After registering and checking the hotel’s security, Haut met with Pan in his salubrious hotel suite on the sixth floor. They sat on a long sofa. Pan’s beefy bodyguard and chauffeur stood outside the suite’s door.

‘You have permanent protection?’ Haut asked.

‘When you have success in business,’ Pan chuckled, ‘you make worthy enemies.’

‘Tell me about it,’ Haut said with a grimace.

Pan ignored the remark and pulled out a folder on the table.

‘We have done our research,’ he said, ‘and we believe your Tasmanian project is a good investment risk.’

‘Risk? You read my report?’

‘Of course. I had experts judge it. They all were in favour.’

‘There is no risk.’

‘Risk and oil, Mr Haut, are soulmates,’ Pan said with a laugh. ‘I will obtain a two hundred million dollar loan to invest in your Tasmanian operation by staking as collateral the deeds to a property of mine in Jakarta.’

‘Sounds good to me,’ Haut said with a grin. ‘Which bank are you using for our deal?’

‘The Royal Bank of the Netherlands. They have the deeds to my Jakarta property. They are ready to supply the two hundred million.’

*

Jacques Bleulance hit the ball with grace and timing and watched it sail down the fairway of his private golf course at his French estate.

‘Superb shot, Jacques!’ the broad-shouldered Belgian, Robert de Cobb, CEO of Conquer, said with an attempted smile. His nickname in business was the ‘reptile’. His large, fleshy features, manner and a record in defeating corporate opposition by any means explained why.

They strolled the manicured course while half-a-dozen security guards prowled in the background.

De Cobb played a fine shot onto the green. Bleulance lined up his ball, and when he slid it into a bunker, de Cobb said quickly, to avoid commenting on his poor stroke, ‘I hear Al Haut’s getting two hundred million for his damned Tasmanian oil project.’

‘He won’t get a cent.’

‘Oh?’

‘I own twenty-eight per cent of the bank Pan’s using. One call will kill that.’

De Cobb sank his three-metre putt.

‘We must deter him further,’ Bleulance remarked as he took time to punch his ball out of the bunker. The ball lobbed two feet from the hole.

‘Great shot, Jacques!’

‘I want you to have a chat to Mawnie Schwartz about “influencing” that opportunist Pan.’

‘Will do.’

Bleulance took too long lining up his shot at the hole. He missed. His face clouded and his chin receded into his neck. He said, just audibly, ‘I want Pan to never, ever again countenance doing any business with Al Haut.’

*

Ten days after doing the deal with Haut, CK Pan received a phone call.

‘Who is this please?’ Pan asked.

‘Not important. Do you value the life of your beautiful daughter?’

‘What? Who is this?’

‘If you want your daughter to live, do not invest in Mr Al Haut’s Tasmanian oil project.’