by Mark Alpert
Lucille frowned. “What do you mean, ‘fit the profile’?”
Crawford blinked twice in quick succession, his cocksure demeanor faltering a bit. “Uh, the profile of our targets, David Swift and his co-conspirators. The individuals we observed were clearly not—”
“Look, I don’t care if it’s a student or a cleaning woman or a ninety-nine-year-old biddy in a wheelchair. Anyone comes near Gupta’s office, I want you to check ’em out. Get their images off the video and run ’em through the face-recognition system, you hear?”
He nodded rapidly. “Yes, ma’am, we’ll do that right away. I’m sorry if—”
Before he could finish, one of the technicians let out a yelp and tore off his headphones. Crawford, who was very eager by this point to end his conversation with Lucille, moved toward the man. “What’s wrong?” he asked. “Feedback?”
The technician shook his head. “Some kind of alarm just went off. On the fourth floor, I think.”
Lucille’s scalp began to tingle. “That’s Gupta’s floor, right?” At the same moment she turned to screen number one and saw the tiny old man rise from his chair and step away from the desk. “Look, he’s on the move! He’s heading out of the office!”
Crawford leaned over the technician’s shoulder and pointed at an array of buttons below the video screens. “Switch to the camera in the reception room. Let’s see where he’s going.”
The technician pushed a button. Screen number one now showed a homely teenage boy sitting at a reception desk and a strange mechanical contraption that looked like a miniature tank. No Gupta, though. They waited several seconds but saw no sign of him.
“Where did he go?” Lucille asked. “Is there another way out of his office?”
Crawford started blinking wildly. “Uh, I have to check the floor plan. Let me—”
“Shit, there’s no time for that! Get some agents up there right now!”
DAVID GRABBED PROFESSOR GUPTA AND covered his mouth while Monique locked the door behind him. The old man was surprisingly light, hardly more than a hundred pounds, so it was relatively easy to carry him to the far corner of the supply room. As gently as he could, David rested Gupta against the wall and crouched beside him. The professor was nearly twice David’s age and yet his delicate frame and small hands and unlined face gave him a remarkably childlike appearance. For a moment David imagined that he was holding Jonah, putting an arm around his son’s shoulders to keep him warm and lightly touching his lips to quiet his crying.
“Dr. Gupta?” he whispered. “Do you remember me? I’m David Swift. I came here once before to interview you about your work with Dr. Einstein, remember?”
His eyes, jittery white marbles with dark brown centers, regarded David uncertainly for a second, then widened in recognition. His lips moved under David’s hand. “What are you—”
“Please!” David hissed. “Don’t speak above a whisper.”
“It’s for your own safety,” Monique added, bending over David’s shoulder. “Your offices are under surveillance. There may be listening devices in this room.”
Gupta’s eyes darted back and forth between David and Monique. He was obviously terrified, but he seemed to be trying to make sense of the situation. After a few seconds he nodded, acquiescing, and David removed his hand from the old man’s mouth. Gupta nervously licked his lips. “Listening devices?” he whispered. “Who’s listening?”
“The FBI, for certain,” David replied. “And maybe others as well. Some very dangerous people are looking for you, Professor. We have to get you out of here.”
He shook his head, bewildered. His unruly gray hair fell across his forehead. “Is this some kind of joke? David, I haven’t seen you in years, and now you come in here with—” He stopped himself and pointed at Monique’s uniform. “Who are you? You work for Carnegie Mellon Building Services?”
“No, I’m Monique Reynolds,” she whispered. “Of the Institute for Advanced Study.”
He looked at her carefully, as if trying to place her. “Monique Reynolds? The string theorist?”
She nodded. “That’s right. I’m sorry if we’ve—”
“Yes, yes, I know you.” He gave her a weak smile. “My foundation funds some particle-physics experiments at Fermilab, so I’m familiar with your work. But why are you dressed like that?”
David was getting impatient. It was just a matter of time before the FBI agents came to the supply room to find out what had tripped the alarm. “We have to get going. Professor, I’m going to help you into the Dumpster and then—”
“The Dumpster?”
