The Omega Theory Read online

  ALSO BY MARK ALPERT

  Final Theory

  Touchstone

  A Division of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

  1230 Avenue of the Americas

  New York, NY 10020

  www.SimonandSchuster.com

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2011 by Mark Alpert

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information address Touchstone Subsidiary Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020.

  First Touchstone hardcover edition February 2011

  Touchstone and colophon are registered trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

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  Designed by Akasha Archer

  Map by Bryan Christie Design

  Manufactured in the United States of America

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Alpert, Mark, 1961–

  The omega theory : a novel / Mark Alpert.

  p. cm.

  “A Touchstone book.”

  1. Physics teachers—Fiction. 2. Nuclear terrorism—Fiction. 3. Women physicists—Fiction. 4. Historians of science—Fiction. 5. Women intelligence officers—Fiction. 6. Einstein, Albert, 1879–1955—Influence—Fiction. I. Title.

  PS3601.L67O64 2011

  813'.6—dc22

  2010043737

  ISBN 978-1-4165-9534-2

  ISBN 978-1-4391-0008-0 (ebook)

  For my parents and my brother, who taught me how to dream

  Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.

  —ALBERT EINSTEIN

  1

  IT HAPPENED ON A TUESDAY, JUNE 7TH, AT 4:46 P.M. WHILE MICHAEL GUPTA was in his behavioral therapy session. There was a knock on the door and Dr. Parsons went to answer it. Just before he got there, the door opened wide and Michael heard a quick, muffled burst. Dr. Parsons tumbled backward and his head hit the floor. He lay motionless on his back, a jagged black hole in the center of his polo shirt. In less than a second, the hole filled with blood.

  They were in the computer room of the Upper Manhattan Autism Center, which Michael visited every weekday afternoon. He was nineteen years old and his teachers had said he’d made great progress over the past two years, but he still needed to improve his social skills so that he wouldn’t get nervous on a crowded sidewalk or start moaning if someone bumped into him. So Dr. Parsons had found a computer program called Virtual Contact that presented simulations of people and places, animated figures walking down realistic-looking streets. The point of the program was to teach Michael that ordinary social encounters weren’t dangerous. The doctor was just about to show him how to launch the simulation when they heard the knock at the door.

  About one and a half seconds after Dr. Parsons collapsed, a man and a woman stepped through the doorway, both dressed in baggy, dark blue jumpsuits. The man was tall and his hair was a black crew cut and he had a long, curved scar on the side of his neck. Michael didn’t look at the man’s face. He usually avoided looking at faces because he didn’t like to make eye contact, and most of the time he couldn’t figure out the meaning of facial expressions anyway. The woman was also tall and her hair was almost as short as the man’s, but Michael could tell it was a woman because her bosoms puffed out the front of her jumpsuit. Her left hand had bandages on three of the fingers, and in her right hand she held a gun.

  Michael knew about guns. He’d seen them before, and not just in video games. The woman’s gun had a silencer, a fat gray cylinder attached to the muzzle. That was why the gunshot had sounded muffled. The woman had shot Dr. Parsons and now she was going to shoot him, too.

  She took a step toward him. Michael let out a moan. He slid off his chair and curled up into a ball on the linoleum floor. He closed his eyes and started calculating the Fibonacci sequence, which was something he did whenever he was frightened. Michael had inherited excellent mathematical abilities; in fact, he was a great-great-grandson of Albert Einstein, although he wasn’t supposed to tell anyone about that. And the Fibonacci sequence was easy to calculate: each number in the sequence is equal to the sum of the two previous numbers. The digits flashed on the black screen of his eyelids, swiftly streaming from right to left like the words at the bottom of a television screen: 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89 . . .

  The woman took two more steps and stood over him. Michael opened his eyes. Although his forehead was pressed against the linoleum, he could see her shadow.

  “It’s all right, Michael,” she said. Her voice was quiet and slow. “I’m not going to hurt you.”

