Polar Shift (44 page)

"Good news. I asked Yeager to scour the records of shipbuilders. I thought if we could figure out where the transmitter ships were built we might be able to track them down. But even Max drew a blank. Next I went after the dynamos. I thought they might be commercially made."

"The generators we saw aren't the kind of thing you'd pick up at your neighborhood electrical supply house."

"Only a few companies manufacture equipment that size," Zavala said. "I followed up on every one, checking their sales for the past three years. They all went to power companies except one order supposedly shipped to a factory in South America, which is owned by Gant's foundation. The same multinational company that owns the factory has a shipyard in Mississippi.
Seemed a funny combination of property for anyone to own, especially a nonprofit lobbying group."

"You're sure the foundation owns them?"

"Positive. I checked through the foundation's filings as a nonprofit. They own the shipyard through a straw company set up in Delaware. I had someone from NUMA follow up with a bogus story about retrofitting a big research vessel for us. The company itself is apparently legit. The management said they had just wrapped up a major retrofit job—they wouldn't go into details—and would be interested in making a bid."

"So the ships are still there?"

"They left several days ago. I accessed the NUMA satellite archives. Four ships left the boatyard last week."

"Four?"

"Three transmitter ships and what looks like a passenger liner. They seem to be headed toward South America."

Barrett had been silent since watching the computer simulation. "Thanks for your hard work, Joe. I'm feeling guilty as hell about all this. I can't stop thinking that this tragedy is my fault."

"Not at all," Karla said. "You could never know that your work would be used in a destructive way. It's no different than my grandfather. He was simply interested in pure science." Karla was shaking her head when a smile appeared on her face. "Topsy-Turvy," she said.

She laughed at the bewildered expressions around the table.

"It's the title of a bedtime poem my grandfather used to tell me. Not very good poetry, as I recall, but he said it was something that I would always have if I needed it." She scrunched her brow as she tried to remember the words.

Topsy-turvy,

Turvy-topsy,

The world stands on its head.

The sky's on fire,

The earth's afraid,

The ocean leaves its bed.

Her recitation was greeted by a deep silence, which Karla broke on her own.

"Dear God," she said. "I've just described auroras, earthquakes and tsunamis."

"A polar shift, in other words," Austin said. "Tell us more."

"I'll try. It's been a long time." She stared at the ceiling. "Each rhyme starts with the same topsy-turvy couplet, and then the verse itself changes. The next one goes, 'The key is in the door
,/
We'll turn the knob and hitch the latch,/To still the ocean's roar.' It goes on for several verses,
then
ends with my favorite one: 'Say good-bye to night. /All's well once more, /As Karla dreams
,/
For all the world is right.' "

Barrett whipped a ballpoint pen and notebook out of his pocket and slid them across to Karla. "Could you write down every verse?"

"Yes, but—" Karla seemed flustered. "Do you think all this gibberish
means
anything?"

"Just curious," Barrett said.

"We should follow any lead, no matter how seemingly frivolous," Austin said. He glanced at a wall clock. "I've got to get moving. We'll meet back here in a couple of hours."

He asked Zavala to talk to the Trouts and have them follow up on the transmitter ships,
then
turned to Karla. "I can give you that ride Austin offered to the hospital," he said.

"I'll see Uncle Karl later. If I go now, he'll demand that I help him escape from the hospital. I'd like to go with you to see Mr. Pitt," she said.

"I don't know," Austin said. "It might be safer if you stay out of sight."

"Maybe, but I don't feel like being stashed in a safe house. There's a good chance that whoever ordered my murder doesn't know that I'm still alive."

"I'd like to keep you that way."

"My grandfather's work started this nonsense. I owe it to him to stop his research from being perverted."

Seeing the determined jut to Karla's jaw, Austin knew that no argument he advanced would be able to sway her.

Fifteen minutes later, Austin and Karla were picking up a car from the motor pool in the NUMA garage. As Austin drove out of the garage exit to join the Washington traffic, he and Karla were observed from behind the one-way windows of a van crammed with the latest electronic listening and watching equipment. The letter on the van's door identified it as belonging to the Metropolitan Transit Authority.

Doyle sat inside the van puffing on a cigarette as he and a helper monitored several screens that showed the street scene around the NUMA building. Hidden cameras in the van and a similar vehicle parked outside NUMA's main pedestrian entrance recorded the face of everyone leaving the building and compared it to images in its database. The facial recognition system was capable of checking more than a thousand faces a second.

The monitor alarm buzzed.
The signal for a hit.
A picture of Austin behind the wheel of a turquoise Jeep Cherokee that had emerged from the garage was projected on one of the screens. Below Austin's face was a summary of personal data. Doyle's hard eyes gleamed with excitement.
Bingo!
He had just ordered his helper to get into the driver's seat and follow the Jeep when a second monitor buzzed. The picture of the attractive young woman who was a passenger in the Jeep filled the screen. The database identified her as Karla Janos.

Double bingo!

A smile came to Doyle's thin lips. He couldn't wait to see Gant's expression when he told him that Karla Janos was alive and well and consorting with the enemy. As the van pulled away from the curb and tailed the Jeep, Doyle called a motel in Alexandria where six Harley-Davidson motorcycles were parked. Minutes later, six men emerged from the motel, hopped on the motorcycles and roared off to rendezvous with Doyle.

36

Karla surveyed the men
in Confederate gray and Union blue who were crowding the suburban roads in their pickup trucks and SUVs.

"I must have been mistaken," she said. "I thought the Civil War was over."

