by Tony Park
Orlov’s face was flushed red now and it was plain to Mike it wasn’t just from alcohol.
‘I didn’t think you’d find anyone in southern Africa who’d let you shoot a black rhino,’ Mike said.
‘I haven’t . . . I mean, of course not. Who began this talk about shooting black rhinos, anyway?’ Orlov was flustered and he laughed, a little too loudly, trying to dismiss the current line of conversation.
‘Well,’ said Sarah, ‘I hope you do get your rhino, Vassily. Black, white or pink, I’m sure it will be a hunt worth remembering.’
‘Thank you,’ he said to her, studiously ignoring Mike after his overt impertinence.
Mike wondered if it was Orlov who had shot Isabella. He fantasised briefly about stalking him through the bush and putting a bullet through his head with his new pistol.
‘Please excuse me, Sarah,’ Orlov said, shifting his chair back from the table. ‘It was a long journey today and I must answer the call of nature. I will be back in a few minutes.’
‘Of course, Vassily,’ she said sweetly.
‘“Of course, Vassily.” You’re laying it on a bit thick, aren’t you?’ Mike caustically said to Sarah after Orlov had left them.
‘Shut up. You nearly blew it with all that talk about white and black rhinos,’ she hissed back as she fished for another cigarette.
‘But we know what he’s after now,’ he replied.
‘Yes. It was pretty obvious, wasn’t it?’ she conceded. She lowered her voice. ‘Where can he find a black rhino around here? I thought there were hardly any left at all.’
‘You’re right. There’re bugger-all left. South Africa and Namibia have quite a few in their national parks, but they’d be hard to get at there. They’re well guarded and they’re naturally a lot shyer than the white rhinos. Also, unlike the whites, they do a lot of their moving and feeding at night. Orlov’s problem is that he’ll need to move the head or the horn, or whatever they’re after, pretty quickly. That would be another problem in South Africa or Namibia, getting the trophy out of the country.’
‘How would they have moved the elephant tusks last year?’ she asked.
He pondered the question for a moment. ‘From Mozambique, I suppose. They herded the elephant over the border by helicopter to shoot it and my guess is they would have moved the ivory from there as well. I imagine it’s a lot easier to bribe a customs or port official in Mozambique, given the poverty over there.’
Orlov was on his way back to them, but was intercepted by the tall blond man, Hess. Sarah whispered quickly to Mike, ‘Orlov’s suspicious of you. Take it easy, OK?’
‘I know,’ he agreed. ‘Give me my marching orders soon after they join us. Try and find out where they’re headed and what their timetable is.’
‘Where are you going?’ she asked. ‘Your leaving me with them wasn’t part of the plan.’
‘To do a little reconnaissance. I think it’s time I took the fight to the enemy. Keep flirting with them – you’re doing fine,’ he said.
‘What are you going to do?’
‘I’m going to find out what Mr Orlov and Mr Hess pack when they’re travelling. I’ll meet you outside in about half an hour. You’ve got my mobile phone number, haven’t you?’ Mike had given the passengers on the truck an information sheet with all sorts of dos and don’ts on it, and the list also included the truck’s mobile phone number for emergencies, in case they got lost or were separated from the vehicle.
Sarah checked in her camera case for the contact sheet and nodded when she found it. ‘I keep it in here because my camera’s always with me.’
‘Call me if there’s trouble,’ he whispered as the two men approached them.
‘Sarah, please allow me to introduce Mr Karl Hess, professional hunter. He’s from Namibia originally. Sarah is one of the small minority of attractive young people who shares our passion, Karl.’ Orlov was beaming; the tension of a few minutes ago seemed to have vanished.
‘Charmed, madam,’ Hess said, taking Sarah’s hand in his.
For a minute Mike thought the oily bastard was going to kiss it. His skin glowed from scrubbing and he wore a cologne the scent of which stuck to the back of Mike’s lower teeth. He was dressed in a black silk shirt and tan chinos.
‘It’s miss, actually,’ Sarah said in her phoney, horsy upper-class accent. ‘But do call me Sarah and I shall call you Karl.’
