“You’ve lost me again. What’s molecular manufacturing?”
“It’s building nano-sized devices essentially atom by atom, molecule by molecule. It is the key to making these nanorobots. The head-hunter told me that Nano had already built some microbivore prototypes and had begun testing them in vivo. At that point it was a no-brainer for me. You’ll have to see scanning electron microscope images we have of these things. They’ll blow you away. Truly. They are incredible.”
“My mind is ready to be blown!” George said, looking at Pia, who returned his stare with more eye contact than usual. He could tell her formidable mind was in high gear. As so often happened, he worried that she could read his mind and realize how little he knew about what she was so passionate about and, if she could, the progress they seemed to be making reconnecting on a personal level would evaporate.
“I guess I’m going to learn a lot about nanotechnology.”
“Wait a second,” Pia commented. “George, you didn’t move to L.A. because I—”
“No, no, of course not.” George desperately wanted to change this particular subject. He had moved to L.A. because of Pia for sure, but at the moment he didn’t want to admit it and look weak. He knew Pia hated when he seemed weak and apologetic. “This work with microbivores must be fascinating,” he continued lamely. “Will you be able to show me what you are doing? I’d love to check it out.”
Pia continued to regard George with an intensity that made him look away.
“I really am starved,” George said, needing to say something. He rubbed his hands together nervously and changed the subject. “What about some lunch? You must be hungry yourself.”
Pia glanced over at George’s roller bag, then back to George. “Where are you intending to stay?”
“Actually, I was hoping . . . ” George said, smiling his broadest, albeit insincere smile. It had worked in the past with other women, but he feared it was wasted on Pia.
Pia closed her eyes for a moment and shook her head almost imperceptibly. “How long are you intending to stay in Boulder?”
“Not long,” George added hopefully. “I only got a couple of days free. I told my chief it was a family emergency. I have to go back on Tuesday. I’m hoping to talk you into reciprocating and coming out to L.A. sometime soon.”
“Okay, we’ll talk about that later. Lunch? Sure, but it’ll have to be fast. Then how about we head out to where I work. I can show you some of what I’ve been doing. The fact is, I’ve got a couple of experiments running I need to check on within the hour.”
“Sounds good,” said George. He brightened. It seemed like progress, of a sort.
2.
ABOARD A GULFSTREAM G550 JET OVER THE WESTERN PACIFIC OCEAN EN ROUTE TO BOULDER MUNICIPAL AIRPORT
SUNDAY, APRIL 21, 2013
Zachary Berman was happiest when he was flying, and preferably, as he was now, on the Gulfstream jet owned by Nano, LLC, of which he was the majority stockholder, president, and CEO. He loved the feeling of time being suspended as the plane sped on toward its destination at 51,000 feet, currently far above the seemingly limitless expanse of the Pacific Ocean, heading for the North American continent. However hectic and stressful his life was on the ground, in the air he felt detached, safe, maybe even invincible. The plane had communications that rivaled those of Air Force One, but by turning them off, he had plenty of time to plan, strategize, and gloat about Nano’s progress, especially on a long flight like this one: Beijing to Boulder, more than six thousand miles as the crow flies. Of course Zach, as most people called him, knew that his plane’s journey would be less than that, due to the plane’s polar route and the oblate shape of the earth.
As far as Zach was concerned, the trip had been a great success to the point of bringing a smile to his face. Putting his work aside, he lowered the back of his chair and raised the footrest, turning the seat into a comfortable lounger. Cradled in the hand-selected, hand-stitched Moroccan leather, he thought about Nano’s spreadsheets and capital needs. A smile appeared on his stubble encrusted, masculine face. For the moment things seemed to be going swimmingly. He even allowed himself to doze.
About an hour later, as Berman nursed the dregs of what would be his last single-malt scotch of the trip and with the back of his chair in the upright position, he idly looked out of the plane’s small window. His mind turned as it often did to his father and to the question of what he would have made of his son’s enormous recent success and flying home from a business trip to China in a sumptuous private jet that was, for all practical purposes, his. Every day as he looked in the mirror to shave, Zachary flinched at his progressive resemblance to his late father, Eli, especially now that Zach was closing in on fifty.
