Black Gold

by Chris Ryan

  Paulo realized what the mysterious picture had been. Alex, you're a rotten photographer. I was wondering for ages what that was.'

  'I'm a rotten photographer?' exclaimed Alex. 'What have you guys been on? Hex sent me a picture of his toes, and I'm not even going to try and guess what that thing you sent was, Paulo.'

  'It's those phone cameras,' said Li, sweeping carefully over the whole carcass. 'They don't have the resolution. They're fine for snaps but you can't do anything arty or abstract with them.'

  'I think those two have gone soft in the head,' said Amber. 'Look what Hex sent me.' She passed her phone to Alex. There was a picture of a pink fluffy toy.

  'It was in the cupboard in our room at the medical centre,' explained Hex. 'Someone must have left it there.'

  'What you keep in your closet is your own business,' said Amber. 'No one else needs to know.'

  Carl and Danny stood with their hands over their mouths and noses. The shark was really gross, yet these kids were laughing and joking as though they saw shocking things all the time. Above them, seagulls were wheeling in the air, waiting like vultures. 'Er – why are you filming this?' asked Carl.

  'Li likes that sort of thing,' said Paulo. 'She's a weird girl.'

  Li looked up from the camera and glared at him, then answered Carl's question. 'It's for Mara; I don't think she'd like us to take the actual shark over to her nice clean clinic.' She straightened up. She had finished.

  'Let's give it to the birds,' said Paulo. He, Hex, Alex and Amber took one corner each of the tarpaulin and tipped the shark head over the edge. As soon as it hit the water the air was full of diving seagulls, shrieking and tearing at the flesh.

  One by one, they stepped off the boat. 'The beach is looking a bit paler,' said Amber. 'It was a lot blacker than this before. All that washing must be working.' As she spoke, a red van was parking in the road; ArBonCo were arriving to work on the beach again.

  'It's too little too late,' said Li as they climbed onto the veranda. 'When we found the shark there was nothing trying to eat it. Any other time it would have been surrounded by little crabs. Half the ecosystem has died.'

  The man and woman whom Mara was escorting out of the medical centre waiting room as Alpha Force arrived were not patients. They were too assured, too confident. And Mara looked fed up.

  'Mara, we've got some more evidence for you,' said Li.

  Mara showed them into her office. It was a mess. Her desk, normally tidy, was a mass of papers and her filing cabinets were all open.

  'More journalists?' asked Paulo.

  'I wouldn't get all this lot out for journalists,' said Mara. 'They were the police.'

  'Police?' repeated Alex.

  Mara sighed. 'They think ABC Guardians are involved in this shooting. They wanted a list of all the members; what I know about them, what I know about their friends. They even asked me what I was doing last night when the shooting started. Fortunately there are plenty of staff who can confirm that I was here, but the police have a way of looking at you that says they think you're lying. It's ridiculous. No activist would want to harm Bill Bowman.'

  Paulo and Hex glanced at each other. That was what Andy had said. They'd thought he was delirious.

  Amber thought it was just as strange as they did. 'This may sound an odd question, but why not? He's the head of the oil corporation – a corporation we think has been breaking all the rules—'

  'Yes, but he's not like that. He's highly respected in ecology circles, passionate about consulting the locals, ploughing cash back into the economy, being fair, working with them for the good of everyone. And he's just been elected head of the Clean Caribbean Consortium. I voted for him on behalf of ABC Guardians. He's a one-off. There aren't many other people in the oil industry I'd trust like him.'

  'But the police think otherwise,' said Amber.

  Mara sighed. 'They're convinced I know who did it. They think all eco-activists are mad murderers.'

  Alex asked, 'Is there anything we can do?'

  Mara put her head in her hands. 'Clone me so that I can do two jobs at once. Or turn back time so that none of this ever happened. Let's see what you've got here.' She held out her hand for the video camera.

  Li passed it over.

  Mara began to look at the footage. Her expression became puzzled. 'What is this? Out-takes from Jaws?'

  'You know Andy was attacked?' said Alex. 'He found someone putting a bomb in the tanker.'

  Mara looked at him for a long moment. When she spoke, her voice was very quiet. 'A bomb . . . in the tanker?'

  Her door opened. Four uniformed policemen walked into the room.

  'Dr Mara Thomas?'

  Mara was irritated. 'I've already made a statement to two of your colleagues. I've looked at the photofit. What more do you want?'

  'Dr Mara Thomas?' repeated the sergeant. Something about his voice made them all go still.

  'Yes,' said Mara quietly.

  'Dr Mara Thomas, I am here to arrest you on suspicion of conspiracy to murder.'

  13

  SUSPECTS

  Out in the bay a boat was moored at the edge of the area enclosed by the sorbent booms; the skimmer boats were starting to remove the oil. The five friends were walking back to the dive centre, but they hardly noticed it. They were in a state of shock.

