Текст книги "Elephant Song"

Автор книги: Wilbur Smith

Соавторы: Wilbur Smith
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Excuse me, Mr.

Anderson, Daniel interrupted.  Are you considering strip-mining the Ubomo river basin?  George Anderson looked as though he had experienced a sudden stomach cramp.

Doctor Armstrong, the term "strip-mining" is an emotionally charged one, filled with negative undertones.  BOSS has never undertaken strip-mining operations anywhere in the world.  I must be very firm on that issue.  I beg your pardon, I thought that the company's copper mines at Quantra in Chile were strip-mines.  Anderson looked affronted.

Open-cast mines, Doctor Armstrong, not strip-mines.  Is there a difference?Of course there is.  However, I think that this is neither the time nor the place to examine those differences.  just let me say that the open-cast mines that we intend developing in Ubomo will take full account of the sensitive environment of the area.

We will operate on a refill-and-renew policy.  BOSS has a green approach to nature.  In fact, Doctor Armstrong, we are convinced that in the long term the environment will be significantly improved by what we are going to do for the country.  He looked at Daniel challengingly, and Daniel almost rose to accept it.  Then with an effort he forced himself to smile and nod.  You must excuse me playing the devil's advocate, Mr. Anderson.

These are the kind of questions people will ask, and I must be able to answer them.  That's what BOSS is paying me for.  Anderson looked mollified.  Yes, of course.  However, I must reiterate.  BOSS is a green company.  It's Sir Peter's firm policy.  I know he is even considering altering the company logo.  As you know the present design is a miner's pickaxe and a ploughshare.

Well, he intends adding a green tree, to show our concern for nature.

I think that's very tasteful.  Daniel smiled placatingly.  He knew that this discussion would be reported to Tug Harrison, there was even a likelihood that at this moment it was being recorded.  If he displayed open hostility and opposition to the company, his free ticket to Ubomo and his contact with the Lucky Dragon and Ning Cheng Gong would evaporate.  With the assurances that you gentlemen have given me, I will be able to go to Ubomo with a clear conscience and I will endeavour to show the world the enormous benefits that will accrue to the country from the intensive development that the BOSS consortium is undertaking. He spoke for the benefit of the hidden microphones, and then paused for emphasis.  Now, what I want from you is an architectural mock-up of the hotel and casino development on the lakeshore.  I'd like to film the area as it is today, and then superimpose the concept over it, to bring out the best features of the design and how it blends into the natural background.  Sidney Green will take care of that, I'm sure.  Pickering nodded.  Right, then I want details of the present per capita income of the average Ubomo citizen, and an estimate of what that income will be in, say, five or ten years time, after the full benefits of the development programme begin to make themselves felt.

You'll see to that, won't you, Neville?  The meeting ran on for another half hour before Daniel summed up with a note of finality.  As a film-maker, I have to have a theme for this production.  The general concept of Africa these days is one of a continent in trauma, plagued by seemingly insurmountable problems, demographic, economic and political. I want to strike a different note here.  I want to show the world how it could be, how it should be.  I see the theme of my production as.  . .

He paused for dramatic effect, and then held up his hand to frame an imaginary screen.  "'Ubomo, High Road to the African Future".  The men at the table burst into spontaneous applause, and Pickering refilled the sherry-glasses.

As he escorted Daniel and Bonny back to the front of the building Pickering told them jovially, I say, that went rather well.  I think you both made a very good impression.  He beamed like an approving schoolmaster.  And now a little treat in store for you.  Sir Peter Harrison, himself.  . . his voice took on a reverential tone, as though he had mentioned the name of a deity, Sir Peter in person has expressed the wish to have a word with you and Miss Mahon.

He did not wait for their agreement but led them to the elevators.

They waited a mere five minutes in the antechamber to Tug Harrison's office, barely long enough to appreciate the priceless works of art displayed on the walls and in the glass-fronted cabinets.  Then one of three comely secretaries looked up and smiled.  Please follow me.  Sir Peter is expecting you.  As she led them towards the door at the far end of the antechamber, Pickering dropped away.  I'll be waiting for you outside.  Don't stay more than three minutes.  Sir Peter is 2 busy man.

The tall windows of Harrison's office looked out across the Thames to the National Theatre.  As he turned from the window, the sunlight flashed off his bald head like a heliograph.

