Vultures in the Wind

by Peter Rimmer

Walking up the flagstone path, he found the old man’s bench and sat, looking out over the kilometres of jungle, with his gun still at the ready. There was only one road to the estate and the seat gave him a view of the road where it still cut through the rainforest. Monkeys chattered, competing with the tree-frogs and the crickets. The Simbas had used the road to attack the old man and his wife, and had departed with all the food they could carry. Through the trees, the great house showed none of the signs brought about by neglect. He recognised Archie’s walk with the slight limp, so he took his hand from the gun and waited for his friend.

  “Thought I’d find you here. Beautiful, Kuchinski. Beautiful, and oh so dangerous.” Archie sat down beside him on the bench, propping his FN rifle next to his knee, a habit that had twice saved their lives.

  “Not really,” replied Lucky, still soaking in the beauty. “He lived here without danger for eighty years. Better to die from a bullet than to decay back to second childhood… That truck’s never going to work. Rust is worse in this humidity than Durban. We’ll have to walk out, Archie. Now we have the maps, we know where to go. Either we leave without the gold or stay with the gold.”

  “We can’t stay. We’ll bury the coins and come back when the country’s quiet.”

  “Can you walk on that leg for so many kilometres?”

  “I’ll have to.”

  “You know something, Arch, I haven’t been bored but I sometimes think idle, carefree boredom must be the best condition of life.”

  Matthew Gray drove into Elisabethville three days after Lucky and Archie walked away from the great house. A stop at the police station gave them the headquarters of the Fifth Commando, and Matthew alone was interviewed by Major Hoare, the commanding officer.

  “They’re dead or deserted. More likely dead by now. Four months since the fire-fight and we haven’t heard… And I don’t want you rushing up to Kasai and expecting me to pull you out. Enough trouble with the nuns and priests. Why do do-gooders always think they’re appreciated? Worst thing you ever do a man is a favour.”

  “Where was the fire-fight?” asked Matthew.

  “About eighty kilometres from one of the coffee estates. They’re all abandoned. No one will ever drink coffee off these bushes again. There’s no food, no law and no profit in that area. Go back to Johannesburg. You are wasting my time,” stated Major Hoare curtly.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “So am I, Mister Gray. I like your safari gear. Must have cost a fortune. What do you do?”

  “I’m an insurance broker.”

  Hoare did not even bother to shake his hand but went back to the hated paper-work on his desk.

  Matthew and Aldo spoke to three men who had been in the same contact, and each of them said that Archie and Lucky were presumed dead. “And if they’re not, they’ll wish they were.”

  At the end of a week, Hoare’s point was as true as it was painful. Matthew was out of his depth, and even Aldo said driving around in circles looking for dead men in Simba country was mere stupidity.

  At the same time as a dejected Matthew arrived back in Johannesburg to throw himself back into his business, Archie and Lucky reached the Sankuru River, ninety kilometres northwest of the deserted house. They were dressed in the old man’s clothes, and each was wearing a planter’s hat that belonged to another age. They had kept their rifles but discarded the military uniforms.

  Elisabethville to the south was controlled by the mercenary armies, as big a problem for Archie as the marauding Simba and Baluba. Months in the forest had shown them how to see without being seen. Since leaving the house and heading for the river, nothing had passed their way. It took them a day to make a crude raft to start the journey that would take them to the Congo River, the mightiest waterway in Africa.

  Lucky had compromised with Archie, and both carried fourteen kilogram’s in weight of gold coins strapped around their waists next to the skin in leather money bags they had fashioned before leaving the house to the jungle. Watching for crocodile and hippopotami, they pushed their craft out into the stream and felt the current take the logs they had lashed together with strips of bark and creepers. The water tightened the straps, breaking half of them, but the logs stayed together. The bow-saw with three spare blades was lashed to the centre log. Sixty kilometres on their journey, they heard the first rapids and with crude oars drove the sluggish raft in to the shore before the current was able to pull too fast for them to control their direction. With the bow-saw and their packs, they passed by the raging white water, threading their way along the bank, leaving the first of their three rafts behind.

  “This is going to be the longest journey of our lives,” shouted Archie above the roar of the water. “But at least we know where we are going.”

  It took them a month to reach the Congo River, where they turned west on the great expanse of the big waters. At Leopoldville they mingled with the civilians from the United Nations peace-keeping force, Archie telling anyone who asked that they were journalists for the Daily Telegraph. They bought clothes with a gold coin and two air tickets with five more. They were leaving the life of mercenaries for Europe, making a lifelong promise to return and retrieve the sack of gold.

  In London at the end of 1962, with the coins they carried properly valued, they were richer than at any other time in their lives. While they waited for the Congo to recover from the civil war, they took a flat and prepared to enjoy themselves.

  The first call they made on the telephone from their new flat was to Johannesburg. They were a little drunk, as they had been ever since getting the coins through the customs at London airport. The receptionist put them through to Sunny, who informed them that Matthew was overseas.

  “Where is he?”

  “He’s in London, at the Dorchester.”

