Elephant Song

ELEPHANT SONG [046-037-5.0]

By Wilbur Smith

Synopsis:

The rangers closed in firing steadily. Within minutes all the adult animals were down. Only the calves still raced in bewildered circles, stumbling over the bodies of the dead and dying. Six minutes after the first shot, a silence fell over the killing ground of Long Vlei.

In the blinding light of Zimbabwe's Chiwewe National Park, Dr. Daniel Armstrong, world-famous TV naturalist, films the slaughter of a herd of elephant. In London, anthropologist Kelly Kinnear is forced into violent confrontation with the shareholders of the most powerful conglomerate in the City of London, warning them of the destruction of an African country. Now the time has come to act. Together, Armstrong and Kinnear forge a passionate alliance - and begin the fight against the forces of greed, evil and corruption, attacking a land they would both give their lives to save. Combining breathtaking realism and the thrilling suspense, the new adventure from the world's master storyteller is a journey deep into the heart of a wild, magnificent continent, threatened forever by the destructive hand of man.

Wilbur Smith was born in Central Africa in 1933. He was educated at Michaelhouse and Rhodes University.

He became a full-time writer in 1964 after the successful publication of When the Lion Feeds, and has since written twenty-three novels, meticulously researched on his numerous expeditions worldwide.

He normally travels from November to February, often spending a month skiing in Switzerland, and visiting Australia and New Zealand for sea fishing. During his summer break, he visits environments as diverse as Alaska and the dwindling wildernesses of the African interior. He has an abiding concern for the peoples and wildlife of his native continent, an interest strongly reflected in his novels.

He is married to Danielle, to whom his last nineteen books have been dedicated.

WILBUR SMITH

The Courtneys: When the Lion Feeds

The Sound of Thunder

A Sparrow Falls

ELEPHANT

The Courtneys of Africa:

The Burning Shore

Power of the Sword

Rage

A Time To Die

Golden Fox

The Ballantyne novels: A Falcon Flies

Men of Men

The Angels Weep

The Leopard Hunts in Darkness

Also The Dark of the Sun

Shout at the Devil

Gold Mine

The Diamond Hunters

The Sunbird Eagle in the Sky

The Eye of the Tiger

Cry Wolf

Hungry as the Sea

Wild Justice

Elephant Song

The author wishes to make grateful acknowledgement to Colin Turnbull's The Forest People, published by Jonathan Cape, which he found invaluable in his research for this novel.

First published 1991 by Macmillan London Limited This edition published 1992 by Pan Books Ltd, Cavaye Place, London SW10 9PG in association with Macmillan London Limited The right of Wilbur Smith to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

ISBN 0-330-32326-1

Photoset by Doux International Limited

Printed in England by Clays Ltd, St Ives plc

For my wife and cherished companion, Danielle Antoinette This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher's prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser

Elephant Song by Wilbur Smith

It was a windowless thatched building of dressed sandstone blocks, that Daniel Armstrong had built with his own hands almost ten years ago. At the time he had been a junior game ranger in the National Parks administration. Since then the building had been converted into a veritable treasure house.

Johnny Nzou slipped his key into the heavy padlock, and swung open the double doors of hewn native teak. Johnny was chief warden of Chiwewe National Park. Back in the old days, he had been Daniel's tracker and gunbearer, a bright young Matabele whom Daniel had taught to read, write and speak fluent English by the light of a thousand campfires.

Daniel had lent Johnny the money to pay for his first correspondence course from the University of South Africa which had led much later to his degree of Bachelor of Science.

The two youngsters, one black and one white, had patrolled the vast reaches of the National Park together, often on foot or bicycle. In the wilderness they had forged a friendship which the subsequent years of separation had left undimmed.

Now Daniel peered into the gloomy interior of the go down, and whistled softly. Hell, Johnny boy, you have been busy since I've been away. The treasure was stacked to the roof beams, hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of it.

Johnny Nzou glanced at Daniel's face, his eyes narrowed as he looked for criticism in his friend's expression. The reaction was reflex, for he knew Daniel was an ally who understood the problem even better than he did. Nevertheless, the subject was so emotionally charged that it had become second nature to expect revulsion and antagonism.

However, Daniel had turned back to his cameraman. Can we get a light in here? I want some good shots of the interior. The cameraman trudged forward, weighed down by the heavy battery packs slung around his waist, and switched on the hand-held arc lamp. The high stacks of treasure were lit with a fierce blue-white light. Jock, I want you to follow me and the warden down the length of the warehouse, Daniel instructed, and the cameraman nodded and moved in closer, the sleek Sony video recorder balanced on his shoulder. Jock was in his middle thirties. He wore only a pair of short khaki pants, and open sandals.

In the Zambezi valley heat his tanned bare chest was shiny with sweat and his long hair was tied with a leather thong at the nape of his neck. He looked like a pop star, but was an artist with the big Sony camera. Got you, guy, he agreed, and panned the camera over the untidy stacks of elephant tusks, ending on Daniel's hand as it stroked one elegant curve of glowing ivory.

Then he pulled back into a full shot of Daniel.

It was not merely Daniel's doctorate in biology, nor his books and lectures, that had made him an international authority and spokesman on African ecology. He had the healthy outdoors looks and charismatic manner that came over so well on the television screen, and his voice was deep and compelling.

His accent had sufficient Sandhurst undertones remaining to soften the flat unmelodious vowel sounds of colonial speech.

His father had been a staff officer in a Guards regiment during World War II and had served in North Africa under Wavell and Montgomery.

After the war he came out to Rhodesia to grow tobacco. Daniel had been born in Africa but had been sent home to finish his education at Sandhurst, before coming back to Rhodesia to join the National Parks Service. Ivory, he said now, as he looked into the camera. Since the time of the pharaohs, one of the most beautiful and treasured natural substances. The glory of the African elephant, and its terrible cross.

Daniel began to move down between the tiers of stacked tusks, and Johnny Nzou fell in beside him. For two thousand years man has hunted the elephant to obtain this living white gold, and yet only a decade ago there still remained over two million elephant on the African continent. The elephant population seemed to be a renewable resource, an asset that was protected and harvested and controlled, and then something went terribly, tragically wrong. In these last ten years, almost a million elephant have been slaughtered. It is barely conceivable that this could have been allowed to happen. We are here to find out what went wrong, and how the perilous existence of the African elephant can be retrieved from the brink of extinction. He looked at Johnny. "With me today is Mr. John Nzou, chief warden of Chiwewe National Park, one of the new breed of African conservationists. By coincidence, the name Nzou in the Shana language means elephant. John Nzou is Mr. Elephant in more than name alone.

As warden of Chiwewe, he is responsible for one of the largest and healthiest elephant herds that still flourish in the African wilderness. Tell us, Warden, how many tusks do you have in this store room here at Chiwewe National Park? There are almost five hundred tusks in store at present four hundred and eighty-six to be exact, with an average weight of seven kilos. On the international market ivory is worth three hundred dollars a kilo, Daniel cut in, so that is well over a million dollars. Where does it all come from? Well, some of the tusks are pick-ups, ivory from elephant found dead in the Park, and some is illegal ivory that my rangers have confiscated from poachers.

But the great majority of tusks are from the culling operations that my department is forced to undertake. The two of them paused at the far end of the go down and turned back to face the camera. We will discuss the culling programme later, Warden. But first can you tell us a little more about poaching activity in Chiwewe. How bad is it? It is getting worse every day. Johnny shook his head sadly. As the elephant in Kenya and Tanzania and Zambia are wiped out, so the professionals are turning their attention to our healthy elephant herds further south. Zambia is just across the Zambezi river, and the poachers that come across this side are organised and better armed than we are. They shoot to kill men as well as elephant and rhino. We have been forced to do the same. If we run into a band of poachers, we shoot first.

All for these. . . Daniel laid his hand on the nearest pile of tusks.

No two of the ivory shafts were the same; each curve was unique. Some were almost straight, long and thin as knittingneedles; others were bent like a drawn longbow. Some were sharptipped as javelins; others were squat and blunt. There were pearly shafts, and others were of buttery alabaster tone; still others were stained dark with vegetable juices, and scarred and worn with age.

Most of the ivory was female or immature; a few tusks were no longer than a man's forearm, taken from small calves. A very few were great curved imperial shafts, the heavy mature ivory of old bulls.

Daniel stroked one of these, and his expression was not simply for the camera. Once again, he felt the full weight of the melancholy that had first caused him to write about the passing and destruction of the old Africa and its enchanted animal kingdom. A sage and magnificent beast has been reduced to this, his voice sank to a whisper. Even if it is unavoidable, we cannot escape the inherently tragic nature of the changes that are sweeping through this continent. Is the African elephant symbolic of the land? The elephant is dying. Is Africa dying?

His sincerity was absolute. The camera recorded it faithfully.

It was the most compelling reason for the enormous appeal of his television programmes around the world.

Now Daniel roused himself with an obvious effort, and turned back to Johnny Nzou. Tell us, Warden, is the elephant doomed?

How many of these marvelous animals do you have in Zimbabwe and how many of those are in Chiwewe National Park? There are an estimated fifty-two thousand elephant in Zimbabwe, and our figures for Chiwewe are even more accurate. Only three months ago, we were able to conduct an aerial survey of the Park sponsored by the international Union for the Conservation of Nature. The entire area of the Park was photographed, and the animals counted from the high-resolution prints.

How many?

Daniel asked. In Chiwewe alone, eighteen thousand elephant. That's a huge population, something approaching a third of all the remaining animals in the country, all in this area. Daniel raised an eyebrow.

In the climate of gloom and pessimism that prevails, this must give you a great deal of encouragement?

Johnny Nzou frowned. On the contrary, Doctor Armstrong, we are extremely concerned by these numbers. Can you explain that please, Warden? It's simple, Doctor. We cannot support that many elephant.

We estimate that thirty thousand elephant would be an ideal population for Zimbabwe. A single beast requires up to a ton of vegetable matter each day, and he will push over trees that have taken many hundreds of years to grow, even trees with trunks four feet in diameter, to obtain that food. What will happen if you allow that huge herd to flourish and to breed? Quite simply, in a very short period they will reduce this park to a dust bowl, and when that happens the elephant population will collapse. We will be left with nothing, no trees, no park, no elephant.

Daniel nodded encouragement. When the film was edited he would cut in at this point a series of shots he had taken some years previously in Kenya's Amboseli Park. These were haunting vistas of devastation, of bare red earth and dead black trees stripped of bark and leaves holding up their naked branches in agonized supplication to a hard blue African sky, while the desiccated carcasses of the great animals lay like discarded leather bags where famine and poachers had destroyed them.

Do you have a solution, Warden? Daniel asked softly. A drastic one, I'm afraid. Will you show us what it is? Johnny Nzou shrugged. It is not very pretty to watch, but, yes, you may witness what has to be done.

Daniel woke twenty minutes before sunrise.

Even the intervening years spent in cities out of Africa, and the passage of so many other dawns in northern climes, or in the fluid time zones of jet aircraft travel, had not dulled the habit that he had first acquired in this valley. Of course, the habit had been reinforced during the years of that terrible Rhodesian bush war, when he had been called up to serve in the security forces.

For Daniel the dawn was the most magical time of each day, and especially so in this valley. He rolled out of his sleepingbag and reached for his boots. He and his men had slept fully clothed on the sun-baked earth, with the embers of the campfire in the centre of the huddle of their prostrate forms. They had not built a boma of thorn branches to protect themselves, although at intervals during the night lions had grunted and roared along the escarpment.

Daniel laced up his boots and slipped quietly out of the circle of sleeping men. The dew that hung like seed pearls upon the grass stems soaked his trouser legs to the knees as he moved out to the promontory of rock at the head of the cliff. He found a seat on the rough grey granite knoll and huddled into his anorak.

The dawn came on with stealthy and deceptive speed and painted the clouds above the great river in subtle talcum shades of pink and grey.

Over the Zambezi's dark green waters the river mist undulated and pulsed like ghostly ectoplasm and the dawn flights of duck were very dark and crisp against the pale background, their formations precise and their wingbeats flickering quick as knife-blades in the uncertain light.

A lion roared, near at hand, abrupt gales of sound that died away in a descending series of moaning grunts. Daniel shivered with the thrill of that sound. Though he had heard it countless times, it always had the same effect upon him. There was no other like it in all the world.

For him it was the veritable voice of Africa.

Then he picked out the great cat shape below him at the edge of the swamp. Full-bellied, dark-maned, it carried its massive head low and swung it from side to side to the rhythm of its stately arrogant walk.

Its mouth was half open and its fangs glinted behind thin black lips.

He watched it vanish into the dense riverine bush and sighed with the pleasure it had given him There was a small sound close behind him. As he started up, Johnny Nzou touched his shoulder to restrain him and settled down on the granite slab beside him.

Johnny lit a cigarette. Daniel had never been able to talk him out of the habit. They sat in companionable silence as they had so often before and watched the dawn come on more swiftly now, until that religious moment when the sun thrust its burning rim above the dark mass of the forest. The light changed and all their world was bright and glazed as a precious ceramic creation fresh from the firing oven.

The trackers came into camp ten minutes ago. They have found a herd, Johnny broke the silence, and the mood.

Daniel stirred and glanced at him. How many? he asked. About fifty.

That was a good number. They would not be able to process more, for flesh and hide putrefy swiftly in the heat of the valley, and a lower number would not justify all this use of men and-expensive equipment.

Are you sure you want to film this? Johnny asked.

Daniel nodded. I have considered it carefully. To attempt to conceal it would be dishonest. People eat meat and wear leather, but they don't want to see inside the abattoir, Johnny pointed out.

This is a complex and emotional subject we are examining.

People have a right to know. in anyone else I would suspect journalistic sensationalism, Johnny murmured, and Daniel frowned. You are probably the only person I would allow to say that because you know better. Yes, Danny, I know better, Johnny agreed.

You hate this as much as I do, and yet you first taught me the necessity of it.

Let's go to work, Daniel suggested gruffly, and they stood up and walked back in silence to where the trucks were parked.

The camp was astir, and coffee was brewing on the open fire.

The rangers were rolling their blankets and sleeping-bags and checking their rifles.

There were four of them, two black lads and two white, all of them in their twenties. They wore the plain khaki uniform of the Parks Department with green shoulder flashes, and though they handled their weapons with the casual competence of veterans they kept up a cheerful high-spirited banter. Black and white treated each other as comrades, although they were just old enough to have fought in the bush war and had probably been on opposing sides. It always amazed Daniel that so little bitterness remained.

Jock, the cameraman, was already filming. It often seemed to Daniel that the Sony camera was a natural excrescence of his body, like a hunchback.

I'm going to ask you some dumb questions for the camera, and I might needle you a little, Daniel warned Johnny. We both know the answers to the questions, but we have to fake it, okay? Go ahead. Johnny looked good on film. Daniel had studied the rushes the previous night. One of the joys of working with modern video equipment was the instant replay of footage. Johnny resembled the younger Cassius Clay before he became Mohammed Ali.

However, he was leaner in the face and his bone structure finer and more photogenic. His expression was mobile and expressive and the tones of his skin were not so dark as to make too severe a contrast and render photography difficult.

They huddled over the smoky campfire and Jock brought the camera in close to them. We are camped here on the banks of the Zambezi River with the sun just rising, and not far out there in the bush your trackers have come across a herd of fifty elephant, Warden, Daniel told Johnny, and he nodded. You have explained to me that the Chiwewe Park cannot support such numbers of these huge animals, and that this year alone at least a thousand of them must be removed from the Park, not only for the good of the ecology, but for the very survival of the remaining elephant herds. How do you intend removing them? We will have to cull them, Johnny said curtly. Cull them? Daniel asked. That means kill, doesn't it? Yes. My rangers and I will shoot them. All of them, Warden? You are going to kill fifty elephant today? We will cull the entire herd. What about the young calves and the pregnant cows? Won't you spare a single animal? They all have to go, Johnny insisted. But why, Warden? Couldn't you catch them, dart and drug them, and send them elsewhere? The costs of transporting an animal the size of an elephant are staggering. A big bull weighs six tons, an average cow around four.

Look at this terrain down here in the valley. Johnny gestured towards the mountainous heights of the escarpment and the broken rocky kopjes; and wild forest. We would require special trucks and we would have to build roads to get them in and out. Even if that were possible, where would we take them? I have told you that we have a surplus of almost twenty thousand elephant in Zimbabwe. Where would we take these elephant? There simply isn't space for them. So, Warden, unlike the other countries to the north such as Kenya and Zambia who have allowed their elephant herds to be almost wiped out by poaching and unwise conservation policy, you are in a Catch 22 situation. Your management of your herds of elephant has been too good. Now you have to destroy and waste these marvelous animals. No, Doctor Armstrong, we won't waste them. We will recover a great deal of value from their carcasses, ivory and hides and meat which will be sold. The proceeds will be ploughed back into conservation, to prevent poaching and to protect our National Parks. The death of these animals will not be a complete abomination.

But why do you have to kill the mothers and the babies?

Daniel insisted. You are cheating, Doctor, Johnny warned him. You are using the emotive, slanted language of the animal rights groups, mothers and babies". Let's rather call them cows and calves, and admit that a cow eats as much and takes up as much space as a bull, and that calves grow very swiftly into adults. So you feel Daniel started, but despite his earlier warning, Johnny was becoming angry. Hold on, he snapped.

There's more to it than that. We have to take out the entire herd.

It is absolutely essential that we leave no survivors. The elephant herd is a complex family group. Nearly all its members are blood relatives, and there is a highly developed social structure within the herd. The elephant is an intelligent animal, probably the most intelligent after the primates, certainly more intelligent than a cat or dog, or even a dolphin. They know, I mean, they really understand.

. . he broke off, and cleared his throat. His feelings had overcome him, and Daniel had never liked nor admired him more than he did at that moment. The terrible truth is, Johnny's voice was husky as he went on, that if we allowed any of them to escape the cull, they would communicate their terror and panic to the other herds in the Park.

There would be a swift breakdown in the elephant-social behaviour.

Isn't that a little far-fetched, Warden? Daniel asked softly. No. It has happened before.

After the war there were ten thousand surplus elephant in the Wankie National Park. At that time, we knew very little about the techniques or effects of massive culling operations. We soon learned. Those first clumsy efforts of ours almost destroyed the entire social structure of the herds. By shooting the older animals, we wiped out their reservoir of experience and transferable wisdom. We disrupted their migratory patterns, the hierarchy and discipline within the herds, even their breeding habits. Almost as though they understood that the holocaust was upon them, the bulls began to cover the barely mature young cows before they were ready.

Like the human female, the elephant cow is ripe for breeding at fifteen or sixteen years of age at the very earliest. Under the terrible stress of the culling the bulls in Wankie went to the cows when they were only ten or eleven years of age, still in puberty, and the calves born of these unions were stunted little runts. Johnny shook his head. No, we have to take out the whole herd at one stroke.

Almost with relief, he looked up at the sky.

They both picked up the distant insect drone of an aircraft engine beyond the towering cumulus clouds. Here comes the spotter plane, he said quietly, and reached for the microphone of the radio. Good morning, Sierra Mike. We have you visual due south of our position approximately four miles. I will give you yellow smoke. Johnny nodded at one of his rangers, who pulled the tab on a smoke marker.

Sulphur-yellow smoke drifted in a heavy cloud across the treetops.

Roger, Parks. I have your smoke. Give me an indication on the target, please.

