“No need to worry about me having you up here like this,” he began. “I was just going through a sheaf of old reports in my desk drawers and came across yours, or one of them. Must have read it at the time and forgotten to give it back to Miss Cooke for filing.”
“My report?” queried Bryant.
“Eh? Yes, yes, the one you filed after your return from that place—what’s it called again? Zangaro? Was that it?”
“Oh, yes, sir. Zangaro. That was six months ago.”
“Yes, quite so. Six months, of course. Noticed as I reread it that you’d had a bit of a rough time with that Minister fellow.”
Bryant began to relax. The room was warm, the chair extremely comfortable, and the whisky like an old friend. He smiled at the memory. “But I got the contract for survey permission.”
“Damn right you did,” congratulated Sir James. He smiled as if at fond memories. “I used to do that in the old days, y’know. Went on some rough missions to bring home the bacon. Never went to West Africa, though. Not in those days. Went later, of course. But after all this started.”
To indicate “all this” he waved his hand at the luxurious office.
“So nowadays I spend too much time up here, buried in paperwork,” Sir James continued. “I even envy you younger chaps going off to clinch deals in the old way. So tell me about your Zangaro trip.”
“Well, that really was doing things the old way. One look, and I half expected to find people running around with bones through their noses,” said Bryant.
“Really? Good Lord. Rough place is it, this Zangaro?” Sir James Manson’s head had tilted back into the shadows, and Bryant was sufficiently comfortable not to catch the gleam of concentration in the eye that belied the encouraging tone of voice.
“Too right, Sir James. It’s a bloody shambles of a place, moving steadily backward into the Middle Ages since independence five years ago.” He recalled something else he had heard his chief say once in an aside remark to a group of executives. “It’s a classic example of the concept that most of the African republics today have thrown up power groups whose performance in power simply cannot justify their entitlement to leadership of a town dump. As a result, of course, it’s the ordinary people who suffer.”
Sir James, who was as capable as the next man of recognizing his own words when he heard them played back at him, smiled quietly, rose, and walked to the window to look down at the teeming streets below.
“So who does run the show out there?” he asked quietly.
“The President. Or rather the dictator,” said Bryant from his chair. His glass was empty. “A man called Jean Kimba. He won the first and only election, just before independence five years ago, against the wishes of the colonial power—some said by the use of terrorism and voodoo on the voters. They’re pretty backward, you know. Most of them didn’t know what a vote was. Now they don’t need to know.”
“Tough guy, is he, this Kimba?” asked Sir James.
“It’s not that he’s tough, sir. He’s just downright mad. A raving megalomaniac, and probably a paranoid to boot. He rules completely alone, surrounded by a small coterie of political yes-men. If they fall out with him, or arouse his suspicions in any way, they go into the cells of the old colonial police barracks. Rumor has it Kimba goes down there himself to supervise the torture sessions. No one has ever come out alive.”
“Hm, what a world we live in, Bryant. And they’ve got the same vote in the UN General Assembly as Britain or America. Whose advice does he listen to in government?”
“No one of his own people. Of course, he has his voices—so the few local whites say, those who’ve stuck it out by staying on.”
“Voices?” queried Sir James.
“Yes, sir. He claims to the people he is guided by divine voices. He says he talks to God. He’s told the people and the assembled diplomatic corps that in so many words.”
“Oh dear, not another,” mused Manson, still gazing down at the streets below. “I sometimes think it was a mistake to introduce the Africans to God. Half their leaders now seem to be on first-name terms with Him.”
“Apart from that, he rules by a sort of mesmeric fear. The people think he has a powerful juju, or voodoo, or magic or whatever. He holds them in the most abject terror.”
“What about the foreign embassies?” queried the man by the window.
“Well, sir, they keep themselves to themselves. It seems they are just as terrified of the excesses of this maniac as the natives. He’s a bit like a cross between Sheikh Abeid Karume in Zanzibar, Papa Doc Duvalier in Haiti, and Sékou Touré in Guinea.”
