The Leviathan Effect (10 page)

In late September, the equatorial sun beats down on the calm seas surrounding Cape Verde, causing water to evaporate and form warm waves of unstable air. As these waves come into contact with low pressure systems, they expand, beginning a cycle of rain and further evaporation. When conditions are right, these atmospheric disturbances feed on one another, growing in size, eventually spinning in a counter-clockwise pattern, fueled by the warm seas and the westerly trade winds.

Each year, several hundred atmospheric disturbances occur in the Cape Verde Islands, dozens of which develop into tropical storm systems. On average, nine of these storms become hurricanes. Exactly what causes an atmospheric disturbance to transform into a hurricane is a mysterious process, each resulting from a complex series of interacting weather patterns; no two hurricanes are alike. It generally takes a week to ten days for a Cape Verde hurricane to reach the United States. Most of the Atlantic Ocean hurricanes that impact the Eastern Seaboard begin as atmospheric events east of the Cape Verde islands.

On the morning of October 2, a band of rain showers to the southeast of the lower Cape Verde islands merged with a low pressure
system and began to spin in a chaotic motion, dumping heavy rains on the islands and the seas to the south. By early afternoon, it had begun to organize around a well-defined center, absorbing several other storms as it moved west.

Minutes before 3
P.M.
, it became a tropical depression, meaning its top wind speeds were greater than thirty miles per hour. Four hours later, Cape Verde Island government officials in Praia, Santiago, issued a Tropical Storm Watch for the region. A TSW meant that winds of 39 to 73 miles per hour were expected within the next twenty-four hours.

But it did not take twenty-four hours for this system to reach Tropical Storm strength. Less than two hours later, satellite and buoy sensors were tracking speeds in excess of 50 mph. At 9:15
P.M.
, what had begun as a series of routine disturbances in the sky above Senegal became Tropical Storm Alexander, the second named storm of the Atlantic hurricane season.

C
ATHERINE
B
LAINE
’
S DRIVER LET
her out in front of her two-story brick townhouse in Cleveland Park, a residential neighborhood between Wisconsin and Connecticut avenues in Northwest D.C. She lived on a quiet street of Victorian-style houses with old trees and cracked sidewalks.

Her driver waited as she unlocked the townhouse door from inside the garage. Then she waved and went inside.

The words from the president were still reverberating in her head as Blaine climbed the stairs to her galley kitchen and poured herself a glass of white wine. There was a subtext to what he had told her, but she wasn’t sure yet just what it meant. As she twisted the wand of her window blinds she saw the familiar dark Suburban parked across the street. Secret Service. The government provided a security detail, which watched her house through the night. The White House preferred that she use a government car and driver and on most days she did. But she still insisted on driving herself to work several times a month. And occasionally she
did
play hide and seek with the Secret Service.

She called down to the man seated behind the wheel of the Suburban, a genial agent named Ralph, to say that she was in for the night.

“Let us know if you need anything.”

“I will. Thanks, Ralph.”

“Have a good night.”

“You too.”

Blaine twisted the blinds closed and pulled off her suit jacket. The
day had begun for her in the drizzle of West Virginia, where she had gone for a routine tour of a flooded valley, and it was winding down with a crisis she still couldn’t fully fathom—or believe. She was anxious to take out her contacts and to trade her suit for soft clothes.

Her townhouse was tidy, appointed with warm colors, artworks from her travels, books, and various photos of her son, Kevin. Only her study revealed her other, less organized side. Before switching on her computer, Blaine tried to reach Kevin, but had to leave a voice mail. She tried to remember if he was working tonight; or maybe he was out with his new girlfriend, Amanda.

After a long, hot shower, Blaine pulled on sweats and socks and poured another glass of wine. She sat in front of her computer, trying to recreate each of the email threats she had read that evening. Afterward, she innocuously titled the file “Recipes,” and began to surf the Internet, giving herself a quick refresher course on climatology.

The modern history of weather modification had begun in the 1940s when researchers at General Electric in New York discovered that silver-iodide smoke transformed cloud droplets to ice, a process that could lead to rain formation. By the late 1940s, the Soviet Union, Britain, and the United States were all experimenting with cloud seeding projects. In one infamous incident from August of 1952, a British cloud-seeding experiment over the town of Lynmouth, England, supposedly caused wild flash flooding that killed thirty-five people. During the more hubristic 1960s, the United States launched Project Popeye, a military weather modification operation used in Vietnam and Laos. The US military also oversaw Project Stormfury, which sprayed silver iodide into the sky to weaken hurricanes. The program claimed several modest successes, including Hurricane Debbie in 1969. But many scientists were skeptical, calling the experiments inconclusive, arguing that it was impossible to isolate the effects of cloud seeding from other natural processes acting on hurricanes.

Weather modification research had, for a time, been part of the Cold War, like the space race and the nuclear arms and chemical/biological weapons races. But the United States seemed to lose interest in the late 1970s. In 1977, a United Nations treaty banned the use of weather modification for military purposes.

Research continued, though, in other countries, particularly China and the Soviet Union. Blaine found several dozen accounts in the
Wall Street Journal
, the
New York Times
, and elsewhere of weather modification programs in China, Russia and the private sector over the last two decades, but little in the United States.

Why had the US lost interest
? Blaine wondered. A cynic might say failure of imagination, she supposed. But there was also the question of priorities, as the President and Secretary DeVries had said. After Stormfury, the United States had decided to spend time trying to first
understand
hurricanes rather than stop them.

Blaine finally shut down her computer, still bothered by what the President had said, and what he hadn’t said. What Blaine needed was a sounding board outside the circle to answer some hypothetical questions that were nagging her.

