Chapter 7 Vague Threats #2
Julian wasn’t a newbie CEO. He’d steered Nancarrow Mining for a decade and a half, on top of the time he’d spent as his grandfather’s right hand. Seeing him this rattled told Gareth how serious Julian was. “What does it look like to you?”
“That either I’ve missed a new trend in the minerals market or that someone has it in for us. Neither of which makes sense.”
“What?”
“You have eyes, yes? In the space of three months, nearly half our active projects have acquired competition.”
Gareth recognised the map from their weekly board meetings, and a quick scan gave him the answer he sought. “Most of those you marked are past environmental impact and into permitting.”
“Quite. And whoever is interfering is either holding up permits or trying to muscle in and bid alongside us. I won’t have to explain to you what the result will be.”
The muscles across Gareth’s back tightened. Adrenaline tingled in his fingertips in a way he remembered from his days as a soldier. His instincts perceived a threat, even if his mind couldn’t see it yet. “Have you talked to Alex?”
Julian’s raised eyebrow betrayed his surprise. “Actually, no. Do you think it’s something in her line?”
“No idea, but I wouldn’t rule it out. There’s unrest all over the place, and everyone’s scrabbling for advantages.
” He took a deep breath and told his body to stand down.
This wasn’t a problem he could shoot or punch into submission.
“Let me just…” He snapped a photo of the map and texted it to Alex.
Any activity in the areas with black tags?
Her answer came moments later. Not to my knowledge, but I’ll check.
Gareth put his phone away. “She’s going to check. Now let’s see what all these projects have in common.” He waved around the untidy office. “I suppose you’ve started on that already.”
“So I have. Let me walk you through it.”
That sounded more like the Julian Nancarrow he was used to dealing with. Gareth took off his jacket and hung it over the nearest chair. Then he rolled up his sleeves and poured himself a coffee from the carafe on the warming plate.
“Lead on,” he said. “We’ll figure it out.”
“Are we planning an invasion?” The last time Jack had seen such an excess of cartography, he’d been preparing for deployment.
Maps covered the conference table in Julian Nancarrow’s top floor office, three deep in places.
Sticky notes and coloured markers lay in heaps, and more maps draped the sitting area beside the window.
“Horwood. Finally.” Julian Nancarrow, shirt open at the throat and sleeves rolled up to his elbows, waved him inside as if Jack had kept him waiting for an hour instead of the ten minutes it had taken for him to leave his dungeon and walk upstairs.
“Fortify yourself with caffeine and then join us. We need your expertise.”
Jack didn’t ask. He poured himself coffee as instructed and joined the two men by the conference table. “How can I help?”
“We’re hoping you can see a pattern we’re missing,” Julian told him. “You know how we operate, yes?”
Jack wanted to roll his eyes. He took a sip of coffee instead.
“Nancarrow verifies and quantifies mineral deposits,” he recited.
“If they seem viable, we perform feasibility studies and environmental impact assessments before acquiring the necessary permits to develop the find. After that, we either sell the information to a larger mining company for extraction, or secure finance for the project before offering it for extraction at a higher price or a share of the profits.”
“Correct.” Julian stared pensively at the maps, not saying anything more.
Beside him, Gareth was just as thoughtful.
“And you need me for…?”
“Your pattern matching skills.”
“Excess of cartography aside, you realise I’m not a geologist, right?” He thought of Tom, whom he hadn’t seen since before he quit the service, and who’d fit into this world like a leaf into a forest.
“It’s not that kind of pattern we’re looking for,” Julian said.
“You know exploration is a risky business with considerable up-front cost. Projects fail for any number of reasons and lose their investment. The last thing anyone wants is an unknown competitor muscling in when you’re halfway to goal. ”
“And that’s happening?”
“Yes.” Julian’s voice came through gritted teeth.
“During the last three months, fourteen of our projects have acquired active competition. They’re coming in alongside us during assessment and feasibility or they’re trying to delay or scupper permitting if they’re not in the running.
And I don’t know who they are or what they want. ”
When mining was a small world with the operators known to each other. Both Gareth’s presence and Julian’s edginess now made sense. “Right. Let’s start with the obvious—Alex?”
“Nothing on her radar, but she’s gone digging,” Gareth jumped in. “We need to know who and why.”
Jack flipped his slate open, pulled the stylus from behind his ear, and contemplated the stacks of maps. “And you’ve started with?”
“Commonalities. Mineral paragenesis. Market. Market applications.”
“That’s the why. You want me to work out who?”
Julian slumped against the table. “Either would help at this point. We need a thread to pull on and there’s nothing there.”
“You don’t know who’s bidding against you?”
“I have the company names, but they’re either investment firms or brand-new outfits with no history or known affiliations.”
Jack felt a prickle of excitement. He met Gareth’s eye and tipped his head in thanks. He loved the chase and Gareth knew it. “Can we afford to lose those fourteen projects?”
“I’d rather not.”
“Of course not. Humour me,” Jack said. “Worst case scenario: we lose all the projects. What happens?”
Julian glared, but answered in the end. “We’d be seriously short of operating capital. So short I’d have to find finance or lay off staff.”
“So… cash flow sabotage.” Jack made notes on his tablet.
“That was my first thought,” Julian agreed.
“Money is tight everywhere. Most mining companies have to ice projects for lack of funds, even as we fear losing the discoveries. Securing finance deals for a package is harder these days than digging for diamonds with a pickaxe. Banks are just too jittery to lend. So how can these upstart outfits muscle into every area we have an interest in?”
“And by muscle in you mean?”
“Survey teams on the ground, claim applications lodged with the local authorities, permit bidding wars, circulars going around for the impact assessments… that’s a significant heap of cash they’re fronting. Now multiply this by fourteen and it’s incomprehensible.”
Jack considered that. At his job interview, Gareth had told him the fight got dirty, and he hadn’t been joking.
The never-ending phishing attacks, network hacks, and attempts to subvert employees didn’t differ from the strategic espionage practices and criminal gangs he’d studied during his last job.
Military and commercial intelligence were no longer separate vectors, and mining, as it turned out, was a cut-throat business to begin with.
Between the Nancarrow family trying to wrest control of the company from Julian, and unknown actors hunting for their data, Jack had never been so well entertained.
“Can you bundle all this stuff and send it to me?”
“Of course. Do you think there is something?”
Jack met Gareth’s gaze, not surprised to see his own convictions reflected there. “There’s always something. We just have to find it.”
“Let me know as soon as you do.”
“Sure.” Jack watched Gareth shrug back into his suit jacket and swallowed the comments crowding his tongue. They hit the stairs down to their floor. “How did your meeting with Fenton go? Anything good?”
“Not really,” Gareth said. “They’re back in the class.”
The pause following was long enough for Jack to turn his head and raise a quizzical eyebrow.
“Can you go watch the dance class?” Gareth asked finally.
Jack tried his damnedest not to grin, but Gareth knew him too well.
“You already knew I couldn’t do it.”
“Well, dance class is on Friday afternoon. And of course I’ll go.”