Long Way Down (6 page)

“Batteries? Aren’t batteries clean?”

He wrinkled his nose in disgust. “Filth. Poisonous semiprecious metals that cannot be intelligently recycled. Acids leaking into groundwater. Batteries are forever. You’re better off with nuclear waste. At least that has a half-life.”

“I see.”

“And the damn things are heavy. You can’t change that. You may be able to make them marginally more efficient, but don’t expect to fly to Tokyo in a battery-driven commercial airplane. You would need to rewrite all the physics books first.”

Haley led me back down the corridor and out to the elevator. “Will it be green?” I asked. “I mean, sustainable? Clean?”

He spread his fingers and waved his hands. “Buzzwords. Pop media. Listen. I will make it simple. What are the two main problems with solar energy?”

“I don’t know. It still costs too much to be competitive?”

He shook his head. “One. Once you have collected the energy, you still need to store it. You need to turn lights on when it’s dark outside. You still need to run your microwave on rainy days. We’ve already covered batteries. They are not the answer.”

“I can see that.”

We didn’t have to go through the same security measures on the way out. Haley pushed a button and the elevator door slid open.

“Two,” he continued. “Solar energy is limited. Only so much of it reaches the earth’s surface. Much of it is reflected off our atmosphere, which is a good thing. Otherwise we would all have been baked into ashes before we evolved beyond seaborne amoebae. But the amount of energy that actually reaches the ground is a limited figure—quantifiable, but definitely limited. The closer to the poles you are, the less solar energy hits the surface. Smog deflects it and absorbs it. So does dust. The Sahara gets an average of more than twice what we get here in New York. So efficiency matters, but only up to a point. Chemical or mechanical systems will only be able to reach a certain level of productivity. After that, modifications to improve efficiency will, almost by definition, become too expensive to pursue.”

“Are we back to nuclear?”

He ignored me. “And much of the energy comes in a form that we can’t use. It comes in wavelengths—colors—that do us no good. It is not readily transferable. The usable band is less than half the total.”

“Infrared?”

He nodded excitedly—his pupil had said something intelligent.

“This is why algae makes so much sense. You agree?”

I didn’t see, but I kept it to myself. “I’m still listening.”

“Algae grow with sunlight, water, and carbon dioxide. One of your ‘greenhouse gases’ according to the popular press, though carbon dioxide is quite natural and very necessary to life on this planet.”

Someone had made an attempt to make the office rooms a bit more presentable, clearing the conference table of litter and straightening some of the chairs. My bet: It wasn’t the ice lady.

“There you go,” I said. “Water. Another limited resource.”

“Yes, but algae actually love dirty water. Briny is best. Clean water is a limited resource. Salt water constitutes over seventy percent of the surface area of the planet. Not a problem.”

I was starting to see it. “And carbon dioxide is fairly abundant.”

“Well, yes. Not always in optimal concentrations, but, yes. Algae remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, takes briny, undrinkable water, and mixes them together to form an oil that is combustible and that requires little processing to turn it into biodiesel. The algae also create proteins that can be used for animal feed, and excrete carbohydrates—sugars—which can be processed into ethanol.”

We settled into the chairs in Haley’s office. There was only one picture in the room—a framed photo of his wife that sat next to his computer monitor. Haley saw me looking and turned it, possibly unconsciously, so that it faced him alone.

“What’s the catch?” I said. “There’s got to be some reason we’re not all doing this already. Where does oil have to be trading before this becomes competitive?”

“As I mentioned, sunlight is limited—finite. You cannot improve your per-acre energy capture by increasing sunlight. So where do you get increased efficiency? Most of the industry is taking an engineering approach, improving their technology. Most of them are using a very commonly found algae. It is much more efficient than corn or sugar beets, and it is easily replaced in case of catastrophic die-offs—algal crashes—due to drought, or predators, or too little sunlight for extended periods. However, the theoretical best, the ultimate, that current systems could hope for would be a return of approximately eight thousand barrels of diesel and four or five thousand barrels of ethanol. That’s per acre.”

