by Mark Aitken
Dave Joyce the PR guy stood on a small stage talking with Aaron, the Oasis corporate logo on a banner behind them. Joyce saw Gallen and cracked a big smile, sweeping his hand in a chivalrous gesture. ‘Mr Gerry Gallen, please meet Dr Martina Du Bois, the president of ArcticWatch.’
Turning to his left, Gallen faced a head of raven hair and waited as the woman turned slowly to greet him.
‘Hello, Captain,’ she said, a flashing smile and intelligent eyes.
‘Gerry will do fine,’ said Gallen, shaking her hand and taking her in. She was about five-ten, physically beautiful and very expensively dressed. She gave him that slightly wide-eyed look of expectation that beautiful women give a man when they’re waiting to be fawned over.
‘So it’s your man on the Ariadne with us?’ she said, her face serious but eyes laughing. ‘Thank you so much.’
‘Pleasure.’ Gallen released her hand and turned to the three men who were with her. Du Bois introduced her crew, whom Gallen knew from their files. He smiled and introduced them to Kenny Winter. But his alarm bells were going off. He wasn’t entirely sure what he’d expected from a film crew, but three men built like athletes wasn’t it.
As Du Bois and her ArcticWatch crew drifted away to set up their filming, Gallen turned to Winter and Aaron. ‘Is it just me?’
‘What’s the problem now, Gerry?’ said Aaron.
‘Nothing,’ said Gallen, trying to relax.
‘Excellent,’ said Aaron, ‘because the boss is diving with that tin can in exactly forty-five minutes, and if you’re good, we’re away.’
~ * ~
CHAPTER 58
Gallen walked the sidelines of the press conference as Winter took one side of the Oasis executive team on the stage, and Tucker the other. He noticed how the news crews had different agendas, different tones in their voices when they yelled their questions at the stage. The varied news angles that Joyce had devised in the briefing document now made sense, as did the five-minute one-on-ones that had preceded the press conference: the journalists had what they wanted and now they got to preen in front of one another.
Keeping his eyes on the ArcticWatch film crew, who were camped at the foot of the stage, Gallen caught Du Bois’ eye as she looked away from Florita. He didn’t like this woman or her crew, but he wasn’t going to make it personal. His job was to keep Florita safe and he would focus on that.
‘Red Fox, Red Fox, this is Blue Dog,’ he said into his radio as a Danish reporter became tangled in his argument against colonising the sea bed. ‘Sitrep, over.’
‘Blue Dog, this is Red Fox. Situation normal—all fucked up,’ came Mike Ford’s nasal twang. ‘No unfriendlies. The tin can looks ready for Go.’
‘Stay in touch, Red Fox,’ said Gallen. ‘Out.’
A British reporter in a pashmina put her question about degrading the Inuit fishing grounds and the fact that in vast areas of the Arctic Ocean, the Inuit were recognised by the UN and by the Hague as having what she called native title; while the current drilling was interesting in a limited sense because of the Ariadne experiment, how were Oasis or the other big oil companies going to contend with Inuit control of oil-field leases?
When the woman sat down, Florita swapped looks with her executive team, and then Joyce the PR guy gave a long nod.
Stiffening, Gallen watched the room sit up as Florita cleared her throat. She hadn’t said a word but the media sensed something and he watched them come dangerously alive, like a bear waking up as you trod on a stick.
The PR guy stood and opened his palms to the media and sat down when they were silent.
‘It’s a privilege to launch the Ariadne this afternoon,’ said Florita, leaning down to the microphone on her table, her helmet of black hair matching the black pant suit. ‘I believe it will revolutionise Arctic oil and gas exploration, making it safer for the environment, safer for the drilling crews and more cost effective for the explorers.
‘However,’ she said, after taking a sip from a glass of water, ‘there is another reason we’ve invited the world’s media here today.’
‘You’re saving the whales, too?’ said a shabby-looking Brit, making the whole room laugh.
‘No, Mr Beetham,’ said Florita, with a confidence that made Gallen realise why she held such a job. ‘But we’re saving a hundred million dollars by putting our rig on the Arctic floor, does that count at the Financial Times?’
The journos laughed again and another Brit ruffled Mr Beetham’s hair.
Gallen felt nervous: there was an anarchy about this profession, if you could call it that.
‘Before we go to the bottom in the Ariadne, I’d like to make an announcement: seven minutes ago, Oasis Energy launched a friendly takeover bid on the London Stock Exchange for the Russian oil and gas company Thor Oil.’
‘Takeover?’ said one reporter, standing. ‘That gives Oasis most of Siberia and Arctic Canada. How’s Moscow going to react?’
‘It’s a friendly takeover,’ said Florita. ‘An equity swap will see Thor Oil basically absorbed but with an accretive effect—’
‘What about the shareholders?’ said an American.
‘More than eighty-five per cent of the shares are held by two Russian groups,’ said Florita, making Gallen’s ears prick up, ‘and the rest is institutional holdings.’
The media hubbub rose as Gallen recalled the Newport Associates report: the two Russian groups behind Thor Oil were the Bashoff crime family’s ProProm oil company and Reggie Kransk’s Transarctic Tribal Council. What was Florita doing?
