Deep Time

by Rob Sangster

  “Understand this,” Barbas said, standing. “If you won’t do what I need, or can’t get it done, by God, I’ll find someone who will. Now it’s time to get you in the chopper.”

  The playboy surrounded by a harem and luxurious toys had left the building. They walked down to the main deck in silence.

  As they approached the helo, Barbas walked directly to Debra, took her elbow, drew her a few feet away, and turned his back to Jack and Gano. Jack couldn’t hear what he said, but when Debra replied, he heard her clearly.

  “I’ll talk with Jack about it, Petros. We’ll all benefit if we can reach agreement.”

  Barbas turned back, face inscrutable, then stepped closer to Jack. “Don’t screw with me. As soon as I get back to San Francisco, I’ll send word, and we’ll meet at the Pacific-Union club. You know what I expect.”

  Arrogant bastard. The moment of truth was coming. He turned away without a word.

  Just before they climbed into the helo, he turned back to face Barbas and said, “Nine days ago, a Greenpeace ship named Aleutian sank in this area.” He looked away and inhaled deeply. “We’ve located the ship on the bottom, but we don’t know why she went down. In one of his last messages to Greenpeace, her captain reported trying to make contact with other vessels to provide assistance. He thought he saw the lights of a fleet of fishing boats, but that could have been the lights on this platform. Did you hear his communication? Do you know what might have caused Aleutian to sink?”

  The corners of Barbas’s mouth turned down. “I got a report when that communication came in, but it wasn’t a Mayday or SOS and we’re not the Coast Guard.” He turned and stalked off.

  Jack flashed on the small framed photo of Katie on his desk. He knew damn well that Barbas wouldn’t have sent his helos to help even if it had been an SOS. “You son of a bitch,” he muttered and started after Barbas.

  Gano grabbed him by the back of his jacket. “Cool your jets. Not the time or place.”

  ON THE RETURN trip, he gave Debra and Gano the whole story about Barbas’s demand. “Since that was his objective from day one, he played it very well, got me watching the wrong target and sucked me right in—almost.”

  “He pushed me hard to pressure you to do what he wants,” Debra said.

  “That’s because I was evasive up on the bridge. I have to make a decision. If I don’t help him block that treaty, he’ll fire us for sure.”

  For the rest of the flight, he and Debra talked about business while Gano caught a nap. The helo landed in Astoria, where they retrieved their cell phones and stepped out. They watched the pilot take off and gain altitude fast.

  “I think that weasel got the picture that we’re not on Barbas’s A-list,” Gano said. “You know, for a guy who’s famous for throwing wild parties, Barbas wasn’t very hospitable. I’ve had warmer receptions as a gringo gatecrasher at a narcotraficante hideout in Juarez. He acted like shaking my hand would send him to a leper colony.”

  “I could use a drink,” Debra said.

  As they walked into the Bridgewater Tavern on the waterfront, the bartender motioned toward a table across from the bar. Jack chose one next to the rear wall instead.

  “Now you want to sit where the bartender can’t listen in,” Gano said as he slid into a chair that put his back to the wall. “You’ve come a long way since I met you in Mexico. Back then, you were as green as a field of shamrocks.” He waved for a server to come over.

  “I may be less green, but I still didn’t get what I wanted on this trip.”

  “Which was?”

  “To persuade myself Barbas has been telling us the truth and come away with a better relationship to keep him as a client. I also wanted to find out what he knew about Aleutian. Instead, well, you heard it all. What’s your take on it, Debra?”

  “Obviously he came to us for more than legal advice. And I’m furious that he ignored Aleutian—and Katie.” Her face flushed. “I don’t see how we can make this work out.”

  Wow. She’s made a U-turn.

  “So you’re going to dump him,” Gano said.

  “I’m convinced that Barbas had been conning us, and the Chaos Project is an iceberg of which we’ve seen only the tip. Now I’m making up my mind about how to play it.”

