Golden Fox

by Wilbur Smith

  ‘Do we really need some other nastiness?’ she insisted.

  ‘There is a groundswell of hatred running against our little country. It is being cunningly orchestrated by a small vicious group of our enemies. They are brainwashing an entire generation of young people around the world to regard us as monsters who must be destroyed at all costs. Very soon these young people will be in positions of authority and command. They are the decision-makers of tomorrow. One day we could see an American naval task-force blockading our coast. We could face a military invasion of, say, Indian troops backed by Australia and Canada and all the members of the Commonwealth.’

  ‘Oh, Papa, that is far-fetched. Isn’t it?’

  ‘Still remote,’ Shasa agreed. ‘But you met influential members of the British Labour Government while we were in London. You spoke to members of the American Democratic Party – Teddy Kennedy for one. Do you remember what he told you?’

  ‘Yes, I remember,’ said Isabella, and the memory subdued her.

  ‘We must make absolutely certain that no nation – not even one of the superpowers – can ever with impunity consider armed intervention in our internal affairs.’

  ‘We already have the bomb,’ she pointed out.

  ‘Nuclear weapons are expensive, difficult to deliver and impossible to limit or control in their effects. There are other effective deterrents.’

  ‘Elsa Pignatelli is going to provide an alternative? Why should she help us?’

  ‘Signora Pignatelli is a sympathizer. She is a member of the Italian South Africa Society. She knows and understands Africa. She is a huntress and she has other ties with this continent. Her father was on General de Bono’s staff when he invaded Abyssinia in 1935. Her husband fought in the Western Desert under Rommel and was captured at Benghazi. He spent three years as a POW in South Africa and developed an affection for the country that lasted his lifetime. He transmitted those feelings to her. She visits Africa regularly, either to hunt or to do business. She understands the problems we face and rejects, as we do, the simplistic solutions which the rest of the world would try to force upon us. This meeting was arranged at her suggestion.’

  Isabella wanted to ask questions, but she knew it was wiser to let him come to it in his own time.

  She sat silently staring at the rutted track, barely noticing the herd of impala antelope that crossed ahead of the vehicle in a series of lithe bounds. They were lovely but insubstantial as blown smoke through the forest.

  ‘Only four people know about this meeting, Bella. Signora Pignatelli has not trusted her own staff. Apart from Garry and I, only the prime minister is aware of the subject of our meeting.’

  Isabella suppressed that sickening sense of treachery that lay at the pit of her stomach. She wanted to warn him not to tell, then she thought of Nicky and she sat quietly.

  ‘Five years ago, NATO had contracted with two chemical companies in Western Europe to develop a nerve gas that could be used under battlefield conditions. Last autumn the contracts were cancelled, mostly due to pressure from the socialist governments of Scandinavia and Holland. However, much work had already been done on the development of these weapons, and one company had produced and tested a gas that met all the original criteria.’

  ‘That company was Pignatelli Chemicals?’ Isabella asked. When Shasa nodded, she went on: ‘What were the criteria that NATO laid down?’

  ‘The weapons has to be safe to store and transport. Pignatelli developed two separate substances, each on its own absolutely inert and harmless. They can be transported in bulk tankers by road or by rail without any risk whatsoever. But when they combine they form a heavier-than-air gas which is approximately eleven times more toxic than the cyanide gas used in American execution-chambers.’

  Shasa pulled off the track and parked the truck on the verge beneath the outspread branches of a flowering kigelia tree, that lovely sausage tree with its gigantic pods the size and shape of polonies.

  He lifted Sean’s double-barrelled .577 Gibbs rifle off the rack behind the driver’s seat and loaded it with two fat brass cartridges from the bandolier.

  ‘Let’s go down to the hippo pool,’ he suggested, and Isabella followed him down the footpath to the deep green pool of the river. The rifle was insurance, for the hippo has killed more human beings in Africa than all the snakes and lions and buffalo combined.

  Yet they did not look dangerous as they wallowed under the bank, only their backs exposed like great black river-boulders. Then the bull opened his jaws in a pink and cavernous gape and showed the curved ivory tusks that could scythe the papyrus reeds or guillotine a full-grown oxen into separate pieces. He turned his piggy eyes upon them and regarded them with a bloodshot malevolence.

