by Don Hoesel
Brent tried to focus on what the reporter was saying, even as the images on-screen pulled at his attention. Part of the draw was the fact that his field gave him an understanding of crowd dynamics, and in studying this one, he could see the fuel for an encounter that would escalate beyond police control.
The camera angle changed, making it clear that the confrontation was playing out against the backdrop of a bank. In light of this, some of the reporter’s words found their way past the professor’s filter: stock exchange, credit, and bleak. It was a moment before Brent noticed the man watching the screen over his shoulder.
“Stocks have been erratic for months,” the marine said—not the soldier who’d retrieved Brent’s computer but another from their unit. The man gestured to the rioters. “Most of these people are probably short-term investors worried they’re about to lose all the money they’ve sunk into companies they shouldn’t have invested in.”
The comment caused Brent to give the marine a second, closer look. He might have been all of nineteen. “You know a bit about investing?” he asked.
“Yes, sir. My father was a day trader before he retired, so I usually have a good feel for what’s going on.”
Brent nodded and glanced back at the screen. “In that case, what’s going on here?”
“That’s a good question, sir. And I’m not sure there’s a real good answer. From everything I’ve seen, most of the stocks that have dropped over the last six months are pretty solid investments. And yet people are short-selling and the prices are dropping.” He shook his head as if puzzled by what he was watching. “It’s like people are panicking without anyone yelling fire first.”
Brent considered the marine’s words but didn’t respond, and not long afterward the man left. It took several seconds before he realized that something was troubling him, yet he couldn’t pinpoint what it might be.
He closed the laptop, stood, and stretched, and then went in search of coffee. When he found the dingy pot in what looked like a break room, he poured himself a cup and stepped back into the hallway. The thing that bothered him still had a hold on some part of his brain, and as Brent sipped at the bitter brew he sensed the subversive thought slowly wiggle its way toward the surface. As it began to take form he understood that it had everything to do with the crowd of rioters, which he’d already analyzed using the Le Bon model. It was typical Convergence Theory. Yet that wasn’t all of it. There was something about watching that crowd develop into a dangerous organism for, if the investment-savvy marine was correct, no easily discernible reason that seemed to track with his earlier thoughts.
Brent took another sip of coffee, returned to his laptop, and sat down. He was about to continue on to the Sports section from which he’d been distracted when the idea chose that moment to reveal itself. The next moments were a blur as Brent scooped up the laptop and, leaving the cup of coffee on the floor by the chair, pushed past the two marines guarding the recovery room door.
Maddy was awake when he barged in. Without so much as a greeting, and as if this were just another brainstorming session back in the NIIU offices, he said, “I’ve been overlooking something. We’ve been tracking a tremendous expending of resources over a period of two years to produce a desired outcome. But aside from the fact that whoever’s doing this has a wide reach, everything we’ve seen has been pretty subtle.”
“You call the obliteration of an oil field subtle?” Maddy asked. Still in the insufficient hospital gown apparently ubiquitous to hospitals worldwide, she made a few adjustments of her attire for modesty’s sake.
“Comparatively speaking, yes,” Brent said. “When you’re dealing with sociological change, there are two things you have to consider. The first is gradual change over time. How do small influences alter the social framework over a prescribed period?”
“Which is what we’ve been following.”
“In an accelerated fashion, yes. Usually the kinds of changes we’ve seen would take decades to manifest. But if we can accept the original theory—that this is an artificially induced state—then, yes, what we’re looking at falls within the gradual family.”
“And the other family is . . . ?”
“A polarizing event. It’s also referred to as a catastrophic event, but I think that’s a bit much.”
“A polarizing event?”
“Right. In our recent history, think 9/11. A single event that alters the landscape for everything—from security to foreign policy to the stock market.”
He waited to make sure that Maddy was tracking with him.
“Y2K was a big one too,” he added. “Something that quickly entered the worldwide collective consciousness, which caused people to change behaviors, which affected what people bought and sold, if they went to church or not. Even though Y2K ended up being nothing, it doesn’t change the fact that up until the clock struck midnight, people were prepared for the worst.”
Brent saw the captain taking in everything he’d said. Over the last eight days he thought he’d come to know her pretty well, and he knew she wouldn’t dismiss his new theory out of hand—except that he hadn’t yet arrived at the big reveal.
It didn’t take Maddy long to do the heavy lifting.
“So you’re anticipating an imminent polarizing event,” she said.
“I am.”
The silence that settled over the room had a chill to it. It matched the one moving up Brent’s spine, despite that he’d been privy to the information prior to its delivery. What warmed him, though, was Maddy’s response, which indicated a willingness to accept the professor’s new theory as the truth.
“But how do we recognize this event before it happens?”
Brent shook his head. “I have no idea. That’s the part that I need your help with.”
“I’ll do what I can—you know that.”
“There’s one more thing,” he said.
With some pain, Maddy shifted slowly in the hospital bed and met Brent’s eyes.
