by Tony Park
‘Young, idealistic, high disposable income – hopefully. I like your style: the rock concerts, the cult of the idol.’
‘I’m a warrior, Sarah, not a pop star.’
She held up a hand. ‘I’m not belittling what you do, Eli, far from it, but you looked pretty ripped in that last bare-chested selfie after your workout in the bush pumping iron with those African rangers last week.’
He gave a deprecatory laugh and put his hands up in mock surrender. ‘OK, you got me there. What do you want, Sarah, time’s ticking.’
‘I think we could all work together better and I want to put a formal proposal to you. How would you like to join forces with Animals Without Borders? You’d double your support base – as would we.’ She took a step closer to him. ‘And, business aside, I’d be happy to discuss possible terms any place, any time with you, Eli. I really want to get to know you better.’
He stood and she shifted a little so that she was half sitting, half leaning against his dressing table, hands either side of her, legs ever so slightly apart.
Eli towered over and closed the gap between them even more. She smiled. Sarah decided she really would have sex with him, if it helped seal the deal, or even kept him interested.
‘I responded to your email, asking to meet, Sarah, because I know exactly what you’re up to.’
‘What’s that?’
‘You’re going to use your donors’ money to relocate six black rhinos from Kwangela Game Reserve, here in the Western Cape.’
Sarah shrugged. ‘It’s true, I’m making a major announcement about rhinos at my fundraiser tomorrow night, though I can’t say any more than that just yet, unless we were, say, business partners.’
‘Don’t worry. I know already. And not only am I not going to go into business with you, I am going to make it my business to make sure your plan for those rhinos never gets off the ground.’
Sarah shifted on the dressing table. This was not what she had planned. ‘Why would you do that?’
‘I’m not alone. I’m not the only one who knows what you’re up to and is opposed to it. Your plan is either crazy or it’s criminal.’
He was staring her in the eye. ‘Are you threatening me, Eli?’
Eli straightened and took a step back from her. ‘Yes.’
She pushed herself off the table and stood, straightening her dress. ‘I would have done just about anything to get you onside with us, Eli.’
He went to the dressing room door and opened it for her. ‘I know. That’s another reason I don’t want anything to do with you, or your other partner.’
She jutted out her chin. ‘You’ll regret this.’
‘Not as much as you will.’
Reeling a little, Sarah turned and walked out. Anger started to bloom in her stomach. He was wrong.
Chapter 23
Kwangela Game Reserve, Graham thought, hardly merited the title. It was little more than a tourist trap, the complete opposite of the vast, mostly empty wilderness of Zimbabwe’s Hwange National Park where they had been the day before.
Graham had driven like an African taxi driver to get to Victoria Falls Airport in time for them to catch their flight. There had barely been time for him and Kerry to sluice the worst of the mud from their exposed skin using a bucket and a tap in the airport car park where they had left Garth’s filthy Land Cruiser.
He and Kerry now rode in comparative luxury in the back of an open-top Land Rover game viewer, enjoying the morning. It was pleasantly warm, the air still tastily crisp, as opposed to the oppressive heat of Victoria Falls, much further north in Africa.
The Cape was like another country, another world. Many of the foreign tourists who visited Cape Town didn’t want to venture too far from the hipster cafes and trendy restaurants, or the shops on the Victoria and Alfred Waterfront, not even in search of Africa’s big five – lion, elephant, buffalo, leopard and rhino – so Kwangela, a tiny reserve by African standards, gave visitors and locals something of a safari experience.
Bradd, with two ‘d’s according to his name badge, was their ranger, and although Graham didn’t ask, he suspected it was the boy’s first guiding job. Bradd was handsome, keen and cocky, as young rangers tended to be.
They came to an electrified fence and Bradd pressed a remote control that opened a barred security gate.
‘We’ve got the black rhinos in the bomas, ready for your check-up,’ Bradd said.
He drove a short distance to a stout wooden fence. Bradd stopped the Land Rover and they all got out.
‘As I’m sure you know, these guys can be quite cheeky,’ Bradd said.
