Pipeline (9 page)

Matta walked back into his office feeling more than a twinge of guilt. Susana Castillo was usually a highly rational woman—the senator was sure that deep down she understood that he would do whatever he could to help. But in rare emotional moments such as these, he could feel Susana’s desperation pointing in his direction, subconsciously accusing him of not having pulled the right strings or cajoled the right person to get her mother treatment.

He made a mental note to call the U.S. ambassador to see if there
was any way to skirt the costs. He doubted it, but it was worth a try. He would also call some of his campaign’s financial contributors; perhaps he could get a collection going.

Matta took Susana in his arms. There was little even one of the most powerful politicians in Peru could do to help his trusted advisor’s mother.

Thank God he had at least remembered to ask.

LIMA
AUGUST 1, 9:00 P.M.
THE PLAZA DE ARMAS

Hugo Flores had been the senator’s chauffeur for over ten years. Luis Matta had “stolen” him from his job at the Mercedes-Benz offices in Peru when the German car company’s local, longtime manager retired. A small, dark sixty-year-old with a chiseled aquiline nose and elongated black eyes, Hugo looked like an artist’s rendition of his Incan ancestors.

Hugo wasn’t family, but his presence was comforting and familiar. He wasn’t a friend, but Matta listened to his advice. Hugo had seen the ups and downs of Senator Luis Matta’s political career.

As Luis Matta walked through the side door of the Senate building, his pupils adjusted to the spreading darkness outside. Eyes squinting, he finally made out a sparkling Pacific blue Mercedes diesel sedan. The car was not new, but given Hugo’s years of employment with the German car manufacturer, it just seemed to rejuvenate and regenerate under his care. This diminutive Peruvian, with barely a high school education, had even taught himself to speak and read German.

“I must read the owner’s manual in its original language,” Hugo had reasoned during his job interview with the senator.

When the senator had offered him the position a decade ago, the
question of a Mercedes was an absolute precondition. “I’m honored, Senator, to work for you. But it has to be with a Mercedes. I will not drive anything else,” Hugo Flores had dictated to a younger Luis Matta. Most people would have been turned off by a driver laying down the law. Not Matta. He was amused and impressed; it demonstrated that this was a man who knew what he wanted.

Hugo was now waiting for the senator beside the Mercedes, the rear passenger door open.

Luis Matta felt a passing twinge of exasperation. For the last ten years, he had punctually reminded Hugo at least once a week that, when alone, there was no need to stand outside and open the car door. That totaled about 520 reminders to Hugo that Luis Matta was not the type of employer who required that level of fastidiousness.

Hugo had never paid the slightest attention.

“Hugo, I may have mentioned this before,” said Matta, with a small grin, denoting the initiation of the well-worn exchange between the two men. “There is no need for you to open—” The senator’s voice of mock seriousness got lost in the baritone of Hugo’s deep, bellowing laugh, which was terminally silenced by the closing car door.

“Yessir,” he giggled as he slid into the driver’s seat. The “yessir” was meaningless. It was only an acknowledgment that he had heard the senator, not that he would abide by his instructions.

Hugo slowly advanced the car out of the curving driveway. The Mercedes slid by the building’s main entrance just as two well-dressed men—one pale and blond with elegant European facial features, the other larger, darker, and with an unkempt stare in his dark eyes—walked out from behind the large main doors of the Senate building.

Luis Matta recognized both immediately. The smaller man was Ludwig Schutz, Manager of Anfang Energie’s Latin American operations. Since registering his company’s official bid for the Humboldt pipeline business, Ludwig had become a regular visitor to Matta’s
Senate office. It was part of the game. The senator was the senior player in the Humboldt decision, so it was Schutz’s business to drop in, solicit the senator’s views, and ask if there was anything else he needed. Matta would carefully answer that his support would go to the best and least expensive proposal. They both knew how to dance this jig.

The larger, dark man now dialing his mobile phone was Oleg Stradius. Matta had met him only once before, with Ludwig, in his office. He had said next to nothing during the entire hour-long meeting. His business card identified him only as Anfang Energie’s head of security.

