Allegiance: A Jackson Quick Adventure (10 page)

Was
that
a
gunshot
?

“It was the waiter,” Townsend said, reaching down and pulling me back into my seat by my right arm. “He dropped a tray of dishes. It’s okay.”

As I get up I can see Bobby’s face again, faded and draining color onto the floor of a gas station bathroom. It’s definitely
not
okay.

I scoot in my chair and straighten myself at the table. I’m still wearing the same clothes I was in when I left Charlie’s place. It seems as if that was days ago, but it’s only been seven or eight hours. There’s a brown spot of dried blood on my shirt next to Kinky Friedman’s smiling face.

“Jackson, why would the people who kidnapped you decide to let you go and try to kill you a day later?” Townsend slides the phone toward me. “Is it possible there is more than one person or group following you?”

“What? I don’t understand.”

“Could it be one side, so to speak, wants to learn whatever it is you know about some grand conspiracy and the other side wants to keep you from talking?” Townsend takes another sip from his glass of water. All that’s left is melted ice. He slurps it down.

I haven’t thought about that possibility. Could it be I’m caught between two equally violent, desperate groups? Somehow I hold a key that both sides have a mutual interest in controlling? The look on my face must make it obvious to Townsend I hadn’t considered it until he brought it up.

“It’s just a theory,” he says, trying to soften the blow. “I could be wrong.”

“No, you’re right. There has to be more to it. It doesn’t make sense that the dude who tortured me would let me go free, tell me he was watching me, and shoot me in the head in a public place.”

Townsend waves to the waiter and gets the check. He glances at the bill and hands the check back with a credit card.

I stop the waiter. “Let me get it.” I give him a twenty, tell him to keep the change, and hand Townsend his card.

“No paper trail?” he asks.

“I wish I could say it’s because I’m a generous guy,” I tell him. “But I don’t want any record of anything in case they somehow connect me to you.”

“Whoever
they
are?” Townsend grabs the phone from the table, pushes the OFF button and slips it into his pocket as he stands.

“Right.” I stand and slip my wallet back into my pocket. I’ve got $120 left. I grab my backpack from the floor. “Let’s go find Ripley’s son.”

***

Rice University is on Houston’s southwest side. The streets leading to the campus are lined with mature oak trees that create a natural green canopy. It’s a welcome, if momentary, distraction from the task at hand.

Townsend pulls his Lexus onto the campus and past the school’s football stadium. It’s an old gray concrete structure that seems out of place with the school’s classic university architecture.

Townsend tells me, as if to ease the palpable tension, “that’s a famous stadium. Super Bowl VIII was played there. And you know JFK’s famous ‘Moon Speech’? He delivered it there.”

I nod without saying anything. I don’t have the energy for small talk.

Townsend pulls into a visitor’s parking lot and finds an empty space. We get out of the SUV and I follow him across the street to a large three-story building. It’s the Space Science and Technology Laboratory. The building is framed by columns around the perimeter of its first floor, creating a covered walkway. Townsend leads me to the right side of the building and into a service elevator.

The doors close and we stand silently as the elevator lurches and hums upwards. We’re both looking at the yellow glow illuminate the floor numbers above the doors. 1, 2, 3. The doors slide apart and we step into the hall. Directly across from us is what’s apparently called the HiPco laboratory. The door is surrounded by a series of coded locks and warning signs.

“What’s that?” I ask as we walk past the lab to the left and turn the corner to the right.

“That’s the lab where the researchers create nanotubes,” Townsend tells me. “They use high pressure carbon dioxide and iron to spin these tiny tubes of pure carbon. They’re super strong and are the building block of nanotechnology. I did a couple of stories on it.”

I’m not sure I really understand it, but it sounds cool.

We keep moving along a sterile hallway lined with labs and offices. A couple of white lab coated men walk past us, but don’t notice. Their heads are buried in clipboards and notes. One is eating an apple.

At the end of the hall on the left is the entrance to a suite of offices. Townsend walks through it as though he’s been here before, and we wind our way to the back of the suite. Townsend finds a closed door and knocks loudly.

