Forever and a Death Page 2
These three, plus Manville and Curtis, were gathered in the aft lounge for the explanations that would precede the event on the island. Manville had set up two easels with charts and drawings stacked on them, and now stood to one side while Curtis began: “The history of Kanowit Island is brief. I bought it, two years ago, from Australia. They retained mineral rights, but it’s a coral atoll, there’s nothing under it except porous rock and salt water. Australia got it in 1946, at the end of the war, from the Japanese, who had occupied it in 1937. Before that it had been nominally Spanish, having been claimed for the Spanish throne in the eighteenth century, but Spain never occupied the island in any way and no longer contests ownership. The title is skimpy, but it’s clean. The island is mine.”
Wayarabo said, “Does Australia claim legal jurisdiction?”
“Yes.” Curtis spread his hands. “Every dry inch of the planet must be under the legal and political control of some nation, and for us Australia’s not a bad jurisdiction at all. There’s nothing we mean to do on the island that breaks any of their laws.”
Hardy said, “Gambling?”
“My lawyers already cleared that,” Curtis told him. “We’re considered offshore, as though we were a ship. We can operate a casino, but we must pay taxes to Australia. They understand and approve that what we want to do here is create a new destination resort. A championship-level golf course, tennis courts, a casino, a first-class hotel, conference rooms. Kanowit Island stands at the southern tip of the Great Barrier Reef, longest barrier reef in the world, where the best snorkeling on Earth can be found. We’ve already made arrangements with the appropriate airlines for flights, when we’re ready, from Australia, the Philippines and Hawaii.”
Madame deCastro said, “Club Med?”
“More up-market than that,” Curtis told her. “Think Rock Resorts, only international. We’ve done customer projections, we’ll give you all of that. But the point today is the demonstration. George?”
Manville stepped forward as though he were about to run them through a routine of calisthenics. He said, “Kanowit Island is an irregular oval, almost a circle, roughly two miles across. The island was smaller when the Japanese took over in the thirties; they built a very thick concrete ring wall, then did landfill into it from the surrounding ocean floor. The island is really just a bit of coral that sticks above the surface of the sea, and it’s very shallow for almost half a mile out from it in all directions, so no large boats can go in, unless we were to cut a channel in the coral, and that we wouldn’t be permitted to do.”
Wayarabo, with a faint smile, said, “You’d have environmentalists all over you.”
“We may have anyway,” Curtis told him, and nodded to Manville: “Go on, George.”
“Having enlarged the island,” Manville said, “the Japanese installed structures and equipment to make it a listening post, to track cargo convoys or military fleets. Most of the equipment was in a honeycomb of tunnels cut into the landfill. At the end of the war, most of the equipment was removed. The rest, and the buildings, were abandoned and are now a ruin.”
“Normally,” Curtis said, “what we would have to do, with such a place as that, is bring in bulldozers, heavy equipment, barge them all in and living accommodations for the crews, and painstakingly reconfigure the whole island to our needs.”
“Expensive,” Madame deCastro said.
“Even impractical,” Wayarabo suggested.
“Which is why,” Curtis said, “we’re trying this experiment.”
Manville said, “What we’re going to use today is a wave, sea water itself, a very special kind of oscillating wave called a soliton. The soliton is usually created deep in the ocean, caused by a seismic shift in the ocean floor, and it’s the root cause of the tsunami, the huge destructive wave that every once in a while marches across the Pacific.”
“But not around here,” Curtis hastened to add. “The tsunami normally hits farther north, sometimes gets all the way to Japan.”
Manville said, “The soliton has been recreated in laboratory conditions, by scientists who want to study it, possibly learn how to control it. They’ve written papers on their work. We’re adapting those papers to our own needs. What we’re doing here, we’ve flooded the tunnels the Japanese dug, we’ve sealed off all the exits, we’ve placed small dynamite charges at specific spots in the tunnels, radio-controlled, and they’ll discharge serially, just about ten minutes from now. If we’ve done our job right—” Manville shrugged, while Curtis looked grim “—the charges will create a laboratory-style soliton, an oscillating wave.”
