Wilbur Smith - B4 The Leopard Hunts In Darkness

by B4 The Leopard Hunts In Darkness(Lit)

  Watching Shadrach lead the huge bull away, there was no mistaking that lordly arrogance now, master and beast were noble in their alliance. Not so the minister of education, still clinging, catlike, to his perch in the jacaranda. Craig went to add his entreaties to those of his bodyguards, who were encouraging him to descend to earth once more.

  Peter Fungabera was the last of the official party to leave. He accompanied Craig on a tour of the homestead, sniffing appreciatively the sweet odour of the golden thatching grass that already covered half the roof area.

  "My grandfather replaced the original thatch with corrugated asbestos during the war," Craig explained. "Your RPG-7 rocket shells were hot little darlings."

  "Yes," Peter agreed evenly. "We started many a good bonfire with them."

  "To tell the truth, I am grateful for the chance to restore the building. Thatch is cooler and more picturesque, and both the wiring and plumbing needed replacing-"

  "I

  must congratulate you on what you have ac com pushed in such a short time. You will soon be living in the grand manner that your ancestors have always enjoyed since they first seized this land." Craig looked at him sharply, searching for malice, but Peter's smile was as charming and easy as always.

  "All these improvements add vastly to the value of the property," Craig pointed out. "And you own a goodly share of them."

  "Of course," Peter laid a hand placatingly on Craig's forearm. "And you still have much work ahead of you. The development of Zambezi Waters, when will you begin on that?"

  "I am almost ready to do so as soon as the rest of the stock arrives, and I have Sally-Anne to assist with the details."

  "Ah," said Peter. "Then you can begin immediately.

  Sally-Anne Jay flew into Harare airport yesterday morning." Craig felt a tingle of rising pleasure and anticipation.

  "I'll go into town this evening to phone her." Peter Fungabera clucked with annoyance. "Have they not installed your telephone yet? I'll see you have it tomorrow. In the me and me you can patch through on my radio The telephone linesman arrived before noon the fbllow ing day, and Sally Anne Cessna buzzed in from the east an hour later.

  Craig had a smudge pot of old engine oil and rags burning to mark the disused airstrip and give her the wind direction, anJ she touched down and taxied to where he had parked the Land-Rover.

  When she jumped down from the cab mi Craig found he had forgotten the alert, quick way she moved, and the shape of her legs in tight, fitting blue denim. Her smile was of genuine pleasure and her handshake firm and warm. She was wearing nothing beneath the cotton shirt. She noticed his eyes flicker down and then guiltily up again, but she showed no resentment.

  "What a lovely ranch, from the air," she said.

  "Let me show you," he offered, and she dropped her bag on the back seat of the Land-Rover and swung her leg over the door likea boy.

  It was late afternoon when they got back to the homestead.

  "Kapa-lola has prepared a room for you, and Joseph has cooked his number, one dinner. We have the generator running at last, so there are lights and the hot-water donkey has been boiling all day, so there is a hot bath or I could drive you in to a motel in town?"

  "Let's save gas," she accepted with a smile.

  She came out on the veranda with a towel wrapped likea turban round her damp hair, flopped down in the chair beside him and put her feet up on the half-wall.

  "God, that was glorious." She smelled of soap and she was still pink and glowing from the bath.

  "How do you like your whisky?"

  "Right up and lots of ice." She sipped and sighed, and they watched the sunset. It was one of those raging red African skies that placed ffiem and the world in thrall; to speak during it would have been blasphemous. They watched the sun go in silence, and then Craig leaned across and handed her a thin sheaf of papers.

  at is this?" She was curious.

  "Part-payment for your services as consultant and visiting: lecturer at Zambezi Waters." Craig switched on the light above her chair.

  She read slowly, going over each sheet three or four times, and then she sat with the sheaf of papers clutched protectively in her lap and stared out into the night.

  "It's only a rough idea, just the first few pages. I have suggested the photographs that should face each text," Craig broke the silence awkwardly. "Of course, I've only a few. I am certain you have hundreds of others. I seen thought we would aim at two hundred and fifty pages, with the same number of your photographs all colour, of course." She turned her head slowly towards him. "You were afraid?" she asked. "Damn you, Craig Mellow now I am scared silly." He saw that there were tears in her eyes again. "This is so-" she searched for a word, and gave up. "If I put my photographs next to this, they will seem I don't know puny, I guess, unworthy of the deep love you express so eloquently for this land." He shook his head, denying it. She dropped her eyes to the writing and read it again.

  "Are you sure, Craig, are you sure you want to do this book with me?"

  "Yes very much indeed."

  "Thank you," she said simply, and in that moment Craig knew at last, for sure, that they would be lovers. Not now, not tonight, it was still too soon but one day they would take each other. He sensed that she knew that too, for though after that they spoke very little, her cheeks darkened under her tan with shy young blood whenever he looked across at her, and she could not meet his eyes.

