by T. M. Clark
‘Just a Coke, thanks,’ he said, wanting to keep a clear head.
‘This is Ethel,’ Chloe introduced the woman as she sat next to Mike. Ethel was obviously used to Mike, as she fed him, then cleaned his face, before she got her own plate.
The roast dinner was scrumptious, and Nick ate with relish as he realised just how hungry he was for a home-cooked meal.
No one said a word during dinner until Colette got up. ‘I guess you’re dying to know what’s going on, Nick,’ Colette said, ‘so I’ll leave you all to chatter amongst yourselves. Nigel was always the one who was into the cloak-and-dagger stuff. The less I know, the less I can tell anyone who asks. You know me, I’m a total gossip. I’ll be in my sewing room, darling.’ She kissed Nigel on the cheek and left.
Nick watched her go. He knew that Colette and Nigel were from very different backgrounds, and he also knew that Colette had gone against her father’s wishes to marry him. She was a French diplomat’s daughter, and Nigel a humble farmer, but they had a love that not even years of excommunication from her parents could break.
Nick shook his head. He’d watched people since he was a boy, always wanting to know their story. It was what had got him into trouble in Zimbabwe in the first place. Wanting to know what made Mike and Enoch so close, why they were inseparable and why it made them such a formidable force together. Even though he had been around them since he was a boy, and growing into a man, he had noticed that their friendship was different to many others around. They shared a brotherhood, and he knew that for a short while, he too had been part of their coalition. A member of their pride.
‘Nick? You here or somewhere else?’ he heard Nigel ask.
He nodded, bringing his attention back to the present.
‘You need to know what is going on before you agree to get involved,’ Enoch said. He went on to explain what had happened with Sebastian.
Nick clenched his fists and his nails bit hard into his palms. If Sebastian hadn’t already been dead, there was a danger that he’d have driven to Howick to teach him an important lesson about respect of women, and of humans in general.
He understood that while Enoch had done everything he could to protect Chloe and Mike, they were living in South Africa, and apartheid and racism were the way of life. Enoch was black. Sebastian was white. Add to that he sounded like a radical Afrikaner, too. It was typical that a minority group could damage the reputation of the majority. He’d worked with, and knew, plenty of amazing Afrikaners. They were not all like Sebastian.
‘What are your plans?’ Nick asked.
‘We want to cross through the bush near Komatipoort, into Mozambique and travel up to Zimbabwe, then through Gonarezhou National Park, home,’ Enoch explained.
Nick shook his head. ‘That area near Komatipoort is crawling with SADF at the moment. There was an upsurge of deurlopers with the increase of RENAMO—the Mozambican National Resistance—movement in the area. FRELIMO—the Mozambique Liberation Front—is pushing down, and they’re pushing back, but it’s taking its toll on the citizens who are coming to South Africa. Despite apartheid, they still think they’ll have a better life here.’
‘They probably will. Safer anyway. Poor bastards, they are caught in the middle of a war zone, and all they want to do is live a normal life,’ Nigel agreed.
‘There’s another option. Travel through Kruger. I’ll join you. We can switch your truck with a Parks Board vehicle. And then we can go as far as we can in the park, and through to the other side into Coutada 16.’
‘But that’s FRELIMO country,’ Nigel said.
‘And hunting country. Yes, but if we can get one of their uniforms from the RENAMO guys I already know, and pay for a guide through the area, then we can get past. If we can get the RENAMO guys to send word that something big is passing through, then everyone, including the South African hunters in that concession, will turn a blind eye. There’s a pontoon service in Mapai to cross the Limpopo, but it’s not big enough for the truck. Lucky the rains haven’t been good, so we might get away with an ox or two helping us through that river. I have seen them take army trucks through like that. Once across, we’re back in RENAMO territory and can go into Zimbabwe south of Gonarezhou, without being spotted.’
‘And you know this route because?’ Enoch asked.
