“Coco, I’m in the engine room of the Viking Alexandra right now – where you ordered me to go!” Robert reminded his boss.
Coco grunted when he remembered the educational errand on which he’d sent Fairchild. After a long period of silence uncharacteristic of the boisterous shipping magnate Coco finally spoke. “And in the engine room is where you will stay if you don’t find me the $500 million!” Coco shouted and hung up.
Chapter 3
The Greek Spirit
The Greek climate, although it had great variety, rarely endured typhoons or very strong gales. The temperature was always pleasant, blue skies, clear atmosphere, and the sun almost a permanent source of light. Such an environment does make for a freer spirit, strengthens the imagination and makes people optimistic, liberal and daring. In other words, it created the necessary conditions for the Greeks to become very good shipping men.
Mr. Spyros M. Polemis
The History of Greek Shipping
The deeply tanned woman floated across the meadow of teak on the stern of the 208-foot Feadship with a shiny silver tray gripped in her hands. She was wearing tight white pants, a blue and white striped sailor shirt and her dirty blonde hair was tousled by the meltemi – the warm northerly wind that blew hard across the eastern Aegean during the summer.
“May I offer you a glass of chilled wine, monsieur Jacobsen?” she asked as she approached the sole occupant of the magnificent vessel’s outdoor Jacuzzi.
Coco Jacobsen looked up mischievously from behind the gold-rimmed Ray-Bans that were shading his blue eyes from the blazing Greek sun. He had spent the past several hours moving in and out of the 105-degree water as he studied the name and location of every supertanker in the Arabian Gulf with the intensity of a master chess player considering his next move.
“Only if it’s Montrachet,” the Norwegian announced as he placed the so-called “position list” of vessels on the edge of the hot tub next to a collection of items essential to successfully running one of the world’s largest private fleets of supertankers: a red box of Marlboros, a tin of Snus, half-a-dozen mobile phones to communicate with the hundreds of people around the world who financed, operated, crewed and chartered his ships…and now the evil eye charm that the Greek had given him.
“Bien sûr,” Dominique replied with the accent of her hometown, Cap D’Antibes.
As the yacht’s full-time sommelier, she knew full-well that Montrachet was the only variety of wine the six-and-a-half-foot magnate would drink anymore; consuming the dry and costly French wine had become a ritual Coco practiced to worship Alexandra Meriwether – his now estranged lover who had first introduced it to him.
After Dominique had disappeared behind the helicopter that was tied-down to the deck, the shipping magnate swallowed a generous quantity of the ice-cold chardonnay, looked down at the telephones and smiled. He knew it was time to start playing the game he loved most of all: trading ships.
The telephones had been buzzing like a swarm of cicadas for nearly a week but Coco hadn’t picked-up a single call. He didn’t need to because he knew exactly who was trying to reach him – shipbrokers – and why: to offer crude oil cargoes for his tankers to load in the Arabian Gulf and Africa and haul east to Asia and west to America. Based on the frantic number of incoming calls that day, Coco figured oil companies and traders around the world had begun to notice that something unusual was afoot in the supertanker spot market; demand for ships was rising and so was the number of available ships…yet not a single ship had been chartered, or “fixed” as they say, for days.
Coco took a deep breath examined the updated position list one last time. He liked what he saw. When there were more ships than there were cargoes, charter rates would drop. But when there were more cargoes than ships, even by a small margin, there was almost no limit to how high the market could rise. The cost of shipping commodities by sea was small relative to the value of those commodities, which meant ocean transportation costs could quadruple before it would destroy demand. That’s what made the shipping market, which was fragmented with thousands of independent vessel owners, so unusual – and so exciting.
“God dag!” Coco boomed to his good friend Peder Hansen who happened to be the lucky caller. The seventy-five-year-old Norwegian tanker broker had been helping Coco buy, sell and charter tankers ever since the oil crisis of 1973 and Coco was happy to give him the business.
“I’m pleased to know you’re among the living,” the old shipbroker said softly. “People in Oslo were starting to worry.”
