Abyss km-15

by David Hagberg

  Anne Marie could hear the old man’s voice as if he’d been sitting right there with them at the window table looking out across the city’s financial district. “Do you think that the disease affected his judgment?”

  “Not directly. But I suspect he was distracted by it.”

  “Enough to make mistakes?”

  “Possibly,” Dr. Calhoun had told her.

  “And realize that he was making mistakes?” Anne Marie had wanted to know, but the doctor had been unable to answer that question exactly except to say that the disease had probably disgusted him.

  “Your father never accepted failures in others, and I expect that he thought his body was failing him, so he would have been upset.” Dr. Calhoun spread his hands. “It had been three months since I’d seen him before he killed himself, so I don’t know his state of mind. But you need to start keeping track of your own health.”

  Her own doctor had told her what she had was nothing more than benign essential tremors, a common condition. But she hadn’t believed him six months ago when she’d first noticed she was developing the shakes, or now this afternoon in her penthouse apartment waiting for Wolfhardt to show up.

  She was convinced that rather than face an uncertain future with the disease her father had put the pistol to his head and blew his brains out, an option she would never consider. Anyway if she had Parkinson’s, it was in the early stages, which left her plenty of time to plan her next move, stay and fight or run. But it was fast becoming crunch time now; she could feel it viscerally just as she had felt when it was time to bail out of the dot-com bubble and a few years later the real estate boom and get out of Dodge.

  The television behind her, tuned to Fox, had been covering two stories all morning, one they called “the Tragedy in the Gulf,” and the other the Reverend Schlagel’s take from his headquarters in McPherson, Kansas, in his sermon, “God Has Spoken, Are We Ready to Listen?”

  DeCamp had failed again. For the third time. The oil platform had been crippled, but not sunk, and Dr. Larsen and most of her technicians and postdocs had survived, rescued by Kirk McGarvey, a former director of the CIA. Drama at sea in the high-stakes contest of big oil’s interest in the status quo versus the green revolutionaries who warned that the planet was at the tipping point and the only way for humankind’s salvation was to stop all carbon dioxide emissions immediately. Alternative sources of clean power from nuclear energy for the time being and then from the wind, the sun, and Nobel laureate Dr. Larsen’s World Energy Needs project. The World Energy Needs project in Eve Larsen’s words; the God Project in Schagel’s.

  Wolfhardt had telephoned an hour ago. “Turn on the television. There’s been a development.”

  She’d done so while he was still on the line, and she’d immediately realized that her decision not to follow al-Naimi’s warning about her security chief until after the oil platform had been destroyed had been the correct one. Insurance, her father had once told her, is not necessarily a waste of money in itself. And thus had been born, at least in his mind and in the minds of others, exotics and semi-exotic financial instruments, among them credit default swaps, a sort of insurance in a negative sense. Cashing in on failure.

  Rightfully she’d made the decision to keep Wolfhardt in play as a credit default swap against DeCamp’s failure, because something would have to be done about the mercenary before he was caught. She could not afford for him to be arrested because the leads would come back to Schlagel and very possibly to her. And whatever else he was, whatever his other agendas might be, Wolfhardt knew what he was about.

  “Come here,” she’d told Wolfhardt. “I have another job for you.”

  “I expect you do,” he’d said. “I’ll be there within the hour.”

  And Octavio had seen the same news stories and had telephoned her from Caracas twenty minutes after Wolfhardt’s call. They spoke via encrypted sat phone and so could be totally open with each other.

  “The president has agreed to extend his invitation for you to transfer your MG operation here as soon as you desire,” he told her.

  “The CIA has a strong presence in Venezuela.”

  “Not so strong as you’d think these days,” he said. “More bluster, perhaps, than actual effectiveness.”

