Interference

by Brad Parks

  Who, as was his custom, said nothing in reply.

  Then the investor-relations woman called back. She had been in touch with Facebook’s legal department, which—lo and behold—had determined that since this so-called Tom O’Day had clearly violated the terms of the user agreement, he was no longer protected by the data policy, which meant they were free to share his information.

  And, therefore, Plottner should expect a call from one of Facebook’s network engineers.

  Plottner paced some more. Now and then, he yelled to Theresa or grumbled more at Lee.

  A half hour passed. He couldn’t stand to wait for anything.

  Finally, Theresa was standing at his office door, clutching the phone.

  Plottner grabbed it before she could finish saying “It’s the engineer from—”

  “Talk to me,” Plottner said into the phone.

  “Hello, sir. My name is—”

  “Yeah, yeah. I get it. Just tell me what you know.”

  “Well, sir, Tom O’Day opened his account this morning, using a Gmail address and a password that appears to have been randomly generated. His first log-in came earlier this morning from an IP address in Slovenia.”

  “Slovenia,” Plottner repeated.

  “The next log-in came about an hour later from India.”

  “India?”

  “After that it was Ukraine.”

  “So he’s using a VPN.”

  A virtual private network, the method of internet entry preferred by hackers, child pornographers, and others who wanted to obscure their electronic tracks. It was the equivalent of being at the receiving end of a long tunnel: you could see where someone came out, but not where they entered.

  “That’s right, sir.”

  “Can you overcome that in some way?”

  “Short answer? No. The best I can do is keep monitoring this account in case he stops using the VPN. If the same IP address pops up twice, we’ll know that’s really him. Unless you’d rather we just erase the account?”

  “Absolutely not. Keep it open. I want to continue being able to talk to this guy.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Was that Ukraine log-in his last one?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “When was that?”

  “About an hour and fifteen minutes ago.”

  Which was when O’Day had chatted with Plottner.

  “Okay. Can you keep an eye on his account for me? Maybe . . . write a program that sends me an email whenever he logs in?”

  “Sure, I can do that. It might take me about an hour or so. See, the way the network protocols are set up—”

  “I don’t care,” Plottner said. “Just get it done.”

  “Okay. Anything else, sir?”

  “Yes. Can you document the previous log-ins and send them to me? I want a record of all of this.”

  A man who had been the subject of four SEC target letters had learned to be careful.

  He wanted his actions to be well accounted for in case there were any accusations.

  CHAPTER 28

  I had never covered the ground between my house and the Dartmouth College campus faster.

  Beppe was somewhere behind me, in his own car, either keeping up or not.

  Where had Sheena been all this time? Why hadn’t she been answering her phone? And what did she know about Matt?

  The questions kept racing in my frantic mind as I parked in my usual spot near Baker Library, then marched inside, speed hiking like I was coming down from the top of a mountain and there were storm clouds closing in fast.

  Without stopping, I charged to the entrance of the stacks, a nine-story structure that was home to a good portion of Dartmouth’s more than two million volumes.

  There was an elevator, but it was notoriously slow. I went for the stairs, whose steps were made of polished gray slate, worn down in the middle by nearly a hundred years of footsteps.

  At the top of the seventh floor, I reached a door.

  It was locked—which I should have known. But I wasn’t thinking clearly. Behind the door were study carrels used by grad students and undergraduates who were working on a thesis or an independent study. The area was off limits to the general public.

  That’s why Sheena felt safe there.

  My keys were down in my office, many floors below. I didn’t want to have to go down and fetch them, so I knocked.

  I couldn’t really tell if there was anything happening on the other side—any sound, any movement. I knocked again.

  From the landing below me, Beppe rounded into view.

  “I haven’t been up here in years,” he said.

  “I knocked. She hasn’t answered.”

  “Hang on. Let me call her.”

  Beppe jabbed at his phone, then brought it up.

  “We’re here,” he said, listened for a moment, then replied, “Yes, it’s just us.”

  Then: “Yes, I’m sure.”

  He hung up and announced, “She says she’s coming.”

  Ten seconds later, the edge of the door separated from the jamb by perhaps an inch, and a tiny sliver of Sheena’s face appeared, peering warily from out of the crack.

  She had a gruesome bruise under her right eye, a large smudge several shades darker than her light-brown skin. Her black hair was pulled back in a rough ponytail, exposing a two-inch-long cut near her hairline.

  “Come on,” she said, opening the door a little more widely, but only by a foot or two. “Quickly.”

  Beppe and I filed past. Sheena gave one hard look down the stairwell, then immediately closed the door. She tested the handle to make sure it was still locked and, satisfied, was immediately on the move again.

  She said something that might have been “Follow me.” She had already turned down the hallway behind her.

  I tailed her around the corner. Sheena was a small woman, no more than five feet tall, but she moved her short legs with purpose. Slung over her left shoulder was a brown leather bag that she was clutching fiercely with her left hand.

  She stopped at a door midway down the next hallway and stuck a key into the lock. She opened it and gestured for Beppe and me to enter.

