The Leviathan Effect (34 page)

Mallory imagined where they would be going. He heard the soprano in the background hitting a high note, then Chaplin shutting the music off. “Bring night vision goggles and two telephone headsets, if you have them.” He added, “And bring a gun.”

Mallory clicked off, his heart racing.
Think like the enemy
was the mantra of intelligence field agents; but this was an enemy he didn’t know. Not really.

There was also a GPS application on her phone, he knew. Walking down to his car, Mallory called up the zoomable vector-based map on his own phone and moments later found her—her location pulsing like a heartbeat, appearing to be moving back toward the Beltway. Only a couple of miles from the motel.

He got in his car and pulled out onto the pike. Floored the accelerator.

Several minutes later, he glanced down at the phone and saw that the locator had stopped blinking. The GPS was no longer transmitting. Whoever had her must have turned it off.

He kept driving toward the Beltway, though, trying to think like his enemy now. He was chasing a man who had done this before, and who had gotten away with it. Seven or eight times. Probably more. Someone who had a system. He’d be driving now toward a sequestered location, Mallory guessed, out of sight of accidental onlookers. A place where he could hide a car, perhaps. Or several cars. And maybe bury a body.
Where he took Dr. Keri Westlake
. A large plot of land. Rolling country out in the suburbs. A farm, maybe. That was part of his system. And it
was
a system. The MOs had all seemed different, but that was by design. To
seem
different. To mask their similarities. He understood that now.

But where? Which direction?
How much time would he wait? Or had the abductor already done what he was going to do?

Minutes later, speeding along the two-lane highway toward the Beltway, Mallory glanced down at his phone and saw that the GPS app on Blaine’s cell had been activated again. Had she managed to turn it on? Or was this a trap?

O
NE FLOOR BELOW
the Oval Office, four men sat in high-backed black leather chairs around a long wooden conference table in the Situation Room: the President, Vice President Bill Stanton, Intelligence Director Harold DeVries, and Dr. James Wu, the President’s chief science adviser. At the President’s directive, Dr. Wu had taken the lead on the White House’s hurricane response. They were waiting for the first briefing from Mr. Zorn and the Weathervane Group. Starbucks coffee cups were in front of each of them, along with printed copies of the projections provided hours earlier by Mr. Zorn.

By eight the next morning, the storm was supposed to have begun
breaking apart, according to those projections. Turning east into open sea. At this point, Alexander should have already slowed significantly, to less than 100 mph, according to Zorn’s projections.

But Dr. Wu gave them the latest readings from the National Hurricane Center in Miami, and no such weakening had been detected. There had been a slight narrowing of the wind field and some slowing of the strongest winds over the past four hours, but it was much less substantial than predicted. The center of the system remained highly organized and Alexander was now a Category 3, with winds topping 127 mph. The National Weather Service had just issued a forecast that some coastal communities would be rendered “uninhabitable” after Alexander came through. FEMA had sent its Incident Management Assistance Teams to staging areas up and down the East Coast, deploying millions of liters of water and millions of meals, along with cots and blankets, and coordinating emergency plans with state and local officials. The National Guard and the Red Cross were also mobilizing, preparing for the aftermath.

“No signs yet of diminishing,” Dr. Wu told the others, in summary, trying to sound unemotional. But inside, he felt sick. This was the worst storm system he had ever seen; the devastation would be unprecedented. “We’re getting a lot of severe thunderstorm activity still in the Carolinas up into Virginia and Maryland. And some reports of violent and continuous cloud-to-cloud lightning storms.”

“Let’s just wait until we’ve heard what they have to say,” the President said. A silence fell over the room. They all stared numbly at the four-foot monitor that conveyed the real-time storm coordinates and the monitor beside it showing a high-resolution satellite image of Alexander swirling toward the East Coast, its cloud cover and wind field stretching nearly from New England to Florida.

At 9
P.M.
, the digital speaker made a short chirping sound, indicating an incoming call. “Go ahead,” the President said.

“This is Dr. Romfo, sir. Good evening.”

