The Leopard Hunts in Darkness

  Sitting on a log, beside one of the waterholes, he reviewed the factors that favoured his plans. It was under an hour’s flight from here to the Victoria Falls, one of the seven natural wonders of the world, that already attracted thousands of tourists each month. It would be only a short detour to his camp here, so that added little to the tourists’ original airfare. He had an animal that very few other reserves or camps could offer, together with most of the other varieties of game, concentrated in a relatively small area. He had undeveloped reservations on both boundaries to ensure a permanent source of interesting animal life.

  What he had in mind was a champagne and caviar type of camp, on the lines of those private estates bordering the Kruger National Park in South Africa. He would put up small camps, sufficiently isolated from each other so as to give the occupants the illusion of having the wilderness to themselves. He would provide charismatic and knowledgeable guides to take his tourists by Land-Rover and on foot close to rare and potentially dangerous animals and make an adventure of it, and luxurious surroundings when they returned to camp in the evening – air-conditioning and fine food and wines, pretty young hostesses to pamper them, wildlife movies and lectures by experts to instruct and entertain them. And he would charge them outrageously for it all, aiming at the very upper level of the tourist trade.

  It was after sunset when Craig limped back into his rudimentary camp under the wild figs, his face and arms reddened by the sun, tsetse-fly bites itching and swollen on the back of his neck, and the stump of his leg tender and aching from the unaccustomed exertions. He was too tired to eat. He unstrapped his leg, drank a single whisky from the plastic mug, rolled into his blanket and was almost immediately asleep. He woke for a few minutes during the night, and while he urinated he listened with sleepy pleasure to the distant roaring of a pride of hunting lions, and then returned to his blanket.

  He was awakened by the whistling cries of the green pigeons feasting on the wild figs above his head, and found he was ravenously hungry and happy as he could not remember being for years.

  After he had eaten, he hopped down to the water’s edge, carrying a rolled copy of the Farmers’ Weekly magazine, the African farmers’ bible. Then, seated in the shallows with the coarse-sugar sand pleasantly rough under his naked backside and the cool green waters soothing his still aching stump, he studied the prices of stock offered for sale in the magazine and did mental arithmetic with the figures.

  His ambitious plans were swiftly moderated when he realized what it would cost to restock King’s Lynn and Queen’s Lynn with thoroughbred bloodstock. The consortium had sold the original stud for a million and a half, and prices had gone up since then.

  He would have to begin with good bulls, and grade cows – slowly build up his blood lines. Still, that would cost plenty, the ranches would have to be re-equipped, and the development of the tourist camp here on the Chizarira river was going to cost another bundle. Then he would have to move the squatter families and their goats off his grazing – the only way to do that was to offer them financial compensation. Old grandfather Bawu had always told him, ‘Work out what you think it will cost, then double it. That way you will come close.’

  Craig threw the magazine up onto the bank, and lay back with only his head above water while he did his sums.

  On the credit side, he had lived frugally aboard the yacht, unlike a lot of other suddenly successful authors. The book had been on the bestseller lists on both sides of the Atlantic for almost a year, main choice of three major book-clubs, translations into a number of foreign languages, including Hindi, Reader’s Digest condensed books, the TV series, paperback contracts – even though, at the end, the taxman had got in amongst his earnings.

  Then again he had been lucky with what was left to him after these depredations. He had speculated in gold and silver, had made three good coups on the stock exchange, and finally had transferred most of his winnings into Swiss francs at the right time. Added to that, he could sell the yacht. A month earlier he had been offered a hundred and fifty thousand dollars for Bawu, but he would hate to part with it. Apart from that, he could try hitting Ashe Levy for a substantial advance on the undelivered novel and hock his soul in the process.

  He reached the bottom line of his calculations and decided that if he pulled out all the stops, and used up all his lines of credit, he might be able to raise a million and a half, which would leave him short of at least as much again.

