The Sons of Adam (28 page)

Authors: Harry Bingham

‘Truly, is Liquor not a devil that it tempts the working man from his fireside? That it brings a man into dens of vice and gambling? That it breaks a family asunder and strikes down the wife and mother?’

For the first time, doubt appeared on the faces of the customs men. Tom produced his leaflets and handed them out.

‘The One True Path,’ intoned Tom, scanning the leaflet as fast as he could, while trying to look as though he’d read it a thousand times before. ‘Which will you choose, brothers: the Angel of Temperance or the Demon of Drink? The Holy Seraphim about your Fireside or the Hosts of Satan at the Gambling Table?’

The customs men smothered grins, holding hands up to their mouths and looking away. The man with the crowbar looked questioningly at his superior, who shook his head. The man let his crowbar slide to rest against the stack of boxes.

With as straight a face as he could manage, the senior customs man said, ‘Real nice leaflet. We’ll be sure to study it good.’ He turned away.

Tom let out a long sigh of relief. ‘Be sure you do that, brother. Praise the Lord.’

On their sixth birthday, Jack Creeley had given Alan and Tom a litter of three brown and white spaniel puppies. The young pups were healthy, playful and rumbustious. They were also competitive. If you dropped a rag in amongst the three dogs, they would fight over it for hours. They growled. They tugged. They tried winning the rag by guile and they tried with brute force. Then, with victory decided, the winner would drag the rag off to a private corner, sniff it briefly – then ignore it completely.

It wasn’t the prize that mattered, it was not being beaten.

It was like that now.

None of the three big oil majors actually liked the geology of southern Persia. The world was huge and unexplored. Nobody had drilled a well anywhere in the Arabian peninsula. Vast tracts of America were still virgin territory. The riches of Mexico and Venezuela still lay largely beneath the ground. Compared with all of that, Southern Persia would have come low on anyone’s list.

And yet.

Anglo-Persian felt threatened. At Shell, Henri Deterding was obsessed by his rivalry with Standard. And at Standard, the idea of stirring things up with Shell was far too tempting to resist.

They each put in an offer.

Three dogs. One rag.

Alan listened to their offers and politely refused them all.

And went on refusing until the offers had climbed as high as they’d go.

Shell and Standard made offers so similar that Alan wondered if they each had spies in the other’s inner sanctums. But neither Shell nor Standard was coming out on top. The company with the most to gain – and the most to lose – was Anglo-Persian, a fact that Sir Charles Greenaway, the company’s chairman, knew full well.

Greenaway reached for some cigarettes, and offered them to Alan. It was their final meeting. Alan knew he had to make a deal and live with the consequences. If Greenaway didn’t offer enough, that would be Alan’s tough luck. There would be no better deal available elsewhere.

‘Filthy habit,’ said the oilman. ‘Can’t stop it. Don’t want to. Will you? No. Very well. Now, look here. We have to have your part of the concession. You know it and I know it. Should never have been split up. Damn bad move by D’Arcy. Hand half the country over to another crowd and the Shah won’t stay quiet. There’d be trouble for us. Trouble for everyone. Trouble and expense.’

Alan nodded. He wasn’t being asked for a reply just yet.

‘And then there’s the question of patriotism. Shell Oil, jolly good company, decent bunch, did well for us in the war, but we have to face the fact that they’re sixty per cent Dutch. It’s no good bringing that sort of mix into our part of the world. It’ll only mess things up. And I need hardly tell you what the chaps at the Foreign Office – let alone the India Office – would say if the Yanks got in there. There’d be hell to pay, I’m afraid. Perfect hell.’

‘I do see.’

‘And we know they’re interested, of course. Had word of it from … well, wholly reliable sources, if I may put it like that.’

Alan nodded, amused to have guessed right about the amount of spying that went on. ‘Yes. I must say I’ve been pleasantly surprised,’ he murmured.

‘Now what I thought was that a young chap like you really needs some adventure. Responsibility. You remind me of myself at your age, as a matter of fact. I’d like to buy the concession off you, naturally, but we should talk about where you’d fit in here, at Anglo-Persian. Maybe with our geology boys, maybe our production team. You’ll do well. Your war record, your geology, terrific stuff. Just the sort of thing we need. Put you in charge of a couple of rigs. See what you could do.’

‘That’s a very kind offer.’

‘Not a bit, not a bit.’ Greenaway’s cigarette was smoked down to his fingers and he stubbed it out carelessly, getting a bit of still-smoking ash on his fingers. ‘So what do you say? We’ll offer seventy thousand pounds for your concession – sixty-eight thousand more than it’s worth, I might add – and sign you up for our production side right away. The government will be extremely pleased with your decision. Extremely.’

Alan controlled his expression with care. His next best offer had been sixty thousand from Deterding at Shell and he was quite sure he wouldn’t get them to go higher. His three-dogs-one-rag game was reaching its limit, and it was time to bring it to an end. Alan frowned and asked for a cigarette. Greenaway handed him one with barely suppressed impatience. He lit it and drew on it thoughtfully.

