The Garden of Betrayal - Lee Vance [16]
“How much do I owe you?”
“He has a tab.”
It figured. I dropped a ten on the counter for my beer anyway.
“How often does he get like that?”
The barman shrugged, perhaps reluctant to talk about a valued customer.
“Maybe you should consider cutting him off.”
“Maybe,” the barman replied. “But he’d only go someplace else. And I’m not the one making him unhappy. You ever think about that?”
4
I headed back to the office, needing to get caught up on e-mail and to prepare some notes for my next day’s bulletin. Late afternoon is a productive time for me, the sole quietus in the global trading day. New York is done by four, the Asians don’t get going until eight, and Sydney and Melbourne—the only open financial centers—are too small to generate much activity. Absent the blinking phone lines and beeping market data screens and the constant background cacophony of rage and glee from the trading floor, I can concentrate.
An hour later, I threw my pen onto my desk and gave up. Alex was on my mind, but more than that, the images I’d seen earlier were haunting me. Hundreds dead, and every one of them somebody’s child. A voice in my head noted bitterly that at least these families knew what had happened to their loved ones and could grieve accordingly. It was a hateful, self-pitying thought, and I did my best to push it away as I packed my briefcase. I wanted to be home with Claire and Kate.
It was dark and cold out, but the sky had cleared. Cobra kept a line of Town Cars waiting from five to midnight despite the straitened economy, and Walter—ever gracious when it came to small things—allowed me free use. I stepped into the lead car and told the driver my address. He handed me a copy of the afternoon Post and then jockeyed his way into the dense traffic. The pipeline explosion dominated the first ten pages of the paper, and I was identified by name as the source of the Nord Stream video in two separate articles. Both mentioned that I’d declined comment. My reticence had been more than a desire to protect Gavin—I wasn’t interested in garnering publicity on the back of a tragedy.
There was a time when I’d thought very differently. Back when I was a Wall Street hotshot, I’d been as calculated in my pursuit of column inches as any scheming politician. Every war, every natural disaster, every refinery fire or tanker accident, was an opportunity for me to elevate my professional profile by pontificating on TV and in the press, explaining what the event meant to the energy industry and speculating as to what might happen next. It shames me to recall that I never took a moment to sympathize with the people afflicted, instead taking pride in my “objectivity.” The single great lesson of my adult life—and one I’d give anything not to have learned so well—is that we’re all vulnerable.
I set the Post aside and shifted restlessly in my seat. As always at this time of year, the avenues were choked with suburbanites intent on seeing the Christmas tree at Rockefeller Center or the animatronic store windows on Fifth Avenue. A surprising number were still driving massive, fuel-guzzling SUVs. Looking out the window at the noxious clouds of automotive exhaust, I found myself wondering what the world would look like in fifty years. It’s not just global warming—everyone in the energy business knows there isn’t anywhere near enough oil and gas in the world to meet long-term demand under any realistic economic scenario. It’s a strangely obvious issue that doesn’t get much play, perhaps because the constituencies that might naturally address it are too busy focusing on the quixotic objective of reducing consumption. Energy demand fluctuates with global GDP, but in the long run, no number of power-efficient fluorescent bulbs are going to offset skyrocketing use from developing nations. Every single available drop of oil and molecule of gas is going to be consumed by somebody, somewhere, unless there’s a lower-cost alternative, and the sooner we figure out that alternative, the less painful the