Pinnacle Event (32 page)

“Yeah. The last entry on the timetable is for November eighteenth. This Thursday.”

“Three days from now,” Mbali whispered.

The three sat silently, looking at each other. Finally, Ray Bowman broke the quiet. “You said something about U.S., Korea, something? You think the Koreans are involved now?”

“Yeah, it's an acronym like a header on all four pages. Here it is U-S-K-O-R-I-T-E-L.”

“That's not an acronym, it's a word. That means ‘accelerator,'” Mbali said.

Bowman looked at her. “It does? In what language? Zulu?”

“Russian,” she said. “I took two years of it at Oxford.”

“Of course, you did. Why wouldn't you, woman of many talents?” Dugout said from California.

Bowman was quiet. Something was coming into view for him. “The ships, Duggie, the ships. Pull their ownership. Probably also a Polis Holdings front company.”

They could see Dugout hitting his keyboard. While they waited, Ray looked at Mbali. “Russian?”

“Seemed like a good idea at the time. They were against Apartheid from the beginning.”

Dugout was double-checking his results against a series of databases. “No, you would be wrong about Polis this time. Those two ships, or at least ships with the same names, are registered in Iceland to the IGRI, the Ice Cap and Glacier Research Institute, which it seems is an entity entirely paid for by the Purpose Fund. They're polar research vessels. Must be the wrong names or there are other ships by those names that I can't find. Maybe they just painted those names on some tramp freighters that are actually registered in Panama or Liberia in other names.”

Bowman closed his eyes. “No, it's them. It's the research ships. And I bet they were in the Comoros.”

“There aren't any glaciers there,” Mbali noted.

Bowman stood up. “Purpose Fund is one of the clients of Olympus Security, remember, it's listed on their Web site. And who is a big donor to Purpose, but Kinder Industries. And how did Rogozin fly into New York? On a Kinder Industries plane with none other than its CEO, Jonathan Kinder, and his brilliant daughter the econometrics professor, whose expertise is econometric modeling of climate change effects.”

“So you're saying that Kinder is in on it? That the Kinders let their ships be used by Rogozin to collect nuclear weapons off the Comoros?” Dugout asked.

“No, I see where he's going,” Mbali replied for Ray. “Ray you're thinking that Rogozin's Olympus Security is actually the muscle that Kinder is using to pull off this operation. That they're in on it together or maybe Rogozin is actually a client of Kinder?”

“Or they're in something bigger,” Ray thought out loud. “Duggie, who else are the big donors to Purpose? Who is on the board?”

Dugout accessed the Purpose Fund Web page and threw it up on the video screen. “Board of Directors: Jonathan Kinder, U.S., Chair. Konstantin Kuznetzov, Russia; Sir Clive Harcourt, UK; Sheikh Ibrahim bin Mohammad al Dursi, Qatar; and Zhang Wei, China.”

Bowman sketched a diagram on his notepad. “Dug, do a link analysis between Kuznetzov and Rogozin.”

“Those five guys are all billionaires, you know,” Mbali said while they waited.

“Good guess,” Dugout said as he threw the link chart up on the screen. “They were both in St. Petersburg, then Leningrad in the eighties. Both appear to have been in the KGB, probably together.”

“Right, and we all know who else was in the Leningrad KGB in the eighties,” Ray said looking down at Mbali. “I have a sinking feeling that I know what the accelerator is designed to speed up. Dug, can you see what investments those five guys from the Purpose Fund have made individually and collectively in the last, say, three years?”

“That will be difficult. I'm sure they hide some of their activity under fronts and brokers. Can I hack accounts?” Dugout asked.

“Do what you need to do, but do it fast.”

Mbali hit the
MUTE
button on the video link. “He just told you that this thing with the bombs probably happens on Thursday and you are asking him to figure out what investments these guys have made? Shouldn't you be calling the White House?”

Bowman sat back down next to her. “I am about to, but I want to be sure about my theory before I get Winston Burrell running down the hall to the Oval Office.”

