Fracture Event: An Espionage Disaster Thriller Read online

  “Actually, given where you come from, they don’t. You’re in an entirely different league now, cowboy.”

  Plates were set before them. Mark leaned forward. “Okay, looks good.”

  “You’re about to enjoy schweinebraten. On the side is weisswurt. Dip it into the sweet mustard. Black rye, I assume you’ve had before.”

  “Delicious. I think I could survive here.”

  “For as long as it lasts.”

  “Amen.”

  After polishing off zwetschgenstrudel for dessert, Mark found his way to the herren room. He stepped up to the urinal, totally absorbed by Stephanie Huntz. Intuitively, he’d known that she wasn’t sticking around long term. But hearing it had bruised his ego. How did a man let a woman like that just walk out of the room?

  But there would be other women? Attractive and poised? Sexually adventurous? Intelligent and interested, but not clingy?

  “Nirvana,” he whispered as a man, singing to himself in German, entered behind him.

  As Mark stepped away from the urinal, he glanced at the newcomer: Tall, blond, wearing a sports jersey and denim pants. The fellow was obviously drunk. He gave Mark a silly grin, almost toppled sideways, and started headlong for the urinal.

  As they passed, the man careened against Mark, almost knocking him off balance. Mark grabbed him, steadied him. “Easy there.”

  The man pawed at him and, in the process, raked his ring across Mark’s hand.

  “Danke!” The man gave Mark’s hand a hard shake, grinning foolishly, his watery eyes bright. Then, he released Mark’s hand and staggered to the urinal.

  At the sink, Mark washed, staring irritably at the red scratches the man’s ring had left. His assailant was braced over the porcelain, still singing in German.

  Back at the table, Stephanie gave him a curious look.

  “Friday night in Garmisch,” Mark muttered, staring at his raked hand.

  They were sipping a dessert wine when he had the first hint that anything was wrong. Blinking, he felt hot, then experienced a slight dizziness.

  “You all right?” Stephanie asked.

  Mark rolled his head, took a breath. “Yeah. Weird. Just a little lightheaded is all.”

  “I’ve seen you drink. It’s not the alcohol.” Her gaze narrowed. “You’re bright red and sweating.”

  “Yeah, and my heart’s racing the way it does when we have sex.” He grinned, blinked again. “Maybe something I ate?”

  “We’re going,” she said. “Come on. Let’s get you back to Oberau and have the clinic check you out.”

  He swallowed hard, let her take his hand. Another dizzy spell hit him. “Whoa.”

  By the time they were on the sidewalk, he was leaning against her. “This is like a bad case of the flu all at once.”

  “Let’s hope that’s all it is,” Stephanie growled, something dark in her voice. “You didn’t take anything? Drugs? LSD? Ecstasy?”

  “I don’t do drugs.” The street lights were smearing in his vision, and the feeling of vertigo worsened.

  Two men in leather coats were approaching. Their white sneakers gave Mark the impression of white rabbits hopping along the concrete.

  Stephanie leaned Mark against the wall as they passed, her right hand partially inserted in her open purse.

  One of the men said something, Stephanie answered, “Nien, danke,” in a clearly hostile voice.

  At that moment, Mark’s stomach lurched. He bent double, vomiting onto the sidewalk.

  He wasn’t sure how it happened but Stephanie jerked, spasmed, and collapsed. Mark fell to his knees and watched Stephanie kicking and jerking beside him.

  Then, in the swirling vertigo, the two leather-coated men had him by the armpits, dragging him toward the street.

  A black van lurched to a stop; the side doors swung open like wondrous flower petals. Two more men leaped like magical dancers, their feet sounding hammer taps on the pavement.

  Mark felt himself lifted, tossed. The sensation of sailing, dropping, and thudding on the van floor made him retch again.

  He caught a vision as the doors were being swung closed. Stephanie was wobbling to her feet, leveling a silver pistol. Mark saw the muzzle flash, heard the bang, and felt the man holding him jerk. Two men dressed in sports jerseys were sprinting past Stephanie, racing for the van, guns in hand. Then the doors slammed shut.

