Charlie Thorne and the Last Equation Read online

  First things first: She had been apprehended by the CIA. That’s who Dante Garcia had worked for the last Charlie knew, and Dante would rather die than leave the Agency.

  Second: Despite the wreck she had been in, she was feeling fine. She had lost consciousness, which was a concern, but she had no headache at all, which was good. Lucky she had kept that ski helmet on.

  Third: She hadn’t been handcuffed or bound in any way. Her wrists were free. Although something was wrapped around her left forearm. A Velcro strap with a tiny piece of metal placed over her median antebrachial vein. A pulse monitor.

  Nuts, Charlie thought. She instantly willed herself to relax, but she knew it was too late. The pulse of someone awake was inevitably faster than that of someone asleep. Which meant . . .

  “You can stop pretending,” Dante said. “I know you’re awake.”

  Charlie could actually hear him smiling.

  “I’m not pretending,” Charlie replied, keeping her eyes closed. “I’m recovering from that car wreck. I nearly killed myself trying to save your stupid butt. What kind of idiot jumps in front of a moving truck?”

  “Twelve-year-old girls shouldn’t be driving trucks in the first place. Or stealing them, for that matter.” There was a slight rustle as Dante set down whatever he had been reading. “Although for you, stealing a truck is small potatoes, isn’t it?”

  Charlie chose not to answer that question. Instead, she said, “I could have a concussion. I should be in a hospital.”

  “That’s not necessary. Agent Moon and I both have extensive medical training. We’ve been monitoring your vitals this whole time. You’re fine.”

  Charlie reluctantly opened her eyes. Other than the split-second glimpse she had caught before wrecking the truck, this was the first time she had seen Dante in years. He looked almost exactly the same. Thick brown hair, gleaming hazel eyes; people had always said he was handsome. He had always been in good shape, too, but now he appeared stronger than ever, his wrestler’s physique straining his clothes. Dante had changed into khakis, a blue button-down shirt, and an old sports jacket that was fraying at the collar. A loaded shoulder holster peeked from under his right armpit. A briefcase sat by his feet. He held his phone, which was relaying Charlie’s pulse rate to him. He was grinning smugly, proud of himself.

  Charlie said, “I could have run you over, you know.”

  “Don’t flatter yourself. I would have shot the tires out first.”

  “Yeah, right. If I weren’t such a nice person, you’d be roadkill right now and I’d already be halfway around the world. . . .” Charlie trailed off, suddenly concerned. She dropped her hand to where her money belt had been wrapped around her waist. It wasn’t there. “Where’s my passport?” she demanded. “And my money? And my phone?”

  “They’re in a safe place,” Dante replied.

  “They were already safe. Can I have them back?”

  “Eventually. If you behave.”

  Charlie sighed. “You are such a schmuck.”

  She sat up, jammed her hands in her pockets, and pouted, doing her best to act like a petulant twelve-year-old. It wasn’t that hard, as she was already ticked off. But the show was really designed to hide the fact that she was checking her jacket to see if they’d found everything she’d had on her.

  They hadn’t. Charlie felt a small, hard object tucked into one of the pockets in the liner and suppressed a smile. This was something she could use to her advantage. When the opportunity presented itself.

  In the meantime, Charlie took in her surroundings. The jet looked as if it hadn’t been remodeled in decades: The upholstery was done in faded pastels, and the thick-pile carpet had been trampled bare in patches. The couch Charlie sat on stretched along the left wall of the cabin toward the rear of the plane. Dante sat across the narrow aisle in a seat that faced the couch. There was a small table next to him, flanked by another seat. Between them and the cockpit were four more seats, these ones standard airline seats, two facing forward, two facing back. At the rear of the jet was a small kitchenette and a door to what must have been the bathroom.

  The window shades were up. The sky was glowing orange. Sunset. According to Charlie’s watch, it was only three o’clock back in Colorado, so they must have been heading east.

  The woman who had chased her was in the pilot’s seat, the cockpit door open so she and Dante could stay in contact. The jet was on autopilot, so the woman didn’t have to pay attention to what was in front of her. She was swiveled around, looking back toward Charlie.

