Fracture Event: An Espionage Disaster Thriller

by W. Michael Gear

  “Then we’re going to be here for days.” Dusty pulled his sweat-stained straw hat down tight as she wheeled into the space. “Fred runs five statistical programs to decide if he has to pee in the morning.”

  Maureen pulled the pages of statistical equations she’d extracted from the Schott article from the console and opened her door. She would just be sharing equations, not the article. The heat hit her like a sledgehammer.

  As they walked out into the sun, Dusty donned his mirrored sunglasses and led the way to the anthropology department. Maureen almost gasped in delight when they entered the air-conditioned building.

  “I’ve read plenty of statistical articles modeling the collapse of prehistoric societies. Why would the Feds care about these data clusters?”

  She gave him a sharp glance. “That’s classified, Stewart.”

  “So you said.” Dusty pointed to the building directory and found Zoah’s room number. A flight of stairs and a hallway later, they stopped at Dr. Fred Zoah’s door. It was plastered with statistical equations.

  Maureen knocked.

  They waited.

  Maureen knocked again. “He said he’d be here, right?”

  “Sure. But knowing Fred that was probably with five degrees of statistical freedom.”

  Maureen was raising her hand to knock again when a voice called, “Read the door! Office hours are Wednesday and Friday!”

  “Fred!” Dusty bellowed. “It’s us.”

  Maureen heard a chair squeak. A moment later, a gray-haired man peered at her as the door cracked open. Thick glasses in industrial frames enlarged his eyes to fish-like proportions. “Oh. Dusty, Dr. Cole, I didn’t expect you until this afternoon.”

  “I said noon,” Dusty reminded as he opened the door wider.

  Zoah, dressed in a rumpled white shirt and chinos frosted with clumps of cat hair, checked his watch. “Oh. Well, I thought it was still morning.”

  As Maureen stepped into Zoah’s cluttered office, she noticed that his shirt had been misbuttoned and the collar was askew. The man’s fly was held together with a safety pin and he wore two different colors of socks visible above worn brown loafers.

  The office, like the man, was a disaster. Towers of poorly stacked archaeological reports rose from the carpet and leaned precariously. A work table supported a small mound of statistics books that partially buried at least four coffee cups. The trash can overflowed with crumpled pieces of paper, most of which were covered with statistical formulae. Long sheets of computer printout had been taped to the walls, some coming loose where the tape had aged and lost grip. Obsolete computers formed a sort of edifice in one corner—an archaeological stratigraphy makes and models. Maureen craned her neck, sure that an Apple II and a Xerox 820 lay at bottom.

  “I keep them,” Zoah said soberly, seeing her interest. “Never know when I might need to recover an old program I developed years ago.”

  Dusty had an amused look, his blond mustache curled as it did when he was trying to hide a smile.

  The two spare chairs were mounded with clutter. The desk, dominated by a glowing computer monitor, was piled equally high.

  “How do you find things in here?” Dusty asked in amazement.

  Zoah’s eyes swam behind his glasses. “Like everything in life, it’s a stochastically modeled statistical probability.”

  Maureen handed him the pages of statistics that she’d printed out. She wasn’t exactly violating Randall’s order. She wasn’t sharing the article, just a bunch of equations. “This is what we’re interested in. I was hoping you could take a look at these. I just need to know if the math is valid.”

  Zoah inspected the first page. “Hmm. Very specialized.” He flipped pages, lips moving as he studied them. “Clever use of tau, don’t you think? And that’s an innovative application of correlation coefficients.”

  Dusty grimaced. “If you say so.”

  Zoah lowered himself to his chair, plucked up an old-fashioned calculator, and began dexterously tapping as he glanced back and forth between the pages and the digital display.

  While she waited, Maureen browsed the titles of the books on Zoah’s shelves. After thirty minutes, she finally asked, “Dr. Zoah?”

  Zoah remained oblivious.

  “Dr. Zoah?” she asked, louder.

