On Demiris' seventeenth birthday, he came across an article about the oil fields in Saudi Arabia, and it was as though a magic door to the future had suddenly opened for him He went to his father. 'I'm going to Saudi Arabia. I'm going to work in the oil fields.' 'Too-sou! What do you know about oil fields?' 'Nothing, father. I'm going to learn.' One month later, Constantin Demiris was on his way.
It was company policy for the overseas employees of the Trans-Continental Oil Corporation to sign a two-year employment contract, but Demiris felt no qualms about it. He planned to stay in Saudi Arabia for as long as it took him to make his fortune He had envisioned a wonderful Arabian nights adventure, a glamorous, mysterious land with exotic-looking women, and black gold gushing up out of the ground. The reality was a shock On an early morning in summer, Demiris arrived at Fadili, a dreary camp in the middle of the desert, consisting of an ugly stone building surrounded by barastis, small brushwood huts There were a thousand lower-bracket workers there, mostly Saudis. The women who trudged through the dusty, unpaved streets were heavily veiled.
Demiris entered the building where asked. asked. Mclntyre, the personnel manager, had his office Mclntyre looked up as the young man came in. 'So. The home office hired you, eh?' 'Yes, sir.' 'Ever work the oil fields before, son?' For an instant, Demiris was tempted to lie. 'No, sir.' Mclntyre grinned. 'You're going to love it here. You're a million miles from nowhere, bad food, no women that you can touch without getting your balls chopped off, and not a goddamned thing to do at night. But the pay is good, right?'
'I'm here to learn,' Demiris said earnestly 'Yeah? Then I'll tell you what you better learn fast. You're in Moslem country now. That means no alcohol. Anyone caught stealing gets his right hand cut off. Second time, left hand. The third time, you lose a foot. If you kill anyone you're beheaded.' 'I'm not planning to kill anyone.' 'Wait,' Mclntyre grunted. 'You just got here.'
The compound was a Tower of Babel, people from a dozen different countries all speaking their native languages. Demiris had a good ear and picked up languages quickly. The men were there to make roads in the middle of an inhospitable desert, construct housing, install electrical equipment, put in telephone communications, build workshops, arrange food and water supplies, design a drainage system, administer medical attention and, it seemed to young Demiris, to do a hundred other tasks They were working in temperatures over one hundred degrees Fahrenheit, suffering from flies, mosquitoes, dust, fever and dysentery. Even in the desert there was a social hierarchy. At the top were the men engaged in locating oil, and below, the construction workers called 'stiffs', and the clerks known as 'shiny pants'
Nearly all the men involved in the actual drilling the geologists, surveyors, engineers and oil chemists were Americans, for the new rotary drill had been invented in the United States and the Americans were more familiar with its operation. The young man went out of his way to make friends with them Constantin Demiris spent as much time as he could around the drillers and he never stopped asking questions. He stored away the information, absorbing it the way the hot sands soaked up water. He noticed that two different methods of drilling were being used He approached one of the drillers working near a giant 130oot derrick. 'I was wondering why there are two different kinds of drilling going on.' The driller explained. 'Well, son, one's cable tool and one's rotary. We're going more to rotary now. They start out exactly the same.' They do?' 'Yeah. For either one you have to erect a derrick like this one to hoist up the pieces of equipment that have to be lowered into the well.' He looked at the eager face of the young man. till bet you have no idea why they call it a derrick.' 'No, sir.' "That was the name of a famous hangman in the seventeenth century.' 'I see.' 'Cable tool drilling goes way back. Hundreds of years ago, the Chinese used to dig water wells that way. They punched a hole into the earth by lifting and dropping a heavy cutting tool hung from a cable. But today about eighty-five percent of all wells are drilled by the rotary method.' He turned to go back to his drilling 'Excuse me. How does the rotary method work?' The man stopped. 'Well, instead of slammin' a hole in the earth, you just bore one. You see here? In the middle of the derrick floor is a steel turntable that's rotated by machinery This rotary table grips and turns a pipe that extends downward through it. There's a bit fastened to the lower end of the pipe.' 'It seems simple, doesn't it?' 'It's more complicated than it looks. You have to have a way to excavate the loosened material as you drill. You have to prevent the walls from caving in and you have to seal off the water and gas from the well.' 'With all that drilling, doesn't the rotary drill ever get dull?' 'Sure. Then we have to pull out the whole damned drill string, screw a new bit to the bottom of the drill pipe and lower the pipe back into the hole. Are you planning to be a driller?' 'No, sir. I'm planning to own oil wells.' 'Congratulations. Can I get back to work now?'
