Watermind (28 page)

But Roman kept his eyes open. Standing next to Max
in the rocking boat, he analyzed mental spreadsheets, weighed his capital position and reviewed worse-case scenarios. He listened to Meir talking on the phone to Elaine. He listened to Godchaux muttering over a rosary. He listened to Vaarveen snore. Then he pivoted on one heel, opened his fly, and pissed into the river.

Near the opposite bank, CJ felt something very different from fear. As the morning grew more radiant, a potent stir of hormones buoyed her spirits and stirred her powers of rationalization. She felt ever more certain that she alone understood the colloid. A bright inquisitive child, unsure of his footing and often harassed by unexpected attacks—yes, she knew how that felt. Her infant colloid didn't realize he had killed Manuel de Silva. He didn't know what a human being was.

“Sa moving into the Port Allen Canal,” Max whispered into his hidden phone.

CJ rummaged quickly through her bag, overstuffed with candy bars, soda cans and electronic gear. Something clattered, her wooden castanets. She'd brought them for good luck. At last, she found her maps. “Okay, I see it.”

The Port Allen Canal linked the Mississippi to the Intracoastal Waterway—a shortcut to the Gulf that bypassed New Orleans. Its entrance bay was shaped like a champagne flute, and the slender neck led to the Port Allen Lock, a few hundred yards inland. The lock's massive gates and channels raised and lowered ships between the Waterway and the higher level of the river. Beyond the lock, the Intracoastal shipping channel ran as straight as a freeway, due South through the Atchafalaya Basin to the Gulf.

“
Djab dile
moving toward the lock,” Max whispered. “Sacony gonna trap it inside.”

CJ bent over the map, biting her finger. “How?”

“He asking the Corps of Engineers to close off the lock.”

“That's wrong.” Arguments bubbled up in her throat. The Intracoastal Waterway led into uninhabited swamplands,
the perfect learning ground for her prodigy. Why trap him here, near the city? Why not let him move through the lock into the wild wetlands? She wished she could tell Roman what she thought of his plan.

The search vessels moved deeper into the goblet-shaped bay, and where it narrowed to a neck, they dropped anchor. She had to admit the channelized neck was a good place for a trap.

A little later, Max said, “Sacony getting tripped up in his own lie. The Corps say, if this spill is harmless, why they have to close the lock?”

CJ heard Max's hostility, and she felt it, too. She wanted to shake Roman till his head wobbled. But Roman didn't need another jolt. He'd just received a call that the Brazilian banker had flown back to Rio. If Roman wanted his petroleum port in Fortaleza, he would have to pursue the banker to his own ground and beg. The necessary bribes would escalate. If only he had a deputy whom he could trust to send in his place. But there was no one.

He ran his hands through his loose wavy hair and tried to sort out priorities. Within five years, a new port in Fortaleza could increase Quimicron's revenues by 50 percent, and Roman needed that future cashflow to service his debt. On the other hand, this present risk could sink him.

Where was the yacht he'd ordered? The confines of the speedboat made him restless, and he scowled at the rippling brown river. It was like time and opportunity, shifting, formless, insubstantial, rushing every minute through his grasp. He hated it.

He opened his cell phone and keyed the number for Arturo Villanova, drug runner.

 

Thursday, March 17

6:29
AM

 

After numerous dead ends, Roman managed to track down Villanova on vacation in Barbados. The Panamanian drug dealer owned a legitimate company called NovaDam, a supplier of water-inflated barriers for use in dam construction. The huge, yellow carbon nanofiber bags were stronger than steel, impervious to acid, and much easier to transport than traditional dam structures. Pumped full of water, they weighed hundreds of tons and stood rigidly immovable. Villanova imported the bags from Germany and transported them by air to remote construction sites in Latin America, good cover for the other items he transported by air. Roman caught him having breakfast with his four young children.

“Arturo, I need a dam. This morning. In Baton Rouge. This afternoon is too late.”

Villanova laughed. “And how much are you willing to pay for this miracle?”

“Don't hold me up. You have eight bags in Matamoros, and I've chartered a sea plane.”

“But
amigo,
those bags are in use. What shall I tell my customer when his worksite floods?”