Sir James turned smoothly from the window and asked with deceptive softness, “Why Sékou Touré?”
“Well, Kimba’s the next best thing to a Communist, Sir James. The man he really worshipped all his political life was Lumumba. That’s why the Russians are so strong. They have an enormous embassy, for the size of the place. To earn foreign currency, now that the plantations have all failed through maladministration, Zangaro sells most of its produce to the Russian trawlers that call. Of course the trawlers are electronic spy ships or supply ships for submarines. Again, the money they get from the sale doesn’t go to the people; it goes into Kimba’s bank account.”
“It doesn’t sound like Marxism to me,” joked Manson.
Bryant grinned widely. “Money and bribes are where the Marxism stops,” he replied. “As usual.”
“But the Russians are strong, are they? Influential? Another whisky, Bryant?”
While Bryant replied, the head of ManCon poured two more glasses of Glenlivet.
“Yes, Sir James. Kimba has virtually no understanding of matters outside his immediate experience, which has been exclusively inside his own country and maybe a couple of visits to other African states nearby. So he sometimes consults on matters when dealing with outside concerns. Then he uses any one of three advisers, black ones, who come from his own tribe. Two Moscow-trained, and one Peking-trained. Or he contacts the Russians direct. I spoke to a trader in the bar of the hotel one night, a Frenchman. He said the Russian Ambassador or one of his counselors was at the palace almost every day.”
Bryant stayed for another ten minutes, but Manson had learned most of what he needed to know. At five-twenty he ushered Bryant out as smoothly as he had welcomed him. As the younger man left, Manson beckoned Miss Cooke in.
“We employ an engineer in mineral exploration work called Jack Mulrooney,” he said. “He returned from a three-month sortie into Africa, living in rough bush conditions, three weeks ago, so he may be on leave still. Try and get him at home. I’d like to see him at ten tomorrow morning. Secondly, Dr. Gordon Chalmers, the chief survey analyst. You may catch him at Watford before he leaves the laboratory. If not, reach him at home. I’d like him here at twelve tomorrow. Cancel any other morning appointments and leave me time to take Chalmers out for a spot of lunch. And you’d better book me a table at Wilton’s in Bury Street. That’s all, thank you. I’ll be on my way in a few minutes. Have the car round at the front in ten minutes.”
When Miss Cooke withdrew, Manson pressed one of the switches on his intercom and murmured, “Come up for a minute, would you, Simon?”
Simon Endean was as deceptive as Martin Thorpe but in a different way. He came from an impeccable background and, behind the veneer, had the morals of an East End thug. Going with the polish and the ruthlessness was a certain cleverness. He needed a James Manson to serve, just as James Manson, sooner or later on his way to the top or in his struggle to stay there in big-time capitalism, needed the services of a Simon Endean.
Endean was the sort to be found by the score in the very smartest and smoothest of London’s West End gambling clubs—beautifully spoken hatchet men who never leave a millionaire unbowed to or a showgirl unbruised. The difference was that Endean’s intelligence had brought him to an executive position as aide to the chief of a very superior gambling club.
Unlike Thorpe, he had no ambitions to b
ecome a multimillionaire. He thought one million would do, and until then the shadow of Manson would suffice. It paid for the six-room pad, the Corvette, the girls.
He too came from the floor below and entered from the interior stairwell through the beech-paneled door across the office from the one Miss Cooke came and left by. “Sir James?”
“Simon, tomorrow I’m having lunch with a fellow called Gordon Chalmers. One of the back room boys. The chief scientist and head of the laboratory out at Watford. He’ll be here at twelve. Before then I want a rundown on him. The Personnel file, of course, but anything else you can find. The private man, what his home life is like, any failings; above all, if he has any pressing need for money over and above his salary. His politics, if any. Most of these scientific people are Left. Not all, though. You might have a chat with Errington in Personnel tonight before he leaves. Go through the file tonight and leave it for me to look at in the morning. Sharp tomorrow, start on his home environment. Phone me not later than eleven-forty-five. Got it? I know it’s a short-notice job, but it could be important.”
