The God Particle

by Tom Avitabile

  Even at Bill’s elevated level of scientific knowledge, in his mind he substituted the words ‘chemical reaction’ for ‘molecular slowing coefficient,’ and ‘radioactive’ for ‘nuclear.’ Percival had walked through the entire White House security system’s radiation, biological, and chemical detectors. Had it been a radioactive or chemical catalyst, the clear liquid in a plastic vial would have had Percival in irons. The rest of the chemist’s report actually questioned whether Bill had seen what he reported seeing. It wasn’t that the report’s author doubted Bill’s word, rather that he had been the victim of a trick or sleight of hand. Bill considered this for a moment but dismissed it, because Joey had seen the same thing, but from an angle behind Percival. As a cop, he would have noticed a ‘switcheroony’ or up-the-sleeve move. Bill wrote back a quick, terse thank you and a mention he’d have to check on his recollection.

  Bill was scanning the rest of the SCIAD traffic when Cheryl came in with her morning cup and his. “Cheryl, Percival Cutney’s at the St. Regis — I need to talk to him, now.”

  ∞§∞

  The Stallion helicopter was winding up on the aft deck helipad of the USS Ronald Reagan as Joey and Brick hit the flight deck from the main bridge stairway. The Mediterranean Sea was rocking and roiling and Joey was glad his transportation was taking off and not trying to land on the pitching deck. As they neared the chopper, they raised their voices.

  “See ya next time we make port in Virginia, Joey.”

  “Drinks are on me, Brick.”

  Joey climbed into the hatch of the Navy’s workhorse, and a seaman handed him a helmet, secured his seat restraint and plugged in the helmet headset. The pilot came over the helmet as the engines revved and the bird lifted up and tilted toward Europe.

  “Mr. Palumbo, welcome aboard. The gipper got us to within one hundred twenty nautical miles of RAF Station Eastchurch, so we’ll be airborne for about forty-eight minutes. There’s water and some snacks in the armrest. Let us know if you need to use the head; I’ll have someone hold you tight while you aim it out the door.”

  “Thanks. I won’t be drinking any water then.”

  Navy humor, Joe thought as he watched the thousand-foot plus Nimitz-class carrier shrink down to the size of a discarded cigar in the water before the craning of his neck was stopped by his helmet.

  He opened his iPad and continued making notes on Commander Klaven. His headphones crackled. “Mr. Palumbo, I have an encrypted radio message coming through for you.”

  “Okay.”

  “Joey, it’s Bill. Change of plans.”

  “What’s up?” Joey yelled over the engine noise.

  “Percival is gone. I need you to pick up his trail in Paris.”

  “Paris? I’m heading for RAF Station Eastchurch, Dover.”

  “Not anymore you’re not. I am re-routing you to France. I’ll have more info waiting for you with a state department driver when you land. Good luck.”

  Joey looked forward, as if he could see the pilot, “Hey, Lieutenant, do you have enough gas in this thing to make France?”

  VII. NO ESCAPE

  Not accustomed to being awakened at 3 a.m., The Engineer knew the call would be bad news. A minute after he hung up, he placed a call to a number he had stored in his head. “There’s been a complication.”

  “What is the nature of this complication?” The Architect said.

  “The target has escaped.”

  “This is not good. I thought the team you hired was good at its craft.”

  “They are the best!”

  “This woman, this psychotic killer who was released from the Stasi when the Berlin wall fell, she is to be trusted, this animal who kills for pleasure?”

  That last reference rattled The Engineer. He had recruited Maya because her homicidal tendencies were necessary to make the threat credible.

  “She asks no questions and is only too happy to kill for money. The real nature of our mission is safe with her.”

  “Except, we have lost our prime subject.”

  “It was an unforeseen circumstance, but the leverage part of the mission has gone well. We will soon have all corrected.”

  “I never believed in your heavy-handed tactics, but I assumed you knew what you were doing. I shall not make that error again.”

  “You may rest assured there will be no further problems.”

  “For your sake.” And then he ended the connection.

  ∞§∞

  Raffey made it home on the tram. In the hallway mirror, he touched his swollen black and blue cheek and winced. Blood had dried and caked down his neck from his cut lip. He reached for the phone to call the police and stopped halfway. He was a major team member on a scientific enterprise of massive import. He needed to be mindful of his budding reputation Even in liberal-minded Switzerland, being rolled by a hooker and her pimp would not look good on his record and would surely get him demoted or expelled from the project.

  Then where would he go? What kind of work could he find? He placed the phone down quietly so as not to disturb his sister and her sleeping daughter upstairs.

  ∞§∞

  “Hanna” had removed the blonde wig and let her black hair fall from the wig cap. They rolled up to Raffey’s house just as he entered the front door.

  “Well, Maya, he is predictable,” her partner said from the backseat. She knew the house well, having been there only hours before. “Das ist gut,” she said.

