“You won’t catch any fish that way,” she continued, gesturing toward his fishing pole. Her laugh rang melodiously in the air. “Need some help?”
And that was his introduction to Laura, who was staying with some friends at Chautauqua Institution for the summer.
After they’d caught a few fish, which Laura insisted go back in to live longer, fuller fish lives, he gathered his courage and asked her if she was interested in going to an art show with him later that day.
He remembered even now the pounding of his heart as he awaited her response, like he was some teenager who didn’t know how to ask a girl out on a date. Then again, he’d never really had to worry. Will’s money and looks had always attracted girls in prep school and at Harvard, and they flocked around him. But none had ever interested him. Paul had said once, “Yeah, cotton-candy girls. All sweet on the outside but nothing on the inside.” He and Will had laughed, because it was so true.
He had always known he wanted someone like his mom, who treated family as her top priority. But he also wanted someone who could stand on her own two feet and think for herself—no offense to his mom or her generation, who tended to allow males to do all the thinking. Someone who was passionate about making the world a better place. Hopefully his wife-to-be could even cook a little too. It was a tall order, and Will still hadn’t found anyone even close by that summer.
Then Laura said yes to his art show offer. As they wandered the Chautauqua show together, he was amazed by the depth of her knowledge and the solidity of her opinions. They extended the art show to ice cream afterward, and then a walk along the cobblestone streets until it was so dark they couldn’t see each other’s faces.
After that, he’d escorted her to her friend’s house.
That was only the beginning. The rest of the summer they attended concerts and many intriguing lectures, and yes, fished together.
Their romance bloomed—all within the beautiful setting of a historic lakeside village.
Before they left Chautauqua that summer, Will had no doubt Laura was the woman for him—or that she would wait for him to finish Harvard.
The day he graduated from Harvard, he asked her to marry him.
At the end of that summer, they said their vows in a lovely outdoor ceremony, on the banks of the Chautauqua Lake, where they’d first met . . .
Will sighed and sat up. He checked his watch. Lunch was over. Time to stop dreaming and get back to work.
He texted Paul: Took a break. Happy?
Do it once a day, his buddy prompted. All work and no play makes Will a dull boy. How’s polar bear suit doing?
Maybe Will would do another quick run by the American Frontier building to check things out before his next meetings at Worthington Shares.
The bomb went off at 1:00 p.m.
Windows shattered with loud pops, falling into thousands of crystal shards to litter the street.
One side of the American Frontier building caved in.
Debris sprayed in multiple blasts, like gunshots.
People screamed and fled in mass panic, leaving their protest signs and possessions behind.
Smoke billowed in a huge cloud, enveloping the people on the street.
Terror reigned.
13
JFK INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT
“Seriously? They bombed the American Frontier HQ? Was Will in the building?” Sean hadn’t heard from his brother yet, who had promised to call him back after lunch, so he was worried and had phoned Drew.
“Will called right after the blast, since I knew he was going by AF. He says NYPD thinks it was a backpack, left up against the side of the building,” Drew said.
“Like Boston?”
“Yes, like Boston.”
“The same sort of bomb?”
“No one is saying, not yet at least. The blast wasn’t nearly as big, though. I’ve heard a few reports that it was maybe a couple of sticks of dynamite, triggered remotely.”
Sean couldn’t believe it. Like everyone else, he saw the news as it came across multiple television networks in JFK. He too was riveted by the aftermath of the explosion. Just as the Boston Marathon bombings had dominated worldwide news coverage for days afterward, this bombing would likely dominate news coverage for the foreseeable future.
He frowned. It seemed a bit too convenient. He wasn’t one to go in for conspiracy theories, especially given that the Worthington family had been the focus of more than one of those rumors of conspiracies over the years when people raged about the Bilderbergers or the Trilateral Commission. But this particular bombing sure did come at an opportune time for American Frontier, he mused. And right when the company needed the diversion.
Their CEO, Eric Sandstrom, had literally walked out of his meeting with the president’s chief of staff at the White House to a bank of cameras established just outside the press office briefing room and had commented live on the act of domestic terrorism.
Yup, too convenient, Sean told himself again.
As his dad used to say when they were fishing, “If something stinks like a dead fish, it probably is one.”
So instead of a steady stream of highly negative coverage of the Arctic spill, the coverage had swiftly turned to run-of-the-mill but still over-the-top disaster coverage that the American press had become skilled at over the years. CNN had already branded the domestic terrorism act as that of the “Polar Bear Bomber” and had created an associated graphic to go along with their round-the-clock coverage that showed what looked like a white grizzly wearing some sort of military head gear.
“And Will’s okay?” Sean asked again.
“He’s fine,” Drew assured Sean. “He wasn’t anywhere near the building when the blast occurred.”
“Good. That’s a relief.”
