The Emissary (10 page)

One of the men laughed out loud.

“I’m glad you find that so funny, Jimmy. This little woman finds three wells in the middle of the desert—in uncharted territory, mind you—with just a ‘sense’ of it all, through her mind’s eye. No sonar, no radar, no high-tech instruments, no fracking … no outrageous costs, no shit. She just ‘sees’ it. Not one mistake, no false starts. She sees it and now they’ve got three wells pumping crude. Now I am dying to know what is so funny about that, yes I am.”

“She must have gotten real lucky,” said one of the men. “Sorry, Mat, that’s all I have to say.”

Mat leaned back in his chair, his hands clasped behind his head. “Well, thank you, Parnell, for that astute contribution to my humble little dialogue over here. Now why didn’t I think of that? ‘She just got lucky.’ Three brand-new wells gushing crude in less than a year. That’s lucky times three. If that is luck, gentlemen, then it appears I have been lookin’ for it in all the wrong places.” He sat back upright in his chair, annoyed. “I guess I don’t have that kind of ‘luck,’ as you call it, ’cuz if I did, I sure as hell wouldn’t be sitting here with you all today, looking at your clueless faces, let me tell you. I wouldn’t be fighting to save your asses out here, y’all can bank on that. No way, my friends … and I wouldn’t be line dancing for everybody in Washington, DC, neither.”

The execs looked at each other, having a hard time believing they were really hearing these words come out of Mat’s mouth. Mat Anderson, a die-hard, cynical conservative Texan, espousing the virtues of a left-wing, New Age psychic? They kept expecting the punch line of a joke that never came.

“Let me reiterate this for y’all, in language your fun-lovin’ little minds can understand. Jamie Hastings worked for the LAPD for five years. In that time, she helped them put away over fifty child rapers and murderers, after the cops themselves admitted the trails had gone cold. Fifty-three, to be exact. That is not luck, my friends. There is something much more powerful at play here, whether you want to understand it or not. An OPEC guy finds out about her and the very next thing you know, they’re flying her good-lookin’ American ass out to Pakistan. How did we let that happen? Really? How did America let that happen? Don’t you think somebody here should have recognized she was a real live national asset, and kept her home? Of course not. It’s too much of a joke, right? Well, boys, I am that guy. I don’t understand it, but I have her track record to go on: this little woman gets these ‘visions’ or whatever and bam! Slimeballs go to jail. New water wells are bringing vital water to the
surface. The crude starts gushing. That’s what I know: I can count on it. And that’s all I need to know.” He pushed aside the report in a dismissive gesture. “It’s amazing she got out of there alive. I know I sure as hell would have held on to her, y’all know what I’m saying? This woman finds three drill sites in a year … and here we are, with all our technological superiority, storming around the Pacific Ocean with nothing to show for it but one giant mess on the ocean floor and a bunch of mean, nasty barnacles growing all over our man parts. I hope y’all see the irony in that.”

He leaned forward with his elbows braced on the table, his right hand in a fist, cupped tightly in his left. “Gentlemen, I’ve got Jamie Hastings outside. I have made her the proverbial offer she could not refuse, and she has agreed to come and give us a hand. Oh … and that’ll be coming out of your developmental research budgets for the next two quarters, if y’all are still around by then, so don’t choke on your French roast when you get that memo in the morning.” Mat forced a smile. “We got ourselves a first-class psychic gonna help us out before we tear up the whole damn Pacific Ocean, like some crazy-ass gophers out there on the golf green—and I am feeling good about it. Yessir, I am feeling really good about it, I can tell you that right now.”

His vice president of marketing, Ben Ackerman, finally spoke out. “This is some kind of a joke, right?”

“Is that what you think?” Mat stood up and buttoned his jacket. “You think I’m in a jokin’ mood?” He buzzed Louise and told her to show Jamie in. “I want you nice Southern gentlemen to show Miss Hastings the maximum cordiality and respect, as we all are fixin’ to welcome her to our team—y’all hear Mattie boy, talking loud and clear?” As he walked over to the door to show Jamie in, he looked back over his shoulder at them all.

“Get ready for the New Age, my friends.”

