Gamay studied the readout for any sign of what Paul was describing, but she saw nothing to suggest a change in elevation. “Let’s let it play out before we go back to the drawing board.”
“Not much else we can do,” Paul said.
Gamay sat back, reaching for her cup of tea with one hand and tapping the keyboard with the other. Lazily, she cycled through a host of other readings: virtual topography, water temperatures and salinity levels. The computer organized the information into a series of displays and graphs, but the data made no sense.
“Something’s wrong with the instruments,” she said, putting the teacup down.
“Why do you say that?”
“According to the temperature profile, it’s getting warmer as the Remora goes deeper.”
Paul glanced over her shoulder. “Have you passed through a thermocline?”
“No,” she said. “No sudden change, just a slow, steady increase, approximately one degree for every seventy feet. That indicates a continuous mixing instead of boundary layer.”
“What about the salinity?” Paul asked.
Gamay tapped the key to bring up another sensor reading. “Even more screwed up than the temperature profile. According to this, the salinity is decreasing as we descend.”
“That can’t be right. Can you run a diagnostic on the sensor probes?”
Gamay didn’t know enough about the ROV to diagnose a problem with the sensors, let alone fix it remotely. “Maybe if Joe was here,” she said. “All I got was a rudimentary lesson on driving the thing.”
“Bring it back up,” Paul suggested. “Not all the way, just a hundred feet or so.”
“What good will that do?”
“If the sensors are failing, the temperature will continue to rise,” he said. “But if they’re working properly and we are actually dealing with an inverted temperature profile, the water should grow colder again.”
“Sneaky,” she said. “I like it.”
Gamay changed the dive angle and put the ROV into an ascent. “Temperature dropping, salinity rising. The sensors are working correctly. Now what?”
“Resume course,” Paul said.
Satisfied but confused, Gamay adjusted the dive profile once more and sent the Remora back toward the deep. She had it level off at a depth of five hundred feet so they could map a wide section of the bottom before investigating up close.
“Still flat,” Gamay noted.
“Amazing,” he said. “I’ve gotten shirts back from the dry cleaner that aren’t that smooth.”
“So, no mountain range,” Gamay said, “but temperature and salinity data that defy logic. Any thoughts?”
“Not at the moment,” Paul said. He glanced at the chart. “You’re nearing the epicenter of Kenzo’s earthquakes. Change course to the west.”
She made the adjustments and the readout changed. “We’re picking up something new.”
“Ridges and hills?” he said hopefully.
“Sorry, Charlie, it’s a depression. It looks like a subsurface canyon.”
The information on the chart suggested a flat plain. But as the Remora’s sonar bounced off the seafloor, a deep V-shaped gash was revealed. The point of the V was aimed like an arrow at Shanghai. “Let’s take a look at that chasm.”
Gamay was already changing course and directing the sub into the gap.
“Temperature continuing to rise,” she said. “Salinity continues to drop.”
It defied all logic. Colder, saltier water was more dense than warm freshwater. It sank to the bottom of the world’s oceans, sliding down into the subterranean canyons the way glaciers slid between the peaks of high mountain ranges.
At the bottom of every ocean were frigid pools and briny currents. Oceanographers considered them rivers because as they crept across the globe, they refused to mix with the rest of the sea.
As the Remora entered the canyon, Gamay turned on the lights. Sediment wafted by the camera like falling snow.
“One thousand feet,” she said.
“What depth is the Remora rated for?”
“Three thousand,” she said. “But Joe built it, so it’ll do twice that.”
From the sonar reading, they could see that the canyon was narrowing.
“Picking up the bottom,” Gamay said. “Shall we take the full tour?”
“We paid for it,” Paul said. “Might as well go on the ride.”
Gamay set the Remora onto a new course. “I’m really fighting the current now,” she said. “I have to keep five degrees down angle on the thrusters just to hold the depth.”
“So the current is flowing up the canyon?”
Gamay nodded. “It’s like we’ve entered opposite world.”
Paul pointed to something on the sonar scan. “What’s that?”
Gamay angled toward a strange rise in the bottom of the canyon. The Remora had to fight like crazy to get near it, pushing and weaving like a bird flying into the wind. As it got closer, the target resolved into a cone-shaped rise. Crossing over it, the Remora was pushed violently to the side and then away.
Before Gamay could circle back, another cone-shaped structure appeared on the scan. And then another.
“What are they?” Gamay asked.
“I think I know,” Paul said, “but keep going.”
Traveling down the canyon and zigzagging as it widened, they found dozens upon dozens of the protruding cones.
“I’m moving in closer to one of them,” Gamay said.
Using full power, the Remora crept up to the cone. The camera focused on its edge. Small amounts of sediment were blasting out of the cone, streaming toward the surface like ash from a volcano.
“It’s a subsurface geyser,” Paul said. “It’s venting water.”
“Geothermal?”
“Has to be.”