‘You really don’t want to know,’ Nick admitted with a shake of his head.
‘Actually I do,’ Chloe said. ‘Are you going to get us all killed?’
Nick chuckled at the irony of this. But then he looked at Chloe’s face and knew that while she might appear outwardly soft, inside she was a survivor. A fighter. Someone he’d be proud to know as an adult.
‘Nothing like that,’ he reassured her. ‘I often travel with the SADF soldiers. We’ve been that way a few times. Khululani showed me the route when I was first getting to know the park. The Malawian and Zimbabwean workers use it to come through to the gold mines in South Africa. It’s an old migration workers’ track. Used for many years, but many have fallen there, too. There are sometimes mines, depending on whether FRELIMO or RENAMO feel like being nice and letting them through to work or not. It won’t be easy, but it’ll keep you away from the SAP.’
‘And you think we can go all that way undetected?’ Chloe asked.
‘It can be done, but horses in the park will be the tricky part. We’ll have to stop to rest them, stretch their legs, let them recover before pushing on. It’ll add time. Lions will be drawn to the smell—there haven’t been horses in Kruger for years. There are enough service roads for us to travel on to get all the way through, and I have a few co-workers who’ll help us if we need it, but we are going to have to keep our presence in the park as inconspicuous as possible.’
Chloe looked at Xo and Enoch.
Enoch shrugged his shoulders. ‘You hold all the cards this time, Nick, we are in your hands.’
CHAPTER
14
Douglas waited for his next client at Klein Knapview airstrip, knowing that she had had to go through Bulawayo airport first. Fridays were always a busy day for the staff at the airport processing people through their counters, but for some reason, being the last Friday in November, the process was taking longer than normal.
While most of his schedule from the 6th was worked out a year in advance, there was no contact with the 6th’s clients until a few weeks before each hunt. They were just a name with a list of the animals they wanted to shoot. Headquarters organised all the import and export permits for the guns and the trophies. The 6th clients had to use their real names because of the legalities of the arms importations and exports at the end.
Everything was organised by fax through the secretaries of the 6th Society. The system had been set up long before he’d been invited to join the 6th—that the clients would provide their names, and as much factual information as possible. He’d found that the easiest way to hide his 6th trophy hunting was to have a proper trophy-hunting front, like the Lindani Conservancy in the lowveld of Zimbabwe that hired him on a regular basis, and to run his 6th clients and the normal clients from the hunting companies he contracted to. Alongside each other, but never together.
It was also a convenient way for him to assess other hunting clients, and report the information to the 6th if he thought that any of them might be worth approaching to join their elite clientele.
When the pilot landed her little plane on the airstrip, he was ready for his next client. Pushing away from the Land Cruiser, he walked to the plane once the pilot had stopped the propellers.
A woman climbed out of the passenger door and stepped in front of him. She pushed her dark glasses up on top of her head. She was about five foot seven with mouse-brown hair, green eyes with bags under them, and a pleasant enough face. ‘Hi. I’m Nicole Schaffer.’ Her South African accent was thick.
She didn’t put her hand out to shake his, and when he glanced down he could see she was missing the last two fingers on her right hand.
‘D
ouglas Jones,’ he said, nodding instead.
Nicole smiled.
‘Thanks,’ he said to the pilot when she came around and deposited the client’s case by his feet.
‘Weapons on the other seat, one second,’ she said, opening the door and giving him the client’s guns.
‘Thanks,’ he said again, and the pilot returned to the plane.
Douglas walked to his Land Cruiser, and carefully put the hunting weapons in the front seat between where he and his client would sit. Only after they were secure, did he go and fetch her luggage. Nicole Schaffer was still standing where he’d left her.
‘We need to move, come over to the bakkie,’ he said.
They walked together to the vehicle before he turned around and signalled to the pilot that they were safely out of her way and not about to cause any obstruction.
She saluted him through the windscreen and started her engines, then she turned her plane around. He watched her taxi, then run her little plane down the dirt field, and up over the trees at the end.
