The Leviathan Effect

by James Lilliefors

  “And the bottom line?”

  He clicked several keys, calling up new rows of numbers on the middle desk monitor. “These are temperature readings. From both buoy sensors and satellite microwave beams. We’re getting readings with this storm system that are quite unusual.”

  “Why?”

  “In general terms, to fuel a hurricane so that it keeps growing, the water temperature would need to be about eighty degrees Fahrenheit to a depth of, say, a hundred to a hundred and fifty feet.”

  “And …?”

  “We’re getting consistent readings in that range right now, but also considerably higher. We’re getting eighty-three and eighty-four degrees on the western edge of this system with some hot pockets at eighty-five and eighty-six.”

  “And that’s unusual.”

  “It’s unprecedented. I’ve never seen it before.”

  Herring stared at the infrared images as if he knew what he was looking at.

  “Here’s another interesting detail.” Dr. Wu said, calling up a new image on the wall monitor. “When we track temperatures ninety miles to the west of the storm’s outer bands we see a difference of as much as seven degrees.”

  “Cooler?”

  “Cooler, yes. It’s almost like there’s a wall of warm water running interference, driving this thing west.”

  They stared in silence at the large screen.

  “But … that doesn’t make sense, does it?” Herring finally said.

  “No, it doesn’t. Of course, you must keep one thing in mind: weather does not always follow predictable or logical patterns. The elements that make up global climate are essentially non-linear. We often see hurricanes take sudden turns that defy all of our computer models. In August of 2004, to give you just one example, Hurricane Charley took a sudden, quite disastrous northeast turn that no one had predicted, devastating several communities on the west coast of Florida. There are countless weather factors interacting with one another in a storm system. And they are capable of transforming from one state of organization to another at a moment’s notice.”

  “So. How alarmed should we be?”

  “Alarmed?” Dr. Wu considered for a moment. “Oh, I don’t think there is any cause for alarm. All we can do is pay attention. Although I would be remiss not to mention that further strengthening is likely.”

  Herring’s brow drew up. “How do you mean?”

  “I mean that over the past twelve hours, the wind shear has decreased from twenty-five to ten. At the same time, we’re seeing some enormous convection activity around the eye wall.” He pointed to the large screen. “And it’s moving very rapidly into what are typically warmer waters.”

  “Meaning …?”

  “The predictors tell us that we will see a rapid strengthening over the next twelve to twenty-four hours,” Dr. Wu said, speaking in a deliberately slow cadence. “In speed and, probably, in size. I wouldn’t expect the system to continue like this for long, though,” he added. “It really can’t. It’s too large. Most likely it will run into wind shear and change course. Or it will collide with a low pressure system or a cold front and break up.”

  “But if it did … if this continued in a westerly direction, when and where would it become a threat to the United States? Give me a time frame. Best guess.”

  “I would say it could be anywhere from five to nine days.”

  Herring mouthed the last four words, his arms still crossed.

  But Dr. Wu was thinking again about the third anomaly. He didn’t want to say anything yet. Not until he was sure. And not to Herring. The next time, he wanted to talk directly to the President. He wanted the President to know. And he also wanted to be a part of whatever it was that was happening. Whatever it was they were keeping from him.

  AS SHE DRESSED for lunch with her son, Blaine kept her eye on the silent television screen on her bedroom mantle, watching for any developments. It was late afternoon now in Western Europe.

  CNN showed the swirl of Tropical Storm Alexander. Blaine punched up the sound. “Weather officials continue to keep a close watch on Tropical Storm Alexander, an unusually large system off the coast of Africa that is expected to become a hurricane within twenty-four hours.”

  At 12:47, Blaine’s landline phone rang, startling her.

  “Cate?”

  “Yes.”

  “It’s Rube.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Rube.”

  Dr. Rubin Sanchez. “Oh.” She had all but forgotten about calling him the night before. Blaine listened to his heavy breathing on the other end.

  “I got your message.”

