miles per hour. Your tsunami has had hundreds of miles and hours to build up its energy. The deeper the water, the faster the wave. That's why a tsunami can hit six hundred miles per hour as it crosses the ocean, even though ships don't feel it and you can't see it from the air. Let me give you an example. In 1960, an offshore quake near Chile sent a wave across the Pacific. The wave was no more than three feet high. Twenty-two hours later, when the wave hit the coast of Japan, it was twenty feet high and killed two hundred people. The waved bounced around the Pacific for days, causing damage wherever it touched.'
'If it's only a ripple in the ocean, how'd you figure this was going to be a big one?'
'I was lobstering out on the ledge where it's comparatively shallow. The wave slowed down when it hit the shallows and started to peak. It was moving slower, but all the energy it built up was still there. That energy has to go somewhere. When the wave approaches shore, the mousy little sea grows up into a monster. Sometimes it builds up into a great towering wave. It might be a bunch of series of breaking waves, or a bore, like a bunch of steps with a steep breaking front. It might suck out the water and spit it back out.'
'That's what happened with us. Like someone pulled the plug out of the harbor.'
Jenkins nodded. 'Tsunamis are fascinating and very adaptive critters. Reefs, bays, entrances to rivers, can affect the damage, the slope of the beach. The waves can crest to one hundred feet or more, but mostly they just surge. All depends on what's in the way. They can wrap around a headland and cause damage on the opposite side of an island. When they get squeezed, they become really dangerous, because you've got all that intensity built up in a small space.' He pointed out the window at a river that fed into the harbor. The high banks were littered with debris. 'They can even go up rivers, as they did here.'
'Good thing the condos Jack Schrager built on the banks of the river weren't occupied, or there would be a lot of dead people floating around in that harbor instead of scraps of wood. Damned lucky you saw those waves and recognized their threat.'
'More than lucky.' Jenkins clicked his computer mouse and pulled up a map of the world with arrows pointing to various countries. 'In the decade starting in 1990, tsunamis killed more than four hundred people and caused billions of dollars in damage.' He tapped the screen. 'This one in Papua New Guinea was a real horror. The wave was forty- five feet tall when it hit along nineteen miles of coast. A few minutes later, there were more than two hundred people dead.'
He switched over to a simulation. 'This is an animation of a quake-generated wave attacking a Japanese village back in 1923. You see a lot of big waves in the Pacific. It's surrounded by the 'rim of fire,' all those tectonic plates that shift every so often.'
'Hate to be so parochial, but we're talking the Atlantic, not the Pacific, and the coast of Maine, not Japan. I've lived here all my life and I've yet to hear about a quake.'
'You've probably had more minor tremors than you know of, but I agree, that's why I started thinking about other causes. Tsunamis caused by landslides are less common. Then you've got volcanic eruptions and large meteorites.'
'Not too many volcanoes around here that I know of.' 'Be grateful. The Krakatoa volcano created waves one hundred feet high and killed thousands back in 1883. If an asteroid five miles across landed in the mid-Atlantic, it would create a wave high enough to swamp the upper east coast of the U.S. New York would be wiped off the map.'
'That leaves landslide.'
'It's what we call a slump. Here – let me show you.' Jenkins pulled up another map on the monitor. 'This is Izmit Bay in Turkey. They had a slump-generated wave there that caused extensive damage.'
'What caused the slump?'
'An earthquake.' Jenkins chuckled. 'I know, it's like asking which came first, the chicken or the egg? In general, a slump is caused by a quake. That's the problem with our Rocky Point ripple. There was a slump, but no quake.'
'Are you sure?'
'Absolutely. I've talked to the folks at the Weston Observatory in Massachusetts. They keep tabs on all seismic disturbances in the area. They picked up some rumbles that indicated a slump, but no quake preceding it, as I'd expect. I heard a tremendous underwater boom shortly before I saw things happening. There was apparently a movement of ocean bottom east of Maine, but without the normal crash of tectonic plates. I've talked to tsunami experts all around the country. Nobody has heard of such a thing.'
'Then we're stumped.'
'Not exactly.' Jenkins brought the wave profile back onto the computer screen. 'I've put together a simulation of our wave. It's pretty crude. Even with the best information, wave calculations can be complicated. You've got to factor in stuff like velocity, wave height and destructive force. Then you've got all the coastal features that cause a wave to deflect or diffract. You've got to calculate the effects of backwash from following waves.'
'Sounds impossible.'
'It nearly is. But not totally. A few years ago, scientists used computer-based mathematical modeling techniques to solve the demise of the civilization on Crete. Look, this is a map chart of the Maine coast. That's the harbor. The hardest hit was several miles from here, where some fishermen saw waves breaking over Newcomb's Rocks.'
The chief whistled. 'Those cliffs must be fifty feet high.' Jenkins nodded and indicated the chart on the screen. An arrow pointed toward the land. 'The main wave force was just to the north of here, so even with my warning, things could have been worse here at the cove. I don't even know if this house would have been safe.'
The chief went pale. 'That would have been the whole town.'
Jenkins leaned forward and peered at the computer. 'This is amazing. Look at how straight it came in. Almost like a child creating a wave in a bathtub.'
The chief tapped the screen. 'Is this where it started?'
'Yeah. It's only an estimate built on circumstantial evidence.'
'I took a course in accident reconstruction. It's amazing what you can tell about speed and impact from skid marks and broken headlights.'
'I'm pretty confident that it originated about a hundred and fifty miles to the east.'
'What are you going to do now?' Jenkins's shoulders ached from tension. 'First I'm going to brew up some tea. Then we're going to have us a slam-bang game of chess.'
13
THE BLACK SEA
As THE FISHING boat Turgut approached the Russian coast, Austin swept the deserted shoreline through the lenses of his Fujinon gyro-stabilized binoculars, alert to any feature out of sync with its surroundings. The barren coast seemed peaceful. Wind and tide had scrubbed the sand clean of footprints. Green tufts of new growth sprouted in the fire-blackened patches of dune grass. It was hard to imagine the deadly game he had played over this tranquil setting only days before.
The beach was about a mile wide, flanked by two headlands like the arms of a sofa. Except for the cliff sculpted by wind and sea into the sharp profile of an old man, the shoreline was unremarkable. A misty curtain hung over the dunes. Austin remembered that the land hidden behind the grassy ridge sloped down to the abandoned buildings, then flattened out in a scraggly plain edged by woods, gradually rising to low rolling hills.
A smell like burning rope assaulted Austin's nostrils. Wrinkling his nose, he lowered the Stabiscope and turned to see Captain Kemal. The captain removed the twisted black cigar from between his tobacco-stained teeth and jabbed it toward the shore.
'How does it look, Mr. Austin?'
'As quiet as a grave, Captain.'
'I don't think I like it quiet like that.' He exhaled twin streams of smoke through his crooked nose. 'When I smuggled, I never liked a beach that was calm like this. Not even birds flying. You sure you want to go there now?'
'Unfortunately, we don't have much choice. I was hoping the fog would burn off, though.'
