Then he sank beneath the surface again, and he felt the cold and the blackness close in around him.
At three o'clock in the morning the lights snapped on in the Laboratoire Ondulatoire of the French Marine Institute, in Vissy. The control panel came to life. The wave machine began to generate waves that rolled down the tank, one after another, and crashed against the artificial shore. The control screens flashed three-dimensional images, scrolled columns of data. The data was transmitted to an unknown location somewhere in France.
At four o'clock, the control panel went dark, and the lights went out, and the hard drives erased any record of what had been done.
PAHANG
TUESDAY, MAY 11
11:55 A. M.
The twisting jungle road lay in shadow beneath the canopy of the Malay rain forest. The paved road was very narrow, and the Land Cruiser careened around the corners, tires squealing. In the passenger seat, a bearded man of forty glanced at his watch. "How much farther?"
"Just a few minutes," the driver said, not slowing. "We're almost there."
The driver was Chinese but he spoke with a British accent. His name was Charles Ling and he had flown over from Hong Kong to Kuala Lumpur the night before. He had met his passenger at the airport that morning, and they had been driving at breakneck speed ever since.
The passenger had given Ling a card that read "Allan Peterson, Seismic Services, Calgary." Ling didn't believe it. He knew perfectly well that there was a company in Alberta, ELS Engineering, that sold this equipment. It wasn't necessary to come all the way to Malaysia to see it.
Not only that, but Ling had checked the passenger manifest on the incoming flight, and there was no Allan Peterson listed. So this guy had come in on a different name.
Furthermore, he told Ling he was a field geologist doing independent consulting for energy companies in Canada, mostly evaluating potential oil sites. But Ling didn't believe that, either. You could spot those petroleum engineers a mile off. This guy wasn't one.
So Ling didn't know who the guy was. It didn't bother him. Mr. Peterson's credit was good; the rest was none of Ling's business. He had only one interest today, and that was to sell cavitation machines. And this looked like a big sale: Peterson was talking about three units, more than a million dollars in total.
He turned off the road abruptly, onto a muddy rut. They bounced through the jungle beneath huge trees, and suddenly came out into sunlight and a large opening. There was a huge semicircular gash in the ground, exposing a cliff of gray earth. A green lake lay below.
"What's this?" Peterson said, wincing.
"It was open-face mine, abandoned now. Kaolin."
"Which is...?"
Ling thought, this is no geologist. He explained that kaolin was a mineral in clay. "It's used in paper and ceramics. Lot of industrial ceramics now. They make ceramic knives, incredibly sharp. They'll make ceramic auto engines soon. But the quality here was too low. It was abandoned four years ago."
Peterson nodded. "And where is the cavitator?"
Ling pointed toward a large truck parked at the edge of the cliff. "There." He drove toward it.
"Russians make it?"
"The vehicle and the carbon-matrix frame are Russian made. The electronics come from Taiwan. We assemble ourselves, in Kuala Lumpur."
"And is this your biggest model?"
"No, this is the intermediate. We don't have the largest one to show you."
They pulled alongside the truck. It was the size of a large earthmover; the cab of the Land Cruiser barely reached above the huge tires. In the center, hanging above the ground, was a large rectangular cavitation generator, looking like an oversize diesel generator, a boxy mass of pipes and wires. The curved cavitation plate was slung underneath, a few feet above the ground.
They climbed out of the car into sweltering heat. Ling's eyeglasses clouded over. He wiped them on his shirt. Peterson walked around the truck. "Can I get the unit without the truck?"
"Yes, we make transportable units. Seagoing containers. But usually clients want them mounted on vehicles eventually."
"I just want the units," Peterson said. "Are you going to demonstrate?"
"Right away," Ling said. He gestured to the operator, high up in the cab. "Perhaps we should step away."
"Wait a minute," Peterson said, suddenly alarmed. "I thought we were going to be alone. Who is that?"
"That's my brother," Ling said smoothly. "He's very trustworthy."
"Well..."
"Let's step away," Ling said. "We can see better from a distance."
The cavitation generator fired up, chugging loudly. Soon the noise blended with another sound, a deep humming that Ling always seemed to feel in his chest, in his bones.
Peterson must have felt it, too, because he moved back hastily.