Einstein's Bridge

by Cramer, John

  “I guess there’s always next year,” said George. “We should have a new Congress by then.”

  “Senator Bumpers certainly plans to try again next year,” said Barbara, “but I’m not optimistic. The Senate vote isn’t likely to change much. And if Speaker Foley always appoints only SSC supporters to the Conference Committee, we’ll have the same scenario every year. The leadership usually gets its way in this town.”

  On the street outside the Dirksen Building, the rain had stopped. George and Alice found a cab that would take them to the Hilton to collect their luggage and then to National Airport. Alice looked depressed.

  “After the big vote margin of the House vote, I was so sure we had succeeded,” she said. “The damned project seems to have a life of its own. It can’t be killed.”

  “It can,” said George. “You must be patient. Focus on one step at a time. Your work here is done for the year, and it’s time to start the next phase. For the rest of the summer you can work to get your friend Bill Clinton elected.”

  “Great!,” said Alice, looking more cheerful. “I really need a change. Congressional politics is fascinating, but for me it has a cumulative toxic effect.”

  George laughed. “Some can tolerate the toxins better than others,” he said. “Some years ago the various scientific societies created Congressional Fellowships that supported young scientists who would come to Washington and work as volunteer staff in congressional offices to help make science-related decisions. It’s somewhat revealing that the chemists and mathematicians all left Washington after their year was up, like biblical refugees fleeing Sodom and Gomorra, while most of the physicists liked it and stayed on.”

  “I can understand that, I guess,” said Alice, “but I’m ready to leave. This town is not my favorite spot on the Earth. I wasn’t cut out to be Machiavelli.”

  “None of us was,” said George. “It makes us feel slimy, and we hate it. But we do it very well, don’t we? I hope we can stop some day soon, before we start to like it.”

  PART 8

  July 27, 1992

  October 25, 1993

  “Overwhelmingly, many Members (of Congress) needed a symbolic act of budget cutting. The SSC was a project that could be cut because neither the Congress nor their constituents understood it or cared about it.”

  — Prof. Steven Weinberg, Univ. of Texas at Austin, Nobel Laureate

  “(The cost of the SSC) kept ratcheting up, and we tested the limits of Congress’s endurance. The SSC showed us just how far we could go.”

  — Prof. Wil Happer, Princeton University, Former DOE Director of

  Energy Research in the Bush and Clinton Administrations

  “It’s disheartening that a large number of fairly intelligent people could do such a dumb thing ... The government decided, in its wisdom, that high energy physics has no future in the USA.”

  — Prof. Leon Lederman, Illinois Institute of Technology,

  Former Director of Fermilab, Nobel Laureate

  CHAPTER 8.1

  Spadework

  “GO HOME, Steve,” said Bertha. “Get a life! It was a nice try, but we can’t run a presidential campaign without a candidate.”

  Steve Brown looked up at the formidable woman who had been the Florida chairman of the “Perot for President” campaign. “I know, Bertha,” he said. “But there are still a few things I need to finish up first. I’m not going to just drop everything and walk away. Who knows? Maybe Ross will change his mind again and decide to run for President after all.”

  “If he does,” said Bertha, “I’ll kill the little jerk. He was doing so well. He’d already pulled to within a few percentage points of Bush and Clinton in the polls, and our projections said he would have been ahead in two more weeks. It was crazy to pull out now.” She patted him on the shoulder. “But, c`est la vie, as they say in Louisiana. Take care, Steve, and thanks for everything.” She walked out the front door and pulled it closed behind her just a bit too hard.

  Steve looked around the deserted Tallahassee “Perot for President” office. Only a few days before, the place had been a beehive of activity. But after Perot announced his withdrawal two days ago, the volunteers had disappeared, taking much of the loaned office furniture and equipment with them. The rent on the office, however, was paid up until the end of the month, a few desks and chairs were still here, and the WATS telephone lines were still connected.

