by Tony Park
She was the only one he had been with; they would be together for life. They had successfully raised just two offspring from six eggs in the past three years. Their habitat was being disturbed along the river, by flood, by predators and by man.
Their roost was far from ideal. The fig was a big tree, but the elephants drank and browsed here often. The massive pachyderms would rub themselves against the trunk, shaking the nest as though the earth itself was moving. In the summer, when the tree fruited, they would have to move because the resident troop of baboons would raid the tree, gorging themselves on its juicy bounty.
He swivelled his head slowly and checked his surroundings. One of his chicks squealed. When the fisherman looked upriver again his head froze as he caught the fast-moving sweep of a shadow on the surface of the river below their perch. A second later he heard the sound that was part of the daily symphony of the bush, yet one that always caused him concern. Wee-aah, hyo-hyo-hyo, cried Inkwazi, the African fish eagle, in his ringing, rising and descending tones as he called to his mate.
Like the fisherman, Inkwazi was a devoted partner to his female and together they were also struggling to raise a family. But whereas the fisherman relied almost solely on the river for his food, the fish eagle’s name was something of a misnomer. He and his wife could, and would given half a chance, feast on lesser birds. The fisherman sat very still.
Along the branch, however, one of his young, denied his feed from the night before, cried out in hunger. The owl turned his head at the sound of beating wings.
Inkwazi had heard the noise or glimpsed the slightest of movements in the dappled shadows of the fig. He dived from his own perch, flying fast, aiming for the kill.
14
ONE WEEK LATER
Tertia Venter received the message by radio that her guests had entered the Sabi Sand Game Reserve via Shaw’s Gate and were on their way to Lion Plains. She hoped a rogue elephant stopped them en route and trampled the mining executives to death.
The other operators and landowners in the reserve had all signed her petition condemning the mine, but none of them would be as directly affected as she by Global Resources’ plans. She appreciated the other lodges’ support and solidarity, but they didn’t want to contribute to a legal case and Tertia couldn’t afford a high court challenge by herself.
She knew her strategy of taking a high-profile stance against the mine in the media was a two-edged one. As well as several articles in the Sunday Times, the Citizen, and the Afrikaans newspapers Beeld and Rapport, and a feature story on the local television current affairs program Carte Blanche, Tertia had also attracted the interest of the South African correspondents of CNN and BBC World and the Australian ABC. While she felt she was gaining traction – two international environmental peak bodies had recently issued a media release condemning Global Resources, and the South African government for approving the company’s application – she knew the publicity had also cost her business. She’d had feedback from her neighbours from clients who had been considering staying at Lion Plains but had mistakenly thought the mine was already operating. People could be stupid – they absorbed only the worst of the facts they saw on TV or read in a newspaper – but many other strangers had contacted her via Facebook to express their support for her and some had made a point of booking with her so they could personally vent their anger about the mine while staying at Lion Plains.
There were plenty of people out there with a passion for wildlife. Passion, she mused, was a funny word – and one that had been absent from her life for so many years, until the mine proposal came along.
Tertia had lost the deeds to the property in a land claim by the local community several years earlier, but thanks to what she believed were her close ties to them she had negotiated a contract to lease the rights to continue operating Lion Plains Lodge on the communal lands for a nominal annual fee. Tertia had received compensation from the government for the loss of ownership of the land and, although she knew the amount was the land’s fair value, she had decided not to buy somewhere else or emigrate to Australia, but to plough most of the money back into Lion Plains. Many had thought she was crazy, but she had built another camp on the property, the community received a good profit from her game lodges and Tertia had been more or less happy with the outcome. Now, of course, the community knew it could make far more from the mining company, and her five-year initial contract had not been renewed. But she wasn’t dead yet; she would show them all – the community, Global Resources, and the government, that they’d been wrong to cross her.
