Fearless: a Novel by M. W. Craven

Author:M. W. Craven
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Flatiron Books

CHAPTER 59

As we walked down into the plant, I asked North what GU would do if it turned out Spencer Quinn was dead.

“Recruit a new CEO,” he said. “Solar energy’s the new kid on the block. It won’t be difficult to get someone with the right credentials.”

“That’s not what I meant,” I said. “GU isn’t publicly listed and Mr. Quinn is the sole shareholder. If he’s dead, he can’t be a shareholder. Corporations can’t be owned by dead men, they have to be passed on to someone.”

North frowned.

“My editor will want to know,” I added.

“That would be an issue for the board,” he said eventually. “I reported to Mr. Quinn on operational matters only. I have no idea how the company is structured.”

We walked the rest of the way in silence. Along corridors and down flights of stairs. Outside the dining room and the immediate passage to it, the building was perfunctory in its decor, like the administration areas of any factory or plant.

We stopped at a secure metal door. North pressed a buzzer and looked up into a small modern camera. A click and the door unlocked. I followed North down a well-lit corridor and onto a gantry overlooking the workshop floor. Men in protective clothing and face masks were fussing around a central machine. One or two employees glanced up, but no one seemed concerned by our presence. We walked down some metal steps and onto the shop floor. A man whose protective clothing covered a suit, a middle management giveaway, met us.

“Jim,” North said, shaking hands with the man, “this is Mr. Decker. He’s with the Washington Post. Can you give him the five-minute tour?”

“Sure,” Jim said. He turned to me and said, “What do you know about solar energy, Mr. Decker?”

I shrugged and glanced at North. “More than I did an hour ago.”

“You’ve seen our solar field?”

“Not yet,” I lied.

“No matter,” Jim said. He walked over to a computer terminal and pressed a couple of buttons. A live feed of the heliostat field flickered into view. It was dark outside, but it was a high-quality image. Using a track pad, Jim dragged a progress bar back a couple of hours. The screen became bathed in light.

“There are two ways to get electricity from the sun, Mr. Decker,” he said. “One way is to use solar panels made up of photovoltaic cells, like the ones that power calculators. They’re dark in color and convert sunlight into direct current electricity.”

“But those things out there are mirrors,” I said, pointing at the screen.

“Indeed they are,” Jim said. “They reflect an extremely hot beam of light onto the central receiver in the solar power tower. A heat-transfer liquid takes the energy to a boiler on the ground. The steam spins our turbine and the electricity is sent here. This is technically a substation. We send some to the town for immediate use, and the rest goes to the grid.”

“Fascinating,” I managed to say before turning to North.

He was talking to another man and studying footage on the screen.

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