Split second, p.11
Split Second, page 11
What in the world?
One didn’t need his math genius to know that the odds this random tablet would be displaying a photo of Jenna Morrison were virtually zero. Which suggested this was anything but random.
His eyes narrowed in worry and confusion as he read the bold text below the photo.
Dan, it’s Jenna. This is not a joke. Don’t say anything out loud, as it’s possible you’re being bugged. Please scroll over and read my message.
Walsh looked around the room, which was still empty, wondering if he were on a hidden-camera television show, of if someone would jump out and tell him he was the subject of an experiment being conducted by the psychology department. When neither occurred, he glanced back at the tablet as though it were an unstable explosive.
He studied Jenna’s photo again and finally, reluctantly, slid his hand on the screen to scroll over to the next page. He took a deep breath and read:
Dan, sorry to hit you with what must look like a charade, but I’m in trouble and I need your help. Just so you can be sure it’s really me, the last time Nathan and I got together with you, you had just seen Guardians of the Galaxy on television and you told me you couldn’t get the song “Hooked on a Feeling” out of your head.
Regardless of what you may have heard, Nathan is dead, savagely murdered last night by unknown parties.
“What?” whispered Walsh out loud. That was absurd. Nathan wasn’t dead. What kind of sick game was this?
On the other hand, that damn song had been stuck in his head the last time he had seen Jenna, which he had confided to her while Nathan was out of the room taking a call. And he hadn’t actually seen Nathan in person for weeks.
He looked down at the tablet once more and continued reading.
The only thing I know for certain is that his death, and subsequent events I will tell you about in person, were somehow triggered by a discovery he made recently. He didn’t have the chance to tell me what it was about before he was killed, but he did mention he had sent an e-mail summary of the discovery to you, hoping you’d act as a second set of eyes for him. I’m convinced this e-mail was intercepted, which is what set everything in motion.
Walsh paused to consider. Even more so than the “Hooked on a Feeling” thing, the accurate description of Nathan’s recent e-mail to him was persuasive evidence that Jenna Morrison really had written this message.
Given the seemingly unlimited resources of the teams of men involved—yes, teams—something about Nathan’s discovery is of extreme importance. I managed to escape these men, but I know for certain they’ll spare no effort to find me, so even if you weren’t bugged or under surveillance before, you are now.
I’m working with a private investigator. He’s helping me compose this message right now, and he came up with this plan to extricate you from prying eyes. He’ll be the one who will leave this tablet at your desk, since I can’t risk being recognized by whoever is watching you.
He also plans to park himself in the hall to make sure that you’re the first to arrive in the classroom, so no one else will see this tablet. He had planned to give this to you in person, but I thought it would be less intimidating for you to read it alone, and you once told me you always arrive to your classes fifteen or twenty minutes before your students, so I thought this would be the best way forward.
When you’re done reading this message, scroll over again to find a picture of me and my new PI partner together. I’m wearing a hideous blonde wig, by the way. I included this so you’ll be able to recognize him, and know that he really is a friend.
Nathan is dead and his hard drive has been destroyed. But his work was preserved on a single flash drive that I now have, protected by a password that I don’t know. This is why I’m being hunted. Until I talk to you, I have no idea what might be on it, what Nathan discovered, and why people are willing to do anything to get it.
So I need to get you away from UCLA without being seen. I assume that you keep an e-mail archive in the cloud and can retrieve Nathan’s recent message once you’re clear. But first, remove and pocket the sim card from your phone, so you don’t lose your data and settings, and put the phone deep within your backpack. Then leave the phone and backpack in the classroom. Assuming the phone is being monitored or tracked, anyone stalking you will think you’re still there.
But to buy us extra time, it would be great if your students stuck around, even with you gone. If they leave right away, anyone watching the building might want to investigate. So write on the board that you had to take a call and will be back in forty-five minutes. Then assign them a reading while you’re gone.
But please hurry.
