by Tony Park
After his haircut Mike ducked below deck to the bathroom to shave off his goatee. The skin around his chin was white compared to the rest of his tanned face and his new haircut conjured up memories of another life. He hadn’t looked like this in over a year. The grey in his hair was more noticeable now that it was short, and the absence of his long sideburns drew attention to the crow’s feet at his eyes. Still, he looked like a soldier again instead of an ageing hippie, and that was just fine. He was starting to feel like a soldier again, too.
‘Jesus Christ!’ is probably not the right thing to say to a woman when she shows off a new hairstyle, but that’s what came out when Mike saw Sarah. Her hair was short. Very short, like a man’s, and very black. The cut was stylish enough, but the transformation from soft blonde bob to GI Jane was a shock to Mike.
‘That’s all they had in the shop,’ she said, throwing an empty cardboard box at him.
He caught it and looked at the label. A smiling African woman with frizzy jet-black hair was surrounded by the words ‘Dark and Lovely’. Many African women coloured their hair, he knew, as they found pure black more attractive than chocolate brown.
‘Well,’ Sarah said, pursing her lips, ‘how do I look?’
‘Um . . . dark and lovely?’ Mike ventured. Mel laughed. Sarah didn’t.
‘How do I look?’ Mike questioned back.
‘Old and grey,’ Sarah said, trying hard to hold back a smile.
‘I think it looks sexy,’ Jane Muir said from behind him.
Mike felt long fingernails suddenly caressing his scalp.
Julie giggled and raised the old Jackie Collins paperback she was reading on the sundeck closer to her face. Sarah, Mike saw, was glaring at Julie with the same burning stare seen on lions when they’re stalking.
‘Time to wash off,’ Mike said, and climbed up onto the safety railing that surrounded the deck.
‘You’ve got to be joking!’ Jane said with real concern.
‘There’re hippos and crocodiles and all sorts of stuff in there. You said so!’ Mel added.
‘What about the cage, Mike?’ asked Sam.
The houseboat came complete with a steel cage that was lowered into the water from a small hand-cranked derrick on the aft deck. It was big enough for three or four people to splash around in while the boat was stationary. Mike had been out on boats with Zimbabwean friends in the past and they maintained that if you were in the centre of Lake Kariba, as they were now, you were safe from harm.
‘It’s too hard to do laps in,’ Mike replied and dived off the railing. The water was cool and refreshing. It soothed the dull ache in his bruised ribs and face, and he scrubbed the annoying, itching bits of cut hair from his scalp. He struck out away from the boat in a strong overarm and then rolled onto his back to look back at the faces lining the rails.
‘Sod it,’ Sarah said. She stepped out of her shorts and climbed the safety rail.
Mike suddenly felt concerned for her. While it was all right for him to take risks, no matter how slight the chance of his being taken by a crocodile in deep water, he was afraid for her safety. She executed a graceful dive and swam towards him.
Suddenly he felt excited, seeing her swimming towards him. He imagined their warm bodies coming together in the cold water, the feel of erect nipples pressing through the flimsy black lycra of her bikini against his chest. She stopped and trod water a couple of metres away from him.
‘It’s great, isn’t it?’ she said, her smile wide, their earlier jousts forgotten.
‘It certainly is,’ he said.
‘Race you back?’
‘Good idea,’ Mike said.
Sarah had about ten years on Mike and he shuddered to think what a comparison of their lifestyles and exercise regimens would reveal. She touched the boat a length ahead of him and wasn’t even breathing hard when he struggled alongside her. She ran a hand through her short black hair and sent up a shower of tiny droplets. He thought the colour made her blue eyes look striking, rather than merely attractive.
He climbed the aluminium ladder that the boat captain had thoughtfully lowered over the side and instinctively reached out a hand to help Sarah aboard. Sarah looked up and for a moment it seemed to him that she was going to scorn his offer. Just as he started to pull back his arm she reached up out of the water and grasped his hand. Her grip was strong and warm. It was the first time they had touched since the kiss in the nightclub and he felt the same confusion and desire sweep through his body.
