Collision (12 page)

During the book tour, switching to GNN on hotel-room television sets at the end of long days, Taylor had seen forecasts of an important SpaceMine announcement and, knowing he would be on the road, told Molly to tape it. In every city, at every Q&A session that followed his book talk, he had fielded questions inspired by the announcement about Asteroid USA. Now he had his first chance to see the entire show and decide how to integrate Hamilton's surprising announcement into the script and storyboard he had been working on in the months leading up to the Asteroid USA announcement. The storyboard had already been approved by his
NOVA
coproducer.

Taylor had seen, saved, and studied every GNN
SpaceMine Special
, but he had still not grown accustomed to seeing Robert Wentworth Hamilton at the head of a venture into space. Taylor knew Hamilton, not as an abstract personification of fabulous wealth, but as a personal opponent and an opponent of honest science.

 

24

Around the time that
Hamilton was secretly founding SpaceMine, Taylor had joined nearly one hundred other scientists who had signed an open letter deploring Hamilton's latest million-dollar “scientific achievement award.” Hamilton annually bestowed the award, selecting a scientist whose work matched what Hamilton called Christian science. One award, for example, went to a “young-earth creationist” who claimed to have scientifically proved—through geology and zoology—that God had created the universe in six twenty-four-hour days less than ten thousand years ago.

The scientific community essentially ignored the Hamilton Award as a billionaire's bauble; a way to give a boost to the right-wing zealots whose beliefs came from the pages of the Bible. But, to Taylor and the other protesters, the latest award had been a million-dollar attack on climate change. The award had gone to an evangelical minister who qualified as a scientist, in Hamilton's opinion, because he was an ex-astronaut who had written a best-seller about his encounter with God in space.

When he announced the award, Hamilton focused on climate change, which he called “the despicable anti-Bible campaign of atheists who claim that man can alter our world for good or for bad. But the future of the Earth is in the hands of a loving God. The fate of the human race will be determined by God, not by the foibles of mankind.”

Hamilton did not treat his critics kindly. He was a man who held grudges. Many signers of the protest letter soon lost research grants without explanation. And Taylor had been told by the then-new secretary of the Smithsonian, Stephanie Sinclair-Hardy, that his signature had cost the Smithsonian the substantial annual donation from the Robert Wentworth Hamilton Foundation.

All this passed through the Hamilton compartment in Taylor's mind as Hamilton appeared in his hologram.
What a silly goddamn display of meaningless pop technology
, Taylor thought. And then Hamilton stepped out of his hologram and made his announcement about Asteroid USA.
Which asteroid is that? What's its astronomical name?
Taylor hit the replay button to hear the announcement again and again. “Payload … Asteroid USA … commercial property … free enterprise.”
My God! He's playing with an asteroid—making it his branch office.

Ned Winslow ended the show with NASA-produced animation scenes portraying what robot mining might look like on the moon—not on an asteroid. Taylor knew that NASA scientists who studied near-Earth asteroids were not enthusiastic about the unregulated mining of them. Mining of the moon would not nudge the moon out of orbit. But mining an asteroid might change its orbit and put it on a collision with Earth.

Taylor sent an e-mail to the
NOVA
producer: “SpaceMine's Asteroid USA gives us a natural peg. Will get update to you by tomorrow morning.” He then turned to the monitor showing scenes from the proposed asteroid show. He was adding his notions on “impact avoidance” when a phone buzzed. He had rigged a speakerphone extension so that when that happened while he was at the table, he could answer without taking his eyes off the monitors or his hands off the keyboard. He saved the file and spoke into the speakerphone: “What's up, Molly?”

“Cole Perenchio,” Molly answered. “He sounds a little … off.” She insisted that Taylor never pick up the phone himself to shield him from what she called the people in the tinfoil hats.

“He sometimes sounds that way. Put him on.… Cole! Where have you been, man?” Taylor boomed. He envisioned a tall man whose arms jutted out of a white lab coat, a man of long silences. “Haven't seen you in—what—a year? And … I guess you've heard about Hal.”

