The God Particle (28 page)

1

Donovan is on his way to the office, cruising through orange dawn in his black S55, when the ringing of his cell phone breaks the morning silence. He reaches down and turns on the speakerphone.

“This is Landon.”

“Mr. Donovan,” says Allgäuer. It’s barely 7:30, he’s had no coffee, and now this smug voice polluting the interior of his car.

“Hey there, Allgäuer. I guess you heard about our announcement. I’m surprised you didn’t call sooner.”

“I have been—how do you say it in English?—a little under the clouds?”

“Under the weather.”

“Yes. ‘Under the weather.’ In any case, I am recovering and will soon be making the journey to Olney.”

“You’re coming here? When?”

“Today.”

“From Switzerland?”

“I am in Geneva now. I will be departing in a few hours, and I will arrive in Wichita Falls no later than five o’clock your time. I would like you to be there when I arrive.”

“Five o’clock? It’s eleven hours from Zurich to Dallas alone. By the time you make your connecting—”

“Mr. Lange has been kind enough to make special arrangements for us. My doctor and I will be traveling by Concorde. We will arrive at Sheppard Air Force Base in Wichita Falls. Please be there by four in case we arrive early.”

“Concorde? I thought those were retired.”

“Only the commercial models. This is a special plane built for Mr. Lange.”

Special plane? “I don’t understand. Why are you coming here now?”

“Circumstances I did not foresee have changed my plans. Thanks to your impulsive announcement, we must prepare for an encounter I did not expect to occur for several weeks. You should have contacted me first, Landon.”

Donovan’s hands squeeze the steering wheel hard enough to press indentations into the leather. “I’ve done exactly what you asked me to do. You never said to contact you if we made a discovery here. Lange never said anything about it, either.”

“The security attendant will be instructed to grant you access to the base. You will be further briefed when I arrive. Do not tell anyone I am coming, including Samantha. Do you understand?”

Through clenched teeth, Donovan says, “Yes, I understand.”

“Thank you, Landon. I look forward to finally meeting you in person.”

The phone disconnects, and a few moments later he turns into the NTSSC gate. Waves at the attendant, Louis. Tries to comprehend the significance of Lange arranging a Concorde flight for Allgäuer, a flight that is going to arrive at a United States Air Force base. The construction of the NTSSC demonstrated that Lange is connected in ways that he is not, but to send Allgäuer over the ocean in your personal Concorde, to land that plane at a military facility in a post–9/11 world, these things speak of a power network that Donovan can only begin to appreciate.

He’s familiar with the stories surrounding the Trilateral Commission, the Council on Foreign Relations, even the Illuminati. Conspiracy freaks clog Internet servers around the globe with websites devoted to “exposing the true leaders of the world,” to the grand plan of the oldest and richest families to create a new world order that steals liberty from the common man. The idea apparently stems in part from Christian fundamentalists and their fear about the Book of Revelations, where the Antichrist rises to power and unites the nations of the world, and anyone can see these people are stretching and confusing the truth to force current events into their mythology. But as crazy as it seems, Donovan can’t help but wonder if a kernel of truth exists somewhere in the chaos of their ideas. Look at Lange’s apparently boundless influence, his relationship with Allgäuer and that effect on the private super collider. It’s not the first time Donovan has wondered about who might be pulling the strings from behind the curtain.

He wonders how close he is to some answers.

2

After three days of print and television interviews, after hours of answering questions and fielding phone calls, Mike refused to schedule any interviews for Thursday and Friday. This morning he relishes the thought of just sitting in his office, staring at his computer monitor, sifting through his overflowing in-box and maybe browsing around the Internet. It’s crazy the way a life can change in the span of a few days. Crazy how Larry’s revelation became Donovan’s mandated press release, which brought Kelly closer to him, the local interview that went national and renewed interest in the field of particle physics. And to think it all started when Donovan brought in Samantha. It was she, after all, who found inconsistency in the detection software, her blackmail that brought Larry to Mike.

And since Samantha hasn’t been to the office in a week—not since he told Donovan about the possible Higgs events—Mike hasn’t been forced to confront her about it. He doesn’t know what he would say anyway. She tried to take his job, to steal all his work and claim Higgs for herself. But who knows when he would have caught on to Larry without her?

Of course Higgs isn’t a complete certainty at this point anyway, considering there hasn’t been much chance to confirm the events Larry previously discarded. But tonight they’ll begin their first beam run since the announcement, and it’s exciting, and—

The phone rings. Mike looks over at it, determined not to answer unless he recognizes the number. He does. It’s Kelly.

“Hi there,” Mike says. “What are you doing up? I thought you stayed in bed until ten o’clock.”

“I need to see you.”

“Is everything okay?”

“I’m fine. Don’t worry about me. But I met someone last night who needs to talk to you. We both do. It’s . . . it’s very strange, Mike.”

“Kelly,” Mike says. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

“I’m fine. I promise. But what I have to tell you. . . . Look, I don’t want to say any more on the phone. I already called in sick to work. I’m going to drive over later. Probably this afternoon. What time are you leaving the office today?”

“Maybe four or four thirty. You’re going to drive all the way to Olney?”

“What, you’re already tired of me?”

“Not hardly,” Mike says. “Just concerned.”

“Don’t worry, Mike. I’ll be there this afternoon.”

“Can you at least tell me who this other person is?”

“Let’s just wait until I get there. I’ll see you around five, okay?”

Mike sits there for a moment, wondering what could be wrong, and then goes back to the never-ending list in his in-box.

3

Larry is still asleep when the doorbell rings.

He’s dreaming of Kelly Smith, the lovely way she likes to lie on her side while (Larry) curls up beside her.

The doorbell. Again.