  ∞§∞

  Holding ice on his lip, Raffey went upstairs and gingerly closed the bathroom door before turning on the light, trying not to disturb his niece and her mother. He opened the medicine chest and found the iodine and gauze. Tape, he thought as he moved a box of tampons to see if the roll was behind it. A bottle of witch hazel fell off the shelf and crashed loudly on the edge of the toilet. He stiffened, waiting to hear his sister call out — nothing. He opened the door. “Sorry,” he said in a whisper. He strained to hear any response. When there was none, he ventured into the hall. “Leena?” He approached her bedroom door and found it half open. He opened it all the way and the light from the bathroom splashed across the bed. It was still made, and had not been slept in. He walked to his niece’s room figuring that since the child had been having bad dreams of late, maybe his sister slept with her.

  Again, both beds neat. He returned to Leena’s room and turned on the light. Not a sign of her. He went down to the kitchen and found the electric teakettle was on but all the water had steamed out. He pulled the plug. Walking into the living room, he turned on the light and was shocked to see the place in a shambles. He ran to the front door, opened the closet nearby, and pulled out his home guard rifle. He fumbled with the magazine and landed it in the breach. He was shaking like a leaf, not knowing what to do next when the phone in the kitchen rang.

  “Your sister and her daughter are fine and they will continue to be unharmed as long as you do what we say. If you deviate from the plan or alert the authorities or anyone else, Leena will watch her daughter die slowly and horribly. Do you understand?”

  “Hanna?” Raffey recognized the voice and immediately went into a spiral of confusion.

  “Verstehen? Do you understand? Do you understand? Raffael!”

  He snapped out of his momentary paralysis. “Yes, please don’t hurt them.”

  “That is solely up to you. Go outside, get in the blue car. Bring nothing. We already have your papers and personal items.”

  ∞§∞

  In the sedan, Hanna closed her cell phone. Next to her, Leena was crumpled in the passenger seat. Hanna’s partner was sitting next to Kirsi in the backseat. Both were unconscious, having been injected with a fast-acting anesthetic. “We give him two minutes. If he doesn’t come out…” She pulled a gruesome-looking folding knife from her belt and clicked it open. She reached around and handed it to Hans in the back seat. “…chop off one of the little girl’s fingers and I’ll bring it to him.”

  ∞§∞

  In the hous
e, tears started to well up in Raffey’s eyes. What had he done? What was going on? Why would a hooker do this? He tried to clear his mind, then had an irrational thought. He got up and parted the curtains in the living room window that looked out on the street. There was a blue car he hadn’t noticed before. With shaking hands he brought the rifle up to his chin and tried to aim at the car. He flipped the selector switch to burst as he had been trained to do. He tried to catch his breath, tears now rolled down the wood stock of the semi-automatic weapon. As if in a spasm, his finger jerked on the trigger.

  Maya asked, “What is that?” The man with the knife turned to look up.

  Raffey jumped back, the rifle hitting the floor — he had forgotten the safety. His whole body now shook. Then he thought for a moment. She must have accomplices. Shooting whoever was in the car would surely mean a death sentence to Leena and Kirsi.

  “Whatever it was is gone now. How long do we give him?” Hans asked, as he positioned Kirsi’s hand in his, extending one of her fingers to be clear of the others.

  “He’s coming out now,” Maya said with a slight tinge of disappointment.

  Raffey approached the car, half expecting to be shot as he neared. The rear door opened and he got in.

  “Shut the door. Turn your back to me,” a voice said, and he complied.

  He thought he caught a glimpse of his niece in the backseat but it was too dark. “Please just don’t hurt my nie…”

  That was as far as he got as the injection directly into his neck put him under.

  ∞§∞

  A young government man in a three-piece suit watched as the Navy helicopter flared and did a perfect three-point landing dead on the circle at the Brétigny-sur-Orge Airport helipad. Joey emerged quickly and half-jogged toward him and the State Department vehicle.

  As he stretched out his hand he said, “Joey Palumbo.”

  “Yardley Haines, State Department.”

  Joey got in the back. Yardley went around to the other side and also got in the back. When he closed the door, he tapped the driver’s seat and the car took off for the seventeen-mile ride north to Paris.

  Yardley handed Joey a red-lined folder. “Ever hear of this Percival Cutney?” he asked as he scanned the papers within.

  “No, not that I would. He is a subject of the UK;I have been stationed in Paris for the last nine years.”

  “That’s it. I knew I had heard your name before.”

  “Yes, I worked with your Quarterback team on the Peter Remo killing a while back.”

  Joey couldn’t remember at that moment what part of the operation code-named Hammer of God had been declassified, so he chose not to inform Yardley that Peter was alive and well. That the murdered man had been a poor schmuck who had stolen Peter’s jacket. “Yes. You did good work on that. What happened with Lloyds of London?”

  “I’m afraid they are denying all knowledge of Percy.”

  “He most stringently prefers Percival.”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “The douche bag.”

  Yardley smiled — here was a guy from back home.

  “So, where do we go to get a lead on him?”

  “We’ve cross-checked the White House scan of his ID and, using facial recognition, have him entering the UK through Gatwick yesterday, traveling under the name Percival Smyth.”

  “Traveling to where?”

  “Paris, we think.”

  “Think?”

