The God Particle

by Tom Avitabile

  Inside, Dupré led Bill to stuffy library that smelled of dust and aged books. Sicard was seated across the room and did not get up to greet him. He did, however, give an exasperated look, as seeing Bill genuinely surprised him.

  “Percy! Oh, I’m sorry, Parnell. Or is there another name you’d like to go by today?”

  Parnell Sicard, also known as Percival Cutney, Percival Smyth, and a few other ‘noms de ruse’, sat silently.

  “Doctor Hiccock is here as an interested party, but I am here in a more proactive role.”

  Bill could see the subtle facial changes as Parnell suddenly recognized Inspector Dupré.

  “You remember me? 1997? The Pope?”

  “I wish to be represented by a lawyer,” Parnell said, looking straight ahead.

  “That would only be necessary if you were under arrest.” Dupré lit a cigarette. He offered one to Parnell.

  He didn’t respond to the offer but instead said, “Then I don’t have to talk to you and I am free to leave.”

  “No.” Inspector Dupré pulled a gun and pointed it at Parnell.

  Bill resisted the instinct to object, because he had no power in France. He hoped this was a ploy, but immediately thought that Parnell was too well trained to be rattled. Then Bill’s thoughts turned ugly. What if Dupré had lost it? What if the only blemish on his long distinguished career, the bobbling of a potential Papal assassination, had affected his brain? What if he was going to settle that score with this smug operator in one shot?

  “If you shoot me, you’ll have to shoot your witness here as well,” Parnell calmly said, nodding to Hiccock.

  “Too melodramatic.” Dupré tossed the gun into Parnell’s lap. “Remember that gun?”

  “No.”

  “Look closely at the side of the grip. You see those scratches? Please point the gun at Mr. Hiccock.”

  “Is that so you can shoot me, claiming I was going to shoot him?” Parnell said, leaving the gun in his lap.

  Dupré pulled out his service weapon now and urged, “Please, indulge me.”

  Parnell gripped the gun and pointed it at Bill.

  Bill tensed; he was about to duck behind the chair when Dupré motioned for Bill to check the gun in Parnell’s hand.

  “Tell me that thing ain’t loaded,” Bill said.

  “Doctor, the second Sicard picked up the gun he knew it was too light to be loaded. Please look at his grip.” Dupré prodded again with his gun as a pointer.

  Cautiously, Bill approached the gun from the side and put his hand over the slide as Parnell held it, still aimed at the spot he had left. He looked closely at the grip, and there, spanning the knurled wood of the grip and onto the nickel-plated metal of the gun body, were small scratches around the area where Parnell’s ring on his ring finger encompassed the grip.

  “It’s scratched by the ring.”

  “What does that prove?” Parnell said indignantly.

  “Ah, this weapon was found at the Sofitel in a hamper, one week after the death of the Franciscan, Friar Gregory. At that time it was brought to my attention. You had already wiped it clean of fingerprints, but those scratches puzzled me.”

  “And since the death of Gregory was ruled accidental by fall with no gun play, it seemed like a separate issue.” Bill was catching on but still mindful of the gun in Parnell’s hand.

  “Yes. It was delivered to me because I was chief investigator at the last crime at that location. I deemed it unconnected and sent it to the evidence locker, after having its ballistics categorized, in case a bullet surfaced in some cold case,” Dupré said as he retrieved the gun from Parnell with a handkerchief. “Thanks for the new set of prints, in case a bullet ever shows up.”

  “I still don’t have to talk to you.”

  “I know you are expecting a squad car to intercede and some judge to whisk you away again, but — ” Dupré pulled out his portable radio and said, “Are the suspects in custody yet?”

  “Affirmative; we are looking for evidence now,” the scratchy reply buzzed out.

  “Please take your time, do everything twice and then check it again,” Dupré said into the radio.

  “Yes, sir.”

