Authors: Tom Grace
Quantum (16 page)
Ann Arbor, Michigan
It was well past nine and evening was ebbing into night by the time Nolan and Kelsey’s question-and-answer session with Detective Ptashnik was finally through. After the debriefing, an Ann Arbor police patrol car ferried them down to the southeast corner of the Diag. They picked up a carryout of General Tso’s chicken from their favorite Chinese restaurant, then walked over to Kelsey’s old sorority house, where Nolan’s SUV was parked.
‘Do you mind driving?’ Nolan asked, offering Kelsey his keys. ‘There’s a call I need to make.’
Nolan set the bag of food cartons on the floor behind the passenger’s seat and pulled the PalmPilot from his briefcase. As they drove toward Dexter, he searched through the handheld computer for Cal Mosley’s number, which he keyed into his phone.
‘This is Mosley.’
‘Cal, it’s Nolan Kilkenny.’
‘What can I do for you?’ Mosley asked.
‘The Russians struck again today, this time in Ann Arbor. Four people dead. Cal, these were the same guys who hit Sandstrom’s lab in South Bend.’ Nolan then launched into a brief report of the latest attack.
‘So they were after these old notebooks?’ Mosley asked.
‘Yes. Definitely. After Wolff’s body was found, the police made no public mention of the notebooks. Only a handful of people even know about their existence and their potential importance to our project – and I trust all of ’em. My best guess is that these guys are still watching Sandstrom and probably have his hospital room bugged.’
‘They got their intel from somewhere,’ Mosley agreed. ‘Get the hospital to move him and ask the FBI to sweep his old room for any surveillance equipment. In the meantime, I’m going to run this latest information past some people here and see what I can come up with. Thanks for the update.’
‘Cal, I need all the help you can give me. This project I’m working on has the potential to become a multibillion-dollar-a-year industry. If whoever’s behind these attacks succeeds in taking control of Sandstrom’s quantum technology, they’ll have the power to pull the economic equivalent of a coup d’état on the rest of the industrialized world.’
Moscow, Russia
The numbers from the Far East exchanges looked flat, the third straight day without any sign of the occasional exuberance or volatility that made watching the markets interesting in the first place. A day without winners or losers, without victory or defeat – so far. The day was still young, and the Western markets had yet to open.
Orlov shuffled around a few positions, much like placing bets on a roulette table – only on a global scale. His bets were spread over the three Cs: companies, commodities, and currencies. The billions under his control allowed Orlov to cover a wide field of opportunities; since the beginning of the year, his portfolio had already increased sixty-five percent.
The phone on his desk rang softly.
‘
Da
, Irena,’ he answered.
‘You have a call from Dmitri Leskov.’
Orlov glanced at his watch; it was just after midnight in the eastern United States. ‘Put him through.’ There was a click, and then a dull hum that often accompanied overseas phone calls. ‘Dmitri, what news do you have?’ Orlov asked.
‘The materials are en route to you now. The courier should deliver them to you by the end of the day.’
‘Excellent.’
Cherny quietly walked into the office and laid several laser-printed pages on his desk. It was a copy of a news article she’d retrieved from a wire-service Web site on the Internet. Orlov’s left eyebrow arched slightly as the headline caught his eye.
FOUR KILLED, DOZENS INJURED IN
ART FAIR ATTACK
‘Did you encounter any problems that I should know about?’
‘Nothing we weren’t prepared for. Did Irena locate the information I wanted you to see?’
‘I have it right here.’
Orlov skimmed the article, noting that three of the slain had been police officers. The search for the men responsible would undoubtedly be thorough, making it dangerous for Leskov’s team to travel.
‘Dmitri, there are many difficulties surrounding this assignment. I think you and your men should remain where you are for a while, just to make sure the situation resolves itself. I’m certain our associates there can find a comfortable place to house all of you.’
‘They already have, Victor Ivanovich.’
Moscow, Russia
‘Oksanna,’ Orlov said with a smile, the syllables of her name rolling almost musically off his tongue.