The Eureka bakkie pulled up in front of her lodge. She watched them get out. There was a woman, who would be Hamilton, with a sticky plaster over a swollen nose – served the bitch right, whatever happened to her – and the man she knew was Cameron McMurtrie. She had last seen his blackened, sweat-streaked face on the front page of the Star, after the mine rescue.
Chris Loubser, the project’s environmental officer, had come to her seven months earlier to explain how his company was going to destroy her life and the land she loved.
He walked fast, to overtake the others. ‘Tertia, howzit?’
She folded her arms. ‘How do you think? Can you imagine what I’ve been going through?’
He smiled. ‘Ja. I’ve had an interesting time, too.’
‘So I read.’
‘Let me introduce you to Dr Kylie Hamilton, head of health, safety, environment and community at Global Resources.’
‘Hmph, chief window-dresser by the sound of it.’
Tertia made no move to approach the other two, and they were smart enough not to extend a hand for her to pointedly ignore. Normally guests would have been greeted by a ranger and tracker, who would have loaded their luggage into a game-viewing vehicle for transport to their suites. Technically this lot were guests, as they were staying the night – Tertia had invited them as she wanted the senior people, particularly the foreigner, to see first hand what they were about to destroy – but she would not be going out of her way to make them feel at home.
‘Tertia, please,’ Chris appealed to her. ‘And this is Cameron McMurtrie. He’s taking over as Global Resources’ head of new project developments.’
‘Please excuse me if I don’t hand you a welcome fruit cocktail,’ Tertia said. ‘If you load your luggage into the game viewer I’ll send someone to park your bakkie. It’s a short drive to the lodge where you’re staying and we can have a game drive on the way.’
Kylie Hamilton walked to the open-topped Land Rover and hefted her bag onto the rearmost of the three tiers of seats. The men did the same and they all clambered up and into the vehicle.
Tertia got into the driver’s seat and took another look at the newcomers, on the pretext of making sure they were all seated. In fact, she wouldn’t have cared less if one had fallen out and been cleaned up by Stompie, the cranky old male lion with only half a tail, and brother to Big Boy.
The woman was trying to smile, but it looked like the action made her swollen nose hurt. McMurtrie had a plaster over a cut above his left eye. He was a good-looking man, but not nearly as handsome as Chris Loubser. Despite her shock and anger when he had first come to Lion Plains to deliver the bad news to her that the mining project had been approved, she still thought him one of the most attractive young men she had ever laid eyes on. He smiled at her and she scowled and turned the Land Rover’s key.
Tertia attacked the track to the lodge, aiming for every rut and pothole she could see. Twice she had the satisfaction of hearing the woman gasp behind her.
‘No point in grading the roads as we get so few guests these days,’ Tertia said in the wind, not deigning to look back at her passengers.
‘Stop!’ the woman called from behind her.
Tertia instinctively pushed the brake and clutch and looked back. The dust cloud that had been trailing the Land Rover now enveloped them. ‘What is it?’
‘I just saw an elephant!’
Kylie, the senior memb
er of the group, was as wide-eyed as a five year old on her first visit to the Kruger Park. Tertia had seen that look countless times, in people of all ages when they first encountered Africa’s glory. Despite her hatred of the woman, of all of them and their filthy business, this was what she had hoped for. The woman was pointing.
‘Back there.’ Kylie looked at Cameron McMurtrie and Chris, who were both smiling.
‘We saw it,’ Cameron said.
‘Please won’t you reverse, Tertia?’ Chris said. ‘I’m sure Kylie would like to have a better look.’
‘Ag. Pleez,’ Tertia mimicked. They were coming here to raze this place and relocate or destroy everything that lived here.
‘Sorry,’ Kylie said, trying to be professional again. ‘We’ve got a meeting to attend. It’s OK.’
Tertia took her hand off the gear lever and waved it in the air. ‘It doesn’t matter. It’s a foregone conclusion. I’ll show you old Marula if you wish.’ She dropped her hand and found reverse, not caring how bumpy the return journey was on them. Looking back over her shoulder she saw the woman frantically scrabbling in her daypack for her camera.
