A Perfect Ambition

by Dr. Kevin Leman

  “I’ve been quiet about it,” Jon said swiftly, smiling at Elizabeth. “Haven’t gone out of my way to let anyone know what I was up to. Green Justice’s research director on board and a couple of others know, but I haven’t been advertising it.”

  Dr. Shapiro peered over his shoulder at the Navy crew that was helping his science team unload whatever gear they’d managed to bring with them. “They’re not happy.” He sighed. “We had to leave a lot of expensive equipment on board the Cantor.”

  “Doubt you were given a choice,” Sean said.

  “Now that’s an understatement,” Elizabeth fired back. She looked more steamed than he’d ever seen her.

  “The Navy boys certainly weren’t aware of the fact a reporter was so close to the scene,” Dr. Shapiro continued in a quiet tone. “And I didn’t tell them. Didn’t think our chances would be very good to get on this boat if I did. I can guarantee it would freak out the AF executives on that platform. They’re trying to keep an extraordinarily tight lid on who knows and sees what in the middle of all of this mess.”

  “I’ll bet,” Jon said.

  Dr. Shapiro studied Jon as if trying to form an answer for a question in his mind. “I think there’s an opportunity,” he began slowly, “a rather unexpected one, in front of us. And we need to adapt to new data when it presents itself.”

  Elizabeth rolled her eyes. “Dad, in English, please. Not everyone here is a scientist.”

  “All right, all right.” He waved a dismissive hand in her direction. “Having a New York Times reporter on board and on the scene is new, unexpected data we didn’t have available on the Cantor. Two postdocs who’ve been with me from the beginning on this research mission were in the middle of writing up some firsthand observations. They’ve brought the data sets and graphs with them. They were about to post a few of those items on their research blog. But it occurs to me”—he wiggled his brows in emphasis—“you may be able to make better use of that data.”

  Sean grinned. The wily ol’ fox.

  Dr. Shapiro cocked a thumb toward the Navy ship. “It will blow our research mission sky-high and make the Navy quite mad at us.” Glancing over his shoulder as the small Navy boat made its way back to the Cantor, he added, “Then again, our mission is over anyway. And I doubt they’d be inviting me back this way anytime soon.”

  “What do you have in hand?” Jon asked, his keen eyes focused on Dr. Shapiro.

  “Some very interesting pictures with an infrared camera from near the ocean floor and the spill itself. And I must say, it doesn’t show anything even remotely close to what has been reported publicly for a few days now. The oil is likely leaking at a vastly greater rate—and from multiple sources well below the surface drilling platform.”

  Jon stared dumbstruck at Dr. Shapiro. “This is from your research mission? Not from the Navy or from American Frontier? I can use this, with attribution?”

  “It’s our equipment. We dropped the camera. But it . . . it isn’t exactly a central part of our research mission. We happened to have the camera with us for other purposes. Once we let this news out, though, you can guess at the reaction.”

  Sean could see the predicament Dr. Shapiro was in. He’d catch holy you-know-what when this was reported. The Navy or American Frontier—or both—would blow a gasket immediately once Jon had reported the story in the New York Times. And if it wasn’t part of their defined research mission, which it almost certainly wasn’t, Dr. Shapiro’s job would be on the line.

  But Sean caught the glint in Jon’s eye. That reporter kind of drive where he knew he had an incredible story, and he wasn’t about to let it go. And he’d be the only one who had the data.

  Jon looked at Elizabeth. She nodded. “Dr. Shapiro, I need those pictures,” he said. “To be more precise, people need to know about what your camera saw.”

  The scientist didn’t hesitate. “Truth is, the postdocs and I already talked about that when they asked to post on it.” He shrugged. “And I’m an old goat. I have tenure. Makes me tougher to get rid of.”

  Elizabeth rolled her eyes again. Sean laughed. The father-daughter scientist team made quite the pair.