Mike handed Sarah a towel as the roar of outboard motors and the slap of a fast-moving hull on the small swell made them all turn towards shore. The houseboat was pointing towards Tashinga and Mike could just make out the A-frame camping shelters on the shore about a kilometre away. That was where the boat was coming from, loud and fast.
‘Can I borrow your binoculars, please, Kylie?’ Mike asked. She had been using them to watch a pair of fish eagles near the shore.
A tall man was standing in the fast-moving boat. He had blond hair. He put a hand on the driver’s shoulder and the boat slowed its speed a fraction. Mike focused the binoculars and saw that the standing man was Hess. Orlov sat in the back, arms outstretched and face tilted to the sun.
The speedboat slowed and Orlov opened his eyes and stared at the larger craft. Hess and Orlov were level with the houseboat, but still about two hundred metres away. Flynn was at the helm and concentrating on the waters ahead. Travelling at the speed they were was a risky business on a lake full of submerged forests. Hess raised his binoculars, and for a moment he and Mike stared at each other.
‘Thank God for the haircuts,’ Sarah whispered close to Mike’s ear.
Mike knew he could have turned away or led Sarah to the other side of the boat, but a part of him hoped Hess could see him, and even recognise him, though he doubted the other man would. Mike felt a burning need to get close to these men again, to exact revenge and to see fear in their eyes.
Hess turned and said something to Orlov and smiled. They were ignoring the houseboat and its passengers. Hess tapped Flynn on the shoulder and Mike heard the outboards scream as the guide opened the throttle wide again.
‘They’re in a hurry,’ Mike said to Sarah. She towelled her short hair while they both watched the small boat recede from view.
‘Do you think they’ve already killed one of the rhinos?’ she asked.
‘I doubt that they’d travel with the horn in broad daylight if they had.’
‘Scared off?’ she ventured.
‘I doubt it. If Flynn’s as good a tracker as I think he is, he’s probably found them their rhino. But I can’t see him being in on the deal. He didn’t strike me as being a poacher.’
‘So this was just a recce and they’ll be coming back later.’
Mike nodded and reached for his towel. ‘Soon.’
The houseboat had a shallow draft, but even so, they could only anchor about a hundred metres from the lake shore at Tashinga that afternoon. Sarah and Mike were first into the small aluminium tender boat when the captain offered to take people ashore to stretch their legs.
Mike wanted to call Theron to update him on Hess and Orlov’s latest movements, and to pass on his theory about what the hunters were up to, but they were too far from Kariba to get a signal on the mobile phone. Mike had no idea if Theron had taken any action as a result of his earlier reports, and Sarah and he decided that the only other thing they could do was try to warn the National Parks staff themselves.
‘Where are you two going?’ Jane asked as Sarah stepped down into the aluminium boat.
‘Sarah wants to interview the head ranger here, for her story,’ Mike lied. ‘I’m just taking her to the Parks office. The boat will be back soon.’
Jane shrugged and turned to George and said, ‘How about that game of poker then, George? The one we were talking about the other night in the club?’
George looked startled, then replied, as calmly as he could, ‘What, strip poker, you mean?’
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‘Get us a G and T, there’s a good love. I’ll shuffle the cards,’ she said.
Mike smiled to himself as he climbed down into the boat. Again, Sarah let him take her hand to steady her as she climbed in. He stowed her camera gear at the front of the boat, to keep it under cover.
‘That woman is incorrigible,’ Sarah said, as the houseboat crewman started the little motor and they cut towards shore.
‘That’s exactly what I was thinking.’
‘And as for her daughter, well . . . It’s none of my business, but is there something serious between you two?’ she asked.
‘Who, Jane or Julie?’ Mike asked, realising his blunder too late.
‘What? You slept with both of them!’
‘No, no. That incident with Julie wasn’t how it looked. She came into the shower, but I turned her away after you left.’
‘But what, you slept with her mum?’
Mike felt his face starting to colour.
‘You did, didn’t you?’ Sarah persisted.
