Chapter 73
A cold draft swirled across the floor, sweeping dust bunnies from hidden nooks and chilling Jack’s feet as he leaned forward, scanning the papers occupying the center of his desk. That was the thing about drafty old attics in wintertime. No matter how many space heaters you strategically positioned, the draft won.
Janet’s head emerged through the trapdoor, followed immediately by a very shapely, black-leotard-clad body.
“So what have you got for me?”
She shrugged. “Just as we thought. Mark’s water bottle was drugged. It had been emptied, but traces of the Mickey were still present. It’s a good thing he didn’t drink any more of that stuff or he would have had more pressing problems than an off night on the basketball court.”
“And the fat team manager kid?”
“One of the school nerds. The interesting thing is that he’s one of a small group of outcasts that have joined a Bible study group headed up by Raul Rodriguez.”
“Rodriguez? The son of the Rho Project scientist?”
“Yes. He’s an interesting story. Two months ago he was dying of terminal brain cancer. Then, on his deathbed, his cancer suddenly went into complete remission. Looking at him now, you’d never guess he’d been sick.”
“So you think Raul got this other kid to drug Mark’s water? What’s the connection?”
“Heather. Raul has the hots for her, and from what I can tell, she likes him back. Mark doesn’t even try to hide his distaste for that friendship. It’s obvious that Raul doesn’t like Mark either.”
Jack nodded. “The name Rodriguez has been popping up a lot this morning. But before I get to that, did you get a chance to read the secure fax from Riles?”
“No.”
“The NSA has gotten four new messages from the Rho Project informant. All of them originated on different parts of the SIPRNet inside the Puzzle Palace.”
“How is that possible?”
“It isn’t. Riles had every one of the associated subnets taken off-line, people polygraphed, the works. Nothing. Even more interesting, they traced each of the messages. All of them seem to have just appeared on the network.”
“Has someone managed to physically tap the cables?”
“No. And more than half of the messages seem to have originated on fiber-optic cables.”
“So I guess Riles is freaking.”
Jack laughed. “Absolutely. He’s not the type to tolerate unexplained intrusions on his security systems.”
“So they don’t have any leads?”
“Not anything they can lay their fingers on. There was one very interesting anomaly. What do you know about the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory?”
“Never heard of it.”
“It’s a big, two-million-pound bottle of heavy water over a mile below ground in a nickel mine in Sudbury, Ontario. The whole thing is surrounded by a sixty-foot-thick array of photomultiplier tubes and is suspended in a huge tank of light water.”
“Why do they need such a big detector, and why put it so far below ground?”
“Neutrinos are very hard to detect. They can pass through almost anything, including the Earth, and give off almost no sign that they were ever there. They put the detector way below ground to block out other types of cosmic radiation. It lets them focus on the Cerenkov radiation that the neutrino and heavy-water interactions produce.”
“So what’s the point of measuring them?”
“That’s what gets interesting. The neutrinos are a side effect of certain high-energy interactions. The reason Riles got interested was that his team monitored reports of unusual neutrino flux measurements.”
“Let me guess. The times corresponded to the times of the SIPRNet hacks.”
“Bingo.”
“So what technologies would cause that?”
“As far as we know, nothing on the planet could produce that kind of neutrino flux.”
“Can its source be traced?”
“No.”
“So we’re dead-ended.”
“Not quite. There’s the content of the message itself. It contained exactly the same five words on each transmission. Rho Project Nanite Suspension Fluid.”
Janet moved over to look down at the fax. “So we know the message appeared on an un-hackable secure network, that at the same time, a fancy detector picked up signals that cannot be produced by anything on Earth, and that the message talks about a Rho Project technology.”
“Specifically nanites. Three guesses as to the name of one of the nanotechnology specialists working on the Rho Project science team.”
“Dr. Ernesto Rodriguez?”
“Bingo again.”
“And his son has just made a miraculous recovery from terminal cancer.”
“Too many miracles for my taste.”
Janet was pacing now, weaving her way through the sparse furniture, letting her fingertips trace around its edges like a feline. God, she was sexy.
“One thing doesn’t make sense. If the next Rho Project technology to be released is some sort of nanotechnology, then why is someone warning us about it? It’ll be reviewed when it’s released.”
“Apparently our mole on the project thinks it’s dangerous enough to go to extraordinary lengths to make sure he gets our attention.”
“What about the direct approach? Can’t Riles just inquire through black-ops channels about the research?”
“It’s so compartmentalized that none of the normal channels are working. He’s afraid that if he presses, someone will put a stop to his little inquiry before he has anything to back up his suspicions. Despite everything, that is still all we have. Suspicions.”
“You want me to focus some extra attention on Raul?”
“While I look into his father. Find out everything you can about his illness, his recovery, any medical history after he got well, his friends. Everything.”
As Janet began climbing down the ladder, she paused to look back.
“It’s odd, isn’t it?”
“What’s that?”
“How a sweet young girl like Heather McFarland can be such a weirdo magnet.”
Jack only nodded.