  He moaned louder, trying to drown her out.

  “Don’t be afraid,” she said. “We’re going on a trip. A big adventure.”

  He heard a jangling noise. Out of the corner of his eye he saw two pairs of wheels. The man with the black crew cut had rolled an ambulance gurney into the room. He pulled a lever that lowered the gurney to the floor. At the same moment, the woman grabbed Michael by the wrist. He tried to scream but she clapped her hand over his mouth. Then she turned to the man. “Get the fentanyl!”

  Michael started thrashing. He kicked and squirmed and flailed so violently that all he could remember afterward was a sickening whirl. They strapped him into the gurney, tying down his arms and legs. Then they put a plastic mask over his face, an oxygen mask. Michael couldn’t scream, couldn’t breathe. All he could do was bang the back of his head against the gurney’s mattress, pounding so hard that the guardrails on either side of him vibrated. The woman turned the valve of a steel canister that was connected by plastic tubing to Michael’s oxygen mask. He felt air pumping into the mask, air that smelled sweet and bitter at the same time. In a few seconds all the strength drained out of his limbs and he couldn’t move at all.

  It was like being halfway between awake and asleep. He could still see and hear but everything seemed very distant. The man and woman in blue jumpsuits pushed the gurney down the corridor toward the emergency exit. Then they slammed through the door and headed for an ambulance that was parked at the corner of Broadway and Ninety-eighth Street. Michael saw a crowd of people on the sidewalk, all of them stopping to stare at the gurney. He was so groggy he could barely lift his head, but he forced himself to look at the faces in the crowd. He was looking for David Swift. The last time Michael had been in trouble, two years ago, David had saved him. Ever since then Michael had lived in David’s apartment, sharing a bedroom with David’s son, Jonah. They were Michael’s family now, David and his wife, Monique, and Jonah and Baby Lisa. He was certain that David would come running down the street any second.

  But David wasn’t there. All the people on the sidewalk were strangers. The man with the black crew cut opened the rear doors of the ambulance and then he and the woman hoisted the gurney into the vehicle. The woman got inside, too, and shut the doors while the man walked to the front of the ambulance and got into the driver’s seat. The woman sat down in a jump seat beside the gurney. Her knees were just a few inches to the left of Michael’s head. Then the ambulance started moving.

  Michael stared straight up at a control panel on the ceiling and began to count the number of switches there, but the woman leaned over him, blocking his view. She removed his oxygen mask. “There, that’s more comfortable,” s
he said. “You’re not hurt anywhere, are you?”

  He took a deep breath. With the mask off, his head began to clear. He tried to turn away from the woman, but she grasped his chin with her bandaged fingers and pulled it back. Her grip was very strong. “I’m sorry we had to rush you,” she said, “but we don’t have much time.”

  She leaned over some more, bringing her face so close that Michael couldn’t help but look at it. She had gray eyes and a slender nose. Her eyebrows looked like black commas. Her lips curved into a smile, which was confusing. Why was she smiling at him?

  “My name is Tamara,” she said. “You’re a handsome boy, you know that?”

  She let go of his chin and stroked his hair. He wanted to scream again but his throat was so tight he couldn’t make a sound. Her bandaged fingers moved slowly across his scalp.

  “I’m taking you to Brother Cyrus,” she said. “He’s looking forward to meeting you.”

  Michael closed his eyes. He tried again to calculate the Fibonacci sequence, but instead of numbers he saw words in his head now, scrolling rapidly from right to left. They were German words: Die allgemeine Relativitatstheorie war bisher in erster Linie . . .

  “You’ll like Brother Cyrus. He’s a good man. And right now he needs your help. It’s very important.”

  He kept his eyes closed. Maybe if he ignored her long enough, she would stop talking and go away. But after a few seconds he felt the woman’s hand on his cheek.

  “Are you listening, Michael? Do you understand what I’m saying?”

