Staring at the square denoting rhodium, she noticed the preceding element had a similar symbol, Ru. Absently twisting a lock of her long brown hair, she said the name aloud: “Ruthenium.” A transitional metal of the platinum family, it was an element that she had not yet been able to test.
“Bob,” she called to a wiry man in a lab coat seated at a nearby computer, “did we ever receive that sample of ruthenium that I requested? ”
Bob Hamilton turned from the computer and rolled his eyes. “Ruthenium. The stuff is harder to obtain than a day off. I must have contacted twenty suppliers, and none of them stocked it. I was finally referred to a geology lab in Ontario that had a limited amount. It cost even more than your rhodium sample, so I only ordered two ounces. Let me check the stockroom to see if it came in yet.”
He walked out of the lab and down a hall to a small storeroom where special materials were kept under lock and key. A graduate assistant behind a caged window retrieved a small box and slid it across the counter. Returning to the lab, Bob set the container on Lisa’s desk.
“You’re in luck. The sample arrived yesterday.”
Lisa opened the box to find several tiny slivers of a lusterless metal housed in a plastic container. She selected one of the samples and placed it onto a slide, then examined it under a microscope. The tiny sliver resembled a furry snowball under magnification. Measuring the mass of the sample, she placed it in the sealed compartment of a large gray housing that was attached to a mass spectrometer. No less than four computers and several pressurized gas tanks were affixed to the device. Lisa sat down at one of the keyboards and typed in a string of software commands, which initiated a test program.
“Is that the one that’s going to be your ticket to the Nobel Prize?” Bob asked.
“I’d settle for a ticket to a Redskins game if it works.”
Glancing at a wall clock, she asked, “Want to go grab some lunch? I won’t be able to get any preliminary results for at least an hour or so.”
“I’m there,” Bob replied, slipping off his lab coat and racing her to the door.
After a turkey sandwich in the cafeteria, Lisa returned to her tiny office at the back of the lab. A minute later, Bob ducked his head around the door, his eyes opened wide in bewilderment.
“Lisa, you better come take a look at this,” he stammered.
Lisa quickly followed him into the lab, her heart skipping a beat as she saw Bob approach the spectrometer. He pointed to one of the computer monitors, which showed a string of numbers rushing down the screen beside a fluctuating bar graph.
“You forgot to remove the rhodium sample before you initiated the new test. But look at the results. The oxalate count is off the charts,” he said quietly.
Lisa looked at the monitor and trembled. Inside the spectrometer, a detector system was tabulating the molecular outcome of the forced chemical reaction. The ruthenium catalyst was successfully breaking the carbon dioxide bond, causing the particles to recombine into a two-carbon compound called an oxalate. Unlike her earlier catalysts, the ruthenium/rhodium combination created no material waste by-product. She had stumbled upon a result that scientists around the world had been seeking.
“I can hardly believe it,” Bob muttered. “The catalytic reaction is dead-on.”
Lisa felt light-headed and dropped into a chair. She checked and rechecked the output, searching for an error but finding none. She finally allowed herself to accept the probability that she had hit pay dirt.
“I’ve got to tell Maxwell,” she said. Dr. Horace Maxwell was director of the GWU Environmental Research and Technology Lab.
“Maxwell? Are you crazy? He’s testifying before Congress in two days.”
“I know. I’m supposed to accompany him to the Hill.”
“Now, there’s a suicide mission,” Bob said, shaking his head. “If you tell him now, he’s liable to bring it up in testimony in order to obtain more funding for the lab.”
“Would that be such a bad thing?”
“It would if the results can’t be duplicated. One lab test doesn’t solve the mysteries of the universe. Let’s rerun things and fully document every step before going to Maxwell. At least wait until after he testifies,” Bob urged.
“I suppose you’re right. We can duplicate the experiment under different scenarios just to be sure. The only limitation is our supply of ruthenium.”
“That, I’m sure, will be the least of our problems,” Bob said with a hint of prophecy.
11
The Air Canada jet skimmed high over Ontario, the landscape below appearing like a green patchwork comforter from the tiny first-class windows. Clay Zak was oblivious to the view, focusing instead on the shapely legs of a young flight attendant pushing a drinks cart. She caught his stare and brought over a martini in a plastic cup.
“Last one I can serve you,” she said with a perky smile. “We’ll be landing in Toronto shortly.”
“I’ll savor it all the more,” he replied with a leer.
Dressed in the traveling businessman’s uniform of khaki slacks and a blue blazer, he looked like just another sales manager headed to an off-site conference. The reality was quite different.
The only child of an alcoholic single mother, he’d grown up in a ragtag section of Sudbury, Ontario, with little guidance. At fifteen, he’d dropped out of school to work in the nearby nickel mines, developing the physical strength that he still retained twenty years later. His life as a miner was short-lived, however, when he committed his first murder, driving a pickax into the ear of a fellow miner who’d taunted his family lineage.
Fleeing Ontario, he assumed a new identity in Vancouver and drifted into the drug trade. His strength and toughness were put to use as an enforcer for a major local methamphetamine trafficker named “The Swede.” The money came easily, but Zak treated it with an unusual intelligence. A self-taught man, he read voraciously, and judiciously studied business and finance. Rather than blowing his ill-gotten gains on tawdry women and flashy cars like his cohorts did, he shrewdly invested in stocks and real estate. His lucrative drug career, however, was cut short in an ambush.
It wasn’t the police but a Hong Kong supplier looking to expand his control of the market. The Swede and his escorts were gunned down during a nighttime deal in Vancouver’s rambling Stanley Park. Zak managed to duck the fire and disappear unscathed into a maze of hedges.
He bided his time before taking revenge, spending weeks staking out a luxury yacht leased by the Chinese syndicate. Setting off a timed explosive charge, using knowledge gleaned from his days in the nickel mines, he blew up the boat with all of the Hong Kong associates aboard. Watching from a small speedboat as the fireball erupted, he saw a man on an adjacent yacht get thrown into the water by the concussion. Realizing the authorities would spend little time investigating the death of a known drug dealer but might expand the dragnet if a wealthy socialite was an added victim, he sped over and fished the unconscious man out of the water.
When a sputtering Mitchell Goyette came to, his gratitude was uncharacteristically effusive.
“You saved my life,” he coughed. “I will reward you for that.”
“Give me a job instead,” Zak said.
Zak enjoyed a huge laugh when he reminded Goyette of the whole story years later. Even Goyette conceded the humor in it. By then, the mogul had come to admire the subversive talents of the former miner, employing him as a high-level enforcer once again. But Goyette knew Zak’s loyalty was based solely on cash, and he always kept a wary eye on him. For his part, Zak enjoyed being the lone wolf. He had influence with Goyette, and while he enjoyed the compensation he also enjoyed tweaking his rich and powerful employer.
The plane landed at Toronto’s Lester B. Pearson International Airport a few minutes ahead of schedule. Shaking off the effects of the in-flight martinis, Zak stepped out of the first-class compartment and headed to the rental-car counter while waiting for his bags to be unloaded. Taking the keys to a beige four-door sedan, he drove south, skirting the western shoreline of Lake Ontario. Cruising the lakefront expressway for another seventy miles, he exited at a sign reading NIAGARA. A mile below the famous falls, he crossed the Rainbow Bridge and entered the state of New York, handing the immigration officer a phony Canadian passport.
