The Trojan Sea

by Richard Herman

Steiner reached over and punched at the keyboard. “Is it all inside their territorial waters?”

  “I believe so,” she said. Together they leaned forward and studied the map of Cuba.

  Marsten was waiting for L.J. in his limousine when she left the Parke Royale. He arched an eyebrow, asking the unspoken question. “He’s in,” she answered. “For how long, I can’t say. Fortunately for us, he’s paranoid and doesn’t know who to trust.”

  “He’s very bright,” Marsten said. “Don’t underestimate him.”

  “I’ll try not to. We do have some leverage. Underneath he’s furious that he was twice refused a Nobel Prize, and he needs validation. We can dangle that carrot in front of him.”

  “Sooner or later,” Marsten said, “he’s going to want money. Large amounts of it. More than we can provide.”

  “That’ll probably happen about the time he figures it all out,” L.J. said. “He’s such a sneaky little weasel, so have ARA watch him. We must maintain secrecy—at all costs until we can lock in the concessions.” She thought for a few moments. “Where’s the weak link? Who besides you, me, and Steiner could possibly know?”

  “The seismic crew on the research ship?”

  “Doubtful,” L.J. replied. “The readouts were downlinked to Steiner by satellite. Even if the crew did see something, they wouldn’t know what it meant.”

  “But they would know where they’d been shooting seismic,” Marsten said.

  “That’s a possible connection. Check it out.”

  Marsten made a note in his diary before handing her a small package. “The videotape from ARA. Good quality. No doubt who they are. Or what they were doing. It is, shall we say, beneficial, when one is paying the bills.”

  She agreed with him. “It most certainly is.” The limousine pulled into the roundabout of the Regency Hotel, and she dropped the package into her handbag. “Do they know?”

  “They were contacted yesterday evening. I believe they spent a very sleepless night.”

  “I’ll catch a taxi back,” she told Marsten, getting out of the limo.

  Ann Silton answered the door, her face ravaged with worry and tears. At first she refused to let L.J. in. “We have nothing to say to you.” Her eyes filled with hate. “I don’t know what game you’re playing,” she said, her voice low and cutting, “but you won’t get away with it.”

  L.J. fumbled in her handbag for the package and tentatively extended it to the woman. “This came in the mail. Do you want to see the letter?” Now it was her turn to cry, and tears ran down her cheeks.

  The woman hesitated, not sure what to do. But L.J.’s tears decided her. She took the package and opened the door. “Did you get a letter?” L.J. asked. Ann shook her head. “Mine’s with the tape,” L.J. said, walking into the hotel suite.

  Clarissa looked at L.J., unsure how to react. L.J. rushed over to her while Ann read the letter. “The bastards,” L.J. hissed. They held hands for a moment. Softly L.J. said, “When I saw the tape, I saw a beautiful, loving moment. There is absolutely nothing for you to be ashamed of.”

  “It’s just that…” Clarissa replied, tears streaking her face, adding years to her look.

  “I know,” L.J. said. “Our society isn’t ready to accept people for who they are.” She straightened her shoulders. “This has nothing to do with what we’re trying to do. I won’t have it. I just won’t have it.” She stood up and paced the floor, taking charge. “Have you shown this to John?”

  “He’s a man,” Ann said, obviously distrustful of Front Uni’s executive director.

  “He’s a good person,” L.J. said. “We need to tell him. Now.”

  John Frobisher fumbled with the second cassette, finally inserting it into the VCR. The screen flashed, and an image of two nude women making love on the same couch he was sitting on appeared on the screen. They watched in silence for a few moments, confirming the two tapes were identical. But L.J. split her attention, closely judging Frobisher’s reaction. It was a combination of fascination and lust.

  “It’s the same tape,” Frobisher said. “Unfortunately, there’s no doubt who it is. When was this taken?”

  Ann’s words were barely audible. “Monday night.”

  “Well,” Frobisher muttered, “considering it’s Wednesday morning, they didn’t waste time.” He stared at L.J., thinking the obvious. “What’s your game, Ms. Ellis?” He stressed the “Ms.”