"You
have
led a sheltered life," Austin said. "The War of Northern Aggression is still alive and well. Holler the name of Robert E. Lee out the window and you'll recruit enough Rebel volunteers to reenact the Battle of Gettysburg."

Austin followed the traffic to a parking lot adjoining a large open field of a dozen or so acres. After parking the NUMA car, they joined the throng of spectators and Civil War reenactors streaming toward the field. Signs along the way announced that the military demonstration and steam car parade were being held to raise money for the Friends of the Manassas National Battlefield.

Austin stopped a bearded man dressed in the butternut gray of an officer in Lee's army to ask directions.

"Stonewall Jackson at your service," the man said with a courtly bow.

"Nice to meet you, General.
You're looking well, considering. I wonder if you might know where the antique steam cars are gathered," Austin said.

Jackson squinted into the distance, tugging thoughtfully at his beard. "Technically speakin', cars weren't invented in 1861, so I don't know what you're talking about, suh. But if I did, I'd suggest that you might find what you're looking for near the Porta Pottis, which we didn't have back in my day."

"Thank you, General Jackson. Hope you enjoy the battle."

"My pleasure," he said, tipping his hat at Karla.

As she watched Jackson melt into the crowd, she said, "He really takes the part seriously, doesn't he?"

Austin smiled. "Manassas was the first big battle of the Civil War. The Feds thought they were going to walk over the Rebels. People even came down from Washington with their picnic baskets to watch the battle, pretty much the same as they're doing today. The Confederates caught the breaks that day, but the Union eventually rallied."

"Why aren't we at the actual battlefield?" Karla said.

"They tried a reenactment there some years ago. Things got kind of crazy, so they're holding it on private land."

Karla looked around. "I see what you mean about 'crazy.'"

Austin grinned.

"As old Stonewall might say, 'Save your blood. The South will
rise
again.' "

The six men
who pulled their motorcycles up to the parked van looked as if they had been cloned in a lab. They all wore goatees, and their widow's peaks had been trimmed to arrow-sharp points.

Lucifer's Legion was an extreme group of neo-anarchists who felt that violence in advancing their cause was not only justified but necessary. Like their wild-eyed, bomb-tossing predecessors, they were the fringe of the mostly nonviolent anarchist movement, which wanted nothing to do with them. They traveled from city to city on their motorcycles, leaving a trail of chaos in their wake.

When Margrave became part of the neo-anarchist movement, he enlisted the legion's help. He reasoned that since the Elites had the police, who were empowered to use physical force, and, in some situations, kill, he and his supporters should have a similar option. He bankrolled the legion, using them as his personal Praetorian Guard. He was amused at first when they grew beards and cut their hair to affect a satanic look that Margrave had come by naturally. After several anarchist protests they were involved in became unexpectedly bloody, he realized that they were out of control.

He kept them on the payroll but used them less and less. He had readily accepted Gant's recommendation that he hire the security company for day-to-day operations. Margrave was initially surprised when Gant suggested that he use the legion to kill Austin and Karla, but he accepted the argument that in case anything went wrong the authorities would think that this was a rogue gang acting on its own.

Margrave knew the legion's psychopathic tendencies better than Gant, which was why he had insisted that Doyle keep an eye on them. Doyle had removed the stick-on
metropolitan transit authority
letters from the van. When the motorcycles pulled up next to the vehicle, Doyle stepped out of the van and inspected the odd crew dismounting from their bikes with a friendly grin that masked his disdain.

Doyle was a cold-blooded murderer, but with their glassy-eyed stares, fixed smiles and quiet-spoken voices these guys gave him the creeps. He hoped Gant knew what he was doing. He had worked, reluctantly, with the group from time to time. His own deadly expressions of violence were controlled and calculated. He killed for business reasons: to remove a competitor; to silence an informant. The undisciplined behavior of Lucifer's Legion offended his sense of order.

He pointed at a turquoise Jeep in an adjacent row. "Austin and the woman are headed to the battlefield. We'll have to find them."

The legion's members seemed able to communicate with each other without speaking, moving in unison like a flock of birds or a school of fish. Acting like a unit, they fanned through the parking lot. They sighted a panel truck owned by a company called Gone with the Wind Costumes. A company employee was unloading a rack of period outfits for the more casual reenactors who didn't own their own uniforms. He found himself surrounded by six grinning clones. One clubbed him unconscious with a telescoping blackjack while the others used their bodies to screen the assault.

They shoved the unconscious man into the back of the truck and rummaged through the collection until they found what they wanted. They carried their loot back to Doyle's van and changed into the costumes. In a short time, the bikers dressed in jeans and T-shirts were gone. In their place were three Confederate and three Union soldiers. They tucked sawed-off shotguns in their belts, then got back on their motorcycles and spread out like hungry wolves in search of prey.

Doyle left the van and joined the flow of foot traffic. As he moved through the stream of spectators and costumed participants, he scanned the crowd like radar. Doyle had near-perfect vision that was a valuable asset for a hunter and his sharp eye picked out Austin's white hair. A second later, Doyle saw the attractive blond woman by Austin's side. Her face was the same one the computer in the van had identified as Karla Janos.

He unclipped a hand radio from his belt and sent a quick message to Lucifer's Legion.

Austin had
found the steamer cars. There were about twenty antique Stanleys lined up along the edge of the field. A middle-aged man with a clipboard in hand was moving along the line of cars.

"I'm looking for someone with a little authority," Austin said, purposely setting himself up for the old gag.

The man grinned. "I've got as little authority as anyone." He proffered his hand. "Doug Reilly. I'm president of the Virginia Stanley Steamer Club. What can I do for you?"