The Omega Theory (21 page)

“Unfortunately, our records don’t provide a complete description. Some of the documents were lost when Soreq digitized its archives in the nineties. We’ve tried getting in touch with the scientists who were in charge of
Cherev,
but two are dead now and the third has Alzheimer’s.”

Shit, David thought. Not another dead end. “Were there any younger people working on the project? Maybe research assistants?”

“We’re trying to locate them. And we’ve requested information from the American researchers who know about
Cherev
.”

This got Lucille’s attention. She stepped toward Rahm, narrowing her eyes. “American researchers?”

“Yes, at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California. This was a joint project between Livermore and Soreq. The laboratories shared their results.”

Lucille grimaced, evidently irked that Rahm hadn’t mentioned this earlier. Livermore was one of the main nuclear-weapons labs in the United States. “Who are the American scientists?” she asked. “The Bureau can help you get in touch with them.”

“I have a list of the researchers involved.” Rahm flipped through his notebook until he found the page he wanted. “Yes, here it is. Livermore’s code name for the project was Excalibur. Which is also the name of a sword, correct?”

David felt a burst of hope. He’d heard of Excalibur. “Wait a second. Was this part of the Star Wars program? You know, Ronald Reagan’s missile-defense plan?”

Rahm shrugged. “The records don’t say. But it’s a good guess. The Americans and Israelis cooperated on missile-defense research during the eighties. For obvious reasons, Israel is very interested in the technology.”

David looked again at the wreckage on the floor, gazing in particular at the broken rods inside the cylinder. Yes, he recognized it now. He’d seen sketches of the device in books and articles. It was a relic of the cold war, forgotten by the general public but familiar to historians. He turned to Lucille. “I know about Excalibur,” he said. “It’s a special kind of laser, one that can shoot beams of X-rays. It was Dr. Strangelove’s last invention.”

Lucille raised an eyebrow. “Dr. Strangelove?”

“Edward Teller, I mean. The father of the H-bomb. Officially, he was retired by the 1980s, but he was still running the Livermore lab. He’s the guy who dreamed up Star Wars and convinced President Reagan that it could work.”

“Whoa, slow down,” Lucille said. “I’ve heard of Star Wars. But what the hell was Excalibur?”

“Excalibur was the showpiece for the whole program. Teller’s idea was to combine his X-ray laser with a nuclear warhead and launch the package into orbit. In the event of a missile attack from the Soviet Union, the U.S. Air Force would send a signal to detonate the warhead in space. Excalibur would channel the bomb’s energy into laser beams that would shoot down the Soviet missiles while they were arcing above the atmosphere.”

Monique gripped his elbow. She was nodding vigorously. “I’ve heard of this, too. The device had laser rods that could absorb the X-ray radiation from the nuclear blast, right? And each rod could be pointed at a different target, so the laser beams could shoot down a whole wave of missiles at once?”

“Yeah, it was a crazy strategy, insanely ambitious. The government spent hundreds of millions on it.” David leaned over the crime-scene tape and pointed at the debris inside the cylinder. “You see those jagged bits? Those are pieces of the laser rods. Each rod was about a meter long and made up of hundreds of metallic strands, all bundled together like the wires in a cable.” He shifted his hand and pointed at the broken struts. “That’s where the warhead would go. Just before launch, the nuke would be placed inside the cylinder, next to the laser rods. In the event of a detonation, the atoms in the metallic strands would absorb the radiation from the blast and release it in a laser beam that would travel down the length of the rod. The nuclear explosion would destroy the whole assembly, of course, but the laser beams would shoot from the ends of the rods just before the device vaporized. And because the beams would have a frequency in the X-ray range, they’d deliver much more energy than an ordinary laser, enough to bring down a Soviet missile.”

Monique let out a whistle. She stared at the cylinder for a few more seconds, then turned back to David. “It might’ve been a crazy strategy,” she said. “But as a piece of technology, it’s pretty amazing.”

“It was groundbreaking,” he conceded. “The Livermore researchers were trying to do something that had never been attempted. And they had some success in the initial tests. They built prototypes of Excalibur and positioned the X-ray lasers next to nuclear bombs at the Nevada test site. When the bombs exploded, the researchers detected laser beams coming from the prototypes. Teller predicted that Excalibur would be ready for deployment in a few years. But the project ran into technical problems and the government cut its funding. Then the Soviet Union collapsed and the cold war ended and the U.S. banned all nuclear tests. So Excalibur was canceled.” He nodded grimly. “And believe me, that was a damn good thing. We should be trying to eliminate nukes, not put them into space.”

