The Zero Game

by Brad Meltzer

  “So is the Congressman here?” she asks, smile still in place.

  I look back through the glass door. She thinks I’m searching for my boss. I’m actually checking for Janos. “He should be joining us shortly—though he said we should start without him,” I explain. “Just in case.”

  Her smile sinks a bit, but not by much. Even if she’d rather see the Congressman, she’s smart enough to know the importance of staff. “Whenever he gets here is good by us,” she says as she leads us back to the elevators. “Oh, and by the way,” she adds, “welcome to the NSF.”

  As the elevator rises to the tenth floor, my mind bounces back to yesterday’s elevator ride: the cage pounding against the walls as the water rained down on our mud-coated helmets. Leaning back against the polished brass railing, I toss a thin smile at Viv. She ignores it, keeping her eyes on the red digital numbers that mark our ascent. She’s done being friends. She wants out.

  “So I understand you’re here to talk to Dr. Minsky about neutrinos,” Marilyn says, hoping to keep the conversation going.

  I nod. Viv nibbles. “Everyone said he’s the expert,” she says, trying not to make it sound like a question.

  “Oh, he is,” Marilyn replies. “That’s where he got his start—subatomic. Even his early work on leptons . . . sure, it may seem basic now, but back then, it set the standard.”

  We both nod as if she’s talking about the TV Guide crossword puzzle.

  “So he does his research right here?” Viv adds.

  The woman lets out the kind of laugh that usually comes with a pat on the head. “I’m sure Dr. Minsky would love to get back in the lab,” she explains. “But that’s no longer part of the job description. Up here, we’re primarily concerned with the funding side.”

  It’s a fair description but a complete understatement. They’re not just concerned with the funding side; they control it. Last year, the National Science Foundation funded over two thousand studies and research facilities across the globe. As a result, they have a hand in just about every major science experiment in the world—from a radio telescope that can see the evolution of the universe, to a climate theory that’ll help us control the weather. If you can dream it up, the NSF will consider giving it financial support.

  “And here we are,” Marilyn announces as the elevator doors glide open.

  On our left, silver letters emblazoned on the wall read: Directorate for Mathematical and Physical Sciences. The sign’s so big, there’s barely room for the NSF logo, but that’s what happens when you’re the largest of the NSF’s eleven divisions.

  Leading us past another reception desk and around the corner to a sitting area that has all the charm of a hospital waiting room, she doesn’t say another word. On our left and right, the walls are covered with science posters: one with a row of satellite dishes lined up under a rainbow, another with a shot of the Pinwheel Galaxy from the Kitt Peak National Observatory. Both are meant to calm anxious visitors. Neither one does much of a job.

  Over my shoulder, the elevator doors open in the distance. I spin around to see who’s there. If we can find the premier neutrino expert in the country, so can Janos. Back by the elevators, a man with thick glasses and a rumpled sweater steps into the hall. From the way he’s dressed, it’s clear he’s just a local.

  Reading my relief, Viv turns back toward the waiting area, which is surrounded by half a dozen closed doors. All are numbered 1005. The one directly in front of us has the additional label .09. Only the National Science Foundation assigns rooms with a decimal designation.

  “Doctor Minsky?” Marilyn calls out, knocking lightly and turning the knob.

  As the door slowly opens, a distinguished older man with puffy cheeks is already out of his seat, shaking my hand and looking over my shoulder. He’s searching for Cordell.

  “The Congressman should be here shortly,” Marilyn explains.

  “He said we should start without him,” I add.

  “Perfect . . . perfection,” he replies, finally making eye contact. Studying me with smoky gray eyes, Minsky scratches slightly at the side of his beard, which, like his wispy, thin hair, is more salt than pepper. I try to smile, but his stare continues to bear down on me. That’s why I hate meeting with academics. Social skills are always slightly off.

  “I’ve never met you before,” he finally blurts.

  “Andy Defresne,” I say, introducing myself. “And this is—”

  “Catherine,” Viv says, refusing my aid.

