“You can bet that AF’s CEO was watching too,” Sean said. “And now he’s trying to figure out how to spin it in his favor.”
NEW YORK CITY
Will was pacing. He’d received two calls. The first was from Sean.
He’d never heard such a somber tone in his brother’s voice. Once Sean told him the news, he knew why.
So the mess has become even messier.
Even in their short conversation, he could hear the hurricane winds.
Within half an hour, Drew returned his call. It always amazed Will how many sources Drew could quickly pull from to get almost any information they wanted.
Will zeroed in on the target. “So, the plan?”
“To make a good show of sending in any ship AF has available to pick up oil and display it to the world, so they look like they’re serious about cleaning up and recovering the oil,” Drew said. “Sandstrom’s confident that will shift public opinion their way and the heat will be off.”
“They only have to pursue that course for a month,” Will reasoned, “because then the ice will really set in for the winter.”
Sandstrom’s plan was simple. Make the world believe you’re doing something, then let Mother Nature and the ocean take care of the rest.
And most likely, it would work.
43
Will was strangely calm. It had been years since he’d paid attention to the still small voice that had guided him when he was younger. He was glad to follow it now, regardless of the outcome of the emergency board meeting.
He hadn’t even felt the need to hold his usual pre-meeting breakfast with Drew. This time there was no need for a pep talk or moral support. Will was more than ready for this challenge.
Soon afterward he would make another concerted effort to connect with his mother. He’d only been able to leave a message after Laura had insisted he contact her. There had been too much on his mind.
Strangely, it was Sarah, who had always in childhood plunged into anything with little forethought of consequences, who’d tried to caution him to slow down a bit. She’d called him right as he was getting in a cab on the way to the American Frontier offices. She’d wanted to check in on him, make sure he still wanted Worthington Shares to be included in the lawsuit, and generally just encourage him to make sure he was okay with any possible outcome.
“Don’t worry. It’ll be fine,” Will said to his little sister. “Isn’t that what Dad always told us whenever we’d get overly worried about a test or an event like a lacrosse championship?”
“It’s certainly what he told you.” Sarah laughed. “You were always the one who got stressed out about everything, no matter what it was. I never cared all that much either way. But you’re a perfectionist, and you get a bit freaked out when things aren’t all neat and tidy.”
“Well, they’re not all neat and tidy right now. This is a mess, and I need to do everything in my power to get it straightened out as much as I can.”
She chuckled again. “That sounds like my older brother.” A slight pause, then, “You know the shareholder lawsuit will be filed while you’re in the board meeting?”
“I know. Hang on for a sec, have to pay the cab fare,” he said. The cab pulled into an open space in front of the offices. Will pulled out a 20-dollar bill and handed it to the driver. He didn’t ask for change as he left the cab curbside. “Okay, I’m back.”
“You’re at their offices?”
“I am.”
“So are there protests today? What’s happened there since the bombing?”
Will stopped and perused the plaza in front of the American Frontier offices. He hadn’t been by the offices since the Polar Bear Bomber had struck.
“There’s no one here,” he said. “A bunch of NYPD milling around the plaza. But no protesters. The place is quiet, almost peaceful.”
“What I figured, and probably the way they hoped it would go,” Sarah murmured.
“Huh? What?” Will was a bit distracted. He was so focused on the board meeting and what he was walking into that he hadn’t quite been paying attention to his sister.
“Oh, nothing,” she answered. “It’s just some speculation we’ve heard here in the office. We’ve been deposing some of the investigators as part of the case, and one of them is convinced that the bombing isn’t nearly what it seems. But for now, it’s all talk.”
“Really, so . . .”
“Will!” Sarah barked. “You need to focus. I know you. If you rush into this meeting thinking about other things, you’ll get all tangled up. So stop dillydallying and get inside. Focus. Prepare. And then give it to them.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said, smiling. People underestimated his carefree, charming, social butterfly sister who always seemed to duck the hard work of life. But Will knew better. His little sister was tougher than anyone knew—and a whole lot smarter and focused.
“Call me soon,” she said.
“I will,” he answered, and hurried inside. He ran into the head of City Cap, Frank Stapleton, almost the instant he stepped off the elevator.
“I’m glad I saw you before the meeting.” Stapleton took Will’s arm and drew him off to one side, out of earshot of several other board members who had started to gather.
“Good to see you too, Frank.”
“Look, we only have a few minutes,” Stapleton said. “You need to know something before the meeting starts. I talked to the president at the White House not more than 30 minutes ago. He’s furious at American Frontier right now. He feels like we deceived him and his administration.”
Will cocked his head. “I’m no fan of this president, as you know, but he may very well have a point.”
“Regardless of what you may think of him or his party, you need to know this,” Stapleton said. “He’s not a happy camper right now. He’s got his headhunters out en masse, and they’re going to make someone pay for this disaster. He made it abundantly clear that he’s changing course on the oil spill. He has no choice. He can’t have the public turning on him over this so early in his first term.”