To David’s surprise, no one argued with him. The room was silent. Then Aryeh stepped forward. “Okay, now we know what the thing is, yes? Livermore was sharing its information with Soreq, so the Israeli researchers must’ve built their own prototype laser. But why, after all these years, did Loebner come here to destroy it? Where’s the sense in that?”

“Maybe Loebner’s a traitor,” Lucille suggested. “Maybe he’s working with the Iranians. So he sabotages a defense system that could shoot down Iranian missiles.”

“But Excalibur wasn’t operational,” Aryeh pointed out. “The IDF put it in storage and forgot about it. And Israel has other missile-defense systems that are already in place—the Patriot rockets, the Arrow interceptors. If Loebner was interested in sabotage, why didn’t he go after those?”

“Because the operational systems have better security,” Lucille answered. “Loebner destroyed what he could, then disappeared.”

Aryeh flashed a skeptical half smile. He didn’t say anything, but he clearly disagreed.

David shook his head. “No, Loebner’s not the bad guy. We know he was working on an experiment with Jacob Steele. And at the moment of the Iranian nuclear test, they detected something that alarmed them. Some anomaly in the flow of time, some disruption in the workings of the—”

“You’re just speculating,” Lucille interrupted. “What we need is more information. We need to—”

“Loebner perceived the danger and took action.” David pointed once more at the broken cylinder. “Within hours of the nuclear test, he rushed over here and demolished this prototype. So Excalibur must be related to the danger. The X-ray laser is part of the threat.”

Resting her hands on her hips, Lucille gave him an incredulous look. “Excalibur is a defensive weapon, designed to shoot down missiles. How the hell could it be a threat?”

David shook his head again. He thought of what Monique had told him about It From Bit and the computational universe. He thought of the Caduceus Array, the pair of single-ion clocks hidden at Beit Shalom Yeshiva and the University of Maryland. And he remembered the last time he’d seen Jacob Steele, in the corridor outside the lecture hall at Columbia. There’s something else, David thought. I’m missing something. It fluttered at the edge of his memory, just out of reach.

“I can’t explain it,” he said. “But I know I’m right.”

THE SUN WAS SINKING TOWARD THE MEDITERRANEAN BY THE TIME THEY
left Soreq. Aryeh and Lucille sat in the front of the limo, as before, and David and Monique sat in the back, but no one talked or turned on the radio. They were no closer to finding Oscar Loebner. They’d discovered a new piece of evidence, but no clues to the man’s whereabouts. With enough time, perhaps, they could interview all of Loebner’s colleagues and retrace his movements and unravel the mystery of his disappearance—what he detected with the Caduceus Array, why he smashed the X-ray laser, and how he was connected to Michael’s kidnapping. But David knew they didn’t have enough time. Time was running out.

He looked out the window as they drove back to Jerusalem. The telephone poles beside the highway cast long shadows in the late-afternoon light, which gilded the neighboring fields. His greatest fear now was that Lucille would decide to go back to America. Given their lack of progress so far, she might want to return to New York and rethink the investigation. David knew this would be a mistake, but he had little hope of changing Lucille’s mind if she made that decision. Although he’d built up a good relationship with Agent Parker, in the end he was still just a civilian.

At the halfway point in the drive, where the highway climbed into the Judean Hills, Aryeh stopped for gas at a roadside station. Luckily, traffic was light and the station wasn’t busy. While Aryeh went to the gas pumps, Lucille opened her enormous black purse and pulled out a tube of lipstick. David glanced nervously at Monique, then turned to Lucille, leaning forward into the gap between the car’s bucket seats.

“So what happens now?” he asked. His voice was tense. “Do we stay in Israel or go back to the States?”

Lucille seemed taken aback, a little startled by his urgency. She lowered the lipstick and looked over her shoulder. “Don’t worry, Swift. We still have things to do here.”

He didn’t know if she was telling the truth or just trying to reassure him. “Really? I get the feeling that we just hit a brick wall.”

“No, you don’t understand. Investigations are hard work. You can’t expect a breakthrough with every interview. Most of the time, you come away with nothing. You have to try lots of approaches until you find the one that gets results.”

“But what’s the next step? No one knows where Loebner went after he left Soreq. He could be anywhere by now.”

