“They will and you’ll handle it. You always do.”
“You have a lot of confidence in me.”
“I always have.”
“I know that.”
“And I always will. Now go to bed, Nina Bannister. Get some sleep. You’re going to need it.”
“All right. Good night, Frank.”
And so thinking, she rose and went in to bed.
CHAPTER TEN: WOMAN OF THE YEAR!
She awoke with first light and glanced at the small alarm clock someone had left on the bed stand. Five forty five.
She got up, dressed, and walked outside. The air was deliciously cool. The world was still gray on its way to blue and green, and mist hung over the lake.
She found a walking trail and began to encircle the lake.
By seven-thirty she had completed her walk, made coffee, and completed half of the bagel Jackson had bought the day before.
She was wondering how she might spend the next two hours when a car pulled up to the cabin.
“Ms. Bannister?”
A fresh-faced young man emerged from the innocuous black sedan, which seemed to have been built for no other purpose but to avoid detection.
She thought she remembered him from Bay St. Lucy High School.
“Ms. Bannister?”
“Yes?”
“I’m Terry Anthony. I was a senior last year.”
“Oh yes, Terry, I remember you. You were on the A Honor Roll for the last two six week periods.”
He beamed.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“What are your plans, Terry?”
“I got accepted to The University of Mississippi.”
“Excellent.”
“I’m planning to go to law school. But for right now, this summer, I’m interning with Mr. Bennett. Just doing errands, and seeing a little bit about what a lawyer does.”
“You couldn’t do better.”
“No, ma’am. Anyway, that’s kind of why I’m here. To pick you up and bring you back into town.”
“I thought Jackson said it would be about nine.”
“Yes, Ma’am. But apparently a lot is going on. He thinks you need to come on in now.”
“I see. All right, then. I’ll get a few things together, and we can go.”
She went inside, packed her travel bag quickly with the change of clothes she had brought out and her toiletries, then returned to the car.
Terry was standing beside it, holding open the back door.
“Are you going to be my chauffeur, Terry?”
“Yes, Ma’am. Just get in and make yourself comfortable.”
“Thank you.”
She slid in, putting her things on the vacant seat beside her.
He started the car, then leaned back and said:
“Ms. Bannister?”
“Yes?”
“Mr. Bennett said I should give you something.”
“All right.”
“He said not to let it upset you.”
This upset her, but she still found the presence of mind to reply:
“I’ll try not to. What is it?”
“This newspaper. It hit the streets about an hour ago.”
He handed her a copy of what she immediately knew to be The New York Times, even before she saw the paper’s masthead or read the headline, which screamed:
DISASTER IMMINENT! MAJOR OIL INSTALLATION ON BRINK OF EXPLOSION!
By…Daruka Narang.
“Ok,” she whispered to herself, unfolding the paper in her lap while Terry eased the car out of the driveway. “Ok, let’s see what you wrote, Professor.”
She read as follows:
“According to unimpeachable data recently obtained from the main computer bank of Louisiana Petroleum’s flagship offshore drilling rig Aquatica, the installation stands on the brink of a major catastrophe, perhaps unparalleled in the history of environmental disasters. Due primarily to greed and mismanagement, at least eight crucial subsystems stand on the brink of near-simultaneous failures, the combination of which stand to unleash a devastating explosion of almost nuclear destructive potential, which will in turn unleash more than a billion gallons of pure crude oil into The Gulf of Mexico.”
“Wow,” she found herself muttering as the car wound its way toward the major highway back to Bay St. Lucy. “The man can write.”
The article continued:
“Eight Steps to Doomsday”:
1. Dodgy cement. The cement at the bottom of the main borehole has failed to create a permanent seal, so that gas and oil have already begun to leak through it into a pipe leading to the surface The cement formulation chosen––a less expensive and more easily applied brand––has clearly proven itself incapable of performing its crucial task.
2. Valve failure. The bottom of the pipe to the surface contains two valves designed to stop the flow of gas to the surface. Both have failed completely, although no one on Aquatica at this moment seems aware of the failure, or of the imminent danger arising from it.
3. Pressure tests misinterpreted. Six pressure tests have been carried out in the last three weeks, all of which should have served as warnings. All of these tests have, inexplicably, been either ignored or misinterpreted.
4. Leaks not spotted soon enough. Unexpected increases in the pressure in the well should have been spotted at least ten days ago by the crew at the surface. These increases have been occurring with ever heightening frequency during the last days, and have not been interpreted as leaks.
5. Third valve failure. A mixture of mud and gas has already begun seeping onto the floor of the ocean. This seepage should have been prevented by the blowout preventer which sits on the ocean floor at the top of the borehole. The blowout preventer––again, a less expensive model than should have been installed given the size of the gas field being dealt with––has completely malfunctioned.