  “Then there’s something you should know about those helicopters. He needs one for routine passenger trips and to transport spare parts, maybe a backup for a medical emergency. But I got close enough to the two birds partly covered by tarps that I can tell you those babies are Russian-made Kamov Ka-52 gunships, cream of the crop. They hit 250 miles per hour when they swoop down on a target. They carry twelve air-to-ground missiles that can take out armored vehicles, and their underbelly cannon can shoot down other aircraft. They also have a couple of 23mm guns, eight 80mm rocket pods, and four thousand-pound bombs. They’re flying battleships, not the kind of thing you keep around in case you come across the great white whale. Like we say down in bayou country, a man carrying a shotgun probably ain’t huntin’ a mouse.”

  Chapter 11

  July 15

  4:00 p.m.

  San Francisco

  MEI TURNED ON her heel and stalked out of Jack’s office. He didn’t blame her. The tension he felt had put a day-long strain on their friendly relationship. If his office wall wasn’t made of wide-plank redwood, he’d have tried to put his fist through it.

  His mind had been racing, careening thoughts trying to grasp a wisp of something and connect it to a clump of something else.

  On the world atlas map of the northeast Pacific Ocean spread across his desk, he’d marked several Xs. One was the last reported position of Aleutian. From it, he’d drawn a line depicting the course it had been on. A second X was where Drake had located Aleutian on the bottom. The third was Gano’s location when he spotted the floating carcasses of mysteriously dead dolphins and where he been bird-dogged by a helo patrol. Connected, those three Xs formed a relatively small triangle.

  From a large-scale hazards-to-navigation map he’d downloaded, he’d gotten the exact location of Barbas’s platform. That was the fourth X, and it was only a few miles from the triangle formed by the other Xs. He wanted to enter a fifth X for the location of the super-HTV that Drake was certain was in the same area, but he didn’t have enough information—yet.

  What did his triangle plus one tell him? That Gano was right. The helo he’d seen must have come from Barbas’s platform. Barbas clearly felt justified in using force to protect his monopoly. If he’d thought Aleutian had been a threat, maybe he’d had some role in its demise. The Xs could even mean that Barbas had already found the HTV Drake had been searching for. If so, a collision was coming up fast between those two powerful, headstrong men.

  He got nothing more from staring at the very small area in the vast Pacific, so he tried looking at the situation from an angle, hoping to open up his right brain. If more answers were there, he still couldn’t see them.

  It was much easier to understand what his confrontation with Barbas had been about. Barbas had wanted him to do something and tried to make it appear that doing it would be in Jack’s best interests. He’d kept throwing out incentives, expecting one of them to hook Jack.

  Barbas’s attempt at manipulation made him think of his father, who had played puppet master, maneuvering his son into position to win appointment to the U.S. Supreme Court. The realization that had changed his life was that the goal had been his father’s, never his own.

  He’d set up his law firm to represent ordinary people such as those damaged by Wall Street, banks, insurers, and corrupt officials at all levels. Trouble was, his eagerness to fight those battles had put his firm in danger and stressed his relationship with Debra.

  Now he had to take on Barbas. The man could be charming, but he had a dark side and felt the best way to get what he wanted was to dominate
everyone else. That’s never going to happen to me again, by God. The question was: how would Barbas retaliate if he didn’t get what he wanted? It would be ugly.

  Chapter 12

  July 16

  8:30 a.m.

  San Francisco

  DEBRA STRODE INTO Jack’s office, fresh from a quick shower after teaching her early morning karate class. She often used karate to center her thoughts in preparation for a hectic day, but this time it hadn’t worked worth a damn. She dropped into a chair across the desk from him, very aware that a cloud of tension had trailed her into the room. Since she could always read his mood, she could tell how worried he was about his confrontation with Barbas on Chaos. She felt tense about potentially losing Barbas as a revenue source and gaining him as an enemy. She wished she weren’t bringing more bad news—but she was. She had another reason for coming and hoped that might turn out better.

  As soon as he looked up, she said, “There’s a new problem with Barbas.” A grimace flicked on and off Jack’s face. “When I got back to my office after our trip to the platform, I found that Barbas had left a message inviting me to return to Chaos to join him for the weekend.”