Mbali looked at him, a man about to jump out of his skin, filled with tension and anxiety, waiting to spring into action, waiting for confirmation. “So what is your theory, Raymond? What are they trying to accelerate?”

“Sea level rise.”

“Sweet Jesus, why on earth?” she asked. “What do they use the nukes on?”

“Probably Greenland. To get it over with quickly. To profit. To be in the best shape when it's happened. They intend to use the massive heat of nuclear explosion to melt a glacier, causing a sudden surge of fresh water into the ocean. Before we could react, islands will disappear, cities will flood permanently, the weather patterns will completely alter.”

“No way. No way anyone would do that,” she asserted. “Thousands of people will die if there is a big sea level rise, especially if it's fast.”

“No,” Bowman said. “Millions will die. And millions more will wish they had.”

 

44

TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 15

ABOARD THE MV
NUNATAK

OFF ROSS ISLAND, ANTARCTICA

“We are essentially a light- to medium-sized ice breaker, research station, and heliport. Only one of two in the world that aren't owned by a government,” Captain Andrey Sobko explained to his American guest. “And the other one is our sister ship, the
Rothera
.”

“Well. It's great to see the work that the Purpose Fund is doing down here, tracking the glacial melt is extraordinarily important,” Glenn Rollins said. He was a geologist from the University of Colorado, working at McMurdo Station on a National Science Foundation grant. “And the work you are doing with the drilling stations, getting down to the bottom of the ice and seeing what the surface is like after five hundred centuries of being covered up.”

“Well, the European Union began the drilling work down here, but we have taken it much further with five drill sites now operating,” Sobko said in fluent English. “Now that spring has arrived and things are warming up down here, we are bringing in new equipment to each of the five sites. The helo you flew in on will be leaving shortly for the Wilkes Basin glacier.”

The American looked puzzled. “Really? But the Wilkes glacier is not deep. It doesn't need deep drilling.”

“You are right. What we are doing there is examining the subglacial ponding effects. When the ice melts in the summer and runs down through the troughs, it creates ponds below the glacier. If they get big enough and touch, creating lakes, there is the possibility that the glacier will float off into the sea faster,” Sobko said.

“Don't I know it. There's only about eighty millimeters of ice creating a wall, a plug, holding back the Wilkes Basin glacier. If that were to melt, we think you'd get three to four meters of sea rise in a few years,” Rollins replied. “That's why I'm here. I'm looking at the entire East Antarctica glacier. My calculation is that the East Antarctic glaciers alone hold enough water to create eighteen to twenty meters of sea rise. Thank god that could only happen over a couple of centuries, long after I'm gone. And my kids.”

“Yes, but we have to worry about what will happen after even our children. Imagine what a terrible place it will be for our grandchildren if we do not plan now for the world changing,” Captain Sobko replied. “I hope you enjoyed your day and your sleepover with us. Our scientists enjoyed having you visit, I know.”

“It was a great experience. I am so jealous of the equipment you have. How long will you be down here this time?”

“We leave today for New Zealand. Between us and the
Rothera,
we have flown in all the new equipments to the five Purpose Fund drill sites in East Antarctica. We will come back at the end of the summer to swap out crews and the like,” Sobko explained. “Now, I see your little helicopter coming for you. Let me go see that its landing is all set. Excuse me.”

The captain left the deck and went inside to the control room, leaving Glenn Rollins to wonder why these two great research ships would leave Antarctica just as the spring was here, just as researchers from all the other Antarctic countries were arriving. But then, he thought, there were so many strange things about MV
Nunatak
and indeed about the Purpose Fund's polar and glacial research. The scientists he had spoken with over dinner on board last night said they weren't even sure what was in the big equipment pods that were being flown out to the five Purpose Fund bases. One thing was sure, they were pretty heavy to need such a big Russian helicopter to haul them out there.

If only the National Science Foundation had the kind of money for glacier research that the Purpose Fund had. At least somebody understands how important the East Antarctic glaciers are for potential sea level rise, but try to tell that to the Congress, he thought, as he watched the little American helicopter, a Dauphin, circling the ship's helipad.

