Double Deal

by John M. Green

  Breathe … in … out … in … out.

  She clenched the lever on the faucet as if that might stop her trembling and she flicked it upwards, as if to make a plea to the God she’d never believed in and now had every reason to believe in even less.

  She plunged her head under the stream of icy water, let it drizzle over her face and, feeling strangely detached, watched the liquid swirling in the bowl – at first red, then pink and finally clear. She took a handtowel from the rack and wrapped it around her hair, took another, which she soaked – the water still running – and patted down her face and body, not cleaning herself as much as checking for wounds or bruises.

  Three scratches came up on her left shoulder, as though someone had clawed her. It couldn’t have been the masked man, not with his hands tied. The woman? Suddenly her whole body spasmed, her stomach cramped and, turning her head fast, she spewed again, this time directly into the toilet.

  She knew what all this looked like, the conclusion the police would jump to when they came. That she’d been part of a three-way, a saturnalian orgy. What they couldn’t know, what they’d never believe, was that Tori didn’t do sex with strangers. Never had. Nor drugs. The only coke she’d ever tingled her nostrils with came out of red cans.

  She squatted, her head hovering close to the toilet, in case, and she pressed two fingers against the crook of her arm to squeeze a drop of blood out of the lump she’d found, where she guessed she’d been injected with some drug.

  If she was a drug-crazed killer, someone who hacked an ulu into a woman’s head and flung razor blades into her back, she’d have cut her own hands. But when she turned up her palms, hers were completely unmarked. Apart from the long lifeline that, years ago, a toothless psychic in a Hong Kong backstreet had smiled over.

  Tori slowly pushed herself up from the floor, hoping the twenty bucks she’d paid that fortune-teller was money well spent, and inched her way back into the bedroom like an accident victim relearning how to walk, first one foot, then the other.

  She stepped over the bloody pile of clothes to get to the man’s side of the bed, and – Please, please don’t be Frank! – she scritched the Velcro strap off the side of his mask and slowly slid it away from his terrified eyes.

  Yes! He wasn’t Frank.

  But no! He was Rao Songtian. And to turn this already unspeakable situation into a grave international incident, not only was Rao the Chinese negotiator she’d gone toe-to-toe against in the negotiations, he was also the brother-in-law of the president of China, having taken the hand of the supreme leader’s sister, meaning he also had President Hou Tao’s ear.

  Rao Songtian was dead. Butchered.

  With him, all hope of a new future for Greenland was as good as dead too.

  11

  Mid-Atlantic, Air Force One

  Washington DC’s snow season was long gone but at 1 am the White House was in a flurry with scores of staffers dragging themselves into work from bars or beds. One team, bushed and bleary-eyed, was sloughing in behind their desks, charged with scanning the administration’s digital databases for anything that mentioned a ‘Project Gusher’ or a project of any name with a connection to oil in Greenland. Another squad was opening up the archive vaults, sneezing from the dust as they opened file boxes from the 1960s. Yet more staffers were rushing in and out of conference rooms in the White House, Homeland Security, and State and Defence departments, scanning phones, shouting or being shouted at. They weren’t just busy, they were frantic, the entire human whirlwind the result of a terse two-page media release issued fifty minutes ago by Endz of the Earth, a shadowy band of eco-terrorists.

  When Endz of the Earth first publicly raised its head, the world had leapt to attention. That was four months ago, via a shock announcement from Russia’s President Tushkin that his country’s Special Forces had averted an international crisis by taking out the group’s top echelon. The entire US security apparatus was dumbfounded. Until then, not a soul in the American intelligence establishment had heard of the group. There’d been no SIGINT, no HUMINT, no OSINT, no intel at all. ‘Another massive intelligence failure,’ the media raged.

  In Tushkin’s surprise media conference, he told the world that Russia’s surgical intervention prevented Endz carrying out an imminent attack on two nuclear waste sites that, had they succeeded, would have killed hundreds of thousands of civilians.

  Endz of the Earth’s plan was chilling, and so was their manifesto. They maintained that the United Nations’ efforts to reduce carbon emissions were futile because they would not arrest climate change fast enough. The Copenhagen Accord, the Kyoto Protocol, the Paris Agreement and the ones that followed, all of them, they said, were a waste of time, and time was the critical resource the world was running out of.

