Nano

CHAPTER 24

Pia awoke with a start. She emerged quickly into consciousness—damn, she thought right away, what time is it? Pia found her phone and was horrified. Although she had expected to sleep for a couple of hours at most, it was ten forty-five. She saw that she had emails and texts from Mariel Spallek asking where she was, and to get in touch with her immediately. And voice mails, too. Pia didn’t need to listen to them to know what Mariel wanted. Not wanting to delay the inevitable, Pia called Mariel, who answered immediately.

“It’s Pia, I’m really sorry, I’m sick. I’ll try and come in after lunchtime, if that’s okay.”

“I guess it’ll have to be,” said Mariel. “What’s wrong with you?” Her question was posed in the same tone an irritated motorist would use to ask a mechanic what was wrong with her car. There was no hint of sympathy or concern. Mariel had been inconvenienced, and she didn’t like it. Pia wasn’t particularly surprised by Mariel’s reaction — she, too, would have been frustrated by someone not showing up for work, even though this was the first time Pia had ever called in sick. Although some of Pia’s morning timekeeping could be somewhat erratic, such episodes had always been due to her working to the wee hours of the morning.

“Headache, dizziness, nausea. Basically, I feel like shit.” Pia had chosen her rude syntax on purpose, hoping to cut off conversation.

“Sounds like the same thing Mr. Berman has,” Mariel said, unable to resist the opportunity for a little dig, and suggesting to Pia that she had learned of Pia’s second visit and felt jealous. “I’ll see you at two o’clock if not before.”

Pia was about to ask a question, but Mariel had hung up. Had Berman not made it into the office? she wondered. That seemed unlikely. Pia surmised that he had come in, and Mariel had seen him looking hung over. The few hours’ sleep she had stolen had done Pia a world of good, and she felt almost back to normal.

To help with the process, Pia downed two ibuprofen tablets, drank two glasses of water, and took a shower. As the hot water further revived her, Pia went over her options. Again, she took the position contrary to her own and challenged her concerns as to what she had witnessed over the last few days and asked if there couldn’t be a rational, innocent explanation for all of it. And again, presumably with humans involved, possibly as subjects of experimentation, she couldn’t convince herself there was and that she should do nothing.

Pia decided she needed a sounding board. She first thought of George, but there was too much personally invested, on his side, for that to be an efficient use of her time. Two years previously in medical school, he had been helpful, even if it was his negative energy that Pia sometimes fed off. He’d pointed her in the right direction for the polonium discovery, although he had done so inadvertently. Today if she called, he’d want to talk about his recent visit and what it meant, and how they needed to make better contact, blah, blah, blah. That was the last thing Pia wanted to discuss. Pia truly liked George, even if he was hopelessly conservative. The problem was that she knew she could never be what he thought he needed. She also knew instinctively that he’d oppose her doing any kind of investigation of Nano and would be unable to understand her need to do so.

Then she thought of Paul Caldwell, and when she did, she remembered she’d promised to call him by midmorning, otherwise he promised he was going to alert the police. She quickly checked the time. It was beyond midmorning; in fact, it was after eleven. Frantically she called him.

“Pia, how are you?” he said with no preamble. He’d obviously seen her name on his phone’s screen.

“Paul, thank God I got you! I almost forgot to call you. You said you’d call the police if I didn’t. You haven’t, have you?”

“No! And I would have tried you before I called them.”

“Good,” Pia said with relief. “Are you in the ER?”

“No, actually I’ve just left there. I filled in on the night shift for one of my partners with a sick kid. I’m on my way home, but I was going to call you when I got in. I hesitate to ask, but how did it go last night? Did you get a good night’s sleep with the Temazepam?”

“I just woke up,” Pia admitted. It sounded to Pia like Paul was teasing her, so she ignored his question. She also didn’t fill in the part about going to bed at five A.M. “Listen, I was wondering if we could have a chat sometime today. In person; the sooner, the better.”

“Aren’t you going into work? It’s after eleven.” Paul set aside his worries about giving Pia the Temazepam, as apparently there were no repercussions, and now he was curious if she’d found out anything about Nano. But he was following her lead, and not asking any questions over the phone.

“I’m going in later,” said Pia. “I’m a bit worse for wear. Alcohol and I are like oil and water.”

“Well, let me tell you my plans. I’m going home and jump into some hiking gear and get out on a trail somewhere. Why don’t you join me? We can chat then. I’d certainly like to hear more about your evening.” Paul wanted to know if Pia really was okay.

“I suppose that’s a possibility. I would like to talk with you. Tell me more about this hike. I’m not up to a real challenge.”

