by Rob Sangster
“If I’m not, I will be.” She grinned. “Maybe you owe me a thank-you note.”
“Depends on what the meeting is about.” Now he had a good idea why Barbas had invited Debra. “Listen, I have to tell you that Gano was here earlier this morning.”
“I thought he was going to call if he. . . . . Oh my God. He came here to tell you in person . . . because he couldn’t find Aleutian. Is that right?”
He nodded. “That was our last chance. The ship’s gone. No one survived. The search is over.”
She sighed deeply. “I knew it. I’ll always miss her. I wish we knew what happened.”
“I just got Steve Drake to agree to search for Aleutian on the bottom. Maybe he’ll find the answer.”
“We need that. And if Petros Barbas wants legal representation, we need that too.”
Tomorrow’s meeting is going to be interesting, on several levels.
Chapter 7
July 11
8:00 a.m.
Sausalito, California
JACK POINTED AT Excalibur, a classic black-hulled wooden schooner tied up at Pier 3 of the Sausalito Yacht Club. “What a beauty,” he said to Debra. “At least seventy-five feet at the water line. I wouldn’t mind a turn at the helm.”
“First we have to get past those Secret Service lookalikes,” Debra replied, nodding toward two men standing shoulder to shoulder, blocking the gate leading to Pier 3. “With those black suits and mirrored Ray-Bans, I’m guessing they’re not members here. Looks like Mr. Barbas has his own palace guard.”
As Jack and Debra approached, the guard on the right said, “Sir?” in a gruff voice. Neither moved aside.
“We’re here for a meeting with Mr. Barbas.”
“And you are?”
Jack didn’t like being interrogated, but he went along. “Jack Strider.”
“Of course, Mr. Strider. And she would be Ms. Vanderberg. Mr. Barbas is expecting you.” He was trying to sound cordial, but his lips were tight. “Please go right down, sir.” Without looking away, he spoke into a concealed microphone and the two gatekeepers stepped apart.
As they walked down the ramp, Jack saw a solid-looking man about six feet tall standing on deck at the top of the gangway. Beneath tight black curls he had heavy eyebrows, deep-set eyes, and an arched nose imbedded in a full beard. Jack knew Barbas was in his mid-fifties, but he looked closer to his own age of thirty-seven.
“Welcome aboard.” His broad smile seemed genuine.
Jack gestured toward Debra. “This is Ms. Debra Vanderberg, my law partner. You two have met.”
He watched Barbas take in Debra’s long, shiny black hair falling from beneath her wide-brimmed sun hat and scanned her body down to her toes. Her tailored khaki shirt and twill trousers neither concealed nor accentuated her shape. He knew she was aware of Barbas’s inspection and would ignore it unless it became annoying, then watch out.
Barbas bowed slightly. “Ms. Vanderberg, I’ve been looking forward to seeing you again. I had some research done to learn more about you. As it happens, I already knew about Mr. Strider. Since you’re his partner, you, too, must be one of the best lawyers in this country.”
Research? He wondered why Barbas had already known about him and what he’d learned about Debra.
During the next couple of minutes of pleasantries, he detected only a trace of Greek accent, the rest probably polished away in prep schools and by world travel.
“Nice day for a short sail,” Barbas said. “Not much breeze today, Jack—I’ll call you Jack. You might be able to handle the helm yourself.”
He started to tell Barbas that by the time he was sixteen he could handle a schooner in a gale, thank you, but held his tongue.
“But,” Barbas continued, “we have business to talk about, so I’ll put Stefan on the helm. He’ll take us across Raccoon Strait to Angel Island and then back to Sausalito.”
So this is about business. Great.
White sails snapped crisply as they were winched up the two masts into place. “Spring lines off. Cast off the bow line,” Barbas called, “then let the stern line go.”
As soon as they were well underway, Barbas led them toward the bow. Two women in their early twenties lay back languidly against the forward cabin. As Barbas approached, the women pulled bikini tops into place and scrambled to their feet. Jack guessed that the one with the pile of blond hair was the one Debra had seen at the gallery. As she walked past them, her eyes were downcast, as if she were ashamed.
