The Carbon Cross (The Carbon Series Book 2)

by Randy Dutton

  “But you and I know Alaska’s worth several trillions of dollars.”

  Dowell nodded his head. “True, with the fuel and minerals.”

  “Get the FBI to investigate how this happened!”

  Chapter 82

  February 17, 1700 hours

  Heyward House

  Tap. Anna smiled wistfully at photo 47. In it, she was gracefully sweeping up Buckingham Palace’s Grand Stairway in an exquisite Oscar de la Renta ball gown. The flaming red, backless dress, accessorized with a Cartier diamond choker, accentuated a svelte figure and long neck. Four-inch gold stilettos highlighted her long legs and graceful moves. Cropped from this image was the dashing Lord Littleton. Controlling what Pete saw, and what he didn’t, was important to her. Pete didn’t need to see her past lovers.

  Listening to Rachmaninoff’s Variations on a Theme of Chopin as background, and tapping fingers so lightly on the keyboard and mouse that nothing registered, she had been reflecting for over an hour, studying each photo in turn. Her fingers occasionally broke from the music to control the image. With pursed lips, she zoomed to her smiling face turned back to the camera.

  Just three years ago. I looked so much younger...elegant...cocky.

  She turned to a small, framed mirror mounted next to her desk.

  Now...my face is flushed and shiny, and the wrinkles...

  Her left index finger smoothed out the very light creases.

  Laugh lines indeed!

  The finger released and her head dipped to look at a bloated figure dressed in a merlot jersey tunic over leggings. For her own self-image, she attempted to maintain some degree of style. A simple empire shape accentuated her pregnant form with a round neck and long sleeves. To Pete, she looked gorgeously chic.

  Her hands cupped her swollen breasts.

  It’s as if my body thinks I’m having twins.

  Her hands dropped lower and she slightly lifted her large belly. She looked back at the screen with the beautiful free-spirited alter ego and then sighed.

  Those days are long gone.

  As if reading Anna’s disquiet, Talos walked over and put his head in her lap. The big brown eyes looked up with adoration. Anna smiled and instinctively scratched the Rott’s nose.

  Tap. A younger Anna was leaning over her black stallion’s neck while it jumped a narrow creek. She ignored the intense countenance and focused on her thinner waist and toned legs. With a crooked smile she recalled the Le Trec cross-country race several years earlier.

  I would have finished better than sixth if I hadn’t had to pace the sheikh to get that thumb drive from around his neck. What an adrenalin kick! Tricking that pig into eating the oyster with the secreted sodium capsule just before the race – an untraceable assassination by ulcer.

  Tap. She was free-climbing Wittich Crack, a rock climbing route in the Grand Tetons. Her right index finger reflexively brushed the nearly invisible scars on the back of her left hand as she flexed it.

  A decade later, and my fingers and muscles still remember the near-death experience...suspended with just my fist jammed into a rock fissure. God, what a rush that was.

  She zoomed in to her facial expression, and smirked.

  I see why my intensity scares men. It certainly didn’t endear me to my climbing instructors. Had they known why I was taking lessons, I bet....

  Beep, beep... The security system interrupted her reminiscence. She tapped a button to change screens. Images of her past were replaced by a property map, and the present. Her pulse quickened as an icon entered the driveway. Pete’s SUV popped up on a quarter-screen. Farther up the driveway, another concealed camera automatically zoomed onto his face. A green box outlined his face, which showed the facial recognition software had identified him.

  Out the window, approaching headlights illuminated the blowing mist-coated Fuzz strands. In the twilight, the greenish-gray yard and moss-draped curtains trailing off naked trees created a surreal image. Now, motion-activated flood lights flicked on, illuminating the last 100 meters of driveway.

  She flipped the screen back to the picture show, which had advanced a photo. Her lips pursed at one last glance of her limber younger self, clinging with fingertips to a rock ledge 60 meters above broken rock.

  Finally, she extracted the photo gallery thumb drive.

