Exile-and Glory (9 page)

Doyle was silent for a moment. It was stuffy in the little office with its frosted windows. Erica was standing in the doorway, no secrets from his wife, none that he would talk of on a telephone anyway. He made a drinking motion and she nodded and went out.

"I am not an Argentine specialist," Doyle said. "You would do better to send—"

"No. There is no one to send," Van Hartmann said flatly. "I will not plague you with the troubles our special assignment teams have at this moment. Be assured that you are the senior man available." The harsh voice softened a trifle. "You would be within your rights to refuse this, but I ask you not to. It is important. Very important. The stockholders will be concerned."

Erica came into the office with a cold beer. Doyle took it and thanked her with his eyes, but his thoughts were far away. Finally he spoke into the phone. "Have they attempted to board Malvinas Station?"

"Not yet."

Doyle drank the beer, a sip, then more, finally tilted back the glass and drained it. Then he sighed. "I will return to Zurich within four hours. Please have my people ready, and arrange transportation. I will need the full briefing, and the contracts."

"Danke. Danke schön,"
Van Hartmann said. "It will be done. Please before you go, see me in my office."

The plane winged over the Atlantic. Doyle found a sheaf of computer printouts in his office behind the wing and began to read.

MALVINAS: DEEP SEA MINING AND REFINING STATION OPERATED BY OCEANIQUE INC. OF ZURICH. OCEANIQUE OWNERS OF RECORD ARE THREE MAJOR SWISS BANKS. SEE CLASSIFIED APPENDIX FOR STOCKHOLDERS.

MALVINAS IS LOCATED OVER THE MALVINAS TRENCH 1,850 KILOMETERS EAST OF THE ARGENTINE COAST INTERNATIONAL WATERS. THE STATION IS UNIQUE AMONG OCEAN MINING OPERATIONS IN THAT THE ABOVE-SURFACE INSTALLATIONS INCLUDING A WESTINGHOUSE-OERLIKON 50
MEGAWATT PRESSURIZED WATER REACTOR REST ON A CAPTURED ICEBERG. ICEBERGS ARE CHANGED AT INTERVALS DICTATED BY ECONOMIC FACTORS AND ARE GENERALLY 20 KILOMETERS LONG BY 2 TO 4 KILOMETERS WIDE.

THE PRINCIPAL PRODUCTS OF MALVINAS ARE COPPER, NICKEL, MANGANESE, AND GOLD. PRELIMINARY REFINING IS ACCOMPLISHED ON SITE USING FRESH WATER FROM THE ICEBERG. THE TOTAL VALUE OF REFINED ORES SHIPPED AMOUNTS TO 60 MILLION SWISS FRANCS OR $284 MILLION U.S. ANNUALLY.

And I can remember when a dollar bought four francs, Doyle thought. And when "sound as a dollar" meant the opposite of what it does now.

MANGANESE COLLECTION IS CONVENTIONAL THROUGH SUBMERGING BARGES AND DREDGES. THE MAJOR COPPER AND NICKEL PRODUCTION COMES FROM MINING THE WALLS OF THE TRENCH ITSELF. THE PLATEAU DIVIDED BY THE TRENCH EXTENDS EASTWARD FROM THE FALKLAND (OR MALVINAS) ISLANDS WITH DEPTHS RANGING FROM 300 TO 1,000 METERS. MINES AND STRIP-MINING OPERATIONS TAKE PLACE FROM 350 TO 1,000 METER DEPTHS. THE DEEPEST PART OF THE TRENCH WHERE MANGANESE NODULES ARE FOUND IS 4,500 METERS.

THE FALKLAND PLATEAU IS CLAIMED BY BOTH UNITED KINGDOM AND ARGENTINA. THE UNITED KINGDOM HAS POSSESSION OF THE FALKLAND ISLANDS. DISPUTE OVER OWNERSHIP OF THOSE ISLANDS DATES TO THE 19TH CENTURY AND WAS FIRST PLACED BEFORE THE U.N. IN 1948. ISSUE TEMPORARILY SETTLED BY FALKLANDS WARS OF 1980'S.

And it's still there, Doyle thought. He reached for a beer. It'll be there when I'm dead. The plane winged on toward Brazil.

OCEANIQUE PAYS ROYALTIES TO BOTH ARGENTINA AND THE UNITED KINGDOM FOR EXPLORATION RIGHTS TO THE FRENCH. THE PAYMENTS ARE SMALL AS THERE APPEARS TO BE NO POSSIBLE COMPETITOR WITH THE REQUISITE TECHNOLOGY. EXPLOITATION CONTRACTS HAVE A TERM OF 30 YEARS AND ARE GUARANTEED BY INTERNATIONAL SECURITY SYSTEMS LIMITED (ZURICH OFFICE).

