Leopard Hunts in Darkness

"Firm and clear" she said, and on the next pass touched down, and immediately applied maximum safe braking that pulled the aircraft to a dead stop in less than a hundred and fifty paces.

"Bird lady," Craig grinned at her and she smiled at the compliment.

They left the aircraft and set off across the plain towards the forest wall, passed through it along a game trail and came out on a rocky bluff above the river.

The scene was a perfect African cameo. White sandbanks and water-polished rock glittering like reptiles" scales, trailing branches decked with weaver birds" nests over deep green water, tall trees with white serpentine roots crawling over the rocks and beyond that, open forest.

"It's beautiful," said Sally-Anne, and wandered off with her camera.

"This would be a good site for one of your camps," Peter Fungabera pointed at the great lumpy heaps of elephant dung on the white sandbank below them.

"Grandstand view."

"Yes, it would have been," Peter agreed. "It seems too "A good to pass up at that price. There must be millions of profit in it."

"For a good African socialist, you talk likea filthy capitalist," Craig told him morosely.

Peter chuckled and said, "They do say that socialism is the ideal philosophy just as long as you have capitalists to pay for it." Craig looked up sharply, and for the first time saw the glitter of good old western European avarice in Peter Fungabera's eyes. Both of them were silent, watching Sally Anne in the river-bed, as she made compositions of tree and rock and sky and photographed them.

"Craig." Peter had obviously reached a decision. "If I could arrange the collateral the World Bank requires, I would expect a commission in Rholands shares."

"I guess you would be entitled to it." Craig felt the embers of his dead hopes flicker, and at that moment Sally Anne called, "It's getting late and we have two and a half hours' flying to Harare." Back at New Sarum air force base Peter Fungabera shook hands with both of them.

"I hope your pictures turn out fine," he said to Sally, Anne, and to Craig, "You will be at the Monomatapa? I will contact you there within the next three days." He climbed into the army jeep that was waiting for them, nodded to his driver, and saluted them with his swagger-stick as he drove away.

"Have you got a car?" Craig asked Sally-Anne, and when she shook her head, "I can't promise to drive as well as you fly will you take a chaRce?" She had an aparpent in an old block in the avenues opposite Government House. He dropped her at the entrance.

"How about dinner?" he asked.

"I've got a lot of work to do, Craig."

"Quick dinner, promise peace offering. I'll have you home by ten." He crossed his heart theatrically, and she relented.

"Okay, seven o'clock here," she agreed, and he watched the way she climbed the steps before he started the Volkswagen. Her stride was businesslike and brisk, but her backside in the blue jeans was totally frivolous.

Sally-Anne suggested a steakhouse where she was greeted like royalty by the huge, bearded proprietor, and where the beef was simply the best Craig had ever tasted, thick and juicy and tender. They drank a Cabernet from the Cape of Good Hope and from a stilted beginning their conversation eased as Craig drew her out.

"It was fine just as long as I was a mere technical assistant at Kodak, but when I started being invited on expeditions as official photographer and then giving my own exhibitions, he just couldn't take it," she told him, "first man ever to be jealous of a Nikon."

"How long were you married?"

"Two years."

"No children?"

"Thank God, no." She ate like she walked, quickly, neatly and efficiently, yet with a sensuous streak of pleasure, and when she was finished she looked at her gold Rolex.

"You promised ten o'clock," she said, and despite his protestations, scrupulously divided the bill in half and paid her share.

When he parked outside the apartment, she looked at him seriously for a moment before she asked, "Coffee?"

"With the greatest of pleasure." He started to open the door, but she stopped him.

"Right from the start, let's get it straight," she said. "The coffee is instant Nescaf6 and that's all. No gymnastics nothing else, okay?"

"Okay," he agreed.

"Let's go." Her apartment was furnished with a portable tape recorder, canvas covered cushions and a single camp-bed on which her sleeping-bag was neatly rolled. Apart from the cushions, the floor was bare but polished, and the walls were papered with her photographs. He wandered around studying them while she made the coffee in the kitchenette.

"If you want the bathroom, it's through there," she called. "Just be careful." It was more darkroom than ablution, with a light-proof black nylon zip-up tent over the shower cabinet and jars of chemicals and packets of photographic paper where in any other feminine bathroom there would have been scents and soaps.

They lolled on the cushions, drank the coffee, played Beethoven's Fifth on the tape, and talked of Africa. Once or twice she made passing reference to his book, showing that she had read it with attention.

"I've got an early start tomorrow-" at last she reached across and took the empty mug out of his hand. "Good night, Craig."

"When can I see you again?"

"I'm not sure, I'm flying up into the highlands early tomorrow. I don't know how long." Then she saw his expression and relented. "I'll call you at the Mono when I get back, if you like?"

"I

like."

"Craig, I'm beginning to like you as a friend, perhaps, but I'm not looking for romance. I'm still hurting just as long as we understand that," she told him as they shook hands at the door of the apartment.

Despite her denial, Craig felt absurdly pleased with himself as he drove back to the Monomatapa. At this stage he did not care to analyse too deeply his feelings for her, nor to define his intentions towards her. It was merely a pleasant change not to have another celebrity boffer trying to add his name to her personal scoreboard.

Her powerful physical attraction for him was made more poignant by her reluctance, and he respected her talents and accomplishments and was in total sympathy with her love of Africa and her compassion for its peoples.

"That's enough for now," he told himself as he parked the Volkswagen.

The assistant manager met him in the hotel lobby, wrin ing his hands with anguish, and led him through to his office.

