Leopard Hunts in Darkness b-4

by Wilbur A. Smith

  The girl insisted on making breakfast for him. She did so with not nearly the same expertise as she had made love, and after she had gone ashore it took him nearly an hour to clean up the galley. Then he went up to the saloon.

  He drew the curtain across the porthole above his navigation and writing desk, so as not to be distracted by the activities of the marina, and settled down to work. He re-read the last batch of ten pages, and realized he would be lucky if he could salvage two of them. He set to it grimly and the characters baulked and said trite asinine things. After an hour he reached up for his thesaurus from the shelf beside his desk to find an alternative word.

  "Good Lord, even I know that people don't say "pusillanimous" in real conversation," he muttered as he brought down the volume, and then paused as a slim sheaf of folded writing-paper fluttered out from between the pages.

  Secretly welcoming the excuse to break off the struggle, he unfolded it, and with a little jolt discovered it was a letter from a girl called Janine - a girl who had shared with him the agonies of their war wounds, who had travelled with him the long slow road to recovery, had been at his side when he walked again for the first time after losing the leg, had spelled him at the helm when they sailed Bawu through her first Atlantic gale. A girl whom he had loved and almost married, and whose face he now had the greatest difficulty recalling.

  Janine had written the letter from her home in Yorkshire, three days before she married the veterinary surgeon who was a junior partner in her father's practice. He re, read the letter slowly, all ten pages of it, and realized why he had hidden it away from himself. Janine was only bitter in patches, but some of the other things she wrote cut deeply.

  " You had been a failure so often and for so long that your sudden success clean bowled you-" He checked at that. What else had he ever done besides the book that one s4e book? And she had given him the answer.

  You were so' innocent and 2entle. Crai , so lovable in a gawky boyish way. I wanted to live with that, but after we left Africa it dried up slowly, you started becoming hard and cynical-"

  " Do you remember the very first day we met, or almost the very first, I said to you, "You are a spoilt little boy, and you just give up on everything worthwhile"? Well, it's true, Craig. You gave up on our relationship.

  I don't just mean the other little dolly-birds, the literary scalp hunters with no elastic in their drawers, I mean you gave up on the caring. Let me give you a little advice for free, dart give up on the only thing that you've ever done well, don't give up on the writing, Craig. That would be truly sinful-" He remembered how haughtily he had scoffed at that notion when he had first read it. He didn't scoff now he was too afraid. It was happening to him, just as she had predicted.

  "I truly came to love you, Craig, not all at once, but 4", little by little. You had to work very hard to destroy that. I don't love you any more, Craig, I doubt I'll ever love another man, not even the one I'll marry on Saturday but I like you, and I always will. I wish you well, but beware of your most implacable enemy yourself." Craig refolded the letter, and he wanted a drink. He went down to the galley and poured a Bacardi a large one, easy on the lime. While he drank it he re-read the letter and this time a single phrase struck him.

  "After we left Africa it seemed to dry up inside you the understanding, the genius."

  "Yes," he whispered. "It dried up. It all dried up." Suddenly his nostalgia became the unbearable ache of homesickness. He had lost his way, the fountain in him had dried up, and he wanted to go back to the source.

  He tore the letter to tiny pieces and dropped them into the scummy waters of the basin, left the empty glass on the coamings of the hatch and crossed the gangplank to the jetty He didn't want to have to talk to the girl, so he used the pay phone at the gate of the marina.

  It was easier than he expected. The girl on the switchboard put him through to Henry Pickering's secretary.

  "I'm not sure that Mr. Pickering is available. Who is calling, please?"

  of

  "Craig Mellow." Pickering came on almost immediately.

  "There is an old Matabele saying, "The man who drinks Zambezi waters must always return to drink again"," Craig told him.

  "So you're thirsty," Pickering said. "I guessed that."

  "You said to call you."

  "Come and see me."

  "Today?" Craig asked.

  "Hey, fellow, you're hot to trot! Hold on, let me check my diary what about six o'clock this evening? That's the soonest I can work it in." Henry's office was on the twenty-sixth floor and the tall windows faced up the deep sheer crevasses of the avenues to the expansive green swathe of Central Park in the distance.

  Henry poured Craig a whisky and soda and brought it to him at the window. They stood looking down into the guts of the city and drinking in silence, while the big red ball of the sun threw weird shadows through the purpling dusk.

  "I think it's time to stop being cute, Henry," Craig said at last.

  "Tell me what you really want from me."

