The Alarmists (7 page)

Behind him, the team separated and began to perform their tasks, leaving Brent to wander around an enormous fenced-in area. Other than the ruined oil rig, his eyes found other areas that appeared to have been targeted and he studied these for a while. He had little to offer here, suspecting Colonel Richards had included him so that he, an outsider, could get a feel for how the team worked, as well as the methods they employed. Meanwhile, he would attempt to use that knowledge to try to develop a working theory about something he wasn’t sure he believed.

But he found that the twisted metal and reminders of lives lost mostly served to depress him, so he turned his attention to a spot just past the gate, to the only place in sight that not only offered a break from the carnage but also a respite from flatness.

Hickson Petroleum was practically in the shadow of the escarpment—the line of rock, red dirt, and weather-savaged greenery that separated the Llano Estacado from the more habitable areas to the west. The escarpment reminded Brent of what he loved about Texas, namely a topography that spoke of both independence and loneliness. His focus stayed there for a while as the team spread out over the oil field and as Colonel Richards, standing only yards away, spoke with someone from Homeland Security, and while Spike remained in its place in the back of the SUV that had ferried it from the airport.

He couldn’t have pinpointed the exact moment the thought began rolling around in his head. One minute he was taking in the scenery, and the next thing he knew, an idea beyond his field had made itself known. And once he realized it, he came close to dismissing the notion, for criminology wasn’t his area of expertise. His province was group dynamics. Or in those cases in which he practiced at the individual level, it was to examine how an individual could be influenced by larger factors. But was the idea he’d been pondering that far removed from sociological theory?

Sociology was the study of human behavior as influenced by any number of causal factors. In that respect, was it far removed from behavioral analysis? Even so, it took the passage of several minutes before he could put voice to what had arranged itself in his mind.

“This was more about creating a panic than about doing any real damage,” Brent said. Standing there by himself, and with the others engaged in whatever it was they were doing, he had no idea if anyone heard him, and yet he’d spoken the words more for himself than for anyone else.

He didn’t turn but he could almost feel Colonel Richards break away from the Homeland Security agent, and in a moment the man was next to him.

“What makes you say that, Dr. Michaels?” he asked.

Brent didn’t answer right away. He took a deep breath, allowing the dry air to fill his lungs, his eyes playing over the escarpment.

“If I’m a terrorist, I’m going after as big a bang as I can for my trouble,” Brent said. “Instead, they pick the target closest to a convenient escape route. Not only that, they choose a target that would produce the least damage even if they’d succeeded in blowing the entire thing.” He paused, hands on hips, looking out across the oil field.

Colonel Richards followed Brent’s gaze, the two men surveying the escarpment. After a time the colonel said, “As far as I can tell, that’s the only chance whoever was behind this had to get out of here unseen. Doesn’t that make this the only possible target for a terrorist action?”

Brent considered that. After all, he’d already admitted to himself that he was out of his element. He could posit theories for anything requiring an analysis of group dynamics, but generally the FBI would fly in to develop a behavioral profile. Still, even in the face of the colonel’s question, the thought would not subside.

“Even with the escarpment, the risk of pulling off something like this in a wide open area is far too high to go for something small scale.” Brent didn’t say anything else for half a minute, and Richards didn’t press him. “A terrorist action, domestic or otherwise,” he said, turning to meet the colonel’s eyes, “almost always has an ideological purpose.” He gestured to the ruined oil rig. “Nothing about this speaks to that. This was about adding weight to a message already delivered—a tweak of an established agenda. An agenda hinted at in Africa, Western Europe, Russia, Venezuela, South Korea, and a dozen other places your team has been over the last two years.”

Colonel Richards took a half step back. “So what are you telling me, Dr. Michaels?”

Brent could sense the dual nature of the inquiry. On one hand, the colonel was enjoying having brought the professor there to see this event that would be added to an already extensive data stream. On the other hand, the question was genuine. The problem was that Brent had no idea what he was telling the career military man. In his estimation, only one force existed that was capable of extending its influence as far as this one seemed to spread, and it was the very government the colonel worked for.