Danny, He said, offering his gnarled right hand.  Have they looked after you?  Couldn't be better, Daniel assured him.  On the strength of what they've told me, I have come up with a theme for the production, "Ubomo, High Road to the African Future".  I like id said Tug Harrison without hesitation, but he was studying Bonny Mahon as he said it.  The approbation could have been as much for her as for Daniel's title.

Exactly three minutes after they had entered the inner sanctum of BOSS, Tug Harrison drew back the cuff of his Turnbull and Asset shirt.

Both his cuff-links and his wristwatch were of gold and diamonds.  It was good to see you, Danny.  Very pleasant meeting you, Miss Mahon, and now, if you'll excuse me.  . . At the front doors of the BOSS building, Pickering had a taxi waiting for them.  It's on the company account, he said, shaking hands and giving Bonny's bosom a wistful farewell appraisal.  It will take you wherever you want to go.  Caviar Kaspia, Daniettold the driver recklessly, 2nd whEnthcy were seated at a window table in the discreetly panelled frontroom.

of the lovely little restaurant, Bonny whispered, Who is paying?

BOSS, He assured her.  In that case I'll have 250 grams of the Beluga, with hot blinis and cream.  Spot on, Daniel agreed.  I'll join you and we'll split a bottle of bubbly.  What do you fancy, Pa] Roger, or the Widow?  What I truly fancy can wait until after lunch when we get back to your flat, but in the meantime a glass of the Widow will help to pass the time, and build up your strength.  She slanted her eyes lewdly.  You are going to need it.  That's a direct threat.

Bonny tucked into the caviar with the relish and appetite of a schoolboy at half-term.

So what did you think of Boss Daniel asked.  I think Tug Harrison is one very sexy man.  The smell of serious money and power is a stronger aphrodisiac than caviar and champagne.  She grinned at him with sour cream rimming the fine coppery down on her upper lip.  Does that make you jealous?  If it doesn't, it was meant to.  I am devastated.  But apart from Harrison's sex appeal, what did you think of BOSS's plans for Ubomo?  Mind-boggling!  she enthused through a half-chewed blini.

It was an expression that particularly irritated Daniel.  Awesome!

That was even worse.  if only you paid me enough to enable me to buy a block of BOSS shares!  Someone is going to make a bagful of torn in Ubomo.  That's all there is to it?  Daniel smiled to make a joke of it.

Yet was this the girl who had conjured up that hauntingly evocative sequence of caribou in the Arctic sunlight?  A bagful of torn?  Is that it?  For a moment she looked mystified by the question, and then she dismissed it lightheartedly.  Of course.  What else is there, ]over?

She mopped up the last grains of the Beluga with a scrap of blini pancake.  Do you think that your newly acquired expense account could run to another pot of fish eggs?  Not often a poor working girl gets a shot at them.

Bonny Mahon was nervous.  it was an unfamiliar sensation.  The skirt and stockings felt just as unfamiliar.  She was accustomed to the firmer embrace of denim.  However, the occasion was sufficiently unusual to call for a change of her customary attire.  She had even gone to the extraordinary lengths of visiting a hairdressing salon.

Usually she managed or, she grinned at the thought, mismanaged her own hairstyle.  She had to admit that the girl at Michael john had done a better job.

She considered her reflection in one of the gilt-framed antique mirrors opposite where she sat in the lobby of the Ritz Hotel in Piccadilly. Not bad, she admitted.  I could pass for a lady at a hundred paces.  She preened her new curls which were fashionably anointed with gel.  It was an uncharacteristic gesture, a symptom of the nervous anticipation with which she regarded the coming meeting.

The female secretary who had arranged the meeting over the telephone had suggested that the car pick her up at her lodgings.

Bonny had shied away from the idea.  She didn't want anybody to see her digs; she was economising and the area of south London where she presently resided was hardly salubrious.

The Ritz was the first alternative rendezvous that came to mind.  It was more the image that she wished to project.  Even though his secretary had arranged the date she had high hopes for what would come out of it. I mean, it just has to be a proposition, doesn't it?  she reassured herself.  There was no doubt about the way he looked at me.

I've never been wrong about that before.  He's got a head of steam for me.

She glanced at her wristwatch.  It was exactly seven-thirty.

He was the type who would make a point of being punctual, she thought, and when she looked expectantly towards the main doors a page was already coming towards her.  She had taken the precaution of tipping the doorman and telling him where to find her.

