“Okay.”
“That’s why I think that date may be significant.”
“What’s December twenty-seventh, 2004?”
“That’s not the date.”
“It isn’t?”
“No. That’s one day after the date.”
“December twenty-sixth, 2004?”
“Yes.”
Mallory watched the road through the glass. The wipers slicing out a moment of clarity, the rain stealing it away. Clear, opaque, back and forth. When he got it, he felt chills race up his spine. Amazed he had missed it.
“At this point, that’s pure speculation, of course,” she said. “I hope it’s wrong.”
Maybe. But then maybe not. Because it explained what they had been missing. The motivation.
Mallory closed his eyes for a moment.
December 27, 2004.
The day after one of the worst natural disasters in history: the Indian Ocean tsunami, caused by a magnitude 9.1 earthquake. The third-largest seismic event ever recorded, an undersea rupture that caused the entire planet to vibrate. The longest duration of faulting ever observed, lasting nearly ten minutes.
Two hundred and twenty-eight thousand people dead.
Mallory glanced to his right, saw the subdued intensity in her eyes, and the ghoulish dark circle where she had been beaten by Thomas Rorbach.
“No,” he said. “It suddenly makes a perverse sort of sense. Easton was Assistant Secretary of Defense for strategic affairs at the time. I’ve learned about their history. Easton and Rorbach have had an unholy alliance going back almost twenty years. Rorbach looks out for him, in some cases does the dirty work for him. Easton promotes him to positions he doesn’t deserve. Who knows what glue held them together all those years? Something in their past, that happened years earlier, presumably. It makes sense: Vladimir Volkov somehow learned what had really happened with Leviathan and he used it to coerce Easton to become involved.”
“Or Zorn did.”
“Yes.”
“I’m hoping none of that’s true,” she said.
“Except it explains what can’t be explained any other way. Something had to motivate Easton to do this. Why would a man with a seemingly sterling career become involved?”
“He wouldn’t.”
“No.”
“So the only explanation is that he didn’t have a choice.”
Mallory thought about that for a while. “That would explain where it started,” he said. “Projecting out from there—later, maybe, he came to believe in this technology. He became convinced that the United States needed to control it, that it could all be worked out behind closed doors, that it would ultimately benefit the world. He’s a strong-willed man who rationalizes decisions having to do with Defense. Volkov knew the industry as well as anyone. So he would have known about Leviathan and maybe why it was shut down. And with some digging, he might have learned how Easton was involved. And Rorbach. It was all crafted in a way that the US would benefit. Easton would benefit. And Volkov would benefit.”
“And if Easton didn’t participate, he would be exposed.”
“Yes. Responsible for a mistake that would cast him as one of the worst villains in American history.”
“So Volkov offered him a way out.”
Mallory nodded, still thinking it through.
“But then what were the email threats about?” Blaine asked.
“I don’t know. That would be the other part of it,” Mallory said. “There had to be someone inside, as we said. But maybe there were two.”
“Why do you think that?”
“The set-up,” he said. “It’s odd that you were never required to reply to the email threats. How did he even know you were receiving them?”
Blaine’s eyes were steady, watching him.
“Remember what you once said about computer hacking?” Mallory went on. “You said only two hundred people really understand the intricacies of hacking at its highest level.”
“I was told that.”
“It would be a perfect set-up to have one of them involved, wouldn’t it?”
“Stiles.”
“Maybe.”
“So Easton was orchestrating this from inside, and his lieutenants were Stiles and Rorbach.”
“Maybe,” he said. “If so, that’s what I had all wrong. I’d been assuming the chain was about Volkov. But those seven names are all connected with Leviathan. They don’t have anything to do with Volkov.”
“So who was the informant?”
Mallory sighed. “I don’t know that yet.”
They rode in silence again through the slanting rain, thinking about it. As they came to the Pike Motel, Mallory clicked on his turn signal and glanced over at Blaine.
“He was running funny, you know,” he said.
“How do you mean?”
“Rorbach. He was running funny before Joseph shot him.”
“How do you mean, funny?”
“He was kind of hunched over and limping in a funny way. As if someone had given him a good kick between the legs.”
“Oh.” Blaine made a neutral sound. “Do you think that impaired his ability to get away at all?”
“It may have, sure.” He added, “Might be something to mention to your father.”
Mallory parked two spaces down from Blaine’s Ford rental. They sat there for a while looking at the rain pouring through the trees.
“So what are we doing?” she said.
“I thought we could get into some dry clothes, as you suggested, and then maybe close our eyes for a few minutes.”
“That sounds pretty nice. Then what?”
“Then maybe it’s time to confront Easton.”
7:50 A.M.
At the makeshift Command and Control Center in rural Virginia, Victor Zorn was flanked by his two lead scientists, studying the most recent satellite images and tracking coordinates of Hurricane Alexander. Weathervane’s initial projections had shown that by 8 A.M. the storm’s speed would have dropped to less than 90 mph and its eye would have begun to break apart. The whole system would be showing signs of a steep easterly jag, a return to sea. But the speed of the storm now hovered around 129 mph and its wind field stretched across more than seven hundred miles, making it about the same size it had been ten hours earlier.
