Craig got through to a parliamentary secretary on his fourth attempt. The telephone system had slowly begun deteriorating, he noticed. The blight of all developing countries was lack of skilled artisans; prior to independence all linesmen had been white, and since then most of them had taken the gap.
This secretary was Mashona and insisted on speaking English as proof of her sophistication.
"Kindly state the nature of the business to be discussed." She was obviously reading from a printed form.
"Personal. I am acquainted with the comrade minister."
"Ah yes. P-e-r-s-o-n-n-e-l." The secretary spelled it out laboriously as she wrote it.
"No that's p-e-r-s-o-n-a-I," Craig corrected her patiently. He was beginning to adjust to the pace of Africa again.
"I will consult the comrade minister's schedule. You will be obliged to telephone again." Craig consulted his list. Next was the government registrar of companies, and this time he was lucky. He was put through to an efficiiInt and helpful clerk who made a note of his requirem%nts.
"The Share Register, Articles and Memorandum of Association of the company trading as Rholands Ltd, formerly known as Rhodesian Lands and Mining Ltd." He heard the disapproval in the clerk's tone of voice. "Rhodesian" was a dirty word nowadays, and Craig made a mental resolution to change the company's name, if ever he had the power to do so. "Zimlands" would sound a lot better to an African ear.
"I will have Roneoed copies ready for you to collect by four o'clock," the clerk assured him. "The search fee will be fifteen dollars." Craig's next call was to the surveyor general's office, and again he arranged for copies of documents this time the titles to the company properties the ranches King's Lynn, Queen's Lynn and the Chizarira estates.
Then there were fourteen other names on his list, all of whom had been ranching in Matabeleland when he left, close neighbours and friends of his family, those that grandpa Bawu had trusted and liked.
Of the fourteen he could contact only four, the others had all sold up and taken the long road southwards. The remaining families sounded genuinely pleased to hear from him. "Welcome back, Craig. We have all read the book and watched it on TV." But they clammed up immediately he started asking questions. "Damned telephone leaks likea sieve," said one of them. "Come out to the ranch for dinner.
Stay the night. Always a bed for you, Craig. Lord knows, there aren't so many of the old faces around any more." Jock Daniels returned in the middle of the afternoon, red-faced and sweating. "Still burning up my telephone?" he growled. "Wonder if the bottle store has another bottle of that Dimple Haig." Craig responded to this subtlety by crossing the road and bringing back the pinch bottle in a brown paper bag
"I forgot that you have to have a cast-iron liver to live in this country." He unscrewed the cap and dropped it into the waste-paper basket.
At ten minutes to five o'clock he telephoned the minister's parliamentary office again.
"The Comrade Minister Tungata Zebiwe has graciously consented to meet you at ten o'clock on Friday morning.
He can allow you twenty minutes."
"Please convey my sincere thanks to the minister." That gave Craig three days to kill and meant he would have to drive the three hundred miles to Harare.
"No reply from Zurich?" He sweetened Jock's glass.
"If you made me an offer like that, I wouldn't bother to answer either," Jock grumped, as he took the bottle from Craig's hand and added a little more to the glass.
Over the next few days Craig availed himself of the invitations to visit Bawu's old friends, and was smothered with traditional old Rhodesian hospitality.
"Of course, you can't get all the luxuries Crosse and Blackwell jams, or Bronriley soap any more," one of his hostesses explained as she piled his plate with rich fare, "but somehow it's fun making do." And she signalled the white-robed table servant to refill the silver dish with baked sweet potatoes.
He spent the days with darkly tanned, slow-speaking men in wide-brimmed felt hats and short khaki trousers, examining their sleek fat cattle from the passenger seat of an open Land-Rover.
"You still can't beat Matabeleland beef," they told him proudly. "Sweetest grass in the whole world. Of course, we have to send it all out through South Africa, but the prices are damned good. Glad I didn't run for it. Heard from old Derek Sanders in New Zealand, working as a hired hand on a sheep station now and a bloody tough life too. No Matabele to do the dirtV'work over there." He looked at hi black herders with paternal affection.
"They are just the same, under all the political claptrap.