  “But there’s one more thing you should know,” Dr. Shapiro said. “We had nearly all of our buoys deployed and online with the Argo system when the accident occurred. We’d already started collecting data and feeding it back to the NCAR supercomputer in Wyoming. When the spill happened, we deployed one more buoy—directly beside the American Frontier platform.”

  Sean knew a bit about Argo and what it might be capable of because of Elizabeth. “So let me guess. You were able to ask it to monitor chemical reactions?”

  “Sure did,” Elizabeth announced triumphantly. “We jiggered it a bit to test for the presence of the sorts of chemical combinations that look like crude oil. And then we nudged it a bit more to see if we couldn’t extrapolate for both volume and direction.”

  Dr. Shapiro jumped in. “Then we correlated all of that initial data with known migration patterns for critical species as well as ocean currents that move out of the Arctic from the top of the world to the Pacific and the Atlantic.”

  “After that, we asked the NCAR team to run the simulation from conservative to speculative at high volumes,” Elizabeth added. “But still within the range of what we think could be leaking at the ocean floor, based on both the infrared and the buoy chemical reaction monitoring.”

  “So what did you find?” Jon asked.

  The older scientist hesitated a minute, then looked at Elizabeth, as if silently pleading for her to summarize.

  She reported, “The oil is leaking at a massive rate, well beyond the rate of the BP spill, and it isn’t going to stay put. It’s moving away from the spill site rapidly, straight toward the two exits at either end into the Pacific and Atlantic. And it’s already heading into the huge ice patterns along all of the coastlines that ring the Arctic. Everyone is going to be affected, and not only in the Arctic Circle. This is moving out beyond—to the rest of the world—whether AF likes it or not.”

  41

  NEW YORK CITY

  Will had always liked the straightforward, no-nonsense writing style of Jon Gillibrand. The guy seemed to find and tell the facts as they were, instead of putting a political spin on them. And when Sean had introduced Jon to Will, he’d liked the solidness of Jon’s handshake and the steady intelligence in his eyes. Since then Will had kept a keen eye on any stories Jon wrote. This time the veteran reporter had caught American Frontier in the midst of a big lie—with the facts to boot.

  This certainly will stir the pot, Will thought, smiling at the reporter’s tenacity in telling what was really happening in the Arctic Ocean. Nothing like catching Sandstrom and the White House with their pants around their ankles.

  Then he sobered. But who knows which way it’ll go . . . or how Sandstrom will spin it? That remained to be seen. With the facts presented, somebody had to figure out very soon that a Worthington had been the one who leased the ship for Green Justice . . . and brought a big-time reporter on board to boot.

  Things were about to get even more interesting at the next board meeting—and potentially dangerous.

  Who knew what Sandstrom would do when he took his boxing gloves off?

  Will was barely out of the shower when his phone rang early in the morning.

  “The A section of the New York Times sure rattled the president this morning,” Drew told Will. “In fact, the entire section landed in a heap on the floor of the Oval Office. All the senior aides who’d gathered for the 6:00 natural security briefing froze.” He laughed.

  Will wasn’t surprised. Those who were in the inner circles with President Thomas Spencer Rich III knew he was prone to such outbursts. His father, Thomas Spencer Rich II, a former president of the United States whose friends called him Thomas, had learned to control his Irish temper when he was caught by the press in the midst of one. Some said he’d pushed his son into the limelight, perhaps before he was ready
, and that Spencer was merely riding his father’s coattails.

  “I don’t have to ask. You’ve seen it, right?” Drew continued.

  Indeed, Will had. You couldn’t miss the picture of the leaking oil that dominated the front page of the paper. The headline was blunt and to the point: “Scientists report Arctic oil spilling at much higher rate than White House or oil company claims.” And the subhead was equally as condemning: “Despite efforts, American Frontier unable to locate source of the massive leaks or keep oil from migrating to Pacific and Atlantic waters.”

  “The president demanded to know who would take credit—or blame—for this,” Drew said. “As soon as he started yelling about the fact Gillibrand basically told the American public the White House had lied to them, the aides found reasons to leave the room. Chalmers tried to calm him down, but the president called him a moron.”

