Struggle for a Small Blue Planet Read online

  "Ah, it's not him," said Cleet hurriedly, "it's one of his supervisors. My man can't speak highly enough of him."

  "Sure, bring him, bring them both, it's up to you. I just want you on top of this thing. And I want them on the next jet coming our way, understood?"

  The President got up from his chair, and it was clear the discussion was over.

  "What about your Science Advisor?" said Cleet at the last minute. "Surely he would be better . . ."

  "Shoot, waste of time," said the President, cutting him off. "I want someone who'll get things done!" He touched something on his desk, and one of his secretaries appeared soundlessly.

  "Get Cleet anything he wants," said the solid man in the grey suit. "Open an account for him, set up a day and night contact with this office, and let the others on your team know."

  The secretary nodded. "This way, if you please," she said, in a rich, cultured voice. Cleet turned to say goodbye to his old friend, but the President was already seated behind his desk, working on another problem. The man who headed the American Institutes for Research followed the President's secretary out of the room.

  8

  A small flat in Richmond

  Virginia, USA

  The tall man looked around the woman's tiny apartment. He hadn't minded lying curled up on the back seat of her car, with towels and running clothes draped over him, and he hadn't minded being smuggled up the back way to her flat. He was used to a lot worse than that when he was on assignment.

  Inside, she set him up at a chair and table so she could work on his arm. Then she disappeared into the tiny bathroom to get some medical supplies. He glanced around the flat again. It had the bare minimum of furnishings, and it didn't have a television, or a sound system. That was unusual.

  There was a picture on the wall above a sideboard, and it showed a man in late middle age who bore some resemblance to her. There were two medals for bravery in a case on the sideboard. It looked like one was a police Purple Heart, the other a citation for valour. He nodded to himself, and more parts of the puzzle slotted into place.

  When she got back, she laid out the medical supplies on the table. They were arranged in the order she would need things. He approved. Then she drew up a chair across the corner of the table from him, and started to work on his arm.

  First she sliced through his shirt, just above the elbow.

  "Hey, that cost me a whole two dollars!" he said, laughing as he said it.

  "Yeah, well, I saw through your disguise straight away," she said, sliding the knife along under the sleeve in one long cut, and pulling the material away. She wasn't being gentle, but he held his arm steady.

  The tall man doubted her claim. She was trying a little oneupmanship. Maybe it was habit, being a woman in an organisation of mostly men. Hard to tell. He smiled, and she looked at him suspiciously. Then she cleaned out the wound, and the pain wiped the smile off his face.

  "You must have a name," he said resignedly, when the worst of the cleaning was over. They would have to get past this at some stage, but it was going to be hard. She didn't trust him that much.

  "What, so you can give me some alias you've dreamed up while you're hanging around in dark alleyways?" she said.

  "No . . ," he began, before she cut him off. "Probably some cover story you practiced until you knew it in your sleep, and then you were interrogated until you didn't break, even under torture."

  He smiled. "You've been watching too many late night movies. Besides, that sounds like your American CIA. In New Zealand it's just us simple folks down home on the farm."

  She stopped jabbing small amounts of anaesthetic along the line of the cut. He had dropped his nationality into the conversation to make a dent in her shields. It was working.

  "New Zealand, huh," she said, getting back to her work. The tall man was impressed. She didn't pretend she'd caught him out, she knew what he'd done. This was one smart woman. Then he remembered he'd said that to himself more than once already.

  "All right," she said, "what name are you going to try and palm off on me?"

  This was followed by a splutter of laughter, and a quick movement that took her hand away before she jabbed him by mistake.

  "You are not Ljudevit Maric!" she said, sitting back and waiting for the anaesthetic to work. "That's almost silly enough to be your real name!"

  He let her amusement pass.

  "It's a Croation name," he said, "from a whole lot of generations ago, when my people first landed in New Zealand. Blame my grandmother."

  "Well, we have a tradition of nicknames here," she said. She looked at him speculatively. He nodded. It happened back home as well.

  "How about 'The Don?' " she said, folding her arms in a 'take it or leave it' way. The tall man shrugged. It was as good as anything.

  "You don't get it, do you?" she said, and started to work on the torn muscles in his forearm. He didn't reply.

  "Don Corleone, from The Godfather," she said. "Someone with innovative ways of getting things done. Someone without boundaries, like you."

  The tall man tried to look pleased, though names meant nothing to him.

  "Righto," she said briskly, "The Don it is."

  "Don," he said quietly. "Don will be just fine." Then he let the silence draw out. She looked up at him a couple of times, but he didn't speak.

  "Stop that!" she said sharply, as she finished aligning the torn muscles in his arm.

  He didn't say anything.

  "You're waiting for me to offer my name," she said.

  "Exactly so. You are very observant," he said, with a smile.

  She bit back several retorts, but couldn't deny the sheer social weight of the situation. Someone told you their name, you offered them yours.

  "Jo Wanhose," she said at last. "From the German Weinhouse, and Jo is short for Josephine, which I hate, and which will cause you a large amount of grievous bodily harm if you should ever try to use it."

