by Rick Jones
Chapter Nine
The CERN Laboratory
Geneva, Switzerland
As part of The CERN’s routine, the center takes constant inventory of everything to comply with regulations that had been mandated by the 22 nations that were part of The CERN community. Approximately three hours after Bosshart’s departure from the facility, a diagnostic from the mainframe hit on a possible manipulation of a program, a highly illegal process which required the authorization from the IT unit.
Further attempts to trace cyber-roads to locate the source had also been tampered with. A program had been entered to hide a prohibited act that was an obvious attempt to mask the action. Though the data had been manipulated, the information in general still didn’t compare well with the rest of the statistics, something similar to a regular heartbeat skipping a beat every so often. Though the efforts to hide the endeavor was delayed, the system eventually was able to zero in to the point of origin, which was to an IP address belonging to one of four PCs in the lab area of Ásbjörn Bosshart.
What was highly disturbing other than the obvious attempt to deceive, was what Bosshart was attempting to hide in the process.
Ásbjörn Bosshart was one of the world’s leading scientists when it came to particle acceleration, and a renowned physicist in recreating a facsimile of the universe on an infinitesimal scale. What Bosshart had achieved over the years, especially over the past three, was to stabilize and manage antimatter, a highly volatile substance known as the equal and opposite to matter. If antimatter and matter touched, then the touch itself would become the fuse that lights the charge, resulting in an incredible outburst of highly explosive energy upon contact.
Bosshart, however, along with his team had learned how to harness the environment so that matter and antimatter could coexist, though with a great measure of caution. Carefully designed vials were created to hold antimatter that had been produced by cyclic processes at high energy. One ounce of antimatter, or 28 grams, held the same explosive power as a three-kiloton nuclear weapon. The data on the mainframe recorded a full gallery of vials, more than 48 ounces in storage, though it seemed to vacillate between 48 and 32, the analogous reading that skip in the heartbeat.
When management went to see to the malfunction, they discovered that 16 vials were missing along with the specially designed sleeves that held them. In the subsequent moments the facility was in lockdown. Doors, windows, and all avenues of escape were cordoned off by metal sheets as thick as two inches. Communication outside The CERN was impossible. No cell phones. No Internet. No ways to contact outside sources.
The theft of one pound of antimatter from The CERN was a catastrophe. So the leading principals to all 22 nations belonging to The CERN were summarily notified. Intel agencies, Interpol, and all major international law enforcement networks were contacted as well.
In the following moments after lockdown, video had been poured over regarding the location of the PC used in Bosshart’s lab. Though Bosshart attempted to extinguish the video, he had failed miserably. The pictures were clear, not grainy, as Bosshart typed the entry code to the vault and entered the chamber with a thermos-sized cylinder. After unscrewing the underside cap with surgeon-like precision, he carefully pulled the vials from their recesses, placed them inside the perfectly fitted holes within the cylinder’s base cap, taking sixteen vials in all, then turned the screwcap of the cylinder until it was tightly secured. Once done, he placed the thermos-like canister into his briefcase, checked his watch, and exited the lab. Six minutes later he was at the checkpoint. Two minutes after that, he had left The CERN.
CCTV cameras using facial recognition software were scanning the city and streets of Geneva, looking to match certain landmarks on Bosshart’s face in order to locate him. So far he had yet to be pinpointed, his location a mystery, the man running around unchecked with sixteen ounces of stabilized antimatter, which equaled a total yield of destruction five times greater than the bomb that had dropped on Hiroshima.
Somewhere in Geneva, a meek man of science who had the knowledge and knowhow to utilize the products to their full capacity, had suddenly become the target in a major manhunt, leap-frogging even the most wanted people in the world which included those in ISIS, al-Qaeda, and the Taliban.
Ásbjörn Bosshart had been labeled a terrorist.
