Split Second (11 page)

17

Dan Walsh walked the short
distance from his office to Kendall Hall, where his quantum electrodynamics
class met from seven thirty to nine. He only taught one night class, on
Mondays, but he didn’t mind it. Most of the time he would just hang out on
campus, have dinner with colleagues, and get some extra work done beforehand.

Besides, he liked the early
evening. The air was cool, there wasn’t the usual kicked-anthill frenzy of students
to dodge—a health hazard for someone often lost in thought—and the noise from
the ever-present heavy construction equipment was finally quieted.

UCLA was the second oldest
college in the California system, founded in 1919, and it had been growing ever
since. It now had the largest enrollment of any school in the state, at well
over forty thousand students, and the eclectic mixture of architecture
reflected different periods of expansion and construction, and included faded
red brick buildings, elaborate parking structures, an extensive sculpture
garden, modern fountains, and stunning sorority and fraternity houses. In fact,
the Westwood campus was so often in a state of flux, some joked UCLA actually
stood for
Under Construction Like Always
.

Walsh had just turned thirty-four,
and while his career was going relatively well, he had grown worried. Unlike
wine, physicists and mathematicians tended to get worse with age. This wasn’t
always the case, but often flashes of true, dazzling insight required young,
daring minds, not hampered in their attempts at thinking outside of the box by having
been
inside
the box too long. Not
overly poisoned by conventional wisdom or fear of peer ridicule.

Einstein was the classic example. Unable
to get a job at a university, at the tender age of twenty-six he published four
papers that formed the basis of much of modern physics, shattering previous
conceptions of space, time, mass, and energy: four papers so important they had
been dubbed his
Annus mirabilis
papers, from the Latin for
extraordinary year
, which most English
speakers preferred to translate into
miracle
year
.

Walsh was beginning to resign
himself to the idea that he would produce solid work and have a successful
career, but he would never do more than polish and extend the insights of the
truly great. He hadn’t given up yet, but he also had to be realistic about it.

But if you couldn’t
be
Einstein, being a close friend and
colleague of the great man wasn’t a bad fate. And if Walsh’s sense of Nathan
Wexler’s potential was accurate, he would be able to tell his spellbound grandchildren
someday about his friendship with the leading thinker of his century.

On the other hand, if he wanted to
have children, let alone grandchildren, he had some work to do. He was still
single, but this was something he was hoping to change within a few years, at
the latest. In fact, there was a girl in one of his graduate classes whom he
really liked, and he sensed she liked him back. They really seemed to click.

And while this might just be the cliché
attraction that many students were fabled to feel toward their professors—although
this seemed to work better for literature professors than for those teaching physics—he
didn’t care. She was twenty-five, so it wasn’t as though he was robbing the
cradle, and he wouldn’t make the slightest overture toward her until she was no
longer in his class.

But this didn’t stop him from
fantasizing about her. It never ceased to amaze him the power of the sex drive.
No matter how intelligent and rational a person was otherwise, the sex drive
was controlled by more primitive regions, and could turn the most brilliant man
on Earth into an animal, flirting with disaster in pursuit of physical
gratification, even when he knew in his rational mind that this was nothing but
a trick played on him by his incorrigible limbic system.

Walsh entered Kendall Hall and
passed a dozen locked doors, including two lecture halls with a seating
capacity of many hundreds. In the corridor in front of one of the lecture halls
a student in his thirties was sitting with this back to the wall, reading a
book, but Walsh didn’t recognize him and didn’t feel the need to interrupt.

He was fifteen or twenty minutes
early, as was his habit. He entered the room that would house his class of
twenty-two graduate students and made his way to the front, where a chalkboard
spanned the entire wall.

He set his backpack down on the
long table and prepared to fill the board with equations prior to the arrival
of his students.

Walsh spotted a tablet computer
someone had left on the table at the front of the room. It was hard to miss, as
it was still on and very bright. Given that this must have been left by someone
in the previous class, which had ended an hour earlier, he was surprised it was
still glowing, having not gone into hibernation or run out of juice.

As he walked over to scoop it up,
he was startled to find the top half of the screen displayed a photo of Jenna
Morrison, Nathan Wexler’s fiancée. It was unmistakably her.

What in the world?

One didn’t need his math genius to
know that the odds this random tablet would be displaying a photo of Jenna
Morrison were virtually zero. Which suggested this was anything but random.

His eyes narrowed in worry and
confusion as he read the bold text below the photo.

Dan, it’s Jenna. This is not a joke. Don’t say anything out loud, as it’s
possible you’re being bugged. Please scroll over and read my message.

