“There’s a computer inside,” she said. “Uri, bring both the container and the computer back with you.”
“How would you know about that, Trish?” Uri asked.
“I guess you discovered that none of your phones worked,” she said. “No microchips will function in that cavern. That box protected Kubacki’s computer from disruptive magnetic interference.”
Magnetic interference, Uri thought. That explains the weird behaviour of James’s compass needle when they were setting up the long-wave transmitter. “I’ll go through the entire place, carefully,” he said. “Including that other hollow from where his power supply operated.”
“Do you think Kubacki’s technology could replace the planet’s reliance on oil as an energy source?” Emily asked.
“The technology, yes. The practicality of it? No, I don’t think so,” Trish said. “But until I’m one hundred percent certain, I want this kept under very tight wraps.”
“What are we going to do about Cevallos and Müller?” Emily asked.
“Müller?” Nathan interjected.
“I’ll explain later,” Emily said.
“Cevallos will have nothing to find and provided that nothing that’s been said here tonight gets out, Müller will no doubt make a complete fool of himself.”
“Just one thing that still puzzles me, Trish,” Uri said. “How on earth did Norman Dean’s documents get from the government archives onto public domain?”
Trish looked at him. “Because I put them there.”
Really sad, the nurse at Henderson Memorial Hospital thought, looking down at the body lying on the bed. She turned off the monitor and reached for the chart clipped to the end of his bed.
Name: John Doe
Time of death: 7.34 p.m.
Cause: Dehydration, gunshot wound, loss of blood
Autopsy would fill in the rest. So sad, she thought again. Nobody should die desolate and alone.
Lying dormant in the neurons of the recently deceased César Kubacki◦– aka John Doe◦– one of the last remaining pieces of the puzzle not included in the document entitled Inertial Engines◦– A Practical Solution, would shortly be on its way to the Henderson Mortuary.
Stubbornly attached to a crowbar in a disposal drum◦– which in a few days, would be emptied into one of McCarran’s large dumpsters◦– a peculiar black rock lay discarded and forgotten about.
Chapter Sixty-Seven
“It’s so good to be home,” Emily said, dumping her luggage on the bed and flopping down on her back beside it.
“That’s got to be the craziest thing we’ve ever been involved in,” Nathan said, putting his own gear on the floor and sitting down beside her. “I didn’t think that a simple notification from the IBM would draw us into such an outlandish world of military high-tech.” He was thinking back to that morning a few weeks ago when the IBM warned him that an encryption had been running for over a minute. Was that only a few weeks ago? It seemed like months.
“Outlandish, is an understatement,” Emily said. And not only military high-tech, she thought. Given the required programming, Emily wondered what Q would have done with Kubacki’s original document, but from what Trish had explained, he wasn’t designed for that. Had he been, Emily had no doubts he would have been able to decipher it in nano-seconds. Strange to think in terms of a computer having a gender, but that’s how Q had been introduced to her by Trish. Emily hoped that one day she would be able to tell Nate all about that weird and wonderful quantum computer; with its apparent sense of humour.
Trish affirmed that there was nothing further to be done at Groom Lake and offered to take them all back to New York in the Office of Security’s Cessna Citation. It certainly beat a C-130 Hercules for speed and comfort. Trish asked Uri to come east so that the two of them could work on the remaining quandary of what Kubacki evidently still had in his head. So far, he hadn’t been located.
They said their goodbyes to Gene, Kovak and the young soldier who hosted them at dinner. During the flight, Trish repeated to Uri, Nathan and Obadiah what she had disclosed to Emily in the obscure Level-7 Tempest Crypt. Years of wanting to know why her husband’s F-14A experimental jet had fallen out the sky had obviously weighed heavily on her. Considering the circumstance, Uri understood Trish’s abrasive attitude over the last few years. Uri had never seen such a dramatic change in personality and was looking forward to working with Trish again. She was back to her old self and Uri hadn’t seen her light a single cigarette since walking with Emily into Level-2 the day before.
Only Emily really understood Trish’s frustration banging heads day in and day out with ruthless, single-minded bureaucrats.
Obadiah was very pleased with himself. He never got back to the gunnery range, but Uri had assured him that none of the rifles he tried had any sort of technology built in. Obadiah’s accuracy with the targets was pure skill on his part.
It was agreed that the fully deciphered document, for which there would be no further replications or digital transmissions, would be restricted to the hard copy held securely by Trish, the one on Emily’s laptop, and the one at SkyTech. Those stored in the NSA and SkyTech’s databanks were still highly encrypted and proved no threat should anyone get hold of them.
“We certainly have plenty to tell James and Sven,” Emily said, staring up at the ceiling.
“Also seems like quite a bit has been going on here,” Nathan responded. “Especially with Yvonne Baird. I’d like to know what’s really going on between her and Müller. More than just being her boss, he seems to have some sort of hold over her. You certainly don’t go around blackmailing your employees unless there’s something else.”
“At least she has her girls back,” Emily said, turning her head to face Nathan. “Aren’t they just too adorable?”
“I wonder what our children would have looked like?” he said.
“Too late for that,” she said, but it was certainly food for thought. Emily sat up and patted Nathan on the knee. “Come on. We have some unpacking to do.”
“Oh my God!” Emily exclaimed, looking out the kitchen window.
“What?”
“Look at the state of the lawn,” she said, pointing. “I’ve never seen the grass so brown or so high.”
Nathan walked up beside her. “Yeah,” he chuckled. “I’ll mow it this weekend, sprinkle fertiliser and water it. It shouldn’t take more than a day to get it back to the same shade of green as the pool.”
“I can’t believe that it’s already six p.m.,” she said.
“We’re still running on Vegas time. It’s only three there.”
“Let’s go out and grab a bite to eat,” Emily said. “When we get back home, I have some suggestions with what we can do, so that our bodies catch up with the three extra hours.”
“Mm, I like the way you think,” Nathan said, smiling.
Leaning with both hands on the rail of one of his private balconies, Angelo Cevallos looked down at the patrons responsible for the enormous profits Fabulous Angelo’s was basking in. They just kept on feeding in the money. He wondered how many of them would still own their own home by the end of today, especially those who preferred chancing their luck with credit cards, as opposed to cash.
Luck, he thought. Well, if they were that stupid, let them gamble away their lives.
Slot machines held no immediate cash on hand and were instead, fed from a central basement vault. When a slot machine was programmatically instructed to hand out a winning, the exact amount arrived on an underground conveyor. The unsuspecting, and soon to be lucky gambler, had no idea that his or her fortune had already been determined beforehand. Money being fed in went to the same vault on another conveyor travelling in the opposite direction. Since the start of this month, Angelo’s coffers had already accumulated over two hundred million. He would arrange for most of that to be transported to the bank in armoured trucks first thing Monday morning.