Pandora's Ark (8 page)

In Bonasero’s
mind he conceded. As strong a politic as he was, Angullo bested him at every
corner, at every turn, his tongue sharp and his reasoning even sharper. He had
turned Vessucci’s considerations of Pope Gregory’s death into the possible
realm of one man’s desperation, should it be spoken in certain circles.
Secondly, in his statement of seeking the truth, didn’t Angullo purposely use
the Vatican Knights as the optimum example of why Vessucci’s ‘truth’ was
hypocritical since the Knights remained a well-hidden secret from the College?
Wasn’t keeping them a secret for fear of internal dissatisfaction within the
religious hierarchy in essence a ‘lie’?

Vessucci was
beaten down on a political level, and badly.

Angullo reached
blindly for the knob, his eyes remaining focused on Vessucci as his hatchet-thin
face held the winning glow of achievement. “Think about it, Bonasero. Your
weakness has become my strength.”

“I have as much
right to the position as you do,” he finally said, but not as self-assured as
before.

“As does anyone
else,” he said. And with that he left the papal chamber, closing the door
behind him.

Vessucci exhaled
as if he had accumulated his frustrations and vented them with a long sigh in
catharsis. Nevertheless, he remained solid in his convictions to believe that
Pope Gregory did not fall by his own miscalculation.

He went back to
the rail and peered over the edge to the bricks below. Despite Angullo’s
countermeasures, there was no doubt in his mind that he was not a desperate man,
but a man of conscience and reason.

He would
politick and try to sway the Electors that he is just as strong a candidate as
he was during the last election within the conclave six months earlier. He
would once again provide them with his strengths, his weaknesses, and lay
everything out as to the direction the Church should head. And then hope that
his bidding would secure him the throne.

People continued
to mill about the Square. And once again Cardinal Vessucci sighed. Cardinal
Angullo was a strong adversary whose name was thrown into the arena at the last
election. And as secretary of state he held the notoriety of being the
pontiff’s closest ally.

This was going
to be an uphill battle all the way, he thought.

And with that
thought on his mind he dolefully returned to the
Domus Sanctæ Marthæ.

CHAPTER
TEN

Las Vegas
, Nevada

Kimball Hayden was working the
trash canisters along the casino floor when Louie tapped him on the shoulder.

“You haven’t
given me an answer. And we have only five days left.”

“I thought my
lack of an answer was answer enough,” said Kimball, tossing a trash bag into
the cart. Around him slot machines and video games chimed their wins and losses
with the winning screens lighting up in cartoonish displays of coins dropping
into the winner’s trough.  

“There’s a
treasure chest lying at our feet,” said Louie, stabbing a finger in the air as
if to harshly punctuate his point. “And all you have to do is get into the
ring. But you’re kinda giving me the feeling that you’re gutless. Is that what
you are, J.J.? Gutless.”

Kimball smiled
at Louie’s adolescent attempt at peer pressure. “Look, Louie, I’m not
interested in cage fighting. I never was and I never will be. Okay?”

“So this is what
you want to do for the rest of your life? To pick up trash?”

“It’s an honest
living. I told you that.”

“You also told
me that you’d think about the ring.”

“I did . . . for
about a second.”

Louie shook his
head. “You have all the tools, J.J. You even have the look. What an awful waste.”

“So I have the
look, huh?”

Another nod.
“You look like a warrior, J.J. It’s in your eyes. It’s in the way you move, the
way you walk. It’s all about you and here you are diving into trash cans.”

“Like I said,
it’s just a temporary gig. And then I’ll move on.”

Louie grabbed
Kimball by the elbow. “Can I show you something?”

“If it moves you—yeah,
sure.”

Louie ushered
him to the end of the aisle that led to the Sports Book. Once there he released
him and pointed to an aging African-American who looked jaded, his face hanging
as if perpetually distraught. Like Kimball, he was shagging trash bags from
receptacles and discarding them into carts. “See that man right there?”

Kimball
shrugged. “It’s Tyrone. So what?”

“Tyrone said the
same thing thirteen years ago,” he said. “That exact same thing: ‘It’s
temporary.’ But look at him. He’s become someone without hope or ambition.” He
turned to Kimball. “And that’s going to be you, J.J.—a man without hope or
ambition.”

“So fighting in
a caged arena like an animal is supposed to give me a sense of hope or
ambition? Is that what you’re telling me?”

“All I’m saying,
J.J., is to give yourself a chance to be what you were meant to be, and to stop
wasting your life.” He looked at Tyrone, then back to Kimball. “We both know
you were never meant to do this. You were meant to be someone special.” Then in
imploring manner, “Don’t become like Tyrone. Don’t waste your life when there’s
opportunity knocking at your door.”

