The Trojan Sea (6 page)

Stuart relaxed. The national security adviser was speaking the language he understood. “We need,” Mazie continued, “to cut across all departments and leave no stone unturned. Obviously this is a major initiative and will need an executive head to shepherd your work.” She looked at the general sitting next to Stuart. “I asked General Butler to chair this committee and he graciously consented. He’ll report directly to me. Bernie, it’s all yours.”

Lieutenant General Franklin Bernard Butler stood up. “Thank you Mrs. Hazelton.” He rapidly outlined how the committee would work and what their first goals were. From the ready acceptance around the table, it was obvious Butler was an accomplished administrator and had worked with them before. “I’ll need help and would like an assistant to act as the main point of contact and coordination. We need a technician who can see the big picture, keep it all in perspective, and be responsible for all the paperwork. I believe he or she should be from this group.” He looked at Stuart, recalling Mazie’s comments. “If it’s acceptable, I would like Lieutenant Colonel Stuart to step in.”

Stuart felt a compelling need to visit the men’s room.

Mazie nodded graciously and looked around the table. “All agreed, then?” There were no objections. The meeting rapidly drew to a close, and Stuart escaped to the men’s room.

General Butler was right behind him. He was friendly as they stood at the urinals. “Well, it looks like you’ve a sponsor,” he said.

“Sir, it’s news to me if I do. Besides, I’m not qualified to do this and, and—”

The general interrupted him. “You’re worried about Ramjet, right?”

Stuart nodded dumbly. How did Butler know about Priestly?

“I’ll explain it to him,” Butler said, zipping up his pants. “And, Mike, when the national security adviser calls you by your first name, you’re qualified.”

Stuart had barely returned to his office in the Pentagon when his phone rang. It was Priestly. “Mike, I heard the meeting went very well. Say, if you’ve got a minute, I would like to see you. No hurry, though. Whenever you’re free.”

Stuart said that he was free, broke the connection, and made record time down the short corridor to Priestly’s office. Peggy grinned at him when he skidded past her desk. “Go right in,” she said.

Priestly stood up and smiled when Stuart reported in with a sharp salute. The colonel waved his fighter-pilot salute back. “Please, Mike. That’s not necessary.” He motioned Stuart to a chair at the conference table in front of his desk while he buzzed Peggy and told her to bring in tea. He came around his desk and joined him. They made small talk until Peggy arrived with the tea tray. She banged it down, not happy to be Priestly’s servant, and walked out. Priestly smiled again. “Secretaries. They think they own the place.” They discussed the meeting at the National Security Council for a few minutes, and Priestly related a funny incident that took place when he was a White House Fellow.

Stuart decided he liked the old Ramjet better than the smooth-talking sycophant he was seeing now. An image of Jane meeting Priestly at a Washington cocktail party played out in his imagination. “General Butler had some good words about the impression you made on the national security adviser,” Priestly said. “When you look good, we all look good.”

That’s why the change,
Stuart decided. An urge to bolt swept over him. He was tired of the games they were playing.

Priestly lowered his voice and spoke in confidence. “You didn’t tell me you knew the national security adviser.”

Stuart couldn’t help himself. “You never asked.”

It was after 9:00
P.M.
when Stuart finally arrived home. His answering machine blinked a couple of messages at him. The first was from Jane. As always, she said little. “This is Jane, call me.” He grinned. She had gone over her allotted four words. The second message was from Jenny, his ex-wife. “Mike, you haven’t called. I have a personal problem and, and…well, please call.” The “I need money” voice—again.

Two women in my life, and both their names start with J,
he mused to himself.
Why do I always go for the middle of the alphabet?
But they couldn’t have been more different. Jenny was tall, willowy, and glamorous. Jane, anything but. He hit the speed dial, eager to hear Jane’s voice again.

She came directly to the point. “Sorry, Mike. I can’t get a loan for the down payment on
Temptress.
I can list her with a broker or try to sell her privately.”

Stuart thought for a moment. Did he still want to sell his boat? He made a decision not to make a decision. “Can you bring her up here? I can get a slip at Annapolis.”