  “Hmm.” He started, giving her a surprised glance through his bottle-bottom glasses. “Oh, yes. Sorry.”

  “What are your initial impressions?”

  “Where’s the rest of the data?”

  Maureen frowned. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean I’d love to see the rest of the model. So many deterministic variables are missing.”

  “Huh?” Dusty asked.

  Zoah thumped the pages. “I’m saying the author is very clever. He’s taken the best work in the field… I see some of my own here… and cherry-picked the statistics. But I don’t know where these forced statistics come from. Nonetheless, they are incredibly elegant. He tailored each and built a synthesis, fitting them into a seamless whole. But he doesn’t provide a linkage between some of the deterministic and stochastic assumptions. Nor does he elaborate on which initial conditions would precipitate an application of—”

  “Hey, Fred,” Dusty interrupted, waving his hand in front of Fred’s face. “I’m a field archaeologist, okay? Give me an elementary explanation.”

  “Oh, well… of course. What I mean is the author assumes his audience is too stupid to understand he’s left out critical details, statistically speaking. Without the other statistics, no one can reliably plan the destruction of a nation.”

  Maureen’s sudden intake of breath was loud in the quiet room. Her eyes went wide. “You can tell from those equations that the author is—”

  “Of course, I can tell. In fact, I assume this is the work of Mark Schott.”

  Dusty squinted when Fred looked up from the pages. “Mark Schott from the University of Wyoming? The guy is a swine. What’s he doing plotting the destruction of a nation?”

  Maureen felt her breathing go shallow. “How do you know that’s what those equations imply?”

  Fred adjusted his glasses. “Think of my work on the Hohokam. I compare data we’ve collected about the people who lived in the Phoenix basin here in Arizona. That includes archaeological material, environmental data, climate, soils, water supplies, total land area under cultivation, canal maintenance, transportation, storage, population estimates based on house size, village size, resource availability, and a host of other variables. From that, I attempt to model exactly how Hohokam society functioned—specifically so I can tell you why it collapsed. And in the end, based upon the variables I choose, I can compute the chances that my model is correct. For years, Schott has been doing the same thing, albeit with less sophistication than my models—” he tapped the pages with a finger “—until now.”

  Dusty asked, “Are you saying that Schott is taking archaeological models, like yours, and applying them to modern societies?”

  “Certainly. Archaeology gives us the ability to study human cultural systems across time. Once you know that—”

  “You can kill your enemy?” Dusty put it bluntly.

  Fred nodded. “We call it diachronic evaluation. Think about it. For five hundred years, the Hohokam flourished in one of the most inhospitable deserts on earth. Then, in 1380 AD, they collapsed. Migration from the north, coupled with a natural disaster, exceeded their ability to produce food. Within a generation, the mighty canals ran dry, their once-green fields became nothing but wind-scoured dust, and the great towns were abandoned.”

  Dusty propped his hands on his hips. “Same as the Chaco Anasazi, Cahokia, the Lowland Maya, Harapan civilization, the Minoans, the Hittites, you name it.”

  Maureen whispered, “That’s why Schott based his work on archaeological models. Because they’ve been derived from the study of failed cultures.”

  “That’s right.” Zoah plucked off his glasses and cleaned them on his shirt. “What S
chott does so brilliantly is to take everything we’ve learned and apply the model to the modern world to predict the future.”

  Maureen blinked. “What is the probability that it actually can predict—?”

  “That,” Zoah stated, “is what I’m trying to tell you. Everything hinges on how the data are sampled. The variables, the types and quality of data employed, all are critical to assessing the predictive model’s utility.”

  “I don’t get it.” Dusty pushed his hat back on his head.

  Zoah gave him a fish-eyed look. “Measure the wrong things and Dr. Schott’s model is nothing more than an intellectual curiosity. Measure the right things, and the model becomes a weapon of war.”

  Maureen was watching Dusty when he went pale.

