Oil & Corruption

by Gareth Flood

  ‘Of course. We-’

  ‘This Demetchev they have put on the case,’ the President ploughed on, oblivious to the meek protestations of his number two. The President was obviously going somewhere with this, ‘the one they call “The Bear”. Everyone speaks incredibly highly of him. They say he is a faithful servant to Russia and has never failed her. I want him to take full control of the FSB side of things. Give him full power to go anywhere with this. Kekushev is too busy to run the investigation effectively. He has too many other things on his mind. The greatest of which is how many months are left till he retires to his dacha.’

  ‘But I will still be running the overall thing?’ Kirkov asked.

  ‘Yes, Anatoly, he will report directly to you. This is still a big chance for you at home and abroad. That chance is still there.’

  ‘Then I agree that it is a good idea.’ whispered Kirkov.

  Overhead, the two air superiority fighters came at each other from the opposite ends of the sky. Each tilted away from the other at the last moment to cross paths right above the assembled crowd. The noise was enormous and rattled the stage.

  The Kazak President, still standing, whooped like an American with delight.

  The two Russians both smiled and surreptitiously looked at their watches.

  14

  London

  It was standing room only in the Victorian themed conference room, within the bowels of the prestigious London Astoria hotel.

  On a normal day, it was the sort of hotel that was so exclusive people could not take off their sunglasses inside.

  Today was different.

  Most of the people on the lower floors were from the press, business magazines, investment journals and Investment Trusts. There was also a sprinkling of black suited company executives amongst the tightly packed throng.

  The auspicious occasion that had prompted the gathering was the very first press conference of Warren Tarrant - the new CEO of the largest multinational oil company in the world.

  All were eager to hear the new boss impart his vision. They wanted his views on: the organisation, energy security, the environment and most importantly - their pension returns. They also wanted to know how much he differed from his recently departed predecessor - Hoot Mitchell.

  ‘Hope this guy knows what he is talking about in front of the press.’ one veteran journalist said to a colleague, as they took a seat and readied their notebooks on the front row.

  ‘Yeah,’ replied his colleague, from a different newspaper ‘The last guy didn’t have a friggin’ clue.’

  As Warrant Tarrant stood behind the curtain while preparing to walk onto the world stage as the boss of all bosses, he paused a minute to reflect and enjoy the momentous moment.

  He had wangled, politicked and bullied for the last twenty years to get to this point. He knew they called him “Warren Tyrant” behind his back - but his methods had worked. His nomination from the board of directors had been a mere formality.

  After appreciating the sheer grandeur of himself for a few moments, he opened the curtain and stepped through to claim what was rightfully his - the most powerful podium in the private sector.

  Polite applause rippled around the room as he stood up to the microphone. Camera flashes were going off sparingly. The press were not sure how many of them would be printed.

  The two journalists started writing notes and then comparing them. The first showed what he had written as a description of Tarrant:

  Five foot three, bald, slightly ginger. Build of an old school English pugilist seen in pictures from the nineteen thirties - the ones with teams crouching together in sepia while laced tightly into leather trunks and boots.

  The second journo laughed quietly, then shared his notes across the chairs:

  Face looks like it lost more fights than it had won - particularly in the boarding school divisions. “Alpine” nose, clearly broken in youth and not quite set straight.

  Both journalists were trying to stifle giggles. These corporate affairs were always interminably dull - the journalistic challenge was to liven them up in any way possible.

  The first journalist scribbled furiously on his pad and passed it across:

  Child molester glasses? it said.

  The second wrote beneath it and passed it back.

  Blotched, pockmarked skin – left too long in microwave…

  Up on the podium, Tarrant knew all the writers were thinking of how to describe him - he didn’t care what he looked like.

  He had flunkies to dress him in smart suits but other than that – he knew he was bald, slightly ginger and ugly - a new set of glasses would not make him any prettier.

  Besides, this was not the telecoms or IT industry, where tall, cover model CEO’s with slicked hair reigned supreme and the stock price of the company could go up or ten dollars depending on how the CEO looked that day.

  This was the oil industry.

  Nobody got excited or sexed up over oil products.

  Tarrant had learned this the hard way in his very first assignment with the organisation. He had been a naïve but proud engineering graduate, thrust into his first sales role - selling Bitumen, or as the Americans liked to call it - ‘Assfault’.

  Tarrant always carried with him the memory of going back to the scum pit that was his home town of Doncaster, in the north of England. The town was essentially a foreground of some rough pubs serving welfare subsidized council estates, against a background of a major rail junction and closed coal pits. He had met up with his only school friend and they had hit the bars.

  Back then he still had hair and retained some of the build from playing rugby at university. Two girls had walked past and his mate had stopped them.

  ‘Ladies, ladies, let us buy you a drink.’ Tarrant’s mate had said to them.

  The girls had flicked their hair, looked them up and down and asked, ‘what do you do?’

  Ordinarily a harsh question, but then fifty percent of the town was living off state benefits, just having job was social currency in that part of the world. The dream of all the young girls was to have all the single mum welfare benefits and a bloke with a job to pay for things as well.

