Vanished (4 page)

Got to keep his mind on the job, with a fed sniffing around
his duty area. Logan took another gulp of water, then turned
back to the Circle, sighting directly down the path. "It's hazy,
but if you look on the diagonal-there, between East University and South Spire-you'll spot the east side of Barcester
Polytech."

Pappas pointed to the west of the Circle to a stretch of trees
and water between University and the middle-class neighborhoods that bordered Walden Estates. "Is that Hubbard Park?"

"You've done your homework."

"What can I say? All those great federal resources. And
MapQuest."

Logan laughed. "Beyond the park are some nice family neighborhoods. Nothing fancy. Mostly single-family houses. Capes
and splits. Straight down Spire you've got small businesses, a
few stores. And the fire station."

"If you were going to do some damage, where would you do
it?" Pappas asked.

"The obvious is the Circle. But they say the trains are
untouchable. They are, aren't they?"

"You already asked me that."

"I'm asking again."

Pappas shrugged. "That's what they say."

"What do you say, Agent Pappas?"

Silence.

Logan stepped in front of Pappas so he could see him faceto-face. "Are you being straight with me? Or has there been
a threat?"

Pappas smiled. "There's always threats. The question is,
which ones are serious?"

"You tell me."

"I'm here on a preemptive mission. So I'll ask again. If not
the trains, where?"

Logan turned back toward the Circle. This was a question
they had all considered in the aftermath of September 11.
Other than the high-speed trains, there was only one target a
terrorist might go for.

"The Tech. It's a midlevel engineering school. Word is that
there's a boatload of federal money in the grad school, and it's
not going for peacetime use. But you already know that."

"Hmm," was Pappas's only response.

Logan felt like shoving that hmm down the guy's throat, but
he knew he'd have to get used to such smugness. In a few weeks
Barcester would be crawling with federal agents and intelligence experts who would see trouble on every street corner and
under every bush.

Applying threat analysis to the place Logan had sworn to
protect and defend.

The place-for better or worse-that he called home.

ONATHAN PERCY LOVED THE SILENCE OF THE TUNNELS.

Even when a Quanta car came through on a test run, it
was a mere whoosh, gliding between the magnetic guideways like a thought that passes without leaving a memory.

Inside the trains, the quiet was profound. They wouldn't
remain like that, of course. Once the high-speeds were filled
with passengers, there would be the toc-toc of computer keys
and the murmur of voices on cell phones. The old-fashioned
passengers would rustle newspapers, business contracts, and
scientific journals. China and crystal would ping on silver trays.
Coffee in the morning and cocktails at night-white-gloved
treatment for people traveling in the Northeast.

If these two high-speed lines were successful, the United
States would be criss-crossed with high-speed city-to-city transport. In the time it took to go to Logan Airport, go through
security, wait for boarding, and then take off, the high-speed
train could rush a passenger from Boston to New York.

And no hate-spewing terrorist wielding a box cutter would
be able to crash a Quanta train into a skyscraper.

Chloe's voice sparked on the walkie-talkie. "Hey, sweetie.
Where are you?"

"Just finishing up. Heading down now," Jon said.

Every morning, from Providence to Montreal and from
Boston to New York, hundreds of engineering grad students
walked the tunnels. They inspected for interrupts on the guideways and checked for cracks in the concrete, gathering the data necessary to prove to Lloyd's of London and to the public that
the trains were impeccably safe.

Four prototype trains ran daily. A couple of weeks after
Labor Day, the full schedule of high-speeds would come on
line. By then, inspection would probably be required only on a
monthly basis. For now, this part-time job was easy and the pay
excellent. That the train lines crossed in Jon and Chloe's duty
area was an amazing coincidence.

The kind of coincidence that could make history.

Chloe had discovered that the Boston-New York train
created a hinky magnetic field when it passed in the wake of
the Providence-Montreal train. Not strong enough to disrupt
the guideways or shake the train, but enough of an irregularity
to get Jon thinking.

If they could cause the two inbound and two outbound trains
to cross at exactly the same time, they might be able to create an
exponentially stronger anomaly. In four separate tunnels, there
would be absolutely no danger to the trains. In fact, when the
full schedule came online in the fall, the trains would cross a
couple times a day. Jon and Chloe would no longer have access
to the tunnels once the prototype phase ended. It was now or
never to see if they could harness this magnetic burst as a poorman's particle accelerator.

Every great mind in physics was on the hunt for the one
theoretical particle-the unifier-that was supposed to point
to that which bound all forces together. After billions of
dollars spent on particle accelerators in the United States and
Switzerland, this theoretical boson still hadn't been detected.
Some had begun to whisper that perhaps there wasn't a
unifying force after all.

Jon didn't believe that. Something held the universe together.
Otherwise, mathematics and physics would just be scrawls on
a blackboard and not the definition of mass and energy and
everything that made the world an amazing place.

They worked for months, Jon creating a makeshift particle
detector while Chloe installed the conduit. No one knewneither the university nor Quanta could be allowed to, though it
was perfectly harmless. It was a matter of protecting their intellectual property-by the time Quanta scientists or their own
professors had gone down with them, Chloe and Jon would be
listed as a footnote in this experiment, rather than the brilliant
minds who conceived and executed it.

