by Wilbur Smith
‘I have been thinking, Craig. This place you call Zambezi Waters can only be about half an hour’s flying time from here. I found the Chizarira river on the map. We could make a small detour and fly over it on the way home.’
‘No point.’ Craig shook his head.
‘Why not?’ she asked, and he passed her the sheet of notepaper with Pickering’s message.
‘Oh, I am so sorry.’ It was genuine, Craig realized, and her concern comforted him a little.
‘I would like to see the area,’ Peter Fungabera cut in suddenly, and when Craig shook his head again, his voice hardened. ‘We will go there,’ he said with finality, and Craig shrugged his indifference.
Craig and Sally-Anne pored over her map. ‘The pools should be here, where this stream joins the main rivercourse.’ And she worked swiftly with callipers and her wind-deflection computer.
‘Okay,’ she said. ‘Twenty-two minutes’ flying time with this wind.’
While they flew, and Sally-Anne studied the terrain and compared it to her map, Craig brooded over the Matabele girl’s words. ‘Fungabera’s puppies.’ Somehow it sounded menacing, and her use of the name ‘Kuphela’ troubled him even more. There was only one explanation: she was in touch with, and was probably a member of, the group of dissident guerrillas. What had she meant by the leopard and crocodile allegory, and Fungabera’s puppies? And whatever it was, just how unbiased and reliable would she be if she were a guerrilla sympathizer?
‘There is the river,’ said Sally-Anne as she eased the throttle closed and began a shallow descending turn towards the glint of waters through the forest-tops.
She flew very low along the river-bank, and despite the thick cloak of vegetation, picked out herds of game animals, even once, with a squeal of glee, the great rocklike hulk of a black rhinoceros in the ebony thickets.
Then suddenly she pointed ahead. ‘Look at that!’
In a loop of the river, there was a strip of open land hedged in with tall riverine trees, where the grass had been grazed like a lawn by the zebra herds who were already raising dust as they galloped away in panic from the approaching aircraft.
‘I bet I could get down there,’ Sally-Anne said and pulled on the flaps, slowing the Cessna and lowering the nose to give herself better forward vision. Then she let down the landing-gear.
She made a series of slow passes over the open ground, each lower than the previous one, until at the fourth pass her wheels were only two or three feet above the ground and they could see each individual hoofprint of the zebra in the dusty earth.
‘Firm and clear,’ she said, and on the next pass touched down, and immediately applied maximum safe braking that pulled the aircraft to a dead stop in less than a hundred and fifty paces.
‘Bird lady,’ Craig grinned at her and she smiled at the compliment.
They left the aircraft and set off across the plain towards the forest wall, passed through it along a game trail and came out on a rocky bluff above the river.
The scene was a perfect African cameo. White sand-banks and water-polished rock glittering like reptiles’ scales, trailing branches decked with weaver birds’ nests over deep green water, tall trees with white serpentine roots crawling over the rocks – and beyond that, open forest.
‘It’s beautiful,’ said Sally-Anne, and wandered off with her camera.
‘This would be a good site for one of your camps,’ Peter Fungabera pointed at the great lumpy heaps of elephant dung on the white sandbank below them.
‘Grandstand view.’
‘Yes, it would have been,’ Peter agreed. ‘It seems too good to pass up – at that price. There must be millions of profit in it.’
‘For a good African socialist, you talk like a filthy capitalist,’ Craig told him morosely.
Peter chuckled and said, ‘They do say that socialism is the ideal philosophy – just as long as you have capitalists to pay for it.’
Craig looked up sharply, and for the first time saw the glitter of good old western European avarice in Peter Fungabera’s eyes. Both of them were silent, watching Sally-Anne in the river-bed, as she made compositions of tree and rock and sky and photographed them.
‘Craig.’ Peter had obviously reached a decision. ‘If I could arrange the collateral the World Bank requires, I would expect a commission in Rholands shares.’
‘I guess you would be entitled to it.’ Craig felt the embers of his dead hopes flicker, and at that moment Sally-Anne called, ‘It’s getting late and we have two and a half hours’ flying to Harare.’
