Pipeline (16 page)

If Zhironovsky was concerned, he didn’t show it. He continued.

“Since Tuesday afternoon, Rudzhin and I have sat in numerous meetings with our intelligence colleagues. And we have all concluded the same thing. General Packard is a very important conduit. Her presence denotes America’s seriousness. But…we think she is not enough. She is from Alaska; everybody knows that the Alaskans are historically close to Russia.

“So we will graciously accept General Packard’s leadership of the American delegation. But we will also ask for somebody to join her directly from the White House. We will tell the Americans that we think someone from the president’s political staff should be at the table during our discussions. It must be somebody who has access to the president, is trusted by Tolberg, the powerful White House
chief of staff. And who doesn’t need to filter his opinion through the snail’s-pace of the U.S. interagency process.”

“And we know exactly who we want,” interrupted Rudzhin, a little disappointed that Zhironovsky was doing all the talking.

“Piotr is right. We know who we want. A young man. Single. Very smart. Comes from a poor background. A Mexican. His name is Anthony Ruiz. Now, mind you, we cannot ask for him directly, but if we phrase the request correctly—you know, we will suggest a politically creative person who is close to the president; someone young, not tainted by the Cold War era—we think it could end up being Mr. Ruiz.”

“And why do you think this Anthony Ruiz is so important?” asked Uggin.

“I meant what I said about him. They tell me that he is, indeed, capable and young and therefore has no memory of the decades of antagonism between our countries. He made it to the top. And you know the Americans; they love anybody who embodies their American-dream story. It is true that while Ruiz doesn’t have the weight of a cabinet secretary, we believe he could be an important voice in favor of the project. He is respected in the White House as an advisor untainted by Washington’s cynicism. That is why Chief of Staff Tolberg has come to depend on him.

“But in addition to all these qualities, our intelligence services believe he has other ‘assets.’ He is young, therefore receptive. He is anxious to leave his mark. He does not have international experience. From a poor family. No university degrees. Our people believe he could easily become impressed by things he has never before encountered.”

Uggin still didn’t know what all this top-secret information had to do with him. But he had a sense he was about to find out.

“If we can get Mr. Ruiz here, we want you as his escort. Your job is to become his friend. Make him an enthusiastic supporter. Take him to dinner. Show him the town. And together, we will find a way to make him stumble.”

WASHINGTON, D.C.
AUGUST 17, 10:30 A.M.
THE FEDERATION OF AMERICAN SCIENTISTS
HEADQUARTERS

“You have got to be kidding,” exclaimed Tony Ruiz for the second consecutive time. He stared at Rajpour Rosenblatt, his mouth agape.

Rosenblatt leaned back in his oversize red leather chair and pulled firmly on his bow tie. The scientist’s dark eyes twinkled in merriment. Impressing Washington’s government types with facts and technical figures were the moments he loved most about living in the nation’s capital.

“At first, I thought it was as dreamy as
Star Trek
. But then, the whole idea of a transcontinental crossing has mushroomed at the White House. People are taking this thing seriously, Raj. Isn’t it just some wild hype? I grew up on the West Coast and never heard of this,” protested Ruiz.

“Look, Tony, there are people in Washington, D.C., who have never visited the Capitol building. Trust me. It’s completely feasible from an engineering point of view.”

It was not what Tony Ruiz wanted to hear. But he listened; after all, he had been the one to call and ask for an hour of the renowned scientist’s time. Tony had been lucky to find the scientist in town during the mid-August lull that invaded Washington’s summertime.

There was no question that Rosenblatt knew his stuff. The son of a prominent Indian businesswoman and the Jewish dean of the faculty of Applied Mathematics at Cornell University, the dark-skinned Rosenblatt was considered one of the foremost engineering experts in the United States. At the president’s request, Rosenblatt had chaired an advisory committee that had just produced the definitive report on the state of the nation’s aging public infrastructure.

“Tony, take those civilian blinders off for a second. The weather is bad and the food is foul up there. But neither of those two things has anything to do with engineering. Crossing the Bering Strait by bridge or tunnel has been talked about for a long time. It’s perfectly doable.”

Notwithstanding the engineer’s chiding tones, Ruiz genuinely liked Rajpour Rosenblatt. They had worked together on the political impact of the infrastructure report. As long as it didn’t stretch or obscure the truth, Rosenblatt was one of only a few scientists willing to work with politicians on the messaging and communications of his scientific opinions.

“Okay,” said Tony Ruiz, “I’ll shut up. But the whole thing sounds like science fiction to me.”

“Drink your coffee and listen,” said Rosenblatt, smiling. He looked up at the ceiling before starting.

“The latest scientific consensus for a Bering Strait crossing is to build a tunnel—it would be the world’s longest—between Cape Dezhnev, Russia, and Cape Prince of Wales, Alaska.”

“Why not a bridge?” interrupted Ruiz, forgetting he had just promised silence.

