On Deception Watch

by David H Spielberg

  “Hello, Sylvia,” he said suddenly stepping in front of her.

  “Jesus, Philip! Where have you been? How did you know I would be here?”

  “You’ll have time to ask all the questions you want, Sylvia, but before you head to Lakewood I need to talk with you? You see, I know you are on a mission. I know you think your mission is in the best interests of the people at work, for the country, and for you personally. But you’re wrong.”

  “I don’t think I can have this discussion with you,” Sylvia said, trying to step around him on her way to the exit.

  “Sylvia, I’m not really asking you. Lives are at stake and it’s important you understand that.”

  Sylvia stopped and turned to face Layland. “Are you threatening me?” she asked with an edge of anger in her voice.

  Layland stopped walking. He faced her, thinking for a moment.

  “Are you?” she repeated.

  “I believe the correct response at this point is ‘of course, notjust giving you a reality check.’ But Sylvia, the answer is a definitive ‘yes.’ There are very big fish in this energy pond and they have very sharp teeth. No onelook at me!no one is safe from their self-interest. So, yes, ‘there are lives at stake’ means what it means.”

  Sylvia looked around nervously. “Where do you want to talk? I don’t think I want to leave the airport with you.”

  “Not a problem. I rented a small conference room at the Marriott for a few hours. We can talk there. We can leave your bags in the limo meanwhile. After we talk it will take just a few moments to have the car here to take you wherever you want to go.

  “Fine. Let’s go,” she said.

  Layland made a quick call on his cell phone and then picked up Sylvia’s bags and headed toward the exit doors. Sylvia followed him. In a moment, a black Mercedes stopped where they were waiting. The driver quickly put Sylvia’s bags in the trunk of the vehicle. Then it was just a short walk to the entrance of the Marriott. She and Layland walked silently into the hotel. Layland led the way to one of the small meeting rooms.

  “Coffee? Tea? Soda? Anything? Some pastry?”

  “Nothing. Let’s talk, Philip. What is it you want to say to me? Tell me so we can get this over with.”

  “Hmm. So, let’s get to it.” He got up and grabbed a bottle of Diet Coke from the little table set up in the room. He took a short drink from the bottle. “Sylvia, do you know what kind of investment oil companies still have in the groundoil and gas that is? Well, let’s just stick with oil. Do you know how many barrels or proved reserve there are?” Sylvia shrugged her shoulders indicating she had no clue.

  “About a trillion barrels of proved reserve. No questionsbet the farm on a trillion. At four hundred dollars a barrel that’s over four hundred trillion dollars with a ‘T.’ That’s a lot of money, Sylvia. And a good many people I know are not simply going to roll over and watch that investment become worth a whole lot less, maybe twenty cents on the dollar when you’re only talking about feed stock for plastics.” Layland paused. Sylvia remained silent, watching Layland.

  “So, here we are. AJC Fusion, ourwell, not anymoreyour little upstart company has made a lot of people desperate, Sylvia. Too desperate, as you can see, I think, from following the news. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

  “Not yet. I still don’t understand why you and I are talking here.”

  “It’s easy to figure out for a smart girl like you. You can be on the crosshairs along with everyone else at AJC Fusion or you can be one of the team.” Layland took a slow sip of his drink as he watched for Sylvia’s reaction.

  “One of the team. Hmmm. Whose team, Philip? I’m already one of the team.”

  “I think you know what I’m talking about. I was one of the team. But the team I was playing with was playing me for a sucker and it’s playing you for a sucker. It’s all about making Cranshaw rich while you and I risk our lives for a salary. For a salary, Sylvia. That old man with his self-aggrandizing bullshit has put everyone in danger while he alone stands to get filthy rich. He feeds your idealism, but what does he do. He keeps everything to himself. He controls everything and doles out cookies while he saves the seven-layer cake for himself. Why do you do it? Can’t you see the position he has put you in? For a salary, Sylvia.”

  “I guess you don’t understand loyalty. And trust. And belief that what we are doing is about more than money.”

