"Just give me the whole bottle," Evans said, trying to make a joke. Kenner had unnerved him. Earlier in the evening, Kenner had been excited, almost twitchy-nervous. But now, sitting on the airplane, he was very still. Implacable. He had the manner of a man who was telling obvious truths, even though none of it was obvious to Peter. "I had it all wrong," Evans said finally. "If what you're saying is true..."
Kenner just nodded slowly.
Evans thought: He's letting me put it together. He turned to Sarah. "Did you know this, too?"
"No," she said. "But I knew something was wrong. George was very upset for the last two weeks."
"You think that's why he gave that speech, and then killed himself?"
"He wanted to embarrass NERF," Kenner said. "He wanted intense media scrutiny of that organization. Because he wanted to stop what is about to happen."
The wine came in cut glass crystal. Evans gulped it, held out his glass for more. "And what is about to happen?" he said.
"According to that list, there will be four events," Kenner said. "In four locations in the world. Roughly one day apart."
"What kind of events?"
Kenner shook his head. "We now have three good clues."
Sanjong fingered his napkin. "This is real linen," he said, in an awestruck tone. "And real crystal."
"Nice, huh?" Evans said, draining his glass again.
Sarah said, "What are the clues?"
"The first is the fact that the timing is not exact. You might think a terrorist event would be precisely planned, down to the minute. These events are not."
"Maybe the group isn't that well organized."
"I doubt that's the explanation. The second clue we got tonight, and it's very important," Kenner said. "As you saw from the list, there are several alternate locations for these events. Again, you'd think a terrorist organization would pick one location and stick to it. But this group hasn't done that."
"Why not?"
"I assume it reflects the kind of events that are planned. There must be some uncertainty inherent in the event itself, or in the conditions needed for it to take place."
"Pretty vague."
"It's more than we knew twelve hours ago."
"And the third clue?" Evans said, gesturing to the flight attendant to refill his glass.
"The third clue we have had for some time. Certain government agencies track the sale of restricted high technologies that might be useful to terrorists. For example, they track everything that can be used in nuclear weapons production--centrifuges, certain metals, and so on. They track the sale of all conventional high explosives. They track certain critical biotechnologies. And they track equipment that might be used to disrupt communications networks--that generate electromagnetic impulses, for example, or high-intensity radio frequencies."
"Yes..."
"They do this work with neural network pattern-recognition computers that search for regularities in great masses of data--in this case, basically thousands of sales invoices. About eight months ago, the computers detected a very faint pattern that seemed to indicate a common origin for the widely scattered sale of certain field and electronic equipment."
"How did the computer decide that?"
"The computer doesn't tell you that. It just reports the pattern, which is then investigated by agents on the ground."
"And?"
"The pattern was confirmed. ELF was buying very sophisticated high technology from companies in Vancouver, London, Osaka, Helsinki, and Seoul."
"What kind of equipment?" Evans said.
Kenner ticked them off on his fingers. "Fermentation tanks for AOB primers--that's ammonia-oxidizing bacteria. Mid-level particle-dispersal units, military grade. Tectonic impulse generators. Transportable MHD units. Hypersonic cavitation generators. Resonant impact processor assemblies."
"I don't know what any of that is," Evans said.
"Few people do," Kenner said. "Some of it's fairly standard environmental technology, like the AOB primer tanks. They're used in industrial wastewater treatment. Some of it's military but sold on the open market. And some of it's highly experimental. But it's all expensive."
Sarah said, "But how is it going to be used?"
Kenner shook his head. "Nobody knows. That's what we're going to find out."
"How do youthink it's going to be used?"
"I hate to speculate," Kenner said. He picked up a basket of rolls. "Bread, anyone?"
TO PUNTA ARENAS
WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 6
3:01 A. M.
The jet flew through the night.
The front of the cabin was darkened; Sarah and Sanjong were sleeping on makeshift beds, but Evans couldn't sleep. He sat in the back, staring out the window at the carpet of clouds glowing silver in the moonlight.
Kenner sat opposite him. "It's a beautiful world, isn't it?" he said. "Water vapor is one of the distinctive features of our planet. Makes such beauty. It's surprising there is so little scientific understanding of how water vapor behaves."
"Really?"
"The atmosphere is a bigger mystery than anyone will admit. Simple example: No one can say for sure if global warming will result in more clouds, or fewer clouds."
"Wait a minute," Evans said. "Global warming is going to raise the temperature, so more moisture will evaporate from the ocean, and more moisture means more clouds."
"That's one idea. But higher temperature also means more water vapor in the air and therefore fewer clouds."
"So which is it?"