Tarnished Image (7 page)

Osborn spun in his chair and began typing. Seconds later text appeared on the screen. “This computer is constantly online with the Internet. I use a service that screens certain news for me. Associated Press usually has the first word on such things. That’s what this is.” He pointed at the screen. “Not much information, but it confirms what you just said. Let me get my team on it right now.”

“I’m going up to communications. I want to know what’s going on. Let me know when you have something.”

Without waiting for a reply, David exited the office, taking the sickness of fear with him.

The room was dark, which was just the way Archer Matthews preferred it. Expensive miniblinds were drawn closed, blocking out the light of day. The gentle glow of a large computer monitor struggled to push back the mantle of darkness that cloaked the room; the pale light shone on the drawn face of Archer as he meticulously and adroitly manipulated the
pencil-like pointing device that he held in his right hand. As he moved the device along its vinyl pad, the action was repeated electronically on the screen. Drag, click, click, drag. He had performed the act countless times that day, the day before, and weeks before that.

Setting the device down, Archer leaned back in his chair and rubbed his bleary blue eyes. He had the look of a weary traveler—pale skin, thin frame, and blond-brown hair that hung in his eyes. He also had a brooding, volatile countenance that others tolerated only because of his skill at the computer.

The dull pain of a headache began to tighten on his temples, and his back was strained from sitting in his high-back leather chair for hours. He was weary, not just because of the work, but because of the Problem. The Problem. His Secret. The ever-present It. Only a few were privy to the concealment. He refused to talk about It and only barely acknowledged Its existence. Yet despite his efforts to ignore It, It refused to ignore him.

A new weariness embraced him, not one that came from long hours at tedious, sedentary, mind-numbing work, but one that came from a body at war with itself. How long had it been? More important, how long would it be? Still there was hope, and that hope lived and breathed because of the work he was now doing.

The phone rang, jarring Archer’s mind and dragging him from his introspection. The sudden sound frightened him at first, then the fright gave way to heated annoyance.

“What?” he said, snapping up the receiver. He listened intently for a moment. “First set went out this morning. I still have work to do on this piece, not that we need it. I don’t
understand—” Again he listened, his mouth drawn tight in frustration at being cut short by the caller. “Understood. I’ll be done by morning.”

Angrily he hung up the phone, sighed heavily, rubbed the back of his tense neck, and resumed his work.

His head still hurt.

His back still ached.

And, worse, his conscience still haunted him.

T
HE
TENSION
IN
THE
CONFERENCE
ROOM
WAS
TANGIBLE
,
PALPABLE
, as though it had a life of its own. David sat stone-still as he listened to Osborn Scott, who once again stood before the assembled RRT. The large screen behind him was blank.

“Here’s what we have so far,” Osborn was saying. “A little less than four hours ago a substantial earthquake took place on the floor of the Indian Ocean. Early readings from the various seismic stations in the area indicate a quake in the neighborhood of a magnitude 8.8. That will likely change a little after more detailed analysis, but not significantly. There is some confusion and much speculation since the quake occurred in a normally stable area of the Indo-Australian plate. These things normally occur along subduction boundaries in the Pacific Ocean where there is greater seismic and volcanic activity.”

“What is subduction?” Kristen asked.

“The earth is covered with a semirigid crust called the lithosphere. This crust floats on a molten mantle of liquid rock and is broken up into a number of geologic plates. These plates are constantly moving, albeit slowly. Where these tectonic plates meet, one of several things can happen. First, they can push together to form an undersea ridge—a mountain range. Or, second, they might move away from each other,
allowing the mantle below to rise and create new crust. Third, they can slip by each other in a lateral movement, or, fourth, one plate may subduct, that is, have its leading edge pushed down and under an adjoining plate. Sometimes this happens slowly, others times quickly. Anytime there is a sudden movement there is an earthquake.”

“But this didn’t happen at a plate boundary?” David asked.

“No. It was fairly close to the center of the plate. There have been a few earthquakes in the center, but not many. This is surprising. If I were a betting man, I would have wagered against such a thing happening at that location. Nevertheless, it did. That’s one thing about science: You can be surprised at any time.”

“So this earthquake caused the tidal wave?” Kristen inquired.

“Tidal wave is the wrong word. The wave that struck the coastal regions of the Bay of Bengal had nothing to do with the tides. It was the result of a sudden seismic occurrence. The accurate term is
tsunami.
It’s a Japanese word that means ‘harbor wave.’ But to answer your question, yes, the earthquake caused the tsunami.”

Osborn paused for a second. “Let me explain. Imagine an area of ocean floor. Above it is several miles of heavy seawater. Think of it as a column of water over the seabed. Have you all got the picture in your mind?” Ten heads in the room nodded. “OK, here’s what probably happened in the Indian Ocean. Centuries of stress fractures a piece of the crust, hundreds of miles long, and thrusts it upward twenty or thirty feet. Now what happens to that column of water above it?”

“It has to move too,” Kristen offered.

“Exactly, but here’s the kicker. Water can’t be compressed. So when this massive sliver of crust is pushed up, it pushes up all that water above it. In this case, over twenty-one thousand feet of water was suddenly pushed upward. Immediately after that, the ocean surface seeks its own level. Gravity insists on that. That sudden rise and fall of the ocean over the earthquake causes a wave, and that wave moves out away from its point of origin in a circle, like what you’d see if you threw a pebble into a pond.”

“How big is this wave?” Bob Connick, the CFO, asked.

“At sea, about three feet high.”

The room filled with incredulous murmuring. “Three feet?” Connick objected. “That’s not big enough to capsize a rowboat.”