The über shipbroker was speaking in a hushed voice because he was camped out at BAR, a raucous restaurant near Oslo’s famous Aker Brygge so thick with shipowners and ship financiers that a single overheard conversation could destabilize the global tanker market or worse; it could cost him a commission.
“I’m in heaven,” Coco said as he admired the magical island of Chios off the port side of his yacht, “but I am feeling more alive than ever.”
“You’re about to feel even better,” Peder whispered with his hand cupped over his telephone, “because I have some very good news.”
“Very good for whom?” Coco whispered back playfully.
After more than forty hair-raising years in the tanker business, Coco Jacobsen had come to believe there was no such thing as good news or bad news; there was only the market – that unpredictable amoeba of perception mixed with reality that parceled-out just enough good luck to give struggling shipowners the hope to keep trying.
“American Refining Corporation just called me,” Peder said.
“Ah yes,” Coco said and smiled as he paced the port side of teak deck wearing only his swimsuit. He had been hoping that Rocky DuBois, the CEO of American Refining Corporation, would be the first beast to wander into his trap.
“He wants to charter Viking Aphrodite today,” Peder said.
“Ja, but of course they want to fix the ship today,” Coco laughed. “Charterers always want to put a ship on subjects on Friday so they can enjoy their weekend knowing they have a free option on a vessel.”
“Does that mean you’ll take it?” the shipbroker asked hopefully before downing half a bottle of ice-cold Ringnes lager to steady his nerves. “So we can all enjoy the weekend?”
“Peder, I am a shipping man without a family,” Coco reminded his friend. “In fact, the closest thing I have to a child is Fairchild.”
“What is that supposed to mean?” Peder asked.
“It means good charter rates are more important to me than good weekends,” Coco said, “and that charter rate simply isn’t high enough.”
“But I haven’t even told you the charter rate,” Peder replied.
“Okay, fine,” Coco sighed. He decided he would go through the usual motions even though he knew exactly how the conversation was going to end. “What’s the rate?”
“Forty thousand a day for the ninety-day round trip Fujairah via Houston,” Peder whispered with his hand over his mouth so that no one could hear him. “That’s $3.6 million for one voyage!”
“No thanks,” Coco said, pressed the “off” button and placed the device on the edge of the Jacuzzi.
“Are you delusional?” Peder snapped after immediately re-dialing the shipowner’s mobile phone.
The tanker broker’s emotional outburst piqued the interest of a pride of ship financiers from Fjord Bank who were gathered around a nearby table. The dozen lenders had been enthusiastically celebrating the closing of a beefy Belgian bulk carrier deal but knew that anything capable of riling-up a veteran tanker man like Peder Hansen was probably market-moving.
“If I wasn’t delusional, I’d still be working in a petrol station in Bergen,” Coco laughed. “And I am not interested in $40,000 a day,” Coco said.
“But Coco, average charter rates were less than $30,000 a day last year,” Peder insisted.
“Ja, but this is exactly why I need a lot more than $40,000 a day,” Coco explaine
d. “I need to make up for last year’s bad market; I’m still in the hole to my banker.”
“You’re always in the hole with your bankers,” Peder laughed. “In fact, most people think you must have photographs of Alistair Gooding or else he would have foreclosed on your fleet ten years ago.”
“Having the right information has always been the key to making money in this business,” Coco said.
“If you don’t like the rate,” Peder said, “let’s just make them a counter offer.”
“A counter offer?” Coco gasped. “Don’t you know how I feel about the CEO of American Refining Corporation?”
The tanker broker knew it was a kamikaze mission to broker a deal between the two greatest foes in the oil shipping market, men whose rivalry was as legendary as it was mysterious, but a successful shipbroker was nothing if not tenacious.
“Everyone in the world knows how you feel about the CEO of American Refining Corporation,” Peder sighed and slowly massaged his temples. He was enjoying the sight of a huge Color Line ferry move slowly across the beautiful Oslo Fjord a lot more than his conversation with Coco.