  After dinner Joseph served coffee on the veranda, and when he left Craig switched out the lights and in darkness they watched the moon rise over the tops of the msasa trees that lined the hills acIbss the valley.

  When at last she, itse to go to her bed, she moved slowly and lingered unnecessarily. She stood in front of him, the top of her head reaching to his chin, and once again said softly, "Thank you," tilted her head back, and went up on tiptoe to brush his cheek with soft lips.

  But he knew she was not yet ready, and he made no effort to hold her.

  y the time the last shipment of cattle arrived, the second homestead at Queen's Lynn five miles away was ready for occupation and Craig's newly hired white overseer moved in with his family. He was a burly, slow-speaking man who, despite his Afrikaner blood, had been born and lived in the country all his life. He spoke Sindebele as well as Craig did, understood and respected the blacks and in turn was liked and respected by them.

  But best of all, he knew and loved cattle, like the true African he was.

  With Hans Groenewald on the estate, Craig was able to concentrate on developing Zambezi Waters for tourism.

  He chose a young architect who had designed the lodges on some of the most luxurious private game ranches in southern Africa, and had him fly up from Johannesburg.

  The three of them, Craig, Sally-Anne and the architect, camped for a week on Zambezi Waters, and walked both banks of the Chizarira river, examining every inch of the terrain, choosing the sites of five guest-lodges, and the service complex which would support them. At Peter Fungabera's orders they were guarded by a squad of Third Brigade troopers under the command of Captain Timon Nbebi.

  Craig's first impressions of this officer were confirmed as arne to know him better. He was a serious, scholarly he c young man, who spent all his leisure studying a correspondence course in political economics from the University of ether with London. He spoke English and Sindebele, tog his native Shana, and he and Craig and Sally-Anne held long conversations at night over the camp-fire, trying to arrive at some solution of the tribal enmities that were racking the country. Timon Nbebi's views were surprisingly moderate for an officer in the elite Shana brigade, and he seemed genuinely to desire a working accommodation between the tribes.

  "Mr. Mellow," he said, "can we afford to live in a land divided by hatred? When I look to Northern Ireland or the Lebanon and see the fruits of tribal strife, I become afraid."

  "But you are a Shana, Timon," Craig pointed out gently.

  "Your allegiance surely lies with your own tribe." Tes," Timon a
greed. "But first I am a patriot. I cannot ensure peace for my children with an AK 47 rifle. I cannot become a proud Shana by murdering all the Matabele. I These discussions could have no conclusion, but were made more poignant by the very necessity of an armed bodyguard even in this remote and seemingly peaceful area. The constant presence of armed men began to irk both Craig and Sally-Anne, and one evening towards the end of their stay at Zambezi Waters, they slipped their guards.

  They were truly at ease with each other at last, able to share a friendly silence, or to talk for an hour without pause. They had begun to touch each other, still brief, seemingly casual contacts of which they were both, however, intensely aware. She might reach out and cover the back of his hand with hers to emphasize a point, or brush against him as they pored together over the architect's rough sketches of the lodges. Though she was certainly more agile than he was, Craig would take her elbow to help her jump across a rock-pool in the river or lean over her to point out a woodpecker's nest or a wild beehive in the treetops This day, alone at last, they found a clay anthill which rose above the levellbf the surrounding ebony and overlooked a rhino midden. It was a good stand from which to observe and photograph. Seated on it, they waited for a visit from one of the grotesque prehistoric monsters. They talked in whispers, heads close together, but this time not quite touching.

  Suddenly Craig glanced down into the thick bush below them and froze. "Don't move," he whispered urgently. "Sit very still!"

  Slowly she turned her head to follow his gaze, and he heard her little gasp of shock.

  IWho are they?" she husked, but Craig did not reply.

  There were two that he could see, for only their eyes were visible. They had come as silently as leopards, blending into the undergrowth with the skill of men who had lived all their lives in hiding.

  "So, Kuphela," one of them spoke at last, his voice low but deadly. "You bring the Mashona. killer dogs to this place to hunt us."

  "That is not so, Comrade Lookout," Craig answered him in a hoarse whisper. "They were sent by the government to protect me."

  "You were our friend you did not need protection from US."

  "The government does not know that." Craig tried to put a world of persuasion into his whisper. "Nobody knows that we have met. Nobody knows that you are here. That I swear on my life."

  "Your life it may well be" Comrade Lookout agreed.

  "Tell me quickly why you are here, if not to betray us."

  "I have bought this land. That other white man in our party is a builder of homes. I wish to make a reserve here for tourists to visit. Like Wankie Park." They understood that. The famous Wankie National Park was also in Matabeleland, and for minutes the two guerrillas whispered together and then looked up at Craig again.

  "What will become of us? "Comrade Lookout demanded.