6. Some moments before an actual explosion takes place, the crew of Aquatica will have the option of diverting mud and gas away from the rig, venting them safely through pipes over the side. Instead, as the system is now designed, the flow will be diverted to a device on board the rig designed to separate small amounts of gas from a flow of mud. This device is called a mud gas separator. The problem is that the mud gas separator currently in place is no more than one third the size necessary, given the volume of gas and oil involved. It will fail, and be overwhelmed immediately by escaping gasses.
7. Questionable gas alarm. The rig has an onboard gas detection system that should sound the alarm and trigger the closure of ventilation fans to prevent the gas reaching potential causes of ignition, such as the rig’s engines. This system HAS NEVER BEEN TESTED.
8. No battery for BOP. The anticipated explosion will almost certainly destroy the control lines the crew will be using to attempt to close safety valves in the blowout preventer. However, the blowout preventer has its own safety mechanism in which two separate systems should shut the valves automatically when it loses contact with the surface. Presently one of these systems seems to have a flat battery and the other a defective switch. Consequently, the blowout preventer WILL NOT CLOSE.”
Consequently, in light of these appalling observations, I cannot but call upon The Louisiana Petroleum Corporation to shut down its Aquatica operations immediately, and evacuate all personnel on board. The installation should remain isolated for at least forty eight hours, during which time no drilling should be done, and residues of gasses now trapped in precarious locations should be allowed to disperse. Following this cool down period, and only after a complete check of all available data has been undertaken by objective scientific observers, a select and highly trained team of maintenance engineers must be dispatched to Aquatica to begin the process either of repairing the institution, or, as painful as it may be economically to the corporation and its shareholders, of dismantling it entirely.”
“Note: it gives me, as a scientist who has spent a career studying the benefits and pitfalls of offshore oil dr
illing, no pleasure in reporting these findings. I can, on the other hand, be heartened by the fact that they come as predictions before the fact rather than regrets following it. At the present time, no lives have been lost, no oil has been spilled, and no damage has been done either to the Gulf of Mexico nor the residents of its coastal cities.”
“Time, though, is not on our side.”
Professor Daruka Narang
PhD. Chemical Engineering
The University of Louisiana at Lafayette
This was the lead story in The New York Times.
A second story, though, ran some inches below it:
“WOULD BE WHISTLE BLOWER MURDERED”
“The Times has learned that a young engineer assigned to Louisiana Petroleum’s offshore vessel Aquatica was brutally murdered three nights ago, possibly as retribution for his attempts to report safety violations occurring aboard the installation. Edgar Ramirez, a recent graduate of The University of Louisiana at Lafayette, had returned to his family from a two week stint on the vessel, and was apparently attempting to contact authorities to make clear his findings. He was attacked scant hours before he was able to do so, then drugged and thrown into a drainage canal, where he drowned.”
“The body of young Ramirez, The Times has also learned, was then discovered by a resident of Bay St. Lucy, retired teacher and high school principal, Nina Bannister. It was Ms. Bannister who, along with fourteen year old Hector Ramirez, the victim’s younger brother, took it upon herself to go to Aquatica, locate the hidden ‘flash disk’ on which Ramirez had recorded his findings, and transfer it personally to Professor Daruka Narang, who wrote the above article.”
“Final note: when this reporter remarked to Ms. Bannister at the conclusion of their personal interview: “Nina Bannister, you are one brave woman. And everybody on the Gulf Coast may owe you more than they realize. As well as those folks on Aquatica….”
…Ms. Bannister answered simply: ‘I do what I can.’
‘What you can,’ Ms. Bannister, is quite a bit.
Quite a bit indeed.”
SPECIAL TO THE NEW YORK TIMES
ELIZABETH COHEN
Okay, thought Nina. So I’m famous.
She let that thought circulate through her mind during the half hour ride back to Bay St. Lucy, and had to be called out of a mental haze by her driver, Terry, who was trying to communicate with her.
“Ms. Bannister?”
“I’m sorry…”
“Ms. Bannister? I think maybe you were napping. I’m sorry to bother you.”
“No, not napping. Just thinking about what it’s like to be splashed over the front page of The New York Times.”
“Yeah! I guess that’s got to be pretty exciting.”
“Well, it’s pretty something.”
“It’s just that Mr. Bennett had some kind of instructions for when we get into town. And we’re only a mile or so out right now.”
“What instructions?”
“He asked me to have you wear these.”
“Sunglasses?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Oh, my God. Why do I have to wear sunglasses?”
“I guess he doesn’t want anybody recognizing you.”
“Is it that bad?”
“I don’t know, ma’am. Things have been pretty chaotic this morning. Mr. Bennett can’t seem to get off the phone. People are coming into town from all over.”
“Louisiana Petroleum people?”
“Yes, Ms. Bannister, and lots of others, too. There’s a kind of panic going on. And also Mr. Bennett thought…”
“Yes, go ahead, Terry, out with it.”
“He thought it might be best if you kind of scrunched down in the seat.”
“Scrunched? Is that a word?”
“It’s the word he used. I guess he means for you to…”
“I know what he means. But I’m only five feet four. I’m scrunched when I’m sitting up straight. Besides, the car has tinted glass windows.”