  Will lifted a brow at that. The president had to be really off-kilter to lay into his chief of staff, Mark Chalmers. Chalmers had been an administrative assistant to three egocentric senators, as well as senior staff in several presidential campaigns. He knew American Frontier quite well, because he’d been paid handsomely to run the American Petroleum Institute before agreeing to help run Rich’s presidential campaign. He was also a confidential background source to most of the reporters and correspondents who covered the White House and knew how the media worked and reported on issues like this.

  Will jumped to the most obvious conclusion. “So Chalmers passed the buck to AF, saying that the White House press has been relying on what AF gave them for the Fact Sheets. So if any of the information is inaccurate, wrong, or even misleading, it’s AF’s fault. Right?”

  Drew chuckled. “Right as usual. The president called it a bunch of bull bleep, but Chalmers stuck to his guns. He said AF remained firm about their information. They were standing by it.” Drew paused. “Then President Rich switched gears.”

  “How so?” Nothing about the conversation thus far had surprised Will. But now Drew’s tone had changed.

  “The president got a call from Frank Stapleton.” Not only was Stapleton on AF’s board of directors, he was one of the Rich campaign’s biggest donors. “Stapleton told the president a massive shareholder lawsuit was being filed this very morning in Manhattan, and you’re joining it. He says you called an emergency meeting of the company’s board of directors, and you’re officially requesting Sandstrom’s presence at the board meeting, whether in person or by remote video. He believes you’re going to demand that American Frontier get out of the Arctic altogether, or else you’ll sell your stock.”

  “What I requested in writing,” Will clarified, “is that American Frontier cease drilling operations in the Arctic for the foreseeable future until a comprehensive risk and damage assessment study has been completed by a series of outside engineering and oil industry consulting firms. I didn’t include that Worthington Shares would sell its share if the board vote goes against me.”

  “Well, I’m sure Sandstrom’s own regulatory lawyers advised him that was a safe assumption. That makes you even more the bad guy, standing in Sandstrom’s way. The president called it extortion. Said you’d stepped out on a limb and it would crack under you.”

  At that moment Will’s phenomenal clarity again kicked in. American Frontier, like any other company in the oil industry, had taken risks, seen failure or blowouts, learned from them, and come back even stronger. They had not become the largest, most dominant industry the world had ever seen by avoiding risk. No, they’d conquered failure time and again. He was sure Eric Sandstrom believed they’d do so again in the Arctic.

  There were only two people standing in his way: Will and Sean Worthington.

  The board simply couldn’t afford the public relations disaster that would ensue if it appeared that a major shareholder had engineered a coup d’état in the midst of a crisis. So Sandstrom would do everything in his power to see that Will wouldn’t get his way, even if it meant that Will would take his toys with him as he left the sandbox. Sandstrom also couldn’t afford a Worthington as an eyewitness to what was really going on with the spill.

  “Rich insisted this was AF’s problem and he wasn’t going to get tagged with it,” Drew continued. “So Chalmers suggested they put out some new Fact Sheets, saying they’d received some updated information from the company. But it would be a big problem if AF stuck by their earlier story.”

  Of course it would. That would put the White House directly at odds with American Frontier. And only AF had direct access to what was really going on in the Arctic.

  “Rich should have been an actor,” Drew added with a chuckle. “With the national security advisor, the ODNI director, the deputy Secretary of State, and several others in the room, he walked slowly around his desk, picked up the copy of the New York Times off the rug, and held it out. And then he said . . .” There was a pause, then Drew quoted from his notes: “‘This is now the new truth. Every news organization in every developed country in the world is going to take what the Times has reported this morning and expand on it. This spill may have been about to disappear from the public’s mind. It isn’t now, and we can’t ignore or get away from that immutable fact. There will be a loser here, and it had better not be the White House. Have I made myself clear?’”