“Please, just come with us. There’s no time to explain.”
David gripped Gupta’s arm above the elbow and started to help him to his feet. But the old man refused to budge. With surprising strength he jerked his arm out of David’s grasp. “I’m afraid you’ll have to take the time. I’m not going anywhere until you tell me what’s going on.”
“Look, the agents are gonna be here any—”
“Then I recommend that you be quick about it.”
Shit, David thought. That was the problem with these brilliant scientists, they were too damn rational. He gazed at the ceiling for a moment, trying to tamp his fears and clear his head. Then he looked Gupta in the eye. “Einheitliche Feldtheorie,” he whispered. “That’s what they want.”
The German words had a delayed effect on Gupta. At first he simply lifted his eyebrows in mild surprise and puzzlement, but after a few seconds his face went slack. He fell back against the wall, staring blankly at the shelves of janitorial supplies.
David leaned over him so he could continue whispering in the old man’s ear. “Someone’s trying to piece the theory together. Maybe they’re terrorists, maybe they’re spies, I don’t know. First they went after MacDonald, then Bouchet and Kleinman.” He paused, dreading what he had to say next. Gupta had worked with the other physicists for many years. He and Kleinman had been particularly close. “I’m sorry, Professor. All three of them are dead. You’re the only one left.”
Gupta looked up at him. The brown skin below his right eye twitched. “Kleinman? He’s dead?”
David nodded. “I saw him in the hospital last night. He’d been tortured.”
“No, no, no…” Gupta clutched his stomach and groaned. His eyes closed and his mouth opened. It looked like he was going to vomit.
Monique knelt on the floor and put her arm around the professor. “Shhh-shhh-shhh,” she whispered, patting his back. “It’s all right, it’s all right.”
David waited several seconds while Monique comforted the old man. But he couldn’t wait too long. He imagined the FBI agents racing up the stairways of Newell-Simon Hall. “The government figured out what was going on,” he said. “And now they want the theory, too. That’s why the FBI put you under surveillance and why they’ve been chasing me for the past sixteen hours.”
Gupta opened his eyes, wincing. His face was shiny with sweat. “How do you know all this?”
“Before Kleinman died, he gave me a code, a sequence of numbers. It turned out to be the geographic coordinates of your office. I think Kleinman wanted me to safeguard the theory somehow. Keep it away from both the government and the terrorists.”
The professor stared at the floor and slowly shook his head. “His worst nightmare,” he muttered. “This was Herr Doktor’s worst nightmare.”
David felt a jolt of adrenaline. Blood jumped in his neck. “What was he afraid of? Was it a weapon?”
He kept shaking his head. “He never told me. He told the others, but not me.”
“What? What do you mean?”
Gupta took a deep breath. With visible effort, he sat up and removed a handkerchief from his pocket. “Einstein was a man of conscience, David. He thought very carefully before selecting the people who would carry this burden.” He raised the handkerchief and wiped the sweat from his brow. “In 1954, I was a married man, and my wife was pregnant with our first child. The last thing Herr Dokto
r wanted to do was put me in danger. So he parceled out the equations and gave them to the others instead—Kleinman, Bouchet, and MacDonald. None of them were married, you see.”
Monique, who was still kneeling beside Gupta, shot David a worried look. Equally alarmed, David leaned a bit closer to the old man. “Wait a second,” he whispered. “You’re saying you don’t know the unified theory? Not even part of it?”
He shook his head again. “I know that Einstein succeeded in formulating the theory and that he’d resolved to keep it secret. But I don’t know any of the equations or the underlying principles. My colleagues had sworn to Herr Doktor that they wouldn’t tell a soul, and they were very diligent about keeping their oath.”
David’s dismay was so strong it made him dizzy. He had to lean against the wall to keep his balance. “Hold on, hold on,” he sputtered. “This doesn’t make any sense. Kleinman’s code pointed to you. Why did he send me here if you don’t know the theory?”
