by Ben Bova
McCARRAN INTERNATIONAL
AIRPORT
They had more than an hour to kill before their flight continued on its way to San Francisco, so Cochrane and Sandoval left their Southwest Airlines plane to stretch their legs in the terminal.
After leaving the police headquarters building in Tucson, they had gone straight to Cochrane’s apartment. They had to step over the yellow crime scene tapes across his front door. There was still blood smeared on the wall and staining the living room carpet. Cochrane quickly packed his roll-on suitcase and they left for the airport. He picked up his accumulated mail as they were leaving the apartment building and stuffed the envelopes into his suitcase.
The first available flight had a layover in Las Vegas. Sandoval bought two first-class tickets and they left Tucson just before sunset.
Cochrane spent the first leg of the flight opening his mail. Junk, most of it. A letter from his sister-in-law Irene, asking him where he’d gotten to; she’d phoned him half a dozen times and gotten nothing but his answering machine.
And a notice from the university, suspending him without pay until he could attend a formal meeting to decide the future of his employment at Steward Observatory.
“Looks like I’m out of a job,” he muttered, handing the stiff sheet of stationery to Sandoval, sitting beside him.
She scanned it, handed it back to him. “Doesn’t matter,” she said, leaning close to him. “You wouldn’t want to stay there anyway: too easy for Gould to find you.”
He looked at her. She was completely serious. “You really think Gould’s after me?”
With a solemn nod, Sandoval replied, “Absolutely.”
Cochrane was feeling depressed when they walked off the plane. A stroll through the terminal only worsened his dark outlook. Slot machines lined the terminal’s corridors. People were eagerly jamming coins into them.
“Christ Almighty,” he complained. “If gamblers could win, the casinos would’ve gone out of business in the fifth dynasty of ancient Egypt.”
Sandoval smiled minimally. “Hope springs eternal, Paul.”
“A fool and his money,” he growled.
“Come on.” She tugged at his arm. “Let’s get back to the plane.”
Once aloft and heading for San Francisco, Sandoval tried to cheer him up. “It’ll be all right, Paul. I can sell the house; it ought to bring in a million-two, maybe more. And I’ve got nearly another mil in stocks and CDs.”
“You’d sell your house?”
“I’ve already put it on the market.”
“But where can we go? If Gould’s really after my butt, where in the world can we hide?”
She made a bigger smile for him. “Australia, maybe. Tahiti. Singapore. There are places.”
“How’ll I make a living?”
“You won’t have to. You’ve got a woman of property mad about you.”
She leaned closer to him and he kissed her. But he was thinking, What kind of a life can we have together? Am I putting her in danger?
Gould Trust to Acquire
Calvin Research Center
NEW YORK, NY—The Gould Trust announced that it plans to acquire Calvin Research Center, of Palo Alto, California. The Calvin laboratories, named after the late Nobel Prize-winning chemist Melvin Calvin, are dedicated to studies of photosynthesis and its possible applications in agribusiness and the energy industry.
A Gould spokeperson said that Gould Trust will fully fund Calvin’s existing research programs and plans to expand into new areas of investigation. The financial terms of the acquisition were not released to the public.
— WALL STREET JOURNAL
SAN FRANCISCO:
RUSSIAN HILL
You’ve been moping for two days now,” Sandoval said.
“I know,” Cochrane replied. “Guess I haven’t been much fun to be with.”
It was morning, bright and breezy outside as the two of them sat at the breakfast table in the kitchen of Sandoval’s house. She had made scrambled eggs for them; Cochrane had brewed the coffee from freshly ground beans. The kitchen walls were painted a cheerful yellow, Sandoval was smiling brightly at him, yet Cochrane felt down, dull, depressed.
“It’s chilly in here, isn’t it?” She got up and went to the thermostat on the wall. Cochrane heard the rumble of the heater down in the basement.
