Wave of Terror

by Jon Jefferson

  “Most unlikely,” Boyd said. “The three instruments are independent of one another. Three separate detectors, three channels of data, all highly consistent. As a scientist, I’d say this data set is quite robust.”

  “But isn’t the global data more robust? That network has more sensors. Better ones, too, I assume.” This, too, from Kincaid. O’Malley was beginning to dislike him. “Why trust O’Malley’s data—a DIY project, jury-rigged by an amateur—more than the data collected by real seismic stations all over the world?” Now she despised him, with a deep and implacable loathing.

  “Because that data has been tampered with,” Boyd said sharply. “It’s been counterfeited. Plagiarized, in a manner of speaking—stolen from the network’s own, earlier archives.”

  “What makes you sure?”

  “Let me explain by way of an analogy.” Boyd took a deep breath, and O’Malley sensed that he was trying to control his frustration. “If you took the complete works of Shakespeare and ran them through a document shredder, then dumped the shreds onto the floor, what are the odds that they would come back together, by random coincidence, in exactly the same arrangement they were in before—every page, every act, every scene, every line of dialogue identical?”

  The Agency man gave a condescending smile. “Nice riff on the monkeys-at-typewriters meme, Doc. Obviously, it’s not possible. But that’s different.”

  “It’s not,” Boyd insisted. He retrieved a handful of printouts and gestured at the identical sets of squiggles. “The exact same data, month after month? That doesn’t happen in nature. Only with counterfeit data.”

  “According to you. And Dr. O’Malley. That’s it—just you two.”

  One of the MI6 men—O’Malley couldn’t recall whether this one was Malcolm or Allen—cleared his throat. “Actually, we had a go at this ourselves,” he said mildly, almost apologetically. “After Dr. Boyd finally got through to us. Our cryptography section. Oxbridge math whizzes, most of them.” Kincaid turned to stare at him. “They agreed with Drs. Boyd and O’Malley—the Canary Islands data’s dodgy. Worse than dodgy, matter of fact—it’s as bent as a nine-bob note.” Now everyone was looking at him dumbfounded—everyone except for his own colleague, who was nodding amiably.

  “How could it be faked?” said Kincaid. “Who could pull off something that sophisticated?”

  “Excellent question,” the Brit replied. “We had a go at that, too, didn’t we, Malcolm?”

  “Right you are, Allen,” said Malcolm. “Seems to be the handiwork of the same chaps who mucked about in your last presidential election, Preston. We’ve tracked it back to an outfit who work hand in glove with the FSB.”

  O’Malley raised a hand. “Sorry, what’s the FSB?”

  “Russian military intelligence,” Dawtry interjected. “Used to be the KGB. Putin’s alma mater. They could track your phone or hack your computer just like that.” He snapped his fingers. “If they’re involved—”

  “Wait,” said Kincaid coolly. “Hold your conspiracy-theory horses.” His patrician face radiated condescension. “You can’t just leap from a glitch in a database to a Russian plot without compelling corroborative evidence.”

  “That’s what we thought, too,” said Allen in his low-key, affable way. “So we asked some of our oil-and-gas friends to do a bit of monitoring on the QT.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a folded printout. “Stand-alone industrial seismometers in western Africa, not reporting to the Global Seismological Network. Their readings from the Canaries are spot-on with Dr. O’Malley’s. Fainter, from a distance, but that’s to be expected, right?”

  “Right,” seconded Malcolm.

  Kincaid took the printout and studied it. He shrugged. “Okay,” he conceded. “Someone—maybe independent hackers, maybe the FSB—could be trying to cover up evidence of seismic instability. In a dangerous fault zone. I get it.”

  “You don’t get it, I’m afraid,” Boyd said softly. “None of you except Dr. O’Malley fully gets it. This isn’t just seismic instability. It’s induced seismicity. Artificially triggered quakes. They have a distinct seismic signature.” He riffled through the pile of papers, selecting two. “Here. See this earthquake pattern?” He held out the page and swung it in a slow arc so that everyone had a chance to see it. “This is from a recent earthquake in Oklahoma. Oklahoma had nearly a thousand earthquakes in 2015—the most of any state in the US. We now know that most of those quakes are the result of induced seismicity.”

