Cornucopia

by John Kinsella

  In 1914, the enemy was clear - Kaiser Wilhelm II. But one hundred years later the dangers were multiple. The world of 2014 was of course different: it was one world where television was omnipresent and more than half the planet connected to Internet. The world was richer, even Africa, though many blight stricken corners of the planet still existed where human suffering was rampant.

  It was difficult to imagine the consequences of an all out war in the Ukraine, or of a breakdown in the world’s financial system. In the summer of 2014, Europeans sunned themselves on Mediterranean or Atlantic beaches, one year resembled another, unchanging, as comfort and normality was taken for granted. They saw no immediate threats to their general well-being. Donetz, in the Ukraine, was in another world. Putin’s claims and protestations incomprehensible. The dithering reaction of European leaders as weak as that of mid-twentieth century politicians in the face of tyrants’ threats.

  Syria’s Assad massacred his fellow citizens and Gaddafi grimly hung onto his last remaining stronghold in Tripoli. The Arab Spring had turned to dust, as Bahrain, base of the American Fifth Fleet, settled into an uneasy calm with the ruling family tenaciously hanging on to power.

  “It only needs one spark to set the whole of the Middle East on fire,” said Pat. “Imagine what it would do to the price of oil.”

  Fitzwilliams nodded.

  “Gaddafi is still hanging on.”

  “Remember what Clausewitz wrote.”

  Pat looked puzzled as he wondered which bank Clausewitz was with.

  “The only decisive victory is the last one.”

  “Hmm,” mumbled Pat making a mental note to check that out.

  As the risk of economic or confrontational turmoil continued to rumble in the background, Nicolas embraced Angela, Silvio reassured Zapetero, Obama called David on holiday in Tuscany.

  London burned and Tom Barton wondered what would it take to tilt an already disastrous situation into a planetary catastrophe? Was he being paranoid when he imagined huge volcanic eruptions, earthquakes and tsunamis. But experience told him such threats were far from science fiction, huge active volcanoes rumbled in Iceland and in the Kamchatka Peninsula. An explosive eruption could change the climate or provoke earthquakes and tsunamis. Karakatoa in 1883 and more recent examples were ample evidence. The tsunami of 2004 which if had taken place off the coast of California would have been a catastrophically disruptive event for the US and perhaps the world economy.

  The idea of retiring to some distant corner of the world far from wars and crisis was slowly but surely making ground in his mind. He was dogged by the images of weary refugees fleeing Russian mercenaries, or blood thirsty Salafists and their fanatical fighters pillaging high street shops and supermarkets.

  He recalled the words written by St Augustine, one and a half millennium earlier, in his work In the City of God:

  How like kingdoms without justice are to robberies.

  Justice being taken away, then, what are kingdoms but great robberies? For what are robberies themselves, but little kingdoms? The band itself is made up of men; it is ruled by the authority of a prince, it is knit together by the pact of the confederacy; the booty is divided by the law agreed on. If, by the admittance of abandoned men, this evil increases to such a degree that it holds places, fixes abodes, takes possession of cities, and subdues peoples, it assumes the more plainly the name of a kingdom, because the reality is now manifestly conferred on it, not by the removal of covetousness, but by the addition of impunity.

  Barton was not becoming religious, but he was weary with the world and its never ending injustice. He had been lucky, born where he had been, he accumulated considerable wealth, but to what avail? His partner, Sophie Emerson, was more and more concentrated on her career as an architect in London and Biarittz. Was it his fault he asked himself. His life seemed to have become a senseless whirl, aimless, a mindless pursuit of more wealth.

  BATTERSEA

  “Did you see that Fitz?”

  “What?”

  “Battersea Power Station Development has sold ninety five percent of its flats, over eight hundred.”

  “So what,” snapped Fitzwilliams

  “Remember what you said?” said Kennedy sniping at the CEO

  “No.”

