Polar Shift

  “What makes Margrave so driven?”

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

  “Which is?”

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

  “That's a pretty tall order,” Austin said.

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

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

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

  “How were you going to do that?”

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

  “The Kovacs Theorems.”

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

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

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

  “How far does it go?”

  “We were trying to cause a polar reversal.”

  “A shifting of the north and south poles?”

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

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

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

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

  “What were the means?”

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

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

  “A whirlpool!”

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

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

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

  Barrett looked stunned at the revelation.

  “What's going on, Spider?”

  The question shocked Barrett out of his daze.

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

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

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

  “That's what drove the orcas into a frenzy?”

  He nodded.

  “What was the problem?”

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

  “So Kovacs was wrong?”

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

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

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

  “Where is that going to be?”

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

  “How did you get into this insanity?”

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

  “Tell me about the attempt on your life.”

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

  “Was Doyle acting on Margrave's orders?”

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

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

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

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

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

  “Who else has an interest in seeing this scheme succeed?”

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

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

  “That's a logical conclusion.”

  “What's Gant's background?”

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

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

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

  “Where would he begin to find something like that?”

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

  “Does Gant know this?”

  “He would if we're right about Doyle.”

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

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

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

  “You're right. What should we do?”

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

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

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

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

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

  NUMA 6 - Polar Shift

  21

  TEN THOUSAND YEARS after the last woolly mammoth shook the earth beneath its feet, its bones and tusks are providing the fuel for a booming international trade. The center of that trade is the city of Yakutsk in East Siberia, about six hours by plane from Moscow.

  It is an old city, founded in the 1600s by a band of Cossacks, and was long considered the last outpost of civilization for explorers. It gained later fame, or notoriety, as one of the islands in the Gulag system, where enemies of the Soviet state found ready employment as slave laborers in the gold and diamond mines. Since the nineteenth century, it has been the world capital for the woolly mammoth ivory trade.

  The Ivory Cooperative is one of the prime distributors in the ivory trade. The cooperative is housed in a dark and dusty warehouse, surrounded by crumbling apartment buildings that go back to the time of Khrushchev. Behind the nondescript, concrete walls and steel door are thousands of pounds of mammoth ivory worth millions of dollars, waiting to be shipped out to China and Burma, where they will be carved into trinkets for the thriving Asian tourist market. The white treasure is contained in crates that are stacked on shelves running from one end of the warehouse to the other.

  Three men were standing in one of the aisles. They were Vladimir Bulgarin, the owner of the ivory business, and two helpers, who were holding each end of a huge mammoth tusk.

  “This is beautiful,” Bulgarin was saying. “What's its weight?”

  “One hundred kilos,” one of his helpers said with a grunt. “Very heavy.”

  “Wonderful,” Bulgarin said. Prime ivory was going at one hundred dollars a kilo.

  A third helper was hustling down the aisle. “Your partner is here,” he said.

  Bulgarin looked as if he had bit into a lemon. He instructed his helpers to load the tusk into a sawdust-filled crate and to set it aside. He might have the tusk carved into little ivory mammoths or earrings rather than send it out as raw ivory, increasing the value even more.

  As he headed back to his office, he had a frown on his fleshy face. His so-called partner was what they called a “bagman” in the United States. He was a Mafia thug who showed up once a month from Moscow to collect a percentage of the take, accuse Bulgarin of holding out and threaten to break his legs if he was.

  It was inevitable that the Russian Mafia would find a way to get its sticky fingers into the profitable mammoth tusk trade. Business was booming, thanks to the international ban against the sale of ivory from the African elephant herds that had been decimated by hunters. Inhabitants of Yakutsk had a history in the mammoth trade going back hundreds of years, and, with an estimated ten million mammoths buried under the Siberian permafrost, a vast source of material.