  He felt angry and betrayed. He had planned so carefully and now it had all come apart. First there was the Alice thing. Alice was pretty, fairly intelligent, and very hard working. He’d picked her specifically for those qualities, and she was supposed to be grateful. As he’d had it planned, they would marry when they graduated, she would get a good job, and she would support him while he finished law school.

  But then that goddamned Texas bastard Preston had appeared, and somehow he’d stolen her. Alice was very secretive about what Preston had told her, but whatever it was, it had completely changed their relationship. Now she had gone off God-knows-where with the bastard doing God-knows-what. She’s probably screwing him right now, he thought, the image striking him like a blow. They’d had a bitter argument the night before she left for Washington. He shouldn’t have hit her, he thought, no matter what she’d said. Now she’d probably never come back to him, even if she broke it off with the damn Texan and came back to FSU.

  The day after Alice left, Steve had totaled his car. He’d been angry about her betrayal, and perhaps he’d been driving too fast. He was very lucky that the driver of the car he’d hit was drunk, so he’d been able to shift the blame. The jerk’s insurance company was going to pay him to replace his car, but for the moment he was a mere bike rider in a town designed around the automobile. Damn, it was frustrating.

  And now there was Perot’s betrayal. Before choosing a presidential campaign, Steve had carefully studied the options. Alice had pushed hard for him to join the Clinton bandwagon, but both Clinton and Bush already had large organizations full of experienced people, and both candidates were burdened with considerable negative baggage. He wasn’t sure if Iran-Gate or Bimbo-Gate was the greater burden, but he didn’t want a candidate carrying either.

  It was also clear to Steve that the media underestimated Perot’s chances of winning. And he soon discovered that the people running the Perot campaign in Florida were simply not that sharp and impressive. He’d seen that it would be easy to rise rapidly in the local Perot organization, possible to move upward to the national organization before the election. After he’d joined the Perot organization his strategy had proved correct. He’d risen very rapidly in the Tallahassee organization until he was Deputy State Chairman. Perot had also risen dramatically in the polls.

  But then two days ago, in the wake of the previous week’s Democratic National Convention, Ross Perot had announced without warning that he was withdrawing from the presidential race. As Bertha had said, without a candidate there was no campaign. And more important, there was no organization to take over.

  It was as if there was a conspiracy to keep him from succeeding, he thought. His plans were in shambles, all his careful planning destroyed. Well, he would not accept this. He’s find a way to fight back. He picked up the telephone, punched the WATS line button, consulted the media list before him, and dialed.

  “Houston Chronicle,” said a female voice.

  “Hello,” said Steve, “I’m calling long distance from Florida. Please connect me with a reporter who covers the oil industry scene in Houston.”

  “That would be Tom Weatherford. The computer shows he’s available. Please hold while I connect you.”

  There was a ring signal, and a voice answered “Weatherford.”

  “Hello, Tom, this is Steve Brown calling from Tallahassee. I’m working on a story for the Tallahassee Democrat,” Steve lied. “I wonder if yo
u could provide some information on a Houston oil man named George Preston. I’ve found several magazine articles about him, and I pulled up a credit report, but I’m looking for deeper information. I thought you might have already checked up on Preston for the Chronicle.”

  “Ah, yes, the mysterious Mr. Preston,” said Weatherford. “Just a minute, Steve, let me fetch my file.” There was a pause, followed by the sound of rustling papers. “Here it is. George Raymond Preston, born in Houston, July 25, 1959, both parents now deceased, no siblings, no record of education in the Houston Public School System or at any public or private university in Texas. President and principal stockholder of the PertoGen Corporation, estimated net worth around one billion dollars. Corporate biography is minimal, claims Preston worked and studied molecular biology in Europe but doesn’t say where or when.”

  “I noticed that his credit history only goes back to 1987,” said Steve.

  “Right,” said Weatherford. “That’s when he moved to Texas from wherever he was before that. He took a driving test to get a Texas Driver’s License in February, 1987. He started Petroleum Genetics Laboratories in a store front on Fannin Street in Houston in March and soon after the company began to market a whole line of petroleum-related biological products for drilling lubricants, drill tool release agents, oil spill cleaning up agents, and other things.

