“When we drilled the first test well in this region, I found a high concentration of pyrolusite ore, in which manganese occurs, so I sent a crawler north and punched another hole. That’s Site A.”
“It’s a good find?” he asked, his excitement growing. Deride liked nothing better than discovering what others had failed to locate.
“Very good. I’ve got samples in the lab. What’s better, at Sites B and C, the concentrations are even denser. See the dotted lines?”
The A, B, and C positions on the screen formed a short, slight arc aimed to the northwest. From Site C, Glenn had projected three different courses, indicated by lavender, purple, and green dotted lines. All of them continued to the northwest, but followed differing curves.
“I see them.”
“I think the green line is our best bet, but we’ve got to test along the other lines anyway, to define the vein.”
“And you think this is going to be worthwhile? Better than the petroleum?”
“The way it’s taking shape, Paul, there won’t be another vein in the world like it. We’ll have a single source of cheap, readily available manganese.”
“It’s not a particularly precious element,” he said, though he was already forming a strategy.
She pushed back from the console and swung around to face him. “What counts is what we do with it.”
He stepped back and sat on the edge of the table, quite interested in what she had to say.
“And what would you do with it, Penny?”
“You own seventy-five percent of Matsumoto Steel Industries.”
He was amazed that she knew about that, and as a reward, he would not ask her how she had found out.
“Sixty-five percent.”
She shrugged. “Whatever. It’s a controlling interest.”
“What would you control?”
“We could put the manganese on the market and do very well. Or we could channel it all into Matsumoto and flood the world with high-grade hardened steel.”
“That would drive prices down steeply.”
“And drive how many international companies out of business?” she asked.
Deride was happy. She was thinking along the same lines of the strategy he had just formulated.
“Most of them, if not all,” he admitted.
“If we passed on the short-term, low-profit angle,” she said, “in five years, we would control the world market for hardened steel. Providing that governments did not step in and subsidize their steel industries.”
“Yes, we’d have to be careful.”
“You’d give up a billion dollars in assured profit?” she asked.
“For fifty or sixty billion down the road? What would you do, Penny?”
“I’m patient.”
“Do you want to negotiate a new commission structure?” Deride asked.
“I’m not worried about it.”
He looked past her to the colorful symbols on the computer screen. Little dashes of color that defined a fortune surpassing the gross national product of most third world nations.
“Are there any hitches in this scenario?” he asked.
“The vein is fairly deep,” she said.
“How deep?”
“So far, it varies between thirty and seventy feet below the seabed.”
“We’re drilling for it?”
“That takes too long. We’re blasting. In a week or two, once I’ve defined the drift, I’m going to need to start moving in conveyors and separators. I’ll want six submarine freighters in the beginning. You’ll have to start working on the Japanese end, preparing Matsumoto for the influx and securing sources of steel.”
“You’re using conventional explosives?”
“Nuclear. It’s much more cost-efficient, Paul.”
“That’s what counts,” he said.
The red Thunderbird drew admiring glances everywhere it went, and it went everywhere Brande could think of to go. He had removed the hardtop and hung it in the garage, and the soft top was rarely raised. The bright finish gleamed under the Southern California sun, and he parked in the far reaches of parking lots — away from adolescent door swinging, hoping to keep it that way. He had ordered a replica of the original Continental spare tire kit for it.
And he had insisted on giving Rae the proceeds of his insurance payment for the Pontiac. It amounted to $18,000, but she wouldn’t accept more than that. Her nurturing of his obsession for old and expensive automobiles amazed him since she had complained about the Bonneville’s nagging little deficiencies power windows inoperative or hydraulic top cylinders leaking as much as Okey did. It made him love her all the more.
And the decade old vision of Janelle Kay Brande became just a little blurrier, and he allowed it to do so. The memory of her hand squeezing his as she lay pinned beneath the broken boom of a sunken Liberty ship on their honeymoon diving expedition was a little less insistent. As she sipped the last of the air from Brande’s scuba tank, Janelle had known she was going to die that day. And she had smiled at him and mouthed the words, “I love you.”
And the smile had stayed with him for a long, long time.
“Won’t this sucker do better than fifty?” Dokey asked. He was slumped in the passenger seat, completely bored with his day.
Brande levered the accelerator pedal, and the speed picked up, the needle moving to sixty five, which was about what the other Californians were averaging. The breeze whipping around the windshield stirred his hair.
He and Dokey had just left the U.S. Naval Station where they had sat through an interminable briefing on the Navy’s goals for subsurface research in the second half of the fiscal year. These briefings tended to be superficial, dealing with only the non secret stuff. Still, they had to be endured because they frequently led to side room discussions, like today, of how MVU might assist the Navy in some of its remotely operated vehicle development. In a matter of only months or years the way the military operated they might land a development or consulting contract.
He and the ‘Bird flowed with the Interstate 5 traffic through the downtown area, rounded the curve to the west and rolled beneath the series of overpasses carrying the numbered avenues. Departing the freeway for Laurel Street, and then North Harbor Drive, Brande crossed the northern end of the bay. San Francisco International Airport was on his right, and Roseville was dead ahead.
“I think,” Dokey said, “that since the afternoon’s shot anyway, I might as well go home. Uncap a bottle of Dos Equis and see if it helps me absorb the sun. Create a new T shirt or something.”
“You aren’t running out of ideas?”
“I’ll run out of shirts first.”
Brande glanced at his friend, who was, in deference to possible Navy contracts, wearing a nicely tailored blue suit and a Republican tie of blended red and gray stripes. He looked like an MIT grad, which he was. If he were to guess, Brande would guess that beneath the facade was a tee shirt blaring, in big red letters, “The Navy sucks eggs!”
He dodged over a lane to the left as a battered Renault decided at the last possible minute to grab the exit for the east terminal of the airport.
The telephone buzzed, barely heard in the slipstream of wind rushing off the windshield.
“Where in hell is the phone?” Dokey asked.
“The glove compartment?”
Dokey tried it.
“Nope.”
The phone rang again.
“Try under the seat.”
He found the cellular unit, tapped the on button, and said, “T Bird Lounge. I don’t know who you’re looking for, but he went home an hour ago.”