by Peter Riva
But here, still in France, as Pero’s breath steamed the air as he walked down the stairs and under the tracks, through the underpass, and up again. There were no customs. How could there be, he had come from Paris and was still in France. No control, no suspicion, no need to worry. Pero walked over to the restrooms. Inside, in the warm, he waited. Two minutes later, he emerged and Vallorbe station had resumed its sleepy way station appearance. No one was moving. It was 11:10 a.m., a time when Vallorbe was hardly a hive of activity.
In that tiny community, situated on the northern side of the Jura range, a row of mountains eroded by glaciation to resemble massive rolling hills, Pero faced his next task alone. He needed to steal a car.
Chapter 9
CERN
T here is something about a Deux Chevaux 2CV, made by Citroen, the idiosyncratic French car company. The translation is two horses, meaning it has a two horsepower motor. It has hugely reliable components, a capable motor, and a wonderful, springy suspension. Like a Model T, it can be driven anywhere and often is. It is, like other Gallic icons, unrivaled for function and affection.
The stationmaster’s and the delivery van of the laiterie (milk and cheese shop) were both 2CVs. They were parked side-by-side, both were warm to the touch. The gas tanks of 2CVs are under the rear. The gasoline sloshes back and forth. You can hear it. If it is a loud slosh, it’s nearly empty. The station master’s, with its SNCF labeling (Société Nationale des Chemins de Fer Français) rocked easily on the soft springs, with just a little slosh, telling Pero it was full. The laiterie van was not. Pero would have preferred it the other way around, but the stationmaster’s was the one to borrow. It is not hard to steal a 2CV. There is no steering lock, no gearbox lock. You take the two wires under the metal dash by the driver’s knees, the green and the black, and you connect them. Then you open up the engine compartment and hold your Swiss Army knife, two blades open, one each side, across the solenoid terminals and touch the engine block for ground. The engine turns and starts. You get in, you drive off. Nothing hurried.
There was no face pressed up against a frosted window of the train station or shops next door. No one was looking, just the station cat basking in the morning sun on the granite steps, nonplussed.
Pero took the road north, back toward Métabief. He had taken a Ski France brochure off the rack in the ticket area in the Gare de Lyon. It showed him the roads he needed to start with but not the little lanes and slip roads he remembered from his childhood.
He had walked these mountains when he was in school on the shores of Lac Leman. The Jura had been so glacially eroded there was even a glacier depression on the top, forming a series of lakes—the largest of which was Lac de Joux, where several Swiss watch manufacturers’ component plants were located: Omega, Tissot, Swatch, Jaeger leCoultre and Patek Philippe to name a few. Pi (π) and Rolex are nearby as well. The air is clean, the altitude favorable, and when the factories were built, there were virtually no taxes.
This area is in Zone Franche. Zone Franche is not strictly Switzerland. It’s in a no man’s land between France and Switzerland. The currency, communications, immigration, and laws are French, the tax laws and sovereignty are Swiss. It’s a compromise instead of a confrontation. It’s been that way since the 1700s. The Canton de Vaud, a Swiss Canton, has a divided people, proud to be Vaudois—a people of the Jura region. On the French side, their cousins are the people of the Haute Jura—the high Jura. CERN lies at the bottom of the Zone Franche, near Geneva. Pero planned to drive near there, walk the last mile or two, and bluff his way in.
At Métabief, he took the small road to Mouthe and onto Saint-Laurent-en-Grandvaux. There he turned by the church heading south through Morez toward Les Rousses. In Les Rousses, he remembered there was a sort of border crossing, French customs only because it connected to Divonne-les-Bains, a spa town, whose waters contain very rare salts that are said to be good for the liver or kidneys. Or was it the pancreas? It also had a gambling casino famous for fleecing the really addicted gambling rich, some as much as a million dollars a night.
Instead of passing through that frontier gate, Pero took the country lane. It was quite muddy, with snow still piled up in the shade but no match for a 2CV. He drove onto Lamoura and then left onto the road for Mijoux, climbing the backside of the Jura, passing the π factory just before you reach Col de La Faucille. In March there was no more skiing, the snow on the pistes had melted at this lower altitude, so there were no tourists and no need for a French frontier guard. He drove down the Lac Leman side of the Jura, through Gex and took the back road to Ornex, about three miles from the backside of CERN and four miles from Switzerland proper. He parked the car under some trees by the town cemetery, put two hundred Euros on the driver’s seat with a “merci” written on a bit of paper, and proceeded on foot.