-" Johnny frowned at the word target and laid emphasis on the alternative word as he replied. At sunset yesterday evening the herd was moving north towards the river five miles southeast of this position. There are fifty-plus animals. Thank you, Parks. I will call again when we locate them. They watched the aircraft bank away eastwards. It was an ancient single-engined Cessna that had probably served on fireforce duties as a K-Car, or killer car, during the bush war.

Fifteen minutes later the radio crackled to life again. Hello, Parks.

I have your herd. Fifty-plus and eight miles from your present position. The herd was spread out down both banks of a dry river-course that was gouged through a low line of flinty hills. The forest was greener and more luxuriant here in the drainage where the deep roots had found subterranean water. The acacia trees were in heavy pod. The pods looked like long brown biscuits, clustered at the tips of the branches sixty feet above ground level.

Two cows moved in on one of the heavily laden trees. They were the herd matriarchs, both of them over seventy years of age, gaunt old dowagers with tattered ears and rheumy eyes.

The bond between them was over half a century strong. They were half-sisters, successive calves of the same mother. The elder had been weaned at the birth of her sibling and had helped to nursemaid her as tenderly as would a human elder sister. They had shared a long life, and had drawn from it a wealth of experience and wisdom to add to the deep ancestral instinct with which they had both been endowed at birth.

They had seen each other through drought and famine and sickness.

They had shared the joy of good rains and abundant food. They knew all the secret hideaways in the mountains and the water-holes in the desert places. They knew where the hunters lurked, and the boundaries of the sanctuaries within which they and the herd were secure. They had played midwife to each other, leaving the herd together when the time was come upon one of them, and by their presence had fortified each other in the tearing agony of birth. They had stripped the foetal sac from each other's newborn calves, and helped discipline them, instruct them and rear them to maturity.

Their own breeding days were long past, but the herd and its safety were still their duty and their main concern. Their pleasure and their responsibility were the younger cows and the new calves that carried their own blood-lines.

Perhaps it was fanciful to endow brute animals with such human emotions as love and respect, or to believe that they understand blood relationships or the continuity of their line, but no one who had seen the old cows quieten the boisterous youngsters with raised ears and a sharp angry squeal, or watched the herd follow their lead with unquestioning obedience, could doubt their authority. No one who had seen them caress the younger calves with a gentle trunk or lift them over the steep and difficult places on the elephant roads could question their concern. When danger threatened they would push the young ones behind them and rush forward to the defence with ears spread wide and trunks rolled ready to fling out and strike down an enemy.

The great bulls with towering frames and massive girth might overshadow them in size, but not in cunning and ferocity.

The bulls tusks were longer and thicker, sometimes weighing well over one hundred pounds. The two old cows had spindly misshapen ivory, worn and cracked and discoloured with age, and the bones showed through the scarred grey skin, but they were constant in their duty to the herd.

The bulls kept only a loose association with the breeding herd. As they grew older they often preferred to break away and form smaller bachelor groups of two or three males, visiting the cows only when the heady scent of oestrus drew them in. However, the old cows stayed with the herd.

They formed the solid foundation on which the social structure of the herd was based. The tight-knit community of breeding cows and their calves relied heavily upon their wisdom and experience for its everyday needs and survival.

Now the two sisters moved in perfect accord to the giant acacia laden with seed pods, and each took up her position on either side of the trunk. They laid their foreheads against the rough bark. The trunk was over four feet in diameter, unyielding as a column of marble. A hundred feet above the ground the high branches formed an intricate tracery and the pods and green leaves a cathedral dome against the sky.

The two old cows began to rock back and forth in unison with the tree-trunk between their foreheads. At first the acacia was rigid, resisting even their great strength. The cows worked on doggedly, pushing and heaving, first one then the other throwing her weight in opposite directions, and a tiny shudder ran up the tree and, high above them, the top branches trembled as though a breeze had passed.

Still they worked rhythmically and the trunk began to move.

A single ripe pod came loose from its twig and fell a hundred feet to crack against the skull of one of the cows. She closed her watery old eyes tightly but never broke the rhythm of her heaves. Between them the tree-trunk swayed and shuddered, ponderously at first and then more briskly. Another pod and then another plopped down as heavily as the first drops of a thunderstorm.

The young animals of the herd realised what they were up to, they flapped their ears with excitement and hurried forward. The acacia pods, rich in protein, were a favourite delicacy. They crowded gleefully around the two cows, snatching up the scattering of pods as they fell and stuffing them far down their throats with their trunks.

By now the great tree was whipping back and forth, its branches waving wildly and its foliage thrashing. The pods and loose twigs showered down thick as hail, rattling and bouncing from the backs of the elephants crowded beneath.

The two cows, still braced like a pair of book ends, kept doggedly at it until the shower of falling pods began to dry up.

Only when the last one was shaken from the branches did they step back from the tree-trunk. Their backs were sprinkled with dead leaves and twigs, bits of dry bark and velvety pods, and they stood ankle-deep in the fallen debris. They reached down and delicately picked out the golden pods with the dextrous fleshy tips of their trunks and curled them up into their gaping mouths, their triangular bottom lips drooping open.

The ooze from their facial glands wetting their cheeks like tears of pleasure, they began to feed.

The herd was pressed closely around them at the feast that they had laid.

As their long serpentine trunks swung and curled, and the pods were shovelled into their throats, there was a soft sound that seemed to reverberate through each of their great grey frames. It was a gentle rumbling in many different keys, and the sound was interspersed with tiny creaking gurgling squeaks barely audible to the human ear. it was a strangely contented chorus, in which even the youngest beasts joined.

It was a sound that seemed to express joy of life and to confirm the deep bond that linked all the members of the herd.

It was the song of the elephant.

One of the old cows was the first to detect a threat to the herd.

She transmitted her concern to them with a sound high above the register of the human ear and the entire herd froze into utter stillness. Even the very young calves responded instantly.

The silence after the happy uproar of the feast was eerie, and the buzz of the distant spotter plane was loud in contrast.

The old cows recognised the sound of the Cessna engine.

They had heard it many times over the last few years and had come to associate it with the periods of increased human activity, of tension and of unexplained terror that they felt transmitted telepathically through the wilderness from the other groups of elephant in the Park.

They knew that the sound in the air was the prelude to a popping chorus of distant gunfire and to the stench of elephant blood on the currents of heated air along the rim of the escarpment. Often after the sounds of aircraft and gunfire had faded, they had come across wide areas of the forest floor caked with dried blood, and they had smelt the odour of fear and pain and death exuded by members of their own race which still mingled with the reek of blood and of rotting entrails.

One of the old cows backed away and shook her head angrily at the sound in the sky. Her tattered ears flapped loudly against her shoulders, a sound like the mainsail of a tall ship filling with wind.

Then she wheeled and led the herd away at a run.

There were two mature bulls with the herd, but at the first threat they peeled away and disappeared into the forest. Instinctively recognising that the herd was vulnerable, they sought safety in solitary flight. The younger cows and the calves bunched up behind the matriarchs and fled, the little ones racing to keep up with the longer stride of their dams; in different circumstances their haste might have been comical. Hello, Parks. The herd is breaking southwards towards the Imbelezi pass. Roger, Sierra Mike. Please head them towards the Maria Pools turn-off. The old cow was leading the herd towards the hills.

She wanted to get off the valley bottom into the had ground where pursuit would be impeded by the rock and severe gradients, but the sound of the aircraft hummed across her front, cutting her off from the mouth of the pass.

She pulled up uncertainly and lifted her head to the sky, where tall silvery mountains of cumulus cloud were piled up as high as the heavens.

She spread wide her ears, riven and weathered by time and thorn, and turned her ancient head to follow that dreadful sound.

Then she saw the aircraft. The early sunlight flashed from its windshield as it banked steeply across her front, and it dived back towards her, low over the tops of the forest trees, the sound of its engine rising to a roar.

The two old cows spun together and started back towards the river.

Behind them the herd wheeled like an untidy mass of cavalry, and as they ran the dust rose in a fine pale cloud even higher than the treetops. Parks, the herd is heading your way now.

Five miles from the turn-off. Thank you, Sierra Mike; keep them coming nice and easy, Don't push them too hard. Will-do, Parks. All K-Units.

Johnny Nzou changed his call-sign. All K-Units, converge on the Mana Pools turn-off. The K-Units, or kill teams, were the four Landrovers that were deployed along the main track that ran down from Chiwewe headquarters on the escarpment to the river. Johnny had put them in as a stop line, to head off the herd if it broke awkwardly. It did not look as though that would be necessary now. The spotter plane was working the herd into position with professional expertise. Looks as though we'll make it on the first try, Johnny muttered as he reversed the Landrover and swung it in a full 180-degree turn, then sent it flying down the track. A ridge of grass grew between the sandy wheel-tracks, and the Landrover rocked and rattled over the bumps. The wind whipped around their heads and Daniel pulled his hat from his head and stuffed it into his pocket.

Jock was filming over his shoulder as a herd of buffalo, disturbed.

by the sound of the Landrover, came pouring out of the forest and crossed the track just ahead of them. Damn it! Johnny hit the brakes and glanced at his wristwatch. Stupid nyati are going to screw us up.

Hundreds of the dark bovine shapes came in a solid phalanx, galloping heavily, raising white dust, grunting and lowing and splattering liquid green dung on the grass as they flattened it.

Within minutes they had passed and Johnny accelerated into the standing dust-cloud and rattled over the loose earth that the herd had ploughed up with their great cloven hoofs. Around a bend in the track they saw the other vehicles parked at the crossroads. The four rangers were standing in a group beside them, rifles in their hands and faces turned back expectantly.

Johnny skidded the Landrover to a halt and snatched up the microphone of his radio. Sierra Mike, give me a position report, please. Parks, the herd is two miles from you, just approaching Long Vlei. A vlei is a depression of open grassland, and Long Vlei ran for miles parallel to the river. In the rainy season it was a marsh, but now it made an ideal killing ground. They had used it before.

Johnny jumped down from the driver's seat and lifted his rifle from the rack. He and all his rangers were armed with cheap mass-produced .

magnums loaded With solid ammunition for maximum penetration of bone and tissue. is men were chosen for this work on account of their superior marksmanship.

The kill must be as swift and humane as possible.

They would shoot for the brain and not take the easier but lingering body shot. Let's go! Johnny snapped. There was no need to give instructions. These were tough young professionals, yet even though they had done this work many times before their expressions were sombre. There was no excitement, no anticipation in their eyes. This was not sport.

They clearly did not enjoy the prospect of the bloody work ahead.

They, were stripped down to shorts and velskoen without socks, light running gear. The only heavy items they carried were their cheap weapons and the bandoliers of ammunition strapped around their waists.

All of them were lean and muscled, and Johnny Nzou was as hard as any of them. They ran to meet the herd.

Daniel fell into position behind Johnny Nzou. He believed that he had kept himself fit with regular running and training, but he had forgotten what it was like to be hunting and fighting fit as were Johnny and his rangers.

They ran like hounds, streaming through the forest effortlessly, their feet seeming to find their own way between scrub and rock and fallen branches and antbear holes. They barely touched the earth in passing.

Daniel had run like that once, but now his boots were slamming down heavily and he stumbled once or twice in the rough footing. He and the camera man began to fall behind.

Johnny Nzou gave a hand signal and his rangers fanned out into a long skirmish line, fifty yards separating each of them.

Ahead, the forest gave way abruptly to the open glade of Long Vlei.

It was three hundred yards wide; the dry beige-coloured grass was waist-high.

The line of killers stopped at the edge of the forest and looked to Johnny at the centre, but his head was thrown back, watching the spotter plane out there above the forest. It was banking steeply, standing vertically on one wing.

Daniel caught up with him, and found that both he and Jock were panting heavily although they had run less than a mile. He envied Johnny. There they are, Johnny called softly. You can see the dust.

It lay in a haze on the treetops between them and the circling aircraft. Coming on fast.

Johnny wind-milled his right arm and obediently his skirmish line extended and shifted into a concave shape like the horns of a bull buffalo with Johnny at the centre. At the next signal they trotted forward into the glade.

The light breeze was in their faces; the herd would not scent them.

Although originally the herd had instinctively fled into the wind so as not to run into danger, the aircraft had turned them back downwind.

The elephant's eyesight is not sharp; they would make nothing of the line of human figures until it was too late. The trap was set and the elephants were coming straight into it, chivvied and sheep-dogged by the low-flying Cessna.

The two old cows burst out of the tree-line at full run, their bony legs flying, ears cocked back, loose grey folds of skin shuddering and wobbling with each jarring footfall. The rest of the herd were strung out behind them. The youngest calves were tiring, and their mothers pushed them along with their trunks.

The line of executioners froze, standing in a half circle like the mouth of a gill net extended to take in a shoal of fish. The elephants would pick up movement more readily than they would recognize the blurred manshapes that their weak, panic stricken eyes disclosed to them. Get the two old grannies first, Johnny called softly. He had recognised the matriarchs and he knew that with them gone the herd would be disorganized and indecisive. His order was passed down the line.

The leading cows pounded down directly towards where Johnny stood.

He let them come on. He held the rifle at high port across his chest.

At a hundred yards distance the two dowager elephants started to turn away from him, angling off to the left, and Johnny moved for the first time.

He lifted his rifle and waved it over his head and shouted in Sindebele, Nanzi Inkosikaze, here I am respected old lady. For the first time the two elephants recognised that he was not a tree-stump but a deadly enemy.

Instantly they swung back towards him, and focusing all their ancestral hatred and terror and concern for the herd upon him, they burst together into full charge.

They squealed their fury at him, extending their stride so that the dust spurted from under their colossal footpads. Their ears were rolled back along the top edge, sure sign of their anger. They towered over the group of tiny human figures.

Daniel wished vehemently that he had taken the precaution of arming himself. He had forgotten how terrifying this moment was, with the nearest cow only fifty yards away and coming straight in at forty miles an hour.

Jock was still filming, although the angry shrieks of the two cows had been taken up by the entire herd. They came down upon them like an avalanche of grey granite, as though a cliff had been brought rumbling down with high explosive.

At thirty yards Johnny Nzou mounted the rifle to his shoulder and leaned forward to absorb the recoil. There was no telescopic sight mounted above the blue steel barrel. For close work like this he was using open express sights.

Since its introduction in 1912, thousands of sports and professional hunters had proved the . 375 Holland & Holland to be the most versatile and effective rifle ever to have been brought to Africa. it had all the virtues of inherent accuracy and moderate recoil, while the 300-grain solid bullet was a ballistic marvel, with flat trajectory and extraordinary penetration.

Johnny aimed at the head of the leading cow, at the crease of the trunk between her myopic old eyes. The report was sharp as the lash of a bullwhip, and an ostrich feather of dust flew from the surface of her weathered grey skin at the precise point upon her skull at which he had aimed.

The bullet sliced through her head as easily as a steel nail driven through a ripe apple. It obliterated the top of her brain, and the cow's front legs folded under her, and Daniel felt the earth jump under his feet as she crashed down in a cloud of dust.

Johnny swung his aim on to the second cow, just as she came level with the carcass of her sister. He reloaded without taking the butt of the rifle from his shoulder, merely flicking the bolt back and forward.

The spent brass case was flung high in a glinting parabola and he fired again. The sound of the two rifle shots blended into each other; they were fired so swiftly as to cheat the ear into hearing a single prolonged detonation Once again the bullet struck exactly where it had been aimed and the cow died as the other had done, instantaneously.

Her legs collapsed and she dropped and lay on her belly with her shoulder touching that of her sister. In the centre of each of their foreheads a misty pink plume of blood erupted from the tiny bullet-holes.

Behind them the herd was thrown into confusion. The bewildered beasts milled and circled, treading the grass flat and raising a curtain of dust that swirled about them, blanketing the scene so their forms looked ethereal and indistinct in the dust-cloud. The calves huddled for shelter beneath their mothers bellies, their ears flattened against their skulls with terror, and they were battered and kicked and thrown about by the frantic movements of their dams.

The rangers closed in, firing steadily. The sound of gunfire was a long continuous rattle, like hail on a tin roof. They were shooting for the brain. At each shot one of the animals flinched or flung up its head, as the solid bullets cracked on the bone of the skull with the sound of a well struck golf ball. At each shot one of the animals went down dead or stunned. Those killed cleanly, and they were the majority, collapsed at the back legs first and dropped with the dead weight of a maize sack.

When the bullet missed the brain but passed close to it, the elephant reeled and staggered and went down kicking to roll on its side with a terrible despairing moan and grope helplessly at the sky with lifted trunk.

One of the young calves was trapped and pinned beneath its mother's collapsing carcass, and lay broken-backed and squealing in a mixture of pain and panic. Some of the elephant found themselves hemmed in by a palisade of fallen animals and they reared up and tried to scramble over them. The marksmen shot them down so that they fell upon the bodies of those already dead, while others tried to climb over these and were in their turn shot down.

It was swift. Within minutes all the adult animals were down, lying close together or piled upon each other in bleeding mounds and hillocks.

Only the calves were still racing in bewildered circles, stumbling over the bodies of the dead and dying, squealing and tugging at the carcasses of their mothers.

The riflemen walked forward slowly, a tightening ring of gunmetal around the decimated herd. They fired and reloaded and fired again as they closed in. They picked off the calves, and when there remained not a single standing animal, they moved quickly into the herd, scrambling over the gigantic sprawling bodies, pausing only to fire a finishing bullet into each huge bleeding head. Most often there was no response to the second bullet in the brain, but occasionally an elephant not yet dead shuddered and straightened its limbs and blinked its eyes at the shot, then slumped lifelessly.

Within six minutes of Johnny's first shot, a silence fell over the killing ground on Long Vlei. Only their ears still sang to the brutal memory of gunfire. There was no movement; the elephant lay in windrows like wheat behind the blades of the mower, and the dry earth soaked up the blood. The rangers were still standing apart from each other, subdued and awed by the havoc they had wrought, staring with remorse at the mountain of the dead. Fifty elephant, two hundred tons of carnage.

Johnny Nzou broke the tragic spell that held them. He walked slowly to where the two old cows lay at the head of the herd. They lay side by side, shoulders touching, with their legs folded neatly under them, kneeling as though still alive with only the pulsing fountain of life-blood from their foreheads to spoil the illusion.

Johnny set the butt of his rifle on the ground and leaned upon it, studying the two old matriarchs for a long regretful moment. He was unaware that Jock was filming him. His actions and his words were completely unstudied and unrehearsed. Hamba gable, Amakbulu, he whispered. Go in peace, old grandmothers. You are together in death as you were in life.

Go in peace, and forgive us for what we have done to your tribe. He walked away to the edge of the tree-line. Daniel did not follow him.

He understood that Johnny wanted to be alone for a while now. The other rangers also avoided each other. There was no banter, nor self-congratulation; two of them wandered amongst the mountainous dead with a strangely disconsolate air; a third squatted where he had fired his last shot, smoking a cigarette and studying the dusty ground between his feet, while the last one had laid aside his rifle and, with hands thrust in his pockets and shoulders hunched, stared at the sky and watched the vultures gather.

At first the carrion birds were tiny specks against the glaring alps of cumulus cloud, like grains of pepper sprinkled on a tablecloth.

Then they soared closer overhead, forming circling squadrons, turning on their wide wings in orderly formations, a dark wheel of death high above the killing-ground, and their shadows flitted over the piled carcasses in the centre of Long Vlei.

