‘I think God has finally intervened,’ the woman replied in her deep southern drawl. ‘Just as He intervened to ensure George W. Bush was elected, God is going to bless America with Governor Davis. To be honest, before Governor Davis entered this election, I was at a loss to know who to vote for, but God is giving America one last chance before the end times for us to repent of our sins, and I know Governor Davis will provide us with that moral compass.’
Murkowski turned to the woman’s husband who was nodding vigorously. ‘And you, sir? What did you think?’
‘Ruby and I don’t always agree,’ the man said with a smile, ‘but she’s right. The race is now on in earnest, and we’ll be urging Christians right across the United States to get behind Governor Carter Davis, because you can tell he’s one of us.’
‘Forgive me, but how can you tell that?’
‘By the way he speaks.’
‘It’s that simple?’
‘A non-Christian wouldn’t understand,’ the parishioner said, his smile vanishing, ‘but Governor Davis has asked for our prayers, and he’s going to get them in spades, because he’s God’s man in the White House, and through President Davis, God will direct America.’
‘So far, so good,’ said Rachel, flicking off the broadcast, ‘but we’ve got a long way to run, so let’s not get carried away. By and large, your answers were fine, Carter, but you have to stay on message. And when we get to the wider audiences, you’ll need to go easy on the God stuff. And don’t say you’re not in bed with EVRAN. That might come back to bite us, so vague that up. Tell them you’re your own man. That way, they can’t accuse you of misleading anyone.’
Davis listened grudgingly.
‘And don’t insist that fracking’s covered by environmental regulations. That might play well for conservative audiences in the primaries, but it’s bullshit and when we come up against Hailey Campbell, she’ll tear you apart if you try that one.’
‘How?’
Oh Christ, Rachel thought. We’re okay with dot points, but push it past what’s on the page in front of him, and he’s fucked. Stay calm, she reminded herself.
‘We don’t want to touch that argument with a barge pole, because that protestor and others like him know that Republicans have approved exemptions in the Clean Water Act, the Clean Air Act, and introduced a host of other legislation specifically designed to allow the oil industry exemptions, and Campbell will hit you over the head. We need to concentrate on the jobs and economy angle, because that’s the one that will play well with Middle America.’
Davis looked at Rachel quizzically.
Up in Montana, Abigail switched off the direct broadcast, her tears fuelling her anger. ‘You bastard! You absolute fucking bastard!’
On the second Tuesday of each month, Pastor Matthias Shipley made the three hundred mile trip from Dallas to Little Rock in Arkansas. If anyone called the Hermit Road office, the staff would respond very politely as they’d been instructed: that Pastor Shipley was interstate, winning souls for Christ.
Far less well known in Arkansas than he was in Texas, Pastor Shipley nevertheless always ensured that he arrived at Christian’s apartment after dark.
‘Matty . . . come on in. Make yourself comfortable. Glass of wine? Tonight I have some chablis, or a cab sav?’
‘Cab sav, thank you,’ Pastor Shipley said, leaving $800 on the sideboard. It was the usual fee for an all-night stay. Matthias couldn’t explain it, but even after six years, he was still nervous every time he visited, and that in itself was a turn-on. Christian was everything he wanted in a man. Young, fit and athletic. Tonight, Christian was wearing cargo shorts and topless. Matthias ran his eyes over Christian’s brown, rippling torso and broad shoulders. Christian’s fabulously fit body never failed to arouse him.
‘I probably should have asked you this question years ago – cheers – but how did you find me?’ Christian asked.
‘Online. Didn’t I ever tell you that? I wanted a site that allowed me to filter my preferences . . . bottom or top, cut or uncut.’
‘Was I the first choice?’ Christian asked, sitting beside Matthias and putting his hand on the pastor’s bulging crotch.
Pastor Shipley’s pale, flabby face coloured. ‘Uh . . . no, but the first guy was far too rough, and wouldn’t go top. I was always bottom, but when I found you – pitching, catching – we seem to alternate pretty well.’
‘Yeah, the sex is always good with you, Matty,’ Christian said. He took the pastor’s hand and slid it down the front of his own cargo shorts.
