Tony’s partners remained silent, looking at Tony to answer the question. Tony leaned back in his chair. “Our customers’ research is proprietary. Our team has been given a finite budget for scientific inquiry and anything we can do to use our resources wisely might help us stretch it further.”
Stefanie stilled. “Oh, who is your customer?”
“We all represent businesspeople in our respective countries collaborating on research for mining work.” Tony gave her a patronizing smile. “They prefer for us to be the face of their business – you have to understand, the business they are in is very competitive. They value discretion, and we don’t want to undercut their value proposition. I can say they’re working with unusual materials and will be providing their own sensors. We just need someone to help us deploy the equipment and retrieve it when the time comes.”
Stefanie’s heart began to pound. She didn’t need Waffle to understand that the CIA had every right to be worried. Even if she’d never gotten the call from her sister, Tony’s team’s desire for total anonymity would be raising red flags. If the circumstances were different, she’d be calling Cole as soon as they left to communicate her misgivings. After giving Joey grief about it at their first meeting, she was a little self-conscious about feigning ignorance, but she didn’t have a lot of other options. “Oh, of course. We’ll steer clear of specifics, then.” Stefanie gestured to the small-scale OEG model on the conference room table. “Our standard research platform can be customized to your needs if you can explain what you need to us.” Waffle chewed on his toy but as soon as he noticed her looking at him, he began to smell the air. He stood and she gave him a pat, as she would any family dog. He stretched and got closer to Tony’s briefcase. He fully laid down, pointing his nose at it, almost willing the poor daft human to figure out it smelled like something important. Her pulse drummed in her ears, but she decided to press just a little harder. “Is there a specific type of research equipment you will need?”
“We will be happy to request anything from you we don’t already have. If we provide you with dimensions, could you leave a blank space or a bracket that could hold our product on your frame?” Tony examined the model. “We’d really just need you to secure our equipment to your frame and include your transmitters.”
Stefanie exchanged a look with Joey. He’d been silent up to this point, letting her take the lead. When he answered, his voice was slow and easy. “Sure. Whatever you want, we can build it. Just let us know how you would like for us to fasten your parts to the frame of the platform. Can you tell us what kind of measurement equipment you’re using? The communication equipment we send down can be sensitive to electrical interference. I wouldn’t want to pair up your equipment with anything of ours that would cause problems with the readings.”
“I’m glad to hear you have such a thorough approach to your work.” Tony smiled. “Not to worry, we’d never send anything down that would interfere with your equipment. We’ll check that.” He rose and shook both of their hands, although his tone was more like that of a parent talking to a child. It was a wonder he didn’t pat Joey on the head and send him away. “We’re in a hurry, you understand. Our previous plan to start the exploration was delayed, and we only have until the end of the month to stay on schedule. We’d like to start by testing a single prototype before deploying it in a number of locations, so anywhere you typically complete your prototype testing is fine. If you have a spot in shallower waters, perhaps nearer to the coast, that will help us minimize the cost of our initial testing. Do you have any availability in the next week? That would make the decision quite easy for our clients.”
His colleagues began to gather their things and Stefanie fought to hide her panic. Their only lead was ready to walk, and they didn’t even know why one of these guys smelled like Dmitri yet. They needed more time. While her internal panic had lasted less than a second, Joey picked up on it. “We can try to make that work. We are going out to pull some data tomorrow from one of our platforms. You could tag along, and I could show you some concepts for your specialized bracket to make sure we can meet your deadline. Do you have dimensions for me to work with?”
One of Tony’s heretofore silent associates stood. Apparently, the meeting was over. “Yes. We’ll come out on the boat to see how you gather data. Our proprietary equipment will be self-contained.” Oliver pulled a sheet of paper out of his bag that listed the outside dimensions and a drawing. The drawing consisted of a large container with a rounded edge. Well, if she wasn’t suspicious before, she definitely was now. He’d handed her a detailed drawing of…a box. She wished she could hear Joey’s thoughts and know what they were supposed to do. Waffle stood and sniffed the paper. She gave him a friendly pat and he wagged his tail but didn’t alert. Instead, he stood at her thigh, leaning against her exposed side. She did some quick math on the dimensions. There would be room for the equipment they used to connect their research platform to the transmission buoy, but that was it.
Stefanie tapped a finger on the paper. “It will take up nearly the entire research platform. We’ll use our standard location tracking equipment on it. That will allow us to collect the data regularly and retrieve the equipment when your experiment is complete.”
“That’s good news.”
