She arrived at the little Georgetown bistro at eight o’clock sharp. There was Mush at the bar, looking sharp. His fashion choice was easy: he was in dress blues, a tailored uniform that was crisp and neat. Did he get a haircut and a beard trim? She loved the way he looked. When he saw her, he smiled the kind of smile Brooke hoped she’d see on his face every time they met.
“Agent Burrell, you look…stunning!”
“Oh, stop.”
“No, really!”
“No, I mean, ‘Oh, stop calling me Agent Burrell.’ It’s Brooke.”
“Brooke. I am glad we could see each other tonight.”
“Don’t you look all dashing in your dress blues.”
“Sorry, I came right from the Pentagon.”
“Oh.” Brooke was a little disappointed he hadn’t dressed that way for her.
“Believe me, when you walked through that door, I knew I should have gone back to my hotel and changed into better clothes, because you look fantastic, but I didn’t want to be late.”
“Good call,” the little voice in Brooke’s head said, slow down, “because I am starving.”
He had made a great choice of wine. Not too expensive, yet a label that had been getting a lot of buzz of late. Ordering from the menu, he asked the waiter to prepare the branzino a certain way for both of them. The waiter was impressed at the suggestion. Then this master and commander of the fourth largest nuclear power on earth, this captain of one hundred fifty or so souls on a ship of war, this man who was used to having his orders followed without pause or hesitation, did the unexpected and said, “If you think the chef wouldn’t mind.”
“I don’t think there will be a problem, monsieur.”
Brooke liked how he was able to slip into civilian mode. Not ordering, but asking, even though he was ordering dinner.
Mush was interested in where and how Brooke grew up. So Brooke did most of the talking during dinner. After he picked up the check, he looked at Brooke — really looked at her. She could see him taking in her hair, her chin, her ears, her lips, and then his eyes fell softly on hers. His mouth curled into a smile of satisfaction and contentment. “Wanna walk a little?”
As they walked the cozy streets of Georgetown, Mush spoke of his plans and ambitions. Brooke was surprised to learn that he wasn’t interested in the Admiralty. He liked the sea and the mission; he wanted to do it until he couldn’t anymore. Then retire. His passion for the job and his loyalty to duty made him even more attractive to Brooke. That surprised her. She thought she would have liked to hear that he wanted to settle down and explore the land side of life, but she wasn’t disappointed at all. They stopped on a corner waiting for “Don’t Walk” to change to “Walk.” Brooke felt him staring, as he had on the bridge of the Nebraska. She didn’t look at him but said, “You’re staring — again.”
“You look as beautiful tonight as on the bridge in the sunset.”
She turned to him. His eyes were mesmerizing. She softened her demeanor and wet her lips. He looked at her lips, tilted his commander captain’s hat back on his head, raised her chin gently with his hand, and kissed her. They kissed for a long time. People were walking around them. A car honked and they didn’t flinch. His arm came around her and he pulled her close; she arched into him and they both held on tight. Eventually they went from their first kiss to a hug. She loved the little sigh that came from deep inside him. They continued walking. They walked and talked for hours. Somehow they found themselves on the Fourteenth Avenue Bridge; they had walked right back to D.C. The sun was rising over the Potomac and they were leaning on the concrete railing looking down at the current sweeping under the bridge. They turned their heads and kissed once more. Mush went to pull her close by her arm but unintentionally grabbed her breast instead; he quickly moved his hand to her arm. Breaking the lip lock long enough to utter, “Sorry.”
She found his hand and placed it back on her breast. His touch was gentle but the way he caressed her made a little moan escape her throat as they embraced. That kiss made them both dizzy.
They found a little breakfast place in the Sofitel on Fifteenth, near the White House, that was just firing up the grill for the morning shift. They sat and ordered eggs.
∞§∞
The SCIAD network that Bill created was a super-charged intranet, superimposed across the entire Internet. He logged back onto the network just before the afternoon staff meeting and saw he had three responses. He assumed they were from the marine and ocean experts who were on the rings. They were the most likely to respond to Bill’s request for information on any studies or cases where whales attacked or were trained to attack ships.
He was intrigued by one response that struck him as odd. It was from a chemical engineer affiliated with Disney Imagineering, the company that dreams up the cybernetics and animatronics elements for Disney rides and attractions all around the world. Re-reading one particularly chilling part made Bill pick up the phone.
“Brooke, is your bag packed?”
∞§∞
Brooke hung up the phone. “Sorry, I shouldn’t have taken that call.”
“Gotta go?”
“Yes. It’s my boss.”
“Quarterback?”
“Yes. He wants me up in New York this morning. I don’t want to go. I want to stay with you.”
“And I don’t want to meet with the Naval Intelligence guys at nine. I want to go back to that bridge and kiss you all over again till the next sunrise.”
“We better get the check,” Brooke said as a way to uncouple her feelings for Mush from the job she had to complete.
At the curb outside the little breakfast place, Mush said, “I’ll flag you a cab.”
