In the meantime Kemp and Sutherland were getting on with their business, to more immediate ends. On the morning the first big load was to roll I was up bright and early, if not bushy tailed. The sun had just risen and the temperature already in the eighties when I drove to the docks to see the loaded rig. I hadn’t had much chance to talk to Kemp and while I doubted that this was the moment, I had to pin him down to some time and place.
I found him and Sutherland in the middle of a small slice of chaos, both looking harassed as dozens of men milled around shouting questions and orders. They’d been at it for a long time already and things were almost ready to go into action. I stared in fascination at what I saw.
The huge rig wasn’t unfamiliar to me but it was still a breathtaking sight. The massive towing trucks, really tractors with full cab bodies, stood at each end of the flat-bed trailer onto which the transformer had been lowered, inch by painful inch, over the previous few hours. Around it scurried small dockside vehicles, fork-lift trucks and scooters, like worker ants scrambling about their huge motionless queen. But what fascinated and amused me was the sight of a small platoon of Nyalan dock hands clambering about the actual rig itself, as agile and noisy as a troop of monkeys, busy stringing yards of festive bunting between any two protruding places to which they could be tied. The green and yellow colours of the Nyalan flag predominated, and one of them was being hauled up a jackstaff which was bound to the front tractor bumpers. No wonder that Kemp looked thunderstruck and more than a little grim.
I hurried over to him, and my arrival coincided with that of Mr Daondo, who was just getting out of a black limousine. Daondo stood with hands on hips and gazed the length of the enormous rig with great satisfaction, then turned to us and said in a hearty voice, ‘Well, good morning, gentlemen. I see everything is going very well indeed.’
Kemp said, ‘Good morning, Mister Daondo – Neil. May I ask what –’
‘Hello, Basil. Great day for it, haven’t we? Mister Daondo, would you excuse us for just one moment? I’ve got your figures here, Basil …’
Talking fast, waving a notebook, and giving him no time to speak, I managed to draw Kemp away from Daondo’s side, leaving the politician to be entertained for a moment by John Sutherland.
‘Just what the hell do they think they’re doing?’ Kemp was outraged.
‘Ease off. Calm down. Can’t you see? They’re going to put on a show for the people – that’s what this daylight procession has been about all along. The power plant is one of the biggest things that’s ever happened to Nyala and the Government wants to do a bit of bragging. And I don’t see why not.’
‘But how?’ Kemp, normally a man of broad enough intelligence, was on a very narrow wave length where his precious rig was concerned.
‘Hasn’t the penny dropped yet? You’re to be the centre-piece of a triumphal parade through the town, right through Independence Square. The way the Ruskies trundle their rockets through Red Square on May Day. You’ll be on show, the band will play, the lot.’
‘Are you serious?’ said Kemp in disgust.
‘Quite. The Government must not only govern but be seen to govern. They’re entitled to bang their drum.’
Kemp subsided, muttering.
‘Don’t worry. As soon as you’re clear of the town you can take the ribbons out of her hair and get down to work properly. Have a word with your drivers. I’d like to meet them, but not right away. And tell them to enjoy themselves. It’s a gala occasion.’
‘All right, I suppose we must. But it’s damn inconvenient. It’s hard enough work moving these things without having to cope with cheering mobs and flag-waving.’
‘You don’t have to cope, that’s his job.’ I indicated Daondo with a jerk of my thumb. ‘Your guys just drive it away as usual. I think we’d better go join him.’
We walked back to where Daondo, leaning negligently against the hood of his Mercedes, was holding forth to a small circle of underlings. Sutherland was in the thick of it, together with a short, stocky man with a weathered face. Sutherland introduced him to me.
‘Neil, this is Ben Hammond, my head driver. Ben, Mister Mannix of British Electric. I think Ben’s what you’d call my ranch foreman.’
I grinned. ‘Nice herd of cattle you’ve got there, Ben. I’d like to meet the crew later. What’s the schedule?’
‘I’ve just told Mister Daondo that I think they’re ready to roll any time now. But of course it’s Mister Kemp’s show really.’
‘Thank you, Mister Sutherland. I’ll have a word with Daondo and then we can get going,’ Kemp said.
I marvelled at the way my British companions still managed to cling to surnames and honorifics. I wondered if they’d all be dressing for dinner, out there in the bush wherever the rig stopped for the night. I gave my attention to Daondo to find that he was being converged upon by a band of journalists, video and still cameras busy, notebooks poised, but with none of the free-for-all shoving that might have taken place anywhere in Europe. The presence of several armed soldiers nearby may have had a bearing on that.
‘Ah, Mister Mannix,’ Daondo said, ‘I am about to hold a short press conference. Would you join me, please?’
‘An honour, Minister. But it’s not really my story – it’s Mister Kemp’s.’
Kemp gave me a brief dirty look as I passed the buck neatly to him. ‘May I bring Mister Hammond in on this?’ he asked, drawing Ben Hammond along by the arm. ‘He designed this rig; it’s very much his baby.’
I looked at the stocky man in some surprise. This was something I hadn’t known and it set me thinking. Wyvern Haulage might be new as an outfit, but they seemed to have gathered a great deal of talent around them, and my respect for Geoff Wingstead grew fractionally greater.
The press conference was under way, to a soft barrage of clicks as people were posed in front of the rig. Video cameramen did their trick of walking backwards with a buddy’s hand on their shoulder to guide them, and the writer boys ducked and dodged around the clutter of ropes, chain, pulleys and hawsers that littered the ground. Some of the inevitable questions were coming up and I listened carefully, as this was a chance for me to learn a few of the technicalities.
‘Just how big is this vehicle?’
Kemp indicated Ben Hammond forward. Ben, grinning like a toothpaste advertisement, was enjoying his moment in the limelight as microphones were thrust at him. ‘As the transporter is set up now it’s a bit over a hundred feet long. We can add sections up to another eighteen feet but we won’t need them on this trip.’
‘Does that include the engines?’
‘The tractors? No, those are counted separately. We’ll be adding on four tractors to get over hilly ground and then the total length will be a shade over two hundred and forty feet.’
Another voice said, ‘Our readers may not be able to visualize that. Can you give us anything to measure it by?’
Hammond groped for an analogy, and then said, ‘I notice that you people here play a lot of soccer – football.’
‘Indeed we do,’ Daondo interjected. ‘I myself am an enthusiast.’ He smiled modestly as he put in his personal plug. ‘I was present at the Cup Final at Wembley last year, when I was Ambassador to the United Kingdom.’
Hammond said, ‘Well, imagine this. If you drove this rig onto the field at Wembley, or any other standard soccer pitch, it would fill the full length of the pitch with a foot hanging over each side. Is that good enough?’
There was a chorus of appreciative remarks, and Kemp said in a low voice, ‘Well done, Ben. Carry on.’
‘How heavy is the vehicle?’ someone asked.
‘The transporter weighs ninety tons, and the load, that big