Free Fire - C. J. Box [116]
Joe took the cover sheet from the Genetech file and read it over. Based in Geneva, the company was partially owned by the Swiss government but had majority private financing. Genetech’s bioengineers were also researching hot springs microbesin New Zealand and Iceland to try to mine more useful microbe thermophiles, but as yet could not find a match for the particular specimen they’d found in Yellowstone.
“Would the microbe be worth killing over?” Joe asked rhetorically.
“Absolutely,” Nate said. “The company’s made a fortune so far exploiting it.”
“So we have a suspect?” Marybeth asked. “A Swiss bioengineeringfirm?”
“That’s what I was thinking at first,” Nate said, “but I’ve changed my mind. I don’t think this has anything at all to do with Genetech, other than they were the company that originally found the microbe and obtained the permit to harvest it from Yellowstone.”
Joe explained to Marybeth what Cutler had told him about the permitting process—how sloppy and controversial it seemed to be, how environmental purists like Rick Hoening and others were opposed to it.
“I tend to agree with them,” she said. “If it’s illegal to dig a mine, hunt, or do any logging in a national park, how can you justify taking microbes for commercial purposes? I don’t know enough about it to have an opinion either way, but it’s not consistentwith their policy, is it?”
“Nope,” Nate said.
“Then why would the Park Service grant permits to companiesto do this kind of prospecting?”
“Bucks,” Nate said. “Parks always need more money.”
Joe was beginning to get what Nate was driving at.
“So we’ve got Genetech, who has a permit extending anotherfive years to exclusively harvest this particular microbe,” Nate said, digging out a copy of the agreement. He showed them where it was signed by the superintendent of the park as well as the chief ranger. “But it seems there’s another company in this pile of papers Marybeth brought with her that desperatelywants a permit as well.”
Nate turned to Marybeth. “Where did you get this particular list of companies?”
She nodded to Joe.
“I saw the names on binders in Clay McCann’s office,” Joe said.
“Okay,” Nate said, his voice rising, “that’s the connection— Clay McCann. Now we come to a company called EnerDyne.”
This was the file Nate had waved in the air earlier. He summarizedit: "EnerDyne was incorporated just last year in the State of Colorado. The incorporation papers are filed with the secretary of state there, and Marybeth was smart to print out the documents when she did her search. EnerDyne has several floors of offices in downtown Denver, a pretty large payroll, but no income as yet according to the records.”
“How can they stay in business?” Joe asked.
“I’m getting to that,” Nate said, excited.
“Please get to it with your voices down,” Marybeth cautioned,gesturing at her sleeping daughters.
According to the papers filed with the Colorado secretaryof state, Nate said, EnerDyne was a research, development, and engineering firm created to implement coal gasification projects throughout North America.
“Coal what?” Marybeth asked.
“Gasification,” Joe said. “Turning hard coal into gas that can be transported in pipelines and distributed. I remember reading about it back when we had the mineral rights dispute around Saddlestring. Energy companies have been trying to figure out how to do it economically for years. The technology is there, but it’s too expensive to do in a cost-effective way, at least so far. They’d have to build big plants to turn the coal into gas, and since coal only costs pennies per ton to mine and ship, it doesn’t make financial sense.”
“That’s right,” Nate said. “Wyoming and other states have billions of tons of coal in the ground. There are seams of coal in the West that are miles thick and stretch across half the state—the largest deposits in the world. If that coal could be made into gas, it could solve all of our energy problems and change the face of the economy. We could be energy independent.”
“My God,” she