Morning fog was burning off, revealing the Golden Gate Bridge, the San Francisco skyline, and even Mt. Tamalpais rising northwest of Sausalito. As they drew closer to Angel Island, he thought of the many times it had been one of the course turning points for races out of San Francisco Yacht Club, of which he’d won more than his share.
Barbas explained that Excalibur was a “loaner” from a friend who’d brought her up from Cabo San Lucas. “Mine is still in the Adriatic Sea. At least I think that’s where she is.” As they relaxed leaning against the cabin, he dominated the conversation in an engaging way. Lots of eye contact, expansive gestures, and occasional touches. He was a gracious, almost courtly, host going out of his way to make his guests feel comfortable.
Stefan tacked into Angel Island’s Ayala Cove and ordered the sails lowered and the hook dropped a hundred yards offshore. This must be where the mysterious Petros Barbas was about to make a business proposition.
A crewman arrived with a bottle in a bucket of ice and a platter loaded with fruit, cheeses, and a variety of other hors d’oeuvres.
“Please set that up in the cabin, Arne.” To Jack and Debra he said, “There’s someone I want you to meet.”
They followed Barbas down the ladder into the cabin. The man waiting for them wore a white lab coat with a yellow orchid pinned to the lapel, white trousers, and white Reeboks. He was very slender and had no visible hair, not even eyebrows, and an unusually prominent Adam’s apple. Jack couldn’t gauge his age but sensed he was younger than he appeared.
“This is my science expert, Dr. Renatus Roux. He answers only to ‘Renatus.’”
The thin man nodded, remaining silent and expressionless.
“Don’t take that personally,” Barbas said. “Renatus suffers from Moebius Syndrome. It has already caused facial paralysis, and it’s spreading. He can speak in a whisper but can’t form expressions, and his irises move only up and down. He’s bitter that Moebius will kill him—yes, we speak openly about it—and because it’s so rare, there’s no research being done to find a cure. Perhaps as a result, he has a personality like a thorn bush.” His glance at Renatus said there was some history there. “There’s his way and no other way. Doesn’t care whether people approve or not. If you remember Howard Roark in Fountainhead, you know what I mean. I’m paying him a fortune because he’s a genius. Knows more about the oceanic seabed than anyone else.”
Arne removed the bottle from the bucket and popped the cork without a sound.
Damn, that’s Armand de Brignac champagne, $500 a bottle. The snobs who lived in Pacific Heights called it A de B. He was impressed. Yachts, women, fine wines. For Barbas this was clearly about enjoying life, not impressing Jack Strider. He noticed Barbas watching him.
“Yes, I live very, very well,” Barbas said. “You’d enjoy it.”
He was afraid Barbas might be right. With a small gesture, he waved Arne away, turning down the champagne. Not a good idea before nine in the morning.
“Make yourselves comfortable”—Barbas pointed to leather captain’s chairs on the far side of a rosewood table bolted to the deck—“and I’ll tell you why we’re here.” As soon as they were settled, he said, “We know a lot more about our brains, inner space, and outer space, than we do about our own oceans. For example, we didn’t figure out how tectonic plates work, one of the
most important mechanisms on our planet, until a half century ago. And we’re just now learning anything useful about the ocean depths and the seabed.” He leaned toward Jack. “Do you know what hydrothermal vents are?”
The question caught him off guard, but National Geographic had taught him something to work with. “They’re vents in the seabed that emit very hot fluids, often located near underwater cracks in the Earth’s crust, especially where tectonic plates are moving apart. On land they’re called geothermal vents, like the geysers at Yellowstone. That’s about it.” Then he thought of another fact. “And I’ve read there are similar vents on Europa, a moon of Jupiter.”
“I don’t give a damn about Europa,” Barbas replied, “at least not yet. But the interface between the ocean and Earth’s crust is vitally important to the future of mankind. That’s why I put a research vessel and a team of oceanographic experts to work ten years ago. Tell him, Renatus.”
