“Yeah, I suppose it’s bad for the country to have the President’s dick cut off, eh? People might not respect us anymore.” Winston stood. “Gotta go back across the street and look at some economic models.”
“Economy looking good?” POTUS asked.
“No complaints from me or Mark Gant. Just so the Fed Chairman leaves the discount rate alone, but I expect he will. Inflation is pretty flat, and there’s no upward pressure anywhere that I see happening.”
“Ben?”
Goodley looked through his notes, as though he’d forgotten something. “Oh, yeah. Would you believe, the Vatican is appointing a Papal Nuncio to the PRC?”
“Oh? What’s that mean, exactly?” Winston asked, stopping halfway to the door.
“The Nuncio is essentially an ambassador. People forget that the Vatican is a nation-state in its own right and has the usual trappings of statehood. That includes diplomatic representation. A nuncio is just that, an ambassador—and a spook,” Ryan added.
“Really?” Winston asked.
“George, the Vatican has the world’s oldest intelligence service. Goes back centuries. And, yeah, the Nuncio gathers information and forwards it to the home office, because people talk to him—who better to talk to than a priest, right? They’re good enough at gathering information that we’ve made the occasional effort to crack their communications. Back in the thirties, a senior cryppie at the State Department resigned over it,” Ryan informed his SecTreas, reverting back to history teacher.
“We still do that?” Winston directed this question at Goodley, the President’s National Security Adviser. Goodley looked first to Ryan, and got a nod. “Yes, sir. Fort Meade still takes a look at their messages. Their ciphers are a little old-fashioned, and we can brute-force them.”
“And ours?”
“The current standard is called TAPDANCE. It’s totally random, and therefore it’s theoretically unbreakable—unless somebody screws up and reuses a segment of it, but with approximately six hundred forty-seven million trans-positions on every daily CD-ROM diskette, that’s not very likely.”
“What about the phone systems?”
“The STU?” Goodley asked, getting a nod. “That’s computer-based, with a two-fifty-six-kay computer-generated encryption key. It can be broken, but you need a computer, the right algorithm, and a couple of weeks at least, and the shorter the message the harder it is to crack it, instead of the other way around. The guys at Fort Meade are playing with using quantum-physics equations to crack ciphers, and evidently they’re having some success, but if you want an explanation, you’re going to have to ask somebody else. I didn’t even pretend to listen,” Goodley admitted. “It’s so far over my head I can’t even see the bottom of it.”
“Yeah, get your friend Gant involved,” Ryan suggested. “He seems to know ’puters pretty well. As a matter of fact, you might want to get him briefed in on these developments in Russia. Maybe he can model the effects they’ll have on the Russian economy.”
“Only if everyone plays by the rules,” Winston said in warning. “If they follow the corruption that’s been gutting their economy the last few years, you just can’t predict anything, Jack.”
We cannot let it happen again, Comrade President,” Sergey Nikolay’ch said over a half-empty glass of vodka. This was still the best in the world, if the only such Russian product of which he could make that boast. That thought generated an angry frown at what his nation had become.
“Sergey Nikolay’ch, what do you propose?”
“Comrade President, these two discoveries are a gift from Heaven itself. If we utilize them properly, we can transform our country—or at least make a proper beginning at doing that. The earnings in hard currencies will be colossal, and we can use that money to rebuild so much of our infrastructure that we can transform our economy. If, that is”—he held up a cautionary finger—“if we don’t allow a thieving few to take the money and bank it in Geneva or Liechtenstein. It does us no good there, Comrade President.”
Golovko didn’t add that a few people, a few well-placed individuals, would profit substantially from this. He didn’t even add that he himself would be one of them, and so would his president. It was just too much to ask any man to walk away from such an opportunity. Integrity was a virtue best found among those able to afford it, and the press be damned, the career intelligence officer thought. What had they ever done for his country or any other? All they did was expose the honest work of some and the dishonest work of others, doing little actual work themselves—and besides, they were as easily bribed as anyone else, weren’t they?
