Blood Oil

by James Phelan

  “For what?” Penny asked. Animated. Agitated. “Putting these guys before a court? How much are they worth? How well are they protected?”

  Fox weighed the options before him. He knew all this. Mendes couldn’t go to court, nor Achebe. Guys like them didn’t get the usual kind of justice. Especially when they were from that part of the world, a place where everyone was covering each other’s backs. These were the guys who made the law then embezzled enough cash to be beyond its reach.

  “I don’t know what to do,” Fox said. His eyes said otherwise—they were asking for permission. “I thought I did, I thought I knew the way ahead. I thought it was clear…”

  “I don’t want you to forget what he died for.”

  “I won’t ever forget.”

  “I want you to finish this.”

  Fox noticed the change in her voice. Her eyes, still glazed over, locked on to his. He nodded as she spoke, assuring her that he agreed and would carry out what she said, as if she were speaking for them both and giving legitimacy to what Fox had considered a step too far.

  “Finish this, Lachlan.” The remaining tears in her eyes refused to fall. “Whatever it takes.”

  “I’ll get it done,” Fox said. Resolute. “I’ll do this.”

  Penny Rollins nodded. Put a hand on Fox’s arm. She was more matter-of-fact than pleading when she said:

  “Finish it. Finish them.”

  46

  WASHINGTON HOSPITAL CENTRE, WASHINGTON DC

  The blocks surrounding Washington Hospital Center were being patrolled by no less than fifty DC police officers. The Secret Service counter-snipers on the roof were an unusual sight, as were the business-suited and uniformed agents who watched over entrances. The constant buzz overhead of two US Marine UH-60 Blackhawks on patrol left no one in doubt of who was currently a patient in the hospital. Farther out, two pairs of F-22 Raptor air superiority fighter jets flew in stand-off formations to enforce a no-fly zone.

  McCorkell entered the President’s suite in a hurry. He had walked double-time from the car and carried a sense of urgency in every inch of his appearance. The door was shut behind him by a Secret Service agent.

  The President was sitting up in bed, resting with his eyes closed as he listened to opera on a portable CD player at arm’s reach.

  “Mr President,” McCorkell started. He took a moment to compose himself. “How are you feeling?”

  “You my doctor now, Bill?” The President opened his eyes, could surely see the restlessness in McCorkell. “I’m well rested. Best sleep I’ve had in years, you gotta try sleeping on whatever it was they gave me.”

  “Sir, I need—”

  “I was briefed on the LOOP attack,” the President said. “There been another?”

  “Another, Mr President?”

  “Another attack?”

  “No, there hasn’t,” McCorkell said. He stood by the foot of the President’s bed.

  The President held up a hand to stop his National Security Advisor from going on.

  “Then take a breather for just a moment, Bill. Listen to this piece of music. I was originally scheduled to be at the closing night of the Met. Nabucco.” The President held up a CD. “They sent me this recording, though. You recognise this track?”

  “Chorus of the Hebrew Slaves?” McCorkell answered.

  “That’s right. Va’, pensiero. You heard it live, with a real opera chorus?”

  “Once, would have been about twenty years ago,” McCorkell said. “Covent Garden, I think.”

  “I just love this track, it takes me back to—listen to this part…”

  McCorkell listened. The CD player provided by the hospital or Secret Service didn’t do the recording much justice. Tinny sound. Nothing on his Bang & Olufsen back at his apartment. Still, the Italian words filled the room.

  O simile di Sòlima ai fati

  traggi un suono di crudo lamento,

  o t’ispiri il Signore un concento

  che ne infonda al patire virtù.

  “My Italian is a little rusty,” McCorkell said.

  “Mindful of the fate of Jerusalem,” the President said, “either give forth an air of sad lamentation, or else let the Lord imbue us with fortitude to bear our sufferings.”

  “And so it became the unofficial national anthem for Italy,” McCorkell said. “I remember going to a soccer game where the Italian supporters sang it instead of their official anthem.”

