The Rock (3 page)

"A Ping-Pong ball is placed in the top of the tube and slowly settles to the bottom. The diameter of the tube is barely one eighth of an inch larger than the circumference of the Ping-Pong ball. Your job"-he grinned-"should you choose to accept it, is to get the Ping-Pong ball out of the steel tube given what's available to you. And the Ping-Pong ball must be intact--no using the hanger to puncture it and pull it out."

Don sat back and listened to several of the usual solutions, pointing out how each one wouldn't work. Finally, he took pity on his students. "All right. Listen up. There's a teaching point here, as always. You all have focused on the material I gave you and not on the problem. You have tunnel vision. Someone give characteristics of the object you wish to remove from the pipe."

"It's round," one student drunkenly declared.

"True," Don acknowledged. "What else?"

"It's white," another announced to laughter.

"What else?" Out of the comer of his eye Batson noted that the men near the bathroom had now written numbers on napkins and were holding them up as women walked past.

"It bounces."

"Good. You're on the right track. More physical characteristics. How would you describe a Ping-Pong ball to someone who's never seen one?"

"It's a hollow plastic sphere."

Don smiled. "All right. What does a hollow plastic sphere do?" Seeing the frowns, he tried explaining further. "You've already said it bounces. What else?"

"It floats."

"Exactly!" Don looked at the student who'd come up with that. "How can you use that to get the ball out of the tube?"

"Well, you pour water in and it will float to the top." The student shook his head. "But you didn't give us any water as part of the material we could use."

Don shook his head. "That just reinforces the teaching point. You have to examine the problem without constricting yourself by given or known parameters. What do you always have with you when you approach any problem?"

"Your mind?"

"Yes," Don replied. "And your body. Isn't your body capable of producing fluid sufficient to get the Ping-Pong ball out of the tube?"

"Oh, gross," one of the students commented as he realized what Don was saying. "You mean take a leak in the pipe?"

"Exactly!"

With that, two men in three-piece suits slowly walked in the front door and gazed about, referring to a photo the lead man held in his hand. They looked out of place among the cowboy boots and hats.

"And speaking of that," Linda announced, "I have to take a little trip. Get me another beer, please," she whispered in Don's ear as she got to her feet.

Don's eyes followed her as she wove her way through the tables to the ladies' room. As she passed the rednecks, they held up their numbers. Don was pleased to note that she rated as high as the mini-skirted girl but dismayed when Linda stopped and tipped their pitcher of beer over, soaking half the men as it splattered across the table.

Don leapt to his feet and was halfway to the table as a fat drunken man with a large silver belt buckle jumped up, cursing Linda. "You fucking bitch! Who the hell do you think you are?"

"Screw you!" Linda yelled back. "I should be able to go to the bathroom without getting harassed." "Hey! Let's chill out here," Don suggested, grabbing Linda's arm. "She with you, asshole?" The fat man wasn't waiting for an answer, looming over Don's slight frame.

Don looked up and smiled weakly. "Come on. Let me buy you another pitcher." He fumbled for his wallet.

Another man from the table cast a tall shadow to his right. "Fuck you. We're gonna make you and your girlfriend here lick our table off."

A large callused hand grabbed the back of Batson's shirt and he tried to remember some of the karate he'd taken in one of his inspired moments several years previously. Unfortunately, nothing of use carne to mind. "Listen, guys, there's no need to--"

The hand pressed him forward, lowering his head toward the wet table. Linda was kicking and biting at the man trying to hold on to her, his hands roaming toward intimate parts of her body.

A voice cut through the room. "Freeze! Breathe and you're dead." The cowboys became statues, their eyes mesmerized by whoever had yelled to Don's rear.

The hand on his back let go and Don slowly stood up and turned. The two men in suits were standing there, one holding a mini-Uzi on the group, the other a large, wicked-looking pistol. The man with the pistol looked at Don. "You Professor Batson?"

Don nodded.

"Come with us, please."

The please sounded incongruous, considering the firepower. "Let's go, Linda," he said, tucking his shirt back in.

They made their way to the door-the two men covering their retreat-and went out into the parking lot.

"Who are you guys?"

The man put his pistol away and flipped his ID card out. "National Security Agency. We need you to accompany us."

"What for?" Don glanced at Linda, who was still shaking from the confrontation. She was eyeing him in a manner he couldn't quite figure out. He shook his head trying to clear it.

The man was leading him toward a black Bronco with tinted windows. "That will be answered when we get where we're going, sir. This action is authorized by your involvement with the Hermes Project."

Don halted, staggering slightly. "I'm not going anywhere until I know where we're going."

The man turned an impassive face to him. "Sir, we would very much like it if you cooperated. If you do not cooperate we are authorized to use force, and I'm sure none of us will like that very much. You agreed to participation in the Hermes Project. I can assure you that everything will be all right. All will be explained at your destination."

The other man stepped up close behind Batson, his manner calmly threatening.

"How long will we be gone?"

"I don't know, sir. A day at least."

"All right. I'll go along for the time being. Let's take Ms. Porter home first. We can drop her at my place while I get some stuff."

The man swung the truck door open. "We've already been by your house and have packed for you."

"How'd you get in?" Don protested.

The man looked slightly surprised, as if it were a stupid question. "We went in the door, Professor. Now please get in the truck. We have a plane waiting at the airport. Ms. Porter can take your car home. We have already notified the university that you will be on a leave of absence.

Don turned to Linda. "I'll give you a call as soon as I find out what is going on."

