He looked across the room to see his Heisman Trophy adorned with Richie’s baby duck plush toy stuffed under the outstretched arm. It made him laugh and smile at the wonderful way his life turned out.
Janice came down the stairs and flopped on the couch beside him. “Who’s winning?”
“Not us. Richie give you any problem?”
“No, he went right off after you told him that ‘touching’ bedtime story.”
“It’s a good story.”
“Bill, a one-and-a-half-year-old doesn’t even understand most of the words you used in telling him how Thomas Edison discovered the filamajingy.”
“Filament! And Edison made up the word, and as made-up words go, it’s as good as goo-goo or blankie, so why can’t an almost two-year-old know it? It wasn’t really a real word. It’s like getting one free.”
“What?”
Bill noticed for the first time that she and Richie both ‘squinched’ their faces, a cute combination of squinting and wincing when they were confused by something. “Never mind. I made popcorn, you want some?”
“Where is it?” Janice asked looking around the living room.
“I left it in the microwave.”
“So it’s not, ‘do I want some?’ It’s more like you want some and you want me to go get it?”
“Well, they scored a touchdown just as the oven dinged.”
“I’m going to ding you. Want anything to drink with that?”
“There’s a diet Coke in the fridge.”
Janice left to go to the kitchen, and when she returned she handed him a bottle of Electrolyte water and some carrot sticks. “Here these are healthier for you and will keep you around long enough to do my bidding.” Then she saw it — a vase with two-dozen roses in it. “Oh Bill, these are gorgeous. How did you sneak them in here?”
“I hid ’em out in the garage.”
“Garage roses! My favorite! What’s the occasion?”
“Nothing, I just wanted to get you flowers.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
“Did I forget that you forgot something?” She wondered aloud as she smelled the bouquet.
“No.”
“You didn’t cheat on me did you?”
“What!”
“Well, guys usually only bring ‘flowers-for-nothing’ when they’ve done something.”
“Oh, how little ye knows of me.”
“Are you going away on some trip and you want to break it to me gently?”
“No, but that is a good one; I should remember that. No, baby, I just love you and wanted to let you know it.”
“So I can breathe?”
“Yes, as many times as you like and for the rest of your life if you want to.”
“Ahhh Bill, that’s so sweet… thank you.”
“Finally!”
With the roses having gone over well, but the Cardinal’s march to the Rose Bowl not so well — being detoured by two turnovers — Bill felt he couldn’t take the defeat tonight, so he switched off the TV and headed into the den and his e-mails.
There he found a report on the CERN, and he started skimming through it. A half hour later, Janice found him. “You’re in here? I thought you went out without telling me.”
“Sorry honey, just catching up on black holes and destruction of all matter as we know it.”
“Is that going to give you nightmares?”
“I’ll just have to hold on to you tighter.”
“Then read more, Billy boy, read more. I am going up and getting ready for you.”
He closed the report and jotted down a note on the cover, ‘Create CERN task force. Use rings and Joey. Skip Burrows, Jason Wallenford?’
Then he turned off the light and headed up the stairs two at a time.
III. UNDERCURRENTS
In the first nanosecond, everything he saw all around him would simply disappear, the instantaneous end of the concept of ‘solid.’ Everything, every molecule, every atom would suddenly fall apart, its basic ability to hold together dissolved. For a few millionths of a second, it would all be an instant liquid, and in a few millionths of a second more, the concept of liquid would no longer exist, as all that was once matter became a version of plasma. The most minute pieces of existence would suddenly be ripped apart into a gaseous fog, until even that dissipated into nothingness. Within the first seconds the earth would cease to exist. In ten minutes the entire solar system would vanish, then everything in creation, and in time, which itself would be dying, everything that ever existed would become non-matter.
With that apocalyptic thought, The Engineer took one last drag on his Gitanes Blonde. Maybe it was the late autumn fresh air flushing his lungs or the bucolic panorama of Lake Geneva surrounding him, but once again he vowed to give up these ‘Gypsy women’ one day. He snuffed her under the toe of his Italian designer shoe, unaware of the small ritual cough that always punctuated the extinguishing of a cigarette. He walked back to his rented Smart Car to drive to the next surveillance spot he had marked on the map of Switzerland.
∞§∞
Mush took one last drag and flicked the butt off the bridge, twenty-five feet above the waterline, as he scanned the small amount of ocean that lay between the Nebraska and the former Midway Naval Base.
Allowed a rare honor, Brooke was “up top” beside him. She noticed that in the Pacific’s setting sunlight, his red beard was incandescent. “I heard someone below refer to Big Red. Is that what they call you — Big Red?”
Mush turned and let out a small laugh. “No, Agent Burrell, the boat is Big Red.”
Brooke gestured to his head of red farm boy hair under his blue-and-gold peaked cap with the words Nebraska SSBN 739 and You sleep. We’ll watch and mused, “You’ve got to admit, what are the odds?”
“Lady, the only way you get a boat named after you in this man’s Navy is to be dead first. And between you and me, that’s a big price tag.”
