The Rising Sea

47

Gamay found she couldn’t sleep. There was too much to worry about, too much she couldn’t control.

Paul, on the other hand, was stretched out on the floor of the INN production van and slumbering as if he were in a king-sized bed at the Four Seasons.

Gamay found she had an almost uncontrollable urge to wake him. She left him alone and took a seat at the editing station instead. It was three o’clock in the morning. The air had grown cold and damp in the van. It was still pitch-dark outside except for the security lights in the gated parking area.

Unwilling to risk a hotel, as the van had been their accommodations for the evening. But it wasn’t a long-term solution. Even if the Chinese didn’t figure out where they were, sooner or later someone from the network would attempt to use the van or fuel it or perform some maintenance on it.

And even if none of those possibilities came to fruition, Gamay was certain that both of them would go stir-crazy before too long.

Staring out into the darkness, she noticed movement. This time, she jabbed Paul in the ribs without hesitation.

“What’s that for?” Paul said, awaking with a start.

“Someone’s coming.”

“Who?”

“I couldn’t see.”

“Was it a security guard?”

Gamay shot him a look. “What part of ‘I couldn’t see’ made you ask that second question?”

“Sorry,” he replied. “Half asleep.”

He rolled up the blanket and pushed it beneath an equipment locker and stood, banging his head against the low ceiling for the umpteenth time. “Now I’m awake,” he said, stifling any expression of pain or anger.

Peering out through the front window, they scanned the lot for any sign of someone moving around in the darkness. They saw nothing.

A knock on the back door startled them both.

Paul reached for the door.

“Paul,” Gamay whispered in warning.

“What are we going to do?” he said, shrugging. “Besides, something tells me the secret police don’t knock.”

He flicked the lever to the unlocked position and the door swung wide. Instead of policemen or military personnel, the smiling, perfectly made-up face of Melanie Anderson appeared beyond.

She climbed inside and shut the door.

“Why did you knock?”

“You know, Miss Manners and all that.”

“Your mom would be proud,” Paul replied with a smile.

She placed an insulated cup down in front of them. “I brought coffee. You’ll have to share this, but it would have looked odd if I’d brought three cups out to the van for myself.”

“If you knew how much Paul has been dying for a cup, I’d think you were trying to steal him away from me,” Gamay said.

Paul took the first sip and looked as if he’d just sampled waters from the Fountain of Youth. “Oh, that’s good,” he said, handing the cup to Gamay.

The aroma was enough for her, at the moment. She turned back to Melanie. “You said you were coming at first light. Unless my eyes are going, it’s not morning yet.”

“Not my fault,” Melanie said. “My bureau chief called and told me to come in early. He said we’d been hacked again and that it had something to do with my last report.”

“But you weren’t hacked,” Gamay said. “We made all that up.”

“Which caused no small amount of worry on my part, let me tell you.” She held up a zip drive. “When I got down here, the chief handed me this and walked away. Said he needed to make some hasty travel arrangements in case he had to leave China early. He suggested I seriously consider doing the same.”

“What’s on it?” Paul asked.

“Don’t know,” she told them. “It’s encrypted. But the hack was done stateside. Our New York office was breached; our satellite was compromised for two minutes and then returned to our control after transmitting the information on here. It was the same satellite we used to get your signal out. So I’m guessing it’s meant for the two of you. Care to take a look?”

Gamay took the zip drive from Melanie’s hand, stuck it in the slot on the laptop and powered up. A few moments later, she was looking at a log-in window. She used her NUMA password and was rewarded with a list of files.

“It’s from Rudi,” she said, opening the first file. A presentation began on-screen.

Paul was incredulous. “He sent a PowerPoint presentation? Instead of fake passports, disguises and tickets for the Orient Express?”

Gamay laughed. “You know that train doesn’t come this far east, right?”

“I was being facetious.”