  Pete stepped in from the attached garage. “The truck traffic’s growing fierce!” Irritation was evident in his tone.

  “Hi to you too! You referring to the biomass haulers?” Anna swiveled her desk chair and slowly pushed herself up. She placed the drive in the wall safe and closed it. With a flip of her finger, the cascading Sol Duc waterfall photo swung to conceal the safe, and clicked when locked. She picked up her now cold tea mug and walked to the kitchen.

  He hung his coat, wrapped both arms around her, leaned down, and kissed her. “Sorry. Hi, Babe.... Yeah. I nearly got run off the road when a big dump truck slid on rain-soaked Fuzz.”

  “Stuff mats pretty good on the road. Like driving on a carpet, particularly with all-wheel-drive and studded tires.” She waddled to a kitchen island bar stool.

  “Until water runs under it, then a section breaks loose and I’m hydroplaning.”

  “Like a flying carpet!” she mused.

  “More like skim boarding.” He poured himself a glass of iced tea, and sniffed a pot simmering on the stove, evoking his first smile of the evening.

  “They’ve increased the patrols that sweep Fuzz off the roads to every week,” she said. “Apparently, it’s not enough.”

  “Not nearly,” he added. “They’ll need to double the frequency, and get the biomass trucks to slow down on the matted stretches.”

  She pouted. “I miss driving aggressively”—her eyes lifted to him and her pout became even more exaggerated—“in a fast car.”

  “Yes...your Alfa Romeo. It was a pretty convertible...matched your eyes. Sometimes I regret luring you away from your...fast life.”

  “No you don’t.” With eyes large with warmth, her hand touched his arm. “You opened the door and I willingly walked through...away from that world. The lifestyle was rotting me from the inside.... So you were talking about the increased truck traffic on our back roads.”

  He brushed a loose hair strain from her eyes and chuckled. “I guess I was.... With the national gasoline supply being shut down, the biofuel refineries are ramping up production. Once they figured out how to pyrolize forest and agriculture biomass, now they can’t get enough.”

  “Well, their hub-and-spoke system does make sense, and it’s helping the local economy. Reducing biomass volume in the first step so they can ship bio-oil to a super biorefinery. Soon that’ll be the global model.”

  He sipped his iced tea. “Maybe. But with the designs open-source by UN fiat, stripping the forests is well underway. Won’t be long until only Fuzz remains on the ground – evenly spread and harder to collect. Then the local resource economy collapses. At least we have our little forest, draped with the stuff as it is.” He sat next to her and slid his hand up her jersey onto her expanded belly.

  She grimaced and immediately lifted his large hand away and sandwiched it between her two warmer hands. “Next time, Honey, make sure your hand’s warm.”

  “Sorry...again.”

  “Accepted. So, beyond your commuting nightmare, how was your day?”

  “Well, we’ve been tracing CO2 absorption through the phytoplankton, Fuzz, and bacteria.”

  “Why?”

  “To understand how their internal structures absorb CO2 differently than their unmodified cousins.”

  “How can you track it?”

  “We exposed them to a pulse of CO2 containing a carbon-13 isotope.”

  “Clever. And what did you find?”

  “Compared to the controls, the modified life-forms transport carbon more rapidly to its reproductive system and the cell walls.”

  “So its outer structure grows faster?”

  He nodded. “Significantly. The Fuzz
design allows fully functional segments to break off.”

  She exhaled loudly. “Thus spreading its progeny.”

  “Exactly. It doesn’t need spores or seeds, it just replicates itself.”

  “Like a Mogwai exposed to water.”

  His brow furrowed. “A what?”

  “Gremlin. You know...the movie?”

  “Saw it decades ago.”

  “Cute little critter from a Chinese antique store.... The grandfather refuses to sell it. Says” – she cleared her throat to imitate the old Chinaman – “Owning one is too great a responsibility” –

  her normal voice returned – “but the grandson secretly sells the Mogwai, and with three conditions...never let it be exposed to sunlight, which kills it....”

  He nodded at the cue. “Never get it wet because it’ll multiply...and...” He glanced upward, pondering.

