The Leviathan Effect (30 page)

The feeling here is that not enough data exists regarding the second process and that more evaluation is needed before trials should go forward. I am also questioning exactly when, how, and why this process became part of the Leviathan Project
.

As you know, the government’s involvement in the Alaska portion of the Leviathan Project was shut down on December 27, 2004, in part because of concerns about the lead contractor, EARS. However, the project continues, and remains funded in large part at least through the current fiscal year by a Defense Department allocation
.

On two prior occasions over the past year, I have expressed concerns to Roger Grimm, in your office, about the lack of oversight on this operation. I was particularly concerned that the project has gone far beyond its stated goal, which was to “measure and better understand tectonic plate convection in the Earth’s mantle” and to study “Earth’s interior processes.” When and how did the “second process” of the Leviathan Project come about?

My feeling remains that it is in our interests to undertake a complete evaluation of the Alaska facility, its objectives and its project administrator. I do not think the withdrawal of the government’s active participation is alone sufficient. I would be pleased to discuss my concerns with you at greater length
.

Mallory re-read the memos, carefully considering what they told him—and what they didn’t. Then he called up a search engine and entered a name. It took just three minutes to find a rudimentary
biography of Frank Johnson. Earlier, they had found detailed information about Frank Johnson, the Canadian physicist who had worked for the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Colorado. Professional and personal data, including the fact that he had died suddenly, in 2010, of a heart attack. Name number six on the list provided by Keri Westlake. Except it had been the wrong Frank Johnson. This Frank Johnson was an optical systems engineer, less well-known. He had worked for Ball Aerospace and Technologies Corporation for several years, then joined NASA. For much of 2003 and 2004, he worked on a government project called Leviathan, as a liaison with EARS. He was found dead in a wooded region of central North Carolina, with a single bullet wound to the head, on February 5, 2005—one month after writing a memo titled “Reassessment of Leviathan Project.” A newspaper account at the time speculated that his death might have been “a hunting-related accident.” The case was never solved.

Mallory was startled from his thoughts by a rap on the motel room door.

Three hard knocks.

He shut down the computer and lifted his Beretta from the table.

His heart was pounding as he stood to the side of the door, gun raised.

He listened as the knock come again. Twice this time.

“Who is it?” he said.

I
N THE
C
LEVELAND
Park section of Washington, Blaine’s chief of staff, Jamie Griffith, got up from the sofa in his boss’s living room to fetch a bottle of iced tea from Blaine’s refrigerator. Then he settled on the sofa again and dove right back into David McCullough’s biography of John Adams.

C
ATHERINE
B
LAINE
’
S FACE WAS
flushed, her blue nylon windbreaker beaded with raindrops. She was standing under the concrete awning. Rain pounded the parking lot behind her.

“Come in,” Mallory said.

She hung her jacket in the bathroom. She was wearing a beige tailored suit and a white shirt, a couple of buttons open. Rainwater dripped from her hair.

She stood near the center of the room and let her nose twitch. “Pizza?”

Mallory nodded. He pointed to the box on the counter. “You said mushroom and green peppers, right?”

Blaine smiled. “That’s nice.”

They sat at the wooden coffee table and pulled slices of pizza onto paper plates.

“I brought some merlot, too,” he said. He lifted a bottle from the paper bag and examined the label. “Pretty good year, I’m told.”

“I shouldn’t.”

“I know. But you’ll join me anyway, for one glass, right? It’ll help fortify us. See, I even brought some fancy wineglasses.”

He reached into the bag again and produced two plastic stem glasses that he had purchased at Walgreens for $2.29 apiece.

“Well, half a glass wouldn’t hurt.”

Mallory poured the wine. They toasted and sipped.

“So,” he said. “Tell me what happened?”

“Mm hmm.” Blaine sighed and looked away, then sighed again. “It’s a done deal,” she said.

“How done?”

“All the way. The President’s on board. They want him to go on television tomorrow, announcing the consortium, explaining the mitigation.”

