He made sure to mention the note in Johnny's hand and the fishscale pattern of the bloody footprint on the office floor without specifically relating either to the Taiwanese ambassador. Let them make their own inferences.
He had a great deal of difficulty when it came to describing his pursuit of the Mercedes and the refrigerator trucks. He had to give his motives without incriminating himself, or pointing too definitely at the suspicions he entertained towards Ning Cheng Gong. I followed the convoy to ask them if they had any knowledge of the missing ivory, he dictated.
Although I was unable to catch up with Ambassador Ning and the leading truck, I did speak to Ranger Gomo whom I met on the Karoi road and who was driving the second refrigerator truck. He denied any knowledge of these events and allowed me to inspect the contents of the truck. I found no ivory. It galled him to have to admit this, but he had to cover himself against any charges that Gomo might bring against him later. I then determined that my duty was to contact the nearest police station and report the deaths of the Chiwewe warden, his family and staff, and the burning and destruction of buildings and other property. It was well after daybreak when Daniel could at last sign the handwritten statement, and only then would the police sergeant respond to his urging to telephone CID headquarters in Harare.
This led to a protracted telephone discussion between the sergeant and a series of increasingly senior detectives in Harare as one passed him on to the other. This was the pace of Africa and Daniel gritted his teeth.
AWA, he told himself. Africa Wins Again. At last it was ordered that the sergeant should drive out to Chiwewe camp in the station Landrover while a team of detectives flew down from Harare to land at the Park's airstrip. Do you want me to come out with you to Chiwewe?
Daniel asked, when the sergeant finally relinquished the telephone and began preparations for his expedition to the camp.
The sergeant looked nonplussed by the question. He had received no instructions from CID as to what to do with the witness. You leave an address and telephone number where we can contact you if we need you, he decided, after a great deal of frowning thought.
Daniel was relieved to be turned loose. Since arriving at the Chirundu police station, he had had many hours in which to consider the situation, and make his plans to cover every contingency.
If Isaac Mtwetwe had been able to capture any of the poachers, that would still be the swiftest path to Ning Cheng Gong, but he had to talk to Isaac before he handed over his prisoners to the police. I want to use your telephone, he told the police corporal as soon as the station commander and his unit of armed constables had driven away in the green Landrover, heading for Chiwewe. Police telephone. The corporal shook his head.
Not public telephone. Daniel produced a blue ten Zim dollar note and laid it on the desk in front of him. It is only a local call, he explained, and the banknote vanished miraculously. The corporal smiled and waved him towards the telephone. Daniel had made a friend.
Isaac Mtwetwe answered the call almost immediately the Karoi telephone exchange made the connection to Mana Pools. Isaac, Daniel blurted with relief. When did you get back? I have just walked into my office this minute, Isaac told him. We got back ten minutes ago. I have one man wounded. I must get him to hospital. You made contact, then? Yes, we made contact. Like you said, Danny, a big gang, bad guys. Did you get any prisoners, Isaac? Daniel demanded eagerly.
if you managed to grab a couple of them, we're home and dry. Isaac Mtwetwe stood at the wheel of the twenty-foot assault craft and ran downriver in the night.
His rangers squatted on the deck below the gunwale and huddled into their greatcoats, for it was cold out on the water with the wind of their passage accentuating the chill of the river mist.
The outboard motor was running rough and cutting out intermittently.
Twice Isaac had to let the boat drift while he went back to work on it.
it badly needed a full overhaul, but there was never enough foreign exchange available for spares to be imported. He got her running again and pointed the bows downstream.
A thick slice of moon spiked up above the dark trees that lined the bank of the Zambezi. it gave Isaac just enough light to push the boat up to top speed. Although he knew each curve and stretch of the river intimately for the next fifty miles, right down to Tete and the Mozambique border, the shallows and rocky outcrops were too complex even for him to run in complete darkness. The glow of moonlight turned the patches of river mist to iridescent pearl dust and gave to the open water a lustre like polished black obsidian. The subdued hum of the motor and the speed of their progress gave no advance warning. They drew level with the hippopotamuses feeding in the reedbanks before the monstrous amphibians were aware of their arrival.
In panic they tobogganed down the steep and slippery paths into the river, and went through the surface in a welter of spray. The flocks of wild duck roosting in the lagoons and quiet backwaters were more alert.
The assault boat's approach sent them aloft on whistling wings, silhouetted against the rising moon.
Isaac knew exactly where he was heading. He had been a freedom fighter during the bush war and he had crossed this same river to raid the white farms and harass the security forces of Ian Smith's illegal regime. He knew all the techniques and tricks that the poachers employed. Some of them had been his comrades-in-arms in the struggle, but they were the new enemy now. He hated them as much as he had ever hated the Selous Scouts or the Rhodesian Light Infantry.
The Zambezi was almost half a mile wide along this stretch below Chirundu and Mana Pools. The raiders would need craft to cross its mighty green flood. They would get them the same way the guerrillas once had, from the local fisherfolk.
The Zambezi supports an itinerant population of fishermen who build their villages upon her banks. The villages are impermanent, for the tenor of their lives is dictated by the Zambezi's moods. When the river floods her banks and inundates the flood plains, the people must move to higher ground.
They must follow the migrations of the shoals of tilapia and tiger fish and barbeled catfish on which they live, so every few months the clusters of rude thatched huts with their fishsmoking racks and smouldering fires are abandoned and allowed to fall into decay as the tribe moves on.
It was part of Isaac's duty to monitor the movements of the fisherfolk, for their exploitation of the river had a profound effect on the river ecology. Now he smelled the smoke and the odour of drying fish on the night air, and throttled back the motor. Softly he crept in towards the northern bank. If the poachers had come from Zambia, that was where they would return.
The odour of fish was stronger and tendrils of smoke drifted out low across the water to mingle with the mist. There were four huts with shaggy thatched roofs in an angle of the bank, and four long dugout canoes drawn up on the narrow beach below them.
Isaac nosed the assault craft on to the beach and jumped ashore, leaving one of his rangers to hold the bows. An old woman crawled out of the low door of one of the huts. She wore only a skirt of lechwe antelope. skins around her waist and her breasts were empty and pendulous.
. I see you, old mother, Isaac greeted her respectfully. He always took pains to maintain good relations with the riverfolk. I see you, my son, the old woman giggled, and Isaac smelled the rank odour of cannabis on her. The Batonka people pound the weed into a paste, then mould it with fresh cow-dung into balls which they dry in the sun and smoke in clay pipes with reed mouthpieces.
The Government had granted them special dispensation to continue the tradition. It was particularly prevalent amongst the old women of the tribe. Are all your men in their huts? Isaac asked quietly. Are all the canoes on the beach? The old woman blew her nose before she replied. She blocked one nostril with her thumb and from the other shot a shaft of silver mucus into the fire. She wiped the residue from her upper lip with the palm of her hand. All my sons and their wives are asleep in the huts, and their children with them, she cackled. You saw no strange men with guns who wished you to ferry them across the river?