They couldn’t force me to accept this assignment; slavery had ended with the Civil War. They wanted to push me into resigning from the firm, but I was damned if I’d let them off so easily.
“What will I be doing for these Third World good old boys?” I said sweetly. “I don’t know anything at all about oil. And of natural gas, I know only what I hear from the next office.” I motioned to the toilet.
“I’m glad you asked,” said Lisle as he crossed to the door. “You’ve been assigned to Con Edison until you leave the country. They burn everything that floats down the East River in that power plant of theirs. You’ll be an expert in energy conversion in a few months.”
Lisle laughed and waved over his shoulder as he went out. “Cheer up, Velis. It might have been Calcutta.”
So here I was, sitting in the Pan Am data center in the middle of the night boning up on a country I’d never heard of, on a continent I knew nothing about, so I could become an expert in a field I had no interest in and go to live among people who didn’t speak my language and who probably thought women belonged in harems. Well, they had a lot in common with the partnership of Fulbright Cone, I thought. On both counts.
I remained undaunted. It had only taken me three years to learn everything there was to know about the field of transportation. Learning as much about energy seemed simpler. You dug a hole in the ground and oil came out, how tough was that? But it would be a painful experience, if all the books I read were as scintillating as the one before me:
In 1950, Arabian light crude sold for $2 per bbl. And in 1972 it is still selling for $2 per bbl. This makes Arabian light crude one of the world’s few significant raw materials subject to no inflationary increase in a similar period of time. The explanation for this phenomenon is the rigorous control that has been placed by world governments upon this fundamental raw product.
Fascinating. But what I found truly fascinating was what the book did not explain. Something, indeed, that was not explained in any of the books I’d read that night.
Arabian light crude, it seems, was a kind of oil. It was in fact the most highly prized and sought-after oil in the world. The reason the price had remained the same for over twenty years was that the price was not controlled by the people who bought it or by the people who owned the land it sat beneath. It was controlled by the people who distributed it, the infamous middlemen. And it always had been.
There were eight large oil companies in the world. Five were American; the remaining three were British, Dutch, and French. Fifty years earlier some of these oilmen had decided, during a grouse shoot in Scotland, to divide up the world’s oil distribution and get off each other’s toes. A few months later they convened at Ostend with a chap named Calouste Gulbenkian, who had arrived with a red pencil in his pocket. Taking it out, he drew what was later called “the Thin Red Line” around a chunk of the world that contained the old Ottoman Empire, now Iraq and Turkey, and a good slice of the Persian Gulf. The gentlemen divided it up and drilled a hole. The oil gushed out in Bahrain, and the race was on.
The law of supply and demand is a moot point if you are the world’s largest consumer of a product and you also control the supply. According to the charts I read, America had long been the most conspicuous consumer of oil. And these oil companies, the preponderance of them American, controlled the supply. The way they did it was simple. They contracted to develop (or find) the oil for the price of owning a healthy share, and they transported and distributed it, receiving an additional mark-up.
I sat there alone with the massive pile of books I’d assembled from the Pan Am technical and business library, the only library in New York that was open all night on New Year’s Eve. I watched the snow sift down through the yellow streetlamps that ran the length of Park Avenue. And I thought.
The thought that ran through my mind over and over was one that would preoccupy better minds than mine in the months ahead. It was a thought that would keep heads of state awake and make heads of oil companies rich. It was a thought that would precipitate wars and bloodshed and economic crises and bring the major powers to the brink of a third world war. But at the time, it did not seem to me such a revolutionary concept.
The thought was simply this: What if we didn’t control the world’s supply of oil? The answer to that question, eloquent in its simplicity, would appear in twelve months’ time to the rest of the world, in the form of the Handwriting on the Wall.
It was our appointment in Samarrah.
A QUIET MOVE
Positional: relating to a move, manoeuvre or style of play governed by strategic rather than tactical considerations. Thus a positional move is also likely to be a quiet move.