  "I'm so glad you told me," he said lightly, shifting his arm so she could get a better line as she brought the skin together. She had done a meticulous job on the muscle groups. Her skill level was impressive.

  "Ah, one question," she said, as she wiped his arm clean and began to bandage the wound. A spot of colour appeared in her cheeks. "You seem a bit young to be in your position."

  "The training position I haven't admitted to?" he said mischievously.

  "Yes, that one," she said, looking down at what she was doing.

  "Croatian genes," he said. "I'm older than you."

  "And how old do you think I am?" she said, straightening up. He failed to hide a smile. Women were so predictable about some things.

  "You are younger than me," he said, the smile broadening. He remembered the taunts of 'baby-faced assassin', and 'get back to school', when he'd first made it into the New Zealand SAS. The barracking only made him try harder; made him faster, stronger, and more skilful.

  Giving up on that line of enquiry, she tied off the bandage. Then she glanced at the tiny kitchenette, and the two easy chairs on one side of the lounge. Maric – Don as he would have to start thinking of himself – figured he was going to be offered a meal, and a place to stay for the night.

  It was the collegial thing to do, the way you treated someone who did, more or less, the same high-risk job you did. And she wouldn't want to drop him back in the cold and dark of the alley. Though it made little difference to him. Not while he was on assignment, or there was training to be done.

  Then there was one more thing he needed to say to her.

  "This time it's my turn," he began, before she could finish bandaging his arm and get up from the table.

  She looked at him with raised eyebrows.

  "You got a free shot back there in the alley, figuring out who I was, and now it's my turn."

  He knew it was unfair. He'd had a chance to think, and the inside of her flat had confirmed a lot of the details for him.

  "You've just been assigned to the tactic
al team," he said. "You're fresh out of training, I can tell. You're doing everything by the book, but you've got no street savvy, no experience.

  "You're also thirty-five, more or less, and trainees have to start special ops before twenty-five to be any good at it. So you were doing something else in enforcement before you switched to tactical."

  He paused. "Profiling? You seem to have a flair for that sort of detail. I bet you were good at it. Fort Belvoir's not far from here, and they've got a top Army Intelligence section. I would guess that's where you were stationed."

  She tried to hide it, but Don saw the look of surprise. He'd been right on the money.

  "The only thing that puzzles me," he said, "is what happened to make you change jobs in mid-career?"

  That shut her down. Her face closed over and she looked away. So, something personal then, and something recent. He decided not to push it.

  "What was your clearance level?" he asked lightly, changing the subject.

  "Whatever your rank is in your organisation," she said, with a warning glance, "you still wouldn't be cleared to know."

  So, thought the tall man, about as high as an analyst can get. That was interesting. Fort Belvoir had a highly rated Global Intelligence unit, and he bet she had been part of that.

  She got up and went through to the tiny kitchen. He kept the small talk going while she prepared some food, and tried to lower the tension between them as they ate. Eventually he pushed his plate away, and thanked her for the meal.

  "Your father got you started in enforcement, didn't he?" he said, turning sideways to look at the photo on the wall.

  This time she didn't shut down like she had before. It was almost as if she needed to talk. Don had often found that. As the stranger passing through, he was somehow the safe repository of secrets and longings.

  "He was a police officer," she said, hesitantly at first, "and he was good at his job; but when I wanted to follow him into the force, he steered me into profiling, with ambulance work as a sideline.

  "I guess he didn't want me to see what he had seen over the years."

  Then the whole story flooded out. When her father had been killed in the line of duty, two years ago, on a raid something like the one she'd been covering in the alley, she realised she couldn't fight evil from a distance any longer. She had to get out on the streets, and take the risks, and be part of the front line.

  Don understood. It was pretty much the way he saw things. But there was more going on psychologically than that. She might be a top profiler, but he had more experience of life.

  He figured she had idolised her father, and every male since childhood had been a letdown. She would start out hopeful with bosses, colleagues, friends and lovers, and always end up disappointed. He made a note to himself to never be any of those things to her. He was not a saint, and in his experience that sort of situation was unwinnable.

  "I shouldn't be telling you this family stuff," she said at last, smiling wryly.

  He shook his head. It was okay, and he told her so.

  "If you're going to survive Tactical," he told her sombrely, "you need someone you can talk to about what happens on duty. Someone in the same line of work who understands. Otherwise the memories will drive you nuts."

  She nodded, and the conversation continued gently back and forth, as some sort of bond, forged by the shared hazards of their work, developed between them.

  An hour later she went to get some bedding for the two easy chairs.

  9

  Mesa Laboratories visitor centre

  Boulder, Colorado

  A soft terracota glow from the Mesa Laboratories complex guided Theo's car through early morning radiance onto Table Mesa. The site was spacious – more than two square kilometres – but it was right on the edge of the city of Boulder. By the time he had assembled his equipment at the car park, and walked the hundred metres to the visitor centre, the doors were already open.

  "Dr Kettle," bubbled the tall receptionist at the main desk. "We haven't seen you for ages! More research?"