  It took a couple of seconds before he turned to her. “Department of Defense. Now, I get it. Who are we planning to kill?”

  She just stared at him.

  Chapter Six

  Anika walked, head bent against the icy wind, and glanced up at the scudding clouds. The University of Wyoming, in Laramie, sat in a high mountain basin. At 7,000 feet, it was perpetually subjected to west winds. She was a Wyoming native. She should have been adequately dressed in her coat but, even for late April, the day felt bitter.

  She tramped up to the administration building door, opened it and stepped inside, curious about the summons she’d received upon arriving at her office that morning. The department secretary had stuck her head in the door and stated: “Your presence has been requested at the highest levels. Dr. Chambers wants to see you at his office at one.”

  “The president? Why?”

  Mary Ann had shrugged. “It’s his university.”

  Anika found the president’s office, announced herself to the secretary, and was led to a small meeting room. To her surprise, Mark Schott sat at the table looking uncommonly lordly. The Dean of the College of Social Sciences, Bill Laslo, hunched like a vulture across from Mark. And at the head of the table, President Chambers rose, offering his hand and greeting, “Dr. French? Thank you for coming on such short notice.”

  She shook the university president’s hand, trying to read his eyes. Chambers wore a jacket, tie, and white shirt. His placid face reflected nothing.

  God, this isn’t about Mark and me, is it?

  But another glance at Mark set her mind at ease. He didn’t look like a man about to be chastised for diddling a graduate student.

  She seated herself. “Why am I here, sir?”

  “Dr. Schott, why don’t you fill Dr. French in on what we’ve been discussing?”

  Triumph glittered in Mark’s eyes. “I have taken a position as an international consultant for the ECSITE corporation. It was a last-minute development.”

  “Yes?” Anika said.

  Mark glanced at Chambers. “I was able to negotiate a rather lucrative deal with ECSITE. The university will be the recipient of a grant, under my direction, to help with various aspects of the research I will be pursuing in international development. That includes two hundred fifty thousand a year for the department. Half of that is designated to fund my research assistant.”

  “Me, I assume?”

  Dean Laslo interjected, “Yes, Dr. Schott has suggested that you fill his position. Not as department head, of course, but as an assistant professor.”

  “I’m not sure I’m interested in the position.”

  Mark preempted the others. “Come on, Anika, you need this job and you have the expertise required for the research ECSITE is conducting.”

  “Designing statistical predictive models,” she concluded.

  “Yes. You’ll be honing your research and actually having a chance to apply it. And it’s a huge benefit to the university.”

  Chambers steepled his fingers, leaning forward. “Ms. French, the university has no problem with this. After discussing the situation with Dr. Schott, and to fulfill the terms of the ECSITE grant, we’d have to replace Mark with a person skilled in predictive modeling. Given your obvious expertise, we’d be hard-pressed to find anyone better on such short notice.”

  She asked, “How many hours would I have to teach?”

  Laslo said, “Three courses—”

  “Two,” Mark interrupted. “Both graduate level in statistical modeling. The rest of the time you’d be working directly with me.”

  Anika glanced at Laslo who looked enraged.

  “Dr. French?” President Chambers said, “Are you interested?”

  Her chances of landing a position anywhere else were less than ten percent. Even then, the salary offered at another institution would be poverty level. Surely, she could figure out a way to make this work.

  “Yes. I’ll take the position.”

  Mark looked so relieved she thought he might faint as he flopped back in his chair.

  Chambers replied, “Good. I’ll have the paperwork sent over.” He looked around. “Anything else? No? Then, Mark, I’ll leave you to work out the details with Dr. French.”

  Chapter Seven

  Anika closed the door behind her as she followed Mark Schott into his office. She wasn’t surprised to note that most of it was already packed into boxes.

  “Have a seat, Anika,” he said and gestured to the chair in front of his desk.

  She sat stiffly with her arms folded. “How are you planning to use my model?”