Finally, Brent shook his head. “All I know, Colonel, is that if I look at everything you’ve given me and conclude that it’s all related, then you have to be ready to accept whatever findings I come up with.” He didn’t vocalize his belief in the possible involvement of the U.S. government. He’d let the colonel do that heavy lifting himself. And when he looked at Richards, he found nothing that hinted at an established ideology. In fact, when the colonel answered him, what Brent found was a complete absence of judgment.

“Dr. Michaels, in case you haven’t figured it out yet, that’s precisely what we do.”

—

December 6, 2012, 10:05 P.M.

Despite all the travel required of him over the last few years, two things never ceased to amaze Canfield. The first was that he could be just about anywhere in the world in twenty-four hours. The second, and almost diametrically opposed to that, was that there were certain portions of the world that required a significant act of will to reach.

Garissa was one such place. One of the larger cities in the North Eastern Province of Kenya, Garissa had a large enough population to make the presence of a single westerner unworthy of notice but not large enough to warrant any decent roads leading to it. He’d landed in Wajir, opting for a smaller airport—one restricted to prop planes—than a landing in Nairobi would have provided. From Wajir, he’d hired a local to take him the 198 miles south to Garissa. He’d traveled the route once before, perhaps eight years earlier, and this most recent trip proved much less eventful than the previous one, when flash floods had turned the dirt road into a mud pit that caught and held tires. This time a small herd of hirola with a collective reluctance to relinquish the road proved the only obstacle.

Garissa was an odd blend of industrialism and decay, beauty and squalor. In certain parts, the houses were freshly painted, colorful awnings shaded the doorways to shops doing brisk business, and construction crews raised office buildings and hotels. In other spots, though, the buckling infrastructure common to the continent was evident: packed-earth streets littered with trash; whole neighborhoods of decrepit structures with rusting metal awnings propped up by pipes and wooden poles; merchants leading donkeys pulling two-wheeled carts, navigating their way around mud holes, large rocks, and debris.

Canfield, who had visited dozens of cities just like it, hardly noticed anymore. He was there for business and would be gone from the place in an hour. One thing that pleased him, however, was that this particular piece of business involved an old friend.

“It’s nice to see you, Matt,” Canfield said.

He leaned against a small writing table in the other man’s hotel room—a room Canfield had paid for—enjoying the air-conditioning after a long ride through the arid land, the lowered windows of the truck the only ventilation.

“You too, Alan,” Matt Ragsdale said.

It was hard to guess the man’s age by looking at him. A lean, rugged-looking body spoke of someone in his midthirties, while a lined, weathered face suggested a man approaching fifty. Canfield, who was forty-two, and who knew that Matt Ragsdale had graduated from Duke a year ahead of him, understood that two decades on this continent bore responsibility for the inability to pinpoint his age. This place chiseled the fat from the bone, but exacted a price for such work.

Ragsdale sat on the room’s single bed, a green duffel bag at his feet. He’d opened it before Canfield had arrived. Amid the jumble of items in the bag lay a handgun.

“How long’s it been?” Ragsdale asked.

“Eight years,” Canfield said.

Even that long ago it had been hard for Canfield to reconcile his old college friend with the man he’d become. At Duke, Ragsdale’s ambitions included law school and, perhaps later, politics. Against that background, the man’s work as a guide, poacher, and sometime mercenary was difficult to process. Still, it was obvious this life suited him.

“Are you still toting tourists around?” Canfield asked.

“That and leading a safari every once in a while.”

And poaching, Canfield knew. In Kenya, it was difficult to spit without it landing on a game preserve. Making a two-hundred-mile circle out from Garissa would capture more than half a dozen of them. His friend Ragsdale earned a good living taking protected game and sending it over the border to Somalia.

