Trusting Viktor (A Cleo Cooper Mystery) (3 page)

“But they did. And yet it’s all the better for us because now, twenty-seven years later, we can be part of it.”

“And a lot’s changed in the meantime. SunCo is back in the exploration business and what a behemoth they are. Has anyone seen any sign of them out at
their
four leased blocks in the mid-Atlantic yet?”

“I talked to our site manager yesterday and the answer’s still no. But don’t worry, babe, I have faith in you and the part you played in picking the blocks Global leased.”

“Whoa!” I said. “Don’t get carried away giving credit. Global made the decision to stay with the four blocks SunCo originally leased back in ’84. I think they were just taking advantage of having me as an investor, figuring I might want to add my professional opinion, being as I have money riding on the well.”

“You do still feel okay about it, don’t you?”

“Of course. The geology’s sound. Your analysis of the financial end of things has left me a bit queasy, though. What’s the bottom line on their actual debt?” I asked, even though I wasn’t sure if I really wanted to know.

“About one-point-five billion.”

My gut tightened as I considered this. It sounds crazy, I know, but he’d never mentioned actual figures when he let me come in. Honestly, I never asked. I’d always trusted Bud Cooper to know a good thing when he saw one. “You were aware of all those things you’ve just been talking about—low inventories, high unresolved debt—and yet you still put this venture together?” I wasn’t being disingenuous, just legitimately curious. After the fact, as it were.

He looked at me squarely. “Consider this. Manteo One is Global’s chance for redemption, a way to pull themselves out of debt and prove to their investors that they’re a solid, competitive company, a true independent that creates its own opportunities even in less than shiny times. They’ve stripped the company to its bare bones and totally reconfigured management. If they feel confident enough to throw another hundred million at this venture, then, yes, I feel good about it too.”

Slugging down the last of his Coke, he absently crunched the can. No matter what Bud said, I sensed he was nervous about this deal. There was little he could hide from me. “Having said that,” he continued, “I’ll feel a lot better knowing you’re on the job.”

“What do you mean, ‘on the job’? I’m just an investor.”

“Things changed with this last big purge. Global’s trying so hard to calm investor fears, they’ve agreed to let you and me, as leaders of our private equity group, go out to the exploration ship for a tour. They know you’re a successful, published geologist with a well-respected client base—their words, not mine—and they want you on the team in a more active role.”

“Uh. More active role?”

“Maybe I didn’t make myself clear. When Global let all those employees go in this last round of layoffs, it included most of mid-level management and many of the higher level—and higher paid —geologists and geophysicists.”

Sweat was starting to break out on my upper lip at the thought of how precarious my investment was becoming, minute by minute. “Good lord, Bud, that’s horrible.”

“I know. But they just couldn’t meet the payroll if they didn’t. I’ve talked with the top scientists on their U.S. offshore development team, in particular, their senior geophysicist—Phil’s his name. He said he was so pleased with your input on which blocks to lease, he’s come up with a plan. He’d like me to run it by you.”

I waited. There was nothing to do but listen.

“He said that, traditionally, the wellsite geologist is a highly-skilled person hired from outside the company for their objective opinion. Normally, this person would answer to Phil back in Houston and to the company executive on the ship—”

“I am familiar with the role of a wellsite geologist, Bud,” I interrupted.

“Right. Anyway, Phil said that due to budget cutbacks, Global went with a lesser-known consulting firm and hired a kid still pretty wet behind the ears. He doesn’t feel all that confident with him, so he suggests you supervise him.”

“Me?”

“Yes. But the kid would be responsible for being there twenty-four/seven, filing daily reports and everything else that falls under his job description—”

“The job description for a wellsite geologist is
huge
,” I cut him off again. “And they hired someone wet behind the ears? What are they thinking?” It was a hell of a lot for me to take in. As far as I was concerned, this all had come out of nowhere.

“They’re doing the best they can, is what I think. You can’t imagine how demoralized and shell-shocked these people are, not to mention overworked. You’d be out there only as often as you deem necessary, but we’ll get a better feel for that after our tour.”

