25
stage?”
A look of genuine shame spread across Robert’s face.
“You can believe me or not,” Robert continued. “But I am only
just hearing about the other bids myself. Apparently the Chinese have made the government an offer that they could not ignore. I am sorry, but their bid is now on the table.”
Jack shook his head in disbelief. “ And what in the hell is this magical, eleventh hour offer? Two golden egg laying geese and a handful of magic beans?”
“Two state-of-the-art nuclear power stations and a contract to operate and maintain them for the next twenty years,” Robert added. “They will cost us twenty five percent less than what you have quoted, and they will accept minerals and coal in part payment.”
Jack started to grin. This annoyed Robert.
“You find this funny Jack?” Robert snarled. “Maybe I should walk away now and tell my government that we will accept the offer from Beijing?”
“They want coal?” Jack asked. “Why do they want coal?”
“Eh... I would assume that it will be used to fuel their power stations,” Robert replied.
“Exactly Robert. They want your coal to burn in their power stations,” Jack explained. “It doesn’t make any sense. If they need energy why don’t they build and run the two nuclear power stations in China? Why would they bring coal all the way from South Africa? Think it through Robert, for god’s sake.”
Robert looked even more agitated and he leaned forwards in his chair towards Jack. The thug from the slums took control of him for a moment as he hissed at Jack in a low voice.
“Why don’t you explain it to me, Jack.”
“It’s simple. Like everything else made in China their nuclear power stations are cheap rip-offs of better quality Western technology. This isn’t some cheap radio made in China that you can simply chuck in the bin once it stops working. When these plants start to break down large parts of this country will start glowing in the dark.”
“You would say that, Jack,” Robert chided.
“I would say that because it happens to be the truth.”
“I have never heard of t here ever being an accident at a Chinese nuclear power plant,” Robert protested.
“For goodness sake Robert, you know that they would never own up to anything like that. I have some friends in government back home who keep me informed about all of our competitors. According to them, there have been at least fifteen major incidents at nuclear installations in the past ten years. It is only a matter of time before an accident so large takes place that it is impossible for them to hide it from the world. Some of the most recent reports suggest that the entire nuclear power project in China has been put into permanent maintenance mode until a complete overhaul has been carried out. They are offering you such good terms because it is good for them. They will get the coal that they so badly need, and they will also get the chance to iron out the kinks in their flawed power plant designs at a safe distance from Chinese cities.”
“A nice fiction, Jack, but the numbers that they are quoting make it very hard for my government to turn them down. It is not only business, it is securing the energy needs of this country for a generation.”
Jack sat back in his chair and he sighed. The conversation was going exactly how he had been expecting. None of the information that Robert was telling him was new. All information in South Africa was for sale, and at very reasonable prices. “Ten percent less,” Jack said, eventually. “Assuming the board agrees with me and doesn’t throw me out of that window.”
Robert looked at the other men in the group. One by one they all nodded with approval. Robert grinned widely.
“It would appear that we have an agreement,” Robert said.
“I do believe that I have heard that somewhere before, Robert,” Jack said, with a hint of resentment.
Robert got to his feet.
“Come now Jack, even the very best of friends do not always see eye to eye at all times. It is how we deal with those little bumps in the road that truly mark the real friendships.”
“That and a signed contract,” Jack said.
“As usual, Jack, it has been a pleasure doing business with you. We have to go. I have a little bit of bad news to pass on to a group of China men. Let us hope they don’t crack.”
Robert grinned widely, as did the sycophants around him. Jack smiled politely at the terrible joke. They exchanged handshakes once again and with the same haste that the group had entered his office, they left. Jack’s PA returned the furniture to the side of the room, and then she closed the double doors as she left his office. Jack sat down on his high back leather chair and he grinned. It was almost too easy. He swung the chair around and he looked out across the city. The sun had set on the old British Empire decades ago and Britain as a world leader was a distant memory. What the rest of the world had yet to realise was that Britain was once again building an empire. The army may have been replaced by financiers and spies but they were every bit as effective, perhaps more so. The deal that Jack had just secured meant that Britain now had control over a large part of South Africa’s future energy needs, and in turn, she had a large hold over South Africa.
This benign form of empire building suited Jack just fine. He had been all over the world and he had encountered many different forms of government. As flawed as the British system was, it was immeasurably better than many of those other forms of government. It had been a good meeting, and the scary stories that he had told them about the Chinese nuclear power industry contained more truth than fiction. Once China had her claws into South African resources she would want more and more. China was an insatiable monster and Africa was but a meal waiting to be swallowed whole.
Jack closed his eyes and he leaned back in the seat. He was content. As he drifted towards a state of semi consciousness he was violently pulled back into the real world. He couldn’t be sure which came first, the low growl from the explosion, or the sudden, yet short lived shaking of the building which accompanied it. Jack jumped out of his chair and he ran over to the window. He had been close to a few explosions in his time and that blast felt as if it was very close indeed. The people down on the street below were running away from his building. There was a dust cloud lazily making its way down the street and it too looked as if it was coming from his building—from the basement level car park, to be precise. The doors to his office opened and Jack
turned to face his PA in a state of shock.