  He shuffled through some papers on his desk. Without looking at her, he replied, “ECSITE is interested in putting their resources where they will have the most beneficial impact in building the developing world. You and I will be helping them choose the most advantageous places to invest. I’m looking at social structure, tribal mores, distribution systems. Can educational facilities be easily integrated into tribal society? Estimating religious flexibility… that sort of thing. And yes, it’s based on parts of your model.”

  “You sound like a publicist. I want to know exactly what ECSITE does.”

  “ECSITE specializes in international finance—investors looking for opportunities in the developing world. They have discovered that economics is one thing, politics another. Where they seek an advantage is in understanding the native cultures. Most investment firms have no sense for indigenous rights or how a sudden influx of capital or technology will impact a tribal or kin-based society. You and I do. We’ll be helping to protect native peoples while ECSITE builds their economies and makes their lives better.”

  She watched him for a moment, mentally applying the model in the ways Mark suggested. She couldn’t dismiss the potential benefits. “If this is all true, why do you have that guilty look?”

  To avoid her eyes, he straightened his cuffs again. “I know I’ve made mistakes. I’ve tried to make it up to you. Hopefully, getting you this position helps.” He raised a hand, forestalling her protest. “And I’m removing myself from the problem.”

  “What problem?”

  “You bring out the worst in me, Anika.” He smiled shyly. “Denise and I are moving to Europe so I won’t see you much, if at all, after today. Now, take the job, tackle the research, and even if you stay in the university system, you’ll be able to write your own ticket after two years.”

  “I have the gut feeling that something’s wrong about this, Mark.”

  He gave her a soft look. “It’s worth a try, isn’t it? What if the model, your model, gives applied anthropology a tool that can sidestep the usual deleterious effects of development on fragile societies? Isn’t that worth a shot?”

  Chapter Eight

  Maureen watched Dusty pace their room on the second floor of Tucson’s Hilton Garden Inn. He was swinging his sunglasses, a familiar frown betraying his thoughts as he considered everything Zoah had told them.

  Dusty muttered, “My tax dollars at work. The government is flying you all over because somebody wrote a statistical model to murder people.”

  “That remains to be proven,” she answered and turned her attention to the window; relentless Arizona sunlight gleamed on rows of ru
sh hour traffic inching down I-10. Beyond the buildings, across the San Pedro valley, saguaro-covered hills wavered in the distance as heat waves rose.

  Dusty said, “And, of course, it’s Mark Schott. He’s slimy on the best of days. Wonder where the rest of the equations are that make the model work?”

  “I wonder that, too.”

  Dusty watched her through suspicious eyes. “I was a lot happier when all we had to do was worry about Navajo witches and prehistoric serial killers.”

  She glanced at the clock. “I have to call Washington. Why don’t you go down and get a beer?”

  “I don’t get to listen in?”

  She pointed at the door.

  He hesitated.

  “My God, Stewart. The world just stopped turning and pink rabbits can fly.”

  “Huh?”

  “You just turned down the opportunity to go for a beer.”

  He grinned, grabbed up his hat, mashed it on his head, and said, “Maybe I’ll call the guys from the Institute of Desert Archaeology. See if anyone’s up for a little party.”

  “Sure. Just don’t mention anything about the data clusters.”

  “I’m not that dense. I’m pretty sure there’s a DOD hit squad watching our hotel.” Then, donning his sunglasses, Dusty was gone.

  Maureen stepped over to the hotel phone, read the directions for an out-of-state call, and dialed the Washington number she’d been given.

  Amy Randall picked up on the second ring. “Randall.”

  “It’s Maureen Cole.”

  “What have you found?”

  “Apparently, Dr. Schott has taken the finest archaeological models and molded them into something applicable to the modern world. A predictable model that may be able to predict the future.

  “May? Why only may?”

  “The model presented in the article doesn’t work. Key variables and the justification for many of the statistical functions are missing.”