“Not good.”

“No.”

As they ate, Blaine told him the rest. The four mitigation procedures. The terms of the deal proposed by Mr. Zorn. The strange acquiescence from the President, Easton and DeVries.

“Harold DeVries knows something that he’s not telling me,” she said. “I can’t figure out what it is.”

“How about the others?”

“I don’t know. I’m really disappointed in all of them, in how easily they’re going along with this. I’m trying to see it from their point of view, but I can’t.”

She lifted the wineglass and took in the room for a moment. Looked at him and smiled. “Feels kind of funny being in a motel room like this,” she said.

“Like what?”

Blaine shrugged. “Nothing. Never mind.” She looked at his opened notepad on the desk. The dark computer monitor. “What are you doing?”

“Oh.” He reached for another slice. “Figuring something. Two things, really.”

“Yeah? Tell me about it.”

“What did you mean about feeling funny being in a motel room?”

“I don’t know.” She shared a look with him. “I mean. It kind of feels like I’m playing hooky.” She pointed her wine glass at his notebook. “Tell me what you’re figuring.”

“I’m figuring where this probably started,” he said. “That’s one of the things. Here, I want to show you something.”

They wiped their hands using the pile of napkins that came with the pizza. Then he turned on the computer, and called up the two memos from Frank Johnson, and passed it to Blaine. He watched her eyes as she scrolled through the memos. Then went back to the top and read them again.

“Where did you get these?”

“I have a source, a whistleblower of sorts, who knew Deborah Piper,” he said. “She worked as an intelligence analyst for years. She
was often outraged by what she saw and heard. Some people think she’s a crazy old lady, but she’s not. She’s smart as a whip. But so eccentric that people don’t see it.”

Blaine was carefully re-reading the memos, as if memorizing them, he saw.

“But there’s still no connection with Volkov here, is there?” she said, at last. “Or Victor Zorn?”

“No. That’s the second thing.”

“What second thing?”

“The part I think I have wrong.”

“Oh?”

“What you just told me, about the mitigation, helps explain it.”

She was still frowning at him.

Mallory said, “They told you about four procedures for dismantling or mitigating a storm, right? But nothing about the technology to
create
a storm or a weather event.”

“No,” she said. “That’s not what they’re selling.” Blaine drank the last of her wine and set the plastic glass down.

“That’s it, then,” he said. “That’s how they pulled this off.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, there are two completely separate components to this consortium. But they’re only talking about one. They’re only
selling
one. The prominent scientists have signed on to the concept of deconstructing a storm. Using weather technology to make the world a better place. To prevent droughts and heat waves. Slow down hurricanes, prevent tornadoes. I’m speculating here but it must have all been presented in a very attractive way, with lots of capital and plenty of hype behind it.”

“Okay.”

“Nothing was said about the offensive capability because those scientists weren’t involved in that part. My guess is that Dr. Clayton doesn’t know that the storm they are attempting to deconstruct may have in fact been artificially constructed.”

Blaine nodded once, and looked away. “Yes, I thought about that.”

“Which is why they’re so adamant about keeping this within a very tight circle. They’re doing both things simultaneously. If you hadn’t stepped out of the circle, this may have all worked out on their terms.”

“It still might.”

“Yes, it might.”

“But the ability to create a storm and the ability to mitigate a storm are two different things, right?”

“Yes,” he said. “That’s what’s starting to worry me. Especially when I try to put myself inside their heads.”

“Why?”

“I mean, how did they gain credibility with the President? Obviously, by accurately predicting these events. Showing they have this seemingly godlike power over nature. Therefore, it’s reasonable to assume that, up until now, at least, they have placed a greater value on being able to
create
these events than on being able to mitigate them.”

“But if they can’t mitigate them, they can’t do business.”

“True. But we’re talking percentages. Storm enhancement versus storm mitigation. Somehow, I don’t think the emphasis, for them, has been fifty–fifty. Because, from what you just said, the storms they broke up in the Pacific were nothing on the scale of the event they’re causing right now.”