Matta felt a creeping irritation. Clearly, the men had been inside the building lobbying other senators. He had no doubt they were offering money and influence to whoever would listen—and he knew that a few of his colleagues were not beyond playing one company against the other to see what they could squeeze out. But, for the most part, Luis Matta was certain that his committee was not on the take; its thirteen senators would decide upon the best and most responsible course for the country.

Winter had arrived in the southern hemisphere. As Lima’s cold, damp air hit the visitors, Senator Luis Matta could see the weather-driven shudder that crawled across Ludwig Schutz’s nearly translucent skin. Against his better judgment, Matta found himself feeling sorry for the two energy company executives. Foreign visitors seemed to always forget that Lima was a foggy, chilly place.

“Hugo, pull over. Let’s offer these gentlemen a ride,” Matta ordered.

Hugo quickly maneuvered the car to the sidewalk. The senator rolled down the window and smiled at the German, trying to raise the collar of his business jacket.

“Ludwig, you look like you need a rescue.”

“Senator, it is a pleasure,” he said, snapping to attention with German formality. “I appear to have forgotten that Lima’s winters are nearly as unpleasant as those in Stuttgart.

“We seem to have lost our driver,” Schutz added, explaining his forlorn situation.

No surprise. Notwithstanding the capture of the last of the leaders of the Shining Path, Peru’s murderous Maoist terrorist group, ten years ago, the police still did not let any unofficial cars anywhere near the Senate building. Visitors were always in front of the building frantically working their cellular phones to find drivers or taxis parked blocks away.

“Forget it,” Senator Matta answered. “Jump in, I’ll take you.”

“Senator, you are too kind. We are going to our hotel, the Miraflores Park Plaza,” said Ludwig Schutz with obvious relief. But the smile did not last. The German’s face quickly stiffened, worried that he was trespassing on unwritten diplomatic lines by inconveniencing a senior senator.

“Please do not worry yourself, Senator. I’m sure we will find our car,” he said, trying to correct his too-quick initial acceptance of the senatorial ride.

“Come on, Ludwig. Don’t be silly! My house is right on the way. Hugo can drop me off and then take you to the hotel,” Matta said, getting out of the car to allow the two European energy executives to get in.

This was too much for Hugo. One thing was his boss’s protestations about his overanxious cares when he was alone. Quite another was seeing the senator open the car door for two foreigners. Hugo was out of his seat like a rocket.

Matta lived in the posh Miraflores neighborhood, less than fifteen minutes away. The hotel was just ten minutes farther down the road. Though it was late and Matta wanted to let Hugo go home, it would be no more than a short detour. At this time of night, there was no traffic.

The three men settled uncomfortably in the Mercedes’s backseat. Oleg Stradius took the place of a person and a half. The man was like a celestial black hole—his huge presence created a massive
gravitational displacement, but it was impossible to peer inside the dark core. Except for polite pleasantries, he said nothing.

Ludwig Schutz was clearly accustomed to the larger man’s reticent silence. It did not seem to bother or distract him one bit. Ludwig Schutz and Luis Matta chatted amiably about world news, avoiding any mention of the project. It was a show in elegant restraint, two men brought together by the one thing they were not talking about.

Hugo got off the highway and entered Miraflores. Traffic tightened up as they passed the neighborhood’s beautiful, large, tree-lined square. Along the streets, the cafés and bars were chock-full of young customers, draped over each other, smiling, smoking, drinking. Matta thought to himself that it was hardly different from what he used to do as a teenager, but somehow young people today exuded a sexual energy that he couldn’t remember from his own youth.

The streets off the huge plaza led to the hotel and restaurant district. One after the other, elegant cars and well-dressed diners awaited entry into Lima’s restaurants. In the last fifteen years, Lima had become a gastronomic mecca.

A new generation of chefs, graduated from European schools, had thrown off the stranglehold of French gastronomic rigidity. They had reinvented Peruvian cuisine with high-intensity sophistication. The food created by this courageous band of nationalist culinary pioneers in the capital’s ultramodern new restaurants had become increasingly creative, turning traditional Peruvian menus into mouthwatering cascades of foams, reductions, and fusions.

