Buried At Sea (8 page)

A dozen smaller monitors displayed CNBC, CNN, C-SPAN, and a range of science and engineering websites. The only decoration in their large, windowless office was a vintage poster for the movie Fantastic Voyage—her father's idea. Their desk was littered with telephones and computer monitors. A printer sighed in a corner, attended by an MBA. A second MBA was whispering into a phone. The third was

poised to retrieve paper files from a bank of cabinets.

Lloyd McVay said, "I should speak with someone in the oil business, in the event Spark heads for his old stomping grounds in West Africa."

"Richard Hood at Shell," suggested Val. "We gave his brother a lab grant."

"Dick's an accountant, for goodness' sake. Bob Hunt oversees security." Val's grandfather had founded McVay Radio, building transceivers for the air force in World War II and microwave generators for the then-new radar. After a long stint with the CIA, her father had taken over, renaming the company McVay Microwaves in time for the Vietnam War and the NASA moon project, and developing transmitters and laser generators for the Defense Department, NASA, and private industry. He had made a second fortune by jumping down from elite technology into PCs for ordinary people. With the company catchphrase, "There are more of them than us," McVay Computers sold cheaper and cheaper computer chips by the billions.

After graduating first in her class at Stanford, Val had joined him in the race to design high-speed browsers for the Internet. But here they stumbled. Their technically brilliant effort was steamrollered by Microsoft at the cost of much money and most of the McVay prestige. Silicon Valley now knew the tall, stooped patrician Lloyd McVay as an older businessman who managed the benevolent-sounding, nonprofit, tax-exempt McVay Foundation for Humane Science, and his reclusive daughter as one of the legion of thirty-something women left in the cyber dust.

In fact, the McVays had regrouped in New Jersey horse country and, under the cloak of their foundation, set their sights on a third fortune that would dwarf the first two. It meant being first on-line when the fifty-year-old electronics mantra "smaller and faster" transformed the Internet by linking ultra-miniature microprocessors to the world's database. Dispensing grants to an array of engineering projects, Val and her father had devoted the past six years to launching the

next great Internet breakthrough. They had finally found it in Sentinel—one of hundreds of developments the foundation had financed. But first they had to find Will Spark, who had stolen it.

"Merchant ships should watch for them offshore. Can you call Vassily Nikolin?"

"The man authenticates with relentless enthusiasm the cliché of Russian dipsomania."

"Whom do you suggest?" she shot back. She hated playing catch-up. It went against her grain. She was willing to accept that plenty of people were smarter than she, but no one was better organized or worked harder.

"Admiral Boris Rugoff," her father replied. "And, obviously, I'm already in touch with the towing companies that service the oil fields."

"And fishing fleets?"

"You know perfectly well that we're thin on the ground there," her father snapped.

"I know that there are thirteen hundred European Union trawlers licensed around the world."

"Well, unless you've become intimate with some fishermen I've yet to meet—"

"What about the navy?"

"It goes without saying that I've already had a preliminary conversation with Fleet Ocean Intelligence."

Val checked her goals list. Yacht clubs, merchant ships, work boats, fishing fleets, and the possibility of enlisting the U.S. Navy had all been covered. For her, the worst part of this catastrophe was that she had come aboard late. When it first hit—which was to say, when Will Spark first screwed them—they had decided that she would take care of day-to-day affairs, freeing her father to devote his full time to managing the crisis. It was he, after all, who had always handled the dark side of the business—assisted by old Andrew Nickels—when lobbying had to be augmented by the well-placed bribe, dirt had to be dug up to smear a persistent rival, a critic was to be silenced, a security breach plugged, or an enemy punished.

But when Spark suddenly disappeared and Andrew Nickels killed himself, Val, with her entire future at stake, had had to step in. She had discovered that her flair for conceiving and managing long-term projects was suited to fighting deceit with deceit. Coupled with her technical expertise, she had the powerful feeling that she could play the dark games even better than her father. Proof was her idea to trace Spark by bugging Jim Leighton's heart-rate monitor. An opportunity that Andy Nickels, her father's latest protégé, had squandered.

