The helicopter thumped over the Arizona desert, twenty miles east of Flagstaff, not far from Canyon Diablo. In the back seat, Sanjong handed Evans pictures and computer printouts. Speaking of the Environmental Liberation Front, he said, "We assume their networks are up, but so are ours. All our networks are running," he said, "and we picked up an unexpected clue from one of them. Of all things, the Southwestern Parks Management Association."
"Which is?"
"It's an organization of state park managers from all the western states. And they discovered that something very odd had happened." A large percentage of the state parks in Utah, Arizona, and New Mexico were booked in advance, and paid for, to reserve them for company picnics, school celebrations, institutional birthday parties, and so on, for this weekend. In each case they were family affairs, involving parents and kids, sometimes grandparents, too.
True, this was a long three-day weekend. But nearly all the advance bookings were for Monday. Only a handful had been for Saturday or Sunday. None of the park superintendents could remember such a thing happening before.
"I don't get it," Evans said.
"They didn't either," Sanjong said. "They thought it might be some cult thing, and because the parks can't be used for religious purposes, they got on the phone and called some of the organizations. And they found in every case that the organization had received a special donation to fund the function on this particular weekend."
"Donation from whom?"
"Charitable organizations. In every case the situation was the same. They'd receive a letter saying Thank you for your recent request for funding. We are pleased to say we can support your get-together at such-and-such park on Monday, October eleventh. The check has already been sent in your name. Enjoy your gathering.' "
"But the groups never requested the booking?"
"No. So they'd call the charity, and someone would tell them it must have been a mixup, but since the checks were already sent out, they might as well go ahead and use the park that day. And a lot of the groups decided they would."
"And these charitable organizations were?"
"None you ever heard of. The Amy Rossiter Fund. The Fund for a New America. The Roger V. and Eleanor T. Malkin Foundation. The Joiner Memorial Foundation. All together, about a dozen charities."
"Real charities?"
Sanjong shrugged. "We assume not. But we're checking that now."
Evans said, "I still don't get it."
"Somebody wants those parks used this weekend."
"Yes, but why?"
Sanjong handed him a photograph. It was an aerial shot in false colors, and it showed a forest, the trees bright red against a dark blue ground. Sanjong tapped the center of the picture. There, in a clearing in the forest, Evans saw what looked like a spiderweb on the grounda series of concentric lines connecting fixed points. Like a spiderweb.
"And that is?"
"It's a rocket array. The launchers are the fixed points. The lines are the power cables to control the launch." His finger moved across the picture. "And you see, there's another array here. And a third one here. The three arrays form a triangle, approximately five miles on each side."
Evans could see it. Three separate spiderwebs, set in clearings in the forest.
"Three rocket arrays amp;"
"Yes. We know they have purchased five hundred solid-state rockets. The rockets themselves are quite small. Close analysis of the picture elements indicates that the launchers are four to six inches in diameter, which means the rockets are capable of going up about a thousand feet or so. Not more than that. Each array has about fifty rockets, wired together. Probably not set to fire at the same time. And you notice the launchers are placed quite far apart amp;"
"But for what purpose?" Evans said. "These things are out in the middle of nowhere. They shoot up a thousand feet, and then fall back down? Is that it? What's the point of that?"
"We don't know," Sanjong said. "But we have another clue. The picture you're holding in your hands was taken yesterday. But here is a picture from a flyby this morning." He handed Evans a second picture, showing the same terrain.
The spiderwebs were gone.
"What happened?" Evans said.
"They packed up and left. You see in the first picture, there are vans parked at the edge of the clearings. Apparently, they just put everything in the vans and moved."
"Because they were spotted?"
"It's unlikely they know they were spotted."
"Then what?"
"We think they had to move to a more favorable setting."
"More favorable for what?" Evans said. "What's going on?"
"It may be significant," Sanjong said, "that at the time they purchased the rockets, they also purchased a hundred and fifty kilometers of microfilament wire."
He was nodding to Evans, as if that was supposed to explain everything.
"A hundred and fifty kilometers amp;"
Sanjong flicked his eyes toward the helicopter pilot, and shook his head. "We can go into it in greater detail later on, Peter."
And then he looked out the window.
Evans stared out the opposite window. He saw mile after mile of eroded desert landscape, cliffs brown with streaks of orange and red. The helicopter rumbled northward. He could see the helicopter's shadow racing over the sand. Distorted, twisted, then recognizable again.
Rockets, he thought. Sanjong had given him this information as if he were supposed to figure it out on his own. Five hundred rockets. Groups of fifty launchers, set widely apart. One hundred and fifty kilometers of microfilament wire.
Perhaps that was supposed to mean something, but Peter Evans didn't have the faintest idea what it could possibly be. Groups of small rockets, for what?
Microfilament, for what?
In his head, it was easy enough to calculate that if this microfilament was attached to the rockets, each rocket would have about a third of a kilometer of wire. And a third of a kilometer was amp;roughly a thousand feet.
Which was how high Sanjong said the rockets could go, anyway.
So these rockets were flying a thousand feet into the air, dragging a microfilament wire behind them? What was the point of that? Or was the wire intended to be used to retrieve them, later on? But no, he thought, that couldn't be. The rockets would fall back into the forest, and any microfilament would snap.
And why were the rockets spaced widely apart? If they were only a few inches in diameter, couldn't they be packed closer together?
He seemed to recall that the military had rocket launchers where the rockets were so close together the fins almost touched. So why should these rockets be far apart?
A rocket flies up amp;dragging a thin wire amp;and it gets to a thousand feet amp;and amp; And what?
Perhaps, he thought, there was some instrumentation in the nose of each rocket. The wire was a way to transmit information back to the ground. But what instrumentation?
What was the point of all this?
He glanced back at Sanjong, who was now hunched over another photograph.
"What're you doing?"
"Trying to figure out where they've gone."
Evans frowned as he saw the picture in Sanjong's hand. It was a satellite weather map.
Sanjong was holding a weather map.
Did all this have to do with weather?
"Yes," Kenner said, leaning forward in the booth of the restaurant. They were in the back of a steakhouse in Flagstaff. The jukebox at the bar was playing old Elvis Presley: "Don't Be Cruel." Kenner and Sarah had showed up just a few minutes before. Sarah, Evans thought, looked drawn and worried. Not her usual cheerful self.
"We think this is all about the weather," Kenner was saying. "In fact, we're sure it is." He paused while a waitress brought salads, then continued. "There are two reasons to think so. First, ELF has bought a considerable amount of expensive technology that seems to have no use in common, except perhaps attempts to influence the weather. And second, the"
"Hold on, hold on," Evans said. "You said attempts to influence the weather?"
"Exactly."
"Influence how?"
"Control it," Sanjong said.
Evans leaned back in the booth. "This is crazy," he said. "I mean, you're telling me these guys think they can control the weather?"
"They can," Sarah said.
"But how?" Evans said. "How could they do it?"
"Most of the research is classified."
"Then how do they get it?"
"Good question," Kenner said. "And we'd like to know that answer. But the point is, we assume that these rocket arrays are designed to produce major storms, or to amplify the power of existing storms."
"By doing what?"
"They cause a change in the electric potentials of the infra-cumulus strata."
"I'm glad I asked," Evans said. "That's very clear."
"We don't really know the details," Kenner said, "although I'm sure we'll find out soon enough."
"The strongest evidence," Sanjong said, "comes from the pattern of park rentals. These guys have arranged for lots of picnics over a large areathree states, in point of fact. Which means they are probably going to decide at the last minute where to act, based on existing weather conditions."
"Decide what?" Evans said. "What are they going to do?"
Nobody spoke.
Evans looked from one to another.
"Well?"
"We know one thing," Kenner said. "They want it documented. Because if there's one thing you can count on at a school picnic or a company outing with families and kids, it's lots of cameras. Lots of video, lots of stills."
"And then of course the news crews will come," Sanjong said.
"They will? Why?"
"Blood draws cameras," Kenner said.
"You mean they're going to hurt people?"
"I think it's clear," Kenner said, "that they're going to try."
An hour later they all sat on lumpy motel beds while Sanjong hooked a portable DVD player to the television set in the room. They were in a crappy motel room in Shoshone, Arizona, twenty miles north of Flagstaff.
On the screen, Evans once again saw Henley talking to Drake.
"I've listened to you before," Drake said resentfully. "And it didn't work."
"Think structurally," Henley answered. He was leaning back in his chair, staring up at the ceiling, fingertips tented.
"What the hell does that mean?" Drake said.
"Think structurally, Nicholas. In terms of how information functions. What it holds up, what holds it up."
"This is just PR bullshit."
"Nicholas," Henley said, sharply. "I am trying to help you."
"Sorry." Drake looked chastened. He hung his head a little.
Watching the screen, Evans said, "Does it look like Henley is in charge here?"
"He's always been in charge," Kenner said. "Didn't you know that?"
On the screen, Henley was saying, "Let me explain how you are going to solve your problem, Nicholas. The solution is simple. You have already told me that global warming is unsatisfactory because whenever there is a cold snap, people forget about it."
"Yes, I told you"
"So what you need," Henley said, "is to structure the information so that whatever kind of weather occurs, it always confirms your message. That's the virtue of shifting the focus to abrupt climate change. It enables you to use everything that happens. There will always be floods, and freezing storms, and cyclones, and hurricanes. These events will always get headlines and airtime. And in every instance, you can claim it is an example of abrupt climate change caused by global warming. So the message gets reinforced. The urgency is increased."
"I don't know," Drake said doubtfully. "That's been tried, the last couple of years."
"Yes, on a scattered, individual basis. Isolated politicians, making claims about isolated storms or floods. Clinton did it, Gore did it, that blithering science minister in England did it. But we're not talking about isolated politicians, Nicholas. We are talking about an organized campaign throughout the world to make people understand that global warming is responsible for abrupt and extreme weather events."
Drake was shaking his head. "You know," he said, "how many studies show no increase in extreme weather events."
"Please." Henley snorted. "Disinformation from skeptics."
"That's hard to sell. There are too many studies amp;"
"What are you talking about, Nicholas? It's a snap to sell. The public already believes that industry is behind any contrary view." He sighed. "In any case, I promise you there will soon be more computer models showing that extreme weather is increasing. The scientists will get behind this and deliver what is needed. You know that."
Drake paced. He looked unhappy. "But it just doesn't make sense," he said. "It's not logical to say that freezing weather is caused by global warming."
"What's logic got to do with it?" Henley said. "All we need is for the media to report it. After all, most Americans believe that crime in their country is increasing, when it has actually been declining for twelve years. The US murder rate is as low as it was in the early 1970s, but Americans are more frightened than ever, because so much more airtime is devoted to crime, they naturally assume there is more in real life, too." Henley sat up in his chair. "Think about what I am saying to you, Nicholas. A twelve-year trend, and they still don't believe it. There is no greater proof that all reality is media reality."
"The Europeans are more sophisticated"
"Trust meit'll be even easier to sell abrupt climate change in Europe than in the US. You just do it out of Brussels. Because bureaucrats get it, Nicholas. They'll see the advantages of this shift in emphasis."
Drake did not reply. He walked back and forth, hands in his pockets, staring at the floor.
"Just think how far we have come!" Henley said. "Back in the 1970s, all the climate scientists believed an ice age was coming. They thought the world was getting colder. But once the notion of global warming was raised, they immediately recognized the advantages. Global warming creates a crisis, a call to action. A crisis needs to be studied, it needs to be funded, it needs political and bureaucratic structures around the world. And in no time at all, a huge number of meteorologists, geologists, oceanographers suddenly became climate scientists' engaged in the management of this crisis. This will be the same, Nicholas."
"Abrupt climate change has been discussed before, and it hasn't caught on."
"That's why you are holding a conference," Henley said patiently. "You hold a well-publicized conference and it happens to coincide with some dramatic evidence for the dangers of abrupt climate. And by the end of the conference, you will have established abrupt climate change as a genuine problem."
"I don't know amp;"
"Stop whining. Don't you remember how long it took to establish the global threat of nuclear winter, Nicholas? It took five days. On one Saturday in 1983, nobody in the world had ever heard of nuclear winter. Then a big media conference was held and by the following Wednesday the entire world was worried about nuclear winter. It was established as a bona fide threat to the planet. Without a single published scientific paper."
Drake gave a long sigh.
"Five days, Nicholas," Henley said. "They did it. You'll do it. Your conference is going to change the ground rules for climate."
The screen went black.
"My God," Sarah said.
Evans said nothing. He just stared at the screen.
Sanjong had stopped listening some minutes before. He was working with his laptop.
Kenner turned to Evans. "When was that segment recorded?"
"I don't know." Evans slowly came out of his fog. He looked around the room in a daze. "I have no idea when it was recorded. Why?"
"You've got the remote in your hand," Kenner said.
"Oh, sorry." Evans pressed the buttons, brought the menu up, saw the date. "It was two weeks ago."
"So Morton's been bugging Drake's offices for two weeks," Kenner said.
"Looks like it."
Evans watched as the recording ran again, this time with the sound off. He stared at the two men, Drake pacing and worried, Henley just sitting there, sure of himself. Evans was struggling to assimilate what he had heard. The first recording had seemed reasonable enough to him. There, Drake was complaining about the problems of publicizing a genuine environmental threat, global warming, when everybody naturally ceased to care about the topic in the middle of a snowstorm. All that made sense to Evans.
But this conversation amp;He shook his head. This one worried him.
Sanjong clapped his hands together and said, "I got it! I have the location!" He turned his laptop so everyone could see the screen. "This is NEXRAD radar from Flagstaff-Pulliam. You can see the precipitation center forming northeast of Payson. There should be a storm there by midday tomorrow."
"How far is that from us?" Sarah said.
"About ninety miles."
Kenner said, "I think we better get in the helicopter."
"And do what?" Evans said. "It's ten o'clock at night, for God's sake."
"Dress warmly," Kenner said.
The world was green and black, the trees slightly fuzzy through the lenses. The night-vision goggles pressed heavily against his forehead. There was something wrong with the straps: they cut into his ears and were painful. But everybody was wearing them, looking out the windows of the helicopter at the miles of forest below.
They were looking for clearings, and had already passed a dozen or more. Some were inhabited, the houses dark rectangles with glowing windows. In a couple of clearings, the buildings were completely blackghost towns, abandoned mining communities.
But they hadn't yet found what they were looking for.
"There's one," Sanjong said, pointing.
Evans looked off to his left, and saw a large clearing. The familiar spiderweb pattern of launchers and cables was partially obscured in tall grass. To one side stood a large trailer truck of the size used to deliver groceries to supermarkets. And indeed, in black lettering, he saw "A amp;P" printed on the side panels.
"Food terrorists," Sarah said. But no one laughed.
And then the clearing had flashed past, the helicopter continuing onward. The pilot had explicit instructions not to slow down or to circle any clearing.
"That was definitely one," Evans said. "Where are we now?"
"Tonto Forest, west of Prescott," the pilot said. "I've marked the coordinates."
Sanjong said, "We should find two more, in a five-mile triangle."
The helicopter thumped onward into the night. It was another hour before they located the remaining spiderwebs, and the helicopter headed home.
The morning was warm and sunny, although dark clouds threatened to the north. At McKinley State Park, the Lincoln Middle School was having its annual outing. There were balloons attached to the picnic tables, the barbecue grills were smoking, and about three hundred kids and their families were playing on the grassy field beside the waterfall, throwing Frisbees and baseballs. More were playing along the banks of the nearby Cavender River, which meandered peacefully through the park. The river was low at the moment, with sandy banks on either side, and small rocky pools where the younger children played.
Kenner and the others were parked to one side, watching.
"When that river overflows," Kenner said, "it'll take out the entire park and everyone in it."
"It's a pretty big park," Evans said. "Will it really overflow that much?"
"Doesn't take much. The water will be muddy and fast moving. Six inches of fast water is enough to knock a person off his feet. Then they slide; it's slippery, they won't be able to get back up again. There're rocks and debris in the water; mud blinds them, they hit things, lose consciousness. Most drownings occur because people try to move across very low water."
"But six inches amp;"
"Muddy water has power," Kenner said. "Six inches of mud will take a car, no problem. Lose traction, sweep it right off the road. Happens all the time."
Evans found this hard to believe, but Kenner was now talking about some famous flood in Colorado, the Big Thompson, where a hundred and forty people died in a matter of minutes. "Cars crushed like beer cans," he said. "People with clothes ripped off their bodies by mud. Don't kid yourself."
"But here," Evans said, pointing to the park. "If the water starts to rise, there will be enough time to get out amp;."
"Not if it's a flash flood. Nobody here will know until it's too late. That's why we're going to make sure they don't have a flash flood."
He checked his watch, looked up at the darkening sky, and then walked back to the cars. They had three SUVs in a row. Kenner would drive one; Sanjong would drive one; Peter and Sarah would drive the third.
Kenner opened the back door to his car. He said to Peter, "Do you have a gun?"
"No."
"You want one?"
"You think I need one?"
"You might. When was the last time you were on a range?"
"Uh, it's been a while." In truth, Evans had never fired a gun in his life. And until this moment, he was proud of it. He shook his head. "I'm not much of a gun guy."
Kenner had a revolver in his hands. He had opened the round barrel-thing and was checking it. Sanjong was over by his own car, checking an evil-looking rifle, matte black stock with a telescopic sight. His manner was quick, practiced. A soldier. Uneasily, Evans thought: What is this, the O.K. Corral?
"We'll be all right," Sarah said to Kenner. "I have a gun."
"You know how to use it?"
"I do."
"What is it?"
"A 9-millimeter Beretta."
Kenner shook his head. "Can you handle a.38?"
"Sure."
He gave her a gun and a holster. She clipped the holster to the waist-band of her jeans. She seemed to know what she was doing.
Evans said, "Do you really expect us to shoot somebody?"
"Not unless you have to," Kenner said. "But you may need to defend yourself."
"You think they'll have guns?"
"They might. Yes."
"Jesus."
"It's okay," Sarah said. "Personally, I'll be happy to shoot the bastards." Her voice was hard, angry.
"All right, then," Kenner said. "That about does it. Let's mount up."
Evans thought, Mount up. Jesus. This was the O.K. Corral.
Kenner drove to the other side of the park and spoke briefly to a state trooper, whose black-and-white patrol car stood at the edge of a clearing. Kenner had arranged radio contact with the trooper. In fact, they were all going to be in radio contact, because the plan required a high degree of coordination. They would have to hit the three spiderweb sites at the same time.