It was 11:14.

She decided to try her friend Dr. Rubin Sanchez at his office, leaving a message for him to call. She knew he wouldn’t get it until the morning. Sanchez was a former professor at Columbia’s Earth Institute and a onetime assistant director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies; he now worked for a private research lab near Baltimore. He was one of the scientists who’d brought global warming to the world’s attention, testifying to Congress often on climate issues. But he had become increasingly eccentric of late, in both his pronouncements and his appearance, growing an unruly white beard and wearing his shoulder-length hair in a ponytail. Detractors called him Professor Rubin Santa Claus.

Blaine felt a little funny calling him, as if doing so were a species of disloyalty. She lay in bed and thought about it, and about all that had happened that day. She should have been tired, but wasn’t. She lay awake for several hours, and her thoughts became like paths through a thick woods that somehow always returned to the same clearing, and the same thought.
It was already Monday in Western Europe
.

R
ONALD
R
EAGAN
N
ATIONAL
A
IRPORT
is located on 733 acres of land in Arlington, Virginia, just over the Potomac River from Washington, D.C. It serves about five thousand passengers each day. Charles Mallory was one of the first of those five thousand on Monday morning. He felt a pleasant surge as he stepped out of the terminal building after arriving on a JetBlue flight. It was eleven degrees warmer in Washington than it had been in Maine and the sky was painted a crisp, hard blue that reminded him of the past. Early football season weather.

Mallory claimed his rental car at the National counter, where he was also handed a sealed, letter-sized envelope that had been left for him. He opened it before pulling out of the parking garage.

It was a series of letters printed in twelve point on a single sheet of paper: RFCROFAUTLFOATHRHOOORUCCG. A message that he knew was from his brother. Typical Jon. He was in some sort of trouble, Mallory suspected, although he couldn’t yet imagine what it might be. His brother saw things that others didn’t see; he saw stories where Mallory might just see information.

He drove the Ford Taurus along the G.W. Parkway beside the Potomac, catching glimpses of all of the famous landmarks: Washington Monument, Lincoln Memorial, Jefferson Memorial, Kennedy Center, Watergate. The hotel was on the river in Maryland, an eighteen-story, two-thousand-room monstrosity with a giant glass atrium. Chaplin had made the arrangements; instructions about his next hotel would be in the room.

Mallory liked large, anonymous hotels where he could disappear
and think for hours at a time. He intended to use this one as his base for a couple of days, as Chaplin made plans for him to meet with his brother.

As he walked to the check-in counter, he noticed that some sort of IT conference had taken over much of the hotel. A Tessitura conference.

Upstairs, he unpacked in less than two minutes, then sat in an armchair and looked at the message again:

RFCROFAUTLFOATHRHOOORUCCG

The first part, he knew.
RFC
identified the code: “Rail Fence Cipher.” The second
R
meant “reverse.” As in “reverse order.” It was a simple system they’d worked out as kids. In recent decades, Charles and Jon Mallory had been distant acquaintances, kept separate by their very different careers and temperaments. But several years ago, in a remote part of Africa, Jon had saved his life, and they’d connected in ways they never had before. If he was in some sort of trouble now, or ever, Mallory would do whatever he could to help.

He stared at the letters and reversed their order in his mind. So, instead of OFAUTLFOATHRHOOORWCCG, the actual cipher became those letters in reverse order:

GCCWROOOHRHTAOFLTUAFO

Mallory worked out the rail fence cipher grid on a sheet of paper, plugging in the letters left to right.

Three levels:

Then, reading diagonally, again left to right, the message became: GO TO CHURCH AT WA FOR FOLO.

He tore the sheet of paper into tiny pieces and flushed them down the toilet.

There was a gym on the first floor of the hotel, and Mallory went down for twenty minutes of upper body weights followed by twenty on the treadmill. Afterward, feeling pleasantly tired, he walked out to the poolside atrium restaurant for an early lunch. He took his club sandwich and fruit juice to the only empty table he saw, surveying
the computer people as he ate. A slow song by ABBA played fuzzily on the PA.

GO TO CHURCH AT WA FOR FOLO.

After several minutes, a pony-tailed woman in her thirties showed up with a cup of beer. She stood beside him, as if at attention, smiling as he looked up.

“Did I lose my spot?”

“I don’t know. Did you?”

She nodded to a pair of sunglasses on one of the other chairs.

“Oh,” he said. “Discreet, but valid. Sorry. Didn’t realize anyone was sitting here.”

Mallory gathered his plate and cup. But the woman touched his wrist.

“No, please. Stay right there. It’s all right,” she said, her voice conspiratorially husky.

He glanced again. A slender, nice-looking woman, dressed in khaki slacks and a loose gray T-shirt. She had intelligent blue eyes, he saw, and a slight but interesting smile.

They both sat.

“So. Are you part of the conference?”

“Me? Not really,” he said.

She sipped her beer, glancing at the pool activity.

“You?”

She exaggerated a shrug. “Guilty.”

“Somehow you don’t strike me as the geek type.”

“Oh. Thank you,” she said, grinning as if he had said it with great irony. “You know what it is. Ninety-nine percent of geeks give the rest of us a bad name.”

Now Mallory smiled.

“No, my company sends me to these things,” she went on. Sipped. “I’m a tech. In addition to doing these seminars, we’re expected to network a little. That’s the part I’m not so keen about. I’m really not much of a mixer.”

“No? Me neither.” He could tell the woman wanted a conversation, and he wasn’t in the mood.