Blue Gold

Chapter 28

Austin poured himself a hot mug of Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee straight, took a sip of the high-octane brew, and picked the aluminum cylinder off his desk. He hefted it in his big hand, staring at the battered convex surface as if it were a crystal ball. The object yielded no secrets, only a distorted reflection of his bronzed features and pale hair.

Setting the cylinder aside, he returned to the map of Alaska spread out on his desk. He had been to Alaska several times, and the sheer immensity of the fiftieth state never failed to boggle his mind. Searching for the old flying wing base in some of the most rugged territory on earth would be like trying to find a single grain of sand on Malibu beach. Compounding the problem, the base would have been built in a way to keep it from prying eyes. He ran his finger from Barrow deep inside the Arctic Circle south to the Kenai Peninsula. The phone rang as the seed of an idea was beginning to sprout.

Eyes glued on the map, he grabbed the phone, stuck it in his ear, and snapped a perfunctory hello. Sandecker's crisp voice came on the line.

"Kurt, can you come up to my office?"

"Can this wait, Admiral?" Austin said, trying to hold on to his thought.

"Of course, Kurt," Sandecker said magnanimously. "Is five minutes sufficient?"

The notion withered and died like a flower in the sun. Sandecker must have been the original irresistible force. The admiral's mind operated at warp speed, and consequently his sense of time tended to be compressed.

"I'll be there in two minutes."

"Splendid. I think you'll find it worth your while."

When Austin walked into Sandecker's tenth-floor office he expected to see the director of NUMA behind the immense desk made from a hatch taken from a Confederate blockade runner. Instead the admiral sat off to the side in one of the comfortable dark leather chairs reserved for visitors. He was chatting with a woman who sat with her back to Austin. Sandecker, who was wearing a navy blazer with gold anchors embroidered over the breast pocket, rose to greet Austin.

"Thank you for coming, Kurt. There's someone here I'd like you to meet."

The woman stood, and Austin's preoccupation with his Alaskan puzzle evaporated in a single glance.

She was tall and slim, with Eurasian high cheekbones and almond-shaped eyes. In contrast to her exotic looks she was dressed conservatively in a long burgundy skirt and matching jacket. Her dark blond hair was tightly woven into a single braid down to her shoulder blades. Something about her went beyond natural beauty. She had the erect carriage of someone born to royalty, but at the same time she walked with the lithe easiness of a panther as she came over to shake hands. The deep brown eyes with gold flecks seemed to radiate a tropical heat. Maybe it was his imagination, but her musky scent made Austin think of the throb of distant drums. It suddenly dawned on him who the woman was.

"You're Dr. Cabral?"

Austin would not have been surprised if she had answered with a soft purr. In a low, mellow voice she said, "Thank you for coming to see me, Mr. Austin. I hope I haven't interrupted any thing important. I asked Admiral Sandecker if I might have the chance to thank you personally for your help."

"You're very welcome, but Gamay and Paul did all the hard work. I simply answered the phone and pushed a couple of but tons."

"You are far too modest, Mr. Austin," she said with a smile that could have melted ice cubes. "If not for your quick action I'm afraid my head and those of your colleagues would be deco rating a village thousands of miles from these comfortable surroundings."

Sandecker stepped between them and guided Francesca back to her chair. "On that happy note, Dr. Cabral, would you mind if we imposed and asked you to tell us your story from start to finish?"

"Not at all," she replied. "Talking to someone about my experience has therapeutic value, and I also find myself remembering details I had forgotten."

Sandecker motioned for Austin to sit, then slipped into his desk chair and lit up one of the ten custom-made cigars he smoked each day. He and Austin listened with rapt attention as Francesca narrated the gripping tale of the hijacking, the crash and her brush with death, her ascension as a white goddess. She went into great detail about the public works projects in the Chulo village that she took so much pride in. She ended with an account of the arrival of the Trouts, their mad flight, and their rescue by helicopter.

"Fascinating," Sandecker said, "absolutely fascinating. Tell me, what became of your friend Tessa?"

