Michael Crichton - State Of Fear

Morton noticed it, too, but he shrugged it off. "He's a lawyer," he said. "What do you expect? Forget about it."

By the time they reached Reykjavнk, the sunny day had turned wet and chilly. It was sleeting at Keflavнk airport, obliging them to wait while the wings of the white Gulfstream jet were de-iced. Evans slipped away to a corner of the hangar and, since it was still the middle of the night in the US, placed a call to a friend in banking in Hong Kong. He asked about the Vancouver story.

"Absolutely impossible," was the immediate answer. "No bank would divulge such information, even to another bank. There's an STR in the chain somewhere."

"An STR?"

"Suspicious transfer report. If it looks like money for drug trafficking or terrorism, the account gets tagged. And from then on, it's tracked. There are ways to track electronic transfers, even with strong encryption. But none of that tracking is ever going to wind up on the desk of a bank manager."

"No?"

"Not a chance. You'd need international law-enforcement credentials to see that tracking report."

"So this bank manager didn't do all this himself?"

"I doubt it. There is somebody else involved in this story. A policeman of some kind. Somebody you're not being told about."

"Like a customs guy, or Interpol?"

"Or something."

"Why would my client be contacted at all?"

"I don't know. But it's not an accident. Does your client have any radical tendencies?"

Thinking of Morton, Evans wanted to laugh. "Absolutely not."

"You quite sure, Peter?"

"Well, yes amp;"

"Because sometimes these wealthy donors amuse themselves, or justify themselves, by supporting terrorist groups. That's what happened with the IRA. Rich Americans in Boston supported them for decades. But times have changed. No one is amused any longer. Your client should be careful. And if you're his attorney, you should be careful, too. Hate to visit you in prison, Peter."

And he hung up.

The flight attendant poured Morton's vodka into a cut-glass tumbler. "No more ice, sweetie," Morton said, raising his hand. They were flying west, over Greenland, a vast expanse of ice and cloud in pale sun beneath them.

Morton sat with Drake, who talked about how the Greenland ice cap was melting. And the rate at which the Arctic ice was melting. And Canadian glaciers were receding. Morton sipped his vodka and nodded. "So Iceland is an anomaly?"

"Oh yes," Drake said. "An anomaly. Everywhere else, glaciers are melting at an unprecedented rate."

"It's good we have you, Nick," Morton said, putting his hand on Drake's shoulder.

Drake smiled. "And it's good we have you, George," he said. "We wouldn't be able to accomplish anything without your generous support. You've made the Vanutu lawsuit possibleand that's extremely important for the publicity it will generate. And as for your other grants, well amp;words fail me."

"Words never fail you," Morton said, slapping him on the back.

Sitting across from them, Evans thought they really were the odd couple. Morton, big and hearty, dressed casually in jeans and a workshirt, always seeming to burst from his clothes. And Nicholas Drake, tall and painfully thin, wearing a coat and tie, with his scrawny neck rising from the collar of a shirt that never seemed to fit.

In their manner, too, they were complete opposites. Morton loved to be around as many people as possible, loved to eat, and laugh. He had a penchant for pretty girls, vintage sports cars, Asian art, and practical jokes. His parties drew most of Hollywood to his Holmby Hills mansion; his charity functions were always special, always written up the next day.

Of course, Drake attended those functions, but invariably left early, sometimes before dinner. Often he pleaded illnesshis own or a friend's. In fact, Drake was a solitary, ascetic man, who detested parties and noise. Even when he stood at a podium giving a speech, he conveyed an air of isolation, as if he were alone in the room. And, being Drake, he made it work for him. He managed to suggest that he was a lone messenger in the wilderness, delivering the truth the audience needed to hear.

Despite their differences in temperament, the two men had built a durable friendship that had lasted the better part of a decade. Morton, the heir to a forklift fortune, had the congenital uneasiness of inherited wealth. Drake had a good use for that money, and in return provided Morton with a passion, and a cause, that informed and guided Morton's life. Morton's name appeared on the board of advisors of the Audubon Society, the Wilderness Society, the World Wildlife Fund, and the Sierra Club. He was a major contributor to Greenpeace and the Environmental Action League.

All this culminated in two enormous gifts by Morton to NERF. The first was a grant of $1 million, to finance the Vanutu lawsuit. The second was a grant of $9 million to NERF itself, to finance future research and litigation on behalf of the environment. Not surprisingly, the NERF board had voted Morton their Concerned Citizen of the Year. A banquet in his honor was scheduled for later that fall, in San Francisco.

Evans sat across from the two men, idly thumbing through a magazine. But he had been shaken by the Hong Kong call, and found himself observing Morton with some care.

Morton still had his hand on Drake's shoulder, and was telling him a jokeas usual, trying to get Drake to laughbut it seemed to Evans that he detected a certain distance on Morton's part. Morton had withdrawn, but didn't want Drake to notice.

This suspicion was confirmed when Morton stood up abruptly and headed for the cockpit. "I want to know about this damn electronic thing," he said. Since takeoff, they had been experiencing the effects of a major solar flare that rendered satellite telephones erratic or unusable. The pilots said the effect was heightened near the poles, and would soon diminish as they headed south.

And Morton seemed eager to make some calls. Evans wondered to whom. It was now four a.m. in New York, one a.m. in Los Angeles. Who was Morton calling? But of course it could concern any of his ongoing environmental projectswater purification in Cambodia, reforestation in Guinea, habitat preservation in Madagascar, medicinal plants in Peru. To say nothing of the German expedition to measure the thickness of the ice in Antarctica. Morton was personally involved in all these projects. He knew them in detail, knew the scientists involved, had visited the locations himself.

So it could be anything.

But somehow, Evans felt, it wasn't just anything.

Morton came back. "Pilots say it's okay now." He sat by himself in the front of the plane, reached for his headset, and pulled the sliding door shut for privacy.

Evans turned back to his magazine.

Drake said, "You think he's drinking more than usual?"

"Not really," Evans said.

"I worry."

"I wouldn't," Evans said.

"You realize," Drake said, "we are just five weeks from the banquet in his honor, in San Francisco. That's our biggest fund-raising event of the year. It will generate considerable publicity, and it'll help us launch the conference on Abrupt Climate Change."

"Uh-huh," Evans said.

"I'd like to ensure that the publicity focuses on environmental issues, and not anything else. Of a personal nature, if you know what I mean."

Evans said, "Isn't this a conversation you should be having with George?"

"Oh, I have. I only mention it to you because you spend so much time with him."

"I don't, really."

"You know he likes you, Peter," Drake said. "You're the son he never had orhell, I don't know. But he does like you. And I'm just asking you to help us, if you can."

"I don't think he'll embarrass you, Nick."