"Where and when do they meet him?"
"He comes in each full moon, driving the road from Tuti Mission to the Shangani river. They wait on the road in the night for his coming." Craig squatted beside the fire and thought for a few minutes, then looked up at Comrade Lookout. "You will F tell these men that they will wait beside the road next full in oon with the rhinoceros horns until this man comes in his motor-can"
"That is not possible," Comrade Lookout interrupted him.
why?" Craig asked.
"The men are dead." Craig stared at him in utter dismay. "All three of them?"
"All three," Comrade Lookout nodded. His eyes were cold and flat and merciless.
"But--2 Craig couldn't bring himself to ask the question.
He had set the guerrillas onto the poachers. It must have been like setting a pack of fox-terriers onto a domesticated hamster. Even though he had not meant it to happen, he was surely responsible. He felt sickened and ashamed.
"Do not worry, Kuphela," Comrade Lookout reassured him kindly. "We have brought you the horns; of your be jane and the men were only dirty Batonka. apes anyway." Carrying the bark string bag of rhinoceros horns over his shoulder, Craig went down to the Land-Rover. He felt sick and weary and his leg hurt, but the draw-string bag cu tung into his flesh did not gall him as sorely as his own conscience.
he rhinoceros horns stood in a row on Peter Fungabera's desk. Four of them the tall front horns; and the shorter rear horns.
"Aphrodisiac," Peter murmured, touching one of them with his long, tapering fingers.
"That's a fallacy," Craig said. "Chemical analysis shows they contain no substance that could possibly be aphrodisiac in effect." "They are nothing wore than a type of agglutinated hair mass," Sally-Anne "explained. "The effects that the failing Chinese roue seeks when he crushes it to powder and takes it with a draught of rose water is merely sympathetic medicine the horn is long and hard, voilap "Anyway, the Arab oil men will pay more for their knife-handles than the cunning old Chinese will pay for their personal daggers," Craig pointed out.
"Whatever the final market, the fact is that there are two less rhino on Zambezi Waters than there were a month ago, and in another month how many more will have gone?" Peter Fungabera stood up and came around the desk on bare feet. His loincloth was freshly laundered and crisply ironed. He stood in front of them.
"I have been pursuing my own lines of investigation," he said quietly. "And all of it seems to point in the same direction as Sally-Anne's own reasoning led her. It seems absolutely certain that there is a highly organized poaching ring operating across the country.
The tribesmen in the game, rich areas are being enticed into poaching and gathering the valuable animal products. They are collected by middlemen, many of whom are junior civil servants, such as district officers and game department rangers. The booty is accumulated in various remote and safe caches until the value is sufficient to warrant a large single consignment being sent out of the country." Peter Fungabera began to pace slowly up and down the room.
"The consignment is usually exported on a commercial Air Zimbabwe flight to Danes-Salaam on the Tanzania coast. We are not sure what happens at that end, but it probably goes out on a Soviet or Chinese freighter."
"The Soviets have no qualms about wildlife conservation," Sally-Anne nodded. "Sable-fur production and whaling are big foreign-exchange-earners for them." o Air Zimbabwe operations fall under?"
"What portfolio d Craig asked suddenly.
AL "The portfolio of the minister of tourism, the honourable Tungata Zebiwe," Peter replied smoothly, and they were all silent for a few moments before he went on. "When a consignment is due, the products are brought into Harare, all on the same day, or night. They are not stored, but go directly onto the aircraft under tight security conditions and are flown out almost immediately."
"How often does this happen?" Craig asked and Peter Fungabera glanced enquiringly at his aide who was standing unobtrusively at the back of the room.
"That varies," Captain Timon Nbebi replied. "In the rainy season the grass is long and the conditions in the bush are bad. There is little hunting activity, but during the dry months the poachers can work more efficiently.
However, we have learned through our informant that a consignment is almost due and will in fact go out within the next two weeks-" "Thank you, Captain," Peter Fungabera interrupted him with a small frown of annoyance; obviously he had wanted to deliver that information himself. "What we have also learned is that the head of the organization often takes an active part in the operation. For instance, that massacre of elephant in the abandoned minefield," Peter looked across at Sally-Anne, "the one that you photographed so vividly well, we have learned that a government minister, we do not know for certain which one, went to the site in an army helicopter. We know that on two further occasions a high government official; reputedly of ministerial rank, was present when consignments were brought in to the airport for shipment."
"He probably does not trust his own men not to cheat him, "Craig murmured.
"With the bunch of cut-throats he's got working for him, who can blame hir& Sally-Anne's voice was hoarse with her outrage, but Etter Fungabera seemed unaffected.
"We believe that we will be forewarned of the next consignment. As I have intimated, we have infiltrated a man into their organization.
We will watch the movements of our suspect as the date approaches and, with luck, catch him red-handed. If not, we will seize the consignment at the airport, and arrest all those handling it. I am certain we will be able to convince one of them to turn state's evidence." Watching his face, Craig recognized that same cold, flat, merciless expression that he had last seen when Comrade Lookout reported the death of the three poachers. It was only a fleeting glimpse behind the urbane manner and then Peter Fungabera had turned back to his desk.