Abyss km-15

by David Hagberg

  “Makes him a professional,” Gail said.

  “Maybe the best since Carlos.”

  “Methodology,” McGarvey said, knowing exactly where Otto was taking it.

  “That and his connections and the motivation. He’s good, which means he’s been well trained, though we’ve come up blank down that path. But it also means that he’s well paid. Somebody with big bucks hired him.”

  “Schlagel’s got the money,” Gail suggested.

  “Too obvious,” Otto said. “He couldn’t afford to have such an immediate tie to his organization. And he’s distanced himself from the two guys in Oslo.”

  “Oil,” McGarvey said. “Marinaccio in Dubai with help from the Saudis, and Octavio with help from his pals in Caracas.”

  “It would fit,” Otto said. “But those people are all but unapproachable unless we have rock-solid proof. And even then it’d be next to impossible to dig her out of Dubai and especially not him out of Venezuela.”

  “They have to travel,” Gail suggested.

  “With bodyguards,” McGarvey said. “And most governments don’t look kindly on the FBI snatching people and hauling them across national borders — especially not people with that sort of money.” He smiled slightly. “But there are ways.”

  “Proof?” Gail asked.

  “A few years ago, just after Marinaccio showed up in Dubai, a Frankfurt Stock Exchange minister and his mistress were shot to death in his lake house outside the city. Assassin or assassins unknown. But the Marinaccio Group was under investigation by the FSE, and the driving force behind the investigation was the minister — Rolph Wittgen.”

  “What else?”

  “Two years ago, Charles Atkenson was shot to death in his Washington apartment. Assassin or assassins unknown, but whoever did it was good. There was tight security on the apartment building, and even tighter security on his penthouse apartment, but absolutely nothing showed up. And the man’s wife was asleep in the next room and she hadn’t heard a thing.”

  McGarvey remembered the still unsolved murder because it had hit all the newspapers, especially The Wall Street Journal . Atkenson was an assistant director at the Securities and Exchange Commission. “Another Marinaccio connection?”

  “He’d been head of the team investigating her since before she bolted,” Otto said.

  Gail looked from Otto to McGarvey. “Okay, so what’s next? Can we give it to the Bureau?”

  “They already have it,” McGarvey said. “Both the woman and Octavio are multibillionaires, and they have connections just about everywhere, so nothing will be done.”

  Otto was suddenly alarmed. “We don’t have enough for something like that.”

  Gail sat up. “Something like what?”

  “If we can’t get to either of them officially, Mac could go in alone and take care of each of them,” Otto said.

  “Isn’t that how your mysterious contractor operates?” Louise asked quietly.

  McGarvey shrugged.

  “But to different ends,” Gail suggested. “Doesn’t that make this different?”

  “Sure,” Otto said, looking at McGarvey. “But not until we have the proof.”

  Which might never happen, McGarvey thought but didn’t say. “I think that they’ll want to try to take Eve and her oil platform down. Probably in the middle of the Gulf.”

  “That’d suit Marinaccio and Octavio as well as Schlagel,” Otto said. “Which is the other idea I’m working on. Schlagel has to be connected to them, and I just gotta find out how.”

  “What about Eric?” Gail asked.

  “That one was his idea, and he’s already on it,” Otto said. “In the meantime what about you two?”

  “We’re going to take a ride on Eve’s oil rig,” McGarvey said, and there was nothing else left to be said because Louise and Gail, and especially Otto, understood the idea of Eve Larsen as a lightning rod, inviting the strike.

  None of them were happy, but none of them could see any other viable means to a solution. And especially McGarvey, because he meant to put some innocent people in harm’s way, which made him every bit as arrogant, at least in his own mind, as their contractor. “Doesn’t it ever bother you to put people’s lives on the line?” his wife Katy had asked him just before she’d given him the ultimatum — the CIA or her — that had caused him to run to Switzerland. He should have stayed and tried to make her understand the only answer he could have given her. Did it ever bother him? All the time.

