Polar Shift

by Clive Cussler

  The yard around the store was cluttered with empty bomb casings, turrets, office furniture and electronic gear. Inside the big warehouse there was aisle after aisle of shelves, all piled high with obsolete electronic gear, such as Geiger counters, oscilloscopes and circuit boards. The Trouts asked the cashier if he knew Frobisher. He led them to an aisle where a man was talking to himself as he rummaged through a stack of control panels.

  “Look at this stuff,” Frobisher said after they had introduced themselves. “This board probably cost a month’s wages of the average taxpayer back in the fifties. Now it’s junk, except to a few tech nuts like me.”

  Frobisher was a big man, over six feet tall, with a barrel chest that flowed into a belly that hung over his wide, military belt. He wore a yellow plaid shirt that would have hurt the eyes even if it hadn’t clashed with the red suspenders that struggled to hold his pants up under the weight of his belly. The pants were tucked into knee-high, rubber fisherman’s boots, although the day was desert dry. His thick, pure white hair was cut in bangs that hung over rectangular, horn-rimmed glasses.

  Frobisher paid for the control board, and led the way out of the store to a dusty and dented Chrysler K-car. He told the Trouts to call him “Froby,” and suggested that they follow him to his house where the Kovacs Society had its headquarters. As the vehicles headed out of town, Gamay turned to Paul, who was at the wheel.

  “Does our new friend Froby remind you of anyone?”

  Trout nodded. “A tall and loud Captain Kangaroo.”

  “Kurt is going to owe us after this one,” Gamay said with a sigh. “I’d rather get sucked down into a whirlpool.”

  The road went higher, winding through the hills above the town. Houses became fewer and farther between. The sedan turned up a short gravel drive, bouncing like a rubber ball on its worn-out shock absorbers, and parked in front of a doll-sized adobe house. The yard was filled with electronic junk, resembling a smaller version of the Black Hole.

  As they walked the path between piles of rusting rocket casings and electronic housings, Froby waved his arm expansively.

  “The labs have an auction every month to sell off their stuff. Guess I don’t have to tell you that I’m at every sale,” Froby said.

  “Guess you don’t,” Gamay said with an indulgent smile.

  They went into the house, which was surprisingly well ordered in contrast to the haphazard nature of its surplus landscaping. Frobisher ushered them into a compact living room furnished with institutional leather-and-chrome office furniture. A metal desk and two metal filing cabinets were pushed against a wall.

  “Everything in this house comes from the national lab,” Frobisher bragged. He noticed Trout looking at a RADIOACTIVE warning sign on the wall and gave him a horsy grin. “Don’t worry. That’s there to cover a hole in the wall. As president of the Lazlo Kovacs Society, I’d like to welcome you to the world headquarters. Meet our founder.” He pointed to an old photograph that hung on the wall next to the sign. It showed a fine-featured man in his forties with dark hair and intense eyes.

  “How many members does the society have?” Gamay said.

  “One. You’re looking at him. As you can see, it’s a very exclusive organization.”

  “I noticed,” Gamay said with a sweet smile.

  Trout gave his wife a look that said he was bolting for the door at the first opportunity. She was busy scanning the floor-to-ceiling bookshelves that filled a good percentage of the wall space. Her female eye for detail had seen what Trout had not: judging from their titles, the books were on highly technical and arcane subjects. If Froby understood even a fraction of his reading material, he was a very intelligent human being.

  “Please have a seat,” Frobisher said. He sat in the desk chair and swiveled around to face his guests.

  Trout sat down next to Gamay. He had already decided that the best way to end the conversation was to begin it. “Thank you for seeing us,” he said as a prelude to saying good-bye.

  “My pleasure,” Froby beamed. “To be honest, I don’t encounter much interest in the Kovacs Society these days. This is a big deal. Where are you folks from?”

  “Washington,” Trout said.

  His baby blue eyes lit up. “An even bigger deal! You’ll have to sign my guest book. Now, tell me, how did you come to be interested in Lazlo Kovacs?”

