The Leviathan Effect

by James Lilliefors

  Chaplin maneuvered in a wide arc up the hillside behind him, wearing his night vision goggles. They both wore open phone headsets.

  Mallory moved in a diagonal down the slope, scanning the woods for movement. He stopped and started. Listened. Waited. A single silent bolt of cloud-to-ground lightning lit up the woods and he saw that the back door of the SUV was open; saw the vehicle name on the back bumper—Ford Explorer—and three of the license plate numbers. Virginia plates. He was maybe thirty feet away now.

  “There’s nothing up here,” Chaplin said in his ear. “No vehicle, no person.”

  “Keep looking.” Mallory raised his Beretta, taking short steps among the narrow trees. Twenty-five feet away. Twenty.

  “There’s nothing here,” Chaplin said.

  A quick flash turned the sky to daylight, and Mallory froze, blinking. Realizing that he’d been mistaken. That his assumptions were all wrong. For an instant, everything became perfectly clear. The killer was standing twelve feet away, his dark eyes watching him through the trees.

  FORTY-SEVEN

  MALLORY FIRED TWICE AT the killer’s after-image and ducked away into the shelter of thick brush, retreating frantically into darkness.

  “He’s here,” he whispered into his headset, adrenaline pumping.

  The other man fired once, the bullet cracking into a tree. Mallory scrambled sideways and slightly uphill, into deeper cover. He crouched behind the trunk of a thick oak and waited, catching his breath, listening. All he heard was the steady beat of the rain through the trees and a more distant sound of creek water rushing downhill.

  The woods and sky lit up again, this time like a fireworks show. He saw no one—just dripping bark and the glitter of falling rain. The Explorer parked by the picnic spot, its back door open.

  But the other man saw him. Two shots exploded the silence, one slamming into the oak tree, missing him by inches. Mallory rolled away and crawled to a new position. He heard a scrambling in the woods: footsteps, moving closer. He aimed his Beretta, steadying it with both hands. He heard the other man snap a tree branch, then stop. Quiet, just the rain. Mallory moved sideways. One step, two. One step. He crouched beside another tree and held his breath, picturing the man advancing stealthily, invisibly toward him. He waited, letting his senses sharpen. He was going to identify the other man’s location through sound now, and wait until he was certain—or until the sky lit up one more time—before firing.

  The rain poured through the trees, streaming down his neck, inside his shirt. He thought about Catherine Blaine. He was here because of her.

  In a park. Deep in the woods. You’re right. It’s east—

  Easton.

  That’s what she was telling him. Easton.

  Another explosion of gunfire jerked him out of his thoughts. He crouched lower, intently listening. Then he heard a sharp intake of breath. He held his gun up, steadying it. The killer was ten feet away from Charles Mallory now. But this time the shots weren’t his. No. This time the shots had come from a different direction.

  Mallory froze, attentive to every sound, smell, movement. At first, nothing happened. Then he heard the killer tramping out of the woods onto the trail. Saw his dark shape in the rain, trying to run downhill, limping badly.

  He heard another explosion and the man disappeared.

  Nothing. He was gone.

  Mallory held out his gun. A moment later, Chaplin’s voice was in his ear: “Got him,” he said.

  Mallory walked down to the trail, Beretta raised. The sky lit up once more as he neared the killer, and he saw the dripping wound in the back of his head.

  “Careful,” Chaplin said in his ear. He was standing fifteen feet behind Mallory now, legs spread wide, dressed in plastic from head to toe. Rivulets of rain ran down the hillside.

  “Good work,” Mallory said, speaking softly. He kneeled and turned the killer over, recognizing Thomas Rorbach from years earlier. Thinking about the nine people he had probably killed. A list that would have included his brother, Cate, and him. Rorbach was the killer. But Rorbach wasn’t Janus. And he wasn’t the real enemy. He worked for the real enemy: for Easton and Zorn.