“Let’s get over the top,” Gamay said. “It’ll give us an idea of how much water is being ejected and allow us to get a direct sample.”
“Great idea,” Paul said.
She maneuvered the Remora up and over the very center of the cone. The submersible was immediately caught in the grips of the outflow. The view spun as the craft was thrust violently upward and outward, rising like a scrap of paper caught in the breeze on a hot summer day.
Gamay maneuvered the submarine away from the rising column of water and got it back under control. “The water in that plume is nearly two hundred degrees,” she said, checking the readings. “Salinity is zero.”
Paul sat back and scratched his head. “I’ve never seen anything like this.”
“Black smokers on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge,” she suggested.
“Not the same,” he said. “They vent toxic sludge, high in sulfur and all manner of dangerous chemicals. Basically, volcanic soot. From the look of this chemical profile, you could bottle that water once it cooled down.”
“Keep it hot and we could make coffee with it,” she joked.
“Now you’re talking,” he said. “How many cones did you count before we stopped looking?”
“At least fifty,” she said.
“Let’s see if there are any more.”
She redirected the Remora once again and it traveled down the canyon for another twenty minutes. They counted more than a hundred cones. There seemed to be no end to them.
“Picking up a source of iron,” Gamay said, checking the magnetometer. “But we’re starting to lose the signal.”
“Head toward it,” Paul said. “We’re getting close to maximum transmission range. We’re going to lose the ROV any minute.”
She adjusted course once more, but the image on-screen began to glitch as pixels dropped out and the transmission became garbled. The view froze and then cleared.
“Hang in there,” Paul urged.
“Bottom coming up
,” Gamay said.
The screen froze once more and then cleared just as the Remora crashed into the sediment pile.
“You’ve hit bottom,” Paul said.
Gamay was already adjusting the controls. “No backseat drivers, thank you.”
The impact caused a momentary blackout, but the link reset after several anxious moments. As the view resolved, the camera focused on a tangle of metallic wreckage.
“Something else was down there,” Paul said.
“It looks structural to me,” she said. Twisted steel plating and pipes were clearly visible. Whatever it had once been, it was now half buried.
Gamay adjusted the lights and then panned and zoomed the camera. The video flickered and a new sight appeared. “That’s an arm.”
It was white in appearance and stretching away from the camera. It looked like colorless, bleached flesh. But the shape was too perfect and consistent and the Remora’s lights reflected off its polished surface. At the end of the arm, they found a hand and mechanical fingers.
“Interesting.”
As the ROV hovered, its thrusters scoured away the loose sediment. A shoulder came into view next and then a face appeared from beneath the silt. Perfectly shaped and porcelain white, it filled the screen. It was like unearthing a statue of Athena.
“She’s beautiful,” Paul said.
“She’s a machine,” Gamay replied.
“Machines can be beautiful.”
Gamay nodded. That was true in many ways but oddly disturbing in this situation. The beautiful machine seemed a little too human. It appeared to be alive even though it was not moving. The face held a sad quality. The eyes were open and looking up toward the surface as if waiting for a rescue that hadn’t come.
It was the last image they recorded before the signal was lost for good.
25
BEIJING
WEN LI trod carefully as he crossed Tiananmen Square. An early snow had dusted the ground. It painted the sky gray and settled in specks on the fur hats and dark green cloaks of the soldiers guarding Mao’s tomb.
Wen smiled as he passed them. As the old joke went, no one knew if they were supposed to keep vandals out or the ghost of Chairman Mao trapped within.
It is the latter, of course. Mao and true communism were the past. China had transcended that era and become a capitalist dynamo. That was the present. And, in Wen’s eyes, Empire was the future.
He passed the spot where Mao’s tanks had famously stopped for a single protester who thought he could hold back the might of the state. Nothing marked the man’s act. No one even knew who he was or if he was still alive. The moment lived only in people’s memories.
At the western edge of the square, Wen reached his destination: a vast, monolithic building. He climbed a wide swath of triple-tiered steps, passed between towering marble columns and entered the Great Hall of the People.
The monstrous building was over a thousand feet in width and six hundred feet from front to back. Its vaulted roof covered nearly two million square feet, larger by far than the American Capitol Building, the United Kingdom’s Westminster Hall or even the giant Smithsonian Museum on the Mall in Washington, D.C.
Inside lay several full-sized auditoriums with droll names, such as the Congressional Hall of the National People’s Congress. Hundreds of offices, conference rooms and work areas were spread about. Wen’s official, Party-sanctioned office lay at the southern end.
The guards stiffened at Wen Li’s approach and he was hustled through the checkpoint without a word. He arrived at the end of the hall to find an old friend waiting outside his door.
“Admiral,” he said, as he entered, “to what do I owe the pleasure?”
“I’ve come here with news,” the Admiral said. “And a warning.”
Wen had broad influence within the Party, but there were those who didn’t agree with his vision of China’s future, those who thought the current trajectory was sufficient. They refused to see the limits put on them by American imperialism.