Chapter Ten
The CERN Laboratory
Geneva, Switzerland
The Einsatzgruppe TIGRIS is a specialized tactical police unit attached to the Federal Criminal Police, or the FCP, and is the investigative arm of the Swiss Federal Office of Police near Bern. And Andolf Bauer headed the team. He was a seasoned veteran with more than twenty-five years of law enforcement duties, the man having a keen sense that had been primed over time through experience. His hair was the color of pewter. And his eyes were just as gray, though they exhibited the spark of curiosity about them, the orbs always flickering about with nervous motions when, in fact, he was actually taking in everything within his immediate environment with absorption. At the moment, Andolf Bauer was standing in the director’s office viewing tapes of Bosshart, while the director—a nervous man by the name of Karl Hoffman who had a habit of chewing on his lower lip during moments of stress—sat in front of the monitor with Bauer scribbling notes on a small pad, as Bosshart’s actions played out on the screen before them.
It was obvious that Bosshart made an attempt to disable the CCTV cameras in the lab. The attempt, of course, failing, the pictures that were captured clean as Bosshart used the ocular scanner to enter the vault, removed the vials, then returned to the PC where he attempted to alter the timestamp by disguising real-time with a false time. The idea behind this was to alter the timestamp so that it would show a specified time of the theft taking place, which would be after he exited the building. It was an effort to validate a false moment that he was gone before the vials had been taken, which would absolve him from any future investigation.
“He tried to disable the security monitors in the lab, tried to erase the fact that he used the ocular scanner to enter the vault, and then he tried to alter the timestamp to appear as if the vials had been taken after he left the building,” said Hoffman, the man continuing to chew on his lower lip. “Obviously,” he added, then pointing to the screen, “he failed to do so on all three accounts.”
“What can you tell me about Bosshart?” Bauer asked him. “Any recent tensions? Marital or financial hardships? Something he might have brought up that might have seemed out of the ordinary for Dr. Bosshart?”
Hoffman nodded. “I don’t talk to the guy all the much,” he told him. “Guy’s got few friends—a bit eccentric. Works more at The CERN than he is at home. But it seems to work. You could probably get better answers from those who work directly with him, his assistants.”
“I’ll do that. As well as his wife.” After adding additional notes to his pad, Bauer asked. “And who has access to the vault besides Bosshart?”
“His assistants.”
“How many?”
Hoffman looked ceilingward to mentally calculate, and then: “Four.”
More notes by Bauer.
“And these vials. What can you tell me about them?”
“Bosshart was a leading scientist in the field of physics where he tried to reproduce the theory of the Big Bang by using a particle accelerator. Now that in itself is not new, since it was achieved long before Bosshart came onboard. But Bosshart’s theory is that when the Big Bang happened, there should have been equal amounts of matter and antimatter. His job was to discover the reasoning behind the imbalance. So he manufactured antimatter and discovered ways to stabilize the particle. Though it’s still an incredibly volatile material, it isn’t the destructive force that TV makes it out to be, like some kind of earth-shattering matter capable of destroying worlds.”
“But it is a destructive force?”
Hoffman nodded. “Each particle, when it loses its stabilization, contains an explosive yield equal t
o a three-kiloton nuclear weapon.”
More notes scribbled on the pad from Bauer.
“And to think that the particle which is so infinitesimal in size,” Hoffman went on, “can bear such power.”
“And Bosshart took sixteen vials, with each vial weighing approximately twenty-eight grams each?”
“Correct.”
“Each vial contains an explosive equal to three kilotons, when speaking in regards to nuclear capacity when detonated?”
“Correct.”
“Are these particles weapon-ready?”
“How do you mean?”
“Can they be used for any type of military application?”
“Not in their raw state, which they were.”
“Can they be altered to become so?”
“I suppose so. In time, I guess. But that’s not what we do at The CERN.”
“What about Bosshart. Does he have the knowhow or ability to divert a raw particle into one that can be applied for military uses?”
