Brad Meltzer - The Zero Game

Using the tip of his shoe to pin down the top corner of the paper, Lowell slid the section out from under the stall. The back page was wet, making it stick slightly as he tried to pull it toward him. Lowell tried not to think about it, focusing instead on using the side of his foot to wedge open the front page. But just as he nudged his foot inside, the door to the bathroom swung open, smashing into the wall. Lowell spun around, pretending to be busy by the hand dryer. Behind him, his assistant darted inside, barely able to catch his breath.

“William, what’s-?”

“You need to read this,” he insisted, shoving the red file folder toward Lowell.

Watching his assistant carefully, Lowell wiped his hands against his slacks, reached for the folder, and flipped it open. It took a moment to scan the official cover sheet. Lowell ’s eyes went wide — and within thirty seconds, the gossip column didn’t matter anymore.

“Hold on,” I say. “You’re telling me people could smash some neutrinos against some…”

“Neptunium…” Minsky says.

“… neptunium, and suddenly create a batch of plutonium?”

“I’m not saying they’ve done it — at least not yet — but I wouldn’t be surprised if someone was working along those lines… at least on paper.”

He’s speaking with the calmness of someone who thinks it’s still theoretical. Viv and I know better. We saw it with our own eyes. The sphere… the accelerator… even the tetrachloroethylene… That’s what Wendell’s building down there — that’s why they wanted to keep it so quiet. If word got out they were trying to create plutonium… there’s no way it’d make it through the process.

“But no one can do that yet, right?” Viv asks, trying to convince herself. “It’s not possible…”

“Don’t say that in these halls,” Minsky teases. “Theoretically, anything’s possible.”

“Forget whether it’s possible,” I say. “Assuming you could do it, how feasible is it to pull it off? Is neptunium even accessible, or is it just as hard to find?”

“Now that’s the vital question,” Minsky says, knighting me with his paperclip. “For the most part, it’s a rare earth metal, but neptunium-237 is a by-product from nuclear reactors. Here in the U.S., since we don’t reprocess our spent nuclear fuel, it’s hard to get your hands on. But in Europe and Asia, they reprocess massive amounts.”

“And that’s bad?” Viv asks.

“No, what’s bad is that global monitoring of neptunium only began in 1999. That leaves decades of neptunium unaccounted for. Who knows what happened during those years? Anybody could have it by now.”

“So it’s out there?”

“Absolutely,” Minsky says. “If you know where to look, there’s lots of unaccounted-for neptunium that’s there for the taking.”

As the consequences hit, I squirm in my seat, wiping my sweaty hands against the sides of the seat cushion. Minutes ago, I was pretending to be uncomfortable. I’m no longer faking it. Whatever branch of the government Wendell Mining really is, the news isn’t gonna be good.

“Can I just ask one question?” Viv says. “I heard what you said — I know it’s possible, and I realize you can get neptunium — but for one second, can we just talk about the likelihood? I mean, studying neutrinos — that’s a small field, right? There can only be a handful of people who are even capable of putting something like this together… So when you add that all up, and you look around the neutrino community, wouldn’t… wouldn’t you know if something like this were going on?”

Minsky again scratches at his beard. His social skills are too off to read Viv’s panic, but he understands the question. “Have you ever heard of Dr. James A. Yorke?” he finally asks. We both shake our heads. I can barely sit still. “He’s the father of chaos theory — even coined the term,” Minsky continues. “You’ve heard the metaphor, correct? — that a butterfly flapping its wings in Hong Kong can cause a hurricane in Florida? Well, as Yorke puts it, that means if there’s even one butterfly you don’t know about, it’s impossible to predict the weather on a long-term basis. One tiny butterfly. And, as the man says, there’ll always be one butterfly.”

The words collide like a sack of doorknobs. I talked Matthew into flapping his wings… and now Viv and I are swirling through the hurricane.

“It’s a big world out there,” Minsky adds, staying with Viv. “I can’t possibly account for everyone in my field. Does that make sense, Miss — I’m sorry, what was your name again?”

“We should get going,” I say, hopping to my feet.

“I thought the Congressman was on his way?” Minsky asks as we head for the door.

“We’ve already got what we needed.”

“But the briefing…”

It’s amazing, really. We just dropped poorly hid hints about a government project that could create plutonium, and he’s still worried about face time. God, what’s wrong with this town? “I’ll be sure to tell him how helpful you were,” I add, whipping the door open and motioning Viv outside.

“Please send him my best,” Minsky calls out.

He says something else, but we’re already up the hallway, running for the elevators.

“So where’re we going?” Viv asks.

The one place Janos thinks we’ll never go. “The Capitol.”

“I don’t understand,” William said as he raced down the circular stairwell. “Where’re we going?”

“Where do you think?” Lowell asked, leading them past the sign for the first floor and continuing toward the basement.

“No, I mean beyond the parking garage. Where we going after that? Shouldn’t we tell someone?”

“Tell them what? That we know who really owns Wendell? That they’re not who they say they are? Sure, they’re linked to Janos, but until we get the rest, it doesn’t do us any good. There’s nothing to tell.”

“So where does that leave us?”

“Not us ,” Lowell said. “ Me .” Leaping down the last few steps and shoving open the door to the basement, Lowell plowed into the parking garage. He didn’t have to go far. Deputy Attorney General gets a spot right in front. If he wanted, he could’ve been in his car within four seconds. But he still paused, searching to make sure Janos wasn’t waiting for him.

The silver Audi was empty.

With the push of a button, Lowell unlocked the car and slid inside.

“What’re you doing?” William asked as Lowell tried to shut the driver’s door.

“I’m going to see a friend,” Lowell said, starting the engine.

It wasn’t a lie. He’d known Harris for over ten years — since they both worked in Senator Stevens’s office. That was why Janos came to him in the first place.

He’d already tried Harris at work, at home, and on both his cell phones. If Harris was in hiding, there was only one place he’d be — the one place he knew best. And right now, finding Harris was the only way to get the rest of the story.

“Why don’t you at least bring some backup?” William asked.

“For what? So they can interrogate my friend? Trust me, I know how Harris thinks. We want him to talk, not panic.”

“But, sir…”

“Good-bye, William.” With a hard tug, Lowell slammed the door and punched the gas. The car peeled out of the spot. Refusing to overthink it, Lowell reminded himself who he was dealing with. If he showed up with armed agents at the Capitol — even forgetting the scene it would make — there’s no way Harris would ever go for that.

Switching on the radio, Lowell lost himself in the mental massage of talk radio. His grandmother used to love talk radio, and to this day, Lowell still used it to, in his grandmother’s words, catch his calm . As the car was filled with the top news stories, Lowell finally took a breath. For one full minute, he forgot about Harris, and Wendell, and the rest of the chaos circling through his head. But as a result, he missed the black sedan that was trailing a few hundred feet behind him as he pulled out of the parking garage and into the daylight.