by Wilbur Smith
"Quiet, my love. Don't ask. It is best you don't know." 'At first I thought it was the Russians, but the Americans acted on my Skylight message. The Americans used my information on the Angola raid. Is it the American CIA, Ramsey?" 'You may be right, my love, but for Nicky's sake don't provoke them." 'Oh God, Ramsey. I am so unhappy. I didn't believe that any civilized people could treat others in this way." 'Not much longer,' he whispered. 'Be strong. Give them what they want for just a little longer, and then Nicky and I will be with you." 'Make love to me, Ramsey. It's the only thing in the world that can keep me from going mad."
Nicholas drove her to the airstrip the following morning. He was tremendously proud of his driving skill, and she was effusive in her praise.
Josd and the regular driver were in the back of the jeep, and she overheard a remark that one made to the other that at the time made little sense but stuck in her memory like a burr.
"Pele is the true cub of the fox, El Zorro." At the ramp of the Ilyushin they said goodbye to each other.
"You promised to come to see me again, Mamma,' Nicholas reminded her.
"Of course, Nicky. What present should I bring you?" 'My soccer ball is worn and leaking. We have to pump it many times during the match." 'I will bring you another." 'Thank you, Mamma.' He offered her his hand, but she could not restrain herself. She dropped to her knees and hugged him to her breast.
For a shocked moment he stood very still in her arms, and then he tore himself violently from her embrace. His face was scarlet with humiliation.
He glared at her, then whirled and ran for the jeep.
She peered down from the small side-window in the flight-deck of the Ilyushin, but Nicholas was gone. She saw the fine pall of dust still hanging over the road to the beach. He left a great emptiness in her soul.
She disembarked from the Ilyushin in Libya where it landed to refuel, and caught a Swissair flight to Zurich. She airmailed postcards to everybody in the family including Nanny, and used her credit cards to establish her presence in Switzerland. She even called on Shasa's bankers in Lausanne to withdraw ten thousand francs and thus allay any suspicions that her father might have about her holiday.
The photographs she had taken of Nicholas were beautiful. She had captured his typical expressions and moods and characteristic poses. Even those of him in his camouflage fatigues handling that dreadful assault-rifle gave her more pleasure than distress.
She was keeping a journal for Nicholas. It was a thick bound book with pockets inside the covers, and it contained every memento of Nicholas that she had accumulated over the years.
There was a copy of his official Spanish birth certificate and adoption papers. She had hired a London firm who specialized in this type of work to trace the Machado family back three centuries. A copy of the family tree and the Machado heraldic arms were in the front pockets of the journal.
There was also the baby bootee that she had retrieved from under his cot in the flat in Milaga. She had pasted in the copies of the reports from his nursery school and the paediatric: clinic, together with every photograph they had ever sent her. She wrote her own comments and a description of her feelings of love and hope and despair on alternate pages.
When she returned to Weltevreden she added the lock of his hair and the photographs she had taken of him to her hoard, and included a description of their interlude together. She even recorded their conversations and every amusing or poignant comment he had made.
When she felt deeply depressed and unhappy she locked herself in her suite, retrieved the journal from her personal safe and gloated over every item in it.
It gave her the strength to go on.
The Beechcraft banked into a steep descending turn and the release of gravity made Isabella feel light in the rear seat.
"There,' Garry shouted from the pilot's left front seat. 'See them? At the foot of the hill. Three of them." Isabella stared down at the forest-top and the broken ground along the rim of the escarpment. The rock was fractured into battlements and turrets, wild cliffs and tumbled towers like the ruins of some fabulous fairy castle.
The forest filled the valleys and the ravines between the rocky castles with splendid chaos; great tree-trunks towered up a hundred feet or more with widespread branches clothed in autumn livery, gilded with all the amalgams of gold and copper and bronze. Other great trees were already bare of leaf; the bloated baobabs with reptilian bark squatted grotesquely as creatures from the age of the dinosaurs. At the very wing-tip of the Beechcraft a giant African ebony flashed by, its leaves still dark shining green and its top branches studded with ripe yellow fruit.
A flock of green pigeons hurled themselves in wild alarm into the air, and darted by so close that she could see their bright yellow beaks and the beady shine of their eyes. Then abruptly the forest ended and a glade of pale winter grass stretched below them. The Beechcraft roared straight at the tall cliff of rock on the far side.
"There! Can you see them, Bella?' Garry called again.
"Yes! Yes! Aren't they magnificent?' she shouted back.
At the far end of the clearing, three bull elephants ran in single file.
Their ears were spread wide as the lateen sail on an Arab dhow. Their backs were humped so that she could see the curved and crested ridge of the spine beneath the grey hide and the gleam of long curved ivory carried high.
