Port Luard was cooler when we got back—about one degree cooler—but the temperature went down sharply when I walked into John Sutherland’s office. It was evident that he’d been hoping I’d disappear into the wide blue yonder never to return, and when he saw me you could have packaged him and used him as a refrigeration plant.
I held up a hand placatingly and said, ‘Not my idea to turn around so fast—blame Mister Geddes. For my money you could have this damn place to yourself.’
‘You’re welcome, of course,’ he said insincerely.
‘Let’s not kid each other,’ I said as I took a can of beer from his office refrigerator. ‘I’m as welcome as acne on a guy’s first date. What’s new?’
My friendly approach bothered him. He hadn’t known when to expect me and he’d been braced for trouble when he did. ‘Nothing, really. Everything has been going along smoothly.’ His tone still implied that it would cease to do so forthwith.
It was time to sweet-talk him. ‘Geddes is very pleased about the way you’re handling things here, by the way.’
For a moment he looked almost alarmed. The idea of Geddes being pleased about anything was odd enough to frighten anybody. Praise from him was so rare as to be nonexistent, and I didn’t let Sutherland know that it had
originated with me. ‘When you left you implied that all was far from well,’ Sutherland said. ‘You never said what the trouble was.’
‘You should know. You started it at the meeting in London.’
‘I did?’ I saw him chasing around in his mind for exactly what he’d said at that meeting.
‘About the rumours of tribal unrest,’ I said helpfully. ‘Got a glass? I like to see my beer when I’m drinking it.’
‘Of course.’ He found one for me.
‘You were right on the mark there. Of course we know you can’t run the Bir Oassa job and chase down things like that at the same time. That was Shelford’s job, and he let us all down. So someone had to look into it and Geddes picked me—and you proved right all down the line.’ I didn’t give him time to think too deeply about that one. I leaned forward and said as winningly as I knew how, ‘I’m sorry if I was a little abrupt just before I left. That goddamn phoney victory parade left me a bit frazzled, and I’m not used to coping with this lot the way you are. If I said anything out of line I apologize.’
He was disarmed, as he was intended to be. ‘That’s quite all right. As a matter of fact I’ve been thinking about what you said—about the need for contingency plans. I’ve been working on a scheme.’
‘Great.’ I said expansively. ‘Like to have a look at it sometime. Right now I have a lot else to do. I brought someone out with me that I’d like you to meet. Geoff Wingstead, the owner of Wyvern Haulage. Can you join us for dinner?’
‘You should have told me. He’ll need accommodation.’
‘It’s fixed, John. He’s at the hotel.’ I gently let him know that he wasn’t the only one who could pull strings. ‘He’s going to go up and join the rig in a day or so, but I’ll be around town for a bit longer before I pay them a visit. I’d like a full briefing from you. I’m willing to bet you’ve got a whole lot to tell me.’
‘Yes, I have. Some of it is quite hot stuff, Neil.’
Sutherland was all buddies again, and bursting to tell me what I already knew, which is just what I’d been hoping for. I didn’t think I’d told him too many lies. The truth is only one way of looking at a situation; there are many others.
For the next few days I nursed Sutherland along. His contingency plan was good, if lacking in imagination, but it improved as we went along. That was his main trouble, a lack of imagination, the inability to ask, ‘What if…?’ I am not knocking him particularly; he was good at his job but incapable of expanding the job around him, and without that knack he wasn’t going to go much further. I have a theory about men like Sutherland: they’re like silly putty. If you take silly putty and hit it with a hammer it will shatter, but handle it gently and it can be moulded into any shape. The trouble is that if you then leave it it will slump and flow back into its original shape. That’s why the manipulators, like me, get three times Sutherland’s pay.
Not that I regarded myself as the Great Svengali, because I’ve been manipulated myself in my time by men like Geddes, the arch manipulator, so God knows what he’s worth before taxes.
Anyway I gentled Sutherland along. I took him to the Luard Club (he had never thought about joining) and let him loose among the old sweaty types who were primed to drop him nuggets of information. Sure enough, he’d come back and tell me something else that I already knew. ‘Gee, is that so?’ I’d say. ‘That could put a crimp in your contingency plans, couldn’t it?’