  A voice shouted in German. The van lurched forward, tires squealing. Tink! Tink! Tink! The sounds like taps on metal, sent heavy bodies crashing down onto Mark. Curses filled the air.

  He and the bodies were pitched sideways. Then they were thrown back as the tires shrieked around a corner. The engine roared. Mark Schott felt something warm and sticky soaking his clothes. Then, he began to float away into darkness.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  As Anika leaned over Sinclair’s shoulder, the number burned into her brain: 0.002.

  “Terrifying, eh?” Sinclair said.

  “Maureen?” Anika called. “You might want to see this.”

  Maureen walked down the table, stared, and wet her lips. Her black hair shone in the lights. “We’re not wrong.”

  “No,” Anika said.

  From down at the end of the table, Amy Randall called, “What is it?”

  Maureen took a breath. “The model was designed to prove the null hypothesis. You remember what that is?”

  “Sure. Situation normal. No problem. Israel will not launch a full-scale nuclear strike. The world is safe.”

  The sensation was akin to a lump of lead in her belly. Anika said, “Sinclair’s calculations demonstrate that we must reject the null hypothesis. The chances of us being wrong are only two in one thousand.”

  Amy Randall’s face lost its color. She nodded, walked over to the phone, and pressed in a number.

  The others crowded around to gaze somberly at Sinclair’s screen.

  “Maybe if we took another look at airborne transmission and global wind currents,” Wade suggested.

  Sinclair replied, “You mean we could wrong about the viral carrying capacity? Yes, we could. But I don’t think so."

  Anika heard Amy Randall say, “Yes, ma’am. Right away.”

  Fred Zoah adjusted his glasses. “After seeing this, I’m not sure I even want to look at the social forcing data. Somehow, it’s no longer a valid pursuit.”

  “French? Cole?” Randall called. “You’re with me. The rest of you, keep working. See if you can knock a hole in this model.”

  “Do we bring the printout?” Anika asked.

  “A copy is already in the Defense database. A printout is waiting for us. Let’s go, Murphy. Time to keep us safe.”

  Anika glanced down at the computer. Of course, Defense was monitoring every keystroke they entered into their laptops. Why wouldn’t they be? It just… made her uncomfortable.

  As she followed the rest out of the room, the question needled her: How is America going to use this information?

  It would start as something small. Seemingly insignificant. The general public wouldn’t even realize the first domino had toppled. The government would use a misinformation campaign to keep the media busy while the next dominoes were quietly knocked over around the world.

  The goal wouldn’t become apparent until it was too late.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Skip managed a crooked smile as he watched Anika French’s reaction when they pulled up to the gate at 1600 Pennsylvania. The redhead was all large eyes and cowed expression as the guard took Amy Randall’s credentials, checked them against his database, and took IDs from the rest of them.

  As they waited in the idling Lincoln, the great gates before them, Anika whispered a reverent question: “I’m going to the White House?”

  “What did you expect?” Randall asked. “You’ve just proved the end of the world is coming. You thought no one would notice?”

  The car dropped them at the West Wing entrance where they went through additional security. Skip—used to the pr
ocedure—had left his HK pistol, knives, and Leatherman in the car, produced his bona fides, then passed through the metal detectors.

  Maureen had a wry smile. Anika looked like she was about to hyperventilate.

  Skip knew the room they were led to. He’d been there before. But last time, it had been with Jenn Royce. He bit off a curse and forced the spear of grief from his heart.

  Amy Randall told them, “Wait here for the moment.” Then she was off, walking at a brisk pace.

  An aide asked if they needed anything. Skip promptly asked for coffee, gesturing the others to do the same. Anything to help Anika relax, to get his mind off Jenn and the ache in his gut.

  After the aide left, Skip forced himself to grin as he paced around looking at the familiar paintings on the walls. “I always liked this one,” he said, pointing at a Bodmer painting of the Upper Missouri.

