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!’