FIFTY-ONE
Kirk McGarvey was cut from a different material than any other man Eve Larsen had ever met, and yet there’d been the brief moment in New York and again in Oslo, where she thought that she’d known him all of her life. In several ways she’d been reminded of her father’s strength and unshakable self-assurance that what he was doing, that the direction his life was leading, was correct. And yet, like her father who’d understood his place as a low-paid mill worker, and had accepted his lot in life, even though he didn’t like it, there was a sadness in McGarvey’s eyes that Eve was familiar and even comfortable with.
Standing at one of the large plate-glass windows looking down at the flotilla — Schlagel’s flotilla — that had started gathering three hours ago, she thought about him, and wondered where he was and why he hadn’t warned her. He’d come aboard yesterday but she’d been too busy, too excited, even a little overwhelmed by the progress they were making to take much notice until this very moment.
“They’re buffoons,” Don said at her side.
She looked at him. “Enough of them to easily take over this platform. Even Kirk and whomever he brought with him wouldn’t be able to stop them.”
Don glared at her. “Those fools out there don’t intend to hurt us. They’re making their stupid mumbojumbo fundamentalist points by calling us names. And the only reason they came out here this morning is because of the news conference. I wouldn’t be surprised if one of the networks tipped them off. The bastard is gathering sound bites, and once the TV guys are gone, the mob will head home, and we can finally get underway.”
She wanted to believe it was that simple. But the incident in Oslo had deeply shaken her, and made her wonder how the situation might have turned out if McGarvey hadn’t been there. Jacobsen, who would recover, had taken the bullet for her, but it was McGarvey’s fast action, pushing her down to the walkway and covering her body with his, that may have saved her life.
“The man’s a magnet for trouble,” Don said as if he’d read her mind. “I looked him up online, what little there is that makes any sense involves him in at least a half-dozen incidents in which there was a shooting, and in one case the car bomb a few years ago in Georgetown. Yet he was actually picked to head the CIA — which proved what I’ve always said about Washington — and we had Nine/eleven.”
“There were larger issues than just one man,” Eve argued. She was no politician, though it was something she would have to become if her project really did blossom after the Vanessa Explorer experiment, because she was going to need funding — government funding on a very large scale. And neither was Don, politically savvy, even if he believed otherwise. But she felt a surge of affection for him, because he was just trying to be worldly for her sake. An arm around her shoulder to assure her that everything would turn out all right.
The rig’s interphone buzzed, and Josh Taylor, a gangly grad-school tech from the U.P. Michigan, picked it up. He was working on his doctoral thesis, under Eve’s supervision, on saline variations in the Gulf Stream and their effects on energy distribution among eddy currents compared with industrial- and farm-produced dust concentrations in the atmosphere and their effects on low-pressure systems in the prevailing westerlies across the North American continent. He held up the phone. “For you, Eve.”
“Anyway, he’s been a help to me,” Eve told Don. “So try to be at least civil to him, okay?”
He managed a brief smile. “You’re the boss,” he said. But it looked like he was angry or maybe just as frightened as she wanted to be, but trying to hide it.
Defloria was on the phone. “The helicopter is twenty minutes out.”
“Any last-minute no-shows?” Eve asked.
“No such luck, Doctor. And you can bet that the first questions they’re going to ask won’t be about your work, but about the circus outside.”
“I’m starting to get used to it, but I’ll depend on you to answer their questions about the platform.”
“No problem,” Defloria said. “The reception area has been set up on the main deck in front of the housing superstructure. The wind shifted, so we had to switch sides. We can start and end there, if that’s okay with you.”
“Just fine,” Eve said. “I’ll need about ten or fifteen minutes for my opening remarks and initial questions and then we can either come directly up here, or head below.”
“We’ll start at the top and work our way down,” Defloria said. “See you on deck in about fifteen minutes?”
“Yes,” Eve said. “Have you seen Mr. McGarvey this morning?”
“No. Would you like me to find him for you?”
“Not necessary,” Eve said a little too quickly, and when she hung up she saw Don looking at her.
Defloria’s people had set up two dozen folding chairs facing a small podium equipped with a portable PA system out of the wind in the lee of housing. All work aboard the rig, except for normal maintenance, had been suspended for the afternoon, and the platform was eerily quiet so that when Eve came out on deck she heard the heavy chop of the incoming InterOil helicopter from Gulfport.
She had decided to change into clean white coveralls rather than a blazer and the khaki slacks she’d worn for her presentations despite Don’s objections.
“You’re a good-looking woman. People appreciate it.”
“I’m a scientist, not a Rockette,” she’d countered, and now glancing up at the control-room windows, she saw her techs watching her, but Don wasn’t with them, and she was a little disappointed.
Defloria came out of a hatch with a slightly built and attractive woman and they walked over to where Eve was standing next to the podium. “Don’t think you’ve met,” he said, introducing her as Kirk McGarvey’s partner at the NNSA. “Ms. Newby will be tagging along for the tour.”
They shook hands and Eve got the distinct impression that the woman was carrying a chip on her shoulder; she seemed to be angry about something, but was keeping it just beneath the surface. Her smile was forced.
“I don’t think we have,” Gail said. “But Kirk has certainly told me a lot about you.”
“All of it good, I hope,” Eve said in an effort to keep it light. “Will he be joining us?”
“No, Doctor, it’ll just be me. And as far as the media is concerned I’m just one of Mr. Defloria’s gofers.”
“Are you expecting trouble?” Eve asked, but instead of letting her off the hook Gail merely shrugged.
And approaching the platform from the northwest, the InterOil helicopter flared above the landing pad, and they watched as it touched down. Several of Defloria’s people were up there to meet the media people, hand them hard hats, and then guide them down to the corridor that led across the rear of the platform.
“Do you want me to introduce you?” Defloria asked.
“No need,” Eve said, and although she’d done dozens of these things she was still nervous, her Nobel and the UAEIBC funding notwithstanding. Thankfully this would be her last media event until the Hutchinson Island experiment either succeeded or failed. “The damn thing works,” Don’s comment aboard the
The media people came through the hatch onto the main deck, and Defloria went over to help them around the maze of piping, cabling, and pumps to the reception area out of the wind. At first some of them looked and acted like tourists in white hard hats, rubbernecking the seemingly haphazard superstructures, spindly cranes, and the remnants of the drilling tower. Gail had moved to one side, well away from the podium, trying to be as inconspicuous as possible, just another deckhand or roustabout, and Eve had to smile, because the woman wasn’t so bright after all. She stuck out like a sore thumb. Kirk’s picking her as his partner was a mystery, and oddly it made her relax a little.
She went to the podium as the television people took light readings, while a couple of the reporters looked at her as if they were examining a bug under a microscope, the same sort of reaction she’d gotten for the past year and a half, maybe more intense now because of the Nobel Prize and because of where they were and why they’d come. The Fox cameraman was panning from left to right across the main deck and then out at Schlagel’s flotilla, before turning back in a complete three-sixty until he focused on Eve.
“Anytime you’re ready,” she said as the reporters settled down.
Lloyd Adams, from ABC, glanced over his shoulder at his cameraman who nodded, and he in turn inclined his