Graham rolled his eyes behind Bradd’s back. Kerry punched him in the arm.
True to form, the first black rhino they saw was bristling with attitude. It trotted up to them, raised its head and snorted.
‘This is Brutus,’ Bradd said. ‘He’s our number one stud at the moment. We had a few births, but it’s not so easy in captivity, and it’s a long time between babies.’
Graham nodded. He’d known a couple in Zimbabwe, the Bryants, who ran a rhino breeding ranch. In the wild, black rhino calves stayed with their mothers a long time – eight years – so females did not normally go into oestrus for the same period; at the ranch they weaned the newborn babies off the mothers as soon as they were born and hand-raised them, which had the effect of fooling the cows into wanting to get pregnant again straightaway.
‘I’ll be sorry to see him go,’ Bradd said.
‘I can imagine.’
‘Why exactly are you getting rid of all your rhinos?’ Kerry asked.
‘Money,’ said Bradd. ‘I can tell you, because you’re not tourists, that the owners of Kwangela are struggling to keep the place going. The name means “sunset” in isiXhosa, and unless they cut costs that’s the direction we’re all riding into. The security bill to protect these rhinos is huge. So when Animals Without Borders offered to buy and relocate them, it was good news for the owners, if not for us guides.’
‘Have you lost any rhinos?’ Graham asked Bradd.
‘None. Our head of security, Michael Collins, is an ex– Rhodesian SAS guy and he’s always testing our systems and looking for ways to improve them. He is bleak that the rhinos are going – it also means there will be less need for him and his guys.’
They walked on to the next boma and Bradd pointed to another black rhino. ‘This is Thandi. She’s completely different from Brutus, very people-friendly.’
On cue, Thandi trotted over to the fence and held her big head up. Bradd reached into a satchel he’d been carrying over his shoulder and took out an apple which he held up to her snuffling, waiting mouth. She grabbed the treat with her hooked upper and lower lips and munched on it, seemingly smiling with delight.
Kerry, with Bradd’s encouragement, reached over and scratched her under the chin. ‘Hello, Thandi. I know a Thandi back in Hoedspruit and she’s beautiful, just like you.’
Graham swallowed hard. He wasn’t given to fits of emotion and wondered where the lump in his throat had come from. He’d hardened himself long ago to the realities of his job and the conditions he worked in. He wondered if it was seeing Kerry’s pure, innocent joy at being this close to the rhino that had triggered it. Carla had been the same with animals.
‘Where are the rhinos going?’ Graham asked.
Bradd shrugged. ‘Officially, I don’t know, but there are rumours. We thought they were going to Australia, but Michael reckons they’re going to another African country and he’s flipping mad about that. He says South Africa still has the best record for protecting rhinos so he wants them to stay here, somewhere.’ Bradd turned to look at Graham. ‘You’re speaking, in Cape Town, right, at the Table Bay?’
Graham drew a breath. ‘For my sins, yes.’
‘You don’t sound too happy about it. I read somewhere that some people rate public speaking as more terrifying than the prospect of death.’
‘Well, given the choice between hunting poachers
armed with AK-47s in the bush or climbing into a monkey suit, walking on stage and addressing a couple of hundred strangers, I’d take my chances with the poachers any day.’
Bradd laughed.
Graham wasn’t joking.
Still, as he and Kerry patted Thandi and he felt the rhino’s hot breath huffing over his hand, he did what he always did when he was in the bush facing danger, what he’d done in the army – he suppressed his fear and told himself to pick himself up and carry on.
He remembered a trip he and Carla had once taken to Zimbabwe. It was funny; being in Victoria Falls with Kerry had brought back the memories but so, too, had seeing Thandi the rhino and touching her. They had gone to the rhino breeding ranch run by his friends the Bryants on that trip, which was supposed to be their last tour around Africa before leaving the continent for good.
Back then there had been plans to release some of those rhinos, bred in captivity, into Zimbabwe’s national parks, including Mana Pools, in the Zambezi Valley. All hope of that was gone; decades of corrupt government had meant that country’s national parks rangers had not received the funding, resources and backing they needed to stop the rhino-poaching epidemic. Just a few hundred rhinos were left in Zimbabwe, mostly in heavily guarded private reserves.