  Anne Marie chuckled. Money bought strange bedfellows, usually for the most transparent of reasons. But Chávez was in trouble, and the country was on the verge of becoming unstable and possibly even collapsing. China, on the other hand, was growing exponentially and desperately needed two things that she could supply: oil for that growth and money management services for the more than one trillion U.S. dollars of foreign debt it owned. And Hong Kong, with immunity, was much more to her liking than Caracas with the CIA breathing down her neck.

  “The offer is kind,” she said pleasantly. “Please thank the president for me, and tell him that I’m sincerely considering his generosity.”

  “My pleasure,” Octavio said, and he dropped his voice. “Be careful, Anne.”

  “Langley is no threat to me here.”

  “I’m talking about the Saudis. Al-Naimi has a long reach in the region. Longer than yours.”

  “I understand,” she said, suddenly feeling chilly. At her level of play she could not defend herself on her own, for that she needed the backing of a government. And Octavio had just offered it in the form of protection from Saudi Arabia. “First I have a few loose ends to clear up.”

  “Quickly,” Octavio said and he was gone.

  She looked at her hand, it had stopped shaking, and she felt as if she were settling down. Really settling down now for a fight, and she felt the first glimmerings of interest, not dread, about what might be coming next. She wasn’t exactly as rich as Bill Gates, but she was wasn’t all that far away, and at least in her mind that kind of money carried a certain clout. She didn’t know where the threshold of importance started, but it was certainly more than a couple hundred million, or even a few billion, and it had something to do with influence. So since she’d left Florida she’d worked on that principle, easing her way — sometimes bullying her way — into the bank accounts of a diverse group of individuals, corporations, local as well as international, and even a few governments — or at least governmental agencies. It was why she’d felt reasonably safe cruising the Med for the first time, and why she wasn’t convinced that she should head for the hills just yet. Perhaps staying to fight might be the better course after all.

  Ramirez buzzed her. “Mr. Wolfhardt is here.”

  “Send him up,” she told her bodyguard. Her chief of security hadn’t been pleased about the extra layer of personal protection she’d put in place after her talk with al-Naimi, and she expected that he’d simply put it down to female paranoia. But he’d accepted the change without protest, though a distance had been created between them.

  Wolfhardt, dressed in a white linen suit, no tie, stepped off the elevator, came across the hall, and walked directly out to where Anne Marie was seated on the balcony. “Good morning,” he said, not sitting down.

  “Would you care for coffee or tea?”

  “I don’t believe there’s time.”

  “Mr. DeCamp has failed for the last time. I want him eliminated.”

  “That may not be easy,” Wolfhardt said. “Most likely he’s gone to ground somewhere to wait and see which way the wind blows.”

  “Are you telling me that you cannot find him?”

  “No, madam, I’m telling you there will be no need because within the next twenty-four hours he’ll come to me and I’ll kill him.”

  For just a moment Anne Marie was vexed. She did not enjoy riddles when it was straight answers she was looking for, but then she understood, and she smiled despite herself. “I see,” she said. “If something were to happen to his woman in Nice he would have the motivation to find you.”

  “Exactly.”

  Stay and fight indeed, Anne Marie thought. It was her nature after all.

  PART FOUR


  The Next Few Days

  SEVENTY-ONE

  It was nine in the morning in Washington when Eduardo Estevez, the president’s adviser on national security affairs, walked into the Oval Office, a scowl on his broad Latin face. Lord’s chief of staff, Robert Russell, his press secretary, Paul S. Green, and his chief science adviser, George Mills, were all watching CNN’s reporting on the attack in the Gulf while the White House photographer snapped pictures. They all looked up.

  “With that kind of expression on your face this can’t be good news,” Lord said.

  When he had been awakened earlier and told of the developing situation in the Gulf, he’d refused to call a cabinet meeting, demanding instead that he be supplied with constant updates. “This will not be allowed to get out of hand, like Hutchinson Island has,” he’d told Russell. “No more fodder for Schlagel.”

  “Kirk McGarvey is on the line from the Coast Guard cutter Ocracoke on scene,” Estevez said. “It’s a video link.”

