Dogs of War (8 page)

Chalmers was a graduate with honors from the London School of Mining, which is probably the best of its kind in the world, even if Witwatersrand liked to dispute that claim. He had taken his degree in geology and later chemistry and gone on to a doctorate in his mid-twenties. After five years of fellowship work at the college he had joined Rio Tinto Zinc in its scientific section, and six years earlier ManCon had evidently stolen him from RTZ for a better salary. For the last four years he had been head of the company's Scientific Department situated on the outskirts of Watford in Hertfordshire, one of the counties abutting London to the north. The ID photograph in the file showed a man in his late thirties glowering at the camera over a bushy ginger beard. He wore a tweed jacket and a purple shut. The tie was of knitted wool and askew.
At eleven-thirty-five the private phone rang and Sir James Manson heard the regular pips of a public coin box at the other end of the line. A coin clunked into the slot, and Endean's voice came on the line. He spoke concisely for two minutes from Watford station. When he had finished, Manson grunted his approval.
"That's useful to know," he said. "Now get back to London, There's another job I want you to do. I want a complete rundown on the republic of Zangaro. I want the lot. Yes, Zangaro." He spelled it out.
"Start back in the days when it was discovered, and work forward. I want the history, geography, lie of the land, economy, crops, mineralogy if any, politics, and state of development. Concentrate on the ten years prior to independence, and especially the period since. I want to know everything there is to know about
the President, his cabinet, parliament if any, administration, executive, judiciary, and political parties. There are three things that are more important than all else. One is the question of Russian or Chinese involvement and influence, or local Communist influence, on the President. The second is that no one remotely connected with the place is to know any questions are being asked, so don't go there yourself. And thirdly, under no circumstances are you to announce you come from ManCon. So use a different name. Got it? Good. Well, report back as soon as you can, and not later than twenty days. Draw cash from Accounts on my signature alone, and be discreet. For the record, consider yourself on leave; I'll let you make it up later."
Manson hung up and called down to Thorpe to give further instructions. Within three minutes Thorpe came up to the tenth floor and laid the piece of paper his chief wanted on the desk. It was the carbon copy of a letter.
Ten floors down, Dr. Gordon Chalmers stepped out of his taxi at the corner of Moorgate and paid it off. He felt uncomfortable in a dark suit and topcoat, but Peggy had told him they were necessary for an interview and lunch with the Chairman of the Board.
As he walked the last few yards toward the steps and doorway of ManCon House, his eye caught a poster fronting the kiosk of a seller of the Evening News and Evening Standard: THALIDOMIDE PARENTS URGE SETTLEMENT. He curled his lip in a bitter sneer, but he bought both papers.
The stories backed up the headline in greater detail, though they were not long. They recorded that after another marathon round of talks between representatives of the parents of the four-hundred-odd children in Britain who had been born deformed because of the tha lidomide drug ten years earlier, and the company that had marketed the drug, a further impasse had been reached. So talks would be resumed "at a later date."
Gordon Chalmers' thoughts went back to the house
outside Watford that he had left earlier that same morning, to Peggy, his wife, just turned thirty and looking forty, and to Margaret, legless, one-armed Margaret, coming up to nine years, who needed a special pair of legs and a specially built house, which they now lived in at long last, the mortgage on which was costing him a fortune.
"At a later date," he snapped to no one in particular and stuffed the newspapers into a trash basket. He seldom read the evening papers anyway. He preferred the Guardian, Private Eye, and the left-wing Tribune. After nearly ten years of watching a group of almost unmoneyed parents try to face down the giant distillers for their compensation, Gordon Chalmers harbored bitter thoughts about big-time capitalists. Ten minutes later he was facing one of the biggest.
Sir James Manson could not put Chalmers off his guard as he had Bryant and Mulrooney. The scientist clutched his glass of beer firmly and stared right back. Manson grasped the situation quickly and, when Miss Cooke had handed him his whisky and retired, he came to the point.
"I suppose you can guess what I asked you to come and see me about, Dr. Chalmers."
"I can guess, Sir James. The report on Crystal Mountain."
