The Trikon Deception

by Ben Bova

  Sir Derek traced esses in the air with a delicate finger as he speed-read several pages of typescript. On a shelf above the wet bar, brandy lapped gently in a Tyrone crystal decanter. Harry Meade licked his lips.

  “Splendid,” said Sir Derek. He removed a fountain pen from his jacket pocket and drew neat circles around certain words on the pages. “This touching conversation between Chakra and his wife contains the key to neutralizing two particularly dastardly toxic-waste molecules. Hisashi Oyamo has no inkling how intelligent and accommodating he can be.”

  Sir Derek hummed gaily as he continued extricating coded words from the transcript. Harry Meade pressed his face against the dark window glass. Within his pale reflection, there was only the barest hint of the Berkshire Downs. The island of hair left by his receding hairline looked scraggly. He wiped it with the palm of his hand.

  Sir Derek’s humming stopped like the disconnect tone of an old English phone box. Harry Meade had only a general knowledge of the complex code Chakra Ramsanjawi employed to smuggle biochemical information out of Trikon Station over unsecured phone lines. But he knew enough to have recognized that the latter portion of the conversation was devoted to Hugh O’Donnell. Sir Derek was reading that portion now; he did not appear happy.

  Meade returned his attention to the window. But instead of searching for landmarks in the dim countryside or features on his lined face, he concentrated on the reflection of Sir Derek flipping through the transcript. After several minutes, Sir Derek cleared his throat.

  “Ring up the lab and transmit these pages posthaste,” he said as he tapped the first portion of the transcript into a uniform pile on the knee-high table.

  Harry Meade scuttled off the jumpseat and took the pages in hand. Bending over double in a space tailored to Sir Derek’s proportions, he opened the jumpseat adjacent to the limousine’s communications center. The Lancashire lab’s fax number was stored in the machine’s memory. Harry secured a connection quickly. As he fed the pages into the machine, he cast an occasional glance at the window. Sir Derek was again busy circling words with his pen.

  Sir Derek abruptly dropped the pages onto the table and got up from the leather couch. He was so tiny that he could almost stand erect inside the Corniche. Leaning forward over the mahogany table, he took the Tyrone decanter and a snifter from the shelf and poured a shot of brandy. Then he sat again facing Harry Meade, the snifter twinkling in his hands, the starched cuffs of his white shirt perfectly placed on his wrists, his booted heels pressed together on the exquisite Persian carpet, barely swaying as the Rolls negotiated a sweeping curve.

  “What have you learned about Hugh O’Donnell?” he asked.

  Meade heard the static that seemed to buzz between his ears whenever Sir Derek confronted him with the slightest bit of displeasure. What was the latest word on O’Donnell? He felt his fingers involuntarily gripping the lip of the jumpseat as he tried to gather his thoughts.

  “We hacked into the computerized personnel files of Simi Bioengineering,” said Meade. “It doesn’t tell us anything we didn’t already know. He graduated from the University of Oregon in 1984 and has been working for Simi since ’96.”

  “No previous or intermediate employment listed?”

  “None,” said Harry Meade, suddenly uncertain of the facts he knew to be accurate. “Just a date of birth.”

  Sir Derek daintily nipped at his drink. Harry Meade imagined the warmth of the brandy bathing his own tongue and throat.

  “Chakra is very concerned about O’Donnell,” said Sir Derek. “It seems that no one knows his purpose on the station. He has been given his own lab in the American module, which he keeps locked at all times. And he appears to be at odds with the American Trikon personnel. In fact, his only friend seems to be the station commander.”

  “Doesn’t Roberts know anything?” Meade asked.

  “Roberts?” said Sir Derek. “Oh yes, the gullible young man who has fallen into Chakra’s clutches. Even he doesn’t know anything, and he is supposedly O’Donnell’s technician.”

  “Maybe O’Donnell isn’t a spy,” said Meade.

  Sir Derek treated the comment as if it did not deserve acknowledgment. He finished his brandy and returned to the bar for a second tiny shot.

  “How rude of me,” he muttered. He placed a paper cup beside his snifter and poured in an equal amount.