“That man is Kraken!” Coco shouted, likening the American oil executive to the giant, legendary sea monsters known for scuttling sailing ships off the coast of Norway.
“Well, I think ARC’s offer is generous,” Peder pouted.
“Ja,” Coco laughed, “but you should always beware of oil companies bearing gifts.”
“But we are moving the market in the right direction,” Peder urged. “This rate is higher than your last fixture of Viking Penelope.”
“Then it sounds like you should have waited a little longer before chartering Penelope,” Coco said.
“Yes, Coco, and if your aunt had balls she’d be your uncle!” Peder blurted out.
“I don’t have an aunt or an uncle,” Coco said solemnly. “I am all alone in this world and I am getting older.”
“Well your ships aren’t alone in the Arabian Gulf, Coco,” Peder said, “and they too are getting older. If you don’t take this cargo I will be forced to offer it to another shipowner with a more modern and fuel-efficient vessel.”
“I appreciate your loyalty,” Coco said.
“A man has to eat,” the well-fed shipbroker said and instinctively rubbed his stomach.
Peder suddenly remembered his hunger and spread a glob of freshly churned butter on a slice of Russian pumpernickel. Then he laid a blanket of smoked salmon over a slice of cucumber with the care of a mother tucking a young child into bed.
“So do you want the cargo or not?” Peder asked as he tucked a white cloth napkin into the collar of his shirt. Then he lifted his fork and knife and began cutting his delicate sandwich.
“Nei,” Coco said casually and then stuffed a giant wad of Snus between his upper lip and gums.
“No?”
“No,” Coco asked once his tobacco was securely in place. He wrapped his hands around the shiny mahogany rail and stared at the magnificent little island of Oinousses. “And would you like me to tell you why not?”
“Do I have a choice?” Peder asked as he reclined in his rattan chair and settled in for another one of Coco’s rousing rants. The celebrity shipbroker lifted his arm to order another bottle of Ringnes; getting a counter offer out of Coco was going to take a while.
“It is because I’m tired of charterers like Rocky DuBois beating up on me like I’m his baby brother,” Coco said.
“Yes, but your big brother is offering you very good money right now, Coco,” Peder pleaded.
“Ja, but this is only because he knows he has a problem,” Coco said. “Most of the time he won’t pay me enough to keep my fleet properly maintained, never mind give me a respectable return on my capital.”
“Return on capital!” the shipbroker groaned. “Coco, you started life as poor as a potato and you are now the wealthiest person in the history of Norway.”
“Ja, but Norway was a very poor country until the 1960s when we found the oil,” Coco said. “Besides, you know I don’t care about money.”
“Yes,” Peder muttered, “except when you lose it.”
“I care about what’s fair,” Coco continued.
“Give me a break, Coco,” Peder said as he sat up in his chair and took the offensive. “Oil companies pay the market rate and there’s nothing fairer than that. The real problem is that ever since opportunistic tanker owners like Hilmar Reksten and Aristotle Onassis started building vessels on speculation instead of against long-term time charters from oil companies, this market has been nothing but a high stakes game of tug-o-war.”
“That’s right,” Coco smiled. “And now it is time for me to drag Mr. DuBois through the mud.”
“But that’s just the point Coco; forcing Rocky to pay $40,000 per day is dragging him through the mud,” Peder said. “The Americans are importing less and less crude oil because of all the fracking and the crude tanker market is sure to suffer.”
“I am not smart enough to predict the shipping market,” Coco said, “but I assure you that there will always be someone in this world who wants to burn the cheapest form of energy – and that will always be crude oil and coal.”
“Oh yeah,” Peder challenged after confirming the stat on his iPad, “then why are there are so many empty VLCCs in the Arabian Gulf?”
“You’re the shipbroker,” Coco mused, “you tell me.”
“I can’t,” Peder said. “There’s not a shipbroker in the world who understands why the charter market is so firm considering how many idle VLCCs there are. Not one ship has been fixed for a week and an agent at Kharg Island told me the tanker crews are so bored they’ve even started fishing off the ships. These vessels are like taxi cabs queuing up outside the airport and one of them is about to pull over and pick up the ARC cargo.”