“I mentioned Y2K.”
“Yes. What about it?” she asked.
“Y2K was a polarizing event that never materialized,” Brent said. “But the interesting thing about it was that it also contained elements from the gradual school. After all, everyone knew the year 2000 was coming.”
Maddy took that in and, after a few moments, responded with a nod.
“Just imagine what would have happened if 9/11 had happened on December thirty-first, 1999.”
“Global panic,” she said. “Chaos.”
“I think someone learned from Y2K. Someone watched the way the world reacted and realized that should something like it happen again, there would be money in it.” He paused, took a deep breath. “But the real money comes if Y2K actually happens.”
Following the bread crumbs was a lot to ask of anyone. Even Brent wasn’t sure he bought all of it, and he was the one versed in theory. What he did know was that it felt right.
Maddy then raised the question Brent had been hoping she would raise.
“But there is no Y2K right now. Nothing for a polarizing event to piggyback on, right?”
Even as she spoke, Brent kept his eyes on her, almost willing the captain to put the pieces together, as if she were a student listening to one of his lectures.
“Wait a minute,” she said, her eyes widening. “You’re not saying . . .”
“If I’m right, we have less than nine days.”
—
Arthur Van Camp seldom ventured outside the range of a convenient gun—one that he could pick up at any moment. With his position of power came a list of enemies of varying degrees and means, and while he doubted the eventuality of its use, he nonetheless kept it close.
He held the gun in his hand, feeling its weight. The Ruger P85 was a heavy gun—a brick, really. But he liked the solidness of it. It was the first time he’d removed the gun from the desk drawer in at least a year, and he didn’t know why he felt the need to do so now, except that having it in his hand ma
de him feel better than he had when he’d walked in that morning.
He’d spent some time in the office at his apartment before giving up and having his driver thread him through Atlanta’s morning traffic to the massive house in Buckhead. The painting over the apartment fireplace refused to let him work without sending accusatory vibes in his direction. Still, he’d tried to sip his coffee and muscle his way through a few reports. In the end, his wife’s painting forced him from his workspace.
As he placed the Ruger back in the drawer, he chuckled at the thought. When she was alive, she’d served as his sounding board, listening, withholding judgment, providing necessary insight. He missed that more than anything. But now, as she tried to speak to him through one of the few things he had left of her, he wouldn’t listen. He wondered, as he picked up the most recent stack of financials, if that was what Alan was doing.
He thought there were things Alan wasn’t telling him, and that was his own mistake. He’d selected Alan because of his stellar track record, his ability to maintain a cool head despite the nature of any conflagration that raged around them, and for the man’s expendability. Van Camp’s mistake, as he now saw it, was allowing Alan too much freedom. Such a loose reporting structure left the company vulnerable should Van Camp’s man in charge of Project: Night House find the stresses of the position too much to bear.
Yet there were reasons for the current arrangement, and the need for that phrase that politicians tossed around: plausible deniability. Without the proper checks in place to make certain that Alan was acting within the established policies of the company, Van Camp would be able to tell a prosecutor, a grand jury, or whoever else might ask that Alan had acted outside of the scope of his duties, and that the man having access to company funds sufficient to finance such an endeavor was an oversight Van Camp would correct. He hoped it never came to that; he hoped it in the same fashion he considered the use of the Ruger in the drawer.
The problem was that Alan wasn’t returning his calls. To be fair, Van Camp had left only two messages, and Alan had a number of irons in the fire. But he also knew Alan had stopped by the office recently, taking two appointments and then leaving.
He understood the stresses the man must be facing, considering his wife’s condition. He of all people did not begrudge Alan the time he needed to get his head straight. However, everything they’d worked for over the last two years would culminate in a matter of days. Alan’s crisis at home had come at a most inopportune time.
Among the standard reports on his desk were a number of papers that, when not in his immediate possession, resided in only one place: the large safe in the Buckhead home. Along with the files he’d procured a 1945 Mouton from the wine cellar. Of all the wines in his possession, the Mouton was most suited for the upcoming occasion. After securing the two items and then spending a few minutes with the key members of his staff, Van Camp left the house, leaving his staff wondering how much time would pass until he returned.
The file in front of him now—the one he hadn’t reviewed in months, as the contents were firmly fixed in his memory—was a skeleton really. A combination of his first hasty notes and a subsequent fleshing out of the plan. Most of it preceded Alan’s involvement, although several key features bore the man’s mark. Among these was the Antarctica project.
Shackleton concerned Van Camp more than any other element, for the concrete reason that, at this point, he should have had the detonator in his hands, the one that would separate the ice shelf from the continent. According to the figures Alan had gathered, the result of such an activity would be catastrophic to the financial sector. Van Camp Enterprises stood to make more than $43 billion by this man-made “act of God,” from a mixture of stock speculation, anticipated changes in commercial fishing patterns, and above all, a heightened interest in national security.