Wayarabo said, “Which will do what?”
Curtis said, “The Japanese increased the size of the island with landfill. The tunnels are in the landfill, because the coral beneath is too porous and the sea would come in. Landfill, no matter how well done, is unstable. In the Los Angeles earthquake a few years ago, several pieces of elevated freeway collapsed, and every one of them was built on landfill. One of the most serious collapses was at a place called La Cienega Boulevard, and in Spanish ‘la cienega’ means ‘the swamp.’ ”
Hardy said, “You mean to break up the landfill with this wave?”
“We mean to turn it into soup,” Curtis told him.
Manville said, “The soliton, once it gets started, feeds itself, builds its own energy for quite a long time. That oscillating wave will break down the tunnel walls and spread through the landfill, breaking it up, so that when it finally wears itself out, the entire island, if our projections are right, will be nothing but a lake of mud, held in by the concrete retaining wall.”
Hardy said, “If the wall doesn’t go.”
“We’ve tested the wall,” Manville assured him, “and it should stand firm.”
Madame deCastro said, “If the wave keeps generating its own force, won’t it eventually push down into the coral, start breaking that up? Then at the end you wouldn’t have any island at all, and possibly some damage to the reef.”
“That’s what some of the environmentalists are bleating about,” Curtis told her, “and they’re wrong.”
Manville said, “The power has exits, through the landfill and eventually upward. Force always takes the easiest route, and the coral isn’t the easiest route.”
Curtis said, “What’s going to happen is, the buildings will break up and sink into the mud. The tunnels will fill in. Nothing will be left but mud, which we think will dry in five to six weeks, draining downward through the coral, to leave a clean, flat, absolutely empty island. Then we come in with our own soil, our plantings, our construction crews. As a way to clear a site—”
“If it works,” Manville said. He had to express that engineer’s caution, he had to keep doing it.
“Yes,” Curtis said, irritated. “If it works, and in my heart I know it will, it can save us millions, not only on this project, but on other projects in the future.”
A steward had appeared in the doorway while Curtis was speaking, and had waited for Curtis to be done. Now he said, “Sir, the captain asks me to inform you, a ship is moving toward the island.”
4
Jerry Diedrich stood beside Captain Cousseran on the bridge of Planetwatch III and looked out at Kanowit Island, so near and yet so far. It seemed deserted, but with some new low metal structures among the crumbling barracks buildings; controls for the explosion? Well off from the island to port waited the yacht, Mallory, solid, starkly white, hardly moving in the small sea. To Jerry, the yacht looked mostly like a dove, impossibly large, resting in the water, wings folded; and what a wrong image that was!
Captain Cousseran, a heavyset Belgian, a man who’d captained Dutch cargo ships until his retirement, when he’d volunteered to join Planetwatch, probably most out of boredom, spoke in French to his steersman, then said to Jerry, “This is as close as we can go.”
“We’ll send a launch ashore,” Jerry said, and the radioman, at his desk behind the others, said, “Captain, the Mallory is calling us.”
“I’ll take it,” Captain Cousseran said, reaching for his microphone.
Jerry said, “Put it on the loudhailer, let the whole ship hear it.”
“Yes, good.”
When next he spoke, Captain Cousseran’s voice echoed outside the bridge, loud and distorted, but plain enough to be heard and understood anywhere on the ship. The sound, so strong here, would fade away almost to nothing long before it reached the Mallory. “This is Captain Cousseran.”
“This is Captain Zhang Yung-tsien of the Mallory. I am asked to inform you that you are too close to Kanowit Island for safety.”
“It is the intention of some members of our party to go ashore.”
“You cannot approach any closer, the sea is too shallow.”
“They will go by launch.”
