“How are things in Isle de Foree?”
“Poe wants to renegotiate. I told him we’d fight him.”
“Will he fight back?”
“I’m not sure, sir. But I’m afraid it looks like he might.”
The Buddha said, “For the sake of your division of the American Synergy Corporation, you better hope like hell that he doesn’t,” and hung up.
“Fuck!” Helms threw his phone on the chair beside his. He jumped up and stared over the pilots’ shoulders at the Vulcan Queengrowing large beneath him. Ordinarily, the sight of the thousand-foot Vulcan-class drill ship bristling with derricks and deck cranes filled his heart. Vulcan Queenwas a completely self-contained explorer capable of steaming to the deepest imaginable oil fields in the world at fifteen knots and drilling two exploratory wells simultaneously in stormy seas when she got there. Satellite-directed one-hundred-ton tunnel thrusters and eight rotating propulsion pods could hold her in position as tightly as if she were welded to the distant sea bottom. Manned by two hundred employees and sending remote submersibles to forage miles below, the drill ship was in her complexity and her mission a thing of powerful beauty, and Kingsman Helms felt all of the pride of the captain of the ship. More, he thought. More like a king in his castle or the admiral of a battle fleet. Vulcan Queen’s mere captain worked for him. He could always fire the captain. Which, of course, was what the Buddha had just told him could be done to him, the mere president of one mere division of the American Synergy Corporation. His phone rang. Case again. Helms was too angry to pretend he didn’t hate the cripple’s guts.
“It would have been goddamned helpful had I been informed that doddering old President Poe is fully capable of reaming out a goddamned regiment.”
“Acting President Poe,” said Doug Case.
“Don’t fuck with me, Case.”
“Had you informed me you were calling on Acting President Poe, I would have filled you in with an up-to-the-minute dossier.”
“You should have known I was calling on him.”
“I do not spy on branch presidents,” Case replied blandly, making “branch presidents” sound like shopping mall bank managers. “When they inform me of their travel plans, I inform them exactly what’s waiting for them. In minute, accurate detail.”
“What are you calling about?”
“Paul Janson says come to Singapore.”
“I’m not going to Singapore. You deal with him.”
“I already tried. Janson said, and I quote, ‘Bring Helms. Tell him I’ll blow this thing sky-high if he doesn’t get his ass to Singapore in twenty-four hours.’ What ‘thing’ would this be, Kingsman?”
“I don’t know.”
“The man seems to think he has you by the short hairs. Anything to do with the fact that Dr. Terrence Flannigan was stabbed to death last week?”
“Have you paid Janson, yet?”
“He wouldn’t take the money,” answered Case. “I stay at the American Club in Singapore. Shall I book you a room?”
TWENTY-NINE
The city-state of Singapore, an equatorial island at the southern end of the Malacca Strait, was as hot and humid as Isle de Foree. But there were no mountains to escape to, only air-conditioned shopping malls. Singapore was flat, with a few low hills, and the city, which occupied much of the island, was densely populated. Development had erased the jungle; streams flowed in concrete ditches between high-rise apartment buildings and glittering hotels; swamps had been drained and dredged to serve commercial shipping with a concrete shoreline. The port was enormous, a transhipment colossus with one foot in the Indian Ocean and the other in the South Pacific.
“ Namaste,” Paul Janson greeted the Gurkha security officers guarding the entrance to the American Club with a folding-stock Remington shotgun, a Heckler & Koch MP5, pistols, and khukuriknives. I bow to the God in you.
He was glad to see good men getting paying work, but they had to wonder, as he did, whether their employment was overkill: Gurkhas were the fiercest, best-trained fighters in the world and Singapore the safest of nations. Janson’s own club up the street, the Tanglin, whose members were the elite Chinese, Malays, Indians, and English who ran Singapore, made do with doormen who kept the taxis from cluttering the driveway.
Doug Case had left word at the front desk that he was waiting in the Union Bar. It was decorated like a sports bar with a big TV. Janson assumed that homesick American businessmen huddled here Saturday afternoons. It was quiet this morning and Case had the place to himself. He had backed his wheelchair into a corner.
“Welcome to the exotic Orient. May I order you a cheeseburger and fries?”
“Where’s Kingsman Helms?”
“Running late. He’ll be here any minute. Good flight?”
“On time,” said Janson, sitting where he could watch the door. He had dressed for the climate in linen shirt and trousers with a jacket draped over his arm. Case wore a bespoke tropical suit of ultralight 300 wool.
“Where’s Ms. Kincaid?”
“Traveling.”
“I’m disappointed. I was looking forward to laying eyes on her again.”
“She asked you a good question last time: How did you know that the doctor had been kidnapped? You answered that the gunrunners told you.”
“Correct.”
“Still your answer?”
Case had hazel eyes. They offered up a glint of steel. “Why wouldn’t it be? What’s up, Paul? What’s eating you?”
“Did the gunrunners mention what the Amber Dawnwas doing south of Isle de Foree?”
“Not that I recall. Delivering or picking up something, I presume. That’s what service boats do. If you’re interested, I’m sure it’s in the company records.”
“I’ll wait for Helms. Maybe he knows. How long did Terry Flannigan work for ASC?”
“There’s Helms!”
The tall blond executive bustled into the bar and crossed the room in several long strides. “What,” he demanded of Paul Janson, “were you going to ‘blow sky-high’ if I didn’t travel halfway around the world to humor you?”
“How long did Terry Flannigan work for ASC?”
Kingsman Helms sank into a chair and said, “You could have asked that on the telephone.”
“I don’t think you would have answered it on the telephone. How long did Terry Flannigan work for ASC?”
“Briefly.”
Janson looked at Doug Case. Had Doug known? Hard to tell.
“What do you mean, briefly?”
“He was let go for schtupping some VP’s wife.”
“I don’t understand. Why’d you hire me to save him if he no longer worked for ASC?”
“He had been one of our own. And he was taken from one of our boats. It was agreed that it would be good for company morale to see even a former employee rescued.”
“There’s a lot of fear in foreign oil patches,” Case chimed in. “It’s hard to get top people to work in them.”
Janson kept his focus on Helms. “What was the Amber Dawndoing south of Isle de Foree the night it sank?”
“That’s another I could have answered on the telephone. You’re batting two for two.”
“What was the offshore service vessel doing south of Isle de Foree where there were no oil rigs to service?”
“The Amber Dawnwas completing a secret three-D seismic program for the Isle de Foree deepwater blocks. We had contracted a small Dutch company to conduct a seismic acquisition project, and they jury-rigged the Amber Dawnas a streamer three-D seismic vessel.”
A surreptitious glance at Doug Case revealed a minute widening of the corporate security chief’s eyes.
Janson asked, “Why didn’t you just send a real one? What was the big secret?”
“I told you about our pro bono contractors two weeks ago,” Case interrupted.
“You did not tell me Amber Dawnserved an independent subcontractor.”
Case leveled an angry gaze at Kingsman Helms. “Apparently that loop was above my pay level.”