BLACK HAND INCORPORATED

(The first three chapters of the novel)

CHAPTER ONE: DESIGNATED TERMS OF SERVICE

It is part of human nature to hate the man you have hurt.

Tacitus, senator and historian of Rome during the Antonine Imperial Era, c.56 – c.120 AD.

Transcript-excerpt of original portable tape recording from Black Hand Incorporated company confidential archives. Contract number, client(s), date and target individual(s) are strictly classified, company president and senior deputies' eyes only.

(Acoustics of a large and enclosed elevated room but with faint outside sounds of heavy metropolitan traffic, possibly from an open balcony.)

BLACK HAND INCORPORATED SENIOR COMPANY REPRESENTATIVE: "This is the Presidential Suite, is it not?"

EXECUTIVE CLIENT VOICE 1: "Actually there are two here at the (hotel name and location classified) and we, the company I mean, lease this one permanently for top guests."

EXECUTIVE CLIENT VOICE 2: "They change it over to 'Royal Suite' when we have some oil prince staying over. Everybody and their uncles come with said prince frigging little Sinbad Fauntleroy. Absolutely incredible what they spend when they're over. The women book private days at Tiffany's and Bloomingdales and clean the places out. We even get some minor royalty and nobility from Europe with heavy historical interests in the business too. Funny just how much old money there still is in it."

BHISCR: "Belgium and Holland, for example?"

ECV1: "This guy a mind-reader or something?"

ECV2: "I told you he was sharp, (client forename 1 classified)."

BHISCR: "Petroleum as a global business originated when Europe was still in its colonial empire era. After what was then called the Great War the Western European empires continued but the holdings of the old German and Austro-Hungarian empires were largely absorbed by their European rivals as war reparations. Great Britain and the United States moved forcefully into the Persian Basin following victories of Arab guerrillas over the collapsing Ottoman Empire. The excellent David Lean film Lawrence Of Arabia touches strongly on parts of that story."

ECV1: "I hope this isn't offensive but, talking classic movies, I keep expecting you to sound like Sabu from The Thief Of Baghdad or something."

BHISCR (short pause): "Not at all."

ECV2: "Hey, (client forename 1 classified), we're all professionals here."

BHISCR: "I was born here in America, a rather rural part. I've lived in New York for many years now, but you never lose the accent where you originally come from."

ECV1: "Yeah, we're a nation of immigrants. You should hear my grand-folks. Straight out of the Ural Mountains in Russia ahead of the advancing Reds in 1919. Somehow they managed to get to what was then still Persia and a ship over the Caspian Sea through the straights to Istanbul. Then across the Mediterranean and eventually to Ellis Island with about three words of English between them. Grandpa made his pile in Schenectady selling dry goods and breeding race horses on the side."

ECV2: "Mine came out of Ireland just before everything blew up in 1916. I can recite every patriotic shamrock poem William Butler Yeats ever scribbled over his bottomless pint of Guinness for my sins."

ECV1: "And (forename of target classified)'s great grandpappy was a dock worker on the wharves in Liverpool, England. That was back when it was one of the biggest ports in the world. Dirt poor all his life until he sailed on one of the ships he saw leaving for America crammed with people."