Ark Storm (24 page)

Bergers pondered. All this earthquake or ARk Storm stuff sounded like Wilkie and Rodgers’ overactive imaginations. They’d sound like a laughing stock. He knew better than to share that.

“No, that’s all I know at this moment in time.”

“If you find out anything else, let me know. Or, put it another way, if you could find out more, we’d appreciate it.”

“See what I can do.”

*   *   *

Canning called Del Russo, Peters, Furlong, and Zucker into his office as soon as he hung up. Luckily for her, Pauline Southward hadn’t yet left the building. Canning’s PA, Brad Cooper, known as Coop, located her as she was about to get in her car, told her to get back upstairs. She hurried in, took a seat.

“SEC came up trumps,” declared Canning. “We have the equivalent of three sets of interesting shorts which have recently been put on.”

“So someone, several someone’s, have shorted the Dow,” said Southward, feeling the quick burn of adrenaline.

“That’s what I asked, but no. Better than that, or perhaps I should be saying, worse than that. They’ve bought put options on California property casualty insurance companies. On all three of the big ones.”

Zucker yelped.

“Shit!” exclaimed Southward.

Canning gave a grim smile. “I think
shit
covers it.”

“Who bought the puts?” asked Zucker.

“They don’t know. Nominees. I gave word to Troy Bergers that you’d call. He says to ask for Special Agent Ange Wilkie.”

Zucker scribbled on a note pad. “Will do.”

“So they’re going to go for buildings. They’re going to bomb the biggest, most expensive real estate they can target,” rasped Del Russo, fury roughening his voice.

“Looks that way,” agreed Canning grimly. “So we need to identify the possible targets. Then, without in any way alerting them to anything specific, get the word out that they need to beef up security.”

He turned back to Zucker. “The put options were six months, by the way.”

“So time frame is anywhere between now and Spring,” mused Zucker.

“Correct. We need to speed this up. Peters, what’s the progress with the private airfields in California?”

“Chief, we’re going to have to narrow it down. We have eighteen primary airports in California, there are five notable private-use airports, and there are over one hundred and twenty miscellaneous airports. We cannot have every last one of them surveilled.”

Canning thought for a while. “Let’s go with a hunch that they won’t hijack commercial planes, do a rerun of Nine-eleven. More likely to use a private jet, several private jets. Ali Al Baharna is a fuckin’ billionaire! He can throw money at this. They’ll either crash them into buildings or use them to drop bomb loads.”

“How would they get hold of bombs?” asked Southward.

“Manufacture them?” suggested Peters.

“Let’s assume they’ve got that covered,” said Canning, “Chris, take a scroll through any large purchases on the bomb maker’s shopping list: ammonium nitrate fertilizer for non-farms, hydrogen peroxide for non-hairdressers, and while you’re at it, check out any known C-4 or Semtex trades in any of the badlands.” He gave a grim smile, “or in any of the goodlands, for that matter. Check if our guys are missing any.”

Furlong nodded.

“Let’s further hypothesize,” continued Canning, “that the Jihadis will use large private jets if they’re using the jets as missiles, medium-size if they have heavy bomb loads. So let’s look at all those airports with sufficiently long landing strips for large private jets to take off from. Then let’s look at all the large private jets that sit around those airports, see who they’re registered to.”

“What about some estate somewhere that has its own runway?” suggested Furlong, finally getting into it. “If they’re going to be loading bombs they might want some privacy.”

“There might be official runways on estates, and there might be an under-the-radar private runway, as it were,” said Canning. “Good call, Chris. Get an aerial survey from NASA.”

Canning got to his feet. “People, this is top priority. I am going to have to take this to the president right now. Let’s get these fuckers before they pull a West Coast Nine-eleven.”

61

THE LAB, TUESDAY MORNING

Gwen parked her Mustang. She swung her long, denim-clad legs out, grabbed her bag, and headed into the Lab. In the light of day, the terror she had felt the night before had burnt off, replaced by simmering fury. She felt half sheriff, half maverick, wholly out to get whichever bastard was fucking with her seventy-eight-year-old neighbor and friend, not to mention fucking with her. Whichever bastard had the blood of two women on his hands. Whether that was the mysterious Haas/Hans, or Gabriel Messenger, or one and the same.

