by John Saul
He wasn’t sure which, for he knew full well that it could be either one. The strokes Reba had suffered could as easily induce phantom pain as phantom terror. The anguish for Reba would be as great whichever emotion she experienced, assuming she was aware of her condition at all. Greg hoped that Reba’s mind was now so far gone that she had no knowledge of her own situation.
In a week—two at the most—she would be dead, and it would, indeed, be a blessing.
He put Reba out of his mind, and picked up the reports on his desk, studying them carefully.
Five minutes later Greg left his office, heading downtown toward the Borrego Building and the last appointment of his day.
It was an appointment he wasn’t looking forward to.
Chapter 10
Otto Kruger glanced out the window of the small office in the control building of the dam, far up Mordida Canyon. He didn’t need to look at the clock to see that it was almost quitting time—the dark shadow of the descending sun creeping up the canyon’s wall told him the time to within a few minutes. Then, uneasily, his eyes went to the rim of the canyon itself, and the lone figure who stood watching there.
It was Brown Eagle. He stood at the canyon’s edge, unmoving, his figure imbued with the same unsettling concentration Otto had only seen before in the birds for which the Indian was named. At first, when Brown Eagle had taken up his sentry’s stance early in the afternoon, Otto had only glanced at him casually, then forgotten about him. Bill Watkins, the dam supervisor, had told him people from Kokatí often appeared above the dam, looking down at it for a few moments, their faces set in silent reproof at the dam’s very existence, then quietly moving off to go about their business.
But Brown Eagle had remained all afternoon, his stance never changing, not a muscle in his lean body so much as twitching. It had finally begun to make Otto nervous, and he’d considered sending someone up to send the man on his way, but Brown Eagle was doing no harm. If the Indian wanted to stand around like a fool, what concern was it of his?
Still, the presence of the Indian watcher was making him increasingly uneasy, as if something in the Kokatí’s gaze compelled his attention; as if it wasn’t actually the dam the old man was concentrating on, but he himself.
It was almost, indeed, as if the Indian somehow knew why he was up at the dam that afternoon, and was waiting for the same thing he was waiting for.
The hell with him, Otto finally told himself. So they all hate us, and hate the dam. So what? Irritated, he finished reading Watkins’s reports of the day’s activities and shoved them in the envelope he would drop off at Max Moreland’s office on his way home.
Like a damned messenger boy, he thought, resenting once more the extra workload that had been put on his shoulders as the company was forced to lay off more and more people.
But not for long, he reminded himself. The company was losing too much money for Max to hang on much longer. Soon—perhaps even today—Moreland would face up to reality.
His thoughts were interrupted as a red light began to flash on the control panel in front of him. At the same time a bell sounded sharply in the building, while a siren began to wail outside, echoing eerily off the canyon walls.
His pulse quickening, Kruger dropped the reports back onto the desk. A moment later Bill Watkins burst in the door, shoving Otto aside as he began scanning the dials and indicators on the control board.
“What the hell’s happening?” Kruger demanded. Watkins didn’t answer. The tendons of his neck standing out starkly, he began twisting knobs and throwing switches. He snatched up a telephone and began barking orders into it.
“Get the main diversion valve open now, then close the number-one intake. And get that shaft clear! Shut down the turbine and get it drained.”
Otto’s eyes widened slightly as the implications of Watkins’s words penetrated his mind, and his eyes instinctively left the control panel to gaze out the window at the dam itself. Though nothing appeared to have changed, men were suddenly spilling out of the doorway that led to the interior of the dam. Some of them were sprinting toward the control shack; others were leaning out over the dam, staring down at its concrete face.
Abruptly, as quickly as it had begun, the siren and bell fell silent.
Otto looked back to Watkins, who was now perched on a chair while he studied the array of meters spread out on the control panel before him.
“What was it?” Otto asked again, and this time Watkins replied.
“Something’s gone haywire in the main power shaft. Looks like it may have developed a crack.”
“Jesus,” Otto breathed, turning back to gaze at the dam. “It isn’t going to—”
Watkins gave Otto’s back a sour look. “It’s not gonna come down, no. Far from it. When Sam Moreland built that dam, he did it right.” He leaned back in the chair, unconsciously rubbing at the tension in his neck. “What we’ve got here is what you might call a minor inconvenience,” he said in a laconic drawl. “I’d reckon we’re gonna have to cut the power to the refinery in about half, maybe more. ’Course, we’re gonna have to shut the wells off completely in order to keep the refinery going at all.”
Otto swallowed, trying to keep his expression impassive. But it was plain that this was the final blow. Max would have to sell out now. Watkins gazed at him steadily, almost as if he could read Otto’s mind.
“Wouldn’t have happened if you’d shown some balls about the maintenance program last month,” he pointed out.
Otto’s eyes narrowed. “We needed to save money,” he said, his voice tight. “I was told we could save twenty-five thousand by skipping it, and not sacrifice safety at all. Max approved it.” It wasn’t quite the truth, for the maintenance reports Max had signed were slightly different from the ones Kruger had placed in the files. For the most part they were accurate; only one page had been changed.
