Authors: Charles Cumming
“Sleeping with the enemy, eh?” Ben mutters under his breath, but Cohen ignores him.
“She’s involved with exploration on the Marlin field,” he says, turning to me. “Where’s that, Alec?”
“You giving me a test, Harry? At a fucking party?”
“Don’t you know? Don’t you know where the Marlin field is?”
“It’s in Brazil. Marlin is in Brazil. Offshore.”
“Very good,” he says with raw condescension.
J.T. looks at me and rolls his eyes. An ally of mine.
“Glad I could be of some assistance,” I tell him.
“Now, now, boys. Let’s all try to enjoy ourselves,” Ben says, grinning. He must have been drinking for some time. His round face has taken on a rosy, alcoholic flush. “Plenty of skirt here.”
J.T. nods.
“You still seeing that journalist, Harry?” Ben asks.
Cohen looks at him, irked by the intrusion into his private life.
“We’re engaged. Didn’t you know?”
“Matter of fact, I think I did know that,” he says. “Set a date?”
“Not as such.”
None of us will be invited.
“Who’s that young bloke next to Henderson, the one with the dark hair?”
Cohen is half pointing at a lean, jaded-looking man in a crushed linen suit standing to the right of our group.
“Hack from the
FT,
” says Piers, taking a satay stick from one of the waiters. “Joined from the
Telegraph
about three months ago. Going places.”
“Thought I recognized him. What’s his name?”
“Peppiatt,” Piers tells him. “Mike Peppiatt.”
This is registered by Cohen, the name stored away. Before the evening is out, he will have spoken to the journalist, made contact, chatted him up.
Here’s my card. Call me anytime you have a query.
Cohen has the patience to forge contacts with the financial press, to feed them their little tidbits and scoops. It gives him a sense of power. And Peppiatt, of course, will return the favor, putting another useful name in his little black book. This is how the world goes round.
I spot Saul now, sloping into the party on the far side of the garden, and feel relieved. There is a look of wariness on his face, as if he is here to meet a stranger. He looks up, sees me immediately through the dense, shifting crowd, and half smiles.
“There he is.”
“Your mate?” says Ben.
“That’s right. Saul.”
“Saul,” Ben repeats under his breath, getting used to the name.
The five of us turn to greet him, standing in an uneven semicircle. Saul, nodding shyly, shakes my hand.
“All right, man?” he says.
“Yeah. How was your shoot?”
“Shampoo ad. Canary Wharf. Usual thing.”
Both of us, simultaneously, take out a cigarette.
“These are the people I work with. Some of them, anyway.”
I introduce Saul to the team. This is J.T., this is Piers, this is Ben. Harry, meet an old friend of mine, Saul Ricken. There are handshakes and eye contacts, Saul’s memory lodging names while his manner does an imitation of cool.
“So how are things?” I ask, pivoting away from them, taking us out of range.
“Not bad. Sorry I was late getting here. Had to go home and change.”
“Don’t worry. It was good of you to come.”
“I don’t get much of a chance to see you these days.”
“No. Need a drink?”
“Whenever someone comes round,” he says, flatly.
Both of us scan the garden for a waiter. I light Saul’s cigarette, my hand shaking.
“Nervous about something?” he asks.
“No. Should I be?”
No reply.
“So what sort of shampoo was it?”
“You really care?” he says, exhaling.
“Not really, no.”
This is how things will start out. Like our last meeting, in March, the first few minutes will be full of strange, awkward silences and empty remarks that go nowhere. The broken rhythm of strangers. I can only hope that after two or three drinks Saul will start to loosen up.
“So it’s good to finally meet the guys you work with,” he says. “They seem okay.”
“Yeah. Harry’s a bit of a cunt, but the rest are all right.”
Saul puffs out his lips and stares at the ground. There is a waitress about ten feet away moving gradually toward us, slim and nineteen. I try to catch her eye. A student, most probably, making her rent. She sees me, nods, and comes over.
“Glass of champagne, gentlemen?”
We each take a glass. Clear marble skin and a neat black bob, breasts visible as no more than faint shapes beneath the thin white silk of her shirt. She has that air of undergraduate self-confidence that gradually ebbs away with age.