As they flashed twenty feet over him, the lead bull turned to confront them. He reached up with a long serpentine trunk as though to pluck them from the sky. Then Garry pulled back on the control column. Gravity sucked at Isabella's bowels, and the aircraft hurtled up to skim the raw blue granite and then bore up high into the cloudless African sky.
"That big one would go all of seventy pounds.' Garry was judging the weight of the bull's tusks as he twisted in the seat, looking back over his shoulder, flying by instinct alone, even in this critical angle of climb.
"Are they in our area, Pater?' he asked, as he rotated the nose down and eased back on throttle and pitch to resume level flight.
"On the edge of it.' Shasa was relaxed in the right-hand seat beside him.
He had taught Garry to fly and knew his capabilities. 'That's the National Park over there - you can see the cut-line through the forest that marks the boundary." 'Those old jumbo are heading straight for it." Isabella leant on the back of her father's seat, and he turned and grinned at her.
"You bet your sweet life, they are,' he agreed.
"You mean they know which is hunting concession and which is the sanctuary?" 'Like you know the way to your own bathroom. At the very first hint of trouble they head for home and mother." 'Can you see the camp?' Garry asked.362 'Just south of that kopie.' Shasa pointed ahead through the windscreen.
"There, now you can see the smoke. The landing-strip runs parallel to that patch of dark Jesse bush." Garry eased the power again, sinking back towards the wilderness, winging low over the rough bush strip to check that it was clear.
A small herd of zebra that had been grazing on the grass strip scattered at their approach and plunged away at full gallop. Each of them towed a feather of pale dust behind it.
Damned donkeys,' Garry muttered. 'Hit one of those and he'll take your wing off." Below her Isabella saw an open truck parked near the crude windsock. She looked for her elder brother at the wheel, but it was one of his black drivers. She felt a tingle of disappointment. She hadn't seen Sean in over two years, and she missed him.
Garry turned the twin-engined Beechcraft on to final approach and lined up with the strip. He lowered the undercarriage, and three green lights lit up on the dashboard. His hands were powerful and sure on the controls as he completed his landing checks and brought her in at a steep angle to avoid the tree-tops that crowded the strip.
"He is a marvelous pilot,'Isabella admired his technique. 'Almost as good as Pater." Garry had flown them up from Johannesburg in the company jet. They had stayed over in Salisbury at the Monomatapa Hotel. Shasa and Garry had had a meeting
with Ian Smith, the Rhodesian prime minister. Then they had flown this last leg in the smaller Beechcraft. The jet needed a thousand metres of metalled runway to make a safe landing, whereas the twin-engined Beechcraft could sneak into the short grass strip at Chizora with a skilful pilot at the controls.
It was a full-flap landing, and Garry set her down firmly, no float or bounce. The machine jolted and pitched to the rough surface. He thrust on maximum safe braking as the wall of trees at the far end of the strip rushed towards them. Then he wheeled her with another burst of engine and taxied in a blown dust-devil to where the truck waited for them.
The camp staff swarmed around the Beechcraft the moment that Garry cut the motors. Shasa opened the hatch and jumped down off the wing to shake their hands and greet each one of them in strict order of seniority. Most of the safari staff had been with the company from the beginning, and so Shasa knew each of them by name.
The pleasure of the camp staff was even greater when Isabella jumped down off the wing, and those marvelous white African smiles stretched to the limit. Although her visits to Chizora were intermittent, she was a firm favourite amongst them. They called her Kwezi, the Morning Star.
"I have fresh tomatoes and lettuce for you, Kwezi,' Lot, the head gardener assured her. The garden at Chizora camp was fertilized with buffalo and elephant dung and yielded fruit and vegetables that would have won prizes at any agricultural show. They all knew Kwezi's weakness for salads.
"I put your tent at the end,- Kwezi,' Isaac, the camp butler, told her. "So you can listeh to the birds in the morning. Chef has got your special rooibos tea for you.' The herbal tea from the Cape mountains was another of Isabella's weaknesses.
Garry ran the Beechcraft into its jackal-wire hangar to prevent the lions and hyenas gnawing on the tyres during the night. The staff loaded their baggage on the back of the open truck. Then with Garry at the Toyota's wheel they bumped along the rough track through the combretum forest.
It had been a good rainy season, and game was plentiful. The sandy track was dimpled with their spoor. When they came out into the wide glade in front of the camp, there were herds of zebra and sleek red-brown impala standing out unafraid on the silvery winter-grass pasture. It was one of Sean's strict rules that no shot was ever fired within two miles of the camp. This was no inhibiting restriction, for the Chizora concession spread over ten thousand square kilometres.
