by Mims, Lee
In strange irony, the little drama had left the pair positioned as if they were holding hands, one dragging the other along, now forever frozen in time. Very apropos. I wondered if the medallion had accidentally broken off one of the thousands of pieces that made up the room or if it been helped along by Viktor. Clearly, he’d actually been in the presence of the crates that held the room. Did he, perhaps, dig through broken pieces to find just the right one for me? I’d like to think he did.
As I placed the medallion carefully in my bag, I was reminded of another object: the little pressure valve I’d found under the ROV. The one that had set into motion one of the most exciting chapters of my life. I’d probably put the medallion together with it in a satin pocket made into the liner of my jewelry box. Who knew, maybe someday when I was old and gray, I’d pull the objects out and tell their story to Will’s and Henri’s children.
Small consolation and definitely not what I had in mind, but maybe I was looking at this whole thing the wrong way. Maybe the tale itself was the treasure. After all, aren’t our life experiences the only things we can take with us when we leave this mortal coil? I blew out a frustrated breath and smacked my fist against the steering wheel.
“Ouch! Dammit!” I said aloud, rubbing my hand. Well, hell, at least I was trying to think positive. That’s about all there was left for me in this deal. I started the car, then I remembered my text alert. It was from Bud:
Burgers on the beach when you get back?
As it turned out, the beach burger dinner wasn’t Bud’s idea. Will and Henri had engineered it, and he, still nursing his hurt feelings—and I imagined happily in love with the tantalizing young Amanda—had gone along to get along. From a comfortable spot under Seahaven’s gazebo, I stirred my bloody mary with a crisp stalk of celery and watched as Henri and Will tried to teach Tulip to ride a skim board. The few quiet days in Alaska and the long plane ride home had given me lots of time to think about my reunion with Viktor.
He’d pulled down a veil over the time we’d spent together, but it wasn’t enough to switch off my curiosity altogether. I wondered, for instance, who in Russia commanded wealth and power so vast that they could take possession of a state treasure like the Amber Room without so much as a word leaking to the press. One of the Yeltsin oligarchs who managed to survive the Kremlin purges to carry on in the Putin era, perhaps? Maybe a political heavyweight. Maybe even Putin, himself …
A clatter at the sliding glass door let me know Bud needed help. I hurried over to open it, and he whisked through carrying a tray loaded down with condiments, dip, and a bag of chips.
“Just leave it open,” he said. “I’ve got to get the burgers.” Then, with pointed politeness, he added, “By the way, when is your Morehead lease up?”
“End of the month,” I answered just as politely. “Tulip and I need to start packing for Raleigh tomorrow, so I can’t make a late night of it.” I didn’t add that I was also planning to fly up to Canada in a few days. A friend had put me onto the possibility of a long-term, lucrative gig consulting for a gold mining company there. Frankly, it was at the bottom of a list of possibilities, and I hadn’t given them a definite answer yet. I needed to check things out in person first, but now seemed like a good time for a change of scenery.
“Don’t worry,” was his clipped retort, though he did squeeze out a thin smile before disappearing into the house. It seemed Mr. Nice Guy was more upset with me than I’d realized. While I understood his anger, I couldn’t help feeling a pang of loss for the new relationship I thought we’d finally reached after six years of divorce.
I sighed and I went back to my thoughts regarding my recent visit with Viktor. No matter how much I wanted to know who killed Hunter, I had to remind myself that, in the end, he was a victim of his own bad deeds. I could almost buy into the notion that the material in his watchband could have come from anywhere, maybe snagged on something while he worked. Operative word: almost.
Truth was, no matter how hard I tried, I was failing to offload the burden of uncertainty. Odd to think that I, who’d always scoffed at the talk-show notion of “closure,” now knew what it felt like to have none.
“Here, let me have that,” I said, taking the burgers from Bud, who’d returned. I deposited them on the picnic table, which had been set with a colorful cloth and matching napkins from back in the days when the children were little. I smiled. Henri and Will. They never stopped.
