The Far Arena (14 page)

'Oh,' said Lew, standing confused in the doorway and not knowing whether to enter without an invitation. 'I have permission, instructions rather, in writing saying I was supposed to leave the site. It's in writing from the superintendent, sir.'

And as soon as Lew had said that, he realized how silly it was.. And he was further put off by the friendl
iness. James Houghton Laurie III
, chairman of the board of Houghton Oil himself, was inviting Lew into the suite.

'Lew, you ol' Maky, where'd yew get thet gawdawful jacket, boy? Take it off before anyone finds out you're working for us. They'll think we've gone dust-bowl broke down at Houghton,' said Laurie, getting up out of a soft chair to shake the hand of Lew McCardle and suggesting they put some good sour-mash whisky into the boy's stomach before they talked of the problems of the world and of Houghton and of Lew McCardle. Just two old Makys - Maky being the nickname of Texas Mechanical and Christian College, known for its sometimes very good football teams, its relatively good petroleum engineers, and the fact that until the 1960s every student had to attend Sunday services, drunk or sober, sick or well. Houghton Oil underwrote Texas Mechanical and Christian.

These fancy, spiffed-up foreign hotels drain my blood. C'mon in, Lew, and let's put some good whisky in our bellies before they dry up from the piss these damned Norwegians try to pass off as booze.'

'Yes, sir,' said Lew. And he wondered whether he should have brought his discharge paper from the site up with him from the hotel safe, or whether he should mention it all again.

'Good to see a Maky face,' said Laurie. 'Especially when there's trouble.'

While both he and Laurie could call themselves Makys, Lew had attended that school, while Laurie, who had gone to Harvard, sat on the board of directors with other Lauries and other
Hough
tons. In 1907 a Houghton did actually attend Texas Mechanical and Christian for a semester.

It remained a school where Houghtons and Lauries got employees, not their educations.

Yet, they had boasting rights to the old campus. And when they wanted to be down-home, so to speak, they were Makys.

'With or without water, Lew?' asked James Houghton Laurie. He had his hand on a crystal tumbler, and he half-filled it with dark Tennessee sipping whisky. The room had gilt-edged furniture with several small marble-topped tables and delicate painted chairs, the sort Lew McCardle sat on gently, testing whether it was really made for sitting.

Mr Laurie could talk Texas or he could talk Wall Street. He looked like a sweet old man with a gentle tan and age spots and a smile like a red old crease going across his face. He wore a soft white shirt with a blue polka-dot tie, grey, soft trousers, and casual black shoes. His jacket was thrown over a chair.

If Lew were that rich and had gone to Harvard also, he thought, he would talk down-home Texas, too. He could afford to.

'Lew, we're on the three-yard line ready to score in the Cotton Bowl, and time is running out, and we're going in over your hole. What I'm asking for now, what we're all asking for, is some of that old blow-'em-out Lew McCardle blocking.
’

Mr Laurie motioned McCardle to sit on a thin-spoked chair with delicate flowers painted on the legs. Lew sat. The chair held.

'Do you remember the Arkansas game ? You must have knocked that defensive lineman ten yards back. I have never seen such a hole you gave to our running back.'

'Did we play Arkansas?' said Lew, trying to remember. He took a good, solid drink of the whisky. Lew would meet a Houghton or a Laurie every few years at some formal dinner. James Houghton Laurie was the one who took Texas M and C football most seriously. Lew had spoken to him more when he was an undergraduate at the school playing tackle than he did later, after his advanced degrees, when he went to work for the company.

'Damned right we played Arkansas. Beat 'em in the last two minutes. You blew your man out of his hole like he was made of straw. It was the greatest block I have ever seen.'

'I'm sorry. I don't remember. I remember Michigan, though.'

'What happened at Michigan ?'

Lew McCardle tapped his left knee. Torn ligaments.'

'Ended your career.'

‘
No. I played the next year.'

'Something ended your career.'

'No. You're thinking of my not going to the pros.'

Mr Laurie snapped his fingers. That's right. You could have been something in the pros.'

'I did all right considering. I'm happy with Houghton and what I've got. I've got the early retirement. I've got a good house. I've got two cars. I've got vacations, and I can pay for my wife and daughters.'

'You didn't do all right, Lew, considering.' The dusty twang was gone now. The words were chosen and sharp and quite specific. There was no grin on the tight, tanned face of James Houg
hton Laurie III of Houghton Oil. ‘
Considering your degrees and your skill and your intelligence, you did not do well, considering.'

'Considering where I came from and what I could have been, I did very well.'

'We both came from North Springs, Texas, Lew.'

'We did not come from the same place, sir. We came from the same town.'

'You have a chance now, Lew, to make up for all your missed opportunities. To make that doctorate from the University of Chicago pay off. Lew, I am talking about a vice-presidency for you. For your wife, Kathy, for your children, I am talking about my country club. I am talking shares, shares in Houghton, not that employee-option thing, real shares at good prices in a company whose worth you might help increase.'

'I'd be happy to, sir. Houghton has been good to me. I never would have left the site unless I was ordered to.'

'Lew. I know that. I trust you. You can't buy trust. You can't rent it. But you've got it.'

'I am ready to go back to the site now. I'll go now.'

'No,' said Laurie. He raised a hand. 'There's another rockhound. We sent him up a couple of days ago. We need something more. We need trust here. It was not a wise decision to send that thing down from the site. And I know it wasn't your decision. And believe me, you don't have to show me some piece of paper saying you were told to leave that site. You've given me your word. And you're a Maky.'