“I am asked to inform you that a series of explosions will shortly take place on the island, and it will not be safe there, or anywhere close by. There will be a considerable shock wave.”
“Since my party is determined to go ashore, Captain Zhang, I would ask you to delay the explosion until we can have a face-to-face meeting.”
“I am asked to inform you that that is impossible. The timing devices on the island have been set, and it is too late to change or stop them.”
Jerry, angry, feeling the old frustration, clenched his fists. “He’s lying!”
“Surely, Captain Zhang, there is a fail-safe mechanism to permit you to abort the explosion.”
“There is not. I am asked to inform you that the timing equipment for the explosions is on the island, that they are set to begin the operation in under four minutes from now, and that it would be impossible at this point to get to the island in time to stop them. Anyone who tries to approach the island now is in very grave danger.”
“Lying, lying.” Jerry gritted his teeth, partly because he was afraid Captain Zhang was telling the truth. He needed to stop Richard Curtis, stop him now, stop him for good.
“Captain Zhang. I can’t believe your employer would create such a dangerous situation, leaving himself open to serious consequences if anyone should be harmed. Our launch will be ready to leave in two minutes. Again. I ask you—”
“This is Richard Curtis.”
Jerry’s shoulders hunched at the sound of the voice, the sound of the name. So arrogant, so sure of his power, so sure he’s unassailable. We’ll see.
And the hated voice went on:
“This is my ship and that is my island, and you are trespassing. I have explosives over there on my island that will kill anybody who gets too close to it. You have been warned, repeatedly, and if any harm happens to the sentimental idiots who are your passengers it is on their—”
Jerry couldn’t stand it anymore, and grabbed the mike away from Captain Cousseran. When he spoke, he knew his voice trembled with passion, but he couldn’t help it, and he didn’t care:
“And if harm happens to the reef? Irreparable harm to the coral?”
“Who is that?”
“This is Jerry Diedrich, leader of the sentimental idiots. I will personally be in that—”
Out of the corner of his eye he saw it; an orange-suited figure rolled backwards over the rail and down into the sea.
He was so startled the words faltered in his mouth.
Who was that? He held the mike, but he couldn’t speak.
Kim! It had to be, he knew it, that goddam eager stupid Kim. What was she doing? Did she think he wanted her to kill herself?
Hand trembling, Jerry held the mike against his lips, so that his chattering teeth hit the metal:
“You saw that. You have to stop it now. You have no choice.”
5
“Who is that?”
Curtis stared through his binoculars, held in his left hand with the mike in his right, but the diver had disappeared the instant he hit the water. Into the mike, with impatient sincerity, Curtis said, “Diedrich, don’t be a fool. Get that man back.”
The voice over the radio sounded scared, as well it should: “I can’t. I didn’t— It wasn’t my order.”
Was the diver moving toward the island? Or would he stay by the ship, waiting to be told what to do next? Curtis said, “If that idiot gets too close to the island, he’s dead. I’m telling you, Diedrich, and it’s true. We’re not talking one explosion here, we’re talking half a dozen in a rolling pattern, each with its own shock wave. If that man’s going toward the island, you’ve killed one of your own people. And I will pursue you in the Australian courts.”
“Then stop it!”
“I can’t, you bloody fool! You’ve been told and told. It’s too late.”
The silence from Diedrich sounded shocked, but there was nothing to be done about it, not now. Handing the mike to Captain Zhang, Curtis said, “There’s nothing more to say to them.” Turning away, carrying the binoculars, he stepped out onto the wing, the small open area to the right of the bridge. He leaned on the rail there and, through the glasses, he looked toward Kanowit, empty and silent.
Diedrich. It was him again, Jerry Diedrich. The other environmental groups, and even other arms of Planetwatch, spent most of their time on the government polluters, the bomb-testers and radioactive-waste dumpers. Only Diedrich was always there, every single time, when the Curtis Construction Company was doing anything that impinged even slightly on environmental concerns.
