Charon's landing

have mushroomed until it encompassed the entire region. Your timely warning prevented not only a revolution here, but the destabilization of the whole Middle East.”

Mercer tried to demure, but Khuddari pressed on. “We had known for some time of a revolutionary element here in the UAE, a man by the name of Hasaan bin-Rufti, but we did not know how deep was his involvement with other — how shall we say — less friendly nations. Later, I learned of Rufti’s connections with the Iraqis and Iranians when I was in London, but I was too incapacitated to make that knowledge useful here at home.

“Fortunately, as soon as Colonel Bigelow learned that I was delayed in London by a terrorist attack at Heathrow, he rightly deduced that the assault was intended to kill me. On his own initiative, he arrested Hasaan Rufti upon his return from the OPEC meeting. Though we had Rufti, we still didn’t know where he had secreted his troops. That’s where you came in.

“By linking the attacks in Alaska to Petromax Oil and Southern Coasting and Lightering, you gave us the clue to the location of those troops. In the limbo period during the sale of Petromax’s fleet to SC amp;L, their ship the Petromax Arabia had become the Southern Accent, a vessel no one had any record of that had sat ignored in our harbor for weeks. We never would have known the tanker’s involvement without you. I mean that. The men Rufti had aboard the ship could have stormed ashore and taken over this country faster than Saddam took Kuwait in 1990.”

“Am I correct in guessing that the attacks on the Alaska Pipeline and the sinking of the Petromax Arctica were the triggers for this Rufti’s revolution here in the UAE?”

“As far as we can tell, yes,” Khalid said.

“The mastermind behind this whole plot was a former KGB agent named Ivan Kerikov-”

“We know all about Kerikov,” Bigelow interrupted. “He was seen in Istanbul last year, meeting with Hasaan Rufti. It was then that they hatched this scheme.”

“Not hatched, Colonel, stole,” Mercer replied. “We found out from a computer expert Kerikov hired that the program he activated had been in place since the Cold War, planted by a KGB sleeper agent. Years ago, Kerikov came upon the plan and the codes needed to override Alyeska’s computers. He’d been waiting for someone like Rufti to come along, someone who would be willing to pay to have the Trans-Alaska Pipeline permanently shut down.”

“But why? And why now?”

“By destroying the pipeline and then sinking a tanker carrying North Slope crude, Kerikov and Rufti could guarantee that the United States would abandon its plan to cut off foreign oil suppliers by relying on domestic production and alternative fuels. The President’s energy policy, which many Washington insiders and the New York financiers detest, would be scrapped before it was ever implemented.”

“So Rufti would use the attacks in America as both a trigger and a diversion while he and his new Iranian and Iraqi allies took over the Middle East.” Khalid spoke with a new understanding of how deeply the plot to take over his country truly ran. “By using tactical lessons from the Gulf War and striking when America was occupied by the domestic feuds following the twin oil-related disasters, Rufti could have seized the Emirates in days and the rest of the region in a matter of weeks. Unbelievable! But where did the money come from? It was something the Crown Prince mentioned prior to my going to London. Despite what the rest of the world thinks, not everyone living in an OPEC country is filthy rich. Rufti is a millionaire, certainly, but not nearly wealthy enough to finance an operation as elaborate as this.”

“That’s where Max Johnston came in, I’m afraid,” replied Mercer. “In a way, he paid for the entire thing. At first, it was a simple business decision, but one he later discovered had a much darker side. Because of the President’s energy policy, oil companies were scrambling to make as much money as possible in the ten years remaining before the deadline. Johnston was approached by Rufti, and later by Iranians and Iraqis, who promised him that in exchange for some up-front money, Petromax would be given exclusive rights for all future oil explorations in Iran, Iraq, and the UAE. From Johnston’s point of view, the 150 million dollars they’d asked for was merely a kickback to the three oil ministers to gain market domination.

“The deal would have stayed in effect even after the U.S. cut off imports, giving Petromax a near monopoly on Middle East crude imported by Europe and Japan. Even if the rest of the world followed our lead on restricting oil consumption, we’re still talking about billions of dollars over the next quarter century.”

