Siberian Treasure (Page 8)

His first day back at the office in Langley after a week vacation for the holiday, and he was going through the piles that had accumulated on his desk and the emails that had stacked up in his virtual in-box.

Later, he never could say what drew his attention to the bulletin that came in on email regarding the earthquakes in Allentown, Terre Haute and Hays, Kansas; they weren’t a CIA investigation. The Bureau was on it. But something drew his attention, nevertheless, and he perused the bulletin.

Interesting, intriguing, but nothing that pertained to him or his counter-terrorism team.

Yet something gnawed at him in the back of his mind, and he logged on to the database that linked all of the branches of Homeland Security to read more. There were photos and he skimmed through each one, trying to determine what it was that caught his attention.

Bergstrom hadn’t worked with spooks for thirty years without trusting his instincts.

And they didn’t fail him this time, because on the sixth page of images, one of them caused him to freeze and gape. His fingers curled around the computer mouse tightened so hard he accidentally pushed one of the buttons, and had to jerk the mouse, clicking and dragging to get that image back on the screen and make sure he hadn’t imagined it.

But no.

It was there.

By God, it was there.

He stared at it, and felt the way his breathing worked his lungs, quickly and shallowly.

The chance he’d been waiting for.

* * *

Dr. Paul Everett, a retired geologist who taught part-time at Princeton, had left a message for Helen Darrow two days ago.

“I’m sorry it’s taken me so long to return your call, but I’ve had to personally visit all three of the locations of the earthquakes,” she explained, readying her pencil and narrow-lined notepad. She’d been glad to return to her office in Chicago after traveling around half of the Midwest in the last three days. “Pennsylvania, Indiana, and Kansas. There aren’t supposed to be earthquakes in those areas, are there?”

“Not ones like those.” Dr. Everett’s voice came through the phone ringed with politeness and a formality that reminded Helen of her grandmother’s new boyfriend, who always tried to make a good impression on the family. “That’s the reason for my call. I saw the seismogram of the quake, and actually put off a vacation in order to travel to the site in Allentown, because it’s not so far from where I live in Princeton.

“I’m not sure if you are aware that the site itself, at least in Allentown, has a unique formation to it.”

“You mean under the ground?” Helen asked. “Is that what caused the quake?”

“No, what I meant to say was that the result of the quake was a very unusual surface deformation. Agent Darrow, perhaps you are already very knowledgeable about how earthquakes are caused; but if you would indulge me for one moment just so that we may be on the same wavelength, I might be able to clear up some of your questions. And help with your investigation.”

Despite her liberal arts degree from Northwestern, Helen was fairly comfortable with the concepts of faults and shifting plates. She figured she could check her email while he talked—and it wouldn’t be a bad thing to have a refresher. “Sure. Go ahead.” The USGS hadn’t done so; they’d just told her it wasn’t a normal earthquake and they didn’t know how to explain it.

If this man had some ideas, she was all ears.

“As you may know,” he was saying; and she recognized that he’d slipped into lecture tone, “The layer of ground that we walk on is the earth’s crust. It extends about thirty miles to the mantle, which is filled with hot magma. Below the mantle, at the very center of the earth, is the core—which is solid, due to enormous pressure.

“Most earthquakes happen when pieces of the crust floating on that mantle, or lava, bump into each other, or one tries to slip under the other. It causes the ground to shake, as you know.

“I believe what happened in Allentown, at least, was not an earthquake caused by that kind of activity. Based on the unusual activity seen on the seismogram—the record produced by the seismograph activity—and the unusual surface deformations above the site, I am fairly certain it was not a natural earthquake but an underground explosion.”

Those last two words snagged her attention firmly. “An underground explosion. How?”

“Let me first begin by telling you that I’ve seen this kind of activity, and its seismological effect, only once before. This was in the late ‘Sixties in Nevada—perhaps you heard of the Faultless Project?”

“Right you are. They were testing the atom bomb in Nevada, under the ground, where it was believed the damage would be minimal. Faultless, as you might say.

“It didn’t happen that way—instead, there was massive destruction in the area despite the fact that there weren’t any fault lines. Windows were shattered over eighty miles away. Needless to say, Faultless didn’t go any further; but I was working with the USGS at that time, and I saw the seismograms of the activity. What happened in Allentown is nearly identical to the activity that happened when the atom bomb was detonated underground.”