As Kenner explained it, the rockets were intended to do something called "charge amplification" of the storm. It was an idea from the last ten years, when people first began to study lightning in the field, in actual storms. The old idea was that each lightning strike decreased the storm's intensity, because it reduced the difference in electrical charge between the clouds and the ground. But some researchers had concluded that lightning strikes had the opposite effectthey increased the power of storms dramatically. The mechanism for this was not known, but was presumed to be related to the sudden heat of the lightning bolt, or the shock-wave it created, adding turbulence to the already turbulent storm center. In any case, there was now a theory that if you could make more lightning, the storm would get worse.
"And the spiderwebs?" Evans said.
"They're little rockets with microfilaments attached. They go up a thousand feet into the cloud layer, where the wire provides a low-resistance conduction pathway and creates a lightning strike."
"So the rockets cause more lightning? That's what they're for?"
"Yes. That's the idea."
Evans remained doubtful. "Who pays for all this research?" he said. "The insurance companies?"
Kenner shook his head. "It's all classified," he said.
"You mean it's military?"
"Correct."
"The military pays for weather research?"
"Think about it," Kenner said.
Evans was not inclined to do so. He was deeply skeptical of all things military. The notion that they were paying for weather research struck him as the same sort of ludicrous excess as the six-hundred-dollar toilet seats and thousand-dollar wrenches that had become so notorious. "If you ask me, it's all a waste of money."
"ELF doesn't think so," Kenner said.
It was then that Sanjong spoke, with considerable intensity. Evans had forgotten that he was a soldier. Sanjong said that whoever could control the weather would control the battlefield. It was an age-old military dream. Of course the military would spend money on it.
"You're saying it actually works."
"Yes," Sanjong said. "Why do you think we are here?"
The SUV wound up into the wooded hills north of McKinley Park. This was an area of intermittent dense forest and open grassy fields. In the passenger seat, Sarah looked at Peter. He was good-looking, and he had the strong physique of an athlete. But sometimes he behaved like such a wimp.
"You ever do any sports?" she said.
"Sure."
"What?"
"Squash. A little soccer."
"Oh."
"Hey," he said. "Just because I don't shoot guns amp;I'm a lawyer, for Christ's sake."
She was disappointed with him and not even sure why. Probably, she thought, because she was nervous and wanted somebody competent to be with her. She liked being around Kenner. He was so knowledgeable, so skilled. He knew what was going on. He was quick to respond to any situation.
Whereas Peter was a nice guy, but amp; She watched his hands on the wheel. He drove well. And that was important today.
It was no longer sunny. They were close to the storm clouds. The day was dark, gloomy, threatening. The road ahead was deserted as it wound through the forests. They hadn't seen a car since they left the park.
"How much farther?" Evans said.
Sarah consulted the GPS. "Looks like another five miles."
He nodded. Sarah shifted in her seat, moving so the holstered gun would not press against her hip. She glanced at the passenger-side mirror.
"Oh shit."
"What?"
Behind them was a battered blue pickup truck. With Arizona plates.
"We've got trouble," Sarah said.
"Why?" Evans said. He glanced in the rearview mirror, saw the truck. "What is it?"
Sarah had the radio in her hand. "Kenner. They spotted us."
"Who did?" Evans said. "Who are they?"
The radio clicked. "Where are you?" Kenner said.
"On Highway 95. We're about four miles away."
"Okay," Kenner said. "Stick with the plan. Do your best."
"Who is it?" Evans said, looking in the mirror.
The blue pickup was advancing fast. Very fast. In the next instant, it banged into the back of their car. Evans was startled, swerved, got control again. "What the fuck?" he said.
"Just drive, Peter."
Sarah took the revolver from its holster. She held the gun on her lap, looked out the side mirror.
The blue truck had dropped back for a moment, but now raced forward again.
"Here he comes"
Perhaps because Peter stepped on the gas, the impact was surprisingly gentle. It was hardly more than a nudge. Peter careened around the curves, glancing at the rearview mirror.
Again, the blue truck dropped back. It followed them for the next half mile, but it was never closer than five or six car lengths.
"I don't get it," Evans said. "Are they going to ram us or not?"
"Guess not," she said. "See what happens if you slow down."
He slowed the SUV, dropping their speed to forty.
The blue truck slowed too, falling back farther.
"They're just following us," she said.
Why?
The first scattered drops of rain spattered the windshield. The road ahead was spotted. But they weren't yet in full rain.
The blue truck dropped even farther back now.
They came around a curve, and immediately ahead of them saw a big silver eighteen-wheeler, with a big trailer. It was rumbling slowly along the road, not going more than thirty miles an hour. On its back doors it said, "A amp;P."
"Oh shit," Evans said. In the back mirror, they saw the blue truck, still following. "They've got us front and back."
He swerved out, trying to pass the big trailer, but as soon as he did, the driver moved toward the center of the road. Evans immediately fell back.
"We're trapped," he said.
"I don't know," she said. "I don't get it."
The trailer blocked them at the front, but behind them the blue truck was farther back than ever, several hundred yards down the road.
She was still puzzling over this situation when a bolt of lightning crashed down at the side of the road as they drove past. It couldn't have been more than ten yards away, a white-hot, dazzling blast of light and sound. They both jumped.
"Jesus, that was close," Evans said.
"Yes amp;"
"I've never seen one that close."
Before she could answer, a second bolt crashed down, directly in front of them. The sound was explosive; Evans swerved involuntarily, even though the bolt was gone.
"Holy shit."
By then Sarah had a suspicion, just as the third bolt hit the car itself, a deafening crash and a sudden pressure that made knife pains in her ears and a blast of white that enveloped the car. Evans screamed in fear and let go of the wheel; Sarah grabbed it and straightened the car in the road.
A fourth bolt smashed down by the driver's side, just inches from the car. The driver's-side window cracked and splintered.
"Holy shit," Evans was saying. "Holy shit! What is this?"
To Sarah, it was only too obvious.
They were attracting lightning.
The next bolt cracked down, and was immediately followed by another, which smashed into the hood and spread burning white, jagged fingers over the car, and then was gone. There was a huge black indentation in the hood.
"I can't do this," Evans was saying. "I can't, I can't do this."
"Drive, Peter," Sarah said, grabbing his arm and squeezing hard. "Drive."
Two more bolts hit them, in rapid succession. Sarah smelled the odor of something burningshe wasn't sure what. But now she understood why they had been so gently rammed.
The blue pickup had stuck something onto their car. Some kind of electronic thing. And it was drawing the lightning to them.
"What do we do? What do we do?" Evans was whimpering. He howled as each new bolt struck.
But they were trapped, driving on a narrow road, hemmed in by dense pine forest on both sides of the road amp; Something she should know.
Forest amp;What about the forest?
A lightning bolt cracked the rear window with explosive force. Another bolt struck them so hard it bounced the car on the macadam, as if it had been hit by a hammer.
"The hell with this," Evans said, and spun the wheel, turning off the highway and onto a dirt track in the forest. Sarah saw a sign flash by, the name of a town on a battered post. They were plunged into near darkness under the huge, green pines. But the lightning immediately stopped.
Of course, she thought. The trees.
Even if their car was attracting lightning, it would strike the taller trees first.
A moment later, it did. They heard a sharp crack just behind them, and lightning flashed down the side of a tall pine, splitting the trunk open with what looked like steam and bursting the tree into flames.
"We're going to start a forest fire."
"I don't care," Evans said. He was driving fast. The vehicle was bouncing over the dirt road, but it was an SUV and it rode high so Sarah knew they would be all right.
Looking back, she saw the tree burning, and the fire spreading laterally in fingers along the ground.
Kenner on the radio: "Sarah, what's happening?"
"We had to leave the road. We're being struck by lightning."
"A lot!" Evans yelled. "All the time!"
"Find the attractor," Kenner said.
"I think it's attached to the car," Sarah said. As she spoke, a bolt smashed down on the road just ahead of them. The glare was so bright she saw green streaks before her eyes.
"Then dump the car," Kenner said. "Go out as low as you can."
He clicked off. Evans continued to race forward, the SUV bouncing on the ruts. "I don't want to leave," he said. "I think we're safer inside. They always say don't leave your car because you're safer inside. The rubber tires insulate you."
"But something's on fire," she said, sniffing.
The car jolted and bounced. Sarah tried to keep her balance, just holding onto her seat, not touching the metal of the doors.
"I don't care, I think we should stay," Evans said.
"The gas tank might explode amp;"
"I don't want to leave," he said. "I'm not leaving." His knuckles were white, gripping the wheel. Ahead, Sarah saw a clearing in the forest. It was a large clearing, with high, yellow grass.
A lightning bolt smashed down with a fearsome crack, shattering the side mirror, which blew apart like a bomb. A moment later, they heard a soft whump. The car tilted to one side. "Oh shit," Evans said. "It blew a tire."
"So much for the insulation," she said.
The car was now grinding, the underside scraping over a dirt rut, metal squealing.
"Peter," she said.
"All right, all right, just let me get to the clearing."
"I don't think we can wait."
But the rut ended, the road flattened, and Evans drove forward, creaking on the rim, into the clearing. Raindrops spattered the windshield. Above the grass, Sarah saw the roofs of wooden buildings bleached by the sun. It took her a moment to realize that this was a ghost town. Or a mining town.
Directly ahead was a sign, auroraville, pop. 82. Another lightning bolt crashed down, and Evans hit the sign, knocking it over.
"Peter, I think we're here."
"Okay, yeah, let me get a little closer"
"Now, Peter!"
He stopped the car, and they flung open their doors in unison. Sarah threw herself bodily onto the ground, and another bolt crashed so close to her that the blast of hot air knocked her sideways and sent her rolling on the ground. The roar of the lightning was deafening.
She got up on hands and knees, and scrambled around to the back of the vehicle. Evans was on the other side of the SUV, yelling something, but she couldn't hear him. She examined the rear bumper. There was no attachment, no device.
There was nothing there.
But she had no time to think, because another bolt struck the back of the SUV, rocking it, and the rear window shattered, sprinkling her with shards of glass. She fought panic and scrambled forward, staying low as she moved around the SUV and through the grass toward the nearest building.
Evans was somewhere ahead, yelling to her. But she couldn't hear him over the rumbling thunder. She just didn't want another bolt, not now, if she could just go a few more seconds amp; Her hands touched wood. A board.
A step.
She crawled forward quickly, pushing aside the grass, and now she saw a porch, a dilapidated building, and swinging from the roof a sign bleached so gray she couldn't see what it said. Evans was inside, and she scrambled forward, ignoring the splinters in her hands, and he was yelling, yelling.
And she finally heard what he was saying:
"Look out for the scorpions!"
They were all over the wooden porchtiny, pale yellow, with their stingers in the air. There must have been two dozen. They moved surprisingly fast, scampering sideways, like crabs.
"Stand up!"
She got to her feet, and ran, feeling the arachnids crunch under her feet. Another lightning bolt smashed into the building's roof, knocking down the sign, which fell in a cloud of dust onto the porch.
But then she was inside the building. And Evans was standing there, fists raised, yelling, "Yes! Yes! We did it!"
She was gasping for breath. "At least they weren't snakes," she said, chest heaving.
Evans said, "What?"
"There're always rattlers in these old buildings."
"Oh Jesus."
Outside, thunder rumbled.
And the lightning started again.
Through the shattered, grimy window Sarah was looking at the SUV, and thinking that now that they had left the car, there were no more lightning strikes on the SUV amp;thinking¬hing on the bumper amp;then why had the pickup nudged the SUV? What was the point? She turned to ask Evans if he had noticed And a lightning bolt blasted straight down through the roof, smashing it open to the dark sky, sending boards flying in all directions, and blasting into the ground right where she had been standing. The lightning left a blackened pattern of jagged streaks, like the shadow of a thorn bush on the floor. The ozone smell was strong. Wisps of smoke drifted up from the dry floorboards.
"This whole building could go," Evans said. He was already flinging a side door open, heading outside.
"Stay low," Sarah said, and followed him out.
The rain was coming down harder, big splattering drops that struck her back and shoulders as she ran to the next building. It had a brick chimney, and looked generally better built. But the windows were the same, broken and thickly coated with dust and grime.
They tried the nearest door, but it was jammed shut, so they ran around to the front, and found that door wide open. Sarah ran inside. A lightning bolt smashed down behind her, sagging the roof over the porch, splintering one of the side posts as it streaked down into the ground. The shockwave blasted the front windows in a shower of dirty glass. Sarah turned away, covering her face, and when she looked out again, she realized she was in a blacksmith's shop. There was a large firepit in the center of the room, and above it all sorts of iron implements hanging from the ceiling.
And on the walls, she saw horseshoes, tongs, metal of all sorts.
This room was full of metal.
The thunder rumbled ominously. "We have to get out of here," Evans shouted. "This is the wrong place to"
He never finished. The next bolt knocked him off his feet as it came crashing down through the ceiling, spinning the iron implements, then smashing into the firepit, blasting the bricks outward in all directions. Sarah ducked, covering her head and ears, felt bricks striking her shoulders, back, legsknocking her overand then there was a burst of pain in her forehead, and she saw brief stars before blackness settled over her and the rumble of thunder faded to endless silence.
Kenner was fifteen miles away, driving east on Route 47, listening to Sarah's radio. Her transmitter was still on, clipped to her belt. It was hard to be sure what was happening because each lightning strike produced a burst of static that lasted for the next fifteen seconds. Nevertheless he understood the most important pointEvans and Sarah had gotten away from the SUV, but the lightning hadn't stopped. In fact it seemed that the lightning was following them.
Kenner had been yelling into his handset, trying to get Sarah's attention, but apparently she had turned her volume down, or was too busy dealing with what was happening in the ghost town. He kept saying, "It's following you!" over and over.
But she never answered.
Now there was a long burst of static, followed by silence. Kenner switched channels.
"Sanjong?"
"Yes, Professor."
"Have you been listening?"
"Yes."
"Where are you?" Kenner said.
"I am on Route 190, going north. I estimate I am three miles from the web."
"Any lightning yet?"
"No. But the rain has just started here. First drops on the windshield."
"Okay. Hang on."
He went back to Sarah's channel. There was still static, but it was fading.
"Sarah! Are you there? Sarah! Sarah!"
Kenner heard a cough, a distant cough.
"Sarah!"
A click. A bang. Someone fumbling with the radio. A cough. "This is Peter. Evans."
"What's happening there?"
"dead."
"What?"
"She's dead. Sarah's dead. She got hit with a brick, and she fell and then there was a lightning strike that hit her full on the body and she's dead. I'm right here beside her. She's dead, oh shit, she's dead amp;"
"Try mouth-to-mouth."
"I'm telling you, she's dead."
"Peter. Mouth-to-mouth."
"Oh God amp;She's blue amp;"
"That means she's alive, Peter."
"like a corpse, acorpse"
"Peter, listen to me."
But Evans wasn't hearing anything. The idiot had his finger on the radio button. Kenner swore in frustration. And then suddenly a new blast of static. Kenner knew what it meant.
There had been another lightning strike. A bad one.
"Sanjong?"
Now, Kenner heard nothing but static on Sanjong's channel, too. It lasted ten seconds, fifteen seconds. So Sanjong had a strike, too. Only then did Kenner realize what must be causing it.
Sanjong came back, coughing.
"Are you all right?"
"I had a lightning strike. Very near the car. I cannot imagine, so close."
"Sanjong," Kenner said. "I think it's the radios."
"You think?"
"Where'd we get them?"
"I had them FedExed from DC."
"Package delivered to you personally?"
"No. To the motel. The owner gave it to me when I checked in amp;But the box was sealed amp;"
"Throw your radio away," Kenner said.
"There's no cellular net, we won't be in communic"
Nothing more. Just a blast of static.
"Peter."
There was no answer. Only silence on the radio. Not even static now.
"Peter. Answer me. Peter. Are you there?"
Nothing. Dead.
Kenner waited a few moments. There was no answer from Evans.
The first drops of rain splashed on Kenner's windshield. He rolled down his window, and threw his radio away. It bounced on the pavement, and went into the grass on the other side of the road.
Kenner had gone another hundred yards down the road when a bolt of lightning crashed down behind him on the opposite side of the road.
It was the radios, all right.
Somebody had gotten to the radios. In DC? Or in Arizona? It was hard to know for sure, and at this point it didn't matter. Their carefully coordinated plan was now impossible to carry out. The situation was suddenly very dangerous. They had planned to hit all three rocket arrays at the same time. That would not happen now. Of course Kenner could still hit his array. If Sanjong was still alive, he might get to the second array, but their attack would not be coordinated. If one of them were later than the other, the second rocket team would have been informed by radio, and would be waiting with guns ready. Kenner had no doubt about that.
And Sarah and Evans were either dead or unable to function. Their car was broken down. Certainly they would never make it to the third array.
So. Just one rocket array taken out. Maybe two.
Would that be enough?
Maybe, he thought.
Kenner looked at the road ahead, a pale strip under dark skies. He did not think about whether his friends were alive or not. Perhaps all three were dead. But if Kenner did not stop the storm, there would be hundreds dead. Children, families. Paper plates in the mud, while the searchers dug out the bodies.
Somehow he had to stop it.
He drove forward, into the storm.
"Mommy! Mommy! Brad hit me! Mommy! Make him stop!"
"All right, kids amp;"
"Bradley? How many times do I have to tell you? Leave your sister alone!"
Standing to one side of McKinley Park, Trooper Miguel Rodriguez of the Arizona Highway Patrol stood by his car and watched the picnic in progress. It was now eleven-thirty in the morning, and the kids were getting hungry. They were starting to fight. All around the park, barbecues were going, the smoke rising into an ever-darkening sky. Some of the parents looked upward with concern, but nobody was leaving the park. And the rain hadn't started here, even though they had heard the crack of lightning and the rumble of thunder a few miles to the north.
Rodriguez glanced at the bullhorn resting on the seat of his car. For the last half hour, he had waited impatiently for the radio call from Agent Kenner, telling him to clear the park.
But the call hadn't yet come.
And Agent Kenner had given him explicit instructions. Do not clear McKinley Park before he was given the word.
Trooper Rodriguez didn't understand why it was necessary to wait, but Kenner had been insistent. He said it was a matter of national security. Rodriguez didn't understand that either. How was a damn picnic in a park a matter of national security?
But he knew an order when he heard one. So Rodriguez waited, impatient and uneasy, and watched the sky. Even when he heard the weather service announce a flash flood advisory for the eastern counties from Kayenta to Two Guns and Camp Paysonan area that included McKinleyRodriguez still waited.
He could not know that the radio call he was waiting for would never come.