Somehow, Victor Zorn seemed unfazed. “This is all still evolving,” Victor said to Dr. Romfo, the tall, heavyset American. “It’s a rather arbitrary—and awkward—time to give a summary, of course”
Petrenko watched from the corners of his eyes, behind the workstation. Mr. Zorn was turned away from Letkov, his chief scientist, whom he now blamed for the failure overnight, and was dealing instead with Dr. Romfo, who seemed to step right up her new role.
“Except we offered them assurances that we would,” she told him, sounding disingenuously cheerful.
“Of course. And so we’re going to have to provide fair value projections in lieu of actuals. Until the project is fully engaged.”
Dr. Romfo was holding a computer printout, something that Letkov had handed her.
“Those are the composite numbers, which Ivan has prepared,” Zorn told her. “We do not yet have true readings to provide for the eight o’clock report, although we expect to have them for the next reporting period. So what we provide are the composite numbers.”
“Okay,” she said, frowning now at the printout. “So, do I introduce these as ‘composite numbers’? Will that mean anything to them?”
“Probably not, no. It’s really just a technicality,” Mr. Zorn said, his tone more firm. “These are the numbers. But it’s a complex interaction taking place. It’s so fluid, in other words, that it’s not possible to give real numbers at this point and have them mean anything.” Petrenko saw Zorn grab the printout from her hand. “In fact, let me give the report. I’ll explain them.” He summoned a quick smile. “You all seem so baffled by this.”
Seated in his darkened space behind the computer statio
n, Dmitry Petrenko saw the project unraveling in triplicate: the flare of frustration in Victor’s eyes. The sudden accent of skepticism in Dr. Romfo’s voice. Letkov’s empty, worn-down expression.
Mr. Zorn was reverting to his own language of obfuscation and justification. Some sort of formula that produced “interim” and “composite” numbers based on statistical computations.
It was Victor’s fallback. A way of compensation, for results that were inconclusive or at variance with projections, while furthering the larger objective. Petrenko understood the game. He knew that a person could do virtually anything he wanted with numbers; he could show, on paper, that he was enormously wealthy when in fact he couldn’t pay his bills. It had been done often, sometimes very successfully. But it was the sort of deception that Vladimir Volkov abhored.
Petrenko kept his gaze steady, appearing to be watching one of the small computer screens, as the call was placed, although he was in fact only paying attention to Zorn. Feeling sorry again for the man he had admired all of his life. The man he had grown up with.
“Good morning,” Mr. Zorn said. “I am pleased to report that we are seeing the mitigation operations approaching full effect as we speak. The actual numbers are lagging slightly behind the projections, but we are seeing a significant movement in the last thirty to forty-five minutes, which has probably not shown up yet in your tracking data. This indicates that the storm will become in line with projections as the day unfolds, with a possible differential of two to three hours.
“The wind speed has fallen to just over 100 mph, with significant and steady diminishment expected throughout the course of the day. The real effects won’t become apparent until after about noon. And so we are going to delay our next report until this afternoon when we have more concrete information.”
Minutes later, Petrenko slipped out of the room and into the crisp, wet Virginia air. Facing the valley, he activated his mobile hand-unit and, his eyes misting with emotion, he typed another message to Volkov, who was probably on his plane by now: “Mitigation still under way. Results minimal, at strong variance with projections.”
Afterward, he went online Internet to see how the storm was being reported.
Alexander is poised to become a Category 4 hurricane, with wind speeds nearing 130 miles per hour. FEMA Director Shauna Brewster is calling on everyone up and down the East Coast within a hundred miles of the ocean to evacuate their homes.
The National Weather Service warns that Alexander has the potential to grow into a Category 5 hurricane by the time it makes landfall.
Emergency Management Director Carter Wilson said that a Cat 5 storm would have the energy of dozens of atomic bombs.
“For years, we’ve heard the argument that coastal communities have allowed building too close to the ocean and that one day we will get our payback,” he said. “Unfortunately, I fear that we’re getting that payback now. I pray we’re not, but I urge everyone to prepare for the worst.”
FORTY-NINE
DR. JAMES WU SHOOK his head as he looked at the row of monitors displaying radar, satellite, and buoy readings for Hurricane Alexander. Scrolling, changing lines of numbers. Swirling bands of color-enhanced satellite images. The night before, President Hall had instructed his chief science adviser to give the Weathervane Group the benefit of the doubt until eight o’clock in the morning. Now the grace period had passed; Dr. Wu realized that he would have to provide a sobering, real-time assessment. He could see the shift already in the President’s eyes, the creeping acceptance of what he was beginning to understand. Minutes earlier, when he was certain that no one was looking, Dr. Wu had turned away and whispered a simple prayer: “Please, God, spare us from this devastation. Thank you, God.”
The room in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building seemed to reverberate now with silence as they waited for the President to speak. Outside, the rain had thinned and the sky was a slate gray. But the calm was an illusion. In fact, the storm had been deflected north by an unusual Bermuda high pressure system, making it an even greater danger to the mid-Atlantic coast.