“And so, who gets the concession to exploit these resources?” the Russian president asked.
“In the case of the oil, our own exploration company, plus the American company, Atlantic Richfield. They have the most experience in producing oil in those environmental conditions anyway, and our people have much to learn from them. I would propose a fee-for-service arrangement, a generous one, but not an ownership percentage in the oil field itself. The exploration contract was along those lines, generous in absolute terms, but no share at all in the fields discovered.”
“And the gold strike?”
“Easier still. No foreigners were involved in that discovery at all. Comrade Gogol will have an interest in the discovery, of course, but he is an old man with no heirs, and, it would seem, a man of the simplest tastes. A properly heated hut and a new hunting rifle will probably make him very happy, from what these reports tell us.”
“And the value of this venture?”
“Upwards of seventy billions. And all we need do is purchase some special equipment, the best of which comes from the American company Caterpillar.”
“Is that necessary, Sergey?”
“Comrade President, the Americans are our friends, after a fashion, and it will not hurt us to remain on good terms with their President. And besides, their heavy equipment is the world’s finest.”
“Better than the Japanese?”
“For these purposes, yes, but slightly more expensive,” Golovko answered, thinking that people really were all the same, and despite the education of his youth, in every man there seemed to be a capitalist, looking for ways to cut costs and increase his profits, often to the point of forgetting the larger issues. Well, that was why Golovko was here, wasn’t it?
“And who will want the money?”
A rare chuckle in this office: “Comrade President, everyone wants to have money. In realistic terms, our military will be at the front of the line.”
“Of course,” the Russian president agreed, with a resigned sigh. “They usually are. Oh, any progress in the attack on your car?” he asked, looking up from his briefing papers.
Golovko shook his head. “No notable progress, no. The current thinking is that this Avseyenko fellow was the actual target, and the automobile was just a coincidence. The militia continues to investigate.”
“Keep me posted, will you?”
“Of course, Comrade President.”
CHAPTER 5
Headlines
Sam Sherman was one of those whom age hadn’t treated kindly, though he himself hadn’t helped. An avid golfer, he moved from lie to lie via cart. He was much too overweight to walk more than a few hundred yards in a day. It was rather sad for one who’d been a first-string guard for the Princeton Tigers, once upon a time. Well, Winston thought, muscle just turned to blubber if you didn’t use it properly. But the overweight body didn’t detract from the sharpness of his brain. Sherman had graduated about fifth in a class not replete with dummies, double-majoring in geology and business. He’d followed up the first sheet of parchment with a Harvard MBA, and a Ph.D. from the University of Texas, this one in geology as well, and so Samuel Price Sherman could not only talk rocks with the explorers but finance with his board members, and that was one of the reasons why Atlantic Richfield stock was as healthy as any oil issue in the known world. His face was lined by a lot of low sun and field g
rit, and his belly swollen by a lot of beers with the roughnecks out in many godforsaken places, plus hot dogs and other junk food preferred by the men who drifted into such employment. Winston was surprised that Sam didn’t smoke, too. Then he spotted the box on the man’s desk. Cigars. Probably good ones. Sherman could afford the best, but he still had the Ivy League manners not to light up in front of a guest who might be offended by the blue cloud they generated.
Atlantic Richfield’s home office was elsewhere, but as with most major corporations, it didn’t hurt to have a set of offices in Washington, the better to influence members of Congress with the occasional lavish party. Sherman’s personal office was in a corner on the top floor, and plush enough, with a thick beige carpet. The desk was either mahogany or well-seasoned oak, polished like glass, and probably cost more than his secretary made in a year or two.
“So, how do you like working for the government, George?”
“It’s really a fun change of pace. Now I can play with all the things I used to bitch about—so, I guess I’ve kinda given up my right to bitch.”
“That is a major sacrifice, buddy,” Sherman replied with a laugh. “It’s kinda like going over to the enemy, isn’t it?”
