Dollar Down

by Sam Waite

He scowled when he heard his name.

  "I'm looking for a translator. I found you on the Internet and called your number. Your wife said you would be here."

  Li's face relaxed. "What languages?"

  "Chinese to English I have the document with me, if you're interested." I handed him the papers without waiting for a response.

  "Nan...nan...hen nan." He repeated the word "difficult" and tossed in a "very" as he scanned the pages.

  "What's the subject matter?" I said.

  "You don't even know what this is?"

  I shook my head.

  "Very technical. It's about petroleum processing, but I can't even understand the Chinese very well. There is a lot of math and chemistry. I don't think I can translate it to English."

  "Do you know anyone who can?"

  "Maybe. I know a student here studying chemical engineering. His father is an old friend."

  Mr. Li called the young man, and an hour later I was having coffee with David Chou. He added a little more detail. The paper described a process for converting bitumen into oil, that is turn tar into liquid. It was a bit too expensive to be a major factor in the world's oil market, but technological advances were making it cheaper.

  "Do you know Orimulsion?" I said.

  "Yes, my field is petrochemicals."

  "Mine isn't, so can you tell me why anyone would want to convert it when it's probably cheaper to produce emulsified bitumen? "

  "Orimulsion isn't suitable for much except firing electric power plants, and even there you need to have a plant close to a large water source. Besides, in the conversion process you can extract some of the pollutants, like sulfur."

  "How does the price of synthetic oil compare to Saudi crude, for example?"

  "That's difficult to say. There are a lot of ways to refine or liquefy bitumen—chemical processes, heat, even microbes." David paused and smiled, "And then there was that big earthquake."

  "Earthquake?"

  "You know Sodom and Gomorrah?"

  "Not intimately."

  "Ha," he said politely and continued. "Back in the nineteen nineties, a pair of British geologists, Harris and Beardow as I remember, decided they had located the site of the cities on a peninsula that was swallowed by the Dead Sea. The area in the Biblical age was bitumen rich, and the locals probably mined the stuff for fuel. The type of soil there is subject to liquefaction in a severe earthquake. One hits, and suddenly the bitumen turns into more flammable liquid. A lamp gets knocked over and poof, fire and brimstone.

  "Maybe that means God wasn't angry at sodomites after all. He was out to zap oilmen." He laughed. "I like Bible stories."

  I didn't ask him to tell anymore, but I did ask how long the translation would take.

  "About a week."

  Long time. There would be a bonus, I said, if he could find someone to help speed up the turnaround. Tomorrow would be good. He said he would need help with it any way, since some sections were outside his expertise. He would check with acquaintances and call back. In truth there was probably no need to rush. It didn't look like anything but a technical report for the Orimulsion study. The only thing that seemed interesting was the language it was written in. China was the world's biggest energy consumer. It would make sense for the country to develop technology that would help it diversify its source of supply. It wasn't part of the study as far as I knew.

  I called the Scotsman, McNulty, to check on his success in bugging Mumby's apartment. He had planted listening devices in each room and video surveillance at the front and back doors. Next, I checked with Pascal. He was still working on it, but expected to have bugs in place in the PDVSA team's office by tonight and in their apartments by tomorrow morning, assuming they went to work on time.

  My next contact was Abe Granger at Global Risk. His experts had traced Trevor's deal with the investment bank. He had bet three thousand pounds on a fall in the dollar. It paid only if the dollar traded in a narrow range against the euro. If it fell too far, the bet blew up. The dollar closed at nearly smack dead center of the range, and Trevor took home twenty-seven thousand pounds. After subtracting trading fees and losses on a hedge bet that the dollar would rise, his net profit came to two thousand pounds or sixty-six percent over a few days. The hedge was lower risk, so it needed a larger outlay to cover potential loss of the first investment. Without that, his net earnings would have been nine hundred percent minus fees.

  The trader who handled Trevor's investment was no surprise, Gordon Mumby.

