The Dogs Of War Part 3

"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 emba.s.sies?" 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 Skou Tour in Guinea."

Sir James turned smoothly from the window and asked with deceptive softness, "Why Sekou Tour?"

"Well, Kimba's next best thing to a Communist, Sir James. The man he really worshiped all his political life was Lumumba. That's why the Russians are so strong. They have an enormous emba.s.sy, 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 Man-son.

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 gla.s.ses 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 amba.s.sador 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 months 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 a.n.a.lyst. 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 ruth lessness 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 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 become 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 swirling 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'ETAT IN AFRICAN STATE.

4.

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 vicua topcoat and hanging it in the closet. Thorpe flicked open a notebook he had pulled from his pocket and recited the result 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 a.s.sess 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 pa.s.sed 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 beermat 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 pa.s.sed to someone in the Photo-Geology section, and he confirmed from a blow-up 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-c.u.m-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 doc.u.ment 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 tended 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 waiting."

"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 coffee pot, 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 b.l.o.o.d.y 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 tune, even ..."

Mulrooney stayed for an hour. When he left he felt the gaffer was a d.a.m.n good man despite all they said about him. Sir James Manson thought Mulrooney was a d.a.m.n 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?"

"I don't know, sir. I have three more days' leave yet; then I report back to the office."

"Like to go abroad again?" said Sir James expansively.

"Yes, sir. Frankly, I can't take this city and the weather and all."

"Back to the sun, eh? You like the wild places, I hear."

"Yes, I do. You can be your own man out there."

"You can indeed." Manson smiled. "You can indeed. I almost envy you. No, dammit, I do envy you. Anyway, we'll see what we can do."

Two minutes later Jack Mulrooney was gone. Man-son ordered Miss Cooke to send his file back to Personnel, rang Accounts and instructed them to send Mulrooney a 1000 merit bonus and make sure he got it before the following Monday, and rang the head of Ground Survey.

"What surveys have you got pending in the next few days or just started?" he asked without preamble.

There were three, one of them in a remote stretch of the extreme north of Kenya, close to the Somaliland border, where the midday sun fries the brain like an egg in a pan, the nights freeze the bone marrow like Blackpool rock, and the shifta bandits prowl. It would be a long job, close to a year. The head of Ground Survey had nearly had two resignations trying to get a man to go there for so long.

"Send Mulrooney," said Sir James and hung up.

He glanced at the clock. It was eleven. He picked up the Personnel report on Dr. Gordon Chalmers, which Endean had left on his desk the previous evening.

Chalmers was a graduate with honors from the London School of Mining, which is probably the best of its kind in the world, even if Wit.w.a.tersrand liked to dispute that claim. He had taken his degree in geology and later chemistry and gone on to a doctorate in his mid-twenties. After five years of fellowship work at the college he had joined Rio Tinto Zinc in its scientific section, and six years earlier ManCon had evidently stolen him from RTZ for a better salary. For the last four years he had been head of the company's Scientific Department situated on the outskirts of Watford in Hertfordshire, one of the counties ab.u.t.ting London to the north. The ID photograph in the file showed a man in his late thirties glowering at the camera over a bushy ginger beard. He wore a tweed jacket and a purple shut. The tie was of knitted wool and askew.

At eleven-thirty-five the private phone rang and Sir James Manson heard the regular pips of a public coin box at the other end of the line. A coin clunked into the slot, and Endean's voice came on the line. He spoke concisely for two minutes from Watford station. When he had finished, Manson grunted his approval.

"That's useful to know," he said. "Now get back to London, There's another job I want you to do. I want a complete rundown on the republic of Zangaro. I want the lot. Yes, Zangaro." He spelled it out.

"Start back in the days when it was discovered, and work forward. I want the history, geography, lie of the land, economy, crops, mineralogy if any, politics, and state of development. Concentrate on the ten years prior to independence, and especially the period since. I want to know everything there is to know about the President, his cabinet, parliament if any, administration, executive, judiciary, and political parties. There are three things that are more important than all else. One is the question of Russian or Chinese involvement and influence, or local Communist influence, on the President. The second is that no one remotely connected with the place is to know any questions are being asked, so don't go there yourself. And thirdly, under no circ.u.mstances are you to announce you come from ManCon. So use a different name. Got it? Good. Well, report back as soon as you can, and not later than twenty days. Draw cash from Accounts on my signature alone, and be discreet. For the record, consider yourself on leave; I'll let you make it up later."

Manson hung up and called down to Thorpe to give further instructions. Within three minutes Thorpe came up to the tenth floor and laid the piece of paper his chief wanted on the desk. It was the carbon copy of a letter.

Ten floors down, Dr. Gordon Chalmers stepped out of his taxi at the corner of Moorgate and paid it off. He felt uncomfortable in a dark suit and topcoat, but Peggy had told him they were necessary for an interview and lunch with the Chairman of the Board.

As he walked the last few yards toward the steps and doorway of ManCon House, his eye caught a poster fronting the kiosk of a seller of the Evening News and Evening Standard: THALIDOMIDE PARENTS URGE SETTLEMENT. He curled his lip in a bitter sneer, but he bought both papers.

The stories backed up the headline in greater detail, though they were not long. They recorded that after another marathon round of talks between representatives of the parents of the four-hundred-odd children in Britain who had been born deformed because of the tha lidomide drug ten years earlier, and the company that had marketed the drug, a further impa.s.se had been reached. So talks would be resumed "at a later date."

Gordon Chalmers' thoughts went back to the house outside Watford that he had left earlier that same morning, to Peggy, his wife, just turned thirty and looking forty, and to Margaret, legless, one-armed Margaret, coming up to nine years, who needed a special pair of legs and a specially built house, which they now lived in at long last, the mortgage on which was costing him a fortune.