“What the hell happened?” Jack asked, as he moved across the room to meet her. He took her by the shoulders and repeated the question. “What is going on?”
“There... There was an explosion in the car park.. There are many people dead. They think that it might have been caused by a bomb.”
29
1
The Dust Settles
Jack looked at his PA for answers. She had none. The woman, who was in her mid-twenties, and employed by Jack not entirely for her intellectual acumen, looked as if she might burst into tears at any moment; or scream the place down. Jack quickly moved to distract her—he had no time to deal with a hysterical woman, no matter how pretty she was.
It was a bomb. Jack’s mind quickly slipped into full professional mode as he asked himself who, and why. The who and why were important in those moments as the answer to those questions would map out what was going to happen next—a lone assassination and they were safe—a terrorist group meant that the bomb may only be the first of many. Top of that list of suspects were the Islamic militants. There were more than a dozen such groups operating in Africa and any one of them would have been willing to blow a company such as his back to the West. South Africa may not have been a typical stronghold for such groups with their extreme ideologies, but as the gateway to the continent, and a hub for Western military and business interests in the region, it wasn’t hard to take that leap.
Then there were the Chinese. It wasn’t beyond the realms of
possibility that they had been listening in to the conversation that had just taken place in the office, and they didn’t like how it had turned
out. If Robert and the others were dead then the deal that the Chinese had with the government would still be in place. Robert held all of the cards and there would not be a back up in—no one would simply step into his shoes as most of the deals he carried out were done inside his head until it was time to commit them to a final contract, and he never shared that information (or at least all of it) with anyone. If it was the Chinese then Jack’s life was now in grave danger—they would never take the risk that the deal would simply die with Robert. If it was a militant Islamic group then everyone’s life was now in danger— they rarely settled for one bomb. Their normal MO was to set off one bomb then wait ten or fifteen minutes and set off another one in the same area, just as people were massing to help the injured from the first explosion.
Jack grabbed his PA firmly by the arm and he led her out of the office towards the lifts. If she held any notions of Jack comforting her in her time of emotional need, his firm actions as he dragged her towards the lifts put an end to them. The door to one of the lifts was already open and Jack stepped inside, pulling the reluctant woman with him. The buttons on the console inside the lift were all flashing and a very low-pitched warning alarm was beeping lethargically. Damn it, Jack thought. In an emergency the lifts were automatically sent to the nearest safe stop and then disabled. alarm began to sound. It had went off and it took them that long to start an evacuation of the building—the very thought of such ineptitude sent a shudder racing down Jack’s spine—a second bomb would surely cause carnage, he thought. Jack hated the high-pitched wail from the alarm—it was unnecessarily loud and served only to distract and disorientate people in a real emergency. As his frustration mounted he dragged the woman, a little more forcefully, towards the stairwell. The stairwell at the side of the building was encased in glass and this gave them a perfect view of the street below. Even though they were looking out on the side of the building, away from where Jack assumed the bomb had gone off, they could still see people running in all directions as they left the building. Police, fire crews and paramedics were streaming towards the building from all directions. The glass in the building was toughened and could easily withstand an explosion, but every so often, as they descended the
31 As they stepped out of the lift the fire been several minutes since the bomb staircase they came across glass from a window that had been blasted out—each floor had at least two windows made from normal glass which could be broken in an emergency. Before that day Jack never knew exactly where those escape routes were—now they were clearly marked as the shards of broken glass gleamed and sparkled in the strong sunlight that was baking the stairwell.
Looking down from the top of the stairs it was very hard to tell that anything significant had just happened at the bottom of the building, apart from the odd pane of broken glass here and there, but as they descended the staircase the very distinct smell of burnt fuel and dust thickened the air. Jack’s PA choked on the thick atmosphere—on another occasion he may have stopped to comfort and reassure her, but as things stood he still didn’t know just how much danger they were in at that moment.
They ran into one of the security guards in the foyer. The man was sweating profusely as he directed the steady stream of bewildered workers out of the building. Jack gave his PA a gentle shove in the direction of the main entrance before walking up to the security guard to find out what had happened. When his PA got to the main entrance she looked back at her boss. They exchanged looks and Jack gave her a reassuring smile that was enough to send her on her way out of the building into the perceived safety of the street. Jack turned to the security guard. Jack didn’t have to ask the man if the explosion had been caused by a bomb—the smell of burnt oil in the air was a clear indication that the explosion was no accident. Jack also thought that he could detect the faint trace of burning sulphur, which if correct, would point towards a non-commercial explosive being used to detonate the main device. Such a device would also point in the direction of an Islamic group. This thought made his heart pound faster as he braced himself for a second explosion. Logic and reason took hold again as he probed another explanation for the smell of burning sulphur. If the bomb set fire to vehicles then the sulphur used to vulcanise the rubber in the tyres could account for what he smelt. It was a stretch but it was enough to convince the logical side of his brain to let the rest of his body investigate further.