In retrospect, what saved Peter Evans was the slight tingling he had felt, holding the radio in his sweating palm. In the minutes before, Evans had realized that something was causing the lightning to follow them wherever they went. He didn't know any science, but assumed it must be something metallic or electronic. Talking to Kenner, he had felt the faint electric tingle from the handsetand on an impulse he had flung it across the room. It landed against a large iron viselike contraption that looked like a bear trap.
The lightning crashed down a moment later, glaring white and roaring, and Evans threw himself flat, across Sarah's dead body. Lying there, dizzy with fear, his ears ringing from the blast, he thought for a moment that he felt some movement from her body beneath him.
He got up quickly and began to cough. The room was full of smoke. The opposite wall was on fire, the flames still small, but already licking up the wall. He looked back at Sarah, blue and cold. There was no question in his mind that she was dead. He must have imagined her movement, but He pinched her nose and began to give her mouth-to-mouth. Her lips were cold. It frightened him. He was sure she was dead. He saw hot embers and ash floating in the smoky air. He would have to leave before the entire building came down around him. He was losing his count, blowing into her lungs.
There was no point anyway. He heard the flames crackling around him. He looked up and saw that the ceiling timbers were starting to burn.
He felt panic. He jumped to his feet, ran to the door, and threw it open and went outside.
He was stunned to feel hard rain coming downpelting him, soaking him instantly. It shocked him to his senses. He looked back and saw Sarah lying on the floor. He couldn't leave her.
He ran back, grabbed both her arms, and dragged her out of the house. Her inert body was surprisingly heavy. Her head sagged back, eyes closed, her mouth hanging open. She was dead, all right.
Out in the rain once more, he dropped her in the yellow grass, got down on his knees, and gave her more mouth-to-mouth. He was not sure how long he kept up his steady rhythm. One minute, two minutes. Maybe five. It was clearly pointless, but he continued long past any reason, because in a strange way the rhythm relieved his own sense of panic, it gave him something to concentrate on. He was out there in the middle of a pelting downpour with a ghost town in flames around him anyway, and Sarah retched. Her body rose up suddenly, and he released her in astonishment. She had a spasm of dry heaves, and then fell into a fit of coughing.
"Sarah amp;"
She groaned. She rolled over. He grabbed her in his arms, and held her. She was breathing. But her eyes fluttered wildly. She didn't seem to be conscious.
"Sarah, come on amp;"
She was coughing, her body shaking. He wondered if she was choking to death.
"Sarah amp;"
She shook her head, as if to clear it. She opened her eyes and stared at him. "Oh man," she said. "Do I have a headache."
He thought he was going to cry.
Sanjong glanced at his watch. The rain was coming down harder now, the wipers flicking back and forth. It was very dark, and he had turned on his headlights.
He had thrown his radio away many minutes before, and the lightning had stopped around his car. But it was continuing elsewherehe heard the rumble of distant thunder. Checking the GPS, he realized he was only a few hundred yards from the spiderweb he was meant to disrupt.
He scanned the road ahead, looking for the turnoff. That was when he saw the first cluster of rockets firing skyward, like black birds streaking straight up into the dark and roiling clouds.
And in a moment, a cluster of lightning bolts came blasting downward, carried on the wires.
Ten miles to the north, Kenner saw the rocket array fire upward from the third spiderweb. He guessed there were only about fifty rockets in that array, which meant there were another hundred still on the ground.
He came to the side road, turned right, and came instantly into a clearing. There was a large eighteen-wheeler parked to one side. There were two men in yellow rain slickers standing beside the cab. One of them held a box in his handsthe firing device.
Kenner didn't hesitate. He spun the wheel of the SUV and drove right for the cab. The men were stunned for a moment, and at the last moment jumped aside just as Kenner scraped along the side of the cab, screeching metal, and then turned into the rocket field itself.
In his rearview mirror he saw the men scrambling up, but by now he was within the spiderweb array, driving along the line of wires, trying to crush the launch tubes under his wheels. As he hit them he could hear: Thunk! Thunk! Thunk! He hoped that would disrupt the firing pattern, but he was wrong.
Directly ahead, he saw another fifty rockets spout flames, and rush upward into the sky.
Sanjong was inside the second clearing. He saw a wooden cabin off to the right, and a large truck parked beside it. There were lights in the cabin, and he saw shapes moving in the windows. There were men in there. Wires came out from the front door of the cabin and disappeared in the grass.
He drove straight for the cabin, and he pushed the cruise control on the steering wheel.
From the front door he saw one man come out, cradling a machine gun. Flame spurted from the barrel and Sanjong's windshield shattered. He threw open his door and jumped out of the SUV, holding his rifle away from his body, then landing and rolling in the grass.
He looked up just in time to see the SUV smash into the cabin. There was a lot of smoke and shouting. Sanjong was only about twenty yards away. He waited. After a moment, the man with the machine gun came running around to the side of the SUV, to look for the driver. He was shouting excitedly.
Sanjong fired once. The man fell backward.
He waited. A second man came out, yelling in the rain. He saw the fallen man, and jumped back, huddling behind the front bumper of the SUV. He leaned forward and called to the fallen man.
Sanjong shot at him. The man disappeared, but Sanjong was not certain he had hit him.
He had to change position now. The rain had matted down the grass, so there was not as much cover as he would have liked. He rolled quickly, moving laterally about ten yards, and then crawled forward cautiously, trying to get a view into the cabin. But the car had smashed in the front door, and the lights inside were now out. He was sure there were more men in the cabin but he did not see anyone now. The shouting had stopped. There was just the rumble of thunder and the patter of rain.
He strained, listening. He heard the crackle of radios. And voices.
There were still men in the cabin.
He waited in the grass.
Rain dripped in Evans's eyes as he spun the wrench, tightening the lug nuts on the front wheel of the SUV. The spare tire was now securely in place. He wiped his eyes, and then briefly tightened each lug nut in turn. Just to be sure. It was a rough road going back to the main highway, and now with this rain it would be muddy. He didn't want the wheel coming loose.
Sarah was waiting for him in the passenger seat. He had half-dragged, half-carried her back to the vehicle. She was still dazed, out of it, so he was surprised to hear her shouting something over the sound of the rain.
Evans looked up.
He saw headlights, in the distance. On the far side of the clearing.
He squinted.
It was the blue pickup truck.
"Peter!"
He dropped the lug wrench and ran for the driver's side. Sarah had already started the engine. He got behind the wheel and put the SUV in gear. The blue truck was gaining on them, coming across the clearing.
"Let's go," Sarah said.
Evans stepped on the gas, turned, and drove into the forestheading back the way they had come. Behind them, the burning building had been put out by the rain. It was now a smoldering wreck, hissing clouds of steam.
The blue pickup drove past the building without a pause. And came down the road after them.
Kenner turned, and came back toward the eighteen-wheeler. The men were standing there, holding the firing box. One had a pistol out, and began firing at Kenner. Kenner accelerated hard, driving straight at them. He hit the man with the pistol. His body was thrown into the air, over the top of the SUV. The second man had somehow gotten away. Kenner spun the wheel.
As he came back he saw the man he had hit staggering to his feet in the grass. The other man was nowhere to be seen. The staggering man raised his gun just as Kenner hit him again. He went down, and the SUV bounced over his body. Kenner was looking for the other manthe man with the firing box.
He didn't see him anywhere.
He spun the wheel. There was only one place the man could have gone.
Kenner drove straight for the truck.
Sanjong was waiting in the grass when he heard the sound of a truck engine. His view was blocked by his own crashed SUV. The truck was behind the SUV. He heard someone put it into gear, backing up.
Sanjong got to his feet and began to run. A bullet whined past him. He dropped to the ground again.
They had left someone in the house.
He stayed low in the grass, and crawled forward, heading for the truck. Bullets snapped in the grass all around him. Somehow they had his position, even in the grass. That meant amp; He twisted, turning to face the house. He wiped the rain out of his eyes and looked through the sights of his rifle.
The guy was on the roof of the cabin. Barely visible, except when he rose up to fire.
Sanjong fired just below the roofline. He knew the bullet would pass right through the wood. He didn't see the man again. But the man's rifle slid down the roof as Sanjong watched.
He got to his feet and ran toward the truck, but it was already driving away, heading out from the clearing, a pair of red taillights in the rain, disappearing onto the main road.
Kenner was out of his SUV, and on the ground. He could see the last guy, a silhouette under the big eighteen-wheeler.
"Don't shoot me, don't shoot me!" the guy was yelling.
"Come out slowly, with your hands empty," Kenner shouted. "I want to see your hands."
"Just don't shoot amp;"
"Come out. Real slow and"
A sudden burst of machine gun fire. The wet grass around him snapped.
Kenner pressed his face into the wet earth, and waited.
"Go faster!" Sarah said, looking over her shoulder.
Their SUV bounced in the mud, headlights jumping wildly.
"I don't think I can amp;" Evans said.
"They're gaining!" she said. "You have to go faster!"
They were almost out of the forest. Evans could see the highway just a few dozen yards ahead. He remembered that the last section of the dirt track was less eroded, and he accelerated, heading there.
And came out onto the highway, going south.
"What are you doing?" Sarah said. "We have to go to the rocket field."
"It's too late now," he said. "We're going back to the park."
"But we promised Kenner"
"It's too late," he said. "Look at the storm. It's already full blown. We have to get back to help those families in the park."
He turned the windshield wipers on full force, and raced down the road in the storm.
Behind them, the pickup truck turned and followed them.
Trooper Miguel Rodriguez had been watching the waterfall. An hour ago, it had been a clear mist, coming over the cliff 's edge. Now it was tinged with brown, and it had more volume. The river, too, was starting to rise. It was flowing faster, and beginning to turn a muddy brown.
But it was still not raining at the park. The air had turned distinctly humid, and there had been scattered raindrops for a few minutes, but then the rain had stopped. A few families had abandoned their barbecues. A half-dozen more were packing up their cars in anticipation of the coming storm. But most had chosen to ignore it. The school principal was walking among the picnickers, telling people the weather would pass, urging everyone to stay.
Rodriguez was edgy. He tugged at his uniform collar, uncomfortable in the dampness. He paced back and forth beside his open car door. He heard the police radio announce flash flood warnings for Clayton County, which was where McKinley Park was located. He didn't want to wait any longer, but still he hesitated.
He couldn't understand why Kenner hadn't called him. The park was located in a canyon, and there was every sign of a potential flash flood. Rodriguez had lived in northern Arizona his whole life. He knew he should clear the park now.
Why hadn't Kenner called?
He drummed his fingers on the door of the car.
He decided to give it five more minutes.
Five minutes. No more.
What worried him most at the moment was the waterfall. The brown tinge had put people off, and most of the crowd had moved away. But a few teenagers were still playing in the pool at the base of the fall. Rodriguez knew that rocks could come over the cliff any minute now. Even small rocks would have enough force to kill a person at the bottom.
Rodriguez was thinking about clearing the waterfall area when he noticed something strange. Up at the top of the cliff, where the water came over the lip, he saw a van with an antenna. It looked like a TV station van. There was no lettering on the side, but there was a logo of some kind. Still he couldn't make it out from this distance. He saw a cameraman get out of the van and take a position by the waterfall, crouching down with a camera mounted on his shoulder and looking down into the park. A woman in a skirt and blouse stood by his side, pointing in this direction and that. Apparently telling him where to film, because he was turning the camera where she pointed.
It was definitely a news crew.
He thought: A news crew for a school picnic?
Rodriguez squinted, trying to identify the van's logo. It was yellow and blue, sort of swirly interlocking circles. He didn't recognize it as one of the local stations. But there was something distinctly creepy about this crew, coming here right as the storm was descending on the park. He decided he'd better walk over and have a talk with them.
Kenner didn't want to kill the guy now huddled beneath the semi. No member of ELF had ever been captured, and this one seemed a likely candidate. Kenner could tell from the sound of the guy's voice that he was scared. And he sounded young, maybe in his twenties. Probably he was shaken by the death of his friend. Certainly he couldn't handle a machine gun very well.
Now this guy was afraid he was going to die, too. Maybe he was having second thoughts about his cause.
"Come out now," Kenner yelled to him. "Come out, and everything will be all right."
"Fuck you," the guy said. "Who the fuck are you, anyway? What is your fucking problem? Don't you get it, man? We're trying to save the planet."
"You're breaking the law," Kenner said.
"The law," the guy said contemptuously. "The law's owned by the corporations that pollute the environment and destroy human life."
"The only one killing people is you," Kenner said. Thunder was rumbling and lightning flickered dimly behind the inky clouds. It was absurd to be having this conversation in the middle of a storm.
But it was worth it to get the guy alive.
"Hey, I'm not killing anyone," the guy said. "Not even you."
"You're killing little kids," Kenner said, "in the park. You're killing families on a picnic."
"Casualties are inevitable in accomplishing social change. History tells us that."
Kenner wasn't sure whether the guy believed what he was saying, had been fed it at college, or was just distracted by fear. Then again, maybe it was meant to be a distraction amp; He looked to his right, beneath his own vehicle. And he saw a pair of feet moving around the SUV and heading toward him.
Ah hell, he thought. It was disappointing. He aimed carefully and shot once, hitting the man behind the SUV in the ankle. The guy screamed in pain and went down on his back. Kenner could see him under the car. He wasn't young, maybe forty or forty-five. Bearded. He carried a machine gun, and he was rolling over to shoot Kenner fired twice. The man's head jerked back. He dropped the machine gun and did not move, his body sprawled awkwardly in the grass.
The man under the semi began to fire his own machine gun. The bullets were flying wildly. Kenner heard several thunk into his SUV. Kenner lay in the grass, head down.
When the shooting stopped, he yelled, "Last chance!"
"Fuck you!"
Kenner waited. There was a long pause. He listened to the sound of the rain. It was coming down very hard, now.
He waited.
The guy yelled, "Did you hear me, you fucking asshole?"
"I heard you," Kenner said, and shot once.
It was a real desert downpour, Evans thought, gripping the steering wheel. The rain was coming down in dense sheets. Even with the windshield wipers going as fast as they could, he found it almost impossible to see the road ahead. He had dropped his speed to fifty, then forty. Now he was down to thirty. The pickup truck behind them had slowed, too. There was no real choice.
He passed one or two other cars, but they were all pulled over to the side of the road. It was the sensible thing to do.
The pavement was awash in water, and whenever the pavement dipped a little, it formed a lake, or a rushing rivulet. Sometimes he could not tell how deep the water was, and he didn't want to soak his ignition. He gunned the engine to keep it dry.
He didn't see any road signs. It was almost as dark as night out there, and he had his headlights on, but they seemed to make no difference. He could see only a few yards ahead through the rain.
He looked over at Sarah, but she was just staring forward. Not moving, not speaking. He wondered if she was all right.
Looking in the rearview mirror, he could sometimes see the lights of the pickup truck following him, and sometimes not. There was that much rain.
"I think we're almost to the park," he said. "But I can't be sure."
The interior of the windshield was starting to fog up. He rubbed it with the back of his arm and his elbow, making a squeaking sound on the glass. Now he could see a little better. They were at the top of a gentle hill, heading down toward "Oh shit."
"What?" Sarah said.
"Look."
At the bottom of the hill was a fifteen-foot culvert, the road passing over a series of large pipes carrying water from a small stream. Earlier, the stream had been little more than a silvery trickle in a rocky bed. But it had broadened and risen so that it now flowed over the surface of the road, the water moving swiftly.
Evans couldn't tell how deep it was. Probably not very deep.
"Peter," Sarah said. "You've stopped the car."
"I know."
"You can't stop."
"I don't know if I can go through this," he said. "I don't know how deep"
Six inches of water is enough to carry away a car.
"You've got no choice."
In his rearview mirror, he saw the lights of the pickup truck. He headed down the hill, toward the culvert. He kept his eyes on the mirror, waiting to see what the truck did. It had slowed as well, but it was still following as he drove the SUV down the hill.
"Keep your fingers crossed," Evans said.
"I've got everything crossed."
He entered the water. It was whooshing up on the sides of the car, spraying up as high as the windows, and gurgling under the floorboards. He was terrified that he would lose the ignition, but so far, so good.
He gave a sigh. He was approaching the middle now, and it wasn't that deep. No more than two, two and a half feet. He would make it okay.
"Peter amp;" Sarah pointed ahead.
There was a large eighteen-wheeler coming down the road toward them. Its lights were flaring. It wasn't slowing down at all.
"He's an idiot," Evans said.
Moving slowly in the water, he turned right, moving farther toward his side of the road, to make room.
In response, the truck moved directly into his lane.
It did not slow down.
Then he saw the logo above the cab.
It said in red letters, "A amp;P."
"Peter, do something!"
"Like what?"
"Do something!"
Several tons of roaring steel were coming right at him. He glanced in the rearview mirror. The blue pickup truck was still behind him, closing in.
They had him front and back.
They were going to drive him off the road.
The semi was in deeper water now, roaring forward. The water plumed high on both sides.
"Peterrrrr!"
There wasn't any choice.
He spun the wheel and drove off the road, plunging into the water of the rushing stream.
The SUV nosed down, and water came over the hood, up to the windshield, and for a moment he thought they were going to sink right there. Then the bumper crunched against the rocks of the streambed, and the wheels gained purchase, and the car straightened.
For a thrilling moment he thought he was going to be able to drive the car along the streambedthe river wasn't that deep, not reallybut almost at once, the engine died, and he felt the rear end pull loose and spin around.
And they were carried helplessly along in the river.
Evans turned the ignition, trying to start the engine again, but it wasn't working. The SUV moved gently, rocking and bumping against rocks. Occasionally it would stop, and he considered getting out, but then it would begin to float downstream again.
He looked over his shoulder. The road was surprisingly far back. Now that the engine was out, the car was fogging up quickly. He had to rub all the windows, to see out.
Sarah was silent. Gripping the arms of her seat.
The car came to a stop again, against a rock. "Should we get out?" she said.
"I don't think so," he said. He could feel the car shuddering in the moving water.
"I think we should," she said.
The car started to move again. He tried the ignition, but it would not start up. The alternator whirred and sputtered. Then he remembered.
"Sarah," he said. "Open your window."
"What?"
"Open your window."
"Oh." She flicked the switch. "It doesn't work."
Evans tried his own window on the driver's side. It didn't work, either. The electrical systems were shot.
On a chance, he tried the rear windows. The left window opened smoothly.
"Hey! Success."
Sarah said nothing. She was looking forward. The stream was moving faster, the car picking up speed.
He kept rubbing the fogged windows, trying to see, but it was difficult and suddenly the car gave a sharp jolt, and afterward the movement was different. It went swiftly ahead, turning slowly in circles. The wheels no longer touched rock.