“Tour? What tour?”

“The one I just told you about. You know, out to the drillship, of course.”

“When”

“Tomorrow.”

“Bud! Good grief! I have to make a living now that all my funds are sunk into this investment. I’ve been gone eight days. I’ve got a ton of work to catch up on. Started out, I was just an investor in this venture, now I hear I’m going to have to babysit too. My schedule will have to be juggled—”

“Babe, this is a big deal for me. I know you understand that. A lot of people are counting on me, and not just investors. Think of the people who’ll lose everything if Global goes under—their jobs, stock options, 401(k) plans … everything.”

I looked out the window at the tiny world below, then back at Bud. As long as I’d known him, he’d never asked me to use my job skills to help him. The truth was, it felt kind of good. Plus, I had my own investment to consider too.

“So? What do you say?” Bud asked anxiously, jolting me from my thoughts.

“Yeah, yeah, okay. What time?”

“I’ll pick you up at your house around eight tomorrow morning. We’re catching a helicopter in Beaufort. That’s as close as they could get to Morehead City, Global’s base of operations for this venture.”

Great. I get to ride in a rock with a fan on top. As many copters as I’d been in, my feelings about them never changed. “Okay,” I said, trying to keep the fatigue out of my voice. My eyelids were getting so heavy I could hardly hold them up. “Do you know my summer address?” I was having my house in Raleigh repainted inside and out, along with a little remodeling in the bathrooms and kitchen. I’d decided my dog, Tulip, and I needed a change of scenery for the summer, thus the need for the rental.

“Of course I do. I’ve
been
there.”

I gave him a questioning look, trying to kick my sleep-deprived brain into gear and remember when he’d been to my new digs. I’d only moved in at the start of May, and it was only the first week in June.

“While you were gone. To see the children.”

Oh. That at least made sense.

One of my eyes started to droop without the other. I gave up. Reclining my seat and turning to the window, I closed them both and said, “Wake me when we get to Wilmington.”

Once we’d landed, my beloved Jeep was waiting right where I left it in the short-term lot. I felt about it like I did about myself: hard-used, but still with plenty of get-up-and-go. And fairly attractive when cleaned up, occasionally even shiny.

Bud insisted on helping me stow my gear. “I hope your nap refreshed you enough so that you don’t drive off the road on your way home.” He fiddled with my tanks, positioning them so they didn’t clang together. “You’ve done that before, you know.”

I opened the driver’s side door, put my tote bag on the seat, first burrowing in it for my emergency stash of BC. My headache was coming back with a vengeance. I tossed back the bitter powder, washing it down quickly with some stale, hot water from a half-empty bottle in the console.

“Hangover?” Bud asked solicitously. Didn’t he have something better to do?

“The
only
time I’ve ever run off the road was owing to a rattlesnake crawling out from under my seat, and you know it. I appreciate your concern even though it’s not necessary.”

“If you say so. You just looked so pitiful earlier this morning, I wasn’t sure you’d recover.”

“Oh, like you haven’t looked just as bad after an all-nighter with one of your own young things,” I snapped.

“You were out all night with a
young
thing?”

Seething at myself for letting my mouth pop out of neutral, I shut the door in Bud’s face, started the engine, and proceeded to back out of the parking space.

He was still standing, palms out, innocent as a lamb, as I exited the lot.

FOur

The drive from Wilmington
to Morehead gave me time to calm my ragged nerves and recover from letting Bud get one over on me. Finding an hour of Chopin on the radio helped. I felt much soothed by the time I was closing in on Bogue Sound, and the glimpses of water completed the cure. Since it was early afternoon, it was the perfect time for a quick boat ride.

For all the years I was married to Bud, my summers had been spent at his oceanside family home in ritzy Wrightsville Beach. This house, facing Evans Street with Bogue Sound at its back door, was a whole different world. I guess that’s why I’d chosen it.

