The Leviathan Effect

by James Lilliefors

  Mallory stepped into the rain and watched. He could tell from the look on the trooper’s face. It wasn’t good news.

  Blaine turned to Mallory, who was standing ten feet behind her. He saw her face sink.

  “THE CONDO WAS empty,” he said, driving back on the flooded highway. “Which just means that he’s somewhere else. It was one of any number of possible locations.”

  But Blaine was silent most of the way back, checking her phone frequently, listening to Mallory as he offered up stories about his life. Talking to be talking. At times, the drive was scary, the wind blowing the car off the road or lifting water out of the fields, the rain so heavy he had to pull over and park.

  They returned to Room 321, where Blaine took off her clothes and took a long, hot shower. Mallory did, too, then. Afterward, they slipped under the covers in bed and warmed each other. Thunder rumbled as they slowly made love, and occasionally the room lit up with lightning. They were going to devise a plan, they agreed, just not right away.

  Then at 5:34, the power went out.

  “Just hold me,” she said. “There’s not much else we can do now, is there?”

  “Not much,” he said. She seemed to fall asleep as he held her and Mallory lay against her with his eyes open, thinking some of what he’d been thinking earlier. About the family he’d had and the one he didn’t have. About the ways he had led his life and the ways he hadn’t, the decisions he had made that had somehow steered him to this room, with Catherine Blaine.

  “What are you thinking?” she said, turning her head slightly, surprising him.

  “Oh, nothing.” He lay his head down beside hers and tried to sleep.

  Later, Mallory heard something else and opened his eyes. Saw Blaine reaching for her cell phone in the dark. Heard a sharp intake of breath, and in the glow from of the phone he saw her face transform.

  DR. JAMES WU waited until two minutes past six to contact the Oval Office. To his surprise, President Hall took the call directly.

  “Sir, I’m getting ready to go.”

  “All right. Any change?”

  “Nothing appreciable. Dr. Clayton will continue monitoring for another couple of hours.”

  “All right. We’ll have a team here overnight, downstairs in the woodshed.”

  “Sir, can I talk with you before you go?”

  “Of course.”

  “In person, I mean.”

  “Of course.”

  “I’ll be right over.”

  FIFTY-SIX

  THE FIRST THING CATHERINE Blaine heard was music in the background. A group that she vaguely recognized. The Killers, maybe, or Radiohead. Or Blink 182. One of them.

  Then she heard Kevin’s voice.

  Saying, “Mom?”

  Blaine listened to him breathe, waiting for him to speak, to explain himself. Anger tempered by joy.

  “What’s going on?” she said. “Are you all right?”

  “Mom?”

  “Honey? Can’t you hear me?”

  “Not well.”

  “Can you hear me now?” She stood in the open doorway, watching the driving rain.

  “Sort of. We have, like, a bad connection?”

  “Are you all right?”

  “Of course.”

  “Honey? I’ve been trying to reach you since yesterday. Why haven’t you called?”

  “I tried,” he said, with his customary bristle. “My phone was out. Then the electricity went. Right? I can’t believe we just now got reception back.”

  “Where are you?”

  “I’m in—I guess, Delaware? We’re in, like, a big house. We’re safe, Mom.”

  “Who’s we?”

  “A bunch of friends. Amanda’s here.” After a moment, he said, “Where are you? I’ve been worried, too, you know.”

  “I know.” Blaine looked at Mallory and shook her head. Then she gave him a thumbs up. “Do you realize what’s coming, Kev?”

  “What?”

  “Do you know what’s coming?”

  “Sort of.”

  “Sort of what?”

  “I mean, our electricity just came back, right? I saw the report from the Weather Service and stuff. Sounds like the usual overreaction.”

  “No, honey, believe me. It’s not overreaction.”

  She heard someone screaming in the background.

  “What’s going on there, Kev? Are they all right?”

  “Nothing.” A woman shouted his name urgently. “It’s just a hurricane party, Mom.”