  Chapter 12

  I met David and his Chinese student pals at a café. There were four of them, and they had finished the translation overnight. They appeared more excited about the content than the bonus for a quick turnaround.

  David introduced his colleagues, two from Hong Kong and one from Hunan Province on the mainland.

  "Where did you get this?" David stood an envelope on its edge and tapped his finger against it.

  "That's confidential."

  "This is very exact. It could almost be patented."

  His colleagues nodded and made little "I agree" sounds down in their throats.

  Must be good material. "As far as I know, it may have already been patented." I took an envelope out of my pocket, opened it so David could see the cash inside and laid it on the table. "Want to swap?" I showed a thin crescent of teeth.

  David held his own envelope against his chest like a high-stakes card sharp. "This is very big, but there is something missing."

  "David." I tapped my envelope and pointed to his. "The translation." I lost the smile. It was fake to begin with.

  David glanced at his friends, then slowly handed me the envelope.

  I pushed the cash toward him and checked what he'd given me. I had a translation all right, but it was only partly English. The rest was chemistry and mechanics.

  "We need to know where you got that." The student from the mainland didn't bother with a fake smile. "It would be better if you told us. That belongs to China. Maybe you stole it."

  Threats? "You haven't learned the word 'confidential'? It means..."

  "I know it!"

  "If you're worried about whether I stole it, why did you do the translation?"

  "I didn't. They did." He swept his index finger toward the other three. "They didn't understand, but it doesn't matter, unless you have what's missing."

  I was beginning to feel like the villain in a Charlie Chan movie. "Missing secret keep adversary off balance." Or maybe that was Sun Tzu—Art of War—not Charlie at all. Whoever.

  I left the espresso untouched, said thanks and walked away. It didn't make sense, "...could be patented...very big...something missing." I didn't get far before David caught up with me.

  "Do you know what we were talking about?"

  I shook my head. "Why was your friend upset?"

  "He's not my friend. I'm Taiwanese, and he's from the mainland. He's the enemy right? But the Chinese community at the university is small, so we see each other. He heard about the translation and tried to stop me from giving it you. When I refused, he made the Hong Kong guys bring him to meet you."

  "He made them?"

  "He is in the party. His father is very powerful and could make life hard on someone in Hong Kong, but not Taiwan. We are free. I don't have to listen to him."

  David might be free, but he looked over his shoulder when he said it.

  "You didn't say what's missing."

  "Give me time to read this." I said.

  "Are you going to call me after you finish?"

  "Only if I need your help again or don't like what you gave me."

  "Call me, not the guy from the mainland."

  "I don't even know his name."

  "He knows yours." David stared at me for a while before he turned on his heel and walked away.

  When I started reading, it was evident I would need someone to explain the technical bits to me, but I did understand the gist, if not the details. As David said, it described a process to tu
rn bitumen into liquid oil. The bitumen would be exposed to sulfur-eating bacteria that would turn a tarry glob into a thick, but pourable, liquid. In the next stage, the liquid would be refined into usable products.

  So what was missing? Did it matter? I was looking for a murderer not a refining technique.

  With no better plan, I called Alexandra, and asked if she would look at the translation.

  "I won't have time," she said. "At least not for the next day or so. Even if I did, a business analyst on the study knows more about the technical aspects than I do."

  The BA turned out to be IG himself, Isaac Goldberg, the young man whose initials had been usurped by Ian Graham. I drank espresso and worked the crossword in the International Herald Tribune while he went through the translation.

  "Where did you get this?" he said when he finished.

  There was that question again.

  "I won't say." How much the BA needed to know was Alexandra's decision, not mine. I told Isaac how much I could understand of it and asked him to fill in what I'd missed.

  "The most impressive aspect is the scale. It's huge. In the first stage bitumen is depolymerized by sulfur-eating bacteria, such as Thiobacillus, Sulfolobus or Rhodococcus. The bacteria eat sulfur molecules that bind large hydrocarbon chains. With the binding agent gone, the chains break up into smaller molecules. Smaller molecules means lower viscosity. It also means a cleaner fuel, because the sulfur is consumed. By-products are alcohol and water. They are friendly to the environment."