  “Yes, that’s what he’s counting onthat idealism that it’s about more than money. Don’t be a fool, Sylvia. Do you think it’s about more than money for Arthur? You’ve heard him talk about the profit motive. Do you think he was kidding or just taking that line to persuade others? He created that rationale because he believes it completely. He is the supreme capitalist, a throwback to the good old days of informed self-interest. And you all walk into the lion’s den while singing his praises. The man is a genius. I’ll give him that. He has you all dancing to his tune.”

  “Philip, I’m not interested in debating with you about Dr. Cranshaw. Say what you have to say to me and then I’m leaving.”

  Layland lit a cigarette. He offered one to Sylvia but she refused it. “Very commendable,” he said to her.

  “Four hundred trillion dollars, Sylvia. Think about that and think what your life is worth next to that. Think about what the president’s life was worth next to that. Or anyone’s life. You can decide whether you want to be on the side of an angry lion or a high-principled, idealistic mouse. A mouse, Sylvia. You, we, all of us are mice compared to that number. What do I want from you? I want you on my team instead of Cranshaw’s team. Be practical. Be realistic. Be, at the very least, interested in self-preservation. I want you on our team. The angry lion team.” Layland crushed his cigarette into the ashtray he had placed in front of him when he got his drink.

  “Philip, I thought you knew me better than to threaten me or bribe me or whatever it is you are doing. I’m not about to be disloyal to Dr. Cranshaw, to my colleagues, to myself. What are you suggesting? I should secretly work for the benefit of the people who want to put this technology back in the box. It won’t happen even if I worked with you. It’s out of the box, Philip. There’s nothing you nor your ‘teammates’ can do to put it back in the box. So whatever you are offering me, it’s too late.”

  “It’s not too late.” Layland pounded the table as he said it. Sylvia jumped, but said nothing more.

  “It’s not too late,” he said again quietly. “This whole process is a laboratory process. The pilot plant is working, I know. But what about the scaling-up process to a commercial-size operation? It’s not just a matter of letting the process engineers do their magic. A whole new set of problems arise with commercial-scale operations. Things can go wrong. Communications can be misdirected. Time is not friendly to this project.” Layland took out his handkerchief and wiped the sweat from his forehead.

  “And I’ll tell you why. The more you know about this whole process, the worse it gets. Unlimited source of energy, my ass. You and I know the signature of the fusion reaction is the burst of neutrons,” he continued. “That’s really the product, isn’t it? Those neutrons that allow you to make methane from the carbon dioxide in the air! But the neutrons also do something else. They make every container they are in highly radioactive. They tear the living crap out of everything in their way. It’s the original shower from hell. And that makes the material of the container self-destruct.

  “Okay, no problem, you say. Just replace them. But what do you do with the old containers? They are more deadly than the spent fuel rods of conventional reactors. If all those eco-Nazis out there thought they had a problem with fuel rods, they might raise quite a ruckus if they knew about this problem. Cranshaw, our little fat wizard of Oz, hasn’t talked much about that. He thinks his team can solve every technical problem. Why shouldn’t he think that? They’ve done a pretty good job so far. But he hasn’t solved this one yet. And I know he has good data on itthat they know about the
problem, but aren’t talking about it.”

  Sylvia got up and began to pace the room. “I heard something about the chamber degradation problem, but I know Dr. Reynolds’ group is working on it and their work is very advanced, very promising.”

  “Promising? Yes, that’s a familiar story. Just like magnetic confinement version #981 is very promising. Just send us a couple of hundred billion dollars more and give us time and we’ll have the answer. How often have we heard that about magnetic confinement since the middle of the twentieth century? And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. The really big problem, the six-hundred-pound gorilla, Sylvia, my sweet, gullible girl is the so-called endless supply of fuel. “

  “What are you saying, Philip?”

  “I’m saying the whole thing is a sham. An endless supply of fuel is just bullshit! The fuel is deuterium and tritium, the two heavy isotopes of hydrogen. Okay, you know that deuterium is found as a very small percentage of naturally occurring hydrogen, but we have so much hydrogen in the world’s oceans that we can assume there will be a plentiful supply of deuterium. You know you are using deuterium-tritium target pellets.”

