The Leopard Hunts In Darkness Part 11

"It's a good life and, h.e.l.l, I was weaned on Zambezi waters. I don't reckon I would be happy breathing London smog or swatting flies in the Australian outback." On Thursday morning Craig drove back to the motel, picked up his laundry, repacked his single canvas holdall, paid his bill and checked out.

He called at Jock's office. "Still no news from Zarich?"

"Telex came in an hour ago." Jock handed him the flimsy, and Craig scanned it swiftly.

"Will grant your client thirty-day option to purchase all Rholands company paid-up shares for one half million US dollars payable Zurich in full on signature. No further offers countenanced." They did not come more final than that.

Bawu had said double your estimate, and so far he had it right.

Jock was watching his face. "Double your original offer," he pointed out. "Can you swing half a million?"

"I'll have to talk to my rich uncle," Craig teased him.

"And anyway I've got thirty days. I'll be back before then." "Where can I reach you? "Jock asked.

"Don't call me. I'll call you." He begged another tankful from Jock's private stock and took the Volkswagen out on the road to the north-east, towards Mashonaland and Harare and ran into the first road-block ten miles out of town.

"Almost like the old days," he thought, as he climbed down onto the verge. Two black troopers in camouflage battle-smocks searched the Volkswagen for weapons with painstaking deliberation, while a lieutenant with the cap, badge of the Korean-trained Third Brigade examined his pa.s.sport.

Once again Craig rejoiced in the family tradition whereby all the expectant mothers in his family, on both the Mellow and Ballantyne side, had been sent home to England for the event. That little blue booklet with the gold lion and unicorn" and Honi Soit Qui Nil y Pense printed on the cover still demanded a certain deference even at a Third Brigade road-block.

It was late afternoon when he crested the line of low hills and looked down on the little huddle of skysc.r.a.pers that rose so incongruoutfy out of the African veld, like headstones to the belief in the immortality of the British Empire.

The city that had once borne the name of Lord Salisbury, the foreign secretary who had negotiated the Royal Charter of the British South Africa Company, had reverted to the name Harare after the original Shana chieftain whose cl.u.s.ter of mud and thatch huts the white pioneers had found on the site in September 1890 when they finally completed the long trek up from the south.

The streets also had changed their names from those commemorating the white pioneers and Victoria's empire to those of the sons of the black revolution and its allies 4a street by any other name' Craig resigned himself.

Once he entered the city he found there was a boom town atmosphere.

The pavements thronged with noisy black crowds and the foyer of the modern sixteen-storied Monomatapa Hotel resounding to twenty different languages and accents, as tourists jostled visiting bankers and businessmen, foreign dignitaries, civil servants and military advisers.

There was no vacancy for Craig until he spoke to an a.s.sistant manager who had seen the T! production and read the book. Then Craig was ushered up to a room on the fifteenth floor with a view over the park. While he was in his bath, a procession of waiters arrived bearing flowers and baskets of fruit and a complimentary bottle of South African champagne. He worked until after midnight on his report to Henry Pickering, and was at the parliament buildings in Causeway by nine-thirty the next morning.

The minister's secretary kept him waiting for forty-five minutes before leading him through into the panelled Office beyond, and Comrade Minister Tungata Zebiwe stood up from his desk.

Craig had forgotten how powerful was this man's presence, or perhaps he had grown in stature since their last meeting. When he remembered that once Tungata had been his servant, his gun boy when Craig was a ranger in the Department of Game Conservation, it seemed that it had been a different existence. In those days he had been Samson k.u.malo, for k.u.malo was the royal blood line of the Matabele kings, and he was their direct descendant.

Baro, his great-grandfather, had been the leader of the Matabele rebellion of 1896 and had been hanged by the settlers for his part in it. His great-great-grandfather, Gandang, had been half-brother to Lobengula, the last king of the Matabele whom Rhodes" troopers had ridden to an ign.o.ble death and unmarked grave in the northern wilderness after destroying his capital at GuBulawayo, the place of killing.

Royal were his blood-lines, and kingly still his bearing.

Taller than Craig, well over six foot and lean, not yet running to flesh, which was often the Matabele trait, his physique was set off to perfection by the cut of his Italian silk suit, shoulders wide as a gallows tree and a flat greyhound's belly. He had been one of the most successful bush fighters during the war, and he was warrior still, of that there was no doubt. Craig experienced a powerful and totally unexpected pleasure in seeing him once more.

"I see you, Comrade Minister, "Craig greeted him, speaking in Sindabele, avoiding having to choose between the old familiar "Sam" and the norn de guerre that he now used, Tungata Zebiwe, which meant "the Seeker after Justice."

