Nano

CHAPTER 27

Pia hustled across the Nano parking lot, clutching her cell phone. She knew the night guards were replaced at six. Her hope had been to get there earlier, but she was not a morning person, and had not gotten up immediately when the alarm had gone off. If this ruse with the iPhone and the iris scanner didn’t work, she thought the tired and generally less attentive staff who were just about to go home would be less likely to notice anything was amiss. To some degree she also knew the men who manned the shift from all the times she had gone into or out of the lab in the wee hours of the morning for various experiments. In contrast to the day and evening shift, they were more conversational, apparently out of boredom.

On the screen of her phone, Pia had ready the image of her eyes at a zoom of just slightly less than normal. As she had expected, there were two guards on duty in the foyer of her building, half the daytime or evening complement. She even knew both of their names.

“Morning, Russ. Morning, Clive.”

“Morning, Dr. Grazdani. Early start for you,” said the older man, Russ.

“Yep. I’ve got lots of experiments running. Gotta go — have a good day, you guys.”

Pia walked over toward the scanner positioned to guard the entrance to the bank of elevators. Russ and Clive ignored her as they concentrated on making their shift-change entries into the logbook. At home, in the bathroom mirror, she’d practiced what she was about to do. Although when she entered she had her phone pressed flat against her right ear, as if on a call, now she moved it to a horizontal position lateral to her eyes with the screen pointing forward. When she was in front of the machine and it indicated it was ready to take a reading, Pia leaned back slightly and moved the phone such that it was directly in front of her eyes.

She waited impatiently. Nothing happened.

She jiggled the camera up and down slightly, but still there was no familiar beep from the machine, as she had hoped. Quickly she glanced at the scanner over the top of the phone. Instead of the usual green light coming on, indicating a successful match, there was nothing. The scanner clearly wasn’t happy. The ruse hadn’t worked.

“Crap,” she said, under her breath. Quickly she turned the iPhone around and looked at the screen. It had gone blank. She’d forgotten to extend the time of the auto-lock, and the phone had switched itself off.

“Everything all right, Dr. Grazdani?” called Russ from the desk in front of the lobby.

“Yes, thanks, Russ. I must have blinked at the wrong time. I’ll just try it again.” She smiled over to the men, who waved and went back to their preparations to leave.

The machine reset, and with the image back on the screen of her phone, Pia tried again. After a couple of seconds, in which time Pia thought her heart was going to stop, the usual beep sounded and the green-for-go light came on. A second later the door lock in the glass partition clicked open.

“It worked,” she said, rather too loudly. In some respects she was surprised. It was a good example of technology chasing technology. The designers of the first-generation of iris scanners probably had never imagined the advances in resolution of smartphone touch screens.

“It usually does work,” said Russ, his voice much closer than it had been the last time Pia had heard it.

Pia jumped and turned. The guard was standing no more than six feet away.

“I’m getting a call,” said Pia, who turned back to her phone and went to adjust its display. At the same time she walked through the glass door and into Nano proper. After pushing the elevator button, she turned her head and saw that Russ had retreated back to the main entrance doors and was in conversation with the daytime security shift that had just come on. Pia resolved to be more careful next time.

Next time.

It was early in the morning, so up on the fourth floor Pia passed the door into her lab and retraced her route to the double doors that barred the way onto the bridge. There she tried the trick with her phone again. She had no reason to believe the phone would work when her own eye didn’t, but she wanted to try. When the predictable happened and she couldn’t get in, Pia walked back to her lab. What the hell did Nano have hidden on the other side of that bridge? In her bones, Pia felt it had to be something serious to justify all the security.

While she checked all the biocompatibility experiments she had running, she again went over all the options of whose eye she was going to capture in a high-resolution photo. She came to the same conclusion: it had to be Berman for a number of reasons. She’d considered Mariel and even Whitney, but she kept coming back to Berman. She reasoned that only with Berman could she be certain she would have total access, as there was a chance the others could have their access restricted for reasons that Pia could not anticipate. There was also the issue that the chances of her being able to take a bunch of photos of Berman without his becoming suspicious were higher than doing the same with the women.

Pia was under no illusions that getting the kind of photos she needed meant that she most likely would have to put herself at risk again by returning to his house. As much as she hated the idea of doing it, she’d have to repeat her charade, but this time without the benefit of the Temazepam. She would have to get herself reinvited, which certainly would inflame Berman’s passions and expectations. For many reasons, it was obvious to Pia that the man was a libidinous brute and accustomed to getting his way.

There were so many problems with the plan, but one rendered all the others moot. For at least a week, Zach Berman hadn’t been at Nano.