The guideways had been in place for almost two years, so no
one noticed a superconductive pipe barely wider than an inch.
Even when the master engineers and Quanta big shots came by,
their attention went to the roof and walls of the tunnel, wary of
the tons of earth pressing down on them. They were oblivious
to what lay right under their feet.

This experiment was a touch insane, but weren't all great
discoveries? If two grad students from Barcester Tech could use
the Quanta high-speeds as their acceletron, what a slap in the
face that would be to MIT and Caltech.

What a glorious boost to their own careers.

Today, due to their elegant hack job to the software that
controlled the trains' speeds, the four prototypes would cross.
For one miniscule moment, the polarities on magnets on all
four guideways would align. Not long enough to cause anything
more than perhaps a tiny shudder on the trains.

But long enough to spark a tremendous magnetic burst.

After the crossing, the hacked computer program would
readjust the speeds so the four prototypes arrived precisely on
time. The few people on board wouldn't even notice-they'd
be busy playing video games, watching DVDs, or getting some
paperwork done. That's how safe and well programmed the
trains were. The code would then delete itself and restore the
original programming.

No one would ever know until they were ready to publish
their findings. And then Chloe Walter and Jonathan Percy would be scientific superstars, pursued by prestigious labs
and foundations that had never even heard of Barcester Polytechnical Institute.

Not long now until 10:00 a.m. Moment Zero, they called it.
If they wanted to get mushy about it, they could term it the first
moment of the rest of their lives.

Jon jogged down the stairs, trying not to stop and fiddle with
the particle detector that he and Chloe had installed before this
morning's inspection. The ones at Cern and Illinois were half
the size of a house. His was little bigger than a suitcase. Should
this experiment produce results, they'd apply for huge grants
and build a larger model. They'd likely get a big bonus from
Quanta, which would be thrilled to show another use for the
high-speeds besides ferrying privileged passengers.

Just one particle. That's all it would take to show this could
work.

Jon came out of the stairway and spotted his wife leaning
against the wall. Chloe's fingers twitched in some daydream
where she deciphered the universe one equation at a time.

"Hey, beauty," he said.

Chloe greeted him with a slow smile. "Hey, beast."

Of Egyptian ancestry, she was graced with elegant features
and silky black hair that hung down to her waist. Why a stunning woman like her had married a pear-bodied physicist with
snowy blond hair and a receding chin was the one question Jon
would never be able to solve.

Why should he even try? There existed no particle trap for joy.

Except perhaps this. Jon pressed his hand to his wife's
abdomen, where deep inside their child grew.

Yes, certainly this.

NTERING THE CIRCLE, BEN TOOK CARE TO KEEP ON
the proper side of the yellow line. This was not the
time to draw attention to themselves by straying into
the cycling lane.

"What if someone comes in there while you're leaving it?"
Ben whispered.

Jasmine rolled her eyes. "No one's gonna come under those
bushes. It's so hot, no one's even out."

They'd only seen a couple cyclists since getting onto the
bike path. Even on the street, traffic was unusually light.
August meant a lot of people on vacation. The playground
program at Tapley School was closed for the day. The city had
bused all the little kids to the beach, even the toddlers in the
day-care programs.

After a quick look around to make sure no one was
watching, Ben and Jasmine pushed through the outer bushes.
Anyone who spotted them would assume they were two horny
kids looking for privacy.

The lofty branches of the rhododendrons provided welcome
shade. Beer cans, snack papers, and condom wrappers littered
the ground. In the middle was a chain-link pen topped with
razor wire-the access stairway down to the trains.

Ben slid the pack off his shoulders. "OK, we're done. Let's get
out of here."

"Wait. What time is it?"

"It's 9:47."

"We've still got three minutes before I'm supposed to leave it
and get out of here." Jasmine pulled Ben to a patch of ground
that had been cleared of trash. "Come on."

"Come on what?"

"Let's sit."

Ben's heart drummed like a jackhammer. This was seriously whacked, but so what? When she leaned against him,
time seemed to stop.

Jasmine slipped her arm around his waist and nestled against
him. "I'm going to do you a favor, Benjie. Ever get wet?"

"What?"

"You are such a geek. Take a hit." Jasmine sniffed.

"Is that what's in this thing? Coke?" As if he didn't know.

What Ben did know was that something was off here. A
backpack filled with bags of cocaine was too valuable to trust
to a dimwit like Jasmine. She leaned against him, her lips a
whisper away from his own. Making it so hard to think. What
kind of fool was he?

"Check it out." She unzipped the knapsack and shoved it in
his lap. Inside was a freezer bag filled with white powder.

"What's that stuff doing in the Flats? That's rich dudes' playground."

Jasmine shrugged. "Just going for a ride up the chain, I
guess. Come on, let's pretend we're in some Boston penthouse
and playin'. One hit, Benjie. No one's gonna know."

Somewhere in the dim mist of Ben's mind, common sense
said walk away.