Endean took in the instructions without moving a muscle, filing the lot. He knew the score; Sir James Manson often needed information, for he never faced any man, friend or foe, without a personal rundown on the man, including the private life. Several times he had beaten opponents into submission by being better prepared. Endean nodded and left, making his way straight to Personnel.
As the chauffeur-driven Rolls-Royce slid away from the front of ManCon House, taking its occupant back to his third-floor apartment in Arlington House behind the Ritz, a long, hot bath, and a dinner sent up from the Caprice, Sir James Manson leaned back and lit his first cigar of the evening. The chauffeur handed him a late Evening Standard, and they were abreast of Charing Cross Station when a small paragraph in the “Stop Press” caught his eye. It was in among the racing results. He glanced back at it, then read it several times. He stared out at the whirling traffic and huddled pedestrians shuffling toward the station or plodding to the buses through the February drizzle, bound for their homes in Edenbridge and Sevenoaks after another exciting day in the City.
As he stared, a small germ of an idea began to form in his mind. Another man would have laughed and dismissed it out of hand. Sir James Manson was not another man. He was a twentieth-century pirate and proud of it. The nine-point-type headline above the obscure paragraph in the evening paper referred to an African republic. It was not Zangaro, but another one. He had hardly heard of the other one either. It had no known mineral wealth. The headline said:
NEW COUP D’ÉTAT IN AFRICAN STATE
four
Martin Thorpe was waiting in his chief’s outer office when Sir James arrived at five past nine, and followed him straight in.
“What have you got?” demanded Sir James Manson, even while he was taking off his vicuña topcoat and hanging it in the closet. Thorpe flicked open a notebook he had pulled from his pocket and recited the results of his investigations of the night before.
“One year ago we had a survey team in the republic lying to the north and east of Zangaro. It was accompanied by an aerial reconnaissance unit hired from a French firm. The area to be surveyed was close to, and partly on the border with, Zangaro. Unfortunately there are few topographical maps of that area, and no aerial maps at all. Without Decca or any other form of beacon to give him cross-bearings, the pilot used speed and time of flight to assess the ground he had covered.
“One day when there was a following wind stronger than forecast, he flew several times up and down the entire strip to be covered by aerial survey, to his own satisfaction, and returned to base. What he did not know was that on each downwind leg he had flown over the border and forty miles into Zangaro. When the aerial film was developed, it showed that he had overshot the survey area by a large margin.”
“Who first realized it? The French company?” asked Manson.
“No, sir. They developed the film and passed it to us without comment, as per our contract with them. It was up to the men in our own aerial-survey department to identify the areas on the ground represented by the pictures they had. Then they realized that at the end of each run was a stretch of territory not in the survey area. So they discarded the pictures, or at any rate put them on one side. They had realized that in one section of pictures a range of hills was featured that could not be in our survey area because there were no hills in that part of the area.”
“Then one bright spark had a second look at the surplus photographs and noticed a part of the hilly area, slightly to the east of the main range, had a variation in the density and type of the plant life. The sort of thing you can’t see down on the ground, but an aerial picture from three miles up will show it up like a beer mat on a billiard table.”
“I know how it’s done,” growled Sir James. “Go on.”
“Sorry, sir. I didn’t know this. It was new to me. So, anyway, half a dozen photos were passed to someone in the Photo-Geology section, and he confirmed from a blowup that the plant life was different over quite a small area involving a small hill about eighteen hundred feet high and roughly conical in shape. Both sections prepared a report, and that went to the head of Topographic section. He identified the range as the Crystal Mountains and the hill as probably the original Crystal Mountain. He sent the file to Overseas Contracts, and Willoughby, the head of O.C., sent Bryant down there to get permission to survey.”
“He didn’t tell me,” said Manson, now seated behind his desk.