  The root cause of climate change, as they saw it, was global population growth. The only sure-fire way to stop the planet warming was to slash the number of people polluting it. ‘The planet is over-populated. Chop the people, save the planet.’

  President Diaz first heard about the latest Endz media release in a call from her Secretary of State not long after take-off. The terror group, he told her, were claiming they’d uncovered a top-secret cache of papers that revealed a defunct CIA project called ‘Gusher’. If it was true, he said, the revelation could damage the US far more deeply than the Edward Snowden leaks and the Vietnam-era Pentagon Papers combined.

  The documents, Endz claimed, proved that illegal American actions were the direct cause of the rapidity of the melting of the Arctic ice sheet and the calamitous rise in world sea levels that flowed from it. All of that, they said, was due to a disastrous CIA operation in Greenland in the 1960s code-named Project Gusher.

  The urgency to uncover the truth was sapping almost all the oxygen in Washington. Isabel’s hope that the people working through the night back in DC would quickly prove it was a hoax was fading.

  In a break in the rat-tat-tat of frenetic calls, her eye caught the reflection of her cashmere cardigan in the mirror opposite her desk. The aqua weave was washing out her olive complexion, making her look as bad as she felt. It had to go, she thought, and it would have except the tiling news headlines covering her computer screen captured her attention:

  Eco-terrorists’ alarming report:

  Secret 1960s CIA program speeds up Arctic melt

  – Le Monde, Paris

  America’s buried shame –

  is Willard Buckingham, 93, the new Edward Snowden?

  – BILD, Germany

  Rising sea levels – US to blame, says revered scientist

  – The Times, London

  CIA’s Project Gusher: ‘peak oil’ dream to king tide nightmare

  – Washington Post

  Project Gusher was supposedly a covert CIA-backed oil-drilling operation in Greenland that Denmark and Greenland never consented to or even knew about. When the engineers and scientists working on the project – and Professor Willard Buckingham was apparently one of them – saw the damage their drilling was doing to the ice shelf, they were forced to terminate the operation and send everyone home. The project’s entire existence, including its dire consequences, was hushed up and had stayed that way for seventy years. Until Endz of the Earth dredged it up.

  Washington’s plan, said Endz of the Earth, was to stretch out as long a gap as possible between America’s illegal actions and their devastating effects. That way no one would ever connect America’s criminal negligence with a global catastrophe that would only reveal itself many decades later.

  Isabel had skimmed three of the articles when her next call came through, a video meeting with her Director of National Intelligence, Robert Hirsty, and Vice-President Spencer Prentice.

  Despite the early hour in DC, Spencer was immaculately dressed – no surprise – his trademark bow tie neatly in place, navy this time, a dark blue suit and one of the glaringly white shirts he liked to wear to contrast against the darkness of his skin. They were, he once confided to her
over a late-night drink, his ‘fuck you’ shirts. ‘Those racists we have to deal with in Congress – you know who I mean, Isabel – this way I remind them, constantly but silently, how proud I am that I’m African American.’

  Her Director of National Intelligence, on the other hand, was tieless, decked out in a blue sports shirt and a rumpled brown sweater. The black shoe-polished helmet he tried to pass off as his natural head of hair was patted down, looking as unnatural as ever. He jumped right in and, far too quickly for Isabel’s liking, began claiming victory.

  It was a habit of Hirsty’s that often rubbed her the wrong way. He was, she felt, like the bass drum at the head of a funeral procession, loud, bombastic and one-dimensional. ‘No doubt about it, ma’am,’ he said, ignoring the vice-president, ‘these so-called explosive documents … they don’t exist.’

  ‘That would be wonderful if it were true,’ said Isabel. ‘What’s the actual proof that justifies you saying that?’

  He looked at her as if she had suddenly grown horns. ‘Ma’am, conclusively provin’ that somethin’ we ain’t seen don’t exist … it ain’t easy. But be assured that our best people are workin’ on it.’

