The Hammer of Eden (14 page)

He shrugged. “You don’t look like Efrem Zimbalist, Junior.”

Zimbalist was the actor who played Inspector Lewis Erskine in the long-running television show
The FBI
. Judy said mildly: “I’ve been an agent for ten years. Can you imagine how many people have already made that joke?”

To her surprise he grinned broadly. “Okay,” he said. “You got me.”

That’s better
.

She noticed a framed photo on his desk. It showed a pretty redhead with a child in her arms. People always liked to talk about their children. “Who’s this?” she said.

“Nobody important. You want to get to the point?”

Forget friendly
.

She took him at his word and asked her question right out. “I need to know if a terrorist group could trigger an earthquake.”

“Have you had a threat?”

I’m supposed to be asking the questions
. “You haven’t heard? It’s been talked about on the radio. Don’t you listen to John Truth?”

He shook his head. “Is it serious?”

“That’s what I need to establish.”

“Okay. Well, the short answer is yes.”

Judy felt a frisson of fear. Quercus seemed so sure. She had been hoping for the opposite answer. She said: “How could they do it?”

“Take a nuclear bomb, put it at the bottom of a deep mine shaft, and detonate it. That’ll do the trick. But you probably want a more realistic scenario.”

“Yeah. Imagine
you
wanted to trigger an earthquake.”

“Oh, I could do it.”

Judy wondered if he was just bragging. “Explain how.”

“Okay.” He reached down behind his desk and picked up a short plank of wood and a regular house brick. He obviously kept them there for this purpose. He put the plank on his desk and the brick on the plank. Then he lifted one end of the plank slowly until the brick slid down the slope onto the desk. “The brick slips when the gravity pulling it overcomes the friction holding it still,” he said. “Okay so far?”

“Sure.”

“A fault such as the San Andreas is a place where two adjacent slabs of the earth’s crust are moving in different directions. Imagine a pair of icebergs scraping past one another. They don’t move smoothly: they get jammed. Then, when they’re stuck, pressure builds up, slowly but surely, over the decades.”

“So how does that lead to earthquakes?”

“Something happens to release all that stored-up energy.” He lifted one end of the plank again. This time he stopped just before the brick began to slide. “Several sections of the San Andreas fault are like this—just about ready to slip, any decade now. Take this.”

He handed Judy a clear plastic twelve-inch ruler.

“Now tap the plank sharply just in front of the brick.”

She did so, and the brick began to slide.

Quercus grabbed it and stopped it. “When the plank is tilted, it takes only a little tap to make the brick move. And where the San Andreas is under tremendous pressure, a little nudge may be enough to unjam the slabs. Then they slip—and all that pent-up energy shakes the earth.”

Quercus might be abrasive, but once he got onto his subject he was a pleasure to listen to. He was a clear thinker, and he explained himself easily, without condescending. Despite the ominous picture he was painting, Judy realized she was enjoying talking to him, and not just because he was so good-looking. “Is that what happens in most earthquakes?”

“I believe so, though some other seismologists might disagree. There are natural vibrations that resound through the earth’s crust from time to time. Most earthquakes are probably triggered by the right vibration in the right place at the right time.”

How am I going to explain all this to Mr. Honeymoon? He’s going to want simple yes-no answers
. “So how does that help our terrorists?”

“They need a ruler, and they need to know where to tap.”

“What’s the real-life equivalent of the ruler? A nuclear bomb?”

“They don’t need anything so powerful. They have to send a shock wave through the earth’s crust, that’s all. If they know exactly where the fault is vulnerable, they might do it with a charge of dynamite, precisely placed.”

“Anyone can get hold of dynamite if they really want to.”

“The explosion would have to be underground. I guess drilling a shaft would be the challenge for a terrorist group.”

Judy wondered if the blue-collar man imagined by Simon Sparrow was a drilling rig operator. Such men would surely need a special license. A quick check with the Department of Motor Vehicles might yield a list of all of them in California. There could not be many.