“Whatever you like, Arturo. Remember Nicaragua.”

“Ah yes, you always remind me.”

Although Villanova's German-made products were rock solid, his finances were sometimes a little soft. A few years back, he'd annoyed the wrong people in the Nicaraguan government, and they confiscated a shipload of his inventory. NovaDam would have gone under if Roman hadn't stepped in, crossed the right palms, and saved Arturo's assets. Since then, Roman had not failed to demand returns on his investment.

“Baton Rouge? You must send me some Hoppin' John.
My children love the white trash cooking.” Villanova had the husky caramel voice of a Spanish crooner.

Roman rinsed his mouth with bottled water, then spat over the gunwale. “The dam, Arturo. This morning.”

“Impossible, you know.”

“Deliver it to the Port Allen Canal. I'll show you where to install it.”

“Ah, you'll show me. That's beautiful.”

“Arturo, I need this. Do this for me, and we're even.”

“No, my friend. You'll be in my debt.”

In the speedboat, Roman shut his phone and slung it to the floor between his feet. He hated being obligated to a character like Villanova. He slumped forward and furiously counted the dials on the dashboard.

 

Thursday, March 17

7:00
AM

 

Chasseur
was the name lettered across the rented, forty-four-foot Cruisers motor yacht. She carried a satellite TV, full galley with eat-in dinette, flush toilet, shower, sleeping accommodations for six, and a swim platform. She also carried Elaine Guidry and a fully catered hot breakfast.

Peter wanted to eat, but first Yue made him set up a field lab in the galley while she assembled their equipment on the stern. Next, they dropped plastic pickle buckets on ropes over the side to draw water samples. In his lab, Peter munched a runny egg sandwich while he analyzed gallons of extraordinarily pure pollutant-free water through the SE scope. He found no working mote computers, but one bucket netted a clump of proplastid with a partial chain of microchips. The clump also contained a large concentration of mutant bacteria cells. Something had restructured their nuclei.

“More Quimi-chimeras,” he quipped. The genetically modified cells were churning out strange new nano-structures. He showed them to Yue. “No way can you call this coincidence.”

“Let me guess.” Yue folded her thin arms. “You believe our swamp creature communes with aquatic life.”

“Communes?” Peter snickered. “More like enslaves. Look at those.” His blunt fingertip hovered over the image of the bloated cells. Their pregnant chloroplasts looked ready to burst.

Yue huffed. “God knows what's in this river.”

Nearby on the
Refuerzo
, Creque and Spicer waited with their collar and pumps. As soon as the lock closed, the Corps expected them to deploy the collar and suck up the refrigerant spill, and Captain Ebbs had agreed to direct traffic. Only Roman's team knew the real plan—they would fire the EM pulse. Roman had ordered Creque to capture a sample if possible, but that was not his priority.

The
Chausseur
rocked and chuffed as a freight ship larger than a stadium slid by, throwing up dingy ochre wake. Its engine noise distorted the air and temporarily drowned out Spicer's radio program—he was listening to NPR. Yue read the ship's Chinese markings, and Max felt it block all light flowing through his porthole in the aft cabin.

He squeezed his phone tighter and cupped a hand over his ear. “Ceegie, you still with me?”

“Oh yeah, I'm playing shuffleboard on my lido deck.” Through binoculars, she saw Rory drop the yacht's anchor. That must mean they'd found the colloid again. The
Pilgrim
was anchoring, too.

“You could come onboard with us, Ceegie. There's pancakes. I know they wouldn't mind.”

“I'm doing an experiment. Call me later.”

Experiment? Max rose in his bunk and peered through the small round window, but there was little to see from his angle. He'd been ordered to sleep, so he lay down, closed his eyes and whispered to his
met tet
guardian spirit: “
Osun Moses Maria Maker of Breath, protégez-nous.”

CJ also whispered a prayer. “Harry, so help me, this better work.”

She squinted at the mixed-up readings from her field finder. Her muscles throbbed from the long confinement in the boat, and her eyes hurt. There were so many EM fields in the harbor, it was hard to pick one from another. Tense and alert, she steered out of her hiding place.

