Blue Gold (NUMA Files 2)

“I have an idea why. Come, I’ll show you.”

Francesca rose from the table and led the way through torchlit hallways to a large bedroom. She reached into a chest and pulled out a battered and scarred aluminum case. She set it on top of her bed, then opened it. Inside was a jumble of broken wires and circuits.

“This was a model of the experiment I was carrying to Cairo. I won’t go into the technical

details, but if you pour seawater in on this end, the salt is extracted and fresh water comes out here.”

“A desalting process?”

“Yes. It was a revolutionary approach unlike any devised before. It took me two years to perfect. The problem with desalination has been its cost. This process would transform hundreds of gallons for only pennies. At the same time it produces heat which can be transformed into energy.” She shook her head. “It would have turned deserts into gardens and allowed people the benefits of power.”

“I still don’t understand,” Paul said. “Why would someone want to prevent a boon like this from being made available to the world?”

“I’ve asked myself that question many times in the past ten years and still have no satisfactory answer.”

“Was this your only model?”

“Yes,” she said sadly. “I took everything with me from São Paulo. All my papers were burned in the plane crash.” Brightening, she said, “I was able to put my hydraulic engineering skills to work here. It can be boring just sitting around being adored all day. I’m virtually a prisoner. They hid me from search parties after the crash. The only place where I am truly alone is this palace. Only those who are invited can enter. My servants were handpicked for their loyalty. Outside the palace I’m watched by my Praetorian guard.”

“Being a white goddess isn’t all it’s cracked up to be,” Paul said.

“An understatement. Which is why I’m so happy you dropped out of the sky. Tonight you rest. Tomorrow I will give you a tour of the village, and we will start planning.”

“Planning for what?” Gamay said.

“Sorry, I thought that was obvious. Planning to escape.”

18

AUSTIN HAD A quick breakfast of ham and scrambled eggs on the deck of his boathouse below the Potomac palisades in Fairfax, Virginia. He stared longingly at the slow-moving river, thinking that a brisk row in his scull would be far preferable to morning traffic on the Beltway. But the events of the last few days gnawed at him. Having narrowly missed being killed twice had injected a personal note into the case.

Driving a turquoise NUMA-issue Jeep Cherokee, Austin headed south and then east across the Woodrow Wilson Memorial Bridge into Maryland, where he left the Beltway. In suburban Suitland he pulled off the road at a complex of metal buildings so boringly nondescript that they could only have been built by the federal government.

A docent in the visitor center took his name and made a call. Minutes later a trim middle-aged man arrived carrying a clipboard. He wore paint-splattered jeans, a denim work shirt, and a baseball cap with the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum logo. He gave Austin a firm handshake and introduced himself.

“I’m Fred Miller. We talked on the phone,” he said.

“Thanks for seeing me on such short notice.”

“No problem.” Miller raised a quizzical brow. “Are you the same Kurt Austin who found the Christopher Columbus tomb in Guatemala?”

“That’s me.”

“That must have been some adventure.”

“It had its moments.”

“I’ll bet. I have to apologize. Aside from what I read in the papers of NUMA’s undersea exploits, I don’t know a lot about your agency.”

“Maybe we can both learn something about our respective work. I don’t know much about the Paul E. Garber Preservation, Restoration, and Storage Facility. Your Web site says you restore historical and vintage airplanes.”

“That’s only the tip of the iceberg,” Miller said, showing the way to the door. “C’mon, I’ll give you a tour.”

He led Austin outside and continued his narrative as they walked past a row of identical buildings, all with low roofs and big sliding doors. “Paul Garber was a plane nut, which was fortunate for us. When he was just a kid he saw Orville Wright fly the world’s first military aircraft. Later he worked for the Smithsonian and was instrumental in creating the National Air Museum. The Air Force and Navy had collected examples of the planes that won World War II and some of the enemy planes they beat. They wanted to get rid of them. Garber did an aerial survey and found twenty-one acres owned by the federal government out here in the sticks. There are thirty-two buildings at the center.” They stopped in front of one of the larger structures. “This is Building Ten, the workshop where we do the restorations.”

“I saw some of your work on the live Web cam.”

“You might have spotted me. I just came from there. I worked for years as a project manager for Boeing in Seattle, but I’m originally from Virginia, and when I had a chance to come to the center I jumped at it. At any given time we’ve got several projects going. We’ve been finishing up a Hawker Hurricane restoration. It’s been a little delayed because of a parts problem. We’re restoring the fuselage of the Enola Gay, the B-29 that carried the A-bomb over Hiroshima. There’s a nifty little biplane called Pitt’s special ‘Little Stinker’ that’s getting its fabric skin painted. It’s not just planes. We’ve had a Russian air-to-surface missile, plane engines, even the spaceship model they used in that movie Close Encounters. We can stop in for a look on the way back.”