Returning to the chair beside him, Sandoval said, “It can get uncomfortable this time of year. Mark Twain said the coldest winter he ever spent was a summer in San Francisco.”
Cochrane tried to make a smile for her. He almost succeeded.
“What is it, Paul?” she asked, her face going serious. “You worried about Gould?”
He looked down at the remains of his eggs on his plate. “I’m not charmed with the idea of looking over my shoulder for the rest of my life, no.”
“We’ll get away from him. The real estate agent has several leads for the house. If you want, we can fly out of here and let her sell the house while we’re in Tahiti or Tasmania or wherever we decide to go.”
“It’s more than that.” As he spoke the words, he realized it was true. “More than that,” he repeated.
She grasped his hand in hers. “What, Paul? What’s eating at you?”
“Gould,” he answered. “He’s won. The sonofabitch has won.”
Sandoval blinked at him. “Of course he’s won. What did you expect?”
“He’s got Mike’s data and he’s going to sit on it until hell freezes over.”
“No,” she said, smiling slightly. “Only until he’s made as much profit from oil prices as he can. Then he’ll step in and be the big savior with your brother’s hydrogen process.”
Nodding, Cochrane said, “He’ll get credit for moving the world off petroleum and on to hydrogen fuel.”
“Maybe the Pope will make him a saint.”
Cochrane laughed bitterly. “Yeah. Maybe he will.”
“There’s nothing we can do about that, Paul. We’ve got to think of our own safety, our own survival. You can’t solve the problems of the world.”
“I could…if…”
“If?”
He sucked in a deep breath, then exhaled wearily. “If I had a copy of Mike’s work, I could change things.”
“Change how? What good would it do? Sell it to the highest bidder? They’re all in this together, Paul. Tricontinental, Garrison, OPEC: whoever you sold the data to would suppress it, just like Gould.”
“I wouldn’t sell it,” Cochrane said, looking away from her. “I’d publish it.”
“Like you wanted Tulius to do.”
“That’s right. Let the whole fucking world know about it. Tell them all how to make hydrogen fuel from Mike’s process.”
“But what good would that do? You wouldn’t make a cent out of it!”
He turned back toward her, looked steadily into her almond-shaped eyes.
“I’m a scientist, Elena. That means I try to learn about the ways the universe works, and when I’ve learned something I tell the world about it. Can you understand that? It’s not about money, god knows. If I’d wanted to make money I’d’ve become a banker or a lawyer or something like that. Maybe a plumber.”
She was staring back at him.
“But I chose to be a scientist. Because I want to understand things. And I want to share what I learn with the rest of the human race. That’s what I do. That’s what I am.”
“And if you had your hands on your brother’s work you’d share it with everybody?”
“I’d put it out on the Internet. Send it to every Web site I could think of. All the universities. All the news networks. All the chat rooms and bloggers. Fuck Gould and the rest of them! I’d spread it around so that nobody could keep it a secret, nobody could suppress it.”
She pulled away from him slightly, edged back in her chair. “Gould’s right to be afraid of you,” Elena murmured.
Cochrane made a self-deprecating smile. “Big talk. I don’t have Mike’s data.
Nobody does except Gould and people Gould controls. So I guess I won’t save the world, after all.”
Sandoval did not reply to him.
Terrorist Scandal Hits
UNESCO Official
NEW YORK, NY—Already plagued by scandals such as the Iraq oil-for-food debacle, the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Office (UNESCO) was rocked by the arrest yesterday of one of its minor officials, charged with heading a terrorist cell.
Zelinkshah Shamil, a Chechen national, was arrested by the FBI in his office at the UN Secretariat building. An FBI spokeman said Shamil was head of a terrorist cell that murdered several people in New York, Palo Alto, California, and Tucson, Arizona.
Shamil claimed diplomatic immunity, but the U.S. attorney general for New York said that under the provisions of the Homeland Security Act, a foreign national can be considered an enemy combatant even if he has diplomatic status.
