Hot Ice (14 page)

“The people do not realize how much carbon that jet puts into the atmosphere? I would think it would be hundreds of times more per-passenger seat mile than a commercial aircraft.”

“And for this he won a Nobel Prize! The American people love causes and man-made global warming is the current cause.”

Carlos only sipped at his glass rather than downing it all at once. “And is the planet warming? And is it man’s doing?”

“Who knows? Who cares? When one burns wood in the fireplace, one does not ask who felled the tree, eh? The final result is centuries in the future, long after our bones have become dust. What is important is that we must not let this opportunity to finally topple the capitalist system slip our grasp.”

Carlos shook his head at the proffering of the bottle. The young Russians were not as inclined to binge drink as their elders. Or to spout old aphorisms. “And how does that relate to the operation that has just begun in America?”

Pedro wagged an unsteady finger at him. “This man Peters has possession of certain … certain things that could be damaging to our cause, the cause of preserving Earth.” He snickered, holding up his glass in yet another toast. “The cause of GrünWelt!”

“You will try to gain possession of these, er, objects?”

“Of course. We will use professionals, some of our former military friends who have no connection to GrünWelt. Should they be apprehended, they cannot be traced to us.”

He extended an arm as though in another toast, staggered forward, and would have fallen had not Carlos stood just in time to catch him under the arms. “Come, comrade. It is afternoon, time for the siesta the people here love so much.”

Pedro was already snoring by the time Carlos laid him out on a couch.

Wan Chu stared out of the windows of his tenth-story office, where the outline of the 2008 Olympic Stadium could be seen. Although less than a quarter of a mile away, the massive structure appeared ghostlike in the brown haze that most residents of China’s capital city had come to accept as normal. The facts that most local factories were fueled by high-sulfur-content coal and that the city’s natural air circulation was limited by its location in a shallow valley combined to produce some of the foulest air on Earth. Rationing permits for operating private vehicles inside Beijing’s Inner Ring Road and mandating alternate days when each car, motorcycle, or truck could operate had not helped.

The Most Serene Development Company, being entirely owned by the government like most Chinese companies, was not subject to such bothersome regulations.

A knock at Wan Chu’s office door announced the entry of Chunhua, his secretary. In the three years Chunhua had been employed, Wan had never seen her when her face was not partially covered by the surgical mask so many Chinese wore in the forlorn hope it would screen out some of the air’s pollutants. Such was the price to be paid for the world’s fastest-growing economy, one that would soon be greater than that of the United States. Not only was China a major creditor of the Western democracy, it was more productive.

Wan Chu, like most Chinese, was puzzled by a country that would intentionally cripple its own industry with a plethora of laws and regulations that were making the stamp “Made in the USA” obsolete while sending manufacturing jobs out of the country at a rate rivaling the migration of lemmings, those rodentlike animals that supposedly drowned themselves by the thousands.

Now that the Soviet Empire had self-destructed, the United States was the sole remaining enemy of the People’s Republic of China, the one obstacle to Asian, if not world, domination. If it also chose to self-destruct, so much the better. Soon, the Chinese Navy would be strong enough to simply take back Taiwan while the United States did little more than whine to the United Nations. They certainly would not have the stomach for armed conflict over the island, no matter what their guarantees of Taiwan’s independence said. After that, US interest in the East could easily be terminated, either peacefully or by threat of a force the Americans would have neither the material or will to oppose.

But that was the future.

Chunhua placed a printout of an e-mail on the otherwise empty desktop and turned to leave.

“Comrade Secretary,” Wan stopped her, using the largely outdated form of address, “we have discussed this before: It is unfitting for one of the People’s employees to display that mask. It implies the People are unable to produce air fit to breathe.”

It was an old and likely dead issue, but Wan felt it his duty to bring it up anyway.

“Comrade,” Chunhua replied, “it is not the air I fear. It is the many diseases spread in the People’s air by evil spirits.”

Wan had made as little headway in dispensing with the woman’s peasant superstitions as he had with the removal of the mask.