"Where are we? What happened?" Together, they rubbed the windshield frantically to get it clean.
"Oh Jesus," Sarah said, when she saw.
They were in the middle of a rushing river. Muddy brown, and moving fast, standing waves of churning water. There were big tree branches and debris moving swiftly along. The car was going faster and faster every second.
And water was coming in through the floor now. Their feet were wet. Evans knew what that meant.
They were sinking.
"I think we should get out, Peter."
"No." He was looking at the standing waves of churning water. There were rapids, big boulders, sinkholes. Maybe if they had helmets and body protection, they might try to go into the current. But without helmets they would die.
The car tilted to the right, then came back up. But he had the feeling that sooner or later it would roll onto its side and sink. And he had the feeling it would sink fast.
He looked out the window and said, "Does this look familiar? What river is this?"
"Who cares?" Sarah yelled.
And then Evans said, "Look!"
Trooper Rodriguez saw the SUV bouncing and spinning down the river and immediately hit his car siren. He grabbed the bullhorn and turned to the picnickers.
"Folks, please clear the area! We have a flash flood now. Everybody move to higher ground, and do it now!"
He hit the siren again.
"Now, folks! Leave your things for later. Go now!"
He looked back at the SUV, but it was already almost out of sight, headed down the river toward the McKinley overpass. And right beyond McKinley overpass was the cliff's edge, a ninety-foot drop.
The car and its occupants wouldn't survive it.
And there was nothing they could do about it.
Evans couldn't think, couldn't planit was all he could do to hang on. The SUV rolled and turned in the churning water. The vehicle was sinking lower, and the water now sloshing at knee height was freezing cold, and seemed to make the car more unstable, its movements more unpredictable.
At one point he banged heads with Sarah, who grunted, but she was not saying anything either. Then he banged his head on the door post, saw stars briefly.
Ahead, he saw an overpass, a roadway held up with big concrete stanchions. Each stanchion had caught debris floating downriver; the pylons were now wrapped with a tangled mat of tree branches, burned trunks, old boards, and floating junk, so that there was little room to pass by.
"Sarah," he yelled, "unbuckle your seat belt." His own belt was now under the chilly water. He fumbled with it, as the car rolled.
"I can't," she said. "I can't get it."
He bent to help her.
"What are we going to do?'
"We're going to get out," he said.
The car raced forward, then slammed into a mass of branches. It shuddered in the current, but held position. It clanged against an old refrigerator (a refrigerator? Evans thought) that bobbed in the water nearby. The pylon loomed above them. The river was so high, the road overpass was only about ten feet above them.
"We have to get out, Sarah," he said.
"My belt is stuck; I can't."
He bent to help her, plunging his hands into the water, fumbling for the belt. He couldn't see it in the mud. He had to do it by feel.
And he felt the car begin to move.
It was going to break free.
Sanjong was driving furiously along the upper road. He saw Peter and Sarah in their SUV, riding the current toward the bridge. He saw them crash against the pylon, and hold precariously there.
The traffic on the bridge was swarming away from the park, passengers panicking, honking horns, confusion. Sanjong drove across the bridge, and jumped out of his car. He began to run across the bridge, toward the car in the water below.
Evans hung on desperately as the SUV rolled and spun in the churning water. The refrigerator clanged against them, again and again. Branches stuck through the shattered windows, the tips quivering like fingers. Sarah's seat belt was jammed, the latch was crumpled or something. Evans's fingers were numb in the cold. He knew that the car wouldn't stay in position very long. He could feel the current pulling at it, dragging it laterally.
"I can't get it open, Sarah," he said.
The water had risen; it was now almost chest high.
"What do we do?" she said. Her eyes were panicky.
For an instant he didn't know, and then he thought I'm an idiot and he threw himself bodily across her, plunged his head underwater, and felt for the door post on her side of the car. He dragged a three-foot length of the seat belt away from the post, and brought his head back up, gasping for air.
"Slide out!" he yelled. "Slide out!"
She understood immediately, putting her hands on his shoulder and shoving as she slithered out from the belt. His head went back under the water, but he could feel her getting free. She moved into the backseat, kicking him in the head as she went.
He was back up above the water, gasping.
"Now climb out!" he yelled.
The car was starting to move. The branches creaking. The refrigerator clanging.
Sarah's athleticism stood her in good stead. She slipped through the rear window, and hung onto the car.
"Go for the branches! Climb!" He was afraid the current would take her if she held onto the car. He was scrambling back into the rear seat, then squeezing himself through the window. The car was pulling loose, trembling at first, then distinctly moving, rolling around the debris pile, and he was still half out the window.
"Peter!" Sarah shouted.
He lunged, throwing himself forward into the branches, scratching his face but feeling his hands close around large branches and he pulled his body clear of the car just as the current ripped it away, dragging it under the bridge.
The car was gone.
He saw Sarah climbing up the debris stack, reaching up for the concrete railing of the roadway. He followed her, shivering from cold and fear. In a few moments, he felt a strong hand reach down and pull him up the rest of the way. He looked up and saw Sanjong grinning at him.
"My friend. You are a lucky one."
Evans came over the railing and toppled onto the ground, gasping, exhausted.
Distantly, he heard the sound of a police siren, and a bullhorn barking orders. He became aware of the traffic on the bridge, the honking horns, the panic.
"Come on," Sarah said, helping him up. "Somebody's going to run over you if you stay here."
Trooper Rodriguez was still getting everybody into their cars, but there was pandemonium in the parking lot and a traffic jam on the bridge. The rain was starting to come down hard. That was making people move faster.
Rodriguez cast a worried eye at the waterfall, noting that it was a darker brown, and flowing more heavily than before. He saw then that the TV crew had gone. The van was no longer atop the cliff. That was odd, he thought. You'd think they'd have stayed to film the emergency exit.
Cars were honking on the bridge, where traffic was stalled. He saw a number of people standing there, looking over the other side. Which could only mean that the SUV had gone over the cliff.
Rodriguez slipped behind the wheel to radio for an ambulance. That was when he heard that an ambulance had already been called to Dos Cabezas, fifteen miles to the north. Apparently a group of hunters had gotten into a drunken argument, and there had been some shooting. Two men were dead and a third was injured. Rodriguez shook his head. Damn guys went out with a rifle and a bottle of bourbon each, and then had to sit around drinking because of the rain, and before you knew it, couple of them were dead. Happened every year. Especially around the holidays.
"I don't see why this is necessary," Sarah said, sitting up in bed. She had electrodes stuck to her chest and legs.
"Please don't move," the nurse said. "We're trying to get a record."
They were in a small, screened-off cubicle in the Flagstaff hospital emergency room. Kenner, Evans, and Sanjong had insisted she come there. They were waiting outside. She could hear them talking softly.
"But I'm twenty-eight years old," Sarah said. "I'm not going to have a heart attack."
"The doctor wants to check your conduction pathways."
"My conduction pathways?" Sarah said. "There's nothing wrong with my conduction pathways."
"Ma'am? Please lie down and don't move."
"But this is"
"And don't talk."
She lay down. She sighed. She glanced at the monitor, which showed squiggly white lines. "This is ridiculous. There's nothing wrong with my heart."
"No, there doesn't seem to be," the nurse said, nodding to the monitor. "You're very lucky."
Sarah sighed. "So, can I get up now?"
"Yes. And don't you worry yourself about those burn marks," the nurse said. "They'll fade over time."
Sarah said, "What burn marks?"
The nurse pointed to her chest. "They're very superficial."
Sarah sat up and looked down her blouse. She saw the white adhesive tags of the electrodes. But she also saw pale brown streaks, jagged marks that ran across her chest and abdomen. Like zigzags or something "What is this?" she said.
"It's from the lightning."
She said, "What?"
"You were struck by lightning," the nurse said.
"What are you talking about?"
The doctor came in, an absurdly young man, prematurely balding. He seemed very busy and preoccupied. He said, "Don't worry about those burn marks, they'll fade in no time at all."
"It's from lightning?"
"Pretty common, actually. Do you know where you are?"
"In Flagstaff hospital."
"Do you know what day it is?"
"Monday."
"That's right. Very good. Look at my finger, please." He held his finger up in front of her face, moved it left and right, up and down. "Follow it. That's good. Thank you. You have a headache?"
"I did," she said. "Not anymore. Are you telling me I was struck by lightning?"
"You sure as heck were," he said, bending to hit her knees with a rubber hammer. "But you're not showing any signs of hypoxia."
"Hypoxia amp;"
"Lack of oxygen. We see that when there's a cardiac arrest."
She said, "What are you talking about?"
"It's normal not to remember," the doctor said. "But according to your friends out there, you arrested and one of them resuscitated you. Said it took four or five minutes."
"You mean I was dead?"
"Would have been, if you hadn't gotten CPR."
"Peter resuscitated me?" It had to be Peter, she thought.
"I don't know which one." Now he was tapping her elbows with the hammer. "But you're a very lucky young woman. Around here, we get three, four deaths a year from strikes. And sometimes very serious burns. You're just fine."
"Was it the young guy?" she said. "Peter Evans? Him?"
The doctor shrugged. He said, "When was your last tetanus?"
"I don't understand," Evans said. "On the news report it said they were hunters. A hunting accident or an argument of some kind."
"That's right," Kenner said.
"But you're telling me you guys shot them?" Evans looked from Kenner to Sanjong.
"They shot first," Kenner said.
"Jesus," Evans said. "Three deaths?" He bit his lip.
But in truth, he was feeling a contradictory reaction. He would have expected his native caution to take overa series of killings, possibly murders, he was an accomplice or at the very least a material witness, he could be tied up in court, disgraced, disbarred amp;. That was the path his mind usually followed. That was what his legal training had emphasized.
But at this moment he felt no anxiety at all. Extremists had been discovered and they had been killed. He was neither surprised nor disturbed by the news. On the contrary, he felt quite satisfied to hear it.
He realized then that his experience in the crevasse had changed himand changed him permanently. Someone had tried to kill him. He could never have imagined such a thing growing up in suburban Cleveland, or in college, or law school. He could never have imagined such a thing while living his daily life, going to work at his firm in Los Angeles.
And so he could not have predicted the way that he felt changed by it now. He felt as if he had been physically movedas if someone had picked him up and shifted him ten feet to one side. He was no longer standing in the same place. But he had also been changed internally. He felt a kind of solid impassivity he had not known before. There were unpleasant realities in the world, and previously he had averted his eyes from them, or changed the subject, or made excuses for what had occurred. He had imagined that this was an acceptable strategy in lifein fact, that it was a more humane strategy. He no longer believed that.
If someone tried to kill you, you did not have the option of averting your eyes or changing the subject. You were forced to deal with that person's behavior. The experience was, in the end, a loss of certain illusions.
The world was not how you wanted it to be.
The world was how it was.
There were bad people in the world. They had to be stopped.
"That's right," Kenner was saying, nodding slowly. "Three deaths. Isn't that right, Sanjong?"
"That's right," Sanjong said.
"Screw 'em," Evans said.
Sanjong nodded.
Kenner said nothing.
The jet flew back to Los Angeles at six o'clock. Sarah sat in the front, staring out the window. She listened to the men in the back. Kenner was talking about what would happen next. The dead men were being ID'd. Their guns and trucks and clothes were being traced. And the television film crew had already been found: it was a truck from KBBD, a cable station in Sedona. They'd gotten an anonymous call saying that the highway patrol had been derelict and had allowed a picnic to proceed despite flash flood warnings, and disaster was probable. That was why they had gone to the park.
Apparently it never occurred to anyone to question why they'd got an anonymous call half an hour before a flash flood warning had been issued from the NEXRAD center. The call had been traced, however. It had been placed from a pay phone in Calgary, Canada.
"That's organization," Kenner said. "They knew the phone number of the station in Arizona before they ever started this thing."
"Why Calgary?" Evans said. "Why from there?"
"That seems to be one primary location for this group," Kenner said.
Sarah looked at the clouds. The jet was above the weather. The sun was setting, a golden band in the west. The view was serene. The events of the day seemed to have occurred months before, years before.
She looked down at her chest and saw the faint brownish markings from the lightning. She'd taken an aspirin, but it was still beginning to hurt slightly, to burn. She felt marked. A marked woman.
She no longer listened to what the men were saying, only to the sound of their voices. She noticed that Evans's voice had lost its boyish hesitancy. He was no longer protesting everything Kenner said. He sounded older somehow, more mature, more solid.
After a while, he came up to sit with her. "You mind company?"
"No." She gestured to a seat.
He dropped into it, wincing slightly. He said, "You feel okay?"
"I'm okay. You?"
"A little sore. Well. Very sore. I think I got banged around in the car."
She nodded, and looked out the window for a while. Then she turned back. "When were you going to tell me?" she said.
"Tell you what?"
"That you saved my life. For the second time."
He shrugged. "I thought you knew."
"I didn't."
She felt angry when she said it. She didn't know why it should make her angry, but it did. Maybe because now she felt a sense of obligation, or amp;or amp;she didn't know what. She just felt angry.
"Sorry," he said.
"Thanks," she said.
"Glad to be of service." He smiled, got up, and went to the back of the plane again.
It was odd, she thought. There was something about him. Some surprising quality she hadn't noticed before.
When she looked out the window again, the sun had set. The golden band was turning richer, and darker.
In the back of the plane, Evans drank a martini and stared at the monitor mounted on the wall. They had the satellite linkup of the news station in Phoenix. There were three anchors, two men and a woman, at a curved table. The graphic behind their heads read "Killings in Canyon Country" and apparently referred to the deaths of the men in Flagstaff, but Evans had come in too late to hear the news.
"There's other news from McKinley State Park, where a flash flood warning saved the lives of three hundred schoolchildren on a school picnic. Officer Mike Rodriguez told our own Shelly Stone what happened."
There followed a brief interview with the highway patrol officer, who was suitably laconic. Neither Kenner nor his team was mentioned.
Then there was footage of Evans's overturned SUV, smashed at the bottom of the cliff. Rodriguez explained that fortunately no one was in the car when it was carried away by the floodwater.
Evans gulped his martini.
Then the anchors came back onscreen, and one of the men said, "Flood advisories remain in effect, even though it is unseasonable for this time of year."
"Looks like the weather's changing," the anchorwoman said, tossing her hair.
"Yes, Marla, there is no question the weather is changing. And here, with that story, is our own Johnny Rivera."
They cut to a younger man, apparently the weatherman. "Thanks, Terry. Hi, everybody. If you're a longtime resident of the Grand Canyon State, you've probably noticed that our weather is changing, and scientists have confirmed that what's behind it is our old culprit, global warming. Today's flash flood is just one example of the trouble aheadmore extreme weather conditions, like floods and tornadoes and droughtsall as a result of global warming."
Sanjong nudged Evans, and handed him a sheet of paper. It was a printout of a press release from the NERF website. Sanjong pointed to the text: " amp;scientists agree there will be trouble ahead: more extreme weather events, like floods and tornadoes and drought, all as a result of global warming."
Evans said, "This guy's just reading a press release?"
"That's how they do it, these days," Kenner said. "They don't even bother to change a phrase here and there. They just read the copy outright. And of course, what he's saying is not true."
"Then what's causing the increase in extreme weather around the world?" Evans said.
"There is no increase in extreme weather."
"That's been studied?"
"Repeatedly. The studies show no increase in extreme weather events over the past century. Or in the last fifteen years. And the GCMs don't predict more extreme weather. If anything, global warming theory predicts less extreme weather."
"So he's just full of shit?" Evans said.
"Right. And so is the press release."
Onscreen, the weatherman was saying, "is becoming so bad, that the latest news isget thisglaciers on Greenland are melting away and will soon vanish entirely. Those glaciers are three miles thick, folks. That's a lotta ice. A new study estimates sea levels will rise twenty feet or more. So, sell that beach property now."
Evans said, "What about that one? It was on the news in LA yesterday."
"I wouldn't call it news," Kenner said. "Scientists at Reading ran computer simulations that suggested that Greenland might lose its ice pack in the next thousand years."
"Thousand years?" Evans said.
"Might."
Evans pointed to the television. "He didn't say it could happen a thousand years from now."
"Imagine that," Kenner said. "He left that out."
"But you said it isn't news amp;"
"You tell me," Kenner said. "Do you spend much time worrying about what might happen a thousand years from now?"
"No."
"Think anybody should?"
"No."
"There you are."
When he had finished his drink he suddenly felt sleepy. His body ached; however he shifted in his seat, something hurthis back, his legs, his hips. He was bruised and exhausted. And a little tipsy.
He closed his eyes, thinking of news reports of events a thousand years in the future.
All reported as if it were up-to-the-minute, important life-and-death news.
A thousand years from now.
His eyes were heavy. His head fell to his chest, then jerked up abruptly as the intercom came on.
"Fasten your seat belts," the captain said. "We are landing in Van Nuys."
All he wanted to do was sleep. But when he landed, he checked his cell phone messages and discovered that he had been missed, to put it mildly:
"Mr. Evans, this is Eleanor in Nicholas Drake's office. You left your cell phone. I have it for you. And Mr. Drake would like to speak to you."
"Peter, it's Jennifer Haynes at John Balder's office. We'd like you to come to the office no later than ten o'clock tomorrow please. It's quite important. Call me if for some reason you can't make it. See you then."
"Peter, call me. It's Margo. I'm out of the hospital."
"Mr. Evans, this is Ron Perry at the Beverly Hills police department. You've missed your four o'clock appointment to dictate a statement. I don't want to issue a warrant for your arrest. Call me. You have the number."
"This is Herb Lowenstein. Where the hell are you? We don't hire junior associates to have them disappear day after day. There is work to be done here. Balder's office has been calling. They want you at the Culver City office tomorrow morning by ten A.M. sharp. My advice is, be there, or start looking for another job."
"Mr. Evans, this is Ron Perry from Beverly Hills police. Please return my call ASAP."
"Peter, call me. Margo."
"Peter, want to get together tonight? It's Janis. Call me."
"Mr. Evans, I have Mr. Drake for you, at the NERF office."
"Peter, it's Lisa in Mr. Lowenstein's office. The police have been calling for you. I thought you would want to know."
"Peter, it's Margo. When I call my lawyer I expect to get a call back. Don't be an asshole. Call me."
"This is Ron Perry from the Beverly Hills police department. If I do not hear from you I will have to ask the judge to issue a warrant for your arrest."
"Evans, it's Herb Lowenstein. You really are a dumb shit. The police are going to issue a warrant for your arrest. Deal with it at once. Members of this firm do not get arrested."
