Ghost Force am-9

by Patrick Robinson

"Well, no. But only because Admiral Morgan told me he didn't believe it either."

  "Phew! That Admiral. He's something, right? Doesn't miss a trick."

  "Really, Lenny, I've come to ask if you have any idea why they wanted him dead?"

  "They've wanted him dead for months and months, Jimmy. I'm surprised he lived so long."

  "You are?"

  "Of course. To them he is one of the most dangerous men in the entire country, a perceived enemy of the state, a threat to the Moscow government."

  "You mean some kind of a traitor?"

  "No. Some kind of a patriot…come on, let's walk for a while. I don't like static conversations. Someone might be listening."

  Both men stood up and walked slowly to the edge of the pond. "Jimmy, do you have any idea how important the oil industry is to Russia?"

  "Well, I know it's pretty big."

  "Jimmy, Russia holds the world's largest natural gas reserves, and it's the second largest oil exporter on Earth. Only Saudi Arabia can pump more crude onto the world market. The World Bank thinks Russia's oil and gas sector accounts for twenty-five percent of GDP while employing only one percent of the population. Russia has proven oil reserves of more than sixty billion barrels. That's three million a day for sixty years."

  "Beautiful. But what's that got to do with poor old Mikhallo being hit by a poisoned dart from a bloody blowpipe?"

  "Everything. Because darn near every barrel of that oil is in Siberia. And old Mikhallo is effectively the boss of the western end of Siberia where nearly all of it is. In the West Siberian Basin just east of the Urals, that's Mikhallo's land.

  "And out there they think he's God, and he's sick to death of the enormous taxation levied by Moscow on what he calls his people's oil. He's sick of Moscow, period. And he's sick of the price gouging, the way Moscow wants all the oil cheap, cheaper, and cheapest. Worse yet, the major oil companies and the other political leaders in Siberia also thought Masorin was God.

  "And Russia lives in fear that a man like him will one day rise up and take it all away, and the country will collapse economically. And remember, Siberia has another ready market right on their doorstep, China. And Beijing will pay much more generously for the product. Moscow faces ruin if these Siberian bosses, both oil and political, cannot be brought into line."

  "Lenny, those are what you might call bloody high stakes."

  "Jimmy, those are the highest stakes on this planet. And I'm assuming you understand the pipeline problems?"

  "Not really, but I guess they have a pretty damn big one pumping all that oil over the biggest land mass in the world."

  "It's a truly colossal system, Jim. The biggest in the world. The Southern Druzhba — that's the export line west of Moscow — runs oil right across the Ukraine, north into Prague, and southwest across Hungary and Croatia to the Adriatic oil port of Omisa. The same system branches to Odessa on the Black Sea and the Caspian.

  "There is a branch farther north, the Baltic Pipeline System, running oil to the ports of Butinge and the new tanker terminal at Primorsk on the Gulf of Finland. Siberian oil flows everywhere, across Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania.

  "And the new northern pipeline all the way to the new terminal at Murmansk up on the Barents Sea is one of the engineering marvels of the modern world. Right out of the West Siberian Basin, it's over twelve hundred miles long through terrible country, mountains and marshes, ice fields, and shocking climate."

  "And then some bloody upstart threatens to turn the tap off, right?"

  "You always had a way with words, young Ramshawe." Lenny grinned. "But you're right. Some bastard suddenly threatened to turn the tap off. Mikhallo may not have been absolutely serious, but Moscow has no sense of humor at the best of times."

  "And didn't I read somewhere about the row over the Far Eastern pipeline?"

  "You sure did. The key to that is the Siberian city of Angarsk — that's a place on Lake Baikal to the north of Mongolia. It used to be the end of the oil pipeline, but then they extended it, right around the lake for twenty-five hundred miles to the Siberian port of Nakhodka on the Sea of Japan, and a new market, okay?"

  "Gottit," said Jimmy. "More big profits for Moscow, right?"

  "Right. But somewhat sneakily, the East Siberian government moved ahead with a fifteen-hundred-mile new pipeline directly into the inland Chinese oil city of Daqing. The Chinese built and paid for a huge length of it, and the Siberians pretended it was all part of the general expansion of the Russian oil industry. But if push came to shove, we know who would control, and service, that particular stretch of pipeline.

