Golden Fox

by Wilbur Smith

  She could use José’s rifle. She would ask Nicholas to show it to her, and once she had it in her hands . . . She shuddered at the thought and could take it no further.

  Colonel-General Ramón Machado recognized the change in her. He had been anticipating it.

  For ten days he had been observing her closely. There were cameras and microphones in the huts which Isabella had not discovered. While she and the child had been together on the beach or in the boat they had been filmed with a high-powered telescopic lens. For hours at a time Ramón studied her through binoculars from carefully prepared vantage points above the beach.

  He had watched her first wild elation change slowly to simple single-minded enjoyment of her son, and then slowly sour into despair and corroding discontent as she came to appreciate fully the invidious circumstances in which she was trapped.

  He guessed that she had probably reached the stage when she could try something desperate that would destroy all the beneficial results that had been achieved by the visit so far.

  He gave Adra new orders.

  As she served dinner that evening, Adra abruptly sent Nicholas on an errand that got him out of the hut for a few minutes. Then, as she spooned thick fish soup into Isabella’s bowl, she leant so close to her that a loose strand of her hair brushed Isabella’s cheek.

  ‘Do not speak or look at me,’ she whispered. ‘I have a message from the marqués.’ Isabella dropped her spoon with a clatter. ‘Careful. Give no sign. He says that he will try to come to you, but it is difficult and dangerous. He says that he loves you. He says to be brave.’

  All thought of suicide was driven from her mind. Ramón was close. Ramón loved her. She knew deep down in her heart that it would be all right as long as she had the fortitude to brave it through, and Ramón’s help.

  The knowledge kept her going through the next two days. There was a new sparkle and zest in her that she was able to share with Nicholas. The restlessness and creeping ennui which had begun to affect their relationship evaporated. They were happy again together.

  In the nights she lay awake in her hut, no longer devoured by doubt and brooding fears, but waiting for Ramón.

  ‘He will come. I know he will.’

  Then one of the women who had met her and searched her luggage on arrival came to her, but with a message.

  ‘There is an aircraft departing at nine o’clock tomorrow. You will leave with it.’

  ‘The child!’ she demanded. ‘Nicholas – Pele?’

  The woman shook her head. ‘The child remains. Your visit is terminated. They will fetch you at eight o’clock tomorrow morning. You must be ready. Those are my orders.’

  She wanted to take some memento of her son with her. After she had showered and changed for dinner she took a pair of nail-scissors from her toilet-bag and hid them in the pocket of her Bermudas. When Nicholas was seated at the dinner table she came up behind him and before he could pull away she snipped a thick dark curl from the back of his head.

  ‘Hey,’ he protested half-heartedly. ‘Why do you do that?’

  ‘I want something to remember you by when I am gone.’

  He thought about that for a while and then asked shyly: ‘Can I have some of your hair as well – to remember you?’

  Without a word she handed him the scissors. He stood in front of her and streamed one of her tresses between his fingers.

  ‘Not too much,’ she warned him. He laughed and cut a lock and curled it round his finger.

  ‘Your hair is soft – and pretty,’ he whispered. ‘Do you really have to go, Mamma?’

  ‘I am afraid so, Nicky.’

  ‘Will you come and visit me again?’

  ‘Yes, I will. I promise you that.’

  ‘I will keep this piece of your hair in my Jock book.’ He fetched the book and pressed the curl between the pages. ‘Every time I read the book I will think of you.’

  The moon was almost full. The silver radiance sifted in through the open sides of her hut and cast stark shadows that moved softly across the floor to mark the passage of the hours.

  ‘He must come,’ she told herself, lying rigid with fearful hope on the hard mattress. ‘Please let him come.’

  Suddenly she sat bolt upright. She had heard nothing, seen nothing, but she knew with utter certainty that he was close. She had to force herself not to call his name aloud. She waited with every sense alert, and then suddenly without sound he was there.

  He appeared like a wraith in the silver moonlight, and she gagged the cry that rose in her throat. She threw back the mosquito-net and with three quick steps had crossed the hut and was in his arms. Their kiss seemed to last a moment and all of infinity; and then, still without a word, he drew her down the front steps of the hut and into the sanctuary of the palm grove.

