Night Probe!, Page 2

  The whistle tooted again, much closer this time, and Harding knew from experience the sound came only a quarter mile up the track. "Okay, whatever you say, right after I flag the Limited."

  The gun went off and Meechum's chessboard exploded, scattering the pieces about the linoleum floor.

  "No more stupid talk about stopping trains. I suggest you get on with it."

  Harding stared at the robber, his eyes stricken with sudden horror. "You don't understand. The bridge might be out."

  "I understand that you're trying to be clever."

  "I swear to God-"

  "He's telling the truth Meechum cut in. "A warning just came over the line from Albany about the bridge."

  "Please listen to us," Harding pleaded. "You could be murdering a hundred people." He paused, his face pale as the headlamp from the approaching engine beamed through the window. The whistle shrilled no more than two hundred yards away. "For God's sake-"

  Meechum snatched the lantern from Harding's hand and lunged for the open doorway. The gun blasted again. A bullet thudded into his hip and he crashed to the floor a foot short of the threshold. He rolled to a kneeling position and cocked his arm to throw the lantern onto the track outside. The man in the straw hat grabbed his wrist and in the same motion brought the pistol barrel down on Meechum's head and kicked the door shut.

  Then he whirled on Harding and snarled, "Open that damned safe." Harding's stomach heaved at the sight of Meechum's blood spreading on the floor, and then he did as he was told. He clutched the combination dial, sick with helplessness as the train roared by on the track not twenty feet behind him, the lights from the Pullman coaches casting flickering reflections through the panes of the station windows.

  In less than a minute the clack from the last car's wheels on the rails had died away and the train was gone, heading up the grade to the bridge.

  The tumblers dropped into place and Harding twisted the bolt arm, swung the heavy door open and stepped aside. Inside were a few small, unclaimed packages, old station logbooks and records, and a cashbox. The robber scooped up the box and counted out the contents.

  "Eighteen dollars and fourteen cents," he said indifferently. "Hardly a munificent sum, but it should keep me eating for a few days."

  He neatly folded the bills in a leather breast wallet and dropped the change in a pants pocket. Casually tossing the emptied cashbox on the desk, he stepped over Meechum and faded into the storm.

  Meechum moaned and stirred. Harding knelt and lifted the telegrapher's head. "The train . . . ?"

  Meechum murmured.

  "You're bleeding pretty bad," said Harding. He pulled a red bandana from his hip pocket and pressed it against the flowing wound.

  Clenching his teeth against the burning agony of two injuries, Meechum stared dully at Harding. "Call the east bank . . . see if the train is safe."

  Harding eased his friend's head to the floor. He grabbed for the phone and threw back the extension arm, opening the transmitter circuit. He shouted into the mouthpiece but silence was his only reply. He closed his eyes for a moment and prayed, then tried again. The line to the other side of the river was dead. Feverishly he turned the selector wheel on the Cummings-Wray sender and called the dispatcher at Albany. All he heard was static.

  "I can't get through." He could taste the bitterness in his mouth. "The storm has disrupted the circuits."

  The telegraph key began to click. "The telegraph lines are still open," muttered Meechum. "That's Standish with his chess move."

  Painfully he dragged his body to the table and reached up and broke in on the incoming message, tapping out an emergency line clearance. Then both men momentarily stared at each other, fearful of what they might learn in the morning light that was beginning to tint the eastern sky. The wind poured through the doorway and scattered loose papers and whipped at their hair.

  "I'll alert Albany," Meechum said finally. "You see to the bridge."

  As if in a dream, Harding jumped to the track bed, his panic mushrooming, and ran recklessly over the uneven rail ties. Soon his breath came in great gasps and his heart felt like it was thumping out of his rib cage. He topped the grade and hurried under the girders of the west bank's flanking span toward the center of the DeauvilleHudson bridge. He tripped and sprawled, gashing a knee on a rail spike. He picked himself up and stumbled on. At the outer edge of the center span, he stopped.

  An icy nausea coursed through his body as he stood in numbed abhorrence and gazed through unbelieving eyes.

  There was a great empty gap in the middle of the bridge. The center truss had vanished into the cold, gray waters of the Hudson River 150 feet below. Vanished too was the passenger train carrying a hundred men, women and children.

  "Dead . . . all dead!" Harding cried in helpless rage. "All for eighteen dollars and fourteen cents."

  Part I

  ROUBAIX'S GARROTE

  FEBRUARY 1989

  WASHINGTON, D.C.

  There was nothing unusual about the man slouched in the back seat of a nondescript Ford sedan driving slowly through the streets of Washington. To the pedestrians who scurried in front of the car at stop lighted intersections, he might have been a paper salesman being driven to work by his nephew. No one paid the slightest notice to the White House tag on the license plates.

  Alan Mercier was a plump, balding character with a genial Falstaff face that masked a shrewd analytical mind. No clotheshorse, he was addicted to ever-rumpled, bargain-priced suits with white linen handkerchiefs stuffed sloppily in the breast pocket. They were trademarks that political cartoonists exaggerated with keen enthusiasm.