  "The fact is the Siberians now have a direct line into one of China's comparatively rare, but extremely well organized, oil complexes, with excellent pipelines to transport the product everywhere. And China will take damn near all the oil it can get its hands on. And they'll pay the price. That scares Moscow."

  Lt. Commander Ramshawe was thoughtful. "I suppose," he said slowly, "it's kind of a natural marriage. China's got a zillion people and hardly any resources, Siberia's got a zillion resources and no people."

  "Precisely so," replied Lenny Suchov. "And no one knows quite what would happen if the Siberians, who would most certainly have been led by the brilliant but dead Mikhallo Masorin, declared autonomy from Moscow, and elected to go their own way. Russia would be virtually powerless. You can't fight a modern war in a place that big. And anyway Russia does not have the resources for that kind of operation.

  "Siberia could shut down the oil for a while, and get along just fine. Moscow, and Russia with it, would perish. You still wonder why Mr. Masorin is no longer alive?"

  "I sure as hell don't. In fact it's a bloody miracle he lasted so long."

  "Considering the mind-set of his enemies, that is exactly so," said Lenny. "Moscow could easily negotiate a better deal for Siberia and make everyone happy. But the Russian government is no good at that. They see a problem and instantly try to smash it. Kicking down the door, even if it's unlocked."

  "And what will happen now?"

  "Who knows? But I imagine there is seething anger in Siberia. They will have guessed what happened to their leader, and I imagine they will begin to level huge demands on Moscow. Always with the unspoken threat…whose oil is it anyway, and do we need interference from Central Government in Moscow?

  "They will surely point out that all the other independent states from the old communist block are thriving, why not us? And we're biggger than all the rest put together, including yourselves."

  "Jesus. Moscow will not love that," said Jimmy, unnecessarily.

  "No, Jimmy, they will not. They most certainly will not."

  The two men continued their slow walk around the memorial garden, in silence. Eventually Lenny said, "Have you finished with me? We just took delivery of some surveillance film from the White House. There was a camera on that dinner and we might just see who delivered the fateful attack on Mr. Masorin."

  "Probably just one of their goons," said Jimmy. "And it's dollars to doughnuts he's safely tucked up in bed in Moscow by now."

  "I agree. But we may recognize him. Or I may. And we'll slip his name into one of our little black books, hah?"

  "Yeah, I guess so. But thanks, Lenny, for the geopolitical lesson. It's bloody unbelievable how much trouble the oil industry causes, eh?"

  "Especially since it's mostly owned by despots, hooligans, and villains…"

  Jimmy chuckled, and then, almost miraculously, his guide from the Russian desk arrived to walk him back to the parking lot.

  "Bye, Lenny, stay in touch."

  And Jimmy watched the double agent from Bucharest, on little spring-heeled steps, still smiling as he made his way back into one of the most secretive buildings on Earth.

  0800 (LOCAL), MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 20

  WESTERN SIBERIA

  Winter had arrived early on the great marshy plains above the oil fields. And the road up to Noyabrsk was already becoming treacherous. Two hours out of the indust
rial oil town of Surgut, heading north, a mere four hundred miles south of the Arctic Circle, the huge articulated truck from the OJSC oil giant had its windshield wipers flailing against the vicious snow flurries that would soon turn the ice-bound landscape milk white.

  Temperatures had crashed during the night and the great wheels of the truck thundered over ice crystals already forming on the highway. In the passenger seat, Jaan Valuev, President of the OJSC Surgutneftegas Corporation, sat grimly staring into the desolate emptiness ahead, clutching his arctic mittens.

  Jaan was a Siberian by birth, a billionaire by choice, from Surgut way back south on the banks of the Ob, the fourth largest river in the world. His mission today was secret, and he traveled in the truck to preserve his anonymity. Out here in the purpose-built dormitory towns that surround the oil rigs, the icicles have ears and the clapboard walls have eyes.

