“Especially not him.”
Dr. Osbourne shook his head. “He told me it was destroyed.
He told me-”
“Who told you?” asked Ralph.
“Victor Drake.”
Was Drake Shade?
“I’ll go get him,” said Ralph.
“Wait.” I pulled him aside and whispered, “We need everything we can get on Drake first. Let’s finish with Osbourne, then we’ll go talk to Drake. You know how it works: the more evidence we have when we get there, the more evidence we’ll have when we leave.”
Ralph considered that, then nodded and said to Osbourne, “All right. Talk. This is your only chance. And if I don’t like what I hear, I’m taking you in as an accessory to murder.”
“Murder! I didn’t… I don’t know-”
“Listen to me,” I said. “Let’s just take it slow. Start at the beginning. Tell us everything you know.” General Cole Biscayne rolled to a stop in the driveway of his sister’s beach house, and sighed.
Ever since the PROC meeting earlier in the day, he’d been fielding phone calls from the State Department, the Pentagon, and even the White House, trying to assure them that the prototype had been destroyed. After all, the fire had completely consumed Building B-14, nothing was found at the scene or on the shore, and the police reports confirmed that the arsonist did not have the device with him when he threatened the federal agent and was subsequently stopped by means of lethal force from attacking her. So, it looked like the satellites’ development might be pushed back, but in the long run things would work out.
Cole’s sister Beverly was working late but had told him to make himself comfortable, to grab whatever he wanted out of the fridge, and that she would see him about ten o’clock. He was glad for the space. It’d been a long, tedious, stressful day. He needed some time to relax and unwind.
The evening had cooled, and the general’s windbreaker snapped to attention around him as he stepped out of the car. Out of habit, he glanced at the shadows lurking around her house, remembering the form he’d seen outside his home in New England.
But there was no one there in the shadows. Of course there was no one there. This whole business with Sebastian Taylor had gotten blown completely out of proportion. Taylor had been on the run for almost four months. If he were going to make a move, he would have done it by now.
And so, General Cole Biscayne reassured himself with these thoughts as he walked up the stony path to his sister’s home and slipped a key into the lock.
91
Dr. Osbourne had swallowed all the spit in his mouth, so before he could begin telling us what he knew, he poured himself a glass of water, downed it in one great tenuous gulp, set down the glass, and then said, “I never met the shark woman, Cassandra Lillo. I swear. All I did was use some of her findings. We’re not allowed to meet each other.”
“Who’s not allowed to meet each other?” Ralph asked.
Stone silence. Dr. Osbourne had already told us more than he was supposed to. His hand was shaking. “All I know is that we each have one person to report to. One contact person. We pass our research along to him; he passes it along to someone else.” Dr.
Osbourne bounced his nervous gaze from Ralph to me to Ralph again. “There’s nothing illegal about it.”
It seemed like a highly unusual and inefficient way to do research, but it wasn’t unprecedented. In World War II only a select few people knew exactly what was being developed at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Oak Ridge, Tennessee-the parts and fuel for an atomic bomb. Only when the bomb was completed did the staff find out what they’d made. So it’s possible Osbourne is innocent, just another pawn.
I wondered what kind of weapon would warrant this kind of secrecy today, but decided for the moment to follow up on the process, not the product. “So,” I said. “Cassandra sent you her findings. Who did you send your findings to?”
“A man named Kurvetek. Dr. Octal Kurvetek.” “What do you know about him?”
“Nothing, except he works closely with Victor Drake.”
“Figures,” said Ralph.
“And you worked out of Building B-14?” I said.
Osbourne nodded.
“Listen carefully,” I said. “I want you to tell me what went on in Building B-14. Why would someone burn it down?”
“It’s where we collated the findings, kept all the files, all the research.” He motioned toward the device. “And that thing. The prototype. We kept everything in hard files, so no one could hack the system. The government was worried about the Chinese.”
In my mind I tried to gather up the fragments of information I’d collected so far, but they were still in disarray. “This prototype,”
I said, “it does more than just sense faint neural electromagnetic impulses, doesn’t it?”
He nodded nervously but didn’t say anything.
“I’d suggest you be a bit more forthcoming,” Ralph said to Dr. Osbourne, who rubbed his fingers anxiously together in response.
“Tell us about the connection to MEG technology,” I said.
He eyed Ralph, who was leaning forward, his shirt straining against his thick, corded neck muscles. Dr. Osbourne’s eyes quivered as he continued, “The device uses the same basic principles as magnetoencephalography, or as you said, MEG technology. An MEG machine is too big to be used in the field, and a patient needs to sit beneath it without moving for several hours. Also it needs cryogenic temperatures and a shielded room to block other magnetic-”
“So that’s where the sharks come in,” I said, speaking my thoughts and inadvertently interrupting Dr. Osbourne. “Sharks don’t need any of those things. They can identify the signals instantaneously, on the fly, using the jellylike substance in their electrosensory organs.”
“Mucopolysaccharides,” he said with a nod. “My point is, sharks don’t need cryogenic temperatures or shielding devices. And they do it over long distances.”
“Exactly,” said Dr. Osbourne. “So by combining a laser-guided targeting device with the neuromorphic and biogenetic engineering developed from electrosensory research on sharks, and including magnetoencephalography technology, we created an inorganic version of the shark’s ampullae of Lorenzini receptors and neural pathways.”
Surprisingly, I was following what he was saying. But there was more, there had to be more.
“What about the cesium-137?”
“That’s been one of the problems.” He walked over and pointed to the device. “See this removable pack?” He took a moment to slide the cesium-137 unit from the bottom of the device. “We weren’t able to figure out how to stop minute quantities from escaping-just during use, you understand. We’re perfectly safe right now.”
He reattached the cesium-137.
“OK,” I said. “I know that when the neurons in our brains fire synapses, they create minute electromagnetic impulses. That’s what the MEG records. But how does all this fit together?”
“With the recent strides in understanding how hemodynamic and electrophysiological signals relate to each other-”
Ralph threw his huge hands to his hips and stood like a drill sergeant. “He’s wasting our time, Pat.” The more irritated Ralph appeared, the more Osbourne seemed to open up. Ralph might have noticed that and been playing into the scenario, or he might have really been getting annoyed. Hard to tell.
“Talk us through the brain signals,” I told Dr. Osbourne.
He rubbed his fingers nervously together and edged back slightly from Ralph. “Hemodynamic and
