Blue Gold

  “But water isn’t a commodity like pork bellies.”

  “You’ve been in the jungle too long. Globalization is nothing more than the promotion of monopolies in communication, agriculture, food, or power. Why not water? Under the new international treaties, no one country owns its water resources anymore. They go to the highest bidder, and Gogstad will be the highest bidder.”

  “You will deny water to thousands who will be forced out of the market. There will be famine and chaos in countries that can’t afford to buy water.”

  “Chaos will be our friend. It will prepare the way for Gogstad’s political takeover of weakened governments. Think of it as water Darwinism. The strong will survive.”

  The icy blue eyes seemed to bore into Francesca’s skull. “Don’t think this is retribution for all the slights I have received because of my stature. I am a businesswoman who realizes the proper political climate is necessary to do business. This has required no small investment on my part. I have spent millions building up a fleet of water tankers that would transport water from places that have it, towing it behind them in huge ocean-going bags. I have been waiting years for this moment. I have not dared to move because I feared your process. It could destroy my monopoly within weeks. Now that I have you and the anasazium, I can strike. Within days the entire western half of the country will run out of water.”

  “That’s impossible!”

  “Is it? We will see. Once the Colorado River is finished as a supplier, the rest of the pieces will fall rapidly into place. My company controls most of the fresh water supplies in other parts of the world. We will simply turn the faucet off, so to speak. Gradually at first, then more forcefully. If there are any complaints, we will say that we are producing as much water as possible.”

  “You know the results,” Francesca said levelly. “You’re talking about turning much of the world into desert. The consequences would be terrible.”

  “Terrible for some, but not those who control the world’s water. We could get any price we ask.”

  “From desperate people. You would soon be exposed as the monster you are.”

  “To the contrary. Gogstad will say that we are ready to move water from Alaska, British Columbia, and the Great Lakes to other parts of the world in the tanker fleet I have been building. When Gogstad’s beautiful tankers appear off the coast we will be hailed as heroes.”

  “You’re already apparently rich beyond the dreams of many. Why do you need more wealth?”

  “This could benefit the world in the long run. I will prevent wars from being fought over water.”

  “A pax Gogstad, imposed by force.”

  “Force will not be necessary. I will reward those who bend to my will, punish those who don’t.”

  “By letting them wither and die.”

  “If that’s necessary, yes. You must wonder where your desalination process fits in.”

  “I assume you would never allow it to spoil your mad plot.”

  “To the contrary, your process is an important part of my scheme. I don’t intend to keep my tankers at sea forever. They are only a stopgap measure while the world builds the fantastic infrastructure that will run water down from the polar ice cap. Vast agricultural areas that have gone to desert will have to be invigorated with huge-scale irrigation.”

  “No country could afford that. Whole nations will go bankrupt.”

  “All the better to snatch them up at a fire sale. Eventually I will build desalting plants using the Cabral process, but I alone will control their output.”

  “Again to the highest bidder.”

  “Of course. Now let me present my new offer. I will place you in a lab with everything you need at your command.”

  “If I say no?”

  “Then I will turn your NUMA friend over to the Kradzik brothers. She will not die quickly or pleasantly.”

  “She’s an innocent. She has no part in this.”

  “Nonetheless she is a nail that must be hammered down if necessary.”

  Francesca was silent for a moment. Then she said, “How do I know I can trust you?”

  “You can’t trust me, Dr. Cabral. You should know that you can never trust anyone. But you are intelligent enough to see that you are far more valuable to me than your friend’s life and that I am willing to trade. As long as you cooperate, she lives. Do you agree?”

  This woman and the deeds hatched in the dark recesses of her brilliant mind revolted Francesca. Brynhild was obviously a megalomaniac and, like so many of her ruthless predecessors, was impervious to the sufferings of the innocent. Francesca had not survived ten years among savage headhunters, blood-sucking bats, and stinging insects and plants without inner resources. She could be as Machiavellian as the most devious. Living in the jungle had given her the quiet ferocity of a stalking jaguar. Since her escape she had been consumed with the desire for revenge. She knew it was wrong and misplaced, but it sustained and helped maintain her grip on her sanity. She pushed her thirst for vengeance aside for the moment. This woman must be stopped.

