BAMAKO, Aribert Raphael [read out loud books .TXT] 📗

scene, you, Monsieur Savoi, invested some of Madame McLean’s money into Carmine’s stock, and fed speculative information to the Toronto Stock Exchange via your friends in New York. This provoked a fluctuation in Carmine’s share prices, and we became worried. Between May and December of last year, Carmine sent nearly a half-a-million dollars to you, Monsieur Savoi.” James was looking fixedly at him. He tried to avert his eyes from his gaze. “However, we had nothing to show our shareholders by way of permits, claims or concessions to justify such expenditure, and things went from bad to worse.”
Until then Savoi had made an effort to stay silent, but now he could no longer contain his annoyance. “But I’ve given you people a full account—”
“Please, Monsieur Savoi,” James cut-in firmly. “There will be time enough later for you to give us further explanations. For now however, I’ll ask you to refrain from making any comments.”
Turning his face to Ahmed Hjamal, James said, “Now, I come to you, Monsieur Hjamal. Sir, you are an extraordinary man. You have done something not many people would dare doing in this day and age. You went to Sabodala several years ago, set up camp, and claimed the land to be yours. Why choose Sabodala? To find the answer to that question we have to go back into the past—your past, Monsieur Hjamal.
“As a young man you traveled throughout Africa in search of fame and fortune. You were not seeking any sort of wealth—no—you were looking for the kind of wealth one may acquire quickly without too much effort. During that period of your life, you were a smuggler. You smuggled gemstones from country to country.” In a flash, Talya recalled the little gem seller at the Dakar Artisan’s market.
“You bought and sold your loot in the most astute of fashion and, you became wealthy, very wealthy indeed. As for fame, you no longer wanted any. Smuggling is not one of those accomplishments that anyone would want shouted from rooftops. Slowly, your travels brought you back to your homeland—Senegal. Here, you soon realized that stones were not easily found but gold was. So, you switched career-paths. You bought a small truck and made your way through Senegal, Mali and Burkina-Faso. You were buying sacs of gold dust from the local ‘diggers’. You learned very quickly how to process this gold in a makeshift smelter that you had installed in the back of your truck—and you made more money. You didn’t stop there, however.
“You chose to claim the Sabodala property as yours because your recently acquired knowledge of gold exploitation told you that it was one of the best sites in Senegal where to establish a gold processing plant. And, since you are not a person to leave much to chance, you studied the old records at both Mining Departments in Dakar and in France. They confirmed your suspicions. In the mid-fifties, the French made substantial discoveries in that region. Therefore, you knew exactly where to plant your flag and did so without qualms.” At that point, James stopped long enough to take a sip of juice from the glass in front of him and then continued.
“Sabodala is in fact considered by many professional geologists as one of the most prospective sites in West Africa. It is said to contain no less than five sizeable gold deposits.
“Monsieur Hjamal, I put it to you, you knew the location of these deposits and you soon realized that one of them—the largest one—lied directly beneath the village of Sabodala.” Hjamal stared at James defiantly but remained silent. From across the table, Hassan had his eyes fixed on the man he had grown to hate.
“To recover this particular treasure, first you engaged Mr. Van Burren.” James, this time, turned to the man sitting on his right. “Johan Van Burren is an expert in many extraordinary trades. One of these is the handling and the detonating of explosives. At one point, Johan, apparently under your orders, Monsieur Hjamal, saw to the safe delivery of the first shipment of nitro-glycerine to the mine site. This was part of the two hundred kilos you had ordered and which was to be used to unearth the deposits I have described earlier.” Johan looked uncomfortable.
“I will not spend time in going into the details as to how this is usually done, I will however say this: Monsieur Hjamal, you were planning to create another open-pit mine out of the village of Sabodala and its surroundings.” James stopped. Hjamal was still staring. He knew where James was going and he was afraid of where he (Hjamal) would end up. However, James was relentless.
“Meanwhile, during one of your many journeys to Mali, you met Monsieur Savoi. The man told you about his dealings with Carmine. He actually boasted to you about his exploits on the Stock Exchange. You listened but did nothing about it, at first. By this time, you were too busy with the construction of your processing plant in Sabodala to pay any heed to such people as Monsieur Savoi.
“In the interim, another man crossed your path, Monsieur Abdul Rasheed. Monsieur Rasheed is a person who can be qualified as ‘useful’. He, too, has a troubled past. I will get to describe his activities later. Suffice to say for now, that Monsieur Rasheed has been doing everything that he felt was appropriate at the time, and that includes kidnapping and torture. But let’s continue retracing the events that brought us here today.” James paused once again and drank not a sip but enough to quench what must have been an ever-increasing thirst. He then resumed his narrative.
