Elephant Song - Smith Wilbur. Страница 34

on who was responsible for this business.  Be careful, Danny.  These people don't mess about.  You could get badly hurt.  Where are you headed?  I'll see you around, Isaac.  Daniel avoided the question.  He dropped the telephone back on its cradle and went out to the Landcruiser.

He sat behind the wheel and thought about it.  He realised that this was merely a respite.  Pretty soon now the Zimbabwean police were going to want to talk to him again, a little more seriously than before.

There was only one place to be, and that was outside the country.  In any event that was where the trail was leading him.

He drove down to the customs and immigration post and parked in the lot before the barrier.  Naturally, he had his passport with him and the papers for the Landcruiser were all in order.  The departure formalities took less than half an hour, which by African standards was almost record time.

Daniel drove out across the steel-girdered bridge that spanned the Zambezi and he was aware that he was not entering paradise.

Zambia was, after Uganda and Ethiopia, one of the poorest and sorriest countries on the African continent.  Daniel grimaced.  . A cynic might put that down to the fact that it had been independent from British colonial rule longer than most others.

There had been more time for the policies of structured chaos and ruination to take full effect.

Under private ownership the great mines of the Copper-belt had once been amongst the most profitable on the continent, rivalling even the fabulous gold mines further south.  After independence, President Kenneth Kaunda had nationalised them and instituted his Anticanisation policy.  This amounted to firing those skilled and experienced engineers and managers who did not have black faces, a kind of affirmative action.

Within a few short years he had miraculously transformed an annual profit of many hundreds of millions into a loss of the same magnitude.

Daniel steeled himself for his encounter with Zambian officialdom.

Can you tell me if a friend of mine passed through here last night on his way to Malawi, he asked the uniformed officer who sauntered out of the customs building to search his Landcruiser for contraband.

The man opened his mouth to protest his outrage at being asked to divulge official information but Daniel forestalled him by producing a five-dollar bill.  The Zambian currency, the kwacha, named for the dawn of freedom from colonial oppression had once held value equivalent to the US dollar.  Numerous subsequent devaluations had readjusted the official exchange rate to 30:1.  The black-market rate was closer to 300:1.  The customs officer's scruples evaporated.  He was looking at a month's salary.

What is your friend's name?  he asked eagerly.  Mr.  Chetti Singh.

He was driving a large truck with a cargo of dried fish.  Wait.  The officer disappeared into the station and was back within minutes.  Yes.

. . he nodded.  Your friend passed through after midnight.  He showed no further interest in searching the Landcruiser and stamped Daniel's passport.  His step was jaunty as he returned to his post.

Daniel felt a little chill of unease as he left the border post and headed northwards towards Lusaka, the territory's capital.

In Zambia, the rule of law ended at the edge of the built-up areas.

In the bush the police manned their road-blocks, but were never so foolhardy as to respond to appeals for assistance from travellers on the lonely rutted roads.

During twenty-five years of independence, the roads had fallen into an interesting state of disrepair.  In some places the potholes through the eroded tarmac were almost knee deep.

Daniel kept the speed down to twenty-five miles an hour and weaved his way around the worst patches as though he were negotiating a minefield.

The countryside was lovely.  He drove through magnificent open forests and glades of golden grass known as damboes.

The hills and kopjes seemed to have been built in antiquity by a giant's hand.  The walls and turrets of stone were tumbled and eroded into spectacular chaos.  The numerous rivers were deep and clear.

Daniel came to the first of the road-blocks.

A hundred yards from the barrier Daniel slowed down to a crawl and kept both hands on the wheel.  The police were jumpy and trigger-happy.

As he stopped, a uniformed constable wearing mirrored sunglasses thrust the barrel of a sub-machinegun through the window and greeted him arrogantly.  Hello, my friend.  His finger was on the trigger and the muzzle was pointed at Daniel's belly.  Get out!  Do you smoke?

Daniel asked.  As he stepped down into the road he produced a packet of Chesterfield cigarettes and thrust it into the constable's hand.

The constable withdrew the barrel of the machine pistol while he checked that the packet was unopened.  Then he grinned and Daniel relaxed slightly.

At that moment another vehicle drew up behind Daniel's Landcruiser.

It was a truck owned by one of the hunting safari companies.  The back was piled with camp stores and equipment, and the gunbearers and trackers sat on top of the load.  .

At the driving-wheel was the professional hunter, bearded, tanned and weatherbeaten.  Beside him his client seemed urbane and effete despite his new safari jacket and the zebra skin hatband around his stetson.

Daniel!  The hunter leaned out of the side window.  Daniel Armstrong, he shouted happily.

Then Daniel remembered him.  They had met briefly three years previously while Daniel was filming the documentary on hunting safaris in Africa, Man is the Hunter.  For a moment he couldn't remember the fellow's name, but they had shared a bottle of Haig at a campfire in the Luangwa valley.  Daniel remembered him as a blow-hard, with a reputation more as a hard drinker than a hard hunter.  He had consumed more than his fair share of the Haig, Daniel recalled.  Stoffel.  The name came back to him with relief.  He needed an ally and a protector now.  The hunters of the safari companies were a class of minor aristocracy in the deep bush.

Stoffel van der Merwe, he cried.

Stoffel climbed down from the truck, big and beefy and grinning.

Like most professional hunters in Zambia, he was an Afrikaner from South Africa.  Hell, man, it's good to see you again.

He covered Daniel's hand with a hairy paw.  They giving you any uphill here?  Well.  . .

Daniel let it hang there, and Stoffel rounded on the police constable.

Hey, Juno, this man is my friend.  You treat him good, you hear me?

The constable laughed agreement.  It always amazed Daniel to watch how well Afrikaners and blacks got along on a personal level once politics were left out of it; perhaps it was because they were all of them Africans and understood each other.  They had been living together for almost three hundred years, Daniel smiled to himself; by this time they damned well should.  You want your meat, don't you?  Stoffel went on to tease the constable.  You give Doctor Armstrong here a hard time and no meat for you.  The hunters had their regular routes to and from the hunting concessions in the remote bush, and they knew the guards manning the road-blocks by name.  Between them they had set up a regular tariff of bonsela.  Hey!  Stoffel turned to shout at his trackers on top of the truck.  Give Juno here a leg of fat buffalo.

Look how skinny He's getting.  We have to feed him up a bit.  From under the tarpaulin cover they dragged out a haunch of buffalo, still in its thick black skin, dusty and buzzing with bluebottle flies.  The hunters had access to unlimited supplies of game meat, legally hunted and shot by their clients.  . These poor bastards are starved for protein, Stoffel explained to his client as the American sportsman came to join them.  For a leg of buffalo he would sell you his wife; for two he would sell you his soul; for three he would probably sell you the whole bloody country.