“What are you saying?”

“I mean, think about it.”

“I am. That’s not a very encouraging thought.”

“No, it’s not. On the other hand, it might work to our advantage. The scientists who are part of this are doing it because they’re working on the defensive end, not the offensive end. They don’t know that this storm is, in effect, an unprecedented act of terrorism. Terrorism disguised as a natural disaster.”

“Right.”

“So if we show them there
is
another side to it, maybe they can be persuaded to help us.”

“Isn’t it sort of late for that?”

“It may be. I’m trying not to think in those terms,” Mallory said. “If my guy Chaplin can get a message to Dr. Clayton, for instance, with the recreated texts of the emails—to show them what’s really going on—maybe we can even get him to help us. Can you do that?”

“I already have. I’ll forward them to you.” She stood, and surprised him, then, by cleaning up, with a sudden urgency, washing the plastic glasses in the bathroom sink. Setting their plates in the trash. “I
better go,” she said, turning to him. “I need to call my son and get my bearings for a few minutes. Thanks for dinner.”

Mallory shrugged. “Just something I threw together.”

He gave her the second room number, explaining about the key.

Blaine took her windbreaker from the bathroom and draped it over her right arm. Something seemed to hold her there, though. “What’s the part you think you might have wrong?”

“Oh.” He glanced at his notebook. In the next instant, one of his cell phones vibrated. Pat Hanratty. He decided not to take it.

“Volkov,” he said. “That this was all about Volkov.”

She frowned. “But you said you got that from a good source.”

“A source who got it second-hand but didn’t have the whole story yet. I’m afraid I’ve been looking too hard at the wrong thing.”

“How so?”

“I’ve just assumed Volkov and his organization orchestrated the emails. I’m starting to think that he probably couldn’t have.”

“Why?”

“It’s too far outside his realm of expertise. Or interest. Why target this so specifically to these particular Cabinet members? For one thing, it’s difficult to do. This is an internal email system, not the Internet. But more than that, it’s not the sort of thing he’d think of.”

“Okay, so he hired Janus, or someone using his identity.”

“He may have hired someone. Not Janus. Or else the idea came from someone else. Someone working
with
Volkov.”

“On the emails.”

“On everything. A more or less equal partner, let’s say. Remember what you said when I asked you what surprised you most about all this? You said what surprised you most was the President.”

“Yeah,” Blaine said. “Because it feels reckless. It doesn’t make sense.”

Mallory nodded. “It
doesn’t
make sense. He’s a careful, highly intelligent, and rational person, right? Politically astute. Comfortable in the international arena. A good husband, family man.”

“Yeah, all of that. That’s
why
it doesn’t make sense.”

“Unless he’s doing something other than what we think he’s doing.”

Blaine glanced at the silent television. Saw the color-enhanced radar spirals of Alexander’s outer bands swirling counter-clockwise
toward the East Coast of the United States. The storm was now the only news story in the country that mattered, it seemed. Blaine read the scroll at the bottom of the screen:
ENTIRE EAST COAST UNDER HURRICANE WARNING
.

“You mean, he may know what’s really happening.”

“Maybe.”

“And he’s deliberately letting it go forward?”

“It’s possible.”

“Why?”

Mallory found himself unable to meet her eyes. He was still thinking it through. “I don’t know that part yet.”

Her face flushed. “But you’re implying that the partner is someone inside. That he’s one of the people in the room with us, in other words?”

“I don’t know. It’s a possibility.”

“Or the President himself.”

“Probably not,” he said. “But possible.”

“There’s just one problem with it,” Blaine said.

“I know.”

“Do you?”

“Yes. Motivation.”

“Mmm hmm.”

“I don’t have that part yet. I’m working on it.”

Blaine looked at the gusts of rain through the crack in the drapes. Mallory glanced at his phone, wondering where his brother was. What he was doing. Neither of them spoke for a while.