Whitewash (15 page)

Washington, D.C.

When Natalie Richards was a little girl she dreamed of being a black Emma Peel. She watched the popular TV show
The Avengers
faithfully and according to her momma she had even been able to mimic a pretty darn good British accent. It didn’t take long for the little girl, or by then a young woman, to realize there wasn’t any room in government intelligence or the Justice Department for a woman, let alone a black woman. Once in a while she wished her momma was still alive to see how far her little girl had come. Today was not one of those days. With the energy summit less than a week away there was still too much at risk.

She stood in her office, looking out of the window. Thankfully, the building was quiet on Saturday, though not the outside. A crew with a jackhammer started ripping up a portion of the sidewalk down the street. But at least the phone remained silent and she’d take that jackhammer noise any day over the phone calls she’d dealt with all week.

She glanced back at her desk, the notes and maps and diagrams spread alongside file folders and to-do lists all dealing with the energy summit. On the edge of her desk were folded copies of the
Washington Post
and the
Times.
She hadn’t bothered to read more than the headlines. She didn’t have the patience to wade through small-minded rantings about the energy summit’s expectations and obligations.

The media had pushed this president to focus on foreign oil and the U.S. dependency. What they didn’t realize, what they didn’t care to understand was that foreign oil wasn’t just about oil. It was about continued relationships. It was about diplomacy and maintaining a level of friendship and influence in a region that spawned and harbored terrorists. How could anyone not understand that? It seemed so simple to Natalie Richards, but then she had grown up in a neighborhood where she had to deal with bullies every day of her teenage life.

The last president understood and he even drew a line in the sand: “You’re either with us or against us.” Despite the jokes about “cowboy diplomacy” it had been absolutely necessary at the time. It had worked. In fact, it had worked so well that this current president thought he had the luxury of backing away, of relaxing and pretending things had changed. But things don’t change overnight. People don’t change.

Natalie and her boss were a part of a group that believed the attitude of this current president threatened to demolish all that goodwill built up among those who had backed the United States. And he was doing it recklessly by taking away contracts and going back on age-old agreements. It wasn’t right and it would cost the country more lives in the long run. Thank God, Natalie’s boss recognized that and had the balls to do something about it. The difficult part, the unfair part, was not letting anyone know, especially when adversaries like Senator John Quincy Allen so blatantly and so vocally lobbied and promoted his pet project, EchoEnergy.

Natalie had to put aside the file on EchoEnergy and now she flipped open her classified dossier on Allen. She hadn’t been able to find anything…yet. He hid it well, but if Natalie couldn’t find anything on William Sidel and EchoEnergy she was determined to find Allen’s Achilles’ heel. Every politician had one. Some were just more difficult to find than others. Allen came off as the protector of the common man’s rights and environmentalists’ advocate, yet it was rumored that he owned a resortlike mansion on South Beach where he intended to retire. He preached about the United States’s need to decrease its dependency on foreign oil, but then he voted against drilling in Alaska’s ANWR. He was called a maverick when he sided with Republicans, proposing an amendment to define marriage, yet Natalie had never once met the senator’s wife. Only in Washington, D.C., was it possible to get away with such contradictions.

Natalie shook her head. Suddenly, she seemed to have the weight of the nation’s future piled somewhere on her desk. It could have been—no, it should have been—a very simple business deal, if only Dr. Dwight Lansik hadn’t changed his mind. Instead, she had to resort to plan B and damn it, she had enough to worry about without some sort of covert operation becoming part of her job.

She smiled at that term
covert operation.
Perhaps in a way she had become a sort of twenty-first century black Emma Peel.

Washington, D.C.

When Natalie Richards was a little girl she dreamed of being a black Emma Peel. She watched the popular TV show
The Avengers
faithfully and according to her momma she had even been able to mimic a pretty darn good British accent. It didn’t take long for the little girl, or by then a young woman, to realize there wasn’t any room in government intelligence or the Justice Department for a woman, let alone a black woman. Once in a while she wished her momma was still alive to see how far her little girl had come. Today was not one of those days. With the energy summit less than a week away there was still too much at risk.

She stood in her office, looking out of the window. Thankfully, the building was quiet on Saturday, though not the outside. A crew with a jackhammer started ripping up a portion of the sidewalk down the street. But at least the phone remained silent and she’d take that jackhammer noise any day over the phone calls she’d dealt with all week.

She glanced back at her desk, the notes and maps and diagrams spread alongside file folders and to-do lists all dealing with the energy summit. On the edge of her desk were folded copies of the
Washington Post
and the
Times.
She hadn’t bothered to read more than the headlines. She didn’t have the patience to wade through small-minded rantings about the energy summit’s expectations and obligations.

The media had pushed this president to focus on foreign oil and the U.S. dependency. What they didn’t realize, what they didn’t care to understand was that foreign oil wasn’t just about oil. It was about continued relationships. It was about diplomacy and maintaining a level of friendship and influence in a region that spawned and harbored terrorists. How could anyone not understand that? It seemed so simple to Natalie Richards, but then she had grown up in a neighborhood where she had to deal with bullies every day of her teenage life.