Hess nodded, but Mike sensed her false charms were wasted on him. Hess turned to Mike next with a pale-eyed gaze that reminded him of a Mozambican spitting cobra he’d once seen in the Pretoria zoo.
‘And this is Mr . . .’ Orlov began.
‘Wilson,’ Mike said quickly, refreshing his memory. He was pleased he could remember his false name, even if Orlov couldn’t. Hess and Mike shook hands. The hunter’s skin was cool and dry, like a snake’s. Mike somehow sensed that it was more likely to have been Hess rather than Orlov who had pulled the trigger on Isabella. He would have been as unmoved by her beauty and innocence as he was by the stunning blonde in the evening dress he had just been introduced to, Mike thought.
As Hess and Orlov took their seats, Sarah said, ‘Michael, didn’t you say you had to have something seen to on the vehicle this afternoon? I’ve already kept you too long as it is.’
‘Of course,’ Mike replied deferentially. ‘Good afternoon, everyone. I hope you enjoy the rest of your safari,’ he said to Orlov as he stood and turned to leave.
Mike made it look like an afterthought, but he was watching Hess closely as he said to Orlov, ‘Oh, and I hope you get your rhino one day.’
Mike saw the alarm flash in Hess’s blue eyes. The Russian’s cheeks coloured. Mike walked away and Sarah picked up the conversation.
‘Now, Mr Hess. Karl? How would someone like me go about getting a permit to shoot a lion and a leopard? I need a new rug for my living room and a new coat for the English winter! Fur is back in this season, you know.’
Mike was relieved to hear both men laugh as he strode quickly back inside, through the hotel and across the courtyard.
15
‘Excuse me,’ Mike said to the same young woman at reception whom he and Sarah had spoken to earlier, ‘I need to have some things delivered to Mr Hess and Mr Orlov later today. Can you give me their room numbers, please?’
‘Of course, sir,’ she said, and tapped the keys on her computer. ‘Mr Hess is in 202 and Mr Orlov is in 203.’
‘Thank you,’ he said.
‘Pleasure,’ she replied.
He retraced his steps back across the courtyard. Instead of continuing on through the open doors to the terrace, where he could see Sarah was still holding court, he took a left and headed up a broad staircase. A gold-lettered sign pointed him in the right direction down a long, carpeted corridor and he found the rooms a few seconds later. At the far end of the hall a rotund woman was pushing a housekeeping trolley from room to room as she finished cleaning and making up each one. Her back was to Mike. Ahead of him he saw a door with an illuminated ‘fire exit’ sign above it. He opened the door and stepped into the stairwell.
Inside the musty enclave he quickly undressed, down to his underpants. Mike wrapped his trousers, shoes and mobile phone in his shirt and loosely tied the arms, to stop the bundle falling apart. He left the clothes in the stairwell and, checking the maid was not in sight, slipped out into the corridor. Placing both hands in front of his crotch in a gesture of pained modesty, he headed down the hallway. Finally, he came to a room with an open door and heard the woman whistling inside.
He coughed loudly. ‘Ah, excuse me, ’he said into the room. The portly maid appeared at the door and placed a hand over her mouth. ‘Sorry. Look, I seem to have locked myself out. Could you please let me into room 202?’
The woman fought back a chuckle and said, ‘Yes, sir. Come, let’s go. This happens all the time, you know,’ she said with another laugh.
‘Really?’
The maid let him into Hess’s room and Mike smelled t
he man’s cloying, vaguely effeminate cologne as soon as he stepped inside. After looking back out the door to check the maid had returned to the room she was cleaning, he propped a Bible from a bedside table against the doorframe to stop the door from locking, and then rushed across the corridor to the fire escape to retrieve his clothes. Quickly he dressed, clipping the mobile phone to his belt, then set about exploring the room.
Fortunately, Hess was a light traveller. There was a canvas holdall on the bed and a suit bag hanging in the wardrobe. Mike imagined Hess kept his fresh clothes, for dinner and socialising, in the suit bag. In the holdall were detailed topographical maps of Hwange National Park and its surrounds, and of the Zambezi valley, from Victoria Falls down as far as Lake Cahora Bassa, in Mozambique. That was interesting, and Mike wondered if they were planning on driving down into Mozambique when they had got whatever they were after in Zimbabwe. There was also a map of South Luangwa National Park in Zambia. Theron had said nothing about the men crossing into Zambia, so that was interesting as well.
