Gianni leaned back in his desk chair, staring through the window at the yachts moving languorously in the distance. From the start, he’d understood the power that came with being a trusted source of information for the two most paranoid, power-mad people he’d ever met. Croyden held the kind of massive financial and political clout that could make anything happen and make it happen fast, but the power Greg held was exponentially more impressive. Should he ever get angry enough, Greg would be able to crush anything Croyden had planned.
At first, Gianni had tried not to let his position go to his head and had focused instead on maintaining an exquisitely delicate balancing act. But after spending time outside the tight orbit of Greg’s insular world, and gaining entrée to Croyden’s expansive one, Gianni had become annoyed at the sheer scope of Greg’s ego and narcissism; his single-minded and increasingly vicious determination to get his own way; and his belief that he knew better than Croyden Flint what the company should do with the installation it had spent $250 million building and bringing on line. Greg was becoming a liability to the company and to Gianni’s personal goal of becoming first indispensable to Croyden and, eventually, his successor.
Shortly after his arrival in the C-suite, Gianni had been made aware of the firm’s unique relationship—dangerous, deeply intimate, and of long duration—with the Pentagon. It had been initiated by Croyden’s grandfather, who had founded the company; Gianni recognized immediately that it was a natural and mutually beneficial fit.
As a private company with virtually limitless resources, Flint could spend freely on research and development, unencumbered by congressional oversight. Offshore, the corporation had even more freedom to do as it pleased. But there were some things that even money couldn’t buy, and in those instances, Flint turned to its five-sided friend for assistance. When lucrative regulatory, diplomatic, and intelligence favors were bestowed, Flint was happy to oblige the Pentagon by providing custom-made weather, perfectly crafted to resolve a vexing situation.
These days, Gianni was the man who made it happen. He was the man who took the meetings, who made the deals, who decided if what the Pentagon wanted would help Flint’s bottom line—or hurt that of its competitors. It had been a heady and rewarding few months; being a puppetmaster was a rush beyond description.
But then he’d had to turn Admiral Medev down a few times in succession. The decisions were warranted and Croyden had backed him up: the rewards weren’t clear, the risks too high, the consequences unfavorable. In hindsight, those refusals had to be what set into motion the situation he now faced.
Gianni had been speechless with anger when the denied weather events happened where and when the Pentagon had requested. They weren’t coincidences—Nature didn’t deal in coincidences like that, with pinpoint accuracy and impeccable timing. Croyden had demanded explanations. Gianni could offer him only two scenarios: the Pentagon had retooled HAARP to do what TESLA could do or had done an end run around him and had gone straight to Greg.
It didn’t take long to figure out which was the more likely scenario.
Gianni had no illusions about Greg Simpson. The man was insane enough to take TESLA down in a blaze of irrational fury. He had the intellectual capability to do it. He had the technological and logistical means to do it.
It hadn’t taken much to convince Croyden that Greg had to be shut down. It had been more difficult to get Croyden to agree to bring Tess on board as Greg’s replacement. Ultimately, Croyden had accepted his word that Tess had qualities that would better serve Flint’s purpose.
For instance, Tess would never willingly be the means to the military’s ends. Despite owing her very existence to the Pentagon’s war machine, she was a peacenik rather than a war hawk; her anti-war, anti-weapon stance was her biggest, probably her only, blind spot. Gianni was sure he could work it to Flint’s advantage.
The sharp bleat of the phone on his desk pulled Gianni out of his reverie. He stopped to rub a brisk hand over his face before taking the call. He’d been staring at the water for too long. All that sparkle had made his eyes ache.
The small screen on the desk unit showed that the call was from Croyden.
“Damn it, you’re on vacation. Can’t you just disengage?” Gianni muttered before picking up the handset. “Yes, sir?”
“Any news?” the old man growled. He’d been in a foul mood ever since hearing that TESLA had gone dark.
“No, sir. The secure signals are still pinging and there’s no evidence of distress or a disturbance at the site. The satellite images are extremely clear, sir. I’m concerned, but not worried. I’m sure it’s just a glitch.”
Best not to mention the enormous pulses TESLA’s phased array had emitted that more than likely were the cause of the flogging of Mexico City.
“Was Simpson there when it happened?”
“No, sir. The plane had cleared the airspace about twenty minutes earlier.”
“Glitch, my ass. If Simpson wasn’t there when it happened, then he probably caused it. Have you heard from Tess?”
Gianni snapped upright at Croyden’s comment, which echoed an earlier thought of his own. “Just the one time, sir, right after the plane took off with Greg aboard. It’s on track to land in Capetown on schedule.”
“Can you get word to the pilot?”
“Not at the moment. There are dead zones—”
“I know about the dead zones, damn it. How much longer ’til we can get in touch?”
“At least an hour.”
“I want Simpson in custody the whole time they’re on the ground. Until he’s standing in my office, I don’t want him to so much as piss without someone standing next to him. Understand?”
“It’s already arranged.”
“What do we do about the installation? How long do we wait?”
Gianni went still. “Sir?”
“Before we send people down there. An extraction team,” Croyden barked.