“You’re not suggesting that someone detonated atom bombs beneath these four plants?”

Everett sighed. “I’m not sure what I’m suggesting. An atom bomb, no. Something, yes.”

“But couldn’t something else have caused that kind of seismogram?”

“There is other evidence too, Agent Darrow—as I mentioned, the surface deformation left by the quake.

“You see, during a—shall we say normal—earthquake, the ground shifts in a random pattern. As the plates crash against each other, the disruption creates shifts and crevices into the ground—you’ve seen the pictures.

“But in the case of Allentown, and perhaps the other places, I’m not sure—the formation was not random. An entire area of approximately a mile’s radius from the center of the quake looks like it was shoved up. The entire ground, like an island, looks as though it was displaced from beneath.”

Helen’s mind was racing. “Yes, I see. If it were an explosion, the force of the explosion would have blasted a whole chunk of the ground up. Like an abrupt elevator.”

“Indeed. And, if you notice, all around that area, in the last few days, the ground has fallen away, down, sixteen, seventeen feet. Almost like a moat. That is identical to what happened during the Faultless Test.”

“My God.” Helen breathed. Until he said that; until he painted that picture, the possibility that the quakes had been man-made had been farfetched; like something out of a thriller novel. But now … she could picture exactly how it had happened.

And in the other locations … . “They’re all like that! I’ve seen every one of them; they all have that kind of island of ground thrust up from the rest of the land, and then the crevice around it.” She sat back in her chair, pencil dangling from her fingers. “But how?”

-10-

July 5, 2007

Langley, Virginia

“Dr. Sayed said you should take at least another two months, Gabe.”

“Dr. Sayed’s just worried about his reputation. I’m damned ready to be back. Three months to lick my wounds is plenty long enough, don’t you think?” Despite his hard words, Gabe MacNeil’s voice was colored with the faint lilt of a West Virginian accent.

Colin Bergstrom settled back in his chair. The man across from him could have been his son if one were considering age and level of intelligence. But where Bergstrom’s Matthew was short like his father, MacNeil was tall and rangy, with close-cropped dark hair that had more than its share of grey edging the sideburns and along the front of his hairline. Colin guessed he must be considered good-looking, if the way all the female admins constantly mooned over him was any indication. And there was, of course, the incident with Rebecca Yves. She hadn’t flickered an eyelash at any of her colleagues until MacNeil came along.

In his mid-thirties, single, dedicated, and sharp as they came, MacNeil was just what Colin needed for this gig. And, since he insisted on returning prematurely from a medical leave of absence, and was thus currently unassigned, he needed an operation he could sink his teeth into while easing back into fieldwork.

Colin wasn’t above keeping his early return a fact between himself, HR, and McNeil—for the time being. He wasn’t going to miss the golden opportunity that had just landed in his lap.

He’d been telling him about the three coincidental earthquakes before he’d looked at the report regarding MacNeil’s return to work, and noticed that the recommendation of Dr. Sayed was that he take another two months. At least. Sayed had put him at approximately 75% physical capacity, and 85% mental readiness.

But this little project Colin had in mind was not a demanding operation; and with MacNeil still officially on leave, Colin could utilize him without digging too deeply into tight, well-managed resources.

The fact that he would be putting one of his best officers on the project, under the blind noses of the Powers That Be, gave him only the slightest of hesitations.

“Everything related to those three earthquakes is being investigated, even a mass of flyers that were found blowing about the site in Allentown. You know how it is—everything out of the ordinary is a potential terrorist attack until proven otherwise nowadays.”

“I hardly think an earthquake, or even a series of them, could be considered a terrorist attack. As we know, subtlety is not one of their trademarks.”

“The theory is that it was some kind of underground explosion. Some professor at Princeton who was watching the seismograph at the time recognized the unusual activity—which consisted of several large spikes out of the blue; no other activity before.”

“An underground explosion.” MacNeil’s wheels were obviously turning. His hands were clasped on his chest, the left thumb tapping on top of the right as if in rhythm of his thoughts. “Certainly is a consideration, but how in the hell a bomb was placed twenty feet—or however deep—under these sites, in solid rock, is impossible to fathom.”