Abyss km-15

by David Hagberg

  “An important article that appeared in 1977 in the magazine The Atlantic outlined Lovins’s ideas and warnings, and went on to explore other emerging technologies. The message was very clear, yet we continued on the hard path.”

  Again Eve paused. The damn thing works.

  A woman in formal dress seated at the rear of the hall suddenly jumped up. “Stop this evil before it is too late!” she screeched at the top of her lungs.

  The king’s two bodyguards suddenly appeared at the side of the stage, and McGarvey got to his feet.

  “You are an affront to our Holy Father’s plan for us!” the woman screamed.

  A pair of metro policemen reached the woman and bodily dragged her to the doors as she shouted, “Repent now, apostate, before it is too late for your mortal soul!” And then she was outside, and as the doors opened and closed Eve could hear people on the street actually cheering.

  Jacobsen was on his feet and he started for the podium, but Eve waved him back and turned to the audience and smiled. “Actually I’m quite glad to see that Norway honors freedom of speech as well as America does.”

  The king behind her applauded and then so did everyone in the hall, and it took a long time to die down before she could continue.

  “In actuality, Lovins was speaking not merely for the U.S., but for the entire world, which is why I’m here today to tell you about my vision for taking the soft path.”

  * * *

  The streetlights switched on about the same time Jenkins and Langsdorf came sauntering up the street from the direction of the harbor. They were dressed almost identically in jeans, leather bomber jackets, and dark blue knit watch caps, Jenkins’s right arm was in a cloth sling that fit over his jacket. They both wore gloves.

  DeCamp had positioned himself a few feet back from the front of the crowd that pressed the walkway from the main doors to the hall. Oslo police had erected barriers and held people back. But Eve’s speech had been piped outside to loudspeakers and the crowd, probably more than three-quarters of them Schlagel’s people, in his estimation, had become restive, and the cops nervous.

  The two men passed within a few feet of DeCamp, stopping nearly at the barriers, and he gently shouldered his way through the crowd until he was within touching distance directly behind them. He had a very good sight line on the walkway from the hall out to where the limos had pulled up, the chauffeurs waiting at the rear passenger doors.

  A burst of applause came from the loudspeakers and minutes later the city hall doors opened and the first of the dignitaries who’d been up on stage began coming out, all of them stopping on either side of the walk, forming a tunnel of well-wishers that Eve Larsen, and presumably Kirk McGarvey, would have to pass through.

  The problem as he saw it was twofold. First he had to get a clear shot, preferably two. If he hit the woman center mass, the explosive bullets he’d loaded would be fatal. There was little doubt of it. The second was convincing the onlookers that it was Jenkins or Langsdorf who’d fired the shots in such a way that the crowd would become hysterical, leaving the police no option but to return fire.

  To solve both problems, DeCamp had removed the suppressor. In the first place shooting without the silencer vastly improved the pistol’s accuracy. And in the second, the noise would startle the crowd, and like a flock of birds they would almost immediately spread out.

  He’d put a little Vaseline on his fingertips and the pad of his thumb on his right hand, and he reached for the Steyr inside his jacket pocket, cocking the hammer so that it would take only a light pull to fire.

  More people were streaming out of the hall, taking up their places in the reception line, until finally Eve Larsen, flanked by McGarvey on her right, and Leif Jacobsen on her left, came out and began moving slowly through the line. More applause began from the people on the walkway and some in the crowd, but most began booing and chanting something about going against God’s will. The Oslo police stiffened up and McGarvey’s head was on a swivel, but his attention was directed toward the people nearest to Eve, those in the reception line.

  DeCamp moved closer to a position directly between Jenkins and Langsdorf, almost touching them, from where he had a clear sight line and their bodies would effectively shield his gun hand from the people on either side.

  Eve would pass within twenty feet of him and as she shook hands with a woman dressed in furs, DeCamp pulled out his pistol, holding it in front of his chest.

