A World Without Secrets (21 page)

"Is that how you transport something worth millions of dollars?"

"It works. If I get mugged, no one would ever steal a matchbox that contains a blank piece of notepaper."

"Look, just leave it with me for a few days. I promise not to eat or sleep until I've examined every last nanometer on the gizmo. Just a few days. I promise," he added desperately.

"Sorry, Morris, it's too dangerous to have this in your possession. I can't leave it with you for even a few hours."

"What if I can arrange a meeting between you, me, and a top scientist in the field of nanotechnology? Would you come?"

"No. Weren't you listening when I said you can't tell
anyone
about this? Don't you realize how dangerous knowing about this is? People wouldn't hesitate to kill to get their hands on it. This would be an end to all secrets. Anyone could spy on anyone else, and the other party would never suspect they were being watched. And I know that people in power aren't ready for a world without secrets."

"Tell that to the NSA. Say, is this how you were able to recover all that artwork? By spying on people?"

"The crimes I investigated all occurred months and even years ago. Watching people going about their daily business wouldn't help anyone solve those crimes."

"So then you found this at the scene of a crime and pocketed it for yourself."

"No, I didn't."

"Then just tell me where you got it. That's all I ask."

I sighed and said, "Don't tell anyone about this if you value your life. The wrong people could hear, and someone will come looking for you. They'll torture and kill you to get the information. If you're smart, you'll forget you ever saw this."

All Morris did was nod. I wished the gizmo could have let me see what he was thinking.

I pulled my coat tightly closed to protect myself from the cold wind that sought to steal my body warmth as I walked to my car. The engine started easily and I let it warm a bit before leaving the parking lot. As I sat there, I realized I had warned Morris just as the mysterious emails had been warning me. I hadn't listened. Would Morris?

All the way back to Manhattan, I thought about the hour I'd spent with Morris, and what I'd learned— and what I hadn't. Technology beyond what humans were presently capable of producing, coupled with emails that mysteriously appeared in my computer and told me to destroy the gizmo, were enough to make anyone uneasy— especially the emails that had arrived without traveling through the normal mail server distribution system. I had no idea how they reached my laptop. And I was no closer to knowing where the gizmo had come from than before my outing across the Hudson.

However, the talk had actually eased my mind in some respects. Yes, the technology was advanced, but that didn't make it the stuff of fantasy. Every great leap forward in technology had been technology beyond what humans were presently capable of until it was recognized that we were in fact capable of doing it. The invention of the telegraph, then the telephone, then wireless communications were all technologies beyond what humans were capable of until someone made them a reality. There was nothing magical about the gizmo. Sure, it was a supercomputer on a sheet of paper, but the technology to make it was already being developed. Someone had just made an incredible leap forward a little sooner than expected.

I parked my car in the garage, pulled on my heavy winter overcoat, and walked home, still deep in thought. Rather than going right up, I sat on the steps of my apartment building for a while. Being January, it was cold, but the sun was out and that helped warm me a bit as I looked at the fenced, empty lot across the street.

The device had come to me the night the building had exploded. Without any prompting from me, Morris suggested that the technology might have come from an alien spacecraft. What if my wild idea for a story about the building's destruction wasn't so wild after all? What if an alien spacecraft really had crash-landed there? Suddenly I felt like such an idiot. In all the time I'd had the gizmo, I had never used it to investigate the source of the explosion. Maybe Morris was right. Maybe non-scientists weren't as bright as people who worked in labs. Nah, I didn't really believe that. I had just been so caught up with the thrill of using the gizmo, and then so occupied with the whirlwind turns my life had taken, that I hadn't taken the time to reflect properly on events that had occurred around me.

I jumped up and hurried upstairs. Since I intended to use the gizmo at home, I first closed the blinds and drapes and spent an hour sweeping the apartment for bugs. As usual, I didn't find any. I again hoped that I was using the equipment properly and that it was working properly, because if anyone were watching, they were about to get an eyeful that would blow their mind.