  "Someone in China did all that. No wonder Li was riled about possible theft."

  "China didn't exactly do all of it. Extraction processes of minerals through sulfur-eating bacteria are well known. Similar technology is used in gold mines to weaken sulfur deposits where traditional chemical processes don't work well. It can also be used to devulcanize tires, and, as we see, to liquefy bitumen. A project in Canada used Rhodococcus strain JVH1 on tar sands. The problem is that microbial liquefaction of bitumen has had limited success. What this paper describes is a fast-growing bacteria that can be introduced into the Orinoco and thrive in natural conditions, while it liquefies deposits of bitumen."

  "What bacteria can do that?"

  "According to the paper, China has genetically modified a strain of Rhodococcus, but I don't know what the strain is or how it's been modified. It doesn't say."

  "If you knew that, could you implement the process?"

  "Looks like it to me. This is pretty complete otherwise."

  So what's missing: the name and constitution of a black-gold bug.

  Chapter 13

  McNulty called to report that the surveillance devices in Mumby's home were working, but there was nothing worth recording so far. Mumby didn't spend much time at home, so it could be a while, if ever, before we got anything.

  You can wait for an apple to fall, or you can shake the tree.

  I called Burroughs and told him what Global Risk had found out about Trevor's investment. All I had were dates and the results of the trades. "Can you use that information to define a trade that would match the payout?"

  "I can do better than that. With the historical data from earlier trades, I have enough hypotheses to write an instrument that will match the payout in the future. That is if my assumptions, such as the flow of money into the cash market, have similar effects."

  "When in the future? Could you make it tomorrow? That'd be the next strike date on the charts."

  "PetaGrid can."

  Good answer. If the network delivered, I had a plan to make the tree of Mumby drop apples like hail stones. I had just started writing a tough-guy scenario for McNulty and me when the doorbell rang.

  It was Oddsson. He looked tired and wore a wan smile. "May I come in?"

  I stepped back." I didn't know you'd been freed."

  "I was released just a short while ago. I came directly here."

  "Sit down. You could use a glass, I expect."

  He nodded as he passed me on his way to a chair.

  I went to open a bottle of claret.

  Neither of us spoke, but there was a tacit communication of the ordeal he'd been through. His faced was pinched. The corners of his mouth twitched now and again as though he was trying to say something. Finally, he did.

  "I'm still under suspicion." His air of resignation was more appropriate for someone who'd just been sentenced.

  "Geir, I think you need someone else. If you want me to stay, I will, but at least hire a local agency. I'll help where I can."

  He shook his head. "I haven't been fair with you Mick. I didn't tell you everything, because I didn't want to prejudice your investigation." He fell silent.

  I did too, as I waited for the other shoe to drop.

  Oddsson clasped his hands and touched his thumbs to his chin.

  "Sabine and Trevor were..." He laced his fingers together.

  Hushed voice—loud shoe.

  He didn't say anything else as he waited for me to stack the bricks of the story before he filled in the mortar.

  "Sabine... That is, her passions were abundant. It was her nature, and as I've said, I had learned to accept it. Trevor, though, became obsessed. She's a captivating woman." His face darkened. "Was."

  He unclasped his hands and gripped the arms of the chair. "He threatened her, if she didn't leave me. Not physically, but he made subtle threats to sabotage her career. Even though he was junior to her in the firm, he had powerful allies." Oddsson squeezed his eyes closed. "Of course, she would never leave me. She told him so. She also challenged him to a professional battle. Even if he won and forced her out of the firm, she could easily find offers elsewhere. Trevor raged. He knew there was nothing he could do to harm her outside the firm. Nothing, unless..."

  There had been no sign of forced entry the day Sabine died. She probably knew her killer.

