1
Geneva, Switzerland, January 19, 2011
ALEXANDER COCHRANE
WALKED ALONG the quiet streets of Geneva. It was well past
midnight, on a dark winter evening. Snow drifted softly from above,
adding to three inches that had fallen during the day, but there
was no wind to speak of, and the night was hushed and
peaceful.
Cochrane pulled his
knit cap down, drew his heavy wool coat tighter around him, and
thrust his hands deep into the coat’s pockets. Switzerland in
January. It was supposed to snow and often did, usually taking
Cochrane by surprise.
The reason for that
was that Cochrane spent his days three hundred feet underground in
the tunnels and control room of a massive particle accelerator
known as the Large Hadron Collider, or LHC. The LHC was run by the
European Council for Nuclear Research, though it went by the
acronym CERN as the French spelling used those initials (Conseil
Européen pour la Recherche Nucléaire).
The temperature in
the LHC’s control room remained a perfect 68 degrees, the lighting
was constant, and the background noise was an unchanging hum of
generators and pulsing energy. A few hours spent down there felt no
different than a few days, or a few weeks, as if time wasn’t
passing.
But of course it was,
and it often stunned Cochrane how different the world appeared upon
his return to the surface. He’d entered the building this morning
under blue skies and a crisp, if distant, sun. Now the clouds hung
thick, heavy and low, illuminated from beneath in an orange glow by
the lights of Geneva. All around lay a three-inch blanket of snow
that had not been present twelve hours before.
Cochrane walked
through the field of white headed for the train station. The big
shots at CERN—the physicists and other scientists—came and went in
CERN-provided cars with drivers and heated seats.
Cochrane was not a
physicist or particle theorist or any other designation of that
nature. He was an educated man to be sure. He had a master’s in
electromagnetic theory, twenty years of experience in the
energy-transfer business, and was well compensated. But the glory
of CERN went to the physicists and the others looking for the
building blocks of the universe. To them Cochrane was nothing more
than a highly paid mechanic. They were bigger than him. Even the
machine he worked on was bigger than him. In fact, it was bigger
than anyone.
The Large Hadron
Collider was the largest scientific instrument in the world. Its
tunnels ran in a twenty-seven-kilometer circular track that
extended outside the territory of Switzerland and into France.
Cochrane had helped design and build the superconducting magnets
that accelerated the particles inside the tunnels. And as an
employee of CERN he kept them running.
When the LHC was
powered up, it used an incredible amount of energy, most of that
for Cochrane’s magnets. After being chilled to 271 degrees below
zero, those magnets could accelerate protons to nearly the speed of
light. The particles in the LHC traveled so fast that they zipped
around the twenty-seven kilometers eleven thousand times in a
single second.
The only problem for
Cochrane was that one magnet failure shut down the whole thing for
days or even weeks at a time. He’d been particularly irked a few
months back when a subcontractor installed a second-rate circuit
board, which had promptly blown. Even now it boggled Cochrane’s
mind; a ten-billion-dollar machine done in because someone wanted
to save a couple euros.
It had taken three
weeks to repair the damage, every single day spent with higher-ups
breathing down his neck. Somehow it was his fault. Then again, it
was always his fault.
Even though things
were going well now, the physicists and the CERN leadership seemed
to regard the magnets as the weak link in the system. As a result,
Cochrane was held on a short leash and seemed almost to live at the
facility.
It made him angry for
a moment, but then he shrugged. Soon enough it would be someone
else’s problem.
Cochrane continued
through the snow to the train station. To some extent the snow was
a plus. It would leave tracks. And he wanted there to be tracks
tonight.
He climbed up onto
the platform and checked the time. Five minutes till the next
train. He was right on schedule. The platform was empty. In five
minutes or less he’d be on his way to a new life, one he felt
certain would be infinitely more rewarding than his current
one.
A voice called out to
him. “Alex?”
He turned and gazed
down the platform. A man had come up the far stairway and was
striding toward him, passing beneath the halogen
lamps.
“I thought it was
you,” the man said, coming closer.
Cochrane recognized
him as Philippe Revior, deputy head of security at the LHC. His
throat tightened. He hoped nothing was wrong. Not tonight. Not this
night.
Cochrane pulled out
his phone to make sure he hadn’t been summoned back. No messages.
No calls. What the hell was Revior doing
here?
“Philippe,” Cochrane
said as cheerfully as he could. “I thought you were prepping for
tomorrow’s run.”
“We’ve done our
work,” Revior said. “The night crew can handle the
rest.”
Cochrane felt
suddenly nervous. Despite the cold, he began to sweat. He felt
Revior’s arrival had to be more than coincidence. Had they found
something? Did they know about him?
