In the darkness the old man brought his hands up and cradled his head.
What have I done?
With his aging eyes he watched his discovery tear a man apart, saw the acid bite of his creation destroy flesh and sinew with quick and ravenous hunger.
Feeling contrite to the point where his soul had paid a horrible price, though not a religious man, old man Sakharov got to his feet. He was no longer afraid.
When the door of his residential capsule opened he was greeted by a harsh light coming from the hallway, causing his eyes to squint until they adjusted.
The hallway was empty.
He sauntered into the corridor in a gait that spoke volumes — that he was not a threat by any physical means, could hardly raise a hand in defiance let alone in retaliation. But it wasn’t his body they had to worry about. It was his mind.
Old Man Sakharov made his way to the lab and silently watched a tech at the console typing a program related to his nanotechnology, the data transmitting as scientific cuneiform on the monitor. In a slow curdle deep within the pit of his stomach; Sakharov could feel a slow boil.
Quietly he made his way behind the tech, and in doing so picked up a metal clipboard on his way. After hefting it he realized that it was too light to cause any real damage. Perhaps striking the man at the temple, a well-placed blow, he considered.
Taking careful aim, the man’s head stationary, a firm and unmoving target, Sakharov swung the clipboard as hard as he could, the corner catching the tech at the thinnest point of his temple, cutting deep, the head wound bleeding out as the tech fell to the side with his hand clutching at the deep incision.
Sakharov hit the man repeatedly, as if he was a guard at Vladimir Central, never relenting, blow after blow, more cuts, more wounds, more blood.
The tech tried to crawl away, the damage inflicted minimal, but driving.
As the tech lay dazed with the collar area of his lab coat saturated with blood, Sakharov labored into the seat and attempted to wipe away the data. But the characters were in Farsi. He looked over the console, a quick perusal. The keyboard he used for his experiments, the one with Russian characters, was gone.
The data continued to download on the screen before him.
He tapped the buttons in random.
Nothing.
And then he became desperate, almost feral.
He looked at the tech that had crawled his way to another terminal, saw the blood track he left in his wake upon the floor and the bloody handprint on the silent alarm, which he pressed before passing out.
Sakharov got to his feet and found an inner strength. He was no longer afraid, but angry, his mind closing out all forms of impending punishments, not caring, his will to succeed in the dismantling of his findings far greater than the retribution he was about to receive.
He picked up the chair, though his arms found it difficult, and swung it against the console, then against the monitor, causing a star-shaped crack in the glass. Another strike, the blow futile and causing no damage, his arms weakening in the process, the muscles starting to turn to gel.
And then he heard the sound of coming footsteps, the Quds approaching.
After another feeble blow Sakharov turned, only to be met with the stock end of a rifle.
Lights out.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
The ceiling.
The walls.
The lights.
The glass partition.
When Sakharov came to he saw that he was inside a vacuum chamber. Immediately, he conceded to his fate.
“Good morning, Doctor,” said Al-Sherrod, his voice coming through the mike system. His face appeared humorless with no lines of his ugly Cheshire teeth showing. Beside him stood al-Ghazi, who shared the same flat appearance, the same emotionless expression. “You’ve been out for most of the day. Welcome back.”
Sakharov measured his surroundings. Did he expect anything less?
“I hardly thought that you’d make such an attempt, Doctor. My mistake for letting my guard down. I didn’t believe you had it in you.”
Sakharov looked at the diminutive man and at al-Ghazi, who stood much taller. “So now you’re going to kill me the same way you killed Umar?”
“Umar was not his real name. He was a Zionist.”
“Does it matter?
Al-Sherrod deflected him with another direction of answering. “I had plans for you, Doctor Sakharov. Huge plans.”
“Not interested.”
“I gathered that since your little escapade early this morning. But there’s good news, I suppose. The only damage you inflicted was a broken monitor, nothing more. So you failed in your attempt to annihilate your findings, which I assume was the purpose of your action?”
When Sakharov didn’t answer, al-Sherrod paced back and forth in front the glass like a caged feline, to and fro, looking and studying Sakharov who watched his every move.
“Big plans,” he finally commented. “President Ahmadinejad presumed to move you and your findings to a different locale, so that you could further your studies.”
Studies? Is that what you call it?
“I have resigned to my fate,” he answered. “I will not lift another finger to help you or your regime. I was foolish to do so in the first place.”
“So you said, Doctor. I believe the term you used was ‘In the pursuit of my own progress, I have abandoned my humanity.’”
“And should there be a Devil,” he added, “then I have surely nailed my soul to the Devil’s Altar.”
“Foolishly poetic,” said al-Sherrod, “but your so-called lack of humanity is actually a state in which ‘true’ evil will be eradicated, and the infidels laden impotent once and for all.” Then, as if imploring his line of thought: “Don’t you see, Doctor, your technology will evolve the world into a much better place.”
“My technology will destroy this planet because of people like you who do not bear the insight or foresight of its true capacity. You only see what you want to see without realizing the destructive potential of what I created. You are misled to believe that a simple program can put you in a position of control when, in fact, you fail to see your own short fallings in the same way I was unable to foresee my own… And in the end, I lost. The same will happen to you.”
“Hardly,” was his response. “You are a foolish old man who could not control his passions. But your ideas will live on, Doctor. And they will do so under the Iranian banner.”
Sakharov’s jaw clenched.
“Unfortunately for you, Doctor, I presume that your action early this morning means that you refuse to further the program with extensive studies to add, or perhaps modify, your findings?”
“Piss off,” he said.
Al-Sherrod turned to al-Ghazi for clarification. “Piss off?”
“It’s a derogatory remark telling you to back off. It’s a crude expression.”
“I see.” He turned back to Sakharov. “Is that your final answer, Doctor? To tell me to ‘piss off’?”
Sakharov did not respond, the man obviously resigning himself.
“Then you leave me no choice,” said al-Sherrod. With a motion of his hand al-Sherrod proffered an order to the tech manning the console.
The tech that Sakharov had beaten with the clipboard tapped a command into the keyboard, then waited for further instructions from al-Sherrod, who stretched the moment out as long as he could as the gazes between he and Sakharov remained steady.
And then: “Do it.”
The tech pressed the ENTER button, initiating the sound waves.
Sakharov then closed his eyes and braced himself, his hands clutching at the armrests of his chair as the waspy hum began to advance on him.
Within less than two minutes it was over.
And Leonid Sakharov, a man with a brilliant mind, had succumbed to the creations of his own ambitions.