The Einstein Pursuit

36

Payne was beginning to understand what Sahlberg had meant when he said the pieces were coming together. Sahlberg knew Berglund. They had worked together. Someone had destroyed Berglund’s lab in Stockholm on the same day Sahlberg was hunted in Pittsburgh.

That wasn’t a coincidence. It couldn’t be.

But something was still missing.

Payne needed to learn more about their connection. ‘Why did you recruit Berglund?’

‘Why? Because the boy was wasting his vast potential,’ Sahlberg answered. ‘He had all this brilliance — it practically oozed from his pores like booze from a drunk — and yet he had no direction in his life. The first time we met, he was hustling people in the park for money. Not robbing them, mind you, simply using his brain to exploit them.’

‘In what way?’ Payne asked.

‘In every way,’ Sahlberg said, smiling. ‘Cards, checkers, chess. It didn’t really matter. If it involved strategy or memorization of any kind, he had an unfair advantage. You see, Tomas has a photographic memory. You could hand him a book, and ten minutes later he could recite it to you, forward and backward, and in a multitude of languages. Word got around about his abilities, and people used to show up at the park to test him. That’s how he made his money. He’d sit on a bench and take on all comers. Eventually he met somebody he couldn’t beat.’

‘You?’ Jones wondered.

Sahlberg laughed. ‘A friend of mine.’

Payne noticed the twinkle in Sahlberg’s eye. ‘You conned him, didn’t you?’

‘Of course I did! It was the only way to beat the lad. I bet him a substantial sum of money that a friend of mine could beat him in a game of chess. You have to understand, Tomas had the ability to play ten people at once, roaming from board to board without even pausing to think, so he jumped at the chance to play my friend for money.’

‘And?’ Jones blurted.

‘And what?’

‘And what happened next?’

Sahlberg laughed, enjoying his captive audience. ‘And obviously my friend won, or I wouldn’t be telling this story, now would I?’

‘Yeah, I realize that, but … how did he win?’

‘How?’ Sahlberg smiled, the twinkle in his eye getting brighter. ‘Oh, how silly of me! I must be getting old. I forgot to tell you one very important detail about my friend. I forgot to tell you his name … It was Bobby … Bobby Fischer.’

Jones gasped. ‘What? You were friends with Bobby Fischer? He’s the best chess player of all time. No wonder Berglund lost.’

‘Not friends, exactly. More like acquaintances. Actually, scratch that. I’d never met the man before that day. He was actually a friend of a friend, who just happened to be in town for a clinic, and we managed to arrange a game. Afterward, I made Tomas an offer he couldn’t refuse. I told him he wouldn’t have to pay me a cent of his substantial debt if he spent a week with me in the lab. He did the math in his head and realized it was a heck of a deal.’

‘What happened after that?’ Payne asked.

‘I introduced him to the best scientists in the world, and he was captivated by them. After that, there was no turning back. The boy became my protégé.’

‘He worked in your field?’

‘At first, yes. But once he got his sea legs, I let him do whatever he pleased. With a mind like that, I’d have been foolish to put limitations on his work. He was free to pursue whatever course he deemed most interesting, and he eventually found his way.’

‘Toward what?’ Jones asked.

‘Toward unlocking the secrets of the human body,’ Sahlberg said. ‘An incredibly ambitious task, I realize, but Tomas was never one to consider the impossibilities. To him, everything was attainable. Every answer was there for the taking. He simply needed to know how to find it.’

‘What kind of secrets do you mean?’ Payne asked. ‘I assume we’re still talking about things that are grounded in reality — by that I mean the physical universe. Berglund wasn’t trying to prove the existence of a soul, or discover latent memories of past lives, or anything along those lines, was he?’

‘He would have considered those pursuits to be studies in science fiction. I assure you, his research was planted squarely in the realm of science fact. Even if some of those facts had yet to be positively verified.’

‘Then what was his focus?’ Payne asked.

‘Tomas was born in 1945, a year after the Avery — MacLeod — McCarty experiment showed that it is deoxyribonucleic acid that carries genetic information.’

‘Deoxyribonucleic acid,’ Jones repeated. ‘You’re talking about DNA.’

‘I am,’ Sahlberg confirmed. ‘By the time Tomas was eight, Watson and Crick had given us the structure of the DNA molecule: the double helix that we have all come to know. While most kids his age were still learning their multiplication tables, Tomas’s attention was drawn to those types of discoveries.’

Jones shook his head at the thought of someone so young being able to comprehend something so dense. ‘When I was eight, the most fascinating thing in my world was learning that I could mix dirt and water to make mud. I’m building castles in the sandbox, and he was studying the building blocks of life.’

‘Indeed he was,’ Sahlberg agreed. ‘Eventually, under my guidance, his fundamental theories began to take shape. The more he learned, the more he was certain that every weakness of the human body could be countered at the molecular level.’

‘I thought the idea of gene therapy didn’t arise until sometime in the seventies, but you’re telling me that Berglund conceptualized it long before then?’ Jones asked.

‘The concept of gene therapy didn’t gain widespread acceptance until the early seventies, but by then Tomas had already been studying the science for over a decade. As I said, he was a man ahead of his time.’

‘He was interested in genes, and you were interested in cells. That’s why you took him under your wing,’ Payne surmised.

‘While not exactly the same, our fields of interest were quite similar, yes.’

‘Was he able to further your research?’

‘In ways that would have taken me a lifetime to envision. The specific details are somewhat irrelevant, but suffice it to say that the suggestions he offered were so far outside the box that they would have never occurred to me. At least not on the path I had chosen. Yet in light of his explanations, his advice made perfect sense. Would I have eventually reached the same conclusions? Perhaps. But at the very least he saved me years of fruitless wandering.’

