Katarina Witte might prove to be a very valuable resource.
CHAPTER 21 — GOLF CART
Soul and Sudden spent the next two hours being driven around the massive CERN complex in what was basically a four-seat golf cart. Katarina Witte proved to be both an excellent driver and tour guide. Sudden made a show of taking notes, but, in truth, the tour provided little useful information. The laboratories and science exhibits were interesting, but both he and Rebecca could have done without visits to CERN’s well-stocked supermarket and its day care center. But they had to play their parts.
They had just pulled up to one of the on-site hotels when Rebecca’s iPhone buzzed. She looked at it and then, when Witte was not looking, showed Sudden what was on the screen. It was a list of seven names. He knew what it was. The whiz kids back at Langley had narrowed the search field at CERN down to the likeliest suspects. Sudden couldn’t help but think of the Mercury Seven, the name given America’s first astronauts, who became instant national heroes during the space race against the Soviet Union. He wondered if the “man” they were pursuing was a hero back home, wherever it was. As for the American astronauts, sic transit gloria. The U.S. space program was now largely dependent on Russian rocket boosters! Seven. A workable number. Their target might not be among them, but it was a place to start. And if they didn’t pan out, a second list would follow.
“This is all very interesting, Mrs. Witte,” Rebecca said, “but I’m not interested in visiting any more housing areas or kindergartens. Unless I missed it, we haven’t seen any colliders. You do have them, don’t you.”
Subatomic particles have nothing on these two, Sudden thought. They’re headed for their own collision. He wondered why two beautiful women rarely hit it off. Might have something to do with dark matter.
“They will come after lunch,” Witte said, easily.
“I’m starving,” Sudden said. “I could eat an antiquark.”
“I think we can do better than that. Why don’t we go to the restaurant now?”
As Witte explained on the way, there were three full-service restaurants in the CERN complex.
“You can, of course, get something to eat from machines, canteens and mobile food trucks,” she said. “But the restaurants are really excellent. And I will take you to the one I prefer, Novae. The food is exceptional’
“Wonderful,” Rebecca said, sourly.
The restaurant was big and bustling.
“I recommend the Rôti de lapin aux noisettes,” Witte suggested. “Roasted rabbit with hazelnuts. That’s what I’m having.”
Just like the cafeteria at Langley, Sudden thought. Not to mention the hoagie shop near his Philadelphia office.
“Sounds great,” Sudden said. “I think I’ll hop along.”
Rebecca rolled her yes.
“I know what I want. And I don’t need a translator.”
She ordered sliced pork with grain mustard.
“And, perhaps, a nice bottle of Swiss wine,” Witte said. “A white, which will go nicely with what we’ve ordered.”
She turned to a hovering waiter.
“The 2007 Cave de la côte Oenoline la Côte, s'il vous plaît.”
A moment later they were sipping the light-bodied and refreshing wine.
Sudden liked it, and said so.
“It comes from a winery on the shores of Lake Geneva,” Witte said, “and is made with Chasselas, Switzerland’s most widely planted grape.”
“Fascinating,” Rebecca said.
The meal passed without any blood being shed by the women, and the food was as advertised. Even Rebecca admitted as much. They finished with strong black coffee and some chocolates.
“Now, if you trust me to drive the cart after the wine,” Witte said, “I will show you the colliders.”
Her remark about the wine was obviously facetious, because she showed no effects of the two glasses she’d consumed. She resumed her tour-guide persona as they walked out of the restaurant.
“The instruments at CERN are particle accelerators and detectors. The accelerators boost beams of particles to high energies. Then the beams are made to collide with each other or with stationary targets. The detectors observe and record the results of these collisions.” They reached and boarded the golf cart. “Our first stop will be the Antiproton Decelerator, or the AD, which provides low-energy antiprotons for studies of antimatter.”
“The stuff that was in the little vials in that Tom Hanks movie,” Sudden commented. “Which almost blew up Rome.”
Witte laughed.
“Something like that. But don’t worry, at CERN we are lucky if we produce enough antimatter to light a cigarette if it touches something. We’re talking microscopic bits, atom size.”
