Phantom: An Alex Hawke Novel (28 page)

Forty

Cambridge University

H
awke was quiet en route to Cambridge, an easy hour-and-a-half drive north on the M11. Congreve’s morning flight from Paris had arrived on time. They’d departed Heathrow’s Terminal One and been on the road by ten. He’d always found the leather and walnut interior of the old Bentley Locomotive a good place to think. As his late friend, the brilliant David Ogilvy, a British advertising man, had once famously said, “At sixty miles an hour, the loudest sound is the ticking of the clock.”

Congreve, for his part, gazed out the window at the late summer foliage, enjoying the first hint of fall in the air. He too kept mum. Both men were thinking about the same thing, the horrific train crash at St. Pancras station one week earlier. Britain was still reeling from the shock. For the last two days, Ambrose and a team composed of MI5 and Scotland Yard officers had been meeting with their counterparts at the Prefecture de Police headquarters on the Ile de la Cité in Paris. The investigation was still ongoing.

But the famous criminalist seated to Hawke’s left, still turning the thing over in his mind, had come to some conclusions that differed from those of the French. They were already ruling it a suicide bombing. Ambrose Congreve was not.

Hawke broke the silence. “And how is your old friend at the rue de Lutèce, Michel Gaudin?”

“Le Préfet? Still his old cocksure self, I’m afraid. Frequently wrong, but seldom in doubt.”

“I take it you two had a disagreement?”

“We certainly would have had I not kept my thoughts to myself. My conclusions may be premature. I’ll give
les Gendarmerie
a few days before weighing in.”

“This morning’s
Times
identified the terrorist. Not your run-of-the-mill sheik of Araby in a bomb vest.”

“Indeed not. A distinguished Nobel laureate in physics.”

“Who won the award for his recent breakthroughs in the field of artificial intelligence.”

“Yes.”

“Has a certain familiar ring to it, does it not?”

“Hmm,” Congreve murmured, still lost in thought.

“Talk to me. Perhaps even the Demon of Deduction could use a little help.”

“What? Oh. Of course. Well, as soon as I determined de Montebello was a physicist, I went immediately to the French Academy of Sciences and asked to meet with the man’s secretary. Lovely woman. Marie-Louise de Sartine by name. I took her to L’Ami Louis near Les Halles. Dreadful place, ghastly food, nightmarish waitstaff, but it’s the only place I’m guaranteed a table.”

“Did you ply her with champagne?”

“No need of that. She was delighted to have someone to talk to who might actually listen to her.”

“And, unlike the French police, take her seriously.”

“You’re one jump ahead of me. You’re thinking of Dr. Cohen’s widow.”

“Now we’re even. What did Mademoiselle de Sartine tell you?”

“Well. It seems the good doctor had an appointment that morning. With a government minister who’d come to present him with a prestigious award. Marie-Louise went in to inform him of the man’s arrival, but de Montebello waved her away. He was on the telephone and wished not to be disturbed. Mademoiselle de Sartine told me he kept the minister waiting for half an hour before she saw him disconnect the call and emerge from his office. He was wearing his hat and overcoat, carrying a briefcase she’d never seen before.”

“His behavior?”

“Exactly like Dr. Cohen’s. Robotic, stiff, oblivious to his surroundings. Ignored her pleas to meet with the minister. He simply kept repeating a single word in answer to her entreaties.”

“Yes?”

“Londres.”

“London. He had his instructions.”

“He did. We next see him on security videos at the Gare du Nord. Boarding the TGV.”

“Good Lord.”

“Alex, someone or something is systematically eliminating the world’s foremost scientists in the field of AI. The methods are identical. Induce a trance state telephonically—why on earth are you driving so bloody fast?”

“On the off chance that a certain professor at Cambridge is going to get a deadly phone call before we arrive.”

“Press on with alacrity, Alex, and don’t spare the horses.”

“Done.”

Hawke’s Locomotive leaped forward. The roaring power of the Bentley 4.5-liter engine and Amherst Villiers supercharger threw Congreve back in his seat.

P
rofessor Sir Simon Partridge, a Life Fellow at Magdalene College and Nobel laureate in physics for his groundbreaking work in the field of artificial intelligence, swiveled his desk chair round to gaze through leaded-glass windows at the river Cam, that placid green stream flowing gently beneath his window. Two men were sitting in his anteroom, patiently waiting to see him, and he had no idea how much, or even what, to tell them. Lord knows, he had enough on his plate without this intrusion.