She watched an assistant slide an open folder onto Lloyd McVay's desk. Another handed him a wireless telephone. McVay ran his finger down the dossier and glanced at the nine-by-twelve glossy photograph of the oil company executive.

"Bob Hunt! It's been too long since we've heard from you. . . . How's that tennis game going? Elbow still giving you trouble?" His finger traced columns of print. "Estelle is well, I trust? Must be wrapping up that nanotech book by now. . . . Still at it? . . . No thanks are necessary; we prefer to support better causes than the Internal Revenue Service—though you might remind Estelle that we like to see our projects completed on time. . . . Now, Bob, we've gotten a hint of trouble in your patch . . . over the transom as it were. It's possible—not yet a certainty—that Greenpeace is targeting your offshore operations in the Niger Delta. . . . A two-lantern coming, if you get my meaning. . . . By sea. Under your radar on a sailboat. . . I'll send a man around with a description of the boat and crew. . . . You're welcome—but there is one thing, Bob. We have first dibs on them. ... That's exactly what I mean." McVay's voice was abruptly drained of good nature. "They severely injured the captain of one of our research vessels with their shenanigans and we intend to bring charges. We'll take them off your hands the instant you get them. . . . That's right, Bob. No skin off your nose." A message from a receptionist crawled across Val's monitor: a geology team from Cambridge was still waiting to present their final report on earthquake predictors. She forwarded "I'll blow them off" to her father's screen. Exiting their private office, she opened double-locked foyer doors with her thumbprint, then hurried out of the mansion she shared with her father, descended the granite front steps, and crossed the winter-bleak gardens on a path of crushed slate. The McVay Foundation for Humane Science presented its public face in a former fiftystall brood barn—a huge stone structure converted into numerous offices, conference rooms, and a great hall that could be used for presentations and formal dinners. The Cambridge scientists were waiting in the reception room, leafing through the foundation'

s four-color annual reports and making the rounds of the many framed photographs of her father, who was pictured shaking hands with presidents and grinning at disadvantaged children who had benefited from McVay generosity. They leapt to their feet when Val strode in.

"Ladies. Gentlemen. Mr. McVay is disappointed he will not be able to greet you in person. He looks forward to reading your report and we will get back to you in due course. The limousines will take you back to New York. Thank you for coming."

"But we brought slides," said a long-haired geologist.

"We'll look at them," said Val, and then, with a hazy realization that the scientists were not happy, she added, "Of course we'll look at them. We paid for them." She hurried back to the house and her desk. A new file was being presented to her father along with a telephone.

Val, who vastly preferred the bluntness of e-mail to the chitchat required on the telephone, turned to her keypad to send blind copies to every yacht captain in her address file:

Have you seen the fifty-foot. one-off sloop Hustle? Center cockpit. high aspect rig. Hong Kong registry. new teak decks. distinctive wooden spoked wheel, white hull. Val brought a file of research vessels up on her screen and began e-mailing McVay grant recipients aboard those currently at sea. Across the desk, her father was describmg Hustle to the chairman of a Taiwanese container fleet. Will Spark had contrived to lose himself on a big ocean. But for the owners of a foundation that underwrote research and development with grants and incubator money, disbursed first-class travel expenses to conferences and retreats, and lobbied congressmen and military officers with studied generosity, the big ocean was surrounded by a very small world.

SECOND-DAY PIE tastes better than first-day pie, because pie needs time to steep. So real wealth," said Will Spark, "would be the means to employ servants to eat your firstday pie." He chewed slowly, savoring a forkful. "I mean real wealth."

"Who are 'they,' Will? Who's chasing you?"

"Question is, how the heck wealthy are you going to get as a personal trainer?"

"Not very. Who is chasing you?"

"Personal trainers serve money, they don't make money. You ever ask yourself where it'

s taking you?"

Jim looked out at the water. Hustle was slogging through low swells. The horizon pressed close today. The sky sagged low. The air was so thick that the shirts and shorts he had hung out to dry were still as wet as when he pulled them from the washing machine.

"I mean long-term," said Will.

His career future was not a happy subject. He was twenty-nine. Thirty loomed and cast a shadow of his limitations. "I used to think I'd hit the big bucks bike racing."