He sighed, conceding both matters for the moment. “You have read the e-mail?”

She bobbed her head. “Of course, Comrade Employer. GrünWelt is having a problem.”

When wasn’t GrünWelt having problems? Letting an operation be run by Russian thugs had been a mistake from the beginning. Of course the company’s European operation was having a problem. GrünWelt was ostensibly a Swiss eleemosynary institution dedicated to saving the world from being ravaged by a greedy mankind. As did most organizations controlled by the People’s Republic, it had three layers.

First were the members, those well-meaning if ill-informed people who, for whatever reason, believed, or professed to believe, the earth was in imminent peril from man-made global warming. They ranged from Birkenstock-shod vegans to businesses that capitalized on “going green” by manufacturing everything from self-decomposing plastic bottles to environmentally friendly laundry detergent.

Next came the Russian ideologues, those former Communist Party members whose equally firmly held beliefs told them that capitalism could be destroyed by use of the green/global-warming movement. Their methods could be and frequently were illegal and violent, carried out with the fervor of zealots, including sabotage of enterprises deemed Earth-unfriendly, such as mining and petroleum operations, nuclear plants, and an endless list of industries. As long as they remained untraceable to GrünWelt, Wan Chu cared only that they achieved the goals set in Beijing, through Switzerland. As far as these men knew, the fifty- or hundred-dollar donations of its members actually supported GrünWelt and its global operations.

Nothing could be further from the truth. Those pitifully small gifts were not enough to pay for a single attack on a Japanese whaler or sabotaging a single pipeline or oil well. GrünWelt was actually funded by the profits from trading fraudulent carbon credits. At first Wan Chu and his Most Sublime Development Company had been skeptical as to the gullibility of the West. Put a value on each metric ton of carbon dioxide released into the air and then trade credits for each ton below that assigned by the European Carbon Exchange or the Chicago Environmental Credit Exchange? Who would be so stupid as to admit they had exceeded the quota assigned by some government?

Western corporations, that’s who. Europe, where such foolishness was regulated or the United Sates, where big companies feared public opinion. If power company A exceeded its carbon limit, it could find manufacturer B who had not reached its limit and buy “credits.” The same amount of carbon dioxide was released into the atmosphere, of course, but those who bought credits either stayed within the law in Europe or got good press in the States.

Wan Chu had come up with the idea of purchasing a number of small plants in France, Holland, and Belgium, along with their assigned carbon limits. The factories, marginally profitable anyway, were shut down, thereby producing nothing but credits, which were sold. The idea became so profitable, the People’s Republic repeated the process in every country in the European Union except Greece, which manufactured nothing that Wan Chu could ascertain rated emissions restrictions. That done, phony manufacturers were incorporated and did nothing more than hiring phantom workforces to pretend to produce items actually made in China and collecting more salable carbon credits. It had been a jewel in Wan’s crown when one of these bogus companies had actually been cited for its carbon efficiency by the American most prominent in the war against global warming, the same American who heated and cooled half a dozen vacation homes and flew about in a private jet.

Wan returned his thoughts to the woman standing in front of his desk. “What sort of a problem this time?”

“The American, Peters.”

“And?”

“Intelligence has located him in Washington by scanning airline passenger manifests. Surveillance from our embassy has tracked Peters to an Air Force base in the city. Perhaps the San Juan, er, office, might like to know.”

The Russians in San Juan. They would not even have to cross a border. They were crude but deadly when efficient. He would not have to worry about Peters much longer. Chunhua might be an ignorant, superstitious peasant, but she was quite capable.

He dismissed her with a “Thank you, comrade. You have been most helpful.”

He watched her departure. Now the Most Serene Development Company and all it had achieved was threatened because of a lucky find in a glacier and this American called Peters. Peters was the last-known person possessing what was found in the glacier, and the Russians had let Peters escape in Iceland even though they had taken care of the little man who used the name of a long-dead movie star. You could hardly trust people who daily drank a liquor that tasted like gasoline and who used violence rather than subtlety or patience to achieve their ends. But that decision had been made higher up the food chain than Wan. Much higher.

