Dollar Down (9 page)

"Yes."

I paused and asked, "Can you get one quick?"

Alexandra had more to say than yes or no. I couldn't
make out what it was, but I pardoned her French.

The next day, Oddsson's lawyer arranged a visit for me.
He said the evidence against him was weak, and he should be
released soon. Maybe so, but that didn't solve the issue of
Sabine's death. I assured everyone that I was making
progress.

Oddsson said, "Thanks."

The lawyer sneered politely.

I called Alexandra to see how the translation was
going.

"It isn't going at all. My computer is broken. The hard
disk just died. The systems administrator put in a new one, but
I lost all my data."

"That's OK. I have the file and a printout."

"No, it isn't OK. I lost everything, not just the Chinese
file. I have back-ups to about a month ago, but from then on,
the best I can do is to try to restore the data from paper reports.
The translation is not a high priority for me right now."

I thanked her and promised to stay in touch. Since I
didn't know any Chinese translators, I checked the Web.
Instead of looking for the cheapest bidder, I went for proximity
and found someone nearly next door.

When I called, the translator's wife answered. She was
French. Her husband was Taiwanese. He was a free-lance
translator and a sidewalk artist. Right now he was with the
artists in Montmartre.

The square, surrounded by bistros and cafes, was
crowded with painters and tourists. I wandered through a
mini-world of red-nosed clowns, amber cityscapes and yellow
bicycles. A girl, about ten years old, with long lashes and
haunting eyes sat patiently as an artist recorded her face to
canvas and passing tourists recorded it to snapshots and video.
Toward the center of the square, the only Chinese man among
the painters was intently adding oil accents to a canvas no
bigger than six by nine inches. The image was a door. All of his
paintings were of doors. I stood behind him a while wondering
if he drew portals as a philosophical statement or if he just
liked rectangles. Either way, the art was good. I tested my
pronunciation of "looks good" in Mandarin.
"
Piaoliang
."

He looked up and smiled. "
Xie xie, ni de Zhongguo
hwa shou de hen hau
."

My pronunciation must have worked. He thanked me
and complimented my Chinese.

"That's as far as I go, Mr. Li."

He scowled when he heard his name.

"I'm looking for a translator. I found you on the
Internet and called your number. Your wife said you would be
here."

Li's face relaxed. "What languages?"

"Chinese to English I have the document with me, if
you're interested." I handed him the papers without waiting for
a response.

"
Nan
...
nan
...
hen nan
." He
repeated the word "difficult" and tossed in a "very" as he
scanned the pages.

"What's the subject matter?" I said.

"You don't even know what this is?"

I shook my head.

"Very technical. It's about petroleum processing, but I
can't even understand the Chinese very well. There is a lot of
math and chemistry. I don't think I can translate it to
English."

"Do you know anyone who can?"

"Maybe. I know a student here studying chemical
engineering. His father is an old friend."

Mr. Li called the young man, and an hour later I was
having coffee with David Chou. He added a little more detail.
The paper described a process for converting bitumen into oil,
that is turn tar into liquid. It was a bit too expensive to be a
major factor in the world's oil market, but technological
advances were making it cheaper.

"Do you know Orimulsion?" I said.

"Yes, my field is petrochemicals."

"Mine isn't, so can you tell me why anyone would want
to convert it when it's probably cheaper to produce emulsified
bitumen? "

"Orimulsion isn't suitable for much except firing
electric power plants, and even there you need to have a plant
close to a large water source. Besides, in the conversion
process you can extract some of the pollutants, like
sulfur."

"How does the price of synthetic oil compare to Saudi
crude, for example?"

"That's difficult to say. There are a lot of ways to refine
or liquefy bitumen—chemical processes, heat, even microbes."
David paused and smiled, "And then there was that big
earthquake."

"Earthquake?"

"You know Sodom and Gomorrah?"

"Not intimately."

