'The NOAA conference,' Cheryl said. 'When was it, February, March? No, I'm sorry, Mr. Bryant, I don't remember you.'
'That's by the by,' breezed Bryant, making Cheryl grit her teeth. She
BBC want to reach him urgently. You don't happen to know his present whereabouts?'
'Well, not precisely, Mr. Bryant. You see, Mr. Chase is on his way back to England right now via New York. He took an early flight from Los Angeles.'
'You mean today? He left this morning?'
'That's right.'
There was a pause, buzzing on the line.
'I guess in that case it doesn't matter,' Bryant said with a slight hesitancy. 'Do you happen to know whether he's making a direct connection at New York or staying overnight? Maybe I could get a message to him there.'
'I think he's transferring directly.' Cheryl frowned, trying to recall Gavin's schedule. She remembered. 'Yes, he complained about having a three-hour wait at JFK, which wouldn't give him enough time to go into Manhattan, so he'd have to wait at the airport.'
Bryant boomed a chuckle. 'I don't envy him.'
'No,' Cheryl agreed.
'Thanks for your help, Dr. Detrick.'
'You're welcome, Mr. Bryant. Good-bye.'
She was about to hang up when he said, 'Was it the eight o'clock flight out of Los Angeles, would you happen to know?'
'The nine-fifteen.'
'Thanks again. I appreciate it. 'Bye.'
Cheryl hung up and walked across the lab and stood unseeingly at the bench, conflicting emotions rising inside her, struggling to keep them quiet and dormant. Of course he had to leave, what was she thinking of? He had professional commitments and personal ties back home. But acknowledging this didn't make her feel any better.
In the office suite in San Francisco Sturges put the receiver down with his right hand while with his left he leafed through the United Airlines timetable. His finger traced a line and stopped. He looked up at Gelstrom behind the desk in the contoured velvet chair and nodded his blond crew cut.
'Take one of our aircraft,' Gelstrom said.
'No, I can make it.' Sturges smiled coldly. 'Plenty of time.'
12
Rumor swept the plane, but it wasn't until they landed at JFK that Chase saw it confirmed in the headlines:
athletes die in finals
Sitting in the crowded transit lounge, Chase read the rest of the story, which added little to the banner headline. Competitors had suffered from dizziness, nausea, and hallucinations for the past ten days. First the food and water had been blamed, then the drugs that many athletes took to improve their performance, and now the climate. The official explanation was ludicrous, Chase thought. Sixty-six degrees F. was in no way excessive, especially for top-class athletes.
There could be another cause, though, one that they wouldn't dream of looking for in a city that was practically at sea level. Cerebral anoxia. It was an insufficient supply of oxygen to the brain, and if the percentage was low enough and the person was exerting himself, he would eventually die. But who would ever think of testing for altitude sickness in a place like Stockholm?
Chase folded the newspaper and tossed it aside. He had filled three fat notebooks and taped over forty interviews. In the past seven weeks he'd talked with scientists, state officials, industrial workers, forestry wardens, city engineers, ecologists, and environmentalists right across the country. It was all there, in the bulging briefcase between his feet. He had enough material--more than enough--for the series he had to write, and he knew that John Ware would be happy with the result. But he didn't have the clincher. Several times he had come close, had sensed it was almost within his grasp: when Binch had spoken guardedly about DELFI's predictions (and the interest shown by ASP); when Ruth Patton had told him about the cloracne victims and that there were military installations in the area; at the Bakersfield plant where he knew damn well that JEG Chemicals were up to something and he couldn't pin down precisely what.
If only he could piece it together, make some sort of sense of it all. All he had was a string of apparently unconnected facts supported by hunch, suspicion, and not very satisfactory circumstantial evidence.
So air pollution is increasing by 15 percent a year. So what else is new? Chemical wastes, pesticides, and herbicides are pouring into rivers and lakes at an unprecedented rate. But who says the environment can't cope? Wildlife is being wiped out, entire species decimated. But isn't that the price we have to pay for a modern technological society? World population is up to 5.7 billion and putting a heavy strain on the biosphere; but don't forget that it's leveling off a lot faster than anyone predicted, due to the famines in Africa and Asia.
No, he decided regretfully, to a skeptic the case was still not proved. Three dead athletes wouldn't prove it either. What was needed was specific, documented, incontrovertible proof, and he had failed to get it.
A moving electronic display caught his eye announcing the arrival of a flight from San Francisco. Another two hours and ten minutes to wait. Chase yawned and rubbed his eyes. Why not get something to eat? He wasn't really hungry, but it would help pass the time.
Russ Trambo wiped the folds of his neck with a handkerchief soaked in ice water and gazed wearily up at the young reporter. Outside the newsroom window of WNRB-TV the hotels and casinos of Las Vegas were baking nicely in a midafternoon temperature of 107 degrees. Across the street a faulty flickering neon sign (wedd ngs while-u-wa t) was trying wanly to compete with the hard desert sunlight.
'What are they, Jesus freaks?'
'No idea. Some of them have shaved heads and black robes and beads and bells and stuff. They're coming in old cars, trucks, buses and heading up highway ninety-three.' Jack Chang rested his knuckles on the desk, his lean sallow face alight. 'Give me a crew, Russ. We can sell this to the networks for sure.'
'What the hell is up ninety-three except a lot of nothing?' Russ Trambo asked with a grimace. 'Where are they going?'
'I asked a couple, of them and they didn't seem to know.' Jack Chang flipped open his notepad. 'They kept on about 'Boomy Bap' or something that sounded like it. There's nothing like that on the map.'
Russ Trambo propped his double chin in the palm of his hand, mechanically wiping the back of his neck with the now-lukewarm handkerchief. ' 'Boomy Bap.' What the fuck is that? Is it the heat or am I going crazy?'
'Maybe it's the end of the world,' the young reporter suggested with a grin. 'You know, these religious nuts? Keep gathering year after year, waiting for the end, prophesying doomsday or whatever. Nothing ever happens, so they put it off till next year.'
'Hey now,' the editor said, a light bulb flashing on in his brain. 'The Atomic Energy Commission's nuke test site is up there--and so is the Nellis Air Force Missile Range. Maybe it's a protest demo. Did any of them mention something like that?'
Jack Chang shook his head. 'Like I say, they told me it was a pilgrimage and just kept on repeating 'Boomy Bap, Boomy Bap' like it was some kind of incantation.'
'Wait a second. 'Boomy.' Could that be a religious reference to an explosion, a nuclear blast?' Russ Trambo wadded the handkerchief into a damp ball and tossed it on the desk. 'Okay, why not, nothing else is going down except a couple of routine homicides.' Jack Chang picked up the phone to get his crew together, grumbled to himself, 'if it is the fucking end of the world, why can't we have a goddam ice age instead?'
From long experience Sturges knew that it wasn't the act itself that presented problems but what happened afterward. If the act could be accomplished quickly, quietly, and without fuss (depending on method, as yet undetermined), he would simply walk away and vanish in the crowd. Though he didn't like working in crowds, too