Jamie walked into the executive boardroom looking as radiant as ever. She was the personification of confidence and grace—not at all what they had most likely envisioned: surely something more akin to Guinevere or the Good Witch from Oz. Dressed in an elegant, cream-colored cashmere suit, offset by her golden New Zealand tan, she was the picture of natural beauty. She wore her thick, wavy auburn hair tied loosely in a French knot, with no other adornment but a pair of gold earrings and a Hermès scarf draped across her shoulders.

Her masterful presence threw them. Very few women ever entered the hallowed halls of the corporate boardroom as equals, if at all. This was Texas, after all—the white boys’ club. A woman of power in the boardroom? They didn’t like it, they didn’t like her, and they weren’t going to make the pretense of making her feel at all welcome. Mat had already presented her as a “done deal,” however, so they knew they were not there to engage in discussion. This was a
fait accompli
—an executive order. They were there to observe. Period.

Mat escorted Jamie to the seat next to his. “It is my pleasure to introduce our consultant for the
Deepwater
operation, Ms. Jamie Hastings. I know y’all are gonna join me in welcoming her to our happy little family here today.” Mat had this amazing gift of
being able to weave sarcasm through his thick Texan drawl like needlepoint.

No, they were not. A few of the men nodded stiffly—others could not even fake it.

Mat was visibly annoyed with the rude behavior. He was, after all was said and done, a Texas gentleman, and he expected the same from his team. “I have already filled you in on Ms. Hastings’s remarkable feats and track record,” he announced sternly. “I have assured her that my decision to fly her in from San Francisco, just to meet with y’all, has nothing to do with her needing to seek anybody’s endorsement here today.”

Relaxed, knowing there was nothing she needed to prove, Jamie sat back comfortably in her chair, observing the men and their collective body language. She knew she was anything but welcome, and found it almost amusing how men inevitably showed their weakness by being aggressive and resistant to women in positions of authority.

Didn’t they realize how transparent they were?

After working with macho cops at LAPD, and the Pakistanis, she knew all about what she affectionately referred to as the “testosterone dilemma.” Hence, they didn’t faze her at all. She was there because the chairman of the board had begged for her help, and she assumed that the executive directors were just going to have to get their heads around it. From what she could discern from Mat’s behavior, he would have liked them to be okay with it, but it was going to be their problem if they were not.

Mat leaned back, pointing the laser at a large navigational map of the Pacific Northwest. “
The Deepwater
is in port in Vancouver, and we begin our explorations very soon now: here, farther north than we’ve been until now, covering new ground. We have carte blanche from the Canadians to open this new area, and we’re going farther out, significantly distancing ourselves from the coast.”

As Jamie observed and listened, she was struck by the fact that Mat was pointing to a place on the map where the words ORCA SANCTUARY were written in ink. Breaking protocol completely, she interrupted Mat at the onset of his presentation, right in the middle of his speech.

“Excuse me, Mat,” she blurted out, “but you’ve got an Orca sanctuary in the middle of your target zone? Am I seeing that right?”

Jamie Hastings had just interrupted the chief executive officer of USOIL, in the middle of an executive directors’ meeting. Mat was not amused. No one else had ever dared to do that: it was simply unthinkable. Jamie challenging Mat in front of these men, in the inner sanctum of the boardroom, was emasculating. It was a question she certainly could have asked him in private, rather than blasting him in front of his colleagues.

One of the executive directors, Jeb Richardson, almost laughed out loud. He was the most conservative of them all, and the least cooperative. He put his hand over his mouth to conceal a snide remark to the man seated next to him. “Like I always say, a woman’s got to be a bitch in bed and a slave in the kitchen.” He coughed, concealing a laugh, but he projected exactly what he was thinking to everyone in the room.

He was the most unapologetic sexist in Texas.

Mat bristled, sharing enough of Jeb’s views on women to imagine what he thought of Jamie. He didn’t need this antagonism from her, breaking down what he was trying to establish in her favor. Where was her “heightened sensitivity,” now?

“Yes,” he answered, dismissively, “there are a few stretches where the whales have the right-of-way, but that won’t be a problem.”

