Halon-Seven (25 page)

Cyrus nodded. “Agent Shaw came through. She rallied a contingent of agents from her press detail and tracked the signal of the phone I planted in the ambulance. They arrived just as the grab-team was switching vehicles. If she’d arrived five minutes later, who knows how things might’ve turned out.”

Reese shook her head. It was an amazing turn of events. A shocking confluence of the right people being in the right places at the right times. For Cyrus to think so quickly in such a situation—for him to make contact with an FBI agent he’d met only the day before? And for him to convince the agent to go out on a limb and try to recover Walter like that? Who was this man? It was no wonder Walter sought Cyrus out after it was all over. They seemed destined to be friends. Cyrus had such a practical intelligence, he was not unlike Walter himself.

She wondered if Cyrus actually understood the contributions he’d already made to Meridian. He didn’t seem to comprehend why Walter wanted him on the project. In light of the last twenty-four hours, Reese found the logic pragmatic and obvious. Neither she nor her team were prepared to deal with the practical realities of Meridian in the real world. Most of their work, to date, dealt with theoretical practicality. In theory, they were going to change the world. In theory, they would improve the quality of life for the whole of mankind. But Walter was right, they were academics. They weren’t equipped to face those who would try to take Meridian from them or corrupt it for their own benefit. The team was in far greater danger than she had ever thought possible. They’d been blinded by idealistic shortsightedness. It was that naïvety which now threatened their very lives.

They could probably go to the FBI or even the State Department for help. But, as Cyrus’s discussion with Sanjay had proven, those options were not as simple as they first appeared. At this point she agreed, they were better off putting their safety in Cyrus’s hands. For reasons she didn’t understand, he clearly had experience in these…
situations
.

Walter had spoken of Cyrus often. Reese frequently felt he was stretching the bounds of some unspoken confidence with some of what he shared. On several occasions he’d mentioned a desire to introduce the two of them. She suspected Walter hoped to play matchmaker. It was flattering because she knew he considered Cyrus the son he never had. There was a clear sense of paternal pride. Although she was interested in meeting the man he held in such high regard, she’d always discouraged Walter’s suggestions. But since Cyrus had come into her life less than twenty-four hours prior, there’d been an undeniable attraction.

Walter had been right again.

She tried to get her mind back to the task at hand. This line of thinking wasn’t productive. Intriguing, but not productive. “What happened to Agent Shaw? How did the FBI react to her going off on her own like that?”

Cyrus chuckled and started sorting through the stacks of manila folders. “There’s a report somewhere detailing that.” He stopped looking and opted to summarize it from memory. “Her immediate supervisor was outraged and wanted her censured. But since it turned out that Walter was a VIP in the eyes of the Defense Department and he rubbed elbows with some bigwigs in Washington, the Director of the FBI intervened. Shaw received a commendation for taking extraordinary initiative in the face of uncertain circumstances, or some such jargon. They found it exceptional that she’d improvised a field team and organized an entire operation on the fly. They didn’t just promote her out of the press department, they promoted her entire field team to a new detail under her command.”

“And she had you to thank for it.”

Cyrus shook his head. “She made her own decisions. She put that team together, and she lead them. Based on the report I read, she was very aware of the strengths and weaknesses of everyone in her department. She was overdue for that promotion. She just needed an opportunity to prove herself.”

Cyrus took a drink from his wine glass. “After I gave Agent Shaw a way to track the ambulance, I took Meade’s laptop and headed back to my hotel. I figured it’d be only a matter of time before someone came to collect it. There was no doubt in my mind that the machine contained valuable information. I’m pretty sure Meade was making an effort to secure it when he collapsed in the cafe.

“It was weird though. No one ever came to collect the computer—I kept it in the hotel vault until I was finished in DC. I took it with me when I flew back to Chicago. Still, I figured it was just a matter of time until someone came to collect it. Even after several weeks, there was still no contact.