  Lord went to his desk console, pressed a couple of buttons and the CNN broadcast was replaced by the image of a weary-looking McGarvey seated at a small conference table. It appeared as if he were alone.

  “Good morning, Mr. McGarvey,” Lord said. “From what I understand congratulations are in order.” His image was being picked up by the camera in his computer monitor.

  “Not yet, Mr. President, because we’re not out of the woods,” McGarvey said. “Is it just you and Mr. Estevez?”

  “That’s not important. What do you have for me?”

  “As you wish,” McGarvey said. “The same man who hit Hutchinson Island was behind this attack. Which means he’s being directed either by Schlagel, Marinaccio, Octavio, or the UAE International Bank of Commerce, or some combination of all four — and very likely the Saudis are somehow involved.”

  “Goddamnit, we’ve been down this path before,” Estevez said, but the president held him off.

  “Do you have any proof?”

  “Gail Newby was chief of security at Hutchinson Island, and she came face-to-face with him just before the explosion. He was only a suspect at that time, and in fact we’d not been able to identify him until a couple of days ago. But he was there on the rig directing the attack and Gail saw him.”

  “You say that you identified him?”

  “Yes, sir. His name is Brian DeCamp, an ex-South African Defense Force colonel in the Buffalo Battalion. Evidently he turned freelance and apparently worked a number of operations over the past several years. He’s good, just about the best I’ve ever heard of.”

  “Now he’s dead, and that part of the problem has been solved,” Lord said. “For that we also offer our thanks.”

  “He got away aboard a helicopter from Schlagel’s flotilla.”

  The president’s anger spiked. “That’s proof enough for me.”

  “No, sir, it’s not that easy,” McGarvey said. “There’s more.”

  “There always is.”

  “The helicopter came off the yacht Pascagoula Trader, with a crew of six, one of them identified as Anthony Ransom, a top aide to Schlagel. We think he was directing the flotilla. But he and the rest of the crew aboard, along with one of the mercenaries DeCamp left behind to act as a rear guard, were shot to death.”

  “How about his other people?”

  “All dead.”

  “Did you actually see him take off?” Estevez asked.

  “Yes, and he was heading west toward the coast of Florida,” McGarvey said.

  “Then we have the bastard,” Estevez said. “He must have shown up on someone’s radar.”

  “No,” McGarvey said, and in that one word Lord knew this situation had the possibility of turning out even worse than Hutchinson Island, much worse.

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Because he’s smarter than that. And he’s not a martyr, which means he’d planned his escape from the beginning. My guess is that he made a deal with someone in the Cuban Navy to meet him somewhere inside Cuban waters, or very close, where he ditched the helicopter.”

  The president, who’d been standing hunched over his desk, sat down. “You think that it’s not over? He’ll strike again?”

  “We saw his face, so I think he’ll go to ground. Maybe plastic surgery, but that would take months, maybe longer.”

  “I’m not following you, Mr. McGarvey. Are we out of the woods or will someone else come after Dr. Larsen and her project?”

  “And don’t tell us that Saudi intelligence agents are going to try next,” Estevez said. “Because I just don’t believe they’re stupid enough to take that kind of a risk.”

  “It won’t be the Saudis,” McGarvey said. “At least not directly. But they funnel money into the IBC in Dubai, which has connections with Marinaccio and Octavio, we know that much for a fact. And no, Mr. President, we are not out of the woods yet, and probably won’t be for a long time.”

  “It’s agreed that none of them, especially the Saudi government, can afford to allow Dr. Larsen’s project to succeed,” the president said. “So we can be fairly certain about the why, but you still don’t have proof who hired this mercenary.”

  “We’re working on it, and if we do come up with something the ball will be back in your court, Mr. President. You might want to give someone at Justice the heads-up.”

  Lord bridled for just a moment, and he almost shot back that he took advice but not orders. Instead he held himself in check. “But somebody else will be coming after her.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Who?”