Your car has arrived, madam, the page informed her.

A Rolls-Royce stood at the kerb.  It was an iridescent pearly grey and the windows were smoked and opaque, giving the magnificent vehicle a surrealistic appearance.

The handsome young chauffeur, who wore a dove-grey uniform and cap with a patent-leather brim, greeted her as she came down the steps.

Miss Mahon?

Good evening.

He opened the rear passenger door and stood aside for her.

Bonny settled into the sensual embrace of the soft grey Connally leather.  Good evening, my dear, Tug Harrison greeted her in that dark-molasses voice that sent a shiver of unease and anticipation up her spine.

The chauffeur closed the door behind her, and sealed her in a cocoon of wealth and privilege.  She inhaled the rich expensive smell of leather and cigar-smoke and some marvelous aftershave, the aroma of power.  Good evening, Sir Peter.  It was so good of you to invite me, she said, and bit her own lip in anger.  it sounded wrong, too gushing and subservient.  She had planned to be cool and unimpressed by his condescension.  Chez Nico, Tug Harrison told the chauffeur, and then touched the button on the arm-rest that operated the soundproof glass division between the driver and passenger seats.

You don't mind my cigar, I hope?  he asked Bonny.  No.  I enjoy the smell of a good cigar.  it's a Davidoff, isn't it?  It wasn't a guess.

She had noticed the discarded hand tucked into the ashtray.  She had an eye for detail; it was the secret of her success as a photographer.

Oh!  Tug Harrison acknowledged.  A connoisseur.  He seemed amused. She hoped he had not noticed her little cheat, and she changed the subject quickly.  I've never been to Chez Nico.

Mind you, that's not surprising.  Even if I could get a reservation, I'd never be able to meet the bill.  They say you have to book weeks in advance.  is that true?  Some people might have to.  Tug Harrison smiled again.  I really don't know.  I'll ask my secretary; she makes my arrangements.

God, it was all going wrong.  Every time she said anything, it came out sounding callow and gave him reason to despise her.

For the remainder of the short journey she let him do the talking, yet despite her poor start to the evening, Bonny's imagination was running riot.  If only she played her cards correctly from now on, this could be her future, Rolls-Royce barge account at Harrods and Harvey and dinner at Nico's, a c Nichols and a flat in Mayfair or Kensington, holidays in Acapulco and Sydney and Cannes and a sable coat.  Pleasures and riches without end.  This could be the big casino.  just cool it, girl.  She had spent most of the afternoon tucked up in bed with Danny, but that seemed like a hundred years ago in another half-forgotten land.  Now there was Sir Peter Harrison and a new world of promise.

The restaurant surprised her.  She had expected a pompous dimly lit atmosphere, and instead it was gay and the lighting was cheerful.  The lovely stained-glass ceiling was in green garden colours and captured a mood of art nouveau.  Her own mood expanded and lightened in sympathy.

As they were ushered to the special table in the elbow of the L-shaped room, the conversation at the other tables faltered and all heads revolved to follow them and then came back close together to whisper his name and barter the latest gossip about him.  Tug Harrison was the stuff of legend.  It felt good to be at his side and savour the envious glances of other women.

Bonny knew just how striking were her tall athletic body and her flaming hair.  She knew everyone would be jumping to conclusions about her status in Sir Peter's life.  Please God, just let it come true.

I'd better remember to take it easy on the wine.  Perrier and a quick wit, those are the watch-words for this evening.  It was easier than she expected.  Tug Harrison was urbane and attentive.  He made her feel pampered and very special by directing all his attention and charm upon her.

Nico Ladenis came up from his kitchen, especially to speak to Tug Harrison.  With his dark satanic good looks Nico had a fearsome reputation.  If he served the best food in England, he expected it to be treated with respect.  If you ordered a gin and tonic to ruin your palate at the beginning of one of his celestial repasts you had to expect his wrath and contempt.  Tug Harrison ordered a chilled La Ina for himself and a Dubonnet for Bonny.  Then he and Nico discussed the menu with the same serious attention that Tug would give to BOSS's quarterly report.

When Nico left, sending one of his underlings to take their order.

Tug turned to Bonny to ask what she had chosen, but she feigned a girlish confusion Oh, it all sounds so gorgeous that I can't possibly make up my mind.  Won't you order for me, Sir Peter?

He smiled and she sensed that she was on the right track at last.

