The Trojan Sea

by Richard Herman

  “I’m much better,” he replied. “Thank you.”

  Marsten played the affable host, and the three were soon seated in a little circle drinking tea and coffee. L.J. gently tapped Steiner’s knee. “The results you’ve obtained with Seismic Double Reflection are absolutely amazing. But I must admit I don’t understand how you did it.” Steiner puffed up at the adulation in her voice and gave her a few bombastic simplifications about wave-propagation characteristics. “Ah, yes,” she replied before going into a detailed discussion of how he had used multiple seismic explosions to reflect off the leading signal the moment it hit a reflecting surface. The initial result had been a lot of “noise,” or confused signals, and she wanted to know how Steiner had filtered, and then modulated, the “noise” into meaningful signals.

  Steiner was no fool. The price of entry into the oil industry was technical expertise and hard field experience. L.J. obviously had the first. “May I ask where you studied?”

  “I studied petroleum engineering at the University of Texas.” She batted her eyelashes at him.

  “Their program is much better than I thought,” Steiner said. L.J. beamed at his praise and gave her hair a little toss. His hand crept out and rested on her right knee. He was not above being sweet-talked by a very pretty woman, but there was a price to be paid. Marsten watched with fascination, wondering how much of his hand Steiner would get back. Perhaps a warning was in order. “L.J.,” Marsten said, “also worked for seven years in the field, until her father died and she inherited the company.”

  Steiner understood and snatched his hand back. Field work was the rough-and-tumble side of the oil industry, and to survive for seven years took a special kind of toughness that few men had. “May I ask where?”

  Again the adoring eyes that he should ask such a perceptive question. “Where the action was. Siberia, the Kalahari, the Grand Banks.” She saved the worst for last. “Eritrea.”

  Steiner shot Marsten a quick look. Eritrea was on the Red Sea coast of Africa and had been part of Ethiopia until 1993, when it declared independence. In 1998 a border war with Ethiopia erupted, and an oil-prospecting team had been taken hostage by a local warlord. “L.J.,” Marsten said, “was the one who negotiated our release.”

  “You were one of the hostages?” Steiner asked Marsten.

  “We were all hostages,” Marsten replied in a low voice. The memories and the tension were back, still unresolved issues. “If L.J. hadn’t been there, they would have killed us.”

  Steiner’s breath came fast. “The rumors about torture, were they true?”

  Marsten pulled into himself, and a fragile, half-pathetic look spread across his face. L.J. recognized the symptoms and changed the subject, leading them away from that traumatic time. “Emil, you’re not going to tell us where the elephant is, are you?”

  Steiner didn’t answer.

  She gazed into his eyes and appealed to his sense of loyalty. “We’ve had such a productive relationship in the past. All the grants for your research when no one else shared your vision, our support when the university wanted to fire you…” She let her voice trail off. RayTex had saved Steiner’s job, not to mention his reputation, by buying the silence of four young women students and his university’s forgiveness with an endowment. It was a large endowment because there was much to forgive: the misappropriated funds, the sexual harassment, the four girls, the faculty wives.

  “And I have delivered as promised,” Steiner said.

  Appeals to Steiner’s loyalty weren’t going to work. L.J. gave a little nod, accepting the challenge. Marsten caught it and felt sorry for the scientist.

  “We need to find a common ground,” L.J. said, starting the hard negotiations.

  “I was thinking of a percentage of the profits,” Steiner replied.

  “Perhaps a percentage of the net.”

  Steiner shook his head. “That is not possible,” he said, slipping into French. He quickly corrected himself. “It must be a percentage of the gross.” Marsten went stiff at the man’s audacity. Even an extremely small percentage skimmed off the top of all revenues from a large oil field translated into millions of dollars.

  “And that is not possible,” L.J. said.

  “Perhaps someone else is interested,” Steiner ventured.

  “We do want to be reasonable,” L.J. said, keeping negotiations open.

  “Then it is gross?” Steiner asked.