  “Chakra has a lead,” said Sir Derek as he handed the paper cup to Harry. “Two to be exact. A Los Angeles lawyer with the inappropriate name of Pancho Weinstein and a woman named Stacey. She is O’Donnell’s ex-girlfriend and is apparently in league with the lawyer against him.”

  The thick smell of brandy wafted past Harry Meade’s nose. He knew it was impolite to drink before Sir Derek invited him.

  “O’Donnell is aloof,” said Sir Derek, leaning comfortably back in the couch. “Chakra needs to know something about him, preferably something personal. We all know how persuasive Chakra can be when he knows a person’s secrets.”

  Meade shuddered; he knew only too well.

  Sir Derek abruptly raised his crystal snifter.

  “To Trikon,” he said. “The finest multinational effort Great Britain never joined.”

  Meade muttered in assent and knocked back his tiny shot in one gulp. The matter was settled. It was his job to invade O’Donnell’s personal life.

  Sir Derek flicked the button of the intercom located in the armrest of his couch.

  “Turn around. Heathrow.”

  The Corniche immediately decelerated, made a sweeping turn to the right, and resumed cruising speed.

  “I hope you are not wearing long underwear,” Sir Derek said to Meade. “You are leaving for Southern California.”

  In the dead middle of the sleep shift, Dan Tighe followed the dancing circle of a flashlight through the darkened rumpus room. Near the back wall, not far from the bonsai, Russell Cramer bobbed rhythmically in a sleep restraint. His wrists and ankles still were bound by duct tape and he had been drugged into bovine placidity by Lorraine Renoir.

  Lorraine. Dan could not think of her without his stomach tightening. She was the exact opposite of his ex-wife: well groomed, subdued, coolly efficient in her approach to life’s routines. He had been attracted to her from the moment they had met at the Cape. But he kept his feelings hidden, like the embers of a campfire at dawn. His bitter divorce and the aftermath of constant bickering had left him uncertain of his ability to understand the female psyche. He denied the signs of mutual attraction and retreated behind his mantle of authority whenever she threatened personal contact.

  Now he was disturbed by the memory of Lorraine and Kurt Jaeckle casting sidelong glances at each other while he questioned them about Russell Cramer. Obviously, they shared much more than knowledge of Cramer’s gathering madness. Something passed between them right before his very eyes. Dan felt trapped in a funny little box of his own creation. How could he undo six months of rejecting her without looking like a petulant child?

  Dan rolled up one of Cramer’s sleeves and trained the flashlight on the inside of his elbow. Despite his wide hips, Cramer had thin arms with remarkably prominent veins. Dan pulled a syringe out of his pocket and, holding the flashlight with his mouth, attached a fresh needle from an antiseptic wrapper. He stuck a vein on his first try. Cramer moaned softly in his sleep. Dan drew out ten cc’s of blood, then carefully removed the needle. A thread of blood spun in the beam of the flashlight. He blotted it with a piece of gauze and pressed an adhesive bandage to the hole in Cramer’s vein before rolling down the sleeve.

  Dan sailed toward the connecting tunnel, wondering whom the hell he could trust to analyze Cramer’s blood.

  28 AUGUST 1998

  ATLANTA

  The space probe Magellan, launched by NASA in May, 1989, was principally devoted to studying the surface geology of Venus. Its findings, however, suggested a dismal future for Planet Earth unless physical processes already set in motion can be reversed.

  Althoug
h they are astronomical twins, Earth and Venus are environmental opposites. The atmosphere of Venus, composed of carbon dioxide (96%), nitrogen (3%), and trace amounts of other gases such as sulfur dioxide, is completely inhospitable to life. Earth’s atmosphere, of course, is composed of nitrogen (79%), oxygen (20%), and less than 1% of carbon dioxide, water vapor, and other trace gases.

  Most astronomers agree that the atmospheres of both planets were once composed of carbon dioxide, water vapor, and nitrogen. The condensation of Earth’s water vapor dissolved the atmospheric carbon dioxide and trapped it in carbonate rocks. As a result, the proportion of oxygen increased to a level capable of sustaining life. Prior to the Magellan Project, the accepted view was that Venus’s proximity to the sun prevented condensation of water vapor and the planet remained a “hothouse” of carbon dioxide and sulfur dioxide. Magellan has forced a reassessment of this view.

