The Curious Case of the Missing Head

by Gabriel Farago

  Rodrigo realised the deal was hanging in the balance and needed a final little push. ‘Makes sense to me,’ he said, turning to Alessandro. ‘I’m sure Mr Cordoba would be most grateful and, on my recommendation,’ continued Rodrigo, lowering his voice, ‘he will show his gratitude when we negotiate the details of that exclusive supply deal, if you know what I mean ...’

  ‘You think so?’ said Alessandro, his face lighting up.

  ‘Oh yes. In the end, the result is all that counts. What do you say?’

  ‘Done!’

  ‘Excellent,’ said Teodora. ‘In that case, gentlemen, we have a deal!’

  After a sumptuous seafood lunch served on deck, washed down with copious quantities of superb French wine, Teodora found herself momentarily alone with Izabel for the first time. They had given each other meaningful looks during lunch, and it was clear there was mutual attraction between them from the start. Teodora had decided to stay overnight on the yacht and return to Como early the next morning.

  ‘Before you arrived, Alessandro told us you are one of the most dangerous women he had ever come across,’ began Izabel, feeling relaxed after the splendid meal. ‘And the most interesting. What do you think he meant by that?’ she added, a sparkle in her eyes.

  ‘He said that? What else did he tell you?’

  ‘Nothing else, actually, and that only added to the mystery and made me curious. Tell me, are you really that dangerous?’

  Teodora pointed to two deckchairs in the shade. ‘Let’s go over there,’ she said, ‘and I will tell you what can make someone like me dangerous.’

  She’s so gorgeous, thought Teodora, watching Izabel slide into the deckchair next to her, her long legs dangling over the edge. And so unassuming and natural. So elegant! Teodora felt totally relaxed and at ease in Izabel’s company. It was a strange feeling she hadn’t experienced for ages, like being with an old friend she had known for years, and could trust implicitly and share secrets with.

  For a while the two women sat in silence, enjoying the promise of excitement and adventure floating in the air, and passing from one to the other like a tantalising, carnal temptation.

  ‘I haven’t spoken about this to anyone for a long time,’ began Teodora. ‘Especially not to someone I’ve just met.’ Teodora turned to face Izabel. ‘I can’t quite explain this, but I feel like I’ve known you for years. I feel that we were somehow destined to meet; here, today.’

  ‘I feel the same way,’ said Izabel and reached for Teodora’s hand, her gentle touch sending a wave of excitement tingling across Teodora’s blushing neck.

  ‘I can’t tell you exactly why I may appear so dangerous to a man like Alessandro,’ said Teodora. ‘We’ve had business dealings before – challenging ones. But looking back, he has good reason to think so, I suppose. What I can tell you is what made me dangerous and why.’

  Izabel looked at Teodora, her eyebrows raised. This wasn’t the answer she had expected. ‘Sounds intriguing,’ she said.

  ‘It happened during one night of terror in Albania a long time ago. I was fourteen at the time ... it was a night that changed my life forever.’

  Once that secret door had been opened, there was no way back. Teodora told Izabel what had happened that fateful night in graphic detail, leaving nothing out. Izabel listened in silence without letting go of Teodora’s hand. Towards the end of the story, Teodora’s voice had become a whisper of dark memories and unspeakable pain, exposed for the first time to a stranger she had just met. ‘I swore that night that I would not rest until my parents’ death had been avenged. I vowed to hunt down that evil man who had so brutally violated their bodies. I can still see his face clearly as if he were standing right here in front of us.’

  ‘And did you? Hunt him down?’

  ‘No. Not yet. Believe me, I’ve tried, in more ways than you can possibly imagine. But he seems to have vanished like a ghost, leaving behind him an unspeakable trail of suffering.’ Teodora paused and wiped away a few tears. ‘But one day, I will. Of that I’m sure!’

  After Teodora had finished, Izabel leant across to Teodora and kissed her tenderly on the mouth. It was a spontaneous expression of love and affection that sent more tears streaming down Teodora’s wan face.

  ‘I too know pain,’ said Izabel. She reached for the little jewel-encrusted cross hanging around her neck and stroked it gently. ‘I just lost the love of my life ...’

  ‘Want to talk about it?

  ‘She was the most beautiful, gifted, generous and funny person you can imagine, with a talent so big, it had audiences in raptures, and millions of adoring fans around the world buying her records.’

  ‘Who was she?’ asked Teodora. She could see that Izabel was beginning to choke and had difficulty in saying the name out loud.

  ‘Soul,’ she whispered. ‘She was Soul, the love of my life ...’

  ‘The jazz singer?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’m so sorry. I read about it. She—’

  ‘Yes, she died of an overdose on stage in Los Angeles six months ago. I was right there ...’

  Teodora squeezed Izabel’s hand. ‘I’m so sorry.’