  “Il Canto degli Italiani only became their official anthem in 2005,” the President said. “Some sixty years after Italy became a republic. And it ain’t got nothin’ on Verdi. The man was a god with music, make no mistake.”

  McCorkell nodded, not for the first time being put through one of the President’s little history lessons.

  “Mr President, we had a leak at the White House—”

  “I know, the Secret Service told me,” the President said. “The nurse’s boyfriend. And that we are tracking the terrorists who struck the LOOP back to the Florida Keys?”

  “Secret Service, FBI, DHS, they’re all on it,” McCorkell said. “I really think that, if you’re up to it, you need to come back to The House. Sign yourself back in, take charge—”

  “Bill, I’m waiting for the doctor’s say-so, should be in a few minutes. Unless your Oxford PhD was in medicine? No, I didn’t think so.” The President leaned over and pressed the back-track button, and the CD replayed the slave’s chorus. “So, in the meantime, we listen. This chorus piece of Verdi’s Nabucco, do you know why it still resonates within us today, why it’s so important to you and me right now?”

  McCorkell shook his head. The President turned the volume down, so that the orchestra was playing softly in its lead-in.

  “Verdi based it on a psalm,” the President explained. “Psalm 137.”

  “I didn’t know that,” McCorkell said. “And my Bible studies are about as fuzzy as my Italian.”

  He took the moment the President allowed him to recall.

  “That’s the ‘Rivers of Babylon’ one?” McCorkell ventured. “The revenge psalm?”

  “It’s sometimes known as that,” the President said. “What the displaced slaves are singing about here in the opera’s third act is a longing for their homeland. The psalm, well, it’s in that sadness of the Israelites, who, when asked to sing the Lord’s song in a foreign land, they instead hang up their harps.”

  “And they asked that if they forget Zion, may their right arm forget its skill,” McCorkell said, the fog of time over memory clearing. “May their tongue stick to the roof of their mouth.”

  The President nodded.

  “And they speak of a revenge that we’ve all felt at times,” the President explained. “A revenge, albeit they wished it delivered in different ways, nonetheless it’s much the same as we feel today when it’s our home that gets attacked.”

  It was considered among the two of them. Seriously considered, by both men, in a silence akin to the serenity the two men shared while fishing from a boat in the middle of a lake.

  “Revenge is a tough emotional place to reconcile, Mr President,” McCorkell finally said. “Unless you’re there, directly affected by it, have had your home and everyone and everything you’ve ever held dear raped and destroyed and taken from you—how could we ever really know that feeling of exacting such revenge.”

  The President nodded, a reflective look on his face as he listened to the faint music play.

  “At the end of the psalm,” McCorkell continued, remembering this passage as verbalised—had it been at Camp David last year? Yeah, by the visiting Israeli leadership. “The slaves remember what their enemies did to their land. To their people.”

  “Yes, and it’s something that they will never forget,” the President said. “All peoples have such lessons in their past. And it’s how their leaders act in those times that makes the difference in how history treats them.”

  The c
hief White House physician entered with the hospital’s head of surgery. Medical charts and relieved faces showed that the prognosis was all good.

  “I’ll be outside waiting for you, Mr President,” McCorkell said.

  “Bill?” The President stopped him as he was halfway through the door. “The end of the psalm. Think about it. Why it’s pertinent today, why we should remember its lessons.”

  McCorkell looked at his Commander-in-Chief. His boss had the same look that he had when he beat him in their weekly chess match; that each mopping of the floor was a lesson for his friend.

  “They say,” McCorkell said, summoning the words from somewhere deep in his memory banks—he recalled the notion behind it rather than the exact language but he knew that was all his friend was after—“they bless those who will have the chance to exact their revenge. They say something to their captors along the lines of fortunate is the man who will seize and dash your children upon the rocks.”

  The President nodded. Mouthed the word ‘never’ to McCorkell. McCorkell shut the door, walked past the Secret Service agents, then took a seat on a plastic chair in the hallway and stared at the linoleum-covered floor.

