The Rising Sea

7

Each member of the NUMA team endured a search no worse than a vigorous TSA pat-down. The only real difference was the use of a bulky device held up by two of Kenzo’s followers and slowly passed up and down the front and back of each guest’s body.

During his turn, Kurt felt nothing from it and saw no sign of it displaying anything in particular. But the heavy weight, thick wires and single red light on the device indicated its purpose. “Electromagnet?”

“Correct,” Kenzo said. “Battery-powered and manually operated. Strong enough to erase the programming and memory of any electronic device you may have concealed on, or within, your body.”

After his watch was subject to similar treatment and then handed back to him, Kurt slid it back on his wrist. “What makes you think we’re interested in recording you?”

“You work for the American government,” he said. “A close ally of the politicians in Tokyo. And they, through various agencies, have been persecuting my followers and me for years.”

“I assure you,” Kurt said, “that’s not why we’re here. In fact, why don’t I let American Paul explain?”

Paul moved forward. “We’re only interested in your study of the Z-waves and the earthquakes that no one else has found.”

“As your telegram said,” Kenzo replied. “But why? So far, my claims have been scoffed at. If the Z-waves can’t be detected by modern means, they must be irrelevant to modern discussion. Is that not correct?”

“We think they might be relevant to something else,” Paul said. “A rise in the nominal sea levels that began a year ago and recently accelerated.”

“I began detecting the Z-waves just over eleven months ago,” Kenzo said.

Gamay cut to the chase. “And how do you do that? I mean, if you don’t use technology…”

Kenzo stared at her. “That’s the big question, isn’t it? You do realize there are other ways to detect such things beyond the use of computers. Animals, for instance, are very sensitive to earth tremors. As for machines, as far back as the first century a Chinese scholar named Zhang Heng developed a seismograph.”

Paul knew this. “Yes,” he replied. “An ingenious device. As I understand it, it used a large brass drum with eight sculpted lizards arranged around the sides. Each lizard had a ball loosely held in its mouth. When an earthquake shook the palace, the balls tumbled out. Whichever ball tumbled out first indicated the direction of the earthquake.”

“Precisely,” Kenzo said. “We have a replica I will show you later. You’ll see that lizards were actually Chinese dragons and the ball that tumbled out would be caught by the mouth of a bronze frog. You should not omit such details.”

“I told you we’d find dragons in here,” Joe said.

“Statues don’t count,” Kurt replied, before turning to Kenzo. “I hope we’re relying on more than brass drums and large-mouthed frogs here.”

“Come with me,” Kenzo said. “I’ll show you.”

Kenzo led them across the foyer and down a hall. Kurt noticed how Akiko never left his side — not like a servant, more like a bodyguard.

They passed through a courtyard and then along a parapet that ran above the water. The lake was like glass beneath the moonlight, and a dry moat could be seen between the outer wall and the castle.

Joe tapped Kurt excitedly on the shoulder. “What about those?” he said, pointing.

Kurt glanced down into the moat. He saw several Komodo dragons, prowling on their short, stubby legs. “How about that. There be dragons here.”

Joe grinned. “I’d like to see them eat.”

“Maybe later,” Kenzo said.

He led them over the moat on a small bridge and they entered a large open room. The décor was a strange mix of ancient Japanese and early industrial.

A glass atrium covered part of the ceiling and one entire wall. Copper fixtures and pipes ran along the opposite wall, disappearing behind bamboo panels. Red velvet couches occupied the center of the room, inviting them to sit by a warm fire that crackled in an old stone hearth. Cluttered all around were polished wooden tables, antique globes and strange examples of mechanical equipment replete with springs, levers and visible gears.

Some of the contraptions held weapons; others had valves and small pressure tanks attached to them, perhaps someone’s idea of ancient diving equipment. Still others were beyond understanding.

In one corner stood an old hand-cranked Gatling gun.

“Reminds me of an antiques store,” Gamay said.

Kurt had to grin. He enjoyed eccentricity and this place did not disappoint. “There’s a certain flavor to it, I must admit.”

Kenzo walked to the far wall and stopped in front of a large cabinet. “This is my detector,” he said.

He opened one of the stained-glass doors to reveal the workings, which included hundreds of thin and tightly strung wires. Glittering crystals were suspended in the wires like insects in a spider’s web. Each of them a different shape and size.

“As you probably know,” Kenzo explained, “quartz crystals vibrate when placed in an electrical field. These wires of gold are perfect electrical conductors. When the earthquakes occur, a great deal of mechanical energy is released. Some of it becomes electromagnetic. As that energy emanates outward from the Earth, it passes over the wires, which conduct the electrical charge to the crystal and create a harmonic vibration. That gives us the signal of the Z-wave. And since no one else is using such a design, no one else can detect them.”