  Mallory stood. Surveyed the woods. Chaplin kneeled down and went through Rorbach’s pockets as Mallory walked toward the parked SUV, his gun aimed, adrenaline coursing through him.

  He clicked on the dome switch and found Blaine’s purse and phone on the floor in back. But no one was inside. The vehicle was empty.

  Chaplin watched him from under the picnic cover as Mallory stepped outside and looked up at the trees, waiting for another flash of lightning. When Mallory caught his eye, he held up a cell phone and a narrow five-inch key with a double lock pin on one end.

  “Handcuffs,” he said.

  Mallory scanned the woods. “There has to be another car.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Because this was his decoy. He wanted to lure me here. But if something went wrong, he needed another way out.”

  “So the next park entrance, maybe.”

  “Yeah, maybe.” Down the hill, not up. He had figured that wrong. They walked along the narrow, slippery trail, single file, Mallory in the lead, descending in the mud and leaves for another quarter mile or so, not speaking.

  The clearing by the next parking area was flooded. No vehicle. Mallory continued walking, down through the trees toward the next trail entrance. He came to a wooden overhang, a picnic table. Then the sky burst with startling veins of lightning and he saw it: another SUV, parked on the edge of the woods.

  Mallory approached it gun raised. A Jeep Liberty. The back door of this one was open, too, just like the first. He came around the side and saw something moving in the back seat.

  He stepped closer, the rain pounding through the trees. He crouched, Chaplin covering him.

  A figure was sitting up, facing them. Then the sky lit from several directions and he saw her green eyes, wide and alert, looking at him.

  “Cate!”

  “Hi,” she said.

  “My god.”

  CATHERINE BLAINE WINCED as she scooted sideways and leaned over the seat-back of the SUV, letting Chaplin unlock the handcuffs behind her back. Then she stepped out and shook her hands. Flexed her legs.

  “Are you hurting?” Mallory said. “Do you need a hospital?”

  “Yes to the first question, no to the second. I’ll survive.”

  Chaplin, despite his head-to-toe plastic covering, moved under the awning, out of the rain. Only a small circle of his face showed.

  “What do we do with the crime scene?” he asked, his voice almost lost in the rain.

  Mallory saw what had happened. Her face was bruised and grotesquely swollen.

  Chaplin asked his question again, louder.

  “Leave it,” he said. “Call the police and let them know.”

  “Is he dead?” Blaine asked.

  “Yes.” Mallory nodded to Chaplin. “Thanks to him.”

  She turned. “Thank you,” she said. Then she closed her eyes and shuddered. Opened them and looked at Charles Mallory.

  “Rorbach did that?” he said, pointing at her face.

  “He did worse than that.”

  Mallory grimaced and felt a shiver of relief that she was alive, followed by a deep-rooted anger over what Rorbach might have done. A madman hiding in plain sight. “I wish it hadn’t happened. I’m sorry,” he said.

  “I’ll survive. How’s the storm?”

  “I don’t know. Let’s go find out.” Mallory turned. He glanced at Chaplin. They began to walk up the trail, single-file.

  “I wouldn’t mind changing into some dry clothes,” she said, halfway up.

  “I’ll second that,” Mallory said.

  Chaplin, walking behind them, said nothing.

  They trudged up the muddy trail back through the woods to the parking lot, Chaplin’s slicker making a whoosh-whoosh sound in the rain.

  Friday, October 7, 6:47 A.M.

  Dmitry Pe
trenko was already seated in a folding chair beside one of workstations when Victor Zorn came through the heavy steel door that provided the only entrance and exit to the Command and Control Center. Petrenko nodded curtly and looked to Mr. Zorn’s chief scientist, Letkov.

  The other scientist, Dr. Romfo, had not yet arrived.

  The night before, Mr. Zorn had seemed worn down, his eyes red and tired. This morning, his face exuded fresh confidence, the “magic” self-assurance that had driven this project so far. But nothing had happened overnight to justify that confidence, and the others in the room seemed to recognize that. In fact, the storm was no weaker now than it had been when Petrenko had left the compound shortly after midnight.

