Elephant Song

Daniel watched him from the verandah as he was driven away by his uniformed chauffeur in the ambassadorial car.

Despite the Union Jack pe

Daniel went back to the files that Michael's secretary had laid out for him in a back room.  When he left the embassy three hours later, his original impression of Ephrem Taffari had been reinforced a hundredfold.

He's a tough and wily bird, Daniel muttered as he started the Landrover.

He and Bo

The tarmac was pitted with sharp-edged craters, while chickens and pigs scattered, cackling and grunting, ahead of the outriders.

The presidential car, another recent gift from the same middle eastern oil potentate, was a black Mercedes.  It was a mark of his high regard that President Taffari had sent it down to Lake House on the waterfront to fetch his guest to the audience.

Ning Cheng Gong sat behind the chauffeur and studied these first glimpses of Ubomo with interest.

After what he had observed in Asia and the other parts of Africa in which he had served, the poverty and degradation of the slums through which they drove neither repelled nor shocked him.  From his father he had learned to look upon swarming humanity as either a source of cheap labour, or a market for the goods and services he had to sell.  Without human beings there is no profit, his father had pointed out on numerous occasions.  The more people the better.  Always when human lives are cheap, there are great fortunes to be made.  We, the Lucky Dragon, must resist any effort to limit population growth in the Third World.

People are our basic stock-in-trade.  Cheng smiled at his father's wisdom, derived from a study of history.  His father's view was that only when human populations had been checked and limited by extraneous factors had the common man regained dignity and a measure of control over his own destiny.  The terrible depredations of the great plagues of medieval times had broken the slavery of the feudal system of Europe. They had reduced human populations to the point where men had scarcity value and could bargain for their labour once again.

The great wars of this century had smashed the class system of inherited privilege and fortune, and ushered in this aberrant age of human rights, in which the common men of inferior races were taught that they were the equal of their betters.  In Cheng's view, and that of his father, common men had no such divine rights, any more than the antelope in the wild deserved special protection from the lion.

When the mass of humanity reached such proportions that human life was cheap, that was the age of opportunity for the great predators to emerge.  Predators like Lucky Dragon.  In Africa that time was fast approaching as populations swarmed like hiving bees.

He thought about the little Cambodian boat girl, whose corpse now lay in the dark depths of the China Sea.  There were millions and tens of millions more like her, in India and China and Africa and South America, for men like him.

Cheng had recognized in the burgeoning populations of Africa a unique opportunity.

That was the main reason that Lucky Dragon was drawn so irresistibly to this continent.  That was why he was going now to a meeting with the president of this country which would soon be made to render up its wealth to him.  He would suck the juice from it, throw away the empty skin, and pluck another from the tree.  He smiled at the metaphor and raised his eyes to the green hill above the town on which Government House stood.

President Ephrem Taffari had an honour guard in maroon uniforms and white sun-helmets drawn up to welcome him and a red carpet laid across the green lawn.  He came down the to meet Ning Cheng Gong personally and to shake his hand.  He led him up on to the wide verandah and seated him in one of the carved armchairs under the revolving fan that hung from the ceiling.

An Uhali servant in ankle-length white robes, scarlet sash and to sselled fez offered him a silver tray of frosted glasses.

Cheng refused the champagne and chose a glass of freshly squeezed orange juice.

Ephrem Taffari took the armchair opposite him and crossed one long leg clad in crisp white cotton trousers over the other.

He smiled at Cheng with all his charm.  I wanted our first meeting to be informal and relaxed he explained, and made a deprecatory gesture towards his own open-neck sports shirt and sandals.  So you will excuse my casual attire and the fact that I have none of my ministers with me.

'Of course, Your Excellency.  Cheng sipped the orange juice.  I am also delighted by this opportunity to get to know you and to be able to speak freely without the inhibition of having other people present.

Sir Peter Harrison speaks very highly of you, Mr.  Ning.  He is a man whose opinion I value.  I am sure that our relationship will be mutually rewarding.  For another ten minutes they traded compliments and ploicstations of friendship and goodwill.  Both of them were at ease with this flowery circumlocution; it was part of their separate cultures and they understood instinctively the moves and countermoves as they circled and closed in on the real business of their meeting.

Finally Cheng took a sealed envelope from the inside pocket of his white silk tropical suit.  It was a piece of expensive stationery, glossy and cream-coloured with a dragon motif embossed on the back flap.  My father and I want you to believe, Mr.  President, that our commitment to your country is unswerving.  We would like you to accept this as an earnest token of our friendship and concern.

Cheng made his offering seem like a free and unsolicited gift, whereas both of them were aware that it had been the subject of intense and protracted bargaining.  There had been other bidders in the market, not least of them the Arab oil sheikh who had provided the gunboat and the presidential Mercedes.

It had taken all Sir Peter Harrison's influence to secure the deal for the BOSS and Lucky Dragon syndicate.

The envelope contained the second instalment due to Ephrem Taffari in his personal capacity.  The first instalment had been paid over ten months previously, on signature of the original agreement.

President Taffari picked up the envelope -and turned it over to examine the seal His fingers were long and elegantly shaped, and very dark against the stiff creamy paper.

He split the corner of the envelope with his thumbnail and unfolded the two documents it contained.  One was a deposit receipt to a numbered bank account in Switzerland.  The amount of the deposit was ten million US dollars.  The other was a share transfer document, notarised in Luxembourg.  A total of thirty percent of the syndicate's share equity was now registered in the name of Ephrem Taffari.  The syndicate's formally registered -name was The Ubomo Development Corporation.

The president returned the documents to the open envelope -and slipped it into the pocket of his flowered sports shirt.  Progress has not been as rapid as I had hoped, he said, his tone still courteous but underlaid with steel.  I hope that will change with your arrival, Mr.

Ning.  I am aware of the delays.  As you know, my field-manager has been in Kahali for the last week or so.  He has given me a full report of the situation.  I believe that some of the blame must attach to the previous management, put in place by BOSS.

There has been some reluctance to exploit all the available assets.

Cheng made a delicately pejorative gesture.  Mr.  Purvis of BOSS, who is now safely on his way back to London, was a sensitive man.  You know how squeamish these Englishmen can be.  My field-manager informs me that we are short of labour.  I assure you, Mr.  Ning, that you will have all the labour you require.  Taffari's smile became strained at the thinly veiled complaint.  Thirty thousand, Cheng said softly.  That was the original estimate approved by you, Your Excellency.  So far we have been given fewer than ten thousand.  You will have the rest before the begi