numerals. Not the watch, Lu Li had said. The fob. I'd asked Fielding about the crystal on his watch chain once. He told me a Tibetan monk had given it to him near Lhasa, promising it would ensure an unfailing memory. Fielding belly-laughed when he told me that story, but I hadn't gotten the joke. Now I did.
One new computer technology perfected by the Trinity team was holographic memory storage. Rather than storing data in microchips, Trinity engineers stored it as holograms within the molecules of stable crystals. Using lasers to read and write data, they could store enormous amounts of information within the crystal's symmetrically arranged atoms. The crystals I had seen in the Trinity holography lab were the size of NFL footballs, but I saw no reason that a smaller one could not be used. Like the one on Fielding's watch chain.
Somehow, the Englishman had been downloading Trinity data into his crystal watch fob. And because no one outside Trinity's inner circle of scientists and engineers knew this was even possible, Fielding could walk it in and out of the building every day without anyone suspecting a thing.
But why would he steal information? To sell to the highest bidder? Fielding was old school. Even if he were desperate for money, he was the last person I would suspect of corporate espionage. Had he secretly embraced some ideology? Or abandoned one? Was he a politically naive scientist who believed all nations should share access to the latest technology? Possibly. But I didn't think he would want a rogue nation to possess something as powerful as a Trinity computer. To hear Fielding talk sometimes, you would think he didn't want any country to possess one.
Was that it? Had he been working to prevent Trinity from becoming a reality? That scenario seemed the most likely, but I didn't have enough information to make an accurate guess. And without the watch, I couldn't prove anything.
I showered in near-scalding water, then dressed in chinos and a sport jacket and walked quickly to my car, trying not to think too much about what I was doing. My primary goal in returning to Trinity was to find Fielding's pocket watch, but in truth I saw little choice. Staying home would only invite closer NSA scrutiny, and running—as I hoped Lu Li had done—would bring the full resources of the agency down upon me. But if I could preserve the illusion of normalcy a little longer—until the president got back to me—I might be able to avenge Fielding's death.
On a good traffic day, the Trinity complex was a twenty-minute drive from my house in suburban Chapel Hill. Research Triangle Park, the manicured haven of corporate research known locally as the RTP , lay between Raleigh and Durham and was named for the triangle formed by Duke University, UNC at Chapel Hill, and North Carolina State. Its quiet lanes led through expansive lawns that suggested an exclusive country club, but instead of golf links, the seven-thousand-acre RTP boasted labs owned by DuPont, 3M, Merck, Biogen, Lockheed, and dozens of other blue-chip names. Forty-five thousand people reported to work within its borders every day, but less than three hundred knew what lay behind the walls of the Trinity building. I drove slowly, hoping in some juvenile way that I would never arrive at my destination.
The Trinity lab stood two hundred yards back from an understated sign that read ARGUS OPTICAL. A forbidding five-story block of steel and black glass, it sat on sixty wooded acres with extensive subbasements and a heliport. The steel and glass was just a shell constructed for show. Behind it, high-tech copper cladding code-named Tempest encased the inner building, preventing electromagnetic radiation from passing in or out of Trinity. The same stuff protected the NSA operations buildings at Fort Meade.
Because the building had been sited in a sort of bowl, its first two floors lay out of sight. The main entrance was on the third floor. To reach it, staff had to cross a
One new computer technology perfected by the Trinity team was holographic memory storage. Rather than storing data in microchips, Trinity engineers stored it as holograms within the molecules of stable crystals. Using lasers to read and write data, they could store enormous amounts of information within the crystal's symmetrically arranged atoms. The crystals I had seen in the Trinity holography lab were the size of NFL footballs, but I saw no reason that a smaller one could not be used. Like the one on Fielding's watch chain.
Somehow, the Englishman had been downloading Trinity data into his crystal watch fob. And because no one outside Trinity's inner circle of scientists and engineers knew this was even possible, Fielding could walk it in and out of the building every day without anyone suspecting a thing.
But why would he steal information? To sell to the highest bidder? Fielding was old school. Even if he were desperate for money, he was the last person I would suspect of corporate espionage. Had he secretly embraced some ideology? Or abandoned one? Was he a politically naive scientist who believed all nations should share access to the latest technology? Possibly. But I didn't think he would want a rogue nation to possess something as powerful as a Trinity computer. To hear Fielding talk sometimes, you would think he didn't want any country to possess one.
Was that it? Had he been working to prevent Trinity from becoming a reality? That scenario seemed the most likely, but I didn't have enough information to make an accurate guess. And without the watch, I couldn't prove anything.
I showered in near-scalding water, then dressed in chinos and a sport jacket and walked quickly to my car, trying not to think too much about what I was doing. My primary goal in returning to Trinity was to find Fielding's pocket watch, but in truth I saw little choice. Staying home would only invite closer NSA scrutiny, and running—as I hoped Lu Li had done—would bring the full resources of the agency down upon me. But if I could preserve the illusion of normalcy a little longer—until the president got back to me—I might be able to avenge Fielding's death.
On a good traffic day, the Trinity complex was a twenty-minute drive from my house in suburban Chapel Hill. Research Triangle Park, the manicured haven of corporate research known locally as the RTP , lay between Raleigh and Durham and was named for the triangle formed by Duke University, UNC at Chapel Hill, and North Carolina State. Its quiet lanes led through expansive lawns that suggested an exclusive country club, but instead of golf links, the seven-thousand-acre RTP boasted labs owned by DuPont, 3M, Merck, Biogen, Lockheed, and dozens of other blue-chip names. Forty-five thousand people reported to work within its borders every day, but less than three hundred knew what lay behind the walls of the Trinity building. I drove slowly, hoping in some juvenile way that I would never arrive at my destination.
The Trinity lab stood two hundred yards back from an understated sign that read ARGUS OPTICAL. A forbidding five-story block of steel and black glass, it sat on sixty wooded acres with extensive subbasements and a heliport. The steel and glass was just a shell constructed for show. Behind it, high-tech copper cladding code-named Tempest encased the inner building, preventing electromagnetic radiation from passing in or out of Trinity. The same stuff protected the NSA operations buildings at Fort Meade.
Because the building had been sited in a sort of bowl, its first two floors lay out of sight. The main entrance was on the third floor. To reach it, staff had to cross a
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