Forty minutes later Daniel heard the rumble of the approaching trucks, and saw them coming slowly through the forest. A squad of half-naked axemen ran ahead of the convoy, cutting out the brush and making a rough track for them to follow.

Johnny stood up with obvious relief from where he had been sitting alone at the edge of the trees, and came to take charge of the butchering.

The piles of dead elephant were pulled apart with winches and chains.

Then the wrinkled grey skin was sliced through down the length of the belly and the spine. Again the electric winches were brought into play and the skin was flensed off the carcass with a crackling sound as the subcutaneous tissue released its grip. It came off in long slabs, grey and corrugated on the outside, gleaming white on the inside. The men laid each strip on the dusty earth and heaped coarse salt upon it The naked carcasses looked strangely obscene in the bright sunlight, wet and marbled with white fat and exposed scarlet muscle, the swollen bellies bulging as though to invite the stroke of the flensing knives.

A skinner slipped the curved point of the knife into the belly of one of the old cows at the point where it met the sternum.

Carefully controlling the depth of the cut so as not to puncture the entrails, he walked the length of the body drawing the blade like a zipper down the belly pouch so that it gaped open and the stomach sac bulged out, glistening like the silk of a parachute.

Then the colossal coils of the intestines slithered after it.

These seemed to have a separate life. Like the body of an awakening python, they twisted and unfolded under the impetus of their own slippery weight.

The chainsaw men set to work. The intrusive clatter of the two-stroke engines seemed almost sacrilegious in this place of death, and the exhausts blew snorting blue smoke into the bright air. They lopped the limbs off each carcass, and a fine mush of flesh and bone chips flew in a spray from the teeth of the spinning steel chains.

Then they buzzed through the spine and ribs, and the carcasses fell into separate parts that were winched into the waiting refrigerator trucks.

A special gang went from carcass to carcass with long boat-hooks, poking in the soft wet mounds of spilled entrails to drag out the wombs of the females. Daniel watched as they split open one of the engorged wombs, dark purple with its covering of enlarged blood vessels. From the foetal sac, in a flood of amniotic fluid the foetus, the size of a large dog, slid out and lay in the trampled grass.

It was only a few weeks from term, a perfect little elephant covered with a coat of reddish hair that it would have lost soon after birth.

It was still alive, moving its trunk feebly. Kill it, Daniel ordered harshly in Sindebele. It was improbable that it could feel pain, but he turned away in relief as one of the men struck off the tiny head with a single blow of his panga. Daniel felt nauseated, but he knew that nothing from the cull should be wasted. The skin of the unborn elephant would be finegrained and valuable, worth a few hundred dollars for a handbag or a briefcase.

To distract himself he walked away across the killing-ground.

All that remained now were the heads of the great animals and the glistening piles of their entrails. From the guts nothing of value could be salvaged and they would be left for the vultures and hyena and jackal.

The ivory tusks, still embedded in their castles of bone, were the most precious part of the cull. The poachers and the ivoryhunters of old would not risk damaging them with a careless axe-stroke, and customarily would leave the ivory in the skull until the cartilaginous sheath that held it secure rotted and softened and released its grip.

Within four or five days the tusks could usually be drawn by hand, perfect and unmarked.

However, there was no time to waste on this procedure. The tusks must be cut out by hand.

The skinners who did this were the most experienced men, usually older, with grey woolly heads and bloodstained loincloths.

They squatted beside the heads and tapped patiently with their native axes.

While they were engaged in this painstaking work Daniel stood with Johnny Nzou. Jock held the Sony VTR on them as Daniel commented, Gory work.

But necessary, Johnny agreed shortly. On an average each adult elephant will yield about three thousand dollars in ivory, skin and meat. To many people that will sound pretty commercial, especially as they have just witnessed the hard reality of the cull. Daniel shook his head. You must know that there is a very strong campaign, led by the animal rights groups, to have the elephant placed on Appendix One of CITES, that is the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species. Yes, I know.

If that happens it would prohibit the trade in any elephant products, skin, ivory or meat. What do you think of that, Warden? It makes me very angry. Johnny dropped his cigarette and. ground it under his heel.

His expression was savage. It would prevent any further culling operations, wouldn't it? Daniel persisted. Not at all, Johnny contradicted him. We would still be forced to control the size of the herds. We would still be forced to cull. The only difference would be that we could not sell the elephant products. They would be wasted, a tragic criminal waste. We would lose millions of dollars of revenue which at present is being used to protect and enlarge and service the wildlife sanctuaries. . . Johnny broke off and watched as a tusk was lifted out of the channel in the spongy bone of the skull by two of the skinners and laid carefully on the dry brown grass.

Skilfully one of them drew the nerve, a soft grey gelatinous core, from the hollow end of the tusk. Then Johnny went on, That tusk makes it easier for us to justify the continued existence of the Parks and the animals they contain to the local tribes-people living in close contact with wild animals on and near the boundaries of the national wilderness areas. I don't understand, Daniel encouraged him. Do you mean the local tribes resent the Parks and the animal population? Not if they can derive some personal benefit from them. If we can prove to them that a cow elephant is worth three thousand dollars and that a foreign safari hunter will spend fifty or even a hundred thousand dollars to hunt a trophy bull, if we can show them that a single elephant is worth a hundred, even a thousand of their goats or scrawny cattle and that they will see some of that money coming to them and their tribe, then they will see the point of conserving the herds. You mean the local peasants do not place a value on wildlife simply for its own sake. Johnny laughed bitterly. That's a First World luxury and affectation. The tribes here live very close to subsistence level.

We are talking about an average family income of a hundred and twenty dollars a year, ten dollars a month. They cannot afford to set aside land and grazing for a beautiful but useless animal to live on. If the wild game is to survive in Africa it has to pay for its supper. There are no free rides in this harsh land.

One would think that living so close to nature they would have an instinctive feeling for it, Daniel persisted. Yes, of course, but it is totally pragmatic. For millennia primitive man, living with nature, has treated it as a renewable resource. As the Eskimo lived on the caribou and seal and whale, or the American Indian on buffalo herds, they understood instinctively the type of management that we have never achieved. They were in balance with nature, until the white man came with explosive harpoon and Sharpe's rifle, or, here in Africa, came with his elite game department and game laws that made it a crime for the black tribesman to hunt on his own land, that reserved the wildlife of Africa for a select few to stare at and exclaim over. You are being a racist, Daniel chided him gently.

The old colonial system preserved the wild game. So how did it survive for a million years before the white man arrived in Africa?

No, the colonial system of game management was protectionist, not conservationist. Aren't they the same thing, protection and conservation? They are diametrically opposed. The protectionist denies man's right to exploit and harvest nature's bounty. He would deny that man has a right to kill a living animal, even if that threatens the survival of the species as a whole. If he were here today, the protectionist would prohibit us from this cull, and he would not want to look to the final consequence of that prohibition which, as we have seen, would be the eventual extinction of the entire elephant population and the destruction of this forest. However, the most damaging mistake that the old colonial protectionists made was to alienate the black tribesman from , the benefits of controlled conservation. They denied him his share of the spoils, and built up in him a resentment towards the wild game. They broke down his natural instinct for management of his resources. They took away his control of nature and placed him in competition with the animals. The end result is that the average black peasant is hostile towards the game.

The elephants raid his gardens and destroy the trees he uses for firewood. The buffalo and antelope eat the grass on which he feeds his cattle. The crocodile ate his grandmother, and the lion killed his father. . . Of course, he has come to resent the game herds. The solution, Warden? Is there one? Since independence from the colonial system we have been trying to change the attitude of our people, Johnny told him. At first they demanded that they be allowed to enter the National Parks that the white man had proclaimed. They wanted to be allowed to go in and cut the trees and feed their cattle and build their villages. However, we have had a great deal of success in educating them to the value of tourism and they are safari-hunting and controlled culling. For the first time being allowed to participate in the profits, and there is a new understanding of conservation and sensible exploitation, especially amongst the younger generation.

However, if the protectionist do-gooders of Europe and America were to force a ban on safari-hunting or the sale of ivory, it would set back all our efforts. It would probably be the death knell of the African elephant and eventually the end of all the game. So in the end it is all a matter of economics? Daniel asked. Like everything else in this world, it is a matter of money, Johnny agreed. if you give us enough money we will stop the poachers. if you make it worth their while, we will keep the peasants and their goats out of the Parks. However, the money must come from somewhere. The newly independent states of Africa with their exploding human populations cannot afford the First World luxury of locking away their natural assets.

They must exploit them and conserve them. If you prevent us doing that, then you will be guilty of contributing to the extinction of African wildlife. Johnny nodded grimly. Yes, it's a matter of economics. If the game can pay, then the game can stay. It was perfect, Daniel signalled Jock to stop filming and clasped Johnny's shoulder. I could make a star out of you. You're a natural. He was only half joking. How about it, Johnny? You could do a hell of a lot more for Africa on the screen than you can here. You want me to live in hotels and jet aircraft instead of sleeping under the stars? Johnny feigned indignation. You want me to build up a nice little roll around my belly.

He prodded Daniel's midriff. And puff and pant when I run a hundred yards? No thank you, Danny. I'll stay here where I can drink Zambezi water, not Coca-Cola, and eat buffalo steaks, not Big Macs. They loaded the last rolls of salted elephant-hide and immature calf tusks by the glare of truck headlights, and climbed back up the rough winding road to the rim of the escarpment and the headquarters of the Park at Chiwewe in the dark.

Johnny drove the green Landrover at the head of the slow convoy of refrigerator trucks and Daniel sat beside him on the front seat. They talked in the soft desultory manner of old friends in perfect accord.

Suicide weather, Daniel wiped his forehead on the sleeve. of his bush shirt. Even though it was almost midnight, the heat and the humidity were enervating. Rains will break soon. Good thing you're getting out of the valley, " Johnny grunted. That road turns into a swamp in the rain and most of the rivers are impassable. The tourist camp at Chiwewe had been closed a week previously in anticipation of the onslaught of the rainy season. I don't look forward to leaving, Daniel admitted. It's been like old times again. Old times, Johnny nodded. We had some fun.

When are you coming back to Chiwewe? I don't know, Johnny, but my offer is genuine. Come with me. We made a good team once; we would be good again. I know it. Thanks, Danny. Johnny shook his head. But I've got work to do here. I won't give up, Daniel warned him, and Johnny grinned. I know. You never do. In the morning, when Daniel climbed the small kopje behind the headquarters camp to watch the sunrise, the sky was filled with dark and mountainous cloud and the heat was still oppressive.

Daniel's mood matched that sombre dawn, for although he had captured some wonderful material during his stay, he had also rediscovered his friendship and affection for Johnny Nzou. The knowledge that it might be many years before they met again saddened him.

Johnny had invited him to breakfast on this, his last day. He was waiting for Daniel on the wide mosquito-screened verandah of the thatched bungalow that had once been Daniel's own home.

Daniel paused below the verandah and glanced around the garden. It was still the way that Vicky had planned it and originally laid it out.

Vicky had been the twenty-year-old bride that Daniel had brought to Chiwewe all those years ago a slim cheerful lass with long blonde hair and smiling green eyes, only a few years younger than Daniel at the time.

She had died in the front bedroom overlooking the garden that she had cherished. An ordinary bout of malaria had turned without warning to the pernicious cerebral strain. It had been all over very swiftly, even before the flying doctor could reach the Park.

The eerie sequel to her death was that the elephants, who had never entered the fenced garden before, despite its laden citrus trees and rich vegetable plot, came that very night. They came at the exact hour of Vicky's death and completely laid waste the garden. They even ripped out the ornamental shrubs and rose bushes. Elephant seem to have a psychic sensitivity to death. It was almost as if they had sensed her passing, and Daniel's grief.

Daniel had never married again and had left Chiwewe not long after.

The memories of Vicky were too painful to allow him to remain. Now Johnny Nzou lived in the bungalow and his pretty Matabele wife Mavis tended Vicky's garden. If Daniel had been able to choose, he would have had it no other way.

This morning Mavis had prepared a traditional Matabele breakfast of maize porridge and sour milk, thickened in a calabash gourd, the beloved amasi of the Nguni pastoral tribes.

Afterwards, Johnny and Daniel walked down towards the ivory go down together. Halfway down the hill Daniel checked and shaded his eyes as he stared towards the visitors camp. This was the game-fenced area on the river bank where the thatched cottages with circular walls stood under the wild fig trees.

These structures, peculiar to southern Africa, were known as rondavels. I thought you told me that the Park was closed to visitors, Daniel said.

One of the rondavels is still occupied, and there's a car parked outside it. That's a special guest, a diplomat, the Ambassador of the Taiwanese Republic of China to Harare, Johnny explained. He is extremely interested in wildlife, particularly elephants, and has contributed a great deal to conservation in this country.

We allow him special privileges. He wanted to be here without other tourists, so I kept the camp open for him- Johnny broke off, then exclaimed, There he is now! Three men stood in a group at the foot of the hill. It was still too far to make out their features. As they started towards them, Daniel asked, What happened to the two white rangers who helped with the cull yesterday? They were on loan from Wankie National Park. They left to go home early this morning. Closer to the group of three men Daniel made out the Taiwanese ambassador.

He was younger than he would have expected a man of such rank to be.

Although it was often difficult for a Westerner to judge the age of an oriental, Daniel put him at a little over forty. He was tall and lean with straight black hair that was oiled and combed back from a high intelligent forehead. He was good-looking with a clear, almost waxen, complexion.

There was something about his, features that suggested that his ancestry was not pure Chinese, but mixed with European blood. Though his eyes were liquid jet-black in colour, their shape was rounded and his upper eyelids lacked the characteristic fold of skin at the inner corner. Good morning, Your Excellency, Johnny greeted him with obvious respect. Warm enough for you? Good morning, Warden. The ambassador left the two black rangers and came to meet them. I prefer it to the cold. He was wearing an open-necked short-sleeved blue shirt and slacks, and indeed looked cool and elegant.

May I present Doctor Daniel Armstrong? Johnny asked. Daniel, His Excellency the Ambassador of Taiwan, Ning Cheng Gong. No introduction is necessary, Doctor Armstrong is a famous man. Cheng smiled charmingly as he took Daniel's hand. I have read your books and watched your television programmes with the greatest of interest and pleasure. His English was excellent, as though he were born to the language, and Daniel warmed to him. Johnny tells me that you are very concerned about the African ecology, and that you have made a great contribution to conservation in this country. Cheng made a deprecatory gesture. I only wish I could do more. But he was staring at Daniel thoughtfully.

Forgive me, Doctor Armstrong, but I did not expect to find other visitors at Chiwewe at this time of year. I was assured that the Park was closed.

Although his tone was friendly, Daniel sensed that the question was not an idle one. Don't worry, Your Excellency. My camera man and I are leaving this afternoon. You will soon have the whole of Chiwewe to yourself, Daniel assured him. Oh, please don't misunderstand me. I am not so selfish as to wish you gone. In fact, I am sorry to hear you are leaving so soon. I am sure we would have had a great deal to discuss.

Despite the denial, Daniel sensed that Cheng was relieved that he was leaving. His expression was still warm and his manner friendly, but Daniel was becoming aware of depths and layers below the urbane exterior.

The ambassador fell in between them, as they walked down to the ivory warehouse, and chatted in a relaxed manner, and then stood aside to watch as the rangers and a team of porters began to unload the newly culled ivory from the truck parked at the door to the warehouse. By this time Jock was there with his Sony camera filming the work from every angle.

As each tusk was brought out, still crusted with freshly congealed blood, it was weighed on the old-fashioned platform scale that stood at the entrance to the warehouse. Johnny Nzou sat at a rickety deal table and recorded the weight of each tusk in a thick leather-bound ledger.

He then allocated a registration number to it and one of his rangers stamped that number into the ivory with a set of steel dies.

Registered and stamped, the tusk was now legal ivory and could be auctioned and exported from the country.

Cheng watched the procedure with a lively interest. One pair of tusks, although not heavy or massive, was of particular beauty. They were delicately proportioned shafts with fine grain and elegant curves, an identical and perfectly matched pair.

Cheng stepped forward and squatted beside them as they lay on the scale.

He stroked them with a lover's sensual touch. Perfect, he purred. A natural work of art. He broke off as he noticed Daniel watching him.

Daniel had been vaguely repelled by this display of cupidity, and it showed on his face.

Cheng stood up and explained smoothly. I have always been fascinated by ivory. As you probably know, we Chinese consider it to be a highly propitious substance. Few Chinese households are without any ivory carving; it brings good luck to its owner.

However, my family interest goes even deeper than common superstition. My father began his working life as an ivorycarver, and so great was his skill that by the time I was born he owned shops in Taipei and Bangkok, Tokyo and Hong Kong, all of them specialising in ivory artefacts. Some of my earliest memories are of the look and feel of ivory. As a boy, I worked as an apprentice ivory-carver in the store in Taipei, and I came to love and understand ivory as my father does. He has one of the most extensive and valuable collections he stopped himself. Forgive me, please. I sometimes get carried away by my passion, but that is a particularly beautiful set of tusks. It is very rare to find a pair so perfectly matched. My father would be ecstatic over them. He watched longingly as the tusks were carried away and packed with the hundreds of others in the warehouse.

Interesting character, Daniel remarked, after the last tusk had been registered and locked away, and he and Johnny were making their way up the hill to the bungalow for lunch. But how does the son of an ivory-carver get to be an ambassador? Johnny chuckled. Wing Cheng Gong's father may have come from a humble background, but he didn't remain there. I understand he still has his ivory shops and his collection, but those are merely his hobbies now. He is reputed to be one of the richest men, if not the richest man. in Taiwan, and that, as you can imagine, is very rich indeed. From what I hear he has his fingers in all the juiciest pies around the Pacific rim as well as some in Africa. He has a large family of sons and Cheng is the youngest and, they say, the brightest. I like him, don't you?

Yes, he seems pleasant enough, but there is just something a little odd.

Did you notice his face as he fondled that tusk? It was, Daniel searched for the word, unnatural? You writers! Johnny shook his head ruefully. If you can't find something sensational, you make it up.

And they both laughed.

Ning Cheng Gong stood with one of the black rangers at the foot of the hill and watched Daniel and Johnny disappear amongst the msasa trees. I do not like the white man being here, said Gomo. Under Johnny Nzou, he was Chiwewe's senior ranger. Perhaps we should wait until another time.

The white man leaves this afternoon, Cheng told him coldly. Besides which you have been well paid. Plans have been made that cannot be altered now. The others are already on their way and cannot be sent back. You have only paid us half of what we agreed, Gomo protested.

The other half when your work is done, not before, Cheng said softly, and Gomo's eyes were like the eyes of a snake. You to do, Cheng went on.

know what you have Gama was silent for a moment. The foreigner had indeed paid him a thousand US dollars, the equivalent of six monthssalary, with the promise of another year's salary to follow after the job was done.

You will do it? Cheng insisted. Yes, Gomo agreed. I will do it.

Cheng nodded. It will be tonight or tomorrow night, not later. Be ready, both of you. We will be ready, Gomo promised, and climbed into his Landrover, where the second black ranger waited, and they drove away.

Cheng walked back to his rondavel in the deserted visitors' camp.

The cottage was identical to the other thirty which during the dry cool season usually housed a full complement of tourists. He fetched a cool drink from the refrigerator and sat on the screen porch to wait out the hottest hours of the noonday.

He felt nervous and restless. Deep down he shared Gomo's misgivings about the project. Although they had considered every possible eventuality and planned for each of them, there was always the unforeseeable, the unpredictable, such as the presence of Armstrong.

