Pipeline (28 page)

“Okay, Blaise. Give me a few hours and call me back,” Hardaway agreed.

LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA
SEPTEMBER 4, 11:40 A.M.
CNN STUDIOS

“All right, that’s a wrap,” shouted Steve Orinbach, Anna Hardaway’s cameraman, as the lights switched off. He looked at his watch. Perfect. Right on time for lunch.

“Nice work, Anna. Just the right tone.” Orinbach smiled her way, his long, stringy hair falling on his face as he leaned over to break down the equipment. His tattoo-covered arms struggled to push the tripod into place.

“Wanna get a bite?” he asked without looking up. “We have to be in Westwood at two-thirty
P.M.
So I figure we have some time.”

“Not today, sweetie pie.” Anna Hardaway smiled. She loved using the most unctuous names to address her talented, punk-loving, camera-wielding toughie. It drove him nuts.

Anna walked down the paper-strewn hallway to her small office. It was a mess. Just what you would expect of a television reporter.

She immediately swished the computer’s mouse to bring the machine back to life. Disappointed, she reached for her purse and glanced at her mobile phone, which had remained silent during the broadcast. Nothing.

Anna was getting worried.

After hanging up with Blaise, she had put in a call to the White House operator and left an urgent message with her name and cell phone number. It had been way too early on the East Coast to expect Ruiz to be at his desk. But she had figured that he would call back upon his arrival.

Government working hours in Washington began between 9 and 9:30
A.M
. That was barely dawn in California. When she hadn’t heard anything by then, she penned a quick e-mail to Ruiz requesting a return call on an urgent matter. By midmorning California time, she wrote him again. This time she decided to put more oomph in the note.

“Tony,” she had written. “Need to talk. I’ve got an exclusive on a story that requires White House confirmation. Please contact me. This is my third message. Regards, AH.”

Anna Hardaway had been sure that her use of journalistic high-priority codes would prompt Ruiz to life. Pressing Send, Anna had gone off an hour ago to talk to her producer. From there, she had walked around the corner to makeup and then ducked under the
heavy curtains onto the set next door. Her piece had taken about forty minutes to produce, from start to finish. Returning to her desk, she was now frustrated to find no answer from Tony Ruiz.

Anna pulled absentmindedly at a wisp of her auburn hair, deep in thought about what else she could do to find Ruiz. The shrill tone of her telephone startled her into an involuntary jump. She grabbed the receiver, expecting a voice from the White House. Instead, it was Blaise.

“Look, I don’t have good news for you. I have left three messages. Nothing. I don’t know if he is traveling or if he just won’t talk to me.”

Hardaway could hear the gasp of fear in the phone’s silence.

“I’m going to keep trying, Blaise. I promise. I will find this guy. I can’t swear he will help. But you have my word that I’ll find him.”

There was nothing else to say.

She heard a barely audible “Thank you” as the phone was hung up. Anna Hardaway felt sorry for Blaise. Her scrappy environmentalist acquaintance had become a shadow of her former self.

Where the hell was Ruiz? She considered, and discarded, the possibility that he had not received the message. Anthony Ruiz worked at the White House. Phone. Blackberry. White House operators. These guys were connected every minute of every day.

Anna forced her mind to concentrate. Twenty years in journalism had taught her that ratcheting up the pressure was the only way to get reticent government officials to talk. A thought occurred to her.

She pulled her computer keyboard nearer and started to tap on the keys.

“Ruiz, damnit. It’s important. Get back to me. Ever heard of Russian involvement in California-bound natural gas? AH.”

She punched Send.

Anna made two quick phone calls to confirm this afternoon’s interviews and was on her way to the ladies’ room when she heard the mechanical two-tone announcement of an incoming e-mail. Glancing backward, she could hardly believe what she saw.

Ruiz. It had taken less than three minutes for him to answer the last e-mail.

Anna spun around and leaned over the chair to open the message. She immediately noted that it had been sent from a Blackberry.

“Will call your office in exactly five minutes. Pick up.”

Anna Hardaway jumped up and ran down the hallway to the bathroom. She had four minutes to get back to her desk.

LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA
SEPTEMBER 4, 12:00 P.M.
CNN STUDIOS

The phone was already ringing when Anna Hardaway walked back into her office, coffee in hand. She glanced at her watch; Ruiz was early. The last e-mail had clearly made an impression on the young White House advisor.

“Anna Hardaway.” She did her best to sound officious, pretending to have no clue as to who would be calling.

“Hey, it’s Ruiz.” His voice was equally nonchalant.

“Long time, friend.”

“Yeah. Congratulations on the Pulitzer. Well deserved.” The banter was ridiculous.

“Ruiz, I’ve been hounding you all morning.”

“I know. Sorry. I’m not in D.C.”

Anna’s voice turned sober. “Can we stop circling around each other like hyenas, Tony? I need something from you. It’s important. You know the subject; I put it in the e-mail.”

“How the hell did you find out about the Russian natural gas negotiations, Anna? It was seriously under wraps.”

Hardaway’s journalistic radar bleeped. There was something strange about his response. But right then and there, she couldn’t put her finger on it.

“I found out the way every reporter finds something out. I have a good source. I’m even going to let you meet the source. But I’m going to hold on to the name for a while yet. Can you confirm that the United States government knows about surreptitious Russian attempts to become one of California’s main suppliers of imported natural gas?”

“Are we off the record?” he asked cautiously.

Christ, Anna thought. Here it goes again. Why won’t anybody speak anymore for attribution?

“Okay, we’re off the record.”

“There is nothing secret or surreptitious about Russia’s desire to supply natural gas to the Pacific coast of the United States. We’re encouraging the conversation. You know better than most how badly we need the natural gas. The Russians have what we want. I’m in Moscow talking to them now.”

“What? You’re in Moscow?” Hardaway choked, her body jerking backward in stunned surprise. The revelation of his whereabouts had made her move so suddenly that the coiled phone cord sent her Styrofoam coffee cup flying across the desk. Hot liquid was slowly seeping out of the sealed container.

“You mean you know about what they did in Peru? And you’re still talking to these bastards?”

“What the hell are you talking about, Hardaway?” gasped Tony. “I’m in Moscow because…”

Silence invaded the telephone line as the two suddenly realized they had been talking about completely different things. Anna Hardaway’s radar warnings were now off the charts.

The truth was dawning on Anna Hardaway. “Jesus, Tony. We’ve been talking past each other. You’re in Moscow on something completely different, aren’t you? You’re making some gas deal with these guys.”

Hardaway knew she had caught him.

Had this been just any news story, Anna Hardaway would have pressed on relentlessly. She would have been all over him, like a pit
bull. To get him to reveal more, she would have threatened to go on air with the revelation that a senior White House official was in Moscow negotiating a gas supply deal with the Russians. But these weren’t normal circumstances. She had Blaise to think about. She had promised.

“Tony, can we take a step back? All cards faceup on the table, okay? I’m in a bind. I’ve got an exclusive here—well, maybe after talking to you, I’ve got two scoops—but I also have a pal in trouble. I’m struggling to be a journalist and a friend at the same time. Maybe the two can’t go together, but I need to try. Can you work with me on that basis?”

She continued without waiting for an answer.

“Here is what I know. I’ve found out that a Russian company called Volga Gaz submitted false bids through sham operating companies to operate the principal Latin American gas fields. The gas from those fields was going to be exported to the United States. I suspect the Russian company tried to hide its involvement in Latin America because its real purpose is to gain some type of leverage with the United States. The senior Peruvian senator who was in charge of his government’s decision to award the project found out about the Russians’ secret involvement three days ago. The next day he turned up dead.”

She heard Tony suck in air.

“I’m not done,” Hardaway barked. “As if all that isn’t good enough, our little misunderstanding a minute ago made me realize that I’ve stumbled on to an even bigger story. While all this is happening in Peru, I just found out my government has people in Moscow negotiating some other gas deal with the Russians. Connect the dots for me, Ruiz.”

She could almost feel the whirring of Tony Ruiz’s brain as it strained to compute the calculations.

