by Peter Tonkin
‘You’d better come with us,’ said the soldier.
But as Anastasia and Ado carried Celine to the truck, he kept the three of them covered just in case. And, in spite of the fact that Anastasia insisted that Celine really ought to lie down in the back, he simply squashed the three of them on the bench seat between himself and the massive man driving the truck. Then the driver blinked his lights as a signal to the truck waiting up ahead. And they were off.
TEN
Zoo
Minister for the Outer Delta Bala Ngama was clearly not a happy man. Richard hated to imagine the conversation between the minister and his defeated corvette captain while the guests were being taken home in one helicopter after another. But, politician to his fingertips, he was equally clearly striving not to display the fact now, the better part of six hours later. Especially before guests from whom he was hoping to charm a considerable fortune. And with whom he was planning to complete a series of extremely lucrative deals.
‘Captain Mariner.’ Minister Ngama’s broad hand carefully encompassed both Richard and Robin, courteously but casually, because they happened to be at the front of the crowd of dignitaries. ‘Madame and Monsieur Lagrande, Mr Asov, Ma’m’selle Lavrov, Dr Holliday. Everybody . . . Welcome to the Zoo!’ He hesitated, beaming around their expectant faces, with a smile that reached from ear to ear but somehow didn’t quite climb to his eyes. Then he continued as he had begun, in English, ‘Except, of course, it is not a zoo in the old-fashioned sense of the word. Let us rather call it a game park-in-waiting. A nascent Masai Mara. Not even Zimbabwe’s Lower Zambezi or Uganda’s Impenetrable Forest game reserves and world heritage sites will rival the Benin la Bas Lower Delta wildlife sanctuary. It is – and will be – like much that you have seen on your visit so far, symbolic of my country and its vision for the future. What you will observe as we proceed is a collection culled regardless of expense from institutions all around the world, of animals, birds, insects, reptiles, amphibians and fishes that were once indigenous to the delta. Or the beginnings of an exhaustive collection at any rate: our pockets are not infinitely deep!’
Ngama turned, leading the group out of the considerable waiting area behind the big gates which said – in spite of his assurances – ‘ZOO’. ‘Here we have gathered together specimens of creatures which were driven to extinction in the hungry decades of the seventies, eighties and nineties but which we plan to reintroduce – in a controlled environment at first, but then more generally.’ He continued, striding purposefully forward between the first few cages. ‘And in the meantime, of course, the sanctuary will form the centrepiece of one of the most important industries of the early twenty-first century. One in which Benin la Bas will become a world-leader, like Florida, like Indonesia, like Egypt and the Sinai. Tourism. Eco-friendly tourism.’
Typically of life in a hot tropical climate, Richard, Robin and the rest had taken something of a siesta after their return from the disastrous war-game. The ebullient Max had choppered them to the hotel’s helipad, leaving the disgruntled, deflated – defeated – Captain Caleb Maina to oversee the towage of his crippled command to the naval dock for repairs, after a debriefing with the minister. Typically of his boundless energy, however, Richard had used the quiet lunchtime for a lengthy meeting with his team rather than for a rest, but that had been in the air-conditioned comfort of the Nelson Mandela Suite with a light buffet supplied by room service. Now, in the cool of the evening, more general business was resumed.
The visit to the zoo was unscheduled and unexpected. Richard soon worked out that it was simply a delaying tactic by which the minister – with the connivance of President Chaka no doubt – was hoping to buy time. And he needed a bit of time, unless he was happy to give in to Max’s almost overpowering demand that the Benin la Bas navy should purchase his Zubr – and several more like it – to replace the corvettes they currently relied upon. ‘But this is still part of what we were discussing at lunch,’ said Robin under her breath, as she and Richard followed Minister Ngama into the massive compound mazed with cages in a bewildering range of shapes and sizes. ‘If we want to keep the business, then we have to grease the wheels. But this time it’s not the president or his family we have to sweeten. It’s the whole country’s future. Is that going to be so bad?’
