Free Monster: Tale Loch Ness by Jeffrey Konvitz Page A

two stories, about fifty rooms, and was brightly lit by floodlights.
    The limousine stopped in front of the main entrance, behind Scotty's jeep. Whittenfeld stepped out. Above him loomed the mansion's stone walls. There were numerous windows, turrets and parapets, too, as well as oblique turns of the architecture that hid clandestine stairways and nooks.
    He climbed the main staircase and looked through the front door's glass partition. He could see the bar. Scotty Bruce was there, waiting. He looked at his watch. He was twenty minutes late. He did not like tardiness. Especially his own!
    Quickly, he opened the door and entered.

    * * *
    "I've listened," Whittenfeld was saying as they attacked their main courses and sipped from partially filled glasses of Mouton Cadet. "I've heard it all. I've heard the scuttlebutt. That I'm consumed by Loch Ness . . . the prospect of finding oil . . . a bonanza. That the whole thing has become a fixation."
    Scotty looked around the dining room. It was elegant. All the tables were filled, conversations subdued.
    "Has it?" he asked.
    Whittenfeld eased a grin. "Perhaps. But I don't find an intense commitment unwarranted. Loch Ness is important. To the world. To Geminii." He looked out the dining-room window. "And to me."
    "That's understandable," Scotty said, staring at his host, who was dressed in an elegantly tailored black suit, white shirt, and black tie. "You did say you were here from day one.
    "From day one and before," Whittenfeld declared. "I was comanaging director of the Dundee field when the Loch Ness oil slick was discovered. Sure, the Dundee field was special. You see, the North Sea represented my first opportunity to work outside the United States. But this loch thing; this was something else. It was . . . well . . . exciting. An incredible opportunity. Something a man waits for all his life. Though the company was skeptical, I grabbed for it, urged them to pursue. I led the first seismic crews and geology contingents. Hell, Scotty, I got my hands dirty. I was there with the doodle buggers, laying seismic cables. I rode the seismic launches. I spent nights awake, reading charts, knocking possibilities around." A look of pride crossed his face. "Damn, I was the one who cracked the puzzle. I pinpointed the anomalies. I explained the unexplainable!" He pounded the table. "My guts are riding with success. No, I will never allow the Loch Ness enterprise to fail. I won't allow it."
    Scotty looked at Whittenfeld's eyes. He'd seen the look many times before. Obsession. But there was more. Contention. Whittenfeld was something other than just a company manager. He was a challenger who might very well have come to hate his opponent.
    "I don't think you will fail here," he said.
    "Is that a compliment?" Whittenfeld asked.
    "Absolutely."
    "I want you to feel like I do. I want you to be committed. To this place. To the loch. To the battle. The loch has thrown down a gauntlet. It has dared us to beat it. It is a vile little bitch!" He laughed smugly. "You know, I remember the licensing hearings. There was such a hue and cry from the hearing committee once its members had learned you can start a well in one place and directionally bend it to drill into a producing horizon many miles away. Why put a ship on the loch? they cried. Why drill down through the water? Why endanger Ness?" He shook his head. "I explained the facts of life. That you can only bend a well a few degrees at a time and that if a producing reservoir is too near the surface, you cannot directionally drill into it because you cannot drill deep enough to bring enough bend into play. And that the Loch Ness field fit the negative criteria precisely since it lay only four thousand feet below the surface. And I remember then thinking about just how clever this renegade was. To have insulated itself so well!"
    Scotty sat back. "To state the obvious, the loch is definitely an emotional thing to you," he said.
    "Yes. I'll confess. It