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Chapter 61 - Disappearing Act

When they were in the air and the seat-belt lights had been turned off, Tamara signaled to the crew member she had spoken to earlier.

“Is it okay to go see that guy now?” she asked.

“I reckon so,” the woman answered. “It seems that he knows your name, he does. But don’t go to his seat; he’ll meet you in the first-class galley right behind us. I’ll get him now. Oh, I’m Jamie.”

Tamara got up and went to the galley and a minute later the man arrived, looking very puzzled.

Before he said anything, Tamara said quietly, “I’m glad to have an air marshal here, sir...”

“Missy, if I can ask, how did ‘ee know who I was?” he interrupted.

“Dead giveaway,” Tamara grinned at him. “How you showed up for the flight and all; other things too. My dad’s a U.S. Marine; my friend’s dad is a Royal Marine. You all have ‘that look,’” she made finger quotes. “Know of a Col. Stuart Marshall?”

“Blimey. Tiny world, innit; ‘ee wus moi team leader on one o’ moi tours. Wus a cap’n then. So you’re Tamara Alexandre. I got this rush assignment to be on this flight n’ I wus to wait to contact you close to when we arrived.”

“Good; I guessed that you were sent when I saw you come aboard,” Tamara told him. “I’ve had some trouble with industrial espionage agents and had an alert that I might have some problems at Baltimore. I called a friend in London and he got the home secretary involved. I’m to stay on the plane until it’s empty. I still need to make arrangements for the U.S. side to get an escort off the plane.”

“Aye, that be what I were told. An’ not to let anyone take ye off the aircraft ‘less ye said it were alright. But that be my only authority, Miss. Oh, the name be Oliver.”

“Hi, Oliver. Sure. But I did want to meet you, thank you, and be sure you knew about the plans I was making. We both need to be using the same playbook.”

“Blimey, you’re plannin’ this just like a Marine,” he said, grinning.

“Dad taught me. Every detail of a campaign is important. Missed details cost lives.”

Oliver grinned wider at that and nodded. “That’s ace.”

“When I find out what’ll happen in Baltimore, I’ll let you know. Thanks again.”

They shook hands and Oliver returned to his seat. Tamara went back to hers and told the others that the first part of her protection had been arranged. She called her father at 6:30, his local time.

“Hi, Tamara,” he answered when she called. “Saw the text when I woke up. So your lwa says to avoid the Customs checkpoint?”

“Yep. You know how indefinite their messages can be, but that was the best sense I could make of the warning. There’s a Brit air marshal on the flight here and he’ll watch out for me as long as I stay on the plane. I’m guessing that the only way I could be removed from the plane when we arrive would be by police or FBI, not by a Customs person.”

“Not sure, but maybe,” Wilson told her. “But I’ll make some calls. Evan Masters at the State Department should know how to get you to bypass the Customs checkpoint at arrivals. I’ll assume that your reason is the industrial spying problem that you had in Miami?”

“Sure. And the Russian problem in Cambridge this summer too,” she said. “The warning was about something that might happen at the Customs and Immigration Control checkpoint. I might be able to handle the situation but it’s best to just avoid it, right?”

Wilson laughed. “You learned well, sweetie. The best way out of a bad situation is to avoid it in the first place.”

“That’s what I’m doing. Okay, I don’t know if you can call me back and reach me while I’m in the air so I’ll call you back in an hour or a bit more. Gotta go, this call costs about four dollars a minute.”

“Bye, honey.”

An hour and a half later, Tamara called back.

“Any news, Dad?”

“I’ll say there is. It helps when you know people. Evan Masters is clearing you to be checked through Customs and Immigration at the airport’s general aviation area. That’s where the smaller charters and private traffic go and the BWI port director will meet you there. Now, to get there from your aircraft, Masters told me that I should get help from the FBI. He was gonna get someone, but I thought of our friend John Norris, the Miami FBI agent, and called him since it was early and I had his private cell number. He told me that one of the FBI agents who interviewed Mom and me when we arrived in Miami, Sarah Wilkins is her name, is now the special agent in charge of the FBI Baltimore field office. Norris had her private number so when I called her, she remembered Mom and me quite well, and when I explained about your situation, she said that she’d handle it herself. She did hear about your attempted Miami kidnapping and would very much like to meet you. She said to wait on the aircraft and that she’d board it, bypass the arrivals terminal, and get you to the general aviation area. Remember, the name is Sarah Wilkins.”