  She leaned over and said something, then moved closer. DeCamp raised his pistol and fired one shot at the same moment Jacobsen moved in front of Eve to speak to McGarvey. The bullet caught the Nobel Prize committee chairman in his shoulder, slamming him backwards off his feet into the line of people.

  McGarvey shoved Eve to her knees as he pulled out his own weapon, and the crowd reacted, going wild, women screaming, everyone trying to get away.

  Jenkins was turning toward DeCamp, who thrust the pistol into his hands.

  “My God, my God!” DeCamp cried. “The reverend knows!” He backed off.

  Jenkins took a step toward him.

  But DeCamp melded with the crowd. “He’s got a gun! He’s got a gun!”

  Both Jenkins and Langsdorf, confused, turned back toward the police. Suddenly they were out in the open, all alone, the people moving away from them.

  One of the cops shouted something, and Jenkins tried to answer back, raising the pistol over his head.

  DeCamp turned and watched from the fringes of the still-moving crowd as the police opened fire, Jenkins and Langsdorf falling back to the pavement, each hit more than a half-dozen times.

  * * *

  Back in Paris, DeCamp waited at noon for the first two days since Oslo just within the entrance to the Saint-Germain-de-Près church where he had a straight line view of the Deux Maggots café across the boulevard. He was armed. Although he was certain that Wolfhardt would come to him, he wasn’t sure of the reception because the second half of his payment for assassinating Eve Larsen had been deposited into his account.

  It was a mixed message the German and his employer had sent him; the woman had not been hurt and the assignment had been a failure except that the blame had gone to the two men shot to death by the Oslo police. They were wanted by the FBI for questioning about a series of abortion clinic bombings a few years ago, and their names were being linked to the Reverend Schlagel’s ministry.

  Schlagel had gone on his SOS television network the morning of the very next day and on Fox News that evening, saying in effect that although he vehemently disagreed with what Dr. Larsen had set out to do, he would defend to his death her right to practice science as she saw it. He would fight her godless research with everything in his body and mind, including his hourly prayers to Jesus Christ his Savior, but he would also thank God for her miraculous escape, and for the souls of his poor lost sheep, shot to death in Oslo.

  A priest in a cassock and wide-brimmed hat, head lowered so that his eyes were not visible, came out of the nave. “You failed,” he said. “Again.”

  DeCamp turned suddenly, reaching for his pistol, but then stayed his hand. “The vagaries of these sorts of assignments,” he said. He willed himself to remain calm. This meeting was expected. “Yet you paid my fee. Why? Do you want me to try again?”

  “Yes, but in a different fashion. This time the assignment will be much larger, more complex, and it will require additional personnel.”

  “I work alone.”

  “Not this time.”

  “If I refuse?” DeCamp asked.

  “That’s not an option, something you know, otherwise you would not have waited for me to show up here.”

  “I will need additional funds.”

  “Under ordinary circumstances I would have told you to pay for this one out of the profits you’ve earned from the monies you have already received for two failed assignments. But my employer is generous. An additional two million euros will be deposited to your Prague account within twenty-four hours.”r />
  On the surface of it the offer was more than fair, it was generous. Afterwards, no matter the outcome, DeCamp would fetch Martine and they would disappear. Perhaps to Australia. An outback sheep station. Anonymous, safe, where a man could see for miles if an enemy were to approach.

  “Am I to be told the details?” he asked.

  Wolfhardt reached beneath his cassock for something, and DeCamp almost pulled out his pistol, but it was a thick manila envelope.

  “Here are the details. And I sincerely wish you luck, for all of our sakes, including yours, of course.”

  “Of course,” DeCamp said, and he turned and walked away.

