Actually, she wasn’t all that unrealistic. She wasn’t looking for stardom. Not at her age. But getting steady work as a character actress seemed an achievable goal. She’d had characters and roles by the dozen in her head as far back as he could remember.
She’d been diagnosed as having a non-existent illness. Multiple Personality Disorder. It was a fad diagnosis, now deservedly discredited, but he knew it was crap even then. She wasn’t like Eve in The Three Faces Of Eve. She hadn’t invented alternate selves as a shield against some blocked-out abuse in her childhood. Did she alternate? Yes. But between movie roles. Her multiples were all movie roles. Did she talk to herself? So what? So did he. More people should have a good long talk with themselves. It would help them cut through their own bullshit.
She did manage to be cast in some minor stage productions. Mostly she worked as a waitress. But she was never the same waitress two days in a row. She’d be Katherine Hepburn one day, Bette Davis the next. She’d also done the same thing at home. And she was good. She could even cross over and be Orson Welles. She could do Brando; she could do Charlton Heston. She’d memorized speeches from their movies.
Disappointed, and probably clinically depressed, she finally snapped and ended up institutionalized. He’d never gone to see her. There seemed little point. On any given day, she would be someone else. She would therefore, understandably, not know who he was because he didn’t have a role in the movie. When she died, his father went to make the arrangements. He was told that she had carried herself with great dignity during her final hours on earth. He was told a number of things that she’d said. He recognized most of them. He’d heard them before. They were lines from a movie called, Lilies of the Field. She was Sidney Poitier when she died.
His father’s later years were considerably more balanced. He’d come to like working as a chauffeur, never finding it demeaning in the least. And he’d tell his son stories of the rich and the famous. Most were amusing. A few were disillusioning. But all were in some way instructive. Through these stories and a few first-hand glimpses of his own, Haskell began to develop a taste for the sort of lives these people lived. Chauffeured limos, private jets, stately homes, important friends. He’d seen the sort of deference with which they were treated whether they’d earned it or not. He’d seen the presumption that they were superior. He’d seen how people stepped out of their way. He wanted that kind of respect.
“Respect?”
Well, no. That wasn’t the word. He wanted the power that went with real wealth. Not just access to power. The power itself. As a boy, raised sort of Catholic, he had actually knelt and prayed. He prayed to Saint Jude as his mother often had. Saint Jude, she’d told him, was the go-to guy when faced with a difficult quest. A fat lot of good he’d done her.
But this was then, so he gave it a try. He swore that he would always use his influence wisely and for the greater good of mankind. He later liked to tell the story of how Jude responded. The good saint had said to him, “You’re shitting me, right? I’m putting you on hold while I redirect your call. The devil has a better sense of humor.”
It’s hard to hustle a saint. Over time, they’ve heard it all. Jude saw right through his professed altruism. Jude knew that he knew, even at that tender age, that he might have to leave a few bodies in his wake if they should stand in his way.
“Um…”
Okay, that’s not true. He didn’t think that way then. Stepping over people, maybe, but not whacking them wholesale. That would come later after life taught him that half measures seemed to take twice the effort.
His mother might have always been a bit of a loon, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t learn from her. She was forever acting; forever in a role, and he would often be her sole audience. He’d come to know most of her speeches by heart and would often recite them himself, and in character. The difference was that Haskell knew he was acting. His mother, for the most part, did not. From her, he’d learned to be a chameleon. He could seem to be whatever he needed to be. All it took was some study and rehearsal. Add in a little identity theft, a few forged documents, a well-thought out plan and, voila, here he was, Charles Barrington Haskell, with nowhere to go but straight up.
Barrington, thought Haskell. That was a nice touch. He’d found the name on a street map of Chicago.