Kimball looked
at Tyrone and noted that the man looked older than his fifty years. His face
hung with aged looseness. And his back began to take on the fatigued shape of
bowing into a question mark.

“I can’t, Louie.
I’m not like that anymore.”

“J.J., I can
tell that you were a fighter at one time, a warrior even. The scars are all
over you. But don’t ever forget that you can never truly walk away from what
you really are. A fighter will always be a fighter. A loser will always be a loser.
And a dreamer will always be a dreamer. If you think for one minute this is
only temporary, then you’re sadly mistaken.”  He pointed at Tyrone. “Take a
look at your future, J.J. I hope it ain’t so, but take a good, long look.”

Kimball did,
seeing more than just the tired assemblage of a man who once dreamed that his
life held so much promise, but eventually lost that potential over time, his
dreams fading. When Kimball turned to say something to Louie, the man was gone.

He had finally
given up on Kimball.

The fight was obviously
off.

And Tyrone was
aging by leaps and bounds.

#

While in Vegas
, Kimball
had become a creature of habit. The moment he clocked out of work he bought his
$1.99 parfait glass of shrimp, watched the overhead show of the Freemont
Experience, and then went home. There were no back-alley surprises, no meth whores
looking for a quick buck or gangbangers sizing him up as he passed them by.
Unlike most nights, tonight was uneventful.

He sat in his
apartment with the lights and TV off, nothing but dark shadows.

Nor did he
shower—the stink of garbage all over him.

Louie had
provided him with an opportunity. He also told Kimball the truth about himself,
even though he tried to turn a blind eye to what he truly was: a warrior, a
fighter, a killer. Not a man who was elbow deep in trash.

But Kimball was
a man convicted to make a change.

But it was hard,
if not impossibly difficult, since the blood of a soldier still coursed through
his veins.

The moment the Vatican Knights were disbanded by Pope Gregory XVII, Kimball wondered what lie in his
future. Honest jobs with meager wages? Little hope of anything else other than
to believe that one lousy job was just a setback? And that every job would be something
‘temporary’ until something better came along. What he learned was that life
beyond the auspices of the Vatican was far more difficult than he had imagined.

Kimball stood up
and parted the drapes, allowing a ray of gray light to filter in. In the
distance he could see the flashing lights along Boulder Highway. And to the
west the dazzling lights that the Las Vegas Strip was known for.

Change was not
easy, he told himself. And Louie’s words were beginning to strike him hard.

He was growing
older, like Tyrone. And whether or not he wanted to admit it, he was becoming
just as jaded. ‘Temporary’ was becoming ‘permanent.’

He then went to
the refrigerator, pulled out a bottle of Jack Daniels, and rather than grab a
glass to drink from, he returned to the window and drank directly from the
bottle.

And then reality
struck him like a hammer blow:
I kill people. It’s
what I do. It’s what I’m good at.

This had always been his mantra.

It was also a fact that those who contested him had also
breathed their last breath.

“I kill people” he whispered. “It’s what I do. It’s what
I’m good at.”

Kimball closed his eyes, letting the effects of a buzz
overwhelm him. And in his mind’s eye he could visualize the disappointment in
Louie’s face, could hear the admonishment in his voice: “
A fighter
will always be a fighter. A loser will always be a loser. And a dreamer will
always be a dreamer. If you think for one minute this is only temporary, then
you’re sadly mistaken
.” 

Kimball brought
the bottle to his lips and took a long swig.

And then in a
whisper only he could hear, he said: “I . . . am . . . a warrior.”

He took another long
pull from the bottle and closed the drapes, immersing him in gloom that was
equal to his mood.

Within the hour
the self-proclaimed warrior passed out from too much drink, his bladder
loosening as he lay in mock crucifixion across his bed, only to awake six hours
later totally humiliated by what he had become.

CHAPTER
ELEVEN

Leonid
Sakharov had always been afraid of flying, which was actually an excuse to
imbibe a few shots before boarding his flight to take away the edge. He also
knew it would be the last time he’d be allowed to partake.

By mid-afternoon he boarded an Aeroflot Russian Airliner.
And though he found the economy class cramped with the hanging odors of
unwashed passengers sitting around him, he at least found marginal comfort
knowing it was a straight route to Tehran.

With his meal tray down, Sakharov had his notes out, little
pieces of paper with drawing representations of molecular buckyballs and
corresponding formulas. From his memory he had mined the information he created
mentally while serving in Vladimir Central, the sketches derived strictly from
recall as he doodled spherical molecular formations of the
Buckminsterfullerene, the Carbon 60 molecule necessary for the structure of the
nanobot.