Back at New Sarum air force base Peter Fungabera shook hands with both of them.
‘I hope your pictures turn out fine,’ he said to Sally-Anne, and to Craig, ‘You will be at the Monomatapa? I will contact you there within the next three days.’
He climbed into the army jeep that was waiting for them, nodded to his driver, and saluted them with his swagger-stick as he drove away.
‘Have you got a car?’ Craig asked Sally-Anne, and when she shook her head, ‘I can’t promise to drive as well as you fly – will you take a chance?’
She had an apartment in an old block in the avenues opposite Government House. He dropped her at the entrance.
‘How about dinner?’ he asked.
‘I’ve got a lot of work to do, Craig.’
‘Quick dinner, promise – peace offering. I’ll have you home by ten.’ He crossed his heart theatrically, and she relented.
‘Okay, seven o’clock here,’ she agreed, and he watched the way she climbed the steps before he started the Volkswagen. Her stride was businesslike and brisk, but her backside in the blue jeans was totally frivolous.
Sally-Anne suggested a steakhouse where she was greeted like royalty by the huge, bearded proprietor, and where the beef was simply the best Craig had ever tasted, thick and juicy and tender. They drank a Cabernet from the Cape of Good Hope and from a stilted beginning their conversation eased as Craig drew her out.
‘It was fine just as long as I was a mere technical assistant at Kodak, but when I started being invited on expeditions as official photographer and then giving my own exhibitions, he just couldn’t take it,’ she told him, ‘first man ever to be jealous of a Nikon.’
‘How long were you married?’
‘Two years.’
‘No children?’
‘Thank God, no.’
She ate like she walked, quickly, neatly and efficiently, yet with a sensuous streak of pleasure, and when she was finished she looked at her gold Rolex.
‘You promised ten o’clock,’ she said, and despite his protestations, scrupulously divided the bill in half and paid her share.
When he parked outside the apartment, she looked at him seriously for a moment before she asked, ‘Coffee?’
‘With the greatest of pleasure.’ He started to open the door, but she stopped him.
‘Right from the start, let’s get it straight,’ she said. ‘The coffee is instant Nescafé – and that’s all. No gymnastics – nothing else, okay?’
‘Okay,’ he agreed.
‘Let’s go.’
Her apartment was furnished with a portable tape recorder, canvas-covered cushions and a single camp-bed on which her sleeping-bag was neatly rolled. Apart from the cushions, the floor was bare but polished, and the walls were papered with her photographs. He wandered around studying them while she made the coffee in the kitchenette.
‘If you want the bathroom, it’s through there,’ she called. ‘Just be careful.’
It was more dark-room than ablution, with a light-proof black nylon zip-up tent over the shower cabinet and jars of chemicals and packets of photographic paper where in any other feminine bathroom there would have been scents and soaps.
They lolled on the cushions, drank the coffee, played Beethoven’s Fifth on the tape, and talked of Africa. Once or twice she made passing reference to his book, showing that she had read it with attention.
‘I’ve got an early start tomorrow—’ at
last she reached across and took the empty mug out of his hand. ‘Good night, Craig.’
‘When can I see you again?’
‘I’m not sure, I’m flying up into the highlands early tomorrow. I don’t know how long.’ Then she saw his expression and relented. ‘I’ll call you at the Mono when I get back, if you like?’
‘I like.’
‘Craig, I’m beginning to like you – as a friend, perhaps, but I’m not looking for romance. I’m still hurting – just as long as we understand that,’ she told him as they shook hands at the door of the apartment.
Despite her denial, Craig felt absurdly pleased with himself as he drove back to the Monomatapa. At this stage he did not care to analyse too deeply his feelings for her, nor to define his intentions towards her. It was merely a pleasant change not to have another celebrity boffer trying to add his name to her personal scoreboard. Her powerful physical attraction for him was made more poignant by her reluctance, and he respected her talents and accomplishments and was in total sympathy with her love of Africa and her compassion for its peoples.
‘That’s enough for now,’ he told himself as he parked the Volkswagen.
The assistant manager met him in the hotel lobby, wringing his hands with anguish, and led him through to his office.
