Jack Du Brul: Charon's landing

The rights of Alaska’s native people had become a hot topic as well. Connie shifted in her seat, resting her knife and fork on the china plate still heaped with congealed eggs and soggy bacon. “They’re relatively quiet so far. Because they lack the international exposure of the big environmental groups, the native advocates are keeping a low profile to see how far the administration is willing to back up this initiative. Though I just heard Amnesty International is threatening to call the entire Inuit population political prisoners of the United States if we continue to infringe on their rights to the land.”

“Jesus Christ!” exclaimed the President. “You call that a low profile?”

“Compared to what this group called PEAL has done, that’s nothing.”

“PEAL?” He cocked a bushy eyebrow. “I’ve never heard of them. Are they another environmental group?”

“More like eco-terrorists.” Connie lifted an expandable briefcase from the floor and set it on the table. After rummaging through the detritus cluttering the case, she slid a manila file over to the President. “This is the dossier INTERPOL has compiled of crimes that PEAL has been directly or indirectly linked to in Europe. And this is just from the last year.”

As the President leafed through the summary reports of bombings, protests, and assaults, Connie Van Buren gave him a brief rundown on the organization. “PEAL is the acronym for Planetary Environment Action League. It was founded four years ago by a Dutch science professor who had fallen from grace with mainstream academia. Jan Veorhoven is a classic study of the charismatic leader. He’s young, not yet forty, good-looking, from a wealthy family with name recognition in his native Amsterdam, and possesses above-average intelligence.”

Connie spoke as if reciting the material arrayed before the President. It was obvious that she’d been over the file many times before.

“Until this year, PEAL had remained inconsequential. They printed pamphlets and Veorhoven lectured at rallies all over Western Europe, but the group was relatively small, about one hundred active members. Many in the environmental movement saw PEAL as too radical for even their tastes.

“Veorhoven espouses a kind of pseudo-religious communing with nature, where the rights of man are second to those of the earth. He flew to Bangladesh after a monsoon that killed eleven thousand villagers and denounced those who survived for cheating nature of her just dues. Last December, after some nonradioactive cooling water escaped from a French reactor, PEAL was thrust to prominence when Veorhoven challenged the director of the plant to drink some of it. It was a media stunt of epic proportions because the director is hyperallergenic and can tolerate only distilled water, a fact Veorhoven was aware of.

“Beginning this year, PEAL became the ‘in’ group to join among the professional protesters. Their ranks have soared, as has their budget. In March, they bought a mothballed survey ship and renamed her Hope . They opened satellite offices in London, Paris, New York, Washington, and San Francisco. And they started getting violent.

“Members of the group have been arrested in Mozambique with enough explosives to destroy the Cabora Bassa dam. In Brazil, they’ve taken responsibility for demolishing about ten million dollars’ worth of heavy equipment used in forest clearing. In Washington State, a PEAL activist is facing manslaughter charges after the steel spike he put into a tree caused a chainsaw to kick back and kill the logger operating it. Your own Secretary of the Interior had a sack full of dead spotted owls left on his doorstep. The bag had the PEAL logo on it. Nothing is beyond them.

“They’ve destroyed gas stations in Germany, Holland, and Belgium. They are suspected of breaking into a German chemical company and destroying several million dollars’ worth of experiments. They’ve broken into laboratories to release test animals, many of them infected with diseases or experimental vaccines with unknown side effects. In short, they are highly motivated, well funded, and dangerous, and their next target will undoubtedly be Alaska.”

The President was startled by Connie’s summation. “How can you be sure that they will target Alaska?”

“Because their ship, Hope , is currently anchored in Prince William Sound, just outside the safety zone set up around the tanker shipping lanes headed into Valdez. And because Jan Veorhoven is said to be aboard.”

“Have they taken any action?”

“Not yet, but I consider their very presence a threat, don’t you?”

“In light of what you’ve just said, yes,” the President agreed. “But there isn’t a goddamn thing we can do about it.”

“I know they have a legal right to be there, but I want to make sure they are number one on the suspect list if anything happens.”

“I’ll tell Dick Henna at the FBI to keep his ears open.”

“I talked to him as soon as I heard the Hope was headed to Alaska. He promised to stay on his toes.” Connie’s last remark was almost flippant, but her eyes had hardened and her mouth was pursed into a tight line. She was serious. And scared.

Mercer stood as the large group of students began a disinterested round of applause. He was sure that they weren’t applauding his presence, just the fact that they didn’t have to suffer through another lecture by their regular teacher, Professor Lynn Snyder. The one hundred and twenty students in the lecture hall were mostly freshmen, and though the school year was only a few weeks old, they had already developed a special loathing for Introduction to Geology. Professor Snyder’s presentation was as dry as the rocks she forced them to study.

Lynn Snyder had been a doctoral candidate at Penn State at the same time as Mercer, and despite the few years separating them, she looked fifteen years older. While he had gone to the U.S. Geological Survey after receiving his Ph.D. and later to the private sector as a consultant, Lynn had ducked immediately back into academia. It always amazed Mercer that so many Ph.D.’s spent their entire careers creating clones of themselves in a never-ending chain of teachers.

Lynn knew ninety percent of the class didn’t give a damn about geology. They signed up only to fulfill the school’s requirement for two semesters of science. Still, she hoped for that rare student who embraced the subject.

However, that special type of student was few and far between, so Professor Snyder hit on the idea of giving her classes a practical application of geology in the form of Dr. Philip Mercer. Mercer was a field man who’d proved that studying igneous inclusions and anticlines could mean millions of dollars in gold or oil or some other precious mineral for mining corporations and substantial finders’ fees for himself. Though his lecture taught nothing critical, it was usually entertaining and on the end-of-semester comment cards, his visit was always a highlight.

Mercer smiled at Lynn as he joined her on the lectern after his introduction. “Once more into the breach.”

“Knock ’em dead.” Lynn gave Mercer a playful pat on the arm.

Mercer adjusted the microphone and busied himself with a sheaf of notes he had no intention of using. His delay was a simple speaking tool to calm the audience and hold their attention for a few moments. The hundred students were spread throughout the lecture hall in GWU’s Funger Hall, one of the urban campus’s many classroom buildings. He thrust his left hand into the pocket of his light gray suit pants; his jacket was draped over a chair behind him on the dais. The room was at least eighty-five degrees despite the air conditioning. He fondly recalled the chilled air he’d felt in Alaska only four days ago.