One morning, Demiris watched as a tool was lowered into the well, but instead of boring downward, he noticed that it cut small circular areas from the sides of the hole and brought up rocks 'Excuse me. What's the point of doing that?' Demiris asked The driller paused to mop his brow. 'This is side wall coring We use these rocks for analysis, to see whether they're oil-bearing.' 'I see.'
When things were going smoothly, Demiris would hear drillers cry out 'I'm turning to the right,' which meant they were making a hole. Demiris noticed that there were dozens of tiny holes drilled all over the field, with diameters as small as two or three inches 'Excuse me. What are those for?' the young man asked 'Those are prospect wells. They tell us what's underneath. Saves the company a lot of time and money.' 'I see.' It was all utterly fascinating to the young man and his questions were endless 'Excuse me. How do you know where to drill?' 'We got a lot of geologists pebble pups who take measurements of the strata and study the cuttings from wells. Then the rope chokers . . .' 'Excuse me, what's a rope choker?' 'A driller. When they Constantin Demiris worked from early morning until sundown, hauling rigs through the burning desert, cleaning equipment, and driving trucks past the streamers of flame rising from the-rocky peaks. The flames burned day and night, carrying off the poisonous gases asked. asked. Mclntyre had told Demiris the truth. The food was bad, living conditions were horrible, and at night there was nothing to do. Worse, Demiris felt as though every pore in his body were filled with grains of sand. The desert was alive and there was no way to escape it. The sand filtered into the hut and through his clothes and into his body until he thought he would go crazy And then it got worse The shamal struck. The sandstorms blew every day for a month, driven by a howling wind with an intensity strong enough to drive men mad Demiris stared out the door of his barasti at the swirling sand 'Are we going out to work in that?' 'You're fucking right, Charlie. This ain't a health spa.' Oil discoveries were being made all around them. There was a new find at Abu Hadriyah and another at Qatif and at Harad, and the workers were kept busier than ever.
There were two new arrivals, an English geologist and his wife Henry Potter was in his late sixties and his wife, Sybil, was in her early thirties. In any other setting, Sybil Potter would have been described as a plain-looking, obese woman with a high, unpleasant voice. In Fadili, she was a raving beauty. Since Henry Potter was constantly away prospecting for new oil fields, his wife was left alone a great deal.
Young Demiris was assigned to help her move into their quarters and to assist her in getting settled.
'This is the most miserable place I've ever seen in my life,' Sybil Potter complained in her whining voice. 'Henry's always dragging me off to terrible places like this. I don't know why I put up with it.'
'Your husband is doing a very important job,' Demiris assured her.
She eyed the attractive young man speculatively. 'My husband isn't doing all the jobs he should be doing. Do you know what I mean?'
Demiris knew exactly what she meant. 'No, ma'am.'
'What's your name?'
'Demiris, ma'am. Constantin Demiris.'
'What do your friends call you?'
'Costa.'
'Well, Costa, I think you and I are going to become very good friends. We certainly have nothing in common with these wogs, have we?'
'Wogs?'
'You know. These foreign people.'
'I have to go back to work,' Demiris said.
Over the next few weeks, Sybil Potter constantly found excuses to send for the young man.
'Henry left again this morning,' she told him. 'He's off to do his silly drilling.' She added archly, 'He should do more drilling at home.'
