"Miss Cooke, it has come to my attention that we
have had, during the past few months, a small survey —one man, I believe—in the republic of Zangaro."
"Yes, Sir James. That's right."
"Oh, you know about it."
Of course she knew about it. Miss Cooke never forgot anything that had crossed her desk.
"Yes, Sir James."
"Good. Then please find out for me who secured that government's permission for us to conduct the survey."
"It will be on file, Sir James. I'll go and look."
She was back in ten minutes, having first checked in her daily diary appointment books, which were cross-indexed into two indices, one under personal names and the other under subject headings, and then confirmed with Personnel.
"It was Mr. Bryant, Sir James." She consulted a card in her hand. "Richard Bryant, of Overseas Contracts."
"He submitted a report, I suppose?" asked Sir James.
"He must have done, under normal company procedure."
"Send me in his report, would you, Miss Cooke?"
She was gone again, and the head of ManCon stared out through the plate-glass windows across the room from his desk at the mid-afternoon dusk settling over the City of London. The lights were coming on in the. middle-level floors—they had been on all day in the lowest ones—but at skyline level there was still enough winter daylight to see by. But not to read by. Sir James Manson flicked on the reading lamp on his desk as Miss Cooke returned, laid the report he wanted on his blotter, and receded back into the wall.
The report Richard Bryant had submitted was dated six months earlier and was written in the terse style favored by the company. It recorded that, according to instructions from the head of Overseas Contracts, he had flown to Clarence, the capital of Zangaro, and there, after a frustrating week in a hotel, had secured an interview with the Minister of Natural Resources. There were three separate interviews, spaced over six
days, and at length an agreement had been reached that a single representative of ManCon might enter the republic to conduct a survey for minerals in the hinterland beyond the Crystal Mountains. The area to be surveyed was deliberately left vague by the company, so that the survey team could travel more or less where it wished. After further haggling, during which it was made plain to the Minister that he could forget any idea that the company was prepared to pay the sort of fee he seemed to expect, and that there were no indications of mineral presence to work on, a sum had been agreed on between Bryant and the Minister. Inevitably, the sum on the contract was just over half the total that changed hands, the balance being paid into the Minister's private account.
That was all. The only indication of the character of the place was in the reference to a corrupt minister. So what? thought Sir James Manson. Nowadays Bryant might have been in Washington. Only the going rate was different.
He leaned forward to the intercom again. "Tell Mr. Bryant of Overseas Contracts to come up and see me, would you, Miss Cooke?"
He lifted the switch and pressed another one. "Martin, come in a minute, please."
It took Martin Thorpe two minutes to come from his office on the ninth floor. He did not look the part of a financial whiz-kid and protege of one of the most ruthless go-getters in a traditionally ruthless and go-getting industry. He looked more like the captain of the Rugby team from a good public school—charming, boyish, clean-cut, with dark wavy hair and deep blue eyes. The secretaries called him dishy, and the directors, who had seen stock options they were certain of whisked out from under their noses or found their Companies slipping into control of a series of nominee shareholders fronting for Martin Thorpe, called him something not quite so nice.
Despite the looks, Thorpe had never been either a public-school man or an athlete. He could not differenti-
ate between a batting average and the ambient air temperature, but he could retain the hourly movement of share prices across the range of ManCon's subsidiary companies in his head throughout the day. At twenty-nine he had ambitions and the intent to carry them out. ManCon and Sir James might provide the means, so far as he was concerned, and his loyalty depended on his exceptionally high salary, the contracts throughout the City that his job under Manson could bring him, and the knowledge that where he was constituted a good vantage point for spotting what he called "the big one."
By the time he entered, Sir James had slipped the Zangaro report into a drawer, and the Bryant report alone lay on his blotter. He gave his protege a friendly smile.
"Martin, I've got a job I need done with some discretion. I need it done in a hurry, and it may take half the night."
It was not Sir James's way to ask if Thorpe had any engagements that evening. Thorpe knew that; it went with the salary.
"That's okay, Sir James. I had nothing on that a phone call can't kill."
