Zero Hour

“After a while, he came to believe there was a sinister reason for this, that his efforts were being thwarted by big shots in the nuclear industry, the oil companies, and other power brokers in your Energy Department. He claimed in an interview that your government had tapped his phone lines and bugged his home and his laboratory. An IRS investigation into his funding only added fuel to the fire.”

“Sounds like a persecution complex.”

“A CIA profile your government shared with us concluded exactly that. He’s a paranoid bugger. That seems to be what drives him. Shortly after Y2K, he fled the U.S. and came to Australia.”

“Why Australia?” Kurt asked. “From what I recall, you guys don’t even use nuclear power.”

“We don’t,” Bradshaw said. “And that’s exactly why he came here. He figured that would level the playing field. That, along with the fact that Australia and New Zealand were pushing back against visits by American nuclear warships. From what I understand, he seemed to think my government would embrace him.”

“Did they?”

“At first,” Bradshaw said. “He received the first real grant he’d ever seen and found work as a professor at the University of Sydney, while trying to perfect his theory. By ’05 he claimed he was only a year away from a workable system. But before he could run his big test, my government got involved and shut him down.”

“Why?”

“I have no answer to that,” Bradshaw said, “but there were people who thought his experiments were dangerous.”

That really wasn’t a surprise. Paranoid nuclear scientists doing unregulated trials in the dark tended to make people nervous.

“How does Hayley fit into all this?”

“She’s a physicist. She was a grad student when Thero arrived. She worked with him the entire time he was here. Hayley, along with Thero’s son, George, and his daughter, Tessa, all of whom were physicists, formed a tight little triangle looking up to Thero.”

“All part of the crusade,” Kurt guessed.

“True believers.”

“So you guys shut him down eight years ago,” Kurt noted. “Somehow, I’m guessing that’s not the end of his story.”

“It’s not. Thero and his family were ordered to leave the country or be deported. They might have gone back to the U.S., but a Japanese venture capitalist named Tokada gave him a lifeline. As near as we can tell, Tokada promised that Japan, unlike your country or mine, would support his work.”

“Makes sense,” Kurt said. “Japan has always been dependent on imported energy.”

“Massively dependent,” Bradshaw said. “They import ninety-eight percent of their oil and ninety percent of their coal. Their nuclear industry is pretty large, but because of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, nuclear power has always been a sore spot, even before the tsunami wiped out those reactors on the coast.”

Kurt could see the dominoes lining up. “So if Thero could tap into this zero-point energy, Japan could do away with all of that, and the whole country would hail him as a hero and probably make him a billionaire overnight.”

Bradshaw nodded again. “Thero moved there in ’06, setting up shop in a secret laboratory on a small island in the north known as Yagishiri. His son and daughter went with him. Hayley stayed behind.”

“Why?”

Bradshaw tried to make himself more comfortable, pulling at a pillow. “Well, for one thing, she’d begun to think they were headed down a dangerous path. Beyond that, she suffers from a debilitating fear of travel. She doesn’t fly, doesn’t even own a car. She mostly walks or takes the train. Until yesterday, she hadn’t been out of Sydney for nine years.”

That surprised Kurt, considering the bravery he’d seen in her.

“How’d you get her out here?”

“Sedatives.”

Kurt laughed.

Bradshaw coughed again and cleared his throat. “Two years after Thero went to Japan, there was an incident, a massive explosion on Yagishiri. His lab was completely obliterated.”

“What happened?”

“No one knows for sure. Some say his experiments literally blew up in his face. Satellite photos showed nothing left but a smoking hole in the ground. It seemed impossible that anyone could have survived. Funerals were held for everyone believed to be present, including Thero and his children.”

“Case closed,” Kurt said. “A little too easy.”

“Yeah,” Bradshaw agreed. “Fast-forward to last year, and my government received a letter, claiming to be from Thero. It insists he’s come for revenge and that he intends to tear Australia apart, the way his family was torn apart.”

Kurt sat back. “Tear Australia apart? As in create chaos, social upheaval, or something like that?”

Bradshaw shook his head. “As in rip the continent in two.”

Kurt studied Bradshaw’s face. There was nothing to suggest he was joking or delusional. “Come again?”

“That’s where the worm turns,” Bradshaw said. “Like any form of energy, there are beneficial uses and harmful uses for this one. Thero claims he’s finally succeeded in his quest and unlocked the secret to limitless energy. He insists that he would have used it for the benefit of the world, but because the world rejected him and brutalized his children, he’ll now use this newfound power for revenge, begi

“Even with some type of energy source I’ve never heard of, that sounds a little absurd,” Kurt said. “A thousand nuclear bombs couldn’t split Australia in half.”

“No,” Bradshaw agreed, “but plate tectonics can.”

“Why don’t you cut to the chase here? What are you telling me?”

“I’ll let Hayley explain the details, but Thero claims he can use this zero-point energy to unleash earthquakes and affect the movement of continental plates.”

Kurt had seen a study some years back, suggesting such a thing might be possible on a minor scale. High pressure, deep-well injections of certain chemicals were known to lubricate fault lines and cause minor tremors in places. But for the most part, these were quakes felt only on the readouts of seismic monitors, not in the streets of cities and towns high above.

Then again, this zero-point energy was like nothing Kurt had ever heard of before.

“Thero’s already proven it to us,” Bradshaw said. “In the letter detailing his threat, he promised to unleash an earthquake exactly two months from the date of his signature. He insisted it would occur somewhere between Adelaide on the southern coast and Alice Springs, where we are now.”

“There was an earthquake last month,” Kurt said, recalling the news. “A big one.”

“Six-point-nine,” Bradshaw said. “One hundred and twenty miles north-northwest of Adelaide. It hit on the exact date Thero promised. Largest quake we’ve had in years.”

“But there are no fault lines here,” Kurt said, remembering his geology. “Australia sits in the middle of a plate, not on the boundary like California or Japan.”

“So I’ve been told,” Bradshaw said. “Thero insists he can change all that. That when he’s done, Australia will be cleaved down the middle and there will be, in effect, two smaller plates where there is currently one.”

Kurt’s mind reeled. Was it really possible?

“Is there any way it could be coincidence?” he asked. “A lucky guess that just happened to come true? Even an educated prediction based on some new sensing device he created?”

Bradshaw shrugged. “Even Hayley isn’t sure. But we can’t exactly wait around to find out.”

No, Kurt thought, there was no way they could do that. Not when they were dealing with a madman looking for poetic justice who’d already lost everything of importance.

“Why is Hayley still involved?” he asked. “She’s no agent. She sounded like a woman on the verge of a nervous breakdown the other night. Why do you have her meeting with these couriers?”

Bradshaw sighed. “I told you, we have an informant, an unknown person inside Thero’s organization who’s been feeding us data. He or she contacted Hayley out of the blue shortly after the threat first came to light. Whoever this person inside Thero’s organization is, he or she is willing to deal with us only if Hayley acts as the go-between.”