As Hugo turned right onto the side street that led to Matta’s house, Ludwig straightened out, arched his spine, and twisted his body so that he was nearly face-to-face with the senator. His back squarely blocked his colleague. It was a carefully calibrated gesture of intimacy.

“Senator, forgive me for ruining your generosity by talking shop,” Ludwig began, with his usual formality. “I must tell you that I am
concerned about what is happening in Bolivia and how it will affect our business in your country. As you know, Senator, your countrymen like to believe that the Bolivians will never get their act together quickly enough to pump their gas out of the ground.”

Matta nodded. There was no doubting how true that statement was. Neighboring Bolivia had considerable reserves of natural gas that could compete with Peru’s exported gas. Furthermore, its gas fields were more accessible, making extraction easier than his own country’s far-off Amazonian resources. This meant that if Bolivia were able to get its gas out and transport it to market, it would be cheaper than Peru’s. If that were to occur, the exciting prospects of Peruvian gas would swivel from opportunity to crisis.

“You see, Senator, Peruvians rarely give Bolivia a second thought,” Ludwig continued, now warming to his business. “Your newspapers dismiss Bolivia’s landlocked poverty. Your politicians shake their heads disapprovingly at its political mess. Your businessmen are appalled by Bolivia’s constant state of upheaval. And your elites think that the ultranationalist peasant movements next door will never allow the sale of Bolivia’s ‘national resources’ to foreign capitalists.”

Ludwig adjusted his spectacles slowly. “Most Peruvians just don’t believe that Bolivia could get its gas to market before you. Am I right, Senator?”

Matta hesitated for a minute and concluded that this was one of those questions that did not require answering. Ludwig was obviously trying to say something important and Matta was not about to interrupt. With a block to go, the car was nearly at his house and Matta did not want him to stop. The senator wished for a way to send Hugo a secret message to slow down.

“I say this with the utmost respect, Senator, but this image of Bolivia may be condescending and, more dangerously, it may be completely wrong.” Schutz was now staring at Luis Matta intensely. He knew he had Matta’s full attention.

“You also know that Russian oil companies are very interested
in expanding their Latin American operations?” Again, it was more a statement than a question, another rhetorical query that did not need an answer. And Schutz did not wait for one.

“Well, Volga Gaz has already completed its agreement with the Bolivian government and it’s my understanding that negotiations are well advanced with Chile to take Bolivia’s gas out through Chilean ports,” Schutz finished.

Matta’s entire body briefly froze. He heard his own heart rhythmically pumping as his mind slowly coiled its neurons around the implications of Ludwig’s message. If the Bolivians got their gas to market first, there would be no room left for Peru’s gas—it would still take time for the Americans to build the necessary off-loading facilities.

California’s recent energy debacle had amply proved how desperate the United States was for more gas. But no matter how great the need, the U.S. market just could not absorb both countries’ gas right now.

Luis Matta wanted to ask one, three, five, a hundred questions. But he ended up asking none because the car braked to a smooth stop in front of the senator’s house. Luis Matta’s throat cleared to instruct Hugo to wait a second, but he was too slow. Hugo was already out of the car and opening Matta’s door. The three men climbed out of the backseat and shook hands on the narrow sidewalk in front of the senator’s home. The conversation was over.

Schutz looked at Matta intently as he held his hand.

“You are kind to have rescued us from the cold, Senator.” He drew closer. Now he was whispering.

“Speed, sir. For all of us, you need to move the decision along faster.”

LIMA
AUGUST 1, 9:15 P.M.
MIRAFLORES

Senator Matta waved Hugo off. The chauffeur usually waited until the senator entered the house. Not today; Luis Matta needed a minute alone.

He drank in the hulking beauty of the old Spanish-colonial home. The big house was wonderful. Matta loved to stare at its bold facade of concrete steps leading to twelve-foot-high double wooden doors, each adorned with three-hundred-year-old wrought-iron knockers in the form of fists.

He knew he could not stand outside alone for very long—Alicia and the girls would be waiting for his arrival to eat dinner. Yet he could not go in just yet. The drive with Ludwig Schutz needed to be thought through.