  Geological data now suggests that significant amounts of water once existed on the surface of Venus. Therefore, Venus—with its surface temperatures of nearly 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit, atmospheric pressures 90 times that of Earth, and perpetual, dense cloud cover—does not represent a divergent development but a continuation of processes already occurring on Earth.

  The small decade-by-decade increases in the amount of carbon dioxide and sulfuric acid (acid rain) in Earth’s atmosphere must be corrected. // not, there is little doubt that Earth may one day become the environmental twin of Venus.

  —Excerpt from the introduction to “A Chemical Assessment of Ocean Pollution and Its Long-Term Effects on Marine Flora”

  “Aaron, Aaron.” Ed Yablon smacked his forehead with the palm of his hand, sending a crack through the cold dry air of his office. He swiveled his chair so that he faced the window, turning his back to Aaron Weiss. Twilight steamed over Atlanta. A thin band of dirty orange was all that remained of sunset. Ghostly hulks of skyscrapers were dappled with yellow office lights.

  Yablon could see the reflection of his own office in the tinted glass of the window. His cigar stub glowed weakly, like the sun through fog. Weiss paced on the far side of Yablon’s desk like a cat contemplating a leap from a ledge. He twirled his Donegal walking hat from hand to hand. Beyond Weiss, Zeke Tucker was wedged into the only section of couch not littered with papers and boxes. Yablon couldn’t understand how the equable cameraman had tolerated Weiss for seventeen years. He himself had been the reporter’s bureau chief for a mere three and he was certain the experience would launch him toward early retirement, if not a coronary.

  “You like the whale story,” said Weiss. He sailed his hat toward a coat rack where a faded cardigan sweater dangled limply. The hat bounced between two hooks, then landed on Tucker’s lap. Tucker brushed it to the floor.

  “I like the whale story,” said Yablon. “I love the whale story. But I don’t see the connection between dead whales and space stations.”

  Weiss’s image disappeared behind the desk, then rose again into view, hat on head.

  “Am I talking English, Zeke?” he asked the cameraman. “I mean, I thought I explained the connection.”

  Yablon slowly rotated his chair until he was facing Weiss. He leaned his elbows onto the desk and let his head hang between his hands.

  “Tell me again.” He spoke softly in an attempt to appear calm. Blue smoke curled toward the ceiling and bits of ash drifted down to his lap.

  Weiss plopped into the creaking leather-covered chair in front of the desk. Leaning forward intently, he said, “Forty-six whales have died since the last week in July, and these are only the ones we know about.” He swiveled the chair to glance at Tucker and then looked back at Yablon. When each nodded in mute agreement, he continued. “We also know that the diet of these whales consists of plankton.” Another pause for more nods. “And we know that they died of starvation. Therefore, the level of plankton in the oceans has dropped.”

  “Wait a second,” said Yablon. “There’s no official word that those whales died of starvation.”

  “The people I talked to believe they did.”

  “Your people? English-lit students working at Sea World for the summer?”

  “I had to start somewhere,” said Weiss. “And you forgot Helga Knuttsen.”

  “Another fine example of the scientific mainstream,” said Yablon. “What about Ted Adamski? Why didn’t you start with him?”

  “We aren’t on speaking terms.”

  “He thinks the whales are suffering from an unidentified virus,” said Yablon.

  “Ted Adamski is a paid debunker of the truth,” said Weiss.

  Yablon smiled obscenely. There was no reason to mention the old court battle between Adamski and Weiss. The smile said it all.

  “He’s still a paid debunker of the truth,” Weiss insisted.

  “All right,” said Yablon. “Let’s suppose the whales did starve to death. What makes this any more than a typical August, slow news story?”

  Weiss looked at Tucker and rolled his eyes as if asking heaven what he had done to be cursed with working for such an imbecile. Tucker shrugged.

  “Right whales eat phytoplankton. Little plants,” Weiss added sarcastically. “But those little plants contribute as much oxygen to the atmosphere as all the rain forests in Africa and South America. In other words, Ed: The story isn’t one of no plankton, no right whales. The story is no plankton, no oxygen, and no oxygen, no fucking human race!”