  Never, McCorkell thought. He’d been in the Oval Office when the President had said that very word to the Iraqi provisional Prime Minister, when the guest had asked after the President’s directive to send more Marines into the Anbar province.

  The Iraqi leader had asked the President, the presumed leader of the free world, if he ever saw the hand of God in what he did? All the President’s men had been so quiet, McCorkell could hear his heart beat. The President had stood, extended his hand and shaken that of the Iraqi’s, and wore the look of a father who’d lost his sons.

  “Never.”

  47

  OXFORD STREET, WEST END, LONDON

  Fox rechecked the map that came with the rental car. He’d spent the past two hours driving a circuit around his target, exploring all the entry lanes on the M4 expressway to Heathrow Airport and a couple of alternatives to outside tube stations. He now knew the streets surrounding his target, where the closest police station was, where good obstacles were, all to make sure he could navigate his hire car at high speed and without pausing to check the map. With each circuit he’d done passes of the house where his target lived. There was no visible security but he knew there was an armed bodyguard inside, around-the-clock protection. He would be ex-military and sharp, no fat security guard getting twenty bucks an hour here. Fox parked his hire car around the corner, walked the block in each direction—still no other security present. He knew his target was in there—he’d prank-called the house earlier, while the housemaid was still there. He’d watched her leave at eleven. It had just clicked past midnight. Now or never.

  Fox made sure he had his essential gear on him: passport, wallet and car keys, all in his pockets.

  He rapped on the door, a big old brass door-knocker that made echoes inside the house.

  The neighbour’s door next to him opened and Fox turned his back from view—heard it slam shut. Then he heard the click-clack of stilettos, the flick of a lighter.

  He turned to look—a pretty young thing was walking down the house next door’s steps in a leather mini. Clear plastic stilettos added a good six inches to her height.

  She turned at the bottom of the stairs, put her lighter away, and puffed smoke up at Fox. She had big blue eyes with thick black eye-liner. Was twenty-five at the most. Sexy but sad.

  “Lousy tipper?” Fox asked.

  “Worse,” she said, with an Eastern Bloc accent. “Lousy lay.”

  Fox returned her sardonic smile with one of his own.

  “He tell you where Osama is hiding?” Fox asked.

  “Pardon?”

  “Nothing.” Fox heard movement from behind his door. “Have a good night.”

  “Thanks,” she said, walking away with a practised sway of the hips that broke Fox’s heart.

  The door opened. A guy stood there, ex-military slab of beef in a dark suit. His former occupation was evident by the man’s shoulders—the straight back and slope of the shoulder from the neck to arm giving away the combination of marching drills and lifting heavy weights. Maybe some jail time in there too. His eyes scanned Fox and then the street.

  “Hi,” Fox said. “My car just broke down—can you please call a cab for me?”

  The guy didn’t answer, just flapped open the left side of his suit jacket to display a holstered Glock.

  “That meant to impress me?” Fox said.

  “Fuck—” The guy couldn’t finish his line. Fox took the two strides between them and feigned his left for the guard’s gun. The beefcake leaned back and went to block with his left and draw with his right—leaving himself exposed and unbalanced. Fox’s right uppercut laid the guy on his back.

  Fox went inside and closed the door behind him.

  The guy wasn’t quite out, despite the nice pock! his head made against the tiled floor of the entrance hall and the instant swelling in Fox’s knuckles. Fox was on him, holding a knee hard down onto the guy’s sternum and relieving him of his Glock. He checked there was a round in the chamber, and pushed it hard into the beefcake’s mouth.

  For a few heartbeats Fox made sure no one was coming. Then looked back down.

  “Turn over on your stomach,” Fox said quietly to the bodyguard. “Make a sound, you lose your head.”

