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 Kumalo, for Kumalo 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 ignoble 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 gratitude," 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 prickle 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 titles 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 assure 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 scraps 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.
Yet he could not fathom the true reasons for Tungata's violent opposition to his plans. The reasons he had given were petty and spiteful, and Samson Kumalo had never been either petty or spiteful. Craig was sure that he had sensed correctly that strange mitigating counter-emotion beneath the forbidding reception, there were currents and undercurrents in the deep waters upon which Craig had set sail.
He thought back to Tungata's reaction to his mention of the three dissidents he had met in the wilderness of Chizarira. Obviously Tungata had recognized their names, and his rebuke had been too vicious to have come from a clear conscience. There was much that Craig still wanted Ilk to know, and much that Henry Pickering would "find interesting.
Craig started the VW and drove slowly back to the Monomatapa down the avenues that had been originally laid out wide enough to enable a thirty-six-ox span to make a U-Turn across them.
It was almost noon when he got back to the hotel room.
He opened the liquor cabinet and reached for the gin bottle. Then he put it back unopened and rang room service for coffee instead. His daylight drinking habits had followed him from New York, and he knew they had contributed to his lack of purpose. They would change, he decided.
He sat down at the desk at the picture window and gazed down on the billowing blue jacaranda trees in the park while he assembled his thoughts, and then picked up his pen and brought his report to Henry Pickering up to date including his impressions of Tungata's involvement with the Matabeleland dissidents and his almost guilty opposition to Craig's land-purchase application.
This led logically to his-request for financing, and he set out his figures, his assessment of Rholands" potential, and his plans for King's Lynn and Chizarira as favourably as he could. Trading on Henry Pickering's avowed interest in Zimbabwe tourism, he dwelt at length on the development of "Zambezi Waters" as a tourist attraction.
He placed the two setoof papers in separate manila envelopes, sealed thenitrid drove down to the American Embassy. He survived the scrutiny of the marine guard in his armoured cubicle, and waited while Morgan Oxford came through to identify him.
The cultural attache" was a surprise to Craig. He was in his early thirties, as Craig was, but he was built likea college athlete, his hair was cropped short, his eyes were a penetrating blue and his handshake firm, suggesting a great deal more strength than he exerted in his grip.
He led Craig through to a small back office and accepted the two unaddressed manila envelopes without comment.
"I've been asked to introduce you around," he said.
"There is a reception and cocktail hour at the French ambassador's residence this evening. A good place to begin.
Six to seven does that sound okay?" Tine."
"You staying at the Mono or Meikles?"
"Monomatapa."
"I'll pick you up at 17-45 hours." Craig noted the military expression of time, and thought wryly, "Cultural attache?" yen under the socialist Mitterrand regime, the French managed a characteristic display of 61an.
The reception was on the lawns of the ambassador's residence, with the tricolour undulating gaily on the light evening breeze and the perfume of frangipani blossom creating an illusion of coolness after the crackling heat of the day. The servants were in white ankle-length kanza with crimson fez and sash, the champagne, although non vintage was Bollinger, and the foie gras on the biscuits was from the P6rigord.
The police band under the spathodea trees at the end of the lawn played light Italian operetta with an exuberant African beat, and only the motley selection of guests distinguished the gathering from a Rhodesian governor, general garden party that Craig had attended six years previously.
The Chinese and the Koreans were the most numerous and noticeable, basking in their position of special favour WIth the government. It was they who had been most constant in aid and material support to the Shana forces during the long bush war, while the Soviets had made a rare error of judgement by courting the Matabele faction, for which the Mugabe government was now making them atone in full measure.
Every group on the lawn seemed to include the squat figures in the rumpled pyjama. suits, grinning and bobbing their long lank locks like mandarin dolls, while the Russians formed a small group on their own, and those in uniform were junior officers there was not even a colonel amongst them, Craig noted. The Russians could only move upstream from where they were now.