  “We’re both scientists with the National Underwater and Marine Agency,” Gamay said. “A colleague of ours at NUMA told us about Kovacs’s work, and said there was a society here in Los Alamos that had the most complete files on the subject. The national lab’s library has very little on Kovacs.”

  “That bunch over there thinks he was a quack,” Frobisher said with disgust.

  “We got that impression,” Gamay said.

  “Let me tell you about the society. I used to work as a physicist with the national laboratory. I played cards with a bunch of my fellow scientists, and invariably the work of Nikola Tesla came up. Some of us used to argue that Kovacs was overshadowed by Tesla’s flamboyant style and deserved more credit for his discoveries than he had been given. We named our poker group the Kovacs Society.”

  Trout smiled, but he was groaning inwardly as he thought about the time being wasted. He cleared his throat.

  “Your society was named after a poker group?”

  “Yes. We thought about calling it Poker Flats. But some of the fellows were married and thought a discussion group would be good cover to put their wives off.”

  “So you never did discuss the Kovacs Theorems?” Gamay said.

  “Yes, of course we did. We were bad poker players but good scientists.” He reached over to a shelf on his desk and pulled out two booklets, which he handed to the Trouts. “We ran off these copies of the original article in which Kovacs discussed his revolutionary theories. This is an abstract of a conference on his work held here about twenty years ago. It was mostly a dump-on-Kovacs affair. They’re on sale for $4.95 apiece. We’ve got biographies you can buy for a little more, to cover the cost of printing.”

  Paul and Gamay perused one of the booklets. The dense text was written in Hungarian, and was heavy on long, incomprehensible mathematical equations. Trout gave his wife a “That’s it” grin and leaned forward, preparing to launch his tall body from the chair and out the door. Sensing his impatience, Gamay touched his arm.

  “The books I see on the shelves are highly technical, and you said you were a physicist with the lab, so we’d value your opinion. I hope you don’t take this the wrong way, but you must know that there has been a great deal of controversy over Kovacs and his theories. Was Kovacs nothing but a brilliant quack? Or did he have something?”

  “He definitely had something.”

  “But he never proved it by experiment, and refused to release details of his findings to the public.”

  “That’s because he knew the information was too dangerous.”

  Gamay smiled. “Forgive me, but that sounds like an excuse to hide his failure.”

  “Not at all. It was a respect for mankind.”

  Trout sensed that Gamay had a plan, and went along with it.

  “If he cared about mankind, why did he work for the Nazis?” Trout said.

  “He had to work for the Nazis. They threatened to kill his family.”

  “I understand that’s exactly what happened,” Gamay said. “It’s all such a shame, don’t you think? The man’s wife and children died for this.” She slapped her knee with the brochure. “An empty theory about deadly extra-low-frequency electromagnetic waves.”

  Frobisher’s pale cheeks turned the color of boiled lobster. After a moment, the frown on his face dissolved into his big-toothed smile.

  “That was a skillful job of baiting me.” He looked from face to face. “Now, please tell me who you really are.”

  Gamay glanced at Paul, who nodded his head.

  “We’re with NUMA’s Special Assignments Team,” she said. “Would you like to see some ID?”<
br />
  “I believe you. What are a couple of people from the world’s largest ocean studies organization doing in Los Alamos, far from the Atlantic and the Pacific?”

  “We think that the key that will unlock the mystery of some unusual ocean disturbances can be found here in New Mexico.”

  He furrowed his brow. “What sort of disturbances?”

  “Whirlpools and giant waves big enough to sink ships.”

  “Please excuse me, but I still don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “One of the NUMA scientists we talked to suggested that the disturbances could have been caused by disruptions in the earth’s electromagnetic flow. He brought up the Kovacs Theorems.”

  “Go on,” Frobisher said.

  Taking turns, they told him about the ocean disturbances, and the speculation that they were man-made.

  “Dear God,” Frobisher said, his voice hoarse. “It’s happening.”

