The Lucifer Sanction (18 page)

Frober shook his head and raised both hands in
a consolatory gesture, paused for a few seconds, visibly
mustered some self-control and flopped into the nearest
chair. He let out a Shakespearean like sigh as he mulled
over his words.
“Mr. Ridkin, it is a master plan. Just like all business,
a plan that has been years in the making. And as they say,
failing to plan is planning to fail.”
“Clear that up a little,” Sam said. “How far does
their plan go?”
Frober appeared to be lost in thought. He hung his
head and patted both knees several times. Sam studied him
during his silence, and when he eventually spoke, Frober’s
voice took on an ominous tone. “Libra is stealth in their
scheming. They set about reducing the population, which
of course freed up vast areas of land and cities otherwise
overpopulated.”
“Okay, I’m up on how they did that, and then . . .”
He tapered off.
Frober shrugged. “And then Libra will put plan B
into effect.” He fell silent for a long few moments after
which his eyes lifted to meet Sam’s. “They will destroy the
competition.”
“CERNA?” Hunter asked.
“CERNA is a mere bauble with whom Libra spars
about the ring – entertainment as such. Libra has - how
do you say it in your country, oh yes, Libra has their
number.”
Hunter studied Frober carefully. After a protracted
silence he shrugged and asked, “So what’s plan B, who’s
the competition?”
Frober groaned at the question as he filled his coffee
cup. He switched to a look of contentment that bordered on
gloating. Being a man who reveled in control, he savored
the anticipation on the faces of the two guests.
“I know this probably does not make a great deal of
sense to you. It is not a matter of
who
the competition is – it
is a matter of
what
the competition is. Libra will implement
plutonium contamination that will render all of the fresh
water on the planet undrinkable.”
Silence.
Sam and Hunter stared and waited for Frober to
continue. He didn’t elaborate. He sat and sipped, then
slowly lifted his eyes above the rim of the mug and savored
the anxiety.
“Let me get this straight,” Sam groaned. “Your
friends upstairs, they’re gonna kill off the excess people
and then kill off the water supply?”
Frober flicked a glance at Sam and replied with
a benign expression. “Primitively put – but a reasonable
hypothesis.”
Sam snapped angrily, “I thought I put it
exactly
the
way it is.”
“We are against what the physicists above are
scheming.” Frober said. “They have lost direction. Libra
originally had good intent. We set about safeguarding
the planet from dwindling resources, and yes – we were
self-appointed sheriffs in our efforts to control over
population.”
Hunter closed his eyes and rubbed his palms into
his eye sockets. “What a fuckin’ nightmare, it’s a doomsday
epic waitin’ for some Hollywood studio to pick up; not even
Crichton would have come up with this creative plan.”
“Crichton?”
Hunter looked from Frober to Sam who met his eyes
calmly, then flicked his frustrating stare back to Schroeder.
“I see you’re too busy fuckin’ with the planet’s destiny to
read a good book or two.”
“Leave it be, Gard,” Sam whispered beneath his
breath.
He considered his next words for several drawn
out seconds. “So that’s plan A and plan B. Tell me what in
God’s name is plan C?”
“Allow me to explain the workings a little more.
We have four hundred and thirty-seven commercial nuclear
power plants throughout the world. One hundred and five
are in your United States. The quantity of nuclear that
is created is gargantuan.” Frober shook his head as if to
make a point of the size of the supplies. “Nations cannot
just flush this material away. They cannot bury it and hope
it dissipates into the soil. All they can do is store it. Your
country is responsible for creating in excess of seventy
thousand nuclear weapons in preparation for war with the
Soviet Union, North Korea, Beijing, and the Middle East
– with whomever. The Alliance for Nuclear Accountability
has reported the United States has created nuclear residues
sufficient enough in number to cover a football arena to
a depth of four miles beneath the surface of the playing
field.”
“So how’d that go unnoticed?”
