Dick Couch - Out of the Ashes

It hadn’t been an easy run, he had to admit. Some of his new geeks had not fully understood what they would be getting into and had asked to leave the project. He had also not anticipated the amount, and expense, of the equipment and software they needed to do what had to be done. Thankfully, as Sullivan had just briefed him, they were up and running, and most of the major expense was behind them.

“Think we ought to support that unit cohesion by getting some of those T-shirts and showing up in the Geek Tank one Friday, Anne?”

“I’ll see to it, boss,” she added with a chuckle. “Pick your color carefully.”

“I will. And to be honest with you, I find myself spending more time with those folks than with almost anyone else on the Op-Center staff. I see you snooping around there a lot. They seem to have piqued your curiosity, too.”

“Ah, just want to see our biggest investment at work.” Sullivan paused. “I’m not sure what it is, boss, but I just like being around them. They are so smart, but they are also simple, honest, and straightforward. It’s refreshing. They don’t have agendas,” she said, smiling. “I guess that comes from being a career bureaucrat in this town, where everyone has an agenda — present company excluded,” she added quickly.

Williams just smiled. Beyond the skills he knew she would bring to Op-Center, he found himself continuing to be struck by Sullivan’s wisdom.

Anne Sullivan all but worshiped Williams. Never married, and with no significant other, she had a wide array of outside interests, especially theater and dance. She also had a large extended family, consisting of three older sisters and one younger one, as well as two younger brothers, and traveled regularly to Ireland, where she still had strong family roots. When it came to finding the right place and person to focus her professional passion and loyalty, she had found that in Chase Williams. Loyal as opposed to patriotic, she wanted, even needed, someone to be loyal to. Williams was the one.

“Anything else on your agenda today, Anne?”

“Yes. Let me give you the details of some of the new hardware and software we’re installing in our command module. It’s a capability Brian Dawson says we need, and I agreed with the purchase.”

Their meeting continued, two seasoned professionals building what the nation needed and would come to call on again.

Half a world away, Prince Ali al-Wandi sat in his office in the Saudi Oil Ministry. He had now killed a man in cold blood. It bothered him at first but he told himself, this was business, both the doing and doing it himself. He realized, and not for the first time, he would do anything to see this project through. While al-Wandi was clearly the czar of Saudi Arabia’s multibillion-dollar pipeline, he was still subservient to the head of the Oil Ministry, Prince Nayef. The oil minister was a lazy bureaucrat, and he was beginning to resent al-Wandi’s fame. He reflected on a meeting with Nayef where he had had to work mightily to keep the project on track. Ali al-Wandi had surprised Nayef and asked for 80 million more riyals (about US$20 million) because his ambitious project was running over budget. Nayef had summoned him to his office on no notice.

“Enter,” Nayef replied to the knock on the open door of his opulent office, not bothering to look up at al-Wandi.

“You wanted to see me, Minister,” Ali began, barely hiding his annoyance. He was making things happen while this … this … bureaucrat did nothing but sit on his fat ass.

“Questions have come from the royal court,” Nayef lied. “They are beginning to have misgivings about this project, and there is even talk about terminating it.” Nayef had no trouble with the big lie; he wanted to put al-Wandi off balance.

Al-Wandi was able to hide his shock, but his brain was spinning. What was this all about? Why now? He’d only asked for 80 million riyals. Didn’t this pencil pusher get it?

“Minister, perhaps this is a good time to recap. Nothing has changed since you secured permission from His Majesty to undertake this project except the costs of labor and materials have gone up, not to mention the cost of security.”

“As you say,” Nayef replied. His tone and body language were all wrong.

“Here, I brought this just to refresh,” al-Wandi continued, rolling out a large map on Nayef’s desk.

The map showed the new pipeline at first taking the route of the old British Trans-Arabian Pipeline, abandoned decades ago. Then, instead of following the path of the old pipeline through Lebanon, it split off to the north through Jordan and Syria, then west to the Mediterranean at the Syrian port of Baniyas.

Nayef traced the dark red path of the pipeline, his hand stopping as it crossed into Syria and his finger tapping involuntarily.

“Yes,” al-Wandi said, acknowledging that country’s continued disquiet. “It’s not Switzerland, but the Alawite military regime is firmly in control, and our money will help make sure they stay in power.”

Al-Wandi didn’t mind pandering to Nayef if it got him what he wanted. Yet, just what was Nayef’s game? Al-Wandi sensed there hadn’t been any questions from the royal court, and certainly not from the king; he was in his mideighties and all but senile. No, Nayef just wanted to throw his weight around and show him who was boss. Fine.

“Doesn’t the pipeline go through tribal lands from here … to here,” Nayef said, tracing along the route al-Wandi had lain out.

“It does, and the tribal chieftains who control that portion of the desert will be paid, as will the central government officials.”

Even though the pipeline was almost a year from completion, al-Wandi was already brokering multiyear oil futures deals throughout a Europe hungry for Saudi oil, and skimming considerable money off the top of every deal. All he had to do was to deliver the oil to cash in on hundreds of millions of riyals in personal wealth. He wasn’t going to let Nayef screw that up.

“Yes, I can see all that,” Nayef murmured, “but I don’t see the return on investment here. Is there really going to be that large a payoff?”

“The riches that will come into the kingdom via this pipeline will dwarf the up-front investment. Our economists have pulled together substantial data, and paid handsomely for other information. What they have found is that the nations we once knew as Eastern Europe — Bulgaria, Romania, Poland, and the others — are at the beginning of a major economic expansion.”

Al-Wandi paused for emphasis.

“Their thirst for oil is set to double or even triple, over the next decade and a half. It’s a market Russia cannot begin to fill. We need to be first to market and have the ability to ship oil directly to them. And we can’t be hostage to Iran, or anyone else who might choose to block the sea routes our oil must now take, who wants to keep us from getting our oil to market—”

“The United States would never let that happen!” Nayef exclaimed, interrupting him and challenging al-Wandi’s logic.

“Ten or even five years ago, Minister, I would have agreed with you. However, the close bond we once had with the United States is fraying. The free rein we had when the House of Bush and House of Saud were figuratively joined at the hip is over. The relationship was never as good as it was when one of the Bushes was in office.”

“Yes, I’ll give you that.”

“Then, as you know, our bond with the United States began to fray more when we clamped down on our people during the so-called Arab Spring in 2011, and when we rolled tanks into Bahrain to help quell their protests, that bond took a major hit. Add to that the fact that the United States has discovered enormous shale oil deposits and sooner or later won’t be nearly as dependent on Gulf oil from anyone, and we can’t count on the United States for anything.”