Simon Morden - The Curve of The Earth

“Bingo.”

“Bingo?”

“Bingo,” said Petrovitch emphatically. “So: what caused the geomagnetic storm, considering it wasn’t the Sun?”

“I don’t know.”

“And neither do I.”

The revelation made Newcomen frown. “What?”

“I know, I know. I do omniscience too well. When I say I don’t know, I can give you a list of things that might have the same effects. But each one is more unlikely than the next. And your government is telling us precisely nothing.” Petrovitch pressed his fingertips to his temples and made small circular motions. “So we went back to check again. Did anything else happen in a ten-minute window around the time we lost contact, anything at all? Surprisingly enough, we found something. An earthquake.”

“And how is that connected?”

“It’s not. Alaska accounts for eleven per cent of all the world’s earthquakes. Eleven. That day alone there were seventy-three discrete events. An average of one every twenty minutes. And all of them only measurable with a seismograph. However, the one that we looked at was different from all the others: it happened a long way to the north of the usual belt, though that in itself doesn’t mean anything. But its seismographic signature was all wrong. It wasn’t an earthquake at all, it was an explosion. We can even estimate its energy. Take a look.”

The satellite image Newcomen saw was of a scar in the snow, dark against the white.

“It’s a crater, some four hundred metres across. Recent snowfall’s obscured it, but this was taken while it was still fresh: you can just about make out the crater wall. But I don’t think anything exploded on the ground. Looks like an airburst. It’s well beyond the northern limit of the treeline, so all that was damaged was rock and ice, twenty-four kilometres south-west of the research station, and thirty-two k south of Prudhoe Bay. I find it a coincidence of astronomical proportions that the two events, crater and electromagnetic disturbance, aren’t connected. Same time, same place.”

Newcomen was silent for a long time. He scratched his chin, while Petrovitch rubbed the bridge of his nose.

“Does,” started Newcomen, then stopped. He gave it another go. “Does Assistant Director Buchannan know any of this?”

“Why don’t you ask him?” Petrovitch waited for Newcomen to take off the infoshades again and place them warily on the table. “Sure as hell we’re not the first to work this out.”

“And in the middle of all this going on, your adopted daughter disappears.”

“Yeah. How does it sound to you now? Sound like she just walked into the wilderness and froze to death? Or did something else happen to her? What did she see that night? More importantly, what did she measure?”

“What did she… measure?”

“Keep up, Newcomen. The kit she had with her would have been able to spot someone using a light switch at a hundred k. She was recording at the time. Could be that she interpreted the results on the fly. If it was something out of the ordinary, and she had proof of it, there might be a good reason to make her disappear. Have you heard of Haarp?”

“Of what?”

“Haarp. Aitch-ay-ay-arr-pee. It’s been kicking around for fifty years as a superweapon designed to harness the Earth’s magnetic field and focus it like a laser. It’s all kon govno . I hope. But something happened that night. A nuke designed for an emp effect. Some sort of space-based particle beam gun that can punch through the atmosphere.” He blinked. “Now that would be scary.”

Petrovitch drifted off into a reverie, and was only brought out of it by Newcomen sitting up sharply.

“There might be another explanation,” said the agent. “You say she was alone in the research station.”

“Yeah.”

“Can you be certain of that?”

“She never mentioned anyone. And no one was scheduled to be there with her until two days later, on a supply run.” Petrovitch sucked at his teeth. Michael, all-knowing, hadn’t said anything either. Lucy was allowed to keep secrets from Petrovitch, from Madeleine, but not from Michael. “What are you implying?”

“How attractive is she?”

“She’s… I’m her legal father. I don’t think I’m supposed to have an opinion on that. She’s, you know,” and he threw up his hands.

“Lucy’s only four years younger than you are.”

“She’s only four years younger than you, too. You tell me, do you think she’s pretty?”

“I’m engaged to be married.” Newcomen huffed and stuck his finger in his collar. “You must know there’s about ten guys for every girl in Alaska.”

“And you must know that statistic’s bollocks.”

“Could someone have taken advantage of the fact that her link was down? Could they have decided to mount their own rescue mission because they’re infatuated with her?” Newcomen was on a roll. “Could she have not wanted to be rescued, and then been kidnapped?”

Petrovitch’s mind temporarily fused. “I… I hadn’t thought of that.”

“If this is a kidnapping, it’s federal business. She may have even gone willingly, if she thought she was going to be taken back to Fairbanks or this Deadhorse place.”

“Deadhorse,” said Petrovitch. “That’s closest by far.”

“When did the rescue team get to the research station?”

“Sunday morning. There was a snowstorm. The university couldn’t get a team out until then, and they borrowed an air force unit out of Eielson.”

“Two, three days. How far can you go in three days?”

“Twice round the planet,” said Petrovitch. “But not if the vehicle you’re trying to use has no electrics. Lucy had a snowmobile. Magnetic field strong enough to fry her link would have destroyed the ignition.”

“It should be relatively easy to check who she’d met, who might have braved a three-day-long blizzard to go and get her, and who had the means to do it. The list of suspects isn’t going to be huge. And whoever it is is unlikely to hurt her. Keep her prisoner, yes. Hurt her, no.”

“I wish I could share your confidence. If any of this is remotely accurate, they might decide that if they can’t have her, no one else will.”

“I’m sure Lucy’s very smart. She’ll know how to play for time. She must know that you’re coming for her.”

“Oh, she’ll know.” The corner of Petrovitch’s eye twitched. “We’ve done this before.”

Petrovitch sent Newcomen away into a corner with a screen and a copy of one of the many unauthorised biographies written about him, and sat down with a fresh brew.

“What do you think?”

Marcus brought out a long-toothed comb and started to tease his hair to even greater heights. “That the boy has had an uncharacteristic flash of brilliance, or he’s delving deep into his own psyche and it’s not a pleasant place.” He found a knot and tugged at it. “It’s a credible scenario. Lucy’s quite a looker. And remember, Sam: you’re here to try and get her back, not bring down another president.”

“We could do that later, I suppose. Are we going to have to break her privacy seal and find out what she’s really been up to?”

“I’m surprised you haven’t asked for that before,” said Marcus. “In fact, I’ll take matters out of your hands: Michael will call an ad-hoc, and if they agree, a counsellor will pick over what information there is. Michael will tell you if anything relevant comes up.”

Petrovitch hunched over. “We’ve a good relationship. I know it’s not like a father — daughter thing really, but we both behave as if it is. Newcomen’s right on one thing: she is smart, but she doesn’t get that from me. Otherwise she’d have inherited my low cunning, too, rather than the naive optimism she excels in despite everything that’s happened to her.”