by Nell Brien
Where were the rest?
Thirty-Five
The lion yawned, showing his pink tongue, his powerful white incisors. Rays of morning sun pierced the trees, throwing bars of light across the full black mane. Tail low and motionless, the lion moved slowly through the mist-wreathed reeds. Suddenly he stopped.
“He’s caught our scent,” Campbell said softly. “He’ll ignore us, they’re lazy devils. But no sudden moves.”
Standing in the open door of the Land Rover, Cat slowly lifted the binoculars, adjusting them until she was looking into golden-green eyes on the far side of the pool. “He’s beautiful!”
“He’s hoping she thinks so.” Campbell nodded toward the underbrush.
A lioness, her body melding with the background of trees and yellow grass, strolled toward the water. As she came close, the lion turned his massive head and gave a soft cough of greeting. She ignored him, stopping at a small inlet among the reeds. She picked up one huge paw, shook it delicately like a great domestic tabby, then lowered her body and put her mouth to the water. Coughing gently, the lion moved toward her. She went on drinking, her only movement in her tail and the lapping pink tongue. His shadow fell on her. The lapping ceased. Eyes wide, she was as still as the water.
“Do you think they’re going to mate?” Cat asked softly.
Campbell shook his head.
The lion touched his nose to her shoulder, then rubbed his face against hers. She remained motionless. Encouraged, he put a tentative paw on her flank. The lioness looked up, nose wrinkled, teeth bared. He held his ground. She slashed at him, claws unsheathed, and he jumped back, coughing a protest.
“Wow! She means business!” Cat said.
The lion hovered just out of reach while the lioness leisurely drank her fill. She stood, shook each forepaw, then slowly sauntered back toward the cover of the bush.
Cat looked down at Campbell, seated behind the wheel of the Land Rover.
“What happens now?”
“Nothing.”
She raised the glasses for another look at the lion. He was gone.
Campbell turned on the ignition, twisted in his seat and backed the Land Rover through the trees onto a track.
Cat collapsed into her seat. “Campbell! What’s going to happen?”
“Oh, he’ll fight to keep other lions away from her until she’s ready to mate. Maybe he can. He looks strong, but nothing’s certain in his life. A younger male could kill him, take over the pride. The new male would then kill all the cubs to bring the lionesses into season again.
“God! How awful!”
“He is driven by instinct to perpetuate his own seed. And she’s unpredictable. This is probably her first time to mate.”
“How do you know that?”
“The look of her. Tight in the belly for one thing. She’s never had cubs.”
Through the thin open forest, Cat watched the mist-shrouded peaks of Mount Kenya appear, disappear, appear. Elusive. Like Campbell himself. She hadn’t asked about Joel’s pictures. They had to get back to Nairobi soon and there would be time enough to deal with her questions then. “Where are we going?”
“I have something to show you.”
The sound of a galloping horse came from behind them. Barely touching the tiny saddle, Morag crouched over the neck of a bay hunter. She wound through the trees, parallel with the Land Rover.
“Beat you to the compound,” she yelled.
Campbell laughed, eased his foot off the accelerator. “You want to break your bloody neck, you’re on your own,” he shouted back.
Morag waved a crop, crouched lower, disappeared in the trees. Campbell followed until a heavy-log stockade became visible through the trees, the horse standing with reins thrown over a hitching rail. Campbell drew to a stop beside the tethered horse. A short dark block of a man wearing khaki raised a hand in a sharp, military salute.
“Jambo, bwana.”
“Jambo, Zama. This is Miss Stanton.”
Zama snapped a salute in Cat’s direction. “Memsahib.”
“Tembo ready?” Campbell asked.
“N’dio, bwana. She ready.”
“Good. Open up.”
Zama pushed against solid wooden gates. Campbell took Cat by the arm, guided her into a stockade. A buffalo calf, several gazelles, a tiny giraffe wandered freely. Enclosures built against the inside of the stockade housed antelope, baboons and odd-looking catlike animals—a litter of young hyenas only slightly more appealing than they would be when adults. Activity among the khaki-clad men working—cleaning cages, feeding, replenishing water troughs—picked up noticeably as Campbell entered.