"Ha," he said politely and continued. "Back in the
nineteen nineties, a pair of British geologists, Harris and
Beardow as I remember, decided they had located the site of
the cities on a peninsula that was swallowed by the Dead Sea.
The area in the Biblical age was bitumen rich, and the locals
probably mined the stuff for fuel. The type of soil there is
subject to liquefaction in a severe earthquake. One hits, and
suddenly the bitumen turns into more flammable liquid. A
lamp gets knocked over and poof, fire and brimstone.

"Maybe that means God wasn't angry at sodomites
after all. He was out to zap oilmen." He laughed. "I like Bible
stories."

I didn't ask him to tell anymore, but I did ask how long
the translation would take.

"About a week."

Long time. There would be a bonus, I said, if he could
find someone to help speed up the turnaround. Tomorrow
would be good. He said he would need help with it any way,
since some sections were outside his expertise. He would
check with acquaintances and call back. In truth there was
probably no need to rush. It didn't look like anything but a
technical report for the Orimulsion study. The only thing that
seemed interesting was the language it was written in. China
was the world's biggest energy consumer. It would make sense
for the country to develop technology that would help it
diversify its source of supply. It wasn't part of the study as far
as I knew.

I called the Scotsman, McNulty, to check on his success
in bugging Mumby's apartment. He had planted listening
devices in each room and video surveillance at the front and
back doors. Next, I checked with Pascal. He was still working
on it, but expected to have bugs in place in the PDVSA team's
office by tonight and in their apartments by tomorrow morning,
assuming they went to work on time.

My next contact was Abe Granger at Global Risk. His
experts had traced Trevor's deal with the investment bank. He
had bet three thousand pounds on a fall in the dollar. It paid
only if the dollar traded in a narrow range against the euro. If it
fell too far, the bet blew up. The dollar closed at nearly smack
dead center of the range, and Trevor took home twenty-seven
thousand pounds. After subtracting trading fees and losses on
a hedge bet that the dollar would rise, his net profit came to
two thousand pounds or sixty-six percent over a few days. The
hedge was lower risk, so it needed a larger outlay to cover
potential loss of the first investment. Without that, his net
earnings would have been nine hundred percent minus
fees.

The trader who handled Trevor's investment was no
surprise, Gordon Mumby.

I met David and his Chinese student pals at a
café. There were four of them, and they had finished the
translation overnight. They appeared more excited about the
content than the bonus for a quick turnaround.

David introduced his colleagues, two from Hong Kong
and one from Hunan Province on the mainland.

"Where did you get this?" David stood an envelope on
its edge and tapped his finger against it.

"That's confidential."

"This is very exact. It could almost be patented."

His colleagues nodded and made little "I agree" sounds
down in their throats.

Must be good material. "As far as I know, it may have
already been patented." I took an envelope out of my pocket,
opened it so David could see the cash inside and laid it on the
table. "Want to swap?" I showed a thin crescent of teeth.

David held his own envelope against his chest like a
high-stakes card sharp. "This is very big, but there is something
missing."

"David." I tapped my envelope and pointed to his. "The
translation." I lost the smile. It was fake to begin with.

David glanced at his friends, then slowly handed me
the envelope.

I pushed the cash toward him and checked what he'd
given me. I had a translation all right, but it was only partly
English. The rest was chemistry and mechanics.

"We need to know where you got that." The student
from the mainland didn't bother with a fake smile. "It would be
better if you told us. That belongs to China. Maybe you stole
it."

Threats? "You haven't learned the word 'confidential'?
It means..."

"I know it!"

"If you're worried about whether I stole it, why did you
do the translation?"

"I didn't. They did." He swept his index finger toward
the other three. "They didn't understand, but it doesn't matter,
unless you have what's missing."

I was beginning to feel like the villain in a Charlie Chan
movie. "Missing secret keep adversary off balance." Or maybe
that was Sun Tzu—Art of War—not Charlie at all. Whoever.

