Oil & Corruption Read online

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Gareth Flood has lived in South Africa, New Zealand and England. He holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in English Literature and Film and a Bachelor of Commerce degree in Marketing, both awarded from the University of Auckland. He worked as an executive for a number of multinational companies before returning to his first love of writing. His other creative interests include composing and publishing music and combining poetry and photography into "Picture Poetry".

  His next novel is already in the planning stage.

  www.GarethFlood.com

  OIL & CORRUPTION

  BY

  Gareth Flood

  NORTH SHIELD PUBLISHING

  Published by North Shield Publishing

  www.northshieldpublishing.com

  First published in 2011

  Copyright © Gareth Flood 2011

  The right of Gareth Flood to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  ISBN: 978-0-9568880-1-3

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without either the prior written permission of the publisher. This book may not be lent, resold, hired out or otherwise disposed of by way of trade in any form of binding or cover that that in which it is published, without prior consent of the publisher.

  For Lorna

  PROLOGUE

  Corsica

  Mr. 3.64 Percent was a powerful, behind the scenes player in the oil industry.

  Originally a Dutch speaking Belgian, he had made his fortune and become a man with powerful connections through the exploits of his younger days in The Gabon.

  He had tied the Then-Dictator of The Gabon into an oil exploration contract when the Dictator desperately needed hard currency, for all the usual reasons: to stop his regime toppling, to buy jet-fighters, to finish a holiday palace for one of his lesser wives on Lake Geneva.

  When oil was struck on the marshy plains of the southern Mandalooloo delta, he was contractually entitled to 3.64 Percent of it for as “long as there shall be supply”.

  Every Dictator of The Gabon since the Then-Dictator had tried to screw him out of the contract to no avail – the contract was tighter than two coats of paint.

  The Dictators could not simply tear up the contract as this contravened international cross-border contract law and would cut off other trickles of IMF and international aid the Dictators badly needed to stay in power (also for upkeep of holiday palaces).

  Since Belgium had never had an empire on any scale relative to its surrounding neighbours, it was particularly vociferous in protecting contractual claims of any citizen who had executed anything of miniscule significance in the international arena.

  So Mr. 3.64 Percent and his progeny therefore had a cast iron assurance of a vast fortune until the last grains of sand trickled through the hourglass of the human epoch.

  He now lived his days out on the veranda of the finest hotel in Corsica; lightly sipping iced tea while heavily drinking in with his eyes the glittering azure seascape of the Mediterranean. His peace on the veranda was only shattered once every three months by a large, dull thud of an exploding villa behind him in the Corsican hills.

  On arriving on the island, he had commissioned a huge villa to be built of the whitest marble on the side of one of the many hills he had purchased. Corsican contractors came from all over to work on it.

  The day after he had been handed the keys he was reclining on his curved, whale foreskin couch (for this was the softest material amongst all of God’s bounty on the earth) when the brass clanger on the front door split the silence of the first day of his retirement.

  His French butler came bumbling into the room, wringing his hands in nervousness.

  ‘M’seur,’ he said, eyes darting left and right as a thin sheen of sweat reflected off the man’s face, ‘You ’ar needed at ze door.’

  Mr. 3.64 Percent had never seen ’Enry sweat before and celebrated this as a reason to get up. He went to the door himself. Standing in the frame of the doorway was a wizened and unshaven peasant, holding a beige flat cap to his chest. Mr. 3.64 Percent recognised him. It was one of the local roofers who had been working on the house for months.

  ‘Bonjour,’ the peasant began.

  ‘You shpeak English?’ Mr. 3.64 Percent interjected, in his thick Belgian Dutch accent.

  ‘A leetle,’ the man replied, ‘M’seur, I am come with a message from Le’ Corsicane Libération Frontière.’

  ‘The who?’

  ‘Le’ Corsicane Libération Frontière. Le Cee El Ef.’

  ‘Never heard of them.’ he stated in fine Belgian Dutch frankness.

  ‘The C! L! F!’ Mr. 3.64 Percent jumped as the butler whispered this menacingly in his ear. He turned, ‘What did I tell you about entering my personal space bubble?’

  ‘Sir, it is the Corsican Liberation Front!’ the butler leaned forward again to whisper something else, at the same time Mr. 3.64 Percent leaned back with a look of disgust on his face.

  ‘Terrorists.’ the butler hissed softly, his voice cracking slightly with fear.

  ‘Ah!’ he turned back to the wizened peasant, his face streaked by annoyance.

  ‘And what do you want?’

  ‘Now that you live here,’ the small man explained, ‘you would really like to make contributions to the CLF. You really would.’

  ‘I really would not! Yes, for sure, will not. If I wanted to associate with peasants who rip me off, I would have stayed in Belgium, which I consider the ghetto of Europe!’ With that he slammed the door in the peasant’s face.

  Two days later when he had to leave the villa on business - it exploded. With such force that the only thing left in situ was the gate down the drive. People came from far and wide to pick pieces of marble out of the surrounding hills.