“This is the director’s office,” Townsend tells me without turning around. “I’ve interviewed him several times. He’ll know where to find our guy.” He knocks again.

The door clicks and opens inward, revealing a genial looking man with thinning gray hair and a matching beard. He’s wearing blue Dockers and a short sleeve gray button down. There’s a pen in his breast pocket.

“George?” His eyes search Townsend for explanation. He glances past George to me and then back to the reporter. “How are you? I’m not under investigation am I?” He chuckles.

“Of course not, Dr. Aglo.” George extends his hand. “I’ve got a favor to ask, if that’s okay.”

“Anything for you.” The man’s expression relaxes. “You’ve always been such a help to us with your reporting.” He slips his hand into Townsend’s grip and shakes it. “It’s not easy, I imagine, explaining what we do here in a couple of sound bite clips.”

“Thank you,” George says. “That’s kind of you. I’m hoping you can help me.”

“Sure,” Dr. Aglo waves George into his office. I follow behind him.

“I’m a friend of George’s,” I tell Dr. Aglo as I move past him into the corner office. He nods and follows me into the large room.

Two of the office walls are floor to ceiling glass, with views looking out on the campus below. To the right is a wall hidden by large book shelves. Dotting the shelves are varying sizes of plastic balls. Not really balls, but spheres shaped by interconnected hexagons. Dr. Aglo directs us to sit at a conference table toward the back of the office next to a glass wall.

“What can I do?” he asks as he sits at the head of the table.

“We’re looking for one of your researchers,” Townsend begins. His eyes dart between Aglo and me. It’s kind of uncomfortable and I wish he’d stop it. Aglo’s going to catch on that something is awry.

“Okay,” says Dr. Aglo. “Which one?”

“Roswell Ripley.” Townsend’s eyes stay on the doctor this time.

“Hmmm,” Dr. Aglo tilts his head and folds his hands across his chest. He leans back in his chair. “I don’t think I can help you.”

“Do you know where he is?” Townsend presses.

“I haven’t seen him since his father, well…” Dr. Aglo doesn’t need to finish the sentence.

“He disappeared?” Townsend asks.

I’m trying to gauge the scientist’s body language but I can’t tell whether he
can’t
help us or
won’t
help us.

“I don’t know,” he says. “He works in a private lab on the second floor. He’s funded by an anonymous donor. I don’t see him very much. He sends me reports on his progress every six weeks. I’m not sure of the last time he was here.”

“Don’t you have electronic keypads for all the labs?” Townsend isn’t letting go. “Wouldn’t that tell us the last time he was here?”

“Sure,” Dr. Aglo unfolds his arms and leans forward onto the table, “but, I haven’t looked at it. I assume he’s lying low because of the issues with his father. I can’t blame him really. They do share the same name.”

“Can we look in his lab?” Townsend asks without any hint of aggression. His tone has shifted. He’s good at this. “It’s really important we talk to him. If you’re with us, I mean, that wouldn’t be inappropriate would it?”

Dr. Aglo takes a deep breath and scratches the beard on his neck, considering it. He pushes back from the table and stands. He walks towards the door and waves at us to follow him. We get up, Townsend shoots me a smirk, and we walk after Dr. Aglo back down the hall to the elevator.

“What was he working on?” I ask. “Engineered nanoparticles,” Dr. Aglo answers without turning around. “What science fiction might call nanobots.”

“Engineered for what?” I catch up to the doctor outside the elevator.

“Energy,” he says. “He is developing an additive for carbon based fuels.”

We follow the doctor onto the elevator and give each other a knowing look before Aglo turns back around.

“What does the additive do?” George takes over.

“It’s still in the early stages as far as I know,” Aglo replies. He pushes the OPEN button on the elevator as the doors slide apart and holds it, motioning us onto the second floor. “He’s trying to extend the life of those carbon fuels. The engineered nanoparticles react with the chemical composition of the fuel and allow an equivalent mass to provide greater energy. It’s an octane booster, but different.”

“Wait,” George asks as we follow the professor down a hall similar to the one above us on the third floor. “Isn’t that exactly what Nanergetix claims to be developing?”

