Wilbur Smith's Smashing Thrillers

by Wilbur Smith

  Daniel came to the first of the road-blocks. A hundred yards from the barrier Daniel slowed down to a crawl and kept both hands on the wheel. The police were jumpy and trigger-happy.

  As he stopped, a uniformed constable wearing mirrored sunglasses thrust the barrel of a sub-machinegun through the window and greeted him arrogantly. “Hello, my friend.” His finger was on the trigger and the muzzle was pointed at Daniel’s belly. “Get out!”

  “Do you smoke?” Daniel asked. As he stepped down into the road he produced a packet of Chesterfield cigarettes and thrust it into the constable’s hand. The constable withdrew the barrel of the machine pistol while he checked that the packet was unopened. Then he grinned and Daniel relaxed slightly.

  At that moment another vehicle drew up behind Daniel’s Landcruiser. It was a truck owned by one of the hunting safari companies. The back was piled with camp stores and equipment, and the gunbearers and trackers sat on top of the load. At the driving-wheel was the professional hunter, bearded, tanned and weatherbeaten. Beside him his client seemed urbane and effete despite his new safari jacket and the zebra skin hatband around his stetson.

  “Daniel!” The hunter leaned out of the side window. “Daniel Armstrong,” he shouted happily.

  Then Daniel remembered him. They had met briefly three years previously while Daniel was filming the documentary on hunting safaris in Africa, Man is the Hunter. For a moment he couldn’t remember the fellow’s name, but they had shared a bottle of Haig at a campfire in the Luangwa valley. Daniel remembered him as a blow-hard, with a reputation more as a hard drinker than a hard hunter. He had consumed more than his fair share of the Haig, Daniel recalled. Stoffel. The name came back to him with relief. He needed an ally and a protector now. The hunters of the safari companies were a class of minor aristocracy in the deep bush.

  “Stoffel van der Merwe,” he cried.

  Stoffel climbed down from the truck, big and beefy and grinning. Like most professional hunters in Zambia, he was an Afrikaner from South Africa. “Hell, man, it’s good to see you again.” He covered Daniel’s hand with a hairy paw. “They giving you any uphill here?”

  “Well…” Daniel let it hang there, and Stoffel rounded on the police constable.

  “Hey, Juno, this man is my friend. You treat him good, you hear me?”

  The constable laughed agreement. It always amazed Daniel to watch how well Afrikaners and blacks got along on a personal level once politics were left out of it; perhaps it was because they were all of them Africans and understood each other. They had been living together for almost three hundred years, Daniel smiled to himself; by this time they damned well should. “You want your meat, don’t you?” Stoffel went on to tease the constable. “You give Doctor Armstrong here a hard time and no meat for you.”

  The hunters had their regular routes to and from the hunting concessions in the remote bush, and they knew the guards manning the road-blocks by name. Between them they had set up a regular tariff of bonsela. “Hey!” Stoffel turned to shout at his trackers on top of the truck. “Give Juno here a leg of fat buffalo. Look how skinny He’s getting. We have to feed him up a bit.”

  From under the tarpaulin cover they dragged out a haunch of buffalo, still in its thick black skin, dusty and buzzing with bluebottle flies. The hunters had access to unlimited supplies of game meat, legally hunted and shot by their clients. “These poor bastards are starved for protein,” Stoffel explained to his client as the American sportsman came to join them. “For a leg of buffalo he would sell you his wife; for two he would sell you his soul; for three he would probably sell you the whole bloody country. And any one of those. would be a bad bargain!” He roared with laughter and introduced his client to Daniel. “This is Steve Conrack from California.”

  “I know you, of course,” the American interjected. “Great honour to meet you, Doctor Armstrong. I always watch your stuff on TV. Just by chance I’ve got a copy of your book with me. I’d love an autograph for my kids back home. They’re great fans of yours.”

  Inwardly Daniel winced at the price of fame but when the client returned from the truck with a copy of one of his earlier books, he signed the fly-leaf.

  “Where are you headed?” Stoffel asked. “Lusaka? Let me go ahead and run interference for you, otherwise anything could happen. It could take you a week or all eternity to get there.”

