Mrs. Pollifax on Safari

by Dorothy Gilman

  He began to laugh. "I don't believe it. Duchess, what in the name of all that's holy are you doing in the middle of Africa with this bunch of cutthroats? Or to put it more bluntly," he said, sweeping her off the ground in an exuberant hug, rifle and all, "what the hell are you up to now, Duchess?"

  CHAPTER

  13

  When Farrell joined them some minutes later they were seated at a campfire, built for them by one of his young men. Farrell sat down, crossed his legs under him, and said, "There—business taken care of." He looked at Cyrus and then he looked at Mrs. Pollifax and he grinned. "Never saw you look better, Duchess, except for the bruise that's rapidly blossoming on your right cheekbone."

  "A souvenir from Simon," said Mrs. Pollifax. "Did I hear them call you Mulika?"

  "It's a name they've given me." His smile was breathtaking, a flash of white in his tanned face. She'd forgotten how handsome he was. He looked ruddy and healthy, and his mustache was infinitely more dashing than she remembered. "And by the way, Jonesi begs me to apologize to you both. He asks you to remember that you traveled in bad company and if your hands were tied, so were the hands of the other lady."

  "Has a point there," admitted Cyrus. "He found it a damn puzzling situation. Sorry, incidentally, that we've had to postpone dinner—" "Food?" breathed Mrs. Pollifax. "—but we're expecting Sikota, you know, which is why you've been moved out of harm's way. Now for heaven's sake, Duchess, talk. Tell me how in hell you and Cyrus got here, and why."

  Mrs. Pollifax obligingly talked. She referred briefly to her arrival in Lusaka and then she concentrated on a description of their last twenty-four hours. When she had finished, Farrell looked stunned.

  "I can't believe it," he said. "You just walked into the Times of Zambia office and placed an advertisement for me in the personals column?"

  "It seemed very logical," she told him. "I couldn't find you."

  He shook his head at her. "That directness of yours, Duchess, is going to cost you your life one of these days." "Nearly did," said Cyrus. "Apparently." "And you didn't even see the advertisement," lamented Mrs. Pollifax. "I thought—just for a moment, you know —that you might have come to rescue us! Farrell, what did bring you here in the nick of time? And why shouldn't I have advertised for you? And how do you come to be called Mulika?"

  He hesitated and then he said flippantly, "Believe it or not, mulika means 'shedder of light' in the Nyanga language. Surprise you?" He looked at her and added soberly, "So help me I've tried to shed some, Duchess, because I've fallen in love with this country. You've heard of middle-age passion? Well, mine is directed at Africa in general—uncluttered, still unpolluted—and at Zambia in particular. Actually I came here to farm—"

  "Not an art gallery," said Mrs. Pollifax, nodding.

  "—and I do own two hundred acres in the Southern Province, but I don't see them very often these days because I've been helping train and instruct freedom fighters."

  "Freedom fighters!" exclaimed Mrs. Pollifax. "So that's it ... But surely—" She frowned over this, puzzled. "Surely that's not enough to explain Simon's abnormal interest in you? He and Amy were ready to commit murder to find out what you look like. There must be other men doing this who don't—"

  "Don't have a price on their heads?" He grinned. "A pity you see that, Duchess. Yes, of course there's more, because with passion one always gets involved. You see, it's all very exciting to watch Zambia grow and develop, but next door you have Zambabwe—or Rhodesia, as you probably know it—and the people over there straggle across our border, some of them having been handled roughly, to say the least, most of them just out of prison or about to be arrested and sent off to prison, and the contrast isn't very nice. These people want autonomy too, they wither under apartheid—God, it's such a waste— and they need to be listened to.

  "And so," he went on, his eyes gleaming in the firelight, "I got involved. With my background and my white skin I became something of a spy. You've heard of spies?" he asked, his smile mischievous. "I began traveling back and forth across the border as a fake tourist, oh-ing and ah-ing at Zambabwe's natural wonders, which are considerable, and I helped Jonesi set up a damn good underground escape route. Even lived briefly in Salisbury. Unfortunately it came to be known that a man named Mulika was guiding men out of Rhodesia, and then eventually that Mulika was a white man, and after that they learned my real name, I knew that. But your advertisement, Duchess, so direct and so naive—" He shook his head. "It must have caused a number of tidal waves in more than a few small ponds."