  “Never, ever feed it after midnight,” she added.

  “Right. The Mogwai turns into a monster.”

  Chapter 83

  Feb 28, 1000 hours

  The Oval Office

  Cigar smoke wafted from the president’s ashtray. The fumes added to the FBI director’s annoyance, and the president knew it. Adding to the lawman’s irritation was the scent, a blend of Cuban tobacco and marijuana, legalized nationally a few years earlier.

  The lawman’s feet shifted. “Mr. President, so far we haven’t found that any crimes were committed.”

  “Certainly there’s some malfeasance. They had to have done something we can use to rescind the sale!” President Fernandez insisted from behind his desk.

  “We’re still investigating the bond issue, Sir. The Hancock Law Office out of Dallas is above-board and claims attorney-client privilege.” Greene glanced at the president’s chief of staff sitting silently, urging an intervention.

  Dowell shrugged.

  The director scowled, belying his thoughts about the chief of staff. You’re no help!

  “I’ll authorize whatever you need to dig into them!” the president said.

  “Sir, that would be imprudent because we don’t have probable cause.”

  “Screw the legal defense! International relations are at risk here. China’s irate!”

  “Sir, isn’t that China’s problem? After all, Russia changed their deal—” He regretted the starting the comment.

  The president stood up and leaned forward. “It’s our problem! We still owe the Chinese five trillion! Why do you think I had to create that Foreign Debt Cabinet position and add a Chinese representative to our Treasury Borrowing Advisory Committee?!”

  “Okay, Sir. I’ll keep investigating.” Greene turned and exited.

  After the Oval Office door closed behind the FBI Director, Dowell turned to the president and said facetiously, “Well, that went well,”

  Chapter 84

  April 1, 1000 hours

  Heyward House

  The sky cleared for the first time in weeks. An onshore, mid-morning ocean breeze had cleansed airborne Fuzz fragments from Anna’s view, and the seldom-seen sunshine beamed bright. With the window open, cool air flowed in this first day of April provided temperatures in the 60s.

  Dressed in a rolled-neck, merino wool jumper, she twisted her aching back. Nestling a cup of coffee, she peered out the office window at the luxurious, verdant river valley below, and her land to the sides.

  At least for a while, the cold, wet weather has abated, Anna mused. The cherry trees are blooming, and the red alders are leafing out. Even the robins are out in force seeking worms under the front yard’s mossy mat. I usually love spring.

  She looked closer and sighed. Fuzz lined the window ledge, the invasive plant’s microscopic barbs anchoring to any surface to support its growing tendrils.

  It’s enveloping every branch and horizontal surface on this lush peninsula. The moist air feeds it, and few places are as consistently wet as the Olympic Peninsula’s southwest side. In just the past few months, every tree’s been enveloped.

  She groaned.

  I know what’s coming – a day when the landscape will have more Fuzz and much less of any other living plant.

  Sitting, she settled the mug next to the computer monitor and returned to her task. In front was a yellow legal pad. With several pages flipped back, she continued writing ideas, scratching some out, and augmenting others. On the wall, a framed, large global map had a little green Post-Its stuck to it asking, “Where in the World is Sven?” She tapped on her keyboard in search of clues.

  Several hours of research had left her disquieted. She waddled to the sofa to rest her back.

  What am I missing?

  She sullenly revisited these same thoughts dwelling in her mind the past seven months.

  As Sven’s recruiter, my goals were to find someone to create our carbon-trapping products. It never occurred to me those products would threaten Earth’s flora and fauna. Would someone else have eventually done it? Probably.

  Again she sighed.

  Does it matter now?

  Her head shook.

  It’s moot. The deed’s done. I allowed it, and Earth and mankind will suffer for our arrogance. Now we must adapt.

  Her mind drifted to a Robert Oppenheimer quote after he helped create the atomic bomb. “When you see something that is technically sweet, you go ahead and do it and argue about what to do about it only after you have your technical success.” That’s exactly the position we took. If only I had known, but then, I wasn’t the same person as I am now.

