Sea of Greed

“I wasn’t,” Joe insisted. “My character doesn’t do suitcases… no upper-body strength.”

Kurt laughed. “As long as your character tips well, we should be okay.”

As Joe checked his cash supply, a woman with short, dark hair, dazzling mahogany eyes and Indian facial features came out onto the deck, maneuvering the compact wheelchair she was confined to with surprising ease.

Priya Kashmir was one member of Hiram Yaeger’s team, a computer genius who’d studied at both Oxford and MIT before joining NUMA. She’d been hired on to a field position when a car crash had left her paralyzed from the waist down. After healing from her injuries, she’d accepted a new position in the tech department, though she continued hoping she’d get back in the field. This was her first opportunity.

She held out a pair of laminated badges with computer chips in them. “Your passes, gentlemen. As long as you have these, you won’t need any additional ID. They’ve been coded to your profiles and embedded with your facial recognition data. All of which has been falsified to match your cover stories, of course.”

“That was fast,” Kurt said, taking his badge and handing the other to Joe. “And I thought we’d have to pretend we lost them.”

“Just trying to earn my keep,” Priya said. “Thanks for having enough faith to bring me along.”

“I have a feeling we’re going to need all the assistance you can provide,” Kurt said. “For now, you’re in charge of the boat. No wild parties while we’re gone.”

“No promises,” she said, “but I’ll try to keep it down. You both look great, by the way. Good luck.”

“Thanks,” Kurt said.

With the water taxi finally pulling up to the stern, he took one of the computer bags, slid it onto his shoulder. He stepped onto the boat as it bumped against the yacht.

“Mr. Hatcher,” the pilot said in a Bermudian British accent.

Kurt nodded and introduced Joe. “This is my assistant, Ronald Ruff. We call him Numbers. You might as well, too.”

Another nod. The pilot nudged the throttle, moving away from the yacht and back toward the shore. “Let me welcome you both to Bermuda. I’ll tell you a little about our history. To begin with, like Mr. Numbers, this island goes by other names as well. Some people call it Somers Island.”

“I’ve heard that,” Kurt replied. “And some call it Devil’s Isle.”

“True,” the pilot said. “It was the shipwrecked sailors who named it that. The island is surrounded by treacherous reefs. And those men found they could neither navigate them to get safely on shore nor escape them once they were stranded here. But even those survivors found pleasure and happiness here. You will, too.”

That, Kurt thought, would depend on what happened at the R3 Conference.

22

NUMA VESSEL RALEIGH

PAUL TROUT found himself both intrigued and frustrated by the work he was doing. Sitting in the Raleigh’s medical center — using it as a makeshift lab — he’d been doing his best to determine exactly what kind of gas they’d pulled from the ruptured pipe.

So far, his efforts had been hampered by the properties of the gas itself. Air caused it to burn, so did water. It corroded various metals, including stainless steel, and its slightest touch on the skin burned like acid.

The only way to contain it was to keep it in a vacuum-sealed container with a glass lining or to drown it in nitrogen. Studying it that way stopped the explosions but presented other problems.

Paul removed a tiny probe from the gas-filled test tube and found the end of the probe smoldering like a burned-out match.

“How’s it going?” Gamay asked. She was across the room, running her own series of tests on the sediment they’d recovered.

“My latest experiment melted the sensor,” he said dejectedly.

“Rudi will dock your pay for that,” she joked.

“Not if no one tells him about it,” Paul said.

“Lucky for you, I can be bribed.”

Paul laughed. “This gas is corrosive like an acid and explosive like a petrochemical vapor. When I put a few drops of seawater in with the gas, it split the water into hydrogen and oxygen and then reacted with the oxygen and caught fire. That’s why it ignites while it’s still underwater.”

“I thought I heard a small explosion.”

“Good thing I only used a few drops,” he said. “Look.”

He held up the tempered-glass beaker he’d used to perform the test. It was blackened on the inside and hairline cracks could be seen running through the curved glass.

“You’d better have your safety goggles on,” she said.

“You, too,” Paul said.

“I’m only working with marine clay,” she said.

“You don’t want mud in your eye?” Paul said. “Especially considering that the sediment is mostly—”

“I know what it is,” she snapped. “And you’re right… I don’t want it in my eye.”

Reluctantly, Gamay put her safety goggles on and then proceeded to conduct her next experiment. She was trying to figure out what was causing the increased pressure in the sealed beaker containing one of the samples.