From the outset, he’d decided to build his career where the money and the fun was. Big Oil. He’d considered Wall Street, but it held no appeal. Sure, one could get rich in the financial game. Obscenely rich. As his banker friend had. Even richer when so many others went under. Bottom-feeding on their scraps while taking government largesse. Some investment bankers found finance exciting, but all they really did was move money around while raking off as much as they could. A criminal mind was certainly an asset, but theirs was a risk-averse criminal mind. That smacked of cowardice to his way of thinking. He felt sure that he’d soon die of boredom.
Big oil, however, was inherently criminal. Unabashedly so. Almost gleefully so. Rough and ready. Bare knuckles. Nor was he being cynical. God had seen fit, in his infinite irony, to put most of the world’s oil in the hands of thugs and despots. The Middle East certainly. No exceptions in that region. Ditto Russia, Venezuela, Nigeria, Angola, and especially Iran and the Caucasus. Every oil company, therefore, needed thugs of its own who were ready to “downsize” those who wouldn’t stay bought. Or to “educate” any who resisted being bought. But we don’t call them thugs. We used to call them contractors. That term, however, had fallen from favor after all those unpleasant episodes in Iraq. Now we call them mediators. They reconcile disputes. It has a much better ring to it. Something like marriage counseling. Except that these often end in something more than divorce.
Nor, for that matter, are their actions really criminal. Well, technically they are. There are laws on the books. But none of the industry’s more aggressive undertakings has ever even led to an arrest that he knew of, let alone a criminal conviction. Why? We need that oil. We need all we can get. An adequate and uninterrupted supply is vital to our national security. And no two words in the history of any country had covered a greater multitude of sins than those two. National Security.
He had risen to the top while still in his late thirties. CEO of Trans-Global Oil & Gas and its many “independent” subsidiaries. One of these, called Scorpion Systems, was an oil field security firm. The mogul found it for him. Got it to sell out to him. The mogul had, and still has, something on its founder that would have destroyed him if published. Wouldn’t say what it is. That would stay between them. The mogul likes to keep a few cards up his sleeve. Fine. Just don’t forget who you’re playing with.
“Suffice it to say,” the mogul had told him, “that this flawed, but exceptionally talented man will stay at the nominal helm of the firm and will do whatever is required of him.”
“Answering to whom?”
“Why, to you, of course, Charles. I merely hold the leash to keep him from straying. Perhaps a little tug now and then.”
Scorpion Systems was a gold mine, not to mix metaphors. An oil ministry - Saudi or Kuwaiti, for example - would hire the firm to assess how vulnerable its facilities were to attack. The primary focus was on terrorist attacks, but sabotage by competing oil interests was always a danger as well.
To find likely weak points, Scorpion Systems would, of necessity, be given unlimited access. It would know those installations inside out from well head, whether on land or off-shore, to refinery to the storage tanks at dockside. All of it computerized every step of the way, so his firm had access to those systems as well. It would recommend and implement protective measures against all conceivable threats. But it would also know how to defeat those same measures if and when doing so would benefit Trans-Global.
Beautiful. Couldn’t lose. He had it both ways. They’d be paying for protection from everyone but him, never dreaming that he’d planted a few bugs of his own, especially in their computers. He could shut a field down for a month with on
e phone call and then he, the mogul and their good friend, the banker, would make a few million off the spike that it would cause in the spot market price of crude oil.
Great fun, but there always seemed to be something missing. It took him a while to realize what it was. After a day of high-stakes machinations, he’d go home to one of his big empty houses and the place would feel like a tomb. No one to talk to. No one to tell. Sure, there were women. The kind attracted by power. Easy pickings. Use and discard. But nothing that could be called a relationship. Or even, for that matter, a friendship. So he’d shopped for a wife of a different sort. Or rather he’d hired a search team to find one. It found several likely candidates and he wooed and married two of them, but neither had worked out all that well.
