“If I knew how such a thing could be, would I be standing here talking to you? No, I wouldn’t. I would be sitting in my palatial home on Martha’s Vineyard—my Martha’s Vineyard, because I would have bought the entire island. Jack, I’d be much too rich to even know you, let alone talk to you. I’d be the kind of rich that’d make Bill Gates look like he’s on welfare.”

“All right. I get the message.”

“Do you?” Abe said. “You’ve heard the phrase, ‘The end of life as we know it?’ That about approximates it.”

Jack nodded. “No power lines. No electric cords. No—”

“You’re thinking small, Jack. How about saying bye-bye to the internal combustion engine?”

“Hey, you’re right,” Jack said. “Finally we’ll be able to breathe the air around here and maybe…”

He heard his voice trail off as the full import of Abe’s words hit ground zero. Now Jack had to sit down.

“Holy shit.”

Because suddenly it was all clear… or most of it, at least.

“Oil,” he said after a moment. His saliva had gone south. “Oil will be worthless.”

“Not completely,” Abe said. “As a lubricant it’ll still be good. But as a fuel? Feh!”

“No wonder Kemel’s been ready to do anything to get hold of this.”

“Kemel? This is the Arab you told me about? Yes, of course he’d do anything. This little toy car portends the complete economic collapse of the Middle East. Not to mention Texas and the U.S. Gulf Coast.”

“My God,” Jack said. “The economic holocaust you’ve been talking about all these years… it’s finally—”

“That was supposed to be from runaway inflation. But this isn’t it. Don’t worry so much. Wailing and gnashing of teeth there’ll be, huge upheavals in finance and in every industry that gobbles power, but no holocaust. Unless of course, you’re heavily invested in oil stocks.”

“Yeah. Then it’ll be time to take that long first step off a window ledge.”

“But if you should have lots of your money invested in countries that rely heavily on foreign oil—”

“Like Japan?” Jack said, thinking of Yoshio.

“Japan, yes. Big time, Japan. They’re virtual slaves to foreign oil. Broadcast power puts the Japanese and Middle East economies on a seesaw: one drops into the abyss, the other goes into orbit.”

The pieces were falling into place. Jack could almost hear the clicks as they came together.

“That’s it, then,” he said. “No wonder that Japanese trade delegate was so ecstatic: Ronald Clayton was on his way to Japan to sell them his broadcast power technology. Kemel and his Iswid Nahr buddies got wind of it, and made sure he never reached Japan. That’s why they’re so desperate and so secretive now—they don’t want anyone to even guess broadcast power exists.”