“Can do for expenses,” she replied. “Figure six hundred seventy-eight.” She had obviously thought about it.

“I’ll send you a check,” he said, breaking the connection.

Almost immediately the phone rang. This time it was Jenny. Her voice carried that same, breathless quality that always made him think of sex. “Mike,” she said, “why haven’t you called?”

“I just came in. It’s been hectic at the office. What’s the problem?”

“Oh, Mike. I’m in love.”

Again?
he moaned to himself.

Dallas

Professor Emil Steiner’s reputation preceded him into the corporate offices of RayTex Oil. As editor of the most prestigious scientific journal in Europe, a department chair at a respected French university, and twice a runner-up Nobel laureate, he had scientific credentials that were unimpeachable. He also had a reputation for thoroughness and maintaining the most rigid scientific standards. His private reputation was somewhat different. He was a womanizer with an extravagant lifestyle.

What actually walked into Lloyd Marsten’s corner office was a short, sixty-four-year-old man with bright blue eyes, a flushed face, and tufts of closely trimmed white hair stuck on his balding head. His expensive suit draped artfully over his rotund body and hid most of his expanding waistline. He walked with quick, bouncing steps, and his incredibly small feet were never still, not even when he was sitting down.

Marsten made the introductions as L.J. and Steiner shook hands. His left hand snaked out and snared her hand between both of his. “I have been looking forward to meeting you,” Steiner said, his voice free of any French accent. He didn’t let go of L.J.’s hand, and she had the distinct impression she was shaking hands with a trained seal.

“My pleasure,” she said, extracting her hand with a little jerk. “I do hope you’re feeling better.” Steiner had arrived in Dallas four days earlier and pleaded jet lag, delaying the meeting. At last count, eleven call girls had cycled through his hotel suite at the Parke Royale to help him recover. Of course, all were billed to RayTex Oil. Steiner hated being alone.

“I’m much better,” he replied. “Thank you.”

Marsten played the affable host, and the three were soon seated in a little circle drinking tea and coffee. L.J. gently tapped Steiner’s knee. “The results you’ve obtained with Seismic Double Reflection are absolutely amazing. But I must admit I don’t understand how you did it.” Steiner puffed up at the adulation in her voice and gave her a few bombastic simplifications about wave-propagation characteristics. “Ah, yes,” she replied before going into a detailed discussion of how he had used multiple seismic explosions to reflect off the leading signal the moment it hit a reflecting surface. The initial result had been a lot of “noise,” or confused signals, and she wanted to know how Steiner had filtered, and then modulated, the “noise” into meaningful signals.

Steiner was no fool. The price of entry into the oil industry was technical expertise and hard field experience. L.J. obviously had the first. “May I ask where you studied?”

“I studied petroleum engineering at the University of Texas.” She batted her eyelashes at him.

“Their program is much better than I thought,” Steiner said. L.J. beamed at his praise and gave her hair a little toss. His hand crept out and rested on her right knee. He was not above being sweet-talked by a very pretty woman, but there was a price to be paid. Marsten watched with fascination, wondering how much of his hand Steiner would get back. Perhaps a warning was in order. “L.J.,” Marsten said, “also worked for seven years in the field, until her father died and she inherited the company.”

Steiner understood and snatched his hand back. Field work was the rough-and-tumble side of the oil industry, and to survive for seven years took a special kind of toughness that few men had. “May I ask where?”

Again the adoring eyes that he should ask such a perceptive question. “Where the action was. Siberia, the Kalahari, the Grand Banks.” She saved the worst for last. “Eritrea.”

Steiner shot Marsten a quick look. Eritrea was on the Red Sea coast of Africa and had been part of Ethiopia until 1993, when it declared independence. In 1998 a border war with Ethiopia erupted, and an oil-prospecting team had been taken hostage by a local warlord. “L.J.,” Marsten said, “was the one who negotiated our release.”

“You were one of the hostages?” Steiner asked Marsten.

“We were all hostages,” Marsten replied in a low voice. The memories and the tension were back, still unresolved issues. “If L.J. hadn’t been there, they would have killed us.”

