Jacobs couldn’t help thinking that Overton was wearing running shoes.
“I’m sure it will all work out,” Jacobs said.
“Oh, yeah, it always does. Where were we?”
“Let me fill your cup, first.”
Jacobs got up and took both their cups to the small galley for replenishment. He brought them back and settled into his seat.
Overton centered his legal pad in front of him, and turned the tape recorder on.
The reporter was paying for this trip, not only with diesel fuel, but also with words. He was forced to listen to Jacobs’s complaints about the world and those in it. Jacobs had agreed to Overton’s caveat that nothing might appear in print, but he was keeping his discourse logical enough, and without demonstrating the rage he felt.
He was sure that some of what was going into the tape recorder would someday appear on some internal page of the Washington Post.
On a slow news day, perhaps.
Carl Unruh met with the others in a conference room at the State Department on 23rd Street. Since he had talked to Hampstead at nine o’clock, he had been busy trying to get this group together.
It was not the group he would have chosen, if he really wanted to accomplish something, but every time he talked to one person or another, they had suggested someone else. So the representation included the Navy, the State Department, the Justice Department, the Commerce Department, and an assistant to the Vice President — a man who was deeply interested in things ecological.
Commerce had not even sent Hampstead, with whom he could identify. Instead, an assistant to the Secretary named Porter was in attendance.
State’s representative was Damon Gilliland, and Unruh wasn’t sure what the man did in this building. That wasn’t particularly unusual, however; he wasn’t certain what most of the people at State did.
Gilliland was a dapper type, properly encased in blue wool with a regimental tie. He was average height and average brown in eyes and hair. Remarkably unremarkable. He could have been an agent for either the FBI or the Agency.
The woman from the Vice President’s Office, Marlys Anstett, carried herself well, as if she had had graduate courses in posture. She wore a dark cream business suit accented with a gold-and-black silk scarf at her throat. Her face was lean, barely touched with makeup, and memorable in the quizzical set of her eyebrows.
Ben Delecourt was a man that Unruh knew fairly well, the only one in the room that he had met before. The Chief of Naval Operations (CNO) had an aggressive jut to his jaw, thin gray hair, and silvery green eyes with all the kindness of torpedoes. Delecourt didn’t often send flunkies on chores that he thought important.
Obviously, this was important to him, and Delecourt was the first to speak after they sat down around the big conference table.
“I don’t know who’s chairing this meeting, if anyone, but Carl, I’m ready to hear more. You were a trifle brief on the phone.”
Unruh had had enough time, while waiting for everyone to decide to get together, to prepare his briefing notes. He referred to them sporadically as he related the concerns of the National Center for Earthquake Information and the involvement of Hampstead and Brande.
“The last information I had, Brande had investigated the first site, some six hundred miles off the coast, and two more sites, another seventy miles to the west.”
He passed around the photographs that Brande had transmitted to Hampstead. “The oceanographers aboard the Orion conclude that the events were man-made and probably in pursuit of mineral deposits.”
“Three miles down?” Marlys Anstett asked.
“That’s right.”
Damon Gilliland asked, “Isn’t that a little bit farfetched? I mean, outside of the conditions imposed on manpower, the expense of mining at that depth would be horrendous.”
“They might be searching for oil,” Unruh said, “and that’s done all the time. In this case, Brande suggests that the profit margins would be much higher, if the developers aren’t paying up-front purchase or lease costs for mineral rights. Not to mention avoiding taxes.”
“We are talking about international waters, correct?” Sam Porter of Commerce asked.
“Correct.”
“Does Brande have any idea who might be behind this operation?” Delecourt asked.
“He thinks,” Unruh said, “that AquaGeo, headed by an Australian named Deride, is the most likely candidate. There are several reasons. One, Deride is known for his off-shore mining and drilling, though this is much deeper than his normal haunts. Two, AquaGeo has the equipment and professional staff to accomplish the task. Three, Brande ran into their chief geologist in the area. And four, Deride is ruthless and greedy enough to utilize nuclear means toward his end.”
“That’s the main concern here, isn’t it?” Delecourt asked. “The nuclear explosives. I think you estimated about a five kiloton yield from each charge.”
“At this point, yes,” Unruh said, passing out more paper. “Brande’s submersible collected samples from the bottom that were definitely radioactive.”
“But three miles down?” Anstett said. “Surely, a five kiloton device isn’t much of a threat.”
“Not to humans, Miss Anstett, no. But if you’ll scan that report, you’ll see that Brande’s people collected data on currents and depths. The residual radiation from a detonation four days ago followed the currents and rose to a depth of around a thousand feet below the surface before it petered out.”
More photographs.
“In an area of approximately three square miles, they found the dead sea life you see in the pictures. A few fish — sharks, tuna, marlin, but this is only four days after the blast. There will be other contaminated fish. And these pictures don’t show the damage to plants or microscopic life, both of which are necessary to ecological balance.”
Marlys Anstett’s face finally developed a frown.
Unruh passed around copies of the chart.
“Dr. Lawrence Emry, the head of exploration for Marine Visions, developed this map. I marked the three sites that Brande has looked at with a yellow marker. The next three have been pinpointed by the Earthquake Information Center. Dr. Emry concurs with the Center in that the pattern appears to be following an arc toward the northwest, which will lead directly into the Pioneer Fracture Zone.”
“With all of the potential that has for shaking up Californians,” Delecourt added.
“What do you think, Admiral?” Unruh asked.
Delecourt’s thin lips compressed even more as he considered the question. Finally, he said, “It’s possible, of course. A small atomic device, if detonated in exactly the right place, might trigger a chain reaction. Pretty remote, though, I believe. What seems more likely is the prospect of several, or of larger, devices being used simultaneously should a profitable and deep deposit of minerals be located. Then, the odds go against us. I don’t know what the seabed structures look like, but the scenario could be exactly what we fear.”
Gilliland of State said, “What we want to do then, is stop Deride.”
“If it’s Deride,” Unruh cautioned.
“We can’t,” Gilliland said. “He’s operating in international waters.”
“I don’t think,” Sam Porter of Commerce said, “that our objective is to stop his mining. Just his use of nuclear explosives.”
“That would drive his costs up substantially,” Delecourt said. “I suspect that he will object.”
Pamela Stroh of the Justice Department, who had been silent until then, and whose white tresses reminded Unruh of a large shaggy puppy, said, “Object or not, the man has to have some consideration for people, and for the planet.”