Last Gasp (44 page)

“Even with the beard,” Ruth smiled. “You’re not exactly unknown, are you? Best-selling author and TV celebrity. The cover of Time.” Foolishly he almost blushed. He couldn’t get used to fame. The Gavin Chase in the media wasn’t him—some other guy. “What are you doing in New York?” he asked her.

“I actually live and work here,” Ruth said. “Somebody has to.” She told him about Manhattan Emergency on Sixty-eighth Street and her research there. “I have just spent a frustrating and totally fruitless two hours with the medical attaché of the Chinese delegation. I heard that they’d introduced a new respiratory drug in China and I’ve been trying to get hold of a sample to test.” Her lips tightened. “Oh, they’re exceedingly polite—yes, madam, of course, madam, leave it to us, madam. That makes the third positive assurance in three months.”

“And still nothing?”

Ruth shook her head. “You know, we send them our new stuff
and
the formulas. Medicine shouldn’t have ideological barriers. For Christ’s sake we’re all living on the same planet—” She threw up her hands and tapped her heel on the marble floor. “Okay, Ruth, take it easy. I tend to get carried away, and will be one day, literally. So what are you doing here?”

It was Chase’s turn to shake his head. “If only I knew,” he said. “I’ve been summoned by the executive office of the secretary-general. Beyond that—” He shrugged.

“Madam Van Dorn herself?” Ruth’s mouth formed a silent O. “I wish I had that kind of clout. Put in a good word for me.”

Chase promised he would.

“If you’re staying in New York for a few days why don’t we have dinner one evening?” Ruth proposed.

“I’d like that. You can meet my son, Dan. Suppose I give you a call at the hospital and we can fix a date?”

“I’ll look forward to it. Don’t keep the lady waiting!” Ruth called out and was gone with a wave in the surging tide of people.

It transpired that Chase, and not the lady, was kept waiting.

He sat in an outer office on the twenty-second floor browsing through a stack of glossy UN pamphlets that ranged from famine relief in Indochina to the annual report of the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics.

Through the high narrow windows the sun was a drab orangy smear, seen diffusely through the murky haze that lay upon the city to a height of two thousand feet. Even at this hour there was hardly any natural daylight: The lights in the offices were kept burning all day long. It was eerily like being underwater, submerged in a viscous ocean.

When the secretary-general did appear, emerging from her office to greet him, she was far more striking in the flesh than as purveyed by the media. She wore a royal-blue silk blouse cut diagonally at the throat and a long pale-cream skirt with a scalloped hem. Her silvery-blond hair was parted at the side and brushed back in a burnished curve that effectively gave prominence to her strong bone structure and widely spaced blue eyes. With spiky high-heeled shoes and an erect bearing, Ingrid Van Dorn was only fractionally shorter than Chase; a stunningly impressive female.

She led him through into a large softly lit room that was more like a luxury apartment than an office—except there were no windows. “In case of rocket attacks,” Ingrid Van Dorn explained casually. “And there isn’t anything to see, is there? One might as well stare at a blank wall.”

Carpeted steps led down to a circular depression in which fat armchairs and two squat sofas were grouped around a low chrome-and-glass table. In the center of the table a large ceramic sculpture posed in frozen animation. It might have been a surrealist horse or man’s soul yearning toward a loftier plane. Chase ran out of inspiration after those two stabs.

Ingrid Van Dorn introduced Senator Prothero, who uncoiled from an armchair, dwarfing Chase by five or six inches. Deeply tanned and beautifully dressed, Prothero had a full head of hair streaked with gray that might have been trimmed and razored not five minutes ago. Thick horn-rimmed glasses lent him an air of thoughtful academic or earnest newscaster.

A secretary appeared, poured fragrant coffee from a silver pot, and silently glided away. Whatever this was all about, it had better be worth it, Chase thought. Worth breaking an itinerary planned months in advance, not to mention a three-thousand-mile flight. He sipped the delicious coffee and waited.

