The Dogs Of War Part 9

"Leave a message," he growled at Endean. "Ring him tonight at seven."

Endean left the message, and the two men put the phones down.

"I want his report as soon as possible," said Manson. "He should finish it at noon tomorrow. You meet him first and read the report. Make sure it covers every point I told you I wanted answered. Then bring it to me. Put Shannon on ice for two days to give me time to digest it."

Shannon got Endean's message just after five and was in his room to take the call at seven. He spent the rest of the evening between supper and bed making up his notes and the memorabilia he had brought back from Zangaro-a series of sketches done freehand on a pad of cartridge paper he had bought in the airport in Paris to while away the time, some scale-drawings done from measurements between fixed points in Clarence that he had paced out stride by stride, a local guidebook showing "points of interest," of which the only interesting one was t.i.tled "the residence of His Excellency the Governor of the Colony" and dated from 1959, and an official and highly flattering portrait of Kimba, one of the few items not in short supply in the republic.

The next day he strolled down Knightsbridge just as the shops opened, bought himself a typewriter and a pad of paper, and spent the morning writing his re- port. It covered three subjects: a straight narrative of his visit, including the episode of the soldier he had killed; a detailed description of the capital, building by building, accompanied by the diagrams; and an equally detailed description of the military situation. He mentioned the fact that he had seen no signs of either an air force or a navy, and Gomez' confirmation that neither existed. He did not mention his stroll down the peninsula to the native shanty towns, where he had seen the cl.u.s.tered shacks of the poorer Caja and beyond them the shanties of the thousands of immigrant workers and their families, who chattered to one another in their native tongue, brought with them from many miles away.

He finished the report with a summary: The essence of the problem of toppling Kimba has been simplified by the man himself. In all respects the majority of the republic's land area, the Vindu country beyond the river, is of nil political or economic value. If Kimba should ever lose control of the coastal plain producing the bulk of the nation's few resources, he must lose the country. To go one step further, he and his men could not hold this plain in 4he face of the hostility and hatred of the entire Caja population, which, although muted by fear, exists beneath the surface, if he had once lost the peninsula. Again, the peninsula is untenable by Vindu forces if once the town of Clarence is lost. And lastly, he has no strength within the town of Clarence if he and his forces have lost the palace. In short, his policy of total centralization has reduced the number of targets necessary to be subdued for a take-over of the state to one-his palace complex, containing himself, his guards, the armory, treasury and radio station.

As to means of taking and reducing this palace and compound, they have been reduced to one, by virtue of the wall surrounding the entire place. It has to be stormed.

The main gate could perhaps be rammed down by a very heavy truck or bulldozer driven straight at it by a man prepared to die in the attempt. I saw no evidence of any such spirit among the citizenry or the army, nor signs of a suitable truck. Alternatively, self-sacrificing courage by hundreds of men with scaling ladders could overwhelm the palace walls and take the place. I saw no signs of such spirit either. More realistically, the palace and grounds could be taken with little life loss after being first pulverized with mortar fire. Against a weapon like this the encircling wall, far from being a protection, becomes a deathtrap to those inside. The door could be taken apart by a bazooka rocket. I saw no signs of either of these weapons, nor any sign of one single person capable of using them. The unavoidable conclusion reached from the above has to be as follows: Any section or faction within the republic seeking to topple Kimba and take over must destroy him and his Praetorian Guards inside the palace compound. To achieve this they would require expert a.s.sistance at a technical level they have not reached, and such a.s.sistance would have to arrive, complete with all necessary equipment, from outside the country. With these conditions fulfilled, Kimba could be destroyed and toppled in a firefight lasting no longer than one hour.

"Is Shannon aware that there is no faction inside Zangaro that has indicated it wants to topple Kimba?" asked Sir James Manson the following morning when he read the report.

"I haven't told him so," said Endean. "I briefed him as you told me. Just said there was an army faction inside, and that the group I represented, as interested businessmen, were prepared to pay for a military a.s.sessment of their chances of success. But he's no fool. He must have seen for himself there's no one there capable of doing the job anyway."