I ran some numbers in my head and whistled. “Not too shabby.”

“Indeed,” he said. “But suppose you could quadruple your production per acre?”

“But you can’t. You said it, sunlight is finite.”

“Sunlight is finite, yes. But remember, the algae only capture a percentage of it. And can only process up to a certain percentage of what is captured.”

“And that’s where you come in. ‘You’ being Arinna.”

“Arinna bioengineers more efficient algae. Producers who use our algae will have fewer pool crashes, capture a wider range of available light, and process a much higher percentage of that light energy into fuel. And our product actually captures more carbon dioxide than the burning of the fuel releases. The holy grail of biofuels.”

“How close are you?”

“We have a product that performs flawlessly in the laboratory. It has done quite well in our research farm in Arizona.”

“Where do you get water in Arizona?”

“There’s plenty of water. It’s just not fit for consumption—filled with salts and minerals. But it’s perfect for our needs. The air is cleaner than we would like, but every site is a trade-off to some degree. But location is not really our concern. I’m not a farmer. I just want to sell my superior product to farmers.”

“So, you don’t need my help there.”

He did finally smile at one of my feeble jokes. “I am at a loss as to why I need your help at all, Mr. Stafford. I have explained to my lawyer that I am innocent. Eventually, investigators will discover who is promoting this scheme.”

I was stunned. The man was certainly intelligent—a genius—and experienced. “Didn’t you go to Virgil Becker for help?”

“Virgil is our banker. His firm took us public. Of course I spoke with him about the situation. But I made it clear to him that there is no cause for concern. I am innocent and that will be demonstrated.”

I am often amazed at how remarkably stupid some smart people can be. In most of those cases, I could see the underlying cause—usually arrogance or inflated sense of privilege. But Haley should have known better. For the first time, I began to doubt him.

“Mr. Haley. You say you know my history. You know part of it. I went to prison. But I’ve been out for a while and I’ve managed to
help some people out of serious jams. I helped Virgil after the mess his father left him. I can help you. But if you’re only telling me part of the story, you are tying my hands. Understood?”

He didn’t like it. He did the scowling thing again.

“I’ve been set up,” he said finally.

“So be it. Who would do this? Do you have any enemies?”

He gave a short, unamused laugh. “Hosts. I am decidedly from the wrong background. Despite that, I am successful and I married a beautiful, wealthy woman.”

“All right. So you have lots of enemies because you married the only remaining heir to a Gold Coast fortune and you live in a castle. But somehow, I don’t see some jealous polo-playing twit running this kind of scam just to put you in your place. Sorry.”

He almost blew up at me. I could see it coming and he pulled back. He thought for another moment.

“The Chinese. They’ll do anything to stop me. To keep my product off the market. If they can’t steal it. They’ve sunk trillions into battery power; they can’t afford to have me beat them.”

That struck me as possible. It was also paranoid, delusional, and racist. But as the Chinese had already hacked into the
New York Times
, the
Wall Street Journal
, and the Pentagon, I supposed that I would have to treat it seriously.

“What do your IT security people say?”

He glowered. “I will not use firm assets or personnel in what is essentially a personal matter.”

“Okay, but they must have given an opinion.”

“I have not asked.” He was past the slow-rolling boil, but not quite to the point of screaming with released steam.

“All right,” I said. He was stonewalling, but I wasn’t going to let it get in my way. “I know people who can look into it. Or at least steer me in the right direction.” I had remained in touch with a young computer whiz, now attempting to better himself by
studying law at Yale. If he couldn’t help, he would know someone. “I was thinking someone closer. A family member. Senior staff. A board member. Someone with clout and connections—and money.”

He cleared his throat a few times as he fought for control. He was again very much in control when he finally answered. “Arinna has a small board. My wife and me; Chuck Penn and Harve Deeter are the moneymen; Helen Ward, from Teachers’ Retirement—our corporate conscience; and Don Kavanagh, our general counsel. Virgil usually sits in with us—the firm owns a large block of nonvoting shares. I get along well with all of them. I respect these people and would want you to treat them as they deserve.”