Prothero took time adjusting the crease in his trousers before crossing his long legs. He remarked pleasantly, as if discussing some tidbit of gossip that had reached his ears, “The president, the entire administration, and the Pentagon are, right this minute, making arrangements to leave Washington and set up the seat of government elsewhere. Does that alarm you, Dr. Chase?”

“My alarm threshold is pretty high. It has been for the past twenty years. I’m surprised it’s taken them so long to wake up to what’s happening.”

The glance between Prothero and Ingrid Van Dorn was laden with coded information. Chase didn’t bother trying to decipher it; he was curious, intrigued, and restive all at once.

Prothero said, “It’s our belief that the government is abandoning its federal responsibility. Instead of facing the situation and tackling it—and being open and honest about what’s really happening—they’re moving their fat hides as quickly as possible to a place of safety. All they’ve done up to now is to declare six states Official Devastated Areas and send in the National Guard to shoot looters. As a member of the Senate I find that reprehensible and pathetic beyond words. Both of us—Madam Van Dorn and myself—believe it is time for independent action. Above all else we need practical solutions and not empty rhetoric.” Prothero clasped his long brown hands and rested his chin on his extended index fingers; this was the musing academic. “You’ll be familiar, Dr. Chase, with the legislation we’ve tried to push through in recent years—and, I hardly need add, failed on nearly every count. Too many vested interests. Commerce and industry closing ranks and screaming “regressive” at the tops of their voices. Anything we’ve managed to push through—and precious damn little it’s been—is merely a sop to the environmentalists. And anyway doesn’t make one iota of difference because the government turns a blind eye to breaches of federal law and point-blank refuses to enforce it.”

Chase had been slow. Kenneth J. Prothero was for years chief administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency until it became moribund. He remembered Prothero had been highly active: speeches, articles, campaigning for radical change in government attitudes.

“So what happens?” Prothero said, spreading his hands. “Everybody sees the problem as being somebody else’s, and so it ends up being nobody’s.”

“You tried to make it everyone’s concern when you were with the EPA,” said Chase. “It didn’t come off.”

“Made me damned unpopular into the bargain,” Prothero said with feeling. “You wouldn’t believe the crank calls, the hate mail, the abuse, the threats. Anyone would think I was trying to destroy the environment, not save it.”

Chase smiled grimly. “I know. People get the strange notion you’re somehow personally to blame. If only you’d shut up the threat would go away.”

“Of course, you get all that crap too.” The eyes behind the thick lenses softened a little, as if the shared experience had forged a common bond between them. “Well, that probably makes it easier for you to understand our feeling, Dr. Chase. As concerned citizens we have to act—independently of government—and try to find a way out of this mess. We have no choice, because if
somebody
doesn’t we might just as well walk out onto the street down there, take a couple of deep breaths, lie down in the gutter, and wait for the meat wagon.”

“You have a son, Daniel, sixteen,” said Ingrid Van Dorn. She was watching him closely. When Chase looked at her without responding, her lips twitched in a smile. “We have investigated you in depth, Dr. Chase. Background, career, family, everything. We had to.”

Chase continued to look at her steadily. “What has my son to do with this?”

“I mention him simply to make the point that the only hope of survival for future generations is if people like us are prepared to take upon ourselves the responsibility that the governments of the world have abdicated. It is we who must act.”

This sounded to Chase like part of a speech she had prepared for the General Assembly. It began to dawn on him that all this, including the informal atmosphere, had been deliberately engineered. His being here was the culmination of a long process whose aim was to achieve ... what?

“We greatly admire the work you’ve been doing,” Prothero told him. “Earth Foundation is a most laudable concept. However, we don’t believe it can provide the solution to the problem. What’s needed is a concerted effort by a group of dedicated specialists—scientists, ecologists, engineers—and yes, even though the coinage has been debased, politicians too. People with a common goal who will do what must be done.”

“Are you planning a world revolution?” Chase said. “Or is it something simple like overthrowing the government of the United States?”

“This isn’t a joking matter,” Ingrid Van Dorn rebuked him, showing more of the Nordic iceberg that resided below the surface.