“Simple – the cloak and dagger antics of the United
States and Soviet Union swept it under the carpet.” He
made a sweeping motion and nodded with a grin. “They
hid it in the secrecy of their Cold War. The dangers we are
now aware of were of little interest back then, there were
few who paid them any credence. The mess now faced by
nations worldwide is monumental to say the least.”
The room became silent, and Hunter’s face scowled
as he fought off terrifying thoughts. He made a questioning
gesture. “Isn’t there a landfill region where the stuff’s
buried, someplace in the States?”
“The Waste Isolation Pilot Plant is the most prominent in your nation, but it does not solve America’s problem.
The United States established an underground facility in a
salt bed, half-mile beneath the ground near Carlsbad in New
Mexico. Your Environmental Protection Agency approved
the site for permanent disposal of radioactive material
back in 1998. They dumped the first loads ten years back, a
further forty thousand truckloads of radioactive cargo will
be shipped there over the next thirty years,”
“I thought Libra was into parallel universes, all of
that faxin’ people shit?”
Frober grinned. “Agent Hunter, do not assume
the work of Libra is limited to particle transference and
population imbalance. Our mandate has a wide parameter.
Solving the nuclear waste issue has been on Libra’s agenda
for some time. Particle transference is in embryo stage.
Population figures involve simple adjustments of past
incidents. How our planet disposes of accumulated nuclear
waste in a safe manner is part and parcel of our particle
transference work. It is different in so much as it shapes
the future rather than erases the past. We are looking into
the largest trash disposer conceivable. Not only has nuclear
waste been created by nuclear weapon detonation but
also from commercial nuclear power. If we could find a
way to relocate waste back to a time that would make the
plutonium’s affective life insignificant, say one hundred
thousand years before man’s arrival, well then, we would
make the problem of storage a non-issue.
“Nuclear waste contamination has similar effects
as radioactive fallout from a nuclear explosion: the waste
causes increases in the occurrence of cancers as well as
infertility and birth defects. Storing of radioactive material
as was done in the 50s when the accumulated waste was
disposed of in lakes and unlined pits, well, that is no more
than another form of fallout. How to handle our nuclear
substances safely challenges the best scientists in the world.
The Russian’s have exacerbated the dangers of nuclear
waste storage. There are no means by which to permanently
and safely dispose of such matter. They directly injected
enormous quantities of high level waste into the ground.”
They listened to Frober in amazement. He paused,
studied their expressions as his stare cut into them like a
razor.
“They started from point A and went in the wrong
direction. What we are doing at Libra is going back to
A and heading in the right direction – in the manner we
sent Moreau and Campion back – so that we are able to
manipulate alternatives.”
“And that would be?” Sam inquired.
Frober exhaled loudly. “That would be a population
explosion.”
Frober set about delivering the message in a more
simplified fashion, having felt he’d adequately presented his
point – he was forced into maintaining a level of tolerance.
He spoke to Sam in a condescending tone. “Plutonium has
a half-life of twenty-four thousand years, but the world’s
physicists have no idea what medium will best contain it,
what soil or rock will best stop its dissipation. We have
rock, clay, sand, soil, even salt. We just do not know. There
is in excess of two hundred million cubic yards of nuclear
residues of which only two hundred and fifty thousand
cubic yards are destined for the underground disposal site
in New Mexico. The remainder of over one hundred and
fifty million cubic yards will remain at sites in twenty-eight
states in the U.S.A.”
Sam looked at him incredulously. “So where’s this
all going? Where are your guys,” and he stabbed a finger at
the ceiling, his voice becoming more aggravated, “and how
are those fuckers upstairs involved?”
“Libra has sent its man, Neuberg, back to eliminate
their rogue operatives. Moreau cannot be allowed to
reenter with the Lucifer virus. Günter Neuberg is carrying
an activation device.”
“An activation device,” Sam said pensively, “to
activate what?”
“Plutonium.”
“In 1356?”
“You are not following what I am explaining, Mr.
Ridkin.” Frober inhaled impatiently, and held the breath
for six long seconds allowing frustration to show as he
exhaled.
