TWILIGHT'S LAST GLEAMING
John Michael Greer
AEON
First published in 2014 by Karnac Books. This new 2019 edition published by
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Copyright © 2019 John Michael Greer
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ISBN-13: 978-1-91159-776-6
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CAST OF CHARACTERS
United States of America
Executive Branch
William Stedman, Secretary of Defense
Paul Gregory Barnett, Director of Central Intelligence
Admiral Roland Waite, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Leonard Gurney, Vice President
Ellen Harbin, national security adviser to the President
Jameson Weed, President
Claire Hayes Hutchison, Secretary of State
Lloyd Schumacher, Secretary of Energy
William Honnecker, Ambassador to South Sudan
Stanley Fukuyama, CIA station chief, Juba, South Sudan
Jeremiah Parks, Ambassador to the United Nations
Frieda Thaler, presidential press secretary
Barbara Bateson, acting Secretary of Defense
Beryl Mickelson, Secretary of the Treasury
Emil Pohjola, operative, Executive Special Projects Staff
Janice Kumigawa, legal adviser to President Gurney
Blair Murdoch, Secretary of Homeland Security
Congress
Senator Pierre “Pete” Bridgeport, chairman of Senate Armed Services Committee
Leona Price, nonvoting delegate to the House of Representatives for the District of Columbia
Joseph Egmont, Senator Bridgeport's political strategist and adviser
Nora Babbitt, researcher on Senator Bridgeport's staff
Senator Michael Kamanoff, majority leader
Senator Rosemary Muller, chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee
Senator Nancy Liebkuhn, majority whip
Military
Colonel Melanie Bridgeport, commander, 33rd Logistics Group, US Air Force
Brigadier General Michael Mahoney, commander, 33rd Fighter Wing, US Air Force
Colonel Edward Watanabe, commander, 33rd Operations Group, US Air Force
Colonel Arnold Biederman, commander, 33rd Combat Support Group, US Air Force
Rear Admiral Julius Deckmann, US Navy, commander, Joint Expeditionary Task Force Three
Captain Samuel McCloskey, US Navy, captain of USS Ronald Reagan
Commander Philip Johnston, US Navy, executive officer of USS Ronald Reagan
Brigadier General Jay Seversky, commander, 101st Air Assault Division, US Army
Colonel Joseph Becher, chief of intelligence, 101st Air Assault Division, US Army
Colonel Benito “Benny” Martinez, commander, First Brigade, 101st Air Assault Division, US Army
Colonel Jason “Ish” Isherwood, commander, Third Brigade, 101st Air Assault Division, US Army
Major James Kroger, 509th Bomb Wing, US Air Force
Captain Philip Bennington, 509th Bomb Wing, US Air Force
Rear Admiral George D. Wanford, US Navy, commander of US forces on Diego Garcia
Major Roy Abernethy, US Army National Guard
Sergeant Howell “Chip” Lansberger, US Army National Guard
General Ralph Wittkower, US Army, Deputy Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Corporal James Wallace, 101st Air Assault Divison, US Army
General Alberto Mendoza; Commandant, US Marine Corps
Admiral Willard Gullickson, Chief of Naval Operations, US Navy
Other
Alexandra Weed, Jameson Weed's wife
James Lattimer, mayor of Trenton, New Jersey
Terence McCracken, Governor of Texas
Bryan Tuckerman, television reporter
Theodore Pappas, chief of derivatives trading for a major New York investment bank
Loretta Wallace, waitress
Leonard Wallace, her younger son
Julia Gurney, Leonard Gurney's wife
Robert Price, Leona Price's husband, professor of history at Georgetown University
Daniel Stedman, grandson of William Stedman
Representative Deanna Bickerstaff, Arkansas House of Representatives
