It is longer than a football pitch, weighs 550 tons, and moves at an average of five miles per hour. Its job-and that of company troubleshooter Neil Mannix – is to move a giant transformer across Nyala, an oil-rich African state. Outwardly politically stable, Nyala erupts in civil war. And Mannix finds himself, and the juggernaut, at the centre of the conflict – with no way to run and nowhere to hide.

Desmond Bagley

Juggernaut (1985)

The telephone call came when I was down by the big circular pool chatting up the two frauleins I had cut out of the herd. I didn't rate my chances too highly. They were of an age which regards any man of over thirty-five as falling apart at the seams; but what the hell, it was improving my German.

I looked up at the brown face of the waiter and said incredulously, 'A phone call for me?'

'Yes, sir. From London.' He seemed impressed.

I sighed and grabbed my beach robe. 'I'll be back,' I promised, and followed the waiter up the steps towards the hotel. At the top I paused. 'I'll take it in my room,' I said, and cut across the front of the hotel towards the cabana I rented.

Inside it was cool, almost cold, and the air conditioning unit uttered a muted roar. I took a can of beer from the refrigerator, opened it, and picked up the telephone. As I suspected, it was Geddes. 'What are you doing in Kenya?' he asked. The line was good; he could have been in the next room.

I drank some beer. 'What do you care where, I take my vacations?'

'You're on the right continent. It's a pity you have to come back to London. What's the weather like there?'

'It's hot. What would you expect on the equator?'

'It's raining here,' he said, 'and a bit cold.'

I'd got used to the British by now. As with the Arabs there is always an exchange of small talk before the serious issues arise but the British always talk about the weather. I sometimes find it hard to take. 'You didn't ring me for a weather report. What's this about London?'

'Playtime is over, I'm afraid. We have a job for you. I'd like to see you in my office the day after tomorrow.'

I figured it out. Half an hour to check out, another hour to Mombasa to turn in the rented car. The afternoon flight to Nairobi and then the midnight flight to London. And the rest of that day to recover. 'I might just make it,' I conceded, 'But I'd like to know why.'

'Too complicated now. See you in London.'

'Okay,' I said grouchily. 'How did you know I was here, by the way?'

Geddes laughed lightly. 'We have our methods, Watson, we have our methods.' There was a click and the line went dead.

I replaced the handset in disgust. That was another thing about the British – they were always flinging quotations at you, especially from Sherlock Holmes and Alice in Wonderland. Or Winnie the Pooh, for God's sake!

I went outside the cabana and stood on the balcony while I finished the beer. The Indian Ocean was calm and palm fronds fluttered in a light breeze. The girls were splashing in the pool, having a mock fight, and their shrill laughter cut through the heated air. Two young men were watching them with interest. Goodbyes were unnecessary, I thought, so I finished the beer and went inside to pack.

A word about the company I work for. British Electric is about as British as Shell Oil is Dutch – it's gone multi-national, which is why I was one of the many Americans in its employ. You can't buy a two kilowatt electric heater from British Electric, nor yet a five cubic foot refrigerator, but if you want the giant-sized economy pack which produces current measured in megawatts then we're your boys. We're at the heavy end of the industry.

Nominally I'm an engineer but it must have been ten years since I actually built or designed anything. The higher a man rises in a corporation like ours the less he is concerned with purely technical problems. Of course, the jargon of modern management makes everything sound technical and the subcommittee rooms resound with phrases drawn from critical path analysis, operations research and industrial dynamics, but all that flim-flam is discarded at the big boardroom table, where the serious decisions are made by men who know there is a lot more to management than the mechanics of technique.

There are lots of names for people like me. In some companies I'm called an expeditor, in others a troubleshooter. I operate in the foggy area bounded on the north by technical problems, on the east by finance, on the west by politics, and on the south by the sheer quirkiness of humankind. If I had to put a name to my trade I'd call myself a political engineer.

Geddes was right about London; it was cold and wet. There was a strong wind blowing which drove the rain against the windows of his office with a pattering sound. After Africa it was bleak.

He stood up as I entered. 'You have a nice tan,' he said appreciatively.

'It would have been better if I could have finished my vacation. What's the problem?'

'You Yanks are always in such a hurry,' complained Geddes. That was good for a couple of laughs. You don't run an outfit like British Electric by resting on your butt and Geddes, like many other Britishers in a top ranking job, seemed deceptively slow but somehow seemed to come out ahead. The classic definition of a Hungarian as a guy who comes behind you in a revolving door and steps out ahead could very well apply to Geddes.

The second laugh was that I could never break them of the habit of calling me a Yank. I tried calling Geddes a Scouse once, and then tried to show him that Liverpool is closer to London than Wyoming to New England, but it never sank in.

This way,' he said. 'I've a team laid on in the boardroom.'

I knew most of the men there, and when Geddes said, 'You all know Neil Mannix,' there was a murmur of assent. There was one new boy whom I didn't know, and whom Geddes introduced. 'This is John Sutherland – our man on the spot.'

'Which spot?'

'I said you were on the right continent. It's just that you were on the wrong side.' Geddes pulled back a curtain covering a notice board to reveal a map. 'Nyala.'

I said, 'We've got a power station contract there.'

'That's right.' Geddes picked up a pointer and tapped the map. 'Just about there – up in the north. A place called Bir Oassa.'

Someone had stuck a needle into the skin of the earth and the earth bled copiously. Thus encouraged, another hypodermic went into the earth's hide and the oil came up driven by the pressure of natural gas. The gas, although not altogether unexpected, was a bonus. The oil strike led to much rejoicing and merriment among those who held on to the levers of power in a turbulent political society. In modern times big oil means political power on a world scale, and this was a chance for Nyala to make its presence felt in the comity of nations, something it had hitherto conspicuously failed to do. Oil also meant money – lots of it.

'It's good oil,' Geddes was saying. 'Low sulphur content and just the right viscosity to make it bunker grade without refining. The Nyalans have just completed a pipeline from Bir Oassa to Port Luard, here on the coast. That's about eight hundred miles. They reckon they can offer cheap oil to ships on the round-Africa run to Asia. They hope to get a bit of South American business too. But all that's in the future.'

The pointer returned to Bir Oassa. There remains the natural gas. There was talk of running a gas line paralleling the oil line, building a liquifying plant at Port Luard, and shipping the gas to Europe. The North Sea business has made that an uneconomical proposition.'