The Garden of Betrayal - Lee Vance [52]
“Quite the display,” he said, looking at the array of documents I’d taped to the long glass wall.
“I needed some space to spread out. You here to talk more about Alex?”
“To make clear that you’re to keep me posted on any conversation you have with him regarding his personal issues.” He did a slow tour of the wall, coming to a halt in front of a map occupying the central position. “Saudi Arabia?”
“Message received,” I said. “Thanks for stopping by.”
He touched one of the brightly colored 3-D representations of Saudi oil fields surrounding the map.
“And this is what?”
“Work.”
“Hmm …” He bent closer, examining the legend on the lower-left corner of the colored printout. “Yellow is oil, blue is water, and green is sedimentary rock. Geological studies?”
I crossed my arms and stared at him. He moved left, peering at a spreadsheet.
“‘Net yield by month in hundreds of thousands of barrels,’” he read. “I thought the Saudis didn’t make public their production data?”
“They don’t.”
He turned from the glass wall to scrutinize me.
“More manna from Narimanov?”
There were two possibilities. Either he knew I’d received the Saudi information from Theresa, and was trying to play me for a fool, or he didn’t. If he did, nothing I told him would be news. If he didn’t, it was marginally more likely that Alex had been straight with me. I was tired of guessing at everything. I decided to find out which.
“No,” I said. “Another source.”
He whistled softly.
“You’re kind of on a hot streak, aren’t you?”
“Maybe. There are complications.”
“Such as?” he asked, settling himself in an empty seat.
I got up to close the door and then sat down opposite him. It took me about five minutes to explain how I’d come by the data, referring to Alex as “my friend” and Theresa as “the expert.” His face was a mask.
“The thing that’s making me most uncomfortable is that Simpson’s entire argument yesterday was predicated on assumptions about the very data that just fell into my lap. It seems like too much of a coincidence. I’m betting that there’s something going on behind the scenes.”
“Let me guess,” Walter said, waving a hand at the documents taped to the wall. “The work you’ve done makes the senator seem prescient.”
“A proper analysis would take weeks. But the short answer to your question is yes. My quick-and-dirty read is that the Saudis are likely to begin experiencing serious production declines in about five years. There’s no way the Western economies can retool that quickly, which pretty much guarantees massive dislocation unless the United States adopts Simpson’s plan or something similar.”
I paused for a reaction, but Walter kept quiet. I wasn’t sure what to think. He rarely showed emotion, so it was no surprise that he was taking the news calmly. I had to push harder to get him to show his hand. If he’d arranged for me to receive the data, he’d want me to believe it.
“My best guess is that the same source who gave me this information also fed it to Simpson, and—if so—that Simpson took steps to check it out. Simpson is on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. I’d love to know what the CIA or the NSA had to say.”
I let the observation hang, waiting for Walter to volunteer a connection. He was plugged in, but not plugged in enough to do fact-checking with our intelligence agencies. If he suggested he’d look into it and then came back the next day to give me the high sign, I’d know something suspicious was going on. Walter pondered for a moment and then shook his head decisively.
“You’ve got this backward.”
“What do you mean?”
“Think about it. That story you told me about how ‘the expert’ got hold of the data and decided to pass it along doesn’t smell right, and you know it. That’s why you’re so suspicious, and why you’re hell-bent on trying to confirm the information from other sources.”
I nodded tentatively, wondering if this was some kind of