“Why are you here, Alan?” Ragsdale asked. “Not that I’m not grateful for the free room. But I imagine this isn’t just a social call.”

“No, it isn’t,” Canfield said.

He understood that what he was about to ask of his old friend was a risk. Van Camp Enterprises had teams to take care of this sort of thing. But those teams seldom operated in this part of the world, and a team from the States was more difficult to get in and out without someone noticing. This operation required something of a local touch.

“How do you feel about Ethiopia this time of year?” he asked.

December 6, 2012, 8:45 P.M.

By the time Colonel Richards extended the invitation to dinner, he, Brent, and Madigan were the only ones left in the Pentagon’s subbasement. After they’d arrived back in Washington, the rest of the team had gone home. But Brent had wanted to press on, with Madigan’s social life—if she had one—a casualty of his desire to finish the consult and head back to his own little part of Texas.

The colonel kept a modest home in Arlington, on Twelfth Street North, just minutes from his office. He shared the four-bedroom home with a woman who could have been a middle-aged angel for the warm smile she’d bestowed on Brent when he stepped through the door, as well as for the sumptuous dinner that was served him.

From what he could gather, having the colonel home this early was an uncommon occurrence, and for some reason she seemed to think that Brent had something to do with it. And as he assumed that was why she’d gone to the trouble to make ribs, he wasn’t going to dissuade her of that notion.

“This certainly beats the burger I probably would have grabbed on the way back to the hotel,” he said to his hosts. He loaded a section of ribs onto his plate and then reached for the mashed potatoes and corn. Emily, sitting at the opposite side of the table, smiled.

“Emily might just be the best cook in Virginia,” Richards said, which might have been the most personable thing Brent had heard him say over the last few days.

“What do you mean
might
?” Emily needled.

Brent sampled the ribs. “Your wife’s right,” he said. “What do you mean
might
?”

Nodding, Richards said, “Point conceded.”

While pouring the wine, Emily asked with a knowing smile, “So tell me, Brent, what’s it like working with Jameson’s team?”

“It’s . . . interesting. Definitely a different environment than I’m used to.”

“You’re only saying that because of the eyeballs,” Richards remarked.

“Those might have been the tipping point, sure.”

“The eyeballs?” Emily asked.

“Something Rawlings is working on,” the colonel explained.

“Ah,” Emily said. “That makes sense.”

The lighthearted talk continued throughout dinner. Then, as Emily began clearing the table, Richards leaned back in his chair, released a sigh that spoke of contentment, and said, “So how’s your research progressing, Dr. Michaels?”

Brent, who was still getting used to the idea of the colonel engaging in easy conversation, reached for his wineglass and took a sip of the cabernet. After setting the glass down, he replied, “Slowly, Colonel. While it’s easy to find minor connections between most of the events you’ve included in the data set, it’s difficult to know if those connections are meaningful. Even the trip we made today. Although portions of it look as if they track with the rest of your mission reports, everything could be little more than conjecture.”

“Well, that’s always a possibility. It wouldn’t be the first time one of our theories turned out to be unfounded.”

Brent’s eyebrows went up a little. “Wait a minute. Maddy said you were convinced there’s something to this.”

“I am. But none of this is an exact science.” He frowned then. “Maddy?”

Brent didn’t realize the reason for the colonel’s reaction right away, and when he did he found himself hoping that he hadn’t gotten the captain in any trouble.

“After sitting at the same table for three days, I got tired of calling her Captain,” he said. It wasn’t until the colonel’s lip curled into what passed for a smile that Brent knew he and Maddy hadn’t broken some item of military protocol.

Richards stood and gestured for Brent to follow him. He led Brent into the family room, where the colonel settled onto the couch. Brent took the chair near the fireplace, where a flame burned low over blackened wood. The colonel thumbed the remote, and the large wall-mounted television came to life.

“Background noise,” Richards explained. “Unless I’m reading a book in here, I have to have the TV on.”

