Polar Shift

20

Austin stood on his deck and gazed out at the sparkling ribbon that flowed behind his house. The morning mists had burned away. The Potomac gave off a fragrance of sunbaked mud and wildflowers. Sometimes he imagined that the river had its own Lorelei, a sultry-eyed, Southern version of the Germanic siren whose singing lured Rhine rivermen to their death.

Heeding her irresistible call, he hauled his twenty-one-foot-long Maas racing scull from under the boathouse and eased it down the ramp to the water's edge. He slipped into the open cockpit, tucked his feet under the clogs bolted to the footrests, pushed his sliding seat back and forth a few times to limber up his abdominal muscles and adjusted the outrigger oarlocks for maximum efficiency.

Then he pushed off into the river, dipped his Concept 2 composite oars into the water, leaned forward and pulled the handles back, using the weight of his body. The nine-foot oars sent the needle-sharp scull flying through the water. He increased his rowing rate until the dial of the StrokeCoach told him he was doing his usual cruising speed of twenty-eight strokes per minute.

Rowing was a daily ritual and his main form of exercise. It emphasized technique over power, and the melding of mind and body necessary to send the light craft skimming over the water was a way to exclude the chatter of the outside world and to bring his concentration into sharp focus.

As he glided past stately old mansions, he tried to make sense out of the events that whirled around in his head like the whirlpool currents that had nearly drawn the Trouts to their deaths. One fact seemed indisputable. Someone had found a way to stir up the oceans. But to what end? What profit was there in producing killer waves and huge maelstroms capable of gulping down whole ships? And who was capable of wielding such immense and godlike power?

Austin saw movement out of the corner of his eye, cutting his meditation short. Another scull was pulling alongside his. Austin shipped his oars and coasted to a stop. The other rower did the same. They stared at each other. His newfound companion didn't fit the mold of the clean-cut, athletic types he often encountered on his morning rows. To begin with, long Rastafarian dreadlocks hung down from under the tan baseball cap. He wore sunglasses with blue lenses.

"Good morning," Austin said.

The man removed his cap with the attached dreadlocks and took his sunglasses off. "Damn, this thing is hot!" he said. He grinned at Austin. "Been to any good kayak races lately?"

The sun gleamed off the bizarre tattoo on the sweaty scalp.

Austin leaned on his oars. "Hello, Spider," he said.

"You know who I am?"

Austin nodded. "The Bob Marley disguise had me fooled for a second."

Barrett shrugged. "It was the best I could do on short notice. A guy was selling them at a souvenir booth near the boat rental place. It was either this or Elvis."

"Good choice. I can't see you singing 'Hound Dog,' " Austin said. "Why the need to go incognito?"

Barrett pointed to a bandage that was wrapped around his head. "Someone is trying to kill me."

"Why?"

"Long story, Kurt."

Austin decided to take a stab in the dark. "Does this have anything to do with extra-low-level electromagnetic transmissions?"

It was obvious from the look of astonishment on Barrett's face that the comment had struck home. "How'd you know about that?"

"That's about all I do know."

Barrett squinted at the sparkle on the river. "Pretty."

"I think so, but you didn't come here for the scenery."

"You're right. I came by because I need a friend."

Austin swept his arm around. "You're in friendly waters here. If it hadn't been for you and your boat, I would have been killer whale bait. Come back to my house and let's talk about it."

"That's not a good idea," Barrett said with a furtive glance over his shoulder. He reached into his shirt pocket and produced a black box about the size of a pack of cigarettes. "This will tell us if there's any electronic surveillance in the area. Okay, it's clear right now, but I'd rather not take any chances. Mind if we row? I'm enjoying myself."

"There's a place we can pull off not far from here," Austin said. "Follow me."

They rowed another eighth of a mile and pulled the sculls up onto a low bank. A kind soul had placed a picnic bench in the shade of the trees for the benefit of passing boaters. Austin shared his water bottle with Barrett.

"Thanks," he said after gulping down a couple of swallows. "I'm way out of shape."

"Not from what I saw. I was flying right along when you caught up with me."

"I was on the rowing team at MIT. Rowed practically every good day on the Charles River. It's been a long time," he said, smiling at the memory.

"What was your major at MIT?"

"Quantum physics, specializing in computer logic."

"You wouldn't know it from the biker look."

Barrett laughed. "That's for show. I was always a computer geek. I grew up in California, where my parents were both university professors. I went to Caltech to study computer sciences, then on to MIT for my grad work. That's where I met Tris Margrave. We put our heads together and came up with the Bargrave software system. Made a zillion bucks on it. We were doing fine, enjoying ourselves, before Tris got involved with Lucifer."

"Lucifer? As in the Devil?"

"Lucifer was an anarchist newspaper published in Kansas back in the eighteen hundreds. It's what they used to call 'matches' years ago. It's also the name of a small group of neo-anarchists Tris has been involved with. They want to topple what they call the 'Elites,' the unelected people who control most of the world's wealth and power."