About two miles down the road, he walked straight at the guard tower he could see through the forest trees. It was about a mile away. The earth between the trees and the gate was covered with gray-brown grass, kept short. He knew that the old cyclotron atom smasher was under his feet. The targets were in the buildings behind the guard tower. It was gray and two stories high with ground-level windows and cameras sticking out all around the top of its square stucco sides. He remembered it was the seldom-used north gate of CERN, used only for deliveries and emergencies. His professor at school had once asked for directions on a school outing. Since he considered his current need an emergency, he proceeded boldly up to the tower and rang the bell. When in this part of the world, Pero knew it was critical to appear calm and very civilized.
“Oui?” Came the tinny voice.
In answer, he explained in fluent French, with a slight Vaudois accent, that he had a breakdown and that he had a friend that worked inside. “Could he come to give me a hand?”
“Qui es?” Who is it? So Pero explained that Professor Samuel Turner would, he was sure, be prepared to help. He was told to wait. Before long, the voice changed, this time more authoritarian, “Qui etes vous?” Who are you? That was not a good sign. Pero knew that Professor Turner would, right now, be seeing the video image on a window on his office computer … unless he was not there. With nothing to lose, Pero decided to continue the pretense that he was sure that his friend was there.
Looking into the camera lens he said in English: “Sam, it’s me, Pero Baltazar, can’t you get off your bony ass and come and help me you, giraffe you?” At school they had been part of a clique, a gang of five all told. Pero was nicknamed otter and Sam was giraffe. The rest of the childhood friends made up a sort of zoo.
“Attendez-la.” Wait there.
A Swiss police officer appeared at the other side of the gate. He seemed to be waiting for something. In a minute or two, a small golf cart approached from a concrete bunker about 200 yards away. Pero saw his friend, all six feet eight inches of him, folded to fit under the plastic roof, giant hands gripping the wheel.
As Sam approached the gate, he handed the police officer his ID card. It was swiped in a portable carrier attached to the police officer’s belt. “Hello Pero, fancy meeting you here. Boney ass, huh? Broken down?”
“Yeah, if I could just get a lift into Geneva, I can have someone go and collect the rental. I left it back there about a mile this side of Ornex,” he lied for the cop. “Anyway, I remembered you worked here and thought le giraffe, he’ll help me out.”
“Eh, you expect me to help out the slippery la loutre?” (otter) “Well …” he milked the pause, “oh, why not? C’est bon chef, vous pouvez le faire entrer, c’est bien mon ami d’école.” He vouched for Pero as his friend from school. The police officer looked annoyed. No doubt, looking at Samuel, he thought, what a geek. Pero didn’t see a geek, he saw what the British called a boffin. A man so deeply committed and talented in his branch of science—nuclear physics—that reality had slipped sideways. His tie was askew, his shirt had one sleeve up, one down, and he noticed Sam had his V-neck sweater inside out. No doubt, his socks woul
dn’t match either. Pero didn’t care, it was his mind and friendship he came for.
The gate opened, Sam and Pero climbed into the golf cart, and they slowly ambled away. “Thanks Sam.”
“Yeah, when you used our secret code words,” he meant skinny ass, “I took a moment to realize what was going on. It’s been twenty years, hasn’t it?”
“A bit more. You’re looking well.”
“You too. Sorry about your wife, Addiena. I meant to write, but then months went by before I found the reminder on my desk. Sorry.”
“It’s okay, I know you. You liked her, I figured you’d miss her too. Sharing the loss with friends at the time always helped, but it doesn’t matter. I knew how you’d feel. Anyway, sharing at the time didn’t reduce the longing later. I still miss her.”
“Yeah, sorry. She was great. If it weren’t you, I would have asked her. And before you say it, there are a couple of other friends, especially Lion who would have fought you for her. Yeah, but she only had eyes for you. Oh, damn, Pero, sorry again. I’ve been saving that up.” They pulled into a little golf cart bay under the concrete overhang of the research facility. Sam got out and plugged the cart in, recharging the batteries. “So, what’s going on and how can I help?”