The professor stops and spins around to face us. We almost run into him. He looks at George and then me. I can see him measuring the conversation. His mind, I imagine, is replaying it at nanoscale.

“How did you know that?” he asks George with a hint of suspicion.

“I’ve covered Don Carlos Buell,” George answers without a pause. “He’s a major investor. I thought everybody who pays attention to this stuff knew what Nanergetix was up to.”

“I see,” Dr. Aglo relaxes his shoulders. He studies George. The pause is uncomfortable and I slip my hands into my pockets.

“Well,” he continues, hands on his hips. “I don’t know what you’ve heard but what Dr. Ripley is working on is far more advanced than whatever Nanergetix claims to have. Of course, I can’t imagine either of their work exists beyond the lab environment, but Ripley would be ahead,” He says defensively.

“Could it be Nanergetix is funding his research, given you don’t know the donor?”

George has balls. Big balls. Big stupid balls. We’re trying to get this guy to help us and he’s clearly antagonizing him.

Aglo blinks as though we’ve input information into his brain that causes a glitch. The data doesn’t seem to compute. He tilts his head again as he did in the office.

“It’s not…” he pauses again and blinks again, trying to process the query. “Well, I…I don’t know. I hadn’t considered that. I don’t think so. My understanding from Dr. Ripley is that this is competing technology. The big challenge, of course, for both of them is developing something which can function in the toxic, high pressure chemical environment required in a combustible engine. He’s so much as said that several times. He seems almost consumed with beating Nanergetix to market. I don’t think so. But I cannot say with complete certainty.”

Aglo turns and leads us to a laboratory at the end of the hall on the right. Its door leads to the interior of the building. He presses an identification badge to a small pad by the door. The pad beeps and a red light flashes to its left. He enters a series of numbers onto a keypad and the red light becomes a solid green. He pulls the handle on the door and swings it open into the hall.

“Let’s see what we can see,” he says and motions George and me into Dr. Ripley’s secret lab.

***

I walk in to the constant hiss of gas running through a web of tubes overhead. They wind and twist to attach to different pieces of scientific equipment. Some of the instruments have valves wrapped in aluminum foil. There are black granite tables running the length of both sides of the room. It reminds me vaguely of high school chemistry class without the smell of formaldehyde.

The three of us spread out looking at the various work stations. None of the equipment or test tubes or Petri dishes means anything to me. I find a stack of green spiral notebooks and open the cover of the one on top. There’s a page full of illegible cursive and mathematical equations. I can’t decipher it or the similar notes on any of the other pages I flip through.

“Please be careful as you look through things,” Dr. Aglo cautions. “And, of course, don’t touch any of the equipment. All of this is very sensitive, as you might guess.”

“What exactly are we looking for?” I ask, turning away from the stack of notebooks. I can’t imagine Ripley left a post-it note with his location.

“Yes,” adds Dr. Aglo. “What
are
we looking for?”

“I’ll know it when I see it,” says George. He’s scanning the room, walking from work station to work station touching papers and notes. “Does Ripley have a university email address?”

“Of course,” Dr. Aglo answers. “But I don’t see a reason we need to access that. It’s not as though this is a police investigation. The university might have a problem with giving access to that account.” He leans back on one of the granite tables, his palms pressed flat against its edge.

“What about voicemail?” George persists. “Can we access that?”

“I don’t think so. I don’t have his pass code. And again, I don’t think the university would agree to access it.”

“Auto redial?” George walks over to a phone near the door of the lab.

“What do you mean?” asks Aglo.

“Do you have auto redial?”

“Yes we do,” says Aglo. “But I am not sure how to access it here.”

“I can,” says George. “We have this same phone system at Channel 4.” He turns to the phone and presses 1-1-9.

I walk over to the phone and look on the numeric display. The numbers appear one at a time: 432-426-3640.

George hits the speakerphone button and hangs up the receiver. The line rings twice and someone answers.

“McDonald Observatory Visitors Center. How may I help you?” the woman on the other end of the line asks pleasantly.

George replies, “What are your hours, ma’am?”

“We’re open from ten in the morning to five-thirty in the evening every day except Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s Day. We also have extended Star Party hours on some nights.”