The town itself was attractively old, offering quiet streets lined with century oaks, magnolias, and azaleas. On the property I’d rented, an expansive green lawn led to a dock with a boatlift. Across the Sound, marshes and sand bars were feeding grounds for a variety of shorebirds and crustaceans. There was an energy level quite different from that of an ocean property, and I was enjoying it for this very reason.

Tulip, a wonderful deer hound who’d adopted me while I was prospecting in the woods of eastern North Carolina nearly two years ago, adored it too. So did my children. In fact, upon seeing it, they’d instantly decided I needed company for the summer and had already spent more time here than I had.

“Mom’s back!” Henri shouted from a second-story window. I heard the back porch screen door slam and knew Tulip had nosed it open. I braced for impact as she bounded toward me whimpering with delight. My beautiful twenty-five-year-old daughter Henri gave me a big hug and started helping me unload my gear, asking a thousand questions. “Did you have fun? Did you see any sharks? How was the conference? Did you eat at any great restaurants? Did you meet anyone interesting?”

“Um,” I took her questions and answered them consecutively. “Yes, yes, interesting and informative, yes, and no.”

“Mom!” Will, my firstborn, two years older than his sister, called to me from where he stood in Henri’s Jones Brothers skiff tied at the dock. “Look what I caught for you to cook us!” He bent down and straightened, carefully holding a huge, angry blue crab by its back.

Nice to know I’m good for something. “Great!” I said sincerely. “You clean ’em, I’ll cook ’em.”

By the time we’d finished our dinner of crab, coleslaw, baked beans, and hush puppies—okay, the frozen kind baked in the oven, but still good—we were all caught up on my trip and what they’d been up to in my absence. I even found out that Tulip had a boyfriend, a black lab two doors down who couldn’t get enough of her. No problem, she was spayed. Henri, of course, had also met someone new. But that was a frequent occurrence.

Will, on the other hand was … well, I couldn’t quite put my finger on it. He’d always been a very serious young man. He’d even started his own business right out of college, a search engine optimization and marketing company that had prospered despite being launched during the great recession. As I was wiping down the kitchen, I was trying to decide whether his usually quiet demeanor had been more pronounced throughout our meal or if it was just my imagination. I wasn’t certain, but mothers usually pick up on these things. I decided to observe him more closely on our sunset cruise.

We all clambered aboard the skiff, Tulip first. Will ran back for the cooler of iced Blue Moons and orange slices he’d packed earlier, and then we were ready to head east for the Morehead City waterfront and Sugarloaf Island beyond. I looked back in our wake, watching the ribbons of white foam that swirled and spread in the silky, still water that was now starting to take on a golden glow. Overhead, a flock of white ibises headed to a roost known only to them. Except for the discreet drone of the four-stroke outboard engine, all was splendidly tranquil. So why did I have an ominous feeling?

The next morning, a Tuesday, I woke before the alarm on the bedside table had a chance to go off. It was five minutes to six. Refreshed by a full night’s sleep, I hopped from my bed and headed for the bathroom. Tulip raised her head inquisitively from her side of the king-sized bed, ascertained to her satisfaction that she wasn’t missing anything, and snuggled back into the chenille throw she’d claimed as her own. Thankfully the bathrooms in this century-old house had been newly renovated, and—even better— the owner had spared no expense.

The walk-in shower in the master featured a rain-forest showerhead as big as a garbage can lid and walls of block glass. There was even a glass-block window on one end of the shower, high up on the east-facing side of the house. But when a faint red glow from that window greeted me as I stepped into the shower, I understood the reason for last night’s anxiety.

I nearly ran to the window in the bedroom that faced in the same direction, opened the plantation shutters, and saw a sight that didn’t make me one bit happy. Far out over the ocean were wispy clouds tinged with red and gold: a spectacular sunrise one might argue, but not for me. The old sailor’s adage, “red sky at night, sailor’s delight, red sky in the morning, sailors take warning” was, in my estimation, counsel to pay strict heed to.

I showered and dressed quickly in designer skinny jeans, short-sleeved T-shirt, and field boots—my uniform when I’m working—then called Bud, but only got his voicemail.