  “What’s happening?” Trout said.

  “NUMA or not, you’ve blundered into something much larger than anything you could imagine.”

  “We do that a lot,” Trout said. “It’s part of the NUMA job description.”

  Frobisher stared at Trout and Gamay. Their calm expressions brought him back to earth, and he got a grip on himself. He went into the kitchen and returned with three cold bottles of beer, which he offered around.

  “We’ve told you who we are,” Gamay said with her beguiling smile. “Now perhaps you’d tell us who you are.”

  “Fair enough.” He gulped down half his beer. “Let me start with a little history. Most everyone knows about the letter Einstein wrote President Roosevelt.”

  Trout nodded. “Einstein said that with a controlled chain reaction a reality, an atomic bomb was possible. He suggested that the United State develop such a weapon before the Germans did.”

  “That’s right,” Frobisher said. “The president appointed a committee to look into it, and the result was the work here at Los Alamos. Few people know that near the end of the war, Einstein wrote a second letter that has never been published. In it, he warned of the dangers of electromagnetic war, based on the theorems. But unlike Kovacs, who was considered by some to be a bit of a quack, Einstein’s opinion had weight. Truman was president by then. He appointed a committee to look into Einstein’s suggestion, and out of that came a research effort similar to the Manhattan Project.”

  “We’ve heard that the Russians were pursuing the same line of research,” Gamay said.

  “That’s right. By the mid-sixties, we were neck and neck with the Russians.”

  “How far did the research go?”

  “Far. They concentrated on the land rather than the sky, and created some earthquakes. After the big Alaskan quake, this country retaliated. We caused some nifty floods and droughts in Russia. That was all small potatoes.”

  “Floods and quakes hardly seem minor occurrences,” Gamay said.

  “That was only the warm-up. Scientists from both countries discovered about the same time that the combined force from their experiments could cause major changes in the earth’s electromagnetic field. A top secret meeting between the two countries was held on a remote island in the Bering Sea. Scientists and government officials attended. Both countries were presented with evidence showing the serious consequences of further experimentation using the Kovacs Theorems.”

  “How do you know all this if it was so secret?” Gamay said.

  “Simple. I was one of the participants. We agreed to end research and get back to lesser evils, such as nuclear warfare.”

  “It’s hard to believe there is something worse than a nuclear holocaust,” Gamay said, raising an eyebrow.

  “Believe it.” Frobisher leaned forward in his chair and lowered his voice from habit, as if he thought that the room was bugged. “Keeping the secret was considered of such consequence that a security apparatus was set up in each country. Anyone who became too inquisitive or knowledgeable about Kovacs and his work was discouraged or, if necessary, eliminated.”

  “Then the Kovacs Society wasn’t formed as a cover for a poker game?” Trout said.

  Frobisher smiled. “That story usually turns most people off. No, the Kovacs Society was formed here as part of the setup. The reasoning was that it would be a first stop for someone interested in his work. If you had wandered in here a few years ago asking questions that crossed a certain threshold, I would have made a telephone call and you would have disappeared. You’re lucky the unit was disbanded a few years ago.”

  “What happened?” Trout said.

  “Budget cuts,” Frobisher said with a smirk. “Loss of institutional memory. The few people who were acquainted with the agreement died, taking the secret to the grave. No one was around to support the budget item, so it was cut. As time went on, Kovacs and his work faded into the woodwork. Like Nikola Tesla, Kovacs has become a cult figure of the conspiracy nuts, only lesser known. Most of the people who stop by here are crazies, like one guy who had a spider tattooed on his scalp. The more serious-minded are put off by my Froby act.”

  “It’s a very good act,” Gamay said.

  “Thanks. I was beginning to believe it myself. I’ve been a one-man gatekeeper, fending people off when they get too nosy.”

  “You talked about worldwide consequences from the electromagnetic manipulation,” Trout said.

  Frobisher nodded. “What scared everyone was the possibility that the electromagnetic manipulation would cause a shift of the earth’s poles.”

