'Some work?' Johanson grinned.

She pursed her lips. 'I'll think about it and talk to Skaugen.'

'You do that,' said Johanson. 'But think quickly.'

BACK AT THE office he checked his inbox for messages. There wasn't much of any interest. The final mail caught his attention when he saw who it was from: [email protected] He clicked on it.

hello dr johanson. thanks for your message, i've just got back to london and all i can say right now is that i don't have a clue what's happened to lukas bauer and his boat i can't contact him. i'd be happy to meet up with you though, who knows? we may even be able to help each other. i'll be at my london office from the middle of next week, but if you fancy meeting sooner, i^'m heading off to the shetlands and could fix up something there let me know what suits you. karen weaver.

'My, my,' murmured Johanson. 'So journalists can be co-operative.'

Had Lukas Bauer gone missing?

Maybe he should request a meeting with Skaugen and tell him his theory. But there was no evidence to support it – just a nasty feeling that the world was coming unstuck and the sea was to blame.

If he wanted to take the idea any further, he needed more evidence… He should hook up with Weaver as soon as he could. Why not meet her in the Shetlands? The flights shouldn't be a problem, if Statoil was paying. In fact, it would all be very easy. Hadn't Skaugen said he could nail him to a cross if he wanted?

He didn't need to go that far. A helicopter would be enough.

Johanson leaned back in his chair and studied the clock. He was supposed to be lecturing in an hour, and then he had a departmental meeting about some DNA sequencing.

He created a new folder and entered a file name: The Fifth Day. It was the first thing that had come into his mind. On the fifth day of creation, God had filled the sea with living creatures… He started to type, and a chill swept through him.

2 May

Vancouver and Vancouver Island, Canada

For the past forty-eight hours Ford and Anawak had been poring over the same sequence of data. At first total darkness. Then an oscillation from an audio signal outside the human range. Three signals in total. And finally the cloud. A luminescent, blue-tinged cloud. Out of nowhere it appeared in the centre of the screen and scattered outwards, like a universe expanding. The light wasn't bright, more a faint blue glow; a dim, diffuse glimmer, just strong enough for the huge silhouettes of the whales to loom into view. It spread rapidly and filled the screen. The whales hovered in front of it, as if bound by its spell.

Several seconds passed.

Deep in the cloud something shot forwards like winding, twisting lightning. Its tapered point struck a whale on the side of the head. Lucy. The whole thing was over in less than a second. More flashes blazed towards the other whales, then the spectacle ended as abruptly as it had begun.

Next the film seemed to play in reverse. The cloud collapsed in on itself and vanished. The screen went dark. Ford's technicians had slowed the footage, then slowed it again. They'd tried everything they could think of to optimise the resolution and let in more light, but even after hours of studying the tape they were still no closer to solving the mystery of the whales.

In the end Anawak and Ford decided to write their report for the emergency committee. They'd been authorised to call on the help of a biologist from Nanaimo who specialised in bioluminescence. It took him a while to get over his bewilderment, but then he backed their conclusions: the cloud and the flashes were organic. According to the expert, the flashes were caused by a chain reaction within the cloud, though he couldn't say how they'd been triggered or what purpose they served. Their twisting motion and the way they tapered off towards the tip reminded him of squid, but a creature that size would have to be truly gigantic, and it was doubtful that giant squid could luminesce. Besides, that wouldn't explain the cloud or where the serpentine flashes were coming from.

But their instincts told them one thing unequivocally: the cloud was responsible for the change in the whales.

All of this was duly recorded in the report, which vanished into a hole of impenetrable darkness. The Black Hole was what they called the emergency committee, which sucked everything in without trace. Initially the Canadian government had encouraged the scientists to work alongside them, but since the US-led allied committee had been set up, all that was required of them was the provision of information. Vancouver Aquarium, the lab in Nanaimo and even the University of British Columbia were just links in a one-way chain of knowledge. The only time the scientists ever heard anything was when the committee instructed them to submit their findings, hypotheses and frustrations as reports. Neither John Ford, Leon Anawak, Rod Palm, Sue Oliviera nor Ray Fenwick had any idea how their input was being used or whether the committee agreed with their findings. Comparing their work with that of other groups was a key element of their research, and now it was being denied them.

'Things were fine,' said Ford, 'till Judith Li took the helm.'

Anawak had Oliviera on the line. 'We need to look at some more of those mussels,' she said.

'I can't get hold of anyone from Inglewood,' he told her. 'They won't talk to me, and Li's insisting that it was all an accident, a blunder with the tow line. No one's said anything about mussels.'

'But you saw them with your own eyes! And we need another sample, plus some of that weird organic substance. Why won't they co-operate? I thought they wanted our help.'

'You could try contacting the committee directly.'

'It all has to go via Ford. I don't get it, Leon. What's the point of an emergency committee, if this is what happens?'

Perhaps it was the nature of crisis squads and emergency committees to work furtively, thought Anawak. When had an emergency committee ever faced the same problem twice? Its permanent members had to get to grips with terrorism, political and military crises, all of which had to be handled in confidence. But they also faced malfunctioning nuclear power stations, broken dams, forest fires, floods, earthquakes, volcanoes and famines. Did all that have to be handled in confidence? Probably not, but it usually was.

'It's not as though we don't know what causes volcanic eruptions and earthquakes,' said Shoemaker, when Anawak voiced his frustration. 'Sure, you can be afraid of nature, but at least it never tries to catch you out or trip you up. Only people do that.'

The three were having breakfast on Leon's boat. The sun peeked out between the white clouds overhead and it was pleasantly mild, but no one was in the mood to appreciate it. Delaware was the only one with any appetite and she was demolishing a plateful of scrambled egg.

'Did you hear about the gas tanker?'

'The one that exploded near Japan?' Shoemaker took a sip of his coffee. 'That's old hat.'

Delaware shook her head. 'No. Another went down yesterday. Burst into flames in Bangkok harbour.'

'Has anyone said why?'

'No.'

'Maybe it was technical failure,' said Anawak. 'We shouldn't read too much into it.'

'You're beginning to sound like Judith Li.' Shoemaker slammed his mug on the table. 'You were right, by the way. There was practically nothing in the news about the Barrier Queen. They wrote mostly about the tug.'

Anawak wasn't surprised. The emergency committee seemed to like to keep them guessing. Maybe that was part of the game. Find your own answers. Well, he was on the case already. Straight after the plane crash Delaware had begun to scour the net. Had whales gone on the offensive anywhere else? As the taayii Haw'ilh had said: Maybe the whales aren't the problem, Leon. 'They might be just part of the problem – the only part we can see.