Cosega Sphere (The Cosega Sequence Book 4)

by Brandt Legg

  “A buddy of mine’s worked in UQP for a few years now,” one of the assistants offered. “I know they’re big into observations and experiments with gravitational waves.”

  “That makes sense,” Savina said. “Gravitational waves changed everything.”

  “Booker’s got people spending fortunes on experiments with the waves. It’s like he’s trying to prove it’s possible to move great distances through the universe, even across time. Once they proved Einstein’s ‘invisible’ waves existed, they took it to an extreme. As you know, the waves occur whenever an object moves in space, like ripples through a pond.”

  “Yeah, but the ripples are made of particles a million times smaller than the width of a hydrogen atom,” the other assistant countered. “They’re impossible to detect without LIGO.”

  They all knew about LIGO, the advanced Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory, which had first detected and continued to track gravitational waves. While exciting and astounding proof of distortions in spacetime, which in itself had enormous implications on what the universe is, the waves were so minute it seemed more like an astronomical Rosetta Stone than anything that would have a practical application.

  “The size isn’t the point,” the first assistant continued. “At least not to the people working on UQP. Apparently they want to ride those ripples at their peaks. My friend explained it as instead of swimming across an ocean, imagine surfing across it on a big wave. You’d get to the other side much faster and with far less effort and energy.”

  “Wow!” Savina said, laughing in a moment of revelation. “Booker really thinks he can find a way to travel across time . . . and why not? Light does it.”

  “And all the information in the Eysen sure has.”

  Chapter 35

  Booker—through his own extensive surveillance network—learned of the meeting between Dabnowski and the Foundation too late. Prior to Cira’s hospitalization, there had been an orderly system to monitoring the movements of all the scientists involved in Sphere research, but in the past twenty-four hours, all those procedures had gone by the wayside. AX agents had been reassigned and technicians monitoring the scientists suddenly had their caseloads tripled. Booker had been shocked by the meeting and contacted Dabnowski himself.

  “Do you have any idea what the Foundation is trying to do?” Booker asked after the preliminaries, which included Dabnowski admitting to the meeting.

  “They’re trying to keep the Sphere away from the government.”

  “So am I.”

  “But Mr. Lipton, with all due respect, you’re a profiteer, and—”

  “I have funded the research and paid your salary!” Booker cried, incensed. “The only reason you know what you know about the Sphere, have even seen the Sphere, is because of me.”

  “But you’re after the technology. You want to find ways to make the next great gadget, the next billion-dollar market, a way to crush another competitor. The Foundation does actual good in the world.”

  Booker knew people believed that. The Foundation had teams of public relations people making them look like angels on Earth when, in fact, he considered them as close to evil as any group he’d ever known. He’d said many times that even though he generally despised the CIA and NSA, those agencies were far more trustworthy and upstanding than the Foundation. Booker, on the other hand, was seen much as Dabnowski had described, even worse, depending on whom you talked to.

  “While it’s true, I have few advocates, Dr. Dabnowski, I can assure you that dealing with the Foundation will accomplish the exact opposite of what you’re attempting to achieve.”

  “I’m glad I don’t trust you, because that would be most unfortunate, if it were true. And if you’re thinking of having some of your thugs or friends at the NSA pick me up, it’s too late. I’ve already turned over my research to the Foundation.”

  “For such a brilliant man, Dabnowski, you’re a fool,” Booker said, trying to contain his anger. At the same time, he worked an INU and ordered an AX agent to pick up Dabnowski immediately. He knew the Foundation would have already ordered Dabnowski’s assassination or abduction, and wanted to save the man, and his knowledge, if possible. “Whom did you meet with at the Foundation?”

  “Why should I tell you?”

  “Because you have made a colossal mistake, and this is your last chance to minimize the damage you’ve done. I should also remind you that you signed a non-disclosure agreement which is binding, and will ruin you, should I decide to enforce it.”

