The going price in Hong Kong was a hundred dollars a pound, or a total of eight hundred thousand dollars. The profit on the day's work would be over one million dollars, in a land where the average annual income of each adult male was less than six hundred dollars.
Of course, there had been the other small costs of the operation. One of the axe men had over-balanced and tumbled from his perch on an elephant carcass. He had landed flat on his buttocks, directly on top of an antipersonnel mine.
"Son of a demented baboon." The officer was still irritated by the man's stupidity. It had held work up for almost an hour while the body was retrieved and prepared for burial.
Another man had lost a foot from an overzealous axe stroke and a dozen others had lesser cuts from swinging pan gas One other man had died during the night with an AK 47 bullet through the belly when he objected to what the officer was doing to his junior wife in the bushes beyond the smoking racks but when the profit was considered, the costs were small indeed. The comrade commissar would be plea so and with good reason.
It was the niornin4 of the third day before the team working on the ivory' had completed their task to the officer's satisfaction. Then they were sent down the valley to assist at the smoking racks, leaving the ivory camp deserted. There must be no eyes to discover the identity of the important visitor who would come now to inspect the spoils.
He arrived in the helicopter. The officer was standing LO attention in the clearing beside the long rows of gleaming ivory. The down-draught of the rotors tore at his jacket, and fluttered the legs of his jeans, but he maintained his rigid stance.
The machine settled to earth and a commanding figure stepped down, a handsome man, straight and strong, with very white square teeth against the dark mahogany of his face, crisp kinky African hair cropped closely to the finely shaped skull. He wore an expensive pearl-grey suit of Italian cut over a white shirt and dark blue tie. His black shoes were hand-made of soft calf.
He held out his hand towards the officer. Immediately the younger man abandoned his respect fill pose and ran to him, likea child to its father.
"Comrade Commissar!"
"No! No!" he chided the officer gently, still smiling. "Not Comrade Commissar any longer, but Comrade Minister now. No longer leader of a bunch of unwashed bush fighters, but Minister of State of a sovereign government." The minister permitted himself a smile as he surveyed the rows of fresh tusks. "And the most successful ivory, poacher of all time is that not true?" raig Mellow winced as the cab hit another pothole in the surface of Fifth Avenue just outside the entrance of Bergdorf Goodman. Like most New York cabs, its suspension would have better suited a Sherman tank.
"I've had a softer ride through the Mbabwe depression in a Land-Rover," Craig thought, and had a sudden nostalgic twinge as he remembered that rutted, tortuous track through the bad lands below the Chobe river, that wide green tributary of the great Zambezi.
That was all so far away and long ago, and he pushed the memory aside and returned to brooding over the sense of slight that he felt at having to ride in a yellow cab to a luncheon meeting with his publisher, and having to pick up the tab for the ride himself. There had been a time when they would have sent a chauffeur, driven limousine for him, and the destination would have been the Four Seasons or La Grenouille, not some pasta joint in the Village. Publishers made these subtle little protests when a writer had not delivered a typescript for three years, and spent more time romancing his stockbroker and ripping it up at Studio 54 than at his typewriter.
"Well, I guess I've got it coming." Craig pulled a face, reached for a cigarette, and then arrested the movement as he remembered that he had given it up. Instead he pushed the thick dark lock of hair off his forehead and watched the faces of the crowds upon the sidewalk. There had been a time when he found the bustle exciting and stimulating after the silences of the African bush, even the sleazy facades and neon frontings onto the littered streets had been different and intriguing. Now he felt suffocated and claustrophobic, and he longed for a glimpse of open sky, i rather than that narrow -ribbon that showed between the high tops of the buildings.
The cab braked sharply, interrupting his thoughts, and the driver muttered "16th Street" without looking round.
Craig pushed a ten-dollar bill through the slot in the annoured Perspex screen tk at protected the driver from his passengers. "Keep it," he said, and stepped out onto the sidewalk. He saw the restaurant immediately, all cutey ethnic awnings and straw-covered chianti bottles in the window.
When Craig crossed the sidewalk he moved easily, i without trace of a limp, so that nobody watching him would have guessed at his disability. Despite his misgivings, it was cool and clean inside the restaurant and the smell of food was appetizing.
All Ashe Levy stood up from a booth at the back of the room and beckoned to him.
"Craig, babyP He put one arm around Craig's shoulders and patted his cheek paternally. "You're looking good, you old hound dog, yaup Ashe cultivated his own eclectic style. His hair was brush-cut and he wore gold-rimmed spectacles. His shirt was striped with a contrasting white collar, platinum cufflinks and tie pin, and brown brogues with a pattern of little holes punched in the toe caps. His jacket was cashmere with narrow lapels. His eyes were very pale, and always focused just a little to one side of Craig's own. Craig knew that he smoked only the very best Tihuana gold.
"Nice place, Ashe. How did you find it?"
"A change from boring old "Seasons"," Ashe grinned slyly, pleased that the gesture of disapproval had been noted. "Craig, I want you to meet a very talented lady." She had been sitting well back in the gloom at the back of the booth, but now she leaned forward and held out her hand. The spot lamp caught the hand, and so it was the first impression that Craig had of her.
The hand was narrow with artistic fingers, but though the nails were scrubbed clean, they were clipped short and unpainted, the skin was tanned to gold with prominent aristocratic veins showing bluish beneath it. The bones were fine, but there were callouses at the base of those long straight fingers a hand that was accustomed to hard work.
Craig took the hand and felt the strength of it, the softness of the dry cool skin on the back and the rough places on the palm, and he looked into her face.
She had dark thick eyebrows that stretched in an unbroken curve from the outer corner of one eye to the other. Her eyes, even in the poor light, were green with honey-coloured specks surrounding the pupil. Their gaze was direct and candid.
"Sally-Anne Jay, "Ashe said. "This is Craig Mellow." Her nose was straight but slightly too large, and her mouth too wide to be beautiful. Her thick dark hair was scraped back severely from the broad forehead, her face was as honey-tanned as her hands and there was a fine peppering of freckles across her cheeks.
"I read your book," she said. Her voice was level and clear, her accent mid-Atlantic, but only when he heard its timbre did he realize how young she was. "I thought it deserved everything that happened to it."
"Compliment or slap?" He tried to make it sound light and unconcerned, but he found himself hoping fervently that she was not one of those who attempted to demonstrate their own exalted literary standards by denigrating a popular writer's work to his face.