  L.J. shook her head. “I don’t play games, John.” She stood up, full of resolve, and paced the floor. “So what do they want?”

  “As the letter says,” Frobisher replied. “‘You don’t need friends like these.’”

  “I don’t desert my friends,” L.J. said. “Why do you think I came here?” Frobisher didn’t answer. “So who do you think did it?” she demanded.

  “Your friends in the oil business,” he answered.

  She shook her head. “They’re too sophisticated to try something this crude. No, it’s got to be someone else.” She stopped and studied him for a moment. “Are you having internal problems in Front Uni?”

  “Only the normal disagreements,” Frobisher said. “The environmental movement is a loose confederation of highly principled individuals who—”

  L.J. interrupted him. “Do any of you have a personal problem?” They all told her no, and her lips compressed into a narrow line. “Do you want to call the police?”

  Frobisher thought for a moment. “If they want to disgrace us, make us lose credibility with the public, wouldn’t that be playing right into their hands?”

  L.J. nodded, conceding the point. “I’m a woman in one of the most male-dominated businesses in the world,” she said, feeding their preconceptions and personal biases. She was also telling them the truth. Her face grew cold. “I have to play hardball to survive.” She paused. “Give me a little time to get to the bottom of this. Do you trust me?”

  “I trust you,” Clarissa said. Ann and Frobisher nodded in unison.

  The Pentagon

  General Butler was impressed. The big poster boards with the yellow Post-its arranged in a flow pattern, the neatly ordered folders, the quick-reference chart for the computer files, and the blue talking folder for Butler’s initial briefing to the National Security Council on the Strategic Petroleum Reserve were ample proof that Mike Stuart was an accomplished staff officer. “You did all this in nine days?” Stuart nodded. “When do you go home?”

  “I’m divorced,” Stuart replied, as if that explained it all.

  “I know promotions are tough these days,” Butler said. “But this is much more than I expected.”

  No emotion crossed Stuart’s face. “It’s pretty clear that I’m not going to be promoted, so I plan on retiring in eighteen months.”

  Stuart’s reply stunned Butler. It was a constant surprise to him that men like Stuart continued to give their best and sacrifice their personal lives even when their careers were at a dead end. He thumbed through the blue talking folder on the current status of the SPR. “Good work,” he muttered. “Even I understand it. Okay, what’s next?”

  Stuart pointed to a third poster board. “The oil world is divided into three parts: upstream, midstream, and downstream. Upstream is exploration and production, midstream is the transportation net that moves crude oil to refineries, and downstream is marketing and distribution. As a user, the military is all downstream. But what ultimately determines what is available to us is the upstream part of the equation. I think,” Stuart ventured, “we need to take a detailed look at what’s coming on-line in the future, in terms of exploration and production.”

  “How do you propose we do that?”

  “We ask the oil companies what their plans are for exploration in the next five years.” From the incredulous look on the general’s face, Stuart knew he was on shaky ground.

  Butler humphed. “There’s no way they’ll tell us that!”

  Stuart shrugged. “We won’t know until we ask. And we promise to treat their answers as secret
, not to go beyond this committee.”

  “Even if we know how much exploration is planned, that doesn’t tell us how much oil will be discovered.”

  “But it gives us some clues,” Stuart replied. “We know what the past success rate has been. We can assume a lower success rate in the future and plot it out against the discovery curve of the last ten years to establish a trend.”

  Butler was even more impressed. “Which gives us a planning factor for the future.”

  “Which can be revised at any time,” Stuart added. “It also gives another indicator. If the overall planned exploration rate by the companies is on a downward curve, then we can assume the oil companies are not worried about their current reserves.”

  “Do it,” Butler said. He gathered up the blue briefing book and headed for his office. “You need a sponsor,” he said, almost to himself.

  Roger “Ramjet” Priestly scanned the proposed survey and then the mailing list. Every oil company that did business in the United States was on the list, and he was worried that the survey would set off all sorts of alarm bells, not to mention phone calls to congressmen and lobbyists. It was exactly the sort of attention he did not want. He picked up the phone and punched at the number for Stuart’s cubicle. There was no answer, and he buzzed for his secretary to come in. “Peggy, where the hell is Stuart? Doesn’t he know Friday is a normal workday?”

