Polar Shift

"Spoken like a classic anarchist," Barrett said. "I'm with you, but killing i

"I am truly sorry about the loss of those ships and their crew. It's unfortunate, but it couldn't be helped. We're not bloodthirsty or crazy. If we pull this thing off, that ship is a small price to pay. Some sacrifices are necessary for the greater good."

"The end justifies the means?"

If necessary.

"Thank you, Mr. Karl Marx."

"Marx was a charlatan, an overblown theorist."

"This project is based upon some pretty unconventional theories, you'll have to admit. Marxism was only a half-baked idea before Lenin read Das Kapital and turned Russia into the workingman's paradise."

"This is a fascinating discussion, but let's get back to something we both agree on. Technology. When we started this gig, you said you could keep a rein on all the power we're unleashing."

"I also told you it would be an imperfect system without the proper frequencies," Barrett said. "I've done the best I could without those numbers, but there's a big difference between a rifle shot and a shotgun blast, which is what we're using. The waves and gyres we created far exceed anything we saw in the computer models." He paused and took a deep breath. "I'm thinking of pulling out, Tris. What we're doing is too dangerous."

"You can't pull out. The project would go down the drain."

"That's not true. You could plunge ahead on the basis of the work I've done. As your friend, I'm urging you not to continue."

Instead of reacting with anger, Margrave laughed. "Hey, Spider, you're the one who discovered the Kovacs Theorems and brought them to my attention."

"Sometimes I wish I hadn't. The man was brilliant, his theories dangerous. It may have been a blessing that his knowledge died with him."

"If I told you Kovacs had come up with a way to neutralize the effect of his theorems, would you reconsider your decision to leave the project?"

"Having a fail-safe option would make a big difference. But it's a moot point. The knowledge died with Kovacs at the end of World War Two."

A sly look came into Margrave's eyes. "Pretend, for the sake of discussion, that he didn't die."

"Not a chance. His lab got overrun by the Russians. He was killed or captured."

"If he was captured, why didn't the Russians expand on his work and make superweapons?"

"They tried to," Barrett said. "They caused the Anchorage earthquake and screwed up the weather." He paused, and light dawned in his eyes. "If the Russians had Kovacs, they would have done better. So he must have died in 1944."

"That's the common assumption."

"Wipe that smug grin off your face. You know something, don't you?"

"The story was true, as far as it went," Margrave said. "Kovacs publishes the paper about electromagnetic warfare. The Germans kidnap him to develop a weapon that will save the Third Reich. The Russians capture the lab and take the scientists back to Russia. But one of those German scientists left Russia after the Cold War ended. I located him. Cost me a fortune in bribes and payoffs."

"Are you telling me he had the data we need?"

"I wish it were that easy. The project was strictly compartmentalized. The Germans held the Kovacs family hostage. He held back crucial data hoping to keep his family alive."

"Makes sense," Barrett said. "If the Germans were aware there was an antidote to his work, they would no longer need him."

"That's my guess too. He didn't know that the Nazis disposed of his family almost immediately, and forged letters from his wife urging him to cooperate for the sake of the children. Hours before the Russians arrived at the lab, a man showed up and took Kovacs off with him. Tall, blond guy driving a Mercedes, according to our scientist."

Barrett rolled his eyes. "That description would fit half the population of Germany."

"We got lucky. A few years after he left Russia, our German informant came across a picture of the blond man in a ski publication. Sometime in the sixties, the guy who snatched Kovacs won an amateur ski race. He had a beard and was older, but our source was certain this was the guy."

"Have you tracked him down?"

"I sent some of our security guys to invite him for a talk. Same company that supplies the island guards."

"Who is this company, Murder Incorporated?"

Margrave smiled. "Gant suggested them. I'll admit that the security company we're using is hard-assed. We wanted pros who wouldn't be shy about pushing the boundaries of the law."

"Hope you're getting your money's worth from these law pushers."

"Not so far. They blew their big chance to talk to the Kovacs contact. He smelled them coming and took off."

"Cheer up. Even if you find him, there's no assurance he knows anything about Kovacs's secrets."

"I came to the same conclusion. So I went back to Kovacs. I programmed a massive search of everything written and said about him. I started with the premise that if he had lived, he would have continued his research."

"Quite the leap of faith. His work destroyed his family."

"He'd be careful, but his fingerprints would be hard to hide. My program combed every scientific publication written since the war. It found a number of articles mentioning unique commercial uses of electromagnetic fields."

Barrett leaned forward in his chair. "You've got my attention."

"One of the pioneers in the research was a company incorporated in Detroit by a European immigrant named Viktor Janos."

"Janus was the two-faced Roman god who looks to the past and the future. Interesting."

"I thought so. The parallels with Kovacs's work were too weird to be true. It's as if Van Gogh copied Ceza

"What do you know about Janos?"

"Not a lot. Money can buy anonymity. He was supposedly Romanian."

"Romanian was one of the six languages Kovacs was fluent in. Tell me more."

"His lab was in Detroit, and he lived in Grosse Pointe. He must have run whenever he saw a camera, but he couldn't hide the fact that he was a generous philanthropist. His wife was mentioned in the local society pages. There was a birth notice of their child, a son, who died with his wife in a car crash."

"A dead end, literally?"

"That's what I thought. But Janos had a granddaughter. I referenced her name and struck gold. She had done a graduate thesis about woolly mammoths."

"The ancient elephants? What's that got to do with Kovacs?"

"Stay with me. She maintains that the mammoths were wiped out by a natural catastrophe that was a more devastating version of what we're trying to do. Here's the interesting part. In her writing, she said that had this happened today, science would have been able to neutralize the catastrophe."

"The antidote?" Barrett snorted. "You're kidding."

Margrave retrieved a portfolio from the table and tossed it into Barrett's lap. "After you read this, I think you'll change your mind about the project."

"What about the granddaughter?"

"She's a paleontologist, working with the University of Alaska. Gant and I decided to send someone up there to talk to her."