One page, detailing the maintenance work that Kruger had ordered not to be done. But the signature at the bottom of the work order was still Max Moreland’s.
“Is that so?” Watkins drawled, his tongue exploring the hollow where he’d lost a wisdom tooth a year ago. “Well, now, it looks like whoever told you that was a little off target, weren’t they?” He hauled himself to his feet, then, without saying another word to Otto, left the control shack to go inspect the power shaft personally.
Alone, Otto savored the moment, then finally picked up the phone. He wished he could see the look on Max’s face when Moreland understood that it was all over, that he was finally going to have to sell Borrego Oil.
This time, Kruger knew, there were no funds left to repair the damage.
As he waited for someone to pick up the call at the other end, Otto’s eyes went once more to the rim of the canyon.
Brown Eagle was gone.
Otto frowned deeply. It was almost as if the Indian had known what was going to happen to the dam, and had been waiting to see it.
But that was impossible—he couldn’t have known.
Could he?
A cold chill passed through Otto Kruger’s body.
Max Moreland sat behind the huge mahogany desk his father had shipped out to the wilds of New Mexico almost seventy years earlier. His eyes were fixed on the papers laid out neatly in front of him, but his mind kept drifting back over all those years, the years when he’d been a little boy, accompanying his father as the old man wildcatted the area, spending most of his time capping the artesian wells he’d hit while drilling for oil, then moving on to the next likely spot. Finally Sam Moreland had found what he was looking for. First one well, then another and another. He’d borrowed against the wells to build the first small refinery, and gone on reinvesting his profits to drill more wells and expand the refinery, building Borrego Oil into an enterprise large enough to support a town of nearly ten thousand people. Now it looked as if his father’s work and his own were all going to crumble away.
Slowly, he looked up from the papers he had been studying. He loved this offi
ce, with its softly glowing mahogany paneling, and the perfectly woven Two Grey Hills rug that had covered the floor since the day the Borrego Building had been completed at the corner of First and E Streets, establishing a new center for the dusty village. His eyes swept over the collection of Kachina dolls his father had begun and he had kept expanding. They covered a whole wall now. For some reason he found himself idly wondering if he should leave them where they were or take them with him if he had to vacate this office.
It was becoming increasingly clear that vacating the office was something he was going to have to do. Though part of Borrego’s problems lay with the crash in oil prices a few years ago, he also knew that part of the problem lay within himself.
He simply hadn’t kept up with the times.
Much of the refinery was obsolete, and there were all kinds of new drilling methods that could conceivably double or even treble crude oil output. He had fallen behind.
But to make Borrego Oil prosper again would take money, and there was no more. He’d spent it all to keep his obsolete refinery operating, then borrowed more.
Yet something in him refused to accept the inevitable. He stared again at the papers in front of him—the papers that would sell the whole outfit, lock, stock, and barrel, to UniChem for what he knew was more than a fair price. He was still having trouble bringing himself to sign them.
All day he’d been looking for a way to keep his promise to Frank Arnold—and a lot of other people— that the employees would have first crack at buying the company if it ever became necessary for him to sell it.
But what would he be giving them?
A pile of debts on an obsolete plant.
And they’d have to take on more debt if they were ever to have a hope of making the company pay off.
If, of course, they could find a lender, which was highly unlikely, given the climate of the oil industry and the net worth of Borrego’s assets.
And yet he still kept working, searching for something he might have forgotten, hunting for something that might postpone the inevitable.
But he hadn’t been able to refuse to see Paul Kendall, the representative from UniChem who had first approached him with a buyout offer months earlier. He’d instinctively liked Kendall, a large, ruddy-faced man in his mid-forties who vaguely reminded Max of himself at the same age. And Kendall knew how he felt, even taking the time to show Max some of the places where things had gone wrong over the suddenly all-too-quick passing of the last quarter of a century.
“Nobody could ever accuse you of mismanagement, Mr. Moreland,” Kendall had assured him. “Lord knows, you did your best, and for a long time it was about as good as it gets. But you were all by yourself out here, and the industry just sort of passed you by. And who could predict what was going to happen to oil prices? It’s been years, and they’re just starting to recover.”
As the weeks went by, he and Kendall had continued bargaining. Max had to admit that Kendall had been more than fair. He and Rita would come out of it with more money than they’d ever need, and UniChem had committed to an immense infusion of new capital into the operation.
Max had been suspicious at first, certain, just as Frank Arnold was, that UniChem would shut down the refinery and simply begin piping the crude to their own facilities farther west. Kendall had insisted that that wasn’t the intention at all. He and the rest of UniChem’s management projected a strong market ahead, and foresaw a need for more refineries, not fewer. Max had finally called his bluff.
With a stare so intense it chilled Kendall’s soul, he asked: “Then you’re willing to sign a guarantee that the refinery remains in operation for twenty-five years?”
Kendall laughed out loud. “Of course not,” he said. “But I think you’d settle for ten, wouldn’t you?”
At that moment Max knew he could not resist much longer.
Now, he focused his attention once more on the papers in front of him, and took up his pen. He was just signing the last page of the agreement when his intercom chimed softly and his secretary informed him that Otto Kruger was on the line.
