Ivory Nation

by Andy Maslen

  Two carried Kalashnikovs, one an antiquated but serviceable-looking bolt-action rifle, one a more modern, wooden-stocked rifle Gabriel couldn’t identify at first. He pointed at it.

  ‘C’est jolie. Qu’est ce que c’est? It’s pretty. What is it?’

  The poacher smiled.

  ‘C’est un Mauser M98 Magnum.’ The last word came out, Magnoom.

  Gabriel nodded his appreciation.

  ‘Calibre?’

  ‘Quatre seize.’

  Gabriel nodded again. A .416 round would stop a charging elephant or Cape buffalo dead in its tracks if you were accurate. If.

  ‘Right. Move out!’ Witaarde called out. ‘The herd’s three miles west of here.’

  Gabriel watched the Congolese shouldering their gear, including a new-looking STIHL chainsaw on a faded-orange webbing sling.

  After an hour’s tabbing through the park, they arrived at a long, narrow waterhole, fringed with trees and waist-high long grass.

  They set up camp, although once the food and water had been consumed, Witaarde made a point of him and Gabriel moving to a spot away from the Congolese. They built a separate fire and then spread out sleeping bags.

  Witaarde retrieved a bottle of whisky from his knapsack. He unscrewed the cap and took a pull before offering it to Gabriel. Gabriel accepted it, but blocked the neck with his tongue as he brought it to his mouth.

  He kept Witaarde company as the man descended into slurring drunkenness, slowing his own speech down to mimic Witaarde’s. Around them, the noise of nocturnal animals built steadily, so that an hour later it was a continuous background wail, mixing every type of sound from buzzes and whines to squeals, shrieks, leopard coughs, and an unearthly hum that sounded as though someone had powered up a distant electrical generator.

  Witaard tilted the whisky bottle neck at Gabriel.

  ‘No thanks, Julius, I’m good. I want to stay fresh for tomorrow.’

  ‘Yah? Gonna lose your virginity, aren’ ya? Bag a big elephan’ for me and get ’is tusks out.’

  ‘Do we take the bakkie?’

  Witaarde rolled his eyes, and Gabriel couldn’t tell if it was in exasperation, drunkenness or both.

  ‘Those ears aren’t jus’ for keeping cool. They can hear real good. Engine noise spooks them.’

  ‘Then how come tourists manage it?’

  ‘Well, for one thing, they don’t get as close as we need to. An’ another thing is, this is more honest. You know? Like my granpappa used to do it.’

  Reflecting that honesty was the last thing he’d have expected as a reason for poaching on foot, Gabriel shuffled a little closer to Witaarde. Witaarde’s eyes were drooping. Gabriel knew he had to be quick.

  ‘I know how important Volksrepubliek van Suid-Afrika is to you, Julius,’ he said softly. ‘You really care about it, don’t you?’

  ‘Course I care. This is my life. My fight,’ he said, punching his chest. ‘You know, Mandela had it right. You have to fight for what you believe in. I’m fighting for what I believe in.’

  ‘Mandela?’

  ‘Yeah, you know. Mandela!’

  ‘Mandala?’

  ‘What. You deaf, Englishman? I said Mandela. You know, Nelson Mandela.’

  ‘Ohh, Mandela. Yeah, Mandela. Mandela.’

  It was easiest with drunks. As long as they were awake, the alcohol did half the work. Gabriel kept repeating the great South African’s surname, varying the stressed syllable and raising and lowering his voice in a precise sequence of tones taught to him many years ago by master Zhao.

  Behind him, Gabriel could hear the Congolese singing old French songs in exquisite harmonies. Their melodic voices, so surprising given their day jobs, floated across the space between the two groups of men, adding their own sonic colours to the disruption Gabriel was causing to Witaarde’s brainwave patterns.

  As he drew Witaarde’s gaze into his and moved his eyes in synchrony with his voice, Gabriel waited for the tell-tale signs that Witaarde had lost control of his own mind. They came after twenty more seconds.

  Witaarde’s pupils blew. His breathing settled into a deep, glacial pace, one breath every thirty seconds. His muscle tone slackened.

