Nano

CHAPTER 50

Paul paced around his apartment, waiting for George Wilson to show up so he could tell him his news. After listening to Paul talk for two minutes on the phone in the middle of the night, George had told Paul to stop. He had heard enough, and he was coming out to Boulder on the next flight he could get. George had refused Paul’s offer to pick him up from the airport, saying Paul should stay home in case Pia showed up. To Paul, George sounded much calmer than he himself felt. Impossible though it seemed, George had experience of a situation with Pia that was not dissimilar to what was currently going on.

The buzzer to the outer door rang and no sooner had Paul buzzed George in than he was in the apartment.

“Any word?” George asked the moment he came into Paul’s living room.

“I got a text. An hour ago.”

“From Pia?”

“Look.” Paul handed George his phone. The text identified Pia as the source and read, “Heading home. Don’t worry. Will call soon.”

“Did you reply?” asked George.

“Of course. I called and texted back and got a reply: ‘Don’t worry.’”

“What do you think?” asked George.

“It’s not Pia. That’s what I think. Someone’s got her phone.”

Paul told George what he’d found on the screen on Pia’s computer.

“I don’t think Pia thinks of the northeast as home, do you?”

“No,” said George. “I don’t.”

For a moment the two men looked at each other. The only way they were acquainted was through the prism of Pia, and their short interaction after Pia’s accident when George had sacked out for some hours in Paul’s apartment. The current circumstance wasn’t the most opportune moment to expand their friendship, as both were nervous, on edge, and tired.

“Thanks for calling me,” George said, and he meant it.

“I didn’t know what else to do,” admitted Paul. “You’re our white knight.”

George wondered about that comment but didn’t respond to it. Instead he said, “And you kept trying her cell?”

“No luck, just voice mail. If it was Pia, she’d pick up the phone.” Paul looked at George. He was a mess and had obviously pulled on the nearest clothes he could find, sweatpants and a sweatshirt over a cotton T-shirt. Paul would not have been caught dead in such an outfit, especially since George was wearing dress shoes with white socks. George noticed Paul looking at his feet.

“I know. I got the wrong shoes. My sneakers were wet after I went for a run in the rain. But after you called and after I cleared the trip with my chief resident, I flew out the door to catch the next flight to Denver, which was leaving in an hour. I came with nothing, but I did make the flight. I’ll need to pick up some stuff. But we have to put our heads together first. So tell me everything again, but fill in the details.”

The men took seats after Paul gave George a Coke. George had asked for one, saying he needed a quick caffeine hit. Then Paul went through the whole story, beginning at the end, the time thirty hours before, when Pia had texted Paul that she was coming right back to his apartment. George nodded every now and then, as if to say, “Got it.” Then Paul was finished.

“So you don’t know what she found at Nano?”

“No, but I think it was something extraordinary as she was so fired up she didn’t want to take the time to explain. She told me she’d tell me everything when she came back and that she would be coming back as soon as she could, apparently after doing something with the blood samples. I believed her. Unfortunately. And she sent me a text that she was on her way. I’m sure that was her.”

“Do you have even the slightest notion of what she might have found?”

“Only a very vague idea. She suspected Nano might have been pushing the envelope with human experimentation of some kind.”

“You mean with the nanorobots she was working with?”

“I don’t know any details. All we know is that there were some athletes involved somehow, one of which Pia had come upon while running and a second one. You remember all this, don’t you?”

“Yeah, of course. So what else happened the night she disappeared that you know of?”

Paul told George about the iris scanner situation, about the camera, and about Pia testing the idea with photos of her own eyes, and then apparently going off to Berman’s to get appropriate photos of the CEO.

“Damn,” said George with emphasis. “That’s so Pia. She puts herself in jeopardy back at that asshole’s house just to get photos so she could sneak around Nano?”

“I tried to talk her out of it. It was the second time she’d gone up to Berman’s house by herself. The first time she had gone in to search his house.” Paul did not include the part about his giving her two capsules of Temazepam. In retrospect he was embarrassed about it. “On this second visit, my guess is that she was successful getting the photo she needed. Using it, I think, she got into a secret part of Nano and found something, as I said, extraordinary.” Paul then went on to tell George the story of the blood sample he’d been holding, and how she had shown up in the middle of the night to get it, wanting to look at it under a microscope.

