Limit

by Frank Schätzing

  ‘We’ll need pictures though,’ Keowa had said. ‘We’re a TV channel.’

  ‘You’ll get some. As long as I feel that I can trust you. But I can only take so many knocks, Loreena. We’ll sound one another out for an hour, and then you can fetch your crew. Or maybe not.’

  Now, in the taxi bringing them downtown from the airport, Keowa went through her material one more time. Her camera crew and sound technician were lolling on the back seat, wrung out by the humid heat that lay across Texas far too early this year. EMCO was headquartered next door in Irving, but Palstein lived on the other side of town. They had a light lunch in the Dallas Sheraton, then Palstein’s driver arrived at the agreed time to fetch Keowa. They left town and drove through the untouched green belt, until the glittering surface of the lake became visible through the trees to the left. It had been a bumpy flight, followed by a plunge into the sauna-like Dallas temperatures, and she enjoyed the ride in an air-conditioned electric van. After a while the driver turned off into a smaller road and then onto a private driveway that led along the water to Palstein’s house, which looked, she mused, something like what she had been expecting. Palstein would have stuck out like a sore thumb in a ranch with buffalo horns and a pillared veranda. This was an airy arrangement of Cubist buildings around green open spaces, with glass frontages, soaring slender framework and walls that seemed almost weightless; all this suited his character much better.

  The driver let her out. A well-built man in slacks and a T-shirt came towards her and asked politely for some identification. Two more men were patrolling down by the quay. She handed him her ID card, and he held it to the scanner on his phone. He seemed happy with what the screen told him, gave it back to her with a smile and beckoned her to follow him. They hurried through a Japanese garden and past a large swimming-pool, to a jetty where a boat was tied up.

  ‘Do you feel like a ride?’

  Palstein was leaning against a bollard, waiting for her in front of a trim, snow-white yacht with a tall mast and furled sails. He was wearing jeans and a polo shirt and looked healthier than last time they had met in Anchorage. The sling on his arm had gone. Keowa pointed to his shoulder.

  ‘Feeling better?’

  ‘Thanks.’ He took her hand and shook it briefly. ‘It tugs a little sometimes. Did you have a good flight, Shax’ saani Keek’?’

  Keowa laughed, caught out. ‘You know my Indian name?’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Hardly anybody does!’

  ‘Etiquette demands that I keep myself informed. Shax’ saani Keek’ – in Tlingit that means the younger sister of the girls, am I right?’

  ‘I’m impressed.’

  ‘And I’m probably an old show-off.’ Palstein smiled. ‘So, what do you say? I can’t offer to take you sailing, that wouldn’t work yet with my shoulder, but the outboard works and there are cold drinks on board.’

  Under other circumstances Keowa would have been suspicious. But what would have seemed manipulative from anyone else, was just what it seemed coming from Palstein: an invitation from a man who liked his boat and wanted to share a trip.

  ‘Lovely house,’ said Keowa, once they had motored out a little way from the shore. The heat stood there like a block over the water, not a whisper of a breeze ruffled the lake surface, but all the same it was more bearable than on land. Palstein looked back and then was silent for a minute, as though considering for the first time whether his homestead could be called beautiful.

  ‘It’s based on a design by Mies van der Rohe. Do you know his work?’

  Keowa shook her head.

  ‘In my view, he’s the most important modern architect there was. A German, a great constructivist and a logical thinker. He aimed to tame the chaotic mess that technological civilisation churned out and frame it with order and structure. Mind you, he didn’t consider that order necessarily meant drawing lines and boundaries – he wanted to create as much open space as possible, a seamless transition between inside and out.’

  ‘And between past and future?’

  ‘Absolutely! His work is timeless, because it gives every age what we need. Van der Rohe will never stop influencing architects.’

  ‘You like clear structures.’

  ‘I like people who can see the whole picture. By the way, I’m sure you know his most famous motto: Less is more.’

  ‘Oh, yes.’ Keowa nodded. ‘Of course.’