“It will be nice, trust me, nothing too strenuous. I had a hard night in the ER. More than the usual couple of drunken college kids, I’m sorry to say. Like, we had a nasty car accident that I’d rather not think about. C’mon, Pia, come with me and get some fresh mountain air. I promise, you’ll feel a lot better. It works for me every time.”

In truth, the last thing Pia felt like doing was going on a hike, but if that was the price she had to pay to bend Paul’s ear, so be it. She felt she needed someone else’s counsel, even if only to hear herself talk. “Okay, Paul, I’ll come. Just tell me where I have to be.”

Forty-five minutes later Pia was standing at a trail head with Paul, dressed in her running gear and a light rain jacket. Paul had on a stylish hiking outfit and professional-looking boots, and he looked good, as if he could hike all day despite having been up all night. Pia felt underdressed, and also unready physically for hard exercise. But Paul assured her that he planned just a two-hour round-trip jaunt up through the pine trees on this popular circuit.

“This time of day it shouldn’t be too crowded up here,” Paul said, immediately setting a brisk marching pace that challenged Pia to keep up with him. Paul breathed in deeply and exhaled. They were walking on a bed of fragrant pine needles. “This is what I live in Colorado for. The air is fantastic, don’t you think?”

“It’s a little thin for my sea-level tastes,” said Pia. “But it is clean and crisp.” Usually she would agree with him more enthusiastically, but today she didn’t want to waste time on pleasantries, so she launched right in, filling Paul in on what had happened the night before. The only omission she made was not confessing to using the Temazepam capsules she’d gotten from Paul on the unwitting Berman, saying instead simply that he got drunk and passed out. As she spoke, she acknowledged to herself that her suspicions about Nano depended on circumstantial evidence: the disappearance of the blood sample, Mariel showing up with armed guards at the ER, the level of Nano’s security, the odd cyclists, and the Chinese runner’s strange illness and miraculous recovery.

When she finished talking about Nano and the fact that she’d learned absolutely nothing at Berman’s house, Pia went back two years and told Paul a bit about the episode surrounding the deaths of Rothman and Yamamoto at Columbia and some of her part in uncovering the truth about them, and how that effort had nearly cost her her life. She was much more scant with the details than she had been talking about her visit to Berman’s house. By the time she finished, she was out of breath from talking so much while walking hard. The hiking was easy for Paul, and he was obviously thinking about what he was hearing as evidenced by a few pointed questions. After a couple of minutes’ contemplation after she was finished, he spoke up.

“So let me be blunt, because that’s the way I am, okay? There are two possibilities that I see. One, you have a well-tuned instinct for sensing trouble and a very good analytical mind that can think your way through evidence and see the way to a solution. And from what you’ve told me, you’re brave enough to follow it up. Or foolish enough to try.”

“If that all is one,” said Pia. “What’s two?”

“That you are a bit crazy,” said Paul. “I mean, no offense. Are you offended?” Paul looked over at Pia, whose face was impassive. “I guess you’re not offended. Good. Because actually I don’t think you are crazy. Dogged is a better word. Also clairvoyant. From what you just described, you were the only one who thought anything was amiss for a long time following the deaths at Columbia, isn’t that right?”

“Yes. No one believed me. I felt like a Cassandra. It seemed so obvious to me.”

“Okay, well, I believe you. I’m not normally one for conspiracy theories, but there is definitely something strange about Nano, based on what I saw in the ER and what you have told me. So what are you going to do about it now that you have flamed out at your boss’s mansion?”

“I’m glad you agree with me about Nano. It’s reassuring, to say the least. The problem for me is that I have the same sense here that I had back in medical school. I can’t help feeling what I feel, and I have an obligation to look into it if just to dispel it. I had a visitor here just this past weekend. His name is George Wilson…”

“Ah-ha!” Paul said with a mischievous smile. “I like this. A love interest?”

“Hardly,” Pia said with a wave of her hand. “At least not from my side.”

“Oh, no!” Paul complained. With an exaggerated gesture he let his face and shoulders fall. “You’re so gorgeous; you must have hundreds of boyfriends.”

“Sorry,” Pia said. She couldn’t help smile. “As I suggested yesterday, I’m not much of a social animal. Sorry to disappoint. George and I have been friends for the whole time we were in medical school, and he did help me with the Rothman investigation, breaking into a few places where we were not supposed to go. Anyway, that’s another issue.

