Juggernaut

‘It will disrupt your traffic flow considerably,’ said Kemp in some surprise.

‘That is of little consequence. We can handle it.’ Daondo bent over the map. ‘I see your route lies through Independence Square.’

‘It’s really the only way,’ said Kemp defensively. ‘It would be quite impossible to move through this tangle of narrow streets on either side without a great deal of damage to buildings.’

‘I quite agree,’ said Daondo. ‘In fact, had you not suggested it we would have asked you to go through the Square ourselves.’

This appeared to come as a wholly novel idea to Kemp. I could see he was thinking of the squalls of alarm from the London Metropolitan Police had he suggested pushing a 300-ton load through Trafalgar Square in the middle of the rush hour. Wherever he’d worked in Europe, he had been bullied, harassed and crowded into corners and sent on his way with the stealth of a burglar.

He paused to take this in with one finger still on the map. ‘There’s another very real difficulty here, though. This big plinth in the middle of the avenue leading into the Square. It’s sited at a very bad angle from our point of view – we’re going to have a great deal of difficulty getting around it. I would like to suggest –’

The Minister interrupted him with an unexpected deep-bellied, rumbling chuckle but his face remained bland. Daondo was also smiling and in his case too the smile never reached his eyes. ‘Yes, Mister Kemp, we see what you mean. I don’t think you need trouble about the plinth. We will have it removed. It will improve the traffic flow into Victory Avenue considerably in any case.’

Kemp and Sutherland exchanged quick glances. ‘I … I think it may take time,’ said Sutherland. ‘It’s a big piece of masonry.’

‘It is a task for the army,’ said Kigonde and turned to Sadiq. ‘See to it, Captain.’

Sadiq nodded and made quick notes. The discussion continued, the exit from Port Luard was detailed and the progress through Lasulu dismissed, for all its obvious difficulties to us, as a mere nothing by the Nyalans. About an hour later, after some genteel refreshment, we were finally free to go our way. We all went up to my hotel room and could hardly wait to get there before indulging in a thorough postmortem of that extraordinary meeting. It was generally agreed that no job had ever been received by the local officials with greater cooperation, any problem melting like snowflakes in the steamy Port Luard sunshine. Paradoxically it was this very ease of arrangement that made us all most uneasy, especially Basil Kemp.

‘I can’t believe it,’ he said, not for the first time. ‘They just love us, don’t they?’

‘I think you’ve put your finger on it, Basil,’ I said. ‘They really need us and they are going all out to show it. And they’re pretty used to riding roughshod over the needs and wishes of their populace, assuming it has any. They’re going to shove us right down the middle in broad daylight, and the hell with any little obstacles.’

‘Such as the plinth,’ said Sutherland and we both laughed.

Kemp said, ‘I think I missed something there. A definite undercurrent. I must say I haven’t looked at this thing too closely myself – what is it anyway – some local bigwig?’

Sutherland chuckled. ‘I thought old Ousemane would split his breeches. There’s a statue of Maro Ofanwe still on that plinth: thirty feet high in bronze, very heroic. Up to now they’ve been busy ignoring it, as it was a little too hefty to blow up or knock down, but now they’ve got just the excuse they want. It’ll help to serve notice that they don’t want any more strong men about, in a none too subtle sort of way. Ofanwe was an unmitigated disaster and not to be repeated.’

THREE

During the next few days I got on with my job, which mainly consisted of trying to find out what my job was. I talked with various members of the Government and had a special meeting with the Minister of Finance which left us both happy. I also talked to journalists in the bars, one or two businessmen and several other expatriates from Britain who were still clinging on to their old positions, most of them only too ready to bewail the lost days of glory. I gleaned a lot, mostly of misinformation, but slowly I was able to put together a picture which didn’t precisely coincide with that painted by Shelford back in London.

I was also made an honorary member of the Luard Club which, in colonial days, had strictly white membership but in these times had become multi-racial. There were still a number of old Africa hands there as well, and from a couple of them I got another whiff of what might be going bad in Nyala.

In the meantime Kemp and Sutherland were getting on with their business, to more immediate ends. On the morning the first big load was to roll I was up bright and early, if not bushy tailed. The sun had just risen and the temperature already in the eighties when I drove to the docks to see the loaded rig. I hadn’t had much chance to talk to Kemp and while I doubted that this was the moment, I had to pin him down to some time and place.