“I wonder what she found?” George asked, looking off into the middle distance, trying to imagine. He looked back at Paul. “This is all very worrisome, to say the very least.”

“I couldn’t agree with you more. The security guys that showed up in my ER looked like a SWAT team. And on top of that was the accident.”

“Right!” George agreed, feeling anger well up inside of him. “Pia was convinced the car accident was no accident, and still you let her go back to Nano that night? And you also let her go and see Berman on her own, twice, with these crazy plans? What kind of a friend are you?”

George had promised himself that he wasn’t going to yell at Paul and suggest her disappearance was his fault if it turned out that Pia had gone rogue again. He knew better than anyone that Pia was fearless and single-minded. In the days that he’d spent in Colorado when Pia was injured after the car accident, he came to like and respect Paul, and he knew he was a good friend to Pia. But now that he was here, George couldn’t help himself.

“If you weren’t prepared to go with her, why didn’t you at least call me?”

“It wasn’t a case of my being prepared, George. She didn’t tell me anything. It was the middle of the night, for God’s sake. I had lectured her in the past about being responsible but she’s a grown woman. I had to trust that she knew what she was doing.”

“Yeah? And look where it got her!”

“I know that, George! Do you think I haven’t been thinking about all this the last thirty hours? ‘You should have stopped her.’ ‘You should have called the police.’ ‘You should have called George.’ I’ve thought all these things a hundred times. But at four o’clock in the morning, when she had woken me from a sound sleep, I wasn’t thinking as I might have had it been four o’clock in the afternoon. She always had a good reason to go it alone.”

“She always does, that’s the point.”

“Look, George, we can have this conversation later. Right now we need to concentrate on what we are going to do to find Pia. Agreed?”

George dropped his bluster and nodded. “You’re right,” he said. “And you’re not the only one beating yourself up. I should have been here myself when she told me a little of what she was planning to do, that’s the bottom line. So let’s go through it again, and see what we can’t figure out. We need to have all our ducks in a row when we go to the police, which I’m afraid we are going to have to do, even though we don’t have much to tell them. We have a woman who just didn’t show up when she said she was going to show up. I don’t think the police are going to do too much. I mean, there’s no sign of foul play or anything like that.”

“That’s part of the reason I haven’t called them yet,” agreed Paul.

“The obvious thing to do is check Berman’s house. Come on.”

“If he’s there with her, he’s hardly going to let us in,” said Paul.

“We have to try, Paul. Can I borrow your car? If you don’t want to come, that is.”

“I’ll come with you, of course.”

As they drove Paul’s Subaru to Berman’s house, Paul raised a question, a scenario he thought was possible, given what he knew of Pia.

“Let me ask you this, George. You’ve known her longer, but we both know how willful Pia can be, and, I have to say, insensitive to other people’s feelings. What do you think of the idea that whatever it was she discovered Sunday night, she just said, ‘Screw it, I’m not having any more to do with Nano,’ and actually did take off somewhere?”

George thought for a minute before responding. It was true Pia had a mind of her own, which was a major understatement, just as it was true that she often showed little regard for other people’s sensitivities, his in particular. But would she just take off? George couldn’t imagine it.

“No,” he said eventually. “I don’t think that’s possible. She’s what you have described, but a whole lot more, chief of which is tenacious. She’s the most tenacious person I’ve ever met. If she found something, she wouldn’t give up. She’d pursue it until hell froze over. Trust me on that.”

Paul nodded in agreement.

When they reached Berman’s gate, George got out and rang the buzzer, but there was no answer.

“He has state-of-the-art security, I assume,” said Paul. He stayed in the car.

“We’re being recorded right now. The camera’s up there.” George pointed it out to Paul.

“So what do we do now? I can’t see the Toyota parked up there,” said Paul.

“Berman would have moved it if she’s still there,” said George. “Maybe I can shimmy over the gate… Wait, someone’s coming.” Driving slowly down the long driveway was a white truck. The heavy iron gates swung open and the truck slowed to a stop. The men could see that the driver was not Zachary Berman.

“Let’s ask this guy,” said George. “See what he knows.”