‘Lost in thought?’ Kerry said.
‘What? Oh, no, nothing.’ All hope was gone, he thought.
*
Kerry thoroughly enjoyed her morning, helping Graham where she could as he examined each of the rhinos.
He was no longer gruff or rude to her, at least not deliberately, but she still felt that the more she got to know him the more obvious it was that he was holding something back from her. Quite what that something was, she couldn’t put her finger on.
She suspected it was to do with his late wife.
When they had finished at Kwangela they drove their hire car back to the Table Bay Hotel in Cape Town, where Sarah had paid for them to stay. It was a lovely place, Kerry thought, and they could walk from the hotel straight into the shopping precinct of the V&A, as everyone seemed to refer to the Victoria and Alfred Waterfront.
Poor Graham, she thought when they met again in the hotel lobby; he looked like an African tigerfish out of water. He was dressed in his trademark khaki shorts and grubby two-tone bush shirt, still dusty and stained from working on the rhinos. On his feet he wore Rocky sandals. The weather had turned dramatically, from sunny and warm in the morning to grey and chilly in the afternoon. Table Mountain was shrouded in white.
‘You must be cold.’
He looked around at the sound of her voice. ‘Nothing that would kill me. Although I feel the ordeal to come might.’
‘I met Sarah a little while ago,’ Kerry said, ‘she came to my room.’
‘Formidable woman, yes?’
Kerry gave a small laugh. ‘You can say that. She’s very direct. I think she thought that because I’d signed up to volunteer through her website that she could get me to do her bidding.’
Graham snorted. ‘Sounds like Sarah. What are your orders?’
‘I’m to take you clothes shopping.’
‘Yes, ma’am,’ he said. ‘I thought Sarah might want to supervise this mission herself.’
She thought she picked up a note of disappointment in his voice. ‘You and Sarah?’
He looked at her. ‘Yes?’
‘You’re just friends?’
His mouth curled into a smile like a moustache, turned up at the sides. ‘Good friends.’
‘Oh.’
‘That is to say,’ he said quickly, ‘occasional friends.’
She saw his cheeks start to colour. He was weird.
He cleared his throat. ‘Anyway, what’s wrong with what I’m wearing?’
‘The invitation says lounge suit.’
‘I often lounge in this suit.’ He raised his eyebrows. ‘How much money did she give you?’
Kerry laughed. ‘I’m under orders not to tell you.’
‘Typical. She knows I’d spend it on booze, cigarettes and fast women.’
‘Yes, there was a comment about that as well.’
‘I’m perfectly capable of buying my own clothes.’ He snorted.
‘Of course. Well, perhaps I can just direct you to a department store.’
‘That would be fine,’ he said.
She could tell he wasn’t happy, neither about having to speak nor about dressing up. Kerry couldn’t really blame him. She felt pretty much the same, although no one was giving her the rand equivalent of two thousand dollars to shop.
Kerry took him by the arm and they went up the escalators from the lobby and into the shopping mall. They soon found a stylish menswear store.
‘All right, you’re not a nine-year-old. I’ll leave you here. I need to go and buy some stockings.’ She opened her handbag and took out the envelope full of cash Sarah had given her. She passed it to him, but held on to it. ‘Remember, it’s donors’ money, Graham.’
He nodded sombrely. ‘I know, Kerry. Actually, I think it’s a waste of their hard-earned coin, but Sarah knows best. She likes to spend a quid to make a quid, or so she tells me. Aiming for the high rollers and all that.’
‘Yes,’ Kerry said. ‘I’m sure she knows best. I’ll see you soon.’
‘I could rather come and help you buy stockings?’
‘Graham.’
‘Sorry. I’ll be good. This shouldn’t be too hard.’
Kerry left him and went to a lingerie store they had passed on the way. When she was done she browsed for a while, looking at shoes, and on impulse bought a pair of boots that she liked the look of. She checked her watch. It had been half an hour, more than enough time for Graham to buy something. She went back to the menswear store.
