Chasing The Dawn (Luke Temple - Book 2) (Luke Temple Series) (16 page)

“Unlikely, surely they would have jumped town by now? That’s if he hasn’t killed Miss Chung already. This is a case now, Sir. Are you telling me that you don’t think this is connected to Vittorio’s disappearance?” Delvechi couldn’t hide his smile.

“I never said that.”

“Probably best I alert the wider authorities in adjoining towns, in case they have bolted.”

“No. We do not alert anyone, all that would do is slow us down.” Beltrano moved closer to Delvechi. “This has become a covert operation, Officer Delvechi, do you understand?”

Delvechi looked puzzled. “If you say so, Sir.”

“I do. I am confident that Mr Reid and Miss Chung are still local and still both alive.”

“But how are you so sure?”

“Because Mr Reid did not come to Teramo for Miss Chung.” Beltrano threw down the remaining coffee. “Now I need you to spread the word amongst the men out there that they need to contact every guest who was present last night and inform them not to talk to any media, the vultures will be swarming.”

“I get all the exciting jobs,” Delvechi huffed, strolling out the door, slamming it behind him.

“I fear there will yet be time for excitement, my boy,” Beltrano whispered to himself.

The waves crashed against the rocks, the deep rumbling was followed by a white salt spray erupting towards the sky. The wind felt like a weight pushing against her frame, relentless in its power. In the distance a silhouette appeared atop a flat-topped rock. She stared hard, trying to focus on the shape, squinting through the barrage of wind-blown salt. It was a person, she could make out no detail, but there was a deep feeling of recognition.

A force suddenly took hold, an energy flowed through her bones and she found herself cutting through the wall of wind, dragging her feet through the shingle, staggering toward the sea. As her feet touched the tide she stopped to look at the person on top of the rock; they had not moved. The closer she got the more she was compelled to reach out to them. Plunging herself into the freezing, bubbling water her breath was stolen from her lungs. She gasped and spluttered, thrashing her arms and legs to try and stay afloat.

Exhaustion took hold, but with every thrash of her arms she was getting closer to the person who stood motionless on the rock. The wind and water stung her face; her limbs throbbed with pain.

The silhouette slowly turned; as if a fog was lifting, her eyes caught the first true sight of the person … Grandfather. Panic took hold. She tried calling but a huge wave smashed over her head, submerging her under the dark water. Her energy had left her. She reached an arm up in one final attempt to break for air, but her body slipped down and down until there was nothing but darkness.

Chung Su jolted awake, her eyes flicking erratically from left to right, taking in her surroundings. She sat up, flinching from the pain in her body. She was on the floor, a window above let an orange light in. A blanket was wrapped around her naked body; she only had vague memories of being placed down and covered. Then the previous night’s activities flooded back into her mind, and a sickness rippled through her stomach. Moving gently, she rolled over to scan the rest of the room, jumping as she came face to face with her captor.

He was sat against the wall, his eyes looking up at the window; they were bloodshot. The fear and severe cold had meant she had not taken much interest in how the man had looked the previous evening. He was Western with pale skin; the orange light caught his dark hair and gave it a red tinge. Chung Su didn’t want to move, a childlike instinct told her that if she didn’t move and hid under the blanket everything would go away, the monster would disappear.
No, no, this man must not see I am afraid. I must be strong. I must …

It was all so unnatural, she was used to being fearless in pushing intellectual boundaries, gender boundaries, but this was something completely different, more immediate, it was true fear. The short, putrid Korean military officer raced through her mind, then her heart sunk even lower, realising that she would now probably never make it home. She didn’t even know if she would make it out of the room alive. Her nakedness rendered her extremely vulnerable.

“Bad dream?”

Chung Su was surprised by the calmness in the man’s voice. He was still looking up at the window; she had no answer for him.

“I empathise. You had early-stage hypothermia but we caught it in time, your appendages should be fine although you will experience severe aching for the next twenty-four hours.”