  ‘We do not have long,’ he warned her softly, and she choked back a sob and clung to him.

  ‘What is happening to us, darling?’ she pleaded. ‘I don’t understand any of it. Why are you doing this to us?’

  ‘For the same reason that you are forced to obey. For Nicholas, and for you.’

  ‘I don’t understand. I cannot go on, Ramón. I have reached the end of my strength.’

  ‘Not much longer, my darling. I promise you that. Soon it will be over, and we will be together.’

  ‘You said that last time, darling. I have done all I can . . .’

  ‘I know, Bella. What you have done has saved us. Both of us, Nicholas and me. Without you we would have long since been destroyed. You have bought time and life for us.’

  ‘They have made me do terrible, terrible things, Ramón. They have made me betray my family and my country.’

  ‘They are pleased with you, Bella. This visit is proof of that. They have given you two weeks with Nicholas. If only you can last a little longer – give them just a little more of what they want.’

  ‘They will never let me go, Ramón. I know that. They will hold me for ever, and bleed the last drop.’

  ‘Bella, darling.’ He stroked her body through the thin silk of her nightgown. ‘I have a plan. If you can keep them happy just a little longer, next time they will be more lenient. They will trust you a little more. They will start to become careless – and then, I promise, I will bring Nicky to you.’

  ‘Who are they?’ she whispered, but he was beginning to make love to her and the question faltered.

  ‘Quiet, my love. Don’t ask. It is best you don’t know.’

  ‘At first I thought it was the Russians, but the Americans acted on my Skylight message. The Americans used my information on the Angola raid. Is it the American CIA, Ramón?’

  ‘You may be right, my love, but for Nicky’s sake don’t provoke them.’

  ‘Oh God, Ramón. I am so unhappy. I didn’t believe that any civilized people could treat others in this way.’

  ‘Not much longer,’ he whispered. ‘Be strong. Give them what they want for just a little longer, and then Nicky and I will be with you.’

  ‘Make love to me, Ramón. It’s the only thing in the world that can keep me from going mad.’

  Nicholas drove her to the airstrip the following morning. He was tremendously proud of his driving skill, and she was effusive in her praise. José and the regular driver were in the back of the jeep, and she overheard a remark that one made to the other that at the time made little sense but stuck in her memory like a burr.

  ‘Pele is the true cub of the fox, El Zorro.’

  At the ramp of the Ilyushin they said goodbye to each other.

  ‘You promised to come to see me again, Mamma,’ Nicholas reminded her.

  ‘Of course, Nicky. What present should I bring you?’

  ‘My soccer ball is worn and leaking. We have to pump it many times during the match.’

  ‘I will bring you another.’

  ‘Thank you, Mamma.’ He offered her his hand, but she could not restrain herself. She dropped to her knees and hugged him to her breast.

  For a shocke
d moment he stood very still in her arms, and then he tore himself violently from her embrace. His face was scarlet with humiliation. He glared at her, then whirled and ran for the jeep.

  She peered down from the small side-window in the flight-deck of the Ilyushin, but Nicholas was gone. She saw the fine pall of dust still hanging over the road to the beach. He left a great emptiness in her soul.

  She disembarked from the Ilyushin in Libya where it landed to refuel, and caught a Swissair flight to Zurich. She airmailed postcards to everybody in the family including Nanny, and used her credit cards to establish her presence in Switzerland. She even called on Shasa’s bankers in Lausanne to withdraw ten thousand francs and thus allay any suspicions that her father might have about her holiday.

  The photographs she had taken of Nicholas were beautiful. She had captured his typical expressions and moods and characteristic poses. Even those of him in his camouflage fatigues handling that dreadful assault rifle gave her more pleasure than distress.

  She was keeping a journal for Nicholas. It was a thick bound book with pockets inside the covers, and it contained every memento of Nicholas that she had accumulated over the years.

  There was a copy of his official Spanish birth certificate and adoption papers. She had hired a London firm who specialized in this type of work to trace the Machado family back three centuries. A copy of the family tree and the Machado heraldic arms were in the front pockets of the journal.