  I excused myself and went to the bedroom. I started punching in Alexandra's number, then thought better of it and hung up. I called the firm's main desk and asked for Sabine's secretary. After a little prodding, she confirmed most of Oddsson's story. I asked her to look for any correspondence between Sabine and Trevor, any memos, letters or computer files.

  I'd been following the English tabloids' coverage of Trevor's death. His body had been found two days after Sabine died. The scandal sheets had many theories about Trevor, including one that involved Druid religious rites. Another had him taking a fatal dose of sedatives and being set upon by hounds as he lay dying.

  A crime of passion, murder, followed by attempted suicide. It was a pattern that has probably been with humankind since the inventions of jealously and guilt. The calculated nature of Sabine's death belied an act of passion, but Trevor and Sabine had both operated on planes a step beyond most mortals. Maybe that's what had blinded me to such possibilities in the first place. They were two exceptional individuals. I had been looking for extraordinary cause.

  I'd seen the Orimulsion study as the key to Sabine's death and to Trevor's disappearance and subsequent death. I had followed bizarre leads, from sulfur-eating microbes to exotic financial instruments. Scientific and mathematical esoterica had morphed into a multi-hued mist. I'd been chasing rainbows across the rapidly eroding vista of my ego.

  If I had focused on human frailty, I might have seen the danger and been able to save Sabine, and with her Trevor. I'd oversold myself in a delusion that had betrayed the trust of both of them. Even as self-doubt grew, I knew it was transitory. Over time, I would convince myself there was nothing I nor anyone else could have done.

  Oddsson had called me an avenging angel with an implication that I could set things right. Sorry Geir, you shouldn't bet on angels.

  "Good-bye" sounded like a good word right now. The easy road away was a strong temptation, just sidle out of a case I couldn't crack. I'd almost decided to take that route, until Sabine's memory interfered. It wasn't a memory of her face but of her scent—our scents—that infused a primal drive. An ache squeezed my belly and groin in
a visceral recollection of her physical poetry. Smells and tastes seeped deep into the reptilian node. I was Ferlinghetti's dog, seeing things bigger than himself, smaller than himself, as he trotted freely through the streets.

  Free from the fear of failure.

  Chapter 14

  Sabine's secretary had found a few messages from Trevor. She didn't go into detail, but yes some were flirtatious, even risqué. I asked her to copy them and get the originals to Oddsson. Since he was the cuckold, risqué notes might incriminate him more than they would an illicit lover. We needed evidence of a threat from Trevor or at least a rejection from Sabine.

  I called Alexandra. "Can you get me access to Sabine's office computer?"

  "No, I can't. I'm sorry Mick, I'm under pressure right now. We'll talk later." She hung up.

  Oddsson was more accommodating, but then he had more at stake. He would give me access to her home computer.

  I was on his doorstep in less than two hours.

  "I don't mind if you see her files, but you should know I've already been through them several times."

  I took a flash drive out of my pocket and held it up. "Do you mind if I install software that will let me read deleted files?"

  Oddsson looked as though someone had dropped ice down his trousers like a cold dose of logic that he hadn't expected. In a moment, his expression shifted to a wry smile. "I am familiar with many types of application software, but I actually know very little about the inner workings of computers. I hadn't thought of that. Yes, of course."

  He repeated "of course" or "certainly" or some other variant of that idea every fourth or fifth second as he lead me to Sabine's office.

  "She may already have some software like that installed, but if you want to use your own, please do. Just delete it when you finish."

  I did use my own. It was industrial strength and would obliterate any evidence that it or I had been there.

  In a short time, I had found several messages from Trevor, inviting Sabine to move in with him. Other notes with later dates sought to entice in other ways. Later still, the messages pleaded. In the most recent letters, Trevor threatened harm to himself, then finally to her or to Oddsson. Not that I'm naÏve about the human condition, but I felt nauseous. When I read the sordid messages from a person I had known and respected addressed to one I had been infatuated with, the psychological underpinning of faith in my species went from sand to water.