The Ocean Dove

by Carlos Luxul

  ‘That’s the way it is.’ Joe smiled.

  ‘And you guys can get a ship in the dock there – to load the plant?’

  ‘No problem,’ Joe said. ‘Our technical people have checked it out.’

  ‘That’s good.’ Aaron nodded. ‘By the way, I meant to touch base with you earlier about your visa for the site visit. One of our supervisory board is some kind of congressman – so he’s got all the connections and could’ve helped smooth it through.’

  ‘Thanks. But it worked out fine,’ Joe said. ‘We’ve got friends in the right places too.’

  Leaving the meeting at around four o’clock, Jawad went back to his hotel for a couple of hours. If it meant he had to swallow his pride, so be it. Red Oak were unrealistic in their expectations and looking for the kind of sucker that just didn’t walk in off the street nowadays, but the risk that they might lose confidence and try to move on to another potential buyer was not acceptable. The deal had to be concluded and he was being suited and booted for sucker of the day. He could clearly imagine the awkward conversations he would have to face over the coming months, with peers in his industry asking why he’d bought a pup.

  As he soaked under the shower, he couldn’t shake ‘leveraging global aspirations’ from his mind. Last week, when he had inspected the plant, the security guard had said something on the same lines – about women and drink and pleasure. He had been an entirely different person from an entirely different background, but seemingly he had also been a disciple seeking the same holy grail.

  ‘Yes, sir. We were expecting you,’ the guard had said, pulling a cap on to his head and straightening his blue uniform with its Sentinel Security badge on the breast pocket. ‘It is so cold. You will take a cup of tea?’

  Joe had recognised the accent – African – but not the country.

  ‘You’re used to warmer weather?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘And where is your country?’

  ‘Liberia.’ The guard smiled, his back straightening proudly. ‘My home is Monrovia. You know it?’

  Joe shook his head. ‘I’m sorry, not really.’

  ‘It is named after James Monroe, America’s fifth president – our founding father.’

  ‘Monrovia, I get it.’ Joe nodded.

  ‘And what is your country?’

  ‘Sharjah.’

  ‘That is where?’

  ‘It’s in the Emirates.’

  ‘Like Saudi Arabia?’

  ‘Kind of,’ Joe said. ‘It’s next to Dubai.’

  ‘Ah, Dubai. Where the soccer players go, where you have women and drink and every kind of pleasure.’ The guard grinned.

  ‘Yeah, we’ve got everything.’ Joe had smiled, wondering just how the local tourist board would take his confirmation of the women and drink and every kind of pleasure.

  ~

  The hotel desk phoned at six thirty. Outside, the street was dark, the sky glowing orange in the city lights. A limousine was at the kerb. Max was on the phone in the back seat.

  ‘How’s your hotel?’ Max said, slipping his phone in his inside pocket with a flash of the yellow silk lining his suit. ‘If I’d known I’d have put you somewhere smarter.’

  ‘It’s fine, Joe said. ‘STC’s very strict on expenses.’

  ‘But not on chemical plants.’ Max winked. ‘You like Japanese? We could go to Nobu.’

  ‘Sounds great. I’ve heard of it. But you’ll have to help me with the ordering – and what are those crazy things you eat with?’

  ‘Chopsticks!’ Aaron smiled. ‘Don’t worry, I spent two years in Tokyo.’

  ‘Two years balling geisha girls, now look at him.’ Max smiled. ‘Made all his hair fall out. What about a cocktail first?’ he added, glancing round enquiringly.

  ‘Is there sand in my desert?’ Joe said, raising an eyebrow.

  ‘Attaboy … then let’s party and do some good business.’

  A greeter swung the heavy glass doors open. ‘Good evening, Mr Paulsson.’

  Black stone lined the bar’s floor. The walls were faced with black suede. The counter was twenty metres of black chrome. Behind it, the staff were very blonde, tall and good looking. Sharp silver light bounced from mirrors and glass. Joe thought it looked as if the Arctic had been dipped in black paint on midsummer’s day.

