The Secret of Secrets: A Novel (Robert Langdon Book 6) - 105

A n even bigger reason? Langdon could not imagine what additional motivation the CIA could have to destroy Katherine’s manuscript. Her book reveals a new top secret CIA technology. Game, set, match…

Katherine had stopped short and turned to him, her face a mask of concern in the harsh halogen lights. “I think Professor Cosgrove must have known something was wrong,” she said. “After his argument with the Stanford guy, he gave me a final assignment before I left neuroscience for noetics. It was an unusual request.”

“What did he want you to do?”

“He insisted that part of the education of any future scientist was to undergo the process of applying for a patent. He said he loved my creative approach to the artificial neurons, and even though the patent would never be granted, the process of applying would—”

“Wait…” Langdon said. “You’re saying you filed a patent for these artificial neurons?”

“It was an academic exercise, ” she said, nodding. “Cosgrove warned me that my application would be denied for ‘lack of utility’ because it was not buildable. Nonetheless, he urged me to think it through, get as technical as I could, imagine tools, technologies, and materials that did not yet exist, and to go through the process of filing the application. And so I did! I filled out a fourteen-page application as best I could and mailed it in. My patent was denied, as expected, and I never gave it another thought…”

Until now, Langdon realized, incredulous. She’s face-to-face with her own invention.

“In retrospect,” Katherine said, “it occurs to me that Professor Cosgrove might have been protecting me when he told me to file a patent…” She paused, her voice catching. “As if he knew the real reason my thesis was denied.”

“Because your technology was being secretly appropriated by the CIA?”

“Stolen, yes.”

“But how would Cosgrove possibly know the CIA did that?”

“That’s a mystery to me,” Katherine said, “but my gut tells me he knew. Years later, I found out that I was the only student Cosgrove ever pushed to apply for a patent.”

“That’s suspicious.”

“Yes, and Cosgrove was insistent. I remember him saying, ‘Don’t talk about it, Katherine. Just do it.’ He’s long since passed away, or I’d call him.”

“Do you still have a copy of your application?” Langdon asked, imagining it was a fairly dangerous piece of paper to have lying around.

“I certainly did…but any copies I had mysteriously disappeared from my files at some point. I always assumed they got lost in the shuffle of moving, but now…”

They probably stole those too. Langdon shuddered to think that the CIA had been watching Katherine for such a long time, but it explained a lot.

“But here’s the thing,” Katherine continued. “All those years ago, when I received a rejection from the patent office, I had to laugh—it was fourteen pages of my most earnest scientific efforts stamped with a bright red Denied on every page. I showed it to Professor Cosgrove, and he didn’t seem as amused as I was, but he asked if he could keep a copy for posterity and for ‘when I became famous.’ Of course I said yes.”

“So Cosgrove has a copy?!”

“Yes,” she said, her voice suddenly emotional. “When he died about ten years ago, his sister showed up on my doorstep with a sealed manila envelope and said part of his final wishes was that this envelope be delivered to me.” Katherine’s voice caught. “Sure enough, it contained my old rejected patent application—faded but still very much intact.”

Incredible. Langdon was now convinced that Katherine’s old professor had known something was suspicious with the handling of her thesis paper and her patent application. The question of how Cosgrove knew what he knew was still unanswered, but clearly he had taken measures to ensure Katherine retained proof.

Leverage, Langdon thought. That’s what this represents. “Where is that copy now?” he demanded, suddenly afraid the CIA might have gotten to that one too.

“In my desk at home,” she said. “Last I knew.”

“We need to go,” Langdon said, motioning toward the door. “If the CIA discovers—”

“There’s one more thing you should know.” Katherine shifted awkwardly and then looked Langdon in the eye. “While I was writing the final chapter of my manuscript about the future of noetics, I was describing my youthful, wide-eyed dream of creating artificial neurons. On a whim, I decided to include a copy of my failed patent application—all fourteen pages stamped Denied —in the book, because I figured sharing my own early failure might help inspire other young scientists who faced rejection along the way.”

Langdon was speechless. The final piece of the puzzle.

Katherine’s patent application would have been published in her book for the world to see. No other motive was required for the agency to take desperate action against her.

Threshold is the Manhattan Project of the future of brain science…and Katherine was about to publish blueprints for their atomic bomb.