“Perhaps you misinterpreted the code.” Gupta had regained some of his composure and now he regarded David as if he were a student. “You said it was a numerical sequence?”
“Yes, yes, sixteen digits. The first twelve are the latitude and longitude of Newell-Simon Hall. The last four are the numbers in your phone—”
David stopped in midsentence. He’d heard something. A quick metallic rattle, quiet but unmistakable, coming from the door to the supply room. Someone was trying the knob.
AGENT CRAWFORD HOVERED OVER THE video console, his anxious face less than ten inches from the screen. Through his radio headset he murmured instructions to the two-man team that was heading for Amil Gupta’s office. Lucille stood behind him, scrutinizing all the activity in the command post. They’d secured the perimeter of Newell-Simon Hall, so there was no chance that Gupta could escape from the building. Still, Lucille couldn’t relax until they’d located the guy.
On the video monitor she saw Agents Walsh and Miller march into Gupta’s reception room. They were dressed like students, in shorts and T-shirts and sneakers, and each carried a large blue backpack. Not the cleverest disguise in the world, but it would have to do. The homely teenage boy was still sitting at the reception desk, but the strange miniature tank was gone now. One of the agents—Walsh, the taller one—approached the teenager.
“You have to get Professor Gupta!” he shouted. “There’s a fire in the computer lab!”
The boy didn’t even look up. He just stared at the large flat-panel screen that took up most of the space on his desk. Because the surveillance camera in the reception room was embedded in the wall behind him, Lucille got a glimpse of what was on his screen: an animated soldier in a khaki uniform running past a yellow blockhouse. Some kind of damn computer game.
Agent Walsh leaned across the desk and got in the boy’s face. “Hey, are you deaf? This is an emergency! Where’s Professor Gupta?”
The teenager simply tilted his head and continued playing his game. Meanwhile, Agent Miller went to the door to Gupta’s office. “It’s locked,” he said. “See if there’s a buzzer on the desk that opens the door.”
Walsh maneuvered around the desk and shoved the boy’s chair aside. As he bent over to examine the desktop, his hand hit the keyboard and the computer screen went blank. In that same instant the teenager leaped out of his chair and began to scream. It was a terrible, desperate, maniacal shriek, long and unwavering. The boy flapped his hands as he screamed, waving them wildly as if they were burning.
“Jesus!” Walsh cried, spinning around to face him. “Shut the fuck up!”
The teenager went rigid and screamed even louder. Oh shit, Lucille thought as she stared at the monitor. She’d seen this kind of behavior before. One of her sister’s grandchildren down in Houston had the same problem. The boy was autistic.
She stepped forward and grabbed the radio headset from Agent Crawford. “Forget about the boy!” she yelled into the microphone. “Just get the door open!”
Walsh and Miller obediently opened their backpacks and removed the breaching equipment. Walsh positioned the forked end of the Halligan bar between the door and the jamb, and Miller swung the sledgehammer to pound the tool inside. After just three swings, they pried the door open and rushed into Gupta’s office. Lucille saw the agents appear on another video monitor, striding past the professor’s desk as they searched the room.
“He’s not here,” Walsh reported over the radio. “But there’s another door in the back, sort of hidden behind the bookshelves. Should we proceed in that direction?”
“Hell, yes!” Lucille bellowed.
Beside her, Agent Crawford flipped through the floor maps of Newell-Simon Hall. “That door isn’t in the plans,” he said. “It must be a recent renovation.”
Lucille looked at him with disgust. He was useless. “I want six more agents to get their asses to the fourth floor, you hear? Every room has to be searched, every goddamn room!”
While Crawford fumbled for his radio, one of the technicians came up to Lucille with a printout in his hand. “Uh, Agent Parker?” he said. “Can I interrupt for a second?”
“Christ! What now?”
“I’ve got, uh, the results of the database search you asked for? Running the surveillance images through the face-recognition system?”
“Well, spit it out already! Did you find anything?”
“Uh, yeah, I think I found something you might want to see.”
“HEY, ANYONE IN THERE?”