The first was the socialite. Family fortune in timber. She taught him how to entertain properly and she was, of course, endorsed by the mogul. But a dullard otherwise. Sent her packing three years later. Then the concert pianist. A touch of class there and much better in the sack. Low maintenance, too, because she practiced for hours. That meant fewer demands on his time. No excitement, however. Aside from the sex, she was more of a pet. More like one of his holdings than a wife. He found himself yearning for the type of woman who could match him in daring, in adventurousness, who could challenge him, stand up to him, be a true partner, a woman who could cover his back. Was there such a woman out there? He knew of only one. And that was one more reason to detest Martin Kessler. He has her. He has Elizabeth Stride. And worse, he comes and goes. Why does she take him back? Well, he won’t be coming back from where Charles Haskell sends him. Then maybe she’ll come to her senses.
Where were we? Ah, his holdings. Aside from Trans-Global Oil & Gas, he had interests in several other companies as well, all of which had relevance to national security and therefore basked in that same protection. He was big, but he could have been bigger.
He’d formed a partnership with Artemus Bourne. Bourne was a giant. He was bigger than Trans-Global. A dozen senators in his pocket. Several foreign heads of state. The deal was struck on this very spot. Sitting around a fire. Done with a handshake. Bourne was, of course, a Bohemian. It was a deal that would have been worth tens of millions to himself and to several other members of this club. It would have given them control of Angola. America would have benefited as well. It would have had a substantial guaranteed source. Not a cheaper source, perhaps. This was no freebie. But this country would no longer have the need to pretend that the Saudis are allies and friends.
But Bourne, without consulting yours truly, decided that he wanted the diamond trade as well. This put him into conflict with the Israelis, which is to say Kessler, not to mention with Harry Whistler. Start with Kessler, Bourne decided. Neutralize him. Not kill him, use him. Against the Israelis. How? Very simple. What does Kessler value most? The answer? Elizabeth Stride.
Stride thought him dead. Kessler had let her think so. Why? Nobody seems to know. But she was alive and Bourne’s people found her. She was living, quite openly, on Hilton Head Island. Quite brazenly, considering the price on her head. Maybe she continued to use her real name so that Kessler, on the chance that he was still alive, would be able to find her one day. Or maybe she had a death wish herself. Whatever her reason, Bourne wouldn’t have cared. He certainly didn’t care about the reward. All he did care about was having her as a hostage to make Martin Kessler play ball.
And he blew it. Or his thugs did. They went to her home, found two women there, snatched the one they believed to be Stride and left the other woman with her throat cut. They got her off the island bound and gagged. Too well bound. Too well gagged. The woman suffocated. Long story short, the world collapsed on Bourne’s head. Bourne, himself, was dead two days later, his house burned down around him, his empire in tatters. By whom? Kessler surely. And Elizabeth Stride. Aided by, one assumes, the Israeli Mossad and by Harry Whistler with his storied long reach.
There was more to the story. Actually much more. But to think those outside forces could do so much damage… and then slink away… as Stride has since done… probably plotting further revenge… answering to no one for what they had done. The injustice of it. The disproportionateness of it. Don’t we live in a nation of laws?
“Say, what?”
Okay, thought Haskell, some hypocrisy there. But the rest of us know that there can be a price. Kessler and his gang seem totally immune. And it’s not over, is it? How could anyone think it is? They surely intend additional mischief because one simply doesn’t do what they’ve done without a longer range purpose in mind. And yet they’re left alone. It’s insane, but there it is. Because of them, here we are, back working with the Saudis, reduced to subverting this moronic minor prince who can’t even control his own family.
Well, perhaps not much longer. He would rather have that disk. With the disk, the banker’s right, they’d have no need of the prince. The fly in the ointment, however, is Leland. Will he help or will he not? Or will Leland decide to grab that disk for himself? Let me sleep on it, he says. And he will. He’ll consider it. He’ll also consider the power he’d have if all those Saudi princes had to kiss his ass every time they need to make a withdrawal.