Sahlberg took another drink and set the glass on the table. He folded his hands in his lap, as if paying his respects to a dear old friend. ‘I assume from this conversation that Tomas is among those dead in Stockholm?’

‘We can’t say for sure,’ Payne replied.

‘Trust us,’ Jones said, ‘it’s not that we won’t tell you, it’s that we really don’t know. All we can say for certain is that he apparently owned the facility. Let me ask you this: what was Tomas working on in Stockholm?’

‘I have no idea,’ Sahlberg said. ‘At least, not specifically. Our conversations were always theoretical. We spoke of things in the abstract. What might be possible. He knew I was often awake until dawn, and he would typically call in the dead of night. I think he appreciated the sleep-deprived ramblings of an old man. It was during these calls that I would allow my mind to go to places it would not venture after a full night’s sleep. It was the closest I ever got to thinking like Berglund. But we never discussed what he was actually working on.’

‘When’s the last time you spoke with him?’

‘It’s been more than two months now.’

‘Is that type of gap usual?’

‘No, not at all. Our calls were not an everyday occurrence by any means, but I had certainly grown accustomed to hearing from him every week or so. When he told me it might be a while until we spoke again, I was surprised, but nothing about it made me think that he was in danger.’

‘He told you he needed to lay low for a bit?’

‘No, he simply said it might be a while until I heard from him again. There was no implication of a threat, nor was it something I inferred from his tone. I merely assumed he needed to focus on the latest project.’

Payne walked over to his printer, opened the drawer underneath, and grabbed the list that Dial had sent to him after their conversation. He returned to the breakfast table and handed it to Sahlberg. ‘Do any of these names look familiar?’

They watched his reaction in silence.

It was obvious that he knew more than one.

‘They’re all dead?’ he whispered.

Payne nodded. ‘Unfortunately, yes.’

He took a moment to absorb the news. ‘What would you like to know?’

‘Whatever might be helpful,’ Jones said.

Sahlberg started at the top of the list. ‘Viktor Eisen was a microbiologist. His area of expertise was genetics. He worked at Caltech in the eighties and nineties, at the heart of what would become monumental advancements in gene mapping and sequencing. They were the precursors to the Human Genome Project, not to mention their contribution to cloning techniques.’

Payne and Jones took particular interest in the comments. For years they had heard tales of secret, underground facilities conducting human experimentation. In military circles, the talk had always centered on biologically engineered super-soldiers — men who had been made bigger, stronger and faster. No one knew where the possibilities ended. There were even rumors of men who could see in the dark and whose wounds would heal themselves almost instantly.

Most people considered those tales to be speculative at best.

But Payne and Jones weren’t most people. They knew that the reality of such technology was much closer than was generally thought.

‘Stephanie Albright,’ Sahlberg continued. ‘She was a chemist. She was instrumental in the building of Berkeley Lab’s Center for X-Ray Optics. For the first time, science could take advantage of the XUV — a subset of the electromagnetic spectrum that covers extreme ultraviolet light to low-energy X-rays.’

‘And why is that important?’ Payne asked.

‘Light in the XUV can be used to manipulate particles at an atomic scale. Molecules and atoms too small to be altered with traditional tools.’

‘Let’s go back a second,’ Jones said. ‘You said that Eisen worked at Caltech, and now you’re telling me that Albright designed an optics lab in Berkeley. What’s the connection to the west coast?’

‘It’s not merely a connection to the west coast,’ Sahlberg clarified, ‘it’s a connection to a very specific pipeline of activity.’

‘I’m not following,’ Jones said.

‘Neither am I,’ Payne agreed.

‘All of these scientists — from Tomas right down to the last name on the list — all followed the same path at the beginning of their careers. All were lured to Pittsburgh by the prospect of funding, just as they were later enticed to California by the temptation of fame and riches. As for what drew them to Stockholm, I simply do not know.’

‘I’m confused,’ Jones admitted. ‘I know Pittsburgh used to be the steel capital of the world, but what does that have to do with scientific funding?’

‘Absolutely nothing.’

‘Then what did Pittsburgh offer that other cities couldn’t?’

Payne answered for him. ‘Jonas Salk.’

Sahlberg smiled. ‘That’s absolutely correct. When the polio vaccine was announced in 1955, Salk and this city were thrust to the forefront of the scientific world. Money rolled in from everywhere. It came from wealthy businessmen hoping to have their name attributed to a cure, from foundations established solely in the name of scientific discovery, from destitute mothers hoping against hope that their pennies would be the last contribution needed to finally cure whatever it was that was killing their children. The amount of money available was staggering. And your father was one of those leading the pack.’

‘Really? In what way?’ Payne asked.

‘In every way. He invested a sizeable chunk of Payne Industries’ capital in medical ventures. Not to mention vast contributions from his personal fortune. He also pushed his contemporaries at other companies to follow suit. He understood the implications of finding success, and he was willing to bet big. His interests were as diverse as his resources would allow.’

‘If things were so good here, why did everyone leave?’

‘Again, it all started with Salk. In 1963, he channeled the interest in his work — and the limitless financial backing that came with it — and established the Salk Institute in La Jolla. There he could offer the same resources with the added benefit of a southern California climate. His colleagues in Pittsburgh followed in droves. From there, they eventually branched out to other places, such as Caltech and Berkeley. Many of the others went on to their own laudable achievements as well.’

‘Why didn’t you follow them west?’ Payne wondered.

Sahlberg smiled. ‘There was no need. I had everything I could ever want right here. My lab, my house, and your father’s unwavering support. I wasn’t about to abandon any of it. Money and fame aren’t nearly as important as loyalty.’