The Burning Wire

here to meet people and make contacts on his own. Someday—soon, he hoped—he’d leave Algonquin and spend all his time on his own company. He was veryup front with his supervisors about his private work. Nobody at Algonquin had ever had a problem with what he did on his own time. They wouldn’t be interested in the inventions he created at home anyway, things like the Sink-Rynicity water-saving system for kitchens, or the Volt-Collector, a portable box that used the motion of vehicles to create power and store it in a battery you could plug into a fixture in your house or office, thus reducing demand from your local company.
    The king of negawatts . .  .
    Already incorporated, Sommers Illuminating Innovations, Inc., was his company’s name and it consisted of himself, his wife and her brother. The name was a play on Thomas Edison’s corporation, Edison Illuminating Company, the first investor-owned utility and the operator of the first grid.
    While he may have had a bit—a tiny bit—of Edison’s genius, Sommers was no businessman. He was oblivious when it came to money. When he’d come up with the idea of creating regional grids so that smaller producers could sell excess electricity to Algonquin and other large power companies, a friend in the industry had laughed. “And why would Algonquin want to buy electricity when they’re in the business of selling it?”
    “Well,” Sommers replied, blinking in surprise at his friend’s naivete, “because it’s more efficient. It’ll be cheaper to customers and reduce the risk of outages.” This was obvious.
    The laugh in response suggested that perhaps Sommers was the naive one.
    Sitting down at the booth, he flicked on light switches and removed the BE BACK SOON sign. He poured more candy into a bowl. (Algonquin hadvetoed hiring a model in a low-cut dress to stand in front of the booth and smile, like some of the exhibitors had.)
    The special project manager kept his guard up, though. There’s a seamy side to invention. The creation of the lightbulb had been a fierce battle—not only technologically but legally. Dozens of people were involved in knockdown, drag-out battles for credit for—and the profit from—the lightbulb. Thomas Edison and England’s Joseph Wilson Swan emerged as the victors but from a field littered with lawsuits, anger, espionage and sabotage. And destroyed careers.
    Sommers was thinking of this now because he’d seen a man in glasses and a cap not far from the Algonquin booth. He was suspicious because the guy had been lingering at two different booths nearby. One company made equipment for geothermal exploration, devices that would locate hot spots deep in the earth. The other built hybrid motors for small vehicles. But Sommers knew that someone interested in geothermal would likely have no interest in hybrids.
    True, the man was paying little attention to Sommers or Algonquin, but he could easily have been taking pictures of some of the inventions and mockups on display at the booth. Spy cameras nowadays were extremely sophisticated.
    Sommers turned away to answer a woman’s question. When he looked back, the man—spy or businessman or just curious attendee—was gone.
    Ten minutes later, another lull in visitors. He decided to use the restroom. He asked the man in the booth next to his to keep an eye on things and then headed down a nearly deserted corridor to the men’s room. One advantage of being in the cheaper,small-booth area was that you had the toilets largely to yourself. He stepped into a corridor whose stylish steel floor was embossed with bumps, presumably to simulate the flooring of a space station or rocket.
    When he was twenty feet away his cell phone started to ring.
    He didn’t recognize the number—from a local area code. He thought for a moment then hit the IGNORE button.
    Sommers continued toward the toilet, noticing the shiny copper handle on the door and thinking, They sure didn’t spare any expense here. No wonder it’s costing us so damn much for the booth.

Chapter 72
    “PLEASE,” SACHS MUTTERED out loud, hovering over the speakerphone. “Charlie, pick up! Please!”
    She’d called Sommers just a moment before but the phone rang only once and then went to voice mail.
    She was trying again.
    “Come on!” Rhyme too said.
    Two rings . . . three . . .
    And finally, in the speaker, a click. “Hello?”
    “Charlie, it’s Amelia Sachs.”
    “Oh, did you call a minute ago? I was on