“A warning?” Wen replied. “Personal or otherwise?”
“Both,” the Admiral said. “Perhaps we should talk inside.”
Wen opened the door and the two men passed through the outer office and entered Wen’s inner sanctum: a hothouse filled with hanging plants, stacks of old books and aged furniture of the most basic type.
Wen offered the Admiral a seat in an overstuffed chair, as he saw to his plants. “The heat is not healthy for them,” he said. “It dries the leaves. But the cold is no better.”
“The same might be said for men like us,” the Admiral replied. “Have you ever thought of stepping down?”
Wen put the watering can down. “There is no retirement for us,” he said. “We die at our posts . . . one way or another.”
“Usually after making a large mistake,” the Admiral said, laughing.
Wen shared the joke. A major misstep could bring an end to more than a career in the People’s Republic. “Are you suggesting I’ve made such an error?”
“There are rumors of your partnership with Walter Han,” the Admiral said. “And then we have your operation in the East China Sea.”
“What of it?” Wen said. “It was an experiment. Closed down last year.”
“Yes,” the Admiral said. “And, at your request, I have spent considerable resources protecting the area. But whatever it was your people did down there, it’s begun attracting attention of a most unwanted kind.”
“What are you telling me, Admiral?”
“To begin with, there are problems with the fisheries. One-point-five billion people require a great deal of food to sustain them. Our fishing fleet is the world’s largest and our trawlers scour every sea on the globe, but the banks in the East China Sea have long been one of our most fertile resources. Not anymore. Catches are down every month since you began your experiments. The sea itself is turning barren. The men who run the fishing fleets are complaining . . . loudly.”
“I do not answer to fishermen,” Wen said coldly. “At any rate, our operations took place on the seafloor. Deep-sea mining. You know this. Nothing we did could affect the aquatic ecosystem. More than likely, pollution from Shanghai and its ten thousand factories are to blame, not a tiny operation my people have long since ended.”
The Admiral looked as if he’d expected this answer. “Have you closed it down?”
“You know I have.”
“Then why did my ships detect an American submersible operating directly in your restricted zone?”
Wen caught himself before overreacting. “I would ask you the same question, Admiral, since it’s your job to see that they don’t. When did this occur?”
“Early this morning,” the Admiral said. “We picked up a coded transmission on a known American frequency. It was a short-range transmission. In addition, our sonar buoys briefly detected the presence of a vessel, though it was lost before we could locate it.”
Wen was simultaneously angered and puzzled. “How did an American submarine penetrate your defenses?”
“This was not a naval vessel,” the Admiral said. “The signature is consistent with a small, remotely operated submarine.”
“Which would have to be launched from a surface ship or dropped from an aircraft,” Wen said. “So I’ll ask again: how was it not prevented?”
The Admiral took the veiled accusation of malfeasance in stride. “I assure you, comrade, no American aircraft or vessel has entered our zone of control. But an ROV was detected.”
Wen took a deep breath. The Admiral was a friend. He would not have come here in person only to lie. If the security forces had slipped up and allowed an American incursion, he would have hidden it, burned the reports and erased the data tapes to prevent his own embarrassment. “You insist there were no American ships nearby?”
“None.”
>
The answer came to him all at once. He should have known before grilling his old friend. The vehicle was the only clue he really needed: a small submersible, operating without a support vessel in sight. It had to be the NUMA agents who’d flown to Japan for the meeting with the reclusive geologist.
Walter Han had failed to eliminate the Americans, despite his claims to the contrary. Now Wen would see to it himself.
He stood, signaling the end of the meeting. “I appreciate your coming to me, Admiral. I assure you, there’s nothing down there for the Americans to find. That said, my people will look into this breach of our territorial rights and respond accordingly.”
The Admiral stood. “Be careful, Wen. This is not the nation it used to be. With wealth comes power and much wealth has been generated in the last twenty years. The Party is not absolute anymore. Other voices are of equal or greater volume. That is the price of economic success.”
Wen understood the warning. The moguls who’d made great fortunes and those who rode their coattails did not want anything to derail the economic train. They needn’t have worried. If his plan came to fruition, not only would the train keep running but the track ahead would be clear as far as the eye could see.
It would happen, he told himself. But first, he had to eliminate the threat.
26
SHANGHAI HARBOR
PAUL STOOD on the ferry’s top deck, staring at the Shanghai skyline. It was a beautiful city. A modern metropolis, with glittering buildings, high-speed trains and multilane highways. Paul looked forward to exploring it . . . if they ever got there.
“Any idea what’s causing the holdup?” Gamay asked.
They were a mile from the dock, sitting idly in the harbor, as containership after containership passed them in both directions. A pilot had come on board two hours ago, but the ferry had yet to move.
“No,” Paul said. “The engines are still running. I haven’t seen any maintenance crews moving about. Maybe we just have to wait our turn. Shanghai is the busiest port in the world, you know.”
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