Juggernaut

Milner was our head logistics man. He had to make sure that everything was in the right place at the right time, and his department managed to keep our computers tied up rather considerably. He came forward and joined me at the map. ‘Easy,’ he said. ‘There are some good roads.’

I was sceptical. ‘Out there – in Nyala?’

He nodded thoughtfully. ‘Of course, you haven’t been there yourself, have you, Neil? Wait until you read the full specs. But I’ll outline it for you and the others. After they got colonial rule their first president was Maro Ofanwe. Remember him?’

Someone made a throat-slitting gesture and there was a brief uneasy laugh. Nobody at the top likes to be reminded of coups of any sort.

‘He had the usual delusions of grandeur. One of the first things he did was to build a modern super-highway right along the coast from Port Luard to Hazi. Halfway along it, here at Lasulu, a branch goes north to Bir Oassa and even beyond – to nowhere. We shouldn’t have any trouble in that department.’

‘I’ll believe that road when I see it.’

Milner was annoyed and showed it. ‘I surveyed it myself with the boss of the transport company. Look at these photographs.’

He hovered at my elbow as I examined the pictures, glossy black-and-white aerial shots. Sure enough, there it was, looking as though it had been lifted bodily from Los Angeles and dumped in the middle of a scrubby nowhere.

‘Who uses it?’

‘The coast road gets quite a bit of use. The spur into the interior is under-used and under-maintained. The rain forest is encroaching in the south and in the north there will be trouble with sand drifts. The usual potholes are appearing. Edges are a bit worn in spots.’ This was common to most African tarmac and hardly surprised me. He went on, ‘There are some bridges which may be a bit dicey, but it’s nothing we can’t cope with.’

‘Is your transport contractor happy with it?’

‘Perfectly.’

I doubted that. A happy contractor is like a happy farmer – more or less nonexistent. But it was I who listened to the beefs, not the hirers and firers. I turned my attention back to Geddes, after mending fences with Milner by admiring his photographs.

‘I think Mister Shelford might have something to say,’ Geddes prompted.

Shelford was a political liaison man. He came from that department which was the nearest thing British Electric had to the State Department or the British Foreign Office. He cocked an eye at Geddes. ‘I take it Mr Mannix would like a rundown on the political situation?’

‘What else?’ asked Geddes a little acidly.

I didn’t like Shelford much. He was one of the striped pants crowd that infests Whitehall and Washington. Those guys like to think of themselves as decision makers and world shakers but they’re a long way from the top of the tree and they know it. From the sound of his voice, Geddes wasn’t too taken with Shelford either.

Shelford was obviously used to this irritable reaction to himself and ignored it. He spread his hands on the table and spoke precisely. ‘I regard Nyala as being one of the few countries in Africa which shows any political stability at the present time. That, of course, was not always so. Upon the overthrow of Maro Ofanwe there was considerable civil unrest and the army was forced to take over, a not atypical action in an African state. What was atypical, however, was that the army voluntarily handed back the reins of power to a properly constituted and elected civil government, which so far seems to be keeping the country on an even keel.’

Some of the others were growing restive under his lecturing, and Geddes cut in on what looked like the opening of a long speech. ‘That’s good so far,’ he said. ‘At least we won’t have to cope with the inflexibility of military minds.’

I grinned. ‘Just the deviousness of the political ones.’

Shelford showed signs of carrying on with his lecture and this time I cut in on him. ‘Have you been out there lately, Mister Shelford?’

‘No, I haven’t.’

‘Have you been there at all?’

‘No,’ he said stiffly. I saw a few stifled smiles.

‘I see,’ I said, and switched my attention to Sutherland. ‘I suggest we hear from the man on the spot. How did you find things, John?’

Sutherland glanced at Geddes for a nod of approval before speaking.

‘Well, broadly speaking, I should say that Mister Shelford seems correct. The country shows remarkable stability; within limits, naturally. They are having to cope with a cash shortage, a water shortage, border skirmishes – the usual African troubles. But I didn’t come across much conflict at the top when we were out there.’

Shelford actually smirked. Geddes said, ‘Do you think the guarantees of the Nyalan Government will stand up under stress, should it come?’

Sutherland was being pressed and he courageously didn’t waver too much. ‘I should think so, provided the discretionary fund isn’t skimped.’

By that he meant that the palms held out to be greased should be liberally daubed, a not uncommon situation. I said, ‘You were speaking broadly, John. What would you say if you had to speak narrowly?’

Now he looked a little uncomfortable and his glance went from Geddes to Shelford before he replied. ‘It’s said that there’s some tribal unrest.’

This brought another murmur to the room. To the average European, while international and even intercounty and intercity rivalries are understandable factors, the demands of tribal loyalties seem often beyond all reason; in my time I have tried to liken the situation to that of warring football clubs and their more aggressive fans, but non-tribal peoples seemed to me to have the greatest difficulties in appreciating the pressures involved. I even saw eyebrows raised, a gesture of righteous intolerance which none at that table could afford. Shelford tried to bluster.

‘Nonsense,’ he said. ‘Nyala’s a unified state if ever I saw one. Tribal conflict has been vanquished.’

I decided to prick his balloon. ‘Apparently you haven’t seen it, though, Mister Shelford. Conflict of this sort is never finished with. Remember Nigeria – it happened there, and that’s almost next door. It exists in Kenya. It exists throughout Africa. And we know that it’s hard to disentangle fact from fiction, but we can’t afford to ignore either. John, who are the top dogs in Nyala, the majority tribe?’

‘The Kinguru.’

‘The President and most of the Cabinet will be Kinguru, then? The Civil Service? Leading merchants and businessmen?’ He nodded at each category. ‘The Army?’

Here he shook his head. ‘Surprisingly enough, apparently not. The Kinguru don’t seem to make good fighters. The Wabi people run the military, but they have some sort of tribal affiliation with the Kinguru anyway. You’ll need a sociologist’s report if you want to go into details.’

‘If the Kinguru aren’t fighters they may damn well have to learn,’ I said, ‘Like the Ibo in Nigeria and the Kikuyu in Kenya.’

Someone said, ‘You’re presupposing conflict, Neil.’

Geddes backed me. ‘It’s not unwise. And we do have some comments in the dossier, Neil – your homework.’ He tapped the bulky file on the table and adroitly lightened the atmosphere. ‘I think we can leave the political issues for the moment. How do we stand on progress to date, Bob?’

‘We’re exactly on schedule,’ said Milner with satisfaction. He would have been pained to be behind schedule, but almost equally pained to have been ahead of it. That would show that his computers weren’t giving an absolutely optimum arrangement, which would be unthinkable. But then he leaned forward and the pleased look vanished. ‘We might be running into a small problem, though.’

There were no small problems in jobs like this. They were all big ones, no matter how small they started.

Milner said, ‘Construction is well advanced and we’re about ready to take up the big loads. The analysis calls for the first big haul to be one of the boilers but the government is insisting that it be a transformer. That means that the boiler fitters are going to be sitting around on their butts doing nothing while a transformer just lies around because the electrical engineers aren’t yet ready to install it.’ He sounded aggrieved and I could well understand why. This was big money being messed around.

‘Why would they want to do that?’ I asked.

‘It’s 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.