Austin, Texas
December 3, 1999 / Friday / 10:45 p.m.
Helius Energy was named after the ancient Greek god who raced across the sky each morning in a celestial chariot, bringing light to the world. The palatial lobby of the company’s world headquarters fully exploited its namesake. The wall facing the main entrance was covered in jet-black marble impregnated with thousands of semiprecious stones, giving it the appearance of the night sky. In the midst of this black expanse, a golden statue of Helius, astride a black chariot drawn by four silver steeds, was bursting through the wall into the lobby. The sculpture was more than twenty feet tall, and the array of lights playing across the Olympian vision gave it a kinetic magnificence.
Mason’s office was on the fiftieth floor, which was the executive suite. In contrast to the ostentatious décor below, the executive floor had a more solemn tone. The elevators opened to a broad lobby with twelve-foot ceilings that were lit by two large chandeliers. The walls were a striking black marble, trimmed with rosewood baseboards, moldings, and cornices. The floor was covered with a plush Persian rug. The wall behind the large rosewood desk where the receptionist sat was dominated by a four-by-six-foot portrait of William T. Mason, the founder of Mason Oil, later renamed Helius Energy.
Mason’s eight-hundred-foot office occupied the southwestern corner of the executive floor. A massive mahogany desk was centered in the far corner of the office. The glass wall behind the desk offered spectacular views of Austin’s skyline. A black granite conference table, with six chairs that matched the style of the desk, was situated in the corner, to the right of the desk. In another corner, a dark leather couch faced a coffee table and two matching leather Queen Anne chairs.
One of the two interior walls was decorated with marble bookshelves that held rare books and works of art from throughout the world. Another interior wall was covered by a map of the world, which identified every known major oil or gas reserve. A series of large red and black pins dotted the display. The black pins identified those areas where Helius already held drilling rights; the red pins identified the areas where Helius was in the process of acquiring rights.
Mason was sitting at his desk looking over the documents that Severino’s team had recovered from the computer disk found on the reporter’s body. One document was a rough outline of a newspaper article. The second was a PDF copy of a deed dated May 1, 1885. The third was a set of notes detailing the backup data supporting the facts in the draft of the article. Mason had read and reread every line, comment, and footnote in the reporter’s documents. The point-by-point indictment against Helius and the Mason family was devastating.
Mason’s father, William, had died of a heart attack when Mason was in college. Richard Mason, his grandfather and the chairman of Helius’s board of directors, had brought him into the company and groomed him for the position of chief executive officer. His grandfather had told him about the “deed problem” the day he’d been appointed chief operating officer of Helius, fifteen years earlier.
Although Mason had listened to his grandfather’s description of the “problem,” the threat had seemed unreal, ridiculous even. Mac had brought the magnitude of the threat home to him a week later, after he’d scoffed at the “Old Man’s” bogeyman.
“Boy, you’ve got to listen to me real good on this one. Real property is a sacred commodity in this country, and that’s particularly true here in Texas. If a man says in a deed you can only use this land as a park, or it reverts to his heirs, and a hundred years later you use that land for a grocery store, then under the law of Texas, the heirs of the original grantor can come and take that land away from you. End of story.”
“Okay, I got it. But if the thing is such a problem, why don’t we get rid of the deed, or … substitute a forgery for the original? Hell, we should have the resources to get that done.”
“Carter, land fraud is a very old game, and systems have been developed so that kind of bullshit can’t happen. Authenticated copies of every deed in this state are maintained in both paper and electronic form in a number of secure locations. We cannot, I repeat, cannot destroy the originals, or substitute a forgery. What’s there is there.”
“Mac, come on, what’s the worst case? Some idiot takes the property. We remove the wells and take the hit. Sure, the field’s a big cash engine, but we’d survive. We’d have to downsize, but we’d survive.”
“It’s a little bit more complicated than that.”
“Why?”
