Leopard Hunts in Darkness - Smith Wilbur - Страница 10

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"Come and see me."

"Today?" Craig asked.

"Hey, fellow, you're hot to trot! Hold on, let me check my diary what about six o'clock this evening? That's the soonest I can work it in." Henry's office was on the twenty-sixth floor and the tall windows faced up the deep sheer crevasses of the avenues to the expansive green swathe of Central Park in the distance.

Henry poured Craig a whisky and soda and brought it to him at the window. They stood looking down into the guts of the city and drinking in silence, while the big red ball of the sun threw weird shadows through the purpling dusk.

"I think it's time to stop being cute, Henry," Craig said at last.

"Tell me what you really want from me."

"Perhaps you're right," Henry agreed. "The book was a little bit of a cover-up. Not really fair although, speaking personally, I'd like to have seen your words with her pictures-" Craig made an impatient little gesture, and Henry went on.

"I am vice-president in charge of the Africa division."

"I saw your title on the door," Craig nodded.

"Despite what a lot of our critics say, w e aren't a i i charitable institution, we are one of the bulwarks of capitalism. Africa is a continent of economically fragile states. With the obvious exceptions of South Africa and the oil, producers further north, they are mostly subsistence agricultural societies, with no industrial backbone and very few mineral resources." Craig nodded again.

"Some of those who have recently achieved their independence from the old colonial system are still benefiting from the infrastructure built up by the white settlers, while most of the others Zambia and Tanzania and Maputo, for instance have had long enough to let it run down into a chaos of lethargy and ideological fantasy. They are going to be hard to save." Henry shook his head mournfully and looked even more like an undertaker stork. "But with others, like Zimbabwe, Kenya and Malawi, we have got a fighting chance. The system is still working, as yet the farms haven't been totally decimated and handed over to hordes of peasant squatters, the railroads work, there are some foreign exchange earnings from copper and chrome and tourism. We can keep them going, with a little luck."

"Why bother?" Craig asked. "I mean you said you are not in the charity game, so why bother?"

"Because if we don't feed them, then sooner or later we are going to have to fight them, it's as simple as that. If they begin to starve, guess into whose big red paws they are going to fall."

"Yes. You're making sense." Craig sipped his whisky.

"Returning to earth for a moment," Henry went on, "the countries on our shortlist have one exploitable asset, nothing tangible like gold, but many times more valuable.

They are attractive to tourists from the west. If we are ever going to see any interest on the billions that we have got tied up in them, then we are going to have to make good and sure that they stay attractive."

"How do you do that?" Craig turned to him.

"Let's take Kenya as an example," Henry suggested. "Sure it's t sunshine and beaches, but then so have Greece and Sardinia, and they are a hell of a lot closer to Paris and Berlin. What the Mediterranean hasn't got is African wildlife, and that's what the tourists will fly those extra all, hours to see, and that's the collateral on our loan. Tourist dollars are keeping us in business."

"Okay, but I don't see how I come in," Craig frowned.

"Wait for it, we'll get there in time," Henry told him.

"Let me lay it out a little first. It's like this unfortunately, the very first thing that the newly independent black African sees when he looks around after the white man flies out is ivory and rhinoceros horn and meat on the hoof. One rhinoceros or bull elephant represents more wealth than he could earn in ten years of honest labour.

For fifty years a white-run game department has protected all these marvelous riches, but now the whites have run to Australia or Johannesburg; an Arab sheikh will pay twenty-five thousand dollars for a dagger with a genuine rhinoceros, horn handle and the victorious guerrilla fighter has an AK 47 rifle in his hands. It's all very logical."

"Yes, I've seen it," Craig nodded.

"We had the same thing in Kenya. Poaching was big business and it was run from the top. I mean the very top.

It took us fifteen years and the death of a president to break it up. Now Kenya has the strictest game laws in Africa and, more important, they are being enforced. We had to use all our influence. We even had to threaten to pull the plug, but now our investment is protected." Henry looked smug for a moment, then his melancholia over, whelmed him again. "Nqk we have to travel exactly the same road again in Zi1pbabwe. You saw those photographs of the kill in the minefield. It's being organized again, and once again we suspect it's somebody in a very high place.

We have to stop it."

"I'm still waiting to hear how it affects me."

"I need an agent in the field. Somebody with experience perhaps even somebody who once worked in the game and wildlife department, somebody who speaks the local language, who has a legitimate excuse for moving around and asking questions perhaps an author researching a new book, who has contacts high up in government. Of course, if my agent had an international reputation, it would open even more doors, and if he were a dedicated proponent of the capitalist system and truly believed in what we are doing, he would be totally effective."

"James Bond, me?"

"Field investigator for the World Bank. The pay is forty thousand dollars a year, plus expenses and a lot of job satisfaction and if there isn't a book in it at the end, I'll stand you to lunch at La Grenouille with the wine of your choice."

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