Death Wave

He had no intention of going through the security checkpoint, or of boarding that plane.

RUBENS’ OFFICE

NSA HEADQUARTERS

FORT MEADE, MARYLAND

SATURDAY, 1015 HOURS EDT

“It’s utter and complete nonsense,” Dr. Walden said. “It’s not even good fiction.”

Dr. Kathryn Walden was a professor of geology at Georgetown University. Brilliant as well as drop-dead gorgeous, she was one of a number of science and academic professionals in a Washington-area network created to provide specialist information to the NSA when necessary. At the moment, she was on the other end of a secure- line video hookup on Rubens’ computer.

“What is utter and complete nonsense?” Rubens asked. “The tidal wave hitting the East Coast? Or the possibility that half of La Palma is going to shift and fall into the sea in the first place?”

“Both!” Walden hesitated, then went on. “Okay … if that much rock hit the ocean, and if it hit with a high enough speed, and if it hit all at once, yes, it could create a megatsunami. Maybe. Conditions would have to be just right. But geologists aren’t sure that the fracture line at the top of the Cumbre Vieja goes very deep. Most think it’s strictly superficial. The important thing is, despite a lot of panicky hype to the contrary, there is absolutely no evidence that any of those rocks have slipped at all since we started watching them.”

“But if a landslide did happen, it could cause a tidal wave?”

“That’s a ridiculously big if — but yeah. It might.”

“Three hundred feet high? Traveling ten miles inland?”

“No. Absolutely not.” She waved a copy of the book in front of her computer video pickup. “Even if the splash started off as high as these guys claim — and that’s saying a lot, believe me — it would be down to twenty meters or less by the time it crossed the Atlantic. It would get funneled by estuaries and river mouths, so there would be a flood surge up rivers like the Hudson, the Potomac, and the York. Those surges might, might reach twenty to fifty meters. But what these guys claim would happen, with killer waves scouring everything as far inland as the Appalachian Mountains … that’s nonsense.”

“Twenty to fifty meters is still bad,” Rubens said. “A wave over a hundred fifty feet high and lasting maybe ten or fifteen minutes? That would still kill millions of people if we couldn’t evacuate.”

“Bill … since when did you start going in for off-the-wall pseudo-science? These guys write about UFO abductions, for chrissakes. They’re kooks!”

“Oh, I skimmed the book, Katie. I agree with you.”

“This whole La Palma thing started a few years ago when the BBC aired a so-called documentary about it, claiming an earthquake or a volcanic eruption was going to throw some hundreds of cubic kilometers of rock into the ocean and trigger a megatsunami. They claimed a hundred million people on the East Coast would be killed.”

“Yes.”

“After that broadcast, thousands of Americans e-mailed the BBC, worried that they were all going to die and wondering if they needed to move. Thousands of tourists canceled their holiday flights to La Palma. Lots of rich Europeans with vacation homes on La Palma sold their property and left the island. JMC stopped their direct charter flights to the island from Britain, as did the Swiss. German airlines reduced their charter flights by half. If you ask me, La Palma could sue the BBC for damages. The BBC has since issued a partial retraction — what amounts to an apology — saying the threat was overhyped.”

“So … you’re saying there’s no danger at all?”

“Not the way that program presented it.”

“If none of it is true, why did the BBC air it?”

“Because disasters sell, Bill. Parts of the BBC program were recycled later by an American cable channel, with the same effect.” She waved the book in front of the pickup. “These guys are just taking the pseudo-science scare-stories from that program and recycling it. It’s damned irresponsible, coming up with scary fiction and passing it off as science to people who don’t know any better. Same with all the tripe written about 2012.” She scowled out of the monitor. “Please tell me the government is not taking this seriously!”

“There’s been a … threat. We’re still evaluating it. That’s why I called you.”

“The government’s as bad as the damned insurance companies. It’s like the powers that be are trying to keep the public in a constant state of terror.”

Rubens smiled. “Now you’re getting into conspiracy theories.”

She chuckled, a grim sound. “The real conspiracy is that the sponsor for that BBC Horizon program was a hazard research company — which in turn is owned by a major insurance company. The so-called research company provided the writers with a lot of their data — much of it manufactured. People get scared out of their wits watching this drivel — and they go out and buy more insurance.”

“I hope I never get as cynical as you, Katie.”

“It’s not cynicism, Bill. It’s the way the modern world works. Sometimes I think we should scour everything clean with a hundred-meter tidal wave and start over!”

Rubens hesitated, then continued. “You’re saying the disaster scenario can’t unfold the way it was presented on TV, but that was assuming a volcano or an earthquake was the culprit.”

“It would have to be something of that nature to shift that much rock.”

“I’m going to ask you another question, Katie. I remind you that this conversation is classified.”

“I’ve got clearance, Bill.”

“I know you do. We wouldn’t be having this conversation otherwise. What about a nuclear explosion?”

That startled her. “What?”

“Specifically, several nuclear explosions, probably set off at the bottoms of a number of boreholes along the length of the Cumbre Vieja.”

“That … would depend on the size, placement, and number of the explosions.”

“As many as twelve devices, each releasing approximately one kiloton of energy. Placement … we’re not sure, but likely at the bottom of some deep oil wells drilled along the Cumbre Vieja, down the center of La Palma.”

Walden was quiet for a long moment, her face on the monitor thoughtful. “I don’t think I can answer that one for you, Bill.”

“Okay …”

“If we just compare energy released with energy released … no. Absolutely not. The nukes wouldn’t even come close.”

“An earthquake is more powerful?”

“An earthquake measuring four point oh on the Richter scale releases about one kiloton of energy. We classify a Richter four to four point nine quake as ‘light.’ It rattles the dishes but doesn’t cause any significant damage. Twelve kilotons … that would still be less than a five. The earthquake off Sumatra in 2004, the one that caused the big tidal wave that killed two hundred and twenty thousand people around the Indian Ocean, that one was around nine point two, maybe nine point three on the Richter scale, and that translates as a hundred and fourteen gigatons — a hundred and fourteen billion tons of TNT.”

“My God.”

“Exactly. That’s the equivalent of over one hundred thousand onemegaton thermonuclear bombs going off together, and that’s way, way more than all of the nuclear weapons in all of the world’s arsenals put together.” She gave him a wan smile. “We humans have a long way to go before we can compete with Mother Nature in the raw energy department.”

“But you’re sounding unsure of yourself.”

“Because I am. Most of the energy in an earthquake is wasted … unfocused. And when it comes to tidal waves, there are so many variables — bottom depth, the shape of the coastline, things like that. We’re also talking about two different ways of generating a tidal wave — by direct transmission of the earthquake energy into the ocean, or by knocking a mountain into the sea and causing a big splash.