It was the first time he had attempted a coup of this magnitude. it was his own initiative. of course, his father knew about and thoroughly approved of the other lesser shipments, but the risk was far greater this time, in proportion to the rewards. If he succeeded he would earn his father's respect, and that was more important to him even than the material profits.

He was the youngest son, and he had to strive that much harder to win his place in his father's affections. For that reason alone he must not fail.

In the years that he had been at the embassy in Harare, he had consolidated his place in the illicit ivory and rhino-horn trade. It had begun with a deceptively casual remark at a dinner-party by a middle-ranking government official about the convenience of diplomatic privilege and access to the diplomatic courier service. With the business training that his father had given him, Cheng recognised the approach immediately for what it was, and made a non-committal but encouraging response.

A week of delicate negotiations followed and then Cheng was invited to play golf with another higher official. His driver parked the ambassadorial Mercedes in the car park at the rear of the Harare golf club and as instructed left it unattended while Cheng l4as out on the course. Cheng was officially a tenhandicap golfer but could play well below that when he chose.

On this occasion he allowed his opponent to win three thousand US dollars and paid him in cash in front of witnesses in the club house.

When he returned to his official residence he ordered the driver to park the Mercedes in the garage and then dismissed him. In the boot he found six large rhino horns packed in layers of hessian cloth.

He sent these out in the next diplomatic pouch to Taipei and they were sold through his father's shop in Hong Kong for sixty thousand US dollars. His father was delighted with the transaction and wrote Cheng a long letter of approbation and reminded his son of his deep interest in, and love of, ivory. Cheng let it be known discreetly that he was a connoisseur of ivory as well as of rhino horn, and he was offered at bargain prices various pieces of unregistered and unstamped ivory. It did not take long for the word to spread in the small closed world of the poachers that there was a new buyer in the field.

Within months he was approached by a Sikh businessman from Malawi who was ostensibly looking for Taiwanese investment in a fishing venture that he was promoting on Lake Malawi. Their first meeting went very well. Cheng found that Chetti Singh's figures added up attractively, and passed them on to his father in Taipei. His father approved the estimates and agreed a joint venture with Chetti Singh. When the documents were signed at the embassy, Cheng invited him to dinner, and during the meal Chetti Singh remarked, I understand that your illustrious father is loving very much the beautiful ivory.

As a token of my utmost esteem I could be arranging for a regular supply. I am sure that you would be forwarding the goods to your father without too much scarlet tape. Most miserably the ivory will be unstamped, never mind. I have a deep distaste for red tape, Cheng assured him.

Within a short time it became obvious to Cheng that Chetti Singh was head of a network that operated in all those African countries that still had healthy populations of elephant and rhino. From Botswana and Angola, Zambia, Tanzania and Mozambique, he gathered in the white gold and the horn. He controlled all aspects of his Organization down to the actual composition of the armed gangs who raided regularly into the National Parks in those countries.

At first Cheng was merely another customer of his, but once the fishing partnership on Lake Malawi began to flourish and they were netting hundreds of tons of tiny kapenta fish each week, drying them and exporting them to the east, their relationship began to change. It became more cordial and trusting.

Finally Chetti Singh offered Cheng and his father a proprietary stake in the ivory trade. Naturally he asked for a substantial investment to allow him to expand the scope and range of the partnership's operations, and another larger payment for his share of goodwill in the enterprise.

In all, it amounted to almost a million dollars. Cheng, on his father's behalf, was able by astute bargaining to reduce this initial fee by fifty percent.

Only once he was a full partner could Cheng appreciate the extent and range of the operation. In each of the countries which still harboured elephant herds, Chetti Singh had been able to put in place clandestine circles of accomplices in government. Many of his contacts went as high as ministerial level.

Within most of the major National Parks he had informers and officials on his payroll. Some were merely game scouts or rangers, but others were the actual chief wardens in charge of the Parks, those appointed as guardians and protectors of the herds.

The partnership was so lucrative that when Cheng's original term of appointment as ambassador expired, his father arranged through friends high in the Taiwanese government for it to be extended for a further three-year term.

By this time Cheng's father and brothers had become fully aware of the investment opportunities that Africa offered. Beginning with the small but profitable fishing venture and then the ivory partnership, the family had been attracted more and more to the dark continent.

Neither Cheng nor his father had any scruples about apartheid and began investing heavily in South Africa. They were well aware that world condemnation and the policy of economic sanctions had depressed the prices of land and other valuable assets in that country to a point where in sensible businessman could resist them.

Honoured parent, Cheng had told his father on one of his frequent returns to Taipei, within ten years apartheid and white minority rule will have passed from the face of the land.

Once that happens, prices in South Africa will rise to find their true levels. They purchased great ranches of tens of thousands of acres for the same price as a three-room flat in Taipei. They purchased factories and office blocks and shopping centres from American companies forced by their government to disinvest from South Africa. They paid five and ten cents for a dollar's worth of value.

However, Cheng's father, who had been among other things a steward of the Hong Kong race club, was too astute a gambler to place all his bets on a single horse. They invested in other African countries. An agreement had just been negotiated between South Africa and Cuba and Angola and America for the independence of Namibia. The family invested in property in Windhoek and fishing licences and mineral rights in that country. Through Chetti Singh, Cheng was introduced to ministers of government in Zambia and Zaire and Kenya and Tanzania who for financial considerations were inclined to look favourably on Taiwanese investment in their countries, at prices which Cheng's father found acceptable.

Nevertheless, despite all these other major investments, Cheng's father, for sentimental reasons, was still drawn to the original ivory venture which had first provoked his interest in the dark continent.

At their last meeting he had remarked to Cheng, as his son knelt in front of him to ask his blessing, My son, it would please me greatly if, once you return to Africa, you were able to find a large quantity of registered and stamped ivory. Illustrious father, the only sources of legal ivory are the government auction Cheng broke off as he saw his father's expression of scorn.

Ivory purchased at government auctions leaves very little! margin of profit, the old man hissed. I had expected you to show better sense than that, my son. His father's censure rankled deeply, and Cheng spoke to Chetti Singh at the very next opportunity.

Chetti Singh stroked his rolled beard thoughtfully. He was a handsome man and the immaculate white turban added to his stature. I am now thinking of but one single solitary source of registered ivory, he said.

And that is being the government warehouse. You are suggesting that the ivory might be taken from the warehouse before the auction?

Perhaps. .

. Chetti Singh shrugged, but it would be calling for great and meticulous laying of plans. Let me run my mind over and around this vexing problem. Three weeks later they met again at Chetti Singh's office in Lilongwe. I have occupied my mind greatly, and a solution has occurred to me, the Sikh told him.

How much will it cost? Cheng's first question was instinctive. Kilo for kilo, no more than the acquisition of unregistered ivory, but as there will be only opportunity to procure a single and solitary shipment we will be wise to be making it as large as possible. The contents of an entire warehouse, never mind!

How would your father be struck by that?

Cheng knew his father would be delighted. Registered ivory had three or four times the value of illicit ivory in the international marketplace.

Let us consider which country will provide us with this merchandise, Chetti Singh suggested, but it was obvious that he had already decided.

Not Zaire or South Africa. Those are two countries where I do not have an effective Organization.

Zambia and Tanzania and Kenya have very little ivory remaining. We are left with Botswana, where there is no large-scale culling, or finally Zimbabwe. Good, Cheng nodded with satisfaction.

The ivory is accumulated in the game department ware houses at Wankie and Harare and Chiwewe until is being undertaken the hi-annual auction.

We would acquire the merchandise from one of those centres. Which one? The warehouse in Harare is too well guarded. Chetti Singh held up three fingers of his one hand and, having discarded Harare, he folded one down, leaving two fingers raised. Wankie is the largest National Park.

However, it is far from the Zambian border. He folded down another finger. Which leaves Chiwewe. I have trustworthy agents on the Park's staff there. They tell me that the warehouse is almost full of registered ivory at the present time, and the Park headquarters are less than thirty miles from the Zambezi River and the Zambian border.

One of my teams could cross the river and be there in a day's march, never mind!

You intend to rob the warehouse? Cheng leaned forward over his desk.

Without the shade or fraction of a doubt. Chetti Singh lowered his raised finger and looked surprised. Was that not also your intention all along? Perhaps, Cheng replied carefully. But is it feasible?

Chiwewe is in a remote and isolated area of the country, but it lies on the river, which is an international boundary. I would send in a raiding party of twenty men armed absolutely with automatic weapons and led by one of my best and most reliable hunters. In darkness they cross the river from Zambia in canoes and in a day's hard marching they reach the Park's headquarters and fall upon it. They dispose of all witnesses . . . Cheng coughed nervously and Chetti Singh paused and looked at him questioningly. These would not amount to more than four or five persons. The permanent rangers are in my pay. The visitors camp will be closed against the rainy season and the bulk of the staff will have returned to their villages on leave. The only remaining personnel will be the Park warden and two or three other skeleton staff. Still, is there no way that we can avoid disposing of them? It was not a matter of scruples that made Cheng hesitate. It was prudent not to take unnecessary risks, if they could be avoided. if -you can be suggesting alternatives, I would be pleased to cast my mind over them, Chetti Singh told him, and after a moment's thought Cheng shook his head.

No, not at the moment, but please go on. Let me hear the rest of your plan. Very well. My men dispose of all witnesses and burn down the ivory warehouse and then immediately retreat across the river. The Sikh stopped speaking, but he watched Cheng s face with ill-concealed glee, anticipating his next question. It annoyed Cheng that he must ask it, for it sounded naive even to his own ears. But what about the ivory?

Chetti Singh smirked mysteriously, forcing him to ask again. Will your poachers take the ivory? You say they will be a small party.

Surely they will not be able to carry that much, will they? That is the absolute beauty of my plan. The raid is a dead herring for the Zimbabwe police. And this time Cheng smiled at the solecism. We want them to believe that the poachers have taken the ivory. Then they will not think to look for it inside their own country, will they? Now, as he sat on his verandah in the midday heat, Cheng nodded grudgingly.

Chetti Singh's plan was ingenious, except, of course, that it did not take into account the presence of Armstrong and his television crew.

In fairness, however, none of them could have foreseen that.

Once again he considered delaying or cancelling the operation entirely, but almost immediately rejected the idea. By this time, Chetti Singh's men would be across the river and marching on the camp.

There was no way he could reach them, and warn them to turn back. They were far past the point of no return. If Armstrong and his camera man were still here when Chetti Singh's men arrived, then they would have to be disposed of along with the warden and his family and staff.

Cheng's train of thought was interrupted by the ringing of the telephone at the far end of the verandah. The VIP cottage was the only one in the visitors camp equipped with a telephone. He jumped up and went to it quickly. He had been expecting the call. It had been prearranged and was part of Chetti Singh's plan.

Ambassador Ning, he said, and Johnny Nzou answered. Sorry to trouble you, Your Excellency, but there is a call from your embassy in Harare.

A gentleman calling himself Mr. Huang. He says he is your charge.

Will you take the call? Thank you, Warden. I will speak to Mr.

Huang. He knew that it was a party line that crossed a hundred and fifty miles of wild bush from the district telephone exchange at the little village of Karoi, and the voice of his charge relayed from Harare was a whisper that seemed to come from some far corner of the galaxy. The message was the one he had expected, and afterwards Cheng cranked the handle of the antiquated telephone and Johnny Nzou came on the line again. Warden, my presence is required in Harare urgently.

It is most unfortunate; I was looking forward to a few more days of relaxation. I also regret that you are forced to leave. My wife and I would have liked you to have dinner with us. Perhaps some other time.

The refrigerator trucks are taking the elephant meat up to Karoi this evening. It might be best if you travelled in convoy with them. Your Mercedes does not have four-wheel drive, and it looks as though it might rain at any time. That also was part of Chetti Singh's plan.

The raid had been timed to coincide with the elephant cull and the departure of the refrigerator trucks. However, Cheng hesitated deliberately before he asked, When are the trucks leaving? One of them has engine trouble. Gomo the ranger had sabotaged the alternator. The object was to delay the departure of the convoy until the arrival of the raiding party. However, the driver tells me that they should be ready to leave around six o'clock this evening. Johnny Nzou's voice changed as a thought struck him. Of course, Doctor Armstrong is leaving almost immediately, you could drive in convoy with him. No.

No! Cheng cut in quickly. I cannot leave that soon. I will wait for the trucks. As you wish. Johnny sounded puzzled.

However, I cannot guarantee when the convoy will be ready to leave and I am sure Doctor Armstrong would agree to delay an hour or so. No, Cheng told him firmly. I will not inconvenience or delay Doctor Armstrong. I will travel with your convoy Thank you, Warden. To end the conversation and forestall any further discussion, he hung up the receiver. He frowned. Armstrong's presence was becoming increasingly troublesome. The sooner he disappeared the happier Cheng would be.

However, it was another twenty minutes before he heard the sound of a diesel engine coming from the direction of the warden's bungalow. He stood up and went to the screen door of the verandah and watched the Toyota Landcruiser coming down the hill. On the door of the truck was painted the logo of Armstrong Productions, a disembodied -arm with the wrist encircled by a spiked bracelet, and the elbow bent and tensed in a body-builder's stylised pose to raise a heroic bulge of biceps.

Doctor Armstrong was at the driver's wheel and his camera man was in the front seat beside him.

They were leaving at last. Cheng nodded with satisfaction and glanced at his wristwatch. It was 2 few minutes after one o'clock.

They would have at least four hours to get well clear before the attack on the headquarters was launched.

Daniel Armstrong saw him and braked the truck. He rolled down the side window and smiled across at Cheng. Johnny tells me you are also leaving today, Your Excellency, he called. Are you sure that we can't be of assistance? Not at all, Doctor. Cheng smiled politely. It is all arranged.

Please do not worry about me. Armstrong made him feel uneasy. He was a big man with thick curly hair that gave him 2 tousled outdoors appearance.

His gaze was direct and his smile was lazy. Cheng thought that to the eyes of a Westerner he might appear extremely attractive, especially if the Westerner were female, but to Cheng's Chinese eye, his nose was grotesquely large and his wide mouth had a mobile childlike expression.

He might have dismissed him as offering no serious threat, except for the eyes. Those eyes made Cheng uneasy. They were alert and penetrating.

Armstrong stared at him for a full five seconds before be smiled again and thrust his hand out of the Toyota's rolled down window. Well then, I'll say cheerio, Your Excellency. Let's hope we get an opportunity for that chat one day soon. He engaged the gearshift, raised his right hand in salutation and drove down towards the main gates of the camp.

Cheng watched the truck out of sight and then turned and stared down along the crests of the hills. They were jagged and uneven as a crocodile's teeth.

Twenty miles or so to the west, one of the dark Cumulus thunder-heads was abruptly shot through by vivid lightning.

Even as he watched, rain began to fall from the drooping belly of the cloud mass, first in pale blue streamers and then in a sullen deluge, as impenetrable as a sheet of lead, that obscured the far hills.

Chetti Singh could not have timed it better. Soon the valley and its escarpment would be a morass. A police team sent to investigate any suspicious occurrence at Chiwewe would not only find the road impassable, but if they did succeed in reaching the Park headquarters, the torrential rain would have scoured the hills and washed away all clues and signs of the raiding party's progress. Just let them arrive soon, he hoped fervently. Make it today and not tomorrow. He checked his wristwatch. It was not quite two o'clock. Sunset at seven-thirty, although with the dense cloud cover it would probably be dark before that. Let it be today, he reiterated.

He fetched his binoculars and his battered copy of Roberts Birds of South Africa from the table on the verandah of the cottage. He was at pains to demonstrate to the warden that he was an ardent naturalist.

That was his excuse for being here.

He climbed into his Mercedes and drove down to the warden's office behind the ivory godown. Johnny Nzou was at his desk. Like any other civil service employee, half the warden's work was made up of filling in forms and requisitions and registers and reports. Johnny looked up from his piles of paper as Cheng stood in the doorway. I thought that while I was waiting for the refrigerator truck to be repaired, I might as well go down to the water-hole at FigTree Pan, he explained, and Johnny smiled sympathetically as he noticed the binoculars and field guide. Both were the paraphernalia of the typical bird-watcher, and he always felt welldisposed towards anybody who shared his love of nature.

I'll send one of my rangers to call you when the convoy is ready to leave, but I can't promise it will be this evening, Johnny told him.

They tell me that the alternator on one truck is burned out. Spare parts are a terrible problem in this country; there just isn't sufficient foreign exchange to pay for everything we need. Cheng drove down to the man-made water-hole. Less than a mile from Chiwewe headquarters a borehole had been sunk at the head of a small vlei.

From it a windmill pumped a trickle of water into a muddy pond to attract birds and animals to the proximity of the camp.

As Cheng parked the Mercedes in the observation area overlooking the pool, a small herd of kudu that had been drinking from it took fright and scattered into the surrounding bush. They were large beige-coloured antelope, striped with pale chalk lines across their backs, with long legs and necks, and huge trumpet-shaped ears. Only the males carried wide corkscrewed horns.

Cheng was too agitated to use his binoculars, although clouds of birds descended to drink at the water-hole. The fire finches burned like tiny scarlet flames, and the starlings were a shining iridescent green that reflected the sunlight. Cheng was a talented artist not only with ivory carver's knives but also with water colours. One of his favourite subjects had always been wild birds which he depicted in traditional romantic Chinese style.

Today he could not concentrate on them as they settled at the water.

Instead he fitted a cigarette into his ivory holder and puffed at it restlessly. This was the spot he had chosen as the rendezvous with the leader of the poachers, and Cheng scanned the encroaching bush anxiously as he fidgeted and smoked.

Still, the first indication he had that someone was there was the sound of a voice through the open window of the Mercedes beside him.

Cheng started uncontrollably and turned quickly to the man who stood beside the motor car.

He had a scar that ran down from the corner of his left eye into the line of his top lip. The lip was puckered upwards on that side giving him an uneven sardonic smile. Chetti Singh had warned Cheng about the scar. It was an infallible point of recognition. Sali? Cheng's voice was breathless. The poacher had startled him. You are Sali ? Yes, the man agreed, smiling with only half his twisted mouth. I am Sali .

His skin was almost purple black, the scar a livid pink upon it. He was short in stature but with broad shoulders and muscular limbs. He wore a tattered shirt and shorts of faded khaki drill that were crusted and stained with sweat and filth.

He had obviously travelled hard, for his bare legs were floured with dust to the knee. In the heat he stank of stale sweat, a goary and rancid odour that made Cheng draw away fastidiously. The gesture was not wasted on the poacher and his smile broadened into a genuine grin.

Where are your men? Cheng demanded, and Sali prodded his thumb towards the dense encircling bush.

You are armed? he insisted, and Sah's grin became insolent.

He did not deign to reply to such a famous question. Cheng realised that relief and nervousness had made him garrulous.

He determined to contain himself, but the next question slipped out before he could prevent it. You know what has to be done? With a fingertip Sali rubbed the glossy streak of scar tissue down his cheek and nodded. You are to leave no witnesses. Cheng saw from his eyes that the poacher had not understood, so he repeated, You must kill them all. When the police come there must be no one for them to talk to.

Sali inclined his head in agreement. Chetti Singh had explained to him in detail. The orders had been agreeable. Sali had a bitter feud against the Zimbabwe Parks Department.

Only a year previously Sali's two younger brothers had crossed the Zambezi with a small group of men to hunt rhinoceros.

