The Green Trap (38 page)

“I don't understand.”

She didn't reply. Instead, she got up from the sofa and headed for the stairs. He followed her.

Once in bed, he reached for her again.

“Please, Paul. Don't.”

Puzzled, nettled, feeling frustrated, he lay in the darkness staring at the ceiling. She turned her back to him. He suppressed an angry complaint, turned on his side, and closed his eyes.

When he awoke, she wasn't in the bed with him. He sat up, reached for his glasses, saw that the digital clock on the night table read 3:47
A.M
. The bedroom was dark. And cold.

He tossed the bedcovers aside and stood up. There was enough light seeping through the window curtains for him to find the jeans he had thrown over the back of the chair in the corner. He pulled them on, then wormed his arms into the shirt he'd left there. Barefoot, he went to the bedroom door. Where the hell is she? he wondered.

Light was coming up the staircase from the floor below. Cochrane padded down the carpeted steps and saw Elena sitting on the fragile little chair at the ornate inlaid desk in the corner of the living room. A laptop computer rested on the desk, but it was closed and she was writing on a sheet of paper in longhand. He saw that she was fully dressed in a dove-gray pantsuit.

“What's going on?” he demanded, striding across the living room toward her.

She jerked visibly with surprise.

“Paul!”

“What are you doing? What's going on?”

There were tears in her eyes, he saw. Streaks runneling down her face.

“Elena, what's the matter?”

“I didn't want to wake you up,” she said in a choked whisper.

“What are you doing?” he repeated.

“I'm… leaving.”

“Leaving?”

“It won't work, Paul. Us. It just won't work. It can't.”

“What do you mean?”

She looked utterly miserable. “What you said about being a scientist. It made me realize, understand. You'd find out, sooner or later. And then you'd hate me.”

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

She got up from the delicate antique chair, crumpling the note she'd been writing. Pointing to the laptop, she said, “This is my farewell gift to you, Paul.”

He stared at her.

“It's got your brother's data in it. Everything. You can broadcast it wherever you want to. You can stop Gould from suppressing your brother's work.”

“But why do you have to leave?” he asked.

And suddenly his legs went weak. He staggered toward her, but she backed away from him. He grabbed for the back of the spindly little chair, sat on it heavily, felt it groan beneath his weight.

“My god almighty,” he whispered. “This is Mike's laptop.”

Sandoval stood there, tears running down her cheeks, hands clenched together.

“The one the cops couldn't find. You've had it all along.”

She nodded.

He stared at her. “
You
killed Mike. You killed my brother.”

“I didn't mean to, Paul. I didn't mean to.”

“You were the woman Mike was fooling around with. You were sleeping with him. To get your hands on his discovery.”

“I didn't mean to kill him,” she repeated, sobbing.

“Mike brought you into his lab through the building's back door and you murdered him.”

“He got abusive, Paul. He hit me. He wanted to make out right there in his lab and when I wouldn't he punched me. He was drunk; we'd had too much wine at lunch. He was violent!”

“And you killed him.”

“I was trying to defend myself.”

“Yeah, I've seen how you can defend yourself.”

“I didn't mean it!” she pleaded. “He hit his head on the corner of the lab bench. It was an accident!”

“You were screwing my brother. And then you killed him.”

“An accident. Honestly, Paul “

“You took his laptop. You've had it all along. All this time.”

“I knew if I told you I had it, you'd figure it all out. I didn't want to lose you, Paul. I love you!”

“Yeah. And how many others?”

“Paul! Please!”

“So you were going to leave me.”

“Because I love you,” she said, barely able to get the words out. “Because I couldn't stay with you with this between us.”

He felt as though all the strength had drained out of his body. He wanted to get down on the floor and lie there till hell froze over.

“So you're leaving,” he heard himself say. “Where're you going? Back to Gould?”

“Paul! No!”

“Go on and go, Elena,” he croaked. “I won't stop you. I can't. Go ahead, get out. Leave me alone.”