  Suppressing a smile, she bowed her head in submission and with a feigned catch in her voice said, “You win. I will help in developing the process.”

  “Agreed. I’ll show you the facility you’ll be working in. You’ll be quite impressed.”

  “I want to talk to Gamay to make sure she is all right.”

  Brynhild punched a button on the intercom. Two men in dark green uniforms appeared. Francesca was relieved to see that they were not the Kradziks.

  “Take Dr. Cabral to see our other guest,” Brynhild ordered. “Then bring her back to me.” She turned to Francesca. “You have ten minutes. I want you to get to work immediately.”

  Flanked by the guards, Francesca was led through a labyrinth of passageways to an elevator that dropped several levels. They stopped in front of an unmarked door opened by punching out the code on a keypad. The guards stood outside while Francesca entered the small windowless room. Gamay was sitting on the edge of her cot. She looked groggy, like a fighter who has taken one too many punches. She brightened and smiled when she saw Francesca. She tried to rise, but her legs buckled and she had to sit again.

  Francesca sat on the cot and put her arm around her friend’s shoulders. “Are you all right?”

  Gamay brushed her straggly hair aside. “My legs are wobbly, but I’ll be fine. What about you?”

  “They gave me a stimulant. I’ve been awake for some time. Your drugs will wear off soon.”

  “Did anyone mention what happend to Paul? He was upstairs when the kidnappers broke in.”

  Francesca shook her head. Putting aside her worst fears, Gamay said, “Do you have any idea where we are?”

  “No. Our host didn’t tell us.”

  “You mean you’ve spoken to someone I can thank for these glorious accommodations?”

  “Her name is Brynhild Sigurd. Those were her men who kidnapped us.”

  Gamay started to reply, but Francesca pursed her lips and shifted her eyes from left to right. Gamay caught the hint. They were being bugged and probably watched.

  “I only have a few minutes. I just wanted you to know I’ve agreed to work with Ms. Sigurd on my desalting process. We’ll have to stay here until the project is complete. I don’t know how long it will take.”

  “You’re going to work with the person who kidnapped us?”

  “Yes,” Francesca replied with a stubborn tilt of her chin. “I wasted ten years of my life in the jungle. There’s a great deal of money to be made, but beyond that I believe Gogstad has the best chance of bringing my process to the world in an orderly and controlled fashion.”

  “Are you sure this is what you want to do?”

  “Yes, I’m absolutely sure,” she said.

  The door slid open, and one of the guards motioned for Francesca to leave. She nodded, then leaned over and gave Gamay a hug. Then she stood quickly and went off with the guards. Alone once more, Gamay pondered what had just happened. As thei
r eyes met briefly, Francesca had winked. There was no mistake about it. Gamay was pleased to think there was more to Francesca’s startling announcement that she was working for the enemy, but there were more immediate concerns. She lay back on her cot and closed her eyes. Her first priority was to give her body and brain a rest. Then she would try to figure out how to escape.

  35

  THE MAN FLOATED high above the cobalt-blue waters of Lake Tahoe, suspended from the parasail under a red-and-white canopy that billowed over his head like an old-fashioned round parachute. He sat in a reclining Skyrider chair attached by a towline to the moving winch boat two hundred feet below.

  The rider clicked on his handheld radio. “Let’s go around for one more pass, Joe.”

  Zavala, who was at the wheel of the boat, waved to show that he had heard Austin’s instruction. He put the ParaNautique winch boat into a big, slow turn that would take them back along the lake’s California side.

