QUANTUM

PRELUDE

Frank Drake, a professor at Cornell University during the mid-sixties and fascinated by the theoretical number of galaxies thought to exist in the universe, developed an equation designed to calculate the probability of the presence of evolved life forms in the cosmos. This equation, which in time became quite famous, is based on declining probability; at each step of the equation, the likelihood drops.

In simplified terms, the number of stars found in any given sector of the universe is multiplied by the fraction of those stars that, in all likelihood, have their own planetary systems. The result is then further multiplied by the fraction of those systems that could, theoretically, host life and then, further still, by the fraction of those systems where that life could, again theoretically, be intelligent. The equation proceeds in this manner.

Because we are multiplying by fractions, with each step, the resulting number is drastically reduced. And yet, taking into consideration only the most conservative estimates, in our galaxy—the Milky Way—alone, the number of intelligent civilizations predicted by the equation is on the order of several million.

It is therefore quite likely that ours is not the only planet inhabited by advanced life forms.

The main problem is the distance between planetary systems; the cosmos is enormously vast.

In other words, if we are not alone, our closest neighbors would be at least two hundred light years away from our planet. And with the speed of light as our reference point—well, let’s just say that if we run out of sugar, the idea of borrowing a cup from our extraterrestrial neighbors is a very farfetched one, to say the least.

ONE

Kalma refugee camp, Nyala, Sudan

December

The Kalma refugee camp, outside Nyala, was one of the most crowded of the eighty in Darfur—and also one of the most dangerous. UNAMID was still just getting organized, and the UN’s military force had not yet been fully deployed. Nevertheless, from their first days on the ground, the mission commanders had been receiving countless aid requests from representatives of the thousands of refugees crowded into the camp.

The main problem was one of security. Women couldn’t venture outside the confines of the tent-city for fear of being targeted for robbery or rape; young men who dared set foot in the outside world were rarely seen again. And the food rations issued inside the camp were never sufficient.

Dan Foster, a physician with Doctors Without Borders, was in his eleventh month at Kalma. As he stepped out of his tent-clinic to go in search of disinfectant, he looked up at the sky, shielding his eyes with one hand against the blinding light of the sun. The white transport plane was gaining altitude as it approached from the south.

“Another arms shipment, right?” asked a voice from behind him.

Dan turned around. Jodie Stanford, a doctor from an American NGO operating in the camp, was also tracking the aircraft as it passed overhead.

“Yeah,” he replied, disheartened. “The Sudanese government is up to its usual tricks. Airplanes painted white are easily mistaken for UN aircraft; they can play on that uncertainty in order to get arms through to the pro-government militias. This mayhem isn’t about to stop anytime soon. How’re you doing?”

Jodie was thirty-seven, and a brilliant virologist. Divorced and childless, she’d thrown herself heart and soul into humanitarian aid work after breaking up with her husband four years ago. Darfur was her third foreign assignment. Dan and Jodie had met a few months earlier, after a brutal nighttime militia attack, which had killed twenty refugees and injured dozens more. They’d become good friends and neither of them had ever ventured past that point.

Quite simply, there wasn’t the spare time to indulge a personal life at Kalma.

“I was looking for you,” she said. “There’s something strange I need to talk to you about. Can you come see me tonight, when you’re done?”

Dan nodded, furrowing his brow. “Some problem?” he asked.

“No, I don’t really think so. But there’s something I want to show you. Maybe you can figure it out, because I can’t. Seven o’clock okay with you?”

“Sure. See you later. Have a good day.”

“You, too,” said Jodie and moved off.

Dan watched her walking in the bright sunlight. Even if she wasn’t an especially showy woman, there was no question that she was attractive: straw blonde hair, above average height, with a muscular but well-proportioned physique and pleasing features. She needed no make up to highlight her sparkling, ocean-green eyes.

‘What a mess this place is’, he thought to himself as he rummaged through the supplies, finally locating the disinfectant. With people dying around you every day, the last thing that would occur to you is to try and strike up a relationship.

The fleeting thought vanished as soon as he stepped back into the clinic: thirty or so refugees were waiting their turn to be seen by the doctor.

Via Vittorio Veneto, Rome

January 23, 10:03 AM, local time

Rome was beautiful in spite of the annoying wind that had been buffeting the city for the past couple of days. It was late January and winter was still making itself felt, though far less ferociously than it had the month before.

Yoshi was walking up Via Veneto on his way to the Grand Hotel, where his client was waiting for him. His cell phone rang, and he answered on the second ring.

“Hello?”

“I’m still alive, dear heart. How are you?”