They had run into one of the Parks anti-poaching units who were all exguerrilla fighters and armed, like them, with AK 47 assault rifles.

In the fierce fire-fight that ensued, one of his brothers had been killed and the other shot through the spine and crippled for life.

Despite his wound they had brought him to trial in Harare and he had been sentenced to seven years imprisonment.

Thus Sali the poacher felt no great affection for the Parks rangers and it showed in his expression as he agreed. We will leave nobody.

Except the two rangers, Cheng qua and David. You know them. I know them. Sali had worked with them before.

They will be at the workshops with the two big trucks.

Make sure all your men understand that they are not to touch them or damage the trucks in any way. I will tell them. The warden will be in his office. His wife and their three children are at the bungalow on the hill. There are four camp servants and their families in the domestic compound. Make sure it is surrounded before you open fire.

Nobody must get away. You chatter like a monkey in a wild plum tree, Sali told him scornfully. I know all these things. Chetti Singh has told me. Then go and do as you have been told, Cheng ordered sharply, and Sali leaned in through the Mercedes window forcing the Chinaman to hold his breath and draw away from him.

Soli rubbed his thumb and forefinger together in the universal sign for money. Cheng reached across and opened the cubbyhole in the Mercedes dashboard. The ten-dollar bills were in bundles of a hundred, each secured by a rubber band. He counted them into Sali's open hand, three bundles of a thousand dollars each. It would work out to approximately five dollars a kilo for the vast store of ivory in the camp warehouse, ivory that would be worth a thousand dollars a kilo in Taipei.

On the other hand, to Sali the sheaves of green bills represented an enormous fortune. He had never in his entire life held that amount of money in his hand at one time.

His usual reward for poaching a good elephant, for risking his life against the anti-poaching teams by penetrating deep into forbidden territory, for risking his life again by firing at the great beasts with the light bullets of the AK 47, for cutting out the tusks and carrying their galling weight back over heavy broken ground, his usual reward for all that risk and labour amounted to around thirty dollars an elephant killed, say, a dollar a kilo.

The treasury bills that Cheng placed in his hands represented the reward he could expect from five years of hard and dangerous labour.

So, compared to that, what was the killing of a few Parks officials and their families? It entailed very little additional effort and minimal risk.

For three thousand dollars, it would be a pleasure indeed.

Both men were mightily pleased with their bargain. I will wait here until I hear the guns, Cheng told him delicately, and Sali smiled so broadly that he showed all his large brilliant white teeth right to the wisdoms in the back of his jaw. You will not have to wait long, he promised, and then as silently as he had appeared, he vanished back into the bush.

Daniel Armstrong drove at a sedate pace. The road was fairly good by central African standards; it was graded regularly, for few of the visitors to the park drove four-wheel-drive vehicles. Nevertheless, Daniel was in no hurry and did not push it. His Toyota was equipped with a full range of camping equipment. He never stayed at motels or other formal lodgings if he could avoid them. Not only were they few and far between in this country, but in most cases the food and comforts they offered were much below the standard that Daniel could provide in his own temporary camps.

This evening he would keep going until a little before sunset and then find some inviting stand of forest or pleasant stream at which to pull well off the road and break out the tucker box and Chivas bottle.

He doubted that they would get as far as Mana Pools, and certainly they would not reach the main metalled highway that ran from the Chirundu bridge on the Zambezi, south to Karoi and Harare.

Jock was pleasant company. It was one of the reasons that Daniel had hired him. They had worked together on and off over the past five years.

Jock was a freelance cameraman and Daniel called him up on contract whenever he had a new project signed up and financed. They had covered huge tracts of Africa together, from the forbidding beaches of the Skeleton Coast in Namibia to the drought and famine-ravaged mountains and ambas of Ethiopia and the depths of the Sahara. Although they had not succeeded in forging a deep or committed friendship, they had spent weeks together in the remote wilderness and there had seldom been any friction between them.

They chatted amicably as Daniel took the heavily laden truck down the twisting escarpment road. Whenever a bird or animal or unusual tree caught their attention Daniel parked the truck and made notes and observations while Jock filmed.

Before they had covered twenty miles they came to a section of the road over which a large herd of elephant had fed during the previous night.

They had pulled down branches and pushed over many of the large mopane trees. Some of these had fallen across the roadway, blocking it entirely. From those trees still standing they had stripped the bark, leaving the trunks naked white and weeping with sap. Naughty beggars, Daniel grinned as be contemplated the destruction. They seem to delight in blocking the roads. Yet it was, clear demonstration, if any were needed, that regular culling of the herds was absolutely necessary. The mopane forest could survive only a limited amount of this destructive feeding.

They were able to pull off the road and detour around many of the fallen trees, although once or twice they were forced to hitch up a tree-trunk to the Toyota's tow chain and bodily haul it aside before they could pass. Thus it was after four o'clock before they reached the valley bottom and turned eastwards through the mopane forest towards the Maria Pools turn-off, near which they had filmed the elephant cull.

At this stage both of them were engrossed in a discussion of how best Daniel could edit the huge volume of film that they now had on tape.

Daniel was experiencing the heightened anticipation he always felt at this stage of a production. It was all in the can. Now he could return to London where, in a hired editing room at Castle Film Studios, he would spend long weeks and months sequestered in a dark room absorbed in the exacting but infinitely rewarding labour of cutting each scene into the next and composing the commentary to support it.

Even though the forefront of his mind was focused on what Jock was saying, he was fully aware of his surroundings.

Nevertheless he almost missed it. He drove over it and went on for almost two hundred yards before it fully registered that he had passed something unusual. Perhaps it was a relic of his experiences during the bush war when any extraneous mark on the roadway could give warning of a land mine and violent death buried in the tracks. In those days he would have been much quicker to register and react, but the intervening years had blunted his reflexes.

He braked the truck and Jock broke off what he was saying and glanced at him quizzically. What is it? Don't know. Daniel swivelled in the seat as he reversed the Landcruiser back down the track. Probably nothing, he murmured, but there was a tiny niggling doubt in the back of his mind.

He stopped and pulled on the handbrake and climbed down out of the cab. I can't see anything. Jock hung out of the window on the far side. That's just it, Daniel agreed. There is a blank spot here.

He pointed down the dusty roadway whose surface was dimpled and pocked by the marvelous graffiti of the bush. The tiny v-shaped spurs of francolin and other birds, the serpentine tracks of insects and lizards, the larger hoof-prints of various species Of antelope and hare, mongoose and jackal were woven into an intricate tapestry of sign except at one point in the roadway where the soft surface was smooth and unblemished. Daniel squatted beside it and studied it for a moment. Somebody has swept sign, he said. So what's so bloody extraordinary about that?

Jock climbed down out of the truck and came to join him. Nothing, perhaps. He stood up. Or everything. Depends on how you look at it.

Shoot? Jock invited him. Only human beings cover their tracks, and only when they're up to no good. Besides that, there aren't supposed to be people wandering around on foot in the middle of a National Park.

Daniel skirted the area of soft earth that had been carefully swept with a leafy branch and stepped off the track into the stand of tussocked grass on the verge. Immediately he saw other signs of anti-tracking. The grass clumps had been crus bed and flattened as a party of men on foot had used them as stepping stones. It seemed to be a large party and Daniel felt the hair on his forearms and at the back of his neck prickle and lift.

Contact! he thought. It was like the old days with the Scouts when they first picked up the sign of a group of guerrilla terrorists. He experienced that same breathless feeling of excitement and the same stone of fear heavy in his bowels.

it took an effort to thrust those feelings aside. Those dangerous days were long past. Still he followed the sign. Although the chase had taken some elementary precautions, they were perfunctory. A cadre of Zanu in the war days would have been more professional. Within fifty yards of the road Daniel found the first clear print of a shod human foot, and a few yards further on the band had joined a narrow game track and formed in Indian file, abandoning all further attempts at anti-tracking. They had struck out in the direction of the escarpment and Chiwewe base camp with determined stride.

Daniel was amazed to find how large the band was. He counted the tracks of between sixteen and twenty individuals in the group.

After following them another two or three hundred yards Daniel stopped and thought about it carefully. Considering the size of the group and the direction from which they had come, the most obvious assumption was that they were a band of Zambian poachers who had crossed the Zambezi River on a raid for ivory and rhino horn. That would also explain the precautions they had taken to cover their tracks.

What he should do now was to warn Johnny Nzou so that he could get an anti-poaching unit in as fast as possible for a follow-up action.

Daniel pondered the best way to do this.

There was a telephone in the ranger's office at Mana Pools only an hour's drive ahead, or Daniel could turn back to Chiwewe headquarters and take the warning in person.

The decision was made for him as he made out the line of telephone poles in the forest not far ahead. These were cut from native timber and steeped in black creosote to discourage the attack of termites.

Between the poles the draped copper telephone wires gleamed in the late sunlight, except between two of the poles directly ahead.

Daniel hurried forward and then stopped abruptly.

The telephone wires had been cut and dangled from the white ceramic insulators at the top of the nearest pole. Daniel reached out for the end of one wire, and peered at it. There was no question about it. It had been deliberately cut. The shear marks made by the cutting edge of a pair of pliers were evident in the malleable red metal of the cable.

There were the milling tracks of many men at the base of the pole.

Why the hell would a poacher want to cut the telephone lines? Daniel wondered aloud, and his sense of unease turned to alarm. This begins to look really ugly. I have to warn Johnny. He has to get on to these gentlemen damned quickly.

Only one way to warn him now.

At a run he started back to where he had left the Landcruiser. What the hell is going on? Jock wanted to know as he jumped up into the cab and started the motor. I don't know, but I don't like it, whatever it is, Daniel told him as he reversed off the road and then swung back on to it, headed in the opposite direction.

Daniel drove fast now, ripping up a long bank of dust behind the Landcruiser, slowing only for the fords through the steep dry water-courses and then accelerating away again. As he drove, it occurred to him that the gang could reach the headquarters camp by cutting across the loop that the road made down the pass of the escarpment. It would be a steep climb up on to the plateau, but on foot they could cut almost thirty miles off the longer route that Daniel was forced to follow. He estimated that the telephone lines had been cut about five or six hours earlier. He arrived at that estimate by a process of fieldcraft deduction which included a study of the erosion of the spoor and the recovery time of trodden-down grass and vegetation.

He could not think of any reason why a gang of poachers should want to visit Chiwewe headquarters. On the contrary, he would expect them to give it the widest possible berth.

However, their tracks were headed resolutely in that direction, and they had cut the telephone wires. Their conduct was brazen and aggressive. If Chiwewe was indeed their destination then they could be there already. He glanced at his wristwatch.

Yes, they could have climbed the escarpment and, by hard marching, have reached the headquarters camp an hour or so ago.

But why? There were no tourists. In Kenya and other countries further north the poachers, having depleted the elephant herds, had taken to attacking and robbing foreign tourists.

Perhaps this gang had taken a tip from their northern counterparts.

But there are no tourists at Chiwewe. There's nothing of value he broke off as the fallacy of that assumption occurred to him. Shit! he whispered. The ivory. Suddenly dread chilled the sweat on his cheeks.

Johnny, he whispered. And Mavis and the kids. The Landcruiser was flying down the track now and he slid her into the first hairpin bend that led on to the slope of the escarpment.

As he. came through the corner at speed a huge white vehicle filled the road directly ahead of him. Even as Daniel hit the brakes and swung the Toyota hard over he realised that it was one of the refrigerator trucks.

He missed its front wing by a foot as he went up on to the verge and tore into a patch of scrub. He came to rest with the nose of the Toyota almost touching the trunk of a big mopane.

Jock was thrown up against the dashboard by the deceleration.

Daniel jumped out of the Toyota and ran back to where the refrigerator truck had managed to pull up, blocking his tailgate.

He recognized Gomo, the senior ranger, at the wheel and called to him.

Sorry! My fault. Are you okay?

Gama looked shaken by the near collision but he nodded. I'm okay, Doctor. When did you leave Chiwewe? Daniel demanded, and Gomo hesitated. For some reason the question seemed to disconcert him. How long ago? Daniel insisted. I don't know for sure. . . At that moment there was the sound of other vehicles approaching down the escarpment road and Daniel glanced around to see the second truck come grinding through the next bend.

It was running in low gear to combat the gravity of the steep gradient.

Fifty yards behind the truck followed Ambassador Ning Cheng Gong's blue Mercedes. The two vehicles slowed and then pulled up behind Gomo's truck and Daniel strode towards the Mercedes.

As he approached, Ambassador Ning opened his door and stepped out into the dusty track. Doctor Armstrong, what are you doing here? He seemed agitated but his voice was soft, barely audible.

When did you leave Chiwewe? Daniel ignored the question.

He was desperate to know that Johnny and Mavis were safe and the Ambassador's -reaction puzzled him.

Cheng's agitation increased. Why do you ask that? he whispered.

Why are you returning? You were supposed to be on your way to Harare:Look here, Your Excellency. All I want to know is that there has been no trouble at Chiwewe. Trouble? What trouble? Why should there be trouble? The ambassador reached into his pocket and brought out a handkerchief.

What are you suggesting, Doctor? I'm not suggesting anything.

Daniel found it hard to conceal his exasperation. I picked up the tracks of a large party of men crossing the road and heading in the direction of Chiwewe. I am worried that they may be a gang of armed poachers and I am on my way back to warn the warden. There is no trouble, Cheng assured him. Daniel noticed that a faint sheen of perspiration bloomed on his forehead. Everything is well. I left there an hour ago. Warden Nzou is just fine.

I spoke to him when we left and there was no sign of any trouble. He wiped his face with the handkerchief. An hour ago?

Daniel asked, and checked his stainless steel Rolex. He felt a vast sense of relief at Ambassador Ning's reassurance. So you left there at about five-thirty? Yes, Yes.

Cheng's tone sharpened with affront. Are you questioning my word?

Do you doubt what I am telling you? Daniel was surprised by his tone and the strength of his denials. You misunderstand me, Your Excellency. Of course I don't doubt what you say. Cheng's prestige as an ambassador was the main reason that Chetti Singh had insisted that he be present at Chiwewe.

Cheng's natural inclination had been assiduously to avoid the scene of the raid, and even to fly to Taipei while it was in progress to give himself an infallible alibi. However, Chetti Singh had threatened to call off the operation unless Cheng was present to vouch for the fact that the raid had taken place after the convoy of trucks had left Chiwewe. That was the whole crux of the operation. As an accredited ambassador, Cheng's word would carry enormous weight in the subsequent police investigation. The testimony of the two black rangers alone might not have been accepted implicitly. The police might even have decided to give them a little earnest questioning in a back cell at Chikurubi prison and Chetti Singh was not confident that they would have withstood that treatment.

No, the police must be made to believe that when Cheng had left Chiwewe with the convoy all had been well. That way they must assume that the raiders had carried the ivory away With them or that it had been destroyed in the fire that consumed the godown. I'm sorry if I gave you the impression that I was doubting your word Your Excellency, Daniel placated him. It was just that I am worried about Johnny, about the warden. Well, I assure you that you have no reason to worry. Cheng stuffed the handkerchief in his hip pocket and reached for the packet of cigarettes in the top pocket of his open-neck shirt. He tapped one out of the pack but his fingers were slightly unsteady

and he let the cigarette drop into the dust between his feet.

Daniel's eyes were instinctively drawn down as Cheng stooped quickly to retrieve the fallen cigarette. He wore white canvas training shoes and Daniel noticed that the side of one shoe and the cuff of his blue cotton slacks were smeared with a stain that looked at first glance like dried blood.

This puzzled Daniel for a moment, until he remembered that Cheng had been present that morning when the fresh tusks had been unloaded from the truck and stored in the godown. The explanation for the stains on his clothing was obvious; he must have picked them up from a puddle of congealed elephant blood in which the tusks had lain.

Cheng noticed the direction of his gaze and stepped back quickly, almost guiltily, into the driver's seat of the Mercedes and slammed the door.

Unthinkingly Daniel noticed the unusual fish-scale pattern that the soles of his training shoes left in the fine dust of the roadway.

Well, I am happy to have been able to set your fears at rest, Doctor.

Cheng smiled at him through the window of the Mercedes. He had regained his composure and his smile was once again suave and charming.

I'm glad to have saved you an unnecessary journey all the way back to Chiwewe. I am sure you will want to join the convoy and get out of the Park before the rains break. He started the Mercedes. Why don't you take the lead position ahead of the trucks? Thank you, Your Excellency.

Daniel shook his head and stepped back. You go on with the trucks.

I won't be joining you. I want to go back anyway. Somebody has to warn Johnny Nzou. Cheng's smile evaporated. You are giving yourself a great deal of unnecessary trouble, I assure you. I suggest you telephone him from Mana Pools or Karoi. Didn't I tell you? They cut the telephone wires. Doctor Armstrong, that is preposterous. I am sure you, are mistaken. I think you are exaggerating the seriousness of this-'You think what you like, said Daniel with finality. I'm going back to Chiwewe. He stepped back from the window of the Mercedes.

Doctor Armstrong, Cheng called after him, look at those rain clouds.

You could be trapped here for weeks. I'll take the chance, Daniel told him blithely, but to himself he thought, just why is he being so insistent?

Something is starting to smell distinctly rotten here.

He walked quickly back towards the Landcruiser. As he passed the trucks he noticed that neither of the rangers had dismounted from the driver's cabs. They were both looking sullen and neither of them said anything as he passed close beside them. All right, Gomo, he called, pull your truck forward so I can get past you. Without a word the ranger obeyed. Then the second truck rumbled past and finally the Ambassador's Mercedes came level. Daniel lifted a hand in farewell.

Cheng barely glanced in his direction but gave him a perfunctory salute before following the trucks around the bend and heading on down towards the Mana Pools turn-off. What did the Chink have to say? Jock asked as Daniel reversed back into the roadway and put the Toyota to the steep gradient.

He says it was all quiet at Chiwewe when he left there an hour ago, Daniel replied. That's a fair do. Jock reached into the cold box and fished out a can of beer. He offered it to Daniel who shook his head and concentrated on the road ahead. Jock opened the can for himself, took a long slug, and belched happily.

The light began to fade and a few heavy drops of rain splattered against the windscreen but Daniel did not slacken speed. it was completely dark before they reached the crest of the escarpment. The lightning blazed through the darkness, illuminating the forest with a crackling blue radiance and thunder rolled across the sky and cannonaded the ridges of granite which rose on each side of the road.

The rain began to fall like silver arrows in the headlights, each drop exploding in a white blur against the glass then streaming down it so copiously that the wipers could not clear the windshield fast enough.

Soon it was oppressively humid in the closed cab and the windscreen began to mist over. Daniel leaned forward to wipe it clear with his hand but when it smeared he gave up the effort and opened his side window a few inches to let in the fresh night air. Almost immediately he wrinkled his nose and sniffed.

Jock smelt it at almost the same moment. Smoke, he exclaimed. How far are we from the camp? Almost there, Daniel replied. Just over the next ridge. The odour of smoke thinned out. Daniel thought that it might have come from the cooking-fires in the servants compound.

Ahead of them in the path of the headlights the gates of the main camp sprang out of the darkness. Each whitewashed column was crowned by the bleached skull of an elephant. The sign read: WELCOME TO CHIWEWE CAMP THE HOME OF THE ELEPHANTS and then in smaller letters, All arriving visitors must report immediately to the Warden's Office.

The long driveway, lined on each side with dark Casia trees, was running ankle deep with storm water and the Toyota's tires threw up a dense fog of spray as Daniel headed for the main block of buildings.