"She stayed on with Dr. Ramirez. Her knowledge of medicinal plants will be invaluable in his research. I talked by phone to my parents to make sure they are well. They wanted me to come home, but I decided to stay in the U.S. I need more of a decompression time before I insert myself back into the Sao Paulo social whirl. Beyond that, I am determined to carry on the task that was interrupted ten years ago."

Sandecker contemplated the stubborn set of Francesca's jaw. "I firmly believe past is not only present but also future. It would help to know what lies ahead if you told us something about the events that led to your plane trip."

Francesca stared into the distance as if she could see through time. "It goes back to my childhood. I became aware at a very early age that I come from a privileged background. Even as a girl I knew I lived in a city with appalling slums. As I grew older and traveled I learned that my city was a microcosm for the world. Here in one place were the haves and the have-nots. I also discovered that the difference between rich and poor nations is the earth's most plentiful substance: water. Fresh water lubricates development. Without water there is nothing to eat. With out food there is no will to live, to raise one's standard of living. Even the oil-rich countries use much of their petroleum revenues to buy or produce water. We take it for granted that when we turn on the tap water will flow, but that will not always be the case. The competition for water has become greater than ever."

"The U.S. is no stranger to water disputes," Sandecker said. "In the old days range wars were fought over water rights."

"That will be nothing compared with the troubles of the future," Francesca said darkly. "In this century wars will not be fought over oil, as in the past, but over water. The situation is becoming desperate. The world's water is strained by the population growth. There is no more fresh water on the earth than two thousand years ago when the population was three percent of its current size. Even without the inevitable droughts, like the cur rent one, it will get worse as demand and pollution increase. Some countries will simply run out of water, sparking a global refugee crisis. Tens of millions of people will flood across international borders. It means the collapse of fisheries, environmental destruction, conflict, lower living standards." She paused for a moment. "As people who deal with the ocean you must see the irony. We are facing a shortage on a planet whose surface is covered two-thirds with water."

"Water, water, everywhere, nor any drop to drink," Austin said, quoting the Samuel Taylor Coleridge poem.

"Precisely. But suppose the Mariner had a magic wand could wave over a bucket of seawater, changing it into fresh."

"His ship would have survived."

"Now extend that analogy to millions of buckets."

"The global water crisis would be over," Austin said. "Nearly seventy percent of the world's population lives within fifty miles of the ocean."

"Exactly," Francesca said, her mood lightening.

"Are you telling me you have this magic wand?"

"Something almost as good. I have developed a revolutionary means to extract salt from seawater."

"You must know that desalting is hardly a new concept," Sandecker said.

Francesca nodded. "The extraction of salt from seawater goes back to the ancient Greeks. Desalination plants have been built around the world, including many in the Middle East. There are several methods, but all are costly. In my doctorate I proposed a radically new approach. I threw out all the old methods. My goal was a process that would be efficient and cheap, available to the poorest farmer trying to scratch a living from the dust. Think of the implications. Water would be nearly free. Deserts would be come centers of civilization."

"I'm sure you thought of the undesirable consequences," Sandecker said, "the fact that cheap water would stimulate development, population growth, and the pollution that goes with them."

"I thought long and hard about that, Admiral Sandecker, but the alternatives were even more unpalatable. I would make orderly development a requirement before allowing a country to use my process."

"It goes without saying then that your experimentation was a success," Austin said.

"Very much so. I was bringing a working model of the process to the international conference. Seawater would go in one end, fresh water come out at the other. It would produce energy and little to no waste products."

"A process like that would have been worth millions of dollars."

"No doubt. I had offers that would have made me immensely rich, but I planned to give my process to the world free of charge."

"That was quite generous of you. You say you had offers. Then someone knew of your process and plans?"

"Once I contacted the United Nations to attend the conference it became an open secret." She paused. "Something has al ways puzzled me. Many people knew about my process. The people who tried to kidnap me would be immediately exposed if they tried to profit from my work."

"There's another possibility," Austin suggested. "Maybe they wanted to bury your work and keep the process a secret from the world."