Evans sighed, and hung up.
Sarah said, "Trouble?"
"No. But it doesn't look like I will be getting any sleep for a while."
He called the detective, Ron Perry, and was told that Perry was gone for the day, and would be in court in the morning. His cell phone would be off. Evans left a number for him to call back.
He called Drake, but he was gone for the day.
He called Lowenstein, but he was not in the office.
He called Margo, but she did not answer.
He called Jennifer Haynes and said that he would be there tomorrow, at ten o'clock.
"Dress professionally," she said.
"Why?"
"You're going to be on television."
There were two white camera trucks parked outside the offices of the Vanutu litigation team. Evans went inside and found workmen setting up lights and changing fluorescent light bulbs in the ceiling. Four different video crews were walking around, inspecting different angles. But nobody was shooting yet.
The offices themselves, he noticed, had been considerably transformed. The graphs and charts on the walls were now much more complicated and technical looking. There were huge, blowup photographs of the Pacific nation of Vanutu, as seen from the air and from the ground. Several featured the erosion of the beaches, and houses leaning at an angle, ready to slide into the water. There was a school picture from the Vanutu school, beautiful brown-skinned kids with smiling faces. In the center of the room, there was a three-dimensional model of the main island, specially lit for cameras.
Jennifer was wearing a skirt and blouse and heels. She looked startlingly beautiful in a dark, mysterious way. Evans noticed that everyone was better dressed than at his first visit; all the researchers were now in jackets and ties. The jeans and T-shirts were gone. And there seemed to be a lot more researchers.
"So," Evans said, "what is this about?"
"B-roll," Jennifer said. "We're shooting B-roll for the stations to use as background and cutaways. And of course we're making a video press kit as well."
"But you haven't announced the lawsuit yet."
"That happens this afternoon, here outside the warehouse. Press conference at one P.M. You'll be there, of course?"
"Well, I didn't"
"I know John Balder wants you there. Representing George Morton."
Evans felt uneasy. This could create a political problem for him at the firm. "There are several attorneys more senior than I who handled George's"
"Drake specifically asked for you."
"He did?"
"Something about your involvement in getting the papers signed to finance this suit."
So that was it, Evans thought. They were putting him on television so he would not be able later to say anything about the gift of ten million dollars to NERF. No doubt they would stick him in the background for the announcement ceremony, maybe make a brief acknowledgment of his presence. Then Drake would say that the ten million was coming, and unless Evans stood up and contradicted him, his silence would be taken as acquiescence. Later, if he developed any qualms, they could say, But you were there, Evans. Why didn't you speak up then?
"I see," Evans said.
"You look worried."
"I am amp;"
"Let me tell you something," she said. "Don't worry about it."
"But you don't even know"
"Just listen to me. Don't worry about it." She was looking directly into his eyes.
"Okay amp;"
Of course she meant well, but despite her words, Evans was experiencing an unpleasant, sinking feeling. The police were threatening to issue a warrant for his arrest. The firm was complaining about his absences. Now this effort to force him into silenceby putting him on television.
He said, "Why did you want me here so early?"
"We need you to sit in the hot seat again, as part of our test for jury selection."
"I'm sorry, I can't"
"Yes. You have to. Same thing as before. Want some coffee?"
"Sure."
"You look tired. Let's get you to hair and makeup."
Half an hour later he was back in the deposition room, at the end of the long table. There was again a crew of eager young scientific types looking down at him.
"Today," Jennifer said, "we would like to consider issues of global warming and land use. Are you familiar with this?"
"Only slightly," Evans said.
Jennifer nodded to one of the researchers at the far end. "Raimundo? Will you give him the background?"
The researcher had a heavy accent, but Evans could follow him. "It is well known," he said, "that changes in land use will cause changes in average ground temperature. Cities are hotter than the surrounding countrysidewhat is called the urban heat island' effect. Croplands are warmer than forested lands, and so on."
"Uh-huh," Evans said. Nodding. He hadn't heard about these land use concepts, but it certainly stood to reason.
Raimundo continued, "A high percentage of weather stations that were out in the countryside forty years ago are now surrounded by concrete and skyscrapers and asphalt and so on. Which makes them register warmer."
"I understand," Evans said. He glanced away, through the glass wall. He saw film crews moving around the warehouse, shooting various things. He hoped the crews wouldn't come in. He didn't want to sound stupid in front of them.
"These facts," Raimundo said, "are well known within the field. So researchers take the raw temperature data from stations near cities and reduce them by some amount to compensate for the urban heat island effect."
Evans said, "And how is this reduction calculated?"
"Different ways, depending on who does it. But most algorithms are based on population size. The larger the population, the greater the reduction."
Evans shrugged. "That sounds like the right way to do it."
"Unfortunately," he said, "it probably isn't. Do you know about Vienna? It was studied by Bohm a few years back. Vienna has had no increase in population since 1950, but it has more than doubled its energy use and increased living space substantially. The urban heat island effect has increased, but the calculated reduction is unchanged, because it only looks at population change."* "So the heating from cities is being underestimated?" Evans said.
"It's worse than that," Jennifer said. "It used to be assumed that urban heating was unimportant because the urban heat island effect was only a fraction of total warming. The planet warmed about.3 degrees Celsius in the last thirty years. Cities are typically assumed to have heated by around.1 degree Celsius."
"Yes? So?"
"So those assumptions are wrong. The Chinese report that Shanghai warmed 1 degree Celsius in the last twenty years alone. That's more than the total global warming of the planet in the last hundred years. And Shanghai is not unique. Houston increased.8 degrees Celsius in the last twelve years.! Cities in South Korea are heating rapidly.* Manchester, England, is now 8 degrees warmer than the surrounding countryside. Even small towns are much hotter than the surrounding areas."
Jennifer reached for her charts. "Anyway," she said, "the point is that the graphs you see are not raw data. They have already been adjusted with fudge factors to compensate for urban heating. But probably not enough."
At that moment, the door opened and one of the four video crews came in, their camera light shining. Without hesitation, Jennifer reached for some charts, and brought them up. She whispered, "B-roll is silent, so we need to be active and provide visuals."
She turned toward the camera and said, "Let me show you some examples of weather station data. Here, for instance, is a record of the average temperature for Pasadena since 1930."!
Pasadena, CA 19302000 "As you see," Jennifer said, "a dramatic rise in temperature. And here is Berkeley since 1930."
Berkeley, CA 19302000 "A surprisingly incomplete record. But we are using raw data, so you can see missing years. And you see a clear warming trend. Indisputable, wouldn't you agree?"
"I would," Evans said, thinking that it wasn't much of a trendless than a degree.
"Now, here is Death Valley, one of the hottest, driest places on Earth. No urbanization has occurred here. Again, missing years."
Death Valley, CA 19332000 Evans said nothing. It must be an anomaly, he thought. Jennifer put up more graphs:
McGill, NV 19302000
Guthrie, OK 19302000 "These are stations from the Nevada desert and the Oklahoma plains," she said. "They show temperatures that are flat, or declining. And not only rural areas. Here is Boulder, Colorado. It's only of interest because NCAR is located therethe National Center for Atmospheric Research, where so much global warming research is done."
Boulder, CO 19301997 "Here are some more small cities. Truman, Missouri, where the buck stops amp;"
Truman, MO 19312000
Greenville, SC 19302000
Ann Arbor, MI 19302000 Evans said, "Well, you have to admit, it's not very dramatic."
"I'm not sure what you consider dramatic. Truman has gotten colder by 2.5 degrees, Greenville by 1.5 degrees, Ann Arbor by one degree since1930. If the globe is warming, these places have been left out."
"Let's look at some bigger places," Evans said, "like Charleston."
"I happen to have Charleston." She thumbed through her graphs.
Charleston, SC 19302000 Evans said, "So, a bigger city gets warmer. What about New York?" "I have several records from New York, city and state."
New York, NY 19302000
Syracuse, NY 19302000
Albany, NY 19302000
Oswego, NY 19302000 "As you see," Jennifer said, "New York City is warmer, but many other parts of the state, from Oswego to Albany, have become colder since 1930."
Evans was acutely aware of the cameras on him. He nodded in what he hoped was a judicious, thoughtful manner and said, "And where does this data come from?"
"From the Historical Climatology Network data set," she said. "It's a government dataset, maintained at Oak Ridge National Laboratories."
"Well," Evans said. "It's quite interesting. However, I'd like to see the data from Europe and Asia. This is, after all, a global phenomenon."
"Certainly," Jennifer said. She, too, was playing to the cameras. "But before we do that, I'd like your reaction to the data so far. As you can see, many places in the United States do not seem to have become warmer since 1930."
"I'm sure you cherry-picked your data," Evans said.
"To some degree. As we can be sure the defense will do."
"But the results do not surprise me," Evans said. "Weather varies locally. It always has and always will." A thought occurred to him. "By the way, why are all these graphs since 1930? Temperature records go much further back than that."
"Your point is well taken," Jennifer said, nodding. "It definitely makes a difference how far back you go. For example amp;"
West Point, NY 19312000 "Here is West Point, New York, from 1931 to 2000. Trending down. And amp;"
West Point, NY 19002000 "Here is West Point from 1900 to 2000. This time the trend is up, not down."
"Ah-ha," Evans said. "So you were massaging the data. You picked the interval of years that made you look good!"
"Absolutely," Jennifer said, nodding. "But the trick only works because temperatures in many parts of the US were warmer in the 1930s than they are today."
"It's still a trick."
"Yes, it is. The defense will not miss the opportunity to show the jury numerous examples of this trick from environmental fund-raising literature. Selecting specific years that appear to show things are getting worse."
Evans registered her insult to environmental groups. "In that case," he said, "let's not permit any tricks at all. Use the full and complete temperature record. How far back does it go?"
"At West Point, back to 1826."
"Okay. Then suppose you use that?" Evans felt confident proposing this, because it was well known that a worldwide warming trend had begun at about 1850. Every place in the world had gotten warmer since then, and the graph from West Point would reflect that.
Jennifer seemed to know it too, because she suddenly appeared very hesitant, turning away, thumbing through her stack of graphs, frowning as if she couldn't find it.
"You don't have that particular graph, do you?" Evans said.
"No, no. Believe me, I have it. Yes. Here." And then she pulled it out.
West Point, NY 18262000 Evans took one look and saw that she had sandbagged him.
"As you predicted, this graph is quite telling," she said. "For the last one hundred seventy-four years, there has been no change in the average temperature at West Point. It was 51 degrees Fahrenheit in 1826, and it is 51 degrees in 2000."
"But that's just one record," Evans said, recovering quickly. "One of many. One of hundreds. Thousands."
"You're saying that other records will show other trends?"
"I'm sure they will. Especially using the full record from 1826."
"And you are correct," she said. "Different records do show different trends."
Evans sat back, satisfied with himself. Hands crossed over his chest.
New York, NY 18222000 "New York City, a rise of 5 degrees Fahrenheit in a hundred seventy-eight years."
Albany, NY 18202000 "Albany, a decline of half a degree in a hundred eighty years."
Evans shrugged. "Local variations, as I said before."
"But I wonder," Jennifer said, "how these local variations fit into a theory of global warming. As I understand it, global warming is caused by an increase in so-called greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide, that trap heat in the Earth's atmosphere and prevent it from escaping into space. Is that your understanding?"
"Yes," Evans said, grateful he did not have to summon a definition on his own.
"So, according to the theory," Jennifer said, "the atmosphere itself gets warmer, just as it would inside a greenhouse?"
"Yes."
"And these greenhouse gases affect the entire planet."
"Yes."
"And we know that carbon dioxidethe gas we all worry abouthas increased the same amount everywhere in the world amp;" She pulled out another graph:* CO2 Levels, 19572002 "Yes amp;"
"And its effect is presumably the same everywhere in the world. That's why it's called global warming."
"Yes amp;"
"But New York and Albany are only a hundred forty miles apart. You can drive between them in three hours. Their carbon dioxide levels are identical. Yet one got a lot warmer and the other got slightly colder. Is that evidence for global warming?"
"Weather is local," Evans said. "Some places are warmer or colder than others. And always will be."
"But we are talking about climate, not weather. Climate is weather over a long time period."
"Yes amp;"
"So I would agree with you if both locations got warmer, albeit by different amounts. But here, one got warmer and one got colder. And as we saw, West Pointwhich is midway between themremained unchanged."
Evans said, "I think the theory of global warming predicts that some places will get colder."
"Really? Why is that?"
"I'm not sure, but I read it somewhere."
"The Earth's entire atmosphere warms, and as a result some places get colder?"
"I believe so."
"As you think about it now, does that claim make sense to you?"
"No," Evans said, "but you know, climate is a complex system."
"Which means what, to you?"
"It means it's, uh, complicated. It doesn't always behave the way you think it will."
"That's certainly true," Jennifer said. "But going back to New York and Albany. The fact that these two locations are so close, yet their temperature records are so different, could lead a jury to wonder whether we're really measuring something other than a global effect. You would agree that in the last hundred eighty-five years, New York has grown to a city of eight million, whereas Albany has grown much less?"
"Yes," Evans said.
"And we know that the urban heat island effect makes cities hotter than the surrounding countryside."
"Yes amp;"
"And this urban heat effect is a local effect, unrelated to global warming?"
"Yes amp;"
"So, tell me: how do you know that the dramatic increase in temperature in New York is caused by global warming, and not just from an excess of concrete and skyscrapers?"
"Well." Evans hesitated. "I don't know the answer to that. But I assume it is known."
"Because if cities like New York become larger and hotter than they were before, they will raise the average global temperature, will they not?"
"I assume they will."
"In which case, as cities expand all around the world, we might see an increase in average ground temperature simply because of urbanization. Without any global atmospheric effect at all."
"I am sure the scientists have thought of that already," Evans said. "I'm sure they can answer that."
"Yes, they can. Their answer is that they have subtracted a factor from the raw data to compensate for the urban heat effect."
"Well, there you are."
"Excuse me? Mr. Evans, you're a lawyer. Surely you are aware of the extraordinary efforts that are made in a lawsuit to be certain the evidence is untainted."
"Yes, but"
"You don't want anybody to be able to change it."
"Yes amp;"
"But in this case, the evidence is the raw temperature data. And it is tainted by the very scientists who claim global warming is a worldwide crisis."
"Tainted? It's adjusted downward."
"But the question the defense will ask is, have they adjusted downward enough?"
"I don't know," Evans said, "this is getting very specialized and nitpicky."
"Hardly. It's a core issue. Urbanization versus greenhouse gases as the cause of the increased average surface temperature. And the defense will have a good argument on their side," Jennifer said. "As I said before, several recent studies suggest the reduction for urban bias has, in fact, been too small.* At least one study suggests that half of the observed temperature change comes from land use alone. If that's true, then global warming in the past century is less than three tenths of a degree. Not exactly a crisis."
Evans said nothing. He tried to look intelligent for the cameras.
"Of course," Jennifer continued, "that study can be debated, too. But the point remains: as soon as anybody adjusts the data, they open themselves to the claim that their adjustment was incorrect. That's better ground for the defense. And the larger point the defense will make is that we have allowed the data to be adjusted by the very people who have the most to gain from that adjustment."
"You're saying that climate scientists are unethical?"
"I'm saying it is never a good policy for the fox to guard the hen house. Such procedures are never allowed in medicine, for example, where double-blind experimental designs are required."
"So you're saying climate scientists are unethical."
"No, I'm saying that there are good reasons why double-blind procedures are instituted. Look: Every scientist has some idea of how his experiment is going to turn out. Otherwise he wouldn't do the experiment in the first place. He has an expectation. But expectation works in mysterious waysand totally unconsciously. Do you know any of the studies of scientific bias?"
"No." Evans shook his head.
"Okay. Simple example. A group of genetically identical rats are sent to two different labs for testing. One lab is told that the rats were bred for intelligence and will run a maze faster than normal. The other lab is told that the rats are dumb and will run a maze slowly. Results come backfaster in one lab, slower in the other. Yet the rats are genetically identical."
"Okay, so they fudged."
"They said they didn't. Anyway, there's much more," she said. "Next example. A group of survey takers are told, Look, we know that pollsters can influence results in subtle ways. We want to avoid that. So you knock on the door, and the minute someone answers you start reading only what is on this card: Hello, I am doing a survey, and I am reading from this card in order not to influence you amp;et cetera.' The poll takers say nothing except what is on the card. One group of pollsters is told, this questionnaire will get seventy percent positive answers. They tell another group, you can expect thirty percent positive answers. Identical questionnaires. The results come backseventy and thirty."
"How?" Evans said.
"It doesn't matter," she said. "All that matters is that hundreds of studies prove again and again that expectations determine outcome. People find what they think they'll find. That's the reason for double-blind' experiments. To eliminate bias, the experiment is divided up among different people who do not know each other. The people who prepare the experiment do not know the people who conduct the experiment or the people who analyze the results. These groups never communicate in any way. Their spouses and children never meet. The groups are in different universities and preferably in different countries. That's how new drugs are tested. Because that's the only way to prevent bias from creeping in."
"Okay amp;"
"So now we're talking about temperature data. It has to be adjusted in all kinds of ways. Not just for urban heat bias. Lots of other things. Stations move. They upgrade, and the new equipment may read hotter or colder than before. The equipment malfunctions and you have to decide whether to throw out certain data. You deal with lots of judgment calls in putting together the temperature record. And that's where the bias creeps in. Possibly."
"Possibly?"
"You don't know," Jennifer said, "but whenever you have one team doing all the jobs, then you're at risk for bias. If one team makes a model and also tests it and also analyzes the results, those results are at risk. They just are."
"So the temperature data are no good?"
"The temperature data are suspect. A decent attorney will tear them apart. To defend them, what we intend to do is"
Abruptly, the camera crew got up and left the room. Jennifer rested her hand on his arm. "Don't worry about any of that, the footage they shot was without sound. I just wanted it to look like a lively discussion."
"I feel foolish."
"You looked good. That's all that matters for TV."
"No," he said, leaning closer to her. "I mean, when I gave those answers, I wasn't saying what I really think. I'm, uh amp;I'm asking someI'm changing my mind about a lot of this stuff."
"Really?"
"Yes," he said, speaking quietly. "Those graphs of temperature, for instance. They raise obvious questions about the validity of global warming."
She nodded slowly. Looking at him closely.
He said, "You, too?"
She continued to nod.
They lunched at the same Mexican restaurant as before. It was almost empty, as before; the same Sony film editors laughing at the corner table. They must come here every day, Evans thought.
