The God Particle (13 page)

Frederick had returned his call and they arranged to meet
just after lunch. He didn’t know if he was getting paranoid or not, but he
thought he could detect a note of tension in Frederick’s voice.
Perhaps the
police have already spoken to him about Ajay’s disappearance?
he wondered.

Tom spent the rest of the morning trying to avoid the
inspector. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to help the police with their
enquiries; he just wanted a chance to speak with Ajay first. He wasn’t prepared
to accept that he was such a bad judge of character.

Just before lunch, he decided to check on Ajay’s apartment
for himself, in case he was hiding there and too frightened to answer the door
to the police. He may be holed up, ready to make his last stand, as Inspector
Gervaux would have it. He thought it prudent to grab his jacket on the way past
his own apartment, just in case he had any more problems getting back into the
office.

As Tom made his way down the corridor, he noticed that the
door to his apartment was slightly ajar. He could have sworn he’d pulled it to
and heard the lock click before he’d left in the morning. He wasn’t a citizen’s
arrest type of person, so figured his best course of action would be to make as
much noise as possible to give any intruder a chance of running away, then
leave it to the police to track him down later.

He stood a few feet away from the door to allow safe passage
for any fleeing criminals and started up an imaginary conversation on his
phone. ‘No, I’m not in my office. I’m just going back to my apartment to pick
my jacket up. Yes, I’m there now. No, I won’t be too long. I’ll see you
shortly.’

He held his breath and inched closer, trying to hear any
movement coming from inside his apartment.
Nothing
. He knocked on the
door.

‘Hello, is there anybody in there?’ He didn’t know what he’d
do if somebody answered him. ‘Yes, I’m just robbing your apartment. I won’t be
too much longer.’ As it happened, there was no reply. Tom breathed a sigh of
relief and pushed the door open with his foot.
Still nothing
. He peered
cautiously into the room.

There was no sign of a burglar, but there was evidence that
somebody had been there. The apartment had been ransacked. He stood in the
entrance, surveying the carnage. The large orange sofa was tipped over; its fabric
had been slashed and stuffing spilled out onto the floor, like entrails. The
unit housing the TV and CD player lay on top of it, its contents smashed beyond
recognition, their constituent parts scattered across the floor. The small
table, upon which the laptop computer was placed, had been tossed across the
other side of the room, but Tom couldn’t see the laptop anywhere.

He made his way into the kitchen, picking his way around the
debris. He could feel a cold breeze on his cheek – the patio doors leading to
the quadrangle were wide open. He thought perhaps he had disturbed them, after
all. The kitchen was in a similar state as the lounge. All the cupboards had
been unceremoniously emptied onto the floor, which was now covered by a carpet
of glass and china. Drawers had been pulled out, their contents tipped onto the
kitchen work surface before being discarded. He didn’t need to go into the
bedroom to know that it would have received the same treatment.

He dialled the main CERN number from the mobile he was still
clenching in his hand and asked to be put through to Inspector Gervaux. He had
to wait several minutes before he heard the heavy French accent on the other
end.

‘Hello, Inspector Gervaux. How may I help you?’

‘Inspector? Hi, it’s Tom Halligan. I think I’ve been
burgled.’

***

‘And you say the only thing missing is your laptop?’

Inspector Gervaux was jotting down everything that Tom was
telling him in his notebook. It had taken him less than ten minutes to get to
the apartment. He had with him a short, broad-shouldered gentleman with a squat
neck and a heavy mono-brow arranged in a constant frown over close-set eyes. He
had a round face with black, short-cropped hair. A badly-stitched scar ran from
one side of his mouth to just below his cheek. If Tom hadn’t known better, he
would have sworn he was looking at somebody who came from the wrong side of the
law. He was introduced as Sergeant Lavelle.

‘As far as I can tell,’ replied Tom. ‘But, as you can see,
it’s difficult to work out what’s here, let alone what’s gone.’

The three men were standing in what was left of Tom’s
bedroom. His mattress and duvet had been shredded, covering everything in a
layer of snowy-white downy feathers. His clothes were strewn across the floor,
the pockets of his jackets and trousers ripped open.