He would smile confidently. ‘It’s nothing I can’t fix,’ he would say, and he’d be right. He wasn’t a bad fixer. At the end of ten days he was all squared away, convinced that it was all his own idea, and much clearer in his head about the politics around him. He also had another conviction—that
this chap Mannix wasn’t so bad, after all, for an American that is. I didn’t disillusion him.
What slightly disconcerted me was Geoff Wingstead. He stayed in Port Luard for a few days, doing his own homework before flying up to join the rig, and in that short time he also put two and two together, on his own, and remarkably accurately. What’s more, I swear that he saw clear through my little ploy with Sutherland and to my chagrin I got the impression that he approved. I didn’t like people to be that bright. He impressed me more all the time and I found that he got the same sense of enjoyment out of the business that I did, and that’s a rare and precious trait. He was young, smart and energetic, and I wasn’t sorry that he was in another company to my own: he’d make damned tough opposition. And I liked him too much for rivalry.
Getting news back from the rig was difficult. Local telephone lines were often out of action and our own cab radios had a limited range. One morning, though, John Sutherland had managed a long call and had news for me as soon as I came into the office.
‘They’re on schedule. I’ve put it on the map. Look here. They’re halfway in time but less than halfway in distance. And they’ll slow up more now because they have to climb to the plateau. Oh, and Geoff Wingstead is flying back here today. He has to arrange to send a water bowser up there. Seems the local water is often too contaminated to use for drinking.’
I could have told Geoff that before he started and was a little surprised that he had only just found out. I decided that I wanted to go and see the rig for myself, in case there was any other little detail he didn’t know about. I was about due to go back to London soon, and rather wanted one more fling upcountry before doing so.
I studied the map. ‘This town—Kodowa—just ahead of them. It’s got an airstrip. Any chance of renting a car there?’
He grimaced. ‘I shouldn’t think so. It’s only a small place, about five thousand population. And if you could get a car there it would be pretty well clapped out. The airstrip is privately owned; it belongs to a planters’ cooperative.’
I measured distances. ‘Maybe we should have a company car stationed there, and arrange for use of the airstrip. It would help if anyone has to get up there in a hurry. See to it, would you, John? As it is I’ll have to fly to Lasulu and then drive nearly three hundred miles. I’ll arrange to take one of Wyvern’s spare chaps up with me to spell me driving.’ I knew better than to set out on my own in that bleak territory.
I saw Wingstead on his return and we had a long talk. He was reasonably happy about his company’s progress and the logistics seemed to be working out well, but he was as wary as a cat about the whole political situation. As I said, he was remarkably acute in his judgements. I asked if he was going back to England.
‘Not yet, at any rate,’ he told me. ‘I have some work to do here, then I’ll rejoin the rig for a bit. I like to keep a finger on the pulse. Listen, Neil…’
‘You want something?’ I prompted.
‘I want you to put Basil Kemp completely in the picture. He doesn’t know the score and he may not take it from me. Why should he? We’re both new to Africa, new to this country, and he’ll brush off my fears, but he’ll accept your opinion. He needs to know more about the political situation.’
‘I wouldn’t call Kemp exactly complacent myself,’ I said.
‘That’s the trouble. He’s got so many worries of his own that he hasn’t room for mine—unless he can be convinced they’re real. You’re going up there, I’m told. Lay it on the line for him, please.’
I agreed, not without a sense of relief. It was high time that Kemp knew the wider issues involved, and nothing I had heard lately had made me any less uneasy about the
possible future of Nyala. The next morning I picked up Ritchie Thorpe, one of the spare Wyvern men, and Max Otterman flew us up to Lasulu. From there we drove inland along that fantastic road that thrust into the heart of the country. After Ofanwe had it built it had been underused and neglected. The thick rain forest had encroached and the huge trees had thrust their roots under it to burst the concrete. Then came the oil strike and now it was undergoing a fair amount of punishment, eroding from above to meet the erosion from below. Not that the traffic was heavy in the sense of being dense, but some damn big loads were being taken north. Our transformer was merely the biggest so far.
The traffic varied from bullock carts with nerve-wracking squeaking wheels plodding stolidly along at two miles an hour to sixty-tonners and even larger vehicles. Once we came across a real giant parked by the roadside while the crew ate a meal. It carried an oil drilling tower lying on its side, whole and entire, and must have weighed upwards of a hundred tons.
