Raffael Juth grabbed his light coat, barely noticing the M-16 in the back of the closet. He checked that his gloves were in the pocket and headed out the door on his way to work.
He hit the fob of his Audi A6, his latest prized possession. He loved the feel of the car and its hi-tech interface. It matched his position at LHC, where he had risen through the layers as his programming code for the dissemination of retrieved data from core sensors was heralded as a giant step forward for LHC as a whole. What no one knew was that his breakthrough had come from his grandfather. When Raffael was a young boy he helped his grandfather build low fieldstone walls. He learned the trick of taking random stones and creating a wall with a flat, level top. The key to the wall, and his program, was the little wedge-stones that balanced and stabilized the big rocks, provided a stable footing for the next layer.
To achieve balance in his program and stabilize the main calculating engine while the live input data was changing, he used a mathematical equivalent of a wedge stone. This little rock of an equation was small enough to fit inside the major algorithm, yet nimble enough to level the output, keeping it stable as new data buttressed and replaced old data on the way to forming a solid wall of numbers that could be relied upon like a fieldstone wall.
The Audi’s Bluetooth interface synced to his iPod, and Coldplay rocked the luxury compartment of his trophy-on-wheels. In twenty minutes he’d pass Lake Geneva and be at the complex five minutes later.
The booming bass reverberated ahead, around and behind the Audi as it passed the scenic overlook where The Engineer stood talking to a severe-looking woman with jet-black hair. “Right on time! Like a fine Swiss watch,” was his droll observation as he watched the Audi take the curve with ease.
“He’s young,” the stone-faced woman said with an East German accent.
“Is that a problem, Maya?” The Engineer said, for the first time seeing her as on the younger side of middle age.
“Only that they think themselves invincible and that they will live forever.”
“I thought you a professional. Did I underestimate?”
“No. You did not. This is not a problem; let’s see the house.”
East Hampton Airport is the bus station where the rich and famous park their “buses,” namely their G4s, G5s, Hawker 400XPs, Boeing Darts, Citation 10s, and the occasional Cessna high wing. On approach from the air, Brooke looked down on the tons of little white multi-million dollar toys all chocked and tied down, lest a sudden nor’easter come through and pile them all up on one end of the runway. Brooke deplaned the government’s Citation 10 down five short built-in stairs in less time than it takes to say “de-planed.” She made her way to the interagency motor pool car and driver waiting on the tarmac, that her experience told her had probably been hastily dispatched from the IRS offices in Holtsville, up island.
It took all of five minutes to get to the facility on the outskirts of the airport, blessedly not enough time to strike up a conversation with her driver. Used to driving around tax auditors and low level managers, he was probably dying to ask her about the bruise on her cheek and her chewed up and scraped hands.
At the front desk of Walt Disney Imagineering she was greeted by Todd Yaleman, who was about forty, lanky, and smelled of cigarettes. Next to him was Officer Derrick Barnes, who wore a Town of East Hampton police uniform. Brooke produced her FBI identification and they settled in a small conference room off the main corridor. Even though the room was small, it had all the gizmos: a whiteboard hooked up to a computer, video projector, multiple LCD screens, and a video conferencing rig.
Officer Barnes handed over an old-fashioned paper police file.
She saw his interest in her face and hands. “Skiing accident, you should see the bush.” Brooke leafed through it. “Were there any latent prints?”
“We found one set that didn’t match the employees. We ran an NCIC but there was no hit.”
Brooke found the print slides in the folder and set them aside. “I’ll sign a chain of custody and take these back with me and out to Interpol.”
“You’re saying someone from Europe actually broke in here and took my propulsion plans?” Yaleman said.
“Did you know that EuroDisney in France had a similar break-in, also two years ago?”
“No, I didn’t know that. Did they get Claude’s work then?”
Brooke took out her Blackberry and flip-fingered through the pages. “Claude Vervant?” She said looking up at the design engineer.
“Yes, he and I worked on it; he on the materials and manufacture over there, while I was working on the fluid dynamics here.”
“Well, Mr. Yaleman, what can you show me about the project?”
“Have you seen the movie?”
“Ishmael’s Quest? No, I’m sorry.”
“Well, you and the rest of the world. That’s why we never built it. There was no ride potential to a movie that wound with up nobody ever seeing it.”
“Aside from the movie, is there anything I can see on the project?”
“We will have to go to the video lab. All I have left are the research and progress tapes.”
“Let’s go take a look.”
Three hours later, Brooke was sitting at a table in World Pie, a bistro in Bridgehampton, one of the picturesque little towns a person encounters on the way back to New York City. She was starved, and the sliced steak salad before her was disappearing at a non-ladylike rate. The government jet that had brought her here went on, and she was to be driven back to New York to check in at her former office on Fifty-Seventh Street. From there she could send the prints to Interpol and also check to see if Yaleman had a criminal record.
Brooke had been the head of the New York office of the FBI until Bill and his QUOG team recruited her. Now she was a prime operator for the Quarterback Operations Group.
As she ate she thought how odd it was that a week ago she had almost died in the Indian Ocean, and now she was in the tony Hamptons. ‘Swanky,’ her late brother Harley would have called it. Thinking of her brother made her think of Mush. The little reverb that rang throughout her body was a nice feeling. Wait, she thought, don’t even go there. He’s a sea captain, gone six months out of the year and based in Hawaii for the rest. Well, that part wouldn’t be too bad. She downed her iced tea, paid the bill in cash, and took a receipt.
IV. PIG IN A POKE
Bill looked at the place where the building had been repaired and couldn’t tell where the old construction ended and the new replacement façade began. So fine was the workmanship that it made him think it was too good. Maybe they should have left it charred and blackened from the 9/11 attacks, as a reminder to be ever-vigilant, to never be asleep at the switch again, at least not here, not at the focal point of America’s military power, the Pentagon,
Inside, Bill and Joey were ushered to a secure teleconference room. Two rear admirals and a civilian contractor were already in the room.
Everyone having been briefed on the meeting in advance, Bill jumped right in. “Can we recover the crucibles?”
“Yes, but it will take a thirty-four days.”
“Why not the three weeks we requested?” Joey said.