“Not for a $40,000 daily fare they aren’t,” Coco said as he used his tongue to push the huge wad of Snus higher into his gums to make room for more – the “turbo pincher” as Magnus Magnusen, Coco’s semi-exclusive investment banker at Haakon’s Gate Capital, liked to call it.
“How can you possibly think that?” the shipbroker demanded.
Peder knew the clock was ticking. If he didn’t get the ARC cargo “on subjects” with Coco in the next few minutes another tanker broker in Monte Carlo, Singapore, London, Paris or New York would fix the business with another ship and Peder would have ruined a perfectly good lunch for nothing.
“Because I just took control of the market,” Coco said, “and I’m about to have a tanker party.”
“Oh, now I understand,” Peder said after a period of silence.
“You do?” Coco asked.
“You’ve gotten into the Ouzo again, haven’t you?” Peder asked. “Don’t you remember what happened at the Posidonia party at the Island Club last year?”
“I am serious,” Coco said softly and lifted his nearly empty glass of Montrachet to inspect it in the sunlight.
“But you can’t have taken control of the market,” Peder said. “That’s impossible.”
“Anything is possible,” said the seventh grade dropout. “I’m proof of that.”
“But I’m looking at the position list and I can see every open supertanker from the Gulf of Aden to Mumbai,” Peder said.
“Don’t believe everything you read on the worldwide web machine,” Coco said.
The tycoon’s interest in modern communications was limited to text messaging; he liked those purely because the truncated style and lack of grammar reminded him of the telexes he was paid to sweep off the floor of Hilmar Reksten’s office in Bergen fifty years earlier.
“But Coco, the names of your tankers start with the word Viking followed by the name of a character from Homer’s Odyssey,” the shipbroker explained. “Everyone knows your naming pattern, even though no one knows why a Norwegian would possibly name his ships after a Greek epic poem.”
“Isn’t it nice to know th
ere are still a few mysteries left in this world,” Coco said. “Goodbye, Peder.”
“No! Wait!” the shipbroker shouted as he read the ship name on the screen of his device. “How about the Junonia – I suppose that ship is yours?”
“Yup,” Coco said by way of a sharp gasp of breath that was unique to Norwegians. “She is actually Viking Telemachus.”
“And Fighting Conch?” Peder asked dubiously as he recited the name of another vessel on his screen. “Is she yours, too, in this little Ouzo-soaked fantasy world you’re living in?”
“Bravo!” Coco said, playfully parroting the favorite expression of his Hellenic partner. “She is Viking Argos.”
“Murex?”
“Viking Odysseus,” Coco volleyed back.
“That’s strange,” the shipbroker said as he skimmed the list again. “Unless I’m mistaken, all the ships presently positioned in the Arabian Gulf are named after seashells.”
“You are finally starting to pay attention,” Coco said.
“But I don’t recall ever seeing a fleet of supertankers named after seashells other than the ones owned by Shell Oil,” Peder said. “And these ships definitely aren’t theirs.”
“Ja, but that was Oddleif’s idea,” Coco chuckled as he spun the evil eye charm on his index finger. Oddleif was Coco’s only shore side employee besides Robert Fairchild.
“Excuse me?”
“It was my idea to play with the position list,” Coco said. “But using the seashell names was Odd’s. He and his wife just bought a very nice house in Miami and his little boys have been finding very pretty seashells on the beach which is what gave us the idea,” Coco said. “You really need to get creative to come up with a unique naming pattern for the ships these days.”
Peder jumped to his feet with a vigor he hadn’t experienced since Spain beat the Netherlands in the World Cup. “You can’t be serious!”
“We didn’t really change the names,” Coco said, “because that would have required getting new inspections and approvals from all of the charterers. We just changed the names on the position list. A computer hacker in Connecticut named Jimmy K helped us do it.”
Viking Raid Page 3