‘And of course,’ Pastor Shipley said, starting to relax, ‘I just love your gorgeous cock . . . so big . . . ’
Pastor Shipley put his glass down and unzipped Christian’s shorts, releasing the male escort’s throbbing manhood, all seven and a half inches of it, and he took Christian in his mouth.
‘Pitcher or catcher, Matty?’ Christian asked after a minute.
‘Catcher,’ the pastor croaked. ‘Give me that big cock, Christian, give me that cock.’
Christian disappeared into his bedroom and brought out two of the fur suits that he knew Matthias liked so much. ‘Fox or wolf?’
‘You be the fox. I’ll be the wolf,’ Pastor Shipley said, breathless with excitement.
34 The Amazon
‘If my mission here gets out, Washington will have McNamara’s head on a plate,’ O’Connor said to Manuel Oliveira, the CIA’s chief of station in Brasília. They were sitting in Oliveira’s secure office in the shielded area of the United States embassy in Avenue das Nações in the embassy sector, just to the north of Lago Paranoá. When the capital of Brazil had been moved to Brasília from Rio de Janeiro in the late 1950s, the River Paranoá was dammed to form the artificial lake, around which were dotted embassies, consulates, up-market residences, the University of Brasília and the Palácio da Alvorada, or Palace of the Dawn, the residence for the President of Brazil.
‘Crowley might be high on our suspect list, but he’s also pretty high on the White House Christmas card list. He’s backing that dopey Carter Davis to the hilt, and if the early polls are anything to go by, Davis might just get up. If that happens, America will be run by a shadowy elite, so if we’re going to roll Crowley and his cronies, we need some hard evidence that these missiles are coming out of Brazil, and that Crowley is behind it.’
‘Well,’ the veteran diplomat demurred, ‘given the sway that EVRAN Timber holds in official circles here, the ambassador’s very reluctant to make any official representation, but he’s made some discreet enquiries. The chances of a complete search of the EVRAN warehouses in Manaus lie somewhere between fuck all and zero, but he’ll keep trying.’
‘There’s a protest at one of Crowley’s timber mills in Manaus tomorrow,’ O’Connor observed.
‘Even if the missiles are hidden in the timber coming out of Manaus, it would be hard to believe that Crowley would have any knowledge of it,’ Oliveira said, ‘but it’s possible, and I don’t have to tell you, but we’re dealing with ruthless white collar thugs here. I don’t have any proof, but where you’re going, the word on the street is that more than one protestor has disappeared. You don’t cross Marcelo Costa and EVRAN timber.’
‘And by extension, Sheldon Crowley,’ O’Connor agreed. ‘Fraud and deception are part of the furniture in Washington and New York, and there are plenty of high-profile businessmen like Bernie Madoff serving life. But there are none that I can think of who might have attempted things on this scale. If Crowley is involved in this, he’ll face the death penalty for treason.’
‘And I see he’s recently brought a Professor Ahlstrom on to his team,’ said Oliveira, consulting the file he had on EVRAN Brazil.
‘The Nobel Laureate. We suspect he’s there to influence the next election, lobbying Washington against any action on climate change.’
‘Well he’s hit the ground running, and he’s not only lobbying Washington. We approved a visa for Professor Ahlstrom to address a business conference
of high-powered CEOs that was held here in Brasília last week, and the following day he had lunch with the president at the palace.’
‘Crowley’s obviously more than a little concerned that the Brazilian government might be about to impose harsher restrictions on logging in the Amazon. That would put a very big dent in EVRAN Timber.’
‘Crowley’s got reason to be concerned,’ said Oliveira. ‘The government’s under immense pressure from environmentalists, because over 20 per cent of the Amazon’s already gone, but the president’s also under pressure from the thousands of small farmers who occupy the Amazon illegally, and Crowley’s taking advantage of that. It’s not every day a Nobel Laureate, who’s spent his life warning that if we don’t stop burning fossil fuels the planet has a use-by date, jumps ship and decides that he’s pro fossil fuel. We recorded what he had to say at the lunch,’ said Oliveira, plugging a thumb drive into his desktop, ‘but it’s his conclusions that are probably of most interest.’
