by Sam Waite
"I don't think it'll help."
"Whether it does or not, I do insist. For personal as well as professional reasons, I'm extremely concerned." Sabine stood and found her purse. "Since technically I am your supervisor, that is, responsible for your employment, wouldn't it be better to start with a spirit of cooperation?"
Considering my financial status, yes it would. Sabine was a good driver. We arrived in less time than it took the taxi last night. A quick look in the study made the rest of the search anticlimactic. The notebook computer was missing, but nothing else was disturbed. I did find an address book, which I slipped into my pocket.
Sabine had gone upstairs to check other rooms. She made a little gasp and quickly turned her back to me when I walked in on her. She had something in her hand.
"You startled me." She looked over her shoulder.
"Sorry, I found this." I showed her the notebook. "It might have something interesting in it."
"And I found this." A faint blush colored Sabine's cheeks as she held out a gold bracelet. "It's mine. I had loaned it to Trevor to decipher this." She pointed to Arabic script engraved on it. "He was studying the language, and..." Her cheeks darkened further. "You not only startled me, I guess it looked like I was stealing."
"Not if it's yours."
"Of course."
We continued searching and discovered nothing but a stack of laundry and a collection of rare vinyl records—thirty-threes, forty-fives and even seventy-eights of Josephine Baker, Bessie Smith, Earl Fatha Hines and people I'd never heard of. If for no other reason, I wanted to find Trevor and sip a fine vintage while we listened to musical history together. Should be nice.
By the time Sabine and I got back to the Winchell office, his secretary had located Trevor's elder brother, who hadn't heard from him in five or six months. She also had a list of twelve people with whom Trevor had been in frequent contact.
Sabine and I compared them with the names in his address book. There were two matches. One was a woman whom Joelle identified as Trevor's romantic interest. The other was Diego Cervantes. Trevor had his name underlined.
Sabine said a Cervantes had sat in on the initial briefings as a member of the Orimulsion client team, but he wasn't part of the follow-up. The phone number was to a hotel. Cervantes had checked out five days ago.
The firm had photographs of the initial client team, five men including Cervantes. He was good-looking. I guessed five-feet-ten and a hundred fifty or sixty pounds. A man that size could be either thin and flaccid or lean and dangerous. Cervantes didn't look flaccid.
After we checked the photos, Sabine asked to look at the data I'd copied from Trevor's computer. We found a folder whose files were garbled, either trashed or encrypted.
"I want to make two copies of this. I'll keep one and give one to our systems administrator. This office has an encryption standard, which is probably what Trevor used. If he did, the administrator can help us." Sabine reconfirmed our dinner engagement and went back to work.
I checked with Petroleos de Venezuela to find out what Diego Cervantes' job was. He didn't show up in the company's management structure. Maybe he'd changed employers. I called Jorge Gavizon, an investigator in Caracas I had worked with while I was at Global Risk Management. His fees would eat up my twenty percent premium. I needed to talk to Sabine about an expense account, but in the meantime, I hired him on my tab.
I went through a list of Trevor's recent contacts without finding much of interest, until I got to Gordon Mumby. His name had also been in the notebook. The number was to an investment bank in London. I called and asked for Mumby by name.
He thought I was a potential customer. He was glib and friendly, until I asked about Trevor. When I did, he stammered and suddenly realized that he had more clients than he could handle. He offered to refer me to another banker.
"I'm not looking for a banker. I'm looking for Trevor Jones."
"Can't help you there, sorry. Good-bye." At least he lost the stammer.
I called Trevor's brother to see if I could learn anything that Joelle hadn't. He lived in Swindon, a nondescript, middle-class town in the southwest of England. I asked him if he knew Mumby.
He didn't.
Did he know anyone at all close to Trevor?
Yes he did. Three more names. Three dead ends.
I was on my fifth cup of coffee, when Sabine called. "I'm famished."
"Me too and frustrated." My list of things to do was down to zero.