‘There it is,’ Kylie hissed. ‘Oh. My. God.’
‘An old bull,’ Cameron said, leaning back in his seat as Kylie raised the camera to her eyes, then cursed, lowered it and quickly removed the lens cap.
‘Sixty, sixty-five, I reckon,’ Tertia said. ‘Just think of how much history he’s seen, and now –’
‘Tertia, you know he’s a lone bull who follows the breeding herds which move in and out of the national park,’ Chris said.
‘Yes, I know, but he always comes back to Lion Plains, as do the breeding herds, and Marula has lived most of his life in the Sabi Sand. It’s his home.’ She swallowed as her voice caught. ‘Now there’ll be even less of the greater Kruger Park for them to feed in, which will add to the pressure on the rest of the reserve.’
The Australian woman was lost to their conversation, snapping picture after picture with her expensive digital camera. Finally she lowered it and just gazed at Marula. ‘He’s beautiful.’
Tertia saw the look again. It had changed, as it did for most people, from surprise to awe to rapture. She had seen people cry at their first elephant sighting. Kylie put her hand on her heart. It was an instinctive gesture, not meant to be seen. Tertia loved seeing this type of reaction in first-time visitors. She wanted not to hate the woman at this moment, but business was business.
‘His name is Marula,’ she said softly.
‘Like the drink they were offering on the South African Airways flight?’ Still not taking her eyes off him.
Marula snatched a tuft of grass with the finger-like tips of his trunk, brushed it against his leg to remove the loose soil, and popped the brittle blades into his mouth. ‘That’s Amarula, but it’s made from the same thing, the marula fruit. All elephants love the fruit, when they ripen, but Marula’s always been particularly berserk for them. We tried putting up a boma many years ago – that’s a fenced enclosure – to keep some rhino we were relocating to the reserve from the Kruger Park before the fences came down between us and them. The idea was the rhino would get used to their surroundings. Unfortunately one of Marula’s favourite trees was in the boma and he destroyed the fence faster than we could erect it. We had to relocate the boma eventually.’
‘Look at his eyelashes,’ Kylie said.
Tertia saw how the majesty of the animal was working its magic. This woman had made it to the top of a man’s game by not taking shit from anyone, and now she was totally disarmed, rendered childlike by an old elephant. Tertia hoped she could make this work to her advantage. ‘He comes here every year, following the ancient game trails that are programmed into his memory like some mammalian GPS. This is where he feels comfortable, Kylie, where he feels at home.’
The woman blinked, as though coming out of a trance, and Tertia wondered if she had overdone it a bit by suddenly using her first name. ‘Ancient?’
‘His ancestors would have followed the same routes,’ Tertia said.
‘Hang on,’ Kylie said, looking away from the elephant. The glow had faded and her emerald eyes locked onto Tertia’s. ‘You just said “before the fences came down between them and us”, didn’t you?’
Tertia shrugged. She turned the key in the ignition.
‘Lion Plains didn’t become part of the greater Kruger National Park until 1993. Before that you were simply part of the Sabi Sand Game Reserve, fenced off from the national park. That elephant’s only been roaming the greater Kruger for the past twenty years, not for generations.’
Tertia waved her hand in the air again, then engaged gear.
‘In fact,’ the Australian droned behind her, ‘from what I’ve read, it’s likely his ancestors would have been born in Mozambique as so many elephants had been killed in this part of South Africa that by the time he was born they were almost eradicated. His parents probably moved from Mozambique into the lowveld and then eventually onto your farm about the time your family was switching it from cattle to game.’
Tertia looked back over her shoulder as she drove. ‘What’s your point?’
‘His family has relocated a couple of times. He can do it again.’
Tertia sighed. She had underestimated the woman, but she wasn’t ready to give up yet, no matter how hopeless the odds. ‘Maybe. But he’ll be going backwards next time, not forwards.’