  “Honey, this is a serious storm. You need to get away from the ocean. Right away.”

  “What?”

  He said something else, but she could only hear a few words. He was breaking up.

  “Kev?”

  “Bye, Mom. I’ll call you in a while.”

  She pulled the phone away. Her gaze met Mallory’s.

  “Hurricane party,” she said. “Can you believe it?”

  Then she looked at her phone and retrieved the message she had just missed. To her surprise, it was from White House Chief of Staff Gabriel Herring.

  “What is it?”

  “A YARI call. That’s odd.”

  “What’s YARI?”

  “Your Attendance Required Immediately. I’m being summoned back to the White House.” She shared a long look with him. “Want to drive me?”

  THEY TOOK INTERSTATE 270, a connector route to the Capital Beltway, back to Washington. The roads were virtually empty now except for police and emergency vehicles. Twice they were stopped at checkpoints and told to turn around. Both times Blaine showed her government identification and they were waved through.

  At the White House gate on Fifteenth Street, Blaine was informed that Mallory did not have clearance to enter.

  After a confused several minutes, the President’s voice came on the gatehouse phone line.

  “Cate, what’s going on?” he said.

  “Charles Mallory’s here, sir,” she said. “He helped me figure all of this out. I’d like him to come to this meeting.”

  “Who?” he said. “Hold on.”

  The President passed the issue on to Gabriel Herring. Another uncertain interval followed, during which Mallory was asked routine background questions, and finally was issued an entry badge.

  The others were standing as they entered the Data Visualization Center, hovering around the two scientists. DeVries. Bill Stanton. Herring. The President nodded a greeting, glancing at Mallory.

  “I hesitated to convene this meeting, Cate. I don’t know if it’s worth much, but Jim Wu and Dr. Clayton here are telling me it warrants at least one more briefing before we close down the circus. So here we are.”

  “All right,” Blaine said.

  “Basically, we’re seeing a small shift in the storm,” the President told her, “which may or may not be attributable to our mitigation efforts.”

  “Okay.” Mallory noticed the childlike spark in the President’s eyes. He exchanged a look with Blaine, trying to stay out of the way. “Jared?” The President gestured, giving the floor to Dr. Clayton, who stood in the center of everyone like a street performer.

  “Thank you,” he said, tugging on his sweater sleeves. “I agree with the President that this may or may not ultimately mean much,” he said, his eyes moving restlessly, seeming to avoid direct contact with anyone. “But we are, clearly, starting to see some dramatic activity within the eye wall.

  “As you know, a series of solar laser pulses was directed to the edges of the new eye wall cycle, beginning at 1:13 this afternoon. One of the intended consequences was to create an elevation in central pressure within the eye wall. The drone planes have also delivered our 37-AQX synthetic bacteria, which appears to be inducing further disruption.

  “Now, the most significant change we’re seeing right now is this increase in central pressure. And a rather dramatic weakening of the eye wall as well.”

  “Which was expected,” said Blaine.

  “Expected, yes. It just too
k longer than we thought.”

  The Vice President asked, “What does central pressure mean, exactly?”

  The corners of Clayton’s mouth turned up wryly. “When air flows into the center of a storm faster than it flows out, the central pressure rises. The effect of these laser pulses appears to have created a pattern of friction within the storm that’s causing the winds to ‘bend’ across the low center, cutting off the storm’s source of energy.”

  “And what in God’s name does that mean?” Stanton said. “In English, please.”

  “Generally, lower pressures correspond to higher winds. By raising the pressure inside this eye wall, we’re basically seeing the storm fill up. And slow down.”

  “Meaning it’s working,” the President said.

  “Well.” Clayton pursed his lips. “It would be rather presumptuous to say that at this point. But I think it’s valid to say that we’re seeing an impact. We get another reading in twenty-seven minutes.”

  “That’s the good news,” Dr. Wu said.

  “The bad?” Blaine asked.

  “At this stage, it may not matter. It may be too late.”

