“I know most of the people on board,” he said, shifting his focus back to Musil. “The officers and crew. The divers. Seventy-seven men and women. Finding out what happened to them isn’t just a company priority. For me it’s personal.”
“Then, respectfully, what is the problem?”
“I don’t understand.”
“You knew my team would be coming today.”
“Yes.”
“You said you would cooperate with our investigation.”
“Yes, certainly.”
“So what changed?”
Olsen shook his head.
“Nothing at our end,” he said. “Possibly we had different expectations for this visit. My sense was it would be introductory. CloudCable does not give outside parties access to our servers without a court order. The same applies to data about specific individuals. It’s strict policy.”
Musil considered that a moment, then gestured toward the model ship.
“Sir,” he said, “is that the Stalwart?”
Olsen nodded. “A perfect reproduction. Given to us by its designers when it left the yard.”
“It’s an impressive vessel.”
“We’re very proud of it,” Olsen said. “The Stalwart was built to spec. It carries nearly five thousand miles of cable when fully loaded. That’s almost four thousand metric tons. It can deploy a deep diving bell with a crew of four, an unmanned submersible and what’s known as a sea tractor to lay the cable. All three are reproduced on the model, if you want to take a look.” He paused. “Everything on the ship is state of the art.”
“Then, how can it have simply disappeared?” Musil asked. “If there was an emergency, wouldn’t someone call for help? Send out a message? I would think there would be automatic distress signals. GPS-locating systems for the ship.”
Olsen looked at him. “All true, Agent,” he said. “We’ve wondered the same things.”
“And you have no answers?”
“I wish we did.”
“Then, why not let us do our work?”
Olsen took a breath.
“Our industry is highly regulated,” he said. “You’re asking us to open up documents, emails, connection logs and potentially personal employee information. There are confidentiality issues. Potential liabilities. We have financial obligations to our corporate partners.”
Musil was quiet a long moment. He was thinking Olsen seemed evasive rather than untruthful. Which sometimes came bundled together, but not always.
The CS Stalwart had been laying cable for a multibillion-dollar, hybrid government–civilian project. A trans-Pacific cable and cloud-computing system financed by the CIA, NSA, National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency and, last but not least, Olympia.com, the world’s largest online e-commerce, cloud-service and media-streaming enterprise. The deal had been in the news for months, as had the opposition to it—led by Net Force’s director-in-chief, Alex Michaels—on grounds of national security.