We’ll need a new plan. Plan A was a washout. Invite Leland here, say we’ll sponsor him for membership, ask a few simple favors of him in return – that Kessler business being just one - and assume that he’d be thrilled to comply. It had actually been the banker’s idea. Haskell had not been so sure.
He’d asked the banker, “What makes you think that he’ll go for it?”
“Of course he will. Do you know anyone who wouldn’t? He’d stand among the most powerful men in the world.”
“Um… he kind of does already, don’t you think?”
“Acting Secretary, Charles. The man is a temp. An appointed position at the pleasure of the White House.”
“Even so,” Haskell answered, “he’s no empty suit. Howard Leland has earned every stripe.”
“And he’s in a job that he’ll no longer have beyond the next election at the latest. He’ll join the lecture circuit for a year or two or be given a red sash and shipped off to some embassy. He’ll never have bonded the way we do here. He’ll never have awakened with the first rays of dawn realizing that he is the rarest of men. Realizing that he is a Bohemian.”
Haskell smiled. “I feel like bursting into song.”
“And with good reason,” said the banker. “This is no mere conceit. No club in the world is more exclusive than this one. No membership, anywhere, is more desperately sought.”
“Okay,” said Haskell. “I suppose it’s worth a shot.”
“Believe me,” said the banker, “he’ll jump at the chance. You couldn’t buy this sort of influence, this sort of prestige, if you had all the money in the world.”
Brilliant man, thought Haskell, but a bit of a twit. He makes his own kids, now full grown; call him “Sir.” You can’t touch him, however, when it comes to knowing how to build a fortune using other people’s money. Especially when they don’t know he’s doing it.
He’s right, however, about the club’s roster. Name a top CEO or any global financier and chances are he’s a member. Name an important federal government official and he’s either a member or he’s on the waiting list. And the wait for those willing to wait their turn has been averaging more than eight years. At least seven former presidents have been members as well, one of whom was holding court just two campfires away. Haskell avoided ex-presidents and such. They‘re inclined to be bores, still living in the past, too long out of the loop to have any real influence.
Truth is told, except for the networking aspect, this whole two-week retreat was a bore. “Weaving spiders come not here,” said a sign at the entrance. It meant that wheeling and dealing are discouraged. Of course it is widely ignored. So, to some extent, was the no-cell-phone rule, but you mustn’t be seen with one at your ear. Very bad form. You’d be asked to leave at once. And God help you if it were to s
tart ringing during one of the rituals or lectures.
There were several scheduled lectures; they were called “lakeside talks.” They were given by prominent members and guests. They were almost never worth hearing. By the time the speakers spoke, what they said was old news to members who had even better sources. Some spoke of the future. Almost always up-beat. Our institutions will prevail. A new dawning for mankind. These were speakers who lived in guarded estates behind razor ribbon-topped walls. The only mankind most of them ever saw were men like his father, driving their cars, or women like his mother bringing their meals.
During the day it resembled a summer camp where rich old white men played at being boys again. Except that nobody slept in a tent or a lean-to. The so-called cabins, though rustic, were more like country inns. All were named for distinguished former members and guests. Theirs was named for Teddy Roosevelt. He’d been a member. He’d slept there. Each had a breakfast room on the first floor that doubled as a reading room or card room. Several, like his own, had a cozy little bar whose walls were covered with assorted old photos, some dating back more than a century. And the head of an elk and the pelt of a cougar, both shot by Teddy himself.
Most cabins had eight or ten bedrooms or suites and all were equipped with every comfort. Most had their own wet bars. Most bathrooms had Jacuzzis. The rooms had phones, but they were room-to-room phones. No outside calls made or taken. No locks on the doors either. Not on any of the rooms. Not even a latch on the door to one’s bathroom. The founders felt that locks were inimical to good fellowship. A little framed sign on the desk downstairs said so. Haskell had never felt especially chummy while taking a dump at six o’clock in the morning, but at least the bathrooms had doors.
The Aisha Prophecy Page 10