The God Machine (48 page)

Koster felt himself being pulled upright by his collar. Special Agent Webster flung him like a bag of dirty laundry through the door. They were in the basement, Koster realized. And they were alone.

He crawled forward on his knees, his thoughts churning. Where was Sajan? Were they hurting her? He tried desperately to wiggle away. The special agent stepped up behind him. Once again, he lifted him up by the collar. Koster braced himself for another brutal punch in the kidneys. But none came. Webster simply stood there behind him. Without moving.

After several seconds, Koster swiveled about.

The special agent was silhouetted against the light of the elevator. He looked barely human in his black body armor. “Now, we're even,” Webster said. Then, he reached up. He pulled off his gas mask and helmet.

It was Macalister.

S
AJAN WOKE UP IN WHAT APPEARED TO BE AN UNFINISHED
basement. She felt groggy, unsettled. Her head ached. And she was tied to a chair.

The last thing she remembered was being dragged by policemen to the bedroom in Koster's loft in the Village. Then they had pressed a rag to her face. And everything had gone dark. But this was clearly no holding cell.

She turned her head, looked about her. A puce-colored washer and dryer stood against the far wall. More purple than red. Several rows of plastic green chairs were stacked up to the side. Beyond them, a Ping-Pong table, folded upright, several brown cardboard boxes and a half-painted bookcase. To her left was a stairwell, with beige wooden stairs. A couple of fluorescent light fixtures dangled down from the ceiling. One of the bulbs wasn't working, she noticed. It kept cutting off and then relighting again. It sputtered and hissed.

Sajan tested her bonds. No use. Her hands had been tied up with some sort of tape. There was no way she could free them.

That's when she first heard the footsteps. The sound came from the stairs to her left. Sajan leaned forward to see. She strained at her bonds.

A shoe and an ankle appeared on the steps. Then a calf, and another shoe, and the dark hem of a skirt or a robe. Sajan felt her heart stop for an instant as the rosary beads swung into view.

The nun from Carpenters' Hall! And directly behind her, Michael Rose, the televangelist's son.

The nun tapped at the concrete floor with the tip of her shoe as if she were testing the thickness of pond ice. Perhaps she thought it was wet. Still conductive. Sajan shuddered.

Sister Maria strode forward with a smile on her face. “You're awake,” she began. “We've been waiting.”

Sajan yanked at her bindings. “Where am I? Untie me,” she demanded.

Michael Rose circled the basement. He paused for a moment by a square cardboard box, bent over and started to drag it across the gray concrete floor toward Sajan. At first Sajan thought he was going to sit down. But, instead, he removed a small electronic device, a digital tape recorder, from his jacket. He propped it up on the box.

“What are you doing?” Sajan said. “Let me go.”

The nun took a step closer. She reached up with a terrible casualness and slipped off her rosary beads.

“Wait!” Sajan said. She struggled. She tried pushing her chair back but it seemed lashed to the floor. “I said let me go.”

The nun swung the beads in her hands. Without warning, she reached out and snatched at the crucifix. She pinched it between her fingers. The body of Christ fell away from the cross, revealing the little steel blade underneath. “Where is Nick Robinson hiding his God machine?” she asked softly.

Sajan stared at the blade, transfixed. It glimmered as the fluorescent bulb blinked overhead. On and off. On and off. With the hiss of a bug-zapper. “I don't know,” she replied. “We were blindfolded. Someplace on the Upper West Side, I think.”

“Where?” The nun took a step closer.

“I told you. I don't know. In Harlem, perhaps.”

“Is it complete?” It was Rose who spoke this time. His voice, seemed unstable somehow, as if the words in the sentence were about to go off like a series of snares.

“It was missing the Tesla schematic.”

“Do you mean this?” Sister Maria pulled out a snapshot from the folds of her robes. She held it up to the light.

Sajan stared at the photograph. It certainly looked like the Tesla schematic. She recognized a battery of squares to one side, and that pattern of lines on the other. Connectors. “I guess so,” she said. “Where did you get that?”

The nun coughed. Then she coughed once again, and again, twisting her head to the side.

Sajan shuddered at the broad imitation. She didn't even want to imagine what had happened to Bettendorf, the curator from the Edison labs.

“Is that the last piece?” Rose inquired. He suddenly veered from his path. He stared down at her with his pasty white face, those red lips and that flap of blond hair.

Sajan hesitated. “Yes, the Tesla schematic. Untie me. Untie me, I said. Let me go.”

The nun's smile broadened. She took a step closer. Her fingers played with the blade in her hand. “You're lying.”

“I said let me go.”

Sister Maria wrapped her arm like a snake around Sajan's narrow shoulders. She waved the blade sticking
out of Christ's severed spine by her face. “The Tesla schematic is not the last piece,” said the nun.

Sajan froze. “What did you say? Why would you think that?”

Rose stared down at Sajan. “The map's incomplete. The four pieces don't work. There's another schematic. Where is it?”

“Let me go,” Sajan commanded. Her voice broke at the end. She felt tears burn her eyes as the dark truth descended upon her. Nick had spoken the truth. Some how, they had built a machine, just like Robinson. It was like a bad dream, a nightmare. It didn't seem real. “Let me go, please, I'm begging you.
Please!”

