“What is his background?” Rebecca asked Witte.
“I don’t recall the specifics. But I know he is well-respected by all his colleagues. If you want, I can have some biographical material put together and sent over to your quarters.”
“Please. I may also want to speak to him again, perhaps away from the control room.”
“I’m sure that could be arranged.”
“We appreciate your taking the time to squire us around, Katarina,” Sudden said.
“You are quite welcome. What are your plans after today?”
“I don’t know about Rebecca here, but I think I’m just going to wander around the next few days. Try to get some local color, meet some people. It’s how I work. A guided tour is great, but I’ll need more.”
“I quite understand. And you, Rebecca.”
“I think I will do much of the same, but perhaps with more purpose. I presume we have the run of the facilities.”
“Yes. Within reason, of course. You both have V.I.P. badges and everyone has been told to cooperate. We want people to know what we do here. We compete with many other scientific projects around the world for funds, and conjecture about our black holes destroying the universe notwithstanding, we relish publicity. In fact, I am in the midst of putting together long-term exhibits in London and Moscow extolling the work we do here.” They had reached the parking lot outside the Welcoming Center. “Do you want me to help you find your housing? Or are the facilities maps in your packets sufficient?”
“I’ll be fine,” Sudden said. “You’ve been kind enough already.”
“Yes,” Rebecca said, finally with a hint of graciousness. “I think I can locate my accommodations on my own as well. Thank you.”
“Well, good luck. The restaurants will be open for a few more hours.”
With that, Witte said her goodbyes and drove off with a cheery wave.
“Nice gal,” Sudden said.
He and Soul checked their information packets. It turned out they were billeted in the same apartment complex but on different floors.
“Since we obviously despise each other,’ Sudden said, “we will limit our contact to bumping into each other at lunch.”
They picked a restaurant they would meet every day at 1 PM.
“I thought about kicking you in the balls while you were salivating over Katarina,” Rebecca said, smiling. “But I thought that might be too much.”
“Look who’s talking,” Sudden said. I saw you eying Bokamper.”
“For the same reason you were.”
“So, you noticed.”
“Of course.”
Klaus Bokamper was one of the seven prime suspects on the list they had received.
CHAPTER 23 - ZERO
Klaus Bokamper’s day had been typically long. The only real break he’d had was when the two visitors came to the LHC control room. He’d actually enjoyed talking to them, especially the very attractive woman journalist from Israel, even if he threw in the occasional lie. Not that they would ever catch on. But he knew his limitations and needed to unwind and then rest. He’d been putting in 18-hour days for weeks, trying to unravel the mystery of Baker’s transmission while carrying a full workload at the LHC.
After leaving the control room, he stopped by a small package store near the Welcoming Center and bought a baguette, a hunk of emmentaler cheese, a link of sweet Italian sausage and some peaches. He then went to his one-bedroom luxury apartment in the complex reserved for senior CERN staff who wanted to live at the facility. Once there he opened a bottle of D'Autrefois Pinot Noir and made a sandwich, which he ate while watching the news on TV. More war. More riots. More Kardashians. What a planet.
After finishing his sandwich, he cut up a peach and dropped the pieces in his wine, which he took into his bathroom, along with a Crispin Patiño, his favorite Cuban cigar, a gift from a visiting Russian scientist. He undressed, ran a tub and settled in with an Alton Rhode novel, one of a series of mysteries he enjoyed. He thought that if he had time left at CERN he next might try one of the books written by the Swift fellow he’d met earlier.
Bokamper ate the peaches and was enjoying his cigar as he sipped the remainder of his wine when he suddenly figured out why Baker had sent him the calculations, most of which concerned absolute zero and rhodium.
