Transition

by Ethan Arkwright

  It was clear that the journalists did not know much at this stage. The Russian government was being its usual source of disinformation. ‘Special experts’ were on all the news programmes, postulating that all sorts of random people were responsible: from the Chechens to Muslim fundamentalists to the Russian Mafia.

  Just as Jonathan put his feet up and took his first swig of beer, his mobile phone rang on the table next to him. He looked at the caller identification in horror.

  Falcus!

  At a time like this, Jonathan had to answer. His hand trembled as it picked up the phone and hit the answer button.

  ‘You watching the news, boy?’ Falcus’s voice boomed over the phone.

  ‘Yes,’ Jonathan said dejectedly as he slumped slightly in his chair.

  ‘Can you believe it?’ Falcus exclaimed.

  ‘No.’

  ‘I’ve not been this excited in years,’ Falcus said, the pitch in his voice rising as he spoke.

  ‘Huh?’ Jonathan grunted.

  ‘You know what this means, don’t you?’ Falcus asked.

  ‘Hopefully absolutely nothing to do with me,’ Jonathan replied truthfully.

  ‘It means a shake-up in the management structure of the company. Everyone will be jockeying for new positions.’

  ‘Oh. No sadness at all then, that people have been killed?’ Jonathan asked.

  ‘Calvin? Hell, if some terrorist hadn’t done it, his wife probably would have as soon as he retired. Besides – he knew the risks. You want to swim with the big sharks, you got to be prepared to lose some flesh – know what I mean?’

  ‘He lost half his brains, apparently,’ Jonathan said, as he took another large swig of beer.

  ‘For us, this is bigger than Calvin!’’ Falcus yelled.

  ‘For you, you mean.’

  ‘Aw, don’t be like that, son. Look, you haven’t figured this out yet, so I’ll tell you what this is. This is my chance of redemption for Venezuela.’

  ‘Ah, I see. Time to come back in from the cold.’

  ‘You’re damn right. And to make it happen, every card in the deck must be stacked in my favour, boy. So you better have that report finished by Wednesday – or else!’

  Jonathan tilted his head away from the phone as Falcus yelled.

  ‘Oh,’ Falcus said, calming down again, but still very excited. ‘Got another call already – let the jockeying begin!’

  With a click, Falcus had hung up.

  ‘Thanks, Falcus. Always a pleasure. Cheers for sorting everything out.’ Jonathan clicked off the phone and downed the rest of his beer. He picked up the phone again and autodialled Conor.

  Conor would still be in the office at this time.

  ‘Yo!’ yelled Conor through the phone. ‘You seen the news?’

  ‘Yes. Hard to believe. What do you make of it all?’ Jonathan asked.

  ‘Well, it’s obvious the two of them were killed for a reason. The tricky bit is to work out what it was – if anyone can ever get to it. The even trickier bit is finding out who’s actually behind it all. Assuming for now it’s even the same person – or government.’

  ‘What does everyone else in the office think?’ Jonathan asked.

  ‘Oh, the political conversations abound. On the surface, everyone’s bouncing ideas no better than those in the news: terrorists, Algerians, eco-whackos.’

  ‘What about a shake-up in the organisation?’ Jonathan enquired.

  ‘That too, everyone’s scuttling around trying to find out if the changes will affect them.’

  ‘Yes, I just had a call from Falcus. He was very excited.’

  ‘Case in point,’ Conor said.

  ‘For half the senior management this is the greatest opportunity since the communist countries opened up; for the other half, it’s self-protection time.’ Jonathan said

  ‘Huh!’ Conor snorted. ‘Don’t lose any sleep over those guys. The whole place would cave in if they didn’t have guys like us doing all the work.’

  Jonathan laughed.

  ‘Let’s go out and hit the bars,’ Conor said, moving the conversation away from work. ‘I know this great Tex-Mex place just off Trafalgar Square. We’ll watch some baseball.’

  ‘You, my friend, are beyond redemption. You live in London, for God’s sake – go and see a play or something.’ Jonathan said.

  ‘Boring.’

  ‘I’m going to go for a run.’

  ‘All right,’ Conor said. ‘Your loss.’

  ‘Call me if you hear anything else.’ Jonathan said, earnestly.

  ‘You too. Stay safe.’ Conor replied.

  ‘Cheers.’

  Jonathan put the phone down again as he heard the key to the front door being used; it was Harry coming home. Jonathan didn’t feel like dealing with his flatmate at this moment, and headed for his bedroom to get changed into his running gear. Some exercise was just what he needed to blast the cobwebs from his mind.

  Ten minutes later, he was hitting the pavement at a fast running pace. He made his way from the flat in Southwark towards the Thames and began following his usual exercise route, which was a large loop down the South Bank, across Westminster Bridge, up Embankment, and across Blackfriars Bridge back into south London.

  As he ran, he started to think about how his life had come to be in this state. He had joined a global company for adventure, to travel the world on exciting assignments – but he didn’t get any. He joined to make a difference to world events by changing an oil company from the inside – but that wasn’t happening. All that happened was that he toiled on spreadsheets in an office to such an extent that he struggled to recall his interests outside of work.