  The room was spare, barely larger than the desk it contained. In front of the desk was a wooden chair. To the left of the desk was a window that offered a sweeping view of the north side of the Dartmouth campus.

  Sheena closed the door behind us and, again, checked the handle.

  “Okay,” she said and took a deep breath, like it was her first in quite some time. “Let me make some room for you.”

  She cleared some books off the ledge, which was wide enough for one person; then she made room on the desk, which could accommodate another.

  I took the desk. Beppe took the ledge. Sheena turned the chair around so she could sit facing us, then set her bag down in between her feet.

  “Sorry, I know it’s a little cramped in here,” she said again. “But they won’t be able to find me here.”

  “Who?” Beppe asked.

  “The men.”

  “What men?”

  She held her hands up in a pleading fashion. “Let me start at the beginning. I think that’s the only way this is going to make even a little bit of sense. Is that okay?”

  “Of course,” Beppe said.

  “It was around four o’clock yesterday afternoon. I had been here for, I don’t know, maybe an hour or so. I was sitting in here, reading. And then it just . . . hit me.”

  “What hit you?” I asked.

  “I don’t know. I think . . . the only explanation I’ve been able to come up with is . . . you call them fits, right? What Matt has been having?”

  I brought a hand to my mouth.

  “It came out of nowhere, just like Matt’s. One second I was normal and the next thing I knew everything just felt . . . strange. And then, boom, nothing. I blacked out. I literally have no idea where the next six hours went. I have these weird memories of it that are . . . almost like a dream. There�
��s nothing really concrete. I’d wake up for a split second, but I couldn’t really control my body. And then I’d go back under. The next thing I could really tell you with any certainty is that it was dark out, and I was lying right here.”

  She made a sweeping gesture, indicating the floor in front of her. “I had a huge headache. I was covered in dried blood. And I had this,” she said, pointing to her blackened eye. “I must have fallen or something. Anyway, I went into the bathroom and washed the blood off my face and looked at my eye, and then I came back here and I kind of just . . . rested for a while.”

  “You didn’t call for help?” Beppe asked.

  “Oh my God, no. By then I had taken stock of everything and I had figured out that I must have had what Matt was having and I just . . . I didn’t want anyone to know. At least not until I had a chance to think about things more.”

  She turned to me. “I’m sorry, but you should hear how people talk about Matt. They think he’s either crazy, or dying, or contagious, or I don’t know. And I can’t . . . I’m not tenured. I don’t even have a job lined up for next year. Physics is such a small world, and all I could think was that if word got out there was something wrong with me . . .”

  “No one in physics is going to discriminate against you because of a health problem,” Beppe assured her.

  “Really?” Sheena spat. “Just like no one in physics is going to discriminate against me because I’m a woman?”

  Beppe looked down at his hands.

  “Anyhow, I obviously knew Matt had suffered a fit and that Brigid was having trouble finding him. It never occurred to me he had been kidnapped. I just assumed he would turn up. So I thought I’d go home and sleep it off, and then in the morning I’d talk to him. I knew I could trust him to be discreet. So I just got in my car and went home. It was probably eleven or so?”

  I thought about the neighbor who had been expecting Sheena to be home by nine o’clock.

  She took a deep breath and pushed it back out. “I got to my place and I was walking up to my front door when all of a sudden this guy came around the corner of the house and started coming toward me. And then I realized another guy was coming up from behind me. They were both Asian—Chinese, if I had to guess.”

  I gasped. Chinese men. Just like the video. It made sense there were only two of them this time. One would have stayed behind to keep watch on Matt.

  “I don’t even really know what happened next,” Sheena said. “I just have this image of them, kind of leering at me. And they were coming at me really slowly, like they were expecting me to try to run, but they weren’t worried because they knew they had me surrounded and they knew they could outrun me. And that’s what gave me the time I needed.”

  “To do what?” I asked.

  “Pepper spray,” she said, reaching into the bag at her feet and drawing out a small metallic cylinder. “I gave it to them good, right in the face like you’re supposed to do, and then I ran for it. I got back to my car and I tore out of there and I haven’t been back to my place since. I just went to a hotel and threw the chain across the door.”

  “Why didn’t you call the police?” Beppe asked.

  “Because they were police. It was dark, and I didn’t get a good enough look to see what kind, but they were definitely wearing police uniforms.”

  “Those were EMT uniforms,” Beppe said softly. “Fake ones, but . . . the men who abducted Matt were wearing EMT uniforms.”

  “Oh,” she said. “Well, I guess I was pretty freaked out, so I just went to the hotel and locked myself in. And just to, I don’t know, calm myself down, I turned on the TV. That’s when I heard about Matt. The way the TV was talking about him, it was like he was already dead. But I knew he wasn’t.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked, and I could feel my heart throbbing in my damaged ears.

  “This is going to sound crazy,” she said. “It feels crazy to even say it out loud. But . . . ever since I came out of the fit, I’ve felt this weird connection to Matt. It’s like . . . I know he’s out there. I can sense him. Sometimes I know I’m moving closer to him, and then other times I know I’m moving away. It’s wild. But I swear, Matt is alive.”

