Page remembered his swearing in ceremony in the Rose Garden behind the Oval Office. Afterwards the president had leaned in close so that his words would not be heard by anyone else, or picked up by the microphones. “I want the truth, Walter. It’s why I hired you, because I think you can handle it, even if the truth is not what we want to hear.”
“Yes, I know where this could lead,” he said. “The truth, even if it’s something none of us wants to hear.”
If the president remembered his own words coming back at him, it didn’t show in his expression. “The truth is one thing, but manipulating a delicate situation is something else altogether. And I want to make myself clear, none of this speculation will appear in the media. Not so much of a hint of it.”
“I’m not sure I understand, Mr. President,” Page said, though he understood perfectly. But he wanted the administration’s position stated plainly so that months or years from now the president, and especially Estevez, a man Page had never liked, would not be able to deny what had been said.
“Do you have any reason to believe that Mr. Octavio, or better yet, Venezuelan intelligence, has any idea what Ms. Fritch was up to?” Estevez asked. “She wasn’t under deep cover, everyone down there knew who she was. So, how careful was she?”
“She knew what she was doing,” Page said tightly. He’d served on a number of boards and he had learned to spot the CEO or an adviser who was running scared. He could almost smell it, then as now. But this was different, this was the Oval Office and he was dealing with the president of the United States.
“I think the Chavez government would not have taken kindly to the CIA prying into the life of one of their most prominent citizens,” Estevez said.
“He’s almost certainly a crook, and it’s possible that Ms. Fritch may have uncovered a connection to Hutchinson Island.”
The president was suddenly angry, and it showed. “That’s nuts, Walter,” he snapped. “And you damn well know it.”
Page spread his hands. “The Agency is doing what it’s mandated to do, protect U.S. interests. But if you’re telling me now to back off and look elsewhere, that’s exactly the course I’ll take.”
“Is there any proof of this connection?”
“We’re assuming that Ms. Fritch was bringing just that when she was assassinated.”
“Assuming,” Estevez said.
Page ignored him. “We can prove that Octavio is connected with the IBC. And we have high confidence that the bank is being used to funnel money from the Saudis and other oil-producing nations, especially Iran, to a number of terrorist cells, among them al-Quaeda.”
“Bin Laden is old news,” Estevez snapped. “You reported six months ago that you also had high confidence that he was dead.”
“Al-Quaeda in the Islamic Maghred,” Page said, keeping his cool, which had been his hallmark for his entire career. No one had ever witnessed his anger, it was one emotion he would never let show. His was the demeanor of the ideal public servant, calm, cool, and above all competent — a man in charge. “The group was formed originally to create an Islamic state in Algeria, but we’re sure that they’re taking part in al-Quaeda’s broader jihad. And there are others receiving IBC money. The Hizbul Mujahideen and Jaish-e-Mohammed in Pakistan and to some extent in Kashmir. Not to mention Hamas, Hizballah, and a dozen other groups — some operating locally, some globally.”
“And according to you, Octavio is somehow involved?” Estevez asked.
“Yes, by association.”
“Good God, man, what would he have to gain?”
“We don’t know that yet,” Page admitted. “But the accident will have an effect on the thirty permit applications for new nuclear plants.”
“Thirty-four,” Estevez corrected. “And Hutchinson Island was no accident, that cat is out of the bag, which’ll have a devastating effect on the permitting process. Especially with the Reverend Schlagel weighing in.”
CNN had covered one of Schlagel’s incendiary speeches about the evils of nuclear energy, and although Page had only caught a tail end of the report, the FBI had sent its file over to Dick Hanson, the Company’s deputy director of intelligence as an FYI, considering the likelihood that the attack on Hutchinson Island had been planned and conducted by non-Americans. Page had seen the DDI’s precis of the document, and just now the intriguing thought came into his head that if Schlagel were somehow connected with the IBC — no matter how far-fetched that idea might be — the Hutchinson Island attack might seem inevitable.
“Can’t do anything but help fossil fuel interests,” he said.
“Coal and natural gas.”
“Oil, too.”
“What is it that you want to do?” the president asked.
And Page sighed inwardly. He’d achieved what he’d wanted to achieve today: convince the president to let him pursue whatever Lorraine Fritch had begun. “Follow the leads we’ve already established.”
“And?”
“Take them wherever they go.”
Estevez started to object, but the president held his NSA off. “Do you think it’s possible we may be attacked again?”
“Yes, sir.”
The president nodded, a bleak expression in his eyes, in the set of his mouth. He suddenly seemed old beyond his years. But then at some point every president seemed to suddenly age overnight. “After you were sworn in I told you I wanted the truth, and I thought that you were the man to handle it. Do you remember?”
“Yes, Mr. President. I remember.”
“Then find us the truth, Walter. But with care.”
TWENTY-NINE
In the eight days after Louisiana, Eve never seemed to manage a full night’s sleep, she was so filled with the possibilities open to her now. The Nobel Prize actually meant something concrete, and when she got back to her lab at Princeton to put together the reconfiguration project for the oil rig — her oil rig — Don had told her just that. And there’d been another celebration that even Bob Krantz had shown up for via video on someone’s laptop to offer his congratulations and four million in NOAA funds. GE had promised to match that amount because the four impellers the company was building — if the thing worked — would only be the beginning of what could lead to contracts totaling in the trillions over several decades. Her project, if it ever fully developed, would be the largest single engineering job in history — larger than the Panama Canal and every nation’s space programs and military budgets combined.
And the floodgates had opened even wider when, in a second dramatic turnaround, InterOil had agreed to not only pick up the entire tab for refurbishing Vanessa Explorer to Eve’s specifications, but to supply the crew for the job, as well as the crew and offshore tug to tow the rig the southern length of the Gulf, thence up into the Straits of Florida all the way to a position offshore from Hutchinson Island — a distance of nearly nine hundred nautical miles.
It had been the oil giant’s U.S. counsel, Jane Petersen, who’d made the call, and she’d sounded friendly, even cheerful to Eve. “I want you to know that InterOil is committed to this stage of your project. Anything we can do, aside from further funding, just ask.”
“I’m overwhelmed,” Eve had told the corporate lawyer and she’d meant it.
“Believe me, Dr. Larsen, this is not about altruism. InterOil is in the business of making money, and we believe we’ll do just that with your project. We want it to succeed as much as you do.”
“For different reasons,” Eve had been unable to stop herself from taking the shot, and Don, seated across the desk from her, had been listening in and winced. But the woman had been so condescending in Baton Rouge that Eve had felt belittled.
“Of course,” the lawyer said. “But to the same ends, and I hope that you can see that. InterOil is not your