The warthog that lived on the other side of the airstrip ran to its hole, its tail up like an aerial, as it always did whenever a plane came or went.
Douglas put the cases in the back, then climbed in. Nicole was already seated, waiting for him. He gave her a folder with the itinerary.
‘Everything is in here. The leopard hunt, and then our free time when I’m your professional guide in a game reserve. Are there any questions before we join the men in the camp?’ he asked.
She let out a quick breath. ‘You need to know I’m only here for the hunting, nothing more. My husband knows that my passion is hunting, but he doesn’t share in the sport. I’ve told him I wanted another leopard—the one I have in my trophy room is small and was the first of the big five I shot a few years ago.’
He nodded his head, understanding what she was saying. She was not after anything other than the thrill of the hunt. He liked her already.
‘I’ve organised for the baiting of your leopard. We’ve permits on this property for those, but our 6th will not be inside the fence of this concession,’ he said. ‘When we hunt your leopard, it’ll be a normal professional trophy hunt, with trackers and skinners and a nice hunting lodge. When we go after the 6th, it is only you and me. No tracker, no porter for your bag. We carry in what we carry out.’
She nodded. ‘I expected as much.’
‘Does your schedule still allow ten days for the hunt?’
‘Yes, and I’ve added two extra in case. I’m happy to sightsee for the last two or more if we don’t need them, but I would like to get home for the public holiday on the sixteenth if I can. Showing people pictures of a safari is always better than showing them pictures of a trophy hunt. It’s becoming more and more socially unacceptable in the circles I move in. There’s no regard for those of us who know that it is we hunters who invest the most in conservation, and make sure that there are animals left to shoot. I suppose I’m preaching to the choir here.’
Douglas had heard it before, but never quite so eloquently. Many people always banged on about how hunters killed everything, but it was true that they also spent a lot of money on that privilege. Trophies were expensive, and much of the money spent was filtered down through the hunting communities, and into the grass roots of those communities where the hunting took place.
At the same time, the people who were complaining about the hunting were the ones still buying the kudu and eland biltong. Hypocrites.
He prided himself on being spared that social taboo. He was a hunter, and that was all there was to it. If those with a gentle constitution couldn’t handle it, they would never cope with knowing that he loved being one of only six 6th-appointed hunters in the world. And he couldn’t live without those kills.
Hunting an animal was easy. They ate, you fed them, you shot them. Game over. A man who knew he was being hunted, that was a different story. The realisation that he was about to die. The chase. That look in his eyes knowing that you were about to end his life, and you held the power to decide if he lived or died and there was nothing he could do about the outcome. That moment when it was over, and you had taken that life, not because he deserved it, but because you deserved it.
That was what he was in hunting for.
He seriously didn’t care about all the other arguments around money, conservation or even the newest term, sustainable tourism.
‘You are,’ he said, realising that he had been quiet for a bit long. ‘And an invitation to play tourist and sightsee is always welcome. Anything particular in mind?’
‘I heard Zimbabwe Ruins were stunning, and Victoria Falls.’
‘I’ll organise charter flights. First, we zero your rifles. Any blood show and my tracker will report it to management, and you’ll pay for a trophy even if we can’t find it afterwards.’
She nodded. ‘Fair enough.’
‘I assume you realise how dangerous a wounded leopard can be? As your professional hunter, I can tell you that I’ll try to protect you, but I’d rather you didn’t put me or my tracker in that position in the first place. So if you want that trophy, and the cover story, you need to shoot true on your leopard.’
She nodded.
He started the bakkie, and they began their drive to the camp.
* * *
Nicole was a great shot. She didn’t even adjust her scope on her .404 Jeffery. He could see that the gun was not new, and it was well cared for; the wood shone with the gloss of a weapon polished often. She loaded it with Douglas’s own hand-loaded bullets. He cursed that ammunition wasn’t allowed on the planes, and knowing that a lot of the hunters brought in .404s, he’d hoarded many original Kynoch bullets to reuse. There had been a decline in commercial bullet manufacturing for her weapon of choice, and he was still expected to have the hunter’s chosen ammunition on hand when they needed it. Making bullets was a skill he’d learned, an art that he was proud of.