‘Mr Mellow, I have had a visit from the police special branch while you were out. I had to open your deposit box for them, and let them into your room.’
‘God damn it, are they allowed to do that?’ Craig was outraged.
‘You don’t understand, here they can do whatever they like,’ the assistant manager hurried on. ‘They removed nothing from the box, Mr Mellow – I can assure you of that.’
‘Nevertheless, I’d like to check it,’ Craig demanded grimly.
He thumbed through his travellers’ cheques and they tallied. His return air-ticket was intact, as was his passport – but they had been through the ‘survival kit’ that Henry Pickering had provided. The gilt field assessor’s identification badge was loose in its leather cover.
‘Who could order a search like this?’ he asked the assistant manager as they relocked the box.
‘Only someone pretty high up.’
‘Tungata Zebiwe,’ he thought bitterly. ‘You vicious, nosy bastard – how you must have changed.’
Craig took his report of his visit to Tuti Rehabilitation Centre for Henry Pickering up to the embassy, and Morgan Oxford accepted it and offered him coffee.
‘I might be here a longer time than I thought,’ Craig told him, ‘and I just can’t work in an hotel room.’
‘Apartments are hell to find,’ Morgan shrugged. ‘I’ll see what I can do.’
He phoned him the next day. ‘Craig, one of our girls is going home on a month’s vacation. She is a fan of yours, and she will sub-let her flat for six hundred dollars. She leaves tomorrow.’
The apartment was a bed-sitter, but it was comfortable and airy. There was a broad table that would do as a writing-desk. Craig set a pile of blank Typex bond paper in the centre of it with a brick as a paper-weight, his Concise Oxford Dictionary beside that and said aloud: ‘Back in business.’
He had almost forgotten how quickly the hours could pass in never-never land, and in the deep pure joy of watching the finished sheets of paper pile up at the far end of the table.
Morgan Oxford phoned him twice during the next few days, each time to invite him to diplomatic parties, and each time Craig refused, and finally unplugged the telephone. When he relented on the fourth day and plugged the extension in again, the telephone rang almost immediately.
‘Mr Mellow.’ It was an African voice. ‘We have had great difficulty finding you. Hold on, please, for General Fungabera.’
‘Craig, it’s Peter.’ The familiar heavy accent and charm. ‘Can we meet this afternoon? Three o‘clock? I will send a driver.’
Peter Fungabera’s private residence was fifteen miles out of town on the hills overlooking Lake Macillwane. The house had originally been built in the 1920s by a rich remittance man, black sheep younger son of an English aircraft manufacturer. It was surrounded firstly by wide verandas and white fretwork eaves and then by five acres of lawns and flowering trees.
A bodyguard of Third Brigade troopers in full battledress checked Craig and his driver carefully at the gate before allowing them up to the main house. When Craig climbed the front steps, Peter Fungabera was waiting for him at the top. He was dressed in white cotton slacks and a crimson short-sleeved silk shirt, which looked magnificent against his velvety black skin. With a friendly arm around Craig’s shoulders, he led him down the veranda to where a small group was seated.
‘Craig, may I introduce Mr Musharewa, govemor of the Land Bank of Zimbabwe. This is Mr Kapwepwe, his assistant, and this is Mr Cohen, my attorney. Gentlemen, this is Mr Craig Mellow, the famous author.’
They shook hands. ‘A drink, Craig? We are drinking Bloody Marys.’
‘That will do very well, Peter.’
A servant in a flowing white kanza, reminiscent of colonial days, brought Craig his drink and when he left, Peter Fungabera said simply, ‘The Land Bank of Zimbabwe has agreed to stand as your personal surety for a loan of five million dollars from the World Bank or its associate bank in New York.’
Craig gaped at him.
‘Your connection with the World Bank is not a particularly closely guarded secret, you know. Henry Pickering is well known to us too,’ Peter smiled, and went on quickly. ‘Of course, there are certain conditions and stipulations, but I don’t think they will be prohibitive.’ He turned to his white attorney. ‘You have the documents, Izzy? Good, will you give Mr Mellow a copy, and then read through them for us, please.’
