“No, I’m happily unattached at the moment.”
Their entrees arrived, all spicy enough to mandate a second bottle of wine.
“This shrimp curry is withering my tongue, but I can’t stop eating it,” Ann said. “It’s really delicious.”
Later Ann excused herself to visit the ladies’ room. Once she was out of earshot, Loren leaned over to Pitt. “That girl is attracted to you.”
“Can I help it if she has good taste in men?” he said with a grin.
“No, but if you get any ideas, I’ll cut out your spleen with a rusty butter knife.”
Pitt laughed, then gave Loren a long kiss.
“Not to worry. I’m quite attached to my spleen—and prefer to keep it that way.”
When Ann returned, they nibbled on sorbet for dessert. Then Pitt pulled a silver rock from his pocket and set it on the table.
“One lump and not two?” Loren said.
“It’s a souvenir from Chile,” Pitt said. “I think it may have something to do with the Heiland case.”
“What exactly is it?” Ann asked.
“One of our NUMA geologists identified it as a mineral called monazite. I found it aboard an abandoned freighter that was barreling toward Valparaiso.”
“I heard about that,” Ann said. “You diverted the freighter from crashing into a crowded cruise ship.”
“More or less,” Pitt said. “The mystery is, what happened to the ship’s crew? And why did the ship end up thousands of miles off course?”
“Was it hijacked?”
“It was a bulk carrier, supposedly loaded with bauxite from a mine in Australia. By all appearances, the cargo was of limited value. We discovered that of the ship’s five holds, three contained bauxite, but the two aft were empty.” Pitt picked up the rock. “I found this chunk of monazite by one of the empty holds.”
“You think the monazite was stolen from the ship?” Ann asked.
“I do.”
“Why would someone steal that and not the bauxite?” Loren asked.
“I had the rock assayed, and the results were quite interesting. This particular monazite contains a high concentration of neodymium and lanthanum.”
Loren smiled. “Sounds like a disease.”
“They are actually two of the seventeen elements known as rare earth metals, several of which are in very high demand by industry.”
“Of course,” Loren said. “We held a congressional hearing on the limited supply of rare earth elements. They’re used in a large number of high-tech products, including hybrid cars and wind turbines.”
“And a few key defense technologies,” Pitt said.
“As I recall,” Loren said, “China is the dominant producer of rare earth elements. In fact, there’s only a handful of other active mines around the world.”
“Russia, India, Australia, and our own mine in California round out the bulk of global production,” Pitt said.
Ann shook her head. “I don’t see what this rock has to do with the Heiland case.”
“It may have absolutely nothing to do with it,” Pitt said, “but there are two interesting coincidences. The first is that clump of monazite in your hands. The neodymium it contains happens to be a key material in the Sea Arrow’s propulsion motors.”
“How could you possibly know that?” Ann asked.