  Dupré snapped the radio back to the belt clip under his jacket and sat in the chair across from Parnell. He motioned for Bill to sit as well. “Did you know that right next door there is a man who was once associated with the Algerian separatists? Of course, it’s all circumstantial evidence, and in a few hours he will be cleared of all suspicions, but for now, all that your judge, or anybody else for that matter, knows is that this is a national security raid on a possible terrorist safe house next door. Your name and even this address is not in any official report. So my friend, let’s relax and just chat without fear of interruption, shall we?”

  Bill finally took a breath. It was the same diversionary tactic he had used in the Boston op. Of course, he had no way of knowing that the ‘separatist’ next door who was being detained for twenty minutes and then released was a rug merchant who was actually only guilty of separating Dupré’s brother-in-law from his money for a supposedly genuine Turkish rug which turned out, regrettably, to have been made in China.

  “What you think you know, I can neither confirm nor deny,” Parnell said.

  “Think? I don’t think, I now know, my friend, that you are a member of a secret order that protects the Pope.” Dupré held up his left hand and tapped the inside of his ring finger with the tip of his thumb as he spoke. “You got wind of a plot to assassinate the Pope here in Paris. You found out that an extreme radical Muslim sect had a hit man posing as a Franciscan priest here to take part in the Youth Day ceremonies. You dispatched the killer with blunt force trauma to the throat, possibly with a pipe, then positioned the body over the edge of the staircase’s metal railing to seem as though he had slipped, crushing his larynx, and died unable to cry out for help. Spilling a cup of coffee on the step just above him and pouring some on the soles of his shoes was brilliant. You then discarded your backup weapon in a clothes hamper in the basement so you could leave light.”

  “Assuming you might be right, how do you come to the conclusion that it was radical extremists?”

  “A local Imam. He was persuaded to tell me everything that he didn’t tell me the first time I interrogated him when he was the deskman at the Sofitel. Although he didn’t know of the plot, he led me to a small fish in the plan, who years later had gotten on the bad side of the radical Blind Sheik. It was the Sheik who put out the fatwa and ordered the Pope’s assassination, and this minnow had somehow angered him. Once we offered him protection from the Sheik, the little guppy started talking and we couldn’t shut him up.”

  “Look, for what it’s worth, I am a Catholic, and I am thankful you thwarted the plot,” Bill said.

  “And I am pleased that a case I misjudged has been rectified,” Dupré said, as his physical stance relaxed from a purely defensive one.

  “So, if I say you are both welcome, can I go now?”

  “The Inspector has his answers; now I need mine.” Bill turned to Dupré and said, “Inspector, could you let us chat in private, please.”

  Dupré reached around his back and produced a pair of handcuffs. He closed one end around the steam pipe next to Parnell’s chair and held out the open cuff. “If you would be so kind.”

  Parnell reluctantly offered his wrist.

  “Is that necessary?” Bill asked looking at the cuffs.

  “I don’t want a hostage situation, Mr. Hiccock. Once I leave, this very capable fellow might find a way to change the dynamics of the situation. He gently tossed the key up and snatched it from the air. “I’ll be right outside with the key.”

  Bill watched him leave, then turned to Parnell. “Sorry about that but it is his jurisdiction and you and I both know a man with your training and skill is not going to be thwarted by a handcuff.”

  Bill watched and confirmed that this man was good at liar’s poker. He didn’t take the bait. Bill decided to
be straight with him. “Parnell, since you disappeared I did a lot of digging. You were CIA, and then after Beirut you went off grid.”

  Being well-trained, Sicard did not betray his shock or denial when his greatest secret was exposed.

  “Only a few in the spook house totally bought your faked death. And they do not rule out the possibility that you were turned. But I looked at your record, and to me you don’t come up as someone who would work for the Chi-coms, the Russians, or the North Koreans. Then a little bird, as in full bird colonel, opened my eyes. A greater cause doesn’t have to be political, hence the ring. And you proved that by saving the Pope.”

