Quantum (12 page)
Authors: Tom Grace
‘His last entry.’
The sixth book started with the latest date he’d found. Thumbing through the blank pages in the back, he reached Wolff’s last entry about halfway through the volume.
‘Ten-twelve-forty-eight,’ Nolan read. ‘Ten December.’
‘That’s the last day I saw him,’ Martin recalled.
‘And likely the day he was murdered,’ Ptashnik added.
As Nolan slowly closed the notebook, he noticed some writing on the thick front endpaper. He opened the cover to expose the page and found a series of carefully written mathematical equations. Nolan recognized some of the functions, but others were used in ways that were unfamiliar to him.
‘What you got there?’ Ptashnik asked.
‘I’m not sure, but at least it’s in plain text. Maybe this is the algorithm Wolff used to encode his notebooks.’
Martin flipped open the first notebook, then glanced back at the one in his grandson’s hands. ‘Take a look at this, Nolan. I think this page is the same as that one.’
A quick check revealed that all the notebooks bore the same formula on the front endpaper.
‘What are you thinking?’ Martin asked, completely confused.
‘I’d say there’s a pretty good chance that this is Wolff’s cipher. Now if we just had the key, we could decode all this. Detective, what are you going to do with the notebooks?’
‘The techs will take a look at them for physical evidence, then we’ll put ’em in the evidence storage center with anything else we collect. Why?’
‘Can I make a suggestion?’
‘Shoot.’
‘These notebooks are old and potentially valuable. Why don’t you take them over to the Preservation Lab at the university library? The people there know how to handle old books.’
‘That’s probably not a bad idea. We’ve used their services on cases before. I’ll arrange it with our techs.’
‘Also, I’d like to get a copy of the letter, to put with the others he wrote to Paramo. If you like, I can get you copies of what we have.’
‘Are they written in code?’
‘Plain English. They’re a mix of personal stuff and physics. I don’t know if they’ll be of much help to you, but there’s a lot of day-to-day commentary. Maybe there’s something in there that you’ll find useful.’
‘I’d appreciate that,’ Ptashnik acknowledged.
‘Can I ask a favor in return?’
‘Depends on what the favor is.’
‘While the books are at the lab,’ Nolan explained, ‘I’d like to have some work done on them for my project.’
‘What kind of work?’
‘Nothing destructive, I promise. I just want to scan the pages into the computer for analysis. Raphaele Paramo thought enough of Wolff to suggest that a stack of letters from the guy might help the physicist I’m working with solve a very complex problem. So I want to know what Wolff was working on.’
‘All right,’ Ptashnik relented. ‘Just keep me posted on what you find.’
Moscow, Russia
‘Dmitri, it’s good to see you again,’ Zoshchenko said coolly as she walked into Orlov’s anteroom. ‘My condolences on the loss of your brother.’
‘Thank you,’ Leskov acknowledged with a nod. ‘Pavel knew the risks involved in our work, and he died with honor. He was a good man, difficult to replace.’
‘He will see you both now,’ Irena Cherny announced as she set the phone in its cradle.
Leskov opened the door for Zoshchenko, then followed her into Orlov’s office. The view across Moscow to the Kremlin was breathtaking on this sunlit summer morning.
‘Please, have a seat,’ Orlov offered, his hand motioning toward the couch and chairs near the window. On the table in the center of the furniture arrangement sat a silver tea service.
‘Dmitri, what is the status of our surveillance in America?’
Leskov unbuttoned his blazer before sitting in one of Orlov’s prerevolutionary antique chairs. ‘The physicist Sandstrom is still receiving treatment for extensive burns at University Hospital in Ann Arbor, Michigan. His condition is stable, but he is in for a long and difficult recovery. Electronic devices have been placed in his room, and his phone has been tapped. The team monitoring him has leased an apartment in a tower across the river from the hospital, high enough that they are receiving very clear transmission from the devices. Sandstrom has two regular visitors – Nolan Kilkenny and Kelsey Newton. Both were present during the raid on Sandstrom’s lab. A thorough background check on Kilkenny has revealed that he was once a junior officer in the U.S. Navy SEALs.’
