Polar Shift

11

The LA-250 Renegade amphibious airplane had followed the rocky Maine coast to Camden, where it wheeled above a line of swanlike windjammers leaving the picturesque harbor and then headed east over Penobscot Bay. Its destination was a pear-shaped island easily identified by the candy-striped red-and-white lighthouse that stood on a high promontory at its narrower end.

The plane made a water landing near the lighthouse and taxied up to a mooring buoy. Two men got out of the plane, climbed into an outboard skiff that was tied up at the mooring and headed toward a wooden dock, where a cigarette boat and a forty-eight-foot schooner were tied up. They left the skiff and walked along the dock to a steep flight of stairs that led up the side of a rugged cliff. The bright Maine sunshine reflected off Spider Barrett's shaved head and colorful tattoo. Barrett looked as if he could single-handedly cause a biker riot. He wore black jeans and a black T-shirt that revealed thick arms covered with skull tattoos. His eyes were hidden behind round-framed, reflecting blue sunglasses. A gold ring dangled from one ear, he had a silver stud in his nostril and an Iron Cross hung from a silver chain around his neck.

The Hell's Angel look was deceiving. Although Barrett owned a fortune in classic Harley-Davidson motorcycles, he was an honors graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology where he had majored in quantum physics.

The pilot was named Mickey Doyle. He was a compactly built man who looked like a walking sports bar. He wore a Celtics T-shirt and a New England Patriots zippered sweatshirt. A Red Sox baseball cap was jammed down on a thatch of unruly hair the color of carrot juice. He was chewing on a thick cigar stub. Doyle had grown up in tough, working-class South Boston. He had a quick, street-smart intelligence and antic Irish sense of humor, and a disarming smile that charmed the unwary but failed to soften the hardness in his blue eyes.

A man carrying an automatic rifle materialized from a thicket of low-growing blueberry bushes. He was dressed in a camouflage uniform and wore a black beret at a rakish angle. He gave the two men a hostile stare, jerked the gun barrel toward the base of the cliff and followed a few paces behind, his weapon cradled in his arm.

At the foot of the bluff, the guard clicked a remote and a door disguised as rock facing opened. On the other side was an elevator that whisked them up to the lighthouse.

As they stepped from the lighthouse they saw Tristan Margrave, who had been chopping wood and stacking it into a neat pile. He put his ax down, waved the armed man away and walked over to greet the newcomers with a handshake.

"So much for my peace and quiet," he said, a mock frown on his thin, satanic face.

He was taller than the other two men by a foot. Although his hands were callused from cutting wood, he was neither a laborer nor a New York Times reporter named Barnes, as he had introduced himself to the detective Frank Malloy. He had met Barrett at MIT, where he had graduated with a degree in advanced computer science. Working together, they had developed innovative software that had made them millionaires many times over.

Barrett watched the departing guard disappear into the trees. "You didn't have the guard dog the last time I was here."

"Guy from the security company I hired," Margrave said dismissively. "There's a contingent of them camped farther down the island. Gant and I thought it might be good to hire them."

"And what Gant wants, Gant gets."

"I know you don't like the guy, but Jordan is vital to our efforts. We need his foundation to negotiate the political agreements we're going to get after our work is done."

"Lucifer's Legion not good enough for you anymore?"

Margrave chuckled. "My so-called legion began to fall apart as soon as there was any hint of discipline. You know how anarchists hate authority. I needed professionals. They call themselves 'consultants' these days, and charge an arm and a leg for their services. He was just doing his job."

"What is his job?"

"To make sure no unauthorized visitors come onto the island."

"Were you expecting visitors?"

"Our enterprise is too important to fail." Margrave grinned. "Hell, what if someone saw a guy with a spider tattoo on his head and began asking questions?"

Barrett shrugged and glanced at the woodpile. "Glad to see you're living your retro philosophy, but cutting all those logs would be a lot easier with a chain saw. I know you can afford one."

"I'm a neo-anarchist, not a neo-Luddite. I believe in technology when it's for the good of mankind. Besides, the chain saw is broken." He turned to the pilot. "How was the flight from Portland, Mickey?"

"Smooth. I flew over Camden, hoping the pretty sailboats would cheer your partner up."

"Why should he need cheering up?" Margrave said. "He's about to enter the pantheon of science. What's going on, Spider?"

"We've got problems."

