‘Welcome, Robert. Glad you could come.’
‘This is Harry Parkinson. Harry, Ann Cable the journalist.’
His palm was dry, like snakeskin; his grip of handshake brief and crushing.
His ‘How d’you do?’ was very English indeed. His face was deeply tanned and lined, the wrinkles round his eyes deep and pale-floored; the nose red and webbed with veins. The pale eyes were given brightness by the contrast and the clipped moustache given depth and whiteness. His teeth were yellow and false, too big for his thin-lipped mouth.
‘We’re hoping to bring her film crew out here later in the week.’ Robert’s tone of voice changed as he spoke and Ann suddenly realised that some unspoken message had passed between the men. They turned and crossed towards the Land Rover. ‘You have a problem with that?’
‘I don’t know, Robert. Miss Cable, would you mind sitting in the back? Just climb aboard.’
The two men lingered outside the battered vehicle as she settled herself onto the cracked and dusty leather of the long bench seat. It was hotter out here than it had been in Mawanga, but the heat was dry and less oppressive. Her mind was aching to wander away into the romance of the jungle but her ears were too well aware of the hurried conversation going on between the men.
‘I think we ought to get the Cessna fuelled up and rolled over by the hut out of harm’s way.’
‘OK, Harry. If you think so. Any reason why old Chobe can’t do it as usual?’
‘Chobe’s gone.’
‘Gone?’
‘Vanished. Disappeared. Last night, after I talked to you. Well, he may have gone earlier but I didn’t know about it until I came down here to warn him to look out for you today.’
During this speech, the Englishman’s voice faded. The pair of them were moving away. Ann glanced out and saw them walking purposefully towards the nearest hut. Their voices faded until they were swallowed by the bush sounds which filled the wavering air, sounds she had dreamed of hearing throughout her youth. They had filled her limitless dreams fostered on the fantasies of Tarzan and Mogambo, of the Hollywood movies on which her father had worked before he died.
And now she was hearing them for real, every well-remembered nameless film-soundtrack chirrup, whistle, cough, song and snarl. It was midday and hot; there was nothing hunting now, she knew, just the bustle of the bush going about its business. Then, loud enough to make her jump, came a whinny and the blowing sound of a horse seeking attention. Her eyes sprang open — she hadn’t realised they were closed.
At the end of the makeshift landing field, where the cleared grass came closest to the trees, was a substantial fence. Over this, for all the world like a pet pony in a field, a zebra had pushed its head. She opened the door and climbed to the ground. The zebra watched her as she walked towards it. She had only seen zebra in pictures and zoos. What struck her about it most forcibly was the fact that it was not black and white. The red dust from the plains had coloured it so that it was striped red and umber — no, not striped, shadowed. Almost dappled. She bent and pulled up a handful of grass, offering it. The delicate nostrils flared. The velvet lips parted to reveal strong yellow teeth.
‘Come on then, my beauty,’ she purred, moving slowly forward.
But then the men behind her started up a wheezing, clanking old hand pump and the zebra’s brown eyes widened with surprise and fear. Its long head jerked back over the fence and it galloped away. Immediately, a whole section of the grassland was in motion too and she realised that what had seemed to be a dusty, dappled field had been a grazing herd. Entranced, she stood and watched. They only moved a couple of hundred metres then they stopped and began to feed again. The dust of their movement billowed and settled, adding to their russet camouflage. The panorama before her seemed slowly to widen as she looked around, taking it all in. In the far distance away to her left, the thunderous line of the tectonic cliff folded into a series of tawny hills which she knew were in fact across the border in the neighbouring state of Congo Libre. Then, from the feet of the hills, as tawny as they were, as though the whole landscape was the flank of a lion, stretched the grassland where the zebra were feeding. On the right, however, the grass became thorn scrub and the tall bushes soon became the trees she knew were gathered round the lake they had flown across.
How she ached to climb the fence and explore. But she knew how foolish such an act would be. All she knew about her current environment was what she had read in the works of Rider Haggard, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Hemingway, Robert Ruark, James S. Rand and Wilbur Smith. However accurate these men had been in their portrayals of Africa, she knew that reading about it was never the same as being out in it. So she stood and strained her eyes, hoping, praying, to see the most coveted prize of all, the tall, lean, long-legged, high-shouldered, wide-eared tuskers of the African plains. She had seen Indian elephants in circuses and zoos, and the squat, square, reliable pachyderms had made her ache to see their great wild African cousins.
The clatter made by the men putting the pump away called her back to herself and by the time they returned to the Land Rover she was sitting back on the seat in the rear. ‘Where first?’ she asked.
‘My place, I think,’ said Harry. As he drove, he talked, giving her an unsolicited interview which she would have found even more interesting if he had not kept looking back over his shoulder at her while he hurled the Land Rover along the red dirt tracks at what seemed like breakneck speed.
‘I’ve been here since the eighties. Helped to set the place up, you see. Stayed on to keep an eye on things even though it’s all gone to rack and ruin. Just a game warden really, but I’m responsible for the better part of ten thousand square miles of assorted desert, bush and scrub. Everywhere south and east to the Blood River, which is the closest we have to a border with Congo Libre, and everywhere north to the escarpment. It’s not all game reserve, of course. A lot of N’Kuru farmland, a couple of towns — real towns with buildings — and half a dozen villages. The N’Kuru Lion lands. The N’Kuru tribal homeland. Almost a magic place. Incredibly important in their religion. I and my askaris are the only law there is, really. Parkinson’s Law, we call it. Prime Minister Mumboto seems happy enough to let me look after things. He doesn’t want that bastard General of Police Nimrod Chala and his Kyoga sadists down here pillaging and looting. Nor Major General Moses M’Diid, the acting President’s brother, with his tank regiment either for that matter. Though both of them would give anything to get their hands on it. If the farmland N’Kuru are on the move because of the drought, the only chance the government have of keeping the lid on things is if the bush N’Kuru stay on their homeland here. Which is why I told Robert I was worried. Something’s up. Something not very nice. And that is why you’re here, Miss Cable. Robert says you can get some publicity drummed up. International observers, press corps, stuff like that.’
‘When you say “keep the lid on things”, what do you think will happen if the lid comes off?’
‘Civil war, plain and simple. Kyoga against N’Kuru with clubs and stones in the countryside until the Lions call in their friends from Congo Libre; and the army versus the police in the city, Moses M’Diid versus Nimrod Chala. The same as is happening in Rwanda and Somalia, the Vietnam of Africa. The Bosnia of the Dark Continent.’
‘And the United Nations in the middle of it,’ began Robert.
‘The same as Kigali, Mogadishu and Sarajevo,’ completed Harry grimly.
‘And all the others,’ added Ann, beginning to understand their desperation, and to feel all too keenly how inadequately she could answer their cry for help. She couldn’t get the lid off a jelly jar, let alone off this.