“Well, let me see, Helius has pumped about eight hundred million barrels of oil out of that field. Even if we assume a five-dollar-per-barrel profit, that’s over four billion dollars that Helius has taken out of the property. If I was one of old O’Neill’s heirs and found out about that little old deed, I’d say Helius owes me about four billion, plus about fifty years’ worth of interest. Run those numbers on that fancy calculator of yours and then dump that liability onto Helius’s balance sheet.”
“What? There has to be a statute of limitations on this thing.”
“We’re working on that, but it’s not a guaranteed fix.”
“Why?”
“That’s complicated,” Mac said, making it clear that he was not going to elaborate.
“Mac, there’s no way—”
“Yes, Carter, there is. Make no mistake, if that door gets opened, the demon that comes out could take down Helius and the Mason family.”
During the lunch Mac had related the whole story. Blackjack had originally been a part of a ranch owned by an old Irishman named Thomas O’Neill. O’Neill was the youngest of five brothers who’d left Ireland during the potato famine and went to work in the bowels of a Scottish coal mine. The four older boys had saved a part of their meager wages each month and used the money to send Thomas O’Neill, the youngest, to America, just after the Civil War.
O’Neill had worked his way west with the Union Pacific Railroad, saved his wages, and used the money to buy a small patch of land in East Texas. Each year O’Neill had saved enough money to rescue one of his brothers from their hellish existence, but in the end it had been too late. The mine had done its work. One of the four brothers died on the ship coming over, and the other three died of lung disease within five years after they arrived.
By the time of his own death, at the ripe old age of eighty, O’Neill had increased his land holdings to ten thousand acres. Since O’Neill didn’t have any sons, and his two daughters wanted no part of the cattle business, O’Neill had reluctantly consented to sell the land upon his death to Jackson T. Mason. Jackson owned a smaller ranch on the western edge of the O’Neill property.
Title to the land passed in 1885. The use restriction in the deed stated that if Jackson Mason or any subsequent owner extracted minerals, or any other substance from beneath the surface of the land, for a profit, then title would “revert to the heirs of Thomas O’Neill.” The restriction was the old man’s way of getting even with the mine owners he held responsible for the deaths of his brothers.
In 1885, Jackson Mason had considered the reversion clause to be a piece of nonsense put there by a half-crazy Irishman. He had no intention of digging up the land. He was a rancher. In 1885, Mason’s view of the world was understandable. It would be another decade before the first oil well was drilled in the Lone Star State, and the man who wasted the time and money to drill that hole was considered a fool by his contemporaries. Within fifteen years, the world had changed. Oil had become liquid gold, and Texas was prime oil country.
Unlike his father, William T. Mason, Jackson Mason’s only son, fully understood the value of oil. In 1910, William hired a drilling firm to sink four exploratory wells on the land. Although William Mason knew about the deed restriction, O’Neill’s two daughters had married and moved away from the area twenty years earlier. As far as he was concerned, the restriction had died with Thomas O’Neill.
The first two wells that William Mason drilled brought up nothing but water, but the third well struck
a giant oil reserve. The oil strike changed William Mason from a small cattle baron to an incredibly wealthy oilman. Being an avid gambler, Mason named the oil field “BlackJack.”
The surviving O’Neills never asserted their termination right under the deed because they weren’t aware that it existed. The secret, however, did not remain buried. In 1914, Jedediah Dickson, a lawyer representing a competitor of the newly incorporated Mason Oil Company, found the clause while researching Mason’s land holdings for his employer.
Fortunately for the Mason family, Dickson was both smart and unscrupulous. Instead of putting his client’s rival out of business by disclosing the reversion to the surviving members of the O’Neill family, Dickson elected to pursue a more profitable course. He blackmailed William Mason for four long years. Knowing Mason’s reputation for ruthlessness, Dickson had sent him a partial copy of a letter that Dickson had left with an undisclosed third party. The letter instructed the holder to open and publish the enclosed material in the event of his death.
