Impact

by Douglas Preston

  He immediately felt a wash of relief. Clearly that was the correct way to handle this problem.

  Standing up, he went into the kitchen and got himself a beer, took a frosty pull, came back into the living room. He stared at the drive, sitting on his coffee table. Freeman was excitable, a bit crazy, but he was also brilliant. What was this big thing, this gamma ray thing? Corso found his curiosity aroused.

  Before he got rid of the drive, he’d just take a quick look at it—see what the hell Freeman was talking about.

  6

  At the wheel, Abbey guided the lobster boat toward the floating dock, tossed out a fender, and neatly brought it alongside. See that, Dad? she thought, I’m perfectly capable of piloting your boat. Her father had gone to California on his annual visit to his widowed older sister and would be gone for a week. She’d promised to take care of the boat, check up on it, look into the bilges every day.

  That’s what she planned to do—on the water.

  She remembered those summers when she was thirteen, fourteen—when her mother was still alive—the mornings she had set off with her father to go lobstering. She worked as his “stern man,” baiting the traps, measuring and sorting the lobsters, tossing back the shorts. It galled her that he had never let her take the wheel—ever. And then, after her mother died and she’d gone off to college, he’d hired a new stern man and refused to take her back on when she’d returned. “It wouldn’t be fair to Jake,” he said. “He’s working for a living. You’re going to college.”

  She shook off these thoughts. The pre-dawn ocean was as still as a mirror, and since it was a Sunday, when it was illegal to fish, there were no lobster boats out. The harbor was quiet, the town silent.

  She threw a couple of dock lines to Jackie, who cleated the boat. Their supplies were piled on the dock: ice chests, a small propane tank, a couple of bottles of Jim Beam, two duffel bags, boxes of dry food, foul weather gear, sleeping bags, and pillows. They began stowing the gear in the cabin. As they worked, the sun rose over the sea horizon, throwing gold bullion across the water.

  As Abbey exited the pilothouse, she heard the backfiring of a car engine and the grinding of gears from the pier above. A moment later a figure appeared at the top of the ramp.

  “Oh no, look who’s here,” said Jackie.

  Randall Worth came strolling down the ramp, wearing a tank top despite the fifty-degree temperature, showing off his crappy jailhouse tats. “Well lookee here. If it ain’t Thelma and Louise.”

  He was tall and ropy with greasy hair to his shoulders, scabs on his face, stubble sprouting from his chin. He wore shitkicker leather motorcycle boots with dangling chains, even though he’d never been on a real motorcycle in his life. He grinned, showing two rows of brown, rotting teeth.

  Abbey continued to load the boat, ignoring him. She had known him almost all her life and she still couldn’t believe the self-induced catastrophe that had befallen the cheerful, dumb, freckled kid who was always the worst player at the Little League games but who never stopped trying. Maybe it was the inevitable nickname they coined from his last name, chanting it at the baseball games. Worthless. Worthless.

  “Going on vacation?” Worth asked.

  Abbey swung a duffle up on the gunwale and Jackie shoved it in the corner of the cockpit.

  “You haven’t visited me since I got out of Maine State. My feelings are hurt.”

  Abbey swung up the second duffel. They were almost done. She couldn’t wait to get away from him.

  “I’m talking to you.”

  “Jackie,” said Abbey, “grab the other handle of the ice chest.”

  “Sure thing.”

  They lifted the ice chest and were about to heft it over the gunwhale when Worth stepped around, blocking them. “I said, I’m talking to you.” He flexed his muscles, but the effect on his wasted body was ridiculous. Abbey put the chest down and stared at him. She felt a sudden, huge sadness.

  “Oh, am I in your way?” said Worth, smirking.

  Abbey crossed her arms and waited, looking away.

  Worth stepped right up to her, leaning over, his face close to hers, the fetid B.O. smell enveloping her. He stretched his chapped lips in a crooked smile. “You think you’re going to dump me?”

  “I didn’t dump you, because there never was a relationship to begin with,” said Abbey.

  “Oh yeah? Well, what did you call this?” He wiggled his hips obscenely, moving them in and out and moaning in falsetto, “Deeper, deeper.”

