by Fritz Galt
That morning at the Geneva airport, she had blithely followed O’Smythe’s goons as they led her away. Alec had felt bewildered at the time, confused that she found O’Smythe more important than President Damon.
As soon as the three of them were set free, Alec had called Everett’s mobile phone.
“You’re free?” his boss had asked.
It was neither the warm reception Alec would have liked, nor the cold reception that he had expected. It was the reaction of someone who already knew that he and Natalie were being held captive, who expected the worst and couldn’t exactly handle the good news.
“How did you know I was in captivity?” Alec asked.
Everett had launched into a long explanation. Mick had learned from O’Smythe that Proteus held Alec and Natalie as hostages. So Mick had spread the word to Eli Shaw in Langley. “Mick told Eli that he was bargaining for you and Natalie’s release.”
“Well, it worked. We’re free. Where do you want me?” Alec had asked Everett.
“Come and meet me at CERN, say the ALEPH detector at ten o’clock. You can help me with some last-minute spot checks.”
Then there was the arrest at the French border and straightening out the whole SATO mess. Next time around, he would not follow covert orders from within his own agency. And especially not from someone in the Research Division of the Directorate of Intelligence.
Everett was his boss, and that’s where he took his orders.
Nevertheless, Alec was still perplexed by Anaïs’ behavior, and his heart felt an overwhelming sense of betrayal.
It helped to keep his mind on technical matters.
He described to Stanton Frazier what he had been doing at CERN. The young scientist from Florida knew next to nothing about quenching the new superconducting magnets, but he was eager to converse with anyone from outside the tunnel.
Shortly after one-thirty, they were passing into Meyrin, and Alec began to focus on where to go. His main interest was to return to Brahim’s cubicle and search for clues.
He pulled off the main Meyrin road up to CERN’s back gate, and a guard approached. He and Stanton flashed their ID cards. But the man took the cards in hand, scrutinized them carefully and checked them against a list of names on his clipboard.
He made a note, handed the cards back, raised the red and white striped gate and let them through.
It was reassuring to know that CERN was on heightened alert, and a relief to learn that he was officially cleared to enter. He clipped on his ID and pulled forward.
Due to the tight security, most of the parking lot was empty. He could park right in front of his own building.
Alec stepped out of the car. On a normal day, he would see people walking about the place with a business-like sense of purpose.
Today there was only empty, charged space.
He led Stanton into his building, the Large Hadron Collider Annex, and turned on lights as he went.
Stanton paused to study a scale model of CERN’s new cryogenic plant. It was intended to super-cool the magnets that would soon replace those in the tunnel.
Leaving the young scientist behind, Alec continued over a walkway to the adjoining office building where Brahim worked.
Every other fluorescent light was off, as were all desk lamps. In the shadows, Brahim’s cubicle looked as disorderly as ever, but an image mounted at the end of the corridor attracted his attention.
In the thick black frame was a photograph of a familiar face with light skin, a long sandy beard and twinkling blue eyes. Elegant script conveyed the words: “In Memory of Anders Lie.”
Anders? What happened to him?
Alec had worked with Anders on several problems related to super-cooling the new German-built prototype dipoles.
He couldn’t imagine Anders gone.
The calm Norwegian would sit sprawled at his desk like a squashed spider. He could extend a hand to the telephone at one end of his cubicle while resting his feet on his laser printer at the other. In between, he would typically tug on his beard, type a few lines of code and train his eyes on his workstation where he maintained the various detectors’ online data-taking status.
Anders never left the office. Stress couldn’t have killed him, because he was always, often quite literally, on top of his work.
Alec tried to recall the name of the inspector that Everett had mentioned that morning. Ah yes, Herr Bürgi.
He reached for a phone and dialed the Embassy’s Control Room for the presidential visit.
A woman answered.
“Hi. This is Alec Pierce. I need to get in touch with Inspektor Bürgi. Do you have his number?”
“Yes, I do.”
He grabbed a pen and wrote it down. “Thanks.”
He immediately dialed the Geneva number. It took a little French to wrangle his way through the police station to the inspector. But Inspektor Bürgi spoke excellent English, and it didn’t take long to identify himself and ask about Anders Lie’s death.
“Yes, it’s true,” the grave, German-accented voice replied. “He is quite dead. We found his body at a bistro in central Geneva yesterday morning. Did you know him?”
“I knew him well.”
“Then I won’t say how he died.”
“Was it murder?”
Inspektor Bürgi didn’t respond.
“Who did it?” Alec asked.
“Someone with a sick view of anatomy.”
Alec sat down. “Listen, Anders worked in Brahim Abbad’s office. We all knew each other. There may be a connection, but I don’t know what it is.”
He could still hear Anders’ calming advice when Brahim was in a confused frenzy.
Then he remembered the long first night that he, Natalie, and Anaïs had spent on the fishing trawler. When the sun had risen the next day, Brahim had vanished from the ship.
“Herr Inspektor, Brahim entered Switzerland sometime in the past two days.”
“We would have stopped him at the border.”