Orlov arched an eyebrow at Leskov’s final comment.
‘
Da
, Victor Ivanovich. That is why three of my men are dead. Kilkenny’s training is equal to Spetsnaz. Per your request, surveillance of both Kilkenny and Newton is also in place.’
‘Excellent, Dmitri. Have you learned anything from the surveillance?’ Orlov asked.
‘
Da.
We have confirmed the assumption that the MARC/ND-ARC combine intends to continue its support of Sandstrom’s research. Their support is contingent upon Sandstrom’s recovery.’
‘It’s a little premature to consider any further offensive actions against Sandstrom. Any such move would have to be handled with the greatest care. What is the status of the police investigation into the raid?’
‘It’s at a complete standstill. Other than the eyewitness reports given by Sandstrom, Kilkenny, and Newton, the police have no leads from which to work.’
‘Good. Keep monitoring that situation, but at a safe distance. In all likelihood the whole matter will fade into obscurity due to lack of progress.’
Orlov turned to Zoshchenko, who sat quietly on the couch drinking her tea.
‘How are things going at our research facility, Oksanna?’
‘There’s a lot of material to review, but Lara Avvakum is making excellent progress. She has an almost intuitive grasp of the conceptual aspects of the project. I anticipate that by the end of the month, she will be ready to address the experimental work. She has embraced the project fully and is very enthusiastic.’
‘I thought she might be receptive to our offer; ten years in Siberia does that to a person.’ Orlov drank his tea, savoring the taste of the imported blend. ‘Any other issues we need to discuss?’
‘One, sir,’ Leskov replied.
‘Go on.’
‘Our surveillance has uncovered something unusual. On several occasions Newton was heard reading letters to Sandstrom. In analyzing the transcripts of these conversations, I believe these letters were written to Sandstrom’s colleague, Raphaele Paramo, several years ago. One transcript shows Sandstrom expressing amazement that the author had a better grasp of quantum physics fifty years ago than anyone today.’
‘Do you have the transcripts of those letters with you?’ Zoshchenko asked as she moved forward in her seat.
Leskov zipped open a leather binder and handed a folder to Zoshchenko. ‘I guessed you might want to take a look. Newton has been reading one or two letters each visit, and the rest of the time is spent discussing what she’s read. Both of them seem very excited by the material. I don’t know how many letters there are, but we’re getting them one at a time.’
‘This is very interesting,’ Zoshchenko said, thinking aloud as she skimmed over the first letter.
‘Could you elaborate, Oksanna?’
‘Oh, of course, Victor Ivanovich.’ Zoshchenko gathered her thoughts. ‘If the first letter I read is any indication of the rest, then I would concur with Sandstrom’s assessment that the author is a very gifted individual. He writes about physics like a poet. I freely admit my grasp of the nondeterministic nature of quantum mechanics is weak at best, but even I can see the fog lifting as I read his words. This person’s thinking is coherent. It is focused like a laser. I’ve never read anything quite like this – if I had, I would surely have remembered it. Who is the author?’
‘A physicist named Johann Wolff,’ Leskov informed them.
‘I’ve never heard of him,’ Zoshchenko admitted quizzically.
‘Nobody has. Kilkenny and Newton have been looking for some record of this Wolff’s work and have apparently found nothing. Sandstrom is convinced that Wolff’s research may provide the key that unlocks the mystery behind his discovery.’
‘How could a brilliant mind such as this go unnoticed?’ Zoshchenko couldn’t comprehend it.
‘That’s where this gets interesting. A few weeks ago Kilkenny and Newton gave up their search for Wolff.’
‘Why?’ Orlov asked.
‘We weren’t sure at first, but we eventually learned that Wolff disappeared in December of 1948 and was never heard from again. According to university records, Wolff was a relatively young man – late twenties – when he disappeared. Interest in Wolff was rekindled a few days ago when his body was discovered near the building where he worked at the university.’
Zoshchenko nodded thoughtfully. ‘That explains why he never published his work.’
