A Perfect Ambition

by Dr. Kevin Leman

  Sandstrom doesn’t see any cracks, huh? Well then, he doesn’t know Sean Worthington very well.

  Will couldn’t help but grin when he clicked off his phone.

  32

  For as long as he could remember, Will had always known what to do. He’d never doubted his path. He’d always believed that everything was for the best, that even dire circumstances eventually led to proper outcomes, and that there was nearly always a reason for something.

  Though born into incredible wealth, he wasn’t conflicted about it the way Sean was. He wasn’t frivolous or carefree about it either, the way Sarah had been growing up. No, he believed that wealth wasn’t so much a privilege as it was a burden.

  To those who are given much, much is required.

  Will wasn’t a religious person ordinarily—that was his little sister’s department, and her interest in it had ramped up over the past several years—but that verse had lodged itself somewhere deep in the recesses of his brain years ago and never let go. He genuinely believed it. He acted on it, even if he never told anyone about his motivations.

  Sarah and he had argued about religious stuff for years. She was always after him to actually sit down and read the Bible, if only so he could dismiss it for himself rather than merely disregard it in casual conversation because most intelligent people in their circles didn’t take it very seriously. But that particular verse haunted him somehow. He didn’t want to reach the end of his life and realize that he’d squandered what he’d been given in life. “Much is required,” it said.

  Okay then, God, he thought, please tell me. What exactly is required?

  At the moment, though, Will was completely at a loss. The American Frontier opportunity was slipping through his grasp, and there was virtually nothing he could do about it. And if it went away, then what?

  Much is required.

  But what if he had no chance to act on that requirement? What was he supposed to do then? Was there, as Drew hinted, a potentially larger prize out there? One that Will should pursue?

  Will knew how the real world worked. He wasn’t naïve. With Sandstrom physically away from New York, running the spill recovery operationally on-site in the Arctic, the board couldn’t act in his absence. Even if a majority now had decided they wanted to replace Sandstrom and that it made the most sense for the head of the largest shareholder to take over in such a turbulent time.

  There had to be a change in leadership at AF. Will had argued against the deepwater drilling effort with everything he could bring to bear at the board level. He’d almost won the fight. But Sandstrom had staked his entire reputation, and the company’s with it, to get the board to go along with the exploration effort. It had taken two years of failed efforts and billions of sunk costs, but Sandstrom and his executive team had gotten platforms built in several locations over some of the biggest potential deposits in the region.

  But that was before the accident. Now the board realized too well that Will had been right and Sandstrom had been wrong. The decision threatened to pull the company, and much else, under with it.

  Even so, Will was powerless to take any decisive action, and it was killing him. It was now two in the morning, and he’d never come close to falling asleep. He got up and walked through the darkened bedroom in their Central Park apartment and turned his laptop back on.

  He shook his head. Old habits died hard. He’d grown up seeing his dad constantly working, and he was trying to change that about himself. To always be present in the moment, even if the rest of his world was poised on the edge.

  A gentle hand descended on his shoulder. He swiveled his chair and looked up.

  “Couldn’t sleep, huh?” Laura’s shoulder-length dark hair was mussed. “I’ve been thinking about what you said too, and reading up on the AF situation and the bombing. I’m so sorry. It sure looks like you’re right.”

  Leave it to Laura to take a few facts he’d told her, add her own research, and then sift through the information for herself. The one person whose judgment he valued above all others believed him. Maybe he wasn’t crazy after all. “But being right doesn’t get us much.”

  She squeezed his shoulder. “You do what you have to do. Don’t worry about me and the kids. Just save the world for us, okay? Get American Frontier—and your brother—out of the Arctic. Your mom is worried sick about that too. I think she worries more about Sean than the other two of you.”

  He chuckled. “She has reason to. Some of the things he’s pulled . . . Dad’s been at his wit’s end. I still remember him yelling once, after Sean blew up the neighbor’s trash bin, ‘This boy cannot be from my loins!’”

