‘Pennsylvania Dutch. If you’re serious about looking for work,’ Paul Geezler took back the card and wrote a booth number on the back, ‘take a look at the expo. If this doesn’t interest you there are others recruiting, and they’ll be looking for people with skills.’ He pointed to Rem’s paint-specked hands. ‘They’re looking for anyone who’ll take on a challenge. People who don’t mind a little hardship as long as the money is good. And the money is good.’
Rem couldn’t help but smile. ‘Where’s the work?’
‘Dubai, less and less. Now it’s Kuwait. Kuwait and Iraq.’
‘I can’t do that.’
‘You’ll clear your debt.’
‘That’s how I raised the start-up money: Kuwait, worked on the hotels.’
‘Construction?’
‘Six weeks. Fitting, finishing, painting. They kept building. You could watch them go up. Fourteen new builds in six weeks.’ Rem raised his hand and tower blocks grew around them. ‘Every one a hotel.’
The businessman nodded. Rem referred to the card, the memory of those six weeks caught with him.
And when was Kuwait? Before the surge or after? He couldn’t remember. He could hardly say he’d seen Kuwait, just views from hotel rooms in which buildings grew faster than flowers. It wasn’t even six full weeks on site, closer really to five. Five short weeks with a team of men, one from St Louis, one from Cedar Rapids, and two Brits from Dev-un, that’s how they pronounced it, Dev-uhn, all particular and resentful, not Dev-on, the way it’s spelled. For five or six weeks the men barely spoke and worked in high-rise high-class hotels, progressing floor by floor, and paid in cash by the completed unit. Money rained down. Tax-free. Divine.
Paul Geezler nodded, brisk and dismissive. ‘There’s a good number of possibilities.’ He became distracted as four men, all suited, came out from the elevator and drifted across their line of view. Paul Geezler fixed on them the same attention he’d fastened earlier on Rem.
‘You know them?’
‘I know him.’ Geezler gave a nod to the man in the middle of the group. ‘In six months his company won’t exist.’
‘You know this?’
‘Intimately. It’s a volatile world.’
‘And you?’ Rem asked.
‘It would take something to shake us. Something newsworthy. Monumental. Can I ask about your business? Can I ask what the problem was?’
‘Sorry?’
‘The problem. With your business.’
Rem straightened his back. ‘There isn’t any problem, except there isn’t any business. People stopped calling.’
‘I ask, because people ordinarily tell you why things haven’t worked out. You gave no explanation.’
‘It’s a small business. People stopped calling.’ He changed the subject. ‘You’re serious about having work?’
Paul Geezler turned to face Rem, to make sure he had his attention. ‘If you have a moment I’ll tell you what we do.’
Both men looked at the full beer glasses set beside the taps, and Rem, imagining Cathy’s complaint, had the notion he should return home. Paul Geezler, of HOSCO International, pushed the beer toward him.
‘I’m giving a presentation tomorrow.’ Geezler looked at his beer. ‘An overview. Sixty-eight per cent of our business is now based in the Middle East. Last year it was forty-two. Even for us that’s exceptional growth.’ The man paused as if this fact might impress Rem. ‘We oversee large-scale development projects. The majority are military contracts, although that’s not exclusive. We handle contracts for building, and we provide maintenance and operational support, but the bulk of our work comes from supply. Eastern Europe, Indonesia, West Africa, Central America. Now it’s the Middle East.’ Geezler cleared his throat. ‘We supply transport, drivers, security, accommodation, food, clothing, entertainment. In the past nine years we’ve built everything from schools to refineries, banks, police stations, prisons, sewers. We have a lot of experience, Mr Gunnersen. There isn’t an aspect we don’t manage. If you take a shower it will be in one of our booths, with water and soap we supply and deliver. You’ll dry yourself with one of our towels.’ Geezler drew in breath. ‘I’ve been looking forward to steak tonight. If you’ll join me, I’d like to make you a business proposal.’
Rem deliberately made no gesture.
‘You have plenty of time to finish your beer.’
* * *
They sat at a table in the dining room. A recessed glass ceiling high above reminded Rem of a cruise ship, a room so creamy and vast their voices sounded thin. Along one wall ran a mural of a woodland, a steamy forest clearing with near-naked Indians and deer, strafing sunlight, a kind of overreaching nobility to the scale, everything pitched at the same grand status, animal and man.
‘I was recently in New Hampshire.’ Geezler looked to the mural. ‘Have you been to New Hampshire, Mr Gunnersen?’
Rem said that he hadn’t.
‘They have woods in New Hampshire, old forests. You think of these as wild places, these habitats, as something unique. After a while everything looks the same and you come to realize that it’s all managed. Very little is what you’d call natural. They plant and cut and replant, redirect streams, build dams, lakes, fire ponds. What appears old isn’t old at all. Everywhere you go looks the same. Even the animals. Everything is controlled. Anything excessive is eliminated.’
Geezler waited as the meal was delivered.
‘Our problem is we’re too big. The only way to manage diversity on this scale is to treat everything the same. We don’t think we do, but we do. The way we handle meat is essentially the way we handle electricity, oil, transport, information, manpower. Source. Deliver. Maintain. Resource. If we have a demand for hamburger in Balad, then we buy land and we raise cattle in Wyoming, because, long-term, it’s cost-effective. We go deep, Mr Gunnersen. New-growth forests in New Hampshire will provide lumber for construction, for paper, pallets, crates, and packaging. If we need water, we filtrate it ourselves. If we need to clear mines in Kuwait or Kosovo, we buy into the manufacturer of the sweepers, and hire and train the labour force ourselves. We’ll own an interest in the company that fabricates the body armour, and an interest in the company that produces the fibre for the armour. We bring the same approach to everything we do. It’s how we work. First it was about supply, about making connections, but now we have interests everywhere you can imagine. And there are issues with this, of course. At some point it becomes difficult to distinguish between what’s ours and what’s someone else’s. Does that make sense?
‘Do you have children?’
Rem shook his head.
‘For the first four months they can’t tell the difference between their own mouths and their mother’s teat. That’s how it is with us. We don’t know our limits. We started in minerals a long time ago. Then oil. And we just grew, we kept saying yes. Eighty-five years on and there’s probably only four people in the entire company who properly understand the scope of what we do. We live in departments where we make our work appear mysterious. The problem is structural.’
Paul Geezler lifted coverings from the platters and satisfied himself with what he saw.
‘I like how they do this. Speaks of another time.’ He smiled. ‘Think about that wood, Mr Gunnersen.’ Geezler leaned forward. ‘The reason everything works in forestry is because they knew what they were doing when they started. They understood the job. They set up a business knowing their parameters, and they created the world in which they operate. You know what they did with the existing woods? They cut them down. They started from scratch. We didn’t. We started out doing one thing and we’ve ended up doing everything. I’m not saying we’re greedy. I’m saying we’re promiscuous. The Middle East is raising lots of questions for us. People like what we provide, maybe they even like what we represent — more than they’d admit. But they don’t like us. That’s the issue. It’s animal, Mr Gunnersen. Instinctive. We make ourselves too available. That’s the scope of our problem. This is what it comes down to. We operate in other people’s territories. Territories we do not control.’