Quiet Move: a move that neither checks nor captures and which does not contain any direct threats.… This apparently gives Black the greatest freedom of action.
—An Illustrated Dictionary of Chess
Edward R. Brace
A phone was ringing somewhere. I picked my head up from the desk and looked around. It took me a moment before I realized that I was still at the Pan Am data center. It was still New Year’s Eve; the wall clock at the far end of the room said it was a quarter past eleven. It was still snowing. I had fallen asleep for over an hour. I wondered why no one was picking up the phones.
I looked around the data center, across the expanse of white-tiled false flooring. It covered miles of coaxial cable packed like earthworms into the bowels of the building. There was no one moving anywhere; the place was like a morgue.
Then I remembered that I had told the machine operators they could take a break while I watched things for them. But that was hours ago. Now, as I grudgingly got up to cross to the switchboard, I realized that their request had seemed strange. “Do you mind if we go into the tape vault to do some crocheting?” they had asked. Crocheting?
I reached the control desk that ran the switchboards and machine consoles for this floor and hooked up with the security gates and mantraps all over the building. I pushed the button for the phone line that was flashing. I also noticed that drive sixty-three had a red light, indicating it needed to have a tape mounted. I buzzed the tape vault to call an operator onto the floor, and I picked up the phone, rubbing my eyes sleepily.
“Pan Am night shift,” I said.
“You see?” said the honeyed voice with its unmistakable upper-class British accent. “I told you she would be working! She’s always working.” He was speaking to someone at the other end. Then he said, “Cat darling, you’re late! We’re all waiting for you. It’s after eleven o’clock. Don’t you realize what tonight is?”
“Llewellyn,” I said, painfully stretching my arms and legs to get the kinks out. “I really can’t come, I’ve got work to do. I know I promised, but—”
“No ‘buts,’ darling. On New Year’s Eve we must all find out what fate has in store for us. We’ve all had our fortunes told, and it was too, too amusing. Now it’s your turn. Harry’s pushing me here, he wants to speak with you.”
I groaned and pushed the buzzer again for the operator. Where were the goddamned operators, anyway? And why on earth would three grown men want to spend New Year’s Eve in a dark, cold tape vault, knitting booties?
“Darling,” boomed Harry in his deep baritone that always made me hold the receiver away from my ear. Harry had been my client when I’d worked for Triple-M, and we had remained good friends. He’d adopted me into his family and at every chance invited me to social events, cramming me down the throats of his wife, Blanche, and her brother Llewellyn. But Harry’s real hope was that I’d befriend his obnoxious daughter, Lily, who was about my age. Not bloody likely.
“Darling,” said Harry, “I hope you’ll forgive, but I just sent Saul with the car for you.”
“You shouldn’t have sent the car, Harry,” I said. “Why didn’t you ask me before you sent Saul out in the snow?”
“Because you would have said no,” Harry pointed out. Which was quite true. “Besides, Saul likes to drive a
round. That’s his job, he’s a chauffeur. With what I’m paying him, he can’t complain. Anyway, you owe me this favor.”
“I don’t owe you any favors, Harry,” I said. “Let’s not forget who’s done what for whom.”
Two years earlier I had installed a transportation system for Harry’s company that had made him the top wholesale furrier not only in New York, but in the Northern Hemisphere. “Harry’s Quality Thrifty Furs” could now deliver a custom-made coat anywhere in twenty-four hours. I pushed the buzzer irritably as the red light for the tape drive glowed before me. Where were the operators?
“Look, Harry,” I said impatiently, “I don’t know how you found me, but I came here to be alone. I can’t discuss it now, but I have a big problem.…”
“Your problem is that you’re always working and you’re always alone.”
“My company is the problem,” I said testily. “They’re trying to shove me into a new career I know nothing about. They’re planning to ship me overseas. I need time to think, time to figure out what I’m doing.”