  Two Days Later

  Wolfhardt had come back from France with assurances that DeCamp would accept the new assignment, and Anne Marie busied herself talking to investors, reassuring them actually, telling them that their hundreds of millions were safe in the dozen MG funds. “We make money on the way down as well as on the way up,” she explained. Though no one asked how, because they all knew that making profits from a declining market meant only that the MG was essentially stealing money from investors in other funds. And she’d always made sure, in those cases, that she never raided any fund in which some of her investors held positions.

  The American Securities and Exchange Commission, which in Anne Marie’s estimation had always been run by idiots who had risen to their levels of incompetence, were working to put a stop to what was called high-frequency trading, which amounted to nothing more than letting computers buy stocks and a millisecond later, before the results showed up on the big board, and before mere humans on the floor could make their orders, the machines would automatically make a sale. In those brief millisecond bursts, profits that totaled in the billions each year were made. Of course the SEC thought it gave the high-frequency traders an unfair advantage, which was why the practice was under fire. Supposedly. But she had her own cadre of highly paid computer friends working out of Amsterdam who’d managed over the past several months to do some trading on the side, so far without detection.

  Making money was so easy this way that sometimes Anne Marie felt a stab of guilt, or even boredom, because she agreed with her father’s original philosophy that systematic macro trading, which was what this amounted to, was only for idiots and cowards. But then no profit held any shame. Nor could it ever, by definition.

  Even though it was winter and a series of cold fronts had marched across the Mediterranean since November, Anne Marie had gone back to her yacht to get away for a few days or weeks, however long it took to refresh her batteries. And everything seemed to be on track. Her investors were content, al-Naimi was off her back for the moment, DeCamp was presumably in the process of bringing the next operation together, and Schlagel’s God Project campaign was in full swing, especially now that Eve Larsen had been presented with the Nobel Prize and had survived an assassination attempt. The woman was blessed, and she was in the clear for the moment.

  And it was more grist for Schlagel’s well-oiled mill. People in the U.S. were already putting a lot of pressure on Congress to rethink the permitting process for new nuclear power stations, along with a growing call for immediate inspections of every nuclear plant. The inspections would probably result in closures, or in repair orders that would be so expensive to complete that the utility companies would be forced to take the matter to their boards. The conservative ones, faced with gigantic repair bills and the growing tide of fear and distrust among the general public, would likely decide on even further shutdowns.

  People in the southeast, especially in places like rural Kentucky, Tennessee, Georgia, and Alabama were actually knocking down power lines by shooting out the insulators because they were convinced the electricity coming from nuclear power plants was itself radioactive and using electrical appliances inside their homes would give them radiation poisoning. It was Schlagel’s doing, of course, and in Anne Marie’s estimation the man was nothing short of brilliant, and in a Machiavellian sort of way he might make an interesting president after all.

  Her thoughts had been flitting around like that ever since Hutchinson Island, and even out here in the Med she hadn’t been able to settle down. Her mood, like the weather, had varied from cold and damp, during which she was too depressed to work or even think, or to cold and blustery, during which she had sudden bursts of energy even though she felt somehow scattered, not together. And all of it was disconcerting.

  Yesterday they’d been slowly cruising east to Athens to pick up a few people she’d considered inviting aboard because she’d started out with just her crew and two bodyguards and she’d thought that some of her depression might be plain loneliness, but she’d been spooked for no good reason she could think of, and she’d ordered the captain to turn south toward the African coast where the weather might be a little warmer. She was more tired of the cold than of her loneliness.

  She sat at the bar in the main saloon drinking a glass of champagne. Dinner had been tasteless, and now that it was fully dark outside, no lights on any horizon, not even those of a passing ship, no moon, no stars under an overcast sky, the thought of going to bed alone was so dreary at this moment, she was almost frightened. So frightened that when her encrypted sat phone buzzed, the caller ID showing al-Naimi’s number, she was almost relieved, even though his call probably meant trouble of some kind.

  “Mr. al-Naimi, good evening,” she said.

  “Are you alone at this moment?” the Saudi intelligence officer asked.

