THE BRIDGE TO CARACAS (Volume 1 of The King Trilogy)

CHAPTER 44

"Dammit!" John Hill swore. Another interruption to Hill's schedule was the last thing he wanted. But he picked up the line anyway.

"Mr. Hill, my name is—"

"My secretary told me who you are." It was Victor Mayer, a junior bureaucrat employed by the New York State Department of the Environment. "Why are you calling me?"

"Please listen to me, and please don't refer me to anyone else. You're the fifth person to whom my call has been transferred. I have some extremely important information and you'll be making a big mistake if you do not listen to it."

"What is it?"

"For the past month, the Buffalo Board of Education has been sending its school busses across the Peace Bridge into Canada. It's so much cheaper to buy gasoline over there right now. The effort is saving the taxpayers an enormous amount of money. The purchases are being made at a gas bar in Fort Erie Ontario, about five hundred yards from the Peace Bridge. It's the normal practice of the Buffalo Board of Education to take samples of the gasoline they use and to have them analyzed by independent laboratories in Buffalo. As I speak, I'm looking at copies of the results of those analyses on my desk. And here's the killer, Mr. Hill. They all reveal that the gasoline contains between two and three percent PCBs!"

"They contain what?" Hill asked, his voice rising with each word.

"Poly chlorinated biphenyls, an extremely toxic chemical."

"Are you absolutely certain?"

"There's no doubt about it. We sent our own people to Canada to verify the analyses provided by the Buffalo Board of Education, and had them analyzed by a different and trusted laboratory. The results were identical."

"Did you find out who owns the gas bar?"

"Yes, it's owned by XG Petroleums. The company's head office is in Toronto."

"That's very interesting. Thank you very much for calling. You did the right thing, Victor. You can rest assured that we'll take it from here. It would be very appreciative if you would send copies of your findings to me as soon as possible."

"I'll be happy to do that."

Hill immediately telephoned Alex McDowell.

"You're not going to believe this. I just picked up a shocking piece of information. If it's true, it would suggest Mr. King is not be as clean as you think."

"What's the shocking piece of information?"

Hill related the entire text of his conversation with Victor Mayer.

"That's incredible! Who in his right mind would put PCBs into gasoline?"

"Someone who was being paid a lot of money to dispose of it?"

Paul Conrad received a telephone call from Dan Campbell at 11 a.m. "Paul, we found it!" Campbell said. "We found the leak!"

"How?"

"Wirtz and I hired an outside contractor to go in there and do an independent check of the entire system. You won't believe what they found."

"Why don't you tell me? I'll let you know if I believe it."

"Two valves were spliced into the gasoline lines leading to the east loading rack. They're just two inches behind the meters—so obvious that they weren't obvious! They were installed by somebody who knew what he was doing and who wanted to steal gasoline. It was a first class inside job."

"Did you have the valves removed?"

"You bet. Right after we photographed them from every angle."

"Have the police been notified?"

"An hour ago."

"How do you know it was an inside job? Do you have any idea who was involved?"

"We can't prove it, but we think it's Sam Martin. He was the one who re-calibrated the meters after the meeting. He set them up to show big gallons."

"Have you talked to him?"

"No. He's managed to disappear, and nobody knows where he is."

"That's just wonderful," Conrad snarled. "Where the hell were our security people?"

"It looks like they blinked."