“Thanks,” he said. “That bloody mary looks good. Be right back.”
Airline food being what it is, I was starving so I decided to fire up the grill myself and hurry dinner along. Besides, I still had a long drive back to Morehead.
When I opened it, I saw a good cleaning was in order and grabbed the scraping tool hanging along the side and proceeded to get to work. Obsessively, I turned the scraper sideways and started to run it along the edges of the grate. Then it got stuck at the top corner. What the heck? Annoyed, I gave it a sharp tug and it popped free, carrying with it a scrap of something.
I knocked it against the rim of the trash can, but the smidgeon of whatever it was refused to drop off. Delicately picking it off with an index finger and thumb, I realized it wasn’t a food remnant.
On closer inspection, I found it to be a burned scrap of silky, bright orange and white material—all that was left of Bud’s lucky shirt, the one he’d had on the very first day we had visited the Magellan. My breath caught in my throat, and I knew right then and there that if I could compare it to the tiny piece of orange material from Hunter’s watchband, it would be a perfect match.
Hearing the glass door slide again in its tracks, I shoved the scrap in my pocket and went back to the grill just as Bud, drink in hand, headed my way.
“You look a little pale. You okay?” he asked.
“Yeah, I’m fine,” I said, rubbing my head. “Just a little jet lag.”
“How about your arm?” he inquired. “Still sore without the cast to support it?”
“A little,” I said, draining my bloody mary.
Bud raised his eyebrows.
“Say, Bud …” I began, but then I couldn’t think how to frame my question. I mean, what’s the best way to ask your ex-husband if he committed murder on your behalf?
“Yes?” he said, drawing out the word. When I didn’t respond because I was still at a loss, he made a diagnosis. Declaring, “I can see another bloody mary is called for,” he headed back into the house.
My heart was pounding and I felt a little shaky. I flopped down in a chair and pulled out the scrap again to inspect it. Yep. No doubt about it. It had once been part of Bud’s lucky shirt. I put it back in my pocket. There was only one reasonable explanation for his burning it: He wanted to get rid of it in such a way as to leave no trace. Why?
Funny how in the time it takes to scrape a charcoal grill, the earth can shift under your feet and you’re not standing where you thought you were. I thought I was standing on the deck of the home of a man I had known and lived with longer than I had lived with my parents. A man I knew like I know myself.
Apparently I wasn’t. Apparently there was a lot about Franklin Donovan Cooper IV that I didn’t know.
Was he capable of killing another human being? For that matter, what kind of man kills another man because he finds him trying to rape his unconscious ex-wife? Answer: a good one. And, if Bud did send Hunter to his just reward, did I really want to know? Answer: probably not.
Bud came back and handed me another drink. I removed the celery, took a big slug, then stuck it back in the glass and swirled the contents.
“So,” Bud said, “did that help loosen your tongue?” As I gazed at him, I realized my perception of him had shifted dramatically. “Remember? You were trying to say something,” he prompted, then waited a beat before adding impatiently, “I guess not.”
The tongue loosener apparently was having an effect o
n me because I blurted out, “I did try to talk to you, you know.”
Bud gave me a confused look. “When? Just now? I didn’t hear you.”
“No, that day on the Magellan when you brought Amanda out for PR photos. I wanted to tell you then all about finding the sub and the map to the Amber Room, but it was obvious you and she were … together … and that you had moved on with your life. I didn’t want to interfere …”
“Interfere?” Bud interjected so abruptly I backed up a step. “Have I ever treated you like an interference?” He glared at me, seeming to grow angrier by the second. I was trying to think of something to say to calm him down when suddenly he banged his glass on the picnic table, sloshing the thick cocktail over his fingers. He snatched up one of Henri’s folded napkins and wiping them said, “And by the way, your dumping our marriage doesn’t mean I’m supposed to take a vow of abstinence and join a monastery. And since when did a little recreational sex become proof I want to move on to a life without you?” He smacked the napkin down on the table with a crack.
