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“What is it like?”
“Full of jungle, swamps, mosquitoes, snakes, and people who don’t understand a damn thing you say.”
“But they understand English,” said the assistant. “We both speak English.”
“Not in Zangaro, they don’t.”
“Oh.” The junior technician had read all he could find, which was not much, in the encyclopedia borrowed from the vast library at the institute, about Zangaro.
“The captain told me if we make good time we should arrive at Clarence in twenty-two days. That will be their Independence Day.”
“Bully for them,” said Ivanov and walked away.
Past Cape Spartel, nosing her way from the Mediterranean into the Atlantic, the MV Toscana radioed a ship-to-shore telegram to Gibraltar for onpassing to London. It was to Mr. Walter Harris at a London address. It said simply: “Pleased a
That afternoon there was a conference in Sir James Manson’s office.
“Good,” said the tycoon when Endean broke the news. “How much time has she got to reach target?”
“Twenty-two days, Sir James. It is now Day Seventy-eight of the hundred estimated for the project. Sha
“Will he strike early?”
“No, sir. Strike Day is still Day One Hundred. He’ll kill time hove-to at sea if he has to.”
Sir James Manson paced up and down his office. “How about the rented villa?” he asked.
“It has been arranged, Sir James.”
"Then I don’t see any point in your waiting around London any longer. Get over to Paris again, get a visa for Cotonou, fly down there, and get our new employee, Colonel Bobi, to accompany you to this place next to Zangaro. If he seems shifty, offer him more money.
"Get settled in, get the truck and the hunting guns ready, and when you receive Sha
"Keep Bobi virtually under lock and key until
Sha
“Yes, Sir James. For the kind of money he’s getting, he’s good and ready.”
“What’s he like?”
“As nasty as they come. Which is what I was looking for.”
“You could still have problems, you know. Sha
Endean gri
When he had gone, Sir James Manson stared down at the City below him and wondered if any man did not have his price. “They can all be bought, and if they can’t, they can be broken,” one of his mentors had once said to him. And after years as a tycoon, watching politicians, generals, journalists, editors, businessmen, ministers, entrepreneurs and aristocrats, workers and union leaders, blacks and whites, at work and play, he was still of that view.
Many years ago a Spanish seafarer, looking from the sea toward the land, had seen a mountain which, with the sun behind it in the east, appeared to him to have the shape of a lion’s head. He called the land Lion Mountain and passed on. The name stuck, and the country became known as Sierra Leone. Later another man, seeing the same mountain in a different light, or through different eyes, called it Mount Aureole. That name also stuck. Even later, and in a more whimsical bout of fantasy, a white man named the town founded in its shadow Freetown, and it still bears the name today. It was just after noon on July 2, Day Eighty-eight in Sha
On the voyage from Spain, Sha
Only one job had he allowed to be done on the way south. The bundles of mixed clothing had been sorted, and the one containing the haversacks and webbing had been opened. With canvas needle and palm, Cipriani, Vlaminck, and Dupree had passed the days cutting the haversacks to pieces and transforming them into backpacks fitted with a score of long, narrow pouches, each capable of taking one bazooka rocket. These now shapeless and inexplicable bundles were stored in the paint locker among the cleaning rags.
The smaller knapsacks had also been altered. The packs had been cut away so that only the shoulder straps remained, with braces across the chest and around the waist. Dog-clips had been fastened atop each shoulder strap, and others at the belt, and later these frames would accommodate an entire crate of mortar bombs, enabling up to twenty to be carried at one time.
The Toscana had a
Freetown is one of the favorite ports along the West African coast for taking aboard these brawny laborers who, trained in the use of tackle and winches, are used by the tramp steamers frequenting the smaller timber ports along the coast. They board at Freetown on the outward voyage and are discharged with their pay on the way back. In a hundred coves and creeks along the coast, where cranes and jetties are at a premium, ships have to use their own jumbo derricks to load cargo. It is grindingly hard work, as one sweats in the tropical fever heat, and white seamen are paid to be seamen, not stevedores. Locally recruited labor might not be available and probably would not know how to handle cargo, so Sierra Leonians are brought along. They sleep in the open on the ship’s deck for the voyage, brewing up their own food and performing their ablutions over the stern. It caused no surprise in Freetown when the Toscana gave this as her reason for calling.
When the anchor cable rattled down, Sha
The sky was overcast, no rain fell, but beneath the clouds the heat was like a greenhouse, and he felt the sweat clamping his shirt to his torso. It would be like this from here on. His eyes riveted on the central area of the city’s waterfront, where a large hotel stood looking out over the bay. If anywhere, this was where Langarotti would be waiting, staring out to sea. Perhaps he had not arrived yet. But they could not wait forever. If he was not there by sundown, they would have to invent a reason for staying on—like a broken refrigerator. It would be unthinkable to sail without the cold store working. He took his eyes away from the hotel and watched the tenders plying around the big Elder Dempster ship tied up at the quay.