The glittering luncheon at the five-star Meliá Brasil 21 Hotel was attended by a who’s who of the business world in South America, along with ministers, heads of government departments and ambassadors.
‘I have not changed my position on climate change without a great deal of thought,’ Ahlstrom concluded, ‘but I’m now convinced climate change is a hoax. Just this past week, New York and Washington, along with much of the rest of America, have experienced the most severe snowstorms in living memory. The temperatures out in the Midwest have, on average, been thirty degrees colder than normal. Thirty degrees! Firemen battling a blaze in Minneapolis watched the spray from their hoses turn to ice before it hit the building. They could do with a little global warming up there . . . it’s so cold their beers are turning to ice in the glass!’
The audience burst into applause. O’Connor observed the Nobel Laureate with interest: a man revelling in the laughter and adulation of big business.
‘And down in Australia, crackpot climate scientists, along with fifty or so climate tourists, set off to prove global warming is melting the Antarctic. As one writer put it, they should have obtained a second opinion, or at least consulted mother nature, because their Russian charter ship, Akademik Shokalskiy, became trapped in record volumes of ice. I have bad news for these climate crackpots. NASA have reported that the sea ice around Antarctica is growing, not shrinking, and the earth is cooling, not warming up.’ Ahlstrom waited for the applause to subside.
‘So in summary, ladies and gentlemen, as the governor of Montana and presidential candidate, Carter Davis, reminded Americans in his recent address, we’ve just come through one of the most testing global financial crises in one hundred years, and we need to be focusing on growth and jobs. It’s time to consign this morally bankrupt green agenda to the trashcan and let companies like EVRAN Timber in Brazil do what they do best – raise the standard of living for many fine Brazilians in one of the great countries of the world. I have come to realise that controlled logging is the ultimate in conservation, and loggers are the ultimate conservationists.’
O’Connor shook his head as the applause reached a crescendo and Professor Ahlstrom, his face flushed, beamed at his audience.
‘I take it you think global warming is real?’ Oliveira asked.
‘I’m a scientist. It’s not only real, but if we don’t take action soon, it will be too late. In the meantime, I’m going to see what Marcelo Costa and EVRAN Timber are really up to.’
O’Connor drove his hire car out of the hotel car park in Manaus and headed down toward the river. Located at the confluence of the massive Negro and Solimões rivers in the heart of the Amazon jungle, the sprawling capital of the Amazonas state was eclectic. In 1960, the Brazilian government had been determined to lift the Amazon out of economic isolation, and declared Manaus a ‘free economic zone’. Attracted by generous tax exemptions, EVRAN and other major companies had invested heavily, and much to the dismay of those trying to protect the forest, the area had become a hive of activity. Journalists, artists and intellectuals congregated at the various bars around the plaza of the famous Opera House, while closer to the port, at squares like Praça da Matriz, one could find the usual mix of sleaze, sailors and prostitutes. In the nineteenth century, when the rubber barons held sway here, the rue Visconde de Mauá had been part of a stylish area of the city. Now the wrought iron balconies were rusted and broken, and gaudy blue and pink paint peeled from the two-storey facades.
O’Connor parked and made his way along the waterfront, past dozens of wooden double-decked ferries that would not have been out of place on the Mississippi. He chose a spot where he had a good view of the Chibatão and Super terminals in the industrial area on the river. The intelligence predicting the arrival of the EVRAN container ship had been correct, he mused, focusing his binoculars on the 20 000-tonne MV EVRAN I, berthed at the Super Terminal wharf.
Both the Super Terminal and Chibatão docks were subject to changes in river heights of up to fourteen metres, so they had been constructed as floating wharves, connected to the shore by massive ramps. The world’s greatest river system was navigable for large, ocean-going vessels for 1600 kilometres, all the way to Manaus, from where smaller vessels could navigate for another 1900 kilometres. Unlike other great rivers such as the Nile and the Mississippi, the ocean currents in the Atlantic ensured the Amazon did not form a delta, meaning silting was minimal, and the river required little dredging. At Manaus, the Rio Negro and the Amazon’s major stem, the Rio Solimões, came together to form the official head of the Amazon. The dark waters of the Rio Negro, which originated in low, tropical rainforest, and the muddy waters of the Rio Solimões, which originated high in the Andes of Peru and Ecuador, refused to mix. Because of differences in temperature and speed, they danced, with an invisible barrier separating them, and their embrace was not complete for another ten kilometres downstream.
