‘Apart from being easy on the eye, Murray’s a very fine analyst . . . one of the best in the NSA, but I doubt she’s spent too much time on the Hill, or in the back corridors of the White House. If we move on Crowley without rock-solid evidence, and it all turns to custard, we’ll be hung out to dry. On the other hand, if Crowley has some sort of hold over Davis, and Davis wins the White House, Crowley gets a hold over the country.’
‘You think Murray’s drawing a long bow on Crowley’s involvement?’
‘Well, let’s look at what we’ve got.’ McNamara hadn’t survived as the country’s chief spymaster without considering every angle. ‘Point one, Crowley’s an A-grade asshole, and he’s been lobbying the Hill furiously to try and get the ban on the export licenses for both the Scorpion surface-to-air and the Taipan anti-ship missiles overturned. He’d sell his grandma if he thought he could make a buck out of the deal, but until now, I haven’t seen anything to indicate he might be working with terrorists . . . I mean not even Crowley’s going to run that sort of risk for the sale of a few missiles. On the other hand, Khan I can understand . . . did you ever meet him?’
‘Once, but only briefly when I was in Islamabad a couple of years back. He struck me as shifty. Although you could say that about more than one Pakistani general.’
‘And politician . . . but we need to know why Crowley is keeping company with someone like Khan, and if there were other people in Alexandria, who were they, and why were they there? Secondly, what’s this choke point Khan’s referring to?’ McNamara flicked a switch on his desk and a large video screen came to life on the opposite wall. He keyed in a computer command and a top-secret map of the world appeared, showing the current deployments of CIA teams.
‘Now, where would you say the major choke points are in the world right now?’
O’Connor picked up a small laser pointer from the table. ‘Depends whether we’re looking at it from a Taliban or al Qaeda point of view,’ he said. ‘From a purely Taliban point of view in Afghanistan, the Khyber Pass is key, but given the firepower we’ve got out of Bagram and Creech, they’re not going to control that for more than short bursts. The best they can hope for is to ambush the re-supply convoys.’
‘Agreed, so if we look further afield, what most affects the West?’ It was one of the reasons O’Connor so much enjoyed working with McNamara. Not only did his boss protect everyone’s back and take the heat from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and the Hill, but like O’Connor, McNamara had that rare ability to put himself on the other side of the fence and look at things from a terrorist’s point of view.
‘Despite the fracking boom,’ said O’Connor, ‘oil’s still one of the chinks in our armour, so if you’re a terrorist, and you want to affect oil supplies on land, you hit the pipelines and the oil refineries. There are any number of those, but without a doubt, Abqaiq and Ras Tanura are the biggest and the most vulnerable choke points,’ he continued, using his laser to highlight the Saudi-owned Abqaiq oil processing facility in the eastern desert of Saudi Arabia and the associated oil port of Ras Tanura on the coast. ‘Two thirds of Saudi Arabia’s oil exports go through Abqaiq and Ras Tanura . . . about seven million barrels a day.’
‘Hard to hit, though,’ McNamara mused. ‘Al Qaeda’s had a couple of unsuccessful cracks at them, but they’re huge targets and the security’s impressive.’
‘Which on land leaves us with the Druzhba Pipeline,’ said O’Connor, highlighting the world’s longest oil pipeline, which ran from the south-east of Russia all the way through Ukraine, Hungary, Poland and Germany. ‘That carries over a million barrels of oil a day.’
‘And it’s relatively easy to hit – there’s 4000 kilometres of it – but attacking the Druzhba wouldn’t hurt us directly,’ said McNamara.
O’Connor nodded. ‘Ever since 9/11 and the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, al Qaeda’s main focus has been the United States . . . I think this attack’s more likely to be at sea, and there are four choke points that a determined terrorist might have a crack at, starting with the Suez Canal.’ O’Connor focused his laser pointer on the 193-kilometre-long canal that connected the Mediterranean with the Red Sea, allowing oil and other cargoes to be transported from Europe to Asia without having to take the much longer route around Africa and the Cape of Good Hope. ‘When it was closed in ’56, we felt it at the gas pumps, but the Suez crisis wasn’t started by some crackpot religious terrorist . . . that was Nasser boring it up Eisenhower’s ass,’ O’Connor said. In 1956, the charismatic Egyptian president had nationalised the canal after the United States and Britain withdrew funding for the Aswan Dam, bringing on a spike in oil prices and another full-blown crisis in the Middle East which went from bad to worse when the British, French and Israelis met in secret and launched an attack against Egypt without warning the United States. Eisenhower had been livid.