  MALLORY TURNED AWAY and watched the silent television on a counter across the room while the others waited for the new reports. Storm scenes from everywhere: The cell phone video from Frederick, Maryland. A Virginia farmhouse washed into Chesapeake Bay. The eerie, continuous streams of lightning around the Washington Monument and the National Cathedral.

  Several minutes later, Dr. Clayton began to make interested sounds—“mmm” and “uh, okay”—studying one of the GOES thirty-minute satellite readings of the storm’s center. Then the animated image from the Space Station. New readings coming in from the National Hurricane Center.

  Something is changing. Mallory could tell. He could read it in the separate faces of the two scientists, well before anything was said. And even more clearly when they huddled together and talked in low voices, Clayton crouched down to bring his head level with Wu’s.

  “What is it?” the President finally asked.

  “We’re seeing a continuation of the shift inside the eye wall,” said Dr. Clayton, nodding toward the large monitor. “As you can see, there’s now significant destabilization and also some disintegration evident.”

  “But we were seeing that five hours ago, weren’t we?” Stanton said.

  “We were. What’s significant now is the activity pursuant to the outer eye wall. Which is also showing signs of disorganization. The question becomes, Will this outer eye wall be able to move in and replace it? My guess at this point would be no.”

  “Meaning it won’t be able to replenish itself,” said Blaine.

  “That’s how it’s starting to appear, yes.”

  “And this is because of these laser pulses?” asked Stanton.

  Clayton made a non-committed tilt of his head, glancing quickly at Blaine.

  “In a sense, it almost doesn’t matter what’s causing it, does it?” the President said, trying not to smile. He’s already thinking about how he’ll present this to the nation, Mallory could tell

  “Well, let’s see what happens in another twenty minutes.”

  DR. JAMES WU could see that, in fact, the outer eye wall was coming apart, a development he hadn’t expected and didn’t understand. But he knew, now, where this was going, just as Jared Clayton must have known. There wasn’t going to be an eye wall replacement cycle. The center of the storm was becoming non-existent and the outer eye wall was tearing apart. The storm no longer had a source of energy, or an organizing force. It had no reason to exist.

  TWENTY MINUTES LATER, they saw new activity on the eastern and northern edges of the storm. High levels of wind shear were disrupting the movement of the outer bands and the vertical structure of the eye wall was being smothered, causing a more visible, and obvious, disruption. Without an energy source, Alexander was coming apart.

  “It seems like it’s getting worse,” said Stanton, looking at the President.

  “No, the opposite,” said Dr. Clayton. “It’s a strange storm. But it’s clearly losing its structure. Alexander’s sin is that he got too big. Too many rain bands competing for the same energy. The wind shear is causing it to lose its rotation and its structure. This is a storm that never should have gotten this big,” he said, looking only at the President, who was nodding. “But now that it has, it no longer can sustain itself. I think we may be starting to see the final death throes of this thing.”

  “But something of this size,” said the Vice President. “It isn’t going to just break up and disappear, is it? Not at this stage.”

  “That’s precisely what’s happening, though, isn’t it?” Clayton said. “Look at it. Too many competing winds and rain bands and temperatures.” He nodded to the monitors behind him. “Look at the projections now.”

  Charles Mallory, a silent observer, nearly invisible in the room, felt the shared sense of relief: The new spaghetti models showed a slight shift away from land, with two indicating that the storm was going to take a sharp turn to the east and north, sputtering out at sea.

  The President turned to Dr. Wu. “Jim?”

  When he responded, it was in a soft but strained voice. “Yes. He’s right.” His eyes glistened. “I wouldn’t have believed this,” he said, “but I don’t think Alexander has anything to do now but break up and return to sea.”

  “This storm is unraveling, people,” Dr. Clayton said, surprising everyone by vigorously clapping his hands together. “We’ve stolen its energy. We’ve outwitted it.”

  Moments later, the others in the room, including Mallory, began to clap their hands almost simultaneously, breaking out in a spontaneous, energetic applause that didn’t want to end.