  There was also the baby bootee that she had retrieved from under his cot in the flat in Málaga. She had pasted in the copies of the reports from his nursery school and the paediatric clinic, together with every photograph they had ever sent her. She wrote her own comments and a description of her feelings of love and hope and despair on alternate pages.

  When she returned to Weltevreden she added the lock of his hair and the photographs she had taken of him to her hoard, and included a description of their interlude together. She even recorded their conversations and every amusing or poignant comment he had made.

  When she felt deeply depressed and unhappy she locked herself in her suite, retrieved the journal from her personal safe and gloated over every item in it.

  It gave her the strength to go on.

  The Beechcraft banked into a steep descending turn and the release of gravity made Isabella feel light in the rear seat.

  ‘There,’ Garry shouted from the pilot’s left front seat. ‘See them? At the foot of the hill. Three of them.’

  Isabella stared down at the forest-top and the broken ground along the rim of the escarpment. The rock was fractured into battlements and turrets, wild cliffs and tumbled towers like the ruins of some fabulous fairy castle.

  The forest filled the valleys and the ravines between the rocky castles with splendid chaos; great tree-trunks towered up a hundred feet or more with widespread branches clothed in autumn livery, gilded with all the amalgams of gold and copper and bronze. Other great trees were already bare of leaf; the bloated baobabs with reptilian bark squatted grotesquely as creatures from the age of the dinosaurs. At the very wing-tip of the Beechcraft a giant African ebony flashed by, its leaves still dark shining green and its top branches studded with ripe yellow fruit.

  A flock of green pigeons hurled themselves in wild alarm into the air, and darted by so close that she could see their bright yellow beaks and the beady shine of their eyes. Then abruptly the forest ended and a glade of pale winter grass stretched below them. The Beechcraft roared straight at the tall cliff of rock on the far side.

  ‘There! Can you see them, Bella?’ Garry called again.

  ‘Yes! Yes! Aren’t they magnificent?’ she shouted back.

  At the far end of the clearing, three bull elephants ran in single file. Their ears were spread wide as the lateen sail on an Arab dhow. Their backs were humped so that she could see the curved and crested ridge of the spine beneath the grey hide and the gleam of long curved ivory carried high.

  As they flashed twenty feet over him, the lead bull turned to confront them. He reached up with a long serpentine trunk as though to pluck them from the sky. Then Garry pulled back on the control column. Gravity sucked at Isabella’s bowels, and the aircraft hurtled up to skim the raw blue granite and then bore up high into the cloudless African sky.

  ‘That big one would go all of seventy pounds.’ Garry was judging the weight of the bull’s tusks as he twisted in the seat, looking back over his shoulder, flying by instinct alone, even in this critical angle of climb.

  ‘Are they in our area, Pater?’ he asked, as he rotated the nose down and eased back on throttle and pitch to resume level flight.

  ‘On the edge of it.’ Shasa was relaxed in the right-hand seat beside him. He had taught Garry to fly and knew his capabilities. ‘That’s the National Park over there – you can see the cut-line through the forest that marks the boundary.’

  ‘Those old jumbo are heading straight for it.’ Isabella leant on the back of her father’s seat, and he turned and grinned at her.

  ‘You bet your sweet life, they are,’ he agreed.

  ‘You mean they know which is hunting concession and which is the sanctuary?’

  ‘Like you know the way to your own bathroom. At the very first hint of trouble they head for home and mother.’

  ‘Can you see the camp?’ Garry asked.

  ‘Just south of that kopje.’ Shasa pointed ahead through the windscreen. ‘There, now you can see the smoke. The landing-strip runs parallel to that patch of dark Jesse bush.’

  Garry eased the power again, sinking back towards the wilderness, winging low over the rough bush strip to check that it was clear.

  A small herd of zebra that had been grazing on the grass strip scattered at their approach and plunged away at full gallop. Each of them towed a feather of pale dust behind it.

  ‘Damned donkeys,’ Garry muttered. ‘Hit one of those and he’ll take your wing off.’

  Below her Isabella saw an open truck parked near the crude windsock. She looked for her elder brother at the wheel, but it was one of his black drivers. She felt a tingle of disappointment. She hadn’t seen Sean in over two years, and she missed him.