"That's it. Incidentally, you were quite right to send it to me personally in a sealed envelope. Quite right."
Chalmers shrugged. He had done it because he realized that all important analysis results had to go direct to the Chairman, according to company policy. It was routine, as soon as he had realized what the samples contained.
"Let me ask you two things, and I need specific answers," said Sir James. "Are you absolutely certain of these results? There could be no other possible explanation of the tests of the samples?"
Chalmers was neither shocked nor affronted. He knew the work of scientists was seldom accepted by laymen as being far removed from black magic, and that they therefore considered it imprecise. He had long since ceased trying to explain the precision of his craft.
"Absolutely certain. For one thing, there are a variety of tests to establish the presence of platinum, and these samples passed them all with unvarying regularity. For another, I not only did all the known tests on every one of the samples, I did the whole thing twice. Theoretically it is possible someone could have interfered with the alluvial samples, but not with the internal structures of the rocks themselves. The summary of my report is accurate beyond scientific dispute."
Sir James Manson listened to the lecture with head-bowed respect, and nodded in admiration. "And the second thing is, how many other people in your laboratory know of the results of the analysis of the Crystal Mountain samples?"
"No one," said Chalmers with finality.
"No one?" echoed Manson. "Come now, surely one of your assistants ..."
Chalmers downed a swig of his beer and shook his head. "Sir James, when the samples came in they were crated as usual and put in store. Mulrooney's accompanying report predicated the presence of tin in unknown quantities. As it was a very minor survey, I put a junior assistant onto it. Being inexperienced, he assumed tin or nothing and did the appropriate tests. When they failed to show up positive, he called me over and pointed this out: I offered to show him how, and again the tests were negative. So I gave him a lecture on not being mesmerized by the prospector's opinion and showed him some more tests. These too were negative. The laboratory closed for the night, but I stayed on late, so I was alone in the place when the first tests came up positive. By midnight I knew the shingle sample from the stream bed, of which I was using less than half a pound, contained small quantities of platinum. After that I locked up for the night.
"The next day I took the junior off that assignment
and put him on another. Then I went on with it myself. There were six hundred bags of shingle and gravel, and fifteen hundred pounds' weight of rocks—over three hundred separate rocks taken from different places on the mountain. From Mulrooney's photographs I could picture the mountain. The disseminated deposit is present in all parts of the formation. As I said in my report." With a touch of defiance he drained his beer.
Sir James Manson continued nodding, staring at the scientist with well-feigned awe.
"It's incredible," he said at length. "I know you scientists like to remain detached, impartial, but I think even you must have become excited. This could form a whole new world source of platinum. You know how often that happens with a rare metal? Once in a decade, maybe once in a lifetime."
In fact Chalmers had been excited by his discovery and had worked late into the night for three weeks to cover every single bag and rock from the Crystal Mountain, but he would not admit it. Instead he shrugged and said, "Well, it'll certainly be very profitable for ManCon."
"Not necessarily," said James Manson quietly. This was the first time he shook Chalmers.
"Not?" queried the analyst. "But surely it's a fortune?"
"A fortune in the ground, yes," replied Sir James, rising and walking to the window. "But it depends very much who gets it, if anyone at all. You see, there is a danger it could be kept unmined for years, or mined and stockpiled. Let me put you in the picture, my dear Doctor. .."
He put Dr. Chalmers in the picture for thirty minutes, talking finance and politics, neither of which was the analyst's forte.
"So there you are," he finished. "The chances are it will be handed on a plate to the Russian government if we announce it immediately."
Dr. Chalmers, who had nothing in particular against the Russian government, shrugged slightly. "I can't change the facts, Sir James."
Manson's eyebrows shot up in horror. "Good gracious, Doctor, of course you can't." He glanced at his watch in surprise. "Close to one," he exclaimed. "You must be hungry. I know I am. Let's go and have a spot of lunch."
He had thought of taking the Rolls, but after En-dean's phone call from Watford that morning and the information from the local news agent about the regular subscription to the Tribune, he opted for an ordinary taxi.