  ‘Do you know what I think? If we could perceive the world the way van der Rohe structured his work, we’d be aware of higher-order connections and we’d reach different conclusions. Clarity through reduction. Recognise what’s in front of you by clearing away the clutter. A mathematics of thought.’ He paused. ‘But you’re not here to hear me talking about the beauty of pure number. What would you like to know?’

  ‘Who shot you?’

  Palstein nodded, almost a little disappointed, as though he had been expecting something more original.

  ‘The police are looking for one man, someone frustrated, angry.’

  ‘Do you still agree with their profiling?’

  ‘I’ve said that I do.’

  ‘Would you care to tell me what you really think?’

  He put his chin in his hands. ‘Let’s put it this way: if you want to solve an equation, you need to know the variables. All the same you’ll fail if you fall in love with one of the variables and assign it a value that it might not have, and if I’m right, this is exactly what the police are doing. The stupid thing is, though, that I can’t offer any better explanation. What do you think?’

  ‘Hey, well. There’s an industry going down the drain here, and you stalk the land like a gravedigger, telling people that they’re going to lose their jobs, you’re shutting down plants, you’re letting companies go to the wall; even if the truth of the matter is that you’re not a gravedigger, you’re the trauma surgeon.’

  ‘It’s all a question of perception.’

  ‘Quite. Why couldn’t it be some husband and father who just snapped? I’m just surprised that they haven’t been able to find someone like that in four weeks. The attack was filmed by several broadcasters, you’d think someone would have seen something. Someone acting suspiciously maybe, drawing a weapon, running away, something like that.’

  ‘Did you know that there’s a complex of buildings across from the podium, over the other side of the square—’

  ‘—and the police think that this is where the shot was fired from. Also that nobody remembers having seen anyone going in, or coming out after the attack. There were policemen nearby, all over the place. Doesn’t that seem odd to you? Doesn’t the whole thing look more like a professional operation, something planned out in advance?’

  ‘Lee Harvey Oswald fired from a building as well.’

  ‘Wait a moment! He fired from where he worked.’

  ‘But not on impulse. He must have planned his action, even if there’s nothing to say that he was a professional assassin – whatever millions of conspiracy theorists may prefer to believe.’

  ‘Agreed. All the same, I have to ask who the bullet was meant for here.’

  ‘You mean whether I was being shot as a private individual, as representing EMCO, or maybe as a symbol for the whole system.’

  ‘You’re not the symbol for the system, Gerald. Militant environmentalists would look for somebody else, not the only one they can sometimes work with. Perhaps it’s the other way about, and you’re a thorn in the side of militant representatives of the system.’

  ‘They’d have taken the chance to snuff me out while there were still decisions to be made at EMCO,’ Palstein said dismissively. ‘As you so nicely put it, I’m letting Imperial Oil go to the wall and I’m winding up our involvement in oil sands. If I had done this before helium-3, it might have made sense to get me out of the way so as to be able to keep grubbing around in the muck, but these days? Every unpopular decision I make, the circumstances make for me.’

  ‘Good, then let’s conside
r Palstein the private individual. What about revenge?’

  ‘Personally, against me?’

  ‘Have you been stepping on any toes?’

  ‘Not that I know of.’

  ‘Not at all? Bedded someone’s wife? Stolen their job?’

  ‘Believe me, right now nobody wants my job, and I don’t have time to go bedding other men’s wives. But even if there were personal motives involved, why would someone take a shot at me in such difficult terrain, out in public? He could have killed me here at the lake. In peace and quiet.’

  ‘You’re well guarded.’

  ‘Only since Calgary.’

  ‘Maybe somebody from your own ranks? Do you stand for something that the powerholders at EMCO don’t want at any price, no matter what the situation?’

  Palstein laced his fingers together. He had switched off the outboard, and the little yacht sat on its reflection in the water as though glued in place. Behind Keowa’s head, the cheerful hum of a bumblebee lost itself in the silence.

  ‘Of course there are some at EMCO who think we should just sit out the whole helium-3 business,’ he said. ‘They think it’s idiotic to buy in with Orley. But that’s unrealistic. We’re going bankrupt. We can’t afford to wait anything out.’

