Fast Ice

by Clive Cussler

  Kurt reached into his jacket pocket. The bottle was there, tucked down deep inside. He pulled it out to make sure the cap was still screwed on tight.

  “Safe and sound,” Kurt said. “Now all we have to do is find out what we risked our lives for.”

  27

  UNIVERSITY OF JOHANNESBURG

  JOHANNESBURG

  The Auckland Park Kingsway campus of the University of Johannesburg sported a collection of futuristic buildings arranged around a manicured lawn. Bountiful trees here and there offered shade for the students and professors, while curving paths branched out from one building to the next.

  Kurt, Joe and Leandra made their way down one of those paths and into the science building, where they entered a lab run by Noah Watson.

  Watson was the ranking professor in the microbiology department. He and Leandra knew each other well. Like her, the professor had worked with NUMA before, primarily as part of their effort to save the world’s reefs from the effects of pollution and ocean acidification.

  “Professor,” Leandra said warmly as they came through the door.

  Watson was in front of a computer when they arrived, an intense look firmly in place. Seeing Leandra, his face softened considerably. “Ah, you’re here,” he said, standing and greeting her. “At last I can stop reading the endless footnotes in this student’s paper.”

  The professor stepped forward, hugging Leandra and offering a hand to Kurt. He was a bit taller than Kurt, a bit rounder, too. He wore a polo shirt with the Springboks logo on it, the South African rugby team. He seemed quite pleased to meet Kurt and Joe in person.

  “I’ve heard so much about you,” he said, his voice filling the room. “Too much, perhaps. When Leandra called and asked that I assist you, I was very skeptical. Considering the stories I’ve heard, I assumed you were imaginary figures, mere figments of some publicity department’s creative minds.”

  Kurt shook Watson’s hand with a firm grip. “I’m sure the tales have grown in the telling,” he said. “We just do our jobs. Sometimes that leads us into a scrape or two.”

  Watson laughed. “I’m told you had a scrape or two last night.”

  “They were on foot,” Leandra said. “Trapped in a game park surrounded by lions and hyenas.”

  Watson shook his head. “Lions and hyenas? You found yourself caught between the two greatest enemies on the savannah and came out alive. That’s a rare thing.”

  “Don’t forget the men with guns,” Joe added.

  The professor laughed deeply. “I see you prefer maximum level of difficulty.”

  Kurt stretched and felt the aches and pains of the night’s efforts. “In all honesty, I prefer to sit on a sunny beach with a cold beer in my hand. But it never seems to work out that way.”

  “Well, considering all you’ve been through,” Watson said, “the least I can do is examine the sample for you. You say these men were using algae to melt the ice?”

  Kurt handed over the water bottle, which the professor studied through the clear plastic. “That’s what we overheard. Ryland claimed it was genetically modified algae. And the water changed to a dark green tint during the demonstration.”

  “Looks rather clear to me,” Watson said. “But many golden brown diatoms and yellow algae appear invisible unless they’re present in high concentrations. I suppose we shall see.”

  The professor shook the bottle gently to stir up anything that had settled and then poured small samples into a pair of test tubes. He put one in a machine that would check the mineral qualities of the water. The other was subject to a chemical dye test that should have brought out the presence of algae in the liquid. Yet again, the water appeared clear.

  “Most interesting,” Watson said.

  “I don’t see anything,” said Joe.

  The professor cocked an eyebrow. “That’s what makes it interesting.”

  Using an eyedropper, the professor took another sample and placed several beads of the water onto a glass slide, covered the sample with another slide and then placed it under the lens of a high-powered compound microscope.

  The compound microscope had two eyepieces instead of one. This allowed it to focus more precisely and enabled the viewer to detect minute, three-dimensional structures.

  “This model is designed for medical use,” the professor told them. “It magnifies images up to twenty-five hundred times. If there are any bacteria or algae in the water, we’ll find it.”

  After adjusting the settings, Professor Watson took a look. He began with the 100 power setting before quickly switching to a more powerful lens. “Most types of algae will be visible at less than a thousand times magnification,” he said. “So far, I’m not seeing anything.”

  Kurt stood back, letting the man do his job and passing the time by glancing at the machine that was analyzing the chemical content of the water. It churned and hummed as a few LEDs blinked but offered nothing to suggest any discovery.

  The professor switched lenses again. “There are a few stray bacteria visible at a magnification of eight hundred. Probably left over from the mouth of whoever drank from this bottle before you used it as a collection vessel.”

  “Will that skew the results?” Kurt asked.

  “No,” the professor said. “To have any hope of performing the task you described, we would have to find something at a high level of concentration. A few bacteria would not affect that.”

  Satisfied that there was nothing to see at eight hundred times normal size, the professor increased the magnification to a thousand times normal and then to fifteen hundred. He looked away from the eyepiece, scribbled a note and then looked back into the microscope.

  Finally, he raised the magnification level to the full power of twenty-five hundred times normal. Kurt noticed a slight nod of the head and a change in the professor’s posture.

  Pulling back from the microscope, Watson appeared satisfied. “Well,” he said. “See for yourself.”