"Mr. Mellow, I have had a visit from the police special branch while you were out. I had to open your deposit box for them, and let them into your room."

"God damn it, are they allowed to do that?" Craig was outraged.

"You don't understand, here they can do whatever they like," the assistant manager hurried on. "They removed nothing from the box, Mr. Mellow I can assure you of that."

"Nevertheless, I'd like to check it," Craig demanded grimly.

He thumbed through his travellers" cheques and they tallied. His return air-ticket was intact, as was his passport but they had been through the "survival kit" that Henry Pickering had provided. The gilt field assessor's identification badge was loose in its leather cover.

Ino could order a search like this?" he asked the assistant manager as they relocked the box.

"Only someone pretty high up."

"Tungata Zebiwe," he thought bitterly. "You vicious, nosy bastard how you must have changed." raig took his report of his visit to Tuti Rehabilitation Centre for Henry Pickering up to the embassy, and Morgan Oxford accepted it and offered him coffee.

J might be here a longer time than I thought," Craig told him, 'and I just can't work in an hotel room."

"Apartments are hell to find," Morgan shrugged. "I'll see what I can do." He phoned him the next day. "Craig, one of our girls is going home on a month's vacation. She is a fan of yours, and she will sub-let her flat for six hundred dollars. She leaves tomorrow." The apartment was a bed-sitter, but it was comfortable and airy. There was a broad table that would do as a writing, desk Craig set a pile of blank Typer bond paper in the centre of it with a brick as a paper-weight, his Concise Oxford Dictionary beside that and said aloud: "Back in business." He had almost forgotten how quickly the hours could pass in never-never land, and in the deep pure joy of watching the finished sheets of paper pile up at the far end of the table.

Morgan Oxford phoned him twice during the next few days, each time to invite him to diplomatic parties, and each time Craig refused, and finally unplugged the telephone. When he relented on the fourth day and plugged the extension in again6, the telephone rang almost immediately.

"Mr. Mellow." Itwas an African voice. "We have had great difficulty finding you. Hold on, please, for General Fungabera." "Craig, it's Peter." The familiar heavy accent and charm.

"Can we meet this afternoon? Three o'clock? I will send a driver." Peter Fungabera's private residence was fifteen miles out of town on the hills overlooking Lake Macillwane. The house had originally been built in the 1920s by a rich remittance man, black sheep younger son of an English aircraft manufacturer. It was surrounded firstly by wide verandas and white fretwork eaves and then by five acres of lawns and flowering trees.

A bodyguard of Third Brigade troopers in full battle dress checked Craig and his driver carefully at the gate before allowing them up to the main house. When Craig climbed the front steps, Peter Fungabera. was waiting for him at the top. He was dressed in white cotton slacks and a crimson short-sleeved silk shirt, which looked magnificent against his velvety black skin. With a friendly arm around Craig's shoulders, he led him down the veranda to where a small group was seated.

"Craig, may I introduce Mr. Musharewa, governor of the Land Bank of Zimbabwe. This is Mr. Kapwepwe, his assistant, and this is Mr. Cohen, my attorney. Gentlemen, this is Mr. Craig Mellow, the famous author."

They shook hands. "A drink, Craig? We are drinking Bloody Marys."

"That will do very well, Peter." A servant in a flowing white kanza, reminiscent of colonial days, brought Craig his drink and when he left, Peter Fungabera said simply, "The Land Bank of Zimbabwe has agreed to stand as your personal surety for a loan of five million dollars from the World Bank or its associate bank in New York." Craig gaped at him.

"Your connection with the World Bank is not a particularly closely guarded secret, you know. Henry Pickering is well known to us too Peter smiled, and went on quickly.

"Of course, there are certain conditions and stipulations, but I don't think they will be prohibitive." He turned to his white attorney.

"You have the documents, Izzy? Good, will you give Mr. Mellow a copy, and then read through them for us, please."

VP

Isadore Cohen adjusted his spectacles, squared up the thick pile of documents on the table in front of him and began.

"Firstly, this is a land purchase approval," he said.

"Authority for Craig Mellow, a British subject and a citizen of Zimbabwe, to purchase a controlling interest in the land-owning private company, known as Rholands (Pry) Ltd. The approval is signed by the state president and countersigned by the minister of agriculture." Craig thought of Tungata Zebiwe's promise to quash that approval and then he remembered that the minister of agriculture was Peter Fungabera's brother-in-law. He glanced across at the general, but he was listening intently to his lawyer's recitation.

As he came to each document in the pile, Isadore Cohen read through it carefully, not omitting even the preamble, and pausing at the end of each paragraph for questions and explanations.

Craig was so excited that he had difficulty sitting still and keeping his expression and voice level and businesslike. The momentary panic he had felt at Peter's sudden mention of the World Bank was forgotten and he felt like whooping and dancing up and down the veranda: Rholands was his, King's Lynn was his, Queen's Lynn was his, and Zambezi Waters was his.

Even in his excitation there was one paragraph that rang with a hollow note with Isadore Cohen read it out.

"What the hell doe that mean enemy of the state and the people of Zimbabuk?" he demanded.

"It's a standard clause in all our do cum ntation," Isadore Cohen placated him, "merely an expression of patriotic sentiment. The Land Bank is a government institution. If the borrower were to engage in treasonable activity and was declared an enemy of the state and people, the Land Bank would be obliged to repudiate all its obligations to the guilty party."

lit

"Is that legal?" Craig was dubious, and when the lawyer reassured him, he went on, "Do you think the lending bank will accept that?" "They have done so already on other contracts of surety," the bank governor told him. "As Mr. Cohen says, it's a standard clause."