"I like the sound of this Shannon," said Manson, closing the military report. "He's obviously got nerve, to judge by the way he dealt with the soldier. He writes quite well; he's short and to the point. Question is, could he do the whole of this job himself?"

"He did mention something significant," interjected Endean. "He said when I was questioning him that the caliber of the Zangaran army was so low that any a.s.sisting force of technicians would have to do practically the whole job anyway, then hand over to the new men when it was done."

"Did he now? Did he?" Manson said musingly. "Then he suspects already the reason for his going down there was not the stated one."

He was still musing when Endean asked, "May I put a question, Sir James?"

"What is it?" asked Manson.

"Just this: What did he go down there for? Why do-you need a military report on how Kimba could be toppled and killed?"

Sir James Manson stared out of the window for some time. Finally he said, "Get Martin Thorpe up here." While Thorpe was being summoned, Manson walked to the window and gazed down, as he usually did when he wanted to think hard.

He knew he had personally taken Endean and Thorpe as young men and promoted them to salaries, and positions beyond their years. It was not simply because of their intelligence, although they had plenty of it. It was because he recognized an unscrupulousness in each of them that matched his own, a preparedness to ignore so-called moral principles in pursuit of the goal success. He had made them his team, his hatchet-men, paid by the company but serving him personally in all things. The problem was: Could he trust them with this one, the big one? As Thorpe entered the office, he decided he had to. He thought he knew how to guarantee their loyalty.

He bade them sit down and, remaining standing with his back to the window, he told them, "I want you two to think this one over very carefully, then give me your reply. How far would you be prepared to go to be a.s.sured of a personal fortune in a Swiss bank of five million pounds each?"

The hum of the traffic ten floors down was like a buzzing bee, accentuating the silence in the room.

Endean stared back at his chief and nodded slowly. "A very, very long way," he said softly.

Thorpe made no reply. He knew this was what he had come to the City for, joined Manson for, absorbed his encyclopedic knowledge of company business for. The big one, the once-in-a-decade grand slam. He nodded a.s.sent.

"How?" whispered Endean. For answer Manson walked to his wall safe and extracted two reports. The third, Shannon's, lay on his desk as he seated himself behind it.

Manson talked steadily for an hour. He started at the beginning and soon read the final six paragraphs of Dr. Chalmers' report on the samples from the Crystal Mountain.

Thorpe whistled softly and muttered, "Jesus."

Endean required a ten-minute lecture on platinum to catch the point; then he too breathed a long sigh.

Manson went on to relate the exiling of Mulrooney to northern Kenya, the suborning of Chalmers, the second visit of Bryant to Clarence, the acceptance of the dummy report by Kimba's Minister. He stressed the Russian influence on Kimba and the recent exiling of Colonel Bobi, who, given the right circ.u.mstances, could return as a plausible alternative in the seat of power.

For Thorpe's benefit he read much of Endean's general report on Zangaro and finished with the conclusion of Shannon's report.

"If it is to work at all, it must be a question of mounting two parallel, highly secret operations," Man-son said finally. "In one, Shannon, stage-managed throughout by Simon, mounts a project to take and destroy that palace and all its contents, and for Bobi, accompanied by Simon, to take over the powers of state the following morning and become the new president. In the other, Martin would have to buy a sh.e.l.l company without revealing who had gained control or why."

Endean furrowed his brow. "I can see the first operation, but why the second?" he asked.

"Tell him, Martin," said Manson.

Thorpe was grinning, for his astute mind had caught Manson's drift. "A sh.e.l.l company, Simon, is a company, usually very old and without a.s.sets worth talking about, which has virtually ceased trading and whose shares are very cheap-say, a shilling each."

"So why buy one?" asked Endean, still puzzled.

"Say Sir James has control of a company, bought secretly through unnamed nominees, hiding behind a Swiss bank, all nice and legal, and the company has a million shares valued at one shilling each. Unknown to the other shareholders or the board of directors or the Stock Exchange, Sir James, via the Swiss bank, owns six hundred thousand of these million shares. Then Colonel-beg his pardon-President Bobi sells that company an exclusive ten-year mining franchise for an area of land in the hinterland of Zangaro. A new mining survey team from a highly reputable company specializing in mining goes out and discovers the Crystal Mountain. What happens to the shares of Company X when the news. .h.i.ts the stock market?"

