“The search for the God Particle!” Parnell said.
“Or the splitting of it.” Joey said.
“Exactly. Our government is lobbying the council at CERN to delay this line of research, in no small part because of my recommendation to the president that there aren’t enough safeguards as yet to avoid exactly what we are fearing now.”
“Although the notion of sabotage certainly bodes well to shut it down,” Brooke said.
“The council meets to consider our proposal at ten. I am going to them and bringing what we know; maybe we can make this a non-event,” Bill said.
“What about, Raffey’s family? What if they are hostages? Do we sacrifice them?” Brooke was emphatic.
Bill looked to Joey and jutted his chin toward him, “Your call Joey.”
“Brooke, you’ll continue electronic and human surveillance; if you get any actionable intelligence, we’ll move to rescue.”
XXX. WORLDWIDE CONCERN
“Swiss authorities are using the word ‘calm’ at the moment in the aftermath of clashes with riot police in the normally quiet city of Geneva. These protests turned violent when a small group of protestors tried to storm the gate here at the CERN facility that houses the Large Hadron Super Collider. There were over a thousand arrests, and the Swiss police have doubled their forces and have drawn a line in the sand, so to speak. For now the protesters are gathering more and more in strength every hour. Nils Macintyre, BBC World Service.” Macintyre waited for the follow-up question from the anchor in London. Behind him were protestors holding signs, only one of them stated simply, ‘No LP at LHC’. Thankfully, Nils didn’t ask what LP stood for lest he find a whole new angle to the story about the dead Dr. Landau and his Protocol being the reason behind the protest.
The anchor was now addressing the large studio monitor in front of him with the video of the reporter. “Nils, there are similar spontaneous outbursts all across the globe. Is there any indication from where you are that there is some organization to these eruptions?”
“Bryan, the level of this ‘movement,’ if you will, seems to be totally grass roots. There are no prepared brochures or even quickly printed or copied press releases one usually finds at less spontaneous gatherings. There are American TV crews here, and they are pretty much asking the same question, wondering if these folks here are part of the protest in New York, Washington, Chicago, and a dozen major cities across that country. And aside from the social media activity that accompanies any large group, we haven’t found any pre-organization or build up to these now-turned-violent, events of the last hours. Back to you Bryan.”
“Thank you, Nils.” Anchor Bryan Diggs turned from the monitor and settled on Camera One as a graphic appeared in the screen behind him reading, ‘Collision at the Collider.’ “But what do the protesters want? Joining us now for some more analysis, from his home in Cheshire, is Professor Ward Sessions director of the Daresbury Laboratory. Dr. Sessions, what is this all about?”
“The LHC is about to perform their greatest and most ambitious experiment yet, the extreme agitation or splitting of the smallest known entity in the universe.”
“Is this the fabled God Particle we’ve heard spoken about?”
“Well, no. Actually, the God Particle, which is a popular, Hollywood-type term that I don’t particularly subscribe to, is what they are hoping to verify. It is in fact a clarification of Higgs Boson. As your viewers probably don’t know, decades back, Peter Higgs theorized about a smaller than small particle, which he named a Boson. It exists in the grey area between matter and energy. He concluded this speck of creation was the weak force of attraction, or the glue of all matter.”
“Well, I think some of us have followed you, but didn’t they find this particle in July of 2012?”
“They found a particle that fit the profile of the Higgs Boson, in that it’s actions under extreme forces were Higgs Boson ‘like’, but this new initiative, the Landau Protocols, is to again agitate or split what ever that particle is in to revealing it’s true makeup and origin to us.”
Luckily the host was not well versed and didn’t focus on what the Landau Protocol was; instead, he jumped on what he thought the headline was. “Wait, so it could or could not be the God Particle that they are attempting to split?
The show went on, doing more to confuse the average viewer than enlighten.
∞§∞
It was the constant whimpering that made it so unbearable. Why can’t we just kill the kid now! Maya thought. The endless sniffles and wails were driving her mad. She had slapped the kid silly, but that only made it worse. Luckily, soon it would all be over. The Architect would get this Raffey jerk to do whatever it was he wanted him to do, then they could kill these witnesses and she could get on with her new life in Egypt with a new identity and new bank account. Just thirty-six more hours. Her patience and boiling point reaching critical, she rapped on the door to the room the kid and her mother were chained up in. “Shut up in there or I’ll come in there and really give you something to cry about.”
∞§∞
“Shhh. Shhh. Kirsi, it will be okay. It will be okay,” Leena said for the thousandth time since they had been thrown into this room with only two meals a day and shackled to just enough chain to reach the toilet and the wash sink where they drank water from the faucet. Their ankles were red and bleeding with welts from the chain’s irons clasped around their legs. She had no idea why someone would do this to them. She kept her mind from dwelling on their ultimate fate by protecting her daughter and trying to ease her fears minute by minute. Her blouse was wet from her daughter’s tears and her sleeves crusted with mucus from wiping Kirsi’s nose. She sat silently in the room, which was pitch-black save for a crack of sunlight coming through the seam of a tarp nailed over the window, gently rocking her whimpering little girl.