  This was the first time Charlie had a good look at the woman’s face unobscured by ski goggles or a helmet. She was striking, with wide cheekbones, raven hair tied back in a ponytail, and dark eyes that shone with intelligence.

  “Hi, Agent Moon,” Charlie said, nice and friendly.

  “Hello, Charlotte,” Milana said.

  “Please don’t call me that. My friends call me Charlie.”

  “I’m not your friend,” Milana replied. There was a coldness to her voice that said she wasn’t joking.

  “Your loss,” Charlie said, which provoked the tiniest trace of a smile from Milana. Charlie studied the features of her face. “Are you Native American?” Charlie asked.

  Milana blinked. She tried to hide it, but she seemed impressed that Charlie had picked up on this. “Yes.”

  “What tribe?”

  “We don’t have time for small talk right now.” Milana swiveled back around in her chair and resumed flying the jet.

  Charlie returned her attention to Dante. “Do we have time to eat? I missed lunch, seeing as I’ve been unconscious.”

  “We picked up some sandwiches before we got on the plane.” Dante nodded toward the kitchenette.

  Charlie stood and headed to the back of the jet. She didn’t feel dizzy or wobbly, which was a good sign. She was concerned about the fact that she had been knocked unconscious, but her brain seemed to be working all right. She did a few advanced calculus problems in her head, just to confirm this.

  There was a small refrigerator. Inside were sandwiches wrapped in plastic. One of them was tuna fish and roast beef on rye bread. With pickles.

  “Ugh.” Charlie groaned. “Dante, I see you still have the most disgusting sense of taste on earth.”

  “You don’t have to eat it,” Dante replied. “There’s one for you in there.”

  Charlie found a turkey with Havarti cheese on sourdough and smiled despite herself. Dante had remembered it was her favorite.

  In the cockpit, Milana Moon perked up at this exchange, trying to understand Dante’s connection to Charlie Thorne. There was apparently more to it than he had let on. He obviously hadn’t learned about this kid’s existence recently. He knew her somehow.

  There was also a can of Cherry Coke in the fridge. Another of Charlie’s favorites. She returned to the couch with it and the sandwich and flopped down. “Just so we’re clear here, you’re making a mistake. I haven’t done anything illegal.”

  “Well, there we have a difference of opinion,” Dante replied. “Yours versus everyone else in the world’s. Most people would say that stealing forty million dollars is illegal.”

  Despite her best intentions, Charlie couldn’t hide her reaction. Dante had the number almost exactly right. Which meant he knew all about Barracuda. Her face filled with worry, but then she caught herself and tried her best to recover her calm facade. “I didn’t steal anything,” she said coolly. “I simply took back what they had stolen from me.”

  “You never had forty million dollars.”

  “I added some interest.” Charlie took a bite of her sandwich. “Not that it really matters. I’m obviously not under arrest.”

  Dante arched an eyebrow, which he had always done when Charlie said something that got his attention. “Why do you say that?”

  “First of all, I’m sure you know where I’m going to college. I made the national news when I picked Colorado over Harvard and Yale and all the other schools tha
t accepted me. So if you really wanted to bust me, it would have been much easier to do it there, rather than coming to Snowmass and ambushing me on a ski mountain.”

  Even though Charlie was right, Dante didn’t give her the benefit of admitting it. He merely stood, went to the back of the plane, and got his own sandwich from the fridge.

  “Next,” Charlie went on, “if I had stolen this money—and I’m not saying I did—that isn’t the CIA’s jurisdiction anyhow. So you wouldn’t even be making the bust.”

  “Agent Moon, are you hungry?” Dante called.

  “Starving,” Milana replied.

  Dante grabbed a sandwich and a Diet Coke and walked them up to the cockpit for Milana.