“How bad is it?” Jack asked. The man wiped the sweat away from his brow. The involuntary action smeared dirt across his forehead giving the slightly chubby guard the appearance of a rather lazy tribal warrior.
“We can’t tell yet, but it looks like a few people have been killed. The building itself appears structurally sound but we won’t know for sure until it has been properly assessed,” explained the man.
Jack nodded to the man and then he walked towards a side door which led to the underground car park, where he assumed the bomb had detonated. The security guard paused for a moment as if to protest before remembering his place as he returned to what he had been doing.
The lights in the underground car park had been knocked off in the blast and the only light permeating the darkness was coming from the street entrance at the front of the building—the escape route that had been used by those fleeing from that part of the building. Half a dozen emergency workers were already in the car park tending to the injured and Jack quickly sought them out as he tried to work out who had been killed in the attack. In the very heart of the car park the twisted wrecks of several vehicles were marking the focal point of their efforts.
As he approached the rescue workers Jack mentally adjusted his perception in an effort to avoid dealing with the worst of the carnage. There were many suspicious lumps of a substance that looked a lot like burnt meat lying around the floor—until this was over they would remain nothing more than lumps of burnt meat in Jack’s mind. Jack’s spirits lifted a little as he recognized the man lying on the ground as the paramedics worked on him—it was Robert. Jack moved as close to him as he could before walking into an angry glance from one of the emergency workers which told him in no uncertain terms to keep the hell back.
“What happened?” Jack asked, as he looked down at Robert. The same paramedic flashed Jack another angry look. It was not the time or the place for an inquisition and every stupid question that was asked would only delay help to other injured people.
“I was talking to one of my cousins who I met down here in the car park. The others from your office were waiting in the cars. Without warning the car that I was to travel in exploded. I was knocked off my feet. I got back up again and I ran over to the burning cars to see if there was anything that I could do for them. That’s when the petrol tank of a nearby car exploded. That blast caught me worse than the big explosion,” Robert’s voice grew weaker. “I caught some shrapnel.” Robert looked down at his torso. Blood was seeping out of a fist
wound in his side. Jack was no medical expert but he had dealt with enough wounds in his time to know that Robert’s injury was not life threatening, as long as he got the proper medical attention. “A flesh wound, old friend,” Jack said.
Robert smiled.
“I had a feeling that you were going to say something like that,
Jack.”
“Do you have any idea who might have done this?” asked Jack. Robert shook his head.
“If you had asked me earlier who I thought might do something
like this, I would have said you. But even you Jack wouldn’t be crazy enough to try to blow up a building that you were still inside,” Robert added.
“It’s nice to know that you have such a high opinion of me,” Jack said, with a smile.
The paramedics had almost completed their emergency treatment and they got ready to move Robert to the back of a waiting ambulance which had only just come to a stop at th
e main street entrance.
“Do you want me to go with you to the hospital?” Jack asked.
Jack wasn’t overly concerned if Robert lived or died but he wanted to find out who tried to blow him to bits. Regardless of what Robert had to say, it was quite clear to Jack that Robert was hiding something from him.
“No Jack, I would prefer if you would stay here and find out as much as you can and then come to see me later,” Robert said.
Jack smiled warmly at Robert to give the impression that he was being fooled by the diversionary request. Robert had some other reason why he didn’t want Jack to go with him to the hospital and Jack had the strong suspicion that reason had a lot to do with the bomb. If Robert did suspect someone of planting the bomb then he, or they,
34
were no longer safe. If they were still in the country then they would soon disappear, permanently, and if they had already slipped through South Africa’s notoriously porous borders then Robert would be sure to hunt them down no matter how far they travelled. The settling of such scores in other countries was never a straightforward pursuit, but even the UK government would understand the need for such a reckoning, given the circumstances.
Jack stood to one side as the paramedics stretchered Robert out of the car park into the street. For a brief moment Jack found himself completely alone in the car park. The dust thrown up by the blast still hung heavily in the air and the smell of fuel remained potent. He carefully made his way through the maze of wreckage in the hope that he might come across another injured person—perhaps knocked unconscious by the blast—who knew more about what was going on than Robert pretended not to know. There were no further signs of life. That Robert was treated last meant that his condition was not as serious as the others who were carried to safety before him—or it could have meant that his condition was so bad that they didn’t believe that he could be saved—ethics mean that every injured person had the right to be treated but pragmatism in incidents such as that mean that the main aim was to save as many someone who was quite clearly other people who might be saved if their injuries are treated in time simply made sense—except to the seriously injured person and their loved ones.
Deadly States (Seaforth Files by Nicholas P Clark Book 2) Page 4