Buckminsterfullerene
is the smallest fullerene molecule in which no two pentagons share an edge. The
structure of C
₆₀
 
is a
 
truncated icosahedron
, which resembles a
 
soccer
ball
made of twenty hexagons and twelve
pentagons with a carbon atom at the vertices of each polygon and a bond along
each of its edge. This special molecule was discovered in 1985 at Rice University and deemed very adaptable, smart, and able to contemplate its own
existence. A year later, Leonid Sakharov embarked on his scientific journey
thousands of miles away by programming a chain of commands into the structure,
the molecule then carrying the codes over to replicated molecules until the
commands became a collective whole. And though the commands worked in previous
testing, the matter to slow the process to duplicate itself exponentially had
fatal consequences. And this was the problem—to somehow give it a smaller
lifespan half the length of the original, and then a half-life for every
subsequent molecule thereafter until it fades itself out completely.

He
examined his notes carefully, then made additional sketches and drew formulas
with numerical designs that looked more like Greek lettering.

And
he did this all the way to Tehran.

Once
the plane touched down, Sakharov disembarked with the aid of airline personnel,
who wheeled him across the terminal in a wheelchair, and released him to
al-Ghazi, who was waiting by the terminal doors.

Al-Ghazi,
as always, was impeccably dressed from top to bottom. “And how was your trip,
Doctor? I assume it was a pleasant journey.”

“Pleasant?
It smelled like ass all the way over,” he said.

As
crotchety as ever
, al-Ghazi thought.

Once
the doors opened, a plume of heat blasted into the doorway.

“It’s
hot as hell out there,” said Sakharov.

“But
it’s a dry heat.”

“I’ll
make sure to tell that to the ambulance driver as he’s loading me into the back
of the van. I’ll just say to him: ‘No rush. It’s just a
dry heat
, so
don’t worry about the oncoming heat stroke.’”

Al-Ghazi
rolled his eyes. Working with Sakharov was going to be difficult, he could
tell.

Moments
later they were in the back of a limousine cruising away from the airport.
Sakharov had his full attention set to the passing landscape, marveling at the
architecture.

Al-Ghazi
smiled, intuiting the old man’s thoughts. “It’s not the mud huts and stone
structures you thought it would be, is it?”

The
old man looked out the window, noting the complexity and wide arrangements of
design and culture taken into consideration of their planning. The buildings
were stunning, elegant. But such praise of amazement was beyond Sakharov’s
makeup.

He
waved his hand dismissively and sat back. “I’ve seen better,” he finally
answered. And then: “So now what?”

“Now,
you will go to a safe house and rest. Tomorrow you will be taken to a facility
in the Alborz Mountain Range, courtesy of President
Ahmadinejad.”

“Ahmadinejad? What the hell does he have to do with this?”

“He’s providing a safe haven that neither Iraq nor Afghanistan can provide at the moment,” he told him. “You will always be safe,
Doctor. And you’ll be able to work knowing that you will not be disturbed.”

“That’s good,” he said. “Those are conditions I can work
with.”

“But, Doctor, you will not be alone, either.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means that you will have three aides of my choosing to
help you with your research.”

“Aides! I don’t need any aides! There was never any
discussion of assistants.”

“The choice is not yours to make.”

Sakharov nodded, “I see. Now that you have me where you
want me, I’m now at your mercy. Is that it?”

“Doctor, I’m providing you with the best equipment, the
best of everything, so that you can simply provide me with the best results.
You will be pampered beyond your wildest dreams. And believe me, this lab will
be something you’ve never seen before and something Russia could never
duplicate. It’ll be your playground. And these aides are there only to be at
the mercy of your beck and whim, nothing more.”

“Nothing more, huh? Well, I don’t want any rookies, you hear
me? I want somebody who knows their way around the lab and to do things without
me watching over their shoulder every waking minute.”

“Your three assistants, Doctor, are tops in their field of
nanotechnology. Two were educated at the most prestigious schools in the United States, the other in the United Kingdom.”

“Americans and a Brit?”

“Hardly,” he answered with a hint of venom. “They are like
me. They are Arab.”

“You mean they’re al-Qaeda?”

“Not particularly. No,” he returned. “Let’s say that they
had no choice in the matter since their family members are at the mercy of my
organization.”

“I see,” said the old man. “Recruitment by intimidation, is
that it?”

“Ultimately in the end, the decision is theirs to make.”

“And if their answer is ‘no,’ then a good ol’ fashion
beheading is in order for their family members. Am I right?”

Al-Ghazi held his hands out in surrender. “What can I say,”
he said. “Business is business.”

