Frozen Fire (15 page)

Victoria stared at her, incredulous.

She’s serious
. “You can’t really think that Dennis would arrange—”

“Well, maybe not
arrange
it, but what if he knew about it, and that’s why he left early? I mean, Dennis can be flighty at times, but he’s rarely downright rude. And leaving before his guests when they were all expecting to fly with him, well, that’s not exactly the done thing, is it?”

Victoria brought her hands up in front of her face, fingers spread wide, palms facing out. “No.
No!
You’re wrong. I mean, yes, I’m always suspicious of random events that break routines or change existing plans,” she said, her words coming too fast. “But this is different. Dennis was
not
part of that explosion, Micki. I’ve known him too long, and his decision to change his plans this morning wasn’t random. It was exactly in line with how he operates. You
know
that. You’ve heard him say, hundreds of times, that being able to make snap decisions is part of the fun of the job. It’s the reason he keeps the pilots on call twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week.”

“Yeah, I know all that, Vic. Dennis always talks a good game, as much as he plays a good game.”

“This is not a game,”
Victoria snapped, feeling anger course through her and half wishing that, for once, she might not automatically hit the brakes. But she knew she would. She always did. Dennis always teased her about that:
“You don’t do “impulsive,” do you, Vic,”
he’d laugh.

No. I don’t. And I won’t start now
.

“You know what I mean.” Micki’s eyes had taken on a challenging gleam.

“No, I don’t know what you mean. Your insinuations are disgusting.”

Treasonous
. Victoria bit her lips to prevent the word from escaping her mouth.

“No, Vic, not disgusting. Disturbing. Frightening, maybe.” Micki’s breathing was getting a little fast, and the healthy golden tan on her face was deepening in sync with it. “You have him so high on that pedestal, you can’t even accept that he might be human. Well, he is. But don’t you think that the way he’s handling this is just a little out of character? Where’s your hero now, Victoria?
In hiding
. The man who has spent the last ten or so years of his life trying to ‘change the world’s balance of power’ is
in hiding
—”

“He wanted to go on the air,” Victoria said, her voice low and tight with anger. “I sent him to the bunker. You were there. You saw how he argued with me.”

“I’m still surprised that he went. And yes, I saw his reaction, but think about it—maybe he’s not overwhelmed with grief. Maybe he’s overwhelmed with
guilt
. And I’m not talking about survivor’s guilt, I’m talking about a perpetrator’s guilt.”

Resisting the overpowering urge to spin on her heel and walk away—or to smack Micki’s gloating face—Victoria forced herself to slow her breathing and to clear her head. Fighting with Micki wasn’t doing anything to help the situation. And she’d always prided herself on her willingness to listen to ideas. This was an unpalatable one, one that sickened her to consider, but shutting Micki down would make the idea fester. Bringing it completely into the open would expose its flaws.

Victoria took one last deep breath and met Micki’s burning eyes. “All right. Tell me why you think . . . this.” Try as she might, she couldn’t bring herself to say the words “Dennis is a killer.”

Micki’s face took on an expression of surprised satisfaction, and her rigid stance relaxed slightly.

“Thank you. Well, as I said, it’s just a possibility. But what made me think of it is the combination of the passenger list and the location. Nine of the world’s most powerful business leaders are dead. All personal friends of Dennis’s. No one would suspect him. And since it happened inside his territory, he gets to run the show.” Micki paused. “He controls the people who determine the outcome.”

“I’m not following you, Micki. You still haven’t given me a motive.”

“Publicity,” she whispered.

Victoria felt her jaw sag again and instantly snapped it shut. “That’s crazy. That’s worse than crazy. Dennis doesn’t need to do something this . . . this awful to get publicity.”

“Okay, maybe that was the wrong word.” Micki shrugged. “Maybe he did it to start momentum building for the methane extraction. He could use this event as a catalyst for restructuring the way the world does business. Out with the old, in with the new,” she finished, her voice as callous as it was casual.

