Brad Meltzer - The Zero Game

“Doctor Minsky?” Marilyn calls out, knocking lightly and turning the knob.

As the door slowly opens, a distinguished older man with puffy cheeks is already out of his seat, shaking my hand and looking over my shoulder. He’s searching for Cordell.

“The Congressman should be here shortly,” Marilyn explains.

“He said we should start without him,” I add.

“Perfect… perfection,” he replies, finally making eye contact. Studying me with smoky gray eyes, Minsky scratches slightly at the side of his beard, which, like his wispy, thin hair, is more salt than pepper. I try to smile, but his stare continues to bear down on me. That’s why I hate meeting with academics. Social skills are always slightly off.

“I’ve never met you before,” he finally blurts.

“Andy Defresne,” I say, introducing myself. “And this is-”

“Catherine,” Viv says, refusing my aid.

“One of our interns,” I jump in, guaranteeing that he’ll never look twice at her.

“Dr. Arnold Minsky,” he says, shaking Viv’s hand. “My cat’s name was Catherine.”

Viv nods as pleasantly as possible, checking out the rest of his office in an attempt to avoid further conversation.

He’s got an upholstered sofa, a matching set of end chairs, and an outstanding view of downtown Arlington outside the plate-glass windows that line the entire right side of his office. Forever the academic, Minsky goes straight to his desk, which is covered with meticulous size-order stacks of papers, books, and magazine articles. Like his work, every molecule is accounted for. As I take the seat directly across from him, Viv slides into the chair that’s next to the window. It’s got a perfect view of the busy street out front. She’s already searching for Janos.

I check the walls, hunting for anything else that’ll give me a read. To my surprise, unlike the usual D.C. ego shrine, Minsky’s walls aren’t covered with diplomas, famous-person photos, or even a single framed newspaper clipping. That’s not the commodity here. He’s done proving he belongs.

Still, every universe has its own currency. The walls on both sides of Minsky’s desk are covered with built-in bookcases, floor to ceiling, filled with hundreds of books and academic texts. The spines are all worn, which I quickly realize is the point. In Congress, the golden ring is fame and stature. In science, it’s knowledge.

“Who’s that with you in the photo?” Viv asks, pointing to a tasteful silver frame of Minsky standing next to an older man with curly hair and a quizzical expression.

“Murray Gell-Mann,” Minsky says. “The Nobel Prize winner…”

I roll my tongue inside my cheek. Stature plays everywhere.

“So what can I help you with today?” Minsky asks.

“Actually,” I say, “we were wondering if we could ask you a few questions about neutrinos…”

“You saw them?” Janos asked, holding his cell phone in one hand and gripping the steering wheel of the black sedan with the other. The morning traffic wasn’t bad, even for Washington, but at this point, even a moment’s delay was enough to get him raging. “How’d they look?” he demanded.

“They’re lost,” his associate said. “Harris could barely get a sentence out, and the girl…”

“Viv.”

“Angry little thing. You could see it in the air. She was ready to take his head off.”

“Did Harris say anything?”

“Nothing you don’t know.”

“But they were there?” Janos asked.

“Absolutely. Even went up to the boss’s office — not that it did them any good,” the man said.

“So you took care of everything?”

“Everything you asked.”

“And they believed it?”

“Even the Dinah stuff. Unlike Pasternak, I see things through to the end.”

“You’re a real hero,” Janos said wryly.

“Yeah, well… don’t forget to tell your boss that. Between the loans, the surgeries, and all my other debts…”

“I’m well aware of your financial situation. That’s why-”

“Don’t say it’s the money — screw money; it’s more than that. They asked for this. They did. The snubs… the shrug-offs… People think it goes unnoticed.”

“As I was saying, I completely sympathize. That’s why I approached you in the first place.”

“Good, because I didn’t want you to think every lobbyist is in it for the cash. That’s a hurtful stereotype.”

Janos was silent. In many ways, his colleague was no different from the shiny sedan he was driving — overhyped and barely adequate. But as he reasoned when he first picked out the car, some things are necessary to blend in in Washington. “Did they say where they were going next?” Janos asked.

“No, but I have an idea…”

“So do I,” Janos said, making a sharp right and pulling into the underground parking garage. “Nice to see you,” he called out as he waved to the security guard outside the employee lot. The guard threw a warm smile back.

“Are you where I said?” his colleague asked through the phone.

“Don’t worry where I am,” Janos shot back. “Just focus on Harris. If he calls back, we need you to keep your eyes and ears wide open.”

“Ears I can help you with,” Barry said, his scratchy voice raking through the phone. “It’s the eyes that’ve always been a bit of a problem.”

“Now what’s this for again?” Dr. Minsky asks, unbending a paperclip and tapping it lightly on the edge of his desk.

“Just background,” I say, hoping to keep the discussion moving. “We’ve got this project we’re looking at-”

“A new neutrino experiment?” Minsky interrupts, clearly excited. It’s still his pet issue, so if there’s some new data out there, he wants to play with the toys first.

“We really shouldn’t say,” I reply. “They’re still in the early stages.”

“But if they’re-”

“It’s actually someone who’s a friend of the Congressman,” I interrupt. “It’s not for public consumption.”

The man has two Ph.D.s. He gets the hint. Congressmen do favors for friends every day. That’s why the real news on Capitol Hill is never in the newspapers. If Minsky wants any more favors from us, he knows he has to help us with this.

“So neutrinos, eh?” he finally asks.

I smile. So does Viv — but as she turns her head slightly, glancing out the window, I can tell she’s still searching for Janos. We’re not gonna outrun him without a head start.

“Let me do it like this,” Minsky says, quickly shifting into professor mode. He holds the unbent paperclip up like a tiny pointer, then motions downward, from the ceiling to the floor. “As we sit here right now, fifty billion — not million — fifty billion neutrinos are flying from the sun, through your skull, down your body, out the balls of your feet, and down through the nine floors below us. They won’t stop there, though — they’ll keep going past the concrete foundation of the building, straight through the earth’s core, through China, and back out to the Milky Way. You think you’re just sitting here with me, but you’re being bombarded right now. Fifty billion neutrinos. Every single second. We live in a sea of them.”

“But are they like protons? Electrons? What are they?”

He looks down, trying not to make a face. To the educated man, there’s nothing worse than a layperson. “In the subatomic world, there are three kinds of particles that have mass. The first and heaviest are quarks, which make up protons and neutrons. Then, there’re electrons and their relatives, which are even lighter. And finally come neutrinos, which are so incredibly lightweight there are still some doubters out there who argue they don’t have mass at all.”