“Jesus Christ. A ten-billion-dollar mountain.”
three
Platinum is a metal and, like all metals, it has its price. The price is basically controlled by two factors. These are the indispensability of the metal in certain processes that the industries of the world would like to complete, and the rarity of the metal. Platinum is very rare. Total world production each year, apart from stockpiled production, which is kept secret by the producers, is a shade over one and a half million Troy ounces.
The overwhelming majority of it, probably more than ninety-five percent, comes from three sources: South Africa, Canada, and Russia. Russia, as usual, is the uncooperative member of the group. The producers would like to keep the world price fairly steady so as to be able to make long-term plans for investment in new mining equipment and development of new mines in the confidence that the bottom will not suddenly drop out of the market should a large quantity of stockpiled platinum suddenly be released. The Russians, by stockpiling unknown quantities and being able to release large quantities anytime they feel like it, keep tremors running through the market whenever they can.
Russia releases on the world each year about 350,000 Troy ounces out of the 1,500,000 that reach the same market. This gives her between 23 and 24 percent of the market, enough to ensure her a considerable degree of influence. Her supplies are marketed through Soyuss Prom Export. Canada puts on the market some 200,000 ounces a year, the whole production coming from the nickel mines of International Nickel, and just about the whole of this supply is bought up each year by Engelhard Industries of the United States. But should the United States need for platinum suddenly rise sharply, Canada might well not be able to furnish the extra quantity.
The third source is South Africa, turning out close to 950,000 ounces a year and dominating the market. Apart from the Impala mines, which were just opening when Sir James Manson sat considering the world position of platinum, and have since become very important, the giants of platinum are the Rustenberg mines, which account for well over half the world’s production. These are controlled by Johannesburg Consolidated, which had a big enough slice of the stock to be sole manager of the mines. The world refiner and marketer of Rustenberg’s supply was and is the London-based firm of Johnson-Matthey.
James Manson knew this as well as anyone else. Although he was not into platinum when Chalmers’ report hit his desk, he knew the position as well as a brain surgeon knows how a heart works. He also knew why, even at that time, the boss of Engelhard Industries of America, the colorful Charlie Engelhard, better known to the populace as the owner of the fabulous racehorse Nijinsky, was buying into South African platinum. It was because America would need much more than Canada could supply for the midseventies. Manson was certain of it.
And the particular reason why American consumption of platinum was almost certain to rise, even triple, by the mid- to late seventies, lay in that simple piece of metal, the car exhaust pipe, and in those dire words “air pollution.”
With legislation already passed in the United States projecting ever more stringent controls, and with little likelihood that any nonprecious-metal car exhaust-control device would be marketed before 1980, there was a strong probability that every American car would soon require one-tenth of an ounce of pure platinum. This meant that the Americans would need one and a half million ounces of platinum every year, an amount equal to the present world production, and they would not know where to get it.
James Manson thought he had an idea where. They could always buy it from him. And with the absolute indispensability of a platinum-based antipollutant catalyst in every fume-control device established for a decade, and world demand far outstripping supply, the price would be nice, very nice indeed.
There was only one problem. He had to be absolutely certain that he, and no one else, would control all mining rights to the Crystal Mountain. The question was, how?
The normal way would be to visit the republic where the mountain was situated, seek an interview with the President, show him the survey report, and propose to him a deal whereby ManCon secured the mining rights, the government secured a profit-participation clause that would fill the coffers of its treasury, and the President would secure a fat and regular payment into his Swiss account. That would be the normal way.
But apart from the fact that any other mining company in the world, if advised of what lay inside the Crystal Mountain, would counterbid for the same mining rights, sending the government’s share up and Manson’s down, there were three groups who more than any other would want to take control, either to begin production or to stop it forever. These were the South Africans, the Canadians, and most of all the Russians. For the advent on the world market of a massive new supply source would cut the Soviet slice of the market back to the level of the unnecessary, removing from the Russians their power, influence, and moneymaking capacity in the platinum field.
Manson had a vague recollection of having heard the name of Zangaro, but it was such an obscure place he realized he knew nothing about it. The first requirement was evidently to learn more. He leaned forward and depressed the intercom switch.
“Miss Cooke, would you come in, please?”
He had called her Miss Cooke throughout the seven years she had been his personal and private secretary, and even in the ten years before that, when she had been an ordinary company secretary, rising from the typing pool to the tenth floor, no one had ever suggested she might have a first name. In fact she had. It was Marjory. But she just did not seem the sort of person one called Marjory.
Certainly men had once called her Marjory, long ago, before the war, when she was a young girl. Perhaps they had even tried to flirt with her, pinch her bottom, those long thirty-five years ago. But that was then. Five years of war, hauling an ambulance through burning rubble-strewn streets, trying to forget a Guardsman who never came back from Dunkirk, and twenty years of nursing a crippled and whining mother, a bedridden tyrant who used tears for weapons, had taken away the youth and the pinchable qualities of Miss Marjory Cooke. At fifty-four, she was tailored, efficient, and severe; her work at ManCon was almost all her life, the tenth floor her fulfillment, and the terrier who shared her neat apartment in suburban Ch
igwell and slept on her bed, her child and lover.
So no one ever called her Marjory. The young executives called her a shriveled apple, and the secretary birds “that old bat.” The others, including her employer, Sir James Manson, about whom she knew more than she would ever tell him or anyone else, called her Miss Cooke.
She entered through the door set in the beech-paneled wall, which, when closed, looked like part of the wall.
“Miss Cooke, it has come to my attention that we have had, during the past few months, a small survey—one man, I believe—in the republic of Zangaro.”
“Yes, Sir James. That’s right.”
“Oh, you know about it.”
Of course she knew about it. Miss Cooke never forgot anything that had crossed her desk.
“Yes, Sir James.”
“Good. Then please find out for me who secured that government’s permission for us to conduct the survey.”
“It will be on file, Sir James. I’ll go and look.”
She was back in ten minutes, having first checked in her daily diary appointment books, which were cross-indexed into two indices, one under personal names and the other under subject headings, and then confirmed with Personnel.
“It was Mr. Bryant, Sir James.” She consulted a card in her hand. “Richard Bryant, of Overseas Contracts.”
“He submitted a report, I suppose?” asked Sir James.