  “From hydraulic fracturing—what the media chaps call ‘fracking’?” asked MI6 Malcolm.

  “From wastewater injection,” Boyd said. “Wastewater injection pumps all sorts of liquids deep underground, most of them not from fracking. Brine from conventional oil extraction. Chemical and industrial wastes. Agricultural wastewater. Municipal wastewater.” Seeing O’Malley’s puzzled expression, he elaborated. “Wastewater injection is like flushing an immense loo down a sewer pipe two miles deep, under immense pressure. Eventually the earth literally breaks apart.” He waved the printout again. “And this particular pattern of earthquake activity—again, induced seismicity—is exactly the seismic signature we’re seeing on La Palma right now.”

  Dawtry leaned on the table. “And what do you make of that? What are the implications?”

  “What I make of it, Mr. Dawtry, is that not only are people going to extreme and sophisticated lengths to conceal earthquakes on La Palma—”

  “They’re working hard to cause them,” Dawtry finished.

  “Exactly,” said Boyd. “I think they’re mounting a multipronged attack on the fault line. They seem to be using explosions—small ones so far, though perhaps they’re gearing up for something bigger. But now . . .” He fished around in the pile of papers again; this time he extracted a photo—the photo of the apparatus O’Malley and Dawtry had spotted, just before they were spotted. “This photo is from La Palma. This is a slant drill rig, angling directly toward the base of the island’s fault line. And this”—he showed the photo of the giant motor and large pipe located just below the rig—“is a high-pressure injection pump. Pumping seawater into a fault zone under intense pressure? It’s like pumping machine oil into a rusty hinge. Pretty soon, it’s going to move.”

  Malcolm nudged Allen, and Allen removed a sheaf of folded images from a coat pocket. “That’s not the only one, I’m afraid,” he said. “We’ve got satellite photos showing a dozen of these rigs. They’re spaced at one-kilometer intervals along the flank of that entire ridge.”

  O’Malley said, “Sweet Jesus.”

  “Quite so,” Boyd added.

  Howell, the FBI legat, looked nervous. “We need to lean on the Spanish authorities. Get them to investigate, intervene. Shut the operation down if those are injection pumps that pose a hazard. That’s the safest course of action.”

  “Or the riskiest,” Malcolm said slowly. “If there’s collusion at some level, we’d be tipping our hand.”

  “Give me a break,” Kincaid scoffed. “You think Spain is colluding in a plot to kill millions of Americans?”

  “Somebody’s sure as hell colluding,” Dawtry snapped. “I doubt that it’s the government itself, but these people are clearly getting inside help. Dr. O’Malley’s phone was being tracked with StingRay technology. At least two people at the observatory—which is administered by Spain—tried to kill us. And the authorities were looking for us at the airport. We have no way of knowing how high up the food chain these people have gotten.”

  Malcolm nodded. “If we tip our hand, the authorities might move slowly, whilst the terrorists go all out toward the tipping point.”

  Dawtry riffled through the maps and seismic graphs. “Dr. Boyd, what do you recommend?”

  Boyd gave a vague shake of his head, and his eyes closed briefly. “As a lifelong academic, I’m supposed to say, ‘Further research is required.’ But as a human being who abhors mass murder? I say find the sons of bitches, gentlemen. And stop them straightaway. If it’s not
too late.”

  They left a visibly drained Boyd and got back in the cars, the same seating arrangement as before. But they did not return to Regent’s Park, as O’Malley had expected. “Where are we going?” she asked.

  “The embassy,” said Howell, the Bureau’s legal eagle. “We’ve got an emergency briefing.”

  “With the ambassador?”

  “Among others.”

  “What others?”

  Howell twisted to look at Dawtry. “You weren’t kidding—she does ask a lot of questions.”

  Dawtry winced at the elbow O’Malley jabbed into his ribs. “Good thing. If she didn’t, we’d still have our heads up our asses on this. Like she said, what others?”

  “Mainly the National Security Council. Our directors”—he nodded at Kincaid, the Agency man—“will both be there, of course. We’ll also be looping in the ambassador to Spain, since this involves Spanish territory. Plus a scientific adviser of some sort, I’m told.”