"After all, Craig," Peter Fungabera smiled, "you aren't intending to lead an armed revolution to overthrow our government, are you?" Craig returned his smile weakly. "Well, okay, if the American lending bank will accept that, then I suppose it must be kosher." The reading took almost an hour, and then Governor Musharewa signed all the copies, and both his assistant and Peter Fungabera witnessed his signature. Then it was Craig's turn to sign and again the witnesses followed him, and finally Isadore Cohen impressed his seal of Commissioner of Oaths on each document.

"That's it, gentlemen. Signed, sealed and delivered."

"It only remains to see if Henry Pickering will be satisfied." 40h, did I forget to mention it?" Peter Fungabera grinned wickedly. "Governor Kapwepwe spoke to Pickering yesterday afternoon, 10 a.m. New York time. The money will be available to you just as soon as the surety is in his hands." He nodded to the hovering house servant. "Now you can bring the champagne." They toasted each other, the Land Bank, the World Bank, and Rholands Company, and only when the second bottle was empty did the two black bankers take reluctant leave.

As their limousine went down the drive, Peter Fungabera took Craig's arm. "And now we can discuss my raising fee. Mr. Cohen has the papers." Craig read them, and felt the blood drain from his face.

"Ten per cent," he gasped. "Ten per cent of the paid, up shares of Rholands."

"We really must change that name." Peter Fungabera frowned. "As you see, Mr. Cohen will hold the shares as my nominee. It might save embarrassment later." Craig pretended to re-read the contract, while he tried to muster a protest. The two men watched him in silence.

Ten per cent was robbery, but where else could Craig go?

Isadore Cohen slowly unscrewed the cap of his pen and handed it to Craig.

"I think you will find a cabinet minister and an army commander a most useful sleeping partner in this enterprise," he said, and Craig accepted the pen.

"There is only one copy." Craig still hesitated.

"We only need one copy," Peter was still smiling, "and I will keep it." Craig nodded.

There would be no proof of the transaction, shares held by a nominee, no documentation except in Peter Fungabera's hands. In a dispute it would be Craig's word against that of a senior minister but he wanted Rholands. More than anything in his life, Craig wanted Rholands.

He dashed his signature across the foot of the contract and on the other side of the table the two men relaxed visibly and Peter Fungabera called for a third bottle of champagne.

p to now; "Craig had needed only a pen and a pile of paper, and time had been his to squander or use as the fancy led him.

Suddenly, he was faced with the enormous responsibility of ownership and time telescoped in upon him. There was so much to do and so little time to do it that he felt crippled with indecision, appalled by his own audacity, and despairing of his own organizational skills.

He wanted comfort and encouragement, and he thought immediately of Sally-Anne. He drove around to her apartment, but the windows were closed, the mail overflowed her box, and there was no answer to his knock.

He returned to the bed-sitter, sat at his table and pulled a blank sheet from the pile and headed it, "Work to be done," and stared at it.

He remembered what a girl had once said of him. "You have only done one thing well in your life. "And writing a book was a far cry from getting a multi-million, dollar ranching company back on its feet. He felt panic rising within him and crushed it back. His was a ranching family he had been raised with the ammoniac al smell of cow dung in his nostrils, and had learned to judge beef on the hoof when he was small enough to perch up on Bawu's saddle, pommel likea sparrow on a fence pole.

"I can do it he told himself fiercely, and began to work on his list. He wrote: 1) Ring Jock Daniels. Accept offer to purchase Rholands.

2) Fly to New York.

a) World Bank meeting.

b) Open checking account and deposit funds.

C) Sell Bawu.

3) Fly ZUrich.

a) Sign share purchase.

b) Arrange payment to sellers.

His panic began to subside. He picked up the telephone and dialled British Airways. They could get him out on the Friday flight to London, and then Concorde to New York.

He caught Jock Daniels in his office. "Where the hell you been?" He could hear Jock had made a good start on the evening's drinking.

"Jock, congratulations you have just made yourself twenty, five grand commission," Craig told him and enjoyed the stunned silence.

Craig's list began to stretch out, ran into a dozen pages: 39) Find out if Okky van Renshurg is still in the country.

Okky had been the mechanic on King's Lynn for twenty years. Craig's grandfather had boasted that Okky could strip down a John Deere tractor and build up a Cadillac and two Rolls-Royce Silver Clouds from the spare parts.

Craig needed him.

Craig laid down his pen, and smiled at his memory of the old man. "We are coming home, Bawu," he said aloud.

He looked at his watch and it was ten o'clock, but he knew he would not be able to sleep.

He put on a light sweater and went out to walk the night streets, and an hour later he was standing outside Sally-Anne's apartment. His feet had made their own way, it seemed.

He felt a little tingle of excitement. Her window was open and her light burning.

"Who is it?" Her voice was muffled.

"It's me, Craig. "There was a long silence.

"It's nearly midnight."

"It's only just eleven and I have something to tell you."

"Oh, okay door * unlocked." She was in her' dark-room. He could hear the splash of chemicals.

"I'll be five minutes, she called. "Do you know how to make coffeeP When she came out, she was dressed in a sloppy cable knit jersey that hung to her knees and her hair was loose on her shoulders. He had never seen it like that, and he stared.

"This had better be good," she warned him, fists on her hips.

"I've got Rholands "he said, and it was her turn to stare.

"Who or what is Rholands?"

"The company that owns Zambezi Waters. I own it. It's mine. Zambezi Waters is mine. Is that good enough?" She started to come to him, her arms rising to embrace him, and he mirrored the movement, and instantly she caught herself and stopped, forcing him to do the same.