"But why would anyone try to stop a boon to humanity?"

"Perhaps you're too young to remember," said Sandecker, who had been listening intently. "Years ago stories circulated about the inventor who supposedly built a car engine that could go a hundred miles on a gallon or burn water. The details aren't important. The oil companies reportedly bought the secret and buried it so they could continue to make profits. The stories were apocryphal, but do you see my point?"

"Who would prevent the poor nations from enjoying cheap water?"

"Our investigations have given us an advantage over you, Dr. Cabral. Let me ask you a theoretical question. Suppose you con trolled the world's supply of fresh water. How would you greet the arrival of a process that suddenly makes cheap water avail able to all?"

"My process would end your theoretical water monopoly. But this is a moot point. It is simply not possible for someone to control the world's water."

Sandecker and Austin exchanged glances.

Taking over from Sandecker, Austin said, "A lot has been happening in the past ten years, Dr. Cabral. We can fill you in on the whole story later, but we've discovered that a huge pan national organization called the Gogstad Corporation is very close to acquiring a monopoly over the world's fresh water."

"Impossible!" "I wish it were."

Francesca's eyes hardened. "Then this Gogstad must be the one who tried to kidnap me, who stole those ten years from my life."

"We have no solid proof," Austin said. "There is certainly strong circumstantial evidence pointing in that direction. Tell me, what do you know of a substance called anasazium?"

Francesca's mouth dropped open in surprise. Recovering quickly she said, "Is there anything you people at NUMA do not know?"

"Quite a bit, I'm sorry to say. We know very little about this stuff other than the fact that it can affect the hydrogen atom in strange ways."

"That's its most important property. It's a very complex relationship. This material is at the heart of my desalting process. Only a few people know of its existence. It's extremely rare."

"How did you come across it?"

"By chance. I read an obscure paper written by a former Los Alamos physicist. Rather than try to improve on the existing methods of desalting, I wanted to deal with it at a molecular or even nuclear level. A solution had eluded me until I heard about this substance. I contacted the scientist who wrote the article. He had a small amount of the material and was willing to part with it when I told him why I needed it."

"Why is it so rare?"

"Several reasons. With no apparent economic use for it, the demand was nonexistent. Then, too, the refinement process is quite complicated. The main ore source is in a troubled part of Africa that is constantly at war. I had several ounces, enough for a working model. I would have proposed that the nations of the world pool their resources to produce enough anasazium to set up pilot projects. Working together we could have viable quantities of this substance within a short time."

"Gogstad was running an installation off the coast of Mexico. It was destroyed in a tremendous explosion."

"Tell me more about this installation."

Austin gave her a quick summary, starting with the death of the whales. He described the storage cylinder after the explosion and how he traced it to the flying wing. Sandecker filled her in on the cold war mission to Siberia.

'A fantastic tale. It's too bad about the whales," she said sadly. "My process produces heat which can be turned into energy. The material can be unstable and under certain circum stances becomes a powerful explosive. These people must have been trying to replicate my desalination process and were unaware of the material's instability. Where would they have acquired the anasazium?"

"We don't know," Austin said. "We are aware of a large source but don't know its exact location."

"We must find it so I can resume my research," Francesca insisted.

"There's an even more important reason," Sandecker interjected.

"I know no more important reason than to continue my work," she said defensively.

"In time, Dr. Cabral, in time. Your work will have little meaning if Gogstad succeeds in its plans. Whoever controls the world's water controls the world."

"It sounds as if you're talking about global domination, Admiral Sandecker."

"Why not? Napoleon and Hitler failed, but their attempts were made through force of arms. In each case they came up against somebody with a bigger stick." He took a smooth puff on his cigar and watched the cloud of smoke. "The people protesting globalization, all that business with the World Trade Organization and the International Monetary Fund, were onto something. The danger is not in these entities but in the i;dCt that it is easier now for someone to exert total control over a economic sector."

"A sort of global Al Capone?" Austin offered.