McNamara’s piercing blue eyes twinkled. Fiercely patriotic, he nevertheless saw the humour whenever 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue experienced discomfort. It was a subliminal payback for the amount of discomfort he’d experienced over the years in the Situation Room below the Oval Office. ‘It was worse after the ’67 Six Day War. What did they call it? The Yellow Fleet. Sixteen cargo ships stuck in the canal for eight years.’ When war had broken out between Israel and the Egyptians and other Arab countries in 1967, Nasser had scuttled cargo ships and dredges at either end of the canal, trapping for eight years the sixteen vessels that had been travelling north. Over time, they had become covered in the yellow sands of the desert, gaining the sobriquet of ‘the Yellow Fleet’.
‘It was one of the catalysts for the supertanker,’ McNamara observed. The closure of the Suez in 1956, and again between 1967 and 1975, had highlighted the vulnerability of what was, at the time, the world’s major choke point. If oil had to be transported all the way round the Cape of Good Hope, then the oil companies had to make that worthwhile, and it had led to the design of the super-tanker, massive ships that were far too big to get into any of the world’s enclosed harbours. ‘And I see that bastard Crowley’s just commissioned two more,’ said McNamara. ‘The EVRAN Cosmos and the EVRAN Universe: both 510 000 tonnes, four football fields long and a draught of 80 feet. They’re the biggest in the world, and too big to go through the English Channel, but they would be, wouldn’t they . . . arrogant prick.’
‘Which is why I don’t think Khan’s choke point is the Suez,’ said O’Connor. ‘In the age of the supertanker, another closure of the Suez isn’t going to hit us nearly as hard.’
‘Although it’s intriguing that Khan and Crowley appear to have met in Alexandria,’ McNamara mused. ‘But if not the Suez, where’s the strike?
‘The Straits of Malacca is another possibility.’ O’Connor focused his laser on the 800-kilometre-long stretch of water that separated the Indonesian island of Sumatra and the Malay Peninsula, the major shipping channel for ships moving from the Indian to the Pacific Oceans. ‘Narrows to about one and a half nautical miles, here,’ said O’Connor, ‘just south of Singapore, and carries a bit over a million barrels of oil a day . . . about the same as Suez, and although that’s significant, I wouldn’t put it at the top of a terrorist’s list.’
‘Yeah, I agree. Any others?’
‘The Bosphorus is the world’s narrowest, in fact it’s downright dangerous,’ said O’Connor, indicating the 17-nautical-mile strait that flowed past Istanbul, connecting the Black Sea to the Sea of Marmara, through which ships gained access to the Aegean and the Mediterranean. ‘The current runs at seven to eight knots, and there’s a 45-degree turn required here, near Kandilli Point.’
‘So it’s easy to attack, but that’s going to impact mainly on Russia and the Ukraine.’
‘Exactly, which leaves the Strait of Hormuz, and that would be my pick,’ said O’Connor, moving his laser pointer to the stretch of water that connected the Gulf of Oman with the Persian Gulf. It was one of the most sensitive choke points in the world, and the Arab Spring uprisings against dictators
like Egypt’s Mubarak and Tunisia’s Ben Ali and his wife Leila, wanted by Interpol for high treason and money laundering, had further destabilised an already volatile region.
‘If I was a terrorist, and I wanted to hit the West hard, especially the US, I’d do it there,’ O’Connor continued. ‘With seventeen million barrels of oil a day passing through that choke point, and most of it destined for Western Europe, Japan and the US, the queues at the gas stations would be longer than they were after the Yom Kippur War in ’73.’ In 1973, on Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement and the holiest day on the Jewish calendar, ordinary Israelis had been either praying in the synagogues or relaxing. In the lead-up to the war, Egypt’s president Anwar Sadat had demanded that the Egyptian Sinai, lost in the ’67 Six Day War with Israel, be returned. Syria’s president Hafez al-Assad had been similarly rebuffed in his demands for the return of the Golan Heights. On 6 October 1973, Egyptian forces stormed across the Suez Canal, and the Syrians attacked the Golan Heights with five divisions, taking the Israelis by surprise.