I found him and Sutherland in the middle of a small slice of chaos, both looking harassed as dozens of men milled around shouting questions and orders. They’d been at it for a long time already and things were almost ready to go into action. I stared in fascination at what I saw.

The huge rig wasn’t unfamiliar to me but it was still a breathtaking sight. The massive towing trucks, really tractors with full cab bodies, stood at each end of the flat-bed trailer onto which the transformer had been lowered, inch by painful inch, over the previous few hours. Around it scurried small dockside vehicles, fork-lift trucks and scooters, like worker ants scrambling about their huge motionless queen. But what fascinated and amused me was the sight of a small platoon of Nyalan dock hands clambering about the actual rig itself, as agile and noisy as a troop of monkeys, busy stringing yards of festive bunting between any two protruding places to which they could be tied. The green and yellow colours of the Nyalan flag predominated, and one of them was being hauled up a jackstaff which was bound to the front tractor bumpers. No wonder that Kemp looked thunderstruck and more than a little grim.

I hurried over to him, and my arrival coincided with that of Mr Daondo, who was just getting out of a black limousine. Daondo stood with hands on hips and gazed the length of the enormous rig with great satisfaction, then turned to us and said in a hearty voice, ‘Well, good morning, gentlemen. I see everything is going very well indeed.’

Kemp said, ‘Good morning, Mister Daondo – Neil. May I ask what –’

‘Hello, Basil. Great day for it, haven’t we? Mister Daondo, would you excuse us for just one moment? I’ve got your figures here, Basil …’

Talking fast, waving a notebook, and giving him no time to speak, I managed to draw Kemp away from Daondo’s side, leaving the politician to be entertained for a moment by John Sutherland.

‘Just what the hell do they think they’re doing?’ Kemp was outraged.

‘Ease off. Calm down. Can’t you see? They’re going to put on a show for the people – that’s what this daylight procession has been about all along. The power plant is one of the biggest things that’s ever happened to Nyala and the Government wants to do a bit of bragging. And I don’t see why not.’

‘But how?’ Kemp, normally a man of broad enough intelligence, was on a very narrow wave length where his precious rig was concerned.

‘Hasn’t the penny dropped yet? You’re to be the centre-piece of a triumphal parade through the town, right through Independence Square. The way the Ruskies trundle their rockets through Red Square on May Day. You’ll be on show, the band will play, the lot.’

‘Are you serious?’ said Kemp in disgust.

‘Quite. The Government must not only govern but be seen to govern. They’re entitled to bang their drum.’

Kemp subsided, muttering.

‘Don’t worry. As soon as you’re clear of the town you can take the ribbons out of her hair and get down to work properly. Have a word with your drivers. I’d like to meet them, but not right away. And tell them to enjoy themselves. It’s a gala occasion.’

‘All right, I suppose we must. But it’s damn inconvenient. It’s hard enough work moving these things without having to cope with cheering mobs and flag-waving.’

‘You don’t have to cope, that’s his job.’ I indicated Daondo with a jerk of my thumb. ‘Your guys just drive it away as usual. I think we’d better go join him.’

We walked back to where Daondo, leaning negligently against the hood of his Mercedes, was holding forth to a small circle of underlings. Sutherland was in the thick of it, together with a short, stocky man with a weathered face. Sutherland introduced him to me.

‘Neil, this is Ben Hammond, my head driver. Ben, Mister Mannix of British Electric. I think Ben’s what you’d call my ranch foreman.’

I grinned. ‘Nice herd of cattle you’ve got there, Ben. I’d like to meet the crew later. What’s the schedule?’

‘I’ve just told Mister Daondo that I think they’re ready to roll any time now. But of course it’s Mister Kemp’s show really.’

‘Thank you, Mister Sutherland. I’ll have a word with Daondo and then we can get going,’ Kemp said.

I marvelled at the way my British companions still managed to cling to surnames and honorifics. I wondered if they’d all be dressing for dinner, out there in the bush wherever the rig stopped for the night. I gave my attention to Daondo to find that he was being converged upon by a band of journalists, video and still cameras busy, notebooks poised, but with none of the free-for-all shoving that might have taken place anywhere in Europe. The presence of several armed soldiers nearby may have had a bearing on that.

