“Swiss authorities are using the word ‘calm’ at the moment in the aftermath of clashes with riot police in the normally quiet city of Geneva. These protests turned violent when a small group of protestors tried to storm the gate here at the CERN facility that houses the Large Hadron Super Collider. There were over a thousand arrests, and the Swiss police have doubled their forces and have drawn a line in the sand, so to speak. For now the protesters are gathering more and more in strength every hour. Nils Macintyre, BBC World Service.” Macintyre waited for the follow-up question from the anchor in London. Behind him were protestors holding signs, only one of them stated simply, ‘No LP at LHC’. Thankfully, Nils didn’t ask what LP stood for lest he find a whole new angle to the story about the dead Dr. Landau and his Protocol being the reason behind the protest.
The anchor was now addressing the large studio monitor in front of him with the video of the reporter. “Nils, there are similar spontaneous outbursts all across the globe. Is there any indication from where you are that there is some organization to these eruptions?”
“Bryan, the level of this ‘movement,’ if you will, seems to be totally grass roots. There are no prepared brochures or even quickly printed or copied press releases one usually finds at less spontaneous gatherings. There are American TV crews here, and they are pretty much asking the same question, wondering if these folks here are part of the protest in New York, Washington, Chicago, and a dozen major cities across that country. And aside from the social media activity that accompanies any large group, we haven’t found any pre-organization or build up to these now-turned-violent, events of the last hours. Back to you Bryan.”
“Thank you, Nils.” Anchor Bryan Diggs turned from the monitor and settled on Camera One as a graphic appeared in the screen behind him reading, ‘Collision at the Collider.’ “But what do the protesters want? Joining us now for some more analysis, from his home in Cheshire, is Professor Ward Sessions director of the Daresbury Laboratory. Dr. Sessions, what is this all about?”
“The LHC is about to perform their greatest and most ambitious experiment yet, the extreme agitation or splitting of the smallest known entity in the universe.”
“Is this the fabled God Particle we’ve heard spoken about?”
“Well, no. Actually, the God Particle, which is a popular, Hollywood-type term that I don’t particularly subscribe to, is what they are hoping to verify. It is in fact a clarification of Higgs Boson. As your viewers probably don’t know, decades back, Peter Higgs theorized about a smaller than small particle, which he named a Boson. It exists in the grey area between matter and energy. He concluded this speck of creation was the weak force of attraction, or the glue of all matter.”
“Well, I think some of us have followed you, but didn’t they find this particle in July of 2012?”
“They found a particle that fit the profile of the Higgs Boson, in that it’s actions under extreme forces were Higgs Boson ‘like’, but this new initiative, the Landau Protocols, is to again agitate or split what ever that particle is in to revealing it’s true makeup and origin to us.”
Luckily the host was not well versed and didn’t focus on what the Landau Protocol was; instead, he jumped on what he thought the headline was. “Wait, so it could or could not be the God Particle that they are attempting to split?
The show went on, doing more to confuse the average viewer than enlighten.
It was the constant whimpering that made it so unbearable. Why can’t we just kill the kid now! Maya thought. The endless sniffles and wails were driving her mad. She had slapped the kid silly, but that only made it worse. Luckily, soon it would all be over. The Architect would get this Raffey jerk to do whatever it was he wanted him to do, then they could kill these witnesses and she could get on with her new life in Egypt with a new identity and new bank account. Just thirty-six more hours. Her patience and boiling point reaching critical, she rapped on the door to the room the kid and her mother were chained up in. “Shut up in there or I’ll come in there and really give you something to cry about.”
“Shhh. Shhh. Kirsi, it will be okay. It will be okay,” Leena said for the thousandth time since they had been thrown into this room with only two meals a day and shackled to just enough chain to reach the toilet and the wash sink where they drank water from the faucet. Their ankles were red and bleeding with welts from the chain’s irons clasped around their legs. She had no idea why someone would do this to them. She kept her mind from dwelling on their ultimate fate by protecting her daughter and trying to ease her fears minute by minute. Her blouse was wet from her daughter’s tears and her sleeves crusted with mucus from wiping Kirsi’s nose. She sat silently in the room, which was pitch-black save for a crack of sunlight coming through the seam of a tarp nailed over the window, gently rocking her whimpering little girl.
More and more, Brooke was convinced that Raffey was a manipulated pawn rather than the brains of the outfit. She knew in her bones that his sister, Leena, and his niece, Kirsi, were the control elements. Her dilemma was that she was in a foreign country, investigating a kidnapping/blackmail/terrorist plot that had been put into motion before she landed in Switzerland six days ago. And how did Abrim’s death play into all of this? Luck, instinct, and drilling into police reports had gotten her so close, yet in many ways she could still be back on the East Coast, and no closer to the answers, while time was running out. She needed to get into Raffey’s house, his life. The tea kettle on the stove whistled and broke her chain of thought. As she took it off the burner and turned off the gas, it hit her!
“Mercaptan?” Bill said, as much impressed with Brooke’s research as blindsided by the randomness of her plan.
“You want to do what?” Joey asked.
“I want to get into Raffey’s house while he’s at work. There have to be some clues there. Also my idea takes away any surveillance teams that maybe have eyes on the house.”
“What if they are using electronics, cameras and such?” Captain Lustig said.
“I’ve been told I look good in a head-to-toe hazmat suit.”
“You know, I can’t find a thing wrong with it!” And so, with that statement, Bill effectively greenlighted Brooke’s out-of-the-box scheme.
XXXI. IT'S A GAS
It took about an hour for the techs at SIG, the Swiss gas company, to rig a fuel oil truck with two pressurized tanks of pure T-butyl mercaptan, the foul smelling additive to normally odorless natural gas that allows immediate detection of gas leaks or extinguished pilot lights. They also wired up a remote aerosol nozzle to dissipate the chemical safely. Their fluid dynamics engineers gave the final approval by judging that the colorless cloud of dissipated mercaptan would stink up the whole neighborhood without any toxicity to the residents. Although, one added, some people might vomit.
At 10:30 a.m., an innocuous tank truck turned down the street that Raffey’s house was on. Ten minutes later, the calls started coming in to SIG, local police, and the firehouses. Brooke was briefly instructed on the gas mask and ventilator that kept her hazmat suit cool and waited for the organic progression of police or fire to call on the gas company to investigate the leak. Their first plan was to order the immediate evacuation of the entire neighborhood. Bill had added a great touch by suggesting that the leak was so severe that the air space above the leak be cleared lest a possible static discharge from the rotors of a copter ignite the very air itself.