Goodbye California

That earthquakes should be largely confined to those areas is in no way fortuitous: their cause, as well as that of volcanoes, is now a matter of almost universal agreement among geologists. The theory is simply that in the unimaginably distant past when land first appeared it was in the form of one gigantic super-continent surrounded by – inevitably – one massive ocean. With the passage of time and for reasons not yet definitely ascertained this super-continent broke up into several different continental masses, which, borne on what are called their ‘tectonic plates’ – which float on the still molten magma layer of the earth – drifted apart. Those tectonic plates occasionally bang or rub against one another; the effects of the collisions are transmitted either to the land above or the ocean floor and appear in the form of earthquakes or volcanoes.

Most of California lies on the North American plate which, while tending to move westward, is not the real villain of the piece. That unhappy distinction belongs to that same North Pacific plate which deals so hardly with China, Japan and the Philippines and on which that section of California lying to the west of the San Andreas Fault so unhappily lies. Although the North Pacific plate appears to be rotating slightly, its movement in California is still roughly to the north-west and, now and then, when the pressure between the two plates becomes too much, the North Pacific plate eases this pressure by jerking north-west along the San Andreas Fault and so producing one of those earthquakes that Californians don’t care so much about.

The extent of the dislocation along this right-slip fault – so called because if you stand on either side of the fault after an earthquake the other side appears to have moved to the right – is crucial in relation to the magnitude of the shock. Occasionally there may be no lateral slip at all. Sometimes it may be only a foot or two. But, even though its consequences are not to be contemplated lightly, a lateral slip of forty feet is eminently possible.

In fact, and in this context, all things are possible. The active earthquake and volcanic belt that circumgirdles the Pacific is commonly – and appropriately – known as the ‘ring of fire’. The San Andreas Fault is an integral part of this, and it is on this ring of fire that the two greatest monster earthquakes (in Japan and South America) ever recorded have occurred. They were on the order of eight-point-nine on the Richter scale. California can lay no more claim to divine protection than any other part of the ring of fire and there is no compelling reason why the next monster, about six times as powerful as the great San Francisco one, shouldn’t occur, say, in San Bernardino, thus effectively dumping Los Angeles into the Pacific. And the Richter scale goes up to twelve!

Earthquakes on the ring of fire can show another disadvantageous aspect – they can occur offshore as well as under land. When this occurs huge tidal waves result. In 1976 the town of Mindanao in the Southern Philippines was inundated and all but destroyed and thousands of lives were lost when an undersea earthquake at the mouth of the crescent-shaped Morro Bay caused a fifteen-foot tidal wave that engulfed the shores of the bay. Such an ocean earthquake off San Francisco would devastate the Bay area and, in all probability, wouldn’t do any good to the Sacramento and San Joaquin Valleys.

As it is said, it is the wandering nature of those tectonic plates that is the prime cause of earthquakes. But there are three other imponderable possibilities that could well act as triggering factors which could conceivably cause earthquakes.

The first of those is emissions from the sun. It is known that the strength and content of solar winds alter considerably and wholly unpredictably. It is also known that they can produce considerable alterations in the chemical structure of our atmosphere which in turn can have the effect of either accelerating or acting as a brake on the rotation of the earth; an effect which, because it would be measurable in terms of only hundredths of a second, would be wholly undetected by many but could have (and may have had in the past) an influence ranging from the considerable to the profound on the unanchored tectonic plates.

Secondly, there is a respectable body of scientific opinion that holds that the gravitational influences of the planets act on the sun to modulate the strength of these solar winds. This is of immediate concern since a rare alignment of all the planets of the Solar System is due in 1982. If this theory, known as The Jupiter Effect from the title of a book by Drs John Gribbin and Stephen Plagemann, is correct that alignment will be the trigger for unprecedented solar activity, with repercussions on the stability of planet Earth. So scientists are waiting for 1982 with considerable interest, and not a little trepidation.

And, apart from war, this concept can be employed for a variety of other interesting purposes, which is what this book is about.

CHAPTER ONE (#u9f24251b-cc42-52fb-a9e4-91f1eb8cf630)

Ryder opened his tired eyelids and reached for the telephone without enthusiasm. ‘Yes?’

‘Lieutenant Mahler. Get down here right away. And bring your son.’

‘What’s wrong?’ The lieutenant customarily made a point of having his subordinates call him ‘sir’, but in Sergeant Ryder’s case he’d given up years ago. Ryder reserved that term for those he held in respect: no friends or acquaintances, to the best of their knowledge, had ever heard him use it.

‘Not over the phone.’ The receiver clicked and Ryder rose reluctantly to his feet, pulled on his sports coat and fastened the central button, so effectively concealing the .38 Smith & Wesson strapped to the left-hand side of what had once been his waist. Still reluctantly, as became a man who had just finished a twelve-hour non-stop duty stint, he glanced around the room, all chintzy curtains and chair covers, ornaments and vasefuls of flowers: Sergeant Ryder, clearly, was no bachelor. He went into the kitchen, sniffed sorrowfully at the aroma coming from the contents of a simmering casserole, turned off the oven and wrote ‘Gone down-town’ at the foot of a note instructing him when and to what temperature he should turn a certain switch: which was as near to cooking Ryder had ever come in his twenty-seven years of marriage.

His car was parked in the driveway. It was a car that no self-respecting police officer would care to have been found shot in. That Ryder was just such a policeman was beyond doubt, but he was attached to Intelligence and had little use for gleaming sedans equipped with illuminated ‘police’ signs, flashing lights and sirens. The car–for want of a better word–was an elderly and battered Peugeot of the type much favoured by Parisians of a sadistic bent of mind whose great pleasure it was to observe the drivers of shining limousines slow down and pull into the kerb whenever they caught sight of those vintage chariots in their rear-view mirrors.

