The Green Trap Read online

  “Elena?” Cochrane fairly screamed.

  “She’s all in one piece,” Kensington’s dark voice came through the earpiece. “If you want to keep her that way, get yourself back to your hotel right away. And I mean right away.”

  WASHINGTON, D.C.:

  J.W. MARRIOTT HOTEL

  Cochrane’s insides were churning so badly he thought he’d throw up in the taxi. Traffic wasn’t too heavy at this time of night, the rational part of his mind noticed, yet still the cab seemed to inch along through the streets. At last the taxi pulled up to the hotel’s entryway. Cochrane stuffed his last twenty-dollar bill into the little receptacle built into the plastic partition that protected the driver, then dived out of the cab and ran through the lobby to the elevators.

  His hands were shaking. It took three tries for him to get his key card into the slot. The light turned green and he pushed the door open.

  Kensington was sprawled lazily on the sofa, his long legs resting on the coffee table, watching television. He grinned as Cochrane half staggered into the room.

  “Took your time getting here,” he said, reaching for the remote and clicking off the TV. “I was starting to think you wouldn’t show up.”

  “I got here as fast as I could,” Cochrane said, panting.

  Kensington slowly got to his feet. “Too bad. I was just starting to think about how much fun I could have with her if you didn’t show up.”

  “Were is she? What—”

  “Relax, four-eyes. She’s okay. So far.”

  “What do you want?”

  “Nothing much,” Kensington said, stepping around the coffee table. He brushed a fingertip against the crusty scab beneath his right eye. “Nothing much,” he repeated.

  He rammed a lightning-fast fist into Cochrane’s midsection. Cochrane felt as if a bulldozer had slammed into him. He doubled up, his body flaring into pain, his breath knocked out of him, and collapsed to the floor.

  “That’s for marking me with that toy sword of yours,” Kensington said.

  Cochrane couldn’t speak. He gasped for breath. The pain was overwhelming, thundering through him.

  Kensington knelt down on one knee and leaned close to Cochrane’s ear. “Now, you just do what you’re told and everybody’ll be happy. Understand?”

  Cochrane tried to speak, couldn’t.

  “Understand?” Kensington repeated sternly, jabbing Cochrane’s shoulder with stiff fingers.

  Cochrane nodded.

  “Good. The cunt’s in a safe place. Nobody’s going to hurt her as long as you deliver the goods.”

  “Deliver… the goods.”

  “All your brother’s discs,” Kensington said. “And the report you’re supposed to be working on for the senator. Understand?”

  Cochrane nodded again. The pain was dulling to a sullen agony, like being slowly roasted over a bed of hot coals.

  “And we want the names of those three friends of yours that you mailed the data to. That’s important. Names, addresses, phone and e-mail numbers. Got that?”

  Squeezing his eyes shut against the pain, Cochrane realized that they knew everything. Everything. All the cards were in Gould’s hands.

  “Okay.” Kensington got to his feet. “Now we understand each other.”

  Cochrane didn’t even try to get up. He lay on the carpeting, face down, helpless with pain.

  Kensington started for the door, hesitated. He turned back toward Cochrane. “Oh, yeah, one more thing.”

  He kicked Cochrane in the small of his back. White-hot agony flared through him. He screamed from the pain, but nothing came through his throat but a strangled groan.

  “That’s for telling Gould that I was willing to sell him out.” Kensington studied Cochrane’s prostrate form, nodded as if satisfied with his work, then said, “Have a nice day.”

  He left Cochrane lying there, awash in sweat and misery. He remembered the pager that Quinn had given him, started to fumble in his pocket for it. What’s the use? he said to himself. Too late now. He’s gone. Too late. He felt himself slipping into unconsciousness, felt grateful for the dark oblivion that swallowed him.

  The insistent ringing of the telephone awakened him. Cochrane blinked gummy eyes, focused on the phone. It was on the night table beside the bed, a hundred miles away. Just lifting his head off the carpet brought on a surge of agony that made his insides heave.