“Try me,” Hunter growled. “What the fuck are
you gettin’ at? There ain’t no nuclear waste back in...” He
paused, gave Sam a confused expression.
Sam put on a contrived smile. “But you’ve got
yourselves the next twenty-four thousand years to find
what works best . . . right?”
Frober nodded, “Voila! Clay appears to be the most
likely medium. The Belgians and French have tested clay
and America has looked at igneous and hard rock as possible
repositories for the waste. The physicists are unsure if
underground storage will be successful. Germany has two
dump sites, one in the former East Germany, the other in
former West Germany. A salt bed underground facility in
Gorleben was closed in 1998 when water was found to be
leaking into the site at a rate of over four thousand five
hundred gallons daily.”
“So – how about allied nations?” Sam asked
shrugging. “You know – the U.K. for instance.”
“The United Kingdom halted construction of their
underground storage site at Sellafield. All construction
of underground facilities within Germany and the United
Kingdom has been halted.” Frober stalled for a breather.
He pressed a desk button and an overweight receptionist
entered through a sliding door. “Getränke und Kekse,”
Frober said.
Three minutes later the woman returned with a
carafe of fresh coffee and a selection of cookies. Frober
nodded at the pastries, “Please gentlemen, be my guests.
Mr. Ridkin, as far as those who predict the outcome are
concerned, it is going to become unstable in the near term,
as they say - for some inexplicable reason.”
“So then - Libra plans to provide that inexplicable
reason?” Sam asked.
“Yes,” Frober replied. “The physicists upstairs are
planning a catastrophe that will destabilize and trigger
leakage into the world’s water supply lines. World leaders
claim the natural movement of the ancient salt bed will
isolate lethal material, but Bosch, Danzig and Schroeder
plan to prove them wrong. These misguided ‘specialists’
believe that out of sight is uh - out of mind. They consider
they can excavate an area, deposit waste into the hole and
salt will eventually creep in and encapsulates the waste.
The waste will become one with the rock.”
Sam leaned in closer to Frober. “I thought the salt’s
supposed to be enough to contain the radioactive material
for thousands of years?”
“The ceilings of the dump holes are designed to
collapse soon after the New Mexico sight is sealed. The
surrounding geological salt beds will, according to the
designers and their advisers, adequately contain the nuclear
waste.”
“What do the crazies upstairs have in mind?” Sam
asked as he tried to nail Frober to an exact response. “What
are their plans for this guy, Neuberg, what’s he doing with
the device?”
“The water system in the New Mexico dump site
runs directly into the Pecos, which itself runs onto the Rio
Grande River,” Frober said. “Libra plans to contaminate
the Yangtze, the Rhine, the Colorado and every other major
waterway. These rivers would not become contaminated
for more than a hundred years allowing natural evolution
to take its snail pace route. Libra plans to reduce that one
hundred year contamination time to less than one year.
There is already water seeping into the facility. Physicists
claim there is an aquifer within the facility. This is a total
fabrication, a lie. If there was an aquifer, the salt would
not be there. Multiply this by the thousands of plutonium
dump-sites worldwide and, well, I am sure you get the
picture. Our friends upstairs, Beckman and Bosch, they are
determined to implement their plan.”
“They’re crazy! It’s suicidal!” Sam snapped. “How
in the name of sweet Jesus do they safeguard their own
people from this disaster? I mean to say - everything will
be affected, right?”
“Absolutely - and there you have plan C. Libra
plans to rid our planet of all military, all aggression, oh,
and unfortunately they cannot avoid collateral damage
- the population at large and all of man’s drinking water
that comes from run off, established catchments, mountain
springs. Libra will start with a clean slate, with a Garden
of Eden.” Frober took a long few seconds to study the
disbelieving faces.
Eventually Hunter groaned, “A Garden of Eden,
with Beckman playin’ God – or will Bosch be holdin’ out
the apple?”
Frober chuckled, “They will each play God, Agent
Hunter. They see their roles as, hmm...” He paused and
mulled over his choice of words, “as providing a rebirth
opportunity for a new race of humans, a peaceful beginning