“Are you catching a
train?” he asked.
“Of course,” the
security chief said. “Who drives in this?”
Who drives in this? Three inches of snow was a normal
winter day in Geneva. Everyone drove in it.
As Revior moved
closer, Cochrane’s mind whirled. All he knew for sure was that he
could not have the deputy head of security traveling with him. Not
here, not now.
He thought of heading
back to the LHC, claiming suddenly that he’d left something behind.
He checked his watch. There was not enough time. He felt
trapped.
“I’ll ride with you,”
Revior said, producing a flask. “We can share a
drink.”
Cochrane looked down
the tracks. He could hear the sound of the train coming. In the far
distance he saw the glow from its lights.
“I, um . . . I . . .”
Cochrane began.
Before he could
finish he heard footsteps from behind, someone coming up the
stairs. He turned and saw two men. They wore dark overcoats, open
to the elements.
For a second Cochrane
assumed them to be Philippe’s men, members of security, or even the
police, but the truth was laid bare in the look on Revior’s face.
He studied them suspiciously, a lifetime of evaluating threats no
doubt telling him what Cochrane already knew, that these men were
trouble.
Cochrane tried to
think, tried to come up with some solution to avoid what was about
to happen, but his thoughts formed like molasses in the cold.
Before he could speak the men drew weapons, short-barreled
automatics. One pointed at Cochrane and one at Philippe
Revior.
“Did you think we
would trust you?” the leader of the two men said to
Cochrane.
“What is this?”
Revior said.
“Shut up,” the second
man said, jabbing the gun toward Revior.
The leader of the two
thugs grabbed Cochrane by the shoulder and yanked him closer. The
situation was spiraling out of control.
“You’re coming with
us,” the leader said. “We’ll make sure you get off at the right
stop.”
As the second thug
laughed and glanced toward Cochrane, Revior attacked, slamming a
knee into the man’s groin and tackling him.
Cochrane wasn’t sure
what to do, but when the leader turned to fire, Cochrane grabbed
his arm, shoving it upward. The gun went off, the shot echoing
through the dark.
With little choice
but to fight, Cochrane pushed forward, bowling the bigger man over
and scuffling with him on the ground.
A backhand to the
face stunned him. A sharp elbow to the ribs sent him tumbling to
the side.
As he came up he saw
Revior head butting the second thug. After putting him out of
action Revior charged and tackled the leader, who’d just thrown
Cochrane off him. They struggled for the gun, exchanging several
vicious blows.
A thundering sound
began to fill the background as the approaching train rounded the
curve a quarter mile from the station. Cochrane could already hear
the brakes screeching as the steel wheels approached.
“Alex!” Revior
yelled.
The assailant had
flipped Revior over and was now trying to get the gun aimed at
Revior’s head. The old security specialist held the arm off with
all he had, then pulled it close, a move that seemed to surprise
the assailant.
He chomped down on
the man’s hand with his teeth, and the thug whipped his arm
backward instinctively. The gun flew out of his grip and landed in
the snow beside Cochrane.
“Shoot him!” Revior
shouted, holding the assailant and trying to immobilize
him.
The sound of the
train thundered in Cochrane’s ears. His heart pounded in his chest
as he grabbed the gun.
“Shoot him!” Revior
repeated.
Cochrane glanced down
the track, he had only seconds. He had to choose. He targeted the
assailant. And then he lowered his aim and fired.
Philippe Revior’s
head snapped backward, and a spray of blood whipped across the
snow-covered platform.
Revior was dead, and
the assailant in the gray coat wasted no time in dragging him back
into the shadows, throwing him behind a bench, just as the
approaching train passed a wall of trees at the end of the
station.
Feeling as if he
might throw up, Cochrane stuffed the gun into his waistband and
covered it with his shirt.
“You should have
backed off,” Cochrane said.
“We couldn’t,” his
would-be attacker replied. “No contingency for that.”
The train was pulling
into the platform, stirring up the snow and bringing a rush of wind
all its own.
“This was supposed to
look like a kidnapping,” Cochrane shouted over the
noise.
“And so it will,” the
man said. He swung a heavy right hand and struck Cochrane on the
side of the head, knocking him to the ground, and then kicked him
in the ribs.
The train stopped
beside them as both assailants pulled Cochrane up and dragged him
backward toward the stairs.
Cochrane felt dizzy
as they hauled him off, disoriented and confused. He heard a pair
of shots fired and a few shouts from passengers stepping off the
almost empty train.
The next thing he
knew, he was in the back of a sedan, staring out the window as they
raced along the streets through the falling snow.