Quercus went on: “They would obviously need drilling equipment, expertise, and some kind of pretext to get permission.”

Those problems were not insurmountable. “Is it really so simple?” Judy said.

“Listen, I’m not telling you this would work. I’m saying it might. No one will know for sure until they try it. I can try to give you some insight into how these things happen, but you’ll have to make your own assessment of the risk.”

Judy nodded. She had used almost the same words last night in telling Bo what she needed. Quercus might act like an asshole
sometimes, but as Bo would say, everyone needed an asshole now and again. “So knowing where to place the charge is everything?”

“Yes.”

“Who has that information?”

“Universities, the state geologist … me. We all share information.”

“Anyone can get hold of it?”

“It’s not secret, though you would need to have some scientific knowledge to interpret the data.”

“So someone in the terrorist group would have to be a seismologist.”

“Yes. Could be a student.”

Judy thought of the educated thirty-year-old woman who was doing the typing, according to Simon’s theory. She could be a graduate student. How many geology students were there in California? How long would it take to find and interview them all?

Quercus went on: “And there’s one other factor: earth tides. The oceans move this way and that under the gravitational influence of the moon, and the solid earth is subject to the same forces. Twice a day there’s a seismic window, when the fault line is under extra stress because of the tides; and that’s when an earthquake is most likely—or most easy to trigger. Which is my specialty. I’m the only person who has done extensive calculations of seismic windows for California faults.”

“Could someone have gotten this data from you?”

“Well, I’m in the business of selling it.” He gave a rueful smile. “But, as you can see, my business isn’t making me rich. I have one contract, with a big insurance company, and that pays the rent, but unfortunately that’s all. My theories about seismic windows make me kind of a maverick, and corporate America hates mavericks.”

The note of wry self-deprecation was surprising, and Judy started to like him better. “Someone might have taken the information without your knowledge. Have you been burgled lately?”

“Never.”

“Could your data have been copied by a friend or relative?”

“I don’t think so. No one spends time in this room without my being here.”

She picked up the photo from his desk. “Your wife, or girlfriend?”

He looked annoyed and took the picture out of her hand. “I’m separated from my wife, and I don’t have a girlfriend.”

“Is that so?” said Judy. She had got everything she needed from him. She stood up. “I appreciate your time, Professor.”

“Please call me Michael. I’ve enjoyed talking to you.”

She was surprised.

He added: “You pick up fast. That makes it more fun.”

“Well … good.”

He walked her to the door of the apartment and shook her hand. He had big hands, but his grip was surprisingly gentle. “Anything else you want to know, I’ll be glad to help.”

She risked a gibe. “So long as I call ahead for an appointment, right?”

He did not smile. “Right.”

Driving back across the bay, she reflected that the danger was now clear. A terrorist group might conceivably be able to cause an earthquake. They would need accurate data on critically stressed points on the fault line, and perhaps on seismic windows, but that was obtainable. They had to have someone to interpret the data. And they needed some way to send shock waves through the earth. That would be the most difficult task, but it was not out of the question.

She had the unwelcome task of telling the governor’s aide that the whole thing was horrifyingly possible.

5

P
riest woke at first light on Thursday.

He generally woke early, all the year round. He never needed much sleep, unless he had been partying too hard, and that was rare now.

One more day
.

From the governor’s office there had been nothing but a maddening silence. They acted as if no threat had been made. So did the rest of the world, by and large. The Hammer of Eden was rarely mentioned in the news broadcasts Priest listened to on his car radio.

Only John Truth took them seriously. He kept taunting Governor Mike Robson in his daily radio show. Until yesterday, all the governor would say was that the FBI was investigating. But last night Truth had reported that the governor had promised a statement today.

That statement would decide everything. If it was conciliatory, and gave at least a hint that the governor would consider the demand, Priest would rejoice. But if the statement was unyielding, Priest would have to cause an earthquake.

