An hour later they both lay exhausted, their bodies entwined in the rumpled and sweat-soaked linen sheets of the royal bed.
‘Victor,’ Zoshchenko whispered as she ran her hand through the graying hair on his chest, ‘I had a chance to take a look at the notebooks you acquired.’
‘And?’
‘And I don’t know what to make of them.’
‘What do you mean?’ he said, a bit irritated. ‘Dmitri and his men went through a lot of trouble to get those notebooks.’
Zoshchenko propped herself up on her elbow to face him. ‘No, you misunderstand me. Acquiring the notebooks was definitely worthwhile. Wolff’s drawings give a hint at what he was thinking, but without the narrative and his calculations, they’re just a collection of very interesting pictures. I’ve put a former KGB cryptographer to work on them, but he doesn’t hold out much hope.’
‘Why? Isn’t he a very good code breaker? If not, get someone who can break the damn code.’
‘Actually, he’s one of the best the KGB ever employed. I know because I’m the one who found him for them. He’s never seen anything quite like the mathematics of Wolff’s cipher — he’s not even sure where to start.’
Orlov’s hand caressed the curve along the small of Zoshchenko’s back as he considered the notebooks. ‘Will this have any effect on Avvakum’s work?’
‘There’s no way of knowing until the notebooks are decrypted. According to your surveillance, Sandstrom believes Wolff may have had a working theory that can explain the quantum effect he discovered. If this is true, such information would go a long way in bolstering our claim on all technology derived from this discovery. Such knowledge would be almost as valuable as the device itself.’
Zoshchenko lifted her head off Orlov’s chest and rolled to prop up her upper body on her elbows so she could face him. ‘I believe then that we must maintain electronic surveillance on Sandstrom and his associates indefinitely.’
‘The longer we keep watching them, the riskier it becomes,’ Orlov reminded her.
‘I understand, but we don’t know how much of the notebooks they have stored in their computers. Our hackers were met with heavy resistance when they tried to access the MARC network. Someone shut them out completely and then began tracking them. If Dmitri hadn’t destroyed the lab server when he did, our hackers might well have been identified. Regardless, we have to assume that they are working to decrypt whatever portion of Wolff’s notebooks they have. Should they succeed, that might put their effort ahead of ours.’
‘And if their patent claim has priority, we lose.’
‘Precisely, Victor.’
39
It was nearly midnight, but within the windowless lab the distinction between night and day wasn’t readily apparent. Lara Avvakum’s fascination with her work caused time to slip past more quickly than it ever had before. Her workdays grew long; spans of eighteen, even twenty, hours weren’t uncommon as the feverish passion of discovery consumed her.
She stared blankly at the screen, unable to get Ted Sandstrom out of her mind. The possibility that he might be the one who started this project whetted her desire to learn more about him.
But surely, Avvakum reasoned, Victor Orlov’s prohibition against contact with my predecessors on this project doesn’t extend to knowing something about them. After all, is it not wise to know all you can about the competition?
A moment later she accessed the Web search engine on her computer and keyed in a deliberately broad search for Ted Sandstrom. Within seconds there were seven responses to her query.
Avvakum selected an article from USA Today and waited while her computer connected with the newspaper’s Web site and downloaded the article. The peripheral elements of the Web page loaded first, then the story and accompanying photographs. In bold text, the headline appeared.
ND PROF KILLED, ANOTHER INJURED IN LAB BLAST
Avvakum scrolled down to the article and read about an attack on the professors’ lab that left Raphaele Paramo dead and Ted Sandstrom severely burned. Five unidentified men posing as a moving crew were responsible for the blaze and the theft of Sandstrom’s lab equipment and research. The article cited FBI sources in claiming that industrial espionage was the apparent motive for the attack.
Two other individuals, Nolan Kilkenny and physicist Kelsey Newton, were treated for minor injuries and released from the hospital. The article went on to describe how Sandstrom had recently signed with two consortia to develop commercial applications related to an undisclosed discovery.
Am I working for thieves and murderers? Avvakum thought fearfully as it all became painfully clear. No one just walks away from all this research; it was stolen, and the minds that created it trampled.
Avvakum pored over the other articles, searching for further information pertaining to the incident. She soon learned that once Sandstrom’s condition had stabilized, he had been transferred to the University of Michigan Hospital. The investigation lab was currently at a standstill because of a lack of evidence.
The more she read, the more the name Nolan Kilkenny kept cropping up. As a project director for the Michigan Applied Research Consortium, Kilkenny was noted as being involved with the commercial application of Sandstrom’s work — an effort she’d been hired by Orlov to pursue.
Avvakum continued to investigate and found herself at the MARC home page. She navigated through the site until she found a staff listing for Nolan Kilkenny, complete with his E-mail address. She clicked on the address and began typing her message.
Is this file the work of Ted Sandstrom?
Avvakum then browsed through a directory of files and selected one that dealt specifically with the quantum energy device and attached it to her message.
She looked at the one-line message she’d written. If her suspicions were wrong, then she was about to violate the trust of her employer — a man who’d saved her from a life of scientific exile in Siberia. But what if her suspicions were right? If Orlov truly was responsible for the attack on Sandstrom, then by developing this research, she became Orlov’s accomplice.
Avvakum carefully weighed the options before her, balancing her need to know the truth against the fearful hope that ignorance could somehow protect her.
She sighed, then clicked the SEND button.
40
Mosley’s knuckles rapped against the partially open door of Cooper’s seventh-floor office.
‘Bart, do you have a minute? There’s something I’d like to discuss with you.’
‘Ah, sure, Cal,’ Cooper replied, surprised by the visit. ‘C’mon in.’
Mosley sat in one of the upholstered chairs opposite Cooper’s desk. ‘I’m working on an industrial-espionage case, something involving a radical new technology.’
Cooper leaned back in his chair, getting comfortable. ‘Tell me about it.’
Mosley quickly ran through the information Kilkenny had provided regarding the quantum power cell, the attack in South Bend, and his lines of inquiry.
‘So what you’re telling me is that you’ve got squat as far as any solid leads.’
‘The trail was getting pretty cold, until a couple of days ago. Two of the same men who hit South Bend led another team to Ann Arbor, where they struck a rare-books lab.’
‘How does that fit in with your technology case?’