Endean got the message. "They go up," he said with a grin.

"Right up," said Thorpe. "With a bit of help they go from a shilling to well over a hundred pounds a share. Now do your arithmetic. Six hundred thousand shares at a shilling each cost thirty thousand pounds to buy. Sell six hundred thousand shares at a hundred pounds each-and that's the minimum you'd get-and what do you bring home? A cool sixty million pounds, in a Swiss bank. Right, Sir James?"

"That's right." Manson nodded grimly. "Of course, if you sold half the shares in small packets to a wide variety of people, the control of the company owning the concession would stay in the same hands as before. But a bigger company might put in a bid for the whole block of six hundred thousand shares in one flat deal."

Thorpe nodded thoughtfully. "Yes, control of such a company bought at sixty million pounds would be a good market deal. But whose bid would you accept?"

"My own," said Manson.

Thorpe's mouth opened. "Your own?"

"ManCon's bid would be the only acceptable one. That way the concession would remain firmly British, and ManCon would have gained a fine a.s.set."

"But," queried Endean, "surely you would be paying yourself sixty million quid?"

"No," said Thorpe quietly. "ManCon's shareholders would be paying Sir James sixty million quid, without knowing it."

"What's that called-in financial terms, of course?" asked Endean.

"There is a word for it on the Stock Exchange," Thorpe admitted.

Sir James Manson tendered them each a gla.s.s of whisky. He reached round and took his own. "Are you on, gentlemen?" he asked quietly.

Both younger men looked at each other and nodded.

"Then here's to the Crystal Mountain."

They drank.

"Report to me here tomorrow morning at nine sharp," Manson told them, and they rose to go.

At the door to the back stairs Thorpe turned. "You know, Sir James, it's going to be b.l.o.o.d.y dangerous. If one word gets out..."

Sir James Manson stood again with his back to the window, the westering sun slanting onto the carpet by his side. His legs were apart, his fists on his hips.

"Knocking off a bank or an armored truck," he said, "is merely crude. Knocking off an entire republic has, I feel, a certain style."

8.

"What you are saying in effect is that there is no dissatisfied faction within the army that, so far as you know, has ever thought of toppling President Kimba?"

Cat Shannon and Simon Endean were sitting in Shannon's room at the hotel, taking midmorning coffee. Endean had phoned Shannon by agreement at nine and told him to wait for a second call. He had been briefed by Sir James Manson and had called Shannon back to make the eleven-o'clock appointment.

Endean nodded. "That's right. The information has changed in that one detail. I can't see what difference it makes. You yourself said the caliber of the army was so low that the technical a.s.sistants would have to do all the work themselves in any case."

"It makes a h.e.l.l of a difference," said Shannon. "Attacking the palace and capturing it is one thing. Keeping it is quite another. Destroying the palace and Kimba simply creates a vacuum at the seat of power. Someone has to step in and take over that power. The mercenaries must not even be seen by daylight. So who takes over?"

Endean nodded again. He had not expected a mercenary to have any political sense at all.

"We have a man in view," he said cautiously.

"He's in the republic now, or in exile?"

"In exile."

"Well, he would have to be installed in the palace and broadcasting on the radio that he has conducted an internal coup d'etat and taken over the country, by midday of the day following the night attack on the palace."

"That could be arranged."

"There's one more thing."

"What's that?" asked Endean.

"There must be troops loyal to the new regime, the same troops who ostensibly carried out the coup of the night before, visibly present and mounting the guard by sunrise of the day after the attack. If they don't show up, we would be stuck-a group of white mercenaries holed up inside the palace, unable to show themselves for political reasons, and cut off from retreat in the event of a counterattack. Now your man, the exile, does he have such a back-up force he could bring in with him when he comes? Or could he a.s.semble them quickly once inside the capital?"

