Blue Gold (NUMA Files 2)

“Are you telling me you have this magic wand?”

“Something almost as good. I have developed a revolutionary means to extract salt from seawater.”

“You must know that desalting is hardly a new concept,” Sandecker said.

Francesca nodded. “The extraction of salt from seawater goes back to the ancient Greeks. Desalination plants have been built around the world, including many in the Middle East. There are several methods, but all are costly. In my doctorate I proposed a radically new approach. I threw out all the old methods. My goal was a process that would be efficient and cheap, available to the poorest farmer trying to scratch a living from the dust. Think of the implications. Water would be nearly free. Deserts would become centers of civilization.”

“I’m sure you thought of the undesirable consequences,” Sandecker said, “the fact that cheap water would stimulate development, population growth, and the pollution that goes with them.”

“I thought long and hard about that, Admiral Sandecker, but the alternatives were even more unpalatable. I would make orderly development a requirement before allowing a country to use my process.”

“It goes without saying then that your experimentation was a success,” Austin said.

“Very much so. I was bringing a working model of the process to the international conference. Seawater would go in one end, fresh water come out at the other. It would produce energy and little to no waste products.”

“A process like that would have been worth millions of dollars.”

“No doubt. I had offers that would have made me immensely rich, but I planned to give my process to the world free of charge.”

“That was quite generous of you. You say you had offers. Then someone knew of your process and plans?”

“Once I contacted the United Nations to attend the conference it became an open secret.” She paused. “Something has always puzzled me. Many people knew about my process. The people who tried to kidnap me would be immediately exposed if they tried to profit from my work.”

“There’s another possibility,” Austin suggested. “Maybe they wanted to bury your work and keep the process a secret from the world.”

“But why would anyone try to stop a boon to humanity?”

“Perhaps you’re too young to remember,” said Sandecker, who had been listening intently. “Years ago stories circulated about the inventor who supposedly built a car engine that could go a hundred miles on a gallon or burn water. The details aren’t important. The oil companies reportedly bought the secret and buried it so they could continue to make profits. The stories were apocryphal, but do you see my point?”

“Who would prevent the poor nations from enjoying cheap water?”

“Our investigations have given us an advantage over you, Dr. Cabral. Let me ask you a theoretical question. Suppose you controlled the world’s supply of fresh water. How would you greet the arrival of a process that suddenly makes cheap water available to all?”

“My process would end your theoretical water monopoly. But this is a moot point. It is simply not possible for someone to control the world’s water.”

Sandecker and Austin exchanged glances.

Taking over from Sandecker, Austin said, “A lot has been happening in the past ten years, Dr. Cabral. We can fill you in on the whole story later, but we’ve discovered that a huge pan-national organization called the Gogstad Corporation is very close to acquiring a monopoly over the world’s fresh water.”

“Impossible!”

“I wish it were.”

Francesca’s eyes hardened. “Then this Gogstad must be the one who tried to kidnap me, who stole those ten years from my life.”

“We have no solid proof,” Austin said. “There is certainly strong circumstantial evidence pointing in that direction. Tell me, what do you know of a substance called anasazium?”

Francesca’s mouth dropped open in surprise. Recovering quickly she said, “Is there anything you people at NUMA do not know?”

“Quite a bit, I’m sorry to say. We know very little about this stuff other than the fact that it can affect the hydrogen atom in strange ways.”

“That’s its most important property. It’s a very complex relationship. This material is at the heart of my desalting process. Only a few people know of its existence. It’s extremely rare.”

“How did you come across it?”

“By chance. I read an obscure paper written by a former Los Alamos physicist. Rather than try to improve on the existing methods of desalting, I wanted to deal with it at a molecular or even nuclear level. A solution had eluded me until I heard about this substance. I contacted the scientist who wrote the article. He had a small amount of the material and was willing to part with it when I told him why I needed it.”

“Why is it so rare?”