“Listen to me, Anna. I can’t connect the dots because what you’ve just told me is a complete mystery. You have got to believe me; I have never heard of these gas projects in Latin America. I have never
heard of a Peruvian senator—alive or dead. And I’ve never heard of Russia operating sham companies in our backyard. None of it. Not one goddamn bit of it.”

Hardaway believed him. He sounded angry and agitated.

“Can you reveal your source? How did they get this information?”

“I’ll do better than that. Let me see if my source will get on the line. Can you hold and I will conference the person in?”

Anna Hardaway put Ruiz on hold and moved the computer mouse to Contacts List to look up Blaise Ryan’s cell phone number. She dialed it quickly.

“Hi, it’s me,” Hardaway said as soon as Blaise answered the phone, still in its On position from Blaise’s search for Anna’s number a few hours earlier.

“I said I would call you. I’d prefer to use a landline.”

“Too late. I’ve got Ruiz on the phone. Our thought was to conference you in. But fasten your seat belt. You won’t believe it. He’s in Moscow.”

In a quick minute, Anna Hardaway summarized their conversation so far. She ended with a warning.

“You’re going to have to make a decision here. It’s your call. This guy is in Moscow negotiating a gas deal. If you decide to trust him, do it with your eyes open. I don’t know him well enough to put my hands in the fire. He lives in Washington. They double-cross people for breakfast in that city.”

Blaise remembered President Harry Truman’s old adage: If you want a friend in Washington, get a dog.

“What would you do, Anna? What do your instincts tell you?”

“I would trust him. For two reasons. First, because he hasn’t been in Washington long enough to have been completely corrupted. Second, because I pulled his bio this morning. I had forgotten that Ruiz used to be a cop. A Chelan County sheriff’s deputy.”

“Okay, put me on,” Blaise declared with finality. That last bit of information was hugely positive.

Two clicks later and the two coasts of the United States were connected with the coming dusk of Moscow’s evening.

“Tony, you there? Okay. I want to introduce you to Blaise Ryan.”

“Nice to meet you. I’ve heard your name before, haven’t I?” The phone was silent for a moment as Tony reflected on her name. “Oh yeah, I remember now. You’re the environmentalist who was beating the crap out of us on Anna’s show.”

Blaise Ryan felt a chill go through her body. This was not a good way to start.

“By the way,” Ruiz chuckled, “two comments about that. First, you do a good interview. Second, I agreed with almost everything you said. That is between you and me, though.”

Blaise sighed in relief.

“Look, Blaise. Anna has told me a lot. But I need to understand some details. How did you get into this?”

“It was a fluke. I was trying to help a friend and I tripped over this information. I know a lot about Peruvian gas because I was the leading environmental voice opposing gas extraction in the Amazon. My friend is married—badly married—to a Russian who has been involved in hiding Volga Gaz’s connection to Humboldt. I know it sounds crazy, but we went from marital advice to discovering a Russian fraud—and possibly a murder—in less than a month.”

“What exactly is the role of your friend’s husband in perpetrating this fraud?”

“I can’t answer that exactly. He has been traveling to Bolivia. He has met with the German company that is posing in Peru as an independent entity. He talked to his wife about taking the Americans down a notch or two. In the past months, he has become extremely paranoid. And rabidly anti-Western. I heard it myself about six weeks ago.”

“What is this man’s name?”

“Daniel Uggin.”

“Oh my God.” Tony Ruiz groaned. He couldn’t hold back the surprise.

Anna Hardaway heard the moan, but had no way of knowing that this name belonged to the son of a bitch who had set Tony up the previous evening. She couldn’t see the band of cold sweat that had begun to form on his spine. Or the shudders of his fingers.

If Anna Hardaway or Blaise Ryan had known what had happened to Tony in Moscow over the past twenty-four hours, they would have understood his anger. Uggin had not only miserably conned Tony in order to get his support in the Moscow negotiations. Now it turned out that he was also a zealot. A crusading anti-American.

It was indeed impossible for either woman to fathom Tony Ruiz’s growing fury as the pieces began falling into place in his mind over a twelve-thousand-mile phone connection. The blackmail perpetrated against him had been much bigger than just the Bering Strait deal. The Russians had a much larger purpose; they were coming at America from two sides.