The Covenant Of The Flame

by David Morrell

  Ninety minutes later, Malone requested confirmation of the Argonaut's speed, determined the tanker's position on the chart, satisfied himself that the first reef had been avoided, and turned to order another course correction. As he did so, he bumped his cup of coffee, knocking it onto the floor. 'Shit! Get someone to clean this up! Ten degrees starboard!'

  'Aye, aye, Captain. Ten degrees starboard.'

  The control room became tensely silent.

  The sonar screen flickered.

  'Captain, the maintenance crew has located the problem. We're ready to… There. The sonar's functional.'

  'I told you. A minor problem. No need to stop.'

  Malone and his officers leaned forward to study the suddenly glowing console.

  'Jesus,' someone said.

  Malone clasped a hand to his mouth.

  The outline of a reef flashed before him. At the same time, a sickening, rumbling crunch shook the supertanker's hull. As Malone lost his balance and fell to his knees, the coffee he'd spilled soaked his trousers. Legs wet, he gaped down in shock as another crunch shook the tanker. The coffee. So dark. So much like…

  FIVE

  'Good evening. This is Dan Rather. CBS News. The worst oil spill in history continues to become more catastrophic. Since striking a reef off Australia 's eastern coast yesterday, the Argonaut - a Pacific-Rim Petroleum Corporation supertanker – remains in danger of sinking while efforts to contain its cargo have been alarmingly ineffectual. An estimated thirty million gallons of crude oil now pollute the formerly pristine Coral Sea. Prevailing currents direct the spill toward one of the world's finest natural wonders, the thousand-mile-long Great Barrier Reef. Ecologists predict that, unless a miracle occurs, the delicate microscopic organisms that form the basis of the reef will be destroyed, and along with those organisms, the Great Barrier itself will be destroyed. As our correspondent in Brisbane explains, yet another magnificent and irreplaceable glory of our planet is about to cease to exist.'

  SIX

  Australia.

  Captain Victor Malone, trembling, haggard, left the Brisbane courthouse where he'd been interrogated throughout the day about the mistaken directions he'd given his watch officer to avoid the reef that the Argonaut had struck. Ten degrees port,' he'd insisted he'd told his subordinates.

  But ten degrees starboard is what his watch officer and helmsman insisted they'd heard. Fools! No, cowards! That's what they were! Damned disloyal cowards! They didn't have the guts to stand by their captain! Some of them even claimed they suspected he'd been drinking!

  A good thing no one had thought to test his blood until twelve hours after the accident. The chemical analysis would be inconclusive. If a small trace of alcohol did show up in his blood, Malone could always claim that he'd had a drink to steady himself after the helicopter had flown him ashore.

  As Malone left the courthouse and photographers snapped his picture, he raised his arm to shield his face and stumbled angrily down the courthouse steps through the crowd toward the car he'd hired to take him away. His muscles shuddered. A vodka martini, he kept assuring himself.

  All I need is…

  If I can manage to escape these bastard reporters…

  A martini!

  That'll set my mind straight!

  Malone jabbed his elbow into a photographer's chest, shoved the doubled-over man aside, oblivious to his anguished moan, and reached the hired car. But the dark sedan was empty. Where the hell was the driver? Sure, Malone thought. The son of a bitch! He ran! The crowd made him panic! He's a coward, the same as my officers!

  Malone lunged behind the steering wheel, slammed the door shut, jerked the ignition key, stomped the accelerator, and roared from the courthouse.

  While he veered around a corner, grinning, free, eager to taste his martinis, his body erupted, as did his car.

  The explosion – which he never heard – sprayed blood, bone, hair, and chunks of metal for thirty yards in every direction.

  The site of the blast had been perfectly chosen. As Dan Rather explained the next evening, 'It appears that the method was deliberate and selective. No one else was injured. Only the Argonaut's captain died.'

  SEVEN

  Hong Kong.

  Chandler Thompson, chief executive officer of the Pacific-Rim Petroleum Corporation, strained not to squint from the glare of TV lights while he stood authoritatively straight behind a podium on a platform, addressing a throng of reporters in the conference room of Pac-Rim's headquarters. Forty-eight, with stern chiseled features, he'd been extremely reluctant to agree to this press conference, but the mounting furor about the disaster left him no choice. He had to diffuse the controversy and bolster Pac-Rim's devastated reputation. His thousand-dollar suit was impeccably pressed. He'd made sure to button its coat before he strode with military bearing into the room and onto the platform.

