Sea of Greed Page 11

  Volke nodded. Woods did the same and the two men walked out. Tessa checked the time. The opening ceremonies for R3 were already beginning. It was time to switch from growling at people to charming them.

  21

  BERMUDA

  THE Lucid Dream was a fifty-meter steel-hulled yacht with three decks and a gleaming white and blue paint job. Classic luxury materials filled the interior spaces, while modern touches gave the vessel an edgy look.

  A sound system that could shake up an entire harbor and a pool that could be covered over by glass and turned into a dance floor made it a great party boat for those who were young, rich and nocturnal.

  A small hangar on the upper deck held three drones that could be used for fun and entertainment or for surveillance. Personal watercraft and a high-speed boat for towing water-skiers and wakeboarders were stored in an enclosed compartment just in front of the engine room.

  As impressive as it was, the Lucid Dream was just one of many yachts to arrive in time for the R3 Conference.

  There were at least fifty vessels of equal or larger size visiting the island at the same time. Not to mention hundreds of smaller craft and two of the five largest yachts in the world. Tech money tended to get spent on toys and many of the dot-com billionaires had taken turns outdoing each other on the water.

  In that environment, the Lucid Dream drew only passing glances—and a parking spot out in the sound a half mile from dry land. All of which suited Kurt Austin just fine.

  He stood at the stern of the yacht. He watched a small boat motoring toward them, while enjoying the sunset, the eighty-degree weather and the soft, humid breeze.

  He was dressed to impress, wearing expensive slacks and an Armani jacket with the sleeves rolled to display the cuffs of his limited-edition Robert Graham shirt. Handmade Italian sunglasses covered his eyes and his hair had been professionally dyed from its silver color to a dark blend of black and gray.

  Standing on the deck, Kurt looked like a movie star, which seemed logical since he was essentially playing a role.

  Thanks to some friends of Hiram Yaeger—NUMA’s resident computer genius—Kurt was arriving in Bermuda billed as a reclusive venture capitalist who’d helped fund a dozen start-ups. The expensive wardrobe was required to look the part and Kurt certainly wore it well. The only thing he found odd were the bespoke, nineteen-hundred-dollar high-top sneakers he’d been told he had to wear.

  The footwear made no sense to Kurt, but Yaeger assured him that many of the VCs in the tech world chose to dress in unique and counterculture styles. Being unique was almost as important as being rich. Some wore berets or fedoras as a calling card. Others never wore anything but white T-shirts, jeans and boat shoes. Steve Jobs had been famous for his black turtlenecks. Zuckerberg for his hoodies.

  The man Kurt was pretending to be had a sneaker obsession and wearing wingtips or boots or even expensive Italian loafers would have been a sure giveaway. If nothing else, the sneakers were comfortable.

  “Water taxi approaching,” he called out to Joe. “It’s showtime.”

  Joe came out onto the aft deck dressed in more traditional tech guru clothing. He had his hair slicked back, his shirt buttoned to the neck and a pocket protector firmly in place and filled with a half dozen pens. His khakis were rolled at the ankles and he also wore sneakers, though his were a checkerboard pair of low-sided Vans. He carried two computer satchels, one for himself and one for Kurt.

  “So glad to have an assistant with me on this trip,” Kurt said.

  “Don’t even think I’m hauling our luggage around all weekend,” Joe warned.

  “First rule of undercover work,” Kurt said. “Never break character.”

  “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 an
d 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.

  She scraped a portion of the mud onto a slide and put it under a microscope. Increasing the magnification, she finally saw what she was looking for. Tiny bubbles were forming in the watery clay. They appeared, popped and vanished, only to be replaced by new bubbles. Raising the magnification to full, she saw the cause of those bubbles.

  “Biofilm,” she said.

  “Is that a new movie?” Paul asked, still looking for a sensor to replace the melted one.

  “Biofilm is a telltale sign of bacteria forming a colony,” she explained “It’s one of the things that makes some strains of bacteria hard to treat with antibiotics. The film is a kind of slime that acts as a barrier. It prevents the antibiotics from reaching the bacteria themselves.”

  “Meaning . . . what?”

  She looked up. “It means there’s a large amount of bacteria in the sediment near the pipeline. But not in any of the other locations we tested.”

  Gamay was the biologist of the family, but Paul knew a thing or two. “Isn’t it supposed to be barren sediment down there? Too deep and dark for life to exist?”

  “It should be,” she replied. “Maybe the heat from the pipelines or some leaking chemicals has become a food source. Or maybe the bacteria is feeding on the volatile gas.”

  She went back to the microscope and raised the magnification. “They’re oddly shaped,” she said, studying individual members of the bacteria colony.

  “How so?”

  “Bacteria are usually oval-shaped blobs. These are more like red blood cells. They have a donut-like form.”

  Paul was suddenly more interested in what she was studying than in his own work. “Maybe we should expose some of the bacteria to a sample of the gas. If their growth rate increases, we’ll know that’s what the little beasties are feeding on.”

  “Great idea,” Gamay said.

  She put a sample of the bacteria into a clean test tube, injected some water and sealed it. As she brought it over to Paul, there was a loud pop. The sound startled her and she dropped the vial, diving to catch it before it hit the ground.

  Paul raced around the table and found her lying on the floor with the test tube in one hand and her safety glasses askew. She was staring at the vial. The glass had been blackened on the inside, exactly like the beaker Paul had almost destroyed in his earlier experiment.

  He and Gamay came to the same conclusion at the same time.