  Jack’s face reddened. “Damn him. Who the hell does he think he is?” His scowl was fierce. “That’s a very bad idea. You should never go back there.”

  “I wasn’t asking for permission. The fact is that I don’t have time for two men dead set on getting their own way. One is trouble enough.” She hoped being a little flippant might get him to lighten up. “When I called back and turned him down, he was furious. He called me a name I didn’t appreciate, so I hung up. That could complicate the meeting you have coming up with him.”

  He nodded. “Don’t worry about it. You did the right thing.”

  Since he seemed reassured, she decided to press ahead with the second reason she was there. “Jack, it’s been more than a week since we had that blow-up at Tikal. We were under a lot of pressure, so I don’t think either of us heard the other very well. The point is, we still haven’t straightened it out. Our firm is important to me, and so are our clients. But my highest priority is the relationship between us, and I’m worried.”

  She had brought this up tentatively before and let it pass when he ducked. But the anxiety was disrupting her work, her whole life. They had to resolve it.

  Jack’s face looked like a fox with his foot in a trap—but a cunning fox. He knew better than to try to flee, knew better than to bite. She knew alternatives were flashing through his brain.

  “Nothing to worry about,” he said. “You know I love you. We’ll get through all this crap and everything will . . . this isn’t the best time—”

  A rap on the door was followed by Gano strolling in. She could tell by his broad smile he was about to crank up his Louisiana charm machine. This time, she wasn’t in the mood to hear it.

  Jack cut him off. “Sit down, and tell Debra about the Bermuda Triangle.”

  Gano put on a mock studious face and smoothed both sides of his mustache. “Picture a triangle in the Caribbean northeast of Cuba. Its points are Miami, Bermuda, and San Juan, Puerto Rico. It’s also called the Devil’s Triangle because many boats, and a few planes, have vanished there. Every time a boat disappears when there’s no foul weather or collision, media hounds fire off sensational explanations involving extraterrestrial beings, UFOs, and columns full of paranormal crap.”

  “Give her the example you gave me.”

  “Well, there I was a few months ago in the Carib making a delivery for some fellows from Singapore. I was hangin’ out in this sweet little back-street bar with—well, her name doesn’t matter—when folks started talking about one of them fancy Ferretti 500 motor yachts out on charter. Sumbitch vanished just north of the Bahamas. No hurricane and no Mayday. Turned out I knew the skipper. Now, that guy—”

  “My guess,” Debra cut in, knowing he liked to tell stories that only occasionally intersected with reality, “is that you have a theory about what happened.”

  “What I have is a reasonable alternative to the mumbo jumbo stuff, and it’s a lot more than a theory. The sediment on the seabed and the crust underneath parts of the Triangle are loaded with methane hydrate.”

  “Which means what?”

  “I won’t go into exactly what methane hydrate is right now because, well, I’m not quite sure. But I do know that when something disturbs methane hydrate, methane gas under pressure shoots to the surface like a giant burp. The density of the seawater in a fairly small area suddenly decreases, making the water frothy and much less buoyant. A boat caught in a burp would sink like an anchor. The Aussies know a lot more about this than we do. While we’re still blaming mysterious disappearances on ET, they’ve done tests that prove a methane burp can sink a ship. In fact—”

  “Hold on,” she said, “are you suggesting that a methane burp—”

  “Could explain what happened to Aleutian? Damn right I am.”

  “But she was much bigger than the charter yacht,” she said. “Could there be a burp big enough to sink it?”

  “For damn sure. Deepwater Horizon,” Gano answered, “a BP drill rig in the Gulf of Mexico, blew up in 2010. Killed eleven people. A year before that, reports say that geologists told BP that its rig was located over a reservoir of compressed methane gas that could blow if BP drilled into it. They were talking about a ‘bubble’ twenty miles across. No safety equipment can contain gas pressurized to a hundred thousand pounds per square inch, but they say that didn’t stop BP from going ahead.”