  “One of our interns,” I jump in, guaranteeing that he’ll never look twice at her.

  “Dr. Arnold Minsky,” he says, shaking Viv’s hand. “My cat’s name was Catherine.”

  Viv nods as pleasantly as possible, checking out the rest of his office in an attempt to avoid further conversation.

  He’s got an upholstered sofa, a matching set of end chairs, and an outstanding view of downtown Arlington outside the plate-glass windows that line the entire right side of his office. Forever the academic, Minsky goes straight to his desk, which is covered with meticulous size-order stacks of papers, books, and magazine articles. Like his work, every molecule is accounted for. As I take the seat directly across from him, Viv slides into the chair that’s next to the window. It’s got a perfect view of the busy street out front. She’s already searching for Janos.

  I check the walls, hunting for anything else that’ll give me a read. To my surprise, unlike the usual D.C. ego shrine, Minsky’s walls aren’t covered with diplomas, famous-person photos, or even a single framed newspaper clipping. That’s not the commodity here. He’s done proving he belongs.

  Still, every universe has its own currency. The walls on both sides of Minsky’s desk are covered with built-in bookcases, floor to ceiling, filled with hundreds of books and academic texts. The spines are all worn, which I quickly realize is the point. In Congress, the golden ring is fame and stature. In science, it’s knowledge.

  “Who’s that with you in the photo?” Viv asks, pointing to a tasteful silver frame of Minsky standing next to an older man with curly hair and a quizzical expression.

  “Murray Gell-Mann,” Minsky says. “The Nobel Prize winner . . .”

  I roll my tongue inside my cheek. Stature plays everywhere.

  “So what can I help you with today?” Minsky asks.

  “Actually,” I say, “we were wondering if we could ask you a few questions about neutrinos . . .”

  65

  YOU SAW THEM?” Janos asked, holding his cell phone in one hand and gripping the steering wheel of the black sedan with the other. The morning traffic wasn’t bad, even for Washington, but at this point, even a moment’s delay was enough to get him raging. “How’d they look?” he demanded.

  “They’re lost,” his associate said. “Harris could barely get a sentence out, and the girl . . .”

  “Viv.”

  “Angry little thing. You could see it in the air. She was ready to take his head off.”

  “Did Harris say anything?”

  “Nothing you don’t know.”

  “But they were there?” Janos asked.

  “Absolutely. Even went up to the boss’s office—not that it did them any good,” the man said.

  “So you took care of everything?”

  “Everything you asked.”

  “And they believed it?”

  “Even the Dinah stuff. Unlike Pasternak, I see things through to the end.”

  “You’re a real hero,” Janos said wryly.

  “Yeah, well . . . don’t forget to tell your boss that. Between the loans, the surgeries, and all my other debts . . .”

  “I’m well aware of your financial situation. That’s why—”

  “Don’t say it’s the money—screw money; it’s more than that. They asked for this. They did. The snubs . . . the shrug-offs . . . People think it goes unnoticed.”

  “As I was saying, I completely sympathize. That’s why I approached you in the first place.”

  “Goo
d, because I didn’t want you to think every lobbyist is in it for the cash. That’s a hurtful stereotype.”

  Janos was silent. In many ways, his colleague was no different from the shiny sedan he was driving—overhyped and barely adequate. But as he reasoned when he first picked out the car, some things are necessary to blend in in Washington. “Did they say where they were going next?” Janos asked.

  “No, but I have an idea . . .”

  “So do I,” Janos said, making a sharp right and pulling into the underground parking garage. “Nice to see you,” he called out as he waved to the security guard outside the employee lot. The guard threw a warm smile back.

  “Are you where I said?” his colleague asked through the phone.

  “Don’t worry where I am,” Janos shot back. “Just focus on Harris. If he calls back, we need you to keep your eyes and ears wide open.”