Dr. Wu pictured the tall, husky, dark-haired scientist.

“Yes.”

The President held eye contact with Wu. Waiting.

“Mr. Zorn and the rest of our team are here,” she said, her voice thick and, it seemed, a little nervous.

“All right.”

“This is our first update. I am pleased to report that the four mitigation operations are now fully active. The maximum sustained wind speed of the system has diminished from 135 miles per hour to 107. The wind field has also decreased significantly. We are seeing particularly strong results from the LRT process, which has, most significantly, begun to disrupt the storm’s eye wall. This will produce results that won’t be evident until the morning, however.”

Dr. Romfo then recited a litany of readings from the past four hours, conveying variations and declines in wind speed, a steady decrease in the storm’s vacuum dome, drops in barometric pressure, and increases in central pressure and wind shear. Her voice occasionally seemed to shift register.

When she finished, several minutes later, it was the Vice President who spoke first. “Uh, okay. And, so, let me just ask, then, if I may, in plain English: When will we see this thing actually break apart?”

“Sir?”

“When will this thing knock back down to a Category Two or One? Are we still on target to see that in the morning?”

“Yes, that’s right,” Dr. Romfo answered. But her voice sounded tentative. “Of course, I’m not able to make precise projections of that nature. But, yes, there should be continued weakening through the morning hours. Our projections, as you know, show it breaking up by late morning or afternoon and turning to sea. But there are still a number of variables at play with a system of this size. And those projections, as we have indicated, are nonlinear.”

“A couple of questions,” said Harold DeVries.

There was no reply. “This is simply an update,” Dr. Romfo said. “Your next report will be at eight
A.M.
”

“Yes,” the President said.

Moments later, the line went to a dial tone.

The men in the room exchanged looks.

“Anyone having buyer’s remorse here?” the Vice President finally said. No one smiled.

“Jim, do you see this thing tracking in any way with their projections?” the President asked.

Dr. Wu frowned, as if he hadn’t considered that issue before. He didn’t speak for a long time. “Honestly? No. Not really, sir,” he said, eyeing the President earnestly. “It’s—there
has
been some wind shear,
which is having an effect on the outer bands. And the wind speeds
have
diminished. But the latest sustained wind-speed reading
we
have is 127.”

“Not 107?”

“No, sir.”

“So, what’s happening?” the Vice President said. “Are they fudging?”

“We can’t say that. It may be they’re basing these readings on data that we simply don’t have,” said Dr. Wu, playing the diplomat. “They obviously have their own satellite-based technologies and their own measurements.”

The Vice President looked to the President, who was staring at the computer monitors. Finally, the President glanced at Dr. Wu, the blue glow of the monitors coloring his face. “Is this consistent with a storm that may break apart or turn back to sea in the morning?”

Wu sighed, feeling the need to stay neutral. It was how he had operated for years. It was the reason he was here in this room with the President of the United States. “Yes and no, sir. It
has
slowed down very slightly, and, as Dr. Romfo just indicated, some of the outer bands do appear to be breaking apart. It’s becoming a slightly smaller system, overall, in other words.”

“But …?”

“But it is still quite well organized at its center. And it’s actually taken an odd turn over the past couple of hours. First to the south and then slightly to the northwest. Based on past models, that’s often—I won’t say usually, but often—a dangerous sign.”

“Dangerous why?” the Vice President asked.

“Because it’s introducing a new trajectory that threatens a larger piece of real estate. South-to-north as opposed to a more direct east-to-west hit at a single mid-Atlantic location, where the land would weaken it. The worst-case scenario now is that it will skirt the entire seaboard, bringing hurricane force effects along a thousand-mile stretch of coast.”

“Jesus,” said the Vice President.

“And what time frame are we looking at?”

“At this point? It looks like we’ll be seeing significant effects tomorrow, with the first direct impact maybe forty-eight hours from now. But there’s still a great deal of wiggle room. Depending on what other systems might come into play.”