Osborn shook his head. “We need to forget images from movies like
The Poseidon Adventure.
Don’t let that fool you. It’s true that if we were on a cruise in the Indian Ocean and a tsunami came by we wouldn’t notice it. It wouldn’t even spill the drink in your glass. Ships at sea seldom notice a tsunami. That’s because the ocean is so deep that the wave travels below the surface with only a slight bulge above. The danger occurs when the massive wave hits shallow water.” He held up his forearm to simulate a wave and slowly moved it in front of his body. “The wave continues on, sometimes altered by undersea geography, until it reaches shallow water. In the deep ocean the wave can move at jetliner speeds—upward of five hundred miles an hour.”

“Five hundred miles an hour?” Kristen said with disbelief.

“Yes, and unlike waves you see at the beach, a tsunami can cross an ocean in a few hours, hit a continental shelf, and bounce back across the ocean. In 1960, for example, a
tsunami created by an earthquake off Chile reverberated through the Pacific for over a week.”

“So what happens when it hits shore?” David asked.

Again, Osborn raised his forearm vertical. “The bottom of the wave strikes the shallow seafloor. This does two things. First, it slows the bottom of the wave.” He tilted his arm so that his palm moved forward while his elbow remained fixed. “This slows the wave considerably. Instead of racing through the ocean at several hundred miles an hour, it slows to freeway speeds. Second, the wave, which has been hidden below the surface, now begins to rise. By the time it hits land it can be between fifteen feet and two hundred feet in height.”

There was silence. David tried to imagine a wall of water two hundred feet tall. His mind flashed back to yesterday’s beach trip with Timmy. He could see Timmy frolicking in the surf. In his mind one of those waves rose high above the beach before crashing down like the collapsing wall of a brick building. The vision made David shudder.

The phone next to David rang. It was his administrative aide, Ava. “Yes. Thanks, Ava.” David hung up the phone and picked up a remote that was near the head of the table. He pointed it at the large screen and pressed a button. The blank screen was replaced with the live image of a middle-aged man in a suit seated behind a news desk. They were seeing a CNN newscast. David turned up the volume.

“… undetermined number of dead and leaving tens of thousands homeless. This highly populated coast was devastated by the first tsunami and suffered even more damage with the second …”

David shot a puzzled look at Osborn. “Two waves?”

“I’ll explain in a minute.”

The anchorman continued, “… reports are being received from the East Coast of India to the West Coast of Burma. Hardest hit was the low-lying region of Bangladesh. Scientists are stating that this may be one of the largest tsunamis on record. The video footage you are about to see was taken by a tourist flying over the wave just before it struck shore. The tourist, Julius Higgins, and his wife were vacationing in India and had been on a return flight from the Andaman Islands aboard a small charter plane.”

The image of the anchorman was replaced by the uneven video picture of open ocean. The muted voices of the travelers could be heard. The picture was startling: A white band of churning water was moving quickly across the blue ocean surface.

“Amazing,” David said.

The conference room was plunged into silence as the dramatic image unfolded. Even from the air, the growing size of the wave could be appreciated. The band of white became a swollen, green wall of water. The camera had stayed fixed on the enigma as it crashed on shore. Ocean spray shot skyward, and buildings twisted unnaturally until they fell in chunks into the boiling flood. Cars tumbled, and debris, propelled by the immeasurable force of the wave, shot through the air like shrapnel from a bomb. Minutes later the inundation began to withdraw to the sea in deadly swirls and eddies of flotsam and bodies. The flooded streets emptied as if a giant plug had been pulled somewhere offshore. So rapid was the watery withdrawal that floating debris whipped around like the blades of a blender. The retraction of the surge was as hideous as its advance.

The anchorman reappeared on the screen. He looked
shell-shocked. “As you can see, great destruction was left in the wake of the wave. Early reports state that Cox’s Bazar, a resort community in Bangladesh, was destroyed utterly. We will have more on this as new information is made available.”

David clicked off the screen and, like the others, sat in stunned silence. Osborn was the first to speak.

“I have made the study of catastrophe my life’s work, but I have never seen anything like that.”

“How extensive is the damage?” David asked.

“Too early to tell,” Osborn answered. “It will be a few more hours before we know with any certainty.”

“What’s this about a second wave?” David felt sick.

“Remember when I said that the wave goes out from the seismic event like ripples from a stone tossed into a pond? Well, the pebble causes more than one ripple. Tsunamis work the same way. The wavelength—the distance between the waves—can be about six hundred miles. That means that the second wave would strike a little over an hour later. That wave is less intense, as are subsequent waves after that. The initial tsunami does most of the damage, but the second wave is a killer too. The locals see that the water has receded and return to the shore area to retrieve their belongings and look for lost loved ones. By the time they realize that a second wave is on the way, it’s too late.”

David rubbed the back of his neck and sighed. Turning his chair he faced the RRT members. “It’s time to get to work,” he said. Of Gail Chen, the quiet, intense department head of communications, he asked, “Any word of our workers?”

“We had two works going on in the affected area,” she replied, brushing away her straight black hair from her brown skin, “one in Vishakhapatnam, India, and another in an
orphanage outside Cox’s Bazar. We have been unable to connect with either one. We have some people in Calcutta who are trying to make physical contact, but that is going to be difficult because of the destruction and chaos.”

Gail Chen didn’t say it, but everyone understood her intent: There was a good chance that Barringston Relief staff had died in the catastrophe.

David already knew the answer, but he asked the question for those who didn’t. “How many of our people were … are in the damaged area?”