Sweet Fortune

consisted of the cove, a rocky beach, and the old mansion. A thick forest of green, mostly pine and fir, rose up behind the great house. “Just lovely.” She batted her lashes at Hatch. “Isn't it, dear?”
    Hatch slanted her a wry glance. “It's okay. Can we get on with this four-hundred-dollar tour? I'd like to get back to our inn in time for dinner.”
    “By all means,” Landis said. “I'm sure that after the tour you'll feel the four-hundred-dollar donation to the DEL Foundation has gone to a terrific cause. Follow us, please.” He turned and led the way back up the path toward the mansion.
    “I'll give you some quick background first,” Sherry said. “The island was originally owned by a timber baron who made his fortune back in the early nineteen hundreds. He had this beautiful house built as a retreat and as a place to entertain his guests.”
    “How did DEL get the place?” Hatch asked.
    “It was donated to the foundation a few months ago by the last surviving member of the family. Dr. Bright took advantage of the offer to move his headquarters here. The previous owner was a strong supporter of DEL.”
    “Was?” Hatch glanced at her.
    “She was a very old woman,” Sherry said sadly. “She died not long after she had put DEL in her will.”
    “Kind of appropriate, isn't it?” Jessie murmured. “Using a timber baron's old home as the base for an environmentalist operation. Poetic justice.”
    Landis chuckled. “Not quite. But I'll explain that part later. The general routine is to start with a video presentation of the work of DEL.” He opened the front door of the huge house and ushered his visitors into a vast paneled hall. “The show will give you an overview of what we're doing.”
    “No offense,” Hatch muttered as he followed Jessie into a small auditorium, “but I'd have thought a bunch of radical environmentalists would have wanted something a little more environmentally efficient than this old pile of stones. Must cost you a fortune to heat it in the winter.”
    Sherry shook her head sadly as she handed him a plastic cup of coffee. “I'm afraid that, like most people, you don't really understand what DEL is all about yet. But you will soon.”
    Jessie eyed the cup of coffee Sherry was offering. “I'll admit I didn't expect to see anyone up here using plastic cups.”
    Landis nodded, his handsome face turning more serious. “I understand what you must be thinking. Have a seat and let me run the video. That should give you a good idea of what DEL is really doing.”
    Jessie sat down beside Hatch in one of the plush auditorium seats. She glanced around quickly as the lights were dimmed.
    “Know what this reminds me of?” Hatch asked under cover of a rousing musical score that heralded the film.
    “What?”
    “The kind of expensive presentation prospective clients get when they fall into the clutches of some slick real-estate-investment outfit.”
    Jessie scowled in the darkness. “Hush. They'll hear you.”
    Hatch shrugged and sat back as the show began. A deep, concerned, masculine voice filled the room:
    Most of the scientific community is well aware that the environment is on the verge of disaster. It will be a disaster every bit as catastrophic as the nuclear winter that would be caused by a third world war. Each day the radioactive waste piles up in our oceans. Acid rain destroys our agricultural lands. The destruction of rain forests threatens the very air we breathe .
    The ultimate fate of our planet is no longer a matter of debate. All that can be debated now is the timing of that fate and the method of saving ourselves from it .
    “Pretty fancy graphics,” Hatch observed softly as the music swelled again. “Someone hired a first-class ad agency to put this show together.”
    The narrator's voice rose again, this time sounding confident and reassuring:
    One man, an expert in computer programming, climatology, and ecology, has studied the problem more intensely than most. His name is Dr. Edwin Bright. And he is the founder of Dawn's Early Light. Meet the one individual who can make it possible for you and me to survive the disaster that is already on its way .
    The scene on the film was of the cove in front of the DEL mansion. The camera zoomed in to show a man dressed in well-cut blue trousers and a crisp white shirt standing on the dock. He was gazing past the camera, out toward the horizon, as if he could see something extremely important