‘And, frankly, to keep an eye on your Russian colleagues, who are to be given the green light now because they are the only opposition to Han Wuhan that we have to hand,’ added Kebila smoothly. ‘There will be certain carefully negotiated provisos with regard to long-term extraction rights, of course. Perhaps, at a later date, an open bidding process …’
‘That goes without saying,’ said Richard, cutting to the chase. ‘But in the long term, we’re all dead, as John Maynard Keynes observed. In the short term, Chaka wants to put Bashnev/Sevmash in there before Han Wuhan can get a foothold, with you to keep an eye on their security and their behaviour. Longer term to be negotiated as and when, after an increasingly hard-to-call election. And you want Robin and me to be liaison on the ground, oiling the wheels between all concerned — aware that there might well be unexpected additions to the situation that will have to be handled — like I said — as and when.’
‘A very precise summation,’ nodded Kebila. ‘Are you game?’
Richard exchanged glances with Robin. She nodded infinitesimally.
‘Right,’ said Richard. ‘You’re on. And we’re in.’
Patience
Ten minutes later, Richard was hammering on the door of Max Asov’s presidential suite. Robin and he had discussed the best way forward as they rode up in the lift. Courtesy really demanded that they phone Max and Felix to arrange a meeting rather than banging on their doors, but it was by no means first thing and Richard was certain that news as good as this warranted immediate action. So they emerged from the lift, swept past the security guards and took a door each.
The door half opened and Max’s bleary-eyed face appeared on Richard’s third knock. ‘Richard! Only you …’ Even as Max reluctantly answered Richard’s knock, Robin, a little way down the corridor, started pounding on Felix’s door.
‘Max. We have to talk …’ snapped Richard.
‘Who is it, Max?’ came the voice of Max’s current companion — the model Tatiana Kolina — from the bedroom. At least Tatiana seemed a little more mature than usual. Most of Max’s girls would make better companions for his daughter Anastasia. Some of them, indeed, were even younger than Anastasia.
‘It’s just Richard, Tatiana,’ Max called back, without looking round.
‘What is so important, Richard, that you must disturb us so early?’
‘We’re off!’
‘Off? Who’s off?’ demanded Max. ‘Where to? Richard! What are you talking about?’
‘We are! Bashnev/Sevmash and the whole of your team. Off upriver. As fast as you like, as far as you want; but back to the lake at least. With an escort of soldiers armed to the teeth, and carte blanche from the president and the leader of the opposition.’
Max’s eyes narrowed. His face lost that sleepy look and became calculating. ‘Carte blanche?’
‘For anyone and anything you need. Any provision or permission the country can give. No limits. Just get up the river and take hold of the Lac Dudo on behalf of your company and the Benin La Bas government while an elite force sorts out your security and makes sure your people are safe.’
Max stood gaping as his brain clearly tried to calculate the full implications of the sudden change in President Chaka’s position. The door swung wide. Tatiana padded out of the bedroom behind him wearing a nightdress that was more or less transparent. She caught Richard’s eye, which was not — to be fair — difficult, gave him a wicked smile and a wave and vanished again.
In the brief silence, Felix’s door opened. ‘Robin,’ he said breathlessly. ‘How nice.’
‘Felix!’ said Robin, gazing over Felix’s shoulder into his room. ‘Is that a multigym? How in heaven’s name did they get something as big as that in there?’
‘Piece by piece. Now, why have you called me away from it?’
Max caught Richard’s wandering gaze again. He shrugged. ‘Felix gets his morning exercise one way. I get mine another.’
‘Get dressed,’ said Richard again. ‘We have to talk. My suite in ten minutes; I’ll order breakfast. And check whether Tatiana’s game for a safari.’
Twenty-four hectic hours later, Richard, Robin and Felix were down at the Granville Harbour docks in the office of ex-minister Bala Ngama’s replacement Minister of the Outer Delta, Patience Aganga. Max was up at the airport bidding a regretful farewell to Tatiana who, it transpired, would not be available for a safari into the interior after all. Especially not a safari likely to involve a good deal of hardship and danger — even before Colonel Odem and his Army of Christ the Infant were added to the picture.
The minister’s office was in one of the smart new government buildings that had been erected on the land which had housed the shanty towns and slums under President Liye Banda’s kleptocratic regime. What had been a mess of shacks and tents constructed of clapboard, bamboo, timber pilfered from the wreckage of the nearest suburbs and ubiquitous plastic sheeting was now, under President Chaka, a carefully planned complex of manicured public gardens and municipal offices. The position of this particular office could hardly have been better from the new minister’s point of view. The broad front of the building opened through a series of glass doors on to a convex curving veranda that seemed to command a view of everything for which she stood responsible.
To the left, the mouth of the River Gir opened, as wide as the Thames at Greenwich. Where the jungle used to cluster right up to the edge of the city as recently as ten years ago, now there stood river docks, bustling with river craft, some freighters, more dredgers and a pair of the neat little Fast River patrol boats. And a marina, filled with pleasure craft of all sorts, from pirogues to gin palaces, that could have been transported here directly from San Francisco or St Tropez.
Straight ahead, on the far bank, the jungle of the delta itself swept out across the bay. But where in the old days that had been an environmental disaster of oil-polluted mangroves peopled with restlessly dissatisfied freedom fighters, now it reflected order and care. The pipework looked new. Distant figures were working there, wearing a range of coloured overalls, clearly about legitimate business. Richard remembered that it had been part of ex-minister Bala Ngama’s plan to repopulate the delta with a huge number of wild animals — most of them extremely dangerous. He had planned to set up a tourist park that would rival the Masai Mara and the Virunga Impenetrable Forest.
To the right, the bay itself stretched away to southern and western horizons, ringed with rigs — the farthest visible only as columns of smoke and flame. Vessels moved busily among them, and Richard found himself wishing for binoculars as he strained to see the tell-tale house colours of Heritage Mariner. Hard right, looking north-west along the city’s coastline, there stood the new dock facilities. Richard’s most vivid memory of the place was as a blazing ruin after the late president Liye Banda’s helicopter had caused a supertanker to explode with near nuclear force. Now it was all rebuilt.
The port frontage extended right down to the office complex itself; the minister of the outer delta’s waterside office seeming to stand as the dividing point between seagoing and river-going vessels, between commercial craft and pleasure boats. Right at the hub of Granville Harbour, at the heart of Benin La Bas. But Richard, Robin and Felix were not here to admire the view, or to appreciate the bustling industry of the anchorages in front of them. They were here to dot a few ‘i’s and cross a few ‘t’s. Because, although they had Kebila’s assurance that he would be supplying men and material, Heritage Mariner and Bashnev/Sevmash wanted to provide transport. For the first stages, at any rate.