Chung Su’s thinking was still hazy so she focused on his lips when he spoke. As if he knew what she was doing he pronounced every word slowly and mouthed it clearly. He still didn’t look at her.

“Miss Chung, you are in no immediate danger, not from me. If I wanted to hurt you I would have. But let’s be clear. I am not here as a friend. It is in our mutual benefit that you stay alive. It is not important who I am, what is important is who you are, what you are doing in Italy … and who the men trying to kill you are.”

Chung Su didn’t know how to respond, each question had so many answers. After witnessing events the previous night she knew that the whole situation was out of her control …
I have never been in control.
Despite his promise of not wanting to kill her she was not naive enough to fully believe it.
I must not betray my country.

“Let’s start at the top, what are you doing here, Miss Chung?”

She didn’t answer.

The man turned his head and levelled his eyes at her, she shivered.

“This is not a game, time is not a luxury we have. There are two options: the first is you share with me what you know, and maybe I can help both of us get what we want; the second is that you stay silent and I pass you back to the men who want you dead.”

Chung Su felt her lip wobble, she fought the emotion. She would not let her country down by becoming upset.

“Talk.” He spoke gently.

“I don’t know anything.” Chung Su pulled her legs tight to her chest.

Luke shifted his body to face her and shook his head. “Let’s start with what you
do
know.”

Chung Su wanted to tell him that she had been ordered to undertake the mission and that it was not her choice. She almost laughed at the absurdity of the word
mission
. She had not even got close.

“Focus, Miss Chung. What are you doing in Teramo?” Luke asked.

“I was invited by CERN and the National Laboratory to be a special guest at the gala yesterday evening.” She choked at having her lifetime dream shattered.

“But that is not all you are here for is it?”

“What do you mean?”

“Why else were you here? And don’t waste time lying, people don’t try to kill you if you are just here to indulge in scientific chit chat.”

Chung Su began to panic. “I came here because I was invited, I have no idea what any of this is about.”

“I think you do.” Luke let the pistol drop into view. “Who were the two men who tried to kill you?”

She shook her head. “I don’t know, I have never seen them before.”

Luke stood up and walked over to the window, the time was approaching 3.30 p.m. and the winter sun was deep into its decline. It would soon disappear behind the Gran Sasso.

“You are no good to me if you lie, and if you are no good to me then I have no need for you, that means you are on your own. Good luck.”

Chung Su felt her options running out. She did not want to give information to the stranger but she also knew he was right. He protected her the previous evening. There was little doubt that without him she would be dead.

“I am going to give you one more chance, Miss Chung. I shall make it easier. I saw you recognise the two men, so I know that wasn’t the first time you had seen them. Who are they?”

Lying back on her makeshift bed Chung Su hesitated, then finally said, “I did recognise them. I think they have been following me since I arrived here. But I do not know why, or who they are.”

Luke could tell she was telling the truth; he scrutinised her breathing and tone of voice. “Have they been the only people you have noticed following you?”

“Yes.”

“Did Professor Brun tell you anything about what he was going to talk about last night?”

The question caught Chung Su off-guard. “Errr, I don’t …”

“I know you have had discussions with Professor Brun since you have been here. I need to know what you talked about.”

“We just … err … we talked about our work, which is what I was here for.”

“
Our
work? What is
your
work?”

Chung Su’s face flushed. “I am a physicist undertaking research in the same area as Professor Brun, particle physics and sub-atomic reactions; our work crosses over on many levels.”

Luke didn’t need details. “And did you discuss what the professor was going to say at the gala?”

I only wish we had
, thought Chung Su. For the first time she replayed Brun’s words. Her breath caught in her throat, at the sheer gravity of what he had claimed.
We were so far behind.
She suddenly felt trapped in the bare room, wanting only to find Brun and question him
. How have they given it life?
If such a thing were true then it was staggering, a true paradigm shift …
it can’t be true
.