  Anne Marie felt a slight tingle of fear. “Yes.”

  “You are doing a good job with the antinuclear power movement in the United States. We’re pleased — the royal family, unofficially, of course — but if the next phase of your operation goes as well as the first we will allow even more money to be placed in your fund.”

  “Thank you. But you must understand that the timing is critical. We cannot make a move until the oil platform is in the middle of the Gulf.”

  “Yes, I understand everything,” al-Naimi said impatiently. “Tell me, where you are at this moment, exactly.”

  Anne Marie was puzzled. “If you want the exact latitude and longitude, I’ll have to get that from Captain Panagiotopolous. But I think we’re about one hundred kilometers off the Libyan coast, running parallel.”

  “Who are your guests aboard?”

  “No guests. Just my crew and bodyguards.”

  “Where is Wolfhardt?”

  “In Dubai,” Anne Marie said, truly alarmed now. Al-Naimi never called to simply chat. “What’s this all about?”

  “You have a crew member by the name of Walter Glass.”

  It was a statement, not a question, and Anne Marie had to think for a moment if such a man were indeed aboard, but then she remembered. “He’s an engineer’s mate. We took him on sometime this summer. Gunther vetted him, and he came up clean.”

  “I’ve learned otherwise,” al-Naimi said. “In fact his real name is Dieter Schey and he works for the Frankfurt Stock Exchange. The security division. He’s aboard your ship to spy on you.”

  “Good heavens why,” she said, but then she knew not only why he’d been sent to spy on her, but why al-Naimi had called.

  “There’ve been some tax dealings with a number of your German investors that have raised a red flag.”

  He was talking about what were called partnership flip structures and inverted pass-through leases, in which the MG had helped fund a couple of infrastructure deals in Germany — one for the rebuilding of ten bridges along the autobahn, and the other the construction of a water treatment plant outside Munich. The construction companies were given healthy tax credits, which they used in return to shelter income gained by investing money back into the MG. Technically it meant that the German government was investing with Anne Marie, and someone smart in Frankfurt had sat up and taken notice.

  “It’s not a problem,” Anne Marie said. “He couldn’t have learned anything aboard ship. And soon as we dock I’ll get rid of him.
”

  “There’s more to it,” al-Naimi said.

  Anne Marie girded herself. “I’m listening.”

  “Herr Schey is a clever man, but he’d have to be because of his excellent training with the KGB in Moscow. He is ex-Stasi.”

  Stasi had been the old East German secret police, and what al-Naimi had left unsaid, the most disturbing message he’d given to her, was that Gunther, himself ex-Stasi, should have caught it. He’d dropped the ball. If it had been unintentional his worth to her was diminished. But if he’d vetted Schey on purpose, for whatever purpose, something would have to be done.

  All of that passed through her thoughts in a beat. “Thank you for the information,” she said. “I’ll take care of it.”

  “All of it.”

  “Yes,” Anne Marie said.

  She poured more champagne and sat at the bar for twenty minutes thinking about her chief of security; thinking that it was nearly impossible to know someone so completely that trust was inviolable. Something like a mother’s unconditional love for her child, even if the child turned out to be a mass murderer. She’d never trusted anyone to that extent. It was another lesson she’d learned from her father. Yet she’d allowed Gunther inside her very inner circle, to such an extent that in some ways he knew more about her business dealings and associates than she did. Where the skeletons were buried.

  She didn’t know whether to curse or cry, but finally she reined in her emotions and called her bodyguard, Carlos Ramirez, on the ship’s phone. “We have a crewman by the name of Walter Glass.”

  “He’s an engineering mate.”

  “Bring him to the main salon in ten minutes,” Anne Marie said. “And bring a flashlight, a pair of kitchen shears, and your pistol. With your silencer, I don’t necessarily want to alert the crew.”

  “Will we need Willy?” Ramirez asked. William Harcourt was Anne Marie’s other bodyguard.