‘Ah, Mister Mannix,’ Daondo said, ‘I am about to hold a short press conference. Would you join me, please?’

‘An honour, Minister. But it’s not really my story – it’s Mister Kemp’s.’

Kemp gave me a brief dirty look as I passed the buck neatly to him. ‘May I bring Mister Hammond in on this?’ he asked, drawing Ben Hammond along by the arm. ‘He designed this rig; it’s very much his baby.’

I looked at the stocky man in some surprise. This was something I hadn’t known and it set me thinking. Wyvern Haulage might be new as an outfit, but they seemed to have gathered a great deal of talent around them, and my respect for Geoff Wingstead grew fractionally greater.

The press conference was under way, to a soft barrage of clicks as people were posed in front of the rig. Video cameramen did their trick of walking backwards with a buddy’s hand on their shoulder to guide them, and the writer boys ducked and dodged around the clutter of ropes, chain, pulleys and hawsers that littered the ground. Some of the inevitable questions were coming up and I listened carefully, as this was a chance for me to learn a few of the technicalities.

‘Just how big is this vehicle?’

Kemp indicated Ben Hammond forward. Ben, grinning like a toothpaste advertisement, was enjoying his moment in the limelight as microphones were thrust at him. ‘As the transporter is set up now it’s a bit over a hundred feet long. We can add sections up to another eighteen feet but we won’t need them on this trip.’

‘Does that include the engines?’

‘The tractors? No, those are counted separately. We’ll be adding on four tractors to get over hilly ground and then the total length will be a shade over two hundred and forty feet.’

Another voice said, ‘Our readers may not be able to visualize that. Can you give us anything to measure it by?’

Hammond groped for an analogy, and then said, ‘I notice that you people here play a lot of soccer – football.’

‘Indeed we do,’ Daondo interjected. ‘I myself am an enthusiast.’ He smiled modestly as he put in his personal plug. ‘I was present at the Cup Final at Wembley last year, when I was Ambassador to the United Kingdom.’

Hammond said, ‘Well, imagine this. If you drove this rig onto the field at Wembley, or any other standard soccer pitch, it would fill the full length of the pitch with a foot hanging over each side. Is that good enough?’

There was a chorus of appreciative remarks, and Kemp said in a low voice, ‘Well done, Ben. Carry on.’

‘How heavy is the vehicle?’ someone asked.

‘The transporter weighs ninety tons, and the load, that big transformer, is three hundred tons. Add forty tons for each tractor and it brings the whole lot to five hundred and fifty tons on the hoof.’

Everybody scribbled while the cameras ground on. Hammond added, airing some knowledge he had only picked up in the last few days, ‘Elephants weigh about six tons each; so this is worth nearly a hundred elephants.’

The analogy was received with much amusement.

‘Those tractors don’t look big enough to weigh forty tons,’ he was prompted.

‘They carry ballast. Steel plates embedded in concrete. We have to have some counterbalance for the weight of the load or the transporter will overrun the tractors – especially on the hills. Negotiating hill country is very tricky.’

‘How fast will you go?’

Kemp took over now. ‘On the flat with all tractors hooked up I dare say we could push along to almost twenty miles an hour, even more going downhill. But we won’t. Five hundred and fifty tons going at twenty miles an hour takes a lot of stopping, and we don’t take risks. I don’t think we’ll do much more than ten miles an hour during any part of the journey, and usually much less. Our aim is to average five miles an hour during a ten hour day; twenty days from Port Luard to Bir Oassa.’

This drew whistles of disbelief and astonishment. In this age of fast transport, it was interesting that extreme slowness could exert the same fascination as extreme speed. It also interested me to notice that Nyala had not yet converted its thinking to the metric unit as far as distances were concerned.

‘How many wheels does it have?’

Hammond said, ‘Ninety-six on the ground and eight spares.’

‘How many punctures do you expect?’

‘None – we hope.’ This drew a laugh.

‘What’s the other big truck?’

‘That’s the vehicle which carries the airlift equipment and the machinery for powering it,’ said Kemp. ‘We use it to spread the load when crossing bridges, and it works on the hovercraft principle. It’s powered by four two hundred and forty-hp Rolls Royce engines – and that vehicle itself weighs eight tons.’

‘And the others?’

‘Spares, a workshop for maintenance, food and personal supplies, fuel. We have to take everything with us, you see.’

