“Winter will close the Arctic for everyone, though, right?”
Stan didn’t respond.
“Stan, what is it? Will Glassuroil…” she left the question open.
She could hear Stan tapping his pencil against the desk. Tap, tap, tap, tap, tap.
“Dennis says that they have learned that if Glassuroil gets a good well going, they’ll keep their people up there till December, maybe even later. They’ve signed a deal with Moscow and so they’ve got huge icebreaker ships already lined up. The Arctic is taking longer to freeze each winter lately, and thawing quicker, and that means that those nine months are becoming more tenuous. No one would want to go up there for the first time, in, say, late September or October, but an established group based in Siberia would have no reason to rush home. Anyway, according to our intelligence reports Glassuroil just issued an internal statement to that effect last night, so our shareholders are getting jittery.
Intelligence reports. Angela smiled in spite of herself. When she had first learned that oil companies had extensive spy networks set up, she had been quite surprised. But the necessity of these operatives had become obvious over the year that she had worked at Riesigoil, and she knew that larger companies went as far as contracting former CIA and FBI undercover agents to investigate all sorts of matters related to their competition. Big money elevated the stakes.
“And if a large enough group of shareholders were to get trigger happy and pull the plug…”
“There would go Riesigoil,” said Angela, completing his sentence. She heard Stan’s pencil tapping once again as they both contemplated the implications.
“Along with our jobs and the jobs of many, many people. We’d sink quicker than Enron did.”
“I get it,” said Angela, letting out a deep sigh. “Look, let me check with Oscar at the University. I’ll see if they’ve been able to shed more light on the matter. If I can find any way around our situation, any way at all to get those barracks opened again in the next couple of weeks…”
“I knew you’d understand, Angela. I mean, I certainly don’t want to lose any more people to the virus either, but maybe they can figure something out—just enough for us to be able to get back up there and work around it, you know?”
She did know. He had already demonstrated that the safety of all of the employees in his company was paramount to him and she trusted that he would not put any lives at risk unnecessarily. He wanted results, of course, otherwise he would be a lousy CEO, but not at the expense of the safety of the workers.
“How soon do you think you can get an answer from Oscar?”
“I’m not sure, Stan, but I’ll convey the urgency of the matter and let you know as soon as I have any news.”
After she hung up, Angela sat thinking about what Stan had said. She had known that the situation was bad and that Riesigoil needed the issue resolved as soon as possible, but she had not imagined that the company would flounder and drown if the competition got to the oil first. Surely there were other opportunities? Weren’t they involved in fracking operations to harvest natural gas in west Texas?
She wished that she could speak to the shareholders directly and explain the situation, maybe show them some pictures of what had happened. But after another few moments she realized that if she could have direct contact with them, her news might have the opposite effect, and rather than convince them to be patient, it would push them over the edge, making it easier for them to pull their money out quickly and leave the company to hemorrhage, just as the Laptev virus had done to its victims.
No, it was better that Stan worked with the shareholders. He knew how to deal with them more than she knew or cared to know. She would handle this end much better. For now, the most pressing need was for further information. She tapped her cell phone and began scrolling through her contacts to find Oscar Mitchell’s number, but when she found it, she paused. It was entirely too easy to evade questions by phone, and she could not afford to have him postpone their conversation. She needed to understand the progress first-hand, preferably today. After all, it had been three weeks since her last meeting with Oscar. That should have been plenty of time for him to have come up with at least a few answers.
Angela notified her assistant to cancel the rest of her meetings for the afternoon. It was only a twenty minute drive from her office in the Energy Corridor to the UT Medical School building in Houston’s museum district. She called Oscar and informed him that she would be paying him a visit in person to discuss the progress that was being made. For some meetings, she knew, there was no better way to apply pressure than to show up in person, holding the purse strings tightly in one’s hand. If the university wanted to receive further funding from Riesigoil, they would have to start providing some interesting information soon.
CHAPTER 9
Three weeks had passed since Sarah and her team had been asked to drop their research on AIDS and focus on Laptev instead. Although her lab was not that large, there were times when the investigators immersed themselves so thoroughly in their experiments that there was not much interaction between the individuals. Sarah liked it when there were fewer meetings as it gave people a chance to really focus, without being asked to report their progress every two seconds. Her investigators seemed to feel the same way. However, every one of her investigators had apparently made tremendous progress and had much to report.
It was Thursday afternoon and their weekly meeting was already in progress when there was a knock on the door of the lab. Sarah looked through the glass panels that framed the door and saw Rhonda, accompanied by Oscar Mitchell, the University President and another woman. Oscar was easily recognizable with his bushy eyebrows that ran together, but who was the woman with him? Certainly not anyone from another lab—she was dressed too nicely, in a classy dark gray pants suit and open-toed pumps. A mixture of dread and irritation washed over Sarah.
“Whoa, look who’s come to visit. Somebody must have screwed up royally,” said Shane under his breath.
“Tone it down,” hissed Emile.
“Sorry, I was just sayin’. It’s not every day that royalty come to visit,” said Shane, far from contrite.
Sarah ignored their comments and rose to answer the door. She was busy trying not to think that Rhonda was throwing her under the bus, popping into her meeting unannounced and with visitors. How difficult was it to be a bit more considerate of your colleagues?
“Sorry to barge in on you like this,” said Rhonda. Sarah saw that Rhonda held her gaze a bit longer than was necessary and then she darted her eyes to the side. Suddenly the coin dropped and Sarah understood—it was not Rhonda’s idea to crash the meeting like this. Something urgent must have happened. Her apprehension remained, but some of her annoyance vanished.
“I’ve got two distinguished visitors with me this afternoon,” continued Rhonda, her voice a slightly higher pitch than usual. “You remember Oscar Mitchell, our university president?”
Sarah accepted his extended hand and kept her eyes from flitting to his eyebrows.
“And this is Angela Redi, Vice President of Safety and Health…”
“Health, Safety and Environment at Riesigoil,” said Angela, extending her hand in turn to Sarah.
Riesigoil. Sarah smiled and shook hands even as she felt her stomach sinking. Riesigoil. Wasn’t that the name of the company which had had the Laptev virus incidents? Of course! And that meant that they were funding her research now, through a sizable donation. Rhonda had only mentioned the company’s name once, and Sarah had barely noted it, being much more concerned with the science than the politics. Now she chided herself for not having looked up the company. The name had sounded foreign and she assumed that it was located somewhere in another country. But here was their HSE VP, speaking in perfect English, and not at all looking like she’d just hurried off a plane and raced through Customs and came straight to the university.