Sandra Brown - Where theres smoke

Where There is Smoke

by

Arthur Pendragon

The Author

Arthur Pendragon was born in South Africa in 1959 and educated at Kearsney College. He spent his National Service (conscription) in the State Presidents Guard in South West Africa (Namibia) and Rhodesia (Zimbabwe). He joined the tobacco industry, working in Johannesburg before transferring to the Southern African head office in Stellenbosch. As London-based Global Relationship Development Manager, he travelled extensively in Europe, the Indian sub-continent and Asia-Pacific. He then joined Bates Worldwide Advertising Agency in New York as Director, Consumer Relations and travelled throughout North America. Two years later, he resigned and backpacked through South America en-route to his beloved homeland. He is married to Leila, has two daughters and two Siberian huskies and now lives in Cape Town.

Contact details:

P.O. Box 1044, Gordons Bay, Western Cape. 7151. Republic of South Africa

Tel: +27 (0) 72 524 4459

WHERE THERE IS SMOKE

WHERE THERE IS SMOKE is fiction, based on the expansion of the tobacco industrys areas of influence, with smuggled product. The story is based on hearsay within the industry. The subject of cigarette smuggling is under investigation by the British Department of Trade and Industry.

Bruce Gibbons is the egotistical, career-orientated, marketing manager of Cosmopolitan Tobacco Company. He plans to make a name for himself by leapfrogging up the corporate ladder to the heady position of European marketing director, with all its accolades and financial rewards. His devious plan is to smuggle cigarettes into foreign territory. For success, he has to ensure that the two men he requires to make this plan work are pliable and unquestioning.

William McCrae, a Scot, is a successful young salesman with the tobacco company. William has no ambition other than to make enough money to pay off his debts at the race track. He is surprised to receive a summons from Gibbons to attend a meeting at head office in London.

Jack Ainsley is a thirty-something admin clerk in the export department. Ainsley is prepared to do anything for management, so when Gibbons calls him to a meeting at head office he is flattered.

Gibbons presents his scheme to McCrae and Ainsley. He wants McCrae to investigate the Netherlands Antilles islands as a potential new market, which he would be required to oversee. Ainsley is to manage the manufacture and export of a new brand of cigarettes from Amsterdam to the Antilles.

McCrae, realising that what he is being asked to do is illegal, negotiates advantageous terms for himself, which they agree will remain private. Ainsley accepts the proposition with alacrity. Gibbons makes it clear to both that nobody must know anything about the plan. In the scheme of things, Gibbons is the king, Ainsley the pawn and McCrae the knight.

In due course, after much research and organisation, McCrae settles on the island of Curaao, where he establishes a general store. It stocks Tango, the new line of cigarettes manufactured for the Curaao outlet, together with legal products imported by McCrae from Amsterdam. On arrival in Curaao, McCrae meets Grace, a beautiful young Latina woman married to the elderly Paulo Mendoza, the most powerful man on the island. Grace is strongly attracted to McCrae, an attraction which is reciprocated. This leads to an intriguing relationship, complicated by Paulo Mendozas warm acceptance of McCrae.

A priest introduces new markets for Tango in neighbouring countries, with the involvement of gangsters in Venezuela and a drug lord in Colombia.

McCrae successfully markets Tango to children on the island, who previously smoked biddies, an inferior bi-product of the cigar trade. His business grows and McCrae becomes popular through his sponsorship of a childrens cricket league.

Fearful that McCrae is becoming too rich and powerful, Gibbons visits Curaao. He needs to demonstrate his authority and investigate further expansion of this very lucrative business.

With the Mendozas patronage, McCrae is entertained royally and mixes with Curaao society. His relationship with Grace develops romantically with sexual overtones.

Everything is going well for McCrae and his business, when Rosemary, Gibbons secretary, who is attracted to McCrae, announces her pending arrival, having been dismissed from Cosmopolitan. McCrae, unaware that Rosemary now knows the nature of their business, welcomes her for a visit. When McCrae makes it clear that a relationship with him is out of the question, Rosemary decides to settle on the island and exact revenge by initiating an anti-smoking campaign.

Mayhem erupts in the form of Gibbons second visit, a threatened revolution and Paulo Mendozas murder.

Much to his consternation, Gibbons discovered that Tango cigarettes are now being sold in North America, the sole preserve of American based companies. Gibbons arrives with the intention of getting rid of McCrae, who is now in a position to spell the end of his dreams.

A group of communist-inspired islanders are plotting to overthrow the governor. When word of the proposed revolution reached Mendoza, he tried to negotiate a peaceful settlement. For this he is murdered and Grace, inconsolable, leaves the island to recuperate with her family in Argentina.

Rosemarys anti-smoking campaign attracts the sympathy of a large number of islanders who join protests at cricket league matches. Parents start questioning the morality of selling cigarettes to under-age children and are dismayed by the increasing numbers of chest ailments amongst the youth.

The anti-smoking campaign gains momentum. McCrae reassesses his business ethics and agrees to sell the smuggling operation to Gibbons. Grace, discovering she is pregnant with McCraes baby, returns to the island. Tango cigarettes are removed from his general dealers. McCraes business thrives and he continues his involvement with cricket, personally sponsoring the league.

Foreword

Tobacco has been a controversial product, dating back, with documentation and references, to the beginning of the first millennium, when Native Americans used it for medicinal purposes. In 1571, Monardes, a doctor of Seville, recommended tobacco as a remedy for upward of thirty-six maladies. Frampton, who later translated the report, added toothache, worms, halitosis, lockjaw and cancer to the list.

The controversy increased with its notoriety, when Sir Francis Drake introduced pipe smoking to the civilized world in Britain, after returning from the Americas in 1572.

Popes have banned the use of tobacco in holy places. King James I of England was quoted as saying that smoking is a custom, loathsome to the eye, hateful to the nose, harmful to the brain, dangerous to the lungs and, in the black and stinking fume thereof, nearest resembling the horrible stygian smoke of the pit that is bottomless.

Experiments on animals, in the seventeenth century, caused the death of cats and mice, after having been fed a drop of distilled oil of tobacco or having the oil rubbed on their skin.

Regardless of this, tobacco is a product that has caused wars, been used to calm soldiers weary nerves during battle, made many people wealthy, employed a large workforce and been written about extensively. Corporations have been built, mergers worth billions of US dollars have been made, deals brokered and reneged upon, promises made and lies told.

Laws have been passed, repealed and passed again, and governments supported or toppled, depending on their stance towards tobacco. Crops have been protected by governments and workers excused from military service to continue their war effort. Free cigarettes were included in soldiers rations, supplied by the Red Cross. Solder from tin cigarette containers was used to build radios inside prisoner-of-war camps. Tobacco has been a deep part of our history regardless of what we might think of it today.