  Yablon let out a genuinely amused laugh. He leaned back in his chair and puffed smoke out of both sides of his mouth.

  “Who told you that one?” he said.

  “Peter Karlis. He’s a professor at Colorado State University.”

  “That’s great.” Yablon’s laugh grew heartier. “You want this network to broadcast a story that sounds damned alarming, if not outright apocalyptic, on the say-so of a whale expert located in the goddamn Rocky Mountains?”

  “He isn’t a whale expert,” said Weiss. “He’s a meteorologist who once worked for NASA. He’s done lots of studies on the composition of the atmosphere fifty, a hundred, five hundred years in the future. He has computer models showing the depletion of the oxygen supply over different time frames. One of the factors involves a decrease in the total land covered by trees. The other is a decrease in the amount of phytoplankton. He tells me that the rate of plankton decrease already exceeds his worst-case scenario. The whale deaths are scaring the shit out of him.”

  Yablon turned back to the window. The orange light had completely left the sky. Atlanta glowed a sickly, muddy yellow in the humid air.

  “If you think I will run a story based on Professor Karlis’s doomsday predications, you are sadly mistaken,” he said. “This is a responsible news bureau, not an electronic tabloid.”

  Zeke Tucker let out a long, plaintive sigh. He had warned Weiss that Yablon would be dead-set against running a story on Weiss’s latest discovery. It looked as if he had been right.

  But Weiss wasn’t finished.

  “Trikon International is working on a secret project with environmental ramifications,” he said. “Maybe they have foreseen this problem. Maybe they caused it.”

  “Our average viewer doesn’t give a good goddamn about Trikon,” said Yablon.

  “We know that.”

  “But the average viewer goddamn cares about the whales. We know that, too,” said Weiss. “Look, I can’t prove there is a connection between Trikon and the whale deaths. But I feel it. Trikon’s CEO, Fabio Bianco, is going to Trikon Station on the aerospace plane. I don’t think it’s a coincidence. I want to be on that flight.”

  Yablon pulled the cigar out of his mouth and studied it closely. Suddenly, Zeke Tucker started to laugh.

  “What the hell’s so funny, Zeke?” Weiss snapped.

  “You on the space plane?” Tucker struggled to form words around his laughter. “You don’t even have a driver’s license because you don’t like cars.”

  “You’re being a real pal, Zeke.”

  Yablon’s c
hair squealed as he slowly rocked back and forth. Tucker’s laughter died away into stifled snorts of amusement.

  “Fabio Bianco’s going up to Trikon Station?” Yablon muttered. “Are you sure?”

  “I have it on the best authority. His personal secretary when he’s in New York was once a big fan of mine. She told me about the arrangements.”

  “Did she say why he was going?”

  “She couldn’t be specific except to say that he was taking over control of a research project. Now the way I see it—”

  “Shut up, Weiss.” Yablon leaned back and stared at his cigar. “I wonder. Bianco needs a traveling drugstore with him wherever he goes. And now he’s going into space. Hmmm.”

  “It can’t be a coincidence. The whale deaths. Bianco taking charge. There must be a connection.”

  “I heard you the first time,” said Yablon. He looked Weiss dead in the eyes for the first time. “Two seats on the space plane are out of the question. We don’t have that kind of pull.”

  “Arrange with TBC for the use of their transmitter on Trikon Station. I can handle a Minicam myself,” said Weiss.

  “You’re going by yourself?” Tucker wailed.

  “Sorry, Zeke.”

  “You’re going on the space plane and to Trikon Station without me?” Tucker seemed stunned.

  “I don’t like it any more than you do,” said Weiss. “Yeah, but you’re doing it anyway.”

  “This is big, Zeke.”

  “So I’ve been hearing.”

  Russell Cramer was running out of time. Rather, Kurt Jaeckle’s efforts at reversing Tighe’s decision to send Cramer Earthside were running out of time. Tighe refused to discuss the issue. Period. End of story. So Jaeckle turned his attention elsewhere. He spent an entire afternoon on his private comm unit lobbying everyone he could contact at NASA and ESA. Tighe was acting precipitously, he said. The project would be severely hampered without Cramer; he was the Mars Project’s chief biochemist.