But somehow everything was different, and not just because his body ached and he was on the verge of falling asleep any moment. Evans felt as if he had become a different person. And their relationship was different, too.
Jennifer ate quietly, not saying much. Evans had the sense she was waiting for him.
After a while, he said, "You know, it would be crazy to imagine that global warming wasn't a real phenomenon."
"Crazy," she said, nodding.
"I mean, the whole world believes it."
"Yes," she said. "The whole world does. But in that war room, we think only about the jury. And the defense will have a field day with the jury."
"You mean, the example you told me?"
"Oh, it's much worse than that. We expect the defense to argue like this: Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, you've all heard the claim that something called global warming' is occurring because of an increase in carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. But what you haven't been told is that carbon dioxide has increased by only a tiny amount. They'll show you a graph of increasing carbon dioxide that looks like the slope of Mount Everest. But here's the reality. Carbon dioxide has increased from 316 parts per million to 376 parts per million. Sixty parts per million is the total increase. Now, that's such a small change in our entire atmosphere that it is hard to imagine. How can we visualize that?"
Jennifer sat back, swung her hand wide. "Next, they'll bring out a chart showing a football field. And they'll say, Imagine the composition of the Earth's atmosphere as a football field. Most of the atmosphere is nitrogen. So, starting from the goal line, nitrogen takes you all the way to the seventy-eight-yard line. And most of what's left is oxygen. Oxygen takes you to the ninety-nine-yard line. Only one yard to go. But most of what remains is the inert gas argon. Argon brings you within three and a half inches of the goal line. That's pretty much the thickness of the chalk stripe, folks. And how much of that remaining three inches is carbon dioxide? One inch. That's how much CO2 we have in our atmosphere. One inch in a hundred-yard football field."
She paused dramatically, then continued. "Now, ladies and gentlemen of the jury," she said, "you are told that carbon dioxide has increased in the last fifty years. Do you know how much it has increased, on our football field? It has increased by three-eighths of an inchless than the thickness of a pencil. It's a lot more carbon dioxide, but it's a minuscule change in our total atmosphere. Yet you are asked to believe that this tiny change has driven the entire planet into a dangerous warming pattern."
Evans said, "But that's easily answered"
"Wait," she said. "They're not done. First, raise doubts. Then, offer alternative explanations. So, now they take out that temperature chart for New York City that you saw before. A five-degree increase since 1815. And they say, back in 1815 the population of New York was a hundred twenty thousand. Today it's eight million. The city has grown by six thousand percent. To say nothing of all those skyscrapers and air-conditioning and concrete. Now, I ask you. Is it reasonable to believe that a city that has grown by six thousand percent is hotter because of a tiny increase in little old carbon dioxide around the world? Or is it hotter because it is now much, much bigger?"
She sat back in her chair.
"But it's easy to counter that argument," Evans said. "There are many examples of small things that produce big effects. A trigger represents a small part of a gun, but it's enough to fire it. And anyway, the preponderance of the evidence"
"Peter," she said, shaking her head. "If you were on the jury and you were asked that question about New York City, what would you conclude? Global warming or too much concrete? What do you think, anyway?"
"I think it's probably hotter because it's a big city."
"Right."
"But you still have the sea-level argument."
"Unfortunately," she said, "the sea levels at Vanutu are not significantly elevated. Depending on the database, either they're flat or they've increased by forty millimeters. Half an inch in thirty years. Almost nothing."
"Then you can't possibly win this case," Evans said.
"Exactly," she said. "Although I have to say your trigger argument is a nice one."
"If you can't win," Evans said, "then what is this press conference about?"
"Thank you all for coming," John Balder said, stepping up to a cluster of microphones outside the offices. Photographers' strobes flashed. "I am John Balder, and standing with me is Nicholas Drake, the president of the National Environmental Resource Fund. Here also is Jennifer Haynes, my lead counsel, and Peter Evans, of the law firm of Hassle and Black. Together we are announcing that we will be filing a lawsuit against the Environmental Protection Agency of the United States on behalf of the island nation of Vanutu, in the Pacific."
Standing in the back, Peter Evans started to bite his lip, then thought better of it. No reason to make a facial expression that might be construed as nervous.
"The impoverished people of Vanutu," Balder said, "stand to become even more impoverished by the greatest environmental threat of our times, global warming, and the danger of abrupt climate changes that will surely follow."
Evans recalled that just a few days before, Drake had called abrupt climate change a possibility on the horizon. Now it had been transformed into a certainty in less than a week.
Balder spoke in vivid terms about how the people of Vanutu were being flooded out of their ancestral homeland, emphasizing the tragedy of young children whose heritage was washing away in raging surf caused by a callous industrial giant to the north.
"It is a matter of justice for the people of Vanutu, and of the future of the entire world now threatened by abrupt weather, that we're announcing this lawsuit today."
Then he opened the floor to questions.
The first one was, "When exactly are you filing this lawsuit?"
"The issue is technically complex," Balder said. "Right now, we have in our offices forty research scientists working on our behalf day and night. When they have finished their labors, we will make our filing for injunctive relief."
"Where will you file?"
"In Los Angeles federal district court."
"What damages are you asking?" another said.
"What is the administration's response?"
"Will the court hear it?"
The questions were coming quickly now, and Balder was in his element. Evans glanced over at Jennifer, standing on the other side of the podium. She tapped her watch. Evans nodded, then looked at his own watch, made a face, and exited the podium. Jennifer was right behind him.
They went inside the warehouse and past the guards.
And Evans stared in amazement.
The lights were turned down. Most of the people Evans had seen earlier were gone. The rooms were being stripped, the furniture stacked up, the documents packed into legal storage boxes. Movers were carrying out stacks of boxes on rolling dollies. Evans said, "What's going on?"
"Our lease is up," Jennifer said.
"So you're moving?"
She shook her head. "No. We're leaving."
"What do you mean?"
"I mean, we're leaving, Peter. Looking for new jobs. This litigation is no longer being actively pursued."
Over a loudspeaker, they heard Balder say, "We fully expect to seek an injunction within the next three months. I have complete confidence in the forty brilliant men and women who are assisting us in this ground-breaking case."
Evans stepped back as movers carried a table past him. It was the same table he had been interviewed at just three hours before. Another mover followed, lugging boxes of video equipment.
"How is this going to work?" Evans said, hearing Balder over the loudspeaker. "I mean, people are going to know what's happening amp;"
"What's happening is perfectly logical," Jennifer said. "We will file a request for a preliminary injunction. Our pleading has to work its way through the system. We expect it will be rejected by the district court for jurisdiction, so we will take it to the Ninth Circuit, and then we expect to go to the Supreme Court. The litigation cannot proceed until the issue of injunction is resolved, which could take several years. Therefore we sensibly put our large research staff on hold and close our expensive offices while we wait with a skeleton legal team in place."
"Is there a skeleton team in place?"
"No. But you asked how it would be handled."
Evans watched as the boxes rolled out the back door. "Nobody ever intended to file this lawsuit, did they?"
"Let's put it this way," she said. "Balder has a remarkable winning record in the courtroom. There's only one way to build a record like thatyou dump the losers long before you ever get to trial."
"So he's dumping this one?"
"Yeah. Because I guarantee you, no court is going to grant injunctive relief for excess carbon dioxide production by the American economy." She pointed to the loudspeaker. "Drake got him to emphasize abrupt climate change. That nicely dovetails with Drake's conference, which starts tomorrow."
"Yes, but"
"Look," she said. "You know as well as I do that the whole purpose of this case was to generate publicity. They've got their press conference. There's no need to pursue it further."
She was asked by movers where to put things. Evans wandered back into the interrogation room and saw the stack of foam core graphs in the corner. He had wanted to see the ones she hadn't shown him, so he pulled a few out. They showed foreign weather stations around the world.
Alice Springs, Australia 18792003
Clyde, NWT 19432004
Christchurch, NZ 18642003
Kamenskoe, Siberia 19491998 Of course, he knew that these particular charts had been chosen to prove the opposition's point. So they showed little or no warming. But still, it troubled him that there should be so many like these, from all around the world.
He saw a stack marked "Europe" and shuffled through them quickly:
Rome, Italy 18111989
Paris, Le Bourget 17571995
Milano-Linate, 17631986
Stuttgart, Germany 17921999
Navacerrada, Spain 19412004
Gцteborg, Sweden 19512004 There was another stack marked "Asia." He flipped through it.
Choshi, Japan 18872004
Lahore City, Pakistan 18762003
Takayama, Japan 19001990
Tokyo, Japan 18762004
"Peter?"
She was calling him.
Her own office was already packed up. She had only a few boxes of things. He helped her carry them out to her car.
"So," he said, "what're you doing now? Going back to DC and your boyfriend?"
"I don't think so," she said.
"Then what?"
"Actually, I thought I'd go with you."
"With me?"
"You're working with John Kenner, aren't you?"
Evans said, "How did you know that?"
She just smiled.
Heading out the back door, they heard the loudspeaker from the conference. Drake was talking now, thanking the press for coming, urging them to attend his forthcoming conference, and saying that the real danger from global warming was its potential for abrupt climate change.
And then he said, "Excuse me, but I regret to say, I have an extremely sad announcement to make. I have just been handed a note that says the body of my dear friend George Morton has just been found."
The full story was on the news that afternoon. The body of millionaire financier George Morton had washed up on the shore near Pismo Beach. The identification was made from clothing and from a watch on the victim's wrist. The body itself was mutilated, the result of shark attacks, the newscaster said.
The family of the philanthropist had been notified, but no date for the memorial service had been set. There was a statement from Morton's close friend Nicholas Drake, director of NERF. Drake said that Morton had devoted his life to the environmental movement and to the work of organizations like NERF, which had just recently named him their Concerned Citizen of the Year.
"If anyone was concerned about the terrible changes that are taking place around our globe, it was George Morton," Drake said. "Ever since we learned he was missing, we have been hoping against hope that he would be found in good spirits and good health. I am saddened to learn that this is not the case. I mourn the loss of my dear and dedicated friend. The world is poorer without him."
Evans was driving when Lowenstein called him on the car phone. "What're you doing?"
"Coming back from the press conference I was ordered to attend."
"Well, you're going to San Francisco."
"Why?"
"Morton's been found. Somebody has to identify the body."
"What about his daughter?"
"She's in rehab."
"What about his ex-wife? What about"
"Evans, you're officially assigned. Make your arrangements. The forensic guys don't want to delay the autopsy so they need him ID'd before dinner."
"But"
"Get your ass up there. I don't know what you're bitching about. Take the guy's plane, for Christ's sake. You've certainly been helping yourself to it lately, from what I hear. Now that he's dead you'd better be more careful. Oh, one more thing. Since you're not family, they'll need two people to ID him."
"Well, I can take Sarah, his secretary"
"No. Drake wants you to take Ted Bradley."
"Why?"
"How the hell do I know? Bradley wants to go. Drake wants to indulge him, keep him happy. Bradley probably thinks there'll be news cameras there. He is an actor, after all. And he was George's close friend."
"Sort of."
"He was at the banquet table with you."
"But Sarah would be"
"Evans, what part of this do you not understand? You're going to San Francisco and you are taking Bradley with you. Period."
Evans sighed. "Where is he?"
"He's in Sequoia. You have to stop and get him."
"Sequoia?"
"National Park. It's on the way."
"But"
"Bradley's already been notified. My secretary will give you the number for the San Francisco morgue. Good-bye, Evans. Don't screw up."
Click.
Jennifer said, "Problem?"
"No. But I have to go to San Francisco."
"I'll come with you," she said. "Who is Sarah?"
"Morton's personal secretary. His old assistant."
"I've seen pictures of her," Jennifer said. "She doesn't look very old."
"Where did you see pictures?"
"In a magazine. They were at a tennis tournament. She's a championship tennis player, something like that?"
"I guess."
"I would have thought that since you spent so much time with Morton, you'd know her well."
"Not really," he said, shrugging. "I mean, we've spent a little time in the last few days."
"Uh-huh." She looked at him, amused. "Peter," she said. "I don't care. She's very pretty. It's only natural."
"No, no," he said, reaching for the phone. "It's nothing like that." Desperate to put an end to this conversation, he dialed the Beverly Hills police and asked for Detective Perry. The detective was not yet back from court. Evans left a message and hung up. He turned to Jennifer. "How does it work if they issue a warrant for your arrest?"
"Criminal," she said. "Not my area. Sorry."
"Me neither."
"Somebody going to arrest you?"
"I hope not."
Then Lisa, Herb Lowenstein's chatty assistant, called. "Hi, Peter. I have the numbers for Mr. Bradley and for the San Francisco morgue. They close at eight. Can you make it by then? Herb wants to know. He's very upset."
"About what?"
"I've never seen him this way. I mean, not for a few weeks."
"What's the matter?"
"I think he's upset about George. Such a shock. And then Drake is giving him fits. He must have called five times today. And I think they were discussing you."
"Me?"
"Yes." Lisa lowered her voice, taking on a conspiratorial tone. "Herb had his door closed while he was talking, but I, uh, I heard a few things."
"Like what?" Evans said.
"Don't say anything."
"I won't."
"I mean I wasn'tI just thought that you would want to know."
"I do."
"Because there's a lot of talk here," she said, dropping her voice even lower, "about whether you have to leave."
"Leave the firm?"
"Be, uh, let go. I thought you would want to know."
"I do. Thanks. Who's talking?"
"Well, Herb. And Don Blandings, and a couple of other senior partners. Bob and Louise. Because for some reason Nick Drake is furious with you. And somebody you are spending time with, a person named Kanner or Connor?"
"I see."
"Mr. Drake is very upset about Mr. Connor."
"Why is that?"
"He says he is a spy. For industry. For polluters."
"I see."
"Anyway, the feeling is Mr. Drake is an important client and you've pissed him off. Even so, they would never dare fire you if Morton were alive. But he's not, anymore. And you're gone all the time. And the police are calling here for you, which I have to tell you is not good. It makes everybody nervous. And then theywhat are you doing with this Mr. Connor, anyway?"
"It's a long story."
"Peter. I told you." She sounded sulky. He knew he would have to trade information.
"Okay," he said, trying to sound reluctant. "I'm carrying out an assignment that Morton gave me, before he died."
"Really? What is it?"
"It's a secret, I can't tell you yet."
"George Morton gave you an assignment?"
"In writing," he said. Thinking: That will cool their jets.
"Wow. Really. They don't dare fire you if you're on the business of the firm."
"Lisa, I have to go."
"And if they did, you would have such a wrongful termination action."
"Lisa amp;"
"Okay, okay. I know you can't talk. But just amp;good luck!"
He hung up. Jennifer was smiling. "That was very skillfully done," she said.
"Thank you."
But he wasn't smiling back. As far as he was concerned, the world was closing in around him. It didn't feel good. And he was still very, very tired.
He called Sarah to arrange for the plane, but got her voice mail. He called the pilot and was told that he was in the air.
"What do you mean?"
"He's flying, right now."
"Where?"
"I can't tell you that, sir. Would you like his voice mail?"
"No," Evans said. "I need to charter a plane."
"When would you like it?"
"In half an hour. To go to San Francisco, with a stop at whatever the airport is nearest Sequoia. Returning tonight."
"I'll see what I can do."
And then fatigue overcame him. He pulled over to the side of the road and got out of the car.
Jennifer said, "What's the matter?"
"You know the way to Van Nuys?"
"Sure."
"Then you drive."
He dropped into the passenger seat and fastened his seat belt. He watched her pull into traffic, and then closed his eyes and slept.
The forest floor was dark and cool. Shafts of sunlight filtered down from the magnificent trees rising all around them. The air smelled of pine. The ground was soft underfoot.
It was a pleasant spot, with sunlight dappling the forest floor, but even so the television cameras had to turn on their lights to film the third-grade schoolchildren who sat in concentric circles around the famous actor and activist Ted Bradley. Bradley was wearing a black T-shirt that set off his makeup and his dark good looks.
"These glorious trees are your birthright," he said, gesturing all around him. "They have been standing here for centuries. Long before you were born, before your parents or your grandparents or your great-grandparents were born. Some of them, before Columbus came to America! Before the Indians came! Before anything! These trees are the oldest living things on the planet; they are the guardians of the Earth; they are wise; and they have a message for us: Leave the planet alone. Don't mess with it, or with us. And we must listen to them."
The kids stared open-mouthed, transfixed. The cameras were trained on Bradley.
"But now these magnificent treeshaving survived the threat of fire, the threat of logging, the threat of soil erosion, the threat of acid rainnow face their greatest threat ever. Global warming. You kids know what global warming is, don't you?"
Hands went up all around the circle. "I know, I know!"
"I'm glad you do," Bradley said, gesturing for the kids to put their hands down. The only person talking today would be Ted Bradley. "But you may not know that global warming is going to cause a very sudden change in our climate. Maybe just a few months or years, and it will suddenly be much hotter or much colder. And there will be hordes of insects and diseases that will take down these wonderful trees."
"What kind of insects?" one kid asked.
"Bad ones," Bradley said. "The ones that eat trees, that worm inside them and chew them up." He wiggled his hands, suggesting the worming in progress.
"It would take an insect a long time to eat a whole tree," a girl offered.
"No, it wouldn't!" Bradley said. "That's the trouble. Because global warming means lots and lots of insects will comea plague of insectsand they'll eat the trees fast!"
Standing to one side, Jennifer leaned close to Evans. "Do you believe this shit?"
Evans yawned. He had slept on the flight up, and had dozed off again in the ride from the airport to this grove in Sequoia National Park. He felt groggy now, looking at Bradley. Groggy and bored.
By now the kids were fidgeting, and Bradley turned squarely to the cameras. He spoke with the easy authority he had mastered while playing the president for so many years on television. "The threat of abrupt climate change," he said, "is so devastating for mankind, and for all life on this planet, that conferences are being convened all around the world to deal with it. There is a conference in Los Angeles starting tomorrow, where scientists will discuss what we can do to mitigate this terrible threat. But if we do nothing, catastrophe looms. And these mighty, magnificent trees will be a memory, a postcard from the past, a snapshot of man's inhumanity to the natural world. We're responsible for catastrophic climate change. And only we can stop it."
He finished, with a slight turn to favor his good side, and a piercing stare from his baby blues, right into the lens.
"I have to pee-pee," one girl said.
The plane lifted off the runway and rose over the forest.
"Sorry to rush you," Evans said. "But we have to get to the morgue before six."
"No problem, no problem." Bradley smiled indulgently. After his talk, he had taken a few minutes to sign autographs for the kids. The cameras filmed that as well. He turned to Jennifer, giving her his best smile. "And what do you do, Miss Hadley?"
