noon with an urgent request to meet him at this out-of-the-way location. He'd arrived at our rendezvous looking shockingly rattled for a guy who approached all drama with analytical calm.
"At Gemini?" I asked, referring to the jewel in our astronomy crown.
Duncan shook his head vaguely. "FCT — the FrancoCanadian Telescope." Then he seemed to pull himself together. "The day before yesterday Grenier goes to work as usual. He arrives at the telescope in the early evening, then spends the night working with one of the French astronomers and the telescope operator on duty that night. By all accounts they have a stellar night of observing, if you'll forgive the pun, and neither Mellier, the French astronomer, nor Aimes, the telescope operator, notice anything amiss. Mellier leaves first, around 3:00 a.m., with a massive high-altitude headache. Grenier and Aimes finish up around 4:30 a.m. and leave together, but in separate vehicles. Aimes checks in at the Astronomy Centre halfway down from the summit but is off the next night so decides to continue on home instead of sleeping at the Centre. Grenier never arrives. Half an hour later he sends a farewell note by e-mail to all the staff, takes the maintenance lift up to the peak of the dome, puts a loop of cable around his neck, and takes a dive."
"A suicide."
"So it would seem." At this point Duncan lifted his coffee again and took another painfully slow sip. The stuff was grey slosh, so I knew the goal of the drinking was to buy time, give him space to formulate. He took a few more moments then carefully placed the cup back in its saucer and looked at me directly. He searched my face then said, "We need your help."
Duncan and I used to work together investigating research fraud for the National Council for Science and Technology. That is, until he bailed for a job as special advisor to the powerful Minister of Industry and Science, something I hadn't quite forgiven him for. "We?"
"The minister's office."
Jobs for them usually involved endless hours of paperwork and mountains of bureaucratic crap, so I kept my voice noncommittal. "What's the problem?"
Duncan leaned forward and lowered his voice. "Grenier kept research diaries, and they're gone."
If that was supposed to impress me, it didn't. "Who cares? The dead guy's an astronomer. It's in the public domain."
Duncan leaned over and extracted a file from his briefcase, which he pushed across the table. It was stuffed with reprints from the Astronomical Journal, Astronomy and Astrophysics, Proceedings from the American Astronomical Society, in short, from the most prestigious astronomy publications in the world. I glanced through it while he spoke in a low voice. His gaze kept shifting to the window every time someone walked by, but being Duncan it didn't break his concentration.
"Grenier was a genius at image reconstruction, where they take the electronic data from these huge light-sensor arrays and use it to build a detailed image. That's what he's been doing with the FrancoCanadian Telescope, developing software to handle a new wide-field imaging camera." He nodded to the file. "It's all in there. Grenier's team was using the camera to detect gravitational lenses and map dark matter, but the point is it has other applications."
I looked up from the file. "You mean military applications."
He nodded. "High-end satellite surveillance. You see the problem."
Actually, I didn't. Military research is always at least ten years ahead of academia, what with all the money, no publishing, and no teaching. Duncan knew this, but I said it anyway. His response caught me off guard.
"We have reason to believe that Grenier was extremely advanced in this area, and much of his work was unpublished. Those diaries may contain algorithms, flow charts, even snatches of code. The fact that they're missing concerns us. We funded the research. It belongs to us, and we want it back."
I looked at him for a second then pushed my chair back and turned to stare out the dirty window. Outside, needles of freezing rain slashed against the glass, and pedestrians scurried by with collars gripped tight against the wind. Welcome to Ottawa's spring. Something didn't add up. For starters Duncan — or at least the Duncan I knew — had disappeared. We need your help? We are concerned? We have reason to believe? Where was the critical, questioning, intelligent Duncan I'd grown to cherish and respect? The Duncan who believed in nothing and trusted no one? The Duncan who was my friend? A year ago I would have trusted him with my life, now I wasn't even sure I knew him. Anyway, this sounded like a spook job, and that didn't turn my crank. I deal with good clean science fraud for good clean reasons, like jealousy, greed, and egomania. I turned back to Duncan and gave him the answer he should have known he'd get if his brain hadn't turned to bureaucratic mush.
"No thank you."
He lifted his head and circled the cup with his hands. His clear hazel eyes looked into mine. "No is not an option."
I could feel the heat rise from my gut. "No is always an option. There may be consequences attached, but it's always an option."
He stared at me for a moment, then his face collapsed, dropped, as if the skin had suddenly detached from the bone. He leaned forward and covered it with his hands. His voice came out in a hoarse whisper. "For Christ's sake, Morgan, do this one for me. There's no one else I can trust."
Duncan had never, in all our years of working together, made a personal appeal. I took a deep breath. "Look, Duncan, if your theory is correct and someone did steal the diaries they're gone. They're in Washington, or Moscow, or Baghdad, or wherever the hell else you're worried about."
"They're in Hawaii."
"How do you know?"
I could see him struggle with that one for a minute. He laid his hands flat on the table. "Look, I need someone who can get inside, ask the right questions, recognize any discrepancies. Someone who understands the culture."
I thought about that for a minute. Not what he was saying: what he wasn't saying. "You think it was an inside job. Someone on staff."
He gave a noncommittal shrug. "Or an astronomer from another telescope, or a visiting observer, or an engineer, or a technician. There are lots of candidates. The point is, I need someone who understands the connections." He leaned forward again. "And someone who isn't afraid of what they might find."
That, of course, meant politics.
"Has it been called?" I nodded to the envelope.
I saw just the slightest wince and did a rapid calculation based on a five-hour time difference between Hawaii and Ottawa. When I came up with the number I sat back and laughed. "It hasn't been called, has it? Yves Grenier isn't even cold."
"It's open and shut, a suicide."
"Except that it's not shut, and until it is I'm obstructing a police investigation. People go to jail for that, Duncan, unless you've got a diplomatic passport filed away in my travel papers." He had the grace to look chagrined. "I didn't think so."
The door to the café opened with a blast of icy wind, and Duncan's eyes followed the elderly man as he shuffled to a booth. As far as I was concerned this meeting was over. I gulped down my coffee and started to pull on my coat.
"My ex-wife called," he said suddenly. "She wants custody of Alyssa and Peter."
I stopped with my arm halfway in the sleeve. "When did this happen?"
"Yesterday." His lips trembled,