“I don’t think there’s any reason to—”
“No reason to what? Panic? Intervene? Damn it, you’re the one who convinced me he’s gone rogue. Now you think that because the ‘all clear’ signal is still pinging, everything is fine? You don’t think Simpson is smart enough to keep that going? God only knows what’s going on down there.”
Perching on the corner of his desk, Gianni studied his shoes—buttery brown Italian calf by Perry Ercolino—and tried to keep the exasperation out of his voice. “No, sir, it’s not that. I strongly believe—I know—that anyone at the installation could disable that signal. If there’s trouble, they’re meant to.”
“And if they’re all in cahoots with him?”
“I can’t see that happening. It would be against their best interests to keep TESLA off line.”
“Then maybe they’re already dead.”
Gianni felt a chill shudder through him. “Greg Simpson isn’t homicidal, Mr. Flint.”
“Tell that to the Afghans,” Croyden snapped. “What he did is mass murder.”
Coming from someone who knows all about it. But it’s different when it’s profit-motivated, isn’t it, Croyden?
Croyden cleared his throat and continued. “I’m touching down in Park City in about an hour. Call me when TESLA is back on line. I don’t care what time it is. Tell Fred and Tim to call me when they get off that plane. I want to talk to that lying, two-faced sack of shit Simpson.”
Gianni let out a long, silent breath. “I’ll take care of it personally, sir. Enjoy your weekend.”
* * *
“Got a minute?”
Nik looked up from his screen to see Ron standing in his office doorway, looking unusually grim.
“Sure. Come on in.”
The younger man came in and carefully closed the door behind him.
“You look serious.”
“Seriously perplexed.”
“With something other than the comms problem?”
“You could say that.”
“Sounds ominous.” Le
aning back in his chair, Nik folded his arms across his chest and met Ron’s gaze. “What could be more important than getting us back in touch with the real world?”
“An impending change in focus.”
“Go on.”
Ron leaned his back against the door and adopted a wide-legged stance, as if bracing himself. The expression on his face went from a deep frown to a black scowl. “One of the test beds began running a brand-new set of algorithms, a series of simultaneous bursts that will run consecutively. It’s bumped everything else off that machine.”
The front legs of Nik’s chair came down on the floor with a thud. “Say that again.”
“You heard me right the first time,” Ron said darkly.
Nik rubbed his unshaven jaw, giving himself a second to digest this. “Simultaneous and consecutive? So that’s multiple parallels? Like a relay race?”
Ron nodded.
“Simultaneous and consecutive,” Nik murmured, then looked up. “Anything else?”
“Multiple locations. It doesn’t make much sense to me. I thought you might have some insight. I asked Pam and Etienne to look at it. I didn’t want to alert the entire room.”
“Did you tell Tess?”
“I came to you first.”
“She’s not going to like that.”
“I’m not doing an end run, Nik, I came to you because I thought you might know something about it. I’ve been doing this stuff for years and I’ve never seen anything like this code. It—” He stopped and shook his head. “This is going to sound kind of nuts, but it looks like the code is trying to anticipate system capacity and estimate response times, only not the way we usually do that. This is more like ‘here a blast, there a blast, everywhere—’”
Nik held up a hand. “Got it. No nursery rhymes. What made you look at the test beds?”
“I was going to take them off line so they couldn’t be usurped,” Ron answered drily. “Oh, the irony.”
“Who else is on this?”
“Tommy Casey.”
Nik was about to ask another question when a quick knock on the door stopped him. Ron pulled it open and instantly a dark, ponytailed head appeared in the widening crack.
“Hey, guys, the external downlink just came back.”
Nik looked at Ron, who mirrored his consternation, then shifted his gaze back to Nangpal. “The downlink? Only the downlink?”
He nodded. “Yes, but not everything. Some things seem to be blocked, or scrambled. Weirdest thing I’ve ever seen.”
“What do we have?” Nik asked, getting to his feet.
“Data streams from NOAA and NASA. Email. And CNN.”
Nik stopped short and stared at him. “Did you say CNN? Is this some kind of joke?”
Nangpal shook his head. “I couldn’t make this stuff up, Nik. Come and see it for yourself.”
“I’ll do that,” he said, and lifted the walkie-talkie from his belt. “Tess? Please meet me in the sandbox.” He let go of the button.
“Nik, I’m already here and waiting for you.” Her voice was calm and cool, and Nik cringed inside.
Damn. Scratch one more demerit onto today’s tally.
“She wasn’t in there when I came in here,” Ron said quickly.
Nik nodded and rose to his feet, his face betraying nothing. “I’ll be right there,” he said into the unit, then released the transmit button. “Okay, boys, let’s go.”
* * *
Greg sat in the gaping tunnel of the Ilyushin’s fuselage as it roared over the Southern Ocean, both delighted with himself—his plans were well under way by now—and livid with Tess Beauchamp for surviving the trip south. The only part of the situation that made him smile was the knowledge that Tess would be the cause of all that was about to happen to the world in the next twenty-four hours.
Flint—and Tess—would pay a steep price for their interference with his life’s work. It was more than likely that Tess had already begun to pay her price: by now, she was certainly an orphan, although she wouldn’t have been informed of that yet.