  Mr. 3.64 Percent was of course outraged at the audacity of it all! Utterly indignant that little people would do such a thing to him! Him! Who had cut deals with dictators so full to the eyebrows with syphilis they would kill anyone who even glanced at their pet leopard!

  He ordered another villa to be built immediately and retired to the hotel to await completion.

  Thus began the game he was still currently engaged in. Every three months his villa would near completion - every three months it would be blown to smithereens by the Corsican Liberation Army. He had been completely unaware of this separatist streak on the island that wanted to break away from France. That, however, was largely irrelevant now. As he was now engaged in a battle of wills. It was a battle that would gall him to his death to lose.

  In the meantime, he was still quite happy as everybody else on the island fawned around him in the manner he was accustomed to, no doubt aided by the fact that his continual building project was supporting many Corsican sons through college on the mainland. Each time the familiar dull thud was heard echoing down the valleys, he would raise his arm to order another ice tea and then raise the phone to order another villa.

  1

  London

  He was in deep trouble.

  As Jonathan Marshall kept looking at the computer screen from different angles, he knew he had just unwittingly entered a world of deep, abiding, vexing turmoil.

  ‘Well, something’s not bloody adding up.’ he said quietly to himself at his desk.

  He jerked his tie away from his throat and twisted his head vigorously left and right to loudly crack a few neck bones, before settling his eyes on the screen again.

  Something’s definitely not right. he thought.

  He could feel ‘The Pressure’ buildin
g up behind him. It was the pressure of delivering the current project on time, at all costs - or face a surreptitious firing.

  He looked up and out the window to try to clear his mind. He could see the muddy coloured Thames flowing under London Bridge. It was technically a great view from the office window, but did little to ease Jonathan’s current state of mind in the department.

  The department in question was an ‘internal consultancy’ which did projects for ‘The Organisation’. Jonathan worked with a horde of crazy characters who all had to be slightly unbalanced to work where they did and undergo the hours they did.

  ‘The Organisation’ was the largest oil company in the world.

  Jonathan looked back at his computer screen. On it was a map of Europe, Russia and the Middle East. The map had lots of coloured lines going across it at various angles. They were oil pipelines: some existing, some proposed.

  The screen was summarising the energy security and supply options for the European Union over the next fifty years.

  ‘What’s at stake here is the balance of power in Europe, Asia and the Middle East.’ he said to himself, as he leaned forward and tapped a few of the coloured lines with his finger.

  ‘These results are vital to the EU and to this company…Europe has no oil and wants to move away from the Middle East as a supplier - the only answer is to run a new pipeline straight East to West from Russia…but that would never happen unless there were serious political and property changes in the countries it would have to go across…. ’ his voice trailed off because the results of his recent calculations on the map scared the hell out of him.

  I want to go home! his mind screamed. At times of extreme stress, he always thought about the village he came from in Derbyshire. He often wondered how he had gone from living amongst people who were as honest as the day is long, to mixing with packs of political back stabbers in the corporate jungle.

  He had redone the calculations twice with the same result. Something was not stacking up with his analysis against the information in the rest of the project and he was the one who had to sort it out.

  The project and its wider ramifications were all resting on his shoulders.

  It was stressing him out immensely.

  Focus damnit. he thought. I need to figure this out. I need to finish it! Otherwise I’ll get fired! I’ll have no house, be stuck living with bloody Harry forever and never get a woman! I need to find out why the analysis is not stacking up and why someone wants an analysis done on something that’s impossible. I need a second opinion. he thought desperately.

  From the only person I trust in this corporate shark pit.

  He needed his friend that he bounced ideas off, the man they called “Captain Pink.”

  The hubbub behind him was becoming intolerable. It was a Friday afternoon in the large open plan office and people were getting noisy as they sensed the weekend approaching.

  ‘What are you working on?’ a voice said over Jonathan’s shoulder.

  Jonathan flicked a few buttons on his computer keyboard to change the view to another program, before turning around.

  Oh no, Metaphor Man! Jonathan thought as he saw who was behind him.

  Metaphor Man had spent so long in American business schools and as a consultant, he could no longer have a normal conversation. He could only speak in business metaphors. If someone pointed out his shoelaces were untied, his reply would be something like, ‘Thanks, I’ll drop that in the on-board bucket for the go-forward.’

  Metaphor Man was pointing at Jonathan’s screen.

  ‘Pie graphs showing market share, eh?’ Metaphor Man said in his soft spoken American accent. ‘One hundred percent of a market being the total size of the cake on offer. Each segment of the cake representing market share of each player in the market and their size of the cake.’

  Jonathan looked back at his screen.

  He had brought up market share graphs for the international and government owned oil companies across Europe and Russia. The screen showed a series of circles that had many segments cut within them – just like a birthday cake cut into varying thickness of slices while still remaining a circle.

  ‘And?’ Jonathan asked with a streak of annoyance.

