Whistle Blower by Terry Morgan

leg up on the table. He checked his gold watch, drained the last of the whiskey and closed his eyes briefly. But then he stood up, went to refill his glass and, as he did so, heard the door to the corridor open. The woman in the long black dress crept down the corridor in soft slippers, walked around the edge of the Chinese carpet and placed a bronze tray with a dallah, a large, Arabic coffee pot and china cups on a long glass-topped table next to a jade statue of yet another prancing horse.
    "It is nine twenty," she said. "Coffee for your guest." And then she stood, removed her headdress, pulled a clasp and let her long black hair flow across her shoulders. The Minister watched, smiled, looked at her, up and down.
    "That is good. Please show him to the room when he arrives. We will be finished in an hour and then…" The woman nodded, smiled, touched her red lips and bowed almost imperceptibly. Then she backed away, turning briefly to smile again as she passed from his sight down the short corridor.
    The Minister was still standing with the bottle in his hand. He held it up, checked the Glen Scotia label, raised his glass to something or someone and then drained it.

Chapter Fifteen
     
    THE SPEED WITH which Mitchell drove his empty truck back to the barbed-wire encircled compound of Mambola Transport broke his previous record by almost five minutes. He skidded to a halt in a cloud of red dust outside Mr. Suleiman's concrete block office, leapt from his truck and ran inside. Mr. Suleiman was sitting on a large, wooden crate, speaking into a mobile phone.
    "Mr. Suleiman, Mr. Suleiman. Big problem. Mr. Moses is very cross. I ran away in case he slapped me o…"
    "Shhh. I am having important negotiations. You must wait."
    Mitchell waited, fidgeting, first on one leg, then the other. He went to the window and glanced into the yard to check if Mr. Moses might have followed him. Mr. Moses had once told him that if anyone ever crossed him then they could expect serious consequences and then, as if to re-enforce his determination, Mr. Moses had pulled out a long and very sharp looking knife from the drawer in his desk and pointed it at Mitchell's nose.
    "Sorry for the interruption, Mr. Taylor," Mr. Suleiman continued calmly. "It was one of my drivers. OK, so that's fifty boxes every day for one week starting on Monday from Cobra Printers to go to Awoko Newspaper. That is very good, Mr. Taylor. No problem. My driver Mr. Mitchell will be responsible. He has just returned from his last delivery and I will make sure he obeys all the instructions. Yes. Thank you, Mr. Taylor. Good bye…What is it Mitchell?"
    "Big problem, Mr. Suleiman. Mr. Moses is very cross. I ran away in case he took out his big…" Mitchell was still out of breath.
    "His big what, Mitchell?"
    "His big knife, Mr. Suleiman."
    "Ha, ha! No problem. I told you already, Mr. Moses is always cross. He is a crook, a swindler, a skimmer. Mr. Taylor who I have just spoke to is the opposite. He is an honest, hard-working family man with six children and his old mother. Don't worry. As long as you do your job it's OK. Moses won't hurt you."
    "No, no, Mr. Suleiman. There is a problem. All his boxes had newspaper inside. I saw with my own eyes."
    "Ha, ha. No problem. It was packaging paper, plastic foam, polystyrene, don't worry."
    "No, no, not packing paper. Nothing to pack. Nothing inside except paper. Nothing. That is why they were lighter than the first two hundred boxes."
    "What are you saying? What first two hundred boxes?"
    "There was a big mistake, Mr. Suleiman. Tamba the forklift driver was drunk from last night and got slapped by Granville. But before he got slapped he made a mistake and gave me the wrong two hundred boxes. So, I unloaded the wrong ones and loaded the right ones. Then I took the right ones to Mr. Moses. But I think they were the wrong ones. Then Mr. Moses checked inside and it wasn't what it said on the paper—it was paper."
    "What sort of