There was also the human element to consider. According to every model they had run, the separation of the ice shelf would produce a tsunami that would potentially strike China’s coast. The researchers who had worked through the available data put the odds at forty-three percent. Not included in that scenario was the number of small islands—some of them inhabited—that fell inside the affected area. There was a part of him that did not think it inappropriate to offer a heartfelt prayer for those souls, or to ask his wife to speak in his stead. And should she choose not to do so, he would deal with it on his own.
Right now he had to consider the possibility of a different kind of tsunami, one that Alan had the potential to unleash. If that were to happen, Van Camp would find a way to deal with that too.
December 13, 2012, 1:09 P.M.
The thing about Tucson, Albert thought as he crawled out from beneath the 1972 Charger, was that it wasn’t always hot. That revelation had come as something of a disappointment to him. After all, he’d selected Arizona because it was supposed to be hot. He wanted a heat that, without the proper sunglasses, would bake his eyeballs in their sockets. A heat that made breathing uncomfortable, that let him fry the proverbial egg on the sidewalk. But now, in mid-December, the temperature got down to the mid-forties at night. When he woke up in the morning he didn’t want to have to put on a jacket to retrieve the newspaper from the end of the driveway. He wanted air-conditioning blasting 24/7 in defiance of a merciless sun. What he got, instead, was sweater weather in the morning and a pleasant breeze in the afternoon.
Albert had had a lot of time to think since the helicopter lifted him from a place colder than anything he’d imagined and ferried him to a small island, where they’d loaded him on a plane and sent him to Miami. Miami was warm; he should have stayed there. But something about the desert appealed to him.
He was forty-six and had spent thirty of those years in some of the coldest spots on the planet, drilling holes deep into frozen ground. For three decades his world was composed of bitter cold and screaming metal. He supposed that after a while, the body’s ability to retain heat vanished like a battery that would no longer hold a charge.
He grabbed a rag and rubbed the oil from his hands as best he could. The Charger was one of three cars in his yard—the front yard, so that he was sure to tick off the neighbors—and the one that he loved working on most.
After they’d pulled him from the ice sheet, he’d taken to thinking about the direction his life had taken, how he’d contented himself with bearing up under the assault of the elements on the chance that he would be part of something big—something that would result in his never having to work again. Flying over icebergs with a mangled leg did much to put things in perspective for a man. He was almost grateful for the mishap that had severed some of the muscles in his calf, leaving him with a permanent limp. A clarifying moment, he called it.
He tossed the rag onto the hood of the car and thought about what to do next. The Charger needed a good deal of work still, but nothing like dropping a new engine into it last week. Everything from this point on was a walk in the park by comparison. In truth, anything short of getting an auger drill working in sub-zero temperatures was akin to a picnic.
He heard the screen door open.
“Albert,” his wife called. “Someone’s on the phone for you.”
He raised his hand in acknowledgment. Since relocating to Tucson two months ago, he’d fielded the occasional call from his former company. They wanted him back in the field, and with the understanding that most of his former mates were now working for someone else, the money they’d dangled in front of him had been substantial. Still, nothing they’d said—or promised—had been powerful enough to present a serious threat to his airborne epiphany: that money didn’t matter if you were too cold to enjoy it.
He took in a deep breath of air that, though cooler than he’d imagined, was a good deal more palatable than what he’d inhaled in Alaska or Antarctica. Then he went inside. She’d left the phone lying next to the cradle and he scooped it up.
“Yeah?”
“Albert?” came the voice from the other end. “Is t
his Albert?”
The thing that struck him right off was that, whoever owned the voice, it wasn’t someone who worked for Sheffield Petroleum.
“It is,” he said. “And you are?”
“Albert, this is Ruth. I’m Ben’s wife. Ben Robinski?”
“Oh sure,” Albert said. “How is old Ben?”
There was a pause on the other end of the line and Albert thought the phone might have cut out on him. They’d been having problems with the phone service the last few months. In some ways, it reminded him of growing up in Adelaide. They’d lost service a lot there.
“That’s why I’m calling, Albert,” Ruth said. “I haven’t heard from Ben in months.”
Albert took that in, along with the worry in the woman’s voice. “Well, I wouldn’t worry about it. From what I remember, the job we were on was supposed to last until the end of the month. You should hear from him anytime now.”
His attempt at encouragement was greeted with silence.
Finally, she said, “I’ve called fifteen people. You’re the first person to even acknowledge my husband was on a team somewhere.”
Albert was a man accustomed to dealing with simple things. It was cold outside so one wore a coat. The drill broke so one fixed it. But women were complicated, hence he seldom engaged them in conversation. He’d gotten lucky in that his Andrea wasn’t complicated. She liked the same simple things he did.
“Look,” he said. “I don’t know what to tell you. I ain’t with the team anymore because my leg was ripped up in one of the drills. But I remember Ben talking about you all the time. He’ll come back, you’ll see.”