  Crystal, Will thought. His disgust and dislike for the Rich administration grew. The boy who’d been a bully had grown up to be a man who still insisted on getting his own way, even if it damaged an entire nation or the whole world.

  “And Will,” Drew said, “the rumors you’re going to jump into the Senate race in New York put the president completely over the edge.”

  Will could just hear President Rich’s tirade: “The last thing we need is another one of those privileged, progressive, wealthy twits over in the Senate . . .”

  “Word also is that Sandstrom has already begun to conspire with James Loughlin to derail your rumored entry into the Senate race, in case you make progress toward his job.”

  Will wasn’t surprised. Indeed, the boxing gloves had come off, and Sandstrom was ready to fight with everything he had. “What’s their plan?” he asked.

  “Nobody seems quite clear on that. But they were all clear that the two were teaming up. If you sail in a new direction—assuming the board vote goes against you—Sandstrom wins. And he’s more than pleased to assist a senator who has been so helpful and generous with his time over the years. So Sandstrom will gladly play out his part to short-circuit your effort to enter politics.”

  42

  THE ARCTIC OCEAN

  The category 4 hurricane hit the American Frontier platform with a force usually reserved for quiet, undisturbed atolls in the middle of the Pacific Ocean that didn’t much care whether the winds were 150 miles an hour or 15. With the delay to pick up the scientists from the USS Cantor, the captain of the Russian ship had decided it would be safer to batten down the hatches where they were rather than trying to make the run to land.

  Sean, Jon, Elizabeth, and Dr. Shapiro hunkered below deck on the Russian ship, peering out of the portholes toward the American Frontier platform. It swayed and bowed under the pressure of the icy, bitter-cold hurricane winds that descended on it. The water churned so deeply and thoroughly around the platform that enormous chunks of ice lodged at the very top of the platform.

  “It’s starting to crack!” Elizabeth cried.

  The winds were finishing what the ocean had begun. At that very minute the platform, already weakened at its subsea structural base, lost its foundation on the side straining most against the raging wind. The platform tilted. Finally, with a mighty screech of metal on metal that could even be heard over the hurricane, the platform’s base cracked. It began to collapse on one side. Within minutes, the platform had toppled over. What was left in the wake of the hurricane was a crippled platform, partially submerged.

  The four on the Russian ship watched in horror.

  Dr. Shapiro shook his head. “And that is th
e end of that,” he said in a solemn tone.

  There was silence for several minutes as they all grappled with the weight and long-term consequences of what had just happened.

  Then Elizabeth spoke. “This isn’t even a particularly severe hurricane for the Arctic Circle. Usually they’re only witnessed by a few polar bears or the occasional beluga whale coming up for some air.”

  Elizabeth had told Sean that hurricanes in the Arctic hadn’t been charted often because there wasn’t much of a reason to do so. When anyone thought of the North Pole or the Arctic Circle, they did so in terms of Santa Claus and barren, windswept stretches of white ice as far as the eye could see—not oceans and water.

  “So AF puts an oil platform in a place that’s known for its hurricanes, without adequate research about what would happen if the platform got hit,” Sean reasoned. “No wonder my normally sedate brother was so hot under the collar about the drilling. He argued against it so much and continued arguing. But he didn’t win out on the board vote.”

  “If the board had listened,” Elizabeth said, her usual sassiness now returning, “we wouldn’t be here watching this mess.”

  “Will said Sandstrom assured everybody on the board that his engineers had taken it upon themselves—as many of them had done when they worked for NASA and had built rockets that could carry men and women to the moon—to do everything in their power to build something that could survive the Arctic’s worst.”

  “So they did their best. Clearly it wasn’t good enough,” Elizabeth concluded in disgust.

  “Right before we were kicked off the ship, there was a big flurry in and out of the communications room,” Dr. Shapiro reported. “You can bet some of those same engineers were watching when the hurricane ripped through that platform structure.”

  “Yeah,” Jon added, “like an invisible villain in a silent horror film. Only it affects a lot more people.”