They were two paces apart.

"That's marvelous news, Craig. I am so happy for you.

How did it happen? I thought it was all off."

"Peter Fungabera arranged a surety for a loan of five million dollars."

"My God. Five million. You're borrowing five million?

How much is the interest on five million?" He had not wanted to think about that. It showed on his face, and she was immediately contrite.

"I'm sorry. That was insolent. I'm truly happy for you.

We must celebrate-"Quickly she moved away from him.

In the cabinet in the kitchenette, she found a bottle of Glenlivet whisky with an inch left in the bottom and added it to the steaming coffee.

"Here's success to Zambezi Waters," she saluted him with the mug. "Now first tell me all about it and then I've got news for you also." Until after midnight he elaborated his plans for her: the development of the twin ranches in the south, the rebuilding of the homestead and the restocking with blood cattle, but mostly he dwelt upon his plans for Zambezi Waters and its wildlife, knowing that that was where her interest would centre.

"I was thinking I'd need a woman's touch in planning and laying out the camps, not just any woman, but one with an artistic flair and a knowledge and love of the African bush."

"Craig, if that is meant to describe me, I'm on a grant from the World Wildlife Trust, and I owe them all my time."

"It wouldn't take up much time," he protested, "just a consultancy. You could fly up for a day whenever you could fit it in." He saw her weaken. "And then, of course, once the camps were running, I'd want you to give a series of lectures and slide, shows of your photographs for the guests- I and he saw that he had touched the right key.

Likeany artist, she relished an opportunity to exhibit her work.

"I'm not making any promises," she told him sternly, but they both knew she would do it, and Craig felt his new burden of responsibility tighten appreciably.

"You said you had news for me," he reminded her at last, grateful for the chance to draw the evening out further.

But he was not prepared for her sudden change to deadly seriousness.

"Yes, I've got news," she paused, seemed to gather herself, and then went on, "I have picked up the spoor of the master poacher"

"My God! The bastard who wiped out those herds of jumbo? That is real news. Where? How?"

"You know that I have been up in the eastern highlands for the last ten days. What I didn't tell you is that I am running a leopard study in the mountains for the Wildlife Trust. I have people working for me in most of the jeopardy areas of the forest.

AVe are counting and mapping the ties of the recording their litters and kills, trying territo cats to estimate the effect of the new human influx on them a that sort of thing which me to one o my men.

He is a marvellously smelly old Shangane poacher, he must be eighty years old and his youngest wife is seventeen and presented him with twins last week. He is a complete rogue, with a tremendous sense of humour, and a taste for Scotch whisky two tots of Glenlivet and he gets talkative.

We were up in the Vumba mountains, just the two of us in camp, and after the second tot he let it slip that he had been offered two hundred dollars a leopard-skin. They would take as many as he could catch, and they would supply the steel spring traps. I gave him another tot, and learned that the offer had come from a very well-dressed young black, driving a government Land Rover. My old Shangane told the man he was afraid that he would be arrested and sent to gaol, but he was assured that he would be safe. That he would be under the protection of one of the great chiefs in Harare, a comrade minister who had been a famous warrior in the bush war and who still commanded his own private army." There was a hard cardboard folder on the camp-bed.

Sally-Anne fetched it and placed it in Craig's lap. Craig opened it. The top sheet was a full list of the Zimbabwe Cabinet. Twenty-six names, each with the portfolio set out beside it.

"We can narrow that down immediately very few of the Cabinet did any actual fighting," Sally-Anne pointed out. "Most of them spent the war in a suite at the Ritz in London or in a guest dacha on the Caspian Sea." She sat down on the cushion beside Craig, reached across and turned to the second sheet.

"Six names." She pointed. "Six field commanders." still too many," Craig murmured, and saw that Peter Fungabera's name headed the six.

"We can do better," Sally-Anne agreed. "A private army.

That must mean dissidents. The dissidents are all Matabele. Their leader would have to be of the same tribe." She turned to the third sheet. On it was a single name.

"One of the most successful field commanders. Matabele.

Minister of Tourism, and the Wildlife Department comes under him. It's an old chestnut, but those set to guard a treasure, are too often those who loot it. It all fits." Craig read the name aloud softly, "Tungata Zebiwe," and found that he didn't want it to be true. "But he was with me in the Game Department, he was my ranger-"

"As I said, the keepers have more opportunity to despoil than any other."

"But what would Sam do with the money? The master poacher must be coming millions of dollars. Sam lives a very frugal life, everybody knows that, no big house, no expensive cars, no gifts for women nor privately owned land no other expensive indulgences."

"Except, perhaps, the most expensive of all," Sally-Anne demurred quietly. Tower." Craig's further protestation died unuttered, and she nodded. "Power. Don't you see it, Craig? Running a private army of dissidents takes money, big, big money." Slowly the pattern was shaking itself into place, Craig admitted. Henry Pickering had warned him of an approaching Soviet-backed coup. The Russians had supported the Matabele ZIPRA faction during the war, so their candidate would almost certainly be Matabele.

Still Craig resisted it, clinging to his memories of the man who had been his-friend, probably the finest friend of his entire lifetime.

He remembered the essential decency of the man he had then known as Samson Kumalo, the mission-educated Christian of integrity and high principles, who had resigned with Craig from the Game Department when they svspected their immediate superior of being involved in 4*poaching ring. Was he now the master poacher himself? The man of fine compassion who had helped Craig when he was crippled and broken to take his single possession, his yacht, with him when he left Africa. Was he now the power-hungry plotter?

"He is my friend, "Craig said.

