by Peter Tonkin
The drought was in its third year now and the world was just beginning to wake up to it. Because Julius Karanga had achieved so much so independently in the sixties and seventies and because his cabinet had been wiped out with him, the United Nations had few contacts in Mau, and so even that organisation, so widely experienced in the causes and results of disaster, was only just beginning to wake up to it. And there was much to wake up to here. The whole N’Kuru nation on the move. The better part of five million people seemingly mere weeks away from death as the last of the food and water trickled away. The desperate Kyoga government on the verge of collapse, relying on the increasingly uncontrollable army to keep an impossible situation under control. A number of general officers building well-armed, dangerous power bases, ready to grasp control. The Lions set to ‘liberate’ the country by any method, no matter how brutal, and at any price, no matter how high. The neighbouring states quietly massing their own armies along the frontiers, all set to snap it up, for Mawanga was the best harbour on the western coast, and that alone would make invasion worthwhile.
It was going to be Somalia and Rwanda all over again and at the moment, it seemed, the only person in the world who could see it coming was sitting naked in a shower in the Mawanga Hilton, crying because she had just taken a shower.
~ * ~
SOUTH
THE LABRADOR SEA
Perched on my city office-stool
I watched in envy while a cool
And lucky carter handled ice…
And I was wandering in a trice
Far from the grey and grimy heat
Of that intolerable street
O’er sapphire berg and emerald floe
Beneath the still cold ruby glow
Of everlasting Polar night…
W. W. Gibson, The Ice Cart
~ * ~
Chapter Nine
Richard Mariner stepped out of the elevator onto the 38th floor of the United Nations building in New York and followed a secretary called Veronica down the corridor towards the offices of the Secretary-General, dripping onto the carpet as he went. ‘As you know,’ Veronica continued, ‘the Secretary-General is in Oxford at the moment, preparing to address the Union,’ she was a Girton girl herself, he had discovered, ‘and so you will be seeing the Executive Assistant first before talking to the Club.’
His head was whirling. He was soaking, storm-battered, airsick, jet-lagged and exhausted. Most of this was going over his head and he hoped to God he would soon be talking to someone who made more sense.
‘The Executive Assistant is waiting for you in the Chef de Cabinet’s office,’ she explained brightly. The introduction of another language, even when it was simply a job title, just added to his confusion. He was going to have to pull himself together as a matter of urgency here. He had the contract for the hire of his supertankers in his briefcase and, although the detail was a matter for lawyers, he was going to have to be clear about exactly what he was committing his company, ships and crews to.
Veronica stopped and he nearly collided with her. She opened a dark panelled door and ushered him in. ‘Captain Mariner,’ she announced, and left, closing the door behind her.
The office was large and comfortably furnished. There were two people waiting in it and both of them rose as he entered. There was a window along one wall with a beautiful view over the river and the city beyond. As he entered, the wide picture was lit by a distant fork of lightning which seemed to illuminate every single raindrop. The thunder, like the storm-force wind, was kept at bay by the double glazing. All he really noticed was the jug of coffee steaming fragrantly on the Chef de Cabinet’s desk. A quiet, melodious voice, deepened by an invisible but clearly audible smile, said, ‘Coffee first and introductions later, I think. Please sit down, Captain Mariner, and tell me, how do you like it?’
Richard collapsed into a deep, deeply comfortable armchair. ‘Black, no sugar, please,’ he answered.
Immediately, a long hand, the colour of café au lait half covered by a red and gold silk garment of some kind, placed a brimming cup of black liquid in his hand. He looked up thankfully into a pair of breathtaking almond eyes the colour of the coffee in his cup, and he nearly spilt it.
‘No, Captain, sit where you are and drink your coffee,’ said that laughing, musical voice and, having poured herself a cup as well, Dr Indira Dyal, Executive Assistant to the Secretary-General of the United Nations, sat in an armchair at his side. ‘Mr Aziz prefers his in the Turkish style, you will observe,’ Dr Dyal continued as the slight man behind the desk raised a tiny cup to his lips.