"I'm on the global warming legal team."
"Good, so you're one of us. How's the lawsuit going?"
"Just fine," she said, glancing at Evans.
"I get the feeling you're as brilliant as you are beautiful," Bradley said.
"Actually, no," she said. Evans could see that the actor was annoying her.
"You're being modest. It's very charming."
"I'm being honest," she said, "and telling you I don't like flattery."
"Hardly flattery, in your case," he said.
"And hardly honest, in yours," she replied.
"Believe me when I say that I genuinely admire what you're doing," Bradley said. "I can't wait for you people to stick it to the EPA. We have to keep the pressure on. That's why I did this thing with the kids. It's a sure-fire television segment for abrupt climate change. And I thought it went extremely well, didn't you?"
"Reasonably well, considering."
"Considering?"
"That it was all bullshit," Jennifer said.
Bradley's smile remained fixed, but his eyes narrowed. "I'm not sure what you're referring to," he said.
"I'm referring to all of it, Ted. The whole speech. Sequoias are sentinels and guardians of the planet? They have a message for us?"
"Well, they do"
"They're trees, Ted. Big trees. They have about as much of a message for mankind as an eggplant."
"I think you are missing"
"And they've managed to survive forest fires? Hardlythey're dependent on fires, because that's how they reproduce. Redwoods have tough seeds that only burst open in the heat of a fire. Fires are essential for the health of the redwood forest."
"I think," Bradley said rather stiffly, "that you may have missed my point."
"Really? What did I miss?"
"I was trying to conveyperhaps a bit lyricallythe timeless quality of these great primeval forests, and"
"Timeless? Primeval? Do you know anything about these forests?"
"Yes. I think I do." His voice was tight. He was visibly angry now.
"Look out the window," Jennifer said, pointing to the forest as they flew above it. "How long do you think your primeval forest has looked the way it does now?"
"Obviously, for hundreds of thousands of years"
"Not true, Ted. Human beings were here for many thousands of years before these forests ever appeared. Did you know that?"
He was clenching his jaw. He did not answer.
"Then let me lay it out for you," she said.
Twenty thousand years ago, the Ice Age glaciers receded from California, gouging out Yosemite Valley and other beauty spots as they left. As the ice walls withdrew, they left behind a gunky, damp plain with lots of lakes fed by the melting glaciers, but no vegetation at all. It was basically wet sand.
After a few thousand years, the land dried as the glaciers continued to move farther north. This region of California became arctic tundra, with tall grasses supporting little animals, like mice and squirrels. Human beings had arrived here by then, hunting the small animals and setting fires. "Okay so far?" Jennifer said. "No primeval forests yet."
"I'm listening," Ted growled. He was clearly trying to control his temper.
She continued. "At first, arctic grasses and shrubs were the only plants that could take hold in the barren glacial soil. But when they died they decomposed, and over thousands of years a layer of topsoil built up. And that initiated a sequence of plant colonization that was basically the same everywhere in post-glacial North America.
"First, lodgepole pine comes in. That's around fourteen thousand years ago. Later it's joined by spruce, hemlock, and aldertrees that are hardy but can't be first. These trees constitute the real primary' forest, and they dominated this landscape for the next four thousand years. Then the climate changed. It got much warmer, and all the glaciers in California melted. There were no glaciers at all in California back then. It was warm and dry, there were lots of fires, and the primary forest burned. It was replaced by a plains-type vegetation of oak trees and prairie herbs. And a few Douglas fir trees, but not many, because the climate was too dry for fir trees.
"Then, around six thousand years ago, the climate changed again. It became wetter, and the Douglas fir, hemlock, and cedar moved in and took over the land, creating the great closed-canopy forests that you see now. But someone might refer to these fir trees as a pest plantan oversized weedthat invaded the landscape, crowding out the native plants that had been there before them. Because these big canopy forests made the ground too dark for other trees to survive. And since there were frequent fires, the closed-canopy forests were able to spread like mad. So they're not timeless, Ted. They're merely the last in line."
Bradley snorted. "They're still six thousand years old, for God's sake."
But Jennifer was relentless. "Not true," she said. "Scientists have shown that the forests continuously changed their composition. Each thousand-year period was different from the one before it. The forests changed constantly, Ted. And then, of course, there were the Indians."
"What about them?"
"The Indians were expert observers of the natural world, so they realized that old-growth forests sucked. Those forests may look impressive, but they're dead landscapes for game. So the Indians set fires, making sure the forests burned down periodically. They made sure there were only islands of old-growth forest in the midst of plains and meadows. The forests that the first Europeans saw were hardly primeval. They were cultivated, Ted. And it's not surprising that one hundred fifty years ago, there was less old-growth forest than there is today. The Indians were realists. Today, it's all romantic mythology."* She sat back in her chair.
"Well, that's a very nice speech," Bradley said. "But those are technical objections. People aren't interested. And it's a good thing, because you're saying that these forests aren't really old and therefore aren't worth preserving. Whereas I say they are reminders of the beauty and power of the natural world and should be preserved at all costs. Especially from the dire threat of global warming."
Jennifer blinked. She said, "I need a drink."
"I'll join you there," Bradley said.
For Evanswho had intermittently been attempting to call Detective Perry while this discussion was taking placethe most disturbing aspect was the implication of constant change. Evans had never really focused on the idea that Indians had lived at the same time as the glaciers. Of course, he knew that this was true. He knew that early Indians had hunted the mammoth and other large mammals to extinction. But he had never considered the possibility that they would also have burned forests and changed the environment to suit their purposes.
But of course they had.
Equally disturbing was the image of so many different forests taking over, one after another. Evans had never wondered what had existed before the redwood forests. He, too, had considered them primeval.
Nor had he ever thought about the landscape that the glaciers would have left behind. Thinking about it now, he realized that it probably looked like the land he had recently seen in Icelandcold, wet, rocky, and barren. It stood to reason that generations of plants would have to grow there, building up a layer of topsoil.
But in his mind, he had always imagined a sort of animated movie in which the glaciers receded and redwood trees popped up immediately along the receding edge. The glaciers pulled away leaving redwood forest behind.
He realized now how silly that view had been.
And Evans had also noticed, in passing, how frequently Jennifer had spoken of a changing climate. First it was cold and wet, then it was warm and dry and the glaciers melted, then it was wetter again, and the glaciers came back. Changing, and changing again.
Constant change.
After a while, Bradley excused himself and went to the front of the plane to call his agent. Evans said to Jennifer, "How did you know all that stuff?"
"For the reason Bradley himself mentioned. The dire threat of global warming.' We had a whole team researching dire threats. Because we wanted to find everything we could to make our case as impressive as possible."
"And?"
She shook her head. "The threat of global warming," she said, "is essentially nonexistent. Even if it were a real phenomenon, it would probably result in a net benefit to most of the world."
The pilot clicked on the intercom, telling them to take their seats because they were on their final approach to San Francisco.
The anteroom was gray, cold, and smelled of disinfectant. The man behind the desk wore a lab coat. He typed at his keyboard. "Morton amp;Morton amp;Yes. George Morton. Okay. And you are amp;"
"Peter Evans. I'm Mr. Morton's attorney," Evans said.
"And I'm Ted Bradley," Ted said. He started to extend his hand, then thought better of it, pulled it back.
"Oh. Hey," the technician said. "I thought you looked familiar. You're the secretary of state."
"Actually, I'm the president."
"Right, right, the president. I knew I'd seen you before. Your wife is a drunk."
"No, actually, the secretary of state's wife is a drunk."
"Oh. I don't get to see the show that often."
"It's off the air now."
"That explains it."
"But it's in syndication in all the major markets."
Evans said, "If we could make the identification now amp;"
"Okay. Sign here, and I'll get you visitor tags."
Jennifer remained in the anteroom. Evans and Bradley walked into the morgue. Bradley looked back. "Who is she anyway?"
"She's an attorney working on the global warming team."
"I think she's a plant for industry. She's obviously some kind of extremist."
"She works right under Balder, Ted."
"Well, I can understand that," Bradley said, snickering. "I'd like her working under me, too. But did you listen to her, for God's sake? Old-growth forests suck?' That's industry talking." He leaned closer to Evans. "I think you should get rid of her."
"Get rid of her?"
"She's up to no good. Why is she with us now anyway?"
"I don't know. She wanted to come. Why are you with us, Ted?"
"I have a job to do."
The sheet draping the body was spotted with gray stains. The technician lifted it back.
"Oh Jesus," Ted Bradley said, turning quickly away.
Evans forced himself to gaze at the body. Morton had been a large man in life, and now he was even larger, his torso purple gray and bloated. The odor of decay was strong. Indenting the puffy flesh was an inch-wide ring around one wrist. Evans said, "The watch?"
"Yeah, we took it off," the technician said. "Barely got it over the hand. You need to see it?"
"Yes, I do." Evans leaned closer and stiffened his body against the smell. He wanted to look at the hands and the nails. Morton had had a childhood injury to the fourth nail on his right hand, leaving the nail dented, deformed. But one of the hands of this body was missing, and the other was gnawed and mangled. There was no way he could be sure of what he was seeing.
Behind him, Bradley said, "Are you done yet?"
"Not quite."
"Je-sus, man."
The technician said, "So, will the show go back on the air?"
"No, it's been canceled."
"Why? I liked that show."
"They should have consulted you," Bradley said.
Evans was looking at the chest now, trying to recall the pattern of chest hair that Morton had had. He'd seen him often enough in a bathing suit. But the bloating, the stretching of the skin made it difficult. He shook his head. He could not be sure it was Morton.
"Are you done yet?" Bradley said.
"Yes," Evans said.
The drape went back on, and they walked out. The technician said, "Lifeguards in Pismo made the discovery, called the police. The police ID'd him from the clothes."
"He still had clothes on?"
"Uh-huh. One leg of the pants and most of the jacket. Custom made. They called the tailor in New York and he confirmed that they had been made for George Morton. Will you be taking his effects with you?"
"I don't know," Evans said.
"Well, you're his lawyer amp;"
"Yes, I guess I will."
"You have to sign for them."
They went back outside, where Jennifer was waiting. She was talking on her cell phone. She said, "Yes, I understand. Yes. Okay, we can do that." She flipped the phone shut when she saw them. "Finished?"
"Yes."
"And was it amp;"
"Yes," Ted said. "It was George."
Evans said nothing. He went down the hall and signed for the personal effects. The technician brought out a bag and handed it to Evans. Evans fished in it and pulled out the shreds of the tuxedo. There was a small NERF pin on the inside pocket of the jacket. He reached in and came out with the watch, a Rolex Submariner. It was the same watch Morton wore. Evans looked at the back. It was engraved gm 123189. Evans nodded, put it back in the bag.
All these things belonged to George. Just touching them now made him feel inexpressibly sad.
"I guess that does it," he said. "Time to go."
They all walked back to the waiting car. After they got in, Jennifer said, "We have to make another stop."
"Oh?" Evans said.
"Yes. We have to go to the Oakland Municipal Garage."
"Why?"
"The police are waiting for us."
It was an enormous concrete structure, adjacent to a vast parking lot on the outskirts of Oakland. It was lit by harsh halogen lights. Behind the cyclone fence, most of the cars in the lot were junkers, but a few Cadillacs and Bentleys were there, too. Their limousine pulled up to the curb.
"Why are we here?" Bradley said. "I don't understand."
A policeman came to the window. "Mr. Evans? Peter Evans?"
"That's me."
"Come this way, please."
They all started to get out of the car. The cop said, "Just Mr. Evans."
Bradley sputtered, "But we are"
"Sorry, sir. They just want Mr. Evans. You'll have to wait here."
Jennifer smiled at Bradley. "I'll keep you company."
"Great."
Evans got out of the car and followed the policeman through the metal door into the garage itself. The interior space was divided into long bays, where cars were worked on in a row. Most of the bays seemed to be given over to the repair of police cars. Evans smelled the sharp odor of acetylene torches. He sidestepped patches of motor oil and gobs of grease on the floor. He said to the cop accompanying him, "What's this about?"
"They're waiting for you, sir."
They were heading for the rear of the garage. They passed several crushed and blood-covered wrecks. Seats drenched in blood, shattered windows dark red. Some wrecks had pieces of string that stretched out from them in various directions. One wreck was being measured by a pair of technicians in blue lab coats. Another crash was being photographed by a man with a camera on a tripod.
"Is he a policeman?" Evans said.
"Nah. Lawyer. We have to let 'em in."
"So you deal with car wrecks here?"
"When it's appropriate."
They came around the corner and Evans saw Kenner standing with three plainclothes policemen, and two workers in blue lab coats. They were all standing around the crushed body of Morton's Ferrari Spyder, now raised on a hydraulic lift, with bright lights shining up at it.
"Ah, Peter," Kenner said. "Did you make the identification of George?"
"Yes."
"Good man."
Evans came forward to stand beneath the car. Various sections of the underside had been marked with yellow cloth tags. Evans said, "Okay, what's up?"
The plainclothesmen looked at one another. Then one of them began to speak. "We've been examining this Ferrari, Mr. Evans."
"I see that."
"This is the car that Mr. Morton recently bought in Monterey?"
"I believe so."
"When was that purchase made?"
"I don't know exactly." Evans tried to think back. "Not long ago. Last month or so. His assistant, Sarah, told me George had bought it."
"Who bought it?"
"She did."
"What was your involvement?"
"I had none. She merely informed me that George had bought a car."
"You didn't make the purchase or arrange insurance, anything like that?"
"No. All that would have been done by George's accountants."
"You never saw paperwork on the car?"
"No."
"And when did you first see the actual car itself?"
"The night George drove it away from the Mark Hopkins Hotel," Evans said. "The night he died."
"Did you ever see the car prior to that evening?"
"No."
"Did you hire anyone to work on the car?"
"No."
"The car was transported from Monterey to a private garage in Sonoma, where it remained for two weeks, before being taken to San Francisco. Did you arrange the private garage?"
"No."
"The rental was in your name."
Evans shook his head. "I don't know anything about that," he said. "But Morton often put rentals and leases in the name of his accountants or attorneys, if he didn't want the owner or lessee to be publicly known."
"But if he did that, he would inform you?"
"Not necessarily."
"So you didn't know your name was being used?"
"No."
"Who worked on the car, in San Jose?"
"I have no idea."
"Because, Mr. Evans, somebody did rather extensive work on this Ferrari before Morton ever got into it. The frame was weakened at the places you see marked by the yellow tags. Anti-skidprimitive, in a vehicle this oldwas disabled, and the discs were cross-loosened on the left front, right rear. Are you following me, here?"
Evans frowned.
"This car was a death trap, Mr. Evans. Someone used it to kill your client. Lethal changes were made in a garage in Sonoma. And your name is on the lease."
Downstairs in the car, Ted Bradley was grilling Jennifer Haynes. She might be pretty, but everything about her was wrongher manner, her tough-guy attitude, and most of all her opinions. She had said she was working on the lawsuit, and that her salary was paid by NERF, but Ted didn't think it was possible. For one thing, Ted Bradley was very publicly associated with NERF, and as a hired employee she should have known that, and she should have treated his opinions with respect.
To call the information he had shared with those kids "bullshit"a talk he didn't have to give, a moment he had offered out of the goodness of his heart and his dedication to the environmental causeto call that "bullshit" was outrageous. It was confrontational in the extreme. And it showed absolutely no respect. Plus, Ted knew that what he had said was true. Because, as always, NERF had given him a talking points memo listing the various things to be emphasized. And NERF would not have told him to say anything that was untrue. And the talking points said nothing about the fucking Ice Age. Everything Jennifer had said was irrelevant.
Those trees were magnificent. They were sentinels of the environment, just as the talking points claimed. In fact, he pulled the talking points out of his jacket pocket to be sure.
"I'd like to see that," Jennifer said.
"I bet you would."
"What is your problem?" she said.
See? he thought. That kind of attitude. Aggressive and confrontational.
She said, "You're one of those television stars who thinks everyone wants to touch your dick. Well, guess what, oh Big Swinging One, I don't. I think you're just an actor."
"And I think you're a plant. You're a corporate spy."
"I must not be a very good one," she said, "because you found me out."
"Because you shot your mouth off, that's why."
"It's always been my problem."
All during this conversation, Bradley felt a peculiar tension building in his chest. Women did not argue with Ted Bradley. Sometimes they were hostile for a while, but that was only because they were intimidated by him, his good looks, and his star power. They wanted to screw him, and often he'd let them. But they did not argue with him. This one was arguing, and it excited him and angered him in equal proportions. The tension building up inside him was almost unbearable. Her calmness, just sitting there, the direct way she looked into his eyes, the complete lack of intimidationit was an indifference to his fame that drove him wild. All right, hell, she was beautiful.
He grabbed her face in both hands and kissed her hard on the mouth.
He could tell she liked it. To complete his dominance he stuck his tongue down her throat.
Then there was a blinding flash of painin his neck, his headand he must have lost consciousness for a moment. Because the next thing he knew he was sitting on the floor of the limousine, gasping and watching blood drip all over his shirt. Ted was not sure how he had gotten there. He was not sure why he was bleeding or why his head was throbbing. Then he realized that his tongue was bleeding.
He looked up at her. She crossed her legs coolly, giving him a glimpse up her skirt, but he didn't care. He was resentful. "You bit my tongue!"
"No, asshole, you bit your own tongue."
"You assaulted me!"
She raised an eyebrow.
"You did! You assaulted me!" He looked down. "Jesus, this was a new shirt, too. From Maxfield's."
She stared at him.
"You assaulted me," he repeated.
"So sue me."
"I think I will."
"Better consult your lawyer first."
"Why?"
She nodded her head toward the front of the car. "You're forgetting the driver."
"What about him?"
"He saw it all."
"So what? You encouraged me," he said, hissing. "You were being seductive. Any guy knows the signs."
"Apparently you didn't."
"Hostile ballbreaker?" He turned and took the vodka bottle from the rack. He needed it to rinse out his mouth. He poured himself a glass, and looked back.
She was reading the talking points. She held the paper in her hands. He lunged for it. "That's not yours."
She was quick, holding the paper away from him. She raised her other hand, edge on, like a chopping knife.
"Care to try your luck again, Ted?"
"Fuck you," he said, and took a big gulp of the vodka. His tongue was on fire. What a bitch, he thought. What a goddamned bitch. Well, she'd be looking for a new job tomorrow. He'd see to that. This bimbo lawyer couldn't fuck around with Ted Bradley and get away with it.
Standing beneath the crashed Ferrari, Evans endured another ten minutes of grilling by the plainclothesmen who encircled him. Fundamentally, the story didn't make sense to him.
