by Wilbur Smith
He looked at his black herders with paternal affection. ‘They are just the same, under all the political claptrap. Salt of the bloody earth, my boy. My people, I feel that they are all family, glad I didn’t desert them.’
‘Of course, there are problems,’ another of his hosts told him. ‘Foreign exchange is murder – difficult to get tractor spares, and medicine for the stock – but Mugabe’s government is starting to wake up. As food-producers we are getting priority on import permits for essentials. Of course, the telephones only work when they do and the trains don’t run on time any longer. There is rampant inflation, but the beef prices keep in step with it. They have opened the schools, but we send the kids down south across the border so they get a decent education.’
‘And the politics?’
‘That’s between black and black. Matabele and Mashona. The white man’s out of it, thank God. Let the bastards tear each other to pieces if they want to. I keep my nose clean, and it’s not a bad life – not like the old days, of course, but then it never is, is it?’
‘Would you buy more land?’
‘Haven’t got the money, old boy.’
‘But if you did have?’
The rancher rubbed his nose thoughtfully. ‘Perhaps a man could make an absolute mint one day if the country comes right, land prices what they are at the moment – or he could lose the lot if it goes the other way.’
‘You could say the same of the stock exchange, but in the meantime it’s a good life?’
‘It’s a good life – and, hell, I was weaned on Zambezi waters. I don’t reckon I would be happy breathing London smog or swatting flies in the Australian outback.’
On Thursday morning Craig drove back to the motel, picked up his laundry, repacked his single canvas holdall, paid his bill and checked out.
He called at Jock’s office. ‘Still no news from Zurich?’
‘Telex came in an hour ago.’ Jock handed him the flimsy, and Craig scanned it swiftly.
‘Will grant your client thirty-day option to purchase all Rholands company paid-up shares for one half million US dollars payable Zürich in full on signature. No further offers countenanced.’ They did not come more final than that. Bawu had said double your estimate, and so far he had it right.
Jock was watching his face. ‘Double your original offer,’ he pointed out. ‘Can you swing half a million?’
‘I’ll have to talk to my rich uncle,’ Craig teased him. ‘And anyway I’ve got thirty days. I’ll be back before then.’
‘Where can I reach you?’ Jock asked.
‘Don’t call me. I’ll call you.’
He begged another tankful from Jock’s private stock and took the Volkswagen out on the road to the north-east, towards Mashonaland and Harare and ran into the first road-block ten miles out of town.
‘Almost like the old days,’ he thought, as he climbed down onto the verge. Two black troopers in camouflage battle-smocks searched the Volkswagen for weapons with painstaking deliberation, while a lieutenant with the cap-badge of the Korean-trained Third Brigade examined his passport.
Once again Craig rejoiced in the family tradition whereby all the expectant mothers in his family, on both the Mellow and Ballantyne side, had been sent home to England for the event. That little blue booklet with the gold lion and unicorn and Honi Soit Qui Mal y Pense printed on the cover still demanded a certain deference even at a Third Brigade road-block.
It was late afternoon when he crested the line of low hills and looked down on the little huddle of skyscrapers that rose so incongruously out of the African veld, like headstones to the belief in the immortality of the British Empire.
The city that had once borne the name of Lord Salisbury, the foreign secretary who had negotiated the Royal Charter of the British South Africa Company, had reverted to the name Harare after the original Shona chieftain whose cluster of mud and thatch huts the white pioneers had found on the site in September 1890 when they finally completed the long trek up from the south. The streets also had changed their names from those commemorating the white pioneers and Victoria’s empire to those of the sons of the black revolution and its allies – ‘a street by any other name’ – Craig resigned himself.
Once he entered the city he found there was a boomtown atmosphere. The pavements thronged with noisy black crowds and the foyer of the modern sixteen-storied Monomatapa Hotel resounding to twenty different languages and accents, as tourists jostled visiting bankers and businessmen, foreign dignitaries, civil servants and military advisers.
