Chapter 3: Blowout Prevention

January – April 2012. Berlin

Texas Dreams. Texas Nightmares.

As the Randolf Corporation jet crosses the Atlantic, Manfred Randolf sleeps fitfully. He is tormented by recurrent dreams...

He is standing a few yards from an oil derrick. High on the tower, he can see the Randolf Company logo, bright in the afternoon sun. As the drilling head turns, he can see fluid escaping from the joint beneath the blow-out preventer valve. The flow starts as a trickle and then builds and builds. In seconds the fluid is being forced out of the joint at enormous pressure, escaping in a thin sheet at a rate of hundreds of gallons per minute. Manfred realizes that the valve is not operating. For some reason, there is no secondary valve as back-up. He tries to get to it. He has to close it manually; has to stop the drilling head turning; has to alter the inflow of drilling mud and kill the well.

The men on the rig are getting on with their tasks. They are oblivious to the danger as the pressure in the underground reservoir forces oil to the surface.

Manfred tries to run across the gantry to reach the valve but the harder he tries to run, the slower he goes. He has almost reached the assembly when the pipe fractures. There is the sound of a dozen express trains howling and thundering past! The whole rig is consumed in a violent explosion of oil, drilling mud, gas and water.

Manfred knows he must do all he can to get clear, to find fresh air to breath, the reach some point of safety...

He wakes. The roaring and whistling sound in his ears is not escaping oil and steam: it is the sound or the air streaming past the fuselage as his jet cruises north east, seven miles high above the cold grey Atlantic. (1)

Randolf is asleep once more, but now his unconscious mind takes him back to Houston. He is in the Enron building, walking through the offices. The building is full of police who are walking between the desks, carefully writing down what each person is doing. Suddenly, he is sitting at a desk himself. He cannot decide whether he has become an employee? Surely he is a visitor? Across the desk sits Jeffrey Skilling, the CEO.

"Manfred! Glad you could drop by. You know, you should have sold out to us when you could. We could have paid in Enron stock. We have been America's Most Innovative Company for three years running, do you know that? Those SPE's you set up? Pah! You are too small to get away with that sort of manoeuvre. Houston PD are here and the D of J people: they are going to see through you, like you were glass."

Randolf tries to tell Skilling not to speak so loud! One of the policemen will hear him. For heaven's sake! There are hundreds of them. A police captain is standing behind Skilling. He says, "Shall we go over to Randolf Corp now, Mr Skilling?" (2)

Randolf decides to run. If he can make it up to the top floor, there is sure to be a helicopter pad...

Randolf is at home. He walks through his lounge. He is alone. He takes a slug of Jack Daniels, straight from the bottle. The whiskey burns a hot trail into his stomach. As he turns he sees Tracy talking to her Mother.

Shanice? What is she doing at the ranch? She has not set foot there since the divorce. Why is Tracy here in Texas and not in Germany? Tracy is talking to Shanice urgently and insistently. She is telling Shanice to dispose of her Randolf stock as fast as she can but without depressing the market price.

"You see Mom, Daddy wants me to pull things round but it's all gone way too far. Look! Here's the cops coming, right now. Daddy hides all his most secret things in the barn. Let's go get 'em."

Randolf looks out of the window. Tracy and Shanice are already disappearing through the door into the darkness of the inside of the barn. Parked, as a barrier between them are three black and white police cars, their lights flashing. A clean-cut young man is climbing out of the first of them. Behind him is the shambling, untidy figure of Columbo.

"No need to worry, Mr Randolf," drawls Columbo, "just a few routine questions." (3)

Dinner at The Mid-Town Grill

Manfred Randolf rides the elevator car down from the Executive Floor to the lobby of the Marriot, Potsdammer Platz. Even though he was in Germany, Berlin even, he still felt he was in the United States, somehow. This was a place where you knew that right at the top of the Company, there was a real guy called Marriot, making sure things were always just as they should be.

As he leaves the elevator, Randolf glances right and left. As if to confirm his musings, his eye falls on a large, idealistic and optimistic portrait hanging in the Lobby. J Willard Marriot sits gazing out, a benign smile on his face and architectural blue prints in his hands, Behind him stands his son, John W Marriot 3^rd also smiling, also reassuring the guests that in this company, their family is securely in charge. Manfred envies them their munificence, to some extent. Their security, definitely! Hotels might not be 'manly', like drilling for oil, but maybe it was more difficult to get yourself into the sort of trouble he was in? (4)

Petra, his head of corporate security and Chuck, the Corporation Chief Accountant have been waiting in the Lobby Bar to join him. The three of them take the short walk towards the dining room, the Mid Town Grill. (5)

Manfred is dressed like a Texan. Blue check shirt; pale blue Wranglers; light tan cowboy boots and a belt to match. He is showing he is here to kick ass if he has to.