  'This is unbelievable,' said Alex. 'Mara can't have had anything to do with the shooting.'

  'The police obviously haven't got any other leads,' said Hex. 'They've got to go for the obvious.'

  'Who hires assassins?' asked Li. 'It's got to be someone who can afford to pay quite a lot. It does look like it's some sort of organization.'

  'She looked so shocked,' said Amber.

  Mara had co-operated and allowed the police officers to lead her away, but her expression had said it all. The crime she was accused of was disgusting, hideous. The confident campaigner who had made outspoken statements on national television and represented the entire Antilles islands at the Clean Caribbean Consortium had looked lost and frightened.

  'How can they think a doctor would do something like that?' asked Li.

  The others just shook their heads in disbelief.

  'I think,' said Hex, 'that instead of clearing birds I'd better get busy.'

  One hour later Hex was sitting cross-legged on his bed, his palmtop open. The others were outside with Carl, Lynn and Danny, removing the birds that had been washed up in the night. He didn't notice that Amber had come in until she was standing right in front of him, waving.

  'Earth calling Hex.'

  Hex's head snapped up. 'Why do you think Bowman was at the event?'

  Amber sat down so she was on the same level as him. 'Because his company sponsored it.'

  'ArBonCo wasn't the only sponsor, nor the most generous – the TV company gave a bigger donation. I figured there must have been some other reason why Bowman was going to make a speech.'

  'There's the small matter of the oil slick,' said Amber. 'Apologizing to everyone and so on.'

  Hex turned the palmtop screen round so that she could see it. 'This is Bowman's personal area on the ArBonCo computer system.'

  Amber gasped. 'You haven't hacked into ArBonCo!'

  'Mara's accused of conspiracy to murder,' Hex reminded her. 'Anything goes. Anyway, their security is atrocious. I just had to find one code and I was past the firewall. Now I can go anywhere I want and I look like the systems administrator doing maintenance.' He took the machine back and hit a few keys. 'Read this.'

  Amber took the screen. 'It's a speech.' She began to read. 'Ladies and gentlemen . . . First may I say . . . blah blah blah . . .'

  'Carry on reading,' said Hex.

  Amber's voice went down to a mutter as she skimmed the text. 'Blah blah . . . Oh.' She started reading the text out loud. 'We believe there are substantial reserves of oil off the south-west tip of Curaçao, reserves that will bring great prosperity to this island. But we recognize that with that comes great disruption too
– and so I am here to promise you today that there will not be a centimetre of drilling, not a drop of oil harvested until all the proper consultation is . . . blah blah blah . . . This oil is your resource, in your environment, and while we want to get it out we want to do so responsibly.' Amber looked at Hex. 'But they had already started drilling.' She snorted. 'He's just a big fat cat liar. I hate them.'

  'Yes, I thought that.' Hex took the palmtop and called up more files. 'But look at this.'

  Amber read the new screen. 'Survey reports of the drill site. There you are. He's a lying rat.'

  Hex shook his head. 'No, look at it. There's nothing about drilling. It's only geophysical imaging and seismic surveys. No drilling – you just sail a ship over slowly and fire sound waves at the sea bed. It does no more harm than radar. Remember? I looked it up before.'

  Amber asked, 'Are you sure?'

  'Now look at the file called "CCC draft". It's a bit rough but it's obviously meant for a secretary to format as a letter and send.'

  Amber read the letter. 'It's asking them to start an environmental assessment into the impact of drilling.' She looked up. 'But he's the head of the CCC – why does he need to ask them anything?'

  'He's the head but that doesn't mean he can do as he likes. And more than that – he obviously cares about the environment and wants the CCC to do its job. Remember what Mara said an oilfield of that size would do to Curaçao?'

  Amber nodded. She read from the letter. 'There has been no drilling this close to Curaçao in the past and before we exploit this resource we must explore the environmental impact fully.'

  'I found something very interesting on Bowman's system too. He's got spy ware.'

  'What's that?'

  'An invisible program that watches things you do and sends a record to someone. Usually you get them by accident from websites so that advertisers can find out what you're interested in. But this one is just sending copies of his e-mails to someone.'

  'That could be the system administrator, or whatever you call it,' said Amber.

  'No. They're going to someone else on the board. Just one person – Neil Hearst, his chief executive officer.'

  'Neil Hearst,' repeated Amber. 'I've heard that name before.'

  'He was on one of the press conferences, making syrupy apologies. That first night, when the other guests went home. I might also point out that Hearst's system doesn't have spyware. In fact his e-mails are encrypted.'

  'So Hearst is spying on Bowman?'

  Hex nodded.

  'I don't suppose a bit of encryption has kept you out of Neil Hearst's files? And try not to be too smug when you tell me.' Amber thought Hex's expression looked as though he was about to unveil the crown jewels.

