Blackmail Earth (2 page)

Pulling a tissue from her pocket, Jenna patted her face; sweat and dust stained the tissue when she was done. Or was that tan stuff makeup? She’d applied it during the flight, after all. Opening her purse, she drew out a small mirror in a sleek black leather case that looked like a notebook, and gazed at her face. The little case was a discreet way to check her appearance without reinforcing the narcissistic TV talent stereotype. The headphones had messed with her hair, but she straightened and fluffed it, then noticed that her eyes were red from the dust. Murine emergency.

Andi peered through her viewfinder, then snapped together a wireless microphone and clipped it to the inside of Jenna’s blouse. The camerawoman kept eyeing the farmer and his border collie. Jenna understood the concern: Loonies were known to mess with live shots in the city.
But you’re not in the city,
she reminded herself a second time. And the dairyman didn’t look like a loony. Actually, he looked kind of handsome, but she had to put aside his presence and turn her thoughts to the work at hand, though in truth she figured that she could do an update in her sleep. And given the schedule of a meteorologist on
The Morning Show—
up at 2:00
A.M.
, on at 7:00
A.M.
—she probably already had on numerous occasions.

Besides, what she would say would play second fiddle to the split screen that the show planned to use as her backdrop: empty, dusty reservoir cheek by jowl with old footage of the lake brimming with cool water. The sweet “then,” the sour—and
scary—
“now.”

Cued, Jenna chattered to the camera, alternately smiling and turning serious as she boiled down the update to “hot and dry,” the daily mantra since a high-pressure system had settled over the region five weeks earlier. The stagnant weather had shown no more inclination to move on than a two-ton boulder plopped on a trail.

She engaged in snappy closing patter with Andrea Hanson,
The Morning Show
’s visibly pregnant host, a darling of viewers and a mainstay of morning television for the past five years.

The dairy farmer and his furry pal watched Jenna sign off. She felt a familiar sense of relief when the camera went dark, then noticed that Andi was back to keeping a wary eye on the guy with the guns.

“Is the drought making dairy farming tougher?” she asked in her most empathetic “the weather really sucks” voice
,
hoping to charm away the tension. She unclipped the mike and handed it to Andi, who pocketed it before heading back to the helicopter. Nicci had already boarded.

“We don’t need a drought to make dairying tougher, but the cows are okay. They’re just moving a little slower.”

“They free range?”

“That’s chickens around here. Only thing free range these days are the roaches. They love the heat. Ever been to Puerto Rico? Cockroaches big as your fist. They’re getting that way around here.”

Who did he remind her of? Somebody appealing. Tall as she was, wiry, with smooth skin and sharp features. “What’s your name?”

“Dafoe. Dafoe Tillian.”

“Good to meet you, Dafoe.” He shook her hand, and she knew that she had, indeed, charmed him, but try as she might, she could not place his face.

The rotors whirled faster. Jenna climbed aboard and belted herself in. Dafoe hurried away from the dust storm whipping up from the lake bed, then turned around so quickly that even through a hurricane of dust and heat he caught her staring at his retreat. She wanted to look down, peel her eyes from his; but her body wouldn’t obey, and a smile betrayed her even more.

As Bird flew them over the barren bowl, Jenna felt herself sink back to earth:
He’s a farmer, for chrissakes. You left that life.

She closed her eyes, catnapping till Nicci asked her to join a call to
The Morning Show
’s executive producer, Marv Balen, or “the twit,” as the two women called him in private. “He texted us a few seconds ago.”

Up ahead, the city’s skyline poked through the low-lying smog like quills through a dirty old quilt. Jenna turned on her headset.

“We’re here, Marv,” Nicci said. “Go ahead.”

“We had three murders in the Bronx last night. Cops found the victims about an hour ago. They think they’ve got the shooter. Word is he snapped and started shooting his poker buddies when the air conditioner went on the fritz. So that makes three more heat-related homicides this week.”

“So you want us to do the story?” Jenna said, hope as irrepressible as ever.

“Noooo. One of our correspondents will. But don’t get ahead of me. There’s more of the gore out on the West Coast. Fresno’s had a week of one-hundred-ten-degree weather…”

Like we need you to tell us that.