  FORTY-TWO

  A few of Eve’s techs from the GFDL’s lab at Princeton had already gone down to Louisiana to ferry crates of equipment out to Vanessa Explorer, but the others were waiting in the small lecture hall on the Forrestal campus, and when she walked in with Don Price everyone got on their feet and applauded and cheered loudly enough for her to blush.

  There were other Nobel laureates on campus, but as the Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences Director Brian Landsberg had told her just before she’d left for Oslo, none of them had faced such an uphill battle for recognition as she had. “And it has sometimes been public and ugly.” Nor had either of them thought it was really possible that someone would actually try to kill her.

  “At least no one’s pushing for me to recant like Galileo,” she’d told him, but she’d been pleased that he had taken the time to see her off and to reassure her that she had his, and therefore the university’s, approval and full support.

  It had meant a lot to her, just as this outpouring now did.

  “On the backs of the poor serfs who serve her!” Lisa, one of the young postdocs, shouted, and everyone laughed even harder than the comment deserved because they were so happy, so proud and even awed to be working elbow-to-elbow with a Nobel doc, especially one who’d survived a pair of gunmen. It was almost like the Wild West, or at the very least a television series. Exciting stuff.

  But it struck her that Landsberg had no appreciation for the real threat that her project faced, just as her techs here today had no idea. Their heads were buried in the sand, as hers had been, she supposed, before Kirk McGarvey had shown up on her horizon. She’d done a little research on him, but beyond the fact of his employment with the CIA, and the murders of his wife, daughter, and son-in-law, which had caused him to drop out until he’d shown up with the NNSA, she’d found little of anything substantial. Except that he was a man who commanded a great deal of respect on both sides of the Beltway. And being inside his circle she’d felt power radiating from him, like heat from a furnace. She didn’t know if she liked the sensation, or was simply being a moth diving toward the flame. Whatever it was that he had — charisma, self-confidence, or arrogance — he was a seductive man.

  “Thank you for that, Lisa,” Eve said, walking down to the head of the hall where on Mondays she laid out the coming week’s work with her group, and they all shared the previous week’s progress of lack thereof. The meetings were almost never lectures, and they were always freewheeling. A bunch of very bright people exchanging ideas. Arguing, debating, endlessly debating, but never disparagingly. Everyone respected everyone else, and it was one of the prerequisites Eve insisted on before hiring someone new. No idea, however far-fetched it might be, would ever be dismissed out of hand.

  Prove it right or prove it wrong. It was a team mantra, chiseled in stone.

  They all laughed again. Something was up.

  “We have a lot of work to do before the Gulf, and this is not a Monday so will someone explain what this is all about?”

  A lot of scientists were like children, eager and excited. It was on all their faces now, including Don’s. He pulled a stool out in front of the lectern and motioned for her to have a seat.

  “What?” she demanded, which nearly brought down the house.

  “Please,” Don said.

  “This better be goddamned good,” she groused, but good-naturedly because this was the same way Don had acted when he’d brought the news that she’d won the Nobel Prize, and she felt a little tickle of nervou
s apprehension. But a good tickle.

  Don took a piece of paper out of his pocket. “This is a fax that came in overnight, and I caught it first thing this morning before you got to your office.”

  “From who?” Eve asked.

  “Let me read it,” Don said, and he grinned. “A drumroll is appropriate at this time.” He paused for a moment. “This is a letter from Mr. Ahmad bin Mubashir al Mustapha, president and CEO of the United Arab Emirates International Bank of Commerce in Dubai, UAE. Addressed to, and I quote, ‘The Honorable Dr. Evelyn Larsen,’ here at your office in the lab.” He looked up for a beat. “Short and to the point. ‘May I, on behalf of the bank and its officers, offer our heartiest congratulations on your Nobel Peace Prize. In recognition not only of this great honor that has been bestowed upon you, but of your continuing work with the World Energy Needs project, and your recent breakthroughs in the production of energy with the possible additional benefit of someday controlling adverse weather conditions, we would like to offer you a conditional grant in the sum of one billion dollars U.S.’”