  The maneuver gave Austin a sweeping view of the lake. Lake Tahoe is on the California-Nevada border in the Sierra Nevada about twenty-three miles southwest of Reno. Ringed by rugged mountains that are covered with snow in the winter, Tahoe is the largest alpine lake in the United States. It is more than a mile high, more than sixteen hundred feet deep. The lake is twenty-two miles long and about a dozen miles wide and lies in a fault basin created by ancient forces deep in the earth. Two-thirds of its two-hundred-square-mile area is in California. At the north end it empties into the Truckee River. At the south end a river of money empties into the coffers of the highrise gambling casinos at Stateline. The first white man to discover the lake was John C. Fremont who was on a surveying mission. To English speakers the Washoe Indian name for the lake, Da-ow, which means “much water,” sounded like Tahoe, and the pronunciation stuck.

  As the parasail brought Austin around in a wide arc he concentrated his attention on a particular stretch of shoreline and the dark forest rising behind it, imprinting the image on his mind. He would have preferred to use a video or still camera instead of his imperfect memory, but traffic this close to Gogstad’s lair was sure to come under close scrutiny. Any undue interest on his part, such as pointing a camera lens in the wrong direction, would set off alarms.

  He drifted past a long pier that jutted from the rocky shore. A powerboat was tied up at the pier. Behind a boathouse or storage shed, the black rocks rose at a sharp angle, then leveled off into a heavily wooded natural tableland. Several hundred yards back from shore the land rose again in thick forest. The towers, roofs, and turrets peeking above the tall trees reminded Austin of the castle ramparts in a Grimm fairy tale.

  Austin’s eye was drawn by sudden movement. Several men in dark clothes had run out to the end of the pier. He was too far away to see details, but he wouldn’t be surprised if pictures of him parasailing wound up in a Gogstad family album.

  The pier disappeared in his wake as the winch boat towed him another mile south. When they were safely out of view he gave Zavala the okay to haul him in. The winch pulled the Skyrider in like a boy reeling in a kite. The reclining chair splashed down and floated in the water. Austin was grateful he wasn’t using the old harness-style rig which would have dunked him in the lake. Even in summer the water temperature was in the sixties.

  “See anything interesting?” Zavala asked as he helped Austin back into the winch boat.

  “There’s no welcome mat on the doorstep, if that’s what you mean.”

  “I think I saw a welcoming committee on the dock.”

  “They came charging out the minute we did our second fly-by. We were right about the tight security.”

  They had assumed the compound would be well guarded and that there would be no point sneaking around. Reasoning that the obvious was often the most innocuous, they had flashed a wad of bills and their NUMA IDs and persuaded the owner of the parasail and the winch boat to spare his equipment for a few hours. They implied that they were investigating the Mafia, which was not implausible given the nearness to the gambling casinos. Since business was off and he stood to make more in the deal than he earned in a week, he went along with the deal.

  Austin helped Zavala stow the Skyrider and parasail, then he opened a waterproof bag and dug out a sketch pad and pen. Apologizing for his draftsmanship, which was really quite good, he drew several sketches of what he had seen from the air. He had brought along the satellite photos Yaeger provided and compared the sketches to them. At the top of the bluff the staircase from the dock connected with a walkway. This in turn widened into a road that led to the main complex. A spur from the road shot off to a helicopter pad.

  “A full frontal waterborne assault is out of the question,” he said.

  “Can’t say I’m disappointed. I haven’t forgotten our shoot-out in Alaska,” Zavala said.

  “I had hoped to see down into the water. In the old days the lake was as clear as crystal, but the runoff from all the development around the shores has clouded up the water with algae growth.”

  Zavala had been studying another photo. After their strategy meeting at NUMA headquarters, Austin called up a NOAA satellite photo of Lake Tahoe. The shot showed the water temperature of the lake in colors. The lake was almost entirely blue except for one spot along the western shore where the red shade denoted high temperatures. The heated water was practically under the Gogstad pier. It was similar to the heat pulse in the ocean off the Baja coast.