Forgetting my plan to diffuse the situation, I snapped back, “A little recreational sex! You were exhausted every time I saw you! Hell, you had to hide at my house to catch a breather!”
“Oh, like you weren’t trying to set new endurance records with the Russian stud muffin, who, if you’ll recall, double-crossed you in a world-class way.”
“Stop right there,” I demanded. “First, I don’t need to be reminded of that, and second, we are not—I repeat not—discussing our sexual exploits.”
“Well, good to know, ’cause I don’t have the week it’d take to hear about yours!”
An angry silence spread between us. We stared out at the ocean. After a while, I dared to look at him. That tendon thing in his jaw was still jerking furiously, but I didn’t care. Besides being stunned by his behavior, I was confused—not my favorite state of mind.
I asked pointedly, “So do you or don’t you have a relationship with Amanda?”
“No! How could I? Someone has to be on call 24/7 to save your fancy ass.”
The anger that instantly rushed over me quickly dissipated. Don’t ask me why, because generally a remark like that would elicit a tirade from me on how just the opposite was true, to be followed quickly by a litany of how overprotective he’d always been. Where was my steadfast insistence that I needed no one, least of all him? Probably not far from where it had always lived in me. Just right now, it was in the way of my figuring out who the guy standing in front of me was and where Bud Cooper had gone.
Bud’s face screwed up in an impressive scowl as he backed me into the corner of the deck, placing an arm on either side of me, his body pressed so tightly against mine I had to lean over backwards. “Please, tell me you don’t have the gall to say your ass didn’t need saving when you got tossed off the Magellan.”
“Well … it is fancy.”
One corner of Bud’s mouth turned up—slightly—and he pulled back a little. I could feel the tension lessen in his arms and abdomen. Then, he pushed away from me and I straightened up. We fell into our familiar Mexican standoff. I smiled and batted my eyelashes. He raked his front teeth with his tongue, stepped to the railing, and looked back to the ocean again.
“Woo-hoo!” shouted Will and Henri from the beach as Tulip, barking ecstatically, skimmed the glassy ripples on the thin, round board. They would be coming in soon.
We resumed sipping our drinks. Sea oats stirred in the evening breeze making whispery noises as the darkness descended around us. While I watched him, Bud lifted the grill’s grate, tipped in the charcoal, spritzed it with lighter fluid, and applied a match.
“You know,” I said, mentally ditching the Canada job. “It’ll be a while before Manteo One starts to pay returns on my investment so, to keep the wolf from the door, I’ve been thinking about getting involved with some of the fracking opportunities over around Sanford. I’ve had several interesting consulting offers to work in that area and honestly, it’d be nice to be close enough to Raleigh to sleep in my own bed for a change. Maybe it’s something you should look into as well.”
“Depends,” Bud said.
“On what?”
“On whether you’ll reconsider doing something as foolhardy as driving back to Morehead tonight after three cocktails.”
“Well, that depends too.”
“Oh what?”
“On whether we’re having dessert or not,” I said firmly. I mean, I had to take a stand on something.
After thoughtful consideration, Bud said, “Maybe.”
The End
author’s note
To me, the best mysteries are those infused with the truth. To that end, I liberally wove historic and scientific facts into Trusting Viktor. Here are some examples.
There really was an Amber Room in the Catherine Palace in Russia, and Hitler really did place Erich Koch in charge of dismantling and hiding it. The Graveyard of the Atlantic Museum does exist in Hatteras, North Carolina. And most of the facts concerning the German U-boat attacks of North Carolina during 1942 are true, including those concerning U-352, now a popular dive site. U-498 as I described it, however, is totally fictional.
The Manteo Exploration Unit, or Manteo Prospect—the mega deposit of natural gas off North Carolina’s coast—is most certainly real. I did my best, within the context of the story, to describe its geologic history and characteristics accurately. Also, just as Cleo described, the outer continental shelf of the United States is divided into blocks for leasing purposes, each one about 9 square miles in size. The Atlantic Ocean is divided into three regions, and all of this is controlled by the federal government. The Manteo Exploration Unit is made up of twenty-one of these blocks and lies within the mid-Atlantic region. Though some of these blocks do have a history of attempted exploration, none of them have ever been drilled. Today, there are no active leases in the mid-Atlantic region.
