by Randy Dutton
Chapter 12
August 9, 1000 hours
Cabinet Room
White House
Light green swirls and streaks flowed across the globe. Set against the deep blue oceans, the added hue made the satellite imagery appear retouched by a child bearing a water color paint brush. The globe rotated once per minute upon the cabinet room’s large monitor and the time lapse added urgency to the issue.
“And as you can see, Mr. President, every ocean, every sea, and almost every harbor is contaminated.” Dr. Curt Edson was nervous as he stood across the table from the President.
The distinguished man at the table’s middle drummed his fingers against the large elliptical mahogany conference table. “Have you established the species’ origin?”
“Not definitively, Sir. We think it came from Snath Genetics because the director, Dr. Sven Johansson, had promoted his product as the great solution to global warming. But Snath never officially released it. Because of 4D printing capabilities, many companies could have done this.”
“Wasn’t the Snath’s product limited to cleaning up oil spills?”
“That’s how they marketed it.”
“But oil isn’t CO2.”
“No, Sir. But there are naturally-occurring ocean bacteria that consume oil and dissolved natural gas and expel CO2. Snath’s phytoplankton was to consume the dissolved CO2 before it could release into the atmosphere.”
The president leaned back and furrowed his brow. “You mean the ocean cleans up oil spills...naturally?”
“Yes, Sir. But we’ve never liked waiting on nature. There’s no political advantage, and people are impatient.”
“So, what’s the status of the investigation?”
“When the FBI raided the Snath facility yesterday, Dr. Johansson and his production manager were gone.”
“Gone where?!”
“Both had resigned days earlier and disappeared. The task force didn’t find any records of the phytoplankton project and the only samples they found didn’t match what’s spreading. We’ve got a request in to the Snath Group legal office, but they’re not very forthcoming.”
President Fernandez’s lips pressed together at the mention of Swanson’s company being investigated. “Forget asking! What’s the FBI doing proactively?”
“Many of the employees are on extended vacation...the FBI’s rounding them up. The few they found were task-specific. Each was told only what was necessary.”
“Plausible deniability?”
Edson nodded. “Witnesses confirm Snath released something in San Francisco Bay and just offshore into the coastal current. That corresponds with the first blooms.”
“And nobody tried to stop them?!”
“No, Sir. And Snath didn’t ask permission before they filled and shipped dozens of large cylinders.”
“As my National Science Advisor, what’s this means?”
Dr. Edson momentarily glanced out the east windows to see workers with leaf blowers forcing moss strands off the Rose Garden’s blooms. He wished to be anywhere but here. He turned back to his boss’ stare. “Sir, our preliminary tests show this new phytoplankton species is likely genetically modified.”
“With what effect?”
“Water sampling shows the phytoplankton’s trapping much more dissolved CO2 than any natural species. And when it dies, it’s doing all the right things.”
With hands pressed onto the table edge, President Fernandez leaned forward. “What are the right things?”
Edson nervously looked at his notes. “It’s propagating exponentially and the nutrients separate out from the detritus near the surface and promote reuse for more phytoplankton. The remnants are mostly just linked carbon, so they drifts down to the ocean floor and aren’t recycled.”
“How would a carcass be recycled?”
Concerned about embarrassing the president, Edson paused. But the president’s stare forced the answer. “By being eaten, Mr. President.”
Fernandez grimaced and leaned back into his plush faux leather chair. “Of course, that makes sense. So this new bug’s removing more CO2 and sending carbon down to the ocean floor where it can’t be returned?” His mood warmed.
“Yes, Sir.” Edson’s voice remained tenuous.
“How much more?”
“Sir, right now it’s in two percent of ocean water and in varying concentrations.” If the spread continues, as we forecast, it may reduce carbon up to ten times the normal rate.”
“How long would it take for it to fully spread?”
“We don’t know, Sir. With ships drawing in and discharging ballast water, and ocean currents circulating it...a year, maybe two. Understand that our definition of global contamination means presence in at least 80 percent of every square kilometer.”
The president sat upright. His voice was tinged with excitement. “How does this affect global warming?”
“The oceans will absorb much more CO2 from the air than nature and humans emit, and atmospheric levels will start dropping.”
“How do we know?”
The scientist brought up a new global display.”
“This view from the Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2 (OCO-2) satellite shows Earth’s current carbon dioxide levels.”
“And the varying hues?”
“Higher frequency spectrums represent carbon sources and lower frequencies, the sinks.”
“So red is bad and blue is good.”
“Essentially yes, Sir. As you can see, the urban and industrial areas are shades of
red and the forests and oceans are in various blues.”
“Will it change much?”
“Our projections indicate they will.”
The president leaned forward excitedly. “And ocean acidity?!”
“The pH will increase.”
The president cocked his head and looked at his chief of staff who was sitting next to him and writing notes. “Jack, good or bad?”
Jack Dowell had kept quiet until this point. “Acidity will go down, Sir.... So it’s good.”
