“What sort of group? Why would you just blindly follow Frik’s orders?”
Keene felt the fuzz returning to his brain. He tried to shake it off. “It’s called the Daredevils Club. It’s like a brotherhood of adventurers. Frik asked for our help, and we saw the opportunity for some action. He wanted something he said your father stole from him and sent to you.”
“Frikkie Van Alman is a sorry excuse for a human being. I know the things Van Alman says about Green Impact. He’s a liar. A killer. A megalomaniac.” Her whole demeanor hardened. “My father is dead. Van Alman killed him because he knew too much about Oilstar’s operations and their intent.”
“I had nothing to do with that. Neither did Terris, and he’s dead too.”
Selene turned to walk back to a small camp stove where she was heating some water. The tail of her shirt rode up and he saw smooth skin.
“You need to listen, Joshua. Green Impact is not a bunch of wild dogs trying to cause senseless destruction. Not my people, and not me. We’re doing this to stop Frik from destroying our future.”
“Are you sure you’re not as deluded as he is?” Joshua’s throat was dry, his voice hoarse. She moved toward the doorway. “I’ve got some things to take care of.” She tucked her shirt back into her khaki shorts. “We’ll talk more when I get back.”
Yet one more time, Keene drifted off into a restless sleep. He awoke in pain and filled with sadness, but less confused. This time he knew where he was and what he was doing there, though there were still plenty of gaps in the past…what was it? A week? Two? He had heard about temporary trauma-induced amnesia and knew that it wasn’t likely to last. The memories would return in bits and pieces, like misrouted mail.
He struggled off the mildewed canvas cot where he’d been lying and made it outside onto a small verandah. Sitting down on one of two handmade chairs, he surveyed his surroundings.
The verandah overlooked a tiny tributary in the lush labyrinth of the Orinoco Delta. He could see some of the remaining members of Green Impact gathering food, preparing supplies, practicing skills. One man, probably a guard who had remained awake through the previous night’s shift, slept in a mesh hammock. Tall trees filled with colorful tropical birds flanked the stream. Dwellings clustered together in what appeared to be an encampment, raised on poles above the marshy ground and constructed of thin stripped logs with roofs thatched with heavy dried palm fronds.
“I’m glad to see you up,” Selene said, appearing from behind and taking the chair next to him. She was holding the same white enamel mug, only this time he could smell coffee.
“Here.” She handed him the cup. “It’s strong.”
Keene took it from her and placed it on a rickety little table that separated the chairs. “Do you know for sure that Terris McKendry is dead?”
“There were many casualties that night,” Selene said, looking away. “Five of my people, the skeleton crew on the tanker, and, yes, I suppose your friend, too.”
Her expression serious, she reached into her shirt pocket and pulled out a strangely shaped object. She tapped it on the table with a dull-sounding click.
“That’s what Frik’s so hot to have? That’s the reason Terris died?” Keene could hear the rising fury in his own voice.
“Yes. It may not look like much, but this one piece could change the world. Frik doesn’t understand much about it, but he wants to possess it badly enough that when my father tried to keep it from him, Frik killed him.”
“How do you know?” Keene asked her. “We were told it was a lab accident.”
“Right! Funny that it happened the day after he and Frik had a confrontation about this very thing. Frik shouted at him, threatened him.” She held up the odd fragment, turning it so that the jungle light was reflected in skewed patterns. “My father wrote me a letter explaining where this thing came from. He was so frightened of what Frik would do that he separated the pieces of the artifact, sent this one to me for safekeeping, and sent another to himself. I’m not sure what happened to the rest. I think Arthur Marryshow might have another one.”
“Arthur’s dead too. Killed in an explosion on New Year’s Eve not long after your father died.”
Selene looked astonished, then even angrier. “See what I mean?”
Keene contemplated his own doubts. Arthur Marryshow and Paul Trujold, dead within days of each other. Both men concerned about Frik Van Alman’s peculiar artifact. He didn’t believe in coincidences. “What else do you know about…that?” He pointed at the fragment.
“All I know is that it was dredged up by Oilstar’s test drilling rig, the one just off the coast of Trinidad,” she said. “According to my father, the composition is like nothing ever found before, nothing that any human made.”
“Are we talking little green men here?” Joshua allowed himself a small smile.
“You tell me.” Selene thrust the fragment at him. “My father believed it has amazing properties. He was sure that when all the pieces were back together, this artifact—device,whatever you want to call it—could be the key to an energy source that would make filthy petroleum companies as obsolete as woodcutters from the Middle Ages.”
“Frik runs an oil company. Why would he want it so badly?”
“Because he wants to make sure nobody else gets it.”
“Nowthat sounds like Frik.”
The coffee tasted bitter in Keene’s mouth. He added even more sugar than the Venezuelan norm. He didn’t like Frik; never had. The Afrikaner was pushy and self-centered, with an abrasive personality. But a cold-blooded killer…?“So what do we do now?” he asked Selene.
“We?”
Keene thought of what Frikkie Van Alman had told them—the lies and the innuendos. If Selene was telling him the truth, then Frik already had plenty of blood on his hands, and he didn’t seem worried in the least about consequences. “Yes,” he said. “We.”
“Well, to begin with, theValhalla is an abomination,” Selene said.
He pictured the huge structure of the rig’s production platform. The first time he had seen the monolith, it had looked to him like an elephantine skyscraper of concrete and steel, bristling with tall derricks, piping, and tubes, belching flames and smoke. Little had he known that the pair of bright pilot flares burning at the edge of the extended derricks would become a funeral pyre for his friend Terris McKendry.
Selene looked at him, her eyes bright and intense. “Even before I found out from my father what that bastard was trying to do, I knew that it was screwing up the ecosystem here in the Serpent’s Mouth—spilled oil and solvents, natural leakage, ‘acceptable losses’ of toxic chemicals and lubricants. It raises the temperature of the water, killing some fish, attracting others, messing with the entire balance.”
She leaned closer to him. “And the sharks. The population has increased three- or fourfold. That’s not natural.”
The mention of sharks brought a new flood of memories, beginning with his game, a stunt, preparation for the confrontation to come later that night. He envisioned four concrete legs thrust downward all the way to the sea bottom, where a honeycomb of holding tanks were filled with the fresh crude oil, and remembered his fears during the swim from the tanker over to the production platform.
Green Impact had proven far more deadly than any aquatic predator.
“What do you think will happen as the drilling continues?” Keene asked.
“I can only guess,” Selene said, “Who can say for sure what sort of global chaos might follow? Oilstar is producing from one of the bore-holes now, draining out a lot of crude oil, but other crews are still exploring. Frikkie wants to find the rest of that artifact. He needs to see if there’s anything else down below at the Dragon’s Mouth site. There have to be checks and balances.”