“It isn’t? Then let me get this straight.” Chase raised two fingers to point to them both. “You’re proposing that a group of private individuals—specialists in their own fields—should band together to halt the slide toward ecological disaster that all the world’s governments are unable or unwilling to achieve. Is that it? Have I got it right?” The skepticism in his voice was thinly veiled.

Prothero nodded gravely. “It’s possible, Dr. Chase. It can be done.”

“How?”

“You’re the scientist, you tell us. Surely it isn’t beyond the wit of man to devise the means of saving this planet from extinction? The misuse of technology has brought us to this state; therefore technology, properly applied, can rescue us. You must believe that.”

Chase had heard, and debated, this argument many times before. He said curtly, “There’s no ‘must’ about it, Senator. Maybe it can, but there’s the very real possibility that it can’t. It could be too late.” Prothero plucked at his crisp white cuffs through force of habit. “Then we shall all perish,” he said calmly. “If what you say is true. But I believe, quite passionately, Dr. Chase, that we at least have to try. We have to find a solution.”

“A scientific solution.”

“Yes.”

“Without government aid.”

Prothero nodded, his long tanned face stiff and without expression. Chase was silent. Was this any more crazy than what was already happening to the world? In the face of governmental inertia and political funk it was clear that
something
had to be done. For if nothing was done, what was the alternative? He said quietly, “Have you the remotest idea of the cost of such an undertaking? The top line is a hundred million dollars, and I could go on adding noughts until you got dizzy. Have you considered that?”

“Funding is available.” Ingrid Van Dorn smoothed her skirt and laced her slender white fingers around a blemishless knee. “We have obtained pledges and offers of support from wealthy individuals, trusts, and organizations. Money is not the problem.”

“Then what is?”

“You’re a scientist,” Prothero said. “You have proved organizational ability. More important, from our point of view, you are known and respected and have an international standing. You could find and recruit the right people. They’ll listen to you.”

“You want me to head this thing?”

They looked at him without answering.

As for Chase, he could only gaze unseeingly at the sculptured horse/soul in the center of the table, bathed in the room’s discreet light. Did this preposterous scheme have a chance of succeeding?

“You do realize why it would be a serious mistake to make this public knowledge,” Ingrid Van Dorn said. “The United States government would not look kindly on an independent research project on its own soil. For that reason we must proceed cautiously and in the utmost secrecy. For obvious reasons, neither the senator nor myself can be involved because of our roles as prominent public servants.”

“Very properly you raised the matter of funding,” Prothero said. “One of the biggest items of expenditure will be a research base large enough to accommodate several hundred personnel and all the necessary facilities. Also it will have to be isolated, hidden away somewhere. That’s a pretty formidable specification,” Prothero said, though he was smiling. “It so happens we already have such a facility, courtesy of the Defense Department.”

“They’re going to rent it out by the month?” Chase said tartly.

“No, it’s entirely free of charge. The Desert Range Station at Wah Wah Springs in southwestern Utah. It’s part of the MX missile silo complex that was abandoned a number of years ago when the Defense Department decided to phase out nuclear weapons in favor of the environmental war strategy. The total MX program came to eighty-six billion dollars, but it was outmoded before it was even completed. They left behind workshops, maintenance bays, living quarters, and plenty of room for laboratories and other facilities. What’s more, the entire installation is buried under millions of tons of reinforced concrete in the middle of the Utah desert. The nearest town of any size is nearly a hundred miles away.”

“You say it was abandoned, but wouldn’t they leave a small military unit behind to keep guard?”

“As a representative of a Senate committee I toured the area in 1997,” Prothero said. “It’s an empty shell. There isn’t a soul there.”

Ingrid Van Dorn said, “We’ve mentioned the need for secrecy, and I’m sure you appreciate the necessity. But there’s another reason, one that might not have occurred to you.”

“Which is?”

“You’ve heard of what the media call pyro-assassinations.”

Chase nodded. “There was another in Paris last week. Claude Lautner.”

“Lautner was an undersecretary in the French government with special responsibility for environmental matters. He was involved in negotiating the nine-nation Mediterranean Treaty to ban effluent discharge. The Treaty was to have been signed next month. The talks have now broken down.”