Far Horizon

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by Tony Park


  Nelson, the truck, was still plying the highways and dirt roads of southern Africa. According to Rian, the new driver, a young American guy called Sam, loved showing the female travellers where the bullet holes were patched. Rian had told him the rules when he took him on as a driver, but Mike had told him that some rules were made to be broken.

  Sarah left for England the day after Mike was flown to Lusaka. Susie regularly pulled Sarah’s stories from The Times off the internet and sent hard copies to Mike in the post.

  A raid by Russian police on Orlov’s mansion outside Moscow unearthed a huge pair of elephant tusks which, with the help of the South African authorities, were positively identified as having once belonged to Skukuza. There was no direct evidence linking Orlov to the killings in Mozambique, mainly because there were no witnesses. However, the South Africans had enough on him to extradite him from Zambia. Orlov hadn’t actually killed anyone in Zambia, except for an inflatable doll, of course. A string of firearms charges, while proved by a Zambian court, weren’t enough to keep him in jail in Zambia for very long; however, the South Africans took poaching seriously and it looked like Orlov would be in prison for a couple of years at least.

  Susie had kept in touch with Sarah via e-mail and they had corresponded intermittently. She posted copies of the messages to Mike, but the mail took weeks to arrive. There was no phone at the fishing shack and the payphone in Chirundu rarely worked. He’d tried a few times to call Sarah, but on the one occasion he had been able to get through to her work, he was kept on hold so long waiting to talk to her that his money ran out.

  Mike was grown up enough to realise that Sarah’s future was a world away in England in pursuit of her career, which seemed to have really taken off in a very short space of time. He was pleased for her.

  The shack came with its own vehicle: a beat-up, roofless old Land Rover. Moses and Mike mainly used it to go shopping and to pick up the mail. This morning was Moses’s turn to pick up their beer, canned food and mail from the postbox at the general store.

  ‘Letter for you, bwana,’ said Moses.

  Mike had given up telling Moses to stop calling him ‘bwana’.

  ‘Thanks, Moses.’

  ‘From the lady,’ he added.

  Mike’s mail was almost always from Susie, and Moses could recognise her large, girlish handwriting. He looked at his watch and saw that it was after eleven, so he relieved Moses of one of the cold bottles of Castle beer in the carry bag and knocked the top off with the opener on his pocketknife.

  ‘Sundowner already, bwana?’ Moses cackled.

  ‘I’m on holiday.’

  ‘You been on holiday more than any man I know, bwana.’

  Mike sat down in his favourite deck chair and slit the envelope with the blade of his pocketknife. Inside was a single sheet of paper and he saw it was a photocopy of a one-paragraph item from The Times.

  The beer bottle slid from his fingers as he read the lines. Moses wore a disapproving scowl as he emerged from the kitchen and saw the broken glass and spilt beer.

  Mike read the item again.

  Times reporter Sarah Thatcher has been appointed as this newspaper’s new Africa correspondent. Ms Thatcher, who will be based in Johannesburg, won two major media awards for her first-hand coverage of an armed attack on a tour group in Zambia and the subsequent arrest of a Russian national on poaching charges.

  At the bottom of the photocopied page was a handwritten message giving the date and time of arrival of a British Airways flight from London to Johannesburg. The aircraft was due in a few days’ time. After that she had written: ‘Do you know a good safari guide who could show me around and not get me killed? Love, Sarah.’

  ‘Moses,’ Mike said, ‘how much fuel’s in the Land Rover?’

  MORE BESTSELLING FICTION AVAILABLE

  FROM PAN MACMILLAN

  Beverley Harper

  Footprints of Lion

  She was in her prime. Pregnant with a first litter, unexpected sounds of danger caused the lioness to remain well hidden whilst the drama of men unfolded. The blood smell told her that a meal awaited. Patience was required.

  As southern Africa is torn apart by a so-called ‘white man’s war’, Dallas Granger-Acheson and his beloved wife Lorna are caught up in a conflict between fiercely proud descendants of Dutch settlers and the might of Britain’s colonial empire. At stake, possession of a land rich in gold, diamonds and cheap human resources.

  Atrocities of the Anglo-Boer war take a terrible toll on soldiers and civilians alike. Lorna fears for her husband and sons – extrovert Cameron; brooding and secretive Torben; roguish Duncan; and Frazer, the youngest, softly spoken and artistic. She worries too for her daughters – medically minded Ellie who is never far from the front line, and headstrong Meggie, baby of the family. No one is left untouched.

  From battlefields stained with blood and concentration camps rife with disease to a pride of veld lions thriving in the madness of war, Footprints of Lion is an action-packed sequel to Shadows in the Grass. Love, hate, revenge, triumph and much more stalk the pages of this unforgettable new novel from Beverley Harper.

  Peter Watt

  Eden

  Jack Kelly and Paul Mann have survived one world war – will they survive another? When the Japanese threaten to invade the Pacific the two men know that they must do everything in their power to protect their country and their loved ones from an ambitious and merciless enemy.

  Lukas Kelly and Karl Mann are like brothers – just like their fathers – and both are determined to do their part for the Australian cause. While Karl works undercover in espionage, Lukas trains to be a pilot. The two men have also inherited their fathers’ passionate natures, and romantic entanglements raise the stakes even further.

  Four men, with ties closer than blood, fight to hold on to love, and a world that is gradually disappearing. When the war finally explodes terrible tragedies, courageous deeds and enduring friendships will change their lives forever.

  A new war, a new generation and an old enemy meet in this thrilling and poignant sequel to PAPUA.

  Praise for Peter Watt, author of Cry of the Curlew, Shadow of the Osprey, Flight of the Eagle, To Chase the Storm and Papua:

  ‘Papua is a rousing historical adventure’

  GOLD COAST BULLETIN

  ‘The home-grown version of Wilbur Smith’

  THE SUNDAY AGE

  Wilbur Smith

  Blue Horizon

  At the close of Wilbur Smith’s bestselling Monsoon, Tom Courtney and his brother Dorian battled on the high seas and finally reached the Cape of Good Hope to start life afresh.

  In this spellbinding new novel, the next generation of Courtneys are out to stake their claim in southern Africa, traveling along the infamous ‘Robber’s Road’. It is a journey both exciting and hazardous, which takes them through the untouched wilderness of a beautiful land filled with warring tribes and wild animals.

  At heart a story of love and hatred, vengeance and greed, Blue Horizon is an utterly compelling adventure from one of the world’s most celebrated novelists.

  ‘Wilbur Smith is one of those benchmarks against whom others are compared’

  THE TIMES

  ‘Good, clean fun: a rumbustious, colourful adventure story, crammed full of incident’

  EVENING STANDARD

 

 

 


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