“Okay, so help me out here: big black ship…”
“Boat.”
“Sorry, boat — nothing red on it that I can see.”
Mush turned to her and brought the back of his hand to his mouth as if to block others from hearing him whisper, “University of Nebraska … Cornhuskers?”
“Big Red! Oh, right, of course.” Brooke turned both her palms up and weighed two imaginary things. “Football, thermonuclear war, it’s a natural match.”
“Are you saying we’re playing a game out here?”
“No, but I had four brothers and I know what boys like.” She turned three hundred sixty degrees and surveyed the ship submersible ballistic missile nuclear, as the Navy lovingly called it. “Yep, this is what boys like.”
“There are women in the Navy, you know?” He said.
“I was one… you know.”
“So, you think this is all just the next male evolutionary step after football?”
“My temporary boss was a quarterback in college.”
“Click! White House, quarterback, Quarterback Group, Wild Bill Hiccock!”
“That was impressive!” Brooke genuinely was impressed, but she quickly chided herself. After all, everything about her was top secret.
He patted the part of the superstructure they called the sail. “They don’t give the keys to one of these things to just anybody, you know?”
“Is that so, Big Red?”
He turned and looked at her, the low amber sun having its effect on her as well. She was looking forward, the wind gently blowing her golden hair. It was then he noticed how the arc of her top lip over her straight bottom lip gave her the look of confidence and perpetual awe, as if she was always seeing something that enticed her. And how, when all that was pointed in his direction, he lapped it up. But now that he saw she gave the same wonder-struck expression to the sea, he felt knocked down a peg.
“You’re staring,” Brooke said, without deflecting her gaze from the vast blue before them.
“I never did this with a w
oman.”
That caused her to turn with the slightest of smirks.
“I mean, the bridge is a kind of men-only environment,” he covered.
“In that case, I am glad we have two lookouts ten feet above us. Otherwise a girl’s reputation might get compromised. But thank you for proving my point!”
“I did what now?”
“No women on the bridge — it reinforces my earlier postulate.”
“So wait, Agent Burrell, are you saying if women ran things, then boats like this on extended deterrence patrols wouldn’t exist?”
“No, not that far, because some side might have foolhardy boys on their boats, and America being caught flat-footed would really be too big a price tag.”
He smiled, folded his arms on the edge of the railing and scanned the horizon. She picked up the binoculars and did the same. Minutes passed.
“Are you married?” Brooke asked.
“Yes.”
“Oh,” she didn’t know why, but she wasn’t expecting that answer. She adjusted her mindset. “Where’s your wife now?”
“You’re standing on her.”
Brooke tried hard to lasso the smile that busted out of her like a wild horse from the corral. “You start singing ‘Brandy’ and I am jumping off this boat and taking my chances back in the ocean.”
“You mean, ‘my life, my lover, my lady is the sea?’” Mush crooned.
“Oh, God, yes! That was my prom song! Because the Homecoming Queen was Brandy Hanson.”
“I would have bet on you for high school heartbreaker.”
“Tomboy! … ’til I was nineteen, then hormones, pheromones or something-mones kicked in and suddenly…
“No more boys being the enemy?”
“Something like that…”
∞§∞
“What would the loading have to be in order to affect the hysteresis dynamics?”
“Loading is not the issue; the issue is power frequency. A half-cycle deviation would result in a six-percent loss in flux and a twenty-five-degree increase in heat output.”
“And if there was a ten-cycle shift?”
“The curves are not linear, so at ten cycles either side of the center frequency you would have ninety percent loss of flux and meltdown of the coil.”
“How long would the meltdown take?”
“At these operating voltages and given the superconductivity, two seconds to liquefy the structure.”
The “Engineer” knew he had just impressed his employer — strike that — his partner, in the great battle that would be over within two seconds of the first shot.
“Do you have the list of what you need?”
“Yes, but are you certain of the timing of the event?.”
“You leave that to me; my unwitting source is impeccable. You focus on your team. With you to guide them, they will not fail.”
“Thank you for your faith in me.”
“My faith is in God; He guides you and me.”
With that, the man, whom The Engineer only knew as “The Architect,” left and melted into the crowds on the tourist-encrusted Route Suisse, the main road that surrounded the Swiss end of the lake. The Engineer went in the opposite direction, where he would meet with the woman he had hand-picked for his team and the main part of this grand vision.
∞§∞
The old gangplank had a banner on the side that read USS Tiger Shark. It was a relic and a leftover from when Midway had a naval facility. At 560 feet, the nearly two-football-field-long Nebraska dwarfed the utility dock, which was now only used to moor small freighters and supply ships. Mush had four seamen weighing down each end of the questionable gangplank just to make sure it was safe. He escorted Brooke and the stretcher carrying seaman Bennis down to the dock where the U.S. Park Service Envoy for Midway met them. He and his car were pressed into service to drive the half mile to the airstrip where a U.S. Air Force G-4 was waiting to return Brooke to Washington. Her condition aboard ship having been upgraded, the hospital check-in wasn’t required. She had been given a set of dress browns befitting an ensign, her last naval rank. She opted to wear the hat so the salute she gave the men cramming the deck to say goodbye would be even crisper.