  Mercier was no paper salesman. Recently appointed national security adviser to the country's new president, he was still unrecognized in the public eye. Widely respected in the academic community, he had built a reputation as a canny forecaster of international events. At the time he came under the eye of the President, he was director of the World Crisis Projection Commission.

  Perching a pair of Ben Franklin specs on a bubble nose, he laid a briefcase across his lap and opened it.

  The underside of the lid held a visual display screen, and a keyboard console, bordered by two rows of colored lights, lay across the bottom. He typed out a combination of numbers and waited a brief moment while the signal was bounced by satellite to his corner office at the White House. There a computer, programmed by his aides, whirred into life and began relaying his workload for the day.

  The incoming data arrived in code and was electronically deciphered in milliseconds by the battery-operated microprocessor on his lap, the final text reading out in green lowercase letters across the screen.

  First came the correspondence, followed by a series of memos from his security council staff. Next came the daily reports from various governmental agencies, the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the director of Central Intelligence. He quickly digested them to memory before erasing their contents from the microprocessor's storage unit. All except two.

  He was still lingering over them when his car swung through the west gate of the White House. His eyes mirrored a curious perplexity. Then he sighed, pressed the off button and closed the case.

  As soon as he arrived in his office and settled behind his desk, he dialed a private number at the Department of Energy. A man's voice answered in the middle of the first ring. "Dr. Klein's office."

  "This is Alan Mercier. Is Ron available?"

  There was a slight pause, and then the voice of Dr. Ronald Klein, the secretary of energy, came on the line. "Morning, Alan. What can I do for you?"

  "I wonder if you could spare me a few minutes today."

  "My schedule is pretty tight."

  "This is important, Ron. You name the time."

  Klein wasn't used to being pushed, but the cement tone of Mercier's voice implied the security adviser was not about to be put off. He held his palm over the phone's mouthpiece while he checked with his administrative assistant. Then he came back on the line.

/>   "How does between two thirty and three sound?"

  "No problem," replied Mercier. "I have a lunch meeting at the Pentagon, so I'll swing by your office on the way back."

  "You did say it was important."

  "Let's put it another way," Mercier said, pausing for effect. "After I ruin the President's day, I'm going to screw up yours."

  In the oval office of the White House, the President sat back from his desk and closed his eyes. He allowed his mind to wander from the pressures of the day for a minute or two. For a man who had been inaugurated to the nation's highest office only a few weeks before, he looked overly worn and tired. The election campaign had been long and exhausting, and he had yet to fully recover from it.

  He was small in stature, with brown hair streaked with white and thinning; his features, once cheerful and crinkling, were set and solemn. He reopened his eyes as a sudden winter sleet rapped the floor-to-ceiling windows behind him. Outside on Pennsylvania Avenue, the traffic crawled at a sloth like pace as the pavement turned to ice. He longed for the warmer climate of his native New Mexico. He wished he could escape on a camping trip to the Sangre de Cristo Mountains near Santa Fe.

  This man had never set out to become President. Never driven by blind ambition, he had served in the Senate during twenty years of conscientious effort and a solid record of accomplishments that did little toward making him a household name.

  Nominated as a dark horse by his party's convention, he was elected by a wide popular margin when an investigative reporter dug up a series of shady financial dealings in is opponent's past. "Mr. President?"

  He looked up from his reverie at the sound of his aide's voice. "Yes?"

  "Mr. Mercier is here for your security briefing."

  "All right, send him in." Mercier entered the room and seated himself across the desk. He passed over a heavy folder.

  "How goes the world today?" the President asked with a thin smile.

  "Pretty grim, as always," replied Mercier. "My staff has completed the projections on the nation's energy reserves. The bottom line isn't exactly encouraging."

  "You're not telling me anything I didn't know. What's the latest outlook?"

  "The CIA gives the Middle East another two years before their fields scrape bottom. That will leave the world's known oil supply at less than fifty percent of demand. The Russians are hoarding their depleted reserves, and the Mexican offshore bonanza fell short of expectations. And as for our own oil deposits . .

  ."

  "I've seen the figures," replied the President. "The hectic exploration several years ago brought in a few small fields at best."

  Mercier surveyed the interior of a folder. "Solar radiation, windmills, electric autos, they're partial solutions of a sort. Unfortunately, their technology is at about the same state as television during the nineteen forties."

  "A pity the synthetic fuel programs got off to such a slow start.

  "The earliest target date before the oil-shale refineries can take up the slack is four years away. In the meantime, American transportation is up the polluted creek without locomotion."

  The President cracked a faint smile at Mercier's rare display of dry humor. "Surely there is some hope on the horizon."

  "There's James Bay."

  "The Canadian power project?"

  Mercier nodded and reeled off the statistics. "Eighteen dams, twelve powerhouses, a work force of nearly ninety thousand people, and the re channeling of two rivers the size of the Colorado. And, as the Canadian government literature states, the largest and most expensive hydroelectric project in the history of man."