Once you’ve done this, go to the men’s room at the northernmost corner of the building. My partner will be there waiting for you.
Thanks, Dan. I know you might doubt this crazy message, but please consider this: if you do what I’ve asked and this turns out to be a farce, you’ve wasted a bit of class time and life goes on. But if you choose to ignore this message and it is real, the impact is far more dire. Please! Write on the board and get the hell out of there. I’ll fill you in on the rest when I see you.
18
Blake felt like an idiot standing next to three urinals and staring at the bathroom door. He glanced at his phone and saw that it was now seven twenty, ten minutes before the scheduled start of Walsh’s class. The physicist had arrived early to prepare and pre-fill the blackboards as Jenna had insisted would be the case.
He should have found the tablet and read the message in minutes, meaning if he didn’t arrive at the men’s room soon he probably wasn’t coming. Or else something had gone horribly wrong. Blake had a plan B, but he hoped like hell he wouldn’t need to use it.
The bathroom door creaked slowly ajar and Blake rolled on the balls of his feet in anticipation.
Dan Walsh entered, a stern, apprehensive expression on his face. Blake caught his eye and put a finger to his lips, signaling for silence. He removed an electronic box, about the size of a package of cigarettes, and waved it a few inches from the physicist, scanning him from head to toe. The indicator light remained green throughout.
Blake powered off the device. “You’re clean,” he said. “We’re all but positive you’re being watched. And I suspect you’re also being bugged, although I wasn’t sure if they would bug your phone or your wallet. Either way works, since these are items you tend to keep with you at all times.” He paused. “Did you put your phone deep inside your backpack like I asked?”
Walsh nodded. “Yes. Why does that matter?”
“Assuming it’s bugged, the backpack should make reception horrible, so they won’t be able to hear exact words.”
“I see,” said Walsh. “So when my students are talking about what I wrote on the chalkboard, they’ll only hear chatter, not content.”
“Exactly,” said Blake.
“Impressive,” said the physicist.
Blake extended a hand. “My name is Aaron Blake, by the way. Welcome to the ah . . . bathroom, Dr. Walsh. Thank you for believing Jenna’s message.”
“Nice to meet you, Mr. Blake. At least I think it is.”
Blake smiled. “Please, Dr. Walsh, call me Aaron.”
“Okay, if you call me Dan.”
“It’s a deal.”
“So I suppose you’d rather leave the premises first and tell me what the hell this is all about later.”
“You got it,” said Blake. He was really beginning to like working with scientists. They were logical and quick on the uptake.
“So what’s the plan?” asked Walsh.
“I assume you’re familiar with the tunnels under this school, right?”
The physicist nodded slowly. “Yes. Of course.”
“Whoever is watching you will be watching the exit door of this building. Only one is open at this hour. Imagine their surprise when you disappear without ever using it.”
The possibility of using a tunnel was the first thing Blake had checked when he was coming up with his strategy. A number of institutions of higher learning, built nearly a century or more earlier, possessed systems of subterranean tunnels between buildings, and UCLA was no exception. He was delighted to find that a comprehensive search of the Web was quickly able to reveal a wealth of information about the system here.
UCLA's steam tunnels were a labyrinth of cement conduits three stories underground. The system circulated steam produced at a plant near the Ronald Reagan Medical Center, housed communications lines and pipes for cold water, and linked most of the major buildings on campus. Although access points were well hidden, adventurous students had made it their mission to breach the tunnels for many decades, and for the last few, to post maps and entry portal locations on the Web.
Blake gestured toward the far end of the men’s room, which housed a small supply closet. “One of many entrances is through there,” he said. “I’ve taken the liberty of busting the lock while I was waiting for you to arrive.”
“How thoughtful,” noted Walsh, following Blake as he opened the door to the closet. Blake had already pushed aside several bottles of cleanser to free a trap door, which he had also left open.
