re of a builder than a businessman, Macallister had agreed in 1903 to enter into partnership with a group of London businessmen, and the following year Bormac was created and floated with an issue of half a million ordinary shares. Macallister, who had married a seventeen-year-old girl the previous year, received 150,000 shares, a place on the board, and managership during his lifetime of the rubber estates.

Ten years after the company’s founding, the London businessmen had clinched a series of lucrative contracts with companies supplying the British war effort with rubber, and the share price had climbed from its issue price of four shillings to more than two pounds. The war profiteers’ boom lasted until 1918. There was a slump for the company just after the First World War, until the motorcar craze of the 1920s boosted the need for rubber tires, and again shares rose. This time there was a one-for-one new issue, raising the total amount of the company’s shares on the market to 1 million and Sir Ian’s block to 300,000. There had been no more share issues after that.

The slump of the Depression sent prices and shares down again, and they were recovering by 1937. In that year one of the Chinese coolies finally ran amok and performed an unpleasantness on the sleeping Sir Ian with a heavy-bladed parang. The undermanager took over but lacked the drive of his dead master, and production fell as prices rose. The Second World War could have been a boon to the company, but the Japanese invasion of Borneo in 1941 disrupted supplies.

The death knell of the company was finally sounded by the Indonesian nationalist movement, which wrested control of the Dutch East Indies and Borneo from Holland in 1948. When the border between Indonesian Borneo and British North Borneo was finally drawn, the estates were on the Indonesian side and were promptly nationalized without compensation.

For more than twenty years the company had staggered on, its assets unrecoverable, fruitless lawsuits with President Sukarno’s regime eating away at the cash, prices falling. By the time Martin Thorpe went over the company’s books, the shares stood at a shilling each, and their highest price over the previous year had been one shilling and threepence.

The board was composed of five directors, and the company rules stipulated that two of them made a quorum for the purposes of passing a resolution. The company office’s address was given and turned out to be the premises of an old established firm of City solicitors, one of whose partners acted as company secretary and was also on the board. The original offices had long since been given up because of rising costs. Board meetings were rare and usually consisted of the chairman, an elderly man living in Sussex, who was the younger brother of Sir Ian’s former undermanager, who had died in Japanese hands during the war. Sitting with the chairman were the company secretary, the City solicitor, and occasionally one of the other three, who all lived a long way from London. There was seldom any business to discuss, and the company income consisted mainly of the occasional belated compensation payments now being made by the Indonesian government under General Suharto.

The combined five directors controlled no more than 18 percent of the million shares, and 52 percent was distributed among 6500 shareholders scattered across the country. There seemed to be a fair proportion of married women and widows. No doubt portfolios of long-forgotten shares sat in deed boxes and banks and solicitors’ offices up and down the land and had done so for years.

But these were not what interested Thorpe and Manson. If they tried to acquire a controlling interest by buying through the market, first, it would take years, and second, it would become quickly plain to other City watchers that someone was at work on Bormac. Their interest was held by the one single block of 300,000 shares held by the widowed Lady Macallister.

The puzzle was why someone had not long since bought the entire block from her and taken on the shell of the once-flourishing rubber company. In every other sense it was ideal for the purpose, for its memorandum was widely drawn, permitting the company to operate in any field of exploitation of any country’s natural assets outside the United Kingdom.

“She must be eighty-five if she’s a day,” said Thorpe at last. “Lives in a vast, dreary old block of flats in Kensington, guarded by a long-serving lady companion, or whatever they are called.”

“She must have been approached,” said Sir James musingly, “so why does she cling to them?”

“Perhaps she just doesn’t want to sell,” said Thorpe, “or didn’t like the people who came to ask her to let them buy. Old people can be funny.”

It is not simply old people who are illogical about buying and selling stocks and shares. Most stockbrokers have long since had the experience of seeing a client refuse to do business when proposed a sensible and advantageous offer, solely and simply for the reason that he did not like the stockbroker.