  'Were we aware that Captain Malone had a drinking problem?… No. It's stringent corporate policy that all of our crewmen abstain from alcohol while on duty and for twenty-four hours prior to boarding a Pacific-Rim vessel… Do we test samples of their blood to insure that they abide by the rule? It's never seemed necessary. Our officers are rigorously screened before they're hired. We have utmost confidence in our personnel. Captain Malone's violation of the rules was a singular exception. There's no reason to question the professionalism of our other officers, but yes, from now on, we do intend to administer random blood tests to check for alcohol and drugs… Have we any idea who's responsible for the murder of Captain Malone? The police continue to investigate. It would be premature for us to make unwarranted accusations… Our delay in responding to the oil spill? What delay? The containment team snapped into action the moment we learned of the accident… Insufficient staff? Lack of training and preparation? Minimal equipment? Nonsense. We were ready for any emergency…One at a time, please. I didn't hear the question…That's true. Several members of the containment team were at home asleep at the time of the accident, but our night-shift supervisor immediately alerted them. I assure you, from now on, our night crew will operate at the same strength as our day crew… No, unfortunately we haven't been able to prevent the Argonaut from discharging more of its cargo… Thirty million gallons to date? I regret to say that's correct. Efforts to keep the oil from spreading have so far proved futile. Portions of the Great Barrier Reef, to my great sorrow, have indeed been contaminated… Repeat the question, please… Yes, some containment equipment did malfunction. Rumors of disorganization? Confusion? A twenty-four-hour delay? Why didn't the Argonaut have a reinforced double hull so the reef couldn't rupture the cargo's interior wall? Before I answer further questions, I want to assure you that the Pacific-Rim Petroleum Corporation is a responsible, public-minded…'

  Harried movement on Thompson's left distracted him. A nervous Pac-Rim executive stepped onto the platform, hurrying forward with a folded note. The executive's face was ashen. You idiot, Thompson thought. You'll ruin…! For God's sake, don't you know enough not to interrupt me? We have to keep up a show of confidence. I was just about to…!

  Repressing a furious scowl, Thompson took the note and mentally vowed to fire the executive the moment the press conference ended.

  'Excuse me, ladies and gentlemen,' Thompson told the reporters. Straining to look dignified, he opened the note, scanned its typewritten message, and instantly forgot his rage. His heart pumped so fast that he felt dizzy. He grasped the podium for support. The note seemed to swirl.

  OUR BRISBANE OFFICE REPORTS KEVIN STARK, DIRECTOR OF CONTAINMENT PLANNING,

  Stark! Yet another executive whom Thompson planned to fire. The bastard's preparations for controlling a major oil spill had been abysmally inadequate. It was Stark's fault that containment procedures had been delayed because of insufficient staff and ill-maintained equipment. It was Stark's fault that the oil had reached and was killing the Great Barrier Reef.

  WAS FOUND AN HOUR AGO, DROWNED, HIS BODY UPSIDE DOWN IN A BARREL OF OIL.

  R
eporters responded to Thompson's evident shock and crowded toward him, shouting further questions. Still dizzy, suddenly thirsty, he groped for a glass of water on the podium. As Thompson swallowed the water, he noted its bitter aftertaste and abruptly gasped, fire coursing through his stomach. His legs felt knocked from under him. Photographers flashed more pictures. Video cameras whirred while Thompson dropped the glass, fell to his knees, clutched his stomach, gasped again, and pitched forward, dead before he hit the platform, but not before blood spewed from his mouth, spattering the front row of reporters.

  EIGHT

  Houston, Texas.

  Virgil Krause, the newly appointed chief executive officer of the Pacific-Rim Petroleum Corporation, urgently thrust documents into his briefcase, about to rush from his top-floor office in Pac-Rim's American headquarters. An hour from now, he was due at Houston 's Intercontinental Airport, where a company jet made frantic preparations to speed him to Hong Kong. Krause was forty, in excellent health, known for his energy and resilience, but already the shock of his sudden promotion had made him breathless. He'd been able to spare just five minutes to phone his wife and explain his new responsibilities. She would join him in Hong Kong as soon as possible. Meanwhile, Krause anticipated an intense, mostly sleepless flight during which he would not only have to review the mistakes that had caused the Argonaut disaster but would also have to come up with solutions for cleaning the spill and avoiding another one.

