The God Particle (7 page)

‘Release the first beam in three… two… one… now!’ Deiter was
instructing the same two technicians as earlier that morning, only this time it
wasn’t a computer game.

All the workstations in the room were manned and all the
computer screens were being observed by at least one operative. The tension in
the room was palpable. Unlike the previous day’s test, the room was deathly
silent.

‘What’s the status of the heat shields?’ Deiter barked
across the room.

‘Heat shields fully operation, temperature stabilised,’ came
the response.

‘Okay, release the second beam in three… two… one… now!’

Tom stood behind Deiter. He knew he wasn’t expected to be an
active participant in today’s experiment, but that didn’t stop him feeling like
a spare part. He turned to the computer screens on the wall he had observed
that morning. This time, the schematics were showing a computer-generated image
of the actual beams that were circulating some hundred metres below them, while
the data screens were recording the actual number of times the protons smashed
into each other. As with the earlier simulation, the figures were steadily
increasing, and were updated on a scrolling roll every second.

The other screens around the room were now showing CCTV
footage of various parts of the Collider. With 27 kilometres to cover, it was
obvious to Tom that they could only focus on the vital components; even so,
they flicked from one image to another every ten seconds.

Tom was surprised to see that there were still workers
underground. The tunnel itself would have been cleared and sealed long before
the experiment was initiated, so what were they doing down there? He looked
around to see if he could find somebody who wouldn’t be too distracted by a
question and decided to approach a group of three technicians monitoring the proton
collisions.

‘Why are there still people underground when the experiment
is running?’ He directed his question to the most senior-looking individual out
of the group - or, at least, he was the oldest.

‘That’s the maintenance crew,’ replied the technician.
‘They’re checking for any coolant leaks around heat shields while the Collider
is running.’

Tom frowned. ‘Isn’t that dangerous?’

‘Only if there’s a leak,’ the technician replied with a
smirk.

Tom didn’t see the funny side of it. ‘Who instructed them to
do that?’

‘Professor Morantz. We had an incident about eighteen months
ago, but luckily it was detected in time, otherwise the whole place could have
gone up. Since then, he ordered the maintenance crew to check for leaks
whenever the Collider is operational. I suppose he thought that it would be
better to risk the lives of a few men than a few hundred.’

Tom didn’t like the sound of that one bit. He couldn’t
disagree with Professor Morantz’s logic, but endangering a single life was
unacceptable. He had just discovered his first task: to identify any threat
from leaking coolant without the need for human intervention.

‘Check heat shields!’ Deiter was still shouting orders
across the room.

‘Satisfactory.’

‘Increase power to seventy-five per cent.’

A technician tapped in the figure on his keyboard. ‘Power at
seventy per cent.’

Tom checked the data screens again. The numbers were still
increasing. He checked the CCTV images of the tunnel. He could see a group of
four workers, dressed in protective suits, inspecting a pipe leading to one of
the helium coolant tanks, with flashlights. He was trying to work out what they
were doing when the camera flicked onto another part of the tunnel. He stood
there, his eyes transfixed on the screen, waiting for the image to return. It
took a full sixty seconds for it to come around again. This time, he could see
the men slowly walking away from the pipe, obviously satisfied with their
inspection.

‘Heat shields effective.’ This time the technician didn’t
wait to be asked before volunteering the information.

‘Increase power to maximum.’

‘Power at maximum.’

‘Heat shields holding.’

Tom was still watching the group of men. They had just
walked off the screen when the monitor flashed white and then went blank. He
checked the other monitors, which were all working normally. He turned his
attention to the data screens. He noticed that the figures on the far left
monitor were descending whilst the others were still increasing.

And then the alarm sounded.

‘Code red! Code red!’ Deiter tried to make himself heard
above the blaring siren.

Everybody, apart from Tom, seemed to know what to do. He
managed to catch hold of a young woman’s arm as she scurried past him. ‘What is
code red?’

‘Emergency shutdown and evacuate the complex.’ She didn’t
wait around to be asked any more questions and hurried out of the room.

Tom surveyed the room. Some technicians were tapping
frantically on keyboards, whilst others were collecting their belongings and
disappearing through the doors at a brisk pace. Deiter was flitting from one
workstation to another, issuing instructions. Everything appeared controlled
but he could see the anxiety on people’s faces.

‘We’d better go.’ It was Serena who had sidled up beside
him.

‘Shouldn’t I be the last man out or something?’

