“She doesn’t think so. She’s afraid of you.”
“Of me? That’s ridiculous.” Though, in truth, Oleg was flattered to hear that. To instill fear was to instill respect. “She must have said something,” he insisted.
“She said she was very sorry.”
“See, what did I tell you?”
“Sorry that poor Dmitri had to go through that horrible experience in the museum.”
That again? “Can’t you leave that alone? That’s garbage. He’s brain damaged. Stupid beyond repair. But not because of me. Because of those stupid stairs. I’m leaving.”
Oleg thought he’d better. PP had a certain look about him, and the only time Oleg had seen it before was when he was moving carnivorously against a doomed business competitor.
His father grabbed his arm. Old but strong. It felt like a metal band around his bicep. “No, I don’t want you to leave. I want you to stay. I’m enjoying our little talk. Let’s bring Dmitri into the discussion.”
“Mr. Mumbles? Into the discussion? You’re crazy. You’re both crazy. I’m the only sane one here.”
He jerked his arm free and backed away, scarcely believing he had to worry about his father shooting him in the back.
What has happened to this family?
Oleg made it to the door and stepped outside. Never had the air of the Russian countryside smelled so good.
He hurried to the Maserati and roared toward the gate, worried PP would lock it, then hunt him down.
What has happened to this family? he asked himself again. A firstborn son, maybe, should never have such sorrow. There’s a sickness here. Sick, sick, sick.
The gate opened, thank Christ, and Oleg raced out to the road. He opened the window, sucking in the untainted air, definitely in pursuit of Galina. Already calling Police Sergeant Sergey Volkov’s superior to put out an alert for Galina Bortnik. He gave him the make, model, and year of her shitty car. How far did she really think he’d let her run after taking so many secrets? Secrets about Antarctica and AAC. Secrets about a dead professor and his wife.
Secrets like little tiles that Galina could turn into a very dangerous mosaic.
CHAPTER 17
CNN kept replaying video of the mushroom cloud taken by a satellite over the South Pole. The repetition was stomach churning, like the coverage given to the attacks on the Twin Towers. Yet Lana could hardly bear to look away, and she was not alone. Tanesa and her family, including her Aunt Eve and her four children, were all sitting around Lana’s living room paying rapt attention to the screen. Doper Don was there, too. Thankfully, he’d kept whatever conspiracy theories he still harbored to himself. Perhaps Esme’s reaction to his rants last night kept his lip buttoned.
Walking in and seeing him in the house with the others had given Lana a start, even though she knew he’d be there. It was the seeming normalcy of his presence, after so many years of absence, that she found most unnerving. It was as if somehow he’d never been away. That puzzled her almost as much as the fact that he looked none the worse for wear. She thought prison was supposed to age people — fast. Of course, he’d done his time in a federal facility with tennis courts and a kidney-shaped swimming pool.
Don wasn’t the only one keeping his peace. None of the others had piped up, either. Under normal circumstances — if they were even imaginable tonight — Lana would have suggested the younger children go to the den and watch a movie, but that felt wrong this evening. Aunt Eve’s youngest two — a three-year-old girl and a six-year-old boy — clung to her fearfully. Children, Lana reminded herself, absorbed much by osmosis, but perhaps nothing so quickly as fear.
News reports said the hackers had detonated the Trident II with its single missile as close as possible to Thwaites Glacier, without actually striking it directly, because that caused what a navy spokesperson called “maximum break impact” on the ice.
That also provided the powerful visual impact of the towering mushroom cloud, which an explosion under the ice, easily delivered by a submarine, would not have accomplished. But an undersea attack might have delivered even more damage. Scientists were openly discussing whether the hackers had favored powerful optics over a possibly more crippling explosion, even as a second missile was ready for blastoff. As it was, the Trident II was plenty terrifying — one thousand times more powerful than the Hiroshima atomic bomb, which had killed upwards of 135,000 people.
The direct death count on Antarctica, at about thirty-three hundred, was a fraction of Hiroshima’s — and a fraction of those who were likely to die in the coming days and weeks as sea levels swallowed entire islands, along with cities and towns built during less apocalyptic times. More would die from radiation poisoning as nuclear winds carried the plutonium to the far corners of the globe.
Emma had been shaking her head slowly for minutes, as though in disbelief. Now tears spilled down her cheeks. Lana gently massaged her daughter’s neck. The girl didn’t look at her mom. She appeared completely unnerved.
When CNN returned to its newsroom for a series of predictable reports about domestic turmoil — flooding, rioting, looting — Lana asked if everyone had eaten.
“We kept it simple,” Tanesa’s mom, Esme, said. “There’s potato salad in the fridge and cold cuts. Even had a nice green salad that Eve made, and we saved some of that for you, too. I just hope we don’t have a blackout because we could lose a lot of food. I don’t think you could fit a pickle in there at this point.”
“We’ll be okay,” Lana replied, “even if there’s a—”
“We’ve had plenty of blackouts in Anacostia,” Esme said.
Lana nodded. “I have a generator built in to my electrical system.”
“Ah,” Esme nodded. “Well, that’s one less thing to worry about.”
Lana was starving and battle weary. Her break from combat, as it were, would be brief. Holmes had asked her to call the “Internet forum woman” as soon as it was six a.m. Moscow time.
“It’s our only play right now,” he told Lana. “But don’t let that cloud your judgment because I still think it may be a means of sucking you into action just to waste your time or, worse, get you in a position for a grab.” Abduction.
“Nobody’s going to grab me,” Lana had told him, “because I won’t be moving anywhere without your approval.” And without the backup support he would undoubtedly insist upon.
Actually, nobody was without government approval. The only commercial flights permitted were those essential to evacuating people from low-lying areas. Otherwise, any airborne planes belonged to DOD, and those fighter jets and troop transport planes were very active, indeed, on both domestic and foreign fronts, from what Lana had learned.
She headed quietly into the kitchen and filled a plate with cold dinner. Every cubic inch of the fridge was packed, just as Esme had indicated, and at least a dozen bags of groceries were sitting on the kitchen counters, nonperishables, she saw with a quick survey. Esme hadn’t exaggerated when she’d said they‘d been stocking up. Still, Lana wondered whether she should ask Tanesa’s mom to come up with a ration plan. With coastal cities flooding and in widespread disarray — violent chaos, in many cases — the vast number of tankers and container ships couldn’t off-load. Many had fled harbors for open ocean where they wouldn’t be subject to the havoc of unusually powerful tidal surges set off by the sudden rise in sea level.
Even the interior of the country was slowing down as fuel supplies dwindled rapidly. The President had mandated gas and diesel rationing, with special consideration granted only to shipments of food, medicines, emergency medical supplies, and military hardware.