She looked back with her eyes clearer just in time to see the first figure top the rise behind them. It was impossible to judge the distance, but there was no way it could be a kilometre yet.
The figure came up to full height and brought a rifle up.
‘NO!’ she screamed again, howling more loudly for herself than she had done even for Harry. She never even thought of trying to shoot back with the pistol, or of trying for the Remington. ‘NOOOO!’ she screamed.
Robert tried to swing the wheel, but he lacked Harry’s wiry strength and bludgeoning technique. The Land Rover continued sedately along the straight line of its path.
The soldier on the crest put the rifle to his shoulder and took aim at them. Ann stopped screaming then, gulped, and watched, fascinated. Knowing that the gun was pointed straight at her, knowing it could not miss, knowing she should be cowering down and getting out of the line of fire, she watched as he drew his bead on her.
And hesitated. Looked around, down the slope. The barrel wavered and fell. The soldier stood there uncertainly until another man joined him then together they turned and looked after the fleeing Land Rover. A third figure joined them, began to gesture, wave his arms. The same scene began to play itself out on the top of the hill behind them as Ann had seen in the seconds after Harry’s death. It continued as she and Robert made good their escape. But the man who hesitated and let them go did not meet the fate of the man who had murdered Harry and sprung the trap too soon.
Or at least he had not done so by the time they were out of sight.
‘Where are we going to go?’ asked Ann wearily when the dawn at last showed them that there was nothing more threatening nearby than some zebra and a few distant giraffe, and allowed them to roll to a stop.
‘I’ve been thinking about that,’ he answered, his voice rusty with fatigue and thirst, and the roughness resulting from discussing over and over again what had happened to Harry and what Ann had subsequently seen. A conversation interrupted only when she hurled herself periodically over the door top to throw up down the Land Rover’s side. ‘We have to go north.’
‘North! But we need to get to Mawanga city. On the coast. That’s west!’ Her voice was also weak. She had not had a drink in several hours — even the slightest sip started her vomiting again, and she couldn’t work out whether it was exhaustion, shock or a gastric infection. It could even have been motion sickness, she supposed; the ride had been rough enough, for they had tried to keep clear of roads.
‘I know we have to get to Mawanga, but we’ll never make it if we go directly. First, we’ll run out of petrol and although I’ve got local currency and cards, there’s no guarantee that we’ll be able to get any if we go west. They built great roads but no gas stations on them. Secondly, with or without Rover here, we’re bound to get mixed up with the refugees heading that way, which will mean going through a police or army checkpoint. They’ll have that camera off you in a second. You wouldn’t stand a chance. They’d detain us at the least. Maybe disappear us, if you know what I mean. Especially if we still have the guns on us. And of course if we don’t take the guns we’ll get mugged by the refugees. No. It’s too risky.’
‘OK,’ she said slowly. ‘What’s north?’
‘Two things. First of all, Harry hid petrol and supplies in caches on his domain. Never knew when he or his askari would need them.’
He pulled out a battered map case from the pocket in the Land Rover’s door. ‘Marked on a map in here. Some of them must still be there, though I doubt he’s topped them up for months.’
‘That’s one. You said two.’
‘The N’Kuru townships. We’ll still stand out like sore thumbs but we’ll have a better chance. There aren’t so many refugees in that area and as far as I know there are no roadblocks yet.’
‘So we can get in. So?’
As he had been speaking, he had been unfolding Harry’s map. Now, holding it across the steering wheel and letting it flap up onto the windscreen, he pointed with a bright pink fingernail. Leading from the townships, across a bridge just below the Leopold Falls then on down to the coast, following an apparently insane course halfway up the tectonic cliff above the river was a long dark line scarred with short cross-marks. She knew it, though she had to reach right back into fourth grade geography to name it. ‘It’s a railway line,’ she breathed.
They found petrol at the nearest cache marked on Harry’s map, which was lucky but logical enough: they were working northwards from the game reserve now, coming into more populous regions. This was therefore the cache least likely to have been found and robbed by the desperate population. There was enough petrol to get them up to the nearest township, but nothing more. They filled up and pressed on. The game roaming the outskirts of Harry’s jurisdiction was thinner but there were still wildebeest and zebra and once, in the distance, elephants. Ann’s camera stayed packed away. She had more important things than animal photos on her mind now.
Seeming to interweave with timeless inevitability, the last few wild herds and the first few scarecrow figures shared the same barren scrub. As they left behind the last family of emaciated little gazelle they passed the first dispirited family of starving N’Kuru, sitting round a fire of thorn scrub cooking something in a copper pot. Probably a bit of gazelle.
The people of the bush gathered dejectedly round the outskirts of the town; more like beggars, never really achieving the status of refugees. There were not enough of them and there was too much food — not enough to keep them alive, just enough to stop them from dying at once. Their encampments thickened and began to form patterns as the tracks became roadways and as the strange grey hillocks in the distance suddenly gleamed dazzlingly as the sun caught their windows. Then the tracks were metalled, or at least tarmacked, and the hillocks were revealed to be clumps of high-rise buildings.
‘But this is a city!’ exclaimed Ann. She was feeling much better. She hadn’t vomited again since they’d found Harry’s cache. ‘Couldn’t we get things rolling from here?’
Robert looked down at her. ‘I have no contacts here. I wouldn’t know who to trust. Where do you suggest we start?’
‘Embassy? Consulate?’
‘Not here. This is upcountry. Certainly nobody of ours. Nobody from Europe either. Only the Angolans, the Russians and Congo Libre have limited diplomatic representation here. The rest are down at the coast.’
‘Firms? Companies? Anyone with a darkroom and a fax!’
‘Plenty of those. One or two oil companies with American staff. One of those new concerns with people checking out local cures and forest plants for new drugs. Very green, but an unknown quantity. Old-fashioned drugs firms. Copper works. Beer factory. Freedom Brand cigarettes — tobacco was a big cash crop here once upon a time. Sweat shops. Clothes of course — labour even cheaper than Taiwan. They make TVs and hold some local franchises for computers, videos, and of course cars and trucks. All a bit shabby since Julius Karanga died. You know how it goes. Western companies sensing a profit but they don’t train the locals properly. Short-term moneyspinning; nothing solid at all. Big plans fallen flat. Lot of people pulled out, gone broke. It’s been a while, but I can ask around. If you can do your own developing it will be much safer.’