Zavala raised a brow, but he said nothing.
"Sorry," Cohen said. "This whole thing has me as paranoid as hell."
"A little paranoia can be a healthy thing, my friend."
Cohen dropped his voice to a whisper again. "We may have a mole in the news department. That's why I had you call on my cell phone." He fidgeted nervously with his spoon. "A lot of weird stuff has been happening at the paper."
"What kind of stuff?"
"Nothing I can put my finger on. Files out of the order you put them in. Strangers in the building. Odd glances."
"Are you sure it's not your imagination?"
"Others on the team have noticed the funny stuff, too. Hell. Are my jitters that obvious?"
"You're even making me nervous."
"Good, I want you to be nervous. I don't think Gogstad would think twice about getting rid of anyone standing in the way of its goal."
"Which is?"
"It's clear to me that they want to control the world's fresh water supply."
Zavala pondered the pronouncement. "That's a tall order. What they've done in North America and Europe is pretty impressive, but can any one company corner the world's fresh water?"
"It's not as hard as you might think. Fresh water is less than one half of one percent of the world's total water stock. What remains is seawater, or it's locked up in ice caps or in the ground. A lot of our water is too polluted to use, and the world needs more of it every day."
"But isn't most of that water still controlled by all sorts of people and governments?"
"No more. Gogstad locates a likely water source, then offers to run it, making all sorts of generous concessions. Once it has its foot in the door it uses bribery, extortion, or more to convert it to private ownership. In the past five years Gogstad has
stepped up the pace of privatization tremendously. It's been helped by the fact that under the new international trade agreements, a country no longer owns its water. For Godsakes, Joe, this is Owens Valley all over again, but it's happening world wide!" "Your megacompany sounds like a very big octopus."
"Nice analogy even if it is a little cliche." He took a red grease pencil from his pocket and drew lines and arrows on the map. "Here are your tentacles. Water will flow from Canada and Alaska to China. From Scotland and Austria it will go to Africa and the Mideast. Australia has contracts to export water to Asia. On the surface separate interests are involved. But Gogstad calls the shots through its shadow corporations."
"How do they intend to move all that water?"
'A Gogstad company has already developed the technology to transport millions of gallons across the oceans in huge sealed bags. In addition, Gogstad shipyards have been building fifty thousand-gross-ton tankers that can serve double duty hauling oil and water."
"That's got to be pretty expensive."
"They say water flows uphill to money. The customers will pay any price. Most of it won't quench the thirst of some poor bastard scratching a living in a dust bowl. It's for high tech, one of the biggest polluters, incidentally."
"The whole thing is incredible."
"Hold on to your seat, Joe, because that's only part of it." He tapped the map of North America with his finger. "Here's the big market. The U.S.A. Remember what I said about Gogstad controlling the Canadian water supply? There's a plan to divert massive quantities of water from Hudson Bay through the Great Lakes to the U.S. Sun Belt." His finger moved to Alaska. "California and the other desert states have sucked the Colorado River practically dry, so another scheme would take glacier water from the Yukon and move it to the American West through a vast system of dams, dikes, and giant reservoirs. A tenth of British Columbia would be flooded, and there would be massive
natural resource and human disruptions. The new hydroelectric plants would garner huge amounts of energy. Guess who is strategically placed to benefit from the energy and construction money?" "I think I know the answer."
"Uh-huh. They'll reap billions! The plans for this boondoggle have been around for years. They've never advanced be cause they're so destructive and expensive, but they are getting some powerful support, and there's a chance they'll go through."
"Gogstad again?"
"Now you're getting it," Cohen said. He was becoming more excited. "This time the opposition won't be there. Gogstad has bought up newspapers and TV stations. It can create a drumbeat that won't be easy to resist. The political clout Gogstad can bring to bear is phenomenal. They've got ex-presidents, prime ministers, secretaries of state on their boards. There's no way to fight it. You put that kind of political and financial clout in the hands of someone willing to use street gang methods, and you'll know why I'm so damned nervous."
He stopped to catch his breath. His face was flushed with excitement. Beads of sweat glistened on his forehead. He stared at Zavala as if daring him to argue with him.
Then Cohen's whole body seemed to deflate. "Sorry," he apologized. "I've been close to this mess for too long. I think I'm on the verge of a nervous breakdown. This is the first chance I've had to get it out of my system."
Zavala nodded. "The sooner the story is published, the better. How soon before you run it?"
"Soon. We're putting the final pieces in place. We want to know why Gogstad has built so many supertankers."
"That certainly fits in with their plans to ship bulk water."
"Yes, we know they have the contracts in place to move glacier water from Alaska, but we've crunched the numbers. There are far too many tankers for the existing market, even if you add China."
"It takes a while to build a ship. Maybe they want to be ready. They'll mothball the ships until the time is ripe."
"That's the strange thing. These ships aren't being moth balled. Each tanker has a captain and a crew. They're just sitting in Alaskan waters as if they're waiting."
"Waiting for what?"
"That's what we would like to know."
"Something's going on," Zavala murmured.
"My reporter's nose for news says the same thing."
Zavala got a cold feeling as if one of those slimy tentacles they talked about had tapped him on the shoulder. He recalled the conversation he had had with Austin about the unseen fears that sometimes come beneath the sea. As usual, Kurt's intuition was on the mark. Zavala's own instincts were telling him that a big, hungry something lay hidden in the blue shadows, watching and waiting. And its name was Gogstad.
Chapter 23
CIA director Erwin LeGrand beamed proudly as his fourteen-year-old daughter, Katherine, trotted over on the back of her chestnut gelding. She slipped out of the saddle and presented her father with the trophy for first place, English style.
"This is for your office, Dad," she said with excitement in her cornflower-blue eyes. "It's for being the best father in the world. You're the one who bought me Val and paid for all those expensive riding lessons."
LeGrand took the trophy and put his arm around his daughter's shoulders, thinking how much she looked like her mother. "Thank you, Katie, but I wasn't the one who worked so hard to show Valiant who's boss." He smiled. "I'll only take it on the condition that it's on loan. As soon as I've bragged to everyone at the agency, it's going back in your trophy case with the others."
LeGrand's pride was mixed with guilt. True, he had sup ported his daughter's love for riding financially, but this was the first event he had attended in years. The country club photographer came over, and LeGrand posed with his daughter and her horse, wishing as he did that his wife were still alive to make the picture complete.
Katie led Val back to the stable, and LeGrand ambled across the field, chatting with his assistant, a plain but extremely intelligent woman named Hester Leonard. LeGrand was sometimes likened in press reports to a beardless Lincoln, a comparison based on his reputation for honesty and his resemblance to the sixteenth president. He was tall and homely, but there was no mistaking the character etched into his large features. He had earned a reputation for integrity in running the world's largest intelligence-gathering organization, and in another age with no TV and sound bites, he would have been considered seriously as a candidate for president.