  Anna recalled recruiting Sven.

  He exceeded my expectations, but I made a mistake by not imposing more limits. Was I as cavalier as Oppenheimer? I thought I could control Sven. That proved to be fallacious. I thought Sven cared about the Earth, and we could use that to our advantage. That too, was an illusion. Was he so brilliant he knew better than us where this would go? He wanted to be remembered for accomplishing something big, but even it if was destructive? Was it planned or an accident that his creations would be unhindered by natural biology? Other experts said it was impossible.

  Her eyes again lifted to the map.

  So where are you now Sven? Did Swanson get you? Damn, I was feeling upbeat before I started thinking of you.

  She walked to her flute lying on the mantle, shook her head, and instead, sat down at the piano. The sheet music reflecting her mood was already in place. ‘The Windmills of Your Mind’ she found particularly haunting – both beautiful and sad, and ultimately, without conclusion.

  As her fingers played the keys, her rich soprano voice sang the personified lyrics. “Like a circle in a spiral, Like a wheel within a wheel, Never ending or beginning, On an ever-spinning reel....” And so the song went ending with, “Like the circles that I find, In the windmills of my mind.”

  Pete sometimes commented that her voice closely resembled the breathy sensuality and longing of Dusty Springfield, a soul singer of decades before. She ran through the song a few times to exorcise her demons.

  “Okay, I felt that!” Anna’s dark reverie broke in the middle of the fourth rendition.

  The young Rottweiler lifted its head at her sudden outburst, while Shade just shifted his eyes. Both dogs had been lying silently on a rug by the fireplace.

  “It’s okay Talos.”

  I wonder if this first contraction signals the start of a very long day?

  Her hand rubbed her stretched out belly as she glanced at her watch second hand.

  Just in case this isn’t the start of false labor, I’ll sit with the telephone. I don’t want to disturb Pete at work needlessly.... It’s been nearly nine months. I’m so ready for this to be over!

  She pressed her hand against the small of her back, groaning from the extra weight. Easing herself into a recliner with the telephone and a coffee at her side, she switched on the TV to catch up the latest news.

  Always a good distraction, though seldom upbeat.

  “This is Jill Brent of Global Heartbeat Network. Today is April first
, and here is the news.”

  A map of Alaska came onto the screen. “Today, Alaska is officially a new country, and already has been recognized by Australia, New Zealand, and Canada.”

  Anna smiled.

  “Legislative president Joe Barco announced that payment has been made in full and the amount transferred to the Russian Central Bank. GHN’s financial analysts said the Free Alaskan Bond Fund has been the most successful investment offering in a decade, and investors flocked to it as a safe place to park their money.”

  The report went on for 10 minutes detailing the agreement, comments from US and Alaskan officials, and noting that Australia was the first country to officially recognize Alaska.

  Anna grinned warily at a very recognizable photo that came onto the screen with a new segment.

  “Today, the Nobel Committee announced Mr. Alexis Swanson will be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for helping solve the world’s global warming problem. The committee president said Mr. Swanson’s foresight and investment in the future will now ensure the world’s climate does not suffer from excessive CO2—”

  Anna’s mood turned dour.

  Are you happy now, Alexis? You now are living under the Sword of Damocles, suspended above the pretender to the throne by a horse hair. And I have the means to cut it. You have your global adoration now, but you may soon beg to disappear from the public view before the truth of your devastation swings down to strike you. Fear the truth, Alexis. You are the destroyer of life. You may never learn, as I have, that virtue is sufficient for living a happy life.

  She grimaced. Okay, that was the second contraction.

  Clicking off the TV, she dialed Pete. He had taken an associate professorship position with a new University of Washington Extension Office outside the nearby coastal city of Hoquiam. “Hello, Pete?”

  “Hi, Babe,” he said nervously. “Everything okay?”

  “I think it’s time. The first two contractions are 10 minutes apart. Your son wants out,” she said calmly. “And frankly, he and I are in agreement.”