“To the board?”

“That’s right. Was it ever mentioned to the board of directors that we were doing any such survey? That’s what I want to know. It may not necessarily be on the agenda. You’ll have to look at the minutes. And in case it got a passing mention under ‘any other business,’ check through the documents of all board meetings over the past twelve months. Secondly, find out who authorized the visit by Bryant six months ago and why, and who sent the survey engineer down there and why. The man who did the survey is called Mulrooney. I also want to know something about him, which you can get from his file in Personnel. Got it?”

Thorpe was surprised. This was way out of his line of country.

“Yes, Sir James, but Miss Cooke could do that in half the time, or get somebody to do it—”

“Yes, she could. But I want you to do it. If you look at a file from Personnel, or boardroom documents, it will be assumed it has something to do with finance. Therefore it will remain discreet.”

The light began to dawn on Martin Thorpe. “You mean …they found something down there, Sir James?”

Manson stared out at the now inky sky and the blazing lights below him as the brokers and traders, clerks and merchants, bankers and assessors, insurers and jobbers, buyers and sellers, lawyers and, in some offices no doubt, lawbreakers, worked on through the winter afternoon toward the witching hour of five-thirty.

“Never mind,” he said gruffly to the young man behind him. “Just do it.”

Martin Thorpe was grinning as he slipped through the back entrance of the office and down the stairs to his own premises. “Cunning bastard,” he said to himself on the stairs.

“Mr. Bryant is here, Sir James.”

Manson crossed the room and switched on the main lights. Returning to his desk, he depressed the intercom button. “Send him in, Miss Cooke.”

There were three reasons why middle-level executives had occasion to be summoned to the sanctum on the tenth floor. One was to hear instructions or deliver a report that Sir James wanted to issue or hear personally, which was business. One was to be chewed into a sweat-soaked rag, which was hell. The third was that the chief executive had decided he wanted to play favorite uncle to his cherished employees, which was reassuring.

On the threshold Richard Bryant, at thirty-nine a middle-level executive who did his work competently and well but needed his job, was plainly aware that the first reason of the three could not be the one that brought him here. He suspected the second and was immensely relieved to see it had to be the third.

From the center of the office Sir James walked toward him with a smile of welcome. “Ah, come in, Bryant. Come in.”

As Bryant entered, Miss Cooke closed the door behind him and retired to her desk.

Sir James Manson gestured to his employee to take one of the easy chairs set well away from the desk in the conference area of the spacious office. Bryant, still wondering what it was all about, took the indicated chair and sank into its brushed suede cushions. Manson advanced toward the wall and opened two doors, revealing a well-stocked bar cabinet.

“Take a drink, Bryant? Sun’s well down, I think.”

“Thank you, sir—er—scotch, please.”

“Good man. My own favorite poison. I’ll join you.”

Bryant glanced at his watch. It was quarter to five, and the tropical maxim about taking a drink after the sun has gone down was hardly coined for London winter afternoons. But he recalled an office party at which Sir James had snorted his derision of sherry-drinkers and the like and spent the evening on scotch. It pays to watch things like that, Bryant reflected, as his chief poured his special Glenlivet into two fine old crystal glasses. Of course he left the ice bucket strictly alone.

“Water? Dash of soda?” he called from the bar.

Bryant craned around and spotted the bottle. “Is that a single malt, Sir James? No, thank you, straight as it comes.”

Manson nodded several times in approval and brought the glasses over. They ‘Cheers’ed each other and savored the whisky. Bryant was still waiting for the conversation to start. Manson noted this and gave him the gruff-uncle look.

“No need to worry about me having you up here like this,” he began. “I was just going through a sheaf of old reports in my desk drawers and came across yours, or one of them. Must have read it at the time and forgotten to give it back to Miss Cooke for filing.”

“My report?” queried Bryant.

“Eh? Yes, yes, the one you filed after your return from that place — what’s it called again? Zangaro? Was that it?”

“Oh, yes, sir. Zangaro. That was six months ago.”

“Yes, quite so. Six months, of course. Noticed as I reread it that you’d had a bit of a rough time with that Minister fellow.”

Bryant began to relax. The room was warm, the chair extremely comfortable, and the whisky like an old friend. He smiled at the memory. “But I got the contract for survey permission.”

“Damn right you did,” congratulated Sir James. He smiled as if at fond memories. “I used to do that in. the old days, y’know. Went on some rough missions to bring home the bacon. Never went to West Africa, though. Not in those days. Went later, of course. But after all this started.”

To indicate “all this” he waved his hand at the luxurious office.

“So nowadays I spend too much time up here, buried in paperwork,” Sir James continued. “I even envy you younger chaps going off to clinch deals in the old way. So tell me about your Zangaro trip.”

“Well, that really was doing things the old way, One look, and I half expected to find people running around with bones through their noses,” said Bryant.

“Really? Good Lord. Rough place is it, this Zangaro?” Sir James Manson’s head had tilted back into the shadows, and Bryant was sufficiently comfortable not to catch the gleam of concentration in the eye that belied the encouraging tone of voice.

“Too right, Sir James. It’s a bloody shambles of a place, moving steadily backward into the Middle Ages since independence five years ago.” He recalled something else he had heard his chief say once in an aside remark to a group of executives. “It’s a classic example of the concept that most of the African republics today have thrown up power groups whose performance in power simply cannot justify their entitlement to leadership of a town dump. As a result, of course, it’s the ordinary people who suffer.”

Sir James, who was as capable as the next man of recognizing his own words when he heard them played back at him, smiled quietly, rose, and walked to the window to look down at the teeming streets below.

“So who does run the show out there?” he asked quietly.

“The President. Or rather the dictator,” said Bryant from his chair. His glass was empty. “A man called Jean Kimba. He won the first and only election, just before independence five years ago, against the wishes of the colonial power—some said by the use of terrorism and voodoo on the voters. They’re pretty backward, you know. Most of them didn’t know what a vote was. Now they don’t need to know.”

“Tough guy, is he, this Kimba?” asked Sir James.

“It’s not that he’s tough, sir. He’s just downright mad. A raving megalomaniac, and probably a paranoid to boot. He rules completely alone, surrounded by a small coterie of political yes-men. If they fall out with him, or arouse his suspicions in any way, they go into the cells of the old colonial police barracks. Rumor has it Kimba goes down there himself to supervise the torture sessions. No one has ever come out alive.”

“Hm, what a world we live in, Bryant. And they’ve got the same vote in the UN General Assembly as Britain or America. Whose advice does he listen to in government?”

“No one of his own people. Of course, he has his voices—so the few local whites say, those who’ve stuck it out by staying on.”