Last Gasp (24 page)

“Every little bit adds to our picture of the biosphere,” Cheryl said. “I divide my time between the research I’m required to do for Scripps and compiling information on the oxygen deficit.”

She pointed and Chase swiveled in his chair to look at a chart, black-painted words on a glossy white board, which took up most of one wall. It was headed “Oxygen Balance Sheet.” He studied it for several minutes.

He swung back to face her, shaking his head. “It’s going to need something cataclysmic, like the Tokyo Alert on a global scale, to convince people that it’s really going to happen. The trouble is that on the human time scale the process is hardly discernible. It’s just creeping up on us day by day, until one day we reach the point of no return.”

“The creeping pace could turn into a gallop,” Cheryl said. “As our friend over there discovered.”

On the window ledge stood a two-foot-high model of Tyrannosaurus rex, its terrible plastic jaws agape, rows of pointed teeth gleaming in the sunshine.

She was referring to the theory put forward by Drs. Luis and Walter Alvarez that the dinosaurs were wiped out in just a few short years, possibly less than twenty. It had always been assumed that the extinction of such a powerful and dominant species, which had existed for 150 million years, would take many thousands of years, but now it was believed that toward the end of the Cretaceous period, about 65 million years ago, an asteroid several kilometers in diameter had hit the earth and the impact had thrown up a mantle of dust that completely shrouded the planet. Over five or six years the dust had filtered down and the atmosphere gradually became clear again. But during that short time sunlight was prevented from reaching the surface, with the result that photosynthesis was impeded. No photosynthesis, no plant life. So the animals that fed off the plants starved and died, and the animals that fed off those animals starved and died, and so on up the food chain. Within a very short space of time three quarters of the earth’s species had been wiped out.

“But the dinosaurs died of starvation, not oxygen deficiency,” Chase pointed out.

“It isn’t what they died of that’s important,” Cheryl said, “but how quickly it happened. One minute they were there, the next—” She snapped her fingers. “It could happen just as quickly to us, in twenty years, ten, even five.”

“I wonder if that’s how it’s going to be. We go merrily on our way, ignoring the poisoned oceans, the polluted air, the acid rain, the disappearing wildlife, until we wake up one morning gasping for air.”

“We’re balancing on a knife-edge right this minute. The net difference between the production and consumption of oxygen is only one part in ten thousand and we’re burning up millions of tons of oxygen every year, as well as destroying the greenery and marine organisms that produce it. One part in ten thousand,” she repeated ominously. “Precious little to be putting in the bank when we’re already deep in the red.”

Chase mulled this over. “It wouldn’t need much to push us over the edge, would it? A marginal shift in any one of these factors on your balance sheet would be enough, by accident or design.”

“By design?” Cheryl frowned at him. “What do you mean?”

“What do you know about dioxin?”

“By-product in the manufacture of 2,4,5-T. The Environmental Protection Agency banned it years ago.”

“It seems not everyone’s obeying the ban. I met a doctor in Colorado last week, Dr. Ruth Patton, who’s investigating several cases of cloracne. Only one thing causes cloracne as far as I know, and that’s dioxin poisoning.”

“Has she found the source?”

“Dr. Patton thinks some of the local farmers are using up old stocks of 2,4,5-T, but I don’t agree. It’s the wrong type of herbicide for the grasslands in that area.”

Cheryl was leaning forward, elbows propped on the desk, watching him narrowly as a detective might watch a slippery customer. She said slowly, “Maybe I’m dumb, but I’m not following this. What has dioxin poisoning got to do with somebody deliberately tampering with the biosphere? That’s what you were suggesting, isn’t it?”

Chase nodded.

“Sorry, I don’t see the connection.”

“The connection is simple. If Dr. Patton’s diagnosis is correct it means that someone is either manufacturing 2,4,5-T or using it in the area. Suppose the application is military? There are experimental missile installations near Denver, so that’s a feasible assumption—”

“If somewhat unlikely.”

“Why? The military have used it before to defoliate jungles; why couldn’t they be using it now for some other purpose?”

Cheryl stood up and went over to the window. The backlight made a translucent cocoon of her blouse so that her breasts were solidly defined. She wasn’t wearing a bra, Chase noted, and her figure was still firm at thirty-one.

“But it would be madness,” she said quietly, as the idea blossomed and took shape in her mind. “I mean, where’s the advantage? It would be committing global suicide.”

“That’s what they said about the H-bomb, but it didn’t stop the superpowers stockpiling enough nukes to kill every man, woman, and child on the planet fifty times over. This could be the new strategy— using the environment as a potential weapon. It’s the threat that counts, remember, not the actual use.”

Cheryl was staring at him now. “How long have you been thinking this?”

“Only since I talked to Ruth Patton a few days ago.”

“Could anybody be that stupid?” Cheryl said, but it was a question to which she already knew the answer. If it was technically possible you could be damn sure that somebody would suggest it, want to try it. “What are you doing?” Chase said.

Cheryl was pressing buttons. She moistened her lips, about to answer him, but then the connection was made and she spoke into the receiver.

“Request from Dr. Detrick, Marine Life Research Group.” She waited a moment, listening, her expression stubborn and preoccupied. “I’d like a list of companies that fit the following indices. Suppliers of herbicides to any of the U.S. armed forces within the last ten years. Companies with current contracts with the Defense Department. Chemical companies with the capability of manufacturing chloraphenoxy acid herbicides. Send a print-out to my office by messenger. Thank you.”

“Process of elimination?”

“There can’t be more than four or five companies to which all those apply.”

“If the data are in your computer to begin with.” Chase said, “That’s a
big ‘if.’”

Cheryl disagreed. “None of that information need be classified. Any industrial yearbook will tell you which companies have Department of Defense contracts.” She looked at her watch. “Shouldn’t take more than fifteen minutes.”

