Blood Oil

by James Phelan

  “Mr McCorkell,” Hutchinson said. “Ever heard of a CIA operation called Magellan?”

  “Yeah, the picking up of ex-KGB types after the Soviet Union folded,” McCorkell said. “We and some NATO countries extended olive branches to many of the old spies, to make sure that we didn’t have thousands of them becoming guns for hire.”

  “And it nearly worked too,” Ridley said. “We kept the numbers that went on to terrorist organisations pretty damn low.”

  “But a lot of these guys slipped through, or got much better offers from Iran and Chechnya and the like,” McCorkell said. “What’s this got to do with Mendes?”

  “These Russians formed quite the club,” Hutchinson said. “Problem is, some of them formed their own club within the club. We think it’s called Umbra.”

  “That’s CIA myth,” Ridley said.

  “That’s because they’re good,” Hutchinson replied. “Steve Mendes was one of the point guys for Magellan in picking up these Ruskies in the first place. He was a money man, a transporter, a recruiter.”

  “And you’re gonna tell me he recruited his own little team on the side?”

  “You got it, Mr McCorkell,” Hutchinson said. “Our good friend Robert Boxcell was the Moscow Station Chief at the time and had the green light on the spending budget for Magellan. Hell, we were throwing money at these ex-KGB guys to keep them from straying to the dark side.”

  “What was Boxcell’s connection with Mendes?”

  “A few months back, Boxcell tried to get control of the NSA’s Echelon system,” Hutchinson said. “We’ve since got intel that that was his endgame. Having that communications intelligence capability, this Umbra brotherhood of ex spooks would have been flush with cash for eternity, through insider trading, blackmail, you name it. As it is, they’re into every cash-cow business you could imagine. Oil in Nigeria and Venezuela, water projects in South America and the sub-continent, dozens of arms companies—mostly selling looted Soviet stuff and even some Iraqi gear has turned up in the arms bazaars being sold by these guys. Their businesses are legit, it’s just the way that they go about their business that stinks. They make the mob look like schoolkids.”

  “How far up the food chain is Mendes?”

  “Close to the top,” Hutchinson said. “Look, I’ve had a team of twelve guys on this round the clock for five months and we’re just scratching the surface.”

  “Need me to get you a bigger team?” Ridley offered. “Inter-agency?”

  “Nope, we’re a closed unit here,” Hutchinson said.

  “There’s something else you’ve not told us,” McCorkell said. “What’s their objective?”

  “We’re working on that,” Hutchinson said, desperation in his voice. “As far as we can tell, it’s all about making profit for the members to share around and get even richer. I was serious about the mob reference. A few of my team are the Bureaus’ finest, busted up mob outfits over the past three decades. This is much more organised than anything we’ve ever seen. And the scary version?”

  “Yeah?”

  “The Ruskies had a unit specialised at getting WMD out of conflict zones—”

  “You think these guys got Iraq’s?” Ridley asked.

  “We’ve got some known ex-soldiers from that special Russian unit selling ex-Iraqi military hardware looted after the fall of Saddam,” Hutchinson said. “You think those guys were in country and didn’t take the good stuff while they were there?”

  “Jesus. All right,” McCorkell said. “Both of you, keep me posted on this. I’ll let you know where we get with Mendes.”

  “If I had any input, I’d say let the guy keep going at whatever he’s doing,” Hutchinson said. “I know that’s not an easy thing to agree to, but another six months or so and I think we’ll be on track to get to his level in the organisation. Maybe even those above him.”

  “Keep me posted,” McCorkell repeated.

  He hung up the connection with a finger and hit the other line that was blinking as his secretary came to the open door.

  “Your ride to Washington Hospital is at the South Portico,” she said.

  McCorkell nodded his thanks.

  “I’m sorry—who is this?” He strained as he listened to his telephone, the crackling static of a bad cell line on the other end.

  “Bill, it’s Lachlan Fox! Can you hear me?”

