“Not necessarily,” said Shannon. “Do you know what this man Endean does at ManCon House?”

“Yes,” said the private agent. “I checked up with a friend who’s a City journalist. He is the personal aide and right-hand man of Sir James Manson, chairman and managing director of Manson Consolidated.”

“Thank you,” said Shannon and put the phone down.

“Curiouser and curiouser,” he murmured as he left the hotel lobby and strolled down to Jermyn Street to cash a check and buy some shirts. It was the first of April, April Fool’s Day; the sun was shining and daffodils covered the grass around Hyde Park Corner.

Simon Endean had also been busy while Shannon was away. The results of his labors he imparted to Sir James Manson that afternoon in the penthouse over Moorgate.

“Colonel Bobi,” he told his chief as he entered the office.

The mining boss furrowed his brow. “Who?”

“Colonel Bobi. The former commander of the army of Zangaro. Now in exile, banished forever by President Jean Kimba. Who, incidentally, has sentenced him to death by presidential decree for high treason. You wanted to know where he was.”

Manson was at his desk by this time, nodding in recollection. “All right, where is he?” he asked.

“In exile in Dahomey,” said Endean. “It took a hell of a job to trace him without being too obvious about it. But he’s taken up residence in the capital of Dahomey. Place called Cotonou. He must have a little money, but probably not much, or he’d be in a walled villa outside Geneva with all the other rich exiles. He has a small rented villa and lives very quietly, probably because it is the safest way of ensuring the Dahomey government doesn’t ask him to leave. It’s believed Kimba has asked for his extradition back home, but no one has done anything about it. Besides, he’s far enough away from Kimba to assume he’ll never present a threat.”

“And Shannon, the mercenary?” asked Manson.

“Due back sometime today or tomorrow,” said Endean. “I booked him into the Lowndes from yesterday onward to be on the safe side. He hadn’t arrived this morning at nine. I’m due to try again tomorrow at the same time.”

“Try now,” said Manson.

The hotel confirmed to Endean that Mr. Brown had indeed arrived, but that he was out. Sir James Manson listened on the extension.

“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 titled “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 report. 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 shantytowns, where he had seen the clustered 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 the 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 takeover 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 palace. 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 palace. I saw no signs of such spirit either. More realistically, the palace and grounds could be taken wit

h 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 death trap 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 assistance at a technical level they have not reached, and such assistance 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 assessment 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 assisting 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.”

Tags: Frederick Forsyth Thriller
Source: readsnovelonline.net