6
Templar awoke to find himself alone. Next to him, resting on Emma’s pillow, were two significant items — a small stickpin of a human ideogram sporting a rakish halo, and a handwritten note of explanation and farewell.
Simon,
The pin is something silly I’ve kept for years, a graduation gift from Catholic school. As you can tell from the halo, it’s a saint. Don’t worry, you don’t have to wear it. I just wanted you to have something of mine, something I loved.
He held the pin as if it were more precious than rubies. He blinked away the emotion stinging the corners of his eyes and kept reading.
In finding the strength to go on without you, I found the courage to give away cold fusion. This morning, at the British Physicists Society Conference at Oxford, I’m giving it away to the world. My topic was to be “The Future of Cold Fusion: Promise and Possibilities,” but instead I will give them the future now. It belongs to the world, Simon, not to me, not to us. We have no right to sell it. Because we don’t own it, we will be free, you and I. Perhaps you don’t believe that right now, but you will. Maybe some day we’ll have a kinder, warmer world. A world where they’ll see the light, and stop hunting you. I love you, Simon.
Forever,
He hurriedly dressed, prepared himself for any eventuality, and blasted his Volvo toward Oxford.
The conference was as well attended as it was well publicized. Physicists and scholars representing science’s diverse disciplines arrived from throughout Europe, America, Australia, Asia, and the South Pacific. Dignitaries in attendance included prominent political figures more adept at public relations than physics, and the requisite representatives of the Royal Family. The latter necessitated the prominent presence of uniformed bobbies and plainclothes agents from Special Branch.
The carefully crafted program was, as is the case with most professional conferences, structured for maximum appeal to specific passions and universal interests.
Dr. Emma Russell held no illusions concerning the reason for her inclusion among the conference’s featured presenters — she was the scientific community’s mascot dreamer and semirespected iconoclast.
While her credentials were impeccable, her obsession with cold fusion was controversial. The placement of Dr. Russell in the morning session assured a stimulating jump-start to the proceedings, especially in light of the recent Russian adventure.
Emma knew she was scheduled primarily for entertainment value, controversy, and speculative newspaper copy. She not only knew it and fully accepted it, but on her drive from Templar’s retreat to Oxford, she delighted in it. If revenge was sweet, vindication was sweeter — especially when it ushered in a glorious new age of unlimited heat, light, and energy.
Traffic was predictably heavy in Oxford, the “city of dreaming spires,” where too many bells were always ringing in the rain. The bells of Oxford pealed out their resonant welcome through the predictably wet weather as Emma’s VW putt-putted into her pre-assigned parking place.
Emma locked the car, paused to inhale an invigorating breath of crisp Oxford air, then walked with light steps to her Chemistry Building office.
On the way, she smiled at distinguished visitors admiring the campus. She read name tags and participant badges of passers-by and fellow scientists who would, in less than an hour, be astonished recipients of her love-inspired breakthrough.
Teal and Rabineau, hardy representatives of the United Kingdom’s law enforcement elite, were on campus as well, hovering near a chaos of umbrellas raised against a British cloudburst.
“Do you think he might show?” asked Rabineau. She was intently studying photographs of an unmasked Simon Templar culled from CNN’s video coverage in Red Square.
Teal masticated slowly, raindrops dripping from his hat.
“How would we know if he did? With the Saint being a master of disguise,” said the detective, pointing discreetly toward an enormous, dignified Samoan, “he could be that gentleman right there.”
For a moment, Inspector Rabineau considered the possibility.
“If she loves him, he might love her, too. Then again, if she loves him, she sure as hell isn’t going to press charges.”
“She doesn’t have to,” Teal sighed. “If we nab him we’re to bring him in for questioning — debriefing is more like it — it’s Dorn and British Intelligence that want him. It’s a matter of priorities — they get first crack at him, even before Interpol. Even if they can’t pin anything on him, the threat of it can hang over him forever. They apparently view him as ‘potentially useful.’ ”
Rabineau’s eyes brightened. “Am I supposed to know that, Inspector?” she asked playfully.
The chief inspector pulled his collar up against the rain. “Forget I said anything,” he instructed, and they both knew he didn’t mean it.
A few minutes later they saw Dr. Emma Russell approaching the Shelton Theatre on foot from the Chemistry Building, bareheaded and blissfully unaware of the weather. The two detectives blended into the background and kept an eye out for signs of the Saint.
The umbrella-laden crowd was queued up outside the theater, moving slowly through the doorways into the auditorium. Emma, in an attempt to bypass a particularly slow-moving contingent from Baycombe, moved to the crowd’s edge.
She skirted the dawdlers on her right and was passing an alley between two quadrangles on her left when a balding man with thick glasses intruded on her personal space and broke her concentration.
“Excuse me, but is this where Dr. Russell is going to speak?”
“Yes, I... uh... I mean, she...” Momentarily flustered, Emma paused to compose herself. As she faced him, a brief bit of sunlight glinted off the stickpin in his lapel — a jaunty stick figure sporting an absurd elliptical halo.
“Oh my God...” Her eyes flicked nervous reference to the abundance of law enforcement personnel on site. They flowed along with the crowd, moving toward the edge, and ducked into the alley.
“Emma,” Templar spoke in his own voice, “I came to say that if you think I’m just going to sit there and watch you give away an unimaginable fortune...”
She held her breath.
“... you’re absolutely right.”
Emma smiled. There was nothing more to say. She glanced from his disguised face to her wristwatch, and then to the theater door. It was time. As she threw him a fraught farewell look, he whispered a parting promise.
“You found me, Emma... I’ll find you.”
She slipped back into the crowd, and joined her fellow attendees. Entering the Shelton Theatre she was soon surrounded by colleagues, press, and Oxford security.
Teal and Rabineau, still standing outside in the rain, were feeling both increasingly wet and foolish.
Teal motioned toward the theater.
“We might as well go on in.”
With the auditorium filled and the perfunctory introductions concluded, the conference chairman introduced the first speaker.
“... Dr. E. J. Russell, whose presentation is entitled ‘The Future of Cold Fusion: Promise and Possibilities.’ ”
Emma waved away the applause as she approached the stage and prepared to take the podium.
Inspector Teal secured a seat just off the aisle near the side exit, and scanned the crowd for anyone resembling Simon Templar. His intense concentration was broken by the nasal lisp of the balding nerd who plopped himself down in the seat beside him.
“You don’t thwallow thith cold futhion nonthenth, do you?”
The detective frowned at the intrusion, then resumed scrutinizing the attendees as Dr. Russell began her address.
“We know cold fusion had a difficult childhood. Those few of us in the field are orphans, bastards at best...”