  He nodded. The German words kept streaming through his head. Then the equations scrolled past, a long string of Greek letters and mathematical operations, with symbols shaped like snakes and pitchforks and crosses. They were his secret, his treasure. He’d promised David Swift that he’d never reveal the theory to anyone.

  He opened his eyes. “I won’t help you,” he said. “You killed Dr. Parsons.”

  “I’m sorry, that was unavoidable. We have to follow orders.”

  Michael saw the doctor in his memory, tumbling backward with the bloody hole in his polo shirt. David had warned that something like this might happen. There were bad people, he’d said, who wanted to use the secret theory to make weapons. Michael had asked, “What kind of weapons?” and David had replied, “Weapons that are worse than atomic bombs. Guns that could kill half the people on earth with a single shot.”

  The woman named Tamara tried to stroke his hair again, but he shook his head. “I won’t tell you anything! You want to use the theory to make weapons!”

  “Are you referring to the unified field theory? The equations you’ve memorized?”

  Michael pressed his lips together. He wasn’t going to say another word.

  “Let me set your mind at ease. We already know some of the equations in the unified theory, and if we’d wanted to use that knowledge to build weapons, we could’ve done so a long time ago.” Her strong hand cupped his chin and held him still. “Listen closely now. Brother Cyrus is a man of peace. Like the prophet Isaiah. Have you ever read the Book of Isaiah?”

  Michael felt sick. Tamara’s hot breath was on his face. She was too close and he couldn’t turn away. “Let go of me! I want to go home!”

  “The wolf shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid. And a child shall lead them.” She smiled. “That’s you, Michael. That’s why Brother Cyrus needs you. You’re going to help us fulfill the prophecy.”

  He started screaming. There was nothing else he could do.

  Without letting go of his chin, Tamara stretched her other hand toward the steel canister and turned its valve. “But now you need to rest. We have a long journey ahead of us.”

  Then the oxygen mask came down again.

  2

  AT 4:52 P.M., LESS THAN TEN MINUTES BEFORE DAVID SWIFT WAS SCHEDULED to open the Physicists for Peace conference, the Islamic Republic of Iran announced that it had just tested a nuclear bomb. One of the conference organizers got an alert on his iPhone, and the word quickly spread to the hundreds of scientists and journalists who’d gathered for the event. They made a beeline for the nearest television set, which was in the lobby of Pupin Hall, Columbia University’s physics building. David went with them and watched the story unfold on the flat-panel screen. Somber CNN reporters stood in front of the White House and tirelessly repeated the few facts that were available. A grainy video showed the celebration in the Iranian Parliament, bearded men in black turbans embracing each other. Then a map of Iran stretched across the screen, with a red X in the Kavir Desert marking the site of the underground detonation.

  “Officials at the State Department had no comment,” the anchorman intoned, “but intelligence analysts said the nuclear test was apparently successful. They estimated that the strength of the explosion was between ten and fifteen kilotons, about the same as the bomb that destroyed Hiroshima.”

  No one could say it was unexpected. For almost a decade all the experts had predicted that Iran would eventually manufacture enough highly enriched uranium to build a nuclear weapon. But seeing the predictions come true on CNN was still a shock. David stared at the television and wiped the sweat from his brow. He felt empty and anxious and sick to his stomach.

  “The president is meeting with his advisers in the Oval Office. White House sources say he will address the nation at nine o’clock tonight.”

  David shook his head. All his efforts over the past two years had been aimed at preventing this. Officially, he was still a professor in Columbia’s history of science program, but his work with Physicists for Peace took up most of his time now. He’d used his contacts in the scientific community to create an organization with more than two thousand members around the world. As the director, spokesman, and chief fund-raiser for the group, David had appeared several times on CNN himself, a hopelessly earnest forty-six-year-old activist in a threadbare tweed jacket, preaching about the need for international friendship and cooperation. All along, though, he’d suspected that no one was taking him seriously. To the networks and newspapers, he was just another oddball, another eccentric professor with unkempt hair and impractical ideas. Good for an occasional quote, but ultimately irrelevant.