“Thanks,” says Saul, the side of his mouth curling up into a flirty smile. It is the most animated gesture he has made since he arrived. The girl moves off.
We have been talking for only ten or fifteen minutes when Cohen sidles up behind Saul with a look of intent in his eye. I take a long draw on my champagne and feel the chill and fizz in my throat.
“So you’re Saul,” he says, squeezing in beside him. “Alec’s often spoken about you.”
Not so.
“He has?”
“Yes.”
Cohen reaches across and touches my shoulder, acting like we’re best buddies.
“It’s Harry, isn’t it?” Saul asks.
“That’s right. Sorry to interrupt but I wanted to introduce Alec to a journalist from the
Financial Times.
Won’t you come with us?”
“Fine,” I say, and we have no choice other than to go.
Peppiatt is tall, almost spindly, with psoriatic flakes of chalky skin grouped around his nose.
“Mike Peppiatt,” he says, extending an arm, but his grip goes dead in my hand. “I understand you’re the new kid on the block.”
“Makes him sound like he’s in a fucking boy band,” Saul says, coming immediately to my defense. I don’t need him to do that. Not tonight.
“That’s right. I joined Abnex about nine months ago.”
“Mike’s interested in writing a piece about the Caspian,” Cohen tells me.
“What’s the angle?”
“I thought you might have some ideas.” Peppiatt’s voice is plummy, precise.
“Harry run out of them, has he?”
Cohen clears his throat.
“Not at all. He’s been very helpful. I’d just welcome a second opinion.”
“Well, what interests you about the region?” I ask, turning the question back on him. Something about his self-assuredness is irritating. “What do your readers want to know? Is it going to be an article on a specific aspect of oil and gas exploration or a more general introduction to the area?”
Saul folds his arms.
“Let me tell you what interests me,” Peppiatt says, lighting a cigarette. He doesn’t offer the pack around. Journalists never do. “I want to write an article comparing what’s going on in the Caspian with the Chicago of the 1920s.”
No one responds to this. We just let him keep talking.
“It’s a question of endless possibilities,” he says, launching a slim wrist into the air. “Here you have a region that’s rich in natural resources, twenty-eight billion barrels of oil, two hundred and fifty trillion cubic feet of gas. Now there’s a possibility that an awful lot of people are going to become very rich in a very short space of time because of that.”
“So how is that like Chicago in the twenties?” Saul asks, just before I do.
“Because of corruption,” Peppiatt replies, tilting his head to one side. “Because of man’s lust for power. Because of the egomania of elected politicians. Because somebody somewhere, an Al Capone if you like, will want to control it all.”
“The oligarchs?” I suggest.
“Maybe. Maybe a Russian, yes. But what fascinates me is that no country at the present time has a clear advantage over another. No one knows who owns all that oil. That hasn’t been decided yet. Not even how to divide it up. It’s the same with the gas. Who does it belong to? With that in mind, we’re talking about a place of extraordinary potential. Potential for wealth, potential for corruption, potential for terrible conflict. And all of that concentrated into what is a comparatively small geographical area. Chicago, if you like.”
“Okay—”
I had tried interrupting, but Peppiatt has still not finished.
“—But that’s just one angle on it. The former Soviet states—Azerbaijan, Armenia, Kazakhstan—are just pawns in a much bigger geographical game. Look at a map of the region and you see the collision of all the great powers. China on the eastern flank of the Caspian Sea, Russia on its doorstep, the EU just a few hundred miles away to the west of Turkey. Then you have Afghanistan in the southeast and a fundamentalist Islamic republic right next door to that.”
“Which one?” Saul asks.
“Iran,” Cohen says, without looking at him.
“So you can see why the Yanks are in there,” Peppiatt says, as if none of us was aware of an American presence in the Caspian. “They’re over-reliant on Middle East oil and they’re trying to get a piece of the action. And their best way of doing that is to toady up to the Turks. And why not? We Europeans treat the government in Ankara as though they were a bunch of good-for-nothing towel heads.”
Saul snorts out a laugh here and I look around, just in case anyone has heard. But Peppiatt is on a roll. This guy loves the sound of his own voice.