“Fine,” Will declared. “Then he’ll like my plan, which is to force American Frontier to get out of the Arctic. He may not like the rest of what I’ll have to say very publicly, which is that this White House should never have authorized any oil company, including AF, to start drilling in the Arctic. I do put that decision firmly at his doorstep. But if he wants a scalp, he should start with Sandstrom’s. The two of them engineered this disaster together.”
“But that’s precisely my point, which is what I wanted to make sure you understood,” Stapleton said. “Sandstrom is like a caged animal that’s been let loose in a crowded room and is now backed into a corner. Now that the president is likely to walk away from him rather publicly, Sandstrom is going to come out fighting. You’re his target, Will. He’ll come after you with everything he has. You need to know that and be prepared.”
Will squared his chin. “I’m ready. And I’m a big boy. Let him come after me with guns blazing. I can handle him and whatever he wants to dish out. Now let’s go see about this board vote.”
Sandstrom hadn’t been able to make the board meeting in person, for obvious reasons. But his IT staff had rigged a satellite uplink from aboard the USS Cantor, so his unsmiling face greeted the board members from a huge video monitor as they made their way into the ornate American Frontier boardroom.
Will noticed immediately that the executive staff had assigned board members to seats around the table. There was a stenographer sitting quietly by herself in one corner, prepared to take notes and minutes. Usually the sessions were merely recorded by audio and transcribed later as minutes. An interesting tactic, Will thought. Sandstrom was putting everyone on notice that he was paying close attention to what each board member said—and did.
Will hadn’t taken even a quick pulse check of his fellow board members. While he knew that most were not entirely comfortable with the decision to drill in deep waters in the Arctic, very
few had spoken up during their previous board discussions. Sandstrom had dominated all of those discussions and would likely do so here. This was his initiative, for good or ill. The board had largely acquiesced.
Once the board members were settled, Sandstrom didn’t waste any time. “Before we get started, I want to tell you a quick story about my heritage. As some of you know, my family came to the United States from Sweden, and we trace our family roots back centuries throughout Scandinavia. One of those tree branches intersects squarely with the Vikings.”
A family heritage story at a board meeting? Will’s thoughts buzzed. Where is Sandstrom going with this?
“Over the years the Vikings have gotten a bad rap from writers and the film industry. The popular depictions of them as noble but vicious savages make for awfully good stories, and good stories are hard to resist, even when they aren’t true. But what most people have forgotten is that the Vikings were probably the first true explorers of an uncharted planet. Long before Christopher Columbus ‘sailed the ocean blue in 1492,’ the Vikings engineered wooden longships with unique, wide hulls that could sail on deeper waters and handle rough seas but also operate nearly as well in shallow waters or even rivers. They were marvels, allowing the Vikings to raid, explore, and ultimately trade goods all across Europe and beyond. Thanks to these extraordinary ships, the Vikings became fearless, courageous explorers, taking enormous risks and traveling widely into dangerous, uncertain parts of the planet. As a result, that era is rightly called the Viking Age.”
Sandstrom paused dramatically. “I believe that American Frontier and our brethren at the other extraction companies that provide cheap energy for the billions of people on this planet are the modern equivalent of the Vikings—though without the savagery, of course. That’s one reason I’m so passionate about the essential, necessary risks we must take in the name of discovery.”
At that moment Will instinctively knew that what Sandstrom would say next would chart a far different path for the meeting than the one most of the people in the room expected.
“The truth is,” Sandstrom continued, “like the Vikings, companies in the twenty-first century such as American Frontier have no choice but to take risks, innovate, and search out new sources of energy in dangerous, uncharted waters like the Arctic. We explore—or we die. We explore for new, abundant sources of cheap energy while others walk comfortably in their warm, heated homes in the winter and turn on light switches without a thought about where that energy might originate. We spend billions on exploration in places that had previously been unimagined—much less mined or drilled—while most people merely turn the key in their cars to drive to work. We don’t ask them to think about where their energy comes from. And they don’t ask us the lengths to which we must go to find and deliver those sources of energy. That is the bargain nearly every country of the world has struck with American Frontier and others in the oil, gas, coal, and natural gas industries.”
Sandstrom leaned in closer to the camera. “‘To those who are given much, much is required,’ someone once said. We’ve been given a lot at American Frontier, and it is our duty to take that extraordinary gift and make certain we are striving for new worlds.
“I know you may feel we have failed in our efforts to explore the Arctic, as you see the images of that collapsed platform in the icy waters. I share that immense pain. But like the Vikings before us, we fail sometimes as we explore brave, new worlds. Yet in that failure, we learn, and then we conquer. American Frontier is an exploration company, the same way the Vikings were in their age. If we end our efforts in the Arctic, we will have given up that heritage and that mission, and history will ultimately judge us badly for that decision. I implore all of you to recognize that—and the true greatness American Frontier stands for in the time-honored traditions of exploration and discovery.”
