The Leviathan Effect (11 page)

“I mean, you’re expected to sort of play a role, right? Be the rep for your company and all that kind of crap. I can’t do it. I mean, I can, right? If I wanted to. But that’s the point: I don’t want to.” She sipped
again. When she lowered the cup, a trace of foam rimmed her upper lip. “I prefer to just be myself. You know?”

“I do.” Mallory nodded. “Which is a good thing, because, as they say, all the others are taken.”

It took her a moment, but when she got it, she laughed, a big, happy laugh, showing a surprising alignment of teeth. The reason for her tight smile, maybe.

Mallory looked across the pool and saw a man with
The Economist
. It suddenly reminded him of a different magazine.

WA
.

Weekly American
.

CHURCH
.

Roger Church, the magazine’s editor
.

“What?” the woman asked.

“Nothing. I was just remembering something.”

Mallory stood. For a moment, her face sank, then she managed to restore the tight, interesting smile.

“Are you leaving?”

“I’m sorry. I need to make a call.”

“My name’s Gwen, by the way.” She reached to shake his hand.

“Fernando.”

“Really?”

He shrugged.

“Well. If you’d like to have a drink or something later, Fernando, I’ll probably just be hanging in the lounge.”

“I’ll look for you.”

M
ALLORY DROVE BACK ALONG
the George Washington Parkway and across Memorial Bridge into the city. Snaked through the late morning traffic and found a public parking garage near the State Department in Foggy Bottom. He walked seven blocks to the
Weekly American
offices, skirting the campus of George Washington University, which was busy with students. It was a brisk day, sixty degrees. Bright cloud towers hung in the sky; rain was coming.

Jon had been a contributing editor to the
Weekly American
for more than ten years, turning out news features and profiles from around the world. His editor, Roger Church, was once considered among Britain’s top investigative reporters. For most of the past decade, he had run the
Weekly American
in Washington, giving it, despite its moniker, an international following.

A bas relief map of the world covered much of one lobby wall. There was also a ceiling-tall trophy case and poster-size blowups of past magazine covers.

“To see Roger Church, please,” Mallory said to the receptionist.

“Do you have an appointment?”

Exactly the question he had expected.

“I don’t.”

She crinkled her face. “And your name?”

He told her.

“And this is in reference to …?”

“It’s not in reference to anything.”

“Okay.” He gazed at a magazine cover showing Bill Clinton and Boris Yeltsin at a joint press conference. 1998. Another, more
recent one: Vladimir Putin with Barack Obama, sharing a Russian breakfast.

The receptionist buzzed Church. Minutes later, a tall, thin man with a mop of silvery hair strode into the lobby and extended his hand. His tie was loosened several inches, his shirt sleeves turned up unevenly.

“Well, well,” he said. “A mystery come to life.”

“A pleasure.”

“Likewise. Please. Come on back.” Church dipped his head graciously and led Mallory into the corridor, taking loping, long-legged steps, past a series of small offices to his own large, immaculate corner space. He closed the door and nodded at the burgundy leather chair in front of his desk. Mallory took in the view—office buildings, the State Department, the tip of the Washington Monument.

“Been expecting you,” Church said.

“Sorry I took so long.”

“Have a seat. Here, let me get something for you.”

Church had the restless energy of a twenty-five-year-old and the weathered, lined face of an old man, just as his brother had once described him. When Mallory finally sat, Church crouched down behind his desk. Mallory leaned forward to see what he was doing: opening his wall safe.

He extracted a nine-by-twelve envelope, closed the safe, and passed it over the desktop.

“For you.”

“From my brother.”

He nodded and sat, resting his right thumb and forefinger on the handle of his steaming coffee cup.

“Where
is
Jon?” Mallory asked. “Do you know?”

“No idea. He told me he was going to disappear for a while. He has, evidently.” He nodded at the envelope. “Have a look.”

Mallory opened it. Inside was a single sheet of paper with a typed, numbered list of names. Nothing else. He studied it: seven names, none of whom he recognized.

