“I can hardly believe it,” Bob muttered. “The catalytic reaction is dead-on.”

Lisa felt light-headed and dropped into a chair. She checked and rechecked the output, searching for an error but finding none. She finally allowed herself to accept the probability that she had hit pay dirt.

“I’ve got to tell Maxwell,” she said. Dr. Horace Maxwell was director of the GWU Environmental Research and Technology Lab.

“Maxwell? Are you crazy? He’s testifying before Congress in two days.”

“I know. I’m supposed to accompany him to the Hill.”

“Now, there’s a suicide mission,” Bob said, shaking his head. “If you tell him now, he’s liable to bring it up in testimony in order to obtain more funding for the lab.”

“Would that be such a bad thing?”

“It would if the results can’t be duplicated. One lab test doesn’t solve the mysteries of the universe. Let’s rerun things and fully document every step before going to Maxwell. At least wait until after he testifies,” Bob urged.

“I suppose you’re right. We can duplicate the experiment under different scenarios just to be sure. The only limitation is our supply of ruthenium.”

“That, I’m sure, will be the least of our problems,” Bob said with a hint of prophecy.

The Air Canada jet skimmed high over Ontario, the landscape below appearing like a green patchwork comforter from the tiny first-class windows. Clay Zak was oblivious to the view, focusing instead on the shapely legs of a young flight attendant pushing a drinks cart. She caught his stare and brought over a martini in a plastic cup.

“Last one I can serve you,” she said with a perky smile. “We’ll be landing in Toronto shortly.”

“I’ll savor it all the more,” he replied with a leer.

Dressed in the traveling businessman’s uniform of khaki slacks and a blue blazer, he looked like just another sales manager headed to an off-site conference. The reality was quite different.

The only child of an alcoholic single mother, he’d grown up in a ragtag section of Sudbury, Ontario, with little guidance. At fifteen, he’d dropped out of school to work in the nearby nickel mines, developing the physical strength that he still retained twenty years later. His life as a miner was short-lived, however, when he committed his first murder, driving a pickax into the ear of a fellow miner who’d taunted his family lineage.

Fleeing Ontario, he assumed a new identity in Vancouver and drifted into the drug trade. His strength and toughness were put to use as an enforcer for a major local methamphetamine trafficker named “The Swede.” The money came easily, but Zak treated it with an unusual intelligence. A self-taught man, he read voraciously, and judiciously studied business and finance. Rather than blowing his ill-gotten gains on tawdry women and flashy cars like his cohorts did, he shrewdly invested in stocks and real estate. His lucrative drug career, however, was cut short in an ambush.

It wasn’t the police but a Hong Kong supplier looking to expand his control of the market. The Swede and his escorts were gunned down during a nighttime deal in Vancouver’s rambling Stanley Park. Zak managed to duck the fire and disappear unscathed into a maze of hedges.

He bided his time before taking revenge, spending weeks staking out a luxury yacht leased by the Chinese syndicate. Setting off a timed explosive charge, using knowledge gleaned from his days in the nickel mines, he blew up the boat with all of the Hong Kong associates aboard. Watching from a small speedboat as the fireball erupted, he saw a man on an adjacent yacht get thrown into the water by the concussion. Realizing the authorities would spend little time investigating the death of a known drug dealer but might expand the dragnet if a wealthy socialite was an added victim, he sped over and fished the unconscious man out of the water.

When a sputtering Mitchell Goyette came to, his gratitude was uncharacteristically effusive.

“You saved my life,” he coughed. “I will reward you for that.”

“Give me a job instead,” Zak said.

Zak enjoyed a huge laugh when he reminded Goyette of the whole story years later. Even Goyette conceded the humor in it. By then, the mogul had come to admire the subversive talents of the former miner, employing him as a high-level enforcer once again. But Goyette knew Zak’s loyalty was based solely on cash, and he always kept a wary eye on him. For his part, Zak enjoyed being the lone wolf. He had influence with Goyette, and while he enjoyed the compensation he also enjoyed tweaking his rich and powerful employer.

The plane landed at Toronto’s Lester B. Pearson International Airport a few minutes ahead of schedule. Shaking off the effects of the in-flight martinis, Zak stepped out of the first-class compartment and headed to the rental-car counter while waiting for his bags to be unloaded. Taking the keys to a beige four-door sedan, he drove south, skirting the western shoreline of Lake Ontario. Cruising the lakefront expressway for another seventy miles, he exited at a sign reading NIAGARA. A mile below the famous falls, he crossed the Rainbow Bridge and entered the state of New York, handing the immigration officer a phony Canadian passport.

Turning past the falls, it was just a short drive south to Buffalo. He found the city airport in plenty of time to catch a half-empty 767 to Washington, D.C., flying under yet another assumed name, this time with a phony American identification. Dusk had fallen as the jet crossed over the Potomac River on its final approach to Reagan National Airport. It was Zak’s first time in the nation’s capital, and he duly stared at the city’s monuments from the back of a cab. Watching the blinking red lights atop the Washington Monument, he idly wondered if George would have deemed the towering obelisk an absurdity.

Checking in at the Mayflower Hotel, he perused the file that Goyette had given him, then rode the elevator down to the wood-paneled Town & Country Lounge on the lobby floor. Finding a quiet corner booth, he ordered a martini and checked his watch. At a quarter past seven, a thin man with an unkempt beard approached the table.

“Mr. Jones?” he asked, eyeing Zak nervously. Zak gave the man a weak smile.

“Yes. Please sit down,” Zak replied.

“I’m Hamilton. Bob Hamilton, from the GWU Environmental Research and Technology Lab,” the man said quietly. He stared at Zak with trepidation, then took a deep breath and slid tentatively into the booth.

A miracle of sorts arrived on the President’s desk shortly after his meeting with Sandecker. It was another letter from the Canadian Prime Minister, offering a potential solution to the growing crisis. A major natural gas field had quietly been discovered last year, the Prime Minister wrote, in a remote section of the Canadian Arctic. Preliminary explorations indicated that the site, located in Viscount Melville Sound, could prove to be one of the richest reserves of natural gas in the world. The privately held firm that made the discovery already had a fleet of tanker ships on line to transport the gas to America.

It was just the tonic the President was seeking to help boost his broader objectives. A major purchase agreement was quickly put in place to get the gas flowing. Though market price was exceeded, the company promised to provide all the gas it could deliver. Or so guaranteed the CEO of the private exploration firm, one Mitchell Goyette.

Ignoring the pleas from his economic and political advisers that he was being too brash, the President quickly acted on the news. In a nationally televised address from the Oval Office, he outlined his ambitious plans to the public.

“My fellow Americans, we are living in a moment of great peril,” he said into the cameras, his normally upbeat mood masked by solemnity. “Our daily lives are imperiled by a crisis of energy while our very future existence is threatened by a crisis of the environment. Our dependency on foreign oil has created damaging economic consequences that we all feel while promoting the emission of dangerous greenhouse gases. Troubling new evidence continues to show that we are losing the battle against global warming. For our own security, and for the safety of the entire world, I am hereby directing that the United States achieve a national goal of carbon neutrality by the year 2020. While some may call this objective drastic or even impossible to attain, we have no other choice. I call tonight for a crash research effort by private industry, academic institutions, and our own government agencies to solve our energy needs through alternative fuels and renewable sources. Oil cannot and will not be the fuel that powers our future economy. A funding package will be presented to Congress shortly, outlining our specific investments in new research and technology.