Lethal Trajectories - Michael Conley [36]
Washington, DC
18 September 2017
Peter Canton looked out the window of his office in the Forrestal Building at the morning traffic on Independence Avenue. Jittery from an overdose of coffee to overcome his sleepless night, he was haunted by the climate discoveries he had confirmed last night with Jack McCarty. He was more convinced than ever of the need to quickly launch the ETCC department and perplexed by the push-back he was getting from Senator Tom Collingsworth and associates on its development.
But despite the powerful people opposing him, he was comforted to have the McCarty brothers on his side. His company, Clayburn Electronics, had acquired McCarty’s company in 2009. Then a fifty-six-year-old MIT graduate and CEO of a Fortune 500 company, he was a burnout candidate when Governor-elect McCarty asked him to head up a new energy and transportation department in California—a challenge he had gladly accepted at a salary of one dollar per year. It was déjà vu when he came to Washington, at McCarty’s request, to create a federalized version of the California model.
He was pleased when his secretary interrupted his reverie to tell him Clayton McCarty was on the phone.
“Good morning, Mr. Vice President,” Peter said, in deference to the position his friend held.
“Oh, c’mon, Peter, will you knock off that ‘Mr. Vice President’ crap and just call me Clayton like you always have? You’ve come to my rescue so many times I should be calling you ‘Mr. Secretary,'” he said with a laugh.
Peter chuckled and said, “Thanks, boss. What’s up?”
“Well first of all, let me apologize again for canceling our meeting the other day. As you can imagine, the Chunxiao Incident has consumed us all, and we’ve put a number of things on hold until we could get it stabilized.”
“What kind of progress are we making on it, Clayton?”
“It seems to be stabilizing, but we’re not out of the woods by a long shot. As a matter of fact, that’s one of the reasons I’m calling you now. I’m afraid the meeting we had scheduled to go over your re-org plans tomorrow will have to be put on hold. I’ll be tied up with an NSC meeting the president wants me to chair in his absence.”
“How’s the president doing? The rumor mill is in high gear, and I don’t quite know what to believe.”
“Strictly confidential, and I mean confidential,” replied McCarty, “his health problems may be far more serious than the flu-and-exhaustion line we’re giving the media.”
“Mum’s the word, but please give him my best when you talk to him.”
“Glad to, Peter. There’s something I want to ask you. I talked to Jack the other day, and he told me we were picking up some nasty signals from our climate-change satellites. What’s your take on it?”
“Jack has every right to be concerned. We met last night at the IEE, and the satellite data is incontrovertible—the tipping point has been reached, and Earth is far sicker than any of us imagined.”
“Ouch,” said the vice president.
“Ouch is right. The only positive in this news is that maybe we can use it as an imperative for the formation of the ETCC department. I’m getting a lot of flak from Tom Collingsworth and company and need a little help.”
“I’ve got your back, Peter, and will do whatever I can to run interference. Could you put together a brief summary on your climate-change findings I can use as talking points? Maybe you can write it up in layman’s terms in case I want to share it with someone.”
“I’ll put something together this morning. It’ll be a rough draft, but I’ll try to give you an overall sense of the data we’re looking at.”
“Thanks, Peter. Take care of yourself, and give my best to Dianna and the kids.”
“You too, Clayton, and good luck at your NSC meeting tomorrow.”
After hanging up, Peter reached over to his credenza and removed a red-covered file labeled “Tipping Points.” He poured another cup of coffee, put on his reading glasses, and instructed his secretary to hold all calls. He reviewed the contents