“I’ve been thinking that maybe we should stop concentrating so much on Oscar Loebner the computer scientist. He’s also Olam ben Z’man the Kabbalah nut. He has ties to Beit Shalom Yeshiva and the right-wing Jewish settlers on the West Bank. And the Bureau has information on the more extreme right-wingers because they have associates in the U.S.”

“You think Loebner could be hiding in one of the West Bank settlements?”

“It’d be a good place to hide. Some of the settlements are on remote hilltops surrounded by Palestinian villages. The Israeli authorities rarely go there, and the settlers are well armed because they’re always fighting with the Palestinians. Here, look at this.” Lucille dug into her purse and pulled out a BlackBerry. She used her thumbs to push the buttons on the device’s keyboard. “I downloaded some data on the settlements this morning. We have an encrypted link to the Bureau’s computers in Washington.”

An alphabetical list of West Bank settlements appeared on the Black-Berry’s screen. The first was Adora, the second Alei Zahav. Each name was accompanied by a satellite photo of the outpost and several links offering more information. “Wow, that’s impressive,” David said.

“Yeah, the Bureau spent millions on new servers and networking equipment. But at least once a month the system crashes and all the screens go black. We’ve had a string of bad luck with our computers.”

She scrolled down the list of settlements: Alfei Menashe, Alon Shvut, Almon, Argaman, Ariel. But the names barely registered in David’s mind, because Lucille had just reminded him of something. The words that had been fluttering at the edge of his memory ever since he stood in the Long-Term Storage Room suddenly swung into view. Now he remembered what Jacob Steele had said outside the lecture hall at Columbia.
A larger disruption could trigger a catastrophe. It could bring down the whole system.

Lucille continued talking about the settlements and scrolling down her list—Dolev, Doran, Efrat, Elazar—but David was too agitated to pay attention. A horrible fear welled up inside him. He turned back to Monique and grabbed her arm. “I know why Loebner did it! Why he smashed the laser!”

She was so surprised she let out a cry. “Jesus! What the hell?”

“A crash, a computer crash! That’s what Loebner was afraid of!” He pointed at the BlackBerry in Lucille’s hand. “Every computer system crashes, right? There’s no computer in the goddamn world that hasn’t crashed at least once.”

Monique stared at him, her eyes swiftly focusing. “Okay, slow down. What are you saying?”

“Can’t you see? If the whole universe is a—”

At that instant all four of the limo’s doors opened. A man in a black jacket appeared behind Monique and clamped a gloved hand over her mouth. Another man did the same to David, while two more assailants dove at Lucille, pinning her arms before she could reach for her gun. The men were fast and strong, and they wore black shirts and black pants under their jackets. Just like the assassins at Beit Shalom Yeshiva, David thought. They’re here to finish the job.

Within seconds the four men had crowded into the car and closed the doors behind them. As the man in the driver’s seat started the engine, David got a glimpse of a black van parked on the other side of the gas pumps. The van’s rear doors were open, and another two assailants were shoving Aryeh inside. Then the doors slammed shut and the van peeled out of the gas station. The Shin Bet limo followed at high speed, heading back to the highway.

David’s head was turned sideways, his right cheek mashed against the fabric of the backseat. He got a good look at the man behind Monique—he was bald and barrel-chested and wore a black eye patch. The man smiled at David and relaxed his hold on Monique, removing his hand from her mouth.

“Shalom!”
he boomed. “My name is Olam ben Z’man.”

18

BROTHER CYRUS’S SOLDIERS TOOK AWAY HIS COMPUTER. WHILE MICHAEL SAT
on his bare mattress, the men came into the yurt and disconnected the Ultra 27 workstation. Without saying a word, they unplugged the extension cord that connected the machine to the camp’s diesel generator. Then they carted the workstation outside and locked the door behind them.

Michael didn’t care about the computer. He hadn’t touched the machine since he’d returned from the burning crater the night before. Instead, he’d spent the whole day writing in a spiral notebook he’d found at the bottom of one of the desk drawers. Using a pencil he’d also found in the drawer, he’d written
The Discovery of Spacetime
on the notebook’s first page. That was the title of chapter three of
An Introduction to Modern Physics,
another textbook that Monique Reynolds had given him for his nineteenth birthday. Michael had memorized the book and now he was copying the chapter into the spiral notebook, transcribing the text in his careful handwriting and drawing his own versions of the illustrations. He enjoyed copying books from memory. It allowed him to push all other thoughts out of his mind.