Cole Perenchio. The sportswriters called him King Cole of the Court. The MIT Engineers' highest scorer
.
The black guy who could have passed, with that name and with that shade of brown.…

“Yeah, I heard about Hal,” Perenchio said, speaking so low that Taylor could barely hear him. “Maybe it was my fault.”

“What? What are you saying?”

“Never mind. I've got to talk to you, Ben. You're the only guy I can trust.”

“Where have you been? You left NASA?” Taylor asked.

“I can't talk right now,” Perenchio said. “I've got to see you. Right away.”

“You're in town? How about my house? Tonight. It's on Capitol Hill. We could have a bite.”

“
No
,” Perenchio insisted
.
“It'll be bugged. Everything's bugged.”

Taylor was beginning to think Molly was right. But Perenchio was a brilliant engineer and had been a great coworker back in the days when they both worked for NASA. “Okay, Cole. There's a place near my house, an outside place. It's on Capitol Hill.” He gave Perenchio directions and his cell-phone number. “How about eight o'clock?”

“Too early,” Perenchio said in a hoarse whisper. “Probably still people around. Make it eleven. Eleven o'clock. And make sure you're not followed.”

Before Taylor could respond, Perenchio hung up.

 

25

When Frederick Law Olmsted
designed the grounds of the U.S. Capitol in the late nineteenth century, he included a small, red brick structure on Capitol Hill, a short distance down from the Senate wing of the Capitol. The Summerhouse, as it is known, is built as a hexagon open to the sky, with three arched doorways leading to a small grotto and a whispering stream of water flowing over the rocks. Around a central fountain are stone benches with stone armrests marking off seats, shielded by a ceiling of red tiles.

Dr. Benjamin Taylor jogged down Constitution Avenue to the Capitol Grounds at Northwest Drive. He looked at his watch's digital dial.
22:55. Five minutes early.
A light rain had just entered the crisp October night, and Taylor, without stopping, pulled up the hood of his gray sweatshirt. At the end of the path he pushed open a wrought-iron gate and entered the Summerhouse. He thought he saw someone sitting on one of the benches.

Turning his cell phone's flashlight toward the bench, he said, “Hello, Cole,” and took a step closer. A man was slumped forward, his gray hair darkened by blood. Taylor leaned down and saw staring eyes and a ragged head wound. Stepping back, he punched 911 on the phone. The call was answered on the third ring.

“I have just found a body on Capitol Hill,” Taylor said. “He is—”

“Hold on. I'm switching you to USCP.”

Before Taylor could say another word, he heard, “U.S. Capitol Police. Where are you?”

“I'm at the Summerhouse off Northwest Drive.”

“Summerhouse? There's no
house
there.”

“It's a little brick building. That's its name. And there's a man in it. A man who looks dead. Shot.”

“Stay where you are. Do not move,” the voice said, ending the call.

In less than a minute he heard sirens. Two Capitol Police cars—white with blue side stripes—sped down Constitution and screeched into Northwest Drive. Farther down Constitution he could see the flashing lights of an ambulance.

Police-car doors opened and four police officers sprinted toward the Summerhouse. The first one to reach Taylor aimed his Glock pistol at him. Taylor, who was returning his cell phone into his sweatshirt pocket, looked down to see the white circle on his chest. His eyes traced the beam back to a flashlight mounted on the bottom of the Glock's magazine.

“Take your hands out of your pocket and get down,” the officer with the Glock said.

Taylor knelt on one knee and then stretched his six feet, two inches onto the wet stone floor.

A second officer appeared. While the first one held his gun on Taylor, she said, “Hands behind your back.” She grabbed his right arm.

Taylor saw a white police van and another police car pull up on the lawn flanking the path to the Summerhouse. Two of the new arrivals donned yellow raincoats and strung yellow crime-scene tapes among the shrubs and trees. Other cops set up three tripods holding lights whose rays cut through the night, sparkling in the rain. Suddenly, the Summerhouse was bathed in light.

