The secretary called Mr. Gregory to let him know. “Neither the USGS nor the NOAA can confirm that there’s going to be an earthquake,” she said, clearly concerned over the lack of agreement.
Mr. Gregory was disappointed, but he wasn’t surprised. “I’m sorry to hear that,” he replied.
“Is there any updated information that you can provide?” she asked, hoping he’d found some more concrete evidence to confirm his prediction.
“Yes,” he responded blandly.
“What is it?” she asked in a voice full of anticipation.
“That their assessment is incorrect,” he replied simply.
She gave an inadvertent chuckle. “I was hoping for more than that.” There was an awkward pause in the conversation before she spoke again. Then she asked him bluntly, “How certain are you?”
“Extremely,” he said.
“Can you give me an estimate in terms of a percentage probability?”
“Based on everything I’ve seen, it’s one hundred percent. The magnitude will be between 8.8 and 9.0, but the timing is less certain.”
“What do you mean?” she asked abruptly. “How much less certain? We can’t just evacuate people indefinitely and wait to see if something happens.”
“Minutes,” he replied. “It will occur on the seventh of September at 10:26 a.m., give or take thirty minutes.”
The secretary set the wheels in motion. She mobilized the civil defense authorities, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, and relevant military agencies, including the Army Corps of Engineers. An orderly evacuation of the Los Angeles Basin was begun a week before the time Mr. Gregory predicted.
Just as he’d said, the earthquake hit on September 7, at 10:49 a.m. The epicenter was thirty-five miles east of Los Angeles in the small city of Ontario, California, but the effects were felt from San Luis Obispo to the north to San Diego to the south and from Malibu to the west to Palm Springs to the east. As predicted, the quake registered 8.9 on the modified Richter scale, and it lasted for six minutes. Because of the preparations and the timely evacuation, there was no loss of human life.
The earthquake’s occurrence cemented Mr. Gregory’s standing as a credible purveyor of the future, regardless of how he was able to do it. The governor of California, the secretary of Homeland Security, and the director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency all thanked him publicly. Once again, the president invited him to the White House. This time, he was the honoree at a ceremony in the Rose Garden to recount his successful earthquake prediction and the lives it had saved, as well as to award him the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest award that could be bestowed on a civilian in the United States.
MR. GREGORY’S INVENTION PROVIDED HIM WITH AN ability to do things that were clearly marvelous. But it was also evident that it could pose a risk to national security if it were used improperly.
Soon after his shepherding of the Panamanian freighter through the Strait of Hormuz and his prediction of the earthquake in Southern California, there was recognition by the president and his cabinet that the technology Mr. Gregory possessed was so powerful that it could change the way events transpired all around the world. That raised two questions: What type of an invention was it, and how could it be put to use to further the best interests of the United States? But looming in the background was an even larger question and cause for concern: How could it be misused if it fell into the wrong hands?
At the behest of the president, talks were held at the highest levels of government to decide how to evaluate Mr. Gregory’s invention as quickly as possible. The director of national intelligence, a bright-eyed and energetic man with razor-sharp intellect, was asked to take the lead of the ensuing investigations.
The week after the earthquake, he convened a meeting of his staff together with the heads of the other intelligence services at the Central Intelligence Agency headquarters in Langley, Virginia.
After he welcomed the participants and outlined the goals of the meeting, he began by asking the chief of his investigative team, “What do we know so far?”
“Whatever he has, it’s remarkable,” he replied with a note of envy. “We’ve estimated the probability that the earthquake would have occurred with the time, place, and magnitude he predicted as less than one in a trillion.”
“So the fact that it happened wasn’t an accident. Is that your point?” the DNI asked with a note of condescension.
“Yes, sir.”
“Okay,” he replied in a more measured tone. “So let’s eliminate the obvious: Was he responsible for its occurrence?”
An impeccably dressed man with silver hair at the far end of the table responded. “There’s no evidence to support that,” the director of the Defense Intelligence Agency said coolly. “He was over two thousand miles away, and he was under continuous surveillance. Furthermore, the USGS and NOAA recorded spontaneous fault line activity—there were no external triggers that preceded the event.”
“Are we satisfied with that assessment?” the DNI asked. “Is there anything else we could have missed?”
“Not likely,” he replied. “The probability that it’s correct is over ninety percent.”
“What about him conspiring with other actors? Is that ruled out?” the DNI asked.
Another of the intelligence chiefs in the room, an athletic-appearing man in his forties, replied. “He had no unusual communications, and there was no indication of outside interference,” he responded casually. “That assessment is also over ninety percent.”
“Okay,” the DNI replied. “Tell me about the freighter getting through the strait. What were the chances of that?” He looked across the table at a mature-looking woman with pince-nez glasses. The DNI had worked with her previously on other sensitive matters, and he relied on her as a trusted confidante.
“Given the situation and the weather conditions in the strait six hours before the ship’s passage, we estimated the probability that it would get through as less than one in ten thousand,” she responded self-assuredly.
“All right then. It’s clear he has something,” the DNI said, resigned. “Do we know what it is?”
“No, sir. I’m afraid we don’t at this point,” she replied, her voice ringing with frustration.
“Well, we need to find out—and in a hurry,” he responded gruffly. “Where was he when the two events occurred?”
“At his town house in Alexandria,” the head of the investigative team answered.
“Then whatever he’s using has to be there,” he said. “Have we been inside yet?”
“No,” replied his chief of staff. “Legal is trying to formulate the case for a warrant.”
“What’s the holdup?” the DNI asked, clearly annoyed.
“The Fourth Amendment,” said the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, who was sitting immediately beside him.
“Doesn’t the USA PATRIOT Act give us enough cover to do a search?” the DNI asked incredulously.
“It could if there were evidence of terrorist activity,” the head of the FBI’s legal team said from the back of the room. “But so far, he hasn’t done anything detrimental to anybody or to the interests of the United States.”
“Yes,