This was one reason he kept his thick, slightly salt-and-pepper hair considerably longer than his father’s closely cropped style. Zachary’s expensive cut would have made the older man blanch. Growing up in a middle-class home in a strongly blue-collar neighborhood in Palisades Park, New Jersey, Zachary often saw flecks of paint in his dad’s hair, an occupational hazard for a painting contractor, and he wondered why his father took so little interest in his appearance and what it implied. When Zach worked summers for his dad, from the time he was fourteen through college and grad school, he always wore a baseball cap as protection against such paint splatters. He’d worried their presence would mark him as a mere day laborer. From an early age, Zach had set his sights high.
A more profound disconnect between father and son was over what Zachary saw as Eli’s contentment and fundamental lack of ambition. Even as Zachary excelled at Yale as an undergraduate and at Harvard Law School, Eli plodded along in the paint business without any concern to make it grow. Still, his father felt entitled to deride his son’s inability to play baseball as well as he had, and had railed at his decision not to go into medicine as Eli had so vociferously voiced.
As the years passed, Eli’s contempt for his son’s career choices only increased as Zachary abruptly abandoned his rather well-paid corporate law job in Manhattan to enter the financial world, and then, after ten years, quit his extremely lucrative job as an analyst on Wall Street. Zachary had tried to explain to an uncomprehending Eli that he had become bored and thought of Wall Street as a big con, believing there was much better money to be made and certainly more satisfaction in actually creating something, not just playing around with paper, betting on a rigged market with other people’s money.
Zachary’s watch sounded a single soft chime, reminding him of the time and hence the proximity of their destination, and he swiveled in his seat to face the back of the plane. Halfway down sat Berman’s private assistant cum secretary, Whitney Jones. She looked right at Berman, ready for his instruction. In one of her straight-line Chanel suits, she was exquisite. Her black hair was pulled back from her face to show off her striking features, which combined the best of her African American father and Singaporean Chinese mother. For Zach, seeing her profile never failed to remind him of the famous bust of Nefertiti housed in the Neues Museum in Berlin. Berman merely tipped his head very slightly, and Jones, ever attentive, unclipped her seat belt. With an equivalent return nod, she stood. From previous instructions, she knew it was time to wake up their guests.
Confident that everything was being taken care of, Berman turned his attention back to the view and to his reverie. “A day’s hard work is its own reward,” Eli Berman had probably said once a week over the course of his whole adult life. He was distressed that his son couldn’t seem to settle on anything and failed to appreciate what Eli had learned in the decades he had given to his paint business. Berman smiled. He far preferred being at 51,000 feet in a Gulfstream jet to any satisfaction gained from a day’s manual labor.
Zachary absentmindedly played with his wedding band. The coming weeks were vitally important to his enterprise and billions of dollars were at stake, yet his wife and chi
ldren, who should have been more involved in his triumph, were in New York City, barely aware of Zachary’s work and the role he was playing in the fantastic evolution of nanotechnology. Zachary had wanted children, or so he thought, but he found domestic life as humdrum as he’d found corporate law. Ever since he’d been a child he’d been addicted to challenge and creativity. He couldn’t stand status quo and predictability. He’d broken his wedding vows many times, even with Whitney Jones on a few occasions, and he’d come to think of his own family with little sentiment above and beyond the need to provide for them in an appropriate manner.
“Work is its own reward,” Zachary silently mouthed contemptuously. It had been another, similar one of his father’s dictums. “Somebody should have told that to Jonathan,” Zach added. Jonathan had been Zachary’s beloved younger brother, the one who could play baseball, and Eli’s obvious favorite, who had died in agony from bone cancer, the failed treatment proving to be even worse torture than the disease.
“No, Dad, the reward is whatever you can take, whenever you can.”
