‘Serena, I’d almost forgotten about our eight o’clock meeting. Shall we go to my office?’ Without waiting for a response, he led the way across the room.
‘I’ve left the file Herr Volker asked me to compile for you, on your desk,’ Deiter shouted after him.
It was the first time the two technicians had been distracted enough to take their eyes off their computer screens. Their gaze followed Serena, intently, as she strolled after Tom, only returning to the task in hand after her shapely body had completely disappeared from view.
‘When you two have quite finished,’ Deiter said irritably.
Tom sat behind his desk and waited for her to come through the door. He picked up the thick manila folder that Deiter had left for him and started to thumb through the pages without taking much notice of its contents.
‘Please, take a seat,’ he gestured to the chair opposite him. ‘Can I get you a coffee, tea or anything?’
‘No, thank you.’
‘Good, because I have no idea where the coffee machine is.’ Tom smirked at his own remark, but Serena’s face remained impassive.
She sat down, put her briefcase on the floor beside her and crossed her legs. Her skirt rode up to just above her knee, an action that didn’t go unnoticed by Tom. There was an awkward silence as he absently flicked through the pages of the dossier. He was struggling to come up with an opening gambit that would impress her without sounding too arrogant.
‘So, how did it go yesterday?’ he blurted out. Safe, if not a little too generic.
‘Well,’ she replied.
‘Good, good.’ He returned his attention to the file in an attempt to buy himself enough time to formulate his next ‘killer’ question.
‘And how do you like it here?’ was the best that he could come up with.
‘The hours are long, but the work is very interesting.’
‘Good, good.’ More page turning. Then he put the folder down on his desk and leant back in his chair. ‘I hope you don’t mind me asking, but where is your accent from?’
‘I grew up in Israel, but my parents moved to America when I was fourteen. I continued my studies there and graduated from university five years ago.’
‘And which university was that?’ Tom enquired, to be polite.
‘MIT,’ she said, smiling at him.
‘That’s a coincidence. I was a professor at MIT.’
‘I know,’ she laughed, the mischievous glint returning in her eyes. ‘You taught me.’
‘I don’t remember you,’ Tom exclaimed, rather tactlessly.
She feigned a hurt expression.
‘Sorry, I didn’t mean I don’t remember you,’ he bumbled. ‘I meant I didn’t recognise you. Sorry, I mean I don’t remember teaching you.’
She laughed again. ‘I don’t blame you. It was only for one semester, when you first arrived at the university, and it was my last term. So I hardly had any classes to attend,’ she said, letting him off the hook. ‘But you did give me a “C” for one of my papers.’
This time it was Tom’s turn to laugh. ‘You probably deserved it. I hope it didn’t affect your career too much?’
‘No, but I did think you were quite mean at the time.’
They spent the next hour laughing at the merits and foibles of the various lecturers they had both known at the university, him from a colleague’s perspective and her from a student’s perspective. Deiter, meanwhile, paced backwards and forwards between his work station and Tom’s office. Finally, when he couldn’t stand the joviality any more, he knocked on the door.
‘I’m sorry to disturb this important meeting, but we need Ms Mayer to be able set the parameters for today’s experiment.’ His face had definitely gone a few shades redder.
‘My fault, Deiter,’ Tom said apologetically. ‘We were just discussing mutual acquaintances.’
Deiter stormed back to his desk.
Serena got up to leave. ‘Do you want me to leave the results of yesterday’s tests with you?’ she asked Tom, retrieving her briefcase.
‘Why don’t we go through them over dinner tonight? My treat for being so mean to you at university.’ The words were out of his mouth before he had a chance to think about it. He wasn’t accustomed to asking attractive women out on dates, but they were getting on so well, it seemed the natural thing to do.
‘I’d like that. Where and when?’
‘I only know one restaurant in Switzerland, but I know for a fact they do a very good fillet mignon, and the lobster’s not bad either. Shall we say the Hotel d’Angleterre at eight o’clock?’
‘I’ll look forward to it.’
Tom watched her as she went over to speak to Deiter. By his body language it was obvious that he didn’t appear best pleased that she was getting on so well with the new Director General. Well, that’s something you’ll just have to live with, Dr Weiss!
CHAPTER 10
‘Release the first beam in three… two… one… now!’ Deiter was instructing the same two technicians as earlier that morning, only this time it wasn’t a computer game.
All the workstations in the room were manned and all the computer screens were being observed by at least one operative. The tension in the room was palpable. Unlike the previous day’s test, the room was deathly silent.
‘What’s the status of the heat shields?’ Deiter barked across the room.
‘Heat shields fully operation, temperature stabilised,’ came the response.
‘Okay, release the second beam in three… two… one… now!’
Tom stood behind Deiter. He knew he wasn’t expected to be an active participant in today’s experiment, but that didn’t stop him feeling like a spare part. He turned to the computer screens on the wall he had observed that morning. This time, the schematics were showing a computer-generated image of the actual beams that were circulating some hundred metres below them, while the data screens were recording the actual number of times the protons smashed into each other. As with the earlier simulation, the figures were steadily increasing, and were updated on a scrolling roll every second.
The other screens around the room were now showing CCTV footage of various parts of the Collider. With 27 kilometres to cover, it was obvious to Tom that they could only focus on the vital components; even so, they flicked from one image to another every ten seconds.
Tom was surprised to see that there were still workers underground. The tunnel itself would have been cleared and sealed long before the experiment was initiated, so what were they doing down there? He looked around to see if he could find somebody who wouldn’t be too distracted by a question and decided to approach a group of three technicians monitoring the proton collisions.
‘Why are there still people underground when the experiment is running?’ He directed his question to the most senior-looking individual out of the group — or, at least, he was the oldest.
‘That’s the maintenance crew,’ replied the technician. ‘They’re checking for any coolant leaks around heat shields while the Collider is running.’
Tom frowned. ‘Isn’t that dangerous?’
‘Only if there’s a leak,’ the technician replied with a smirk.
Tom didn’t see the funny side of it. ‘Who instructed them to do that?’
‘Professor Morantz. We had an incident about eighteen months ago, but luckily it was detected in time, otherwise the whole place could have gone up. Since then, he ordered the maintenance crew to check for leaks whenever the Collider is operational. I suppose he thought that it would be better to risk the lives of a few men than a few hundred.’
Tom didn’t like the sound of that one bit. He couldn’t disagree with Professor Morantz’s logic, but endangering a single life was unacceptable. He had just discovered his first task: to identify any threat from leaking coolant without the need for human intervention.