“So I’m Hippasus,” he said.
“Hippasus?” Professor Braun looked startled. Then he let out an incredulous laugh.
“Your days as a card counter are numbered. How are you going to take care of your father?” Phelps said from the door, which he was blocking.
Red fog clouded Elliott’s eyes. He said, “Did you arrange the robbery? The one at Tahoe? Was it to get my notebook? Did you hire the man with the gun? He’s looking for me.” A new flood of images made him shout, “Did you kill that girl at Tahoe last week? Try to kill my friends?”
“Take it easy!” Professor Braun said. “What are all these accusations? This isn’t the Mafia! We’re a business!”
“You didn’t answer my questions. Did you? Did you?”
“Of course not,” Patty Hightower said. “Wait! Don’t go yet. We have to… Stop him!”
But when he pushed Phelps, the lawyer shrugged and stepped aside, and no one ran after him, no burly security guard chased him down the fourteen flights of stairs, no one stopped him as he rushed breathless from the building into the rational coffee-scented Seattle morning.
Leaning one hand against the granite wall of a building to support himself, he reached inside his jacket and felt the reassuring bulk of his notebook over his heart. He felt shaky. The people walking by on the street paid no attention to him.
Was he thinking straight, though? Confusion overwhelmed him.
Hippasus. The Pythagoreans had murdered Hippasus for telling a secret that undermined their system.
He covered his eyes with his hands and rocked a little. The professor must know how many nights Elliott had lain awake in bed, imagining the joy, the acclaim, when his proof was finished. His work didn’t just belong to him, it was a permanent advance in human understanding. Knowing all this had allowed Elliott to work endlessly, to give it everything. How many times had he fantasized about Professor Braun reading his proof in the Journal of Mathematics, appreciating it, thrilled that his student had come so far!
His work was all he had. What trick was the universe playing on him now, that such a hard-won discovery had become such a threat to the powerful?
Silke would never love him, and his work would be stolen and destroyed. His father was dying. Wherever he looked, he saw failure and disappointment.
He was rocking a little as he stood against the building, getting some glances now.
Have to get out of here, he thought. Can’t go home. But-Pop! He started walking blindly up the busy street.
As he turned a corner, he pulled out his cell phone to call Silke and tell her everything, get her advice.
No answer. She was in some tiny town on the Rhine more than six thousand miles away. She couldn’t help.
I’ll hide it, he thought. The notebook came first. Silke had told him the night before that he should stay home and keep his guard up. Was it all he could do, stay home knowing they would have to come for him, like Hippasus?
“Hallo?”
“Hello? Is this Silke Kilmer?”
“Who’s calling?” the voice responded in English.
“Ms. Kilmer, this is Nina Reilly, calling from California.”
A pause. “Sorry, I don’t want to talk to you.”
“Are you represented by counsel?”
“A lawyer? Not anymore, since we came here.”
“Then please, give me a moment of your time.”
“How did you get my number?”
“You told me you came from Heddesheim. You’re staying with your parents, I take it.” It was eleven at night, and Nina lay on her bed in her kimono, practicing law. Germany was nine hours ahead.
Silke Kilmer said in a voice so low Nina almost couldn’t catch it over the transatlantic static, “Do you know what happened to us? Why we left the U.S.?”
“Yes. An explosion. You weren’t hurt?”
“A miracle. The car smelled wrong. Like a bad aftershave. I don’t know. I said, ‘Raj, someone’s been in here.’ He panicked, thank God, and dragged me out and we went running. It must have been set off with a remote trigger. The man was waiting not far away. I suppose he watched us get in and he was looking down or something, and didn’t see us run from the passenger side, and set it off. We shouldn’t be alive.”
“I’m very glad you’re all right.”
“So. You can understand, this lawsuit of yours-so long as the man is at large, we cannot help.”
“He’ll stay at large unless you do help. Another person has died. One of the people who helped bring this lawsuit.”
“Why are you pushing this?” Silke said. “I don’t understand people like you. This thing is ruining my life. I had to leave school.”
Nina said, “You don’t have to understand. There is a court order requiring your presence at a deposition in ten days here at Lake Tahoe. I am calling to offer you and Mr. Das traveling funds.”
“You make me laugh. We’re not going anywhere. We’ll be killed. Your police are letting this man run amok.”
“Then help us get him.”
“You have the head of a mule, Miss Reilly. I admire you for staying there yourself. But I’m not brave like that.”
“Elliott’s been served too,” Nina said. “Are you going to let him travel here all alone?”
“He won’t come.”
“Then I’ll get a judgment against him and you and Raj that will compromise your futures for years to come,” Nina said. She wasn’t too sure she could do that, but it wasn’t completely impossible.
Another pause. The faint crackling continued. Nina imagined phone cables laid across the still, freezing floor of the Atlantic, her words flung like pellets toward the woman in Germany.
It was probably all done by satellite anyway. Who could keep up with technology?
“Elliott isn’t well,” Silke said finally. “He has had some psychiatric problems. He doesn’t deal with stress very well. Please don’t harass him.”
“What’s wrong with him?”
“I’d rather not go into it.”
“If you don’t come, what can I do?”
“We aren’t coming! Our lives are in danger!” Yet she was still talking. Nina thought, She’s torn, she’s looking for a way to help.
She thought, What if I do drag them here and something happens? For a moment, the whole effort of overcoming the obstacles in the case seemed insuperable.
“I’m getting off the line now,” Silke said.
“What if I come to you?” Nina said. “I might be able to persuade the court to allow me to take your depositions in Germany, where you feel safer. Don’t say no without thinking, Ms. Kilmer. This may be the only way out for both of us.”
“You would come to Heddesheim?”
“If I can work out the legal details.” It would be expensive. Nina tried not to think about that. It was, in fact, highly irregular. But it had been done, in cases where people were too sick to travel, for instance.
“What about Elliott?”
“I have to depose him, too. He may have seen something you and Raj didn’t see.”
“What if Elliott comes to Germany, too? Could you take all of our statements the same day?”
“It’s a possibility,” Nina said.
“He’s in danger in the States.”
“What do you all know that is causing you to live in fear? The sooner it’s known to everyone, the sooner you’ll be safe.”
“I don’t know what we know! We had money, he wanted it. What else is there to say? He killed a bystander, now he has to kill us so we can’t testify about him.”
Nina said, “You were very close to him. You saw some identifying feature.”
“Then come here and help us figure it out. I’m going to call Elliott and tell him not to say anything until he is with us.”
“You seem to care a lot about him.”
“He’s my friend, okay? I watch out for him. You don’t understand. Elliott is brilliant. Brilliant, but very fragile.”