‘Do you have any idea who could be responsible for this?’
the inspector asked.

‘No, I don’t. Perhaps it was an opportunist thief,’ Tom
suggested.

‘It doesn’t look like a regular burglary. It appears more
like they were looking for something.’ It was the first time Sergeant Lavelle
had spoken. Even when he was first introduced to Tom, he had simply nodded a
greeting. His voice was gravelly, with a mix of French and German accents.

‘But what?’ Tom tried to rack his brains. ‘I don’t have
anything of value.’

‘What was on the laptop?’ Inspector Gervaux enquired.

‘Nothing of mine. I haven’t even had time to log on since I
arrived.’

‘Was it a new laptop?’ Sergeant Lavelle interjected.

‘As I said, I hadn’t really had a chance to use it,’ replied
Tom. ‘But, going by everything else, it was probably a hand-me-down.’

‘Pardon?’ the two men said in unison.

‘It probably belonged to my predecessor,’ Tom explained.

‘Ah yes, Professor Morantz.’ Inspector Gervaux closed his
notebook and pocketed it. ‘I will send our forensics team in to see if they can
find any fingerprints or DNA. But, I must advise you, if they were
professionals it’s very unlikely that we will find anything. If you remember
something that could help us, please give me a call.’ He handed his card to
Tom.

He watched the two men leave, then turned his focus back to
his bedroom. It was clearly uninhabitable
.
He gathered a pile of
underwear, socks, T-shirts and a pair of trainers from the floor, grabbed the
American Airlines complimentary wash bag from his bathroom and stuffed them
into his flight bag, which he located in the living room; there really wasn’t
anything else worth salvaging. He put on a sweater, gave one last perfunctory
glance around and left the apartment without locking it, then made his way to
the canteen.

Serena was already there, sitting on a small table by the
window picking at a tuna Niçoise salad. She saw him as soon as he came in and
waved him over.

‘Going somewhere?’ Serena asked, motioning to the bag over
Tom’s shoulder.

‘Long story,’ Tom replied taking the seat opposite her. ‘My
apartment was broken into and this,’ he indicated to the flight bag, ‘is the
sum total of all my worldly possessions.’

‘Oh my God! Did they take much?’

‘I don’t think so, but they trashed the place and my clothes
with it. Apart from what I’m wearing and the few essential items I managed to
recover, everything else was either ripped to shreds or smashed.’

‘Who would do such a thing?’

‘I’m not sure, but the police seem to think they were looking
for something.’

Serena automatically reached for the tan-coloured briefcase
in front of her. ‘You don’t think they were after this, do you?’

Tom looked bemused. ‘What, your briefcase?’

‘No, dummy. Morantz’s file.’ She tried to say the words
without moving her lips, but would have failed spectacularly to get a job as a
ventriloquist.

Tom was a little taken aback by the insult, but warmed to
the way familiarity had crept into their relationship.

Up to that point, it hadn’t crossed his mind that the file
could have been what they were looking for.

‘But nobody knew I had it…’ Then he remembered the voice
message he had left earlier that morning. ‘Except, of course, Frederick.’

‘What would Frederick want with the file?’

‘I don’t know, but I’m seeing him this afternoon. Why don’t
I just ask him?’

‘Do you think that’s wise? After all, somebody
did
break into your apartment and he was the only person who knew you had it.’

‘Frederick’s not the breaking and entering type.’

‘Who else could it be?’

Tom thought for a moment. That was the second time in one
day that his character judgement had been brought into question. ‘Alright,
perhaps I won’t ask him directly,’ he replied. ‘But I should be able to
determine how desperate or not he is to get his hands on the file, by his
reaction when I show it to him. Did you manage to confirm the figures, by the
way?’

‘Yes and they stack up. The earthquakes all happened when
the Collider was producing its maximum electromagnetic output.’

‘And the one in Istanbul?’

‘The timings match, but I haven’t been able to extrapolate
all the figures yet.’

Tom studied the half-eaten meal in front of Serena.

‘Aren’t you going to get anything to eat?’ she said,
noticing him eyeing her plate.

‘No, I seem to have lost my appetite.’

‘Do you want me to come with you?’ Serena offered.