  As Professor Watson stood back from the microscope, Kurt moved in. He adjusted the eyepieces and pressed against them, squinting until his eyes became accustomed to the bright field of view.

  Focusing intently, he looked for any sign of bacteria or algae. “I don’t see anything.”

  “Because there’s nothing down there to see,” the professor replied. “No algae. Very little in the way of bacteria. Nothing organic of any consequence. This water is surprisingly sterile. Are you sure this is the right sample?”

  “It came straight out of the pool,” Kurt said. “I collected it myself.”

  The professor nodded politely and scratched at a spot below his ear. “It seems you’ve risked your lives to recover a bottle of purified water.”

  “That’s impossible,” Joe said. “We saw Lloyd use this to melt the ice.”

  “Perhaps it was heated,” the professor said. “Or perhaps the ice wasn’t really ice to begin with.”

  “Trust me,” Joe said. “We sat on that ice, it was real and it was freezing. My glutes have only just thawed out.”

  “The pool water was still frigid when I collected the sample,” Kurt said. “At most, it could have been just above freezing. That would have left the ice there for hours, if not days. It couldn’t have accounted for what we witnessed.”

  The professor didn’t argue. “I don’t know what to tell you. If the ice was real and the water was cold, then something else must be at work.”

  The machine behind them emitted a subtle beep. “Ah,” the professor said. “The chemical analysis is complete.”

  He tapped a button on the face of the machine and an old dot matrix printer began spitting out the results of the test. When it was complete, Professor Watson grabbed the sheet of paper and tore it off.

  “Well,” Kurt said, grinning. “Don’t keep us in suspense.”

  The professor cleared his throa
t. “Your water sample contains elevated levels of calcium chloride. Along with even higher levels of potassium chloride, sodium chloride and a strong concentration of sodium acetate and glycol.”

  “Rock salts,” Kurt noted.

  “And aircraft de-icer,” Joe said, referring to the glycol.

  “So, Ryland pumped de-icing fluid into the pool once he dimmed the lights,” Kurt said.

  “The de-icer would float to the surface,” Joe said. “It would separate the ice from the water, eating away the frozen stuff at warp speed. Especially if it was heated before entry.”

  Kurt understood now. “The rock salts would spread through the pool, changing the melting point of the water and keeping it from freezing once the glycol and sodium acetate had done their job.”

  “He tricked them,” Leandra said.

  Kurt nodded.

  “But why?” Joe asked. “Why fool your own allies? Especially when they’re the kind of people who might react violently to being misled?”

  Kurt fell silent, considering the question from a couple different angles. In the end, there were only a few possibilities that made any sense. “Either he doesn’t have the algae or it doesn’t work the way he says it does. Or . . .”

  “Or what?” Joe asked.

  “Or Ryland’s playing a different game,” Kurt said. “A longer, more complicated one. And we’re only seeing a small part of the big picture.”

  28

  NUMA HEADQUARTERS

  Rudi was in his office, sitting behind his laptop, reading the latest baffling news from Kurt with a scowl on his face. He scanned the page twice to make sure he hadn’t missed anything, then closed the laptop screen with a deliberate excess of force.

  “Easy, now,” a voice said from the doorway. “Computers are people, too. Or they soon will be.”

  Rudi looked up to see Hiram Yaeger leaning against the doorjamb, arms folded across his chest.

  “A revolution you will no doubt be at the forefront of,” Rudi said.

  “Maybe,” Hiram said. “Although, realistically, we’re years away from the robot takeover.”

  “Good,” Rudi said. “That’ll give me time to erase the computer’s memory, so it won’t hold my crimes against me. We have more immediate problems anyway. Kurt came up empty in South Africa.”

  “He didn’t find anything?”

  “He found something,” Rudi said. “But it was a whole lot of nothing.”

  Yaeger furrowed his brow. “A lot of that going around. Kurt asked me to study the historical record from the Schwabenland expedition to see if we could match that photo to a particular flight and landing location.”

  “Sounds like a good idea,” Rudi said. “But from the look on your face, I’m guessing it didn’t work out.”

  Yaeger came in and sat down. “I’ve had our computers look through every known source of information about the Schwabenland expedition. Public, private, even classified records from an old OSS file. There’s no match for that picture anywhere in the existing photographic record.”

  “Could you have missed something?”

  “Doubtful,” Yaeger said. “I even had the photo digitized and put each of the characters in the picture through a facial recognition program. The system compared the images to photos of the known explorers and crew members on the ship.”

  “How’d that work out?”

  “More nothing,” Yaeger said. He held up a hand to prevent Rudi from interrupting. “Now, I’ll admit we don’t have photos of every deckhand and third-class enlisted sailor that worked on the ship, but there are multiple, high-quality images of all the officers, air crew and scientists who participated.”

  “And?” Rudi asked, already knowing the answer.

  “Not a single person in that photograph was part of the Schwabenland expedition. The men in that picture simply weren’t on the ship.”