Four blocks from his own home Ryder parked his car, walked up a flagged pathway and rang the front-door bell. A young man opened the door.

Ryder said: ‘Dress uniform, Jeff. We’re wanted downtown.’

‘Both of us? Why?’

‘Your guess. Mahler wouldn’t say.’

‘It’s all those TV cop series he keeps watching. You’ve got to be mysterious or you’re nothing.’ Jeff Ryder left and returned in twenty seconds, tie in position and buttoning up his uniform. Together they walked down the flagged path.

They made an odd contrast, father and son. Sergeant Ryder was built along the general lines of a Mack truck that had seen better days. His crumpled coat and creaseless trousers looked as if they had been slept in for a week: Ryder could buy a new suit in the morning and by evenfall a second-hand clothes dealer would have crossed the street to avoid meeting him. He had thick dark hair, a dark moustache and a worn, lined, lived-in face that held a pair of eyes, dark as the rest of him, that had looked at too many things in the course of a lifetime and had liked little of what they had seen. It was also a face that didn’t go in for much in the way of expressions.

Jeff Ryder was two inches taller and thirty-five pounds lighter than his father. His immaculately pressed California Highway Patrolman’s uniform looked like a custom-built job by Saks. He had fair hair, blue eyes–both inherited from his mother–and a lively, mobile, intelligent face. Only a clairvoyant could have deduced that he was Sergeant Ryder’s son.

On the way, they spoke only once. Jeff said: ‘Mother’s late on the road tonight–something to do with our summons to the presence?’

‘Your guess again.’

Central Office was a forbidding brownstone edifice overdue for demolition. It looked as if it had been specifically designed to depress further the spirits of the many miscreants who passed or were hauled through its doorway. The desk officer, Sergeant Dickson, looked at them gravely, but that was of no significance: the very nature of his calling inhibits any desk sergeant’s latent tendency towards levity. He waved a discouraged arm and said: ‘His eminence awaits.’

Lieutenant Mahler looked no less forbidding than the building he inhabited. He was a tall thin man with grizzled hair at the temples, thin unsmiling lips, a thin beaky nose and unsentimental eyes. No one liked him, for his reputation as a martinet had not been easily come by: on the other hand, no one actively disliked him, for he was a fair cop and a fairly competent one. ‘Fairly’ was the operative and accurate word. Although no fool he was not over-burdened with intelligence and had reached his present position partly because he was the very model of the strict upholder of justice, partly because his transparent honesty offered no threat to his superiors.

For once, and rarely for him, he looked ill at ease. Ryder produced a crumpled packet of his favoured Gauloises, lit a forbidden cigarette–Mahler’s aversion to wine, women, song and tobacco was almost pathological–and helped him out.

‘Something wrong at San Ruffino, then?’

Mahler looked at him in sharp suspicion. ‘How do you know? Who told you?’

‘So it’s true. Nobody told me. We haven’t committed any violations of the law recently. At least, my son hasn’t. Me, I don’t remember.’

Mahler allowed acidity to overcome his unease. ‘You surprise me.’

‘First time the two of us have ever been called in here together. We have a couple of things in common. First, we’re father and son, which is no concern of the police department. Second, my wife–Jeff’s mother–is employed at the nuclear reactor plant in San Ruffino. There hasn’t been an accident there or the whole town would have known in minutes. An armed break-in, perhaps?’

‘Yes.’ Mahler’s tone was almost grudging. He hadn’t relished the role of being the bearer of bad news, but a man doesn’t like having his lines taken from him.

‘Who’s surprised?’ Ryder was very matter of fact. For any sign of reaction he showed Mahler could well have remarked that it looked as if it might rain soon. ‘Security up there is lousy. I filed a report on it. Remember?’

‘Which was duly turned over to the proper authorities. Power plant security is not police business. That’s IAEA’s responsibility.’ He was referring to the International Atomic Energy Agency, one of the responsibilities of which was to supervise the safeguard system for the protection of power plants, specifically against the theft of nuclear fuels.

‘God’s sake!’ Not only had Jeff failed to inherit his father’s physical characteristics, he was also noticeably lacking in his parent’s massive calm. ‘Let’s get our priorities right. Lieutenant Mahler. My mother. Is she all right?’

‘I think so. Let’s say I have no reason to think otherwise.’

‘What the hell is that meant to mean?’

Mahler’s features tightened into the preliminary for a reprimand but Sergeant Ryder got in first. ‘Abduction?’

‘I’m afraid so.’

‘Kidnap?’ Jeff stared his disbelief. ‘Kidnap? Mother is the director’s secretary. She doesn’t know a damn thing about what goes on there. She’s not even security classified.’

‘True. But remember she was picked for the job; she didn’t apply. Cops’ wives are supposed to be like Caesar’s wife–beyond suspicion.’

‘But why pick on her?’

‘They didn’t just pick on her. They took about six others, or so I gather: the deputy director, deputy security chief, a secretary and a control room operator. More importantly–although not, of course, from your point of view–they took two visiting university professors. Both are highly qualified specialists in nuclear physics.’

Ryder said: ‘That makes five nuclear scientists to have disappeared in the past two months.’

‘Five it is.’ Mahler looked acutely unhappy.

Ryder said: ‘Where did those two scientists come from?’

‘San Diego and UCLA, I believe. Does it matter?’

‘I don’t know. It may be too late already.’

‘What’s that meant to mean, Sergeant?’