Mohammed Aziz, Chef de Cabinet to the Secretary-General, nodded to Richard as he sipped, the eyes behind his pebble glasses crinkling to show that he, too, was indulgently amused by the situation.
The coffee hit Richard’s system like an antidepressant drug. After the first few sips of the heavenly liquid, his head began to clear and his horizons to expand. He began to appreciate the fine furnishings of Mr Aziz’s office. He registered the view from the wide window, though from this angle it consisted mainly of the tops of skyscrapers, the bottoms of storm clouds and wild sheets of teeming rain hurled hither and yon by the wind. Storm force ten at the very least, he thought, and not for the first time that day. Another couple of sips and he felt able to turn to face his hostess; the possibility of reasoned communication seemed not too remote after all.
Dr Dyal sat, her back ramrod straight, perched on the very edge of the chair beside him. Her tall body was swathed in a sari of red and gold silk so bright it seemed to glow. Part of it fell across her head to cover her hair, but the material was so fine that it did little to conceal the black locks, streaked with silver and drawn severely back into a bun. She wore little make-up and needed none. The huge almond eyes, fringed with extravagant lashes under delicate black brows, emphasised the aquiline fineness of her nose; the patrician curve of her nostrils seemed at odds with the vivid fullness of her lips. Before accepting her post with the United Nations, Indira Dyal had enjoyed the reputation of being the most beautiful politician on the Indian subcontinent. Or anywhere else, for that matter, thought Richard.
The same could not quite be said for Mohammed Aziz, the Moroccan Chef de Cabinet. He was an outstanding, world-class politician whose acumen and knowledge, especially about Africa, were legendary; but he looked very much as if he should have been selling camels in the kasbah at Marrakesh. Except for the glasses and the suit, he was very much the sort of wiry, woolly-haired, gap-toothed, wise-eyed street Arab on whom the commerce of the whole Middle East had turned since the dawn of time.
‘Are you with us, Captain Mariner?’ he asked as Richard emptied his cup.
‘I do apologise, Mr Aziz, Dr Dyal,’ said Richard. ‘The flight was dreadful and very late indeed. And getting a cab out from Kennedy in the rain . . .’ He shrugged.
‘You should have got the helicopter.’
‘It’s been grounded until the storm moderates.’
‘Ah. Of course.’
Lightning pounced down outside the window again, seemingly dangerously near.
‘Still,’ said Dr Dyal, ‘you are here now, Captain, and under the circumstances, you seem to have performed a miracle to be so precisely on time.’
‘I am extremely keen to do business with you,’ he answered drily.
Dyal and Aziz exchanged a long glance which was by no means disapproving. ‘Good,’ said Dr Dyal. ‘And I am pleased that we seem to be putting all our cards on the table. I like straight talking and so, I know, does Mr Aziz.’
‘The draft contract seems quite satisfactory to you?’ the Moroccan probed gently.
‘In general, yes indeed. You have offered a standard open-ended charter at competitive but realistic rates. We supply six ships and three crews. You supply three crews and the personnel on the ice itself. Working with the people on the ice under the command of Dr Colin Ross, we are contracted to secure the iceberg in the manner we deem most practical and guide it at a
speed we find most feasible along a course which we decide but which we must refer to you in case we need political clearance of any kind, to a destination on the west coast of equatorial Africa to be designated by yourselves. Once there, we are to make it safe by whatever manner we deem best and assist, if possible, in the bringing ashore of either ice or water. You are prepared to take overall responsibility for fuelling, provisioning and insuring the enterprise. All we have to do is get our ships to the iceberg, get the iceberg to wherever you decide, and help whoever may be waiting there to get it ashore and use it.’
‘That about sums it up,’ said Aziz.
Dr Dyal nodded in agreement. There was the slightest of smiles lifting the corners of her lips; she was impressed with the accuracy of Richard’s breakdown of the contract, especially as it had been delivered from memory.