But Mexico was just a test, merely the first place he would show his muscle. Whatever else happened would depend on Tess herself. If she were as clever as people thought she was, she would absorb the lesson quickly and realize that behaving like some sort of righteous prig, taking actions beyond the scope of her abilities, was causing all the harm. If she did that—which was unlikely—Mexico would be the only location harmed. But if she chose to try to elevate herself to his level, if she tried to outsmart him or outthink him and impede the progress of his plan, a more distressing outcome—global devastation on an unequalled scale—was assured. The blame for it would be squarely on her shoulders as the neophyte stepping into a giant’s shoes.
He let his head rest against the wall of the plane and closed his eyes. His dreams would be sweet indeed.
CHAPTER 17
Spring in Connecticut had been fabulous so far.
Swards of green so lush and verdant that they seemed artificial stretched in all directions, sliced here and there by discreet ribbons of freshly sealed asphalt and punctuated by majestic trees. In the country club’s lavish clubhouse, foursomes of men—some quiet, sipping coffee, some already gregarious and loud and draining their third screwdriver—milled around waiting to be called to the first tee. The golf course was filling up in a steady, orderly fashion, as expected at 8 A.M. on a rare, unseasonably gorgeous Friday in late April. It was the boys’ club ritual. The office, the board room, could wait; the golf course, and the deals to be made on it, could not.
As one of the oldest, most expensive country clubs on the East Coast, the Warrington Country Club boasted the most macho, monochromatic, and monied membership in the region. The combined net worth of the morning’s players exceeded the GDP of nearly a third of the world’s countries. Most of the men had grown up on the course and the members considered themselves a family, almost; all of them had either inherited their membership or had married into it. Women could only inherit memberships after the death of a member spouse—making Warrington widows a scarce and precious commodity.
Membership was strictly reserved for the bluebloods: those gilded personages whose distant ancestors had been of the ruling classes of socially acceptable countries, whose less distant ancestors had ruled the free market, and whose families had for decades summered in Newport, wintered in Palm Beach, and spent the intervening months on New York City’s Upper East Side with weekends idled away in Greenwich.
Castlelike Warrington Hall sat amid old-growth-studded acres of lush lawn that ended where the Long Island Sound began. There was no pier or marina, just a picturesque seawall topped with formidably jutting balconies that effectively precluded any approach to the grounds via the water. Members knew to drive in through the imposing gate, or arrive—appropriately clad—by way of the groomed riding trails.
The club made neither excuses for its policies nor exceptions to them. No one bought their way into Warrington. Not the young lions of Wall Street (too tacky), not politicians (too slick), not celebrities (too much trouble). The lone occasion upon which someone might be considered for a buy-in was if there was a large capital expenditure in need of funding. Then the membership committee was only too happy to quietly dangle a much-coveted membership, with its breathtaking initiation fee and annual assessments that were nearly as precipitous, in front of an eager outsider. For the privilege, the committee would take his money and even tolerate his presence, but it was understood among the members that no one would go out of their way to make the newcomer feel welcome.
It went without saying that Croyden Flint was a Warrington member; his grandfather had been one of the club’s founders. And it was only by the grace of his well-funded and duly worshipped God that Croyden, accompanied by his children and grandchildren, was in his plane and on his way to his home in Utah that day rather than toiling on the still-pristine Alister MacKenzie-designed course.
Foursomes—all men; women weren’t allowed on
the course until eleven—were called at twenty-minute intervals. The congenial laughter and conversation deadened to a reverent hush at the tee and didn’t resume until the pairs were in their carts and headed down the velvet fairway.
Not a man present cared about the nor’easter that had been battering the Atlantic coast from Bar Harbor to well south of Boston all week; there was no immediate risk to their happiness other than an annoying and growing accumulation of clouds. Their cottages in Nantucket and yachts in Newport were insured and, thus, didn’t merit a thought.
By late morning, the Hall and its sweeping terrace that overlooked the eighteenth hole were packed with lolling families. Dowagers sat in the shade wearing Lilly Pulitzer while trophy wives clustered in the sun wearing as little as possible. Well out of maternal earshot, a battalion of imported nannies managed the toddling heirs.
The course remained full despite the lessening weather. The uninterrupted early sunshine had given way to huge puffs of picture-perfect clouds, and frisky breezes were playing occasional havoc with the longest drives. As the population on the greens and fairways, at the pool, and on the terrace and tennis courts had increased through midday, so had the wind, building steadily and slowly from light zephyrs to obnoxious gusts. Golfers on the front nine, just setting out—the mothers, wives, and daughters of the earlier players—were becoming hesitant. Most, though, pushed on rather than appear timid or weak in front of their peers and rivals. It was just weather, after all.
And then, within moments, their golden world changed. Clouds rolled in more rapidly than anyone had ever witnessed, and obscured the sun. Thick, heavy, and ominous, they looked like sculpted snowdrifts in motion under an eerie moonlit sky. A thousand shades of gray swirled dizzily overhead like a communal hallucination. Even the risk-takers tallied their scores and headed for the clubhouse.
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