  “Ears I can help you with,” Barry said, his scratchy voice raking through the phone. “It’s the eyes that’ve always been a bit of a problem.”

  66

  NOW WHAT’S THIS for again?” Dr. Minsky asks, unbending a paperclip and tapping it lightly on the edge of his desk.

  “Just background,” I say, hoping to keep the discussion moving. “We’ve got this project we’re looking at—”

  “A new neutrino experiment?” Minsky interrupts, clearly excited. It’s still his pet issue, so if there’s some new data out there, he wants to play with the toys first.

  “We really shouldn’t say,” I reply. “They’re still in the early stages.”

  “But if they’re—”

  “It’s actually someone who’s a friend of the Congressman,” I interrupt. “It’s not for public consumption.”

  The man has two Ph.D.s. He gets the hint. Congressmen do favors for friends every day. That’s why the real news on Capitol Hill is never in the newspapers. If Minsky wants any more favors from us, he knows he has to help us with this.

  “So neutrinos, eh?” he finally asks.

  I smile. So does Viv—but as she turns her head slightly, glancing out the window, I can tell she’s still searching for Janos. We’re not gonna outrun him without a head start.

  “Let me do it like this,” Minsky says, quickly shifting into professor mode. He holds the unbent paperclip up like a tiny pointer, then motions downward, from the ceiling to the floor. “As we sit here right now, fifty billion—not million—fifty billion neutrinos are flying from the sun, through your skull, down your body, out the balls of your feet, and down through the nine floors below us. They won’t stop there, though—they’ll keep going past the concrete foundation of the building, straight through the earth’s core, through China, and back out to the Milky Way. You think you’re just sitting here with me, but you’re being bombarded right now. Fifty billion neutrinos. Every single second. We live in a sea of them.”

  “But are they like protons? Electrons? What are they?”

  He looks down, trying not to make a face. To the educated man, there’s nothing worse than a layperson. “In the subatomic world, there are three kinds of particles that have mass. The first and heaviest are quarks, which make up protons and neutrons. Then, there’re electrons and their relatives, which are even lighter. And finally come neutrinos, which are so incredibly lightweight there are still some doubters out there who argue they don’t have mass at all.”

  I nod, but he knows I’m still lost.

  “Here’s the significance,” he adds. “You can calculate the mass of everything you see in a telescope, but when you add all that mass up, it’s still only ten percent of what makes up the universe. That leaves ninety percent unaccounted for. So where’s the missing ninety percent? As physicists have asked for decades: Where’s the missing mass of the universe?”

  “Neutrinos?” Viv whispers, accustomed to being a student.

  “Neutrinos,” Minsky says, pointing the paperclip her way. “Of course, it probably isn’t the full ninety percent, but a portion of it . . . they’re the leading candidate.”

  “So if someone’s studying neutrinos, they’re trying to . . .”

  “. . . crack open the ultimate treasure chest,” Minsky says. “The neutrinos that we’re swimming in right now were produced at the big bang, at supernovas, and even, during fusion, at the heart of the sun. Any idea what those three things have in common?”

  “Big explosions?”

  “Creation,” he insists. “That’s why physicists are trying to figure them out, and that’s why they gave the Nobel to Davis and Koshiba a few years back. Unlock neutrinos and you potentially unlock the nature of matter and the evolution of the universe.”

  It’s a nice answer, but it doesn’t get me any closer to my real question. Time to be blunt. “Could they be used to build a weapon?”

  Viv looks away from the window; Minsky cocks his head slightly, picking me apart with his scientist’s eyes. I may be sitting in front of a genius, but it doesn’t take one to know something’s up.

  “Why would someone use it as a weapon?” he asks.

  “I’m not saying they are—we just . . . we want to know if they can.”

  Minsky drops the paperclip and puts his palms flat against his desk. “Exactly what type of project is this for again, Mr. Defresne?”

  “Maybe I should leave that for the Congressman,” I say, trying to defuse the tension. All it does is shorten the fuse.

