No Kiss For The Devil

23

Riley climbed the stairs at Copnor Business Publications and found David Johnson still looking confused and harassed in equal measure. She suspected it was his default position. There was no sign of Emerald.

‘Hello again,’ he said with a faint smile. His expression could have been welcoming or wary, it was hard to tell. He cleared some papers off a chair for her. ‘How can I help?’

‘I need to pick your brains,’ Riley told him, ‘about the East European telecoms market.’ After talking to Richard Varley, she had found a number of questions vying for attention, and David Johnson might be the easiest person to provide the answers — or the name of someone who could. She had called him earlier and got him to agree to a meeting.

‘What about it?’

‘Who’s in it, who’s trying to get in… what’s the potential market size. Stuff like that.’

He blinked and puffed out his cheeks, then plonked himself down behind his desk. ‘Well, the potential market size is huge. Vast. And that’s down to the latest round of talks going on.’

‘Go on.’

‘Over the last couple of years, there’s been a move to put together a loose federation of independent states — a free trade sector modelled on the EU but confined to the former Soviet states and some emerging republics.’

‘Sounds like trade protection.’

‘It’s a response to the enlargement of the EU, and the drain of their skilled workforce to the west. They’re not exactly pulling up the drawbridge, which would be bad for trade, but they are trying to draw local demarcation lines to keep out the commercial rabble.’

‘That’s a tall order. It would be like holding back fog.’

‘Not the way they see it. The telecoms industry uses a saturation approach, banging up masts everywhere, with competing shops and networks in every town, all to get ten-year-old kids carrying mobiles and texting each other. And what does it do? In a poor country, it starts to direct the local, then the regional economy. Commercial property prices go up, land prices rise and soon everyone is looking for the next cheap deal or the latest cool mobile phone. Crime follows like night after day.’

‘That’s a bit simplistic, isn’t it?’

‘I’m not so sure.’ Johnson ruffled his hair with his fingertips. ‘Look at other economies around the world and you’ll see the same thing. It’s the thin edge of the wedge. Sure, we’re happy with our mobile market because we grew into it. Your average Eastern European — and I’m talking about way, way east — still hasn’t seen it.’

‘I’d have thought some competition would be good for keeping prices down.’

‘They don’t share that view. Remember, we’re only a few years down the road from communism and state control. The people with the clout reckon there’s only one way of keeping the commercial hordes from ransacking their economies and upsetting the status quo.’

Riley thought she saw where Johnson was heading. ‘Go on.’

‘What they’re planning is to allow a single chosen operator to have sole access to the satellite technology, and effectively bar every other provider. They could do it, too, with the new LEO system.’

‘What’s that?’

‘Mobile phone communication requires LEO — that’s Low Earth Orbit — satellites, to function at their best. They circle the earth very fast — every ninety minutes or so — and feed off lots of other satellites for their signals and coverage. The new federation have just put a new satellite system in place. It’s called Batnev. It’s rumoured to have the capability of piggybacking signals off far more satellites than ever before — in effect, borrowing capacity from other systems — which means much lower operating costs.’

‘And lower costs to the users?’

‘Exactly. They’re working on the theory that it’s better to have a million people paying peanuts, but right on time and growing, rather than a smaller number of high-value subscribers struggling to pay their bills and defaulting.’

‘I see.’

‘And they’ll get them because the extra satellite capacity means they can cover a much larger region than ever before.’

‘Will it work?’

‘They think so — and they reckon they could ring-fence the entire region if they chose to.’

‘Which would mean…?’

‘Locking out every other provider.’

Riley stared at him. If Johnson was right, it would give the selected provider one of the biggest consumer markets on the planet. And no competition.

‘So who’s likely to be in the running?’

He chuckled dryly. ‘Bloody Ada — you name a provider, they’ll be chucking their hats in the ring for this one. There’s already a couple of quiet mergers going on as a result.’

‘How about anyone who isn’t a provider?’

‘What — investors, you mean?’

‘Yes.’

He nodded. ‘Possibly. They’ll need heavy backing, though, because the up-front investment will be considerable.’

‘How about Al-Bashir?’

Johnson nodded. ‘Definitely. He’s already got a share of the Batnev system. It’s not his normal field, but he’s got the investors to go with him.’

‘Like who?’

‘Middle Eastern, mostly. They’re very traditional, but not averse to risk. And they’ve got lots of oil money sloshing around.’

Riley suddenly saw what Richard Varley had been driving at. ‘Is Al-Bashir a Muslim?’

‘Yes — as are his backers. Their investment rules are a bit rigid, but bringing communications to the masses will appeal to them. The one thing he can’t afford to do is upset the more fundamental elements.’

‘Are there any local investors in the running?’

‘Certainly. They’ve got the money and the interest, even if they’re based abroad.’

‘What’s in it for the various states in this so-called federation?’

He shrugged. ‘Control. They’d have control of the technology release, and I’m pretty sure they’d control prices and even the manufacture of the equipment. With command of the network, they could control all other electronic industries in the region.’

‘But that’s frightening. What does Moscow think of it?’

He pursed his lips. ‘I gather they’re not bothered. They’ll get a spin-off benefit, anyway… and Putin’s probably happy because it’s spitting in the eye of western conglomerates.’

‘So what would it mean for the eventual winner?’

Johnson puffed out his cheeks again. ‘God knows. They’d have to give a lot away to the various controlling state bodies, but in return, they’d have a monopoly, with no threat of competition and the backing of the regional governments. Most analysts reckon they can’t lose.’

‘Apart from having the federation peering over their shoulders.’

‘True. But they’ll still make a killing. I wouldn’t mind having shares in it.’ He looked at Riley and tilted his head to one side. ‘You know something, don’t you? You’ve been researching-’ He sat up as if he’d been stung. ‘Christ — oligarchs! Is this connected with Helen’s death?’

But Riley was already getting to her feet. The more she heard about it, the more she was beginning to see the astonishingly weak link in Al-Bashir’s grand plans: his wife, Asiyah. If the rumours were true, it brought to mind David Johnson’s earlier comment about his backers.

‘The one thing he can’t afford to do is upset the more fundamental elements.’

Once outside, Riley ducked into a quiet doorway and rang Natalya Fisher. She was lucky to catch her between lectures.

‘Miss Gavin,’ the professor greeted her, coughing wetly with the effects of another illicit cigarette. ‘How is that nice young man you were with?’

‘Palmer? He’s fine, thank you.’ It was a reminder that, once again, she didn’t know where Frank Palmer was. It was something he’d again managed to avoid telling her.

‘How can I help you?’

‘The oligarchs we were talking about,’ said Riley. ‘Could they out-bid someone like Kim Al-Bashir in a bidding war?’

‘Al-Bashir? Al-Bashir the shopkeeper?’ Natalya laughed. It produced another coughing fit. When she recovered, she apologised and said, ‘Of course — if they wanted to.’

‘But his financial backers have deep pockets.’

‘So do Levels One and Two, Miss Gavin. They could buy him without even noticing… for, what you call it — small change.’ She clearly didn’t like the man.

‘And Level Three?’

‘Not so easy. I suppose they could join forces with others. But they would then run into their main competitors.’

‘The other two levels.’

‘Precisely. They are like fleas on a dog, these people. The pecking order has its rules.’ She chuckled. ‘I am mixing metaphors, a little, I think. But people who break the rules rarely survive.’

‘But if in doing so, they go home with the school prize?’

‘Then you have a different situation, Miss Gavin. Then all the rules are changed.’