Kevin Anderson - Ill Wind

Mayeaux sighed and smiled. “Offer that brunette KSFO reporter an exclusive deep-background interview with me tonight. Order room service. Champagne. I’ll leave tomorrow morning. And call my wife—tell her I’ve been held over.”

“Should I start the staff researching gas tax alternatives?”

Mayeaux shook his head, waving dismissively. “And have Huey Long roll over in his grave? There’s no way to stop it, no matter what I promised Branson. I’ll throw it back into negotiations and let it build up its own momentum—as long as I don’t go on record for it, that should keep Branson happy. I’ll call for a voice vote so she can’t pin me on anything.”

The elevator bumped to a stop. When the door opened, a crowd surged toward him. Speaker of the House Jeffrey Mayeaux put on his smile and started shaking hands, offering reassurance. He spotted two sweet young things straining to get a glimpse of him.

He hated the work itself, but God, he loved being a congressman.

“But are we following our contingency plan?” Emma Branson said, glaring at her deputies in what had to be the most claustrophobic meeting room on the entire Oilstar site. “Can we at least say that much? We have to find some kind of positive spin for Oilstar.”

“Uh, we rescued the crew of the tanker—how about that?”

“What kind of positive spin is that?” Branson snorted. “We rescue a captain who blames the whole mess on some mysterious crewman who’s disappeared? The public wants to see every member of the Zoroaster crew shot.”

Charlene Epstein, a deputy with severe gray-blond hair, slapped a stack of thick books that no one had ever bothered to read before. “We think we adhered to all the legal requirements, but the plan is eight volumes long. Six thousand pages of convoluted sentences and flow charts that nobody ever thought about needing to follow!”

Branson shook her head, disgusted instead of surprised. The arguments had continued all morning. Arriving from her brief meeting with Mayeaux after his grandstanding news conference, now she was ready for some shouting. She counted off names on her fingers. “The Petroleum Industry Response Organization signed off on it, the Departments of Transportation, Interior, Energy, the EPA, the Coast Guard Pacific Area Strike Team, the American Petroleum Institute. Didn’t anybody read the damned plan?”

“Everybody’s passing the buck, Ms. Branson,” Henry Cochran said. “No one ever really believed a million-barrel spill would happen.”

“Lucky us, to witness it in our lifetimes!” Charlene snapped. All of Branson’s deputies began arguing at once.

She tolerated only a moment of the chaotic shouting, enough to let them blow off some steam, then she slammed her hand down like a schoolteacher. The deputies shut up.

“So,” Branson said, her voice rattling, “we wrote all this documentation to cover ourselves, but nobody even knows what we agreed to. We’ve got an army of demonstrators outside the gate. People are making death threats on me, and not one of you has a clue about what Oilstar is supposed to be doing.”

“It’s not that simple —” Cochran interrupted. Sweat covered his bald head and florid face, making his fashion-frame glasses slide down his nose.

“Cut the bullshit, please,” Branson said quietly. “What about the lightering operations? How much did we pull off before Zoroaster went under?”

Walter Pelcik squinted at his figures, running pudgy fingers through his beard. “75,000 barrels. That’s a damned good amount, I might add.” He grabbed another piece of paper. “The skimmers are recovering some of what’s floating on the surface, but for all intents and purposes we’ve got an inexhaustible supply down there inside the hulk, and it’s going to keep leaking for years.”

Charlene Epstein shuddered. “We already have a spill that’s four to five times greater than the maximum estimates of the Valdez —and it’s not way up in Nowheresville, Alaska. It’s in downtown San Francisco.”

Cochran shook his head, then yanked off his glasses. “They are going to string us up. We might as well all change our names and move to Argentina.”

“Enough of that, Mr. Cochran,” Branson said. “Oilstar will accept responsibility for this spill, and we will make our absolute best effort to clean it up. Is that clear? Have we requested all available skimmers worldwide? Do we need more booms? What else can we do to mitigate this disaster?”

Walter Pelcik folded his hands over his paunch. “We’ve ordered everything. The other oil companies are pitching in, mostly for the PR value.”

Charlene slid one of the heavy books off a stack. “What other options do we have? They won’t let us do controlled burning. The Bay Area Air Quality Management people would rather smell stinking petroleum fumes for a decade than have a few days of black smoke.”

Branson tried to recall everything she knew about their own preparations. “How about dispersants? We’ve got a whole stockpile—why don’t we use them?”

“No chance!” said Pelcik. “The environmentalists are singing the same song on that one, and you know how powerful those groups are when they actually agree on something!”

Cochran leaned over the conference table. “Dispersants break the oil up and suspend it in the water. Right now the crude is floating on top. Dispersants would mix it with the water, make it look great from above—but the suspended oil would still be killing fish and damaging the food chain.”

Branson sighed in exasperation. For the first time in her life, she felt like giving up. “You mean we’ve got nothing else? What do you suggest we do, roll over and die? I won’t believe there are no alternatives.”

“Well there is Argentina,” Cochran said, smiling weakly.

At the doorway, a tall young man cleared his throat. “Excuse me?” He wore a tie and expensive clothes. Beside him stood an older man in jeans and a flannel shirt. “I’m Mitchell Stone and this is Dr. Kramer. We have a meeting with Ms. Branson?” He looked at his watch and smiled before any of the startled deputies could answer. “Looks like our timing is pretty good, because we’re going to offer you something that might solve this crisis.”

For a strange instant, Branson recalled the story of Faust; she wondered if Stone would offer her a magical solution to the Zoroaster spill… for the mere price of her soul.

Cochran glanced at both of their badges, then turned to flip through an appointment book. “Oh. Bioremediation people.”

Branson heaved a weary sigh. Dr. Kramer hung behind Stone, who seemed too full of himself. She decided which one to trust on the basis of her first impression. Kramer looked tired and listless, with a simmering fire behind his eyes. She recalled a memo that had mentioned Kramer’s name, something about losing his family in an accident, an Oilstar fund to send flowers. She had even signed the form letter herself.

“What can we do for you, gentlemen? We’re in the middle of an important meeting.”

Stone flinched a smile. As he stepped into the room, the strong smell of his sweet cologne mingled with the haze of cigarette smoke thickening the air. “We need you to listen to us for a moment. What you decide after that is up to you.”

The deputies frowned at the interruption. “We’ll be brief,” Dr. Kramer interjected, looking very uncomfortable.

Mitch strode toward an overhead projector in the corner of the room. He pulled a set of viewgraphs from under his arm and slapped one on the projector, punching the button that turned on the lamp. The title stood out against the blue-and-gold Oilstar logo: THE PROMETHEUS PROJECT.