Free Ghost Force by Patrick Robinson Page B

Russian President stood up and pressed a bell for the Senate butler to come through and bring them coffee and sweet pastries. He stood before a gigantic portrait of the elderly Catherine the Great, accompanied by her brown-and-white whippet, and specified the precise texture of thick dark coffee he required, and the precise sweetness of the pastries.
    Then he sat down and began to outline a plan of such terrifying wickedness and subversiveness, each of the four officials who were listening were stunned into silence.
    “We are going to need a new supply of oil,” he said. “From somewhere in the world where there are ample reserves, billions of barrels of crude, which we can seize control of. I know it’s not going to be easy, and that anyone who has it wants to keep it. But there is a new and very serious player in the game…China. And within a few short years they are going to want every last barrel they can lay their hands on.”
    He hesitated for a moment as the door opened and the butler came in with their coffee. He nodded respectfully and set the large silver tray down on an antique sideboard beneath a gigantic nineteenth-century painting of the Battle of Balaklava fought in the Crimea in 1854.
    Turning to Energy Minister Kuts, the President said, “Oleg, read to them those stats you gave me yesterday, will you? I think everyone will be interested, and I would like my memory to be refreshed.”
    “Certainly,” replied Kuts, shuffling his files. “I should perhaps begin by stating there are more than fifty-six million cars, vans, and sport utility vehicles rolling down China’s highways at this very moment. That accounts for probably sixteen percent of the world’s energy consumption—that’s second only to the U.S., which gobbles up twenty-four percent.
    “By 2020 it is estimated that China will be very close to that twenty-four percent—probably using eleven million barrels a day, plus three point six trillion cubic feet of natural gas. And that’s likely to put their backs to the wall.
    “Hardly a day passes without some kind of power outage in China, especially in the winter, when their aging pipelines occasionally fail. Their electricity grid grows more decrepit every year. Output is rapidly declining in the big northeastern fields around Daqing, and their reserves in far western China mostly lie beneath the high, dry deserts.
    “That means their best shot at claiming those reserves, deep beneath the surface, is going to be very, very expensive.
    “That’s why, even as we speak, China is out there scouring the globe for new opportunities in oil exploration. They will naturally try to crowd their way into neighboring Siberia with promises of a huge market for local oil. In the meantime, they will be pushing forward, financing and trading, to open up oil exploration fields in Australia, Indonesia, Iran, Kazakhstan, Nigeria, Papua New Guinea, and the Sudan.
    “Gentlemen, China calls it supply security , and the name of that game is diversification. They’re in it up to their elbows, we’re lagging far behind. We’re too dependent on Siberia. We must raise our sights. And I think you will find our most esteemed leader has some very advanced views on that.
    “Yesterday I briefed him as well as I could on the global situation. Who has new oil? Where are the big new fields? Is anyone vulnerable to persuasion? If not, how can we persuade them? During the next few minutes, gentlemen, you will hear why our President may one day be talked of in the same breath as Brezhnev, Gorbachev, and Yeltsin. The great visionaries of our time.”
    The President smiled. “Thank you for those generous words, Oleg. I’m grateful for them, and I’m grateful to be here among old and good friends who share my concern for the future.
    “And I would like, if I may, firstly to outline the very obvious difficulties that lie in much of the world’s oil exploration countries. Take the Middle East…well, we may make some