"Do you like oysters?"
"Yep, fried, Rockefeller, boiled or po-boy."
"I won't try to follow what you just said, but let's go eat."
We went to a restaurant that specialized in fruites de mer. The menu had two or three dozen types and grades of oysters and a variety of mussels, crabs and shrimp. We sat at a circular bar inlaid with a tile mosaic. It was early in the evening and the only other patron at the bar was a middle-aged woman with faded blond hair and a frumpy suit.
Sabine ordered a mix of shellfish presented on a mound of ice that was as wide as the length of my forearm. She identified the types of oysters for me and tried to explain why some cost twice as much as others. A portly Frenchman with a dapper air and a kindly smile sat down next to her and joined her tutorial. When he found out I spoke Spanish, a bit of Japanese and a smattering of other languages that did not include French, he frowned and shook his head.
"No French?" He said it without disdain or disappointment. He simply looked puzzled that someone would consciously deny himself one of life's great joys. He extended one finger at a time. "Liberté, égalité, fraternité." If nothing else, he clearly wanted me to remember the country's motto in its own language.
Those attributes became increasingly abundant at our little round bar. I entered a conversation in Spanish with a couple who sat next to the portly gentleman, and in tortured Japanese with a Taiwanese couple. Salute the world's language teachers.
Sabine nudged my arm. "Would you like coffee?"
"Yes."
"I have a flat near here."
Her flat was large enough for a couple, two kids, a dog and a maid. Despite the lack of population, it had a textured warmth of wood and cotton and a sensual elegance of down and silk. Soon the aroma of coffee enhanced the effect.
"Let me guess, black?" She set a silver tray in front of me.
"How'd you know?"
"I know my coffee drinkers. Besides you're a middle-aged American male. I played the odds. So what do you think about your new position?"
I chuckled.
"What's funny?"
"I'm an undercover business consultant. It's a bit like infiltrating the Boy Scouts."
"Management consultant."
"Excuse me."
"Business consultants advise their clients on what kind of secret sauce to use, so consumers will eat more of their products."
Five, four, three...
I started a little mental countdown, ready to launch a smile when the punch line arrived, but Sabine looked as stern as an executioner. She took herself and her job seriously.
...two, one.
"Management consultants advise corporations on how to eat the competition. You're an undercover management consultant."
There it was, but I didn't smile. I wasn't sure "Sabine the Stern" would like it. For an instant, I thought I was getting closer to figuring her out. I wasn't. Dimples deepened in her cheeks, and the corners of her mouth slid up a tad. She licked her lips, probably to cool them off. Her eyes smoldered.
Coffee could wait. Sabine couldn't.
To touch her was as surprising as anything else about her. She was an intellectual, surely into her mid-forties, but she had a musculature under youthfully pliant skin that would have drawn envy from most eighteen-year-olds. Her passion flowed from caress to tease to attack. Each mood had its own poetic humor or driving emotion—from Whitman to Nash to Ferlinghetti. Mostly Ferlinghetti, who won fame for a poem about a streetwise Dog looking for an answer to things that were bigger
or smaller than himself. Fitting for Sabine, with her painting of a squalid window in her opulent office, her books of gauchos and McGrew, her exquisite intellect and physique. Her lust without pretension. I'd met her only yesterday and this evening realized that physically I'd never wanted a woman more.
Her hair fell softly across my chest. Her head rose and fell with my breathing. "Are you going to find him, Mick?"
"Ask me again next week. I had expected to make more progress."
"It's only been a day."
"Usually finding people isn't that hard, unless they don't want to be found and have the resources to hide. Or, if they..."
Sabine touched her fingers to my lips. She didn't want to hear the more dire possibility.
"I'll keep in touch with his brother," I said. "Trevor still might contact him. I asked his secretary to send a bulletin throughout the firm. That's a worldwide resource. I also hired an investigator in Caracas to check Diego Cervantes' status in Petroleos de Venezuela. There might not be a connection, but Trevor apparently thought the guy was important."