“Well, sometimes you gotta pay back, Sam, and making policy the right way can be diverting.”
“Well, I have no complaints with what you guys are doing. The economy seems to like it. Anyway,” Sherman sat up in his comfortable chair. It was time to change subjects. Sam’s time was valuable, too, as he wanted his guest to appreciate. “You didn’t come here for small talk. What can I do for you, Mr. Secretary?”
“Russia.”
Sherman’s eyes changed a little, as they might when the last card was laid in a high-stakes game of stud. “What about it?”
“You have a high-powered exploration team working with the Russians ... they find anything nice?”
“George, that’s sensitive stuff you’re asking. If you were still running Columbus, this would constitute insider-trading information stuff. Hell, I can’t buy any more of our stock now, based on this stuff.”
“Does that mean you’d like to?” TRADER asked with a smile.
“Well, it’ll be public soon enough anyway. Yeah, George. Looks like we’ve found the biggest goddamned oil field ever, bigger ’n the Persian Gulf, bigger ’n Mexico, damned sight bigger than Prudhoe Bay and Western Canada combined. I’m talking big, billions and billions of barrels of what looks like the very best light-sweet crude, just sitting there and waiting for us to pump it out of the tundra. It’s a field we’ll measure in years of production, not just barrels.”
“Bigger than the P.G.?”
Sherman nodded. “By a factor of forty percent, and that’s a very conservative number. The only beef is where it is. Getting that crude out is going to be a mother-humper—to get started, anyway. We’re talking twenty billion dollars just for the pipeline. It’ll make Alaska look like a kindergarten project, but it’ll be worth it.”
“And your end of it?” the Secretary of the Treasury asked.
That question generated a frown. “We’re negotiating that now. The Russians seem to want to pay us a flat consulting fee, like a billion dollars a year—they’re talking a lot less than that now, but you know how the hog-tradin’ works at this stage, right? They say a couple of hundred million, but they mean a billion a year, for seven to ten years, I’d imagine. And that isn’t bad for what we’d have to do for the money, but I want a minimum of five percent of the find, and that’s not at all an unreasonable request on our part. They have some good people in the geology business, but nobody in the world can sniff out oil in ice like my people can, and they’ve got a lot to learn about how to exploit something like this. We’ve been there and done that in these environmental conditions. Ain’t nobody knows this like we do, even the guys at BP, and they’re pretty good—but we’re the best in the world, George. That’s the barrel we have them over. They can do it without us, but with us helping, they’ll make a ton more cash, and a hell of a lot faster, and they know that, and we know they know that. So, I got my lawyers talking to their lawyers—actually, they have diplomats doing the negotiating.” Sherman managed a grin. “They’re dumber than my lawyers.”
Winston nodded. Texas turned out more good private-practice attorneys than most parts of America, and the excuse was that in Texas there were more men needin’ killin’ than horses needin’ stealin’. And the oil business paid the best, and in Texas, like everyplace else, talent went where the money was.
“When will this go public?”
“The Russians are trying to keep a cork in it. One of the things we’re getting from our lawyers is that they’re worried about how to exploit this one—really who to keep out of it, you know, their Mafia and stuff. They do have some serious corruption problems over there, and I can sympathize—”
Winston knew he could ignore the next part. The oil industry did business all over the world. Dealing with corruption on the small scale (ten million dollars or less), or even the monstrous scale (ten billion dollars or more), was just part of the territory for such companies as Sam Sherman ran, and the United States government had never probed too deeply into that. Though there were federal statutes governing how American companies handled themselves abroad, many of those laws were selectively enforced, and this was merely one such example. Even in Washington, business was business.
“—and so they’re trying to keep it quiet until they can make the proper arrangements,” Sherman concluded.
“You hearing anything else?”
“What do you mean?” Sherman asked in reply.
“Any other geological windfalls,” Winston clarified.