“Yes, ma’am. I’m only telling you what he told me.”
“All right, all right,” she answered, putting on the glasses and sliding down so that her head was below the level of the back windows. “Now I know what Greta Garbo must have felt like.”
“Who?”
“Don’t worry about it, Terry. Just drive. Get us there in one piece and maybe I’ll give you my autograph.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
She could feel the car slowing now, and she could imagine the familiar turns that took them into downtown Bay St. Lucy.
Overhead she could now hear the throbbing pulse of rotor blades.
“Helicopter?” she asked.
“Yes. They’ve been flying in since about six o’clock this morning.”
“From where?”
“Just about everywhere. All right. We’re here, but I’m supposed to take you around back and park in the alley.”
“Wonderful. I’m breaking into my own husband’s old law office.”
The car parked.
She got out, looking warily up and down the alley, and running toward the rickety back stairs which she had not climbed for at least twenty years.
They held her, though they wobbled a bit and forced her to grab tight to the paint-peeling bannister.
She remembered Frank having painted this bannister all those years ago, beaming as he attached a cylindrical tube designed to hold messages that were, for reasons of security, meant to be delivered out of sight of the general public:
“The Bannister bannister canister!”
And she had answered:
“Oh, Frank, honestly!”
How many times had she said ‘honestly’ to her husband?
And just what did that mean, anyway?
She opened the door.
There was a restroom just to her right, and a dark corridor.
She followed the hallway, turning first right, then left.
Then another door.
And Jackson’s office.
Jackson Bennett himself turned as she entered the room.
“Well,” he rumbled. “The film star!”
She walked across the old office, took off her sunglasses, and put them on the arm of the couch.
“What is happening, Jackson?”
He shook his head:
“What isn’t happening? The whole world is in chaos. Look. I’ve been watching tv for the last ten minutes. The networks are breaking into all the regular shows. It’s the biggest story of the decade.”
“What is that you’re watching now?”
“CNN. Louisiana Petroleum is having a live news conference, out of Lafayette. There. There’s their president, and, I don’t know, a bunch of muckety mucks. Here. Sit on the couch.”
She did so, feeling as though she were living in a dream.
Jackson had, some years earlier, installed a flat screen television on the wall that Frank had always kept covered with maps.
It seemed a sacrilege, but one must, Nina had concluded at the time, keep up with progress.
Now the area that had been central Europe was plastered over by the face of a man who, dressed in a black suit and red tie, looked to be the model of all corporate presidents.
“I think,” said Jackson, “this guy’s name is…”
“It doesn’t matter what his name is,” Nina interrupted. “He’s the president of a corporation. He plays golf and has silver hair. That’s all you need to know.”
Jackson chuckled.
“I guess that’s right. Well. We’ll listen to what he has to say.”
They did.
“First, I want to assure everyone here present at the press conference today, and all those people who might be watching across the country––that every allegation made in this morning’s New York Times’ story is completely without foundation. We have no idea how this particular professor got hold of his information, but it’s insane. There is no drilling installation in this country, or in the world, for t
hat matter, that is safer than Aquatica. Every gram of cement, every valve, every pipe, must meet, and have met, the highest specifications. There is no ‘seepage’ of gas, no malfunctioning gas alarms, no malfunctioning blowout preventers—and we are completely at a loss to explain how these absurd allegations could ever have been made. Now—rather than my going on and saying the same things over and over again, I’d like to open the floor for questions. Yes, Allyson?”
Reporters had surrounded the podium like a pack of dogs. They fired questions one by one, and he answered with the same flat equanimity.
“Are steps being taken to evacuate the facility at this time?”
A shake of the head:
“No, of course not. There is no reason to evacuate Aquatica.”
“Have you been in contact with the crew?”
“John…”
How did this man seem to know the first names of all of these national reporters?
That must come with the territory, Nina decided, if one is a CEO.
“John, not only are we in contact with the crew of Aquatica now, but we are in contact with them daily, and even hourly—as we are every day of the week––without exception! We have people in Lafayette who are seeing the same images that the people in the control room at Aquatica are seeing. And I must tell you, everyone out there is just as shocked as we are here in the company’s main offices.”
“Is there any panic on the vessel?”
“Of course there’s no panic on the vessel! Nothing is wrong on the vessel! The only panic on Aquatica stems from the fear that families and loved ones on shore are going to believe some cock and bull story—I’m sorry, but that’s the only way I can describe it—about misinterpreted safety checks and dodgy cement.”
“Have you been in contact with the EPA?”
“Patricia, we are ALWAYS in contact with EPA. A team of EPA inspectors returned from Aquatica just last week. I met with them personally here in Lafayette. Their only concern—and this was in fact somewhat troubling, because we take these kinds of things very seriously—was that the lobster they were served for dinner was two days old.”
Oil Change: A Nina Bannister Mystery (The Nina Bannister Mysteries Book 4) Page 13