A tall Englishman stood up and raised his hand. ‘Excuse me, madam, could you tell us what share price the takeover offer has been made at?’
‘Initial offer was nineteen euros,’ said Florita, enjoying herself. ‘I believe we had our takeover threshold met within three minutes.’
The reporters gawped.
‘You mean three days?’ said an American, looking up from her shorthand pad.
‘No,’ said Florita, ‘we had our proxies in hand before I announced just now. Guess our advisers read the market perfectly, huh?’
The tall Englishman looked over his colleague’s shoulder at her iPad and read from it. ‘That’s very quick, madam, and very expensive: half an hour before this announcement, Thor Oil was trading at ten euros ninety-one.’
‘I believe so,’ said Florita, checking her watch.
‘That’s a premium of ninety per cent,’ said the Englishman, looking annoyed. ‘Forget about the Russian shareholders, I assume yours are happy with the price?’
‘Rather than getting your assistant to fiddle with that computer,’ said Florita, signalling for Joyce to start handing out a stack of white folders with the Deutsche Bank logo on the cover, ‘I can tell you that the takeover is valued at forty-eight billion US dollars.’
The journos mumbled and a few dialled their sat-phones.
‘So what’s the projected market capitalisation of the new entity?’ asked one.
‘Deutsche Bank is projecting ninety-five billion,’ said Florita, as Aaron touched her on the arm and gave Gallen the nod. They were heading for the Ariadne dive.
‘So you’ve overtaken ConocoPhillips in market cap?’ said the tall Englishman. ‘You’ve basically bought out Arctic oil.’
But the comment was lost as Florita stood and the photographers surged forward in a blast of flashes.
~ * ~
They stood on the starboard hull of the Fanny Blankes-Koen and formed a guard around Florita as she climbed the ladder and eased into the trapdoor on the top of the Ariadne. Tucker followed: he would organise the take-off from the Ariadne.
As he made to climb the ladder, Gallen grabbed Tucker. ‘Keep an eye on things, okay, Liam?’
‘That was the idea, boss.’
‘No, I mean it,’ said Gallen. ‘You see anything you don’t like, get her into a safe room and shoot anyone who approaches. Okay?’
‘Crystal, boss,’ said the former Marine, dancing up the ladder and
disappearing inside.
The technicians secured the air lock and radioed up to the control room on the ship; most saturation-diving platforms were run from the ship they were connected to and it was the control room that monitored the temperature, oxygen mix and comms. The Ariadne was different, as Aaron had explained: once on the sea bed and set in place on the footings that the Dutch ship had secured ten days earlier, the Ariadne had its own power source and could be self-sustaining for months at a time, hence its capacity to keep operating when the sea ice arrived.
‘She’ll be up in twenty minutes,’ said Aaron, stamping warmth into his feet as Bjorn Hansen, the ship-side commander, walked to the outside railing of the service hull and yelled a command into his hand-held radio. Beside him, another man—also in a red exposure suit—trained binoculars on the crane and the lines and murmured updates to the Swede. The crane whirred into motion and the lines on the Ariadne went taut.
‘Twenty minutes is too long,’ said Gallen.
‘You worry too much,’ said Aaron.
Gallen pulled his arctic suit hood up. ‘I worry enough to keep myself alive.’
The submersible pilot was dressed in dark blue Ariadne coveralls with thermals beneath and held a helmet in his hands. His yellow mini sub sat on a cradle on the inside of the starboard hull, a smaller crane ready to lower her. He was talking with Mike Ford as Gallen approached.
‘Let’s do this as fast as possible, okay?’ said Gallen, offering Ford and the pilot a cigarette as they watched the Ariadne being lifted clear of her derricks, the lines straining and crane groaning as the huge Dutch service vessel laboured under her task, the barked commentary from the big Swede making many of the media contingent stare at him before looking away.
‘It is no problem,’ said the Dutch submersible pilot, a blond sailor in his late twenties. ‘This is easy for her.’
The crane swung away from the starboard hull, carrying the sea-floor drilling rig with it, the media contingent huddling as the Arctic wind bit deep. Gallen saw two reporters patting their cameramen and photographer on the back as they peeled back for the warmth of the ship.
The Ariadne swung out over the Arctic Ocean, a slight chop on the cold waters as the crane took her clear of the service ship’s starboard hull. The big Swede raised his hand as he yelled into his radio and his sidekick continued to look up and down the lines with his binoculars. When the binoculars man finally spoke, the Swede brought his hand down and said something quickly into the radio, and then the pale blue form of the Ariadne was being lowered into the sea, the waves lapping gently at the steel fuselages at first and then slowly engulfing the structure until it seemed tiny. And then it was gone.
Gallen stared at the point where the Ariadne used to be and was momentarily struck by how massive the ocean actually was. The sea had swallowed that lump of steel like it was a raindrop, he thought, following Hansen as he charged through the media scrum to the control room.
From the control room—a glass-sided area wrapped around the pylons and gantries of the crane—they watched the cables and lines spill off the decking as the crane lowered the Ariadne. European voices barked out of the radio speakers and people responded to Hansen as he demanded answers from the operators at their screens. Gallen had no idea what language they were speaking—they were Dutchies, Swedes and Danes but they seemed to understand just fine when Hansen spoke.
