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and seemed to know exactly what he wanted.
    David Kesler left the hotel feeling quite
pleased with the way the interview had gone. He had already been offered a job
with a shipping company call Sea Containers Inc., but they were only offering
$15,000 and he would have to be based in Chicago. Chicago wasn’t his kind of
town. David liked the thought of living in London and acquiring a matt British
finish on his glossy American efficiency. He promised himself that if Discovery
Oil offered him the position of their executive in London he would take it.
    Ten days later he received a telegram from
Silverstein, inviting him to lunch at the 21 Club in New York. The plush air of
the restaurant gave David confidence that these people knew what they were
about. Their table was in one of the small alcoves so liked by businessmen who
prefer their conversations to remain confidential. He met Silverstein in the
bar at twelve fifty-five.
    Silverstein was genial and relaxed. He
stretched the conversation out a little, discussing irrelevancies, but finally,
over a brandy, offered David the position in London. David was delighted–
$20,000 a year and the chance to be involved with a company which obviously had
such exciting potential. He did not hesitate to agree to start working in London
on January first.
    A week later he flew to Santa Barbara on the
West Coast of America for a rare holiday with his uncle. The offshore oil rigs
rise there from the limpid Pacific in a cluster. Most tourists think they spoil
the view, and most locals detest them, recalling the disastrous Union Oil of
California blowup of January 1969, when 12,000 barrels had gone up in a pillar
of fire that burned and smoked for days and left an 800-mile oil slick to kill
the wildlife and ruin the local tourist industry. But David liked the rigs.
That thrusting technology was part of him now that he was an oilman. After
three weeks of swimming and sunbathing, he was ready for his new career, and
looking forward to starting his government training course.
    David enjoyed his introduction to oil, which
taught him an immense amount about the industry, although he was a little disconcerted that nobody else on the government course
seemed to have heard of Discovery Oil. But after eight weeks he had educated
most of them. He spent Christmas with his parents in Manhattan and was well
ready to fly to England on December 28 to take up his post in London.
    David Kesler had never been to England: how
green the grass was, how narrow the roads, how closed in by hedges and fences
the houses. He felt he was in Toy Town after the vast highways and large
automobiles of New York. The small flat in the Barbican was clean and
impersonal, but, as Mr. Cooper had said, convenient for his office a few
hundred yards away in Threadneedle Street.
    David spent the weekend recovering from the
flight and change of circadian rhythm, and turned up briskly for his first day
at the offices of Discovery Oil on Tuesday, January 2.
    The small building in Threadneedle Street
consisted of seven rooms, of which only Silverstein’s had a prestigious air
about it. There was a tiny reception area, a telex room, two rooms for
secretaries, a room for Mr. Elliott and another for himself. It seemed very
pokey to David, but as Silverstein was quick to point out, office rent in the
City of London was fifteen pounds a square foot compared with two pounds in New
York.
    Bernie Silverstein’s secretary, Judith
Lampson, ushered him through to the well-appointed office of the chief
executive. Silverstein sat in a large black swivel chair behind a massive desk,
which made him look like a midget. By his side were positioned the telephones–three
white and one red. David was later to learn that the important-looking red
telephone was directly connected to a number in the States, but he was never
quite sure to whom.
     
    “Good morning, Mr. Silverstein. Where would
you like me to start?”
    “Bernie, please call me Bernie. Take a