"He was. But he has changed. When last you saw him, he declared himself your enemy," Sally' Anne pointed out.

"You told me that yourself." Craig nodded, and then suddenly remembered the search of his deposit box at the hotel by the police on high orders. Tungata must have suspected that Craig was an agent of the World Bank, would have guessed that he had been detailed to gather information on poaching and power-plotting all that could have accounted for his unaccountably violent opposition to Craig's plans.

"I hate it," Craig muttered. "I hate the idea like hell, but I think that you just may be right."

"I am sure of it."

"What are you going to do?"

"I'm going to Peter Fungabera with what evidence I have." "He will smash Sam," Craig said, and she came back quickly, "Tungata is evil, Craig, a despoiler!" He is my friend." He was your friend," Sally' Anne contradicted him. "You you don't know what don't know what he has become happened to him in the bush. War can change any human being. Power can change him even more radically."

"Oh God, I hate it." "Come with me to Peter Fungabera. Be there when I put the case against Tungata Zebiwe." Sally'Arme took his hand, a small gesture of comfort.

Craig did not make the mistake of returning her grip.

"I'm sorry, Craig." She squeezed his fingers. 11 truly am," she said, and then she took her hand away again.

eter Fungabera made time for them in the early morning, and they drove out together to his home in the Macillwane Hills.

A servant showed them through to the general's office, a huge sparsely furnished room that overlooked the lake and had once been the billiard room. One wall was covered with a blown-up map of the entire territory. It was flagged id with multi-coloured markers. There was a long table under the windows, covered with reports and despatches and parliamentary papers, and a desk of red African teak in the centre of the uncarpeted stone floor.

Peter Fungabera rose from the desk to greet them. He was barefooted, and dressed in a simple white loin-cloth tied at the hip. The bare skin of his chest and arms glowed as though it had been freshly oiled, and the muscles moved beneath it likea sackful of living cobras. Clearly Peter Fungabera kept himself in a warrior's peak of fighting condition.

"Excuse my undress," he smiled as he came to greet them, "but I really am more at ease when I can be completely African." There were low stools of intricate carved ebony set in front of the desk.

"I will have chairs brought," Peter offered. "I have few white visitors here."

"No, no." Sally-Anne settled easily on one of the stools.

"You know I am always pleased to see you, but I am due in the House at ten -hundred hours-" Peter Fungabera hurried them.

"I'll come to it without wasting time," Sally-Anne" agreed. "We think we know who the master poacher is." Peter had been about to seat himself at the desk, but now he leaned forward I'with his fists on the desktops and his gaze was sharp and dhnanding.

"You said I had trily to give you the name and you would smash him," Sally-Anne reminded him, and Peter nodded.

"Give it to me," he ordered, but Sally-Anne related her sources and her deductions, just as she had to Craig. Peter Fungabera heard her out in silence, frowning or nodding thoughtfully as he followed her reasoning. Then she gave her conclusion, the last name left on her list.

"Comrade Minister Tungata Zebiwe," Peter Fungabera repeated softly after her, and at last he sank back onto his own chair and picked up his leather, covered swa-wer-stick from the desk. He stared over Sally-Anne's head at the map-covered wall, slapping the baton into the rosy pink palm of his left hand.

The silence drew out until Sally-Anne had to ask, "Well?" Peter Fungabera dropped his gaze to her face again.

"You have chosen the hottest coal in the fire for me to pick up in my bare hands," he said. "Are you sure that you have not been influenced by Comrade Zebiwe's treatment of Mr. Craig Mellow?"

"That is unworthy," Sally-Anne told him softly.

"Yes, I suppose it is." Peter Fungabera looked at Craig.

"What do you think?"

"He was my friend, and he has done me great kindness."

"That was once upon a time," Peter pointed out. "Now he has declared himself your enemy."

"Still I like and admire him."

"And yet-?" Peter prodded gently.

"And yet, I believe Sally-Anne may be on the right spoor' Craig conceded unhappily.

Peter Fungabera stood up and crossed the floor silently to stand before the vast wall-map.

"Me whole country is a under-box," he said, staring at the coloured flags. "The Matabele are on the point of a rebellion. Here! Here! Here! Their guerrillas are gathering in the bush." He tapped the map. "We have been forced to nip the plotting of their more irresponsible leaders who were moving towards armed revolt. Nkomo is in forced retirement, two of the Matabele Cabinet members have been arrested and charged with high treason. Tungata Zebiwe is the only Matabele still in the Cabinet. He commands enormous respect, even outside his own tribe, while the Matabele look upon him as their only remaining leader. If we were to touch him-2

"You are going to let him go!" Sally-Anne said hopelessly. "He will get away with it. So much for your socialist paradise. One law for the people, another for the-"

"Be silent, woman," Peter Fungabera ordered, and she obeyed.

He returned to his desk. "I was explaining to you the consequences of hasty action. Arresting Tungata Zebiwe could plunge the entire country into bloody civil war. I didn't say that I would not take action, but I certainly would do nothing without proof positive, and the testimony of independent witnesses of impeccable impartiality to support my actions." He was still staring at the map across the room. "Already the world accuses us of planning tribal genocide against the Matabele, while all we are doing is maintaining the rule of law, and searching for a formula of accommodation with that warlike, intractable tribe. At the moment Tungata Zebiwe is our only reasonable and conciliatory contact with the Matabele, we cannot afford to destroy him lightly." He paused, and Sally Anne broke her silence.

