Zodiac Station by Tom Harper

Author:Tom Harper [Harper, Tom]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton
Published: 2014-06-18T23:00:00+00:00

Twenty-six

Eastman

He lifted himself through the hatch. He noticed I hadn’t moved the gun.

‘What is this?’

‘You tell me.’ I nodded at the antenna hanging in the space above us like a giant spider. ‘In fact, there’s a few conversations we need to have.’

He looked up, and did a pretty good job of making himself seem surprised. ‘What the hell is that thing?’

‘You tell me,’ I said again.

‘I swear on my mother’s grave, I never saw it in my life.’

‘Yeah?’

He chuckled. ‘Truth to tell, Mom’s alive and well, doing just fine in Fort Lauderdale. But you get the point.’

I didn’t smile. ‘I’m not sure that I do.’

‘I only came here because you asked me, Bob. If you want to show me whatever fancy toy you’ve got here, you go right ahead. But don’t make out like I should know what the hell you’re talking about.’

‘It’s not my toy. It’s a satellite antenna – and I want you to tell me what you’re doing with it.’

He shrugged. ‘I’m in the oil business.’

‘Really? I heard you have something called methane clathrates coming out of that well.’

He didn’t argue the point. ‘Either way, DAR-X isn’t exactly AT&T. We’ve got Iridium and UHF at Echo Bay, and that does us fine. We’re not searching for E.T. in our spare time.’

‘You expect me to believe that.’

He managed to make himself look genuinely hurt. ‘As a matter of fact, Bob, yeah, I do.’

I pitched him the change-up. ‘Tell me about Martin Hagger.’

He looked confused. ‘Your guy who fell down the crevasse?’

‘Who was doing a special project for you. Why did you need to get rid of him?’

Malick just stared at me. Big Texas oilmen don’t go down easy, but he looked floored.

I switched up again. ‘Were you here two days ago, Bill? Any of your people chasing us? Our doc almost got himself killed, running away from some guy in a yellow parka shooting at him.’

The fear I’d felt was flowing out now. Strength and weakness, it’s the same thing, they just run in opposite directions depending on which way the switch is flipped. I had the gun; I could make him do what I wanted. I jabbed it at him in case he’d forgotten.

‘I can account for every one of my guys. None of them’s been up here since the weekend. Show’s over; we’re breaking down the camp. Heading home tomorrow.’

That surprised me, if it was true. Maybe now they had this thing up, they could leave it to run itself.

‘Can we rewind?’ said Malick. ‘I came here because you said you had some data for me.’

‘I lied.’ I’ll admit it, I enjoyed saying that. Something about a gun that strips away the bullshit. ‘I just had to get you here.’

‘So you could show me this space needle?’

‘So you could tell me what it’s about.’

He looked at me like I was crazy.

‘What the hell are you on? Yeah, we’re drilling for methane at Echo Bay. Yeah, we were having problems with the pipes and Hagger looked into it.

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