'We've got no choice,' Suess decided. 'A false alarm won't do anyone any good. We've got to keep working on it.'

Bohrmann couldn't take his eyes off the screen. The simulation had finished, but it continued in his mind, and what he saw made him shudder.

29 April

Trondheim, Norway

Johanson entered Olsen's office. He closed the door and sat down on the other side of his desk. 'Is this a good time?'

Olsen grinned. 'I've left no stone unturned for you.'

'And what did you find?'

Olsen lowered his voice to a whisper. 'What do you want first? The monsters or the natural disasters?'

He was keeping him on tenterhooks. Johanson played along. 'Whichever you'd prefer.'

'Come to think of it,' Olsen looked at him slyly, 'isn't it time you were a bit more forthcoming?'

Johanson wondered again how much he could tell his colleague. The man was clearly dying of curiosity and, in his position, Johanson would want to know too. But within hours of Olsen finding out, the entire university would he buzzing.

He'd have to make something up. Olsen would think he was nuts, of course, but it was a risk he was willing to take.

'I'm thinking of being the first to come out with a theory,' he murmured.

'Namely?'

'That the anomalies aren't just coincidence. Those jellyfish, the boats that keep vanishing, people missing or dead … I realised there had to be a plan.'

Olsen looked blank.

'It's all connected.'

'What are you after? The Nobel Prize or a visit from the men in white coats?'

'Neither.'

Olsen stared at him. 'You're pulling my leg.'

'No.'

'Oh, come on. You're talking about. . . the devil? Forces of evil? Little green men? The X-Files?

'It's only a theory. But, there has to be a connection somewhere. Lots of different phenomena happening all at once – does that sound like coincidence to you?'

'I don't know.'

'There you go. You don't know. And I don't either.'

'What kind of connection did you have in mind?'

Johanson made an evasive gesture. 'It depends on what you've found.'

'Very clever.' Olsen curled his lip.

'Just tell me what you've got and we'll take it from there.'

Olsen bent down to open a drawer and pulled out a stack of paper. 'My Internet pickings,' he said. 'You nearly had me with that nonsense you were spouting.'

'What's the story?'

'The beaches in Central and South America are closed. No one's going into the water, and jellies are clogging the fishermen's nets. In Costa Rica, Chile and Peru, they're descending on the coastline in apocalyptic swarms. Portuguese men-of-war, plus a second species, very small, with extremely long, toxic tentacles. At first they thought they were box jellies, but now they suspect something else, perhaps a new species.'

Another new species, mused Johanson. First unidentifiable worms, now unidentifiable jellyfish…

'And the box jellyfish in Australia?'

'Similar problem.' Olsen riffled through his stack of paper. 'Increasing numbers. Fishing industry in chaos. Tourist industry on its knees…'

'What about the fish? Are they bothered by the jellies?'

'Too late – they've gone. The big shoals have abandoned the coastlines. Reports from fishing trawlers say they've left their normal range and headed out to sea.'

'But they won't find any food there. What's the official take on it?'

'All the affected areas have emergency committees,' said Olsen, 'but they won't tell you anything. I've tried.'

'So they're keeping the really bad stuff to themselves.'

'Quite likely.' Olsen pulled out a sheet of paper. 'Take a look at this. It's a list of stories that hit the press with a fanfare and haven't been heard of since. Jellies off the west coast of Africa. A probable jelly plague in Japan. Confirmation of a jelly invasion in the Philippines. People listed as missing, then a retraction, then not another peep. But that's nothing compared to this. For a few years now there's been talk of a particular kind of algae. Pfiesteria piscicida. A microscopic killer. Targets animals and humans. It's almost impossible to get rid of. Until recently it'd stuck to the other side of the Atlantic, but now France is affected. It's not looking pretty.'

'Any deaths?'

'You can bet on it. The French are fairly tight-lipped about it, but it seems they found the algae in contaminated lobster. I printed out all the key stuff.

He pushed one section of the documentation towards Johanson. 'Then we've got the disappearing boats. Some of the distress calls have been recorded, but they don't make any sense – they break off too early. Whatever happened to those vessels happened quickly.' Olsen waved another piece of paper at him. 'Three of the distress calls ended up on the web.'

'Go on.'

'The boats were attacked.'

'Attacked?'

'That's right.' Olsen rubbed his nose. 'Now there's a conspiracy theory for you. More grist to your mill, I suppose. The sea rises up and takes on mankind… About time too, after all the rubbish we've dumped in it. Not to mention the fish and the whales. Which reminds me, the last I heard was that ships in the east Pacific were being set upon by whales. Now everyone's too scared to venture out, apparently.'

'Does anyone know-'

'Of course not. No one knows anything. I tried bloody hard to get something for you. There was nothing on the collisions or the tankers either. A total news embargo. You're right about one thing: the minute anyone starts reporting the incidents, a veil of silence descends. Maybe this is The X-Files, after all.' Olsen frowned. 'In any case, there are too many jellyfish. Too much of everything, really – it's all happening in excess.'

'And no one knows why.'

'They're not rash enough to claim it's all interconnected if that's what you mean. They'll probably blame El Niño or global warming. There'll be a sudden interest in invasion biology, and all kinds of theories will be published.'

'The usual suspects, then.'

'Yes, but it makes no sense. Algae and jellies have been shipped around the world for years. It's not a new phenomenon.'

'Sure,' said Johanson. 'But that's what I'm suggesting. An invasion of box jellies is one thing, a worldwide outbreak of extraordinary phenomena is another.'

Olsen pressed his fingertips together. 'Well, if you really want to make connections. I don't think biological invasions are the right place to start. I'd go for behavioural anomalies. We're seeing attacks of a kind we've never seen before.'

'Did you come across any other new species?'

'Have you anything in mind?' asked Olsen, deliberately.

If I ask about worms, thought Johanson, he'll guess right away. 'Not really,' he said.

Olsen handed over the rest of the papers. 'So when are you planning to tell me whatever it is you're not prepared to say now?'

Johanson picked up the printouts and stood up. 'I'll buy you a drink someday.'

'Sure, you know, if I can ever find time.'

'Thanks, Knut.' Johanson stepped out into the corridor. Students streamed past from a lecture hall. Some were laughing and chatting, others more serious.

He stood still and watched them. Suddenly the idea of a master-plan didn't seem so far-fetched.

GREENLAND SEA, near Spitsbergen, Svalbard Archipelago

That night, in the moonlight, the ocean of ice looked so spectacularly beautiful that the crew came out on deck. Lukas Bauer missed it: sitting in his cabin, bent over his work, he was searching for a needle in a haystack – but the haystack was the size of two seas.

Karen Weaver had helped him enormously, but two days ago she'd disembarked in Longyearbyen, the capital of Spitsbergen, to pursue her research there. She led a turbulent life, thought Bauer, whose own was scarcely more ordered. Since starting out in journalism, she had specialised in marine-related topics. As far as Bauer could tell, she had chosen her career because it allowed her to visit the world's most inhospitable places. Weaver loved extremes, unlike Bauer, who hated them but was so committed to his work that he was prepared to give up comfort for the sake of understanding. It was the same for many scientists: people took them for adventurers, but adventure was the price they paid for knowledge.