Chapter 9

 

On the top floor of the Chevron Corporate office in Ventura, the solitary figure of Maverick Duncan strolled down the long hallway, which led to the lone office at the end. Rays of sunshine cut through a series of large windows on his right and brightened the barren, sky-blue, wall to his left. Hands in his pockets, wearing tight-fitting, flared jeans, and frameless, prescription sunglasses, he rolled a toothpick from one side of his mouth to the other as he went. The thud from his black cowboy boots tromping on the wood inlay floor, echoed along the way. Arriving at his destination, he stopped in front of a large set of double doors and read the cereal-box-sized, bronze sign -Kwan Li, Director. Without hesitation, he opened the door wide, walked through the doorway, and into the room. The large glass window which covered at least half of the back wall of Kwan’s office revealed to him a magnificent view of the Pacific Ocean and the jagged, black, cliffs of Santa Rosa Island.

Sitting at a mahogany desk, Kwan pretended to be too absorbed in her work to notice his entry. She wore a black slacks and a white blouse, conservatively fit. No jewelry or make-up adorned her during work hours. She never wore feminine attire at work, not even when the plan for the afternoon included receiving a visit from the exciting Maverick Duncan.  Ever since that night at the seminar, when she spotted him standing behind the horrible looking Boa Yang, she had desired him.

Kwan Li stood up and motioned for him to sit down on the couch positioned against the wall. Content to enjoy his presence, Kwan smiled, sat back down, and waited several moments for him to speak.

Maverick removed his toothpick and tossed the mangled splinter into the trash can beside him, “Your Grandparents have been released, Kwan; they are on their way to Santa Barbara Airport, Air China flight 446 arriving at 3:30pm tomorrow. Here is a copy of their itinerary. Do you have the report?”

He held up the itinerary as Kwan rose from her chair and walked over to the couch to take the folded documents from him. She sat on the arm of the sofa and looked down at him.

“Yes I have the report. I am working on the translation. Of course, now that the author is on his way to jail, I will need much more time to complete this complex task.” The tone of her voice firmed as she spoke. Her admiring gaze turned serious.

Duncan was nice to look at, but Kwan was not happy with him.  She suspected that he had had something to do with Dana’s troubles.  Although he was even more smug and arrogant than his boss, she could not bring herself to hate him, or even dislike him. Maybe it was the way he filled out his tight, black, jeans and always had that look on his face, like he didn’t care if he lived or died, as long as he wasn’t bored. That’s what attracted him to her, she decided: he was crazy, and dangerous.

He slid over on the sofa and to allow her room. Trembling, she knew Duncan sensed her fear. He looked up at her and nodded as if he were the one in charge now. She slid off the arm of the couch and sat next to him. He smiled.

“We cannot allow anyone else to know about the findings in the Santa Rosa Island Report, otherwise they have no value,” Duncan said.

“Yes, of course, Duncan, but you shouldn't worry too much about anyone else seeing the information. There aren't but a couple people besides myself and Dana who would understand the report’s meaning anyway. And now Dana is in jail.”

Duncan nodded, and the two sat in silence for several moments. He took out a pack of cigarettes, pulled out one from the pack, and lit it.

“What do you know about Mike's murder?” Kwan asked.

Grinning, he leaned back, spread his arms out along the back of the sofa, and said, “Just what I read in the papers. Mike was stupid. I know he hated Dana, but he shouldn't have pushed him too far. I think the remark about him being a cripple who is only good enough for other crippled girls might have pushed that Mathers guy into doing something more than the punch in the mouth we planned on.”

Kwan raised an eyebrow, “I never read that detail in the paper, sounds like you might have some inside information. Do you?”

“What are you talking about, inside information?”

“You put Mike up to confronting Dana, didn't you?”

Duncan looked away and took a drag off of his cigarette.

Kwan drew closer. “Yes, you did, I saw you at the beach that morning; Mike, you, and that maniac you call Professor. You got Mike to start a fight with Dana so he would get arrested, didn't you?”

Duncan blew out the smoke from his cigarette and laughed. “You are hard to fool, Kwan Li,” he said, “Yeah, we encouraged him a little, but he didn’t need much. He hated Dana pretty bad, anyway. We hoped that the little dust up that they got into at Surfer’s Park would be enough to get Dana thrown in jail.”

“I knew it!” she said balling up her small hand into a fist and striking the air in front of her, “You were trying to get my best research scientist put in jail. You and Bao Yang, you got Mike killed.”

“You give me too much credit,” Duncan said as he slid over on the couch to give her space, “What do you think, I am God or something?”

“I hope you and Bao Yang are happy.”

“No, Bao Yang is not pleased. I swear to you, nobody was supposed to get killed, especially Mike. We were counting on his support. We needed his editorial comments about the moratorium to help us with our plans, and besides, murder is not allowed for me. I am an agent for the Chinese Ministry, not an assassin. Mike’s death almost ruined our whole plan.”

Kwan stood up and hugged the itinerary as she walked toward the window and looked out at the ocean. The sun lit her forlorn face with a streak of soft gold as she watched it sink slowly behind a black hillcrest on Santa Rosa Island. She didn’t like not being able to see where things were heading. When she started her game with Bao Yang, it was supposed to be about money and business. She didn’t want to hurt anyone; she just wanted to get ahead.

Now it was no longer a game, now there were real people’s lives involved, other people’s lives that she knew and respected. She had never thought the simple theft of information she committed would lead to the death of a good friend’s son, and the imprisonment of her most talented new prospect, Dana Mathers. She blamed and accused Bao Yang and Duncan out loud, but it was to herself that she reserved the severest rebuke. She stood there in silence for several minutes, and then she turned around to face him. “But why did you want to get Dana thrown in jail?” she said. “It doesn’t make sense. I needed him as bad as or worse than you needed Mike.”