  The police guard, still grinning, lifted the barrier and saluted them as they drove through. From there onwards their progress was a royal procession, with lumps of raw meat appearing regularly from under the tarpaulin. “Roses, roses all the way, and buffalo steaks strewn in our path like mad.” Daniel grinned to himself and put his foot down to keep up with the safari truck. They were driving through the fertile plains that were irrigated from the Kafue River. This was an area of sugar and maize and tobacco production and the farms were owned almost entirely by white Zambians. Prior to independence, the farmers had vied with each other to beautify their properties.

  From the main road the white-painted homesteads had glistened, set like pearls in the green and lovingly tended home paddocks. The fences had been meticulously maintained and sleek cattle had grazed within view of the road.

  These days the dilapidated appearance of the properties was a deliberate attempt by the owners to divert envious and acquisitive eyes. If you look too good, one of them had explained to Daniel, they’re going to take it away from you. He didn’t have to explain who they were. The golden rule in this country is: if you’ve got it, for God’s sake don’t flaunt it. The white farmers lived as a tiny separate tribe in their own little enclave. Rather like their pioneering ancestors, they made their own soap and other commodities which were simply unobtainable from the bare shelves of the local trading stores.

  They lived mostly on the products of their own lands, yet they enjoyed a reasonably good life with their golf clubs and polo clubs and theatrical societies.

  They sent their children to school and university in South Africa with the small amounts of fiercely rationed foreign exchange they were granted; they kept their heads down below the parapet and took care not to draw attention to themselves.

  Even the powers that presided in the government halls in Lusaka realised that without them the precarious economy would collapse completely. The maize and sugar they produced kept the rest of the population from true starvation and their tobacco crops eked out the tiny dribble of foreign exchange brought in by the ruined copper mines.

  “Where could we go?” Daniel’s informant put the rhetorical question. “If we leave here, we go in our underclothes. They won’t let us take a penny or a stick with us. We’ve just got to make the best of it.”

  As the two-vehicle convoy approached the capital town of Lusaka, Daniel was given a demonstration of one of the many distressing phenomena of the new Africa, the mass movement of rural populations to the urban centres. Daniel smelt the slum odour as they passed the outskirts of the town. It was a miasma of smoke from the cooking-fires, the stench of pit latrines and festering garbage heaps, of sour illicit beer brewing in open drums, and human bodies without running water or rivers in which to bathe. It was the smell of disease and starvation and poverty and ignorance, the ripe new smell of Africa.

  Daniel stood Stoffel and his client a drink in the bar of the Ridgeway Hotel, then excused himself and went to the reception desk to check in. He was given a room overlooking the swimming-pool, and went to shower away the grime and exhaustion of the past twenty-four hours. Then he reached for the telephone, and called the British High Commission. He caught the telephonist there before the close of the day’s business.

  “May I speak to Mr. Michael Hargreave, please?” He held his breath.

  Mike Hargreave had still been in Lusaka two years previously, but he could have been transferred anywhere in the world by now.

  “I’m putting you through to Mr. Hargreave,” the girl replied after a few moments, and Daniel let his breath out.

  “Michael Harg
reave speaking.”

  “Mike, it’s Danny Armstrong.”

  “Good Lord, Danny, where are you?”

  “Here in Lusaka.”

  “Welcome back to fairyland. How are you?”

  “Mike, can I see you? I need another favour.”

  “Why don’t you come to dinner tonight? Wendy will be charmed.”

  Michael had one of the diplomatic residences on Nabs Hill, within walking distance of Government House. As with every other house in the street it was fortified like the Maze Prison. The ten-foot perimeter walls were topped with rolled barbed wire and two malondo, night watchmen, guarded the gate.

  Michael Hargreave quieted his pair of Rortweiler guard dogs, and greeted Daniel enthusiastically.

  “You aren’t taking chances, Mike.” Daniel gestured towards the security precautions and Michael grimaced.

  “On this street alone we average one break-in a night, despite the wire and dogs.”