  “You know this is about more than one man’s career. I’ve already decided it’s worth my job, my future, even my life, if it comes to that. History may never know my sacrifice, but I’ve done what I know is right. The future of all of us is more important than the life of one of us.”

  Booker knew AX would get it out of him, and he also had other ways of finding the information. There weren’t that many Foundation agents in Hawaii, and Booker had access to NSA tracking systems. It might take a few hours, but he’d find out. The problem was that with so much at stake, a few hours could mean everything.

  The monitors in Booker’s office were filled with images of urgency; Gale Asher on the Gulfstream, taxiing toward the runway, Rip Gaines on El Perdido, the hospital in Fiji, his link to the security cameras still live. Others showed BLAX and AX operatives in various parts of the world, yet with all that activity, Dabnowski troubled him most at the moment.

  He muted the call and gave the order to pick up the astrophysicist. Once the Foundation realized what Dabnowski really knew, they would grab him. If not them, then the NSA would find him once they caught up in the game, which shouldn’t take long after their raid on the university. The world had largely ignored Booker’s Universe Quantum Physics project, but if the government got enough of the scientists to talk, UQP was about to become the hottest topic in the intelligence community.

  The global balance of power had been fairly lopsided for decades. The US had the edge in all areas of technology, health and medicine, space, weapons, and more. For the past seventy-five years, the US owed almost all of that “good fortune” to HITE, but everything HITE had ever accumulated paled next to the Eysen-Sphere. It was the reason they never stopped looking, and now, with what the UQP team had discovered, the stakes were even higher.

  Booker watched Rip struggle in the skyroom, trying to understand the unfathomable object, and imagined what it would have been like for those in earlier times, like Clastier, Malachy, and the others who had encountered Spheres.

  “It’s all we’ve ever sought,” Booker whispered to himself. “Understanding… answers to all the great questions . . . and yet we may destroy ourselves before we uncover that which can save us.”

  Chapter 36

  Rathmore watched the plane carrying Gale turn onto the runway at the Honolulu International Airport. He knew his options: block the runway and storm the plane, have the plane fired upon and destroyed, or let it takeoff.

  “Ninety seconds,” the team at the runway announced.

  “Let her go and we’ll get Gaines,” the Conductor urged again.

  “Where is she going to go?” Murik asked Rathmore rhetorically. “Is that Gulfstream going to outrun an F/A-18 Hornet?”

  “Sixty seconds.”

  “We have her on satellite. We’ll know every turn the pilot makes and our Navy MONSTER just put eight Hornets in the air.”

  Rathmore looked at the live feed from the runway. On another screen, several men, who had been on the plane from Fiji with Gale, were involved in a shoot-out with federal agents that had spilled onto the main concourse. It wasn’t a matter that particularly concerned him. That was definitely within the Conductor’s domain, but he did want at least one of the men alive. He was certain they worked for Booker Lipton, and he hadn’t had many opportunities to question AX agents.

  “Thirty seconds.”

  Murik looked at Rathmore. The team had to start moving if they were going to safely block the runway. T
he Gulfstream had been cleared by the tower and was accelerating.

  “Okay,” Rathmore finally said. “Let them fly.” He stood up and addressed the entire room in a loud, bursting shout. “Do. Not. Lose. This. Plane!” He then made eye contact with some of the younger techs and continued his rant. “Loose lips sink ships! That means no one outside this room is to know we have Gale Asher. No one!” Rathmore had become concerned, over the course of the past twelve hours, that the NSA had a leak. “Let me remind you that this is a Scorch and Burn, meaning a violation of clearance carries a mandatory death sentence.”

  While the room buzzed with tense and determined activity, Rathmore’s thoughts turned to his prisoner down the hall, former FBI Special Agent Dixon Barbeau. Rathmore had read every file relating to the Eysen case. At the very beginning of the investigation into Gaines’ theft of the artifacts, Barbeau had made a critical decision to let a key witness go in the hopes that he would lead them to Gaines. It had not worked. The witness was later killed, and Gaines had never been caught.

