Sins Against the Sea (6 page)

“Okay…but what’s your point?”

“My point,” Peter said with an edge to his voice, “is that, while the Minch has yet to be designated as an MPA, there are limits on the size of tankers allowed to pass through its waters. Nothing over ten-thousand tons of deadweight.”

An Aframax could carry more than ten times that amount. “How much was
Ketos
carrying?”

“That’s just it,” he said. “Nobody seems to know.”

This made no sense, as Conch kept careful track of its tankers and their activities. Corey’s insides squirmed with suspicion—and dread. “How could something like this happen?”

“Beats the hell out of me.” Peter sounded more unconcerned than seemed appropriate, given the severity of the situation. “A clerical error, maybe, or…”

Corey waited for him to go on. When he didn’t after an impossibly long pause, she prompted him. “Or what?”

“Well, that’s the jackpot question, isn’t it?” He expelled a heavy sigh into the receiver. “You’re going to need to come up with a damn good answer for it—before we land in Benbecula.”

Corey, buzzing with adrenaline, disengaged the call, hurried to her desk, and opened the bulging three-ring binder she’d brought home from the last training session. She would be the media point-person on the “away team”—the on-scene strike force of communications and technical specialists—and she intended to be as prepared as humanly possible. It would be her job to field calls and questions from reporters, prepare statements and news releases, and to take charge of the twice-daily press briefings.

The thought of bearing the mantle of so much responsibility made her stomach hurt. This wouldn’t be her first time in front of an angry mob of journalists armed with microphones and television cameras, but it would be her first time on the scene of an actual spill, and she was already feeling the pressure. Her temples were pounding and her gut felt like she’d swallowed a rock the size of her fist. What if she blew it? What if she lost her cool? What if she said the wrong thing? A bitter laugh escaped her stress-strangulated throat. Who was she kidding? She knew exactly what would happen if she screwed up.

Peter would kick her to the curb just as the bus was due.

Corey took a deep breath and returned her attention to her notes from the drill. The point of these bi-annual training exercises was to work out any kinks before an actual spill occurred—an inevitability given the fact that Conch transported more than a billion barrels of oil every day in the U.S. alone. The company’s North Sea operations were somewhat smaller, but still extensive.

Something struck her then like a boot to the gut: OPA90 required oil companies to file a response plan with the government for any tank vessel transporting product—meaning that, if
Ketos
was sailing without documentation, Conch was in violation.

She shook her head in dismay, heaved an exasperated sigh, and slammed the binder. How was she ever going to come up with an explanation for all of this that would satisfy the media?

Chapter Three

Inside the tidal cave, Cuan was curled on his side, a trembling, fevered study in misery. Everywhere the oil had touched him burned like acid. Blisters, boils, and ulcers covered his flesh, his lungs were inflamed and congested, and every few minutes, his intestines gripped and spasmed before expelling another searing burst of diarrhea. He had vomited so many times, his stomach was empty. Even so, he continued to heave, bringing up little more than watery black bile.

If he was going to die, he prayed it would be soon. He welcomed an end to this suffering. Yearned for it, in truth. Never in the whole of his life had he known such all-encompassing agony.

He’d been in this desperate condition for hours now. The oil had poisoned him, he was sure. Nothing else could explain this sudden, violent assault on his system. He had eaten nothing since last night’s feast and, had he ingested a bit of bad fish or crab, it would surely have affected him long before this. It had to be the oil and, if it could plague him—a demi-god—to this extent, he could only imagine what affect it was having on the weaker creatures of the sea and their young.

Strange sounds were coming from the beach. He didn’t know what was happening, only that more boats had arrived. It sounded as if a mob had descended—and was making enough noise to rouse the gods. He shuddered to think what might happen if they found him. The cave’s entrance was hidden, though not invisible. Anyone determined enough could find it, especially if they caught a whiff of his sickness. He prayed no one would, pleaded with the gods to let him die in peace, and called upon the tide to carry his body back to the sea.

He dozed off for a time and the next time he opened his eyes, it was dark outside the cave. It was quieter, too. The only sound was the soft lapping of the sea against the shore. Had the men on the beach gone away?

The tide had come in, submerging him in a foot of seawater. Swirling around on all sides were brown muck and dead fish. The smell of the fish made him aware of his hunger. His stomach did a flip and began to growl. He wasn’t just peckish, he was ravenous. Sadly, everything edible within reach had been contaminated by oil. He tried to sit up, finding he was as weak as a newborn pup. His skin felt raw and fevered and his head throbbed something terrible.

He looked around the cave for clumps of lichen, but the water-etched walls were barren. He pulled himself through the tidewater toward the entrance, pleased to find it covered in moss. Tearing off a chunk, he stuffed it into his mouth. It tasted earthy and bitter, making him grimace as he chewed. Swallowing proved painful, but he ate as much of the spongy green fare as he could before looking around for something else. He cheered when he spotted a large patch of
creathnach
—a fringed red-brown lichen—growing just outside the cave’s entrance. With all due caution, he poked his head into the open; just far enough to see if anybody was about. Nobody was, thank the gods.

Dragging himself a little ways out, he pulled a clump of
creathnach
up by the roots, and stuffed the whole plant into his mouth, savoring the sharp herbal flavor. Keeping watch, he gobbled all the lichen he could gather. Movement nearby gave his heart a jolt. Dropping his fistful of lichen, he scrambled back inside. He cowered there, breath held, heart pounding, praying to the gods he would not be found out.

* * * *

As Corey drove up Lakewood Boulevard toward the airport, her mind careened back and forth between two topics. The first was the statement she’d been asked to prepare to mislead the media, and the second was how the spill might adversely affect the island’s delicate ecosystem. Both worries made her stomach hurt.