Steiner’s breath came fast. “The rumors about torture, were they true?”

Marsten pulled into himself, and a fragile, half-pathetic look spread across his face. L.J. recognized the symptoms and changed the subject, leading them away from that traumatic time. “Emil, you’re not going to tell us where the elephant is, are you?”

Steiner didn’t answer.

She gazed into his eyes and appealed to his sense of loyalty. “We’ve had such a productive relationship in the past. All the grants for your research when no one else shared your vision, our support when the university wanted to fire you…” She let her voice trail off. RayTex had saved Steiner’s job, not to mention his reputation, by buying the silence of four young women students and his university’s forgiveness with an endowment. It was a large endowment because there was much to forgive: the misappropriated funds, the sexual harassment, the four girls, the faculty wives.

“And I have delivered as promised,” Steiner said.

Appeals to Steiner’s loyalty weren’t going to work. L.J. gave a little nod, accepting the challenge. Marsten caught it and felt sorry for the scientist.

“We need to find a common ground,” L.J. said, starting the hard negotiations.

“I was thinking of a percentage of the profits,” Steiner replied.

“Perhaps a percentage of the net.”

Steiner shook his head. “That is not possible,” he said, slipping into French. He quickly corrected himself. “It must be a percentage of the gross.” Marsten went stiff at the man’s audacity. Even an extremely small percentage skimmed off the top of all revenues from a large oil field translated into millions of dollars.

“And that is not possible,” L.J. said.

“Perhaps someone else is interested,” Steiner ventured.

“We do want to be reasonable,” L.J. said, keeping negotiations open.

“Then it is gross?” Steiner asked.

“Agreed.”

Steiner almost giggled at the stunned look on Marsten’s face. “I believe fifteen percent is a reasonable figure,” the scientist ventured.

L.J. and Marsten stared at him in disbelief. Fifteen percent of the gross would make Steiner wealthier than half the nations of the world. “One-tenth of one percent,” L.J. countered. “We
are
talking gross here.”

“You insult me. Twelve percent.”

“One-half of one percent.”

Steiner stood up to leave. “My CD disks please.”

“Dr. Steiner,” L.J. said, “you must be realistic. No company can pay the percentages you’re asking for. At best you can expect maybe one percent of the net profit, or its equivalent.”

Steiner thought for a moment. “Three and a half percent of the gross. This is my last offer.”

L.J. gave him a radiant smile. “I believe we have a deal.” They shook hands.

“My lawyers will draw up the agreement,” Steiner said.

“Of course,” L.J. said. “And the location of the field?”

“After the agreement is signed and sealed with the proper advance, I will be glad to reveal its location.”

“How much of an advance were you thinking of?”

“Half a billion dollars on signing.”

Nothing betrayed what L.J. was thinking. “Until then,” she said. She escorted him to the door. Again they shook hands, and he left, a very satisfied man.

“My God!” Marsten blurted. “Three and a half percent of the gross and half a billion up front? You can’t be serious.”

“Of course not,” L.J. said. “We need to explain the situation to him in a way he’ll understand.” She paced the floor, her anger showing. “What exactly are we dealing with here?”

Marsten had experienced her anger before and knew what she was capable of doing. It was the dark side of her nature that frightened him. But he was the moth to her flame, and he couldn’t turn away from her. “Steiner is a brilliant scientist, but he’s a very silly person. He’s lived too long in academia and lost touch with reality. And he is a very greedy man.”

“I want the location of that elephant and, since we paid for it, the computer program for Seismic Double Reflection. Reopen negotiations. The sooner the better.”

“Shall I go in hard?” Marsten asked.

L.J.’s face was an icy mask. “Get his attention.” She turned and walked out of Marsten’s office. He thought for a moment before reaching for the phone.

The four young women were waiting for Steiner when he returned to his hotel room late that evening. At first he thought there was some mistake, they were so beautiful. His surprise was even more complete when two of them spoke fluent French. After a little conversation one of them went into the bathroom to draw a hot bath while another called room service for champagne. He smiled when they all started to undress. “Four is my favorite number,” he told them.