  The ringing stopped. Cochrane licked his brittle dry lips. Got to get up, he told himself. With infinite effort he reached for the coffee table, leaned one arm on it, and tried to lever himself up to his knees.

  The damned phone started again. Stiffly, slowly, Cochrane crawled on all fours toward the night table. It seemed to take an hour to cross the few feet of distance.

  Fumbling the phone off its base, he sat against the bed and mumbled, “Hello?”

  “Dr. Cochrane? Paul? It’s me… Owen Esterbrook.”

  “Dr. Esterbrook?”

  “Are you all right? You left the office in such a rush.”

  “How… how’d you get this number?”

  “The phone stores the numbers of incoming calls. I just pushed the ‘return call’ button.”

  Cochrane felt foggy, totally weary.

  “Are you all right?” Esterbrook repeated.

  “I’ll live. I think.”

  “You sound terrible.”

  “Listen,” Cochrane said, suddenly remembering what he had to do. “That report we’re writing. Forget it. Destroy it. Erase it from your hard drive.”

  For a long moment Esterbrook didn’t reply. Then, “What do you mean? I can’t erase—”

  “Erase it!” Cochrane shouted. The effort brought a fresh wave of pain. “It’s my data. I want it erased. Destroyed.”

  “But Senator Bardarson—”

  “Screw Senator Bardarson. I want that report erased. Totally. Your own life might depend on it.”

  “My life?”

  Cochrane tried to get fresh air into his lungs. His entire body was aflame; he could only take shallow little breaths.

  “I don’t understand you,” Esterbrook said.

  “Look,” Cochrane replied, more reasonably. “Things have changed. I don’t want to deliver the report to Senator Bardarson. Or anyone else. I want it destroyed. In its entirety.”

  “This is… well, it’s very unusual, to say the least.”

  “I realize that.”

  “We don’t write reports and then erase them.”

  “Please. I need your cooperation. Don’t ask me to explain. Just do as I tell you.”

  Another silence, longer this time. At last Esterbrook said, “I’ll stop working on the report, if that’s what you wish. We’ll need to talk about this face to face.”

  “Okay,” Cochrane said, too exhausted to feel pleased. “I’ll call you… tomorrow. We’ll talk then.”

  “Are you certain you’re all right, Paul?”

  “Yeah. I’m okay.”

  “Well… good night, then.”

  “Good night. And thanks.”

  It took every ounce of his remaining strength to reach up and hook the phone back on its receptacle. Then he sank back to the carpeting and passed out.

  Catch-22 for Lite Fuel

  Ford’s latest fuel-cell-powered car faces an energy conundrum

  By Leonard Eames Ryan

  Test-driving a car powered entirely by a hydrogen-fed fuel cell is something else. Ford’s new H2X is peppier on city streets than most gasoline-powered economy cars. It feels different, too, because the fuel cell powers an electric motor instead of a normal gasoline engine. There’s no growl, no roar, no lurch of shifting gears. The H2X feels more like a golf cart than an automobile.

  Fuel cells generate electricity by combining hydrogen fuel with oxygen from the air. Then the electricity powers the quietly purring motor. Ford is betting that such pure electrical cars will outperform and outsell hybrids that use fuel cells as well as a normal internal combustion engine.

  Hydr
ogen can be extracted from water, in theory, but it takes a lot of electrical power to split the H2O molecule so that its hydrogen can be used for fuel. Hydrogen is more efficient than gasoline, however. A liter of hydrogen (roughly a quart) yields as much mileage as a gallon of gasoline: approximately 57 miles. And what comes out of a hydrogen-powered auto’s exhaust pipe is nothing more than water vapor, not greenhouse-warming carbon dioxide.

  But hydrogen is very bulky, requiring an oversized fuel tank that makes the H2X’s trunk space minimal and its rear seat claustrophobic. Even so, the H2X’s range is only about 150 miles—and there aren’t many service stations around where a driver can fuel up on hydrogen.