Renatus was ready for the cue. “They discovered that around hydrothermal vents there were lumps of minerals about the size of potatoes lying on the seafloor.”
He and Debra had to lean closer to hear him.
“Initially they found manganese, copper, nickel, cobalt, iron, and zinc, but then they found polymetallic sulphides and ferromanganese crusts. All very valuable.”
Barbas broke in. “So-called mining experts tried to figure out how to get these minerals up from the deep seabed at costs that worked. But they were old farts who grew up digging shafts miles into the ground then building a huge infrastructure to drill and blast ore loose and transport it aboveground, all of which requires a large workforce. They haven’t adapted to mining the sea. When I got involved, undersea technology was primitive, so I brought new brains to the problem and came up with new solutions. All my life people have told me what I can’t do. Then I do it.”
Jack was struck by the excitement showing in Barbas’s eyes and his more rapid speech. Debra, too, was paying close attention. The façade of suave Greek billionaire playboy had given way to an entrepreneur turned on by a new venture with huge potential profits.
“Are you going to enlighten us about your ‘new solutions’?” Jack asked.
“Of course. After all,” he glanced at Debra, “we’re going to be working very closely together. My solutions are already in operation. First, I put a floating platform in place 7,200 feet above a hydrothermal vent. Next, I built a complex infrastructure on the seabed and used state-of-the-art technology to collect the minerals. I bring them up in conduits with a suction pump system. It’s like using a vacuum cleaner on the seabed. On the platform, we separate the minerals from seawater and transport them to our smelter on the mainland. There’s much more to it, but that’s the general idea.”
“Sounds very expensive. Is it profitable?” Debra asked.
“As you already know, I donate to charities, but this isn’t one. Front-end costs have been enormous, but now revenues are coming in. I’m counting on mineral prices doubling within a year, and then I’ll really cash in.”
“What about competition?” Debra asked. “I read about a company operating in the Bismarck Archipelago north of New Guinea that’s already going after the minerals you described. And there’s another operation a few hundred miles northeast of New Zealand.”
“Oh, there are a few of them out there, but the pitiful handfuls of nodules they dredge up won’t make a blip in meeting market demand. In this business, like many others, location is everything. And no other location is as rich in polymetallic sulphides and ferromanganese crusts—which carry a lot of gold and silver—as the one I’ve staked out. But that’s all you need to know for now.”
“Fair enough,” Jack said. “So tell me why you invited us here. Are your mining operations causing some sort of environmental damage?”
Barbas tugged on his beard, then refilled his glass. “Our equipment stirs up sediment from the seafloor that might affect some filter-feeding organisms nearby. Nothing I worry about.”
Jack had occasionally dealt with CEOs who rationalized or denied the damage their operations did to the environment. Barbas sounded like he was one of them. Time to test him with a dose of reality.
“When the government wanted to build the Tellico Dam on the Little Tennessee River,” he said, “construction was held up for years to protect the snail darter, a kind of minnow. In other words, it doesn’t take much damage to get the regulators on your back.”
“I won’t let that happen to me.” He made a chopping motion with his left hand. “Too much at stake. Besides, my platform is located where U.S. regulators can’t touch me. No, the issues I want you to handle are land-based. The minerals are shipped to my processing plant in Oregon. In getting that permit, I crossed every technical ‘t’ and dotted every damned regulatory ‘i’. No objections from the locals. They’d turf their own mothers to get a job at my plant. But there is one potential problem. The volume of ore I’m processing is a lot higher than I projected for the bureaucrats. Your job will be to do whatever it takes to make sure nothing interrupts my operations.”
Jack had heard that song before. When violations turned out to be horrendous, the client expected him to act like some Mafia consigliore to make the regulators disappear. He liked this part of a conversation with a prospective client where he stuck his spear in the ground and challenged him or her to walk away. Only two had left in a huff, but several had thought they could hire him and still find ways to cheat. Those relationships had turned out badly.
“I can advise you about laws and regulations and how to comply. What I won’t do is help you get around them.”