She was getting the feel of the relationship, her intuition working up to cruise speed.  Clearly, he liked to be in charge of any situation, even to choosing the meal.

She went very gently on the Chevalier-Montracket that he ordered to complement her salmon.  She encouraged him to relate the adventures of his young days in Africa.  It was not difficult to show intense interest in his conversation, for he was a fine raconteur.  His voice was like the caress of velvet gloves, and it didn't matter that he was old and that his skin was wrinkled and bagged and foxed by the tropical sun. Recently she had read somewhere, perhaps in the Sunday Times Magazine, that his personal fortune was over three hundred million pounds.  At that price, what were a few wrinkles and scars?  Well, mydear.  At last Tug dabbed his leathery lips with the folded table-napkin.  May I suggest that we take coffee at Holland Park.

There are a few small matters that I would like to discuss with you.

Modestly she hesitated a moment.  Could she afford to make herself too readily available?

Shouldn't she play just a little hard to get?  Should she hold out until the second time of asking?  But what if there were no second time?  She quailed at the thought.

Go for it now, honcychild, she counselled herself, and smiled at him.

Thank you, Sir Peter.  I'd love that.  She was awed by the splendour of the Holland Park house.  It was hard not to rubberneck like a tourist as he led her up to his study and settled her into a deep leather armchair.

it was a masculine room with a set of rhinoceros horns on the panelled wall.  She noticed the two paintings and shivered as she recognised their value.

Are you cold, my dear?  He was solicitous and motioned the black servant in flowing white kanza to close the window.  Sir Peter brought the coffee cup to her with his own hands.  Kenya Blue, he told her.

Specially picked from my private plantation on the slopes of Mount Kenya.

He dismissed the servant and lit a cigar.  And now, my dear.  . . He blew a streamer of cigar smoke towards the ceiling.  Tell me, are you sleeping with Daniel Armstrong?  It -was so unexpected, so brusque and alarming that she lost her equilibrium.  Before she could prevent herself she flared at him, Just who the hell do you think you're talking to?  He raised a beetling silver eyebrow at her.  Ah, a temper to match the colour of your hair, I see.  However, that's a fair question, and I'll answer straight.  I think I am talking to Thelma Smith.  That's the name on your birth certificate, isn't it?  Father unknown.  My information is that your mother died in 1975 of an overdose.  Heroin, I believe.  That was the period when a shipment of had stuff got loose in the city.

Bonny felt a cold nauseous sweat break out on her forehead.

She stared at him.  Like your mother's, your own career has been, shall we say, chequered.  At the age of fourteen, a juvenile school of correction for shop-lifting and possession of marijuana.  Then at eighteen, a nine-months sentence for theft and prostitution.  It seems you robbed one of your clients.  White in women's gaol you developed your interest in photography.  You served only three months of your sentence.

Time off for good behaviour.  He smiled at her.  Please correct me if I have got any of these facts wrong.  Bonny felt herself shrinking down into the huge chair.  She still felt sick and cold.  She kept silent.

You changed your name to the more glamorous version and got your first job in photography with Peterson Television in Canada.  Dismissed in May 1981 for stealing and selling video equipment belonging to the company.

They declined to press charges.  Since then a clean record.

Reformed, perhaps, or just getting a little more clever?

Whichever is the case, it seems you are not burdened by too many moral qualms and that you'll do almost anything for money.  You bastard, she hissed at him.  You've been leading me on.  I thought.  .

. Yes, you thought that I was lusting after all that decidedly palatable flesh.  He shook his head with regret.  I am an old man, my dear.  As the flames burn lower, I find my appetite becomes more refined.  With due respect for your obvious charms, I would class you as Beaujolais nouveau, a hearty young wine, tasty but lacking integrity or distinction.  The wine for a younger palate, like Danny Armstrong's perhaps.  At my age I prefer something like a Latour or a Margaux, older, smoother and with more class to it.  You old bastard!  Now you insult me.  That was not my intention.

I merely wanted us to understand each other.  I want something other than your body.  You want money.  We can do a deal.  It's a purely commercial arrangement.

Now to return to my original question.  Are you sleeping with Daniel Armstrong?  Yes, she snarled at him.  I'm screwing his arse off.

An expressive turn of phrase.  I take it that no mawkish sentiments complicate this relationship?  That is, not on your side at least?

