“I have a proposition,” Sean said.
“Which is?”
“How’d you like a new ship for the Green Justice fleet?”
“What sort?”
“The kind that can sail into the Arctic. With me aboard.”
10
NEW YORK CITY
All is now right with the world, Will thought. At least my world at home. There was no place he’d rather be than here, now, surrounded with the happy faces of his wife and kids. As hectic as things were at the Worthington Shares building, he needed his family home to remind him of what truly mattered.
It was no surprise that eight-year-old Davy was the first to run straight into Will’s arms. As the boy gripped his father’s waist with fervor, Will ruffled his son’s dark curls. But he didn’t get a word out before Davy exclaimed, “Daddy! Guess what? We got to go swimming with a bunch of kids in a lake that had lots of really colorful fish, and . . .” Davy was off and running with an excited monologue, barely taking a breath.
Will couldn’t help but grin. He caught the merriment in Laura’s eyes and winked. She stretched her arms toward him and pantomimed hugging him. He moved toward her slowly, Davy still hanging on to his waist and talking.
Patricia stood nearby, arms crossed, patiently waiting. Her fair skin had a reddish flush. Clearly she’d given up on hugging her father until Davy was done. “Hey, Dad,” she said. “I’m glad to be home. Do you know how hard it is to get a text signal there? I forgot that from last summer.” And with those few words, she pulled her iPhone out of her shorts pocket and started texting like a mad woodpecker.
That was Patricia, his social networking queen. She and Sean had a lot in common. But Will knew that once she’d contacted her friends and he took her aside for some daddy-daughter time, he’d get a running commentary about the summer from her too.
Andrew stood back a few feet, looking taller than Will could remember. Did the kid grow in the last few weeks? Unbelievable. Always serious, Andrew was poised like a soldier on the outskirts, awaiting his turn.
Midstep toward Laura, Will cocked his head toward Andrew. She nodded and smiled. With Davy now hanging monkey style from his waist, Will shuffled across the floor to hug his oldest son as Drew carried the last load of luggage in the door.
Andrew returned the hug, stepped back, then hugged his father again. “I missed you, Dad,” is all he said. But his thoughtful expression ensured he would share lots of new experiences later with his father.
“Incredible kids,” Will mouthed to Laura.
She simply nodded again, but a mother’s pride radiated from her eyes.
“Okay, kids, why don’t you relieve Uncle Drew of some of your luggage and get it stashed away? I have a very special dinner planned—something you said you wanted as soon as you got home.”
“Pizza!” Davy yelled and ran toward the kitchen.
“Whoa there, young man,” Laura said, corralling him. “Get your suitcase put in your room first.”
“Thanks, Dad.” Andrew sniffed the air. “Sausage and mushroom. My favorite.” He turned to Drew. “Thanks for picking us up at the airport.”
Drew grinned. “You’re welcome, William Andrew Jennings Worthington VII.”
Will laughed and Laura sighed. It had been a long debate between them when Andrew was born. Will’s father had insisted that he carry the William Jennings Worthington name to the seventh generation. Laura had balked against all the expectations that were set up for their son but at last had agreed. “If,” she’d stated firmly, “he has something different added to his name—at least a name we love.” That was when the given name of their trusted mentor, Andrew, had come to mind.
As a result, Andrew and Drew had always shared a special bond. Will hoped that when Andrew was ready to tackle his own career, Drew would still be able to mentor him, like he had Will and his father before him. There was no one Will could trust more to do right by his son.
“Ew, Dad, sausage and mushroom?” Patricia tapped her foot.
Will smiled. “Don’t worry. I got you pepperoni.” After all, he had learned something growing up with Sean. Sean always complained that he never got to pick what he wanted for dinner, and looking back, Will realized he was right. He didn’t want Patricia to walk away from their home feeling that way, so he went out of his way to keep her interests in mind.
Satisfied, she ran at him full tilt. “You’re the awesomest!” Her hug was brief but crushing, and then their 10-year-old was off again, dragging her suitcase with one hand while using her iPhone with the other.
