Juggernaut

For a moment he looked almost alarmed. The idea of Geddes being pleased about anything was odd enough to frighten anybody. Praise from him was so rare as to be nonexistent, and I didn't let Sutherland know that it had originated with me. 'When you left you implied that all was far from well,' Sutherland said. 'You never said what the trouble was.'

'You should know. You started it at the meeting in London.'

'I did?' I saw him chasing around in his mind for exactly what he'd said at that meeting.

'About the rumours of tribal unrest,' I said helpfully. 'Got a glass? I like to see my beer when I'm drinking it.'

'Of course.' He found one for me.

'You were right on the mark there. Of course we know you can't run the Bir Oassa job and chase down things like that at the same time. That was Shelford's job, and he let us all down. So someone had to look into it and Geddes picked me – and you proved right all down the line.' I didn't give him time to think too deeply about that one. I leaned forward and said as winningly as I knew how, 'I'm sorry if I was a little abrupt just before I left. That goddamn phoney victory parade left me a bit frazzled, and I'm not used to coping with this lot the way you are. If I said anything out of line I apologize.'

He was disarmed, as he was intended to be. 'That's quite all right. As a matter of fact I've been thinking about what you said – about the need for contingency plans. I've been working on a scheme.'

'Great,' I said expansively. 'Like to have a look at it sometime. Right now I have a lot else to do. I brought someone out with me that I'd like you to meet. Geoff Wingstead, the owner of Wyvern Haulage. Can you join us for dinner?'

'You should have told me. He'll need accommodation.'

'It's fixed, John. He's at the hotel.' I gently let him know that he wasn't the only one who could pull strings. 'He's going to go up and join the rig in a day or so, but I'll be around town for a bit longer before I pay them a visit. I'd like a full briefing from you. I'm willing to bet you've got a whole lot to tell me.'

'Yes, I have. Some of it is quite hot stuff, Neil.'

Sutherland was all buddies again, and bursting to tell me what I already knew, which is just what I'd been hoping for. I didn't think I'd told him too many lies. The truth is only one way of looking at a situation; there are many others.

For the next few days I nursed Sutherland along. His contingency plan was good, if lacking in imagination, but it improved as we went along. That was his main trouble, a lack of imagin ation, the inability to ask, 'What if…?' I am not knocking him particularly; he was good at his job but incapable of expanding the job around him, and without that knack he wasn't going to go much further. I have a theory about men like Sutherland: they're like silly putty. If you take silly putty and hit it with a hammer it will shatter, but handle it gently and it can be moulded into any shape. The trouble is that if you then leave it it will slump and flow back into its original shape. That's why the manipulators, like me, get three times Sutherland's pay.

Not that I regarded myself as the Great Svengali, because I've been manipulated myself in my time by men like Geddes, the arch manipulator, so God knows what he's worth before taxes.

Anyway I gentled Sutherland along. I took him to the Luard Club (he had never thought about joining) and let him loose among the old sweaty types who were primed to drop him nuggets of information. Sure enough, he'd come back and tell me something else that I already knew. 'Gee, is that so?' I'd say. 'That could put a crimp in your contingency plans, couldn't it?'

He would smile confidently. 'It's nothing I can't fix,' he would say, and he'd be right. He wasn't a bad fixer. At the end of ten days he was all squared away, convinced that it was all his own idea, and much clearer in his head about the politics around him. He also had another conviction – that this chap Mannix wasn't so bad, after all, for an American that is. I didn't disillusion him.

What slightly disconcerted me was Geoff Wingstead. He stayed in Port Luard for a few days, doing his own homework before flying up to join the rig, and in that short time he also put two and two together, on his own, and remarkably accurately. What's more, I swear that he saw clear through my little ploy with Sutherland and to my chagrin I got the impression that he approved. I didn't like people to be that bright. He impressed me more all the time and I found that he got the same sense of enjoyment out of the business that I did, and that's a rare and precious trait. He was young, smart and energetic, and I wasn't sorry that he was in another company to my own: he'd make damned tough opposition. And I liked him too much for rivalry.