by Jack Du Brul
“It’s amazing the sympathy you get with one of these. Hell, even the Air France flight attendants were civil.”
“Should have come down on BOAC.” Bigelow still used the old name for British Airways. “But I’m sure the flap at Heathrow has mucked them up for a few days.”
“So everything went as planned?” Mercer asked. Between the time spent waiting in airports and on planes and the hours he’d lost traveling thirteen time zones east, a full day had passed since he and Captain Hauser had prevented the destruction of the Petromax Arctica.
“Like clockwork,” Bigelow replied with a grand smile. The Mercedes purred along at about a hundred miles an hour on the ribbon of asphalt bisecting the white desert sand. “I’ll let Minister Khuddari fill you in on the details.”
“I understand from my conversation with his secretary that he was severely injured in London during an attack at the British Museum and later at Heathrow.”
“Siri has a soft spot for him. She made his wounds sound worse than they are. He caught a bunch of shrapnel fragments, nothing even remotely life threatening, and he gave himself a nasty spinal dislocation jumping from an airplane.” Bigelow then added fondly, “The pansy fell ten feet and pinched off a nerve for a couple of hours. I’ve known men who’ve leaped from five thousand feet without a parachute and walked away with nothing more than a mild limp. I knew he should have gone to Sandhurst rather than Cambridge and the London School of Economics. Lad’s too soft by far.”
“Known him long?” Mercer smiled at Bigelow’s gruff affection.
“Since his father brought him in from the desert when he was a boy. Men like him are the future of the Gulf. They can function in the Western world yet still retain their traditions and their faith, giving each the proper due and maintaining true balance. The fundamentalism so popular now isn’t the answer. Whether it’s belief in Allah or in modern civilization, the Arabs have to learn not to rush headlong in either direction. Unfortunately, they are so passionate about everything they do that they lose sight of life’s subtle compromises.”
Mercer chuckled. “I just gave that same speech about environmentalists.”
“It applies to everyone,” Bigelow replied.
Once in the city, Bigelow parked them in a garage under a modern glass and steel office tower, the space he took having his name on a plaque affixed to the poured concrete wall. “You can leave your bag. In fact, the car is yours while you’re here in Abu Dhabi. I hope you enjoy it more than I do. I much prefer my old Rover to these Kraut leather-lined bordellos.”
While the building could not have been more than a few years old, Bigelow led Mercer into an area that had the feel of an old Victorian edifice, plaster walls, dark woodwork, and ceilings at least twelve feet high. The effect was disorienting but very welcome in the otherwise sterile city. The doors to Khalid al-Khuddari’s office were solid pieces of mahogany, each four feet wide by nine feet tall. Mercer knew they had to be antiques because trees that size were just not found anymore.
The outer office was large, richly decorated, and inviting, the colors hued to those of the outlying desert and the azure of the Gulf to the north. The desk at its far end was as large as a pool table but spotlessly organized, even the cables running from the computer were tightly wrapped to reduce their ugly functionalism. Mercer assumed that the woman coming from behind the desk was Khalid Khuddari’s secretary, Siri Patal. He wasn’t ready for her exquisitely delicate beauty. He’d expected a heavy, matronly woman like the ones he knew from the Indian restaurants around Washington. Siri Patal could have been a model; her fluid movement and her reed-thin body were exceptional. Thinking a purely chauvinistic thought, Mercer hoped that Khuddari had the sense to have an affair with this woman. He would have, in Khuddari’s position.
“Hello, Colonel,” Siri said respectfully to Bigelow, who ignored her professional demeanor and gave her cheek a tickle with his mustache.
“Hello, darling. How’s my girl?”
“Colonel, please,” she blushed and nodded to the corner of the antechamber.
Seated on one of the two leather sofas and leafing through an oil industry magazine, Jim Gibson looked up and smiled broadly. “Don’t you mind me, little lady, you just carry on.” His Stetson and cowboy boots looked appropriate once he spoke in his booming Texas voice. “Well, jerk my lizard! They told me you was comin’, Mercer, but I said naw, couldn’t be. Mercer is a miner, I said, and the only resource this country’s got other than oil is sand. Since the bottom fell out of the hourglass market, there’s no sense mining that.”