Morag was trying to hold a plastic bucket of alfalfa pellets away from the inquisitive trunk of a small elephant.
“This is Tembo,” Campbell said.
Morag wiped a wet green hand on the seat of her jeans. “Ugh! Elephant slobber. I wish we could keep her.”
“She’s not a pet,” Campbell said.
“What is this?” Cat looked around. “Not a zoo.”
“Christ! No!” Campbell said. “We only keep them until they get back on their feet, then out they go. Costs a bloody fortune as it is.”
Cat touched the head of the small elephant. What was Campbell, really? If not a poacher, then a thief who stole from poachers? She thought again of the Maasai, old friends from the village that had cared for him, carrying tusks.
“Here.” Morag handed Cat the bucket. “You feed her. She was orphaned by poachers. We’ve had her three years.”
Cat thought of the tiny elephant trying to nurse on a mutilated mother. She looked at Campbell. “Why didn’t you try to save that calf?” She did not have to explain which calf she meant.
“It was too dehydrated to have survived the journey. It had another hour or two at the most. I put it out of its misery.”
“Then why didn’t you tell me that?”
He shook his head. “I don’t know. I should have.”
Tembo’s small gray ears moved gently, stirring the air. Cat held out a palm filled with alfalfa pellets. The moist tip of the little trunk searched delicately for each morsel, lifting it expertly to her mouth.
“Where’s she going?”
“Well, she came from Tsavo—”
“You can’t take her back there!” Morag interrupted. “It’s terrible down there. The poachers have wiped almost everything out.”
“Zama will stay until she joins up with a herd—”
“What herd? Jane Terry’s brother was down there last month. He says Tsavo’s been shot out. The elephants left are so panicked they barely stop to feed or to drink anymore. We should keep her here.”
“Morag, she’s going back where she belongs. We can’t keep her. You’ve always known that.”
“We could if you wanted to. But you never change your mind about anything, do you? God, you’re impossible.” Morag turned, ran across the kraal and disappeared behind a long thatched building.
Campbell stared after her. “Now, what do you think of that? I never know what’s going to set her off.”
Cat took his hand. “What’s that building?”
“An infirmary of sorts. Come on, I’ll show you to the rest of the place, give madam a chance to cool down.”
Like a giant dog out for a stroll, Tembo accompanied them around the enclosure. The young elephant waited patiently when Campbell stopped to talk to the men, then tried to push her way through the door of the infirmary as soon as Campbell opened it. Laughing, he held her back while Cat eased through, then shut it before the little elephant could follow her inside. The latch rattled.
“It’s been Tembo-proofed, but she doesn’t believe it. She’ll be busy for a while.”
The large rectangular room was filled with small pens, most containing sleeping young animals. At the far end was a row of doors. Storage, Campbell said, and a small isolation room for those animals too sick to be in with the general population.
Morag was on her knees, holdi
ng a bottle to the mouth of a tiny gazelle with a leg bound in a splint.
“Dan, look,” Morag said. “Teddy Cavellini brought this little fellow over yesterday.”
Cat felt his sudden stillness.
“Keep away from the Cavellini boy, Morag. I don’t want him here.”
“Oh, he’s all right. Nice boy, really.” Morag didn’t look up. “I rather like him. He took the trouble to bring this little fellow. Didn’t he?” she cooed to the gazelle. “Drove thirty miles to do it. A lot of people wouldn’t have bothered, they’d just have killed him. Wouldn’t they, little thing?” she said to the gazelle. “I said I’d go and have tea at their place on Sunday.” She smiled up at Campbell. “He’s the right age for me.”
“As soon as you get back to the house, call them and cancel. I’ve told you before, keep away from the Cavellinis.”
Morag turned her head and looked up at him. She stood, her face tight. “I thought you’d be pleased. But no. Always you—never what I want. What’s the matter with you? Why do I have to keep away from every boy you don’t like? Poor old Dougie—”
“That’s your idea of a boy? Doug Maxwell’s damn near as old as I am—”
“Well, Teddy Cavellini isn’t! I’ve known him forever—”
“No, you haven’t. I’ve made bloody sure of that.”