Barbas didn’t miss a beat. “Listen to me, Jack. I’m not going to waste time trying to evade some penny-ante rules. I intend to follow the law. That’s why I identified you months ago as the best lawyer to guide me on this. When I met Debra it was a sign it was time for me to make a move. Now you know what kind of legal work I expect from you, so I’ll tell you what you can expect from me. High fees, of course, and you also get a chance to share in my lifestyle.” He glanced at Debra. “After you’ve been with me for a while, first-class results, no mistakes, and my mining and refining operations are in full swing, there’s no end to what I can do for you. I can put you on the boards of banks like Credit Suisse or Deutsche Bank. Maybe you’d prefer the Senate or Supreme Court. Whatever you decide, my friends and I can provide the money it takes to get there. Now let’s get this done. I’m ready to hire your firm.”
Barbas was putting on a full-court press. Jack took a harder look at the self-assured smiling man. Could he really deliver all of that? Or any of it? Barbas couldn’t know how deeply his casual reference to the Supreme Court struck home. Until the tumultuous events three years ago had stood his career on its head, he’d bought into his father’s obsession that his son be appointed to the court. He shook off those thoughts. He had to respond to Barbas’s immediate offer, not to pie in the sky.
He’d been at this kind of crossroads before. He could wait until the processing plant did its damage and then sue Barbas on behalf of claimants, or he could step in now and prove to Barbas it was in his best interest to obey the laws in the first place. The truth was, he preferred the latter, and legal fees would start immediately. But there was a major roadblock. The Armstrong case had priority.
“I’ll represent you, but I can’t start for several months. I’m committed to another major client.”
Barbas frowned. Then he bared very white teeth and ran his tongue across them. He was clearly used to getting what he wanted, and a delay of several months wasn’t it.
“All right. I have the solution. I’ll call on you only rarely, for very special problems. Debra will manage the day-to-day work on my account. I’m sure you’re both okay with that.”
Deadpan, Debra looked at Jack and waited.
He hated to take any of her time away from the Armstrong sui
t, but for the firm and their relationship there was no way he could turn this down. He looked at Debra and nodded. She nodded back in agreement. Then he saw Barbas taking another swallow of Armand de Brignac champagne and breathed in the lifestyle. For the first time in his life, he felt a prick of envy.
“You have a deal, but we’d like to go out to your platform.”
“I’m afraid that’s not allowed.”
“We can do a better job after we see your business in operation.” He might be right about that, but knew he was pushing the point mainly because he was curious. And maybe this was a small forerunner of what their relationship would be like.
Barbas smiled benevolently, swallowed the rest of his champagne, and said, “As long as you’re not making that a condition to signing on, you can come aboard for a short look-around.” He climbed the ladder back to the cockpit. “Stefan, take us back to the barn.”
Jack noticed the scientist, who had remained standing off to one side, watching him. Nothing challenging, just paying close attention.
“Doctor Roux,” he said, then perceived an infinitesimal frown, “I mean, Renatus. What does your work actually consist of?”
“I advise Barbas on mining operations.” His voice was slightly louder than a sigh. “I’m also an expert on hydrothermal vents. Using my calculations, I discovered our present site.”
Because of the stiffness of Renatus’s face, the normal clues that conveyed complex meanings in speech were nonexistent, but Jack noticed he referred to his employer as “Barbas,” not Mister or Petros. Lack of respect? Some distance between them?
“Since the platform is already operating, what are you working on now?”
“My work is in the Earth’s crust, which means the thin shell from the seabed down three to six miles. At its upper surface, what we call the seabed, the temperature is near freezing. At its deepest levels, it rises to 750 degrees,” Renatus answered. “Below the crust are thirty-eight hundred miles of mantle and core. The inner core is nearly at hot as the surface of the sun, but it is gradually cooling. That will cause the electromagnetic field that shields the Earth from the sun to fail in the future. Life as we think of it will end. You can understand why all this is fascinating to a serious scientist.” Renatus paused as if something had sidetracked his train of thought.
