Wilbur Smith - C08 Golden Fox

by C08 Golden Fox(Lit)

  He lifted Sean's double-barrelled Gibbs rifle off the rack behind the driver's seat and loaded it with two fat brass cartridges from the bandolier.

  "Let's go down to the hippo pool,' he suggested, and Isabella followed him down the footpath to the deep green pool of the river. The rifle was insurance, for the hippo has killed more human beings in Africa than all the snakes and lions and buffalo combined.

  Yet they did not look dangerous as they wallowed under the bank, only their backs exposed like great black riverboulders. Then the bull opened his jaws in a pink and cavernous gape and showed the curved ivory tusks that could scythe the papyrus reeds or guillotine a full-grown oxen into separate pieces. He turned his piggy eyes upon them and regarded them with a bloodshot malevolence.

  They sat side by side on a dead log, and Shasa propped the rifle close at hand. After a moment, the bull hippo closed his jaws and sank back below the surface so that only his eyes and the tip of his small round ears were exposed. Shasa stared back at him as balefully.

  "Eleven times more toxic than cyanide gas,' he repeated. 'It is terrifying stuff." 'Then, why, Pater? It is heinous. Why do it?" He shrugged. 'To protect ourselves from hatred.' He picked up a pebble from between his feet and lobbed it at the hippo. The pebble splashed twenty feet short, but the bull submerged completely. Shasa went on speaking.

  "The gas is code-named Cyndex and it has other desirable properties apart from its ability to deal swift and silent death." 'How heartening,' Isabella murmured. 'What are they?" 'It is odourless. There is no warning; death comes unannounced. However, it can be given a signature, any signature one chooses - the smell of ripe apples, or jasmine, or even Chanel Number Five if you so wish." 'That's macabre, Pater. Not your usual style." He did not respond to the rebuke. 'It is also highly unstable. Decay time is a mere three hours after mixing. Thereafter, it is absolutely harmless.

  This is extremely advantageous. You can gas an opposing army, and then move your own troops in to occupy the area three hours later." "Charming,' Isabella whispered. 'I have no doubt that the political possibilities have not entirely escaped the prime minister. Say, if a million blacks went on the rampage." Shasa sighed. 'It doesn't bear thinking of' 'But you have thought of it, haven't you, Pater?' He was silent, acquiescing. 'You say that NATO cancelled the contracts. Only Pignatelli Chemicals are manufacturing this Cyndex 25F 'No. They manufactured and tested the gas. It was the twenty-fifth prototype, hence the numerical designation. But when the NATO contract was cancelled they discontinued production and allowed the original stocks to degenerate." Isabella glanced sideways at him. 'Degenerate?" 'As I said before, it is a highly unstable product. It has a very short storage-life - six months. New stocks have to be constantly manufactured to replace those that deteriorate." 'Lucrative for Capricorn Chemicals," Isabella pointed out, but Shasa ignored the remark.

  "Signora Pignatelli will be able to supply us with blueprints for the plant; it is a complicated manufacturing procedure with very delicate manufacturing tolerances." 'When will you begin to manufacture?" Isabella asked, and Shasa chuckled.

  "Hold your horses, young lady. It isn't even certain that Signora Pignatelli can be persuaded to sell us the blueprints and the formula. That is what we are going to chat about now.' He glanced at his wristwatch. 'Almost lunchtime and we are still half an hour from camp."

  Sean called up on the camp radio on the'unmanned airfield' frequency when he was still forty minutes out. So they were waiting on the airstrip when the Beechcraft slanted in towards the field that evening.

  Shading his eyes against the low-lying sun, Shasa made out the head of Sean's passenger through the windscreen as she sat in the right-hand seat.

  He felt an electric tickle down the back of his neck that was more than simple curiosity. It was extraordinary that he and Elsa Pignatelli had never met, for they came from the same world - that exclusive world of wealth and rank and privilege that knew no national boundaries. They had literally dozens of mutual friends and acquaintances, and he was aware that on several occasions over the years they had been within a few minutes or kilometres of meeting each other. Shasa had been on friendly terms with her husband.

  The two men had skied in the same party one afternoon at Klosters and had run the notorious Wang together, that terrible ice wall that hangs above the village. At the time, Bruno Pignatelli had apologized for his wife's absence but explained that she had flown to Rome that weekend to visit her elderly mother. She and Shasa must have passed each other at Zurich airport, travelling in different directions.

  On another occasion, during Shasa's tenure at the embassy in London, they were invited separately to a dinner at the Swiss embassy. He learnt afterwards that they would have been table companions, but Elsa Pignatelli had been obliged to cancel for family reasons only days before the engagement.

  Since then, Shasa had heard Elsa Pignatelli's name mentioned and discussed in detail at many a society dinner or weekend house-party, often spitefully and vindictively but often again with admiration and open envy. He had seen her photograph in the glossy women's fashion magazines to which Centaine and Isabella subscribed religiously. Courtney Industries had dealt with Pignatelli interests for twenty years to the benefit and satisfaction of both parties. So in the weeks since this meeting had been arranged Shasa had studied all the considerable information about her contained in the file that Special Service's had provided.

