James Manson had also made several fortunes on the side. His latest was in the shares of the nickel-mining company in Australia called Poseidon. When Poseidon shares in late summer 1969 had been standing at four shillings, he had got a whisper that a survey team in central Australia might have found something on a stretch of land whose mining rights were owned by Poseidon. He had taken a gamble and paid out a very hefty sum to have a sneak preview of the first reports coming out of the interior. Those reports said nickel, and lots of it. In fact nickel was not in shortage on the world market, but that never deterred the punters, and it was they who sent share prices spiraling, not investors.

He contacted his Swiss bank, an establishment so discreet that its only way of announcing its presence in the world was a small gold plate no larger than a visiting card, set into the wall beside a solid oak door in a small street in Zurich. Switzerland has no stockbrokers; the banks do all the investments. Manson instructed Dr. Martin Steinhofer, the head of the investments section of the Zwingli Bank, to buy on his behalf five thousand Poseidon shares. The Swiss banker contacted the prestigious London firm of Joseph Sebag & Co., in the name of Zwingli, and placed the order. Poseidon stood at five shillings a share when the deal was concluded.

The storm broke in late September when the size of the Australian nickel deposit became known. The shares began to rise, and, a.s.sisted by helpful rumors, the rising spiral became a rush. Sir James Manson had intended to start to sell when they reached 50 a share, but so vast was the rise that he held on. Finally he estimated that the peak would be 115 and ordered Dr. Steinhofer to start selling at 100 a share. This the discreet Swiss banker did and cleared the lot at an average of 103 for each share. In fact the peak was reached at 120 a share, before common sense began to prevail and the shares slid back to 10. Man-son did not mind the extra 20, for he knew the time to sell was just before the peak, when buyers are still plentiful. With all fees paid, he netted a cool 500,-000, which was still stashed in the Zwingli Bank.

It happens to be illegal for a British citizen and resident to have a foreign bank account without informing the Treasury, and also to make half a million sterling profit in sixty days without paying capital gains tax on it. But Dr. Steinhofer was a Swiss resident, and Dr. Steinhofer would keep his mouth shut. That was what Swiss banks were for.

On that mid-February afternoon Sir James Manson, strolled back to his desk, sat back in the lush leather chair behind it, and glanced again at the report that lay on the blotter. It had arrived in a large envelope, sealed with wax and marked for his eyes only. It was signed at the bottom by Dr. Gordon Chalmers, the head of ManCon's Department of Study, Research, Gee-Mapping, and Sample a.n.a.lysis, situated outside London. It was the a.n.a.lyst's report on tests conducted on the samples a man called Mulrooney had apparently brought back from a place called Zangaro three weeks earlier.

Dr. Chalmers did not waste words. The summary of the report was brief and to the point. Mulrooney had found a mountain, or a hill, some 1800 feet high above ground level and close to 1000 yards across the base. It was set slightly apart from a range of such mountains in the hinterland of Zangaro. The hill contained a widely disseminated deposit of mineral in apparently evenly consistent presence throughout the rock, which was of igneous type and millions of years older than the sandstone and ragstone of the mountains that surrounded it.

Mulrooney had found numerous, and ubiquitous stringers of quartz and had predicated the presence of tin. He had returned with samples of the quartz, the country rock surrounding it, and shingle from the beds of the streams surrounding the hill. The quartz stringers did indeed contain small quant.i.ties of tin. But it was the country rock that was interesting. Repeated and varied tests showed that this country rock, and the gravel samples, contained minor quant.i.ties of low-grade nickel. They also contained remarkable quant.i.ties of platinum. It was present in all the samples and was fairly evenly distributed. The richest rock in platinum known in this world was in the Rustenberg mines in South Africa, where concentrations or "grades" ran as high as Point Two Five of a Troy ounce per rock ton. The average concentration in the Mulrooney samples was Point Eight One. I have the honour to remain, Sir, Yours, etc . . . .