Heartbreaking images from Prince William Sound and Deepwater Horizon flashed through her mind. Pelicans, egrets, sea turtles, and baby dolphins coated in muddy brown crude. Volunteers soaping up the birds with grease-fighting detergent. Clean-up crews in hazmat gear trampling all over the fragile environment. Booms snaking through the mire like bloated intestines.

It would be her job, she was painfully aware, to do damage control, starting with keeping images like those out of the media. But how? By building a “no comment” wall between Conch and reporters like Peter Blackwell preferred? By denying access to photographers and threatening reporters with arrest, the way British Petroleum had? Corey bit her lip to hold back her tears of frustration. Even if she could keep the photographers from gaining access, how was she ever going to explain what
Ketos
was doing there to begin with? First, somebody needed to explain it to her, and it didn’t appear as if her superiors had any intention of doing so.

She took a deep breath and tightened her grip on the steering wheel. Why had she taken this crappy job in the first place? She’d dreamed of becoming a marine biologist, of working somewhere like Scripps Oceanographic Institute in California or Woods Hole in Massachusetts. Then, in her final year at UCLA, when she wondered how the hell she was ever going to afford grad school, she got an unexpected call from Peter, her late father’s former boss and the only survivor of the
Nautilus
wreck.

“If you promise to come and work for me after you graduate,” he’d told her, laying on the charm, “Conch will pay the full freight for your advanced degree, including living expenses.”

Though his offer was too good to turn down, she never doubted his motives had something to do with her father’s death. Since he’d drowned aboard the company yacht, Peter probably feared she’d try to sue Conch Oil for wrongful death or something. Not that she would have. Her father’s death was an accident, plain and simple. It would have been wrong to hold his employer accountable. The coastguard’s report blamed a freak storm for the accident.
Nautilus
, they concluded after a thorough investigation, had been indisputably seaworthy at the time of the sinking.

So, she accepted the offer, earned her master’s degree, and found out when she showed up for her first day at Conch that she’d been assigned to corporate communications instead of the oceanographic research department, as she’d expected. Peter, it turned out, had recruited her not for her intellect, but for her appearance.

“You’re far too attractive to hide in the laboratory,” he’d said with that sleazy grin of his, “and television cameras and focus groups are going to love you.”

It was probably just as well, since witnessing her dad’s accident had brought on an acute case of aquaphobia. The psychologist at the student health center said it was understandable, given what she’d observed. He also said the only way to get past her fear of water was to dive in.

She hadn’t taken his advice. Or gotten any closer to the ocean in all this time than the balcony of her apartment. How could she when a mere walk on the beach triggered a massive anxiety attack?

While the job didn’t thrill her, she’d hoped to persuade Peter to transfer her to the research department once she conquered her fear of drowning. Maybe if she joined the research team, she’d reasoned, she could teach Peter and the rest of the Conch brass something about the devastating effects of underwater drilling on delicate marine ecosystems.

Over the next five years, however, her priorities shifted. Her primary goal became making herself indispensable. Her diligence paid off. After ten years of long hours that nixed any chance of a personal life, she now headed the department.

The flash of an advertising searchlight brought her back to Lakewood Boulevard. Her frown deepened as she passed a string of gleaming car dealerships, their gas-guzzling SUVs lined up like invading tanks. The price of gasoline was currently averaging well over five dollars a gallon. Not that the exorbitant price had slowed the national addiction any. Instead, it only seemed to fuel the rage for offshore drilling.

Drill, baby drill.

Corey shook her head at the short-sightedness of the drill-happy mentality. More deep-water drilling would do nothing to lower gas and oil prices or help wean Americans off their unsustainable addiction to fossil fuels. The earth’s oil reserves were finite. Someday, the oil supply would run dry. It was not a question of
if
; it was a matter of
when
.

Taking a deep, angst-purging breath, Corey steered her mind back to the crisis at hand. She still wanted to know what
Ketos
was doing in the Minch. Last time she checked, Scotland still banned drilling off its west coast—a policy Conch, among other major oil companies, had been lobbying to change for decades now.

The majority of North Sea drilling took place in three deep-water fields: the East Shetland Basin, whose name was self-explanatory; the Fladen Ground, which lay east of the Orkney Islands; and the Forties Oil Field, the biggest in the region, located off the coast of Aberdeen. Conch had platforms in all three, as well as the smaller fields located West of Shetland and in the Moray Firth, the triangular inlet that cut all the way to Inverness.

She might not know exactly how things worked over there—or
didn’t
work, apparently—but this much she did know: the Scottish Parliament did not control drilling rights in Scottish waters; the U.K. Parliament did. Thus, Scotland, though struggling economically, reaped no financial benefits whatsoever from the harvesting of its underwater oil reservoirs—an inequity that inflamed proponents for Scottish independence. Yet, despite these gross imbalances, the Scottish people voted down independence when given the chance, which, being a freedom-loving American, she could not understand.

A sudden onslaught of stress emptied her mind as she turned onto the road leading into the airport. Wrapping herself in the hard coating she’d need to deal with Peter and the media, she made her way to long-term parking, quickly found a space, and hoisted her wheelie bag out of the trunk. As she headed toward the white art-deco terminal, the night air made her shiver. It also made her grateful she’d had the foresight to grab a jacket on her way out the door.

Unfortunately, the jacket would do nothing to protect her from the chill she felt over what she was about to do.

Upon entering the terminal, she found Peter standing at the far end—near the ticketing counters. Being well over six feet tall, he was hard to miss. He also was uncommonly handsome with his chiseled features, deep-set dark eyes, and salt-and-pepper hair. Clad in a well-tailored black suit and red necktie, he stood beside a hard-sided silver spinner, briefcase in hand. A smile flickered on his mouth when their gazes met.