  "Who operates it?"

  "Quebec Hydro, the provincial power authority. They began work on the project in nineteen seventy-four. The price tag has been pretty hefty. Twenty-six billion dollars, the major share coming from New York money houses."

  "What's the output?"

  "Over a hundred million kilowatts, with double that coming in the next twenty years."

  "How much flows across our borders?"

  "Enough to light fifteen states."

  The President's face tensed. "I don't like being so heavily dependent on Quebec for electricity. I'd feel more secure if our nation's power came from our own nuclear plants."

  Mercier shook his head. "The sad fact is our nuclear facilities provide less than a third of our requirements."

  "As usual we dragged our feet," the President said wearily.

  "The lag was partly due to escalating construction costs and expensive modifications," Mercier agreed.

  "Partly because the demands on uranium have put it in short supply. And then, of course, there were the environmentalists."

  The President sat in thoughtful silence.

  "We banked on endless reserves that do not exist," Mercier continued. "And while our country consumed itself into a corner, the neighbors to the north went ahead and did something about it. We had no option but to tap their source."

  "Are their prices in line?"

  Mercier nodded. "The Canadians, bless their souls, have kept rates on a par with our own power companies."

  "A glimmer of sunshine after all."

  "There's a catch."

  The President sighed.

  "We have to face the unpleasant fact," Mercier went on, "that Quebec expects to pass a referendum for full independence by summer."

  "Prime Minister Sarveux has slammed the door on the Quebec separatists before. You don't think he can do it again?"

  "No, sir, I don't. Our intelligence sources claim that Premier Guerrier of the Parti quebecois has the votes to make it stick next time around."

  "They'll pay a high price to break away from Canada," the President said. "Their economy is alre+dy in chaos."

  "Their strategy is to rely on the United States to prop up their government."

  "And if we don't?"

  "They can either raise electrical rates to an outrageous level or pull the plug," Mercier answered.

  "Guerrier would be a fool to shut off our power. He knows we'd retaliate with massive economic sanctions."

  Mercier stared bleakly at the President. "Might take weeks, even months before the Quebeckers felt the pinch. In the meantime our industrial heartland would be paralyzed."

  "You paint a bleak picture."

  "That's only the background scene. You're familiar, of course, with the FQS."

  The President winced. The so-called Free Quebec Society was an underground terrorist movement that had assassinated several Canadian officials. "What about them?"

  "A recent CIA report claims they're Moscow-oriented. if they somehow gained control of the government, we'd have another Cuba on our hands."

  "Another Cuba," the President repeated in an expressionless tone.

  "One with the capacity to force America to its knees."

  The President rose from his chair and walked to the window, staring at the sleet building on the White House grounds. He was silent for nearly half a minute. Finally he said, "We cannot afford a power play by Quebec. Especially in the months ahead." He turned and faced Mercier, his eyes grieved. "This country is broke and up to its ears in hock, Alan, and just between you and me and these walls, it's only a matter of a few years before we have no choice but to cut the stalling and declare national bankruptcy."

  Mercier sagged into his chair. For a heavy man he appeared curiously hunched and shrunken. "I'd hate to see that occur during your administration, Mr. President."

  The President shrugged resignedly. "From Franklin Roosevelt on, every chief executive has played a game of tag, pinning a multiplying financial burden on the office of his successor. Well the game is about to be called, and I'm it. If we lost electrical power to our northeastern states for twenty days or longer, the repercussions would be tragic. My deadline for the announcement of a new deflated currency would have to be drastically reduced. I need time, Alan, time to prepare the public and the business community for the ax. Time to make the transition to a new money standar
d as painless as possible. Time for our shale refineries to halt our dependence on foreign oil.

  "How can we restrain Quebec from doing anything foolish?"

  "I don't know. Our choices are limited."

  "There are two options when all else fails," Mercier said, a thin line of tension forming around his mouth.

  "Two options as old as time to save an economy from sinking down the drain. One is to pray for a miracle."

  "And the second?"

  "Provoke a war."

  At precisely 2:30 in the afternoon, Mercier entered the Forrestal Building on Independence Avenue and took the elevator to the seventh floor. Without fanfare he was ushered into the plush office of Ronald Klein, the secretary of energy.

  Klein, a scholarly-looking man with long white hair and a large condor nose, unwound his slim six-feet-five-inches frame from one end of a littered conference table and came over to shake Mercier's hand.

  "So what's this matter of dire importance?" asked Klein, skipping the cordial small talk.

  "More odd than dire," replied Mercier. "I ran across a request from the General Accounting Office for data concerning the expenditure of six hundred and eighty million dollars in federal funding for the development of a doodlebug."

  "A what?"

  "Doodlebug," answered Mercier matter-of-factly. "That's a pet name given by geological engineers to any offbeat tool that's supposed to detect underground minerals."