ALSO BY CONTRACT WITH OCEANIQUE, INTERSECS PROVIDES LAW ENFORCEMENT AND JUDICIAL SERVICES ON THE STATION AND ALL VESSELS BASED THERE. A SEPARATE CONTRACT AMONG OCEANIQUE, INTERSECS, AND THE ARGENTINE GOVERNMENT GIVES OCEANIQUE EXTRATERRITORIAL RIGHTS IN THE PORT OF SANTA ROSA ON THE ARGENTINE COAST. WITHIN THE DEFINED AREA OCEANIQUE REGULATIONS AS ENFORCED AND ADJUDICATED BY INTERSECS HAVE THE FORCE OF LAW.

The plane reached the Brazilian coast as Enoch finished reading the summary and detailed attachments. The converted military transport landed in Recife for fuel and was on its way south again when the steward came into Doyle's crowded office space.

"Telefono,
Superintendent. Zurich."

"Gracias."
Enoch Doyle lifted the instrument. There was no vision screen, "
Ja
?"

"Van Hartmann. You cannot land in the Argentine, Herr Doyle. The new government is arresting all INTERSEC people."

"I will divert the flight to Malvinas. Can you arrange for our reception there?"

"Ja.
As we predicted, the Argentine is sending a warship to Malvinas. These men are not reasonable, Herr Doyle, and I must so inform the Board when it meets this afternoon."

Doyle cursed in English. There were more satisfying languages for cursing, but he generally reverted to the speech of his youth when pressed that far. "I suppose you must, but I will ask you to please impress upon the stockholders' representatives that this matter may yet be settled to our satisfaction. Restrain them."

Van Hartmann paused. "I will try. Not much is known of the new government. A military junta has made a coup against General Molina. They have given the usual pledges of democratic elections and promised the usual reforms. Many of the reforms have to do with what they call ending the exploitation of their nation by international imperialist corporations. The Directors will not care for this."

"No, I don't expect they will," Doyle said, but to himself. "What more do we know of the new government?"

"We have not yet identified the strongest man among the junta, and they have not yet announced their new President. I will have the dossiers sent to your computer when they are assembled. The junta has requested recognition from all the major nations."

"We have taken the standard measures, one presumes?" Doyle asked dryly.

"Ja.
There will be delays in recognition. We are ready to bribe their diplomats if you think it required."

"I doubt it would do any good." Doyle thought for a moment. "South American nationalists place pride above all else. Their present diplomats will not be of their sympathies, of course, but the men they send to replace them may not be rational. I think it will be better if we merely assemble the dossiers."

"Ja.
But do not forget, Herr Doyle, the Directors will be anxious."

"I understand. I will report when I know more. I must now instruct my pilot to change course." Enoch Doyle laid the receiver in its hook and turned back to his briefing forms. He did not like this at all.

These contracts, he thought. Now useless. Perhaps they were not so fair to the Argentines as they might be, but without contracts and enforcement of them, how could there be business? Argentine patriotism was a very fine thing, but the new leaders must be made to understand that contracts must be enforced.

Once upon a time men evolved a system called international law. For a short period it was taken very seriously. Until the end of the first quarter of the twentieth century, the Counsel for the Department of State was the second-ranking diplomatic official in America. International disputes had a decidedly legal air to them.

In general, only Great Powers could enforce international law, and then usually only against smaller powers; yet, oddly enough, the Great Powers took international law seriously among themselves. Legal disputes were cheaper than war. Scholars were paid large sums to prepare briefs quoting musty volumes of Grotius and Vattel, and phrases such as "
pacta sunt servanda
" and "
clausula rebus six standibus
" were traded in the chanceries of Europe.

Diplomats debated questions of real as opposed to paper blockades. The Powers signed conventions for the treatment of prisoners of war, and even Adolf Hitler invited the International Red Cross to inspect his POW camps. As trustees of the international legal systems the Great Powers were far from perfect, but international law was often upheld.

The rattletrap system survived World War I, but when World War II began, all bets were off. In 1918 the United States of America went to war because German unrestricted submarine warfare was a violation of international law. On December 8, 1941, the United States of America ordered her submarines to sink enemy merchant vessels without warning and wherever found.

By the 1960s, the authorities could write that peace was more important than law. Enforcement of international law was entrusted to the United Nations—whose charter stated that no power could interfere in the internal affairs of another, and made self-defense the only permitted reason for resorting to force.

A small country could seize the property of a Great Power; murder her citizens; defy every contract and convention; and the authorities would gravely pronounce that the Great Power had no right to take military action. The powers could only sue before a court that could not enforce its judgments.