— INTERNATIONAL NEWS SERVICE
SAN FRANCISCO:
RUSSIAN HILL
They were sitting on the sofa in front of the gas-fed fireplace, watching the silent blue flames as the darkness deepened outside the big bay window of the living room. Cochrane heard the distant clang of a cable car trolley; otherwise the night was blessedly quiet.
“I closed on the house this afternoon,” Sandoval said, staring into the fire. “We can leave whenever you want to.”
They had planned to drive to Vancouver, then fly to Sydney.
“You think Gould will try to track me down in Australia?” he asked her.
She shook her head. “I don’t know.”
He reached out to slide an arm around her shoulders, but Elena pulled away slightly.
“What’s the matter?” he asked.
“I can’t,” she said, still not looking at him.
“Your period?”
“No, it’s not that.”
“Then what?”
Elena turned toward him at last. “It’s what you said a few days ago, about being a scientist and all that.”
He felt his brows knit. “What’s that got to do with—”
“It made me realize what a gulf there is between us, Paul.”
“What gulf?”
“More than you realize,” she said. “More than you realize.”
“I don’t understand.”
She didn’t reply. Instead, she got up from the sofa and headed for the stairs. He followed her.
Once in bed, he reached for her again.
“Please, Paul. Don’t.”
Puzzled, nettled, feeling frustrated, he lay in the darkness staring at the ceiling. She turned her back to him. He suppressed an angry complaint, turned on his side, and closed his eyes.
When he awoke, she wasn’t in the bed with him. He sat up, reached for his glasses, saw that the digital clock on the night table read 3:47 A.M. The bedroom was dark. And cold.
He tossed the bedcovers aside and stood up. There was enough light seeping through the window curtains for him to find the jeans he had thrown over the back of the chair in the corner. He pulled them on, then wormed his arms into the shirt he’d left there. Barefoot, he went to the bedroom door. Where the hell is she? he wondered.
Light was coming up the staircase from the floor below. Cochrane padded down the carpeted steps and saw Elena sitting on the fragile little chair at the ornate inlaid desk in the corner of the living room. A laptop computer rested on the desk, but it was closed and she was writing on a sheet of paper in longhand. He saw that she was fully dressed in a dove-gray pantsuit.
“What’s going on?” he demanded, striding across the living room toward her.
She jerked visibly with surprise.
“Paul!”
“What are you doing? What’s going on?”
There were tears in her eyes, he saw. Streaks runneling down her face.
“Elena, what’s the matter?”
“I didn’t want to wake you up,” she said in a choked whisper.
“What are you doing?” he repeated.
“I’m… leaving.”
“Leaving?”
“It won’t work, Paul. Us. It just won’t work. It can’t.”
“What do you mean?”
She looked utterly miserable. “What you said about being a scientist. It made me realize, understand. You’d find out, sooner or later. And then you’d hate me.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about!”
She got up from the delicate antique chair, crumpling the note she’d been writing. Pointing to the laptop, she said, “This is my farewell gift to you, Paul.”
He stared at her.
“It’s got your brother’s data in it. Everything. You can broadcast it wherever you want to. You can stop Gould from suppressing your brother’s work.”
“But why do you have to leave?” he asked.
And suddenly his legs went weak. He staggered toward her, but she backed away from him. He grabbed for the back of the spindly little chair, sat on it heavily, felt it groan beneath his weight.
“My god almighty,” he whispered. “This is Mike’s laptop.”
Sandoval stood there, tears running down her cheeks, hands clenched together.
“The one the cops couldn’t find. You’ve had it all along.”
She nodded.
He stared at her. “You killed Mike. You killed my brother.”
“I didn’t mean to, Paul. I didn’t mean to.”
“You were the woman Mike was fooling around with. You were sleeping with him. To get your hands on his discovery.”
“I didn’t mean to kill him,” she repeated, sobbing.