She hit the mark that he made with his axe on the tree three out of three times, at about eighty metres. Given that the hide was probably on the thirty- to forty-metre range, he was more than happy that she could shoot well enough to take on the leopard.
‘We use that weapon, then,’ he said.
‘Yes, but I need to check this as well,’ she said, removing a 30-inch-long shotgun out of her bag. She loaded it with number two shells, and then took a shot at the tree.
She blasted a hole in it. ‘It’s also good.’
‘Not too many hunters carry a shotgun in case they don’t make the kill shot, they’re always so certain that they’ll make it. You shoot well, and you carry this backup in case the leopard charges you. There must be a story behind that …’
‘I lost my fingers to stupidity, I’m not losing my life to it as well,’ she said.
Douglas looked at her. ‘Yet you still balance your weapon perfectly.’
‘It took a little practice. Before I took up hunting, I used to do enduro motor biking. I had a bad fall and my fingers were crushed. The doctors couldn’t save what was left,’ Nicole said. ‘Now I hunt, the adrenaline rush is better, and I get a lovely trophy for my room instead of leaving bits of myself in the bush.’
Douglas didn’t ask her any further questions. ‘Right—let’s go bag an impala and re-bait. That leopard has been sniffing around an empty tree after it finished its last bait. Let’s give it something to keep it there, shall we.’ He shouted out into the camp, ‘Virgil! Woza.’
Virgil ran from an ikhaya at the end of the campsite, and greeted his new client with a grin.
‘Nicole, this is my tracker, Virgil.’
Virgil looked at her when she didn’t put her hand out. He reached out and took her right hand in both of his.
‘Salibonani. Welcome to Zimbabwe, I am happy to be your tracker.’
Nicole stood there a bit dazed as he let her hand go and ran to sit in his seat on the front of the bakkie.
‘Hop in,’ Douglas said, and she shook her head slightly
before climbing into the front passenger seat.
‘Don’t mind Virgil, we recently did a bit of hospitality training; he’s just really keen to show that he learned something there.’
Nicole half smiled.
Douglas smiled in satisfaction. They would be alright on this hunt; there was more substance to Ms Nicole Schaffer than her wafer-thin body and missing fingers.
They drove down to the waterhole.
‘This is an artificial water source. There’s a borehole that pumps the water from deep in the ground up into the dam daily. This waterhole is the lifeline to this section of the conservation, as without the water source, the game would drift off in the bush, looking for another water point, and they would have no animals in this area year around, just dry thornbushes.’
‘It’s cleverly done. If you hadn’t told me I would have thought it was natural,’ she said.
‘This section of the conservation used to be a cattle farm. It’s better now that it’s back to the natural bushveld.’
Nicole nodded.
‘Look. Impala,’ Douglas said, pointing.
There were always plenty of impala coming in for a drink. The herd was larger than he was expecting, and while they were calm, they were still constantly looking around, checking for predators, their tails flicking at the summer flies. The familiar brown antelope with the big ears milled around, some drinking while others nibbled the short grass on the side of the dam, upwind from the bakkie and not aware of their presence.
Virgil sat on the front. ‘There’s a big ram in there, but he’s good for breeding, so the one on the outside, who isn’t quite as large, is a good one for the baiting if we’re not doing a trophy today.’
Douglas watched as Nicole removed her weapon from its bag, and then he stood next to her as she chose.
‘Virgil has a good eye,’ she said.
Douglas was watching, but before he could even check that she knew which part of the vital organs she was aiming for, she’d let off her shot.
The large male dropped down onto its knees, and fell over. The rest of the herd scattered, barking and running in all directions.