  Rathmore closed his eyes and said a quick prayer. He needed to have another conversation with Barbeau, but something nagged at him. Something in how Barbeau was so sure of himself, so damned self-righteous, but that would have to wait. He didn’t plan to leave the situation room until Gale Asher’s plane landed.

  “Sir, King is on the line, looking for an update,” a technician said.

  Rathmore looked at Murik.

  “You have to tell him,” Murik said slowly.

  Rathmore took the call. A few minutes later, he turned back to Murik. “King’s got the Unit moving toward the flight path.”

  “Let’s hope he’s not the leech.”

  “He’s not,” Rathmore said.

  “We just got the report back on the tail number of the Gulfstream,” another analyst announced, as they all watched the plane soar into the sky. “It belongs to Buchta Broadcasting, a media company that owns a slew of radio and television stations in the southwest, including, are you ready for this, the one where Gaines’ father works.”

  “So Booker owns everything,” Rathmore said, disgusted. “Arrest Gaines’ father. Pick up Asher’s parents too. In fact, get every relative either one of them might have spoken with during the past seven years. Boom. Boom. Boom.” He clapped his hands in exclamation.

  —O—

  The Conductor reported that the scientists were slow in providing information about the Sphere research and UQP. “We’ve still got nothing useful from the drives. Our experts are now saying it could take weeks, even months, to crack the encryptions.”

  “That may be optimistic,” Murik said. “I talked to one source who said it could be years, if ever. Booker’s companies are all protected by insanely complex firewalls that have never been hacked, and ever since Gaines discovered the Eysen-Sphere, encryption has advanced rapidly.”

  “It’s one of my areas of expertise,” Rathmore said. “I think we can crack it.”

  “What about CryptFast, a firm suspected to be controlled by Booker?” Murik asked. CryptFast had begun selling software five years earlier. It came with a million-dollar guarantee if it was to ever be hacked. “I’ll take that check. Might even buy you a new personality, Claude.”

  “Marketing gimmick,” Rathmore said, ignoring Murik’s weak attempt at humor while nervously watching the Gulfstream flying out over the Pacific Ocean.

  “No one’s beat it. They even host an annual contest where they up the guarantee to ten million.”

  “Publicity stunt,” Rathmore snapped. “The NSA could get through it easily, but you know we’re prohibited by law from taking part. None of our technicians could privately try such a stunt either or they’d face prosecution.”

  “I don’t know,” Murik said, staring into his INU, his fingers manipulating data like a concert pianist. “Booker isn’t some software startup company.”

  “It doesn’t matter anyway. Even if they crack the university drives in a week, that’s too late to help us right now,” Rathmore said. “What are the scientists saying? That’s where our information is going to come from.”

  “The biggest news is that there are at least one thousand scientists on Booker’s payroll.”

  “More than a thousand?” Rathmore repeated. “What the hell is Booker doing? It only took a few hundred to design and build the first atomic bomb.”

  “If I recall my history correctly,” the Conductor began, “the Manhattan Project, which produced the bomb, took about five years and cost two billion dollars, even translating that into today’s dollars, that’s twenty-some billion. Booker has had seven years, and could spend twenty billion each year without even noticing.”

  “What the hell is he working on?” Rathmore asked again. “The Sphere has already made Booker rich beyond measure with his INU technology, but there’s a lot more to it . . . Those damned scientists know. We’ll arrest them all if we have to. I’m authorizing enhanced interrogation methods.”

  “On scientists?” Murik asked. “We’re going to torture scientists? Maybe we should round up some of Gaines’ daughter’s preschool classmates and see how they do with water boarding.”

  “We need to know what they know now,” Rathmore retorted. “You CIA boys invented this stuff. I would think you’d be leading the charge.”

  “They aren’t all here,” the Conductor said. “They’re at universities, labs, and companies around the world. And something else . . . ”

  “What?” Murik asked, still ignoring Rathmore.

  “They’re afraid,” the Conductor said. “Terrified, actually.”

