by Jon Land
“Let me ask the question another way, then: if this had been a scheme hatched by Putin, what would they think then?”
“They would be leading celebrations in the street,” insisted Oleg Malyshkin, a deputy comfortable working behind the scenes to ensure that the LDPR maintained its hard line at all costs and voted as a unified block. “But…”
“But what?” Zhirnosky prodded.
Malyshkin needed to force himself to respond. “We must consider how such open opposition to the ruling party will be greeted.”
“You speak of the future.”
“And the present, if our part in this is revealed prematurely. We all know that our president speaks like a nationalist while acting like a capitalist behind closed doors. He and his supporters will not be happy about the economic devastation wrought internationally by this.”
“Only until they see the entire scope of the plan, something all of you are just about to see for yourselves,” Zhirnosky explained. “We will use it to propel our party to a ruling position. The Soviet Union will be returned to all its previous glory as the true superpower in the world, the United States reduced to utter dependence on us for her very survival.”
The ministers exchanged nervous glances, cushioning themselves against the jars and jolts that threatened to slam their skulls against the vehicle’s roof. Around them right now there was only the tree line thickening into a forest in all directions as the convoy thumped up a slight hill.
“Goals achieved long after the plan’s original implementation,” said the lone female minister in the vehicle, Valentina Mironov, whose father had been a founder of the original LDPR but who had championed the move to radicalism upon his death. “I believe you were involved, at least peripherally.”
“Peripherally, indeed. It was 1983,” Zhirnosky scoffed, growing even stiffer. “I was a mere boy. I was responsible for the security details of the scientists involved.”
“Protecting them,” another minister wondered, “or watching them?”
“Both. Everything should have gone perfectly once the plan became operational.”
“What happened?”
“We encountered circumstances that could not be anticipated. If you could grasp how close we came, how close we were to preserving our Union forever, how close to winning. Well, we are that close again—and to securing the power of our party for generations to come.”
“Of course, our complicity in such a plot could be used against us before we are able to reap its rewards,” Valentina Mironov agreed. “And we must also consider the detrimental, even catastrophic effects to our own economy of the likely collapse of international markets, once the operation’s success becomes clear. We risk becoming pariahs, not heroes. We must have deniability here, plausible deniability, lest we risk our careers as well as our lives. And in that respect, comrade, I must question if your thinking is flawed.”
Zhirnosky let himself smile. “That assumes you know what my thinking is. And what you’re about to see should assuage any concerns and questions you may have.”
Zhirnosky stopped there, as the SUV crested the hill and the driver slowed so the occupants could see what lay directly beneath them, stretching as far as the eye could see across a vast stretch of open, rolling fields.
“Bo-zheh moy!” Malyshkin managed. “My God.…”
“Can this be?” followed Lebedev in disbelief. “Am I seeing it right?”
“You are,” Zhirnosky said, unable to restrain the grin that widened his jowls to bulbous proportions. “Behold the weapon we will wield to control our own destiny. Behold the means by which we will secure the destiny of the Soviet Union.” He paused, smiled. “The new Soviet Union.”
55
MIDLAND, TEXAS
“You have any idea the level of oil reserves in the Permian Basin, Ranger?” Calum Dane asked, picking up his pace slightly on the treadmill.
“I’m afraid I don’t, sir,” Caitlin told him, standing on a neighboring one that remained still. She could see a cup threaded over Dane’s index finger, connected to an LED readout currently reading ninety-five.
“Thirty billion barrels,” he said, answering his own question. “That’s billion with a b.”
“I know how to spell it, sir.”
Dane’s heart rate touched one hundred as he looked away from her.
“Anyway,” Caitlin resumed, “I appreciate you seeing me.”
She’d been waiting in the lobby of Midland’s recently completed and lone skyscraper, the fifty-three-story Energy Tower, which was home to Dane Corp’s international headquarters. Calum Dane’s private gymnasium was located on the top floor of the old-fashioned slab-design of a building. The surrounding countryside’s utter flatness allowed for a view stretching upwards of fifty miles, across pumpjack-littered oil fields currently producing more than a million barrels of oil per day.
“Didn’t I also see you at the grand opening of the rechristened Midland International Air and Space Port?” Dane asked, turning to regard her again.
“No, sir,” Caitlin told him, “I’m afraid I missed that.”
“Guess I was mistaken, then. But you did hear we’ll soon be offering suborbital space flights from just a few miles from here.” Dane grinned. “A bit more exciting than riding on that helicopter that brought you here.”
“The roof of your building here is plenty high enough for me, Mr. Dane.”
“A building made possible by the fact that the potential of our fields dwarfs other oil-rich geological formations, including North Dakota’s Bakken and Texas’s Eagle Ford Shale. It’s not even close. You are standing smack-dab in the center of this country’s biggest boomtown.” Dane held his gaze on her, to the point where he stumbled a bit and had to grasp the treadmill’s side rails for support. “I believe your grandfather spent some time in such boomtowns of his day, rode herd over them, I’ve heard told.”
