the Monarch line, which starts in Nickelback. Now each of these lines is responsible for transporting the oil from the various independent oil wells in the surrounding area down to the Rancho Cucamonga point, where it all goes into a larger line and makes its way down to Long Beach to the refinery here.” He traced the routes with the pointer, showing the flow of oil, like tributaries dumping into a larger river.
Then he said, “The folks in Rancho Cucamonga have calculated that they’re losing roughly twelve to twenty thousand gallons a day, and have been for nearly two weeks. This figure is determined by adding up the gallons input at the beginning of each of the three lines and subtracting out the number of gallons that arrive at the Rancho Cucamonga facility.”
The projector switched off and the head of R&D collapsed the pointer into a one-foot rod. He cleared his throat and continued, glancing at Marshall to gauge how it was going. “Now, we’ve had some planes fly over the routes that these lines run, looking for spots on the ground that could be a leak, but so far nothing obvious has come up. This could be attributable to a number of factors. Often the pipe is buried deep enough that a leak wouldn’t necessarily reveal itself on the surface, at least not right away. In many places, development has crowded over the pipeline such that the surface is obscured completely, and in other areas, such as around Bakersfield and Nickelback, the flatness of the terrain and the absence of landmarks makes it difficult to ascertain from the air exactly where the lines run.”
Marshall cleared his throat and all of the heads at the table turned simultaneously to look at him. “Now,” he cut in, “I’ve spoken to legal about this and, just among the people in this room, we’re in some serious shit here. They’ve told us to stop sending oil through the lines until we figure out where the leak is. The last thing we want to do is poison some groundwater and end up in a major lawsuit. Of course, as of today we’re still sending oil through, the way oil prices have recovered, we can’t afford not to. We’ve already cut all the corners we can and laid as many people off as we can, and our stock is still near its fifty-two week low. So as of now, we’re still pumping oil. But damn it, we’ve got to find that leak before we have a leak around here and the story finds its way into the newspapers.”
Everyone around the table nodded and took notes and mumbled to each other about how finding the leak sounded like a really good idea. Victor smirked and shook his head. He’d heard the same kinds of ridiculous speeches at the Bureau—now look, boys, what we really need to do is bring the crime rate down!—brilliant, absolutely brilliant. Victor had seen a million Kevin Marshalls and they were all the same: officials talking endlessly about nothing at all, making careers out of pointing out the obvious. It was the Victor Joneses of the world, the guys in the trenches, the guys putting it on the line who got shit done. But it was the hot, blathering winds flowing out of guys like Kevin Marshall that people paid attention to.
As usual, there was more, and Marshall went on. “I want everyone in this room to know that we’re doing everything we can to find it. That’s the story I want everyone to communicate. If someone asks about a leak, we need to make it clear that we have not yet confirmed that there is a leak, but we’re doing everything we can to ensure the safety of the community.” He slapped his hand on the table for emphasis and then looked up at the head of R&D. “Tony, you had an idea?”
“Uh, well, it wasn’t actually my idea, sir, it was Doctor Ross who came up with it.” Tony tapped Ted Ross on the shoulder and smiled sheepishly. Marshall was giving him a look that said, you poor son of a bitch, that’s why you’ll always be stuck in middle management, you’re too damned honest to steal other people’s ideas.
Ted Ross stood up as Tony sat down. He scratched behind his neck and spoke slowly. “Yeah, uh, one of the things we thought about doing was placing radioactive isotopes into the delivery stream and tracking the migration of the radiation