The raid had been timed to coincide with the elephant cull and the departure of the refrigerator trucks. However, Cheng hesitated deliberately before he asked, When are the trucks leaving? One of them has engine trouble. Gomo the ranger had sabotaged the alternator. The object was to delay the departure of the convoy until the arrival of the raiding party. However, the driver tells me that they should be ready to leave around six o'clock this evening. Johnny Nzou's voice changed as a thought struck him. Of course, Doctor Armstrong is leaving almost immediately, you could drive in convoy with him. No.
No! Cheng cut in quickly. I cannot leave that soon. I will wait for the trucks. As you wish. Johnny sounded puzzled.
However, I cannot guarantee when the convoy will be ready to leave and I am sure Doctor Armstrong would agree to delay an hour or so. No, Cheng told him firmly. I will not inconvenience or delay Doctor Armstrong. I will travel with your convoy Thank you, Warden. To end the conversation and forestall any further discussion, he hung up the receiver. He frowned. Armstrong's presence was becoming increasingly troublesome. The sooner he disappeared the happier Cheng would be.
However, it was another twenty minutes before he heard the sound of a diesel engine coming from the direction of the warden's bungalow. He stood up and went to the screen door of the verandah and watched the Toyota Landcruiser coming down the hill. On the door of the truck was painted the logo of Armstrong Productions, a disembodied -arm with the wrist encircled by a spiked bracelet, and the elbow bent and tensed in a body-builder's stylised pose to raise a heroic bulge of biceps.
Doctor Armstrong was at the driver's wheel and his camera man was in the front seat beside him.
They were leaving at last. Cheng nodded with satisfaction and glanced at his wristwatch. It was 2 few minutes after one o'clock.
They would have at least four hours to get well clear before the attack on the headquarters was launched.
Daniel Armstrong saw him and braked the truck. He rolled down the side window and smiled across at Cheng. Johnny tells me you are also leaving today, Your Excellency, he called. Are you sure that we can't be of assistance? Not at all, Doctor. Cheng smiled politely. It is all arranged.
Please do not worry about me. Armstrong made him feel uneasy. He was a big man with thick curly hair that gave him 2 tousled outdoors appearance.
His gaze was direct and his smile was lazy. Cheng thought that to the eyes of a Westerner he might appear extremely attractive, especially if the Westerner were female, but to Cheng's Chinese eye, his nose was grotesquely large and his wide mouth had a mobile childlike expression.
He might have dismissed him as offering no serious threat, except for the eyes. Those eyes made Cheng uneasy. They were alert and penetrating.
Armstrong stared at him for a full five seconds before be smiled again and thrust his hand out of the Toyota's rolled down window. Well then, I'll say cheerio, Your Excellency. Let's hope we get an opportunity for that chat one day soon. He engaged the gearshift, raised his right hand in salutation and drove down towards the main gates of the camp.
Cheng watched the truck out of sight and then turned and stared down along the crests of the hills. They were jagged and uneven as a crocodile's teeth.
Twenty miles or so to the west, one of the dark Cumulus thunder-heads was abruptly shot through by vivid lightning.
Even as he watched, rain began to fall from the drooping belly of the cloud mass, first in pale blue streamers and then in a sullen deluge, as impenetrable as a sheet of lead, that obscured the far hills.
Chetti Singh could not have timed it better. Soon the valley and its escarpment would be a morass. A police team sent to investigate any suspicious occurrence at Chiwewe would not only find the road impassable, but if they did succeed in reaching the Park headquarters, the torrential rain would have scoured the hills and washed away all clues and signs of the raiding party's progress. Just let them arrive soon, he hoped fervently. Make it today and not tomorrow. He checked his wristwatch. It was not quite two o'clock. Sunset at seven-thirty, although with the dense cloud cover it would probably be dark before that. Let it be today, he reiterated.
He fetched his binoculars and his battered copy of Roberts Birds of South Africa from the table on the verandah of the cottage. He was at pains to demonstrate to the warden that he was an ardent naturalist.
That was his excuse for being here.
He climbed into his Mercedes and drove down to the warden's office behind the ivory godown. Johnny Nzou was at his desk. Like any other civil service employee, half the warden's work was made up of filling in forms and requisitions and registers and reports. Johnny looked up from his piles of paper as Cheng stood in the doorway. I thought that while I was waiting for the refrigerator truck to be repaired, I might as well go down to the water-hole at FigTree Pan, he explained, and Johnny smiled sympathetically as he noticed the binoculars and field guide. Both were the paraphernalia of the typical bird-watcher, and he always felt welldisposed towards anybody who shared his love of nature.
I'll send one of my rangers to call you when the convoy is ready to leave, but I can't promise it will be this evening, Johnny told him.
They tell me that the alternator on one truck is burned out. Spare parts are a terrible problem in this country; there just isn't sufficient foreign exchange to pay for everything we need. Cheng drove down to the man-made water-hole. Less than a mile from Chiwewe headquarters a borehole had been sunk at the head of a small vlei.
From it a windmill pumped a trickle of water into a muddy pond to attract birds and animals to the proximity of the camp.
As Cheng parked the Mercedes in the observation area overlooking the pool, a small herd of kudu that had been drinking from it took fright and scattered into the surrounding bush. They were large beige-coloured antelope, striped with pale chalk lines across their backs, with long legs and necks, and huge trumpet-shaped ears. Only the males carried wide corkscrewed horns.
Cheng was too agitated to use his binoculars, although clouds of birds descended to drink at the water-hole. The fire finches burned like tiny scarlet flames, and the starlings were a shining iridescent green that reflected the sunlight. Cheng was a talented artist not only with ivory carver's knives but also with water colours. One of his favourite subjects had always been wild birds which he depicted in traditional romantic Chinese style.
Today he could not concentrate on them as they settled at the water.
Instead he fitted a cigarette into his ivory holder and puffed at it restlessly. This was the spot he had chosen as the rendezvous with the leader of the poachers, and Cheng scanned the encroaching bush anxiously as he fidgeted and smoked.
Still, the first indication he had that someone was there was the sound of a voice through the open window of the Mercedes beside him.
Cheng started uncontrollably and turned quickly to the man who stood beside the motor car.
He had a scar that ran down from the corner of his left eye into the line of his top lip. The lip was puckered upwards on that side giving him an uneven sardonic smile. Chetti Singh had warned Cheng about the scar. It was an infallible point of recognition. Sali? Cheng's voice was breathless. The poacher had startled him. You are Sali ? Yes, the man agreed, smiling with only half his twisted mouth. I am Sali .
His skin was almost purple black, the scar a livid pink upon it. He was short in stature but with broad shoulders and muscular limbs. He wore a tattered shirt and shorts of faded khaki drill that were crusted and stained with sweat and filth.