“I’ll go first,” said Blake, lowering himself onto a steel ladder that was entirely vertical. He descended a few rungs to give Walsh room to follow and then stopped.
Walsh’s face curled up in distaste but he followed suit, and they soon completed their descent. The tunnels were occasionally punctuated by dim lightbulbs, but were still eerily dark, dank, and claustrophobic.
“Follow me,” whispered Blake, so his voice wouldn’t echo and make the entire venture even creepier than it was already. He unfolded a map he had printed earlier, with the route he intended to take drawn in red marker, and shined a penlight on it.
They took several offshoots, sometimes traversing through tunnels that could only take them single file, crammed with pipes, wires, and steel cables. The wider tunnels were decorated by graffiti, and Blake felt like an archeologist visiting a prehistoric cave. Except that instead of rough drawings of animals and spears, the drawings here were of male and female genitals, along with a multitude of Greek letters signifying various fraternities, and messages as creative as, “Joe Hempel was here,” some with dates indicating they had been written as early as the 1940s.
Sections of the tunnels became quite warm, but this was short-lived as they continued moving at a rapid pace. At one point they entered a huge cavern—the damp insides of a walled-in bridge below the center of campus, where “Welcome to Hell” was scrawled on the ceiling in block letters.
They emerged near a parking lot minutes later, through a door that was strategically covered by a large shrubbery. Blake had broken open the lock before he had traveled to Kendall Hall.
“Wait here,” he told the physicist, leaving him in darkness even greater than the inside of the tunnels. He reconned the area to make sure they were clear of any surveillance, and then returned.
“All good?” asked Walsh when Blake was beside him once again.
Blake nodded. “The coast is clear. So let’s visit Jenna Morrison and find out what this is all about.”
19
Dan Walsh hugged Jenna briefly and then slid into the backseat of Blake’s car, parked in a nearby lot. Jenna had been waiting anxiously for the two to finish their trek through the catacombs of UCLA.
Finally—finally!—they would be getting a glimpse of the truth. Jenna hoped this would be a giant leap forward in their ability to make whoever was responsible for Nathan’s death pay for his crimes.
“Sorry to pull you into this, Dan,” said Jenna. “But we didn’t really have much choice. Thank you so much for responding to my message.”
“Of course,” said Walsh. “But you should know, Nathan wasn’t murdered last night. What makes you think he was?”
A tear came to Jenna’s eye, which she wiped away with the back of her hand. “I saw him die, Dan,” she said softly. “I was right next to him. He was shot point-blank in the head. With no possibility of mistake.”
Walsh looked both confused and horrified. “I am so sorry,” he whispered.
He paused for several seconds and then shook his head. “I can’t even begin to digest a loss this enormous,” he said. “Nathan was a good friend and colleague. And he was destined for greatness, making this tragedy all the worse. I still can’t believe it,” he muttered, looking as though he had just taken a fist to the gut.
Jenna nodded and blinked back tears.
She had to stop this! she told herself. She had to compartmentalize this loss and not get maudlin every time it was driven home to her. “Thanks, Dan. But we need to postpone our mourning,” she said, as much to convince herself of this as to convince him. “When this is over, we’ll have a proper funeral and proper eulogies. But we can’t afford to dwell on this right now.”
Before Walsh could respond, Blake broke in. “Sorry, Dan, but I have to ask: what made you so sure Nathan wasn’t dead?”
“I’ve exchanged two e-mails with him today. The last one just a few hours ago.”
Jenna shook her head in disgust. “It was a decoy,” she explained. “Someone pretending to be Nathan.”
“Well, whoever it was, he was very convincing. Knew things I thought only Nathan knew.”
“The men behind this are insidious,” said Jenna in disgust.
“But extremely competent,” added Blake.
“Whoever responded to my message knew a lot of the same math Nathan did,” said Walsh. “I had been stuck on a problem with tensorial derivatives, which no one is better at solving than Nathan. I laid out the problem in my e-mail and the reply got me un-stuck. There aren’t all that many people running around who could have helped me.”