Sir James Manson knew as well as anyone in mining that platinum was the third most precious metal in the world, and stood at a market price of $130 a Troy ounce as he sat in his chair. He was also aware that, with the growing world hunger for the stuff, it had to rise to at least $150 an ounce over the next three years, probably to $200 within five years. It would be unlikely to rise to the 1968 peak price of $300 again, because that was ridiculous.

He did some calculations on a scratch pad. Two hundred and fifty million cubic yards of rock at two tons per cubic yard was five hundred million tons. At even half an ounce per rock ton, that was two hundred and fifty million ounces. If the revelation of a new world source dragged the price down to ninety dollars an ounce, and even if the inaccessibility of the place meant a cost of fifty dollars an ounce to get it out and refined, that still meant.. .

Sir James Manson leaned back in his chair again and whistled softly.

"Jesus Christ. A ten-billion-dollar mountain."

3.

Platinum is a metal and, like all metals, it has its price. The price is basically controlled by two factors. These are the indispensability of the metal in certain processes that the industries of the world would like to complete, and the rarity of the metal. Platinum is very rare. Total world production each year, apart from stockpiled production, which is kept secret by the producers, is a shade over one and a half million Troy ounces.

The overwhelming majority of it, probably more than ninety-five per cent, comes from three sources: South Africa, Canada, and Russia. Russia, as usual, is the uncooperative member of the group. The producers would like to keep the world price fairly steady so as to be able to make long-term plans for investment in new mining equipment and development of new mines in the confidence that the bottom will not suddenly drop out of the market should a large quant.i.ty of stockpiled platinum suddenly be released. The Russians, by stockpiling unknown quant.i.ties and being able to release large quant.i.ties any time they feel like it, keep tremors running through the market whenever they can.

Russia releases on the world each year about 350,000 Troy ounces out of the 1,500,000 that reach the same market. This gives her between 23 and 24 per cent of the market, enough to ensure her a considerable degree of influence. Her supplies are marketed through Soyuss Prom Export. Canada puts on the market some 200,000 ounces a year, the whole production coming from the nickel mines of International Nickel, and just about the whole of this supply is bought up each year by the Engelhard Industries of the United States. But should the United States need for platinum suddenly rise sharply, Canada might well not be able to furnish the extra quant.i.ty.

The third source is South Africa, turning out close to 950,000 ounces a year and dominating the market. Apart from the Impala mines, which were just opening when Sir James Manson sat considering the world position of platinum, and have since become very important, the giants of platinum are the Rustenberg mines, which account for well over half the world's production. These are controlled by Johannesburg Consolidated, which had a big enough slice of the stock to be sole manager of the mines. The world refiner and marketer of Rustenberg's supply was and is the London-based firm of Johnson-Matthey.

James Manson knew this as well as anyone else. Although he was not into platinum when Chalmers' report hit his desk, he knew the position as well as a brain surgeon knows how a heart works. He also knew why, even at that time, the boss of Engelhard Industries of America, the colorful Charlie Engelhard, better known to the populace as the owner of the fabulous racehorse Nijinsky, was buying into South African platinum. It was because America would need much more than Canada could supply for the mid-seventies. Man-son was certain of it.

And the particular reason why American consumption of platinum was almost certain to rise, even triple, by the mid- to late seventies, lay in that simple piece of metal the car exhaust pipe and in those dire words "air pollution."

With legislation already pa.s.sed in the United States projecting ever more stringent controls, and with little likelihood that any nonprecious-metal car exhaust-control device would be marketed before 1980, there was a strong probability that every American car would soon require one-tenth of an ounce of pure platinum. This meant that the Americans would need one and a half million ounces of platinum every year, an amount equal to the present world production, and they would not know where to get it.

James Manson thought he had an idea where. They could always buy it from him. And with the absolute indispensability of a platinum-based anti-pollutant catalyst in every fume-control device established for a decade, and world demand far outstripping supply, the price would be nice, very nice indeed.

There was only one problem. He had to be absolutely certain that he, and no one else, would control all mining rights to the Crystal Mountain. The question was, how?

