Gideon’s Sword

13

Six hours later, the sun was setting over the Hudson River as the limousine pulled into Little West 12th Street, in the old Meatpacking District of Manhattan. The area had changed dramatically from what Gideon remembered during his graduate school days, when he’d come down from Boston for some occasional R&R: the old brick warehouses and covered walkways, with their chains and meat hooks, had been transformed into ultra-hip clothing stores and restaurants, slick high-rise condos and trendy hotels, the streets crowded with people too cool to be real.

The limousine bumped down the refurbished street — bone-jarring nineteenth-century cobblestones re- exposed — and came to a halt at a nondescript building, one of the few unrenovated structures within view.

“We’re here,” said Garza.

They stepped onto the sidewalk. It was much warmer in New York than in New Mexico. Gideon stared suspiciously at the building’s only entrance, a set of metal double doors on a loading dock plastered with old posters and graffiti. The building was large and imposing, some twelve stories tall. Near the top of the facade, he could just make out a painted legend: PRICE & PRICE PORK PACKING INC. Above it, the grimy brickwork gave way to glass and chrome; he wondered if a modern penthouse had been built atop the old structure.

He followed Garza up a set of concrete steps on one side of the dock. As they approached, the loading doors slid open on well-oiled hinges. Gideon followed Garza down a dim corridor to another set of doors, much newer, of stainless steel. Security keypads and a retinal scanner were set into the wall beside them. Garza put his briefcase on the floor and leaned his face into the scanner; the steel doors parted noiselessly.

“Where’s Maxwell Smart?” said Gideon, in full wiseass mode, looking around. Garza looked at him, no smile this time, but did not reply.

Beyond lay a vast, cavernous room, an open shell four stories high, illuminated by seemingly hundreds of halogen lights. Metal catwalks ran around the upper levels. The floor — as big as a football field — was covered with rows of large steel tables. On them rested a confusing welter of disparate items: half-dissected jet engines; highly complex 3-D models of urban areas; a scale model of what appeared to be a nuclear plant undergoing a terrorist attack by airplane. In a near corner was an especially large table, displaying what looked like a large, cutaway section of the seabed, showing its geological strata. Technicians in white coats moved between the tables, making notes on handheld PDAs or conferring in hushed whispers.

“This is corporate headquarters?” Gideon asked, looking around. “Looks more like Industrial Light and Magic.”

“I suppose you could call it magic,” Garza said as he led the way. “Of the manufactured variety.”

Gideon followed him past table after table. On one was a painstaking re-creation of Port au Prince, both before and after the earthquake, tiny flags on the latter marking patterns of devastation. On another table was a huge scale model of a space facility, all tubes and cylinders and solar panels.

“I recognize that,” Gideon said. “It’s the International Space Station.”

Garza nodded. “As it looked before leaving orbit.”

Gideon looked at him. “Leaving orbit?”

“To assume its secondary role.”

“Its what? You must be joking.”

Garza flashed him a mirthless smile. “If I thought you’d take me seriously, I wouldn’t have told you.”

“What in the world do you do here?”

“Engineering and more engineering, that’s all.”

Reaching the far wall, they rode an open-cage elevator up to the fourth-floor catwalk, then passed through a door that led to a maze of white corridors. Ultimately, they reached a low-ceilinged, windowless conference room. It was small and spartan in its lack of decor. A table of exotic, polished wood dominated the space, and there were no paintings or prints on the white walls. Gideon tried to think of a suitable crack, but nothing came immediately to mind. Besides, he realized it would be wasted on Garza, who seemed immune to his rapier-like wit.

At the head of the table sat a man in a wheelchair. He was perhaps the most extraordinary-looking human being Gideon had ever seen. Closely cropped brown hair, shot through with silver, covered a large head. Below a deep brow gleamed a single fierce gray eye which was fixed on him; the other eye was covered with a black silk patch, like a pirate’s. A jagged, livid scar lanced down the right side of the man’s face, starting at his hairline and running through the covered eye, continuing all the way to his jaw and disappearing under the collar of his crisp blue shirt. A black, pin-striped suit completed the sinister picture.

“Dr. Crew,” the figure said, his face breaking into a faint smile that did nothing to soften its hardness. “Thank you for coming all this way. Please sit down.”

Garza remained standing in the background as Gideon took a seat.

“What?” Gideon said, looking around. “No coffee or Fiji water?”

“My name is Eli Glinn,” said the figure, ignoring this. “Welcome to Effective Engineering Solutions, Incorporated.”

“Sorry in advance for not bringing my resume. Your friend Garza was in a hurry.”

“I don’t like to waste time. So if you’d be kind enough to listen, I’ll brief you on the assignment.”

“Does it have anything to do with that Disney World downstairs? Plane crashes, natural disasters?—?you call that engineering?”

Glinn gazed at him mildly. “Among other things, EES specializes in the discipline of failure analysis.”

“Failure analysis?”

“Understanding how and why things fail—?whether it be an assassination, an aviation accident, or a terrorist attack — is a critical component to solving engineering problems. Failure analysis is the other face of engineering.”

“I’m not sure I understand.”

“Engineering is the science of figuring out how to do or make something. But that’s only half the challenge. The other half is analyzing all possible modes of failure — in order to avoid them. EES does both. We solve very difficult engineering problems. And we dissect failures. In both these tasks, we have never failed. Ever. With one minor exception, which we’re still working on.” He flicked his hand as if waving away a bothersome fly. “Those two things, engineering and failure analysis, form our primary business. Our visible business. But they are also our cover. Because behind our public facade, we use these same facilities to carry out, from time to time, highly unusual and confidential projects for special clients. Very special clients. We need you for one of these projects.”

“Why me?”

“I’ll get to that in a moment. First, the details. A Chinese scientist is on his way to the United States. We believe the man is carrying the plans for a new, high-technology weapon. We’re not certain, but we have reason to hope he may be defecting.”

Gideon was about to make a sarcastic quip, but the look in Glinn’s eye deterred him.

“For two years,” Glinn went on, “US intelligence has been aware of a mysterious project going on in an underground compound inside the Lop Nor nuclear testing zone in far western China. Staggering amounts of money and scientific talent have been devoted to this effort. The CIA believes they’re developing a new weapon, a kind of Chinese Manhattan Project, something that would change the balance of power completely.”

Gideon stared. “More destructive than the H-Bomb?”

“Yes, that’s the information we have. But now, one of the project’s chief scientists seems to have stolen the plans and is on his way to the United States. Why? We don’t know. We hope he might be defecting to the US with the plans for that weapon, but we can’t be sure.”

“Why would he do that?”

“Apparently, he was the victim of a successful honey trap at a scientific convention in Hong Kong.”

“Honey trap?”

“Surely you’ve heard the term. An attractive woman is employed to get the target in a compromising position, pictures are taken, pressure is then applied…But this honey trap went awry and triggered the man’s panicked flight from China.”

“Right. I get it. So when is this scientist supposed to arrive?”