‘Wolff was murdered,’ Leskov continued. ‘Someone practically cut his head off. We intercepted a conference call between Kilkenny, Sandstrom, and Newton yesterday when Kilkenny explained this to his associates.’
‘What do we know about this Wolff?’ Orlov demanded.
‘According to a newspaper article, Wolff was from Dresden and studied physics in Berlin. During the war he worked with a physicist named Heisenberg.’
‘Werner Heisenberg?’ Zoshchenko mulled over the name. ‘He won the Nobel Prize for inventing quantum mechanics and the famous Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle. In the pantheon of great theoretical physicists, Heisenberg is a titan. The main reason the Americans spent so much time and money to build an atomic bomb during the Great Patriotic War was because Heisenberg was working for the Germans. Every physicist in the world believed that if anyone could successfully build such a weapon, it would be Heisenberg.’
‘So Wolff was suckled on the tit of the great Heisenberg,’ Leskov continued, perturbed at Zoshchenko’s minilecture. ‘After the war, he went to America and took a job teaching physics at a university. A couple of years later, he was killed.’
‘Is that all?’
Leskov looked over his notes regarding Wolff. ‘There is one more thing. The reason for the renewed interest is not so much the body, but what was found with it. In that phone intercept, Kilkenny mentioned that Wolff’s briefcase contained a letter and six notebooks. There’s a problem with the books that Kilkenny didn’t elaborate on.’
‘If they were buried in the ground with Wolff,’ Zoshchenko offered, ‘they are probably in very poor condition.’
‘Perhaps, but our competitors still believe they are of some value.’
‘Then so should we. Good work, Dmitri. Follow up on the notebooks; we’ll acquire them if necessary. Oksanna, I would like you to do a little research on Johann Wolff. I believe the Red Army confiscated most of the Third Reich’s scientific records. See what you can dig out of the archives. Let’s meet on Friday to discuss this matter more fully.’
Langley, Virginia
Bart Cooper arrived at the CIA’s George Bush Center for Intelligence a little after ten o’clock having avoided the daily rush-hour traffic. Setting his own work hours was one of his perks as a consultant to the Agency, the latest in a long line of titles he’d held in an intelligence career that started when he became an OSS field operative during the Second World War. He’d risen in rank as the Agency grew, and fought on the front lines of America’s Cold War. Cooper had survived scandals, various downsizing programs, and micromanaging congressional oversight. And now, he seemed to have survived retirement in his role as adviser to the Director of Central Intelligence. At a robust seventy-seven, he served as counselor emeritus to Jackson Barnett, the current DCI, who valued Cooper for his broad perspective.
After parking in the same spot he’d been assigned back in the sixties, Cooper cleared the main building’s security and took the elevator up to the executive level. The place was filled with its usual buzz of activity as information from around the world was gathered, sifted, analyzed, processed, digested, and eventually regurgitated for the elected officials who would decide what it meant. Some things never changed.
‘Morning, Bart,’ Sally Kirsch, Jackson Barnett’s executive secretary, said as Cooper stepped into the office pantry to get himself a cup of coffee.
‘Hi, Sally. How are things in the Far East today?’
‘No better than yesterday, and Africa is heating up again.’
Cooper sighed at the thought of another military coup in some sub-Saharan country launching yet another round of intertribal genocide. ‘There are times when I yearn for the old days, when we would just send a team out and pop these guys.’
‘You’re kidding, aren’t you?’
Cooper just smiled and left with a mug of black coffee.
When he reached his office, he set the mug down on the desk and hung his blazer on the rack. His in-basket contained the files that Barnett wanted him to peruse. Most of them dealt with operational concepts – Cooper’s forte – while the remainder were a mixed bag of analysis that somebody, somewhere, wanted a seasoned eye to give the once-over. He wasn’t on the front lines anymore, but Cooper was thankful that Barnett valued his insights enough to let him keep his hand in the game. He was the last of the old guard, a cold warrior whose tenure ran back as far as the days of Wild Bill Donovan and Allen Dulles.
He sat down and wiggled the mouse on his desk, awakening his computer from its electronic slumber. The black screen flickered back to life, rendering the CIA logo against a field of light blue. A small box on the bottom center of the screen waited for him to type in his password. Cooper keyed in the thirteen random characters and pressed
ENTER.