There is only one person I love, and she's sitting right here in this room.

Total honesty, he smiled.  Better and better, especially as Danny Armstrong is not the type to treat it so lightly.  You have a certain influence and leverage over him, so you and I can do business now.

What would you say to twenty-five thousand pounds?  The sum startled Bonny, but she screwed up her courage and followed her intuition.  She dismissed the offer scornfully, I'd say "Up yours, mate!  " I read somewhere that you paid ten times more than that for a horse.  Ah, but she was a thoroughbred filly of impeccable bloodlines.  You wouldn't set yourself in that class, surely?  He held up his hands to forestall her furious response.  Enough my dear; it was Just a little joke, a poor one, I agree.  Please forgive me.  I want us to be business associates, not lovers, nor even friends.  Then before we talk about a price, you'd better explain what I have to do.  Her expression was bright and foxy. He felt the first vestiges of respect for her.

It's very simple really.  . . And he told her what he wanted.

Daniel had spent every day that week at the Reading Room of the British Museum.  This was invariably his practice before leaving on an assignment.  In addition to books specifically on Ubomo, he asked the librarian for every publication that she could find on the Congo, the Rift Valley and its lakes, and the African equatorial forest.

He started with the books of Speke and Burton, Mungo Park and Alan Moorehead, re-reading them for the first time in years.  He skipped through them rapidly, merely refreshing his mind on the half-forgotten descriptions of the nineteenth-century explorations of the region.  He moved on to the more recent publications.

Amongst these he found Kelly Kinnear's book, The People of the Tall Trees, listed in the bibliography.

He called for a copy of her book and studied the author's photograph on the inside of the dust-jacket.  She was rather pretty, with a strong and interesting face.  The blurb did not give her birth date but it listed her honours and degrees.  She was primarily a medical doctor, although she also had a PhD.

in Anthropology from Bristol University.  When not conducting research in the field, Doctor Kinnear shares a cottage in Cornwall with two dogs and a cat.  That was the only personal information that the blurb contained and Daniel returned to the photograph.

In the background of the photograph was a palisade formed by the trunks of large tropical trees.  It seemed as though she stood in a forest clearing.  She was bare-headed, dark hair pulled back from her face and twisted into a thick plait that had fallen forward over one shoulder and hung down her chest.

She wore a man's shirt.  It was difficult to tell what her figure was like, but she seemed slim and small-breasted.  Her neck was long, with clean graceful lines, and her collar-bones formed a sculptured cup at the base of her throat.

Her head sat well on the column of her neck, strong square jaw and high cheekbones like an American Indian.  Her nose was thin and rather bony and her mouth was determined, perhaps obstinate.  Her eyes were probably her best feature, wideset and almond-shaped, and she stared coolly at the camera.  He judged that she had been in her early thirties when the photograph was taken, but there was no indication as to how old she was now.  A handful, Daniel decided.  No wonder she has my friend Tug running scared.  This is a lady who gets her own way.  He flicked through to the first dozen pages of People of the Tall Trees, and read the introduction in which Kelly Kinnear explored the first references to the pygmies in the writings of antiquity.

This began with the report of the Egyptian leader Harkbuf to his child-Pharaoh Neferkare.  Two thousand five hundred years before the birth of Christ, Harkhuf had led an expedition southwards to discover the source of the Nile river.  In his field report, discovered four and a half thousand years later in Pharaoh's tomb, Harkhuf described how he had come to a mighty forest to the west of the Mountains of the Moon, and how in that dark and mysterious place he had encountered a tiny people who danced and sang to their god.  Their god was the very forest itself and the description of their dancing and worship was so tantalizing that Pharaoh despatched a messenger ordering Harkhuf to capture some of these tiny god dancers and bring them back to Memphis.

Thus the pygmies became familiar figures in ancient Egypt.

Over the ages since then, many strange legends have grown up around these tiny forest people, and much that is fanciful and apocryphal has been written about them.  Even their name was based on a misconception.

Tugme was a Greek unit of measurement, from elbow to knuckle, an imaginative estimate of their height by people who had never seen them.

Daniel had read all this before and he passed quickly to the more enjoyable portion of the book, the author's description of three years spent living with a pygmy clan in the depths of.  the equatorial forests of Ubomo.

Kinnear was a trained and professional anthropologist with a keenly observant eye for detail and the ability to marshal her meticulously garnered facts and extract from them reasoned conclusions, and yet she possessed the ear and heart of a storyteller.

