Golden Fox

by Wilbur Smith

  Sean tried to sit up, but the pain of the cracked ribs lanced him and he moaned again and clutched his chest. Garry smoothed back his hair with both hands, but the unruly crest at the crown of his scalp sprang up again immediately.

  ‘Right,’ said Garry calmly. ‘From now on you will behave yourself. Do you hear me?’

  Sean managed to push himself up on to his knees with one hand, clutching his chest with the other.

  ‘Do you hear me?’ Garry asked again, standing over him.

  ‘Screw you,’ Sean whispered, and the effort hurt his chest.

  Garry leant over and prodded his injured chest with a thick hard thumb.

  ‘Do you hear me?’

  ‘OK, OK,’ Sean yelped. ‘I hear you.’

  ‘Good,’ Garry nodded, and turned to the hovering nurses. ‘Fräulein,’ he said in passable German, ‘I think we have need of your professional services.’

  They rushed forward clucking. One on each side of him, they raised Sean to his feet and led him away to his tent.

  Shasa released Isabella’s arm.

  ‘Well,’ he murmured. ‘That seems to have sorted that out at last.’ And then he glanced at the shambles of the dining-tent.

  ‘I do hope that wasn’t the last bottle of Chivas.’

  Garry sat on the camp-bed, stripped to the waist while Isabella anointed his bruises with arnica salve from the first-aid box. The hectic blotches left by Sean’s fists covered his arms and upper body like the dappling of a giraffe’s hide. His nose was swollen, and his lip was lumped and crusted with fresh scab.

  ‘I think it’s an improvement,’ Isabella told him. ‘Before your face was only half-nose, now it is all nose.’

  Garry chuckled and pinched the end of it gingerly. ‘We have taken care of Master Sean. Now it seems as though you are next on the list to be taught a little respect.’

  She kissed the top of his head where the tuft stood up from his crown. ‘Teddy Bear,’ she said. ‘You know, Garry, Holly is a lucky girl; you are one hell of a man.’ He blushed, he actually blushed, and her love for him was confirmed and strengthened. He was no longer comical, even with the bloated nose and thick upper lip.

  Sean groaned again theatrically, and Otto Heider threw back his head and laughed.

  ‘Here!’ He poured another three fingers of whisky into the tumbler that stood on the bedside table. ‘This is for the pain, like chloroform.’

  Sean leant across to take the glass and tossed back the whisky. ‘I’ve been jumped on by buffalo and kicked by jumbo, but this one! Hey, Trudi, take it easy.’

  Trudi paused with the surgical tape in her hand, and kissed him full on the lips.

  ‘Be quiet,’ she said. ‘I am fixing you.’ She had a sexy German lisp and soft red lips.

  ‘You are a great little fixer,’ he admitted. She tinkled with laughter and resumed work on his injured chest, passing the tape under his armpit to Erica who sat behind Sean on his king-size bed.

  ‘No more bumsen for you.’ Erica smiled severely. ‘Not for many long times.’ And passed the tape under his other armpit, back to Trudi.

  Otto Heider laughed again. ‘Are you going to retire injured and leave me to take care of these two little vixen all on my own?’ Otto was amazingly generous to his friends, and Sean was an old friend. Otto shared with his friends. The four of them – Otto, Trudi, Erica and Sean – had done more than merely hunt together. It had been a fun safari. Except for the elephant that Garry had messed up, they had all enjoyed themselves immensely.

  ‘You no good any more. But your brother – he strong like a bull.’ Trudi slanted her eyes wickedly. ‘He fight good. You think he bumsen good?’

  Sean stared at her thoughtfully for a moment, and then he began to grin. ‘My brother is a prude, a prig. He was almost certainly a virgin when he married that po-faced wench of his. I doubt he would know what to do with a good piece of bumsen if you waved it under his nose.’

  ‘We show him what to do with it,’ Trudi promised. ‘Me and Erica, we show him good.’

  ‘What do you think, Otto?’ Sean looked across at his client. ‘Can I borrow the ladies tonight? It shouldn’t take long? I’ll have them back at your tent by midnight.’

  Otto shook his head with admiration. ‘My friend, you are one funny man. You always make such good jokes. Hey, girls, you like it? What you think? It’s a funny joke, hey?’

