Piranha (Oregon Files 10)

“I plugged it into my phone’s translator, but I don’t know how good it is with scientific terminology. We should get a more definitive translation when we’re back on the Oregon.”

“Spitballing is fine for now.”

Eric furrowed his brow at the screen. “It says ‘On the detection and perception of minor atom particles and radioactive decay.’”

“What are ‘minor atom particles’?”

“I don’t know. The abstract isn’t online, if they even wrote abstracts back then. It could mean subatomic particles.”

“It doesn’t give us much to go on. Why would Kensit be so desperate to keep it secret?”

“When I was in college, I studied that era of physics experimentation, and it really was an exciting period in the science.” Eric became animated as he talked about it. “In the span of ten years, from 1895 to 1905, some of the most critical discoveries and hypotheses in scientific history were made. In 1895, Wilhelm Röntgen discovered X-rays. The next year, Henri Becquerel and Marie Curie found that certain chemical elements gave off rays that fogged unexposed photographic plates and called the phenomenon radioactivity. In 1897, J. J. Thomson discovered electrons. Ernest Rutherford built on their work in 1899 and determined that uranium gave off alpha and beta rays. And on and on until 1905, when a Swiss patent clerk published his special theory of relativity.”

“I didn’t know Einstein was Swiss.”

“He was a draft dodger. He moved there from Germany to avoid Army service. Kind of ironic, now that he’s considered one of the fathers of the atomic bomb.”

“Where does Gunther Lutzen fit in?”

“At the time, Berlin University was one of the premier centers for theoretical nuclear physics and quantum mechanics. Max Planck was one of the first physicists to accept Einstein’s theory, which was surprisingly controversial back then. Planck, who subsequently won the Nobel Prize in physics, was also a professor at the university. If Lutzen got his doctorate there, he was among some of the giants in the field.”

“If Lutzen’s work was so groundbreaking, why haven’t we heard of him?”

Eric shrugged. “I just did a quick search of the physics literature. He never published, and his work was never referenced in anyone else’s papers. If the work doesn’t show up in a peer-reviewed journal, it essentially doesn’t exist. Lutzen may have been preparing his findings for a paper when he died. That could be the journal that Kensit found. It’s also possible that his work was too groundbreaking.”

“‘Too groundbreaking’?”

“It’s possible Lutz

en’s ideas were so novel that he had trouble getting his work published. Enrico Fermi, one of the scientists on the Manhattan Project, submitted a paper to the journal Nature in 1934, explaining the structure of the atom as we know it today, and it was rejected for being ‘too remote from reality.’ If Lutzen’s work was that far ahead of its time, he may have been trying to find more evidence to support it.”

“In the Caribbean?”

“We won’t know what he was looking for until I can see the thesis.”

“We’ll need just a couple of minutes with it,” Juan said. He still had his camera glasses with him. When they reached the library, they’d request the thesis, which would be brought to their carousel. Juan would flip through each page to get a high-resolution image of the entire document and then transmit it back to Overholt for a complete translation by the CIA.

Juan found a parking space on the street in front of the Grimm Center, a gray concrete building that was all right angles and which had narrow slits for windows. Given the austere façade, he thought the name Grimm was fitting in more ways than one.

He and Eric hustled inside, brushing away snowflakes as they approached the main desk. They were directed to a librarian on the sixth floor who could help them with the special collections.

Their path took them through the building’s central atrium, and Juan was momentarily taken aback. Unlike the center’s cold and uninviting exterior, the atrium was a stunning architectural statement brimming with warmth and light. From the atrium’s ground floor, terraced balconies of reading stations with forest green tables climbed to the sixth floor. The walls were clad in rich wood, and a grid of skylights provided much of the illumination. Thick carpeting muffled any rustling of paper or whispered conversations.

When they got to the librarian’s station, a ponytailed student wearing a name tag reading “Greta” said something in German. Though Juan was fluent in Spanish, Russian, and Arabic, his German was minimal.

“I don’t suppose you speak English,” he said.

“English, yes,” she said with a smile and a heavy accent. “A little.”

“We would like to look at a thesis from 1901 by a student named Gunther Lutzen.” Eric showed her the title of the thesis.

Greta furrowed her brow, then looked up at Juan. “You also want this document?”

Juan’s muscles tightened. “What do you mean ‘also’?”

“A man has come minutes ago to see it. The librarian, Herr Schmidt, has just taken him there.”

“What did this man look like?”