“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.”
C H A P T E R – 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 grit, 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, a 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 theyre 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.”