"There are similarities. Capone was ruthless about exterminating the competition and had a fine instinct for organization. His economic power gave him political clout. Bootleg booze is a far cry from water. The world can't do without water. Those who control its flow will have the ultimate political power. Who will stand up against someone whose word can condemn you and your country to die of thirst? That is why I say with all due respect, Dr. Cabral, that there are more important matters to be taken care of first."

"You're right, Admiral Sandecker," Francesca conceded. "If this Gogstad finds the main supply of anasazium, it will control my process as well."

"Intelligence and beauty are such a welcome combination," Sandecker said with unveiled appreciation. "The young lady has stated my fears exactly. It's imperative that we find that long-lost cache before Gogstad does."

"I was trying to figure out how to pinpoint the location when you called. I'm going to need some help."

"That's not a problem. Use any NUMA resource that you need, and if we don't have them we'll find them else where."

"I think Joe and I should leave as' soon as possible for Alaska."

"Before you go dashing off to the Yukon there's something else we have to discuss. This buildup of tankers that Joe's re porter friend told him about has me worried. What do you make of it?"

"At the very least Gogstad is expecting to move lots of water from Alaska to someplace that needs it. There has been talk of transporting water to China."

"Perhaps," Sandecker said, unconvinced. "I'll talk to Rudi Gunn. Maybe he and Yaeger can shed light on this mystery. While you and Joe are trying to nail down this flying wing, they can see what they can find about the tankers."

Austin rose and said, "I'll start things moving." He shook hands with Francesca and said, "I'll show you out, Dr. Cabral."

"Thank you, and please call me Francesca," she said as they strolled to the elevator.

"I will if you call me Kurt. Tell me, do you prefer Korean, Thai, Italian, or just plain old American cooking?"

"I beg your pardon."

"No one told you?" he said with mock amazement. "Dinner is part of the Austin rescue package. I hope you won't refuse. Who l‹knows how long I will have to subsist on whale blubber and walrus steaks after today."

"In that case, I would be happy to accept your invitation. Would seven o'clock be convenient?"

"That's fine. It will give me plenty of time to start making preparations for our trip to Alaska."

"I'll see you then. As you know I am staying with the Trouts. And Korean would be fine."

Austin bid Francesca good-bye near the huge globe that rose from the center of the sea-green floor in the NUMA lobby, an atrium surrounded by waterfalls and aquariums filled with colorful and exotic sea life. Then he went back to his fourth-floor office, called Zavala to let him know of his meeting with Sandecker, and lined up transportation for their trip.

Francesca was ready when he arrived at the Trouts' Georgetown house to pick her up. He chatted with Paul and Gamay long enough to be polite, then drove to his favorite Korean restaurant, housed in an unpretentious building in Alexandria.

Austin recommended that they order below, thin strips of marinated beef cooked on a hot plate on the table. Ordinarily it was one of his favorite meals, but he hardly tasted it; he was too busy looking at Francesca. She was dressed simply in a stone washed denim dress whose light blue color set off her dark complexion and long luxurious hair that seemed to have captured the light of the sun. It was hard for Austin to reconcile the picture of this cultured and beautiful woman, who was clearly de lighted over the simple pleasure of a civilized meal, with the tale he had heard of her reign as a white goddess among savage Indians. She seemed relaxed and entirely at ease, but even as they laughed over her inept use of chopsticks, Austin couldn't shake the feeling he experienced when they first met. Despite the civilized veneer, the jungle had seeped into her blood. He saw it in the feline gracefulness of her movement, and the watchfulness in her dark eyes. It was a quality that fascinated and attracted Austin, and he vowed to see more of Francesca when he returned from his mission.

Which was why it was all the more painful when Austin apologized for calling it an early night. He had much to do be fore leaving for Alaska, he explained. As he dropped her off on the Trouts' doorstep, he asked if she would like to go out again when he returned.

"Thank you. I'd like that, very much," she said. "I plan to be in Washington for some time and hope we can get to know each other better."

"Until then," Austin said. 'At a time and place to be announced."

She smiled and pecked him lightly on the lips. "It's a date."