He wondered if he really could.

Melanie sounded convincing when she talked about the fault line and what it would take to make it slip. But no one had ever tried this. Even she admitted she could not be one hundred percent sure it would work. What if it failed? What if it worked and they were caught?
What if it worked and they were killed in the earthquake—who would take care of the communards and the children?

He rolled over. Melanie’s head lay on the pillow beside him. He studied her face in repose. Her skin was very white, and her eyelashes were almost transparent. A strand of long ginger-colored hair fell across her cheek. He pulled the sheet back a little and looked at her breasts, heavy and soft. He contemplated waking her. Under the covers, he reached out and stroked her, running his hand across her belly and into the triangle of reddish hair below. She stirred, swallowed, then turned over and moved away.

He sat up. He was in the one-room house that had been his home for the last twenty-five years. As well as the bed, it had an old couch in front of the fireplace and a table in the corner with a fat yellow candle in a holder. There was no electric light.

In the early days of the commune, most people lived in cabins like this, and the kids all slept in a bunkhouse. But over the years some permanent couples had formed, and they had built bigger places with separate bedrooms for their children. Priest and Star had kept their own individual houses, but the trend was against them. It was best not to fight the inevitable: Priest had learned that from Star. Now there were six family homes as well as the original fifteen cabins. Right now the commune consisted of twenty-five adults and ten children, plus Melanie and Dusty. One cabin was empty.

This room was as familiar as his hand, but lately the well-known objects had taken on a new aura. For years his eye had passed over without registering them: the picture of Priest that Star had painted for his thirtieth birthday; the elaborately decorated hookah left behind by a French girl called Marie-Louise; the rickety shelf Flower had made in woodwork class; the fruit crate in which he kept his clothes. Now that he knew he might have to leave, each homely item looked special and wonderful, and it brought a lump to his throat to look at them. His room was like a photograph album in which every picture unchained a string of memories: the birth of Ringo; the day Smiler nearly drowned in the river; making love to twin sisters called Jane and Eliza; the warm, dry autumn of their first grape harvest; the taste of the ‘89 vintage.
When he looked around and thought of the people who wanted to take it all away from him, he was filled with a rage that burned inside him like vitriol in his belly.

He picked up a towel, stepped into his sandals, and went outside naked. His dog, Spirit, greeted him with a quiet snuffle. It was a clear, crisp morning, with patches of high cloud in the blue sky. The sun had not yet appeared over the mountains, and the valley was in shadow. No one else was about.

He walked downhill through the little village, and Spirit followed. Although the communal spirit was still strong, people had customized their homes with individual touches. One woman had planted the ground around her house with flowers and small shrubs: Priest had named her Garden in consequence. Dale and Poem, who were a couple, had let their children paint the outside walls, and the result was a colorful mess. A man called Slow, who was retarded, had built a crooked porch on which stood a wobbly homemade rocking chair.

Priest knew the place might not be beautiful to other eyes. The paths were muddy, the buildings were rickety, and the layout was haphazard. There was no zoning: the kids’ bunkhouse was right next to the wine barn, and the carpentry yard was in the midst of the cabins. The privies were moved every year, to no avail: no matter where they were sited, you could always smell them on a hot day. Yet everything about the place warmed his heart. And when he looked farther away and saw the forested hillsides soaring steeply from the gleaming river all the way to the blue peaks of the Sierra Nevada, he had a view that was so beautiful it hurt.

But now, every time he looked at it, the thought that he might lose it stabbed him like a knife.

Beside the river, a wooden box on a boulder held soap, cheap razors, and a hand mirror. He lathered his face and shaved, then stepped into the cold stream and washed all over. He dried himself briskly on the coarse towel.

There was no piped water here. In winter, when it was too cold to bathe in the river, they had a communal bath night twice a week and
heated great barrels of water in the cookhouse to wash one another: it was quite sexy. But in summer only babies had warm water.