Mercer shook Gibson’s hand awkwardly with his left, his whole fist vanishing in the Texan’s big paw. “Thanks, Jim, for everything. I think the world would be a different place if you hadn’t put me in touch with Colonel Bigelow.”
“Hell, I haven’t talked to you since Nigeria, and the next thing I know, you’re calling me up about government plots and sabotage. When I heard about the flap at the Alaska Pipeline and knew you hadn’t gone round the bend, I did what any hero woulda done.” Gibson laughed. “Taking a lesson from the Duke, John Wayne, when the Indians are circling, begging your pardon ma’am, but when they’re circling, you call in the cavalry, right? I’m just glad I was able to help. And speaking of which, it’s time for this hero to get his reward.”
Mercer cocked an eyebrow at the brawny petroleum geologist.
“The Crown Prince wants to add to his stables, and knowing me to be a fine judge of horseflesh, he’s sending me on a buying spree through Europe and the States. Told me that if I happen to find a few fillies that catch my eye, not to be shy about buyin’ them for myself. The check he gave me has more zeros than a high school chess club.” Gibson tipped his hat. “Miss Siri, Colonel. Mercer, hate to cut this short, but I’ve got a plane to catch.”
No sooner had Gibson left than the door leading to Minister Khalid al-Khuddari’s chamber opened. The minister wore casual clothing, American-style jeans and an open-necked shirt. Supported by two canes, his movement into the reception area was slow but steady, his arms taking much of the strain as he crabbed forward. Mercer stole a quick glance at Siri Patal and was envious of the look she gave Khuddari. An image of Aggie Johnston flashed painfully in his mind. They hadn’t spoken since Alaska. They probably never would.
“Dr. Mercer, it is both a pleasure and a privilege to meet you,” Khuddari said, coming close. He looked at Mercer critically, and when he made some sort of personal judgment, smiled. “I’m willing to bet your injuries are a lot worse than they appear.”
“Only if I appear dead.” Mercer made no move to shake Khuddari’s hand because he could only use his left comfortably. He knew that touching an Arab with that hand, which they considered unclean, was a sign of disrespect.
“We’ve both suffered for this,” Khuddari said so quietly that only Mercer could hear. Mercer nodded a silent agreement, recognizing the seriousness of those words and the meaning behind them. Just as quickly as it appeared, Khuddari’s serious edge disappeared, and he was again the charming host. “Come into my office. We have a great deal to discuss, a great many war stories to swap. I think even Colonel Bigelow may be impressed by us. What do you think?”
Mercer laughed, “Unless you and I single-handedly defeated Rommel, I don’t think much would impress your Colonel.”
Khuddari was delighted by the accurate description of his friend and mentor, grinning at Bigelow’s scowl.
He led them into his office and took a seat behind his desk, propping his legs on an ottoman and leaning the canes against the wall like dueling sabers. Bigelow and Mercer sat opposite the desk. Because Mercer’s internal clock was so messed up by jet lag and exhaustion, he didn’t refuse Bigelow’s offer of whiskey from the gold-capped flask he pulled from the pocket of his khaki tunic.
“To begin with, my closest friends call me Khalid. I would like to count you among them. May I dispense with your formal title and call you Philip?”
“My friends call me Merc
er. Actually, so do my enemies, but that doesn’t really matter.”
“Then let me say officially, Mercer, the people of the United Arab Emirates and everyone else living in the Gulf owe you a great deal. I’m afraid that without your involvement, what we saw as an internal problem would have mushroomed until it encompassed the entire region. Your timely warning prevented not only a revolution here, but the destabilization of the whole Middle East.”
Mercer tried to demure, but Khuddari pressed on. “We had known for some time of a revolutionary element here in the UAE, a man by the name of Hasaan bin-Rufti, but we did not know how deep was his involvement with other — how shall we say — less friendly nations. Later, I learned of Rufti’s connections with the Iraqis and Iranians when I was in London, but I was too incapacitated to make that knowledge useful here at home.
“Fortunately, as soon as Colonel Bigelow learned that I was delayed in London by a terrorist attack at Heathrow, he rightly deduced that the assault was intended to kill me. On his own initiative, he arrested Hasaan Rufti upon his return from the OPEC meeting. Though we had Rufti, we still didn’t know where he had secreted his troops. That’s where you came in.