  “Pictures don’t lie,” Zavala said. “There’s always the possibility of a hot spring.”

  Austin frowned.

  “Okay, say you’re right, that there’s an underwater facility like the one in the Baja. There’s one thing I don’t understand. We’re talking about a desalting plant. This is a freshwater lake.”

  “I agree, it doesn’t make sense. But there’s only one way to find out for sure. Let’s head back and see if our package has arrived.”

  Austin started the engine and pointed the winch boat toward South Lake Tahoe. They skimmed over the intense blue waters, and before long they were pulling into a marina. A lanky figure stood at the end of a finger pier waving at them. Paul had stayed on shore. His wound was still too tender to allow him to bounce around in a boat. As they pulled up to the slip he grabbed the line with his good hand and tied them off.

  “Your package has arrived,” he announced. “It’s in the parking lot.”

  “That was fast,” Austin said. “Let’s take a look.” He and Zavala set off toward the parking lot.

  “Wait,” Paul said.

  Austin was eager to check out the delivery. “We’ll fill you in later,” he said over his shoulder.

  Paul shook his head. “Can’t say I didn’t try to warn you,” he muttered.

  The flatbed truck was pulled up off to the side. The object on the trailer was about the shape and size of two cars, one behind the other. It was covered with padding and dark plastic. Austin had moved in for a closer look when the passenger door of the truck opened and a familiar figure stepped out. Jim Contos, skipper of the Sea Robin, strolled over with a grin on his face.

  “Uh-oh,” Zavala said.

  “Jim,” Austin said. “What a nice surprise.”

  “What the hell is going on, Kurt?” The grin had vanished.

  “It was an emergency, Jim.”

  “Yeah, I figured it was an emergency when Rudi Gunn called in the middle of sea trials and told me to ship the SeaBus out to Tahoe ASAP. So I just tagged along on the ride in from San Diego to see who was on the receiving end.”

  Austin noticed a picnic table and suggested they sit down. Then he laid out the situation, using the photos and drawings as visual aids. Contos sat silently through the entire explanation, his dark features growing graver with each added detail.

  “So there you have it,” Austin said. “When we saw that there might be only one way in, we checked on the nearest submersible to do the job. Unfortunately it happened to be the one you were testing.”

  “Why play Blind Man?
??s Bluff?” Contos said, referring to daring covert underwater operations during the cold war. “Why not just go in?”

  “First of all, the place has better security than Fort Knox. We checked on land access. The complex is surrounded by razor-wire fence rigged to set off alarms if you so much as breathe on it. The perimeter is heavily patrolled. There is only one access road in and out. It runs through dense forest and is heavily guarded. If we send a SWAT team in with guns blazing it’s likely someone would get hurt. Beyond that, what if we’re wrong about the whole thing, that the women are not being held there, and what’s behind all those fences is perfectly legal?”

  “You don’t think that’s the case, do you?”

  “No, I don’t.”

  Contos gazed out at the sailboats peacefully gliding across the lake, then turned to Paul, who had joined them at the table.

  “Do you think your wife is in there?”

  “Yep. I have every intention of getting her out.”

  Contos noted Trout’s arm in its sling. “I’d say you could use an extra hand. And your friends here will need some help launching the SeaBus.”

  “I designed it,” Zavala said.

  “I’m well aware of that, but you haven’t been the one testing it, so you don’t know the quirks. For instance, the batteries are supposed to be good for six hours. They barely make it past four. From what you say, this facility is quite a way from here. Have you given any thought to how you’re going to get it to the launch point?”

  Austin and Zavala exchanged an amused glance.

  “As a matter of fact, we have already lined up a delivery system,” Austin said. “Would you like to see it?”

  Contos nodded, and they got up from the table and walked through the parking lot to the dock. The closer they got to the water the more puzzled was the expression on Contos’s face. Used to NUMA’s state-of-the-art equipment, he was looking for something like a high-tech barge fitted out with cranes. There was nothing like that.