  Garry turned the twin-engined Beechcraft on to final approach and lined up with the strip. He lowered the undercarriage, and three green lights lit up on the dashboard. His hands were powerful and sure on the controls as he completed his landing checks and brought her in at a steep angle to avoid the tree-tops that crowded the strip.

  ‘He is a marvellous pilot,’ Isabella admired his technique. ‘Almost as good as Pater.’

  Garry had flown them up from Johannesburg in the company jet. They had stayed over in Salisbury at the Monomatapa Hotel. Shasa and Garry had had a meeting with Ian Smith, the Rhodesian prime minister. Then they had flown this last leg in the smaller Beechcraft. The jet needed a thousand metres of metalled runway to make a safe landing, whereas the twin-engined Beechcraft could sneak into the short grass strip at Chizora with a skilful pilot at the controls.

  It was a full-flap landing, and Garry set her down firmly, no float or bounce. The machine jolted and pitched to the rough surface. He thrust on maximum safe braking as the wall of trees at the far end of the strip rushed towards them. Then he wheeled her with another burst of engine and taxied in a blown dust-devil to where the truck waited for them.

  The camp staff swarmed around the Beechcraft the moment that Garry cut the motors. Shasa opened the hatch and jumped down off the wing to shake their hands and greet each one of them in strict order of seniority. Most of the safari staff had been with the company from the beginning, and so Shasa knew each of them by name.

  The pleasure of the camp staff was even greater when Isabella jumped down off the wing, and those marvellous white African smiles stretched to the limit. Although her visits to Chizora were intermittent, she was a firm favourite amongst them. They called her Kwezi, the Morning Star.

  ‘I have fresh tomatoes and lettuce for you, Kwezi,’ Lot, the head gard
ener assured her. The garden at Chizora camp was fertilized with buffalo and elephant dung and yielded fruit and vegetables that would have won prizes at any agricultural show. They all knew Kwezi’s weakness for salads.

  ‘I put your tent at the end, Kwezi,’ Isaac, the camp butler, told her. ‘So you can listen to the birds in the morning. Chef has got your special rooibos tea for you.’ The herbal tea from the Cape mountains was another of Isabella’s weaknesses.

  Garry ran the Beechcraft into its jackal-wire hangar to prevent the lions and hyenas gnawing on the tyres during the night. The staff loaded their baggage on the back of the open truck. Then with Garry at the Toyota’s wheel they bumped along the rough track through the combretum forest.

  It had been a good rainy season, and game was plentiful. The sandy track was dimpled with their spoor. When they came out into the wide glade in front of the camp, there were herds of zebra and sleek red-brown impala standing out unafraid on the silvery winter-grass pasture. It was one of Sean’s strict rules that no shot was ever fired within two miles of the camp. This was no inhibiting restriction, for the Chizora concession spread over ten thousand square kilometres.

  The camp overlooked the glade and the muddy waterhole at its centre. Later in the season, when the water dried up, the game would migrate. Then Sean would be obliged to pack up this entire camp and follow them down the escarpment to his other campsite on the shore of Lake Kariba.

  The row of green tents was set back discreetly within the forest, each with its own shower and earthen toilet standing behind it. The dining-tent was surrounded by a thatch-walled boma which was open to the sky. The canvas camp chairs were set around the camp-fire, great logs of leadwood and mopane which were kept burning day and night. The camp servants all wore crisply starched uniforms, and Isaac, as camp butler, sported a crimson sash over one shoulder.

  The portable generator provided lighting and power for the bank of refrigerators and deep-freezers in the mud-walled pantry. From his thatched kitchen the chef conjured up a sequence of gourmet dishes. There were all the refinements of what was known as a ‘Hemingway camp’. Chief amongst these were the tubs of ice on the bar table and the regiments of liquor-bottles drawn up in ranks. There were five different brands of premium whisky and three of single malt. A grand cru Chablis Vaudésir reposed in a silver ice-bucket. There were also the ingredients for Pimm’s No. 1 and Bloody Mary, to cater for those with more mundane tastes. All the glasses were Stuart crystal. The type of clients who could afford the safari fees expected and made damn sure they got these basic necessities of life.