The Leviathan Effect

by James Lilliefors

FORTY-TWO

  CATHERINE BLAINE DROVE THROUGH the rain-soaked streets of downtown Washington to Fifteenth Street, where she pulled in through the southwest gates to the White House. She parked on Executive Drive, where a waiting security guard accompanied her to the gate house and a Secret Service agent signed her in.

  A Jeep Liberty was parked four blocks from the entrance, at the curb along Fifteenth Street.

  The man behind the wheel watched Blaine’s car as it passed through the White House gates and came to a stop on the other side. The assassin leaned back and watched the rain. All he had to do now was wait.

  PRESIDENT AARON LINCOLN Hall, dressed in shirtsleeves, gazed at her through the dim, rain-filtered light from the south windows. It was more than five hours since they had made the agreement. His eyes were bloodshot and puffy, but still alert.

  “I’ve just had another briefing with Dr. Wu,” he said. “The projections, I’m afraid, are terrifying. We’ve already suffered some big losses in the Carolinas.”

  Blaine thought about her parents, glad that they’d gotten out in time, headed to the mountains of Tennessee. She wondered if their house would survive. “It hasn’t begun to diminish yet, in other words.”

  “No. I’m to have an update from Mr. Zorn in less than two hours. Then one in the morning at eight. And every two hours after that. The big change is supposed to happen overnight. But Jim Wu is telling me now he doesn’t think this mitigation is going to work. Can’t work, he says.” She looked at the television monitor behind him, showing a feed from the Data Visualization Center across the street.

  “You’re surprised I told him.”

  “Yes,” she said. “You said you wanted it to stay in our tight circle.”

  The President rubbed his temples, his hands hiding his eyes.

  “I needed another expert opinion, Cate. An outside opinion.”

  “I can relate to that,” she said.

  “I’m told this thing is about to become larger than any North Atlantic storm system we’ve ever seen. Potentially twice as large. We’re starting to get doomsday stuff all over the Internet. A preacher in Alabama is telling people that Alexander is God coming to collect our overdue debts. There’s a professor in New Jersey who’s saying New York City is going to be washed to sea. Another preacher wrote on his blog that two percent of the people on the East Coast are going to be raptured.”

  “What about the other ninety-eight percent?”

  “They’re going to drown.” The President shook his head. “There are already lots of people saying this thing was created by the government. We’ll be hearing plenty more of that.”

  “No doubt.”

  “I want this to work, Cate,” he said, turning, showing the matinee idol profile. “I want to stop this.”

  “I think we all want that, sir.”

  The President lifted his coffee cup, sipped, and set it down. He seemed uncertain and, maybe, scared. Blaine had never seen him like this before.

  “Jim Wu walked me through all the computer projections. Landfall is expected now in about—” He glanced quickly at the clock on his desk. “Fifty-one hours. Most of the spaghetti models have it hitting due east of us. Maybe a little to the north. Although one projection has the damn thing coming up the Chesapeake Bay and putting Washington under ten feet of water. Can you believe that? Making it uninhabitable. A lost city like Atlantis.”

  “What’s happening with evacuations?” Blaine said.

  He gave her a look. Evacuations were technically her territory, as head of Homeland Security; but he had taken away her authority.

  “Everything’s activated. Mandatory evacuations up and down the coast. We’ll see what happens overnight. I don’t think any of us will be sleeping much tonight.” He forced a smile.

  “Probably not, sir.”

  The President took another sip of coffee. “I’ve been getting a bit of a history lesson here,” he went on. “I’m told this thing could be a Category Five when it makes landfall. Do you how many Cat Five storms have ever made landfall in the United States, Cate?”

  “Three, I think.”

  “Three. That’s right.” He looked at her quickly. “The Labor Day hurricane in 1935 that hit Miami. Camille in 1969, which hit Louisiana, I believe. And Andrew, in 1992. Katrina was only a Three when it hit land.”

  “Yes, that’s right.”

  “Do you know what was the world’s deadliest hurricane ever, Cate?”

  “Wasn’t that the Bhola Cyclone in 1970?”

  “Yes, right. Exactly.”