"That's what you said on the phone. I thought you were kidding."

Barrett gave him a bleak smile. "Not this time."

"In that case, I think we all need a drink." Margrave led the way up a flagstone walkway that led to the big, two-story, white clapboard building attached to the lighthouse.

When Margrave bought the island three years earlier, he had decided to preserve the keeper's house as it had been in the days when it quartered the taciturn men who manned the lonely station. The pine-board walls had bead-board wainscoting, and the worn linoleum flooring was original, as were the slate sink and hand pump in the kitchen.

Margrave gave Doyle's shoulder a squeeze. "Hey, Mickey, Spider and I have some stuff to discuss. There's a bottle of Bombay Sapphire in the pantry. Rustle up a couple of drinks, like a good fellow. There's beer in the fridge for you."

"Aye-aye, Captain," the pilot said with a grin and a brisk salute.

The other two men ascended a painted wrought-iron spiral staircase to the second floor. The upper level, which once housed bedrooms for the keeper and his family, had been gutted to create one large room.

The clinical minimalist decor stood in stark contrast to the preservation on the ground floor. A laptop computer sat on a black teak table on one side of the room. A chrome-and-leather sofa and a couple of armchairs were the only furniture on the other side. Windows on three walls offered views of the island, with its tall pine trees, and the sparkling waters of the bay. Flowing through the open windows was the salty scent of the sea.

Margrave motioned Barrett into the sofa and settled into a chair. Doyle arrived a few minutes later and served the drinks. He popped a can of Budweiser for himself and took a seat at the table.

Margrave raised his glass in a toast. "Here's to you, Spider. The bright lights of New York City will never be the same. Too bad your genius must go unrecognized."

"Genius had nothing to do with it. Electromagnetism runs almost every part of our lives. Fiddle around with the magnetic fields and it's easy to mess stuff up."

"That's the understatement of the century," Margrave said, roaring with laughter. "You should have seen the look on that cop's face when his name was plastered all over Times Square and Broadway."

"Wish I could have been there in person, but it was easy enough to do from my house. The locator you carried in your recorder did its job. The big question is whether our demonstration put us anywhere nearer our goal."

A cloud seemed to pass over Margrave's brow. "I've been checking the media reports," he said with a shake of his head. "The spin machine is going full steam. The Elites are saying it was a fluke that the disruptions coincided with the world economic meeting. They're worried, but the fools haven't taken our warning seriously."

"Time for another shot across the bow?"

Margrave got up and went over to the table. He came back with the laptop computer, settled in his chair again and tapped on the keys. The sole blank wall glowed and displayed a huge electronic map of the oceans and continents.

The global composite image was made from data fed into it from orbiting satellites, ocean buoys and dozens of ground stations around the world. Continents were silhouetted in black against the bluish green of the sea. Numbers from 1 to 4 blinked in the Atlantic Ocean; two were above the equator, two below it. A similar pattern was displayed for the Pacific Ocean.

"The numbers show where we made experimental probes of the ocean floor. The computer modeling I've programmed indicates that if we bring all our resources to bear in this area of the South Atlantic, we'll get the desired effect. The time for warnings is past. The Elites are either too dumb or too arrogant. In either case, we should go for the big enchilada."

"How soon are you talking about?"

"As soon as we can get things set up. The only language that the Elites understand is money. We've got to hit them hard in their pocketbooks."

Barrett removed his sunglasses and stared into space, apparently deep in thought.

"What's going on, Spider?"

"I think we should call the whole thing off," Barrett said.

Margrave's face underwent an amazing transformation. The V-shaped eyebrows and mouth deepened. The expression of devilish mischief was gone. In its place was a look of pure malevolence. "You've apparently got some issues."

"We're not talking college pranks, Tris. You know the potential for damage if this thing gets out of hand. Millions could die. There would be huge economic and natural disruptions that the world might not recover from for decades."

"How could it get out of control? You said you had a handle on it."

Barrett seemed to sink into himself.

"I was kidding myself. It's always been a crapshoot. After that business with the cargo ship on Site Two, I went back to the drawing board. I tested a miniaturized version of the equipment in Puget Sound. The orcas went crazy. They attacked a whole bunch of kids. They would have eaten one guy if I hadn't pulled him out of the water."

"Someone saw the zapper?"

"Yeah, a guy named Kurt Austin. I read about him in the paper. Works for NUMA, and was leading the kayak race that got busted up. He only saw the setup for a second. He wouldn't have known what it was for."