  Theo nodded. He was down here now and then on NEIC business, and it was nice to be remembered. A different set of staff had looked after him as a young man when he'd accessed his godfather's notes for his own doctorate research.

  "Would you like access to the carols again?" she said, beaming broadly. He nodded gratefully. Separated from the visitor centre, soundproofed and airconditioned, the small self-study areas were exactly what he needed. It didn't take him long to set up a work station in one of them.

  Unfortunately, he hadn't made any headway on the old 1950s papers by late afternoon. It was frustrating. He knew Ted and Charlie's work backwards, and had expected an answer to leap out at him straight away. He refocused his mind.

  If there had been 'visitors', as the research notes hinted at (though carefully avoided saying in the academic paper), and they'd been coming to Earth for generations, what would be their next step? What was their long-term plan? Could the continuous tremors of the last few days be some sort of consequence of their activities?

  Ted and Charlie must have had some idea. They would have kicked the possibilities around and made some guesses. They were closer to the strange events they had recorded than anyone else, and Human intuition was a powerful thing, often underrated.

  Theo rested his head in his hands for a moment. The only thing he hadn't gone over with a fine-toothed comb was a maths paper on harmonic frequencies. He had always thought its presence a mistake, a result of poor filing somewhere along the seventy-year journey to the final collection of Ted's notes.

  He knew the theory of harmonic frequencies well enough. The central span of the first Tacoma Narrows bridge in Washington state had collapsed in 1940. It had only taken a mild 40kph wind to make the roadbed of the bridge oscillate more and more wildly. If energy could be 'trapped' in a system like that, then even a gentle energy input, lasting long enough, could reach dangerous proportions.

  He looked at the clock, and decided to go over the maths paper one more time before he headed home. Then his cell phone rang.

  "Grant here, Theo," said his boss. "I hope you're sitting down, because I've got news. You're going to Washington."

  Theo sat stunned. "President's orders," continued Grant. "He wants someone from NEIC on deck in case this thing gets any worse. You'll be in a team headed by Cleet Anderson. He heads the American Institutes for Research in Washington."

  There was a long silence.

  "Are you there, Buddy?"

  "Yeah, ah . . ," said Theo. "Where will I stay, how will I . . ."

  "All taken care of," said Grant. "Plane ticket waiting for you when you get back."

  "Geez, this is a bit sudden," said Theo, his mind trying to catch up.

  "I know," said Grant, "but we have to hurry on this one, understand?

  "One more thing," he added. "Strictly national security stuff, so keep it under your hat. Some spy station we use to keep tabs on nuclear tests around the world says there's a gravity wave bouncing round inside the planet. They say it may be on the same wavelength as the harmonic frequency of the Earth.

  "Did you find anything like that in Ted Arms' notes?"

  Theo scrabbled at the papers on his desk. Where was that file?

  "Yeah, something like that," he said. "I just need more time."

  "You fly out tonight, Theo," warned Grant. "Make sure you're back here before ten. You've still got to pack."

  Theo promised he would be back in Golden before the appointed time, and turned his attention to the harmonic frequency file. He doubted there was anything useful in it, but it was the only place Ted might have left notes, maybe some guesswork. If he could find something, anything!

  The last thing in the file was a piece of A3 paper folded in half. It had 'Journal' handwritten on the outside, which was one reason Theo had ignored it. All researchers kept a journal of their progress – people consulted with, reference texts, papers filled out to please the bureacracy – an
d he had glossed over it for that reason. For the first time he opened the single sheet of A3 paper, and began to read.

  Mother of God, he thought, after the first two paragraphs. It was exactly what he'd been looking for.

  10

  Three days later

  Situation Room, The White House

  Theo and Cleet took their places beside others at the long table in the Situation Room. Theo was placing material he might need in front of him when the President came in.

  "Thank you all for coming," said President Marshall warmly, and took a seat at the head of the table.

  "You all know why we're here, so let's begin. Cleet, what's the latest on the background tremors?"

  Cleet cleared his throat. "We're seeing the same geometric progression we've been seeing all along, Mr President. Ah, that is to say, the effect is still steadily increasing.

  "We continue to see gravitational waves propagated inside the Earth, but our instruments are too limited to know if they are increasing.

  "We've only been able to detect the damn things in the last few years," he added, apologetically.

  "We'll have to make a public statement soon," said the head of the National Security team. "People along the fault lines are starting to feel tremors. Some are phoning government departments, but thank God we don't have media stories yet.

  "Perhaps we should send out a warning," she continued uncertainly. "Avoid older buildings, don't travel over bridges or along suspended freeways, that sort of thing?"

  "Not yet," said the President. "We can't make decisions if we don't know what we're dealing with. A warning like that and industry would grind to a halt.

  "But yes, I understand, Sarah. A bulletin will have to be put out soon. In the meantime, alert our top Civil Defence staff, and get them to put their assets in play. Call it a nationwide drill if you like."

  She nodded her head.

  The President thought for a minute. "Since all we have so far is theories," he said, "I want you all to listen to what Dr Kettle has to say. He has some NCAR papers from the fifties that seem to predict these tremors. You've been given the outline of them already, and I'll want your responses when he's finished."