If he had, it was a disaster.
“What the hell could have happened since last night, Mbomo? Can you answer me that? I thought you had everything under control. Stark must have got wind of something.”
“I don’t know,” Mbomo replied, oblivious to the fact that during the past couple of days René E. Eriksen had been through sheer hell at the thought of having sent a man to his death, and as things now stood was more than willing to go along with anything that might stop this juggernaut nightmare from developing any further.
To René’s mind there was no doubt at all as to what should happen now. Not only must Mbomo Ziem be removed from the Baka project, he had to be removed permanently. No one who was involved in the project had anything to gain from having a man like him charging around and messing things up. A man who knew as much as he did and at the same time was so fucking inefficient and heavy-handed.
“I’ll get back to you, Mbomo. In the meantime I want you to just take things easy. Go home, and stay there. Later today we’ll send someone over who can brief you on what’s going to happen next.”
And then René hung up the phone.
Mbomo would be briefed all right. More than he could ever imagine.
–
The boardroom of Karrebæk Bank wasn’t humble by any stretch of the imagination. Both the furnishings and the location suggested the headquarters of one of the country’s leading financial institutions, and nothing in the countenance of its managing director, Teis Snap, seemed to suggest otherwise. All that met the eye was extravagant: furniture, fittings, the works. Within these walls overspending had long been par for the course.
“Our chairman, Jens Brage-Schmidt, is listening in on this, René. As you know, he’s in the same boat as us.”
Snap turned toward a walnut speaker cabinet on the imposing desk.
“Can you hear us all right, Jens?” he said.
The answer was affirmative, the voice rather squeaky but still replete with authority.
“Then we’ll begin the meeting.” He faced René. “I’m sorry to have to be so frank, René,” Snap said, “but following your conversation with Mbomo earlier today, Jens and I have come to the conclusion that the only solution to our problem is to do everything in our power to stop William Stark, and that in the future you personally are to make sure that no one with Stark’s zeal ever comes anywhere near the Baka project.”
“Stop William Stark?” René repeated the words softly. “And this is to happen in Denmark, is that what you mean?” he added after a pause. It was mostly here his reservations lay.
“In Denmark, yes. It has to be,” Teis Snap went on. “We’re disarming time bombs here, stopping Louis Fon, and soon Mbomo Ziem and William Stark, too. Once they’re out of the way we’ll be back on track. Officials at the ministry in Yaoundé will stay tight-lipped, of course, since they’re in on this themselves. And if you continue to receive regular reports from some public servant in situ who is willing to call himself Louis Fon for a while and spread the word to your ministry about how magnificently the project is running, then we shall have little to worry about. It’s the way of all African projects. A bit of encouraging news once in a while, that’s all anyone expects, dammit.”
René heard Brage-Schmidt grunt over the speaker, and though he had never met the man there seemed to be an underlying tone to his voice that made René envisage a man who for all too many years had been used to bossing people around in places far beyond the borders of his home country. There was a harshness about the way he began a sentence, as if everything he said was an order not to be disobeyed. The image of a British imperialist or shipping magnate with unfettered powers was easy to conjure up. René had heard that every butler Brage-Schmidt had employed through the years he had addressed as “boy,” and that if anyone knew Africa, it was him: consul for a handful of southern African states for as long as anyone cared to remember and successful businessman in Central Africa even longer, though not always accompanied by the best of reputations.
No, as far as René could make out there seemed little doubt that Brage-Schmidt was the architect of the scam. Teis Snap had told him that after some time as a successful importer of timber from equatorial Africa, Brage-Schmidt had gathered all his assets in Karrebæk Bank and had in the years that followed become the bank’s largest shareholder by far. As such it was hardly surprising that he had been elected chairman, or that he should now guard his fortune so fiercely. René understood this completely, and yet besides their fraud they had now condemned three men to death. So why did René not hear himself protesting?
He shook his head. The fact of the matter was that unfortunately he understood this gray eminence a little too well.
What else could they do?
“Yes,” said the chairman. “Taking such radical steps is certainly no easy decision, but think of the jobs that will be lost, the small savers who will lose their money if we fail to act in time. It is regrettable, of course, that this William Stark should have to pay the price as well, but that’s how it goes sometimes. The few must be sacrificed for the many, as they say, and in a few years everything will be good again. The bank will be safeguarded and consolidated, society will go on as before, investments will continue, jobs will be retained and shareholders will suffer no losses. And who in the meantime, Mr. Eriksen, do you think might bother to check up on how the pygmies of Dja are progressing in agricultural matters? Who would bother to investigate whether schools and health conditions have improved since the project was initiated? Who would even have the means to do so when those who launched the project to begin with are no longer of this world? I ask you.”
Who, indeed, but me? René thought to himself, his eyes wandering to the tall casement windows of the room. Did that mean he, too, was in the danger zone?
But they weren’t going to put one over on him, that much was for sure. He knew where he had them and thankfully could still look over his shoulder on the rare occasion he ventured out.
“I only hope you know what you’re doing and keep it to yourselves, that’s all. I don’t want to know any more, are you with me?” he said after a moment. “And let’s pray that William Stark hasn’t left documentation in some bank box explaining how the fraud came about-as I’ve done.”
He looked at Teis Snap and listened intently to the background noise from the speaker on the desk. Were they shocked? Suspicious?
Seemingly not.
“OK,” he went on. “What you say is true. Maybe no one will notice that Louis Fon’s reports are coming from someone else, but what about William Stark’s disappearance? It’ll be all over the news, surely?”
“That’s right. And…?” Brage-Schmidt’s voice sounded deeper all of a sudden. “As long as nothing can be traced back to us, Stark going missing doesn’t matter much, does it? As I see it, he goes to Africa, fails to turn up for his appointment, flies home without a word, and disappears. Wouldn’t that indicate a certain degree of instability? Would one not be inclined to consider that his disappearance might be of his own volition? I would, certainly.”
Snap and René exchanged glances. Karrebæk Bank’s chairman of the board had chosen to ignore René’s bank-box insurance scheme, so apparently their mutual trust remained intact, albeit perhaps a bit tarnished.
“Listen, Eriksen,” Brage-Schmidt went on. “From here on, everything proceeds exactly according to our agreement. You will continue to ensure that fifty million per annum is dispatched to Cameroon. And once a year on the basis of Louis Fon’s fabricated reports you will draw up a nice summary of how excellently things are progressing down there.”