At the end of the prayer Oliver, noticing the fatigue in Alice’s face, her eyes swollen from crying, said to her, “I’m here for you, and I’ll help in any way I can in the coming week. You’ve had a long day and need to get some sleep. I‘ll stay here a while longer after you have gone to bed and talk with Father Ryan.”
Alice nodded agreement and left the living room, heading up stairs. Oliver then turned to Father Ryan. “Thank you for being here for Alice and for me; we’ve both been hit hard by this sudden tragedy. Peter had always been so full of life and energy. Had he shown any recent signs of health problems?”
“Peter was fine according to his doctor, who just conducted his annual physical three weeks ago.”
“Did he give any indication this morning he was ill?”
“According to Alice, at the breakfast table he was excited and upbeat about his most recent work on the fundamental nature of matter. The only thing he said to me at the hospital before he died made no sense, but might hold some clue to his condition. I’ve been trying to find some meaning in it for the past hours. I had begun last rites at Peter’s bedside, and had just made the sign of the cross, when he uttered, ‘You must find the three.’ I said nothing to Alice about this last request for fear of further upsetting her, but thought you might see some hidden meaning in it.”
Oliver, as puzzled as Father Pat, asked, “The three what?”
“It could have been his team members, Elizabeth, Khalil, and David, but they were the ones who found him, accompanied him to the hospital, and had been in the waiting room when he died. But in case this had something to do with his work, I asked Elizabeth to retrieve his laptop from his office to see if there was something there he was concerned about.”
“What did she find?”
“Nothing so far, the computer seems to be locked in a ‘blue-screen’ mode. It won’t respond to any commands. Elizabeth Ward, as you know, is the team member with probably the best knowledge of computers in the mathematics department. After her preliminary search, she has concluded the laptop had been attacked by some worm or virus and that it would take her a day or more to determine what, if anything, could be retrieved.”
“You mean his most recent work has been erased by some deliberate cyber-attack!?”
“They don’t know yet if this virus was deliberate, or if it entered his computer through some innocent download from the internet, but that is one thing Elizabeth is looking into.”
Oliver looked at Father Pat with a worried expression. “I hate to even suggest this, but if it turns out his work was deliberately attacked, maybe his death was not from natural causes.”
“You think he might have been murdered?! Who would possibly do such a thing?”
“I don’t know, but considering his importance to the entire country as well as the world scientific community, the authorities should be asked to conduct a careful autopsy to determine the exact cause of death.”
Father Pat replied, “Alice and I have already made such a request out of concern for the sudden nature of his death, regardless of the cause. As a result, we’ve decided to delay memorial services for a few days, depending on the duration of the examination. As you can understand, the word of his death has already spread to the news media, and condolences and inquiries are flooding Alice’s email. Oliver, you need not worry yourself about these final arrangements for Peter’s service, Alice and I have begun working them out and there will be time for us to handle his affairs as well as the service.”
Oliver took comfort in the fact that Father Ryan was such a help and comfort for Alice. On the other hand, he was greatly troubled by thoughts of how and why Peter died and what he had meant by “You must find the three”. What or who are the three: The Holy Trinity; his three team members; three hidden volumes of his work; or things hidden at Fermilab, CERN, and the Dark Sector Lab, where his three team members worked?
“Father Pat, it’s after midnight. I can stay here if you need me, but I must tell you I want to look into all aspects of Peter’s death, including a possible conspiracy, and therefore may have to do some traveling in the next week.”
“We’ll be ok,” said Father Pat. “Find out what you can. We all want to know why Peter died so suddenly, and at such a young age.”
“Tomorrow I’ll talk to Peter’s team members to see if anything at all comes to mind regarding Peter’s last request.” Oliver then shook Father Pat’s hand, and made his exit.
Returning to his nearby apartment, Oliver turned on a few lights and opened some windows to allow fresh air to clear out the evidence of his week-long absence. The living room was filled with replicas of artifacts from various world religions that he often used in his lectures. This room resembled a London men’s club, complete with heavy dark wood paneling and heavy leather lounge chairs. It smelled of lemon oil, old leather, and redwood. The center of the oak floor was covered by a Persian rug with a traditional gold and blue motif against a deep red background. Next to his favorite wingback chair stood a floor lamp with a Tiffany shade, and a burled redwood magazine stand full of books and newspapers. The far wall held a flat screen TV which he used on a daily basis for world news reports. It was truly a bachelor pad, and had suited Oliver’s lifestyle quite well over the years.
The adjacent study centered on a large desk, piled with notes and books that partially obscured the open, laptop computer at its center. File cabinets of lecture notes and student records, and shelves of reference books, lined two of the walls. On the upper shelves of these bookcases were a few framed photographs of family and friends. In prominent positions was the one of his parents, both of whom had recently died, and one of himself with Peter and Alice. He removed both photographs and stood examining them, one in each hand.