Jenna sighed. “They wouldn’t be after Nathan’s work if they didn’t understand its implications. Which means they must have some top physicists working with them. One of these impersonated Nathan.”
“Speaking of Nathan’s work,” said Blake, “I can’t tell you how much I need to know what’s in that e-mail. To say I’ve never been more curious about anything in my life would be an understatement.”
“I could just summarize it for you,” offered Walsh.
“No,” said Blake. “I’d appreciate it if you’d read it to us. I want to hear it for the first time from Nathan’s perspective, word for word.”
Not taking his eyes from the road, Blake thrust his arm toward the backseat behind him. A tablet computer was in his hand. “Use this to access the Internet,” he said. “It can’t be traced to us.”
Walsh quickly found the relevant site in the cloud, entered his user name and password, and retrieved the e-mail from his archives.
“Here it is,” announced Walsh. “I’ll read it slowly,” he added, and then, clearing his throat, began:
Dan. How’s life? I hope you are well. As you’ll be able to see from the time stamp when you get this, I’m writing at two in the morning.
Why? Because I just completed work on a discovery that came to me from out of nowhere and crystallized in less than a week. I just dotted the last i and crossed the last t an hour ago, and I’ve checked and rechecked this for days now. Despite the late hour (or early hour, depending on your perspective) I couldn’t contain myself. I’m dying to tell at least one other person about this, even if you won’t read this until you awaken. I’m not sure this is how most people spend their Saturday nights (or Sunday mornings) but this works for me.
So let me begin at the beginning. Jenna left town for a week to visit her sister (long story), and the next day I awoke to a eureka moment. Maybe I dreamed about it, or maybe it was some kind of divine intervention, but I’ve been working around the clock to develop it ever since.
It’s staggering really. Although you aren’t expert in all the areas of mathematics I used to complete it, you’re more expert than I am in two disciplines I used, five-dimensional manifold topology and hyperbolic knot invariants. I’ve quadruple checked everything, and I’m certain there are no flaws in the areas of math I’m most experienced in, but there is a very slight chance I missed something in your areas of expertise. So I was hoping you could read the final write-up and give it your blessing before I try to make history. In exchange, I will invite you to Stockholm when I collect my Nobel Prize. (just kidding, I’m not that egotistical—which is one of the things that make me so great :)).
But jokes aside, if you confirm I didn’t make any errors, I’m certain this theory will turn out to be sound. Profoundly sound. I have the confidence in this that Einstein had in relativity, even before it was confirmed experimentally, when he famously said the theory was just too beautiful to be false.
I’m dying to send the paper to you this second, but I’d rather it not hit cyberspace. I know I’m somewhat paranoid, but theoretical physicists like us have a license to be a bit eccentric. And I work hard at not being too normal, for fear of failing to live up to expectations.
Anyway, I know you have a night class on Mondays, so I’ll plan to drive up to see you Monday before noon, and hand-deliver a paper copy of my work. Eyes-only, of course. You can’t breathe a single word of this to anyone until I publish. I can only imagine what a shock, what a tidal wave of media coverage, this will cause when I finally put it out there.
I would drive up later today, but Jenna is returning home this evening, and I plan to meet her at the airport with bells on. So I’ll go over the theory one last time, buy some expensive wine to celebrate my discovery with Jenna, and see you on Monday. If you’re as enthusiastic as I expect you to be, this visit could well last into Tuesday.”
“Hold on a moment,” said Blake, interrupting the recitation. “Nathan obviously didn’t visit you today as planned. I assume he canceled on you in one of those bogus messages you got. What excuse were you given?”
“The person posing as Nathan wrote this morning and said he had found a flaw in his new theory. He said he was going to attempt to correct it, but he wasn’t very hopeful, and if he did visit it wouldn’t be for at least a few more weeks.”