‘I remember that war,’ McNamara said. ‘I’d only just started out in the CIA, and I’d been posted to Tel Aviv. Israel damned near got pushed into the Mediterranean. “Tricky Dicky” Nixon was missing in action and didn’t attend a single formal meeting of the National Security Council. Spent the war bunkered down in his Key Biscayne retreat, stalling Special Prosecutor Cox’s demands for the Watergate tapes.’ With Israel down to its last three days of ammunition, and in danger of being pushed into the sea, it had been left mainly up to Secretary of State Henry Kissinger to organise support for Israel. The Arab states were furious, and the OPEC nations, led by Saudi Arabia, had promptly cut exports of petroleum to the United States.
O’Connor grinned. ‘Not to mention having to deal with the fallout of the resignation of his vice president. Spiro Agnew – caught with his hands in the cookie jar.’
‘The queues at the gas stations stretched for block after block . . . people waiting for hours to fill up and panicking that fuel would run out,’ said McNamara. ‘You think an attack on Hormuz would have the same effect?’
‘We’re better prepared these days,’ said O’Connor, ‘but it would still hit the West hard. In 1973 oil shot up from eighteen dollars a barrel to over a hundred, and today, a closure of the Strait of Hormuz would have the same effect. A quadrupling of prices at the pump really starts to damage the West and the rest of the world’s economy.’
‘Which these al Qaeda assholes couldn’t give a shit about,’ agreed McNamara. ‘Problem is, the satellites are working overtime in Iraq and Afghanistan, and on Syria, but I’ll see what can be done.’
‘Should we be briefing Pennsylvania Avenue on this?’
McNamara shook his head. ‘Not until we’ve got a little more to go on. McGovern’s up to his armpits with Iran and their nuclear program, Netanyahu and Israel, al-Assad and Syria, Karzai in Afghanistan . . . he needs this like a synagogue needs a pork chop. I’ll let them know through the back door, and I’ll have a word with the Secretary of State. In the meantime, you’d better get yourself across to Alexandria and unearth who the hell was at that meeting and what was on the agenda at the Kashta Palace. Take a couple of extra days in Alexandria, and give Aleta my best,’ McNamara said with a grin, getting to his feet.
O’Connor walked back to his temporary office, turning Barbara Murray’s card over in his hand. It didn’t escape him that she’d given him her personal card. He turned his thoughts to Carter Davis as president. Surely the American people couldn’t be that gullible? He shook his head. With someone like Crowley behind him, Hailey Campbell might need a little more than Chuck Buchanan, Megan Becker and a high approval rating.
26 EVRAN Headquarters, Dallas, Texas
Crowley sat at the centre of the polished mahogany board table with Rachel on his right. The rest of the places were taken up by some of the most highly paid executives on the planet: ‘Big Jack’ Allard, the CEO of EVRAN Coal, a huge multinational with interests in nearly half the world’s coal mines; Frank McFarland, the CEO of EVRAN Energy, a vast oil and gas multinational, dwarfing the likes of ExxonMobil, BP, and Royal Dutch Shell; Barclay Roberts, the lanky CEO of EVRAN Defense Industries, at the top of world rankings which included Lockheed Martin, BAE Systems, Boeing and Northrop Grumman; Marcelo Costa, the wily Brazilian CEO of EVRAN Timber; along with Professor Truman Stockton, the CEO of EVRAN Nuclear and Albin Martin Jr., EVRAN’s shady general counsel. Professor Marcus Ahlstrom sat on a chair against the wall, nervously looking on. None of Crowley’s CEOs received less than US $50 million a year.
‘You’ve all read the briefing notes. They’re to be returned before you leave the building,’ Crowley warned. ‘Since we last met, a number of threats to our operations have intensified, but the one that’s gaining the most traction in Washington right now is this climate change crap.’ Crowley turned toward Rachel. ‘Let’s have the video.’
Rachel switched on a recording of the previous night’s Late Night Live, a talk show out of New York. Hosted by the stylish and hugely influential Merrill Stewart, the controversial program commanded a viewing audience of over ten million, the largest since the finale of Cheers in 1993.