"Good. Look, I've been going over some old reports and came across this one. Six months ago one of our men from Overseas Contracts was sent out to a place called Zangaro. I don't know why, but I'd like to. The man secured that government's go-ahead for a small team from here to conduct a survey for any possible mineral deposits in unchartered land beyond the mountain range called the Crystal Mountains. Now, what I want to know is this: Was it ever mentioned in advance or at the time, or since that visit six months ago, to the board?"
"To the board?"
"That's right. Was it ever mentioned to the board of directors that we were doing any such survey? That's what I want to know. It may not necessarily be on the agenda. You'll have to look at the minutes. And in case
it got a passing mention under 'any other business,' check through the documents of all board meetings over the past twelve months. Secondly, find out who authorized the visit by Bryant six months ago and why, and who sent the survey engineer down there and why. The man who did the survey is called Mulrooney. I also want to know something about him, which you can get from his file in Personnel. Got it?"
Thorpe was surprised. This was way out of his line of country.
"Yes, Sir James, but Miss Cooke could do that in half the time, or get somebody to do it—"
"Yes, she could. But I want you to do it. If you look at a file from Personnel, or boardroom documents, it will be assumed it has something to do with finance. Therefore it will remain discreet."
The light began to dawn on Martin Thorpe. "You mean . . . they found something down there, Sir James?"
Manson stared out at the now inky sky and the blazing lights below him as the brokers and traders, clerks and merchants, bankers and assessors, insurers and jobbers, buyers and sellers, lawyers and, in some offices no doubt, lawbreakers, worked on through the winter afternoon toward the witching hour of five-thirty.
"Never mind," he said gruffly to the young man behind him. "Just do it."
Martin Thorpe was grinning as he slipped through the back entrance of the office and down the stairs to his own premises. "Cunning bastard," he said to himself on the stairs.
"Mr. Bryant is here, Sir James."
Manson crossed the room and switched on the main lights. Returning to his desk, he depressed the intercom button. "Send him in, Miss Cooke."
There were three reasons why middle-level executives had occasion to be summoned to the sanctum on the tenth floor. One was to hear instructions or deliver a report that Sir James wanted to issue or hear
personally, which was business. One was to be chewed into a sweat-soaked rag, which was hell. The third was that the chief executive had decided he wanted to play favorite uncle to his cherished employees, which was reassuring.
On the threshold Richard Bryant, at thirty-nine a middle-level executive who did his work competently and well but needed his job, was plainly aware that the first reason of the three could not be the one that brought him here. He suspected the second and was immensely relieved to see it had to be the third.
From the center of the office Sir James walked toward him with a smile of welcome. "Ah, come in, Bryant. Come in."
As Bryant entered, Miss Cooke closed the door behind him and retired to her desk.
Sir James Manson gestured to his employee to take one of the easy chairs set well away from the desk in the conference area of the spacious office. Bryant, still wondering what it was all about, took the indicated chair and sank into its brushed suede cushions. Manson advanced toward the wall and opened two doors, revealing a well-stocked bar cabinet.
"Take a drink, Bryant? Sun's well down, I think."
"Thank you, sir—er—scotch, please."
"Good man. My own favorite poison. I'll join you."
Bryant glanced at his watch. It was quarter to five, and the tropical maxim about taking a drink after the sun has gone down was hardly coined for London winter afternoons. But he recalled an office party at which Sir James had snorted his derision of sherry-drinkers and the like and spent the evening on scotch. It pays to watch things like that, Bryant reflected, as his chief poured his special Glenlivet into two fine old crystal glasses. Of course he left the ice bucket strictly alone.
"Water? Dash of soda?" he called from the bar.
Bryant craned around and spotted the bottle. "Is that a single malt, Sir James? No, thank you, straight as it comes."
Manson nodded several times in approval and brought the glasses over. They "Cheers"ed each other and savored the whisky. Bryant was still waiting for the conversation to start. Manson noted this and gave him the gruff-uncle look.
"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 dicator," 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 Sיkou Tourי in Guinea."
Sir James turned smoothly from the window and asked with deceptive softness, "Why Sekou Tourי?"
"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 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."