  “Yeah, right. Should’ve saved my breath for all the good it did me.”

  Jackie burst out laughing.

  A silence. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  Abbey turned away, all sympathy gone. “Nothing. Just get out of my way.”

  “When I fuck a girl, I own her. You didn’t know that, nigger?”

  “Hey, shut your fucking face, you racist asshole,” said Jackie.

  Why, why had she been so stupid to get involved with him? Abbey grasped the handle and lifted the cooler. “Are you going to move or do I have to call the police? If you violate parole, you’re back in Maine State.”

  Worth didn’t move.

  “Jackie, get on the VHF. Channel sixteen. Call the cops.”

  Jackie jumped into the boat, ducked in the pilothouse, and pulled down the mike.

  “Fuck you,” Worth said, stepping aside. “Forget the cops. Go ahead, I ain’t stopping you. I just got one thing to say: you don’t dump me.” His arm held high, he stabbed a finger down at her. “ ’Cause you’re dark oak. And you know the saying, If you’re looking to split wood, go for the dark oak.”

  “Get a life.” Abbey, her face on fire, brushed past him and heaved the last ice chest up on the gunwale, stowing it in the cockpit. She took the wheel and laid her hand on the shift lever.

  “Cast off, Jackie.”

  Jackie uncleated the lines, tossed them in, and hopped aboard. Abbey threw the boat into forward, kicked out the stern, reversed, and backed it away.

  Worth stood on the dock, small, skinny as a scarecrow, trying to sound tough. “I know what you’re up to,” he called. “Everybody knows you’re looking for that old pirate treasure again. You’re not fooling anyone.”

  As soon as Marea cleared the peppercan buoy at the head of the harbor, Abbey swung to starboard, gunned the engine, and headed out to sea.

  “What an asshole,” said Jackie. “You see that meth mouth on him?”

  Abbey said nothing.

  “Racist jerk. I can’t believe he called you a nigger. White trash honky motherfucker.”

  “I wish . . . I was a nigger.”

  “What shit are you talking now?”

  “I don’t know. I feel so . . . white.”

  “Well, you are sort of white. I mean, you can’t dance worth shit.” Jackie laughed awkwardly.

  Abbey rolled her eyes.

  “Seriously, nothing about you seems black, really, not the way you talk, not your background or friends . . . no offense, but . . .” Her voice trailed off.

  “That’s the problem,” said Abbey. “Nothing about me really seems like me. I’m phenotypically black but white every other way.”

  “Who cares? You are what you are, fuck the rest.” After an awkward silence, Jackie asked, “Did you really sleep with him?”

  “Don’t remind me.”

  “When?”

  “At that going-away party at the Lawlers’, two years ago. Before he got into meth.”

  “Why?”

  “I was drunk.”

  “Yeah, but him?”

  Abbey shrugged. “He was the first boy I kissed, back in sixth grade . . .” She looked at Jackie’s smirk. “All right, I’m stupid.”

  “Nah, you just have bad taste in men. I mean, really bad taste.”

  “Thanks.” Abbey opened the pilothouse window and the sea air poured in over her face. The boat split the glassy ocean. After a while she felt her spirits returning. This was an adventure—and they were
going to be rich. “Hey, first mate!” She held up a hand. “High fives!”

  They smacked hands and Abbey gave a whoop. “Romeo Foxtrot, shall we dance?” She stuck her iPod into the dock of her father’s Bose stereo and dialed in the “Ride of the Valkyries,” cranking it up to full volume. The boat roared down Muscongus Sound, Wagner booming over the water.

  “First mate?” she said, “Make an entry in the log. Marea, May 15, 6:25 A.M., fuel 100 percent, water 100 percent, bourbon 100 percent, weed 100 percent, engine hours 9114.4, wind negligible, sea state one, all systems go, heading sixty degrees true at twelve knots for Louds Island in search of the Muscongus Bay meteorite!”

  “Aye aye, captain. Shall I roll a blunt first?”

  “Capital idea, first mate!” Abbey whooped again, all thoughts of Worth vanquished. “It doesn’t get any better than this.”