Langdon could only imagine the legal nightmare for the CIA if a watchdog group like the Federation of American Scientists discovered that a prominent noeticist’s patent application had been denied…and then stolen by the CIA without the applicant’s knowledge or compensation.

It would be an investigative reporter’s dream.

The book included a bold vision for a breakthrough technology that represented the missing piece in the global race for a true human-to-machine interface. At the moment, the CIA alone possessed it…but if Katherine published, all bets were off.

Whatever specific purpose the CIA’s implants might serve, Threshold clearly had the potential to provide the CIA with a secret and unmatched technological advantage.

But that’s not all, Langdon realized. Threshold is a potential gold mine.

If the CIA decided to bring proprietary H2M technology to market, Q would become the richest venture capital firm in the world, capable of funding every operation the CIA ran. Either way, secrecy was paramount.

“What’s more,” Katherine said, “this explains why Brigita bragged to me about her patents last night. She raised the subject because she was on a reconnaissance mission. Remember she asked me if I had any patents…or if I’d ever applied for a patent?”

Langdon remembered it well. “And you said you hadn’t!”

“I just didn’t want to get into it. And it was quite a long time ago.”

“No wonder Finch panicked last night,” Langdon said. “Gessner probably told him that you not only rebuffed her request for a signed NDA but rejected her request for an advance copy of the manuscript, and she must have reported that you’d also blatantly lied about never having applied for a patent! Finch would have suspected you were jockeying for personal gain and preparing to publish some kind of bombshell exposé.”

“Well, we can publish it now, ” Katherine said, motioning to the classified binder in his hand. “Complete with PALM of an implanted brain. Pretty conclusive proof.”

“What is PALM?”

“Photoactivated localization microscopy—a brain imaging technique. Threshold genetically encoded their artificial neurons with fluorescent proteins so they could, in effect, see them…and track their growth. Clever idea— theirs, not mine.”

“Wait, are there images in this binder?! You didn’t—”

“You took it away too fast,” she said, holding her hands out for the binder. “I’ll show you.”

Langdon thrust the binder eagerly back into her hands. Despite their evidence that the CIA had stolen Katherine’s idea and was building artificial neurons, Langdon had seen no actual proof that Threshold was doing human trials. This could be it…

“Here’s a good one,” Katherine said, laying the open binder on the counter before them.

When Langdon saw the image, he felt both repulsed…and vindicated. The colorful photo resembled a computer-enhanced X-ray of a human brain inside a skull. What was horrifying, however, was what else was inside the skull with the brain.

Beneath the bone of the skull, a surprisingly large computer chip was nestled into the brain tissue. Attached to the chip a cord snaked to an illuminated mesh of fluorescent threads that seemed to be woven into a lacy, weblike cap, similar to a hairnet, and pulled down over the top of the brain.

“That neural mesh,” Katherine said. “ My idea.”

Langdon looked on in amazement as she flipped through various images, graphs, and notes monitoring the implant’s progress over time. The records were startling, but the bigger shock came when Langdon noticed the tiny footer at the bottom of every page.

PATIENT #002 / VESNA

“Sasha…” Langdon whispered, his worst fears now confirmed. What have they done to you?

Langdon felt sickened to see the thick mesh of tentacles spread out over Sasha’s brain like some kind of parasite. Ironically, he and Katherine had broken into Threshold to find incriminating evidence…only to learn that the single most incriminating piece of evidence was on the outside, inside Sasha Vesna’s head.

I hope the ambassador has located Sasha, he thought, again sensing it was time to go.

“Whatever Ms. Vesna has in her head,” Katherine said, “it does a lot more than cure epilepsy.”

“Is there anything here that describes what the chip does ?”

“Nothing specific,” Katherine said, flipping pages. “This binder is all about neural integration, and I have to admit, I am amazed they’re achieving integration so quickly.”

“What do you mean?”

“Integration between chip and brain,” she said. “Once you lay an artificial neural mesh on a living brain, the two elements need time to fuse into one system. Neural plasticity is a miracle, but it doesn’t happen overnight. For a brain to synapse fully with a neural implant would take at least a decade—maybe two. It’s one of the big obstacles I mentioned in my grad thesis.”

“What did you propose as a solution?”

“I didn’t,” Katherine replied. “There is no solution but to wait. Biological growth takes time. Evolution takes time. And yet somehow…” She studied a series of graphs, shaking her head. “They’ve accelerated the process with remarkable speed. In a year, they’ve done what should have taken at least a decade. The question…is how ?” She kept flipping pages, passing one on which appeared a tiny headshot of a younger Sasha Vesna with long blond hair.