“… and last night
they
had their fourth murder during that heat wave. So you’re going to be our resident expert on how weather affects behavior, Jenna.”

“It’s not really my area of expertise, Marv, but—”

“Yeah, I know,” he interrupted, “but you can say that heat and high pressure systems are linked to higher murder rates.”

The 101s of weather,
Jenna thought.

“It’s a lot cheaper than flying a crew up to MIT to get some professor to spew,” Marv went on, “and you’re an author. You can spout off.”

He was referring, in his typically ham-handed way, to a book Jenna had published seven years ago on geoengineering—how technology could be used to combat climate change. There had been little interest back then, but the publisher had reissued her volume three months ago to great interest in both the academic and mainstream press.

“So talk about heat and murder, and don’t go throwing in a lot of other stuff. Don’t complicate it. And Nicci, make sure she doesn’t go yammering on about global fucking warming. We’re keeping it supertight.”

All stories had to be supertight these days: reports, live shots, updates, even the banter with Andrea Hanson. It was a presidential election year, and the news hole for everything but polls, politicians, and pundits had shrunk faster than a Greenland glacier.

Minutes after they’d landed in Manhattan and raced back to the Weather Command Center, a crew hurried over from the Northeast Bureau. The correspondent was an up-and-comer who put together reports for
The Morning Show
as well as the evening news. He was all smiles and good cheer, which Jenna appreciated. Life was too short for sneakiness and sarcasm—for people like Marv, in other words.

A cameraman set up quickly, positioning Jenna in front of
The Morning Show
logo. Product placement. As she finished answering the correspondent’s question about heat and homicide, Jenna spotted Cassie Carter, the Weather Command Center’s frizzy-haired assistant, waving frantically for her attention. “It’s the White House,” Cassie said breathlessly.

“The White House?” Jenna asked. Nicci looked up from her laptop. “Is this a joke?” Jenna asked her. “Did you put Cassie up to this?”

“No, I didn’t.”

And she hadn’t, Jenna learned an instant later when she heard “Please hold for Ralph Ebbing.” The White House chief of staff. In seconds he came on the line.

“Good morning, Ms. Withers.”

“Good morning.” Her voice sounded as bright as one of her weather maps. Still, she shot Nicci a final questioning look. Nicci gave an immediate shake of her head, but even without that, Jenna had heard Ebbing on the Sunday morning talk shows often enough to know that the voice on the phone really did belong to him.

“I’m sure you’re busy,” he said, “so I’ll get right to the point: We’d like you to serve on the Presidential Task Force on Climate Change.”

“I’m very honored. Very. But I’ll have to check to see whether that’s permitted. The network has rules about this. As you probably know,” she hurried to add. Her heart was pounding.

“Absolutely. But I want you to know that we’d really like you to serve.”

Serve?
The word had such an honorable ring to it. Jenna thought about asking about per diem costs and transportation, but decided those pesky questions were best left to one of Ebbing’s underlings—and after she made sure that the network had no objections to her … serving. “I should be able to get back to you in a day or two,” she said.

“We’d appreciate that greatly. We believe your expertise could be helpful to our nation,” Ebbing said. “The vice president will chair the task force, and if you could communicate with his chief of staff, that would be best.” Ebbing gave her a phone number for his counterpart. “On behalf of the president, I want to thank you for considering this appointment, Ms. Withers. I hope you’ll serve.”

“Thank you. And I will if I may. I’ll let the vice president’s people know.”

And then the conversation was over. Jenna kept the phone to her ear after Ebbing hung up, savoring the request in silence for a few seconds because she was all but certain that as a member of the news division, she would be barred from taking any appointment to a governmental body. Those were the network’s rules.

After a breath, she cradled the receiver and passed the bulletin to Nicci and Cassie.

“Wow,” Cassie said. “Big, big wow.”

“The suits are never going to let me take it,” Jenna said to both women, shaking her head. “They don’t want us doing that kind of stuff.”

“Maybe you’re right,” Nicci said, “but you’re a meteorologist, and that’s a little different.”

“I doubt they’ll see it that way.” Jenna shrugged. But she could take solace, scant as it was, that someone had seen her as more than the morning weather bimbo. Not many years ago, the joke in male-dominated newsrooms was that a woman’s sole qualification for a weather job was whether her breasts reached from New York to Kansas when she stood next to the map.