  “We’ve been reading the same article again, haven’t we?”

  He looked at his coffee cup and sighed. “Half a million people lost their lives in that thing. We have no frame of reference for a disaster of that magnitude. Our deadliest was Galveston in 1900. Eight thousand casualties, but that was mostly because we had no warning system then. Katrina was responsible for eighteen hundred deaths. They’re telling me this could top Bhola, if it keeps on track. We’ve never had that kind of disaster, Cate. Nothing even remotely close. It’s really beyond our ability to comprehend.”

  The President watched her expectantly.

  “I know there’s a reason you didn’t want to have the conversation I initiated earlier,” she told him. “I probably should have been with you one hundred percent. For what it’s worth, I apologize.”

  “You were acting on what you thought was the best available information, Cate.”

  Blaine made a face. Had she been?

  Then the President said the last thing she expected him to say. “Cate, we know about Vladimir Volkov.” His eyes narrowed, watching her.

  “What? You know about him?”

  “Yes.”

  For a moment, Blaine was speechless. “How long?”

  “Not long. A couple of weeks. I maybe should have made that clear to you earlier. I didn’t know you were going to bring it up. I had no intention of making this deal, Cate. Of going through with it. Not on their terms.”

  Past tense.

  “You know about Volkov.”

  “We don’t know all the details. We don’t know where he is or how exactly he pulled this off. But we know this is his project. And in a sense we have no choice but to accept his terms. For now.”

  So he was trying to lay a trap for Volkov. That was why he seemed so compliant.

  “Our intelligence is continuing to provide useful information, just not fast enough. Most of it’s needles-in-a-haystack stuff.” He looked at her differently, as if making an assessment. Blaine nodded, staying with him. “I don’t have to tell you, this is potentially an enormous setback for the country, Cate. And I’m just trying to do what I can to hold on.”

  Intelligence. Meaning DeVries.

  “How do you know?”

  “About Volkov? We have an informant. Someone who gave us a piece of information about him. About how he’s doing it. It’s a complicated game, Cate, and Volkov is obviously an ingenious adversary. I just can’t afford to make a wrong move at this stage.”

  An elementary surveillance technique: observe the enemy’s behavior until you’re able to learn the identity and location of the enemy’s leaders. That was the President’s chess game.

  “So that’s why you kept moving forward.”

  “It was the only avenue to information. We didn’t know enough. We still don’t. We still don’t know how and where it really operates. If we don’t play by their rules, they beat us. They win a cold war that the public never saw. We can’t afford that.”

  “No, I understand.”

  “Good.”

  “That’s why you were so adamant about keeping it within this group.”

  “No.” He leaned forward; for a moment, the rain shadows swam ominously across his face. “No, the other side was adamant. If we’d allowed it to go public or if we had in any way violated their terms, he might have backed away and probably would have let the storm do its damage. He may be doing that now, I don’t know. I hope to hell
not.”

  “Did you transfer the down payment? Is that done?”

  He nodded. “Of course. We’ve done our end. As I said earlier, five billion dollars is the least of our worries. I assume we’ll know more in a couple hours.”

  Blaine considered that.

  “We had Victor Zorn on the radar, too,” the President continued. He clasped his hands. “Before Volkov. We’d never been able to get that close to him before, either. We were actually surprised that he came in to do the negotiation himself.”

  That was why no one had pressed him. They wanted him to think they had bought his illusion.

  “There’s another reason you didn’t want dissension, though, wasn’t there?” Blaine said. “It’s because you didn’t want to raise the suspicions of someone in the room with us.”

  She watched the President shift in his chair, turning away for a moment. Finally, he nodded. “We’ve been carefully building a case. Although I can’t get into details.”

  Someone in the room. Theoretically, it could have been any of them. Four men with strong, quiet ambitions. Stanton an affable man, who desired the presidency. DeVries a brilliant internationalist, who felt he deserved a larger role in US foreign policy. Easton a loyal but forceful tactician, who wanted to pull the administration’s most important strings from backstage. The President a competent, popular leader in search of a cause that could lift him to greatness.