"One thing I have not mentioned, but which Craig and I have discussed. If Tungata Zebiwe is the poacher, then he is using the profits to some special end. He gives no visible evidence of extravagance, but we know there is a connection between him and dissidents." Peter Fungabera's expression had set hard, and his eyes were terrible. "If it's ZeNwel I'll have him he promised himself more than h&. "But when I do, I'll have proof for the world to see and he will not escape me."

"Then you had best move pretty damned quickly," Sally Anne advised him tartly.

t23 r ell, you've picked a good time to sell." The Tyacht,broker stood in Bawu's cockpit and ! looked nautical in his double-breasted blazer and marine cap with golden anchor device seven hundred dollars from Bergdorf Goodman. His tan was even and perfect sunlamp at the N.Y. Athletic Club. There was a fine web of wrinkles around his piercing blue eyes not from squinting through a sextant nor from tropical suns on far oceans and coral beaches, Craig was certain, but from perusing price-tags and cheque figures.

"Interest rates right down people are buying yachts again.

It was like discussing the terms of a divorce with a lawyer, or the arrangements with a funeral director. Bawu had been part of his life for too long.

"She is in good nick, all tight and shipshape, and your price is sensible. I'll bring some people to see her tomorrow "Just make sure I'm not here, "Craig warned him.

J understand, Mr. Mellow." The man could even sound like an undertaker.

she Levy also sounded like an undertaker when Craig telephoned. However, he sent an office messenger down to the marina to collect the first three chapters Craig had completed in Africa. Then Craig went to lunch with Henry Pickering.

"It really is good to see you." Craig had forgotten how much he had grown to like this man in just two short meetings.

"Let's order first," Henry suggested, and decided on a bottle of the Grands Ech6zeaux.

"Courageous fellow," Craig smiled. "I am always too afraid to pronounce it in case they think I am having a sneezing fit."

"Most people have the same reluctance. Must be why it is the least known of the world's truly great wines keeps the price down, thank God." Appreciatively they nosed the wine and gave it the attention it deserved. Then Henry set his glass down.

"Now tell me what you think of General Peter Fungo, hera," he invited.

"It's all in my reports. Didn't you read them?"

"I read them, but tell me just the same. Sometimes a little thing may come out in conversation that just didn't get into a report."

"Peter Fungabera is a cultivated man. His English is remarkable his choice of words, his power of expression but it all has a strong African accent. In uniform he looks likea general officer in the British army. In casual clothes he looks like the star of a T! series, but in a loin-cloth he looks what he really is, an African. That's what we tend to forget with all of them. We all know about Chinese inscrutability, and British phlegm, but we seldom consider that the black African has a special nature "There! Henry Pickering murmured smugly. "That wasn't in your reports. Go on, Craig."

"We think them sloxy'-moving by our own bustling standards, and we do not realize that it is not indolence but the deep consideration they bring to any subject before acting. We consider them simple and direct when really they are the most secretive and convoluted of people, more tribally clannish than any Scot. They can maintain a blood feud over a hundred years, like any Sicilian-" Henry Pickering listened intently, prodding him with a leading question only when he slowed. Once he asked, "Something that I still find a little confusing, Craig the subtle difference between the term Matabele, Ndebele and Sindebele. Can you explain?"

"A

Frenchman calls himself a Francais, but we call him a Frenchman. A Matabele calls himself an Ndebele, but we call him a Matabele."

"Ah" Henry nodded, "and the language he speaks is Sindebele, isn't itr "That's right. Actually the word Matabele seems to have acquired colonial connections since independence " Their talk ranged on easily, relaxed and free-flowing, so that it was with a start of surprise that Craig realized that they were almost the last party left in the restaurant and that the waiter was hovering with the bill.

"What I was trying to say," Craig concluded, "is that colonialism has left Africa with a set of superimposed values. Africa will reject them and go back to its own."

"And probably be the happier for it," Henry Pickering finished for him. "Well, Craig, you have certainly earned your wage. I'm truly pleased that you are going back. I can see that you will soon be our most productive field agent in that theatre. When do you return?"

"I only came to New York to pick up a cheque." Henry Pickering laughed that delightful purring laugh of his. "You hint with a sledgehammer I shudder at the ect of a direct demand from you." He paid the bill prosp and stood up. "Our house lawyer is waiting. First you sign away your body and soul and then I give you drawing rights up to the total of five million dollars." The interior of the limousine was silent and cool, and the suspension ironed out most of the trauma of the New York street surfaces.

"Now enlarge on Sally-Anne Jay's conclusions regarding the head of the poaching ring," Henry invited.

"At this stage, I don't see any alternative candidate for the master poacher, perhaps even the leader of the dissidents." Henry was silent for a moment. Then he said, "What do you make of General Fungabera's reluctance to act?"

"He is a prudent man, and an African. He will not rush in. He will think it out deeply, lay his net with care, but when he does act, I think we will all be surprised at how devastatingly swift and decisive it will be."

"I would like you to give General Fungabera. all the assistance you can. Full co-operation, please, Craig."

"You know Tungata was my friend."

"Divided loyalty?"

"I

don't think so, not if he is guilty."

"Good! My board is very happy with your achievements so far. I am authorized to increase your remuneration to sixty thousand dollars per annum."

"Lovely," Craig grinned at him. "That will be a big help on the interest payment on five million dollars." t was still light when the cab dropped Craig at the gates of the marina'. The smog of Manhattan was transformed by the low angle of the sun to a lovely purple mist which softened the grim silhouettes of the great towers of concrete.

As Craig stepped on the gangplank, the yacht dipped slightly under his weig4', and alerted the figure in the cockpit.

"Ashe! Craig was taken by surprise. "Ashe Levy, the fairy princess of struggling authors."