The driver of the truck sounded his horn — Paul’s Subaru was blocking the way. The driver stuck his head out of the truck window. He was a blond-haired man with a deep tan. “C’mon, guys, can you move your car?”

“Is the boss man around?” said George.

“Mr. Berman? I’m his tree guy. I didn’t see him, but I don’t usually see him anyway. Look, I want to go to my next job and you know I can’t let you in. Have you buzzed up to the house?”

“Come on, George,” said Paul. “Get in! We’re in the man’s way.”

“Just a second,” said George. He wandered over to the truck and stuck his head in through the passenger-side window.

“Sorry, we don’t mean to get in your way, and we’ll move in a second, we’re just wondering if Mr. Berman’s around. It’s important to us. We’re old friends. I’ve come all the way from L.A. I just wanted to say hello.” George was at his most amiable — in his ultra-casual outfit he looked quite benign, and the gardener just wanted to be on his way.

“I don’t think he’s here. One of the guys who looks after the flower beds says he went on one of his trips.”

“Abroad?” said George.

“I don’t know where he goes. I just know that when he’s here, everyone’s on their best behavior, and right now, there’s a couple of the gardeners sitting out back drinking coffee and taking their time. I commented on that, and they said Berman’s away somewhere. But where, you’ll have to ask someone else. The gardener guys should be coming down within the hour.”

“Thanks,” said George. “We’ll come back.”

“If I see anyone when I come back tomorrow, who shall I say stopped by?”

“Just a friend,” said George, and waved a casual good-bye.

George got back in the car, where Paul was waiting.

“What was that about?” said Paul as he backed out of the way to let the arborist pass.

“Berman’s apparently gone on a trip, or so the guy heard from one of the gardeners. But he doesn’t know if it’s foreign or domestic or anything. But Berman’s apparently not around, at least not around here. How about we stop by Nano, see what we can find there?”

“I guess it makes sense,” said Paul, and they drove off toward Boulder.

“I don’t think we are going to find anything out at Nano. They are extremely security conscious.”

“We have to cover the bases,” said George. He sounded more decisive than Paul remembered. “Perhaps they don’t know what car she was driving. Anyway, if we strike out at Nano, we’ll go by her apartment again.”

“Security would have noted what car she arrived in…”

“Okay,” said George, raising his voice. “I know. But we have to look.”

They rode the rest of the way in silence. Neither man thought it would be easy to get past the first security gate on the road into Nano, and both were right.

“We’re here for a job interview,” said George, talking past Paul, trying a line he had thought up on the way over on the first line of security at a gatepost by the main entrance to Nano.

“There are no interviews scheduled for today,” said the guard, an efficient-looking older man. “They always let me know to be prepared for people who need temporary ID, and there’s none today.”

“It’s unofficial. An informational interview with Whitney Jones, in Mr. Berman’s office.”

“I know for a fact that Whitney Jones is not here today. Can I see your driver’s license, sir.”

“What do you need that for?”

“Everyone who comes in here has to show ID. And you, too, sir,” the guard said to Paul.

Paul and George looked at each other. If they showed their ID, Nano would know they had been here. If they didn’t, they’d be turned away immediately. George shrugged and dug his license out of his wallet. Paul followed suit. The guard retreated into his small cabin and picked up a phone. A line of cars had formed behind Paul and a couple of impatient drivers were honking at him.

“Look, George, we should take this to the police,” said Paul.

“It might not hurt to let Berman know we’re around.”

Paul said nothing. The guard put down the phone.

“Pull in over there,” he said, indicating a cut-out to the right of the guard post. He handed over the driver’s licenses. As soon as Paul parked, a black SUV drove up and a man in a suit got out of the passenger side.

“Can I help you fellas?” He was younger than the gatepost guard, fitter, more athletic, and much more intimidating, despite his smile and casual syntax.

“We’re here for an interview,” said Paul.

“There’s no interviews today, Dr. Caldwell.” The man knew exactly who Paul was. “Better check your calendar, I think you got the wrong day. You can drive out through the same gate.” He indicated the same guard post, where the exit barrier was now raised. The security man had one more thing to say.

“Have an excellent day, gentlemen.”