Andrew, right behind her going down the hallway, turned toward his parents and rolled his eyes.
Will laughed. It was so good to have them all home again. And finally . . .
Drew broke in. “Okay, think you all need to settle in now, and Jean is waiting on dinner for me.”
“Thanks again for picking them up while I was finishing my meeting.” Will clasped his hand. “Give our best to Jean.”
When the door closed, Will at last moved unencumbered toward his beautiful wife. After a long, tender embrace, he drew back slightly. “You are my home,” he whispered, “and I’m so glad you’re home.”
She reached up with both hands and cradled his face. “If I could, I’d choose you all over again, William J. Worthington.” Warmth shimmered in her liquid brown eyes.
“And I you, Mrs. Laura Worthington.” He gazed lovingly at her. “You know what my Irish grandmother used to say?”
“No, what?”
“Always kiss like it’s the first time.”
The smile he loved now hovered around her mouth. “Well, I think we can take care of that easily, don’t you?”
Slowly, ever so slowly, his lips moved toward hers and claimed them . . . until a chorus of “Ew, yuck” resounded from the hallway.
11
A SMALL PORT IN ALASKA
Just before he left the little port in Alaska on a flight to New York City, Sean got the most long-winded call he’d ever received from his friend Jon Gillibrand, a journalist for the New York Times. Sean wasn’t surprised to see Jon’s number pop up on his screen after all that was happening in the Arctic.
Jon, a veteran reporter of 18 years, smart and persistent, had a nose for big news. He’d started out at the environment desk at the paper . . . until it was killed off. Then he’d simply asked to be reassigned to the science desk and kept moving. During the BP oil spill, the giant oil company had commissioned research aboard every available ship carrying out National Science Foundation–funded research, save one, in order to keep non-BP ships away from the Deepwater Horizon spill site. All of the research ships conveniently found other parts of the world to sail to for new research, funded by the company out of the goodness of its heart. Gillibrand had been able to talk his way onto that one remaining academic research vessel and report firsthand less than a mile from the site of the oil spill for nearly two weeks.
Sean grinned. He and Jon had a lot in common.
Jon jumped right in, not even saying hello. “You know Elizabeth and Dr. Shapiro never distort the truth or sugarcoat anything, and she’s worried . . . in a way I haven’t seen since we met. The Arctic spill is huge, planet-altering news. Consistent, ever-present, daily, front-page news. I need to be on the front lines, not trapped here at my desk, reporting on some claptrap propaganda fed from the press aides at the White House or the paid flacks at American Frontier.”
“I know the feeling,” Sean replied. “I want to be there myself again.”
“Climate change isn’t a hoax,” Jon said. “It’s real, big, complicated, and dangerous for the world over some undefined period of time. I know the facts. I’ve studied them. And after the facts Elizabeth sent me about the oil spill, I’ve got to get to the Arctic Ocean. I talked to the U of Washington about getting inside their research mission already there. No go. Called my friend at NSF to see if they’re sending a research vessel that way. No go.” There was a pause, then Jon plunged on. “I�
��ve heard rumors from one of my activist sources. Someone big is stepping up. There might be a ship available, but I’d be walking a bit across the line to join it. Then again, that’s never stopped me.”
Sean laughed out loud. Jon was gutsy and took his assignments to the edge. He always said he’d never aspired to be an editor or a columnist, so he could basically do his job day in and day out without ever worrying in the slightest whether his output was elevating his status in the newsroom or the business offices of the Times. He’d been doing his job successfully for so many years that the editors cut him slack. If he said he needed time to develop a piece, they gave him time. If he said something wasn’t actually a story, they didn’t ask him to report it and instead carried a few paragraphs from Reuters, AP, or Bloomberg, if needed.
“So I talked to Frances. Pestered her relentlessly is more like it. She swears AF would have a stroke if they thought a national reporter was tagging along.”
