the Rifles (retired), hung up the phone on the leather-covered top of his seventeenth-century desk. As director of special projects for MRI, it was his job to make sure that the sometimes “socially unpleasant” aspects of the huge mining corporation’s affairs were smoothed out long before the first ton of ore was extracted from a site.
MRI was the second-largest mining company in the world, right after the massive Barrick Gold. Like Barrick, MRI was officially headquartered among the bleak, featureless towers on Bay Street in Toronto but did virtually no business there, simply taking advantage of Canada’s very liberal and freewheeling laws regarding mining ventures.
The real business of MRI was done in London and the company presently operated in Papua New Guinea, the United States, Canada, the Dominican Republic, Australia, Peru, Chile, Russia, South Africa, Pakistan, Colombia, Argentina and Tanzania. For some time now it had been studying the geological possibilities of embarking on a venture based in the hinterlands of Kukuanaland.
“Well,” said Harris, putting his glass down on a silver coaster that sat permanently on the lacquered twenties Chinese end table. “What’s going on?”
“Apparently we’ve been given the green light by His Majesty,” said Faulkener, thoughtfully looking up at the rather gruesome watercolor on the wall of his office. It was called The Last Stand at Islandhula and showed a regiment of red-coated, mounted British soldiers being slaughtered by an enraged group of Zulu warriors.
Africa was never Faulkener’s battlefield of choice, but these days that was where the goodies were. “Time to show us your mettle, Harris. This is the sort of thing you and your CIA brothers were so good at.”
“Do tell.”
“I’m afraid it’s Africa this time. A wretched little place called Kukuanaland.”
“Solomon Kolingba.” Harris nodded. “A true-blue nut bar.”
“He has something we want,” said Faulkener. “We need to figure out how to get it.”
“I’ll drink to that,” said Harris, lifting his heavy glass.
“You’ll drink to anything,” said Faulkener. He stood, went to the sideboard and poured himself a glass of the same single-malt Harris was drinking. He stood there for a moment, his gaze turning once again to the watercolor of the Islandhula massacre. “There’s one other thing,” he muttered. “Nothing more than a loose end, really.”
“Oh?” Harris said.
“Have you ever been to Khartoum, Mr. Harris?”
4
The rowboat-sized fishing craft burbled across the immense, glassy expanse of Lake Tana, powered by the oldest and smallest outboard motor Holliday had ever seen. According to Rafi, it was a 1939 Evinrude one-and-a-half-horsepower Mate. Somehow it had found its way to Ethiopia and into the hands of the Halebo family, who had cared for it meticulously ever since. Halebo Iskinder, the current owner and head of the family, had rented the boat and the motor to Rafi only after a rigorous test to prove that he knew how to handle such a delicate and marvelous device. The noise it made was like somebody rattling marbles around in a tin can, but it was remarkably speedy.
“I’m surprised they let you dig here,” said Holliday, lifting his voice over the engine’s racket. Clouds of blue-white exhaust followed in their wake. “Between Communists, Orthodox Christians and Muslims, I always figured Ethiopia as being pretty anti-Semitic.”
“Israel was always the monkey wrench in the gears,” said Rafi, sitting at the tiller. “In the eighties the U.S. saw Ethiopia as either going over to the Communists or heading toward radical Islam. Somalia, Eritrea and the Sudan on three sides and Yemen on the other side of the Red Sea. There were ‘Cuban observers’ everywhere. It was a hot spot that needed cooling down, so we always provided the democratic Christians with arms and anything else they needed. Then we took fifteen thousand Beta Jews off their