“Why? What’s he done to you? Why are you like this with everyone—”
“Because you make some pretty rash choices. Now, cancel those plans for Sunday and keep away from the Cavellinis.”
“Why should I? You can’t make me. You don’t like anybody. Not anybody.” Morag’s voice was rising. There was a flurry of anxious movement from the penned animals. “You can’t stop me from seeing everyone. I’m not a child.”
Cat looked from one angry face to the other, unable to intervene.
“Then stop behaving like one for a change. If I say I don’t want you consorting with the Cavellinis, assume I have a good reason—”
“I didn’t consort,” Morag shouted. Behind her a young baboon grabbed the bars of his cage and shrieked. “He brought a bloody gazelle here, that’s all. You can’t control everything. I’ll do as I bloody want.”
“Morag!”
Campbell started to move toward her, and Cat put a restraining hand on his arm.
“Get away from me!” Morag shouted. “It was just tea, but I’ll fuck him if I want to. That’s what you’re afraid of, isn’t it? That I’ll fuck him? You think I’m like my mother, don’t you? Well, I am. I want to be like her.” Her face was suffused with blood. “I know all about it. You can’t beat up everybody in the world.”
She raced across the room, heels drumming on the wooden floor. She struggled with the door. Cat held Campbell’s arm with both hands, but he made no attempt to go after her. The door slammed back against the wall, shaking the building. At the end of the room, one of the storage doors bounced open with the impact.
Startled, Campbell looked toward it.
The little elephant put a triumphant head inside the room, and Cat hurried to shoo her out before she wedged herself in the doorway, then turned back into the nursery to ask Campbell what Morag meant about her mother.
Beyond him, she could see into the room whose door had just burst open.
It was an armory. Shoulder-held rocket launchers she recognized from television news programs, other weapons whose purpose she didn’t know. Ammunition. Cases of it.
Campbell slammed the door. “I don’t know what she’s learning in that bloody expensive convent school,” he said over his shoulder. “If the nuns knew what their senior girls get up to, it would wither their wimples.”
“What is all that stuff for? All those guns?”
“The farm’s pretty isolated. You never know when weapons are needed. We have licenses for them.” He snapped the padlock in place.
Questions she wanted to ask whirled through Cat’s mind. Suddenly none of her questions seemed safe. This was a complicated puzzle she didn’t understand.
But her instincts couldn’t be that wrong, she told herself. How could she be mistaken about loving him?
“What did she mean about her mother?”
“Who the hell knows what Morag means? She doesn’t know, herself, I shouldn’t think.” He went to the outside door, opened it, holding Tembo aside. “Aaron,” he shouted. One of the khaki-clad men came on the double, snapped to attention in front of him.
Campbell switched to Swahili.
Aaron’s eyes strayed to the door.
Campbell continued in Swahili.
Aaron stayed silent while Campbell blistered the air. Finally he stopped, and Aaron saluted and turned, marched away, back rigid.
Campbell came back into the infirmary, his face grim. Cat said, “He looks like an ex-military man.”
Campbell took Cat’s arm. “I’m starving,” he said in English. “Let’s get some lunch.”
“Now, these are eland,” Jock Campbell said. “Resistant, easy to raise.” He rode with the ease of a man used to long hours in the saddle.
Cat let the chestnut mare she was riding dance a little, enjoying the creak of the leather, the restrained power of the animal. She studied the herd of enormous antelope on the other side of the fence.
“Six feet at the shoulder,” Jock said. “They’ll thrive in areas where rinderpest makes it impossible to graze cattle.”
“Don’t encourage him. He’ll tell you more about rinderpest than you ever knew existed,” Campbell said.
“That wouldn’t be difficult,” Cat said. Jock had been delivering snippets of information since the inspection of the farm started just after lunch. A paramyxovirus, fiercely contagious, that caused high fever, skin lesions, diarrhea—he’d spared none of the details.