  And, in the flickering firelight beneath a billion stars, Gabriel Wolfe began talking. As the insects chittered, and the eternal battle between the eaters and the eaten gathered pace, he issued instructions and made suggestions for the following day’s sport.

  By seven, they were on the move again. One of the Congolese had been away before dawn, scouting ahead, tracking the herd. He’d reported back as the rest were eating breakfast.

  In a ramshackle patois incorporating French, English, Swahili and Afrikaans, he communicated that the elephants were no more than a mile to the north, foraging in a patch of grassland by a waterhole.

  Witaarde turned to Gabriel.

  ‘This is it, my friend. Time to show what you’re made of. Because I tell you, man, all that army BS counts for nothing out here. You shoot straight, you kill a tusker and you take the ivory. Then I know I can trust you.’

  Gabriel nodded grimly. The hunt was nearing its climax.

  54

  Witaarde settled his bush hat lower over his brow. The sun was blinding, and even with the yellow-lensed hunting sunglasses, its glare was terrific. Like staring into a furnace.

  He signalled with a finger to his lips to the lead Congolese, a guy called Amadou, to go ‘all quiet’. The kaffir nodded and started signing orders to the other three. They grinned and nodded. You had to give it to those Congolese kaffirs, they enjoyed the sport.

  Ahead, the grass speared skywards, increasing from waist-height to over eight feet tall. Somewhere among those breeze-disturbed stems the elephants were grazing.

  He saw the topmost branches of an acacia swish violently from side to side, then still. Soft snuffling and parping little calls denoted the presence of babies. No good for ivory but the meat was supposed to be good. Maybe we’ll get our new friend to put a .416 Rigby into their little skulls. See if he’s man enough.

  They were downwind of the beasts and he drew their musky stink deep into his lungs before exhaling quietly. Dung, mostly, and something else, something weirdly like human sweat.

  Imagine God creating such a huge animal and then loading its face with hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of ivory. He gave us dominion and with that much money available, it’s our duty to put it to better use.

  He looked left and right. The Congolese had vanished. Just him and the Englishman. You playing me for a fool, Gabriel? Or are you serious about helping us? Soon we’ll know. And if I don’t like what I see? Well, one more corpse out here won’t make a difference either way.

  It had caused him a moment’s pain handing over his father’s rifle. But the Englishman needed the Dakota to make a clean, one-shot kill. Witaarde had taken one of the kaffirs’ AKs to replace it. Now he held it across his body like a damn guerrilla in one of the northern wars. He patted the 629 in its holster on his right hip. Always good to have backup.

  The Englishman slid between two clumps of the monstrous grass, turning to Witaarde and signalling with his eyes. Witaarde had no trouble reading it. They’re in there. I’m going in.

  He nodded and pointed his right index finger. Then he followed close behind, the AK’s muzzle pointing at the midpoint of the Englishman’s spine. Don’t let me down now, Gabriel.

  He felt a buzzing in his head, and a high-pitched whine. Bloody mosquitos. He slapped at his right cheek.

  The Englishman turned and put a finger to his lips. He beckoned Witaarde forward with a crooked finger.

  ‘There they are,’ he whispered, close to Witaarde’s still-buzzing right ear. ‘A bull, a cow and two calves. We kill them all at once, OK?’

  ‘Yah, good plan.’

  ‘I’ll take the bull. You kill the other three. Make certain of it, Mandela.’

  The buzzing intensified for a second. Witaarde shook his head at the mention of the dead preside
nt’s name. He scowled. He didn’t need an Englishman telling him how to kill elephants.

  The Dakota had more than enough power to punch through the skull, but the puny little 7.62 mm rounds he’d be shooting didn’t. Not singly. He flicked the fire selector switch to full auto. It wouldn’t be clean, but it would be lethal.

  He watched the Englishman silently raise the Dakota to his shoulder. He settled his cheek against the worn-smooth stock and sighted on the bull. Witaarde saw his trigger finger as if through a magnifying glass.

  Extreme close-up. Tightening around the trigger. The innocent-looking curve of steel beginning its short journey.

  He realised he was holding his breath, let it out in a controlled exhalation as silent as any he’d ever breathed.

  He raised the AK and aimed at the cow, ready to rake her and her babies with a blistering hail of bullets.