*
Chris had seen how Tertia had continued to seethe on the rest of the short drive to Lion Plains. She’d thought she had the measure of Kylie, but the Australian had pulled back from her moment of weakness – her first sighting of an elephant in the wild – and set Tertia back on her butt.
He was pleased they were staying the night, even though Kylie had questioned the need for it at first. It was three in the afternoon when they arrived at the lodge, allowing them just half an hour before high tea, followed by the regular afternoon game drive at four.
Tertia stopped the Land Rover and, after curtly telling them the schedule, walked off to her office.
‘We can skip the game drive if you want,’ Cameron said to Kylie.
Chris didn’t appear to be part of the decision-making process, but he was fine with that.
‘Oh well, we’re here now, and I don’t know if I want to spend any longer with that woman than I have to,’ Kylie said with a laugh, which Chris thought was forced.
The truth was Kylie now actually did want to get back into an open Land Rover and go for another drive. Certainly she was right – it would be a more pleasant experience than spending an hour or two more than necessary across a table from Tertia – but he had seen the same thing that Tertia had. Kylie had just sampled her first real taste of Africa and she was ready for more.
Two guides arrived and took Cameron and Kylie’s bags and led them off to their rooms. ‘See you at three-thirty?’ Kylie said to him.
‘Ja, I’d never miss a game drive,’ Chris said. He loved the bush. She gave him a wave and walked off behind the guide.
Chris wondered what Cameron thought of the exchange between the women. Cameron had been quiet on the trip up from Barberton – quiet since the rescue.
Chris had thought they were all going to die – Cameron for sure – when he had leapt on the grenade. Cameron had been annoyed at him, he knew, for telling the reporter from Beeld about the incident with the grenade. When he thought about it now it seemed like something out of a movie, but at the time his terror had been all too real. And Cameron, why had he done that? Chris liked to think he would have sacrificed himself for the others, but he doubted it.
Kylie’s reaction had been interesting, too. She had run towards Cameron, not from him. Chris couldn’t have done much of anything. He had Luis on his back so he couldn’t have jumped. He had fallen onto the rock-cut steps and waited for the explosion that should have shredded Cameron’s body.
But it hadn’t happened. The grenade was a dud.
Cameron, shaken bu
t still in control, had eventually got to his feet and ushered first Kylie and then Chris and Luis to the next landing. He then kicked the grenade down the shaft to the next level. Explosive Ordnance Disposal technicians from the army had later been called in to get rid of the explosive and to search the zama zamas’ workings for more explosives and weapons.
Nine of the illegal miners had been killed in the rockfalls and thirty had been rounded up, some of them injured, by the police who had been forced, belatedly, to go underground after Cameron’s one-man commando raid had rescued Chris and disrupted Wellington’s operation.
Wellington himself had got away. While Chris knew the other zama zamas would have escaped through the labyrinth of old tunnels and some might have stayed to regroup and start work again, Wellington’s operation had been dealt a blow that might end it forever in Eureka. Much of his equipment had been destroyed or confiscated, and his workforce slashed.
Chris checked his watch. It was 15:10. He had less than twenty minutes. He knew he should probably go to his room and check emails. Instead he walked into the old farmhouse that had been converted to the lodge’s dining and bar area.
He went through the entrance foyer and turned right down a corridor that led to a new extension that housed the lodge’s administrative offices. The administrative assistant’s office was empty. Tertia’s was next door.
Chris felt his pulse start to throb in his carotid artery and he was suddenly short of breath as he put his hand on the door handle. He turned the knob.
Tertia looked up from her laptop, unsmiling.
Chris kept his eyes on her and closed the door behind him.
She glanced down, looking at her watch. ‘You have to be on a game drive in eighteen minutes.’
‘I know.’
‘Do you want to talk about what happened to you?’
He gave a brief shake of his head and took a step towards her desk.
She swallowed, then just sat there, lips slightly parted.