  7

  Ford paid the cab driver and strolled down the sidewalk. The Bangkok gem district lay in a warren of side streets off Silom Road, not far from the river, a mixture of giant, warehouse-like wholesalers mingled with the ugly shop fronts of the gem-scam operations. The street was choked with traffic, the narrow sidewalks blocked by illegally parked cars, the buildings on either side cheap, modern, and tawdry. Bangkok was one of Ford’s least favorite cities.

  At the corner of Bamroonmuang Road he came to a low building in dark gray brick. A sign above the door read PIYAMANEE LTD. and the smoked windows reflected his image.

  With a quick comb-through Ford slicked back his hair and adjusted the raw silk jacket. He had dressed like a drug dealer, silk shirt unbuttoned to the sternum, gold chains, Bollé shades, three-day stubble. Shoving his hands into his pockets, he sauntered in the open door and stood looking around. The interior was dim so the gems couldn’t be examined too well, and the air smelled faintly of Clorox. Glass counters with anemic lighting formed a giant open square. A young American couple, evidently honeymooners, was looking at a spread of muddy star sapphires laid out on black velvet.

  He was immediately rushed by two salesgirls, neither of whom could have been more than sixteen years old.

  “Sawasdee! Welcome, special friend!” One of them held out a mango drink, with a flower and umbrella. “You come for last-day Thai government export special to buy gems, sir?”

  Ford ignored them.

  “Sir?”

  “I want to see the owner.” He spoke to the air about a foot above their heads, hands in his pockets, shades still on.

  “Gentleman wish welcome drink?”

  “Gentleman not wish welcome drink.”

  The girls went off, disappointed, and a moment later a man appeared from the back room, dressed in an impeccable black suit with a white shirt and gray tie, hands clasped together, making several obsequious half-bows as he approached. “Welcome, special friend! Welcome! Where do you come from? America?”

  Ford gave him a hard stare. “I’m here to see the owner.”

  “Thaksin, Thaksin, at your service, sir!”

  “Fuck this. I ain’t talking to a lackey.” Ford turned to leave.

  “Just a moment, sir.” A few minutes passed and a very small, tired man came out from the back. He was dressed in a track suit and he walked stooped, with none of the hurry of the others, bags under his eyes. When he reached Ford, he paused, looked him up and down with an inscrutable calmness. “Your name, please?”

  Without answering, Ford removed an orange stone from his pocket and showed it to the man.

  The man took a casual step back. “Let us go back into my office.”

  The office was small and covered in fake wood paneling that had warped and detached in the humidity. It stank of cigarettes. Ford had done business in Southeast Asia before and knew that the shabbiness of an office, or the poor cut of a man’s clothes, was no guide to who that person was; the most dilapidated office might be the den of a billionaire.

  “I am Adirake Boonmee.” The man extended a small hand and gave Ford’s a neat little shake.

  “Kirk Mandrake.”

  “May I see that stone again, Mr. Mandrake, sir?”

  Ford removed the stone but the man did not take it.

  “You may place it on the table.”

  Ford put it down. Boonmee eyed it for a long moment, moved closer, then grasped it, held it up to a strong point light shining from a corner of the room.

  “It’s a fake,” he said. “A coated topaz.”

  Ford feigned a moment of confusion, recovering quickly. “Naturally, I’m aware of that,” he said.

  “Naturally.” Boonmee placed it down on a felt board on his desk. “What can I do for you?”

  “I have a big client who wants a lot of these stones. Honeys. Real ones. And he’s willing to pay top price. In gold bullion.”

  “What has led you to think we sell this kind of stone?”

  Ford reached into his pocket and pulled out a stack of American gold eagles and let them fall to the felt, one by one, with a dull clinking. Boonmee didn’t even appear to look at the coins. But Ford could see the pulse in his neck quicken. Funny how the sight of gold did that.

  “That’s to open the conversation.”

  Boonmee smiled, a curiously innocent, sweet expression that lit up his small face. His hand closed over the coins and slipped them into his pocket. He leaned back in his chair. “I think, Mr. Mandrake, that we will have a good conversation.”