Hoffman hesitated for a moment, the pause brief, however. And then he shook his head. “I’d hate to think that of a man whose achievement in life was to discover the truth about creation, not destruction. Bosshart was a man who sought truth. You know, science versus religion. That sort of thing.”
“Your endorsement of Doctor Bosshart is duly noted, Director. But that did not answer my question. Does Doctor Bosshart possess the ability to divert a raw particle into one that can be applied for military uses?”
“If he can stabilize it…then he can alter it. Yes.”
Bauer added more notes.
Then from Hoffman: “You think a man like Bosshart, who had a loving family and a career he adored, would condemn himself to a life on the run with no hope of forgiveness?”
“And therein lies the mystery, don’t you think? Why would a man like Doctor Bosshart, who has absolutely no criminal record and is held in high regards by his peers, has never shown a propensity to do nothing other than to seek scientific proof, do something like this?”
Hoffman nodded. “Bosshart always quoted Arthur C. Clarke,” he said. “Always citing Clarke’s adage that ‘magic was science not yet understood.’ So for me to believe that Bosshart disregarded his ambition of seeking scientific truth and giving way to terrorist ideologies, is something I will never believe in. I just can’t. Something else has to be going on here. I didn’t know the man well. But I know enough of him to say that he was entirely devoted to his work.”
“Yet, Director Hoffman, it is what it is. The fact remains that Doctor Bosshart did commit a crime. He stole sixteen vials of an element capable of mass destruction, should it be altered. He knowingly tried to cover up the deed. And in the end, against all protocol, something Doctor Bosshart clearly understood, walked out of this facility in possession of materials that was against international law.”
Hoffman stared into Bauer’s gray eyes, their gazes locking for a moment before Hoffman begrudgingly conceded the fact. “Like I said, there has to be a reason why.”
“Of course there is,” said Bauer, tucking the pad and pen into his shirt pocket. “There always is. But the only one who knows for certain why Bosshart did what he did, is Bosshart himself. My job, Director, is to find out why…And I will find out.”
“He’s smart,” said Hoffman. But Hoffman knew that the statement sounded rudimentary. His point, however, was that Bosshart, if he wanted to, was smart enough to stay hidden.
But Bauer picked up on this. “He’s not as smart as he thinks he is,” he told him. “He’s out there, we know this. And we have the means to locate him no matter how far he plans to run. The world is so much smaller with today’s technology, believe me.”
With that final statement, Andolf Bauer tipped his head in thanks and exited the room. While on the cellphone before he closed the door to Hoffman’s office, he dispatched his team of specialists to Bosshart’s residence.
As a leading member of the Einsatzgruppe TIGRIS, jurisdiction in such matters always belonged to him.
Chapter Eleven
Warehouse 47
The Outskirts of Zurich, Switzerland
As Yeong Che was going over the scenarios in his mind’s eye as to how Operation Scepter’s Rule was to be played out, Kwan Ma interrupted his thoughts.
“The team is ready, Che. And the train departs from the terminal in five minutes.”
Che nodded, realizing that coordination was everything. A moment later he opened his eyes, his moment of meditation over. “Everything else is in place?” he asked Ma.
“Everything.”
Che nodded. “There’s one last thing,” he said to Ma. “The woman and the child.”
Ma undid the strap of his sheath and wrapped his hand around the knife’s hilt, ready to pull it free.
But Che held up a halting hand in anticipation. “The girl we’re to use as leverage against Bosshart, since a father would move mountains to save his child.”
“And the woman?”
“From this point on she would only be a burden.”
Ma agreed with a slight nod.
“Spare the child for control over Doctor Bosshart…Kill the woman. But do it discreetly and not in front of the girl.”
Ma removed his knife, the blade wicked and keen-looking along its edge, with the knife’s point appearing sharp enough to punch holes through sheets of metal with straight jabs. “It’ll be done, Che.”
“Since we have less than five minutes,” Che added, “see her dead within two. Time is becoming critical.”