  “Agreed.”

  Steiner almost giggled at the stunned look on Marsten’s face. “I believe fifteen percent is a reasonable figure,” the scientist ventured.

  L.J. and Marsten stared at him in disbelief. Fifteen percent of the gross would make Steiner wealthier than half the nations of the world. “One-tenth of one percent,” L.J. countered. “We are talking gross here.”

  “You insult me. Twelve percent.”

  “One-half of one percent.”

  Steiner stood up to leave. “My CD disks please.”

  “Dr. Steiner,” L.J. said, “you must be realistic. No company can pay the percentages you’re asking for. At best you can expect maybe one percent of the net profit, or its equivalent.”

  Steiner thought for a moment. “Three and a half percent of the gross. This is my last offer.”

  L.J. gave him a radiant smile. “I believe we have a deal.” They shook hands.

  “My lawyers will draw up the agreement,” Steiner said.

  “Of course,” L.J. said. “And the location of the field?”

  “After the agreement is signed and sealed with the proper advance, I will be glad to reveal its location.”

  “How much of an advance were you thinking of?”

  “Half a billion dollars on signing.”

  Nothing betrayed what L.J. was thinking. “Until then,” she said. She escorted him to the door. Again they shook hands, and he left, a very satisfied man.

  “My God!” Marsten blurted. “Three and a half percent of the gross and half a billion up front? You can’t be serious.”

  “Of course not,” L.J. said. “We need to explain the situation to him in a way he’ll understand.” She paced the floor, her anger showing. “What exactly are we dealing with here?”

  Marsten had experienced her anger before and knew what she was capable of doing. It was the dark side of her nature that frightened him. But he was the moth to her flame, and he couldn’t turn away from her. “Steiner is a brilliant scientist, but he’s a very silly person. He’s lived too long in academia and lost touch with reality. And he is a very greedy man.”

  “I want the location of that elephant and, since we paid for it, the computer program for Seismic Double Reflection. Reopen negotiations. The sooner the better.”

  “Shall I go in hard?” Marsten asked.

  L.J.’s face was an icy mask. “Get his attention.” She turned and walked out of Marsten’s office. He thought for a moment before reaching for the phone.

  The four young women were waiting for Steiner when he returned to his hotel room late that evening. At first he thought there was some mistake, they were so beautiful. His surprise was even more complete when two of them spoke fluent French. After a little conversation one of them went into the bathroom to draw a hot bath while another called room service for champagne. He smiled when they all started to undress. “Four is my favorite number,” he told them.

  Marsten’s voice cut through the fog. “Ah, there you are.” Steiner came awake and blinked his eyes. “You do remember who I am?”

  Steiner nodded, his mouth unbelievably dry. He wanted a drink but his lips were taped shut. Fear shot through him when he realized he was naked and tied spread-eagle on the bed. His eyes darted around the room. The women were still there, all dressed and wearing the coldest expressions he had ever seen. Surely the games they’d played hadn’t been that bad? One of them opened an aluminum briefcase and pulled out two syringes and two small vials. With a cold efficiency that matched the look in her eyes, she filled one syringe. He wet the b
ed.

  “Really, Dr. Steiner,” Marsten said. “We expected better of you. Perhaps you’re wondering what we’re doing here.” Steiner bobbed his head vigorously. “Think of this as contract renegotiations.” The woman holding the syringe sat on the bed beside Steiner and looked at Marsten. “Of course,” Marsten continued, “you’re thinking that we can’t get away with this sort of thing, what with the police and its being the twenty-first century, yes?” Marsten paused for effect. “Please disabuse yourself of that thinking. This is Texas. Actually, we like to reward our friends because we value them. We want to value you, Dr. Steiner. Please give us a reason to do so.”

