The Carbon Trail Read Free Page B

twentieth floor. The reception’s walls were covered in soft grey tweed, and marble tables and exotic plants were scattered all around; the place reeked of power and money. They walked towards the visitors’ desk under the gaze of a bored looking blonde. The woman looked them up and down disdainfully, her baleful stare a security scan. Finally she pressed a button and waved them towards a set of smoked-glass doors.
    The doors slid back to reveal a short corridor and within seconds they’d reached the maple door at its end. Devon stopped, hesitating. Mitchell leaned past him and knocked the door hard, opening it on ‘enter’. Both men were stunned by the sight that greeted them.
    Three sides of the large Boardroom were made of ceiling-to-floor glass, yielding a view over Manhattan like nothing Mitchell had ever seen. The Goldman Sachs Tower stood straight ahead of them, glinting in the morning sun. It seemed so close that they could have leaned down and patted its roof like a child’s head. Further left the West Street Building appeared, a testament to Gothic style, showing that New York had room for both the old and new. Mitchell stood in the doorway drinking it all in. He was dragged from his sight-seeing by Devon’s cough, reminding him of where they were.
    They turned to see an oblong conference table fringed with chairs. Three men of varying ages and uniform prosperity were seated on them. The tallest one stood and gestured them to sit, then he wandered to a coffee halt, indicating two cups. Mitchell shook his head but Devon took a cup for comfort, nursing it gratefully between his hands.
    Mitchell scanned the men carefully, assessing them just as they assessed him. One was slim and saturnine, dark–haired and olive skinned. He looked Spanish. No, Brazilian. Mitchell wondered how he could be so sure. The second man was short and round, with thinning hair and a hooked nose. He could have been from anywhere, but his prominent jaw and perfect teeth made him American through and through.
    The tall man took his seat again and clasped his tanned hands together, resting them on the table. White metal squares glinted at his cuffs, bearing the logo N.S. Mitchell wondered if the S stood for Scrabo. The guy certainly acted as if he owned the place.
    Neil Scrabo was slim and muscled, his grey hair slicked back from his forehead in a style favoured by men of wealth. His eyes were small and looked perennially unsmiling. The whole impression was of pure steel.
    Scrabo stared at Mitchell coolly, as if summing him up. They held each other’s gaze until Devon finally spoke, uncomfortable with the vacuum. He talked quickly and opened a folder that Mitchell hadn’t noticed before, distributing A4 sheets covered with equations and graphs. Devon’s tone was more hushed than earlier, as if he was in church, or the headmaster’s office. His face said it was the latter.
    The young scientist spoke for a full five minutes without drawing breath, outlining the point that their research on carbon had reached. Then he paused, waiting for questions. There were none, only the same cool silence that had greeted their arrival. Finally Neil Scrabo unclasped his hands, ignoring Devon completely and fixing Mitchell with a challenging look.
    “Everyone has this! The whole world has been researching Graphene for a decade.” The grey-haired man lurched forward. “We need something new, ahead of the curve. Not just the same bloody stuff!”
    He slammed his palm hard against the table and Devon jerked back, caught unawares. Mitchell didn’t flinch, just tensed imperceptibly. The man was a bully and Mitchell knew with sudden certainty that it wouldn’t work on him.
    “We pay you both handsomely, the government gives you subsidies and you’ve had every research facility that a scientist could ever want. Yet after five years this is all you have?” He looked pointedly at Mitchell. “You came from Harvard with the best references I’ve ever seen,