‘That’s Sienna’s mother, Saara. Daingerfield invited her to The Woodlands for a holiday six months ago. They’ve been inseparable ever since.’
Cantara grinned and gripped Sam’s arm tighter. ‘Do you still think he manipulated the whole Greenland crisis to eliminate his competitors?’ she asked.
‘Without a shadow of a doubt.’ Sam replied. ‘At least he had the decency to buy a fleet of four hundred Sirius four-wheel drives to help him run his new business. It helped the Sirius Motor Corporation achieve its first annual profit.’
‘So he played the two of us for fools?’
‘Absolutely. Daingerfield was smart enough to realise his oil and gas business was doomed once the price of renewable energy fell below that of fossil fuels. Daingerfield’s cash reserves were running low and he had to act quickly to create the right conditions for his new business. He couldn’t afford to wait for the passing of the old guard and knew their withering attacks on his new business would have been fatal. But even he could not have anticipated how his business rivals would self-destruct through their own greed.’
‘But Daingerfield could not have known how close to the brink the world would come with his Greenland test well.’
‘His test well was a ploy to create a sense of environmental crisis and fatally weaken the fossil fuel lobby. But Sienna was correct; the world was facing the perfect storm and it was the wrong time to play games.’
‘And what about Sienna? Do you think she was in cahoots with her father?’
‘Sienna knew what was happening, but she was powerless to influence her father.’
‘So she recruited you instead in a last-ditch attempt to change the political landscape before her father’s Greenland well tipped the world into catastrophe.’
‘Her faith in me was misguided.’
‘Hardly,’ said Cantara, pulling Sam closer to fend off the cold.
‘At least she was able to use the crisis to support her successful campaign to become the president of the World Energy Council. On that issue at least, Rex Daingerfield was absolutely correct. She has been able to drive an affordable, stable and sustainable energy policy through the United Nations that was supported by all the governments of the world. She would never have been able to do that as the Oracle of Sekhmet.’
Cantara waited as her father eased himself out of the driver’s seat and walked around the Sirius to open the rear door for his daughter and her fiancé. Osman Sharif was determined to tour the great cities of Europe in his beloved Sirius before he succumbed to the dreadful disease he had been fighting for the last three years. His heart filled with pride for his beautiful daughter, who had just been awarded Fortune Magazine’s Business Person of the Year accolade for the success and spectacular sales results of her Sirius Motor Company. For the third time that morning, Sharif embraced his daughter.
In the background, the cloud of dust and concrete settled on the frozen earth as the sun broke through the clouds, spreading its life-giving qualities on the dissipating crowd of onlookers below. For the first time in two years, there was real warmth in the sun’s rays. The sequence of harsh winters was over. Life on earth was returning to normal.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
I hope you enjoyed reading this book as much as I enjoyed writing it. I’d be very grateful if you’d post a short review on Amazon. Your support really does make a difference.
To leave a review at Amazon, please visit this link
US, UK, AUS, CA
Christopher Hepworth
MORE BOOKS BY THE AUTHOR
The Sleepwalker Legacy
The Wulff Agenda
THE SLEEPWALKER LEGACY
Sam Jardine Crime Thrillers, Book 1
Christopher Hepworth
In 1814, Britain’s foremost scientist, George Napier witnesses a drug-fuelled massacre on a US battlefield. The drug, Berserker, has a deadly side effect known as the Sleepwalker Legacy, which destroys the life of his Native American lover. After the War, Napier dedicates himself to the eradication of Berserker.
Two hundred years later, Napier’s global pharmaceutical company has fallen into the hands of the ruthless Beckett family. They are determined to produce and leverage Berserker for profit, as the US government seeks to exploit the drug for military advantage.
