“I’m sorry to interrupt you, sir. Are you Professor Timothy Locke?” Sam asked.
The man studied Sam’s face. The slightest sign of recognition in his eyes. “You were a student here. Did I teach you?”
“It was a long time, but I never took any of your subjects.”
“Pity. I heard that you’ve made quite a name for yourself Mr. Reilly.”
“So you do know me?”
“No, but I’ve heard of your exploits on the ocean. And I’ve watched your escapades over the years. A couple amazing discoveries of historical significance, and some not so astonishing.” He sighed. “At any rate. You’ve had quite the adventure.”
“Thanks. This is Tom Bower. He’s been involved in many of the searches over the years. Do you mind if we come in? There are some things I’m hoping you can help me with.”
Locke’s eyes darted between both men. He then stepped out of his apartment and scanned the people in the university’s quadrangle. “Sure.”
Sam and Tom followed the man inside.
Locke turned on the radio and then loud enough for anyone outside to hear, he said, “Okay, tell me about your literature review, then I’ll hear the premise for your thesis.”
With that Sam and Tom sat down on the small couch. It appeared older than its owner.
Professor Locke then poured all three of them a whiskey without asking if they were interested. “Okay, so you want to know why they killed Luke Eldridge.”
Chapter Fourteen
Sam looked at Tom. The edge of his lips curled into a slightly upwards grin. “Yes. How did you know?”
“Because they’re after me, too. They’d like to kill all of us if they could, but even they understand that you can’t get rid of the four top energy scientists in the world without someone wanting to investigate more thoroughly. And that’s the last thing they want. No, they’re going to let me live. At least for a year or two. They’re hoping they’ve paid me enough to buy my silence until they can get rid of me.”
“Who are they?” Sam interrupted.
Locke took a large sip of his drink. “They are the ones who didn’t want us to succeed with our project.”
Sam studied the man. He appeared confident. Almost relaxed for someone who knew THEY wanted him dead. He had light blue eyes. Almost gray. His eyes expressed the significance of his intelligence. He must have been nearly eighty, but his mind hadn’t faltered an inch. “What exactly were you working on?”
“It was called Elixir Eight.”
“I’ve heard of it, but have no idea what it means.”
The Professor laughed. “The name’s industrial espionage – a red herring. Elixir Eight represents probably the most significant discovery about electricity since Benjamin Franklin proved the correlation between electricity and lightning by using a kite with a key – and it also means absolutely nothing.”
“Nothing? Two people are dead, over nothing?”
“When we registered the research lines, we didn’t want to have everyone else trying to copy us. We were working on a means of stabilizing thorium nuclear reactions.”
“You were working with nuclear energy? I thought Luke was a leader in alternative energies and clean fuels?”
“Thorium conductors are the holy grail of energy production. The stuff is everywhere. It’s in the sea, the soil, mountains. There will be no wars waged over thorium.”
“So, why haven’t we had thorium conductors for years?”
“Two reasons.” Locke spoke slowly, with multiple pauses for significance. His voice was deep, and Sam found it hard not to feel like he’d entered one of the man’s lectures. “In the late 1940s when uranium and thorium isotopes were first being used to build nuclear reactors, the U.S. Navy wasn’t interested in power generation for the country. Instead it was concerned with building nuclear submarines to power its fleet of subs to maintain its shield of nuclear deterrence during the Cold War.”
He waited for them to nod their head in understanding. When they didn’t, he continued his lecture. “Uranium reactors cause a fission of an atom of uranium-235 and produces two to three neutrons, and these neutrons can be absorbed by uranium-238 to produce plutonium-239 and other isotopes. While thorium only produced energy and waste products, uranium could produce an ample supply of plutonium, which as you know, is required to build nuclear weapons. Consequently, all the funding for research and development went towards uranium reactors.”
Sam had heard the argument previously. He’d also heard the other problems associated with thorium conductors, but he wasn’t going to get into that now. “And the second reason?”
“The second? Like with all the best technologies, there’s a minor glitch that we couldn’t overcome. The nuclear reaction is highly unstable, and difficult to maintain. You can do so, but only in large scales. Elixir Eight however, was supposed to change all that. It broke down the process, theoretically making it possible to build hand held thorium reactors, safely. It was supposed to take eight single thorium molecules and bind them to make one stable molecule – Elixir Eight.”
Sam grinned. He’d heard of a lot these types of spiels before. None of them had panned out, the way their proponents had hoped. Even so, the threat would have been enough. “You’re going to bring down the price of electricity and piss off the oil industry?”
“I don’t think you quite understand the value of this discovery. Elixir eight meant that people could power their entire house with a single thorium reactor that fits in the palm of their hand – and it would do so for their entire lives. Electricity is the source of everything. The greatest changes to humanity occur when electricity becomes readily available.”
Sam drank more of his whiskey. “But you said Elixir Eight means nothing.”