  Bill’s inference that a ‘colonel told him’ was a deliberate attempt to protect his line to Klaven and the Navy. “Look, I understand that religious patriotism can trump nationalism. I get that. And personally, I don’t care about any of that. Except I know I got you nailed, and your effectiveness as a stealth operative is now in my hands. I squawk, and you are done as an operative both to the Pope and to the order.”

  For the first time since Bill started talking, Parnell stopped focusing on a spot on the wall and turned to him.

  Bill upped the stakes. “Knights of the Sepulchre. I know all about them, the Monsignor and that judge, who got you sprung from Dupré the first time, is also one of you. You and they will be exposed and rendered ineffective if you don’t answer my questions honestly and without hesitation. Do you understand me?”

  Parnell weighed the proposition. He looked at Hiccock.

  “Look, Parnell. Don’t underestimate me. I run a top-secret operations cluster at the White House. You knew that when you came to me. So you know where my loyalties lie. I will not hesitate to destroy the five-hundred-year old order, or you, if you get in my way.” Bill could see he was running this over in his mind. “Just tell me what you know of the electro-dynamic fluid you brought to me and how or who is using it to attack ships.”

  “I gave you the lead. It’s up to you to connect the dots, Doctor.” Parnell dropped the affluent Euro-trash accent and spoke like an American for the first time. It was a small nod to Bill’s information being correct.

  “Here’s the last chunk for you to bite into. I have negotiated with the Vatican to back off on their opposition to the Super Collider. So I now have juice with the robes in Rome.”

  “The ring?”

  Bill nodded, “Yes the ring of thorns, the knights, I will blow the cover on all of it…”

  “No, no, the ring, CERN!”

  It was a ten-ton bucket of ice water that hit Bill in the back. “Holy shit!” The collider at CERN was a seventeen-mile ‘ring’ 574 feet deep in the ground. It was used to separate matter down to its basic elements. The next threshold would be to pierce the attraction force or “glue” that holds the sub-atomic parts of atoms together. “Are you telling me the knights have something to do with the supercollider ring?”

  “Dr. Hiccock, we are the Knights of the Ring of Thorns. We think it a prophecy and our destiny to defend against this ‘ring of science’ that is the greatest threat to creation there could ever be.”

  “You sound like my partner, ex-partner.”

  “He’s right. You’re wrong.” Parnell summed up as he relaxed his body language.

  “I tell you what wrong is; killing this man and almost me and my son.” Bill held up a picture of Roland Landau from his folio. He switched to the bloody photo of the dead priest from the trailer. “And this guy, one of yours, shooting surface to air missiles in the Maryland countryside.”

  Bill noticed a slight show of surprise rippled across Parnell’s face. “You know this priest, don’t you?”

  “He was a knight but left the order. He felt we weren’t aggressive enough.”

  “Well, he got aggressive, all right. Let’s put the collider ring to the side for a moment. Tell me about electric ice.”

  At first Parnell was confused, but then he reasoned it out. “Yes, I can see how it is like ice. We first got on the trail because of someone we know only as The Engineer. We were trying to find out who he is, but so far we haven’t.”

  “Why were you after The Engineer?”

  “We think he’s one of the leaders of a plot to blow up the collider at a critical moment and destroy not only the machine, but everything else.”

  “So how does ‘ice’ come into it?”

  “At first the plot seemed to involve infecting the supply truck of helium coolant with the same substance I showed you. We think their plan was to have the liquid helium cooling system crush the rings when they reached the speed in the rings to smash the protons.”

  Bill digested the idea. “I have only been exposed to the substance for a minute but I don’t see how you could control that kind of attack. The electromagnetic fields associated with shaping the path of the particles as they accelerate would generate a current in the liquid helium well before critical speed. So it would be crushed before that point.”

  “I think you are right, but it took them a lot longer to figure that out than you just did and they abandoned that approach.”

  “But they still had all the fluid so…” Bill said.

  “Maguambi channels it to the pirates and they use it as a propulsion system for some kind of weapon.”