  ‘Henry Pickering, my very favourite banker, are you ever in for a surprise!’ He grinned recklessly as he thought of how he was planning to break the first and cardinal rule of the prudent investor and put it all in one basket. ‘Dear Henry, you have been selected by our computer to be the lucky lender of one and a half big Ms to a one-legged dried-up sometime scribbler.’ That was the best he could come up with at the moment, and it wasn’t really worth worrying seriously until he had an answer from Jock Daniels’ consortium. He switched to more mundane considerations.

  He ducked down and sucked a mouthful of the sweet clear water. The Chizarira was a lesser tributary of the great Zambezi, so he was drinking Zambezi waters again, as he had told Henry Pickering he must. ‘Chizarira’ was a hell of a mouthful for a tourist to pronounce, let alone remember. He needed a name under which to sell his little African paradise.

  ‘Zambezi Waters,’ he said aloud. ‘I’ll call it Zambezi Waters,’ and then almost choked as very close to where he lay a voice said clearly. ‘He must be a mad man.’

  It was a deep melodious Matabele voice. ‘First, he comes here alone and unarmed, and then he sits amongst the crocodiles and talks to the trees!’

  Craig rolled over swiftly onto his belly, and stared at the three men who had come silently out of the forest and now stood on the bank, ten paces away, watching him with closed, expressionless faces.

  They were, all three of them, dressed in faded denims – the uniform of the bush fighters – and the weapons they carried with casual familiarity were the ubiquitous AK 47s with the distinctive curved black magazine and laminated woodwork.

  Denim, AK 47s and Matabele – there was no doubt in Craig’s mind who these were. Regular Zimbabwean troops now wore jungle fatigues or battle-smocks, most were armed with Nato weapons and spoke the Shona language. These were former members of the disbanded Zimbabwe People’s Revolutionary Army, now turned political rebels, men subject to no laws, nor higher authority, forged by a long murderous and bloody bush war into hard, ruthless men with death in their hands and death in their eyes. Although Craig had been warned of the possibility, and had indeed been half-expecting this meeting, still the shock made him feel dry-mouthed and nauseated.

  ‘We don’t have to take him,’ said the youngest of the three guerrillas. ‘We can shoot him and bury him secretly – that is good as a hostage.’ He was under twenty-five years of age, Craig guessed, and had probably killed a man for every year of his life.

  ‘The six hostages we took on the Victoria Falls road gave us weeks of trouble, and in the end we had to shoot them anyway,’ agreed the second guerrilla, and they both looked to the third man. He was only a few years older than they were, but there was no doubt that he was the leader. A thin scar ran from the corner of his mouth up his cheek into the hairline at the temple. It puckered his mouth into a lopsided, sardonic grin.

  Craig remembered the incident that they were discussing. Guerrillas had stopped a tourist bus on the main Victoria Falls road and abducted six men, Canadian, Americans and a Briton, and taken them into the bush as hostages for the release of political detainees. Despite an intensive search by police and regular army units, none of the hostages had been recovered.

  The scarred leader stared at Craig with smoky dark eyes for long seconds, and then, with his thumb, slid the rate-of-fire selector on his rifle to automatic.

  ‘A true Matabele does not kill a blood brother of the tribe.’ It took Craig an enormous effort to keep his voice steady, devoid of any trace of his terror. His Sindebele
was so flawless and easy that it was the leader of the guerrillas who blinked.

  ‘Hau!’ he said, which is an expression of amazement. ‘You speak like a man – but who is this blood brother you boast of?’

  ‘Comrade Minister Tungata Zebiwe,’ Craig answered, and saw the instant shift in the man’s gaze, and the sudden discomfiture of his two companions. He had hit a chord that had unbalanced them, and had delayed his own execution for the moment, but the leader’s rifle was still cocked and on fully automatic, still pointed at his belly.

  It was the youngster who broke the silence, speaking too loudly, to cover his own uncertainty. ‘It is easy for a baboon to shout the name of the black-maned lion from the hilltop, and claim his protection, but does the lion recognize the baboon? Kill him, I say, and have done with it.’

  ‘Yet he speaks like a brother,’ murmured the leader, ‘and Comrade Tungata is a hard man—’

  Craig realized that his life was still at desperate risk, a little push either way was all that was needed.