The last president understood and he even drew a line in the sand: “You’re either with us or against us.” Despite the jokes about “cowboy diplomacy” it had been absolutely necessary at the time. It had worked. In fact, it had worked so well that this current president thought he had the luxury of backing away, of relaxing and pretending things had changed. But things don’t change overnight. People don’t change.

Natalie and her boss were a part of a group that believed the attitude of this current president threatened to demolish all that goodwill built up among those who had backed the United States. And he was doing it recklessly by taking away contracts and going back on age-old agreements. It wasn’t right and it would cost the country more lives in the long run. Thank God, Natalie’s boss recognized that and had the balls to do something about it. The difficult part, the unfair part, was not letting anyone know, especially when adversaries like Senator John Quincy Allen so blatantly and so vocally lobbied and promoted his pet project, EchoEnergy.

Natalie had to put aside the file on EchoEnergy and now she flipped open her classified dossier on Allen. She hadn’t been able to find anything…yet. He hid it well, but if Natalie couldn’t find anything on William Sidel and EchoEnergy she was determined to find Allen’s Achilles’ heel. Every politician had one. Some were just more difficult to find than others. Allen came off as the protector of the common man’s rights and environmentalists’ advocate, yet it was rumored that he owned a resortlike mansion on South Beach where he intended to retire. He preached about the United States’s need to decrease its dependency on foreign oil, but then he voted against drilling in Alaska’s ANWR. He was called a maverick when he sided with Republicans, proposing an amendment to define marriage, yet Natalie had never once met the senator’s wife. Only in Washington, D.C., was it possible to get away with such contradictions.

Natalie shook her head. Suddenly, she seemed to have the weight of the nation’s future piled somewhere on her desk. It could have been—no, it should have been—a very simple business deal, if only Dr. Dwight Lansik hadn’t changed his mind. Instead, she had to resort to plan B and damn it, she had enough to worry about without some sort of covert operation becoming part of her job.

She smiled at that term
covert operation.
Perhaps in a way she had become a sort of twenty-first century black Emma Peel.

EchoEnergy

Sabrina stood back and stared at the dirty white Crown Victoria. Thunder growled overhead, the clouds bloated and slow moving. The parking-lot lights blinked on as the sky continued to darken. There was no breeze, nothing to break up the thick, humid air. On the weekends there was no rumble of trucks, no hiss of hydraulics, only the distant hum that joined with the croaking of frogs from the river’s bank. She’d never noticed before how close this parking lot was to the river.

She held up the electronic keypad attached to the keys. She knew it was Dwight Lansik’s car. Yet when she pushed Unlock she jumped at the sound of the doors unlocking.

There could still be a logical reason for his disappearance. There could have been an emergency and someone could have picked him up. If he had left in a hurry that would certainly explain the car and the duffel bag. Whatever had happened wasn’t really any of her business.

She checked inside the car, opening the driver’s door and glancing behind seats, not sure what she was looking for. Then she popped the trunk, walking slowly, almost hesitant to look inside. Did she really expect to see the body of her boss tied up and tossed back there? Thankfully, it was empty and she released a long sigh, not realizing that she had been holding her breath. Too many movies, she decided, blaming the storm clouds above for inducing her slasher-movie mentality. So her boss had played hooky. Maybe that’s all it was.

Finally she locked the car and headed back to the lab. The rain might start any second and Sabrina had learned the hard way that thunderstorms in Florida weren’t anything like in the Midwest. Until she moved to Florida she had never seen rain come down so hard and for so long, drenching sheets of it, that would begin full force and so suddenly as if a huge water spigot had been opened.

Sabrina glanced back at the car and this time caught a glimpse of the rolling river between the trees. William Sidel had chosen this property specifically so he could be on the Apalachicola River. The forest surrounded the park on three sides and the river created a natural border on the fourth side. A swatch had been cleared in the middle of nowhere so that the park was protected by a fortress of trees and water. Some had suggested Sidel simply wanted his company to be a part of the natural environment he loved and hoped to save. Others called him paranoid and accused him of isolating his manufacturing plant from scrutiny.

A closer rumble of thunder made Sabrina quicken her pace. But in midstride she stopped. Whether it was only the weather or a hunch, something wasn’t right. She turned and headed to the plant instead of the lab.

She found the door to Reactor #5 locked. Of course it was locked. Every door to every building was locked. The reactor wasn’t being used, and yet, standing on this side of the door, she could feel the vibration.

Sabrina pulled out her security pass key card. Few employees had clearance for all the working areas of the plant. All the scientists and most of the engineers had full clearance. She slipped the card into the slot, but the electronic eye continued to blink red. She looked over her shoulder. Was it possible they had already restricted access? She tried again, this time slowly. The light flashed green for several seconds then finally the lock clicked. She yanked the door open before it flashed back to red.