  “What happened?” she asked.

  “The robotic submersibles they sent down photographed cracks in the seafloor where plumes of methane were seeping out. If BP tapped into methane far below the seabed, some experts say it would blow like a volcano and rip through the seal on the blowout preventer. That would send gas, oil, and mud up the pipe at over six hundred miles per hour. It would explode when it hit fire, even a spark, on the drilling platform. So while the ‘drill, baby, drill’ crowd preaches about ending U.S. dependence on foreign oil, it’s really about their own profits, and damn the risks to mere human beings.”

  “Here’s where I think we are,” Jack said. “Gano is correct that there’s a lot of methane hydrate in the seabed within the Bermuda Triangle. Maybe that is what’s causing boats to sink. Maybe not. He’s also correct that there’s a huge volume of methane hydrate in the Gulf of Mexico, and it may have caused the BP disaster. Then there’s the Australian research. We have more work to do, but it looks like sudden release of methane, a methane burp, might be the culprit. We know Barbas is mining near a hydrothermal vent and that they emit methane, so the next question is whether there was enough methane hydrate to produce a major burp in Aleutian’s path. Methane might also have killed the dolphins Gano saw.”

  The idea that a methane burp could sink Aleutian was so new to her that she didn’t know how she felt about it. And how would the families of Aleutian’s crew feel? Some would want to keep believing that Nikita Maru sank her even though the facts didn’t support that. Others had to be worried that the tragedy was caused by something the crew did. If a methane burp might be the culprit, they’d be greatly relieved to know that.

  “Jack, I’m going to assign two of our new lawyers to find out about methane hydrate in Aleutian’s area. You okay with that?”

  “Of course.”

  She didn’t feel like chatting, so she stood, nodded at both of them, and walked back to her office.

  It was what hadn’t happened in Jack’s office that had her emotions jangling. He had brushed off the chance to take an honest look at the friction in their relationship, and this was the third time he’d done that. It really got to her that he wouldn’t look her in the eyes while he was doing his evasive tap dance. That was so unlike him. Of course it hadn’t been the best time to get in to a touchy subject, but it didn’t fe
el like the best time was coming up.

  As a partner in the firm, she had more thorny challenges to deal with than ever before in her career. They woke her up in the middle of the night and too often made her short-tempered, but she felt strong enough to face everything head-on. Another question bothered her almost as much. Where would she be if the firm did survive? Would she wind up being one of those rich, workaholic lawyers with no love in her life?

  In the beginning, three years ago, their relationship had been red-hot. He still told her he felt the same way about her, so, because he was an honest man, he must believe that was true. But if it were, they’d have blown away this friction between them in a heartbeat. In her heart, she knew it wasn’t true, and that was tearing her up every day.

  What was the truth?

  She had a good idea what had caused their relationship to get stuck on a plateau. Even if Jack understood those reasons, she wasn’t sure he had the emotional tools to deal with them. His issues ran deep, deep, deep, all the way back to his childhood.

  A plateau could be a resting point where you get a second wind and the will to keep climbing for the summit. What was eating at her was knowing that two people on a plateau might not keep climbing together. One might fall off. She had the aching feeling she was losing him. She couldn’t fix that by herself. She loved him, but that wasn’t going to be enough this time. And this was the only time that mattered

  Chapter 13

  July 20

  1:30 p.m.

  San Francisco

  JACK HAD JUST finished an expensive lunch with a client at the Mark Hopkins Hotel, but he had a hollow feeling in the pit of his stomach. He stopped at the corner, waiting to cross California Street to meet Petros Barbas at the Pacific-Union Club.

  Some thought the Club’s four-story brownstone building at the crest of Nob Hill was majestic. Far more, including Jack, thought it was just plain ugly. Either way, it was one of the oldest and most exclusive private clubs in America. The membership roster included names from William Randolph Hearst to, more recently, McNamara, Packard, and Schwab. Even though his father had been a member, and even if Peck’s scandal hadn’t made acceptance unlikely, Jack had no interest in joining.