2020 - Lambros, Lawrence G.

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Résumé :
The story of 2020 begins in the winter of 2016. A joint research project is being carried out by three government agencies in a secure mountain bunker and at a space experimental station in Denver to determine if solid hydrogen can be safely used as a fuel to replace the depletion of fossil fuels around the world subsequent to the 2012 worldwide disasters and to determine if the heretofore undetected energy particles emitted by sun storms when merging with sound waves received by modern cell phone technology is causing the disturbing rise in brain cancer. A terrorist effort to destroy the bunker is thwarted by Lenny Lemke who is living two lives, one as a Homeland Security agent on the bunker crew and the other as an undercover agent in a Denver sleeper cell as Abou Mustafa, a Pakistani radical. Lenny; John Quincy, a science consultant; and Alan Hanes, an FBI agent, find themselves working together to monitor the sleeper cell and avert simultaneous terrorist attacks in New York City and Washington DC. While John and co-worker Lena are having a passionate relationship, Lenny and Alan are learning the inside workings of the terrorist cell, which leads them to discover that a woman in a burka who attends Alcoholic Anonymous meetings may be the terrorist leader. A trip to the Bahamas, Somalia, Germany, and New York City leads them and her to the same destination on Presidents' Day. Middle Eastern history and points of view regarding Palestinian and Israeli causes are debated by the ethnic characters throughout the story. The story ends four years later with a reunion of agents, a surprising marriage of cultures, and the inauguration speech of the first woman president of the United States who pays tribute to many of the great women in our history and then details the state of the world that she has inherited on January 20, 2020.