  “I love you.”

  Instead of finding his friends in the jungle of equatorial Africa, Matthew found them waiting for him in the foyer of the Dorchester Hotel. For the first time in his business life Matthew was unfit to work the following day. His journey to the Congo had not been a waste of time. The bond his search had created was now unbreakable.

  Matthew’s conviction that a badly insured client would be better advised either to put his insurance premiums in his own bank account or to insure correctly, coupled with his shares for premiums, was attractive to industrial clients. Their management had neither the time nor knowledge to ensure that their enterprises were properly covered.

  To prevent his staff from making mistakes, Matthew installed a series of check-lists that were shown to him by individual account executives every Monday morning or flown to him from his branches around the world. Every day he read through flimsy copies of all letters sent out by his staff. Each night he went to bed with a note pad and pen beside his bed so that when his eyes pinged open at night and his mind gnawed at a problem he could write it down, get it out of his mind and hopefully return to sleep. There were often two pages of notes by the time he made his first cup of tea in the morning and sat at his desk in his flat to write down all the jobs he had to do for the day.

  Every one of his executives was required to carry a notebook so that when something came to mind it was committed to paper. Regularly, he called for these pads and when his staff went home, he stayed in his office and went through the work on their desks, in their drawers and deep in the filing cabinets. Matthew ignored the antagonism his paranoia caused but the mistakes he corrected vindicated his rudeness. When the uninsured risk came to light with a claim, the client would blame Matthew, owner of the company that bore his name, not the account executive.

  The product that finally upset the short term insurance industry was one Matthew found in America, where it was common for the oil companies to sponsor insurance brokers. The insurance target was the gas station that flew the oil company’s flag but was owned independently. Being small in the way of business, the gas station owner was unable to buy competitive health care, pension and casualty insurance unless the oi
l company developed with a broker an umbrella programme that would couple his purchasing power with the other independents that pumped the same brand of petrol.

  When Matthew introduced the programme to South Africa, he made his selected carrier, the company which would underwrite the risk but not handle the paperwork or issue individual policies, sign an exclusive agreement with Gray Associates. When Matthew’s product hit the market through the sponsorship of four oil companies simultaneously, his opposition was stunned.

  The group programme cut the premium of petrol stations by almost half. Before, when a competing broker attacked an account, the holding broker was able to offer his client the new rate of premium from the new company, it being understood that insurance companies offered the same rates to all incorporated brokers. Matthew had not been prepared to do the other brokers’ work for them and the exclusive carrier, common practice in America, was the result.

  This time Matthew had overstepped the mark and antagonised every broker and insurance company but one in the country. His friend who had paid for the model’s plastic surgery gave him a friendly warning: “Not my company, Matthew. Good luck to you. You offered me the scheme and I turned it down. But I’ll tell you this in all earnest. The others won’t tolerate any attack on close to six per cent of the nation’s short-term insurance premiums. They’re after you. You’re breaking their rice bowls. Drop your garage programme before you get hurt. There are times when tactical retreats pay large dividends. This one’s too big all at once. Come in somewhere else at a small market.”

  Matthew, overworked to the point of breaking, ignored his friend’s advice. He was to regret it.

  During the Easter recess, while Matthew was in America, disaster struck Gray Associates. Person or persons unknown broke into the head office accounts department and removed three locked filing cabinets, containing eighty per cent of the accounts records. If the burglars had waited another month until the company moved from mechanised accounting to mainframe computer, the effect of the loss would have been minimal. As it was, the company was unable to send out client statements, reconcile insurance company statements or produce a balance sheet without going back to the files in each account executive office throughout South Africa to recreate the company’s general ledger.

  Matthew flew back to face the biggest crisis of his life. The police found not a fingerprint, not a clue. In years to come, not a trace of the documents, the perpetrators or the filing cabinets was ever found. Matthew heard not even a rumour. What he found was a terrible silence.

  Finally, a team from the auditors put the accounts back to normal. It took three months and drained the bank account of Grays, paying what the insurance companies said they were owed with little money coming in from clients. They came through and began to build again, but not before Matthew relinquished his exclusive underwriting authority for his garage programme.

  Selecting the life insurance company that provided full investment disclosure guaranteeing not to increase deduction percentages during the life of the pension, Matthew went back to his oil companies with a proposal to offer the petrol station owners and their staff a pension fund with benefits equal to those offered by the oil companies to their salaried staff, benefits considerably better than those available in the insurance market to individuals purchasing retirement annuities. The fact that not all the short-term business was going through Gray Associates mattered little to the oil companies. With bulk buying, they had reduced the petrol station premiums.

  The pension plan was given full sponsorship, letters going out from Gray’s offices on special notepaper showing the Gray and oil company logos. Very deliberately, Matthew obtained exclusive rights to the brokerage on any pension fund placed on the plan. The other brokers were welcome to use the pension plan, only they would not receive commission. Every branch manager, account executive and trainee account executive was trained to present the programme. Three days after the letters arrived, the petrol stations received phone calls requesting appointments. Gray’s hit the market with every available member of staff. The appointment success rate was ninety-four per cent and the close rate fifty per cent. Before Matthew’s competitors had time to realise the implications, Gray’s were the top new business broker in the country.