There was a stir as an aide came forward to whisper something into Daondo’s ear. He raised his hand and his voice. ‘Gentlemen, that will be all for now, thank you. I invite you all to gather round this great and marvellous machine for its dedication by His Excellency, the Minister of the Interior, the Right Honourable Hamah Ousemane, OBE.’ He touched me on the arm. ‘This way, please.’

As we followed him I heard Hammond saying to Kemp, ‘What’s he going to do? Crack a bottle of champagne over it?’

I grinned back at him. ‘Did you really design this thing?’

‘I designed some modifications to a standard rig, yes.’

Kemp said, ‘Ben built a lot of it, too.’

I was impressed. ‘For a little guy you sure play with big toys.’

Hammond stiffened and looked at me with hot eyes. Clearly I had hit on a sore nerve. ‘I’m five feet two and a half inches tall,’ he said curtly. ‘And that’s the exact height of Napoleon.’

‘No offence meant,’ I said quickly, and then we all came to a sudden stop at the rig to listen to Ousemane’s speech. He spoke first in English and then in Nyalan for a long time in a rolling, sonorous voice while the sun became hotter and everybody wilted. Then came some ribbon cutting and handshakes all round, some repeated for the benefit of the press, and finally he took himself off in his Mercedes. Kemp mopped his brow thankfully. ‘Do you think we can get on with it now?’ he asked nobody in particular.

Daondo was bustling back to us. In the background a surprising amount of military deployment was taking place, and there was an air of expectancy building up. ‘Excellent, Mister Kemp! We are all ready to go now,’ Daondo said. ‘You will couple up all the tractors, won’t you?’

Kemp turned to me and said in a harassed undertone, ‘What for? We won’t be doing more than five miles an hour on the flat and even one tractor’s enough for that.’

I was getting a bit tired of Kemp and his invincible ignorance and I didn’t want Daondo to hear him and blow a gasket. I smiled past Kemp and said, ‘Of course. Everything will be done as you wish it, Minister.’

‘Good,’ he said. ‘I must get to Independence Square before you arrive. I leave Captain Sadiq in command of the arrangements.’ He hurried away to his car.

I said to Kemp, putting an edge on my voice, ‘We’re expected to put on a display and we’ll do it. Use everything you’ve got. Line ’em up, even the chow wagon. Until we leave town it’s a parade every step of the way.’

‘Who starts this parade?’

‘You do – just tell your drivers to pull off in line whenever they’re ready. The others will damn well have to fall in around you. I’ll ride with you in the Land Rover.’

Kemp shrugged. ‘Bunch of clowns,’ he said and went off to give his drivers their instructions. For the moment I actually had nothing to do and I wandered over to have another look at the rig. It’s a funny thing, but whenever a guy looks at a vehicle he automatically kicks a tyre. Ask any second-hand auto salesman. So that’s what I did. It had about as much effect as kicking a building and was fairly painful. The tyres were all new, with deep tread earthmovers on the tractors. The whole rig looked brand new, as if it had never been used before, and I couldn’t decide if this was a good or a bad thing. I squinted up at it as it towered over me, remembering the one time I had towed a caravan and had it jackknife on me, and silently tipped my hat to the drivers of this outfit. They were going to need skill and luck in equal proportions on this trip.

Kemp drew up beside me in the Land Rover with a driver and I swung in the back. There was a lot of crosstalk going on with walkie-talkies, and a great deal of bustle and activity all around us.

‘All right, let’s get rolling,’ Kemp said into the speaker. ‘Take station on me, Ben: about three mph and don’t come breathing down my neck.’ He then said much the same thing into his car radio as drivers climbed into cabs and the vast humming roar of many engines began throbbing. Captain Sadiq rolled up alongside us in the back of an open staff car and saluted smartly.

‘I will lead the way, Mister Kemp. Please to follow me,’ he said.

‘Please keep your speed to mine, Captain,’ Kemp said.

‘Of course, sir. But please watch me carefully too. I may have to stop at some point. You are all ready?’

Kemp nodded and Sadiq pulled away. Kemp was running down a roster of drivers, getting checks from each of them, and then at last signalled his own driver to move ahead in Sadiq’s wake. I would have preferred to be behind the rig, but had to content myself with twisting in the rear seat of the car to watch behind me. To my astonishment something was joining in the parade that I hadn’t seen before, filtering in between Kemp and the rig, and at my sharp exclamation he turned to see for himself and swore.