  44

  LAGOS, NIGERIA

  Fox had driven through the night, the old VW Golf running smoother since he’d stopped and filled the fuel tank, added a litre of oil to the engine and air into the bald tyres. He wiped the drowsiness and sweat from his eyes, the sweat that came in the early-morning humidity which even the sun’s first rays seemed to produce. It was like a humidity switch, where this country instantly became a hot, sticky place to be. The interior of the car was almost all metal save the bead-covered seats. Twenty years of this environment had steamed the linings off the dull red frame.

  “Still no cell network on either of our phones,” Rollins said, putting his cell phone away. He sat in the passenger seat, cradling the briefcase, the contents of which he was just now reading. The sound of the Adhan came through the open windows, marking the morning prayer time for the weary travellers.

  “That normal here, the bad cell network coverage?” Fox asked. His last call, to McCorkell, had cut out after just a minute of conversation. Just long enough for McCorkell to tell Fox he needed him to stay put in Nigeria, to be his man on the ground.

  “I haven’t seen it this bad, they must be having problems,” Rollins replied. Pointed up ahead. “You’ll need to take this turn off to Victoria Island.”

  Rollins began talking quietly, reciting along with the distant muezzin.

  “Allahu Akbar, Allahu Akbar, Allahu Akbar…”

  Fox found something infinitely comforting in the tone and phonetics of speech in the Englishman’s prayers. Many of the cars on the road were pulled over, their occupants kneeling on well-worn rugs as they went about the Fajr. Other cars driven by the country’s Christians continued on, their drivers and occupants as used to the ritual around them as the morning song of birds. Even those creatures seemed dulled in respect for a greater sound that filled the world right now.

  It was the sound of awakening.

  “That line…” Fox said, when Rollins had finished.

  “As-salā tu khayru min an-na ū m. I’ve not heard it before—what does it mean?”

  “It’s a line in the Sunni first daily prayer,” Rollins said. “It translates to ‘Prayer is better than sleep.’”

  Gammaldi awoke with a snort on the back seat, making both men in the front laugh.

  “Have you made the Hajj?” Fox asked. The pilgrimage to Mecca was another of the Five Pillars of Islam.

  It took a while for Rollins to answer.

  “I thought I had,” Rollins said. “For a long time, I thought I had. But it was in my mind.”

  “Tell me,” Fox said, in the tone of someone asking for explanation from someone who knew a secret. This man had been through the unimaginable and survived. He had an inner peace that Fox dreamed of obtaining. “You said you found God when you were in detention. What did it do for you? How did…”

  “It’s funny, now,” Rollins said, with a distant look as he gazed through the windscreen. “I was born in London, raised a Catholic. My father’s mother was Kurdish and his father Iraqi, but he was raised an atheist in the UK from age ten and slowly became Christian through my mother, a Catholic Englishwoman. They taught me all the major religions, which got me into some trouble when I boarded at a Catholic high school.”

  Fox geared down as he turned onto the ring road. He saw in the rear-view mirror that Gammaldi had sat upright, though his face and hair were of one still asleep.

  “There’s something in Islam that spoke to me when I wished for help,” Rollins said. “After two months in detention they gave me a Qur’an. For the first day I just held it,
didn’t dare open it in case it was empty. It had all the hallmarks I’d known in the Bible and then took me to places that I wished to inhabit. Those pages really took me somewhere else. I was at school again.”

  They drove along a wide road lined with towering coconut palms.

  “Will you raise your daughter as a Muslim?” Fox asked.

  “I think, like my parents, I will teach my children all religions, and let them find their own path,” Rollins said. “In a way, I can understand if Nigeria is to come under Sharia Law. It will be a way to make many steps forward in one leap. Ah—this turn up here will take us on to Ahmadu Bello Way.”

  Fox navigated the turn and traffic appeared up ahead. The road was lined with cars and hundreds of people queued up. Families, young and old; it was obvious they’d camped out all night and maybe more.

  “They are Nigerians seeking visas into the UK,” Rollins said. “It has been like this for years…”

  “We there yet?” Gammaldi asked from the back seat.