  “We think he’s “chunneling” over this morning.”

  “So that’s why I am here.”

  “You were already airborne when we learned this, and Quarterback had the copter vectored to here. We have men at the train depot and his picture is everywhere as a person of interest in the UK bank scandal.”

  “Cute—covering your bases with the cross-channel rivalry?”

  “There are many die-hard French civil servant soccer fans who hate Manchester United and would pull out all the stops to embarrass the English. We should know more in an hour when the train arrives.”

  “I’d like to be there.”

  “That is where we are heading. We should be there thirty minutes before the train.”

  “Good, then I have time to take a piss without risking my life.”

  Yardley didn’t bother to ask.

  ∞§∞

  Cheryl poked her head into Bill’s office and announced, “Agent Burrell on line two.”

  “Brooke, how is France?”

  “Lonely place to be working while others are here for love. But it forces me to focus on how crummy my love life is.”

  Her TMI response reminded Hiccock of how women respond differently to work and life. A guy would have said, “Like a foreign film where everybody speaks a funny language,” or something else ‘shrug of the shoulder’ neutral, but a woman sees and hears things differently. And that was why he was glad Brooke was on the case.

  “Maybe when this is over you can catch some R&R there.”

  “Been there, done that, got the black French nightie.”

  Bill just went with it, “Well all-righty then… let’s get down to the case. What have you found out?”

  “The two break-ins are definitely connected, and while each on its own means nothing, the patterns are obvious. It seems to point to a Nigerian connection.”

  “Maguambi?”

  “Ding-ding-ding, you win the kewpie doll. How’d you find out?”

  “Somewhere there’s a leak. A Percival Cutney, a.k.a. Percival Smyth, came in here and knew all about you, the Vera Cruz, the crucibles, and the whale thing.”

  “That’s not comforting. Is he foreign intel?”

  “We are trying to track him down now. In fact, Joey is in Paris as we speak, on his trail.”

  “You think this Percy guy is a Maguambi operative?”

  “Could be, but he seems more MI-5ish. And you’ll piss him off if you call him Percy — he prefers Percival.”

  “Well isn’t that precious. I tell you what, I will meet up with Joey and make my report and maybe we can double team old Percy while I am here.”

  “Sounds good; be careful.”

  “Bill, can I ask you something?”

  “Yeah, what?”

  “When you talk to Joey, do you ever tell him to ‘be careful?’”

  “Yeah… I think I do, especially when he’s out there doing something for me. So, I’ll tell you what I always tell him. ‘Be careful… and wear a cup if you scrimmage.’”

  “Thanks, Quarterback.”

  ∞§∞

  Raffey awoke in a cold concrete room, strapped to a bed. He strained to look around. A woman and man entered the room. It took a second and then he realized it was Hanna in black hair. “Hanna, why did you do this to me and my family?”

  “Shut up and listen. Blindfold him.”

  Hans tied a strip of cloth around Raffey’s head and made sure his eyes were covered.

  Raffey sensed someone else had entered the room. He smelled cigarette smoke and started to think they were going to beat him. His body tensed. Then the new voice talked.

  “You are Raffael Juth?”

  “Yes. Where are my sister and niece?”

  A switch of metal, like an old car-radio antenna, whipped down on his legs and stung him so hard he whimpered.

  “You will only answer my questions and not deviate from that or she will hit you again, only next time across your face. Do you understand?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good, now, you work at the LHC?”

  “Yes, I work at the Large Hadron Collider. I am attached through CERN.”

  “You will follow our instructions to the absolute smallest detail or we will make your family suffer and curse your name as they die.”

  “What can you possibly want with me?”

  The whip came down across his face, aggravating his already sore cheek. He screamed.

  “You are supposed to be smart, yet you can’t follow the simplest instruction not to speak except
in response to my questions,” the man calmly said.

  “Are you ready to obey or should we amputate one of little Kirsi’s limbs?” Maya added.

  “No, no, don’t do that. I will listen; anything you say.”

  “Good, now maybe we can proceed without interruption.” The man coughed as he ground his cigarette into the carpet of the hotel room. “So you are familiar with the high voltage distribution circuitry that powers the magnets in the machine?”

  “Yes.”

  “I want you to program an aberration into the frequency regulator module. At our direction you will pre-program this variant to occur at the time we choose. You will do this and it will work or Leena will watch her baby be dismembered slowly. Do you believe we will do this?’

  “Yes.”

  “Do you plan to carry out our wishes?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then they shall be spared.”

  There were no more questions, and Raffey sensed that he was alone in the room.

  Outside the room in an abandoned warehouse, the man reached into the pocket of his car coat and retrieved a pack of Gitanes, placing one between his lips. It wagged as he spoke. “Has he asked for proof of life?”

  “No.”

  “Surprising,” was all that The Engineer said as he lit his cigarette and left without saying another word.

  ∞§∞

  “The conductor on the train is French ex-paratrooper and my former brother-in-law, so I e-mailed him the picture from the ID. He says your man is in the fifth car, first row of seats,” Marc Dupré, the rather rotund director of the French Intelligence service said matter-of-factly.