3
The lab elevator descended so slowly that there was no physical indication it was even moving. The lights above the door were the only way to know for sure. It was designed that way, to eliminate as many vibrations as possible. Vibrations were the enemy. They skewed readings and measurements in the lab.
The door slowly opened on the basement level and Pierce stepped out. He used his scramble card to enter the first door of the mantrap and then, once inside the small passageway, punched in the October combination on the second door. He opened it and entered the lab.
The lab was actually a suite of several smaller labs clustered around the main room, or day room, as they called it. The suite was completely windowless. Its walls were lined on the inside with insulation containing copper shavings that knocked down electronic noise from the outside. On the surface of these walls the decorations were few, largely limited to a series of framed prints from the Dr. Seuss book Horton Hears a Who!
The secondary labs included the chemlab to the left. This was a 'clean room' where the chemical solutions of molecular switches were made and refrigerated. There was also an incubator for the Proteus project which they called the cell farm.
Opposite the chemlab was the wire lab, or the furnace room, as most of the lab rats called it, and next to it was the imaging lab, which housed the electron microscope. All the way to the rear of the day room was the laser lab. This room was sheathed in copper for added protection against intruding electronic noise.
The lab suite appeared empty, the computers off and the probe stations unmanned, but Pierce picked up the familiar smell of cooking carbon. He checked the sign-in log and saw that Grooms had signed in but had not yet signed out. He walked over to the wire lab and looked through the little glass door. He didn't see anyone. He opened the door and stepped in, immediately being hit with the heat and the smell. The vacuum oven was operating, a new batch of carbon wires being made. Pierce assumed Grooms had started the batch and then left the lab to take a break or get something to eat. It was understandable. The smell of cooking carbon was intolerable.
He left the wire lab and closed the door. He went to a computer next to one of the probe stations and typed in the passwords. He pulled up the data on the switch tests he knew Grooms had been planning to conduct after Pierce had gone home early to set up his phone. According to the computer log, Grooms had run two thousand tests on a new group of twenty switches. The chemically synthesized switches were basic on/off gates that one day could -or would -be used to build computer circuitry.
Pierce leaned back in the computer seat. He noticed a half full cup of coffee on the counter next to the monitor. He knew it was Larraby's because it was black. Everybody else in the lab used cream but the immunologist assigned to the Proteus project.
As Pierce thought about whether to continue with the gateway confirmation tests or to go into the imaging lab and pull up Larraby's latest work on Proteus, his eyes drifted up toward the wall behind the computers. Scotch- taped to the wall was a dime. Grooms had put it up a couple years earlier. A joke, yes, but a solid reminder of their goal. Sometimes it seemed to be mocking them. Roosevelt turning the side of his face, looking the other way, ignoring them.
It wasn't until that moment that Pierce realized he wasn't going to be able to work this night. He had spent so many nights working in the confines of the lab suite that it had cost him Nicole. That and other things. Now that she was gone, he was free to work without hesitation or guilt and he suddenly realized he couldn't do it. If he ever spoke to her again, he would tell her this. Maybe it would mean he was changing. Maybe it would mean something to her.
Behind him there was a sudden loud banging sound and Pierce jumped in his seat.
Turning around and expecting to see Grooms returning, he saw Clyde Vernon come through the mantrap instead. Vernon was a wide and husky man with just a fringe of hair around the outer edges of his head. He had a naturally ruddy complexion that always gave him a look of consternation. In his mid-fifties, Vernon was by far the oldest person working at the company. After him Charlie Condon was probably the oldest at forty.
This time the look of consternation Vernon carried was real.
'Hey, Clyde, you scared me,' Pierce said.
'I didn't mean to.'
'We do a lot of sensitive readings in here. Banging the door open like that could ruin an experiment. Luckily, I was just reviewing experiments, not conducting any.'
'I'm sorry, Dr. Pierce.'
'Don't call me that, Clyde. Call me Henry. So let me guess, you put out a 'be on the look out for' on me, and Rudolpho called it in when I came through. And that made you come all the way in from home. I hope you don't live too far away, Clyde.'
Vernon ignored Pierce's fine deductive work.
'We need to talk,' he said instead. 'Did you get my message?'
They were in the early stages of getting to know each other. Vernon might be the oldest person working at Amedeo, but he was also the newest. Pierce had already noticed that Vernon had difficulty calling him by name. He thought maybe it was an age thing. Pierce was the president of the company but at least twenty years younger than Vernon, who had come to the company a few months earlier after putting in twenty-five years with the FBI.
Vernon probably thought it would be improper to address Pierce by his first name, and the gulf in age and real-life experience made it difficult to call him Mr. Pierce. Dr. Pierce seemed a bit easier for him, even though it was based on academic degrees not medical ones. His real plan seemed to be to never address him by any name if possible. To the point it was noticeable, especially in e-mail and telephone conversations.
'I just got your e-mail about fifteen minutes ago,' Pierce said. 'I was out of the office. I was probably going to call you when I got finished here. You want to talk about Nicole?'
'Yes. What happened?'
Pierce shrugged his shoulders in a helpless gesture.
'What happened is that she left. She quit her job and she, uh, quit me. I guess you could say she quit me first.'
'When did this happen?'
'Hard to tell, Clyde. It was happening for a while. Like slow motion. But it all sort of hit the fan a couple weeks ago. She agreed to stay until today. Today was her last day. I know when we brought you in here you warned me about fishing off the company dock. I think that's what you called it. I guess you were right.'
Vernon took a step closer to Pierce.
'Why wasn't I told about this?' he protested. 'I should've been told.'
Pierce could see the color moving higher on Vernon 's cheeks. He was angry and trying to control it. It wasn't about Nicole so much as his need to solidify his position in the company. After all, he didn't leave the bureau after so many years to be kept in the dark by some punk scientist boss who probably smoked pot on the weekends.
'Look, I know you should have been told but because there were some personal issues involved I just… I didn't really want to talk about it. And to tell you the truth, I probably wasn't going to call you tonight, because I still don't want to talk about it.'
'Well, we need to talk about it. She was the intelligence officer of this company. She shouldn't have been allowed to just waltz out the door at the end of the day.'
'All the files are still there. I checked, even though I didn't need to. Nicki would never do anything like you are suggesting.'
'I am not suggesting any impropriety. I am just trying to be thorough and cautious about this. That's all. Did she take another job that you know of?'
'Not as of the last time we spoke. But she signed a no-compete contract when we hired her. We don't have to worry about that, Clyde.'
'So you think. What were the financial arrangements of the separation?'
'Why is that your business?'
'Because a person in need of finances is vulnerable. It's my business to know if a former or current employee