Sam Jardine is a direct descendant of Napier. When he discovers that Berserker could change the nature of humanity forever, he sets out to fulfil his ancestor’s destiny by destroying the drug from within, using his extraordinary powers of negotiation. Sam finds himself battling demons from his past as he becomes entangled in a dangerous game of corporate espionage and a battle of wits with the beautiful heiress, Rachael Beckett. He resolves to help his lover, Cassie, who inherited the Sleepwalker Legacy and is becoming increasingly unstable. But Sam is in a race against time…
Download Free Chapters Here
The Sleepwalker Legacy is now available on Amazon at this link
US, UK, AUS, CA
THE WULFF AGENDA
Sam Jardine Crime Thrillers, Book 2
Christopher Hepworth
When sociopathic media tycoon, Leo Wulff acquires elite British social media company, Smart Lifestyle, he creates a secret database to manipulate his victims’ Internet profiles to the extent it costs them their job, reputation, or even their life.
When Smart Lifestyle runs into commercial trouble, Wulff sends in a brilliant negotiator, Sam Jardine to war torn Ukraine where he collaborates with some dangerous characters to secure the largest data centre in the world. But Sam finds himself in direct competition with the Russians, who need the data centre to fuel their next generation spy programme.
Wulff extends his zealous campaign of assassination into Russian elite society, and destabilises an already volatile region, plunging the world into crisis. His murderous social algorithm uncovers a conspiracy by a group of Ukrainian monks, intent on restoring the Tsarist Rurikid regime personified by the notorious Ivan the Terrible.
As Sam falls for a stunning local politician, Natalya Alexandrova, he becomes a pawn in her ambitious plans for the rebel Donetsk People’s Republic. Only his extraordinary negotiation skills and his beautiful, but volatile Cossack protégé, Xenia stand in the way of the new ultra-nationalist regime seeking to reconstruct the Russian empire.
Download Free Chapters Here
The Wulff Agenda is now available on Amazon at this link
US, UK, AUS, CA
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Author Christopher Hepworth has been a professional negotiator for over thirty years, with some of the largest and best-known companies in the world. He has won numerous prestigious awards in his chosen profession of procurement and developed many of the strategies and techniques that are now widely used across the industry. He has spent half a lifetime working for an array of colourful captains of industry, some inspirational; others downright terrifying. He often wonders how these desk warriors would cope if they were confronted with real-life, world threatening global emergencies rather than plotting their own narrow-minded corporate agendas. With the magic of fiction, Christopher Hepworth has created a wonderful set of characters he hopes will put the fear of God into his readers, adding to the list of threats already facing humanity.
Born in the UK in 1961 and raised in Zambia in central Africa like his hero, Wilbur Smith, Christopher Hepworth now lives in Sydney, Australia with his wife, Anne and four children. Much of the spare time he finds for writing comes while watching his children play representative cricket. It’s amazing how many sentences can be written in between the fall of wickets.
The exotic characters in his books reflect his fascination with the charismatic and proud, but often maligned warrior nations around the world, whose stories are screaming to be told. In his books, Christopher Hepworth’s desk-bound corporate warriors come face to face with those proud peoples, who have suffered the misfortunes of fate and history but their dignity and aspirations remain intact.
Christopher
Hepworth has created a new brand of hero for the twenty-first century. Like James Bond, or the lawyers of John Grisham’s thrillers, Sam Jardine must use his occupational skills to thwart the ambitions of ruthless villains who seek to subordinate the world with their depraved sense of moral values. Armed only with a sense of justice, respect for ancient warrior cultures and an extraordinary talent for negotiation, can he win the day or will he be engulfed in the cesspit of corporate politics? For the sake of world peace, let’s hope Sam Jardine is up to the task.
CONNECT WITH CHRISTOPHER HEPWORTH
Website: http://christopherhepworth.com
Email: [email protected]
Social Networks
Facebook
LinkedIn
Twitter
Join my Readers’ Group
Get the latest scoop on book giveaways, new releases and advance review copies of upcoming novels by joining my Readers’ Group. Click Here to Join.
The Last Oracle: A Climate Fiction Thriller (Sam Jardine Crime Thrillers Book 3) Page 31