  Anika, almost quaking, noted, “You’ve been here before?”

  “A few times. Not so long ago, I was here with Maureen after a terrorist tried to blow her up with a letter bomb.”

  “You’re joking.”

  “I wish he was,” Maureen said dryly. “My advice? Take a load off, enjoy the artwork. And if things get hairy, Skip will start earning his exorbitant fee.”

  Skip smiled.

  An aide leaned in: “Follow me, please.”

  Skip gestured Maureen and Anika ahead of him, then brought up the rear. The aide led the way down elegant halls, past paintings and doors. The fates of nations had perched precariously on the shoulders of the men and women who had trodden this same hall. It never ceased to humble him.

  The big shock came when the aide opened a door and Skip followed Anika and Maureen into the Oval office. To his amazement, it was smaller than it looked on television. In the center of the room, two couches faced each other on a carpet depicting the Presidential seal. A copy of the infamous printout sat perfectly square in the center of the polished coffee table between the couches.

  Skip glanced at the two Secret Service agents standing watchfully on either side of the room, then at the three people huddled around the magnificent desk: President Jonathan Begay, Secretary of Defense Martina Rivera, and National Security Advisor Juan Zapatero. When Secretary Rivera looked up, she nodded at Cole and pinned Anika French with reserved eyes. Then she glanced at Skip, a flash of recognition in her eyes. “Mr. Murphy. I’d heard you were back. Why is it that when there’s trouble with anthropologists, you’re in the middle of it?”

  “You keep hiring me, Madam Secretary.”

  Rivera arched an eyebrow but the man behind the desk chuckled and stepped around. President Begay was tall, fit, and gray-haired, and his Navajo ancestry was clear in the sculpted lines of his face.

  “Mr. President,” the Secretary said, “May I present Dr. Anika French and Dr. Maureen Cole. Accompanying them is the security contractor Sean Murphy, better known as Skip.”

  “My pleasure.” President Begay shook hands in turn, his smile warm and reassuring. He pursed his lips for a moment, frowned, and said, “Why don’t we sit on the sofas? They’re more comfortable.” He led the way to the three pale blue couches, arranged around a large square table, and said, “My aides have been briefing me on parts of your model for days, and I just reviewed the printout, but I don’t understand it and none of my people seem to be able to explain it to me. That’s why you’re here.”

  With Maureen and Anika on one side, the President and Secretary on the other, the printout was spread on the table between them. Dr. Zapatero, National Security Advisor, sat alone on the third couch. Skip took a position behind Anika, his hands clasped in front of him.

  The President leaned forward and propped his elbows on his knees. He pointed at the printout. “All right, what does this mean? I don’t want to waste time on background, why or how it was developed; just give me the bottom line.”

  Anika opened her mouth but no sound came out.

  It was Maureen who calmly said, “Mr. President, global civilization as we know it is headed for catastrophe.”

  “Uh-huh. I’ve heard all this before. Why does this particular model have everyone trembling in their boots?"

  Maureen didn’t even flinch. “Because this isn’t religion, it’s science. Not speculation but statistical certainty.”

  “Science says the world’s about to end?”

  “It… it’s a mathematically derived probability based on a sampling of the data,” Anika finally found her voice.

  “So this is all just based on sampling, on statistics? Sort of like our infamous political polls? Like the ones that said I wouldn’t win the presidency in the last election? What was it that Mark Twain said, ‘There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics?’ ”

  Maureen smiled and answered, “Yes, sir, but Dr. French has demonstrated that we have two chances in a thousand of being wrong. Specific genetic information will be used in Israel to—”

  “I don’t buy it.” President Begay touched the printout and looked at Anika. “If someone was about to launch nukes, my analysts would inform me first. And they haven’t.”

  Maureen nodded. “Yes, sir, I know they would if they understood the probable chain of events. Please, let us explain.”

  “That’s why you’re here. Dr. French? It’s your model.”

