Ice Fire: A Jock Boucher Thriller (12 page)

“Who?”

“Palmetto.”

“John, it’s been twenty years. He’s old news. We’re developing technologies he’s never imagined. Why are you still worrying about that geezer?”

“Because he’s a loose end. Because he could find himself another lawyer and claim we stole his extraction process and call attention to what we’re doing. Because it could be twenty years ago all over again. I don’t want him mouthing off now that we’re so close. We’ve got to find him.”

“He knows you bribed a judge. Nobody gave a damn then. Why do you think anyone would give a rat’s ass now that the judge is dead? That makes no sense.”

Perry leaned back in his seat. “Bob Palmetto should have been terminated twenty years ago. He needs to become a damned methane hydrate himself. Iced.”

P
ALMETTO LOVED HIS WINDBREAKER
. It needed no folding and could be crammed into his backpack when he wasn’t wearing it, which was seldom. Its synthetic fabric was impervious to wind and rain and it had a hood folded into the collar that could be unrolled to protect his neck and head. There was elastic at the wrists, a zipper up to the throat, and in low temperatures the drawstrings at the waist could be pulled tight, enabling him to use his own body heat as insulation like a diver’s wet suit.
Forget Oscars, Pulitzers, and Nobel Prizes,
he thought.
The man who invented this jacket should have been honored, his name glorified.

He stood on the dock at Marblehead. A brisk Atlantic breeze gave a mid-October hint of what the next few months would bring. A ferry bobbed idly on the water, the summer rush now over. Nearby streets where parking wars had raged for the past months were quiet, shops and restaurants extending a more civil invitation now that the tourist hordes were gone. The caliber of pedestrian was elevated. The man wearing the Sikh turban could be an oceanographic geologist; the Malay, an expert on zooplankton; the Aussie with his loud and unmistakable accent, a leading authority on coral reefs—and more
than one of them could easily have been wearing Nobel prize medallions around their necks. These scientists were here as visitors to the Marblehead Oceanographic Institute, to learn from colleagues and to share knowledge they had gained. The man who invented the windbreaker would have fit right in, Palmetto thought. He zipped up his jacket and turned toward the town. Of course, two other things could also have brought these men of science to this charming New England seaside village: the vivid colors of autumn leaves, now in their final days, and clams—not to study the bivalve mollusks, but to eat them. Bob Palmetto gorged on clams. On his way back to the Institute, he bought a paper cone full of fried clams and ate them like popcorn as he walked.

He’d been coming to Marblehead for so long, everyone assumed he was part of the staff at the Institute. Though he’d seen security tightened over the years, he’d never even been asked his name. He was a routine visitor, and his routine never varied. Discarding the paper cone, now emptied of its fried contents, he entered the building that contained the oceanographic geology and geophysics department. He didn’t get ten feet before a voice called out:

“Hey, Bob, when did you get back?”

A woman stepped forward and embraced him in the hall. Her auburn hair was cut short and she wore jeans, a beige Irish fisherman’s sweater, and chukka boots. Admiring her utilitarian wardrobe, he held her hands in his with arms outstretched. He noticed her wedding ring.

“Mae, did you—”

“Me and Mark,” she said. “I started helping him after his accident, and”—she patted her heart—“what can I say? It’s crazy. We worked across the hall from each other for five years and never said a word to each other.”

“What accident? How is he?”

“It was a freak thing. He was on one of our research vessels. A generator on deck got loose, slid, and pinned him against the ship’s railing. His pelvis was crushed; a lot of nerve damage. The doctors say he might never walk again, but we have hope.”

“I’m so sorry.”

“No, no, no. No sorry stuff. Encouragement is what he needs. We treat it like a research problem. We work at physical therapy every day and we know we’ll succeed.” She put a finger alongside her cheek, and her expression changed. “You know something? You show up out of nowhere once a year and it always seems to be just after I’ve made a new discovery. I’ve just gotten results of a study you’ll find interesting.”