A dark cloud seemed to pass over Margrave's face. "I hope you're right. Otherwise, we'd have to eliminate Mr. Austin."

Barrett looked horrified. "You're kidding!"

Margrave smiled. "Of course I was just joking, old pal. I saw the reports of the orca attack. What are you telling me, Spider, that orcas are predators?"

"No, I'm saying that my experiment messed with their sensory abilities because I was unable to control the electromagnetic field."

"So what?" Margrave said. "No one got hurt."

"Have you forgotten that we lost one of our own ships?"

"It was a skeleton crew. They knew the dangers involved. They were well paid to take the risk."

"What about the Southern Belle? Those people weren't paid to take part in our experiments."

"Ancient history. It was an accident, my friend."

"Hell, I know that. But we're responsible for their deaths."

Margrave leaned forward in his chair. His eyes burned with smoldering intensity.

"You know why I feel so passionate about this enterprise."

"Guilt. You want to atone for the Margraves who built up your family fortune on the blood of slaves and opium addicts."

Margrave shook his head.

"My ancestors were small-time compared to what we're facing. We're battling a concentration of power that is unlike anything the world has ever seen. Nothing can rival the multinational corporations that are taking over the world with the help of the WTO, the World Bank and the IMF. These unelected, undemocratic entities ignore civilized laws and do anything they want, no matter what impact it has on everyone else. I want to reclaim power over the earth for its inhabitants."

"Spoken like a classic anarchist," Barrett said. "I'm with you, but killing innocent people doesn't seem to be the way to do it."

"I am truly sorry about the loss of those ships and their crew. It's unfortunate, but it couldn't be helped. We're not bloodthirsty or crazy. If we pull this thing off, that ship is a small price to pay. Some sacrifices are necessary for the greater good."

"The end justifies the means?"

If necessary.

"Thank you, Mr. Karl Marx."

"Marx was a charlatan, an overblown theorist."

"This project is based upon some pretty unconventional theories, you'll have to admit. Marxism was only a half-baked idea before Lenin read Das Kapital and turned Russia into the workingman's paradise."

"This is a fascinating discussion, but let's get back to something we both agree on. Technology. When we started this gig, you said you could keep a rein on all the power we're unleashing."

"I also told you it would be an imperfect system without the proper frequencies," Barrett said. "I've done the best I could without those numbers, but there's a big difference between a rifle shot and a shotgun blast, which is what we're using. The waves and gyres we created far exceed anything we saw in the computer models." He paused and took a deep breath. "I'm thinking of pulling out, Tris. What we're doing is too dangerous."

"You can't pull out. The project would go down the drain."

"That's not true. You could plunge ahead on the basis of the work I've done. As your friend, I'm urging you not to continue."

Instead of reacting with anger, Margrave laughed. "Hey, Spider, you're the one who discovered the Kovacs Theorems and brought them to my attention."

"Sometimes I wish I hadn't. The man was brilliant, his theories dangerous. It may have been a blessing that his knowledge died with him."

"If I told you Kovacs had come up with a way to neutralize the effect of his theorems, would you reconsider your decision to leave the project?"

"Having a fail-safe option would make a big difference. But it's a moot point. The knowledge died with Kovacs at the end of World War Two."

A sly look came into Margrave's eyes. "Pretend, for the sake of discussion, that he didn't die."

"Not a chance. His lab got overrun by the Russians. He was killed or captured."

"If he was captured, why didn't the Russians expand on his work and make superweapons?"

"They tried to," Barrett said. "They caused the Anchorage earthquake and screwed up the weather." He paused, and light dawned in his eyes. "If the Russians had Kovacs, they would have done better. So he must have died in 1944."

"That's the common assumption."

"Wipe that smug grin off your face. You know something, don't you?"

"The story was true, as far as it went," Margrave said. "Kovacs publishes the paper about electromagnetic warfare. The Germans kidnap him to develop a weapon that will save the Third Reich. The Russians capture the lab and take the scientists back to Russia. But one of those German scientists left Russia after the Cold War ended. I located him. Cost me a fortune in bribes and payoffs."

"Are you telling me he had the data we need?"

"I wish it were that easy. The project was strictly compartmentalized. The Germans held the Kovacs family hostage. He held back crucial data hoping to keep his family alive."