Sean could just imagine the conversation. Frances Blythe, the deputy science editor, was a climber, with her eye on greater horizons in the journalism world. So she always took the cautious, what’s-in-it-for-me approach to any decision.
“I finally told her, ‘Hey, let’s say I do find a ship that’s going that way and I catch a ride. But let’s also say it’s maybe, um, also headed there to cause trouble?’”
Sean broke in. “I’m sure that went over really well.”
“She immediately assumed it was the Russians, since they are way ahead of the American military and geniuses in Congress on the need for ice-cutting ships in the Arctic. So I hedged a little and finally told her, ‘I’ve heard about an opportunity, but it’s a bit on the aggressive enviro side.’”
Sean propped his cell phone closer to his ear. He had a feeling . . .
“When I said Green Justice, she about passed out.”
Sean wasn’t surprised. If Green Justice got itself tangled up with American military types in the Arctic, it could be dangerous, and she didn’t want to lose a great reporter. But Sean had great respect for Green Justice and folks like Kirk Baldwin. Green Justice was one of the few progressive environmental groups with both the resources and the courage to challenge authorities on the high seas. They sailed their aging boats in pirate-infested waters in the Indian Ocean, for instance, in search of whalers and dolphin killers. In one of their more notorious escapades, Green Justice had sailed a ship right in the middle of a Navy exercise to protest military maneuvers widely believed to kill perhaps millions of marine mammals routinely. The Navy had politely but firmly escorted the Green Justice ship back to harbor, but not before a news crew had filmed it all and reported on the confrontation.
Green Justice got things done. It was why Sean had gone to Kirk in the first place when he needed to make things happen.
“Frances claimed there was no way they had an ice cutter, only old rusted-out hulks that putter along,” Jon said, interrupting Sean’s thoughts. “But when I told her someone has stepped forward and offered to bring in a newly commissioned ship of sorts for Green Justice, she started waffling. When I said the paper would have the only reporter in the field reporting directly from the site of the spill on what would be the most covered story of the past decade, and that we’d have our own pictures, our own video—what no one else has—she caved in and approved the travel voucher. If I can find a ship, if it’s safe, if I don’t break the bank, and if I can get aboard before it sails for the Arctic.”
“That’s a lot of ifs.”
“Yeah, but that’s Frances. Covering all her bases.” Jon’s voice sobered. “Now I have to find the right connections to get on that ship.”
“Well, buddy, I think I know just the person who can help out with that,” Sean said wryly. “Me.”
NEW YORK CITY
He’d been a bit surprised at the street-acting gig, even felt foolish parading around outside a building in Manhattan in the middle of a bunch of protesting nutbags.
But no matter. He had his instructions, and they seemed simple enough: “Walk around for a couple of hours in the full polar bear suit. Don’t let on who you are or that you’re an actor. Then drop the backpack off at the side of the building exactly where I’ve instructed.” That was what the slick lawyer type had said.
Easy as eating a slice of cherry pie. It was something he could easily do even through the haze and a foggy brain. There was no heavy lifting involved. He knew how to follow instructions and hit his marks.
12
It was late morning when Will walked by American Frontier’s New York headquarters after a round of meetings at Worthington Shares. He wanted to see what was going on with his own eyes. Like Occupy Wall Street, which had mobilized overnight and taken over a city block and a public park in the shadow of the World Trade Center site, protesters of the oil leak had mobilized within 24 hours.
It had started with pickets and signs and street comedy, Drew reported, but quickly grew into organized scenes and impromptu speeches. Now dozens of protesters camped outside on the streets. American Frontier had ordered additional security, and the New York Police Department had doubled its patrols nearby.
Will scanned the crowd and shook his head. It was natural. Whenever television cameras mobilized—and plenty of cameras regularly camped outside the American Frontier offices already—those groups whose only hope was getting their message of doom out to the greater public would find a way to primp before those very same cameras.