The army was coming in no half measures. Two recoilless guns, two mortars and two heavy machine guns mounted on appropriate vehicles came forward, followed by a tank and at least two troop carriers. ‘Good God,’ said Kemp in horror, and gave hasty orders to his own driver, who swung us out of the parade and doubled back along the line of military newcomers. Kemp was speaking urgently to Sadiq on the radio.

‘I’ll rejoin after the army vehicles, Captain. I must stay with the rig!’

I grinned at him as he cut the Captain off in mid-sentence.

‘They’re armed to the teeth,’ he said irritably. ‘Why the hell didn’t he warn me about all this?’

‘Maybe the crowds here are rougher than in England,’ I said, looking with fascination at the greatly enhanced parade streaming past us.

‘They’re using us as an excuse to show what they’ve got. They damn well know it’s all going out on telly to the world,’ Kemp said.

‘Enjoy the publicity, Basil. It says Wyvern up there in nice big letters. A pity I didn’t think of a flag with British Electric on it as well.’

In fact this show of military prowess was making me a little uneasy, but it would never do for me to let Kemp see that. He was jittery enough as it was. He gave orders as the tanks swept past, commanders standing up in the turrets, and we swung in behind the last of the army vehicles and just in front of the rig, now massively coupled to all its tractors. Ben Hammond waved down to us from his driving cab and the rig started rolling behind us. Kemp concentrated on its progress, leaving the other Wyvern vehicles to come along in the rear, the very last car being the second Land Rover with John Sutherland on board.

Kemp was watching the rig, checking back regularly and trying to ignore the shouting, waving crowds who were gathering as we went along, travelling so slowly that agile small boys could dodge back and forward across the road in between the various components of the parade. There was much blowing of police whistles to add to the general noise. We heard louder cheering as we came out onto the coastal boulevard leading to the town centre. The scattering of people thickened as we approached.

Kemp paid particular attention as the rig turned behind us into Victory Avenue; turning a 240-foot vehicle is no easy job and he would rather have done it without the extra towing tractors. But the rig itself was steerable from both ends and a crew member was spinning a ship-sized steering wheel right at the rear, synchronizing with Ben Hammond in the front cab. Motorcycle escorts took up flanking positions as the rig straightened out into the broad avenue and the crowd was going crazy.

Kemp said, ‘Someone must have declared a holiday.’

‘Rent-a-crowd,’ I grinned. Kemp sat a little straighter and seemed to relax slightly. I thought that he was beginning to enjoy his moment of glory, after all. The Land Rover bumped over a roughly cobbled area and I realized with a start that we were driving over the place where Ofanwe’s plinth had been only a few days before.

We entered the Square to a sea of black faces and colourful robes, gesticulating arms and waves of sound that surged and echoed from the big buildings all around. The flags hung limply in the still air but all the rest was movement under the hard tropical sun.

‘Jesus!’ Kemp said in awe. ‘It’s like a Roman triumph. I feel I ought to have a slave behind me whispering sweet nothings in my ear.’ He quoted, ‘Memento mori – remember thou must die.’

I grunted. I was used to the British habit of flinging off quotations at odd moments but I hadn’t expected it of Kemp. He went on, ‘Just look at that lot.’

The balcony of the Palace of Justice was full of figures. The President, the Prime Minister, members of the Government, Army staff, some in modern dress or in uniforms but some, like Daondo, changed into local costume: a flowing colourful robe and a tasselled hat. It was barbaric and, in spite of my professed cynicism, a touch magnificent.

The tanks and guns had passed and it was our turn. Kemp said to me, ‘Do we bow or anything?’

‘Just sit tight. Pay attention to your rig. Show them it’s still business first.’ Off to one side of the parade, Sadiq’s staff car was drawn up with the Captain standing rigidly at the salute in the back seat. ‘Sadiq is doing the necessary for all of us.’

The vast bulk of the rig crept slowly across Independence Square and the troops and police fought valiantly to keep the good-humoured crowd back. As soon as our car was through the Square we stopped and waited too for the rig to come up behind us, and then set off again following Sadiq, who had regained his place in the lead. The tanks and guns rumbled off in a different direction, and the convoy with its escort of soldiers crept on through narrower streets and among fewer and fewer people.