  Petrenko saw Zorn huddling with Letkov, pretending at first that their conversation was casual and light-hearted. But the room was thoroughly miked and Petrenko heard every word they were saying through his ear buds.

  He watched Mr. Zorn feign a smile and turn from his sight line. “But why?” he said, speaking softly, in Russian. “Why are these projections so far off? All these months you have been working on this, giving me your assurances, and now you present me this bad news?”

  “I don’t know, sir. I am sorry.”

  “Sorry?”

  The scientist lowered his head, trying to appear contrite. Bad acting, Petrenko thought. “Except what I said before. That I’m afraid he may just be too large. Too chaotic. Programmed too large.”

  “How could that be?” Zorn said, still smiling.

  “It’s just—the models weren’t based on actual storms of this size, as you know.”

  “Of course not. Since there never has been a storm of this size.”

  “No. You’re right.”

  “So? What explanation do you have?”

  “None, sir. Except—I think that maybe we’ve just pushed him too far.”

  “What do you mean ‘him’?”

  “The storm. Alexander.”

  “Don’t call it him.”

  “I’m sorry, sir. It’s just—I don’t know. It’s just—there’s something about this storm. Something I don’t know how to put—scary.”

  Petrenko listened to the silence, imagining the look in Vladimir Volkov’s eyes when he heard about this.

  “Come on, Letkov. Please. Don’t tell me that. Tell me something I can use,” Mr. Zorn said, his voice whispery but angry. And then, to Petrenko’s great surprise, Zorn slapped Letkov.

  Mr. Zorn looked sharply around the room, pretending to smile, embarrassed by his sudden loss of temper. Petrenko stared blankly in front of him, as if he were studying one of the computer models. Then Zorn said to Letkov “What’s the matter with you? We never speak that way in an open venue like this. We never express doubts like that.”

  “I’m sorry, sir. You are right.”

  Petrenko watched the two men as they turned away again and schemed, although he pretended to only be studying the animated images of Alexander on one of the desk monitors. He had not wished Zorn ill, particularly, but if he was going to bully others while continuing to live out his illusion, the cost would be huge.

  Petrenko had feared this, and he felt a strange mix of emotions watching it actually unfold. Zorn’s scientists were loyal and they were certainly competent, but they were not as capable as the Americans. He had used their expertise to create a monster, infinitely larger than was necessary for “The Project” to go forward. And now, he had no idea how to bring the monster down.

  FORTY-EIGHT

  FOR A LONG TIME, Mallory and Blaine rode in silence, Mallory driving, both of them watching the rain on the twisting, unlit park road as the wipers beat a steady rhythm. Thinking, replaying what had happened. As they came into the Maryland suburbs, the day’s first light began to fill in the spaces between the trees.

  “You know what I keep thinking?” Blaine finally said. “I keep thinking about my father.”

  Mallory glanced at her. She was a mess, her face bruised, her hair plastered and muddy, her clothes wet and torn. “The general.”

  “Yeah. I keep thinking how I’d like to tell him what happened back there. How I’d like to explain the whole thing to him. Every detail. How we did this. How I was a prisoner. How you rescued me.”

  “Why can’t you?”

  “Because we don’t do that. We just don’t,” she said. For a moment, her voice seemed choked with emotion. “I mean … because there’s a part of me that knows exactly how he’d respond if I tried. He’d criticize me for letting myself get caught. For putting myself in that position. And that would be it. We’d never get beyond that to have the conversation I’d want to have.”

  “How long has this been going on?”

  Blaine’s sigh sounded like air leaking from a balloon. “Forever,” she said. “Grade school.”

  “Tough.”

  “Kind of. The cliché would be to say that he wanted a son.”

  “And like many clichés, it’s actually true?”

  She smiled, and Mallory thought of his own father. Lessons he had learned from him and lessons he was still learning. His father had been killed because of the information in his head. At least Blaine still had time to make things right; Mallory had lost that chance. “Maybe you could try again,” he told her.