As a further check, I looked for wires and signs of construction activity like drilling or cutting or clean areas that shouldn't be that clean. I even checked to see if the dust bunnies under my bed and furniture had been disturbed. Nothing seemed out of place, but I did make up my mind to vacuum the next day.

Satisfied that no one was watching or listening, I put the gizmo against the wall in the kitchen and dialed in the latitude and longitude of my building, then set the time and date for one hour before the explosion. I moved the viewing window out of my house and through every part of the apartment building across the street. In areas where there was enough illumination to see, I didn't find the presence of any living thing except mice, rats, and cockroaches. I even moved it through the ground under the apartment building in case there was a secret lab below the basement. All I found was darkness everywhere to a depth of three hundred feet.

Other than a gas leak, it appeared that no other pre-existing situation could have caused an explosion. The gizmo didn't provide olfactory readings, so I couldn't sniff the air in the apartment building for the presence of natural gas.

I next moved the window forward in time until just a few seconds before the explosion and watched the roof. As far as I could see, nothing crashed into the building from above. I moved the window around to a number of vantage points and watched the explosion over and over. I even froze the image at the exact instant of the explosion and examined every square foot of roof and wall space. My conclusion was final. Nothing hit the building. That meant that the explosion had occurred from forces inside an empty building. The gas leak theory was gaining credibility. The explosion certainly wasn't owed to the crash of an alien spacecraft.

I next moved the window into the building and located the flash point of the explosion. Fortunately, it had occurred in a third-floor location where there was enough illumination to see the surrounding space just before the event. I watched in ultra-slow motion as the explosion occurred. A second before the explosion, there was nothing discernible at that spot. In fact, the entire area was completely empty. That pretty much confirmed the gas leak theory.

Still, two mysteries remained. One, what was the source of the ignition if it was an explosion that resulted from a gas leak? And two, since the gas leak theory had been spread by the authorities and media, I'd continued to think of it as an explosion, but from the lack of debris outside the perimeter of the apartment building, I knew it had actually imploded. If it had been a gas leak explosion, debris could have traveled for blocks. I knew there was only one more avenue I could investigate.

I set the gizmo to show my initial discovery of the paper in the pile of scrap on my kitchen table. I touched one of the dots that allowed me to follow a person or object, then worked backward towards the implosion.

My theory of where the gizmo had come from was correct all along. It did come from the apartment building. But when I tried to follow it back to before the explosion, I reached a dead end. At one point it didn't appear to exist and the next it did.

Following my investigation, I still had no evidence of where the gizmo had actually come from. It was just— there. However, I knew for sure it didn't come from an alien ship that had crashed into the apartment building.

I had no idea where to go from this point in my quest to learn the origin of the gizmo, but I knew what Morris would do in my place. He'd hop on a plane for California to discuss the problem with the professors at CalTech or take a shuttle to Boston to discuss things at MIT. At the very least, he'd jump into his car and drive up to Cornell. He would also most likely lose the gizmo, and perhaps his life, within twenty-four hours. I didn't intend for either of those things to happen to me.

* * *

I had just twisted the top off a beer when my landline rang.

"Hey, bro, whassup?" I heard when I answered.

"Not much, Billy," I said. "How are things with you?"

"Same oh, same oh. You're a tough man to get a hold of these days. I'm glad to finally find you in."

"Yeah, I've been spending most of my evenings with Kathy. She's out with her girlfriends tonight."

"So, how are things going?" Billy asked. "I hardly see you guys anymore."

"Things are great. She's fantastic. I'm glad you kept pushing us to get together."

"Buy the ring yet?"

I took a long pull on my beer before I answered. "Not yet. I don't want to frighten her off by moving too fast."

"Bro, you couldn't frighten her off with a shotgun."

"Funny you say that. I thought she might leave me after I joined the FBI and she learned that I had to carry a handgun all the time."

"Ya know, I still can't believe you took a job as a fed. You were doing so great with the art recovery gig."

"I'm still available for that kind of work. In fact, I got an email query just yesterday."

"What'd you say?"

"I told them I'd consider it."

"What's the payday?"

"Three million eight."