There was no vacancy for Craig until he spoke to an assistant manager who had seen the TV production and read the book. Then Craig was ushered up to a room on the fifteenth floor with a view over the park. While he was in his bath, a procession of waiters arrived bearing flowers and baskets of fruit and a complimentary bottle of South African champagne. He worked until after midnight on his report to Henry Pickering, and was at the parliament buildings in Causeway by nine-thirty the next morning.
The minister’s secretary kept him waiting for forty-five minutes before leading him through into the panelled office beyond, and Comrade Minister Tungata Zebiwe stood up from his desk.
Craig had forgotten how powerful was this man’s presence, or perhaps he had grown in stature since their last meeting. When he remembered that once Tungata had been his servant, his gunboy, when Craig was a ranger in the Department of Game Conservation, it seemed that it had been a different existence. In those days he had been Samson Kumalo, for Kumalo was the royal blood line of the Matabele kings, and he was their direct descendant. Bazo, his great-grandfather, had been the leader of the Matabele rebellion of 1896 and had been hanged by the settlers for his part in it. His great-great-grandfather, Gandang, had been half-brother to Lobengula, the last king of the Matabele whom Rhodes’ troopers had ridden to an ignoble death and unmarked grave in the northern wilderness after destroying his capital at GuBulawayo, the place of killing.
Royal were his blood-lines, and kingly still his bearing. Taller than Craig, well over six foot and lean, not yet running to flesh, which was often the Matabele trait, his physique was set off to perfection by the cut of his Italian silk suit, shoulders wide as a gallows tree and a flat greyhound’s belly. He had been one of the most successful bush fighters during the war, and he was warrior still, of that there was no doubt. Craig experienced a powerful and totally unexpected pleasure in seeing him once more.
‘I see you, Comrade Minister,’ Craig greeted him, speaking in Sindabele, avoiding having to choose between the old familiar ‘Sam’ and the nom de guerre that he now used, Tungata Zebiwe, which meant ‘the Seeker after Justice.’
‘I sent you away once,’ Tungata answered in the same language. ‘I discharged all debts between us – and sent you away.’ There was no return light of pleasure in his smoky dark eyes, the heavily boned jaw was set hard.
‘I am grateful for what you did.’ Craig was unsmiling also, covering his pleasure. It was Tungata who had signed a special ministerial order allowing Craig to export his self-built yacht Bawu from the territory in the face of the rigid exchange-control laws which forbade the removal of even a refrigerator or an iron bedstead. At that time the yacht had been Craig’s only possession, and he had been crippled by the mine blast and confined to a wheel-chair.
‘I do not want your gratitude,’ said Tungata, yet there was something behind the burnt-honey-coloured eyes that Craig could not fathom.
‘Nor the friendship I still offer you?’ Craig asked gently.
‘All that died on the battlefield,’ Tungata said. ‘It was washed away in blood. You chose to go. Now why have you returned?’
‘Because this is my land.’
‘Your land—’ he saw the reddish glaze of anger suffuse the whites of Tungata’s eyes. ‘Your land. You speak like a white settler. Like one of Cecil Rhodes’ murdering troopers.’
‘I did not mean it that way.’
‘Your people took the land at rifle-point, a
nd at the point of a rifle they surrendered it. Do not speak to me of your land.’
‘You hate almost as well as you fought,’ Craig told him, feeling his own anger begin to prickle at the back of his eyes, ‘but I did not come back to hate. I came back because my heart drew me back. I came back because I felt I could help to rebuild what was destroyed.’
Tungata sat down behind his desk and placed his hands upon the white blotter. They were very dark and powerful. He stared at them in a silence that stretched out for many seconds.
‘You were at King’s Lynn,’ Tungata broke the silence at last, and Craig started. ‘Then you went north to the Chizarira.’
‘Your eyes are bright,’ Craig nodded. ‘They see all.’
‘You have asked for copies of the titles to those lands.’ Again Craig was startled, but he remained silent. ‘But even you must know that you must have government approval to purchase land in Zimbabwe. You must state the use to which you intend to put that land and the capital available to work it.’