"Where do you fit in?"

"I'm part of Lucifer. That is, I was."

Austin eyed Barrett's head tattoo. "You don't strike me as a conventional person, Spider, but don't you and your partner control a considerable amount of the world's wealth?"

"Absolutely. That's why we're the ones to carry on the fight. Tris says men of wealth and education-those that had the most to lose-started the American Revolution. Guys like Hancock, Washington and Jefferson were well-off."

"What's Margrave's role in Lucifer?"

"Tris refers to himself as Lucifer's driving force. Anarchists don't like the idea of following a leader. It's a loosely organized group of a hundred or so like-minded people affiliated with some of the more active neo-anarchist groups. A couple of dozen of the more violence-prone guys call themselves 'Lucifer's Legion.' I was more involved in the technical than the political side of the project."

"What makes Margrave so driven?"

"Tris is brilliant and ruthless. He is guilty about the way his family made its fortune off of slavery and rum-running, but I think he is driven mainly by an obsession with power. He got me into the Lucifer scheme."

"Which is?"

"We were going to mess up the Elites' empire, so they'd cave in to our wishes and relinquish some of their power."

"That's a pretty tall order," Austin said.

"Tell me about it. We gave them a taste of what would happen a couple of weeks ago in New York. We shut down the city for a time during a big economic conference, hoping to get them to deal, but it was like an elephant being stung by a bee."

Austin raised an eyebrow. "I heard about the blackout. You were responsible for that?"

Barrett nodded. "It was just a sample to show them we could cause chaos. Our long-range plan is to cause massive communications and economic disruption around the world."

"How were you going to do that?"

"By using a set of scientific principles to temporarily foul up their communications and transportation systems and cause general economic chaos."

"The Kovacs Theorems."

Barrett stared at Austin as if he had just sprouted a second head. "You've been doing your homework. What do you know about the theorems?"

"Not much. I know that Kovacs was a genius who came up with a way to use extra-low-frequency electromagnetic transmissions to disrupt the natural order of things. He was worried that in the wrong hands, his theorems could be used to alter weather, cause earthquakes and other sorts of mischief. From what you've told me about your Lucifer pals, his fears seem to have been borne out."

Barrett winced at the mention of "pals," but he nodded in agreement. "That's about right, as far as it goes."

"How far does it go?"

"We were trying to cause a polar reversal."

"A shifting of the north and south poles?"

"The magnetic poles. We wanted to knock out communications satellites. Mess up commerce, and throw a scare into the Elites. Strictly low-end stuff."

Austin's jaw hardened. "Since when are killer waves, ship-swallowing whirlpools and the loss of a cargo ship and crew considered low-end?"

Barrett seemed to draw into himself. Austin feared his sharp comment may have shut off further communication. But then Barrett nodded in agreement.

"You're right, of course. We didn't think of the consequences, only the means."

"What were the means?"

"We built a fleet of four ships, each carrying a device modeled on the Kovacs Theorems. We concentrated the beam at an oblique angle into a vulnerable spot on the ocean floor. The power in each ship is enough to light a small city, but it's feeble when compared to the great mass of the earth. That's where the theorems come in. Kovacs said that at the proper frequency, the transmissions would be amplified by the very mass they were trying to penetrate, in the way a tuba amplifies the sound of air being blown through pursed lips."

"I saw the giant whirlpool you created. That was more than a set of pursed lips."

"A whirlpool!"

Austin gave him a condensed version of the maelstrom and the disaster it nearly caused.

Barrett whistled. "I knew about the giant waves we created with one of our field tests. The kickback sunk a cargo ship and one of our transmitter vessels."

"Sometimes the sea gives back what it takes. The whirlpool churned up your transmitter ship. I managed to board her before she sank."

Barrett looked stunned at the revelation.

"What's going on, Spider?"

The question shocked Barrett out of his daze.

"We didn't consider the violent ocean disruptions that would be caused by the anomalies we created in the earth's electromagnetic field. From what you told me, the disruptions continued even after we stopped transmitting and moved the ships off. The magma under the earth's crust must continue to move even after the initial stimulus. It's like the secondary ripples that bounce around a pond when you throw a rock into the water. That's the dangerous part of the theorems. It's what worried Kovacs. The unpredictability of the whole thing."

"What were you doing the day I saw you in Puget Sound?"

"After the Southern Belle sank, I went back to the drawing board. I was conducting a test, using a miniaturized version of the setup on the transmitter."

"That's what drove the orcas into a frenzy?"

He nodded.

"What was the problem?"

"The waves were bouncing all over the place. We had made an educated guess, but even if it were off by a nanosecond the transmissions can go haywire."

"So Kovacs was wrong?"

