Golden Buddha (Oregon Files 1)

Cabrillo walked into the living room. The room was fitted and furnished like the library of an expensive gentleman’s club. Dark wood paneling, the walls were covered with paintings of hunting scenes and birds. Along the right wall was a fireplace containing a roaring wood fire. A pair of high-backed red leather chairs framed the fireplace, with a couch just behind them closer to the door. A thick red carpet atop the inlaid wood floors led almost to the fireplace hearth. Two brass lamps on each side of the couch cast pools of light in the otherwise dark room. President Putin’s back was to Cabrillo as he stoked the fire. Finishing, he stood up and turned.

“Mr. Cabrillo,” he said, smiling, “come in and have a seat.”

Cabrillo slid into the red leather chair to the left of the fireplace, while Putin took the right.

“Back when I was with the KGB, I had quite a file on you,” Putin said.

“And me you,” Cabrillo said in Russian.

Putin nodded, then looked directly into Cabrillo’s eyes. “Your Russian is much better than my English.”

“Thank you, sir,” Cabrillo said.

Putin nodded. “I assume you have done a recent psychological profile on me,” he said. “Did it hazard a guess as to how I would respond?”

“It doesn’t take a team of psychologists,” Cabrillo said, “to know you’ll say yes.”

“Then why don’t you tell me what I’m agreeing to,” Putin said, smiling.

Cabrillo nodded, then opened the file he had brought. “Sir,” he said, “we’ve been commissioned to put the Dalai Lama back in power. We think we’ve worked out a solution that can benefit everyone. We just need some Russian muscle.”

“Explain,” Putin said.

Cabrillo handed over the document Overholt had faxed to the Gulfstream. “This is a classified satellite image of potential oil reserves inside Tibet. We recently recovered ancient documents that list thousands of oil seeps in the northern region.”

“From the Golden Buddha that your company stole in Macau?” Putin asked.

“Your intelligence is good,” Cabrillo said.

Putin studied the image and nodded. “Yes, it is,” he said.

“The preliminary estimates place the reserves in the neighborhood of fifty billion barrels.”

“That’s an expensive neighborhood,” Putin said. “About half of the reserves in Kuwait, or

around five percent of the world’s known reserves.”

“It’s potentially an elephant field,” Cabrillo agreed. “Even if it is less, we believe it is definitely larger than the field on the north slope of Alaska.”

“That would put it in the top twenty of all known fields,” Putin noted.

“Exactly, sir,” Cabrillo said.

“However, right now, the Chinese have control of the field and they don’t even know of its existence,” Putin said, “so you want us to remove them from Tibet.”

“Not exactly, sir,” Cabrillo said. “What we are proposing is that Russia join in a consortium to develop the field. Fifty percent to Tibet, forty percent to your country.”

“And the other ten percent?”

“The other ten percent will be owned by my company,” Cabrillo said, “for putting it all together.”

“Nice tip,” Putin said, smiling, “but you are asking me to commit my forces for a profit. As soon as the casualties start pouring in, my citizens will smell a rat.”

Cabrillo nodded slowly. Then he set the hook.

“Then we make a deal with China,” he said easily. “Jintao wants out anyway—his economy is tanking and his increasing oil imports are accelerating his problems. You make a diplomatic mission to China and offer him half of the production at a cost of fifteen dollars a barrel for the next ten years, and I think he’ll take it and back down.”

Putin laughed. “Brilliant.”