Alec remembered the mirrored cosmetic case in Anaïs’ hands. The cream foundation could create a light skin tone, perhaps a Scandinavian cast.
“Would you have stopped Anders Lie at the border?”
“What?”
Bürgi’s voice came back several seconds later.
“You’re suggesting that Brahim might be assuming Mr. Lie’s identity? You might be right.”
“Could Brahim get into CERN that way?” Alec asked.
“Most assuredly he is already in CERN. In the event that he hasn’t yet entered, I’ll call CERN security and check that Mr. Lie’s name is removed from the guards’ lists. If he tries to enter, he’ll be detained.”
Alec looked at the framed memorial on the wall. “I have a photo of Anders. In case Brahim has already entered CERN, I’ll ask our security officer to pass around the picture of Anders and start hunting for him.”
Alec hung up the phone and stood up to grab the photo off the wall. But as he looked at the picture, it became more than an image. He was staring in the eyes of a former colleague, a likeable guy, now framed in black.
He knew that America needed to join CERN. But he had no idea what experiments American scientists were conducting or why they needed membership so badly.
Whatever it was, it couldn’t be worth the high price of all those lives that had been cut short over the past few weeks.
He set the picture back on the wall with a sinking feeling in his heart.
The photo was the last he would ever see of Anders Lie. Even if Brahim could extend his arms and legs to assume Anders’ lanky frame, he wouldn’t risk impersonating a dead man among all of Anders’ former colleagues. He would change to some other disguise once he entered CERN.
If he had learned one thing from his city-hopping trek across Morocco, Alec had learned that the killer, the gigolo, the formerly amenable friend, perpetually stayed one step ahead of him.
Brahim was already at CERN, and he was no longer posing as Anders Lie.
Chapter 56
Everett Hoyle adjusted his black bow tie and tuxedo collar that might have blown askew in the wind as he drove Natalie Pierce to CERN that night.
Ahead of them, the Main Building was all lit up, all seven floors glowing against the pink twilight to the west. He noted with approval that armed Swiss soldiers stood on each floor in the glass stairwells.
He would drop Natalie off at the building’s entrance and find a parking space.
Ahead of him, a line of chauffeur-driven limousines let off glamorous guests. With a squeal of his narrow rubber whitewalls, he finally pulled up to the door.
Natalie squeezed his shoulder in thanks. Her formerly weary, slumped form had been transformed by a change of wardrobe and a little sleep. Flowing hair and a radiant smile made an exquisite backdrop to her eyes that blazed tantalizingly like two topaz gems.
Then, in a blink, she gathered her silver purse and extended her elegant doe-like legs from the car. The setting sun glanced across the silky curves of her upper thighs.
“Everett!”
He cracked several vertebrae jerking toward the sound of the familiar voice. It was Estrella, decked out in jewels and a rivetingly short evening dress. She had just hopped out of a cab.
He would never be able to explain taking Natalie and not her to the event, not even to himself.
He rose in his seat and searched for words.
“Natalie!” Estrella cried, opening her arms and scooting in her spike heels toward her. “I’ve been worried sick about you, day in and day out. When did they release you?”
Natalie tilted her head and shot a quizzical look at Everett.
“Estrella knows all about you,” he told her. “My wife has been helping us out.”
He started to step out onto the pavement, but a chorus of horns forced him back into his car.
“Estrella will explain everything.”
He lowered his head, jammed the transmission into gear and peeled out of sight.
Natalie opened the glass front door of CERN’s Main Building and escorted Estrella inside.
Several Secret Service agents stopped them at once. Two were women, who frisked them and sent them through a metal detector.
Beyond that, a press pool watched the front doors expectantly, even hungrily.
“Smile pretty,” she told Estrella, and they launched into a battery of strobe flashes. Plenty of film must have captured their bemused expressions.
Then she heard a man shout, “Natalie?”
She recognized the Slavic accent.
In the bank of television lights, she made out the slim young man who had hailed her. “Ivan, you survived,” she cried.
The last she had seen of Ivan Lekic was from images on television of Yugoslav border guards parading his bludgeoned and bloody body around the streets of Szeged.
“I saw you dead on TV.”
He smiled ironically. “That wasn’t me. But it made for good drama.”
She threw her arms around him. A flood of memories returned from their farewell party in Belgrade.
“How’s Petra?”
“Petra’s fine.”
“How’s your cat?”
“The cat’s fine. Everyone’s surviving, except our little radio and television station. The regime shut it down. What can I say?”
“Why are you here?”
“I work for the bad guys. I’m a reporter for RTV Beograd.”
She shook her head and tisked.
“Well, they’re not as bad as they used to be,” he explained.
She was still somewhat confused. “But why are you here now?”
“Now that the embargo is lifted, we can renew our status with CERN today, along with Morocco.”
“Morocco will become a member?”
“An observer state, like us.”
A cold chill began to seep into her blood. “Who’ll sign for the Moroccans?”
“Why, their King. Who else?”