  "When you have built your houses?" ! e are friends," Craig reminded him. "There is room for you here. I will help you with food and money, and in return you will protect my animals and my buildings. You will secretly watch over the visitors who come here, and there will be no more talk of hostages. Is that an agreement between friends?" "How much is our friendship worth to you, Kuphela7

  "Five hundred dollars every month."

  "A thousand, "Comrade Lookout counter, offered

  "Good friends should not argue over mere money," Craig agreed. "I have only six hundred dollars now, but the rest I will leave buried beneath the wild fig tree where we are camped."

  "We will find it," Comrade Lookout assured him. "And every month we will meet either here or there." Lookout pointed out two rendezvous, both prominent hillocks well distanced from the river, their peaks only bluish silhouettes on the horizon. "The signal of a meeting will be a small fire of green leaves, or three rifle shots evenly spaced."

  "It is agreed "Now, Kuphela, leave the money in that ant, bear hole at your feet and take your woman back to camp." Sally-Anne stayed very close beside him on the return, even taking his arm for reassurance every few hundred yards and looking back fearfully over her shoulder.

  "My God, Craig, those were real shufta, proper dyed-in the-wool guerrillas. Why did they let us go?"

  "The best reason in the world money." Craig's chuckle was a little hoarse and breathless even in his own ears, and the adrenalin still buzzed in his blood. "For a miserly thousand dollars a month, I have just hired myself the toughest bunch of bodyguards and gamekeepers on the market. Pretty good bargAn." "You're doing a deat with them?" Sally-Anne demanded.

  "Isn't that dangerous? It's treason or something, surely?" "Probably, we just have to make sure that nobody finds out about it, won't we?" he architect turned out to be another bargain. His designs were superb; the lodges would be built of natural stone, indigenous timber and thatch. They would blend unobtrusively into the chosen sites along the river. Sally' Anne worked with him on the interior layouts and the furnishings, and introduced charming little touches of her own.

  During the next few months, Sally-Anne's work with the World Wildlife Trust took her away for long periods at a time, but on her travels she recruited the staff that they would need for Zambezi Waters.

  irstly, she seduced a Swiss-trained chef away from one of the big hotel chains. Then she chose five young safari guides, all of them African-born, with a deep knowledge and love of the land and its wildlife and, most importantly, with the ability to convey that knowledge and love to others.

  Then she turned her attention to the design of the advertising brochures, using her own photographs and Craig's text. "A kind of dress rehearsal for our book," she pointed out when she telephoned him from Johannesburg, and Craig realized for the first time just what he had taken on in agreeing to work with her. She was a perfectionist. It was either right or it wasn't, and to get it right she would go to any lengths, and force him and the printers to do the same.

  The result was a miniature masterpiece in which colour was carefully coordinated and even the layout of blocks of rint balanced her illustrations. She sent out cop pies to all the African travel specialists around the world, from Tokyo to Copen aagen.

  "We have to set an opening date," she told Craig, "and make sure that our first guests are newsworthy. You'll have to offer them a freebie, I'm afraid."

  "You aren't thinking of a pop star?" Craig grinned, and she shuddered.

  J5

  "I telephoned Daddy at the Embassy in London. He may be able to get Prince Andrew but I'll admit it's a big may be". Henry Pickering knows Jane Fonda-"

  "My God, I never realized what an up-market broad you are."

  "And while we are on the subject of celebrities, I think I can get a best-selling novelist who makes bad jokes and will probably drink more whisky than he is worth!" When Craig was ready to commence actual construction on Zambezi Waters, he complained to Peter Fungabera about the difficulty of finding labourers in the deep bush.

  Peter replied, "Don't worry, I'll fix that." And five days later, a convoy of army trucks arrived carrying two hundred detainees from the rehabilitation centres.

  "Slave labour, "Sally-Anne told Craig with distaste.

  However, the access road to the Chizarira river was completed in just ten days, and Craig could telephone Sally-Anne in Harare and tell her, "I think we can confidently set the opening date for July lst." "That's marvelous, Craig."

  "When can you come, up again? I haven't seen you for almost a month."

  "It's only three weeks," she denied.

  "I have done another twenty pages on our book," he offered as bait. "We must go over it together soon."

  "Send them to me."

  "Come and get them." A "Okay," she capitulated. "Next week, Wednesday. Where will you be, King's Lynn or Zambezi Waters?"

  "Zambezi Waters. The electricians and plumbers are finishing up. I want to check it out." "I'll fly up." She landed on the open ground beside the river where Craig's labour gangs had surfaced a strip with gravel to make an all-weather landing ground and had even rigged a proper windsock for
her arrival.

  oe The instant she jumped down from the cockpit Craig could see that she was furiously angry.

  "What is it?"

  "You've lost two of your rhino." She strode towards him.

  "I spotted the carcasses from the air."