"Endorsements? You're talking top ten. That's like breaking into the NBA?'

"And I was also hoping to get into the top ten of triathlon. My swimming was tops. I'm good on the bike. But I'm too slow a runner. I'd lose my points running. I don't even compete anymore."

"Well, what rank did you get to?"

"Nothing to write home about. . . . I wouldn't do the blood doping or any hormones, but like it or not, if you don't, you're not in the top twenty." Will reached over and lightly punched his biceps. "Not even steroids?"

"No way, man!"

"I wondered. Lot of bulk. So what are you going to do? Live off your wife?"

"No!"

"Hey, I'm just kidding you. I know you wouldn't do that. But how are you going to live?"

"I live. I pay my rent. I can cover my bills, run my car, but . . . I don't know, maybe I'll go back to school:'

Will's jowls and scars scrunched up in an expression that scorned professional students. " What did you study in college?"

"Lit and history."

"Good beginning. No reason why you couldn't turn that into an MBA. These days there's more and more respect for a liberal arts degree—the flexibility it teaches you—if you cap it with a business degree."

"I don't want to be a businessman!'

"Why not? You got a problem with business?'

"I don't think I'm competitive enough."

Will looked at him, surprise on his face. "Good answer. That why you didn't win your bike races?"

"That and injuries."

"What injuries? That?" He pointed at a white scar on Jim's right knee.

"I got hurt a lot. Too many crashes. Too much overtraining. Shannon says I try to overcome my lack of competitiveness by beating up on my body."

'What does Shannon want?"

Jim, only vaguely aware that Will had once again turned their conversation on its ear and that he was answering more questions than he was asking, admitted, "That's complicated. She says she wants a simple life. She doesn't want the whole two-jobs, half-theday-commuting lifestyle, nannies and housekeepers, all that fast-track-to-nowhere stuff. And no time for the kids"

"Not to mention each other," said Will.

"Shannon says young parents are like cellmates." "I've said it before: she sounds like a sensible girl." "Yeah, except that she doesn't have a clue about what it's like not to have money. Her father gives her anything she

wants. She thinks it's normal to drive a new BMW." "A boom-time baby." Jim nodded. "If it wasn't for her mother nagging her to find a rich guy, she probably would have married one of their Westport neighbors."

"You were the rebellion?" Will asked with a smile.

"Not really. I mean, I was—as far as her mother is concerned."

"If I may be so blunt," said Will, "before she turned you down, did you ever ask yourself what you were doing with this girl?"

More often than Will could imagine, Jim reflected, for reasons he would never know. He answered, "We liked each other. In fact, we knew the second we met we were exactly what we wanted."

"I know the feeling well," Will said acidly. "Several of my marriages started on that basis."

"Yeah, well, it used to amaze me how I loved her more every day." Will nodded gravely. "I underwrote some interesting research on a neuropeptide called oxytocin. Oxytocin influences pair bonding. And it seems that rubbing your sexual parts stimulates the brain to release oxytocin—which might explain your feelings. Scientists call it the 'cuddle hormone.' I'm still hoping to cash in." Jim laughed. Then he said, "I still feel that way, even after she said no. I mean, I'm pissed, but Jesus, I miss her. And I gotta tell you, your long cut to Africa is killing me."

Will said, "Offshore, being a monk works best. Just shut it all down. You'd be amazed how you can crank it up again, when you get your arms around a warm woman. What did you say her father does?"

"He's got a chain of health clubs."

"Right. In Connecticut. How many?"

"Just took over his sixth. He's buying up the mom-andpops and taking them big time. That's how we met. He bought one of the clubs I was working in. The one you came to in Bridgeport."

"And I'll bet that if Shannon ever changed her mind and married you, he and her mom would want you to manage one."

"If they couldn't strong-arm her into marrying a rich guy." "But that's not money," Will scoffed. "Money is independence, not living off your father-in-law."

"Hey, I wouldn't be living off him. I'd be doing a job. A good job. I've got a lot of ideas for the clubs. Get people involved like it's their community. I'm thinking that the clubs could field bike-racing teams."