15

AGENT LONG SMOOTHED his hand over his shiny head and breathed deeply. He’d been waiting in customs at San Francisco International Airport for over an hour. He knew Quinn’s Korean Air flight direct from Seoul took just under eleven hours, but he wasn’t taking any chances. Long had met with all the customs agents and instructed them to escort Quinn straight to secondary screening the moment he turned over his passport.

How he interrogated Quinn depended on what he found in his luggage. Long had learned from HydroGen President Jerry Wilcox that Quinn’s research there focused on the development of a catalytic reaction that facilitated the separation of hydrogen from oxygen. Wilcox and Quinn had worked side by side for months on the project, although their working relationship was anything but collegial. They constantly disagreed over their research protocols and possible catalytic materials. According to Wilcox, Quinn was so competitive that it was his way or no way. It was as if he’d brought a fencing competition to the research lab. But he put up with Quinn because of his raw talent, or as Long surmised, because Quinn had better ideas than his own.

The reason for Quinn’s sudden departure to Korea was still unclear. At first, Wilcox claimed he’d fired Quinn because of an unprofessional working relationship, but he later changed his story, saying Quinn had left in a huff once Wilcox had invented the catalyst and refused to place Quinn’s name on the patent application, because Quinn didn’t invent anything.

Whatever the reason, being fired or leaving on his own initiative, Quinn’s employee agreement required him to assign all of his inventions to HydroGen, who in turn was obligated to assign its rights to the Department of Energy. Even if Quinn was disgruntled because Wilcox wouldn’t put his name on the patent application, that was no reason to steal the idea. He didn’t own it anyway.

Long’s phone beeped, a signal that Quinn was on his way. Long jumped behind the large X-ray machine. While Long was under immense pressure to obtain enough evidence to arrest Quinn for theft of trade secrets, the Justice Department wanted Long to stop Quinn without any publicity.

The official story was that the DOE felt that the technology wasn’t fully developed and did not want a premature announcement of any so-called water cars until they were sure it really worked. Being embarrassed on the international stage if they couldn’t make good on the outlandish claims was political suicide for anyone at the Energy Department. Long privately surmised it was because of the politics behind protecting a massive investment in US oil production, but that was all way above his pay grade.

From his hiding place, Long observed Quinn being escorted by a single customs agent to the luggage scanner. “Throw all your stuff on the conveyor belt,” the agent said placing his hands on his hips, above his holstered handgun.

“I’ve got computer equipment in there. Can I pull that out?” Quinn said.

“Computer equipment?”

Quinn hesitated. “Couple of flash drives.”

“Your data will be safe. If it doesn’t go through our scanner, we’ll need to download the data. Choice is yours.”

Quinn’s jaw muscles flexed. Long leaned his ear closer to hear Quinn’s response.

“Put ‘em through, then.”

“And we’re going to need to search your person.”

“Meaning?”

“We’ll start with a pat down.”

“And if I refuse?”

“We take your computer equipment and send you back to Korea.”

Long peeked around the corner to catch Quinn’s reaction. Quinn hesitated, then held up his hands and beamed a smile. “If you put it that way, I’m all yours.”

Long pounded his fist against his leg. If Quinn had the catalyst, there was no way he would consent to the search. While Long could run to a judge and try to get a search warrant for the drives, he knew the DOJ wouldn’t want that sort of public record. Besides, the drives were probably encrypted at so many levels that he’d never be able to uncover the information in his lifetime.

He knew he had struck out again.