OLYMPUS SECURITY OFFICES

36 EAST 74TH STREET

NEW YORK CITY

Sergey Rogozin loved the tree-lined blocks of the Upper East Side. He had insisted that their New York offices be in twin town houses on a leafy street. Also, he did not trust high-rise buildings, too many other tenants, too much shared telecommunications equipment.

With his own building, he could install the satellite dish that would connect directly with the Express-AM7 satellite of the Russian Satellite Company. His encrypted link to that bird would be safe, as would the satellite itself. There was no other way he would connect, certainly not over the Internet. This gave him a dedicated link to his Moscow office and from there he had a virtual private network to Kuznetzov in Yakutsk.

The data rate was slow, but he could still do voice and exchange short documents. Today he began by downloading the daily briefing his team had been sending out to him and the board members throughout the operation, beginning in August. As it slowly opened on his laptop, he could see the map of Antarctica. Each of the five research stations was shown, along with the position of the two ships,
Rothera
and
Nunatak
. Four of the five sites indicated red, armed. The fifth, Wilkes Basin, would be armed today.

The ships' captains were told to take up positions at a safe distance and monitor the explosions and the aftermath, to see how fast the ice melt happened, to measure the sea level rise. Only the captains and a handful of the Olympus men on each ship were read into the operation and knew what would happen. Or thought they did. What none of them knew was that the ships would explode at the same time that the bombs did, from hidden conventional explosives on board.

Sergey did not like loose ends. That's why he had killed all the Trustees after they sold the bombs. Everyone, except Potgeiter, of course. He had been useful. It was he whom Rogozin had originally contacted with the proposal to buy the bombs, he who had persuaded the others that it was all right to sell them to Taiwan. Of course, Taiwan had been a false flag for the Trustees to see, just as al Qaeda and Hezbollah had been false flags raised once the Americans and Israelis learned about the bomb theft. Sergey liked false flags.

Ray Bowman was a loose end, Sergey thought, he and his South African friend. They had been getting too close. They had somehow managed to trace the bombs to Madagascar and then to Comoros. But they had been stopped there, he was sure. There was no way that they would figure out that the bombs were bought by the Purpose Fund, no way that they could learn that the Purpose Fund owned Polis Holdings and Olympus Security, no way that they would ever connect anything back to the Czar. In any event, Bowman would be eliminated, this time successfully, as would the South African woman.

When the detonations take place, Sergey knew, there would be a major investigation. Time for more false flags, but soon enough every nation would be diverted to dealing with the effects of the bombs. If not, if they did somehow find a trail, it would maybe mean that Kinder or Sir Clive were at risk. If that happened, they would disappear before the authorities could arrest them. No one would ever get near Kuznetzov and himself, not in the middle of Russia.

COMPUTER CONTROL CENTER

LAWRENCE LIVERMORE NATIONAL LABORATORY

LIVERMORE, CALIFORNIA

“You said you would be gone by now,” Professor McFarland said, as his normally pallid face turned red. “I am taking it back. The computer center is mine now. I have an important project for the President's Science Advisor.”

“Yes, you do,” Dugout replied. “In fact, I have the Science Advisor waiting by the secure telephone to personally tell you all about it. Seems the National Security Advisor asked him to get you to run your model on a specific scenario, one in which there is rapid and significant sea level rise. We want to see what the climatic effects are.

“We also want to see how that theoretical possibility would effect certain real estate and other investments. It's all set up on the network for you.”

McFarland looked confused, but then Dugout handed him the phone. “Yes, this is Professor McFarland,” the professor said into the phone. “Yes, sir, I can run that model right away. Oh, probably no more than a few hours now that I have the world's fastest processor back under my control. No, sir, thank you.”

The professor was smiling as he handed the phone back to Dugout. He then wandered off to begin applying his model to the data set Dugout had set up for him.

Dugout reconnected the videoconference with USUN, where Ray and Mbali had been poring over the partial list of Purpose Fund holdings that Dugout had found.