“Did you know him before that?” I asked.
“By reputation.”
I was glad to hear that Frank was familiar with him. “What kind of reputation did he have?”
“Let’s put it this way,” he said. “These companies are spending hundreds of millions, billions, of dollars to take energy from under the ground, sometimes under the ocean. They know it’s there, but until they go after it, they don’t really know how much or, more importantly, how easy it will be to get to.”
“So it’s a crap shoot?”
“Ever hear the term ‘dry well’? Anyway, people have to make the judgment about what’s there and what isn’t, and there are maybe fifteen people in the industry who are considered the best at doing that. Michael Oliver was one of those people.”
“Could he be wrong?’
“Sure, anything’s possible. But if Michael Oliver said ‘drill here,’ I’d invest my money in it, no questions asked.” He laughed, “Well, of course I’d have questions, but you know what I mean. And I don’t really have any money.”
I showed him copies of the information that Gallagher had gotten from Kagan and Rhodes’s room, except for the information about Carlton and the Hanson executives. He seemed most interested in the schematic layouts of the land, as I knew he would.
“Oliver prepared these?” he asked.
I shrugged. “Not sure. Why?”
“They’re well done, very thorough, so it was probably him.”
“Does it show where the natural gas is?”
“It shows where Oliver thought it was, and based on what I see, I would say he was right.”
“So there’s nothing unusual about it?” I asked. “I was struggling to come up with a reason that Oliver was a specific target, but that reason probably did not exist.”
“Well, there’s one thing that surprises me, but there’s probably a good explanation for it.”
“What’s that?”
He pointed to the map. “You see these arrows? That’s where Oliver was telling them to drill.”
“So?”
“So I don’t know why they’d drill in that many places, and it’s too spread out. You drill in the best spots, and then expand if you have to. He was telling them to start out wider. He must have had his reasons, but I don’t know what they were.”
“Would Oliver be important to the process from now on?” I asked. “Would they have needed him to do the drilling?”
Frank shook his head. “I doubt it. I’m sure he’d told them all he knew, and they had his notes and reports. Now it’s just a question of going down there and sucking the stuff out. Guys in his role become expendable once they’ve finished their analysis.”
I nodded. “Expendable people seem to have a short life expectancy.”
Bryan … I’m not going to lose this time, either.
There’s been a lot of violence surrounding this Brayton situation. You may be seeing it on television. Gallagher is going to understand that it’s all tied in to Brennan’s death. I will make him understand, and at the very least he’ll give you more time.
Do not give up hope. We’ve been through a lot, Brother, and we’ll make it through a lot more.
It took Bryan almost six hours to break into the box.
That was not a lot, when you consider that it took almost five days to even notice that it was there. It was a fairly large metal box, technically a strongbox, and it was in the kitchen pantry, partially hidden by shelves and dishes.
The reason it took so long to break open was not just that it was locked with a fairly good-sized padlock. It was also just at the end of the range that Bryan’s chain allowed him to reach, so prying it open became that much more awkward. But with the help of a heavy screwdriver that was in a kitchen drawer, he was finally able to get it done.
The result was something of a disappointment. He hadn’t known what to expect, and his expectations had been low. Certainly there was not going to be a key to unlock the chains, thereby allowing him to get the hell out of there.
Only a slightly greater hope would be a handgun, locked away for safety. He might have been able to shoot the chains off, though with his lack of familiarity with guns he knew he might kill himself in the process. Maybe he could have used it to shoot Gallagher if he returned; then they could at least die together.
The third hope, and the most realistic one, was that there was some clue to his location, something that he could use to help Luke find him.
But he was zero for three. All that was in the box were rations, labeled US Army MREs. Bryan had no idea what that meant, but he assumed they were long-lasting rations for soldiers out in the field. Never having been in the army himself, he had no idea if they were any good, but doubted it.
In any event, he had no need to experiment with them; food supply was not his problem, air supply was.
And Bryan had already planned his last meal.
He would dine on the two pills that Gallagher left him.
It was turning into a public relations fiasco for Hanson Oil and Gas.
Of course, Hanson’s bottom line did not rely on public relations, so it could fairly easily absorb the damage. But no one wants their company to look bad, especially in a part of the country so close to Wall Street.
Hanson’s CEO, Randall Murchison, was kept updated on the calls and e-mails coming from the public. They were overwhelmingly negative, as was to be expected. Also in line with expectations was the fact that very few shareholders were among the complainers. Those who stood to benefit financially from the Brayton natural gas find were inclined to be tolerant of it.
Ironically, the death of Michael Oliver, while a damaging blow to the company, provided a public relations bright spot for Hanson. Through Oliver, they had become the victims of vigilante justice. People didn’t countenance water and air pollution, but that was a somewhat less immediate and dramatic danger than bombs blowing up in parking lots.
There was a shareholders meeting coming up, and Murchison wanted it to go as smoothly as previous ones. He didn’t want angry townspeople to storm the meeting, yelling their claims that Hanson was going to be poisoning their children. Murchison was known to be a bit of a loose cannon, prone to straight talk that sometimes got him in trouble. But he didn’t want to be fighting with a bunch of panicked and angry parents on national television.
So he placed a call to Richard Carlton. The deal hadn’t officially closed yet, and the money therefore hadn’t been paid, so this was when Murchison would have the most leverage.
“You need to get that situation up there under control,” Murchison said. “My people are telling me we don’t need this aggravation.”
“I’m going to release a statement,” Carlton said.
“You’re going to release a statement? I got a dead chief engineer, people conducting a goddamn pep rally on the land I’m supposed to be drilling on, half the country sending me nasty e-mails, and you’re going to release a statement? Better be a damn good one; that had better be the goddamn statement of the year.”
“I will say that we’re going to use part of the resources from the sale to expand the auto parts business. It’ll mean a thousand more jobs for the locals.”
“You’re lying through your teeth,” Murchison pointed out. “You ain’t dumb enough to pour more money into that shit-ass company.”
The fact that Carlton was in fact lying through his teeth did not mean that Murchison’s accusations didn’t make him angry. The truth was that the auto parts company was going to close within a year and the angry people of Brayton would have something else to get angry about.
“My company has been a leader in its field for sixty years.”
“Yeah. Until you got hold of it. I’m instructing my people to not make the payment.”
“You can’t do that.”
“Watch me,” Murchison said.
“There are plenty other companies that would love to get their hands on that land.”