Bayard Haskell, House Majority Leader, Arkansas House of Representatives
Mary Brice, House Minority Leader, Arkansas House of Representatives
Clyde Witherspoon, office manager, Oklahoma Independence Party
Suzette Delafarge, President, Oklahoma Independence Party
Michael Capoblanco, Mafia don
Maria del Campo Ruiz, Speaker of the Texas House of Representatives
Thomas Pettigrew, Texas Senate majority leader
Philip Briscoe, Texas Senate minority leader
Harriet Elkerson, delegate to the US Constitutional Convention
James Owen, veteran, US Army Rangers
Ray Muldoon, county sheriff, Lamar County, Mississippi
Gretchen Hayes, Melanie Bridgeport's campaign manager
People's Republic of China
Wen Shiyang, assistant vice president, China National Overseas Oil Corporation (CNOOC)
Jun Yinshao, Chinese ambassador to Tanzania
General Liu Shenyen, Vice Chairman of the Central Military Commission
Fang Liyao, professor of strategic studies, Academy of Military Science, Beijing
General Yang Chao, commander of People's Liberation Army ground forces
General Ma Baiyuan, Vice Chairman of the Central Military Commission
Chen Weiming, President
Liu Meiyin, wife of Liu Shenyen
Major Guo Yunmen, air defense commander, Lingshui Air Base, Hainan Island, China
General Cai Tungshao, Hainan Military District commander, People's Liberation Army
Major Chung Erhwan, commander, Unit 6628, People's Liberation Army Special Forces
Captain Kuo Lienmen, commanding officer, Zheng He, People's Liberation Army Naval Force
Captain Kwang Wenshang, People's Liberation Army Air Force
Russian Federation
Gennady Maksimovich Kuznetsov, President
General Mikhail Alexeyevich Bunin, Minister of Defense
Colonel-General Lev Arkadyevich Myshinski, Army chief of staff
Igor Ivanovich Vasiliyev, director of foreign intelligence
Islamic Republic of Iran
Ayatollah Husayn al-Jahrami, President of the Expediency Council
General Farzad al-Zardawi, commander of the Revolutionary Guards
Ayatollah Saif al-Shirazi, member of the Expediency Council
Colonel Hassan Gholadegh, Iranian Air Force
General Abdulhassan Birjani, Revolutionary Guards
United Republic of Tanzania
Joseph Matenga, chief petroleum geologist, Tanzanian Petroleum Company
Elijah Mkembe, President
General Mohammed Kashilabe
, commander, Tanzanian Army
Private Kwame Mtesi, Tanzanian Army
Private Moses Olokumbe, Tanzanian Army
Colonel Mohammed Ilumubeke, Tanzanian Army
Republic of Kenya
Mutesu Kesembani, President
Corporal Hassan Omumberi, Kenyan Army
Other
Thomas “Tommy” McGaffney, Australian freelance journalist/author
Hafiz al-Nasrani, reporter for al-Jazeera News
Yamagushi Fumiko, freelance news photographer
Prince Khalid ibn Saud, Saudi ambassador to the United States
General Hassan al-Sharif, Saudi Arabian Army
General Mehmet Burzagli, commander, Turkish expeditionary force in Saudi Arabia
PART ONE
HUBRIS
ONE
29 August 2028: thirty kilometers off the Tanzanian coast
“Keep going,” said Joseph Matenga. The driller gave him a dubious look, but turned back to his console. More than six kilometers below them, the drill bit chewed its way through rock.
Matenga turned away from the console, though there wasn't far he could go. Windows on three sides of the cramped little control room showed the girders and gear of a drilling platform and, beyond them, blue ocean out to the horizon. The fourth side looked down on the drill floor, where the roustabouts were hauling another length of riser pipe to add to the drill string—the long shaft of hollow steel connecting the drilling rig with the bottom of the ocean and the hole he'd spent years convincing the onshore execs to drill.