"Baby." Ashe came down the deck to him with a landlubber's uncertain steps. "I couldn't wait, I had to come to you right away."

"I am touched." Craig's tone was aci ye "A when I don't need help you come at a gallop." Ashe Levy ignored it, and put a hand on each of Craig's shoulders. "I read it. I read it again and then I locked it in my safe." His voice sank. "It's beautiful." Craig checked his next jibe, and searched Ashe Levy's face for signs of insincerity. Instead he realized that behind the gold-rimmed spectacles, Ashe Levy's eyes were steely with tears of emotion.

"It's the best stuff that you have ever done, Craig."

"It's only three chapters."

"It hit me right in my guts."

"It needs a lot of polishing."

"I doubted you, Craig. I'll admit that. I was beginning to believe that you didn't have another book in you, but this it was just too much to take in. I've been sitting here for the last few hours going over it in my mind, and I find I can recite parts of it by heart." Craig studied him carefully. The tears might be a reflection of the sunset off the water. Ashe removed his spectacles, and blew his nose loudly. The tears were genuine, yet Craig could still scarcely believe them, there was only one positive test.

"Can you advance on it, Ashe?" Now he didn't need money, but he needed the ultimate reassurance.

"How much do you need, Craig? Two hundred grand?"

"You really like it, then?" Craig let go a small sigh, as the writer's eternal doubts were dispelled for a brief blessed period. "Let's have a drink, Ashe."

"Let's do better than that," said Ashe. "Let's get drunk." Craig sat in the stem with his feet up on the rudder post, watching the dew form little diamonds on the glass in his hand, and no longer really listening to Ashe Levy enthusing about the book. Instead he let his mind out to roam, and thought that it would be best not to have all one's good fortunes at the same time but to spread them out and savour each more fully.

He was inundated with delights. He thought about King's Lynn and in his nostrils lingered the odour of the loams of the Matabele grassland. He thought about Zambezi Waters and heard again the rush of a great body in the Thorn brush. He thought about the twenty chapters which would follow the first three, and his trigger finger itched with anticipation. Was it possible, he wondered, that he might be the happiest man in the world at that moment?

Then abruptly he realized that the full appreciation of happiness can only be achieved by sharing it with another and he found a small empty space down deep inside him, and a shadow of melancholy as he remembered strangely flecked eyes and a firm young mouth. He wanted to tell her about it, he wanted her to read those three chapters, and suddenly he longed with all his soul to be back in Africa where Sally' Anne Jay was.

raig found a. second-hand Land-Rover in Jock Daniels" used car lot that backed onto his auctioneering floor. He closed his ears to Jock's impassioned sales spiel and listened instead to the motor. The timing was out, but there was no knocking or slapping.

The front-wheel transmission engaged smoothly, the clutch held against tho,brakes. When he gave it a run in an area of erosion and steep don gas on the outskirts of town, the silence" r" box fell Off, but the rest held together.

At one time he had been able to take his other old Land, Rover down into its separate parts and reassemble it over a weekend. He knew he could save this one. He beat Jock down a thousand dollars and still grossly overpaid, but he was in a hurry.

Into the Land-Rover he loaded everything he had saved from the sale of the yacht: a suitcase full of clothing, a dozen of his favourite books and a leather trunk with brass bindings, his heaviest piece of luggage, that contained the family journals.

These journals were his entire inheritance, all that Bawu had left him. The rest of the old man's multi-million dollar estate, including the Rholands shares, had gone to his eldest son Douglas, Craig's uncle, who had sold out and cut for Australia. Yet those battered old leather bound, hand-written texts had been the greater treasurer Reading them had given Craig a sense of history and a pride in his ancestral line, which had armed him with sufficient confidence and understanding of period to sit down and write the book, which had in turn brought him all this: achievement, fame and fortune, even Rholands itself had come back to him through that box of old papers.

He wondered how many thousands of times he had but never like this, driven the road out to King's Lynn never as the patron. He stopped just short of the main gate, so that his feet could touch his own earth for the first time.

He stood upon it and looked around him at the golden grassland and the open groves of flat, topped acacia trees, at the lines of blue grey hills in the distance and the unblemished blue bowl of the sky over it all, then he knelt likea religious supplicant. It was the only movement in which the leg still hampered him a little. He scooped up 01"W sr 6 the earth in his cupped hands. It was almost as rich and as red as the beef that it would grow. By eye he divided the handful into two parts, and let a tenth part spill back to earth.

"That's your ten per cent, Peter Fungabera," he whispered to himself. "But this is mine and I swear to hold it for all my lifetime and to protect and cherish it, so help me God." Feeling only a little foolish at his own theatrics, he let the earth fall, dusted his hands on the seat of his pants and went back to the Land-Rover.

On the foothills before the homestead he met a tall lanky figure coming down the road. The man wore an oily unwashed blanket over his back and a brief loin-cloth; over his shoulder he carried his fighting-sticks. His feet were thrust into sandals cut from old car tyres, and his earrings were plastic stoppers from acid jars embellished with coloured beads that expanded his earlobes to three times normal size. He drove before him a small herd of multi, coloured goats.

41 see you, elder brother," Craig greeted him, and the old man exposed the gap in his yellow teeth as he grinned at the courtesy of the greeting and his recognition of Craig.

"I see you, Nkosi." He was the same old man that Craig had found squatting in the outbuildings of King's Lynn.

"When will it rain?" Craig asked him, and handed him a packet of cigarettes that he had brought for precisely such a meeting.

They fell into the leisurely question and answer routine that in Africa must precede any serious discussions.