"I feel that Trevor is alive and well, but maybe scared. I also think you'll figure all this out and bring him back."
I traced the length of her spine and pressed her against me. In the comfort of her warmth, I let myself relax and believe her. "Do you like vineyards?"
"I adore vineyards, stamping about in the country, stealing grapes."
"I have a friend who has a few cottages on his vineyard in Bordeaux. We could spend the weekend if you're free."
Sabine slid on top of me, kissed my lips and ran her fingers along my temples. "Thank you Mick, but I can't. I keep my weekends free for my husband."
"Your husband? You're separated?"
"Not at all, at least not in that sense. We have a home outside the city. I stay here during the week."
My breathing suddenly grew shallow. I should have asked. I should have known. It probably wouldn't have made any difference in what just happened, but at least I could have put a leash on my rampaging emotions.
"He knows." Sabine kissed me again. "He's an extraordinary man, whom I love with the same fervor as when we wed. He is in bed what Blake is on paper—a genius of mystical refinement. And you Mick are—"
"Robert Service?"
Sabine brushed her hand along my chest, down my stomach, between my legs and squeezed.
"A Dangerous Dan McGrew."
I grunted and hoped I met a better demise.
Chapter 3
Before going into the office, I went with Sabine to file a missing-person report with the police. The man who interviewed us was efficient and polite, but he seemed to harbor some expectation that Trevor might come back from a woozy tryst today or tomorrow.
Sabine told him that was highly unlikely considering the nature of his work. A sudden absence could wreck any chance for his being elected to a director's post.
The policeman nodded sagely. "There's much pressure at work, no? A little escape to refresh is understandable."
"It is not understandable. That's why I'm here." Sabine said.
"There's been no word from family, and it's been only one day."
"He has no family in Paris. He missed a client meeting. You do not understand. That's disastrous for him, for his career."
"Disaster?"
The policeman's voice hardened and revealed what he saw as disaster—lives wasted to drugs, beatings, murder. The career of a wealthy consultant seemed not to make the list.
"If he is still missing in a day or two, come back. It would be better to hear from his family."
"I just told you he doesn't—."
"Have family in Paris. He must have family somewhere. If you'll excuse me..."
On the way back to Winchell, Sabine did a lot of muttering about bureaucratic inefficiency. By the time we got there she was refocused on work. She briefed me on the firm's structure while we waited in her office for Alexandra Roussel, the associate assigned to the Orimulsion study.
As a director, Sabine was working on four other studies. Trevor was a partner and worked on two others. Associate consultants and business analysts worked only one study at a time. They handled the drudgery—staying up late writing reports, drawing charts, and doing legwork, including interviews and on-site research. Industry specialists, where I'd been slotted, helped out as necessary. Directors were left pretty much to run their studies as they saw fit. That's how Sabine got me temporarily on the payroll with no hassle.
Alexandra knocked twice and opened the door without waiting for a response. She had a sculptured beauty that exuded all the warmth of chiseled marble, and she moved with physical economy. Her attire was a simple skirt, blouse and pumps that needed polish.
"Mr. Sanchez," she nodded slightly in my direction. I stood to greet her at the same time as she sat down without waiting for a handshake or a nod. I plopped back like a jack-in-the-box. I had a lot to learn about economy of motion.
"Mick," I said.
Sabine interrupted our banter. "Alexandra, take thirty minutes to brief Mick on the study. Charge his time to the firm as client development, and yours as well, if you need to."
"It won't be necessary. I'll easily have seven hours that are billable to client."
"Good. For now, I think all of Mick's time should be billed in-house as development. Show him how to fill out a time sheet. As far as his contribution to the study, he will be working on a special project for me. Keep him current. Cooperate if he has questions, but he won't be of any help to you just yet. None of the Paris partners can spare time for this study. I've started looking outside for a partner to replace Trevor. It looks like we'll get someone from the UK. I'll know by tomorrow."