Zachary changed when Jonathan died. He’d always pushed himself, but after his brother’s demise he had become supercharged, and had started to be reckless. He left Wall Street when Jonathan had been diagnosed, and Zachary helped Jonathan run their father’s firm while Jonathan was being treated.
Unfortunately Jonathan’s aggressive cancer was not to be denied, and he died within four months. As if from a broken heart, Eli, who had developed rapid-onset dementia, followed quickly, leaving Zachary, a cynical and ambitious man, in charge of a moderately successful company that was poking along with seemingly little upside.
As a gesture of respect to his brother and his father, Zachary gave himself six months to make something of Berman Painting and Contracting, taking on the challenge at sixty miles per hour. He cut prices aggressively, hired more crews, and immersed himself in the details of the business, looking for some angle that might persuade him that it was worth his time. When Zachary found an article about the possible uses of nanotechnology in paint he almost didn’t bother to read it. Paint was paint was paint. What relevance could it have for him when he was busting a gut trying to establish a foothold over the competition in northern New Jersey?
But Zach did read the article, particularly a section about research into the use of carbon nanotubes in paint that could block cell phone signals in a concert hall. He read the piece again and quickly went on to read all he could find on nanotechnology. Zach was convinced this was fertile ground that was virtually unexplored and certainly underexploited. There was so much about nanotechnology that he didn’t understand, but the potential was obvious, exciting, and challenging. In college he’d steered clear of chemistry, math, physics, and even biology. He now regretted it. He had a lot to learn, and he applied himself with the zeal of a starving man having stumbled into a grocery store.
Within weeks, he had sold the business at a healthy profit and given all the proceeds to Jonathan’s widow, and with that he felt he had fulfilled his obligation to his brother’s family. When his mother was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s some months later, and Zachary realized nanotechnology might possibly offer some hope, he felt thoroughly vindicated. Suddenly he was consumed by the promise of nanotechnology in the medical realm. What if he could cure bone cancer as a fitting tribute to his late brother? And what about his mother? Could he help her? Why not? With nanotechnology the sky was the limit.
Zachary felt a light pressure on his arm. It was Whitney. As she leaned in to whisper, Zachary smelled the fetching perfume she wore as well as her personal pheromones, and the scents conjured up a brief but welcome image of her long, toned body stretched out on a bed.
“They’re all set,” Whitney whispered. “We’re landing in forty-five minutes.”
Zachary nodded and stood up and stretched his arms, shoulders, and legs. His clothes—black T-shirt and blue jeans—fit tightly over a muscular body. Zachary was health conscious, particularly after Jonathan’s sudden illness and demise and his parents’ dementia. Even when he was busy, which he always was, he found time to work out and eat healthfully.
Berman freely admitted he’d become something of a hypochondriac, and he regularly took advantage of the fact that Nano employed a number of doctors. What consumed Zachary was the fear that he would suffer the same Alzheimer’s dementia he witnessed in both his parents as they descended relentlessly into total helplessness. Hoping to reassure himself, he had himself tested for the apolipoprotein E4 gene associated with an increased risk of the disease. To his horror, the test had the opposite effect. He’d learned that he was homozygous for the gene, a factor that increased his risk, as did the fact that both his parents had had it. For Zach, his interest in medical nanotechnology became a personal obsession.
“Time for our little speech,” said Zachary, and he followed Whitney toward the rear of the plane. Seated in leather armchairs similar to his were three Chinese men attired in carefully tailored Western-style suits. In a jump seat in the very rear of the plane was a large and serious-looking Caucasian man whose bulky jacket concealed a variety of airplane-safe weapons: a Taser, knives, and a rubber truncheon. He had never had cause to use any of these on a trip such as this because the main cargo was very secure. Four figures in shapeless brown jumpsuits slumped in the facing banquettes. The plane’s manufacturers may have designed the seats and table for a card game or a meal on a long flight, but Zachary had found the arrangement perfect for his purposes. The four, three men and a woman, were shackled together and chained to the table. They were unconscious, having been tranquilized when they had reached altitude.