Although Dickson was a careful man, he underestimated William Mason’s intellect and determination. Mason incrementally pieced together Dickson’s personal universe with the help of some very capable former Pinkerton operatives, and he ultimately found the human repository of Dickson’s secret threat. The Louisiana lawyer holding the dead man’s letter had died a slow and painful death, and Dickson’s own death had been even more painful.
Several weeks after his lunch with Mac, Mason had suggested to his grandfather that the company should develop a database on O’Neill’s heirs.
“Doesn’t it make sense for Helius to track these people down and keep tabs on them?”
His grandfather’s response had shocked Mason. “That’s not necessary, Carter.”
“Why not?”
“Because … because your great-grandfather already did that.”
“A smart man. We should do the same thing.”
“Carter, my father did more than track them down.”
“What do you mean?”
“You know what I mean. Now leave it be.”
Mason’s grandfather had not been explicit, but the implication was clear. William T. Mason had helped the surviving heirs of Thomas O’Neill into the grave in order to make sure they could never make a claim. Unfortunately, William’s extermination effort had not been completely successful. According to Richard Steinman’s notes, at least one of O’Neill’s heirs survived his great grandfather’s genetic rundown—a man named John Caine.
The good news was Steinman hadn’t revealed his story to anyone at the Statesman. Mason suspected that Steinman had kept the story secret in order to make sure that no one else stole his thunder prior to its publication. If that was the case, Steinman’s paranoia was an incredible stroke of luck. It gave Mason a chance to put the cork back in the bottle, at least until year end. After that, the sunset law would eliminate the termination right.
Mason stood up and looked out over the city lights through his wall-to-wall window. He wished Paquin were here. He needed the former STASI agent’s intelligence, skill, experience, and, most importantly, utter ruthlessness. Mason had never worked with Severino, Paquin’s second-in-command, before, and he didn’t trust his background. Both Paquin and Severino were killers, but Paquin understood how important it was to keep the company’s black-ops handiwork secret. He didn’t know if Severino, who’d been a mob enforcer before he joined the Helius security team, had the same skill set. Unfortunately, he couldn’t wait for Paquin to get back from Cameroon. Steinman could already have alerted John Caine about the existence of the reversion. They had to eliminate the last heir. It’s time, Mr. Caine, for you to join your ancestors.
CHAPTER
TEN
Douala Airport, Cameroon
December 3, 1999 / 9:50 p.m.
The two men standing on the observation deck overlooking the tarmac were almost invisible in the darkness. They were alone. No one else was inclined to endure the unseasonable heat and humidity.
The men were watching the line of people waiting to board the Air Brussels jet parked about a hundred yards from the terminal. They’d arrived forty-five minutes before boarding time and intended to wait until the plane departed. The younger of the two men, Pieter Boutreau, was dressed in a short-sleeve linen shirt and a pair of jeans. The older man was dressed in a khaki suit and a white shirt.
Boutreau, a Belgian national, had spent most of his life in West Africa, and he’d taken the Air Brussels flight a number of times. The 10:00 p.m. flight generally left on time. At 9:50 p.m., Boutreau broke the silence.
“It seems the Irish priest doesn’t plan on coming.”
Nicholas Paquin, the second man, drew on his cigarette and exhaled slowly before answering.
“He still has time.”
“I’m told he’s a stubborn man. My bet is he’ll stay and try to clear his name.”
“Maybe. Is there any chance the bishop rescinded the expulsion order?”
Boutreau shook his head and pulled a thin cigar from his shirt pocket.
“No. The old man is suspicious of European priests generally, and he hates homosexuals.”
“What about the two boys?”
“They said exactly what their mothers told them to say. By now, they’ve probably forgotten the whole thing.”
“And the women?”
“I paid them two grand each in francs. I could have got it done for less, but you told me to be generous.”
“What about the photos of the spill?” Paquin said.