  Bill decided he didn’t need to inform Parnell of the whale, so he continued. “Thank you. I am sorry it had to come down to all this just for me to get the answers. I’ll get Dupré to release you.”

  As Bill got up, Parnell blurted out, “The Architect.”

  Bill turned, “Excuse me?”

  “It’s not over. They abandoned the approach, not the plot.”

  Bill slowly sat back in the chair and cautiously said, “Go on…”

  XXI. WASHINGTON BY DAY

  Joey’s second day on leave started with a leisurely breakfast and husband and wife banter about all the things in their life that needed attention. From the gutters in the back of the house to the new recycling rules that meant they needed to buy a blue garbage can. An hour later, Joey was on his computer trying to track Parnell Sicard through Interpol when the phone rang.

  Phyl came into the room and saw Joey hanging up the phone. “Who called?”

  “It was the personnel department of the Executive Branch.”

  “What did they want?”

  “Phyl, I have to go to the office for a while.”

  “Are you coming home for dinner?”

  “I’ll be home by four!”

  She walked out of the den with him as he stood in the front doorway; she kissed his cheek. “Okay…”

  “Want me to pick up something on the way home?”

  “Would you like fresh corn?”

  “Whatcha makin’?”

  “London broil.”

  “Sounds good. And I’ll get some mushrooms too.”

  “Great, I’ll call you if I think of anything else.”

  “Sure thing.”

  Joey was amazed that his White House ‘A’ I.D. hadn’t been restricted. Since he was technically still attached to the FBI, he needed to retrieve some of his interagency papers, then go see the HR department.

  As he left his office, he was surprised to see the president walking down the hall. He stepped aside out of deference but the Commander-in-Chief stopped to say hello.

  “Joey. I thought you were in Paris.”

  “Got in yesterday morning, sir.”

  “Really, then why did Bill fly there overnight?”

  “He did?”

  “Why don’t you know that, son?”

  “To be honest sir, Bill and I have a difference of opinion.”

  “Let’s go to my office.”

  “Sir, with all respect, thank you, but you have other things to do. This is not important.”

  “You don’t get to tell the president what is and what isn’t important, Joey.”

  “You know sir, when you put it that way…”

  The president laughed and turned to his aide, “Tell Ray to push
the Secretary of the Interior for ten minutes.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  A minute later, it was Joey and the president in the Oval Office. A Secret Service agent was peering through the peephole in the door that led to the secretary’s office.

  “Joey, Bill works for me and you work for Bill, so you work for me. He’s there; you’re here. What happened?”

  “Can we just say we’ve reached an ideological impasse?”

  “I am not Oprah, and you aren’t on the couch, so forget the posturing and tell me what’s gotten between the two of you,” the president said as he reached for a sour ball and unwrapped it. He tilted the candy dish toward Joey, who demurred.

  “No thanks, but what I want you to know, sir, is that I am not comfortable disclosing this to you.”

  “Duly noted. Joey, the first time I met you, you were risking your career to go up against your boss, the director of the FBI, in defense of Bill. If you didn’t do that, Bill would have been sidelined and this country would have suffered millions of dead, under a technical tyranny that would have enslaved us all. So I am damn interested in what you’ve got to say. So speak, I’ve got a Cabinet member cooling his jets outside.”

  Joey enlightened the president as to the disagreement. He tried hard not to cross the constitutional line of accusing the president of a ‘high crime or misdemeanor’ allowing research on the God Particle to continue.

  When he was done, the president sucked on the candy in his mouth a little and then spoke. “You aren’t wrong with your concerns; you are, however, wrong about Bill.”

  “I am afraid that Quarterback has become cheerleader for the research, sir.”

  “No he hasn’t. I asked him to give me the go ahead to support this research. Hell, I sent Professor Landau to his death so that Bill could have every chance to give me the right opinion.”

  The president opened his desk drawer, pulled out a folder stamped “Eyes Only” and handed it across the desk to Joey. “Read this, then return it to Mrs. Grayson when you are done.”