The blade inched still closer, and although Sajan wiggled and heaved, though she tried with all of her might to pull herself free, the nun had locked her head in the crook of her elbow. There was nowhere to go, except down the interminable hole of her scream.

I
N THE END, IT WAS
R
OSE WHO GAVE
R
OBINSON THE KEY TO
his victory. That was the wonderful irony. But, as Sun Tzu once said, “The victorious strategist only seeks battle after the victory has been won.” And Robinson was not fond of losing.

It was too late for loyalty, the riptide of friendship. It was too late for the mystery of numbers. But there was something that Koster would fight for, Robinson realized, something beautiful and pure. And it wasn't Sajan, as wondrous and intelligent as she was. It was the
idea
of Sajan. The idea that love was still possible, even for someone like Koster.

There was a knock on the conference room door. Robinson climbed to his feet. He patted his pocket. A moment later, the door opened. Koster stood there. Macalister loomed at his side, grim and silent.

Robinson rounded the table. It was a small window-less conference room, with barely space for the table and a half dozen chairs. But it was deep in the bowels of his temple in Harlem. Behind twenty-four inches of
concrete and steel. “Come in, Joseph, please. How are you?” he said. “Were you hurt in the rescue? Please, sit down.”

Koster glared back at Macalister. “Nothing serious,” he said. “But I'd hardly call it a rescue. How have you helped me, exactly? I can't hide out in this basement indefinitely.”

“You won't have to, believe me. As long as you do what I tell you. We've been friends a long time, Joseph. A long time. I wouldn't let anyone hurt you.”

“Don't even start, Nick. I'm not going to help you.” Koster sat at the head of the table.

Robinson's smile melted away. After a moment, he pulled out a chair and sat down beside Koster. He leaned closer and said, “Where is it?”

“Where's what?”

“I'm not stupid, Joseph. The last fragment. The final piece of the map. And don't tell me the Tesla schematic.”

“I don't know what you're talking about.”

“When I added the fragment you gave me, the one from Edison's notebook, the God machine still didn't work.”

“Gee, that's strange. Maybe God wasn't home.”

Robinson stiffened. Macalister took a step closer.

“Your Gestapo tactics won't work on me,” Koster said.

“You'd be surprised,” said Macalister.

Robinson shook his head. “I'd rather you helped me,” he told Koster, “because you believe it's the right thing to do. I don't want to hurt you, Joseph,” he added. “I have feelings for you. But you've put me in a very difficult position.”

“Your
position!” Koster laughed. “I'd rather be the spider than the fly, any day.”

“Would you? But that's exactly my point, Joseph. For too long, you were happy being the fly. Stuck in a web of
self-pity.
Help me, help me,”
he mocked, raising his hands. “Who urged you to pick yourself up, to get on with your life? You were moribund, Joseph. A shell of a man. You hated your job. You couldn't get over Mariane's death. And now you have. Because of this quest.” Robinson chortled. “Take this with as many grains of salt as you wish, my friend, but I'm genuinely proud of you.”

“You'd do anything, wouldn't you, say anything to get your hands on the God machine? What's next? The majesty of numbers? The world's oldest conjecture?” Koster leaned forward. He put his hands on the table and said, “Why did Mariane die, Nick? If you hadn't dragged me into your quest, she'd still be alive. She's dead because of you. All I care about is freeing Savita. You took one woman away from me. You won't take another.”

Robinson sighed. “On the contrary,” he said. “It would seem you've taken Savita from
me.”

Koster straightened. He tightened his fists. “You gave her up years ago.”

“I didn't want to. I loved her… love her still. But it was a necessary sacrifice. My personal feelings were unimportant. She was to play a different role in this quest.”

Koster laughed bitterly. “And I always looked up to you. You're a fool, Nick. It may have taken me over forty years, but I've learned a few things in my stumbling about. Including this curious equation: When you have a chance at love, any chance, you'd better grab it. You'd better hold on tight. Because it may never come along again.” He shook his head. “Numbers may be perfect, in their own way, to be sure, beautiful and true, but they don't keep your feet warm at night.”

Robinson glanced up at Macalister. Then, as if it were an afterthought, he reached into his pocket and took out
the recorder. Without saying a word, he placed it on the table before him.

“What's that?” Koster asked. The recorder was so small that it looked like an insect.

Robinson tapped the device and the voice of a man said,
“Savita Sajan. You know her. Does she mean something to you?”

“Who is this?”
Robinson's recorded voice sounded tinny and flat.

“Listen carefully,”
the man said.
“If you ever want to see Savita alive again, hand over the last piece of the map. The fragment she drew. Koster has it. We know. And Koster's with you.”

Koster lifted himself up in his chair.

There was a pause. Then, a piteous voice echoed back.
“What are you doing? Let me go. Wait! I said let me go.”

Koster flinched. It was Sajan.

Another woman broke in. She had a Latin American accent.
“Where is Nick Robinson hiding his God machine?”

“I don't know. We were blindfolded. Someplace on the Upper West Side I think.”

“Where?”

“I told you. I don't know. In Harlem, perhaps.”

“Is that the last piece?”
the man asked.

“Yes, the Tesla schematic. Untie me. Untie me, I said. Let me go.”

“You're lying.”

“I said let me go.”