The Levanter (10 page)

Something had to be done quickly. The Howell reputation was at stake, and my own self-confidence had taken a beating. After an exceedingly unpleasant session with Hawa, I secured his agreement to my withdrawing all unsold stocks from the dealers. I also stopped production and did the quality-control research that I had neglected to do before we started. Most of this work concerned the zinc containers. These were formed on jigs and had soldered seams. Obviously, faulty soldering would cause leaks, but the chief problem was with chemical impurities. For example, zinc sheeting of a quality that could be used for covering a roof would not necessarily do for bakery production. Certain impurities, even in very small amounts, would, in contact with the electrolyte, start up a chemical reaction. The result was that the zinc became porous. The same was true of the solder used on the seams. In the future, all materials used would have to be checked out chemically before we accepted them from the suppliers.

I worked out a series of standard tests for each material. Then I had to find someone to carry out the tests. As usual, trained and even semi-trained manpower was in short supply. I knew I wasn’t going to be able to hire a qualified chemist; in fact, I didn’t need one. I had already done the necessary elementary chemistry, and the actual testing would be routine work; but I did need someone with sufficient laboratory experience to carry out the routine procedures faithfully and without botching them.

That was how I came to employ Issa.

He was a Jordanian, a refugee from the West Bank territory who had come north with his family after the war, first to the UNWRA camp at Der’a, then to live with relatives in Quatana. He was in his mid-twenties, a dropout from the Muslim Educational College in Amman where he had received some schooling in inorganic chemistry. More important for me, he had worked part-time as a lab assistant during his second year at the college.

I found him through a department in the Ministry which had started, or was trying to start, a technical training program. Representing himself as a science graduate, Issa had applied to them for a job as an instructor. In the absence of any papers to support his claim to graduate qualifications - he told them that they had been lost when the family fled from the Israelis - the Ministry took the precaution of writing to Amman for confirmation. When the truth had been established they referred him to me.

On first acquaintance he seemed a rather intense young man who took himself very seriously and had a lot of personal dignity. Later, I found him quick to learn, intelligent, and hard-working. The fact that he had previously lied about his qualifications should, I suppose, have prejudiced me against him, or at least made me wary. It did neither. He was, after all, a refugee; one had to make allowances. If, in his eagerness to better himself and make the most of his intelligence, he had gone too far, well, he could be excused. The lie had done no one any harm.

When we started production again I gave him a small wage increase and made him responsible for ordering the battery-project raw material supplies as well as checking them. It seemed a reasonable thing to do at that time.

Until that afternoon in May the idea that the punctilious, hard-working Issa might have other, less desirable qualities of mind and character had never once crossed my mind. And, as I have said, even that first warning signal - Teresa’s news about the alcohol orders - didn’t really register.

Naturally, the conclusion I immediately jumped to - that Issa had been carrying on a private bootlegging business at my expense - wasn’t exactly welcome; but until I had questioned him on the subject there was nothing to be done. He might have a perfectly innocent explanation to offer. I couldn’t imagine what that might be, but the matter could, and would have to, wait.

As I drove to the Ministry that afternoon I had pleasanter things to think about, for this was a moment I had been looking forward to for months. This was showdown time for Dr. Hawa. If I played my hand properly the dry battery project would soon be no more than a disagreeable memory.

Before leaving for Italy I had prepared the ground carefully by sending him a statement of the financial position of the dry battery project Along with this profoundly depressing document, however, I had sent a cheerful little covering letter saying that I hoped, on my return, to be able to submit proposals for saving the entire situation.

As the situation was patently catastrophic, this promise of good news to come would, I
thought, soften him up a little. The drowning man offered a line does not much care, when it arrives, whether the hempen rope he had been expecting turns out to be made of nylon. Although it would have been a gross exaggeration to describe Dr. Hawa’s political difficulties at the time as those of a drowning man, he was certainly floundering a little and in need of additional buoyancy.

His first words to me after the coffee had been brought in suggested that I had overdone the softening-up process.

“Michael, you have failed me,” he said mournfully.

This would not do. In his pity-me mood, which I had encountered once or twice before, he wouldn’t have bought IBM at par. I wanted him braced in his embattled PM-warrior stance, beady-eyed and looking for openings. I took the necessary steps.

“Minister, we have made some rectifiable errors, that is all”

“But these figures you sent me!” He had them there on his desk, sprinkled with cigarette ash.

“The obituary notice of an unsuccessful experiment which may now be forgotten.”

“Forgotten!” That stung him all right. “Forgotten by whom, may I ask? The public? The press?”

“Only by you and me, Minister. For the public and the press there will be nothing to forget. The battery project will go forward.”

“On the basis of these figures? You expect the Ministry of Finance to fund the project when all we have to show them is this miserable record?”

“Of course not. But if you will recall our original conversation on the subject of dry batteries, the feasibility of the project was always in question. What I have in mind now is the rectification of an original error.”

“Which error? There have been so many.”

“The error of making primary batteries. We should have made secondary batteries.”

“What are you talking about? Batteries are batteries. Please come to the point, Michael.”

“With respect, Minister, that is the point. Secondary batteries are rechargeable storage batteries, the kind you have in cars and buses.”

“But...”

“Please, Minister, allow me to explain. I propose that the battery project should go ahead, but that we phase out the dry battery operation and change over to the manufacture of storage batteries.”

“But the two things are totally different!”

“They are indeed, but they are both
called
batteries. That is the essential point We should not be abandoning the announced battery project, only redirecting it along a more profitable path. As for the changeover, I have had exploratory talks in Milan with a firm of car accessory manufacturers. They are willing to send us experienced technicians to train our own people and help us to set up an efficient plant for making storage batteries here.”