I smiled at my new colleague. Lose a key player; win Mick the albatross.
Alexandra had an office a third the size of Sabine's and four times larger than my cubicle. She pulled an armful of folders from a cabinet and asked her secretary to secure a conference room immediately. It was 11:03 a.m. when we got settled in. Alexandra turned her watch back to eleven on the dot to make it easier to time our thirty-minute session.
"What is your project with Sabine?"
"Security contingencies. There have been demonstrations against Orimulsion in Florida and other places." I'd been modestly proud of my creativity in coming up with a suitable job description for myself, but Alexandra squinted at me as though I had tried to sell her a vial of snake oil.
"It's a new field for the firm" I said. "With increased political dangers around the world, they're giving it a test. I used to work for Global Risk Management, what you would call a boutique consultancy, highly specialized. Some of Winchell's directors, forward thinking directors, believe security issues to be vital enough to integrate into selected studies."
Alexandra didn't exactly clap me on the shoulder, but she did ease up on the squint. "I had not heard, but I suppose I can see how it works here."
Note to myself: prepare a proposal to the directors for a full-time job when this is over.
"As I'm sure you know," she said, "the U.S. has been shifting its reliance on oil to domestic production and imports from the Western hemisphere. Only about twenty-five percent is imported. Of that only twenty percent comes from Persian Gulf states, compared with more than fifty percent from Canada, Mexico and Venezuela. However, PDVSA, Petroleos de Venezuela, is losing market share. It was once the second largest exporter to the U.S. After Chavez was elected president and now under Maduro, that has declined, and in 2013 U.S. imports fell to the lowest since 1985. Now, Venezuela is focused on China. It exports hundreds of thousands of barrels daily, just to repay loans from that country.
"Chinese President Xi and Maduro recently signed five billion dollars worth of financial deals from communications satellites to oil-field development. China's the main player now, not the U.S."
Alexandra had been pointing to charts too fast for me to follow. She stuffed them all into a folder then broke out a new set.
"Venezuela h
as seventy-seven billion barrels of proven oil reserves and more than one point two trillion barrels of extra-heavy oil or bitumen, mostly in the Orinoco belt. The country has more hydrocarbons than the entire Persian Gulf region. By some estimates, it has the largest reserves in the world, or at least comparable to Canada. Of the country's total bitumen, two hundred seventy billion barrels are considered commercially recoverable with current prices and technology. That compares with Saudi Arabia's estimated two hundred fifty billion barrels of mostly light crude. Venezuela also has an interest in undeveloped fields in the Gulf of Paria and the Serpent's Mouth Channel between Venezuela and Trinidad. Our study is to extend markets in the EU for Venezuela's extra heavy crude, specifically Orimulsion."
She paused and stared at me long enough to see through my facade.
I wondered what element produced a hazel-hued laser.
"Why are you really here, Mick?"
There are some things I do well. Working out logical sequences in investigations is one. Combative confrontation is another. I hadn't known it before, but facing hazel eyes in sculptured beauty was something I'm not good at. "You should ask Sabine."
"I'm asking you. Is it about Trevor? If it is, I have a right to know."
"Between you and me. No one else."
She eased off on the lasers.
"I'm here because Trevor hired me."
By her watch, I had thirteen minutes to tell her all I knew. When I finished, she said, "I see," and headed for Sabine's office.
Whatever those two had to say to each other could get said without my input. I asked Trevor's secretary to let me into his office. This time I shooed her out and closed the door. I'd made only a quick pass through before. There was a good chance I'd missed some things. I hadn't looked in his computer at all. I fired it up, entered the company password and started going through files. The phone rang.
"A Mr. Gavizon," Trevor's secretary said. She punched me through.
It was my Venezuelan investigator. "Que paso, cabron," I said. In other words, "cheers."
"Drop the home boy slang, Sanchez." Gavizon spoke street English as well as every Spanish dialect in Latin America. "I almost feel guilty taking your money."