Curtis Construction was large, not as large as it used to be, but still big enough to be a player in most of the major construction work around the globe, the dams, the widening of rivers, deepening of ports, construction of harbors. And every time, sooner or later, Diedrich would appear, a plague, a pest.
Would he show up later, in Hong Kong, when it really mattered? Was there no way to stop him?
Holding the binoculars, Curtis scanned the water between the island and the environmentalists’ ship, but could see nothing. The diver would stay underwater, to move faster, but couldn’t be very deep, not amidst all that coral. If he was out there now, near the island, and if the shock waves didn’t kill him, then being battered repeatedly against razor-edge outcroppings of coral surely would.
He hadn’t meant anyone to die, not this time. Later, when the real thing happened, a whole lot of people would die, but they would deserve it. These environmentalists were merely well-meaning ignoramuses, minor irritations; all except Diedrich. There was no need, as the French had once done, to kill them.
But if the diver did die, could that be used to hamper Diedrich, tie him up, keep him away when it was important for Curtis to be unobserved? There were recordings of the ship-to-ship conversation, there would be proof of the repeated warnings, and of Diedrich’s refusal to heed them. When he got back to Sydney, Curtis would turn it all over to the lawyers, let them harry Diedrich for a while, see how he enjoyed it,
Curtis scanned the ocean through the binoculars, seeing nothing, only the wavelets, the constant shifting movement of the sea. And then the ocean trembled, it flattened into hobnails, and the binoculars shuddered, punching painfully against Curtis’s face.
6
At first the sea seemed to shrink, to turn a darker gray, as though it had grown suddenly cold, with goosebumps. There was a silence then, a pregnant silence, like the cottony absence of sound just before a thunderstorm. The island seemed to rise slightly from the sea, the concrete collar of its retaining wall standing out crisp and clear, every flaw and hollow in the length of it as vivid as if done in an etching.
Then a ripple appeared, faint at first, and rolled outward from the island, all around, just beneath the surface, like a representation of radio waves. With the ripple came a muttering, a grumbling, as though boulders sheathed in wool were being rolled together in some deep cave. And the ripple came outward, outward, not slackening, not losing power, with more ripples emerging behind it.
Planetwatch III lay abeam the island, portside facing it, preparatory to loweri
ng its launch. That first ripple, now visible as a strong surge just below the waves, hit the ship all along its port side and rocked it like a cradle. Crashing sounds came from everywhere aboard as anything on the ship that wasn’t tied down was flung away. Half the ship’s passengers and crew lost their feet, falling awkwardly, bruising elbows and knees and heads.
Planetwatch III righted itself groggily, a fighter who’s been hurt but not yet downed, and Captain Cousseran shouted in French to the steersman. And the next ripple came steadily on, rolling closer.
Jerry Diedrich had been knocked painfully sideways against the metal wall of the bridge, narrowly missing the sidemost large window pane. Now, his left arm streaked with pain, his chest aching, he cried, “Captain! What are you doing?”
“Moving,” the captain told him, short and unapologetic. He was master of his bridge, and of his ship. “We’re too close,” he said, and Planetwatch III started the slow process of its turn, away from the island.
Jerry clung to the rail. “But…what about Kim?”
Captain Cousseran gestured at the sea and the island. “See for yourself.”
Jerry saw; he had to admit he saw. Closer to the island, the sea had begun to boil, with whitecaps that leaped like dolphins. The discrete ripples rolled outward like moving rings of Saturn, and the island itself had begun to change, as though it had abruptly gone out of focus. The land seemed to shudder, and the buildings to oscillate wildly, as though an inanimate place could feel agony.
The second ripple hit when Planetwatch III was midway through her turn, so that it helped as much as it harmed, pushing the ship along, farther from the island, at the same time that it battered them all once more, with a harder punch at the stern that rattled doors and strained rivets throughout the ship.