I pulled in and had a chat with the head driver. He was a Russian and very proud of his rig. We talked in a mixture of bad English and worse French, and he demonstrated what it would do, a function new to me but not to Ritchie. Apparently it was designed to move in soft sand and he could inflate and deflate all the tyres by pushing buttons while in the cab. When travelling over soft sand the tyres would be deflated to spread the load. He told me that in these conditions the fully loaded rig would put less pressure on the ground per square inch than the foot of a camel. I was properly appreciative and we parted amicably.
It was a long drive and we were both tired and dusty when we finally came across Wyvern Transport. By now we had passed through the rainforest belt and were entering scrubland, the trees giving way to harsh thorny bush and
the ground strewn with withering gourd-carrying vines. Dust was everywhere, and the road edges were almost totally rotted away; we slalomed endlessly to avoid the potholes. We found the rig parked by the roadside and the hydraulics had been let down so that the load rested on the ground instead of being taken up on the bogie springs. They had obviously stopped for the night, which surprised us—night driving at their speed was quite feasible and much cooler and normally less of a strain than daywork.
I pulled up and looked around. Of the men I could see I knew only one by name: McGrath, the big Irishman who had driven the lead tractor in the parade through Port Luard. Ritchie got out of the car, thanked me for the ride up and went off to join his mates. I called McGrath over.
‘Hi there. Mister Kemp around?’ I asked.
McGrath pointed up the road. ‘There’s a bridge about a mile along. He’s having a look at it.’
‘Thanks.’ I drove along slowly and thought the convoy looked like an oversized gypsy camp. The commissary wagon was opened up and a couple of men were cooking. A little further along were the other trucks, including the big one with the airlift gear, and then the camp of Sadiq and his men, very neat and military. Sadiq got to his feet as I drove up but with the light fading I indicated that I would see him on my return from the bridge, and went on past. I saw and approved of the fact that the fuel truck was parked on its own, well away from all the others, but made a mental note to check that it was guarded.
The road had been blasted through a low ridge here and beyond the ridge was a river. I pulled off the road short of the bridge and parked next to Kemp’s Land Rover. I could see him in the distance, walking halfway across the bridge, accompanied by Hammond. I waved and they quickened their pace.
When they came up to me I thought that Kemp looked better than he had done in Port Luard. The lines of his face
fell in more placid folds and he wasn’t so tired. Obviously he was happier actually doing a job than arranging for it to be done, Ben Hammond, by his side, hadn’t changed at all. He still had his gamecock strut and his air of defensive wariness. Some little men feel that they have a lot to be wary about.
‘Hello there,’ I said. ‘I just thought I’d drop by for a coffee.’
Kemp grinned and shook my hand, but Hammond said, ‘Checking up on us, are you? Mr Wingstead’s just been up here, you know.’
Clearly he was saying that where Geoff had gone, no man need go after. His voice told me that he thought a lot of his boss, which pleased me. I sometimes wondered if I was as transparent to other people as they appeared to me.
I jerked my thumb back up the road. ‘Sure I’m checking. Do you know what that transporter is worth? Landed at Port Luard it was declared at one million, forty-two thousand, nine hundred and eighty-six pounds and five pence.’ I grinned to take the sting out of it. ‘I still haven’t figured out what the five pence is for. If it was yours, wouldn’t you want to know if it was in safe hands?’
Hammond looked startled. Kemp said, ‘Take it easy, Ben,’ which I thought was a nice reversal of roles. ‘Mister Mannix is quite entitled to come up here, and he’s welcome any time. Sorry if Ben’s a bit edgy—we have problems.’
I wasn’t a bit surprised to hear it, but dutifully asked what they were. Kemp held out a lump of concrete. ‘I kicked that out with the toe of my boot. I didn’t have to kick hard, either.’
I took the lump and rubbed it with my thumb. It was friable and bits dropped off. ‘I’d say that someone used a mite too much sand in the mix.’ I pointed to the bridge. ‘Milner said the bridges would prove dicey. Is this the worst?’
Kemp shook his head. ‘Oh no. This isn’t too bad at all. The really tricky one is way up there, miles ahead yet. This
one is run-of-the-mill. Just a little shaky, that’s all.’ He and Hammond exchanged rueful smiles. ‘It’s too risky to move in the dark and there’s only half an hour of daylight left. We’ll take her across at first light. Anyway it will be our first full night stop for nearly a week, good for the lads.’