  They sat side by side on a dead log, and Shasa propped the rifle close at hand. After a moment, the bull hippo closed his jaws and sank back below the surface so that only his eyes and the tip of his small round ears were exposed. Shasa stared back at him as balefully.

  ‘Eleven times more toxic than cyanide gas,’ he repeated. ‘It is terrifying stuff.’

  ‘Then, why, Pater? It is heinous. Why do it?’

  He shrugged. ‘To protect ourselves from hatred.’ He picked up a pebble from between his feet and lobbed it at the hippo. The pebble splashed twenty feet short, but the bull submerged completely. Shasa went on speaking.

  ‘The gas is code-named Cyndex 25 and it has other desirable properties apart from its ability to deal swift and silent death.’

  ‘How heartening,’ Isabella murmured. ‘What are they?’

  ‘It is odourless. There is no warning; death comes unannounced. However, it can be given a signature, any signature one chooses – the smell of ripe apples, or jasmine, or even Chanel Number Five if you so wish.’

  ‘That’s macabre, Pater. Not your usual style.’

  He did not respond to the rebuke. ‘It is also highly unstable. Decay time is a mere three hours after mixing. Thereafter, it is absolutely harmless. This is extremely advantageous. You can gas an opposing army, and then move your own troops in to occupy the area three hours later.’

  ‘Charming,’ Isabella whispered. ‘I have no doubt that the political possibilities have not entirely escaped the prime minister. Say, if a million blacks went on the rampage.’

  Shasa sighed. ‘It doesn’t bear thinking of.’

  ‘But you have thought of it, haven’t you, Pater?’ He was silent, acquiescing. ‘You say that NATO cancelled the contracts. Only Pignatelli Chemicals are manufacturing this Cyndex 25?’

  ‘No. They manufactured and tested the gas. It was the twenty-fifth prototype, hence the numerical designation. But when the NATO contract was cancelled they discontinued production and allowed the original stocks to degenerate.’

  Isabella glanced sideways at him. ‘Degenerate?’

  ‘As I said before, it is a highly unstable product. It has a very short storage-life – six months. New stocks have to be constantly manufactured to replace those that deteriorate.’

  ‘Lucrative for Capricorn Chemicals,’ Isabella pointed out, but Shasa ignored the remark.

  ‘Signora Pignatelli will be able to supply us with blueprints for the plant; it is a complicated manufacturing procedure with very delicate manufacturing tolerances.’

  ‘When will you begin to manufacture?’ Isabella asked, and Shasa chuckled.

  ‘Hold your horses, young lady. It isn’t even certain that Signora Pignatelli can be persuaded to sell us the blueprints and the formula. That is what we are going to chat about now.’ He glanced at his wristwatch. ‘Almost lunchtime and we are still half an hour from camp.’

  Sean called up on the camp radio on the ‘unmanned airfield’ frequency when he was still forty minutes out. So they were waiting on the airstrip when the Beechcraft slanted in towards the field that evening.

  Shading his eyes against the low-lying sun, Shasa made out the head of Sean’s passenger through the windscreen as she sat in the right-hand seat. He felt an ele
ctric tickle down the back of his neck that was more than simple curiosity. It was extraordinary that he and Elsa Pignatelli had never met, for they came from the same world – that exclusive world of wealth and rank and privilege that knew no national boundaries. They had literally dozens of mutual friends and acquaintances, and he was aware that on several occasions over the years they had been within a few minutes or kilometres of meeting each other. Shasa had been on friendly terms with her husband.

  The two men had skied in the same party one afternoon at Klosters and had run the notorious Wang together, that terrible ice wall that hangs above the village. At the time, Bruno Pignatelli had apologized for his wife’s absence but explained that she had flown to Rome that weekend to visit her elderly mother. She and Shasa must have passed each other at Zurich airport, travelling in different directions.

  On another occasion, during Shasa’s tenure at the embassy in London, they were invited separately to a dinner at the Swiss embassy. He learnt afterwards that they would have been table companions, but Elsa Pignatelli had been obliged to cancel for family reasons only days before the engagement.