  Sean was laughing with them, holding his injured ribs to cushion them. However, there was a vindictive gleam in his eyes.

  Sean understood better than any of them what had happened that day. It had been much more than another brotherly brawl that he had provoked. It had been the ultimate territorial contest of two young bulls in the final battle for dominance and rank. He had lost, and the defeat rankled deeply.

  He knew that he could never seriously challenge again. Garry had beaten him in every sphere, from the boardroom to the physical arena. Garry was at last unassailable. All Sean could do now was adulterate his power. He wanted to lay in a little insurance against the stormy days that he was sure lay ahead.

  Garry was having a dream. It was extraordinarily vivid and real. He was being pursued across an open meadow by a horde of dancing wood-nymphs, and his legs were lead beneath him. Each pace was an effort as though he waded through a swamp of hot treacle.

  He could see Holly and the children standing at the far side of the meadow. She was holding the baby in her arms, and the other children crowded about her legs, clinging to her skirts. Holly was calling something to him, although he could not hear the words. Tears poured from those lovely bi-coloured eyes of hers.

  He tried to reach her, but then he felt the soft warm hands of the nymphs on his body holding him back. He tried to shrug off the hands, but the effort was unconvincing. In despair, he saw Holly and the children turn away from him. She gathered the little ones closer around her, and they faded away into the woods beyond the meadow.

  He tried to call to them to wait, but his own thoughts and feelings were confused. The hands on him were exciting. Suddenly his own arousal was overpowering. He no longer wanted to escape. He didn’t want the dream to end, for even in his sleep he realized that it was a dream.

  He let himself flow with the fantasy, and there were smooth warm bodies pressing close around him. The smell of excited young womanhood was sweet and irresistible in his nostrils. He heard their laughter muffled by his own flesh and the startling sensation of their hot lubricious mouths upon him.

  Holly and the children were gone; he had forgotten them, their images were erased by his lust. He felt himself surrendering to it completely.

  Then suddenly he was wide awake and he realized that it was not a dream. His bed was filled with squirming bodies. They swarmed over him. He did not know how many hands were stroking and pressing and tugging and caressing him. Silky hair washed over his face like sea-water. Hot wet little tongues licked and probed at him. Long smooth limbs wrapped and enveloped him.

  For a moment longer he lay quiescent, and then he let out a cry and sprang upright. The moonlight poured into his tent. The naked feminine bodies glowed like opals as they clung to him.

  His elder brother was sitting on the end of his bed. Sean’s chest was wrapped in white tape, but there was a boyish grin on his face. ‘You have won first prize, Garry old fruit. To the victor the spoils. Enjoy, lad, enjoy!’

  ‘You bastard!’ Garry reached for him.

  But Sean was gone with an alacrity that discounted the injuries to his chest. The two girls scrambled out of his rumpled bed in a confusion of limbs and bouncing bosoms and bobbing white buttocks.

  Garry grabbed them, one under each arm and lifted them as easily as he would a pair of kittens. He carried them out of his tent. They squealed and kicked in the air ineffectually.

  He saw his father in the doorway of his tent belting his dressing-gown.

  ‘I say, old chap, what’s going on?’

  ‘My darling brother put a bunch of vermin in my bed. Just g
etting rid of them,’ Garry told him politely.

  ‘Pity,’ said Shasa. ‘Awful waste.’ But Garry marched on. Shasa sauntered along behind him, hands in the pockets of his dressing-gown, grinning with amusement.

  Isabella was in a short lace nightie, wide-eyed with sleep as she stumbled out of her tent. ‘Garry, what on earth have you got there?’

  ‘I should have thought that was fairly obvious.’

  ‘Two, Garry? Isn’t that a bit greedy?’

  ‘Ask Sean; it was his idea.’

  ‘What are you going to do with them? May I come along?’

  ‘Delighted. You and Pater can report to Holly for me.’

  Garry led the small procession out of the camp, across the glade and down to the edge of the waterhole. It was a cold night; the frost crunched under their feet. The approach to the waterhole had been trampled into a greasy black porridge by the hoofs of the game that drank from it.

  ‘Please, we make little joke,’ Trudi trilled from under Garry’s arm, wriggling weakly.