"I sent you away once," Tungata answered in the same language. "I discharged all debts between us and sent you away." There was no return light of pleasure in his smoky dark eyes, the heavily boned jaw was set hard.

"I am grateful for what you did." Craig was unsmiling also, covering his pleasure. It was Tungata who had signed a special ministerial order allowing Craig to export his self built yacht Bawu from the territory in the face of the rigid exchange, control laws which forbade the removal of even a refrigerator or an iron -k;edstead. At that time the yacht had been Craig's only possession and he had been crippled by the mine blast and confined to a wheel-chair.

"I do not want your grat.i.tude," said Tungata, yet there was something behind the burnt, honey-coloured eyes that Craig could not fathom.

"Nor the friendship I still offer you?" Craig asked gently.

"All that died on the battlefield, Tungata said. "It was washed away in blood. You chose to go. Now why have you returned?"

"Because this is my land."

"Your land-" he saw the reddish glaze of anger suffuse the whites of Tungata's eyes. "Your land. You speak likea white settler. Like one of Cecil Rhodes" murdering troopers."

"I did not mean it that way."

"Your people took the land at rifle-point, and at the point of a rifle they surrendered it. Do not speak to me of you r land."

"You hate almost as well as you fought," Craig told him, feeling his own anger begin to p.r.i.c.kle at the back of his eyes, "but I did not come back to hate. I came back because my heart drew me back. I came back because I felt I could help to rebuild what was destroyed." Tungata sat down behind his desk and placed his hands upon the white blotter. They were very dark and powerful.

He stared at them in a silence that stretched out for many seconds.

"You were at King's Lynn," Tungata broke the silence at last, and Craig started. "Men you went north to the Chizarira."

"Your eyes are bright," Craig nodded. "They see all."

"You have asked for copies of the t.i.tles to those lands." Again Craig was startled, but he remained silent. "But even you must know that you must have government approval to purchase land in Zimbabwe. You must state the use to which you intend to put that land and the capital available to work it."

"Yes, even I know that, "Craig agreed.

i SO you come to me to a.s.sure me of your friendship." Tungata looked up at him. "Then, as an old friend, you will ask another favour, is that not so?" Craig spread his hands, palms upward in gesture of resignation.

"One white rancher on land that could support fifty Matabele families. One white rancher growing fat and rich while his servants wear rags and eat the sc.r.a.ps he throws them," Tungata sneered, and Craig shot back at him.

"One white rancher bringing millions of capital into a country starving for it, one white rancher employing dozens of Matabele and feeding and clothing them and educating their children, one white rancher raising enough food to feed ten thousand Matabele, not a mere fifty. One white rancher cherishing the land, guarding it against goats and drought, so it will produce for five hundred years, not five "Craig let his anger boil over and returned Tungata's glare, standing stiff-legged over the desk.

"You are finished here," Tungata growled at him. "The kraal is closed against you. Go back to your boat, your fame and your fawning women, be content that we took only one of your legs go before you lose your head as well." Tungata rolled his hand over and glanced at the gold wrist-watch.

"I have nothing more for you," he said, and stood up.

Yet, behind his flat, hostile stare, Craig sensed that the undefinable thing was still there. He tried to fathom it not fear, he was certain, not guile. A hopelessness, a deep regret, perhaps, even a sense of guilt or perhaps a blend of many of these things.

"Then, before I go, I have something else for you." Craig stepped closer to the desk, and lowered his voice. "You know I was on the Chizaril. I met three men there. Their names were Lookout, eking and Dollar and they asked me to bring you a message-" Craig got no further, for Tungata's anger turned to red filry. He was shaking with it, it clouded his gaze and knotted the muscles at the points of his heavy lantern jaw.

"Be silent," he hissed, his voice held low by an iron effort of control. "You meddle in matters that you do not understand, and that do not concern you. Leave this land before they overwhelm you." J will go," Craig returned his gaze defiantly, "but only after my application to purchase land has been officially denied."

"Then you will leave soon,"Tungata replied. "That is my promise to you." In the parliamentary parking lot the Volkswagen was baking in the morning sun.

Craig opened the doors and while he waited for the interior to cool, he found he was trembling with the after-effects of his confrontation with Tungata Zebiwe. He held up one hand before his eyes and watched the tremor of his fingertips. In the game department after having hunted down a man-eating lion or a crop-raiding bull elephant, he would have the same adrenalin come-down.

He slipped into the driver's seat, and while he waited to regain control of himself, he tried to arrange his impressions of the meeting and to review what he had learned from it.

Clearly Craig had been under surveillance by one of the state intelligence agencies from the moment of his arrival in Matabeleland. Perhaps he had been singled out for attention as a prominent writer he would probably never know but his every move had been reported to Tungata.