Juggernaut

‘Oh quite,’ Sutherland said, not believing a word of it. ‘What do you plan to do first?’

‘I think I’d like to go up to the site at Bir Oassa for a couple of days, use the plane and overfly this road of theirs. After that I might want to see someone in the Government. Who would you suggest?’

Sutherland stroked his jaw. He knew that I’d read up on all of them and that it was quite likely I knew more about the local scene than he did. ‘There’s Hamah Ousemane – he’s Minister for the Interior, and there’s the Finance Minister, John Chizamba. Either would be a good starting point. And I suppose Daondo will want to put his oar in.’

‘He’s the local Goebbels, isn’t he?’

‘Yes, Minister for Misinformation.’

I grinned and Sutherland relaxed a little more. ‘Who has the itchiest palm? Or by some miracle are none of them on the take?’

‘No miracles here. As for which is the greediest, that I couldn’t say. But you should be able to buy a few items of information from almost anyone.’

We were as venal as the men we were dealing with. There was room for a certain amount of honesty in my profession but there was also room for the art of wheeling and dealing, and frankly I rather enjoyed that. It was fun, and I didn’t ever see why making one’s living had to be a joyless occupation.

I said, ‘Right. Now, don’t tell me you haven’t any problems. You wouldn’t be human if you didn’t. What’s the biggest headache on your list right now?’

‘The heavy transport.’

‘Wyvern? What exactly is wrong?’

‘The first load is scheduled to leave a week from today but the ship carrying the rig hasn’t arrived yet. She’s on board a special freighter, not on a regular run, and she’s been held up somewhere with customs problems. Wyvern’s road boss is here and he’s fairly sweating. He’s been going up and down the road checking gradients and tolerances and he’s not too happy with some of the things he’s seen. He’s back in town now, ready to supervise the unloading of the rig.’

‘The cargo?’

‘Oh, the transformers and boilers are all OK. It’s just that they’re a bit too big to carry up on a Land Rover. Do you want to meet him right away?’

‘No, I’ll see him when I come back from Bir Oassa. No point in our talking until there’s something to talk about. And the non-arrival of the rig isn’t a topic.’

I was telling him that I wasn’t going to interfere in his job and it made him happier to know it. We had been travelling up a wide boulevard and now emerged into a huge dusty square, complete with a vast statue of a gentleman whom I knew to be Maro Ofanwe sitting on a plinth in the middle. Why they hadn’t toppled his statue along with the original I couldn’t imagine. The car wove through the haphazard traffic and stopped at one of the last remaining bits of colonial architecture in sight, complete with peeling paint and sagging wooden balconies. It was, needless to say, my hotel.

‘Had a bit of a job getting you a room,’ Sutherland said, thus letting me know that he was not without the odd string to pull.

‘What’s the attraction? It’s hardly a tourist’s mecca.’

‘By God, it isn’t! The attraction is the oil. You’ll find Luard full of oil men – Americans, French, Russians, the lot. The Government has been eclectic in its franchises.’

As the car pulled up he went on, ‘Anything I can do for you right now?’

‘Nothing for today, thanks, John. I’ll book in and get changed and cleaned up, do some shopping, take a stroll. Tomorrow I’d like a car here at seven-thirty to take me to the airport. Are you free this evening?’

Sutherland had been anticipating that question, and indicated that he was indeed available. We arranged to meet for a drink and a light meal. Any of the things I’d observed or thought about during the day I could then try out on him. Local knowledge should never be neglected.

By nine the next morning I was flying along the coast following the first 200 miles of road to Lasulu where we were to land for refuelling before going on upcountry. There was more traffic on the road than I would have expected, but far less than a road of that class was designed to carry. I took out the small pair of binoculars I carried and studied it.

There were a few saloons and four-wheel drive vehicles, Suzukis and Land Rovers, and a fair number of junky old trucks. What was more surprising were the number of big trucks; thirty – and forty-tonners. I saw that one of them was carrying a load of drilling pipe. The next was a tanker, then another carrying, from the trail it left, drilling mud. This traffic was oil-generated and was taking supplies from Port Luard to the oilfields in the north.

I said to the pilot, a cheerful young man called Max Otterman, ‘Can you fly to the other side of Lasulu, please? Not far, say twenty miles. I want to look at the road over there.’

‘It peters out a mile or so beyond the town. But I’ll go on a way,’ he said.

Sure enough the road vanished into the miniature buildup around Lasulu, reemerging inland from the coast. On the continuation of the coastal stretch another road carried on northwards, less impressive than the earlier section but apparently perfectly usable. The small harbour did not look busy, but there were two or three fair-sized craft riding at anchor. Not easy to tell from the air, but it didn’t seem as though there was a building in Lasulu higher than three storeys. The endless frail smoke of shantytown cooking fires wreathed all about it.