Lock smiled. “Well, you see. The theory behind Elixir Eight had been tried previously, with no success.”
“By who?” Tom asked.
“Me.”
“Then why did you patent the name? And how did you upset someone bad enough that now we have two dead scientists?”
“We patented the name and the idea because we needed funding for a different type of research. At the same time, we wanted to put industrial feelers out, looking for a big name to fund our real research.”
Sam shuffled in his seat. “And what was it that you were really working on, if not the original Elixir Eight?”
Locke crossed his arms. “Telling you that, I’m afraid, would get me killed.”
“Why can’t you just tell us what this is all about? You obviously know. And if you wanted to keep quiet about it, you wouldn’t have said as much as you have. Instead you would have told us both to go away.”
“THEY watch me. If I tell you, they’ll kill me, too.” He shook his head. “By the way, how did you find out about Luke?”
“He sent the man in charge of his life insurance a text the night before he was murdered, saying to find me in the event of his death to prove it was murder.”
“Really?” Locke took a deep breath. “So, you see why I can’t talk to you about it.”
“That’s crazy. You’ve already told us THEY are planning to kill you within the next couple of years anyway, and haven’t you essentially just told us everything?”
“No. I haven’t told you any more than you could have gotten for yourself by walking into the patents office. I wish I could help.” Professor Locke shrugged his shoulders. “I can tell you that Luke was probably the smartest pupil I ever had. If he sent a text saying that only you could prove that he was murdered – I would suggest you look into the areas that you, of all people, know best.”
“The rogue wave,” Sam said, thinking about why his old school friend would have reached out to him. “Tell me what happened. How did THEY build the rogue wave? We’ll protect you.”
Lock laughed. It was only a little forced. “No one can protect you from THEM.”
Sam stood up to leave. It was clear he wasn’t going to get any more out of the man. Be
neath his outward composure, Professor Locke was terrified to the core. “Good luck. I hope you live long enough for us to sort this all out.”
“Yeah, you too, son.” Locke’s voice was crisp, but polite.
Sam stopped just before the door. “Oh say – where did the name Peter Flaherty come from?”
Timothy gritted his teeth, just slightly. Even the most casual observer could see the man was trying to hold something back, with great difficulty. He looked like a restrained man about to fly off the wheels. His voice became concentrated and intense. “Forget about that name. It won’t do any good to you, or to anyone else for that matter. Just forget it. Concentrate on the damn rogue wave.”
Chapter Fifteen
Senator Vanessa Croft stood at the podium. She wore elegant business dress with flat-soled shoes in an attempt to conceal some of her height. A small American flag pin at her left breast pocket. With light brown hair tied back in a bun, high cheek bones, and a large confident smile, she was easy to watch.
But the people did more than just watch.
Vanessa’s popularity had risen fast. Her big smile and exuberance became infectious as she spoke on matters such as family, while her tenacity and conviction drove her to change the status quo. The people watched her speak about the future of government policy regarding the environment, health care, and gun control, in such a way that it was hard not to become enthusiastic and motivated.
She smiled. It was honest and heartwarming. This was her day. More than twenty years in the making. She was getting close to achieving what she’d set out to do so long ago. Vanessa finished her acceptance speech. Turned and then returned to the podium. “God bless you all, and God bless America.”
She’d just won the Democratic Nomination for President of the United States.
The crowd of more than thirty-five thousand people cheered and chanted her name. Despite reaching into her late forties it wasn’t hard to imagine her just as perfectly at ease on the cat walk as she was in a political arena. It would be easy to mistake her as simply a beauty pageant contestant, but in reality she was a formidable presence in the political arena.
Staring at the thousands of cheering people in the crowd, Vanessa realized for the first time that her lifelong dream might just become a reality.
She had campaigned heavily on the future of the environment, clean energies. She was supported by a grass-roots campaign, motivating the younger voters who were sick of the age old rhetoric that there were other problems to beat first, and the planet would be saved when the time was right. Of course, everyone knows that the world has a number of problems that will continue to occur until it becomes too late to save earth.
She thought about her own vicissitudes. The challenges that had forced her into her current position. One that she would have never believed herself capable of. Lost in the sound of a thirty-five thousand people cheering, her mind returned her to the journey which had ultimately brought her to this place.
Chapter Sixteen
After completing a bachelor of medical science, she’d planned to go on to study medicine. However, after marrying Brian, her high school sweetheart she fell pregnant immediately. She gave birth to a boy.
Her baby was beautiful, and she fell in love with him instantly, as every mother does. It wasn’t until he was nearly six months old that the doctors confirmed what she had suspected all along – her son was blind and deaf.
It took another two years before she discovered the cause. It was the consequence of a local mine sending their run off water, containing a deadly element, into the town’s water supply. It took three more years to prove they were involved, and nearly ten before they closed down the mine altogether.
In that time she’d put all her energies into fixing it. Instead of drowning in the time and effort required to help her own child, she had fixated on changing the status quo and improving the environment so that no one else had to bear the same experience.