  More to the point, Krause wouldn't get much sleep on the flight because he feared that the promotion he'd so often prayed for would be his damnation.

  Malone, Stark, and Thompson. Their brutal deaths had been as startling as the Argonaut disaster.

  Will I be next? Krause thought, his hands trembling as he shut his briefcase.

  A secretary intercepted Krause as he darted from his office. This telegram just came for you, sir.'

  Krause crammed it into his suit-coat pocket. 'Got to hurry. I'll read it on the plane.'

  'But the messenger said it was urgent. He insisted you read it as soon as possible.'

  Krause faltered, yanked the telegram from his pocket, and tore it open.

  The three sentences made him more breathless.

  MISTAKES DEMAND PUNISHMENT. DON'T LET THE ARGONAUT HAPPEN AGAIN. THE LORD IS YOUR WITNESS.

  'GOD BLESS'

  ONE

  Manhattan.

  In her office on the fifteenth floor of a soot-dinged building on Broadway near Thirty-Second Street, Tess Drake set a reproduction of a painting onto her desk. The painting, by an early nineteenth-century artist, was a colorful representation of a wooded slope in the Adirondack Mountains in upper New York State. Typical of his time, the artist had idealized the wilderness, making it so romantically lush, so idyllic and gardenlike that the painting seemed an advertisement for pioneers to settle there, an American Eden.

  Next to the painting, Tess set a photograph, dated 1938, of a similar section of the Adirondack Mountains. Because of limitations in color photography during that period, the hues weren't as brilliant as in the painting. A further contrast was that the photograph didn't idealize the landscape but rather presented the forested peaks realistically, the cluttered chaotic woods more impressive as a consequence.

  Finally Tess set down a photograph, taken last week, of the slope depicted in the 1938 photograph, and now the contrast was startling, not because improvements in color photography made the hues vivid. Quite the contrary. The image was alarmingly drab, disturbingly lusterless. Except for a hazy blue sky, there were almost no colors. No green of lush foliage. Only a muddy brown, as if something had gone wrong when the film was developed, and indeed something had gone wrong, but it hadn't happened in the processing lab. It had happened in the air, in the clouds, in the rain. This section of the forest had been killed by acid in the water that was supposed to nourish it. The trees, denuded of leaves, looked obscenely skeletal, the grassless slope cursed.

  Tess leaned back in disgust to study the sequence of images. They made their depressing point so effectively that the article she was preparing to write to accompany them couldn't possibly be as strong, although of course the article had to be written, just as she'd written God knows how many others on related environmental disasters, in the hope that people would at last respond to the global crisis. Her commitment explained why, despite lucrative employment offers from such mainstream publications as Cosmopolitan and Vanity Fair, she'd chosen to work for Earth Mother Magazine. She felt an obligation to the planet.

  Granted – she readily admitted – it wasn't any sacrifice for her to be idealistic. At the age of twenty-eight, while most of her contemporaries seemed obsessed with money, she had the benefit of a trust fund from her late grandfather that gave her the freedom to be indifferent to the temptation of high-paying jobs. Ironically, that trust fund provided not only independence but a motive for her to devote herself to environmental causes, for the considerable money in that trust fund had come from her grandfather's extremely successful chemical factories, the improperly discarded wastes from which had killed rivers and contaminated drinking water throughout several sections of New Jersey and Pennsylvania. It gave Tess satisfaction to think that she was doing her best to make amends.

  She was statuesque, five-feet-nine, with cropped blond hair, attractive glowing features, and a sinewy sensuous figure that she kept in shape with a daily workout at a health club near her loft in SoHo. Her eyes were crystal blue, her only makeup a slight touch of lipstick. Jeans, sneakers, and a cotton pullover were her favorite clothes. She reached toward an apple in a well-stocked bowl on her desk, savored the taste of the fruit, sensed someone behind her, and turned toward a man in the open doorway to her office.

