The Cosmic Crime: Part Nine

Standing inside the now deserted Mission, the map they had found there spread out on a table, the Green Man and his two female associates looked down on the picture before them. The atmosphere was charged with an air of deep foreboding.

It was a map of the United States, ommitting the Western seaboard, with little coloued squares on it, a great many clustered around the meeting point of Missouri, Arkansas, Kentucky and Tennessee. There was a similar, if lesser cluster of squares along the border between Tennessee, North Carolina and Georgia. There was a massive concentration just off the map, and others in New England, which had also been missed off (in other words, this was the America George W. Bush sees when he gets up in the morning).

"That map," Ms. Madison explained earnestly, "is a map showing recent earthquakes in the United States. The San Andreas fault, the best known of the earthquake hotspots, has been missed off, presumably to make this map look more serious than it would otherwise.

"Now, we know the Order of Cain own land on the San Andreas fault, and I suspect a search of the land resistry throughout the USA would turn up cases of land owned at these hotspots."

"So?" Andrea looked confused. "What can they do with them?"

"Too much." Ms. Madison sounded worried. "If the Order of Cain should explode a number of atomic bombs in those spots, they could open up long-dormant fault lines and tear the United States into fragments."

"Not only would they destroy the most powerful country in the world," the Green Man cut in, but it would change the map of the world for all time. The dust thrown up by the explosions would plunge the world into a new Ice Age. Millions would die, not only in the United States, but in massive Tsunamis. Cuba would be totally swamped, for example."

"So Castro wouldn't be able to gloat," Ms. Madison cracked.

"You've got it," Andrea smiled. "So, where do we go from here?"

"To the other possible location for the Order's base." The Green Man looked towards the door. "The fortress off the coast."

"Goody," Ms. Madison laughed. "I get to top up my suntan."

"Afterwards."

The Green Man looked upwards to an old monument. There, looking blankly down on them, was an alabaster skull. A reminder of the millions who would die if the Order of Cain was not stopped.