  “Sorry I called so late.”

  “No worries. It’s funny because I was just thinking of calling you yesterday.”

  “Oh? Why?”

  “Well. It’s a rather interesting coincidence. But you go first. What might your humble servant do for you today?”

  “I have a question,” Blaine said. “Just something hypothetical.”

  “Please.”

  “I’d love to sit down with you and pick your brain for a few minutes.”

  “Have at me.”

  “Actually, I’m getting ready to go out now,” she said. “And anyway, I’d prefer to talk in person.”

  “All right. When?”

  “Whenever you’re free.”

  “Tomorrow?”

  “Okay.”

  “Tell me what it’s about.”

  Blaine told him briefly, only the basics, mentioning four recent natural disasters and asking him a hypothetical question.

  “Very interesting,” he said, imitating Artie Johnson from Laugh-In. “Come by in the morning. I’ll have answers for you.”

  “What time?”

  “I’m in the office at five thirty.”

  “Can we make it a little later?”

  “Seven?”

  “Eight?”

  “Eight it is.”

  Then she called Jamie Griffith, her chief of staff, and asked him for a favor. Before leaving, she looked in her old Rolodex and found a number for Charles Mallory. She wondered if she might be able to reach him.

  FIFTEEN

  CATHERINE BLAINE PARKED ON a Georgetown side street of old bare trees and brick townhouses. She walked down the hill to one of her favorite M Street bistros, enjoying the cold breeze and the brief freedom she had to spend time with her son.

  It was 1:33 when she entered the restaurant, an old-fashioned brass-rail sandwich place with comfortable booths, fern plants, lots of privacy.

  Kevin worked as a waiter in an Italian restaurant down the street, while studying business at George Washington University. Eventually, he wanted to open his own restaurant. He was independent-minded, sometimes to a fault. She had offered to let him stay with her, but he didn’t want that. He lived in the city with a roommate and had begun dating a girl from school. She was proud of how he had changed his life.

  He was always early; this time was no different. He gazed up from his mobile device as she approached and said, matter-of-factly, “Hi Mom,” then looked down again and finished texting.

  Blaine slid in the booth, all the way across, and reached out to hold his hand. She glanced around, surprised and pleased that no one had noticed her.

  “Honey, you look good.”

  He winced, finally shutting off his phone.

  “Sorry. You don’t want me to say that.”

  “It’s all right.” Kevin looked at her appraisingly. He had his father’s mouth and it still sometimes spooked her, seeing him smile, those full lips conjuring his dad’s handsome features. Their split had been his idea, not hers. He had found someone less career-oriented than Blaine, not to mention nine years younger. He’d moved back to California, where he opened a fusion restaurant, and quickly remarried. He had a whole different life now, and very little communication with Kevin. But Kevin admired his dad from afar. Going into the restaurant business had been a way of staying connected with him.

  Kevin was
tall and tied his dark hair back, with an uneven part down the middle. He had a deep voice and large green eyes. He wore a small hoop earring in his left ear. As she normally did, Blaine let him talk, pleased to observe his enthusiasm as he ran through his eclectic interests, relaying the events in his life as if reciting a school report. His girlfriend, Amanda, was going to Wisconsin for Thanksgiving and he was thinking of traveling with her (although he obviously wasn’t ready for his mom to meet her yet). He was playing stand-up bass again in a jazz combo, still looking for their first paying gig. Amanda was into acrylics. They both liked Charlie Rose and Frontline and occasionally even The X Factor. But he couldn’t stand Dancing with the Stars, which he called “cheesy exploitation.” When his level of enthusiasm accelerated past a certain point, Kevin occasionally called her “dude,” which almost made Blaine smile. She enjoyed his energy, and tried to stay with him, although she was still plugged in to the events in Washington that had dominated the past twenty-four hours. And to the knowledge that it was evening in Western Europe.