Rosenblatt shot Tony a tough stare.

“Sorry, sorry. I won’t interrupt.” To prove his good faith, Tony
Ruiz balanced the yellow pad on his knees and clicked his pen. He was ready to take notes.

“Lots of people have talked about a bridge,” Raj continued. “A bridge would be easier to build. And it wouldn’t be much longer than the Lake Pontchartrain causeway in New Orleans. That causeway is today the world’s longest bridge.

“But a bridge is exposed to the elements. And notwithstanding my joke about the weather and food, winters are a serious matter up there. We’re talking about temperatures that could go down to minus seventy degrees Fahrenheit. That means maintenance is nearly impossible between November and April. And then the end-of-winter ice floes present a whole special problem of their own. Specially protected piers would be needed to keep the bridge stable during the springtime ice bombardment.”

Tony nodded. Made sense.

“A tunnel has none of those problems. Sure, it’s more expensive than a bridge; people are talking about a twelve-billion-dollar price tag. But that isn’t outrageous for a sixty-four-mile construction. The project would actually be three separate tunnels, the middle section beginning and ending on the two Diomede Islands halfway into the strait. Maximum depth would be only about one hundred and eighty feet. The tunnel would be composed of natural gas and oil pipelines, fiber-optic cable, and an unmanned rail link for container traffic. The whole thing would take about ten years to complete.”

Rosenblatt paused.

“Questions?” he asked.

“What, you’re done?” choked out Tony Ruiz. “That’s it? It can’t be that simple.”

“Tony, I’m sparing you the engineering details. But, yes, it’s that simple. The Chunnel connecting France and England is about forty percent smaller than this project, but it’s under some of the roughest winter waters in the world. Though longer, the engineering for this tunnel is more reasonable because it won’t be a passenger link; there are none of the human-safety issues.”

Tony was about to say something but Rosenblatt held up his hand.

“Look, Tony, close your eyes and think about it. Big building projects have been bold strokes that propelled the history of civilization forward. Big infrastructure has opened frontiers, brought economic opportunity, and changed societies. Roman aqueducts brought water to parched cities and wiped away cholera. The bullet train brought Japan’s disparate areas into the national economy. The Tennessee Valley Authority ended centuries of flooding in the Midwest. The Chunnel is the symbolic end to England’s isolation from the rest of Europe. Those were big ideas. So is the Bering Strait crossing.

“Furthermore, there is a Russian company that has already moved on the project. It’s called WorldLink. They announced plans to start negotiations with the U.S. government a year ago. The press release said they want to sell the United States and Russian governments controlling equal shares totaling fifty-two percent of the project. The rest they expect to get from private investors.”

“Come on! Who is going to invest in this?” snapped Ruiz, sarcasm dripping from his voice.

“Lots of people. WorldLink is so bullish about the tunnel’s success that they are talking about adding an extremely high-voltage electricity cable to the mix. The Russians produce more electricity in their two Okhotsk Sea generator plants than they know what to do with. They rightly figure that transporting electricity eastward is cheaper than sending it west across Siberia.

“No, Tony, this thing will attract a ton of investors,” Rosenblatt mused, leaning back deeply into his leather chair. “WorldLink is predicting profitability in under a decade. That is far better than most toll highways in this country. And those toll-road projects get fast funding from banks and investment funds.”

“Jesus, Raj, the way you talk about this pie-in-the-sky elephant project makes this something completely different. This is real.”

Rajpour Rosenblatt leaned forward and took in his young friend’s eyes.

“This is one hundred percent real.”

Tony Ruiz nestled back in his chair. He threw a dejected stare across the scientist’s light-colored pine desk. It was impressively un-cluttered. Rajpour Rosenblatt did not fit the banal stereotype of the messy, absentminded professor.

“Okay, you’ve convinced me now that this Bering Strait tunnel is technically possible. But I gotta tell you, Raj, I still don’t get it. Why would we do this? Why in God’s name would we
want
to do this? We’re hooked on oil like a junkie is hooked on heroin. And now, rather than finding a way to wean ourselves off expensive, polluting oil, we’re going to go get hooked on expensive, polluting natural gas. It’s like telling the same heroin-addicted junkie to try a little cocaine.”

Rosenblatt said nothing, so Tony continued.

“It hasn’t been two months since California went to hell and back. Shouldn’t our government policy be to promote alternatives to carbon fuels? Shouldn’t we be creating incentives for nuclear, wind, biofuels, hydropower, and hydrogen-cell energies? Shouldn’t we be inciting conservation—higher fuel standards, hybrid cars, and ethanol gas?”

Tony slammed his palm on the desk. The force made the yellow notepad balanced on his knees slip onto the floor.

“And instead of doing any of that, we’re now talking about adding a new gas dependence on Russia to our already large oil dependence on the Middle East. These Russians don’t seem all that much better. To me, they’re just another gang of authoritarians to whom we’re going to pay billions of dollars.”