“He sent a memo, Sir James. I have it here. You were in Canada at the time and were not due back for a month. He makes plain he felt the survey of that area was only an off chance, but since a free aerial survey had been presented to us, and since Photo-Geology felt there had to be some reason for the different vegetation, the expense could be justified. Willoughby also suggested it might serve to give his man Bryant a bit of experience to go it alone for the first time. Up till then he had always accompanied Willoughby.”
“Is that it?”
“Almost. Bryant got visa-ed up and went in six months ago. He got permission and arrived back after three weeks. Four months ago Ground Survey agreed to detach an unqualified prospector-cum-surveyor called Jack Mulrooney from the diggings in Ghana and send him to look over the Crystal Mountains, provided that the cost would be kept low. It was. He got back three weeks ago with a ton and a half of samples, which have been at the Watford laboratory ever since.”
“Fair enough,” said Sir James Manson after a pause. “Now, did the board ever hear about all this?”
“No, sir.” Thorpe was adamant. “It would have been considered much too small. I’ve been through every board meeting for twelve months, and every document presented, including every memo and letter sent to the board members over the same period. Not a mention of it. The budget for the whole thing would simply have been lost in the petty cash anyway. And it didn’t originate with Projects, because the aerial photos were a gift from the French firm and their ropy old navigator. It was just an ad hoc affair throughout and never reached board level.”
James Manson nodded in evident satisfaction. “Right. Now, Mulrooney. How bright is he?”
For answer, Thorpe tendered Jack Mulrooney’s file from Personnel. “No qualifications, but a lot of practical experience, sir. An old sweat. A good African hand.”
Manson flicked through the file on Jack Mulrooney, scanned the biography notes and the career sheet since the man had joined the company. “He’s experienced all right,” he grunted. “Don’t underestimate the old Africa hands. I started out in the Rand, on a mining camp. Mulrooney just stayed at that level. But never condescend; such people are very useful. And they can be perceptive.”
He dismissed Martin Thorpe and muttered to himself, “Now let’s see how perceptive Mr. Mulrooney can be.”
He depressed the intercom switch and spoke to Miss Cooke. “Is Mr. Mulrooney there yet, Miss Cooke?”
“Yes, Sir James, he’s here wa
iting.”
“Show him in, please.”
Manson was halfway to the door when his employee was ushered in. He greeted him warmly and led him to the chairs where he had sat with Bryant the previous evening. Before she left, Miss Cooke was asked to produce coffee for them both. Mulrooney’s coffee habit was in his file.
Jack Mulrooney in the penthouse suite of a London office building looked as out of place as Thorpe would have in the dense bush. His hands hung way out of his coat sleeves, and he did not seem to know where to put them. His gray hair was plastered down with water, and he had cut himself shaving. It was the first time he had ever met the man he called “the gaffer.” Sir James used all his efforts to put him at ease.
When Miss Cooke entered with a tray of porcelain cups, matching coffeepot, cream jug and sugar bowl, and an array of Fortnum and Mason biscuits, she heard her employer telling the Irishman, “…that’s just the point, man. You’ve got what I or anyone else can’t teach these boys fresh out of college, twenty-five years’ hard-won experience getting the bloody stuff out of the ground and into the skips.”
It is always nice to be appreciated, and Jack Mulrooney was no exception. He beamed and nodded. When Miss Cooke had gone, Sir James Manson gestured at the cups.
“Look at these poofy things. Used to drink out of a good mug. Now they give me thimbles. I remember back on the Rand in the late thirties, and that would be before your time, even…”
Mulrooney stayed for an hour. When he left he felt the gaffer was a damn good man despite all they said about him. Sir James Manson thought Mulrooney was a damn good man—at his job, at any rate, and that was and would always be chipping bits of rock off hills and asking no questions.
Just before he left, Mulrooney had reiterated his view. “There’s tin down there, Sir James. Stake my life on it. The only thing is, whether it can be got out at an economical figure.”
Sir James had slapped him on the shoulder. “Don’t you worry about that. We’ll know as soon as the report comes through from Watford. And don’t worry. If there’s an ounce of it that I can get to the coast below market value, we’ll have the stuff. Now how about you? What’s your next adventure?”