He crawls out of bed, wondering who in the hell could be bugging him at
this
hour of the morning. And it better not be some fuckface door-to-door salesman, by God.

The doorbell rings again, and he’s pulling on a pair of shorts now, and a T-shirt, and in the back of his mind he thinks something is wrong with the light coming through the windows. Wonders if maybe he overslept a little. Turns a corner and looks out the peephole and there is Samantha, standing on his front porch.

He pulls open the door, squinting at the sunlight. At the humid heat. Man, it’s going to be a scorcher today.

“Larry?” she asks. “I’m sorry. Were you asleep? Are you sick?”

“What are you doing here?” His tongue is thick and dry. Someone may or may not be pounding a wooden stake into his temple. There is a chance he may have consumed some alcohol last night. He may have served himself a cocktail or ten with dinner.

Samantha seems agitated. Looks upset.

“Can I come in?”

“I don’t think so,” Larry tells her. His house, if he remembers correctly from sixty seconds ago when he stumbled here from his bedroom, is not exactly in what some might call “tip-top shape.”

“Look,” she says. “I was sent here—to Olney—for more than just luminosity improvements. Landon was instructed to give me full access to the facility, but not for the reason you think. It wasn’t just to take the Higgs discovery for myself. There was more.”

“Why did you come so early in the morning to tell me this?” he asks her.

“Larry, it’s nearly six o’clock in the evening.”

“What?”

“Please let me come in.”

He finally does, mainly because he wants to look at a clock and prove her wrong. There’s no way it’s nearly six o’clock. No way he slept an entire day away.

Samantha picks her way through the living room, past empty pizza boxes and purple Crown drawstring bags, and finds a place on his sofa to sit.

“See,” he says, pointing at the big digital numbers on the cable box. “See, it’s only . . .”

The clock reads 5:51.

“Larry,” she says. “You’ve been drinking.”

He stands there for a moment, then thinks better of it. Sits down on the floor and looks across the cocktail table at her.

“I’ve had a rough couple of days,” he admits.

“Well, please pull yourself together, because I need some help. Will you help me?”

“Why should I help you?”

“Because this situation has gone bad for both of us. I may have put the thing in motion, but you sure didn’t help by going to Mike.”

Still staring at her.

“I think we both could squeeze something out of this,” she tells him, “and I don’t want to go to the office by myself. I think something is going to happen soon.”

“Where have
you
been, Sam? Everything already happened.”

“I’m not talking about Higgs. I’m talking about a bigger project. The one I’ve been helping Karsten with for years.”

“Who’s Karsten?”

“He’s German, but he lives in Switzerland now. Look, I don’t have time to go into details. He was a military scientist during the ’30s and ’40s. About fifteen years ago he came to CERN and brought this boy with him. The kid couldn’t have been more than eighteen. He was autistic. And—you’re not going to believe this—but when we turned on the beam, this kid would go crazy. I could barely believe it myself, even when I saw it. We would be in the counting house, or in the office, and even once we were in town, maybe five kilometers outside the ring. He knew when the beam was on, and he didn’t like it.”

Larry sits there, listening to this, wondering if he’s still asleep, wondering if he is perhaps in an alcohol-induced coma.

“I am not making this up,” she tells him.

“You’ve lost your mind,” Larry says. “Or you’re trying to fuck me over somehow. One of the two.”

“Larry, I’m not. I’m not trying—”

He raises his hands. Becoming a little more coherent now. “Okay, fine. Let’s say, for the sake of argument, that you’re telling me the truth. Why? Why are you coming to me now?”

“Because there is another experiment,” she says. “A man here in the United States. I was supposed to be on the inside, just in case there was any problem getting this guy near the detector. Now Karsten is coming here to the super collider, and I want to be there if he brings the test subject.”

“Why now? What’s the rush? Why not wait until the Higgs thing dies down?”

“Because Karsten is old. He’s dying. And I think he’s going to try something crazy. I don’t know what it is, but I want to be there when it happens.”

“I still don’t understand why you’ve come to me. You’re Karsten’s contact here. Why didn’t he arrange this with you?”

“I don’t know. He’s trying to shut me out for some reason. But I have plenty of friends in Switzerland, I know he left for the U.S. today, and as far as I’m concerned, that means he’s coming here.”

Larry considers this. Samantha is surely stuffing him full of bullshit, although he can’t really think of a good reason why. She could just drive to the super collider if she wanted. She still works there, after all.

“And you want me to go with you?”

“I’m not sure what’s going on. I don’t want to go by myself.”

“I guess I don’t have anything else better to do,” he says finally. “Should we go now?”

“Soon,” she answers. “He’ll wait until most of the normal staff is gone, for the overnight shift. He wants to be there when the beam reaches full energy.”

4

“Hi,” Kelly says as Mike opens the door. She steps through the doorway, into his arms, and the breezy smell of her perfume, her toned and yet somehow inconsequential frame against his, her newfound dependence on him—the entirety of this is something he is hesitant to examine, in case the reality of it is found to be completely without merit. In case he turns out to be dreaming.

“Hi,” Mike says.

“And this,” Kelly announces, “is Steve Keeley. Steve, meet Mike McNair.”

Steve is tall and solid, rugged and tanned in the face, a man you might regard with distrust. Distrust because the average woman is prone to falling for guys like this. Because your own girlfriend has just driven him here from Dallas. And yet there seems to be a kind of desperation in his eyes, so Mike tells himself not to get carried away.

Steve steps forward and shakes his hand heartily. “Very pleased to meet you, Mike.”

Mike leads them out of the entryway and into the kitchen, where he pours three glasses of iced tea. Steve stands there looking at them, then looks away, and no one seems to know how to start.