“He has an admiration for historical assassins,” Pitt offered.
“Might be his line of work. We crossed our records with the Canadian authorities, and they think they have him pegged as a fellow named Clay Zak.”
“Are they going to pick him up?”
“They would if they knew where to find him. He’s a suspect in a twenty-year-old murder at a Canadian nickel mine. His whereabouts have been unknown ever since.”
“A nickel mine? Might be a tie to his use of dynamite.”
“We’re following up on that now. The Canadians might not find him, but if he sets foot in the country again we’ll have a good chance at picking him up.”
“Nice work, Dan. You’ve accomplished a lot in short order.”
“A lucky break that you recalled your encounter. There’s one more thing that you might be interested in knowing. Lisa Lane’s lab assistant, Bob Hamilton. We were able to obtain a search warrant on the guy’s financial records. It seems that he just had fifty thousand dollars wired into his bank account from an offshore entity.”
“I suspected something was amiss with that one.”
“We will do a little more digging, then bring him in for questioning at the end of the week. We’ll see if there is a connection, but I have to say, things look promising at the moment.”
“I’m glad the investigation has legs. Thanks for your efforts.”
“Thank you, Dirk. You’ve given us a nice jump on the case.”
Pitt wondered how his own research was going and took the stairwell down to the tenth-floor computer operations center. He found Yaeger seated at his console conversing again with Max, who stood before a large projection screen. A flattened map of the globe was displayed, with dozens of pinpoint lights flashing from scattered points across the oceans. Each light represented a buoy that relayed sea and weather info via satellite link to the headquarters building.
“Problem with the sea buoy system? ” Pitt asked, taking a seat beside Yaeger.
“We’ve had an uplink problem with a number of segments,” Yaeger replied. “I’m having Max run some software tests to try and isolate the problem.”
“If the latest software release had been properly tested before going operational, we wouldn’t be incurring this problem,” Max injected. Turning to Pitt, she said good morning, then eyed Pitt’s bandage. “What happened to your head?”
“I got in a slight fender bender on a rocky road,” he replied.
“We’ve tracked the information on the jet tail number that you phoned in about,” Yaeger said.
“It can wait. Fixing the sea buoy data is more important.”
“I can multitask with the best of them,” Max offered with a touch of indignation.
“She’s running a test that will take twenty minutes,” Yaeger explained. “We can exercise her until the results come back.”
Turning to the holograph image, he said, “Max, bring up the data on the Canadian Gulfstream jet.”
“The aircraft is a brand-new Gulfstream G650 eighteen-passenger jet, manufactured in 2009. According to Canadian aeronautical records, the tail number C-FTGI is registered to Terra Green Industries, of Vancouver, British Columbia. Terra Green is a privately held company, chaired by a man named Mitchell Goyette.”
“Hence the TGI in the tail number,” Yaeger said. “At least he didn’t flaunt his personal initials, like most filthy rich jet owners.”
“Goyette,” Pitt mused. “Isn’t he big into green energy?”
“His holdings include wind farms, geothermal and hydroelectric power plants, and a small number of solar panel fields,” Max recited.
“Being privately held tends to obscure things,” Yaeger said, “so we did a little digging. Found over two dozen other entities that trace their ownership to Terra Green. Turns out, a number of the holdings were related to gas, oil, and mining exploration activities, particularly in the Athabasca region of Alberta.”
“So Terra Green is apparently not all that green,” Pitt quipped.
“It’s worse than that. Another Terra Green subsidiary apparently controls a recently discovered natural gas field in the Melville Sound. Its value could conceivably outweigh his other holdings combined. We also found an interesting nautical link to NUMA. It seems that over the past few years, Terra Green has contracted for the construction of several big icebreakers from a Mississippi Gulf shipyard, along with a number of very large LNG and bulk-carrier barges. It was the same yard that built our last research ship, which was delayed in launching due in part to their work for Terra Green.”
“Yes, the Lowden Shipyard in New Orleans,” Pitt recalled. “I saw one of those barges in dry dock. It was a massive thing. I wonder what they’re transporting?”
“I have not attempted to locate the vessels, but I can try if you like,” Max said.
Pitt shook his head. “Probably not important. Max, can you determine if Terra Green is conducting any research related to artificial photosynthesis or other countermeasures to greenhouse gas emissions?”
Max stood motionless as she scanned her databases for published research reports and news releases.
“I find no references to Terra Green and artificial photosynthesis. They operate a small research facility devoted to solar research and have published work in carbon sequestration. The company has in fact just opened a carbon sequestration facility in Kitimat, British Columbia. The company is known to be in discussions with the Canadian government to build an unknown number of additional sequestration facilities across the country.”
“Kitimat? I just received an e-mail from Summer, who was writing from there,” Yaeger said.
“Yes, the kids apparently stopped there for a few days on their way down the Inside Passage testing the local sea alkalinity,” Pitt said.
“Do you think the carbon sequestration plants figure in as a motive to halt Lisa Lane’s research?” Yaeger asked.
“I can’t say, but it could be a possibility. It’s clear that Goyette is after the ruthenium.” He explained his visit to the Miners Co-op and the chance encounter with the man he’d seen at the GWU lab. He recited the portion of the journal entry he had read, and pulled out his notes for Yaeger.
“Max, last time we talked, you indicated that there was little, if any, mining of ruthenium taking place,” he said.
“That’s correct, just a small quantity of low-grade ore being produced from a mine in Bolivia.”
“The mining Co-op has a finite inventory left. Do you have any data on potential deposits in the Arctic?”
Max stood motionless for a moment, then shook her head. “No, sir. I find no mention in any recorded surveys or mining claims that I have access to, which mostly date from the 1960s.”
Pitt eyed his journal notes, then said, “I have a record from 1917 that a quantity of ruthenium called Black Kobluna was obtained some sixty-eight years earlier by a number of Adelaide Peninsula Inuit. Does that mean anything to you, Max?”
“I’m sorry, sir, I still don’t find any relevant mining references,” she replied, a hurt look in her transparent eyes.
“She never calls me sir,” Yaeger muttered quietly.
Max ignored Yaeger as she tried to generate an added response to Pitt.
“The Adelaide Peninsula is located on the north coast of Nunavut, just to the south of King William Island. The peninsula is considered an essentially uninhabited landmass, historically occupied at certain seasons by small groups of migrating Inuit.”
“Max, what is meant by the term ‘Black Kobluna’?” Yaeger asked.
Max hesitated while accessing a linguistics database at Stanford University. She then tipped her head at Yaeger and Pitt with a confused look on her face.