  Since then, Shasa had heard Elsa Pignatelli’s name mentioned and discussed in detail at many a society dinner or weekend house-party, often spitefully and vindictively but often again with admiration and open envy. He had seen her photograph in the glossy women’s fashion magazines to which Centaine and Isabella subscribed religiously. Courtney Industries had dealt with Pignatelli interests for twenty years to the benefit and satisfaction of both parties. So in the weeks since this meeting had been arranged Shasa had studied all the considerable information about her contained in the file that Special Services had provided.

  Sean taxied the Beechcraft to the hard stand of compacted red clay and switched off the engines, and Elsa Pignatelli stepped out on to the wing then jumped down to earth. She moved with the supple grace of a young gymnast, and yet she was tall and long-limbed. Shasa knew she had modelled for Yves St-Laurent before she married Bruno Pignatelli.

  Although he felt that he knew her, Shasa was unprepared for his own reaction to her physical presence. The electric tickle spread from his neck to the back of his arms, and he felt the hair there come erect as she looking around. Her dark gaze there swept over Garry and Isabella and the servants and fastened directly on him.

  Her hair was very dark, with an almost bluish gloss in the late-afternoon sunlight. It was drawn back severely and secured behind her head in a neat tight coil. This emphasized her fine bone structure, the high, slightly domed forehead and vaulted cheekbones. And yet her features were full and feminine. Her lips looked soft, and her mouth was wide.

  ‘Shasa Courtney,’ she said his name as she came towards him with a free hip-swinging model’s gait. She smiled, and he saw that her jaw-line was clean. He knew that next year in July she would celebrate her forty-third year. However, her skin was flawless and lovingly cared for under light natural-toned make up.

  ‘Signora Pignatelli.’ He took her hand. It was cool and firm with long narrow bones. Her grip was swift, but strong, the kind of hands that could hold a racket-handle or the reins of a thoroughbred.

  He regretted that the contact had been so fleeting, but her eyes were compensation. They were starred with rays of brown and gold that radiated from the central pupil. They were bright intelligent eyes, and the lashes were long and black and curled.

  ‘It is my regret that we have not met sooner,’ Shasa said in awkward Italian, and she smiled and answered in faultless English, tinged with only an intriguing hint of an accent.

  ‘Oh, but we have.’ Her teeth were startlingly white, but one incisor was just crooked enough to suggest that they were her own and not some orthodontist’s artifice.

  ‘Where?’ Shasa was surprised.

  ‘Windsor Park. The Guard’s Polo Club.’ She was amused by his confusion. ‘You were playing number two for the Duke of Edinburgh’s invitation team.’

  ‘My goodness, that was ten years ago.’

  ‘Eleven,’ she said. ‘We were never introduced, but we met for approximately three seconds at the buffet after the match. You offered me a smoked-salmon sandwich.’

  ‘You have a marvellous memory,’ he admitted defeat. ‘Did you accept the sandwich?’

  ‘How ungallant of you not to remember,’ she teased, then turned to the others. ‘You must be Garrick Courtney?’ And Shasa hastened to introduce first Garry and then Isabella.

  The servants were loading Signora Pignatelli’s luggage into one of the trucks. It was heavy leather luggage with brass-bound corners, and there was plenty of it. Only people who flew in their own jets and were not subjected to the caprice of the commercial airlines’ check-in could afford that type and quantity of luggage. There were four long gun-cases amongst it.

  ‘You’ll ride with me, signora,’ Sean tossed back his hair and called to her as he stepped up into the high driver’s seat of his hunting vehicle. She ignored the suggestion and fell in naturally beside Shasa as he crossed to the second truck.

  Isabella started to follow them, but Garry caught her hand and steered her towards the seat in Sean’s truck which Elsa had refused.

  ‘Come on, Bella. Wise up!’ Garry murmured. ‘Three’s a crowd.’

  Isabella started. It hadn’t occurred to her – not Pater and the widow! Then she leant briefly against Garry’s arm.

  ‘I didn’t realize that you included match-making amongst your many talents.’

  At sundowner time, Isaac brought Elsa Pignatelli a seething tulip-shaped glass of Dom Pérignon from a freshly opened bottle, without being ordered to do so. He knew all the foibles of each of their regular clients.