  He led Daniel into the house and Wendy came to kiss him. Wendy was a rosebud, with soft blonde hair and one of those incredible English complexions.

  “I had forgotten that you are even more handsome in the flesh than on television.” She smiled at him.

  Michael Hargreave resembled an Oxford don more than a spook, but he was indeed an MI6 man. He and Daniel had first met in Rhodesia towards the end of the war. At the time Daniel had been sick and dispirited with what he had come to realize was not only a lost cause, but an unjust one.

  The breaking point had come when Daniel led a column of the Selous Scouts into the neighbouring state of Mozambique. The target was a guerrilla camp. Rhodesian intelligence had told them it was a training camp for ZANLA recruits, but when they hit the cluster of huts they found mostly old men and women and children. There had been almost five hundred of these unfortunate people. They had left none of them alive.

  On the return match Daniel had found himself weeping uncontrollably as he staggered along in the darkness. Years of ever-present danger and endless call-up for active service had worn his nerves thin and brittle. Only much later Daniel realised that he had suffered a breakdown, but at that critical moment he was approached by the clandestine Alpha Group.

  The war had dragged on for so many years that a small group of police and army officers had come to realize the facility of it all. Even more they had realised that they were on the side, not of the angels, but of the devil himself.

  They decided that they must strive for an end to the bitter civil war, that they must force the white supremacist Smith government to accept a truce negotiated by Great Britain, and thereafter agree to a democratic and free election and the process of national reconciliation between the races. All the members of the Alpha Group were men whom Daniel admired; many were senior officers and most of them had been decorated for their courage and leadership. Daniel was drawn irresistibly to them.

  Michael Hargreave had been the head of station for British intelligence in Rhodesia. They had first met once Daniel had committed himself to the Alpha Group. They had worked together closely and Daniel had played a minor role in the process that finally led to the end of those dreadful sufferings and excesses, and that culminated in the Lancaster House Agreement.

  Daniel had not been in Zimbabwe when Ian Smith’s white regime finally capitulated. His disloyalty had been discovered by Rhodesian intelligence. Warned of his impending arrest by other members of his group, Daniel had fled the country. Had he been captured he would certainly have faced a firing squad. He had only dared return once the country had changed its name to Zimbabwe and the new order, led by Robert Mugabe, had come to power.

  When first he had met him, Daniel’s relationship with Michael had been detached and professional, but mutual respect and trust had finally transformed it into genuine friendship, which had survived the years.

  Michael poured him a whisky and they chatted and reminisced until Wendy called them to the dinner-table. Home cooking was a treat for Daniel, and Wendy glowed with gratification at his performance with knife and fork.

  With the brandy Michael asked, “So what about this favour?”

  “Two favours, actually.”

  “Runaway inflation, speak up, my lad.”

  “Could you possibly arrange to have my film tapes sent back to London in the diplomatic bag? They are more valuable than life itself. I wouldn’t trust them to the Zambian post office.”

  “That’s an easy one,” Michael nodded. “I’ll get them away in tomorrow’s bag. What about the other favour?”

  “I need some information on a gentleman named Ning Cheng Gong.”

  “Are we likely to know him?” Michael asked.

  “You should. He’s Taiwan’s ambassador to Harare.”

  “In that case, we will certainly have a file on him. Is he friend or foe, Danny?”

  “I’m not sure, not at this stage, anyway.”

  “Don’t tell me, then.” Michael sighed and pushed the brandy decanter across to Daniel. “I should have a computer print-out for you before noon tomorrow. Shall I send it around to the Ridgeway?”

  “Bless you, old son. I owe you another one.”

  “And don’t you forget it, Danny boy.”

  It was an enormous relief to get rid of the tapes that Jock had shot. They represented a gruelling year’s labour and almost Daniel’s entire worldly wealth. He believed so strongly in this new project that he had decided that, contrary to his usual practice, he would not seek outside financing. He had put everything he owned at risk, almost half a million dollars that he had painfully accumulated over the last ten years since he had become a fulltime out or and television producer.

