Quantum

36

It was well past nine and evening was ebbing into night by the time Nolan and Kelsey’s question-and-answer session with Detective Ptashnik was finally through. After the debriefing, an Ann Arbor police patrol car ferried them down to the southeast corner of the Diag. They picked up a carryout of General Tso’s chicken from their favorite Chinese restaurant, then walked over to Kelsey’s old sorority house, where Nolan’s SUV was parked.

‘Do you mind driving?’ Nolan asked, offering Kelsey his keys. ‘There’s a call I need to make.’

Nolan set the bag of food cartons on the floor behind the passenger’s seat and pulled the PalmPilot from his briefcase. As they drove toward Dexter, he searched through the handheld computer for Cal Mosley’s number, which he keyed into his phone.

‘This is Mosley.’

‘Cal, it’s Nolan Kilkenny.’

‘What can I do for you?’ Mosley asked.

‘The Russians struck again today, this time in Ann Arbor. Four people dead. Cal, these were the same guys who hit Sandstrom’s lab in South Bend.’ Nolan then launched into a brief report of the latest attack.

‘So they were after these old notebooks?’ Mosley asked.

‘Yes. Definitely. After Wolff’s body was found, the police made no public mention of the notebooks. Only a handful of people even know about their existence and their potential importance to our project — and I trust all of ’em. My best guess is that these guys are still watching Sandstrom and probably have his hospital room bugged.’

‘They got their intel from somewhere,’ Mosley agreed. ‘Get the hospital to move him and ask the FBI to sweep his old room for any surveillance equipment. In the meantime, I’m going to run this latest information past some people here and see what I can come up with. Thanks for the update.’

‘Cal, I need all the help you can give me. This project I’m working on has the potential to become a multibillion-dollar-a-year industry. If whoever’s behind these attacks succeeds in taking control of Sandstrom’s quantum technology, they’ll have the power to pull the economic equivalent of a coup d’état on the rest of the industrialized world.’