The camp overlooked the glade and the muddy waterhole at its centre. Later in the season, when the water dried up, the game would migrate. Then Sean would be obliged to pack up this entire camp and follow them down the escarpment to his other camp-site on the shore of Lake Kariba.
The row of green tents was set back discreetly within the forest, each with its own shower and earthen toilet standing behind it. The dining-tent was surrounded by a thatch-walled boma which was open to the sky. The canvas camp-chairs were set around the camp-fire, great logs of leadwood and mopane which were kept burning day and night. The camp servants all wore crisply starched uniforms, and Isaac, as camp butler, sported a crimson sash over one shoulder.
The portable generator provided lighting and power for the bank of refrigerators and deep-freezers in the mudwalled pantry. From his thatched kitchen the chef conjured up a sequence of gourmet dishes. There were all the refinements of what was known as a 'Hemingway camp'. Chief amongst these were the tubs of ice on the bar table and the regiments of liquor-bottles drawn up in ranks. There were five different brands of premium whisky and three of single malt. A grand cru Chablis Vaudesir reposed in a silver ice-bucket. There were also the ingredients for Pimm's No. i and Bloody Mary, to cater for those with more mundane tastes. All the glasses were Stuart crystal. The type of clients who could afford the safari fees expected and made damn sure they got these basic necessities of life.
The uniformed attendants had filled the tanks of the individual showers with piping-hot water. While the guests washed off the dust and grime of their travels, they unpacked and laid out their safari clothes in each tent.
Bathed and refreshed, the family gathered at the campfire, and Shasa glanced at his wristwatch.
"Bit early for a peg?" 'Nonsense,' said Garry. 'We are on holiday." He called the barman to take their orders.
Isabella sipped her cold white wine. For the first time in almost two years she felt safe and at peace, and incongruously she thought of Michael. He was the only thing missing. She watched the procession of beautiful wild animals coming down to drink at the waterhole and listened to her father and Garry with only half her attention.
They were discussing Sean's client. He was a German industrialist named Otto Heider.
"He's twenty years older than Sean, but they are soulmates. Both of them are thrusters. God, they take some chances together,' Shasa told them. "The more hairy and dangerous the action, the more old Otto loves it. He won't hunt with anybody except Sean." 'I had Special Services run a full report on him,' Garry nodded. Special Services was a closed section of Courtney Enterprises whose director reported directly to Garry. It was his private intelligence system. It dealt with everything from company security to industrial espionage. 'Otto Heider is a player all right. The list of his assets runs to four typed pages, but he is a wild player. I don't think we should get financially involved with him. He takes too' many chances. According to my calculations, he is undercapitalized by at least three billion Deutschmarks." 'I agree," Shasa inclined his head. 'He's an interesting character, but not for us. Do you know he brings his own blood-bank on safari, just in case he gets stamped on by an elephant or hooked by a buffalo?" 'No, I didn't know that.' Garry sat forward in his campchair.
"Fresh sweet blood,' Shasa smiled. 'On the hoof, so to speak.
Self-administering transfusions." 'What does that mean?' Even Isabella was interested.
"He brings two qualified nurses with him. Both blonde, both beautiful and under twenty-five years old, both blood-type AB Positive. If he needs blood, he can tap it 3ee straight off one of them and at the same time have expert nursing care." Garry let out an admiring snort of laughter. 'And, even if he does not need blood, they are still extremely useful items to have on a safari. The transfusions simply flow in the opposite direction." 'You are disgusting, Garry,' Isabella smiled.
"Not me! Old Otto is the disgusting one. I think I am changing my opinion of him. We might still do business together. Such forethought is most commendable." 'Forget it. Otto is flying out first thing in the morning with his two nurses. The client we are really interested in arrives tomorrow afternoon.
Sean will drop Otto in Salisbury and bring the other one back-' Shasa broke off and shaded his eyes, staring out across the wide glade in front of the camp.
"I hear Sean's truck. Yes, there he comes." The tiny shape of the hunting vehicle darted out of the forest edge a mile away across the open grassland.
"Master Sean is in a real hurry." The sound of the truck engine mounted to a roar. A tall column of dust rose into the still evening sky. The animals at the waterhole panicked and galloped for the trees.
As the distance closed rapidly, they could make out the occupants of the open Toyota. The cab and the body work had been removed and the windscreen laid flat over the engine bonnet. On a high rear seat were four figures.
Sean's two black trackers in khaki fatigues and two white women. These, Isabella presumed, were the German nurses, for they fitted the description, young and blonde and pretty.
In the front passenger-seat was a middle-aged dressed in custom-tailored safari clothing. He wore goldrimmed spectacles and a leopard-skin band around his Stetson. He exuded the air of jaunty confidence that marked him as Otto Heider, the client they had been discussing.
