Page 168 of The Secret of Secrets

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!”