  "Including the Zambian police," she told him. "I was interviewed by a—oh," she gasped, "now I realize what was wrong with that interview. How blind of me! He didn't want to know anything about you at all, only how I came to know that you were in Zambia."

  "Who?"

  "A Lieutenant Dunduzu Bwanausi," she said.

  Farrell burst out laughing. "Dundu? God, you must have alarmed him. I'll bet he thought you were a Rhodesian agent. I'll have to radio him all's well."

  "You know him?"

  "A very good friend of mine. His brother Qabaniso happens to be half owner and partner in my farm."

  Their campfire was small, far removed from the burial ground, and on an incline from which they could watch a larger campfire being built some five hundred yards away. Mrs. Pollifax found her attention distracted now by Jonesi's activities. Amy Lovecraft and her confederates had been placed around the fire, their wrists still bound, and Mrs. Pollifax saw that Jonesi was tying gags across their mouths.

  Following her glance Farrell said dryly, "The goats are being tethered to catch the lion, Sikota being the lion.

  And a rather big one, I suspect, well worth catching."

  "Rather hard on Mrs. Lovecraft, isn't it?" asked Cyrus.

  "No harder than for Simon and Reuben and Mainza," pointed out Farrell, "but of course you're still laboring under the illusion that she's Amy Lovecraft, aren't you. She's not," he said, his voice hardening.

  "Who is she?" asked Mrs. Pollifax.

  "A Rhodesian by the name of Betty Thwaite. She's given us a hell of a time catching up with her, because from what we've been told she certainly didn't come to Zambia to abduct anyone, and the bush country is the last place we thought of looking for her."

  "It's Amy you were hunting for, then?"

  "Desperately," he said. "Night and day and around the clock for the past six days."

  "Why?" asked Cyrus.

  "Well, to give you her background, she's the intelligence behind a fanatical right-wing group in Rhodesia, one of those situations where a group takes a more extreme stance than the government, and then, like the Herstigte Nasionale Party, breaks away to form its own party, which in turn provokes several more spinoffs, and by this time you're deep among the fanatic fringe. That's where you find Betty Thwaite's group, all gung-ho for slaughtering anyone who suggests compromise or reason. Even the Rhodesian Government doesn't claim Betty. All we knew," he said, "was that she'd been smuggled across the border into Zambia last week, either by boat at night across the Zambesi River near Livingstone, or through the swamps into Botswana and then into Zambia. We also knew that she'd left Rhodesia with a forged Kenya passport and a change in name and in hair color, but why she decided to switch horses in midstream and kidnap you, Duchess, I just don't know. It certainly wasn't her purpose in coming here."

  "But she did kidnap me!"

  "Yes, and that's what baffles me," he said, scowling. "Oh I have to admit there was some sense in her madness, because if you'd given them what they wanted it would have been a real coup for her, and she's a very ambitious woman. The next time I crossed the border into Zambabwe—" He circled his throat with a finger. "Curtains."

  Cyrus said, "But she didn't arrive here with that in mind?"

  Farrell shook his head. "That's what's so damn puzzling. According to our informant—and he's never been wrong before—she was coming to Zambia for the purpose of assassinating President Kaunda."

 
"Assassinating?" said Mrs. Pollifax, suddenly alert

  "Good God," said Cyrus. "Why?"

  "Why assassinate Kenneth Kaunda? Because KK, as he's affectionately called, is a gentle but insistent force against apartheid, Cyrus. He's been making behind-the-scene appeals to both Rhodesia and South Africa for diplomatic talks on compromise, and what's more, they've begun listening to him."

  "Assassinate," repeated Mrs. Pollifax, frowning.

  He nodded. "You can understand our panic. We had only an old photograph to work with, and time's been against us. We batted zero until we found a waiter at the Livingstone airport restaurant who remembered her, and that's when we learned she was a blonde, after which we linked her with the flight to Ngomo airstrip traveling as a Mrs. A. Lovecraft. She stayed a few nights at Ngomo Lodge and then flew to Lusaka, where we discover that she arrived just in time to join—of all things—a safari party." He shook his head. "But it doesn't make sense," he said. "It simply doesn't make sense, her going off on a safari."

  "It could," said Mrs. Pollifax softly, trying to control the excitement that had been rising in her. "It could, Farrell. It's possible that Amy Lovecraft came on safari to meet the real assassin."