“Got it, Dad. Thanks.”

“Oh, another thing. I’ll be at the general aviation office to pick you up, so tell Claire and Scott not to worry about where you’ll be.”

“Cool. Thanks again. I’ll let my favorite air marshal here know what’s up. See you in a few hours.”

Tamara asked her crew member Jamie to tell Oliver that she had news for him.

“How do you know him then, dear? Funny to meet someone like that on a transatlantic flight.”

“He served with my friend’s dad in the Royal Marines. They’re a really small, close-knit unit and most everyone knows each other,” Tamara told her.

“Brilliant. I’ll bring him the message.”

They met again in the galley and Tamara told him the FBI agent’s plan for when they arrived.

“Sounds proper bost, Miss. I reckon you must know loads of highly placed folk, don’t you.”

“Actually the ones I know are the ones with those good contacts. But you’re right and it’s those people who get people, like yourself, to help me. Here’s Stuart’s cell and email address if you want to get back in touch with him, and I’ll tell him how you helped me.”

“Cheers, Miss. It’s jobs like this that make my life less borin’,” he joked.

Baltimore-Washington International Airport, Anne Arundel County, Maryland

“The flight’s in on time,” Parker remarked to his partner, Mel Bearton, when Bearton returned to the TSA office near the immigration control area of the airport. “Is the baggage trick all set?”

“Yeah... the boss got Gondon and his team to do the dirty work. The baggage train will come through the secluded area you picked and they’ll find the right bag and do the drop. Since she’s in first class, they only need to check for the priority tags and the supervisor said they’ll be on the first cart, probably.”

Parker nodded. “She’s on the flight and the Customs people flagged her name on the passenger manifest; they know to signal you or me and a CBP agent will take her to the private inspection area like we discussed.”

About ten minutes later, an out-of-breath man rushed up to where Parker was standing.

“Gondon says to tell you that there’s no baggage for Alexandre,” he told Parker. “I had to run ‘cause we get no signal in that impound area. We can’t hold the carts there any longer.”

“Shit! Boss never thought of that—who travels overseas with just a carry-on?” Parker asked and the man just shrugged. “Okay, tell him to, um, release the carts, find a lost baggage item or something and tag it with her name, and get it over to the baggage claim. I’ll get the agents here to delay her, asking why she left her bag in the claims area. That an item with her name was still there.”

He rushed back off to the baggage area and Bearton came over. “Snag?” he asked.

“Yeah. No one thought of what to do if the target has no checked bag.”

“Huh. Wouldn’t occur to me either,” Bearton said. “Ah... here comes the first group.”

He went back to where he had been waiting. And waited. And waited while everyone on that flight had been processed through the checkpoint.

The supervisor went over to Parker. “That’s everyone and your person hasn’t come through here.”

“Is everyone off the plane?” he asked.

“Yes; it’s been checked,” she answered. “No one is left in the security area either.”

“So how could someone get off and not go through customs?” Parker asked.

“It’s possible but only with official or inside help and those people would be breaking the law,” she replied. “An airport employee with secure-area flight-line access would have to help someone get through the doors that lead to outside the terminal. That’s the only way anyone can bypass security and avoid customs, but going out that way leads to the flight line and then they’d stand out like a sore thumb for the security people stationed outside at the flight line. They do watch the terminal doors to keep people from slipping through.”

Parker called the airport manager’s office and asked to meet the flight-line crew supervisor; then he called his contact in the NSA signal communications office.

“This is Parker. Has there been any cell phone traffic today for subject Tamara Alexandre? ... None? When was the last traffic? ... I know we don’t have international data yet. ... What about any calls she made from transatlantic air traffic? ... Nothing? Damn. So the last traffic on her phone was over four days ago? ... Thanks.”

Bearton had come over during the call; he had gone to check the baggage claim area.

“No baggage left from that British Airways flight,” he told Parker as Parker’s phone rang.

“Yeah? ... You did? Well, the bag’s not there anymore and the subject has pulled a disappearing act too. ... I know, the shit’s really gonna hit. I’m still checking. Bye.”

Parker turned to Bearton. “That was Gondon. He put the stack into a 26-inch pink and grey rolling bag and got it on the carousel along with the last of the bags from that flight.”