“I told you,” Harry bellowed into my ear. “You should never trust those goyim. Lutheran accountants, whoever heard of such a thing? Okay, so maybe I married one, but I don’t let them do my books, if you see what I mean. So you’ll get your coat and go downstairs like a good girl. You’ll come have a drink and kvetch to me about it. Besides, this fortune-teller is incredible! She’s been working here for years, but I’ve never heard of her before. If I’d known about her, I’d have fired my broker and gone to her instead.”
“You can’t be serious,” I told him in disgust.
“Have I ever kidded you? Listen, she knew you were supposed to be here tonight. The very first thing out of her mouth when she got to our table was, ‘Where’s your friend with the computers?’ Can you believe that?”
“No, I’m afraid I can’t,” I told him. “Where are you, anyway?”
“I’m telling you, darling. This dame kept insisting you come down here. She even told me that your fortune and mine were linked together somehow. That’s not all, she knew Lily was supposed to be here, too.”
“Lily couldn’t come?” I said. I was more than relieved to hear it, but I wondered how his only child could leave him alone on New Year’s. She must have known how hurt he’d be.
“Daughters, what can you do with them? I need some moral support down here. I’m stuck with my brother-in-law as the life of the party.”
“Okay, I’ll come,” I told him.
“Great. I knew you’d do it. So you’ll meet Saul in front, and you’ll have a big hug when you get here.”
I hung up feeling more depressed than I had before. Just what I needed, an evening listening to the inanities of Harry’s extremely boring family. But Harry always made me laugh. Maybe it would take my mind off my own problems.
I strode across the data center to the tape vault and swung the door open. The operators were there, passing around a little glass tube full of white powder. They looked up guiltily as I entered and held the glass tube out to me. Evidently what they’d said was “do some cocaine,” not “crocheting.”
“I’m leaving for the night,” I told them. “Do you guys think you can pull it together enough to mount a tape on drive sixty-three, or should we just close down the airline for tonight?”
They scrambled over each other to respond to my request. I picked up my coat and bag and went out to the elevators.
The big black limousine was already there when I got downstairs. I could see Saul through the windows as I crossed the lobby. He jumped out of the car and ran to open the heavy glass doors.
A hatchet-faced man with big creases running down either side of his face from cheekbone to jaw, Saul was hard to miss in a crowd. He was well over six feet, nearly as tall as Harry, but as skinny as Harry was fat. Together they looked like concave and convex reflections in funhouse mirrors. Saul’s uniform was lightly powdered with snow, and he took my arm so I wouldn’t slip on the ice. He grinned as he put me into the backseat.
“Couldn’t turn Harry down?” he said. “He’s a hard man to say no to.”
“He’s impossible,” I agreed. “I’m not sure ‘no’ is a word he understands. Where exactly is this mystical coven taking place?”
“Fifth Avenue Hotel,” said Saul, slamming the door behind me and going around to the driver’s side. He started up the engine, and we whisked away through the deepening snow.
On New Year’s Eve the major thoroughfares of New York are nearly as crowded as they are in broad daylight. Taxis and limos cruise the avenues, and carousers wander the pavements in search of one more bar. The streets are littered with streamers and confetti, and a general hysteria pervades the air.
Tonight was no exception. We nearly hit a few stragglers who stumbled out of a bar into Saul’s fender, and a champagne bottle flew out of an alley and bounced off the hood of the limousine.
“This is going to be a rough ride,” I observed to Saul.
“I’m used to it,” he replied. “I take Mr. Rad and his family out every New Year’s, and it’s always the same. I should get combat pay.”
“How long have you been with Harry?” I asked him as we whooshed down Fifth Avenue past gleaming buildings and dimly lighted storefronts.
“Twenty-five years,” he said. “I started with Mr. Rad before Lily was born. Even before he was married, in fact.”
“You must like working for him,” I said.