The officer with the Glock aimed its beam toward the benches across from the body, and the two of them sheltered under the tiles, now fringed with dripping rain. Taylor saw the three stripes of a sergeant and his nameplate, Malcolm, and asked, “Am I under arrest, Sergeant? I'm the one who—”

“Shut up,” Malcolm said, jamming a hand into Taylor's sweatshirt pocket and taking out the cell phone. He next went through the sweatpants pockets, which were empty.

“What are you doing here? You and the deceased.” He jerked his head toward the body.

“Am I under arrest?” Taylor repeated.

“Where's your identification? Your wallet?”

“My name is Dr. Benjamin Taylor. I live on Maryland Avenue. Near the Folger. I am the assistant director of the Smithsonian's Air and Space Museum and director of—”

The first notes of “Thus Spake Zarathustra,” the musical theme from
2001: A Space Odyssey
, flowed from Taylor's cell phone.

Malcolm, seeming to be startled that he held a cell phone in his hand, stared at it for a moment and then pressed a button, saying, “Who is this?”

“Well, who are
you
?” The voice was female and surprised.

“I am a Capitol Police officer speaking into a cell phone held by a jogger in a hooded sweatshirt.”

“Hold on, mister. I know where you're coming from. I'm taping this.” Malcolm heard a faint click.

“I refuse to allow it.”

“Well, then, you can just hang up.”

“Lady, I'm black, just like this suspect here.”

“Well, I'm black, too. And you are using my daddy's cell phone.”

Malcolm pressed a button, ending the call. In an instant, Zarathustra spake again. Malcolm turned off the phone.

“That was my daughter, Darlene,” Taylor said. “And that
is
my cell phone. She was calling to—”

A man in a brown suit and a red baseball cap appeared out of the darkness and ducked under the tiles. “I'll take that, Sergeant,” he said, reaching out his left hand to grab the phone and pocket it. He aimed his right hand at Taylor and flipped open a black leather case bearing a Capitol Police badge. “Detective Willard Seymour,” he said. “Is the number of that cell phone 202-345-6998?”

“Yes,” Taylor said.

“The victim had a piece of paper in his pocket with that number written on it. So you knew the victim?”

“Yes. We were—”

“You were the one who called 911.”

“Yes.”

“We're taking you to headquarters,” Seymour said, grasping Taylor by the right arm and motioning him to stand. The detective led him down the path to an unmarked car. The cop who had cuffed him followed the two men. She opened a back door of the unmarked car and stood on her tiptoes to push down Taylor's head and ease him into the backseat. She sat down next to him, slammed the door, and Seymour drove off for the short drive down Capitol Hill to the headquarters of the U.S. Capitol Police.

Taylor had walked past the plain gray building countless times without thinking that he was passing a police station. This block of D Street was better known for the Monocle Restaurant, a power-lunch Capitol Hill palace for members of Congress and their lobbying hosts. He had eaten there himself about a month ago with the chairman of the Committee on House Administration, which had jurisdiction over Smithsonian museums.

Like all other Capitol Hill residents, Taylor knew that his neighborhood was extraordinarily well policed and that the police belonged to Congress, not the District of Columbia. Congress had given the Capitol Police exclusive jurisdiction over the Capitol and about two hundred blocks in the Hill neighborhood, which radiated from the Capitol in all directions.

On his walking and jogging around the Hill, Taylor almost invariably saw police officers, in cars or on foot patrol. There were some 1,700 of them, about the number found in midsize American cities. When Taylor dialed 911, he had reached the District of Columbia Metropolitan Police, which had switched him over to the U.S. Capitol Police. Taylor was pondering that fact, wondering what a federal arrest might mean to him, when Seymour parked and led him into the building, followed by the officer who had handcuffed him.

They filed through a hall to an elevator that took them to the third floor. Seymour punched the number lock on an interrogation room, switched on the light, and nodded to the uniformed officer. She uncuffed Taylor, who pushed back his hood and said, “Thanks.” Without responding, she punched the numbers on the inside lock of the door and left the room. The door closed behind her.

Seymour took a seat on one side of a metal table and motioned Taylor to a chair opposite him. The table and the chairs were bolted to the floor. Seymour touched a button under the table. On the wall behind Seymour, Taylor could see the aperture for a video camera that began silently recording.