“To design and install a mill circuit usually takes time, effort, money and expertise. To take these items each in turn, I would say, Monsieur Hjamal, that you had time, you had the will to make the effort and you had money. But the one thing you were missing was expertise. Consequently, you started shopping around for the missing item. You went to conferences, exhibitions and visited mining companies in France and in North America. On these occasions, you met several interesting people and saw many displays of processing plants that could very well fit your design and purpose in Sabodala. However, since you wanted no one to share in the possible wealth that lay at your feet, you gleaned information from here and there, ultimately deciding to buy pieces of machinery from various suppliers, and a ball-mill from a very reputable North American company. You paid half the price in advance and signed documents to the effect that you promised to pay the rest, once the mill was installed and connected to the circuit at the mine-site.
“The mill, with all its necessary parts—except for its door—was shipped to Dakar and was laboriously brought to Sabodala in the spring of last year. This is when Richard Gillman arrived on the scene. Richard was a typical ex-pat. Early in his career, he was devoted to his work. You could have sent him everywhere or anywhere across the world to do a job and he would have done it, under whatever circumstances. In this case, however, the circumstances were more stressful than usual. And after years of traipsing from job-site to job-site, Richard developed a problem which ultimately cost him his life.”
James turned to Hjamal and said with emphasis, “Monsieur Hjamal, you had no right to take the man’s passport upon his arrival in Senegal. You had absolutely no right to have him endure the rigors of your ill-equipped compound in Sabodala, and foremost, you had no valid reason to detain him anywhere against his will. What’s more, you did all of those things without consideration for the repercussions. At present, you have only your conscience to answer to, for those misdeeds. There is no actual proof that any of this ever happened. Unfortunately, Richard is no longer here to tell us what really occurred during all those months he had been working on your project. He only left us a letter, which explains that his first sojourn in Senegal ended up in near disaster. He had to be escorted to the safety of his homeland with the assistance and the diligent services of the Canadian embassy. The rescue in itself proves, to some extent, that Richard had been prevented to leave this country of his own free will.” James took another sip of juice.
“Now, we come to the crucial point of this story. As I stated earlier, constructing a processing plant takes money, a lot of money. When you started, Monsieur Hjamal, you were comfortably wealthy, but as time passed, your spending was getting out of hand (hiring your personal Lear-Jet takes a lot of cash) and you began running out of funds. You didn’t have enough money left to pay the other half of the mill’s invoice and you had to think of a way of getting a cash flow rather quickly.
“Some could say that ‘you were sitting on a gold mine’ (literally) and that you could have used the ownership of such a valuable piece of property as collateral for obtaining a loan from any bank. To that suggestion, I would have to point out to everyone here, that Monsieur Hjamal has neither title nor deed to the Sabodala Property. Remember that he just decided one day to squat on the land and tell everybody it was soon to be his. To date, the property belongs to the villagers, to the people of Senegal in general, but not to Monsieur Hjamal in particular. Thus, sir, you were faced with a sizeable financial problem.” James paused again to let his statements sink in. Hjamal looked stern and yet embarrassed. James took a deep breath and continued.
“This is when you remembered your mere acquaintance, Monsieur Savoi. You recalled how the latter bragged about receiving money (hand-over-fist) from a gullible Canadian company for doing nothing more than playing the stock markets in New York and Toronto. Therefore, you called the man and offered him a partnership. You invited him to send you money in exchange for a share of the profits (yet to be made) in Sabodala. Monsieur Savoi has always been blinded at the sight of a dollar sign but when it came to wave a gold ingot at him, he was totally hopeless.”
Once again, Savoi wanted to interrupt James’s account. He gesticulated, blurted out some insults and was about to get up to leave. Samir, who sat beside him, brought him back down in his seat. James watched the scene for a moment and then went on with the story.
“Thus, a deal was struck and the money started flowing into the bottomless pit again. Everything seemed to go the right way for you both, gentlemen, until a few weeks ago. As I said, the directors of Carmine, and me in particular, became very nervous about the enormous amount of money we had sent to you, Monsieur Savoi, without seeing any result for our charity. I began asking questions. At one point, I even menaced to pay you a visit. That was very bad for business, wasn’t it, Monsieur Savoi?”
This time there was no word to be heard from ‘the accused’. He just stared at the wall across from where he sat.
“What happened next