  Eve was rocked to the bottom of her soul, and it took a seeming eternity before she could breathe again, and realize that her people were watching her, waiting for a reaction, just like people watched television when the sweepstakes winner opened the door and was told they’d just won ten million dollars. Only here and now, they were a part of the sweepstakes pot, not just voyeurs.

  Then it came to her, what the message said. “Conditional on what?” she asked. Where’s the catch? Banks — oil banks — did not hand out that kind of money to the Queen of the High Seas without a lot of serious strings, maybe unacceptable strings, attached.

  “‘When electricity flows from Vanessa Explorer to the U.S Eastern Interconnect, thus proving that your project is a practical reality,’ and I quote again, ‘the full amount of the grant will be made available to you to use any way you see fit.’”

  Eve’s people held their breath, practically on the verge of exploding.

  “And the last line is sweet and to the point,” Don said. “‘Details to follow. Again, our heartiest congratulations.’”

  “What else?” she asked.

  Don shook his head. “Lots of other verbiage, about your visionary thinking for the future of the planet, service to mankind despite numerous obstacles and even setbacks.” He looked up. “And brilliance.”

  “That’s a gross understatement!” one of her techs shouted, and again everyone laughed harder and longer than the comment deserved.

  They were keyed up to the max, and Eve figured today was either going to be a bust, production wise, or set some kind of a record for manic frenzy.

  “Speech!” someone shouted.

  “No,” Eve said. “We leave for the rig in two days, and I’ve given all the speeches I’m going to give this year.”

  “Champagne?” Don asked.

  “Work,” Eve said, standing up.

  “Boo.”

  “Slave driver,” Lisa said, but everyone was getting up, huge smiles on their faces, and heading out the door, chattering like excited schoolchildren. They couldn’t help but look over their shoulders at her, and she couldn’t help but smile back.

  Don handed her the fax. “With this kind of money on the table, along with InterOil’s rig, Schlagel becomes practically a nonissue. Oil and money equals power.”

  But she didn’t agree and he saw it on her face.

  “What are you worried about now?” he asked.

  “We’re still facing the same trouble. Only now the stakes are higher.”

  Don was vexed. “Landsberg said practically the same thing when I showed him the fax. He wants to see you as soon as we were done here.”

  And Eve softened; she couldn’t help it because of Don’s obvious disappointment. He’d gotten over his snit from Oslo, in part because of the shooting, and he refused to understand why she wasn’t over-the-moon happy, why she was still nervous. It’s what all of her team, and especially him, wanted for her. “Did you actually bring champagne?” she asked.

  “In the lab. Only four bottles.”

  She grinned. “What the hell. Let me talk to Landsberg first.”

  * * *

  Eve walked across campus from the GFDL lab building to Sayre Hall where the AOS program director and staff had offices. Forrestal was also home to the Princeton plasma physics department. A lot of bright people here, she thought, watching the foot and bicycle traffic, most of them dressed in standard scientific uniforms — jeans, sneakers, sweatshirts, and sometimes photographer’s vests with lots of pockets for pencils, pens, markers, scientific calculators, iPods, BlackBerries, and for the older faculty, endless scraps of paper with world-shattering notes, observations, or calculations.

  Home. She carried the thought further, places like this were the only homes she’d ever known. She felt comfortable here. Safe. Cocooned — there was something to the ivory tower notion after all — and mostly accepted.

  Landsberg’s secretary, an older woman with gray hair up in a bun, scurried around from behind her desk and gave Eve a warm embrace. “My goodness, we’re so proud of you.”

  This now was exactly what she’d been thinking about on the way over. “Thanks, Doris, but my team had a lot to do with it.”

  “Of course, we know, but, my goodness, what an achievement. Not many lady laureates you know.”