“What about you? Where will you go?”

“What difference does it make?”

“I can give you some money….”

“My brother's blood money? Fuck it! I'll go back to Tucson and wait for Gould to catch up with me.”

“Paul, please….”

“Go!” he roared. “Get the hell out of here!”

She turned and ran out of the living room. Cochrane sat on the silly little chair, bleeding from every pore. He closed his eyes but the pain wouldn't go away. He heard the garage door rattle open, then a car start up. Mike's red convertible, he knew without looking.

Long after she had driven away he still sat there. The sun came up and the morning brightened and Cochrane still sat on the little chair, his whole body numb except for the throbbing of his bad leg.

At last he turned to his brother's laptop, opened it, booted it up. The data was all there, every bit of it. Blindly, automatically, Cochrane pulled up his Internet address book and began e-mailing Mike's work to everyone he could think of.

Hours later he struggled to his feet, alone. He limped upstairs and began to pack his clothes.

J
ason Tulius fumbled in his desk drawer for a tranquilizer. The pair of FBI agents had just left his office, apparently content with his claim that he had no idea that Shamil was connected with Chechen terrorists.

“I admit that I had some qualms about accepting funding from UNESCO,” he'd told the agents. “But, after all, the agency does fund some scientific work. I didn't think there was anything actually illegal in what Mr. Shamil was doing.”

The agents had nodded and tapped on the keyboards of their pocket-sized computers. Then they had accepted coffee and doughnuts from Tulius's executive assistant. And then, finally, they had left.

It's over, Tulius told himself once they'd left his office. It's over and I'm all right. Gould will buy the lab and I can look forward to a comfortable retirement in a few years.

After we've duplicated Michael's work, he added silently.

He reached for the brushed chrome coffee jug, still on the metal tray resting on his desk, and poured a trickle of coffee into his empty mug. Caffeine and tranquilizers, he thought, popping a pair of pills into his mouth. Two of the major food groups.

Leaning back in his swivel chair, Tulius waited for the pills to soothe his lingering anxiety.

But Ray Kurtzman barged through his office door, a quizzical grin on his bearded face.

“Looked at your e-mail this morning?” Kurtzman asked before Tulius could complain about his sudden interruption.

His brows knitting, Tulius replied, “My e-mail? Why?”

Sitting in front of the desk, Kurtzman said, “There's a message waiting for you. From Mike's brother, I think.”

Tulius reached for the keyboard on his desk. “What does he want?”

“He's giving us a gift,” said Kurtzman. “All Mike's data. The stuff Mike wouldn't show you.”

“The hydrogen process?”

Kurtzman nodded as Tulius tapped away at the keys with trembling fingers. Michael Cochrane's data began to scroll slowly down his display screen.

“It's all there,” Kurtzman said. “I spent an hour looking it over.”

“Cochrane sent it to you?”

“Must've been him. Who else?”

“And he sent a copy to me,” Tulius said.

Kurtzman replied, “And to a Dr. Esterbrook at Georgetown University with a ‘cc' to the National Academy of Sciences. And to
Science
magazine. And
Nature,
over in England. And everybody else he could think of, it looks like.”

Tulius scrolled up to the address list. It more than filled the screen.

“Oh, my god,” he moaned.

Kurtzman nodded. “Yeah. There goes any chance of keeping Mike's work proprietary. Cochrane's blabbed it to the whole friggin' world. It's public information now. No patents, not even proprietary rights, I guess.”

“This is a disaster!”

Strangely, Kurtzman smiled. “For the Calvin Research Center, maybe. But for the human race, it's a gift. Now anybody who wants to can figure out how to produce hydrogen. If he has the brains for it, and there's plenty of people who do.”

“It's the end of the petroleum industry.”

“I guess it is. Not overnight, but the end is in sight.” Kurtzman seemed happy about the prospect.

But Tulius wondered how Gould would react.