  The killer put down came from his friend, ‘Well I’m a pilot and he sells Bitumen.’ The scorn in their eyes - he never forgot it.

  He was the one laughing now.

  In the oil industry the numbers spoke - Tarrant always delivered the numbers.

  As Tarrant took his place at the podium, he knew he stood to make millions.

  It’s my time and it’s going to be an epoch. he thought, These idiots will remember my name for generations to come!

  Tarrant raised his arms to quell the clapping in the room, feeling like a Roman emperor about to address the seething masses. In those days, the Emperor would garner favour with the plebians by having loaves of bread tossed into the crowd. Today’s version of the bread was information.

  He would toss them some morsels but keep them hungry, always wanting more from him. He looked out over the floor and beamed his plastic smile that the image consultants had forced him to use until it no longer hurt. But behind the plastic was a feeling of disgust.

  They are still plebs, he decided.

  He would throw them some crumbs but they would still have no idea what he knew.

  It was his game now and he held all the best cards.

  My time! he thought triumphantly as he began to address the crowd.

  Forty minutes later the press conference was ending. Tarrant would take no more questions and was attempting to deliver his sign off with a flourish. He was put off slightly when he felt vibrating in his pocket.

  The vibrating came from a very special and encrypted mobile phone. Only a few people had the number. It was only used on urgent occasions.

  Tarrant finished on something about ‘delivering the vision and exceptional shareholder returns’, before departing the podium quickly; suddenly remembering that he should walk out with an air of s
urety and confidence. If you looked uncomfortable and as though you couldn’t wait to get off the stage, it made people think you had something to hide. Tarrant brushed aside the curtain at the back of the stage and once through, fished the vibrating phone from an inside jacket pocket.

  ‘Yes’ he answered quietly, while looking to see who else was around. Some flunkeys where coming towards him to shower praise. He waved them away.

  The voice he heard coming through phone was robotic. He knew it was being run through a state of the art scrambling system. The software ran both ways on the phone, so neither of the callers could be identified through voice recognition programs. The call could not be traced either.

  ‘Greetings.’ said a ghostly, tinny voice in his ear, ‘We may have ourselves a problem.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ whispered Tarrant, his voice filled with intensity.

  ‘A new man has been put in charge of the investigation on the Russian intelligence services side.’ the tin voice said.

  ‘So take care of him.’ Tarrant stated. ‘Why is this urgent enough to call me? Just deal with it.’

  ‘Because this man is different. They call him “Medvjed” – The Bear. He cannot be bought. Eliminating him will draw even more attention to where there is too much already. He is like an attack dog and that is how he will handle the investigation. He does not care who he upsets and manages to maintain this even in Russia, because he gets results.’ intoned the hollow voice.

  ‘Who is sponsoring him in this position?’ asked Tarrant. Many times in his career, when being scratched by an unwelcome claw in the organization, he had found it was easier to go upwards and find a way to lop off the head that controlled the claw.

  ‘The President of Russia.’ the unemotional voice stated flatly.

  ‘Shit.’ Tarrant said.

  ‘Exactly.’ said the robotic voice, with a kind of Game Over finality. ‘Which is why we should prepare to leak something to the press in the meantime. We may need to shore up the blame against someone else, throw this Bear off the scent while we figure out some way to get to him.’

  ‘Right. Agreed.’ Tarrant said.

  The line clicked off. Tarrant put the special phone back in his pocket and motioned for the flunkeys to come over and tell him how great he was.

  15

  Paris

  Jonathan walked through the doors of a large department store in Paris.

  He’d found his way there after a long and tortuous conversation with the old man who ran the downmarket hotel he had stayed in the previous night. He wanted to buy clothes in a local shopping centre, as he figured the tourist areas would be where whoever was trying to kill him would focus their search - not in some dingy suburb on the far east side of town.

  The old man in the hotel had been highly recalcitrant in the matter of giving directions. Probably because he wanted to direct the Englishmen to the tourist districts, where he would be most royally ripped off, in the cause of subsidizing the unsustainable French lifestyle. The old man had kept drawing circles on the tourist districts with his finger, while Jonathan had drawn smaller ones around the outlying suburbs. They eventually had a meeting of minds through Jonathan’s broken French and the Frenchman’s incoherent English.

  After a short taxi ride, he was now shopping for new outfits and disguises.

  ‘This is a time when my atrocious fashion sense will serve me well.’ he said to himself, as he started looking through rails of shirts.

  He had been shopping for about an hour, trawling up and down the racks of clothes and picking up similar items to what he saw locals wearing, when he turned a corner and froze in his tracks.

  I can’t believe it! he thought, Is it too much of a coincidence?

  His heart was racing as adrenaline was dumped wholesale into his system.

  As he was about to backtrack slowly in his steps - she turned and looked straight at him.

  His eyes were locked with those of Julie Anguillarme. Julie worked in the Paris office of the organisation. Jonathan had gotten to know her at a friendly level on a month long project he had worked on in the city.

  They had hit it off from the start, after a laughable incident when he thought he was asking for a stapler in French, but mispronounced it and actually asked for fellatio.