“I see you’ve done your research, sir. Things were different back in those days. It was the Depression, and men rode trains from everywhere to get where the work was, compared to today’s oil workers, who make a salary that starts at eighty thousand a year.”
“I see you’ve done your research, too.”
“It pays to be prepared, Mr. Dane.”
“I agree, Ranger, which explains why I was disappointed when you wouldn’t be more specific about the reason for this meeting.”
“It’s not something easily explained over the phone,” Caitlin told him.
“Like what?”
“I believe your life may be in danger, sir.”
56
MIDLAND, TEXAS
Calum Dane hit Pause on his treadmill and looked at Caitlin for what seemed like a much longer time than it really was, after she’d finished laying out for him the contents of the wall map in the murdered Alexi Gribanov’s office.
“Farms and ranches, okay. What’s that got to do with me, with oil, with Dane Corp?”
“You didn’t let me finish, sir,” Caitlin said, leaning up against the rail of her treadmill so her holstered SIG Sauer hung just beneath it.
That rail, in conjunction with the one on Dane’s machine, created a barrier between them, a kind of invisible wall extending both up and down between their respective treadmills. The sun had just started streaming in through the north-facing glass wall, pricking Dane’s eyes and forcing him into a squint that made him look even more uncomfortable.
“It’s the potential perpetrators that have got me concerned, sir,” Caitlin continued. “They seemed to have a specific selection of targets, and the evidence indicates you could be on that list.”
“What evidence is that, Ranger?”
“I’m not at liberty to say, Mr. Dane,” Caitlin told him, thinking of a property of his near Waco that had been identified on Alexi Gribanov’s wall map. “I can say that four men were murdered yesterday and I believe their involvement in all this holds the reason. If you were on their target list, it stands to reason you might still be.”<
br />
“Four of them, you said,” Dane recalled, wedging a toothpick into the corner of his mouth, which he held between his teeth as he started up the treadmill again and jogged into the sun streaming into his eyes.
The same shaft of sunlight was just reaching Caitlin now. “And it’s whoever murdered those men that’s call for concern. You see, that wall map I mentioned also included some property in West Texas that belongs to you—your company anyway.”
Dane grinned smugly, picking up his pace a bit. “Throw a stone from any window in these parts and you’re bound to hit some land Dane Corp owns.”
“I’m talking specifically about a former petrochemical plant, sir. Of course, you couldn’t hit it with a stone, on account of the fact that it burned to the ground a few years back, after an explosion. Five workers were killed in the blast and seven firefighters in a secondary explosion that followed their arrival on the scene. Am I triggering any memories here?”
Dane’s hands clenched into fists by his sides as they moved in rhythm with his pace; he was working his toothpick like a baby’s pacifier. Caitlin noticed his heart rate was accelerating, up to one hundred twenty in bright red LED numbers. And his cheeks were now flushed with red, as if someone had smeared paint on them, when his previous exertion had achieved no such effect.
“You’re no more the kind to mince words with me than your grandfather was when he tamed those oil towns in the thirties,” he told her, his heart rate holding.
“The fire was labeled as suspicious,” Caitlin told him. “But you already knew that, since the lawsuits are still pending against your company.”
“That plant was actually owned by a subsidiary. We did a bad job of oversight, I’ll admit that to you—but I’ll deny ever saying it, if the statement comes back to haunt me one day. And, if it means anything, I reached out to the families of the men lost that night myself.”
“The reports I’ve read indicated that plant manufactured pesticides.”
“A business I’m glad to be out of,” Dane said, dialing back his pace a bit by pressing a section of his treadmill’s touch screen with a finger.
“Yes, I also read about the poisoning of those aquifers and resulting cancer clusters.”
“Alleged poisoning, Ranger, alleged cancer clusters.”
“My mistake, sir. But I’m sure you can understand my concern for your safety, given the connection between your petrochemical plant and these murdered Russians.”
Dane seemed to perk up a bit. “I don’t know any Russians, save for the business consortiums and investment groups I do business with.”
“Any chance Alexi Gribanov was one of them?”
“Not to my knowledge, Ranger, and my knowledge of my own business dealings runs pretty deep. I’m not as good at delegating as I should be. I tend not to trust others to do a job I know I could do better. And I don’t like to do business with someone, especially important business, without being able to look them in the eye.” He turned toward her atop the churning treadmill. “Does that sound familiar?”
“Is that what we’re doing now, sir, business?”
“I figure you for the same kind of person, just like your grandfather Earl Strong was. A loner at heart. Someone who doesn’t always play well with others.”
“You could learn that much from reading the papers or watching the news.”
“But it was the same for your father, too, and that was before the twenty-four-seven news cycle,” Dane said, his cheeks still rosy but no longer flushed with red. “Jim Strong had a whole lot of folks at his funeral, I understand, but how many of them could he count as friends while he was alive?”
Caitlin reached over and plucked the emergency stop free of its magnetic hold. Dane’s treadmill ground to an almost immediate halt. “You trying to scare me, sir?”
“I was merely sharing information, Ranger.”
“Information about my dad and granddad, to make me think you’re wearing the shoes here.”