Could he—

No
. Victoria shook her head as if to wake herself from a bad dream, and then steadied herself. “Micki, I appreciate your willingness to share your ideas with me,” she said coolly. “However, I don’t find the argument compelling. If anything, what you’ve just said makes it more apparent that someone outside of Taino, outside of the Climate Research Institute, has learned about the mining project and is taking drastic steps to sabotage it. Our competitors and the nations and consortia that sponsor them are more feasible suspects. Radical ecowarrior-type environmentalists, too, especially the heavily funded ones. Have someone compile a list. Meanwhile, I want you to focus on finding out who might have leaked information—any information—about
Atlantis
and what we’re doing down there.” She paused minutely. “And please keep your . . . suspicions to yourself.”

Her back straight and her jaw clenched, Victoria turned and walked briskly down the path toward her cottage, and Dennis.

She felt as if she were about to be sick. What happened this morning was no accident, of that she was sure. Whoever planned it had known about the habitat, had known what Dennis was doing. The question worrying her was who was behind it. And how he or she had found out about the mining operation.

“Where are you going now?” Micki called.

Victoria stopped and glanced over her shoulder. “My cottage. I’ll be back soon.”

Micki gave her the ghost of a smile. “I don’t suppose you want company?”

“No, I don’t suppose that I do. I’d rather you get in touch with the boats and see if anything has changed. I’ll be back shortly,” Victoria repeated and continued walking.

3:15
P.M
., Saturday, October 25, Gainesville, Florida

Sam sprawled lazily across the enormous brown leather couch that took up most of his living room. He had a beer in one hand, the remote control in the other, a half-eaten bag of barbecue pork rinds resting atop his flat belly, and the remains of a plate of bean burritos and jalapeño cheese grits congealing on the floor next to the couch. There was no one there to yell at him, so he had his head resting on a few of the dozen or so damned throw pillows Cyn had inflicted on him a few months ago, and his feet resting on a short stack of a few more.

Feeling happily dazed at the prospect of having an entire Saturday to himself, he’d abandoned plans to go to the Gators game and parked himself there a few hours ago to begin surfing the pregame shows on the brand-new fifty-inch plasma TV he’d hung in front of the fireplace. Cyn had had a complete hissy fit that he’d hung it in front of the fireplace instead of above it, but he’d stuck to his guns. She didn’t live with him—yet—and he wanted the height of the screen to be just right. Besides, he never used the damned fireplace. The only time he’d ever even had the damper open was when a nest of baby squirrels had fallen down from the top and he’d had to get them out.

Right now, he was flicking through the channels during halftime of a
game between his alma mater, the Georgia Tech Yellowjackets, and the University of Maryland Terrapins. He paused briefly at the Weather Channel because one of his buddies was displaying uncharacteristic gravitas as he discussed some tornadoes that had just slammed through another trailer park.

What is it with trailer parks and tornadoes?

He continued to flick the remote until his eye was caught by a ticker tape of headlines running along the bottom of a news channel’s screen.

PRIVATE JET CRASHES OFF TAINO. NO SURVIVORS REPORTED
.

Sam took another pull from his beer and decided to wait for the commercials to end so he could see what the story was. He’d been to Taino once, when he was finishing up his Ph.D. He’d applied for a grant from the Climate Research Institute to finance a research trip he’d been trying to put together to study methane releases from ancient lake beds in Siberia. Dennis Cavendish had called Sam personally to discuss his proposal and then had flown him down there for an interview.

Sam smiled at the memory. He’d been in the final throes of getting ready to defend his dissertation and, boy howdy, had he been full of himself. Cavendish’s surprise offer of a high-paying job with lots of perks—including eight weeks of annual vacation and a huge bonus if he’d move to the island permanently—had made Sam damned near unbearable, at least according to the girlfriend he had at the time.

There he was, not even in possession of a real Ph.D. yet, and he was having
serious
money dangled in front of him. He’d been tempted, but in the end he’d turned down the job because the island was beautiful and all, but it had an odd feel to it, and the people he’d met with and would be working with were odd, too. They were friendly in a stiff way, and were completely focused on their work, sort of like some of the dweebier colleagues he had in the doctoral program. The kind that got excited over the discovery of a new species of hermaphroditic mud worms.