“Miss Chung.” Luke brought her back. “Did you discuss what the professor was going to say at the gala?”

“No, well not exactly.”

“Go on.”

“I don’t know what you want me to say. The professor did talk to me about progressions he had made in his work. I had also read the recent release of information from CERN in regards to Professor Brun’s and …” she hesitated, “well, Professor Brun’s studies.”

“The studies that we now know were falsely portrayed as recent, you mean.” Luke rested against the wall.

Do I tell him the truth?
The weight of the secret she was keeping now weighed heavier than ever. She was alone and frightened, nothing made sense and she wondered if she could pour everything out to the stranger sat opposite. Would it bring relief?
The truth
. The truth that she had spent the past five years of her life replicating Vittorio and Brun’s neutrino observation experiments, and the truth that she and her team were only just at the point of calibrating machinery. The realisation that they were so far behind embarrassed her. She knew she could not tell anyone about her country’s experiments …
for the good of the nation and its people.
If she told she could be jeopardising the very men she had come to find.

“Focus, Miss Chung. What do you know of Professor Vittorio?”

Chung Su could now see the direction the questioning was heading. She was scared that her inexperience would betray her, she wanted to deflect. “Who are you? Why did you save me?”

“Vittorio, what do you know about him?” Luke persisted.

“I know what everyone else knows, he is a great scientist, who does great work.”

“And that he is missing.”

“Yes, we all know this. But I do not know anything about that, I swear.”

“Professor Vittorio is missing, and it seems very few people know where he is.” Luke stared at her, even though dishevelled she was striking.

“Is that what all this is about?” she asked.

“You tell me, Miss Chung. All I know is Professor Vittorio is missing, and two people are trying to kill a North Korean scientist who is apparently just visiting for a very secretive scientific gala.”

Chung Su didn’t answer; she didn’t have anything to add.

Luke knew the best way to get honesty from a subject was to talk about what they felt comfortable with. “How big is the discovery that Brun talked about tonight?”

“Big? How big? I do not think this English word
big
is a term that relates. This cannot be talked about with such terms.”

Luke could sense she wanted to talk, so he let the silence hang.

She obliged and continued: “When you find something that travels faster than the speed of light it is something truly remarkable, and frightening. We put so much faith in the laws of physics laid down by our predecessors. But if that platform is taken away … well then we must go back and look again at everything. But here … what Brun was suggesting last night is something that goes beyond that, a neutrino … do you know what that is?”

Luke had a vague idea from Brun but he shook his head to keep the flow. “It is more than just a triumph of nature, it is a triumph of our understanding of the world we live in. The greatest minds of the human race conceived an idea with nothing but pure theoretical physics, and went about proving it. The practical work, the endless testing, testing, testing. The neutrino is yet another example of human brilliance. But none of us were ready for the leap that was claimed last night.” Chung Su was now talking to herself. “What have they done?”

Luke analysed every twitch of her eyes, every quirk in her tone. There was an exceptional deep personal connection with what she was talking about, not a passion as much as an emotional investment. “You tell me what they have done, Miss Chung.”

There were so many competing thoughts running through Chung Su’s mind. She replayed Brun’s words.
Yin and Yang … balance … we have given the neutrino life.
It was all so cryptic, yet her heart felt clear. “I think, no, I surmise, that from what Brun was saying they have found a way of making the neutrino interact with the world around it. You see, the neutrino is called the ghost particle because it does not interact with the world around it; billions of neutrinos stream through rock, earth… everything. We long believed it not to have a mass at all.”

“Then how did they make it interact?” Luke asked.

Chung Su wished she had the answer, there was so much she wanted to ask.
Yin and Yang.
The eternal balance,
why would he use that term?
She shook her head, indicating she had no idea. “I do know that should this be true then it would change the world. Sheer volume alone means there are endless possibilities as to what it could do. It could do so much, imagine an endless supply of particles that could be harnessed, the energy…it could free the world.”