Brooke took one long last look at Mush. He held his white cap out and let out a whistle that nearly pierced her eardrums. As the cab neared, he took her by the arms and kissed her. “Let’s see each other the first chance either one of us gets.”
“How long will you be in D.C.?”
“Only today. I leave at five to go back out to Pearl to supervise the repairs.”
“Is that where you live?”
“For the foreseeable future, temporary change of station. Our boomer nest is in Bangor, Washington, but the Pentagon wants to flex a little muscle at the Chinese and North Koreans and nothing shows the bad guys you’re watching them like a Trident sub on their front porch. Maybe you can come to Hawaii?”
“Yes. I want to.” Reflexively she began smoothing his hair. “Be careful.”
“Me! You, you’re the secret agent here.” He reflexively caressed her bruised cheek, taking care not to actually touch the wounds. “I don’t want you to risk an eyelash on that beautiful face of yours or do anything to this incredible body until we see each other again. Promise?”
“Just keep those shoulders and arms ready to wrap around me when I see you, Big Red.”
They kissed one more time as the horn of the cab lightly beeped.
∞§∞
Conscription is mandatory in Switzerland for men and voluntary for women, so a large percentage of the population has military experience. The responsibility to serve is not easily avoided, due to the yearly training sessions and the fact that almost every home has a closet with an M-16 and a sealed box of ammunition somewhere nearby. The seal is checked on a random basis by agents of the government to make sure the weapon is only used in a national emergency, such as anybody coming after the world’s trillions in gold held in the famous Swiss banks.
Raffael Juth grabbed his light coat, barely noticing the M-16 in the back of the closet. He checked that his gloves were in the pocket and headed out the door on his way to work.
He hit the fob of his Audi A6, his latest prized possession. He loved the feel of the car and its hi-tech interface. It matched his position at LHC, where he had risen through the layers as his programming code for the dissemination of retrieved data from core sensors was heralded as a giant step forward for LHC as a whole. What no one knew was that his br
eakthrough had come from his grandfather. When Raffael was a young boy he helped his grandfather build low fieldstone walls. He learned the trick of taking random stones and creating a wall with a flat, level top. The key to the wall, and his program, was the little wedge-stones that balanced and stabilized the big rocks, provided a stable footing for the next layer.
To achieve balance in his program and stabilize the main calculating engine while the live input data was changing, he used a mathematical equivalent of a wedge stone. This little rock of an equation was small enough to fit inside the major algorithm, yet nimble enough to level the output, keeping it stable as new data buttressed and replaced old data on the way to forming a solid wall of numbers that could be relied upon like a fieldstone wall.
The Audi’s Bluetooth interface synced to his iPod, and Coldplay rocked the luxury compartment of his trophy-on-wheels. In twenty minutes he’d pass Lake Geneva and be at the complex five minutes later.
∞§∞
The booming bass reverberated ahead, around and behind the Audi as it passed the scenic overlook where The Engineer stood talking to a severe-looking woman with jet-black hair. “Right on time! Like a fine Swiss watch,” was his droll observation as he watched the Audi take the curve with ease.
“He’s young,” the stone-faced woman said with an East German accent.
“Is that a problem, Maya?” The Engineer said, for the first time seeing her as on the younger side of middle age.
“Only that they think themselves invincible and that they will live forever.”
“I thought you a professional. Did I underestimate?”
“No. You did not. This is not a problem; let’s see the house.”
∞§∞
East Hampton Airport is the bus station where the rich and famous park their “buses,” namely their G4s, G5s, Hawker 400XPs, Boeing Darts, Citation 10s, and the occasional Cessna high wing. On approach from the air, Brooke looked down on the tons of little white multi-million dollar toys all chocked and tied down, lest a sudden nor’easter come through and pile them all up on one end of the runway. Brooke deplaned the government’s Citation 10 down five short built-in stairs in less time than it takes to say “de-planed.” She made her way to the interagency motor pool car and driver waiting on the tarmac, that her experience told her had probably been hastily dispatched from the IRS offices in Holtsville, up island.
It took all of five minutes to get to the facility on the outskirts of the airport, blessedly not enough time to strike up a conversation with her driver. Used to driving around tax auditors and low level managers, he was probably dying to ask her about the bruise on her cheek and her chewed up and scraped hands.
At the front desk of Walt Disney Imagineering she was greeted by Todd Yaleman, who was about forty, lanky, and smelled of cigarettes. Next to him was Officer Derrick Barnes, who wore a Town of East Hampton police uniform. Brooke produced her FBI identification and they settled in a small conference room off the main corridor. Even though the room was small, it had all the gizmos: a whiteboard hooked up to a computer, video projector, multiple LCD screens, and a video conferencing rig.
Officer Barnes handed over an old-fashioned paper police file.
She saw his interest in her face and hands. “Skiing accident, you should see the bush.” Brooke leafed through it. “Were there any latent prints?”
“We found one set that didn’t match the employees. We ran an NCIC but there was no hit.”
Brooke found the print slides in the folder and set them aside. “I’ll sign a chain of custody and take these back with me and out to Interpol.”
“You’re saying someone from Europe actually broke in here and took my propulsion plans?” Yaleman said.
