Saving Cascadia

by John J. Nance

  UNION STATION, PORTLAND, OREGON

  He is watching me!

  Diane Lacombe picked up her bag and headed for the front drive, keeping track of the tall, expressionless male she’d spotted working hard to be inconspicuous. His eyes had never left her body since she’d entered the station, and at the very least she resented it. The restoration of Union Station had been an unqualified success, with the ceilings and frescos paying homage to a simpler time of architectural elegance. She wanted to take a few minutes and enjoy it, but if she was being tracked, there was no time.

  With one eye on the station door, she selected a cab and launched herself into the back seat with her bag, snapping at the startled driver.

  “Just drive! Go! Now!”

  The station began receding from view as she twisted around to peer out of the rear window.

  And just as she’d suspected, the same tall man stepped through the door and stood watching the departing taxi and, she figured, memorizing the cab’s registration number.

  “To the airport, please.”

  The driver partially turned, a grin on his face.

  “You just in a hurry or are you running from someone?”

  The question froze her for a second until she realized his joke and remembered to smile.

  “No, no! Just always in a hurry. Got to catch a flight to California.”

  She could lose herself in the terminal and loop back to the car rental counter, where once again Debbie’s driver’s license and credit cards would hide her presence.

  There would be approximately two hundred miles to drive, and a needle to find in a haystack.

  MONTLAKE CUT, SEATTLE

  Jennifer let herself back into Doug’s house, all thoughts of the previous evening safely stored away in a less practical side of her mind. The pilot in her was on a mission that had little to do with flying, but everything to do with pleasing her father. It was pro forma—one foot in front of the other to accomplish a given task.

  She glanced around almost absently at the comfortable, familiar interior of the floating home, more the abode of some academic bookworm than a dynamic geophysicist—or perhaps her stereotypes needed massive adjustment. The place, in short, could use a better housekeeper than he employed.

  Jennifer closed the door behind her and winced to think she’d been too distracted last night to remember her father’s plaque. She moved into the main room of the home, well aware that she was visible from a half dozen windows in adjacent floating homes across a tiny waterway. For reasons she never understood, Doug refused to hang curtains in the living room, and it had always made her feel a bit decadent, even in the dark, when she had a midnight occasion to dash naked between his bedroom and the kitchen. He’d teased her about being a closet exhibitionist, and she’d countered with feigned seriousness that it was a premeditated act of charity for the four retired men living across the way, two of whom were fighting long-term illnesses. Surely an occasional flash of the female form would improve their recovery rates.

  He kept a large rolltop desk in the corner and she began with the bottom drawer as the most likely storage spot, working her way up without success and glancing impatiently at her watch. This was already taking too long, but she didn’t want to distract Doug with a phone call in the middle of the media storm he was handling. She knew the house well enough to find anything, and he’d already told her the plaque had arrived and looked great.

  She moved to the hall closet and unfolded a small stepladder to stand on, rummaging through the upper shelf where he tended to toss incoming boxes he wasn’t ready to open. A pile of FedEx and UPS boxes finally yielded the right one and she pulled it off the shelf, catapulting a small manila envelope to the floor in the process.

  Damn!

  Jennifer placed the shipping box containing her father’s plaque on a chair and knelt to pick up the spilled envelope, which was unsealed. According to the postmark, it had come several months ago from a major cruise ship line, and out of idle curiosity she slid the pair of 8 x 10 photos halfway out of the envelope.

  Deborah Lam, Doug’s estranged wife, smiled back in Kodachromatic glory from the sundrenched deck of a cruise ship obviously plying the Alaska route. There were glaciers in the background and a date in the corner indicating the shot had been taken in August, three months before, and she pulled the photo the rest of the way out, wondering who Deborah had sailed with.

  Maybe, Jennifer caught herself thinking, Mrs. Lam has a new boyfriend and she’s finally ready to let Doug go.