Walsh looked around the room, which
was still empty, wondering if he were on a hidden-camera television show, of if
someone would jump out and tell him he was the subject of an experiment being conducted
by the psychology department. When neither occurred, he glanced back at the
tablet as though it were an unstable explosive.

He studied Jenna’s photo again and
finally, reluctantly, slid his hand on the screen to scroll over to the next
page. He took a deep breath and read:

Dan, sorry to hit you with
what must look like a charade, but I’m in trouble and I need your help. Just so
you can be sure it’s really me, the last time Nathan and I got together with
you, you had just seen
Guardians of the Galaxy
on television and you told me you couldn’t get the song “Hooked on a Feeling”
out of your head.

Regardless of what you may
have heard, Nathan is dead, savagely murdered last night by unknown parties.

“What?” whispered Walsh out loud. That was
absurd
. Nathan wasn’t
dead
. What kind of sick game was this?

On the other hand, that damn song
had
been stuck in his head the last time he had seen Jenna, which
he had confided to her while Nathan was out of the room taking a call. And he
hadn’t actually seen Nathan in person for weeks.

He looked down at the tablet once more and continued
reading.

The only thing I know for
certain is that his death, and subsequent events I will tell you about in
person, were somehow triggered by a discovery he made recently. He didn’t have
the chance to tell me what it was about before he was killed, but he did
mention he had sent an e-mail summary of the discovery to you, hoping you’d act
as a second set of eyes for him. I’m convinced this e-mail was intercepted,
which is what set everything in motion.

Walsh paused to consider. Even more so than the “Hooked
on a Feeling” thing, the accurate description of Nathan’s recent e-mail to him was
persuasive evidence that Jenna Morrison really had written this message.

Given the seemingly
unlimited resources of the teams of men involved
—
yes, teams
—
something about Nathan’s
discovery is of extreme importance. I managed to escape these men, but I know
for certain they’ll spare no effort to find me, so even if you weren’t bugged
or under surveillance before, you are now.

I’m working with a private
investigator. He’s helping me compose this message right now, and he came up
with this plan to extricate you from prying eyes. He’ll be the one who will
leave this tablet at your desk, since I can’t risk being recognized by whoever
is watching you.

He also plans to park
himself in the hall to make sure that you’re the first to arrive in the
classroom, so no one else will see this tablet. He had planned to give this to
you in person, but I thought it would be less intimidating for you to read it
alone, and you once told me you always arrive to your classes fifteen or twenty
minutes before your students, so I thought this would be the best way forward.

When you’re done reading
this message, scroll over again to find a picture of me and my new PI partner together.
I’m wearing a hideous blonde wig, by the way. I included this so you’ll be able
to recognize him, and know that he really is a friend.

Nathan is dead and his hard
drive has been destroyed. But his work was preserved on a single flash drive
that I now have, protected by a password that I don’t know. This is why I’m
being hunted. Until I talk to you, I have no idea what might be on it, what
Nathan discovered, and why people are willing to do anything to get it.

So I need to get you away
from UCLA without being seen. I assume that you keep an e-mail archive in the
cloud and can retrieve Nathan’s recent message once you’re clear. But first, remove
and pocket the sim card from your phone, so you don’t lose your data and
settings, and put the phone deep within your backpack. Then leave the phone and
backpack in the classroom. Assuming the phone is being monitored or tracked, anyone
stalking you will think you’re still there.

But to buy us extra time, it
would be great if your students stuck around, even with you gone. If they leave
right away, anyone watching the building might want to investigate. So write on
the board that you had to take a call and will be back in forty-five minutes
.
Then assign them a reading while you’re gone.

But please hurry.

Once you’ve done this, go to
the men’s room at the northernmost corner of the building. My partner will be
there waiting for you.

Thanks, Dan. I know you
might doubt this crazy message, but please consider this: if you do what I’ve
asked and this turns out to be a farce, you’ve wasted a bit of class time and
life goes on. But if you choose to ignore this message and it is real, the
impact is far more dire. Please! Write on the board and get the hell out of
there. I’ll fill you in on the rest when I see you.

18

Blake felt like an idiot standing next to three
urinals and staring at the bathroom door. He glanced at his phone and saw that
it was now seven twenty, ten minutes before the scheduled start of Walsh’s
class. The physicist had arrived early to prepare and pre-fill the blackboards
as Jenna had insisted would be the case.

He should have found the tablet and read the message
in minutes, meaning if he didn’t arrive at the men’s room soon he probably
wasn’t coming. Or else something had gone horribly wrong. Blake had a plan B,
but he hoped like hell he wouldn’t need to use it.

The bathroom door creaked slowly ajar
and Blake rolled on the balls of his feet in anticipation.