  ‘Apart from my memories, this is all I have left,’ said Izabel, holding up the beautiful little cross around her neck. ‘She used to wear it all the time. It had a special meaning. Her mother gave it to her. It was supposed to protect her, you see. It did so once in Central Park in New York a long time ago, just after we became lovers. I saw it all. I was quite young then. A man who was waiting for us saved her. It was a warning; very frightening. After that, she went into rehab and promised never to touch the stuff again. Unfortunately, the little white devil never quite left her ...’ Izabel shrugged. ‘That was sixteen years ago. Sadly, this time the little cross couldn’t protect her. It’s mine now ...’

  ‘How very sad.’

  ‘Let me tell you the story of the little cross and the man who saved her life that time,’ said Izabel, feeling better. ‘It’s quite extraordinary. His name was Jack Rogan, an Australian war correspondent. You might have heard of him. He’s quite famous now. A bestselling author and adventurer.’

  ‘Wasn’t he in Time Magazine a few years ago?’

  ‘Yes, he was. On the cover. I caught up with him again at Soul’s funeral. It was all very sad ...’

  Somehow the presence of the woman sitting next to her, radiating compassion, understanding and strength, had eased the grief and hurt inside Izabel, and for the first time since her lover’s death she felt liberated; a heavy stone of deep sorrow had been lifted from her heart. She told Teodora the story of Jack Rogan and his little cross and how Soul had a copy made of it and sent to him after he returned from the war in Afghanistan, badly injured and alone.

  ‘What a story,’ said Teodora, pointing to the little cross. ‘That’s quite a bond now, between you and him. A special bond of memories ...’

  ‘That’s what he said,’ replied Izabel dreamily. ‘Memories of bittersweet love are to be cherished because they can defeat death.’

  ‘Yes, they can,’ said Teodora, trying to remember her parents as they were before that dreadful night of horror in Albania all those years ago.

  Teodora and Izabel made love that night with a passion and abandon that surprised them both. It was a liberating release of pent-up loneliness, loss and pain that seemed to dissolve in a sea of tenderness and love.

  When Izabel woke the next morning and reached sleepily across the bed to caress her new lover, she noticed she wasn’t there. Teodora had left at first light and was already halfway to Como.

  Disappointed, Izabel turned around to get up. That’s when she noticed the little note on her bedside table. It was a phone number with some words scribbled in a tiny, spidery handwriting across the crumpled piece of paper, just below the numbers: Soon. You promised. I need you!

  9

  US Space & Rocket Center, Alabama: 16 April

  One of the few connections with the outside world Professor Stolzfus
was allowed to foster were his monthly lectures he gave to visiting students at the US Space & Rocket Center, a short internal bus ride from the MSFC where he lived and worked. Stolzfus, an excellent public speaker and communicator, could explain complex ideas and principles without resorting to mathematics and equations, by using easy-to-understand analogies and everyday language. This made his lectures very popular and they were usually sold out weeks, often months in advance.

  He never shied away from tackling the big questions. Some of his favourite subjects were the Big Bang, the possibility of time travel, whether there is other intelligent life in the universe, the nature of black holes and the future of artificial intelligence, to name but a few. He particularly enjoyed question time at the end of his lectures and took great care to answer every question, however far-fetched or tedious it may seem, with patience and humour and without patronising or embarrassing his audience. His recently found fame after his tribute to Hawking from space had only added to his popularity.

  Major Andersen had an appointment with Stolzfus after his lecture to discuss his London travel and security arrangements, but she arrived early. This was deliberate as she wanted to attend the lecture to get to know the man she had to protect, a little better. She thought that to see him interacting with the public would be a good way to do this.

  The major walked in towards the end of the lecture and took a seat at the back of the hall packed full of eager students hanging on Stolzfus’s every word. Dressed in his usual eccentric attire – baggy black trousers, red braces, loose white shirt and bowtie – and with Gizmo sitting next to the lectern, he had wowed his mesmerised audience with stories of time travel, worm holes, black holes and warped space, making these remarkable subjects appear perfectly natural and easy to follow. The exciting Hubble telescope images displayed on the huge screen behind him added extra realism to his eloquent explanations.

  Then came question time and things became really interesting. A young woman of about eighteen sitting in the third row stood up and asked: ‘Professor Stolzfus, do you believe there is a God?’ and then sat down.

  Despite the fact Stolzfus had been asked this question many times before, he always found it difficult to answer. He knew he was walking a tightrope when addressing this important and highly emotive topic. He realised that his own Amish background had a lot to do with this; he had wrestled with the question for years himself, as science increasingly answered questions that used to belong exclusively to religion, and blurred the boundaries between the two. Torn between reason and faith, the scientist in him had formed a clear view, which had become stronger over the years as more compelling facts and laws of nature were discovered. However, his Amish upbringing based on strong faith and entrenched beliefs had been difficult to suppress and shake off.

  Stolzfus took his time before giving an answer. He took off his small, gold-rimmed glasses and began to polish the lenses with his handkerchief, as he stared at something only he could see. This only heightened the anticipation in the hall as several hundred eyes followed his every move.

  Interesting, thought the major. Is he performing, or just buying a little time and collecting his thoughts? Whatever it was, he had the spellbound audience eating out of his hands.

  After a while, Stolzfus put his glasses back on and turned towards the young woman who had asked the question.

