Endean seemed to sag at the shoulders, as if the knowledge of the certain loss of his personal fortune, promised by Sir James Manson when Bobi was installed, had suddenly been compounded by the realization that Shannon was the most completely dangerous man he had ever met. But it was a bit late for that.
Semmler appeared in the doorway of the study, behind Endean, and Langarotti slipped quietly through the dining-room door from the corridor. Both held Schmeissers, catch off, very steady, pointing at Endean.
Shannon rose. “Come on,” he said, “I’ll drive you back to the border. From there you can walk.”
The single unpunctured tire from the two Zangaran trucks in the courtyard had been fitted to the vehicle that had brought Endean into the country. The canvas behind the cab had been taken away, and three African soldiers crouched in the back with submachine carbines. Another twenty, fully uniformed and equipped, were being marshaled into a line outside the palace.
In the hallway, close to the shattered door, they met a middle-aged African in civilian clothes. Shannon nodded to him and exchanged a few words.
“Everything okay, Doctor?”
“Yes, so far. I have arranged with my people to send a hundred volunteer workers to clean up. Also another fifty will be here this afternoon for fitting out and equipping. Seven of the Zangaran men on the list of notables have been contacted at their homes and have agreed to serve. They will meet this evening.”
“Good. Perhaps you had better take time off to draft the first bulletin from the new government. It should be broadcast as soon as possible. Ask Mr. Semmler to try to get the radio working. If it can’t be done, we’ll use the ship.”
“I have just spoken to Mr. Semmler,” said the African. “He has been in touch with the Toscana by walkie-talkie. Captain Waldenberg reports there is another ship out there trying to raise Clarence port authorities with a request for permission to enter port. No one is replying, but Captain Waldenberg can hear her on the radio.”
“Any identification?” asked Shannon.
“Mr. Semmler says she identifies herself as the Russian ship Komarov, a freighter.”
“Tell Mr. Semmler to man the port radio before going to work on the palace transmitter. Tell him to make to Komarov: ‘Permission refused. Permanently.’ Thank you, Doctor.”
They parted, and Shannon took Endean back to his truck. He took the wheel himself and swung the truck back on the road to the hinterland and the border.
“Who was that?” asked Endean sourly as the truck sped along the peninsula, past the shantytown of the immigrant workers, where all seemed to be bustle and activity. With amazement Endean noticed that each crossroads had an armed soldier with a submachine carbine standing on point duty.
“The man in the hallway?” asked Shannon.
“Yes.”
“That was Doctor Okoye.”
“A witch doctor, I suppose.”
“Actually he’s an Oxford Ph.D.”
“Friend of yours?”
“Yes.”
There was no more conversation until-they were on the highway toward the north.
“All right,” said Endean at last, “I know what you’ve done. You’ve ruined one of the biggest and richest coups that has ever been attempted. You don’t know that, of course. You’re too bloody thick. What I’d like to know is, why? In God’s name, why?”
Shannon thought for a moment, keeping the truck steady on the bumpy road, which had deteriorated to a dirt track.
“You made two mistakes, Endean,” he said carefully. Endean started at the sound of his real name.
“You assumed that because I’m a mercenary, I’m automatically stupid. It never seemed to occur to you that we are both mercenaries, along with Sir James Manson and most of the people who have power in this world. The second mistake was that you assumed all black people were the same, because to you they look the same.”
“I don’t follow you.”
"You did a lot of research on Zangaro; you even found out about the tens of thousands of immigrant workers who virtually keep this place running. It never occurred to you that those workers form a community of their own. They’re a third tribe, the most intelligent and hard-working one in the country. Given half a chance, they can play a part in the political life of the country. What’s more, you failed to recognize that the new army of Zangaro, and therefore the power in the country, might be recruited from among that third community. In fact, it just has been. Those soldiers you saw were neither Vindu nor Caja. There were fifty in uniform and armed when you were in the palace, and by tonight there’ll be another fifty. In five days there will be over four hundred new soldiers in
Clarence—untrained, of course, but looking efficient enough to keep law and order. They’ll be the real power in this country from now on. There was a coup d’etat last night, all right, but it wasn’t conducted for or on behalf of Colonel Bobi."
“For whom, then?”
“For the general.”
“Which general?”
Shannon told him the name.
Endean faced him, mouth open in horror. “Not him. He was defeated, exiled.”
“For the moment, yes. Not necessarily forever. Those immigrant workers are his people. They call them the Jews of Africa. There are one and a half million of them scattered over this continent. In many areas they do most of the work and have most of the brains. Here in Zangaro they live in the shantytown behind Clarence.”
“That stupid great idealistic bastard—”
“Careful,” warned Shannon.
“Why?”
Shannon jerked his head over his shoulder. “They’re the general’s soldiers too.”
Endean turned and looked at the three impassive faces above the three Schmeisser barrels.
“They don’t speak English all that well, do they?”
“The one in the middle,” said Shannon mildly, “was a chemist once. Then he became a soldier; then his wife and four children were wiped out by a Saladin armored car. They’re made by Alvis in Coventry, you know. He doesn’t like the people who were behind that.”
Endean was silent for a few more miles. “What happens now?” he asked.
“The Committee of National Reconciliation takes over,” said Shannon. “Four Vindu members, four Caja, and two from the immigrant community. But the army will be made up of the people behind you. And this country will be used as a base and a headquarters. From here the newly trained men will go back one day to avenge what was done to them. Maybe the general will come and set up residence here—in effect, to rule.”
“You expect to get away with that?”
“You expected to impose that slobbering ape Bobi and get away with it. At least the new government will be moderately fair. That mineral deposit, or whatever it was, that you were after—I don’t know where or what it is, but I can deduce that there has to be something here to interest Sir James Manson. No doubt the new government will find it, eventually. And no doubt it will be exploited. But if you want it, you will have to pay for it. A fair price, a market price. Tell Sir James that when you get back home.”
Around the corner they came within view of the border post. News travels fast in Africa, even without telephone, and the Vindu soldiers on the border post were gone.
Shannon stopped the truck and pointed ahead. “You can walk the rest,” he said.
Endean climbed down. He looked back at Shannon with undiluted hatred. “You still haven’t explained why,” he said. “You’ve explained what and how, but not why.”
Shannon stared ahead up the road. “For nearly two years,” he said musingly, "I watched between half a million and a million small kids starved to death because of people like you and Manson. It was done basically so that you and your kind could make bigger profits through a vicious and totally corrupt dictatorship, and it was done in the name of law and order, of legality and constitutional justification. I may be a fighter, I may be a killer, but I am not a bloody sadist I worked out for myself how it was done and why it was done, and who were the men behind it. Visible up front were a bunch of politicians and Foreign Office men, but they are just a cage full of posturing apes, neither seeing nor caring past their interdepartmental squabbles and their re-election. Invisible behind them were profiteers like your precious James Manson.