Down there, past a thousand meters of sea water and more rock than Matenga wanted to think about, there should be oil, plenty of it. Blurred patterns deep down in the seismic surveys, biomarkers in the scant oil from that fault zone further west: all of it spoke to him of black gold somewhere down below the Upper Cretaceous plays they'd been drilling for years, trapped under a fold of impermeable shale that might stretch for a hundred kilometers or more, a petroleum geologist's dream if it told the truth. If not—well, with drilling costs well on the upside of five million renminbi a day, and two months of that already spent, the chance that he would be given another try was really too small to worry about.
He heard the driller's breath catch, turned back. Half a dozen computer screens faced him, but the one that mattered showed data from instruments downhole, just behind the drill head. Porosity was up, electrical resistance headed the right way, hydrocarbons detected—
“There it is,” Matenga said. “Now, a core sample.”
“Yes, sir.” That meant pulling up all six thousand meters of the drill string so a coring bit could go onto the business end, but the driller didn't argue. Back in the bustling ports of newly oil-rich Tanzania, they said that oil came to old man Matenga in his dreams and told him where it could be found. The driller knew that such things didn't happen, or so he would have said most other days. The numbers on the screen whispered otherwise.
It was noon before the first fragments of rock from the new formation had come back up with the drilling mud. By then everyone on the drilling rig, from the company men all the way down to the roughnecks who hauled trash and chipped paint down in the pontoons, knew that something was up. As he stood in the geology lab, waiting for his assistant to wash the last of the drilling mud off the rock chips and get them under a microscope, Matenga could hear muffled voices outside the door. He bent over the microscope when the assistant waved him over, saw what he'd hoped to see: porous sandstone with the sheen of oil on it.
Another three hours passed before the core sample came in, and by then the whole rig was tensed, waiting. Matenga was waiting on the drilling floor when the drill string came up. When the sample reached the geology lab minutes later, he slid it out of its tube and let out a long whistle. It was everything he'd hoped for, a good coarse sandstone full of pores, with the sweet stink of crude oil impossible to miss. As soon as he finished examining it he was on the radio with corporate headquarters back in Dar es Salaam to give them the news, and get the core flown in right away for laboratory analysis.
It would take many months and much more drilling, he knew, before anyone could be sure just how much oil was down there, but it was good to be proved right, good to know that his luck had not yet turned its back on him and that his career would end with a success and not a failure.
“God grant that there be much oil,” he murmured, turning back to his work.
It would be early the next year before he found out just how abundantly that prayer had been granted.
6 February 2029: Dar es Salaam, Tanzania
The customs clerk finished with the papers and smiled a broad insincere smile. “Welcome to Tanzania, Mr. McGaffney. I hope you enjoy your stay.”
“Thanks, mate.” Tommy McGaffney nodded to the man and left the visa desk.
A few minutes later he was crossing the main concourse at Julius Nyerere Airport, shapeless leather bag swinging from his shoulder as he weaved through the crowd. After a dozen years chasing news across the hot crowded belly of the planet, it was a familiar drill: travel light, move fast, have everything settled beforehand and then don't be surprised when it all goes blue on you the moment you get off the plane.
A quick glance up at the sign showed that they'd moved the zone for the hotel shuttles since the last time he'd been through Dar es Salaam: more construction, a fourth terminal going in. He headed for the doors.
It was hot enough inside the terminal, but outside the heat came crashing down like a falling wall and then bounced back up hard from the pavement. The hotel shuttle was where it should be, thank whoever, with a gaggle of Chinese businessmen in black suits and red ties sweating bullets as they climbed aboard. McGaffney evaded a clutch of Russian tourists and made for the shuttle.
“Mr. Thomas McGaffney?” the driver asked. “Please, make yourself comfortable.”
The van's feeble air conditioning tried to make good on the offer and failed. McGaffney got his bag settled on the overhead rack, plopped down on a seat, and only then noticed that one of the Chinese businessmen was looking at him.
“Mr. McGaffney,” the man said. “The journalist, perhaps?”
