Wilbur Smith - C07 A Time To Die

by C07 A Time To Die(Lit)

  "Did you hear the lions roaring last night, Donna?"

  "I didn't hear a thing." She yawned. They could have had a brass band playing "America, the Beautiful" beside her bed without waking her.

  Moses finished laying out her clothes on the spare bed. He had polished her boots until they shone. "You want something, Donna, you call me," he told her as he backed out of the tent flap.

  She shot out of the warm bed and stood over the brazier shivering while she held her panties over the coals to warm them before pulling them on.

  The stars were still shining when she left the tent. She paused to look up, still amazed by the jeweled treasure chest of the southern sky. She picked out the Southern Cross with a sense of achievement, then went to the camp fire where the men were and held her hands out gratefully to the flames.

  "You haven't changed since you were little." Her father smiled at her. "Do you remember how I used to battle to get you out of bed to go to school every morning?" And a waiter brought her a second cup of tea.

  Sean whistled, and she heard Job start the Toyota and drive it around to the front gate of the stockade. They began pulling on their heavy gear: jerseys and anoraks, caps and woolen scarves.

  When they trooped out to the hunting car, they found the rifles in the racks and Job and Shadrach, the two Matabeles, standing in the back with the little Ndorobo tracker between them. The tracker was a childlike figure who came only to Claudia's armpit, but he had an endearing wrinkled grin and bright mischievous eyes. She had been predisposed to like all the black camp staff, but Matatu was already her favorite. He reminded her of one of the dwarfs from Snow White. The three blacks were bundled up against the cold in army surplus greatcoats and knitted balaclava caps, and they answered Claudia's greeting with white grins in the darkness. All of them had fallen under her spell.

  Sean took the wheel and Claudia sat on the front seat between him and her father. She crouched down behind the windshield and cuddled against Riccardo for warmth. In the short time she had been on safari, she had come to love this start to the day's adventure.

  They drove slowly over the winding, bumpy track and as the night retreated before the advance of dawn Sean switched off the headlights.

  Claudia peered into the comb return forest and down the grassy glades that intersected it that Sean called vleis, trying to be the first to spot some elusive and lovely creature. But it was always Sean or her father who murmured first, "Kudu on the left" or "That's a reedbuck." Or Matatu would lean over from the back to tap her shoulder and point out a rarer sight with his tiny pink-palmed hand.

  The dusty track was pocked with the spoor of the animals that had crossed in the night. Once they came across the fresh droppings of an elephant, still steaming in the chill of dawn, a knee-high pile everybody climbed out of the Toyota to examine closely. At first Claudia had been disconcerted by this avid interest in dung, but now she was accustomed to it.

  "Old beggar," Sean said. "On his last set of teeth."

  "How do you know that?" she demanded.

  "Can't chew his food," he replied. "Look at the twigs and leaves in the dung, almost whole."

  Matatu was crouched by the spoor, examining the great round footprints, the size of trash can lids.

  "See how smooth the pads of his feet are?" Sean said. "Worn down like an old set of car tires. Old and big."

  "Is it him?" Riccardo asked eagerly, glancing at the.416 Rigby rifle in the gun rack behind his seat.

  "Matatu will tell us." Sean shrugged, and the little Ndorobo spat in the dust, and shook his head mournfully as he stood up.

  Then he spoke to Sean in piping falsetto Swahili.

  "It's not the one we want. Matatu knows this bull," Sean translated. "We saw this one last year down near the river. He has one tusk broken off at the lip, and the other is worn down to a stump.

  He might once have had a magnificent pair, but he's far over the other side of the hill now."

  "You mean Matatu can recognize a particular elephant by his footprints?" Claudia looked incredulous.

  "Matatu can recognize a particular buffalo out of a herd of five hundred, and he'll know that animal again two years later just by a glance at the spoor," Sean exaggerated a little for her. "Matatu isn't a tracker, he's a magician."

  They drove on with small wonders occurring all around them: a kudu bull, gray as a ghost, striped with chalky lines, maned and humpbacked, his long corkscrew horns glinting in the gloom, slipped away into the forest; a genet cat caught out from his nocturnal prowling, spotted and golden as a miniature leopard, peered at them with astonishment from the brown grass of the verge; a kangaroo rat hopped ahead of the Toyota. Troops of chattering guinea fowl with waxen yellow helmets on their heads ran through the grass beside the track. Claudia no longer had to ask, "What is that bird?" or "What animal is that?" She was beginning to recognize them, and this added to her pleasure.

  Just before sunrise, Sean parked the Toyota at the foot of a rocky hill that rose abruptly out of the forest and they climbed out stiffly and took off their heavy outer clothing. They climbed the side of the kopJe, three hundred feet of steep, uneven pathway, without a pause, and Claudia tried to disguise her ragged breathing as they came out on the summit. Sean had timed the ascent perfectly, and as they reached the top the sun burst out of the distant forest and lit it all with dramatic color and brilliance.

  They looked out over a panorama of forest and glade that glowed with golden grass to other high sheer kopJes standing like fairy castles, all turreted and towered in the dawn. Other hills were great dumps of black rock, like the rubble left over from the Creation.

