“See, you are already proving your value to me,” he said. “This is excellent.”
Both men sat back in their chairs for a moment to consider each other.
“I’ve been in prison a long time,” said Jonah. “I need to hear the catch.”
“I left out… details… about the scientists in the lost plane,” whispered Dr. Nassiri. “They are of no interest or consequence to my government. I have no sanction or backing from the Directorate or any other organization. The scientist is my mother. She was in Somalia studying a massive new red tide. She’s dedicated her life to her research. This project cost her her life. I must recover her body; I must recover her life’s work.”
“What if I’d rather shoot my way out of here?” asked Jonah. “I don’t think you’d be able to stop me if I wanted to take that pistol of yours for a last stand.”
“You’re my last hope,” said Dr. Nassiri. “I’m begging you. I’m at your mercy. I’ve tried to hire divers, mercenaries. No one will work in those waters for any price. And then it occurred to me to check prisoners, find a man who could be motivated. And then I found you, Mr. Blackwell. I swear to you I’ll do what I said. Believe me when I say I gave up everything — everything to come to this prison to meet you.”
There was something different about the doctor now. No more clipped formality, no more deception, the Moroccan’s once-arrogant face radiating the one emotion Jonah could truly identify with — pain.
“No backing — no support — so what’s the big plan for getting me out of here?” asked Jonah.
Dr. Nassiri gingerly opened a desk drawer to reveal a single pre-prepared syringe. “I will give you a powerful sedative,” said the doctor. “I’ll declare you dead from the fight, a cerebral hemorrhage. I’ll drive you overland to Marrakesh in a body bag. I’ve already hired a ship in Casablanca.”
“Your ship won’t work.”
“But—” protested the doctor.
“There’s only one ship in the world that’s fast enough,” said Jonah. “And she ain’t for charter.”
“I’m afraid I’m in no position to purchase a yacht.”
“That’s fine,” smiled Jonah. “Because we’re going to steal it.”
CHAPTER 3
Charles Bettencourt loved speaking at Ivy League business schools. A beautiful aura of greed hung in the air, so thick he could smell it — hell, he could swim in it. These soft-handed, sharp-minded children of privilege read Liars Poker like an instruction manual, idolized bronzed Wall Street movers, and wanted life fast, dirty, and rich. They wanted to be the masters of the universe. They wanted it all.
He never did this pump-’em-up, leave-’em-wet speech for anything less than a full crowd, hungry adulators packing every available seat. Leaning forward in his too-small folding chair on the stage, he squinted his eyes at the darkened auditorium.
A self-made billionaire, Bettencourt was at the top of his career and he knew it. His adherents called him the man who’d conquered Silicon Valley, but his detractors preferred nicknames like ‘Pink Slip Charlie,’ ‘Bastard Bettencourt,’ or sometimes the unwieldy ‘Charles Wins-in-court’. So what if he’d jumped ship from hedge funds and cut a bloody swath through the California tech industry? Mergers, acquisitions, hostile takeovers, and financial maneuvers were all part of the game. Disruption wasn’t just for blue-collar autoworkers in Michigan anymore; the nerds had it coming just as much as anyone else. But to the media, Bettencourt was a dyed-in-wool, true-blue, goddamn American golden child. His prominence in tech had grown to prominence in everything — private security, energy, global freight, anything that mattered to the world he intended to shape in his own image.
The speaker — some Harvard blowhard who hadn’t been real-world relevant since the ’90’s tech bubble — was wrapping up a second lap on his effusive and wholly unnecessary introduction, lapping up the impatient attention of the audience as if it was his own.
Besides him, a well-coiffed lawyer leaned over to whisper in Bettencourt’s ear.
“I know this is bad timing,” said the lawyer, “but the Conglomerate needs to talk. Soon.”
He frowned deeply. He’d rather stay in the moment, look across the audience, see all the young people who wanted to found the next billion-dollar empire. Even the mention of the word Conglomerate sent a feeling through his spine with which he was thoroughly unfamiliar — fear.
“Make an excuse.”
“They don’t like excuses,” protested his lawyer. “You know the types of people we’re dealing with here.”
“Make a convincing excuse,” Bettencourt snapped.
“And with no further ado or apologies,” said the speaker with a flourish. “President and CEO of Bettencorps, Charles Bettencourt!”
The crowd didn’t applaud. They roared.
Bettencourt rose to his feet, his handsome face catching every ray from the expensive stage-lighting system. He flashed a white grin — not Hollywood white, but white enough to pop in press photos — and waved at the audience with one expansive flourish. Catching the eye of an attractive blonde in the front row, he winked, enjoying her reaction as she visibly blushed.
“I was a marine archaeology undergrad,” he began. “Never mind that only about one in twenty of my cohort would even get a faculty position, and the rest of us would spend the rest of our lives selling life insurance and arguing about feudalism with all the other former humanities majors.”
He knew exactly what to say, just the right mix of self-immolation and cruelty. Every word hurled right into the audience’s ears to rattle around for a millisecond before being pumped out into their brains as the next billion is yours.
“So the US Navy had recently declassified a treasure trove of bathymetric data of the deep sea. I’m talking really deep, like two, sometimes three miles beneath the surface. My academic advisor was determined to suck all the grant money out of this great white elephant he could. He puts these old — and I mean old — printout data sheets through the computer, and the computer starts spitting out possible archaeological shipwreck targets. I mean, we had an entire storage locker of these rolled-up photo-paper printouts, so I’m stuck feeding these through the scanner for an entire summer.
“And then we find something, a great target. It’s on the old Spanish treasure routes. We don’t know much, but the computer says two important things. One — this target is made of wood. Two — this target is old. We had ourselves a mission.
“So the professor sets me on a two year circle-jerk, where I spend sixteen hours a day writing grant proposals, analyzing depth charts, scoping equipment, busting my ass to try to get an exploration mission on the water. We scrimp, save, steal, and borrow, and eventually put together about two and a half million dollars. By the way — who here has a bigger trust fund than that?”
Nervously looking at each other for approval and laughing, a number of the students in the back slowly raised their hands. Legacies — he loved them, one big fat slab of cocky around a tiny-weenie bit of insecurity, all of them. Like they had to get permission from their neighbor to be wealthy. Wait for it. Here comes the punchline.
“Keep those hands up, you rich fuckers. OK, next question. How many of you got that trust fund because your parents were archaeologists?”
Yeah, they were laughing now, especially the jacket-wearing, dinner-club legacies in the back.
“So we raise our two and a half million dollars, which, incidentally is peanuts money, and we book this ancient Ukrainian deep survey vessel and a couple of rusting Russian mini-subs and take them into the middle of the ocean. I get to be on one of the first dives to see this wreck. Naturally, I’m creaming my khakis for a chance to see this target, the deepest wooden shipwreck ever discovered. We launch this old submersible into the water. Takes five and a half hours to descend to the bottom of the ocean. We reach about 17,000 feet deep and start searching for our shipwreck site. Another three hours pass, batteries are already about halfway expended. It’s like an alien world down there, rolling dunes of mud and silt, not much visibility, a bunch of weird fish all around, not that we cared about them. That’s how narrow-minded I was. I was probably surrounded by species that had never been discovered before and may go extinct before they’re ever classified, and I didn’t give a shit because I was an archaeologist, and all that weird fish stuff was for biologists.