Both of his parents, who had worked in the redwood lumber industry, would have been amazed at the life their son now led: a college professor and a secret agent for the government. As he studied their photograph, Oliver realized that the life his parents had led, though completely different from his, was in fact happy and fulfilling. He and his parents had been surrounded by the majestic stands of redwood and Engelmann spruce that had provided them with a stable environment for both work and leisure.
When Oliver was a child, his father had taken him on long outings into the surrounding woods looking for the oldest and largest trees. Stopping at old stumps to count tree rings, they would then discuss what creatures might have walked in these same woods when that tree was young. Oliver’s young mind would create images of large Saber-toothed tigers as they quietly made their way through the forest on a hunt for deer or bears or giant sloths. He loved these outings with his father and now realized that they had formed his love of history.
Cutten, California, had offered a wholesome and stimulating environment for his boyhood and allowed him to explore the world around him with little exposure to the crime and inner-city strife he knew only through television.
Nothing in his childhood memories was more exciting than watching giant redwood logs being cut into lumber in the Georgia Pacific lumber mill where his father and mother had worked. As the steam-powered carrier, the size of a railroad flat-car, carried a huge redwood log through the vertical band saw blade, he would watch each piece of wood as it was carried away to be cut into standard lumber. The floor shook and the saw screamed as these logs were being cut. The outer slabs of bark would be directed down a chute into a flickering furnace. The entire sawmill ran on the heat from this furnace.
The drying yard that lay to the south of the mill contained the rough–cut lumber that would eventually be planed to standard size for market. On one occasion Oliver’s father took him out to the drying yard to see a special piece of redwood. It was a slab 4 inches thick, 4 feet wide, and 16 feet long of solid burled redwood. It was worth thousands of dollars and would eventually become a conference table for a large corporation. It was the most beautiful piece of lumber Oliver had ever seen.
Oliver was also aware that muc
h of the redwood not used for lumber was sent to a nearby pulp mill where it was made into paper. Not until he went off to college in New Jersey, had he realized all the newspapers published in Northern California smelled like redwood. None of the newspapers he picked up anywhere else in the country smelled like home.
Looking back and forth between the picture of himself with Peter and Alice, and the one of his parents, he realized that three of the five figures were no longer with him. Alice, alone, was his family. The thought made him feel an emptiness that brought back his grief at Peter’s death.
Examining everything around him, he saw the smallness of this apartment as a representation of home. Over the years, as he pursued his career as professor and scholar, his sense of home and family had become small and self-centered. Yes, there are his students here in Chicago, and yes, there is his work with Maxine at I&A, but at this moment, he felt very alone.
He went to his kitchenette and checked to see if he had eggs and bacon for his breakfast the next morning. Taking a bottle of beer from the refrigerator, he returned to the study and turned on his laptop. Opening a new document page he wrote, “You must find the three.” Oliver then stood staring at the words, sipping periodically at his beer. Finally, he sat the unfinished bottle on the side of the desk, shut down the computer, and walked to his bedroom. There he unpacked his small carry–on bag and got ready for bed. His sleep, through the early morning hours, was troubled by thoughts of these words, along with his loneliness and loss. He slept little before dawn began to cast a few rays of dim light and stir a gentle breeze through his bedroom window.
2
The Three
For many things lead me to have a suspicion that all phenomenon
may depend on certain forces by which the particles of bodies,
by causes not yet known, either are impelled toward one another,
and cohere in regular figures, or repelled from one another and recede.
-Isaac Newton
After rising that morning and having a breakfast of bacon, eggs, and coffee, followed by a warm shower, Oliver called the Fermilab office of Peter’s team.
Kahlil answered, and recognizing Oliver’s number, said, “Dr. Saxon, I’ve been expecting your call; we’re all still in shock and are here in the office trying to determine what we should do.”
“I’d like to come out to the lab and see you, David, and Elizabeth.”
“That would be fine. I’ll let security know you’re coming.”
“Has Elizabeth finished her work attempting to restore Peter’s laptop?”
“She’s still working on it but says she should know something by tomorrow.”
“I’d still like to talk with the three of you about the work you each have been doing with Peter. I’ll be there in about an hour,” Oliver responded as he walked to his car.
Oliver drove from the University of Chicago campus, north through the city and then west out Interstate 88, toward Fermilab. As he drove, he could not help visualizing the exuberant Peter Newbury, encouraging his team of three researchers, as together they worked to unravel the secrets of the universe. What impact will Peter’s death have on this important research? How will his team members be affected? If his death was not from natural causes, who could possibly expect to profit from such a hateful act? These thoughts did little to soothe Oliver, or brighten his dark mood as he drove west toward the lab. His thoughts were finally interrupted by the exit signs for Fermilab. Exiting Interstate 88 he drove north along Kirk Road into the National Accelerator complex, a 6,800-acre tract of land just south of Batavia.
In his discussions with Peter, Oliver had learned that Fermilab employed over 1,500 scientists and engineers, and was a world leader in sub-atomic physics and particle accelerator design. Oliver recalled Peter’s enthusiastic words: “Here at Fermilab, particles like electrons or protons are accelerated to high energies, held in a storage ring, and made to collide. Over the years, these controlled collisions have yielded a lot of information about the structure of matter. We are close to finding out how all matter is formed!”