  But only one of the four really made sense.

  “How did they get Garland? Clayton? The other scientists on board? That’s what I don’t get.”

  “Venture capital at Garland’s level depends largely on high-level references,” the President said. “If a heavyweight in the defense industry recommends a contractor, it carries a lot of weight. If they get one on board, it becomes easier to get two. It started there, with a handful of defense contractors. Then they managed to recruit a consultant or two. From there, it became a domino effect.”

  Only one of them had those connections, Blaine thought.

  “So, Easton,” she said.

  He furrowed his brow, but didn’t say anything.

  “Why? Why would he do this? What would be his motivation?”

  “I couldn’t say, Cate.” He looked off, at the television across the room, avoiding her eyes, and her question.

  After a while, Blaine said, “I wonder, too, why they decided to bring me in to the mix.”

  The President was nodding. “I suspect because there was a degree of doubt somewhere. Maybe they felt that you would tip the scales; that, based on your background, you’d urge us to sign on with this emerging science. They also thought you’d be blindly loyal.” He winked. “They were wrong on both counts. It’s about the only mistake they’ve made so far.”

  He swiveled toward the South Lawn and the Washington Monument again. “We made the deal for two reasons, Cate. Most importantly, to stop that,” he said, nodding toward the storm. “Secondly, to learn the rest of it. To get Zorn in the room was a bonus.”

  “Zorn is Volkov’s proxy.”

  “Mmm.” The President turned back to her, showing no expression. “Actually, he’s more than that, Cate.”

  “What do you mean?”

  His eyes flattened. “He’s Volkov’s son.”

  FORTY-THREE

  CHARLES MALLORY RECEIVED THE encrypted email from Chaplin with his brother’s message and immediately went back to the list of names, discerning patterns he hadn’t recognized—the cross clues completing connections that hadn’t made sense before. What emerged was a grid of intersecting points dating back nearly two decades. Two biographies intertwined in ways that had never drawn attention to themselves. Military. Government. Private sector. For eighteen years, Thom Rorbach had been Clark Easton’s lieutenant, working for him behind the scenes, in some cases doing the difficult and dirty jobs that Easton couldn’t do himself. Easton had hired his firm, EARS, to manage the Alaska arm of Leviathan, and he had made Rorbach the project administrator. Later, he had brought him back into government, first on the National Security Council staff and then creating a hybrid job for him in the Department of Defense, where he worked now.

  But what would Rorbach be doing for him tonight? Mallory felt a current of apprehension rush through him as he realized the answer to his question.

  “SO HAROLD DEVRIES knew, too,” Blaine said, watching the President.

  “Yes.”

  “But not the Vice President.”

  “No one else knows.”

  “Why didn’t you bring me up to speed?”

  He sighed. “We simply didn’t see that it was necessary. We actually thought you’d be on board. Harold thought that. I thought that. We miscalculated.”

  “Mr. Zorn is Volkov’s son.”

  “Yes.” He smiled unexpectedly. “Volkov has two daughters by his wife. He wanted a son to carry on his business. To be his front man. Mr. Zorn was groomed for years to do what he did today, apparently.”

  “What happens now? What’s the next move?”

  He let out his breath. “I’m hoping everything goes forward per the agreement. I’m hoping your brief dissension isn’t going to bring the spaceship down. On the other hand, I’m afraid they could walk away from it.”

  Blaine held his gaze. “Let the storm go ahead and tear up the East Coast?”

  “Possibly. In which case, on top of everything else, I’d be the victim of a five billion dollar scam, wouldn’t I?” His eyes went to the window for a moment. “I’d love to send in a SEAL Six Team and take out Volkov, Cate. But, unfortunately, we don’t know where he is. And we don’t know how they operate. It’s like a foreign language no one has heard before. It’s a new kind of warfare. And make no mistake, Cate, this is war.”

  “So, what can we do?”

  “Nothing. Nothing but wait. And to be honest with you, I don’t care about a lot right now. If I’m able to stop this storm, I will do whatever needs to be done. If I have to go on television and make that speech, I’ll do it. If we have to become partners, we’ll become partners. If they want another billion dollars tomorrow, they’ve got it. I don’t want the world’s worst disaster on my hands. Or in this country’s history books.”