  “Well, we’re changing that statistic,” Eve said. “Is the director in?”

  “He’s expecting you.”

  Landsberg was a tall, lanky man, all arms and legs and angles, who never seemed to sit or stand still. Common campus wisdom was that if he ever did pull up short it would mean that his extremely fertile mind had shut down; his movements were a physical manifestation of his thoughts.

  He was seated behind his desk, his fingers flying over his keyboard, and he looked up and smiled. “Quite a surprise, I’ll bet,” he said, without interrupting his typing.

  “The money or the assassination attempt? “Eve asked, sitting down.

  “Both, but I wanted to talk to you about the money.”

  “Do you want to finish what you’re doing first?”

  “Nope, just answering a few e-mails,” Landsberg said. “I have a friend on Wall Street who has advised me on how best to manage the occasional big grant we receive. I talked to him this morning and mentioned your good fortune.”

  “Might be a bit premature. We haven’t got the rig over to Florida, let alone up and running.”

  Landsberg glanced at the screen for just a second then looked back at Eve as he continued typing. “I don’t think there’s any question that you’re on the right track, and you’ll get the money. Problem is handling a billion dollars is complicated. You’ll need help.”

  “I don’t know if I trust the guys on Wall Street,” Eve said. “Not after all the crap we’ve gone through over the past few years. A lot of them didn’t seem so smart.”

  “His name is James McClelland, manages a couple of successful hedge funds, one of them that includes InterOil who gave you the rig. And he’s done fine by this institution. All I’m suggesting is that you sit down and talk to him.”

  “When the experiment is a success,” Eve said, and she knew that she was being stubborn. She supposed it was her British parsimony because of her upbringing, but the grant was hers.

  Landsberg read something of that from her posture, because he stopped typing. “You’re a brilliant scientist, but I read your monthly financials and department budget and expenditure reports. If I didn’t know better I would have to assume that you flunked fifth grade arithmetic.”

  Eve was startled for just a moment, but then she laughed out loud, all the way from her gut. “You’re right,” she sputtered, spreading her hands. “Damned if you’re not right.”

  “Manage your own prize money, but a million or so dollars is a drop in the bucket compared to what the bank has offered you.”

  “When the time comes I’ll talk to your friend.”<
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  “Good,” Landsberg said, and went back to answering his e-mails. “If I don’t see you before you head to the Gulf, bon voyage.”

  “I’m going to Washington first,” Eve said. “But thanks.”

  FORTY-THREE

  William Callahan, the FBI’s assistant deputy director for counterterrorism, had never been to the White House except once about five years ago on a public tour with his wife. He’d been impressed then, but he was even more impressed this afternoon as he was escorted by a White House staffer to the West Wing office of Eduardo Estevez, because the president’s adviser on national security affairs had called this morning to ask him over for a chat.

  “To get all of our cards on the table,” Estevez had said mysteriously, and Callahan had absolutely no idea what the man was talking about, and he said so. “The Hutchinson Island attack. The president wanted me to kick around a few ideas with you.”

  The incident concerned the Bureau’s domestic intelligence and criminal investigation divisions, but Estevez said he wanted to start with counterterrorism. “Around two o’clock?”

  It was that time now, and Estevez, who was seated on a chair facing two men on the couch, waved Callahan in. “Bill, glad you could make it.”

  “Yes, sir,” Callahan said.

  A desk and credenza were set in front of a window at one end of the pleasantly furnished office. A small conference table on one side of the room faced the couch and easy chairs.

  “I don’t know if you’ve met Marty Bambridge, he runs the directorate of operations over at the CIA.”

  Bambridge stood up, reached across the coffee table, and shook hands. “Heard good things about you,” he said.

  “Of course I think you must know Joe Caldwell. He’s deputy secretary over at the Department of Energy.”

  “You were on Meet the Press a few weeks ago,” Callahan said, shaking hands, and Estevez motioned for him to have a seat in a chair drawn up from the small oval conference table.