The Rising Sea

33

Kurt listened to the news about Paul and Gamay calmly. Rudi Gunn was blunt as he delivered it. There was no hand-wringing or pronouncements of mea culpa from either of them, nonetheless both felt the weight of responsibility.

“Can you get them home?” Kurt asked.

“I’m looking for an angle to exploit now,” Rudi said. “In the meantime, we’ve been analyzing the data. Even though the mounds in the video look like volcanoes, they’re not. They’re spewing nothing but water. No sulfur, no arsenic, no carbon, nothing that you’d expect to find from volcanic action. Only hot freshwater and minute amounts of trace elements.”

“How big are they?” Joe asked. “It’s hard to tell from the video.”

“According to the sonar data, the closest one is the size of a twenty-story building,” Rudi said. “We’re less certain of the others, but they appear similar in scale.”

“How much water are they venting?” Kurt asked. “Enough to cause what we’ve seen?”

“Based on a three-dimensional study of the geyser closest to the camera and an estimate of the velocity and volume of the ejected water, we’ve calculated a discharge rate of nearly half a million cubic feet per minute. To put that in perspective, ten of those jets are equal to Niagara Falls on a rainy day.”

“How many are there?” Joe asked.

“We don’t know,” Rudi admitted. “In the snippet of video Paul and Gamay sent, we counted about forty, but the time index on the recording shows that they’ve edited the video. It was originally much longer.”

“Just giving us the highlights,” Joe said.

“Seems that way,” Rudi admitted. “We’re pulling satellite data now, but the preliminary indication is a bulge of water forming in the East China Sea and flowing outward. It’s wreaking havoc with the standard currents. Under normal conditions, a large northbound current enters the area between Taiwan and Okinawa. That current has been deflected nearly due east and replaced with an outflow heading southward. The combined effect has unsettled the normal weather patterns, bringing fog to normally clear areas, storms to normally dry areas and early snow over parts of China.

“Outflows to the north are so large, we’re detecting salinity and temperature changes all the way up to the Bering Strait. The Sea of Japan is being desalinized so rapidly, in another month or two it will be little more than a freshwater lake.”

“Where is all this water coming from?”

“We’re trying to figure that out now,” Rudi said. “But to come up with any real answer — not to mention any hope of stopping this or at least estimating how bad it will get — we need to know exactly what the Chinese were doing down there. Which brings me to my next question: are you making any progress?”

Kurt explained the convoluted path they’d taken to get to Walter Han and the fact that he’d been unable to shake the man with a direct face-to-face confrontation. “We don’t have anything on him other than the word of a Yakuza underling trying to keep himself alive.”

“You may have more than you think,” Rudi said. “I’m looking through your report now. It says here that his company designs and manufactures robots.”

“That’s right,” Kurt said.

“I’m sending you a still shot from the video Paul and Gamay managed to transmit.”

Kurt glanced at the computer screen and waited. The link appeared and he clicked on it. There, in black and white, was the robotic arm, shoulder and cranium that the Remora’s cameras had recorded.

“Look familiar?” Rudi asked.

“Very familiar,” Kurt said. “Apparently, Joe’s future wife has a twin.”

“Had a twin,” Rudi corrected. “That robot is buried at the bottom of a canyon near the anomalies Paul and Gamay discovered.”

“What was it doing down there?”

“It appears they were doing some deepwater mining. There’s a great deal of additional wreckage down there, including a habitat that was crushed like a tin can.”

“Any idea what they were digging for?” Joe asked.

“Afraid not. But whatever it was, it had to be valuable. Our own experience proves that underwater mining is usually fifty to a hundred times as costly as ground-based extraction. In other words, even if they found a mother lode of platinum and gold down there, they’d be better off just leaving it there. It would cost more to pull out than it would be worth owning.”

“Then it has to be something worth more than gold.”

“The geology department is looking into it,” Rudi said. “But, right now, they’re stumped. There’s nothing they can come up with that would be worth the effort.”

“Something tells me the Chinese came to the same conclusion,” Joe said. “The place looks abandoned.”

“That’s true,” Rudi said. “Nothing on the video suggests an effort to rebuild.”

Kurt sat back. Something didn’t add up. He turned to Akiko. “When did Kenzo first discover the Z-waves and the tremors?”

“Almost a year ago,” she said, confirming what Kurt already knew.

He turned his attention back to Rudi. “You’ve got faster internet than we do, Rudi. Do us a favor. Look up CNR and find out when they incorporated.”

There was a brief delay before Rudi came back with the answer. “The partnership was announced eleven months ago.”

Kurt nodded. “And when did China suddenly reach out to Japan and start thawing out relations?”

“Also eleven months ago,” Rudi said. “In fact, the initial contacts coincide with CNR’s incorporation to the day.”

Kurt could see the outline of the answer, even if he couldn’t see what was at its center. “The Chinese wouldn’t go through all this trouble to cover up an abandoned mine or to save face from an operation that went awry. They’re hiding the truth because it’s an ongoing operation. One that has shifted from the bottom of the sea to the islands of Japan.”

“That’s a big leap,” Rudi said.

“I don’t think so,” Kurt said. “All the actors are here. Han and his robots. The Chinese diplomats. A warming trend in diplomatic relations between the two countries that’s proceeding at the pace of a bullet train. All pushed by the Chinese side after seven decades of demanding apologies and reparations for Japanese aggression in World War Two.”

“What are you suggesting?” Joe asked.

“Whatever they were looking for in that underwater canyon they now believe they can find here, in Japan or in Japanese waters. Han is an extension of the Chinese state. The warming trend is a cover under which to operate. CNR is the tool to be used when they find what they’re looking for.”

“Which is?”

“Impossible to know,” Kurt admitted.

“I’ll give your theory to the geology team,” Rudi promised. “Maybe they can round up a few possibilities. My primary concerns are getting Paul and Gamay back and figuring out what the Chinese stumbled onto down there and how to stop the flooding. And our only hope of achieving either goal is by putting the screws to Walter Han.”

“Understood,” Kurt said.

“I don’t care if our hides get hung out to dry,” Rudi added, “I want you to find out what he’s up to, even if you have to break into that factory and abduct him with your bare hands.”

“I don’t think you’ll have to go to such extremes,” Akiko announced.

Kurt turned. She had his phone in hand. A text was flashing on the screen.

“A message just popped up,” she explained. “Walter Han is inviting you to dinner.”