Kompromat

He was suddenly serious. ‘Rosie and Edward will remember the time I flew them from St Petersburg to Khabarovsk earlier this year to look for Siberian tigers in the Russian Far East. I was piloting my Gulfstream 550. Rosie’s father, Ronald, was with us on that amazing trip and he came up front to sit in the co-pilot’s seat. We were flying a great circle route over the Arctic. That’s one of the most magnificent spectacles you will ever see. The Inuits live up there, the polar bears, the seals, the walruses. Makes you want to cry, it’s so beautiful.

‘There was I, flying the plane, and thinking how global warming was already working a massive change in the Arctic environment. The ice cap is shrinking, year by year. The polar bears are starving because they can’t get out on the ice to hunt seals. The oil rigs will soon be sprouting in the ocean where the ice used to be.

‘Then I saw Ron looking out the window and I realized that he wasn’t seeing what I was seeing. He wasn’t looking at a magnificent, pristine environment, now seriously threatened. No, what he saw was a massive opportunity for Craig Shipping. He was thinking that he could cut thousands, literally thousands of miles off a journey from Europe to Asia if he could get rid of the ice in the Arctic Ocean. And he was thinking about the possibilities for Craig Oil if he could do a deal with Russia over exploitation rights. There are billions of barrels of oil up there. Never mind the risk of blow outs or maritime disasters.

‘Do you know what Ron Craig’s precise words to me were?’ he concluded. ‘They were “Roll on global warming”!’

‘I’m totally with Jack on this one,’ Rosie said. ‘I’m giving him all the help I can. My father listens to me sometimes.’

‘That’s the understatement of the year. He listens to you all of the time,’ Jack Varese countered. ‘If he’s elected, they’ll be giving you your own office in the West Wing, right from the get-go.’

After dinner, Julia Boles showed Rosie Craig around the house. The three men went out on to the terrace.

‘I can’t tell you how glad I am that you’re raising some of these key environmental issues with Ronald Craig,’ Barnard told Varese.

‘Actually, I’m raising them with both candidates,’ Varese replied. ‘Caroline Mann has got a better track record, that’s all. Also,’ Varese lowered his voice, ‘there are people around Craig who believe any future deal between the US and Russia can’t just be limited to sanctions, human rights, weapons or whatever. They want an agreed regime for the Arctic too, a regime which gives pride of place to Craig Oil and Craig Shipping, not to speak of Craig Hotels.

‘Well, I’m all for an agreed Arctic regime,’ Varese continued. ‘I just want to make sure it has the strictest standards of safety for shipping and a ban on oil wells in the Arctic Ocean and full protection for wildlife and native peoples.’

‘Are you sure you ought to be saying all this?’ Boles asked.

‘Hell,’ Jack Varese replied. ‘I’m in love with Rosie. I’m not in love with her dad.’

Edward Barnard went to bed that night in a sombre mood. The stakes were suddenly so much higher than he had realized. You could at a stretch sympathize with Russia over the Crimea and even Ukraine. You could argue that Russian intervention on Syria had not been wholly negative. But that didn’t mean you had to buy in to the whole Popov agenda, including accelerating, not reversing, global warming!

Was it too late to get Ronald C. Craig to change his mind?

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

Wilbur Brown, director of the FBI, strode across the room to greet his visitor.

‘Mr Barnard, I really do appreciate your making the time to stop by. When I heard you were coming to Washington, I said to myself, “Here’s a golden opportunity to throw some light on something that’s been troubling us”.’

‘Happy to help in any way I can,’ Edward Barnard said.

Wilbur Brown explained the problem. ‘Some time back we had word that the Chinese Ministry of State Security believed President Popov deliberately fired a tranquillizing dart into Ronald C. Craig’s backside during Craig’s visit to the Russian Far East earlier this year. I should add that the Chinese came to that conclusion because the tiger which Popov was theoretically aiming at was already darted and in the system so it wouldn’t have made much sense to dart it again. Do you follow me?’

‘I do indeed.’ Barnard tried to recapture in his mind that amazing morning. The tiger bounding towards them, Popov with his rifle, Craig going down with a dart in his left buttock.

‘It was a confusing situation,’ Barnard added. ‘But, yes, I would say that the Chinese theory is certainly worth exploring. At the time I thought it odd that an expert shot, as Popov apparently is, missed his target. On the other hand, Craig was more or less in the direct line of fire.’