36

 

THE LAB

Gwen stilled her breathing. She was good at it, bringing down her pulse, slowing her breath, using less oxygen, calming herself. It was a survival skill for all surfers of big waves. A multi-wave hold-down was not uncommon, and it could keep you underwater for several minutes. If you could hold your breath when you were getting the shit kicked out of you, you could sure as hell master your breath, and your nerves, during a conversation in an office, reasoned Gwen. She pushed to her feet. Showtime.

“Dr. Messenger, I’ve got kind of bad news,” said Gwen, standing in his open doorway.

“What, your model doesn’t work?” asked Messenger, looking up from his computer screen, eyebrows pinched.

“Oh, it works all right. It’s what it’s telling me that’s the problem. My sensors have been picking up extreme readings. We have checked and triple-checked them. They are accurate. We’ve got a mega-Niño brewing up, so fast and strong that as far as I can tell, no one else is onto it.”

Messenger jumped to his feet. “Mandy,” he called out. “Get Peter and Kevin in here now.”

Messenger turned back to Gwen. She felt his gaze, intense as always. She met it, steady-eyed.

“Come in, please,” he said, gesturing to a chair, pulling it out for her, old-world charm ascendant.

“Thank you,” replied Gwen, sinking down elegantly into the seat, flicking a smile at him. She could do charm too.

Weiss and Barclay hurried in. Weiss was carrying his laptop, as always. Barclay brandished his iPad.

They all sat round the table. Messenger turned to Gwen. “Tell them what you just told me,” he said urgently, as if the flood were coming even now.

“Oracle is predicting a mega-Niño,” said Gwen. “It’s brewing up as we speak. To put it in context, the last mega-Niño hit in nineteen ninety-seven. It caused twenty-two thousand deaths worldwide and cost thirty-three billion dollars in flood and drought-related damage.”

“Ugly,” proclaimed Barclay.

“It gets uglier. A mega-Niño means superfuel for the Pineapple Express. A warming sea causes more evaporation, giving a massive boost to the water vapor in the atmospheric rivers. These rivers are the ammunition, if you like, for an ARk Storm.”

“And what’s the detonator?” asked Messenger.

Gwen smiled. God, he was quick. In another world, she would have liked him.

“Pole-to-equator temperature differentials,” she replied. “And get this. A mega-Niño causes global weather chaos. It is more than possible that it will ramp up those differentials, in layman’s terms, detonating an ARk Storm.”

“Shit!” said Weiss, eyes going faraway. “The ARk Storm cometh. What would it look like?” he asked, eyes snapping back to Gwen.

“Read the article in the San Fran Reporter this morning!” instructed Barclay, pointing at a folded paper on Messenger’s desk. “That describes it pretty well. Scared the shit out of me!”

Thanks, Dan, thought Gwen; an element of scaremongering to generate interest was a common journalistic tool, but then some things we should be scared of, she reckoned, remembering Riley’s words.

“Think of forty Mississippis slamming their way across the Pacific, hitting California.”

Weiss paled. Barclay’s eyes, flickering in thought, came to rest on Gwen with a kind of awed speculation.

“How sure are you, Gwen?” asked Messenger.

Gwen held up her hands. “I cannot be one hundred percent sure, obviously. All I can say is that the chances of an ARk Storm have increased dramatically.”

Messenger nodded. “Timing?”

“It’s a winter phenomenon, so sometime in the next two to four months, I’d say.”

“And the market view differs to this?” queried Barclay.

“Yes,” answered Gwen. “The prevailing academic opinion is that an ARk Storm is a possibility, not a probability, let alone a high probability.”

“Sure, academic opinion, gimme the market opinion,” pushed Barclay. He leaned across the table with the controlled aggression of an interrogator.

Gwen paused for a moment, registering that she did not have to reply. When she did, her voice was coolly impassive. “There is nothing like Oracle out there, so the market opinion will follow the consensus academic opinion as broadcast by the ARk Storm Project on its Web site.”

Barclay’s mood changed with the rapidity of a spoiled child granted the toy he’d screamed for. He leaned back, grinning. “So Oracle beats the market. I’m loving it!” He tapped away on his iPad. “You want me to buy some puts?” he asked Messenger, glancing across at him. “I’ve already prepped a short list of companies with the most exposure.”

Gwen stared at Barclay in disbelief.

“Good anticipation,” replied Messenger, rising to his feet. “Give me ten minutes. I want to check Falcon’s liquid funds.” He eyed each of them in turn. “I don’t need to tell you we have an information lockdown on this.”

“Wait a minute,” said Gwen, jumping up, slamming her hands on the table, locking eyes with Messenger. Outside at her desk, Mandy shot Gwen a worried look.

“We need to start warning people,” argued Gwen. “I need to talk to my friend at Hazards so the whole ARk Storm Project can be alerted.”

“We alert no one,” said Messenger.

“What, we just sit on this information?” asked Gwen, fury building, voice rising.

“Until I say so, yes we do. We need to get these trades on ahead of the market.”

“What, you mean benefit from my inside knowledge, from Oracle’s predictions?”

“Of course. Why would I not act on that?” asked Messenger, visibly impatient.

“But isn’t that insider trading?” asked Gwen.

The German burst out laughing. “Welcome to the world. Private equity is legalized insider trading. That’s why we all do it!”