Suddenly the reek of smoke was thick and rank in their nostrils. It was the smell of burning thatch and wood with a foul underlay of something else, flesh or bone or ivory, perhaps, although Daniel had never smelt ivory burning. No lights, Daniel grunted as he saw the loom of dark buildings in the rain ahead. The camp generator was not running; the entire camp was in darkness. Then he became aware of a diffused ruby light that shimmered over the wet Casia trees and played gently on the walls of the buildings. One of the buildings is on fire.

Jock sat forward in his seat. That's where the smoke is coming from.

The Toyota's headlights cut a broad swathe through the gloom and then focused on a huge amorphous dark pile ahead of them. The misted windscreen obscured his vision and for some moments Daniel could not decide what it was. The strange glow seemed to emanate from it. Only as they drove closer and the lights lit it more clearly could he recognize it as the blackened, smouldering ruins of the ivory godown.

Horrified by what he saw, Daniel let the Toyota roll to a halt and he stepped down into the mud and stared at the ruin.

The heat of the flames had cracked the walls and most of them had collapsed. The fire must have been an inferno to have produced such heat. It still burned and smouldered despite the cascading rain. Oily streamers of smoke drifted across the headlights of the truck and occasionally the flames flared up fiercely until the heavy raindrops beat them down again.

Daniel's sodden shirt clung to his body and the rain soaked his hair, smearing his thick curls over his forehead and into his eyes. He pushed them back and scrambled up on to the tumbled masonry of the wall. The collapsed roof was a thick mattress of black ash and charred beams that clogged the interior of the devastated godown. Despite the rain the smoke was still too dense and the heat too fierce to allow him to approach any closer and discover how much of the ivory still lay under that blackened pile.

Daniel backed away and ran to the truck. He climbed into the cab and wiped the rain out of his eyes with the palm of his hand. You were spoton, Jock said. It looks as if the bastards have hit the camp.

Daniel did not answer. He started the engine and gunned the Toyota up the hill to the warden's cottage. Get the flashlight out of the locker, he snapped.

Obediently Jock knelt on the seat and groped in the heavy tool-locker that was bolted to the truck bed, and came out with the big Maglite.

Like the rest of the camp the warden's cottage was in darkness. The rain streamed down from the eaves in a silver torrent so that the headlights could not illuminate the screened verandah beyond. Daniel snatched the torch from Jock's hand and jumped out into the rain.

Johnny! he yelled. Mavis! He ran to the front door of the cottage.

The door had been smashed half off its hinges and hung open. He ran through on to the verandah.

The furniture was shattered and thrown about in confusion.

He played the torch-beam over the chaos. Johnny's cherished collection of books had been tumbled from their cases along the wall and lay in heaps with their pages fanned and their spines broken.

Johnny! Daniel shouted. Where are you?

He ran through the open double doors into the sitting-room.

Here the destruction was shocking. They had hurled all Mavis's ornaments and vases at the stone fireplace and the broken shards glittered in the torch beam. They had ripped the stuffing out of the sofa and easy chairs. The room stank like an animal cage and he saw that they had defecated on the carpets and urinated down the walls.

Daniel stepped over the reeking piles of faeces and ran through into the passageway that led to the bedrooms. Johnny! he shouted in anger and despair, as he played the torch-beam down the length of the passage.

On the end wall was a decoration that had not been there before. It was a dark star-shaped splash of paint that covered most of the white-painted surface. For a moment Daniel stared at it uncomprehendingly and then he dropped the beam to the small huddled shape that lay at the foot of the wall.

Johnny and Mavis had named their only son after him, Daniel Robert Nzou.

After two daughters, Mavis had finally given birth to a son and both parents had been overjoyed.

Daniel Nzou had been four years old. He lay on his back. His eyes were open but sightlessly staring into the beam of the torch.

They had killed him in the old barbaric African way, in the same way that Chaka's and Mzilikazi's impis had dealt with the male children of a vanquished tribe. They had seized little Daniel by the ankles and swung him head-first against the wall, crushing his skull and beating his brains out against the brickwork.

His splattering blood had daubed that crude mural on the white surface.

Daniel stooped over the little boy. Despite the deformation of the crushed skull his resemblance to his father was still marked. Tears prickled the rims of Daniel's eyelids and he stood up slowly and turned to the bedroom door.

It stood half open but Daniel dreaded pushing it all the way.

He had to force himself to do it. The hinges of the door whined softly as it swung open.

For a moment Daniel stared down the beam of the Maglite as he let it play around the bedroom and then he reeled back into the passageway and leaned against the wall, gagging and gasping for breath.

He had witnessed scenes such as these during the days of the bush war, but the years had eroded his conditioning and softened the shell that he had built up to protect himself. He was no longer able to look dispassionately on the atrocity that man is able to perpetrate on his fellows.

Johnny's daughters were older than their brother. Miriam was-ten and Suzie almost eight. They lay naked and spreadeagled on the floor at the foot of the bed. They had both been raped repeatedly. Their immature genitalia were a torn and bloody mush.

Mavis was on the bed. They had not bothered to strip her entirely, but had merely pushed her skirts up around her waist.

Her arms were pulled up above her head and tied by the wrists to the wooden headboard. The two little girls must have died of shock and loss of blood during the prolonged assault upon them. Mavis had probably survived until they were finished with her, then they had put a bullet through her head.

Daniel forced himself to enter the room. He found where Mavis kept her extra bed-linen in one of the built-in cupboards and covered each of the corpses with a sheet. He could not bring himself to touch any of the girls, not even to close their wide staring eyes in which the horror and the terror was still deeply imprinted.

Sweet Mother of God, Jock whispered from the doorway. Whoever did this isn't human. They must be ravaging bloody beasts. Daniel backed out of the bedroom and closed the door. He covered Daniel Nzou's tiny body.

Have you found Johnny? he asked Jock. His voice was hoarse and his throat felt rough and abraded with horror and grief. No. Jock shook his head, then turned and fled down the passage. He blundered out across the verandah and into the rain.

Daniel heard him retching and vomiting in the flowerbed below the step.

The sound of the other man's distress served to steady Daniel. He fought back his own repugnance and anger and sorrow and brought his emotions back under control. Johnny, he told himself. Got to find Johnny-He went swiftly through the other two bedrooms and the rest of the house. There was no sign of his friend, and he allowed himself the first faint hope.

He might have got away, he told himself. He might have made it into the bush. It was a relief to get out of that charnel house. Daniel stood in the darkness and lifted his face to the rain. He opened his mouth and let it wash the bitter bile taste from his tongue and the back of his throat.

Then he turned the torch-beam on to his feet and saw the clotted blood dissolve from his shoes in a pink stain. He scrubbed the soles in the gravel of the driveway to clean them and then shouted to Jock Come on, we have to find Johnny!

In the Toyota he drove down the back of the hill to the domestic compound that housed the camp servants. The compound was still enclosed with an earthen embankment and barbed-wire fence from the war days.

However the fence was in a ruinous state and the gate was missing.

They drove through the gateway and the smell of smoke was strong. As the headlights caught them Daniel saw that the row of servants-cottages was burnt out. The roofs had collapsed and the windows were empty.

The rain had quenched the flames, although a few tendrils of smoke still drifted like pale wraiths in the lights.

The ground around the huts was sown with dozens of tiny objects which caught the headlights and sparkled like diamond chips. Daniel knew what they were, but he stepped down from the truck and picked one of them out of the mud. It was a shiny brass cartridge case. He held it to the light and inspected the familiar Cyrillic head stamp in the brass. 7. 62

mm, of East European manufacture, it was the calibre of the ubiquitous AK 47 assault rifle, staple of violence and revolution throughout Africa and the entire world.

The gang had shot up the compound, but had left no corpses. Daniel guessed that they had thrown the dead into the cottages before torching-them. The breeze shifted towards him so that he caught the full stench of the burned huts and had his suspicions confirmed.

Underlying the smell of smoke was the odour of scorched flesh and hair and bone.

He spat out the taste of ir and walked down between the huts.

Johnny! he shouted into the night. Johnny, are you there? But the only sound was the creak and pop of the doused flames and the sough of the breeze in the mango trees that brought the raindrops pattering down from the branches.

He flicked the torch left and right as he passed between the huts, until he saw the body of a man lying in the open. Johnny" he shouted, and ran to him and fell on his knees beside him.

The body was horribly burned, the khaki Parks uniform burned half away, and the skin and flesh sloughing off the exposed torso and the side of the face. The man had obviously dragged himself out of the burning hut into which they had thrown him, but he was not Johnny Nzou.

He was one of the junior rangers.

Daniel jumped up and hurried back to the track.

Did you find him? Jock asked, and Daniel shook his head. Christ, they've murdered everybody in the camp. Why would they do that?

Witnesses" Daniel started the truck. They wiped out all the witnesses.

Why? What do they want? It doesn't make sense. The ivory. That's what they were after. But they burned down the warehouse! After they cleaned it out. He swung the Toyota back on to the track and raced up the hill.

Who were they, Danny? Who did this? How the hell do I know?

Shifta? Bandits? Poachers? Don't ask stupid questions. Daniel's anger was only just beginning. Up until now he had been numbed by the shock and the horror. He drove back past the dark bungalow on the hill and then down again to the main camp.

The warden's office was still standing intact; although when Daniel played the beam of the torch over the thatched roof he saw the blackened area on which someone had thrown a burning torch. Well-laid thatch does not burn readily, however, and the flames had not caught fairly or perhaps had been extinguished by the rain before they could take hold.

The rain stopped with the suddenness which is characteristic of the African elements. One minute it was falling in a furious cascade that limited the range of the headlights to fifty yards, and the next it was over. Only the trees still dripped, but overhead the first stars pricked through the dispersing thunder clouds that were being carried away on the rising breeze.

Daniel barely noticed the change. He left the truck and ran up on to the wide verandah.

The exterior wall was decorated with the skulls of the animals of the Park. Their empty eye-sockets and twisted horns in the torch-beam gave a macabre touch to the scene and heightened Daniel's sense of doom as he strode down the long covered verandah. He now realised that he should have searched here first, instead of rushing up to the bungalow.

The door of Johnny's office stood open and Daniel paused on the threshold and steered himself before he stepped through.

A snowstorm of papers covered the floor and desk. They had ransacked the room, sweeping the stacks of forms off the cupboard shelves and hauling the drawers out of Johnny's desk, then spilling out the contents. They had found Johnny's keys and opened the old green-painted door to the Milner safe that was built into the wall.

The keys were still in the lock but the safe was empty.

Daniel's torch-beam darted about the room and then settled on the crumpled form that lay in front of the desk. Johnny, he whispered.

Oh, Christ, no! I thought that while I was waiting for the refrigerator truck to be repaired, I might as well go down to the water-hole at Fig Tree Pan. Ambassador Ning's voice interrupted Johnny Nzou's concentration, but he felt no resentment as he looked up from his desk.

In Johnny's view one of his major duties was to make the wilderness accessible to anybody who had an interest in nature. Ning Cheng Gong was certainly one of those. Johnny smiled at his accoutrements, the field guide and the binoculars.

He rose from his desk, glad of the excuse to escape from the drudgery of paperwork and went with the Ambassador out on to the verandah and down to his parked Mercedes, where he stood and chatted to him for a few minutes, making suggestions as to where he might get a glimpse of the elusive and aptly named gorgeous bush shrike that Cheng wanted to observe.

When Cheng drove away, Johnny walked down to the vehicle workshops where ranger Gomo was stripping and reassembling the alternator of the unserviceable truck. He was dubious about Gama's ability to effect the repair. In the morning he would probably have to ring the warden at Mana Pools and ask him to send a mechanic to do the job.

One consolation was that the elephant meat would keep indefinitely in the cold storage of the hull. The truck's refrigerating equipment was plugged in now to the camp generator and the thermometer registered twenty degrees below freezing when Johnny checked it. The meat would be processed and turned into animal feed by a private contractor in Harare.

Johnny left ranger Gomo to his labour over the dismembered alternator and went back to his own office under the Casia trees. No sooner had he left the workshop than Gomo looked up and exchanged a significant glance with David, the other black ranger. The alternator he was tinkering with was a worn out piece of equipment that he had retrieved from the scrap heap in Harare for just this purpose. The truck's original alternator, in perfect working order, was hidden under the driver's seat in the cab. It would take less than ten minutes to bolt it back in place and reconnect the wiring.

Back in his office Johnny settled to the monotony of his forms and ledgers. Once he glanced at his wristwatch and found that it was a few minutes before one o'clock, but wanted to finish the week's reports before knocking off for lunch. Of course, it was a temptation to go up to the house early. He liked to be with the children for a while before lunch, especially with his son, but he resisted the impulse and worked on conscientiously. Anyway he knew that Mavis would probably send the children down to fetch him soon. She liked to serve his lunch promptly.

He smiled in anticipation of their arrival as he heard a sound at the door and looked up.

The smile faded. A stranger stood in the doorway, a stocky man with bow legs, dressed in filthy rags. Both his hands were behind his back as though he was concealing something. Yes? Johnny asked shortly.

Who are you? What do you want? The man smiled. His skin was very dark with purple black highlights. When he smiled the scar that ran down one cheek pulled his mouth out of shape and the smile was malicious and humourless.

Johnny stood up from the desk and went towards him. What do you want?

he repeated, and the man in the doorway said, You! From behind his back he brought out an AK 47 rifle and lifted the barrel towards Johnny's belly.

Johnny was caught totally off guard in the centre of the room.

However, his recovery was almost instantaneous. His reflexes were those of a hunter and a soldier. The armoury door was ten paces to his left and he went for it.

The Parks weapons were kept in there. Through the door he could see the rack of firearms on the far wall. With despair turning his legs as heavy as concrete, Johnny realised that none of the weapons in the rack was loaded. That was his own strict safety rule. The ammunition was kept in the locked steel cupboard under the gun-rack.

All this passed through his mind as he leaped for the door.

From the corner of his eye he saw the scar-faced brigand swing the AK on to him and halfway across the room Johnny tumbled forward like an acrobat, ducking under the blast of automatic fire that swept across the room.

As he rolled smoothly to his feet he heard the- man curse and Johnny dived forward once more for the doorway. He realised that his assailant was food. He had seen that he was a killer in the practised way he handled the rifle. It was a miracle that he had been able to evade that first close-range volley.

The air was filled with a haze of plaster dust that the bullets had battered from the wall and Johnny dived through it, but he knew he was not going to make it. The man with the AK 47 was too good. He could not be fooled again. The shelter of the doorway was too far for Johnny to reach before the next burst came.

The clock in Johnny's head was running; he anticipated how long it would take for the man to recover his balance. The muzzle of the AK 47

always rode up uncontrollably in automatic fire; it would take him the major part of a second to bring it down, and line up for the second burst.

Johnny judged it finely and twisted his body violently aside, but he was a fraction late.

The gunman aimed low to compensate for the rise of the AK.

One bullet sliced through the flesh of Johnny's thigh, missing the bone, but the second cut through the lower curve of his buttock and smashed into the joint at the femur, shattering the head and the cup of bone of the pelvis.

The other three bullets of the burst flew wide as Johnny threw himself to one side. However, his left leg was gone and he fell against the door jamb and tried to hold himself from falling. His impetus sent him sliding sideways along the wall, and his fingernails screeched as they gouged the plaster. He ended up facing back into the room standing on one leg. His left leg hung from the shattered joint, and his arms were flung open like a crucifix as he tried to hold his balance.

Still smiling, the gunman clicked the rate-of-fire selector on to single-shot. He wanted to conserve ammunition. A single round cost him ten Zambian kwacha, and had to be carried hundreds of miles in his pack.

Each cartridge was precious, and the warden was maimed and completely at his mercy. One more bullet would be enough. Now, he said softly.

Now you die. And he shot Johnny Nzou in the stomach.

The bullet drove the breath from Johnny's lungs with an explosive exhalation. He was slammed hard against the wall and doubled over by the brutal force of the impact and then he toppled forward. Johnny had been hit before, during the war, but he had never received a full body strike and the shock of it was beyond his worst expectations. He was numbed from the waist down but his brain stayed clear, crystalline, as though the rush of adrenalin into his bloodstream had sharpened his perception to its limits.

Play dead! he thought, even as he was going down. His lower body was paralysed, but he forced his torso to relax. He hit the floor with the loose unresisting weight of a flour sack and did not move again.

His head was twisted to one side, his chest pressed to the cold cement floor. He lay still. He heard the gunman cross the floor, the rubber soles of the combat boots squeaking softly.

Then his boots entered Johnny's field of vision. They were dusty and worn almost through the uppers. He wore no socks and the stink of his feet was rancid and sour as he stood within inches of Johnny's face.

Johnny heard the metallic snick of the mechanism as the Zambian moved the rate-of-fire selector again, and then felt the cold hard touch of the muzzle against his temple as the man lined up for the coup de grace.

Don't move, Johnny steeled himself.

It was his last despairing hope.

He knew that the slightest movement must trigger the shot. He had to convince the gunman he was dead.

At that moment there was a burst of shouting from outside the room, and then a volley of automatic fire, followed by more shouting. The pressure of the rifle muzzle was lifted from Johnny's temple. The stinking boots turned away and retreated across the floor towards the doorway. Come on! Don't waste time! the scar-faced gunman yelled through the open door. Johnny knew enough of the northern Chinianja dialect to understand. Where are the trucks? We must get the ivory loaded! The Zambian ran out of the office leaving Johnny lying alone on the cement floor.

Johnny knew that he was mortally hit. He could feel the arterial blood squirting out of the wound in his groin and he rolled on his side and swiftly loosened the top of his trousers.

Immediately he smelled his own faeces and knew that the second bullet had ripped open his intestines. He reached down into his crotch and pressed his fingers into the wound in his groin. Blood spurted hotly over his hand.

He found the open artery and pinched off the end of the severe d femoral.

Mavis, and the babies! That was his next thought. What could he do for them? At that moment he heard more firing from up the hill, in the direction of the domestic compound and his own cottage.

It's a gang of them, he realised with despair. They are all over the camp. They are attacking the compound. And then, My babies. Oh, God!

My babies!

He thought about the weapons in the room next door, but he knew he could not get that far. Even if he did, how could he handle a rifle with half his guts shot away and his life-blood spreading in a pool under him?

He heard the trucks. He recognised the beat of the big diesels and knew that they were the refrigerator trucks. He felt a surge of hope.

Gama, he thought. David . . . But it was short-lived. Lying on his side, clinging to his severed artery, he looked across the room and realised that he could see through the open door.

One of the white refrigerator trucks pulled into his view. It reversed up against the door of the ivory godown. As soon as it parked, Gomo jumped out of the cab and began a heated, gesticulating discussion with the scar-faced leader of the gang In his confused and swiftly weakening condition, it took Johnny several seconds to work it out.

Gama, he thought. Gomo is one of them. He set it up.

It should not have come as such a shock. Johnny knew how pervasive was the corruption in the government, in all departments, not only the Parks Administration. He had given evidence before the official commission of enquiry that was investigating the corruption, and had pledged to help stamp it out. He knew Gomo well. He was arrogant and self-seeking.

He was just the type, but Johnny had never expected treachery on this scale.

Suddenly the area around the godown that Johnny could see was teeming with the other members of the gang. Swiftly Scarface organised them into a work-party. One of them shot the lock off the door of the warehouse and the bandits laid aside their weapons and swarmed into the building. There were shouts of greedy joy as they saw the piles of ivory and then they formed a human chain and began passing out the tusks, and loading them into the truck.