  “Of course, Philip. Get to the point so I can get out of here.”

  “The point, Sylvia, is the tritium. Tritium doesn’t occur in nature. It has to be made, and it costs Cranshaw plenty for his experiments to buy tritium from the government, and in very small amounts. The biggest problem is tritium, Sylvia. Tritium is the limiting ingredient in the fusion recipe. You know about limiting reactants, don’t you? If you have a lot of flour and a lot of water but only one egg, you only get to make one loaf of bread. The egg is the limiting ingredient. Well, tritium is the limiting ingredient for fusion energy.

  “And there is only one practical way—one way—to ignite a fusion reaction. With tritium. You didn’t think to bother about tritium, because achieving fusion ignition was such a big problem, you didn’t look down the road, or at least, not far enough to look at the details of how you would get commercial quantities of tritium. And, my dear girl, the answer is that you can’t. There is only one viable way to make tritium. You need to bombard the Lithium-6 isotope with neutrons, in a nuclear reactor, of course. This would work, but Lithium-6 is so rare that for all practical purposes, it would be a short-term fuel supply. We would have a shorter time before depletion of Lithium-6 than for the depletion of oil or coal. It’s a nonstarter.”

  “I don’t believe it,” Sylvia shouted, trying with her voice to overwhelm the pounding in her chest. “It’s just one more of the thousands of technical problems we met and overcame. You are despicable and disloyal and I now see you will do anythingsay anythingto discredit the achievements of the AJC team. Dr. Cranshaw is not a fool. He would have looked down this road and seen the problems. I know, I’m convinced, if what you say is true, he has a plan to overcome these problems. He is a genius, not an idiot. Or a fraud, as you so gleefully accuse him of being.”

  “Well, actually there is another way. Instead of deuterium-tritium you can also get a fusion reaction using deuterium and Helium-3, the heavy helium isotope. But once again, Helium-3 is very rare. There’s just not a big percentage of Helium-3 in nature. So for years, billions, hundreds of billions of dollars have been spent chasing the chimera of unlimited energy from an unlimited fuel supply, only to find that the whole scheme rests on the slippery banana peel of a fuel component that we don’t really have and can’t really make in large quantities. So once again, Ms. Carlyle, what the hell have you all actually accomplished besides getting a lot of papers published and high salaries and a lot of posturing about ideals and saving humanity and all that other rubbish?”

  “I’ve heard enough. You talk about rubbish. I trust you as far as I can throw you, which is just about no distance at all. So peddle your accusations somewhere else. I have complete faith in Dr. Cranshaw and—guess what?—no faith whatsoever in you. I’m out of here.”

  She started to turn away, finished with the discussion, when Layland grabbed her by the arm and stopped her.

  “We’re not done yet, Sylvia.”

  “I’m done with you. Take your hand off me.” Sylvia tried to pull away but Layland would not let go of his grip on her arm. After a few seconds of futile effort Sylvia resigned herself to the fact that Layland was simply too strong and too determined for her to resist. When she stopped struggling he released her arm.

  “Sylvia, this is not a fucking game we are playing here. Just be quiet and listen. We have more at stake and more problems than Cranshaw and tritium. We have General Slaider. Slaider is crazy. He’s a crazy fox and that’s the worst kind. He’s playing the public. He’s playing Llewellyn. He’s playing the Congress. He’s playing Secretary-General Lal. He’s even playing General Stoner. We don’t know what the hell he is up to but it’s all about power. Of that we are sure. But the power to do what?”

  He walked to the only window in the room and pulled the blinds aside so he could look out. There was a patch of deep blue surrounded by an otherwise gray and featureless sky.

  “He’s a very dangerous man, Sylvia,” he said. “In a world of danger, he is more dangerous. We can understand money as a strong motivator. Decisions are predictable and business people like predictability. But power, Sylvia! The urge to power is unpredictable. Even if we knew what he wanted power over, it would still be unpredictable and therefore dangerous. And we haven’t a clue what his real intentions are.”

  “Why are you telling me all this?” Sylvia asked him.

