Seven Floors High

Steve Goddard

Description

Seven Floors High is based around a true story of life inside iaxis, a London based telecoms start-up company valued at US$1 Billion during the “Dot.Com” boom. Written with style, insight and often hilarious humour, Goddard’s story is an exhilarating account of greed, hubris and corporate extravagance in the iaxis quest for a stock market floatation. Set as a background to the iaxis story, Seven Floors High also contains a very powerful Non-Fiction sub-theme which lifts the lid on the secret world of NSA telecommunications spying and covert CIA operations in the Middle East.

Sujets

• Histoire
• Military
• History

Informations

• Publié par: AuthorHouse UK
• Date de parution: 20 février 2009
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781728376097
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

SEVEN FLOORS HIGH
 
 
 
 
 
STEVE GODDARD
 
 
 

 
AuthorHouse™ UK
1663 Liberty Drive
Bloomington, IN 47403  USA
www.authorhouse.co.uk
Phone: UK TFN: 0800 0148641 (Toll Free inside the UK)
UK Local: (02) 0369 56322 ([phone] from outside the UK)
 
 
“The gulf between books and experience... is a lonely ocean.”
WHITE TEETH by Zadie Smith, Penguin 2000.
Seven Floors High © Copyright 2003 by Steve Goddard
Front image: © Corbis Images
Back image: © David Nunuk / Science Photo Library
 
The right of Steve Goddard to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
 
 
© 2009 Steve Goddard. All rights reserved.
 
No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.
 
Published by AuthorHouse  10/14/2022
 
ISBN: 978-1-4389-4882-9 (sc)
ISBN: 978-1-7283-7609-7 (e)
 
 
 
 
Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.
Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.
 
 
Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.
 
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, names, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
Contents
The Author
Author’s Note
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
The Final Chapter
Epilogue
Comments
Afterthought…
The Epilogue
Appendix
‘Good Morning America’
 
For my family.
For everyone who worked at iaxis.
And for my friend Simon, who picked up the
phone and gave me a chance.
THE AUTHOR
The author was born on June 29th 1971 and this is his first book.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
The following is based on a true story. I would like to thank Simon, James and Alistair for helping to make this book possible. I am also indebted to ‘ Kathryn ’ and ‘ Seamus ’ who gave me permission to write about their backgrounds. Thank you.
There are many others who have known about this book and whose personal support throughout these past two years has been invaluable to me. I would not have got this far without your friendships and support. Thank you for being there.
Finally, the political and espionage material contained within this book is very real and everyone who provided me with detailed information for publication in Seven Floors High did so on the basis of remaining “ strictly anonymous ”. You know who you are. Thank you.
Steve Goddard
7th January 2003
 
All text in smaller font, within brackets and double quotation marks, ie
[“…”] is information supplied by a secret narrator.
 