“You can’t know too much about rinderpest. It’s the curse of East Africa,” Jock said. “I’ve seen it kill the cattle in an entire section practically overnight.” He laughed. “I can be a bit of a bore about it, I suppose. Terrifies me. Damn near wiped us out more than once.”
Close-up, the farm looked as prosperous as it had from the air. Cat had already admired the thoroughbred mares, the trophies won by Campbell Farms at the course in Nairobi over the last five decades. Bloodstock that had taken years to perfect had been sold off to raise cash, but they’d been lucky enough to buy back offspring from some of their own mares, Jock said, so they had hopes of reestablishing a breeding program.
All this regained prosperity from raising eland instead of beef? Cat wondered.
Campbell looked at his watch. “I have to get back. Tom’s calling in half an hour. See you at teatime, Cat. And, Jock, please, easy on the rinderpest. She’s from Los Angeles, remember.” Laughing, he put his gelding into an easy canter.
“Ask Tom if he found out anything about Stephen N’toya,” she called after him, and he waved without turning.
Campbell took the gelding back to the stable to be unsaddled by the groom, then drove the mile or so back to the house instead of taking the forest path on foot as he usually did.
A telephone was ringing as he walked into the office. He picked it up.
“Campbell.”
“I was about to hang up,” Stephen N’toya said. “I’m at a public phone and people are lined up waiting for me to finish.”
“Sorry, I was out on the farm. Where are you?”
“Main post office in Nairobi. Everything all right?”
“Yes. The tusks we took from Reitholder have been brought in, and I’ve increased the security around the barn, but we’ve got to get rid of it, and soon. Jock’s getting jumpy. What have you found out?”
“The largest collection of ivory moved through this country in years is now on dhows riding just outside our territorial waters, waiting for the rust bucket that will take it to Macau and Hong Kong.”
“You mean it has slipped through our fingers?” Campbell said incredulously.
“What do you expect? When you grabbed Reitholder, you sent a clear s
ignal to Francis that he’d never get a chance like this again. Like the good general he is, Francis jumped on it. He moved the ivory while Reitholder was locked up in Nairobi, and while there was no one from Johannesburg to monitor exactly how many tusks he was moving. You want to guess how many were skimmed off the top? He had a meeting with Reitholder and let him believe the stuff was still held in Nairobi, so Reitholder went on a two-day binge. Let him explain that to his masters in Johannesburg.”
Campbell swore. “The dhows can be taken from the sea.”
“I’m working on it. But we can’t lose sight of the original objective, which is to take Francis and Reitholder together and break them. I’ve got some things going, and I need to discuss them with you. I’m coming up to Erukenya tonight.”
“You can’t do that. Cat Stanton is here. It’s too big a risk.”
“Then make sure she’s in bed. You should be good at that by now. Tom’s flying me up around eleven.”
“Don’t be a fool,” Campbell said. But N’toya had hung up.
Cat watched Campbell cantering back toward the stable, admiring the grace of his body moving as if part of the gelding. She felt Jock’s eyes on her and looked away quickly. Her feelings must be right there, printed on her face for all to see.
“Started to ride as soon as he could walk,” Jock said. “His mother was a fine horsewoman.” He turned his mare toward rows of cultivated trees, pausing until Cat fell in beside him. She was quiet, hoping he’d say more about Campbell’s mother, but he didn’t. They entered one of the long verdant tunnels.
“Macadamia trees. Got them from Hawaii,” Jock said. “Best macadamia nuts in the world come from Hawaii.” He stopped, pulled one of the branches toward him and examined it. Far down the row of trees, Cat caught a glimpse of deer cropping grass, and flocks of tiny green birds swooped and landed, chattering in the trees. Apparently satisfied, Jock let the branch spring back, then led the way onto a wide rocky roadway.
Around them, men went about their work, moving from barns to sheds to kraals built in the shade of the magnificent cedars that dominated the area.
“This is the working heart of the farm,” Jock said. “The barns contain feed, equipment, that kind of thing.” Cat wondered about rocket launchers but remained silent.