"Niiicce," he said, drawing the word out slowly for effect. "You should go for it. It'd make for a nice wedding gift."

"Yeah, that's true. I've been thinking about it. I could certainly use the money. It amazing how little one million seven will buy in the real estate market these days."

"Are you kidding?"

"No. Kathy's friend kept showing us the nicest places in her listings, so when we looked at the places I could afford, they seemed almost— shabby. I need about five mil to get something nice for Kathy."

"What happened to the rest of the money? Didn't you make two million off that one deal?"

"Yeah, but Uncle Sammy and Auntie Albany take half of everything I earn. I need to make about eight million more in order to have enough to buy the kind of home I'd like for Kathy."

"What you need is one of those accountants like the other millionaires and Wall Street bankers have. What was it that multi-billionaire Democrat buddy of the President said— he pays a lower tax rate than his secretary? You gotta climb on that greed bandwagon, bro. The lobbyists have already done all the hard work of paying off politicos to create tax loopholes for them. All you gotta do is find a good tax accountant who knows how to take advantage of a system that's already been corrupted to make the rich richer."

"It goes against the grain."

"I know, but the Wall Street fat cats and politicos are raping this country big time and reaming the middle class, so if you can't fight 'em, join 'em. And my advice on real estate, bro, is to forget the skybox seats and stick to courtside."

"Are you kidding? Courtside is twenty to thirty mil. The skybox people spend a hundred to two hundred mil for their condos and co-ops. At five mil we're practically talking nosebleed seats."

"Gee, I'm glad I don't have your problems," Billy said with a chuckle.

"Go ahead and make fun," I said. "But I've made up my mind not to ask Kathy to marry me until I can give her the kind of home I want for her. Me? I can live anywhere. This place is just five hundred eighty square feet, and it's always been fine. But I wouldn't ask Kathy to live here."

"From what I understand, her place isn't much larger."

"That's true, but what's fine for one person isn't always enough for two. And it's not just about square footage. I want a nicer neighborhood with good schools."

"Schools? You planning to need them?"

"I kinda thought we might at some point. I'm twenty-nine now, and Kathy is twenty-six. It's time we started thinking about kids."

"Have you talked to her about that?"

"Not yet."

"Better do it before you propose."

"Why? What do you know?"

"Nothing, bro, honest. But some career women aren't interested in giving up their jobs to breed a litter of rug rats and curtain climbers. So if you want kids, better make sure you're both on the same page before you make the marriage commitment."

"I take it you have no interest in 'rug rats and curtain climbers'," I said with a chuckle.

"I'm really not the big daddy type— I'm happy just the way I am. Although I would like something softer to hug on a continuing basis than my pillow, it seems I keep getting involved with women who can't wait to procreate. Somewhere out there is a woman who's both as selfish as I am about sharing her life with a houseful of kids and who can love an ignorant slob like me. I just haven't found her yet."

"Keep looking, Billy. You're a great guy, and you'll find
your
Kathy eventually."

"Yeah. In the meantime I'm having fun going out for test drives."

"And just for the record, you'd make a great father."

* * *

I worked late into the night on free stories, so after breakfast the following noon, I decided I should do something more financially productive. From my wallet, I removed the paper containing the two FBI case file IDs Brigman had handed me during my recent visit to the office. I accessed the FBI intranet system and entered my password.

The first file was an unsolved serial killer case from twelve years ago. The case had been covered with the usual thoroughness of all FBI investigations but had not resulted in any arrests. Since the initial active investigation ended, the case had been reassigned twice to other Special Agent teams. Neither team had been able to advance the case, and it had gone inactive again after three months of investigation. According to the file information, the murderer had killed at least four women within seven weeks and then simply stopped. He had never been identified. Several months after the fourth victim had been taken, the four bodies were found at the same location. The initial report speculated that the murderer might have been arrested on other charges and incarcerated. The investigation team had examined every arrest record within a hundred mile radius for a three month period from the date of the last disappearance in their effort to identify the killer. It was important that he be identified and charged with the murders before he could begin again if and when he was released. There was no statute of limitations on murder.