Viking Raid

by Matthew McCleery

  The better his life became, and the more of his problems he solved, the more apparent it was that he lacked the most fundamentally important thing of all – a family. He didn’t have Alexandra Meriwether and he didn’t have children. He was all alone; he was nothing but a big boy with a lot of toys.

  “Bring me the Aalborg!” Coco cried out to the Swiss barmaid, sounding like a rowdy pirate.

  The tanker tycoon knew it may not have been a good idea to drink Aquavit before doing a billion-dollar deal with the Chinese government, but that didn’t stop him. The fact was that Coco missed Norway and when Coco missed Norway, he craved drinking aquavit and singing haunting and emotionally-charged Norwegian folk songs. He just wished Smalahove – severed sheep’s head – was on the menu of the Swiss restaurant to further enhance his visceral experience.

  As he waited anxiously for the patriotic elixir to arrive, Coco took out the tiny pink iPod that Alex had given him during the enchanted week they spent together as the Kon Tiki plowed through the gray water of the North Atlantic en route from Cap Ferrat to St. Bart’s.

  Although the miniscule machine held hundreds of Alex’s favorite songs, songs she’d once wanted to share with her new lover, Coco had never moved past the first one. He had listened to the same song repeatedly since their final encounter on St. Bart’s and rarely was he able to resist singing it out loud; the song had become a battle cry to all he had lost.

  Coco stuffed the tiny white buds into his giant brown ears, pressed the play button, cleared his throat and began to wail.

  “She’s got a smile it seems to me, reminds me of childhood memories, where everything was as fresh as the bright blue sky.”

  The modern day Viking screeched the Guns N’ Roses heavy metal ballad from his overstuffed embroidered couch in the corner of the bar room, his pitch hauntingly high for a man of his girth.

  “Oh, oh, oh, sweet child o’ mine,” he continued.

  Coco’s emotionally charged vocals immediately captured the attention of a huddle of Silicon Valley plutocrats, a too-casually dressed group of zillionaires for whom the leverage-funded binge of the early twenty-first century had resulted in more than steadily declining income, higher taxes, damaged psyches and upside-down mortgages on their homes.

  One bottle of Aalborg led to another as Coco watched an endless parade of politicians, industrialists and financiers come and go from the hotel bar. Most of the ones who hailed from oil-producing nations stopped to thank Coco, offering him drinks and kind words for using his giant ships to miraculously transform their mud into money.

  It was just after 11:00 p.m. when the person he had traveled to Davos specifically to see finally arrived. Because the cheery man was as nearly intoxicated as Coco, and never passed up a chance to sing karaoke, it took little effort for the Norwegian to persuade his future charterer to join him in singing an encore of Guns N’ Roses.

  After the odd couple had completed the rousing song with the back-up support of some gregarious Dutch bankers, Coco finally opened his eyes. When he did, he was stunned by an image that he believed existed only in his imagination: Alexandra Meriwether floating through the doorway of the bar room, the candelabra illuminated above her head giving her the ethereal appearance of St. Lucia.

  Chapter 21

  A Family Business

  Most if not all Greek shipping companies are family firms. When people said during the buying spree that everybody and his brother were ordering ships, it might have been true.

  Fortune Magazine, 1974

  Robert Fairchild drew-in a fortifying breath of salty air and marched toward the doorway that he assumed must lead into the office area. Just as he began to round the corner leading into the chartering room, Robert was startled to find himself nose-to-nose with another person – the same statuesque siren that had tempted him into putting his life at risk at the Astir Palace Hotel a year and a half earlier. The mysterious Aphrodite was so close to him that Robert could smell the primal musk of leather, tobacco and Channel No. 5 on her skin.

  “Hello, Mr. Robert,” Aphrodite greeted him, pronouncing his name like a growl. “I am feeling so happy to see you again.”