Dane reattached the metal disc against the magnet but stopped short of firing up the treadmill again. “I’m not sure I understand your meaning.”
“You want me to believe you hold the upper hand so I’ll hold my tongue in your presence. That’s not going to happen, sir, not so long as you’re implicated in four murders.”
“Did you just use the word implicated?”
“You can substitute the word connected, if you like. The point is I believe those men were killed because of the locations marked on a map of Texas, visible only under UV light. And your petrochemical plant that mysteriously blew up and burned to the ground, taking a dozen lives of working men and firefighters alike, for just doing their jobs, was one of those locations.”
“I thought you came here because that made me a potential victim.”
“I did, sir,” Caitlin told him. “But maybe I had things wrong.”
57
MIDLAND, TEXAS
“Those firefighters were volunteers,” Caitlin continued. “How’s that sit with you, Mr. Dane?”
Dane forced a smile. He’d worked up such a sweat that Caitlin figured if she reached out to touch him his skin would burn her hand, and she half expected the toothpick on which he was chomping to catch fire in his mouth. The sunlight streaming in through the north-facing window now caught both of them in a narrow shaft, like a spotlight shining from the sky.
“Their families were very well taken care of,” he said finally.
“Out of guilt?”
“The plant was a subsidiary of Dane Corp, Ranger. It was out of a moral responsibility—the kind nobody ever showed my family.”
Caitlin remained silent, waiting for him to continue.
“When my father died on the last farm we sharecropped, in Glasscock County, nobody offered to do a damn thing except pay for his plywood coffin so he could be dumped in a pauper’s grave with no headstone. You know what I thought of when I made my first million dollars, Ranger? Picking cotton in those fields, the scars I’ve still got to show for it. You’d figure I could put all that behind me, not bother looking back. But all I could think of was that farm, still up and operating with no regard for the workers out doing the picking. Time seemed to seize up whenever I thought about those days, to the point where nothing I was accomplishing seemed to matter, and wouldn’t, until the farm itself was dead too.”
“So what’d you do, sir? Kill it?”
Dane’s gaze was still distant, reflective. “Close enough.”
“And what were you thinking when you got word you were responsible for the deaths of a dozen men, Mr. Dane?”
Dane chomped down on his toothpick, the wood cracking audibly.
Caitlin had intended to leave it there, but more words raced up her throat before she stop them. “Two years ago, right around the time of the fire … that would’ve been the same time that class action suit first sprang up, claiming one of your pesticides was making people sick.”
The sun was continuing to move, one side of Dane’s face lost to shadows.
“You came here to tell me my life was in danger,” he said, his tone flat. He started to discard his toothpick, then changed his mind. “I appreciate the warning and can assure you I will take additional precautions.” Dane stepped down from the treadmill and draped a towel that had been hanging from the front panel over his shoulders. “That should conclude our business, I believe.”
“You don’t find it strange, sir?”
Dane twisted the cap off a water bottle tucked into the machine’s bottle holder and chugged half of it down. “Find what strange?”
“Like I told you, the sites marked on that wall map in Alexi Gribanov’s office contained mostly farms and ranches. Kind of places known to use pesticides. What do you think I’d find if I checked which pesticide they’d been using?”
“I really have no idea.”
“I’m sorry the connection escapes you, but I don’t want to make this personal. A multibillion-dollar conglomerate like Dane Corp has tens of
thousands of workers, and this connection to you that showed up in Gribanov’s office could just as easily be someone else. I apologize if I led you to believe otherwise.”
“This Gribanov, what’s he do exactly?”
“Did, sir. Operated a strip club just off Harry Hines Boulevard. He’s been in this country since 1983. Does that ring any bells for you?”
“Should it?”
Caitlin decided not to push that part of the issue. For now.
“Thank you for your time, sir,” she said, as politely as she could manage. “I’m glad you’ll be taking those extra precautions. But at least three of the men attached to your personal security team have done time on serious beefs. I thought you should be aware you have violent criminals in your employ.”
“Who I hire is my business, Ranger.”
Caitlin stepped down off her treadmill, the back of her shirt wet with enough sweat to make her think she’d just endured a workout of her own, eye to eye with Dane now. “I imagine any man who beats his own son would be comfortable in their company,” she said, never taking her gaze off Dane.
Something flared in the man’s eyes. Maybe it was the way the sun was hitting his face, but Caitlin could have sworn they turned as red as something out of a cartoon.
“Those baseless charges came out in my divorce proceedings,” Dane said, the words seeming to hiss from his mouth. “The records were sealed.”
“Not to me they weren’t, sir. And ‘baseless’ isn’t the way I’d describe those pictures of your son’s injuries.”
“Those were Photoshopped by my wife.”
“What about that restraining order that forbids you to have any contact with your boy? Care to explain that?”
“Anything else, Ranger?”
“Just this, sir. I had an expert review the fire marshal’s report on the explosion and fire at your plant. He informed me that the items listed don’t entirely jibe with the plant’s shipping manifests, suggesting some of the actual contents got left off.”
“You’ll have to take that up with the fire marshal, Ranger.”