  Jaan Valuev wanted no one to know of his presence in Noyabrsk. So far only the driver knew he was on his way, except for Boris and Sergei. And the big truck kept going, fast, the speedometer hovering at 120 kilometers, great tracks of pine and birch forest occasionally flashing past, but mostly just bleak white flatland, bereft of human life, the icy wilderness of the West Siberian Basin.

  They came rolling into Noyabrsk shortly before nine a.m. The weather, if anything, had worsened. The sky was the darkest shade of gray, with lowering thunderheads. The temperature was–1 °C, and malicious snow flurries sliced down the streets. The locals call them bozyomkas, and, as bozyomkas go, these were on the far side of venomous.

  They say there is no cold on this earth quite like that of Siberia, and those gusts, 50 mph straight off the northern ice cap, howling in off the Kara Sea, shrieked down the estuary of the Ob River and straight into downtown Noyabrsk. That's cold.

  In the wild lands beyond the town, men were already struggling with the drilling pipes, manhandling the writhing hydraulics, trying to control them, heavy boots striving to grip the frozen steel of the screw-drill rig, forcing the pipe into the steel teeth of the connector mechanism that joins it to the next segment, lancing two miles down, into the earth. Jaan's corporation alone, OJSC, drills ninety of these wells every year and accounts for 13 percent of all Russian oil production.

  Russia, showing the dividing line of the Ural Mountains. To the east lie the vast plains of Siberia, all the way to the Pacific Ocean.

  The fifty-two-year-old Siberian oil boss disembarked from the truck and nodded his thanks curtly to the driver, who had brought the massive vehicle to a halt outside the main doorway of a three-storey wooden office building on a side street right off the main throughway of the town.

  Jaan hurried inside, brushing the snow off his fur coat as he entered the warm corridor. He walked briskly upstairs to the first floor, where a large wooden door bore the lettering SIBNEFT, the Russian name for the gigantic Siberian Oil Company, whose refineries in the city of Omsk, down near the Kazakhstan border, and in Moscow, produce 500,000 barrels of oil product every day.

  Inside, behind a large desk, in front of a roaring log fire, sat Sergei Pobozhiy, the fabled Chairman of SIBNEFT. Neither man had been to this oil frontier town for at least two years, and they gave each other great bear hugs of recognition. Sergei had arrived by helicopter from the city of Yekaterinburg, which stands, in its infamy, in the foothills of the Urals.

  The next visitor, who arrived at 9:30, had traveled up from the same city, also by helicopter. The mission was too secret for the men to travel together. Like Sergei, Boris Nuriyev, first Vice President of Finance at the colossal, restructured LUKOIL Corporation, had traveled alone in the corporate helicopter.

  Boris Nuriyev was a stranger to Jaan and Sergei, but all three of them were Siberian-born, and all three of them had been close friends with the late Mikhallo Masorin. They shook hands formally and sat down with black coffee to await the arrival of the fourth and final member of the meeting.

  He came through the door at 9:40, direct from the rough little Noyabrsk airport, having landed in a private corporate jet directly into the teeth of the wind, and was almost blown off the runway. The government car that picked him up was a black Mercedes limousine, with chains already fitted to the tires. The automobile was a gift from the Chinese government.

  Roman Rekuts, a big man well over six feet three, issued no bear hugs, mainly because he might have crushed the spines of the other men. But Jaan, Sergei, and Boris each shook hands warmly with the last arrival, welcoming the new head of the Urals Federal District, the man who had replaced Mikhallo Masorin. A Siberian-born politician, he had served under Masorin for four years.

  Sergei Pobozhiy motioned for Roman to remove his coat and to sit in the big chair behind the desk. The SIBNEFT boss poured coffee for them all, and suggested that the new Urals Minister begin proceedings. Nothing written down, just an informal chat among four of the most influential men in Siberia.

  "Well," he began, "I understand we are unanimous that Moscow agents assassinated Mikhallo Masorin. The American newspapers confirm the findings of the autopsy, and the coroner in Washington is expected to deliver a verdict that he was murdered by person or persons unknown.

  "I imagine the Russian security contingent that traveled to the United States with the President will maintain the Americans must have done it. But of course no one is going to believe that. At least the Americans won't, and neither will we.