“I have a different question,” Langdon said. “If Sasha is patient number two …”

Katherine glanced up. “Right, then who is patient number one ?”

She immediately began flipping backward through the binder, looking for information on patient number one, who Langdon assumed was most likely the Russian epilepsy patient, Dmitri, from the same institution as Sasha.

“This is strange,” Katherine said. “I don’t see any section with data on any other—oh, wait—here it is. It’s much shorter. I missed it.”

The section included assorted data, graphs, and a similarly eerie X-ray of the subject’s brain showing an implanted chip and neural mesh.

The footer read:

PATIENT #001 / SYSEVICH

Sysevich certainly sounds Russian, Langdon thought.

“Handsome man,” Katherine said, having turned to a page bearing a small headshot of a striking, square-jawed man with curly black hair. His features were clearly Slavic, sturdy and commanding, and yet his eyes had an unsettlingly lifeless gaze. “This guy was clearly implanted with the same chip as Sasha,” Katherine said, still reading. “But it’s weird—there’s absolutely no data post-op. Nothing.”

“We can talk on the way out,” Langdon said, heading for the revolving door. “We’ve got to get out of here.”

Katherine closed the binder and slipped it into her shoulder bag. “I hate to say it, but his records end too abruptly. Zero follow-up. It’s like they put the chip in, and…something went wrong. Maybe he died. ”

The thought was disturbing, and yet it added additional ammunition to the leverage they would have; if the CIA experimented on and killed an unsuspecting Russian epilepsy patient, the diplomatic fallout could have dire repercussions in a world already on edge.

As they pushed through the revolving door back into the hallway, Langdon was reassured to find the corridor pitch-black, its lights having timed out while they were in the lab.

We’re still alone down here.

The floor lighting immediately came on, and Langdon and Katherine turned back toward the double doors through which they had come.

They had taken only a few steps when Katherine grabbed Langdon’s arm. “Look!” she whispered, pointing dead ahead to the doors with the oval windows.

Langdon had seen it too.

The lights on the other side of that door had just blazed to life.

Having completed his thorough search of the medical area, Finch had continued around the corner, where the floor lighting came on to illuminate his path to the double doors at the end of the hall. Taking no chances, he took a moment to stick his head into Immersive Computing, where he was relieved to find all the VR chairs empty and helmets in order.

Then he saw the desk chair on its side.

And the cracked glass in the computer room window.

Normally Finch would have dashed over to check the computer, but he had just had a far more alarming realization—a delayed reaction to something he had glimpsed only moments earlier in the hallway…a soft glow coming through the oval windows of the double doors.

The lights in the RTD hallway were on.

Someone is coming!

Whether a cleaning crew, a security guard, or worse, Langdon knew he and Katherine could not afford to be seen. Unfortunately, they were trapped in a dead-end corridor with no way out except the way they had come.

Langdon rushed back toward the RTD lab, hoping to find somewhere to hide, but as he neared the clean room door, he realized Katherine had stopped in the middle of the hallway and was pointing at the floor. “Robert,” she whispered. “These are tire marks!”

Langdon had seen the marks earlier—a trail of scuff marks worn into the polished floor by the treads of the forklift.

To his confusion, Katherine immediately sprinted past him, waving for him to follow her toward the dead end. What is she doing?! There’s no exit! A moment later, Langdon spotted what Katherine had seen: the wear of tire tracks continued down the hallway and disappeared… beneath the far wall.

Impossible…unless…

Langdon broke into a full sprint, pulling even with Katherine fifteen yards from the end of the hall. He spotted the electric eye and ran toward it, waving to activate the sensor. The entire wall began to slide, retracting smoothly to the left, revealing another section of darkened corridor beyond.

The air emerging from the opening was noticeably colder.

Without breaking stride, he and Katherine ran through the opening and within a few yards plunged into sudden darkness. They came to a stop at a metal railing just as the retracting wall closed behind them.

Soft lighting swelled to reveal their surroundings. Langdon was startled to see they were standing atop a concrete ramp that wound downward around the perimeter of a narrow shaft. As he peered over the railing into the darkness below, he realized that Threshold was indeed considerably larger than what they had seen…and it continued in an unnerving direction.

Down.