  Of course Fitzwilliams forgot. It was one of opportunities he had missed, a miscalculation after the derelict power station’s past owner had been put into administration. In 2012, the site had been bought by a Malaysian consortium whose plan was to transform it into a vast residential real estate development. Off-plan sales were launched in May at a lavish marquee party where prospective buyers were serenaded by Elton John, which coincided with an acceleration of the UK economy, encouraging investors to pile-in, buying off-plan, snapping up hundreds units priced at up to three million pounds each in the first few days, and six million for a penthouse suite.

  “They’re building the new American Embassy there.”

  “Is that a fact,” the CEO replied, feigning disinterest. “When are you leaving for Shanghai?” he asked abruptly changing the subject.

  *

  Once Pat settled into his first class seat on Airbus 380 for Hong Kong he flipped through the morning newspapers. The headlines screamed with delight, it was a field-day for the press, a bolt out of the blue, a huge shock, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the head of the IMF, had been arrested in New York, accused of raping a maid in suite 2806 at the Sofitel Hotel. The maid, a certain Miss Diallo, complained she had been groped by Strauss-Kahn, then, it was reported, Strauss-Kahn forced the thirty three year old Guinean into performing oral sex.

  Pat Kennedy’s Irish Catholic upbringing could not help but see the head of the IMF as a pervert, but it was not without seeing the victim as a kind of temptress. Kennedy’s initially dismay at Strauss-Kahn’s escapade soon turned to amusement. Pat was not naive; he was well-travelled and had himself indulged in opportunistic sex romps, but it seemed to him that the rich economist-politician had asked for trouble, and in New York above all places.

  Pat had spent a year in Boston as a young man and was well aware of the ambiguities of American justice, especially when it concerned prominent political figures. Then there was of course the right to financial compensation, a process widely exploited by American lawyers, especially if the accused was wealthy.

  The head of the IMF and favourite runner for the coming French presidential elections had in a single moment of carnal excitement ruined his career. The picture of him being led in chains to prison reminded Pat of his own frightening brush with the law more than a decade earlier. Good fortune had been on his side and he had got off with a very severe warning.

  It would soon emerge that Strauss Kahn had a track record in doubtful sexual encounters. In Paris a young woman was to accuse him of sexual aggression, alleging he had lunged at her like a ‘rutting chimpanzee’ as he tried to rape her in a Paris appartment.

  *

  Pat was pleased to see John Ennis again. Their first meeting went back to an art fair in Paris, it was when Pat had sought the advice of a specialist in Asian art after acquiring his Cheney Walk home in London. Together they had visited museums and art collections with Ennis enlightening him on the history of Asian art, followed by auction rooms where they bid for decorative collectables.

  Ennis owned galleries in London, Paris and Zurich. More than ten years earlier his sensational discovery of the bones of the last known surviving Homo erectus, had made international news headlines. It happened during one of his expeditions to remote areas of Malaysian Sarawak, on the Island of Borneo, in search of tribal heirlooms.

  The Hong Kong Fine Art Asia fair was a must for all lovers of collectible fine art. With the presence of museum-quality artworks spanning five thousand years of history, from archaic Chinese bronzes to contemporary art, it was a venue that attracted dealers and buyers from the world over.

  John Ennis was present amongst the ninety or so renowned international dealers presenting some of the finest
examples of Asian and Western art, both ancient and modern. Pat’s interest was in ancient Chinese bronzes, ceramics and works of art, which had grown after a guided tour by Lili of the Shanghai Museum’s remarkable collection.

  That morning he had met up with Ennis the Peninsula Hotel and after a late breakfast they headed for Central on the Star Ferry. Pat, like his friend, never missed the opportunity to take a ride on the ferry, nothing pleased them more than the chance to mingle with the crowds of office workers and tourists during the ten minute trip across the harbour.