“By linking the attacks in Alaska to Petromax Oil and Southern Coasting and Lightering, you gave us the clue to the location of those troops. In the limbo period during the sale of Petromax’s fleet to SC&L, their ship the Petromax Arabia had become the Southern Accent, a vessel no one had any record of that had sat ignored in our harbor for weeks. We never would have known the tanker’s involvement without you. I mean that. The men Rufti had aboard the ship could have stormed ashore and taken over this country faster than Saddam took Kuwait in 1990.”
“Am I correct in guessing that the attacks on the Alaska Pipeline and the sinking of the Petromax Arctica were the triggers for this Rufti’s revolution here in the UAE?”
“As far as we can tell, yes,” Khalid said.
“The mastermind behind this whole plot was a former KGB agent named Ivan Kerikov—”
“We know all about Kerikov,” Bigelow interrupted. “He was seen in Istanbul last year, meeting with Hasaan Rufti. It was then that they hatched this scheme.”
“Not hatched, Colonel, stole,” Mercer replied. “We found out from a computer expert Kerikov hired that the program he activated had been in place since the Cold War, planted by a KGB sleeper agent. Years ago, Kerikov came upon the plan and the codes needed to override Alyeska’s computers. He’d been waiting for someone like Rufti to come along, someone who would be willing to pay to have the Trans-Alaska Pipeline permanently shut down.”
“But why? And why now?”
“By destroying the pipeline and then sinking a tanker carrying North Slope crude, Kerikov and Rufti could guarantee that the United States would abandon its plan to cut off foreign oil suppliers by relying on domestic production and alternative fuels. The President’s energy policy, which many Washington insiders and the New York financiers detest, would be scrapped before it was ever implemented.”
“So Rufti would use the attacks in America as both a trigger and a diversion while he and his new Iranian and Iraqi allies took over the Middle East.” Khalid spoke with a new understanding of how deeply the plot to take over his country truly ran. “By using tactical lessons from the Gulf War and striking when America was occupied by the domestic feuds following the twin oil-related disasters, Rufti could have seized the Emirates in days and the rest of the region in a matter of weeks. Unbelievable! But where did the money come from? It was something the Crown Prince mentioned prior to my going to London. Despite what the rest of the world thinks, not everyone living in an OPEC country is filthy rich. Rufti is a millionaire, certainly, but not nearly wealthy enough to finance an operation as elaborate as this.”
“That’s where Max Johnston came in, I’m afraid,” replied Mercer. “In a way, he paid for the entire thing. At first, it was a simple business decision, but one he later discovered had a much darker side. Because of the President’s energy policy, oil companies were scrambling to make as much money as possible in the ten years remaining before the deadline. Johnston was approached by Rufti, and later by Iranians and Iraqis, who promised him that in exchange for some up-front money, Petromax would be given exclusive rights for all future oil explorations in Iran, Iraq, and the UAE. From Johnston’s point of view, the 150 million dollars they’d asked for was merely a kickback to the three oil ministers to gain market domination.
“The deal would have stayed in effect even after the U.S. cut off imports, giving Petromax a near monopoly on Middle East crude imported by Europe and Japan. Even if the rest of the world followed our lead on restricting oil consumption, we’re still talking about billions of dollars over the next quarter century.”
“It’s nice that Rufti was negotiating as our Petroleum Minister,” Khalid said sarcastically.
“Johnston must have known you were to be assassinated as an obstacle to Rufti’s plan, but I don’t believe he was aware that Iran, Iraq, and Rufti intended to establish themselves as the dominant power in the Gulf. He believed the deal was with three separate nations, not a triumvirate. Johnston couldn’t raise the 150 million without selling some of his assets. Enter Southern Coasting and Lightering. He sold them his fleet of tankers, using the promissory notes of sale and hauling contacts to raise the cash in some sort of financial derivatives fund. I’m not certain how it was all to work out, but in essence he financed his own downfall.”
“Excuse me,” Bigelow said, “but this doesn’t make sense. He sells his tankers to raise money to become sole importer of oil from any new Middle Eastern fields.”
“He had just made a deal for drilling rights to half the world’s oil supply. I doubt he was concerned with the few million dollars a year he makes on his tankers. But this is where the story gets truly Machiavellian.”