‘
Ohayo gozamasu
, Cooper-san,’ the computer announced in a voice that sounded a lot like Toshiro Mifune.
‘
Ohayo
, computer-san,’ Cooper replied.
Every day, the computer greeted Cooper in the language of one of the countries he’d worked in during his years as a field agent, never voicing the same greeting twice in a month.
Cooper clicked on his calendar and saw that he had a meeting with the Deputy Director in Charge of Operations at 1:30. He then checked his E-mail: a few general-broadcast announcements, a response from Barnett regarding the China-Korea situation, and something generated by the central computer regarding a flagged file.
‘I don’t recall making a search request,’ Cooper mused as he selected the last piece of mail for viewing.
TO: COOPER, BARTHOLOMEW
FROM: CIA CENTER NETWORK
KEYWORD SEARCH FOR FILE OSS-17932 HAS
FOUND
1 MATCH FOR KEYWORDS: WOLFF, JOHANN.
The OSS designator in the file number identified it as something dating back to the Second World War, part of the CIA’s inheritance from the Office of Strategic Services. Cooper was the last remaining veteran of the OSS still active with the Agency. While stationed in Germany immediately following the war, Cooper was tasked with weeding out Nazis from the stream of German refugees seeking to emigrate to the United States.
The body of the message contained only a line of blue, underscored text. Cooper selected the hypertext link, and his computer responded by loading an article that the system had culled from the day’s electronic edition of the
Ann Arbor News.
Body that of missing asst. prof.
The remains unearthed Monday from a construction site on the Diag of the University of Michigan have been positively identified as those of Johann Wolff. Wolff was an assistant professor of physics at the university from 1946 until his disappearance on Dec. 10, 1948.
Wolff, originally from Dresden, Germany, received a doctorate in physics at the Kaiser Wilhem Institute in Berlin and worked with renowned physicist Werner Heisenberg.
Det. Brian Ptashnik, of the Ann Arbor Police, has confirmed that Wolff’s death is being investigated as a homicide. No further details regarding the investigation were announced.
The discovery of Wolff’s body follows the grisly discovery of the preserved remains of medical cadavers from the 1800s on the same construction site last week. Dozens of handmade grave markers, bearing names like Amelia Earhart, Jimmy Hoffa and Elvis Presley, have sprung up on the Diag as students have transformed the campus lawn into a mock cemetery.
Cooper printed a copy of the article, then closed the window and pulled the single sheet from the printer. After rereading the article for the third time, Cooper scanned the phone list tacked to his wall and dialed the number he was looking for.
‘Research, this is Connie,’ a whiskey-throated woman answered.
‘Morning, Connie. It’s Bart.’
‘Bart Cooper?’ her voice softened with surprise. ‘It’s been a while. How they treating you upstairs?’
‘Same as always, with the great respect due one of my numerous years of service.’
‘Sounds like the same old song and dance we get down here,’ Connie said with a laugh. ‘What can I do for you?’
‘I need some research done on an old case.’
‘How old?’
‘Old, as in before your time.’
‘A request like that isn’t research; it’s archaeology.’
‘I know,’ he said, laughing. ‘But please, I need everything you can find on a Johann Wolff. He was a German physicist, worked on the Nazi A-bomb project during the war.’
‘What’s the story?’
‘They just found his body up in Michigan, fifty years after he disappeared. Looks like murder.’
‘A murdered German physicist. How intriguing.’
‘Might be. See what you can dig up. Full package: German Intelligence, Immigration. The works. You can start with file OSS-one seven nine three two. Also, see if you can get anything from our friends at Lubyanka – they got most of the Gestapo’s records out of Berlin.’
‘I’ll see what I can do. Any rush on this?’
‘No, it’s just to satisfy my own curiosity. You see, Wolff was one of the German scientists I vetted after the war – I wrote that OSS file I just told you about. Based on what I could find at the time, I cleared him to immigrate into the U.S. Still, I have a few questions about Wolff that I’d like to resolve.’