  The contrast between China and the UK always came as a pleasant surprise on those fine Hong Kong days. The crowds, the movement, a sense of purpose. The economic climate that stifled the North Atlantic nations economies was depressing compared to the seemingly endless boom that China was thriving on. European and American growth had plunged to near zero whilst that of China hovered around ten percent, as it had done so for as many years he could remember. Of course China had started from zero, but that did not comfort Western leaders faced with the dilemma of paralysing stagnation and debt.

  More than two-thirds of all global growth was expected to come from countries of the developing world, where demand was solid and was not dependant on recovery in the West. Ennis understood Pat’s optimism, which his friend reminded him should be tempered by past experience, which had always demonstrated, however good the figures appeared to be, there were always unexpected dangers lurking in the shadows, ready to ensnare unwary and inexperienced investors.

  At the ferry terminal in Central, Pat’s driver was waiting to take them for the short ride to the Convention Centre and the sale preview. It was a spectacular modern building that over-looked the harbour which had played a central role in the 1997 hand-over ceremony ending more than a century and a half of British presence in China.

  That evening Pat with Lili accompanied by John Ennis, arrived for the opening seance of Sotheby’s annual Hong Kong sale at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre situated on the North shore of the Island overlooking Victoria Harbour in Wanchai.

  It was one of the high points of the former colony’s art season.

  LIBYA

  Libya had become a dysfunctional state. Before the demise of Muammar Gaddafi there had been order. Watching the smoke and ruins on the TV screen John Francis was reminded of the trip he had made to the country with friends from Trinity’s department of classical history, soon after the enigmatic colonel had eased travel restrictions for Western visitors.

  The news that NATO had refused to commit itself on the possibility of air strikes on Leptis Magna, if it was discovered military equipment had been hidden there, was yet another sign of increasing human folly to academics and archaeologists.

  After visiting the stunningly beautiful ruins of the Roman theatre at Sabratha, perhaps the finest piece of extant Roman architecture Francis had ever seen, they had flown east to Cyrenaica where more marvels were to be discovered.

  Their visit was a precursor to a new cooperation programme with Libyan archaeologists and researchers in the planning. It included a field trip to the Akakus Mountains in the south-west of the country where a number of prehistoric sites were being explored. Francis remembered their journey through the southern desert, their proximity to unspoilt nature, sleeping under the star filled sky in tiny one man tents, an unforgettable experience.

  At that time the Gaddafi family reigned over the country with an iron fist, a situation that then seemed immutable. The ‘mad colonel’ could not have imagined that in so short a time he would meet a bloody end, surrounded by a throng of rebels in the dusty war torn market town of Sabha on the edge of the Sahara, with a bullet in his head.

  Was Libya better off? Certainly not. Perhaps Nicolas Sarkozy’s philosopher friend had been as crazy as Gaddafi. Bernard-Henri Levy, flaunting his bouffant hairstyle, a ridiculous French bobo intellectuel, had harangued rebels with a fiery oration from the top of a gun carrying pickup truck, camping a latter day Fidel Castro before fawning reporters of French television.

  A

  kakus Mountains – Libya

  Unlike Castro he was a foreigner, and Jewish to boot, in an Arab Muslim country, without the means to back his inflammatory discourse. Tragically a worse fate than the self-proclaimed philospher’s harangue awaited the war torn factions of the benighted country. It was almost as if the eternal destiny of Bedouin tribes was internecine conflict: killing their leaders; and replacing them by like tyrants.

  The savage nature and beauty of the Libyan desert was highlighted one morning when Francis crept from his tent to find a suitable spot to relieve himself. Crouched between the rocks he overlooked a vast reg − a rock strewn plain, unmarked by man, which faded into a purple haze, shrouding the distant mountains. A staggeringly breathtaking setting for an early morning shit.

  Francis, who had seen the Himalayas, the wonders of the Serengeti, Pacific Islands, the Russian Steppe and the Andes, contemplated the scene in awe. It was an existential moment, the realisation of his own insignificance and of civilisation's fleeting existence.

