Chapter Thirty-Seven
“You’ve seen the news?”
Leyton Drisdale regretted taking the call the moment he heard Jake Carver’s urgent tones. Not that he had not been expecting to hear from the billionaire engineer, rather that it was a conversation that he could have put off quite happily, but, ever since the first public announcement had been made concerning the massive new building project springing up in the very heart of Africa, Drisdale knew that it would not be long before Carver came seeking his advice.
Drisdale sounded weary as he answered, “I presume you are talking about the Tower of Black Power?”
“Of course. What else?”
“Yes.” Drisdale added, being deliberately controversial, “Looks mighty... impressive.”
“Doesn’t it,” agreed Carver, bitterly.
Drisdale could not resist saying, mischievously, “You sound almost jealous. If it is penis envy that you are suffering from I would have thought that you would have been better off ringing a doctor rather than myself. Or a psychoanalyst, perhaps.”
“This is serious. How could this building have sprung up without you knowing about it?”
Now it was Drisdale’s turn to sound aggrieved, “Without me knowing about it! What interest is it for me? I’m not the one consigned to maintaining Garnet’s place in construction history. Besides, what’s the problem? I would have thought you could have just paid your... team - is that the word? - to bring the whole bloody thing tumbling down, and don’t try to sound all innocent, I know all about you and the Green Brigade, who do you think tipped them off about you in the first place?”
“You?”
“Don’t sound so surprised. I have contacts you know. So, what are you going to do?”
“They won’t travel to Africa. I’ve already contacted them.”
“Then find someone else.”
“Who? Besides, there isn’t the time. This new construction appeared almost to be completed.”
“I’m sorry, but what can I do?”
“I just...”
Leyton Drisdale cut short the conversation, not prepared to get himself involved in the difficulties of the other man. He interrupted Carver, saying, “There is one other thing. I’m glad you rang, I would have rung you otherwise. It’s Medea. We have reason to believe that she is back here in New York. I thought that you would like to know.”
••••••••••
Leyton Drisdale’s secretary hovered nervously outside the closed door to his office, uncertain of whether to knock or not. She had only been working for the busy lawyer for three weeks and, having yet to complete her probationary period of employment and also having failed to establish an immediate and easy rapport with her employer, she was still unsure when was a suitable time to interrupt him. She had heard him speaking on the telephone and had delayed sounding her presence while he was still engaged on his call, but had then summoned up enough courage to strike the wood panel when she heard him hang up, only for her hand to be stilled again, as she heard the unmistakable sounds of him making another call. She pressed her ear hard up against the wood of the door, anxious not to miss a further opportunity of gaining an audience; determined to show herself the second the telephone receiver was replaced. Drisdale’s words were muffled by the intervening medium and, had she not heard her employer mention the name of a well known film star - and one of her favourite actors to boot - she would not have paid much attention to the nature of the lawyer’s conversation - she had not achieved her current prominence as a legal secretary by demeaning herself through earwigging at keyholes - but the name-dropping had got her intrigued and, try as she might, she couldn’t help but listen.
“He’s filming is he. So what? Are you saying he won’t do it?
“Can’t, won’t, same difference.
“And you’re sure that Denzel’s not free?
“Okay, so who are we left with?
“Is he still alive?
“Broadway! He might as well be dead. But he’ll do it, right?
“What’s his fee?
“That’s fine. Okay, Samuel it is then. And he knows where it is? You’ve explained everything to him? I don’t want him pulling out at the last minute because he is scared of travelling.
“True. Some of these people would turn up to open a... what’s that? There is a bit of a delay with the connection. I’m getting an echo. Say again.
“He remembered what? Passengers being sucked out of a plane over Congo. Oh, I know what he means. Tell him that was years ago. He won’t be flying in the same kind of aircraft.
“A Lear Jet? He should be so lucky. Just reassure him, it will all be fine.
“Okay.
“Yes, I know. But it’s all publicity. And construction, it is all to schedule? You know I am relying on you for this. I can’t be seen to be involved.
“Okay. Good. Keep me updated.
“Me? At the inauguration? I suppose so. Well, yes of course.
“No, don’t worry. I’ll make my own travel arrangements closer to the time. Wouldn’t miss it for the world. Only place that might be more fun would to be a fly on the wall in Jake Carver’s living room when he sees the news on TV.
“What? No. Private joke.”
Interlude
Columbite-tantalite. Coltan. Tantalum ore. Grey gold. Different words for the same thing. Both a resource and a ruin for a country.
In Greek mythology, Tantalus was the son of Zeus and the nymph Pluto. He was a prosperous Lydian king, who was punished by the gods for divulging their secrets to mere mortals. He was ducked into the river of Hades, the waters of which receded every time he attempted to drink from them, and was located beneath the spreading branches of a flowering fruit tree, the fruit of which remained always just out of his reach. Hence we get our verb, to tantalise, meaning to raise a hope only to ultimately disappoint it. Such, would be a good description of the state of the economy in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Rich in natural resources, Congo, has for many years been the world’s primary source of the valuable mineral known as coltan, which increasingly is used in a vast array of modern, electronic devices, with a range of uses from the aeronautics industry to the everyday home computer and the mobile phone in your pocket.
Great news for a poor country. So one would think, but the reality makes for far more depressing reading. Locked in a decade of fruitless civil war, the money generated from Congo’s natural resources is not being ploughed back into improving the well-being and economy of the country as a whole, but has provided a further excuse for rival warring factions, both inside and outside the country, to pillage the land for personal gain. Reminiscent of the California gold rush of the 1850s, the Democratic Republic of Congo is a land at the mercy of the entrepreneur and the unscrupulous: the prize of economic stability remains tantalisingly out of reach.
‘Congo Caviar’ - the expression commonly used to describe the country’s mineral wealth - has long been a prize that both its immediate neighbours and the larger, economically powerful nations of the Western world have considered a booty worth fighting over and, for the global corporation, a destabilised Congo, ruled by corrupt and purchasable regimes, is a more attractive trading proposition than a legitimate, well-run country, demanding market-prices for its valuable exports. The West, in its various ‘guises, has long been instrumental in fostering anarchy in the region, in its support of particular power-greedy individuals and militias, groups which in turn rule by the force of fear, over people too poor to disagree. Only recently, though, since the global war on terrorism has become the keystone of international policy for so many of the wealthy nation states, has the pillaging of the Congo’s natural resources gained a pseudo justification: it is now a moral obligation of the West to control Africa’s ‘rogue states’’ mineral reserves, in order to prevent them from falling into the hands of unscrupulous terrorists, where they could be used
to construct weapons of mass destruction. To let the smallest drop of Christian oil or the tiniest nugget of holy Tantalum ore slip through the West’s clutches would be close to sacrilege.
(Extract from an article by Max Killingray entitled ‘Congo and coltan: the story of a nation tantalised’ published in the Manchester Guardian, 15th September 2006.
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