Johnny's vision began to fade. Clouds of darkness passed across his eyes and there was a soft singing in his ears.

I'm dying, he thought without emotion. He could feel the numbness spreading from his paralysed legs up through his chest.

He forced the darkness back from his eyes and thought that he must be fantasising, for now Ambassador Ning stood in the late sunlight below the verandah. He still had the binoculars slung over his shoulder and his manner was impossibly cool and urbane. Johnny tried to shout a warning to him, but it came out of his throat in a soft croak that did not carry beyond the room in which he lay.

Then to his astonishment he saw the scar-faced leader of the gang come to where the ambassador stood and salute him, if not respectfully, at least with recognition of his authority.

Ning. Johnny forced himself to believe it. It really is Ning.

I'm not dreaming it.

Then the voices of the two men carried to where he lay.

They were speaking in English. You must hurry your men, Ning Cheng Gong said. They must get the ivory loaded, I want to leave here immediately.

Money, answered Sali . One thousand dollars. . . His English was atrocious. You have been paid. Cheng was indignant. I have paid you your money. More money. More one thousand dollars. Sali grinned at him. More money or I stop. We go, leave you, leave ivory. You are a scoundrel, Cheng snarled. Not understand "scoundrel", but think you also "scoundrel", maybe.

Sali's grin widened. Give money now. I haven't any more money with me, Cheng told him flatly. Then we go! Now! You load ivory yourself.

Wait. Cheng was obviously thinking quickly. I haven't got money.

You take the ivory, as much as you want. Take everything you can carry.

Cheng had realised that the poachers would be able to take only a negligible number of tusks from the hoard. They could not possibly manage more than a single tusk each. Twenty men, twenty tusks, it was a small price.

Soli stared at him while he considered the offer. Clearly he had milked every possible advantage from the situation, so at last he nodded.

Good! We take ivory. He began to turn away.

Ambassador Ning called after him. Wait, Sali ! What about the others?

Did you take care of them? They all dead. The warden and his woman and children? Them too? All dead, Sali repeated. Woman is dead, and her piccanins.

My men make jig-jig with all three women first. Very funny, very nice jig-jig. Then kill . The warden? Where is he? Sali the poacher jerked his head towards the door of Johnny's office. I shoot him boom, boom.

He dead like a ngulubi, dead like a pig. He laughed. Very good job, hey?

He walked away with the rifle over his shoulder, still chuckling, and Cheng followed him out of Johnny's field of vision.

Anger came to arm Johnny and give him just a little more strength.

The poacher's words conjured up a dreadful vision of the fate that had overtaken Mavis and the children. He could see it as clearly as if he had been there; he knew about rape and pillage. He had lived through the bush war.

He used the strength of his anger to begin to wriggle across the floor towards his desk. He knew he could not use a weapon. All he could hope for now in the few minutes of life that remained to him was to leave some sort of message. Papers had spilled off his desk and littered the floor.

If he could just get to a single sheet, and write on it and hide it, the police would find it later.

He moved like a maimed caterpillar, lying on his back, still clutching the severed artery. He drew up his good knee, dug in his heel and pushed himself painfully across the floor, sliding on his back a few inches at a time, his own blood lubricating his passage. He moved six feet towards the desk and reached out for one of the sheets of paper. He saw then that it was a sheet from the wages register.

He had not touched it when the intensity of the light in the room altered. Somebody was standing in the doorway. He turned his head and Ambassador Ning was staring at him. He had come up on to the verandah.

His rubber-soled training shoes made no sound at all. Now he stood petrified with shock in the doorway, and for a moment longer he stared at Johnny.

Then he yelled shrilly, He is still alive. Sali, come quickly, he is still alive. Cheng; disappeared from the doorway and ran down the verandah still shouting for the poacher. Sali, come quickly. It was all over, and Johnny knew it. Only seconds remaining to him. He rolled on his side reached out and snatched up the register sheet. He pressed the sheet flat on the floor with one hand, and then released the severed artery and drew his blooddrenched hand out of the front of his trousers.

Immediately he felt the artery begin to pulse and fresh blood jetted from the wound.

With his forefinger he scrawled on the blank sheet of paper, writing in his own blood. He formed the letter N in a large lopsided character, and dizziness made his senses swirl. and It was more difficult to concentrate. The down stroke of the I was elongated and curved, too much like a J. Painfully he dotted the letter to Make its meaning clearer.

For a moment his finger was glued lightly to the paper with his sticky blood. He pulled it free.

He started on the second N. It was crude and childlike. His finger would not follow the dictates of his mind. He heard the ambassador still calling for Sali, and the poacher's answering shout filled with alarm and consternation. NIN, Johnny began the G but his finger wandered off at an angle and the wet red letters wiggled and swam before his eyes like tadpoles.

He heard running feet come pounding down the verandah and Sali's voice. I thought he was dead. I finish him good now! Johnny crumpled the sheet of paper in his left hand, the hand that was clean of blood, and be thrust his closed fist into the front of his tunic and rolled over onto his belly with his arm trapped under him, concealing the balled note.

He did not see Sali come in at the door. His face was pressed to the concrete floor. He, heard the poacher's boots squeak and slip on the blood, and then the click of the safety-catch on the rifle as he stood over Johnny's prostrate form.

Johnny felt no fear, only a vast sense of sorrow and resignation. He thought about Mavis and the children as he felt the muzzle of the rifle touch the back of his head. He was relieved that he would not be left alone after they were gone. He was glad that he would never see what had happened to them, would never be forced to witness the signs of their agony and degradation.

He was already dying before the bullet from the AK 47 tore through his skull and buried itself in the concrete under his face. Shit, said Sali . He stepped back and shouldered the rifle, a faint feather of gunsmoke still drifting from the muzzle. A hard man to kill. He made me waste mining! bullets, each one ten kwacha. Too much! Ning Cheng Gong advanced into the room. Are you sure that you've finished the job, at last? he asked. His head gone, Sali grunted as he picked up Johnny's keys from the desk and went to ransack the Milner safe. Kufa!

He dead, for sure. Cheng moved closer to the corpse, and stared at it with fascination. The killing had excited him. He was sexually aroused, not as much as if it had been a young girl who had died, but aroused, nevertheless. The smell of blood filled the room. He loved that smell.

He was so absorbed that he did not notice that he was standing in a puddle of blood until Gomo called him from below the verandah.

"All the ivory is loaded. We are ready to go. Cheng stepped back and exclaimed with disgust as he saw the stain on the cuff of his crisply ironed blue cotton slacks. I'm going now, he told Sali . Burn the ivory godown before you leave. In the safe Sali had found the canvas bank bag that contained the month's wages for the camp staff, and he grunted without looking up from the contents. I burn everything for sure. Cheng ran down the verandah steps and climbed into the Mercedes. He signalled to Gomo and the two refrigerator trucks pulled away. The ivory was packed into the holds and then covered with the dismembered carcasses of the culled beasts. A casual inspection would not reveal the hoard, but there was nobody to stop the convoy. They were protected by the badges of the National Parks Board painted on the trucks, and by the khaki uniforms and shoulder flashes of Gomo and David, the two rangers. Not even one of the frequent roadblocks was likely to delay them. The security forces were intent on catching political dissidents, not ivory-runners.

It had all gone as Chetti Singh had planned it. Cheng glanced at the rear-view mirror of the Mercedes. The ivory godown was already ablaze.

The poachers were forming up into a column for the return march.

Each of them carried a large tusk from the hoard.

Cheng smiled to himself. Perhaps Sali's greed would work to his advantage. If the police ever caught up with the gang, the disappearance of the ivory would be neatly explained by both the fire and the loads the poachers were carrying.

At Cheng's insistence they had left forty tusks in the burning godown, to provide traces of charred ivory for the police forensic laboratory. As Chetti Singh might have said, Another dead herring.

This time- Cheng laughed aloud. He was elated. The success of the raid and the thrill of violence and death and blood warmed his belly and filled him with a sense of power. He felt masterful and sexually charged, and suddenly he was aware that he had a hard throbbing erection.

He determined that next time he would do the killing himself.

It was quite natural to believe that there would be a next time, and many more times after that. Death had made Cheng feel immortal.

Johnny. Oh, God. Johnny. Daniel squatted beside him and reached out to touch the side of his throat just below the ear feeling for the pulse of the carotid. It was an instinctive gesture, for the bullet entry wound in the back of Johnny's skull was conclusive.

Johnny's skin was cool and Daniel could not yet bring himself to turn him over and look at the exit wound. He let him lie a little longer and rocked back on his heels, letting his anger flourish to replace the enervating chill of grief. He cherished his rage, as though it were a candle flame on a dark night. It warmed the cold empty place in his soul that Johnny had left.

Daniel stood up at last. He played the torch-beam on the floor ahead of him, and stepped over the pools and smears of Johnny's blood as he went to the armoury.

The remote control for the generator was on the mains panel beside the door. Daniel threw the switch and heard the distant clatter of the diesel engine in the power house down near the main gates to the camp.

The diesel engine ran up to speed an settled at a steady beat, then the generator kicked in and the lights flickered and bloomed. Through the window he saw the street lamps lining the driveway light up and in their glow the Casia trees were vivid green and shiny with raindrops.

Daniel fetched the bunch of keys that still hung in the lock of the Milner safe and strode through into the armoury. Along with the . 375

culling rifles, there were five AK47 assault rifles on the rack.

These were used on anti-poaching patrols when the rangers needed equivalent fire-power to take on the gangs of poachers. Ammunition was stored in the cupboard below the gunrack. He unlocked the steel door.

There were four magazines of AK ammunition in each pouched webbing belt hanging. on the hooks.

He slung one of these over his shoulder, then lifted an automatic rifle down from the rack and loaded it with deft movements; the old warlike arts once learned were never forgotten.

Armed and angry, he ran down the verandah steps. Start with the ivory godown, " he decided. They'll been there for sure. He circled the burned-out building, searching for sign by the light of the street lamps, flashing his torch at anything that caught his attention. If he had allowed himself to think about it, he would have realised he was wasting his time. The only prints that had withstood the erosion of the rain were those protected by the overhanging verandah roof, a set of heavy tyre tracks in the mud at the front entrance to the ivory godown.

Even these were almost erased and only just recognisable.

Daniel ignored them; he was after the gang and they would not be using vehicles. Quickly he widened the circles of his search, trying to pick up an outgoing set of tracks, concentrating on the northern side of the camp's perimeter, for the gang would almost certainly head back to the Zambezi River.

It was useless, as he had known deep down that it would be.

After twenty minutes he gave it up. There were no tracks to follow.

He stood under the dark trees and raged with frustration and sorrow.

If only I could get a shot at the bastards, he lamented.

It meant little to him in his present mood that he was one man against twenty or more professional killers. Jock was a cameraman, not a soldier. He would be of no help in a fight. The memory of those mutilated bodies in the bedroom of the bungalow and of Johnny's shattered head overpowered all rational thought. Daniel found that he was physically shaking with the strength of his anger, and that put him on the road to recovering his scattered wits. While I'm wasting time here, they're getting clean away, he told himself. The only way is to cut them off on the river. I need help. He thought of the Parks camp at Mana Pools. The warden there was a good man. Daniel knew him well from the old days. He had an anti-poaching team and a fast boat. They could get downstream and patrol the river crossing to catch the gang as it attempted to get back on to the Zambian side. Daniel was already starting to think logically as he started back towards the warden's office. From Mana Pools they could ring Harare and get the police to send in a spotter plane.

He knew that speed was vital now. Within the next ten hours the gang would be back across the river. However, he could not leave Johnny like that, lying in his own blood. It meant wasting a few more minutes, but he had to show him some last respect and at the very least cover him decently.

Daniel paused in the doorway to Johnny's office. The overhead lights were brutally explicit; they left nothing of the horror concealed. He set aside the AK 47 and looked around for a covering for his friend's corpse. The curtains over the front windows were green government issue, faded by sunlight, but they would do as a makeshift shroud. He took one of them down, and went with it to where Johnny lay.

Johnny's attitude was tortured. One arm was twisted up under his chest and his face lay in a pool of thick congealing blood. Gently Daniel rolled him over. The body had not yet stiffened in rigor mortis. He winced as he looked at Johnny's face, for the bullet had come out through his right eyebrow. He used a corner of the curtain to wipe his face clean, then arranged him in a comfortable attitude on his back.

Johnny's left hand was thrust into the front of his tunic and his fist was tightly clenched. Daniel's interest quickened as he saw the balled up sheet of paper in his hand. He prised Johnny's fingers open and freed the wad.

He stood up, crossed to the desk and spread the paper on it.

He saw at once that Johnny had scrawled on it, using his own blood, and Daniel shivered at the macabre characters.

NJNC. The letters were childlike and crude, smeared and barely legible.

They made no sense, although perhaps the J was an I. Daniel studied it.

NINC. Still there was nothing obvious in the message. Either it was gibberish or had some obscure meaning that only made sense to a dying man.

Suddenly Daniel felt a stirring in his subconscious, something was trying to surface. He closed his eyes for a minute to give it a chance. Often it helped to let his mind go blank when searching for an elusive idea or memory, rather than to harry the point and drive it further under. It was there, very close now, a shadow just below his conscious mind like the shape of a man-eating shark under the surface of a turgid sea.

NINC.

He opened his eyes again and found himself looking at the floor.

There were bloody footprints left by his own boot soles and by those of the killer. He was not thinking about them; he was still grappling with that single cryptic word that Johnny had left for him.

Then he found his eyes had focused on one of the footprints, and his nerves jumped tight and shrieked like the strings of a violin slashed with the bow. The footprint was chequered with a fish-scale pattern.

NINC. It resounded through his mind and then that distinctive footprint turned the sense of it and the echo came back, altered and compelling.

NING. Johnny had tried to write NING! Daniel found that he was cold and trembling with the shock of the discovery. Ambassador Ning, Ning Cheng Gong. How was it possible? And yet there were the bloody footprints to confirm the impossible. Ning had been here after Johnny was shot. Ning had been lying when he said that he had left, Daniel broke that train of thought as another memory struck him like a bolt from a cross-bow.

The blood on the cuff of the blue cotton slacks, the tracks of Ning's training shoes and the blood, Johnny's blood. At last his rage had a target on which to focus, but now it was a cold constructive rage. He pressed the bloody note back into Johnny's hand and folded his fingers around it for the police to find. Then he spread the green curtain over Johnny's body, covering the shattered head. He stood over him for a few seconds.

I'll get the bastard for you, old friend. For you and Mavis and the babies. I promise you, Johnny, on the memory of our friendship. I swear it. Then he snatched up the rifle and ran from the office, down the steps to where Jock waited beside the parked Landcruiser.

In the few seconds that it took him to reach the truck, the last details fell into place in his mind. He remembered Cheng's perturbation when he thought Daniel might be staying longer at Chiwewe, and his obvious relief when he learned that Daniel was leaving.

He glanced back towards the ruins of the ivory godown and the tyre treads were still just visible in the mud. It was simple and ingenious. Let the gang of poachers draw the pursuit, while they ferried the ivory out in the Parks Board's own trucks.

Daniel remembered the surly unnatural behaviour of Gomo and the other driver when he had met them on the road. Now it made good sense. They had been sitting on a load of stolen ivory. No wonder they were acting strangely.

As he slipped behind the wheel of the Landcruiser and ordered Jock to climb aboard, he glanced at his wristwatch. it was almost ten o'clock, nearly four hours since he had passed Cheng and the trucks on the escarpment road. Could he catch them before they reached the main highway and disappeared?

He realised that it had been so carefully planned that they must have worked out an escape route and some means of disposing of the ivory.

He started the Landcruiser and hit the gear-lever. You aren't going to get away with it, you dirty bastard! In many places the recent storm waters had scoured the escarpment road, gouging knee-deep gulleys across the tracks and exposing boulders the size of cannonballs.

Daniel pushed the Landcruiser over them so violently that Jock seized the grab handle on the dashboard for support. Slow down, Danny, damn it.

You'll kill us both. Where the hell are we going? What's the rush?

In as few words as possible Daniel told him the bare outlines. You can't touch an ambassador, Jock grunted as the bouncing truck slammed the words out of him. If you're wrong, they'll crucify you, man. I'm not wrong, Daniel assured him. On top of Johnny's note, I feel it in my guts. The rain waters had rushed down the slope of the escarpment, but when they reached the floor of the valley they slowed and piled up upon themselves.

Only hours before, Daniel had crossed and re-crossed a dry river-bed at the foot of the escarpment. Now he pulled up on the approach to the ford and stared down the beam of the headlights.

You'll never get through there, Jock muttered with alarm.

Daniel left the motor running and jumped down into ankledeep mud. He ran to the edge of the crazy water. It was the colour of creamed coffee, racing past in a muddy blur, carrying small tree-trunks and u rooted bushes with it. It was almost fifty yards across.

One of the trees growing beside the ford draped its branches out over the torrent, in places just touching the swirling waters with its lowest twigs. Daniel grabbed the main branch for support and let himself down into the river. He edged out across the flood and it took all the strength of his arms to prevent himself from being swept away.

The drag of the water was overpowering and his feet were continually lifted clear of the bottom. However, he worked himself out to the deepest section of the river.

It was as deep as his lowest rib. The branch to which he was clinging was creaking and bowing like a fishing-rod to the strain as he began to work his way back to the bank. He emerged from the torrent with water streaming down his lower body, his sodden clothing clinging to his legs and his boots squelching.

It'll go, he told Jock, as he clambered back into the cab. You're crazy mad, Jock exploded. I'm not going in there. Okay! Fine!

You've got just two seconds to get out, Daniel told him grimly, and changed the gearing of the Toyota into four-wheel drive and low ratio.

You can't leave me here, Jock howled.

The place is lousy with lions. What happens to me? That's your problem, mate. Are you coming or going. Okay, go ahead! Drown us!

Jock capitulated and grabbed the sides of his seat.

Daniel rolled the Landcruiser down the steep approach to the ford, and into the brown waters. He kept her rolling at an even pace and within a few yards the water was above the level of the wheels, but still the nose of the truck was tilted steeply downwards as the bottom fell away.

There was a whoosh of steam as water rushed through the engine compartment and swamped the hot metal of the block.

The headlights were obscured as they sank below the surface, becoming two luminous glows in the turgid water. A bow wave rose ahead of the bonnet, as the water came up to the level of the windshield. A petrol engine would have swamped and stalled, but the big diesel pushed them stolidly forward into the flood. Water was pouring in around the door posts.

They were calf-deep where they sat. You really are crazy, Jock yelled, and put his feet up on the dashboard. I want to go home to mother! Now even the Landcruiser was faltering as the air trapped in the body floated her high and her spinning tires lost traction on the rock-strewn bottom.

Oh, my God! Jock cried, as a huge up-rooted tree came hurtling down upon them out of the darkness.

It crashed into the side of the truck, hitting one of the windows, and stewing the whole chassis around. They were hurled downstream, spinning slowly under the weight of the floating tree. As they made one full revolution the mortal embrace of the tree mass was broken.

Released from its grip, they floated free, but they were sinking fast as the trapped air was expelled from the Landcruiser's body. Water began to seep in, and soon they were sitting waist-deep. I'm getting out, Jock yelled, and threw his weight against the door. it won't budge. He was panicking, as the pressure of water held the door tightly closed.

