“I’m sorry, Mr. Lloyd. I am an old man; you will have to connect the dots for me. What are you doing in my office?”
“My company is prepared to offer you a threefold increase in contracts if you will only assist us in the neutralization of the Gray Man. Without going into unnecessary detail, the president of Nigeria is asking us to help him bring justice down on his brother’s killer.”
“Why LaurentGroup?”
“That would involve unnecessary detail.”
“You will find it to be quite necessary if this discussion is to continue.”
FOUR
Lloyd hesitated. Nodded slowly. “Very well. Two reasons. One, my firm has a powerful and far-reaching security apparatus, and the president thinks we have the means at our disposal to handle this situation for him. We’ve done other little odd jobs for the Nigerians in the past, you understand.” With a wave of his hand Lloyd added, “Good customer service.”
Fitzroy’s eyebrows rose and touched.
“And two, Julius Abubaker feels he has some leverage over us. We have a large contract pending signature. It was on his desk when your man killed his brother. The president leaves office in less than a week. He’s given us until then to avenge his brother’s murder.”
“What sort of a contract do you have pending his approval?”
“The sort that we cannot afford to lose. Did you know, Sir Donald, that Nigeria not only produces an abundance of oil, but they also produce an overabundance of natural gas? This gas is completely squandered, bubbles up at their oil wells and drifts into the atmosphere to the tune of thirty billion tons a year. A complete waste of energy and profit.”
“And LaurentGroup wants the gas?”
“Certainly not. The gas is a natural resource that belongs to the good people of Nigeria. But we alone have the technology to cap their wells, pipe the liquefied gas to port in Lagos, transport it to refineries in our dual-hulled, temperature-controlled tankers, and refine it for the Nigerians. We’ve spent four years and over three hundred million dollars on R & D for this project. We’ve built ships, we’ve retrofitted shipyards to build more ships, we’ve negotiated land rights for the pipeline.”
“All without a contract to export the product? Sounds like LaurentGroup needs new lawyers,” Fitzroy quipped.
Lloyd, a LaurentGroup lawyer, bristled. “Wehada contract with Abubaker. His people found a loophole. We fixed the unfortunate error and needed only the wave of his pen over the document to seal the deal and begin operations. And then your man killed his brother.”
“I still don’t see the connection.”
“The connection, if you will pardon my language, is that President Abubaker is a prick.”
Fitzroy noticed something in the young solicitor’s agitation.
“I think I have it. Your office was at fault for the loophole in the contract. Your masters have sent you on this errand to fix your cock-up.”
Lloyd took off his thin glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose slowly.
“A minuscule oversight that wouldn’t justify five seconds’ consternation in any courtroom in the civilized world.”
“But you are dealing with the most corrupt nation on earth.”
“Third most corrupt, actually, but your point is valid,” saidLloyd. He pressed a fresh smile into his lips just after a taste of coffee. “Abubaker is threatening to sign the operation over to our competitor, a firm that did not even bid on the job. Our competitor would take a decade to arrive at our present level of infrastructure assets and engineering know-how, and Nigeria would lose billions of dollars in profits in the intervening years.”
“As would LaurentGroup.”
“Admittedly, we are not a social services department within the Nigerian government. Our own self-interest propels us; I just make mention of the dual benefit to the poor wretches of Nigeria who will lose out if I don’t find and kill the Gray Man.”
“If those poor wretches remain poor wretches after the billions annually in oil wealth that already pour into Nigeria, I don’t imagine a few gas lines would much improve their lot in life.”
Lloyd shrugged. “Perhaps we are straying from the subject at hand.”
“What about the payer of the contract? Why doesn’t the president go after him? The Gray Man is, if your intelligence is correct, only the triggerman.”
Lloyd smiled without humor. “As you well know, the payer of the contract was killed in a plane crash months ago. The Gray Man could have and should have kept the money he’d already been wired and forgotten the job. But your assassin continued on his mission. Seemed to think he was doing something noble.”
“What about me? If you think I am involved with coordinating Isaac Abubaker’s death, why not take me out, as well?”