  There was another figure in the picture, a handsome male in his thirties looking slightly sheepish, as if he hadn’t welcomed the photographer’s attention, and had been even less interested in posing with his arm around Deborah. Jennifer felt a cloud of confusion envelop her as she stared at the picture. The man with Deborah Lam was Doug.

  How in the world…

  Her hand was shaking slightly as she pulled the photo closer and scrutinized the date. She fumbled in her purse for a pen and on the back of the first business card she could grab she wrote it down: August 23.

  Her PDA was in the same purse and she yanked it out now, punching the keys too rapidly at first, finally bringing up the schedule for August.

  I was in town most of August. And Doug…

  She blinked at the multiple days blocked out on the tiny calendar screen. From August 16 through August 30 Doug Lam had been in Menlo Park, California, the western headquarters of the U.S. Geological Survey, on business.

  Or so he’d said.

  Yet, he’d posed for a picture on a cruise ship in Alaska at the same time.

  If he had ever lied to her before, she couldn’t recall when, but here was cold, hard evidence of purposeful deception. He’d even called her several nights during that time, supposedly from Menlo Park, although each time he was on his cell phone, which meant no strange area codes would have shown up on her screen.

  Jennifer sat down hard on the floor, her head swimming with conflicting thoughts. The need to get back to Boeing Field fought the need to confront him. She’d found the shots by accident, but it was while pawing through his things. Could she even admit that? The reality that he’d lied about something he knew would be a very big deal to her meant she could no longer trust him. And worse, he had apparently sneaked off for a week or two with the very woman he was supposed to be divorcing, with whom he was supposed to be through.

  He was cheating with his wife! God! And here sits stupid, vulnerable, trusting little Jennifer waiting for Godot.

  Fleetingly she wondered if he was even separated. But no, she’d seen those papers. That was real enough.

  Somehow she’d lost control of their relationship, and last night she’d tried to regain it. Now, one way or another, she was going to have to seize control again—rip it away from him or anyone else who might redirect her life in ways she didn’t want.

  You are so busted! she thought, trying to let the words have a comedic ring.

  But there was nothing at all funny about what she’d found.

  Chapter 13

  AIRBORNE, TWENTY MILES SOUTH OF NEAH BAY, WASHINGTON 9:40 A.M.

  “Skipper, what the hell is that, over?”

  The pilot of the Coast Guard Black Hawk using the call sign Angel Twelve glanced to his left at his helmeted crewmember leaning over the center pedestal. His copilot was leaning forward and looking in the same direction. Both pointed to something in the water below and the pilot banked left in response.

  “What are you guys seeing?”

  “That rock just ahead… there’s something big on top of it.”

  A tiny archipelago of stony outcroppings too small to be called islands studded an area a half mile offshore, most of them home to only birds and the occasional sea lion.

  “Which one, Davis?”

  “Third on the left. The larger one.”

  The pilot latched his eyes onto the correct one, spotting the same anomaly. He lowered the collective and slowed as they descended
, his mind searching through the database of familiar shapes for anything matching the large, gray cylindrical mass bisecting the rock and barely contained within its confines. There was always a small rush in discovering out-of-the-ordinary sightings on routine patrols, and he felt his level of interest spiking.

  The sea fog that had obscured the coast from Neah Bay south had mostly dissipated now, but there were still patches here and there, and such pockets of fog could do strange things to visibility. But there was definitely something there, and, considering the fact that they were still a half mile away and descending through a thousand feet, it was large.

  Not a ship, the pilot thought to himself. It looks more like a… a deflated blimp.

  The last few hours had brought one of the oddest series of alerts and calls for help he could recall from a dozen years of service. An inbound Russian freighter captain had stopped engines and called a mayday in the middle of the Strait of Juan de Fuca only to find out that the frightening clanging and banging sounds he and his crew had heard throughout the ship were caused by seismic waves transmitted through the water. It had taken the Coast Guard cutter Point Glass an hour to convince the captain that his ship wasn’t falling apart. Other captains and boaters were jamming the VHF channels with worried questions relating to the tremors. Commercial fishing boats off Westport were reporting a wide variety of problems, and the mood was one of jumpy apprehension.

