In order to do this, he charters a floating wreck from a scrapyard in Bangladesh and recruits a cheap crew, no member of which speaks the same language nor asks any questions. The Russian captain’s orders are to make his first port of call in Europe in order to take delivery of 50 cubic metres of liquid caustic soda, which he will declare is to be used to clean the tanks on the old freighter. The vessel will then head to Africa, but will stop for a while off Gibraltar, where several other boats will be waiting for it after returning from the United States, where they had gone to take delivery of the naphtha. And right there, on the high seas, ship to ship, is where the blending will take place, with the boats separated by old rotten fenders to prevent their hulls from colliding. At any moment, it could turn into an ecological catastrophe, but de Rigny doesn’t give a damn; after all, these things happen, especially in international waters.

In order to monitor his unauthorised refining process, he has personally, at nearly seventy years of age, helicoptered out to the boat, carrying 8 kilograms of cobalt catalyst to set off the chemical reaction. The age at which he is schlepping around, suspended in the air, is an interesting detail worth mentioning in order to understand just how much joy he gets from watching his dough being generated right before his eyes. The mixture circulates from vat to vat and the 30,000 tonnes of naphtha slowly get washed, and the sulphur levels fall sufficiently to allow the production of very poor, African-quality diesel.

Once the operation is finished, the Russian takes off in his tanker again to go and deliver the diesel that de Rigny has just sold over the telephone to Togo and Nigeria. But once the hydrocarbon is unloaded from the ship, he still has to get rid of the ultra-toxic black sulphur syrup: the slop. The problem is that they don’t want it in Lagos – the only port capable of retreating refining waste – because the oil terminal is run by a former Oilofina employee who evidently knows de Rigny too well to accept it. In Ghana, he’s presented with a quote of 3 million euros, the same price as in Europe, which would ruin his margin. Nor can he tip his slop into the ocean, because having made the mistake of trying once or twice to have it retreated, he has thereby rendered his toxic waste traceable. If, in the unlikely event, Oilofina were to get caught in the process of the unauthorised cleaning-out of his tanks, that would be considered an unpardonable display of bad taste in the small world of petroleum.

Thank God, that still leaves him French Africa. And it’s in this direction, where he has unwavering supporters, that de Rigny turns to rid himself of his filth.