  He smoothed back his gelled hair with the soft, uncalloused hand she always avoided shaking because it felt like a day-old fajita. That was one blessing of the COVID-19 crisis. There was a lot less hand-shaking afterwards.

  Isabel didn’t share Hirsty’s breezy over-confidence and, unlike some, she wasn’t comforted by his homey, apple-pie Southern drawl. As commander-in-chief, she had to brace herself for the possibility that if the Endz claim did stack up, if there were documents that no one in DC knew anything about, America’s moral culpability for a global crisis and its legal liability might force her to go into defence mode. And if it did, she’d find herself forced to defend the indefensible.

  The more she thought about it, Endz of the Earth’s unlikely source was probably the best thing the US had going for it. Professor Emeritus Willard (Buck) Buckingham, now aged ninety-three, was one of the world’s most respected glacial geologists. Why, she kept wondering, would a man with such a stellar record of service and scholarship turn against his country?

  He had indeed worked in Greenland, from 1961 to 1966, but the bio in front of her said he’d been working on a US project called Ice Worm, not Gusher.

  Isabel had a report on Ice Worm but hadn’t yet had a chance to read it.

  After Ice Worm, he’d returned home, taken a professorship at the University of Minnesota and over time had become one of the country’s, if not the world’s, most distinguished experts in glacial geology. His numerous projects had received millions in federal research funding.

  Buckingham had retired only five years ago, straight after the tragic deaths of his wife and son. Since then he’d spent most of his time quietly collecting and cataloguing butterflies. Importantly, he’d never once lodged a complaint with any government department about his work in Greenland or what he’d seen there, and neither his name nor any complaint about Gusher had come up on any whistle-blower register.

  Nothing in the professor’s record hinted at a man who’d betray his country. So why would he hand over what the Washington Post was calling ‘the stash of the century’ to a bunch of extremists without at least trying to alert the new Administration in DC first? It simply didn’t gel.

  On top of that, the timing was very opportune for China, and Isabel couldn’t help wondering if Hou Tao was behind it. If it was a program of disinformation designed to kill any chance of the US making a counteroffer for Greenland, it was pretty damned good.

  ‘Could this be a put-up job by China?’ she asked the two men on the call. ‘That by the time the world finds out it’s a hoax – if it is a hoax – the Greenland parliament has ratified the China deal and we’re—’

  ‘Out in the cold,’ said Hirsty, trying for humour, but failing. ‘We’re explorin’ all possibilities,’ he went on, but Isabel saw him hastily jot something down, which told her that China being behind it had not occurred to him until now.

  ‘What about that Endz of the Earth crowdfunding campaign?’ asked Spencer Prentice. ‘How much have they raised so far?’

  ‘The websites keep poppin’ up, despite us blockin’ them. They say they got eleven million and some, sir. Enough to pay for a small army of mercenaries, but this Project Gusher thing’ll probably see them double that level of support.’

  Isabel wasn’t listening. She was pondering Russia’s reaction to the news. Max Tushkin had claimed he’d decapitated Endz, yet here they were, this time setting off a bomb under the credibility of the United States as well as wrecking any chance it had of winning over Greenland.

  Tushkin was coming to the funeral in Barcelona. She definitely needed to talk to him. She’d previously invited him for a tête-a-tête after the funeral but he’d declined when he heard she wanted him to stand down the Russian forces at the Estonian border in exchange for dropping US sanctions. That was not a proposal he was willing to entertain. But Russia had unique insights into Endz, so she had to try again.

  If this Gusher thing did kick the US out of the race for Greenland, Russia was the only credible counterbidder to China. For the US, Greenland coming under Russian or Chinese control was equally bad.

  An hour later another video call from Hirsty and Spencer came through, this time with Secretary of State Linden joining them. ‘Gentlemen,’ she said, seeing the three faces pop onto her screen from separate locations, ‘let me play out a new scenario for you. Just hours after Greenland’s prime minister inks a deal that duds the United States, this shadowy terrorist group reveals a project that no one in Washington ever knew existed but which they claim is—’

  ‘—directly causing a global climate catastrophe,’ said Hirsty.