“It’s nice that Rufti was negotiating as our Petroleum Minister,” Khalid said sarcastically.

“Johnston must have known you were to be assassinated as an obstacle to Rufti’s plan, but I don’t believe he was aware that Iran, Iraq, and Rufti intended to establish themselves as the dominant power in the Gulf. He believed the deal was with three separate nations, not a triumvirate. Johnston couldn’t raise the 150 million without selling some of his assets. Enter Southern Coasting and Lightering. He sold them his fleet of tankers, using the promissory notes of sale and hauling contacts to raise the cash in some sort of financial derivatives fund. I’m not certain how it was all to work out, but in essence he financed his own downfall.”

“Excuse me,” Bigelow said, “but this doesn’t make sense. He sells his tankers to raise money to become sole importer of oil from any new Middle Eastern fields.”

“He had just made a deal for drilling rights to half the world’s oil supply. I doubt he was concerned with the few million dollars a year he makes on his tankers. But this is where the story gets truly Machiavellian.”

“You mean more so,” Khalid said mildly.

“I have a friend in Miami who is a leading maritime attorney. He found all the details of what transpired. Up until a year ago, Southern Coasting had been a small outfit in Louisiana, owning a couple of 100,000-ton product tankers that ran between Galveston and Venezuela. Then they were bought, and suddenly Southern Coasting had the money to go buy three VLCCs, a huge step for a company that showed only modest profits last year.”

“Who bought the company?”

“Remember the Oil for Food deal the United Nations gave to the Iraqis a few years ago as a way of maintaining international sanctions yet allowing some humanitarian aid into the country? Part of the proceeds of those oil sales went into Southern Coasting. The company was owned by Iraq and Hasaan bin-Rufti, a fact that Max Johnston was unaware of. He thought he had made the deal of a lifetime. Instead he put his neck in a noose that was about to be pulled.”

“You mean Iraq paid for this whole thing? Why bother bringing in Max Johnston if they were going to finance the operation themselves?” Minister Khuddari was quick to point out.

“Two reasons. One, the Iraqis needed to launder the money internationally in a legitimate business deal. During the Oil for Food program, the United Nations was keeping a tight watch on Iraq’s money to ensure that they weren’t buying weapons. Once my friend Dave Saulman started pulling the thread of SC amp;L’s ownership, the whole tapestry unraveled. What started out as a 150-million-dollar deal for soy and other foodstuffs turned into a tanker fleet with just a few falsified documents and a little bribery. Southern Coasting paid Johnston for his ships, and he turned the money right back over to Iraq, and they now found themselves with a tremendous fortune in their war chest. Some of this money went to Kerikov to set up the destruction of the pipeline and the Arctica. For this, he hired commandos and heavily bankrolled PEAL to become his unwitting pawns.

“The second reason was the need to use some of Johnston’s equipment, namely his tankers, to carry the huge quantities of liquid nitrogen to Alaska and to act as Rufti’s troop base here in the Emirates. Johnston would also be their scapegoat when the operation was over.

“What Max didn’t know is that Kerikov and Rufti planned to cancel the deal all along and leave him with the mess following the destruction of the Petromax Arctica. Max had already fulfilled his part of the bargain, letting them use his ships and washing their money, so they were going to doublecross him. To ensure he never revealed what he’d done, Kerikov and Rufti’s assistant, a man named Abu Alam-”

“Oh, we know Alam,” Bigelow said. “The man’s a bloody psychotic.”

“Right now he’s just blood. Maybe a little tissue, but I doubt it. Anyway, Alam and Kerikov kidnapped Johnston’s daughter, Aggie. By holding her, Kerikov could threaten Max with her death if their deal were ever made public. Johnston’s hands were tied.”

“So Max Johnston didn’t know that the money he laundered from Rufti would eventually be used to destroy him?” Khalid asked.

“He had no idea. Kerikov and Rufti played off his greed for their own benefit while planning to betray him. It’s almost like a Shakespearean tragedy in its scope. It hasn’t been reported yet, but the FBI raided Max’s home yesterday. I was told by Dick Henna that Johnston had shot himself. I doubt he knew that Kerikov was no longer