“The point I wanted to make was that when he was here over the weekend, he asked me an interesting question that set me thinking. After I told him how enormously nanotechnology was going to affect the medical field and the huge amounts of money being spent in research and development, he asked who was overseeing it all, making sure that corners weren’t being cut on issues like safety. At first his question just irritated me because I was already irritated he’d shown up uninvited.”

“That’s a no-no,” Paul interjected.

“But later I realized he was right. There is no oversight of nanotechnology research. No one is checking what might be the health risks of some nano products or violations of ethical standards, like premature human experimentation.”

“Ah, so that is what you think might be going on?”

“Truthfully, I don’t know, but, yes, that is a worry. And here I am in the thick of it, so to speak. I want to be sure I’m not abetting something unethical or even possibly illegal. I need some evidence of what is going on at Nano. I can’t call the authorities like the FDA or a newspaper, because I don’t have anything to show them, and it is not at all unreasonable for a nanotechnology company to be secretive.

“It’s the same as when I was in medical school. It’s down to me. I’m going to have to get inside the other buildings at Nano where I’m officially not supposed to go to find out what is going on. I tried to look around a little the other day, even the building connected to the one I work in by a bridge. Frankly, it is my first choice to look in, because it seems to have the most security, but I got nowhere. An iris scanner blocked my entrance to the bridge.”

“Isn’t snooping around Nano going to be dangerous? You saw those guards who came to my ER.”

Pia shrugged. “Maybe yes, maybe no. I don’t really know. But I am a Nano employee. If I end up being found in some area where I’m not supposed to be, I can just say I got lost, or I’m running an errand for Mr. Berman, now that I know him socially. The only other thing I can think of is to try to get him to invite me to participate in other aspects of Nano’s research efforts. The trouble is, I don’t know what it is, exactly, and I can’t tip my hand. My immediate boss, Mariel, has told me on several occasions how important secrecy is considered, even with the work I am doing. You see, I could be fired at any time. I’m helping them, but I am certainly not indispensable.”

“How do you know you’re not already working on the secret stuff?”

“What do you mean?” said Pia.

“I just mean you may not know all of the uses the projects you’re working on are put to. I mean, do you?”

“And I thought I had a cynical side,” said Pia, with a sarcastic chuckle. She hadn’t thought of that possibility. The microbivores seemed to have a benign purpose, but with the technology she was helping develop to counter the biocompatibility issues, she couldn’t be so sure. Pia was silent for a few minutes.

“I’m sorry,” said Paul. “I didn’t mean to upset you.”

“You didn’t upset me. I’m fine.”

“Okay. Good.” Paul came to a halt and gestured around them. “This is the turnaround. Let’s enjoy the view for a few minutes and head back.” They had emerged from the trees and reached a rocky ledge, which offered a striking view of distant mountains.

After another few minutes of silence, Paul spoke again. He wasn’t out of breath in the slightest. “So how do you want me to help you? I have a sense that this is where your monologue is leading. So just talk it through or is there something more concrete? I won’t do anything illegal, mind. And I’m not breaking in anywhere like you just told me George did with you.”

“I got it,” said Pia. “There is something you can help me with.”

“Okay, shoot.”

“When we first met, you told me you liked to play around with computer code, yes?”

“I may have said that, yes.” Paul sounded wary.

“Don’t worry, I’m not asking you to hack into anything. But I need to get past the iris scanners at Nano. When I tried to cross the bridge from my building to the neighboring building, an iris scanner wouldn’t allow me access. Is there some way I can dupe such a scanner without smashing it with a hammer? It has to be something that might look like the scanner made an honest mistake if I got caught.”

“Are these scanners manned?”

“What you mean?”

“I mean is there a security person standing there watching you when you stand in front of it?”

“Some but not all,” Pia said. “On the first floor of my building there are certainly security people, but they have never paid any attention when I go through the scanner. And when I tried but failed to get past a scanner blocking the door to the bridge from my building to the next, there was no security person.”

“I think I can help you, in that case,” said Paul. It sounded as if it might be illegal, but only if he was the one to break in somewhere he didn’t have a right to have access to. It also sounded like a fun challenge, the type he used to love when he was in high school. “My understanding is that an iris scanner uses mathematical pattern-recognition techniques that take advantage of the fact that people’s irises are as different from one another as fingerprints. I’ll tell you what, I’ll look into it for you.”

“Thanks, Paul, that’s great.”

“Listen, I don’t want to pour cold water on this, but it sounds dangerous. Do you think it’s a good idea?”

Pia rolled her eyes. Paul was channeling George.

“I’m going to try whether you’ll help me or not.”

“I figured you’d say something like that. I’ll see what I can find out.”