The mantra came back to her. Track thinking. Track the King. “‘He’ll track the King to CERN,’” she said. “Oh, my God.”
In the distance, she heard the throb of an approaching helicopter.
Alec and Stanton were sitting in the back row of CERN’s auditorium, scanning faces for Brahim and waiting for the president to arrive and sign the charter and give his speech, when security personnel came rushing in through the exits.
Reporters, who were firmly ensconced in their comfortable seats, were asked to leave the auditorium and gather in the lobby.
Grumbling, they picked up their notepads and cameras and left.
On his way out the door, Alec spotted Paul Schroeder ushering people out
“What’s going on?” Alec asked.
Paul pulled him aside. “We changed the venue to a different room. The president wants the signing ceremony in front of an accelerator. For the photographers.”
“Which accelerator? We’ve got ten of them.”
Paul pointed through a side door.
“The president’s going to sign the charter in the PS?”
“If that’s what you call it.”
Alec motioned for Stanton to follow him into the Antiproton Accumulator Complex.
They slipped inside, the first people to enter the large hall. The ceiling lights were on full blast. On the ground hummed a pair of accelerator rings, collecting rare anti-matter particles before shooting them back into the Proton Synchrotron.
“She’s running,” Stanton said.
“No kidding,” Alec said. “I don’t like this. Where’s the beam coming from?”
Stanton pointed to the far end of the room.
“That’s where the Proton Synchrotron beam hits its target,” Stanton said, “and blam, we get all sorts of garbage like pions, muons and electrons. Then every so often we bag some antiprotons.”
The young scientist slapped his hand on top of the long chain of waist-high electromagnets.
“Here’s where we groom the anti-matter protons using stochastic cooling. Won us a Nobel Prize when we found the W and Z particles.”
“That’s enough history for now,” Alec said. “Where does the beam go?”
“Well, once we stack up enough antiprotons in the inner ring, we send them back to the Proton Synchrotron and spin them up for initial acceleration before squirting them into the Super Proton Synchrotron in that direction.” He pointed at a place some distance away. “There the poor things smash into the real protons at over three hundred GeV at the UA1 and UA2 experiments.”
The beam was only one of their problems. “Let’s check the doors,” Alec said.
They vaulted over the chain of red and green painted electromagnets, skipped over floor pipes and dashed in opposite directions around the circular walls in search of doors.
Sweating, Alec converged with Stanton at the farthest point.
“Any exits?” he asked.
“None.” Stanton scratched his head. “What exactly are we looking for?”
“Ways to sneak in and kill the president.”
“Doesn’t the Secret Service check these things out long in advance?”
“You would think so.”
“So where are all the agents?”
“There was a sudden change of plan. The White House must have picked a room at random for a photo op, and this happens to be it.” He clasped Stanton on the shoulder. “And we’re gonna save his life.”
“Jesus,” Stanton said, and swallowed hard.
The doors to the complex were now open and reporters began collecting near the center of the vast hall. Workmen hurriedly carried in a long table. Beside that, they busily assembled a podium with a lectern.
Something overhead caught Alec’s eye.
“What are those?”
Two control booths were suspended from the ceiling. A robotic arm extended from each booth, and on the end of each arm was a dark machine that pointed out over the room.
“Uh,” Stanton said. “That’s a la
ser beam project we’ve been developing here at CERN.”
“Why a laser beam?”
“We’re creating laser-activated switches in our newest particle detectors,” Stanton explained.
“You’re shooting laser beams around the anti-matter room?”
“Yes, this accumulator is one of our experiments. We take a badly defined particle beam and control it by monitoring it at one point and sending correction signals across the ring to another point to alter the path of the particles later on. We position the laser at different monitoring stations to test the synchronization.”
“That looks like a pretty powerful laser,” Alec said.
“Your standard gas laser,” Stanton said. “Normally, the arms reach down to the accelerator tubes. Right now the guns are pulled out of the way.”
“Guns?”
“It’s just an expression. I guess you could call the laser beams bullets.”
“How strong is the laser beam?”
“It depends on the frequency you use.”
“What’s its capacity?”
“I don’t have the slightest idea. Probably enough to cut into body tissue, weld a few body parts together, bore a hole in your skull, vaporize a few limbs and cauterize whatever blood vessels remain…”
“Thanks for the graphic description,” Alec said.
“No problem.”
Chapter 57
Everett was looking for a place to park when he saw the distinctive profile of a military helicopter approaching out of the night sky.
The presidential seal appeared under the cockpit window. It was Air Force One.
In a split second decision, Everett decided to leave the women behind at the main venue and escort the presidential motorcade.
He wheeled out of the parking lot and raced back in the direction from which he had come. He sped past a line of twenty national flags fluttering in many directions in the chopper’s downdraft.
He hung a left and spun down the main drag past the fire brigade building. Just after the medical center, he turned onto the field where the bulky-looking chopper had just landed.
Dignitaries were hastily forming a reception line under the arc lights at the landing pad. Everett could see Alfred Mann positioning Ambassador Pistol to be among the first to greet the president.