  Blaine had her standard lunch—salad with iced tea—and Kevin had his—a Coke, cheeseburger, and fries, which he squirted with zigzags of both ketchup and mustard. When Catherine Blaine lost focus on what he was saying, he stopped, mid-bite, and narrowed his eyes.

  “So,” he said. “There was something you wanted to tell me?”

  “Yes. There is, actually.” She dabbed a napkin at a corner of her mouth. “No big deal. It’s just that there’s been a change of plans. It looks as if I’m going to have to postpone our trip this weekend.”

  “Oh?” The look of vulnerability that she had known since he was a little boy suffused his face, reminding her of his first day at grade school. “You mean we’re not going to the Shore?”

  “I’m sorry, not this weekend. But we’ll do a rain check.”

  Kevin’s eyes slid to the left; his mouth parted as if he were about to cry. He became hurt easily, but got over stuff just as quickly.

  “I’m sorry. It’s work, honey.”

  “But I thought you said you weren’t working.”

  “No. I wasn’t, that’s right. But things come up with this job. We’ll do it, I just need to postpone it a week or so.”

  “A week or so? That’s pretty vague, Mom.” Kevin made an exasperated face, exaggerating his displeasure. Outrage, then acceptance. Then not caring. It could be a charming transformation; she imagined his girlfriend found it rather endearing.

  Blaine looked at her watch and felt a rush of adrenaline. It was 6:52 there now. “We’ll make up for it, honey. I promise. We’ll try for next week.”

  Kevin was looking toward the television above the bar, not wanting to make eye contact anymore.

  “Is it something serious?” he said. “I mean, like terrorism or something?”

  “You know I can’t talk about that.”

  “Okay. Fine.” He decided to concentrate on his food for a while. “I just hope you were serious about wanting to quit in a couple of years,” he added, still refusing to look at her.

  Blaine felt a sharp anger. She looked quickly around the restaurant. “What did you just say?”

  Kevin shrugged. “You told me once that you only expected to do this job for a couple of years.”

  “No, I didn’t,” she said, her pulse racing, trying to force him to look at her. “Or if I did, I shouldn’t have.”

  “But you did say it.” A look of outrage rose to his face. “Right? Are you denying that you even said it?”

  “Honey, no, of course not.” She lowered her voice, and took a deep breath. “The point is, whatever is said about my work is very sensitive, and it needs to remain strictly between us.” She leaned closer. “Honey. To be honest, I don’t know how long I’ll do it. Okay? I’m serving the President and he decides how long I work for him, not me. I hope you can respect that.”

  “There’s that word again.”

  Blaine smiled, remembering how she’d felt when her parents had spoken to her the same way.

  “What’s funny?”

  “Nothing.”

  He concentrated on his food, devouring the rest of the hamburger in two bites.

  “That’s just how your grandfather brought me up,” she said. “If you’re asked to serve, especially at this level, you do it. You consider it a responsibility and an honor.”

  “Yeah, yeah.” He was taking each of his fries in two bites, eating with a detached self-consciousness, his right leg beating time to some unheard music. He finally broke the silence, as he often did, with an unrelated question.

  “Mom, have you ever heard of Thomas Merton?”

  “Sure,” she said. “Why do you ask?”

  He shrugged, looking intently up at the television news. “Do you like him?”

  “Like him? I haven’t read him in years. But, yeah, sure, I thought he was very interesting. Why?”

  Kevin just shook his head, and focused on his fries, adding a final zig-zag of ketchup. Apparently this was an acceptable style of conversing for him.

  Blaine paid the bill and went to the ladies’ room to check her makeup. Calm again. She saw the Secret Service detail standing on the sidewalk now. Despite Kevin’s reaction to the postponement of their trip, he was doing well, and she enjoyed knowing that.

  As Blaine returned to the booth, her secure cell phone vibrated in her purse.

  Kevin, she noticed, was no longer at the table. Where was he?

  “Mom!”

  He was standing by the bar, signaling her with an urgent wave. For a moment, she didn’t recognize him. He looked like an older man, not her son. She walked toward him. Stopped.

