The Forgotten Room

22

It was nine o’clock in the evening when Logan rose from the desk in his quarters on Lux’s third floor and walked over to the nearest window. The bad weather had finally won out over the good and a storm had settled over Newport. Swollen clouds scudded before the moon, and sheets of wind-driven rain beat against the panes of leaded glass.

He stared out at the storm-lashed ocean — pounding fiercely against the coastline — for several minutes, lost in thought. Then he turned back to the desk. It was covered with notes he had taken following various interviews, along with brief dossiers on a dozen of the scientists and administrators at the think tank: Roger Carbon; Terence McCarty; Perry Maynard; Laura Benedict, the quantum computing expert. Life, he had learned, had been especially unkind to Ms. Benedict recently: in addition to losing her mentor, she was doubly bereaved — her grandfather had died of cancer a few years before, and not long after she’d been tragically widowed. Her husband, an aviation enthusiast, had died in a midair crash with another small plane during a storm — perhaps a storm not so different from this one.

He flipped through the pages on his desk for a minute, then pushed the folders aside. Beneath them was another: a file on Kim Mykolos. He’d made a point to sit at her table that evening for dinner, and had found that — when the conversation did not turn to Strachey, obviously still a painful subject — she was witty and charming, an excellent conversationalist. She had also borne out the fact that Strachey had, in fact, been like a father to Laura Benedict. Logan’s empathetic instincts assured him of what he’d already deduced: that, whether out of misapprehension or spite, Carbon was wrong about Kim — she had not been after Strachey’s job.

Turning to his computer, he brought up his encrypted spreadsheet on “the others” and reviewed it one more time, just to be sure. But there had been no mistake in his deduction.

He paused, looking at the screen, for several minutes. Then he turned off the computer. It was time.

Picking up the printed phone directory for Lux, he turned pages until he found the number he wanted: Dr. Olafson’s private quarters. Picking up the phone, he dialed.

It was answered on the third ring. “Olafson.”

“Gregory? It’s Jeremy Logan.”

“Jeremy. I penciled a note on my calendar to call you tomorrow morning, discuss your progress.”

“That’s why I’m calling. I wondered if I could drop in for a few minutes.”

There was a pause. “Now?”

“If you’re not otherwise occupied.”

The sound of shuffling papers came over the line. “Of course. I’ll be expecting you.”

“Thanks.” Logan hung up the phone and, without bothering to grab his satchel, quickly exited the room.