Berman and Jones stood side by side. Zachary spoke and Whitney translated into her perfect Mandarin for their Chinese guests. Her fluency in the language was one of the reasons she was paid more than a million dollars a year.
“We will be landing at our destination shortly,” Berman said. “Please follow our representative into the vehicle that will meet the plane. We will proceed directly to the research plant, where you will be staying in very comfortable accommodations. Our luggage will follow us to the facility.” Berman motioned to the four passengers with his head, including them as part of the plane’s designated cargo.
“We are entering a very exciting phase of our partnership. As we advance together toward our common goal we must focus on the end objective that we have all identified, toward which we have been working so hard.” Berman paused and waited for Jones to finish. He finished in Mandarin.
“Welcome to Nano.”
The men nodded and muttered a greeting of their own. They seemed nervous, aware of the responsibility the secret branch of their government had placed upon them.
Berman resumed his seat, steepled his fingers together, leaned back in his chair, and closed his eyes. For the last few minutes of the trip home, he wanted to think of the best reason he could for getting back to Boulder. On the trip out to China and even as he was conducting his vital business, his mind had been preoccupied by the same thoughts . . . Pia Grazdani.
3.
NANO, LLC, BOULDER, COLORADO
SUNDAY, APRIL 21, 2013, 12:33 P.M.
“So the company you work for is called Nano. What’s the main guy’s name again?” George shouted to make himself heard above the sound of the wind and raspy growl of the VW’s engine. It was a fire-engine red VW GTI. He didn’t even know Pia could drive, let alone like this. He gripped the edges of his bucket seat and nervously watched the winding road as Pia slalomed along.
Every time they turned, he reflexively pressed his left foot against the floor pan as if he could influence what the car might do with an imaginary foot brake. The last thing he wanted was for the vehicle to spin out on one of the hairpin turns. They were heading up into the foothills of the Rocky Mountains that cascaded down onto Boulder like an angry sea. The aspens were still leafless despite the fact that it was
almost May, and their spidery branches, in contrast to the dark evergreens, looked yellow. On straightaways, where he felt he could release his life-or-death grip on the seat, George wrapped his arms around himself. Coming from Los Angeles, he thought the place was damned cold. Pia seemed immune. She was still dressed in her jogging clothes and a sweatshirt thrown over her shoulders.
“Berman. Zachary Berman,” Pia yelled back. The car’s windows were down, and the wind was whipping around her jet-black, nearly shoulder-length hair. She was wearing a pair of cycling sunglasses that curved around the side of her head. When George hazarded a glance in her direction, he saw a distorted reflected image of himself. His hair was standing on end and his face was twisted horizontally.
“What’s he like?”
“I don’t know much about him,” said Pia, telling a white lie. Despite what she wasn’t telling George, Pia didn’t know a huge amount about Berman above and beyond what was in the press. He was a kind of international playboy in the mold of a few other more famous, relatively young, highly successful business entrepreneurs such as Richard Branson and Larry Ellison. But she did know that although he was married with kids, it was, in his words, an open marriage.
The reality was that Zachary Berman had happened upon Pia in one of Nano’s several cafeterias and was actively pursuing her. At first Pia had allowed herself to have a few casual dates with the man because she was truly impressed with what he was accomplishing in nanotechnology and the promise he represented in medical nanotechnology. But when he started to get personal, and she learned about the Berman family in New York, she put an end to it, to Zachary’s chagrin.
Then it became a problem. As a man unaccustomed to hearing the word no from a woman, he’d become a pest, as far as Pia was concerned. Even if he hadn’t been married, she wouldn’t have been all that interested in any kind of a relationship. She was in Boulder to work and recover from the emotional trauma she’d experienced in New York City. Besides, she didn’t even know if she was capable of a relationship even if he was not the driven, selfish man she thought he was. Over the years, Pia had become quite knowledgeable about her social limitations.