His eyes landed on a guy in a polar bear suit, wearing a bulky backpack. He didn’t seem all that out of place, especially for a protest against an oil spill in the Arctic Circle. Just one of the usual crazies, Will thought, watching the guy trying to drink a Coke through the snout of his furry suit.
Like other major metropolitan cities, New York had its share of vagabonds, mentally ill transients, and the homeless. And they showed up in droves to mix in with the protesters at American Frontier. That made it tough for the NYPD to keep track of who was there legitimately to protest and who was just hanging out. And then, of course, add the tourists. Part of the intrigue around Occupy Wall Street was that it became a tourist attraction. During the movement’s heyday, hundreds of tourists milled around the city block that included tents and vans and makeshift shelters, often outnumbering the actual Occupy protesters themselves.
So it was logical that much of the same kind of thing would spring up outside the American Frontier headquarters, albeit on a smaller scale. Whenever there was an event—something that galvanized the public’s brief attention span—people would rush in to try to take the stage right alongside it.
Will’s gaze caught the guy in the polar bear suit again. He paused under a windowsill up against the side of the American Frontier building, a good 100 feet or so away from the crowd, and set his backpack down. Then, after hanging out there for a while, the guy walked off and disappeared into the crowd, forgetting his backpack.
Yup, crazy, Will thought. Some homeless guy would doubtless discover the backpack later that day and appropriate what might be inside.
At that instant, his cell phone vibrated.
So how are the polar bears and Sean? his buddy Paul texted.
One’s still in the Arctic. The other’s on his way home. And some wacko guy is dressed in a polar bear suit in front of the AF building.
There was a pause, then: Too much hard work makes you see things. Take a break, man. Pretend we’re catching striped bass in Chesapeake Bay. Remember that 50 pounder?
Will remembered, all right, and laughed. Paul still loved to rub it in that he’d caught the big one on that trip.
Glancing up at the bright sun that managed to filter through the congestion of the city’s tall buildings, Will decided to do something that was rare for him. He spontaneously picked up lunch at a local deli and headed to Central Park by himself. There, among the squealing of toddlers playing in water and scooping sand and the laughter of school-age boys trying to outdo each other on the climbing net, he ate h
is sandwich and drank his bottled water, enjoying the sun’s warmth on his face. Then he settled back against the bench and closed his eyes for a minute.
The respite wasn’t nearly as good as a fishing trip with Paul to some remote location, but for now, it would have to do.
He chuckled. Funny how so many of his best memories in life had to do with fishing. Like his trips with Paul and the summers in Chautauqua Institution with his siblings, his mom, and occasionally his dad.
And then there had been the very special summer in Chautauqua, before his senior year at Harvard, when Laura had entered his life. He’d been lying on the grass, fishing pole beside him. His arm was flung over his face to block the sun, and he was breathing deeply of the scents of water and earth, trying to rid himself of the last stressful weeks of finals at Harvard. It was his way of both escaping the noise of the cottage and gaining some think time that was hard to get with his younger, very social sister tugging on his arm, always wanting him to take her places.
He’d complete his classes at Harvard within a year. So what was next? The family business, of course . . . but what else?
So he’d gone to Chautauqua to relax. The place appealed to him, had always appealed to him. He liked its history dating back to the 1800s, its cobblestone streets, its simplicity and beauty. As he lay there, dreaming and fretting about his future, he sensed a shadow, as if someone had entered his space and was blocking the sun.
Slowly he moved his arm and opened his eyes. There, haloed by the sunlight so her face appeared angelic, was the most beautiful, hazel-eyed, dark-haired young woman he’d ever seen.
He sat up so swiftly the blood rushed to his head, and he wavered for a moment.
“Whoa there, pardner,” she said, grabbing his arm. “Didn’t mean to scare you.”
He opened his mouth, then shut it. Tingles shot up his arm to his head, making him dizzier. He couldn’t believe he, William Jennings Worthington VI, was actually tongue-tied.
A Perfect Ambition Page 7