  “I could. I have, actually. Many times, over the years.” He realized that she was looking at him. “Maybe I will.”

  “You’re an only child?”

  “Yeah.”

  Mallory glanced over, saw her smiling at him again, in a way that he liked, despite her bruised features. When he looked back, she was turned away, watching the trees, but there was still the vestige of a smile on her face. “You’re not.” she said.

  “No.”

  “Your brother’s why you came back.”

  “Yeah. I’d decided I wasn’t going to come back. For anything.”

  “The reluctant spy.”

  “I guess.”

  “I’m glad you did.”

  Mallory watched the road.

  “What was he able to say that made you come back?”

  “Nothing. He just asked me.”

  “And that was it.”

  “Yep.”

  They rode in silence for a while along the winding park road, the rain periodically thudding harder on the roof, then softening. Mallory thought about his brother. The story he’d be able to write, the parts still coalescing. The road was empty; traffic lights flashed yellow in the distance.

  “It’s Easton, you know,” Blaine finally said.

  Mallory came out of his thoughts. “Yes,” he said. “I do.”

  “I think I figured out the rest of it, too,” she said. “The last part.”

  “Which last part?”

  “Motivation.”

  He glanced over, surprised.

  “It was something you said right before I left the motel. Volkov needed someone on the inside. Or, someone capable of being on the inside.”

  “Yes,” he said. “But Easton didn’t want the job of Secretary of Defense. He said so publicly on several occasions.”

  “That’s right. Then fourteen months ago he seemed to suddenly change his mind.”

  “So what happened fourteen months ago?”

  “I think it happened earlier, actually,” she said. “Maybe it was just fourteen months ago that Volkov confronted him with it—through Mr. Zorn, presumably—and it became leverage. You said that Volkov preys on weaknesses, right?”

  “That’s what I was told.”

  “So maybe he found one with Easton. Rorbach ran the facility in Alaska for the Leviathan Project. Isn’t that what you said?”

  “Yes.”

  “A project that conducted research into convections in the Earth’s crust. Which at some point expanded to include ground radio tomography experiments. Then he was moved off of that. And the government quietly withdrew.”

  “It became inactive at the end of December 2004, supposedly.”

  “December twenty-seventh, to
be exact,” she said. “That was the date listed in the memo.”

  “All right. So?”

  “So, I presume it was Easton who moved him off of it. He was the top level Defense Department liaison.” Mallory waited. “The objective of Leviathan, the memo stated, was to study ways to build, and then dismantle, a massive storm system. Through computer models. And then in real time.”

  “Yes. Keep going.”

  “But there were actually two objectives, according to the memo Hanratty gave you. Two processes. The first was ‘creating an event and taking it apart.’ ”

  “A hurricane, presumably.”

  “Yes. That was the primary objective of Leviathan. The second process had only one part. That’s because it was a finite event that happens very suddenly. That couldn’t be mitigated because it gives no warning. It’s over within a few minutes.”

  “An earthquake.”

  “Yes, exactly. That’s why I think that date is significant.”

  Mallory frowned at her. “Okay.”

  “Suppose the real purpose of Leviathan was to explore a new sort of military weapon. An experimental technology, that was maybe pushed along after 9/11. Say it involved the use of high energy radio waves, bouncing energy off the stratosphere.”

  “For what purpose?”

  “Say you wanted to create something that could be used militarily. A ‘disturbance’ that could pinpoint a strategic target. Where al Queda leaders were thought to be, let’s say; where Osama bin Laden was hiding back when that was an issue. Something that was developed under the guise of Defense Department research. Easton bought into all that. Off-the-books secret defense allocations for selective covert ops projects.”

  “Okay.”

  “Rorbach was project manager but it was under Easton’s watch. Hypothesis, then: suppose something orchestrated by Rorbach went wrong.” Mallory watched the back and forth of the wipers. “Suppose it worked, in other words, but it worked too well.”