  They both laughed.

  Then Laura’s brown eyes turned serious. “But you know Sean’s heart. He may not act like it, but he’d do anything for you. He loves you and worships the ground you walk on.”

  “Yeah, maybe a little too much. It’s torn us apart over the years. And Dad hasn’t helped. He’s hard on all of us kids, but with Sean, there’s always an edge. Like the two of them can never see eye to eye on anything. Dad and I could always work together on Worthington Shares, but Sean had no choice but to go off on his own and work with the start-ups.”

  “Which he’s doing a great job with,” she interjected. Then she softened. “Just take one thing at a time.”

  “I’m tryin’, babe, trust me. But right now I’m at a loss. I honestly don’t know what to do, and I feel like time is slipping away from me. I know I need to do something, to act. But for the first time in my life, I can’t sort out what that might be. And I’m having a hard time believing the truth I’m seeing right in front of my nose.”

  “So tell me about it. Give me the options, and we’ll sort it out together.”

  Will filled her in on the latest information he’d received that day, including what his contact had told him about the standoff, and the continuing inquiries from the DSCC for him to make a decision about running for the Senate in New York. Laura had been playing catch-up the last few days after being in Malawi, and with the AF crisis, he hadn’t seen as much of her as he wanted. It felt good, even at two in the morning, to get it all off his chest. Sometimes simply getting the questions out on the table was helpful.

  When he was finished, Laura wagged a playful finger at him. “Come on, Will. You know what you need to do. Your options seem pretty clear to me. And if you think it through a bit, you’ll see them too.”

  He shrugged. “So tell me.”

  “First, is there any reason at all that AF should be drilling in deep waters in the Arctic right now? Does that make any sense?”

  He pondered the questions. “No, it’s what I’ve been fighting at the board level for months now.”

  “They didn’t heed your warnings or take your advice,” Laura stated emphatically. “So it’s time to get beyond that fight. You lost it. I know you have your heart set on using the situation to take over the company and lead it in a new direction. But Sandstrom isn’t going away quietly, if at all. He’s clearly fighting, maybe even in a dirty, underhanded way. So you have no choice, especially as the head of Worthington Shares. You have to go public with this fight. You have a right, as a big shareholder, to call the question publicly. Demand that they get out of the Arctic. Don’t worry about whether you then get the chance to run the company. You have to do the right thing first and see where that path takes you.”

  Will sat back in his chair. “Wow,” he murmured. “In all the years we’ve been married, that’s the longest lecture you’ve given me.”

  “Well, you’re being a big baby,” she chided. “You know what you need to do. I know you think being the CEO of this big company is what’s required of you. But what if it’s not? What if the thing that’s really required of you is to do the right thing at a critical moment, and that you need to use what’s in your control—what’s been given to you—to get that job done? What if that’s the job you need to do, not become American Frontier’s CEO?”

  When he was sil
ent, thinking, she added more softly, “Will, are you afraid you’ll fail? Because you’ve never failed at anything you’ve done? Honey, the only way you can fail is by not taking the risk to do what you know is right. Nothing is a failure if you learn from it and come back even stronger.”

  He exhaled heavily. “And then once that fight is over? What’s required of me then?” he asked with both palms extended upward.

  “Run for the Senate, Will. Why not? You’ve thought about it for years.” She laughed. “Even if you’ve told everybody else you haven’t. So quit thinking about it. Yes, I know your mom’s worried, but she’s tight-lipped about her reasons. You’re right. I can’t wangle them out of her until she’s ready to spill. So call back that woman, Kiki, and tell her you’re in. Tell her you’ll put your name into the primary.”

  And there it was again. The clarity Laura brought to his life.

  Marrying her had been the single best decision he’d ever made.

  33

  Sarah was in a cab partway to her office when Darcy called.