‘You mean is there much of a difference between being asked to help support a wildlife park that might one day become a massive tourist attraction and being asked to buy the president’s son a Rolls Royce or a private jet?’ asked Richard thoughtfully. ‘I don’t know.’ He shrugged. ‘I guess it all depends on where the profits from the wildlife park are going to go in the end.’
‘You mean, if the president still creams off the proceeds from the tourist industry we help to set up as the price of carrying on with the contracts to ship his oil, then it doesn’t make much difference?’ probed Robin thoughtfully.
‘That’s about the size of it,’ said Richard. ‘I still remember a story told by a friend who had dealt with the previous administration here. Hoping to finalize a contract after months of head-to-head negotiations with a Russian rival, he sent the minister in question a case of ruinously expensive vintage champagne. Only to receive an email saying, “Thank you for the case of champagne. It fits neatly into the back of the American limousine your competitors have just given me.” This kind of game’s not just illegal under UK law, it could be expensively stupid in all sorts of ways.’ As if to echo his thoughts, a big cat of some kind started roaring in one of the cages, setting off a wild cacophony of hooting, screeching, howling and flapping. The stench of the place suddenly overwhelmed him, recalling at once visits to zoos and circuses in the days of his childhood, when the inherent cruelty of such institutions had been unknown to him, or to his parents. The feral stench of the jungle might indeed be symbolic of Benin la Bas and its future – in ways the minister had not yet considered. He looked into the first cage and was met by the burning golden gaze of a black panther that really and truly for a heart-stopping moment seemed to be eyeing him up for supper. Bonnie Holliday suddenly inserted her slim form between him and Robin, also unsettled, perhaps, by the sheer naked threat of the atmosphere.
‘This is good sport, eh?’ demanded Max, throwing his arm round Robin’s shoulder at that moment and letting his fingers drift apparently accidentally across the cinnamon flesh of Bonnie’s bare upper arm, while Irina Lavrov fell in beside the all too susceptible minister. ‘It is like shopping in Chechnya, eh? All that bargaining! All those mind games! I love it!’
‘I’m not so sure, Max,’ said Richard simply, as the panther was replaced by a pair of equally lean and hungry-looking leopards. ‘Heritage Mariner’s relationship with this place is quite complicated enough already. And do we really need to get involved in all this internal horse-trading and double-dealing just to get President Chaka’s OK over the fact that I want to move your oil from your wells – which just happen to be off his coastline – to our refineries in Europe.’
‘It’s not such a big deal for you, I know,’ Max allowed cheerfully. ‘Or not directly. But don’t forget, for us at Bashnev-Sevmash it’s the difference between keeping our full concession out there on the continental shelf and maybe having to share it with some nationalizing consortium set up by the minister for the outer delta – or pulling up sticks and walking away altogether. Then that would affect Heritage Mariner, would it not? At the very least you’d have to come back here hat in hand, trying to renegotiate your rates.’
The four of them followed the minister and his oh-so-charming companion past a cage full of mandrills, the cheeks of whose backsides were almost as colourful as those of their faces. ‘And anyway, as you know, we also want to make a sale with the Zubrs,’ Max continued. ‘Not to mention the fact that we want back into the gold business in the delta. You remember we were getting such good returns from our placer system there before the president’s people closed us down. He may be more amenable now – especially with the price of gold up at n
early two thousand US dollars an ounce.’
The minster had halted, and so they all stopped behind him and found themselves looking into a cage full of chimpanzees. The primates watched the people watching them and it was hard to tell which group was the more curious – or intelligent. Dr Holliday walked towards the cage as though hypnotized by the dozen or so pairs of round brown eyes regarding her. But then the biggest of the chimps suddenly exploded into action, hurling himself forward to grab the bars and shake them, screaming and spitting, as though he wanted to tear her limb from limb. She jumped back, colliding with the minister himself. He immediately swept her into his ambit and proceeded with a beautiful woman on each arm. Followed by Robin sandwiched between Richard and Max.
The whole group moved hurriedly on, past friendlier, less threatening colobus and blue monkeys. Without Dr Holliday kibitzing, Max became even more expansive. Suspiciously so, thought Richard, who was beginning to see that all this innocent intimacy was just another way of manipulating Robin and himself. But, to be frank, Richard enjoyed the mind games too. And Robin was a past master of almost Olympic standing.
