Leopard Hunts in Darkness - Smith Wilbur - Страница 11

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"Like I said at the beginning, Henry, isn't it time to stop being cute and level with me completely?" It was the first time Craig had heard Henry laugh, and it was infectious, a warm, throaty chuckle.

"Your perception confirms the wisdom of my choice. All right, Craig, there is a little more to it. I didn't want to make it too complicated not until you had got your feet wet first. Let me freshen your drink." He went to the cocktail cabinet in the shape of an antique globe of the world, and while he clinked ice on glass he went on.

"It is vitally important for us to have a complete picture of what's going on below the surface in all of the countries in which we have an involvement. In other words, a functioning intelligence system. Our set-up in Zimbabwe isn't nearly as effective as I'd like it to be. We have lost a key man lately motor car accident or that's what it looked like. Before he went, he gave us a hint he had picked up the rumours of a coup d'ftat backed by the ruskies." Craig sighed. "We Africans don't really put much store in the ballot box any more. The only things that count are tribal loyalties and a strong arm. Coup d'gtat makes better sense than votes."

"Are you on the team?" Henry wanted to know.

"I take it that "expenses" include first-class air tickets?" Craig demanded wickedly.

"Every man has his price," Henry darted back, "is that yours.

"I don't come that cheap," Craig shook his head, "but I'd hate like hell to have a Soviet stooge running the land where my leg is buried. I'll take the job."

"Thought you might." Henry offered his hand. It was cool and startlingly powerful. "I'll send a courier down to your yacht with a file and a survival kit. Read the file while the courier waits and send it back. Keep the kit." Henry Pickering's survival kit contained an assortment of press cards, a membership of the TWA Ambassadors Club, an unlimited World Bank Visa credit card, and an ornate metal and enamel star in a leather case embossed "Field Assessor World Bank'.

Craig weighed it in his palm. "You could beat a maneating lion to death with it," he muttered. "I don't know what else it will be good for." The file was a great deal more rewarding. When he finished reading it, he realized that the alteration of name from Rhodesia to Zimbabwe was probably one of the least drastic changes that had swept over the land of his birth since he had left it just a few short years before.

raig nursed" the hired Volkswagen over the undulating golden grass-clad hills, using an educated foot on the throttle. The Matabele girl at the Avis desk at the Bulawayo airport had cautioned him.

"The tank is full, sir, but I don't know when you will get anoffier tankful. There is very little gasoline in Matabeleland." In the town itself he had seen the vehicles parked in -All long queues at the filling-stations, and the proprietor of the motel had briefed Craig as he signed the register and picked up the keys to one of the bungalows.

"The Maputo rebels keep hitting the pipeline from the east coast. The hell of it is that just across the border the South Africans have got it all and they are happy to deal, but our bright laddies don't want politically tainted gas, so the whole country grinds to a halt. A plague on political dreams to exist we have to deal with them and it's about time they accepted that." So now Craig drove with care, and the gentle pace suited him. It gave him time to examine the familiar countryside, and to assess the changes that a few short years had wrought.

He turned off the main macadamized road fifteen miles out of town, and took the yellow dirt road to the north.

Within a mile he reached the boundary, and saw immediately that the gate hung at a drunken angle and was wide open the first time he had ever seen it that way. He parked and tried to close it behind him, but the frame was buckled and the hinges had rusted. He abandoned the effort and left the road to examine the sign that lay in the grass.

The sign had been pulled down, the retaining bolts ripped clear out. It lay face up, and though sun-faded, it was still legible: King's Lynn Aftikander Stud Home of "Ballantyne's Illustrious IV" Grand Champion of Champions.

Proprietor: Jonathan Ballantyne.

Craig had a vivid mental image of the huge red beast with its humped back and swinging dewlap waddling under its own weight of beef around the show-ring with the blue rosette of the champion on its cheek, and

Jonathan "Bawu" Ballantyne, Craig's maternal grandfather, leading it proudly by the brass ring through its shiny wet nostrils.

Craig walked back to the VW and drove on through grassland that had once been thick and gold and sweet, but through which the bare dusty earth now showed like the balding scalp of a middle-aged man. He was distressed by the condition of the grazing. Never, not even in the four-year drought of the fifties, had King's Lynn grass been allowed to deteriorate like this, and Craig could find no reason for it until he stopped again beside a clump of car riel-Thorn trees that threw their shade over the road.

When he switched off the engine, he heard the bleating amongst the camel-thorns and now he was truly shocked.

"Goats!" he spoke aloud. "They are running goats on King's Lynn." Bawu Ballantyne's ghost must be without rest or peace. Goats on his beloved grassland. Craig went to look for them. There were two hundred or more in one herd. Some of the agile multi-coloured animals had climbed high into the trees and were eating bark and seedpods, while others were cropping the grass down to the roots so that it would die and the soil would sour. Craig had seen the devastation that these animals had created in the tribal trust lands

There were two naked Matabele boys with the herd.

They were delighted whep Craig spoke to them in their own language. They stuffed the cheap candy that he had brought with him for JOst such a meeting into their cheeks, and chattered without inhibition.

Yes, there were thirty families living on King's Lynn now, and each family had its herd of goats the finest goats in Matabeleland, they boasted through sticky lips, and under the trees a homed old billy mounted a young nanny with a vigorous humping of his back. "See!" cried the herd boys "they breed with a will. Soon we will have more goats than any of the other families."

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