“Did you know that EuroDisney in France had a similar break-in, also two years ago?”
“No, I didn’t know that. Did they get Claude’s work then?”
Brooke took out her Blackberry and flip-fingered through the pages. “Claude Vervant?” She said looking up at the design engineer.
“Yes, he and I worked on it; he on the materials and manufacture over there, while I was working on the fluid dynamics here.”
“Well, Mr. Yaleman, what can you show me about the project?”
“Have you seen the movie?”
“Ishmael’s Quest? No, I’m sorry.”
“Well, you and the rest of the world. That’s why we never built it. There was no ride potential to a movie that wound with up nobody ever seeing it.”
“Aside from the movie, is there anything I can see on the project?”
“We will have to go to the video lab. All I have left are the research and progress tapes.”
“Let’s go take a look.”
∞§∞
Three hours later, Brooke was sitting at a table in World Pie, a bistro in Bridgehampton, one of the picturesque little towns a person encounters on the way back to New York City. She was starved, and the sliced steak salad before her was disappearing at a non-ladylike rate. The government jet that had brought her here went on, and she was to be driven back to New York to check in at her former office on Fifty-Seventh Street. From there she could send the prints to Interpol and also check to see if Yaleman had a criminal record.
Brooke had been the head of the New York office of the FBI until Bill and his QUOG team recruited her. Now she was a prime operator for the Quarterback Operations Group.
As she ate she thought how odd it was that a week ago she had almost died in the Indian Ocean, and now she was in the tony Hamptons. ‘Swanky,’ her late brother Harley would have called it. Thinking of her brother made her think of Mush. The little reverb that rang throughout her body was a nice feeling. Wait, she thought, don’t even go there. He’s a sea captain, gone six months out of the year and based in Hawaii for the rest. Well, that part wouldn’t be too bad. She downed her iced tea, paid the bill in cash, and took a receipt.
IV. PIG IN A POKE
Bill looked at the place where the building had been repaired and couldn’t tell where the old construction ended and the new replacement façade began. So fine was the workmanship that it made him think it was too good. Maybe they should have left it charred and blackened from the 9/11 attacks, as a reminder to be ever-vigilant, to never be asleep at the switch again, at least not here, not at the focal point of America’s military power, the Pentagon,
Inside, Bill and Joey were ushered to a secure teleconference room. Two rear admirals and a civilian contractor were already in the room.
Everyone having been briefed on the meeting in advance, Bill jumped right in. “Can we recover the crucibles?”
“Yes, but it will take a thirty-four days.”
“Why not the three weeks we requested?” Joey said.
“The final position of the ship on the ocean floor isn’t going to make it easy, because now we know it settled hull up,” Rear Admiral Merkel said.
“That and getting in there from a distance without being detected by a satellite, and working in those depths in pressurized hulls and suits, with pre-positioned recharges…” another officer said.
Bill couldn’t remember the officer’s name, but saw the stars on his shoulder boards. “Please explain, Admiral?”
“From the cover of a freighter specially rigged up for the deep submersible team, the first seven runs to the wreck will be to deposit supply capsules and tools. The eighth trip will bring men and sensors to the site and with the pre-positioned supplies they will have enough oxygen, food and fresh water to work for the two weeks. We anticipate it will take that long to locate, reach, and retrieve the crucibles,” Admiral Pensey said.
“How much do you estimate it will cost?” Bill asked.
Merkel nodded to the civilian contractor, who opened a briefing book and quoted, “If the thirty-four-day schedule holds, three hundred eighty-five million, which includes two weeks simulated recovery in Vieques to test and true up the tools and sensors.”
“The Navy must have sunk a hundred
ships off that Puerto Rican island in gunnery practice, so that will give your men lots of hulls to practice cracking,” Joey said.
“Exactly,” Merkel said. “Also, it will help acclimate the bodies to pressure and pure O2.”
Bill reached into his case and retrieved two sets of documents. “Admiral, I am authorized by the President of the United States, whose seal and signature is duly affixed, to order you to claim under international maritime law, in the name of the United States of America, the ship wreck Vera Cruz, originally registered under the Maltese flag and now classified as adventurae maris or wreckage still at sea. To retrieve from her hold those items hereunder classified by executive order as articles of national security in the highest priority including…” Bill looked up to denote how important this part was. He read on, “but not limited to, nuclear containment crucibles, their crating, documentation, and any other pertinent evidence as to be used at such time in a world court, or court of world opinion, to protect the interests of the United States. The president, as Commander in Chief, and acting under the National Command Authority, on this day declaring these items a clear and present danger to the United States being hereby acknowledged.” He grabbed a pen and signed both copies. “I now co-sign these operational orders as your executive officer with the simulated rank of an SES-14.”
He slid the orders to the Admiral, who signed them and closed the leather folder. Neither man dwelled on the fact that the paper was essentially a purchase order for three hundred eighty-five million dollars-worth of Navy attention.
“Good luck and Godspeed to you and your men,” Bill said as he shook the hands of the two Navy men and the contractor.
The God Particle Page 5