‘Yes, even I know that,’ Craig agreed.
‘So you come to me to assure me of your friendship.’ Tungata looked up at him. ‘Then, as an old friend, you will ask another favour, is that not so?’
Craig spread his hands, palms upward in gesture of resignation.
‘One white rancher on land that could support fifty Matabele families. One white rancher growing fat and rich while his servants wear rags and eat the scraps he throws them,’ Tungata sneered, and Craig shot back at him.
‘One white rancher bringing millions of capital into a country starving for it, one white rancher employing dozens of Matabele and feeding and clothing them and educating their children, one white rancher raising enough food to feed ten thousand Matabele, not a mere fifty. One white rancher cherishing the land, guarding it against goats and drought, so it will produce for five hundred years, not five—’ Craig let his anger boil over, and returned Tungata’s glare, standing stiff-legged over the desk.
‘You are finished here,’ Tungata growled at him. ‘The kraal is closed against you. Go back to your boat, your fame and your fawning women, be content that we took only one of your legs – go before you lose your head as well.’
Tungata rolled his hand over and glanced at the gold wrist-watch.
‘I have nothing more for you,’ he said, and stood up. Yet, behind his flat, hostile stare, Craig sensed that the undefinable thing was still there. He tried to fathom it – not fear, he was certain, not guile. A hopelessness, a deep regret, perhaps, even a sense of guilt – or perhaps a blend of many of these things.
‘Then, before I go, I have something else for you.’ Craig stepped closer to the desk, and lowered his voice. ‘You know I was on the Chizarira. I met three men there. Their names were Lookout, Peking and Dollar and they asked me to bring you a message—’
Craig got no further, for Tungata’s anger turned to red fury. He was shaking with it, it clouded his gaze and knotted the muscles at the points of his heavy lantern jaw.
‘Be silent,’ he hissed, his voice held low by an iron effort of control. ‘You meddle in matters that you do not understand, and that do not concern you. Leave this land before they overwhelm you.’
‘I will go,’ Craig returned his gaze defiantly, ‘but only after my application to purchase land has been officially denied.’
‘Then you will leave soon,’ Tungata replied. ‘That is my promise to you.’
In the parliamentary parking lot the Volkswagen was baking in the morning sun. Craig opened the doors and while he waited for the interior to cool, he found he was trembling with the after-effects of his confrontation with Tungata Zebiwe. He held up one hand before his eyes and watched the tremor of his fingertips. In the game department after having hunted down a man-eating lion or a crop-raiding bull elephant, he would have the same adrenalin come-down.
He slipped into the driver’s seat, and while he waited to regain control of himself, he tried to arrange his impressions of the meeting and to review what he had learned from it.
Clearly Craig had been under surveillance by one of the state intelligence agencies from the moment of his arrival in Matabeleland. Perhaps he had been singled out for attention as a prominent writer – he would probably never know – but his every move had been reported to Tungata.
Yet he could not fathom the true reasons for Tungata’s violent opposition to his plans. The reasons he had given were petty and spiteful, and Samson Kumalo had never been either petty or spiteful. Craig was sure that he had sensed correctly that strange mitigating counter-emotion beneath the forbidding reception, there were currents and undercurrents in the deep waters upon which Craig had set sail.
He thought back to Tungata’s reaction to his mention of the three dissidents he had met in the wilderness of Chizarira. Obviously Tungata had recognized their names, and his rebuke had been too vicious to have come from a clear conscience. There was much that Craig still wanted to know, and much that Henry Pickering would find interesting.
Craig started the VW and drove slowly back to the Monomatapa down the avenues that had been originally laid out wide enough to enable a thirty-six-ox span to make a U-tum across them.
It was almost noon when he got back to the hotel room. He opened the liquor cabinet and reached for the gin bottle. Then he put it back unopened and rang room service for coffee instead. His daylight drinking habits had followed him from New York, and he knew they had contributed to his lack of purpose. They would change, he decided.