Tom knew the chivalrous thing to do would be to exclude
Serena in case he had totally misinterpreted Frederick’s intentions. ‘Do you
mind?’ he said. ‘I think it would help if you were there to verify the
figures.’

Tom had arranged to meet Frederick in his office, which was
in a different part of the complex to the main building. At the time, he
decided it would be a more discreet location than his own office, which was swarming
with police. As he sat next to Serena in the golf buggy, he was wishing he
could have reversed that decision.

‘Did you manage to make a copy of the data?’ he asked,
pulling into a parking spot in front of a two-storey, anonymous grey building.

‘Yes, why? Do you think he’s going to steal it from us at
gunpoint?’ Serena joked.

Tom didn’t know what to think or say, so he remained silent.
He was feeling a little apprehensive as he made his way into the building.

‘We have an appointment with Frederick Volker,’ he told the
receptionist. Serena was by his side; she reached out and gave his hand a quick
squeeze, out of sight of the woman behind the counter. She had heard the
nervousness in his voice.

‘I’ll just let him know you’re here. Can I have your names,
please?’

‘It’s Professor Halligan and Serena Mayer.’

The receptionist punched Frederick’s extension number into
the computerised switchboard. When he answered, she informed him that his
visitors had arrived.

‘He said he’ll be right down. If you’d like to take a seat,’
she said pointing to the row of black plastic chairs behind them.

They sat in the two furthest away from the reception
counter.

‘I feel like I’m waiting to see the dentist,’ whispered Tom,
leaning conspiratorially towards Serena.

‘I quite liked my dentist, actually. He once asked me out on
a date,’ she replied chattily.

‘Is that allowed? Doctor-patient relationships, I mean?’

‘Well, strictly speaking, he wasn’t a doctor,’ Serena
replied. ‘So I suppose so. But I turned him down, anyway.’

‘Why?’

‘I didn’t want to have to find a new dentist if it didn’t
work out. Where I grew up, good dentists were hard to find. Boyfriends, on the
other hand, were plentiful.’ She chuckled at her own witticism.

‘I bet they were,’ he retorted, with a hint of jealousy.

Just then, Frederick burst through the door with all the
ardour of a teenager.

‘Tom! Welcome to my lair. And I see you’ve brought the
delectable Miss Mayer with you. What a pleasure!’ His enthusiastic welcome
dispelled any doubts that Tom had about Frederick’s disposition. ‘Come! Come!
Let me show you to my office.’ He put his arm around Tom’s shoulder and
shepherded him through the door, holding it open for Serena to follow. ‘Up the
stairs, first on the left,’ he shouted after them.

They reached the landing and stood back to let Frederick
lead them in.

His office was much bigger than Tom’s but, despite its size,
it felt more homely, more lived in. Photos of family and friends adorned the
walls. Tom recognised Ajay in a few of them and wondered, again, if Frederick
had been told of his disappearance. The ubiquitous florescent strip lights were
turned off and, instead, a softer illumination was provided by a tall standard
lamp in one corner.

Thick, dark green curtains dressed a large window that overlooked
the car park Tom had used earlier. A mahogany bookcase stretched the full
length of one wall and was stocked with rows and rows of ancient books bound in
vellum, the aroma of which filled the office with a sweet, camphorous scent.

His work station was an antique leather-topped pedestal desk
and a matching green, high-backed chesterfield chair. Two plain green leather
chairs occupied the other side of the desk. Pot plants filled corners and
niches. It reminded Tom more of a gentleman’s study than a place of work.

‘As you can see, I do like my home comforts,’ Frederick
commented, closing the door behind him and taking up position behind his desk.

Tom left Serena to join Frederick and wandered over to the
bookcase. He scanned the books’ bindings for titles or authors he would
recognise, the musty smell of the parchment almost overpowering him. He was
familiar with the names of a few of the authors – Galilei, Kepler, Copernicus,
Pflaum – but he was embarrassed to admit that, apart from Einstein and Newton,
he hadn’t read any of their works.

‘Are all these originals?’ he asked, tilting his head to
read the vertical writing of one book spine.