  ‘I will show you,’ he said, still without the slightest quaver in his voice. ‘Let me go to my pack.’

  The leader hesitated.

  ‘I am naked,’ Craig told him. ‘No weapons – not even a knife – and you are three, with guns.’

  ‘Go!’ the Matabele agreed. ‘But go with care. I have not killed a man for many moons – and I feel the lack.’

  Craig stood up carefully from the water and saw the interest in their eyes as they studied his leg foreshortened halfway between knee and ankle, and the compensating muscular development of the other leg and the rest of his body. The interest changed to wary respect as they saw how quickly and easily Craig moved on one leg. He reached his pack with water running down the hard flat muscles of chest and belly. He had come prepared for this meeting, and from the front pocket of his pack he pulled out his wallet and handed a coloured snapshot to the guerrilla leader.

  In the photograph two men sat on the bonnet of an ancient Land-Rover. They had their arms around each other’s shoulders, and both of them were laughing. Each of them held a beer can in his free hand and with it was saluting the photographer. The accord and camaraderie between them was evident.

  The scarred guerrilla studied it for a long time and then slipped the selector on his rifle to lock. ‘It is Comrade Tungata,’ he said, and handed the photograph to the others.

  ‘Perhaps,’ conceded the youngster reluctantly, ‘but a long time ago. I still think we should shoot him.’ However, this opinion was now more wistful than determined.

  ‘Comrade Tungata would swallow you without chewing,’ his companion told him flatly, and slung his rifle over his shoulder.

  Craig picked up his leg and in a moment had fitted it to the stump – and instantly all three guerrillas were intrigued, their murderous intentions set aside as they crowded around Craig to examine this marvellous appendage.

  Fully aware of the African love of a good joke, Craig clowned for them. He danced a jig, pirouetted on the leg, cracked himself across the shin without flinching, and finally took the hat of the youngest, most murderous guerrilla from his head, screwed it into a ball and with a cry of ‘Pele!’ drop-kicked it into the lower branches of the wild fig with the artificial leg. The other two hooted with glee, and laughed until tears ran down their cheeks at the youngster’s loss of dignity as he scrambled up into the wild fig to retrieve his hat.

  Judging the mood finely, Craig opened his pack and brought out mug and whisky bottle. He poured a generous dram and handed the mug to the scar-faced leader.

  ‘Between brothers,’ he said.

  The guerrilla leaned his rifle against the trunk of the tree and accepted the mug. He drained it at one swallow, and blew the fumes ecstatically out of his nose and mouth. The other two took their turn at the mug with as much gusto.

  When Craig pulled on his trousers and sat down on his pack, placing the bottle in front of him, they all laid their weapons aside and squatted in a half circle facing him.

  ‘My name is Craig Mellow,’ he said.

  ‘We will call you Kuphela,’ the leader told him, ‘for the leg walks on its own.’ And the others clapped their hands in approbation, and Craig poured each of them a whisky to celebrate his christening.

  ‘My name is Comrade Lookout,’ the leader told him. Most of the guerrillas had adopted noms-de-guerre. ‘This is Comrade Peking.’ A tribute to his Chinese instructors, Craig guessed. ‘And this,’ the leader indicated the youngest, ‘is Comrade Dollar.’ Craig had difficulty remaining straight-faced at this unlikely juxtaposition of ideologies.

  ‘Comrade Lookout,’ Craig said, ‘the kanka marked you.’

  The kanka were the jackals, the security forces, and Craig guessed the leader would be proud of his battle scars.

  Comrade Lookout caressed his cheek. ‘A bayonet. They thought I was dead and they left me for the hyena.’

  ‘Your leg?’ Dollar asked in return. ‘From the war also?’

  An affirmative would tell them that he had fought against them. Their reaction was unpredictable, but Craig paused only a second before he nodded. ‘I trod on one of our own mines.’

  ‘Your own mine!’ Lookout crowed with delight at the joke. ‘He stood on his own mine!’ And the others thought it was funny, but Craig detected no residual resentment.