  “In a brief statement, the secretary of defense said the Pentagon was studying its options. A carrier group led by the USS Theodore Roosevelt has reversed course and is now heading toward the Persian Gulf.”

  He stood there, paralyzed, for the next few minutes, listening to the newscasters’ breathless reiterations. At 5 P.M. he was supposed to give the welcoming address for the conference, but he made no move toward the lecture hall. It was pointless, he thought. How could he talk about peace when the whole world was preparing for war? He wished he could cancel his address and go home to his apartment. Maybe take Baby Lisa for a stroll in Central Park. Or toss the softball with Jonah and Michael.

  Then he heard someone nearby clear her throat. He turned around and saw Monique. His wife cocked her head and smiled. One of her lovely eyebrows rose slightly, arching a few millimeters higher on her forehead. Her face was dark brown and shaped like a heart. “Isn’t it time for your speech, Professor?”

  David was delighted to see her. Although Monique was also involved in Physicists for Peace—she was one of the most highly regarded theorists in the country—she’d told David she couldn’t attend his opening speech because she was working at the computer lab that evening. She and another physicist from Columbia’s department were running a particle-collision simulation program on the university’s supercomputer, which was so much in demand that the time slots for using the machine couldn’t be rescheduled. “What happened?” David asked. “Did your computer break down?”

  She shook her head. She wore her usual work clothes—faded jeans, old sneakers, and a Bob Marley T-shirt—but she still looked better than anyone else in Pupin Hall. Her hair was braided in gorgeous cornrows that trailed down her back. “No, it’s just a delay. They bumped our run by twenty minutes. I h
ad just enough time to swing by and wish you luck.”

  He smiled back at her. “Well, I can use it.” He pointed at the television screen. “You see the news? The Iranians tested a nuke.”

  Monique’s face turned serious. She pressed her lips together and narrowed her eyes. “Forget the news, David. You have—”

  “How can I forget it? No one’s gonna be interested in anything else.”

  “No, you’re wrong. These people have come from all over the world to hear you. They want to hear about peace, not war.”

  “That reminds me of an old saying. Peace activists can’t put an end to war, but war can put an end to peace activism.”

  “I don’t believe that. Not for a second.”

  A thin vertical line appeared between those lovely eyebrows. David knew what it meant. Monique was a fighter, born in a rough housing project in the Anacostia section of Washington, D.C. Although she’d suffered all the disadvantages of poverty and neglect, she’d fought her way out of the ghetto and into the Ivy League, becoming a professor at one of the best physics departments in the world. It wasn’t in her nature to give up. She hadn’t even considered it.

  David leaned over and kissed her forehead, brushing his lips against the vertical line. “All right. I’ll start herding the crowd. Thanks for the pep talk.”

  “Anytime, baby.” She slipped her hand under his jacket and gave his waist a surreptitious squeeze. “I’ll come home as soon as I finish the computer run, okay? I’ll give you a little reward for all your hard work.” She winked at him before heading for the exit.

  He watched her leave, his eyes fixed on her jeans. Then he gave a signal to one of his grad students, who began directing the conference attendees toward the stairway. Within ten minutes everyone had reassembled in the lecture hall, settling into rows of varnished seats that hadn’t been renovated in half a century. David had chosen this venue partly for its symbolism. On the same floor of Pupin Hall was the laboratory where the atomic age had begun. Seventy-two years ago a team of scientists led by Enrico Fermi had used Columbia’s cyclotron to split uranium atoms. Although the scientists later relocated to a bigger lab in Los Alamos, New Mexico, the effort became known as the Manhattan Project because that was where it had started. The cyclotron was gone now, dismantled and carted away and sold for scrap, but David still felt its presence. He couldn’t think of a better place to have this discussion.