  “That CNN field producer has been incredibly helpful. She already sent me the contact information for that press aide at American Frontier. Not only that”—Darcy’s voice increased in fervor—“she was kind enough to scan in her shot list and field notes and give me a link to the raw video footage that she’d uploaded to a password-protected Vimeo site.”

  Sarah was taken aback. That was way beyond the call of duty. Reporters and producers, as a rule, didn’t do that sort of thing. At least the ones she knew. Everything tended to be a one-way street with them. They were in the job of vacuuming up information, not doling it out.

  Except . . .

  Her thoughts flashed back to when she’d met Sean’s friend Jon Gillibrand. Of average height with dark blond hair, he didn’t stand out from the crowd. And he certainly wasn’t the usual type of guest who showed up at Worthington events. But Jon’s keen blue eyes revealed a quick intellect. The kind of person who studied situations from all angles and knew when to keep his mouth shut.

  He’d also selectively shared information with Sean when it would affect the Worthington family, but without revealing his sources. Lots of people shared information with the Worthingtons, but they expected handouts, favors, or to be paid. Jon wasn’t pushy. He just slid the details into a conversation because he was Sean’s friend and cared about the Worthingtons.

  Sarah was no pushover with men—she had a lot of her mother’s feisty Irish spirit in her—but Jon had slowly earned her respect. Even more, he’d always treated her with respect, instead of as the baby sister of his friend.

  Jon Gillibrand was a quiet force to be reckoned with, she thought, yet totally trustworthy. He intrigued her. She’d had enough of the Harvard Law guys and all others of their ilk.

  Darcy’s voice interrupted. “So what are you waiting for? Get back here.”

  Startled from her reverie, Sarah said, “Yes, ma’am,” and hung up. Darcy wouldn’t have heard anything else she said anyway. Her friend was clearly on the track of something and intensely focused.

  So the young producer was both smart and helpful. Probably figured it didn’t hurt to have contacts inside DHS and Justice’s Criminal Division if there were going to be any further developments in the Polar Bear Bomber case.

  When Sarah swept into the door of DHS and hightailed it to Darcy’s office, her friend already had her nose close to the computer. “So what have you got?”

  “The shot list . . . whatever that is.” Darcy peered even more intently at the screen.

  “That’s what TV producers shooting out in the field create for themselves so they remember what they took pictures of with their camera.” When Darcy swung her chair around and gave her friend a blank stare, Sarah added, “Let’s say you’re on assignment for five hours, and you run the camera for most of that time. You’d need to be able to go back in and know what to look for and when to look for it.”

  “And how exactly did you get to be that smart?”

  “Dated a producer once.” She shrugged. “He was a jerk and my parents hated him—with good reason, I found out later—but I learned some of the terminology.”

  Darcy looked her up and down. “That, I didn’t know about you.”

  “Hey,” Sarah teased, “there’s a lot you don’t know. We Worthingtons keep our secrets.”

  Darcy nodded sagely. “I bet you do.”

  Together the two women went through the entire shot list. There wasn’t a single American Frontier official anywhere on the list. It was all random people, one after another, who’d shown up for the protest.

  But one entry intrigued them. Tried to get interview with polar bear protester. AF press guy said likely wouldn’t work. So B-roll only, no interview.

  “AF press guy,” Sarah mused. “That’s probably the same young aide Catherine talked about. The one who’d expressed an opinion about the guy in the polar bear suit for whatever reason.”

  “What’s ‘B-roll,’ oh brilliant one?” Darcy asked, smirking at Sarah.

  “Shorthand for video footage shot so it can be used as background in a news piece,” Sarah replied.

  “Well, aren’t we smart?” Darcy scrolled to the timeline marks for the polar bear suit guy in the raw footage.

  Catherine Englewood had been there by herself, without a camera operator beside her to shoot film. Clearly CNN hadn’t felt like there would be anything of use there and had sent Catherine only as cannon fodder. So the journalist shot all the video herself. For those shots that would wind up only as B-roll, she either talked into the camera mic as she was shooting or left it open for natural sound.