  FIFTY-SEVEN

  7:42 P.M.

  THE NETWORKS AND NEWS channels all broke in within minutes of one another to announce the news CNN’s Kyra Phillips was the first to come on the air.

  We have breaking news out of Washington. There are signs that in just the past two hours, Hurricane Alexander has shown a dramatic weakening and we are getting reports that it may in fact take a turn back to sea, according to officials at the White House.

  Defying all predictions, Alexander has taken a sudden easterly turn and may be downgraded to a tropical storm this evening, according to sources, who spoke to us on condition of anonymity. Officials caution, however, that the storm’s path remains unpredictable and that Alexander is still a dangerous hurricane.

  THE TELEPHONE CALL that Dmitry Petrenko expected from the White House finally came at 7:53. The Oval Office summoning Victor Zorn.

  Petrenko listened as Zorn took the call in his private room at the Virginia compound. President Hall congratulating him first, Victor responding. The President baiting a trap. Or else, inviting him to come in and join the other side.

  Either way, Petrenko would, of necessity, have to provide an alternative.

  ABORT.

  “Thank you, sir,” Zorn said, the persuasive salesman’s tone back in his voice. “I am only sorry that the initial projections were not on target.”

  “Well, the end result is what matters, isn’t it?”

  “Yes it is, sir. So thank you,” Victor said, his eyes lit with naked excitement. “And your part of the bargain, of course, was to make the address to the nation, announcing our partnership. Does that still hold?”

  “Of course,” the President said. “As we agreed. In fact, I’d love to announce it with you on television at nine thirty this evening. If you can make it here by then.”

  Mr. Zorn laughed. “No. Thank you, sir, but I am not a television performer.”

  The President laughed then, too. “Could we invite you to at least be present here with us? I’d love for you to be at the White House when we make the announcement and seal the deal.”

  “Yes. Thank you, sir. Yes, of course. That would be an honor.”

  “Very good. Thank you again, Mr. Zorn. And congratulations,” the President said. �
�I believe we are on the cusp of a real breakthrough in science. Of a new era for civilization, really.”

  “Yes, we are.” Zorn was beaming, thinking, as he nearly always did, that he would come out of this on top.

  His name, Victor, had been a most perfect choice, Petrenko thought. Perfect, until now.

  ONE OF PETRENKO’S security officers drove Victor Zorn to Washington through the still-heavy rains in a Mercedes GL450 SUV. Two D.C. police cars accompanied the vehicle the last twelve blocks and in through the White House gates near Fifteenth Street. The car arrived on the White House grounds shortly after 9:15 P.M.

  Mr. Zorn and his driver were detained by White House police immediately as they stepped out into the rain, and transported to the military prison at Marine Corps Base Quantico in Virginia.

  From Zorn’s house in the Virginia foothills, Petrenko activated a remote electronic prompt just minutes before President Hall began his talk to the nation. It released a synthetic endotoxin from the implant in Mr. Zorn’s left arm, which quickly seeped into his bloodstream, shedding bubbles containing concentrated toxin. Within seconds, the poison had given him an irregular heartbeat and was causing blood vessels to leak throughout his body. As the blood vessels hemorrhaged, Mr. Zorn’s lungs and kidneys were destroyed.

  Six minutes after the activation, Victor Zorn was dead.

  FIFTY-EIGHT

  “GOOD EVENING,” PRESIDENT HALL began, seated behind his desk in the Oval Office, gazing at the teleprompter that scrolled through the speech he had finished writing that evening with Dr. Wu. “I would like to update the American people tonight on the fate of Hurricane Alexander.

  “Just twelve hours ago, many of the world’s leading climate scientists and weather forecasters were predicting that Alexander had the potential to become the worst natural disaster in this nation’s history. Its unprecedented power, we were warned, was capable of destroying dozens of cities along the East Coast of the United States, resulting in tens of thousands of lives lost.