Leslie Wolfe
The Ghost Pattern
To my husband, for being in my life.
…1
Chief Ramsay paced the room impatiently, muttering curses under his breath and looking out the same window every two seconds, although the view stayed eerily the same. A cold and foggy Aberdeen morning, engulfed in fog so thick it condensed water droplets on everything it touched, including his office window.
He picked up the radio and tried again.
“Nancy Belle, Nancy Belle, this is Shore Base, come in, over?”
He released the radio button, listening intently and hearing nothing. “C’mon, c’mon, where the hell are you?” he whispered impatiently.
His typical mornings were a lot different from that particular one. He’d come in the office a few minutes before 8:00AM, shaking off the humid chills brought by the thick Aberdeen fog, and heading straight for the coffee machine. He’d brew a fresh cup, then enjoy it while making his morning rounds. That was a figure of speech, of course. He rarely left the shore base. Once a rig was in production, barring some unforeseen event, the head of shore base operations had no reason to visit in person. His morning rounds consisted of radio calls with each of the drilling platforms under his purview, making sure everything was running well. He’d check the status of operations for each rig, and receive reports for everything from staff health to outstanding work orders for parts and repairs.
That would have been a routine morning. This time, things were different.
Nancy Belle, or NB64, was one of the three offshore oilrigs he was responsible for, and it was not reading on any comm. The night before NB64 had signed off with a “status normal, nothing to report” code, and now there was nothing, not a single sound coming from the platform on any channel. It was as if the milky fog had swallowed it whole.
A quick rap on the door, and the shift supervisor came in uninvited.
“Boss?” he said, rubbing his forehead hesitantly.
“Yeah, what do you have?”
“Nothing, dead silent on radio, on sat, all of it is dead. I tried a few personal cell phones, none pick up. Even video is down, all of it.”
“What?” Ramsay stopped and turned on his heels to face his shift lead.
“Yeah, boss, all video feed is down for 64.”
“Damn… bloody hell, what happened to those boys? Have any of the other rigs reported anything?”
“No, nothing,” the man replied, shifting his weight from one foot to the other, while the frown on his forehead became more pronounced under the rim of his hard hat. “But they don’t have eyes on them either… fog’s too thick.”
Ramsay went to the window and pressed his binoculars against it, squinting hard against the eyecups, trying to make something out in the milky haze that had swallowed everything like a shroud. His other rigs weren’t visible yet either, but NB64 was the farthest one out; it would be a while.
“There’s one,” he said, pointing in the direction of a familiar shape almost completely hidden in the fog.
“That’s 27,” the other man confirmed. “If we can see 27, it shouldn’t be that long before we put eyes on 64.”
“Nancy Belle, Nancy Belle, come in, goddamnit,” Ramsay tried again and got no response. “Go try video again, will ya’?”
The man left quietly. He returned within minutes. “Nothing, boss.”
Ramsay stuck his face against the cold window and squinted some more.
“There she is,” he said, as the fog lifted a little more, enough for him to discern the familiar silhouette of NB64 against the gray mist. “She’s still there!”
Ramsay grabbed his binoculars and looked at 64 again. “Yeah, seems to be in one piece, no flames, no smoke.”
He made another attempt to raise the rig by radio, then turned to his lead and said, “You know the procedure. We can’t wait any longer; it’s been almost an hour. We have to assume the worst. Get SAS and emergency response ready, and meet me on the helipad.”
Minutes later, the rotor blades of a SA 330E Puma helicopter ripped through the lifting fog as it headed toward the eerily silent NB64.
…2
Vitaliy Myatlev reaped the benefits of being President Abramovich’s lifelong friend, and loved it. He took a top floor office in the Russian Ministry of Defense, right next door to Minister Dimitrov, another one of his lifelong friends. Although at the center of a starving, frozen, and desperate Moscow, Myatlev’s office was lavishly decorated in Western fashion, with imported furniture and art pieces worthy of the world’s finest galleries. He had become accustomed to a certain lifestyle since he had started enjoying tremendous success in business, propelling him on the short list of the world’s richest men. He would have settled for nothing less.
This lifestyle contrast was nothing new to the citizens of Moscow, accustomed by now with the gaping chasm between classes. Moscow was the only place in the world where workers dressed in rags crowded on commuter busses that shared the streets with a parade of Lamborghinis and Ferraris. No, nothing new for them.
Since the fall of communism, Russia had quickly replaced one dominant class with another, leading to little quality of life improvement for the average citizen. Of course, it had been the Communist Party’s greatest, the KGB’s finest who had access to riches, connections, and business knowledge to lay down the foundations of capitalism in Russia. No one else but them, the same ruthless elite had gained access to capitalist power using the same methods as they did back in their communist days. This time they were chasing the mighty dollar, not the political favor of one communist dictator or another.
Myatlev was no exception. He’d come of age in the final days of the old KGB, cutting his teeth in foreign intelligence and gaining invaluable exposure to the West and its ways. He also gained something equally invaluable during those days: the lasting friendship of two young men he met while he was a student at the Dzerzhinsky Higher School of the KGB.
The three of them had a lot in common; they were ruthlessly ambitious; stopped at nothing to achieve their goals; and were bold, unafraid, and brilliant. They all lived to see their dreams become reality, although in different directions.
One, Piotr Abramovich, or Petya for his close friends, had become the president of Russia, and the first to stay in power for more than the typical two mandates after the fall of communism. Abramovich had started his third presidential mandate, and the Kremlin rumor mill suggested he was planning yet another Constitution amendment, to remove any remaining limitations on his path of becoming the first post-glasnost dictator. His ego moved mountains; his bruised ego started wars.
The other one, Mikhail Dimitrov, was Russia’s minister of defense, the best and brightest the country had seen in ages. A talented strategist with a cool head on his shoulders and a heartfelt desire to restore Russia’s greatness along with Abramovich and Myatlev, Mishka Dimitrov was the voice of temperance keeping impulsive Abramovich from setting the world on fire. He had to walk a fine line to do that, but no one else could do that better than Dimitrov.
Finally, Myatlev, the youngest of the three but not by much, had been born with a natural inclination for big business. Within years after he was set free by the fall of communism, he had amassed billions of dollars and business interests, ranging from banking, imported goods, food, and oil in Russia and the former Soviet republics to investments in technology, natural resources, and real estate everywhere else on the globe. Of course, having his best friends in high positions of power within the Russian government had helped him a little in his business ventures. Myatlev never had to worry about permits, taxes, or even staying on the right side of the law. He had become an all-powerful oligarch, grateful and generous toward anyone who helped him prosper.