Turning to the computer keyboard, he typed an encrypted message, which, even if decoded, would only have read “The package you seek is in Washington. Location upon your arrival.”

For some reason, he had a bad feeling about this. Joss, experience, whatever. Peters was trouble.

Jason was speaking into his BlackBerry. “There are a couple of things I need. First, I had to leave the Glock in Iceland.”

Momma’s voice came across the vapor as mellifluous as if she were standing there. “Easy enough. I can have another over to you in an hour, hour and a half, with a coupla extra clips and National Security permit. Anything else?”

Jason didn’t want to ask how she could arrange for a concealed-carry permit when it took weeks of investigation, mounds of forms, vetting, and a biography almost pre-dating birth. City of Washington permits simply didn’t exist, no matter what the Supreme Court said.

“Yeah. I need a name of someone at the laboratory at the Department of Agriculture, as well as someone who can do a metallurgical analysis.”

There was the sound of a pen scratching on paper. Momma was a believer in making old-fashioned lists rather than relying on cyber entries that could disappear on a whim.

“Anything else? I mean, the PX got your brand of scotch? Your love life OK?”

“What love life? After you cooked up that expedition to get Maria out of the way, I’ll be lucky to see her in six months.”

A deep chuckle, the sound of logs crackling in a fireplace. “By that time, this problem be solved. She’ll never know what you did.”

Manipulative old woman!

But he said, “I hope not.”

The phone went dead.

Forty-five minutes later a package arrived by private courier. It included a business card of a Seymore Watt, PhD, Department of Agriculture. Jason had no idea how a firearm and ammunition got past the guard shack at the base’s entrance. He had just finished making sure the Glock was in good functioning order when his BlackBerry pealed off the ominous opening bars of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, his personalized ring tone.

Momma was as good as her word.

“Jason?” Maria’s voice was excited. “Where have you been? I’ve been trying to reach you for hours!”

“Er, been in DC. No reason there’d be a reception problem. Things going well with you and … ?”

“Pier Sevensen. They’re going great! Did you get the pictures I sent?”

“Haven’t checked for messages lately.”

“Well, you’ll see. This afternoon, we went out to a volcanic field, geysers all over the place, like your Yellowstone Park.”

A whole field of geysers? She sounded as excited as a child on Christmas morning.

“Jason, you have no idea! Iceland is a volcanologist’s dream, every kind of volcanic activity you can imagine!”

Not exactly a recommendation Condé Nast’s glossy travel magazines would give, Jason thought.

But he said, “And the expedition, how’s it coming along?”

“We should have it fully equipped in a week. Your friend Momma has been a perfect angel. Everything we need arrives almost as soon as we ask for it.”

I’ll bet.

“After it’s all set I’ll come home until Eyjafjallajökull has sufficiently … Speaking of home, where are we going to go if we can’t go back to Isola d’Ischia?”

A decidedly reproachful tone.

“I’m working on that.”

“In other words, you don’t know. Jason, I hope you’ve learned your lesson. Doing violent things only brings more violence. If you hadn’t gotten involved in that shooting in Africa, we would still be at our villa …”

And you wouldn’t be among all those geysers and volcanoes.

Gently, Jason put the BlackBerry down, reached across a small table, and unscrewed the top of a bottle of Balvenie single-malt scotch. A bargain at the PX at only seventy-five bucks a fifth. He could still hear her voice if not the words as he crossed over to the kitchenette, filled a glass with ice, and returned. Picking up the BlackBerry, he murmured assent, put it down, and filled his glass.

“… I don’t want to have to move for fear of our lives again. I just hope you’ll listen to me this time …”

“I always listen to you, Maria.”

She
hmph
ed her indignation before changing the subject. “I hope so, Jason, I really do. Don’t forget to look at the pictures I sent you. Well, have to go. I’m having dinner with Pier.”