  “He signed out on leave for the day, sir. He’s going to pick up his son in Dover, Delaware.” She paused to let Ramjet’s blood pressure go up ten points. “You did approve it, sir.”

  “Right,” he said, not really remembering. He threw the offending survey across his desk. “Put a hold on this until I can talk to him.” He almost told her to throw it in the trash can but thought better of it. “No, wait. Better yet, send it back.”

  “Send it back,” Peggy murmured. “Will that be all?” Ramjet nodded, and she returned to her desk. “Send it back,” she told herself. “Now, what does that mean?” She answered her own question. “He must mean to General Butler’s office.” She glanced at the cover letter, which was duly signed by one Michael E. Stuart. She smiled to herself and dropped the survey in distribution to forward it to General Butler’s office. Then she picked up the phone and called Butler’s secretary. “Joannie, Ramjet told me to return the survey being sent to the oil companies back to your office for action. So will you send it out?” She listened for a few moments. “You’ve got that right, girl. Without us, nothing would ever get done.”

  Dover Air Force Base, Delaware

  Stuart drove slowly through base housing trying to find the house he had lived in as a teenager, when his father had been assigned to a staff job at the air base. It was one of William “Shanker” Stuart’s few assignments outside the tactical Air Force and away from fighters, and it had been a strange time, as his father had hated his job while his family had been most content and happy. In fact, Stuart remembered his three teenage years at Dover as among the best times in his life. It was even more ironic because Stuart had been born at Dover when his father was assigned there as a lieutenant before going to pilot training. But he didn’t remember that.

  Three good years, he thought. That’s all I got. Eric deserves more. A lot more.

  The wail of turbofan engines split the air, and Stuart instinctively looked up. A massive white transport aircraft, the sound of its four huge engines pounding his senses, flew over. Stuart stared in wonder and shook his head. It was an Antonov An-124, the Russian counterpart to the USAF’s C-5 Galaxy. How many times had he briefed pilots on that aircraft during the early years of his career in the Air Force as a young intelligence officer? But he had never seen one, and the actual sight was overpowering. He watched mesmerized as the giant plane seemed to defy gravity entering the landing pattern.

  He drove across the main highway and through the gate, heading for the passenger terminal where he was to meet his son and father. He parked his car and wandered toward the terminal, fascinated by the sight of the An-124’s tail moving slowly behind the building. For Stuart’s first eight years in the Air Force, the plane had belonged to a potential enemy, the Soviet Union, and one of his jobs in the Defense Intelligence Agency as a captain had been to track the status of AeroFlot and Voyenno-Transportnaya Aviatsiya, the Soviet Air Force’s air-transport arm. A stand down by either was considered a “trip wire” indicating that the Soviet Union was moving to an attack footing. If both stood down, the United States military would have started to move up the DEFCON as it also prepared for war.

  But things had changed. The Soviet Union no longer existed, and Russian Transport Aviation was reduced to hauling commercial cargo to earn money and landing at the bases of its former enemy. And that’s why he was there. His son was on the An-124.

  Stuart groaned when he entered the terminal. His ex-mother-in-law was standing inside the door, her arms folded tightly across her breasts, her feet apart in a boxer’s stance. A man in a charcoal-gray suit holding a briefcase stood next to her. Barbara Raye always leads with a lawyer, he thought. He tried to manage a smile, anything to pull her fangs. “Where’s Jenny?” he asked, hoping his ex-wife was around.

  Barbara Raye Wilson’s look turned even harder. “She couldn’t make it. She’s off with her current scumbag.” As a matter of family policy, Barbara Raye never approved of any man in her only child’s life, and Stuart had been another casualty in the long procession of men Jenny presented to her mother for sacrifice. Stuart assumed that it was a combination of money and a lone grandchild that kept the two women together. Barbara Raye had won the Powerball Lottery, and Jenny had Eric.

