Duffy laid it on him, and Black’s eyes got buggier with every word. “That’s pretty reasonable, I must say. In fact, it’s almost suspiciously reasonable.” He paused again. “Like I said, what’s the catch? Has this stuff got the pest potential of kudzu or water hyacinth, maybe?”
“Nothing like that,” Duffy replied, still retaining his sheepish expression. “Besides, the parent plants are native to the very area where we plan to use them.
“That should pacify the environmentalists. It’ll be up to your production people to sell this to Rossi, of course—I personally would rather try to get a kindergarten class to agree on one vegetable they all like—but in the end I don’t think he’ll have any alternative.
“As it is, he’ll have to get the process approved by the international commission and the Brazilian government. The recovery company will retain ownership of the plants and do all the harvesting. They’ll also be entitled to any minerals extracted from the husks.”
“He’d be crazy not to go for it,” Black replied.
“Fortunately for us peons, Rossi’s crazy—period. He’ll do anything he thinks will make him an extra nickel. So maybe that puts us in business.”
“There’s a board meeting tomorrow morning,” Black announced. “I’ve been told to report on our conference. What else did you bring me?”
“Lotsa goodies. They’re out in the trunk of my car. There are several videotapes and a couple of loose-leaf notebooks full of charts and tables. None of it makes much sense to me.”
“So, I spend the night cramming instead of sleeping? Thanks a lot, Joe.”
“Don’t mention it.”
“I won’t tell anybody.”
“I’ll be standing by to handle any of the legal details, assuming the board goes for it.”
“Assuming Rossi goes for it. He is the board, you know.”
“I’m afraid there’s a little legal problem down in Brazil, Joe. It finally dawned on Rossi why he got by so cheap.”
“I knew this was too good to last,” Duffy replied with a sigh. “Fill me in.”
“On the phone?”
Duffy was silent for a moment, then decided Black was right. “Can you get away?”
“And come there? No, I don’t think that’s a good idea either. I’m already on the pan. Rossi’s nothing if not paranoid. When things go wrong he looks for somebody to blame. If anybody saw me going into your building, much less your office, he’d think we were plotting against him.”
Black, worried by the long silence that followed, decided to drop the other shoe right away “Joe, the word ‘malpractice’ came up in the conversation a couple of times.”
That got Duffy’s full attention. “OK, tell you what. You’ve got a boat on the lake, I’ve got a boat on the lake. How about we do some fishing tomorrow morning—right out there in the center, where nobody can sneak up on us?”
“Sounds good. I’ll be there.”
Duffy was a little embarrassed at all the slapping they were doing. “We shouldn’t have started quite so early. All these mosquitoes want us for breakfast.”
“They’re the reason the fish get up so early, Joe. The fish are looking for breakfast, too.”
“Let’s make this quick. What’s up?”
“That clause in the contract about the Japanese controlling all the stock and doing all the processing—Rossi finally figured it out. It seems he thought his mining claim extended into the riverbed, too.”
“It doesn’t,” Duffy said grimly. “He only got riparian rights because the beds of navigable streams are public domain.”
“He claims you didn’t tell him that.”
“But he knew I remember he complained about it. He wanted me to find a way to stop boats from coming through.”
“Yeh. Well, he’s now claiming he didn’t know, and like always, money’s the reason. It seems that the riverbed isn’t just contaminated with mercurials, it also has a lot of gold in compound, stuff that got washed out over the eons and collected in the mud or that formed amalgams with the mercury. The separation process he’s using isn’t efficient enough to recover all the gold.”
“I can see it coming already—greed is overpowering Rossi—but go on.”
“The Japanese are obligated to remove the mercurials, of course, but there’s nothing in the agreement that says they can’t go into business for themselves or that they have to divvy with Rossi if they do.
“As the levels of mercury dropped the Japanese began mixing the mercury-concentrating strain with one whose peptides bind to gold. They also brought in a machine that chums up the bottom so the plants get more exposure. We can’t tell for sure but it’s highly likely they’re taking more and purer gold out of the river than Rossi can get from the banks, and that makes Rossi very unhappy.
“Now he wants to find a way to claim they are in breach. He says he’ll sue them into bankruptcy. I think that’s a pipe dream but you’re the one who’ll have to deal with that. As you’re well aware they’ve done such a good job of cleaning up the bottom that the fish downstream are edible again. Rossi can’t find anything to squawk about.”
“He’s gonna blame me?”
“You better believe it. He says if it hadn’t been for you he’d control the riverbed rights too.”
“He’s wrong. Nobody controls them. They’re public property and anybody can do what the Japanese are doing…”
“Theoretically, yes. But, how does anybody else do this when nobody else owns any of these lily pads? Besides, he also says you could have and should have protected him with a covenant not to compete—and you didn’t.”
Duffy pondered a moment, slapped away a few persistent female mosquitoes intent on perpetuating their species with his life’s blood, and replied dourly. “That worries me a little but, if not the Japanese, somebody else would eventually have moved in on him. It’s only a question of time until somebody else develops a comparable process using a different biological collector. Rossi would buy into it.”
“The lilies are patented. There’d be litigation. Competition might come too late to suit Rossi. He’s no spring chicken, you know, and he isn’t especially well known for patience.”
“He’ll just have to live with whatever develops,” Duffy replied with a sigh. “That’s the only reasonable course.”
“Reasonable, huh? Rossi’s only reasonable as long as everybody else does what he wants. Joe, Rossi’s a nut, and you never can tell what a nut will do.”
“Even a nut can’t take on the whole world and win,” Duffy replied. “Look, I don’t know how you’re going to handle your end of it, but I intend to cover my own back. I appreciate the warning, though, and I will do my best to protect you too.”
“He what?!”
“Hold it, Joe. I didn’t say it was him. Nobody said it was him, but he is the logical suspect. He has a motive. He’s the only possible beneficiary of the destruction of the Japanese plantation.”
“Run that by me again? Where’d you hear this?”
“BBC—on the short-wave. They probably picked it up from some Brazilian wire service. The report called it a guerrilla raid but that was probably local rumor, maybe even one Rossi himself started. As far as I know there’s never been any guerrilla activity anywhere near Rossi’s diggings.”
“If they do try to pin it on Rossi our firm will be involved, that’s a certainty. Is there any way you can check it out? We need more details.”
“I’ve got people working on it already, but communication isn’t what you could call swift, especially on weekends. The so-called guerrillas supposedly hit the satellite dish first thing. We shared that with the Japanese and several other local users, including the provincial police FARCE—that’s Rossi’s pet name for them, and in this case it’s well deserved. Sooner or later, though, somebody will answer.”