  Sean taxied the Beechcraft to the hard stand of compacted red clay and switched off the engines, and Elsa Pignatelli stepped out on to the wing, then jumped down to earth. She moved with the supple grace of a young gyrrmast, and yet she was tall and long-limbed. Shasa knew she had modelled for Yves St.-Laurent before she married Bruno Pignatelli.

  Although he felt that he knew her, Shasa was unprepared for his own reaction to her physical presence. The electric tickle spread from his neck to the back of his arms, and he felt the hair there come erect as she looked around. Her dark gaze swept over Garry and Isabella and the servants and fastened directly on him.

  Her hair was very dark, with an almost bluish gloss in the late-afternoon sunlight. It was drawn back severely and secured behind her head in a neat tight coil. This emphasized her fine bone structure, the high, slightly domed forehead and vaulted cheekbones. And yet her features were full and feminine. Her lips looked soft, and her mouth was wide.

  "Shasa Courtney,' she said his name as she came towards him with a free hip-swinging model's gait. She smiled, and he saw that her jaw-line was clean. He knew that next year in July she would celebrate her forty-third year. However, her skin was flawless and lovingly cared for under light natural-toned make-up.

  "Signora Pignatelli.' He took her hand. It was cool and firm with long narrow bones. Her grip was swift, but strong, the kind of hands that could hold a rackct-handle or the reins of a thoroughbred.

  He regretted that the contact had been so fleeting, but her eyes were compensation. They were starred with rays of brown and gold that radiated from the central pupil. They were bright intelligent eyes, and the lashes were long and black and curled.

  "It is my regret that we have not met sooner,' Shasa said in awkward Italian, and she smiled and answered in faultless English, tinged with only an intriguing hint of an accent.

  "Oh, but we have.' Her teeth were startlingly white, but one incisor was just crooked enough to suggest that they were her own and not some orthodontist's artifice.

  "Where?' Shasa was surprised.

  "Windsor Park. The Guards'Polo Club.' She was amused by his confusion. "You were playing number two for the Duke of Edinburgh's invitation team." 'My goodness, that was ten years ago." 'Eleven,' she said. 'We were never introduced, but we met for approximately three seconds at the buffet after the match. You offered me a smoked-salmon sandwich." 'You have a marvelous memory,' he admitted defeat. 'Did you accept the sandwich?" 'How ungallant of you not to remember,' she teased, then turned to the others. 'You must be Garrick Courtney?' And Shasa hastened to
introduce first Garry and then Isabella.

  The servants were loading Signora Pignatelli's luggage into one of the trucks. It was heavy leather luggage with brass-bound corners, and there was plenty of it. Only people who flew in their own jets and were not subjected to the caprice of the commercial airlines' check-in could afford that type and quantity of luggage. There were four long gun-cases amongst it.

  "You'll ride with me, signora,' Sean tossed back his hair and called to her as he stepped up into the high driver's seat of his hunting vehicle. She ignored the suggestion and fell in naturally beside Shasa as he crossed to the second truck.

  Isabella started to follow them, but Garry caught her hand and steered her towards the seat in Scan's truck which Elsa had refused.

  "Come on, Bella. Wise up!' Garry murmured. 'Three's a crowd." Isabella started. It hadn't occurred to her - not Pater and the widow! Then she leant briefly against Garry's arm.

  "I didn't realize that you included match-making amongst your many talents."

  At sundowner time, Isaac brought Elsa Pignatelli a seething tulip-shaped glass of Dom Pdrignon from a freshly opened bottle, without being ordered to do so. He knew all the foibles of each of their regular clients.

  While they sat in the half-circle round the camp-fire, keeping above the drift of blue smoke, Sean called his two trackers to the evening conference. This ritual was mainly for the benefit of the client, for everything of importance had been discussed previously and well out of earshot. However, the average client, and especially the first-timers, were impressed by the flow of Swahili between Sean and his trackers. In addition, being included in the ritual gave them a sense of being part of the hunt, and not merely excess baggage.

  The trackers, both of whom had been with Sean since he had been an apprentice in Kenya at the time of the Mau Mau rebellion, were natural actors and hammed it up splendidly. They squatted respectfully on either side of Sean's camp-chair and called him Bwana Mkubwa, or Big Chief They mimed the animals they were discussing and drew their spoor in the dust between their feet, and rolled their eyes and shook their heads, then hawked and spat in the fire for emphasis.

  They were an oddly assorted pair. One was a tall taciturn Samburu with shaven head and classical Nilotic features, Maria Theresa silver dollars set in the enlarged lobes of his ears. The other was a gnome with a puckish face and bright beady eyes.

  Matatu was one of the few surviving members of the forest Ndorobo tribe, a people famous for their magical bushcraft, adepts of forest lore who had unfortunately been unable to withstand the impact of progress which had destroyed their forests and contaminated them with all civilization's ailments and diseases, from tuberculosis to alcoholism and venereal disease.

  Sean had named him Matatu, or Number Three, because his tribal name was not pronounceable and because he was the third tracker whom Sean had hired. The other two had not lasted longer than a week each. Matatu had been with Sean more than half Sean's lifetime.