“Mike brought you into his lab through the building’s back door and you murdered him.”
“He got abusive, Paul. He hit me. He wanted to make out right there in his lab and when I wouldn’t he punched me. He was drunk; we’d had too much wine at lunch. He was violent!”
“And you killed him.”
“I was trying to defend myself.”
“Yeah, I’ve seen how you can defend yourself.”
“I didn’t mean it!” she pleaded. “He hit his head on the corner of the lab bench. It was an accident!”
“You were screwing my brother. And then you killed him.”
“An accident. Honestly, Paul “
“You took his laptop. You’ve had it all along. All this time.”
“I knew if I told you I had it, you’d figure it all out. I didn’t want to lose you, Paul. I love you!”
“Yeah. And how many others?”
“Paul! Please!”
“So you were going to leave me.”
“Because I love you,” she said, barely able to get the words out. “Because I couldn’t stay with you with this between us.”
He felt as though all the strength had drained out of his body. He wanted to get down on the floor and lie there till hell froze over.
“So you’re leaving,” he heard himself say. “Where’re you going? Back to Gould?”
“Paul! No!”
“Go on and go, Elena,” he croaked. “I won’t stop you. I can’t. Go ahead, get out. Leave me alone.”
“What about you? Where will you go?”
“What difference does it make?”
“I can give you some money….”
“My brother’s blood money? Fuck it! I’ll go back to Tucson and wait for Gould to catch up with me.”
“Paul, please….”
“Go!” he roared. “Get the hell out of here!”
She turned and ran out of the living room. Cochrane sat on the silly little chair, bleeding from every pore. He closed his eyes but the pain wouldn’t go away. He heard the garage door rattle open, then a car start up. Mike’s red convertible, he knew without looking.
Long after she had driven away he still sat there. The sun came up and the morning brightened and Cochrane still sat on the little chair, his whole body numb except for the throbbing of his bad leg.
At last he t
urned to his brother’s laptop, opened it, booted it up. The data was all there, every bit of it. Blindly, automatically, Cochrane pulled up his Internet address book and began e-mailing Mike’s work to everyone he could think of.
Hours later he struggled to his feet, alone. He limped upstairs and began to pack his clothes.
PALO ALTO:
CALVIN RESEARCH CENTER
Jason Tulius fumbled in his desk drawer for a tranquilizer. The pair of FBI agents had just left his office, apparently content with his claim that he had no idea that Shamil was connected with Chechen terrorists.
“I admit that I had some qualms about accepting funding from UNESCO,” he’d told the agents. “But, after all, the agency does fund some scientific work. I didn’t think there was anything actually illegal in what Mr. Shamil was doing.”
The agents had nodded and tapped on the keyboards of their pocket-sized computers. Then they had accepted coffee and doughnuts from Tulius’s executive assistant. And then, finally, they had left.
It’s over, Tulius told himself once they’d left his office. It’s over and I’m all right. Gould will buy the lab and I can look forward to a comfortable retirement in a few years.
After we’ve duplicated Michael’s work, he added silently.
He reached for the brushed chrome coffee jug, still on the metal tray resting on his desk, and poured a trickle of coffee into his empty mug. Caffeine and tranquilizers, he thought, popping a pair of pills into his mouth. Two of the major food groups.
Leaning back in his swivel chair, Tulius waited for the pills to soothe his lingering anxiety.
But Ray Kurtzman barged through his office door, a quizzical grin on his bearded face.
“Looked at your e-mail this morning?” Kurtzman asked before Tulius could complain about his sudden interruption.
His brows knitting, Tulius replied, “My e-mail? Why?”
Sitting in front of the desk, Kurtzman said, “There’s a message waiting for you. From Mike’s brother, I think.”
Tulius reached for the keyboard on his desk. “What does he want?”
“He’s giving us a gift,” said Kurtzman. “All Mike’s data. The stuff Mike wouldn’t show you.”