It was his sister, Midori, after two months of radio silence. But Yoshi was used to it.

“Next time I won’t even answer when I see it’s you. Where did you disappear to this time?” he upbraided her affectionately.

“Oh, hell! It was an exhausting tour this time. First Australia, then Seoul. Pain in the ass. I’m ready to retire. And I’m not kidding around.”

Midori was thirty-five years old and an international corporate consultant. Her work took her all around the world and she seemed utterly indifferent to the appeal of a long-term relationship. Yoshi smiled.

“That’s what you say whenever you call me, and then, like always, you vanish into thin air again. How much more money are you planning on earning?”

“I’ve told you before: Pretty soon I’ll quit, and when I do I’ll buy you a magnificent house on some Pacific island. You can marry a pretty girl, have lots of kids, and I’ll spend my days babysitting while you make your wife happy traveling to fantastic places all around the world.”

“You know that’s never going to happen. First, because you’re never going to stop working, and second, because I’m not looking for anyone to marry.”

“Where are you now?”

“Rome. I’m going to see an English client of mine. An authentic gentleman. The type that would be just perfect for you.”

Midori snorted impatiently.

“Nyet, you know I can’t stand the subjects of Her Majesty the Harpy. How old is he?”

“Fifty. Salt-and-pepper hair, dark eyes, a sharp dresser. Not only is he one of my best clients, he’s also crazy about kendo. Normally, whenever we meet, we work out together.”

The brief pause before her reply told Yoshi that he’d managed to catch his sister’s attention.

“Mmmh . . . Maybe you can introduce me sometime. Just out of curiosity. How long are you staying?”

“Two or three days. The reason my client called me is that he wants to tell me about a very special item. Truthfully, I don’t know exactly what this is all about; he told me he needs to see me to get a better idea.”

“And you have the nerve to lecture me! You run hither and yon hunting down ancient art on behalf of bored rich people, but you don’t have time to find some nice mummy just for you!”

Yoshi smiled.

“Yes, but mine is a pure passion. And the good thing about it is that it will never betray me.”

“One of the two of us will have to procreate, sooner or later,” Midori decreed, “and it would make most sense for it to be you. You know, all that bullshit about carrying on the family name, and so on and so forth . . . Anyway, where are you heading?”

Yoshi entered the lobby of the Grand Hotel and steered straight for the reception desk.

“I’m supposed to go to Paris to see this special object. We might be leaving directly from the hotel. What about you?”

“I’m free for a couple of weeks. I was thinking about taking a vacation. I could meet you in the Ville Lumiére.”

“That would be lovely, but I know perfectly well you’re never going to do it. I have to go now. I’ll let you know when I leave. All my love, sis.”

“This time I may surprise you, brother. Kisses to you.”

Yoshi ended the call and asked the concierge to let Mr. Hooper know that Yoshi Araki had arrived.

Hadar Dafna Building, King Saul Boulevard, Tel Aviv

January 23, 12:24 PM, local time

Nahud Oz was looking out his office window down onto the street. Despite the constant looming threat of terrorist attacks, the city was vibrant with energy. Life wins out over fear; life wins out no matter what.

Someone knocked on his office door. “Come in!” he called out loudly without bothering to turn around.

Zvi Shalit, director of the Collections Department, and Efraim Harel, director of the Political Action and Liaison Department, both walked in, saluting.

Oz continued watching the traffic below him as he invited them to make themselves comfortable. The director of Mossad was notorious for his apparently distracted demeanor, as well as for his pragmatism.

“Coffee?” asked Oz, finally turning around.

The two men nodded and Oz picked up the phone to place an order with his assistant.

“I was in a meeting until ten o’clock last night with the Ashkenazi and Sephardi chief rabbis. Longest day of my life. Better to be under attack by a Syrian brigade.”

Shalit and Harel chuckled. The chief rabbis the director had met with were the country’s highest religious authorities, and Oz, like most non-Orthodox sabras, was amiably irreverent when it came to religion.

The director’s assistant came in carrying a tray piled high with coffee and sandwiches, a sign that this was not going to be a quick meeting. He set everything down on the conference table and quickly left the room.

“We may have a problem on our hands,” said Oz. “I still can’t say how big of a problem, but my instincts tell me this is going to be a nasty one,” he continued, as he served the coffee.

“As it happens, a couple of months ago, two physicians working for two non-governmental organizations operating in Darfur found something. Don’t ask me to tell you exactly what it was, because as things now stand, we don’t really know, but it’s believed to be an artifact of some kind — and that is the root of the problem.”

The director took a sip of coffee before continuing.