“Bao Yang was afraid he would talk about his oil discovery to someone.”

“Who?”

“Anyone, maybe Jack Tanner. Anyway, we weren’t trying to get him put away, just arrested. Then we could save him, bail him out, and make him our friend. We thought he would work for us on his own. That fat sheriff was supposed to arrest him the first time he and Dana fought. The second time we tried it at Rincon Beach, hoping for better cops. We tracked them on the scanner and thought the two policemen we targeted were going to show up. Instead that pig Cyrus Fleming and that Max Stern guy, Robocop Junior, are put on the case. That did not work out so well. And then Dana kills him before we get there, what a mess.”

Noticing that Maverick was looking for somewhere to duck his cigarette ashes, Kwan walked around to her desk, set the itinerary down, and found an old coffee cup. She didn’t have an ashtray; Maverick was the first person who ever dared to smoke in her office. She handed him the cup and asked, “How do you know it was Dana if you weren't there?”

“I don't know. That's just what the cops say and that Briana girl that the Professor is so fond of. She was supposed to call the cops before anything bad happened.”

“What the hell, Mr. big shot spy; you blew it bad didn't you? If you would have let me handle Dana, none of this would have happened. Didn't you know that Dana grew up with that fat sheriff? He probably wouldn't have arrested Dana even if he saw him murder Mike. Now you get the only man who can understand this algorithm for finding oil put in jail for murder.”

“I know, I told you Bao Yang is not pleased with me, either. I can’t control everything, especially the Professor. And I don’t think anybody can handle Dana Mathers. I read about how he got out of that car wreck. He is one cool cowboy,” Duncan said as he stood up and stretched. He walked over to Kwan and put his arms around her waist. The stench of the cigarette made her queasy, but she liked the feel of his warm body next to her. She smiled and leaned back into his arms. The new fact that Mike hated Dana, and that their conflict was inevitable, helped her to rationalize away the guilt she was feeling over the tragic events of the last few days. Whatever had happened to Mike and Dana had nothing to do with her own schemes.

“Don’t worry, Kwan, Dana is safe,” Maverick said. “He is safer in jail than he is on the outside. Besides, Bao Yang has our people there watching out for him.”

“What do you mean safer than on the outside?” She pulled away from him and looked up at him with narrowed eyes, “You mean…You mean because the Professor wants to kill him, doesn’t he?”

Maverick burst into laughter, and then he said, “The Professor is crazy; he wants to kill everybody-even me, you, and himself, until there are only a couple thousand people left. Then his Mother Earth will be happy. What a lulu.”

“You and Bao Yang are playing with fire, literally. The FBI is looking for him. If they find you with him you will ruin everything. We will all go to jail. What do we need him for?”

“We need him to restore the moratorium permanently, and get rid of all the other offshore oil rigs.”

“Restore it permantly? I think you are as crazy as the Professor. How are we going to get the oil if the moratorium is restored?”

“We drill horizontally from a secret place. Everybody else will be gone except for CNOOC.”

“What do you mean gone? What secret place?”

“It’s secret. That’s all I can talk about now, Kwan.” Maverick walked over to her desk and turned through the pages of the Santa Rosa Island Report. “It’s really better you don’t ask anymore questions.”

Kwan sat back down on the couch and folded her arms. As much as she hated not being in control, she decided to comply. Probably it was better not to know too much about what was going on.

“This is a very old mud log, where did you get this data?” Maverick asked.

“It’s from Unocal and you’re right the data in that log is over forty years old. It is the last log Unocal made before the moratorium. Dana took the data from it and constructed a 3D model.”

“This report is based on forty year old data? How reliable is that?”

“By itself, not very, but when you add other data, like sonic transmission data, and RF transmission data, you can see that Dana is right, there is a huge oil deposit off the coast of Santa Rosa Island.”

“How did you get the other data? I thought the moratorium forbid exploratory drilling.”

“We didn’t drill. We got all that data from a submarine, Dana’s idea. We conducted non-intrusive, surface exploration.”

“How can you be sure the oil is there?”

“We can’t be a hundred percent certain, but we have data from other oil deposit discoveries and they match up pretty close to what we have found off the coast of Santa Rosa. We are more than ninety percent certain there is an oil deposit there.”

“That’s good. I would hate to go through all this trouble just for nothing. I see you need a little help with your Chinese, this character is wrong, may I?” Maverick picked up a pencil and waited.”

Kwan got up, walked over to her desk where Maverick was sitting, and looked down at her translation, “Where?”

Maverick pointed to the character.

“Oh, you are old school,” Kwan said. “That’s a simplified character. You can change it if you like. Where did you learn Chinese?”

“I learned it where I was born, Szechuan.” Maverick replied as he carefully changed the character.

“I wasn’t sure if you were Chinese or not. You look more European than Asian.”

Maverick laughed, then sat down in her chair and said, “That’s why I work for Bao Yang in the Ministry of Intelligence. My mother was a blonde Russian. I am told that except for the hair and the eye color, I look just like her. I guess it’s true. My father met her in the early eighties, while she was working for the Soviet Embassy.”

“That must have been difficult for them. I’ve read that the relationship between the Soviets and the Chinese during that time were as bad as between them and the US.”

“Yes, it was, but they married anyway and had me. Despite being a Russian, my mother is well respected and she lives in Szechuan; ten years after my father’s death. China is still her home.”

Maverick had been studying the mud log the whole time he was talking to Kwan. She guessed from the expression on his face that he understood what he was reading.

“You can help me fix the report later. Are you hungry?” Kwan put her arm around his shoulder and hugged him gently.

“Yes, I am.” Maverick set her pen down, stood up, and put his arms around her. “How about Chinese?”