  'Working late again?' The man's eyes crinkled. 'You'll make me feel ashamed for going home.' His name was Walter Trask. The editor of Earth Mother Magazine, he had his suitcoat draped over the arm of his wrinkled white shirt. His top button and his tie were open. Fifty-five, portly, he had gray thinning hair and paler gray, sagging cheeks.

  'Late?' Tess glanced at her watch. 'Good Lord, is it seven o'clock already? I've been putting together my piece on acid rain. I guess I got so involved I-'

  'Tomorrow, Tess. Give yourself a break, and do it tomorrow. The planet will manage to survive till then. But.you won't last much longer if you don't go easy on yourself.'

  Tess shrugged self-consciously. 'I suppose I could use a swim.'

  Trask shook his head. 'How I wish I had your energy.'

  'Vitamins and exercise.'

  'What I need is thirty less years. Have you read the papers? The murders at the Pac-Rim Corporation after the spill. What do you think?'

  Tess raised her shoulders. 'It's obvious.'

  'Oh?'

  'The spill pissed somebody off.'

  'Sure.' Trask sighed. 'That's not what I meant. Do you think we should do a story on it?'

  'Earth Mother Magazine isn't a tabloid. The spill's the story. Not the murders. They're a sidebar. A small one. Fanatics hurt our cause. Too many people think that we're fanatics, exaggerating the threat to-'

  'Sure,' Trask said again. 'But our profit-and-loss statement's in the red. If we could… Well… Never mind. Lock up when you leave, will you, Tess? And soon, okay?'

  'Word of honor.'

  'Good. See you tomorrow, kid.' His shoulders stooped, Trask walked down the hallway, disappearing.

  A half-minute later, Tess heard the elevator descend. She finished her apple, assessed the artwork for her article, and decided that Trask was right – she needed a break. But the trouble was, she knew that after her swim at the health club, after a shower, a walk home, a salad, a meatless tomato sauce on pasta (with plenty of mushrooms, onions, and green peppers), she'd still feel compelled to work on the article. So in spite of Trask's advice, she packed up her artwork and two boxes of research, slung her purse across her shoulder, hefted both boxes as well as her clipboard of legal-sized yellow notepaper, used an elbow to shut off her o
ffice light switch, and proceeded along the hallway, elbowing other light switches as she passed them.

  A further nudge of her elbow turned on the intruder alarm… Stepping back from the infrared beam, she fumbled to open and close the door, which locked behind her automatically. In a small waiting area, she nudged her arm against the elevator's button, sagged against the wall, heard the elevator rise, and finally admitted she was tired.

  Fatigue, or fate. For whatever reason, when the doors hissed open and Tess stepped into the elevator, she lost her grip on her clipboard. It fell to the floor, dislodging the gold Cross pen she'd clipped onto it. The pen, a gift from her father on the day she'd entered college, had bittersweet significance – her father had never lived to see her graduate.

  With a mournful twinge, she pressed the button marked LOBBY, felt the elevator sink, and stooped with her purse and boxes to grope for the clipboard and pen. Bent over, her hips angled into the air, she tensed when the elevator unexpectedly stopped. As its doors slid open, she peered backward, up past her knees, and a man loomed into view, casting a long shadow over her. Her awkward undignified pose made Tess feel vulnerable, at the very least embarrassed. Nothing like presenting my better side, she thought.

  But the man's good-natured smile put her instantly at ease. With a sympathetic shrug, he picked up her clipboard and pen, and although Tess realized it only later, his act of courtesy changed her life. In nightmarish days and weeks to come, Tess would compulsively re-analyze these next few moments and wonder if she'd never dropped her clipboard and pen, maybe they'd never have started talking. Maybe none of the pain, grief, and terror would ever have happened.

  But her conclusions were always the same. Events had controlled her. No matter the horrifying results, she couldn't have changed a thing any more than she'd have been able to repress the immediate attraction she felt toward this man. Absurd? Illogical? Yes. Call it chemistry, or call it vibrations. Call it a confluence of the planets or a merging of the stars. Whatever the explanation, her knees had felt weak, her groin warm, and she'd briefly feared that she might faint. But instead of sinking, she'd managed to straighten, face the man, and keep herself from wavering.