Barrett threw his arms wide apart. "He published his general theory as a warning to the world, but he withheld the information that would make it work. Look, it's like an atomic bomb. You can find plans for an A-bomb on the Internet, and you can even acquire the materials to put one together. But unless you have specific knowledge about the way things act, it's going to fail, and the best you can get is a dirty, radioactive bomb. That's what we've got here; the electromagnetic equivalent of a dirty bomb."

"The loss of your ship must have stopped the project in its tracks," Austin said.

"It only delayed it. We had a ship in reserve. It's being moved onto station for the big, major zapping."

"Where is that going to be?"

"Tris never told me. There were a number of possible locations. The final choice is all in his head."

"How did you get into this insanity?"

"In a very routine way. I first brought the Kovacs Theorems to Tris's attention. I thought there might be something there for our company, but he saw it as a way to advance his anarchist cause. He asked me to develop a system that would cause a temporary magnetic shift. I saw it as a technical challenge. Using Kovacs's work as a basis, I filled in the gaps."

"Tell me about the attempt on your life."

Barrett gingerly touched the side of his head. "I was visiting Tris on his island in Maine. Mickey Doyle, who flies Tris's private plane, tried to kill me. He faked engine trouble and landed on a lake. His bullet grazed my head and caused a lot of blood. I was rescued by a couple of fishermen from Boston. One of them happened to be a doctor. I gave him a fake name, and took off as soon as I got the chance. That's why I was doing the Rasta thing. I don't want anyone to find out I'm still alive or I will be dead!"

"Was Doyle acting on Margrave's orders?"

"I don't think Tris was behind it. He's gone ultraweird on me. He's become a megalomaniac. He's hired his own army, guys he says are around for security. But when I told Tris I was pulling out of the project after the Southern Belle sank and the orcas went crazy, he said he would put things off until I had a chance to go through some new material he'd come across. Just before he shot me, I asked Mickey if Tris was behind it. He said he was working for someone else. I don't think he was lying."

"That begs the question. Who would want to take you out?"

"Mickey was trying to warn me against going public. When I refused, he tried to kill me. Whoever he was working for didn't want the project stopped."

"Wouldn't the project screech to a halt if you were dead?"

"Not anymore," Barrett said with a sad smile. "The way I've got this thing set up, Tris can direct the ships and unleash their power with a minimum of personnel and equipment."

"Who else has an interest in seeing this scheme succeed?"

"There's only one other person I know who's got the inside track. Jordan Gant. He runs Global Interests Network. GIN for short. It's a foundation out of Washington that lobbies for many of the same causes as Lucifer. Abuse of corporate power. Tariff policies that hurt the environment. Arms buildups in developing countries. Tris says Gant's foundation is like Sinn Fein, the political wing of the Irish Republican Party. They can keep their hands clean, more or less, while the IRA is the secret organization that uses the muscle."

"Then a threat to Tris's project would be a threat to Gant's goals as well."

"That's a logical conclusion."

"What's Gant's background?"

"He's an apostate from the corporate world. He was working for some of the same groups we're fighting until he saw the light. He's pretty much a front man. Smooth talker. Lots of oily charm. I can't picture him behind a murder plot, but you never know."

"It's a trail worth following. You say Margrave gave you some material, hoping it would change you mind."

"He said that Kovacs had come up with a way to stop a polar reversal even after it had been started. I said I wouldn't pull out if he could come up with a fail-safe plan."

"Where would he begin to find something like that?"

"There's evidence that Kovacs survived after the war, and that he moved to the U.S., where he remarried. I think his granddaughter knows about the antidote to a polar shift. Her name is Karla Janos."

"Does Gant know this?"

"He would if we're right about Doyle."

Austin pondered the implication of the answer. "Ms. Janos could have a bull's-eye on her back. She should know that she may be a target. Do you know where she lives?"

"In Alaska. She's doing some work at the University of Alaska at Fairbanks. But Tris said she's on an expedition to Siberia. She may be cold, but she should be safe there."

"From what you've told me, Margrave and Gant have a long reach."

"You're right. What should we do?"

"We've got to warn her. The safest course for you is to stay 'dead.'

Do you have a place to stay? Someplace Margrave or Gant don't know about?"

"I've got a sleeping bag on my Harley and a pocket full of cash, so I don't have to use credit cards that can be traced. My cell phone calls are laundered through half a dozen remote stations, so they're practically impossible to trace." He pulled the little black box out of his pocket. "I put this together for fun. I can route phone calls to the moon if I want to."

"I'd suggest that you stay on the move. Call me this time tomorrow and we'll have a plan in place by then."

They shook hands and went back to their boats. Austin waved good-bye and pulled off at his house, while Barrett rowed his scull back to the boat rental place half a mile farther along the river. Austin put his boat up in its rack. In the few seconds it took to climb the stairs to the living room, he had put together a plan.