All three of them froze when they heard the booming voice on the other side of the door. David, Monique, and Professor Gupta held their breath at the same time, and the only sound in the supply room came from the column of water still running in the sink.
Then there was an urgent pounding on the door, so violent it made the walls shiver. “This is the fire department! If anyone’s in there, open up!”
Gupta clutched David’s arm, his delicate fingers digging into the biceps. Again David thought of his son, remembering how Jonah clung to him when the boy was frightened. Gupta pointed at the door and gave him a questioning look. David shook his head. It definitely wasn’t the fire department.
Now a clanking noise came from the corridor. Something heavy scraped against the door frame. A second later a thunderous slam shook the room. In the narrow gap between the door and the jamb, David saw the forked end of a metal bar poking through.
Monique pulled her revolver from the waistband of her shorts and this time David didn’t stop her. He knew that they didn’t have a chance in hell, that the FBI agents would cut them to pieces if they started shooting, but at that moment he wasn’t thinking too clearly. In fact, he felt like he was drunk, drunk on fear and rage. It was stupid and suicidal, but he was too pissed off to care. Fuck it all, he thought. I’m not going down without a fight.
Luckily, Professor Gupta took control. He let go of David and grasped Monique’s arm, forcing her to lower the gun. “You don’t need that,” he whispered. “I have a better idea.”
Gupta reached into the inside pocket of his jacket and pulled out a handheld gadget that looked a bit like a BlackBerry but was obviously custom-designed. With his quick little thumbs he began stabbing the gadget’s keyboard. On the miniature screen was a three-dimensional architectural layout, a map of Newell-Simon Hall with flashing icons scattered among the floors. David had seen this map before, on his previous visit to Gupta’s office. The old man used it for tracking his robots.
Another tremendous slam pummeled the door. The noise made David jump, but Gupta stayed bent over his tiny screen, his thumbs working furiously. Jesus, David thought, what the hell is he doing? Then came the third slam, the loudest of all, and it was accompanied by a deep metallic groan, the sound of the steel door frame buckling under the pressure of the Halligan bar. The forked end now protruded several inches into the room, glinting silver gray under the fluorescent lights. One more tap and the door would burst open.
Then David heard a familiar whirring in the corridor o
utside the room. It was the whine of an electric motor, coming steadily closer. And then the synthesized voice of the AR-21 Autonomous Receptionist: “WARNING! Hazardous levels of radiation have been detected. Evacuate the area immediately…WARNING! Hazardous levels of radiation have been detected. Evacuate the area immediately…”
As if to confirm the robot’s warning, a buildingwide alarm sounded from the public-address speakers and emergency strobe lights on the ceiling began to flash. Gupta had obviously rewired the building’s electrical systems so he could control them with his handheld device. Beneath the noise of the alarm, David heard shouting in the corridor, the voices of the FBI agents yelling orders at one another. Then they dropped their breaching tools—David heard them clatter to the floor—and raced for the exit. Soon he could no longer hear their footsteps.
Grinning, Monique put her gun away and squeezed Professor Gupta’s shoulder. The old man smiled sheepishly and pointed at his handheld controller. “The warning was already in the program,” he explained. “We originally developed this class of robots for the Defense Department. Reconnaissance in battlefield environments. The military version is called the Dragon Runner.”
David helped Gupta to his feet. “We better get going. The agents will be back in a few minutes with their Geiger counters.” He led the professor to the Dumpster and prepared to heave him inside. “It’s not the most comfortable ride, but it got me into the building. You just have to lie still, okay?”
“Are you sure this is a good idea?” Gupta asked. “The FBI is looking for me now and the building is probably surrounded. Don’t you think they’ll search the Dumpster?”
Monique, who had already unlocked the door, stopped in her tracks. “Shit, he’s right. We can’t get out that way.”
David shook his head. “We don’t have a choice. We’ll take the Dumpster as far as we can, until we get past the surveillance cameras, and then we’ll just have to take our chances with the—”
“Those surveillance cameras?” Gupta interjected. “They transmit their signals wirelessly, correct?”