  They fired together. A massive bang from the Dakota and from his AK an insane, juddering series of blasts that merged into a deafening roar. The bull toppled, blood spurting from a head wound, dead centre between its eyes.

  He held his finger down on the trigger until the mag was empty. Dropped it out and slammed a new one home and emptied that, too, the red-hot barrel spewing lead into the fallen mother and babies. The corpses jerked and jumped as the rounds smashed through flesh and bone.

  The AK’s bolt smacked home on an empty chamber.

  Ears ringing, Witaarde let the smoking AK drop to the ground. His nose itched with the smell of burnt propellant and hot brass. The coppery smell of blood was thick in the air.

  The Englishman picked up the chainsaw. Grinning at Witaarde over his shoulder, he walked over to the dead bull. He kicked the massive head. With a flowing movement, he pulled the chainsaw’s starter cord.

  The machine kicked into life with a cough. A harsh rasping filled the air. The Englishman blipped the throttle a couple of times, then bent and hit the first tusk with the blade. It bit deep and the engine note deepened then started singing and screaming as he sliced into the skull to take off the tusk.

  The second tusk came off even easier than the first.

  The Englishman killed the engine and dropped the chainsaw. He picked up one of the tusks and held it aloft in triumph.

  Witaarde was pleased. More than pleased. Delighted. He had what he wanted. More ivory to trade. And a ready-made private army of battle-hardened soldiers he could use to smash the opposition. He’d like to see the Botswanans try and shut him down now.

  ‘Come and take a look,’ the Englishman called out.

  No need for silence now they’d killed the elephants.

  Witaarde walked forward, trying to ignore the ringing in his ears. It felt like it was located exactly halfway between them, right at the centre of his brain. Like a damn mosquito had crawled into one of his ears and burrowed in, right there. He shook his head and took a few more steps, then came to a stop in front of the Englishman.

  He looked at the tusk. Odd. Up close, he couldn’t see any blood. Normally the root end was a mess of severed tissue, soaked in the stuff for a foot up towards the point. And why was it forked like that?

  He looked at the Englishman.

  There was something wrong with his eyes. They were, what was the word, flickering. No. Flicking. Left, right, left, right. The ringing in his ears grew louder. He tried to follow the Englishman’s eyes with his own, but the damn noise was too loud.

  It stopped. Just like that. He blinked. He could hear birdsong. The swish of the tall grass. His own laboured breathing. The Englishman’s voice.

  ‘…three, two, one.’

  Witaarde blinked. He looked around him and frowned. It made no sense.

  Amadou lay a few feet away, a hole you could put a fist through blown clear through his chest. A red mess already swarming with flies. The other three Congolese poachers lay sprawled in tortured postures.

  One was missing half his face and his right hand, red craters blowing out from his khaki shirt. One lay face-up with his belly ripped open and slimy purple-grey intestines coiled beside him. One was on his front, gaping exit wounds in his back revealing splintered ribs and the mushy interior where his internal organs had once been.

  He looked back at the Englishman. The tusk he’d been holding was gone. He held a bone-white tree branch in his hand.

  ‘What?’ was all Witaarde could manage.

  His heart was racing and sparks were shooting off at the edge of his vision. He tried again.

  ‘Where are they?’

  The Englishman shook his head.

  ‘They were never here, Witaarde.’

  Witaarde grabbed for the revolver on his belt.

  55

  Even if Gabriel hadn’t just brought Witaarde out of a post-hypnotic trance, the clumsy grab for the revolver would have been child’s play to defeat. He brought the branch round in a short swing that connected with Witaarde’s left temple and sent him to the ground. Gabriel stooped and retrieved the 629.

  Witaarde came round a couple of minutes later. Gabriel was leaning back against the dead tree he’d so recently attacked with the chainsaw, removing two of its lower limbs.

  ‘Get up,’ Gabriel said, holding the 629 steady, aimed at Witaarde’s midsection.

  ‘What the fuck did you just do?’

  ‘I planted a post-hypnotic suggestion in your whisky-soaked brain last night.’

  ‘No! I saw them. The elephants. We shot them.’