“Finally I pulled the laptop from my safe and booted it up. Or, I should say that I tried to boot it. That’s when I realized why no one cared about the machine. It had been erased. There must’ve been some sort of remote wipe protocol built in. The machine had purged all of its information at some point, likely shortly after Meade was taken. That sort of security says a lot about the people controlling it. A man only bothers with that level of security because he’s toting some seriously sensitive information.”

Cyrus ran a hand through his short stubble of hair and yawned. “About twenty-four hours after I tried to boot the laptop, Walter Meade showed up at my door for the first time. He introduced himself and we talked for some time. He had a security detail with him. But even that was interesting. He didn’t know me at that point, but he left his three-man detail out in the hall. Normally in situations like that, a member of the security team will enter a residence to sweep it prior to the VIP entering. But Meade told his guys it wasn’t necessary. He left them in the hall and we sat down and talked for hours. It was all very strange because it was so comfortable and informal. We just sort of hit it off.”

Cyrus scratched at the stubble on his chin. She knew he was pondering something. He either didn’t know how to bring it up or he wasn’t sure how to say whatever it was.

“What’s on your mind?” she asked.

His eyes met hers, and he smiled. “I’ve been thinking about the current security concerns. Meade obviously thought I could be useful in a situation like this. But I don’t understand how he knew there’d be a situation like this. How could he have anticipated attacks on the team? I’m missing a piece of the puzzle.”

First she smiled. Then she laughed outright—she couldn’t help it. “I’m sorry,” she said self-consciously. “While I suspect Walter knew very well what you were capable of, his abduction not withstanding, his desire to have you involved with Meridian had nothing to do with your field experience.”

She could read the confusion in his eyes. “Walter never spoke about the platforms? About the technology?”

That made Cyrus chuckle. “We talked about a lot of things. But always in the abstract.
Always
. Never specific details. He would stop by without so much as a phone call. We’d kick around whatever problem was on his mind, and then he would go.”

“But you never asked what he was working on? You never wondered where his ideas were coming from?”

Cyrus shook his head. “This might be hard for you to understand…” He paused while he searched for the right words. “I’m used to dealing with people with secrets. When I was with the Coalition, I was trained to keep those secrets. As an investigative reporter, I need to do the opposite. I need to know what questions to ask—know where to look when something seems off. When it came to Walter, I just knew what questions not to ask.

“There’s a problem that’s somewhat unique to people in my former line of work. The job requires people who are very good at reading between the lines…at seeing what other people don’t see. The trouble starts when those people retire. That sense that was once so important suddenly becomes a slippery slope, and it can do a lot of damage. You start to see things in the people you deal with in day-to-day life. You notice when they’re lying or when they’re telling a partial truth. It’s fine when you’re on the job or in the field. Then it can save your life. But when you see those things in your personal life, it can make normal friendships tough and relationships impossible.

“The reason being that people—friends—constantly tell half-truths. Often to spare another’s feelings. They do it for any number of reasons, really. But when you pick up on all those tells, and it’s second nature to dissect their motivation for what they just did or what they just said, it can be terribly destructive.”

“You make it sound like a mental condition.”

Cyrus responded with a slow knowing nod. “Some field operatives get wound pretty tightly. It’s a hazard of the job. They have to be tuned in to everyone and everything around them, 24/7. When they leave the field, many have trouble adjusting to normal life. It can manifest as any number mental of conditions. Some guys become paranoid. Some just burn out. Far too many end up eating their own bullet. It’s common—it happens to more of us than not. It’s one of the reasons I left that life. I choose to take people at face value. That’s how normal people live. They don’t dissect the actions of everyone around them, always watching for anomalies.

“The point being, I just took every conversation with Meade as the talk that it was. Always interesting, always thought provoking. That voice in the back of my mind that speaks up when something is off or out of place? I locked it away. I used the conversations with Meade to help me hone that discipline.”