  He nodded at the woman sitting on the bed. She grabbed Steiner’s arm and jabbed the needle into his left biceps. She quickly filled another syringe from the second vial. “I assure you, it’s very painless,” Marsten said, his voice friendly. “You will feel a little warmth before lapsing into unconsciousness. That’s all. The medical examiner will report the cause of your death as an overdose of a controlled substance, which, of course, laboratory tests will confirm.” He pointed to the woman. “She’s holding the antidote. But it must be administered within a few minutes, seconds actually, to be effective. Would you like to know the price of the antidote?” Steiner bobbed his head up and down. “Ah, I thought you would. We want the Seismic Double Reflection process as well as the exact location of the oil field.” He reached over and peeled the tape away from Steiner’s mouth.

  Steiner babbled in French while one of the women translated. “He says it’s all in his computer. The computer is in the safe. The safe is in the dressing room.” She wrote down the numbers as Steiner rattled off the combination. She handed the note to another woman, who hurried into the dressing room.

  “I do hope the computer is there,” Marsten said.

  “Please,” Steiner pleaded, “the antidote. I feel very warm.”

  “I would imagine you do,” Marsten replied. “You’ve soiled yourself.” He gave a slight nod, and the woman sitting on the bed administered the second shot. Steiner relaxed as tears streaked down his face in relief. The woman who had left was back with a laptop computer and a stack of nine disks. She handed it all to Marsten. “The password, please.”

  “There are six.” Steiner answered in English. He babbled a string of French words, which the woman acting as translator wrote down in clear block letters.

  Marsten carefully placed the computer and the disks into his briefcase. “I do hope this all works,” he said, pocketing the note with the passwords. He walked to the door. “I hope you don’t mind waiting while I validate your offer.” He spoke to one of the women. “It smells terrible in here. I know it’s not part of our agreement, but do clean him up.”

  The drive back to the Fountain Plaza building took less than twenty minutes, and Marsten rode the express elevator to the top floor. He walked quickly through the deserted offices, ignoring the night cleaning crew. He locked the door to his office and sat at his desk. For a moment he stared at Steiner’s computer. An inner voice warned him that he was taking a fateful step and there would be no turning back. He drew in a deep breath and opened the computer. Fortunately, Marsten’s French was very good, and Steiner was quite pedantic, and predictable, in creating files. Still, it took Marsten twenty minutes to find the correct opening menu. Then it required all six passwords Steiner had given him to reach the directory he wanted.

  He looked at the screen in amazement, not believing what he saw. He picked up the phone and hit the speed dial. Within seconds L.J. was on the line. “I do believe you need to see this,” Marsten said, his voice calm and matter-of-fact as he stared at the map on the screen.

  5

  Dallas

  The Parke Royale prided itself on its discretion and service, and the two maids never batted an eyelash as they repaired the chaos in Steiner’s suite. L.J. sipped her breakfast tea until they finished and handed each a twenty-dollar tip as they left. Then she sat Steiner’s laptop computer and the nine disks on the coffee table in front of her. “They’re gone,” she called to Steiner, who had taken refuge in a bathroom.

  A very subdued scientist poked his head out the door. He glanced around to ensure they were alone. Satisfied, he finally emerged, dressed in a conservative dark suit, his tie carefully knotted. He rubbed his wrists as he sat down opposite her. For once his little feet were still, and his normally flushed face was very pale. “I’m so sorry,” L.J. said. “I came over the moment I heard.” She handed him a cup of coffee. “One sugar, yes?” He nodded, a little surprised that she remembered. She gave him a repentant look and nudged the computer in his direction. “Please, what can I do to set things right?”

  “The man’s a barbarian. He must be punished.” L.J. reached for the phone and asked the operator to connect her with the Dallas Police Department. “Considering who you are and the circumstances,” she said as they waited, “there will be some bad publicity. Reporters never seem to sleep. But it can’t be avoided.”

  Steiner’s face turned a paler shade of white. “Perhaps, perhaps,” he stammered, not sure what to do.

  “Please,” she said, “let me take care of it. In my own way.” He nodded, and she broke the connection.

