BOOK ONE                                            
NOVEMBER, 1952

FORCE MAJEURE

Raven arrived at the Milan headquarters of ENI, the Italian National Oil Company precisely at 9:50 am. His appointment with Enrico Mattei, its chairman, was not until ten, but he made it a practice to be early. He was always the first to arrive for any appointment.

Raven had been working for the cartel now for just over five years at least five years he was aware of. After getting his double-first at Christ Church College at Oxford in 1939, his professor recruited him to work for a special double-cross counter-intelligence compartment in MI-5. Not being upper class enough for the elite there, he was given the job no one else would take: liaison officer with their American counterpart in London. "The Kin," as the Americans were called, were brash, unsophisticated and inexperienced. They also played to win at any cost. After the war ended, the Americans needed "wet jobs" done on some embarrassing double-agents in Germany, but their law forbid them from undertaking assassinations. So, as liaison officer, he arranged a convenient exchange: British agents would do American "wet jobs" in return from American agents doing some equally sensitive British dirty work in oil sheikdoms that were British protectorates. It was then that Lord Crude, who had somehow heard of his "exchange program," offered him a position with the seven oil companies that owned most of the worlds crude oil. His job was to, by diplomacy or any other means necessary, to prevent interlopers from undercutting the cartel's control.

The modest card Raven had given to the attractive receptionist identified him as "Executive Director, Coordinating Committee, International Petroleum Institute," but, by the rapid "uno momento" response she got from Mattei's assistant, she guessed that the badly-dressed Englishman represented something more than an academic institute. She smiled and said in her best English"Dottorie Mattei will meet you in his office."

She escorted him to huge sparsely furnished office, with two ultra-modern black leather sofas facing each other across a marble coffee table. She guided him to his designated place. On the wall, there was a map of all of ENI's assets.

As always, Raven had made a careful study of his quarry. He had found that Mattei's success in building ENI into a force that threatened the cartel proceeded from a combination of bluff and ambition. Nothing more. In 1947, when he was still in MI-5, Mattei had gotten himself appointed head of ENI, then only a small, government-owned gas company in the Po Valley. Mattei then used his bluff to convince journalists that ENI was sitting on top of enormous gas reserves, and to cow other bureaucrats into lending ENI state funds to develop these largely fictional resources. With the government funds, he constructed refineries, chemical plants, fertilizer companies, pipelines, gas stations-even hotels. The only problem was that ENI had, in fact, no energy to feed into this growing complex. As ENI became more and more financially overextended, Mattei upped the bluff. He got the Italian government to supply ENI with the funds to seek its energy abroad. The politicians had little choice. They couldn't let Mattei's empire collapse into bankruptcy. He wasted this money drilling dry holes.

So Mattei was desperate. When Mossadeq seized the cartel's oil in Iran, he saw it as his golden opportunity. He told Mossadeq that ENI would take all the oil that was formerly purchased by the cartel. He planned to refine it in Sicily and sell the refined products throughout Europe.

Mattei, suave and energetic as always, entered with a hand-wringing gesture. "Tony, I"m so sorry to be late."

"I was early." Raven wasted no time getting to the point. "I don"t need to beat around the bush with you, Enrico. I am here because my principals are concerned about your plan to buy Iranian crude."

"Italy needs to buy oil," Mattei shrugged. "Mossadeq needs to sell oil." "The oil does not belong to Mossadeq. Or Iran. It belongs to the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company."

"Not according to Italian law," Mattei countered, "Iran nationalized the oil."

"Illegally nationalized it," Raven reminded him.

"Will Anglo-Iranian sue Italy?" Mattei had scoffed, blushing as he tended to do when he felt prodded or pressed.

"No need to be litiginous," Raven said. "How are you planning on shipping a million barrels of Iranian oil to Italy?"

"If we can't charter enough tankers, we'll build them," Mattei answered.

At that point in the meeting, a buzzer sounded and Mattei, with a surprised look on his round face, picked up the red phone on his desk, listened a moment, and then, excusing himself for a moment, left the office.

Raven had a fairly good idea what the call was about. Before coming to ENI, he had sent out telegrams to the seven companies he represented---Standard Oil, Mobil, Shell, Gulf, Texaco, Anglo-Iranian, and Socal--- asking them not to deliver one drop of oil to Italy until they received clearance from Raven's Coordinating Committee in London. They could invoke the Force Majeure clause in their contracts, and provide any excuse, even if it was transparently untrue. Tankers headed for Italian ports were to turn around immediately. Pipelines in Germany, Austria, and Yugoslavia were to cut off both oil and gas to Italy. under the pretext of urgent repairs. Trucks on the highway were not to cross the border.

Mattei returned to the room looking grim. His black hair was slightly ruffled. "Sorry to keep you waiting . . . but there has been an unfortunate avalanche in the Austrian Alps."