Sir James Manson shot forward in his chair and planted his elbows on the desk. “Martin, find out about the old woman. Find out who she is, where she is, what she thinks, what she likes and hates, what are her tastes, and above all, find out where her weak spot is. She has to have one—some little thing that would be too big a temptation for her and for which she would sell her holding. It may not be money—probably isn’t, for she’s been offered money before now. But there has to be something. Find it.”

Thorpe rose to go. Manson waved him back to his chair. From his desk drawer he drew six printed forms, all identical and all application forms for numbered accounts at the Zwingli Bank in Zurich.

He explained briefly and concisely what he wanted done, and Thorpe nodded.

“Book yourself on the morning flight, and you can be back tomorrow night,” said Manson as his aide left.

Simon Endean rang Shannon at his flat just after two and was given an up-to-date report on the arrangements the mercenary was making. Manson’s assistant was pleased by the precision of Shannon’s reporting, and he noted the details on a scratch pad so that he could later make up his own report for Sir James.

When he had finished, Shannon put forward his next requirements. “I want five thousand pounds telexed direct from your Swiss bank to my credit as Keith Brown at the head office of the Banque de Luxembourg in Luxembourg by next Monday noon,” he told Endean, “and another five thousand telexed direct to my credit at the head office of the Landesbank in Hamburg by Wednesday morning.”

He explained tersely how the bulk of the £5000 he had imported to London was already spoken for and the other £5000 was needed as a reserve in Brugge. The two identical sums required in Luxembourg and Hamburg were mainly so that he could show his contacts there a certified check to prove his credit before entering into purchasing negotiations. Later, most of the money would be remitted to Brugge and the balance fully accounted for.

“In any case, I can write you out a complete accounting of money spent to date or committed for spending,” he told Endean, “but I have to have your mailing address.”

Endean gave him the name of a professional accommodation address where he had opened a box that morning in the name of Walter Harris, and promised to get the instructions off to Zurich within the hour to have both sums of £5000 awaiting collection by Keith Brown in Luxembourg and Hamburg.

Big Janni Dupree checked in from London airport at five. His had been the longest journey: from Cape Town to Johannesburg the previous day, and then the long SAA flight, through Luanda in Portuguese Angola and the Isla do Sol stopover, which avoided overflying the territory of any black African country. Shannon ordered him to take a taxi straight to the flat.

At six there was a second reunion when the other three mercenaries all came around to greet the South African. When he heard Shannon’s terms, Janni’s face cracked into a grin.

“We going to go fighting again, Cat? Count me in.”

“Good man. So here’s what I want from you. Stay here in London, find yourself a small bed-sitting-room flat. I’ll help you do that tomorrow. We’ll go through the Evening Standard and get you fixed up by nightfall.

“I want you to buy all our clothing. We need fifty sets of T-shirts, fifty sets of underpants, fifty pairs of light nylon socks. Then a spare set for each man, making a hundred. I’ll give you the list later. After that, fifty sets of combat trousers, preferably in jungle camouflage and preferably matching the jackets. Next, fifty combat blouses, zip-fronted and in the same jungle camouflage.

“You can get all these quite openly at camping shops, sports shops, and army surplus stores. Even the hippies are beginning to wear combat jackets about town, and so do people who go shooting in the country.

“You can get all the T-shirts, socks, and underpants at the same stockist, but get the trousers and blouses at different ones. Then fifty green berets and fifty pairs of boots. Get the trousers in the large size—we can shorten them later; get the blouses half in large size, half in medium. Get the boots from a camping-equipment shop. I don’t want heavy British army boots. I want the green canvas jackboots with front lacing and waterproofed.

“Now for the webbing, I need fifty webbing belts, ammo pouches, knapsacks, and campers’ haversacks, the ones with the light tubular frame to support them. These will carry the bazooka rockets with a bit of reshaping. Lastly, fifty light nylon sleeping bags. Okay? I’ll give you the full written list later.”

Tags: Frederick Forsyth Thriller
Source: readsnovelonline.net