Zoshchenko passed through the tall French doors of his office, moving with poise and grace. The well-cut lines of her jacket and skirt accentuated her trim figure.
Orlov stood in front of his desk, enjoying every step of her approach. When she reached him, he clasped both her hands in his, leaned forward, and kissed her gently.
‘Will Dmitri be joining us today?’ she asked.
‘
Nyet
,’ he replied, looking amorously into her eyes.
Orlov reached over his desk to activate his speaker-phone.
‘Irena?’ he called out. ‘While I am meeting with Dr Zoshchenko, please see that we are not disturbed.’
‘
Da
, Victor Ivanovich.’
Orlov switched the speakerphone off, then motioned for Zoshchenko to accompany him into the adjacent room. Once inside, she turned and embraced him, pressing her body tightly against his, fueling their arousal.
She pulled back far enough that her hands could find space between them to begin the unfastening. Orlov carefully worked the buttons of her jacket and slid the garment off her shoulders.
Orlov stepped out of his Italian loafers, then bent down and caressed each of her calves as he removed her pumps. He lingered there, gazing up at her as his hands roamed up beneath her skirt to slowly draw down her tights.
His silk tie fell to the floor, quickly followed by his shirt and trousers, then her blouse and skirt. They kissed each patch of bare skin as it was revealed.
Orlov appraised her nude form with delight. She guided him to the ornate bed that dominated this private chamber. The headboard bore the carved image of a Romanov double eagle – Orlov had once told her that the last czar had commissioned this bed. Now, they shared it.
When their sexual relationship had begun to evolve, she found Orlov’s technique to be like that of most men she’d been involved with – crude and clumsy. Slowly, patiently she trained him and as a reward for his efforts brought him to dizzying heights of ecstasy. Orlov eventually developed a sense of improvisation, and their passion play now took occasional ventures into the exotic.
An hour later they both lay exhausted, their bodies entwined in the rumpled and sweat-soaked linen sheets of the royal bed.
‘Victor,’ Zoshchenko whispered as she ran her hand through the graying hair on his chest, ‘I had a chance to take a look at the notebooks you acquired.’
‘And?’
‘And I don’t know what to make of them.’
‘What do you mean?’ he said, a bit irritated. ‘Dmitri and his men went through a lot of trouble to get those notebooks.’
Zoshchenko propped herself up on her elbow to face him. ‘No, you misunderstand me. Acquiring the notebooks was definitely worthwhile. Wolff’s drawings give a hint at what he was thinking, but without the narrative and his calculations, they’re just a collection of very interesting pictures. I’ve put a former KGB cryptographer to work on them, but he doesn’t hold out much hope.’
‘Why? Isn’t he a very good code breaker? If not, get someone who can break the damn code.’
‘Actually, he’s one of the best the KGB ever employed. I know because I’m the one who found him for them. He’s never seen anything quite like the mathematics of Wolff’s cipher – he’s not even sure where to start.’
Orlov’s hand caressed the curve along the small of Zoshchenko’s back as he considered the notebooks. ‘Will this have any effect on Avvakum’s work?’
‘There’s no way of knowing until the notebooks are decrypted. According to your surveillance, Sandstrom believes Wolff may have had a working theory that can explain the quantum effect he discovered. If this is true, such information would go a long way in bolstering our claim on all technology derived from this discovery. Such knowledge would be almost as valuable as the device itself.’
Zoshchenko lifted her head off Orlov’s chest and rolled to prop up her upper body on her elbows so she could face him. ‘I believe then that we must maintain electronic surveillance on Sandstrom and his associates indefinitely.’
‘The longer we keep watching them, the riskier it becomes,’ Orlov reminded her.
‘I understand, but we don’t know how much of the notebooks they have stored in their computers. Our hackers were met with heavy resistance when they tried to access the MARC network. Someone shut them out completely and then began tracking them. If Dmitri hadn’t destroyed the lab server when he did, our hackers might well have been identified. Regardless, we have to assume that they are working to decrypt whatever portion of Wolff’s notebooks they have. Should they succeed, that might put their effort ahead of ours.’