  How to change things? he mused as he ran between the tourists outside the Globe Theatre.

  How do I get back to travelling the world and doing exciting things that make a positive difference in the world? he thought. First, though, I have to get to the end of this assignment, otherwise I won’t have the flexibility to change my fate ... I need a certain amount of money in the bank to have the luxury to switch lives.

  This train of thought inexorably dragged his focus back to current events, and the project he had to complete for Falcus or prematurely end his career and salary.

  As the Festival Hall and the Hayward Gallery hove into view, he recalled something Falcus had said in the office: ‘Meeting of bigwigs in Moscow to decide new pipelines – the company needs to be in on the deal.’

  Jonathan stopped running as a moment of panic overtook him.

  What if my company is involved in the murders? involved in some secret backroom deal to push a new oil pipeline through? What does that mean for me, if I’m doing work on that very project for them?

  He walked to the railing of the walkway and looked out over the chaotically churning waters, which seemed to reflect his state of mind. He turned away from the angry river and put his head in his hands.

  Don’t panic, he thought: there’s no proof of anything!

  A random thought popped into his head – something a senior manager had said to him when he had first started out in the company: Focus on the things you can control.

  Right, he thought, what does that mean in this situation? Get the report done by Wednesday, then start a plan to do something different with your life.

  He lifted his head up and started running again, with Westminster in his sights. As he ran he kept repeating to himself, ‘Report by Wednesday; start plan for new life.’

  8

  Moscow, London

  Beneath the dome of the yellow and white neo-classical Senate building in the Kremlin, the president of the Russian Federation was venting his fury at anyone in sight.

  ‘So let me get this straight,’ he yelled at the two hapless individuals in front of him. ‘You’re blaming the Jews and the Arabs!’

  The supreme head of Russian intelligence, Aleksey Kekushev, took a sidelong glance at Andrei Demetchev, his number two.

  ‘With current intelligence – yes,’ explai
ned Kekushev. ‘These assassins – whoever they were – were too good. They left not a trace anywhere. Not one human hair. It’s like these men were killed by ghosts.’

  The president flung himself into his official chair and buried his head in his hands.

  ‘We have a national crisis!’ the President yelled. ‘Where the vice president and a global CEO are assassinated a short car ride from here – and we don’t know anything. My intelligence service is blaming it on poltergeists!’

  The newly promoted replacement Russian vice president, Anatoly Kirkov, formerly the energy minister, stood to the right and behind the president’s desk. Kirkov had made sure not to stand in front of the desk – lest he be associated with the failure that was being presented to the president.

  The security men shifted in their discomfort, and the new VP smirked.

  Kirkov could have said something that would aid them, but didn’t – he was enjoying watching them squirm.

  ‘This is not good enough!’ yelled the president, as he banged the desk in front of him.

  ‘We have half the force on the case. Led personally by Demetchev here, our best man,’ Kekushev said.

  The president leant forward. ‘And no elements of our own services were involved in this? No FSB?’

  ‘No. Not even from black operations,’ Kekushev replied.

  Bullshit, thought the President. Nothing of this scale would go down without some elements of them being involved.

  ‘The press all over the world is going crazy,’ the president said. ‘We’re looking extremely bad at the moment. Whatever comes out of this, we’re going to have a hard time keeping a sanitized lid on it. Anatoly ...’

  The VP’s head whipped around.

  ‘I want you to take personal charge of the investigation. You know I have to leave tomorrow for this World Bank thing. I want Kekushev and his men reporting to you, and you give me daily updates.’

  Kirkov nodded. As the others turned their attention away from him again, he allowed himself a secret smile.

  His long-due elevation was already working out better than he had hoped.

  The vending machine made a horrendous noise before extruding brown ooze into a plastic cup. Jonathan picked up the cup and inspected the contents at the bottom.

  ‘So much for the coffee break,’ he said in disgust, before throwing the cup into the nearby recycling bin.

  The coffee was off, but he decided to still spend his allotted break time in the refreshment area. BBC News was on the television screen mounted on the wall.

  It was Monday, and nothing concrete about the assassinations had surfaced over the weekend.

  ‘Goddammit!’ A nearby colleague named Parsons spat the coffee back into his plastic cup. Jonathan couldn’t help but smile.

  ‘Assume it tastes as bad as it looks?’ Jonathan asked.

  ‘Yes,’ Parsons replied. ‘Like it came out of one of our refineries.’

  Parsons joined him in watching the television.

  ‘Anything new?’ he enquired, pointing at the screen.

  ‘No,’ Jonathan said. ‘Just of shots of reporters standing outside the Kremlin or Westminster saying “We’re waiting for a statement.” Lots of speculation – that’s all it is at this stage.’

  Parsons nodded. ‘I bet that in all the offices of the intelligence and policing agencies of the major world powers, they’re right now drawing up shortlists of suspects,’ he said.

  Jonathan did not respond.

  ‘What do you think?’ Parsons asked, turning to face him.