Reese gave some thought to all Cyrus had said. Certainly being a human lie detector was harmful to relationships great and small. No one should be one hundred percent honest with the people around them. It defied the natural order. There were times when it was necessary to omit information, however trivial, to spare the feelings of another. She couldn’t imagine how difficult it might be for someone trained so thoroughly in detecting these tells that they saw deception everywhere they turned. She could see it eventually becoming detrimental.

“Those ideas that Walter brought to you?” she started. “They were key issues relating to Meridian. Many of them were roadblocks we, the team, hit. When that happened, Walter would visit you and discuss the problem. He would return the next day, more often than not, with a great new idea or a different approach that would lead to a workaround or an outright breakthrough. A number of the innovations currently employed on the platforms were yours!”

Cyrus laughed. “I think Meade was exaggerating my contributions. I don’t know anything about teleportation. I’ve read a little about quantum physics, even quantum entanglement, but I’m no physicist. I don’t even know enough to be dangerous.”

Reese finished her wine and poured them each another glass. “Then you’re going to love this,” she said with a coy smile.

“Early in the project, we were trying to encase the entire contents of the transport platform in a magnetic field. The next step was to entangle every atom within that field with the atoms encased in a duplicate field, located on the paired platform. Prior to our experiments, quantum teleportation had been successful but only on a single photon at a time. Our approach intended to entangle the entire contents of both platforms, resulting in a quantum bridge between the two devices. The bridge would last only a fraction of a second, long enough for the contents of the platforms to instantly swap positions. But while this approach was theoretically possible, it required astronomical levels of energy to entangle any matter of consequential mass.”

She made penetrating eye contact with Cyrus again. “The energy requirements were entirely prohibitive. Each platform would require its own dedicated high output nuclear reactor. Essentially, it was the same problem Pellagrin faced in 1908 with his test platform. The difference being, we didn’t have Fire Star.”

Cyrus whistled and sat back in his chair. He ran his hands through his hair again. His eyes drifted into the distance as he considered the ramifications.

“The goal of this project is,” she said in a very serious tone, “and always has been, to create a network of teleportation platforms putting every location on the planet within easy reach. Professor Meade’s soul intent for this project is—was,” she corrected herself, “to create an extensive network of inexpensive teleportation platforms that would be safe to operate, and available to everyone in the world. He wanted to revolutionize travel, solve a significant portion of our pollution problems, and unite our people in a way never before imagined.

“The platforms will have the power to do all of that. But if each device requires its own nuclear reactor, that’s simply never going to happen. They must be inexpensive to produce as well as operate. And safe! Nuclear-powered platforms are neither cheap nor safe. We need to produce millions of them, or none at all. If they’re ubiquitous, then everyone on the planet has equal opportunity. Imagine the entire world using safe, instantaneous travel.

“Walter believed it was absolutely critical that the platforms be available to everyone to use free of charge. He wouldn’t allow them to be a tool strictly for the affluent and powerful.”

Cyrus leaned forward. He understood. “So the power requirements are a problem?”

“No,” she said with a smile. “Power requirements
were the problem.
But you and Walter solved it!”

—————

Cyrus sat back
in this chair and rubbed his eyes. Exhaustion was setting in, but they were finally getting to the meat of the matter. Understanding the project would be the key to understanding the threat they faced. He waited for Reese to continue.

“Two things made a difference when it came to the platform power requirements. The first part of the solution was your idea.” She had a smile that made Cyrus suspect that she wanted him to guess what his contribution might have been. He had no idea, and he lacked the energy to speculate.

She nodded in understanding and continued. “Your suggestion did away with magnetic field as a means of controlling the mass entanglement onboard the platform.” She let the statement hang in the air for a moment.

“Lasers?” he said with a nod of understanding.

“Your idea was so simple and practical that it bordered on genius! Rather than entangle the entire contents of the platform, we would generate a laser containment field around the contents of the platform. The concept went right back to the original work of Einstein and Rosen in the 1930s! And it was poetic since the very first groundbreaking work in quantum teleportation was done with photons. After all, what is a laser if not an array of photons?”