Since facts and figures about off-shore exploration can be a snooze to some readers, I left them out wherever possible. It is interesting to note, however, that each year the United States uses about 24 trillion cubic feet of gas. The Manteo Prospect may contain as much as 5 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. For those interested, here’s a quick rundown of what would happen in real life if Cleo and Bud actually invested in a wildcat well like Manteo One:
First, because such an operation could cost upwards of $70 million, they would have to partner with one of the major oil companies. Since the Manteo Prospect lies in water 2,100 feet deep, a drillship like the Magellan would be used. After arriving at the site, it would use its global positioning propellers or thrusters to hold itself over the site, where they’d “spud in,” or force about 400 feet of 36-inch metal casing into the seafloor to provide support for the well.
Then a bit would be lowered into the well at the end of a drill string to cut another 2,000 to 3,000 feet. Synthetic mud would be forced down the well to carry rock chips to the surface for people like Cleo to analyze. The mud also cools and lubricates the bit and controls the pressure in the well. Next, a 22-inch casing would be run down through the original casing and set with cement. A blowout preventer (BOP) and marine riser would then be added on top of the well. The BOP stops dangerous gas bubbles from reaching the surface and causing explosions, and the marine riser is a large-diameter pipe that runs from the seafloor to the ship and serves as a conduit for the pipe and mud.
The remainder of the well would be drilled until the wellsite geologists were sure they’d reached the good stuff. Logging equipment would then be run down the well and tests run to determine if the well had producible hydrocarbons. In this story, Manteo One is a dry natural gas well, not an oil well. (Remember, gasoline is actually a liquid; Cleo and crew are searching for a true gas.)
Also, while many of the locations in my story are real, the ships, companies, and people are entirely creations of my ima
gination.
about the author
Lee Mims holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in Geology from the University of North Carolina–Chapel Hill, and she once worked as a field geologist. Lee is a member of Mystery Writers of America and Sisters in Crime. Trusting Viktor is her second novel. Currently a popular wildlife artist, Lee lives in Clayton, North Carolina. Visit her online at LeeMims.com.
acknowledgments
Several folks were essential in creating Trusting Viktor and deserve a grateful nod from me. First, big thanks go to my editor and friend, Michele Slung, who never shies from herding cats. Everyone at Llewellyn Worldwide/Midnight Ink, especially my editors there, Terri Bischoff and Nicole Nugent, deserve loads of credit, as does my agent, Kimberley Cameron.
For this book, a good deal of on-site research was needed. Thankfully, J. W. and Barbara Grand introduced me to Marcel and Susie Duchamp, who graciously loaned me their fish camp in southern Louisiana and took me out into the Gulf to the offshore oil rigs. Ione L. Taylor, PhD, Associate Director, U.S. Geological Survey—besides answering endless questions about reservoirs—was an inspiration from the beginning. Stan Lewis, retired Senior geological advisor at Anadarko; and Richard Ingram, retired engineer from Schlumberger, were also fonts of information as well as early readers. Randy Adams, owner and president of Sea Support in Cut Off, Louisiana, also merits a nod for educating me in the role of support boats.
For all issues of a criminal nature, I went to my friend Mardy Benson, retired captain, Johnston County Sheriff’s office. For taking time to share his knowledge in oil-well investments, Charlie Rushton of Hardrock Oil has my gratitude too. My husband, Allen, gets the red badge of courage for patiently answering my questions about boats, cars, trucks, and anything else with an engine. Thanks also to Bob Murray for his patience and attention to detail in preparing a map that reflects the story. And lastly, to early readers Boo Carver, Helen Ellerbe, and Bet Barbour: thanks for your encouragement.