"I think you have to let us take care of that," said Endean stiffly. "What we are asking you for is a plan in military terms to mount the attack and carry it through."

"That I can do," said Shannon without hesitation. "But what about the preparations, the organization of the plan, getting the men, the arms, the ammo?"

"You must include that as well. Start from scratch and go right through to the capture of the palace and the death of Kimba."

"Kimba has to get the chop?"

"Of course," said Endean. "Fortunately he has long since destroyed anyone with enough initiative or brains to become a rival. Consequently, he is the only man who might regroup his forces and counterattack. With him dead, his ability to mesmerize the people into submission will also end."

"Yeah. The juju dies with the man."

"The what?"

"Nothing. You wouldn't understand."

"Try me," said Endean coldly.

"The man has a juju," said Shannon, "or at least the people believe he has. That's a powerful protection given him by the spirits, protecting him against his enemies, guaranteeing him invincibility, guarding him from attack, ensuring him against death. In the Congo the Simbas believed their leader, Pierre Mulele, had a similar juju. He told them he could pa.s.s it on to his supporters and make them immortal. They believed him. They thought bullets would run off them like water. So they came at us in waves, bombed out of then: minds on dagga and whisky, died like flies, and still kept coming. It's the same with Kimba. So long as they think he's immortal, he is. Because they'll never lift a finger against him. Once they see his corpse, the man who killed him becomes the leader. He has the stronger juju."

Endean stared in surprise. "It's really that backward?"

"It's not so backward. We do the same with lucky charms, holy relics, the a.s.sumption of divine protection for our own particular cause. But we call it religion in us, savage superst.i.tion in them."

"Never mind," snapped Endean. "All the more reason why Kimba has to die."

"Which means he must be in that palace when we strike. If he's upcountry it's no good. No one will support your man if Kimba is still alive."

"He usually is in the palace, so I'm told."

"Yes," said Shannon, "but we have to guarantee it. There's one day he never misses. Independence Day. On the eve of Independence Day he will be sleeping in the palace, sure as eggs is eggs."

"When's that?"

"Three and a half months away."

"Could a project be mounted in that time?" asked Endean.

"Yes, with a bit of luck. I'd like at least a couple of weeks longer."

"The project has not been accepted yet," observed Endean.

"No, but if you want to install a new man in that palace, an attack from outside is the only way of doing it. Do you want me to prepare the whole project from start to finish, with estimated costings and time schedule?"

"Yes. The costing is very important. My-er-a.s.sociates will want to know how much they are letting themselves in for."

"All right," said Shannon. "The report will cost you five hundred pounds."

"You've already been paid," said Endean coldly.

"I've been paid for a mission into Zangaro and a report on the military situation there," replied Shannon. "What you're asking for is a new report right outside the original briefing you gave me."

"Five hundred is a bit steep for a few sheets of paper with writing on them."

"Rubbish. You know perfectly well if your firm consults a lawyer, architect, accountant, or any other technical expert you pay him a fee. I'm a technical expert in war. What you pay for is the knowledge and the experience-where to get the best men, the best arms, how to ship them, et cetera. That's what costs five hundred pounds, and the same knowledge would cost you double if you tried to research it yourself in twelve months, which you couldn't anyway because you haven't the contacts."

Endean rose. "All right. It will be here this afternoon by special messenger. Tomorrow is Friday. My partners would like to read your report over the weekend. Please have it prepared by tomorrow afternoon at three. I'll collect it here."

He left, and as the door closed behind him Shannon raised his coffee cup in mock toast. "Be seeing you, Mr. Walter Harris oblique stroke Simon Endean," he said softly.

Not for the first time he thanked his stars for the amiable and garrulous hotelkeeper Gomez. During one of their long nightly conversations Gomez had mentioned the affair of Colonel Bobi, now in exile. He had also mentioned that, without Kimba, Bobi was nothing, being hated by the Caja for his army's cruelties against them on the orders of Kimba, and not able to command Vindu troops either. Which left Shannon with the problem of a back-up force with black faces to take over on the morning after.