Boutreau smiled as he lit the cigar.
“The rolls of film in his bag are blank. We destroyed the originals. The overnight package with the only copy is in my car. The clerk at his hotel was a good capitalist.”
Paquin nodded.
The two men watched the line of passengers board the jet. When the line was almost gone, Boutreau spoke again. His voice was quieter. “If he stays, I can do it. His hotel is in a bad area. A fatal mugging won’t generate too much interest, even if he’s European.”
Paquin waited until the last two passengers climbed up the steel ramp and disappeared into the plane before he answered.
“No. It has to be quiet, without violence and away from Douala. If he stays, we’ll let him start south to the village. When the bus stops at Kribi, we’ll do it. It will look like a snakebite. The news will take two or three days to get back here and another day or two to get to his friends in Europe. By then, most people will be thinking about the holiday.”
Boutreau nodded as he watched the two men pull the stair ramp away from the door of the plane. Paquin shook his head. It appeared that Boutreau was right. The priest was determined to receive his last rites in the continent of Africa. The ramp was halfway back to the terminal when two men emerged from the lower level of the building, and walked in the direction of the waiting jet.
One of the men, an older African man, was dressed in the traditional black habit of a Catholic priest. The second man was younger, white, and casually dressed in jeans and a short-sleeve polo shirt.
Boutreau nodded toward the two men.
“The black is the bishop’s aide. Father Rourke, you know.”
The younger man had a shoulder-length mane of black hair and handsome features. The older priest was carrying a backpack in one hand. His other hand was gripping the younger man’s arm, half guiding, half pulling him toward the waiting Airbus 330.
The young priest angrily gestured with his free hand as he walked. The older man nodded sympathetically, but continued to guide him toward the plane. At the foot of the stair ramp, which had been restored to its position against the door of the plane, the older priest held up a hand with quiet authority, stemming the tide of protests. Then he lowered the backpack to the ground and spoke earnestly to the younger man, as the flight attendant waited impatiently at the top of the ramp. When the older man finished, the young priest hesitated for a long moment. Then he gave the other man a quick embrace and walke
d up the stairs carrying his backpack.
Paquin waited until the jet was taxiing down the runway before he turned to leave. The ruin of the priest’s reputation and his expulsion from the country by the local bishop was the lesser of two evils. Helius couldn’t allow the priest to continue to badger the local authorities about the spills fouling the waters near the small village where his missionary effort was located. Either he had to stop, which the young priest would never do voluntarily, or he had to die. Eliminating the spills wasn’t an option. The government of Cameroon had seen to that.
Four months after Helius had secured the offshore oil lease from Cameroon, the interior minister had informed the company that all five offshore wells had to be in place within seven months, or the lease was forfeit. A French oil company was behind the demand. The French company had offered the minister a huge bribe and a larger profit split, if the minister could find a way to transfer the drilling rights. To meet the new deadline, Helius had been forced to cut corners, which meant spills were going to happen.
When the problem had surfaced, Menard Onwuallu, Helius’s “fixer” on the African continent, had cryptically notified Mason that he would solve the problem. When Paquin had demanded specifics, Onwuallu advised him that he intended to kill both the priest and the local French oil executive behind the scheme. The two killings would be intentionally brutal in order to convey the “right” message to the French company and the troublesome minister.
Paquin had rejected Onwuallu’s proposal and taken over the operation himself. Onwuallu’s typical brutality could backfire in this situation. If the murders were traced to Helius, the environmental movement would turn the priest into a martyr, focusing even more attention on the spills. The bad press would give the new oil minister the excuse he was looking for to terminate the lease.
Paquin’s plan was more discreet, less risky, but just as effective. Destroying the priest’s reputation ensured his expulsion by the local bishop. It also made him a poor spokesman for the environmental cause. A priest accused of molesting two African boys was not a sympathetic figure, no matter how just his cause.
Helius Legacy Page 4