  “The whole PGL startup was peculiar. High technology startup companies usually need big initial investment capital and have to invest heavily in high-tech hardware, but PGL had no financial backers I could find and no large initial hardware purchases except for office computers. Their products were so much better than anything else available that they immediately began to make lots of money. Then Preston began to buy up old garbage dumps and non-producing oil wells.”

  “Garbage dumps? I hadn’t heard about that.”

  “Yes, he put up factory buildings on some of the land. I guess it was cheap, but it must have been hell to stabilize it enough to construct a building on. I never understood what he was up to there.”

  “Interesting,” said Steve, making notes. “What about Preston’s private life?”

  “He lives in a penthouse apartment that occupies the complete top floor of an apartment building he owns on the west side of downtown Houston. He owns two cars, a Porsche and a BMW, no chauffeur. No boats registered to him, but his company recently bought a corporate jet. He’s never been mentioned on the Chronicle’s Society Page, but he’s attended a number of political functions and is occasionally mentioned in connection with politics. When he’s seen in public, it’s usually with business associates. No indication of women friends. He was a big contributor to the Bush Campaign in 1988, but recently he’s switched his contributions to Clinton and Perot.”

  “Is Preston backing Perot too?” Steve asked. “I wasn’t aware of that.”

  “Guess he must have had a falling out with the Bush people,” said Weatherford. “Let’s see what else there is. He has no season tickets for sports or cultural activities. The doorman of his apartment told me that he works long hours, doesn’t go out much, and never brings anyone home with him late in the evening, either male or female.”

  Steve frowned. He’d envisioned Preston as a ladies man, and this didn’t seem to fit. Was Alice something more than a casual conquest? He needed to know more about the bastard. “How do you explain the blank credit record before 1987 and the lack of an educational history?” he asked. “Even if he moved back to Texas from out of state, shouldn’t there be some paper trail of his previous credit cards and bank accounts?”

  “Interesting question,” said Weatherford. “Marquis Who’s Who said that he declined to write a biography for them. Perhaps he did return to the U. S. from Europe, but when we see a blank like that, it usually means something else. Usually the person in question is either in the federal witness protection program, or has changed his name and started over for some other reason.”

  “Maybe he has a prison record,” said Steve, “or has drug money. Perhaps he absconded with somebody else’s money and is hiding out.”

  “I doubt it,” said Weatherford. “Preston’s lifestyle has been too conspicuous for someone who’s in hiding. His picture was in Business Week a few weeks ago.”

  “Hmm,” said Steve. “Maybe he had plastic surgery.”

  “Possible,” said Weatherford. “He certainly looks much younger than the age 43 his birth certificate would indicate. If I hadn’t seen it myself, I’d say he was in his mid-30s.”

  “I don’t suppose you’ve tried running a fingerprint check on him,” Steve said.

  “I don’t know if you guys in Florida can get away with doing such things, but the Houston Police Department is not terribly receptive to reporters who want them to run fingerprint checks through their forensic database system in pursuit of a story. Besides, I don’t have a sample of Preston’s fingerprints.”

  After making arrangements to keep in touch with Weatherford, Steve locked up the campaign office and pedaled to the rooming house where Alice had lived. He knew she had paid up the rent for the summer, even though she was away. He rang the doorbell, and an older woman opened the door.

  “Hello Mrs. Mitchell,” he said. “I’m Steve Brown, Alice’s friend.”

  “Oh, yes,” she said. “How is Alice? We’ve missed her.”

  “She’s working in Washington, D.C. right now, and she’s doing fine,” Steve said. “She just called and asked if I could find something that she left in her room and send it to her. I’d really appreciate it if you could let me in.”

  The woman opened the room for him, then left. Steve put on a pair of light gloves and began to search the drawers and the bookshelf. He found nothing of interest. Finally, he took a flashlight and magnifier from his pocket and walked to the bathroom.

