The Trojan Sea (36 page)

Dallas

The elevator doors to the top floor of the Fountain Plaza Building ghosted open. The two women stood there and took in the scene. For all appearances it was a normal Wednesday morning as the staff went about their work. “Go ahead,” L.J. told Shugy. “You look wonderful.” The new Shugy saw her reflection in the elevator’s polished bronze. She was wearing a very stylish pantsuit with matching Italian shoes. Her hair had been cut and styled to frame her face, while makeup highlighted her eyes and accentuated her high cheekbones. She straightened her shoulders and marched resolutely to her desk. For a moment the staff was silent. “Mrs. Jenkins!” one of the secretaries gasped. “I didn’t recognize you!”

L.J. smiled but inside, a sadness touched her. She wished she could have given her spinster aunt a moment like this one. She went into her office and turned on the TV. As expected, the news was dominated by Cuba. Her phone buzzed, but she hesitated, wanting to hear what the commentator was saying. “Havana is in chaos, and Fidel Castro has disappeared. The rumor currently on the lips of every resident of this neurotic, jittery city is that he has returned to his revolutionary headquarters in the Sierra Maestra mountains.” She picked up the phone.

“Felix Campbell is on line one,” the old Shugy said.L.J. punched at the button. “Felix,” she said, “how are things at BP?”

“You know damn well how things are,” Campbell replied. “I hear your drilling ships are on their way to Cuba.”

“They sailed this morning.”

“Do you have the concessions?”

The intercom buzzed, and she glanced at the caller screen. Dutch Shell was on line two. “Not yet,” she answered. She would lie to Frobisher, but never to Campbell.

“We need to talk.”

“Are you making a preemptive offer?” L.J. asked. Silence answered her. “Felix, you need to put something on the table. Sorry, I’ve got to go. Amsterdam is on line two.” She didn’t wait for his answer as she broke the connection. Before she could punch up the line with Amsterdam, the caller screen flashed. A name she did not recognize was calling from Miami.
How did he get this number?
she wondered. She punched up that line.

“Miss Ellis?” a voice with a heavy Spanish accent asked. She confirmed her identity and he said, “I represent the provisional government of Cuba and have been directed to speak to you about certain concessions.”

Havana

“In the name of God,” Amelia Salandro begged, “don’t do this. We’re cousins. We played together as children. Please, let us stay.” The man shook his head and pushed her toward the door. Again she pleaded with him. “Please, Agosto said to meet him here.”

Her cousin sneered in contempt. “Your husband left.”

“How long ago?” Marsten asked. Before the man could answer, gunfire echoed down the street. The man jerked in fear and yelled at Amelia. Marsten caught something about Agosto’s being
una mierda
—a real shit—and not helping the family.

“He said a few minutes ago,” Amelia answered.

“Tell him I can make him a wealthy man,” Marsten said.

“He says we must leave now,” Amelia said. “He says the soldiers will kill everyone if they find us.”

Marsten started to unbuckle his belt to bribe him with a Krugerrand. But he thought better of it and handed him his Rolex watch. Amelia’s cousin snatched the watch and slipped it on. He fumbled at the snap, finally securing it to his wrist. More gunfire echoed in the next block, and he looked up, a very frightened man. He shook his head and grabbed Amelia, dragging her to the door. “Where are we supposed to go?” she wailed.

The man rasped, “Follow the shit!” Gunfire rang out, much closer now, and he hesitated before opening the door.

“The soldiers will kill us!” Amelia shouted. Her cousin opened the door and shoved Amelia into the dark street. But she held on to his shirt and kept pleading. He turned his back to Marsten and beat Amelia to the ground, yelling something in Spanish about
putas
and Rosalinda.

“She’s my daughter!” Amelia wailed. The shouting and gunfire grew louder. Marsten quickly unbuckled his belt and pulled it free. He twisted an end around each wrist, feeling its heavy weight, and looped it over the man’s head. Then Marsten jerked hard, garroting him. The man tried to fight and grabbed at the belt as Marsten dragged him back into the house. Amelia staggered into the house and banged the door closed. “He’s my cousin!” she wailed, beating on Marsten with her tiny fists.

Marsten ignored her and kept pulling. He had never killed a man before, and it seemed like an eternity before the man quit twitching and lay still. “I didn’t have a choice,” Marsten said, breathing deeply. Outside, the gunfire stopped. “Blow out the candle.” Amelia extinguished the candle as Marsten dragged the body into an alcove under the stairs. “What now?” he wondered aloud. Amelia gasped at the sound of boots pounding down the street and ran into Marsten’s arms. He held her tight, surprised that she was so thin and frail. They froze at the sound of someone banging on the door across the narrow street.
What would
L.J.
do?
Marsten thought. The answer was unbelievably simple: take care of Amelia. He released her and chanced a look out the heavily shuttered window.