∞§∞
More and more, Brooke was convinced that Raffey was a manipulated pawn rather than the brains of the outfit. She knew in her bones that his sister, Leena, and his niece, Kirsi, were the control elements. Her dilemma was that she was in a foreign country, investigating a kidnapping/blackmail/terrorist plot that had been put into motion before she landed in Switzerland six days ago. And how did Abrim’s death play into all of this? Luck, instinct, and drilling into police reports had gotten her so close, yet in many ways she could still be back on the East Coast, and no closer to the answers, while time was running out. She needed to get into Raffey’s house, his life. The tea kettle on the stove whistled and broke her chain of thought. As she took it off the burner and turned off the gas, it hit her!
∞§∞
“Mercaptan?” Bill said, as much impressed with Brooke’s research as blindsided by the randomness of her plan.
“You want to do what?” Joey asked.
“I want to get into Raffey’s house while he’s at work. There have to be some clues there. Also my idea takes away any surveillance teams that maybe have eyes on the house.”
“What if they are using electronics, cameras and such?” Captain Lustig said.
“I’ve been told I look good in a head-to-toe hazmat suit.”
“You know, I can’t find a thing wrong with it!” And so, with that statement, Bill effectively greenlighted Brooke’s out-of-the-box scheme.
XXXI. IT'S A GAS
It took about an hour for the techs at SIG, the Swiss gas company, to rig a fuel oil truck with two pressurized tanks of pure T-butyl mercaptan, the foul smelling additive to normally odorless natural gas that allows immediate detection of gas leaks or extinguished pilot lights. They also wired up a remote aerosol nozzle to dissipate the chemical safely. Their fluid dynamics engineers gave the final approval by judging that the colorless cloud of dissipated mercaptan would stink up the whole neighborhood without any toxicity to the residents. Although, one added, some people might vomit.
At 10:30 a.m., an innocuous tank truck turned down the street that Raffey’s house was on. Ten minutes later, the calls st
arted coming in to SIG, local police, and the firehouses. Brooke was briefly instructed on the gas mask and ventilator that kept her hazmat suit cool and waited for the organic progression of police or fire to call on the gas company to investigate the leak. Their first plan was to order the immediate evacuation of the entire neighborhood. Bill had added a great touch by suggesting that the leak was so severe that the air space above the leak be cleared lest a possible static discharge from the rotors of a copter ignite the very air itself.
Brooke rolled in the first SIG truck on the scene. The engineer who rigged the tank truck was first out with a handheld monitor and declared the leak at five hundred parts per million, which was the trip wire for mass evacuations. The police and fire companies went to work, and by 11: 45 a.m. a three-block square area surrounding Raffey’s house was a ghost town; even pets were brought to the temporary shelters set up at two local high schools. SIG released a statement saying the residents should only be inconvenienced for three to four hours.
Only the gas company engineer and Brooke knew this was a false alarm. All the other gas, police, and fire personnel took it as seriously as they had been trained to do, which included insuring that the citizens didn’t lock their doors, so that the gas crew could have acces to find the leak. One added plus was that the procedure for gas leaks mandated that the power to the affected blocks be cut. This was done to protect against accidental ignition by electrical spark from timers, heaters, and other automatic electric appliances that could trigger a gas cloud into an explosive force.
Still, for appearances, and any battery powered cameras or monitoring devices, Brooke first went into the house next to Raffey’s, as over fifty crewmembers went into every other house on the street. She dallied for a few minutes and then went to Raffey’s. The door was locked, and she had to fumble a little working the lock pick and tension bar through hazmat gloves.
Once inside, she removed her hazmat helmet and took a big flashlight out of her tool bag. She opened the hall closet and saw the M-16 and the box of ammo on the shelf. She rifled through the clothes hanging in the hall closet. She found women’s and little girl’s coats, hats, and gloves. She went into the kitchen. This morning Raffey had had breakfast for one, left dishes in the sink and should have taken out the garbage. She went into the den, reached in her bag, and placed a small disk device under his keyboard. She also rested a similar device over his cable modem. Brooke found the power strip to the computer, unplugged it from the wall, and plugged it into the ten-pound uninterruptable power supply in the canvas sack she had lugged in. The UPS had a lead-acid battery that could power a computer for up to twenty minutes if the wall power went out. She would only need ten. She put a five-terabyte hard drive into the fire wire port, turned it on, and hoped there wasn’t a password on his home computer. The pre-programmed hard drive dug right in and started cloning Raffey’s entire computer and drives. She went down into the basement looking for Bill’s gory freezer stuffed-with-dismembered-family-members, but all she found was a mouse in a humane trap. She released the little creature and then went upstairs to the second floor and found Kirsi’s room. The drawers were full, her closet full, and her hamper smelled like it hadn’t been cleared in weeks. She found Leena’s room to be the same. The bathroom cabinet showed no prescription medicines for any of them. She noticed Raffey used a hair dryer this morning. Leena’s heated curlers, which were the kind you could take with you, were on the shelf with the cord wrapped around them. In fact, Leena’s makeup case was untouched and could have easily been grabbed if she had left on a planned trip.