Mike opened the map for the area covering Chizarira down to Kariba. There was nothing written in pencil or ink on the chart to indicate where they were going or what they were up to. Mike hadn’t expected there to be. Hess was ex-army, and one of the first things they teach you in army navigation classes is not to write notes or route marks on maps, in case they fall into enemy hands.
Also in the holdall was a Glock pistol in a leather shoulder holster. Mike wondered, if Hess were ever arrested and this weapon examined, could a forensics expert identify it as the weapon that killed Isabella? Were there even forensics experts in Mozambique?
He continued rummaging but found nothing of use. A packet of chewing gum, a mini torch, a hunting knife, underclothes, bush shorts and shirts, and a leather-bound organiser with diary and notebook. He checked the diary, but there was nothing incriminating noted down for the next few days. Mike was about to give up when his hand touched something solid, about the size and weight of a mobile phone. It was a portable GPS unit, similar to the one he had used to plot the locations of minefields in Mozambique and, while this model was a couple of years older, the buttons were all basically the same.
Mike turned the device on and punched the menu button, scrolling through the options until he came to one that said ‘landmarks’. These would be pre-set points on the earth’s surface that Hess had entered. Some would be for destinations he had previously visited – by pushing the mark button he could record his exact location at that time and give it a name. Others, Mike hoped, would be points he had set for this present trip by taking their latitude and longitude from a detailed map, such as the ones he carried in his bag. Mike hit the enter button and then scrolled through a long list of landmarks.
Predictably, there were landmarks named ‘home’, which he guessed was Hess’s hunting lodge, and ‘joburg’, which had probably been entered by a sales assistant in a camping store when he bought the gadget. Others would have been landmarks on walking or driving safaris, used as an aid to get to or back from a particular spot. These had names such as ‘caves’, ‘koppie1’ and ‘mount’. When the alphabetically organised list came to the letter O there was an entry entitled just that – ‘O’. The entry intrigued Mike, even more so when he read the latitude and longitude of that landmark.
The line of latitude was the Tropic of Capricorn. Because of what had happened to him on that imaginary line its coordinates would stay in his mind forever. He felt his pulse quicken. He pulled the personal organiser from the holdall and unzipped the leather cover. Mike used a pen from the elasticised holder to scrawl the longitude coordinate for point ‘O’ on a blank page.
Mike quickly scrolled through the remaining landmarks. Only one other caught his eye, a point called ‘Tashinga’. Tashinga, he knew, was the main camp of Matusadona National Park, a wild reserve on the southern shore of Lake Kariba, in the far north of Zimbabwe. Hess and Orlov would pass the land entrance to Matusadona on their way to Kariba and would be only a short boat ride away from Tashinga, on the lake’s shore, once they reached the town.
There was no hunting allowed in the park – not that that would have stopped them – and, as far as Mike knew, nothing out of the ordinary worth hunting there. All the rhino and most of the big elephant had probably been poached decades ago. He tore the sheet of paper with the coordinates for point ‘O’ from the notebook and stuffed the sheet in his shirt pocket.
Mike started to leave, then had a thought. He took the pistol from the holdall and unholstered it, then thumbed the magazine release catch, and the mag slid silently into the palm of his left hand. It was full of snub copper-nosed bullets and he laid it down on the bedspread. He slid back the cocking slide of the pistol and, as he expected, there was another bullet in the chamber. Although it wasn’t the safest way to transport a firearm, it meant Hess could cram an extra round into the pistol, on top of the thirteen in the full magazine. He laid the pistol on the bed, picked up the magazine again and thumbed the top bullet out into his palm, then replaced the bullet in the magazine, but not as the makers intended. He replaced the magazine, wiped the pistol on the bedspread to remove his fingerprints, and placed it back in the holster. Then he rearranged the contents of the holdall to how they first appeared and zipped it closed.
The phone on his belt beeped loudly four times.
‘Shit,’ he said aloud as he snatched the phone. The illuminated screen read ‘One message’. Someone must have called him, he realised, when his clothes were bundled in the fire escape and the message had only just been transmitted.