“Sorry, Mr. President,” the scientist said meekly. “I must correct one point. The oceans aren’t acidic because the pH has always been well above neutral, which is a pH of 7.0. Over the last couple decades they’ve only become a little less basic.”
“Semantics.” Fernandez grinned. “So global warming will be stopped sooner?!”
“Quite possibly, sir...if CO2 is the problem. Global temperatures haven’t changed much the last couple decades despite increasing CO2 levels. But it’s much too early to announce anything,” Dr. Edson cautioned.
Dowell put down his pen. “Mr. President...perhaps it’s best to wait until the appropriate time.”
With a grin President Fernandez slowly nodded. “Election time.”
Chapter 13
August 10, 1000 hours
The Spider
Yoav’s chin nested in his propped up hand. “Needle in a haystack.... If only we had an active ‘selector’, an email with which to start.” He turned from the monitor and looked at the young woman with bobbed red hair, sitting at another work station to his left. “Help me out here, Collette.”
“Well, I’ve been monitoring the inboxes to her known email addresses,” she said. “Anna’s getting lots of invitations, and people asking for a response, but no indication she’s responding to anyone.”
“How far removed are you looking?”
“Three ‘hops’ from the target. Using some search algorithms, I’m looking at all discussions mentioning her.”
“Three degrees of separation,” Yoav mumbled. “Those who contact those who contact her direct circle of gentlemen callers and acquaintances.”
“Our data list shows several thousand ‘first hop’ communications, numerous one-timers, some very frequent.”
“How have you prioritized them?”
“Several ways, including by last date of contact. I’m trying to find her pattern of hiding communications by cycling thro
ugh throwaway ‘burner’ phones from different providers.”
“This presumes she’s alive and in contact with part of her old life. It’s a shame she doesn’t have any family.... Check genealogical records to see if there’s anyone we might have missed.”
“Will do.... What we need is the right anomalous event to confirm she’s alive,” she said.
“Have you included the investigators on that Maldives incident?”
“Uh huh.” Collette flipped to a Tableau dashboard chart. The relationship program sorted data pictorially with different sized and colored circles projected over a global map. The cursor hovered over the Dallas headquarters of Profit Energy, a nearby law firm, and the Heyward house. New data boxes popped up.
“Nothing out of the norm,” she said. “There were a flurry of calls between the investigator, three law firms, and the Heywards.”
“Heywards?” Yoav emphasized the last syllable and his brow narrowed.
“The guy initially charged with killing the Maldivian official.”
“No, I mean Heywards...plural?”
“Right. The son, Dr. Peter Heyward, joined the investigation team to save his father according to telephone intercepts. But the communications mentioning Anna Picard ended soon after Interpol dropped the investigation on her.”
“Any captured soft content?”
“I’m still studying her environment and relationships.”
“Give me something new.”
Collette pulled up a matrix. She clicked on a query category. “Pete Heyward spent many hours googling Anna across numerous websites, and by that, I mean a couple dozen. I figure he was researching her as part of their private investigation.”
“Normal response for someone personally involved.... Bring up some of his search results.”
“Glad to!” Collette smiled as society photos tiered on the screen and like a revolving album flipped from one image to the next. “Wish I had clothes and jewels like her.”
“They’re not all hers.”
Collect cocked her head. “Loaners?”
“Designers, jewelry shops, and friends loaned her items whenever she asked.... So I’m told.”
With furrowed brow, Collette cocked her head. “Why would they do that?”
“Because she was connected to the world’s wealthiest man...an elite. And she made their fashions look even more desirable.”
Collette nodded then froze one particular photo – Anna sparkled in a golden-sequined dress that trailed the floor, and she was being escorted by an A-list actor into a Cannes Film Festival premier. “Oh là là. That man’s magnifique.” She pretended to swoon.
“No doubt he’s wealthy as well.”
“Alas.” Her eyes left the screen and glanced down at her flatter chest and slightly paunchy figure. “I couldn’t fill out the fashion. At least, not the top.” Her eyes shifted to him. “Think if I worked out three hours a day like Anna, I’d be a comer?”
Yoav pursed his lips and glanced at her pale complexion, uneven mouth, and wide nose. “Just focus on being a top-notch analyst.... What else did he review?”
Collette sighed at his refusal to answer. “Well, he pulled up every article she wrote for the Harvard Law Review.”
“Odd.... What was his last search?”
“Some Google Earth images on her villa and the vicinity.”
“When?”
“A few days before the investigation was called off,” she said.
“And nothing else? No emails or telephone calls mentioning her name?”
“Nothing.”
“Well, keep Heyward and the investigators on the low priority list, and focus on her regular contacts. Robert Spenser is still a good prospect. Finding a clue’s just a matter of time.”
Chapter 14
August 10, 1300 hours
Cabinet Room
White House
“Damn hackers!” President Fernandez snarled at his FBI Director. “They’re ruining everything.”
“Well, Mr. President, because of the sting, there’re fewer out there now.”
