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Milner was our head logistics man. He had to make sure that everything was in the right place at the right time, and his department managed to keep our computers tied up rather considerably. He came forward and joined me at the map. ‘Easy,’ he said. ‘There are some good roads.’
I was sceptical. ‘Out there – in Nyala?’
He nodded thoughtfully. ‘Of course, you haven’t been there yourself, have you, Neil? Wait until you read the full specs. But I’ll outline it for you and the others. After they got colonial rule their first president was Maro Ofanwe. Remember him?’
Someone made a throat-slitting gesture and there was a brief uneasy laugh. Nobody at the top likes to be reminded of coups of any sort.
‘He had the usual delusions of grandeur. One of the first things he did was to build a modern super-highway right along the coast from Port Luard to Hazi. Halfway along it, here at Lasulu, a branch goes north to Bir Oassa and even beyond – to nowhere. We shouldn’t have any trouble in that department.’
‘I’ll believe that road when I see it.’
Milner was annoyed and showed it. ‘I surveyed it myself with the boss of the transport company. Look at these photographs.’
He hovered at my elbow as I examined the pictures, glossy black-and-white aerial shots. Sure enough, there it was, looking as though it had been lifted bodily from Los Angeles and dumped in the middle of a scrubby nowhere.
‘Who uses it?’
‘The coast road gets quite a bit of use. The spur into the interior is under-used and under-maintained. The rain forest is encroaching in the south and in the north there will be trouble with sand drifts. The usual potholes are appearing. Edges are a bit worn in spots.’ This was common to most African tarmac and hardly surprised me. He went on, ‘There are some bridges which may be a bit dicey, but it’s nothing we can’t cope with.’
‘Is your transport contractor happy with it?’
‘Perfectly.’
I doubted that. A happy contractor is like a happy farmer – more or less nonexistent. But it was I who listened to the beefs, not the hirers and firers. I turned my attention back to Geddes, after mending fences with Milner by admiring his photographs.
‘I think Mister Shelford might have something to say,’ Geddes prompted.
Shelford was a political liaison man. He came from that department which was the nearest thing British Electric had to the State Department or the British Foreign Office. He cocked an eye at Geddes. ‘I take it Mr Mannix would like a rundown on the political situation?’
‘What else?’ asked Geddes a little acidly.
I didn’t like Shelford much. He was one of the striped pants crowd that infests Whitehall and Washington. Those guys like to think of themselves as decision makers and world shakers but they’re a long way from the top of the tree and they know it. From the sound of his voice, Geddes wasn’t too taken with Shelford either.
Shelford was obviously used to this irritable reaction to himself and ignored it. He spread his hands on the table and spoke precisely. ‘I regard Nyala as being one of the few countries in Africa which shows any political stability at the present time. That, of course, was not always so. Upon the overthrow of Maro Ofanwe there was considerable civil unrest and the army was forced to take over, a not atypical action in an African state. What was atypical, however, was that the army voluntarily handed back the reins of power to a properly constituted and elected civil government, which so far seems to be keeping the country on an even keel.’
Some of the others were growing restive under his lecturing, and Geddes cut in on what looked like the opening of a long speech. ‘That’s good so far,’ he said. ‘At least we won’t have to cope with the inflexibility of military minds.’
I grinned. ‘Just the deviousness of the political ones.’
Shelford showed signs of carrying on with his lecture and this time I cut in on him. ‘Have you been out there lately, Mister Shelford?’
‘No, I haven’t.’
‘Have you been there at all?’
‘No,’ he said stiffly. I saw a few stifled smiles.
‘I see,’ I said, and switched my attention to Sutherland. ‘I suggest we hear from the man on the spot. How did you find things, John?’
Sutherland glanced at Geddes for a nod of approval before speaking.
‘Well, broadly speaking, I should say that Mister Shelford seems correct. The country shows remarkable stability; within limits, naturally. They are having to cope with a cash shortage, a water shortage, border skirmishes – the usual African troubles. But I didn’t come across much conflict at the top when we were out there.’
Shelford actually smirked. Geddes said, ‘Do you think the guarantees of the Nyalan Government will stand up under stress, should it come?’
Sutherland was being pressed and he courageously didn’t waver too much. ‘I should think so, provided the discretionary fund isn’t skimped.’
By that he meant that the palms held out to be greased should be liberally daubed, a not uncommon situation. I said, ‘You were speaking broadly, John. What would you say if you had to speak narrowly?’
Now he looked a little uncomfortable and his glance went from Geddes to Shelford before he replied. ‘It’s said that there’s some tribal unrest.’