  “Why do we assume they can actually stop this, though?” Blaine asked. “This is much larger than the storms in the Pacific.”

  “Yes, I know.” His mouth tightened. “That’s what worries me. We don’t know, Cate. We’re into the realm of faith now, I’m afraid.”

  They both turned their gazes to the television, and the giant, counterclockwise bands of wind that were threatening an unprecedented collision with the East Coast of the United States.

  THE FORD FOCUS’S headlights lit up the swirls of rain as Catherine Blaine drove out of the southeast gate of the White House and turned south along Fifteenth Street, toward Constitution Avenue.

  The assassin pulled from the curb in his Jeep Liberty, keeping a block and a half to two blocks between them. Blaine took a right turn onto Constitution Avenue, then crossed the Memorial Bridge into Virginia. She entered the stream of traffic on George Washington Parkway and picked up speed, headed toward Maryland and the Capital Beltway. The assassin kept his eyes trained on her taillights.

  He followed her around the Beltway into Maryland, exiting a quarter mile behind her onto a rural highway. The traffic was sparse, the lights flashing yellow. About a mile later, her taillights flared and her turn signal begin to blink off the wet sheen of the street. A convenience store. She was stopping at a convenience store.

  The assassin pulled into the parking lot of a business park and cut his lights. He waited beneath a canopy of dripping trees and watched. From there he had a clear view of the 7-Eleven. A straight shot. If he’d wanted to stop her with an M24 sniper rifle, it would have been a splendid location. But he couldn’t do that with her. This one had to be a Jimmy Hoffa. Without a trace.

  He was fully engaged now. Nothing mattered but the target. He watched as she came out the door, head dow
n, swinging a plastic bag. Hurrying back to the car in the rain. She had made it easier for him, eluding her security detail the way she did. It would be her fatal flaw, although Blaine did not know that yet.

  Her headlights went on again, the taillights brightening as she pulled out. The killer waited until she was back on the pike before he switched on his own lights. He followed her from a distance again on the rolling two-lane highway. The target drove another mile and three quarters and then he saw her turn signal blinking again, her brake lights pumping. The Pike Motel. The assassin slowed in the right lane and followed her car into the lot. She drove around the building, parking under an overhang of trees near the rear stairwell, again making things easier for him. He counted the cars in the lot. Seven.

  He rolled past the office and edged his SUV toward the stairwell. The target came out of her car and splashed toward the overhang, head down, bag swinging in one hand, purse over her shoulder. Walking along the stucco wall out of the rain toward the elevators. The assassin suddenly accelerated his Liberty, startling her, then braked abruptly. He clicked off his lights. Parked. Opened the door.

  DR. JARED CLAYTON walked toward the Bourbon Steak restaurant just off the lobby at the Four Seasons hotel, but he stopped before going in. He had been instructed to wait until he saw a man wearing a black carnation and to follow him. As he did, Clayton saw Zorn’s man move to intercede. If he had had doubts about working for Mr. Zorn before, they were confirmed now. He followed the man with the carnation out the revolving front door to Pennsylvania Avenue, where two Homeland Security police officers emerged from the back of a Lincoln limousine to block Zorn’s security man. Dr. Clayton slid in the open door, and one of the men closed it. The car began to move, up Pennsylvania Avenue toward the White House.

  FORTY-FOUR

  8:27 P.M.

  CATHERINE BLAINE HAD PURCHASED a bottle of aspirin, a small carton of orange juice, and a six-pack of Heineken at the 7-Eleven. She had not slept well in weeks, and knew that this night was going to be an especially long one. As she walked through the rain from her rental car to the motel stairwell, she was surprised by the throttle of an engine and the bright flash of headlights in her eyes. An SUV, stopping by the elevators. She shielded her eyes but kept moving. For a moment, she debated taking the elevator, but decided to walk. The pavement was slippery and she stopped to test her footing. That’s when she heard the SUV door close, and heard an urgent splash of footsteps coming around the back of the vehicle.