‘Point taken,’ allowed Max. ‘We can go through the video record in more detail when we get back to base. Have a really good look at it. Digitally enhanced. Make proper use of some of these experts I ferried up here at such expense. But on the other hand, if it doesn’t look too difficult down below us now, we can still come upriver anyway. Two-pronged attack. Once we get to the lake we can clear that jungle rubbish away, set up camp and really get to work.’
‘There’s a time limit,’ insisted Felix. ‘Word of this is bound to get out, and then …’
‘The Chinese,’ said Richard. ‘Yes. I’d worked that out too. Chinese suppliers to Japanese and Korean manufacturers who can’t live without tantalum processors for their laptops, mobile phones and flat screens — let alone the new markets for electric cars and so forth.’
‘It’s Sony, Toyota, Cannon, Honda, Mitsubishi, Sumitomo, NTT, KDDI and all the others from Kagoshimo to Sopporo,’ Robin emphasized forcefully. She had read the same reports. ‘But the Japanese manufacturers are supplied by Chinese mining companies such as Beijing Jinshan, Dongguan Benyuan and Fuyang Zhongyu to start with just a few of the legitimate ones with interests in the areas closest to this.’
‘Right,’ said Richard at his most forceful. ‘Everything from Anhul Beijing Chenzhou Developments to Xin Yingkou Zenjiang by way of Han Wuhan Extraction! At the last count our commercial intelligence department at London Centre listed more than fifty Chinese companies applying to set up mining concessions in nearby countries within easy reach of Benin La Bas — just to the north or the south. The only reason they’re not here yet is that the place has been too dangerous — far too hostile to strangers under the last couple of governments anyhow — and apparently too worthless up till now. We are the only people who know about Lac Dudo — so far. Once they hear about this two point five trillion dollar honey pot, will they ever come swarming round!’
‘But of course we have an edge,’ purred Robin.
‘How do you reckon that?’ asked Max morosely, his eyes fixed on the laptop screen, no doubt thinking about the tantalum processors that made the microelectronic circuitry work as he watched the picture showing all too clearly another vertiginous waterfall that would be hell on earth to climb.
‘We already know where the deposits are located,’ answered Richard matter-of-factly. ‘You’re already in tight with the president. And so are we.’
‘And we’re in tight with the leader of the opposition,’ concluded Robin. ‘However the upcoming elections go, someone will have their foot in the door. And,’ she added again, leaning forward, ‘the fact that the leader of the opposition was damn near killed by the Army of Christ the Infant means that even during the hurly burly of an election campaign, the best of the country’s special forces will be on their way up here any day now on a mission to make the jungle safe.’
Richard couldn’t resist a Blues Brothers joke. ‘A mission from God, even if it is against the Army of Christ,’ he said.
‘And, with luck,’ added Felix thoughtfully, ‘I’ll be able to sell the president a couple of my Zubr hovercraft to get his troops upriver at top speed.’
‘Which would, if we time things right,’ said Richard, lowering his voice as though fearful of being overheard in his shocking deviousness, ‘liberate the Zubrs to take you on upriver as far as the first major waterfall and give you a good head-start if you want to follow the river route in.’
‘A win-win situation,’ mused Max. ‘I like this!’ He reached down on to the floor by his foot and produced a briefcase identical to Felix’s, which turned out to contain an identical bottle of Stolichnaya Elit. ‘Now that’s the kind of edge I approve of!’
Talk
The president’s office, inherited from the more grandiose days of the kleptocratic President Liye Banda, was based on the White House Oval Office of the Bush administration, rather than the more conservative Obama makeover. Even after all the years of General — later President — Julius Chaka’s dominance, little had changed. Richard might have been waiting in that exclusively privileged environment to be speaking with the present occupant of the White House — except that instead of a Rose Garden outside the French windows there was now a precinct made slightly disturbing by the inverted red claws of hundreds of huge Flame Lilies. It was a national flower Benin La Bas shared with the nearby Democratic Republic of the Congo. But it still looked like the blood-covered talons of recently feeding vultures to him.
‘I haven’t much time to talk, Richard,’ warned President Chaka as he strode in from his private quarters and closed the door decidedly on the anxious countenance of his chief of staff. ‘I’m due at an election rally in forty-five minutes.’
‘I’m aware of that, Mr President,’ countered Richard calculatedly. ‘But I know you plan a dramatic entrance by the helicopter waiting in the garden and it’s only a ten-minute flight from here to the National Stadium.’
Julius Chaka threw up his hands. ‘Touché. Now what can I do for you?’
‘It’s important, Mr President, or we wouldn’t be disturbing you. Robin is just coming with something I think you should see as a matter of urgency. It’s on a laptop and she’s just having it all checked by your security people. I came on ahead to explain the background as I know you’re pressed for time.’
‘Very well.’ President Chaka leaned back against the presidential desk.
‘You are aware that we went up to Lac Dudo yesterday?’
‘Of course. Not altogether successfully, I understand.’
‘Not in terms of exploring the area in any detail, no sir. But we brought back a good deal of information that will be of use to us in preparing our negotiations with your ministerial team when the time comes.’
‘Hmmm,’ purred President Chaka.
‘We took video footage of everything the Kamov flew over.’
At this point Robin entered, clutching the laptop that had shared Max’s briefcase with the vodka bottle.
‘If you would just take a look at this, Mr President, I believe our point will become self-evident,’ said Richard.
Robin placed the laptop on the desktop and opened it. The screen came alive at once with the picture that the Kamov’s camera took of Lac Dudo just at the instant it turned and headed down the river towards the Gir. As the pilot dipped the chopper’s nose to follow the valley down past Dr Koizumi’s dam system towards the first of the waterfalls, the camera caught a flash of what was happening behind the fuselage. Richard’s long finger pointed to the centre of the screen where, frame by frame in slow motion, the ferns parted and a figure stepped out. Richard pressed zoom until it filled the screen in close-up from beret to belt buckle.
‘Who is this man?’ demanded the president.
‘You may need to check with the leader of the opposition,’ said Robin. ‘Celine’s the one who got the closest look at him the last time the Army of Christ the Infant invaded Benin La Bas, but I think that’s Colonel Odem, the man who replaced Moses Nlong as their leader after their last incursion into Benin La Bas. But there’s more …’
President Chaka held up his hand, went behind the desk and sat at his own computer. He engaged Skype and contacted the leader of the opposition. She answered on her mobile, her face betraying surprise that the president should be calling her up instead of heading to the rally she was clearly at herself. ‘I want to talk to you as my daughter for a moment,’ said Chaka. ‘Not as the leader of the opposition and my political opponent.’