Sabrina had never been inside Reactor #5. It had been exactly what O’Hearn had said yesterday afternoon. It was offline for future use, for a process they weren’t prepared for, that they couldn’t afford. Sabrina entered slowly, taking careful steps. A huge transparent water tank, two stories tall, stood in the middle of the room. Steel ladders climbed up its sides and grated catwalks crossed over the open top. She recognized it as a flushing tank. There was a similar one in Reactor #3 that the flash-off from the depressurized feedstock spilled into, almost like the final rinse cycle of a washing machine. All of the nutrients and cooked oil were separated and pumped to other tanks, but the leftover water was forced into the flushing tank where it was cleaned up one last time before being released into the river.

Sabrina could hear the pinging sound inside the reactor more clearly. There was no doubt that feedstock of some sort ran through the overhead pipes. She had been right when she thought the valve was open. The whirl of machinery vibrated all the way to the floor. Huge fans spun and buzzed, but the room radiated heat. And with all the activity, the flushing tank, the most important part of the process, the part that cleaned up the final mess, sat idle without a gurgle.

EchoEnergy

Sabrina stood back and stared at the dirty white Crown Victoria. Thunder growled overhead, the clouds bloated and slow moving. The parking-lot lights blinked on as the sky continued to darken. There was no breeze, nothing to break up the thick, humid air. On the weekends there was no rumble of trucks, no hiss of hydraulics, only the distant hum that joined with the croaking of frogs from the river’s bank. She’d never noticed before how close this parking lot was to the river.

She held up the electronic keypad attached to the keys. She knew it was Dwight Lansik’s car. Yet when she pushed Unlock she jumped at the sound of the doors unlocking.

There could still be a logical reason for his disappearance. There could have been an emergency and someone could have picked him up. If he had left in a hurry that would certainly explain the car and the duffel bag. Whatever had happened wasn’t really any of her business.

She checked inside the car, opening the driver’s door and glancing behind seats, not sure what she was looking for. Then she popped the trunk, walking slowly, almost hesitant to look inside. Did she really expect to see the body of her boss tied up and tossed back there? Thankfully, it was empty and she released a long sigh, not realizing that she had been holding her breath. Too many movies, she decided, blaming the storm clouds above for inducing her slasher-movie mentality. So her boss had played hooky. Maybe that’s all it was.

Finally she locked the car and headed back to the lab. The rain might start any second and Sabrina had learned the hard way that thunderstorms in Florida weren’t anything like in the Midwest. Until she moved to Florida she had never seen rain come down so hard and for so long, drenching sheets of it, that would begin full force and so suddenly as if a huge water spigot had been opened.

Sabrina glanced back at the car and this time caught a glimpse of the rolling river between the trees. William Sidel had chosen this property specifically so he could be on the Apalachicola River. The forest surrounded the park on three sides and the river created a natural border on the fourth side. A swatch had been cleared in the middle of nowhere so that the park was protected by a fortress of trees and water. Some had suggested Sidel simply wanted his company to be a part of the natural environment he loved and hoped to save. Others called him paranoid and accused him of isolating his manufacturing plant from scrutiny.

A closer rumble of thunder made Sabrina quicken her pace. But in midstride she stopped. Whether it was only the weather or a hunch, something wasn’t right. She turned and headed to the plant instead of the lab.

She found the door to Reactor #5 locked. Of course it was locked. Every door to every building was locked. The reactor wasn’t being used, and yet, standing on this side of the door, she could feel the vibration.

Sabrina pulled out her security pass key card. Few employees had clearance for all the working areas of the plant. All the scientists and most of the engineers had full clearance. She slipped the card into the slot, but the electronic eye continued to blink red. She looked over her shoulder. Was it possible they had already restricted access? She tried again, this time slowly. The light flashed green for several seconds then finally the lock clicked. She yanked the door open before it flashed back to red.

Sabrina had never been inside Reactor #5. It had been exactly what O’Hearn had said yesterday afternoon. It was offline for future use, for a process they weren’t prepared for, that they couldn’t afford. Sabrina entered slowly, taking careful steps. A huge transparent water tank, two stories tall, stood in the middle of the room. Steel ladders climbed up its sides and grated catwalks crossed over the open top. She recognized it as a flushing tank. There was a similar one in Reactor #3 that the flash-off from the depressurized feedstock spilled into, almost like the final rinse cycle of a washing machine. All of the nutrients and cooked oil were separated and pumped to other tanks, but the leftover water was forced into the flushing tank where it was cleaned up one last time before being released into the river.

Sabrina could hear the pinging sound inside the reactor more clearly. There was no doubt that feedstock of some sort ran through the overhead pipes. She had been right when she thought the valve was open. The whirl of machinery vibrated all the way to the floor. Huge fans spun and buzzed, but the room radiated heat. And with all the activity, the flushing tank, the most important part of the process, the part that cleaned up the final mess, sat idle without a gurgle.