“Sam, I know I used our code, but I’ll consider you’ve fulfilled any commitment or promise we once had just by listening to me. It’s a long story, and I don’t know if you can—or should help. It could be dangerous. Can we speak alone?”
By then they were walking down a neon-lit, concrete corridor with pipes that ran along the walls. Some technicians pushed or squeezed past. Everyone seemed to have a task at hand, a schedule to keep. It was never a nosy place, CERN. Too many dedicated, mono-focused scientists for internal politics.
“It’s two-fifteen Pero, it’s lunch time, no one will be back until four. Anyway, this is my lab here—the whole shebang, so I can send them all away if they butt in. Often do. Prefer working on my own.”
“You always did Sam. But then you did finish your work in five minutes when we took the whole evening.”
“Not the damn French idioms. Still haven’t gotten the hang of them. Luckily everyone here speaks English, the language of my trade, well, apart from math that is.”
Anytime he’d ever been in CERN—the first time was twenty-two years ago to be exact—there had been pipes in every corridor with wires inside, all rainbow colors, and aluminum and plastic pipes that were written upon and, sometimes, tagged. The whole building was one electronic erector set. At the end of the corridor was a twelve-foot sphere filled with a light blue clear liquid. Sam explained, “New liquid helium bubble target. Interesting results. The Mesons we accelerate don’t seem to hit anything, making energy calculations difficult. I was trying to ionize it, like the sun but not thermal-reactive, to see if that causes a more dense target. If it works, we’ll be able to trace light emitting quarks, especially those that jump time and space. Interesting …” he was losing Pero. Sam’s brain thrived in complex calculations and theory—far away from the mundane moments of life.
Pero needed him to focus, “Sam, are you with me here?”
“Sorry, Pero. Shoot.” He was still looking at the bubble chamber.
“My story involves a matter of life and death. So far, it’s a dozen or so people at risk. But I suspect it may involve exponentials of that number.”
Sam’s head snapped around. Pero used a term, “exponential.” That would mean something special to the mathematician in Sam. “Explain.” Now Sam was in “input” mode, staring at Pero’s face intently. Whenever they had a problem at school, Sam would say, “Explain.” And the other students would relate all they knew. Sam would do the calculations and give them the answers or at least the odds of success. He was a certifiable genius without ego, a rare combination.
Pero pulled out the lead bag and rolled back the flap. A small light on the ceiling immediately started flashing. Sam put his giant hand over Pero’s, stopping him, calmly but firmly. “Not here, unstable environment.”
Pero folded the lead top back over and they walked a few more hundred meters, through underground corridors, until they got to a large steel door. Sam pushed the key code buttons and pulled the door open revealing a one-desk office and lab cluttered with an eccentricity Pero hadn’t seen since dorm days. Sam’s domain. The door swung shut automatically behind them. Sam walked over to a clear-sided box and simply said, “It’s got a lead crystal liner.” He took the film bag from Pero and put it inside as if it was a newborn baby, shut the lid, and put his hands into rubber gloves attached to the box. Talking to Pero as he opened the lead film bag, he extracted the vacuum bag containing the liquid. “Pero what the hell have you got here? It’s so damn hot the hydrogen radiation sensor went off as you opened the outer bag. It’s outgassing, for Christ’s sake. And it’s got to have a radiation signature, giving off rems like crazy, to set that detector off.”
“It’s a bag someone asked me to carry to the Max Planck labs in Germany for analysis. Something went wrong, there have been killings. We need to know a few things in order to find out what’s so damn interesting about this material. We need to know what the hell it is, and then I’ll be able to figure out what to do. Sam, I am pretty sure I need to take the damn thing back with me and give it to someone. It must look untouched.”
“No way. It’s not leaving here. It’ll kill you in time. This outer bag, what is it? Lead?” Pero nodded. “Yeah, well, look …” Sam peeled its plastic outer layer revealing white powder, dust, “See? It’s already breaking down, it’s not pure lead anyway. It’s an alloy, fine for film safe x-ray machines but not this. Two days, max, the whole bag will turn to dust.”