  “Is that possible?” Gamay said.

  “Oh yes. Let me explain. The earth’s electromagnetic field is created by the spinning of the outer crust around the solid part of the inner core. Scientists at Leipzig University developed a model that showed the earth as a gigantic dynamo. The heavy metals and liquid magma of the inner-core electromagnet are the clutch. The lighter metals at the crust are the windings. The planet’s poles are determined by the electromagnetic charge. The magnetic poles are the result of vortices deep in the molten core. The magnetic poles tend to wander. Navigators take this phenomenon into account all the time. If one pole declines in strength, you might see an actual reversal of the magnetic north and south poles.”

  “What would be the effect of a magnetic pole shift?” Gamay said.

  “Disruptive, but short of catastrophic. Power grids would be knocked out. Satellites rendered useless. Compasses confused. Atmospheric holes might be punched in the ozone, causing long-term health problems from solar radiation bursts. You’d see the aurora borealis farther south. Migrating birds and animals would be disoriented.”

  “You’re right about a polar shift being disruptive,” Gamay said.

  “Yes, but it would be nothing compared to the effects of a geological polar shift.”

  As a deep-ocean geologist, Trout knew exactly what Frobisher was talking about. “You’re talking about actual movement of the crust over the inner core rather than a change in the earth’s electromagnetic field.”

  “Precisely. The solid part of the earth moves over the liquid part. There’s evidence that it has happened before, caused by a natural event like a passing comet.”

  “I’m a deep-ocean geologist,” Trout said. “A comet is one thing. I find it hard to envision that man-made machinations could cause major physical changes.”

  “This is why the work of Kovacs was so important.”

  “In what way?”

  Frobisher rose and paced back and forth a couple of times in the small room to gather his thoughts, then stopped and made a rotating motion with his forefinger.

  “This is different. Electromagnetism runs the whole universe. The earth is charged up like a huge electromagnet. Changes in the field can cause a shift in polarity, as we discussed a few minutes ago. But there’s another effect, which Kovacs homed in on in his research. Matter oscillates between the stages of matter and energy.”

  Trout nodded in understanding. “What you’re saying is that by changing
the electromagnetic field of the planet, it is possible to change the location of matter on the earth’s surface.”

  “That might explain the ocean disturbances,” Gamay added.

  Frobisher snapped his fingers and smiled in triumph. “Give that man and woman each a cigar.”

  “What would happen with a land shift?” Gamay said.

  Frobisher’s smile vanished. “The forces of inertia would react to the shift of matter. The waters in the world’s oceans and lakes would be jerked in a different direction, pounding the coastline, causing massive floods. All electrical devices would fail. We’d have hurricanes and tornadoes of unheard-of force. The earth’s crust would break open, causing huge earthquakes and volcanic eruptions and massive lava flows. Climate changes would be drastic and long-lived. Radiation sickness from solar rays penetrating the earth’s magnetic field would kill millions.”

  “You’re talking a catastrophe of major proportions,” Gamay said.

  “No,” Frobisher said, his voice almost a whisper. “I’m talking about nothing less than the end of all living matter. The end of the world.”

  ON THE drive back to Albuquerque to catch their flight home, it was Trout’s turn to be silent.

  “A penny for your thoughts,” Gamay said. “Adjusted for inflation, of course.”

  Trout came out of his trance. “I was just thinking about Roswell, New Mexico, where the UFO supposedly crashed.”

  “Maybe we can go there another time. My head is still spinning with conspiracy theories after listening to our friend Froby.”

  “What was your take on him?”

  “He was either entertainingly eccentric or frighteningly sane.”

  “That was my opinion as well, which was what got me thinking about Roswell. Some of the UFO enthusiasts say that after the incident, the president appointed a high-ranking board of scientists and government officials to look into the matter and cover it up. The group was called MJ12.”

  “Sounds familiar. Are you thinking that the parallels with what we heard might be too close?”

  “Maybe, but there’s one way to confirm what he said one way or the other.”