  They shed their sweaters, for the climb had warmed them and even the first rays of the sun held the promise of the noonday heat.

  They sat on the front edge of the hill and played their binoculars over the forest below. Behind them Job laid out the food box he had carried up, and in minutes he had a fire going. It had been too early to eat breakfast before they left camp, but now, at the odor of frying bacon and eggs, Claudia felt saliva flooding her mouth.

  While they waited for their breakfast, Sean pointed out the terrain. "That is the Mozambican border over there, just beyond the second kopje, only seven or eight miles from here."

  "Mozambique," Claudia murmured, peering through her binoculars. "The name has such a romantic ring to it."

  "Not so romantic. It's just another triumph of African socialism and the carefully thought out economic policy of chaos and ruination," Sean grunted.

  "I can't take racism before breakfast," Claudia told him icily.

  "all right." Sean grinned. "Suffice it to say that just across the border there you have twelve years of Marxism, corruption, greed, and incompetence, just beginning to bear fruit. You have a civil war raging out of control, famine that will probably starve a million people, and epidemic disease, including AIDS, that will kill another million in the next five years."

  "Sounds like a fun place for a vacation," Riccardo said. "How about breakfast, Job?"

  Job brought them plates of eggs and bacon and fried French bread followed by mugs of strong, aromatic coffee. They ate off their laps, glassing the forest through their binoculars between mouthfuls.

  "You're a pretty good cook, Job," Claudia told him.

  "Thank you, ma'am," Job answered quietly. He spoke English with only a slight accent. He was a man in his late thirties, with a tall, powerful physique and wide-spaced intelligent eyes in the handsome moon face typical of the Matabele and their Zulu origins.

  "When did you learn" Claudia asked.

  The Matabele hesitated and glanced at Sean before he said in his deep soft voice, "in the army, ma'am."

  "Job was a captain in the Ballantyne Scouts with me," Sean explained.

  "A captain!" Claudia exclaimed. "I didn't realize--" She broke off quickly, looking embarrassed.

  "You didn't realize there were black officers in the Rhodesian army," Sean finished for her. "There's a lot more to know abou
t Africa than what they show you on CBS television."

  Shadrach, the second gun bearer, was sitting fifty yards farther along the crest, where he had a better view toward the north. Now he whistled softly and pointed up that way. Sean wiped the last of the egg yolk off his plate with the toast and stuffed it into his mouth. He passed the plate to Job. "Thanks, Job, that was great." And he went to join Shadrach. The two of them peered down into the forest.

  "What is it?" Riccardo called impatiently.

  "Elephant," Sean replied. Both Riccardo and Claudia sprang up and hurried to join them.

  "There? Where?" she demanded.

  "Big one?" Riccardo asked. "Can you see his tusks? Is it him?"

  "Too far to be sure, a couple of miles." Sean pointed out the indistinct gray blur among the trees, and Claudia was amazed that such a huge animal was so difficult to see. It took some minutes before it moved slightly and she was able to pie it out.

  "What do you think?" Riccardo asked. "Could it be Tukutela?"

  "It could be." Sean nodded. "But it's a thousand to one against it."

  Tukutela. Claudia had listened to them discussing this elephant at the camp fire. Tukutela, the angry one, was one of those legendary animals of which there were only a handful left in the whole length and breadth of Africa. A bull elephant with tusks that weighed over a hundred pounds each. Tukutela was the main reason her father had come back to Africa for the last time. For he had once seen Tukutela. Three years before, he had been on safari with Sean Courtney, and the two of them had followed the great elephant for five days. Matatu had led them over a hundred miles on the spoor before they had come up with him. They had stalked to within twenty paces of the enormous, ancient beast as he fed on the fruits of a morula tree. They had studied every wrinkle and crease in his riven gray hide. They were so close could have counted the remaining few hairs in his tail, the rest worn away over the years, and they had gazed in silent awe upon his ivory.

  Riccardo Monterro would have willingly paid any price to possess those tusks as his own trophy. He had asked Sean in a whisper, "Isn't there any way I can have him?" And he had seen Sean hesitate before he shook his head.

  No, Capo We can't touch him. More than my license and my concession are worth." For around his neck Tukutela wore a collar, a sturdy thing of nylon, tough as a heavy-duty truck tire, and suspended from it was a radio transmitter.

  Some years previously, the old bull had been darted from a helicopter by members of the government elephant research project, and while he was unconscious, they had riveted the radio collar around his neck. This made Tukutela a "designated research animal" and placed him beyond the reach of legal safari hunters.

  Of course, he was still at risk from ivory poachers, but no licensed hunter could legally hunt him.

  While the elephant was under the influence of the drug, Dr. Glynn Jones, the government veterinarian in charge of the project, had measured his tusks. His report was not for general publication, but his secretary was a nubile blonde who thought Sean Courtney was the most awe-inspiring thing she had ever seen in her young life. She had duplicated a copy of the report for Sean.

  "From Jonesy's measurements, one tusk will weigh a hundred and thirty pounds and the other a few pounds lighter," Sean had whispered to Riccardo as they studied the old bull, and they had stared at the tusks hungrily.