  Gabriel pushed himself upright and took a couple of strides towards Witaarde, who fell back.

  ‘Look around you, Witaarde. Do you see any dead elephants? Oh, wait. They got up and walked away after shooting your Congolese friends dead.’

  ‘It was us,’ Witaarde said in a defeated whisper.

  ‘Yes, it was. I killed Amadou with your Dakota. You killed the others.’

  ‘But, why?’ Witaarde asked, his eyes wide.

  ‘You murdered the Paras. I’m an ex-Para. I’m here to kill you in their memory.’

  ‘But the men you promised me.’

  Gabriel sprang at Witaarde and delivered a hard-palmed slap to his left cheek.

  ‘Don’t you get it? There aren’t any men. There never were. I traced you from Botswana to Hong Kong, Dubai and Vientiane, Witaarde.’

  Witaarde’s face closed in on itself.

  ‘It’s him, isn’t it? He sent you. He’s double-crossed me,’ he murmured in a dangerous, low voice.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘You know perfectly well, you kaffir-loving cunt. I’m not playing games with you.’

  Gabriel shook his head.

  ‘I don’t know who you’re talking about, but it doesn’t matter.’

  ‘Tammerlane! It’s Tammerlane. Your own precious prime minister,’ Witaarde yelled.

  ‘Joe Tammerlane?’

  Witaarde’s eyes bulged out of their sockets.

  ‘Yes! Of course! How many other Tammerlanes are there?’

  Gabriel heard the unmistakable sound of pieces clicking into place.

  ‘Tell me.’

  ‘And you’ll let me live?’

  ‘Tell me. And I’ll think about it.’

  ‘We met at Oxford. Balliol College. We were all undergraduates together.’

  ‘Wait. You said, “all”. Not “both”?’

  ‘Me. Joe Tammerlane. And Horatio Bokara. He’s the—’

  ‘President of South Africa.’

  As the Englishman identified Bokara, Witaarde closed his eyes. He was remembering a meeting, not so very long ago. Just a few years.

  They had chosen their meeting spot carefully. At the heart of the Kruger National Park, five hundred kilometres from Pretoria. The three Oxford graduates, each, in his own way, an idealist, stood beside each other on the south bank of the Letaba River. Here, they felt, they could meet safely.

  And safety was key. All three men had to please constituencies who would be shocked if they knew with whom their leaders were consorting. Left, right, black, white: all held fast
to their own world views. All were sceptical at best, and downright hostile at worst, to any countervailing belief-system.

  They had spent many evenings and nights as undergraduates debating, disputing and, on one memorable night, fighting, about politics.

  No two shared the same point of view. Yet each recognised in the others the same ferocious fire. The same obsessional single-mindedness. The same visionary clarity of mind that said, ‘I am right. And one day I will prove it’.

  Over the intervening years they had followed each other’s fortunes as they waxed and waned. And now they had found the perfect confluence of money, power and ideas that would help them achieve their goals.

  Three vehicles, a Range Rover, a Mercedes G-Wagen and a Toyota Hilux pickup sat beneath the broiling sun, one hundred metres away. Red dust shrouded the lower halves of their bodywork. Beneath their raised-up chassis, condensed water dripped from the aircon units’ bleeder pipes, darkening the earth.

  ‘The next shipment goes to the UAE on Friday,’ Witaarde said.

  ‘How much did we get for it?’ Bokara asked.

  ‘Three point two million. Your share’s in the bakkie.’ He turned to Tammerlane, the third member of their ill-assorted trio. ‘Yours too, Joe.’

  ‘Thanks. So, how’s it going?’ Tammerlane asked, as Bokara ambled over to the pickup to count his share.

  ‘Slow, to be honest. Believe me, setting up a country takes a lot more than cash.’

  ‘I feel your pain. I might not be setting up a country from scratch, but I’m still trying to recreate one.’

  ‘You do know that Marxism won’t work? I mean, look around this continent. The place is littered with basket-case economies because their leaders sided with the Commies.’

  ‘Ah, but that’s where I’m different. I’m going to do it properly.’

  ‘And does “properly” include stashing your millions in offshore bank accounts?’

  ‘To be drawn on as and when we need extra cash. For the transition.’