  I was getting light headed, suddenly incapable of getting enough air into my lungs. My mind only had room for one thought, and it kept playing on repeat.

  Matt is alive.

  Beppe seemed to be shocked by this news as well, but he recovered faster.

  “How could that be?” he asked.

  “I don’t know. I’ve been thinking a lot about it obviously, and my theory is . . .”

  Sheena’s voice trailed off for a moment; then she looked at me. “Did Matt ever mention anything to you about entanglement?”

  “Spooky action at a distance,” I said. “Once entangled, two particles are never again truly apart.”

  “Right, but specifically that the viruses he was working on were showing signs of being entangled with each other?”

  “Matt didn’t tell me much,” I said.

  “Are you suggesting . . . ,” Beppe said but couldn’t finish the thought.

  “On Sunday afternoon, I was cleaning up some stuff in the lab and I cut myself on some glass,” Sheena said. “It sliced right through my gloves. I was working near where Matt normally worked, and I think I must have been infected by the same virus that infected him, the tobacco mosaic virus. There was an incubation period—roughly two days—and then I had the fit. And now? Ever since I’ve come out of it, I’ve had this feeling about him. It’s almost like twin sense or . . . I don’t know.”

  She bowed her head for a moment before bringing it back up. “But I think our brains have become entangled.”

  CHAPTER 29

  During thirty-two years with the New Hampshire State Police, Emmett Webster thought he had seen and heard it all—every crazy story, every odd twist, every color of behavior in the human rainbow.

  This was a new one. Even for him.

  “So let me get this straight,” he said, having hurried to Baker Tower at the urging of Beppe Valentino. “This woman and Professor Bronik, they’ve both been infected by this quantum virus, and now she has quantum ESP?”

  “I wouldn’t call it ESP,” Beppe said. “She can’t tell what he’s thinking. It’s more, she can feel his presence.”

  They were sitting on the sixth floor of the stacks, huddled in two chairs by the window, talking in low voices.

  One floor above them, still ensconced in her study carrel, was Sheena Aiyagari, the young woman who wasn’t missing after all.

  She was, apparently, just leery about talking to Emmett. Which was why Beppe was trying to smooth the way, explaining what had happened to her over the previous twenty-four hours.

  “All right, so this quantum whatever-you-want-to-call-it. Entanglement. ESP. Whatever. How is this,” Emmett started, then stopped himself because he wasn’t sure of how to word the question. “I guess what I’m trying to ask you is: You’re a scientist; you’re supposed to be skeptical about everything. What do you make of this?”

  Beppe put his elbow on the desk in front of him and rested his chin in his hand for a moment.

  “Detective, do you know what the x in x-ray stands for?”

  “No.”

  “Neither does anyone else. When x-rays were first discovered, all the scientists knew was that very short wavelength light could seemingly pass through solid objects. The experimenters had no idea why or how, so they called the rays of light they were sending out x—like it was a variable they would go back and define later. There are all kinds of things in the history of science that seemed fantastical or even impossible when we first tripped on them, things that completely defied explanation. Quantum theory is another one of those things. I’ll be traveling to Copenhagen later this year to celebrate the centennial of Niels Bohr’s institute there. Do you know who he is?”

  “Sort of,” Emmett said. “And by ‘sort of’ I mean ‘not really.’”

  “He’s
the father of quantum theory. He pioneered what’s known as the Copenhagen interpretation. That means we’re a hundred years into our efforts to understand quantum theory. And, in some ways, it’s been a disaster. We still can’t grasp some very fundamental aspects of the quantum universe. We’re pretty good with the what of it. We’re very bad with the how. It’s like we’re waiting for another Einstein to come along and help us make sense of it all. And until he or she arrives, we’re still wandering in the dark.

  “But, in other ways, the last hundred years have been a raging success. The best century in human history. Quantum theory is the most accurate, most well-verified scientific hypothesis the world has ever known. Everywhere we look, we keep finding quantum mechanics is really wonderful at explaining some of our greatest mysteries. As just one example, how do migratory birds navigate such huge distances with such precision? Well, a few years back, some researchers from the UK discovered they do it with the help of entangled electron pairs in their eyes. How do salmon know how to return, after five years of swimming in the open ocean, to the exact same spot they were born in order to spawn? We suspect it’s the same kind of mechanism.”

  Beppe spread his hands. “Now, a quantum virus is, quite literally, a new animal. We have no idea what it’s capable of or how it might change the world. We do know that viruses are capable of transferring their genetic material into human beings. After that, all bets are off. So if you’re asking me whether it’s possible that two people infected with a quantum virus might have developed some kind of connection that allows them to sense where the other is? I have to be honest: if the birds and the fish can do it, I’m not ready to rule it out for human beings. With quantum theory, I’ve learned to accept the what and try not to get too caught up on the how.”

  Emmett sighed—for him, a demonstrable display of emotion.

  What to believe? He had read stories about police solving crimes with the help of psychics who claimed to be able to locate crime scenes or find bodies, and had actually done so with an accuracy that had no logical basis.

  Then again, he had also read stories about psychics who had played the police for idiots.