Chuck is definitely, visibly, an accountant. Whilst Manfred is slim and wiry, Chuck is more than a few pounds over his fighting weight. He is dressed in a sombre dark business suit, white shirt and dark blue striped tie. He looks like a Republican Conservative and votes like one, but that's not always how he acts in his business life.

Petra is the anomaly. She is tall and well-proportioned with an athlete's body; she has long blond hair, pleated and put into a bun on the back of her head. Manfred notices she is wearing a pair of those patent leather, lace-up, British boots (Doc Martens or something?). The boots have red laces which contrast with the shiny black of the leather. She has the blackest of black tights and a dark red cotton pleated skirt. Above the skirt there is a red blouse beneath a black biker jacket. Petra looks very desirable and sexy. Manfred notices his mouth has begun to water. She also looks dangerous.

As the trio sweep into the dining room, the Maitre D', an immaculately dressed black girl who speaks English with a German accent smiles broadly and personally shows them to their table. They turn left, walk past the open 'kitchen' area and right to the end or the room. They are almost in a little annex.

"I have put you here so you could have some privacy. I hope that will be satisfactory?" she says. A colleague is standing at her elbow. "Maxine will be looking after you this evening."

Maxine, small, blond, pale skinned and with blue Germanic eyes smiles and says "Guten Abend Damen und Herren". She nods and gives almost a little bow. Formal, yet friendly.

"Like I said," says Petra," the steaks are good here..."

The cabal are into their meal now and Randolf takes charge of the situation. He is demolishing a T bone with French fries, asparagus with butter and rocket.

"So Petra, Chuck and I are gonna have to put you more in the picture about the Corporation. Most of this stuff is going to be deeply confidential. If you don't want to know it, say 'stop' but we think it will give you some important context. Chuck?..."

Chuck clears his throat and swallows a mouthful of salmon steak. He has become worried recently about his profile – how he looks in the bedroom mirror and reducing his red meat quotient is for him, a first step on the road to better nutrition.

"Well Petra, it's like this. Frankly, the Corporation has been in poor shape over the past few years – yes I know the share price has done well but there's the rub. We are overvalued. Seriously over-valued. We need real money to refinance and to get working capital to rebuild our financial foundations..."

"What Chuck means", interjects Randolf, "is that we need real dough to start deep drilling in the Texas fields. There's more oil down there but the technology to get it is expensive. And it's not just about oil. There is technology to frack natural gas out of shale rock and we need to be part of that. Did you know the US is now self-sufficient in natural gas, thanks to fracking? We need to be part of that." (6)

"So why not just go to the Bank and borrow?" asks Petra, "If you are thought to be a good risk and a valuable company, that should be no problem?"

"You are a minx, Petra! You are just needling me. Look since the sub-prime mortgage fiasco, since Lehman Brothers went belly up, the banks are being much more careful and frankly, I don't want them crawling over the company accounts..." (7)

"and the reason is", continues Chuck, "that the accounts have not told the complete picture about the corporate finances for quite a while."

Randolf chews vigorously on another mouthful of steak, gazing at Petra through a half closed eye, like an alligator sizing up its prey.

"So what we did", continues Chuck

"Look, Petra it's like this", says Randolf, following through. "Gradually, productivity in the Texas field started to fall. We're talking mid-eighties here. I had offers for the Corporation from the people at Marathon and Philips. (8) I wanted to stay independent. Then along comes The Nineties. The Soviet Union collapses. The Russian Empire used to be the world's number one oil exporter, then in the Soviet period, it was off limits but that did not really matter because in the West we had the Mid East, North Africa, Nigeria, the North Sea, Venezuela and of course, Texas. Anyway, I could smell money. Could we cut some deal with the former-soviets to get hold of their oil and ship it to the US or could we sell them some of our expertise to bring their industry up to date? Hell, I thought we'd be dealing with a bunch of engineers who knew fuck all about business or a collection of ex-pinko communist apparatchiks who did not know which way up the balance sheet went."

"And I am going to guess it did not turn out quite like that?"

"No siree girl, it did not. We found ourselves tied in with a bunch of bandit capitalists of the blackest hue."

" ... so we took a leaf out of the Enron Book"' adds Chuck, "we set up a number of Special Purpose Vehicles. These separate an investment from the main balance sheet. If it makes money, you can transfuse money into the main Corporation accounts. If it loses, it is off the books but the main thing is that the share price is not affected by what the SPV's are doing." (9)

"I wanted them just to bring investment capital into the Corporation", explains Randolf.