‘Like the captain going down with his ship?’ she teased.
‘That’s very noble of you, but not necessary. We’ve got a strict protocol for
this type of emergency. “All extraneous members of staff should evacuate the
complex immediately and report to the assembly point.” You should have read
your emergency manual, Professor, tut, tut. I think that deserves a “D” minus.
Come on, I’ll show you where we have to go.’

***

It was over four hours before they were allowed back into
the complex, during which time four fire engines, three ambulances, one federal
and two local police cars had arrived. The ambulances were the first to leave,
two of them carrying the bodies of the two workers who had been pronounced dead
at the scene of the explosion, the third carrying the other two badly-burnt
workers. The fire engines had left after putting the fires out, but only when
they were confident that there wouldn’t be a risk of the fires re-igniting by
using their thermal imaging cameras. The police cars were still there.

A whole section of the complex where the explosion had taken
place was cordoned off by police tape, not just from a structural safety
standpoint but also because it was officially a crime scene.

‘…until they had conducted their enquiries and were
satisfied that there was no criminal intent involved,’ as Tom was told by
Inspector Gervaux, the senior officer in charge of the investigation, who had
an air of aloofness about him.

‘We will need to interview everybody that was involved in
today’s
experiment
,’ the Inspector added. It was obvious to Tom by the
way he sarcastically emphasised the word ‘experiment’ that he wasn’t a huge fan
of the organisation’s objectives. ‘Could you please arrange six interview rooms
where my colleagues can conduct their questioning and identify the staff that
we will need to speak to.’ Without waiting for a response, he left Tom to
rejoin the other officers.

‘Something tells me this is going to be a long day,’ Tom
muttered to himself.

The sun was just rising over the Bosphorus on a cold, grey,
November morning, when Hamil Sadik arrived at his ‘office’. Unlike the modern
chrome and glass skyscrapers that could be found in the business quarter, his
office was a sixth-century masterpiece of Byzantine architecture. With its
golden mosaics, marble pillars and rich wall coverings, not to mention the
impressive Grand Dome, the Hagia Sophia had long been considered by most art
historians as the eighth wonder of the world, and Hamil Sadik tended to agree.

Hamil was a family man who often joked that his spreading
girth was as a result of his wife trying to kill him with kindness by feeding
him too much. His two children had flown the nest years ago, only to return
most weekends with their own fledglings. He doted on his grandchildren, of
which he had six, and always maintained that the prerogative of a grandparent
was to spoil them rotten without having the guilt of parental responsibility.

But, at the age of 60, he was finding it more and more
difficult to keep up with their energetic antics. His eyesight had deteriorated
over the last few years to the extent that he now wore glasses all the time as
opposed to just for reading. His hair had faired a little better. Unlike most
of his contemporaries, who were either going grey or thin on top, his was still
as full and dark as when he was a teenager, which he wore military style –
short back and sides. Although he wouldn’t admit it, he often found the odd
rogue silver hairs, which were dispensed of as soon as they were discovered.
His bushy moustache was subjected to the same treatment, borrowing his wife’s
tweezers to perform the operation.

He checked his watch. It was just before 7 am, two hours
before the museum was due to open to the public and three hours before the
dignitaries arrived. He had made good time from his home on the outskirts of
Istanbul, despite having to take a detour over the Galata Bridge to avoid a
traffic jam that had been announced on the radio.

As he let himself in through the Judas gate, set in the
magnificent Imperial entrance at the front of the building, he reflected, as he
had done so many times before, on how lucky he was to have been given the
position as Curator - or ‘Guardian’, as he liked to think of himself -
of this historic symbol of Turkey’s heritage. That was almost three years ago
to the day and, ever since then, he’d been awed by the sheer size of the temple
built by the Emperor Justinian nearly fifteen centuries ago.

He walked through the highly-decorated portal, stopping at
the entrance to the nave to switch on the resplendent wrought iron chandeliers
so he could survey his domain in all its glory. His thick-rimmed glasses had
steamed up; he polished them on the lapel of his overcoat, before returning
them to his ruddy face. So vast was the structure that he had to look at one
section at a time to take in the whole shape of its interior. His eyes led from
the monolithic blue, green, and blood-red columns of marble and stone brought
from every corner of the empire, to the soaring vaults, then to the smaller
domes, finally coming to rest on the great mosaic figure of Christ in the
central dome that had taken almost two years to restore.