Then suddenly Daniel felt the wheels touch bottom again.

The flood had swept them into a bend of the river and pushed them in against the far bank. The engine was still running. The modified airintake pipe and filter reached up as high as the cab roof. Daniel had installed it for just such an emergency. In the shallows, the wheels caught at the jagged rock bottom and heaved the Landcruiser's bulk forward. Come on, darling, Daniel pleaded. Get us out of here.

And the sturdy truck responded. She shuddered and bounced and tried to drag herself from the waters. The headlights pushed through the surface and blazed out suddenly, lighting the far bank. The flood had cast them up on the shelving mudbank and the truck canted steeply nose-up as her spinning front wheels clawed up the slope.

Ahead of them was a low spot in the riverbank. The Landcruiser slipped and slewed and crabbed up it, the engine roaring, ferociously tearing out small bushes that had survived the flood and ploughing deep ruts in the soft earth, until suddenly her lugged tires gained full purchase and hurled her for-ward up out of the flood. Sheets of water streamed from her bodywork like a surfacing submarine and the big diesel engine bellowed triumphantly as they roared into the mopane forest. I'm alive, Jock whispered. Hallelujah! Daniel turned parallel with the riverbank, weaving the Landcruiser back and forth between the tree-trunks of the standing mopane until they bumped over the verge on to the roadway.

He kicked her out of low ratio and gunned the motor. They sped away towards the Mana Pools turn-off. How many more like that?

Jock asked with trepidation. For the first time since Johnny's death Daniel smiled, but it was a grim little smile.

Only four or five, he answered. A Sunday afternoon stroll.

Nothing to it. He glanced at his watch. Cheng and the refrigerator trucks had almost four hours start on them. They must have got through the fords before the drainage of storm waters off the slope of the escarpment had flooded them. The earth beneath the mopane trees was melted like warm chocolate by the rain.

This black cotton soil was notorious for bogging down vehicles when it was wet. The Landcruiser slithered and laboured and left deep glutinous ruts behind the churning wheels. Here's the next river.

Daniel warned, as the road gradient altered and thick dark riverine bush pressed in close on each side of the narrow track. Get your life-jacket on. I can't stand another one like the last. Jock turned to him, pale-faced in the glow of the instrument panel. I promise ten "Hail Mary's" and fifty "Our Father's" . The price is right, it'll be a breeze, Daniel assured him as the headlights lit the ford.

In Africa a flash flood drops almost as abruptly as it rises.

The rain had stopped almost two hours earlier, and the slope of the valley was by now almost drained. There was a high-water mark on the far bank of the river almost six feet above the present surface of the shrunken waters, to show how swiftly they had subsided. This time the Landcruiser made light of the crossing. The waters did not even cover the headlights before she triumphantly climbed the far bank.

The power of prayer, Daniel grunted. Keep it up, Jock. We'll make a believer of you yet. so The next river had fallen even lower, to the level of the tops of the wheels, and Daniel did not bother to change gear ratios as they splashed through. Forty minutes later, Daniel parked the truck at the front door of the warden's bungalow at Mana Pools Camp.

While Jock leaned on the horn button and sounded a long urgent peal, Daniel pounded with both fists on the warden's door.

The warden came stumbling out onto the screened verandah, dressed only in a pair of underpants. Who is it? he called in Shana. What the hell is going on? He was a lean, muscled forty-year-old named Isaac Mtwetwe.

Isaac? It's me, Daniel called.

There's big trouble, man. Get your arse into gear. You've got work to do. Danny? Isaac shaded his eyes against the glare of the Landcruiser's headlights. Is that you, Danny? He flashed his torch into Daniel's face. What is it? What has happened? Daniel answered him in fluent Shana. A big gang of armed poachers has hit Chiwewe camp. They wiped out Johnny Nzou and his family, and the entire camp staff. Good God! Isaac came fully awake. My guess is that they're from the Zambian side, Daniel went on. I reckon they're heading back to cross the Zambezi about twenty miles downstream from here. You've got to get your antipoaching team there to head them off. Swiftly Daniel gave him all the other information he had gleaned, the estimated size of the gang, their weapons, the time that they had left Chiwewe and their probable line and speed of march. Then he asked, Did the refrigerator trucks come through here from Chiwewe on their return to Harare? At about eight o'clock, Isaac confirmed. They just got through before the rivers flooded. There was a civilian with them, a Chinese in a blue Mercedes. One of the trucks was towing him. The Mercedes was no good in the mud. Isaac was dressing as he spoke. What are you going to do, Danny? I know Johnny Nzou was your friend. -If you come with us you might get a shot at these swine. Although they had fought on opposite sides during the bush war, he knew Daniel's reputation.

However, Daniel shook his head.

"I am going on after the trucks, and that Mercedes. I don't understand.

Isaac looked up from lacing his boots and his tone was puzzled.

'I can't explain now, but it's all part of Johnny's murder.

Trust me. Daniel couldn't tell Isaac about the ivory and Ambassador Ning, not until he had proof. Trust me, he repeated, and Isaac nodded.

Okay, Danny, I'll get those murdering swine for you before they get away across the river, he promised. You go ahead.

Do what you have to do. Daniel left Isaac on the Zambezi bank, assembling his strike force of anti-poacher rangers and embarking them into the twenty-foot fast assault craft. There was a big ninety horsepower Yamaha onboard on the stern. Like the rest of them, the boat was a veteran of the bush war.

Daniel drove on westwards into the night, following the track that ran parallel to the Zambezi. Now the tyre tracks of the convoy were even more deeply ploughed into the muddy earth. In the headlights they looked as fresh as if they had been laid only minutes before.

Certainly they had been made since the last downpour of rain. The pattern of the treads was clearly moulded in black cotton clay of the roadway.

Obviously one of the trucks was still towing the Mercedes.

Daniel could pick out the scuff-marks where the tow rope had touched the earth at intervals. The tow would slow them down considerably, Daniel thought with satisfaction. He must be gaining on them rapidly now. He peered ahead eagerly, half expecting to see the red glow of the Metcedes's tail-lights appear out of the darkness, and he reached out to touch the AK 47 rifle propped between the seats.

Jock noticed the gesture and warned him softly, Don't do anything stupid, Danny. You don't have any proof, man. You can't just go, blowing the ambassador's head off on suspicion.

Cool it, man. It seemed that they were further behind the convoy than Daniel had hoped. It was after midnight when they intersected the Great North Road, the metalled highway that crossed the Chirundu bridge over the Zambezi to the north, and to the south climbed the escarpment of the valley on its serpentine route to Harare, the capital of Zimbabwe.

Daniel pulled the Landcruiser into the verge at the road junction.

He jumped out with the Maglite in his hand.

In all probability the convoy would have turned south towards Harare.

They couldn't have hoped to get two huge government trucks loaded with fresh game meat and ivory through both the Zimbabwean and Zambian customs posts, not even with the dispensation of the most princely bribes.

Daniel found confirmation of his deduction almost immediately. The tires of the trucks and the Mercedes had been caked with clinging black clay.

They left clear tracks on the tarmac of the highway. The tracks gradually faded out as the last vestiges of clay were spun off the tires, but for almost a mile further the moulded bars of mud from between the treads of the tires, littered the tarmac like squares of chocolate. South, said Daniel, as he climbed back behind the drivingwheel. They're heading south, and we're catching up with them every minute. He pushed the Landcruiser hard and kicked in the Fairey overdrive. The speedometer needle touched 90 miles per hour and the heavy tires whined shrilly on the black tarmac surface of the highway.

They can't be much further ahead, Daniel muttered. As he said it he saw the glow of headlights in front of them.

He touched the stock of the AK rifle again, and Jock glanced at him nervously. For Chrissake, Danny. I don't want to be an accessory to bloody murder. They say Chikurubi prison isn't exactly five-star accommodation. The lights were closer now and Daniel switched on the Landcruiser's powerful spotlights, then exclaimed with disappointment .

He had expected to see the distinctive hull of the refrigerator truck standing up tall and polar white in the beam of the spotlight. Instead he found a vehicle that he had never seen before. It was a gigantic MAC truck, a twenty-tonner, towing an equally large eight-wheel trailer. Both the hull of the truck and the body of the trailer were covered by heavyduty green nylon tarpaulin and roped down with a hook-and-eye arrangement that securely protected the cargo. This massive road-rig was pulled off the highway and parked in a lay-by at the roadside facing back northwards towards Chirundu Bridge.

Three men were working around the trailer, adjusting the ropes that held the tarpaulin in place. The beam of the spotlight froze them, and they stared back at the approaching Landcruiser.

Two of the men were black Africans dressed in faded overalls.

The third was a dignified figure in a khaki safari suit. He was also dark-complexioned but bearded and wearing some sort of white headgear.

it was only when Daniel got closer that he realised that it was a neatly bound white turban and that the man was a Sikh. His beard was carefully curled and rolled up into the folds of the turban.

As Daniel slowed the Landcruiser and pulled in in front of the parked truck, the Sikh spoke sharply to the two Africans.

All three of them turned and hurried back to the front of the truck and climbed aboard. Hold it a second! Daniel shouted, and jumped out of the Landcruiser. I want to talk to you. The Sikh was already seated behind the wheel. Hold on! Daniel called urgently, and came level with the cab.

The Sikh was five feet above the level of his head and he leaned out of the window and peered down at Daniel. Yes, what is it?

Sorry to trouble you, Daniel told him. Have you passed two large white trucks on the road? The Sikh stared down at him without answering and Daniel added, Very big trucks, you couldn't miss them.

Travelling together in convoy. There might have been a blue Mercedes saloon with them. The Sikh pulled his head in and spoke to the two Africans in a dialect that Daniel could not understand. While he waited impatiently for a reply, Daniel noticed a company logo painted on the front door-panel of the truck.

CHETTI SINGH LIMITED IMPORT AND EXPORT P. O. BOX 52 LILONGWE MALAWI Malawi was the small sovereign state that nestled between the three much larger territories of Zambia, Tanzania and Mozambique. it was a country of mountains and rivers and takes, whose population was as prosperous and happy under its octogenarian dictator Hastings Banda as any state on the poverty- and tyranny-ridden continent of Africa. Mr.

Singh, I'm in a desperate hurry, Daniel called. Please tell me if you've seen those trucks.

The Sikh popped his head back out the window in alarm. How do you know my name? he demanded, and Daniel pointed at the logo on the door.

Ha!

You are one very observant and erudite fellow, never mind. The Sikh looked relieved. Yes, my men reminded me that two trucks passed us one hour ago. They were heading south. We did not see a Mercedes with them.

I am totally certain of that salient fact. No Mercedes.

Absolutely. He started the engine of the MAC truck. I am happy to have served you. I am also in desperate haste. I must return home to Lilongwe. Farewell, my friend, safe journey and happy landings. He waved cheerily and let the huge truck roll forward.

Something about his airy manner struck a false note in Daniel's mind.

As the heavily loaded trailer rumbled past him, Daniel caught hold of one of the steel slats and swung himself up on to the footplate below the trailer's tailgate. The headlights of the parked Landcruiser gave him enough light to peer between the steel slats of the bodywork and the edge of the tarpaulin cover.

The trailer seemed to be packed with a full load of gunny sacks.

Stencilled on one of the sacks that he could see was the legend Dried Fish. Product of. . . The country of origin was obscured. Daniel's nose confirmed the contents of the sacks.

The smell of half-rotten fish was powerful and unmistakable.

The truck was gathering speed swiftly and Daniel dropped off and let his own momentum carry him forward as he hit the ground. He ran with it for a dozen paces and then pulled up and stared after the dwindling tail-lights.

His instinct warned him that something was as fishy as the stink from under the tarpaulin of the departing trailer, but what could he do about it? He tried to think. His main concerns were still the convoy of refrigerator trucks and Ning in his Mercedes which were heading southwards, while the Sikh in his MAC truck was rumbling away in the opposite direction.

He couldn't follow both of them even if he could Prove a connection between them, which he could not. Chetti Singh, he repeated the name and the box number to fix it firmly in his mind. Then ran back to where Jock waited in the Landcruiser.

Who was that? What did he say? Jock wanted to know. He saw the refrigerator trucks heading south about an hour ago. We're going after them. He pulled out of the lay-by and they raced on southwards at their top speed.

The road began to climb the hills that led up on to the high central plateau, and the Landcruiser's speed bled off slowly, but still they were doing around 70 miles an hour.

Jock had not spoken again since they had met Chetti Singh, but his features were drawn and nervous in the light reflected from the instrument panel. He kept glancing sideways at Daniel as if he were about to protest, but then thought better of it.

The road went into a series of gentle curves as it followed the gradient of the hills. They came through the next curve and without warning one of the white refrigerator trucks blocked the road ahead of them. It was travelling at half the speed of the Landcruiser and diesel smoke belched out of its exhausts as it laboured upwards in low gear. The driver was holding the middle line of the highway, not leaving sufficient space for Daniel to pass him.

Daniel sounded his horn and flicked his spotlights on and off to induce the truck to move over, but it never wavered. Move over, you murdering bastard, Daniel snarled, and hit the horn button with another prolonged blast. Take it easy, Daniel, Jock pleaded. You're going over the top.

Cool it, man. Daniel swung the Landcruiser out on to the far verge of the road, into an overtaking position, and he sounded the horn again. Now he could see the wing mirror on the cab of the truck and reflected in it the face of the driver.

The driver was Gomo. He was watching Daniel in the mirror but making no effort to give way and let him pass. His expression was a mixture of fear and ferocity, of guilt and bitter resentment. He was deliberately blocking the road, swinging wide on the corners and weaving the truck back and across when Daniel tried to pass him on the wrong side. He knows it's us, Daniel told Jock angrily. He knows we've been back to Chiwewe and seen the bloody business there. He knows we suspect him, and he's trying to hold us off Come on, Danny.

That's all in your head, man.

There could be a dozen explanations for why he's behaving like this.

I don't want any part of this crazy business. Too late, my friend, Daniel told him. Like it or not, you're part of it now. Daniel pulled the Landcruiser sharply back in the opposite direction. For once Gomo was slow to react and get across the road to block him. Daniel dropped a gear and thrust the accelerator flat. The Landcruiser jumped forward and got round the truck's tall tail-end. Still holding the accelerator flat to the floorboards, Daniel drew level with the cab, squeezing through the gap between the steel side of the hull and the edge of the road.

Only the nearside wheels of the Landcruiser had purchase on the tarmac surface, the off-side wheels were on the verge of the highway, throwing up a spray of loose gravel, dangerously close to the edge that fell away steeply into the Zambezi valley below them. Danny, you mad bastard, Jock yelled angrily. You'll get us both killed. I've had enough of this bullshit, man. The Landcruiser hit one of the concrete road-markers with its reflective cat's-eye that warned of the dangerous drop. With a crash they snapped off the road sign, and swayed dangerously, but Daniel held grimly to the outside berth and inched up alongside the cab of the lumbering truck.

Gama stared down at the Landcruiser from the vantage point of the high cab. Daniel leant forward to see him, lifted one hand from, the wheel and made a peremptory hand signal for him to pull over and stop.

Gomo nodded and obeyed, swinging the truck back to the left, giving way to the Landcruiser.

That's more like it, Daniel grated, and edged back into the space alongside the truck that Gomo had opened for him. He had fallen into the trap and let down his guard. The two vehicles were still grinding along side by side, and Gomo suddenly spun the driving-wheel hard back in the opposite direction. Before Daniel could react, the truck crashed into the side of the Landcruiser and a shower of sparks blazed from the violent contact of steel against steel. The weight and momentum of the huge truck flung the smaller vehicle back over the verge.

Daniel fought the wheel to try and resist the thrust but the struts flew through his fingers and he thought for a moment that his left thumb was dislocated. The pain numbed him to the elbow. He hit the brakes hard and the Landcruiser slowed and allowed the truck to pull ahead, with a shriek of metal between the two vehicles as they disengaged. The Landcruiser came to rest, half over the embankment with one front wheel hanging over the cliff face.

Daniel wrung his injured hand, tears of agony welling into his eyes.

Gradually he felt strength return, and with it his anger. By now the truck was five hundred yards ahead and pulling away rapidly.

With the Landcruiser in four-wheel drive, Daniel flung her into reverse.

Only three of her wheels had purchase, but she heaved herself gamely back from the drop. Her near side was scraped down to bare gleaming metal where the truck had struck her. Okay, Daniel snarled at Jock.

Do you want any more proof? That was a deliberate attempt to write us off. That bastard Gomo is guilty as hell. The truck had disappeared from view around the next curve of the highway, and Daniel hurled the Landcruiser in pursuit. Gomo isn't going to let us get ahead of him, Daniel told Jock. I'm going to get on to that truck and take him out of it. I want no more part of this business, Jock muttered. Leave it to the police now, damn it. Daniel ignored his protest and pushed the Landcruiser to its top speed. As they came through the bend the refrigerator truck was only a few hundred yards ahead. The gap between them closed swiftly.

Daniel studied the other vehicle. The scrape marks down its side were not as extensive as the damage to the Landcruiser and Gama was making better speed now as the slope of the hill eased away towards the crest of the escarpment. The double rear doors into the cargo hold were locked with a heavy vertical bar. The airtight seats were black rubber around the edge of the doors. On the nearside of the hull a steel ladder gave access to the flat roof where the cooling fans of the refrigeration equipment were housed in fibreglass pods. I'm going to get on that ladder, Daniel told Jock. As soon as I'm gone, you slide over and grab the wheel. Not me, man. I told you, I've had a gutful.

Count me out. Fine. Daniel did not even glance at him. Don't steer!

Let her crash and you with her. What's one stupid prick less in this naughty world? Daniel was judging the speed and distance between the two converging vehicles. He opened his side door. The retaining catch on the door had been removed to allow unimpeded photography through the opening so the door hinged fully open, to lie flat against the side of the bonnet.

Steering with one hand, Daniel leaned out of the open door. Take her, she's yours, he shouted at Jock. Daniel hauled himself up on to the roof, the pain in his thumb forgotten. At that moment Gomo once again swung across to block the Landcruiser.

As the two vehicles came together Daniel leaped across the narrow gap. He caught the rung of the side ladder and hauled his lower body out from between the steel sides of the vehicles as they clashed together again.

He had a glimpse of Jock at the driver's wheel, pale-faced and sweating in the reflected headlights. Then the Landcruiser swerved away and fell behind the white truck, Jock steering it erratically, letting the slope slow it, finally bringing it to a halt on the side of the road.

Daniel clambered upwards, hand over hand, agile as an ape on the narrow steel rungs, and reached the flat roof of the truck. The fan housing was in the centre of the roof and a low grab-rail ran the length of the hull, fore and aft. On hands and knees Daniel worked his way forward, falling flat on his belly and clinging grimly to the rail when the centrifugal force of the truck through the bends threatened to throw him from the roof.

It took him fully five minutes to get forward above the articulated driver's cab. He was pretty certain that Gomo had not seen him come aboard. The bulk of the cargo hold would have blocked his rear view.

By now he must be fairly confident that he had discouraged the driver of the Landcruiser, for its headlights were no longer visible on the empty road behind the truck.

Daniel worked his way gingerly across to the passenger side of the cab and peered over. There was a running-board below the passenger door, and the sturdy wing mirror standing out from the side of the cab would give him a secure handhold. It only remained to find out if Gomo had taken the precaution of locking the passenger door. There was no reason why he should, Daniel comforted himself, as he looked ahead down the beams of the truck's powerful headlights.