“It’s a job,” Saul replied. Then, after a moment, he added, “I respect Mr. Rad. I’ve been through some hard times with him. I remember times when he couldn’t afford to pay me, but he did it anyway, even if he had to go without. He liked having a limo. He said having a driver gave him a touch of class.” Saul drew up at a red light, turned, and spoke to me over his shoulder. “You know, in the old days we used to deliver the furs in the limo. We were the first furriers in New York to do that.” There was a touch of pride in his voice. “Nowadays I mostly drive Mrs. Rad and her brother to go shopping when Mr. Rad doesn’t need me. Or I drive Lily to the matches.”
We drove on in silence until we got to lower Fifth Avenue.
“I understand Lily hasn’t shown up this evening,” I commented.
“No,” Saul agreed.
“That’s why I left work. What could possibly be so important that she couldn’t spend a few hours on New Year’s with her father?”
“You know what she’s doing,” said Saul as he pulled the car up in front of the Fifth Avenue Hotel. Perhaps it was my imagination, but his voice sounded a little embittered. “She’s doing what she always does. She’s playing chess.”
The Fifth Avenue Hotel sat on the west side of Fifth a few blocks above Washington Square Park. I could see the trees piled with snow as thick as whipped cream, forming little peaks like gnomes’ caps around the massive arch that marked the entrance to Greenwich Village.
In 1972 the public bar of the hotel had not yet been renovated. Like many New York hotel bars, it so authentically replicated a Tudor country inn that you felt you should be tying up a horse outside instead of stepping out of a limousine. The large windows overlooking the street were surmounted with heavy ornamentation in beveled and stained glass. A roaring fire in the big stone fireplace illuminated the faces of the revelers within and cast a ruby glow through the bits of stained glass, reflecting on the snowy street outside.
Harry had secured a round oak table near the windows. As we pulled up in front I could see him waving to us, leaning forward so his breath made a frosty blush against the glass. Llewellyn and Blanche were in the background, seated across the table, whispering together like a pair of blond Botticelli angels.
It was like a picture postcard, I thought as Saul helped me out of the car. The roaring fire, the crowded bar with people in their holiday cocktail attire moving about in the firelight. It didn’t look real. I stood on the snow-packed pavement and watched the sparkling snow fall through the streetlamps as Saul drove off. A second
later Harry came rushing out into the street to retrieve me, as if he were afraid I would melt away like a snowflake and disappear.
“Darling!” he cried, giving me a big bear hug that nearly crushed me. Harry was gigantic. He was six feet four or five, and to say he was overweight would have been kind. He was a towering mountain of flesh, with saggy eyes and jowly cheeks that made him look like a St. Bernard. He was wearing a preposterous dinner jacket of red, green, and black tartan that, if possible, made him look even bigger.
“I’m so glad you’re here,” he said, taking my arm and propelling me through the lobby and the heavy double doors into the bar, where Llewellyn and Blanche were waiting.
“Dear, dear Cat,” said Llewellyn, rising from his seat to give me a peck on the cheek. “Blanche and I were just wondering would you ever arrive, weren’t we, Dearest?” Llewellyn always called Blanche “Dearest,” the name Little Lord Fauntleroy had called his mother.
“Honestly, darling,” he continued, “prying you away from that computer of yours is like wresting Heathcliff from the deathbed of the proverbial Catherine. I swear, I often wonder what you and Harry would do if you didn’t have businesses to rush to every day.”
“Hello, darling,” said Blanche, motioning me to bend down so she could offer me her cool porcelain cheek. “You’re looking wonderful, as usual. Do sit down. What should Harry get you to drink?”
“I’m getting her an eggnog,” said Harry, beaming over us all like a cheerful plaid Christmas tree. “They have wonderful eggnog here. You’ll have some, then choose whatever you like after that.” He plowed away into the crowd toward the bar, his head towering above everyone else’s in the room.
“So Harry tells us you’re going off to Europe?” said Llewellyn, sitting beside me and reaching to Blanche, who handed over his drink. They were wearing matching outfits, she in a dark green evening gown that set off her creamy complexion and he in black tie with dark green velvet evening jacket. Though they were both in their mid-forties, they were extremely youthful, but beneath the gleam and polish of the golden façades they were like show dogs, silly and inbred despite the grooming.