  Fox looked at Gammaldi in the mirror again, and beyond his dark tangle of Italian hair, down the street behind them, spotted the glimpse of a gun—

  “Heads down!” Fox yelled. The rear window shattered from rifle fire. Fox geared down into third and weaved into the free oncoming lane as another salvo shredded their rear tyres.

  “Deputy High Commission—on our left—turn left!” Rollins said, peering over the dash.

  Fox pulled on the handbrake and the last of the rubber on the rear tyres tore off the steel rims. The front-wheel-drive surged left, sparks flying in their wake as Fox floored the accelerator.

  In the rear seat Gammaldi emptied the clip from the Browning High Power towards the Land Cruiser that pursued them. A splash of red appeared on the side window as a bullet found its mark. The smell of black powder filled the VW.

  “They’re security contractors!” Gammaldi said. He took Fox’s pistol from the backpack and fired double-handed, his hands resting on the rear shelf, the bullets blowing out the Toyota’s radiator causing steam to erupt. The crowds that lined the street ducked and screamed as they sought cover.

  “Hold on tight! Exit left doors, three seconds!” Fox said. The Deputy High Commission was dead ahead, its cyclone-wire outer fence already next to them. He drove up onto the hastily evacuated sidewalk, now driving between the fence and the parked cars on the road. Those vehicles provided relative cover as gunmen in the pursuing Land Cruiser let rip with submachine-gun fire that devastated the parked cars and sent splinters of steel and glass into the little red Golf.

  “Now!” Fox said, stomping on the brakes. The car stalled and screeched to an agonisingly slow stop not ten metres from the entry gate. Two Royal Marines were there, L85A2 assault rifles shouldered at the approaching threat—they came under fire from the passing Land Cruiser, ducked instinctively for cover, and then moved to engage the vehicle.

  Gammaldi and Rollins were out the left-side doors and moving close to the ground. Both Royal Marines in front of them were down; one ignored the blood pumping out of his leg and continued to return fire towards the Land Cruiser.

  Fox climbed over the gear stick as more bullets tore into the Golf, shrapnel ricocheting and tearing through his shirt and turning his chest crimson. He ran ground-close and bumped into Gammaldi, who was kneeling beside Rollins.

  “Let’s move inside the compound!” Fox said.

  Gammaldi shook his head, steadfast with Rollins.

  Two bullet holes had drilled through the black leather briefcase—they’d found a home in Rollins’s stomach. His legs were twitching involuntarily. Blood pumped out of his wounds, seemingly too fast to be fixed.

  More Marines were at the gate now, firing with assault rifles and SIG pistols at the fleeing Land Cruiser, which fishtailed away down the street.

  Fox looked from Rollins’s wounds to Gammaldi. Amid the shouting and cries from the queued-up Nigerians the gunshots in the air fell silent. It was the quietest moment Fox could ever remember. He called to a Marine for help but he would never be sure if any sound came out. Even the distant thunderclap of a grenade sounded hollow, more of a bright orange flash and puff of smoke as the Nigerians crowded away from the embassy as fast as they could, Royal Marines taking cover and scanning for threats—screaming orders among themselves, guns raised and at hair-trigger.

  Fox looked down at Rollins. The reporter’s head was on Gammaldi’s lap. Fox held his hands tight against the man’s bleeding stomach. His blood was like the warmest water but it was a thick and visceral fluid that covered Fox’s hands and stained the pavement.

  “I’m sorry, Michael,” Fox said. The Englishman looked up to him. There wasn’t any pain registering on his face. In fact, he had that same look on his face that he had worn earlier when they had been in the boat and he’d first spoken of God.

  For Fox, the picture of another man was there in Michael Rollins’s face. And it became someone else again. Rollins wore the many faces of the departed, of all those Fox wished were still here.

  “Lachlan, do you hear?” Rollins said. There was hope and happiness and a look that was more prepared than Fox had ever thought possible. “Do you see?”

  Fox released the pressure to Rollins’s stomach as the man used the last of his strength to hold Fox’s hands. Fox gripped hard through the blood on his hands to keep purchase.