  ‘Would your death have changed anything for Imperial Oil, in particular?’

  ‘It wouldn’t have changed anything for anyone. I wouldn’t have been able to make a few meetings.’ Palstein shrugged. ‘Well, as it is, some of them I can’t make anyway.’

  ‘You were supposed to fly to the Moon with Orley. He invited you.’

  ‘Truth be told, I asked him whether I could come along. I would have really liked to have flown.’ A dreamy look came into Palstein’s eyes. ‘As well as which, there are a lot of interesting people up there, maybe I could have talked up a joint venture or two. Oleg Rogachev, for instance, he’s worth fifty-six billion, the world’s biggest steel producer. Plenty of people trying to close a deal with him. Or Warren Locatelli, he’s worth nearly as much.’

  ‘EMCO and the world market leader in solar cells,’ smiled Keowa. ‘Doesn’t it make you angry that your industry used to be so powerful, and now you have to court favour with these kinds of people?’

  ‘It makes me angry that EMCO didn’t listen to me at the time. I always wanted to work with Locatelli. We should have bought Lightyears when the time was right.’

  ‘When you still had something to offer him.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘It’s absurd, isn’t it? Doesn’t it seem like history having the last laugh – the oil bosses dictated what happened in the world for nigh on a century, and then, in the end, they weren’t in a position to turn new developments to their advantage?’

  ‘Every kind of rule ends in decadence. Anyway, I’m sorry I can’t help you with any more reasons for trying to kill me. I’m afraid you’ll have to keep looking elsewhere.’

  Keowa said nothing. Perhaps it had been naïve of her to hope that out here, on silent Lake Lavon, Palstein would whisper dreadful secrets in her ear. Then she had an idea.

  ‘EMCO still has money, is that right?’

  ‘Absolutely.’

  ‘You see.’ She smiled triumphantly. ‘So what you did was, you made a decision, where there would have been an alternative.’

  ‘And that would have been?’

  ‘If you’re investing in Orley Enterprises, then you must be thinking of considerable amounts of money.’

  ‘Of course. But really, there’s no alternative there either.’

  ‘Depends on who’s interested, I would say. It needn’t necessarily be about keeping EMCO in business.’

  ‘What else?’

  ‘Shutting the place down and taking the money elsewhere. I mean, who might have an interest in actually speeding up EMCO’s end? Perhaps your rescue plan actually gets in someone’s way?’

  Palstein looked at her with melancholy in his eyes.

  ‘Interesting question.’

  ‘Think about it! There are thousands out of work who would reckon it makes a lot more sense for EMCO to use the money for their welfare bills, at least for as long as it takes them to get new jobs, and then the ship can go down for all they care. Then there are the creditors who don’t want to see their money blast off to the Moon. A government that has dropped you lot without batting an eyelid. Why exactly? EMCO has know-how, after all.’

  ‘We have no know-how. Not on the Moon.’

  ‘But isn’t it all resource extraction, even up there?’

  Palstein shook his head. ‘It’s space travel more than it’s anything else. Then, Earth-based technologies can’t just be mapped onto the Moon one to one, especially not in our line of work. The lower gravity, the lack of atmosphere, it all brings its own problems. A couple of guys from coal-mining are involved, but otherwise they’re developing completely new techniques. If you ask me, there’s a completely different reason why the government just dropped us. The State wants to control helium-3 extraction, one hundred per cent. So Washington has grabbed the opportunity with both hands, and they’re aiming not just to get out of the armlock the Middle East had them in, they want to be free of the oil companies as well.’

  ‘Stick the knife in the kingmaker’s ribs,’ said Keowa mockingly.

  ‘But of course,’ said Palstein, almost cheerfully. ‘Oil has made presidents, but no president wants to be a puppet for private business unless he’s the biggest fish in that pond. It’s just in the nature of things that the new-crowned king wants to get rid of the kingmaker first thing, if he can. Just think of what happened in Russia in the nineties, think of Vladimir Putin – ah, heck, you’re too young to remember that.’