  'Hearst, it seems, has been sending e-mails to a senior civil servant called Simon Ter Haar.'

  Amber was getting weary. 'And? You're meant to be getting Mara out of trouble, not being Poirot.'

  Hex raised a finger. 'Bear with me. Ter Haar is high up in the energy department here. They've been exchanging a lot of correspondence, and it's all secretive. Even though they've encrypted it, they're talking in code. They are hiding something. Most of the e-mails just say "Call me". One of them says, "Our adviser could help with this". Could be to do with hiring an assassin—?'

  'Or it could be choosing wallpaper for the boardroom,' exclaimed Amber. 'That's hardly evidence.'

  'It is when you look at the sequence of e-mails. Hearst had sent Ter Haar a section from Bowman's speech – the bit where he promises everyone an inquiry before drilling starts. They obviously didn't like that. That's when Ter Haar replied saying that their "adviser" could help. And think about what we've got so far. We're pretty certain the tanker was crashed deliberately to hide the drilling. Was it to hide the drilling from the public, or from Bowman, who wouldn't have authorized it in the first place? I think when Bowman was about to make that speech with all those promises they decided he had to be silenced. It wasn't ecologists who wanted him out of the way – it was his own people.'

  Amber had to admit it made sense. She folded her arms crossly. 'The moment I came in you could have just said, "Bowman's a good guy, his CEO's been plotting with some geek in the government. Bowman was about to blow it all wide open so they tried to assassinate him and make it look like revenge for the oil spill."'

  Hex looked at her simply. 'If I'd just come out with all that you wouldn't have believed me.'

  There was a tap at the door. Paulo's curly head appeared, with Li and Alex close behind him. 'So here you are.' He saw the serious expressions on their faces. 'What's up?'

  Amber looked at Hex. 'I'll tell them – you'll just make an epic out of it. Come in, guys.'

  '. . . these guys in ArBonCo hired a gunman so he couldn't give the speech.' Amber looked at her four friends. 'Any questions?'

  Three blank faces looked back at her.

  Alex was propped against the headboard of his bed. 'How on earth do you know all that?'

  Hex looked at Amber. His face said, I told you so.

  Once again Hex went through the evidence, showing them the files on his palmtop and explaining each step.

  Li bundled her long hair into a plait. 'This is really nasty.'

  'But it adds up,' said Alex. 'A big company like that would have the resources to pay a professional assassin.'

  'There's one thing I don't understand,' said Paulo. 'ArBonCo couldn't keep it secret for long. Once they'd set up a drilling platform they couldn't exactly hide it.'

  'By then it would be too late,' explained Li. 'They'd pay the CCC fines and carry on. The only people they really need permission from is the government. That's why they needed the civil servant, who could push it through from the inside. Bowman would have stopped it all and spent years consulting and assessing the situation before they could get permission.'

  'Of course,' said Hex, 'we can't take any of this to the police because it's been obtained illegally. Now we've got to find a way to prove it properly.'

  'Bowman is still alive, isn't he?' said Alex. 'If someone wants him dead they'll probably try again, won't they? I wonder if he's gone back to work as normal.'

  Li jumped up and flew out of the room. Before the others had time to look puzzled, she came back in with the newspaper and laid it out on Hex's bed. 'They say his bodyguards got him to safety. They don't say where he is now.'

  'If we could find out where he is,' said Amber, 'we might be able to keep our eyes open for another attempt. We could save him and get proper evidence.'

  Alex's face was screwed up in thought. 'I think I've got an idea.'

  Alex sat on his bed, dialling the ArBonCo press office on his mobile; the others crowded together on Hex's bed on the other side of the room. With notepad in hand, Alex looked every inch the investigative reporter.

  The phone was answered immediately by a brisk, male voice. 'Hello – press office.'

  Alex launched into his prepared spiel. 'My name's Alex Craig. I'm writing a follow-up about the attempted shooting of your president last night and I was wondering if I could ask a few questions.'

  'Which publication are you from?'

  Alex had this prepared. 'I'm a freelance doing a piece for the Financial Times in London.' Using a British newspaper had been Amber's suggestion, in case the press office had already been bombarded with questions from US, South American and Caribbean papers.

  'What's your angle?'

  So far, so good. This was what they'd expected. 'I'm interested in him as a big personality in the oil world and was wondering if we could talk to him.'

  'That's not possible.'

  'Is he well?' asked Alex.

  'He is well,' said the press officer.

  'Was he hurt in the incident?'

  'He wasn't hurt.'

  This wasn't getting very far. Alex suddenly realized where he was going wrong; he was asking questions that could easily be answered with yes or no. He needed to phrase them so that they couldn't be dismissed so swiftly. He
grasped at straws. How did big corporations work? Say something about money. 'What are you telling the investors and shareholders?'