A spot of lunch proved to be patי, truffled omelet, jugged hare in red-wine sauce, and trifle. As Manson had suspected, Chalmers disapproved of such indulgence but at the same time had a healthy appetite. And even he could not reverse the simple laws of nature, which are that a good meal produces a sense of repletion, contentment, euphoria, and a lowering of moral resistance. Manson had also counted on a beer-drinker's being unused to the fuller red wines, and two bottles of Cote du Rhone had encouraged Chalmers to talk about the subjects that interested him: his work, his family, and his views on the world.
It was when he touched on his family and their new house that Sir James Manson, looking suitably sorrowful, mentioned that he recalled having seen Chalmers in a television interview in the street a year back.
"Do forgive me," he said, "I hadn't realized before—• I mean, about your little girl. What a tragedy."
Chalmers nodded and gazed at the tablecloth. Slowly at first, and then with more confidence, he began to tell his superior about Margaret.
"You wouldn't understand," he said at one point.
"I can try," replied Sir James quietly. "I have a daughter myself, you know. Of course, she's older."
Ten minutes later there was a pause in the talking. Sir James Manson drew a folded piece of paper from his inside pocket. "I don't really know how to put this," he
said with some embarrassment, "but—well, I am as aware as any man how much time and trouble you put in for the company. I am aware you work long hours, and the strain of this personal matter must have its effect on you, and no doubt on Mrs. Chalmers. So I issued this instruction to my personal bank this morning."
He passed the carbon copy of the letter across to Chalmers, who read it. It was brief and to the point. It instructed the manager of Coutts Bank to remit by registered mail each month on the first day fifteen banknotes, each of value £10, to Dr. Gordon Chalmers at his home address. The remittances were to run for ten years unless further instructions were received.
Chalmers looked up. His employer's face was all concern, tinged with embarrassment.
"Thank you," said Chalmers softly.
Sir James's hand rested on his forearm and shook it. "Now come on, that's enough of this matter. Have a brandy."
In the taxi on the way back to the office, Manson suggested he drop Chalmers off at the station where he could take his train for Watford.
"I have to get back to the office and get on with this Zangaro business and your report," he said.
Chalmers was staring out of the cab window at the traffic moving out of London that Friday afternoon. "What are you going to do about it?" he asked.
"Don't know, really. Of course, I'd like not to send it. Pity to see all that going into foreign hands, which is what must happen when your report gets to Zangaro. But I've got to send them something, sooner or later."
There was another long pause as the taxi swung into the station forecourt.
"Is there anything I can do?" asked the scientist.
Sir James Manson breathed a long sigh. "Yes," he said in measured tones. "Junk the Mulrooney samples in the same way as you would junk any other rocks and bags of sand. Destroy your analysis notes completely. Take your copy of the report and make an exact copy, with one difference—let it show the tests prove conclu-
sively that there exist marginal quantities of low-grade tin which could not be economically mined. Burn your own copy of the original report. And then never mention a word of it."
The taxi came to a halt, and as neither of his passengers moved, the cabbie poked his nose through the screen into the rear compartment. "This is it, guv."
"You have my solemn word," murmured Sir James Manson. "Sooner or later the political situation may well change, and when that happens, ManCon will put in a tender for the mining concession exactly as usual and in accordance with normal business procedures."
Dr. Chalmers climbed out of the taxi and looked back at his employer in the corner seat. "I'm not sure I can do that, sir," he said. "I'll have to think it over."
Manson nodded. "Of course you will. I know it's asking a lot. Look, why don't you talk it over with your wife? I'm sure she'll understand."
Then he pulled the door to and told the cabbie to take him to the City.
Sir James dined with an official of the Foreign Office that evening and took him to his club. It was not one of the very uppercrust clubs of London, for Manson had no intention of putting up for one of the bastions of the old Establishment and finding himself blackballed. Besides, he had no time for social climbing and little patience with the posturing idiots one found at the top when one got there. He left the social side of things to his wife. The knighthood was useful, but that was an end to it.
He despised Adrian Goole, whom he reckoned for a pedantic fool. That was why he had invited him to dinner. That, and the fact that the man was in the Economic Intelligence section of the FO.