Mae grabbed his hand and led him into a room. On a stand was something that looked like a combination mini-submarine and Jet Ski. It was a remote-operated deep-sea exploration vehicle, and was the size of a compact car. Palmetto recognized it. The letters MBARI, for Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute, were printed large enough to be read from a distance and up to four thousand meters below the ocean’s surface—as if literacy were one of many discoveries made at that depth.

“That’s MBARI’s Tiburon,” he said. “What’s it doing here?”

“On loan,” Mae said. “We’ve been doing some experiments. We used it to help inject CO
2
hydrate slurry into subsea sediments more than three thousand meters deep.”

“Geologic sequestration,” Palmetto said. “What happened?”

“The purpose was to find the effect on single-cell foraminifera, organisms which play an integral role in the marine food chain. In a nutshell, some survived, some didn’t.”

“Conclusion?”

“We’d better be damned careful before we start exterminating life-forms.”

Palmetto smoothed back the sparse strands of hair remaining on the top of his head. “There’s a lot of interest in injection of CO
2
into the ocean floor. I don’t think there’s going to be much sympathy for a single-celled organism that never evolved from the seabed.”

Mae sighed. “We do what we can. Why don’t you go say hello to Mark? He’s in the communication center. It’s worked out well for him. He’s happy there. If he can’t go to sea, he can at least keep in touch with those who can. Go see him. And tell him you’ve been invited to dinner tonight. You look like you haven’t eaten in a week.”

“I get that a lot,” Palmetto said.

He excused himself and walked to the communication center, where all research vessels of the Institute were monitored as they conducted their experiments around the world. A floor-to-ceiling map of the world showed the location of each of the research vessels. Via satellite, phone calls and faxes could be sent to and received by all ships at sea. Mark was sitting in his wheelchair with his back to the door, talking on the phone. Palmetto called his name. Mark leaned back in his chair as if he were going to fall, grabbed the wheels by their handrails, and literally turned on a dime.

“Bob Palmetto. How in the world are you?” he said.

Palmetto chuckled. “Man, you are hell on wheels. Good to see you, buddy. I’ve just come from Mae. She tells me you’re in training for the Special Olympics.”

“No, next year I’ll be out of this thing and ready to run the Boston Marathon.”

They shook hands, spent about fourteen seconds catching up, then got down to science. Mark was eager to show off their satellite
communication equipment, and pointed to the location of each vessel of MOI’s research fleet.

“The research vessel
Beagle
is in the Navy Yard at Norfolk. It transports
Lucy,
our mini-sub. We had some work done on the three-man mini-sub’s manipulator arm. It’s ready now and waiting for its next mission. The research vessel
Ahab
is in Tampa Bay,” he said. “The smaller ships are here in port.”

“Any research on methane hydrate?” Palmetto asked.

“We’re not doing anything at the moment, but somebody out there is. Come over here.” Mark wheeled himself over to the world map and with a laser pen pointed off the coast of South Carolina.

“There’s a research vessel about two hundred miles off the coast of South Carolina. It’s not ours, it’s not Monterey’s, and it’s not from Scripps Institution of Oceanography. I’ve checked with all of them. But somebody out there is using a moored buoy tethered to some kind of transmitter on the seabed. Data is being sent from the seabed to the buoy to the vessel, then by satellite to somewhere on the Gulf Coast; could be New Orleans.”

Palmetto felt hairs bristle on his arms and neck. “How are you getting it?”

“We’re getting it because I’m probably the only guy in the world who’s got nothing better to do than sit in here all day every day and I accidentally hit on their frequency. I’ve been snooping. Their encryption—if you can call it that—is transparent. It’s almost the same as ours. I bet there’s one or more of our guys out there. I just hope they’re making more money than I am.”

“What kind of data?”

“They’ve been marking off a field and taking core samples, as far as I can tell.”

“Any idea how long they’ve been there?”

“I found them a week ago, so at least that long.” Mark looked at his watch. “Mae did invite you to dinner, I hope.” Palmetto nodded. “Then I guess we’d better close up shop and make our way home.”

“I need to go to my motel room and freshen up.”

“You do that. And check out. You’re staying with us. No argument.”