  ‘I think the answer to this can be found in the journey of man,’ began Stolzfus quietly. ‘It is part of being human to ask this question. When early man looked up at the stars in wonder, or hid in fright when there was an eclipse or an earthquake, and faced a dangerous and hostile environment down here on earth – just to survive was a daily struggle often between life and death – it was only natural to turn to the supernatural for explanations and help. For thousands of years, man believed the natural world around him was ruled by gods. Gods were responsible for floods, thunder, lightning and storms; they made the sun rise every morning, and the Nile flood every year to ensure a good harvest. Angry gods had to be appeased with sacrifices, and generals and statesmen prayed to the gods for victory and guidance. Priests were in charge and complex rituals and beliefs evolved into religions that ruled the lives of everyone. Those who dared to question this were viewed as heretics, persecuted and burned at the stake.

  ‘Then along came the great thinkers like Aristotle, Aristarchus, Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, Newton, Einstein, to name but a few, who changed the way we view the natural world. How did they do this? By being inquisitive. They began to ask questions and increasingly they found the answers to those questions through observation and reason, which ultimately resulted in the discovery of laws. Laws of nature that actually explain everything around us in the entire universe. How it all began, where it is heading, how it works, everything. In the past, right now and in the future.

  ‘These great thinkers began to view the universe as a machine governed by physical laws that could be observed and understood by man. Laws that could do this were fixed and eternal.

  ‘This soon begged a question: If that is so, they asked, then where does God fit into this? What is the role of God in a universe governed by fixed and eternal laws that explain everything? They had reached the contradiction between science and religion.’

  Stolzfus turned again to face the young woman in the third row. ‘You asked me if I believe there is a God,’ he said. ‘In order to answer this, I would like to use God as a concept, in an impersonal sense like Einstein did, synonymous with the laws of nature. So if we do that, what follows is this: if we know the laws of nature, we know the mind of God. To me, knowing the mind of God is the biggest challenge of science today, and I believe that we are getting very close to achieving just that. A unifying theory of everything will do this. The late Professor Hawking was getting very close and we who are standing on his shoulders will, I believe, achieve it; soon.’

  Stolzfus scratched his head.

  ‘However, there are still some great challenges ahead,’ he continued. ‘One of them has occupied me for years now and is at the very centre of the question you have asked. It’s the great mystery of the Big Bang we spoke of earlier: How can something materialise out of nothing? Today, we are actually getting close to an answer, and the answer is to be found in perhaps one of the strangest facts about the universe you can imagine, a fact predicted and explained by those eternal laws of physics I mentioned before. When we have a close look at those laws we find that they predict, no, demand the existence of what we call “negative energy”. Remember the three essential building blocks we need to build a universe? What were they? Can someone tell me?’

  A young man at the back held up his hand.

  ‘Yes,’ said Stolzfus.

  ‘Matter, energy and space,’ said the young man.

  ‘Correct. And then along came Einstein with his famous E = mc2, which simply means what? Someone?’

  ‘That mass and energy are in fact the same thing,’ said another young man in the back.

  ‘Right. If that is so, we now only need two building blocks to construct a universe: energy and space. Finally, we are getting closer to the ultimate question we asked before. Can someone remember what it was?’

  ‘Where did all that energy and space needed to build a universe come from?’ called out a young woman in the first row.

  ‘Precisely. In short, how can energy and space materialise out of nothing? The answer is in that negative energy we discussed before. So, what is negative energy? Does anybody know?’

  How clever, thought the major. Stolzfus had already explained it all before, but in separate parts, and now he was tying it all together by asking questions of his audience. But now, Stolzfus was only the guide, and they were providing all the answers. Ingenious!

  Stolzfus looked around the crowded hall, but there were no hands in the air to be seen. ‘I thought so,’ he said, smiling. ‘I will give you the answer first and then try to explain how it can – must – be so.’ Stolzfus paused to let the anticipa
tion grow before he continued.

  ‘Those eternal, fixed laws of nature we spoke of earlier tell us that the universe in all its spectacular glory, its mind-boggling size and diversity, with its billions of galaxies in all their wonder and their terror, was in fact spontaneously created out of nothing. Yes, out of nothing,’ repeated Stolzfus. ‘And it’s all because of negative energy. So, what is negative energy? Professor Hawking explained this very well by using a simple, easy-to-understand analogy, and I’m sure he wouldn’t have minded if I now use it to explain what negative energy is to you. It’s about a man who wants to create a hill on a flat piece of land. He takes a shovel and begins to dig. He digs a hole and uses the soil to build his hill. But of course he isn’t just creating a hill, he is also creating – what? Can someone tell me?’

  ‘A hole,’ said someone in the back.

  ‘Precisely. And that hole is the exact negative version of the hill. The removed soil used to create the hill, and the hole left behind by the soil he had dug out balance out perfectly. Simple isn’t it? This is exactly what happened at the beginning of the universe during the Big Bang. The huge amount of positive energy that was produced, created the exact same amount of negative energy so that the positive and the negative add up to ... someone?’