  “My client is a wholesaler in the U.S. looking for at least ten thousand carats of raw stone to cut and sell. I myself am not a gem dealer; I wouldn’t know a diamond from a piece of glass. I’m what you might call an ‘import facilitator’ when it comes to, ah, getting shipments through U.S. Customs.” Ford allowed a certain braggadoccio to creep into his voice.

  “I see. But ten thousand carats is impossible. At least, right away.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “The stones are rare. They’re coming out slowly. And I’m not the only gem dealer in Bangkok. I can start you off with a few hundred carats. We can work up from there.”

  Ford shifted in his seat, frowned. “You aren’t going to ‘start me off’ at all, Mr. Boonmee. This is a one-shot deal. Ten thousand carats or I walk down the street.”

  “What is your price, Mr. Mandrake?”

  “Twenty percent higher than the going rate: six hundred American dollars an uncut carat. That’s six million dollars, in case math isn’t your strong suit.” Ford gave an appropriately stupid grin.

  “I will make a call. Do you have a card, Mr. Mandrake?”

  Ford produced an impressive, Asian-style card on heavy card stock with stamped gold embossing, English on the front, Thai on the back. He handed it to Boonmee with a flourish. “One hour, Mr. Boonmee.”

  Boonmee inclined his head.

  With a final handshake, Ford walked out of the shop and stood on the corner, looking for a cab, waving off the tuk-tuks. Two illegal cabs came by but he waved those off as well. After ten minutes of pacing about in frustration, he took out his wallet, looked through it, and went back inside.

  He was immediately rushed by the salesgirls. Bypassing them, he went to the back of the shop. He rapped on the door. After a moment, the little man appeared.

  “Mr. Boonmee?”

  He looked at him, surprised. “A problem?”

  Ford smiled sheepishly. “I gave you the wrong card. An old one. May I—?”

  Boonmee went to his desk, picked up the old card, handed it to him.

  “My apologies.” Ford proffered the new card, slipped the old one into his shirt pocket, and hustled back out into the hot sun.

  This time he found a cab right away.

  8

  Amazing how places like this always look the same, thought Mark Corso as he walked down the long polished halls of the National Propulsion Facility. Even though he was on the other side of the continent, the halls of NPF smelled just like those at MIT—or Los Alamos or Fermilab for that matter—the same mixture of floor wax, warm electronics, and dusty t
extbooks. And they looked the same, too, the rippled linoleum, the cheap blond-wood paneling, the humming fluorescent panels spaced among acoustic tiles.

  Corso touched the shiny new identity badge hanging on a plastic cord around his neck almost as if it were a talisman. As a kid he’d wanted to be an astronaut. The Moon was taken but there was Mars. And Mars was even better. Now, here he was, thirty years old, the youngest senior technician in the entire Mars mission, at a moment in human history like no other. In less than two decades—before he was fifty—he would be part of the greatest event in the annals of exploration: putting the first human beings on another planet. And if he played his cards right, he might even be mission director.

  Corso paused at an empty glass case in the hall to check his reflection: spotless lab coat casually unbuttoned, pressed white cotton shirt and silk foulard tie, gabardine slacks. He was punctilious with his dress and careful to avoid any suggestion of the nerd. Gazing at his reflection, he pretended to be seeing himself for the first time. His hair was short (read: reliable), beard (unconventional), but neatly trimmed (not too unconventional), his frame thin and athletic (not effete). He was a good-looking guy, dark in the Italian way, chiseled face, big brown eyes. The expensive Armani glasses and tailored clothes reinforced the impression: no geek here.

  Corso took a deep breath and knocked confidently on the closed office door.

  “Entrez,” came the voice.

  Corso pushed open the door and entered the office, standing in front of the desk. There was no place to sit; the office of his new supervisor, Winston Derkweiler, was small and cramped, even though the team leader could have gotten himself a much bigger office. But Derkweiler was one of those scientists who affected a disdain for perquisites and appearances, his blunt manner and sloppy look broadcasting his pure dedication to science.

  Derkweiler eased himself back in the office chair, where his soft corpulance settled in, conforming to the chair’s contours. “Adjusting to the asylum, Corso? You got a big new title now, new responsibilities.”