Graham was sitting on a courtesy chair, a look of total bewilderment plain on his face.
‘What’s happening?’
He looked up at her and shrugged.
‘Graham, what’s wrong?’
‘What’s wrong? I have no bloody idea what to buy or who to ask. The sales assistants look at me like I’m a vagrant and everything I’ve looked at costs the same as the gross national product of South Africa.’
She felt sorry for him. ‘Oh dear.’
‘If you go into a menswear store in the lowveld you have two choices: green and khaki. I looked at something before that was called teal. That’s a flipping duck!’
Kerry laughed, then controlled herself when she saw his palpable stress. ‘Can I help?’
‘Please. I’d rather have my left eye gouged out by a buffalo’s horn than do this.’
Kerry took the lead and Graham fell in behind her. ‘What’s your suit size?’
‘How the hell should I know?’
She looked him up and down and remembered buying a jacket for an old boyfriend. The coat had fitted well but the man hadn’t liked it, or stuck around. He’d resented her for trying to make him look smarter. Kerry had a sudden panic attack. ‘I don’t know your style, what you like, Graham.’
He smiled. ‘Oh, that’s an easy one. I have no style.’
Chapter 24
Eli Johnston moved on foot, alone, through the open grassland around Kwangela Game Reserve.
He carried a backpack and in it a commercially available drone. He was dressed in black jeans and matching sweater and beanie, and combat boots.
Ahead of him, he saw the floodlights of the rhino bomas.
*
Sarah told the catering manager at the Table Bay Hotel to put another dozen bottles of French champagne on the bill, just in case. The guests at her fundraiser, the manager had just told her, were hammering the bubbly during the pre-dinner drinks.
‘Excuse me, love, do you know where a bloke can get a beer around here?’ said a man in a broad, almost comical Australian accent.
Sarah turned. The man had piercing blue eyes, the first thing she noticed about him, and he was immaculately groomed. The salt and pepper hair was cut short but stylishly finished
with just the right amount of product.
The shirt was crisp, white, simple but elegant. The suit was charcoal, slim-fit, with a pocket square; the dress boots polished. He was trim and handsome.
Sarah’s mouth dropped.
‘Well, say something,’ Graham said.
‘It’s . . .’
Kerry stepped out from behind Graham and beamed at Sarah. ‘I know, a miracle, right?’
‘Uh-huh,’ was all Sarah could manage.
‘Talk about extreme makeover,’ Kerry said.
‘I didn’t recognise you, Graham.’ Sarah took a step closer and kissed him on the cheek.
‘Control yourself, woman. I know you’re only human, but let’s not make a scene in public.’
It was him all right. ‘You look great.’
‘But?’
‘What do you mean?’ Sarah asked.
‘I sense you wanted to add a “but” at the end of that sentence.’
She exhaled. ‘Yes. But, are you ready to go onstage and address the audience, after they’ve had their main meal?’
Graham paused and surveyed the room. Sarah saw what he saw, about two hundred people who could each afford two thousand rand a head for a ticket to a dinner in a fancy function room. These were businessmen and women; Sarah deliberately targeted the top end of town in her fundraising. There were lawyers, bankers, doctors, millionaires.
Graham drew a deep breath. ‘Never been readier.’
A drinks waiter came to them, bearing a platter. Sarah took a glass of champagne and Kerry a white wine. Graham reached out, his hand hovering near a beer, but instead he took a sparkling water with a slice of lemon.
‘Well done, Graham.’
‘Woof, woof,’ he said.
‘Don’t be like that.’
He forced a grin and raised his glass. ‘Cheers.’
‘Cheers,’ the women said.
‘I reserve the right,’ he said after a sip, ‘to get blotto after I’ve finished my speech.’
‘And after you’ve taken questions and mingled with the crowd for a bit,’ Sarah said.
‘Yes, dear.’
‘Stop it, Graham. You’re being boring now.’
The master of ceremonies, a comedian, went to the microphone and asked people to start taking their seats.