"Don't bother," she spat, grabbing the keys and walking over to his car.

LEVY London, England

19 DECEMBER 1995, 0900 LOCAL

19 DECEMBER 1995, 0900 ZULU

The lecture hall was filled to capacity and people were even standing along the back wall. Debra Levy let the curtain slip back into place with a twitch of nervousness.

"I didn't know there would be so many!"

The coordinator from Oxford made clucking noises, presumably to soothe her. "Your reputation is unmatched. Your work is at the very cutting edge." He smiled. "In fact, you are beyond the cutting edge, as far as I am concerned. I am not sure I understood your last paper on the quantum theory of gravitation and the physics of the cosmos. Most especially the section on..."

Debra grasped her notes tighter in damp hands and pushed her glasses up on her nose, tuning out his words. That all these people should be here to listen to a twenty-three year old Jewish girl from Brooklyn! It was all so strange to her. Having lived her life, she didn't understand that others found her amazing. After graduating from high school at nine, she'd completed her doctorate in physics at MIT at fifteen. Since then she'd added several other degrees, but still kept her concentration in the world of physics.

It never seemed to occur to those around her that as much as they didn't quite comprehend her, she didn't quite comprehend everyone outside of herself. To her it was quite natural to have progressed the way she did and unnatural that people her own age were still struggling in the graduate program she'd completed almost a decade ago. The egocentrism of the average human mind never ceased to confound her.

"Two minutes," the coordinator whispered to her, his body unnecessarily close.

He irritated her. She knew she was far from pretty but she also knew she wasn't ugly. Five and a half feet tall, the one hundred and ten pounds sparingly applied to her frame gave her an acceptable body, as far as present societal standards went, where it was always better to be on the lesser side of the weight scale than the greater. Debra couldn't have cared less, but her brain acknowledged that it sometimes mattered to others, most particularly men. Her face, devoid of makeup, was very pale and smooth. Her eyes were hidden behind functional thick glasses that were hopelessly out of style. Her dark hair was drawn back severely in a bun with a small ribbon and had never known the graces of a stylist's scissors.

"One minute."

Two figures appeared near the door to the stage wing, one of the professors trying to stop their entry. They pushed past him as if he didn't exist. The taller of the two men walked up to Debra.

"Miss Debra Levy?"

She nodded as the coordinator and several others hovered worriedly about, asking questions that went unanswered.

"I'm Agent Stone from the Defense Intelligence Agency." He pushed a very official-looking ID card under her nose. "We have reason to believe that your life might be in danger and have orders to take you under protective custody."

Debra blinked in confusion. "What?"

They didn't even stop to explain. One on either side, they hustled her out of the lecture hall through a back door, ignoring the howls of indignation from the Oxford people. She was in a dark car and speeding away from the curb before the reality of what had happened caught up with her.

FRAN New York, New York

19 DECEMBER 1995, 0442 LOCAL

19 DECEMBER 1995, 0942 ZULU

The computer screen cast an eerie glow across the hardwood floors of the large den. Francine Volkers was facing the screen but her eyes were unfocused--she didn't need to see the numbers portrayed, because she'd created them and they were indelibly etched in her mind. She took another sip of her coffee and sighed as a light went on in the guest bedroom. Her husband padded out, his bathrobe half thrown on.

"Are you going to get any sleep?"

Francine shook her head. For the past forty-eight hours she'd had to face her own numbers and she didn't like them one bit. She'd transmitted them as required on the secure modem as soon as the calculations were complete. Now she could do nothing but look at them.

"No."

Her husband cursed under his breath. Their marriage had been one of convenience for many years now and she was currently an irritant-upsetting the unspoken truce. "Jesus Christ, Fran! You've been sitting in front of that damn computer since I got home. The glow is coming right in my door."

"Then shut your door." She was surprised he'd noticed how long it had been. He worked on Wall Street, crunching his own set of numbers and all he truly cared about was that they turned out in the black, and in at least six digits a month. The numbers had brought them together fifteen years earlier in college, but had subsequently taken them in radically different directions. His had ended on Wall Street. Hers had taken her to Columbia University, where she had helped pioneer the field of statistical projection. She took facts and figures, collated them into numbers a computer could read, and then tried to project out what the possibilities of various future events would be. Right now they read very poorly.

A few years ago a group that had kept what they called a Doomsday Clock had moved the minute hand back from two minutes before midnight to almost fifteen minutes prior to midnight. The breakup of the Soviet Union and the worldwide cutback in military spending had been the impetus. Fran had disagreed with that move, but kept it to herself. Her own calculations would have edged the minute hand a shade closer to the dark hour. The loss of the relative stability of the Soviet Union and the formation of numerous splinter countries all armed with nuclear weapons certainly did not bode well for mankind in her mind or in her calculations. Nor did the world economic condition. The haves were teetering and the have-nots were getting angrier.

She didn't even bother to look at her husband. "Go to bed, George. You need your rest so you can make money tomorrow, or should I say later today."

A year before he would have retorted angrily to the dig, pointing out that his money paid for their exclusive Central Park West apartment. It was a sign of how low things had sunk between them that he simply turned and stalked back into the bedroom, slamming his door behind him. Fran was in her mid-thirties; a tall, slender woman whose dark hair was now streaked with gray-a sign of premature aging she refused to color. As a result of that and the creases around her eyes and mouth, she looked almost ten years older than she really was. It wasn't something to concern her. Such trivial matters bothered her little when weighed against what her numbers told her day in and day out.