Thank you,' said Lew.

'Why, you may ask, was it a bad decision?' said Mr Laurie, stopping Lew from answering the question which Laurie was about to answer himself. 'Because it was unlucky. It was also stupid. But worse, unlucky.'

Mr Laurie sighed. He rose from his seat like a man weary with the world. He went to the bed on which his jacket lay. From an inside pocket he took a thin black box. He held it aloft briefly as though it were evidence

'A treacherous world,' he said
‘I
have bodyguards in the two rooms next to this, I don't go anywhere without them. I don't use the phone for anything more than ordering a hamburger. A treacherous world.'

'You mean terrorist kidnappings of business executives?' asked Lew.

Laurie turned a dial on the box and it sounded like a radio with heavy interference. He put it on the small, grey marble coffee table between them.

'No. Those kids don't mean piss. I'm talking about Gulf, Standard Oil, Royal Dutch Shell, Norway, Kuwait. I'm talking oil, Lew, a treacherous world and a needed commodity.'

‘I
know there's competition,' said Lew, and got such a baleful look from Laurie that he added: 'More than competition.'

'That's just about right. More than competition. This isn't a radio playing. It cuts bugging of our conversation. I don't know how it works. It's the latest today, and tomorrow it won't be worth a piss in a rainstorm, because there'll be a new one you've got to have. We use it, they use it, everybody uses it. Everybody just keeps getting better at listening in on others and stopping others listening in. Never ends. That's competition.'

‘I
see how difficult your job is,' said Lew.

'Thank you,' said Laurie, if this were the best of all possible worlds, we would be proud of what that Russian doctor is doing. We would say to the world we found it here, here on our exploratory site and here and here. Do you follow ?'

Lew nodded. He finished his drink. Laurie poured another. Lew noticed creases in the tanned neck and freckles above Mr Laurie's colour.

'We are about to make major bids on exploratory alien rights,' said Laurie. 'We don't want it known that we are exploring before we buy the rights for it. We don't like doing business like this, but everybody does it, and if we don't, we go out of business. It's like that black doo-hickey buzzing away. You've got to have it. All right, we have it.'

'I don't know too much about bidding, Mr Laurie.'

'You know enough to just realize what I'm talking about. If we know for sure what we're bidding on, we've got the right atmosphere. I'm talking bidding atmosphere, and I don't want it spoiled. Now, if that thing the Russian is working with becomes known worldwide as some kind of miracle, there are going to be more reporters and other kinds of newspeople than you've ever seen. And what we want quiet is going to be found out and is going to be noisy as hell. It'll ruin the atmosphere. Everybody is going to know who and where and what is going on up there. Now, this is a fluid situation. That cadaver could get u
p and walk and say he's Louis XI
V of France, and then forget it. It's carnival time above the seventieth parallel.'

'I was aware of what kind of site we were drilling.
’

'Good. I imagine the men do tend to know what they're working on and some of the broader ramifications. But I'm not just talking about international publicity. I'm talking about such harmless little questions as how far did you haul it ? What did you bring with you? How deep down? Glacial ice? Permafrost? What ? Those sorts of things.'

'They already know the depth of discovery of the ... thing.'

'All right. We'll live with it. What we're looking for, Lew, is someone to block for us. And by that I mean I don't expect you to go demolishing some opponent somewhere, but sort of like brush blocking. And by that I mean delaying any sort of great publicity and sort of specific answers about where you found it and how. That's what I mean.'

‘
I won't say anything to anyone. I'll go home now. I've put in a lot of consecutive time and I'm close to retirement. I haven't given information other than the depth of the ice to anyone. And I'm sorry about that. You can trust me to keep my mouth shut, Mr Laurie.'

'We need more than that, Lew.
’

‘
Sir?'

'I am the goodwill ambassador of Houghton. I go from country to country promoting our commitment to the benefit of mankind. We are a committed company. Houghton Oil is committed to the energy of man and the welfare of man. Because we are committed, we are assigning one of our vice-presidents - a learned man with a doctorate - to assist the project of Dr Semyon Petrovitch, in co-operation with the Scandinavian-Soviet Friendship Pact. This vice-president will allocate funds from Houghton to support this project. This vice-president will make sure that for at least a month, maybe two months, answers to certain questions are delayed, no matter whether the patient lives, which would attract publicity eventually, or dies, which would require some answers for Norwegian health authorities or whatever. It is a fluid situation, Lew. We need someone sensitive to our interests. You must use your judgement.'

McCardle was about to tell Mr Laurie that he was not a vice-president. But now he knew he was, just as Semyon Petrovitch had known he would be working on the project. Lew seemed to be the last to know these things. He listened to who would do things for him back at Houghton, different ways to get funds -there were donations to the university which came from Houghton Public Affairs, there was dead, solid cash which came from a Credit Suisse account, and then there was his personal account here in Oslo.

There was more money looking back at Lew McCardle now than he had ever made cumulatively.

'We don't expect you to hide the damned body in some ditch, but we do expect judgement'

'I don't know if I'm fit for this, Mr Laurie. I'm a geologist. I've chosen this area. It's been good to me.'

'We're going to be better.'

'I don't want better.'

'Why not?'

'Because this is good enough. This is really good for me. Considering everything, I feel quite lucky I've got what I've got and gotten where I've gotten.'

'Lew McCardle, you can't do this to us. We need you.'

'There must be better people.'