They were policemen, basically. One of them, Congreve, was a former head of Scotland Yard and had taken a doctorate at Cambridge. Took his degree in languages, oddly enough. The other, this Lord Hawke, was a well-known society figure of some repute. Name in the society pages now and then, cover of business magazines and their ilk. Less well known was the fact that he was a spook, a high-ranking operative at MI6. Any notion Partridge had had about feigning illness and begging off went out the window when he’d looked into their backgrounds.

Well,
he thought,
sooner the better.

He picked up the direct line to his assistant and said with sigh, “I suppose I’ll see them now. Although I am very, very busy, you see.”

“Yes, sir. Oh, there was a call for you earlier on your private line, rather odd. The caller who rang asked for you; I put him on hold to see if you were available and when I went back to the call, there was music of some kind. Quite eerie, to be honest. A crank call obviously, and I rang off immediately.”

“No one has that number, Sybil. Unless it was given them personally by me. By that I mean no one. You see?”

“I know that, sir. Very odd indeed. It’s why I thought you should know.”

“You don’t have that number, do you?”

“Certainly
not,
sir.”

“No need to get huffy about it. All right, then, Miss Symonds, send the two distinguished gentlemen into the lion’s den.”

Partridge was an old lion. Distressingly thin, he had a leonine head of thick white hair, clear blue eyes, a classically sculpted face with a Roman nose, and a strong jawline. He was dressed, as usual, in a frayed, open-collared shirt, rumpled grey flannel trousers, and an old brown tweed jacket, stooped in the shoulders. He was well known at the university, not for his style, but for his patrician and distracted air, his wit and brilliance.

Born in London, he’d attended the prestigious St. Paul’s school before becoming an undergraduate at Magdalene. He’d stayed on for his master’s as well as his Ph.D. in particle physics. Having earned his doctorate, he’d risen to the lofty position of Life Fellow, which entitled him to free rooms at the Memorial Court, free meals at High Table in the Hall, and, most important, free rein to walk on the grass unaccompanied.

He got to his feet as the two men were shown into his office. His eyes, Congreve noticed, behind thick glasses, appeared outsized, like those of an appealing character in one of those Pixar animated films Ambrose and his fiancée enjoyed so much. His office looked a little shabby and was filled with old phone books, textbooks, overflowing cardboard boxes, and countless piles of yellowing paper leaning Pisa-like toward the floor.

Taped to the walls were a map of the solar system, a periodic table, a poster of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, a taxonomy of animals, color photos of Obama and John McCain with handwritten labels reading
THIS ONE
and
THAT ONE
.

“I’m very much in a rush, you see,” he said, pushing his glasses up on his nose. “In a rush about so many things, rushing about, here, there, everywhere. Which isn’t to say that I don’t have time to talk to you. My goodness, no; I mean, yes, I do. It’s just that—that’s why my office is in such disarray, because I’m so rushed. If you take my point.”

“We very much appreciate your making time for—” Hawke began, before being startled by a large explosion erupting from Congreve. The sun-dappled dust clouds in the room had caused him to sneeze uproariously.

“Sorry about the dust,” Partridge said. “I don’t like the janitors to come sweep for fear they’ll disturb something. Do you care for a stirrup cup at all? Laphroaig. Bit early in the day but . . . but . . .” Congreve sneezed again, something akin to a typhoon.

“God bless,” Hawke said to Ambrose, who was mopping up with his handkerchief. Then, to the professor, “As I was saying, we’re most grateful for your time.”

“Yes, yes, of course, of course. Chief Inspector, Lord Hawke, so good of you to come all this way. I do hope you won’t find it’s been in vain.”

Congreve and Hawke glanced at each other sidewise, neither of them liking the phrase “in vain.”

“So do I, so do I,” Hawke said, shaking the man’s hand. He found it dry and strong, always a good sign.

“Do sit down, won’t you?” Partridge said. “Tea will arrive momentarily unless I’m very much mistaken. Do either of you take sugar?”

His guests declined.

“No?” he said, gazing at them for confirmation.

“Thanks, no,” Congreve said.