The normal way would be to visit the republic where the mountain was situated, seek an interview with the President, show him the survey report, and propose to him a deal whereby ManCon secured the mining rights, the government secured a profit-partic.i.p.ation clause that would fill the coffers of its treasury, and the President would secure a fat and regular payment into his Swiss account. That would be the normal way.

But apart from the fact that any other mining company in the world, if advised of what lay inside the Crystal Mountain, would counterbid for the same mining rights, sending the government's share up and Man-son's down, there were three groups who more than any other would want to take control, either to begin production or to stop it forever. These were the South Africans, the Canadians, and most of all the Russians. For the advent on the world market of a ma.s.sive new supply source would cut the Soviet slice of the market back to the level of the unnecessary, removing from the Russians their power, influence, and money-making capacity in the platinum field.

Manson had a vague recollection of having heard the name of Zangaro, but it was such an obscure place he realized he knew nothing about it. The first requirement was evidently to learn more. He leaned forward and depressed the intercom switch.

"Miss Cooke, would you come in, please?"

He had called her Miss Cooke throughout the seven years she had been his personal and private secretary, and even in the ten years before that, when she had been an ordinary company secretary, rising from the typing pool to the tenth floor, no one had ever suggested she might have a first name. In fact she had. It was Marjory. But she just did not seem the sort of person one called Marjory.

Certainly men had once called her Marjory, long ago, before the war, when she was a young girl. Perhaps they had even tried to flirt with her, pinch her bottom, those long thirty-five years ago. But that was then. Five years of war, hauling an ambulance through burning rubble-strewn streets, trying to forget a Guardsman who never came back from Dunkirk, and twenty years of nursing a crippled and whining mother, a bedridden tyrant who used tears for weapons, had taken away the youth and the pinchable qualities of Miss Marjory Cooke. At fifty-four, she was tailored, efficient, and severe; her work at ManCon was almost all her life, the tenth floor her fulfillment, and the terrier who shared her neat apartment in suburban Chigwell and slept on her bed, her child and lover.

So no one ever called her Marjory. The young executives called her a shriveled apple, and the secretary birds "that old bat." The others, including her employer, Sir James Manson, about whom she knew more than she would ever tell him or anyone else, called her Miss Cooke.

She entered through the door set in the beech-paneled wall which, when closed, looked like part of the wall.

"Miss Cooke, it has come to my attention that we have had, during the past few months, a small survey -one man, I believe-in the republic of Zangaro."

"Yes, Sir James. That's right."

"Oh, you know about it."

Of course she knew about it. Miss Cooke never forgot anything that had crossed her desk.

"Yes, Sir James."

"Good. Then please find out for me who secured that government's permission for us to conduct the survey."

"It will be on file, Sir James. I'll go and look."

She was back in ten minutes, having first checked in her daily diary appointment books, which were cross-indexed into two indices, one under personal names and the other under subject headings, and then confirmed with Personnel.

"It was Mr. Bryant, Sir James." She consulted a card in her hand. "Richard Bryant, of Overseas Contracts."

"He submitted a report, I suppose?" asked Sir James.

"He must have done, under normal company procedure."

"Send me in his report, would you, Miss Cooke?"

She was gone again, and the head of ManCon stared out through the plate-gla.s.s windows across the room from his desk at the mid-afternoon dusk settling over the City of London. The lights were coming on in the. middle-level floors-they had been on all day in the lowest ones-but at skyline level there was still enough winter daylight to see by. But not to read by. Sir James Manson flicked on the reading lamp on his desk as Miss Cooke returned, laid the report he wanted on his blotter, and receded back into the wall.