  Three T&Ts appeared, Tanqueray and tonic, in tall glasses loaded with ice and wedges of lime. Joe looked around, picking up the beat of the music, the heavy bass, the driving rhythm, drowned by the sound of a hundred people. The crowd were mostly young, smartly dressed. There was a heady whiff of money and money seekers blending coolly with arts and music people. The languages were international – Russian, American English, English English, French, and, as Joe’s ears pricked up, even Arabic.

  ‘Cool place.’ Joe smiled, chinking his glass on Aaron’s as Max signed the tab and flirted with the six-foot blonde serving him.

  ‘Yeah, Max and I come here a lot. It’s great for babes,’ Aaron said.

  Joe clocked his diligent groundwork, his probing for the kind of predilections and entertainments a new client may be interested in. Perhaps he’d see Aaron whisper the information in Max’s ear later, and earn a pat on the back.

  ‘Yeah, I noticed,’ Joe yelled into his ear enthusiastically, playing a low-value card openly.

  Max joined them again. ‘Dreaming of those beautiful polymers?’

  ‘Yeah, and pipe coatings. I love the smell of pipe coatings in the morning. Smells like …’

  Max clattered his glass into Joe’s with a respectful nod, completing Lieutenant Colonel Kilgore’s line from Apocalypse Now: ‘… Victory!’

  Joe recognised the play, the ice breaking, the client dropping his guard with a drink in his hand, willing to shoot the breeze. They ran through their favourite films, quoting lines, reliving the scenes, laughing at the antics, relaxed, easy. People joined them for a few minutes as they passed by and recognised Max, who made sure he collared all the pretty women and introduced them to his new best friend, whose status continued to rise. Hey, meet Joe, he’s captain of the Dubai polo team. Hey, this is my friend Joe, he’s the Finance Minister of Dubai, he’s the prince of a million square miles of oil wells and desert.

  Aaron fetched and carried, allowing Max to concentrate on setting the ground rules, getting to know his target and soften it up. Drinks were the prelude. The main event would come later. Now was the time for Max to demonstrate what a great couple of guys he and Joe were, how they shared interests and values, had a common philosophy on the important things in life. As a consequence they could not fail to do business together. To fail would be unnatural, perverse. Should Joe dissent and find himself unable to see it Max’s way, it would reveal a moral fault line, expose him as a poseur, unable to hold his place in the real world.

  ‘Okay, let’s eat,’ Max said, draining his glass and checking his watch in one synchronised movement.

  Right on cue, Joe thought. For the last two minutes he’d been anticipating that Max would demonstrate how timing was of the essence and it was time to move on – how alpha guys didn’t stand still and react to what was happening around them. They set a fast pace and let everyone know they had more important things awaiting them and could barely afford the time to be where they were now.

  ‘Such a beautiful city,’ Joe said, settling into the back of the limo and craning his neck. They swung by the perimeter of Red Square, past St Basil’s Cathedral with its minaret towers and spiralling onion domes of blue and white lit up like a fantasy. At the head of the square sat the great slab of the Kremlin, massive and forbidding. Joe widened his eyes, belittled by scale, by place and company, softened up.

  The maître d’ ran his experienced eye over Max’s tailoring. ‘I’ve got the perfect table for you.’

  ‘With perfect service.’ Max smiled, slipping some thousand Rouble banknotes in his breast pocket.

  Aaron studied the menu and checked Joe’s preferences for hot and cold, seafood and meat, ex
plaining the subtleties of sushi and sashimi. Max discussed sake and checked the degree of rice polishing in the Junmai Daiginjô-shu variety, which met with both his and the sommelier’s satisfaction. Joe looked about, taking in the scene, letting his hosts know he was suitably impressed.

  The crowd was not unlike the cocktail bar set, though the Arctic scene had warmed. This was more boudoir, with blood reds and burnished copper. Across the room a table of eight were enjoying the theatre of a personal chef.

  Conversation flowed. Max kept it light with a dusting of anecdotes. The service was slick. Delicacies followed one after the other: white fish sashimi with muso, scallops, crab tempura, black cod. Joe struggled manfully with his chopsticks and overdid the wasabi sauce with the Wagyu beef.

  ‘Wow, hot!’ he said, fanning his mouth.

  ‘Ferocious. Like the women here.’ Max grinned.