Richards set the remote down but didn’t continue the conversation that had started in the dining room. Brent, though, felt compelled to chase the topic to its conclusion.

“Colonel, as much as I appreciate your offering me this job, I have to tell you that I can’t remember a research project where I’ve felt less confident about a deliverable than I do about this one.” He leaned forward in the chair, elbows on his knees. “A project like this should take years to complete, and that’s if it’s possible at all. And I’m not certain it is.” He thought that if he was going to anger the military, it would be best to do so on the front end, before expectations got too high.

But instead of anger, Brent’s statement pulled a sigh from the colonel.

“Dr. Michaels, that’s exactly why you got the job. Most of the other academics we considered would have taken the money and, if they couldn’t find anything, they would have made up something. After looking at your profile, I figured you were the sort of man who would give it to me straight.”

“Only because I’m afraid you’d shoot me if I lied to you.”

His response produced a chuckle from Richards, but then Brent saw the man’s eyes move past him, drawn by the television.

“What do you think of this 2012 business?” he asked.

Brent shifted his position until he faced the TV. On the screen a news anchor delivered his teleprompter-supplied oration while beside him a large monitor showed footage of an ancient temple in South America. Richards grabbed the remote and raised the volume.

“. . . exactly what will happen on December twenty-first, 2012, but that isn’t stopping a lot of people from preparing as if it’s going to be the end of the world.”

The picture cut to a reporter at a discount store, putting a microphone in the face of a man standing in line.

“You just don’t know,” the man said. “Probably nothing is gonna happen, but with all the stuff goin’ on in the world right now, man, I wouldn’t be surprised. I mean, you just don’t know.”

The picture cut back to the anchor.

“Researchers who study the Maya, though,
do
think they know. And they say that the only thing they’re expecting will happen on December twenty-first—” he paused, aimed a smile at the camera—“is that it will be cold here in Washington.”

With a shake of his head, Richards hit the mute button. “With all the things people have to worry about today, you’d think they would be smarter than to waste their time on this kind of nonsense.”

Brent looked from the TV to the colonel, and it took Richards a few seconds to catch the bemused smile on his guest’s face.

“What?”

“I just think it’s ironic,” Brent said. “You traipse all over the globe investigating things most people don’t believe in and yet you dismiss this other thing out of hand. I would think the 2012 phenomenon would be right up your alley.”

That pulled a smirk from the colonel. “Dr. Michaels, we started investigating 2012 a decade ago,” Richards confided. “It took us a week to see that there’s nothing there. The Maya created a calendar that runs out next month. If the ancient Maya were still around today, do you know what they’d do? They’d start the calendar all over.”

Brent thought he’d finished, but then the colonel said, “People have always bought into doomsday scenarios, and this one has the added benefit of being based on something that’s actually true. The Mayan Long Count calendar really does end this month. And what makes this one even more virulent is that the pervasiveness of the media allows these nut jobs to talk to each other.”

It was the first time in their brief association that Brent had witnessed the colonel getting worked up about something.

“Yet I imagine with the length of time you’ve been at this job, you’ve seen a thing or two that doesn’t have a ready explanation, am I right, Colonel?”

Richards nodded. “You’ve heard us talk about our allegiance to the scientific method. Well, believe every word of it. It’s the only solid launching point for what we do.” He glanced at the television, then back at Brent. “But I’ve seen too much to close the door to the possibility of supernatural causes for certain phenomena.”

Brent was a bit surprised: a career military man who accepted the idea that science might not explain all?

“So I suppose you brought in the man of reason on this one in order to balance out your man-of-faith tendencies?”

The colonel laughed. “A man’s made up of both, Dr. Michaels,” Richards said once the laughter had eased. “And while I might have a few more doors opened to some of the less scientific methods of inquiry, I can assure you that nothing trumps the science.”