  They turned south onto a busy thoroughfare and crossed a river—the Thames, O’Malley assumed—by way of what was labeled VAUXHALL BRIDGE. On the far bank, a brooding, hulking building loomed above the river. It rested, or, rather, bristled, on a sharp-cornered foundation that reminded O’Malley of a star-shaped fortress from some bygone century. Rising above the foundation was a structure whose muscular Art Deco turrets and towers might have served as a movie set: the fortress of Darth Vader or Lord Voldemort or a Batman supervillain. “That’s creepy,” O’Malley said, reaching between the front seats to point it out. “That might be the most sinister building I’ve ever seen.”

  Howell chuckled. “I’ll tell them you said so. They’ll appreciate that.”

  “Who?”

  “MI6. That’s their headquarters.”

  O’Malley felt a sense of relief when they turned parallel to the river and left the building behind. A half mile upriver, they came to a cube of glass, ten or twelve stories high, luminous in the twilight. It was set in what appeared to be a park, surrounded by lawns, trees, and a pond. The building radiated light, transparency, and a sort of friendly wholesomeness, on its own merits but also, especially, in contrast to the brooding building inhabited by British intelligence. “Welcome to US territory,” announced Kincaid.

  O’Malley gaped. “This is the embassy?”

  “It is,” Howell said. “Brand-spanking-new. We’re still unpacking. Ignore the boxes and lack of furniture.” The car angled down a ramp toward a security gate, armed guards, and an underground garage.

  “It’s gorgeous. Not menacing at all.”

  Kincaid turned and gave her a crocodile smile. “The perfect disguise.”

  O’Malley had been waiting for an hour—sitting, stewing, chafing—in a hallway outside a conference room while Dawtry, Howell, and Kincaid sat inside: conferred inside, she supposed, though conferring, in this case, seemed to be a word that meant “shouting.” She tried to eavesdrop, but the words were muffled, protected against spying ears, including ears that were far sharper and more important than her own. She wondered if the Russian embassy was nearby; if it wasn’t, the KGB—no, the FSB, she corrected herself—surely had listening posts in the neighborhood. Perhaps the FSB occupied several floors of the tall, missilelike skyscraper she’d glimpsed towering over the riverbank halfway between the US embassy and MI6. Perhaps someone somewhere in that tower had read her emails, listened to her phone calls, sent thugs to her apartment. She shuddered at the thought.

  The door opened and Dawtry emerged, his face red and grim. “Well, that was fun,” he muttered, beckoning to her. “If somebody asks you a question, answer. Briefly. Otherwise, keep quiet.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The conference room was as big as O’Malley’s entire apartment, and the wall at the far end was covered with large monitors showing maps, seismograms, and video feeds of other participants in the teleconference. One feed was captioned “Madrid—Local Time 8:17 p.m.”; front and center amid a handful of people in the Madrid group was a distinguished sixtysomething man O’Malley assumed was the US ambassador to Spain. Another feed, captioned “NSC/Washington, DC—Local Time 2:17 p.m. EST,” showed several men in military uniforms, along with a handful of civilians. O’Malley was both disappointed and relieved to see that the president was not among them, but she did recognize other VIPs, including the vice president, the secretary of state, the attorney general, and the FBI director.

  A third video feed was labeled “Federal Emergency Management Agency” and registered eastern time as well. The fourth and final feed was captioned “UC Seismology Lab, Berkeley, CA—Local Time 11:17 a.m. PST.” O’Malley gasped when she saw the face on that screen: David Solomon, her ex-husband. It took all her willpower—that, and the admonitory squeeze Dawtry was giving her forearm—to keep from shouting, “David, what the hell are you doing here?”

  “Dr. Solomon,” said one of the DC military brass, “you’ve written quite a bit about rising risks of earthquakes and tsunamis affecting the Pacific Coast. But you haven’t written about the East Coast and La Palma. Is that because you think the risk is small?”

  “Until recently—until today, in fact—I did believe the risk from La Palma was minor. Insignificant, even. But now? Frankly, I’m gravely concerned. Alarmed, in fact. La Palma shows signs of serious and rising instability. And the consequences for our Eastern Seaboard could be catastrophic. ‘Apocalyptic’ would not be an exaggeration.”