Morgan Oxford introduced Craig to the host and hostess. The ambassadress was at least thirty years younger than her husband. She wore a bright Pucci print with Parisian chic. Craig said, En chaW madame," and touched the back of her hand with his lips; when he straightened, she gave him a slow speculative appraisal before turning to the next guest in the reception line.
"Pickering warned me you were some kind of cocks-man," Morgan chided him gently, "but let's not have a diplomatic incident "All right, I'll settle for a glass of bubbly." Each of them armed with a champagne flute, they surveyed the lawn. The ladies from the central African republics were in national dress, a marvelous cacophony of colour like a hatching of forest butterflies, and their men carried elaborately carved walking-sticks or fly-whisks made from animal tails, and the Muslims amongst them wore embroidered pill-box fetes with the tassels denoting that they were hadji who I-ad made the pilgrimage to Mecca.
"Sleep well, Bavr'u"
"Craig thought of his grandfather, the arch-colonist. "It is best that you never lived to see this."
"We had better make your number with the Brits, seeing that's your home base," Morgan suggested, and introduced him to the British High Commissioner's wife, an iron jawed lady with a lacquered hair style modelled on Margaret Thatcher's.
"I can't say I enjoyed all that detailed violence in your book," she told him severely. "Do you think it was really necessary?" Craig kept any trace of irony out of his voice. "Africa is a violent land. He who would hide that fact from you is no true storyteller." He wasn't really in the mood for amateur literary critics, and he let his eye slide past her and rove the lawn, seeking distraction.
What he found made his heart jump against his ribs likea caged animal. From across the lawn she was watching him with green eyes from under an unbroken line of dark thick brows. She wore a cotton skirt with patch pockets that left her calves bare, open sandals that laced around her ankles and a simple T-shirt. Her thick dark hair was tied with a leather thong at the back of her neck, it was freshly washed and shiny. Although she wore no make-up, her tanned skin had the lustre of abounding health and her lips were rouged with the bright young blood beneath.
Over one shoulder was slung a Nikon FM with motor drive and both her hands were thrust into the pockets of her skirt.
She had been watching him, but the moment Craig looked directly at her, she lifted her chin in a gesture of mild disdain, held his eye for just long enough and then r turned her head unhurriedly to the man who stood beside her, listening intently to what he was saying and then showing white teeth in a small controlled laugh. The man was an African, almost certainly Mashona, for he wore the crisply starched uniform of the regular Zimbabwean army and the red staff tabs and stars of a Brigadier-General. He was as handsome as the young Harry Belafonte.
"Some have a good eye for horse flesh," Morgan said softly, mocking again. "Come along, then, I'll introduce you: Before Craig could protest, he had started across the lawn and Craig had to follow.
"General Peter Fungabera, may I introduce Mr. Craig Mellow. Mr. Mellow is the celebrated novelist."
"How do you do, Mr. Mellow. I apologize for not having read your books. I have so little time for pleasure." His English was excellent, his choice of words precise, but strongly accented.
"General Fungabera is Minister of Internal Security, Craig, "Morgan explained.
"A difficult portfolio, General." Craig shook his hand, and saw that though his eyes were penetrating and cruel as a falcon's, there was a humorous twist to his smile, and Craig was instantly attracted to him. A hard man, but a good one, he judged.
The general nodded. "But then nothing worth doing is ever easy, not even writing books. Don't you agree, Mr. Mellow?" He was quick and Craig liked him more, but his heart was still pumping and his mouth was dry so he could concentrate only a small part of his attention on the general.
"And this," said Morgan, "is Miss Sally-Anne Jay." Craig turned to face her. How long ago since he had last done so, a month perhaps? But he found that he remembered clearly every golden fleck in her eyes and every freckle on her cheeks.
"Mr. Mellow and I ha! met though I doubt he would remember." She Turn%d back to Morgan and took his arm in a friendly, familiAr' gesture "I am so sorry I haven't seen you since I got back from the States, Morgan. Can't thank you enough for arranging the exhibition for me. I have received so many letters-2
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