Refuelling was done quickly at the airstrip, and then we turned inland. From Lasulu to Bir Oassa was about 800 miles and we flew over the broad strip of concrete thrusting incongruously through mangrove swamp, rain forest, savannah and the scrubby fringes of desert country. It had been built by Italian engineers, Japanese surveyors and a mixture of road crews with Russian money and had cost twice as much as it should, the surplus being siphoned off into a hundred unauthorized pockets and numbered accounts in Swiss banks – a truly international venture.

The Russians were not perturbed by the way their money was used. They were not penny-pinchers and, in fact, had worked hard to see that some of the surplus money went into the right pockets. It was a cheap way of buying friends in a country that was poised uncertainly and ready to topple East or West in any breeze. It was another piece laid on the chessboard of international diplomacy to fend off an identical move by another power.

The road drove through thick forest and then heaved itself up towards the sky, climbing the hills which edged the central plateau. Then it crossed the sea of grass and bush to the dry region of the desert and came to Bir Oassa where the towers of oil rigs made a newer, metal forest.

I spent two days in Bir Oassa talking to the men and the bosses, scouting about the workings, and cocking an ear for any sort of unrest or uneasiness. I found very little worthy of note and nothing untoward. I did have a complaint from Dick Slater, the chief steam engineer, who had been sent word of the change of schedule and didn’t like it.

‘I’ll have thirty steam fitters playing pontoon when they should be working,’ he said abrasively to me. ‘Why the bloody hell do they have to send the transformers first?’

It had all been explained to him but he was being wilful. I said, ‘Take it easy. It’s all been authorized by Geddes from London.’

‘London! What do they know about it? This Geddes doesn’t understand the first damn thing about it,’ he said. Slater wasn’t the man to be mealy-mouthed. I calmed him down – well, maybe halfway down – and went in search of other problems. It worried me when I couldn’t find any.

On the second day I had a phone call from Sutherland. On a crackling line full of static and clashing crossed wires his voice said faintly, ‘… Having a meeting with Ousemane and Daondo. Do you want …?’

‘Yes, I do want to sit in on it. You and who else?’ I was shouting.

‘… Kemp from Wyvern. Tomorrow morning …’

‘Has the rig come?’

‘… Unloading … came yesterday …’

‘I’ll be there.’

The meeting was held in a cool room in the Palace of Justice. The most important government man there was the Minister of the Interior, Hamah Ousemane, who presided over the meeting with a bland smile. He did not say much but left the talking to a short, slim man who was introduced as Zinsou Daondo. I couldn’t figure whether Ousemane didn’t understand what was going on, or understood and didn’t care: he displayed a splendid indifference.

Very surprising for a meeting of this kind was the presence of Major General Abram Kigonde, the army boss. Although he was not a member of the government he was a living reminder of Mao’s dictum that power grows out of the muzzle of a gun. No Nyalan government could survive without his nod of approval. At first I couldn’t see where he fitted in to this discussion on the moving of a big piece of power plant.

On our side there were myself, Sutherland, and Basil Kemp, who was a lean Englishman with a thin brown face stamped with tiredness and worry marks. He greeted me pleasantly enough, remembering our last encounter some few years before and appearing unperturbed by my presence. He probably had too much else on his plate already. I let Sutherland make the running and he addressed his remarks to the Minister while Daondo did the answering. It looked remarkably like a ventriloquist’s act but I found it hard to figure out who was the dummy. Kigonde kept a stiff silence.

After some amiable chitchat (not the weather, thank God) we got down to business and Sutherland outlined some routine matters before drawing Kemp into the discussion. ‘Could we have a map, please, Mister Kemp?’

Kemp placed a map on the big table and pointed out his bottlenecks.

‘We have to get out of Port Luard and through Lasulu. Both are big towns and to take a load like this through presents difficulties. It has been my experience in Europe that operations like this draw the crowds and I can’t see that it will be different here. We should appreciate a police escort.’

Daondo nodded. ‘It will certainly draw the crowds.’ He seemed pleased.

Kemp said, ‘In Europe we usually arrange to take these things through at extreme off-peak times. The small hours of the night are often best.’

This remark drew a frown from Daondo and I thought I detected the slightest of headshakes from the Minister. I became more alert.

Kigonde stirred and spoke for the first time, in a deep and beautifully modulated voice. ‘You will certainly have an escort, Mister Kemp – but not the police. I am putting an army detachment at your service.’ He leaned forward and pressed a button, the door of the room opened, and a smartly dressed officer strode towards the table. ‘This is Captain Ismail Sadiq who will command the escort.’