Arctic Gold

back.

He paid no attention. The philosophical divide between the scientists and the Greenworlders had reached a fever’s pitch during the past few days. Benford had added a little fuel to the fire here and there, helping to enflame the debate, but it had scarcely been necessary. The scientists resented, deeply and angrily, the Greenworld presence here. For their part, the other four Greenworlders felt the scientists were all but betraying the human species by downplaying the world-threatening dangers of major climatic change. Richardson and that little rich bitch Cabot, in particular, were convinced that the climatologists all were deep in the hip pockets of Big Oil, that they were being paid to downplay the immediacy of the global threat.

Benford didn’t buy any of that himself. He’d joined Greenworld because the people represented by Feodor had sought him out during his trip to St. Petersburg two years ago and offered him a proposition, quite literally an offer he couldn’t refuse.

He wished now he had refused it. Things were getting entirely too nasty, too risky personally. The trouble was, he’d gotten into this mess step by tiny step, had never seen ahead of time where the bastards were leading him.

Two years before, he’d been a very junior sales rep for Wildcat Technologies, a Houston-based firm that manufactured high-tech drilling equipment for the petroleum industry… especially for certain highly specialized deep-ocean drilling rigs.

In 2006, Benford had been sent to Russia with a WT sales team to negotiate a $500 million deal. A Russian petroleum company was interested in the new robotic drilling rigs that could actually work on the seabed itself, and the order for a single test rig alone would have guaranteed Wildcat’s success.

Unfortunately, doing any business in Russia at all these days was an ongoing exercise in frustration, unforeseen expense, and delay. The Russian mafia had its hand in everything-including in the Russian petroleum industry, it turned out-which meant they had to be paid off before any negotiations could even begin. That half-billion-dollar deal would cost 10 percent, an extra 50 million, just to get to the talking stage, and there’d be another 10 percent in fees, bribes, and special considerations for each consignment shipped into the country.

And Wildcat Technologies, frankly, was on the ropes. They’d developed the Deepsea platform over the past ten years at considerable expense, and they’d overextended on the loans needed to begin production. So far, though, none of the big global petro companies had shown more than an initial and passing interest. The Canadians were intrigued, but there were some governmental barriers there on both sides of the border… and way too many rumors that Mobil and Exxon both were working on their own versions of the Deepsea drilling technology.

The Russians could make or break Wildcat Technology with this one order, and that extra 10 to 20 percent on the red side of the ledgers might well have killed the entire deal.

And then Benford had met Masha.

Maria Antoninova. She’d been one of the interpreters for the sales team in Russia, blond, leggy, and drop-dead gorgeous. They’d flirted, harmlessly enough… and then one evening after a particularly discouraging round of negotiations with the reps from Russian Petro-Gas, he’d come back to his hotel room to find her naked and waiting for him in the bed.

The next morning she’d told him that she might know some people who could help.

And, in fact, Feodor had been most helpful. The barriers, the difficulties, the need for yet another round of high-level approvals and special payments, all had vanished as if by magic. Benford had been able to secure several signatures in particular that had opened up a whole new world of possibilities for Wildcat, including no less than Putin’s signature on a long-term agreement for continued sales and service that would guarantee Wildcat’s survival for the next decade.

It hadn’t hurt that the unexpected turnaround had transformed Benford, the very junior member of the sales team, into Houston’s fair-haired boy, with promises of a big raise and bonuses that would set him up very well in the years ahead.

And all he’d had to do in exchange was make a promise to join a bunch of tree-hugger freaks out to save the planet… and maybe do a little job for Golytsin later on, when the time was right. Where was the harm in that?

Joining Greenworld had been simple enough. Apparently, the Russians already had people-sleepers, they called them-planted inside the organization, though Benford still had no idea what interest the Russians could possibly have with the environmental activists. He’d joined the American branch of Greenworld by contacting one of their agents in California and happily gone back to work in Houston for more money than he’d dreamed was possible. Not only that, but it turned out, just by chance, that Masha was now working in Houston for a travel agency and she’d wanted to keep seeing him. Benford was married already, but Masha hadn’t minded in the least seeing him as his mistress while he stayed married to Georgette. Life had been good. So very good.

Benford reached the far end of the aisle, set down the gasoline, and looked around. Yeah, this would work okay. And he might not get another chance, not one as good as this, anyway. Both Larson and Richardson were here, with no one else around. There wouldn’t be a better time.

He was terrified. Could he go through with it?

He had to. That was the problem. He had to. There was no other way out.

Benford had thought he was home free. As a member of Greenworld, he received a certain amount of junk mail and computer spam, but he hadn’t been expected to do anything. He’d not even had to attend any meetings. Then, just five weeks ago, his contact had phoned him and told him it was time to make good on his promise.

When he’d learned what was involved, what was expected of him, he’d done his best to back out and renegotiate the deal. Three weeks in the Arctic… God, there was a reason he liked living on the Texas gulf, despite the mosquitoes and the cockroaches. And what they wanted him to do…

He’d tried to get out of it; he really had. He’d threatened to go to the authorities and blow this filthy thing wide open. But it seemed the bastards had been filming him and Masha in that hotel room through a one-way mirror, both that first night and on some of their subsequent trysts over the two years since.

If he didn’t do precisely what he’d been ordered to do, Georgette would find out about Masha. Worse, his bosses at Wildcat would receive convincing documentation suggesting he’d been feeding the Russians highly proprietary information on Deepsea drilling technology, passing it through Masha to Moscow.

It meant utter ruination-losing his wife and his job and his overpriced house with its pool and hot tub and expensive back deck. It meant blacklisting in the industry and a very expensive lawsuit, and probably criminal charges and jail as well.

But if he did this thing, just this one thing, his handlers would turn him loose. He’d have the negatives of him and Masha and the incriminating documents to do with as he pleased. And he’d have a half-million dollars besides.

Yeah… an offer he couldn’t refuse.

The whole thing didn’t make an ounce of sense. The Cold War was over, right? The Russians were friends now, friends and business partners. It wasn’t like they were asking him to steal military secrets or betray his country or anything like that.

But to actually kill someone…

Golytsin had explained with great care why he had to do this, and do it this way. A simple murder wasn’t enough. The murder had to look like it had been committed by one of the NOAA officers. Otherwise, it would all be for nothing… and Benford would lose everything he’d worked for since leaving college.

He didn’t like the idea of murder, but it wasn’t nearly as bad as the alternative…

British Airways Flight 2112 200 miles southeast of Nova Scotia 1710 hours EDT

Charlie Dean sat in 7A, a window seat in tourist class, looking down on the brightly sunlit waters of the western Atlantic. Tommy… dead?

No. God damn it, no! It made no sense whatsoever. Tommy Karr had been a good agent, but more important, he’d been a lucky agent. At times, it had seemed like nothing could touch the exuberant young giant with the unkempt blond hair and unfailing grin.

Everyone back at NSA headquarters had been shaken by the news… no, stunned. It just didn’t seem possible that Tommy was gone.

Damn it, this was going to hit Lia hard. Her relationship with Karr had been a thorny one, full of jabs and put-