A pack of soldiers was breaking down the door on the opposite side of the street. The door collapsed, and a soldier sprayed the interior with a burst of submachine-gun fire. Two ran inside and dragged a man out. Marsten sucked in his breath. It was Amelia’s husband, Agosto Salandro. He watched in horror as the two soldiers twisted and straightened Salandro’s arms behind his back, forcing him to his knees. A burly sergeant pulled his automatic, thumbed the safety off, and jammed the muzzle against the back of Salandro’s head.
“Traidor!”
he yelled. A single shot rang out, and Salandro slumped onto the pavement facedown in a pool of his own blood. Marsten turned away and took Amelia’s hands, relieved that she hadn’t witnessed the execution. “We must hide. Is there a back door?” Amelia pointed down a side hall. He pulled her after him, hurrying into the back, desperate to escape. A loud banging at the door sent fear jolting through him. He found the back door and jerked it open. The banging grew louder.

He forced himself to think. He was doing exactly what the soldiers expected him to do.
Give them what they want!
he thought. He left the door open and pulled Amelia back to the alcove where he had hidden her cousin’s body. He dragged the body out and propped it up against the side of the stairs, its back to the front door. Then he stepped into the alcove, still holding up the body. The door crashed open, and the beam of a flashlight swept the entryway. Then a burst of automatic gunfire deafened him. At the same time, Marsten pushed the body away as hard as he could. It fell against the opposite wall as a second burst of gunfire rang out. The body jerked as round after round tore into it, the force of impact tumbling it toward the kitchen.

Marsten fell back into the alcove, his body shielding Amelia. He closed his eyes as soldiers crashed into the house, mere inches away on the other side of the thin boards framing the alcove. Footsteps pounded over his head as two soldiers ran up the stairs. Another pair ran into the kitchen and shouted. They had found the open door. Soldiers streamed into the house and out through the back door. Now the two soldiers who had run upstairs returned. The first one down paused over the dead body. He reached down and pulled the Rolex watch free, trying to hide it from his partner. The second soldier yelled that he wanted to see the watch. “It’s for the people!” the thief shouted in Spanish, following the others out the back door. The last soldier ran after him.

Marsten leaned against the wall as Amelia collapsed into his arms. “We’ve got to leave,” he told her. “Out the front.” But he had to warn her. “Don’t look at the body. It’s very bad.”

She nodded, and he led her out the front, fully intending to head in the direction the soldiers had come from. But Amelia saw the body and recognized her husband. She fell to her knees and cried, unable to go on. Marsten scooped her up, not sure how far he could carry her. Then he stopped. The neighbor’s door was back in place as if nothing had happened. Still holding Amelia, he kicked at the door. No answer. Twice more he kicked. It cracked open, and he saw a dark shadow. Then it flew open full wide, and Rosalinda rushed out. “Mama! Mama!” she shouted, taking her mother in her arms.

Marsten drank, surprised at how thirsty he was. Then he set down the bottle and looked around the room. It was packed with people he recognized: the cabdriver who had first given him the card and told him to ask for Angelica, two servants from the Salandro household, the madam from the whorehouse where Rosalinda worked, and finally the negotiator from the Guardians he had cut a deal with on the concessions. “Who’s winning?” Marsten asked.

“The Guardians are in control,” the negotiator answered.

Marsten glanced at the people crowded around him. “It certainly looks like it.”

“We control the radio and the government. But the army is in revolt.”

“So you control about half.”

The negotiator gave him a hard stare. “The important half.”

“And the concessions?” Marsten asked. The negotiator said he had no news. “Well,” Marsten said, “let’s find out.” He took the pieces of his satellite phone out of his shoulder bag and carefully patched them together. He stood by a window and dialed L.J.’s number. She answered on the first ring.

“Lloyd! Where are you? Are you okay?”

“I’m okay,” Marsten said. “For now. What’s happening?” The irony struck him. He was in the middle of a revolution, and he didn’t have a clue what was going on.

“I’m in contact with the provisional government’s representative in Miami, and we’ve got the concessions. The ships are on station and drilling.”

“The army is still loyal to Castro,” he said. “What about the Cuban navy?”

“I bought them, lock, stock, and leaky boat.”

“Money’s a wonderful thing,” he said.

“You haven’t heard?”

“Heard what?”

The signal was fading and the “battery low” light flashed at him. Just as the phone died, he could have sworn he heard her say, “The Guardians captured Castro.”

Seven minutes later the soldiers returned, and again Marsten was running for his life with Amelia still in tow. He pulled her into a dark alley, and Rosalinda crashed in behind them. She slung her submachine gun onto her back and gave her mother a hug. “You can bribe Rogelio, if you can find him. Do you have any money?” Amelia shook her head.

“I do,” Marsten replied.

“Go,” Rosalinda urged. She unlimbered her submachine gun and ran into the street, firing on the run. This time Amelia led the way down the dark alley.