‘You are aware that it is more than a hundred kilometres long.’
‘We have Dr Ross’s detailed report,’ answered Aziz.
‘Fifteen kilometres wide.’
‘Yes.’
‘And that it is currently about nine hundred metres deep.’
‘As I say, we have the report...’
‘Well, I cannot accept the contract without saying that I personally feel there is nowhere on the African coast where you will be able to get it ashore. Or even near the shore. Not near enough to do any good, anyway.’
This time it was Dr Dyal who spoke, and her voice had lost that laugh. ‘No, Captain Mariner,’ she said seriously, ‘there I must disagree with you. We have a feasibility study which suggests that there is just one place where we could get something that large into a position where it could do some good. And it so happens that this place needs it the most at the moment.’ She rose, and Richard automatically rose with her.
‘Now that we have finished our coffee and our preliminary chat, I’m sure you’d like to freshen up,’ she said. ‘And then I’d like you to meet the Mau Club.’
~ * ~
Richard shook the water off his hands then thought again, cupped them, filled them with water and dashed the glorious coolness up into his face, running his hands up over his forehead and back into his hair. He straightened and looked at himself in the mirror. Five minutes and he would be back on mainline. He stooped and filled his hands again.
He knew about the Congo Club in the sixties, that group of men in the United Nations who had overseen their involvement, in the terrible trouble there. He hadn’t realised they still had clubs thirty years later. Perhaps the name had been dusted off for the occasion.
But Mau! Why hadn’t he thought of Mau? Because the harbour at Mawanga had been more or less closed since that terrible business of the assassination of Julius Karanga nearly ten years ago. God in heaven, he thought, feeling old, nearly ten years ago. It seemed like yesterday.
Lost in thought, he scrubbed his cheeks dry and reached into his jacket pocket for a comb. He dismissed the memory of Dr Karanga’s death and turned his mind to the practicalities. The harbour at Mawanga had no bottom. It was an abyssal valley between seven and ten miles wide from memory - an old one if he was thinking in miles - contained between two horns of sandy silt. It would need some engineering work - maybe some serious engineering work - but if anywhere was feasible, Mawanga was. And, he suddenly realised, pausing in his combing to grin as he did so, if he was going to Mawanga, then he wouldn’t have to cross the equator. That thought somehow added considerably to his confidence about this enterprise. Yes, Mau was the most practical place to take the iceberg Manhattan to.
But why did they want it there so badly?
~ * ~
The Mau Club sat round the big oval table in the Secretary-General’s conference room further along the 38th floor. Dr Dyal and Mr Aziz occupied the head of the table, clearly Chair and Deputy. Richard sat opposite them at the foot, the guest of honour perhaps. The rest of the Club sat down the sides between them, four figures, two a side. Dr Gunther Sepulchre, the Belgian ‘expert’ on the area, was just finishing his analysis of the historical background.
‘So, since the assassination, the country has effectively been in turmoil. All Dr Karanga’s outstanding political, social and economic work has come undone and anarchy looms. Without water, the country will have slipped into civil war by next summer, I am certain. And if that happens, unless we become directly involved, there will be an invasion. Mawanga is too rich a prize for several other nearby states to resist.’
Dr Dyal nodded once, decisively. ‘Thank you, Dr Sepulchre. Most succinct. General Cord?’
General Warren Cord, US Army (Rtd), familiar from television and documentary footage of his part in Desert Storm and a dozen lesser peacekeeping campaigns, ran his broad hand over the white stubble of his regulation crew cut. ‘Well, Dr Dyal,’ he drawled, ‘I’d have to agree with Dr Sepulchre’s breakdown of the current status. There are a lot of folks out there who want to get at Mawanga. It’s the best harbour on the west coast. Not only that. It’s got the remains of all the infrastructure you would expect from what used to be a major business centre. Wouldn’t take all that much to get it up and running. Back to being - what did they used to call it? - the Cape Town of the north. And I suspect Professor Kroll here will bear me out when I say that outside South Africa, Mau has the potential to be about the richest country in Africa. I’m speaking about the mineral deposits, of course, but I would also reckon the grassland to be worth a great deal if it can be farmed again. Yeah. Unless we take tight hold on this one really quickly it’ll make Somalia and Rwanda look like a picnic.’
