Angels & Demons - Hassaan Bin Khalil

“He’s right.” Vittoria’s voice was frail.
Both men turned. Vittoria was moving toward them, her gait as tremulous as her words.
“He’s right. Nobody could reverse engineer a recharger in time. The interface alone would take
weeks. Flux filters, servo-coils, power conditioning alloys, all calibrated to the specific energy grade of
the locale.”
Langdon frowned. The point was taken. An antimatter trap was not something one could simply plug
into a wall socket. Once removed from CERN, the canister was on a one-way, twenty-four-hour trip to
oblivion.
Which left only one, very disturbing, conclusion.
“We need to call Interpol,” Vittoria said. Even to herself, her voice sounded distant. “We need to call
the proper authorities. Immediately.”
Kohler shook his head. “Absolutely not.”
The words stunned her. “No? What do you mean?”
“You and your father have put me in a very difficult position here.”
“Director, we need help. We need to find that trap and get it back here before someone gets hurt. We
have a responsibility!”
“We have a responsibility to think,” Kohler said, his tone hardening. “This situation could have very,
very serious repercussions for CERN.”
“You’re worried about CERN’s reputation? Do you know what that canister could do to an urban
area? It has a blast radius of a half mile! Nine city blocks!”
“Perhaps you and your father should have considered that before you created the specimen.”
Vittoria felt like she’d been stabbed. “But… we took every precaution.”
“Apparently, it was not enough.”
“But nobody knew about the antimatter.” She realized, of course, it was an absurd argument. Of
course somebody knew. Someone had found out.
Vittoria had told no one. That left only two explanations. Either her father had taken someone into his
confidence without telling her, which made no sense because it was her father who had sworn them
both to secrecy, or she and her father had been monitored. The cell phone maybe? She knew they had
spoken a few times while Vittoria was traveling. Had they said too much? It was possible. There was
also their E-mail. But they had been discreet, hadn’t they? CERN’s security system? Had they been
monitored somehow without their knowledge? She knew none of that mattered anymore. What was
done, was done. My father is dead.
The thought spurred her to action. She pulled her cell phone from her shorts pocket.
Kohler accelerated toward her, coughing violently, eyes flashing anger. “Who… are you calling?”
“CERN’s switchboard. They can connect us to Interpol.”
“Think!” Kohler choked, screeching to a halt in front of her. “Are you really so naive? That canister
could be anywhere in the world by now. No intelligence agency on earth could possibly mobilize to
find it in time.”
“So we do nothing?” Vittoria felt compunction challenging a man in such frail health, but the director
was so far out of line she didn’t even know him anymore.
“We do what is smart,” Kohler said. “We don’t risk CERN’s reputation by involving authorities who
cannot help anyway. Not yet. Not without thinking.”
Vittoria knew there was logic somewhere in Kohler’s argument, but she also knew that logic, by
definition, was bereft of moral responsibility. Her father had lived for moral responsibility—careful
science, accountability, faith in man’s inherent goodness. Vittoria believed in those things too, but she
saw them in terms of karma. Turning away from Kohler, she snapped open her phone.
“You can’t do that,” he said.
“Just try and stop me.”
Kohler did not move.