  Jonathan had always found her attractive but was too shy to do anything about it.

  Now he was terrified for his life as he looked into her sultry French eyes within her pretty face that was framed by a chic auburn bob.

  She started walking towards him!

  ‘Run!’ his mind screamed.

  He was frozen to the spot.

  ‘Jonathan?’ she asked quizzically as she got to within a metre of him. Her head was cocked to one side and her face was a mixture of surprise and disbelief. Jonathan’s legs still felt like lead but he was now looking wildly around for men in black coats - moving toward them for the kill.

  Everything seemed normal in the store. He turned back to Julie, who was smiling as though she had gotten over the surprise and was genuinely happy to see him.

  It’s all too convenient. he thought. She must be working for them.

  He took her arm and herded her toward a row of coats that partially shielded them from sight of the rest of the store.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ he demanded.

  She took her arm back.

  ‘I…live here?’ she said, sounding confused and surprised. ‘My apartment is two blocks away. I’m…shopping. It is more surprising that you are here!’

  ‘Mmm, convenient.’ Jonathan said. ‘What is the first shop on the left when you walk through the main doors?’

  ‘A Decathlon.’ Julie answered. ‘Sells sporting equipment. Why?’

  ‘Why are you here on a weekday?’

  ‘I took the day off as I’m having furniture delivered this afternoon. I only moved into my new place last week.’ Julie said.

  ‘What have you heard from the office?’ Jonathan asked, moving his face closer to hers.

  ‘Jonathan.’ she said looking stern. ‘You are acting very strangely. I’m not sure I like this.’

  ‘Please, it’s really important.’ he said.

  ‘Nothing. Had no contact. Everything was fine when I left yesterday. Why? What is going on? What are you doing here?’ Julie asked.

  Jonathan looked around again.

  Everything was a picture of shopping normality.

  ‘I have one final question. Then I’ll explain, just bear with me, please! How many people at the office know where you live?’ he asked.

  ‘Not many. Just my friends. I moved last week and haven’t updated my details. So technically no-one on the company side.’ Jonathan’s shoulders went down slightly and he exhaled deeply.

  I can’t be that paranoid in thinking that everyone in the company is in on this. he thought.

  As he looked into her eyes again, he decided to take the biggest chance he had ever taken in his life.

  ‘Sorry I was acting strangely.’ he said, while thinking quickly, ‘A lot has happened over the last few days. Someone tried to kill me last night so I’m understandably a little on edge.’

  ‘No!’ Julie exclaimed. ‘Kill you?’

  ‘Yes. Now I may need your help. Julie, will you help me?’

  ‘Uuh, sure.’ Julie said; looking confused again.

  *

  During the ten-minute walk back to Julie’s flat, Jonathan attempted to tell her as much as he dared.

  What he ended up doing was unburdening his soul, in case he died and his entire life was in vain. He tried not to panic her by continually looking over his shoulder but she seemed oblivious to any apparent danger as her warm brown eyes stayed fixed on him and wide with incredulity.

  He would tell her something, she would exclaim, ‘No! No!’ in her cute French voice and he would fire back, ‘Yes! Yes!’.

  He managed to condense everything that had happened to him in the last few days since the report had been submitted. It
was only when they got to her front door and she inserted her key that her eyes opened even wider.

  ‘But Jonathan,’ she said, almost breathless, ‘if all this is true, then we are in great danger. Even now.’

  ‘Yes, Julie, yes. Before you turn that key, you still have a choice of whether to help me or not. If you do not - I understand. I will turn away right now and disappear. All I ask is that you do not speak of this to anyone until it has come out in the media.’ Jonathan said.

  Julie hesitated with her hand on the key in the door. She released the key and let her arm drop to her side.

  She’s going to say no! he thought.

  She turned to fully face him.

  ‘Come inside.’ she said, ‘I’ll help you where I can for now.’

  Jonathan breathed a sigh of relief as he followed her in.

  Neither of them knew that as they had approached Julie’s door, they had walked through a sensor beam that had been hidden in a bush on the path to the door. Walking through the beam had triggered a signal on a laptop in a room in central Paris; the operator of the laptop was looking at multiple video feeds and was continually switching to feeds with activity – like people walking through sensors.

  Once it had become clear that Jonathan had not been killed in the hotel explosion, the people charged with killing him had set up an operations room to find him and complete their task. Using the considerable resources put at their disposable, they had managed to hack into many of the cities CCTV systems to try to pick Jonathan up again. They were also counting on Jonathan potentially contacting someone he knew from the French office of his company. On the off chance this would happen, they had surreptitiously installed a sensor and small camera in the last twenty four hours near the entrance of the home of all one hundred and twenty company employees of the Paris office. The operator of the laptop turned on a small camera, no bigger than a lipstick, that had been attached to the security light on the outside of Julie’s flat. The picture was in black and white and grainy but the operator could easily see Julie and a man fitting Jonathan’s description. The operator typed a text message containing a code and Julie’s address into a mobile phone and hit the send button. The phone beeped almost immediately with a reply, the screen flashed: 20 mins.