“What I tell you in the dark speak in the light. And what you hear in a
whisper, proclaim on the house tops”
Yehoshua ben Joseph
CHAPTER 1
‘Blaady hell, Justin! ’ screams George, his blood-red face highlighted even more by his white hair as he looks up from his terminal.
Justin sits next to him in the hot seat and every day he wishes he didn’t.
‘What the fucking hell did you say, last time you were in Tehran?’ shouts George in a savage tone. If he doesn’t get an answer within three nanoseconds, he’ll run outside and start pulling up the trees (again).
Young Justin looks sheepishly down at his PC screen. He can feel his chair starting to heat up once more as George is close to having a meltdown. Everyone is now looking over at his part of the dealing desk.
I work as a shipbroker with one of London’s leading and most prestigious broking houses, ‘Seamart Shipbrokers plc’, and this is the start of my sixth year…
Today is the first real day of trading after the millennium celebrations. We have just been informed that the Iranians have chartered another two million-barrel oil tanker without using us as their broking channel to the owner of the vessel. Negotiating the deal between the shipowner and the oil company is how we make our money.
George’s face now looks like somebody else has just eaten his dinner, and he eyeballs Justin hard for letting this happen. ‘Justin! That’s the seventh oil tanker those buggers have chartered in the last four weeks, and you’ve done one of them, just fucking one! ’
George is one of the founders of the company; now he’s losing his touch. Losing all his money from being a Lloyd’s name hasn’t helped matters either. Now he only takes home around two hundred thousand pounds a year, including his company share dividends and bonus. He might be fifty-seven, but he’s as hard as nails. Nobody dares take him on.
From across the dealing room, careful not to catch his eye, I look up from my screen. After rubbing my tired eyes, I think to myself, ‘after so many years in this industry, I hope to hell I don’t end up like you, old boy.’
The Iranians have been chartering these ships for storage capacity in the Persian Gulf and a single deal for a few phone calls can net us twenty-five thousand dollars commission here. Just now the market is low; if it were high, commission levels would be in the region of fifty thousand dollars or more. However, being cut out of a lucrative shipping deal stays with a broker like a trauma. And George has had his fair share of traumas over the years. Right now he is verbally beating a twenty-four year old broker in front of everyone. I should be feeling sorry for Justin but, since his arrogance takes the shine off his broking skills, I’m laughing to myself as he squirms. He can be a tosser, so this is payback time. He looks more stressed than I’ve seen him before.
‘I just don’t understand why the Iranians need so much storage capacity,’ whimpers Justin, clearly now in a classic state of total shock.
On hearing this, George’s grey eyes, which are usually colder than the brass plate outside the office front door, are suddenly on fire with rage. Within two seconds George snarls, draws a deep breath and then explodes.
‘It’s simple , you little twat! Their oil refineries are shit! If they turn off the taps to meet the OPEC quotas they’ve agreed to, they might not fucking start up again!’
Justin is squirming and flinching like hell and the whites of his eyes are now illuminating the entire dealing desk as George has sprung to his feet. Most of the twelve brokers bunkered up inside this dealing room are now shitting themselves in anticipation that George will do any of the following:
Throw Justin out of the office window.
Pick up his PC monitor and bury it in Justin’s head.
Bounce Justin across the room to the telex machine, hit the Tehran number and ram his head through it.
George suddenly realises that we are all watching him and unfortunately he does none of the above. He now looks tired, and takes another deep breath in order to lower his heartbeat back down to one hundred and twenty beats per minute. He takes off his glasses and wipes away the condensation that has built up over the last fifty seconds. Then he takes a deep breath to get the simple words out of his mouth.
‘Look here old boy, I’ve been in this industry since sixty-seven. Their oil industry is on its knees. BP, Shell and Total are going to invest tens of billions of dollars in the country in exploration and upgrading existing assets over the next eighteen months. The taps can’t be turned off in a hurry,’ says George, now making a serious effort to be patient.
I need to yawn, but think better of it when I see George’s head turn viciously around to see who is not paying attention in today’s lesson. He is of course, right but it’s too close to lunchtime to care. And besides, it’s not my account. Then suddenly our screens flash informing us that Marc Rich Trading has also chartered a two million-barrel oil tanker, for an Iranian shipment of oil going to the West. We’ll have to check it out to see if it’s correct and, if it is, what price they paid for the vessel. We have also been trying to get Marc Rich Trading to use us as their broking channel but so far we’ve had very little success at trying to win this lucrative trading account.
On hearing this piece of market news, George goes berserk and his voice rips through the dealing room. Everyone, including myself, buries his head behind his monitor just in case George takes it off.
I mentally break free from all the shouting and think about a Christmas present last year: it was my personal horoscope that had been worked out by Equinox in Covent Garden for the year ahead. My twenty-ninth year and the Saturn Cycle of Responsibilities spoke of big changes ahead in my life. I look around the tanker desk and I don’t see too many changes. Most brokers sitting around this desk have been here for ten to fifteen years or more, all out of sheer loyalty to the firm. (Or rather the fat pay cheques we get every month.)
William is in his early forties. He runs the big Shell and Saudi Aramco accounts and is one of the most helpful and friendly brokers on the desk. He’s working out how many days he’s got to work before he retires, a “ritual” he does almost every day with his pension plans and shares, as he charts and tries to forecast the stock market. Today he’s looking at a ten-year str