  Another problem is that hydrogen is difficult to distribute. The gas leaks out of normal pipeline seals and joints. Until there is a significant demand for hydrogen fuel, no one is going to take the investment risk to build special hydrogen distribution systems and hydrogen “gas” stations. And until such distribution infrastructure comes into being, the hydrogen car will remain nothing more than a lovely dream.

  Catch-22.

  — NEW TIMES MONTHLY

  PHILADELPHIA:

  THE FRANKLIN INSTITUTE

  The larger-than-life statue of Benjamin Franklin smiled down benignly at the horde of schoolchildren pouring through the science museum’s main lobby. The planetarium show had just ended, and the youngsters were streaming toward their waiting school buses, the din of their chattering, yelling, laughing echoing painfully off the lobby’s high walls.

  Senator Bardarson winced at the noise, thinking that it was a waste of time and money to bring these kids to a science museum. All they did was trash the exhibits and race uncontrolled through the halls. Pearls before swine. Publicly, though, the senator always voted in favor of spending federal funds to support “outreach” programs that paid to send ghetto kids to cultural institutions.

  The senator had motored up to Philadelphia in one of his limousines. No paper trail of airline or train tickets. Only his chauffeur accompanied him, and the man was quiet-mouthed and completely loyal.

  Lionel Gould had driven down from New York. Philadelphia was a good halfway point for their meeting. Gould was not in the noisy, crowded lobby, of course. A slim young African-American woman pushed her way through the tide of schoolchildren, frowning distastefully at them.

  “Senator Bardarson?” she asked.

  Bardarson nodded and smiled while he thought that she would have to be a real brain-damage case not to recognize the only adult male in the lobby, except for a trio of uniformed guards who were pointedly ignoring the scrambling flow of children.

  “Mr. Gould is waiting for you,” the young woman said.

  She led him up a narrow winding marble staircase to a set of offices that were blissfully quiet. Extending a graceful slim arm, she gestured to a closed door.

  “In there,” she said.

  Bardarson stepped into a fair-sized library. Its walls were stacked with bookshelves, except for a pair of windows that looked out on the greenery of the broad Parkway, where cars and buses flowed smoothly along. It was starting to get cloudy, Bardarson noticed. I’ll probably go back to Washington in the rain, he thought.

  Lionel Gould was seated at the head of the library’s only table, intently poring over a thick book that looked to Bardarson like an atlas of some kind. Gould’s suit jacket lay over the back of the chair nearest him; his necktie was pulled loose, his shirt collar unbuttoned.

  When he looked up from the atlas and made a perfunctory smile, the senator could see that Gould’s face was shining with perspiration. There’s something wrong with the man, Bardarson thought. I wonder how long he has to live.

  “Good afternoon, Ian,” Gould said cheerfully. “It’s good of you to come all this way to see me.”

  Bardarson pulled out the heavy oak chair closest to Gould and sat down. “You came just as far, Lionel.”

  “Indeed. Indeed. A meeting of equals, eh?”

  The senator nodded and smiled. “This is an unusual place to meet, isn’t it?”

  “Perhaps so,” Gould agreed easily. “The Gould Trust supports this museum handsomely. And it’s just about halfway between your base and mine. Besides, it’s not likely to be staked out by nosy reporters.”

  “The paparazzi don’t haunt science museums, true enough.”

  “So,” Gould said, closing the massive atlas and pushing it aside, “it seems our interests have intersected.”

  “Interesting choice of words, Lionel.”

  Gould threw his head back and laughed, a hearty, full-throated bellow that almost rattled the windows. Bardarson wondered what was so funny.

  “I choose my words carefully,” Gould said as he took a handkerchief from his back pocket and mopped his face. “I am interested in this hydrogen fuel process that Dr. Cochrane discovered—”

  “Invented,” Bardarson corrected. “Since we’re choosing words carefully.”

  With a smile, Gould conceded, “Invented. Have it your way.”

  “And I,” said Bardarson, “intend to use the hydrogen fuel card as the cornerstone of my proposed new energy policy.”

  “You intend to ride hydrogen fuel to the White House,” Gould said, his smile gone.

  “I hope to have your help in my campaign, Lionel.”