  ‘I’ve studied Russian history,’ Keowa said, smiling. ‘Putin was supposed to be the oligarchs’ puppet, but they underestimated him. Characters like that guy with the unpronounceable name—’

  ‘Khodorkovsky.’

  ‘Right, one of the robber-barons from Yeltsin’s day. Putin came onto the scene, a little bit later Khodorkovsky wakes up in a prison camp in Siberia. It happened to a lot of them.’

  ‘In our case, the problem solves itself.’ Palstein grinned.

  ‘Nevertheless,’ said Keowa insistently, ‘during the big crisis sixteen years ago governments all over the world put together packages worth billions to save the banks from sinking. There was talk of pain in the financial markets, as though it were the banks and the board members who were suffering, not the armies of small investors who lost their money and never saw it back from State guarantees. But the states helped the banks. And now they’re doing nothing. They’re letting the oil giants go to the dogs. It doesn’t matter how much they’d like to be free of them, that can’t be in Washington’s interest.’

  Palstein looked at her as though at an interesting fish that he hadn’t expected to catch in this lake.

  ‘You want a story, no matter what it takes, don’t you?’

  ‘If there is one.’

  ‘So you’re comparing chalk and cheese just to get one. It was completely different with the banks. Banks are the very essence of the system called capitalism, they hold it up. Do you really believe that back then it was just about individual financial institutions, or about nasty managers and speculators paying themselves performance-related bonuses for no performance at all? It was about keeping the system going that even makes politics possible, it was about the temple of capitalism not crashing down, in the final analysis it was about governments’ influence on capital which had been lost over time. Let’s not kid ourselves, Loreena, the oil companies never played anything like that kind of a role. Our industry was only ever a symptom of the system, it was never part of its structure. You can do without us very well. Those of us who didn’t manage to leap aboard the alternative energies bandwagon in time are in our death throes. Why should the State save us? We’ve nothing to offer it. Back in the day we paid the politicos, which was a comfortable way for them to live, but now you expect them to prop us up? Nob
ody’s interested in that! The State is digging up the helium-3 because it sees the chance to become an investor in its own right again. America now has the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to secure its energy supply under State control, and this time it won’t let the kingmakers appear in the first place.’

  ‘That really sounds like a lot of eyewash,’ said Keowa dismissively. ‘You name me one capitalist system where capital and private enterprise aren’t the real powerbrokers. The USA is switching from EMCO to Orley Enterprises, that’s all. Orley will bring Washington to the Moon, build the reactors so that when the stuff gets down to the Earth it does what it has to. The whole project would never have got this far without private sector support. And the new kingmaker is sitting on his patents and laying down the law for his partners. Without him, they’d not be able to build any more elevators, any reactors—’

  ‘Julian Orley isn’t a kingmaker in the classic sense. He’s an alien, if you like. An out-of-worlder. ExxonMobil, later EMCO, they were Americans, they influenced elections in America and stoked foreign insurrections with their money or by running guns. Orley’s not like that, he acts like a state himself, he sees himself as a world power in his own right. That’s something that the multinationals always flirted with the idea of doing. Answerable to nobody but himself. Julian Orley would never try to topple an American president he didn’t like, he’d even have moral scruples against it. He’d simply break off diplomatic relations with Washington and recall his ambassador.’

  ‘He really thinks that he’s a – state?’

  ‘Are you surprised? Julian’s rise to power was all plotted out while governments were still rubbing their eyes and demanding a greater say in how the banks were run. It was their own idea to privatise everything they could lay their hands on, and now they saw the welfare state slipping between their fingers. So all of a sudden they wanted more State power, but were forced to concede that if you take capital into State ownership, you rob it of the very strengths that make it grow, and they went back to business as usual. People contented themselves with the idea that the depression of 2008 to 2012 was just a system overheating, that there was nothing wrong with the system itself. They squandered the chance to reinvent capitalism, and with it the chance to strengthen State power in the long term.’