It had been a controversial decision at the time to allow
the layers of the calligraphic medallion quoting the Light Verse from the
Qur’an, which had adorned the prime position of the Grand Dome for over five
hundred years, to be peeled back to reveal the Christian Messiah as judge and
ruler of all, looking down as though from heaven itself. Heated discussions had
taken place in parliament between the various religious sects, but it was the
historians that had won the day led by an impassioned speech by Hamil,
lambasting the Ottoman Turks for plastering over such important religious
artefacts when they converted the temple into a mosque in the fifteenth
century.

He always looked forward to arriving at his place of work
and would always see something new to pique his interest. But today, he didn’t
have time to indulge in this passion, he reminded himself, because today they
were unveiling several large mosaics as well as the new face of the Grand Dome.
Today, he had to get ready for the President, the Prime Minister and the
Minister of Culture and Tourism along with their entourages and the world’s
press. He hated these public showcases, but he was astute enough to realise
that they generated the interest necessary to attract the funds from the
country’s coiffeurs to enable him to continue his restoration work. So today he
would press the flesh, smile at the cameras and answer all the questions the
journalists put to him, because tomorrow he could stand here again and marvel
at the exquisite craftsmanship of true artisans from an era long forgotten by
most people.

***

As Hamil Sadik was arriving at his office, Giyas Macar was
already halfway through his working day. He had been woken by his father at 2
am, as he had been every morning since leaving school the previous year. At the
age of 16, and without any qualifications to his name, it was inevitable that
he would be joining his father on the small fishing boat that had been passed
down to him by his father. When his father eventually retired, through ill-health
rather than choice, Giyas would become the proud owner of a rather dilapidated
trawler.

A great deal had changed since his grandfather’s time:
over-fishing, increase in maritime traffic, light pollution from the city,
global warming and water pollution. Whatever the cause, tuna and swordfish were
now extinct from these waters.

Giyas could still remember the stories his grandfather used
to tell him as a boy, about how they’d caught gigantic tuna and swordfish and
how the best restaurants in the city would fight to get the freshest catch, as
soon as they’d docked, to serve to their European clientele. He recalled his
grandfather telling him about the time he’d caught an enormous swordfish in his
nets; so big was this monster of a fish, that the boat nearly capsized when he
started to drag it in and he had to cut it loose. Fishermen’s stories maybe,
but that’s all they had to remind themselves of the prosperous times.

All they could hope to catch these days were lüfer, a
popular fish amongst the locals, but even their numbers were dwindling year by
year. A lot of the other fishermen had given up altogether, turning their boats
into private fishing vessels for the tourists. However, his father had told him
on numerous occasions that it would be a cold day in hell before he hung up his
nets and pampered to the spoilt, rich tourists. He had used a lot more
expletives to convey his views, but the sentiment was the same.

Giyas’s scrawny muscles ached from the sea-sodden weight of
the nets as he threw them over the side, whilst the weather-beaten figure of
his father stooped over the wheel, trying to steer a straight course through
the pounding waves. He was distracted by the sound of a helicopter above him
and looked up just as a wave came crashing over the side, knocking his puny
frame off-balance and showering him in icy water. He regained his foothold and
continued to let out the nets, ignoring the sound of the rotor blades as they
passed by; he had to concentrate on getting the lines out straight, as their
meagre catch so far today wouldn’t even pay for the fuel they had used, let
alone be enough to support the family. He prayed for a bountiful catch.

***

Traffic Dawn’s day had started as unremarkably as any other.
That wasn’t her real name, of course, but it hadn’t stopped some bright spark
in the office giving her a nickname the first day she started her new job as
Airborne Dawn Traffic Correspondent for the only English-speaking radio station
in Istanbul – Radyo KO. The executives picked up on it and created a natty
little jingle which Dawn - or Maria Spencer, which was her real name -
hated, ‘Traffic Dawn, your eye in the sky’.

One advantage of working for a radio station as opposed to a
TV channel was that she could quite easily leave the Traffic Dawn persona at
the station and slip back into her true identity once she had finished for the
day and nobody, apart from her friends, would be any the wiser. But that was
all the advantages she could think of.

From as far back as she could remember, she had wanted to be
a TV presenter. Growing up in the UK, she had always been fascinated by
children’s programmes - not for their content, but the way the presenters
interacted with their audiences, captivating impressionable little minds with
stories and poems, or making useful things out of everyday household items. She
had applied to as many TV channels as she could, once she’d finished her degree
in Communication Studies, but nobody was hiring without experience. One helpful
rejection letter suggested that she should try radio work and, once she’d
served her apprenticeship there, then they may consider her for a role in TV.