She watched as Mush said goodbye to the injured seaman as he was loaded into the Midway Hospital ambulance. She was taken with how gentle he was as he put his hand on the man’s and leaned over, no doubt saying something supportive and encouraging. He snapped a salute as the doors closed and then walked over to Brooke.
“Well, Agent Burrell, I guess you’ll be glad to get back to D.C.” Mush said, removing his hat for the first time.
Finally seeing his entire mane of red curly hair made her smile. “Captain, thank you so much for the VIP treatment.”
“After all you went through, it was the least…”
“I know that space is a luxury on a sub and there is no such thing as an extra stateroom. Thanks for giving me your cabin; it was a magnanimous gesture that I really appreciate.”
“If my exec snored, you would have been out of there in a minute!”
Brooke wanted to say something more but thought better of it, and instead she simply said, “Captain, if you ever get to the East Coast, I’m usually free any day that ends in a ‘y.’”
“Good, ’cause today ends like that.” With that, a yeoman brought the captain’s bags to the trunk of the car and placed them inside.
“Where are you going?”
“The exec and crew can get Big Red back to Pearl for repairs. I’ve been ordered back to Washington to tell them first-hand about Jonah and the whale.”
“My offer still stands.”
“I already took you up on it.”
“No, I mean to be a witness in support.”
“Thanks. Hopefully it won’t come to that.” He said.
“It will be nice to have company on the long plane ride home.”
Smiles became the uniform of the day.
∞§∞
“A what?”
“He says a whale!”
“Joey, is this some kind of swab term for a mini-sub or something?”
“Bill, I don’t know; I wasn’t Navy. But even Brooke reported hearing a warning about a whale.”
“I’ve got five or six guys on the rings who are oceanologists and marine biologists; I’ll run it by them.”
The “rings” were the organizational center of Bill’s SCIAD Network. The name was a double entendre of sorts in that he was the science advisor to the president and his shorthand title in White House memoranda was SciAD. It was his innovation and it brought massive brainpower to all the nasty things that could go click in the night and bring America to its knees. From cyber-attacks, approaching asteroids, nuclear proliferation, and world resource shortages, to medical, biological, and synthetic life, science played big as a National Intelligence asset. Bill’s SCIAD rings gave America a fighting chance to counter any technological, man-made, or natural disaster.
“Do you think we can convince Ray to go to bat for us with the Navy?” Joey asked.
“What do we want?”
“A submersible recovery vehicle to plumb the depths of the wreck Brooke got blown off of.”
“You think the crucibles are down there?”
“Not me, Brooke.” Joey laid the top-secret stamped report down on Bill’s desk. “She was on the Vera Cruz to confirm the brokers actually had the crucibles. They were in the hold of that ship!”
“Okay, I’ll ask him at the afternoon staff. Anything else?”
“I need tomorrow off.”
“Sure. What’s up?”
“Going to sign up Joe Jr. to the D.C. Little League.”
“How’s he adjusting to not being in San Francisco anymore?”
“He’s doing fine, makes new friends in an instant. Phyllis? That’s another story.”
“I’ll ask Janice…”
“Bill, Janice doesn’t have time to be welcome wagon queen. Phyl’s got to get out and meet folks.
”
“Take it easy on her, okay? It wasn’t her idea for you to rip up your roots and plant ’em next to me here in the district.”
∞§∞
Brooke had tried on six different outfits in front of her full-length mirror, changing shoes to boots to sling backs to sandals and back to boots. Pearls to chain to choker and back again. Long skirt to short to mid-length to sluttily-high to sensible to pants. Dangles to studs to jackets to feather things. And there was eye shadow, lip liner and four different shades of lipstick on wet wipes and tissues in the trash pail. She tried in vain to cover her scratched cheek and hands with copious amounts of makeup, but abandoned it. He’s already seen me scuffed up. It was seven thirty, she was meeting Mush at eight, and she was exhausted already! Just choose a look already and get out.
In the cab on the way over, she had a panic attack, thinking she should go back and put on the lower cut top. No, that would be too… desperate. She took a deep breath and thought, It is what it is.
Looking out of the cab window as they passed the National Mall, she tried to control the wild horses she felt inside. Despite her apparent reputation as a girl who must have a lot of admirers, her real life after work was rather boring. In fact, Mush, the submarine captain, had been the cause of an unexpected bit of undercurrent in her lower depths. Although they shared their flight back to Washington, they were well chaperoned by Navy and Air Force personnel attending to their every need… except the one she really needed to address. Through the long night’s flight, she hoped he was feeling the same impulse and desire to be alone with her, but she couldn’t read him. Don’t make a fool of yourself, girl. He may only want you as a witness for the board of inquiry. She didn’t believe that last bit of propaganda, but she needed a sober thought to avoid gushing like a schoolgirl when she saw him.
The God Particle Page 4