He actually shouted “Eureka!” — just as Archimedes allegedly did, also in a tub, when he suddenly realized the volume of water displaced when he got into the water was equal to the volume of his submerged body. The ancient Greek scholar was said to be so anxious to tell people of his discovery that he jumped out of his tub and ran through the streets of Syracuse naked. Bokamper’s reaction was more reserved. He calmly got out of the tub without spilling the wine, threw on some clothes and drove over to CERN’s auxiliary control room, a few doors removed from the main control room. It was after hours, but not as late as he often worked, so none of the security personnel thought anything of “Santa” Klaus popping in. They were all used to it by now.
As usual, he had the auxiliary control room, and its computers, all to himself. He took out his iPad, which he had to admit was quite an impressive device, and called up the equations and calculations that Baker had sent him. He inputted them into one of the Hadron computers, integrated them with his own work, which none of his fellow human scientists could understand, which was not a problem. All of them were supposedly theoretical scientists, always toying with ideas that only made sense to themselves. Those ideas were shared rarely, and only when scientists wanted to share. Millions, maybe billions, could ride on a patent arising out of something someone was brainstorming.
Because many of CERN’s accelerators were cooled by liquid helium and other elements, Bokamper and all the facility scientists knew all about absolute zero, the lowest possible temperature, where nothing could be colder and no heat energy remains in a substance. All subatomic activity theoretically stopped. That temperature has been determined to be -273.15 °C, or −459.67°F. Compared to absolute zero, most interstellar space is a sauna. The coldest temperature recorded by instruments in the solar system is a -240°C in the shadow of a lunar crater. Even the Boomerang Nebula, 5,000 light years from Earth, which is cooled by gases expanding at more than 300,000 miles per hour, is a few degrees above absolute zero.
Why hadn’t he seen it sooner?
According to Baker, scientists at the University of Georgia had been trying to duplicate a Bell Labs experiment in which powerful magnets were used to slow the spin of atoms in a piece of rhodium until it reached a temperature of one billionth of a degree above absolute zero. It was a record that had stood for 14 years. The Georgia scientists believed that with their more powerful lineac magnets they could do better. Not that they believed they could reach absolute zero. According to Earth science, mainly the Third Law of Thermodynamics, absolute zero was a theory, not an attainable goal. At absolute zero, nothing would exist. And how could you reduce something to nothing? As was the case in the contention that the speed of light barrier was unbreakable, earth scientists were, Bokamper mused, light-years behind what other scientists in his own world knew to be true. They had gone past absolute zero, at which point the fundamental particles of nature have no motion and exhibit only quantum-like effects. In fact, they were toying with the idea of negative absolute zero.
Bokamper had his own doubts about that, but what was important to him was the fact that, as Earth scientists had already discovered, molecules in an ultra-cold gas can chemically react at distances up to 100 times greater than they can at room temperature. At absolute zero that particular effect would presumably be infinite.
Bokamper now realized that if he could get his transport cube to absolute zero, it was highly likely that its properties would be fully restored. For some reason, subatomic particles rearranged themselves as their environment neared absolute zero, and then stayed there. Baker knew that the magnets at the Hadron complex were vastly more powerful than anywhere else, and there were a lot mor
e of them. And he had realized that the cube was made out of a metal unknown on Earth — but closely related to rhodium! That’s why he sent the message to Bokamper at Hadron. Now all he had to do was figure out how to utilize the magnets to manipulate his cube down to absolute zero. At Hadron, the magnets were used in sequence along the track to speed up particles. But what if he used them to magnify each other’s power in one location? Say, with his transport cube in the center of their magnetic fields? Was it possible with a metal similar to rhodium but with unearthly characteristics?
Bokamper watched his screen as the computer crunched the new calculations. There was a steady diminution in values as the equations were sorted out. Equations that at first took up the entire screen slowly reduced, line by line. Finally there were eight lines, which kept flashing. Then seven. Then six. The last reductions were painstakingly slow, and got slower as the lines diminished. Finally, after ten minutes — a lifetime for a computer that powerful — there was one flashing line. A very long equation. Too long. Bokamper grew nervous. Was the computer still thinking, or had it reached a problem it couldn’t complete?
