Polar Shift

The reporter read the text on the phone's message screen. 'It says that the scooter goon squad is wrapped around the guerrilla musicians. Telling people to avoid this neighborhood. Calling for cameras. Medics and legal observers. Says to blockade cops from arresting demonstrators harassing people in the Theater District. Who's this from?'

'The crazies. The cops aren't the only ones who learned from Seattle. The anarchists have their own MACC-type media center. They tell the activists what routes to take to stay away from the cops. While we shut down one operation, they're starting another.' He laughed. 'We're spending multimillions each year on security measures, and they use technology that's practically free.'

'Don't they know you can read the same messages?'

'Sure. But the demonstrations are more spontaneous, so we're always playing cat-and-mouse games with each other. Intel is the name of the game. They're fast, but it comes down to numbers. We've got thirty-seven thousand cops, a blimp, helicopters, video cameras and two hundred of our guys have helmet video cameras connected to the security nerve center.'

'Can't they monitor the police scanners?'

'We know that they do. Rapid response is the key. You know what they say in a fight, a good big guy can beat a good little guy any day. On a level playing field, we're going to win.'

Barnes handed the phone to Malloy. 'This appears to be for you.'

The text printed on the message screen had changed.

GOOD MORNING, NOMAD. OR SHOULD WE CALL YOU FRANK, MR. MALLOY?

'Huh?' Malloy said. He looked at the phone in his hand as if it had turned to a snake.

'How the hell are they doing this?' he said, turning to Barnes.

The reporter shrugged and made some notes. Malloy tried to clear the screen, but a new message came on.

PLAYTIME.

The screen went blank. Malloy snatched up the radio and tried to call MACC, but the call wouldn't go through. The cell phone rang again. Malloy listened a few moments, and said, 'I'll get right on it.' He turned to Barnes, his face pale. 'That was MACC. They say that the air-conditioning broke down in the nerve center. The communications are going haywire. No one knows where the squads are. Traffic lights have gone red all over town.'

They were approaching Times Square. Hundreds of demonstrators, apparently unimpeded by the police, were pouring into the square from the side streets. The square was as crowded as New Year's Eve.

Malloy's cruiser moved slowly through the mob that surged around it. As they approached the old New York Times Building, the huge video screen stopped showing a Disney character and went black.

'Hey, look at that,' Barnes said, pointing at the screen.

Big letters had appeared in white, streaming across the ABC News Spectacular sign.

GREETINGS, NEO-ANARCHISTS, FELLOW TRAVELERS AND TOURISTS. WE HAVE SHUT DOWN THE OPPRESSIVE ARMIES OF THE POWER ELITE. THIS IS A SMALL TASTE OF THE FUTURE. TODAY IT'S NEW YORK. NEXT WE'LL SHUT DOWN THE WORLD. CONVENE A SUMMIT CONFERENCE TO DISMANTLE THE FRAMEWORK OF GLOBALIZATION OR WE'LL DISMANTLE IT FOR YOU.

HAVE A NICE DAY!

A smiley face with horns appeared, then a single word:

LUCIFER.

'Who the hell is Lucifer?' Malloy said, staring through the windshield.

'Beats me,' Barnes said. He reached for the door handle. 'Thanks for the ride. I've got to file a story.'

Then the word disappeared, and FRANK MALLOY appeared simultaneously on every sign of every size on the square. Panasonic. LG. NASDAQ.

Malloy cursed and scrambled out of the car. He scanned the milling crowd. Barnes had been swallowed up among the thousands of protesters. He muttered the name 'Lucifer' and a chill ran up his spine. It came to him where he had seen the reporter's face. The pointed beard, the red hair and the V-angled brows and mouth and the green eyes had subconsciously reminded him of renderings he had seen of Satan.

As Malloy stood there wondering if had gone crazy, he was unaware that he was under the gaze of those same jade eyes. Barnes had stepped into the doorway of an office building where he could watch Malloy. He held a cell phone to his ear, and he was laughing.

'I just wanted you to know that your plan went off like clockwork. The city is in total breakdown.'

'That's great,' said the voice on the other end of the line. 'Look, we've got to talk. It's important.'

'Not now. Come out to the lighthouse, so I can thank you in person.'

He tucked the phone in his pocket and gazed out at Times Square. A young man had thrown a brick through the front window of the Disney store. Others followed his example, and within minutes the sidewalks were littered with broken glass. A car was set on fire, sending black billowing smoke toward the heavens. The acrid stench of burning plastic and fabric filled the air. A guerrilla band was marching down the street, playing the theme from Bridge on the River Kwai. The music could barely be heard over the cacophony of honking car horns.

Barnes gazed at the scene with a beatific smile on his satanic face.

'Chaos,' he murmured like a monk chanting his mantra. 'Sweet, sweet chaos.'

4

The deck lights were ablaze when the NUMA car carrying Austin and Zavala pulled up to the dock at Norfolk. Austin climbed the gangway with a jaunty step. He was happy to be going back to sea, and excited about sailing on the research vessel Peter Throckmorton, one of the newest ships in the NUMA fleet. He owed the mysterious Dr. Adler a debt for inviting him on the search expedition.

The 275-foot ship was named after one of the early pioneers in nautical archaeology. Throckmorton had proven that archaeological methods could work underwater, spurring a whole era of discovery. The ship was a seagoing workhorse. It was designed with versatility in mind, and its remote sensing equipment could just as easily explore an underwater city as a field of hypothermal ocean vents.

Like most research vessels, the Throckmorton was a seagoing platform from which scientists could launch vehicles and probes to carry out their experiments. Sprouting from the fantail and foredeck were the booms and cranes that could be used to deploy the various undersea probes and submersibles the ship carried. Power winches were located on the port and starboard sides.

One of the ship's officers greeted the NUMA men at the top of the gangway.

'Captain Cabral welcomes you aboard the Throckmorton and wishes you a pleasant trip.'

Austin knew the captain, Tony Cabral, from other NUMA expeditions, and looked forward to seeing him again.

'Please thank the captain, and tell him we're pleased to be sailing under his command.'

With the brief formalities over, a crewman escorted them to their comfortable cabins. They dropped off their duffel bags and went to find Adler. At the suggestion of the crewman, they looked for him in the vessel's survey control center.

The center was a spacious semidark room on the main deck. The walls were lined with banks of monitors that served as the eyes and ears for the ship's remote sensing gear. When a probe was launched, the information it gathered was transmitted to the center for analysis. With the ship still in port, the room was deserted except for a man who sat at a table pecking away at a computer keyboard.

'Dr. Adler?' Kurt said.

The man looked up from his keyboard and smiled. 'Yes. And you must be the folks from NUMA?'

Austin and Zavala introduced themselves and shook hands with Adler.

The wave scientist was a rumpled, big-boned man who had the physique of a lumberjack and a mop of shaggy, silver hair that looked like Spanish moss growing on an old oak. His upper lip was adorned by a crooked mustache that looked as if it had been pasted on his face as an afterthought. He had a rumbling voice and a grumpy way of