It couldn’t be called running because both feet did not leave the ground during each stride, but on his way back to his motel room, Palmetto could have beat any runner hands down. He had wings on his feet, but when he got to his motel and tried several phone calls his feet were like lead as he paced his room, dragged down by frustration, fear . . . and failure. The day was here and he had failed to prepare for it. The phone numbers he had dialed, from scraps of paper yellowed with age, were no longer any good. He was a scientist, but he also had once been a businessman and he had lost one of the businessman’s most important assets, his contacts. Palmetto, in his effort to survive all these years, had lost contact with those whose help he needed now. He had no one. Weighed down with frustration, he checked out of the motel.

Mark and Mae’s home was a small Cape Cod, little more than a bungalow, with a hint of a front yard with a white picket fence and a large bay window, not far from the Institute. Mark answered the door when Palmetto knocked, took one look at his guest, and yelled over his shoulder, “You were right, Mae, a backpack, not a suitcase, and it’s a small one.” He laughed. “It wasn’t even a bet. We knew you’d be traveling light. Come on in. Leave that in the hallway.”

Palmetto followed his host into the living room, where a fire had been lit, more for atmosphere than heat. He sat on the sofa and heard a loud crash from the kitchen.

“Shit!”
Mae yelled. She stepped into view. She was still wearing the jeans she’d worn earlier, but now they were splattered with what looked like blood. “I dropped a whole fucking bottle of red wine,” she said as she collapsed on a dining chair. Mark wheeled to her side after a quick survey of the kitchen.

“Yeah, that’s one dead soldier,” he said; then, to her, “We’d better clean that up quickly or we’ll never get the stains out.”

He turned to Palmetto. “Bob, there’s a ring of keys on a hook by the door. Would you mind taking the car and going to the supermarket? It’s just about three miles straight up the road. You can’t miss it. I’ve got handicapped plates, so you can park right in front. We’ll have this cleaned up by the time you get back. If you need some money, my wallet’s—”

“No, no. I’m an idiot for not bringing some wine with me. I’ve forgotten what manners I used to have. Not a problem. I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

The family car was a late-model Volkswagen. Palmetto couldn’t remember the last time he’d driven a late-model anything, but keys still turned ignitions, automatic transmissions still shifted from
P
to
R
to
D
, and he was on his way. As cautiously as he drove, he could have walked faster. He should have.

He found the supermarket, pulled into a handicapped spot as advised, and hopped out of the car, anxious to complete his purchase and get back. This time he even ran. That was a mistake.

“Just a minute theah, mistuh.”

He didn’t even need to turn around. Whether it was the broad New England
a
’s or the drawn-out vowels of the Southern drawl, it didn’t matter. A cop’s command was the same regardless of accent or inflection.

“That your car?” the cop asked. He had been cruising the parking
lot in his patrol car and seen a man jump from a vehicle parked in a reserved handicapped spot who showed no signs of a handicap at all, unless being on the slim side qualified—which it did not.

“No, sir,” Palmetto said. “It’s a friend’s. He asked me to come get some wine. We’re having dinner and his wife dropped—”

“Can I see your driver’s license?”

Palmetto drew a deep breath, then with his exhale seemed to collapse in on himself. His shoulders sagged. His knees bent. For more than two decades he had avoided this moment, using more artistry and imagination in this singular endeavor than the most creative of men employed in a lifetime. He looked around him. A
supermarket,
for fuck’s sake. Busted in a supermarket.

“No driver’s license, Officer.”

“Got some ID?”

“Not on me, Officer.”

How he begged and pleaded. Geophysicist; guest of scientists working at Marblehead. Their house just three miles that way. No, he didn’t know the address, but it wasn’t far. Just minutes away.

“Well, the police station’s just minutes away too.”

Bob Palmetto rarely thought of food; it just wasn’t that important to him. But that night, more than anything else on earth, he wished for the dinner that had been prepared in the home of his friends. He would have given anything to have been there for it.

B
Y THE TIME MARK
and Mae had become worried enough to call the police and report their friend’s failure to return from the supermarket, Bob Palmetto was gone from Marblehead, transferred to a federal holding facility in Boston. Though the phone literally shook in his hand as he did so, the custodial officer made a late-night call to the home of a federal district judge in New Orleans, obviously waking him.