  "Meet the—what?" said Farrell.

  "Because that's why I'm here," she told him, nodding. "I don't know about your Betty Thwaite, but I do know about assassins. It's why / joined the safari." She glanced pointedly at Cyrus and then back at Farrell. "I was sent," she added, "by a mutual friend of ours named Carstairs?"

  "Good heavens," said Farrell, and now they both turned and looked at Cyrus, who regarded them benignly but lifted one eyebrow, waiting.

  Farrell said, "Do you tell him, or shall I?"

  "Tell me what? That you didn't," said Cyrus, "live next door to Emily in New Brunswick, New Jersey, or build a soapbox car for her son? Already guessed that, young man. How did you two meet?"

  Farrell grinned. "Would you believe tied back to back in Mexico, after being doped and carried off by the—"

  "Farrell!" she gasped. "You're overdoing this."

  "Nonsense," said Farrell. "My dear Reed, if you're so obtuse that you believe this charming but terribly resourceful lady does nothing but raise geraniums, then you're not at all the man for her, and it strikes me from the way you look at her—"

  "Farrell!" sputtered Mrs. Pollifax.

  Cyrus said in his mild voice, "Certain—uh—arts have become apparent to me. A persuasive bending of truth, shall we say, and then there was the karate—"

  "Karate!" It was Farrell's turn to be surprised. "Duchess, you astonish me, you're becoming a pro?"

  "Pro what?" asked Cyrus quietly.

  "She had this little hobby," Farrell said blithely. "As CIA courier. Sandwiched in between—if I remember correctly—her garden club and hospital activities. That's how I met her, except that three years ago I resigned from the CIA and wrote finis to that chapter. But if you don't mind assimilating this little bombshell later, Cyrus, I want very much to learn about this safari. Enlighten me, please, Duchess. And fast."

  She told him all that she knew. "But Carstairs was certain enough of his informant to send me here. I was simply to take pictures of everyone on safari, nothing more, so that every member of the safari could be traced—"

  She stopped as Cyrus let out an indiscreet roar of laughter. "Sorry," he said, subsiding into chuckles. "Not really amusing except—those snapshots!"

  Mrs. Pollifax gave him a reproachful glance before she added, "Carstairs seemed very sure that Aristotle would be on the safari to meet someone and discuss his next project, and if Amy Lovecraft's been heavily involved in her Rhodesian group all this time I can't see her wandering around the world shooting people. I'm only assuming, of course, but putting our two stories together—"

  Farrell said abruptly, "I'm going to break radio silence and call Dundu. I'm stricken by the same assumptions, Duchess, because your story fits into mine like the one missing piece of a jigsaw puzzle." He nodded. "It certainly explains why Betty Thwaite headed for a safari of all things, and if she'd already concluded her business with Aristotle, it also explains why she could go off on a tangent and take on an abduction. She eavesdropped on your interview with Dundu and realized that one of her traveling companions was a woman who actually knew and could identify me. She couldn't resist. The abduction must have been done on impulse, and of course it was terribly unprofessional of her, but she thought she could handle both. Yes, very ambitious woman, Betty Thwaite. But I don't like using the radio, damn it."

  "Why?" asked Cyrus.

  "Because that's how we discovered and pinpointed your party," he said. "We'd left Chunga camp for Kafwala and stopped on the road to radio our whereabouts to headquarters, and that's when we overheard Simon calling Green-Bird in Lusaka. The code name Green-Bird was not unfamiliar to us," he went on, "so while we continued to Kafwala to look for Mrs. Lovecraft, Jonesi set out alone to track you down. Very good at that sort of thing, Jonesi. He wore a homing device in his cap so that we could find him again."

  "As a fool, Jonesi was certainly convincing," commented Mrs. Pollifax.

  "Oh God yes, he can go anywhere with that act, it's saved his life innumerable times. But Duchess, let's get back to basics: which of those people on safari do you suspect is Aristotle?"

  "I've no idea," she said truthfully. "I'd say none of them, except that my first film was stolen from my room at Kafwala camp, which implies that my picture-taking bothered someone a great deal. It had to have been Aristotle who stole the film because Cyrus told me that Amy Lovecraft and Dr. Henry stayed down at the campfire while I was gone. Amy could tell you who Aristotle is, of course."

