David Epperson - The Third Day

“I’ve had my staff running in circles for days,” I replied.

“I’m sorry to have caused them so much trouble,” she answered.

“Three years ago, we had an idea but no funds to pursue it. MIT, as you know, is as open to backing new scientific concepts as any of our institutions, but we knew that we could never get anything like this through the grant review committees. Normal university channels were therefore closed to us.”

“So you went looking for suckers,” said Markowitz.

“I wouldn’t refer to your father in those terms, Mr. Markowitz. He wasn’t the only person on Wall Street to fall for that particular delusion.”

“Call me Ray.”

“OK, Ray. What happened was this: with his initial investment, we developed the technology to the point where the central processing unit was the size of a typical laptop. We found that we could use this to transmit a two dimensional object, such as a letter or a fax.”

“How did you know it worked?” I asked. “Surely you would have wanted to test it before you wired money.”

“We had some fun with Alicia up front. We’d send a seemingly urgent fax back to the previous hour, and then we’d ask why she hadn’t informed us immediately of its arrival. The poor girl became quite befuddled.”

Markowitz finally laughed. “So once you proved it up, you sent the order back for Wal-Mart?”

She nodded. “At that point, our biggest challenge was finding a bank that had stayed both solvent and in one location for the past 35 years. That took a couple of months.”

“How did you send back the initial investment?” I asked. “You started with $10,000 as I recall.”

“Henry remembered that his father had a savings account that he left untouched for years, so we sort of borrowed it for a while. We had a lawyer draw up all the documents; then we printed them on a font commonly used in the 1970s and sent them to the bank’s trust department. The documents contained specific instructions for the disposition of our account, as well as the return of his money, with interest and a substantial return for his trouble.”

“When did you know it worked?”

“Last fall, Henry sent the papers while I logged in to our account. A few seconds later, our bank’s web site showed the totals change. It was quite thrilling.”

Incredible.

“So you finished the rest of the project with your own money?” Markowitz asked.

“We didn’t feel like we could go back to your father for more funds without disclosing what we had achieved. Once we confirmed our initial hypothesis, it was merely a matter of expanding on our previous work.”

I laughed. “Merely?”

She smiled. “It may have been a bit more complicated than that. After a few more months of work, we eventually succeeded in transporting a three dimensional object, using the mechanism you saw below.”

“Nothing living could survive that level of cold,” said Markowitz.

“No. The transport facility is immediately above the quantum processor. I’ll show it to you later, when everyone has gone home. Only one other member of our staff knows that it exists.”

Markowitz closed his eyes as he stretched his hands over his head; then he turned to me. “I’m still not sure I believe this.”

I wasn’t sure what to believe, either. All I could muster in reply was that her explanation seemed to square with the facts as we knew them.

I did have a question, though. “You keep using the word ‘we.’ Can you tell us where your other half is now?”

Juliet didn’t answer. Instead, she flipped open her phone and tapped a quick text message before turning to a side door that I had not noticed earlier.

“Excuse me, gentlemen. I need to check on something in the lab. I’ll be right back.

Juliet returned a few minutes later and beckoned us to follow her into the facility’s conference room. She had furnished it, like her office, with good quality second hand stuff, but that wasn’t what drew my attention.

I had thought the lab kept itself out of the public eye, but seated at one end of the long table were two other visitors. The man was dressed in jeans, old boots and a work shirt that would have fit in on any of the city’s burgeoning construction sites. Though not rugged, he clearly spent a fair amount of time outside.

I pegged his companion to be in her late 30s; a natural blonde who, a decade earlier, probably caused traffic accidents. Her face still retained its youthful luster, and from her fit, toned arms, I surmised that she didn’t sit on the couch all day gorging on potato chips and watching talk shows.

Juliet introduced the four of us. Our new acquaintances were Sharon Bergfeld and Dr. Robert Lavon — what type of doctor, she didn’t say.

Markowitz hadn’t expected company, either. Though polite, he was clearly unhappy.

“Dr. Bryson, I’ve always assumed that the work of this facility would remain confidential. Our contract specifies — ”

“I’m aware of the contract, Ray, but I also understood that you were interested in the whereabouts of my husband.”

“We are,” he replied.

“My guests found him. They arrived a couple of days ago. Since I knew you were coming, I asked them to stay.”

This was a surprising turn of events.

“OK,” I said. “Where is he?”

“Israel,” said Lavon. “I’m afraid Dr. Bryson is dead.”

I glanced over to Juliet, but I couldn’t think of anything to say except that I was very sorry. I found the news so unexpected that I failed to notice that her demeanor didn’t exactly match that of a woman suddenly bereaved.

Lavon unfolded a map of Israel and turned it so that Markowitz and I could read it easily. He had drawn an X where they had located the body — just off the freeway bisecting Jerusalem’s outer western suburbs.

“We found him at this site, about three weeks ago,” he said.

“What on earth was he doing there ?” asked Markowitz.

I could think of a number of reasons. Veterans of the Israeli army had turned the country into one of the world’s burgeoning tech centers. Perhaps someone had offered him a better deal.

I glanced again toward Juliet, but she didn’t volunteer an answer.

“Have the police released their initial report?” I asked. “If not, one of their investigators owes me a favor. I’d be happy to make a few calls to speed things along.”

“Thank you,” she replied, “but I doubt that would help.”

“Why not?” I asked.

In my dealings with them, the Israeli police had exhibited the highest levels of competence and professionalism.

“Because, um.”

She gave Lavon a fleeting look. Go ahead .

“The police wouldn’t be interested because the tests we ran on his skeleton indicated that Dr. Bryson died approximately two thousand years ago,” he said.

Markowitz nodded, just as he had when Juliet explained the source of their great wealth. A few seconds later, though, Lavon’s words registered.

“Two thousand what ?” he blurted. “Did you say two thousand years ?”

Lavon handed him a computer printout. The younger man quickly scanned it before tossing it back.

“Radiometric Labs, Tel Aviv. What are you people trying to pull? What kind of doctor are you, anyway?”

“My Ph.D is in archaeology — University of Michigan, with honors. Go check if you’d like.”

I made a note to do that, but he didn’t seem like the type of person who would lie about something so easily verified.

He held up another printout.

“We found the initial results to be as incongruous as you do now, so we headed back home to retest our findings with two independent labs here in the States. None of the three facilities had access to the work of the others.”