‘And if their patent claim has priority, we lose.’
‘Precisely, Victor.’
Moscow, Russia
It was nearly midnight, but within the windowless lab the distinction between night and day wasn’t readily apparent. Lara Avvakum’s fascination with her work caused time to slip past more quickly than it ever had before. Her workdays grew long; spans of eighteen, even twenty, hours weren’t uncommon as the feverish passion of discovery consumed her.
She stared blankly at the screen, unable to get Ted Sandstrom out of her mind. The possibility that he might be the one who started this project whetted her desire to learn more about him.
But surely
, Avvakum reasoned,
Victor Orlov’s prohibition against contact with my predecessors on this project doesn’t extend to knowing something about them. After all, is it not wise to know all you can about the competition?
A moment later she accessed the Web search engine on her computer and keyed in a deliberately broad search for Ted Sandstrom. Within seconds there were seven responses to her query.
Avvakum selected an article from
USA Today
and waited while her computer connected with the newspaper’s Web site and downloaded the article. The peripheral elements of the Web page loaded first, then the story and accompanying photographs. In bold text, the headline appeared.
ND PROF KILLED, ANOTHER INJURED IN LAB BLAST
Avvakum scrolled down to the article and read about an attack on the professors’ lab that left Raphaele Paramo dead and Ted Sandstrom severely burned. Five unidentified men posing as a moving crew were responsible for the blaze and the theft of Sandstrom’s lab equipment and research. The article cited FBI sources in claiming that industrial espionage was the apparent motive for the attack.
Two other individuals, Nolan Kilkenny and physicist Kelsey Newton, were treated for minor injuries and released from the hospital. The article went on to describe how Sandstrom had recently signed with two consortia to develop commercial applications related to an undisclosed discovery.
Am I working for thieves and murderers?
Avvakum thought fearfully as it all became painfully clear.
No one just walks away from all this research; it was stolen, and the minds that created it trampled.
Avvakum pored over the other articles, searching for further information pertaining to the incident. She soon learned that once Sandstrom’s condition had stabilized, he had been transferred to the University of Michigan Hospital. The investigation lab was currently at a standstill because of a lack of evidence.
The more she read, the more the name Nolan Kilkenny kept cropping up. As a project director for the Michigan Applied Research Consortium, Kilkenny was noted as being involved with the commercial application of Sandstrom’s work – an effort she’d been hired by Orlov to pursue.
Avvakum continued to investigate and found herself at the MARC home page. She navigated through the site until she found a staff listing for Nolan Kilkenny, complete with his E-mail address. She clicked on the address and began typing her message.
Is this file the work of Ted Sandstrom?
Avvakum then browsed through a directory of files and selected one that dealt specifically with the quantum energy device and attached it to her message.
She looked at the one-line message she’d written. If her suspicions were wrong, then she was about to violate the trust of her employer – a man who’d saved her from a life of scientific exile in Siberia. But what if her suspicions were right? If Orlov truly was responsible for the attack on Sandstrom, then by developing this research, she became Orlov’s accomplice.
Avvakum carefully weighed the options before her, balancing her need to know the truth against the fearful hope that ignorance could somehow protect her.
She sighed, then clicked the
SEND
button.
Langley, Virginia
Mosley’s knuckles rapped against the partially open door of Cooper’s seventh-floor office.
‘Bart, do you have a minute? There’s something I’d like to discuss with you.’
‘Ah, sure, Cal,’ Cooper replied, surprised by the visit. ‘C’mon in.’
Mosley sat in one of the upholstered chairs opposite Cooper’s desk. ‘I’m working on an industrial-espionage case, something involving a radical new technology.’
Cooper leaned back in his chair, getting comfortable. ‘Tell me about it.’
Mosley quickly ran through the information Kilkenny had provided regarding the quantum power cell, the attack in South Bend, and his lines of inquiry.
‘So what you’re telling me is that you’ve got squat as far as any solid leads.’
