The following is a work of fiction. Here is the Table of Contents, which is updated as new chapters are written.
The Duke of Oil is the third in a series of sci-fi novels of the type known as
alternate history. What’s different is that this series takes place in
our time, with characters familiar in your real life.
The first book in the series, The Chinese Century, was written late 2004. Its table of contents is here. The second, The American Diaspora, was written in 2005. The table of contents for that book is here.
A synopsis of the series is here.
"That’s a surprise."
It was his first day back at work following the lung transplant. Physically, Dick Cheney was feeling A-OK. Better than he had in ages. A new heart and lungs will do that for you.
But this might have him going in for a new stomach. It was a series of cascading trades, routed through Singapore, on oil futures. And they were all betting on falling, not rising prices.
What they knew that he didn’t he couldn’t say. And he knew a lot.
He knew, for instance, that the Iraqi insurgency was continuing after the U.S. was forced to pull out thanks to Blackwater Dubai. A recent series of "accidents" at the Iranian oil terminals were not accidents at all. Failing equipment in Venezuela also had a human origin.
When a corporation adopts the attitude of a global guerilla, it is amazing how effective it can be. If secrets can be kept, it’s a license to steal. As a private company under the protection of the Sheikh, ready to deny everything, there is some serious immunity.
But if those secrets came out, trouble might still follow. If Cheney’s trades came out, the DCM might collapse as traders realized the market was rigged.
And here were these Asian trades, heavy volumes, pounding futures not just here but in Europe as well. Who knew what?
Real transactions were already priced into the market. The new Chinese pipeline running east from Kazakhstan was priced into the market. The rapprochement between China and Russia was priced into the market. The idea that Asian supplies were more reliable than those from Africa, South America or the Middle East was priced into the market.
Cheney sent a quick note to Prince, a screensave as a file attachment and a simple question mark. Within a few minutes the answer came back, a story out of South Africa talking about a new type of solar cell, with some quotes from that blowhard Richard Branson about a "revolution in rural power."
"But that’s bullshit," Cheney said out loud to his empty office. He picked up his private line, mashed a single button. "Is this all?" he demanded.
"Supply and demand are on a knife edge right now," Erik Prince replied laconically. "Any rumors of a cut in demand, or any alternative supply, is going to move the futures."
"But this is nothing. Nothing!"
"If you need to get out, I have a team who might be able to do something…"
Cheney grunted. Word of another sabotaged oil pipeline in Nigeria later that day saved his positions, but it still didn’t make him feel a lot better.
"You don’t really need to care about it, dear," his wife said later that night over dinner. Cheney still didn’t trust himself to join her in a glass of wine, but he’d been assured that day was coming soon.
"You’re right, of course," he said. "We can make money no matter where markets move. And there are many markets other than the energy complex. It’s just that energy is a linchpin for so much else. When energy rises you buy, when it falls you sell."
"But you don’t need to buy or sell," she said. "You just make the market."
"Sure, sure. And with no income tax in Dubai we have an absolute advantage over everyone, so long as we keep costs in line and our technology current. It just feels like clerical work."
"It is clerical work, dear. Banking is clerical work. Insurance is clerical work. You can make a lot of money from clerical work. That’s why you were in politics so long. It’s not clerical work. Isn’t that why you left Halliburton in the first place – you were tired of clerical work?" She smiled here Madame Bountiful smile, the one she thought was so attractive, the one that annoyed him so when she was drinking.
"But how quickly? I’m 66 years old. I’ve had my chest opened up twice in the last year. I’ve been dead, turned off, and there’s no light, no God. There’s nothing but what I can do, here and now."
Lynne Cheney put down her fork and gave her husband the hard look, the one she’d always reserved for bad dogs and liberals. "How do you know, dear? God knew you weren’t really dead on that table. So God didn’t come for you." Her religiosity was annoying sometimes. He smiled in reply. No use arguing about it.
Cheney was making $1 million a week, running DCM, and it wasn’t enough. He was making another $2 million a week with his trading, charging the cost of Prince’s operation to the firm. He knew there would be a gigantic bonus at the end of the year, and he knew how big it would be.
It still wasn’t big enough. He ate his fill, yet his stomach still rumbled.