The old man looked out the window noting that the landscape
was getting visibly downgraded as if war torn, the buildings old and in
disrepair. “Obviously you’re not taking me to a five-star hotel.”

“Where I’m taking you, Doctor, is still better than that
rat-infested apartment I took you out of.”

“There were no rats in that apartment,” he insisted
harshly. Then in a more subdued tone, “They were just big-ass mice.”

The vehicle turned onto a dust-laden driveway between
buildings that were cramped with just enough space for single-lane driving,
until they came to a lot in front of a two-story rise with barred windows.

“This is it, Doctor.”

Sakharov remained silent, but just for a brief moment. “Are
you kidding me?” he finally said. “A bunch of fleas wouldn’t live here. I think
I’m entitled to a little luxury for what I’m about to do for you, don’t you
think? I want to stay in one of those fancy hotels we passed a while back with
caviar and an all-you-can-drink bar. That’s what I want.”

“What you want is of no concern to me, Doctor. This is just
a place to lay your hat for a moment while I’m in Islamabad finishing up
business. And then off to greater comforts come the day after tomorrow.”

Sakharov could do nothing but relinquish his bull-headed
stance.

#

“Why
does everything
in this country smell like
ass?” said the old man.

Al-Ghazi clenched his jaw, fighting for calm. The old man
continued to test his patience.

The moment the old man opened the door he clearly noted
that the room was small with horrible ventilation, the air so hot and stale
that it hung like a pall. On the floor was a thin mattress with a blanket that
had seen better days, its edges tattered like the ends of a flag that had waved
itself ragged with the course of an unyielding wind. And the walls were cracked
enough to reveal the mud bricks underneath. Even the roof bowed downward in threatening
manner.

“You do take me to the nicest places,” Sakharov commented,
shaking his head disapprovingly. 

Al-Ghazi dropped Sakharov’s bag to the floor with a loud
bang. Apparently he’d had enough of the old man’s ravings of discontent.

“Regardless, Doctor,” his tone held an edge of its own to
it, “here you will stay and here you will rest. Come tomorrow and everyday
thereafter, there will be no time for leisure. This is it.”

The old man chortled. “I had better accommodations in Vladimir
Central.”

Al-Ghazi closed his eyes and clenched his jaw once again;
the muscles in the back working like cords. And then calm overtook him, his
facial semblance taking on the features of gentle repose.

“I see it’ll take patience to deal with you,” he told him.

“Whatever.” The old man shuffled his way across the floor
and to the window, looking through the bars at a dirt lot. Children played with
sticks and a ball, kicking up dust in their wake. And the old man now had
regrets.
What have I done?

“Doctor Sakharov?”

The voice sounded thin and tinny, as if spoken from a great
distance.

“Doctor?”

“What.”

“Perhaps you could go over your notes to better acquaint
yourself with the technology you have been away from for so long.”

“The science is up here,” he said, tapping the tip of his
forefinger against his temple. “It never went away. It never goes away.”

“Then you can replicate your findings of what you did in Russia in the Alborz?”

Sakharov turned on al-Ghazi. “I can do this with my eyes
shut,” he answered. “From the first day I started my sentence in Vladimir to the day you showed up at my apartment, I have thought nothing other than
nanotechnology or how I
could make it better.” He took an awkward gait
closer to the Arab. “All those years you reached me in Vladimir Central with
letters and messages kept my hopes alive that someday I would be granted the
opportunity to ply my trade once again. And for that I thank you. But don’t you
ever question or interpret the validity of my skills as a nanotechnologist
again. Duplicate it I will, as promised for my early release.”

Al-Ghazi nodded, somewhat taken aback by the old man’s
power to intimidate. “You do realize that we will be time restricted.”

“If you say you have the equipment as you claim, then time
won’t be an issue. I simply need to achieve the methods to program the
fullerene
molecules to nullify their lifespan by half upon every replication, until they
fade out of existence completely.”

Al-Ghazi
didn’t have a clue as to what Sakharov was talking about.

“Yeah,
well—I can tell by the stupid look on your face that you don’t know what I’m
talking about,” said the old man.

If
Sakharov had a skill, thought al-Ghazi, it was getting under a man’s skin.

“Rest,”
he finally told him. “Food will come momentarily.”

“Food?
We ain’t talking baboon eyes or anything like that, are we? No monkey nuts or
something that’ll make my stomach crawl.”

Al-Ghazi,
for the moment, really had to wonder if it was worth keeping this man alive. As
much as he wanted to say “no” and pass a sharp blade across Sakharov’s throat,
he had no alternative but keep the old man upright. If nothing else, he
considered, keeping him alive was imperative.