The Burning Wire (Lincoln Rhyme 9)

She diverted a tickling stream of sweat and nodded. He offered her a paper towel from a roll kept there for mopping faces and necks, it seemed, and she dried off.

"Come on this way."

He led her down more corridors and into another building. More stairs and finally they arrived at his office. She stifled a laugh at the clutter. The place was filled with computers and instruments she couldn't recognize, hundreds of bits of equipment and tools, wires, electronic components, keyboards, metal and plastic and wood items in every shape and color.

And junk food. Tons of junk food. Chips and pretzels and soda, Ding Dongs and Twinkies. And Hostess powdered sugar doughnuts, which explained the dandruff on his clothes.

"Sorry. It's the way we work in Special Projects," he said, shoveling aside computer printouts from an office chair for her to sit in. "Well, the way I work, at least."

"What exactly do you do?"

He explained, somewhat abashedly, that he was an inventor. "I know, sounds either very nineteenth century or very infomercial. But that's what I do. And I'm the luckiest guy in the world. I do for a living exactly what I wanted to when I was a kid and building dynamos, motors, lightbulbs--"

"You made your own lightbulbs?"

"Only set fire to my bedroom twice. Well, three times, but we only had to call the fire department twice."

She looked at a picture of Edison on the wall.

"My hero," Sommers said. "Fascinating man."

"Andi Jessen had something about him on her wall too. A photo of the grid."

"It's Thomas Alva's original signature. . . . But Jessen's more Samuel Insull, I'd say."

"Who?"

"Edison was the scientist. Insull was a businessman. He headed Consolidated Edison and created the first big monopolistic power utility. Electrified the Chicago trolley system, practically gave away the first electrical appliances--like irons--to get people addicted to electricity. He was a genius. But he ended up disgraced. This sound familiar? He was way overleveraged and when the Depression came, the company went under and hundreds of thousands of shareholders lost everything. Little like Enron. You want to know some trivia: The accounting firm Arthur Andersen was involved with both Insull and Enron.

"But me? I leave the business to other people. I just make things. Ninety-nine percent amounts to nothing. But . . . well, I've got twenty-eight patents in my name and I've created nearly ninety processes or products in Algonquin's. Some people sit in front of the TV or play video games for fun. I . . . well, invent things." He pointed to a large cardboard box, brimming with squares and rectangles of paper. "That's the Napkin File."

"The what?"

"I'm out at Starbucks or a deli and I get an idea. I jot it down on a napkin and come back here to draw it up properly. But I save the original, toss it in there."

"So if there's ever a museum about you there'll be a Napkin Room."

"It has occurred to me." Sommers was blushing, from forehead to ample chin.

"What exactly do you invent?"

"I guess my expertise is the opposite of what Edison did. He wanted people to use electricity. I want people not to."

"Does your boss know that's your goal?"

He laughed. "Maybe I should say I want people to use it more efficiently. I'm Algonquin's negawatt maven. That's 'nega' with an n."

"Never heard about that."

"A lot of people haven't, which is too bad. It came from a brilliant scientist and environmentalist, Amory Lovins. The theory is to create incentives to reduce demand and use electricity more efficiently, rather than trying to build new power plants to increase supply. Your typical power station wastes nearly half of the heat generated--right up the smokestack. Half! Think about that. But we've got a series of thermal collectors on the stacks and cooling towers here. At Algonquin we lose only twenty-seven percent.

"Oh, and lately I've been spending half my time traveling around the country linking up small alternative and renewable companies, so they can get onto the major grids like the Northeastern Interconnection--that's ours--and sell juice to us, rather than us selling to small communities."

"I thought Andi Jessen wasn't very supportive of renewables and alternative energy."

"No, but she's not crazy either. It's the wave of the future. I think we just disagree about when that future's going to arrive. I think sooner." A whimsical smile. "Of course, you did notice that her office is the size of my entire department, and it's on the ninth floor with a view of Manhattan. . . . I'm in the basement." His face grew solemn. "Now, what can I do to help?"

Sachs said, "I have a list of people at Algonquin who might've been behind the attack this morning."