The Leopard Hunts In Darkness Part 20

It was like discussing the terms of a divorce with a lawyer, or the arrangements with a funeral director. Bawu had been part of his life for too long.

"She is in good nick, all tight and shipshape, and your price is sensible. I'll bring some people to see her tomorrow "Just make sure I'm not here, "Craig warned him.

J understand, Mr. Mellow." The man could even sound like an undertaker.

she Levy also sounded like an undertaker when Craig telephoned. However, he sent an office messenger down to the marina to collect the first three chapters Craig had completed in Africa. Then Craig went to lunch with Henry Pickering.

"It really is good to see you." Craig had forgotten how much he had grown to like this man in just two short meetings.

"Let's order first," Henry suggested, and decided on a bottle of the Grands Ech6zeaux.

"Courageous fellow," Craig smiled. "I am always too afraid to p.r.o.nounce it in case they think I am having a sneezing fit."

"Most people have the same reluctance. Must be why it is the least known of the world's truly great wines keeps the price down, thank G.o.d." Appreciatively they nosed the wine and gave it the attention it deserved. Then Henry set his gla.s.s down.

"Now tell me what you think of General Peter Fungo, hera," he invited.

"It's all in my reports. Didn't you read them?"

"I read them, but tell me just the same. Sometimes a little thing may come out in conversation that just didn't get into a report."

"Peter Fungabera is a cultivated man. His English is remarkable his choice of words, his power of expression but it all has a strong African accent. In uniform he looks likea general officer in the British army. In casual clothes he looks like the star of a T! series, but in a loin-cloth he looks what he really is, an African. That's what we tend to forget with all of them. We all know about Chinese inscrutability, and British phlegm, but we seldom consider that the black African has a special nature "There! Henry Pickering murmured smugly. "That wasn't in your reports. Go on, Craig."

"We think them sloxy'-moving by our own bustling standards, and we do not realize that it is not indolence but the deep consideration they bring to any subject before acting. We consider them simple and direct when really they are the most secretive and convoluted of people, more tribally clannish than any Scot. They can maintain a blood feud over a hundred years, like any Sicilian-" Henry Pickering listened intently, prodding him with a leading question only when he slowed. Once he asked, "Something that I still find a little confusing, Craig the subtle difference between the term Matabele, Ndebele and Sindebele. Can you explain?"

"A.

Frenchman calls himself a Francais, but we call him a Frenchman. A Matabele calls himself an Ndebele, but we call him a Matabele."

"Ah" Henry nodded, "and the language he speaks is Sindebele, isn't itr "That's right. Actually the word Matabele seems to have acquired colonial connections since independence " Their talk ranged on easily, relaxed and free-flowing, so that it was with a start of surprise that Craig realized that they were almost the last party left in the restaurant and that the waiter was hovering with the bill.

"What I was trying to say," Craig concluded, "is that colonialism has left Africa with a set of superimposed values. Africa will reject them and go back to its own."

"And probably be the happier for it," Henry Pickering finished for him. "Well, Craig, you have certainly earned your wage. I'm truly pleased that you are going back. I can see that you will soon be our most productive field agent in that theatre. When do you return?"

"I only came to New York to pick up a cheque." Henry Pickering laughed that delightful purring laugh of his. "You hint with a sledgehammer I shudder at the ect of a direct demand from you." He paid the bill prosp and stood up. "Our house lawyer is waiting. First you sign away your body and soul and then I give you drawing rights up to the total of five million dollars." The interior of the limousine was silent and cool, and the suspension ironed out most of the trauma of the New York street surfaces.

"Now enlarge on Sally-Anne Jay's conclusions regarding the head of the poaching ring," Henry invited.

"At this stage, I don't see any alternative candidate for the master poacher, perhaps even the leader of the dissidents." Henry was silent for a moment. Then he said, "What do you make of General Fungabera's reluctance to act?"

"He is a prudent man, and an African. He will not rush in. He will think it out deeply, lay his net with care, but when he does act, I think we will all be surprised at how devastatingly swift and decisive it will be."

"I would like you to give General Fungabera. all the a.s.sistance you can. Full co-operation, please, Craig."

"You know Tungata was my friend."

"Divided loyalty?"

"I.

don't think so, not if he is guilty."

"Good! My board is very happy with your achievements so far. I am authorized to increase your remuneration to sixty thousand dollars per annum."

