Lee Vance: The Garden of Betrayal

“And what about us?”

The question surprised me.

“What do you mean?”

Claire shook her head and began playing. A nocturne: Chopin, op. 9, no. 2. It was an old favorite, a piece she used to play in the evenings after we put Kyle and Kate to bed. I’d slump on the couch with a glass of wine, exhausted from work, and travel, and baths, and pajamas, and endless rounds of “Baa Baa Black Sheep.” She’d glance up occasionally to smile at me as she played, and I’d remember the offer I’d made her at the biscotteria: whatever she wanted. It had been a good deal for me, and I’d wondered at my luck, right up until the moment when my luck ran out. I turned her words over in my mind as I listened to the familiar music. What about us-after Kate was gone? It was something I worried about. More than anything else, it was Kate who kept the cloud at bay.

I glanced out the window again. Kate and Phil were still embracing. I looked back to my wife. Her shoulders were hunched, the way they got when she was hurting. I felt a pang of guilt, remembering that I’d forgotten to buy flowers. Kate’s relationship with Phil was something I’d have to think about later. Right then, I needed to do what I could to ease Claire’s pain.

I was at the office the next morning, buried in fallout from the previous day, when the intercom buzzed. I’d slept badly and was feeling tired and irritable.

“What’s up, Amy?”

“Theresa Roxas calling on your direct.”

“Don’t know her,” I replied testily, assuming she was a journalist. The press had been hounding me nonstop, intent on learning where I’d obtained the Nord Stream video.

“She claims Alex sent you an e-mail introducing her.”

“Hang on.”

I grabbed my mouse and scrolled through my in-box. I’d received more than a hundred e-mails overnight and had time to get through only about a third of them. Sure enough, there was a note from Alex in the middle of the stack, the subject line theresa roxas. I noticed it had been sent just after three a.m. and hoped he hadn’t stayed up all night drinking. Alex stopped by most mornings to say hi, but it was after ten and I hadn’t seen him.

“Found it,” I said, clicking on the e-mail. “Is Alex in today?”

“I don’t know. Would you like me to check?”

I took a moment to read the e-mail before responding: Theresa Roxas will be contacting you today with some important information.

It wasn’t notably terse by trading-desk standards, and it certainly seemed lucid, but the late hour and indistinct mention of “important information” made me a little suspicious. The energy markets attract all sorts of lunatic conspiracy theorists, and I was constantly getting calls from people anxious to persuade me that international Zionists secretly controlled OPEC, or some similarly paranoid nonsense. I didn’t have time to waste on a crazy woman Alex had met in a bar.

“I’ll pick up,” I said reluctantly. “And yes, please try to get hold of Alex for me. I’d like to speak to him.”

“Will do.”

I switched to my direct line.

“Ms. Roxas? This is Mark Wallace.”

“Theresa,” she said, pronouncing it the Spanish way. I could hear voices in the background, as if she was calling from a public place.

“Theresa,” I repeated. “Thanks for calling. Alex sent an e-mail saying you have something to tell me.”

“Yes. But I don’t want to talk on the phone. I’d prefer to meet in person.”

I rubbed the bridge of my nose wearily. There aren’t that many things you can’t talk about on the phone. Maybe she was still at the bar and needed someone to come settle the check.

“Do you mind my asking how you and Alex know each other?”

“We’re old friends.”

I waited, but it was all she had to say on the subject.

“My schedule’s really very difficult right now,” I said, doing my best to sound regretful. “Are you sure you can’t give me a preview?”

“You’re familiar with seismic reprocessing?”

The question caught me off guard. Energy companies had been using seismic studies-effectively, terrestrial sonar-since the early 1930s, to help them find oil and gas. Seismic reprocessing was a more recently developed technique that took advantage of computational advances to reanalyze old data, revealing originally unobtainable detail. It wasn’t a subject many people knew about.

“Generally,” I admitted cautiously.

“And you’re aware that Aramco did extensive seismic work at Ghawar in the 1950s, and again in the 1970s?”

Aramco had been the original name of Saudi Aramco, the Saudi Arabian state oil company. And Ghawar was Saudi’s largest oil field-the largest oil field in the world. Now she had my complete attention.

“Yes.”

“So, we should meet.”

I felt a little dizzy, exhaustion vanquished by excitement. Ghawar’s geology was the most fiercely guarded secret in the energy markets, because the Saudis didn’t want the market to know how much oil they were capable of producing. Information was power-if prices were low, the Saudis could hint at shortages. If prices were high, they could talk about bringing more capacity on-line. Reprocessed seismic data would go a long way toward shedding light on the truth of their situation, by revealing how much oil they’d started with. I counted to three, willing myself to calm down. The chances that someone I’d never heard of had gotten hold of Saudi secrets and picked me to share them with were slim to none.

“I’m not an engineer,” I cautioned, making another stab at drawing her out. Experience had taught me that people tended to talk more freely when they thought you didn’t understand them. “If you have technical data, I’ll need help interpreting it.”

“Interpretation won’t be a problem,” she said flatly. “Are we getting together or not?”

I realized I wasn’t going to learn anything more on the phone. I glanced at my in-box unhappily-another four e-mails had arrived while we’d been speaking. But I couldn’t risk missing out on a scoop of this magnitude. I had to hear what she had to say.

“Absolutely. When and where?”

“Now would be good. I’m at Cafe Centro, in the MetLife Building.”

“Fifteen minutes,” I said, abandoning any pretense of reserve.

“I’ll be seated. The table’s in your name.”

The line clicked and went dead. I shouted for Amy and then grabbed my keyboard. Better I knew who Theresa was before we spoke. Google returned eight hits for “Theresa Roxas,” four of them a MySpace page for a sultry Philippina baton twirler. I tried “Theresa” and “Roxas.” A hundred and sixty-five thousand hits, the first half-dozen for a Catholic school in Mexico. I was fuming at Google and trying both of Theresa’s names and words to do with the oil industry when Amy finally joined me.

“Sorry,” she said. “I’ve been trying to locate Alex. Lynn hasn’t heard from him, and he isn’t answering his cell. I just left a voice mail asking him to call you.”

Lynn was Alex’s assistant and also Amy’s neighbor in Brooklyn. They were members of the same church.

“Try his home, please,” I said, pointing toward my phone. “Speed-dial seventeen.”

“The machine,” Amy announced a few seconds later. “You want me to leave another message?”

I nodded unhappily and shoved the keyboard away, frustrated by my inability to learn anything useful. Rising, I put on my suit coat.

“I’m going to go meet this Roxas woman,” I said, as Amy settled the receiver back onto its cradle. “Keep trying Alex’s home and cell. I’d like to talk to him as soon as possible.”

“I will. And don’t forget you have lunch at the Palace hotel with Senator Simpson.”