McGaffney turned in his seat. “That's me.”
“Wen Shiyang.” They shook hands. “No doubt we will be at the same place tomorrow.”
“Then I'll guess that you're with CNOOC,” McGaffney said, as the van lumbered out onto Pugu Road and headed toward downtown. The guess was safe enough; the Chinese National Overseas Oil Corporation had its people all over most of the African petrostates these days, with Beijing's money and muscle to back it up.
Wen smiled. “Exactly. I hope you had a comfortable trip here?”
“Not bad, once I got out of Spain.”
That got a startled look from Wen. “You flew out?”
“Not a chance, mate; the Catalans are too bloody good with rockets these days. Got a boat to Morocco and flew from there.”
“Ah.” Wen shook his head. “A bad situation, the Spanish war. Still, I gather you are used to that sort of travel.”
“Comes with the job.”
They kept up a string of small talk as the van wove through heavy traffic, while the other Chinese in the van sat and said nothing. Every few blocks they passed another construction site: here a terminal for the city's brand-new light rail system, there an apartment complex or an office park, with Chinese firms as general contractors and Chinese banks as funding sources. Closer in, office towers loomed over the street, more markers of Tanzania's new prosperity.
The hotel was a bland faceless building just south of downtown. McGaffney checked in, caught the elevator up to his room, showered, and then parked himself at the bleak little desk next to the windows and powered up his tablet. A few quick jabs at the screen brought up a page of links he'd made with all the media stories so far on the new deepwater find, a few background pieces on the Tanzanian oil industry and the latest annual report on worldwide oil production from the International E
nergy Agency.
The oil was what mattered, here in Tanzania and around the world: the black gold that fueled planes and ships and trucks, and kept a faltering global economy from pitching forward onto its face. Countries that produced more of it than they used got rich, countries that used more than they produced got poor, and those that couldn't produce any at all got thrown to the wolves. Tanzania had been a modest exporter of oil for years, enough to balance the budget decades earlier when oil was cheap, enough to cash in handsomely once the price of oil broke out of its last slump in 2021 and started the ragged climb that had kept economies struggling ever since. If the rumors about the new find were true, though—
McGaffney leaned forward, propped his chin on his hands. After a dozen years chasing the news, he knew a crisis in the making when he saw it. If the rumors were true, there was going to be a hell of a fight over all that oil.
7 February 2029: TPC headquarters, Dar es Salaam
The taxi rattled to a halt, and McGaffney paid the driver and got out. Reflected sunlight nearly blinded him: the building in front of him, all glass and aluminum, mirrored sun down onto the street with terrific force. Through the glare, he managed to recognize the new headquarters of the Tanzanian Petroleum Corporation.
Except for the brightly colored tingatinga paintings on the walls, the conference room on the fifth floor might have been anywhere on the planet. McGaffney took a seat toward the back, got out his tablet and waited. Around him, the room filled: reporters on the East Africa beat, diplomats, oil industry people. He knew maybe half of them, nodded greetings to those, watched newcomers find seats. One of the newcomers was Wen Shiyang, though there were plenty of other Chinese present, CNOOC officials and media people mostly. The Chinese ambassador wasn't there, though that didn't surprise McGaffney; he'd get his own briefing, no doubt.
Twenty minutes late, bustle behind McGaffney announced the beginning of the press conference. A middle-aged woman walked up to the podium and introduced herself as a TPC vice president, then introduced the country's Assistant Minister of Energy, a rotund gray-bearded man who just then looked jolly enough to be East Africa's answer to Santa Claus. The assistant minister spent five minutes saying very little in the most graceful way imaginable, then introduced the petroleum geologist they had come to hear. McGaffney sized up the man—lean as a crane with a white crest of unruly hair to match, the sort who'd clearly spent much more time handling rocks on drilling rigs than giving speeches in conference rooms—and noted the name down carefully: Dr. Joseph Matenga.