But no. The lines flashed, and lost a couple of symbols internally, becoming shorter, as the computer cut mathematical corners. It did this five more times. Then the equation just kept flashing and Bokamper could see that it was the same one, without any shortening. The flashing seemed to go on forever and Bokamper was convinced it had “given up”.
But then it stopped flashing. What finally remained was:
GeV/c2 X 1.783×10−27 kg 1 amu - 931.4941 MeV/c2×0.9314941 TeV/c2 1.602176565(35)×10−19 J ~624 EeV (6.24×1020 eV) (100 W) = 100 J/s ≈ 6.24×1020 eV/s.
Bokamper stared at the result: 100 J/s ≈ 6.24×1020 eV/s×mc2.
He knew he was the only one on Earth who understood the answer to the equation, the ticket home.
So, for the second time that day Bokamper shouted, “Eureka!”.
***
Brin Yunner was content to let Soul and Sudden do most of the investigative legwork for him. He’d received the same list of seven names they had and was confident that they’d eventually locate the target, if not in that first list, in subsequent ones. But since he wanted to be there when they made their move, he kept close tabs on their movements. That wasn’t hard to do in the bustling CERN complex. He’d procured a lab smock and a golf cart, and had no trouble shadowing Soul and Sudden on the first day, when they were being driven around by the hot babe whose name, he discovered, was Katarina Witte, who headed up Stakeholder Relations, whatever the hell that was.
But after the first day, his surveillance became harder, as Soul and Sudden split up, presumably dividing the list between them. He decided to stick with Soul. Not only was she easier to look at, but he’d never waterboarded her as he did Sudden, who might more easily spot him despite the dark glasses he wore and the stomach pad he’d purchased at a novelty shop in Geneva. He felt ridiculous but he didn’t think his own mother would recognize him at a distance.
It didn’t take Yunner long to realize that Soul and Sudden met every day in a CERN restaurant at approximately the same hour, probably exchanging notes.
That made his job a bit easier. But he knew the really hard part was yet to come.
CHAPTER 24 — WINNOWED OUT
During their first “chance” meeting at the restaurant the next day, Soul and Sudden decided, for investigative purposes, to split the other six men on the list, all unmarried physicists: Marius Zambasa, whose specialty was vapor plasma; Sebastian Muglin, who ran the Compact Muon Solenoid Project; Ignacio Petrillo, an expert in elastic scattering and defraction; Hideki Takamura, who apparently knew everything there was to know about the Higgs boson; Aaron Shultz, who spent his time on something called the Precision Mass Measurements of Exotic Nuclei with the Triple-Trap Mass Spectrometer, and Basil Throckmorton, the go-to guy on laser spectroscopy of gallium isotopes.
“Do you believe some of these specialties?” Sudden asked when he and Rebecca, using directories supplied by Katarina Witte, discussed their targets. “They could all be aliens as far as I’m concerned. Thank God there are no women scientists on the list.”
“Yet,” Rebecca said. “If we clear this bunch, there will be more names. Meanwhile, I’ll take Gentile, Muglin and Petrillo. You check out the others.”
“Who gets Bokamper? Want to flip a coin?”
“I have him. He called me this morning in my room. Wants to take me to dinner.”
Sudden stared at her.
“What? You saw the way he looked at me.”
“Suppose he’s our guy and he’s on to us. You could be walking into a trap.”
“You think he’s planning to feed me a poisoned escargot? If he wanted to get rid of me there are easier ways. I don’t care how safe they say this place is, it wouldn’t be hard for someone like Bokamper to arrange an accident that turned me into plasma. I just think he has the hots for me.”
“Baker had a way with the ladies, remember?”
“Are you jealous? Sounds like a win-win for me.”
Sometimes Sudden forgot how calculating Rebecca Soul could be.
***
Rebecca wasn’t at the restaurant the next day. Sudden waited for almost 40 minutes, nursing a coffee, and was becoming increasingly anxious when she finally walked in. She grabbed a cup of chai latte and joined him.