‘The trail was getting pretty cold, until a couple of days ago. Two of the same men who hit South Bend led another team to Ann Arbor, where they struck a rare-books lab.’
‘How does that fit in with your technology case?’
‘They were after a set of notebooks, and it’s these notebooks, or rather their author, that led me to you. The man who wrote them was a German physicist named Johann Wolff. When I called down to Research for some information about this guy, they told me you’d recently made a similar request. That led me to wonder what your interest is and if there’s any overlap with what I’m working on.’
‘There might be,’ Cooper replied. ‘Have you gotten the report from Research?’
‘No, I spoke with them just before I came here. So far, these attacks have left eight people dead and one hospitalized with severe burns. I’d appreciate any help you can give me on this.’
Cooper leaned his head back and composed his thoughts.
‘As you probably know, I’ve been with the Agency for a long time. In fact, I’ve been in the intelligence business since the Second World War, when I worked for Bill Donovan in the OSS.’ Cooper pointed to a black-and-white photo of him with the legendary spymaster on the wall. ‘When the war in Europe began to wind down, the OSS launched an active campaign to capture as many German scientists as we could find – especially the ones working on rocketry, jets, and atomic research. Wolff was part of the group that was working on the German bomb project. I interviewed him and cleared him for entry into the U.S. When his body was found, the computer system matched his name with the keywords on his old OSS file and, since I’m still here, notified me.’
‘If it’s just an ancient case, why’d you request a full background check?’
‘Professional curiosity. When I checked out Wolff, I didn’t find anything that tied him to the nastier stuff the Third Reich was into. He looked like a bright young guy who spent the war doing math – exactly the kind of highly educated professional that the government wanted us to import. After his body was found, it made me wonder if I’d missed something. I requested a full check because there’s a lot more information available now than back in ’forty-six.’
‘Did you find any skeletons?’
‘Just a rumor that turned out to be false. I did learn one new thing about Wolff; he was a lot smarter than he let on.’
‘How so?’
‘Did you ever hear the story about how Einstein and a group of top physicists wrote a letter to Roosevelt explaining why the U.S. needed to build the bomb?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Well, in Germany, Wolff’s boss, a guy named Werner Heisenberg, did the opposite with Hitler. Heisenberg and his team ran the numbers and determined that even if it were possible, it would cost too much and take too long to build an atomic bomb.’
Cooper then explained how the Soviets and their captured scientists reconstructed the German nuclear research and discovered that Wolff had sabotaged the calculations, thus preventing the Nazis from pursuing development of atomic weapons.
‘So you’re telling me that Wolff kept the Nazis from building an A-bomb?’
‘That’s what his colleagues thought after they put all the pieces together. He was the best mathematician on Heisenberg’s staff, and they trusted his skills implicitly. If he said two plus two equaled five, they believed him. That’s pretty much it as far as background for Wolff. Now, you said that the teams that hit the two labs were apparently Russian?’
‘Yeah, that was the impression they left. Why?’
‘When our people asked the FSB in Moscow to check their archives for information about Wolff, we learned that I wasn’t the only one asking about him. I called a guy I know over there and asked him to see if he could find out who put in the other request.’
‘Did you get an answer?’
‘Yeah. The other interested party is a woman named Oksanna Zoshchenko. She’s a high-level apparatchik in the Russian Academy of Sciences. My contact is digging up some information on her. Whatever I get, I’ll pass along.’
‘Thanks.’ Mosley scribbled a few more notes on a legal pad. ‘So, just days after Wolff’s body is discovered, both you and this Zoshchenko put in a request for information about him.’
‘The timing’s a bit much for mere coincidence, wouldn’t you say?’
‘That and the guys hitting these labs have the look of Russian Special Forces.’
‘Odd thing, though. If the Russian government is behind this, then why let us peek into their archives about Wolff and why tell us about Zoshchenko? That part doesn’t fit.’
‘No, but none of this has played out like a typical government-run intelligence operation. Somebody doesn’t just want to acquire this technology, they want to own it completely.’