  At the lip they were as thick as Sean's thigh, and there was no taper to them. They were stained almost black with vegetable juice and the tips were rounded off bluntly. According to Dr. Jones, the left tusk was eight feet four and a half inches, the right tusk eight feet six and a quarter, from lip to tip.

  In the end they had walked away and left the old bull to his solitary wandering. Then, only six months ago, the blond secretary had been making breakfast for Sean in her tiny bachelor flat in the Avenues in Harare, when she mentioned quite casually, "Did you know that Tukutela has thrown his collar?"

  Sean was lying naked on her bed, but he sat up quickly. "What did you say?"

  "Jonesy was in an awful pet. They put the radio direction finder on Tukutela. and all they got was his collar. He had managed to tear it off at last and had hurled it into the top of a msasa tree."

  "You clever little beauty," Sean said happily. "Come here and get your prize." And the girl had dropped her dressing gown on the floor and rushed across the room.

  So Tukutela had thrown his collar and was no longer a "designated research animal. " Once again he was legal game. That same day Sean had sent a cable to Riccardo in Alaska. He had received the reply the following afternoon.

  I'M COMinG STOP BOOK ME fuLL SAFARI 1ST JULY TO AUGUST 15TH STOP I WANT THAT JUMBO STOP CApo. "

  And now, as Riccardo stood on the crest of the kopJe, studying that far-off smudge of elephant gray in the forest below, he was shaking with excitement.

  Claudia studied him with open amazement. This was her father, the coolest cat in the business, the master of savoir faire She had seen him negotiating a ten-million-dollar contract and betting a prince's ransom across the tables at Vegas without any visible emotion, but here he was shivering with excitement like a schoolboy on his first date. She felt a rush of affection for him, "I haven't understood just how much this means to him," she thought. "Perhaps I'm being too hard. This is the last thing in his life that he truly wants." And she wanted to put her arms around him, hug him, and tell him, "I'm sorry, Papa. I'm sorry I've been trying to deprive you of this last pleasure."

  Riccardo was not even aware of her existence. "It could be Tukutela," he repeated softly, speaking almost to himself, as though he were trying to will it to be so. But Sean shook his head.

  "I've got four good trackers watching the river. Tukutela couldn't cross without them knowing. Besides, it's still too early.

  I wouldn't expect him to leave the valley until the last water holes along the escarpment dry up, another week or ten days at the earliest."

  "He could have slipped through." Riccardo ignored his explanation. "It's just possible it is him down there."

  "We'll go down and take a look, of course." Sean nodded in agreement. Riccardo's passion did not amaze him as it had his daughter. He understood it totally, had seen it in fifty other men like Riccardo-the powerful, aggressive, successful men who made up his clientele, men who did not try to conceal or check their instincts. The hunting imperative was part of every man's soul; some denied or suppressed it, others diverted it into less blatantly violent avenues of expression like wielding clubs on the golf course or racquets on the court, substituting a little white ball for the prey of flesh and blood, but men like Riccardo Monterro gave their passions full rein and would settle for nothing less than the ultimate thrill of the chase and the kill.

  "Shadrach, bring the Bwana's.416 banduki," Sean called. "Job, don't forget the water bottles. Matatu, akwendi, let's go!"

  They went directly down the steep front slope of the kopje, leaping lightly from boulder to boulder, and at the bottom they dropped naturally into their running formation with Matatu leading to pick up the spoor, followed by Job and Sean with their almost supernatural eyesight to sweep the forest ahead, the clients in the middle, and Shadrach at the end to hand Riccardo the Rigby when he needed it. They went swiftly, but it was almost an hour through the forest before Matatu picked up the huge dished spoor in the soft earth and the litter of stripped twigs and branches that the elephant had strewed behind him as he fed. Matatu stopped on it, turning back to roll his eyes, and give shrill piping cries of disgust.

  "It's not Tukutela. It's the old one-tusk bull," Sean told them.

  "The same one whose spoor we saw on the road this morning. He has circled back this way."

  Claudia watched her father's face and saw the intensity of his disappointment. Her heart squeezed for him.

  Nobody spoke on the march back to the Toyota, but when they reached it, Sean said softly, "You knew it wasn't going to be that easy, didn't you, Capo." And they grinned at each other.

  "You'r
e right, of course. The chase is everything. Once you kill, it's only dead meat."

  "Tukutela will come," Sean promised him. "This is his regular beat. He'll be here before the new moon, that's my promise to you, but in the meantime there's the lion. We'll go check bait to see if Frederick the Great is going to oblige us."

  It was only another twenty minutes" driving to the dry river-bed below the hide and the buffalo bait. They left the Toyota parked on the white sand, and Claudia felt a tremor of last night's terror as they climbed the path up the far bank and saw the pad marks of the lioness in the earth behind the hide. Then Sean and his gun bearers were talking excitedly and Matatu was chattering like an agitated guinea fowl.

  "What is it?" Claudia demanded. But nobody answered her and she had to trot to keep up with them as they hurried down the open tunnel through the bush to where the remains of the carcass hung in the wild fig.