"Makes sense," Barrett said. "If the Germans were aware there was an antidote to his work, they would no longer need him."

"That's my guess too. He didn't know that the Nazis disposed of his family almost immediately, and forged letters from his wife urging him to cooperate for the sake of the children. Hours before the Russians arrived at the lab, a man showed up and took Kovacs off with him. Tall, blond guy driving a Mercedes, according to our scientist."

Barrett rolled his eyes. "That description would fit half the population of Germany."

"We got lucky. A few years after he left Russia, our German informant came across a picture of the blond man in a ski publication. Sometime in the sixties, the guy who snatched Kovacs won an amateur ski race. He had a beard and was older, but our source was certain this was the guy."

"Have you tracked him down?"

"I sent some of our security guys to invite him for a talk. Same company that supplies the island guards."

"Who is this company, Murder Incorporated?"

Margrave smiled. "Gant suggested them. I'll admit that the security company we're using is hard-assed. We wanted pros who wouldn't be shy about pushing the boundaries of the law."

"Hope you're getting your money's worth from these law pushers."

"Not so far. They blew their big chance to talk to the Kovacs contact. He smelled them coming and took off."

"Cheer up. Even if you find him, there's no assurance he knows anything about Kovacs's secrets."

"I came to the same conclusion. So I went back to Kovacs. I programmed a massive search of everything written and said about him. I started with the premise that if he had lived, he would have continued his research."

"Quite the leap of faith. His work destroyed his family."

"He'd be careful, but his fingerprints would be hard to hide. My program combed every scientific publication written since the war. It found a number of articles mentioning unique commercial uses of electromagnetic fields."

Barrett leaned forward in his chair. "You've got my attention."

"One of the pioneers in the research was a company incorporated in Detroit by a European immigrant named Viktor Janos."

"Janus was the two-faced Roman god who looks to the past and the future. Interesting."

"I thought so. The parallels with Kovacs's work were too weird to be true. It's as if Van Gogh copied Cezanne. He might master impressionistic light, but he couldn't stop himself from using colors that were bold and basic."

"What do you know about Janos?"

"Not a lot. Money can buy anonymity. He was supposedly Romanian."

"Romanian was one of the six languages Kovacs was fluent in. Tell me more."

"His lab was in Detroit, and he lived in Grosse Pointe. He must have run whenever he saw a camera, but he couldn't hide the fact that he was a generous philanthropist. His wife was mentioned in the local society pages. There was a birth notice of their child, a son, who died with his wife in a car crash."

"A dead end, literally?"

"That's what I thought. But Janos had a granddaughter. I referenced her name and struck gold. She had done a graduate thesis about woolly mammoths."

"The ancient elephants? What's that got to do with Kovacs?"

"Stay with me. She maintains that the mammoths were wiped out by a natural catastrophe that was a more devastating version of what we're trying to do. Here's the interesting part. In her writing, she said that had this happened today, science would have been able to neutralize the catastrophe."

"The antidote?" Barrett snorted. "You're kidding."

Margrave retrieved a portfolio from the table and tossed it into Barrett's lap. "After you read this, I think you'll change your mind about the project."

"What about the granddaughter?"

"She's a paleontologist, working with the University of Alaska. Gant and I decided to send someone up there to talk to her."

"Why not hold off on the project until we find out what she knows?"

"I'll wait, but I want to get all the pieces in place so that we can hit the ground running." Margrave turned to Doyle, who had been quietly absorbing the discussion. "What do you think about all this?"

"Hell, I'm just a dumb air jockey from Southie. I go with the flow."

Margrave winked at Barrett. "Spider and I will be busy for a while."

"I got you. I'll grab another beer and go for a walk."

After Doyle left, the two other men huddled over a computer. When they were satisfied their plan had gone as far as it could, they agreed to meet again. Doyle was puttering around the dock when the meeting broke up.

"I appreciate you changing your mind about leaving the project," Margrave said to Barrett. "We've been friends a long time."

"This goes beyond friendship," Barrett said.

They shook hands, and minutes later the plane was skimming across the bay for takeoff. Margrave watched until it became a speck in the sky, then he went back into the lighthouse. He stared out the second-floor window for a moment with a smile on his strange face. Barrett was a genius, but he was unbelievably naive when it came to politics.

Despite his assurances, Margrave had no intention of delaying the project. If ever a time existed when the end justified the means, it was now.