  Charlie took another bite of her sandwich and spoke with her mouth full. “Finally, I know this probably isn’t the snazziest jet in the CIA’s fleet, but still, it’s a jet. And I’ve heard that jet fuel is really expensive. So I’m betting the Agency doesn’t loan jets out at the drop of a hat. Busting a kid like me certainly doesn’t qualify as a national emergency. Therefore, something else must be going on. Something serious. Because you wanted me fast. The question is: Why?”

  Dante returned to his seat, considered Charlie a moment, then laid his cards on the table. “We want you to work for us.”

  Charlie nodded, as though she had expected this all along. “And your plan is to use my supposed crimes to blackmail me into it?”

  “The thought had crossed my mind.”

  “Even though I’m not exactly spy material?”

  “You have certain gifts we believe would be helpful in this particular case.”

  Charlie took a sip of her soda, then said, “I pass.”

  Dante’s eyebrow arched again. “What?”

  “Thanks, but no thanks. I don’t want to be a spy. It sounds like a lousy job. The pay stinks, you answer to the government, and people occasionally try to kill you. Plus, your blackmail plan isn’t going to work. I’m only twelve, Dante. You can’t force me to do anything I don’t want to. It’d make the CIA look like a bunch of slimeballs.”

  Dante said, “I’m not going to force you to do anything, Charlie. You’re going to choose to help us of your own free will.”

  “And why is that?”

  “Because if you don’t, your life—and the lives of billions of other people—will be in danger.”

  SIX

  Why don’t you tell me what all this is about?” Charlie said.

  “How much do you know about Albert Einstein?”

  “Plenty. I’ve read a couple books about him. Did you know he never wore socks? He hated it when they got holes in them.”

  “Have you ever heard of something he developed called Pandora?” Dante asked.

  “No,” Charlie replied, although she was intrigued. It surprised her that there could be anything Einstein had come up with that hadn’t been in any of the biographies she’d read.

  “Sometimes it’s referred to by its German name: Pandorabüchse.”

  “I still haven’t heard of it. Contrary to popular belief, I don’t inherently know everything.”

  Dante checked his phone to see if there had been a change in Charlie’s heart rate. That might have happened if she was lying. But it held steady. Charlie seemed to be telling the truth.

  “Pandora is an equation,” Dante explained. “Related to the theory of special relativity. I’m assuming you know about that.”

  “Duh. Everyone knows about that.”

  “So, why don’t you tell me what you know about it?” Dante took a bite of his roast beef, tuna fish, and pickle sandwich.

  “Could you stop eating that in front of me?” Charlie asked. “I’m getting nauseated just watching you.”

  “I’m hungry. I had to skip lunch today to apprehend you.”

  “You know how the CIA does really annoying things to force bad guys to give up? Like blasting them with awful music at high volumes? They should just send you in and have you eat that sandwich in front of the bad guys. And maybe let them smell your breath afterward. I’m sure they would surrender in droves.”

  Dante’s smile faded slightly at the mention of his breath and he glanced toward Milana, as though worried she had overheard this. She was still focused on flying the plane though. So Dante made a show of setting the sandwich down and said, “Satisfied?”

  “Yes.”

  “Now tell me what you know about special relativity.”

  “Okay. Einstein published it in 1905—and the world has never been the same. Essentially, Einstein deduced that matter and energy are the same thing, which led to the most famous equation in history: E = MC2. The amount of energy in something (E) is equal to the quantity of matter within it, which is its mass (M) times the speed of light (C) squared. Which is the speed of light multiplied by the speed of light.” Charlie settled back on the couch and dug back into her sandwich.

  Dante stared at her. “That’s all you’ve got?”

  “How much more do you want?”

  “If I were your professor, I’d give you a D for that.”

  “Well, you’re not my professor. What’s the point of all this?”

  “I want to make sure you know what the equation means. Give me more than just the elementary school version.”