‘Because, of course, we want to get back into the business of finding the Holy Grail of modern metals,’ Max continued over the fading shrieking and howling of the warlike primates. ‘Coltan. It’s fetching nearly one hundred dollars a kilo at the moment and the price is set to rise by more than a thousand percent over the next few years. You know it rose by nearly three hundred percentage points in three months alone back at the beginning of 2011? And the rise shows no sign of slowing. Especially as no one seems all that keen to give up their latest generation mobile phones, new generation BlackBerries, iPads, their laptops and their flat-screen, 3D television sets. We want in there – our people had found wolfram and cassiterite before President Chaka asked us so nicely to leave. And now he’s asked us equally nicely back. And we just know there’s coltan in them thar hills, as my American friends might say. And access to that might well be our bottom line if the opposition don’t get there first. And if we can get at it, we will, no matter what the price. Irons in the fire, old chap.’
‘Opposition?’ asked Robin. Aptly enough, it seemed to Richard, they were now walking past a series of glass-fronted containers not unlike aquaria. But these contained snakes rather than fish. Huge jungle pythons, mambas, cobras.
‘Everyone from the marauding armies like General Nlong’s outfit to smugglers, gunrunners, local land-grabbers,’ answered Max, also looking thoughtfully at the largest of the pythons. ‘They live out there beyond anyone’s control, like feudal tsars, princes and barons. Anyone who can find a decent source and motivate some slave labour into getting it out of the ground for them.’
‘Motivate?’ asked Robin dangerously.
‘Threaten, torture, rape . . .’ Max might have been listing reasonable business practices available to anyone.
‘Not legitimate businesses, then?’ asked Richard, intrigued in spite of himself.
‘Precious few of those left in this neck of the woods, old man,’ said Max airily. ‘Am I right, Dr Holliday, or am I right?’ he called forward suddenly, breaking the cosy little group apart for a moment. But the doctor did not appear to hear him, her horrified gaze riveted on a brightly banded giant centipede, the better part of twenty centimetres long, and which, like the alpha male chimp, seemed set on getting out of its vivarium at her. Beyond it, Richard could see a monstrous yellow scorpion. Ever the gentleman, he moved Robin sideways so that they could give the creatures the widest possible berth.
Max repeated his question sufficiently loudly to catch Dr Holliday’s attention at last. ‘Precious few legitimate businesses left in this particular section of the world,’ he shouted. ‘Present company excepted, of course . . .’
‘Certainly,’ the African expert replied, from the height of her Harvard degrees, ‘the collapse of legitimate business in areas like this has inevitably followed the failure of settled, central government – and any real form of local government, of course.’
Richard realized with an inward smile – a small and wry smile – that the World Bank representative’s reply had easily reached the ears of the IMF contingent just behind them. A neat point neatly driven home: Max at the top of his game.
‘And that’s what the Zubrs are about, isn’t it?’ Robin demanded suddenly, stopping dead as she made one of those leaps of association that often left Richard absolutely breathless. ‘You don’t just want to supply General Chaka’s navy with vessels that are better suited to coastal and river work than the corvettes he already has. You want to control them.’
Max ruthlessly steered the three of them into the quiet, empty space just beside the glass-fronted containers that didn’t seem quite large or strong enough to contain the huge forest, trapdoor, bird-eating and tarantula spiders that would soon be let loose in the jungle once again. ‘It’s nothing to do with a little short-term profit Sevmash might make supplying them and guaranteeing the spares and whatnot,’ Robin continued, enraptured by her own thought processes. ‘You know you’ll have to crew them at first with Sevmash men like Captain Zhukov – and then take time to train up any local officers and crew. So for the foreseeable future you’ll have a fleet of massive craft that you – and effectively you alone – control. Vessels that won’t just be confined to the bay like these poor creatures locked up in the cages here. They’ll be able to go upriver, into the delta – all over the place. Wherever they want to go. Wherever you tell them to go.’