  ‘Where?’ Peking wanted to know.

  ‘On the river, between Kazungula and Victoria Falls.’

  ‘Ah, yes,’ they nodded at each other. ‘That was a bad place. We crossed there often,’ Lookout remembered. ‘That is where we fought the Scouts.’

  The Ballantyne Scouts had been one of the elite units of the security forces, and Craig had been attached to them as an armourer.

  ‘The day I trod on the mine was the day the Scouts followed your people across the river. There was a terrible fight on the Zambian side, and all the Scouts were wiped out.’

  ‘Hau! Hau!’ they exclaimed with amazement. ‘That was the day! We were there – we fought with Comrade Tungata on that day.’

  ‘What a fight – what a fine and beautiful killing when we trapped them,’ Dollar remembered with the killing light in his eyes again.

  ‘They fought! Mother of Nkulu kulu – how they fought! Those were real men!’

  Craig’s stomach churned queasily with the memory. His own cousin, Roland Ballantyne, had led the Scouts across the river that fateful day. While Craig lay shattered and bleeding on the edge of the minefield, Roland and all his men had fought to the death a few miles further on. Their bodies had been abused and desecrated by these men, and now they were discussing it like a memorable football match.

  Craig poured more whisky for them. How he had loathed them and their fellows – ‘terrs’, they called them, terrorists – loathed them with the special hatred reserved for something that threatens your very existence and all that you hold dear. But now, in his turn, he saluted them with the mug, and drank. He had heard of RAF and Luftwaffe pilots meeting after the war and reminiscing as they were doing, more like comrades than deadly enemies.

  ‘Where were you when we rocketed the storage tanks in Harare and burned the fuel?’ they asked.

  ‘Do you remember when the Scouts jumped from the sky onto our camp at Molingushi? They killed eight hundred of us that day – and I was there!’ Peking recalled with pride. ‘But they did not catch me!’

  Yet now Craig found that he could not sustain that hatred any longer. Under the veneer of cruelty and savagery imposed upon them by war, they were the true Matabele that he had always loved, with that irrepressible sense of fun, that deep pride in themselves and their tribe, that abounding sense of personal honour, of loyalty and their own peculiar code of morals. As they chatted, Craig warmed to them, and they sensed it and responded to him in turn.

  ‘So what makes you come here, Kuphela? A sensible man like you, walking without even a stick into the leopard’s cave? You must have heard about us – and yet you came here?’

  ‘Yes,
I have heard about you. I heard that you were hard men, like old Mzilikazi’s warriors.’

  They preened a little at the compliment.

  ‘But I came here to meet you and talk with you,’ Craig went on.

  ‘Why?’ demanded Lookout.

  ‘I will write a book, and in the book I will write truly the way you are and the things for which you are still fighting.’

  ‘A book?’ Peking was suspicious immediately.

  ‘What kind of book?’ Dollar backed him.

  ‘Who are you to write a book?’ Lookout’s voice was openly scornful. ‘You are too young. Book-writers are great and learned people.’ Like all barely literate Africans, he had an almost superstitious awe of the printed word, and reverence for the grey hairs of age.

  ‘A one-legged book-writer,’ Dollar scoffed, and Peking giggled and picked up his rifle. He placed it across his lap and giggled again. The mood had changed once more. ‘If he lies about this book, then perhaps he lies about his friendship with Comrade Tungata,’ Dollar suggested with relish.

  Craig had prepared for this also. He took a large manila envelope from the flap of his pack and shook from it a thick sheaf of newspaper cuttings. He shuffled through them slowly, letting their disbelieving mockery change to interest, then he selected one and handed it to Lookout. The serial of the book had been shown on Zimbabwe television two years previously, before these guerrillas had returned to the bush, and it had enjoyed an avid following throughout its run.

  ‘Hau!’ Lookout exclaimed. ‘It is the old king, Mzilikazi!’

  The photograph at the head of the article showed Craig on the set with members of the cast of the production. The guerrillas immediately recognized the black American actor who had taken the part of the old Matabele king. He was in a costume of leopard-skin and heron-feathers.