Looking nervously at his watch, Gallen saw they had fifteen minutes until the take-off. The Dutch pilot shrugged into the yellow sub, Ford behind him, and the deck crew screwed down the lid. Gallen’s stomach grumbled with stress and he wondered if the ship carried a nice big bottle of Pepto-Bismol. And then the secondary crane lifted the bright submersible clear of the hull and into the sea, and it was gone too.
‘We at depth yet?’ said Gallen, as the media dispersed. At the rear of the service ship he could hear the sounds of the first Sikorsky being readied to shuttle the reporters back to land.
‘Halfway down,’ said Hansen, pointing at the main monitoring screen, where a digital read-out on a blue background showed a white 28—the Dutch ship was run in metrics, and at 28 metres, the Ariadne was more than halfway to Florita’s take-off.
‘Can I?’ said Gallen, pointing at the comms desk.
‘Sure,’ said Hansen, ushering him forward with a big paw.
‘Yellow Bird, this is Blue Dog,’ he said into the mic stalk. ‘Are you reading, over?’
There was a pause of a few seconds and then Tucker was on the radio. ‘Gotcha, Blue Dog, this is Yellow Bird reading you clear, over.’
‘Red Fox is on his way down, repeat Red Fox is five minutes away. You readied for the take-off, over?’
‘Ready and—’ came the American’s voice, and then there was nothing. No static, no squelch, just dead air.
Looking at the mic, Gallen felt Hansen push past and gabble at the comms guy, who shrugged as he played with the settings.
Stepping back as the control room personnel descended on the comms desk, Gallen joined Aaron and Joyce. ‘This isn’t good.’
‘It’s not so bad,’ said Aaron. ‘The radio’s just down for a few seconds.’
In special forces, losing comms was usually the starting point for a whole world of wonderful screw-ups, and Gallen wasn’t interested in the glass-half-full argument. He wanted the glass fully full.
‘We on with the sub?’ he said, and the comms guy nodded enthusiastically, hitting a button and pointing to the mic.
Leaning into the stalk mic, Gallen called up Mike Ford.
‘We’ve lost comms to the Ariadne. You talking to them?’
‘Negative, Blue Dog,’ came the Aussie accent. ‘We have dead air with the Ariadne.’
Gallen felt his pulse bang behind his eyeballs. ‘Got visuals, Red Fox?’
‘Affirmative, Blue Dog. We have her in our lights and we’re continuing to the RV.’
Gallen looked at Hansen and the commander hit a series of switches; the screens that had stopped broadcasting the Ariadne’s video footage now leapt to life and showed Mike Ford and the Dutch sailor in the sub itself, while another screen was the submersible’s camera view of the Ariadne.
The depth counter showed thirty-five metres.
Gallen tapped it. ‘Can we stop the Ariadne?’
‘The descent?’ said Hansen.
‘Yeah,’ said Gallen. ‘Just a time-out until we can sort this out? ‘
‘We’re on a clock,’ said the Swede.
‘And I’ve lost contact with my employer. Let’s do the take-off at forty metres,’ said Gallen, irritated.
‘Sounds fair,’ said Aaron, schmoozing between them and giving Hansen the go-ahead. Turning to Gallen, he gave him a look. ‘Take it easy, Gerry.’
The cables screeched and the control room shuddered slightly as the descent slowed and then stopped at forty-one metres. The screens on the control console showed the Ariadne looming out of the darkness of the killer-cold sea as the submersible closed on her, the flashing red light on the top of the vessel and the lights shining through the portholes a sign that at least the vessel had power.
‘Blue Dog, this is Red Fox,’ came Mike Ford’s voice. ‘We’re twenty-three metres from the Ariadne. Closing.’
‘See anything, Red Fox?’ said Gallen.
‘No, boss. It looks business as usual. You’ve stopped her, so this is the take-off?’
‘Affirmative, Red Fox,’ said Gallen, making himself breathe out. ‘This is the take-off Proceed to the diving lock.’
The submersible’s camera tracked their path under the massive submerged vessel and the workers in the control room pored over the detail as Ford talked them in. ‘Five metres and powering back,’ said the Aussie as the submersible moved under the light from the open divers lock beneath the diving section of the vessel.
‘And powering up,’ said Ford, and the submersible ascended slowly into the Ariadne’s belly, the light becoming brighter until the processors had to adjust for flaring light
.
‘Blue Dog, this is Red Fox. We’re docked and ready for take-off,’ said Ford.
From the interior shots, Gallen could see the two men doing their pressure checks as the external sensors gave them ATM and psi readings from the diving bell. The outside camera just showed the side of the diving bell with its padded V-docks for submersibles.
‘Strange,’ said Hansen, as he left a confab with two technicians. ‘Power, air and water are up. So are comms.’
‘So?’ said Gallen.
Hansen frowned. ‘So my guys are saying it’s ninety per cent the case that comms have been shut down on the sea-side.’
‘Someone on the Ariadne has shut down comms?’ said Gallen.