‘I understand your concern for British interests,’ he said, ‘but I’d sooner not be too far out of pocket. Perhaps if you said seventy-five thousand … ?’

Greenaway drummed on the table. ‘Very well, very well, seventy-five.’

‘And I’m grateful for your offer of employment, but before I take it up, there’s something I want to try to do.’

‘Yes?’

‘It relates to the concession I’m selling.’

‘Yes?’

‘There’s an area twenty miles long by ten wide that I’m interested in. I’d like to sublease the area from you. Any oil I find there is mine. If I don’t find any, then in ten years’ time the land reverts to you.’

‘Damnation!’
Greenaway was shocked by Alan’s gall. ‘By God, Montague, you push hard. Where’s the strip? The map, the map, where in hell’s name is the map?’ He punched a button on his desk and a secretary came running in. ‘Mrs Parker, get me some geologists, will you? Reynolds, Camberley, Keegan, Lewis, any of those chaps. Right now, please, right now.’

The secretary ran off and Greenaway found the relevant map and unrolled it.

‘Here,’ said Alan. Taking a pencil from Greenaway’s desk he drew a mark at the four corners of his precious strip – the Ameri fault, as he thought of it. Greenaway frowned over the map, muttering ‘Damnation, damnation,’ under his breath. In a few moments, three geologists knocked and entered, their skin all bearing the deep tan of their trade.

‘Wait outside, would you, Montague?’

Alan had to wait an hour for his answer. He tried lighting up, but his painful lung (worse always in London smoke) rebelled against the tobacco. Eventually, the door burst open. It was Greenaway.

‘Five years. You have five years to find oil. If you fail, the land reverts to us.’

‘Very well.’

‘And you’ll sign a contract as soon as we can have it drawn up. Later today or first thing tomorrow. No further communication with those dogs at Shell or Standard.’

‘Very well.’

‘And seventy thousand pounds sterling for the concession. Not a penny more. Not if you slice pieces off my territory.’

‘I understand. Seventy thousand it is.’

‘And even seventy thousand is extortionate, mark you.’

‘It’s a generous price, sir. Thank you.’

‘And, if you don’t hit oil, I want you working for us, d’you hear? Five years, that’s all. By heaven, you’re plucking us.’

Alan left the building, and stepped blinking out into the sun. He had five years and seventy thousand pounds to fulfil his promise to Tom. It was too little money and too little time. Alan thought of Tom that day above the ruined cellar, just before their first assault in the Battle of the Somme. Tom had promised to be careful, but what were promises amidst the lunacy of war? Alan had promised to drill for oil, but he wasn’t even sure if he’d have the cash to sink a well before his money ran out. His prospects seemed hopeless …

Alan’s daydreams were interrupted by the sound of boots running after him. He turned, and found himself staring into a bright red face, lit up by anger, and a ferocious black moustache stretching, it seemed, from ear to ear.

‘By God, it’s robbery,’ shouted the man. ‘You’ve found oil there, haven’t you? By God, I tell you, it’s robbery.’

‘Who are you, sir?’ said Alan, putting some distance between himself and the man.

‘Have you or haven’t you, sir?’

‘Have I what?’

‘Found oil, dammit, oil.’

‘You’re one of the Anglo-Persian geologists. Is that right?’

‘Yes, that’s right. Pardon me. George Reynolds. Pardon me.’

Some of the heat left Reynolds’ face and he held out his hand. Reynolds was a thickset northerner with a face that must have been ruddy at the best of times. He held himself compact and powerful, like a piston ready to fire. Alan shook the outstretched hand warily.

‘Have I drilled for oil there? No.’

‘I didn’t mean that. A seepage. A trace. Tar in the water. Gas springs. Bitumen pits. A smell, for heaven’s sake.’

Alan swallowed and brought something from his pocket. It was a small waxed canvas pouch containing a small handful of sand. He offered the pouch to Reynolds, who put it to his nose and sniffed. It was Ameri’s sand. The smell had worn off since being carried around in Alan’s pocket for the past few months, but all the same, it was unmistakable.

‘I knew it. The fault. The others didn’t see the fault. I tried to tell them, but they wouldn’t listen.’

Secretly Alan began to be amused at Reynolds’ fire-and-brimstone approach to life, but he kept himself cool. ‘They’re probably right. Geologically the fault is certainly there, but that doesn’t mean anything about the presence of oil. I found the oil sand in the exposed strata, far above where any oil might still be today. It’s a very long shot. A very, very long shot.’

‘Yes.’

Reynolds was reluctant to hand back the pouch. He was standing in the gutter of the street, and a delivery van honked him to get out of the way. Reynolds sniffed and sniffed.

‘Not too much sulphur there.’

‘No, not much.’

Reynolds kneaded the sand with his fingers, letting it trickle between his fingers.

‘Light. It feels light. Not too tarry.’

‘I think so too.’

‘It would refine well.’

‘Yes.’

Reynolds handed back the bag, without taking his eyes from it. ‘You’ll drill there, of course.’

‘Yes.’

‘With your seventy thousand?’

‘That’s all I’ve got.’

‘You’ll need more.’