“He won’t live long if he does,” Goyette replied. His nostrils flared as he shook his head. “This could kill my carbon sequestration plant expansion. Worse still, it would permit the Athabasca refineries to come back on line, even expand. That’d drive down the price of Athabasca bitumen, it’d ruin my contract with the Chinese! I won’t have it!”
Zak laughed at Goyette’s greed-induced anger, which drove the mogul to more fury. Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out a small gray pebble and bounced it across the desk. Goyette instinctively caught it against his chest.
“Mitchell, Mitchell, Mitchell… You are missing the big picture. Where’s the grand environmentalist, the King of Green, the tree hugger’s best friend?”
“What are you babbling about?” Goyette sneered.
“You’re holding it in your hand. A mineral called ruthenium. Otherwise known as the catalyst to artificial photosynthesis. It is the key to the whole thing.”
Goyette studied the stone with quiet regard.
“Go on,” he replied curtly.
“It is rarer than gold. There are only a few places on earth where the stuff has ever been mined and every one of those mines has gone kaput. This sample came from a geology warehouse in Ontario, and they might well be the last source of the stuff. Without ruthenium, there can be no artificial photosynthesis, and your problem is solved. I’m not saying it can be done, but whoever owns the supply of the mineral will own the solution to global warming. Think how your green friends would worship you then?”
It was the perfect tonic of greed and power that made Goyette tick. Zak could almost see the dollar signs light up in his eyes as he digested the possibilities.
“Yes,” Goyette nodded hungrily. “Yes, we’ll have to explore the market. I’ll get some people on it at once.”
Staring back at Zak, he asked, “You seem to have a bit of the bloodhound in you. How would you like to visit this warehouse in Ontario and find out where this ruthenium came from and how much of a supply is left?”
“Providing Terra Green Air is operating a scheduled flight,” Zak replied with a smile.
“You can use the jet,” Goyette grumbled. “But there’s another matter of minor importance that requires your attention beforehand. It seems I have a small annoyance in Kitimat.”
“Kitimat. Isn’t that near Prince Rupert?”
Goyette nodded and handed Zak the fax he had received from the natural resources minister. Reading the document, Zak nodded, then gulped down his martini.
“I’ll take care of it on the way to Ontario,” he said, stuffing the fax into his pocket and rising from the chair. He moved toward the door, then turned back toward Goyette.
“You know, that research mole of yours, Bob Hamilton? You might consider posting him a nice bonus for the information he provided. Might make you a bit of money down the road.”
“I suppose,” Goyette grunted, then he closed his eyes and grimaced. “Just knock next time, will you please?” he said.
But when he opened his eyes, Zak was already gone.
33
The true die-hard members of the Potomac Yacht Club had already capitalized on the sparkling Sunday-morning weather and taken to the river in their sailboats by the time Pitt stepped onto the main dock at nine o’clock. An overweight man toting an empty gas can trudged toward Pitt, sweating profusely in the muggy morning air.
“Excuse me,” Pitt asked, “can you tell me where the Roberta Ann is berthed?”
The fat man’s face brightened at the name. “That’s Dan Martin’s boat. He’s on the far dock, the third or fourth berth down. Tell him Tony wants his electric drill back.”
Pitt thanked the man and made his way to the last dock, quickly spotting the Roberta Ann as he stepped down a ramp from the quay. She was a gleaming wood sailboat of just under forty feet. Built in Hong Kong in the 1930s, she was all varnished teak and mahogany, accented by loads of brass fittings that sparkled in the sunlight. In impeccable condition, she was a boat that oozed the romance of another era. Admiring the sleek lines, Pitt could practically envision Clark Gable and Carole Lombard sailing her under the stars to Catalina with a case of champagne aboard. The image was shattered by a string of four-letter words that suddenly wafted from the stern. Pitt walked closer, to find a man hunched down in a bay that housed the sailboat’s small inboard motor.
“Permission to come aboard?” Pitt called out.
The man popped upright, a frustrated snarl on his face softening at the sight of Pitt.
“Dirk Pitt. What a pleasant surprise. Come to mock my sea-faring ways?”
“On the contrary. You have the Roberta Ann looking shipshape and Bristol fashion,” Pitt said, stepping aboard and shaking hands with Dan Martin. A tough Bostonian with thick brown hair, Martin gazed at Pitt through a pair of elfin blue eyes that seemed to dance with mirth.
“Trying to get her prepped for the President’s Cup Regatta next weekend, but the inboard motor is giving me fits. New carburetor, wiring, and fuel pump, yet she still doesn’t want to fire up.”
Pitt leaned over the hatch and studied the four-cylinder engine.
“That looks like the motor from an old American Austin,” he said, recalling a minuscule car built in the twenties and thirties.
“Good guess. It’s actually an American Bantam motor. The second owner had an American Bantam dealership and apparently tore out the original engine and inserted the Bantam. She ran fine until I decided to overhaul her.”
“Always the case.”
“Can I get you a beer?” Martin offered, rubbing his oil-stained hands on a rag.
“A little early for me,” Pitt replied, shaking his head.
Martin kicked open a nearby ice chest and rummaged around until he located a bottle of Sam Adams. Popping the cap, he leaned on a rail and inhaled a large swig.
“I take it you didn’t come down here strictly to talk boats,” he said.
“No, that’s simply a bonus,” Pitt said with a grin. “Actually, Dan, I was wondering what you know about the explosion at the George Washington University research lab last week.”
“Since the Director of NUMA isn’t calling at my office, I presume this is an unofficial inquiry?”
“Entirely off-the-record,” Pitt replied with a nod.
“What’s your interest?” Martin turned his gaze to the beer bottle, studying its label.
“Lisa Lane, the scientist whose lab exploded, is a close friend of my wife’s. I had just walked into the building to give her a report when the place detonated.”
“Amazing nobody was killed,” Martin replied. “But it does appear to have been a measured blast.”
“You have people working on it?”
Martin nodded. “When the D.C. police couldn’t identify a cause, they flagged it as a potential terrorist act and called us in. We sent three agents over a few days ago.”
Dan Martin was the director of the FBI’s Domestic Terrorism Operations Unit within the agency’s Counterterrorism Division. Like Pitt, Martin had an affinity for old cars as well as boats, and had become friends with the NUMA Director after competing against him at a vintage auto concours some years earlier.
“So nobody believes the explosion was an accident?” Pitt asked.
“We can’t say definitively just yet, but things are looking in that direction. A ruptured gas line was the first thing police investigators looked at, but the epicenter of the explosion was well away from the nearest gas line. The building’s gas line didn’t in fact rupture from the explosion, which could have caused much more damage.”
“That would seem to suggest that the source was a planted device, if not something in the lab itself.”
Martin nodded. “I’ve been told that there were canisters of oxygen and carbon dioxide in there, so that’s one suspicion. But my agents have performed a full residue sampling test, so that ought to tell us if there was any foreign material involved that can’t be placed in the lab. I’m expecting the results on my desk tomorrow.”