“What about its baggage tag?” Bearton asked.

“He pulled one off another bag. Had to staple it together since the self-stick got torn. Said that happens sometimes so it’s not unusual. But the bag’s gone, you said?”

“It is, and there wasn’t anything from that flight in the unclaimed baggage office either.”

“How the hell did she do that?” Parker asked, looking up at the ceiling in frustration. He got no answers from up there. “Anyway, we need to get to the management office; I asked to meet with the flight-line supervisor up there.”

When they arrived at the office, a man in a coverall came in right after them.

“You here to see the manager?” a woman asked Parker.

He confirmed that and she showed him into a little conference room and were quickly joined by the coveralled man and a suited one.

After a brief exchange of names, Parker asked the supervisor if he had seen anyone sneaking off the aircraft.

“I don’t look for those things, sir; I’m directing the ground crew. Security monitors the doors from the flight-line to the terminal security area and watches for people who don’t belong out there; if anyone not authorized was there, Security should have noticed anything wrong. If they did, they would have apprehended the person. I know that everyone nearby was servicing that craft and was authorized, for sure.”

“Any video coverage?” Parker asked. “What can we see?”

“An overview of the general flight-line and aircraft service area,” the manager told them. “Which gate again?”

He made a call, asking for a replay of the scene from that gate to be set up.

“We’ll go a few doors down and can see the replay there,” he told them.

The replay showed the normal arrival and baggage-handling activities with many people rushing in all directions, entering and leaving the camera’s field of view.

Parker asked the supervisor, “See anything out of the ordinary?”

“No sir. Just the normal orderly chaos of servicing an arrival.”

Parker looked at Bearton, who looked back and shrugged.

Aboard the British Airways Airbus 380 at BWI: an hour and a half earlier

“‘Bye for now, sweetie,” Tamara told Peter as he prepared to leave the craft; then she said goodbye to the others. “I’ll see you all at my parents’ house, 4:30; Dad’ll take me there and we’ll have dinner with them.”

As she waited, Oliver came up and sat in a seat near her as several cabin crew members came over and began fussing over him.

When Tamara looked at them with amusement, one winked at her. “Ollie’s our favorite air marshal. Too bad he’s hitched; else he’d have his own harem.”

“Now belay that, Rita,” Oliver chided her. Then to Tamara, “Our mob ‘as to keep a reyt low profile, fer sure, so I was proper shocked that you picked me roight out, Tamara.”

Tamara chuckled. “I’m extremely observant; always have been. Also, I knew that someone in the Brit government was doing something to protect me so when you appeared, it was kinda obvious.”

“Ooooh, a spy thing...” Tamara’s own adopted flight crew member, Jamie, said, wide-eyed.

“Nope, just a bit of difficulty about keeping me safe from some unpleasantness,” Tamara said. “I do stuff that both the U.S. and U.K. governments want to protect and some baddies seem to be hanging around me lately.”

“Well, that’s ace, almost like a spy,” Rita objected. “Hey, write a book about it; I’d buy that.”

They all laughed and a flight-deck crew member popped his head in. “Gonna get over to the crew lounge now, mates?” he asked. “Got the overnight flight back in nine hours.”

“Okay, wait up.” Rita said. “See you later, Ollie... Oi, are you going back with us?”

“Possibly. I need to check in with the ‘eadquarters; this were a special trip. I’ll see you lot in the crew lounge... erm... just hold up...”

Someone had just appeared at the passenger door.

“... well. It’ll be reel quick now; so wait up—looks like my relief’s ‘ere,” he finished as a tall woman in a ground-crew coverall came into the cabin. The cabin crew members hung back and watched, curious. The newcomer pulled out a leather case and flipped it open, displaying a shield.

“I’m Special Agent Sarah Wilkins, FBI. I assume you’re...” indicating Tamara, “Tamara Alexandre?”

“Yes, ma’am, and good to see you,” Tamara said. “This is Oliver, my valiant British bodyguard.”

Everyone laughed as she continued. “He came to my rescue on a difficult transatlantic trip—difficult to stay awake, that is. Anyway, Oliver, it’s been a real pleasure getting to know you and your harem...” more laughter, “... so a fond farewell and maybe we’ll cross paths again. Remember about Stuart Marshall, okay?” and she hugged him as he blushed.