  Matatu said, 'Ngwi,' and rolled his eyes as he drew the perfect imprint of a leopard's spoor in the dust. Sean questioned him in sonorous Swahili, to which Matatu replied in his piping lyrical voice and at the end spat explosively in the fire. Sean turned to Elsa Pignatelli to translate.

  "'A week ago I hanged five leopard baits, two on the river and the others along the rim overlooking the National Park."' Elsa nodded; she knew the area well from her previous trips.

  "'We had one strike a few days ago. An old tabby that came out of the park.

  She only fed once, and then left it, and we tracked her back into the park.

  Since then it has been quiet."' Sean turned back and asked Matatu another question. The little Ndorobo answered at length, obviously enjoying the attention.

  "Matatu checked the baits today, while I was fetching you from Salisbury.

  You are in luck, signora. We have had another strike on one of the river baits. Matatu says it's a g. ood tom. He ate well last night. The impala bait has been hanging for a week, and even with the cool weather it has ripened nicely. if he feeds again tonight, then we'll sit up for him tomorrow evening." 'Si,' Elsa nodded. 'That's good." 'So tomorrow morning we can check the bait and shoot a few more impala, just in case we need them. Then after lunch we'll have an hour's lie-down and then we'll go into the hide around three o'clock tomorrow afternoon." "You check the bait. You shoot the impala,' Elsa told him. 'Tomorrow morning I have a meeting to attend.' She smiled at Shasa in the chair beside her. 'We have much to discuss."

  The discussion took up most of the morning. Garry had made the arrangements with deceptive simplicity. He had sent Isabella off in the Toyota with Sean to check the leopard baits, and had then ordered Isaac and his staff to set up three chairs and a folding table under a msasa tree at the edge of the glade, but well away from the camp itself.

  Under the msasa tree, the three of them, Garry, Shasa and Elsa Pignatelli, were as secure from eavesdropping as at any spot on the planet. It was bizarre, Shasa thought, to be discussing such a terrifying subject in such tranquil and beautiful surroundings.

  On the other hand, the negotiations did not follow the course that either Shasa or Garry had hoped for. Although Elsa Pignatelli had with her a handsome pigskin attache case, it remained locked and unopened while they delicately circled around the central issue.

  Almost immediately it became obvious that Elsa had not yet made up her mind to proceed with the Cyndex enterprise. On the contrary, she was obviously having serious doubts and misgivings, and would need a great deal of persuasion.

  "It is a hideous thing to let loose in the world,' she said at one point.

  "My relief when NATO rescinded the original contract and ordered us to allow the existing stocks to degrade and to dismantle the plant was immense. I cannot imagine what possessed me even to consider equipping another plant, especially one over which I would have no direct control." All that morning, Shasa and Garry worked to allay her fears. They tried to devise between them some arrangements that would satisfy her demands on control and the ultimate rules of engagement under which Cyndex could ever be used.

  "If you were to begin manufacturing, any NATO expert who ever inspected the plant and analysed a sample of the gas would know immediately where the technology was obtained,' she pointed out. 'If that happened and it was traced back to Pignatelli..." She did not finish the sentence, but merely spread those long graceful hands in an expressive Italian gesture. Gradually, as the discussion continued, Elsa moved round in her chair to face Shasa. She began to direct all her remarks and questions to him alone.

  It was subtly, almost subconsciously, that she excluded Garry from the exchanges. Beneath his bluff exterior Garry was an intuitive and sensitive negotiator. Before even they realized it, he had detected the currents that ran between these two. He recognized that, belonging to the same generation and the same caste, they shared values and understood a special code that he could not comprehend.

  He sensed that Elsa Pignatelli wanted to be reassured not by him, but by the man to whom she was inexorably being drawn. Tactfully he withdrew into silence and watched them fall in love with each other without realizing what was happening to them.

  The hum of the engine of the returning Toyota startled them. Shasa glanced at his watch with disbelief.

  "Good gracious, it's lunchtime already, and we have settled nothing."

  "We have two weeks in which to talk,' Elsa pointed out, and rose to her feet. 'We can pick up again from here tomorrow morning." As the three of them came back into the boma, Sean was already at the bar table mixing Pimm's No. i in a crystal jug. He prided himself on his personal recipe.

  "Good news, signora,' he called. 'Can I wheedle you into a festive Pimm's?" She smiled a refusal. 'I'll have my usual Badoit water with a slice of lemon. Now, tell me the good news." 'The leopard fed again last night. judging by the sign, he came in early, half an hour before sunset. So he's starting to get careless and bold, and he's huge. He's got paws on him like snow-shoes." 'T
hank you, Sean. You always find good cats for me, but never so soon. This is the first day of safari." 'Take a nap after lunch, just to settle your nerves, and we'll go into the hide around three this afternoon." Isaac offered Elsa her mineral water on a silver tray, and then distributed the tall glasses of Pimm's to the musical accompaniment of tinkling ice, and Sean gave them a toast.

  "To a big old tom leopard death at the base of the tree.' The professional hunter's horror was the cat down from the tree and waiting wounded in the tall grass.