“You mean more so,” Khalid said mildly.
“I have a friend in Miami who is a leading maritime attorney. He found all the details of what transpired. Up until a year ago, Southern Coasting had been a small outfit in Louisiana, owning a couple of 100,000-ton product tankers that ran between Galveston and Venezuela. Then they were bought, and suddenly Southern Coasting had the money to go buy three VLCCs, a huge step for a company that showed only modest profits last year.”
“Who bought the company?”
“Remember the Oil for Food deal the United Nations gave to the Iraqis a few years ago as a way of maintaining international sanctions yet allowing some humanitarian aid into the country? Part of the proceeds of those oil sales went into Southern Coasting. The company was owned by Iraq and Hasaan bin-Rufti, a fact that Max Johnston was unaware of. He thought he had made the deal of a lifetime. Instead he put his neck in a noose that was about to be pulled.”
“You mean Iraq paid for this whole thing? Why bother bringing in Max Johnston if they were going to finance the operation themselves?” Minister Khuddari was quick to point out.
“Two reasons. One, the Iraqis needed to launder the money internationally in a legitimate business deal. During the Oil for Food program, the United Nations was keeping a tight watch on Iraq’s money to ensure that they weren’t buying weapons. Once my friend Dave Saulman started pulling the thread of SC&L’s ownership, the whole tapestry unraveled. What started out as a 150-million-dollar deal for soy and other foodstuffs turned into a tanker fleet with just a few falsified documents and a little bribery. Southern Coasting paid Johnston for his ships, and he turned the money right back over to Iraq, and they now found themselves with a tremendous fortune in their war chest. Some of this money went to Kerikov to set up the destruction of the pipeline and the Arctica. For this, he hired commandos and heavily bankrolled PEAL to become his unwitting pawns.
“The second reason was the need to use some of Johnston’s equipment, namely his tankers, to carry the huge quantities of liquid nitrogen to Alaska and to act as Rufti’s troop base here in the Emirates. Johnston would also be their scapegoat when t
he operation was over.
“What Max didn’t know is that Kerikov and Rufti planned to cancel the deal all along and leave him with the mess following the destruction of the Petromax Arctica. Max had already fulfilled his part of the bargain, letting them use his ships and washing their money, so they were going to doublecross him. To ensure he never revealed what he’d done, Kerikov and Rufti’s assistant, a man named Abu Alam—”
“Oh, we know Alam,” Bigelow said. “The man’s a bloody psychotic.”
“Right now he’s just blood. Maybe a little tissue, but I doubt it. Anyway, Alam and Kerikov kidnapped Johnston’s daughter, Aggie. By holding her, Kerikov could threaten Max with her death if their deal were ever made public. Johnston’s hands were tied.”
“So Max Johnston didn’t know that the money he laundered from Rufti would eventually be used to destroy him?” Khalid asked.
“He had no idea. Kerikov and Rufti played off his greed for their own benefit while planning to betray him. It’s almost like a Shakespearean tragedy in its scope. It hasn’t been reported yet, but the FBI raided Max’s home yesterday. I was told by Dick Henna that Johnston had shot himself. I doubt he knew that Kerikov was no longer holding his daughter, so he must have traded the silence of his death for her life.”
“And avoided a long stint in gaol,” Bigelow said.
“I’ve known Max for a number of years. He would have gone to prison to make things right. I believe he saw his suicide as a way of rescuing his daughter, not to avoid his responsibilities.”
“Did Johnston know that Kerikov was using that oil rig you escaped from?”
“Yes, he did know that. Actually, Kerikov took it over and then told Max about it. But it was too late for him to do anything. He was in too deep.”
“And you managed to stop it all before it really even began?”
“Well, it did begin in the United States, but yes, it’s over. The twin spills in Alaska and Puget Sound were not nearly as bad as they could have been. Cleanup will still run into the hundreds of millions of dollars, but since this was a terrorist act, the federal government will be picking up a good share of the cost. But here in the Gulf, Kerikov and Rufti’s operation never really got off the ground. Colonel Bigelow told me a little about the action this morning. That was where everything finally stopped, Kerikov’s plan, Rufti’s coup, and the Iran-Iraq pact to dominate the Middle East.”