“Which doesn’t rule out the possibility that these people”—Brent gestured to the television—“are right about the world ending in two weeks. Personally, I don’t believe it, but can a reluctant man of faith completely rule out the possibility?”

Instead of a return to laughter—or even a smile—Richards’s face turned serious. “Putting faith in foolishness makes one a fool.” He glanced once again at the television. “All this sort of thing does is stir up needless panic. And that’s the last thing we need right now, knowing the kind of thing we’re investigating.”

Emily, carrying a tray with coffee, cream, and sugar, chose that moment to join the men. After setting the tray on the coffee table, she took a seat on the couch next to her husband. She placed a hand on his knee.

“Do you need decaf tonight, sweetie?” she asked the colonel. Then she winked at Brent, who returned something approximating a smile.

—

Arthur Van Camp believed that opportunity found its greatest fulfillment in chaos. He preached that truth to his senior executives, forcing it down the ranks as a kind of secret vision statement. And he demanded that all the members of his staff understood and practiced this truth: the man who kept his head while everyone around him panicked was the man who won. As a result, he considered himself something of an expert on chaos. He could see it coming long before others sensed it; he could get inside it, study it, learn its patterns, and determine how to leverage it for his own gain. Perhaps it was this intimacy with the unpredictable that caused him to keep his office in an order bordering on the clinically obsessive.

He owned three properties in Atlanta, all in Buckhead. He’d paid $25 million for the sprawling estate he seldom visited anymore. He didn’t need nine bedrooms or sixteen fireplaces. Since his wife died he’d been spending the majority of his time in the penthouse suite of the Ashbury. All four of Ashbury’s penthouses belonged to him and had long ago been made one unit. At ten thousand square feet, it was still much more space than he required, yet he couldn’t argue with the view.

The penthouse office was spare in its design, its furnishings consisting of a desk, a single chair in addition to the one belonging to the desk, and a narrow bookshelf holding the more rare and expensive volumes of his considerable collection. A fireplace had been built in the east wall, where even now a fire was burning. Two paintings hung on the wine-colored walls: a Matisse on the north wall and a much less valuable landscape above the fireplace. The latter, painted by his wife before she fell ill, was the one his eyes went to most often.

At the desk, Van Camp scrolled through a spreadsheet showing the financials for the month, each of the industries that made up his business empire neatly arranged under its own tab by his accounting team. He paid the men and women who compiled these reports a great deal of money, to ensure both accuracy and loyalty, and because he hired only the best for what he considered to be a critical function in support of his business interests. And it was because he knew that his employees were the best corporate financial team ever assembled under a single umbrella that he wondered if any of them had attained a sufficiently global view to find the patterns in the figures—how a trend across one of his many business lines affected, or was reflected in, the trends of the other lines. If that were to happen—if one of his employees came to him and demonstrated an understanding of the bigger picture—Van Camp didn’t know if he would give that person a substantial raise or have him killed. He leaned toward the first option while retaining the right to exercise the second.

He finished with the spreadsheet and leaned back in the leather chair, feeling his muscles argue against the more relaxed position. The numbers he’d reviewed reinforced what he’d already known: the plan he’d set into motion years ago was, almost miraculously, coming down the home stretch in much the fashion he’d designed. While he seldom touted his own skills—his business savvy—he recognized the magnitude of what he’d accomplished, even as he understood how precarious the whole thing was, for any one of a hundred factors could shift beyond optimum and ruin the entire thing. Were that to happen, he didn’t know if any of the exit strategies he’d devised would serve to protect him from the fallout, nor was he convinced that this mattered.

He was eight when he heard the Sunday school lesson that would play a major role in setting the course for his life, though he wasn’t aware of it at the time. Even at that young age, Van Camp had held an appreciation for money—a respect enhanced by the financial state of his own family, which saw him showing up for Sunday school attired in the hand-me-downs of some of his wealthier classmates. And so when his teacher commented about King Solomon’s great wealth—that he’d been the richest man in the world—a seed fell in fertile soil.