She flashed her key card at the reader, input her PIN, pushed through the glass doors, and strode through the central atrium. Preoccupied with the visions in her head, she didn’t notice that her office was occupied.

She swung through the open doorway and froze. Gabriel Messenger was sitting at her desk. Her desk drawer was open and the laptop he had given her was on the desk, open and running.

Gwen felt her heart slam against her ribs. She just stood and glowered at him, willing herself not to speak, not to say something irrevocable.

Messenger leaned back in her chair, raised his hands in a gesture of surrender.

“Whoa, stop there! What’d I do?” A faint smile played on his lips, but his eyes were wary.

“Don’t you have your own office?” demanded Gwen. “I mean, this is the second time I’ve come in to find you just sitting at my desk as if—” Gwen cut herself off. She was sounding ridiculous, she knew, but that was a cover of sorts.

“As if I owned the place,” supplied Messenger, amused now. “Goodness Gwen, I had no idea you were so proprietorial.”

“And how’d you get into my desk drawer? I suppose you have some kind of
master
key?” she continued, hands on hips.

“I do, as it happens. Goes with owning some of the place.”

“But not the people!” declared Gwen.

Messenger got to his feet. He kept his distance, noted Gwen, skirted around her. He stopped at the doorway.

“Better now?” he asked.

Gwen said nothing. She moved past him and sat at her desk. Her body ached from the collision of the night before. Now her head pounded.
Had it been Messenger?
She needed proof, one way or the other.

“What rattled your cage?” asked Messenger. “I do not think I own you or anyone else here.”

Gwen blew out a breath. She was going to have to get a serious grip on herself if she wasn’t going to blow everything.

“Bad night,” she replied. “Sorry. And yes, I am proprietorial, I guess. I’m an only child. We don’t do sharing.” She nodded to the laptop.

Messenger’s eyes hardened. He was running out of patience, Gwen noted.

“I wanted to see what you had done to the model,” he replied, voice clipped, clearly unused to having to explain himself. “I didn’t have much time,” he continued. “We’ve been summoned. You and I, and Peter and Kevin. Sheikh Ali Al Baharna, who I suppose you could say really does own the place, has requested our company this morning aboard his yacht. He wishes to hear about Project Zeus, and so I was updating myself.” Messenger paused, tilted his head to one side like a hunting dog, listening.

“And if I’m not much mistaken, that’s his helicopter approaching. So get your bag, bring your laptop, and if I might suggest, find and bring some good humor. Sheikh Ali is not the kind of man you want to offend.”

62

THE SUPER-YACHT,
ZEPHYR
, LATER THAT MORNING.

Gwen had seen big yachts before. You couldn’t live by the sea and spend half your life working on it and surfing it and not see some whoppers. But she’d never seen anything like this craft before. It was gunmetal gray, for a start, not a pretty anodyne white, and there were no gentle angles. This craft was clearly built for speed, whilst being big enough, huge enough to offer serious home comforts.

Gwen had a chance to eye it from all angles as the helicopter approached, did a circle round, then came in to land on a demarked
X
on the deck at the aft.
Zephyr
looked ruthlessly futuristic, almost military. It was too gentle a name for such an aggressive-looking craft. Should have been
Hurricane,
thought Gwen, or
Typhoon.
So this is what billions bought you, she mused, wondering if the Sheikh himself were as lean and mean-looking as his yacht.

During the forty-minute flight, she had forced herself to calm down. She had sat in silence, gazing at the sea, trying to empty her mind of all thoughts, all incriminating thoughts anyway. It was a dull, energy-sapping day: low skies, low pressure. An unbroken layer of dark gray stratocumulus blocked off the sun.

Two tall, well-built Middle Eastern–looking men wearing polo shirts, tan shorts, and deck shoes met them as they exited the copter, ushered them across the deck and into the yacht itself.

Gwen noticed the heavy door closed behind her with a hiss, as if air- or watertight. She wondered if the yacht could withstand a three-sixty. She guessed it could.

The interior was radically different from the exterior. Outside was pure functionality, but inside was lavish, sensuous almost. The walls were paneled with a rich, dark wood. The carpets were so deep you felt yourself sinking into them. There was a heady smell that seemed to permeate the hallway; a sweet, spicy tobacco. Someone smoked the same cigarettes as Peter Weiss. She padded along, silent on the thick carpets, following behind Messenger, Weiss, and Barclay. One of the large men led, another fell in behind her, shepherding, she realized.