As Sandstrom ended his opening remarks, Will was a bit in shock. The passage “much is required” had defined his life and ambitions. To hear Sandstrom take it, twist it, and crown American Frontier’s mission with it had shaken Will to his core. He had no immediate, steady response.
And that was a new experience for William Jennings Worthington VI.
Will gazed around the boardroom at the approving smiles and warm sympathy on the faces of so many of the other CEOs and titans of industry. All those gathered here in the boardroom of the modern era were the equivalent of the Vikings, as Sandstrom had so accurately described. At that instant Will realized precisely what he was up against. He knew that he’d lost, and he had not yet even begun to fight.
There was, in fact, no path forward to victory here.
American Frontier was an exploration company, risking failure in the name of discovery and innovation. It took risks and failed at times. But when it succeeded, it reaped great rewards. Sandstrom was correct. When AF stopped taking risks, it would die. There was an elegant, awful truth in that concept.
Truly, American Frontier was the modern equivalent of the Vikings. AF and the other companies built around the same principles could never be expected to stop exploring at the edge of the universe. They could never be expected to stop their efforts to exploit and harvest every drop of oil from even the most remote places on the planet, no matter if it altered Earth’s systems, brought the world to the edge of the abyss, and threatened the livability of human civilization. Others who’d been appointed and elected by the people would have to keep watch. American Frontier would marshal its armies, and others would marshal theirs.
After Sandstrom spoke, the engineering team chief gave the board an update on the platform collapse and the imminent recovery and cleanup efforts. The chief was upbeat and optimistic that they would be able to have new ships in the area with skimmers and booms within days. He also expressed some level of confidence in their ability to find an innovative way to seal the leaks at the ocean floor and learn from the stress failure of the subsea structure. No one questioned his assessment or his optimism on the recovery efforts.
Attorney Jason Carson then delivered a brief report on the successful efforts and negotiations with the members of the Arctic Council, the US Congress, and various senior regulatory officials at the major federal science agencies. All were supportive of AF’s recovery plan, he reported, and of its plans to reimburse any and all harmed communities through both monetary and restorative efforts.
When the board members finally took up the discussion of AF’s actions in the Arctic, Will did not counter Sandstrom with an impassioned speech about why the company needed to cease its operations in the Arctic. It would be futile to do so now. There was another obvious, clear path forward for him, and he was a bit surprised that it had taken him so long to see it.
Laura’s words rang in his head and his heart: “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.”
So Will did speak up. He repeated arguments he’d once made to this board about the risks in the Arctic, which were now self-evident. But even as he spoke, he could see the truth in the eyes of his fellow board members. They, like the Vikings before them, were clearly willing to take necessary risks and build their longships to explore new, uncharted territories.
The board vote on Arctic policy, in the end, wasn’t even a roll call. When Sandstrom moved to a motion on whether AF would continue its efforts to explore and drill in the Arctic—knowing full well there were great risks and possible failures—he’d asked for a simple show of hands for those who opposed the current policy. Will raised his hand, along with several others. But the vast majority did not. The company’s Arctic policy remained intact.
The question of Eric Sandstrom’s leadership of the company was not taken up. It simply wasn’t raised, not even by Will. Drew was right, he thought. This situation will shape my destiny.
As the meeting ended, Will did not wait around to speak with his fellow board members. He’d already made his decision, and it w
as time to move on.
He phoned Drew first on his way out of the building. “Sell our shares in American Frontier,” he ordered. “Find somewhere else to invest Worthington Share funds.”
There was no sound of surprise on the other end of the line. Only a simple, “I’ll take care of it immediately.”
Will phoned Sarah next. “The board maintained the Arctic policy,” he told her. “It wasn’t even close.”
“I’m sorry,” she said. “But perhaps the criminal negligence case combined with the shareholder lawsuit will change their minds. I know for certain that they’re worried about the criminal negligence case.”
“We’ll see—but I doubt it. But you need to do what you believe is right, regardless. It’s time for others to take up this fight.”
His next text was to Paul: Walked away from AF. Senate, here I come.
Paul’s response came seconds later: Out of the frying pan, into the fire. Go get ’em. Change the world.
And finally, Will phoned his longtime acquaintance, the senior editor at the Wall Street Journal, to see if he was available to meet for a cup of coffee in Midtown. Will had two important exclusives to discuss with him. One of them—the American Frontier board vote to maintain the Arctic policy and keep Eric Sandstrom in place as the company CEO—might not surprise the editor. But the second story—that Will was going to challenge New York’s senior senator—just might.
44
Darcy was on a rant. “I may not be the smartest dog in any fight, but I certainly know what a bone looks like. And when I find one, I don’t let go.”
And right now, she told Sarah as they sat together in Darcy’s office at DHS, she had a bone. American Frontier was either covering up what it knew of the Polar Bear Bomber, or they were flat-out lying. She couldn’t tell yet which it might be, but she was certain it was one of the two. How she got to the bottom of that question was something else entirely.
A Perfect Ambition Page 19