  She only had one extended shot of the polar bear suit guy. He was still carrying the backpack at this point.

  “I already saw a segment from this that passed among law enforcement earlier in the investigation,” Darcy started to say, but then stopped talking. She was silent the rest of the video as they both watched.

  It was fascinating to Sarah for two reasons. First, the guy was walking around, gesturing, talking, and interacting with people. He wasn’t trying to hide. He looked like one of those characters who wandered around at Disneyland and had their pictures taken with kids. The guy—if he was a guy—had either done this type of thing before or was pretending he was a street actor. Clearly he either thought he was there for that reason or wanted people to remember him like that. It was hard to tell which it was from the video, because the guy appeared to have no plan whatsoever. He seemed to wander aimlessly, accosting one group then another, and the next minute veer off into space for no good reason.

  Second, she could hear the AF press guy in the background for most of the video. He’d obviously been standing right next to Catherine as she’d filmed the bomber. She’d left the mic open, and they’d kept up a cute running dialogue the entire time. The guy was obviously hitting on Catherine, but she wasn’t having anything to do with it.

  Sarah grinned. Good girl. I could hang with her.

  At one point, the press aide had rather unartfully checked with Catherine to see if she maybe felt like grabbing a cup of coffee. She’d brushed it off with an “I’ve had too many cups of coffee already” comment, to which the aide had come right back with a lunch offer, prompting her to counter with an “I don’t usually eat lunch while I’m in the field” comment. The guy had kept pressing, finally getting to a “drinks around the corner” gambit, which Catherine had parried with an “I’ve got to get back to the studio and edit” comment.

  But neither the bomber’s wanderings nor the inane conversation intrigued Sarah. What did was the simple fact that the AF press aide had, for whatever reason, come out of the building to point out the polar bear suit guy to Catherine. At one point, as Catherine had indicated in her shot list notes, he mentioned that he and some of his press office buddies had been watching the polar bear suit guy from the tower because he looked so goofy, and that he hadn’t stopped to talk with anyone for any length of time.

&nb
sp; So why did he bring the polar bear guy, of all people, to Catherine’s attention? To make sure she got him on camera?

  When Darcy sat back hard in her chair, Sarah knew her friend was thinking the same thing. They didn’t even need to discuss it.

  Together they lined up some questions, then Darcy placed a call to the AF press office and asked for the young press aide Catherine had spoken with.

  Darcy rolled her eyes when the receptionist who’d answered the call put her on hold. Five minutes later, she was still on hold and raging. “How can a press office function with such a sloppy, nonresponsive receptionist?”

  Sarah tilted her head. “Maybe it’s how they deal with anyone who calls for information.”

  At that, Darcy frowned even more. Then all of a sudden, she waved her right index finger in a circle. Their signal for Sarah to quietly pick up the other line and listen in.

  “Hi, this is Jack Canton,” a deep voice said, “the executive vice president for external relations here at American Frontier. Is there something I can help you with?”

  It wasn’t all that uncommon to ask for someone junior and get their supervisor instead, especially when you were asking for information. As a general rule, any investigator made offices nervous. But Darcy’s scowl showed her clear frustration that she’d have to go through a gatekeeper. “Well, hello there, Jack Canton, Mr. Executive Vice President for . . . what was it again?” she asked sweetly.

  Sarah rolled her eyes. Darcy? A sweet tone?

  “External relations,” he answered. “My office handles inquiries from outside the company, like from the media or investor analysts—”

  “Or nosy investigators from the Department of Homeland Security?”

  “Exactly,” Canton said. “So. What can I help you with?”

  “I was hoping I could speak to one of the aides in your press office. I was given his contact information from a CNN field producer who had some footage of the Polar Bear Bomber, and I just wanted to ask him a few questions.”