  The combination of Aphrodite’s aroma and the sultry sound of her voice brought back a tsunami of visceral memories of Robert’s lost night at the Astir Palace Hotel. He remembered her hair so panther black that it reflected the full moon, eyes so dark they appeared wet and skin so impossibly tan that she seemed to disappear into the night. The large golden hoops hanging from her ears were the same ones she had been wearing that night in Greece as they stood together high above the shimmering Saronic Sea – the shiny bling had attracted Robert like a bluefish to a reflective lure.

  As Robert continued to stare silently at Aphrodite he remembered the words she had spoken to Spyrolaki when the three of them were standing at the bar next to a swimming pool illuminated by a thousand floating candles. “Will this one buy the ship,” she’d said without even looking at Robert. “Or should we offer it to the other American who is sitting in the bar waiting for us.” After issuing the challenge, she placed her bejeweled hand on her hip and awaited his reply. Her words and actions had been a Circe’s invitation that Robert simply couldn’t resist.

  “Let’s do it!” Robert said spontaneously in the same manner he had agreed to accept the time charters from Rocky DuBois, gamble his son’s shares on the IPO and buy the $3 million house on Martha’s Vineyard even though he didn’t have the cash. “I will buy the Delos Express! I will be a shipowner!”

  It wasn’t until he woke up in a fog the following afternoon, after a long night of celebrating in a beachfront nightclub in Glyfada, that Robert considered the consequences of his impulsive act; he had signed a legally binding document that committed him, personally, to purchase a thirty-five-year-old freighter sight-unseen from the Greek for $4 million.

  “What are you doing here, Aphrodite?” he asked after snapping out of his flashback. Before he had received her reply, Robert Fairchild felt a pair lips press against his face – he also felt the stubble of a beard.

  “Hello, my friend!” Spyrolaki exploded after he had aggressively pushed Aphrodite aside and pecked the startled American once on each cheek. “I always knew you would come back to me,” the Greek added in his smoky Greco-British accent. Even though it was a customary greeting among adult men in Greece, Robert Fairchild would never be truly comfortable being kissed by any man that wasn’t a blood relative.

  “Well I sure didn’t,” Robert laughed. “In fact, when I finally managed to unload that old bulk carrier you sold me, I prayed I’d never see you again.”

  “Yes, but this is the shipping business,” Spyrolaki said and raised his hands into the air. “Whether you are in London or Oslo or Hong Kong or Piraeus you will see the same people over and over. Shipping is the original global village.”

  “I know,” Robert said sadly as he momentarily thought of the feud between Rocky DuBois and Coco Jacobsen, “for better or worse.”

  “Did I just hear you ask what Aphrodite is doing at Blue Sea Shipping & Trading?” Spyrolaki said with a smile.

  “You sure did,” Robert said and waited for the reply. “I am very curious.”

  “Then allow me tell you. She is not as much as she should!” The Greek slapped his thigh and roared with laughter before wrapping his arm around Aphrodite’s neck and dropping her into a tight headlock.

  “That doesn’t mean much coming from a grown man who had to have his daddy find him a grain cargo out of Argentina!” Aphrodite grunted as she jabbed her elbow into Spyrolaki’s stomach and broke free from his grip. Then she stomped on his foot with the stiletto heel of her black shoe and he howled with pain.

  “At least I’m not the malaka whose ship ran out of lube oil in the middle of the Panama Canal last week,” Spyrolaki fired back, “just because you wanted to buy them for a few dollars cheaper in Port of Balboa on the other side.”

  “A shipowner who wa
tches the pennies doesn’t need to worry about the dollars,” she said sweetly as she fixed her hair. “Besides, you know full-well that the gauges don’t work right on those old French built ships.”

  Before Spyrolaki had the opportunity to retaliate, an old man’s voice roared from the opposite side of the wall with such fury that it instantly silenced Spyrolaki and Aphrodite. “Children!” the man bellowed. “Enough is enough!”

  Robert dropped his head, opened his eyes wide and said, “Did that man just say ‘children’?”

  “Sadly,” Spyrolaki said with solemn nod.

  “Wait a minute,” Robert gasped as he tried to think through what this new information actually meant to him. “Are you telling me you two are brother and sister?” He didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.