She took out her camera and went back to take a picture of Raffey’s desk and his papers as she rifled through his notes and doodlings. She checked the drive, it had two more minutes to go. She looked around and then had an idea. She ran upstairs, took the teddy bear pillow pet from Kirsi’s bed and shoved it in her kit. In the kitchen, she opened the cabinet below the counter and attached a magnetic box to the underside of the sink.
When the drive finished its copying routine, she wrapped it up and placed it back in her kit. She shut down Raffey’s computer and re-plugged it into the wall. She tried to replace the notes and other items on his desk exactly as they were, using as a guide the first picture she took on her digital camera before she moved everything. One last look and she left. Again, for appearance’s sake, she entered to the house across the street.
By two thirty, the all clear was given and the gas company released a statement that the source of the leak was a separated main trunk line that led to the house three down from Raffey’s. They thanked the residents and the emergency services personnel for a quick, orderly, efficient evacuation, which ensured minimal disruption to everyone’s lifestyle.
∞§∞
“Most disturbing.” The Engineer took a drag from his skinny cigarette and blew out the smoke with an exasperated sigh. He turned to the Architect, “Do you believe in coincidences?”
“According to the gas company, the leak was on the same street. I would have been more suspicious if it had happened when Juth was home. As it is, if they did plan this, they were inept in not securing him in one of the shelters. I’d say whether actual or induced, the gas leak has not damaged us.”
“Yes, but they shut down the power; our cameras were blind. And Klaus and his team were moved out with the other evacuees. We have no way of knowing if they went into the house or even near it.” Maya pointed this out as she shut off the TV news, which only had a shot taken from a camera at the police line five blocks away.
“Well, Architect, how do you wish to proceed?” The Engineer said.
After a long moment’s contemplation, he looked at Maya. “Maya, did Kraus report smelling any gas?”
“Yes, he said the odor was quite strong.”
“That would seem to support the coincidence theory, but just as a precaution, do you think we need to reinforce our position with Juth?”
“It couldn’t hurt. Just in case the authorities did try something, he’ll know that we know, and that should make him resist any thought of going along with them.” Maya said.
“What would you suggest?” The Engineer was agreeing.
“Let’s send him a body part,” Maya suggested as if she were sending flowers.
“I would not suggest any physical connection right now. We don’t know if the police have wired the block. Any attempt to reach him with anything physical may expose us with only one day remaining before the Landau experiment,” the Architect countered.
Maya actually was deflated. But she understood the risk.
In the end, they decided on a phone call.
∞§∞
In a small town newsroom in Maryland, cub reporter Juan Gonzales was pitching a story to his editor. “So what I am saying is this Landau guy dies in a copter accident, he’s got some kind of connection with the government in some forward looking initiative for science, and in Europe they are about to run something, my source tells me, is called the Landau protocol. It’s the reason people are gathering and planning to protest.
“Conspiracy theories don’t win Pulitzers, there is no second source on this. There’s nothing on the web anywhere.”
“Maybe they erased it from the web?”
“You can’t do that. There’s always a trace and besides no one in the government is that smart, only in the movies. Until you get a second source, your story is spiked.”
∞§∞
“Dis is friggin’ easy,” Kronos said as he dove into the contents of the hard drive that Brooke had downloaded from Raffey’s computer. He was a little punchy after flying all through the night, but seven cups of coffee later his digital skill was as sharp as ever.
“Kronos, look closely for any communication that could tell us where the kidnappers are holding the family,” Bill stressed as he reviewed the photo prints of Raffey’s notes that were part of the treasure trove that Brooke’s fake gas emergency diversion had provided.
“What was he doing, think
ing about gambling?” Brooke asked as she studied one picture of a page from his yellow pad that showed a doodle of a roulette wheel.
“Let me see.” Joey took the photo and looked closely. “What’s this next to it — university?”
“That’s what I thought, but it’s an abbreviation. Maybe University of Xenia, Ohio?” Brooke said.
“Right, it is U-N-I-X, not V.”
“Roulette dot unix,” Kronos said.
“How do you figure that?” Joey asked as he moved the photo closer and farther to try and make out the chicken scratch.
“Because it’s right here on the friggin’ drive. It’s a unix operating program. I’m opening it now.”
“So our boy Raffey had dreams of the big wheel at Monte Carlo?” Joey said.
“My cousin, Mathilde, lives a few miles away from there. I can swing on down in one of your SAM flights, check the casino cameras ,and be back by dinner!”
“Let’s see what brain boy comes up with first, shall we?” Bill said.
“It’s a super-collider simulation program. It is just one module, but it has open loops to another program. This is interesting — ”
“What’s happening now is our techno-sapien, as I like to call him, has latched onto a digital clue. At times like this, our whole plan can change…wait for it…wait for it,” Bill said.
“Leather Pants was planning to do something; he was running a lot of permutations of different acceleration possibilities and some sort of malfunction.”
The God Particle Page 33