  While they sat in the half-circle round the camp-fire, keeping above the drift of blue smoke, Sean called his two trackers to the evening conference. This ritual was mainly for the benefit of the client, for everything of importance had been discussed previously and well out of earshot. However, the average client, and especially the first-timers, were impressed by the flow of Swahili between Sean and his trackers. In addition, being included in the ritual gave them a sense of being part of the hunt, and not merely excess baggage.

  The trackers, both of whom had been with Sean since he had been an apprentice in Kenya at the time of the Mau Mau rebellion, were natural actors and hammed it up splendidly. They squatted respectfully on either side of Sean’s camp-chair and called him Bwana Mkubwa, or Big Chief. They mimed the animals they were discussing and drew their spoor in the dust between their feet, and rolled their eyes and shook their heads, then hawked and spat in the fire for emphasis.

  They were an oddly assorted pair. One was a tall taciturn Samburu with shaven head and classical Nilotic features, Maria Theresa silver dollars set in the enlarged lobes of his ears. The other was a gnome with a puckish face and bright beady eyes.

  Matatu was one of the few surviving members of the forest Ndorobo tribe, a people famous for their magical bushcraft, adepts of forest lore who had unfortunately been unable to withstand the impact of progress which had destroyed their forests and contaminated them with all civilization’s ailments and diseases, from tuberculosis to alcoholism and venereal disease.

  Sean had named him Matatu, or Number Three, because his tribal name was not pronounceable and because he was the third tracker whom Sean had hired. The other two had not lasted longer than a week each. Matatu had been with Sean more than half Sean’s lifetime.

  Matatu said, ‘Ngwi,’ and rolled his eyes as he drew the perfect imprint of a leopard’s spoor in the dust. Sean questioned him in sonorous Swahili, to which Matatu replied in his piping lyrical voice and at the end spat explosively in the fire. Sean turned to Elsa Pignatelli to translate.

  ‘“A week ago I hanged five leopard baits, two on the river and the others along the rim overlooking the National Park.”’

  Elsa nodded; she knew the area well from her previous trips.

  ‘“We had one strike a few days ago. An old tabby that came out of th
e park. She only fed once, and then left it, and we tracked her back into the park. Since then it has been quiet.”’

  Sean turned back and asked Matatu another question. The little Ndorobo answered at length, obviously enjoying the attention.

  ‘Matatu checked the baits today, while I was fetching you from Salisbury. You are in luck, signora. We have had another strike on one of the river baits. Matatu says it’s a good tom. He ate well last night. The impala bait has been hanging for a week, and even with the cool weather it has ripened nicely. If he feeds again tonight, then we’ll sit up for him tomorrow evening.’

  ‘Si,’ Elsa nodded. ‘That’s good.’

  ‘So tomorrow morning we can check the bait and shoot a few more impala, just in case we need them. Then after lunch we’ll have an hour’s lie-down and then we’ll go into the hide around three o’clock tomorrow afternoon.’

  ‘You check the bait. You shoot the impala,’ Elsa told him. ‘Tomorrow morning I have a meeting to attend.’ She smiled at Shasa in the chair beside her. ‘We have much to discuss.’

  The discussion took up most of the morning. Garry had made the arrangements with deceptive simplicity. He had sent Isabella off in the Toyota with Sean to check the leopard baits, and had then ordered Isaac and his staff to set up three chairs and a folding table under a msasa tree at the edge of the glade, but well away from the camp itself.

  Under the msasa tree, the three of them, Garry, Shasa and Elsa Pignatelli, were as secure from eavesdropping as at any spot on the planet. It was bizarre, Shasa thought, to be discussing such a terrifying subject in such tranquil and beautiful surroundings.

  On the other hand, the negotiations did not follow the course that either Shasa or Garry had hoped for. Although Elsa Pignatelli had with her a handsome pigskin attaché case, it remained locked and unopened while they delicately circled around the central issue.

  Almost immediately it became obvious that Elsa had not yet made up her mind to proceed with the Cyndex 25 enterprise. On the contrary, she was obviously having serious doubts and misgivings, and would need a great deal of persuasion.