  Man had left few if any mark on the majestic scene. A million hues of ochre decorated the panorama before him and only the soft whisper of the morning wind fitfully interrupted the silence. The beauty of nature moved him to tears, more powerful than the legendary Mountains of Mourne at home in County Down, celebrated by the sad laments of his own tribe’s tragic history.

  Later that day, in the valley that lay below them, they collected stone tools left by passing hunters ten thousand or more years earlier. As far as the eye could see was a carpet of stone tools left by prehistoric hunter-gatherers of the Middle and Upper Pleistocene eras, who had shaped the landscape of the Messak Settafet escarpment.

  As Francis held one of the smooth chocolate coloured stone tools in his hand; polished by time and the dust of the desert, he was moved by a deep sense of communion with the hunter, bridging the millennia that separated their different worlds. It was an epiphany, a moment of realization, a holistic vision, a flash of understanding. As William Burroughs, the American writer who had lived in Tangiers, crudely put it; ‘a frozen moment when everyone sees what is at the end of the fork’.

  Francis wondered about the meaning of life; earlier ways of life; past civilisations, the vestiges of which lay in ruins on the shores of the Mediterranean, more than one thousand kilometres to the north, the modern world, its obsession with money, religion, and senselessness killing.

  UKRAINE

  Barton was not in the least surprised to learn Blair’s strange spin doctor, now a peer of the realm, was about to trade up to an eight million pound home in London. The lord had been a recent guest speaker at a conference organised by the Foundation for Effective Governance at the InterContinental Hotel in Kiev, invited by the Ukraine’s richest man, the oligarch Rinat Akhmetov, partnered by the mouthpiece of capitalism: The Financial Times.

  During his address in televised debate, the lord lavished praise on the host country: ‘As a British and European politician, I have come to admire your country... Ukraine needs to be put on the map - where it is, its people, beauty and its landscape and coastline.’

  The strange lord had been flown in on an all expenses paid trip for the event sponsored by the controversial oligarch. The costs paid for by a foundation set up and funded by Akhmetov, though the peer denied claims he had received a substantial fee.

  Akhmetov, who had paid one hundred and thirty six million pounds for the UK’s most expensive penthouse near Hyde Park, had been accused by his enemies of having underworld links. True or untrue, the question remained: Who had he robbed? For the average Londoner, struggling to find decent accommodation, the accusations did not come as a surprise, conjecture apart, how else could he have come by such a vast fortune in a poor strife torn country with few natural resources? Some suspected underworld links, others questionable business dealings, money laundering and dubious financial affairs.

  The revelations concernin
g New Labour’s fellow travellers no longer surprised. Whilst the British working man and his family continued to suffer from the policies implemented under New Labour, its former leaders and cohorts, profited from the generosity lavished on them by the super-rich who had been afforded help to become even richer during the so called socialists period in power. Its former leaders were invited to the tables of their benefactors and in return they lavished praise on countries of doubtful human rights, frequenting, all costs paid, post-Soviet robber barons, whose fortunes had been built on the industrial heritage stolen from their people.

  Sudden wealth, secret loans, questionable friendships were of course all about ‘people getting filthy rich’.

  Barton had witnessed the lord’s links to Russian oligarchs five years previously in the Aegean, since confirmed by his connections to Oleg Deripaska and others including Timur Kulibayev, the son-in-law Kazakhstan’s President Nursultan Nazarbayev.

  *

  The so-called miracle of the developing world was simply the last hurrah before the economic ice age. At least that’s what the press liked to tell its readers from time to time. The doomsters had never gone away, and with the first signs of improvement visible, they were out in force.

  It was said industrialised nations had exhausted easy to reach conventional resources, leaving China and India to scrape the bottom of the barrel, something that John Francis admitted was true, but at the same time telling those that cared to listen they should invest in innovative, new technologies and the development of new resources.