He sat down at the desk at the picture window and gazed down on the billowing blue jacaranda trees in the park while he assembled his thoughts, and then picked up his pen and brought his report to Henry Pickering up to date – including his impressions of Tungata’s involvement with the Matabeleland dissidents and his almost guilty opposition to Craig’s land-purchase application.
This led logically to his request for financing, and he set out his figures, his assessment of Rholands’ potential, and his plans for King’s Lynn and Chizarira as favourably as he could. Trading on Henry Pickering’s avowed interest in Zimbabwe tourism, he dwelt at length on the development of ‘Zambezi Waters’ as a tourist attraction.
He placed the two sets of papers in separate manila envelopes, sealed them and drove down to the American Embassy. He survived the scrutiny of the marine guard in his armoured cubicle, and waited while Morgan Oxford came through to identify him.
The cultural attaché was a surprise to Craig. He was in his early thirties, as Craig was, but he was built like a college athlete, his hair was cropped short, his eyes were a penetrating blue and his handshake firm, suggesting a great deal more strength than he exerted in his grip.
He led Craig through to a small back office and accepted the two unaddressed manila envelopes without comment.
‘I’ve been asked to introduce you around,’ he said. ‘There is a reception and cocktail hour at the French ambassador’s residence this evening. A good place to begin. Six to seven – does that sound okay?’
‘Fine.’
‘You staying at the Mono or Meikles?’
‘Monomatapa.’
‘I’ll pick you up at 17.45 hours.’
Craig noted the military expression of time, and thought wryly, ‘Cultural attaché?’
Even under the socialist Mitterrand regime, the French managed a characteristic display of élan. The reception was on the lawns of the ambassador’s residence, with the tricolour undulating gaily on the light evening breeze and the perfume of frangipani blossom creating an illusion of coolness after the crackling heat of the day. The servants were in white ankle-length kanza with crimson fez and sash, the champagne, although non-vintage, was Bollinger, and the foie gras on the biscuits was from the Périgord. The police band under the spathodea trees at the end of the lawn played light Italian operetta with an exuberant African beat, and only the motley selection of guests distinguished the gathering from a Rhodesian governor-general’s garden party that Craig had att
ended six years previously.
The Chinese and the Koreans were the most numerous and noticeable, basking in their position of special favour with the government. It was they who had been most constant in aid and material support to the Shona forces during the long bush war, while the Soviets had made a rare error of judgement by courting the Matabele faction, for which the Mugabe government was now making them atone in full measure.
Every group on the lawn seemed to include the squat figures in the rumpled pyjama suits, grinning and bobbing their long lank locks like mandarin dolls, while the Russians formed a small group on their own, and those in uniform were junior officers – there was not even a colonel amongst them, Craig noted. The Russians could only move upstream from where they were now.
Morgan Oxford introduced Craig to the host and hostess. The ambassadress was at least thirty years younger than her husband. She wore a bright Pucci print with Parisian chic. Craig said, ‘Enchanté, madame,’ and touched the back of her hand with his lips; when he straightened, she gave him a slow speculative appraisal before turning to the next guest in the reception line.
‘Pickering warned me you were some kind of cocks-man,’ Morgan chided him gently, ‘but let’s not have a diplomatic incident.’
‘All right, I’ll settle for a glass of bubbly.’
Each of them armed with a champagne flute, they surveyed the lawn. The ladies from the central African republics were in national dress, a marvellous cacophony of colour like a hatching of forest butterflies, and their men carried elaborately carved walking-sticks or fly-whisks made from animal tails, and the Muslims amongst them wore embroidered pill-box fezes with the tassels denoting that they were hadji who had made the pilgrimage to Mecca.
‘Sleep well, Bawu,’ Craig thought of his grandfather, the arch-colonist. ‘It is best that you never lived to see this.’
‘We had better make your number with the Brits, seeing that’s your home base,’ Morgan suggested, and introduced him to the British High Commissioner’s wife, an ironjawed lady with a lacquered hair style modelled on Margaret Thatcher’s.