Oliver’s “harem” members all lined up to shake Tamara’s hand and wish her well; then they all left as the cleaning people began to arrive. Wilkins pulled a ground-crew coverall out of the small duffle bag she was carrying.

“Here, slip this on over your clothes and I have a worker’s cap for you too. You just have that backpack, right?”

Tamara nodded as she slipped into the garment. “My friends took my carry-on.”

“Good. I’ll carry the backpack in the duffle—good, just fits. Here’s your ID card; of course the lanyard goes around your neck. Okay, just follow along with me like you belong and we’ll walk purposefully. When I heard about your problem, I figured this was a good time to get to meet you. Your parents are very impressive and it would seem you are as well, judging by what I saw you doing with the crew when I boarded.”

Wilkins led Tamara out onto the jetway and then turned toward the jetway’s control station; opposite to that was a doorway, now standing open, that door opened to a metal stairway leading down to the apron.

“When we’re halfway down, keep your head down as there’s a camera on the wall almost directly in front of us. We’re heading straight to the wall ahead and there’s a blue utility cart parked there. Climb in on this side—I’d let you drive but you don’t know where we’re going,” she joked.

As the two discussed Tamara’s situation, Wilkins drove the vehicle along a marked vehicle lane parallel to the concourse building, over to an open area, and then followed several trucks as they drove along a road which circled around the end of a runway. The road led to a large open apron area across from several taxiways and and a runway; the main terminal was on the opposite side of the airport now. She pulled up to a building near the apron’s edge.

“Here’s the FBO, or Fixed Base Operator. The general aviation office. We’re to meet a guy from Customs here , so do you have your form filled out?”

“Yep, all set.”

“Okay, give me the ID and you can slip off the cover-all. You can keep the hat,” Wilkins said as she shed her coverall. “Here’s your backpack. Let’s go see the man.”

The customs inspection involved his checking her diplomatic passport and taking the paper declaration form.

“This isn’t what I usually do,” he told Tamara, “but I’ll go through the motions. Anything you need to declare?”

“No, sir.”

“Good. You’re done, then. I sincerely hope that your security problem will be straightened out soon. It’s not every day that I’m contacted by the Homeland Security deputy secretary and asked to check in an international arrival, after all.”

He left the office and went to a car parked on the apron. Tamara and Wilkins went out to a waiting area and found Wilson there, pacing anxiously.

“Hi, Dad, everything went smooth, thanks to Agent Wilkins and everyone else who helped,” Tamara said as she hugged him.

Wilkins smiled at her as she shook Wilson’s hand. “Good to see you again—and you can call me Sarah; John Norris said to tell you that he misses you guys and the excitement you brought to his office in Miami.” She grinned. “But I’ll be pleased if you don’t import that kind of excitement to the Baltimore area.”

“Sorry, but I think that it already may be starting,” Tamara offered. “You see, three months ago, I was with a group of friends at a British research company—I have a small ownership stake in it—and we were introducing a new energy device...”

She went on to briefly relate the Russian incident.

“So I have good intelligence sources through a number of various contacts,” she finished, “and I got a warning that I’d be in some kind of trouble if I went through the regular Customs here. I’d like to know what that was all about, though. I’m not working on anything that’s been made public yet, so I hope that I didn’t create this whole uproar unnecessarily.”

“We’ll see, Tamara; I’ll keep alert for anything the Agency hears through the grapevine about you,” Wilkins said. “It’s been great meeting you—and Wilson, good seeing you again; send my regards to Nadine.”

She left and Tamara followed Wilson out to his car.

“Dad, I’ve got this incessant feeling of being followed lately so I want to keep using an anonymous phone. Not this international one I’ve been using on the trip; the fees are too high. Can we stop somewhere and I’ll get one?”

Wilson laughed. “Sure. A burner phone, they’re called.”

“Yeah, I heard of them. Mom’s at work?”

“She had a class or she’d be here now. But somehow she knew you’d be okay. Strange, but I also knew you’d be all right but it’s hard to shake years of military training of being prepared for the unexpected. It’s hard to let other people take care of stuff that you want to do yourself.”

Traveling home after the phone purchase—she bought four of them using a pre-paid debit card, and Tamara told him, “This will only be a short-term solution; I’m sure someone determined can eventually find out my number or numbers by watching other phones that I call and eliminate known numbers. But that would take a huge effort. That’s why I got four; make it that much harder. But I sense that I only need them for a short time.”