‘Can you be more specific, General?’
‘You want comparisons? Material estimates? Comparisons - worse than ten Somalias, worse than ten Bosnias. Cost you almost as much as World War Two, especially if the Angolans or the Congolese come in. Not a lot we could do to stop them either, unless we started sending major air cover - that open country’s just heaven sent for battle tanks and they got plenty there. Especially just across the border in Congo Libre. More than ever since the Russian republics started selling off their equipment to the highest bidder. Men and materiel - now, let me see. Not counting aircraft carriers, you’d need—’
‘No, thank you, General, I think you’ve made the picture clear enough for the time being. Professor Kroll.’
Professor Inga Kroll looked more like a dumpy hausfrau than an economics genius. Which was one of the reasons she was working here instead of at the Bundesbank in Bonn. But she sounded every bit as authoritative as General Cord.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘The general is correct. In Mawanga the banking systems and the Bourse are still in place. It would be very easy to bring the country back on line financially. And when one considers that it was largely the work of the terrorist groups like the Lions which stopped the production of the mineral and agricultural wealth needed to support such powerful financial dealing, then you will see that whoever can either enlist or negate these people has the opportunity to reawaken the country financially very quickly indeed. You are familiar with the story of Sleeping Beauty? Yes? Mau just needs a handsome prince to kiss her and she will awake. And we are not the only people to be aware of this, I think. It is as the general says. There are people who understand economics all over Africa these days.’
‘And people who understand strategy,’ broke in the final speaker as though she could no longer contain herself. Alone among the Club members she was not content to sit and talk. No sooner was she speaking than she had torn herself up out of her seat and was pacing round the table, every lithe movement speaking of impatience and frustration. ‘You’ve got to move people. It’s all to win or all to lose and you have no time to sit around speechifying. Warren’s right: those borders in the bush were drawn by old guys in Brussels with pencils on paper. There’s nothing there but the grasslands and maybe a couple of baobab trees and maybe an acacia or a thorn or two and that’s not going to stop a squadron of battle tanks. And if you get tanks onto the farmland then the irrigation system will be shot t
o hell and even if the rains come back it’ll take the better part of a decade to get the farms and communes up and running again. I mean, it’s all still there, every ditch and channel. You’ve seen the reports from Bob Gardiner of UNHCR and the others who’ve actually been out in the bush to look for themselves. Even after all these years, the whole system is there even if the river isn’t any more. But it’s old and it needs work or it will all turn into dust like the rest of Mau is doing. And it needs more than the World Health people or Oxfam, for Christ’s sake. It needs something major and it needs it now. It’s my field of specialisation and you know I know what I’m talking about or I wouldn’t be in your Club. But you’ve only got a few months, or maybe only a few weeks. Then it’ll all be gone and you’ll have a political and environmental disaster on your hands. And you’ll be stuck in there just like the general says. The peacekeeping force you’ll have to send to get things back under control will cost you an arm and a leg - and I’ve got Kyoga blood, remember, so I know what I’m talking about - and then you’ll need a permanent police force there to keep everyone from each other’s throats like you’ve got for the rest of recorded time in Bosnia and Somalia and God knows where else, and in the meantime, quite apart from your men and materiel - with or without aircraft carriers - you’re going to have to feed five million N’Kuru in the bush and another two and a half million Kyoga in the cities and up on the escarpment, in the mines, the police and the army. If you can get their guns away from them, of course, and stop them slaughtering your aid workers and stealing all the supplies for their own people!’