  Political change had boosted the ivory trade as well. Moscow had always regulated commerce in Yakutsk, and still controlled the diamond and gold business, but the local inhabitants had been trading with the Chinese for two thousand years, and they knew better than anyone how to make money off the bones of ancient, dead giants. The ivory first had to be worked in order to be exported legally under the law, but some distributors, like Bulgarin, ignored the law and sent raw ivory directly to the buyers.

  When Moscow stepped out, the Mafia stepped in. The previous year, the cooperative received an unannounced visit from a group of the most frightening men Bulgarin had ever met. They wore black turtlenecks and black leather jackets, and they spoke softly when they said they were becoming partners in the business. Bulgarin was a petty thief, and he rubbed elbows with the more violent elements of the Russian underworld. When these hard men said he and his family needed protection, he knew exactly what they meant. He agreed to the arrangement, and the people from Moscow installed the two guards with machine guns at the door to protect their investment.

  Bulgarin was puzzled as well as annoyed at the timing of the visit. As regular as clockwork, his partner showed up on the fourth Thursday of every month. This was the second Wednesday. Despite his annoyance, when he entered his tiny, cluttered office near the entrance to the warehouse he wreathed his face in a broad smile, expecting to see Karpov, the usual representative from Moscow. But the man dressed in the black suit and turtleneck was younger, and, in contrast to Karpov, who stole money with a tough-guy affability, his expression was as cold as Yakutsk on a winter night.

  He glared at Bulgarin. “I don't like to be kept waiting.”

  “I'm very sorry,” Bulgarin said, maintaining his smile. “I was at the far end of the warehouse. Is Karpov ill?”

  “Karpov is only a money collector. We have serious business. I want you to get in touch with the men on Ivory Island.”

  “It's not easy.”

  “Just do it.”

  Several days before, Moscow had called, and told him to assemble a team of his most hardened ivory hunters and send them to the island. They would find a scientific party working there, and were instructed to hold a woman scientist named Karla Janos. They were to hand her over to a team coming in from Alaska.

  “I can try,” Karpov said. “The weather—”

  “I want you to change their orders. Tell them to take the girl and transport her off the island.”

  “What about the Americans?”

  “Their people are unable to come. They were willing to pay a great deal of money for the job, so s
he is evidently of some value. We will talk to her, to see what she has to say, and hold her for ransom.”

  Karpov shrugged. It was typical of the Moscow Mafia. Double cross. Crude and direct.

  “What about the other scientists?”

  “Tell your men, no witnesses.”

  A chill ran down Karpov's spine. He was no angel, and had broken a few heads as a young smuggler. Ivory hunting was a cutthroat business. After the Mafia got into ivory hunting, they had recruited men who could be charitably called “scum of the earth.” Some of his competitors had conveniently vanished.

  At the same time, he was smart enough to know that, as a witness, he too would be in line to be eliminated. He would do as the man said, but his mind was already working on ways to fold his business and leave Yakutsk. He nodded, his mouth dry, and opened a cabinet that housed a state-of-the-art radio.

  Within minutes, he had contacted the ivory hunters. Using a carefully crafted code in case someone was listening, he called the leader of his team, a violent man named Grisha, who was a Sakha descendant of the Mongols that had lived as ivory hunters going back hundreds of years. He relayed the instructions. Grisha asked only for clarification to make sure he had heard the order correctly, but otherwise had no questions.

  “It's done,” he said, replacing the microphone.

  The Mafia man nodded. “I will come back tomorrow to make sure.”

  Karpov wiped the sweat off his brow after the man left. He didn't know which was worse, dealing with the cutthroats from Moscow or the cutthroats who worked for him. What he did know was that his days in Yakutsk were numbered. He would be safe until they brought someone in to replace him, but, in the meantime, he would activate plans made long ago. He had millions of dollars in Swiss bank accounts.

  Geneva would be nice. Or Paris or London. The gem business would be profitable.

  Anything would be preferable to a Siberian winter.

  He smiled. The Mafia may have done him a great favor.

  NUMA 6 - Polar Shift