The phones started ringing and Nicci went to work. Cassie took a message, hung up, and handed it to Jenna. “Just a guy who wanted to talk to you—”

Another one.
It seemed to Jenna that half a dozen guys called after every show, most of them vowing to make her happy. Their means for accomplishing this were notably unmentionable.

“He said you almost landed on him this morning,” Cassie finished.

“Really?” A lilt colored her voice. “What did he want?”

“He said just to talk.” Cassie rolled her eyes.

Jenna stared at the name: Dafoe Tillian. Before she could do more than remember his rugged, pleasing appearance, Nicci cupped the receiver on her phone and said, “It’s Rafan on line two.”

“Rafan?” Jenna sat up. He was an old boyfriend, one of the few real loves of her life. “Where is he?”

“The Maldives, I guess. He says it’s pretty important.”

Jenna got on the line right away.

“I saw you on
The Morning Show,
” Rafan said in his accented English. “You do weather now.”

Had it been that long since they’d spoken? She’d been doing the show for three years. She told him this gently, as if she might break his heart all over again. They used to talk all the time: in bed, first thing in the morning, at the beach, the market—

“Here, the weather gets hotter. The islands, they will disappear.”

“I know, Rafan. It’s so sad.” She’d been aware of the threat to his country’s archipelago of twelve hundred islands since she’d started on her doctoral work ten years ago. The Maldives had been her home for several months of research. She’d look out and see nothing but islands and Indian Ocean all the way to the horizon. Now the Maldives was destined to become the first country to fall victim to global warming. Seas rising much faster than the U.N.’s predictions had already claimed coastline, and now had started claiming thatched houses.
To see your homeland washing away must be heartbreaking,
she thought.

In recent years, the Maldivian president and his ministers had strapped on scuba gear for an annual underwater cabinet meeting to dramatize the plight faced by his country’s three hundred thousand people. To no avail. Most Americans, Jenna had found, still hadn’t heard of the Islamic nation, much less of its highly endangered status.

She listened closely to her old lover, but knew that if he was pitching a climate story, he’d picked the wrong person. Especially in a political year. But no, he was pushing a story that
always
had traction.

“Muslims here, they are angry. It’s not like before. Remember? We would go to parties, have a good time. Here, it’s changing, Jenna. It’s changing very fast. People say the West, your country, is doing this to us. They say the decadence is killing us. Come see for yourself. I think they will strike back. Soon.”

“What do you mean, ‘strike back’? How?”

“How do you think? How do you think?”

Jenna looked out her window and saw another warm summer day not so many years ago.

“You should come. I can show you.” Rafan said good-bye.

She walked to the window and looked as far as she could see to the right. She didn’t do this often. It hurt too much. But she let herself stare at the smoggy sky where the Twin Towers once stood.

How do you think? How do you think?

CHAPTER 2

I am now Minister of Dirt.

Rafan was actually a civil engineer in the Maldivian Ministry of Home Affairs and Environment, but at the moment he couldn’t get that strange title—
Minister of Dirt—
out of his head.

With that absurd burden, he stepped into the throng hurrying down the narrow winding street of the Maldivian capital of Malé, where government officials huddled behind white walls and hatched crazy plans to pile dirt on an island to try to save it from the hungry sea.

That’s if Rafan could find dirt. Millions of cubic meters of it. Not easy in the middle of the Indian Ocean. And these days that wasn’t the only absurd plan afloat (though perhaps that was the wrong word for the circumstances). A real government minister—of development—had proposed building a towering skyscraper to house his country’s people. Kind of a modern-day castle with the whole ocean as a moat. Rafan whistled at the madness.
Cuckoo.

A crazy country. Crazy. The president was even more ambitious, if equally deluded: He was looking for an entirely new land where he could move everyone, as if a Xanadu were waiting just for them—the cursed Maldivians. And last night Rafan had heard a rumor that some of his government colleagues were already feeling out Sri Lanka, India, and China to see if they wanted to buy the country’s fishing rights. Testing the waters, so to speak. Or, perhaps more to the point, cashing in while they could. Maybe he should, too. Buy land in Asia or Australia and move, like other Maldivians were doing. Every man for himself on a sinking ship.