  "I wouldn't bet on that," he said dryly. "So we can assume that Aristotle's still with the safari, and the assassination's already been scheduled?" He shivered. "I'm not sure that Zambia could survive as a country without President Kaunda. He's a damn strong leader and a beloved president. Any leader's a genius who can hold together a country of at least seventy different tribes speaking sixteen major languages and make it all work." He stared into the fire, frowning, and then he looked up and said sharply, "All right, this is Thursday night. Where's the safari now?"

  "Camp Moshe," said Cyrus promptly. "Tomorrow they make their way back to Chunga camp, remain there over Friday night, and then end the safari in Lusaka on Saturday."

  Farrell nodded. "Then I've definitely got to get a message to Dundu so the police can put everyone on safari under surveillance until they leave Zambia. Give me their names. It may save time to radio them now.** He drew pencil and paper out of his pocket.

  "There's Cyrus' daughter, Lisa Reed," began Mrs. Pollifax.

  "And Dr. Tom Henry," added Cyrus.

  Farrell looked up. "Not the chap from the mission hospital over near the Angolan border?" When Mrs. Pollifax nodded he said, "Small world. Go on."

  "John Steeves, travel writer, and a very charming man. Willem Kleiber—Dutch I think he said, very prim and hygienic and in heavy construction work, whatever that means. And then there's—well, Mclntosh."

  Farrell stopped writing. "Yes?"

  "According to Amy Lovecraft, that's only half his name. She peeked at his passport. Of course anything she said is suspect now, but I can't see any ulterior motive in her saying that unless it was true."

  Farrell put down his pencil. "What sort of person is he?"

  "Secretive," said Mrs. Pollifax.

  Cyrus cleared his throat and said cautiously, "Reserved, in my estimation. Businessman. American."

  "But always traveling," added Mrs. Pollifax.

  "All right, who else?" asked Farrell.

  "Chanda," said Cyrus. "Dr. Henry's prot6ge who, I might add, tracked down Emily's abductors for me, and then went back to camp on foot to guide any search parties. Age twelve."

  "Yes, and where are those search parties?" asked Mrs. Pollifax.

  "No idea, Duchess. I'm sorry, but it's a damn big park." He gave her a rueful smile. "When you were taken west
they undoubtedly went east, and now that you've headed south they're probably combing the north. That's usually the way, isn't it? Okay, we've Lisa Reed, Dr. Tom Henry, John Steeves, Willem Kleiber, the mysterious McIntosh, and young Chanda. Anyone else?"

  "Amy Lovecraft, Emily and myself," said Cyrus. "Nine in all."

  "Right." Farrell pocketed the memo and rose to his feet. "I'm going to radio Dundu now. Sit tight and I'll send a man over to guard you while I'm gone because this campfire has to be extinguished in a few minutes."

  Mrs. Pollifax looked at him in astonishment. "Guard us? Sit tight? But surely you want me down at the camp-fire with Amy and the others. Sikota will be expecting to see me there. He'll count heads."

  Farrell shook his head. "Too dangerous for you, Duchess."

  "Dangerous!" she gasped, standing up. "Farrell, this is an assassination we're trying to stop! Of course I'm going down there."

  Farrell sighed. "Look, Duchess," he said patiently, "you're tired, you need a rest. There are only seven of us men, and three are out scouting for Sikota, and anything could happen down there in the next hour."

  "Absolutely right," agreed Cyrus. "Sit, Emily."

  "I refuse," she told him, and grasping Farrell by the arm she turned him toward the campfire. "Look at them —four mannequins in a store window," she pointed out hotly. "No movement at all, no one talking, eating, smiling or lifting their hands. Sikota isn't a lion, he's a man with a brain that reasons. Those people abducted me and I'm missing, and then he'll wonder why nobody moves, but if Cyrus and I—"

  "Ha," snorted Cyrus.

  "If Cyrus and I sit with them we can talk and—and pass things around, as if we're eating, which heaven only knows I wish we could do, having eaten nothing all day."

  Farrell turned to Cyrus. "Well, Cyrus? Damn it, I've got to send this radio message."

  "Both of you absolutely right," said Cyrus judiciously. "Dangerous place to be down there. Crossfire and all that if he slips past your men." He considered this, sighed and climbed to his feet. "Have to admit Emily's right, too," he added, "and if all this helps—don't happen to have a pistol, do you?"