L
ionel Gould scowled at the display screen on the wall of his private office. Page after page of chemical formulas and mathematical gobbledygook scrolling past: all of Michael Cochrane's work, apparently.

Standing before his desk in a nervous knot were two of Gould's corporate lawyers and the chief scientist of the Gould Trust.

Wiping at the perspiration beading his forehead, Gould looked up at them, his face a thundercloud.

“Is this what I think it is?” he growled.

“It's Michael Cochrane's work,” said the scientist, in a voice that quavered slightly. “His hydrogen process.”

“You've checked its authenticity?”

“As far as I was able to, sir. I have a team looking it over now.”

“But as far as you can see, it's authentic?”

The scientist swallowed visibly before replying, “Yes, sir, I believe it is.”

Gould turned to the attorney who specialized in patents and intellectual properties.

“What does this do to our chances for obtaining a patent on this hydrogen process?”

The attorney hid his tension better than the scientist, but still he licked his lips before replying in a subdued voice, “I'm afraid it throws the information into the public domain. It will be impossible to claim patent protection for it.”

“Paul Cochrane,” Gould muttered.

“Sir?” asked all three men in unison.

“Nothing,” Gould answered. He took a deep breath, then slapped both hands on his desktop hard enough to make the three men flinch.

“Very well, then! We can't claim exclusive rights to this process, but by god we'll be the first ones to offer it to the public!”

Banging on his intercom keyboard, he boomed, “Get Zelinski and Adamson in here! At once! We have a lot of work to do!”

The scientist and the two lawyers scuttled out of his office. Gould leaned back in his padded chair and mopped his face again. Cochrane's won, he told himself. The idealistic young twit has made it impossible to keep his brother's hydrogen process safely locked up. So we go in the opposite direction: Gould Energy Corporation will be the first to offer hydrogen power to the world. We will lead the way to a new era.

He spent the rest of the day rattling off orders to his department heads and corporate executives. He told his secretary to set up an emergency meeting of the corporation's board of directors.

To his public relations director, he blustered, “This is not a crisis, it's an opportunity. I want this breakthrough announced as good news, wonderful news for the entire world. Never mind what happens to the corporation's stock. Never mind what the oil industry's prices do. In fact, we should be prepared to buy when those shares come tumbling down!”

His aides and department heads from Dallas to Dubai nodded their heads in agreement, no matter what their inner feelings.

“We'll make this look like you're giving a Christmas present to the world,” said the sharp-featured woman who ran his public relations department.

“That is good,” said Gould, thinking: When they hand you a lemon, make lemonade.

It wasn't until the long, tension-charged day was over and he had taken his private elevator up to his penthouse quarters that Gould allowed the fury to overtake him.

Cochrane! he fumed silently. He thinks he's won.

Gould stalked through his sumptuous living room, his fingers curled into claws, perspiration dripping from his face. He snatched at the graceful Athenian vase on the end table and hurled it into the Gainsborough portrait above the fireplace. Its shattered pieces slashed the canvas. Then the table lamp. Gould yanked it out of its socket, power cord dangling, and banged it to the floor. The carpeting was too thick, the lamp bounced instead of breaking, so he kicked it across the room. Then he knocked over the delicate little table itself, stamped on its slim legs, crushing them into kindling.

Smashing, tearing, throwing, Gould rampaged through the room and on into the dining room, where he knocked over chairs, hurled delicate china platters and exquisite stemmed glassware against the walls. He gasped and grunted with a furious need to destroy, to demolish, to work out the frenzy that boiled in his blood.

His butler and one of the housemaids cracked open the pantry door, eyes goggling wide as their master stormed through the dining room trashing everything he could get his hands on.

“Shouldn't we do something?” the maid whispered. “Call his doctor?”

The butler shook his gray head. “No. For heaven's sake, don't let him know we're watching this!”

“But all those beautiful things! He'll hurt himself.”

“Leave him alone. I've seen him like this before.”