  “Maybe it’d be best if you showed me the actual proposal for the project,” Minsky says.

  “I’d love to—but right now it’s confidential.”

  “Confidential?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The fuse is on its last hairs. Minsky doesn’t move.

  “Listen, can I be honest with you?” I ask.

  “What a novel idea.”

  He uses the sarcasm as a mental shove. I purposely twist in my chair and pretend he’s got control. Rope-a-dope. He may have twenty years on me, but I’ve played this game with the world’s best manipulators. Minsky’s just someone who got an A in science.

  “Okay,” I begin. “Four days ago, our office got a preliminary proposal for a state-of-the-art neutrino research facility. It was hand-delivered to the Congressman at his home address.” Minsky picks up his paperclip, thinking he’s getting the inside poop.

  “Who did the proposal? Government or military?” he asks.

  “What makes you say that?”

  “No one else can afford it. You have any idea how much these things cost? Private companies can’t pull that kind of weight.”

  Viv and I exchange a glance, once again rethinking Wendell, or whoever they really are.

  “What can you tell me about the project?” Minsky asks.

  “According to them, it’s purely for research purposes, but when someone builds a brand-new lab a mile and a half below the earth, it tends to get people’s attention. Because of the parties involved, we want to make sure that ten years from now, this won’t be coming back to haunt us. That’s why we need to know, worst-case scenario, what’s the potential damage they can do?”

  “So they’re going with an old mine, huh?” Minsky asks.

  He doesn’t sound surprised. “How’d you know?” I reply.

  “It’s the only way to get it done. The Kamioka lab in Japan is in an old zinc mine . . . Sudbury, Ontario, is in a copper mine . . . Know what it costs to dig a hole that deep? And then testing all the structural support? If you don’t use an old mine, you’re adding two to ten years to the project, plus billions of dollars.”

  “But why do you have to be down there in the first place?” Viv asks.

  Minsky looks almost annoyed by the question. “It’s the only way to shield the experiments from cosmic rays.”

  “Cosmic rays?” I ask skeptically.

  “They’re bombarding the earth at all times.”

  “Cosmic rays are?”

  “I realize it must sound a little sci-fi,” Minsky says, “but think of it like this: When you fly from coast to
coast on an airplane, it’s the equivalent of one to two chest X-rays. That’s why the airlines regularly screen flight attendants to see if they’re pregnant. We’re being bathed in all sorts of particles right now. So why put your science underground? No background noise. Up here, the dial in your wristwatch is giving off radium—even with the best lead shielding, there’s interference everywhere. It’s like trying to do open-heart surgery during an earthquake. Down below the earth’s surface, all the radioactive noise is shut out, which is why it’s one of the few places where neutrinos are detectable.”

  “So the fact that the lab’s underground . . .”

  “. . . is pretty much a necessity,” Minsky says. “It’s the only place to pull it off. Without the mine, there’s no project.”

  “Location, location, location,” Viv mutters, glancing my way. For the first time in three days, things are finally starting to make sense. All this time, we thought they wanted the mine to hide the project, but in reality, they need the mine to get the project going. That’s why they needed Matthew to slip the mine in the bill. Without the mine, they have nothing.

  “Of course, what really matters is what they’re doing down there,” Minsky points out. “Do you have a schematic?”

  “I do . . . it’s just . . . it’s with the Congressman,” I say, smelling the opening. “But I remember most of it—there was this huge metal sphere filled with these things called photomultiplier tubes—”

  “A neutrino detector,” Minsky says. “You fill the tank with heavy water so you can stop—and therefore detect—the neutrinos. The problem is, as neutrinos fly and interact with other particles, they actually change from one identity to another, making different neutrino ‘flavors.’ It’s like a Jekyll-Hyde type of affair. That’s what makes them so hard to detect.”

  “So the tubes are just for observation purposes?”

  “Think of it as a big enclosed microscope. It’s an expensive endeavor. Only a few exist in the world.”