Isadore Cohen adjusted his spectacles, squared up the thick pile of documents on the table in front of him and began.
‘Firstly, this is a land purchase approval,’ he said. ‘Authority for Craig Mellow, a British subject and a citizen of Zimbabwe, to purchase a controlling interest in the land-owning private company, known as Rholands (Pty) Ltd. The approval is signed by the state president and countersigned by the minister of agriculture.’
Craig thought of Tungata Zebiwe’s promise to quash that approval and then he remembered that the minister of agriculture was Peter Fungabera’s brother-in-law. He glanced across at the general, but he was listening intently to his lawyer’s recitation.
As he came to each document in the pile, Isadore Cohen read through it carefully, not omitting even the preamble, and pausing at the end of each paragraph for questions and explanations.
Craig was so excited that he had difficulty sitting still and keeping his expression and voice level and businesslike. The momentary panic he had felt at Peter’s sudden mention of the World Bank was forgotten and he felt like whooping and dancing up and down the veranda: Rholands was his, King’s Lynn was his, Queen’s Lynn was his, and Zambezi Waters was his.
Even in his excitation there was one paragraph that rang with a hollow note when Isadore Cohen read it out.
‘What the hell does that mean – enemy of the state and the people of Zimbabwe?’ he demanded.
‘It’s a standard clause in all our documentation,’ Isadore Cohen placated him, ‘merely an expression of patriotic sentiment. The Land Bank is a government institution. If the borrower were to engage in treasonable activity and was declared an enemy of the state and people, the Land Bank would be obliged to repudiate all its obligations to the guilty party.’
‘Is that legal?’ Craig was dubious, and when the lawyer reassured him, he went on, ‘Do you think the lending bank will accept that?’
‘They have done so already on other contracts of surety,’ the bank governor told him. ‘As Mr Cohen says, it’s a standard clause.’
‘After all, Craig,’ Peter Fungabera smiled, ‘you aren’t intending to lead an armed revolution to overthrow our government, are you?’
Craig returned his smile weakly. ‘Well, okay, if the American lending bank will accept th
at, then I suppose it must be kosher.’
The reading took almost an hour, and then Governor Musharewa signed all the copies, and both his assistant and Peter Fungabera witnessed his signature. Then it was Craig’s turn to sign and again the witnesses followed him, and finally Isadore Cohen impressed his seal of Commissioner of Oaths on each document.
‘That’s it, gentlemen. Signed, sealed and delivered.’
‘It only remains to see if Henry Pickering will be satisfied.’
‘Oh, did I forget to mention it?’ Peter Fungabera grinned wickedly. ‘Governor Kapwepwe spoke to Pickering yesterday afternoon, 10 a.m. New York time. The money will be available to you just as soon as the surety is in his hands.’ He nodded to the hovering house servant. Now you can bring the champagne.’
They toasted each other, the Land Bank, the World Bank, and Rholands Company, and only when the second bottle was empty did the two black bankers take reluctant leave.
As their limousine went down the drive, Peter Fungabera took Craig’s arm. ‘And now we can discuss my raising fee. Mr Cohen has the papers.’
Craig read them, and felt the blood drain from his face. ‘Ten per cent,’ he gasped. ‘Ten per cent of the paid-up shares of Rholands.’
‘We really must change that name.’ Peter Fungabera frowned. ‘As you see, Mr Cohen will hold the shares as my nominee. It might save embarrassment later.’
Craig pretended to re-read the contract, while he tried to muster a protest. The two men watched him in silence. Ten per cent was robbery, but where else could Craig go?
Isadore Cohen slowly unscrewed the cap of his pen and handed it to Craig.
‘I think you will find a cabinet minister and an army commander a most useful sleeping partner in this enterprise,’ he said, and Craig accepted the pen.
‘There is only one copy.’ Craig still hesitated.
‘We only need one copy,’ Peter was still smiling, ‘and I will keep it.’ Craig nodded.
There would be no proof of the transaction, shares held by a nominee, no documentation except in Peter Fungabera’s hands. In a dispute it would be Craig’s word against that of a senior minister – but he wanted Rholands. More than anything in his life, Craig wanted Rholands.