Sean would never tell his brother, but he’d always worshiped the ground Will walked on, even though he knew he’d never measure up. But he’d purposefully chosen to go another direction. There was no competing with Will, ever. Sean had stopped trying long ago. Still, he would never want to step into his brother’s place in the family, especially now. He saw all the pressure Will was continually under, all the expectations heaped on him. That was why Sean liked to live on the fringes of his family—to come in and touch base when he was needed but otherwise to handle life and business on his own.
But that didn’t mean he didn’t care.
“And you? Can I assume you’re about to jump into the fight publicly, as only you can?” Drew pressed.
Sean hated being pinned down by anybody. He liked keeping his feelings and his thoughts to himself. But Drew was the one person who knew how to wrestle answers out of Sean and didn’t give up until he got them.
Sean chuckled and tried his typical ploy. “I can’t keep anything from you, can I?” He’d read once that the surest way to avoid answering a question you didn’t want to answer was to offer up a question right back. It worked with most people.
It didn’t work with Drew. “You didn’t answer my question.”
Sean paused. “I didn’t, did I? All right, yeah, I’ve decided to get in further on the game. I’ve arranged for a lease.”
“A lease?”
“Yeah, one of the Russian ice-cutting ships. I’ve leased it for exploration purposes for the month. I’m heading out within the hour to meet up with the crew we just hired.”
“Oil exploration? Like in the Arctic?” Drew’s voice was suspicious.
“Sure, why not?” Sean said breezily. “It’s international waters, after all, even though the entire ocean has been carved out for commercial purposes already. It’s a Russian-flagged ship. Not like anyone can deny us entry to the waters.”
Drew persisted. “So it’s not your Green Justice pals?”
Sean had to give it to their family’s advisor. He didn’t miss a trick. “Well, not exactly, but yes, a couple of the Green Justice folks will be on board.”
“Anyone else?”
“Uh, well, dunno, maybe a few
others.” Sean hedged. “A New York Times reporter is joining us.”
He heard Drew’s sharp intake of breath. “Do I have to say it?”
“What, to be careful? Have I ever not been careful?” Sean bristled. “I know what’s at stake, for our family, for my brother—”
“Your sister’s involved too. So be careful what you say around that reporter. There’s an awful lot at stake right now for Worthington Shares. Will is considering joining the shareholder lawsuit against the company.”
“And you’re worried about me, what I might say to some Times reporter?”
“I’m only saying be careful,” Drew said gently. “That’s all.”
“No worries,” Sean tossed back. “I’ll be careful. But I’m trying to evaluate the situation from all sides, and if I’m on-site, I can help Worthington Shares all the way around with firsthand information. Don’t you think I can help bring something to the table that way when needed?”
“Sean the peacemaker.” Drew laughed.
“Yeah, that’s me.”
“Except when you’re causing trouble.” A small sigh escaped.
“Never. I simply like coloring outside the lines every so often. It’s worked before.”
“Promise you’ll watch what you say and do? And update us?”
“Always, and often,” Sean vowed.
But he didn’t promise how much he would tell and exactly when.
14
NEW YORK CITY
“I’m in deep here, bro,” Sarah told Will. He could hear the stress in her voice. “And I can’t help but think that explosion was a little too convenient.”
Will wondered the same thing himself. Miraculously, not a single person had been killed by the explosion. Unlike the Boston Marathon bombings, which had killed three people and injured many others, this explosion only damaged the American Frontier building. Even there, the damage was minimal, since the bomb had gone off next to an unoccupied storage room. The only people injured were those on the street who had stepped on the glass from the broken windows or suffered twisted ankles or bruises after being shoved to the ground when the crowd started running.
“And to have a CNN field producer right there on the spot, hanging out with a camera when it happened? Talk about timing for a rookie fresh out of Columbia University’s Journalism School. Catherine Englewood’s career has definitely launched. Within 30 minutes of the explosion, her footage was used by everyone in the media—even Fox News, CNN’s rival.” Sarah blew out a breath.
“So you think she might be a plant, a setup?” he asked.
“No. My sources tell me she was only there interviewing as many of the protesters and hangers-on as she could. Doubt she thought her footage would ever be used. But I have to hand it to her—she’s tenacious. She kept right on rolling the camera and asking questions.”
“So she just happened to get those shots of the guy in the polar bear suit, the same one I told you I saw.” His mind flashed back to the crowd at the American Frontier headquarters and zeroed in until he saw the guy in the polar bear suit with perfect clarity. It was a gift Will had. Still, there was something not right in the picture. Something out of place. But he couldn’t put his finger on it . . . yet.
“Yeah. And when she went back through all her shots, she found some with the polar bear suit guy in the background. She even had video of him carrying a backpack. The same backpack that has now been identified by bomb disposal experts as what housed the bomb. This whole thing now makes my job even tougher.”
He understood. Within a few hours, the entire world knew about the crazy ecoterrorist in the polar bear suit who had bombed the American Frontier headquarters to protest the oil spill in the Arctic. Public sentiment shifted a bit in sympathy for the poor, beleaguered oil company. No longer was AF the 100 percent bad guy in the media. That meant the work Sarah was doing had ramped up. The explosion and shift of public opinion also muddied the waters for Will’s own moves to take control of the board at American Frontier.
