Death Wave

“What you’re talking about … a precise application of energy …” She shrugged. “It probably all comes down to whether or not there really is a deep fault line beneath the Cumbre Vieja.”

“And we don’t know if there is one.”

“Right. There is volcanic activity on La Palma, though the last few eruptions were kind of nonevents. And there have been earthquakes, so there could be a fault of some sort under that ridge, something more than the scratch we see on the surface. But we just don’t know enough about the subsurface architecture to make a good guess at how large or how deep it might be. That BBC Horizon program just went off and declared that the fault was there and that it was quite deep — on the order of twenty or thirty kilometers down, if I remember right — but they were making the numbers up.”

“To sell insurance.”

“Right. But if people are deliberately planting nuclear charges underground right along that earthquake zone? I have to say … I just don’t know, Bill. Nobody does.”

“Might the nukes trigger a big earthquake? I guess what I’m asking is, could twelve kilotons jump-start a hundred gigatons? Or would they have to try for making a really big splash?”

“The jump-start, I just don’t know. I’d have to say probably not. As for a big splash? A few years back, a Dutch research group tested the hypothesis that if half of the Cumbre Vieja fell into the Atlantic, it would generate a megatsunami. They used pretty advanced computer modeling. What they came up with was … yes, it could generate a big wave if everything worked right, but the wave that hit the East Coast wouldn’t be a hundred meters high, like it says in this book. Twenty to fifty meters at most. And it would have to be very precise — like a diamond cutter striking a diamond’s fracture plane exactly right.” She looked thoughtful. “One theory — and it’s only a theory — is that there’s a wall, a kind of curtain of basalt beneath the Cumbre Vieja, running north to south beneath the ridge. The idea is that if there is a fault, lava might have welled up through the crack and solidified into a very hard wall.”

“Okay.”

“I can imagine … well, if someone set off a nuclear explosion on the west side of that wall, a lot of the blast would be reflected toward the west.”

“What the military calls a force multiplier.”

“Exactly. That might push the whole west side of that ridge up, out, and into the Atlantic very quickly. But that’s a worst-case scenario, and it depends on that basalt wall being there. We don’t know for sure that it is.”

“But it’s possible?”

She nodded. “It’s possible. There are lots of basaltic extrusions along the top of that ridge — odd-looking rock formations, towers, exposed cliffs, things like that, things that suggest a much larger mass of basalt underground.”

“I see. How could we find out if that wall exists?”

“Geological surveys. Ground-penetrating radar, maybe. I happen to know there are a couple of tunnels running through the Cumbre Vieja. I don’t think the tunnel engineers encountered anything like a solid wall of basalt. Of course, the tunnels are up at the north end of the ridge. The basalt wall, if it’s there, would be farther south, probably.”

“Well, thank you, Katie. I appreciate your time.”

“Not a problem. But … Bill?”

“Yes?”

“When the deputy director of the NSA calls me up and asks about one-kiloton nukes causing landslides and tidal waves on the East Coast … I have to ask. Is it time for me to sell my house and move to Denver?”

“I can’t discuss the details, Katie. I’m sorry. As I said, there is a threat, yes. We don’t know how serious a threat it is, but we’re evaluating it now. Should you move to Denver?” He smiled. “Probably not. You might want to buy some extra flood insurance, though.”

“Georgetown is at an elevation of around forty meters above sea level, Bill.”

“Perfect. You may find yourself owning high-priced beachfront property. Thanks again, Katie. I’ll be in touch.”

PLAYA DE PUERTO NAOS

LA PALMA, CANARY ISLANDS

SATURDAY, 1520 HOURS LOCAL TIME

When Lia saw him walking up the beach toward her, she was furious. CJ had called from the airport hours before, saying she hadn’t seen him at the airport, that a surreptitious check of the airport’s passenger lists had not turned up his name. Clearly, Vince Carlylse had not gotten on the flight for Madrid as planned, but where he’d gone on the tiny island instead had been a complete mystery.

After walking a couple of miles north along the beach, Lia had turned around and was well on her way back toward the hotel when she’d seen his lanky frame coming toward her across the black sand. He’d stood out. Only a few other people were scattered along the beach, bright splotches of swimsuit colors lying on towels or wading at the edge of the incoming surf. Tourism on the island was light; the beach at Alicante had been packed by comparison.

“What the hell are you doing here?” Lia demanded. She looked at her watch. “You were supposed to be on that commuter flight out of here and back to the mainland over two hours ago!”

“I decided,” Carlylse replied with an easy grin, “that I didn’t want to go.”

“What’s the matter with you? Is this some sort of death wish thing?”

“Frankly, Lia, I’m not sure I believe all that stuff. I write fiction for a living, you know. I don’t know what your game is … but I’m having a little trouble believing in this cloak and dagger stuff, or terrorists out to get me because of the books I write.”

She sighed. “So would you believe me if I told you little gray aliens from Atlantis were out to get you instead?”

“That I might believe!”

Lia was angry, but she found the anger evaporating fairly quickly. Carlylse, when you thought about it, had no reason to trust her, or to believe anything that she’d told him, in fact.

“You are a world-class idiot,” she told him. “Has anyone ever told you that?”

“No, actually. I find your candor refreshing.”

“Are you still in the same room at the Sol? The one we switched you to last night?”

The evening before, Lia had asked the Art Room to intercede for her, having them contact the front desk and see if there had been a complaint about a woman with a gun. There hadn’t been, thank God. A Spanish-speaking handler from the Art Room pretending to be Vince Carlylse had gotten a different room for him at the hotel and the solemn promise that no one be told where he now was staying. It was one way to stay ahead of any potential assassins until she could get him on a plane bound for the United States.

“Still there. It does have a better view than the other one.”

“Fuck the view! We need to get you someplace safe.”

“Okay, you’re trying to track down these assassins of yours, right? What better way to get them into the open than to use me as bait?”

Eyebrows raised, Lia didn’t answer that. Part of the discussion with the Art Room the day before had revolved around exactly that possibility — using Carlylse to flush out al-Wawi. She’d argued that it would be better to get him off the island and back to the United States, suggesting that he would be useful in figuring out just what it was about his tidal wave book that had turned him into a target.

When Lia didn’t reply, Carlylse went on, changing the subject. “At least Carmen doesn’t appear to have caused a problem with the front desk,” Carlylse told her. He sounded almost disappointed. “God knows what she thinks of me now, though.”

“You can always tell her I was your crazy ex-wife,” Lia told him.

He laughed. “I might just do that.”

After getting him a new, assassin-proof room last night, the Art Room had booked him on a local flight out of La Palma back to Madrid. From there, he was supposed to catch a flight to Dulles International. A couple of U.S. Marshals were to have met him in Spain to provide security for the rest of the trip back to the States.