Besides, it hadn’t seemed like there would be much to do on the island except work and surf, which wasn’t that bad, except that he’d been twenty-seven and just coming up for air after ten years of nonstop higher education. Sure, he’d wanted to make a name for himself, but he’d also wanted to play and party and fry some of those pumped-up brain cells, not bury himself doing work he could never talk about.

The commercial ended and the news babe came on looking all serious, and began talking in that low, urgent, news-anchor voice.

“We go now to the waters off the eastern Caribbean island known as The Paradise of Taino, where a luxury jet belonging to billionaire Tainoan President Dennis Cavendish crashed at 10:38 this morning, Eastern Standard Time. I-Team reporter Soledad Steinly is there at the crash site. Soledad, what’s going on?”

The screen split to show an attractive woman clutching her microphone with one hand and the railing of a ship with the other. She must have been in a heavy chop or on a really small boat because the camera kept losing her. Just watching her made Sam rethink any more pork rinds.

“Thank you, Tiffany. I’m actually about four nautical miles from the crash site and just outside Taino’s national boundary. The Taino government is not allowing any outsiders in the area and they aren’t providing us with much information. In the three hours we’ve been here, the number of reporters in the area has probably quadrupled and we’ve all been sharing what little we know. The story that seems to have the most credibility is that the passengers on the plane were all high-powered business executives headed to Taino at Dennis Cavendish’s invitation to see some secret underwater installation he’s created. There is, apparently, a large methane deposit under the seafloor around Taino, and it has been rumored for years that President Cavendish has been attempting to mine it.”

The female anchor in New York City frowned. “Did you say ‘mine’ it?”

“Yes, I did.”

“Isn’t methane a gas? Do you mean he’s going to be drilling for it like they do for natural gas?”

“Not exactly.” The woman on the boat let go of the railing briefly to look at some index cards in her hand but a wave must have hit the boat because the cards flew out of her hand and fluttered over the side. Her next words were bleeped.

“Oh, I’m sorry! Let me see. The methane that’s beneath the seafloor is in a form called methane hydrate, which is a white, very lightweight crystalline form. I’ve been told its appearance and weight are much like those Styrofoam pellets used as packing material. It has been considered for years to be the answer to the world’s energy problems because it burns clean and its only by-products are carbon dioxide and water.”

“If it only gives off carbon dioxide and water, it does sound like the answer to a lot of our problems!” Tiffany chirped with a smile, the plane-crash victims forgotten.

Sam stared at the TV screen in mild disbelief. “Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere
is
one of our problems, you moron,” he said out loud.

“So, Soledad,” Tiffany continued brightly, “if people know the methane is there, why hasn’t anyone drilled for it before now?”

Sam rolled his eyes. “Well, damn, honey, maybe because it’s beneath four thousand feet of water and a few more hundred feet of rock? And maybe because it’s not a liquid you can pump to the surface like oil?” He tipped his beer bottle to his lips. “Bet your next question is about underwater bulldozers.”

“Well, Tiffany, apparently, the challenge is getting the methane out of the seafloor and up to the surface. You can’t exactly use bulldozers down there,” Soledad said with a smile.

As the women shared a brief laugh, Sam went to the kitchen to get another beer and some Tums.

When he returned, Tiffany was posing questions to an official from the National Transportation Safety Board and getting the same answers: The Taino government wasn’t letting any people in or any information out.

I’ll get me some information
. Sam grabbed his phone and punched in a number.

“The ’Jackets are kickin’ your big old Terrapin asses, son,” he drawled when Marty—Dr. Martin Collins, professor of environmental science at the University of Maryland, expert on the geochemistry of Caribbean trenches, and Sam’s research partner and fraternity brother—picked up the phone. “I think I’m goin’ to have me some turtle soup for dinner.
Terp
soup.”