  “Because we need you.”

  “Who is ‘we?’” she asked.

  “Who do you think?”

  “The oil patch, of course,” she said.

  “Exactly. Look, Sylvia, the oil interests have served this country well. The whole world really. Yes it made a lot of money, but that’s the way it works. Remember, money is the great motivator. And the oil patch realizes change is inevitable. Oil is a nonrenewable resource and they know that. They are not fools. But there is ‘change’ and there is change. Revolutionary change that makes a valuable resource not exactly worthless, but worth less than twenty cents on the dollar, is not something to be tolerated by powerful interests.” He paused for a moment. “No one is above the reach of focused people when such vast sums of money are at stake. Not even the president of the United States. When you think how tied together were the banking interests at the turn of the century and what the disruption of that entangled network produced, you can imagine a similar calamity with a sudden devaluation of the oil assets and all those enterprises that depend on it.”

  “Yes, yes,” Sylvia said. “So what does all this have to do with me?”

  “Right. Quite right. It’s time I got to the point. We need you to get us information on just what General Slaider wants from your company and why. And we want to know how far Cranshaw is going to push this so-called breakthrough before he acknowledges the secret failure of his system. That’s what we want you to do for us.”

  “You want me to spy for you?”

  “Yes. And if vast amounts of money would make you feel any better doing this, that is a very workable proposition, although I doubt that would motivate you. I just raise it for the sake of thoroughness.”

  “How vast?” Sylvia asked.

  “Let’s just say it would be easier to count the commas rather than the zeroes in the amount, if need be.” Layland, who had been leaning heavily on the conference table, relaxed and sat down in a chair. He had said what he had come to say.

  Sylvia looked at him with cold eyes. “You were doing quite well at AJC. How many commas did it take to lure you away?”

  “You misjudge me, Sylvia. I don’t do what I do for the money either, though I am well-paid. I sought out my current employers when I realized I was involved in a sham and Arthur Cranshaw refused to acknowledge the fraud he was perpetrating. You know Arthur. ‘We’ll find the answers.’ Sometimes I think he believed his own bullshit.”

  Sylvia went to the refreshment table a
nd poured herself some more coffee.

  “And you think I am a good prospect for doing what you just described?”

  “Yes, because you don’t want your name or your country associated with a high-tech scam for which people’s lives have already been forfeited. Yes. I think you are a good prospect.”

  Layland did not press her. He wanted to plant the seed. He did not need to see the flowers blooming on the same day. He felt he had made his case well and convincingly. He felt she was receptive. That was enough for this session. Anyway, he knew if he pressed her she would default to fail-safe. She would refuse.

  Finally, Sylvia put out her cigarette, and turning to Layland, asked, “Am I free to go now?”

  Layland laughed despite his intent to remain serious throughout the discussion.

  “Yes, Ms. Carlyle. You are free to go. My driver will take you wherever you were going when I nabbed you. Here is a number where you can get me. I hope you see that this is not a battle for truth, justice, and the American way. This is a battle between deceit and self-interest. I chose self-interest as the less despicable.”

  They both walked to the door. Layland’s driver was waiting outside the door. Layland instructed him to take Sylvia wherever she directed. He extended his hand to her before she turned to leave with the driver. Sylvia Carlyle looked at his hand, shrugged her shoulders and shook hands with him before leaving. Once outside she motioned to the driver to wait a moment as she pulled her cell phone from her purse. He moved discreetly to the car, giving her some privacy as she moved next to one of the magnificent oak trees adorning the hotel property.

  “Hello, James. Where are you? Okay, can you talk? I have to see you. Something has gone horribly wrong.”

  97

  Teddy London followed at a discreet distance behind Sylvia Carlyle’s car. Stay with Sylvia Carlyle, the director had said. She was right. Carlyle was suddenly leading a very rich and interesting life. First the Federal Building under military escort. London had no clue who she was meeting at the Federal Building but it was under duress. That means it was probably someone pretty high up who could throw enough weight to ignore her visibility. His guess was that Marshall was just along for the ride. Carlyle had become the main event. He just didn’t know why or where it was leading.