  "Perhaps you're right," Henry agreed. "The book was a little bit of a cover-up. Not really fair although, speaking personally, I'd like to have seen your words with her pictures-" Craig made an impatient little gesture, and Henry went on.

  "I am vice-president in charge of the Africa division."

  "I saw your title on the door," Craig nodded.

  "Despite what a lot of our critics say, w e aren't a i i charitable institution, we are one of the bulwarks of capitalism. Africa is a continent of economically fragile states. With the obvious exceptions of South Africa and the oil, producers further north, they are mostly subsistence agricultural societies, with no industrial backbone and very few mineral resources." Craig nodded again.

  "Some of those who have recently achieved their independence from the old colonial system are still benefiting from the infrastructure built up by the white settlers, while most of the others Zambia and Tanzania and Maputo, for instance have had long enough to let it run down into a chaos of lethargy and ideological fantasy. They are going to be hard to save." Henry shook his head mournfully and looked even more like an undertaker stork. "But with others, like Zimbabwe, Kenya and Malawi, we have got a fighting chance. The system is still working, as yet the farms haven't been totally decimated and handed over to hordes of peasant squatters, the railroads work, there are some foreign exchange earnings from copper and chrome and tourism. We can keep them going, with a little luck."

  "Why bother?" Craig asked. "I mean you said you are not in the charity game, so why bother?"

  "Because if we don't feed them, then sooner or later we are going to have to fight them, it's as simple as that. If they begin to starve, guess into whose big red paws they are going to fall."

  "Yes. You're making sense." Craig sipped his whisky.

  "Returning to earth for a moment," Henry went on, "the countries on our shortlist have one exploitable asset, nothing tangible like gold, but many times more valuable.

  They are attractive to tourists from the west. If we are ever going to see any interest on the billions that we have got tied up in them, then we are going to have to make good and sure that they stay attractive."

  "How do you do that?" Craig turned to him.

  "Let's take Kenya as an example," Henry suggested. "Sure it's t sunshine and beaches, but then so have Greece and Sardinia, and they are a hell of a lot closer to Paris and Berlin. What the Mediterranean hasn't got is African wildlife, and that's what the tourists will fly those extra all, hours to see, and that's the collateral on our loan. Tourist dollars are keeping us in business."

  "Okay, but I don't see how I come in," Craig frowned.

  "Wait for it, we'll get there in time," Henry told him.

  "Let me lay it out a little first. It's like this unfortunately, the very first thing that the newly independent black African sees when he looks around after the white man flies out is ivory and rhinoceros horn and meat on the hoof. One rhinoceros or bull elephant represen
ts more wealth than he could earn in ten years of honest labour.

  For fifty years a white-run game department has protected all these marvelous riches, but now the whites have run to Australia or Johannesburg; an Arab sheikh will pay twenty-five thousand dollars for a dagger with a genuine rhinoceros, horn handle and the victorious guerrilla fighter has an AK 47 rifle in his hands. It's all very logical."

  "Yes, I've seen it," Craig nodded.

  "We had the same thing in Kenya. Poaching was big business and it was run from the top. I mean the very top.

  It took us fifteen years and the death of a president to break it up. Now Kenya has the strictest game laws in Africa and, more important, they are being enforced. We had to use all our influence. We even had to threaten to pull the plug, but now our investment is protected." Henry looked smug for a moment, then his melancholia over, whelmed him again. "Nqk we have to travel exactly the same road again in Zi1pbabwe. You saw those photographs of the kill in the minefield. It's being organized again, and once again we suspect it's somebody in a very high place.

  We have to stop it."

  "I'm still waiting to hear how it affects me."

  "I need an agent in the field. Somebody with experience perhaps even somebody who once worked in the game and wildlife department, somebody who speaks the local language, who has a legitimate excuse for moving around and asking questions perhaps an author researching a new book, who has contacts high up in government. Of course, if my agent had an international reputation, it would open even more doors, and if he were a dedicated proponent of the capitalist system and truly believed in what we are doing, he would be totally effective."

  "James Bond, me?"

  "Field investigator for the World Bank. The pay is forty thousand dollars a year, plus expenses and a lot of job satisfaction and if there isn't a book in it at the end, I'll stand you to lunch at La Grenouille with the wine of your choice."

  "Like I said at the beginning, Henry, isn't it time to stop being cute and level with me completely?" It was the first time Craig had heard Henry laugh, and it was infectious, a warm, throaty chuckle.

  "Your perception confirms the wisdom of my choice. All right, Craig, there is a little more to it. I didn't want to make it too complicated not until you had got your feet wet first. Let me freshen your drink." He went to the cocktail cabinet in the shape of an antique globe of the world, and while he clinked ice on glass he went on.