  “The bacteria aren’t feeding off the gas,” Paul said.

  “No,” she agreed. “They’re generating it.”

  23

  POLARIS BALLROOM, CONSTELLATION HOTEL AND CONFERENCE CENTER, BERMUDA

  KURT HAD BEEN to more trade shows and conferences than he cared to remember, but he’d never seen anything quite like the R3 Blackout Conference. It was less a trade show and more like an electronic version of Mardi Gras.

  In large rooms, lit by black light, electronic music thumped away while glow-in-the-dark drinks were poured and passed around.

  Men and women wore “active clothing” equipped with LEDs and fiber-optic lights that changed with their body temperature. The colors supposedly corresponded with their state of mind. Fear, aggression, arousal and contentedness were all represented by different hues.

  And everyone in the hall wore clear glasses with little computer displays projected on the lenses.

  “Feel like I’ve died and gone to electronic hell,” Kurt said.

  “You should embrace this,” Joe replied. “Remember that whole ‘remain in character’ thing. Besides, when in Rome, and all that.”

  “But if this is Rome,” Kurt said, “then the barbarians have already conquered.”

  A woman in a neon-green rain slicker with lighted piping around the collar came up to them and scanned their ID badges. “Welcome to the Blackout,” she said. “Here are your complimentary sentience goggles.”

  She handed them each a pair of not-so-stylish glasses with lenses tinted a pale pink color. Kurt put them on and was instantly presented with a wave of information. The words Amanda: Host appeared above the woman in the green outfit.

  “Your name is Amanda?” Kurt asked.

  “It is,” she said. “I’m a guest facilitator, sometimes called a host. If you tap the side of your glasses, you’ll get more information about me or anyone you’re speaking to.”

  Kurt tapped a spot on the right arm of the glasses. Immediately, more information appeared about Amanda.

  Sex: Female

  Status: Single

  Home: Palo Alto, California

  Employer: Sentience Industries

  Education: B.S. in Technology, M.S. in Network Science, Stanford University

  Quote: “If you think you can keep up with me, go ahead and try . . .”

  Standing next to Kurt, Joe was reading the same thing. He grinned. “That’s something I might be interested in attempting,” he said.

  “Easy there, Numbers,” Kurt said. “We’re here on business.”

  As Joe flirted, Kurt scanned the room and read the names of other people nearby.

  “You can also get directions via voice activation,” Amanda said. “Press the other arm and speak.”

  “Elevator,” Kurt said, testing the system.

  A faint line appeared on the glass. It led across the room, appearing like a shadow on the crowd before brightening against the far wall and turning.

  Their host beamed. “All you have to do is follow that line and you’ll be taken right to the elevator.”

  “Personal GPS,” Kurt replied. “I like it.”

  “Let me try,” Joe said. He pressed the sensor on the left arm of his own glasses and spoke. “Directions to winning Amanda’s heart.”

  A line pointed directly toward Amanda, but nothing more appeared.

  “Unfortunately, it doesn’t give emotional directions,” she joked. “But if you’re good at foot rubs, you’re halfway there.”

  She tapped a sensor on the arm of the glasses for Joe and a little heart appeared beside her name. Joe raised his eyebrows and smiled.

  “Thank you,” Kurt said, “we won’t take up any more of your time.”

  Amanda left to speak with other guests and Kurt and Joe began wandering around the main convention hall, talking to other attendees and getting used to the idea of knowing who one was speaking with before even asking a single question.

  Kurt found it stilted the interactions. “One thing’s for sure, you don’t have to make small talk with these things on. It’s just right to the chase.”

  “I’m saving all the single women in my list of favorites,” Joe said. “Unfortunately, that leaves no room for you.”

  “I’m heartbroken,” Kurt feigned. “Time to get down to business.” He pressed the sensor on the arm of his glasses and spoke. “Fuel cell displays.”

  A l
ist of several companies hawking their most advanced fuel cells appeared. Kurt pressed the sensor again and spoke the name of the first company. A line directing him across the room led to an impressive booth with promotional video running on multiple screens. Each mini-movie showed different uses of the fuel cell system, but the technical information suggested there was nothing revolutionary about this company’s products.

  He and Joe moved to a second booth and then a third. The results were the same.

  “Nothing special about these designs,” Joe said. “Just a little more efficient than your garden-variety fuel cells.”

  “Don’t bother saving them to your favorites,” Kurt said. He tapped the button on the arm of the glasses and spoke the name of the last company on the list. “Novum Industria.”

  “Don’t you mean Industrial with an l?” Joe asked.

  “That’s not what it says here,” Kurt replied.

  The line on the glasses led Kurt through a swirling crowd and past a wall covered with falling water. Like everything else in the Blackout Conference, the water appeared to glow in the black light.

  As he passed the end of the wall, he arrived at another display. Here, he saw samples of magnetic material and information about batteries and storage systems.

  As he watched through the glasses, words appeared from a background that seemed to be made of solid rock. Novum Industria. This time, the glasses offered a translation. Latin for New Energy.

  In a small lounge behind all the technical stuff, a woman with wavy dark hair, full lips and a formfitting suit was holding court. Kurt noticed her eyes, partly because she wasn’t wearing the sentience goggles and partly because they were instantly alluring, almond-shaped and canted slightly, which gave her an almost feline appearance.

  As Kurt scanned the group around her, the glasses told him her subjects were all potential investors. He moved in with the others, focused on the woman and was rewarded with information about her.