DIAMONDS ARE FOREVER BY IAN FLEMING

As the other man came up, the pilot half raised his hand in greeting. “Everything all right?”

“I hope so. But you’re late again. I shall only just make it through the frontier by first light.”

“Magneto trouble. We all have our worries. Thank God there are only thirteen full moons a year. Well, if you’ve got the stuff let’s have it and we’ll tank her up and I’ll be off.’,.’

Without speaking, the man from the diamond mines reached into his shirt and handed over the neat, heavy packet.

The pilot took it. It was damp with the sweat from the smuggler’s ribs. The pilot dropped it into a side pocket of his trim bush shirt. He put his hand behind him, and wiped his fingers on the seat of his shorts.

“Good,” he said. He turned towards his machine.

“Just a moment,” said the diamond smuggler. There was a sullen note in his voice.

The pilot turned back and faced him. He thought: it’s the voice of a servant who has screwed himself up to complain about his food. “Ja. What is it?”

“Things are getting too hot. At the mines. I don’t like it at all. There’s been a big intelligence man down from London. You’ve read about him. This man Sillitoe. They say he’s been hired by the Diamond Corporation. There’ve been a lot of new regulations and all punishments have been doubled. It’s frightened out some of my smaller men. I had to be ruthless and, well, one of them somehow fell into the crusher. That tightened things up a bit. But I’ve had to pay more. An extra ten per cent. And they’re still not satisfied. One of these days those security people are going to get one of my middlemen. And you know these black swine. They can’t stand a real beating.” He looked swiftly into the pilot’s eyes and then away again. “For the matter of that I doubt if anyone could stand the sjambok. Not even me.”

“So?” said the pilot. He paused. “Do you want me to pass this threat back to ABC?”

“I’m not threatening anyone,” said the other man hastily. “I just want them to know that it’s getting tough. They must know it themselves. They must know about this man Sillitoe. And look what the Chairman said in our annual report. He said that our mines were losing more than two million pounds a year through smuggling and IDE and that it was up to the government to stop it. And what does that mean? It means ‘stop me’!”

“And me,” said the pilot mildly. “So what do you want? More money?”

“Yes,” said the other man stubbornly. “I want a bigger cut. Twenty per cent more or I’ll have to quit.” He tried to read some sympathy in the pilot’s face.

“All right,” said the pilot indifferently. “I’ll pass the message on to Dakar, and if they’re interested I expect they’ll send it on to London. But it’s nothing to do with me, and if I were you.” the pilot unbent for the first time, “I wouldn’t put too much pressure on these people. They can be much tougher than this Sillitoe, or the Company, or any government I’ve ever heard of. On just this end of the pipeline, three men have died in the last twelve months. One for being yellow. Two for stealing from the packet. And you know it. That was a nasty accident your predecessor had, wasn’t it? Funny place to keep gelignite. Under his bed. Unlike him. He was always so careful about everything.”

For a moment they stood and looked at each other in the moonlight. The diamond smuggler shrugged his shoulders. “All right,” he said. “Just tell them I’m hard up and need more money to pass down the line. They’ll understand that, and if they’ve got any sense they’ll add another ten per cent on for me. If not…” He left the sentence unfinished and moved towards the helicopter. “Come on. I’ll give you a hand with the gas.”

Ten minutes later the pilot climbed up into the cockpit and pulled the ladder in after him. Before he shut the door he raised a hand. “So long,” he said. “See you in a month.”

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