Salt of the bloody earth, my boy. My people, I feel that they are all family, glad I didn't desert them."
"Of course, there are problems," another of his hosts told him. "Foreign exchange is murder difficult to get tractor spares, and medicine for the stock but Mugabe's government is starting to wake up. As food-producers we are getting priority on import permits for essentials. Of course, the telephones only work when they do and the trains don't run on time any longer. There is rampant inflation, but the beef prices keep in step with it. They have opened the schools, but we send the kids down south across the border so they get a decent education."
"And the politics?" "That's between black and black. Matabele and Mashona. The white man's out of it, thank God. Let the bastards tear each other to pieces if they want to. I keep my nose clean, and it's not a bad life not like the old days, of course, but then it never is, is it?"
"Would you buy more land?"
"Haven't got the money, old boy."
"But if you did have?" The rancher rubbed his nose thoughtfully. "Perhaps a man could make an absolute mint one day if the country comes right, land prices what they are at the moment or he could lose the lot if it goes the other way."
"You could say the same of the stock exchange, but in the meantime it's a good life?"
"It's a good life and, hell, I was weaned on Zambezi waters. I don't reckon I would be happy breathing London smog or swatting flies in the Australian outback." On Thursday morning Craig drove back to the motel, picked up his laundry, repacked his single canvas holdall, paid his bill and checked out.
He called at Jock's office. "Still no news from Zarich?"
"Telex came in an hour ago." Jock handed him the flimsy, and Craig scanned it swiftly.
"Will grant your client thirty-day option to purchase all Rholands company paid-up shares for one half million US dollars payable Zurich in full on signature. No further offers countenanced." They did not come more final than that.
Bawu had said double your estimate, and so far he had it right.
Jock was watching his face. "Double your original offer," he pointed out. "Can you swing half a million?"
"I'll have to talk to my rich uncle," Craig teased him.
"And anyway I've got thirty days. I'll be back before then." "Where can I reach you? "Jock asked.
"Don't call me. I'll call you." He begged another tankful from Jock's private stock and took the Volkswagen out on the road to the north-east, towards Mashonaland and Harare and ran into the first road-block ten miles out of town.
"Almost like the old days," he thought, as he climbed down onto the verge. Two black troopers in camouflage battle-smocks searched the Volkswagen for weapons with painstaking deliberation, while a lieutenant with the cap, badge of the Korean-trained Third Brigade examined his passport.
Once again Craig rejoiced in the family tradition whereby all the expectant mothers in his family, on both the Mellow and Ballantyne side, had been sent home to England for the event. That little blue booklet with the gold lion and unicorn" and Honi Soit Qui Nil y Pense printed on the cover still demanded a certain deference even at a Third Brigade road-block.
It was late afternoon when he crested the line of low hills and looked down on the little huddle of skyscrapers that rose so incongruoutfy out of the African veld, like headstones to the belief in the immortality of the British Empire.
The city that had once born
e the name of Lord Salisbury, the foreign secretary who had negotiated the Royal Charter of the British South Africa Company, had reverted to the name Harare after the original Shana chieftain whose cluster of mud and thatch huts the white pioneers had found on the site in September 1890 when they finally completed the long trek up from the south.
The streets also had changed their names from those commemorating the white pioneers and Victoria's empire to those of the sons of the black revolution and its allies 4a street by any other name' Craig resigned himself.
Once he entered the city he found there was a boom town atmosphere.
The pavements thronged with noisy black crowds and the foyer of the modern sixteen-storied Monomatapa Hotel resounding to twenty different languages and accents, as tourists jostled visiting bankers and businessmen, foreign dignitaries, civil servants and military advisers.
There was no vacancy for Craig until he spoke to an assistant manager who had seen the T! production and read the book. Then Craig was ushered up to a room on the fifteenth floor with a view over the park. While he was in his bath, a procession of waiters arrived bearing flowers and baskets of fruit and a complimentary bottle of South African champagne. He worked until after midnight on his report to Henry Pickering, and was at the parliament buildings in Causeway by nine-thirty the next morning.
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.
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.
Wilbur Smith - B4 The Leopard Hunts In Darkness Page 8