‘Gentlemen don’t tell,’ he said, turning away from her. ‘Anyway, in answer to your question there is nothing serious or otherwise going on between me and either Jane or Julie Muir.’
Mike could see the boatman was straining to hear their conversation now that it had turned to sex, and he was glad when they coasted into the sandy shore. Sarah left the boat first, so Mike didn’t get a chance to offer his hand again.
‘So, you slept with Jane, but it meant nothing to you and you don’t care about her? Is that right?’ Sarah said as they walked up the sandy incline from the lake shore.
‘Typical journalist, putting words in people’s mouths. If you must know, it’s more the other way around. She’s hardly said a word to me since we . . . well . . .’
‘Maybe you didn’t leave a lasting impression? I don’t know how people can carry on like that. What sort of example is Jane setting for her daughter?’
‘Haven’t you ever had a one-night stand?’ Mike asked, drawing level with her.
‘None of your business if I have, but I can tell you it wouldn’t be on a trip with my daughter in tow. Rather than playing around like a horny teenager I would have thought she’d have been looking for a serious relationship, so she could set an example for her daughter,’ Sarah said.
‘Maybe she thinks she’ll never be able to replace the man she lost. She was very young when it happened. Maybe she sees sex as a substitute for true love.’
‘Do you feel like that? That you’ll never replace Isabella?’ Sarah asked.
He thought for a moment about his answer. He hated other people reminding him about Isabella, and a couple of days earlier in the trip he would have told Sarah to mind her own business. But now he felt it was OK to talk about his lost love and that maybe Sarah was a good person to talk to. He stopped to pick up a gnarled piece of driftwood and inspect its sun-bleached surface.
‘It’s different for me. I found Isabella late in my life. I’d been floating around aimlessly – having a pretty good time – but I was beginning to think I’d never find someone. I’ll never forget what we had together, no matter how brief it was, but the odds of me finding a love like that again are pretty long.’
Mike didn’t know what, if anything, he was starting to feel for Sarah now, despite her often prickly manner. Jane’s advances and their one night of sex had awoken feelings of lust in him that he had suppressed since Isabella’s death.
‘What about you?’ he asked. ‘Where does Mr Right fit into your plans?’
‘Who said I was looking for Mr Right? No, I’m not where I want to be yet with my career. But when I am, maybe there’ll be time for . . . I don’t know, time for love, maybe even children.’
‘Want some advice from an old soldier?’
‘Keep your gun clean and always carry a condom?’
‘Very funny. No, just go for life, wherever it takes you. Grab it by the bit and run with it. Do whatever you want and chase whatever goals you want, but don’t try to live your life by a timetable. I had only a few years to go in the army before I could retire with a full pension, but then I met Isabella and I knew that we wouldn’t have a chance if I marked time at some middle-of-nowhere army base in Australia while she waited half a world away. I made the right choice, even with everything that happened in Mozambique, and I don’t regret chucking away my old job. My only regret is that I didn’t do it sooner, then maybe none of that stuff would have happened.’
‘You shouldn’t go on like that, Mike. I believe in fate. What will be, will be, and there’s no point wondering “what if”. It’s easy for you to talk about chucking away your career on a whim, but it’s still early days for me. I’m trying to make a name for myself. I want to do well and be successful, even if that means making some sacrifices in my personal life.’
They arrived at the park headquarters. The building was green-painted, rendered brick with an array of solar panels on the roof and a tall radio mast at one end. Garbled voices chattered noisily through a veil of static from the radio’s loudspeaker as Mike and Sarah entered the building.
An old ranger with tight curly grey hair greeted them from behind the polished wooden counter.
‘Good morning, sir, madam. How are you?’ He spoke with a whistle through the gap where his front teeth had once been.
They exchanged pleasantries and introduced themselves quickly, as Mike was eager to raise the alarm. ‘Are you the head ranger here?’
‘No, sir, the boss he is in Kariba for three days,’ the old man said.
‘We have information that some poachers will be coming to this camp, probably to shoot one of your rhinos.’