  “Of what?” Rathmore asked.

  “I don’t know yet. They’re too scared to tell us.”

  “Sir!” the Vax analyst shouted in alarm. “We’ve got data moving on Asher. Waves of it leaving our network!”

  Chapter 37

  Taz couldn’t get anywhere near the gate purported to be Gale’s location. He could hear the shootout though, and hoped the feds weren’t dumb enough to kill their most valuable lead. Stellard fed him information from inside the NSA while he watched helplessly from behind a security barrier as a large section of the airport was evacuated.

  “They found her and an unidentified man in a routine sweep of a plane from Fiji,” Stellard told him through his earpiece.

  “Fiji? Damn, they play wild,” Taz said, hitting his left palm hard enough to feel the sting of his gold rings. One of them, an eagle in flight, had been his father’s, a military man he barely remembered. KIA in Iraq.

  “At least three other men were on board the plane as well. A passenger plane, by the way.”

  “They flew commercial?” Taz couldn’t believe it. “Any chance the guy is Gaines?”

  “The NSA doesn’t believe so, but it hasn’t been entirely ruled out. Still, if Gaines was traveling with her, why would they leave Fiji when there are plenty of places to hide down there and they would remain much closer to their daughter?”

  “You’re right. She’s heading to Gaines. It’s the only reason she would take this risk.”

  “We’re working on getting you airport security credentials. We had an identity lined up as an airline employee—one of the members owns one of the airlines at that terminal—but in the time it took to get you here, they ordered all employees out and aren’t letting any others inside.”

  Taz cursed the time he’d wasted with “that egghead” Dabnowski. “Ever since Gaines was ‘resurrected,’ I’ve been a little late for every party,” Taz said. “We can’t just rely on scraps of information from Wattington. By the time we learn anything, the NSA is already onto the next break.”

  “We’ve got the daughter.”

  “Exactly. If the NSA gets ahold of the kid, we’ll be out of the game. Every minute that passes is a minute closer to the US government figuring that out. We have to cut a deal with Booker now.”

  “But we can’t move the girl,” Stellard said, standing in the Foundation’s darkened conference room. The seldom-use
d space was a virtual “dome of silence,” utilizing every known anti-monitoring technology, but Stellard came in for the heat. There was a giant gas fireplace set into one wall, surrounded by an ornately carved marble mantle. He loved the flames, generated instantly whenever he pressed the concealed switch. It was his favorite place in the building.

  “There must be a way to safely immobilize a six-year-old kid and move her,” Taz said. “I mean, they can replace a human heart. These are just eyes! If the NSA kills Gale Asher, there’ll be far fewer demands on Gaines for a deal.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Asher is a ‘mommy.’ That maternal instinct means she’ll betray Gaines, if need be, to save her kid, and she’ll sure as hell put enough pressure on him to help make up his mind. The Sphere for the kid, or, at least, Gaines for the kid.” Taz looked around at the mayhem continuing to build at the airport. “But we have to do it now while Asher is still alive!”

  Stellard agreed and immediately made the call to Maxim Miner, also known as the Judge. As current head of the Foundation, the Judge was one of the most powerful people in the world, and he could reach Booker.

  —O—

  The Judge waited for a series of clicks and transfers. He’d spoken to Booker on numerous occasions and knew the routine—routers, faux stations, and satellite bounces that would make the heavily encrypted call totally untraceable. Booker was not just the world’s wealthiest man, he was the world’s most wanted.

  Although he had never been prosecuted for any crime—his lawyers, lobbyists, and contacts were too good for that—the NSA and FBI had put him on a target list ever since the Gaines case. They couldn’t prove any direct wrongdoing by Booker, but there had been enough confrontations with suspected AX agents that meant charges were always pending. There’d actually been open military conflict in Mexico with AX, but somehow Booker had bribed his way out of that mess. The Foundation, on the other hand, didn’t care about proof or how much money the man had. They employed a team of four assassins who worked full time trying to find and kill the trillionaire.