  "It is vitally important for us to have a complete picture of what's going on below the surface in all of the countries in which we have an involvement. In other words, a functioning intelligence system. Our set-up in Zimbabwe isn't nearly as effective as I'd like it to be. We have lost a key man lately motor car accident or that's what it looked like. Before he went, he gave us a hint he had picked up the rumours of a coup d'ftat backed by the ruskies." Craig sighed. "We Africans don't really put much store in the ballot box any more. The only things that count are tribal loyalties and a strong arm. Coup d'gtat makes better sense than votes."

  "Are you on the team?" Henry wanted to know.

  "I take it that "expenses" include first-class air tickets?" Craig demanded wickedly.

  "Every man has his price," Henry darted back, "is that yours.

  "I don't come that cheap," Craig shook his head, "but I'd hate like hell to have a Soviet stooge running the land where my leg is buried. I'll take the job."

  "Thought you might." Henry offered his hand. It was cool and startlingly powerful. "I'll send a courier down to your yacht with a file and a survival kit. Read the file while the courier waits and send it back. Keep the kit." Henry Pickering's survival kit contained an assortment of press cards, a membership of the TWA Ambassadors Club, an unlimited World Bank Visa credit card, and an ornate metal and enamel star in a leather case embossed "Field Assessor World Bank'.

  Craig weighed it in his palm. "You could beat a maneating lion to death with it," he muttered. "I don't know what else it will be good for." The file was a great deal more rewarding. When he finished reading it, he realized that the alteration of name from Rhodesia to Zimbabwe was probably one of the least drastic changes that had swept over the land of his birth since he had left it just a few short years before.

  raig nursed" the hired Volkswagen over the undulating golden grass-clad hills, using an educated foot on the throttle. The Matabele girl at the Avis desk at the Bulawayo airport had cautioned him.

  "The tank is full, sir, but I don't know when you will get anoffier tankful. There is very little gasoline in Matabeleland." In the town itself he had seen the vehicles parked in -All long queues at the filling-stations, and the proprietor of the motel had briefed Craig as he signed the register and picked up the keys to one of the bungalows.

  "The Maputo rebels keep hitting the pipeline from the east coast. The hell of it is that just across the border the South Africans have got it all and they are happy to deal, but our bright laddies don't want politically tainted gas, so the whole country grinds to a halt. A plague on political dreams to exist we have to deal with them and it's about time they accepted that." So now Craig drove with care, and the gentle pace suited him. It gave him time to examine the familiar countryside, and to assess the changes that a few short years had wrought.

  He turned off the main macadamized road fifteen miles out of town, and took the yellow dirt road to the north.

  Within a mile he reached the boundary, and saw immediately that the gate hung at a drunken angle and was wide open the first time he had ever seen it that way. He parked and tried to close it behind him, but the frame was buckled and the hinges had rusted. He abandoned the effort and left the road to examine the sign that lay in the grass.

  The sign had been pulled down, the retaining bolts ripped clear out. It lay face up, and though sun-faded, it was still legible: King's Lynn Aftikander Stud Home of "Ballantyne's Illustrious IV" Grand Champion of Champions.

  Proprietor: Jonathan Ballantyne.

  Craig had a vivid mental image of the huge red beast with its humped back and swinging dewlap waddling under its own weight of beef around the show-ring with the blue rosette of the champion on its cheek, and

  Jonathan "Bawu" Ballantyne, Craig's maternal grandfather, leading it proudly by the brass ring through its shiny wet nostrils.

  Craig walked back to the VW and drove on through grassland that had once been thick and gold and sweet, but through which the bare dusty earth now showed like the balding scalp of a middle-aged man. He was distressed by the condition of the grazing. Never, not even in the four-year drought of the fifties, had King's Lynn grass been allowed to deteriorate like this, and Craig could find no reason for it until he stopped again beside a clump of car riel-Thorn trees that threw their shade over the road.

  When he switched off the engine, he heard the bleating amongst the camel-thorns and now he was truly shocked.

  "Goats!" he spoke aloud. "They are running goats on King's Lynn." Bawu Ballantyne's ghost must be without rest or peace. Goats on his beloved grassland. Craig went to look for them. There were two hundred or more in one herd. Some of the agile multi-coloured animals had climbed high into the trees and were eating bark and seedpods, while others were cropping the grass down to the roots so that it would die and the soil would sour. Craig had seen the devastation that these animals had created in the tribal trust lands