  “I want Marsten fired, broken, ruined,” Steiner said.

  “I can do that,” L.J. said in a low voice. “But you must understand, Lloyd only thought he was protecting RayTex and me.”

  “He would have killed me.”

  “He was bluffing.”

  Steiner shook his head. “You weren’t here.”

  “But I do know Lloyd.” She searched for the right words to explain. “He has…well, an exaggerated sense of loyalty to me. It goes back to Eritrea when that group of rebels took my exploration team hostage. He flew in to negotiate our release, but he ended up a prisoner himself.” She shuddered involuntarily. “They did unspeakable things to him.”

  “What did they do?”

  She answered in a low voice filled with pain. “Please, I don’t like to talk about it.” She pulled into herself, for a moment back in time. Then she looked directly at Steiner. “I did what I could and, fortunately, was able to convince them to release us. We managed to get Lloyd to a hospital in time to save him. It created a special bond between us, and I can’t desert him, not after all we’ve been through together. But Lloyd has always felt”—she searched for the right words—“well, that he failed me, and he’s never ceased trying to make up for it.” She gave him a pleading look. “I do hope you understand. I value loyalty above all else, and I was hoping”—she paused for effect—“I was hoping that perhaps you and I, after this terrible experience…” Her voice trailed off. She studied Steiner, reading his body language, correctly gauging his emotional state. Now it was time for renegotiations.

  She gave him a tentative smile, little more than a flicker before it disappeared. “I must tell you, I was impressed by the way you negotiated. Half a billion dollars for nothing.” She gave the computer a definite push in his direction. A little sigh. “I do wish you were on our team.”

  Steiner was a very confused man. “Nothing? How can you say the largest offshore oil deposit in the world is nothing?”

  “Oh, Emil,” she said, leaning into him, keying on the confused look on his face. She patted the couch beside her. “Please.” She pulled the computer to her while he moved over to her side. She turned it on and worked her way to the seismic cross-section in question. “Just like Saudi Arabia’s Safaniyah field, correct?” Steiner nodded in answer. “But there is one big difference,” she said. “Safaniyah is a proven reserve, but we won’t know if there’s oil here until we drill.”

  “There’s oil there,” Steiner muttered.

  She sighed. “Have you ever heard of Mukluk?” He shook his head. “Well,” she continued, surprised by his ignorance, “Mukluk is near Alaska’s North Slope and has a perfect profile. So perfect that the rock-trappers at Sohio thought they had an elephant to rival the Saudi fields. They calculated
the odds of finding oil at one in three, not the normal one in eight, and formed a joint venture. Together the companies spent over two billion dollars drilling, and when Dr. Drill finally spoke, they had the most expensive dry hole in history. Oh, the oil had been there, but it had either migrated or leaked to the surface over thirty million years ago.”

  She had his undivided attention. “There’s another problem. Right now oil is a glut on the market. The world is awash in it, and only artificial supports are keeping the price per barrel at the current level. A find like this will drive prices so low that the oil industry in the United States will not be able to compete and will go bankrupt.” Her fingers danced on the keyboard as she called up a map.

  “Consider the geopolitics,” she urged. “Look where it’s located. Do you really think he’ll do business with the United States? Or any Western democracy?”

  “Oil must have a market,” Steiner said.

  “Exactly,” she said. “If oil is there, and if it is put into production, he’ll use it as an economic weapon against us. Prices will be driven to half their current level, and RayTex will be one of the first to go under. Not even the majors can survive for long. Obviously you knew that, and that’s why you wanted half a billion dollars up front. Absolutely brilliant. Take the money and run.”

  Steiner was crestfallen. “Then no other company will be interested?”

  “Oh, they’ll be interested—in keeping it a secret. I imagine they’ll react much like Lloyd. But they won’t be bluffing.” Now she was feeding his paranoia. “I do wish you were on my team. I could protect you, and we might…well, who knows what we might be able to do? All at the right time, of course.”