  ‘Yeah, you need to watch that stuff. Water only makes it worse,’ Aaron said, topping up his cup with a generous measure of sake.

  ‘No more for me, thanks,’ Joe said, right on time.

  The waiter hovered a few paces away. At Max’s signal he cleared the table and brought coffee, double espressos. Max dabbed his mouth with a napkin and looked across.

  ‘So, you like my plant?’

  ‘I do. But …’

  Max leant in. ‘But?’

  ‘I think we are going to end up too far apart on price.’

  ‘What are your ideas?’ Aaron said.

  Joe noticed the sideways glance that Max gave Aaron, saw the irritation that he’d indicated the price was negotiable so early in the discussion.

  Max held Joe’s eye, confirming he was the one to talk to. ‘We got three valuations from professional brokers.’

  ‘Brokers are brokers – they want the instruction. The market’s dropped. Just look at commodities. Our prices have dropped twenty per cent this year.’

  ‘They’ll go back up,’ Max said. ‘We’re not talking short positions here. We’re talking long term, right?’

  Joe conceded the point. ‘But no one is investing. I can buy new plant, twice the capacity, twice the speed, half the energy consumption, and all on soft loans. Moritz is inefficient. It’s why they’ve gone and we’re here. And it’s why you’re going to make money developing the land – but from a very second-hand chemical plant? That’s not going to happen.’

  Aaron started to say something but the flat of Max’s hand moved across the table.

  ‘I’m only hearing what you can’t do. Tell me what you can.’

  Joe drained his cup. ‘That’s good coffee.’

  Max’s eyes remained fixed on Joe. He clicked his fingers and pointed to the coffee cup as it chinked back to the saucer. The waiter turned silently on his feet, reappearing moments later with a fresh espresso as Joe laid out his position.

  ‘A lot of the plant is mismatched or needs replacing. Either way, I’ve got to buy new. The tanks and storage are shot. The linings are gone. I don’t need to tell you about the NDT.’

  ‘The what?’

  ‘Non-destructive testing. Ultrasonic, magnetic particle inspection, flux-leak scanning,’ Joe said, reeling off terms that were conceivably relevant but unnecessary. ‘But we can move quickly, wrap the contract up next month, dismantle in March, April, May, and ship out in June.’

  ‘There’s plenty of time,’ Max said dismissively. ‘We don’t get planning till Christmas.’

  Joe chose not to dispute the planning approval, which he knew was due in June, having drawn it out in conversation with the security guard at the plant. He put his hands on the table. ‘Twenty per cent cash down, twenty per cent each March, April, May, twenty per cent before shipment. A short contract, American law, arbitration in New York – okay?’ he said, looking across to Aaron, who nodded his agreement. ‘And two point seven five million.’

  Max’s eyes rolled. He sat back and folded his hands behind his head. ‘Dinner’s been great, thanks. You take the bill. I’ll take the tip.’

  Joe pushed his chair back. ‘Excuse me a moment.’

  There was no need to hurry. It was not as if he was leaving a hot date to go cold on him. The more time he could give them the better. Let Aaron bring some unimaginative and unambitious reasoning to the proceedings. Max liked money. Aaron liked neat contracts with partners who performed quietly.

  He took a cubicle in the lavatory – not for the sake of modesty – reasoning that Max had probably seen a movie where the alpha male clinches the deal in the bathroom.

  The water in the basin was warm, the towel cool and soft. He washed his hands, splashed his face, checked his teeth and straightened his tie. Looking good, he thought. He even managed to hide the surprise from his own face at how sober he felt. The Lebanese were relaxed about alcohol, with a bar on just about every street corner. No one had asked where he was from, assuming he was a generic Arab, and when pressed would be exposed as a lightweight trying to be sophisticated, a man of the world, Westernised.

  ‘Okay,’ Max said, as Joe resumed his place at the table. ‘Aaron’s pointed out some leverage for me on your schedule. I’m gonna say five and you’re gonna say three. Then I’ll say four and you’ll say three point two five. So let’s agree at three and a half million.’ He held his hand out across the table.

  Joe smiled and reached across. ‘Done.’