  ‘It is joke,’ Erica agreed tearfully. ‘Please to let go.’ She had slipped around and hung head-down in Garry’s grip. Her bare bottom flashed in the light of the moon, and she bicycled her legs in the air.

  ‘Me, too,’ Garry told them. ‘I make little joke. I think my joke better than your little joke.’

  His first throw was not his best, a mere twenty feet. But, then, Erica was the plumper and heavier of the two and she classed as a ranging shot. His second throw was much better, all of thirty feet, and Trudi shrieked in flight. The sound was cut off abruptly as she plunged below the icy water.

  Both girls came up spluttering and wailing miserably under a coat of glistening black mud.

  ‘Now, that,’ said Garry, ‘is what I call a real joke.’

  Sean was late for breakfast. He paused in the entrance to the dining-tent, and his eyes narrowed as he glanced around.

  The servants had made good most of the damage. The broken furniture had been repaired during the night by the camp handyman. Isaac had put together a scratch dinner service to replace the breakages. Trudi and Erica had washed off most of the mud, but their hair was still drying in coloured plastic curlers. However, none of this held Sean’s attention.

  He looked to his place at the end of the long table. It was his camp, and that seat was his by tradition and custom. Everybody knew that. His name was printed on the canvas back of the chair.

  Garry sat in his top chair. The swelling of his nose had subsided considerably. He had repaired the side-frame of his damaged spectacles. His hair was still wet from the shower. He looked big and cocky and self-satisfied, and he was sitting in Sean’s chair.

  He looked up at Sean from his hunter’s breakfast of impala liver and onions and scrambled eggs. ‘Morning, Sean,’ he said cheerfully. ‘Get me a cup of coffee while you’re up.’

  There was a sudden silence at the table. Every one of them watched Sean for his reaction. Slowly Sean’s scowl faded and he smiled.

  ‘How many sugars?’ he asked as he went to the sideboard and took the coffee-pot out of Isaac’s hands.

  ‘Two will do.’ Garry resumed eating, and an audible ripple of relief ran down the table. Everybody started talking again at the same time.

  Sean brought his younger brother the coffee-mug, and Garry nodded. ‘Thanks, Sean. Sit down.’ He indicated the empty chair beside him. ‘We have got a few things to discuss.’

  Isabella wanted desperately to listen to that conversation, but the two German girls were giggling and chattering, flirting with Shasa and Otto indiscriminately. She knew that Garry was setting out the programme of meetings that would be taking place in this camp over the next few days. The names of the visitors and every detail about them would be important to her, and to Nicky.

  ‘What about this Italian woman? You’ve had her as a client before. What’s she like?’ she heard Garry ask, and Sean shrugged.

  ‘Elsa Pignatelli? Swiss Italian. She shoots well, when you can get her to shoot. Never takes a chance, but when she pulls that trigger something falls down. I’ve never seen her miss.’

  Garry thought about that for a moment, then nodded. ‘Anything else?’

  ‘She’s bloody-minded. Wants things done her way, and you can’t slip anything over on her – eyes in the back of her head. I tried to pad the bill a little. She picked it up right away.’

  Garry nodded. ‘Doesn’t surprise me. She’s one of the richest women in Europe. Pharmaceuticals and chemicals. Heavy engineering, jet engines, armaments. She has run the show since her husband died seven years ago. She has a tough reputation.’

  ‘Last season we took a full-out charge from a wounded jumbo in thick Jesse bush. She stood her ground and put him down with a frontal brain shot at twenty paces. Then she turned on me and chewed me up. Accused me of firing at her elephant. She’s tough all right.’

  ‘Anything else? Any weaknesses? Liquor?’ Garry asked.

  Sean shook his head. ‘One glass of champagne every evening. Fresh bottle of Dom Pérignon each time. She drinks one glass and sends the rest away. Fifty dollars a bottle.’

  ‘Anything else?’ Garry stared at him through his thick spectacles, and Sean grinned.

  ‘Come on, Garry. She’s an old aunty – must be all of fifty.’

  ‘Actually she is forty-two,’ Garry contradicted him.

  Sean sighed. ‘OK, you want to know if we played hide-the-sausage together. Look, I made the offer. Hell, it’s expected of me. That’s part of the service. She laughed. She said she didn’t want to be arrested for child abuse.’ He shook his head. Sean didn’t like admitting to sexual failures.