  “Schlagel.”

  It was the worst possible news for Lord. While his own numbers in the polls had dropped from an approval rating of 67 percent to a dismal 43, Schlagel’s, even though he had not yet announced his candidacy, had risen from nothing to a respectable 29 percent. And it had begun with the incident at the Hutchinson Island Nuclear Power Plant. The bastard had done nothing but hammer home his message of fear; fear of nukes and especially fear of Dr. Larsen’s God Project, which spilled over to the populist message of fear of all scientists.

  “Tinkerers with God’s designs!” Schlagel shouted from his pulpit in McPherson, and just about everywhere else as he crisscrossed the country, all of his appearances as well prepared and stage-managed as the Reverend Billy Graham’s had been at the height of his ministry. But Schlagel was even better than Graham had been; his sermons were more firey, yet simpler and even more real and current. “Americans,” he preached, “are frightened out of their wits, and believe me they have every reason to be.”

  “You say that he was personally behind the attack against Dr. Larsen’s project?” Lord said.

  “No, but his followers were.”

  “Then he’s already won. As long as he keeps his hands clean.”

  “Unless he’s pushed,” McGarvey said.

  “I’m listening,” Lord said, his interest piqued.

  “He’s campaigning for your job, even though he hasn’t come out and said it in so many words yet. So you need to do two things.”

  Estevez started to object, but Lord waved him off. “I’m still listening.”

  “Campaign back. You’re very good at it. You’re smart, you’re articulate, and you photograph well. Take him on the issues. Green energy will be our ultimate salvation. Give the public Eve Larsen’s message in plain language that everyone — especially Schlagel’s followers — will understand. And he’s right, you know. Americans are frightened and they do have a right to be. So fight back.”

  “And the second thing?”

  “The media is all over the attack in the Gulf, so you need to hold a news conference as quickly as possible, today or better yet tonight when you can address the nation on all the networks. Your administration will make sure that Vanessa Explorer will be repaired and towed to Hutchinson Island, and Dr. Larsen’s project will get the highest priority.”

  “That would certainly put me head-to-head with Schlagel.”

  “It’d be risk
y,” McGarvey admitted. “But not as risky as having someone like him in the White House.”

  Lord figured that his advisers would tell him that he was committing political suicide; he could see it already in Estevez’s eyes. But they were talking about his political suicide, not the nation’s.

  “In the meantime what will you be doing, Mr. McGarvey?”

  “Waiting for Schlagel to make a mistake.”

  “Are you so sure that he will?” Lord asked.

  “Oh, yes, sir, he’ll have to stick his neck out if he wants to be president, and you already know what that’s like.”

  “And then what?”

  “I’ll nail him,” McGarvey promised.

  It was about what Lord had expected and he exchanged a glance with Estevez. “You understand, Mr. McGarvey, that I can’t become personally involved with an action like that. I can’t sanction it. My critics would have a field day.”

  Estevez nodded his approval.

  “We never discussed this aspect, Mr. President,” McGarvey said.

  SEVENTY-TWO

  In the Ocracoke ’s officer’s mess, McGarvey clicked the shutdown tab on the laptop computer he’d used to talk to the president, and sat back to gather his thoughts. He’d been given all but a carte blanche to pursue whoever was behind the attacks on Hutchinson Island and here in the Gulf, but this now would not be the same as chasing after someone like DeCamp, who if he managed to go completely to ground would be all but impossible to find.

  Schlagel was a different problem altogether, because unlike DeCamp, who either worked alone or with a very few handpicked operators, Schlagel’s followers were a sizeable portion of the American voting public. Millions of people were backing him, and the number was growing daily. Isolating him from his supporters in such a way that making a mistake large enough to topple him, expose him for who and what he really was, would be next to impossible.

  But until the good reverend was brought down, Eve Larsen and her project were in imminent danger, although Schlagel was already denying any involvement in the attack.