Chase studied her, seeing Theo’s determination in the set of her jaw and those intense blue eyes. She hadn’t altered all that much since he first met her in Geneva. She still wore her fair hair short, though not as close-cropped. And as he had seen, her figure was still good and firm, more mature of course but avoiding the dangers of laxness and overindulgence. He wondered whether he had aged so well; Americans seemed to work at it more.

He said, “All right, Sherlock, let’s take it a stage further. Let’s say we have the names of the companies. What then?”

“Simple. We find out which company is breaking the EPA regulations by continuing to manufacture 2,4,5-T. And, more important, why.”

“I don’t see anything simple about it,” Chase said, unsure whether to be irritated or amused by her feminine directness and—to him— naiveté.

A uniformed messenger arrived with the printout, which at first glance appeared to contain a lot of white space, and when Cheryl swiveled it around with outspread fingers Chase saw a single line of type:

jeg chemical corp inc bakersfield calif

“There we go,” Cheryl said, smiling sweetly, with a suspicious lack of guile. “I told you it was simple.”

About midmorning the heat had started to congeal over Washington and by midday the air was dense and sultry, threatening to thunderstorm. In his fourth-story office in the southwest wing of the Pentagon, Thomas Lebasse had the distinct impression that the weather bore him a personal grudge. Even with the air conditioning and sustained by iced lemon tea, Lebasse was dogged by a dull nagging headache that made every thought a wearisome effort.

His doctor had warned him what to expect, so he was hardly surprised. Fatigue. Nausea. Lack of concentration. Deteriorating motor function. It was all happening just as predicted: the long slow slide into death, with the world growing dimmer as the cancer devoured him alive.

Resolutely he pushed the nightmare away. Move on, you old bastard, he ordered himself. Don’t dwell on it. Just keep going.

Answering a buzz on the intercom, Lebasse listened to his senior aide, David Markham, who told him of a call on his private line while he’d been in conference with the budget steering committee. Lebasse sat forward in his red leather wing chair, the pain and fear momentarily forgotten. “Did the caller leave a name, Dave?”

“No, sir. Said he’d call back later.”

“The caller was male?”

“Yes, sir. From a phone booth, I think.”

He’d been expecting Gene Lucas to call any day now. If DEPARTMENT STORE really was as monstrously unthinkable as he suspected, Lucas was the man to confirm it.

If he achieved nothing else in the short time left to him, the secretary of defense had pledged his conscience to stop that evil scheme before it got started. By comparison, chemical warfare was positively humane.

He buzzed his secretary and told her he was going to lunch at his desk. Would she bring him a sandwich, corned beef and pickle on rye, a glass of milk, and a cream doughnut. He’d given up counting calories. Not much point. And anyway over recent months he’d noticed that no matter what he ate, and in whatever quantity, he continued to lose weight. Only this morning he’d pulled his belt in another notch.

His head still throbbed. He couldn’t shake it.

He took a plastic vial from a side drawer, shook a red-and-white capsule into his hand, and washed it down with water. Phenoperidine was a narcotic analgesic with side effects similar to those of morphine, and the doctor had warned him not to take more than three in any twelve-hour period. It was an effective pain-killer, although it tended to make him light-headed and euphoric. Hardly the right frame of mind for dealing with sober matters of state, Lebasse thought wryly.

The light from the window was hurting his eyes. He got up—too quickly, it seemed, because all of a sudden he felt giddy—and had to steady himself against the corner of the desk before going across to close the Venetian blind.

He held the cord in his hand. It had the feel and texture of thick rope. He tugged at it and the large office was plunged into restful twilight.

Turning away, Lebasse was mesmerized by the pattern the filtered sunlight made on the pastel green carpet... thin gold rods arranged in perfect symmetry.

Hell, that was so pretty!

A lump of emotion rose up in his throat. That’s what he’d miss the most. Vibrant golden light. It was light from heaven—God’s light. He’d never been a religious man, but he supposed that the prospect of death heightened one’s awareness of the Infinite. He’d soon know. Nothing surer.

It was restful in this aquarium. Everything was cool limpid green, peaceful and green and golden (the gold bars like golden steps reaching all the way to the Infinite) and for the first time in his life he had absolutely no fear of death. “Death, where is thy sting?” Death was pure golden light all the way to infinity, beckoning him. He welcomed it, in fact. To be at one with the Infinite, shimmering in green and gold light ...

What more could any man want?

Woman.

Damn right, a woman!

Miracle of miracles, there she was, golden-haired, arms outstretched, drifting toward him. She was holding something, an offering, and he, in turn, opened his arms to her. But now she was turning away. Oh, no. He
needed
this woman to share eternity with him. Sure he did. Damn sure. Nothing surer.

Then. Something beautiful took place. The woman began to sing. Her mouth opened wide and a high note pierced his brain with such exquisite intensity that he wanted to weep. Siren song. He was uplifted, his spirits soaring, floating, flying toward the Infinite.

Why had he never flown before? It was so ridiculously easy!

Everyone ought to try this, he told himself, flying toward the bars of light, which parted before him in glittering splendor as he crashed through the window headfirst taking the tangled Venetian blind with him and soared ecstatically all the way down to the multicolored concrete paving four floors below.

When his blond secretary came back with his senior aide they found an empty office filled with a humid breeze. One complete window had disappeared from its aluminum frame and sunlight streamed like a golden searchlight onto the pastel green carpet. The senior aide approached the window. The blond secretary hung back, white except for her garish lips.

Thomas Lebasse, ex-secretary of defense, lay mangled and twisted on the concrete paving. The images invoked by having chosen the one capsule containing a large dose of LSD-25 were wiped clean from his brain.

Nothing surer.