The report Richard Bryant had submitted was dated six months earlier and was written in the terse style favored by the company. It recorded that, according to instructions from the head of Overseas Contracts, he had flown to Clarence, the capital of Zangaro, and there, after a frustrating week in a hotel, had secured an interview with the Minister of Natural Resources. There were three separate interviews, s.p.a.ced over six days, and at length an agreement had been reached that a single representative of ManCon might enter the republic to conduct a survey for minerals in the hinterland beyond the Crystal Mountains. The area to be surveyed was deliberately left vague by the company, so that the survey team could travel more or less where it wished. After further haggling, during which it was made plain to the Minister that he could forget any idea that the company was prepared to pay the sort of fee he seemed to expect, and that there were no indications of mineral presence to work on, a sum had been agreed on between Bryant and the Minister. Inevitably, the sum on the contract was just over half the total that changed hands, the balance being paid into the Minister's private account.

That was all. The only indication of the character of the place was in the reference to a corrupt minister. So what? thought Sir James Manson. Nowadays Bryant might have been in Washington. Only the going rate was different.

He leaned forward to the intercom again. "Tell Mr. Bryant of Overseas Contracts to come up and see me, would you, Miss Cooke?"

He lifted the switch and pressed another one. "Martin, come in a minute, please."

It took Martin Thorpe two minutes to come from his office on the ninth floor. He did not look the part of a financial whiz-kid and protege of one of the most ruthless go-getters in a traditionally ruthless and go-getting industry. He looked more like the captain of the Rugby team from a good public school-charming, boyish, clean-cut, with dark wavy hair and deep blue eyes. The secretaries called him dishy, and the directors, who had seen stock options they were certain of whisked out from under their noses or found their Companies slipping into control of a series of nominee shareholders fronting for Martin Thorpe, called him something not quite so nice.

Despite the looks, Thorpe had never been either a public-school man or an athlete. He could not differenti- ate between a batting average and the ambient air temperature, but he could retain the hourly movement of share prices across the range of ManCon's subsidiary companies in his head throughout the day. At twenty-nine he had ambitions and the intent to carry them out. ManCon and Sir James might provide the means, so far as he was concerned, and his loyalty depended on his exceptionally high salary, the contracts throughout the City that his job under Manson could bring him, and the knowledge that where he was const.i.tuted a good vantage point for spotting what he called "the big one."

By the time he entered, Sir James had slipped the Zangaro report into a drawer, and the Bryant report alone lay on his blotter. He gave his protege a friendly smile.

"Martin, I've got a job I need done with some discretion. I need it done in a hurry, and it may take half the night."

It was not Sir James's way to ask if Thorpe had any engagements that evening. Thorpe knew that; it went with the salary.

"That's okay, Sir James. I had nothing on that a phone call can't kill."

"Good. Look, I've been going over some old reports and came across this one. Six months ago one of our men from Overseas Contracts was sent out to a place called Zangaro. I don't know why, but I'd like to. The man secured that government's go-ahead for a small team from here to conduct a survey for any possible mineral deposits in unchartered land beyond the mountain range called the Crystal Mountains. Now, what I want to know is this: Was it ever mentioned in advance or at the time, or since that visit six months ago, to the board?"

"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 pa.s.sing mention under 'any other business,' check through the doc.u.ments 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 doc.u.ments, it will be a.s.sumed 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 a.s.sessors, 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 b.a.s.t.a.r.d," 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 b.u.t.ton. "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 h.e.l.l. The third was that the chief executive had decided he wanted to play favorite uncle to his cherished employees, which was rea.s.suring.

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 s.p.a.cious 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 gla.s.ses. 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 gla.s.ses 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."

"d.a.m.n 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 b.l.o.o.d.y 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 cla.s.sic example of the concept that most of the African republics today have thrown up power groups whose performance in power simply cannot justify their ent.i.tlement 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 dicator," said Bryant from his chair. His gla.s.s 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 a.s.sembly 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."

"Voices?" queried Sir James.

"Yes, sir. He claims to the people he is guided by divine voices. He says he talks to G.o.d. He's told the people and the a.s.sembled diplomatic corps that in so many words."

"Oh dear, not another," mused Manson, still gazing down at the streets below. "I sometimes think it was a mistake to introduce the Africans to G.o.d. Half their leaders now seem to be on first-name terms with Him."