Beneath the list, written in blue ink, were the initials DKW. Mallory recognized the handwriting as his brother’s.

“Who are they?”

Church touched his coffee cup handle. “At least four of the people on the list are dead.”

“The other three?”

“Unknown.”

“So …? What ties them together?”

“Don’t know. I’ve run a couple hours of data searches. Checked with police agencies. Four were scientists involved in weather research. That’s the closest I’ve found to any sort of link. But the projects they worked on had no apparent connection. All in different parts of the country. Number five was a newspaper reporter. He’s one of the confirmed dead.”

“What happened?”

“Shot. A remote wooded region of Alaska.”

“Unsolved?”

“Unsolved.”

“And the others?”

“Susan Beaumont was murdered in a motel room near Caspar, Wyoming. Dr. Atul Pradhan died in the tsunami in the Bay of Bengal.”

“Last week?”

“Yes. September twenty-fifth.”

“What about this weather research? What specifically were they working on?”

“Very different arenas, as I say. Steven Loomis, to start at the top, was involved with the Defense Department from the 1960s through the 1970s. He worked for a time on Project Stormfury.”

“The hurricane mitigation project,” Mallory said. “Now largely discredited.”

“Yes. About ten years ago, he signed on as a consultant for a private industry weather mapping project in California. He also worked
for a company called Energy and Atmospheric Research Systems, or EARS, which was a big government contractor for a while.”

Mallory nodded. He knew a little about them.

“Dr. Beaumont was a forensic meteorologist. She was a researcher at MIT. Frank Johnson was a physicist who created weather tracking computer models. Died of a heart attack, apparently. No connection between the two, though. At least none that I’ve been able to find. Deborah Piper, I’m not sure. Not much on her yet.”

Mallory glanced at the names. “And their paths never crossed? None of the seven?”

“Not that I’ve been able to determine.”

“Who were the other confirmed dead?”

“The confirmed dead are numbers two, five, six, and seven.”

He glanced at the four names. “And the three disappearances. Any signs of violence?”

“In one case, yes. Number four. There were signs of a struggle at his home,” Church said. “In three of the deaths, interestingly, DNA was found at the scene which was not that of the victim and could not otherwise be identified. Not spouses or anyone else who was considered a possible suspect.”

“And not part of the FBI’s DNA database.”

“Exactly.”

“Any connection among those DNA samples? Indicating it could have been the same person?”

Church pressed his lips together, showing the faintest trace of a smile. “I actually planted that idea with one of the detectives. Said I’d received an anonymous tip that the cases might be connected.”

“And?”

“He followed up. The DNA doesn’t match. In one case, it belonged to a woman.”

Mallory was forming an idea.

“It’s possible, of course, that they’re
not
related,” Church added. “That this is some kind of elaborate ruse. Or a mistake.”

Mallory glanced at the paper again. “And these initials at the bottom?”

DKW
.

Church sighed. “She’s the one your brother was talking with for
his story. Dr. Keri Westlake. Based in College Park. Now officially a missing person.”

“She’s the one who gave him this list?”

“Evidently. I wish I had asked him more, in a way. He was very reluctant to discuss any of this with me. It was very dangerous information, he said. Which is probably true. But he seemed quite determined that you get this list. He said he had tried to reach you for several days. Unsuccessfully. Almost a week, I think.”

“Yes, I know.” Mallory looked away.

“He said if anyone could figure this out, you could.”

“Well. He sometimes overestimates me.” Mallory read through the names again, feeling guilty that it had taken him so long to pick up the messages, wondering: Was Jon in the same situation their father had been in—pursued for what he knew? Had something happened to him?

“Why was he talking with this Dr. Westlake, anyway?”

“He’d been doing preliminary research for a story on the geo-engineering industry. He didn’t talk a lot about it, although he did tell me something quite interesting. He said, ‘She answered a question I didn’t ask.’ ”

“Without saying what it was.”

“Right.”

