Page 224 - harryDEC12_clean.iba

The major produced a presidential decree, with a colorful Crest (as customary in that part of the world) and the assumed signature of Samuel Doe and a map in which the area was encircled with red color - the outmost western district “Grand Cape Mount” bordering to Sierra Leone.
I sat back in my chair and reflected. Let everything I had heard sink in. I did not like the project - Deforestation on a grand scale, which I was no friend of - buying at ridiculous price, which soon would cause somebody to review the situation, outrageous low labour cost of 60 cent per fully prepared cubic meter of wood - this had all the ingredients, that somebody at government level would pocket the license fee upfront and think twice, whether or not to honor the contract. But above all, as a “political risk broker” I new that DOE run Liberia as a sturdy and brutal dictatorship, that was in the process of destroying civil society and sowed ethnic hatred by blatantly favoring his own tribe. I also remembered that the United States propped him up as an anti-communist ally and that after Doe had blatantly rigged his 1985 re-election, Secretary of State George Schultz had the audacity to say Liberia was making "genuine progress toward democracy." What Hypocrisy. In view of this picture I saw no way that this contract, given the duration, would go ok. There was only one half Indian underwriter in Miami, who might look at this risk, but really James Brewer had the better relations to him, as he frequently used him.
Above all however, I felt that the story I was told, was somehow to simple, to straight forward, diluting another truth behind it. So, in a moment, good intuition took the better of me, I turned round to the Major and said:
“I am sorry Sir, but my underwriters have currently no capacity for Liberia, I cannot accommodate your request - however tempting - but I have a colleague in the Market and I will speak to him- I do believe jointly we may get somewhere”.
I flipped through my visitor’s card book, because in those days wed did not look at the contact files on the PC and grabbed the telephone. James came on the line almost instantly:
"James, I have here a rather peculiar inquiry, but I think with your contact in Miami, we may get results"
"Ok, let's meet this afternoon in Lloyd's coffee room"
I turned to the Major and told him, that I would be back to him in two days. When John came back to the office, I said:
“Didn’t like the deal. Has all the ingredients of trouble. But I will give it a try - together with James Brewer. Its up to him to decide, whether we go forward.”
Then I met James in the coffee room at Lloyd's and explained him the proposition, and James brooded for a while. Then he said:
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