The ranger was taken aback. ‘Poachers? No, sir, we shoot the poachers here.’ He raised his arms, pantomiming pointing a rifle.
‘No, you don’t understand. There are men planning to come here, maybe tonight, to shoot a rhino.’
‘How do you know this?’ the ranger asked, narrowing his eyes.
Mike thought things were going badly. Not only did the ranger not believe them, but now he was getting suspicious.
Sarah tried a different tack. ‘There were five men camped here last night. They tracked a wild rhino this morning, in the bush, didn’t they?’
The ranger looked even more distrustful now. ‘How did you know this?’ he asked. He was fidgeting with a piece of paper now, but Mike couldn’t read what it said.
Sarah continued. ‘These are the men that the South African Police suspect of poaching. We overheard them talking about illegally hunting a rhino in Zimbabwe when we were travelling in South Africa and we reported our concerns to the police. Haven’t you received any information about this?’
Mike liked Sarah’s neat paraphrasing of the truth and nodded in support. The ranger looked down at the paper again.
‘As a matter of fact we have received a warning of possible illegal activity from the police. But those men who came yesterday, they were with a man who would not be involved in such things. I do not think they are the ones.’
‘Gerry O’Flynn, you mean? Flynn?’ Mike asked.
‘Yes. That is the man. He worked here as warden in the old days. I once saw him kill a poacher. He would never shoot a rhino.’
‘I know Flynn also, and I believe you. I don’t think he knows what the other men were up to.’
‘Let me take your name and I will make a report,’ the ranger said, reaching for a large book on the counter.
Mike knew there was nothing more they could do and his exasperation must have shown.
‘Don’t worry, sir. We take poaching very seriously in this country and we do not need the South Africans to tell us to be vigilant. We know how to treat these people.’
Mike wasn’t sure whether the man was referring to meddling South Africans or desperate poachers, but either way they had to leave it in his hands. Sarah and Mike supplied their names and addresses, and the man took a long time writing down a short version of what they had told him. When th
ey were finished, the ranger offered to arrange a visit to where the young orphan rhinos were kept. Sarah was keen to see them and Mike realised he had no problems about spending another hour or so with her away from the group.
21
Hess looked up at the half moon. He knew they needed its light to track the rhino, but any illumination at night increased the risk of their being spotted, by a National Parks or border patrol boat, or by anti-poaching patrols on the ground.
Hess was dressed in black denim jeans and a long-sleeved black T-shirt, his blond hair covered with a navy-blue woollen watch cap. Orlov, as usual, had scorned his advice and insisted on wearing his faded old Spetsnaz smock. Klaus was dressed like his employer, while the three poachers wore ragged T-shirts and shorts. Hess had produced specially made boots for Orlov and himself before they left the lodge at Siavonga. They were leather hiking boots, but Klaus had fitted new soles to them.
‘The tread looks like it has been cut from an old car tyre,’ Orlov had said as he turned one of the boots over in his hands.
‘It was,’ Hess said. ‘Any tracks we leave will look like those left by African poachers wearing locally made sandals.’ Sure enough, when they rendezvoused with the local poachers on a small lakeside beach just out of the Zambian border town of Siavonga, the poachers were wearing sandals cut from old car tyres.
The night air was cool on their faces as the boat skimmed across the calm silvery waters of Lake Kariba. They detoured around a couple of kapenta boats, the noise and lights from the ungainly vessels visible from far off and, as they closed on the shores of Matusadona, Hess pointed out a lone houseboat to the helmsman, the eldest of the Zambian poachers, whose name was Alfred.
Alfred nodded and gave the houseboat a wide berth. He adjusted the throttle setting at the same time to reduce the noise from the seventy-horsepower outboard motor. The outboard was already muffled, its top housing covered with an old wooden packing crate lined with hessian sacks. Hess guessed this was not the first time the three poachers had used this speedy but comparatively silent craft on the lake. They moved with no lights and, at Alfred’s urging, Hess and Orlov sat with the others in a puddle of water at the bottom of the sleek, open fibreglass ski boat so as to lower their silhouette as they crossed the lake.