The building housing the Antiproton Decelerator was a nondescript concrete affair. If anything, the decelerator itself was even less impressive. To Sudden, it looked like the climate-control unit that might be in the sub-basement of a large, modern office building, albeit much larger and with very strange tubes and conduits emanating from it.
“Before CERN,” Witte explained, “decelerators consisted of chains of accelerators, each performing various steps needed to produce antiparticles for experiments. Now this machine performs all the tasks alone.”
There was a low background hum.
“Is the AD on?” Rebecca asked.
“No. That’s just the building’s air-conditioning. Not that you would hear much if the AD was actually running. Maybe a small snap, like the one audible during a dental X-Ray. Now, please follow me.”
After a short walk to another part of the building they came to machine that reminded Sudden of a very long diesel engine.
“This is the Proton Synchrotron, or PS,” Witte intoned. “It is the starting point for the AD we just saw. It fires a beam of protons into a block of metal. About one out of every million collisions create a new proton-antiproton pair. The antiprotons produced travel at almost the speed of light. They have to be slowed down before they can be made into antiatoms. The AD uses magnets to focus antiprotons and strong electric fields slow them down. When the beam is slowed down to about a tenth of the speed of light in the decelerator they can be used in experiments. The whole process takes about 55 seconds.”
“Please take this the right way, Mrs. Witte,” Sudden said, “but you sound as if you actually understand what you are saying.”
She laughed.
“I’m not just a PR talking head, Mr. Swift. I have a degree in advanced nuclear physics.”
“I didn’t mean …”
“That is all right. And, please, call me Katarina.”
“Then it’s Cole.”
They both looked at Soul.
“And Rebecca,” she said, with feigned reluctance.
Their next stop, 10 minutes away, was an underground glass-enclosed control room at the site of the Super Proton Synchrotron. A pair of white-smocked technicians greeted Witte warmly and then went back to monitoring their instruments.
“The SPS is the second-largest machine at CERN,” Witte said. “You can only see a small section through this window, but it measures almost seven kilometers in circumference.”
Once again, Sudden was unimpressed with what he saw. The SPS looked like a long line of interconnected car engines that went on out of sight around the bend.
“The SPS takes particles from the Proton Synchrotron and accelerates them to provide beams for the Large Hadron Collider,” Witte continued. “The SPS operates at up to 450 GeV. It has 1317 electromagnets.”
“Ok,” Sudden said. “I’ll play the dunce. What’s a GeV?”
“Sorry,” Witte said. “I tend to slip into jargon. GeV stands for gigaelectronvolt, a unit of energy equal to billion electron volts. That means the SPS put out 450 billion volts of energy.” Sudden was finally impressed. “The SPS has controlled many different kinds of particles, including sulphur nuclei, electrons, positrons, protons and antiprotons. Although recently overshadowed by
the publicity surrounding the Large Hadron Collider, the SPS made its own history. Running as a proton-antiproton collider, it played a part in the 1983 Nobel-prize-winning discovery of W and Z particles.”
Sudden didn’t want to know what they were, or what happened to X and Y.
“The SPS also functions as the initiator for the Gran Sasso Project,” Witte said. “It directs a beam of protons onto a graphite target. The collisions create pions and kaons, which are focused by magnetic lenses into beam. The pions and kaons then decay into muons and muon neutrinos in a one-kilometer tunnel. At the end of the tunnel, a block of graphite and metal 18 meters thick absorbs protons as well as pions and kaons that did not decay. The muons are stopped by the rock beyond, but the muon neutrinos continue their journey to Italy, where they are detected. Now, on to our final stop, the Large Hadron Collider.”
She began to walk ahead and Sudden leaned over to Soul and whispered, “Thank God the lunch was good.”
***
Just after Sudden and Soul left on their golf cart tour, Dr. LaPortre received a call from his superior, Dr. Dieter Von Shoenlanke, CERN’s Director-General.
