“Isle de Foree does not have time for a protracted legal battle with Nigeria. Whoever we permit to explore for us will continue to.”
“If you violate the international court orders to cease drilling and exploring until the dispute is resolved, I guarantee you that Nigeria will invade first and answer the world’s questions later.”
Ferdinand Poe rubbed his mouth, as if to prevent a doubt from passing his lips.
“And I wouldn’t be surprised if Gabon piled on to see what they could grab,” Kingsman Helms said, rising to his full height. “Mr. Acting President, we have a deal. ASC stands by its deals. We hope you do, because if you don’t, Isle de Foree will be the partner that ends up alone.”
Ferdinand Poe stood painfully from his chair. “Our nation—this island—has the minutest window open for the shortest instant. In this moment, we can speed the clock ahead of the past. We can erase the final memories of colonialism. We can blot out the memory of terror that Iboga visited on our people. We can use this gift found under the sea to build a homeland that welcomes prosperity, decency, and peace. In other words, Mr. Helms, I will resist your schemes with every breath in my body. This ruinous, larcenous contract will stand on my dead body. We will renegotiate it. Or break it.”
Kingsman Helms turned on his heel and walked out of Poe’s office. Margarido, Poe’s chief of staff, was standing in the hall and looked at him inquiringly. “I trust you had a good meeting, Mr. Helms?”
“An excellent meeting. Always a pleasure doing business in Isle de Foree—Excuse me; I have a call.”
He took out his satellite phone.
Mario Margarido went into Poe’s office. “Well?”
Poe was slumped behind his desk, his mouth working. He looked up wearily. “When I agreed to oil lease terms with American Synergy in exchange for their support in our war against Iboga, I truly believed that liberating our country from that monster would make Isle de Foree a better home for our people. I had a dream that I could be like another Nelson Mandela—free our nation and then step back and let the young build her anew. You warned me at the time that I was making a deal with the Devil.”
The chief of staff smiled, hoping to calm Poe, and said, “It was my job to be your Devil’s Advocate.”
“I explained how desperately we needed the help and you agreed. But it never occurred to me how determined the Devil is to remain the Devil.”
“What happened?”
“I asked for fairer terms.”
“And?”
“He told me to go to hell.”
“That doesn’t mean you have to.”
“He made it very clear he would embroil us with the Nigerians.”
“Yes, I wondered about that— So what do we do?”
“Same thing we did with Iboga. Resist.”
“Do you really want to wage war, again? So soon?”
Ferdinand Poe stood up and limped to a window that overlooked the seawall. He collected his thoughts. Then he repeated to his old comrade the essence of what he had told the oilman from Texas.
“Yes, I am ready to resist, again, if I must.” Poe turned around and faced Margarido. “And you, my friend?”
Mario Margarido bowed his head. “I would be a liar to say I was anxious to. But surely you don’t have to ask.”
* * *
KINGMAN HELMS TOOK his telephone outside. His Sikorsky VIP S-76C++ was waiting on the windswept terrace that served as the palace helipad. He twirled his hand in the air, gesturing impatiently for the pilots to crank her up, and bounded up the boarding steps.
“Out of here. Now.”
“Where to, Mr. Helms?”
“Vulcan Queen.”
The ultraluxury helicopter lifted off immediately. Its so-called Silencer cabin and QUIETZONE gearbox made it quiet enough to talk on the phone, but when Helms saw that it was Doug Case calling from an airplane he did not bother to answer. Fuck him.
The helicopter swept seaward, thundering low over the Black Sand Prison. Last time Helms had been in Porto Clarence, the prison had been full of Ferdinand Poe’s allies. Now the rebels were dancing in the streets and President for Life Iboga’s officer corps were festering inside. There, thought Helms, was Poe’s Achilles’ heel. If Poe had a brain in his head he would shoot the whole bunch. Like most fools, Poe picked the wrong fights. Instead of killing the army officers who truly meant him harm, he wanted to slug it out with American Synergy over some misguided issue of principle.
Twenty minutes later, fifty miles to the south, when Helms could see the Vulcan Queen’s immense double drill tower his phone rang again. The Buddha. The CEO and chairman of the board of American Synergy calling from Houston. Helms answered hastily. “Yes, sir. How are you today?”
“How are things in Isle de Foree?”
“Poe wants to renegotiate. I told him we’d fight him.”
“Will he fight back?”
“I’m not sure, sir. But I’m afraid it looks like he might.”
The Buddha said, “For the sake of your division of the American Synergy Corporation, you better hope like hell that he doesn’t,” and hung up.
“Fuck!” Helms threw his phone on the chair beside his. He jumped up and stared over the pilots’ shoulders at the Vulcan Queengrowing large beneath him. Ordinarily, the sight of the thousand-foot Vulcan-class drill ship bristling with derricks and deck cranes filled his heart. Vulcan Queenwas a completely self-contained explorer capable of steaming to the deepest imaginable oil fields in the world at fifteen knots and drilling two exploratory wells simultaneously in stormy seas when she got there. Satellite-directed one-hundred-ton tunnel thrusters and eight rotating propulsion pods could hold her in position as tightly as if she were welded to the distant sea bottom. Manned by two hundred employees and sending remote submersibles to forage miles below, the drill ship was in her complexity and her mission a thing of powerful beauty, and Kingsman Helms felt all of the pride of the captain of the ship. More, he thought. More like a king in his castle or the admiral of a battle fleet. Vulcan Queen’s mere captain worked for him. He could always fire the captain. Which, of course, was what the Buddha had just told him could be done to him, the mere president of one mere division of the American Synergy Corporation. His phone rang. Case again. Helms was too angry to pretend he didn’t hate the cripple’s guts.
“It would have been goddamned helpful had I been informed that doddering old President Poe is fully capable of reaming out a goddamned regiment.”
“Acting President Poe,” said Doug Case.
“Don’t fuck with me, Case.”
“Had you informed me you were calling on Acting President Poe, I would have filled you in with an up-to-the-minute dossier.”
“You should have known I was calling on him.”
“I do not spy on branch presidents,” Case replied blandly, making “branch presidents” sound like shopping mall bank managers. “When they inform me of their travel plans, I inform them exactly what’s waiting for them. In minute, accurate detail.”
“What are you calling about?”
“Paul Janson says come to Singapore.”
“I’m not going to Singapore. You deal with him.”
“I already tried. Janson said, and I quote, ‘Bring Helms. Tell him I’ll blow this thing sky-high if he doesn’t get his ass to Singapore in twenty-four hours.’ What ‘thing’ would this be, Kingsman?”
“I don’t know.”
“The man seems to think he has you by the short hairs. Anything to do with the fact that Dr. Terrence Flannigan was stabbed to death last week?”
“Have you paid Janson, yet?”
“He wouldn’t take the money,” answered Case. “I stay at the American Club in Singapore. Shall I book you a room?”
TWENTY-NINE
The city-state of Singapore, an equatorial island at the southern end of the Malacca Strait, was as hot and humid as Isle de Foree. But there were no mountains to escape to, only air-conditioned shopping malls. Singapore was flat, with a few low hills, and the city, which occupied much of the island, was densely populated. Development had erased the jungle; streams flowed in concrete ditches between high-rise apartment buildings and glittering hotels; swamps had been drained and dredged to serve commercial shipping with a concrete shoreline. The port was enormous, a transhipment colossus with one foot in the Indian Ocean and the other in the South Pacific.