  “What is it?”

  “Look.”

  A BREAKING news banner stretched across the bottom of the television screen. She heard her secure phone vibrating again and knew: she was being summoned back to the White House.

  It had happened. There had been another one.

  That’s when Blaine felt chills race down her back, and for the first time, realized with absolute certainty what the others in the circle had already accepted. This was real.

  SIXTEEN

  Picardy, Northeastern France

  THE NAME OF THE valley where Louise Fournier had grown up meant “tranquility,” although the stories she had heard about the Somme Valley as a girl were not about tranquility, they were mostly about war. In the summer of 1916, her grandfather had lost his life in a wide-open meadow that was now home to market gardeners, country cottages, and dairy cattle.

  More than one and a half million Allied and German soldiers had died along the Somme River that year. The valley was visited by war again in 1944, when she had lost an aunt and an uncle in a bombing raid just miles from where she now lived. These days, people came to the Somme Valley from around the world to see the gothic cathedrals and the numerous cemeteries, to wander through the quiet fields, thinking about those long-ago battles. But for people who lived here, war was not just history; it was real; it was something that had changed their lives.

  Louise was reminded of that today as she glanced up and saw something very strange crossing the open meadow. Something like she had never seen before—dark and V-shaped, a giant funnel, skipping over the land, raising up dense swirls each time it touched down. Then behind it, a second funnel, just as large.

  Beyond the picket fence she saw Paul Martin next door, pointing frantically toward the sky and shouting something to her, his hair blowing wildly in a gust of wind. But he was too far away and Louise could not hear what he was saying. She looked back and became hypnotized by the otherworldly colors suddenly streaking the sky—odd shades of greens and browns and oranges—and by the dance of the peculiar twin funnels: touching down, lifting up, kissing the earth, skipping back into the sky. It was almost like watching a life-size silent movie.

  But then she began to hear the sound of it—a low roar of wind, like an approaching airplane—and she realized that the dark swirling funnels carried the wreckage of homes and
trees; that it was chewing up the countryside like a giant lawnmower.

  Her heart began to pound furiously as she breathed the cool, potent currents of wind. Paul was running toward her now. “Depechez-vous! Entrez dans le sous-sol!”

  He grabbed her arm and led her across the yard and inside her house. Pulled her down into the cellar and bolted the door. Breathless, they huddled together in a corner of the concrete room, listening. Waiting.

  Minutes later, she felt the tornadoes moving overhead. The house shook with terrible violence, what she imagined were the windows exploding, then the walls blowing apart. The roar seeming to hover above them for a full minute or more. Then the cellar doorway tore open and briefly the beast was visible again, hurling shredded debris down the steps toward them.

  Paul moved in front of her in a protective crouch. A brave, fatal mistake; in the next instant, he was knocked back by a shaft of wood.

  Louise huddled against the wall in the corner, shaking. She listened to the vortex of wind moving away from them. Waited. Eyes closed.

  And then, all at once, there was silence.

  She crawled to Paul and touched his forehead. His eyes were wide open, but he could no longer see anything. A spear of wood had gone through his chest. Blood was still oozing out, staining the front of his white shirt.

  Louise pushed the broken wood out of her way as she made a path up the steps, knowing before she reached the top that none of her house remained. It was only a pile of wood and stone now, her belongings all gone. She stood at the top of the steps in what had been her living room, and peered out over the valley. All of it was gone. No one, nothing, moved. In every direction, destruction. But somehow, she had been spared.

  What had been cottages and houses a few minutes before were heaps of wood and stone. Cars were overturned and crumpled. Among the piles of wreckage, she began to see pieces of human debris—a man in his undershorts, his head and torso terribly crushed; an old woman she did not recognize literally torn in pieces, one of her legs against a pile of stones; a decapitated body on its back in a field; a child impaled on a tree branch. And in the valley, she saw cattle torn open, their limbs ripped off and scattered.