This brought another murmur to the room. To the average European, while international and even intercounty and intercity rivalries are understandable factors, the demands of tribal loyalties seem often beyond all reason; in my time I have tried to liken the situation to that of warring football clubs and their more aggressive fans, but non-tribal peoples seemed to me to have the greatest difficulties in appreciating the pressures involved. I even saw eyebrows raised, a gesture of righteous intolerance which none at that table could afford. Shelford tried to bluster.
‘Nonsense,’ he said. ‘Nyala’s a unified state if ever I saw one. Tribal conflict has been vanquished.’
I decided to prick his balloon. ‘Apparently you haven’t seen it, though, Mister Shelford. Conflict of this sort is never finished with. Remember Nigeria – it happened there, and that’s almost next door. It exists in Kenya. It exists throughout Africa. And we know that it’s hard to disentangle fact from fiction, but we can’t afford to ignore either. John, who are the top dogs in Nyala, the majority tribe?’
‘The Kinguru.’
‘The President and most of the Cabinet will be Kinguru, then? The Civil Service? Leading merchants and businessmen?’ He nodded at each category. ‘The Army?’
Here he shook his head. ‘Surprisingly enough, apparently not. The Kinguru don’t seem to make good fighters. The Wabi people run the military, but they have some sort of tribal affiliation with the Kinguru anyway. You’ll need a sociologist’s report if you want to go into details.’
‘If the Kinguru aren’t fighters they may damn well have to learn,’ I said, ‘Like the Ibo in Nigeria and the Kikuyu in Kenya.’
Someone said, ‘You’re presupposing conflict, Neil.’
Geddes backed me. ‘It’s not unwise. And we do have some comments in the dossier, Neil – your homework.’ He tapped the bulky file on the table and adroitly lightened the atmosphere. ‘I think we can leave the political issues for the moment. How do we stand on progress to date, Bob?’
‘We’re exactly on schedule,’ said Milner with satisfaction. He would have been pained to be behind schedule, but almost equally pained to have been ahead of it. That would show that his computers weren’t giving an absolutely optimum arrangement, which would be unthinkable. But then he leaned forward and the pleased look vanished. ‘We might be running into a small problem, though.’
There were no small problems in jobs like this. They were all big ones, no matter how small they started.
Milner said, ‘Construction is well advanced and we’re about ready to take up the big loads. The analysis calls for the first big haul to be one of the boilers but the government is insisting that it be a transformer. That means that the boiler fitters are going to be sitting around on their butts doing nothing while a transformer just lies around because the electrical engineers aren’t yet ready to install it.’ He sounded aggrieved and I could well understand why. This was big money being messed around.
‘Why would they want to do that?’ I asked.
‘It’s some sort of public relations exercise they’re laying on. A transformer is the biggest thing we’re going to carry, and they want to make a thing of it before the populace gets used to seeing the big flat-bed trundling around their country.’
Geddes smiled. ‘They’re paying for it. I think we can let them have that much.’
‘It’ll cost us money,’ warned Milner.
‘The project is costing them a hundred and fifty million pounds,’ said Geddes. ‘I’m sure this schedule change can be absorbed: and if it’s all they want changed I’ll be very pleased. I’m sure you can reprogramme to compensate.’ His voice was as smooth as cream, and it had the desired effect on Milner, who looked a lot happier. He had made his point, and I was sure that he had some slack tucked away in his programme to take care of such emergencies.
The meeting carried on well into the morning. The finance boys came in with stuff about progress payments in relationship to cash flow, and there was a discussion about tendering for the electrical network which was to spread after the completion of the power plant. At last Geddes called a halt, leaned over towards me and said quietly, ‘Lunch with me, Neil.’
It wasn’t an invitation; it was an order. ‘Be glad to,’ I said. There was more to come, obviously.
On the way out I caught up with Milner. ‘There’s a point that wasn’t brought up. Why unship cargo at Port Luard? Why not at Lasulu? That’s at the junction of the spur road leading upcountry.’
He shook his head. ‘Port Luard is the only deep water anchorage with proper quays. At Lasulu cargo is unshipped in to some pretty antique lighters. Would you like to transship a three hundred ton transformer into a lighter in a heavy swell?’
‘Not me,’ I said, and that was that.
I expected to lunch with Geddes in the directors’ dining room but instead he took me out to a restaurant. We had a drink at the bar while we chatted lightly about affairs in Africa, the state of the money market, the upcoming by-elections. It was only after we were at table and into our meal that he came back to the main topic.
‘We want you to go out there, Neil.’
This was very unsurprising, except that so far there didn’t seem to be a reason. I said, ‘Right now I should be out at Leopard Rock south of Mombasa, chatting up the girls. I suppose the sun’s just as hot on the west coast. Don’t know about the birds though.’
Geddes said, not altogether inconsequentially, ‘You should be married.’
‘I have been.’
