A Quiver Full of Arrows by Jeffrey Archer Page B

Silveira. “Though I must warn
you I always manage to beat my staff.”
    “Perhaps they always manage to lose,” said
Manuel, as he rose and grabbed the half empty bottle of wine by its neck.
    Both men were laughing as they left the
dining room.
    After that, the two chairmen had lunch and
dinner together every day.
    Within a week, their staffwere eating at the
same tables. Eduardo could be seen in the dining room without a tie while
Manuel wore a shirt for the first time in years. By the end of a fortnight, the
two rivals had played each other at table tennis, backgammon and bridge with
the stakes set at one hundred dollars a point. At the end of each day Eduardo
always seemed to end up owing Manuel about a million dollars which Manuel
happily traded for the best bottle of wine left in the hotel’s cellar.
    Although Lieutenant Colonel Dimka had been
sighted by about forty thousand Nigerians in about as many different places, he
still remained resolutely uncaptured. As the new President had insisted,
airports remained closed but communications were opened which at least allowed
Eduardo to telephone and telex Brazil. His brothers and wife were sending
replies by the hour, imploring Eduardo to return home at any cost: decisions on
major contracts throughout the world were being held up by his absence. But
Eduardo’s message back to Brazil was always the same: as long as Dimka is on
the loose, the airports will remain closed.
    It was on a Tuesday night during dinner that
Eduardo took the trouble to explain to Manuel why Brazil had lost the World
Cup. Manuel dismissed Eduardo’s outrageous claims The as ill-informed and
prejudiced. It was the only subject on which they hadn’t agreed in the past
three weeks.
    “I blame the whole fiasco on Zagalo.”
    said Eduardo.
    “No, no, you cannot blame the manager,” said
Manuel. “The fault lies with our stupid selectors who know even less about
football than you do. They should never have dropped Leao from goal and in any
case we should have learned from the Argentinian defeat last year that our
methods are now out of date. You must attack, attack, if you want to score
goals.”
    “Rubbish. We still have the surest defence
in the world.”
    “Which means the best result you can hope
for is a O O draw.”
    “Never...” began Eduardo.
    “Excuse me, sir.” Eduardo looked up to see
his private secretary standing by his side looking anxiously down at him.
    “Yes, what’s the problem?”
    “An urgent telex from Brazil, sir.”
    Eduardo read the first paragraph and then
asked Manuel if he would be kind enough to excuse him for a few minutes.
    The latter nodded politely. Eduardo left the
table and as he marched through the dining room seventeen other guests left
unfinished meals and followed him quickly to his suite on the top floor, where
the rest of his staffwere already assembled. He sat down in the corner of the
room on his own. No one spoke as he read through the telex carefully, suddenly
realising how many days he had been imprisoned in Lagos.
    The telex was from his brother Carlos and
the contents concerned the Pan-American road project, an eight-lane highway
that would stretch from Brazil to Mexico. Prentinos had tendered for the
section that ran through the middle of the Amazon jungle and had to have the
bank guarantees signed and certified by midday tomorrow; Tuesday. But Eduardo
had quite forgotten which Tuesday it was and the document he was committed to
sign by the following day’s deadline.
     
    “What’s the problem?” Eduardo asked his
private secretary. “The Banco do Brasil have already agreed with Alfredo to act
as guarantors. What’s stopping Carlos signing the agreement in my absence?”
    “The Mexicans are now demanding that
responsibility for the contract be shared because of the insurance problems:
Lloyd’s of London will not cover the entire risk if only one company is
involved. The details are all on page seven of the telex.”
    Eduardo flicked