“Can’t you examine its signature or whatever, without opening the plastic bag and spilling the heavy water?”
“You mean it’s not the liquid that’s giving off these rems? It’s the crap floating around in there? Christ, it must be really hot.” He peered closer. “There are less than one point five grams in there, I’ll bet.” He picked up a portable meter inside the plastic box, held it against the vacuum bag, and then tilted it to let Pero see. The needle held steady at three hundred rem or 3MSV.
Pero had no clue what the reading meant. “Bad is it?”
“About a full year’s worth of normal radiation exposure every one second. Nasty stuff. Now, tell me exactly, what am I looking at?”
“Apparently a label that came off some gold being shipped from a US Treasury gold deposit to Zurich. It set off the Swiss sensors at Zurich airport. They bagged it in heavy water …”
“Christ, that’s what this is? Paper? And I was getting a reading, any damn reading? Holy cow …” Pulling his hands out of the gloves, he swiveled the chair, entered an equation on the computer, pressed enter a few times, clicked this icon and that one—then swiveled back to face Pero: “You have thermonuclear fissionable material in there. It can’t be just the paper. It has to be what the paper holds.” He was getting excited but disappointed. “Look, Pero, I may have to give this stuff back to you. If I keep it here, there are procedures. No telling what it will do to destabilize years of research. No way the Planck people could have handled this, they’d even have had trouble handling it as far as he has. This here is a new type ten-b shielded box, real secret lead and depleted deuterium Plexiglass. We’re clear here, safe.” He took a deep breath as if about to take a plunge. “Now, how the hell do I help you? And who are you nowadays?”
“Sam, I can’t answer that. I am just the same old me, but I’ve been given this damn thing, and I need to work it out. All I can promise is that it’s not illegal. But, if you can help me know what it is, then maybe I’ll be able to give you some answers.”
Sam went into one of his eyes-closed-thinking modes that Pero remembered so well from school, so Pero waited, absolutely still. If Sam couldn’t tell what it was, Pero had no idea what to do next.
Sam shook his head and then smiled. “Ok, Pero, let’s make a few assumptions.
Anything that’s in there is uniform, original. We’re probably not dealing with contaminants, except for the paper or what the paper was saturated with. Paper won’t hold radioactivity. The heavy water we can discount. Therefore, we don’t need a large sample. And, if I give it back to you, you will need to track where it goes because, Pero, one stick of dynamite attached to this stuff and you could pollute a major city’s water supply for God knows how long. We okay so far?” Pero swallowed and quickly nodded in agreement.
“Okay, then here’s what I propose. I have a sample needler. I don’t know how it will work with this bag, a police sample bag I assume as it looks like one. We had a case in here once, many years ago, some stolen plutonium and flakes in a plastic evidence bag. Anyway, if it reseals, then all will be well, if not, we’ll catch it in a basin and decide what to do next. Agreed?” Pero nodded. Sam was in command.
“Sam, don’t you want the whole story?”
“Look, otter, I know you. If you’re doing this—well, it must be right.” Reaching over, he put his hand on Pero’s shoulder. “It’s dangerous, very, very dangerous, but if it’s you, it’s right. But I don’t think I want to know too much. If it goes wrong, at least I can claim some sort of scientific curiosity but no involvement.” He looked sad. No, more than sad.
“This stuff frightens you, doesn’t it Sam?”
“It’s why I was working here and not in Los Alamos. I want to uncover nature’s secrets, not use them to kill. This stuff you have here? It’s killing material, I am certain of that. Massive killing material. Evil.”
Slipping his hands back into the rubber gloves, he put the vacuum bag back into the deteriorating lead film bag. He muttered something about a little protection being better than none. Then he opened the box and reaching over, took a glass bowl, and placed it inside the box. Then walking to the other side of this small lab, he brought back what looked like a pistol. In the place of a barrel was a long needle. He put that in the box. “And you’ll need a better bag. Let me see, where was that Russian bag they sent?” He rummaged through drawers in his desk. “Ah, here it is.” And he put that in. “Lead balls, millions of tiny ones, loads of surface to deflect the radiation, better design than we have, frankly,” and shut the lid.