O’Connor observed the ship with interest. She had not long berthed, and three 45-tonne cranes were hovering above the containers, delivering the first of them to the tractors waiting to haul them along the bridge to the shore. O’Connor pondered his options. If the missiles were already in Manaus, they would likely be kept in shipping containers in one of EVRAN’s storage areas, and without any definitive intelligence, searching them all would be impossible. The only chance of a complete search rested in the hands of the ambassador, and neither McNamara nor Oliveira were holding out any hope there.
O’Connor checked his watch. Time to make his way over to where the protestors were gathering near the slipway to EVRAN timbers. A barge stacked with red cedar and big leaf mahogany had arrived from deep within the jungles, where EVRAN was logging one of the world’s last great forests. O’Connor watched the helmsman manoeuvre it toward the shore where the logs would be loaded onto the rail trolleys and hauled up into the mill.
‘No more logging! Kick EVRAN out! Save our forests! Kick EVRAN out!’
The protestors chanted ceaselessly, waving myriad placards, ranging from the mildly clever ‘Barking Up The Wrong Tree’, to the more serious ‘Six Football Fields Logged Every Minute’.
An effigy of Marcelo Costa with a noose around his neck swung from a street lamp. O’Connor melded in with the crowd, when suddenly he noticed a tall, solidly built man dressed in black. The man had climbed on to a gantry behind an EVRAN fence topped with razor wire. He looked familiar, and O’Connor quietly photographed him.
‘If you interfere with the unloading of lawful cargoes of timber, you will be arrested,’ the man announced through a hand-held megaphone.
The protestors responded by blocking the slipway. The man in black gave a signal and scores of guards, all dressed in black and armed with heavy clubs, streamed out of the doors of the nearby sheds. Two more guards opened the heavy steel gates and the guards swarmed on to the slipway, swinging their clubs with ruthless abandon. O’Connor withdrew a short distance. His mission was not going to be aided by getting embroiled with a bunch of baton-wielding thugs, particula
rly when it seemed there would be no official response. It gets more curious, he thought. No police and no media. Protestors filming the attack found themselves stripped of their iPhones, lifted by their arms and legs and thrown into the river. Outnumbered and overwhelmed, the protestors were no match for Costa’s guards and they withdrew, blood streaming down some of their faces, colleagues supporting those with broken legs.
Back in his hotel room, O’Connor was considering his next move when he received an encrypted message from McNamara on his laptop:
Text from Khan to Jamal: ‘Next shipment due to leave M in next 48 hours.’ I’ve confirmed that Crowley clearly has influence over key players – no chance of official search of containers, but little doubt missiles are about to be loaded. Execute Plan B.
‘Jesus Christ,’ O’Connor muttered, hoping that the piraña wouldn’t be too active tonight.
O’Connor waited until it was dark, and drove down the narrow roads to the waterfront. On either side, the stone fences around the container storage areas were topped with barbed wire, but O’Connor had already reconnoitred an area about 400 metres from the Super Terminal wharf, and he parked under a clump of trees that gave him enough cover. He pulled on his wetsuit and scuba gear, putting any thought of piraña out of his mind, reminding himself that although they were curious, piraña were not the biggest threat to swimming or diving in the Amazon. Notwithstanding Hollywood’s best efforts, attacks by piraña were rare, and usually only in specific circumstances – if the swimmer was bleeding, wearing shiny jewellery, or swimming where there was very little food. The candiru catfish was a far bigger threat – a primitive species of catfish that literally ripped a hole in its prey, allowing the rest of its school to enter the body. O’Connor put that out of his mind as well, and concentrated on the task ahead. He did his final checks, crossed a strip of sand and slipped into the dark waters of the Rio Negro.
The Alexandria Connection Page 29