Alex and Ambrose took the offered chairs at the professor’s ancient desk. The view of the willows along the river out the tall windows was lovely. Sunshine streamed in, making the dark wood paneled room a very pleasant place to be on a Saturday morning. Congreve had often ruminated about what life might have been had he chosen to remain on at Cambridge, perhaps as a don or Fellow. As charming as the setting was, he couldn’t see himself sitting in the chair across the desk. He’d forever be missing out on all the action. He’d been a copper at heart all his life.

“Well, gentlemen, let me begin by saying how fascinating my colleagues and I here at Magdalene have found the task you set before us. We are odd ducks, you know. We toil away in our laboratories, lost in our tiny realms, oblivious to the outside world and its mysteries. So thank you for providing us with a distraction. And, quite frankly, an enormous challenge.”

“Professor Partridge,” Congreve said, “if I may clarify, what, precisely, is your role here at the college?”

“Of course. I am the university senior lecturer in Machine Learning and advance research fellow and director of studies in Quantum Computing here at the college. Ultimately, your—problem—was kicked along to me. I happened to know the late Dr. Cohen and his work quite well, so I was the logical choice. I did some of my postgraduate quantum computing work in the States, a good part of it at Stanford, as it happens.”

“You worked on the Perseus Project?”

“I did indeed. Only for a brief period, unfortunately. But long enough to have a good working knowledge of what they were after. It was still early days, you see.”

“The Singularity,” Congreve said.

“Precisely. The world’s first ultra-intelligent machine. My particular interests lay in computational modeling of human reasoning. Artificial intelligence, automated reasoning, diagrammatic reasoning, theorem proving, proof planning, cognitive science, machine learning, human-computer interaction, quantum mechanics, and so on. You get the general idea. Perhaps you’ve read my books?”

“Unfortunately not. What are the titles?” Congreve asked, pulling out his notepad and pencil.

“
The Fabric of Infinity
was the first. Followed by
The Fallacy of Reality.
Published by Cambridge University Press. Available on Amazon where they languish in well-deserved obscurity. Never seen a nickel in royalties.”

“I would say we’ve come to the right door,” Congreve said, smiling. “Quite impressive. Although I must tell you, sir, that I’m afraid all I know about mathematics is that two plus two equals four.”

Partridge regarded Ambrose above his tented fingers, thought for a bit, and said, “Hmm. I’ve often wondered.”

Hawke laughed at the obvious joke, glanced at Congreve, and could see his friend was uncomfortable, not quite sure whether to laugh or not. But before he could say anything, Partridge looked at Hawke, unsmiling.

“No, I’m quite serious,” he said. “As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain, and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality. If you take my point.”

“Precisely,” Congreve said with a bit of a smirk at his friend. “I was thinking along those very lines myself, Professor.”

“Like you, Chief Inspector, I am merely a detective. And a devotee of Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes, as are you, I believe, according to Mr. Google.”

“Devotee is putting it mildly,” Congreve said.

“As you know, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle never liked detective stories that built their drama by deploying clues over time. Conan Doyle wanted to write stories in which all the ingredients for solving the crime were there from the beginning, and that the drama per se would be in the mental workings of his ideal ratiocinator. The story of quantum computing follows a Holmesian arc, since all the clues for developing a quantum computer have been there essentially since the discovery of quantum mechanics, waiting patiently for the right mind to properly decode them.”

“And that man was Waldo Cohen?”

“It was indeed.”

Hawke said, “Professor Partridge, we would very much appreciate hearing your thoughts on Dr. Cohen and his protégé, Darius.”

“Of course. There are two distinct issues here: the Darius File, as we call it, and Dr. Cohen’s progress, or as much of it as we shall determine by delving further into what we might glean from his workstation. Where would you like to begin?”

“Cohen’s progress,” Hawke said, shifting in his chair. “We know that he was very secretive.”

Partridge laughed. “Oh, you have no idea. There is a level of encryption in his files the likes of which we’ve never seen. We were simply unable to break through here at Cambridge, I’m sorry to say. You’re aware of prime factorization, of course, for centuries the holy grail of mathematics. It’s the basis of much current cryptography. It’s easy to take two large prime numbers and multiply them. But it’s very difficult to take a large number that is the product of two primes and then deduce what the original prime factors are. Prime factorization is an example of a process that is very easy one way, and very difficult the other. Do you follow?”