As Oliver turned east onto the main entrance road to Fermilab, approaching Wilson Hall, he was again struck by the unusual architecture of this main administrative building. The concave, inward-sloping east and west wings, looming more than fifteen stories above the surrounding flat-lands, had always given him the impression of two giant hands, clasped in prayer. He had often teased Peter about the symbolism, asking what all these physicists and mathematicians could be praying for. Peter would laugh and remind him of the opening scenes of “Raiders of the Lost Ark”, where Indiana Jones takes all the risks and does the hard work to find the hidden treasure, and in the end has it stolen from him by that nasty Frenchman, Belloc.
“Well, Oliver, physics research is just like that. All of us in this building are working as hard as we can to find the next hidden treasure, hoping and praying someone else in this building, or elsewhere, doesn’t publish the same findings before we’re able to. Being scooped after years of hard work is devastating.”
“Peter,” Oliver would say, “you’re so far ahead of the rest of the world of physics that the only praying I see you do is in church.”
Now, as Oliver drove up Road A to the Wilson Hall edifice, he had another vision. The inward-sloping towers on either side reminded him of the flying buttresses and the two towers of Notre Dame Cathedral. Perhaps this National Laboratory for Particle Physics is indeed a place of worship where man is reaching not for God, but for what the media call the “God Particle.” Somehow this thought did not comfort him, but instead gave him a chill, as he walked from the parking lot and approached the front of the building. Entering, he noticed that the entire lobby was hushed and somber, the news of Peter’s death being on everyone’s mind.
The unusually quiet security guard immediately recognized him and handing him his security badge, said, “Professor Saxon, Peter’s team is expecting you. I’ll key you in.”
Oliver rode the elevator to the fifth floor and walked down to the office complex where David Benjamin was holding the door open for him. Each office of the complex had its own door with a keypad for entry, and even the outer meeting room into which each of the four offices opened was locked to the outer hallway. Usually these inner office doors were propped open, but today they were all closed and locked. Obviously the team was taking all precautions to maintain the security of these offices after this tragic death.
Oliver consoled and was consoled by Elizabeth Ward, Khalil Ahmed, and David Benjamin. Elizabeth, at age forty, was the oldest of the three. She had grown up in Houston, and for as long as she could remember, loved to sing. She had always been in a church or school choir and loved the challenge of sight-reading a new piece of music. She would always try to discover the beauty of the harmony of the composition as well as the hidden patterns of the underlying themes. She later realized that these same feelings of discovery had drawn her to the study of mathematics. By the time she was in college she had discovered the oratorio works of J. S. Bach. She immediately recognized his genus for creating works that pulled at her heart-strings as well as his genus for incorporating mathematical patterns and symbols into the score. She identified with Bach because music and mathematics had become her life.
After finishing her doctorate in group theory and the study of mathematical symmetries at Stanford University, she had come to Chicago as a postdoctoral fellow to work with Peter. The two wrote the grants that eventually led to their work on the fundamental theories of matter in the universe. She was unmarried, and her life was dedicated to her work in mathematics and to singing with a newly formed Bach Choir.
When Peter took on two graduate students, David, and then Khalil, she became their mentor and to some extent their mother. She had carefully reviewed each of their doctoral theses and provided needed guidance as the two graduate students prepared for their final oral exams. They were both indebted to her for helping them finally obtain their doctorates
in astrophysics and particle physics respectively. They now worked together as an effective research team, combining the findings of their three scientific fields. They worked well with one another even though they each came from a different background.
David grew up in Chicago in a Jewish family. He regularly attended the synagogue, and had recently invited both Elizabeth, a Christian, and Khalil, a Muslim, to attend the family Seder at Passover. The three shared their religious faiths and practices as often as they did their scientific ideas.
One evening Elizabeth invited David and Khalil to a professional performance of Bach’s Saint Matthew Passion by her Bach Choir and Orchestra. The performance, presented as a worship service rather than a concert, was so moving it brought tears to the eyes of the performers as well as the patrons.
Khalil, born to immigrant parents who had escaped the Lebanese Civil War in 1975, had become an active member of a local mosque near the University of Chicago campus. For the past three years, Elizabeth and David, strictly following Islamic jurisprudence, had prepared halal food for Khalil’s mosque during the month of Ramadan. Here, the faithful, who fasted during the day, would be able to share a meal at the mosque, after sundown.
As Oliver had learned these things about Peter’s team over the last few years, it was not lost on him that they had become a close-knit family, spiritually as well as intellectually. Addressing all three of them, he asked, “Can you give me some background on the work you have been doing? I’m sorry to say that in all the time I’ve spent here with Peter, he seldom talked in detail about your work, and I seldom asked.”
They then took turns relating the development of their work, each from his or her own perspective. Oliver learned that here at Fermilab, in the last two decades, three independent scientific disciplines: particle physics, astrophysics, and mathematics, had begun to work together on what some had called the ‘Theory of Everything’.
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