Dan Walsh entered, a stern,
apprehensive expression on his face. Blake caught his eye and put a finger to
his lips, signaling for silence. He removed an electronic box, about the size
of a package of cigarettes, and waved it a few inches from the physicist,
scanning him from head to toe. The indicator light remained green throughout.

Blake powered off the device.
“You’re clean,” he said. “We’re all but positive you’re being watched. And I
suspect you’re also being bugged, although I wasn’t sure if they would bug your
phone or your wallet. Either way works, since these are items you tend to keep
with you at all times.” He paused. “Did you put your phone deep inside your
backpack like I asked?”

Walsh nodded. “Yes. Why does that
matter?”

“Assuming it’s bugged, the backpack
should make reception horrible, so they won’t be able to hear exact words.”

“I see,” said Walsh. “So when my
students are talking about what I wrote on the chalkboard, they’ll only hear
chatter, not content.”

“Exactly,” said Blake.

“Impressive,” said the physicist.

Blake extended a hand. “My name is Aaron
Blake, by the way. Welcome to the ah . . . bathroom, Dr. Walsh. Thank you for
believing Jenna’s message.”

“Nice to meet you, Mr. Blake. At
least I think it is.”

Blake smiled. “Please, Dr. Walsh,
call me Aaron.”

“Okay, if you call me Dan.”

“It’s a deal.”

“So I suppose you’d rather leave
the premises first and tell me what the hell this is all about later.”

“You got it,” said Blake. He was really
beginning to like working with scientists. They were logical and quick on the
uptake.

“So what’s the plan?” asked Walsh.

“I assume
you’re familiar with the tunnels under this school, right?”

The physicist
nodded slowly. “Yes. Of course.”

“Whoever is
watching you will be watching the exit door of this building. Only one is open
at this hour. Imagine their surprise when you disappear without ever using it.”

The possibility
of using a tunnel was the first thing Blake had checked when he was coming up with
his strategy. A number of institutions of higher learning, built nearly a
century or more earlier, possessed systems of subterranean tunnels between
buildings, and UCLA was no exception. He was delighted to find that a
comprehensive search of the Web was quickly able to reveal a wealth of
information about the system here.

UCLA's steam tunnels were a labyrinth of cement
conduits three stories underground. The system circulated steam produced at a
plant near the Ronald Reagan Medical Center, housed communications lines and
pipes for cold water, and linked most of the major buildings on campus. Although
access points were well hidden, adventurous students had made it their mission
to breach the tunnels for many decades, and for the last few, to post maps and
entry portal locations on the Web.

Blake gestured toward the far end of the men’s room,
which housed a small supply closet. “One of many entrances is through there,”
he said. “I’ve taken the liberty of busting the lock while I was waiting for
you to arrive.”

“How thoughtful,” noted Walsh, following Blake as he
opened the door to the closet. Blake had already pushed aside several bottles
of cleanser to free a trap door, which he had also left open.

“I’ll go first,” said Blake, lowering himself onto a steel
ladder that was entirely vertical. He descended a few rungs to give Walsh room
to follow and then stopped.

Walsh’s face curled up in distaste but he followed
suit, and they soon completed their descent. The tunnels were occasionally
punctuated by dim
lightbulbs
, but were still eerily
dark, dank, and claustrophobic.

“Follow me,” whispered Blake, so his voice wouldn’t
echo and make the entire venture even creepier than it was already. He unfolded
a map he had printed earlier, with the route he intended to take drawn in red
marker, and shined a penlight on it.

They took several offshoots, sometimes traversing
through tunnels that could only take them single file, crammed with pipes,
wires, and steel cables. The wider tunnels were decorated by graffiti, and Blake
felt like an archeologist visiting a prehistoric cave. Except that instead of rough
drawings of animals and spears, the drawings here were of male and female
genitals, along with a multitude of Greek letters signifying various
fraternities, and messages as creative as, “Joe Hempel was here,” some with
dates indicating they had been written as early as the 1940s.

Sections of the tunnels became quite warm, but this
was short-lived as they continued moving at a rapid pace. At one point they
entered a huge cavern
—
the damp insides of a walled-in bridge below the center of campus, where
“Welcome to Hell” was scrawled on the ceiling in block letters.

They emerged near a parking lot minutes later, through
a door that was strategically covered by a large shrubbery. Blake had broken
open the lock before he had traveled to Kendall Hall.

“Wait here,” he told the physicist, leaving him in
darkness even greater than the inside of the tunnels. He reconned the area to
make sure they were clear of any surveillance, and then returned.

“All good?” asked Walsh when Blake was beside him once
again.

Blake nodded. “The coast is clear. So let’s visit Jenna
Morrison and find out what this is all about.”