“What time are Peter and the others coming by?” Wilson asked as they entered his driveway.

“I told them 4:30. Let’s see; it’s 3:25 now. Gives me a chance to freshen up.”

About fifteen minutes later, Wilson’s phone rang and he answered and spoke for a few minutes.

“Hey Tamara,” he called. “That’s Sarah Wilkins. She has some news already but wants to come by to see you.”

“When?” Tamara called back.

“She’s not far, maybe twenty minutes.”

“Sure. Tell her okay.”

When Wilkins greeted them again, her first words were, “You were so right, Tamara, you are bringing some excitement here. After I left you, I was about to head back to my office when one of our airport liaison agents called me; airport security had called him in after they apprehended an offender who they caught trying to steal a checked bag from the secure baggage claim area, of all places. Snuck in somehow and then tried to bluff his way through Customs; apparently he’s done it before; he’s got a stolen airport ID. There was a name tag on the bag he was caught with that read ‘Tamara Alexander’ but spelled...”

“But I didn’t have any checked luggage...” Tamara started.

“Wait, I know; presumably you know how to spell your own name—the name was spelled ‘er’ and not ‘re.’ There were other inconsistencies with the bag too, but when it was opened by Customs, since it was from the secure area, they found a stack of counterfeit hundred dollar bills in it...”

“What!” Wilson exclaimed.

“That was why they called our ALA. So I went back to the terminal. The belongings in the luggage were nothing like a twenty-some-year-old gal would travel with, or would even own. And there was a name and address in a pocket inside. A Maryland address. We ran the name and it turns out that the bag belongs to a 72-year-old woman who flew out of BWI with her husband on a 1:47 p.m. flight to Raleigh, North Carolina. She reported a lost bag when they arrived there.”

Tamara was looking thoughtful now. “Some things are making sense now, from what I heard about the danger to me. Tell me, Mrs Wilkins, could this be a botched attempt at setting up a blackmail scheme of some kind?”

“Jesus, gal, you deduced all that so quickly?” Wilkins grinned. “Good job; that’s what my agent and I thought of too. But what makes no sense is how they’d pull it off—if you had been there when the bag was found, perhaps the plan was that Customs would try to link you to it, despite the wrong name...”

“Actually, no, Mrs Wilkins, there are some other wrong things,” Tamara objected. “What about the airline luggage claim tag on it?”

“Ah, yes. It was a coach tag and was stapled together, like it had gotten torn off at one point.”

“So I had a first-class booking. And then there’s that name and the stuff inside it. Here’s a thought. Possibly whoever set that up had planned on my having a checked bag and when I didn’t, they botched up some kind of intended frame-up.”

Wilkins nodded. “Makes sense. But that implies collusion between whoever did that and the airport and some Customs officials too. We know that the port director wasn’t involved since he cleared you. Damn. Tamara, please take your grief back to damned Miami and John Norris. But you’re right; your idea makes the most sense. A couple in their seventies going to visit their grandkids isn’t gonna be carrying ten thousand in counterfeit hundreds in their checked luggage. I gotta kick this one up the chain; looks like an interagency corruption issue here. Well, thanks for helping me sort this out, I guess. I’ll let you know what I learn, if the matter isn’t buried. Great seeing you guys.”

She left.

Tamara and Wilson provided great entertainment for the others that evening with that story.

NSA Offices, Fort George G. Meade, Maryland: that evening

“And Customs has the counterfeit bills now?” Logan Ames, an assistant director of the NSA, who was called “the boss” by his subordinates, asked, fuming.

“The FBI agent in charge there called the Secret Service, so they probably took custody,” Parker said. “You didn’t have a backup plan if the girl didn’t have checked baggage. We tried to rescue that operation with no resources.”

“Who the fuck travels overseas with practically no baggage?” Ames growled.

“This one did.”

“So tell me how she could have completely disappeared right under the noses of people from multiple agencies. She walked off the plane, through the terminal, past security and Customs checkpoints, and bing, gone with no trace?”