"No one hurt, I hope." Raven smiled politely.

"No, but it buried a pumping station. The pipeline is shut."

"Bad luck. I assume you have reserves stockpiled."

"Of course." Mattei knew, as did Raven, that ENI had less than a week's oil in its reserve. After that, Italy would close down, and the politicians would have his scalp.

The phone rang again. Mattei listened, looking increasingly concerned. He then said, "There seems to be another force majeure: a storm in the eastern Mediterranean . No tankers are delivering oil. Such a storm can last for weeks."

Raven suggested, "You can charter your own."

"We tried but there are no tankers presently available anywhere."

"It must be the storm, or the avalanche. Not much you can do about force majeures. You can't sue nature, can you?"

Mattei's eyes narrowed, focusing on Raven. He realized that the "avalanche" and the "storm" were Raven's work.

"Pity you don't have time to build tankers," Raven's head remained immobile as he sketched out what continuing force majeures might do. "ENI's chemical plants could run out of feed stock and have to shut down. There would be no fertilizer for the crops. Your friends in the government might begin asking what happened to ENI's reserves."

"You know we need that oil," Mattei answered.

Raven knew that Mattei needed it. He was not a man who could stand up under such pressures. His power rested solely on his reputation as a producer of energy supplies. If this buckled, Mattei was through as a political force in Italy. Mattei could not afford to have his bluff called over Iran. "No man in your position would risk seeing the entire Italian economy grind to a halt because of a lack of oil." Raven said, "I got a plane to catch."

At 5PM that afternoon, Mattei called a brief press conference in his offices at ENI. He announced that although Premier Mossadeq of Iran and he had offered ENI a million barrels of crude oil, ENI would not take delivery of the Iranian oil until after the International Court in the Hague had ruled on the legality of Iran's nationalization of foreign oil concessions. He added that he didn't expect such, a decision for at least one year,

By the time Raven's flight landed in London that evening, oil was again moving to Italy. The Force Majeure crises had ended as abruptly as it had begun.

Raven's Daimler was waiting at the airport. The driver handed him his mail. In it was an hand-delivered envelope. It came from Suite 42, Hotel Aviz, Lisboa, an address with which Raven was well acquainted. It was from the suite of Mr. Five Percent himself, Calouste Gulbenkian. Raven opened it immediately. It offered him, as he expected, a gift.

Raven knew that Mr. Five Percent was an Armenian who understood the art of baksheesh in a way no Westerner could. He had begun as a paymaster for Nubar Pasha, who he named his son after, who represented the Rothschild bank in the far-flung Turkish empire. By the time he was thirty, he knew the precise position of every court official in the baksheesh chain, from the bottom to the top of the hierarchy, and paid informants to apprise him of the exact state of mind of each key official in the Sultan's court. He would find out when someone had had a satisfactory time with a woman, or when, through some business reverse, someone was more amenable to accepting a bribe. He would even secretly consult the court astrologist, who, for a price, would supply him with the charts, he had drawn up for each official, so that he could offer them a bribe on the very day that they were expecting good fortune. He found ways of bribing that did not compromise officials, such as giving them Korans encrusted with diamonds since they could commit no crime in accepting the word of Allah. By the time the Sultan was driven from power , he had gotten the Rothschilds and their allies the giant oil concession in Iraq, and, in return, kept five percent for himself.

"My Dear Antony," the letter began. " I hope you will accept a small token of my appreciation of your untiring work on all of our behalf. Nubar has told me of your interest in the picture of the Achnacarry Shoot in Lord Crumonde's library. As you no doubt know, it is one of seven copies of the painting by Allen Julian in the Gulbenkian collection. The original was personally given to me by Sir Henry Deterding in 1928. I would very much for you to have the original. You, as a connoisseur of such art, will appreciate its unusual provenance. I have also taken the liberty, if you have no objection, of arranging for an art consultant from Christie's, Miss C. Winchester, to deliver it to your home, and provide any assistance you need in mounting it."

"C. Winchester would be that girl with the glancing eyes at the shoot at Loch Eddy, the girl who saw too much." Raven thought. He had tried all that weekend to hide the attraction she had aroused. He did not ever like losing control of that part of his brain, the sensorium, that substitutes passion for reason. But there had been a moment of weakness, when peeking in the library to see the painting, she had caught him off guard. Had sly Nubar seen that weakness as an opening?

The Daimler passed White's, the only club he ever lunched at, and turned into St. James place, where he lived, and where Diane would be waiting up for him. But he was still locked in his train of thought. "It is always a mistake underestimating the Gulbenkians. They have their own agenda in Iran. Were they gifting him more than a painting. Were they sending him another force majeure." It was not an offer he could turn down.


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