“Now, the object in question seems to be — according to what we were told by the two rabbis — of primary importance to relations between the three biggest religions on this planet. From what I was able to gather, it seems to constitute a sort of Ark of the Covenant, capable of reconciling all groups. I have no reason to suppose that anyone is pulling my leg.”

Shalit and Harel exchanged a baffled glance. Harel was the first to speak.

“I don’t quite see what you’re saying, sir. Are you telling us that the chance discovery of an artifact in a desert area of Sudan is a national security problem?”

Oz bit into a sandwich and nodded as he looked at his men. They were professionals, longtime members of the most effective security agency on Earth. It was only natural that they would have the same doubts he had. He finished chewing and pulled a folded sheet of paper out of his pocket; on it were a few notes he had jotted down.

“I’m not the one who says so. This morning I got a phone call from the Prime Minister basically ordering me to give this case absolute and maximum priority over everything else. Let’s take a look at our hand and see the cards we’ve been dealt. First of all, we aren’t the only ones to have been alerted. The Vatican’s intelligence service will be getting in touch with us in the next few hours. And we need to activate our network to exchange information with the Saudis as quickly as possible. The Arabs will put their intelligence agencies on alert, but they’ll be coordinated by Riyadh. They’re willing to put a halt to their suicide bombings until we’ve solved this problem.”

His two men stopped eating and stared at him in disbelief. Oz made a face.

“I told you this was going to be a nasty one. Let’s continue. The object was found by . . .” he took a glance at his notes, “. . . Jodie Stanford, an American virologist, thirty-five years old, from Savannah, Georgia, and Dan Foster, Scottish neurologist, forty-one, from Aberdeen. The two of them had been stationed in Darfur for roughly a year. Pretty normal people: She’s divorced and childless; he’s single. Both brilliant. For different, but in both cases strictly personal, reasons they decided to become involved in humanitarian aid.”

Shalit and Harel were frantically taking notes.

“At the beginning of December they return to London together, certainly carrying the object, which does not appear to be particularly bulky, and they get in touch with four other individuals. Jean Boulanger, a French researcher at CERN, with a Ph.D. in computer science, thirty-two years old, unmarried, considered a genius in his field. Pavlov Kurilov, a Russian physicist with a Finnish passport, sixty-eight years old; he fled with his family from the then-Soviet Union in 1985 after giving the Americans several items connected to research on a revolutionary new type of ICBM rocket engine he had invented. Apparently, this was a blow to the Soviets that accelerated their collapse. George Kowalsky, American, forty-seven years old. He lost his wife and two children in a car crash five years ago, and is the head of the Computer Science research department at MIT; born into a Jewish family, it was he who provided what scanty information we possess to the head rabbi of Boston. Francesca Farini, Italian, thirty-six years old, a biochemist, divorced, with one son; she lives in London, is noted for her research into mitochondrial DNA, and is a consultant for the ESA.”

Oz took another bite of his sandwich and drank some more coffee. The two men across from him were waiting, alert. The director wiped his mouth with a napkin.

“A little before Christmas, these six people all meet in London, at the laboratory where Farini works. They stay in the laboratory, cooped up for a few days, and emerge only to withdraw cash with their debit cards. The total withdrawn is . . . let’s see here . . . thirty-four thousand pounds sterling. Then, on Christmas Eve, they vanish into thin air. Kowalsky gets in touch with the head rabbi of Boston, an old friend of his, and informs him that he and his friends have discovered something extraordinary, something he calls ‘an ancient artifact,’ and that this discovery could radically alter — pay close attention here — our understanding of technology. In short, it could be a coup for mankind — or it could be a way of destroying it entirely. Kowalsky also says that, although they are sorry to have to do it, the six of them must disappear for a while until they can decide what to do, and that they can’t predict how long this disappearance is going to last. When the rabbi insists on more information, the answer is that this artifact, figuratively speaking, could be a latter-day Ark of the Covenant, but that it’s not possible to be more precise than that. In the days that follow, all the family members of the people involved in this plot receive letters or phone calls telling them not to do anything to try to find their loved ones for any reason whatsoever if they value their own lives. But there are no further explanations. The various police forces are powerless to do anything because the ‘fugitives’ are all adults, and there’s no reason to think this is a kidnapping. Voluntarily disappearing is no crime. That’s all we know. The orders that have come down are to find them and recover the object. Any questions?”

Shalit cleared his throat.