“It looked that way at first, but somehow she did clear Customs,” Parker told him. “After the whole uproar with stopping the baggage theft attempt, the Customs supervisor ran the flight manifest to see if the actual owner of that suitcase had been on the Brit flight. That’s when I saw that Alexandre’s name came up as being cleared and it even showed that a Customs declaration form had been submitted. And the clearance showed that she came through the regular arrivals area. But both Bearton and I had been watching every station and for sure she never came through there and besides, that’s the only Customs area that was operating then. So she must have had some high-level help, boss. Remember, she and her family have important contacts.”

“Not as powerful as this agency...”

“Don’t be so sure. And now she’s completely disappeared electronically too. We were tracing her activities by phone and through bank card use, until she left the States. Then all of our tracking stopped. She had to be communicating to arrange her disappearance but we have no traffic from her phone. Nothing for four days, even internationally; she just dropped off the signal comm radar. It’s very possible she might somehow have figured out that we were watching her.”

Ames snorted. “A kid? Really?”

“Don’t underestimate this ‘kid.’ She got the world’s top engineering award at seventeen. She invented a battery thing that’s going to revolutionize electronics. Gerston gave her a Presidential Medal of Freedom. She’s got DARPA contracts as a private person. That’s unique; no one else has that. The British queen knighted her this past summer and our info section sent me a message this morning that the queen just gave her a gallantry award—that’s why she was in England. Her family has close friends at the State Department—the dad is actually on a presidential detail as an special ambassador for them. I heard that they have contacts with people in the CIA too. But it looks like she got spooked about going through the Customs checkpoint; why else would she make such an effort to avoid it? Somehow she must have figured out that we planned something. I for sure don’t want that family on my bad side.”

“Now listen...”

“One sec, I’m not done. When Customs found the counterfeit money in that baggage, they called the FBI in, and the agent who showed up called in the agent in charge of the area. Guess what? That FBI supervisor was really close by, because she showed up almost immediately, and she began asking some very, very pointed questions that suggested that she knew much more than she was letting on. I’m not going to prison over this stunt, boss. I won’t accept any assignment that even suggests that it will affect the Alexandre girl. After all, what you’re trying to do is way outside the NSA’s mission.”

“If I order you...”

“Don’t say it. If you do try to do something to me for backing out, I have enough evidence about your own involvement to ... let’s just say, you’d regret what would happen. That’s it; not sayin’ any more. Enjoy your evening.”

Parker walked out and Ames sighed and leaned back in his chair. What should have been a simple, straightforward job had turned into a complex mess. Perhaps he should try a direct approach and simply have an agent contact her. But she’d need to be alone. He wondered how he could convince her to divulge her secrets; perhaps researching her past—or maybe searching her possessions—could find something to give him an advantage.

Applied Physics Laboratory, North Laurel, Maryland: several days later

“Tamara, while you were gone, we finished the suite of tests using those ultra high-speed cameras; you wanted the timing data as soon as it was calculated. The results are now on the secure server,” Betty Miskin told her. “The file’s in the ‘CalTech’ folder.”

“Oh, good. You did that real fast; I wasn’t expecting the results till next week.”

“This time we knew what we were doing; besides, we still had the test apparatus set up so we didn’t have to build much.”

“Oh yeah, Betty, on my trip I got an idea about using an EEG on a person in an MRI. You know that the magnet interferes with the electrode pickups?”

“Sure. What’d you figure out?”

“I visualized how a circuit could use the Meissner effect locally, right at the electrode. You recall, I’m sure, that a superconducting circuit can exclude a magnetic field; that’s known as the Meissner effect.”

“Right. Superconducting circuits act as a perfect diamagnet and repel or nullify the field. But can you do that on such a tiny area?”

“That’s what I think the circuit can do. I scaled it onto a chip sized the same as an EEG electrode and the chip itself is the electrode. Can you get the techs to run five of them to test? I’ll email you the specs, schematic, and chip layout.”

“Damn. You did all that on your trip?”

“Hey, not very much to do on transatlantic flights. And the CAD program on my laptop is easy to use. I hope that design works. It should let me get readings in the room with the magnet and maybe even work in the MRI field when the RF pulses occur—but I won’t be crushed if that part doesn’t work. That’s a big stretch.”

“All right, shoot me the plans and I’ll get some chips made. And please let me know how those timing numbers work out. Those cameras are totally sweet to use.”

Tamara went over to speak to Saul Freeberg, her engineering tech, who was working on one of the larger coil assemblies.