  "Gentlemen, we are discussing here a matter of approach. And we should perhaps decide among ourselves what it is we want. And the short answer is plainly revenge, and then money. The taxes on Siberian export oil levied by Moscow are very high, and we do not get even a reasonable share of it.

  "It would obviously suit us much better if the oil corporations — your good selves, that is — paid a higher tariff to Siberia, and made Central Government pay a higher price for domestic oil, and then share some of their huge export tax revenues with the country of origin. That's us."

  "Of course, we are not really a country," said Boris thoughtfully. "We are, and always have been, a part of Russia."

  "A situation that could probably be changed," said Sergei. "Let's face it, Siberia really is a separate country. The Urals form a great natural barrier between us and European Russia. We're talking a twelve-hundred-mile range of mountains stretching north-south all the way from the Arctic Circle to Kazakhstan. That's a barrier, a true break point. Enough to discourage anyone from using force against us."

  "True enough," said Jaan. "And the Russian government knows it has no possibility of suppressing us by force. Even the mighty army of Germany never penetrated the Urals. We're safe from invasion, and the Chinese love us, so we don't have that much to fear. If we demand financial justice, Moscow essentially will have to give it to us."

  Sergei, who, with Masorin gone, was probably the most militant of them, suddenly said flatly, "We could just round up the other two Siberian Federations and inform Moscow that we do plan to secede from the Russian Republic. Just like the smaller countries did from the Soviet Union.

  "We ought not to do this in any spirit of malevolence, and we should inform them we would like to continue with trade agreements, much like the status quo. But in the absence of cooperation from Moscow, and in light of their compliance in the murder of the leader of the Ural Federal District, we intend from now on to call the shots financially on our own oil, and increase our trade with China."

  "To which they will say, No, out of the question," said Roman, mildly.

  "Then we issue our first veiled threat that there may be some interruption in production," replied Sergei.

  The room fell silent. The snow squalls lashed against the double-glazed windows, and the wind howled.

  "You hear that weather out there?" said Sergei. "That is our greatest strength. Because you have to be Siberian to work out here, to cope with the terrible conditions. I know we ship in labor for the rigs from Belarus and other cold climates. But the bedrock of our workforce is Siberian. Without native labor the entire
oil industry would collapse. No one else is tough enough to stand it."

  "Gentlemen, how serious are you about a declaration of independence?" Roman was pensive.

  "Not very, I don't think," said Boris. "But I think we all believe the threat would send a lightning bolt through the Russian government. And that would quickly bring an agreement that the Siberian Federations deserve more from the treasure that lies under their own lands. It's really the only compensation the people have."

  "I believe the intention of opening up increased trade with China would really frighten them," said Jaan. "We already have shortages and bottlenecks on the pipelines. If Moscow thought we intended to ship more and more oil down the new pipeline to China, I think they'd be very nervous. Especially if we were getting a much better price for it."

  "And of course we ought not to forget the new tanker terminal in Murmansk," added Boris. "Right now we're shipping one point five million barrels of Siberian crude a day to the United States directly from the Barents Sea to the U.S. East Coast. Moscow would hate to jeopardize that, and Murmansk is a real outpost, way down at the end of a very long pipeline. Everyone knows they're what the Americans call ‘low man on the totem pole.'

  "Any shortages up there would infuriate them. But they already know the danger. And they know the sympathies of the big oil corporations are very much in favor of the Siberians. Especially as so many of us are Siberians. The truth is, Siberia not only owns the oil, Siberia also controls it."

  Outside, the ice storm continued to blow out of the north. Sergei stood up and placed another couple of logs on the fire, saying quietly as he did so, "Moscow is fifteen hundred miles from us — and if we decide to increase our production to China, there's nothing they can do about it. Except negotiate, on our terms. And the murder of Mikhallo has not helped their cause, both in this room and out there among the people."

  "Gentlemen, I think this calls for a summit meeting, in the next ten days. Is that likely to be possible?" Roman was getting down to brass tacks.

  "Yes. I think we could manage that," replied Sergei. "Say four or five top oil executives, ourselves and perhaps three more, plus four or five major Siberian politicians, Roman and the other two Federation leaders, plus two Energy Ministers from the Ural Federation and maybe Mikhail from the Far East."