  Twelve

  Dan stepped across the cobblestones at the back of the building. A gabled window flashed in the sunlight, the brickwork glowing orange against a thin sky. Icicles hung like musical notes from the guttering. He rubbed an eye. Getting up at three in the morning in late January and catching a six o’clock flight was not his preferred start to a winter’s day.

  ‘It was the stables,’ Lars said, approaching a low block at the back of the courtyard.

  They entered a long room, brightly lit, modern and functional, at odds with the carefully preserved exterior. A row of tables stretched along one side. Facing them, a grid section was marked on a wall. Dan recognised annotations on it. He lingered at the tables, his eyes sweeping over a coil of rope, a bucket, a shirt, a binoculars case and other items, all labelled and numbered. Further on and drawing his attention were fragments of wood. Some were quite small but others were substantial, up to a metre long. He looked across to Lars.

  ‘Not sure yet,’ Lars said, anticipating the question.

  Moving on to a laboratory section, Dan stared down at an instrument.

  ‘A spectrometer,’ Lars said. ‘We got everything we need.’

  A woman turned in a chair at a workstation tucked in an alcove at the far end. She stood up and walked across, smoothing her tartan skirt.

  ‘Melissa Lopez,’ Lars said, making the introductions.

  She offered a warm, firm handshake. ‘Hi. Lars tells me you were navy,’ she said, her hazel eyes glinting as she swept a mass of dark hair over one shoulder. ‘We’ll be speaking the same language then.’

  Lars rolled a cigarette and went out to the yard, leaving them to get better acquainted. They worked out they had probably been on the same US–UK exercise in the Arabian Gulf a few years before.

  ‘So, after college I served nine years and then joined the agency, which is coming up five years ago now,’ she said. ‘Navigation’s always been my thing.’ She paused. ‘Lars is feeling a bit awkward about … you know.’

  ‘Yeah, we talked on the phone. It’s okay. We go back a long way.’

  ‘He told me. Whatever …’ She smiled. ‘Anyway, he asked me to take a closer look. I haven’t got a clear opinion, or even a hunch,’ she added with a knowing look. ‘I’ve just gone for the data and a double-check. So, you wanna see what I got?’

  They sat together at her desk. Melissa brought up images on the screen and explained the processes. ‘I took the course and cross-referenced it to the confirmed satellite positions, excluding all areas the ships didn’t have the speed to reach – so we know they weren’t there, right? I ran it for twenty miles from the location, and th
is is what I’ve got.’ She pointed to the screen. ‘See this blur?’

  Dan narrowed his eyes. ‘Can you enlarge it?’

  She shook her head. ‘Not with this.’

  ‘But later?’

  ‘Maybe,’ she said. ‘Look, come and see it in context,’ she added, getting up and walking over to the wall grid.

  ‘Here’s the location and here’s the next twenty miles. And the blur comes up here.’ She tapped a finger on the grid. ‘It’s precisely in line with the Ocean Dove’s route. If you calculate the timings, the blur’s moved at an average twelve knots. I just can’t be sure about the time stamp on the image. By all my deductions it should be accurate – but I can’t guarantee it.’

  Dan turned and looked around the room, assembling the details in his mind. Lars was standing by the row of tables, looking at him quizzically. Dan hadn’t heard him come back in from his smoke. The satellite coverage was patchy. At the precise time and at the precise location, nothing had passed overhead. There was no confirmed image of either the Ocean Dove or the Danske Prince. That was definite. All he had was a blurred image of something that was too small to be the Ocean Dove, but was on its route and moving at the same speed. The image was eight miles ahead of the accident location and, if he accepted the unconfirmed time stamp, it was precisely where the Ocean Dove should have been.

  ‘An anomaly in the image?’ he said, turning back to Melissa. ‘Some sort of atmospheric interference?’

  She turned her nose up. ‘I don’t buy that.’

  ‘You got any ideas?’ Dan said, turning to Lars.

  ‘There’s something there. But you guys are the experts.’

  Dan blew his cheeks out. ‘Yeah.’

  ‘You know, at first,’ Lars said. ‘I just didn’t …’ He stumbled for the words, his eyes dropping before lifting them again. ‘And I still don’t know what I believe. But what I’ll do now is a proper investigation and I’ll do it my way – and a little bit your way. But you gotta prove it, right.’