  “Indeed. Which is why we need to understand each other.”

  Bardarson nodded.

  Clasping his hands together on the tabletop and hunching forward, Gould said, “I am perfectly prepared to support your candidacy for president. Support you generously, I might add.”

  The senator was silent for a moment, studying Gould’s sweat-sheened face. At last he asked, “In exchange for what?”

  Staring straight into the senator’s eyes, Gould replied, “In exchange for your understanding. Nothing more than that.”

  “Understanding?”

  Deadly serious, Gould said, “This hydrogen fuel thing must be handled carefully. Very carefully.”

  “You mean suppressed.”

  “No! Not suppressed. Certainly not.”

  “Then what?”

  Gould pursed his lips, then continued, “It must be phased in carefully. We cannot simply switch from fossil fuels to hydrogen overnight.”

  “I understand that, Lionel.”

  “Do you?”

  “Of course. I know Detroit can’t convert its assembly lines to a new kind of engine without enormous retooling, reinvestment. The whole industry will be affected. They’ll need considerable help from the Energy Department.”

  “And the Department of Labor,” Gould added, almost mournfully.

  “That’s why,” Bardarson said, slipping into his speech-making mode, “we need a carefully thought-out, fully integrated energy policy. One that involves our relations with OPEC and all the Middle East.”

  “And the Russians,” Gould added. “They are major petroleum producers, don’t forget.”

  “Of course, of course.”

  “But the key question,” said Gould, “is who will control the hydrogen process.”

  “Control it?”

  “This man Cochrane discovered—or invented, if you will—a means of obtaining hydrogen from water cheaply, efficiently. A process that won’t require building a whole infrastructure of piping and new service stations.”

  “So I understand,” said Bardarson.

  “Gould Energy Corporation should control it.”

  Bardarson had seen it coming. Of course Gould would want to control the hydrogen fuel process. Why else would he be interested in it? If I want Gould’s support in my run for the White House, the senator told himself, I’ll have to let him have control of the hydrogen fuel process. That’s politics. Give and take. I’ll scratch your back if you scratch mine.

  “Do you have a proprietary position on this?” he asked guardedly.

  Gould made a sound halfway between a grunt and a snort. “We would have, if the late Dr. Cochrane had lived long enough to honor the verbal agree
ment he made with me.”

  “Oral agreement,” Bardarson murmured, remembering some old movie mogul’s dictum: An oral agreement isn’t worth the paper it’s written on.

  “I was prepared to give Cochrane ten million dollars for the rights to his work. I am still prepared to give his brother and that call girl he’s running around with the same amount, if and when they deliver the process to me.”

  “Call girl?” Bardarson felt surprised. And intrigued. “That Sandoval woman? Is she really a prostitute?”

  “The next thing to it,” Gould muttered. “She uses her body to get what she wants.”

  “Really?”

  With a smirk, Gould asked, “Are you interested?”

  The senator suppressed a grin. “Let’s get back to business, shall we?”

  “By all means.”

  Leaning back in the hard, unforgiving chair, Bardarson asked, “Once you get the information about this hydrogen process, what do you intend to do with it?”

  “Patent it, first of all,” said Gould.

  “That will take a year or more.”

  “Piffle!” Gould waved a chubby hand. “Once we have the patent in hand, we can begin to bring together leaders of the petroleum and automobile industry to start the process of integrating hydrogen fuel into the existing energy and transportation industries.”

  “In other words, delay the conversion to hydrogen as long as possible.”

  Gould started to reply angrily, but caught himself and forced a smile instead. “As long as oil prices keep rising, why should we upset the applecart?”

  “Because you’ll be bleeding the American taxpayer to death!” Bardarson snapped.

  “You mean the American voter, don’t you?”

  “One and the same.”

  Gould shook his head. “Senator, do you actually believe you can capture your party’s nomination without the support of the energy and automobile industries? And their unions?”

  Bardarson did not reply. He realized that what Gould was threatening was not merely to refuse to support him. He’ll support whoever runs against me. He’ll support whoever plays ball with him.