“Okay,” the President said, staring at Wu. “I’m looking at the numbers you’re giving us and the numbers they’re giving us and they’re not lining up. They’re not even close.”
Dr. Wu nodded. “That is correct, sir.”
“The numbers they’re giving us aren’t real. Is that what you’re saying?”
Wu waited before answering, as if it were a complicated question. He summoned his diplomat’s persona. “Sir, I’ve gone through all of the computer models. Two of them do in fact show a turn to the east, of varying degree, by nine A.M.—”
“But that’s not what’s happening.”
“No, not at this point, sir. This high pressure system appears to be pushing the storm north and west.”
“And it hasn’t lost any strength since their report last night?”
“Minimally, perhaps. Because of an eye wall effect. But not appreciably, no.”
“An eye wall effect. Explain.”
“Most large storms go through an eye wall replacement cycle. What usually happens is that an outer eye wall will move in and replace the inner eye wall, forming a larger eye. The immediate effect is that the storm will weaken during this cycle and then re-intensify and become even stronger. That’s what happened with Katrina in 2005 shortly before it struck land.”
He changed the image on the large monitor and pointed to the eastern bands of Alexander, where a counterclockwise system seemed to contain the early stages of another eye wall.
The President turned away. Wu didn’t enjoy being the bearer of bad news, and wouldn’t have been unless he was absolutely certain. Now, there was no choice.
“What’s this about, then?” the President said, at last.
“Maybe they just can’t do it, sir.”
“They can build it but they can’t take it apart?”
“Maybe.” Dr. Wu sighed. “As I mentioned earlier, sir, a storm of this size has so many variables. And, in a manner of speaking, its own sense of logic. Or lack of logic. It can behave in ways that may be, frankly, beyond our ability to understand. This storm has something I’ve never seen before. What almost seems like a survival instinct.”
The Vice President snorted, then scooted back in his chair. “Sorry,” he said.
“No, that’s a perfectly natural reaction,” Dr. Wu said, turning to Stanton. “I would never have said anything like that before yesterday. But this storm isn’t like any I’ve ever seen.”
“All right,” the President said, gesturing impatiently. “What are our options?”
“Options?” Dr. Wu looked at his shoes. “I don’t know that that word applies anymore, sir. If this new eye wall continues to organize, I’m afraid that our only real option is to get out of its way.”
CHARLES MALLORY LIFTED his head and saw the pizza box and the bottle of merlot on the counter from the night before. He looked over at the other motel bed and saw Blaine. She was sitting up, pillow propped vertically behind her back, gazing at the silent television, wearing nothing but one of his dress shirts, half-buttoned, and her underpants. Except for the bruises on her face, she looked awfully nice.
“What time is it?”
“9:32,” she said.
“A long couple of minutes.”
“Funny how that happens.”
He glanced at the TV screen. A scene of boarded up homes along a stretch of North Carolina coast, then a traffic jam coming off a barrier island. A list of MANDATORY EVACUATIONS scrolled across the bottom of the screen.
“How’s the storm?”
“Worse,” she said. “I’m really worried. I keep trying to call my son but can’t reach him.”
She gazed down at the cell phone in her right hand. Mallory climbed out of bed and walked to the window, wearing boxer shorts and a dark polo shirt. He glanced outside, saw the rain dimpling puddles in the parking lot.
“Want to come over and sit with me for a minute?”<
br />
He turned. “Sure,” he said. “Okay.”
Mallory walked to the bed. Her green eyes were keen and damp, watching him.
“I need a hug,” she said.
Mallory walked around to her. He met her on the other side.
“Just not too hard. Okay?”
They gave each other a tentative hug, then tried a longer one. It felt good. She pulled her head away to look at him and he kissed her softly and she kissed him back. He breathed the scent of shampoo in her soft hair, and pulled her against him. They folded onto the bed together, touching each other’s faces. And then Blaine unbuttoned the shirt and pulled it off and Mallory took off his clothes and they slipped under the covers and held each other. Everything about Blaine excited him. Her skin, her hair, her lips, her courage, the easy way she held him, the way her eyes watched his, the way she pulled him into her. For a few minutes he forgot everything else that was happening in the world.
Afterward, they lay in the covers, holding hands. Then it began to rain harder again. And then harder. And eventually, the outside returned.
“I wish we could just stay here,” she said.
“Does it say somewhere that we can’t?”
“No.” She turned her head to the wall. “Except it’s nearing ten thirty.”
“And …?”
“I seem to recall you saying something about confronting Easton.”
“Well, yeah. Someone has to.”
“But the President wants me to come in for an 11:15 meeting about the storm. Dr. Jared Clayton will be there.”
“Oh. Really.” Mallory propped himself on an elbow and watched her with a new interest. “Where is he?”
“He’s at the White House right now. And he’s talking. Sending him those memos worked, apparently. He’s been talking with the President and Dr. Wu about something. The mitigation hasn’t been effective. It’s not working.”
“Uh oh.”
“Yeah. They want to lay the cards out for everyone, apparently.”
The Leviathan Effect Page 29