  ‘Pity! We have to do business with her,’ Garry pointed out. ‘I need any leverage I can lay my hands on.’

  ‘I’ll bring her in at five this afternoon,’ Sean promised. ‘Then she’s all yours, and the best of British luck to you.’

  They all drove out to the airstrip to give Otto and his nurses a send-off. The mood was gay.

  Not only had the German girls forgiven Garry for their midnight dunking, but he also seemed to have won their esteem and piqued their interest by his forthright refusal of their offer. They made a huge fuss of him, kissing and hugging him and ruffling his hair until he blushed again.

  ‘Next time, we make good jokes again,’ they promised him. They waved furiously through the side-windows as the Beechcraft roared down the airstrip and flashed into the air. Half a mile out and two hundred feet high, Sean threw the aircraft into a maximum-rate turn and came diving back on them, flashing barely twenty feet over their heads. The girls in the back seat were still waving.

  ‘Cowboy!’ gruffed Garry, as he climbed behind the wheel of the Toyota. ‘Are you coming, Bella?’

  ‘I’ll drive back with Pater,’ she called. She knew it would be easier for her to pump her father than her brother. She ran to the second truck and jumped up into the seat beside Shasa.

  They were halfway back to the camp before she got her chance.

  ‘So who is Elsa Pignatelli?’ she asked sweetly. ‘And why haven’t I heard of her before?’

  Shasa looked startled. ‘How did you find out about her?’

  ‘Don’t you trust me, Pater? I am your personal assistant, aren’t I?’ Cunningly she saddled him with guilt, and immediately he began trying to exonerate himself. ‘Forgive me, Bella. It’s not that I don’t trust you. It’s all rather hush-hush.’

  ‘She is the main reason for us all being here, isn’t that so?’

  But Shasa was still being evasive.

  ‘Elsa Pignatelli is an avid huntress, a veritable Diana. She has hunted with Sean for the last three seasons. Her passion is hunting the cats – lion and leopard. You know that Sean has a reputation for bringing in big cats.’

  ‘We haven’t come to watch her kill cats,’ Isabella pressed him, and Shasa shook his head and relented.

  ‘Amongst the Pignatelli assets are a number of chemical factories – pharmaceuticals, agricultural f
ertilizers and pesticides, plastics and paints. They hold certain patents that we are interested in.’

  ‘So why didn’t Garry fly to Geneva or Rome, or wherever she lives?’

  ‘Lausanne actually.’

  ‘So why didn’t he go to her, or why didn’t she send one of her people to meet him in Johannesburg, instead of this Tarzan setting in the jungle? What precisely is all the mystery?’

  Shasa slowed the truck and gave all his attention to negotiating the rocky ford of the river. He did not reply until they climbed the steep opposite bank in four-wheel drive.

  ‘Forgive me for not letting you in on it. I was going to tell you. Our interests are not confined entirely to agricultural pesticides. There would be a lot of unfriendly people out there in the big wide world who would be very interested in any discussions between Pignatelli Industries and the chairman of Armscor.’

  ‘Ah, you are wearing your Armscor hat, so it must be armaments or weapons.’

  Speculatively Shasa glanced across at her. She had a brightly coloured scarf bound around her hair like a turban, and the wind had rouged her cheeks. She was very lovely, and Shasa felt a prickle of guilt that he should have mistrusted her. She was part of him; he should trust her as he did his own self.

  ‘You and I have discussed the weapons of last resort,’ he murmured.

  ‘Not nuclear weapons?’ Isabella said. ‘You have the bomb already. All that fuss over Operation Skylight.’

  ‘No, not nuclear weapons,’ he sighed. ‘Something just as nasty, I’m afraid. You know that I share your distaste for weapons of mass indiscriminate destruction. However, such weapons are not intended ever to be used. Their effectiveness lies in their mere existence.’

  ‘If they exist, then sooner or later some madman is going to use them,’ she said flatly, and again Shasa shook his head.

  ‘We’ve been over this before, my darling. But the bare fact remains that I have been entrusted with the job of providing our nation with all possible means of protecting itself. I have not been given the option of deciding which weapons are morally acceptable.’