“In my view it’s an outrage that Turkey hasn’t been offered membership in the EU. That will come back to haunt us. Turkey will be Europe’s gateway to the Caspian, and we’re allowing the Americans to get in there first.”
“That’s a little melodramatic,” I tell him, but Cohen immediately looks displeased. He doesn’t want me offending anyone from the
FT.
“How so?” Peppiatt asks.
“Well, if you include Turkey in the EU, your taxes will go up and there’ll be a flood of immigrants all over western Europe.”
“Not my concern,” he says, unconvincingly. “All I know is that the Americans are being very clever. They’ll have a foot in the door when the Caspian comes online. There’s going to be a marked shift in global economic power and America is going to be there when it happens.”
“That’s true,” I say, my head doing an easy bob back and forth. Saul smiles.
“Only to an extent,” Cohen says, quick to contradict me. “A lot of British and European oil companies are in joint ventures with the Americans to minimize risk. Take Abnex, for example.” Here comes the PR line. “We got in at about the same time as Chevron in 1993.”
“Did you?” says Peppiatt. “I didn’t realize that.”
Cohen nods proudly.
“Well, you see, that in itself will be interesting for my readers. I mean, are all these joint ventures between the multinational oil conglomerates going to make millions for their shareholders in five or ten years’ time, or are they all on a hiding to nothing?”
“Let’s hope not,” says Cohen, giving Peppiatt a chummy smile. It’s sickening how much he wants to impress him.
“You know what I think you should write about?” I say to him.
“What’s that?” he replies briskly.
“Leadership. The absence of decent men.”
“In what respect?”
“In respect of the increasing gap between rich and poor. If there aren’t the right kind of politicians operating down there, men who care more about the future of their country than they do about their own comfort and prestige, nothing will happen. Look what happened to Venezuela, Ecuador, Nigeria.”
“And what happened to them?” Peppiatt asks, his brow furrowing. I’ve found another gap in his knowledge.
“Their economies were crippled by oil booms in the 1970s. Agriculture, manufacturing, and investments were all unbalanced by the vast amounts of money being generated by oil revenues in a single sector of the economy. Other industries couldn’t keep up. There was no one in power who foresaw that. The governments in the Caspian are going to have to watch out. Otherwise, for every oil tycoon fucking a call girl in the back of his chauffeur-driven Mercedes, there’ll be a hundred Armenian farmers struggling to make enough money to buy a loaf of bread. And that’s how wars start.”
“I think that’s a bit melodramatic, Alec,” Cohen says, again smiling at Peppiatt, again trying to put a positive spin on things. “There’s not going to be a war in the Caspian. There’s going to be an oil boom for sure, but no one is going to get killed in the process.”
“Can I quote you on that?” Peppiatt asks.
Cohen’s eyes withdraw into calculation. That is what he wants most of all. His name in the papers, a little mention in the financial press.
“Of course,” he says. “Of course you can quote me. But let me tell you a little bit about what our company is doing down there.”
Saul catches my eye. I can’t tell whether he’s bored.
“Fine,” says Peppiatt.
Cohen takes a step back.
“Tell you what,” he says, suddenly looking at me. “Why don’t you tell him, Alec? You could explain things just as effectively as me.”
“All right,” I reply, slightly off balance. “But it’s quite straightforward. Abnex is currently conducting two-dimensional seismic surveys in several of Kazakhstan’s one hundred and fifty unexplored offshore blocks. It’s one of our biggest projects. Some of this is being done in conjunction with our so-called competitors as a joint venture, and some of it is being done independently without any external assistance. I can have details faxed to you tomorrow morning, if you like. What we want to do is start drilling exploration wells in two to three years’ time if evidence of oil is found. We have sole exploration rights to six fields, thanks to the well-workover agreements negotiated by Clive Hargreaves, and we’re very hopeful of finding something down there.”
“I see.” This may be too technical for Peppiatt. “That’s a long and expensive business, I take it?”
“Sure. Particularly when you don’t know what you’re going to find at the end of the rainbow.”
“That’s just it, isn’t it?” says Peppiatt, with something approaching glee. “The truth is you boys don’t know
what
you’ve got down there. Nobody does.”
And Saul says, “Print that.”