Tony threw a pained stare at the senior scientist across the desk. He eyes begged for some support. For any small sign of reassurance that he was right.

It didn’t come.

Rajpour Rosenblatt looked at him blankly.

“Good questions, Tony. They’re the right ones to ask. But I’m not the guy to answer them. All that is way above my pay grade. I’m just here to tell you what you don’t want to hear. Namely, that crossing the Bering Strait is a near certainty.”

WASHINGTON, D.C.
AUGUST 17, 1:00 P.M.
THE WHITE HOUSE

Anthony Ruiz pushed away the papers on his desk and unraveled the aluminum foil covering the White House cafeteria’s poor imitation of a pizza. He was still mulling over his morning meeting with Rajpour Rosenblatt when he absentmindedly picked up the remote and turned on the television. Since the California crisis, the television in his office had never strayed away from CNN.

Seeing a close-up of Anna Hardaway’s face on the screen, Tony was reaching for the remote to zap the CNN reporter away when the camera angle widened to include a shot of her guest. Hardaway’s reporting of the crisis had been prize-winning journalism; it had been so good that the network had now graduated her to anchoring in-studio interviews. Tony didn’t have a problem with Hardaway’s reporting. But he just couldn’t stand hearing another withering analysis of California’s situation.

Sitting next to Anna Hardaway was a good-looking, red-haired woman with a winning smile. She was dressed simply in a starched white shirt and elegantly fitting blue jeans. Dark high-heeled pumps covered her feet. Something about the woman was supremely attractive.

She’s hot, thought Tony Ruiz, slowly lifting his right hand off the remote as the left hand wiped a string of mozzarella from the side of his face. Tony’s mind struggled to place the actress, but he realized
it was an impossible task. Months had gone by since he had watched a television series or seen a movie.

Once the woman began to talk, however, it took less than five seconds to realize that she was not an actress at all.

“Anna, that isn’t the right question,” the redhead was saying as she leaned over her host’s desk. Her posture was so emphatic that she seemed nearly face-to-face with the interviewer. “Don’t ask me how the United States is going to find more energy to avoid another California crisis. Haven’t we learned anything from what has happened there? It can happen again—maybe in a year, maybe in a decade. Maybe even tomorrow. How many people have to die before we understand that the question to ask is how our country slows its use of energy. The issue, Anna, is not finding more sources of the same carbon fuels. The issue is how to consume less!”

Over the past weeks, Tony had tuned out the pundits and the editorialists. Opinions had been everywhere—a dime a dozen—in the aftermath of California. As usual, the media onslaught had cheapened the tragedy, turning it into an opinion circus. But there was something mesmerizing about this particular woman. She had an unusual combination of looks, energy, and smarts that kept him watching. Who the hell was she?

“My guest is Blaise Ryan of the World Environmental Trust,” intoned Anna Hardaway. “All right, Blaise, let’s ask the question you want to answer. How does America consume less?”

“Political will, Anna. Leadership. Decision. Clarity. And guts. All things we haven’t had in our politics for twenty-five years. It’s high time somebody at the White House understood that we can’t go on importing fossil fuels as if there were no tomorrow. How long is our political leadership going to allow our country to become ever more dependent on foreign sources of oil and gas? People have died, Anna. And, even today, there is nothing coming out of the White House except for a stunning silence.”

Notwithstanding the quasinuclear attack on his boss, Tony couldn’t figure out if he was more enthralled by Blaise Ryan’s in
cisive clarity or her down-to-earth good looks. He was so taken by her nearly feline gray eyes that he didn’t hear the phone until the third ring. He picked it up irritably.

It was Mary Jane Pfeiffer, the chief of staff’s secretary, with the bad news that he would have to rip himself away from his trance over Blaise Ryan. Isaiah J. Tolberg wanted to see him right away.

“You wanted to see me, Senator?” asked Tony two minutes later. He was holding on to Tolberg’s heavy door, leaning inward. Ruiz’s feet were still planted in the corridor; only his head leaned into the chief of staff’s office.

Without looking up from a briefing paper on his desk, Tolberg waved Ruiz in. Hand raised in the air, Tolberg pointed to the brown leather sofa near the office’s far wall. Tony sat down and waited for the chief of staff to finish.

From the very first day at the White House, Ruiz had been impressed by the modesty of the offices of senior White House officials. People would have been surprised to find that some of the country’s most powerful men and women worked in understated surroundings. Yet, even without regal size or opulent furnishings, every nook and cranny in the White House’s West Wing offices still managed to denote power.

He looked around Tolberg’s office. A glass coffee table surrounded by leather sofas and easy chairs dominated one side of the room. The chief of staff’s large, dark desk and an adjacent round conference table with four chairs filled the other half. It could have been the office of any important corporate executive. But the dark furnishings, the freshly cut flowers, and the thick plush of the blue carpet instantly communicated that this office was just a few feet away from the workplace of the world’s most powerful leader.