River traffic was dense and noisy. Fishing boats zipped behind thirty-barge tows, and monumental freighters cruised into dock with truck-size containers stacked up on their decks like children's blocks. She stuffed her hair under a faded Red Sox cap, put on a pair of sunglasses, and hoped that in the middle of so many diverse vessels, she might pass unnoticed.

She approached the
Chasseur
obliquely, aiming toward the bow, keeping out of sight of the
Pilgrim.
Luckily, no one was on deck to see her. The closer she came, the clearer the water sparkled. She dipped up handfuls and sniffed the clean fresh smell. “You're here,” she said, inwardly rippling with joy. Soon her field finder detected the faint outline of the blossom-shaped energy field. She recognized its shape like a familiar face. It was welling beneath the yacht. “You!”

She bit her finger to staunch the intensity of her excitement. Cutting off her engine, she let her boat drift under the
Chasseur
's upswept bow. Her Viper rode low in the water, so anyone on the larger craft would have to lean far out over the rail to see her hiding directly under the bowsprit. She hung a pair of fenders over her gunwale to avoid bumping, then tied off to the
Chasseur
's dripping anchor chain. Next she bungeed the Lubell speakers together and lowered them into the water on a ten-foot cord.

“How about a music lesson?” she whispered.

It was Max who thought to retrieve the Lubell speakers and box of CDs after CJ walked off in a pique. Max, the good knight. She rummaged through the dozens of disks till she found the simple keyboard melodies he'd
recorded. There were twelve in all, held together in a rubberband, and nestled among them was a folded piece of paper. She opened it and recognized Max's handwriting. He'd written down the titles in proper order.
“Sa progression,”
he said. The order was important. She slotted the first CD.

Trailing her fingers through the fresh sweet water, she pondered a riddle whose solution still eluded her. What was it about music that made the colloid respond?

Max's words came back to her. “Little children know. Even animals know.”

Well, it worked. That's what mattered. And if the small skein isolated in the lagoon could learn to compose a waltz, surely the full-fledged colloid would become a maestro.

She balanced Max's CD player on one knee and her field finder on the other. It took concentration to track the faint edges of the colloid's field drifting among so many noisy patterns. She had to keep a close eye on her instrument.

“Let's jam,” she whispered. Then she pushed the button marked “Play.”

 

Thursday, March 17

9:01
AM

 

Roman sat on the floor beside Yue's bunk, rocking on his haunches. The seaplane was coming, bringing the NovaDam bags to trap his enemy. Vaarveen was keeping watch. Soon, soon. Roman swallowed another red-and-black capsule and rocked back and forth. He hadn't rocked that way since his early youth, when his widowed mother locked him in a closet for skipping Mass. His mother didn't factor in his life anymore. Bitter and arthritic, she languished in
the old yellow house in Mar del Plata. Let her berate the ocean and clouds. He paid her expenses, that was enough. Still, as he sat on the
Chasseur
's mildewed carpet watching Yue sleep, he wasn't able to stop rocking.

Yue had collapsed and knocked her head against a monitor. The gash on her temple still seeped a little blood, and Roman knew he had pushed her too far. Like him, she'd been surviving on black-and-red capsules. He couldn't remember the last time she'd rested. Moments ago, when he had carried her down to the bunk, she felt like a sack of bird bones in his arms. He removed her shoes, then bathed her emaciated face with a cloth. She'd been beautiful once.

As he rocked to and fro beside her bed, he longed to rest his brow against the soft white edge of her mattress. But he feared the cotton batting was not solid enough to support the weight of his skull. If he pressed against it, he thought he might dissolve through the fiber and metal springs. His cohesion would fail, and he would enter a region of molecules, where his cellular atoms would swirl a billion courses through the void.

“
¿Qué
?”

He shook himself awake, got to his feet and climbed the dew-slick ladder to the deck. Someone had made coffee. Burnt sludge, he drank it anyway. Enlisting the help of the Coast Guard and the Corps of Engineers had taken all his energy. He loathed the taste of bureaucratic shit, but he'd eaten it. His tongue rolled around his sour unbrushed teeth, and he felt gritty inside. To gain cooperation from the
Anglo
authorities, he had divulged that the colloid might not be completely inert. His people didn't know enough about its properties to guarantee public safety, that's how he put it.