Arctic Drift Part 8

"I don't know how much more of this I can support," he told Goyette in a tired voice.

"You will support as much as I need," Goyette hissed, his eyes quickly turning ice cold. "Unless you wish to spend the rest of your days at Kingston Penitentiary."

Jameson physically wilted, accepting the reality with a weak nod.

Confident in Jameson's indenture, Goyette, features softened, waved an arm toward the tent.

"Come, cheer up now," he said. "Let us join the Prime Minister and drink a toast to the riches he is about to bestow upon us."

9

CLAY ZAK HAD HIS FEET UP ON THE PLANT MANAGER'S desk while casually perusing a book on frontier history. He glanced out a picture window as the thumping from the departing helicopter rattled the gla.s.s panes. Goyette entered the room a few seconds later, a suppressed look of annoyance on his face.

"Well, well, my capital planning director," Goyette remarked, "looks like you missed your flight out."

"It was rather a cramped ride," Zak replied, placing the book into his satchel. "Quite stuffy, as a matter of fact, with all those politicians aboard. You should really get a Eurocopter EC-155. A much faster ride. You wouldn't have to spend as much time trapped conversing with those prost.i.tutes. By the way, that natural resources minister? He really doesn't like you."

Goyette ignored the remarks and slid into a leather chair facing the desk. "The PM was just notified of Elizabeth Finlay's death. It was reported as a boating accident."

"Yes, she fell overboard and drowned. You'd think a woman of her means would know how to swim," he smiled.

"You kept things tidy?" Goyette asked in a hushed voice.

A pained look crossed Zak's face. "You know that is why I don't come cheap. Unless her dog can talk, there will be no reason to suspect it was anything but a tragic accident."

Zak leaned back in his chair and gazed up at the ceiling. "As Elizabeth Finlay goes, so goes the movement to halt natural gas and oil exports to China." He then leaned forward and prodded Goyette. "Exactly how much would that bit of legislature have cost your Melville gas field operation?"

Goyette stared into the killer's eyes but saw nothing illuminating. The man's weathered, slightly longish face showed no emotion. It was the perfect poker face. The dark eyes offered no window to his soul, if he even had one, Goyette thought. Hiring a mercenary was playing with fire, but Zak was clearly a tactful professional. And the dividends were proving to be enormous.

"It is not an inconsequential amount," he finally replied.

"Which brings us to my compensation."

"You will be paid as agreed. Half now, half after the investigation is closed. The funds will be wired to your Cayman Islands account, as before."

"The first stop of many." Zak smiled. "It might be time for me to check in on my little nest egg and enjoy a few weeks of R and R in the sunny Caribbean."

"I think vacating Canadian soil for a short time would be a good idea." Goyette hesitated, not sure whether to keep rolling the dice. The man did nice work, he had to admit, and always covered his tracks. "I've got another project for you," he finally proposed. "Small job. It's in the States. And no body work required."

"Name your tune," Zak said. He had yet to turn down a request. As much as he thought Goyette a cretin, he had to admit that the man paid well. Extremely well.

Goyette handed him a folder. "You can read it on the next flight out of here. There's a driver at the gate who will take you to the airport."

"Flying commercial? You may have to get a new capital planning director if this keeps up."

Zak rose and strode out of the office like an emperor, leaving Goyette sitting there shaking his head.

10

LISA LANE RUBBED HER TIRED EYES AND AGAIN scanned the periodic table of elements, the same standard chemistry chart posted in most every high school science cla.s.s across the land. The research biochemist had long ago memorized the table of known elements and could probably recite it backward if given the challenge. Now she gazed at the chart hoping for inspiration, something that would trigger a new idea.

She was searching for a durable catalyst that would separate an oxygen molecule from a carbon molecule. Scanning the periodic table, her eyes stopped at the forty-fifth element, rhodium, symbol Rh. Lane's computer modeling kept pointing to a metal compound as a likely catalyst. Rhodium had proved to be the best she had found so far, but it was totally inefficient, in addition to being a horribly expensive precious metal. Her project at the George Washington University Environmental Research and Technology Lab had been called "blue sky research," and maybe it would stay that way. Yet the potential benefits of a breakthrough were too enormous to overlook. There had to be an answer.

Staring at the square denoting rhodium, she noticed the preceding element had a similar symbol, Ru. Absently twisting a lock of her long brown hair, she said the name aloud: "Ruthenium." A transitional metal of the platinum family, it was an element that she had not yet been able to test.

"Bob," she called to a wiry man in a lab coat seated at a nearby computer, "did we ever receive that sample of ruthenium that I requested? "

Bob Hamilton turned from the computer and rolled his eyes. "Ruthenium. The stuff is harder to obtain than a day off. I must have contacted twenty suppliers, and none of them stocked it. I was finally referred to a geology lab in Ontario that had a limited amount. It cost even more than your rhodium sample, so I only ordered two ounces. Let me check the stockroom to see if it came in yet."

He walked out of the lab and down a hall to a small storeroom where special materials were kept under lock and key. A graduate a.s.sistant behind a caged window retrieved a small box and slid it across the counter. Returning to the lab, Bob set the container on Lisa's desk.

"You're in luck. The sample arrived yesterday."

Lisa opened the box to find several tiny slivers of a l.u.s.terless metal housed in a plastic container. She selected one of the samples and placed it onto a slide, then examined it under a microscope. The tiny sliver resembled a furry s...o...b..ll under magnification. Measuring the ma.s.s of the sample, she placed it in the sealed compartment of a large gray housing that was attached to a ma.s.s spectrometer. No less than four computers and several pressurized gas tanks were affixed to the device. Lisa sat down at one of the keyboards and typed in a string of software commands, which initiated a test program.

"Is that the one that's going to be your ticket to the n.o.bel Prize?" Bob asked.

"I'd settle for a ticket to a Redskins game if it works."

Glancing at a wall clock, she asked, "Want to go grab some lunch? I won't be able to get any preliminary results for at least an hour or so."

"I'm there," Bob replied, slipping off his lab coat and racing her to the door.

After a turkey sandwich in the cafeteria, Lisa returned to her tiny office at the back of the lab. A minute later, Bob ducked his head around the door, his eyes opened wide in bewilderment.

"Lisa, you better come take a look at this," he stammered.

Lisa quickly followed him into the lab, her heart skipping a beat as she saw Bob approach the spectrometer. He pointed to one of the computer monitors, which showed a string of numbers rushing down the screen beside a fluctuating bar graph.

"You forgot to remove the rhodium sample before you initiated the new test. But look at the results. The oxalate count is off the charts," he said quietly.

Lisa looked at the monitor and trembled. Inside the spectrometer, a detector system was tabulating the molecular outcome of the forced chemical reaction. The ruthenium catalyst was successfully breaking the carbon dioxide bond, causing the particles to recombine into a two-carbon compound called an oxalate. Unlike her earlier catalysts, the ruthenium/rhodium combination created no material waste by-product. She had stumbled upon a result that scientists around the world had been seeking.

"I can hardly believe it," Bob muttered. "The catalytic reaction is dead-on."

Lisa felt light-headed and dropped into a chair. She checked and rechecked the output, searching for an error but finding none. She finally allowed herself to accept the probability that she had hit pay dirt.

"I've got to tell Maxwell," she said. Dr. Horace Maxwell was director of the GWU Environmental Research and Technology Lab.

"Maxwell? Are you crazy? He's testifying before Congress in two days."