The Garden of Betrayal - Lee Vance [6]
“Geez,” I said loudly. “It sure is lucky that I have an assistant terrific enough to remember to tape my business card to the back of my three-hundred-dollar phone. Thanks so much, Amy. I don’t know what I’d do without you.”
“Waste half a day trying to load your contacts onto a new phone before losing your temper and yelling at me to call the tech guys.” She sniffed. “I’ll call AT&T for you and get it reactivated. You need anything from the storage room?”
“Nothing, thanks.”
She left, head shaking in mock disapproval. I made a mental note to buy her some flowers when I went out to get lunch, thinking I could pick up something for Claire at the same time. Claire loved flowers.
I’d settled back in with my magazine when my desk phone rang. Amy wasn’t back yet, so I picked it up and said hello.
“As-Salāmu ‘Alaykum,” a reedy voice said. Peace be upon you.
“Wa ‘Alaykum As-Salām,” I responded, recognizing the caller immediately. And on you be peace. It was Rashid.
“You’re well?” he asked.
We’d spoken less than twelve hours previously, but Arabs are big on ritual. The first lesson of doing business with Middle Easterners is that nothing can ever be rushed.
“Very. And you?”
“Alive, al-Hamdulillah.”
It was the answer I expected. Rashid was in acute renal failure, the result of a lifelong battle with diabetes and lingering complications from a kidney and pancreas transplant a few years back. He was being treated as an outpatient at New York–Presbyterian. His Viennese doctor’s first suggestion had been a hospital in Houston, but Rashid was uncomfortable taking up residence in the first city of the American energy industry. He’d been head of the office of the secretary-general of OPEC for going on twenty years before his recent medical leave, and there was no love lost between his employer and the Texas oil and gas tycoons whose overseas reserves had been nationalized by OPEC’s membership. New York had been the obvious second choice.
“Praise God,” I said, echoing him.
“I’m hearing word of a problem at Nord Stream.”
Nord Stream was a pipeline that was being built beneath the Baltic Sea to deliver Russian natural gas to Germany. I checked my news screen and didn’t see anything.
“What kind of problem?”
“I don’t know.”
I hesitated, wondering if he was being completely honest. Rashid was my oldest and best source, as well as a close friend, but he routinely held back more than he shared. He usually let me know when he had information he couldn’t discuss, though. I was about to press him when a sudden beeping caught my attention. A headline had scrolled up on my screen: explosion reported at nord stream pipeline terminus. The terminus was in Russia, near Saint Petersburg.
“Reuters just now posted a story saying there was some kind of explosion,” I said.
“I see it.”
I clicked on the headline, but there weren’t any details yet.
“Let me make a few calls. I’ll get back to you when I know more.”
“Thanks. Me salama.”
“Alla y’salmak.”
I punched another line on my phone and called Dieter Thybold, a friend at Reuters in London.
“It’s Mark,” I said when he answered. “What’s up with this pipeline explosion?”
“No idea yet,” he replied tersely. “I can’t even confirm that there was an explosion. But something strange is going on.”
“Strange how?”
“Today’s the day of the terminus construction completion ceremony. A lot of reporters and dignitaries are visiting. The whole site went quiet twenty minutes ago. Nobody can get hold of their people. And we just got word a moment ago that the Russians have closed their airspace between Saint Petersburg and the Finnish border, and that there’s been a huge increase in encrypted radio traffic out of their military bases at Pribilovo and Kronstadt.”
“So, how do your people know there was an explosion?” I asked, my adrenaline beginning to pump.
“There was a camera crew shooting the ceremony. The footage should be on air any minute. You can see the tiniest hint