  “Explain,” said the talking head identified as the director of FEMA.

  David nodded. “On its own, La Palma is active, volcanically and seismically. The terrain is high, steep, and unstable. There’s evidence, historical and prehistorical, of major landslides and large tsunamis, some of them hundreds of feet high, in the Canary Islands. All that’s indisputable, but not particularly worrisome. What’s new and alarming is what we’ve learned only this week. There’s been a deliberate and very sophisticated effort—a very successful effort—to hack into the Global Seismological Network. To manipulate the data in order to mask an increase in seismic activity on La Palma. This hacking was discovered and brought to our attention by Dr. Megan O’Malley, a respected Johns Hopkins scientist.” O’Malley was pleased and grateful that he called her a “scientist” rather than an “astronomer,” a term that would surely have undercut her credibility on seismic matters. “To be honest,” David went on, “at first I was skeptical about Dr. O’Malley’s findings. But my colleagues and I have combed through the data, and Dr. O’Malley is absolutely right. The hacking is real, it’s irrefutable, and it’s been going on for the past two years.”

  “Dr. Solomon, if I may,” began another of the civilians in Washington. He paused, giving the video camera time to zoom in on him.

  Dawtry leaned toward O’Malley and whispered, “CIA director.” Her eyebrows shot up and she nodded, duly impressed.

  “Yes?”

  “Granted, the data hacking is cause for concern, and we do have our cybersecurity experts tracing the source. But if the data we have is flawed, it seems to me the only firm conclusion we can draw is that we don’t really know what’s happening on La Palma. Maybe La Palma poses a danger, maybe not. Isn’t that correct?”

  David nodded slightly, but his eyes flickered in a way that O’Malley recognized from prior, sometimes-painful experience. The nod acknowledged the question; the eye-flicker dismissed its validity and warned of a withering response. “Actually, that’s not correct at all. La Palma is a ticking time bomb, and someone’s doing their best to fast-forward the clock.”

  “What’s your basis for that?” pressed the CIA director.

  “Twofold. First, we’ve gone back and looked at other sources of data—oceanographic data and industrial seismology, oil and gas seismic readings that don’t report to the global network. These provide independent indicators of seismic activity on La Palma—data strongly contradicting the hacker-modified database. What we see from these independent sources points to a dramatic increase in seismi
c activity on La Palma beginning eighteen months ago—an increase in both frequency and intensity. Second, we now have direct, reliable data—real-time data—from La Palma itself, thanks once more to Dr. O’Malley. Dr. O’Malley placed three seismometers on the island, and in the past thirty-six hours alone, they’ve recorded sixteen events, all of them centered near the fault line that bisects much of the island. This trio of seismometers reports four earthquakes and twelve sets of explosions.” O’Malley noticed a flickering reflection from David’s glasses, and he glanced down, peering at a corner of his screen. “This just in,” he said. “Another quake occurred less than sixty seconds ago. Magnitude four, the strongest yet.”

  “Let me be sure I understand you,” said the FBI director. “You’re saying it’s getting more dangerous by the minute? As we sit here talking to you?”

  “Yes, sir, I’m afraid so. And the reason is that someone—I have no idea who—is working very, very hard to make it more dangerous.”

  “And if this trend continues?”

  “It will be cataclysmic. Let me show you something.” He looked down again, made a few keystrokes, and reduced the window showing his face to a small thumbnail image. Another window opened, this one showing a large three-dimensional map of La Palma. “This is an animation showing the landslide and the tsunami that could result from a major quake. Bear in mind, this model assumes worst-case conditions—the largest collapse, the fastest slide, and therefore the biggest tsunami. But the modeling is scientifically solid.” He clicked the “Play” arrow, and the men in DC and London and Madrid saw what O’Malley had seen a few days before—Christ, had it been only days? It felt like a year, a lifetime—when she had gone down the rabbit hole of tsunami research. A huge portion of the island broke free, slid rapidly downward, and plunged into the ocean. The view widened, and color-coded waves radiated outward from La Palma toward other coastlines: northwest Africa, southwest Europe, the United Kingdom.