Without another word spoken, Che closed his eyes for two more minutes of meditation, while Ma went to steal away the life of the woman.
The young girl, Bosshart’s daughter, would have a stay of execution for now.
* * *
The child wept while Nann Bosshart tried to wiggle out of her binding ties, which happened to be flexcuffs. “Don’t worry,” she said softly to Emily, though she sounded like she was about to break as well. “We’ll be all right, sweetheart. Daddy will come and save us.” But ‘Daddy’ was far from the heroic type since he was more cerebral than a man of brutish means. Especially when he was by nature a person who couldn’t lift a finger against an annoying insect, let alone a captor.
“Mama, I want to go home.”
“I know, sweetheart.”
When she saw two of the captors heading in their direction, she stopped trying to manage her way out of her binds and shushed her daughter.
Ma, along with an armed companion, said something to his compadre that galvanized the soldier. Slinging his assault weapon so that it festooned across his back, he roughly grabbed the girl and carried her away, the child calling out for her mother.
When Emily was removed from the area, Kwan Ma removed his knife to show Nann Bosshart her fate. He displayed the weapon to reveal its sharp blade and its cutting edge.
And then the woman broke as she looked into eyes that were cold and without feeling, her pretty face streaking with tears as she pleaded with Ma to spare her life. But he looked upon her with the cold fortitude of a machine and with indifference.
In the subsequent moments as he wielded the knife against her person, his eyes only became colder.
Chapter Twelve
Geneva Railway Station
Geneva, Switzerland
“Wait. What?” Kimball sounded and appeared puzzled by the old man’s statement as Frederic Becher patted the manila folder beside him.
“This is my file,” Becher told him. “My life’s story which, in some ways, mirrors yours.” Then his hand moved to a photo next to the file, his sole possession, and held it up for Kimball to see. The picture itself had yellowed with age, its edges tattered. But the image was clear—that of a young Frederic Belcher in a Nazi uniform holding a rifle. Standing in front of him was a young Jewish girl with raven hair and strikingly beautiful features—though she appeared defiant in her pose—who had been forced to wear the striped garments of an Auschwitz inmat
e.
“Her name was Ayana Berkowitz,” Becher continued. “And she became my epiphany. I, a German who became a Nazi, fell in love with a Jew—a sin that would have condemned us both had the truth been known.” Becher then laid the photo aside. “As a boy growing up in Hitler’s Jungvolk group,” he continued, “and then as a member of Hitler’s Youth Organization, we had been groomed to hate Jews and to see them as creatures of a lesser value, and as the people of a lesser God.”
“And?”
“When I saw her enter through the gates of Auschwitz, I watched as Mengele sent her family to the gas chambers and Ayana to the right. Perhaps he in saw the strength and breath-taking beauty as I did…And spared her by sending her to the right.”
Kimball noted that Becher’s jaw shook with gelatinous quivers, as if he was close to breaking emotionally at the memory before regaining himself.
“In time I got to know and love her. She would be my first thought in the morning when I woke up and my last thought at night before I fell asleep. She became everything to me. So I smuggled her food, pieces of bread or potato to keep her going when others starved. But I found out later that she would share these bounties with others, saving their lives. But I didn’t care because in my eyes she could do no wrong.”
“Did it ever occur to you that she was using you?”
Becher nodded. “I did at first, yes. But that was not the case with Ayana. She was as bold as she was beautiful, and was never afraid to tell it like it was. Her courage was greater than most, never once fearing the consequences. She helped those who could not help themselves. And before her liberation from Auschwitz, Ayana remained kind and strong and above all else…loyal.” Becher’s eyes suddenly took on a faraway look as if his memories could be seen playing out against the wall behind Kimball. A moment later, he said, “By knowing her, only then did I realize that everything I’d been taught as a member of the Jungvolk and Hitler’s Youth was nothing but misrepresentations.”