  Charlie sighed. “Fine. Just about everyone has heard of E = MC2, but what most people don’t realize is exactly how big ‘C squared’ is: The speed of light is nearly three hundred million meters per second. Square that and you’re at over a quadrillion. That’s a massive number. A quadrillion seconds ago, the earth was just forming. Multiply the mass of something by a number that large and . . . Well, what Einstein’s equation really means is that inside even the tiniest bit of matter, there’s a staggering amount of energy. For example, in one teaspoon of plutonium, there’s enough energy to run a single lightbulb for a hundred million years—or better yet, to power all of Manhattan for a day.”

  Dante smiled, looking pleased. “Very good.”

  “Gee, thanks, Professor,” Charlie said mockingly. “Do I get an A now?”

  Dante ignored her and grew serious. “With relativity, Einstein handed us the power of the atom. But there were always rumors that he was never satisfied with the equation. It’s obviously correct, but not easy to use. It’s not hard to obtain energy from coal or petroleum—you just burn them—but to get energy from something as small as an atom is immensely complicated. Even after Einstein developed the theory, it took hundreds of the world’s greatest minds several decades to figure out how to put it to practical use.”

  “You mean nuclear bombs?”

  “Nuclear energy too. But even now our methods to extract that energy aren’t very efficient—or safe. Well, the story goes that at some point in his life, Einstein proposed there might be a shortcut: another equation that would make the process of converting mass to energy considerably easier. He called it Pandorabüchse—or Pandora’s box, though it’s usually just referred to as Pandora. You know the myth of Pandora, right?”

  “Of course,” Charlie replied. “In Greek mythology, Pandora was the first woman. Her story mirrors that of Eve in the Bible, in that both women are blamed for humanity’s fall from grace. In a lot of those old myths, women were nothing but trouble. I’m betting men wrote them.”

  “Let’s focus on the story,” Dante said.

  “Fine. Originally, the world was paradise—and then Pandora came along. She was given a box and told never to open it, but curiosity got the better of her. The box contained the Furies—great evils that were then unleashed upon the world. Which was a total setup. Honestly, what jerk gives someone a present and tells them they can’t open it?”

  “But the box also contained hope,” Dante added. “In Einstein’s view, his new equation would have a similar impact. There was hope: With Pandora, the world’s energy problems would be solved. But on the flip side, there was a very significant danger that—”

  “Any jerk with an ax to grind could build a nuclear weapon.
” Charlie’s cocky attitude vanished. Her face was now full of concern.

  “Exactly,” Dante agreed. “The only thing that has kept nuclear power out of the hands of dangerous people is the difficulty of using it. But if it was easy . . . well, the world would be a very scary place. Anyone who got ahold of Pandora would have the capacity for incredible destruction. Which is why, according to the story, Einstein decided to stop looking for it. He lost his faith in humanity and decided that the rest of us simply couldn’t be trusted to do the right thing.”

  Charlie sat forward on the couch, her eyes now riveted on Dante. According to her heart monitor, her pulse was rising with excitement. “I’m guessing that’s not the only version of the story.”

  Dante held her gaze for a moment before admitting, “No. The other version says that Einstein let everyone think he stopped looking for Pandora—but he didn’t. Despite his reservations, he couldn’t keep himself from unlocking the secrets of the universe. And, being Einstein, he succeeded. Only once he figured out the equation, he knew humanity wasn’t ready for it, so he hid it.”

  “Where?” Charlie asked.

  “I don’t know. No one has ever been able to find it.”

  “No one?” Charlie burst into laughter. “Then it probably doesn’t exist.”

  “The CIA thinks it does.”

  “Really? It’s been nearly seventy years since Einstein died. How many agents have you sent looking for this equation?”

  “I don’t know the exact number. . . .”

  “Well, I’ll bet it’s big. And the CIA can’t be the only organization that’s heard about Pandora. I’m sure someone leaked that info to the Russian KGB or British MI6 or who-knows-what-else along the line. So hundreds, maybe thousands of agents have been scouring the earth for this thing for seven decades and come up dry?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then you don’t have anything to worry about. Pandora’s a myth.”

  “I don’t think so. . . .”

  “Like I said, I’ve read plenty about Einstein. There’s no record of Pandora. Einstein never wrote anything about it. He never said anything about it. Not once, in his entire life.”