By eight o’clock, when he picked me up, the stillness of the morning had evaporated. Though it was still sunny, a slight breeze was starting to kick up. He had on an Hawaiian print shirt featuring saucer-sized, neon-bright orange hibiscus flowers.

“Nice shirt,” I said. “Does it come with protective sunglasses for your companions?”

“For your information, this is my lucky shirt.” He demonstrated by rubbing the front of it as if it was a rabbit’s foot.

“And that has to do with our visit to an offshore drillship how?” I asked, plugging numbers into my iPhone.

“Well, I don’t know about you, but since it’s our first visit to the actual hole we’re both dropping so much money down, I want to take every opportunity to make it a success.”

“I don’t remember the mystic powers of this particular shirt. Or any others for that matter. Since when do you believe in luck?”

“Don’t you think luck plays a role in our everyday lives?”

“What I prefer to believe in can be found between the pages of science books. Speaking of which, I’ve got Weather Underground pulled up here, and the forecast calls for sunny but windy conditions with seas three to four feet,” I said. I switched the screen off and turned my attention to a bright yellow helicopter landing in front of us as softly as a dragonfly on a lake.

“Yeah? Good thing we’re not taking a boat, then,” he said.

“Still,” I said, “maybe it’s too breezy for such a small helicopter.”

“Maybe all the Chinooks were taken,” Bud replied with a grin. “Man oh man, if I’d known investing in a wildcat would be so much fun, I would have done it way before now!” Then, realizing I wasn’t amused, he added, “Babe, it’s a Bell 206. Just looks small from here, wait until you get in it. It’ll be great, you’ll see. Besides, these oil rig pilots are the best in the world. They’re usually ex-military, so their training is second to none.”

“Okay,” I said reluctantly.

Bud gave me a reassuring pat on the back. “You worry too much. Look, here comes our pilot now.”

If a person’s gait was any indication, I’d say the tall, lean man marching briskly toward us was indeed ex-military. Wiry as a winter deer, the guy was as business-minded as the flat top he sported.

“Ma’am, sir,” he said like a drill sergeant addressing raw recruits, “you’ll find your headsets and inflatable vests in your seat. Put them on and buckle in tight, as we have brisk conditions today. If you need to ask me something during the flight, you may do so at any time, just speak through the mike in your headset. Any questions?”

Brisk
conditions? I glanced at Bud, who ignored me. No sooner had I pulled my seatbelt tight than the tail of the helicopter rose steeply to a 45-degree angle and we took off in a blur. I resisted the
urge to scream but promised myself payback for Bud at a later
date. Possibly killing him in his sleep.

The truth was, though, this wasn’t my first helicopter flight to an oil rig. I’d spent time mudlogging for one of the major exploration companies in the Gulf during college breaks. The flights out and back every two weeks were one thing I didn’t miss when I switched to land-based work. The landscape zoomed by under our feet like vacation images fast forwarded on a PC: Beaufort, Cape Lookout Lighthouse, Core Sound, Core Banks, and then a nauseating swoop to the northeast followed by an endless stretch of the Atlantic Ocean. Good thing I didn’t have any questions because my two pals hadn’t shut up since we lifted off.

After what seemed like an eternity—in real time only about forty minutes—our destination came into view.

From the helicopter, the exploration drillship
Deep Sea Magellan
looked like a CGI Transformer, his head and shoulders just breaking the surface of the deep ocean as he prepared to stride ashore and wreak havoc on the tiny humans. I knew that Global, like most of the major oil companies in the world, didn’t own it’s own fleet of drillships. It had leased this
state-of-the-art drillship from another company, TransWorld Exploration, which possessed one of the world’s largest and most sophisticated fleet of exploration vessels.

Beside the time I’d put in as a mudlogger on a jackup—a drill rig used in water up to 500 feet deep—I’d also done contract work on several semi-submersibles, which were floating rigs mostly used for ultra-deep exploration in water more than 2,000 feet. But this would be my very first drillship. Even more than I wanted to stop flouting the laws of physics and exit this helicopter, I wanted to explore the technical marvel that lay so massively below us.