Tom Clancy - The Bear and the Dragon

“Russia.”

Sherman’s eyes changed a little, as they might when the last card was laid in a high-stakes game of stud. “What about it?”

“You have a high-powered exploration team working with the Russians … they find anything nice?”

“George, that’s sensitive stuff you’re asking. If you were still running Columbus, this would constitute insider-trading information stuff. Hell, I can’t buy any more of our stock now, based on this stuff.”

“Does that mean you’d like to?” TRADER asked with a smile.

“Well, it’ll be public soon enough anyway. Yeah, George. Looks like we’ve found the biggest goddamned oil field ever, bigger ’n the Persian Gulf, bigger ’n Mexico, damned sight bigger than Prudhoe Bay and Western Canada combined. I’m talking big, billions and billions of barrels of what looks like the very best light-sweet crude, just sitting there and waiting for us to pump it out of the tundra. It’s a field we’ll measure in years of production, not just barrels.”

“Bigger than the P.G.?”

Sherman nodded. “By a factor of forty percent, and that’s a very conservative number. The only beef is where it is. Getting that crude out is going to be a mother-humper-to get started, anyway. We’re talking twenty billion dollars just for the pipeline. It’ll make Alaska look like a kindergarten project, but it’ll be worth it.”

“And your end of it?” the Secretary of the Treasury asked.

That question generated a frown. “We’re negotiating that now. The Russians seem to want to pay us a flat consulting fee, like a billion dollars a year-they’re talking a lot less than that now, but you know how the hog-tradin’ works at this stage, right? They say a couple of hundred million, but they mean a billion a year, for seven to ten years, I’d imagine. And that isn’t bad for what we’d have to do for the money, but I want a minimum of five percent of the find, and that’s not at all an unreasonable request on our part. They have some good people in the geology business, but nobody in the world can sniff out oil in ice like my people can, and they’ve got a lot to learn about how to exploit something like this. We’ve been there and done that in these environmental conditions. Ain’t nobody knows this like we do, even the guys at BP, and they’re pretty good-but we’re the best in the world, George. That’s the barrel we have them over. They can do it without us, but with us helping, they’ll make a ton more cash, and a hell of a lot faster, and they know that, and we know they know that. So, I got my lawyers talking to their lawyers-actually, they have diplomats doing the negotiating.” Sherman managed a grin. “They’re dumber than my lawyers.”

Winston nodded. Texas turned out more good private-practice attorneys than most parts of America, and the excuse was that in Texas there were more men needin’ killin’ than horses needin’ stealin’. And the oil business paid the best, and in Texas, like everyplace else, talent went where the money was.

“When will this go public?”

“The Russians are trying to keep a cork in it. One of the things we’re getting from our lawyers is that they’re worried about how to exploit this one-really who to keep out of it, you know, their Mafia and stuff. They do have some serious corruption problems over there, and I can sympathize-”

Winston knew he could ignore the next part. The oil industry did business all over the world. Dealing with corruption on the small scale (ten million dollars or less), or even the monstrous scale (ten billion dollars or more), was just part of the territory for such companies as Sam Sherman ran, and the United States government had never probed too deeply into that. Though there were federal statutes governing how American companies handled themselves abroad, many of those laws were selectively enforced, and this was merely one such example. Even in Washington, business was business.

“-and so they’re trying to keep it quiet until they can make the proper arrangements,” Sherman concluded.

“You hearing anything else?”

“What do you mean?” Sherman asked in reply.

“Any other geological windfalls,” Winston clarified.

“No, I’m not that greedy in what I pray for. George, I haven’t made it clear enough, just how huge this oil field is. It’s-”

“Relax, Sam, I can add and subtract with the best of ’em,” SecTreas assured his host.

“Something I need to know about?” Sherman only saw hesitation. “Give and take, George. I played fair with you, remember?”

“Gold,” Winston clarified.

“How much?”

“They’re not sure. South Africa at least. Maybe more.”

“Really? Well, that’s not my area of expertise, but sounds like our Russian friends are having a good year for a change. Good for them,” Sherman thought.

“You like them?”

“Yeah, as a matter of fact. They’re a lot like Texans. They make good friends and fearsome enemies. They know how to entertain, and Jesus, do they know how to drink. About time they got some good luck. Christ knows they’ve had a lot of the other kind. This is going to mean a lot for their economy, and damned near all of it’s going to be good news, ’specially if they can handle the corruption stuff and keep the money inside their borders where it’ll do them some good, instead of finding its way onto some Swiss bank’s computer. That new Mafia they have over there is smart and tough … and a little scary. They just got somebody I knew over there.”

“Really? Who was that, Sam?”

“We called him Grisha. He took care of some high rollers in Moscow. Knew how to do it right. He was a good name to know if you had some special requirements,” Sherman allowed. Winston recorded the information in his mind for later investigation.

“Killed him?”

Sherman nodded. “Yup, blew him away with a bazooka right there on the street-it made CNN, remember?” The TV news network had covered it as a crime story with no further significance except for its dramatic brutality, a story gone and forgotten in a single day.

George Winston vaguely remembered it, and set it aside. “How often you go over there?”

“Not too often, twice this year. Usually hop my G-V over direct out of Reagan or Dallas/Fort Worth. Long flight, but it’s a one-hop. No, I haven’t seen the new oil field yet. Expect I’ll have to in a few months, but I’ll try for decent weather. Boy, you don’t know what cold means ‘til you go that far north in the winter. Thing is, it’s dark then, so you’re better off waiting ’til summer anyway. But at best you can leave the sticks at home. Ain’t no golf a’ tall in that part of the world, George.”

“So take a rifle and bag yourself a bear, make a nice rug,” Winston offered.

“Gave that up. Besides, I got three polar bears. That one is number eight in the Boone and Crockett all-time book,” Sherman said, pointing to a photo on the far wall. Sure enough, it showed a hell of a big polar bear. “I’ve made two kids on that rug,” the president of Atlantic Richfield observed, with a sly smile. The pelt in question lay before his bedroom fireplace in Aspen, Colorado, where his wife liked to ski in the winter.

“Why’d you give it up?”

“My kids think there aren’t enough polar bears anymore. All that ecology shit they learn in school now.”

“Yeah,” SecTreas said sympathetically, “and they do make such great rugs.”

“Right, well, that rug was threatening some of our workers up at Prudhoe Bay back in … ‘75, as I recall, and I took him at sixty yards with my.338 Winchester. One shot,” the Texan assured his guest. “I suppose nowadays you have to let the bear kill a human bein’, and then all you’re supposed to do is just cage him and transport him to another location so the bear doesn’t get too traumatized, right?”