I left the espresso untouched, said thanks and walked
away. It didn't make sense, "...could be patented...very
big...something missing." I didn't get far before David caught up
with me.

"Do you know what we were talking about?"

I shook my head. "Why was your friend upset?"

"He's not my friend. I'm Taiwanese, and he's from the
mainland. He's the enemy right? But the Chinese community at
the university is small, so we see each other. He heard about
the translation and tried to stop me from giving it you. When I
refused, he made the Hong Kong guys bring him to meet
you."

"He made them?"

"He is in the party. His father is very powerful and
could make life hard on someone in Hong Kong, but not Taiwan.
We are free. I don't have to listen to him."

David might be free, but he looked over his shoulder
when he said it.

"You didn't say what's missing."

"Give me time to read this." I said.

"Are you going to call me after you finish?"

"Only if I need your help again or don't like what you
gave me."

"Call me, not the guy from the mainland."

"I don't even know his name."

"He knows yours." David stared at me for a while
before he turned on his heel and walked away.

When I started reading, it was evident I would need
someone to explain the technical bits to me, but I did
understand the gist, if not the details. As David said, it
described a process to turn bitumen into liquid oil. The
bitumen would be exposed to sulfur-eating bacteria that would
turn a tarry glob into a thick, but pourable, liquid. In the next
stage, the liquid would be refined into usable products.

So what was missing? Did it matter? I was looking for a
murderer not a refining technique.

With no better plan, I called Alexandra, and asked if
she would look at the translation.

"I won't have time," she said. "At least not for the next
day or so. Even if I did, a business analyst on the study knows
more about the technical aspects than I do."

The BA turned out to be IG himself, Isaac Goldberg, the
young man whose initials had been usurped by Ian Graham. I
drank espresso and worked the crossword in the International
Herald Tribune while he went through the translation.

"Where did you get this?" he said when he
finished.

There was that question again.

"I won't say." How much the BA needed to know was
Alexandra's decision, not mine. I told Isaac how much I could
understand of it and asked him to fill in what I'd missed.

"The most impressive aspect is the scale. It's huge. In
the first stage bitumen is depolymerized by sulfur-eating
bacteria, such as
Thiobacillus
,
Sulfolobus
or
Rhodococcus.
The bacteria eat sulfur molecules that
bind large hydrocarbon chains. With the binding agent gone,
the chains break up into smaller molecules. Smaller molecules
means lower viscosity. It also means a cleaner fuel, because the
sulfur is consumed. By-products are alcohol and water. They
are friendly to the environment."

"Someone in China did all that. No wonder Li was riled
about possible theft."

"China didn't exactly do all of it. Extraction processes
of minerals through sulfur-eating bacteria are well known.
Similar technology is used in gold mines to weaken sulfur
deposits where traditional chemical processes don't work well.
It can also be used to devulcanize tires, and, as we see, to
liquefy bitumen. A project in Canada used
Rhodococcus
strain JVH1 on tar sands. The problem is that microbial
liquefaction of bitumen has had limited success. What this
paper describes is a fast-growing bacteria that can be
introduced into the Orinoco and thrive in natural conditions,
while it liquefies deposits of bitumen."

"What bacteria can do that?"

"According to the paper, China has genetically
modified a strain of
Rhodococcus
, but I don't know what
the strain is or how it's been modified. It doesn't say."

"If you knew that, could you implement the
process?"

"Looks like it to me. This is pretty complete
otherwise."

So what's missing: the name and constitution of a
black-gold bug.

McNulty called to report that the surveillance devices
in Mumby's home were working, but there was nothing worth
recording so far. Mumby didn't spend much time at home, so it
could be a while, if ever, before we got anything.

You can wait for an apple to fall, or you can shake the
tree.

I called Burroughs and told him what Global Risk had
found out about Trevor's investment. All I had were dates and
the results of the trades. "Can you use that information to
define a trade that would match the payout?"