  As the American’s brown eyes moved between the smirking Spyrolaki and the smiling Aphrodite he answered his own question. All at once, he saw the resemblance in the almond shape of their eyes, the proud slope of their noses and even the contour of their cheekbones. Their hair may have been a different color and each may have spoken with a different accent, since Spyrolaki attended high school at Eton and Aphrodite at Institut le Rosey in Switzerland, but Robert had been a fool not to have noticed their many physical similarities when they were together at the Astir Palace.

  “Twins,” Aphrodite added. “And I’m the elder.”

  “By two lousy minutes,” Spyrolaki interjected.

  “I can’t believe this,” Robert said. “Is this what children of Greek shipping magnates do for fun on a Saturday night? You go down to the Astir Palace Hotel and hustle an American hedge fund rube like me into buying an old cargo ship?”

  “Only on special occasions,” Aphrodite said.

  “Haven’t you ever heard of going to the movies, or maybe bowling?” Robert asked.

  “Can you believe my sister made me pay Barbie Shipbroking a 1% commission just for standing around while I pitched you,” Spyrolaki said without looking at Aphrodite. “That was forty thousand dollars.”

  “Barbie Shipbroking?” Robert asked, recalling the placard he had seen with that name in the lobby of the building.

  “Our father gave us our first Liberian companies when we turned ten and he let us name them,” Spyrolaki said. “She picked Barbie.”

  “Oh yeah, well you chose Bat Man! And did you just say I did nothing but stand around?” Aphrodite laughed with disbelief. “If I hadn’t created a sense of urgency, Fairchild would never have bought the ship. He would have said he needed to think about it and woke up in the morning thankful he hadn’t made a terrible mistake; there are some risks that can only be undertaken at night. And don’t forget, little brother, I’m the person who invented the recipe for ‘Shipowners’ Punch,’” she laughed.

  “I knew Greeks were into shipping, but I didn’t know I was up against Apollo and Artemis. In fact, I…”

  Before Robert had finished his sentence a barrel-chested old man charged around the corner like a bull. Then he stopped. Robert’s first impression of the thick man breathing hard in front of him was that he looked like he’d been cut from stone. He was not finely crafted with precise lines of a Roman sculpture but instead hewn from a boulder with just a few rough chisels. His hairless head appeared almost rectangular beneath his navy blue Greek fisherman’s cap, his nose was a thick triangle and his massive ears were like squares that had been appended to the sides of his head. But what struck Robert more than the collection of basic geometric shapes was the brightness of his copper eyes – they flashed like a pair of freshly minted pennies.

  “Robert,” Spyrolaki cleared his throat and spoke with sudden formality. “I would like to introduce you to our father, Captain Spyros Bouboulinas.”

  “Ti kanis, Robert Fairchild,” the old Greek smiled warmly as he raised one of his rough mitts and offered it to Robert.

  “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Captain Bouboulinas.”

  When Robert took the old man’s hand he was surprised more by thickness of the man’s calluses than by the stump of his missing index finger – caught in the winch of a crane loading bananas in the Congo fifty years earlier.

  “I am so glad to finally meet you as well, Mr. Fairchild,” the old man said softly. “The children have enjoyed your company very much and I am also happy to have this opportunity to congratulate you on the Lady Grace. She was a good ship.”

  Good for you, but not for me, Robert thought.

  “Thank you,” Robert said.

  “We are all so happy that you were successful with her in the end,” he smiled. “It is like I tell the children, if you take care of the ship, the ship will take care of you.”

  “Well I’m glad my folly into shipowning provided some entertainment to you and the children,” Robert said and then flashed a wry smile at Aphrodite and Spyrolaki. Now that it was over, Robert couldn’t help but feel amused that he’d been hustled by the Greek twins. “That was quite a learning experience.”

  “No it wasn’t,” the Captain said and shook his giant head back and forth. “Not really.”

  “Excuse me?” Robert laughed.

  “There are few things more dangerous to a career in shipping than early success, Mr. Fairchild. In this sense, I suppose it resembles life,” he added thoughtfully.

  “There’s nothing wrong with beginner’s luck,” Robert mused.