  Jonathan didn’t know Parsons that well. He wouldn’t be drawn into sharing ideas with someone in the organisation he didn’t trust.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Jonathan asserted. ‘All I do know is – I’ve got a deadline to hit.’

  Jonathan walked out of the refreshment area and back to his desk. As he sat down, the view from the window caught his eye. He found himself staring distractedly outside.

  He could see it was a typically bleak, autumnal English morning. The clock was ticking on his project, but his mind was still distracted by the whole affair of the assassinations.

  If I exclude the possibility that anyone at this company was involved, he thought, as he gazed out the window, there are still plenty of obvious suspects. But who would be well-organized enough, and well-funded, and have the motivation to take them both out on the same day? Either they were into something they shouldn’t have been and were discovered, or they just really pissed off the wrong people.

  Maybe they were blocking something a few other groups really wanted? But how the hell were they connected – Maslov and Mitchell? Maybe they were similar players in two separate cases, which presented an opportunity when they were both in the same country? You could twist it around for ages.

  He felt that minds greater than his would figure it out. He sighed as his eyes tracked a trail of a plane in the sky.

  Focus on the things you can control.

  In the meantime, he was still staring down the double-barrelled deadline of the project review for Falcus.

  What was bothering him most was that he had the names of the two dead men in part of his analysis – and that would have to be revised.

  He was still tossing up whether to leave in the ‘before’ snapshot of the situation, when the two men were alive, or delete the lot and just hypothesize on what the future situation could now be. He pulled his eyes away from the window with a heavy heart and focused on the computer screen.

  9

  London

  A few hours later and Jonathan was close to despair.

  He was fast running out of time on the analysis, and the numbers he had been ordered to work on were still not adding up.

  The analysis was essentially about shifting huge amounts of crude oil westwards, out of Russia to the Mediterranean. The only way to shift the volume that was proposed, and make the numbers add up to match the initial spreadsheet received from production, was for quite a few geopolitical elements to change.

  Since the numbers weren’t adding up, he would have to go to macro environmental factors that could encourage such a change to occur.

  Jonathan had now spent the best part of the day trawling through online databases, trying to find or verify anything of public record lodged within the planning systems of the European Union. He had done the same for Eastern European states aspiring to join the Union.

  Information was always sketchy in the eastern region of the world.

  He had come across some vague land acquisition orders that started to form a rough patchwork running from east to west. He then started to dig further to scrutinize the government paths of the countries involved, to see who were the drivers behind these changes.

  He did not get very far before hitting a dead end.

  His final act was to scan local newspapers that had been translated into English, looking for evidence of local villages being cleared in the last few years.

  ‘This is all taking way too long,’ he said to himself.

  The spectre of Falcus was growing larger behind him as time ticked on.

  It was the end of Monday, and the booming voice of Falcus still rang in his ears: ‘Close of play Wednesday – or else!’

  ‘I can’t afford to spend any more time on this,’ Jonathan said, starting to close files. ‘I’m going to have to put a hypothesis together and insert it into the presentation.’

  He stopped typing and sat back, tapping his fingers on the table.

  But this is linked to the earlier problem I was working on – the people in the ‘stakeholder graph’, he mused.

  ‘Stakeholders’ were defined in the organisation as people who have an interest in a particular issue; and therefore may be inclined to influence any decisions taken about that issue.

  In any attempt to bring about change in an area, or become involved in a project, or solve an issue, it was often useful to identify the likely sources of support. Stakeholders could be allies, but also opponents – peop
le who might oppose the project.

  There could also be stakeholders who the project needed to have ‘on board’ with useful recommendations.

  Jonathan had plotted a graph of stakeholders, identifying their relative level of power and interest in the proposed project.

  Obviously there were many parties interested in shifting large amounts of oil from east to west in a profitable manner.

  Jonathan’s challenge was to narrow down the comparison to only the most interested, those likely to gain or lose from the potential outcome. These were the people who could encourage such an event to occur, or prevent the event from happening.

  When he had started the analysis the previous week, and had got bored with just looking at the numbers, he had taken a break by doing a full ranking of powerful people who would have an interest – positive or negative – in the potential pipeline.

  He sat up in his chair as he began re-reading his work from the previous week.

  ‘Whoah!’ he said to his computer screen. ‘This is interesting.’

  It turned out that the most potentially revealing part of the entire analysis was not the numbers, but the stakeholder graph.

  In the graph he had produced last week, there were two people with enough power and influence to make the great oil shift happen or prevent it.

  Jonathan sat staring at his screen as the names of Maslov and Mitchell glowed back at him. If those two names were removed, the new names below them moved to the top by default. The two names to be shifted up were the natural successors to the previous heads of the largest oil company and most relevant government department. Jonathan stared in a kind of mute horror at the names that would be elevated to the top of the grid: Anatoly Kirkov, and Warren Tarrant.

  Jonathan took deep breaths to calm himself down. He had no proof of anything – this was just an analysis. It was his job to analyse and generate a hypothesis, and that’s what he’d done.