  The President turned to Anika but when she stared into the eyes of the most powerful man in the world, she froze. Her mouth opened but nothing came out.

  Secretary Rivera glanced at her stunned face and said, “Sir, this is all nonsense. Economists, the Department of Defense, State, professors of political science, foundations like the Brookings Institute, have been creating models for years. They’ve had limited success and produced nothing but conflicting results.”

  Maureen answered, “Yes, the difference here, Madam Secretary, is that Dr. French’s model was derived from a long line of archaeological models based on failed systems.”

  “Archaeological models? If they’re so good, why haven’t I ever heard of them?”

  “Is the Mid-Continental Journal of Archaeology high on your reading list?”

  “The what?” Rivera made a face.

  “A small pool of American archaeologists has been refining models… testing them on closed systems… for thirty years now. They’ve slowly, but surely, determined which categories you keep, which you throw out, and the statistics you need to fill in the blanks. But, because they were archaeologists, no one paid them any attention. Who, in the Department of Defense, or State, would have thought we had anything to learn from the collapse of the Lowland Maya in the mid-ninth century?”

  President Begay asked, “So, you’re saying the perfect model was under our noses all along?”

  Maureen shrugged. “Not even the archaeologists realized how pertinent their research was. At least, not until Dr. French put it all together. Her brilliance was applying climatic forcings to social and behavioral data. In short, human emotion. After that, the last piece of the puzzle was in place. We can finally look down on the forest and clearly identify the specific trees that will fail, know where the system is likely to break or has already broken. We call these ‘fracture events’.”

  President Begay stood, walked over to the wall, and stared up at the portrait of Abraham Lincoln. Rivera and Zapatero exchanged worried glances. The room was silent but for the ticking of an antique clock.

  Finally, the President asked, “You’re here because of the model you ran over at the Pentagon. Amy Randall said it all came down to Israel. That was where this fracture event might be. Based on your statistics, how much time do we have to turn this thing around?”

  Anika stammered, “Maybe days.”

  “You said it would be a virus? Why a virus?”

  “It makes the most sense. No one wants to get into a military conflict with Israel. The lessons taught by COVID-19 have been learned. A targeted virus, coupled with cyberattacks, has the highest probability of bringing Israel to its knees. But the
attackers haven’t calculated the behavioral variable.”

  The President’s body tensed. “Then give me something I can use to stop it. Anything.”

  Anika began, barely audible, “I think—”

  Maureen cut her off: “The key is not with stopping Israel, but convincing Iran and Syria not to launch missiles into—”

  “No,” Anika murmured. “That won’t work.”

  Rivera interrupted, “It would actually be easier for us to work with Israel’s government. They’re rational if you give them the hard data.”

  Anika insisted, “Not given the current ties you’re building with the PLO coupled with the senior housing crisis. Throw in an epidemic and that would be devastating. Conspiracy theories based on pandering to the Americans would run wild. They’ll feel even more threatened and likely to—”

  “Mr. President, this is ridiculous.” Juan Zapatero said, “Wishing no disrespect to Dr. French, here, but if there’s going to be a crisis in Israel, we should consider working with Russia to put pressure on Syria…”

  The President held up a hand. His gaze had fixed on Anika, who was twisting her hands in her lap. For several moments, he just studied her. “Dr. French, sheerly out of curiosity, have you ever modeled the collapse of America?”

  Skip unconsciously tensed, loosened his arms, and perched on the balls of his feet. The silence in the room was palpable.

  Anika nervously glanced around the room. In a small voice, she answered, “I completed one model for America.”

  “Tell me about it. It might help us all to have an example that’s closer to home.”

  Anika inhaled a breath and let it out slowly before she said, “In the case of America, an attack that obviously came from a foreign power would unite the American people against the threat. The one small act, the fracture event, is more likely to come from inside.”

  “How so?”

  Anika looked petrified to continue but said, “If you tried to ban guns with a capacity of more than six rounds, it would be the fracture event.”