After he’d dropped the backpack off, he’d wandered away from the building as the man had explained and waited until he was in an alley to strip out of the polar bear suit. He’d bundled it up into a brown plastic garbage bag and then walked around carrying it for the rest of the day.
He’d checked the disposable cell phone with preloaded minutes they’d given him nearly every five minutes since the incident at the American Frontier building. He wasn’t sure whether he’d get his instructions via text or a phone call. Either way, he hoped the instructions would come soon.
That evening he heard about the bombing at the American Frontier headquarters. It was hard to miss—the story was blaring almost everywhere anyone looked. When the news started to report that maybe some guy in a polar bear suit had been responsible, he panicked. He was pretty sure they were talking about him. He needed to get rid of that suit.
15
Elizabeth kept Sean informed via email and text as he was lining up his and Jon’s ride through Green Justice. Her news wasn’t good.
She had linked in by satellite to the one and only supercomputer ever built to study the entire Earth system. It had been built in Cheyenne, Wyoming, and connected by a massive Google dark fiber network to the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado. She and her father and the rest of the scientific team had huddled for hours aboard the USS Cantor to link up all the hardware, then sync it all through the laptop connected to the wireless network on board the ship, getting every piece of data moving in the right direction.
So far the Navy hasn’t cut off any of our ongoing research. We’re still permitted to gather streams of data from the buoys we placed and then feed it back to the supercomputer. The data’s pure gold. No one else has had this kind of steady stream of data from the Arctic, ever.
For decades, research teams had to guess at what might be transpiring in the Arctic region. Sure, they’d tagged a few polar bears and beluga whales to study land and sea migration patterns. NASA satellites could take pictures from space, and others could extrapolate from there. But hard data from sensors in strategic places in and around the Arctic waters, ice, and land masses? Not available, until now. That had been the entire purpose of the research mission—one Elizabeth said her father had talked about for years.
What they’d not anticipated, of course, was the bizarre turn the mission had taken since the oil leak occurred. Besides Elizabeth, her father, and the tight research team, Sean and Jon were the only ones who knew the team now had access to both underwater images from the infrared camera and linked data about where the oil was traveling in the Arctic, based on flow rates and currents.
We think the highly unusual and novel subsea platform that American Frontier built and anchored broke free at the floor—not somewhere along the pipe.
Your Green Justice buddies are going to have a fit. The few whales not tainted by the spill have fled the area. The only ones left are the dead and dying.
Sean knew her well enough to realize how angry that made her. Elizabeth hated seeing animals die because of mistakes humans made or accidents that could have been avoided if the research beforehand had been thorough. But she was also enough of a scientist to realize that some things just happened, and even those who were careful couldn’t have guessed when or how the resulting events would take place.
After the supercomputer linked all the available worldwide ocean circulation patterns together into one software coding stream, we plugged in data from the linked buoy system so we could estimate where the spilled oil might go as it migrates.
Before this is over, the oil will reach many shores. How bad it gets will be based on the flow rate, how long it takes AF to diagnose the problem, and how long it might take to seal the break. All we can do is guess on those fronts.
The Arctic wasn’t self-contained, Sean knew. It fed ocean systems in several different, separate directions. The Arctic Ocean was literally at the top of the world, and what happened there spread
out to the rest of the planet. At that moment, Sean realized he had to loop in his brother on the data. To manage the mess at American Frontier if he became CEO, Will would need every bit of front-end information he could get, even if he couldn’t reveal his sources or it might end what Sean had in motion next.
Though Will’s controlling nature often rubbed Sean the wrong way, he wasn’t about to let anyone in his family get caught in the crossfire. Not if he could help it.
Speaking of which, he’d better call Sarah too.
It had been 12 hours and still no call or text. He kept checking. Every minute he kept the polar bear suit with him here in the basement of the Baptist church on Madison Avenue that he’d crashed in was another minute that he anticipated the police would arrest him. He didn’t dare go back to his crummy, one-room flat in Brooklyn. They’d find him there.
He was glad they were going to pay him in cash for the street-acting gig. He could at least take that with him if he had to run. But the waiting! It was killing him.
16
Will could sense a storm approaching—and an enormous opportunity as well, if it was managed properly. And now Drew had done something he’d never done before in all the time he’d served the Worthington family. As soon as Sean’s plane had landed at JFK, Drew had maneuvered each of the three siblings into a family dinner before the three of them went their separate ways back into the firestorm of the Arctic situation.
To anyone who didn’t know the Worthington family, a dinner with three siblings might seem like an easy thing to accomplish. Just set a date and people show up.
But each of the Worthington siblings had more scheduled in a day than most people would schedule in a month. And because of their roles, few of the scheduled meetings could be bumped.
Will kissed Laura before he headed out the door. “Something’s up. You know I have a sixth sense about these things. Just sorry you and the kids won’t be there.”
A Perfect Ambition Page 8
