The Garden of Betrayal - Lee Vance [96]
“What does it say?” Claire demanded.
“Mac, my friend at Chevron, had an opportunity to bid on the leases that Petronuevo bought,” I said, summarizing as I read. “He declined, because the geology didn’t look encouraging, but he passed the offering documents along to one of their analysts. Chevron has some kind of proprietary mapping software that they use to collate all the information they receive. The analyst input the data, and the software kicked out an exception report.”
“What kind of exception?”
“Each lease was for a block of around five thousand acres. The geology at the edges of one block should match the geology at the edges of the blocks around it. One of the Pemex blocks didn’t match. The analyst checked it out and discovered that the information for the block had been rotated ninety degrees. Mac thought something funny was going on, but he didn’t want to ask questions because Chevron does a lot of business with Pemex, and he didn’t want to risk pissing them off.”
Kate looked dubious.
“So, someone screwed up the numbers. It sounds like an easy mistake to make.”
I remembered thinking about it at the time.
“No. Absolutely not. The whole point of the geological data is to generate a detailed seismic map of the ocean floor. To do that, you take dozens of individual observations and stitch them together with the help of really precise GPS fixes, working from the bottom up. You can’t rotate the composite map without making the exact same mistake with every single observation.”
“But if you were faking the data …” Kate began.
“Then you’d probably do it the other way around,” I said. “Figure out what you wanted the big picture to be, and then manufacture the individual observations to suit. And if you were working top-down instead of bottom-up, then it would be easy to rotate one of the blocks, because it would only involve a single mistake.”
“But why would Pemex fake data?” Claire asked.
I continued scanning my notes.
“That’s what I was trying to understand at the time. Pemex is a government company. Given what we know now about Petronuevo, my guess is that there were Mexican officials invested in it as well. Maybe the entire transaction was originally designed to put money in the pocket of some corrupt Mexican officials, and someone invited the Venezuelans along for the ride.”
“So, what did you do?” Claire whispered.
“Two things. I put a call in to Pemex and spoke to a guy in their leasing group named Ernesto Guttero. He said he was busy with another project and asked me to give him a couple of weeks to look into it. And I phoned Petronuevo directly, but I never got past some PR flack.” I cast myself backward in time, trying to remember the conversation with Guttero. He’d been friendly, accommodating. We’d shared a laugh about something. I looked at Kate, a half-formed fear rising within me. “Check Guttero, please. See if there are any news stories from around that time.”
She dashed back to her computer.
“Ernesto Guttero from Pemex,” she announced a moment later. “News item in La Prensa dated two weeks later. I’m running it through Google Translate.…” She looked up, the color drained from her face. “He was hit by a car while he was crossing a street and killed instantly. The driver didn’t stop.”
I put a hand on the trestle table to support myself.
“What next?” Claire said, her voice fierce. “Try to find out who Guttero talked to?”
I shook my head as I gathered my thoughts.
“No. Pemex is a huge organization. We could dig around there forever without really figuring out who did what. The key here is Petronuevo. Petronuevo was the conduit for the bribe. Whoever