"Lovely," Craig grinned at him. "That will be a big help on the interest payment on five million dollars." t was still light when the cab dropped Craig at the gates of the marina'. The smog of Manhattan was transformed by the low angle of the sun to a lovely purple mist which softened the grim silhouettes of the great towers of concrete.

As Craig stepped on the gangplank, the yacht dipped slightly under his weig4', and alerted the figure in the c.o.c.kpit.

"Ashe! Craig was taken by surprise. "Ashe Levy, the fairy princess of struggling authors."

"Baby." Ashe came down the deck to him with a landlubber's uncertain steps. "I couldn't wait, I had to come to you right away."

"I am touched." Craig's tone was aci ye "A when I don't need help you come at a gallop." Ashe Levy ignored it, and put a hand on each of Craig's shoulders. "I read it. I read it again and then I locked it in my safe." His voice sank. "It's beautiful." Craig checked his next jibe, and searched Ashe Levy's face for signs of insincerity. Instead he realized that behind the gold-rimmed spectacles, Ashe Levy's eyes were steely with tears of emotion.

"It's the best stuff that you have ever done, Craig."

"It's only three chapters."

"It hit me right in my guts."

"It needs a lot of polishing."

"I doubted you, Craig. I'll admit that. I was beginning to believe that you didn't have another book in you, but this it was just too much to take in. I've been sitting here for the last few hours going over it in my mind, and I find I can recite parts of it by heart." Craig studied him carefully. The tears might be a reflection of the sunset off the water. Ashe removed his spectacles, and blew his nose loudly. The tears were genuine, yet Craig could still scarcely believe them, there was only one positive test.

"Can you advance on it, Ashe?" Now he didn't need money, but he needed the ultimate rea.s.surance.

"How much do you need, Craig? Two hundred grand?"

"You really like it, then?" Craig let go a small sigh, as the writer's eternal doubts were dispelled for a brief blessed period. "Let's have a drink, Ashe."

"Let's do better than that," said Ashe. "Let's get drunk." Craig sat in the stem with his feet up on the rudder post, watching the dew form little diamonds on the gla.s.s in his hand, and no longer really listening to Ashe Levy enthusing about the book. Instead he let his mind out to roam, and thought that it would be best not to have all one's good fortunes at the same time but to spread them out and savour each more fully.

He was inundated with delights. He thought about King's Lynn and in his nostrils lingered the odour of the loams of the Matabele gra.s.sland. He thought about Zambezi Waters and heard again the rush of a great body in the Thorn brush. He thought about the twenty chapters which would follow the first three, and his trigger finger itched with antic.i.p.ation. Was it possible, he wondered, that he might be the happiest man in the world at that moment?

Then abruptly he realized that the full appreciation of happiness can only be achieved by sharing it with another and he found a small empty s.p.a.ce down deep inside him, and a shadow of melancholy as he remembered strangely flecked eyes and a firm young mouth. He wanted to tell her about it, he wanted her to read those three chapters, and suddenly he longed with all his soul to be back in Africa where Sally' Anne Jay was.

raig found a. second-hand Land-Rover in Jock Daniels" used car lot that backed onto his auctioneering floor. He closed his ears to Jock's impa.s.sioned sales spiel and listened instead to the motor. The timing was out, but there was no knocking or slapping.

The front-wheel transmission engaged smoothly, the clutch held against tho,brakes. When he gave it a run in an area of erosion and steep don gas on the outskirts of town, the silence" r" box fell Off, but the rest held together.

At one time he had been able to take his other old Land, Rover down into its separate parts and rea.s.semble it over a weekend. He knew he could save this one. He beat Jock down a thousand dollars and still grossly overpaid, but he was in a hurry.

Into the Land-Rover he loaded everything he had saved from the sale of the yacht: a suitcase full of clothing, a dozen of his favourite books and a leather trunk with bra.s.s bindings, his heaviest piece of luggage, that contained the family journals.

These journals were his entire inheritance, all that Bawu had left him. The rest of the old man's multi-million dollar estate, including the Rholands shares, had gone to his eldest son Douglas, Craig's uncle, who had sold out and cut for Australia. Yet those battered old leather bound, hand-written texts had been the greater treasurer Reading them had given Craig a sense of history and a pride in his ancestral line, which had armed him with sufficient confidence and understanding of period to sit down and write the book, which had in turn brought him all this: achievement, fame and fortune, even Rholands itself had come back to him through that box of old papers.

He wondered how many thousands of times he had but never like this, driven the road out to King's Lynn never as the patron. He stopped just short of the main gate, so that his feet could touch his own earth for the first time.