“Well, there was a brief period when I thought I was going to go to L.A. I had found out there was a nanotechnology company in L.A. that was interested in microbivores, but their program is still in the design stage. I applied for a research position, but then I was contacted by a head-hunter who sought me out for the company here in Boulder called Nano, which has far outpaced its competitors in molecular manufacturing.”
“You’ve lost me again. What’s molecular manufacturing?”
“It’s building nano-sized devices essentially atom by atom, molecule by molecule. It is the key to making these nanorobots. The head-hunter told me that Nano had already built some microbivore prototypes and had begun testing them in vivo. At that point it was a no-brainer for me. You’ll have to see scanning electron microscope images we have of these things. They’ll blow you away. Truly. They are incredible.”
“My mind is ready to be blown!” George said, looking at Pia, who returned his stare with more eye contact than usual. He could tell her formidable mind was in high gear. As so often happened, he worried that she could read his mind and realize how little he knew about what she was so passionate about and, if she could, the progress they seemed to be making reconnecting on a personal level would evaporate.
“I guess I’m going to learn a lot about nanotechnology.”
“Wait a second,” Pia commented. “George, you didn’t move to L.A. because I—”
“No, no, of course not.” George desperately wanted to change this particular subject. He had moved to L.A. because of Pia for sure, but at the moment he didn’t want to admit it and look weak. He knew Pia hated when he seemed weak and apologetic. “This work with microbivores must be fascinating,” he continued lamely. “Will you be able to show me what you are doing? I’d love to check it out.”
Pia continued to regard George with an intensity that made him look away.
“I really am starved,” George said, needing to say something. He rubbed his hands together nervously and changed the subject. “What about some lunch? You must be hungry yourself.”
Pia glanced over at George’s roller bag, then back to George. “Where are you intending to stay?”
“Actually, I was hoping… ” George said, smiling his broadest, albeit insincere smile. It had worked in the past with other women, but he feared it was wasted on Pia.
Pia closed her eyes for a moment and shook her head almost imperceptibly. “How long are you intending to stay in Boulder?”
“Not long,” George added hopefully. “I only got a couple of days free. I told my chief it was a family emergency. I have to go back on Tuesday. I’m hoping to talk you into reciprocating and coming out to L.A. sometime soon.”
“Okay, we’ll talk about that later. Lunch? Sure, but it’ll have to be fast. Then how about we head out to where I work. I can show you some of what I’ve been doing. The fact is, I’ve got a couple of experiments running I need to check on within the hour.”
“Sounds good,” said George. He brightened. It seemed like progress, of a sort.
CHAPTER 2
Zachary Berman was happiest when he was flying, and preferably, as he was now, on the Gulfstream jet owned by Nano, LLC, of which he was the majority stockholder, president, and CEO. He loved the feeling of time being suspended as the plane sped on toward its destination at 51,000 feet, currently far above the seemingly limitless expanse of the Pacific Ocean, heading for the North American continent. However hectic and stressful his life was on the ground, in the air he felt detached, safe, maybe even invincible. The plane had communications that rivaled those of Air Force One, but by turning them off, he had plenty of time to plan, strategize, and gloat about Nano’s progress, especially on a long flight like this one: Beijing to Boulder, more than six thousand miles as the crow flies. Of course Zach, as most people called him, knew that his plane’s journey would be less than that, due to the plane’s polar route and the oblate shape of the earth.
As far as Zach was concerned, the trip had been a great success to the point of bringing a smile to his face. Putting his work aside, he lowered the back of his chair and raised the footrest, turning the seat into a comfortable lounger. Cradled in the hand-selected, hand-stitched Moroccan leather, he thought about Nano’s spreadsheets and capital needs. A smile appeared on his stubble encrusted, masculine face. For the moment things seemed to be going swimmingly. He even allowed himself to doze.
About an hour later, as Berman nursed the dregs of what would be his last single-malt scotch of the trip and with the back of his chair in the upright position, he idly looked out of the plane’s small window. His mind turned as it often did to his father and to the question of what he would have made of his son’s enormous recent success and flying home from a business trip to China in a sumptuous private jet that was, for all practical purposes, his. Every day as he looked in the mirror to shave, Zachary flinched at his progressive resemblance to his late father, Eli, especially now that Zach was closing in on fifty.
This was one reason he kept his thick, slightly salt-and-pepper hair considerably longer than his father’s closely cropped style. Zachary’s expensive cut would have made the older man blanch. Growing up in a middle-class home in a strongly blue-collar neighborhood in Palisades Park, New Jersey, Zachary often saw flecks of paint in his dad’s hair, an occupational hazard for a painting contractor, and he wondered why his father took so little interest in his appearance and what it implied. When Zach worked summers for his dad, from the time he was fourteen through college and grad school, he always wore a baseball cap as protection against such paint splatters. He’d worried their presence would mark him as a mere day laborer. From an early age, Zach had set his sights high.
A more profound disconnect between father and son was over what Zachary saw as Eli’s contentment and fundamental lack of ambition. Even as Zachary excelled at Yale as an undergraduate and at Harvard Law School, Eli plodded along in the paint business without any concern to make it grow. Still, his father felt entitled to deride his son’s inability to play baseball as well as he had, and had railed at his decision not to go into medicine as Eli had so vociferously voiced.
As the years passed, Eli’s contempt for his son’s career choices only increased as Zachary abruptly abandoned his rather well-paid corporate law job in Manhattan to enter the financial world, and then, after ten years, quit his extremely lucrative job as an analyst on Wall Street. Zachary had tried to explain to an uncomprehending Eli that he had become bored and thought of Wall Street as a big con, believing there was much better money to be made and certainly more satisfaction in actually creating something, not just playing around with paper, betting on a rigged market with other people’s money.
Zachary’s watch sounded a single soft chime, reminding him of the time and hence the proximity of their destination, and he swiveled in his seat to face the back of the plane. Halfway down sat Berman’s private assistant cum secretary, Whitney Jones. She looked right at Berman, ready for his instruction. In one of her straight-line Chanel suits, she was exquisite. Her black hair was pulled back from her face to show off her striking features, which combined the best of her African American father and Singaporean Chinese mother. For Zach, seeing her profile never failed to remind him of the famous bust of Nefertiti housed in the Neues Museum in Berlin. Berman merely tipped his head very slightly, and Jones, ever attentive, unclipped her seat belt. With an equivalent return nod, she stood. From previous instructions, she knew it was time to wake up their guests.