“No, I’m not that greedy in what I pray for. George, I haven’t made it clear enough, just how huge this oil field is. It’s—”
“Relax, Sam, I can add and subtract with the best of ’em,” SecTreas assured his host.
“Something I need to know about?” Sherman only saw hesitation. “Give and take, George. I played fair with you, remember?”
“Gold,” Winston clarified.
“How much?”
“They’re not sure. South Africa at least. Maybe more.”
“Really? Well, that’s not my area of expertise, but sounds like our Russian friends are having a good year for a change. Good for them,” Sherman thought.
“You like them?”
“Yeah, as a matter of fact. They’re a lot like Texans. They make good friends and fearsome enemies. They know how to entertain, and Jesus, do they know how to drink. About time they got some good luck. Christ knows they’ve had a lot of the other kind. This is going to mean a lot for their economy, and damned near all of it’s going to be good news, ’specially if they can handle the corruption stuff and keep the money inside their borders where it’ll do them some good, instead of finding its way onto some Swiss bank’s computer. That new Mafia they have over there is smart and tough ... and a little scary. They just got somebody I knew over there.”
“Really? Who was that, Sam?”
“We called him Grisha. He took care of some high rollers in Moscow. Knew how to do it right. He was a good name to know if you had some special requirements,” Sherman allowed. Winston recorded the information in his mind for later investigation.
“Killed him?”
Sherman nodded. “Yup, blew him away with a bazooka right there on the street—it made CNN, remember?” The TV news network had covered it as a crime story with no further significance except for its dramatic brutality, a story gone and forgotten in a single day.
George Winston vaguely remembered it, and set it aside. “How often you go over there?”
“Not too often, twice this year. Usually hop my G-V over direct out of Reagan or Dallas/Fort Worth. Long flight, but it’s a one-hop. No, I haven’t seen the new oil field yet. Expect I’ll have to in a few months, but I’ll try for decent weather. Boy, you don’t know what cold means ‘til you go that far north in t
he winter. Thing is, it’s dark then, so you’re better off waiting ’til summer anyway. But at best you can leave the sticks at home. Ain’t no golf a’ tall in that part of the world, George.”
“So take a rifle and bag yourself a bear, make a nice rug,” Winston offered.
“Gave that up. Besides, I got three polar bears. That one is number eight in the Boone and Crockett all-time book,” Sherman said, pointing to a photo on the far wall. Sure enough, it showed a hell of a big polar bear. “I’ve made two kids on that rug,” the president of Atlantic Richfield observed, with a sly smile. The pelt in question lay before his bedroom fireplace in Aspen, Colorado, where his wife liked to ski in the winter.
“Why’d you give it up?”
“My kids think there aren’t enough polar bears anymore. All that ecology shit they learn in school now.”
“Yeah,” SecTreas said sympathetically, “and they do make such great rugs.”
“Right, well, that rug was threatening some of our workers up at Prudhoe Bay back in ... ‘75, as I recall, and I took him at sixty yards with my .338 Winchester. One shot,” the Texan assured his guest. “I suppose nowadays you have to let the bear kill a human bein’, and then all you’re supposed to do is just cage him and transport him to another location so the bear doesn’t get too traumatized, right?”
“Sam, I’m Secretary of the Treasury. I leave the birds and bees to EPA. I don’t hug trees, not until they turn the wood chips into T-Bills, anyway.”
A chuckle: “Sorry, George. I’m always hearing that stuff at home. Maybe it’s Disney. All wild animals wear white gloves and talk to each other in good Midwestern Iowa English.”
“Cheer up, Sam. At least they’re laying off the supertankers out of Valdez now. How much of the eastern Alaska/Western Canada strike is yours?”
“Not quite half, but that’ll keep my stockholders in milk and cookies for a long time.”
“So, between that one and Siberia, how many options will they give you to exercise?” Sam Sherman got a nice salary, but at his level the way you earned your keep was measured in the number of options in the stock whose value your work had increased, invariably offered you by the board of directors, whose own holdings you inflated in value through your efforts.