These were not dry scientific subjects she was describing but human beings, each with his own character and idiosyncrasies; here was a warm, loving and lovable people pictured against the awe-inspiring grandeur of the great forest, a merry people, wonderfully in tune with nature, expressing themselves with songs and dances and impish humour.

At the end the reader was forced to share with the writer her obvious affection for and understanding of her subject, but even more, her deep concern for the forest in which they lived.

Daniel closed the book and sat for a while in the pleasant glow of wellbeing that it had inspired.  Not for the first time he felt a desire to meet and talk to the woman who had created this small magic, but now at last he knew how and when to do SO.

The annual general meeting of the shareholders of BOSS was set for a week before his departure for Ubomo, and Pickering in public relations arranged an invitation for Daniel and Bonny to attend.

The AGM was always held in the ballroom of BOSS's own magnificent headquarters in Blackfriars.

The AGM was always held on the last Friday of July and began at seven-thirty in the evening.

It ran for an hour and twenty-five minutes: ten minutes to read the previous minutes, an hour of sonorous prose from Sir Peter as he made his chairman's report and, finally, fifteen minutes of appreciation by the members of his board, capped by a vote of thanks and approbation, proposed by an individual planted in the body of the shareholders.  The vote was always passed unanimously by a show of hands.

That's the way it always went.  It was company tradition.

Security at the door was very strict.  The name of every person entering was checked against the current register of shareholders and special invitations were scrutinised by uniformed members of BOSS's security staff.

Sir Peter didn't want wild Irishmen or anti-Rushdie fundamentalists letting off bombs in the middle of his carefully rehearsed speech, nor did he want freelance journalists or trade unionists, or other free-loading riffraff making pigs of themselves at the heavily laden buffet table and complimentary bar.

Daniel had mistimed their departure from the flat in Chelsea.

They would have been at Blackfriars thirty minutes earlier but Bonny had, at the last minute, begun feeling very healthy.  She had made a suggestion which Daniel, always the perfect gentleman, had been unable to refuse.  Afterwards it had been necessary to take a shower together during which Bonny had started a water fight which had reduced the bathroom to a sodden shambles with water running out under the door into the passageway.

All this took time, and then they had battled to find a taxi.

When they finally flagged one down in the King's Road they ran into traffic along the Embankment and only arrived at the BOSS building after Sir Peter was in full stride, mesmerising his audience with an account of BOSS's performance over the previous twelve months.

All seats were taken and the overflow crowded the back of the hall.

They sneaked in, and Daniel shepherded Bonny into a corner near the bar, and pressed a large whisky and soda into her hand.  That should hold you for half an hour, he whispered.  Just please don't start feeling healthy again until we get home.  Chicken.

She grinned at him.  You can't take it, Armstrong.  The shareholders around them frowned and shushed disapproval and they settled down contritely to an appreciation of Sir Peter Tug Harrison's wit and erudition.

On the dais Sir Peter faced them from the centre of the long table with a microphone in front of him and the members of his board spread out on each side of him.  Amongst them there was an Indian maharajah, an earl, an East European pretender and a number of run-of-the-mill baronets. All were names and titles that looked good on the company letter-head, but not a person in the room that evening had any illusion as to where the true power and might of BOSS lay.

Sir Peter stood with his left hand thrust into his jacket pocket, occasionally extending the forefinger of his right hand and pointing at his audience.  As he made each point, he stabbed his forefinger like a pistol barrel at them, and even Daniel found himself flinching and blinking as though a shot had been fired at his head.

Everything Sir Peter had to tell them was good news, from the results of offshore oil drilling in the Pemba channel, to the cotton harvests and ground-nut crop of Zambia, and the increase in both pretax profits and declared dividends.  The audience hummed with delight at each fresh revelation.

Sir Peter glanced at his watch.  He had been running for fifty minutes, ten to go.  It was time to move on to future plans and projections.  He took a sip of water, and when he resumed, his voice was velvety and seductive.  my lords, ladies and gentlemen, I have given you the bad news.  . . He paused for laughter and a volley of applause.  Now let me move on to the good news.  The good news is Ubomo, the People's Democratic Republic of Ubomo and your company's participation in a new era for that beautiful little country, the opportunity that we have, not only to provide employment but also prosperity for a sadly disadvantaged population of four million souls.