Mallory watched Church, the way he nervously fidgeted with his sleeves. “Why geo-engineering?”

“Not sure.” He shrugged. “I just know it interested him. He thought geo-engineering was going to be a major growth industry eventually, and he wanted to explore how legitimate it really was. How viable it will be.”

“Thinks.”

“Pardon?”

“Thinks, not thought.”

“Of course. Sorry.”

Church’s long hairless arm reached for his coffee cup, then he seemed to change his mind and pulled his hand back. “It’s a controversial subject, of course,” he said, exhaling audibly. “The viability of the industry is really down to whether or not you accept the premise of quote unquote climate change, or global warming. We talked about that a few times.”

“And?”

“He said that if you accept the premise of global warming, then there are really only two options for how you deal with it: you reduce carbon dioxide emissions, which, of course, is what everyone talks about. Or else you mitigate the effects of those emissions.”

“Through geo-engineering.”

“Yes. For the first option to really work—to reverse the effects of climate change—would require reducing carbon emissions by eighty percent. Which isn’t feasible.” Church tugged at his left sleeve. “Did you know that Exxon Mobil has spent thirty million dollars over the past decade to discredit the idea of man-made global warming?”

“Okay,” Mallory said. “So, option one, cut the CO
₂
by eighty percent, isn’t going to happen, you’re saying.”

“Not likely, no. It’s messy and it’s political. Mitigating the climate, on the other hand, isn’t. It just isn’t taken very seriously yet.”

“I don’t follow politics much anymore,” Mallory said. “Tell me about it. How does it work?”

“Well.” Mallory waited while Church deliberately sipped his coffee, his eyes blinking rapidly. “The idea that gets the most currency these days is you pump sulfur into the upper atmosphere to create a sun shield. It actually wouldn’t take much. Block one to two percent of the sunlight and you’ve offset the doubling of the CO
₂
levels.” He smiled, his face becoming an old man’s. “It sounds a little kooky, I suppose. But at the same time, there’s something very American about that idea, isn’t there?”

“You mean that we can solve our problems through innovative science rather than through conservation.”

“Exactly, yes. American ingenuity.” They shared a look. “That’s what your brother thought. From our few conversations on the subject, I think he believed there was something inevitable about the geo-engineering industry.”

“Believes.”

“Right. Sorry.”

“Why?”

“Why? Because when you get down to it, the costs of geo-engineering would be relatively trivial compared to the costs of cutting carbon. Not to mention the practicalities of it.”

Mallory looked again at the names. “And so, while he was doing preliminary research for this story, he came to talk with Dr. Westlake. And she gave him this list. Telling him that these seven people were somehow connected.”

“That’s right. By something I haven’t yet discovered.”

“And who’s this most recent name? Number seven?”

“Dr. Atul Pradhan? A well-respected climate scientist. Originally from India. Died in the tsunami of September twenty-fifth, as I said. He was sent to Bangladesh as a consultant by a California-based firm, supposedly.”

“Why?”

“Studying the effects of climate change on nomadic populations on the char islands, evidently. He was quite outspoken on issues of climate control.”

Mallory waited for him to say more. When he didn’t, he asked, “And how about Dr. Westlake? What happened to her?”

“Unknown. She told a colleague at the university that she was going out running Friday afternoon on the C & O canal and never returned. Her car’s still missing. She was reported as a missing person by her estranged husband three nights ago.”

“Has it made the news yet?”

“No. I expect it will any time.” He smiled ambiguously, his face fissuring into a grid of lines.

Mallory said, “Have you shown this list to the police?”

“Not yet.” Church looked away. “Jon did. As I say, at this point I don’t know that the list really means anything.”

“What are you going to do with it?”

“Wait.” Church moved his fingers on the handle of the coffee cup. “If there are connections I’m not seeing, it may eventually become a story.”

“Can I call you if I think of anything?”

“Please. Any time.” Church pulled a business card from the top drawer of his desk. Scribbled a number on the back. “That’s my home. I’m a night owl. Call up until midnight if you want.”