Her Turkish mother and English father split up the day she
graduated from university; they later told her that they hadn’t been getting on
for years and were ‘Just waiting for the right time’ before going their
separate ways - she back to Ankara in Turkey and he back to his alter
ego, namely a transvestite called Monica. It was whilst visiting her mother
that she met one of the sound engineers from the radio station, in a local bar,
who told her about a vacancy for a ‘roving reporter’ based in Istanbul. He went
into far too much detail about how the station he worked for was part of a
network of phantom stations scattered throughout the country, all sharing the
one resource in Ankara to save on costs. And, with modern technology the way it
was, as long as you had ‘Eyes on the ground’, as he described it, the
unsuspecting listener was none the wiser that their ‘local’ radio station was
actually being broadcast from a modern office building in the country’s
capital.

The next morning, she phoned the number he had given her and
was ecstatic when they asked her to come in for an interview. Her euphoria
dissipated somewhat when they told her that the position for the ‘eyes on the
ground’ reporter for Istanbul had already been filled, but there was still a
vacancy for ‘eyes in the air’, which would entail reporting on the state of the
city’s traffic from a helicopter. Her enthusiasm was dampened even more by the
fact that she would be expected to be on air from 6 am to 6 pm, six days a
week. But, with little else going on in her life, and at the tender age of 24
with nothing to lose, she accepted the role when it was offered to her.

She was now sitting next to Devrim, a rather rotund agency
pilot with a wandering eye and a penchant for
Top Gun
. Unfortunately for
him, the mirrored Ray Bans and slick-backed black hair made him look more like
a Sicilian gangster than Tom Cruise. He’d asked her out on a date, the first
time they’d flown together, which she politely declined, stating that she just
wasn’t ready for a relationship. She didn’t consider herself unattractive, with
her long wavy blonde hair and slim figure that she’d inherited from her mother
(or was it Monica?), and she could certainly do better than the letch beside
her, but for the time being she was concentrating on her career. There were
worse jobs than hers, she consoled herself, spotting a small fishing boat being
buffeted by the waves some 500 feet below them.

‘There, to your left. I can see a line of brake lights,’ she
said into her mike, as she scanned the main arterial roads in and out of
Istanbul for any signs congestion.

‘No, just traffic signals,’ came the reply through her
headset, in heavily-accented English.

‘Dawn, you’re on air in thirty seconds. Anything to report?
Over.’ The voice of Seb, her producer, broke into the conversation.

‘Nothing, apart from the earlier accident which closed the
Unkapani Bridge, but that seems to have re-opened now and the traffic’s moving
freely. Just in time for the morning rush. Over,’ Dawn replied.

‘Okay, just tell the nice listeners that and then hand back
over to the studio. Fifteen seconds, we’ll run the jingle and then you’re on.
Over.’

She could hear the radio station as it was being broadcast
through her headset. ‘That was Survivor with Eye of the Tiger. Talking of
which, let’s go to our eye in the sky, Traffic Dawn, with the latest update on
the roads. Traffic Dawn, your eye in the sky. Hi Dawn, how are the roads
looking this morning?’

***

Hamil was just covering the mosaics with dust sheets ready
for the grand unveiling, a piece of theatre that always seemed to please the TV
cameras, when he heard a low rumble. His first thought was that they must have
diverted the traffic down the normally quiet side streets because of the
earlier accident; but, as the noise intensified, his second guess was that it
was a helicopter. He was right. He could distinctly pick out the rhythmic beat
of the blades as it passed overhead.

He was standing on a platform of wooden planks, forty feet
in the air, supported at either end by scaffolding, which his protégés, all
final year Archaeology students from the nearby Koç University, had used to
painstakingly remove the metal masks and white plaster from the intricate glass
and gilt mosaics. If the Ottoman Turks had been able to see how masterfully the
mosaics had been restored they would have realised, to their chagrin, far from
destroying these works of art, as they had intended, they had actually helped
preserve them for future generations.

The sound of the helicopter returned, only this time it was
much louder. It made the perch he was standing on shake and the ladder, which
was propped against the scaffolding, clatter to the ground. He was annoyed with
himself because he had told his students, on numerous occasions, that they
should always ensure it was fixed securely with ties before climbing up. He
would have to wait for his cleaners to arrive in half an hour before he could
get down, which was fine because he still hadn’t finished his preparations.