Charles Penn was a big fish—a whale. A multibillionaire with interests in everything from start-up tech companies to minerals mining. Harvey Deeter was an oilman and even wealthier. Helen Ward had referred to me in the press as “just another small-time crook” when I had been convicted. I didn’t think she would take my call this time around.

“I can finesse when need be. I’m multitalented that way.” I would have Virgil make the call to Ward and the lawyer. “Anyone else? Competitors? Jealous family members? Jilted ex-lovers?”

“I’m quite serious about the Chinese. You should look into that connection.”

“Okay, but I might start with your wife.”

He opened his mouth as though to object, then closed it and sat staring at me blankly.

“Can I reach her here?” I asked.

He snapped out of whatever reveries had caught him. “At the house? No. She’ll be at our place in the city.” He gave me the number. “Let me walk you out,” he said, standing.

His mood had changed when I mentioned the wife. He was no longer as confident. He had gone from the assured CEO to the beleaguered husband.

We were shaking hands in the parking lot when he suddenly shook off the change in mood. “Do you have a minute? Let me show you something. May I?”

I had plenty of work to do and not much time to do it, but a minute or ten wouldn’t make a difference.

“Lead on.”

We walked up through the rhododendrons, the curled brown leaves rattling in the wind and sounding like a wooden waterfall. I was cold already, but Haley didn’t seem to notice it, though he was wearing no more than his suit.

“I was late getting back this morning. Checking my lobster pots and trolling for whatever fish are still around this time of year.”

Nothing on the Internet had hinted that he had a hobby of any kind.

“I’m surprised. I didn’t see you as a fisherman.”

“I grew up dirt-poor in Georgetown, South Carolina. You either fished or worked at the paper mill. Or went hungry.”

The stables were just to our right. From this perspective I could see they were empty and needed work. The white paint was flaking badly in spots and the outdoor riding ring was partially covered with bare brown weeds. We kept walking.

The house was both arrogant and pitiful. Arrogant in size and with all the Gold Coast love of over-ornamentation, but pitiful in that it failed so abysmally at conveying any sense of beauty or grandeur. The path we were on would lead us directly to the front door. I wasn’t interested in a house tour.

Haley must have sensed my reluctance. “Almost there. We’ll take a right up here around the hedge.”

I followed him and found myself in a low-walled garden in back of the house. The flower beds were all piled with mulch and only the brown stumps of rosebushes along the stone wall gave any
indication of what this area would look like in early summer. At the end of the garden was all of Long Island Sound.

Water views and wealth are inextricably bound and will be so even after the oceans rise twenty-five feet and turn Manhattan into a twenty-first-century version of Venice. Virgil’s mother lived in a castle with a view of Newport Harbor. Every multimillionaire on Wall Street had to have a water view, if only at the summerhouse, and every lowly intern and trading assistant dreamed of getting there one day. But few had dreamed this big.

Beyond the wall was a steep cliff of clay and rock, pushed here by the Wisconsin glacier of the last ice age that had scraped away everything in its path down to bedrock before being defeated by warming weather, gravity, or friction. The glacier melted and left the Sound.

And from that garden, I felt like I could see all of it. Far to the west was Manhattan, the towers looking like sparkling crystals in the afternoon sun. A lighthouse, which must have been miles away, looked like a toy replica. Across the water I could see the hedge fund mansions in Greenwich, the soaring bastions of banking in Stamford, and in the distance, the towers of the power plant at Bridgeport. To the east, water stretched to the horizon, giving the illusion of infinity. It was impossible that such a view belonged to one family alone.

“Is this the highest point on Long Island?”

“No. Not even close. It’s not even the tallest point on the North Shore.”

“Why isn’t this a national park?”

“It may yet get there. But come over here. I want to show you my farm.”

It was too odd to question. I followed him to a set of steps that led down to a rocky beach in a set of switchbacks along the cliff. Far
below us, a rock jetty stuck out from the beach for sixty or seventy feet into the Sound. I made the mistake of looking straight down and felt my equilibrium shift. The ground was very far away and there was very little between me and it.