“Louis, I just heard from the N.D.B. in Zurich.” LaPortre recognized the initials of the Nachrichtendienst des Bunde, the Swiss Secret Service. “They asked me to extend every courtesy to an American colleague who will be visiting CERN for an indefinite period. Please credential him as a visiting scientist and arrange housing.”
“This is highly unusual, Dieter. What is it about?”
“I have no idea, and I was told not to ask.”
“We are scientists, not spies.”
“And Switzerland, Louis, can pull many strings, including those around our purse. I had no choice.”
Which was why LaPortre was now handing a facilities pass and other credentials to the rather strange-looking man sitting in front of him.
“I’m afraid our housing is in rather limited supply,” LaPortre said. “But I was able to arrange a room for you at one of our on-site hotels. It will be quite comfortable.”
“I’m sure it will be fine,” Brin Yunner said.
CHAPTER 22 - THE BEAST
“Well, here we are,” Katarina Witte said, pulling the cart up to a small, nondescript, one-story bunker-like building about a quarter mile removed from most of the CERN facilities.
The three of them went in through a single door. Sudden wondered why there was no security until he realized that there was nothing to secure — above ground. The structure was merely a shelter. Witte headed directly to a bank of elevators, where she entered some numbers on an electronic keypad. The doors hissed open and they got on. A moment later they were traveling downward at a rapid clip. The lift sighed to a stop and they started walking down a long, gleaming corridor that almost immediately branched off to smaller corridors left and right.
“They lead to various access points along the collider tunnel,” Witte explained, pointing down the corridors.
Continuing down the main corridor, they passed several small rooms, including a break room that smelled strongly of coffee. Finally, they reached a large glass double door and entered a gleaming control room that was a hive of activity. Witte led them over to a man standing at the largest of what appeared to be control panels. He was talking to another man seated next to him.
“Dr. Bokamper.”
The man standing turned around and smiled.
“Katarina, right on time, as usual. Are these our special guests?”
“Yes, Doctor. This is Rebecca Soul, an Israeli journalist, and Cole Swift, an American author. Cole, Rebecca, this is Dr. Klaus Bokamper, the Project Manager of the Large Hadron Collider.”
There were handshakes all around.
“I bet you can’t wait to see Das Big Junge,” Bokamper said. He saw the look of confusion on Sudden’s face. “The Big Boy. It’s a nickname. Our French scientists call it La Bête, The Beast. Either name is appropriate, I suspect. Come, I’ll show you.”
He turned to the man who was still seated facing the control panel.
“We’ll pick this up later, Irma.”
The “man” swiveled in the seat. Sudden looked into the toad-like face and realized it was a woman who he suspected might have stood too close to a particle accelerator. He tried not to stare at the large mole on the side of her nose.
“I trust you won’t be long, doctor,” the woman rasped. “We have much work to do.”
She swiveled back.
Bokamper looked at his guests and rolled his eyes.
“Dr. Eisler at Columbia sends his regards, Dr. Bokamper,” Sudden said as they started to walk away.
“Konrath! How nice. He’s a wonderful fellow.”
“If you don’t mind, Doctor,” Witte said. “I’ll find a quiet corner somewhere and make some calls. I think I’ve heard your presentation a few times before.” She smiled. “Perhaps a thousand. Is there a land line I can use?”
Bokamper laughed.
“The canteen is probably best, Katarina. There is a phone. Help yourself to the coffee. And Ludwig’s wife baked some spitzbuben to die for.”
They walked over to a large window overlooking part of the tunnel that housed the Large Hadron Collider. As with the smaller synchrotron they’d just visited, they could only see a small portion of the LHC, but looking in both directions down the tunnel, which looked large enough to accommodate a small train, Sudden was awed at the magnitude of the project. The gleaming collider itself looked like a very large sewer pipe about 12 feet in circumference, alternately painted in six-foot sections of blue, gold and silver. The walls of the tunnel were lined with pipes, wires, conduits and pumps.
“It’s bigger than I expected,” Sudden said.
