Gallen drew the Newport Associates report from the backpack, threw it to him.
‘Holy shit,’ said Aaron, flipping through the document and handing it to Florita. ‘Where was it?’
‘Where no one was going to find it,’ said Gallen. ‘But we wanted it out of play.’
Florita pored through the document. ‘Is it all here?’
‘It’s all there,’ said Gallen, reaching for one of Winter’s smokes.
Florita hugged the file. ‘Well that’s one thing less to worry about.’
‘Sure,’ said Gallen as they sped for the airport. But it still left a list of the other things he’d be losing sleep over.
The flight refuelled at Baker Lake and Gallen awoke and made a quick trip to the head. At the front of the cabin, his three guys slept under blankets.
He washed his face and headed back to his seat, and saw Aaron looking up at him.
‘You okay, Gerry?’
‘Tired of being shot at.’
Aaron stood, taking care not to wake Joyce in the facing seat, and led Gallen to the kitchenette. ‘I caught your tone in the limo,’ said Aaron, looking over the seat next to him to check Florita was sleeping. ‘You really worried about the ArcticWatch film crew?’
Gallen poured a paper cup of water. ‘I’m worried about everything, Aaron. Paranoia can be a life saver.’
Aaron leaned over to his briefcase and pulled out a file. ‘Every person aboard the Ariadne is profiled.’
‘The film crew’s okay?’ Gallen took the file and flipped through it to the ArcticWatch crew.
‘I rang their last references. They check out.’
Gallen saw the intel bio for Martina Du Bois, followed by two French males and one Spanish: the director, sound guy and cameraman. They looked healthy, tanned and sure of themselves. Gallen had no idea what he was looking for. He wouldn’t know a film director if one ran up and kicked him on the leg.
Fanning the file, he was about to give it back when the sheaf opened at a page profiling NEGROPONTE, John S, the chief engineer of the Ariadne. The name grabbed Gallen’s attention because he remembered a Tony Negroponte, a US Navy captain based in Okinawa. The photo showed a round-faced, smiling bald guy — probably not related, thought Gallen, given that Tony Negroponte had thick black hair and a long face.
Handing back the file, Gallen remembered his query on the Newport Associates report. ‘You had a look at the Newport file?’
‘No. Why?’
Gallen shrugged. ‘Harry wrote a few comments in the margins.’
‘Like?’
‘Like, he underlined a phrase in a section on technology risk, I think it was, and then he wrote, Star Okay. Something like that.’ Aaron made a face.
‘Want me to ask about it?’
‘Just thought you’d know,’ said Gallen.
‘Well it’s too late anyway.’ Aaron yawned and stretched. ‘She had it pouched from the airport in Calgary. It’s been destroyed by now.’
‘Thank God for that,’ said Gallen, moving back to his seat.
As Gallen sat back in his forward-facing seat, he turned sideways to where Winter was sleeping across the aisle. The Canadian opened an eye and shut it quickly.
‘Don’t think I’ve forgotten about you, Kenny,’ said Gallen, pulling his blanket up to his neck.
‘I didn’t steal their money,’ said Winter, raising his head to check on Mike Ford, snoring in the opposite seat.
‘Well, they don’t believe you and they certainly don’t believe me.’
‘Sorry — about Roy ‘n’ all,’ Winter whispered as the engines raised their revs and the Challenger rolled forward. ‘I was laying low, thought Clearmont was perfect.’
‘What?’ hissed Gallen. ‘You knew you were being chased? And you didn’t tell me?’
‘It was hard to tell one crew from another there for a while.’
Gallen groaned at the overhead locker. ‘I don’t believe this. How much?’
‘I didn’t—’
‘How much?’ snapped Gallen, wanting to grab Winter by the throat.
The Canadian gulped. ‘Twenty-eight mill.’
The Challenger’s engines went to full pitch and the aircraft catapulted along the slushy runway and climbed into the night, bound for Kugaaruk. Gallen seethed while Winter chewed his bottom lip.
Calming himself, Gallen looked across at Winter. ‘The Pentagon will put an officer under surveillance for fudging a report — but they’ll tap the family phones and wire the dog if there’s money missing, okay?’
‘I see.’
‘So, Kenny,’ said Gallen, ‘for twenty-eight million dollars, they’re gonna make us a lifelong project.’
CHAPTER 56
The Sikorsky’s loadmaster doled out good coffee and donuts as the helo got to its flight path. Gallen took two chocolate-iced donuts and asked for three sugars in his coffee. It was almost five-thirty am and if he was expected to perform at his peak, he needed to hit his system with a big dose of sugar.
Leaning over Mike Ford — who held the Ariadne schematic on his lap — Gallen went through how he wanted things to work and ensured the new guy, Liam, was happy with the approach, since he would be spending three months on the bottom with the crew.
The Ariadne was built like a huge steel crucifix, with each of the four arms housing a particular function: lodgings, bathrooms and kitchen in the long wing on the bottom; suit room, dive bell and docking bay in the starboard wing; stores, gas storage, oxygen scrubbers and maintenance workshop in the one opposite; and the control rooms in the forward-facing arm. Each of the shorter wings was a hundred feet long and the size and shape of a 737 fuselage. The dormitory wing was more than one hundred and fifty feet and could house more than a hundred people for months.
On its underside was a mini power station that supplied not only all the power to keep the occupants alive but also enough to run the fourteen pumping stations that would eventually be running under and on the sea floor, pumping crude oil out of the wells, along the sea bed and onto land.
The diving shifts would swim out of the pressure-lock in the suit room and do their maintenance or repair sweeps with the aid of the vast system of floodlights that would illuminate the infrastructure.
It seemed to Gallen’s eyes like an expensive venture, but Florita had claimed it was going to halve the typical costs of retrieving crude in the Arctic. Most Arctic drilling projects were in the shallows and were built on gravel islands; the deeper sites relied on drilling ships but they had to shut down for half the year because of the seasonal ice.
The Oasis site was deep, at almost one thousand feet, and by putting the pump function on the bottom there was no seasonal shut-down. Once the well was sunk and cased using a drilling ship during the ice-free summer, the site would be sustained by the Ariadne unless more wells needed to be sunk — at which point the ship would be brought back in during the summer months when the ice receded. And the most expensive part of any oceanic oil venture — the rig itself — would not be required. Florita had seemed most proud of that part. That’s where she claimed to be saving a hundred million dollars.
‘Sorry, Liam,’ said Gallen, ‘but I need one guy down there for the first three-month rotation. This is an Oasis property and if the captain needs help with these ArcticWatch people, then I need you right there.’
‘Got it, boss,’ said Tucker.
‘You’ll take a SIG sidearm,’ said Gallen, ‘with three clips. I’ve put a packet of flexi-cuffs in your bag and we have to find you a brig.’
‘Brig?’
‘Yeah, buddy, you’re the buffer,’ said Gallen, using Navy slang for the person on a ship who locks up the miscreants.