“Sorry, I had something to do. What did you find out?”
“My guys didn’t pan out,” Sudden said. “Zambasa has one arm. Lost it to a land mine in Nigeria. I’m pretty sure someone would have noticed something along the way about him if he was our man. Makes you wonder how good those guys back at Langley are to miss that. As for Muglin and Petrillo, I don’t think it’s either of them. They live together and are unabashedly gay.” He smiled. “Not that there’s anything wrong with gay aliens. But they’ve been together for years. Muglin told me they plan to marry.”
“Jesus, Cole. You’re eliminating suspects who are handicapped, black and gay. If that gets out, we’re liable to get sued. Do you think aliens are as prejudiced as humans?”
Sudden laughed.
“Why should they be any different? No, I just think that they’d stick to one model. Why complicate things. We can always go back and revisit everyone. How did you do?”
“I think Takamura is a long shot,” Rebecca said. “He wasn’t even here when Baker sent his message. He was lecturing back in Tokyo. As for Shultz and Throckmorton, two more unlikely candidates would be hard to imagine. Shultz is a total dweeb, all glasses, buck teeth and dandruff. Throckmorton weighs about 400 pounds and smells like a three-day-old flounder. I would hope even aliens would have more self-respect.”
“That leaves your boyfriend, Bokamper, at least in the first bunch. How did your dinner go?”
“Very well. He asked me back to his apartment here at CERN.”
“To see his plasma etchings, no doubt.”
Sudden couldn’t keep the hint of disapproval out of his voice. Rebecca ignored him.
“I got his DNA. That’s why I was late today. I went into Geneva to give a sample to an old friend of mine in Mossad. He’s taking it to a lab.”
“How did you get Bokamper’s DNA? From a glass.” He paused. “Maybe a toothbrush?”
“My, don’t we sound jealous.” Rebecca smiled. “Who needs a toothbrush? I insisted that Klaus use condoms. He couldn’t very well say he is sterile, could he? Anyway, the man is insatiable. He lost count. It was no problem to sneak one into my purse.”
Sudden was sorry he asked.
“When will you get the results?”
He’d wanted to say the “fucking results” but thought that would be tacky.
“Hopefully, tomorrow. I’m meeting my contact back in Geneva.”
“What are you doing tonight?”
Rebecca smiled.
“I have a date. More research.”
“Don’t tell me.”
“Then, don’t ask.”
***
That evening, Sudden was having a Scotch before a late dinner in Novae when Katarina Witte walked in. She spotted him and came over to his table.
“How is your research coming, Mr. Swift?”
“Remember, it’s Cole now. And Katarina.” He pointed at a seat. “Would you care to join me? I haven’t ordered yet.”
“You don’t mind? I do hate to dine alone. I don’t normally eat out at night but there is nothing in my fridge.”
“I’d appreciate the company myself.”
It was true. And Katarina Witte wasn’t hard to look at. In fact, she was stunning. He waved over a waiter.
“Would you like a drink?”
“Yes, please.” She looked up at the waiter. “A Negroni, please. Two slices of orange.”
The waiter looked at Sudden, who pointed at his Scotch and nodded. The man walked away.
“What’s in a Negroni?”
“Gin, Campari and red vermouth,” Katarina said. “It’s very refreshing. Where is Rebecca? Don’t you dine together?”
Sudden laughed and decided to keep up the charade, which, he realized, had a ring of truth to it now.
“We don’t see eye to eye, as you might have gathered from our little tour. I’ve only bumped into her once or twice since.”
“Yes. She seems quite serious.”
“She seems quite serious about one of your scientists. That fellow, Bokamper. They’re out together tonight.”
Sudden wasn’t being caddish. He wanted to see what Witte thought about it. Katarina didn’t seemed surprised.
“How nice. I’m sure she will find his company very rewarding. Dr. Bokamper works very hard. He deserves a chance to relax.”
TWO SUDDEN!: A Pair of Cole Sudden C.I.A. Thrillers Page 30