  Stuart couldn’t help himself. “She did tell me she was in love.” The words were no sooner spoken than he realized he had made a bad mistake. Jenny and her mother were at each other’s throats again, locked in a deep love-hate battle for dominance, with money and access to Eric the weapons of choice. It escaped his understanding why they couldn’t break the tie that binds and go their separate ways, or at least declare a cease-fire in their on-again, off-again war.

  Eric burst through the door leading from customs and ran up to his father. “Dad, you got to come out and see it!” Stuart assumed he was talking about the An-124.

  “Mr. Stuart,” the lawyer said, “letting your child fly on that aircraft was the height of irresponsibility.”

  “He and his grandfather were suppose to fly United.”

  Eric couldn’t contain himself. “Gramps’s friend had a Lightning we had to get out of England to save it from being cut up and another friend’s got lots of money and he rented a plane to fly it here and we came with it.” He smiled as if that explained everything. “Come on. We can watch it unload.”

  “Maybe we should wait here,” Stuart said, seeing the look of disapproval on Barbara Raye’s face.

  Eric felt the tension between his father and grandmother and didn’t want any part of it. “Please, Dad. Gramps is at the airplane.”

  “Well, let’s go howdy the folks,” Stuart said. Eric led them, half running, out to the parking ramp where a small crowd was watching the big aircraft discharge its cargo.

  Eric ran up to the rope holding the crowd back. “Gramps!” he yelled, waving at his grandfather. Shanker waved back and motioned them to the entry-control point. “That’s Wing Commander Seagrave and Prince Turika with Gramps,” Eric explained. “You’ll like them.”

  Shanker escorted the small group to the back of the aircraft to watch the unloading. He introduced them to Seagrave and Turika while four spare jet engines were offloaded. Three pallets of spare parts were rolled onto loaders, followed by a set of wings mounted on a wooden cradle. The last loader drove up, and two spare wings were rolled off, along with twelve tires. Finally the fuselage of the Lightning was rolled out the front of the aircraft, gleaming in the September sun like a wingless dart. “I sat in the cockpit,” Eric said. “It’s really neat and Commander Seagrave flew it when he shouldn’t have but he didn’t have a choice and that�
��s why he got in trouble and we had to save it.”

  Stuart laughed. He had never seen his son so animated. “It sounds like you had a great time.”

  “It’s time he was back in school,” Barbara Raye announced, taking charge. “You’re coming with me, young man.”

  Stuart’s stomach took a twist. He could not remember Barbara Raye losing an argument to anyone other than Jenny. Tons of money gave her unlimited power and she wielded it like a deadly weapon. Still, he tried to delay the inevitable. “We need to talk to Jenny,” he said.

  Barbara Raye gave him a cold look. “No we don’t. Eric is staying with me.”

  “Dad,” Eric pleaded. His wonderful day had suddenly turned sour.

  “Come,” Barbara Raye ordered. She reached for Eric’s hand, but Shanker knelt down beside the boy, blocking her.

  “Where do you want to go?” Shanker asked.

  Eric didn’t answer and only looked very unhappy. He fought back the tears and shook his head.

  “He’s going with Mrs. Wilson,” the lawyer said.

  Eric looked at his grandfather, who looked at Stuart. “Well?” Shanker asked. “You’re his father. Make a decision.”

  Stuart didn’t know what to say.

  “I want to stay with you or Dad,” Eric whispered to Shanker.

  “He’s coming with me, and that’s final,” Barbara Raye said, pushing Shanker out of the way.

  It was a mistake. Shanker stepped in front of her. “Ma’am, normally I don’t cotton to hittin’ women. But in your case I’ll make an exception.”

  The lawyer intervened. “Stop right there, Mr. Stuart.”

  Shanker whirled on the lawyer, fully engaged. “As I recall, Mike and Jenny have joint legal custody of Eric. Unless you’ve got a court order—”

  The lawyer interrupted him. “In the absence of Jennifer Stuart, Mrs. Wilson is empowered to act in her place.”

  Shanker leaned into the lawyer, his face inches away from the man’s nose, and exhaled. “You got a piece of paper from a judge saying that?”