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.’
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