Lawrence Emry, with a PhD in geophysics, was the Director of Exploration. He was short at five-five, bald as the national bird, sported a bushy gray mustache, and was the oldest employee of Marine Visions. He was sixty-two and a widower for the past three years.
All of the heads of Marine Visions’s teams were gathered around him. The best in the business, people Brande could depend upon.
Rae Thomas appeared a little unfocused, as if her day had frazzled her nerves somewhat. She was wearing a short white dress that was strained in the right places, but which was slightly wrinkled. Her light-blond hair was fluffed by her fingers rather than a brush. Her blue eyes were vivid, firing off a few sparks, and her mouth was one short grim line. Worrying about money again, Brande thought.
“All right,” he said, pointing at the live, but muted, television set, “you’ve all heard the news. I’ll tell you about my day.”
He quickly went through the meeting with Hampstead and the briefings he and Dokey had received from Dr. Provost and from the Navy. He did not hold anything back.
“You have a contract from Commerce or the Navy?” Thomas asked.
“No, not yet. I wanted to go over it with all of you, first. I won’t make a commitment if we don’t have consensus here.”
“Because it’s dangerous?” Emry asked.
“There is risk, yes. A high risk.”
“How high is high, Dane?” Ingrid Roskens asked.
She was Chief Structural Engineer, responsible for the basic designs of the domes at Harbor One, the mining and agricultural complexes, and at Ocean Deep. She was in her forties, auburn-haired with traces of gray, and green-eyed, a proud product of Louisville, Kentucky. Her husband ran a student-counseling center at San Diego State University. She was the only MVU associate who did not know how to swim, and she did not want to learn.
“The feds are trying to pin it down, Ingrid. Provost and the Navy people say that, if it does let go while weʼre…while someone is in the immediate vicinity, say a couple thousand meters, the radiation dosage would very likely be fatal. Three-to six-month life span.”
“What’s the likelihood of the Russians retrieving it, Dane?” asked Mayberry.
“Much less than fifty percent, the last I heard, Bob. My understanding is that the closest submersible is undergoing retrofit and not available.”
“They’re flying the Sea Lion in from Murmansk,” Thomas said.
Brande looked at her. She had talked to someone, probably Hampstead.
“The Sea Lion can’t do it,” Emry said, “not if the reports on location are correct.”
“Twenty-six degrees, twenty minutes north, one-seventy-six degrees, ten minutes east,” Dokey told him.
Emry got up and walked across the office to a topographical map of the Pacific pinned to the wall between two windows. He searched briefly.
“Nope,” he said. “Well, if they got lucky and it came to rest on a mountaintop, maybe. We’ve got a mean depth of fifty-two hundred meters. My bookie will tell me the odds are in favor of it hitting in some valley or canyon. Locating it may be a tougher job than raising it.”
“It means,” Dokey said, “that we’ve got to use DepthFinder and SARSCAN.”
“Oh, I think so,” Emry agreed. “I’m in, Dane. I can always use a challenge before breakfast.”
“Ingrid?” Brande asked.
“You’re going to need a structural engineer?”
“Probably. It’ll depend upon the condition of the reactor body and the module.”
“I’ve always wanted to glow in the dark. In the light, too.”
“Thanks. Mel?”
The captain of the Orion mused to himself for a while, then said, “So it goes busto while we’re on the surface. We’d still have some time to get out of the area.”
“I think so, but I certainly can’t guarantee it,” Brande said.
“I’m going to get my kids over in the corner and talk it over,” Sorenson said.
The crew members of the research vessel, ranging from old salts who had circumnavigated the globe a dozen times to a teenager who had run out of money for surfing, followed Sorenson to one corner of the office.
Brande looked to Otsuka. “Kim?”
She did not display the smile and laughing eyes to which he had grown accustomed. Her mouth was downcast.
“I should tell you, Dane, that I received a telephone call from the Japanese Consulate.”
“Oh?”
“Hokkaido Marine Industries has a prototype submersible which they say is capable of depths to twenty-two thousand feet. It has not been fully tested, but the Tokyo government has asked them to make an attempt to locate the reactor. In response, Hokkaido Marine has asked the government to intervene and request that I return to Japan to assist them.”
Brande was disappointed. “You agreed, of course?”
“I have yet to make up my mind.”
“All right, Kim. You do whatever you need to do.”
The reclusive Dankelov raised his hand.
“Valeri?”
“Svetlana and I have a similar dilemma, Dane. We have been discussing the matter.”
“I can understand,” Brande said, though he did not want to do so. He considered both Dankelov and Polodka as world-class engineers. He did not want to lose them.
“The…accident,” Dankelov said, “is properly the responsibility of the CIS government, our government. We really should join our ships on the scene and offer our services.” Polodka nodded her approval of his statement.
“I respect that position, Valeri. I would point out, however, that the DepthFinder has the best chance of making the recovery within the probable time span whatever that may be.”
“September tenth,” Thomas said.
“What?” Dokey said.
“While you two were out researching, or whatever, Avery called. I don’t think he was going to tell us, but I got it out of him.”
“Tell us what?” Brande asked.
“The nuclear experts are saying meltdown will occur between September tenth and September eighteenth.”
“Shit,” Dokey said.
“Mel!” Brande called toward the corner of the office.
“I heard, Dane. I’m calculating now.”
Silence ruled while Sorenson tapped on his pocket calculator.
Finally, he said, “I can push Orion at top revolutions all the way, and maybe get twenty-eight knots out of her. Given favorable winds and currents, we’ll be in the area on the night of the sixth, or early morning on the seventh. Better call it the seventh”
“And have only three days of search time,” Emry said. “I don’t know that we can swing that, Dane.”
“It could be more than three days, Larry.”
“You want to bet on it?”
“No.”
More silence.
“Did Avery say anything else, Rae?”
“No. He was rushing for a meeting and I couldn’t pin him down on a contract or a fee,” she said.
She did not say, “in which case, we go belly-up,” but it was in her tone.
But Brande’s team was falling apart, anyway. With Otsuka, Dankelov and Polodka out, he was losing the expertise he might need on-site.
“Bob?”
“I’m thinking about Rachel and the kids, Dane,” Mayberry said. “Let me think for a few more minutes.”
“We can beat the goddamned deadline,” Dokey said with conviction.
He did not have to worry about a wife and family.
Brande turned to face Thomas. He had saved her for last. She was always supportive, even when she did question his strategies.