  And now this.

  The target ahead just would not resolve itself into something familiar, and the pilot brought the Black Hawk in fast and low, circling around into the wind from the east before what he was seeing finally clicked.

  “My God, that’s a whale!” Davis exclaimed.

  “You’re kidding? On a rock?”

  The crewman and the copilot were nodding excitedly.

  “That’s a gray.”

  “No, it’s a humpback. Or not.”

  They were within a few hundred feet now and there was no mistaking it.

  “Where’s the tide?” the pilot asked.

  “It’s a rising tide, and it doesn’t hit high tide for another five hours.”

  “Meaning,” the copilot added, “that this fellow had to have lodged himself there over six or eight hours ago.”

  “But how?” the pilot asked, slowly changing their visual perspective as he rotated the Black Hawk from one end of the creature to the other.

  “Only way he could have done it is breach and fall on it,” the copilot responded.

  “Not by accident, then?” the pilot asked.

  The copilot and the crewman were both shaking their heads.

  “No,” the copilot said. “I’ve studied a lot of whales and I’ve never even heard of this. He’s thirty tons if he’s a pound, and that rock would have been “visible” to his built-in sonar in the equivalent of living color. No, he meant to put himself right where he is… and die there.”

  “So he’s dead, you think?”

  The copilot shook his head. “I don’t know, but we need to alert a bunch of agencies before he washes onto the beach.”

  The crewman had produced a tiny digital camera and was snapping a series of shots when the copilot triggered his microphone again.

  “My God in heaven,” he said almost reverentially. “That’s a blue! That, gentlemen, is a hundred-foot-long member of the largest mammalian species on earth.”

  CASCADIA ISLAND RESORT

  Every property Mick Walker built had a fabulous owner’s suite, and Cascadia’s was spectacular. In Mick’s view, it was never the expense of the furnishings or even the ample electronics that made his suites so desirable, it was the view—and how effectively he could use such magnificent vistas to wow those from whom he might want favors, or reward those who had already provided them. A weekend in this beauty, Mick thought, would soften up a judge. Of course, such suites worked well with women, too, as he’d proven on many delightful occasions.

  Mick sipped his coffee and searched the southwest horizon for evidence of the oncoming weather. Two hours of REM sleep, routinely induced by self-hypnosis, had been just enough to get him through the day; he was marshaling energy for what he was determined would be a memorable, wonderful celebration. He planned to turn every glitch or adversity into an asset. There was a storm coming, of course, but by his definition it would allow a marvelous and unique opportunity for his guests to see how beautiful the coast could be in a winter gale. There might be service problems, but, if so, he’d label them staged pre-opening exercises. Lemons into lemonade. There was no one better at it.

  He took a look at himself in the mirrored wall which lined the side of the living room opposite the floor-to-ceiling windows. Mick never bothered with clothes in his own environment when he was alone, and part of the price for such indulgence was keeping himself fit and trim. Flat stomach, moderately hairy chest, muscular shoulders, and a head still full of brown hair was a satisfying image. He patted his stomach and turned in both directions in a combination of admiration and systems check. No strange sores, no splotches, no growing love handles, and a naturally rough-hewn face that wasn’t showing too many wrinkles as yet—thanks in part to his ability to sleep fast.

  He’d learned the brutally demanding mental gymnastics of self-hypnosis thirty years ago from a professional hypnotist as a way of getting the jump on his competition by working longer and seeming to be indefatigable. There was a small legend going around about Mick Walker never needing sleep, and he encouraged it because it frightened his adversaries. The secret, he knew, was to make incredibly good use of the time you had by avoiding the normal slow descent into the lower stages of sleep. He simply forced himself to drop instantly into REM. It had taken a year of practice before he got the hang of it, but the advantages it had brought him over the years were incalculable.