  Isabel disliked people finishing her sentences and she was certain Hirsty wouldn’t dare if she’d been male. ‘Let’s zero in on our weakest points,’ she said, looking at the notes she’d scribbled. ‘In 2013, scientists discovered a massive lake hiding beneath Greenland’s glaciers—’

  ‘As big as the state of Virginia, ma’am, three times the size of Switzerland.’

  If she was a different woman she might have told him to shut the fuck up, but she wasn’t and she didn’t. ‘Like I said, gentlemen, a gigantic body of water that’s been melting the ice above it perhaps for centuries, which in turn has been creating more water that’s contributing to the rise in global sea levels.’

  ‘Which until now scientists were sayin’ was a natural phenomenon.’

  Maybe some, she thought. Her fingers were drumming against her desk. She’d probably crack her nail polish but she didn’t care. ‘Based on this Professor Buckingham’s assertions—’

  ‘If he’s to be believed.’

  She’d had enough. ‘Robert, will you kindly hear me out? Based on the files Buckingham’s supposedly given to Endz of the Earth, which we are yet to see, Endz are laying the melting glaciers and rising sea levels right at our feet.’

  Her feet.

  ‘Yes, ma’am,’ Hirsty said, clearly not getting her message. ‘Buckingham says … the Endz people say … that our drillin’ and blastin’ into the glaciers while we were lookin’ for hydrocarbons was the cause. And when our people saw the damage they were doin’ they stopped, hid the facts and vamoosed, prayin’ no one’d ever find out.’

  Mercifully, another paper came through from State. She clicked it open and read the first few paragraphs.

  Secretary Linden spoke to it. ‘Ma’am, as you can see in that memorandum, my department has undertaken as comprehensive a sweep as we can in the short time available. I’m assured there’s not a single record anywhere within the United States government that refers to a Gusher project in Greenland. Likewise, any secret oil drilling project.’

  ‘That’s puttin’ us on damn solid ground,’ said Hirsty.

  ‘Not in the court of public opinion,’ said Vice-President Spencer Prentice.

  ‘I’m with Sp
encer,’ said Isabel. ‘If this was a deep cover-up isn’t that precisely the kind of thing we’d say? As I see it, this game is playing out as heads, Endz of the Earth wins, tails, we lose.’

  ‘Ma’am, the truth will win out eventually. It always does.’

  ‘Eventually can be a hell of a long time. We need hard evidence fast, and well before the next fourteen days passes.’

  ‘Fourteen, ma’am?’

  Hirsty really was an idiot, she concluded. When Nivikka Petersen phoned last night after the signing, she had gone out of her way to tell Isabel about the deal’s ratification condition. ‘Even as prime minister,’ she’d said, ‘I could never usurp my parliament’s authority over such an historic agreement. In two weeks, parliament gets the final say on whether we partner with China or not.’

  While Isabel felt that good democratic process was one reason why Petersen included the ratification clause, she was confident it wasn’t the only reason. The real reason was tactical, to give America and Russia an opportunity to see what China had offered and quickly come up with better proposals.

  But overnight everything changed. This Project Gusher scandal would taint anything the US proposed.

  Which was why Isabel needed hard proof. ‘Gentlemen, China’s deal with Greenland only goes live if Greenland’s parliament ratifies it, and their vote is in two weeks. If we can’t kill this scandal well before then, the United States’ Arctic presence is cooked. China or Russia, one or both of them, will control the region. Do I make myself clear?’

  ‘Yes, ma’am.’

  ‘So hard proof, Robert, and fast.’

  ‘And Robert,’ said the vice-president, ‘it’s the middle of the night in Minnesota but has anyone gone to wake up this Professor Buckingham? Have we talked to him directly?’

  ‘A report just came in, sir.’ Hirsty was reading from it. ‘Folks went out to Buckingham’s home … yadda yadda … He weren’t there … Heck, this is … double heck … There weren’t nothin’ much there. No files, no computer, just the cables danglin’ off his desk, makin’ it look like he scarpered off like a jittery jackrabbit. All they rustled up was his walking cane, a mess of antique snowshoes, and trays and trays of dead butterflies … They roused his next-door neighbours, an’ none o’ them seen him for three days. Seems the guy just upped and disappeared—’