  I’m under enough pressure without someone talking to me about bloody cake. he thought.

  ‘I was looking at something similar earlier today.’ Metaphor Man said, oblivious to Jonathan’s tone. ‘Thing is, the share of all the international oil companies has been declining for some time.’ Metaphor Man pointed at the screen at a series of thin segments in the largest circle. ‘Being squeezed by Governments and oil companies owned by governments - essentially we are left playing in smaller pieces of cake.’

  ‘Playing in smaller pieces of cake!’ Jonathan said incredulously, ‘that’s pushing it on the business metaphor front – even for you?’

  Metaphor Man shrugged his shoulders. ‘It’s true isn’t it?’ he said. ‘The only way for an international oil company to now grow is to break out of the current segment they exist in – cross over to others.’

  ‘Holy crap!’ Jonathan said. ‘You’re absolutely right. You’ve just given me a massive clue to something I was working on. Thanks!’

  ‘Anytime.’ Metaphor Man said before walking away to comment on someone else’s work uninvited.

  Jonathan turned back to his screen – stunned.

  Of course! he thought. The only way we can break out of our market share segment and get more of his bloody cake is if we do things we said we never would…by dealing with people we said we would never touch. That’s what this analysis is! We could never do this proposed pipeline on our own, or through legitimate business means alone...why am I then checking if it can be done?

  ‘Now I definitely need that second opinion.’ Jonathan said to his screen.

  His head started spinning.

  His thoughts were now contending with the noisy office discussion of “Which of the two pubs that are right next to each other right across the street should we go to”.

  To him it was a cacophony of voices with twenty different accents competing for ascendancy. The shrill screech of Felicity the Philistine from Florida cut through everything else to feel like a well aimed knitting needle going through the back of his brain.

  He pushed his chair back and stood up.

  ‘Enough!’ he yelled at the top of his voice. ‘Be Quiet! Quiiieettt!’ He took two deep breaths and looked around as everyone stared at him, before yelling, ‘Where the hell is Captain Pink?’

  2

  London

  ‘You got it Jonathan ol’ buddy! On my way.’ Captain Pink ended the call from Jonathan on his mobile phone, paid for his coffee and marched out of the canteen.

  Captain Pink was the proud product of several generations of patriotic American breeding. Some said that he had been born clutching a little flag of the red, white and blue and that as soon as he could walk he had been dressed in the official uniform of the casual American: stonewashed jeans, white sneakers and grey T-shirt proclaiming ‘HARVARD’ tucked tightly into his belt.

  Recruited into The Organisation and transferred to London after his MBA; he originally went by the unofficial moniker ‘Captain America’. His unique preference for pink shirts transformed this into his current nickname.

  As soon as Jonathan put the phone down to Pink, he immediately fell back into being transfixed by the screen. Apart from things not adding up, his frustration also came from not knowing whom he was doing this work for.

  The assignment had arrived in an email from the Vice President of the consultancy. It came with just a note saying “for someone important”. Jonathan hated all this political intrigue crap. He’d recently begun to feel, with some discomfort, like a faceless cog in a big machine; not even allowed to question why he was working on something. He yearned for some excitement and adventure in his life.

  He felt a presence sneaking up behind him. A cold chill ran through his body as he contemplated
that it was him – Falcus Loader!

  Falcus was a previous boss that Jonathan had endured a horrific experience with in Venezuela. Jonathan never wanted to see or have anything to do with Falcus Loader ever again. Though he had heard that Falcus was back in London and was thus terrified at any potential meeting point. Memories of the “Venezuelan Incident” flooded over him in waves of horror. He turned slowly, to see another consultant, Lambdon Bijlani trying to look over his shoulder at the screen.

  Jonathan breathed a sigh of relief that it was not Falcus Loader, before becoming intensely irritated. Lambdon deeply annoyed him at the best of times. Now was not the best of times. He just wanted to talk the analysis through with Captain Pink, not deal with a moron like Lambdon.

  Lambdon was British of Indian descent and one of those annoying consultants who always claimed to be best at every conceivable conversational topic. He was in the ‘Avoid like Ebola’ column in the mental spreadsheet of people that Jonathan kept in his mind.

  ‘Piss off Lambdon.’ he said.

  ‘Oooh!’ Cooed Lambdon, while stepping closer.

  Jonathan turned the screen off with a jab of his index finger on its power button.

  ‘You seem a bit stressed, what is the name of the project you are working on?’ Lambdon asked casually.

  ‘It’s nothing.’ Jonathan said.

  ‘Project nothing?’ Lambdon asked.

  ‘Don’t be moronic. Just because you claim to come from another culture doesn’t mean you have to take everything literally.’ Jonathan said.

  ‘What is it then?’ Lambdon pressed on.

  ‘Fine. Project Globe.’

  ‘Is it a global project? That is, the scope covers every region around the world?’

  ‘Uhh, DUH! The clue is in the name.’ Jonathan said, the irritation clear in his voice.