  When Steve was 13 he had for a time been obsessed with the techniques of finding and analyzing fingerprints. He’d read many books on the subject and assembled his own fingerprint kit with a flashlight, a magnifying glass, ruled sheets of paper, a black stamp pad, tiny paint brushes, talcum powder, and clear plastic tape. He had taken and analyzed the fingerprints of his family and friends. He’d memorized all the fingerprint variations, the whorls, arches, overhand loops, and learned the line-counting techniques used to convert a given print-pattern to a set of numbers used in computer database searches.

  Now he shined the flashlight at an oblique angle to Alice’s bathroom mirror and used the magnifier to look closely at the surfaces near the mirror’s edges. Clear fingerprints were visible there, undoubtedly Alice’s. All had a characteristic whorl pattern. He used face powder from a drawer to dust some of the glass and plastic bottles from the medicine cabinet . They bore same whorl pattern.

  Returning to the main room, he walked to a corner containing a microwave and small refrigerator. Against the wall was a cabinet containing china and glassware. He was sure that Preston bastard had been here several times, particularly on the night Alice had left. He opened the cabinet and examined each glass closely.

  Most of the glasses were clean. A few had clear whorl fingerprints on their surfaces. One glass, however, bore the traces of fingerprints that were distinctly different, with an overhand loop pattern unlike anything he’d found in the bathroom.

  He considered this. Preston must have drunk from this glass while he was here, then washed it, and put it away. Or perhaps the prints belonged someone else altogether. What the hell, it was worth a shot.

  He carefully wrapped the glass in tissue, placed it in a paper bag, clipped the bag to the back of his bicycle, and pedaled back to the Perot office.

  “You’re absolutely sure it was a break-in?” asked the policeman. The name plate on his uniform read “Cable,” “Couldn’t this have been done by one of your volunteers? Maybe one who forgot to tell you?”

  “No,” said Steve. “We gave out offi
ce keys freely to our volunteers, since people worked here at all hours. And, as you can see, the door was jimmied.”

  Officer Cable nodded. “So you’re missing some files, a cashbox containing about $250, and a bottle of scotch whiskey. How important were the files? This sounds a bit like that Watergate thing.”

  “The files were confidential and sensitive,” said Steve. “Contributors lists, investigative reports, privileged correspondence ... They might have been valuable to the opposition, except that Perot has now dropped out of the race. The file cabinets, desks, computers, and almost everything else had been cleared out of the office already. We’re giving up the building lease in a couple of days. I’d been saving the scotch for a celebration, but as it turned out, we never had much to celebrate.”

  Cable nodded, then looked closely at the drinking glass on the desk. It had a slight brown residue in the bottom and smelled of stale liquor. “So the timing is peculiar, but this might have been a politically-motivated break-in,” he said. “The thief wasn’t very professional. He must have helped himself to a quick drink before he left. That’s good for us, because it looks like he left us a clear set of fingerprints on the glass.”

  Steve smiled and nodded. “I hope they help you catch the bastard,” he said.

  Steve waited three days, then called Officer Cable. “Any progress on our break-in?” he asked.

  “Glad you called, Mr. Brown,” Cable said. “I had a feeling that your break-in might be like that Watergate thing, so I pulled out all the stops. We faxed the prints to Washington and asked the FBI to check them.”

  “What did they find,” Steve asked.

  “It’s strange,” said Cable. “We got a positive match to the prints from the FBI database. It pulled up the records of a guy named George A. Griffin. He’s not a criminal, though, he’s a scientist. FBI had his prints because while he was a student at MIT many years ago he had a high-security summer job with a Boston military contractor. We started with the contractor and tracked down his current address. It was at the CERN Lab in Switzerland, so we got the Geneva Office of Interpol to check on him. Griffin is now living in France near the Swiss border. It’s very clear that he’s not the person we want, though. He was giving a speech at a physics meeting at CERN in front of 200 people at the exact time of your break-in. Your burglar couldn’t have been him. Guess there must have been some computer screwup in the FBI’s identification system.”