‘With the country suffering some of the worst snow storms in years,’ Stewart intoned, ‘many of President McGovern’s critics are furious over the president’s plans to deal with global warming, claiming it’s a myth and that any attempt to put a price on carbon will damage an already fragile economy. Please welcome Professor Megan Becker who, until she joined the team supporting former secretary of energy Hailey Campbell, was President McGovern’s scientific advisor.’
The left-leaning audience broke into enthusiastic applause as the red-haired, five-foot-ten, blue-eyed environmentalist strode on to the set.
‘Before we get to the president’s position on global warming, Megan, perhaps you can answer the question on everyone’s lips – is Hailey Campbell going to run?’ Stewart’s smile was disarming.
‘A curve ball right up front,’ Becker responded, her smile equally disarming. ‘You would have to ask Ms Campbell.’
‘Given that President McGovern can’t run for a third term, why have you joined Campbell’s team as an advisor?’ persisted Stewart.
‘The bases are loaded tonight, aren’t they?’ said Becker, smiling at the audience.
‘You can’t blame me for trying,’ replied Stewart. ‘Let’s move on to President McGovern’s new position on global warming. Do you think people understand what is meant by climate change and global warming?’
‘No, and that’s partly our fault,’ said Becker turning toward the studio audience again. ‘We scientists are sometimes not very good at putting arguments in terms that people in other professions can understand, but we’ve known the planet has been heating for a very long time. In the 1820s, the French mathematician Joseph Fourier calculated that because of its distance from the sun, our planet should be a lot cooler, which led him to the possibility of our atmosphere acting as a trap for the sun’s heat reflected off the earth: what we now call the greenhouse effect. And then in the 1860s, the Irish physicist, John Tyndall, carried out experiments with a number of gases to see which were the best at trapping heat, and he found that carbon dioxide had an interesting property: it allowed visible light to pass through unimpeded, but it was by far and away the best at trapping heat. The best analogy I can give you is your car. When you lock your car and leave it in the sun, the light goes through the windows and the car heats up, because the heat can’t escape, and it’s the same with the earth’s atmosphere. The Swedish Nobel Laureate Svante Arrhenius linked the changes in global temperature to the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, and those amounts have steadily increased as we burn more and more of the fossil fuels – coal, oil and gas.’
‘This fear about the burning of coal, oil and gas doesn’t seem to be shared by a large number of Americans,’ challenged Stewart. ‘The latest surveys indicate that nearly 50 per cent of Americans t
hink that global warming can be attributed to natural fluctuations in the climate?’
‘Yes, and in Australia, there is strong support to abolish their carbon tax, but that’s hardly the point. Ninety-seven per cent of climate scientists are convinced that the science is rock-solid. The planet is heating to dangerous levels. Americans, Australians, Europeans – many of them have fallen victim to unseen but powerful forces that are funding public relations programs to convince them that climate change is a myth. It’s not unlike the tobacco industry’s efforts in the eighties and nineties to convince people that smoking wasn’t harmful.’
‘I saw a report just recently that the Nobel Laureate and clean energy proponent, Professor Marcus Ahlstrom, may have been lured over to work for EVRAN?’ Stewart asked.
‘He wouldn’t be the first scientist to be lured into the fold. I suspect Ahlstrom is going to be part of the EVRAN public relations campaign to derail the science, because EVRAN is one of the biggest polluters in the world. You only have to look at the scale of their coal operations in Wyoming.’
The shot cut to some footage of the rare beauty of the snow-capped eastern Rocky Mountains.
‘Wyoming might be one of our least populous states, second only to Alaska, but it’s also one of the richest mining states in the country,’ continued Becker. ‘Last year, out of the billion tonnes of coal dug up by the US alone, nearly 400 million tonnes came out of the cowboy state.’
Stewart picked up that some in the audience looked shocked, and she judged it was time to allow some audience participation. ‘We’re going to open things up for some Q and A . . . yes,’ she said, pointing to a young woman in the front row.
‘My name’s Sarah Kable, and I’m in my first year of environmentalscience at the University of Wyoming in Laramie. I’m curious to know how our energy consumption compares to the rest of the world?’
The Alexandria Connection Page 20