Adrian Magson - No Kiss For The Devil

‘Why should they care? It’s business.’

‘True. But it’s more fragile than that. If he gets far enough along the route and actually wins the licence, then has to back out for any reason — say, someone with the power to pull the plug doesn’t like something about his background — it will leave a massive hole in the project with nobody to fill it. The cost of mounting, presenting, then losing the bid will be considerable. Another bidder might find it impossible to take his place. It could torpedo the whole project for years.’

‘So you’re saying it’s better to get the skeletons out of the cupboard right from the outset?’

Varley shrugged. ‘Why not?’ He leaned forward, suddenly serious. ‘Riley, this entire project has huge implications for the consumer market right across Eastern Europe. It will liberate vast resources for the man in the street, as well as small businesses and governments. You know how the commercial sector has exploded in the Indian sub-continent and in China; this is just an extension of that. What they don’t need is a bid that falls at the last hurdle. Because if that happens, it’ll be dead for a long, long time to come.’

‘But it could fail for all sorts of other reasons,’ she pointed out. ‘A market crash, ill-health, a change of government somewhere.’

He tilted his head from side to side. ‘Not really. The various governments are right behind it; the consumers definitely want it to go ahead. And there’s the technology and science out there to make it happen. If it goes through — either with Al-Bashir at the helm or one of the others — it will be a huge success. But only if nobody rocks the boat after the bid is awarded.’ He lifted his shoulders and smiled, as if suddenly trying to take the heat out of the conversation. ‘Hell, what do I know? We’re only watching the game, not out there playing.’

‘No,’ Riley agreed. ‘We’re not.’ She wondered why the sudden change in tone. Had he realised he was arguing too fiercely?

‘Write what you see, Riley. It’s all we can ask.’

‘Even if it turns out bad?’

‘Bad for who? Al-Bashir, maybe. Or even the other bidders. I think we have to wait and see.’ He looked up as the wine waiter approached. ‘Now, how about another drink?’

Frank Palmer watched from a cafe fifty yards down the street as Riley and her companion stepped out of the restaurant after their lunch. The area was busy, providing ample cover for him to watch without running the risk of being seen.

The publisher was tall, making him easy to follow in the crowd. As they walked towards the kerb, he placed his hand on Riley’s back, steering her towards the kerb. The gesture looked natural without appearing over-familiar. A taxi stopped nearby, and Riley climbed aboard. Varley leaned in briefly, then the vehicle moved off, leaving him standing on the pavement for a moment, before turning and walking in the direction of Piccadilly.

Palmer put down his cup and set off after him.

Riley climbed the stairs at Copnor Business Publications and found David Johnson still looking confused and harassed in equal measure. She suspected it was his default position. There was no sign of Emerald.

‘Hello again,’ he said with a faint smile. His expression could have been welcoming or wary, it was hard to tell. He cleared some papers off a chair for her. ‘How can I help?’

‘I need to pick your brains,’ Riley told him, ‘about the East European telecoms market.’ After talking to Richard Varley, she had found a number of questions vying for attention, and David Johnson might be the easiest person to provide the answers — or the name of someone who could. She had called him earlier and got him to agree to a meeting.

‘What about it?’

‘Who’s in it, who’s trying to get in… what’s the potential market size. Stuff like that.’

He blinked and puffed out his cheeks, then plonked himself down behind his desk. ‘Well, the potential market size is huge. Vast. And that’s down to the latest round of talks going on.’

‘Go on.’

‘Over the last couple of years, there’s been a move to put together a loose federation of independent states — a free trade sector modelled on the EU but confined to the former Soviet states and some emerging republics.’

‘Sounds like trade protection.’

‘It’s a response to the enlargement of the EU, and the drain of their skilled workforce to the west. They’re not exactly pulling up the drawbridge, which would be bad for trade, but they are trying to draw local demarcation lines to keep out the commercial rabble.’

‘That’s a tall order. It would be like holding back fog.’

‘Not the way they see it. The telecoms industry uses a saturation approach, banging up masts everywhere, with competing shops and networks in every town, all to get ten-year-old kids carrying mobiles and texting each other. And what does it do? In a poor country, it starts to direct the local, then the regional economy. Commercial property prices go up, land prices rise and soon everyone is looking for the next cheap deal or the latest cool mobile phone. Crime follows like night after day.’

‘That’s a bit simplistic, isn’t it?’

‘I’m not so sure.’ Johnson ruffled his hair with his fingertips. ‘Look at other economies around the world and you’ll see the same thing. It’s the thin edge of the wedge. Sure, we’re happy with our mobile market because we grew into it. Your average Eastern European — and I’m talking about way, way east — still hasn’t seen it.’

‘I’d have thought some competition would be good for keeping prices down.’

‘They don’t share that view. Remember, we’re only a few years down the road from communism and state control. The people with the clout reckon there’s only one way of keeping the commercial hordes from ransacking their economies and upsetting the status quo.’

Riley thought she saw where Johnson was heading. ‘Go on.’

‘What they’re planning is to allow a single chosen operator to have sole access to the satellite technology, and effectively bar every other provider. They could do it, too, with the new LEO system.’

‘What’s that?’

‘Mobile phone communication requires LEO — that’s Low Earth Orbit — satellites, to function at their best. They circle the earth very fast — every ninety minutes or so — and feed off lots of other satellites for their signals and coverage. The new federation have just put a new satellite system in place. It’s called Batnev. It’s rumoured to have the capability of piggybacking signals off far more satellites than ever before — in effect, borrowing capacity from other systems — which means much lower operating costs.’

‘And lower costs to the users?’

‘Exactly. They’re working on the theory that it’s better to have a million people paying peanuts, but right on time and growing, rather than a smaller number of high-value subscribers struggling to pay their bills and defaulting.’

‘I see.’

‘And they’ll get them because the extra satellite capacity means they can cover a much larger region than ever before.’

‘Will it work?’

‘They think so — and they reckon they could ring-fence the entire region if they chose to.’

‘Which would mean…?’

‘Locking out every other provider.’

Riley stared at him. If Johnson was right, it would give the selected provider one of the biggest consumer markets on the planet. And no competition.

‘So who’s likely to be in the running?’

He chuckled dryly. ‘Bloody Ada — you name a provider, they’ll be chucking their hats in the ring for this one. There’s already a couple of quiet mergers going on as a result.’