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  TWILIGHT'S LAST GLEAMING

  John Michael Greer

  AEON

  First published in 2014 by Karnac Books. This new 2019 edition published by

  Aeon Books Ltd

  12 New College Parade

  Finchley Road

  London NW3 5EP

  Copyright © 2019 John Michael Greer

  The right of John Michael Greer to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with §§ 77 and 78 of the Copyright Design and Patents Act 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

  British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

  A C.I.P. for this book is available from the British Library

  ISBN-13: 978-1-91159-776-6

  Typeset by Medlar Publishing Solutions Pvt Ltd, India

  Printed in Great Britain

  www.aeonbooks.co.uk

  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.