rose, a tremble still evident in his knees. ‘Why did you, Francis, this time?’
The light from the desk lamp threw harsh shadows across Urquhart’s face, bleaching from it any trace of vitality. One eye seemed almost to have been plucked out, leaving a hollowed socket that led straight to a darkness within.
‘Because Francis Urquhart and only Francis Urquhart is going to decide when Ministers come and go from his Cabinet, not some shrivelling cuckold from New Spalden.’
‘I understand.’ He had been hoping for some acknowledgement of his own irreplaceable worth.
‘And because now I own you. Today, tomorrow, and for as long as I wish. You will jump whenever I flick my fingers, whether it be at the throats of our enemies or into your own grave. Without question. Total loyalty.’
‘Of course, Francis. You had that anyway.’ He turned to leave.
‘One last thing, Geoffrey.’
‘Yes?’
‘Give me back my fountain pen.’
Some people prefer to pour oil on troubled waters. I prefer to throw a match.
The sun blazed fiercely outside the window, and the coffee on the table in small cups was dark and thick; in all other respects the office with its stylishly simplistic furniture and modern art trimmings might have been found on the Skeppsbron overlooking the harbour in Stockholm. Yet most of the books along the light oak bookshelves were in Turkish, and the two men in the room were of dark complexion, as were the faces in the family photographs standing behind the desk.
‘Now, what brought you in such a hurry to Nicosia?’
‘Only a fool tarries to deliver good tidings.’
There was an air of formality between them, two Presidents, one Yakar, chief of the Turkish National Oil Company, and the other, Nures, political head of the Republic of Turkish Cyprus. It was not simply that the oil man was a homosexual of contrived manner and the politician a man of robust frame, language and humour; there was often a distance between metropolitan and islander which reflected more than their separation by fifty miles of sea. It had been a century since the Ottomans had ruled Cyprus and differences of culture and perspective had grown. Mainlanders patronized and shepherded the islanders – had they not delivered their cousins from the clutches of Greek extremists by invading and then annexing one third of the island in 1974? At one moment during those confused days, the Turkish Cypriots had found themselves on the point of a Greek bayonet, the next they had been in charge of their own state. Except the Government in Ankara kept treating it as though it were their state.
Time to get rid of them, Mehmet Nures told himself yet again. For a thousand years mainland Turks and Greeks and the imperialist British had interfered and undermined, using the island as a well at which to quench the thirst of their ambitions. They’d sucked it dry, and turned an island of old-fashioned kindnesses and a million butterflies into a political desert. Perhaps they couldn’t step through the looking glass, back to the ways of old, with bubble-domed churches standing alongside pen-nib mosques, but it was time for change. Time for Cypriots to sort out their own destiny, time for peace. The question was – whose peace?
‘I have the honour to present to you a draft of the formal report that Seismic International will publish in a few days following their recent survey of the offshore waters.’ The oil man removed a folder from a slim leather case and deposited it in front of Nures, who proceeded to rustle through its pages. The file contained many coloured maps and squiggles of seismic cross-sections with much technical language that was quite beyond him.
‘Don’t treat me like a tortoise. What the hell does all this mean?’
Yakar tugged at his silk shirt cuffs. ‘Very little. As expected, the seismic survey has revealed that beneath the waters of Cyprus there is much rock, and beneath the rock there is…much more rock. Not the stuff, I fear, of excited headlines.’
‘I sit stunned with indifference.’
Yakar was playing with him, a reserved smile loitering around his moist lips. ‘But, Mr President, I have a second report, one which neither Seismic International nor anyone else has – except for me.
And now you.’ He handed across a much slimmer file, bound in red and bearing the TNOC crest.
‘Not the Greeks, you mean?’
‘May my entrails be stretched across the Bosphorus first.’
‘And this says…?’
‘That there is a geological fault off the coast of Cyprus which has tilted the subsurface geology of the sea bed to the north and west of the island. That the structure in that area does indeed contain oil-bearing rock. And that the fault has tipped all the oil into a great big puddle about – there.’ He stretched and prodded a bejewelled finger at the map Nures was examining.
‘Shit.’
‘Precisely.’
The tip of Yakar’s manicured nail was pointing directly at what had become known as ‘Watling Water’ – the sea area contested between Greek and Turkish Cypriot negotiators and currently the subject of arbitration by the British professor’s panel.
Nures felt a current of apprehension worm through his gut. It had taken him years to balance the scales of peace, feather by feather, he didn’t know if he wanted tons of rock thrown at it right now, oil or no oil. The peace deal was important to him; by giving up so little to the Greek side he could gain so much for his people – peace, international acceptance, true independence, prosperity – and possibly a Nobel Peace Prize for himself. All in exchange for a little land and a stretch of water that was worthless. Or so he had thought.
A thick hand rasped across his dark chin. ‘How much oil?’ he asked, as if every word had cost him a tooth.
‘Perhaps a billion barrels.’
‘I see,’ he said, but clearly didn’t. ‘What does that mean?’
‘Well, the international spot price for oil is around twenty dollars a barrel at the moment. Cost of extraction about five. In round terms – approximately fifteen billion dollars.’
The oil man was whimpering on about Turkish brotherhood and TNOC getting preferential access, teasing out the deal he wished to cement. Nures closed his hooded eyes as though to shut himself away from such squalor, but in truth to contemplate temptation. He had an opportunity – had created the opportunity – to turn a tide of history that had forced poison between the lips of Cypriots and had condemned his own son to be raised in a land of fear. For his grandson it could be different.
Would the world forgive him for endangering the peace process? Would his people forgive him for missing out on fifteen billion dollars’ worth of oil? But could he forgive himself if he didn’t try to grab both?
No contest.
‘President Yakar, I think we want those rocks.’
‘President