“What’s this?” Joe asked from a few yards away.

Joe was a born wanderer, curious to a fault. He’d already stepped away from the bulky cabinet and was standing in front of a large wall map, complete with silver-leaf borders. Like everything else in the room, it was ancient-looking, in some ways, but had been marked with myriad lines that were drawn in modern red pen.

“Those are the courses each bank of Z-waves took,” Kenzo explained.

Paul accompanied Kenzo to where Joe stood. Kurt moved up beside Gamay, watching from a distance. It was clear who the skeptics in the group were.

Kenzo reached for a tarnished protractor. Using it as a pointer, he directed their attention to the long straight lines. “Each incoming wave was measured in strength and charted. They come from individual events, which I call ghost quakes since no one sees them but us. Unfortunately, I can only plot the direction they came from, not their precise location. But they propagated along these headings.”

“Why can’t you determine a location?” Gamay asked.

“It requires a second station,” Kenzo insisted. “Like intercepting a radio signal, one receiver can give you direction, but it requires two receivers and the crossed lines they create to get a fix.”

“So why not set up a second station?”

“We have,” Kenzo insisted, “but there have been no additional events in the week since I did so.”

Kurt whispered to Gamay, “Sounds like running out of film just as Bigfoot stumbles into your camp.”

“Amazing how often that happens,” she said.

“What about the numbers written beside each line?” Paul asked.

“Dates and strength indicators,” Kenzo insisted.

Unlike the American system of date notation, which went month/day/year, or the European system, which put the day first, the Japanese system placed the year first, then the month, then the day.

Once Kurt had accounted for that, he was able to make sense of the map. If Kenzo was correct, the Z-waves had been doubling in frequency and intensity every ninety days.

Kenzo was explaining exactly that when a light began to flash beside the stained-glass door of his machine.

He rushed over to it as a soft tone began to emanate from inside the box. Several of the golden strings could be seen vibrating ever so slightly. A printer that looked like it was made from an old phonograph scratched out a two-dimensional shape of the waves.

“Another event,” Kenzo said excitedly. “With the secondary group. This is our chance to find the epicenter.”

He rushed to a large desk and grabbed a nickel-plated microphone that belonged in the booth of an old radio station. Kurt could imagine Walter Winchell using it to broadcast his news program: “Good evening, Mr. and Mrs. America, from border to border and coast to coast and all the ships at sea.”

After flicking several switches, Kenzo called out to someone.

“Ogata, this is Kenzo. Confirm you are receiving.” Letting go of the talk switch, he waited and then tried again. “Ogata, do you read? Are you picking up the event?”

Finally, an excited voice came back. “Yes, Master Kenzo. We’re picking it up now.”

“Do you have a direction?”

“Stand by. The signal is wavering.”

Kenzo looked up at his visitors. “This is what we’ve been waiting for. Your arrival is fortuitous.”

Very, Kurt thought.

Ogata’s voice returned over the speakers. “We calculate this as a level-three wave,” he said. “Bearing two-four-five degrees.”

“Stand by,” Kenzo said. He rushed back to his own machine and rotated it carefully, using a large brass lever. It turned smoothly on a pewter gimbal. “Two-six-zero,” he said, reading off the bearing marker.

Kenzo went to the map and placed the oversized protractor against it. From their current position at the castle, he marked a straight line running 260 degrees. It slashed down the length of Japan, crossed over Nagasaki and ran out into the ocean. Satisfied with this mark, he located Ogata’s position on another part of the island and then drew a line along the 245-degree bearing.

The lines crossed out in the East China Sea. The intersection was nowhere near the edge of the tectonic plate. As far as Kurt could tell, it was solidly up on the continental shelf, no more than a hundred miles from Shanghai.

Kenzo seemed just as surprised. With the mark in place, he rushed back to the large microphone. “Are you certain of those numbers? Please reconfirm.”

Ogata came back on the line. “Stand by for—”

He was interrupted by a stuttering noise.

“Was that—” Gamay said.

“Gunfire,” Kurt said, suddenly on alert.

“Ogata, are you reading me?” Kenzo transmitted. “Is everything okay?”

Thick static came first and then: “There are men coming up the hill. They’re carrying—”

Additional gunfire cut him off, but the line stayed open long enough to hear shouting and then some kind of explosion.

“Ogata?” Kenzo said, clutching the microphone tightly. “Ogata!”

His face went white, his hand began shaking. His stricken appearance told Kurt that this wasn’t part of the show.

As Kenzo waited for an answer, a deep, somber bell started ringing somewhere high in the castle. The sorrowful tone echoed repeatedly.

“What’s that?”

“Our alarm,” Kenzo said.

Glass shattered in the atrium behind them. Kurt spun and saw an object crashing through one of the windows and tumbling across the room toward them.