“No? How do you figure?” Jamie demanded. Terms had been clearly defined just days prior, when he was courting her into the deal, and she was not going to let it go, regardless of how this Jeb character or any of the others dismissed her.

Mat tried not to lose his patience, but, at the same time, he had to maintain his posture in front of the men. “Well, now, Ms. Hastings, I mean we can avoid it.”

Jamie would not be dissuaded. “I need to be real clear with you and everyone here present that, if you want me out there, we’re going to have to stay far away from any whale migration routes and this sanctuary.”

In that moment, Mat realized he had set himself into a trap: how to keep Jamie on board while holding his position of authority? All eyes were on Mat, waiting to see how he was going to handle this woman who they had heard, through Louise’s grapevine, was a “pain-in-the-ass, liberal female from San Francisco.” She had stepped right into the stereotype.

“Yes,” Mat said, tightly, “we will be careful to avoid any collateral damage.”

“Collateral damage? Where have we heard that term before? Sorry, Mat—either the whales have your full protection, and this Orca sanctuary and all whale migratory routes remain off-limits completely, or I can’t do this. I will have to back out.”

Mat looked around the room. He felt he was being usurped, his credibility waning. The meeting was a disaster—Jamie was not playing ball with him at all, making him look small in front of his peers. “I assure you we will stay clear of the whale sanctuary,” he said, through clenched teeth. “Now do you mind if we move on?”

Jamie continued to press him. “I have your word on that?”

Mat clenched down so hard you could see the muscles in his jaw contracting. “Yes, you have my word.”

They all sat waiting for Mat to put Jamie in her place, as he would have done to any one of them, but to their amazement, he held back. That never happened in Mat Anderson’s boardroom.

“I tell you what … if you gentlemen will accompany our guest
to the dining room, I think a few drinks are in order. Let’s lighten things up a little, and then we can continue this over lunch.”

He motioned to them to leave the room. Jamie looked at him, quizzically.

“I’ll be right with you, Ms. Jamie—I’ve got a few urgent matters to clear off my desk before lunch. You just tell the boys all about your time down in L.A. Let them in on the kind of work you did for the police,” he said, winking.

Everyone stood and started for the door. It was a welcome reprieve from the highly charged environment of the meeting room. After the last executive closed the door behind him, Louise came in with a stack of memos that had to go out that morning. She put the pen in his hand and stood next to him while he signed each one. Despite the pressures of the moment, these were documents that could not wait until after lunch.

Once she was out the door, Mat picked up his cell phone and speed dialed the number 2. He held it close to his mouth, almost whispering into the phone. “I want you to keep a very, very close eye on Jamie Hastings,” he said, furtively. “And tell that boy Sam to be cool or I’ll yank him, even if we need his daddy’s pull up there on the Hill.” He hung up immediately, and went off to join the others, hopeful that a few drinks and a little Texas-style hospitality would be enough to break the ice wall that had formed around Jamie.

To his amazement, by the time he entered the dining room, Jamie had managed, like magic, to turn things around. The men were captivated, engaging her. She was recounting the story of the famous serial killer, Willie Hynes, who had terrorized four states on the West Coast and brutally murdered seventeen young women, before the Los Angeles Police Department finally turned to Jamie for help, and officially hired her as a psychic investigator for the department.

Hynes remained one of the most elusive serial killers in history. A girl would go missing without a trace and then, days later, the
police would get a call, directing them to the body. He never left a trace of evidence at the crime scene. He was meticulous: no blood, no prints, nothing. Police forces from L.A. all the way up as far as Seattle were absolutely stumped. After seventeen murders, covering four states, no one had come up with a single clue or lead to follow. Empty-handed, with nothing at all with which to appease the good citizens of the entire West Coast, they had had to admit that the trail for all the murders had gone absolutely cold.

Jamie stopped talking when Mat walked up to the table, deferring to him, but he insisted she continue, seating himself at the head of the table. The only man without a drink in his hand was Jeb. By now, he was so openly annoyed with what he perceived as psychic fairyland that he just could not contain himself any further. He wanted to dismiss Jamie completely and cut the floor out from under her.

“Let me guess,” he said, condescendingly, “you’re saying
you
solved that case?”