Enron Debacle/Syriana

Somewhere between the Enron debacle and Syriana lies the scenario in The Gambit.

The Gambit mixes corporate corruption, focused principally in the person of a Houston oilman willing to sacrifice his entire company to terrorist assault, within a broader high stakes international drama centered on massive manipulation of global oil markets through the scripting of terrorist events designed to cause oil prices to explode ever higher. The Gambit is conspiracy theory run amok, both at home and abroad, centered on the fragile nature of oil markets and the ease in which they may be manipulated to the detriment of everyone.

Similar to Enron, many of the scenes described in the novel are centered in Houston. Whereas the Enron meltdown was a function of illicit financial schemes not properly reported, overseen by corrupt and negligent management, the nature of this Houston story is different. In The Gambit, the CEO of a prominent oil company in town is at odds with a restive Board and in personal need of ready cash, eventually succumbing to a campaign exposing his own company's assets and personnel to terrorist assaults. One of those assaults is aimed at Houston directly. In return for his handsome payout, the CEO embarks on a deceptive and galling program to cover his duplicity.

The fall of Enron lurks always behind the scenes. The CEO, Charles Sanders, vows he will not be "another Enron" and, in fact, emerges to fill the void left by the downfall of that company's once prominent management. Through the deft handling of publicity surrounding his high-profile stance on terrorism in the oil patch, he boxes his own Board into a corner and drives the stock price down as well. The latter is a short-term phenomenon only, the crafty CEO soothes the same board members who felt, after the Enron scandal, they could not coddle local management's poor performance or renew Sanders' once-valuable option grants any longer. That's okay to Sanders; he doesn't really work for or report to the Board now. He's receiving considerably more money elsewhere and will even the score with the Board. Wait until the terrorist shocks hit the company.

The Gambit also depicts political blackmail in high places: an outrageous scheme is originated in the Middle East, using creative means to terrorize oil markets, for the purpose of spiking oil prices both for profit and at the expense of the U.S. and the consuming West. Unlike Syriana, where the U.S. pursues a cynical policy of maintaining the status quo to protect certain oil interests, The Gambit is all about coverup leading to the very doors of the White House, prompted by a threatened American president stuck in the middle of a bruising reelection campaign, going after the one man who desperately tries to reveal the conspiracy underway. Is the effort led by shadowy elements timed expressly for the U.S. election, knowing that the President is coopted and unable to respond? Or actually willing to accommodate the action to a considerable degree?

Hopefully, the reader of The Gambit will be motivated to question energy and economic policies exposed to the oil weapon with his or her standard of living hanging in the balance.

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