Gamay read through the first page of the file. “Sounds like Priya has been working with the geology team in your absence. They’ve been studying what we sent them and they believe they’ve figured out where the water is coming from. Han’s mining operation created a deep-earth fissure, releasing water from beneath the transition zone.”

Paul leaned forward. “That’s two hundred miles down.”

“Water under intense pressure,” Gamay said, reading and summarizing. “Z-waves caused by the water being released from a mineral known as… ringwoodite.”

“Ringwoodite?” Paul said.

“Did I say that correctly?”

“Perfectly. It’s just…” He hesitated. “Read on.”

Gamay gave Paul a sideways look. He was holding back. But instead of prodding him to spill what he knew, she scanned the next few lines, again summarizing as she went. “Attached you’ll find our evidence and calculations, along with two separate presentations to use. One is highly technical, the other is done in generalities. Due to the vast amount of ringwoodite and the nature of the ongoing fractures, total hydraulic release cannot be calculated at this time. But if left unchecked, it would likely result in a seawater rise of two thousand feet by end of decade.”

“Two thousand feet?” This from Melanie.

Gamay double-checked to make sure she’d read it correctly. “That’s what it says.”

“Read on,” Paul said calmly.

“Other calculations become speculative,” she said, picking up where she’d left off. “Including a theoretical doomsday scenario, according to which the entire surface of the planet is covered in water within fifty years. Despite the extreme nature of this scenario, the possibility cannot be ruled out. For reasons that remain undetermined, the fractures of ringwoodite seem to be self-perpetuating and accelerating. Branching in all directions and spreading. Each new fracture releases more water. Which, in turn, causes additional fractures.”

The three of them were crowded around the computer now.

“And I thought I was the one who came up with crazy stuff,” Mel said. “Doomsday scenario? Entire world covered with water?”

“I know it sounds irrational,” Paul said, “but if the water is coming from that far down, it could be a real possibility. Believe it or not, there’s more water trapped in the deep layers of rock than in all the oceans of the Earth. Three or four times as much. It’s trapped in the minerals and held under incredible pressure. But if that pressure was released and the water began forcing its way to the surface…”

“You know about this?” Gamay said.

“Of course,” Paul said. “It’s deep-earth geology.”

“Why didn’t you bring it up when we were first exploring the rise in sea level?”

Paul shrugged. “I considered it early on but ruled it out as a possibility. The only process known to bring water up from that depth is a large magma plume, followed by volcanic eruptions. And volcanic activity was down for the past year.”

Gamay turned her attention back to the data put together by the science team. A graphic showed the fissures created by the Chinese mining operation. “The crustal fractures extend downward beyond any existing measurement. They appear to be branching in all directions.”

“That’s where that field of geysers came from,” Paul said. “We couldn’t see to the end of the field. Who knows how many there are. Hundreds, maybe thousands. All pumping water up from the depths.”

Gamay had overcome the shock of discovery and was quickly flipping through the other files.

“What are you looking for?” Paul asked.

“Anything that mentions getting us out of here.” She came to a file labeled Instructions. “Rudi has given us an address to proceed to.”

“Safe house?” Paul asked hopefully.

Gamay typed the location into the computer. “Not sure.”

Melanie leaned over to look at the map. “That’s not a safe house,” she said. “That’s the Shanghai bureau of the Ministry for State Security. Local headquarters of the secret police.”

Paul leaned back. “And I thought Rudi was on our side.”

“Maybe he thinks it’s the last place anyone would look for you.”

“He’s not asking us to hide there,” Gamay told them, reading on. “He wants us to turn ourselves in. But only to a man named Zhang. Make that a general named Zhang.”

Paul sighed. “Well, that ought to speed up our trial and make it easy to get a firing squad together.”

“We have to trust Rudi on this,” Gamay said. “He’s obviously got something in mind.”

Paul nodded. “Can we borrow the van?”

Mel shook her head. “And lose my exclusive on the biggest story ever? Not on your life. You two share the coffee. I’ll drive.”