  So Daniel’s tapes went out the following morning with the diplomatic courier on the British Airways flight and would be in London within twelve hours. Daniel had consigned them to Castle Studios where they would be in safe keeping until he could begin the editorial work to transform it into another one of his productions. He had almost settled on a title for the series, Is Africa Dying?

  Rather than entrust it to a messenger, Michael Hargreave personally delivered the computer print-out on Ning Cheng Gong to Daniel at the hotel. “Nice lad you’ve picked on,” he commented. “I haven’t read it all, just enough to find out that the Ning family is not one to trifle with. Take it easy, Danny; these are big boys.” He handed over the sealed envelope. “Just one condition. As soon as you have read it, I want you to burn it. Do I have your word on that?”

  Daniel nodded in agreement and Michael went on, I’ve brought along an askari from the High Commission to guard your Landcruiser for you. You daren’t leave a vehicle untended on the street, not in Lusaka. Daniel took the envelope up to his hotel room and ordered a pot of tea. When it arrived he locked the door, stripped to his underpants and lay on the bed. The print-out ran to eleven pages, all of them fascinating.

  Johnny Nzou had given him only an inkling of the wealth and importance of the Ning family. Ning Heng H’Sui was the patriarch. His holdings were so diversified and cross-pollinated with international companies and offshore holdings in Luxembourg, Geneva and Jersey that the author of the report admitted laconically at the end of this section, List of holdings probably incomplete. Going over the data more attentively, Daniel thought he perceived a subtle shift in investment emphasis dating from about the time of Ning Cheng Gong’s appointment to his ambassadorial post in Africa. Although the Ning family holdings were still centred on the Pacific rim, the investments in Africa and in Africa-based companies had risen to a significant percentage of the entire portfolio.

  Turning the page, he discovered that the computer had analysed this and determined that within six years the African section had increased from zero to just under twelve percent of the total. There were large holdings in South African mining conglomerates, and in African land and food production companies, and even larger holdings in forestry estates, paper pulp mills and cattle and sheep ranches, all in Africa, south of the Sahara. It didn’t take any clairvoyant
gift to surmise that Ning Cheng Gong had pointed the family in this direction.

  On page four of the computer print-out, Daniel read that Ning Cheng Gong was married to a Chinese girl from another rich Taiwanese family. The marriage had been arranged by the respective families. The couple had two children: a son born in 1982 and a daughter in 1983. Cheng’s interests were listed as oriental music and theatre and collecting oriental art, especially jade and ivory artefacts.

  He was an acknowledged expert on ivory netsuke. He played golf and tennis and sailed. He was also an expert in the martial arts, having reached the Fourth Dan. He smoked moderately and drank alcohol socially. He did not use any type of narcotic and the only weakness which the report suggested might be used as leverage or influence was that Ning Cheng Gong regularly patronised the high-class brothels of Taipei. His special sexual tastes seemed to lean towards acting out elaborate fantasies of an overtly sadistic nature. In 1987 one of the brothel girls had died during one of these performances. The family had obviously been able to quell any scandal, for no charges were ever brought against Cheng. Mike was right, Daniel conceded as he laid aside the print out. He is a big boy and well protected. Best take it one careful step at a time. Chetti Singh first. If I can establish a connection, that might be the key.

  As he dressed for dinner he kept turning the pages of the report on the dressing-table to make certain he had not overlooked any connection with Malawi or with Chetti Singh. There was none and he went down to dinner feeling depressed and discouraged. The role he had chosen for himself as Johnny Nzou’s avenger was daunting.

  There were both smoked Scotch salmon and roast sirloin of milk-fed Charollais beef on the five-page menu. However, when he ordered these the waiter shook his head regretfully. “Sorry, no got.” It swiftly developed into a guessing game. “Sorry, no got.” The waiter looked genuinely distressed as Daniel worked his way unsuccessfully through the menu until Daniel noticed that everyone else in the dining-room was eating stringy roast chicken and rice. “Yes, got chicken and rice.” The waiter beamed approval. “What you want for dessert?” By now Daniel had learned the trick. He checked the other tables.