  As Matthew had planned it, it was the life insurance offices that reacted. Luke Mbeki was not available and this time the call came from Matthew’s godfather directly.

  “Matthew, I want to see you in my office.”

  “I’m very busy with my oil company programme.”

  “Tomorrow at ten o’clock.”

  Matthew surmised his godfather was very annoyed, and smiled with satisfaction when he put down the phone. The call had come from Security Life sixty days after the launch.

  The introductions in the office were no different.

  “Matthew, what the hell are you doing?”

  “Making a pisspot full of money.”

  “Last time they burgled your general ledger.”

  “You know about that? So it was the insurance companies.”

  “I have no idea who it was, only that it happened. This time you are trying to force full disclosure from all the Life companies. Luke told you why that is impossible.” The memory of Luke hung with them for a moment.

  “Progress, Mister Todd. Status quos in business or politics do not last.”

  “I will not have my godson creating such a hiatus in the insurance industry,” snapped Mr Todd. “Once is enough.”

  “Are you sure you knew nothing about that break-in over Easter? Are you saying my methods benefit my clients and not you? Are you telling me you are price-rigging and, because you generate so much money to lend the government, they keep quiet? Are you saying you’re right and I’m wrong?” There was silence as they glared at each other.

  Matthew continued. “Now, what I think is that your current arm-twisting is the unjust face of capitalism, that what you are threatening me with is not the real free-market system, but the capitalist system according to the fat-cat bankers and insurance companies. You know something, I don’t like insurance anymore.”

  “Then get out of the industry.”

  “Buy me out.”

  “How much do you want?”

  “For my sixty-seven point one per cent of Gray Associates, calculated at two and a half years’ annual brokerage income, six point three million rand in cash. Now, if you will excuse me. The two oil companies not on our programme wish to see me, and I have an appointment with the railway workers union about a fully disclosed pension fund. I am also thinking of forming my own insurance company, and have an option to purchase the President Insurance Company and a life office that prefer to remain anonymous. If you buy me out by twelve noon tomorrow, I will sign a five-year agreement to keep out of the insurance industry.”

  Sunny Tupper had not gone into the office the day after the take-over. She was sick to the pit of her stomach. She was sure that life had passed her by; worse, she had seen the hurt in Matthew’s eyes, not the triumph he was trying to portray for the benefit of his staff.

  The industry had wanted him out and now they had succeeded, but in the process they had also succeeded in ruining her life and those of most of the staff. A young, independent company was fun. Working for Security Life, one might as well join the civil service. She no longer even had a job to enjoy, let alone hopes for the future – the hope that one day he would fall in love with her and return the burning passion that was eating her life.

  When she came back after wallowing in self-pity, she found Matthew cleaning out his desk.

  “Leaving so soon?” she asked.

  “I never did like working for other people. What are you going to do, Sunny? You going to stay on?”

  “I’m going back to England.”

  “Why?”

  “Oh, Matt, are you really that stupid? I’ve been in love with you for seven years.”

  Matthew stared in surprise for a moment. “Well, at least rule seve
n doesn’t apply anymore.” In his embarrassment he tried to make a joke of it. “You’ve done well with your shares. Give you a good start.”

  “Didn’t you hear?”

  “Sunny, I’m hollow inside. Empty. Nothing. I’ve got nothing to return. I don’t even know what I’m going to do this afternoon.”

  “Take me to lunch, to dinner.”

  “That’s a pleasure, Sunny. You know that.”

  “As a date.”

  “I’m not too good at dating people these days,” Matthew excused himself. “Maybe I’ll visit London. There’s Lucky and Arch. Rumour has it Luke’s in London working for the ANC… I think I want to be alone, Sunny. For a while. I’ll take a rain check. I’ll find you in London if I come over. I want to walk the beach and find out where I am. I’m only thirty-three… Seems such a waste of effort.”

  He was looking round his office. He shook his head and went back to emptying the last of the drawers. “Leave your London number with Life Security, Sunny. And thanks for the years. Best damn secretary a man ever had, and when you came you couldn’t even type… Do you know what’s happened to that model car that was on top of my desk? Sunny?” He closed the last drawer and looked up. She was gone.

  “Now I really am on my own.” said Matthew Gray. He hunched his shoulders and left his office for the last time, rubbing the side of his hand along the big sign by the lift: “Gray Associates (Pty) Ltd. Incorporated Insurance Brokers.”

  Book Two

  1

  Matthew Gray bent forward against his seat belt to look out of the small window of the Boeing 707 at the approaching runway at Heathrow airport, London. He watched, fascinated, as the big wings levelled, taking the air pressure from the ground, and the aircraft touched the tarmac twice before running smoothly. As the South African Airways pilot put all four engines into reverse, Matthew sat back into his seat letting the nervousness of arrival take pleasant control as expectation and apprehension mingled with the reality of arriving in a foreign country.