“But that means another pilot project.”

“No, Minister, not this time. You cannot make these things on a pilot scale. That is one reason for our present failure. This would have to be a full-scale operation from the start. That means a joint-venture arrangement between the Italian company and your agency.”

“But why should they be willing to do this? Why should they help us? What do they get out of it?”

I
knew then that I had him.

They have no outlet for their products in the Middle East at present. The West Germans and the British have most of the market. They were looking for a way in and came to me.” That was not quite true; I had approached them; but it sounded better the other way. “I advised them to manufacture here and take advantage of low labour costs and the favourable UAR tariffs.”

“But it would be
their
product they would be making and selling.”

They are willing to put it out here under our Green Circle trademark.”

That clinched it; but, of course, he did not give way immediately. There were doubts to be assuaged about the plant’s value to the economy. The standard complaint was made that all the raw materials would have to be imported and that, as usual, money and cheap labour were all that was being asked of poor Syria. I countered with a question.

“Minister, when will the new plastics factory which has been promised be going into production?”

This factory was to be a present from Russia via East Germany and I wasn’t supposed to know about it. My indiscretion threw him for a moment.

“Why do you ask?”

The battery cases could be made there.”

“Have you a plan on paper yet for this project? Figures, estimates?"

I opened my briefcase and handed over the bound presentation that I had worked up with the people in Milan. It was quite a tome, and I
could see that the size and weight of it impressed him. He leafed through it for a moment or two before looking up at me.

“In the matter of phasing out the present operation,” he said thoughtfully, “if that is finally decided upon, there would have to be continuity, Michael. If we were to go ahead with this revised Green Circle plan there could be no sudden changes, no loss of employment. The two would have to overlap.”

“I understand, Minister.” What he meant was that he didn’t want the press or radio picking up the story until we had papered over the cracks.

“Then I will study these proposals and we will have a further meeting. Meanwhile, this will be treated as confidential. There must be no premature disclosure.”

“No, of course not.” It was all right to browbeat the Agence Howell into squandering its money on a half-baked experiment after sounding off about it to the press; but to release the news of a sizable joint-venture deal involving an Italian company and his agency before clearing it with the ministries of Finance and Commerce would be asking for trouble. I was fairly sure that he would get the clearance, however. All I could do now was hope that he would get it quickly. The sooner I could start “phasing out” the dry battery fiasco the better.

Still, I was pleased with the way things had gone. Back at the house I told Teresa all about the meeting and we had some champagne to celebrate.

It wasn’t until after dinner when we were in bed that I thought again about Issa. We had taken a bottle of brandy with us, and as I poured some into her glass the fact that it was alcohol reminded me.

“I was trying to work it out earlier,” I said. “Ten rottols of alcohol would be how many litres?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know how much alcohol weighs. Over fifty litres I suppose. Can you drink that stuff?”

“Absolute alcohol? Heavens no, it would kill you. What you could do, though, if you had fifty litres of it, would be to dilute it with a hundred and twenty-five litres of water and add a little burnt sugar flavouring. You would then have over two hundred bottles of eighty-proof whiskey. Whiskey of a sort anyway.”

I did not have to tell her what that would be worth on the black market; we bought our own drink supplies there.

She was thoughtful for a moment “You know, Michael,” she said then, “alcohol isn’t the only expensive stuff that Issa has been ordering. I
told you about that because of the duty we had to pay on it”

“What else? Gold dust?”

“Mercury. There have been orders for mercury.”

“Mercury?”

“Four orders, each for one oke. I did ask him about those because two were marked urgent and we had to pay extra delivery charges.”

“What did he say?”

“That he was experimenting with mercury cells. He said that the Americans make a lot of them. They have am extra-long life.” She gave me a sidelong look

“I gathered that you knew all about it.”

“Did he say that I knew?”

“Not in so many words, but he conveyed that impression.”

“Well, I
didn’t
know.” The idiocy of it hit me. “Mercury cells, for God’s sake! It’s almost more than we can do to make the ordinary kind. What sort of mercury did he order, mercuric oxide or the chloride?”

“Just mercury, I think, the kind you have in thermometers. He said that it was a very heavy metal and that one oke wasn’t much.”

I swallowed my brandy and put on my glasses. “Teresa, have you still got those invoices here?”

“They’re in the office, yes.”

I got out of bed. She followed me through to the office and found the invoices for me in the files.

It took me about twenty minutes to go through them all and mark the items which should not have been there. By the end of that twenty minutes I wasn’t concerned any more about bootlegging. I was, though, both angry and alarmed.

I glanced across at Teresa. Even with no clothes on she managed, sitting at her desk in front of the ship models in their glass cases, to look businesslike.

“Have we a spare set of keys to the battery works stores?” I asked.

“Yes, Michael.”

“Would you get it for me, please?”

“Now?”

“Yes.”

“Is it something very bad?”

“Yes. I think it may be very bad indeed,” I said, “but I’m not spending a sleepless night waiting to find out. I’m going to the battery works to do a little stock taking.”

“I’ll come with you.”

“There’s no need.”

“I’ll drive if you like.” She knows that I dislike driving at night

“All right.”

We got dressed in silence. It was after ten, so the servants were off duty and in their own quarters. I opened the gates in the courtyard and closed them again after Teresa had driven out. Then I got in beside her and we set off.

‘Teresa is in the habit of crossing herself in the Catholic manner before she starts to drive a car. The gesture is made briskly, almost casually - she is fastening a spiritual seat belt - and it seems to work very well. She has never had a traffic accident or even scratched a fender. On Syrian roads and with Syrian drivers all about you, that is a considerable achievement.