Terry, Terry Utas, the secretary, came back on the line and explained that their headquarters were on the west side of the lab I’d visited the other day. Ms. Utas’s main instruction, besides telling me which access road to take, was to make sure that the name she gave to security exactly matched what was on my photo ID.
I went back to my report on the Saskatchewan project manager, but in the back of my mind, I was hoping Breen wanted to hire me. I wondered, too, about his daughter, how she’d come to tell Breen that Martin had disappeared.
As soon as I’d finished the report, I went to one of my subscription databases for a quick rundown on the family. The entry was meager; I suppose Metargon’s computer resources combined with their security fears meant Breen could do a good job of keeping most of his personal information personal.
All I learned was that Breen had apparently married late, or at least started his family late: he was seventy-four, but his only child, Alison, was twenty. Alison was taking a gap semester from Harvard. No word on what she was doing. He and his wife, Constance, lived in an eighteen-room shack in Lake Forest.
There was a little background on the early days of Metargon, when Edward Breen had done highly classified work in rockets and weapons. He’d been in Europe at the end of the war, working for something called Operation Paperclip. This seemed to be the code name for a program that brought Nazi rocket and weapons personnel into the States; when I looked it up, I discovered we apparently had let in some notorious war criminals without questioning their backgrounds, just to keep them out of Soviet hands.
It was Edward Breen’s early work on computers, more than his rocketry, that moved his little company forward. Just at the time that John von Neumann was bringing the first big computer online at Princeton, Edward Breen came up with a relativistic model for the matrix that altered the mechanics of core memory. I read that last sentence three times and decided that English might not actually be my first language.
I was so happy in my cutoffs that I hated to change into work clothes, but Breen would treat me more seriously, and I’d behave more professionally, in a jacket and trousers. I drove back to my apartment to change, pulling on my soft Lario boots, which always made me feel like a million dollars—perhaps because that was what I’d paid for them.
16
SOURCE CODE
SINCE I’D MADE such a song and dance about my limited time, I skipped lunch and headed straight to Northbrook. Metargon’s corporate offices were behind the research lab I’d visited earlier in the week. For once in a blue moon, the traffic was moving fast. I reached the electronic gates surrounding Metargon Park with ten minutes to spare—I could have eaten lunch after all.
The Metargon security team whisked me through with surprising speed, but after the gates had opened I realized I was being photographed. Computer screens in the guard station showed all the traffic on the access roads, including close-ups of license plates and occupants. I hadn’t noticed this when I’d been to the lab because I’d entered on foot.
Once I was inside the park, I followed a drive that curved around the lab’s south side, away from the pond. While the lab was a severely functional structure, the limestone headquarters building managed to create an aura of both prosperity and tranquillity. A thicket of trees blocked any view of the lab but this part of the campus had its own pond, where a pair of swans was swimming. Much classier than ducks.
Breen and his staff were prepared to respect my time. As soon as I reached the receptionist, a poised young man appeared to escort me upstairs. Traffic was good? Had I had a pleasant summer? He’d hand me over to Terry Utas, Mr. Breen’s secretary; she’d take good care of me.
Terry Utas, with her pearl earrings and salmon-colored dropped-waist dress, made me feel dowdy, even in my Lario boots. Her makeup had been put on with a sure hand, whereas I’d forgotten even to run a lipstick over my mouth. She stopped in the middle of whatever she was doing to tell an intercom the good news of my arrival.
Breen himself appeared a moment later, a tall man whose broad shoulders and flat waist showed a rigorous attention to the workout room. His thick hair still had some dark streaks in it.
“Ms. Warshawski, thanks for interrupting your day for me. I only learned this morning that Martin Binder had gone AWOL, and it’s a source of concern.” He put a hand between my shoulder blades to nudge me toward his office. “Terry, let’s have some coffee in here, or tea, if you’d rather?” he added to me.
I murmured that coffee would be fine. Breen gestured toward a corner where a glass-topped table stood underneath a big painting of purple squares. Rothko’s name was on a discreet plaque for ignorant people like me. When I sat down, I saw an array of wires embedded in the table’s top.
Breen smiled at my look of surprise. “The team made this for my father on the fortieth anniversary of the Breen Machine. We all knew, including him, he wouldn’t live for the fiftieth.”