“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.”