Demiris had no answer. The geologist was a very important man in the company hierarchy and Demiris had no intention of getting involved with Potter's wife, and jeopardizing his own job. He was not sure exactly how, but he knew without question that one way or another this job was going to be his passport to everything he dreamed of. Oil was the future and he was determined to be a part of it.
One midnight, Sybil Potter sent for Demiris. He walked into the compound where she lived, and knocked at the door 'Come in.' Sybil was wearing a thin nightgown that unfortunately concealed nothing 'I did you want to see me, ma'am?' 'Yes, come in, Costa. This bedside lamp doesn't seem to be working.' Demiris averted his eyes and walked over to the lamp. He picked it up to examine it. 'There's no bulb in . . .' And he felt her body pressing against his back and her hands groping him 'Mrs Potter Her lips were on his and she was pushing him onto the bed.-And he had no control over what happened next His clothes were off and he was plunging into her and she was screaming with joy. 'That's it! Oh, yes, that's it. My God, it's been so long!' She gave a final gasp and shuddered. 'Oh, darling, I love you.' Demiris lay there panicky. What have I done? If Potter ever finds out I'm finished As though reading his mind, Sybil Potter giggled. 'This will be our little secret, won't it, darling?'
Their little secret went on for the next several months. There was no way Demiris could avoid her and, since her husband was away for days at a time on his explorations, Demiris could think of no excuse to keep from going to bed with her. What made it worse was that Sybil Potter had fallen madly in love with him 'You're much too good to be working in a place like this, darling,' she told him. 'You and I are going back to England.' 'My home is Greece.' 'Not anymore.' She stroked his long, lean body. 'You're going to come back home with me. I'll divorce Henry and we'll get married.'
Demiris felt a sudden sense of panic. 'Sybil, I ... I have no money. I . . .'
She ran her tips down his chest. 'That's no problem. I know how you can make some money, sweetheart.'
'You do?'
She sat up in bed. 'Last night, Henry told me he's just discovered some big new oil field. He's very clever at that, you know. Anyway, he seemed terribly excited about it. He wrote out his report before he left and he asked me to send it out in the morning pouch. I have it here. Would you like to see it?'
Demiris' heart began to beat faster. 'Yes. I... I would.' He watched her get out of bed and lumber over to a small battered table in the corner. She picked up a large manila envelope and returned to the bed with it.
'Open it.'
Demiris hesitated for only an instant. He opened the envelope and took out the papers inside. There were five pages. He scanned through them quickly, then went back to the beginning and read every word.
'Is that information worth anything?'
Is that information worth anything? It was a report on a new field that could possibly turn out to be one of the richest oil fields in history.
Demiris swallowed. 'Yes. It... it could be.'
'Well there you are,' Sybil said happily. 'Now we have money.'
He sighed. 'It's not that simple.'
'Why not?'
Demiris explained. 'This is valuable to someone who can afford to buy up options on the land around this area. But that takes money.' He had three hundred dollars in his bank account.
'Oh, don't worry about that. Henry has money. I'll write a check. Will five thousand dollars be enough?'
Constantin Demiris could not believe what he was hearing 'Yes. I... I don't know what to say.'
'It's for us, darling. For our future.'
He sat up in bed thinking hard. 'Sybil, do you think you could hold on to that report for the next day or two?' 'Of course. I'll keep it till Friday. Will that give you enough time, darling?' He nodded slowly. 'That will give me enough time.' 1
With the five thousand dollars that Sybil gave him no, it's not a gift, it's a loan, he told himself -Constantin Demiris bought up options on acres of land around the new potential strike Some months later, when the gushers began to come in in the main field, Constantin Demiris was an instant millionaire. He repaid Sybil Potter the five thousand dollars, sent her a new nightgown, and returned to Greece. She never saw him again.
Chapter
3
There is a theory that nothing in nature is ever lost that every sound ever made, every word ever spoken, still exists somewhere in space and time, and may one day be recalled. Before radio was invented, they say, who would have believed that the air around us was filled with the sounds of music and news and voices from around the world? One day we will be able to travel back in time and listen to Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, the voice of Shakespeare, the Sermon on the Mount . . .