“Yes,” Bokamper said. “That’s everyone’s first response. The outer tube contains two separate beam pipes kept at ultrahigh vacuum. The beams are guided in opposite directions around the 27-kilometer accelerator ring by thousands of superconducting electromagnets built from coils chilled to -271.3 Centigrade. That allows for the conduction of electricity without resistance or loss of energy. To achieve such a low temperature there is a distribution system of liquid helium.”
It was obvious that they were in for another lecture. For the next 10 minutes Bokamper droned on about the wonders of subatomic particles. Sudden smiled and nodded when he thought it appropriate but tuned the jargon out. He was more interested in studying the man giving the lecture.
Bokamper was of average height but his ramrod-straight posture made him appear taller. He had a full head of ash-blond hair combed straight back, piercing blue eyes, an aquiline nose and chiseled chin. He looked more movie star than scientist. Sudden noticed Rebecca Soul also taking him in.
Bokamper was finishing up, explaining how at certain points the particle beams were made to collide.
“Now, I know you must have some questions.”
He was looking at Rebecca Soul. Sudden wasn’t surprised. He was used to men looking at her.
“Doctor,” Rebecca said, “you must know that many people believe that you are playing God here, delving into things that may be very dangerous. Some even worry that you may inadvertently create a black hole that will swallow the Earth, perhaps even the solar system, up. Can you address those fears?”
Sudden knew that Rebecca was just playing her role, but he was actually interested in what Bokamper’s answer would be.
The scientist smiled.
“Come, let’s sit.”
He led them to a small table away from the window and they all took chairs.
“The LHC can achieve an energy that no other particle accelerators on Earth have reached before,” Bokamper stated, “something on the order of 14 TeV. That’s 14 trillion electron volts. Now, that sounds impressive, but in context, it’s not. A flying mosquito produces that kind of energy. What we do here is concentrate that energy into a space a million, million times smaller than a mosquito. What happens during collisions of particles at that level is astoun
ding, from a scientific point of view, because we have developed the capacity to detect the results. But on a cosmic scale, we’re newcomers to the game. We’re only duplicating the natural phenomena of cosmic rays, which are particles produced in outer space accelerated to energies far exceeding those of the LHC. What the LHC and other accelerators do, nature has been doing for a long time. In fact, over the past billions of years, nature has generated on Earth alone millions of cosmic ray collisions – and the planet still exists. The other planets, moons and our sun also get bombarded constantly. We estimate that the universe conducts 10 billion LHC-like experiments per second — and it doesn’t look like we are running out of stars and galaxies, does it?”
“You are saying cosmic rays can’t produce a black hole,” Rebecca said. “So, the LHC can’t either.”
“No, actually, I think cosmic rays can, and we might.”
“I don’t understand,” Sudden said.
“I’m in the minority in the scientific community,” Bokamper said. “Most of my colleagues hold to Einstein’s theory of gravity which only allows for the creation of black holes when certain huge stars collapse on themselves and concentrate a very large amount of matter in a very small space. Then their incredible gravity sucks everything into it, including light. Hence, a black hole. I, myself, think that at the subatomic level we work at, proton collisions might — and I stress might — create a microscopic black hole. But they would have virtually no mass and would decay within billionths of a second. Only if a way could be found to stabilize such a black hole could we even study them, and they still wouldn’t have any gravitational properties.”
“If they did exist, how would you stabilize them?” Rebecca asked.
“I have no idea,” Bokamper lied.
***
“The man is a genius,” Soul commented.
“Yes, Dr. Bokamper is considered one of the brightest minds at CERN,” Witte said. “We were lucky to get him.”
They were in the golf cart having spent another 45 minutes in the LHC control room while Bokamper and some of his assistants explained various instruments and experiments. Sudden had noticed Bokamper and Rebecca off in a corner laughing at one point when one of the other technicians was explaining something about flux capacitors. Later, Sudden realized it probably wasn’t about flux capacitors from the Back to the Future movie; the jargon was running together in his head and he had been trying to overhear what Bokamper and Rebecca were talking about.
TWO SUDDEN!: A Pair of Cole Sudden C.I.A. Thrillers Page 29