  Mick smiled as he walked through the bedroom and stepped into the gleaming, glassed-in shower stall in the spacious bathroom. His “ritual shower” was as vital to the process of being Mick as his sleeping technique. Fifteen minutes of focus and meditation and five of washing and he was ready to tackle almost anything—provided it wasn’t someone else’s reality. Mick had always engineered his own success by refusing to believe in anyone else’s assessments of the art of the possible. He had learned early that the way to escape the hardscrabble life of a sheep station in the northern Australian outback was to be not only better than everyone else, but to wear his opponents down with unshakable confidence.

  As he adjusted the stream of water to exactly the right temperature, Mick reflected on his promotional prowess, pleased that it wasn’t just hype. He was a great salesman, and maybe even a great con artist—though he didn’t victimize or cheat people. He preferred to be known as a slightly dangerous but thoroughly ethical scoundrel whose worst vice in business was the occasional tendency to select the most useful version of reality.

  Mick relished hearing the many stories about him, and especially the one that had all but become legend. He’d tired one day of a group of Japanese investors and decided to convince them that it was raining despite a completely cloudless afternoon. “The downpour is there,” he told them. “You just can’t see the drops in this sun angle.” He had his secretary hand them complimentary umbrellas on the way out and phoned his limo driver to turn on the windshield wipers, then watched with immense pleasure from the executive suite as all six of them ran to the limo with their umbrellas open.

  His eyes closed and his mind cleared as the white noise of the shower drowned out all other sound. He stood in deep contemplation for nearly fifteen minutes before emerging to the sound of a ringing phone.

  “Yes?”

  “Is this Mick Walker?”

  “It is. And who is this?”

  “Dr. Douglas Lam of the U.S. Geological Survey.”

  Mick’s mood darkened as he nodded unseen. “Oh, yes, Doctor. I remember you all too well. How’d you get this number?”

  “From Nightingale Operations.”

  “I see. Don
’t tell me I left you off my invitation list for this weekend?”

  There was a brief pause on the other end.

  “Look, I know we’ve clashed in the past over your resort—”

  “Oh, I’d hardly call it a clash, mate,” Mick said, feeling the need to swing at Lam and be cautious at the same time. “As I recall, you made it abundantly clear this resort shouldn’t be built, for some very novel reasons no one else agreed with, and you tried to use your scientific status to overwhelm all opposition. Thank God you failed miserably to convince even your own colleagues, or I’d be standing here in the cold on nothing but a wet rock covered with gull shit. I’ve never calculated the cost of the delays you helped create with your oppositions.”

  “Look, for the record, I never did believe you really were out to rape the planet.”

  “Really? Meaning you once thought I was?” Mick asked.

  “No, I never thought or said that, but some of the, ah, environmental people did.”

  “Ah, yes. The environmental people. Your basic tree hugging ecoterrorists.”

  “Just… environmental groups, some less responsible than others. And for the record, I’m not a member of any of them.”

  “Not even the Sierra Club?”

  “Not even.”

  “Pity. I am.”

  “I… didn’t know that.”

  “Quite a few things you don’t know about me, Dr. Lam.” He paused, trying to keep the acid out of his tone. “Fair enough. So if you don’t want to come join our little soiree, to what do I owe the pleasure of this conversation?”

  “Mr. Walker, are you aware of the earthquake swarm we’re having right now out there, or the damaging surficial quake that just happened in Bellingham?”

  “I wasn’t aware Bellingham had had one, but I felt a few shudders this morning and did some checking. I’m sure you’re going to give me your expert point of view without my having to request it, right?”

  Doug quickly explained the unprecedented nature of the Quilieute Quiet Zone epicenters they’d been observing all night. “That’s why I have to ask you in the most respectful terms—”