We got on with the meal. I had nothing to say and let him make the running. ‘So you don’t mind solving the problem,’ he said eventually.
‘What problem? Milner’s got things running better than a Swiss watch.’
‘I don’t know what problem,’ Geddes said simply. ‘But I know there is one, and I want you to find it.’ He held up a hand to stop me interrupting. ‘It’s not as easy as it sounds, and things are, as you guessed, far from serene in Nyala under the surface. Sir Tom has had a whisper down the line from some of the old hands out there.’
Geddes was referring to our Chairman, Owner and Managing Director, a trinity called Sir Thomas Buckler. Feet firmly on the earth, head in Olympus, and with ears as big as a jack rabbit’s for any hint or form of peril to his beloved company. It was always wise to take notice of advice from that quarter, and my interest sharpened at once. So far there had been nothing to tempt me. Now there was the merest breath of warning that all might not be well, and that was the stuff I thrived on. As we ate and chatted on I felt a lot less cheesed off at having lost my Kenya vacation.
‘It may be nothing. But you have a nose for trouble, Neil, and I’m depending on you to sniff it out,’ Geddes said as we rose from the table. ‘By the way, do you know what the old colonial name for Port Luard used to be?’
‘Can’t say that I do.’
He smiled gently. ‘The Frying Pan.’
TWO (#ulink_e31c1a42-fad4-5225-9d95-f39172db5c69)
I left for Nyala five days later, the intervening time being spent in getting a run down on the country. I read the relevant sections of Keesing’s Archives but the company’s own files, prepared by our Confidential Information Unit, proved more valuable, mainly because our boys weren’t as deterred by thoughts of libel as the compilers of Keesing.
It seemed to be a fairly standard African story. Nyala was a British colony until the British divested themselves of their Empire, and the first President under the new constitution was Maro Ofanwe. He had one of the usual qualifications for becoming the leader of an ex-British colony; he had served time in a British jail. Colonial jails were the forcing beds of national leaders, the Eton and Harrow of the dark continent.
Ofanwe started off soberly enough but when seated firmly in the saddle he started showing signs of megalomania and damn near made himself the state religion. And like all megalomaniacs he had architectural ambitions, pulling down the old colonial centre of Port Luard to build Independence Square, a vast acreage of nothing surrounded by new government offices in the style known as Totalitarian Massive.
Ofanwe was a keen student of the politics of Mussolini, so the new Palace of Justice had a specially designed balcony where he was accustomed to display himself to the stormy cheers of his adoring people. The cheers were equally stormy when his people hauled up his body by the heels and strung it from one of the very modern lampposts in Independence Square. Maro Ofanwe emulated Mussolini as much in death as in life.
After his death there were three years of chaos. Ofanwe had left the Treasury drained, there was strife among competing politicians, and the country rapidly became ungoverned and ungovernable. At last the army stepped in and established a military junta led by Colonel Abram Kigonde.
Surprisingly, Kigonde proved to be a political moderate. He crushed the extremists of both wings ruthlessly, laid heavy taxes on the business community which had been getting away with what it liked, and used the money to revitalize the cash crop plantations which had become neglected and run down. He was lucky too, because just as the cocoa plantations were brought back to some efficiency the price of cocoa went up, and for a couple of years the money rolled in until the cocoa price cycle went into another downswing.
Relative prosperity in Nyala led to political stability. The people had food in their bellies and weren’t inclined to listen to anyone who wanted a change. This security led outside investors to study the country and now Kigonde was able to secure sizeable loans which went into more agricultural improvements and a degree of industrialization. You couldn’t blame Kigonde for devoting a fair part of these loans to re-equipping his army.
Then he surprised everybody again. He revamped the Constitution and announced that elections would be held and a civil government was to take over the running of the country once again. After five years of military rule he stepped down to become Major General Kigonde, Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces. Since then the government had settled down, its hand greatly strengthened by the discovery of oil in the north. There was the usual amount of graft and corruption but no more so, apparently, than in any other African country, and all seemed set fair for the future of Nyala.
But there were rumours.
I read papers, studied maps and figures, and on the surface this was a textbook operation. I crammed in a lot of appointments, trying to have at least a few words with anybody who was directly concerned with the Nyala business. For the most part these were easy, the people I wanted to see being all bunched up close together in the City; but there was one exception, and an important one. I talked to Geddes about it first.
‘The heavy haulage company you’re using, Wyvern Haulage Ltd. They’re new to me. Why them?’
Geddes explained. British Electric had part ownership of one haulage company, a firm with considerable overseas experience and well under the thumb of the Board, but they were fully occupied with other work. There were few other British firms in the same field, and Geddes had tendered the job to a Dutch and an American company, but in the end the contract had gone to someone who appeared to be almost a newcomer in the business. I asked if there was any nepotism involved.