‘I’m afraid so,’ replied Frederick. ‘It’s more of a
compulsion of mine rather than a hobby. If my wife were to discover how much
I’d spent on my cosmic collection, I can guarantee you I’d be a single man the
very next day.’

‘Are they all about astronomy?’ Serena asked, studying the
titles.

‘Astronomy, science, physics, they’re all linked together,
really.’

‘Do you have a favourite?’ She could tell by the light
shining in his eyes that he was bursting with pride.

‘Far too many, my dear,’ said Frederick. ‘But, if I had to
choose one, it would be Galileo’s
Sidereus Nuncius,
printed in 1610, in
which he first announced his use of a telescope and his subsequent discoveries
that there were craters on the Moon, that the Milky Way was made up of stars,
and that Jupiter had moons. Quite remarkable for his day.’

Tom was only half listening to the conversation going on
behind him; astronomy had never been his forte. But then his excitement grew as
he spotted a book he knew well. He stretched to his full height and managed to
pull it out with his fingertips –
QED: The Strange Theory of Light and
Matter
by Richard P. Feynman. He opened the cover and noticed that there
was an inscription: ‘
To my dear friend Freddy, without your inspirational
guidance, I would still be in the dark.
’ It was signed
Dick.

‘Did you know Richard Feynman well?’ Tom asked.

‘Ah, I see you’ve found his book. We worked together on a
number of projects and became quite close. But don’t take too much notice of
that dedication, he always was a bit over-generous with his praises,’ Frederick
replied modestly. ‘I could bore you all day with my library, but I’m sure
that’s not the reason you wanted to see me.’

‘As fascinating as it is, unfortunately not.’ Tom returned
the book and went to sit next to Serena. ‘As I said in the message I left you,
I believe we have the evidence that Professor Morantz was going to take to the
newspapers.’

‘Evidence of what?’ Frederick sat forward in his chair and
clasped his hands together on the desk.

‘I’ll let Serena explain,’ replied Tom. ‘She’s better at
figures than I am.’

As Serena went through the data in detail, Frederick
listened intently to her, interrupting only once to ask if she’d checked the
figures for herself. As the briefing progressed, Tom observed the blood
draining from Frederick’s face. He looked visibly shaken. His vitality had been
replaced by a dark, life-draining weariness. At one point, Tom was convinced he
was going to faint.

Serena finished by rounding off with her conclusions. There
was a reverential silence, the three individuals absorbed in their own
thoughts.

Frederick was the first to fill the void. ‘What
have
we done?’ The sentiment was almost inaudible. ‘What
have
we done?’ he
whispered again. His eyes were glazed over, staring into space.

‘Frederick?’ Tom was concerned for the man’s health, if not
his physical, then certainly his mental. He didn’t respond. ‘Frederick?’ he
repeated louder. This time he managed to get through. Frederick looked at the
two people opposite him as though they were strangers. ‘What do you think we
should do?’ Tom urged.

‘I… I don’t know,’ came back the feeble response.

Tom turned to Serena, who was mesmerised by the
transformation in the man. Cupping a hand over his mouth he said in a low
voice, ‘I think we need to take this file to the authorities and let them sort
it out.’

‘No!’ The single word was delivered with such force that it
made them both jump. The spell was broken. Blood rushed back into Frederick’s
face and his eyes regained their clarity. ‘No,’ he repeated, softer now, but
with as much conviction. ‘Involving the police would only entail a lengthy
investigation, at the end of which they will indubitably find that no
individual is culpable. Science created this abomination and it is up to us to
sort it out. We will have to stop all experiments involving the Collider,
immediately, with a view to closing down the facility permanently. And pray to
God with thanks that this came to light when it did.’

Tom couldn’t question his reasoning, but he wasn’t accustomed
to taking the law into his own hands. ‘Surely somebody has to be held
accountable for these atrocities?’

‘We all are,’ Frederick said mournfully. ‘Scientists by
their very nature are driven to explore the unknown, discover new worlds, push
the boundaries to the edge of man’s knowledge, and then push further. The
intangible desire to explore and challenge the boundaries of what we know and
where we have been has provided benefits to our society for centuries, but not
without a cost, the currency of which is usually the lives of innocent
victims.’