The president glared at the law man sitting across him. “Greene, I hate giving blank checks to blank faces!”
“I agree, Sir. Under normal circumstances I wouldn’t advise it. But this is an exception.”
“Mr. President, if I may....” The chief of staff stepped closer. “Rounding up more than 300 hackers is a credit to your crime-fighting program. We can use this during the campaign.”
“All right Greene, but make these things rare!” The president swirled his signature on both pages.
“Yes, Sir.” The smiling director slid the documents into a manila envelope.
The president growled. “What about your phytoplankton release investigation?”
“Sir, we’ve expanded the case and are reconstructing events as we get them. NSA’s accessing their archived metadata and reconstructing linked personal and professional contacts with Johansson going back four degrees of separation. We’ve got agents interviewing those with more than a passing overlap.”
“What have you found?”
“An interesting environmental extremist connection back in his graduate school days. After that, he was fairly clean.”
“Or he knew to hide connections,” Dowell added.
“There’s that possibility,” Greene said. “There’s another odd connection with a Snath employee, an Anna Picard—”
“Name seems familiar.” President Fernandez pondered the name. His eyes widened. “Wait.... I met her on Swanson’s yacht.”
Greene turned his tablet with her passport photo.
“That’s her. Gorgeous blond, great figure, real intense. She stayed near him during most of the meetings and fed him information. A few of us joked that she was the right side of his brain.”
Greene turned his tablet back. “Well, she recruited Johansson for Swanson nearly 10 years ago, and had periodic electronic and personal contact with him over the years.”
“When was the last?”
“June 30th. She dropped off NSA’s intercepts on July 27th, though a violence incident report showed gunfire and a fire at her French Riviera villa on August 5th.”
“Someone kill her?” The president’s face appeared solemn.
“There’s no body to suggest that. We’ve issued a BOLO on her as a person of interest.”
Dowell turned to the confused President, “Be on the lookout.”
“Thanks.”
Greene continued. “Hours later, Snath’s head of security and three male security employees died when their vehicle flew through a guardrail and over a 200-meter cliff. We believe they may have been returning from a suspicious datacenter fire outside Nice, France.”
“Hmmmm. Is there a nexus between these deaths and the phytoplankton?” Dowell interrupted.
“We never presume coincidence,” the FBI director said. “Cross referencing to Swanson, we show he went into protective mode onboard his megayacht. Soon after the car crash, localized jammers on his boat prevented NSA from listening in.”
“Swanson’s scared?”
“At least four dead and two fires.... If that happened in D.C. to your people, Sir, we’d have you in lockdown, too!”
“Who’s protecting him?” Dowell interjected.
“Our analysts say he’s got some new security talent onboard, a former CIA agent.”
President Fernandez was rubbing his temple. “Could be an anti-GMO environmental group blaming him for releasing those genetically modified life-forms.... Keep digging.... What else?”
Again Greene looked at his notes. “The shipping companies that transported the storage tanks have been identified and contacted. All the payments and documentation were through a shell company. There’s only one shipping agent, a Ms. Tanya Smith.”
“Good. What’s her story?”
The director looked down with slight embarrassment. “We can’t find her.”
“What?!”
“She’s go
ne...hasn’t been seen since August 6th.”
“Somebody whack her?”
“Doubt it. She took a leave of absence from her employer. Her boss said she earned a huge commission from the large contract she brought in. He admitted it put their finances in the black for....” The director hesitated.
“For what?”
“His words, ‘for the first time since you took office.’ Sorry, Sir.”
The president scowled.
Greene continued. “A couple associates said she was very happy during the month she worked the contract. She also advance-paid her apartment rent and utilities for a year.”
“So she took a very long vacation or skipped town for some reason, but expects to return?”
“That’s our take. Doesn’t sound like someone who thinks they committed a crime.... We’ve got an international search for her...same for Dr. Johansson.”
“Are they together?”
“Quite possibly. They worked closely for a few weeks. They’re both attractive, tall, and single. And we’ve determined he siphoned over 50 million dollars from his company’s accounts in the last few weeks.”
“Swanson file theft charges?”
“No, Sir. But, nonetheless, we’ll search for them.”
Chapter 15
August 12, 1000 hours
Heyward Ranch
Denton, TX
Fuzz particles swirled on the driveway. Attorney Jim Hancock stepped out of his Cadillac and put on a tan Stetson, shielding his eyes from the mid-morning sun. Whipping a briefcase from the back seat, he glanced at the heat-shimmers rising from the concrete. It was another hot Texas day, one that would keep his parked car’s air-conditioner cycling. The silver sedan’s rear door thumped closed and caused a second swirling.
He strode toward the large house surrounded by large oaks, their leafed branches lacey with strands of moss—a sight becoming more prevalent in humid Texas.
A sudden commotion drew his attention leftward. His right hand instinctively touched the small pistol in a concealed shoulder holster. With a quickened pace, he diverted toward the sound of grunting and thumping coming from around the south corner. Rounding the corner, he tentatively approached a large oak.