  He lifted his weight off the man, still keeping the gun point-blank at the bodyguard’s head as he rolled over. Fox pulled a few plastic cable ties from his jacket pocket, zipped them around the guy’s wrists and through one another so that his arms were cuffed behind his back. He took a second and decided, given the man’s size, that he’d double up with another pair. A soldier this guy’s size that Fox used to serve with had once busted through a set for laughs.

  Fox connected the man’s ankles and put a hood over his head—it read ‘British Airways’. Tight fit. It was the pillow cover from the flight he’d taken from Lagos that morning.

  He knelt into the guy’s back between his shoulders, put a hand at the guy’s throat and pulled his hooded head up off the floor, whispering into his ear:

  “Make one noise, it will be your last.”

  Fox went down the hall silently, Glock in hand, his right index finger running down the length of the barrel just over the trigger-guard so as not to engage the Safe Action trigger system.

  The first door to his left, a room that fronted the street, had the glow from a television coming from within.

  Fox glanced in and saw an old man sitting by an unlit fire watching a movie. Hassan Ruma. Ex-president of Nigeria.

  He went in, and put the gun in Ruma’s face.

  The old man stared up at him wide-eyed. Then settled a little, as if he knew the day would come when he had a gun pointed at his face. The armed guards only delayed that day, but no more. This was now, this was real.

  “Anyone else in the house?” Fox said.

  No answer.

  The Glock pushed harder against Ruma’s forehead.

  “Anyone in the house?”

  “No,” Ruma said.

  Fox nodded, and put the Glock down on the mantle. Within his reach.

  “I need some quick answers and I’ll be on my way,” Fox said. “Brutus Achebe. Steve Mendes. You know what they’re up to?”

  Hassan Ruma looked at Fox with interest now. It was clear that he was still unsure about Fox’s intentions.

  “I have intercepted some documents from Nigeria,” Fox said. “Being couriered from Steve Mendes and Brutus Achebe to someone known as Musa.”

  The old man’s eyes showed that he knew the name and he shook his head.

  “You know that name?” Fox asked.

  “I know that name,” Ruma replied. “Who are you? What do you want with him? With Achebe, with Mendes?”

  “I’m someone concerned with what’s going on in your country,” Fox said
. “As for what I want to do with this … I’ll draw Mendes and Achebe out, then decide. Whatever the case, this is something that will come out in the press, eventually.”

  Hassan Ruma nodded but there was doubt in his face. “You can’t get to them—they’re well-protected,” he said. “And their movements are made at the last minute. Achebe, maybe Mendes too, resides in safe houses all over the country. Unreachable.”

  “But this Musa guy will know where to find them.”

  “Most likely … but he’s no ordinary man,” Hassan Ruma said. “He was an assassin originally. Very dangerous.”

  “I’ll take my chances,” Fox said.

  “What will you do when you find them?”

  “I’ll worry about that then,” Fox said. “Right now, I need to find the sender of this.” He handed over the note. “You know how I can get in touch with Musa Onouarah? His name came up in some references to you.”

  Ruma looked down his nose through his bifocals. He looked almost grandfatherly now, like a fat, bald Morgan Freeman. He didn’t look like someone who’d embezzled over five hundred million dollars. He nodded, handed back the note. Didn’t say anything.

  “Will you help me?” Fox asked, tapping the note. He considered glancing at the Glock but didn’t. He felt the guy shifting of his own accord.

  “You don’t want to know this man,” Hassan Ruma said. “He is one reason I have bodyguards.”

  “One reason?”

  “Those who control the oil, control the world,” Hassan Ruma said. “I have many enemies, and not many friends left.”

  Silence. Fox waited for him to go on—the raspy old guy had a sip of water.

  “Musa Onouarah, yes, that is his name. He’s what you’d call a crime boss. Gets things done, big and small. Runs the security in the Rivers State. Some federal ministers use him to fix election results at polling stations, oil companies pay him to ensure his thugs rule the areas around their assets. The populace don’t look him in the eye. He rules a great deal of the coastal areas. Yet—he’s like a phantom.”