  “In shipping there is,” the Captain corrected him again.

  “What’s that?”

  “The child who never falls off the bicycle will become reckless,” the Captain said. “The gambler who wins the first time he places a bet will become reckless and the person who makes money on their first shipping investment will also become reckless,” the Captain said. His words echoed the ones spoken by Coco Jacobsen at Brown’s Hotel in Mayfair three months earlier. “Beginner’s luck can be a curse.”

  “You’re probably right,” Robert sighed as he thought about the foolish double or nothing bet he’d made with Oliver’s 10% of Viking Tankers.

  “But don’t worry,” the Captain said as he laid a fatherly hand on Robert’s shoulder. “You are not alone. Shipping is the second-oldest profession in the world and yet for some reason people make the same mistakes.”

  “So what brings you back to Greece, my friend?” Spyrolaki asked.

  “I need your help on a deal,” Robert confessed.

  He had just nine days to get his hands on the LNG ships and save the IPO of Viking Tankers and he had already wasted enough time on pleasantries. Now it was time to sit in a conference room and start working the telephones to figure out who owned the ships – and what it would take to get them to sell them.

  “Oh,” Aphrodite said and struggled to hold back her laughter, “are you considering the purchase of another old bulk carrier?”

  “No,” Robert said, “I am here because I need to buy some very special tankers.”

  “This is perfect,” the Captain said as he began to move toward the elevator. “It is five o’clock which means we can discuss your tankers over a nice lunch.”

  “You want to go for lunch?” Robert asked. “But this is an urgent matter of tremendous importance,” Robert stressed.

  “So is lunch,” the Captain replied with a smile. “We must never forget to enjoy the simple pleasures.”

  Chapter 22

  The Jim Tisch $5 Million Test

  And what is the Jim Tisch $5 Million Test, you may ask? While on the ship, you look to the front and then you look to the rear…then take a look to the right and then to the left…then you scratch your head and say to yourself – “Gee! You mean you get all this for $5 million?!”

  James Tisch, CEO, Loews Corporation

  2006 Commencement Address, Columbia University

  Once the foursome had boarded the freshly-washed black Cadillac Escalade idling on the sidewalk in front of 93 Akti Miaouli, Robert Fairchild was anxious to get back on the grid. He hadn’t checked his email f
or more than fifteen minutes and he was eager to see if there was any update on his fate.

  Moments after the vehicle lurched forward and made an abrupt left-hand turn onto a steep hill called Skouze Street Robert lowered his head and placed his hands together. While some observers in the Orthodox country might have assumed the man in the middle row of the SUV was praying, he was, in fact, just carefully inspecting his BlackBerry.

  Robert Fairchild furtively scanned the forty-three messages he’d received during his short time in the offices of Blue Sea Shipping & Trading as he searched for one in particular. He was anxious to know from Oddleif if ARC had paid the $7 million of freight they owed to Viking Tankers every two weeks for the time charters (10 ships x 14 days x $50,000 per ship per day = $7,000,000).

  Robert was disappointed the harvest didn’t yield a single one from Oddleif. Then he noticed the tiny red star illuminated on his infrequently used text message inbox. He dragged his thumb across the keypad, made a few clicks and spotted a message that had been sent from one of Coco’s mobile phones – as always, it was written in the truncated style of a shipping man nostalgic for the bygone days of the telex machine:

  “Bad news…Stop…we r in rcpt of termination notice and redelivery instructions from ART…Stop…Nine days left to sign MOA on LNG vssls…Stop…Oliver and I r counting on u…So is Grace. Brgs…Ends.”

  Just as Robert finished reading the text message he felt his breath leave his lungs – not from Coco’s haunting message but because the huge American car began free-falling down Koumoundourou Street. When Robert jolted his head up to see if he should lower his head to prepare for impact he was startled to find that the chaotic urban density of Piraeus had been replaced by a beautiful Greek harbor loaded with boats. When the vehicle reached the bottom of the steep hill, the driver finally tapped the brakes, lit a fresh cigarette and began to creep slowly along the traffic congested harbor-side road.