Evans said, "George was a good driver. If all these changes were made to the car, wouldn't he have noticed something was wrong?"
"Perhaps. But not if he was drinking heavily."
"Well, he was drinking, that's for sure."
"And who got him the drinks, Mr. Evans?"
"George got his own drinks."
"The waiter at the banquet said you were pushing drinks at Morton."
"That's not true. I was trying to limit his drinking."
Abruptly, they changed course. "Who worked on the Ferrari, Mr. Evans?"
"I have no idea."
"We know you rented a private garage outside Sonoma on Route 54. It was fairly quiet and out of the way. Any person or persons who worked on the car would have been able to come and go as they wished, without being seen. Why would you choose such a garage?"
"I didn't choose it."
"Your name is on the lease."
"How was the lease arranged?"
"By phone."
"Who paid for it?"
"It was paid in cash."
"By whom?"
"Delivered by messenger."
"You have my signature on anything? Fingerprints?"
"No. Just your name."
Evans shrugged. "Then I'm sorry, but I don't know anything about this. It's well known that I'm George Morton's attorney. Anybody could have used my name. If anything was done to this car, it was done without my knowledge."
He was thinking that they should have been asking Sarah about all this, but then, if they were good at their jobs, they'd already have talked to her.
And sure enough, she appeared from around the corner, talking on a cell phone and nodding to Kenner.
That was when Kenner stepped forward. "Okay, gentlemen. Unless you have further questions, I'll take Mr. Evans into custody on my recognizance. I don't believe he is a flight risk. He will be safe enough with me."
The cops grumbled, but in the end they agreed. Kenner handed out his card, and then he headed back toward the entrance, his arm firmly on Evans's shoulder.
Sarah followed some distance behind. The cops stayed with the Ferrari.
As they neared the door, Kenner said, "Sorry about all that. But the police didn't tell you everything. The fact is, they photographed the car from various angles and fed the shots into a computer that simulates crashes. And the computer-generated simulation didn't match the photos of the actual crash."
"I didn't know you could do that."
"Oh yes. Everybody uses computer models these days. They are de rigueur for the modern organization. Armed with their computer simulation, the police went back to the wreck itself, where they now decided that it had been monkeyed with. They never imagined this during their previous examinations of the wreck, but now they do. Clear example of using a computer simulation to alter your version of reality. They trusted the simulation and not the data from the ground."
"Uh-huh."
"And of course their simulation was optimized for the most common vehicle types on American roads. The computer had no ability to model the behavior of a forty-year-old, limited-production Italian racing car. They ran the simulation anyway."
Evans said, "But what's all this about a garage in Sonoma?"
Kenner shrugged. "You don't know. Sarah doesn't know. Nobody can even verify if the car was ever there. But the garage was rentedI'd guess by George himself. Though we'll never know for sure."
Back outside, Evans threw open the door to his limo and climbed in. He was astonished to see Ted Bradley covered in blood, all down his chin and shirt front.
"What happened?"
"He slipped," Jennifer said. "And hurt himself."
On the flight back, Sarah Jones was overcome with confused feelings. First of all, she was profoundly distressed by the fact that George Morton's body had been recovered; in some part of her mind, she had been hoping against hope that he would turn up alive. Then there was the question of Peter Evans. Just as she was starting to like himstarting to see a side of him that was not wimpy, but rather tough and resilient in his own bumbling wayjust as she was beginning, in fact, to have the first stirrings of feelings toward the man who had saved her life, suddenly there was this new woman, Jennifer somebody, and Peter was obviously taken with her.
And in addition, there was the arrival of Ted Bradley. Sarah had no illusions about Ted; she had seen him in action at innumerable NERF gatherings, and she had even once allowed him to work his charms on hershe was a sucker for actorsbut at the last moment decided he reminded her too much of her ex. What was it about actors, anyway? They were so engaging, so personal in their approach, so intense in their feelings. It was hard to realize that they were just self-absorbed people who would do anything to get you to like them.
At least, Ted was.
And how had he been injured? Bitten his own tongue? Sarah had the feeling it had to do with this Jennifer. Undoubtedly, Ted had made a pass at her. The woman was pretty enough in a street-smart kind of way; dark hair, toughish face, compact body, muscular but skinny. A typical speeded-up New York typein every way Sarah's opposite.
And Peter Evans was fawning over her.
Fawning.
It was sort of disgusting, but she had to admit she was disappointed personally as well. Just as she had started to like him. She sighed.
As for Bradley, he was talking to Kenner about environmental issues, showing off his extensive knowledge. And Kenner was looking at Bradley the way a python looks at a rat.
"So," Kenner said, "global warming represents a threat to the world?"
"Absolutely," Bradley said. "A threat to the whole world."
"What sort of threat are we talking about?"
"Crop failures, spreading deserts, new diseases, species extinction, all the glaciers melting, Kilimanjaro, sea-level rise, extreme weather, tornadoes, hurricanes, El Niсo events"
"That sounds extremely serious," Kenner said.
"It is," Bradley said. "It really is."
"Are you sure of your facts?"
"Of course."
"You can back your claims with references to the scientific literature?"
"Well, I can't personally, but scientists can."
"Actually, scientific studies do not support your claims. For example, crop failureif anything, increased carbon dioxide stimulates plant growth. There is some evidence that this is happening. And the most recent satellite studies show the Sahara has shrunk since 1980.* As for new diseasesnot true. The rate of emergence of new diseases has not changed since 1960."
"But we'll have diseases like malaria coming back to the US and Europe."
"Not according to malaria experts."* Bradley snorted and folded his hands across his chest.
"Species extinction hasn't been demonstrated either. In the 1970s, Norman Myers predicted a million species would be extinct by the year2000. Paul Ehrlich predicted that fifty percent of all species would be extinct by the year 2000. But those were just opinions. Do you know what we call opinion in the absence of evidence? We call it prejudice. Do you know how many species there are on the planet?"
"No."
"Neither does anybody else. Estimates range from three million to one hundred million. Quite a range, wouldn't you say? Nobody really has any idea."!
"Your point being?"
"It's hard to know how many species are becoming extinct if you don't know how many there are in the first place. How could you tell if you were robbed if you didn't know how much money you had in your wallet to begin with? And fifteen thousand new species are described every year. By the way, do you know what the known rate of species extinction is?"
"No."
"That's because there is no known rate. Do you know how they measure numbers of species and species extinctions? Some poor bastard marks off a hectare or an acre of land and then tries to count all the bugs and animals and plants inside it. Then he comes back in ten years and counts again. But maybe the bugs have moved to an adjacent acre in the meantime. Anyway, can you imagine trying to count all the bugs in an acre of land?"
"It would be difficult."
"To put it mildly. And very inaccurate," Kenner said, "which is the point. Now, about all the glaciers meltingnot true. Some are, some aren't."* "Nearly all of them are."
Kenner smiled thinly. "How many glaciers are we talking about?"
"Dozens."
"How many glaciers are there in the world, Ted?"
"I don't know."
"Guess."
"Maybe, uh, two hundred."
"There are more than that in California. There are one hundred sixty thousand glaciers in the world, Ted. About sixty-seven thousand have been inventoried, but only a few have been studied with any care. There is mass balance data extending five years or more for only seventy-nine glaciers in the entire world. So, how can you say they're all melting? Nobody knows whether they are or not."!
"Kilimanjaro is melting."
"Why is that?"
"Global warming."
"Actually, Kilimanjaro has been rapidly melting since the 1800slong before global warming. The loss of the glacier has been a topic of scholarly concern for over a hundred years. And it has always been something of a mystery because, as you know, Kilimanjaro is an equatorial volcano, so it exists in a warm region. Satellite measurements of that region show no warming trend at the altitude of the Kilimanjaro glacier. So why is it melting?"
Sulking: "You tell me."
"Because of deforestation, Ted. The rain forest at the base of the mountain has been cut down, so the air blowing upward is no longer moist. Experts think that if the forest is replanted the glacier will grow again."
"That's bullshit."
"I'll give you the journal references.* Now thensea-level rise? Was that the next threat you mentioned?"
"Yes."
"Sea level is indeed rising."
"Ah-hah!"
"As it has been for the last six thousand years, ever since the start of the Holocene. Sea level has been rising at the rate of ten to twenty centimetersthat's four to eight inchesevery hundred years."
"But it's rising faster now."
"Actually, not."
"Satellites prove it."
"Actually, they don't."!
"Computer models prove it's rising faster."§ "Computer models can't prove anything, Ted. A prediction can't ever be proofit hasn't happened yet. And computer models have failed to accurately predict the last ten or fifteen years. But if you want to believe in them anyway, there is no arguing with faith. Now, what was next on your list? Extreme weatheragain, not true. Numerous studies show there is no increase."* "Look," Ted said, "you may enjoy putting me down, but the fact is, lots of people think there will be more extreme weather, including more hurricanes and tornadoes and cyclones, in the future."
"Yes, indeed, lots of people think so. But scientific studies do not bear them out. That's why we do science, Ted, to see if our opinions can be verified in the real world, or whether we are just having fantasies."
"All these hurricanes are not fantasies."
Kenner sighed. He flipped open his laptop.
"What are you doing?"
"One moment," Kenner said. "Let me bring it up."
US Hurricane Strikes by Decade 19002004 "Here is the actual data, Ted," Kenner said. "US hurricane strikes over the last hundred years are clearly not increasing. And similarly, extreme weather is not more frequent globally. The data simply do not agree with you. Now, you also mentioned El Niсo events."
"Yes amp;"
"As you know, El Niсo is a global weather pattern that begins when ocean temperatures along the west coast of South America remain above normal for several months. Once it's triggered, El Niсo lasts about a year and a half, affecting weather around the world. El Niсo occurs roughly every four yearstwenty-three times in the last century. And it has been occurring for thousands of years. So it long precedes any claim of global warming.* But what threat does El Niсo represent to the US, Ted? There was a major El Niсo in 1998."
"Floods, crops ruined, like that."
"All that happened. But the net economic effect of the last El Niсo was a gain of fifteen billion dollars because of a longer growing season and less use of winter heating oil. That's after deducting $1.5 billion for flooding and excess rain in California. Still a net benefit."
"I'd like to see that study," Bradley said.
"I'll make sure you get it. Because of course it also suggests that if global warming really does occur, it will probably benefit most nations of the world."
"But not all."
"No, Ted. Not all."
"So what exactly is your point?" Bradley said. "You're saying that we don't need to pay any attention to the environment, that we can just leave it alone and let industry pollute and everything will be hunkydory?"
For a [moment, it looked to Sarah as if Kenner would get angry, but he did not. He said, "If you oppose the death penalty, does it also mean you are in favor of doing nothing at all about crime?"
"No," Ted said.
"You can oppose the death penalty but still favor punishing criminals."
"Yes. Of course."
"Then I can say that global warming is not a threat but still favor environmental controls, can't I?"
"But it doesn't sound like you are saying that."
Kenner sighed.
Sarah was listening to this exchange, thinking Bradley wasn't really hearing what Kenner had to say. As if to prove her thoughts, Bradley continued: "Well? Aren't you saying that the environment needs no protection from us? Isn't that what you are really saying?"
Kenner said, "No," in a way that suggested that the conversation was over.
Sarah thought: Ted really is a fool. He has a severely limited understanding of what he is talking about. Ted was an actor with a script, at a loss if the conversation moved away from scripted lines.
She turned away and looked toward the front of the cabin. She saw Peter talking to Jennifer, their heads together. There was a sort of intimacy in their gestures that was instantly recognizable.
She was glad when the pilot announced they were landing in Los Angeles.
Sanjong Thapa was waiting at the airport, looking worried. He and Kenner got immediately into a car and drove off. Sarah went home to her apartment. Bradley climbed into an SUV limo and left with an irritable wave. He was already on his cell phone. Peter Evans drove Jennifer to her car, which was back in Culver City. There was an awkward moment saying good-bye. He wanted to kiss her but sensed some reserve, and didn't. She promised she would call him in the morning.
He drove home, thinking of her. Sarah did not enter his mind.
It was almost midnight when Evans got back to his apartment. He was very tired and was stripping off his shirt when the phone rang. It was Janis, the exercise instructor. "Where have you been, you cute thing?"
"Traveling," he said.
"I have called you every single day," she said. "Sometimes more. Sometimes every hour."
"Uh-huh. What's up?"
"My boyfriend broke up with me."
"I'm sorry to hear that," Evans said. "Was it very"
"Can I come over?" she said.
He sighed. "You know, Janis, I'm really tired amp;"
"I need to talk to you. I promise I won't stay, if you don't want me to. I'm only about a block away. Five minutes?"
He sighed again, louder this time. "Janis, tonight is not"
"Okay, good, see you in five."
Click.
He sighed. He took his shirt off and tossed it in the hamper. She never listened, that was the trouble. He decided that when she got to his apartment, he would just tell her to leave. That's all. Just go.
Or then again, maybe he wouldn't.
Janis was uncomplicated. He was ready for an uncomplicated exchange. He pulled off his shoes and dropped them on the floor. On the other hand, he didn't want Janis around in the morning if Jennifer called. Would Jennifer call? She said she would. Did Jennifer know his home number? He wasn't sure. Maybe not.
He decided to take a shower. He might not hear Janis in the shower, so he unlocked the front door for her and headed for the bathroom. The hallway was dark and he had just a fleeting glimpse of a dark shadow before something hit him on the head, very hard. Evans yelled. The pain was intense, making him gasp, and he fell to his knees. He groaned. Someone hit him again, this time in the ear, and he fell over on his side.
Disoriented, he found himself staring at a pair of feet in dirty socks. He was being dragged into the living room. He was dropped unceremoniously on the floor. There were three men, moving around him. They had dark masks over their faces, like ski masks. One of them stepped on both his arms, pinning him down, flat on his back. Another one sat on his legs and said, "Don't talk. Don't move." A growly menacing voice.
Evans couldn't move anyway. He still felt disoriented. He looked around for the third man. He heard sloshing water. He glimpsed what looked like a plastic baggie.
"Hold him good." The third man spoke in a whisper. He crouched by Evans's shoulder, pulled up the shirtsleeve, exposing the flesh of his arm. He was wheezing softly behind the black mask. In the same whisper, he said, "You know what this is?"
He held up the baggie. The water was cloudy. Evans saw what looked like a fleshy ball, and in a panic he thought, Oh God, they cut somebody's balls off. But then he saw the ball moving, undulating. It was brown with white spots, about the size of a golf ball.
"You know?" the man said.
Evans shook his head.
"You will," the man whispered, and unzipped the baggie. He pushed it against the underside of Evans's arm. Evans felt wetness. The man was manipulating the baggie, squeezing the ball. Evans was trying to see, but it was hard to see exactly what was The ball moved. It spread, extended what looked like wings. No, not wings. It was a tiny octopus! Tiny! It could not have weighed more than a few ounces. Brownish with white rings. The man was squeezing the baggie, compressing it, pushing the little octopus toward the flesh of Evans's arm.
And then he understood.
Evans moaned and began to struggle, trying to move against his captors, but they had him firmly, and he felt the touch of the octopus, a kind of sticky sensation, like cellophane or Sticky Putty or something. He lifted his head in horror and saw that the man was snapping the baggie with his finger, trying to goad the octopus, which had wrapped itself against the skin of Evans's arm, and in a flash the rings on the octopus changed from white to blue.
The blue ring of death.
"That means he's mad." The third man holding the baggie said, "You won't feel it," but Evans did. It was a bite from the tiny beak, a single sting, almost like the sting of a needle. Evans jerked his arm and the man withdrew the baggie and sealed it again. He whispered, "Hold him good."
He went away a moment, then came back with a kitchen rag. He wiped the underside of Evans's arm, wiped the water off the floor. Still whispering, he said, "You won't feel anything for a few minutes." He walked over to the phone. "Don't try to call anybody," he said, and ripped the phone off the wall, smashing it on the floor.
The men released him. They moved quickly to the door, opened it, and were gone.
He coughed, and got to his hands and knees. He looked at his underarm; the bite looked like a dimple in the flesh, a small pink spot just at the edge of the hairs of his armpit. Nobody would ever see it.
He did not feel anything except a sort of dull tingling at the spot where the bite had occurred. His mouth was dry, but that was probably from fear. His head hurt. He reached up, felt blood, realized that they had torn open some of his stitches.
Jesus. He tried to get to his feet but his arm gave way, and he fell down again, rolling on the floor. He was still disoriented. He stared into the lights in the ceiling. His apartment had that cottage-cheese kind of ceiling. He hated that ceiling. He wanted to do something about it but it was too expensive. Anyway, he had always thought he would be moving soon. He was still disoriented. He got onto his elbows. His mouth was very dry now. It was the effect of the poison.
Some kind of a toad. No, he thought, that wasn't right. It wasn't a toad. It was a amp; He couldn't remember.
Octopus.
That's right. It was a little octopus, hardly bigger than a thumbnail. Cute little thing.
The Indians in the Amazon used them for poison for their arrowheads. No, he thought, that was toads. No octopus in the Amazon. Or were there?
He was confused. Becoming more confused. He broke into a cold sweat. Was that part of it, too? He had to get to a phone. He might only have a few minutes of consciousness left.
He crawled to the nearest object, which was an easy chair amp;he'd had it in law school, it was pretty ratty, he had intended to get rid of it when he moved here but he hadn't gotten around to it yet amp;the living room needed a chair right in this spot amp;he'd had it re-covered in fabric his second year in law school amp;pretty dirty now amp;who had time to go shopping? With his mind racing, he pulled himself up until his chin was resting on the seat of the chair. He was gasping for breath, it felt as if he had climbed a mountain. He thought, Why am I here? Why is my chin on the chair? Then he remembered that he was trying to climb up, to sit in it.
Sit in the chair.
He got the elbow of his good arm up onto the seat and began to press himself up. Finally he was able to heave his chest onto the chair, then the rest of his body. His limbs were getting numb, and cold, and heavier by the minute. They were becoming too heavy to move. His whole body was getting heavy. He managed to get himself almost upright in the chair. There was a phone on the table beside him, but his arm was too heavy to reach for it. He tried, but he could not reach out at all now. His fingers moved slightly, but that was all. His body was very cold and very heavy.
He began to lose his balance, slowly at first and then sliding over sideways, until his chest rested on the arm of the chair and his head hung over the side. And there he stayed, unable to move. He could not lift his head. He could not move his arms. He could not even move his eyes. He stared at the fabric of the chair and the carpet on the floor and he thought, This is the last thing I will see before I die.