The President turned to Dr. Wu. “All right. We’ll give them the benefit of the doubt and see what this looks like in the morning. People like to wake up to good news,” he said, smiling weakly. “In the meantime, we’ll continue to mobilize emergency efforts, anticipating a worst case.”

“Yes, sir.” Dr. Wu looked to the swirling color-enhanced image of Alexander. No one said anything.

Dmitry Petrenko glanced from the bank of monitors along the wall of the underground facility to Victor Zorn’s face in the blue glow of a computer monitor. His skin had taken on a waxen quality as it sometimes did when he was very tired, but he still had the confident swagger in his walk. He was confident by nature, not by circumstances. It was dangerous to fall under his spell, as Petrenko himself had done, long ago. He had a personality that worked like a magic trick, Volkov used to say. Now, though, for the first time in years, Petrenko was feeling a little sorry for Victor, knowing that he had worked all of his life for this evening and the next day. To be the leader of this operation. Knowing that Volkov had trusted him implicitly, giving him the reins. But also knowing that if he failed, Mr. Zorn, as he called himself, would never have another chance.

There were three workstations in the room, each with three computer screens lined up side by side. Wires and extension cords snaked across the floor. The facility felt temporary, which it was, part of a parcel of land that Mr. Zorn had purchased more than a year ago, with financing from Vladimir Volkov. It was only a hollowed space, the walls and ceiling made of rock, the floor an overlaid metal mesh.

Now, all at once, it seemed, there were serious problems with Mr. Zorn’s operation, and Mr. Zorn was having difficulty handling them. “The true test of character is how we respond to troubles,” Volkov liked to say. Mr. Zorn seemed to be auditioning a variety of responses, all the while keeping up his front. At first, he had been too nervous; now, it seemed, the opposite: nonchalant, showing his dimples as if everything were proceeding as projected.

But it wasn’t.

The outcome of this operation was actually quite simple, Petrenko knew, like that of any sporting event. There were only ever two
possible results. If Mr. Zorn pulled this off, and the American president went on television to announce the partnership, then he won. If anything else happened, he lost. The loss in this case would almost certainly be permanent for him.

But Petrenko could see that Mr. Zorn was not thinking in those terms. He wasn’t made that way. There was too much at stake for him to admit the possibility of a massive miscalculation. Yet it had been more than eight hours now since they had turned off the laser heaters and the mitigation was not following any of the projections Mr. Zorn had prepared for the Americans—and for Volkov. Worse, he was pretending that it did not matter, that they were simply in a “transition phase.”

No
. There was something wrong with this storm. Something Mr. Zorn hadn’t prepared for. It was not responding as it should have. It was almost as if the storm were somehow trying to undo all of their efforts, trying to defeat them.

Already, Mr. Zorn had relayed manufactured figures to the White House. He had done that with several of the investors, as well, Petrenko had noticed, during the buildup. “An American trick,” he had heard Mr. Zorn say once, in a hushed voice, to his chief scientist Ivan Letkov. It was how corporations like Enron had appeased their investors during rough patches, he said. They invented “fair value” projections and “interim results” until the “weather turned.” He was playing this trick at a fairly safe level now; but if he was forced to do it again, at the 8
A.M.
briefing, the stakes would rise significantly. And it would become increasingly difficult for Mr. Zorn to align his numbers with reality. Soon, the group’s credibility would be lost. And Volkov would not be pleased.

The next report to the Americans would be at 8
A.M.
By then, the storm was supposed to have begun breaking apart.

Petrenko would be in the room well before then, doing his job. It was a very simple job, but it was becoming a painful one. All he had to do was observe. To watch and to listen. And report.

B
LAINE COULDN
’
T MOVE
.
It was as if she were suspended between consciousness and unconsciousness. Unable to open her eyes, unaware of where she was. Then, gradually, the outside began to seep in. She tasted the damp air. Heard rain thudding on a metal
covering. Felt metal bands squeezing her wrists. Recognized smells, earth scents—wet soil, minerals, rain. And then she heard a subtler, more distant sound of water; the rushing of a creek, perhaps. Finally she opened her eyes to the cold darkness.