"At a later date," he snapped to no one in particular and stuffed the newspapers into a trash basket. He seldom read the evening papers anyway. He preferred the Guardian, Private Eye, and the left-wing Tribune. After nearly ten years of watching a group of almost unmoneyed parents try to face down the giant distillers for their compensation, Gordon Chalmers harbored bitter thoughts about big-time capitalists. Ten minutes later he was facing one of the biggest.

Sir James Manson could not put Chalmers off his guard as he had Bryant and Mulrooney. The scientist clutched his gla.s.s of beer firmly and stared right back. Manson grasped the situation quickly and, when Miss Cooke had handed him his whisky and retired, he came to the point.

"I suppose you can guess what I asked you to come and see me about, Dr. Chalmers."

"I can guess, Sir James. The report on Crystal Mountain."

"That's it. Incidentally, you were quite right to send it to me personally in a sealed envelope. Quite right."

Chalmers shrugged. He had done it because he realized that all important a.n.a.lysis results had to go direct to the Chairman, according to company policy. It was routine, as soon as he had realized what the samples contained.

"Let me ask you two things, and I need specific answers," said Sir James. "Are you absolutely certain of these results? There could be no other possible explanation of the tests of the samples?"

Chalmers was neither shocked nor affronted. He knew the work of scientists was seldom accepted by laymen as being far removed from black magic, and that they therefore considered it imprecise. He had long since ceased trying to explain the precision of his craft.

"Absolutely certain. For one thing, there are a variety of tests to establish the presence of platinum, and these samples pa.s.sed them all with unvarying regularity. For another, I not only did all the known tests on every one of the samples, I did the whole thing twice. Theoretically it is possible someone could have interfered with the alluvial samples, but not with the internal structures of the rocks themselves. The summary of my report is accurate beyond scientific dispute."

Sir James Manson listened to the lecture with head-bowed respect, and nodded in admiration. "And the second thing is, how many other people in your laboratory know of the results of the a.n.a.lysis of the Crystal Mountain samples?"

"No one," said Chalmers with finality.

"No one?" echoed Manson. "Come now, surely one of your a.s.sistants ..."

Chalmers downed a swig of his beer and shook his head. "Sir James, when the samples came in they were crated as usual and put in store. Mulrooney's accompanying report predicated the presence of tin in unknown quant.i.ties. As it was a very minor survey, I put a junior a.s.sistant onto it. Being inexperienced, he a.s.sumed tin or nothing and did the appropriate tests. When they failed to show up positive, he called me over and pointed this out: I offered to show him how, and again the tests were negative. So I gave him a lecture on not being mesmerized by the prospector's opinion and showed him some more tests. These too were negative. The laboratory closed for the night, but I stayed on late, so I was alone in the place when the first tests came up positive. By midnight I knew the shingle sample from the stream bed, of which I was using less than half a pound, contained small quant.i.ties of platinum. After that I locked up for the night.

"The next day I took the junior off that a.s.signment and put him on another. Then I went on with it myself. There were six hundred bags of shingle and gravel, and fifteen hundred pounds' weight of rocks-over three hundred separate rocks taken from different places on the mountain. From Mulrooney's photographs I could picture the mountain. The disseminated deposit is present in all parts of the formation. As I said in my report." With a touch of defiance he drained his beer.

Sir James Manson continued nodding, staring at the scientist with well-feigned awe.

"It's incredible," he said at length. "I know you scientists like to remain detached, impartial, but I think even you must have become excited. This could form a whole new world source of platinum. You know how often that happens with a rare metal? Once in a decade, maybe once in a lifetime."

In fact Chalmers had been excited by his discovery and had worked late into the night for three weeks to cover every single bag and rock from the Crystal Mountain, but he would not admit it. Instead he shrugged and said, "Well, it'll certainly be very profitable for ManCon."

"Not necessarily," said James Manson quietly. This was the first time he shook Chalmers.

"Not?" queried the a.n.a.lyst. "But surely it's a fortune?"

"A fortune in the ground, yes," replied Sir James, rising and walking to the window. "But it depends very much who gets it, if anyone at all. You see, there is a danger it could be kept unmined for years, or mined and stockpiled. Let me put you in the picture, my dear Doctor. .."

He put Dr. Chalmers in the picture for thirty minutes, talking finance and politics, neither of which was the a.n.a.lyst's forte.

"So there you are," he finished. "The chances are it will be handed on a plate to the Russian government if we announce it immediately."

Dr. Chalmers, who had nothing in particular against the Russian government, shrugged slightly. "I can't change the facts, Sir James."

Manson's eyebrows shot up in horror. "Good gracious, Doctor, of course you can't." He glanced at his watch in surprise. "Close to one," he exclaimed. "You must be hungry. I know I am. Let's go and have a spot of lunch."

He had thought of taking the Rolls, but after En-dean's phone call from Watford that morning and the information from the local news agent about the regular subscription to the Tribune, he opted for an ordinary taxi.

A spot of lunch proved to be pat, truffled omelet, jugged hare in red-wine sauce, and trifle. As Manson had suspected, Chalmers disapproved of such indulgence but at the same time had a healthy appet.i.te. And even he could not reverse the simple laws of nature, which are that a good meal produces a sense of repletion, contentment, euphoria, and a lowering of moral resistance. Manson had also counted on a beer-drinker's being unused to the fuller red wines, and two bottles of Cote du Rhone had encouraged Chalmers to talk about the subjects that interested him: his work, his family, and his views on the world.