  “Listen…” Rollins said.

  Through the shouting and footfalls of the fleeing Nigerians and the well-drilled clacking of military boots Fox heard what could have been the river. It sounded like all the voices around them, carrying the life of Africa and gracing the world as it spilled out here, giving life to the sea.

  “I hear it,” Fox said. The older man smiled up at him, that same peaceful smile.

  “I … I’m going there,” Rollins said. His face held a final frame that carried serenity in knowledge. “I am going into … the unity of all things.”

  Rain began to fall in a big warm curtain that advanced upon them, and as it hit the sticky, hot, blood-soaked pavement it immediately turned into vapour that whispered up into the air.

  PART THREE

  45

  LONDON

  Fox knocked a second time on the red door. A thick old thing, with a fresh coat of red high-gloss paint bordered with a white doorframe and set in the dark bricks that were uniform in the street. The door still had some masking tape on the dimpled glass panel, remnants of the Rollins family improving their home. Fox stood there in jeans, T-shirt, sports jacket. Aside from his boots, he’d bought all the clothes at Heathrow, dumping his blood-stained gear in the airport bathroom. He hadn’t risked going back to the hotel in Lagos—he and Gammaldi had been ushered via helo from the Deputy High Commission to the airport and boarded a waiting BA flight evacuating British nationals out of the country. He looked down at his black boots, saw what might have been an imaginary blood stain on the leather, and buffed it off with his jacket sleeve.

  He stood up and rapped on the door again. He turned around and looked back at his rental car, considered leaving. The death of Rollins was a lead weight in his gut. More than that. It twisted and rose in a wave of anxiety that came not just with the sudden death of someone close to you but with the implicit knowledge that came through knowing just how much the loss would affect particular people. To be this close to grief was to put your heart through hell. His heartbeat felt as uncontrollable as the sadness on his face.

  From behind the door the sound of a key being turned, then there was a clunk as a dead-bolt slid across. It opened, and Penny Rollins was revealed through the doorway. Silhouetted from the bright window light at the far end of the hall, it was like she wasn’t really there.

  Fox hesitated before stepping over the threshold. There was no invitation to enter and there was certainly no friendly gesture in greeting. Just emptiness. Wallace had phoned earlier, had borne the first of the pain and shock and suffering. Anger and despair was sure to i
mmediately remain. The loss, that would never fade.

  Inside, Fox closed the door and followed Penny Rollins into the lounge room. He saw Scarlet sitting at the top of the stairs, as if waiting to run down them at the sight of her father. It seemed a place where she’d spent far too much of her precious time on earth.

  Fox waited to sit, while Penny Rollins sat heavily in her chair.

  “I’m—” Fox caught himself. The sight of Penny, the thousand-mile stare on her face. Distant, prone. Hands on her belly. Protective, comforting. A slight bump. Damn. That’s the shit that smacks you upside the head and dumps you flat on your ass.

  “I didn’t realise…” he said, gesturing.

  “It’s a boy,” she said. For a half-second she almost smiled, but solemnity prevailed. “Michael was so happy about it. The news was the first real step in his recovery. It brought him home in a way that I couldn’t—I just couldn’t do it on my own.”

  Fox cringed. What was he supposed to do now? What was she supposed to do?

  He started where he could; described the nature of Michael’s death. The attack on the delta. Cheating death more than once. The photos of them found in the police car, that they’d been hunted. Driving through the night. Being so close to safety. His descriptions of her husband’s last moments had made her even more disposed to weep, recognising, as she did, all that he so faithfully portrayed. The briefcase that he held onto at the end. Uncovering the truth behind the Port Harcourt bombing.

  “What was in it?”

  “The case?”

  She nodded.

  “Documents. Proof of corruption of the Nigerian leadership. Dirt files on them, all from the office of the oil minister, Brutus Achebe. Orders from his advisor Steve Mendes for security contractors. The very men that attacked us. Info on the bombing in Port Harcourt, what to do afterwards to reap the benefits of the oil companies moving out. Enough evidence for—”