‘None that I know of,’ Geddes said. ‘This crowd has good credentials, a good track record, and their price is damned competitive. There are too few heavy hauliers about who can do what we want them to do, and their prices are getting out of hand – even our own. I’m willing to encourage anyone if it will increase competition.’
‘Their price may be right for us, but is it right for them?’ I asked. ‘I can’t see them making much of a profit.’
It was vital that no firm who worked for us should come out badly. British Electric had to be a crowd whom others were anxious to be alongside. And I was far from happy with the figures that Wyvern were quoting, attractive though they might be to Milner and Geddes.
‘Who are they?’
‘They know their job, all right. It’s a splinter group from Sheffield Hauliers and we think the best of that bunch went to Wyvern when it was set up. The boss is a youngish chap, Geoffrey Wingstead, and he took Basil Kemp with him for starters.’
I knew both the names, Wingstead only as a noise but Kemp and I had met before on a similar job. The difference was that the transformer then being moved was from the British industrial midlands up to Scotland; no easy matter but a cake-walk compared with doing any similar job in Africa. I wondered if Wyvern had any overseas experience, and decided to find out for myself.
To meet Wingstead I drove up to Leeds, and was mildly startled at what I found when I got there. I was all in favour of a new company ploughing its finances into the heart of the business rather than setting up fancy offices and shop front prestige, but to find Geoff Wingstead running his show from a prefab shed right in amongst the workshops and garaging was disturbing. It was a string-and-brown-paper setup of which Wingstead seemed to be proud.
But I was impressed by him and his paperwork, and could not fault either. I had wanted to meet Kemp again, only to be told that he was already in Nyala with his load boss and crew, waiting for the arrival of the rig by sea. Wingstead himself intended to fly out when the rig was ready for its first run, a prospect which clearly excited him: he hadn’t been in Africa before. I tried to steer a course midway between terrifying him with examples of how different his job would be out there from anything he had experienced in Europe, and overboosting his confidence with too much enthusiasm. I still had doubts, but I left Leeds and later Heathrow with a far greater optimism than I’d have thought possible.
On paper, everything was splendid. But I’ve never known events to be transferred from paper to reality without something being lost in the translation.
Port Luard was hot and sweaty. The temperature was climbing up to the hundred mark and the humidity was struggling to join it. John Sutherland met me at the airport which was one of Ofanwe’s white elephants: runways big enough to take jumbos and a concourse three times the size of Penn Station. It was large enough to serve a city the size of, say, Rome.
A chauffeur driven car awaited outside the arrivals building. I got in with Sutherland and felt the sweat break out under my armpits, and my wet shirt already sticking to my back. I unbuttoned the top of my shirt and took off my jacket and tie. I had suffered from cold at Heathrow and was overdressed here – a typical traveller’s dilemma. In my case was a superfine lightweight tropical suit by Huntsman – that was for hobnobbing with Cabinet ministers and suchlike – and a couple of safari suits. For the rest I’d buy local gear and probably dump it when I left. Cheap cotton shirts and shorts were always easy to get hold of.
I sat back and watched the country flow by. I hadn’t been to Nyala before but it wasn’t much different from Nigeria or any other West African landscape. Personally I preferred the less lush bits of Africa, the scrub and semi-desert areas, and I knew I’d be seeing plenty of that later on. The advertisements for Brooke Bond Tea and Raleigh Bicycles still proclaimed Nyala’s British colonial origins, although those for Coca-Cola were universal.
It was early morning and I had slept on the flight. I felt wide awake and ready to go, which was more than I could say for Sutherland. He looked exhausted, and I wondered how tough it was getting for him.
‘Do we have a company plane?’ I asked him.
‘Yes, and a good pilot, a Rhodesian.’ He was silent for a while and then said cautiously, ‘Funny meeting we had last week. I was pulled back to London at twelve hours’ notice and all that happened was that we sat around telling each other things we already knew.’
He was fishing and I knew it.
‘I didn’t know most of it. It was a briefing for me.’
‘Yes, I rather guessed as much.’
I asked, ‘How long have you been with the company?’
‘Seven years.’
I’d never met him before, or heard of him, but that wasn’t unusual. It’s a big outfit and I met new faces regularly. But Sutherland would have heard of me, because my name was trouble; I was the hatchet man, the expeditor, sometimes the executioner. As soon as I pitched up on anyone’s territory there would be that tightening feeling in the gut as the local boss man wondered what the hell had gone wrong.
I said, to put him at his ease, ‘Relax, John. It’s just that Geddes has got ants in his pants. Trouble is they’re invisible ants. I’m just here on an interrupted vacation.’