‘But somebody
should
be made to pay,’ Tom argued.

Frederick’s eyes saddened. ‘It’s a burden we must all
shoulder. It’s the price we have to pay for the advancement of civilisation.
Take Rutherford, for example. He was one of the founding fathers of nuclear
physics and considered by many to be one of the greatest experimental
scientists that ever lived. Should he have been made to pay for the deaths of
over two hundred thousand people when the Americans dropped their atomic bombs
on Nagasaki and Hiroshima, some twenty-five years after he split the atom?’

‘Perhaps,’ Tom speculated.

‘Perhaps,’ Frederick conceded. ‘But perhaps we have lost our
way. Perhaps, in our quest to achieve the ultimate goals for the collective good,
we have forgotten about what’s really important – the individuals.’ Tears
pooled in his eyes. ‘I don’t have all the answers, Tom,’ he said earnestly.
‘But I do know that going to the police won’t bring back those poor souls who
have perished as a result of our arrogance. We must learn from this. We need to
inspire future generations of scientists to be ethically motivated and morally
responsible. If we can accomplish
that
, then the loss of those lives
will not be in vain.’

‘But the scientific profession already has a high standard
of integrity,’ Tom said, indignantly.

‘That’s what I like about you, Tom,’ Frederick replied.
‘You’re an idealist. But history has shown us that scientists are capable of
morally abhorrent behaviour. Look at the heinous experiments Mengele performed
on the inmates of Auschwitz in the name of scientific research.’

You could argue that we have learnt from our mistakes,
developed codes of conduct to prevent those sorts of atrocities ever happening
again,’ Tom reasoned.

‘You would like to think so, but even today scientists serve
as apologists for the tobacco and pesticide industries, and cosmetics are
routinely tested on animals. Is that morally acceptable? What I’m saying is
that beneath the white lab coat is a human being, who is vulnerable to all the
usual temptations of the real world.’

‘One thing’s puzzling me,’ Serena said. ‘Why don’t we just
go to the press with the information we’ve got, as Professor Morantz wanted to
do?’

‘When Erik came to me,’ replied Frederick, ‘the afternoon
before he died, and told me that he was going to the media with proof that the
Collider was going to destroy the world, I was naturally very sceptical. I
thought he’d lost his mind. But it made me think about what would happen if the
story was true. How would the world react? At first, there would be a media
frenzy; we would be inundated by an army of reporters and camera crews seeking
an exclusive. And it wouldn’t just be our facility in the spotlight; every
research establishment in the world would come under the scrutiny of the press.
Newspapers, in particular, are notoriously indiscriminate when it comes to
apportioning blame.’

Frederick paused for a moment, sighed, then continued.

‘Secondly, the hype would generate mass hysteria. At best,
we’re talking about the demand for the immediate closure of all research
facilities, at worst – lynch mobs. Next, once the furore had died down, there
would be a period of reconciliation. Debates would go on between eminent
scientists on the one side and lawmakers on the other; naturally, the lawmakers
would win, as they would have to be seen to take action. More governing bodies
would be set up and more legislation passed.’

Selena made as if to say something, but Frederick continued
without giving her the chance to speak.

‘The long-term consequences for science as a doctrine would
be devastating,’ he went on. ‘It would set scientific research back hundreds of
years and it wouldn’t just be physicists that would be affected. Every disciple
in the science arena, from astronomy to oceanography, would be regulated to
such an extent that we wouldn’t even be able to produce a new formula of
dandruff shampoo without getting it approved first. Medical research, I fear,
would be affected the most. It’s already a race against time to come up with
new drugs and procedures to prevent and treat chronic diseases. Can you imagine
how many more people would die as a result of slowing down the pace of that
development with bureaucratic red tape – a hundred, a thousand, a million times
more than have been killed in the Earthquakes? So, when we make our decision,
it isn’t just the loss of life we need to consider, but also the potential
loss.’

‘So what do we do now?’ Serena asked, anxiously.

‘I have some… er, colleagues,’ he replied. ‘I’d like to run
it past them to get their perspective. Do you mind if I take the file with me?’