" ... and avoid tax" adds Chuck with an accountant's precision.

" ... and avoid tax, yes, that's true and then when we had enough we could kiss 'Boris' good bye", adds Randolf

"How did 'Boris' take this?" asks Petra

"Well, 'Boris' did some checking of his own ... I tell you, girl, these guys are good. We should be employing them. If we could trust them ... Anyway, he found out that we were over-valued and he guessed that we had been using out East Europe operations to rebuild our finances", replies Randolf.

"So they started to send us invoices for what purported to be services they had supplied to us"' says Chuck.

"Invoices! Blackmail demands, that's all they were. 'Boris' thought he had us over a barrel but I could see through his little scheme. They wanted us as a gateway into the US market. They wanted a market presence without having to come clean about it. The next step: getting me to sell them a controlling share in the corporation

... you see Petra, they knew that we had not been correctly declaring profits and The Treasury does not like that", the pedantic Chuck explains.

" ... and I have no intention of doing jail time like that dumbass Jeffery Skilling", adds Randolf. (10)

" ... so Manfred sent Tracy to tie to tie up the East European operation."

"To cut the Russians loose?"

"Yep, that's about it. A few more months and we would not have needed them any more"' Randolf replies.

"And now they have Tracy, she is security to guarantee your good behaviour?" says Petra, summarizing the situation.

"Yes Petra, that's it. Tracy also knows where a whole lot more bodies are buried."

"Do the Reds know everything?"

"Well, Petra I think we now need some precision in the conversation because there is not just one single collection of Reds. We spread our risk and I don't know how much they all talk to each other. The plan is to pay what is owed, so that is the slate wiped clean but mainly to find out which little gang of hoodlums is responsible for Tracy's disappearance and to try and get her back before they figure out what she is worth. This is your job, Petra. Get hold of who ever took her and screw them till they tell you where she is. We gotta be tough here. I just feel it in my gut."

Petra begins: "So Manfred, you are pretty definite that people you upset were on this side of the pond?"

Manfred nods again and Petra continues, "I don't think it's anything they'll have done by themselves, that is to say done personally. They'll have commissioned someone in West Europe or someone who is experienced at working here.

There's one operation I'd normally have down for something like this. Man called Clegg, no real scruples, goes where there's a good buck. He operates out of the UK and works largely with clients in the area you might call Iran-istan. He has got connections in the States by the way. You know a Steve Glennis?" (11)

Manfred nods and adds, "well, 'know him' is a bit too much of a description, 'heard of him' is nearer the mark."

Petra continues: "Clegg doesn't care much who commissions him to do what, although he's been tidying up his business the last couple of years. An abduction like this is well within his capability. His organisation is a good example of the sort of people we will be dealing with but, I don't think he will be responsible on this occasion. After all, why would Russians want to work with the British on a 'project' in Germany?"

"Anyone else?"

"Plenty, I'm afraid. There is one West Europe operation run by someone who calls herself 'The Contessa'. There are a number of criminal gangs from the old Yugoslavia and others from the new Baltic Republics – Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia. Then of course, there are the Russians – well, 'former Soviets is a better description because they don't all come from what we would now call 'Russia'. Some nasty operators. Some skilful ones. A few that are both. The Former Soviets are the people who still have a lot of links in Berlin and I think that's where we have got to start, following on from what you have just told me"

"Understood..."

"I spent some time checking out the area where her apartment was and I've tried following up with the Berlin police. They don't have any real clues. There's no much that even points to a snatch and if anyone actually knows anything in Berlin they aren't saying."

"So that's where we are at? For goodness sake Petra. Part of me does not want the police and heaven forbid, the FBI people at the Embassy getting too involved with this. On the other hand, I was hoping for something more concrete."

"Let's have a bit of patience here, Manfred. Tracy has only been gone 72 hours and yes, I hear what you say about the police. Oh, by the way, who is this?"

Petra slides a photograph taken from a security camera over the table. It shows Tracy in a café, talking to a man. Young. Attractive. Smart. Black.

"Who in hell's name is this, Petra?"

"Tracy often called at a café on her way home. I 'borrowed' the security camera records. This is what I found."

"Shouldn't the police have that?"

"I guess they should, Manfred. The question is, at what point do you want them to have it? Are you going to rely on normal channels to get Tracy back or are we going to work on this ourselves – at least for some time?"

"Ah, oh, yeah. I see what you mean."

"Here is another. This is from the surveillance camera I had installed in Tracy's apartment. It covers the front door. See? Here she is coming in and here is the guy again. This is something the police will also have and at the moment they will be going through Tracy's address book to match names with faces with visitors, so we have us a start."