Owen grabbed a blowtorch from the tools littered on the floor.
Then, slowly, painstakingly, and with desperate focus, he began welding the wall back together.
SNOWFALL
Even with Axel’s special ops training, it was no easy task finding an opportunity to confront Bhavin. Bhavin had his own personal bodyguards shadowing him, and his assistants were always nearby, ready to turn away people that may be unwanted distractions.
Axel had settled for trying at a TV interview at the Rockefeller Center. It wasn’t publicly known Bhavin would attend, but Axel had heard about the interview when talking with a Nadar PR representative. Bhavin may not like it, but at least he would get an answer face-to-face about when they could more formally meet.
In the meantime he checked his sources and did his own homework on imminent threats. A particularly deadly form of influenza called cat flu, or gato gripe in Portuguese, had taken hold in Goa, India. It was the most virulent and deadly flu virus so far—more deadly than Ebola or bird flu, with over forty thousand dead in a matter of weeks. The spread of the virus was growing exponentially, and officials were in a state of panic.
But what could Axel do? He wasn’t trained to deal with contagions. He couldn’t go in and “take out” a health pandemic with an ops team.
There were the same old fascist states with their nuclear weapons programs, the same old climate-change fears and environmental law abrogators, and a few more isolated incidents of dangerous genetic splicing programs. It was the latter Axel spent his time on. It seemed it might be something he and his team could mitigate, just as they had done with the researchers in Singapore. That is, assuming Bhavin wanted him to do anything at all. At this point, Axel wasn’t so sure.
As he was reviewing a particularly complex and poorly translated genetic splicing paper, he received a call from Bhavin’s assistant.
“Mr. Kelemen. Mr. Nadar will see you now.”
Axel had divergent expectations for the meeting. On the one hand his employment could be terminated, and depending on how ruthless Bhavin really was, he could even be terminated in a violent manner. On the other hand, he could be kept on for future ops without any real power or resources, like a chess piece glued to the board. And, as much as his paranoid mind rejected the idea, it was also possible he could be made part of the Fortient war machine Bhavin was building, whatever that was for.
Bhavin’s assistant escorted him to the same discreet meeting room he remembered from his first day on the job. Bhavin arrived a few minutes later, with no strongmen, thankfully diminishing the probability of a violent end for Axel. The high-res screen on the wall displayed the snow falling. The color of the sky, and the amount and velocity of the snowfall, seemed almost identical to what he’d seen outside his own office window only moments before. It looked to be some kind of high-definition video feed. He wondered if it was taken from a nearby camera outside and relayed to the wall display.
“First of all, Axel, I’m sorry to take so long to respond to your meeting request,” Bhavin began. “It has been very busy, and there have been many things on my mind that have monopolized my time.”
“I understand, sir.”
“I hope you do. I’m curious though, why it is you think I finally capitulated?” A playful look crossed Bhavin’s face.
Axel said, “I did wonder, sir, if the gato gripe may be something you’re concerned about, because of the gravity of the situation in Goa. As you might expect, we’ve thoroughly researched the subject, but I have yet to formulate a strategy for deployment of resources that would be cost-effective. Do you know of a way you can use me or the team against the threat in Goa?“
Bhavin shook his head, vigorously dismissing the idea. “No, no, no,” he said. “Don’t get me wrong. I could see why you might think it would be important to me. A plague is killing tens of thousands of my countrymen. In fact, one of my childhood friends lives near Goa. He died.”
“I’m sorry, sir.”
Bhavin waved away his apology. “That’s not how I think, Axel. The now is already gone for me. In fact it was gone some time ago. As an entrepreneur and philanthropist, I’m always thinking further, later, because that’s where no one else is treading or considering. I’m concerned about plagues that happen in five or ten years, and that kill millions. And as you have rightly explained, once a plague is unleashed, there’s nothing we can really do, except perhaps to send some humanitarian aid or research a vaccine. In the case of gato gripe, Nadar Corporation has sent some aid, but it’s a minor fraction of our humanitarian charitable contributions. In fact it’s less than one percent.”
Axel nodded slowly. It seemed strange that Bhavin cared little for the Goa virus, but if there was indeed some greater threat, perhaps it made sense.
“I also wondered if you agreed to meet because of changes within Nadar Corporation,” Axel said. “Perhaps you’ve finished vetting those changes and wanted to communicate the outcome to me.”
Bhavin smiled. “A diplomatic way of putting it, and also a vague one. I don’t blame you. You’re right, of course. We are indeed making a number of changes. I suspect you may be surprised to find out why, however.”
Bhavin tapped a pen on the desk in a melodic manner.
Axel knew the answer to his questions might not come right away. Bhavin tended to be unpredictable in meetings, letting his curiosity take him down unanticipated tangents.
“Tell me, Axel, what do you think our greatest threat is? You have given me your input on specific hot spots—we worked together on the Russian op and a few others of lesser gravity—but aside from reading your report, we never had an opportunity to discuss your thinking openly. Have your thoughts changed at all, since your report?”
“Thank you for asking sir. I do think nuclear splinter groups like the New Bolotnikov revolutionaries are good targets, sir. The loss of life and political destabilization potential is great, and although the Russians and Chinese may have snuffed it out, us executing on it does give us near certainty that the problem is solved. The op we did, in particular, seemed to go very cleanly—almost too cleanly—and I have some questions about that…”
Axel let it hang in the air for a bit, hoping for some kind of input from Bhavin, but receiving none.
“But we can talk about that later. In general I don’t see as much social utility in addressing long-term dangers like climate change, because it’s like playing whack-a-mole against a herd of gophers. Fundamentally, it’s too hard to stop unless it is coordinated on a government level. On the other hand, I think synthetic biology poses some of the greatest threats. Anthrax-like contagions, genetic splicing, and viruses are all worthwhile targets. The human cost could be exponential and thus our upstream intervention could prevent significant mortality.”
“I see,” was all Bhavin said in response. Bhavin was certainly contemplating his answers but was otherwise unreadable. Bhavin glanced at the video display. The snow was falling faster, and at a steeper angle than before.
Bhavin tapped his pencil a few more times on the desk and then abruptly jumped up on his feet, turning fully to the visual of the snow falling. “Do you know this image depicted here is entirely synthetic, made by Nadar Corporation? It’s a simulation of the weather we anticipated for today. The simulation was developed three days ago, and it predicted all the parameters of the snowstorm today to within zero-point three percent. Wind speed, amount of snow fall, temperature, barometric pressure, everything.”
“Sounds like quite an improvement over existing weather prediction tools. Do we have a weather app project, sir?”