“Let’s start from the bottom. Kowalsky mentioned ‘an ancient artifact,’ which would mean that it was something built or assembled by human beings in antiquity. But then he says that this is something that’s also technologically advanced, and that it could be a ‘sort of latter-day Ark of the Covenant.’ Aside from the fact that none of the fugitives is an archeologist or a semiologist or a paleoanthropologist, how could an ancient object, perhaps a religious symbol of some kind, also be a piece of advanced high technology?”

Oz nodded.

“It struck me right away as odd, too. But it could be something that mainly has to do with mathematics or physics. I don’t know, formulas to be decoded that aren’t linked to any specific language. Mathematics is the only genuine lingua franca. It might be that its intrinsic value is bound up with this, rather than with the age of the object. And after all, there’s an expert biochemist in the group. By studying mitochondrial DNA, it’s possible to trace our lineage back to Eve, for those who believe in Eve.”

“Who warned Rome and Riyadh, and why?” asked Harel.

The director leaned back against the padded backrest of his chair.

“I alerted Rome and they arranged to contact the Arabs. At the Prime Minister’s orders. The powers that be wish to get a clear picture as quickly as possible and so it doesn’t much matter whether it has to do with technology or religion, or both. The fact that the Arabs are willing to hold their fire for a while only helps us at this juncture. Gaza remains a powder keg, and this will just give us more time to get ourselves reorganized. It strikes me as an eminently acceptable compromise.”

Shalit glanced down at his notes.

“Don’t we have even the slightest indication of where they might have run to? Maybe their family members might be able to give us a hint of some kind.”

Oz shook his head.

“We can’t approach them without arousing suspicions. According to what we know, their family members are applying absolutely no pressure for the authorities to investigate. Let me repeat, these are ordinary people and I’m sure we wouldn’t find anything fishy in their personal or professional lives. In any case, Zvi, what I want is for you to gather all the information you can about them, from when they started working right up until they vanished. Use all the contacts we have in the various cities they lived in. We might not come up with much, but we have to at least try.”

Shalit nodded. “Certainly, sir. How much time do I have?”

“Not much. A week, ten days at most. Meanwhile, you, Efraim, try to find out what really happened in Darfur. We need to know what we’re looking for. You’ll be dealing with Arabs, so it’ll be carrot and stick. How are we set up in Sudan?”

“Well, I’d say. We have a couple of decent contacts. That shouldn’t be a problem. In a week or so I think I ought to be able to get some solid answers,” Harel replied.

“One last thing: If the individuals refuse to cooperate, once we’ve recovered the object, we no longer need them.”

Again, both men exchanged a glance. Oz threw his arms out wide.

“No one wants to run the risk of having them go around telling this story.”

“Do you want to alert the Metsada, sir?” asked Shalit.

The director shook his head no.

“No special operations, no kidon. Once the hunt is on, the hunter will have to be a freelancer, an independent operator. No one that can be traced back to us. Both Rome and Riyadh are willing to pay as much as it takes as long as we take care of the dirty work. So we’re going to need to watch where we put our feet. Any suggestions?”

Again, it was Shalit who spoke.

“The most reliable operative is Shadow. But we’ll have to be ready to pay top dollar. The last time we used Shadow, the kidon we sent to avoid paying the rest of the bill ended up dead. I don’t think there’s any need for me to remind you, sir.”

Oz felt uneasy thinking back on what had happened.

Two years earlier, they’d had to use a freelancer to eliminate four fundraisers and Al Qaeda members who were working in the West. It had been a challenging operation because the targets were all respected businessmen who were, moreover, extremely well-protected. Mossad couldn’t run the risk of being dragged into it, so the highest officers agreed to call on Shadow, the best hunter on the market. The hunter completed the operation, and managed to pass the assassinations off as accidents, but the price requested had been ten million dollars per target, twenty up front and the rest when the job was complete. Some idiotic politician recommended killing the hunter instead of paying the remaining fifty percent agreed upon. A four-man kidon was sent out. Not only did none of them come back, but Oz himself, contacted by Shadow over the phone, was asked to make sure the payment was made in full, to stave off any further disagreeable complications. The sum was paid, and the incident was put behind them, to the director’s enormous relief. Shadow was truly worthy of the nickname: No one had ever seen this individual, and anyone who wanted to hire the hunter was obliged to initiate contact through a system entirely of the freelancer’s own devising. And prices were never negotiable.

“All right. Gather all the information we need. There’ll be a meeting back here in exactly ten days, at this same time, after which we’ll contact the hunter. This time, I’d guess we’ll have to pay in advance.”

1. The sabra are Jews born in the state of Israel.
2. Mossad’s division for special operations.
3. Death squads, which can be deployed anywhere on the planet.