  Rudi drummed his fingers on the desk. Some information was better than none. Maybe this told them they were looking in the wrong direction. “Could the photo be a hoax?”

  Yaeger shook his head. “Not a computer-generated one. I’ve run our deep fake analysis a couple different ways. The pixels, the light angles, the shade and the photographic depth are all legitimate. There are no artifacts to suggest the photo was manipulated or subject to editing. Whatever else it is, that picture is not computer generated or photoshopped.”

  “What about a real photograph but staged?” Rudi suggested.

  “Possibly,” Hiram said. “But you’d have to find an old Dornier flying boat, restore it to flying condition, take it out to a frozen lake and snap the photo. You’d also need a vintage camera with authentic glass lenses and film with the exact ratio of silver and chemical levels to match what was produced in Germany in the late 1930s. Which would have to be made from scratch, I might add, because that type of film isn’t produced anymore.”

  “That’s a lot of trouble to go through for a single picture covered in graffiti,” Rudi admitted. “If it’s not a hoax and it isn’t from the Schwabenland expedition, who and what is it a photo of?”

  Yaeger shrugged. “The only way to figure that out would be determine where Cora got the picture from. And I think I have an idea how we can do that.”

  Rudi perked up. “That’s what I like to hear. Just tell me it doesn’t involve a psychic or a soothsayer.”

  “Neither,” Hiram said. “Just a special blue light and the actual printed copy of the photograph. The one in Kurt’s possession. Assuming he hasn’t lost it.”

  “The printed copy?” Rudi said. “Not the original picture?”

  “Correct.”

  Rudi was baffled. “How will that solve the problem?”

  “Well,” Yaeger said. “Few people know this, but the vast majority of modern printers embed microdots in every single page they print.”

  “Microdots?”

  “Tiny dots of ink,” Hiram said. “Offset from the color of the actual printed page. Usually it’s done using a shade of yellow. Each dot is so small and light that it’s invisible to the naked eye. And with thirty or forty spread throughout the page, it doesn’t alter what’s printed either. But the end result is a pattern, readable like a QR code. This pattern records the time and date of printing and includes a unit identification code that reveals the make, model and serial number of the printer that produced this particular page. Once we have that information, all we have to do is check with the manufacturer and find out who they sold that printer to and we can find out where Cora printed the photo, helping us to track down the original.”

  Rudi eyed Hiram suspiciously. “Which printers did you say are doing this?”

  “Almost all of them.” Yaeger said. “Anything manufactured in the last ten to fifteen years or so.”

  “Ours, too?”

  “Of course.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

  Hiram shook his head. “It’s ubiquitous,” he said. “You could pluck any piece of paper, from any random garbage can, from anywhere in the world, and within minutes I could tell you precisely where and when it was printed and on what machine. We’ve used this method to catch people who leaked documents to the public or who stole corporate secrets. We’ve even caught counterfeiters who were printing their own money using this method.”

  “Sounds like the robot takeover is closer than you think,” Rudi said. “With my phone listening to every word I say and my computer keeping a record of everything I do, and now my printer ratting me out if I use it for any non-approved purpose, it feels like Big Brother is watching.”

  “Oh, he is,” Hiram said. “Big Sister, too. And the entire extended family. But in this case, we can use it to our advantage.”

  29

  UNIVERSITY OF JOHANNESBURG

  Back in Professor Watson’s laboratory, Kurt, Joe and Leandra listened to Yaeger’s in
structions over a speakerphone.

  “Sounds pretty simple,” Kurt said. “Stand by.”

  With great care, Kurt pulled out the printed sheet of paper with the old Nazi photograph on it. The page had spent the better part of a week folded up into a pocket-sized square and would need to be smoothed out before they scanned it.

  While Kurt worked to ease the creases out, Joe, Leandra and Professor Watson modified a scanner to emit the wavelength of blue light that the test required.

  “The new LEDs are in,” Joe said, putting the machine down.

  Leandra switched it on while the professor used a photometer to check the wavelength. “We’re within the parameters.”

  Kurt looked over. “I won’t make any jokes about how many of you it takes to change a lightbulb.”

  “Good,” Joe said. “Because that sheet of paper was getting the best of you for a while.”

  Kurt laughed. “I’ll have you know my job requires precision workmanship.”

  On the speaker, Yaeger cleared his throat to let them know he was still there, waiting.

  Kurt handed the delicately flattened sheet of paper over to Leandra, who inspected his effort before placing the paper down on the scanner and closing the lid.

  “Ready,” she said.

  Joe pressed the button.

  They took four scans, each at maximum resolution. The scans were run through a program that melded all four together and then performed a digital search for the microdots.

  Kurt sat with the others watching the computer screen for the results. For several seconds, there was nothing. Then a pattern appeared.

  “Looks like a random distribution,” Leandra said.

  “Or the beginnings of a Jackson Pollock painting,” Joe said.

  To Kurt, it looked more like an arrangement of stars—a few here, a few there. With a bit of imagination, he could have connected the dots and made his own constellations. To the computer, it was like a punch card from the 1950s. And it contained information that could be used to access the database of printer manufacturers.