entire island was quickly clouded in thick black smoke, which hid the inferno below.
Across the bay, Zhou stood in astonishment as he watched the flames spread across the terminal complex. Staring at the decrepit freighter as it wallowed and rolled onto its side after the fire inside melted its innards, he grasped to comprehend what kind of suicidal maniac would destroy himself in such a rage.
***
A mile away from Zhou's dock, a faded white runabout motored slowly off Cezi Island. Concealed beneath a low-slung canvas tarp, a coffee-skinned man lay on the bow, surveying the burning holocaust ashore through the lens of a small telescope affixed to a laser sight. Appraising the damage with an upturned grin of satisfaction, he disassembled the laser device and accompanying wireless transmitter that minutes before had relayed course directions to the rusty derelict's automatic navigation system. As smoke drifted over the water, the man hoisted a stainless steel suitcase over the gunnel and gently let it slip from his fingers. A few seconds later, the suitcase and its high-tech components found a permanent home under three inches of soft mud in the murky depths of Ningbo Harbor.
The man turned to the boat's pilot, exposing a long scar that ran across the left side of his face.
'To the city marina,' he directed in a low voice. 'I have a plane to catch.'
***
The fires raged for a day and a half before the port fire control authorities extinguished the blaze. A fast acting trio of tugboats saved the oil tanker from destruction, converging on the big ship through flaming waters and shoving the mammoth vessel into the bay, where the shipboard fires were quickly controlled.
The onshore facilities were less fortunate. The Cezi Island terminal was completely destroyed, taking the lives of ten oil workers. An additional half-dozen crewmen from the supertanker were still missing and presumed dead.
When investigators were finally able to board the mystery derelict, they were stumped to find no bodies aboard. The eyewitness accounts were beginning to sound correct. It was a deserted ship that had seemingly sailed itself. Unknown in the local waters, the ship was traced by insurance agents back to a Malaysian ship broker who had sold it at auction to a scrap dealer. The scrap dealer had vanished, and his business turned out to be a shell company with a phony address and no traceable links.
Investigators speculated a disgruntled former crew was to blame, angered with the ship's captain and setting the vessel ablaze in revenge. The 'Mystery Fire Ship of Ningbo,' as it came to be known locally, had sailed to a fiery demise at the Cezi Island terminal by sheer luck. Hang Zhou suspected otherwise, however, and forever believed that somebody had guided the ship of death to shore.
-12-
'Jan, we're on in ten minutes in the Gold Conference Room. Can I get you a coffee before we start?'
Jan Montague Clayton stared at the coworker standing in her doorway like he'd just landed from Mars.
'Harvey, my urine has turned the color of cappuccino, and there's enough caffeine in my bloodstream to fuel the space shuttle. But thanks anyway. I'll be along in a moment.'
'I'll make sure the projection system is set up,' Harvey replied sheepishly, then disappeared down the corridor.
Clayton couldn't count the number of coffees she had consumed in the last two days, but knew it had been her primary sustenance. Since the news of the earthquake at Ras Tanura had broken the day before, she had been glued to her desk, developing economic impact assessments while quietly gathering oil company reactions from the slate of industry insiders that filled her Rolodex. Only a brief foray to her stylish apartment in the East Village at two in the morning for a catnap and change of clothes had offered a respite from the state of chaos that surrounded her.
As a senior commodities research analyst for the investment banking firm of Goldman Sachs, Clayton was used to working twelve-hour days. But as a specialist in oil and natural gas futures, she was unprepared for the fallout from Ras Tanura. Every sales associate and fund manager in the firm seemed to be calling her, crying for advice on how to handle their clients' accounts. She finally had to unplug her phone in order to concentrate, while steering well clear of her e-mail account. Taking a last look at some oil export figures, she stood and patted down her beige Kay Unger suit, then picked up a laptop computer and headed for the door. Against her better judgment, she stopped suddenly and wheeled back toward the desk, where she scooped up a ceramic cup half full of coffee.
The conference room was a packed house, the mostly male crowd waiting anxiously for her report. As Harvey opened the meeting with a brief economic overview, Clayton studied the audience. The sprinkling of partners and senior managers was easy to spot, their premature-gray hair and paunch bellies signaling the lifetime of hours spent inside the building's walls. At the other spectrum were the younger sales associates, cutthroat and aggressive in their desire to climb the firm's ladder to the holy land of seniority, where seven-figure year-end bonuses were regularly pocketed. Half of the overpaid and overworked investment professionals didn't care whether Clayton's predictions would be accurate or not so long as they had someone to blame for their trades. Yet those who paid attention quickly learned that Clayton knew her stuff. In the short time she had been with the firm, she had already acquired the reputation as a savvy analyst with an uncanny ability to predict trends in the market.
'And Jan will now discuss the current state of the oil markets,' Harvey concluded, passing the stage to Clayton. Plugging her laptop into the projection system, she waited a moment for her PowerPoint presentation to appear on the screen. Harvey walked to the side of the conference room and closed the blinds of a large picture window that offered an impressive view of lower Manhattan from the Broad Street high-rise.
'Ladies and gentlemen, this is Ras Tanura,' she began, speaking in a soft but confident voice. A map of Saudi Arabia jumped to the screen, followed by photos of an oil refinery and storage tanks.
'Ras Tanura is Saudi Arabia's largest oil and liquid natural gas export terminal. Or was, rather, until yesterday's massive earthquake. Damage assessments are still under way, but it appears that nearly sixty percent of the refinery was destroyed by fire and that at least half of the storage facilities suffered major structural damage.'
'How does that impact oil exports?' interrupted a jug-eared man named Eli, munching on a doughnut as he spoke.
'Hardly at all,' Clayton replied, pausing to let Eli take the bait.
'Then why the big oil shock?' he asked, crumbs spraying off his lips.
'Most of the refinery's output is utilized by the Saudis themselves. What will impact oil exports is the damage incurred to the pipelines and shipping terminals.' Another image appeared on the screen, showing a dozen supertankers docked at the Sea Island loading terminal.
'Those floating terminals should have been safe from the earthquake at sea,' someone commented from the rear of the room.
'Not when the epicenter of the earthquake was less than two miles away,' Clayton countered. 'And those aren't floating terminals, they are fixed in the seabed. Shifting sediments from the earthquake caused a complete collapse of this offshore terminal, which is known as Sea Island. The Sea Island terminal handles the largest of the supertankers and that capacity has been completely wiped out. Several additional shore-based loading piers were destroyed as well. It appears that over ninety percent of Ras Tanura's export infrastructure has been damaged or destroyed. That is why there has been a 'big oil shock,' ' she said, staring at Eli.
A hushed gloom fell over the room. Finally finishing his doughnut, Eli broke the silence.
'Jan, what kind of volume does that translate to?'
'Nearly six million barrels a day of Saudi export oil will immediately be removed from the supply chain.'
'Isn't that nearly ten percent of the daily world demand?' a senior associate asked.
'It's closer to seven percent, but you get the picture.'
Clayton brought up the next slide, which showed the recent spike in price of a barrel of West Texas intermediate crude oil, as traded on the New York Mercantile Exchange.
'As you know, the markets have reacted with their usual rabid hysteria, blasting the spot price of crude to over one hundred twenty-five dollars a barrel in the last twenty-four hours. Those of you in equities have already