Tiredly, he picked up the receiver. “Yes, Otto? What is it?”
Across the room, Paul Kendall looked up when the phone rang. He had been sitting at a conference table with Greg Moreland, quietly explaining to the younger man the complex series of documents that comprised the offer for the company, while he let the older man adjust to the inevitable in any way he could. He gestured to the extension on the conference table, and when Max nodded, pressed a button that amplified Kruger’s voice so both he and Greg could hear it clearly.
“… it’s going to mean a shutdown of the dam, Max,” they heard Kruger saying. “And the wells, and maybe the refinery too.” Kendall saw the blood drain from Max Moreland’s face.
When the call was over, Paul Kendall faced Max. “If it’ll make you feel any better, Mr. Moreland, none of this will affect our offer. The offer stands as it is, and we’ll deal with the problem at the dam.”
Max said nothing for a moment. His expression grim, he punched at a button on his intercom. “I want the maintenance files on the dam,” he said. The color had come back into his face, and his voice seemed suddenly to have strengthened.
Kendall glanced questioningly at Greg, who shrugged but said nothing, as Max’s secretary entered the office, carrying three thick file folders. She laid them on Max’s desk, then turned to go.
“Take him with you, please,” Max snapped, nodding toward Kendall and already beginning to flip through the files. Kendall started to object, but Max silenced him with a glance. “I’m sorry, Mr. Kendall,” he said. “I want to know what happened out there at that dam, and until I know, I’m afraid I can’t let you sign these papers. For the moment this deal is on hold.” He slid Kendall’s documents into the center drawer of his desk, then locked it.
Kendall frowned. “But I already told you—”
“I heard what you said,” Max interrupted. “And it may not make any difference to you and your company, but it makes a hell of a difference to me. I don’t sell shit for the price of fertilizer.”
Kendall’s brows rose slightly, but he followed the secretary out of the office without another word. When the door had closed behind him, Max looked up again, this time fixing his gaze on Greg. “Something’s going on,” he said, his voice dropping. “Take a look at this.”
Greg crossed to his uncle’s desk and leaned over to look at the page that lay exposed in the file folder. The notations on the page were as indecipherable to him as his prescriptions were to his patients. “What is it?”
“The results of the last inspection of the dam, and the orders for repairs that needed to be made Except that what’s here and what I signed are not the same.”
Greg frowned. “I’m not sure I understand …”
Max’s fist clenched angrily. “It means that what I authorized—hell, what I ordered—wasn’t done. I may be getting old, but I remember what I read, and what I sign. And what I signed was an order that all the cracks in the main drive flume were to be repaired. But those orders aren’t here. Christ, anyone who looks at this would have to assume I’d lost my grip completely!” His voice was rising now and a vein was beginning to stand out on his forehead. “God damn it—look at this! Here’s Watkins’s report on the damage they found at the last inspection.” He picked up the page and began reading it out loud. “ ‘Transverse cracking at the intake—erosion of the primary casing in the area of the turbine.’ Hell, there’s ten or fifteen items here, and every single one should have been taken care of. But according to this, I didn’t authorize any repairs. Which is a damned lie!” His fist slammed down on the desk and he fairly trembled with rage.
“Now take it easy,” Greg said, alarmed by his uncle’s fury. “You might be wrong. You might have thought you authorized those repairs but forgot—”
“No!” Max roared. “I don’t forget things like that. Not something as important as that dam.” He fell silent for a moment,
sitting still, his mind working quickly as he tried to figure out what might have happened.
“All right,” he said, his breathing slowly coming back to normal as his rage subsided and reason took over. “Here’s what we’re going to do. You tell Kendall he’s going to have to wait until at least tomorrow. And in the meantime I’m going to have a little talk with Otto Kruger. This whole thing smells, and the only thing that could have happened is that Kruger changed the orders after I signed them. And that,” he added, “seems to me like a pretty good indication that someone’s been paying him off.” A cold grin spread across his face and his eyes shifted to the door through which Paul Kendall had passed only a few moments ago. “Now, who do you suppose would have been interested in paying Otto off to sabotage the dam?” he asked. His voice hardened. “If I can pin this on that son of a bitch, we won’t need to sell this company at all.”
“Even if you can prove it, what difference will it make?” Greg asked. “It would mean a lawsuit, and that would drag on for years. We don’t have the time for something like that, let alone the money—”
“We’ll find it,” Max declared, his voice suddenly stronger than Greg had heard it in years. “I’m damned if I’m going to let them just squeeze me out like this.” He picked up the phone and began dialing, then gestured toward the door. “Go on—get rid of Kendall, and don’t say a word about these orders. If I’m right, I want to take him by surprise.”
Greg, knowing there was no point in arguing with his uncle, stood up and left the office. Paul Kendall was waiting in the anteroom beyond the secretary’s office. As he came in, Kendall rose to his feet.
“What’s going on?”
Greg shrugged. “Nothing much. He just wants to find out what happened to the dam. I don’t think anything else is going to happen until tomorrow.”