Max stopped dead and simply gaped at her. In a fenced-off pit beside them, the spiders had been replaced by a range of reptiles that made Nile crocodiles look like baby salamanders. ‘What the fuck?’ he said at last. ‘Where did you get her, Richard? I want one. Oh God, I want one of those! Can you actually read minds, Robin? Or are you some kind of Ved’ma witch? Richard’s little blonde Baba Yaga?’
‘I know you of old, Maximilian Asov,’ riposted Robin, not a bit put out – flattered, if anything. ‘All this bullshit and persiflage means I’ve hit the nail on the head, doesn’t it? You’re really hoping to pull the wool over these people’s eyes and actually get them to buy the things that will allow you to sneak in behind their backs and get at their most valuable assets?’
‘It worked for the Greeks at Troy!’ Max’s voice wavered between the offended and the amused as he moved them forward once again. ‘My partner Felix Makarov thought it was pretty smart.’
‘Yeah,’ she snapped. ‘But you’re no Odysseus – and Felix Makarov’s no Achilles.’
‘You think it’ll work?’ asked Richard soberly. ‘You think they’ll buy it? In all senses of the phrase . . .’
‘We sold them the Zubr pretty effectively this morning, didn’t we?’ demanded Max. ‘And by the way, Captain Zhukov was able to scoot the better part of three kilometres upriver as part of that little game. The only government boats that have been that far before are the little Shaldag fast patrol craft, and compared to the Zubr they’re nothing more than rowing boats. Man, if I can get them to buy just one Zubr I will fucking rule the delta!’
Dr Bonnie Holliday broke up the conversation just then by returning to confront Max, her face stricken. ‘The minister says Captain Maina has been relieved of his command! Because of that fiasco you put on this morning the poor man has lost his corvette. The biggest vessel he’s likely to command for the foreseeable future is one of those fast patrol craft. And it’s all your fault!’ She raised her hand in outrage and would have slapped the Russian round the face had Robin not caught her arm.
But Robin caught more than her arm. She caught some of the woman’s outrage too. ‘Have you done that?’ she snarled at Max. ‘Have you ruined this poor man’s career over some grubby little business deal?’
Suddenly Irina Lavrov was there too, a thunderous frown making her face much less lovely than usual. More Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk than lovely Layla the Vampire Slayer, thought Richard. And he was suddenly almost sorry for Max. Almost.
Max l
ooked at the three outraged women and shrugged. ‘Come,’ was all he said. ‘I have something to show you. But I’ll buy us dinner first, OK?’
What Max had to show them was a club and bar called OTI down by the docks. They arrived there just before ten, after a quick, light, nearly silent, nouvelle cuisine dinner whose gastronomic perfection was largely wasted on them. Max gestured at the sign: ‘OTI’. ‘It’s supposed to be Yoruba for “drink”,’ he explained as they stood outside, listening to the raucous noises from within.
It was like being back at the zoo, thought Richard, intrigued.
‘Is it the kind of a place you should be taking ladies to?’ demanded Dr Holliday a little nervously.
‘I wouldn’t bring my mother here if that’s what you mean,’ laughed Max. ‘At least not unless she insisted. It’s where the sailors go. Especially the navy men.’ He pushed the door open and ushered his four guests in.
It was a bar like any other, thought Richard. And surprisingly civilized – upmarket even. Better suited to officers, perhaps. The room was a big, low-ceilinged, smoke-filled square. Sweat-inducingly humid. Heady with alcohol fumes. Down one side ran a bar the better part of twenty metres long. Behind it were ceiling-high racks packed with bottles of all sorts. Along the back wall at right angles to the bar there was a stage – a proper one, with a proscenium arch and curtains. At the moment, there was only one person on the stage, an elderly man playing a grand piano – whose music was completely lost in the cheerful din. Opposite the bar was a series of boxes such as one might find in a theatre, and these too had curtains to ensure privacy. But the main area was a simple plain wooden floor crowded with tables of all shapes and sizes. Like the boxes, they were simply packed with customers. And a team of girls in revealing costumes, which owed more to Tarzan movies than ethnic accuracy, moved cheerfully from behind the bar and through the tables dispensing drinks.