“Hey Saul.”

“Hey Tamara. What’s up? I’m still working on getting the effective field sizes for the different coil configurations; should be done in maybe a week.”

“Got a side project I thought of when I was sitting in the plane on my last trip. I did some quick calcs on the π-electron wave functions in steroid molecules and I think that the coil force can affect the molecules enough to help in some chemical synthesis problems that Joyce is having. The stereoisomers are causing a roadblock.”

“Yeah, what’s that all about? I didn’t pay a lot of attention to that stuff in chemistry.”

“Okay, I’ll keep it simple. You know that molecules aren’t just atoms that hook up like tinker toys—balls and sticks—but that their atoms are closely joined, interlocked and held in place by their electron clouds, and when three atomic nuclei are connected as in a molecule, their orientation follows certain discrete angles, called the bond angles?”

“Okay, I remember that.”

“So stereoisomers are identical molecules; they have the exact same atomic compositions and are structurally identical, but certain bond angles inside them are flipped so that the molecules are mirror images of each other. Think of gloves. A left glove won’t fit well on a right hand. You might be able to force it, but your hand won’t work well at all. So when a biologically active molecule attaches to its cellular receptor, it has to have just the right physical shape to properly fit and the mirror-image version either won’t fit at all, or will fit badly and interfere somehow with the receptor’s function. That’s the molecular version of a left-hand glove trying to fit a right hand. Following this?”

“Sure. Makes sense. You had mentioned before that the synthesis makes both molecule versions and the wrong molecule version won’t work.”

“Yep. So complex steroid molecules—they are based on three or four aromatic ring structures—are rich in π electrons. These are electrons which are not localized to their related bonds and are free to move in the vicinity of their ring structure. Kind of like a π-electron cloud. So I did some wave-function calcs and noticed that the coil force can likely kind of stabilize the π electrons and I’m thinking that this might be a way to separate the stereoisomers or maybe even selectively synthesize each version. I’d like you to try to use some coil assemblies and try to build this chamber...”

She gave him a sketch of a tube showing how she wanted the coils arranged.

“I’d like two versions,” she continued. “One would be a closed tube to do reactions inside and another would be open at both ends so that a volatilized gas stream could be passed through. Here’s what a gas injection device looks like for a gas chromatograph. I’d like you to figure out how to make this using the coils. I’ve done a batch of sketches. You and Betty already figured out how to use that ferromagnetic colloid you guys made as a coil-force indicator for looking at how the coil force field is shaped. So use that colloid to tune the coil assemblies. Is this possible to do?”

Freeberg looked at the sheets. “Don’t see why not. This looks like an interesting job. I’ll let you know how it’s going—maybe a week or two to get something you can test.”

“That should be fine. If this works, it would be an application of principles that are about a hundred years old, so it would be really cool to have a working device.”

~~~~

Toward the end of the day, Tamara met Emma and they discussed her processing of the coil-force timing study.

“Emma, I’m getting some very interesting results there. In a way, it’s disturbing because I can’t believe what the numbers are showing. I need to try a new approach; perhaps my initial conditions weren’t properly set and that would change the integration limits.”

“That’s correct; that’s one of the most frequent sources of error in working with quantum theory. Oh, Betty says you had another of your inspirations. A new kind of EEG electrode.”

“Yeah, it was an obvious thing to try. I think there’s a good chance it’ll work. At least the calcs show that enough of the magnetic field is excluded around the electrode that any tiny electrical activity won’t be masked. And I might be able to use mathematical filters to separate the electrical signal from any RF pulses the EEG picks up.”

“Okay, that’s ace. I plan to leave in 45 minutes if you want to ride with me. If you’re staying later, you’ll need to call for your Uber ride.”

“Sure, I’ll be here then. I don’t have to work late.”

Tamara had been staying at Emma’s home during the week and riding to the lab with her this semester, since all of her work was at the lab. She still hadn’t bothered with getting a driver’s license. On weekends, she stayed at Peter’s Baltimore apartment since all of his research work was at the university, but he sometimes came out to the APL to visit or as an occasional subject for her work.

“Good, Sam and Jay are coming over and bringing dinner and Abi and Ryan will be there. Sam says that she’s got news about a crazy case that she got a huge settlement on and wants to celebrate.”

“Should be an interesting evening, then,” Tamara grinned.

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