Dallas

L.J. laid the satellite phone on the desk in her library and walked out onto the flagstone veranda overlooking her garden. The cold air bit at her, and she shivered. She threw back her head and let the wind stream through her hair as she clasped her arms under her breasts. Relief flooded through her. Lloyd was safe, at least for now. The phone rang, and she breathed deeply. It should be Felix Campbell from BP with a new offer. She walked back inside, glanced at the Caller ID, and picked up the phone. “Yes, Felix,” she said.

As always, Campbell’s unruffled accent made her think of the Scottish Highlands and bagpipes. Nothing in his voice betrayed the fact that he had not slept in over thirty-six hours. “Good evening, L.J. I understand it’s quite cold in Dallas.”

She countered with her thickest Texas drawl. “You are the smooth one, Felix. It’s colder than a polecat’s ass swimmin’ across Loch Ness. It’s almost midnight here. Don’t you ever sleep?”

He didn’t answer. Instead, “I do think we have something you might be interested in. We want to make a preemptive offer.”

“Preemptives are expensive,” she murmured. “Are we talking a seat on the board of directors? Perhaps a vice presidency with stock options?”

“Please, L.J. For an unproven reserve?”

She could almost hear the bagpipes droning in the background. “The ships are drilling,” she said. “Shell and Exxon are knocking at the door. They want in bad.” Campbell casually mentioned a large dollar amount and a larger amount of stock in British Petroleum in exchange for 50 percent of the oil concessions. “I think our polecat drowned, Felix.” He doubled the stock number, absolutely stunning her. “Our polecat is showing new signs of life.”

“I should think he is,” Felix replied. “That will make RayTex the tenth-largest shareholder in BP. However, there are conditions.”

“Because Dr. Drill hasn’t spoken,” she said.

“Exactly. In the event there is no oil—”

She interrupted him. “That’s the chance you’re taking, Felix.”

“If we experience another Mukluk, RayTex will, of course, keep the money—”

“And half the stock,” she said.

She heard him take a deep breath. “I can’t justify that. Not unless BP acquires sixty percent of your stock in RayTex as a quid pro quo.” He paused. “A gamble, yes?”

L.J. knew he was baiting her, exactly as she had baited him on the golf course. She needed the money desperately. But was she willing to take the chance? An inner voice spoke to her. “Arranging that will be tricky,” she said, edging toward the offer.

“There are means through offshore holding corporations,” he told her. “Please remember, with that amount of stock in British Petroleum, RayTex is going to be a very rich company—”

Again she broke in. “Which, with sixty percent of my stock, you’ll shortly control.”

“We’re all assuming risks here,” he said. “But no matter what happens, you’ll be a very wealthy woman.”

They had a deal. “Our polecat just made it to shore,” she said.

L.J. collapsed into her bed after signing a letter of intent and faxing it to Campbell. But the numbers kept swirling in her head, all to the accompaniment of bagpipes. Slowly she drifted off to sleep.

Five hours later she woke with a start. She sat bolt upright, her back rigid, her face streaming with sweat. She had been dreaming, and her subconscious had sent her a message. Even now the image was clear and vivid. She was standing at a blackboard in a college classroom working a calculus problem as the professor’s voice droned in the background. But it wasn’t a calculus problem, it was Steiner’s Seismic Double Reflection matrix. The professor said, “As you can see, it’s a gambit, a deliberate mislead. Brilliant, yes?” L.J. gasped. It was Steiner’s voice, laughing with glee.

She ran for the bathroom and collapsed by the toilet, throwing up. When there was nothing left, the dry heaves started. Again and again convulsions racked her body. She clutched at the commode and laid her cheek against the cool porcelain. Like a spotlight snapping on to catch the hidden action, her subconscious had worked through Steiner’s math. Seismic Double Reflection was a total fraud. Lloyd had warned her. But she hadn’t listened, and in her mad drive for power she had lost RayTex.

“Get a grip,” she told herself. It was a dream. She was obsessing. She went back to bed, confident she could always back out of the deal with Campbell.

Fairfax County Courthouse, Virginia

Stuart silently cursed himself for taking Sam Broad’s advice and not retaining a lawyer for Eric’s custody hearing. The Honorable Loretta Calhoun was not a sympathetic judge in the least and had bombarded him with questions while listening politely to everything Barbara Raye’s lawyer said. Calhoun was a tall, severe woman in her mid-sixties. Her gray hair was pulled back in a tight bun, and her skin sagged under her bright blue eyes. After the first twenty minutes Stuart labeled her a man-hater. She seemed to enjoy watching Barbara Raye’s lawyer eat him alive on every point he had spent hours preparing to make in court. He had a vision of judges and lawyers in short black robes with bare feet and knobby knees dancing around a boiling cauldron chanting legalisms as they dumped him in for a judicial rendering. He scribbled “legal cannibalism” on his notepad as the lawyer slowly tore Hank Langston’s testimony apart on cross-examination. “Then,” the lawyer said, glancing at Jenny and Barbara Raye, “you admit that Eric was in a life-threatening situation when this jet fighter, an old Lightning, experienced electrical failure.”