He dialled the number to retrieve his messages and, as it was a South African number, it took long, agonising seconds for the call to get through. Finally the litany of recorded options began. He angrily stabbed the numbers to retrieve the new message, then took a deep breath to steady himself when he heard Sarah’s voice.
‘Mike, Hess is on his way. He says he’s left something in his room that he needs! It’s . . . it’s four fifty-five. You’ve got about five minutes. Get out! Get out now!’
‘Fuck!’ He checked his watch. It was a minute to five, and he was surprised he had been in the room such a short time. He opened the door a crack and heard a woman’s voice, slurred and overly loud.
‘No, no. Really, really, I’m going to be fine. Please, Vass-ly, please don’ make a fuss. Karl, Karl, thank you, thank you.’
Mike peeked down the hall and saw that it was Sarah. She had dropped theatrically to one knee in her feigned drunkenness and held on to both Hess and Orlov, with one hand on each man’s arm. They bent over her, trying to help her to her feet.
Both men had their backs to Mike and he softly pulled the door to Hess’s room closed and darted across the hallway to the emergency exit. Sarah saw him, though, and their eyes locked for a second. She gave an urgent nod to tell him that she was, indeed, sober. He slipped into the fire escape and ran down the stairs. When he got to the first floor he barged through the door and ran along the corridor to the main stairwell, then he took the thickly carpeted stairs four at a time on his way back up to the second floor, where he nearly knocked over an elderly American couple in matching photographic vests and floppy bush hats.
When he got to the hallway he slowed his pace as he approached the two men, who still held Sarah between them. Orlov was working his key card into the lock on the door of his room.
‘Gorra be sick now. Sorry. So sorry, Vass-ly,’ she cried, breaking free from their arms and pushing into the Russian’s suite.
‘Excuse me! Mr Orlov, Mr Hess. It’s me, Michael, Sarah’s guide,’ he called from down the corridor. Both men turned. ‘Excuse me, did I just see Miss Grey with you?’
‘Yes. Er . . . Miss Grey is not well,’ Orlov said, clearly embarrassed. ‘We brought her here so that she could . . . recover herself.’
‘I was on my way out to get the car and a man from the wedding party stopped me. This is difficult, but, well, I believe he’s her boyfriend and . . .’
‘Her boyfriend?’ Orlov said, a look of shock passing over his face.
‘Yes sir,’ Mike said, playing the humble servant now. ‘He was very anxious to find her. I think, perhaps, if it’s all right with you, maybe I should escort her back downstairs to the wedding reception.’
‘Yes, yes, of course,’ Orlov said quickly. ‘Sarah? You can come out now. Your guide will take care of you.’ The Russian was keen to extricate himself from such an embarrassing situation as quickly as possible.
Hess eyed Mike coldly and said nothing.
Sarah stumbled from the suite, crashing into the doorframe and rebounding straight into Mike’s arms.
‘Mike? Zat you, Mike? Take me home, Mike,’ she slurred. She had splashed water on her face and done an excellent job of ruining her make-up.
‘Thank you, for, for looking after her, Mr Orlov,’ Mike said deferentially and, with an arm around Sarah, led her down the corridor.
Orlov looked back at them with a visage of half-drunken confusion. Hess had his serpent’s eyes fixed on Mike as he propelled Sarah around the corner and down the stairs. Once on the stairs they broke into a run. Sarah stumbled and Mike reached out and grabbed her hand to steady her. She left her hand in his until they burst out of the ground-floor corridor, back into reception.
The girl at reception gave them a puzzled look as they exploded from the cool interior into the red-gold heat haze of the dying afternoon. They stopped outside to catch their breath and Mike called across to the concierge, ‘Can you hail a taxi for us, please?’
‘Certainly. Where to, sir?’
A porter struggled into the foyer of the hotel with the last armfuls of tourist bags from outside.
‘Municipal Campground,’ Mike said, fighting to get his breath back.
The concierge held up his hand to stop a battered Peugeot from pulling away and told the driver their destination.
‘Let’s go, man!’ Mike said to the driver, bundling Sarah in front of him into the cramped back seat.