Pretty soon, nobody paid much attention to international law.

The runway was two kilometers long, but the iceberg lay north-south, nearly crosswinds; the landing was rough. Doyle had a brief glimpse of icy crags and, incredibly, gaily clothed skiers winding down the sides of the ice toward a plastic lodge decorated as an Austrian castle. The plane taxied to a semi-cylindrical hangar, ugly in its functional simplicity, yet certainly more honest than the frilly trim of the ski lodge. There were a number of people waiting for Doyle and his team.

"Inspector Jiminez Ortega," the first man introduced himself. Enoch recognized the INTERSECS chief agent at Malvinas. "And this is Mr. Michael Alden, the Director here."

Doyle took Alden's extended hand. The American engineer had dark patches beneath his eyes, and his look was grim.

"Glad to see you, Superintendent," Alden said. "But I don't know what you're going to do. I've had three calls from the junta, all from a Colonel Ortiz, but he won't discuss anything except how fast we're willing to turn over the station and everything else to him. They won't negotiate."

Doyle smiled lazily. "We'll see." His face showed confidence he didn't feel as they went to Alden's office through cylindrical tunnels laid above the ice. The office complex was a cube of a building, held together by girders so that it could be moved as a single unit.

Alden's office itself was sparsely furnished, with cellulose panel walls and steel furniture. Models of ocean craft and undersea vehicles filled shelving along one wall. Alden's desk was an old steel model with plenty of space for papers as well as the computer console. His drafting table was the latest model IBM, but next to it stood a wood table with T-square, unchanged in forty years except for the small console bolted to one edge. A mounted sailfish hung over the table.

The wall opposite Alden's desk was covered with screens showing TV pictures of underwater mining operations. The waters were murky, with bright yellow lights illuminating the drowned world. At the edge of the illuminated area Doyle saw grotesque shapes, some motionless, some moving.

Disc-shaped subs darted about the sheer wall of the Trench, which stretched upwards and down until there was no more light. Ledges had been cut into the convoluted sides of that infinite cliff, and enormous digging machines sliced out segments for vacuum dredge-heads to suck up and carry away. Another screen showed the ores loaded into an underwater barge suspended by cables from something unseen above.

An inside shot of the barge showed pulverization and suspension-sorting machinery. Constant streams of muck spewed forth from the sorting barges to drift with the current, and a dark cloud settled slowly toward the invisible abyssal floor below.

Doyle felt a growing admiration for the American engineer who had built all this. "Doesn't that sediment give your manganese dredges some problems?" Enoch asked.

"Uh?" Alden glanced at the screen. "No. It settles too slowly, and there's a fast current." He grimaced slightly; that current made it difficult to anchor the iceberg. "We only dredge a few miles downwind of the berg. Seas get too high for the surface equipment outside the wind shadow. We let the refining discharges out near the surface—oddly enough, the stuff stimulates plankton blooms. Lots of fish. Sports fish, too."

"Ummm. Oh. Thank you." Doyle accepted a drink Alden took from a cabinet next to his cluttered desk and sniffed. Scotch. Alden would have heard that Enoch Doyle came from the Scots border country, but his deduction was wrong. Doyle hated Scotch and its iodine flavor.

"It seems you are operating," Enoch said.

"Sure. But where will I send the crews for rest-up?" Alden asked. "The shift patterns are complicated, Superintendent. The underwater crews stay down there for six weeks, then they get three off. Surface crews rotate by the week. They all have to live somewhere. Southern part of Chile's no good. Costs too much to send 'em to Uruguay or Brazil."

"So you need Santa Rosa. A pity."

"Yeah, that's what I thought when we put in the station. I wanted to be self-sufficient here. Couldn't do it. Installation got too big, human factors killed me. We keep finding more and more minerals, and developing new capabilities for on-site processing, and that needs more workers." Alden's fingers played across the computer console and pictures on the TV monitors changed to show grey crashing seas and bleak lead-grey skies. "How long can workmen put up with that?" The question was rhetorical, of course. OCEANIQUE, like every other country, would long since have tested just what conditions would get maximum productivity at minimum cost. There weren't any labor unions in this business, and with a hundred nations clamoring for the hard currencies international corporations paid taxable workmen, there wouldn't be. Not real ones.

"We can't keep people here anyway," Alden said. "Logistics of feeding a big crew are just too expensive." The pictures changed again, to show a lavish casino, where couples in evening clothes played roulette, craps, blackjack, other games. A famous Canadian couple sang a duet in a bar furnished like 1928 America. "And yet we get tourists here. They don't stay too long, though. Go over to the mainland after a few days, but a lot of 'em come back every year. Jet set, idle rich. They like it. I can't imagine why."