“You’d better give us yours, then,” Pitt said.

“I’ll turn it over,” Culver said. “But let me be clear: the theory and the technology must be kept under wraps. Ever since this accident, we’ve watched people approach what Tesla discovered. Ninety-nine percent of them touch on it and then go the other way, even the serious ones. Those that don’t turn back have fallen on hard times.”

“So you guys were watching Thero,” Pitt said wryly. “Probably helping make sure he failed.”

“It wasn’t hard,” Culver said. “He’s a nut. Delusional, and possibly schizophrenic. We just helped people see that more clearly.”

Pitt glanced at Sandecker. “Just because you’re paranoid, doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you.”

“Indeed,” Sandecker said.

Pitt turned back to Culver. “You probably could have saved the world a lot of pain if you’d have brought him into the fold.”

“We should have put a bullet in him,” Culver said bitterly. “We don’t want him, or anyone like him, in the fold. We don’t want anyone messing around with this. Ever.”

Pitt narrowed his gaze. “Why? We pursue every other technology. Nuclear bombs, biological and chemical weapons. Why not this?”

Culver didn’t blink. But he took the long way around in explaining. “My wife and I have a farm, Mr. Pitt. We have a few cows, a few goats, a few ATVs, and a whole lot of dogs. Some big dogs, some little dogs, even a few mean dogs. But there’s one scrawny mutt that just never was right. He never behaves the same way twice. Friendly one second, trying to tear your arm off the next. That dog scares me more than the mean ones. He scares the other dogs too. They give him a wide birth. Even the big alphas.

“Zero-point energy is like that. It’s unpredictable. Erratic. The NSA has had people studying it for decades. We’re too damned scared to do anything like this experiment because each time we run the numbers, we come up with a range of possible outcomes instead of just one. Could you imagine firing a gun if you had a fifty-fifty chance of hitting the target or having the gun blow up in your face?”

“No,” Pitt admitted.

“Nor can I,” Culver said. “But that’s how it is. With a gun, you pull the trigger and the bullet fires. With a bomb, you hit the detonator and the explosives blow. Even a hydrogen bomb has an established yield. But with this stuff… With this stuff, the results seem to be random, like it has a mind of its own. And that means once you press the switch, all bets are off. At that point, anything can happen.”

Pitt recalled Yaeger’s comment describing it as a moody genie, best kept in a bottle. It seemed the NSA agreed with him. He had a feeling Culver was making the point for a reason. “What are you really trying to say?”

Culver still wouldn’t shoot straight, perhaps enjoying the little bit of power he was still holding.

“Have your man run the numbers,” Culver said. “If he disagrees with our people, then we can argue about it. But this device must be prevented from operating under any circumstances. I assure you that’s how the President sees it. We have two nuclear attack submarines moving into the area. As soon as we have a location, they’re going to destroy the site with nuclear-tipped cruise missiles.”

Pitt glanced at Sandecker, who nodded gravely. He’d already been told.

“It has to be done,” Sandecker said.

To his surprise, Pitt found himself agreeing.

TWENTY-NINE

After a stop in the mess hall, and a change of clothes, Kurt sat in a dingy cabin with gray-brown walls lit by a single incandescent light.

A chessboard sat in front of him on a small table. The game was in mid-progress, the pieces already in motion. A quarter of them stood on the side, fallen soldiers already taken by the other player.

To the left was an almost empty bottle of Stolichnaya vodka and two shot glasses, which Anton Gregorovich had just finished topping off for the seventh time. To the right — easily within both men’s reach — sat the Makarov pistol that Gregorovich had given Kurt.

Kurt had been in there for most of the night. This was their third game. Occasionally, Gregorovich asked him questions, which Kurt did his best to deflect. More often than not, he sat silently brooding.

Kurt figured it was some kind of test to see if he could hold his liquor or his tongue.

Eyeing the board stoically, Gregorovich finally moved, sliding a bishop into Kurt’s section. The move created options, forcing Kurt to choose between saving a pawn or a rook or making an offense move and letting both pieces go.

Done with his move, Gregorovich pushed one of the overflowing shot glasses toward Kurt and lifted the other to his mouth.

He knocked it down and then turned to the bottle for a refill. As he did, Kurt dumped the contents of his shot glass in a planter with a dying fern in it and quickly brought the glass back to his mouth.

He finished the last sip as Gregorovich turned back to him. “I wouldn’t do that,” Kurt suggested, putting the glass down firmly.

“What?” Gregorovich asked. “The bishop or the vodka?”

“You leave yourself open to check,” Kurt said.

“Only if you give up one of your pieces,” Gregorovich said and then downed the shot.

Kurt studied the board carefully. He moved the rook to a spot next to the pawn, protecting them both, instead of threatening Gregorovich with check, which the Russian could have easily escaped.

“You don’t understand this game, I think,” Gregorovich said. “You play defensively, protecting your pawns. This game, like life, is all about attacking.”

Gregorovich took another of Kurt’s pieces, moving his queen recklessly into danger.

“What would you know about life?” Kurt said. “Except how to end it.”

This time, Kurt reached for the bottle and poured the shots. He allowed his hand to shake and appear unsteady.

Gregorovich snickered. “I know that life is about finding your place in all of this madness,” he said. “Some of us find it easily, maybe you did. My path was more complicated. When I was a boy, my mother left us. My father’s temper and the back of his hand were too much for her. So, naturally, he took it out on me. When he drank, everything was my fault. When he didn’t drink, everything was my fault.”

Gregorovich shook his head. “Somehow, I always failed him. And when I did, he would beat me. His favorite game was to force me outside and make me stand in the ice water of the bog. It came up to my thighs and it numbed my legs, and then he would whip me with a belt until the water turned red or until my knees buckled and I fell in it. I couldn’t feel my lower half, but I could feel every inch of that belt on my back with heightened awareness.”

Kurt looked up from the board.

“One day,” Gregorovich said, “I decided I would stay up. Stay up until he killed me, and then I’d be free. I stood as he thrashed me and I kept myself from falling. It infuriated him more until eventually he charged into the water and tried to force me under. This triggered something in me. Something I had never felt. I had forced him to change. And so instead of letting him drown me, I fought him. For the first time ever, I raised my fist to him. And when I’d beaten him to a bloody mess, I took that belt and strangled the life from the miserable bastard.”

Kurt remained silent.

“The look in his eyes,” Gregorovich continued. “The look in his eyes as he died. It wasn’t shock. It wasn’t fear. It was pride. For the first time in my life, and the last time in his, I had impressed him.”

Kurt tipped back another shot of vodka. “Why are you telling me this touching family story?”

“Because from that day on, I knew who I was,” Gregorovich said coldly. “From that day on, I understood life. It revealed what I was meant to be. An assassin. A killer. It is my gift. I have never failed at an assignment. Never failed to destroy the selected target. It is perfection. I am perfection.”