Instead of going on to study medicine, Vanessa changed to a Master of Environmental Sciences. She studied mostly in the evenings. She slept little. Her parents were still alive and she burdened them with longer and longer hours with her son. She became distant with her husband. It wasn’t that she no longer loved him. It was simply a case that she no longer had time to love anyone. In truth, all she wanted was to change the world. Revenge, she discovered, was as powerful a motivator as fear, and it drove her away from the family she should have loved completely.
Afterwards, she got a job with the Environmental Protection Agency. At first it satisfied her need to punish companies and people who managed them. Each fine she issued, or case she brought before a court, somehow made her feel as though she was making the person responsible for her own child’s pain pay. It was foolish, she knew, but still it felt good.
For a time, she felt as though she was making a difference. That, somehow, what she was doing served a purpose. But then she saw how the penalties demanded of the companies who were destroying the environment were nowhere near enough of a deterrent to force the companies to act decently. In many cases, the companies had performed a simple cost versus benefit analysis and found that it was cheaper to pay the fine than it would have been to work in a safe manner to begin with. If she ever really succeeded in a major windfall, the company would simply appeal in one of the several legal avenues for recourse, so that it would be years before anything would be achieved.
This made her more fanatical, and drove her to achieve more. The EPA demanded more hours of her, and further study to stay ahead of the next culprit. The companies would often simply purchase the expert opinions of others to satisfy their objectives by providing false perspectives. And then, the only solution she could see was to study more.
By the time she was thirty-two, she went back to university for the third time in her life. This time, to complete a doctorate in environmental sciences. She mistakenly believed that to beat people in this game, she would need to increase her knowledge base.
After the first year of her third degree, Brian left her. She didn’t blame him. How could she? After all the hours that her chosen field demanded of her, it left no room for intimacy or family.
Three more years of study, and she had successfully completed her Doctorate. Now, she’d thought, she was armed with the knowledge base required to change the world. It took her another two years, and finally the death of her son, before she discovered that she’d been absolutely wrong about everything.
Her son had died aged nine, during winter after contracting viral pneumonia. He was unable to shake it due to his multitude of lead poisoning related illnesses. She walked in to check in on him on her way to work at 4:30 a.m. one morning. At first she thought he was just in a very deep sleep. She thought he looked so very peaceful.
Vanessa had walked into his bedroom to see him for a moment, and give him a kiss before going to work. Instead, she greeted his lifeless body. The ventilator that her son had now lived with for nearly nine years, was still going, mechanically causing his chest to rise and fall. He hadn’t changed much since she’d kissed him goodnight before going to bed, but in an instant, she knew that he was dead.
She sat down next to his bed and cried. To her dismay, she knew that they weren’t tears of loss, but to her shame, tears of relief.
Vanessa contacted her boss at the EPA that very day, and quit.
It was the catalyst that changed her life. Suddenly she realized how wrong she’d been all this time to think that she could change the world by simply enforcing rules. No, for her to make the world a truly better place, she would have to do so by changing everything from the top down. She needed people to think differently. To do that she would need to commit to something more than she ever had before.
And that meant that she would have to reach the top. Politics was the only way to really change the view of the people. To really make a difference. The difficulty was to not become lost in the corruption required to achieve it.
The crowd
started chanting her name.
It brought her mind back to the present. They had come a long way since that day nearly thirty years ago when her son had been poisoned. Her thoughts considered the current lead poisoning case in the town of Flint – but there’s so much further to go.
She smiled. Her life’s ambition had begun. As she rolled the die of chance she wondered where it would end. Her acceptance speech had been well received, and she wondered for an instant if she might actually have a chance at winning.
As she smiled for the cameras, Vanessa wondered if America could ever accept an environmentally friendly President.
The faces smiled back at her.
Yes, they could.
Fear, she understood, was a powerful motivator. She’d been lucky to make it this far. All she needed now was an environmental disaster to strike the heart of America, and she might have a real chance at winning the Presidency.
Chapter Seventeen
The Maria Helena’s massive twin 44, 000 HP diesel engines turned her powerful screws through the water. Her steel bow sliced through the calm waters. The swell was low, and the barometer showed a high. They would be in for a nice few days at sea. On the bridge, Sam stared at the admiralty charts which mapped the region. Standing next to him was Matthew, his conservative skipper. One look at the man’s hazel eyes and cordial smile, and you knew exactly what the man was thinking – there’s no such thing as the Bermuda Triangle.
He glanced at the fanciful map of the Bermuda Triangle, superimposed on the area in which all four rogue waves had recently done so much damage. Within the Atlantic Ocean, an imaginary triangle formed between Bermuda, Miami and Puerto Rico. Contrary to popular beliefs, research gathered by both the American Bureau of Shipping and shipping underwriters Lloyd’s of London show no statistical increase in maritime risk or insurance claims within the area.
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