They were shown into a large stateroom.

“Could I have your bag, please?” asked one of the men in chino shorts.

“I’m sorry?” queried Gwen, holding onto her bag.

“Security,” replied the man. “We check everyone who comes aboard, apart from family.”

“Don’t take it personally,” said Messenger, a warning note in his voice.

No one asked him or Weiss or Barclay for their laptop cases, thought Gwen.

“We’ve been checked a hundred times,” said Weiss, as if reading Gwen’s mind. “Just hand it over.”

Gwen handed over her bag. She didn’t like it. Clearly didn’t have a choice, save getting back on the helicopter and getting the hell out.

The man opened her bag, juggled quickly through its contents, then took out an airport-like scanner, moved it over her bag and back again.

Gwen stared at the ceiling, waiting for him to finish. He handed it back.

“Thank you, ma’am,” he said.

“Please, take a seat,” said the other man. “Can we bring you some refreshments? We have most things here aboard
Zephyr.
”

Gwen asked for a coffee, and water. One man disappeared on his errand, the other stayed, hovering in the background. No one spoke.

A few minutes later, the door opened, and in walked a man who could only have been Sheikh Ali. He smiled with the quiet munificence of the proprietor. He moved with an athletic confidence, swishing toward them in his flowing white robes, hand outstretched, murmuring greetings.

He greeted Messenger first, then Weiss, whom, Gwen noted, exchanged an Arabic greeting with the Sheikh, then Barclay, who did likewise. Then the Sheikh came to her.

“Ah, the Oracle,” he declared, shaking her hand firmly. “It is a pleasure. I have heard much about you and your ingenious work.”

Gwen smiled back. She enjoyed the way he rolled the
r
of Oracle. It made her company sound exotic and special to her own ears.

“Thank you,” she said.

“Please, sit,” murmured the Sheikh, gesturing at the leather sofa.

The refreshments arrived. The coffees were served in tiny gold cups, then, at a signal from the Sheikh, one of the men disappeared. The other moved away, to the far end of the stateroom, where he stood, feet firmly planted, eyes on the visitors.

Gwen sipped her coffee. She felt a welcome jolt as the caffeine hit her system. She hadn’t slept much the night before. Dan had insisted on staying until she had left for work. He had slept on the sofa. Painfully aware of him, just feet from her on the other side of the wall, Gwen had lain in bed, the ceiling fan turning softly above her, going over the events of the evening, playing out endless
what if
scenarios. She had fallen asleep just before dawn.

“So, I am very interested to hear about your model, Dr. Gwen,” the Sheikh was saying. “About Oracle and about Zeus. I am told you have had a very beneficial impact on that.”

“She has,” cut in Messenger. “She’s done a lot of work; I checked her input this morning. I’m confident her adjustments will materially boost the rain yield.”

“Excellent! Excellent!” repeated the Sheikh, bringing his hands together as if in prayer.

“So sad, about the death of the inventor, but so useful that you have come along in our hour of need,” Al Baharna added softly.

“Well, I’m sure Peter Weiss has more than held the reins since then,” said Gwen. “I’m a latecomer to the model. I’ve just tinkered a bit.”

“Ah yes, Peter has been most helpful. But two brains are better than one, don’t you think?”

The Sheikh was eying her intently, thought Gwen, feeling a tad discomfited. The man was charm himself, but there was acuity to his gaze. She could see why Messenger described him as someone you would not want to offend. Something else lay below the charm. Probably the ruthlessness that had garnered him billions. Perhaps he
was
like his yacht, lean and mean.

For an hour, the five of them spoke about Oracle and Zeus. Gwen quickly gathered from his questions that the Sheikh was extraordinarily well informed. By no means a passive investor. He turned to them all with questions. Ever polite, ever the diplomat, it seemed to Gwen, he was solicitous not just of Messenger but of Barclay and Weiss and herself, keen to elicit all their opinions. There was nothing of the brash billionaire about him, nor the lordly Sheikh. The man was a listener, one of the best Gwen had ever met.