"What is your name, old man?" A term of respect rather than an accusation of senility.

"I am called Shadrach."

"Tell me, Shadrach, are your goats for sale?" Craig could at last ask without being thought callow, and immediately a craftiness came into Shadrach's eyes.

"They are beautiful goats," he said. "To part with them would be like parting wrth my own children." Shadrach was the acknowledged spokesman and leader of the little community of squatters who had taken up residence on King's Lynn. Through him, Craig found he could negotiate with all of them, and he was relieved. It would save days and a great deal of emotional wear and tear.

He would not, however, deprive Shadrach of an opportunity to show off his bargaining skill, nor insult him by trying to hasten the proceedings, so these were extended over the next two days while Craig reroofed the old guest cottage with a sheet of heavy canvas, replaced the looted pump with a Lister diesel to raise water from the borehole and set up his new camp-bed in the bare bedroom of the cottage.

On the third day the sale price was agreed and Craig found himself the owner of almost two thousand goats. He paid off the sellers in cash, counting each note and coin into their hands to forestall argument, and then loaded his bleating acquisitions into four hired trucks and sent them into the Bulawayo abattoirs, flooding the market in the process and dropping the going price by fifty -per cent for a net loss on the entire transaction of a little over ten thousand dollars.

"Great start in business," he grinned, and sent for Shadrach.

"Tell me, old man, what do you know about cattle?" which was rather like asking a Polynesian what he knew about fish, or a Swiss if he had ever seen snow.

Shadrach drew himself up in indignation. "When I was this high he said stiffly, indicating an area below his right knee, "I squirted milk hot from the cow's teat into my own mouth. At this height," he moved up to the kneecap, "I had two hundred head in my sole charge. I freed the calves with these hands when they stuck in their mothers" wombs; I carried them on these shoulders when the ford was flooded. At this height," two inches above the knee, "I killed a lioness, stabbing her with my assegai when she attacked my herd-" Patiently Craig heard out the tale as it rose in small increments to shoulder height and Shadrach ended, "And you dare to ask me what I know about cattle!" "Soon on this grass I will graze cows so sleek and beautiful that to look upon them will dim your eyes with tears. I will have bulls whose coats shine like water in the sun, whose humps rise like great mountains on their backs and whose dewlaps, heavy with fat, sweep the earth when d-icy walk as the rain winds sweep the dust from the drought, stricken land."

"Haul" said Shadrach, an expletive of utter astonishment, impressed as much by Craig's lyricism as by his declaration of intention.

"I need a man who understands cattle and men," Craig told him.

Shadrach found him the men. From the squatter families he chose twenty, all of them strong and willing, not too young to be silly and flighty, not too old to be frail.

"The others," said Shadrach contemptuously, "are the products of the unions of baboons and thieving Mashona cattle-rustlers. I have ordered them off our land." Craig smiled at the possessive plural, but was impressed with the fact that when Shadrach ordered, men obeyed.

Shadrach assembled his recruits in front of the rudely refurbished cottage, and gave them a traditional giya, the blood-rousing speech and mime with which the old Matabele indunas primed their warriors on the eve of battle.

"You know me! he -shouted. "You know that my great great-grandmother was the daughter of the old king, Lobengula, "the one who drives like the wind"."

"Eh he!" They began to enter into the spirit of the occasion.

"You know that I am a prince of the royal blood, and in a proper world I woutil night frilly be an induna of one thousand, with wido*-bird feathers in my hair and ox tails on my war shield." He stabbed at the air with his fighting, sticks.

Th he! Watching their expressions, Craig saw the real respect in which they held the old man, and he was delighted with his choice.

"Now!" Shadrach chanted. "Because of the wisdom and farsightedness of the young Nkosi here, I am indeed become an induna. I am the induna. of King's Lynn," he pronounced it "Kingi Lingi', "and you are my aniadoda, my chosen warriors." Th he! they agreed, and stamped their bare feet on the earth with a cannon-fire clap.

"Now, look upon this white man. You might think him young and un bearded but know you, that he is the grandson of Bawu and the great-grandson of Taka Taka."

"Haul" gasped Shadrach's warriors, for those were names to conjure with. Bawu they had known in the flesh, Sir Ralph Ballantyne only as a legend: Taka Taka was the onomatopoeic name the Matabele had given Sir Ralph from the sound of the Maxim machine-gun which the old freebooter had wielded to such effect during the Matabele war and the rebellion.

They looked upon Craig with new eyes.

"Yes, Shadrach urged them, "look at him. He is a warrior who carried terrible scars from the bush war. He killed hundreds of the cowardly, women-raping Mashona--2 Craig blinked at the poetic licence Shadrach had taken un to himself "he even killed a few of the brave lionhearted Matabele ZIPRA fighters. So you know him now as a man not a boy." Th he! They showed no rancour at Craig's purported bag of their brethren.

"Know also that he comes to turn you from goat-keeping women, sitting in the sun scratching your fleas, into proud cattle-men once more, for-" Shadrach paused for dramatic effect soon on this grass will graze cows so sleek and beautiful that to look upon them-" Craig noted that Shadrach could repeat his own words perfectly, displaying the remarkable memory of the illiterate. When he ended with a high stork-like leap in the air and a clatter of his fighting-sticks, they applauded him wildly, and then looked to Craig expectantly.

"One hell of an act to follow, Craig told himself as he stood before them. He spoke quietly, in low, musical Sindebele.

"The cattle will be here soon, and there is much work to be done before they arrive. You know about the wage that the government has decreed for farm-workers. That I will pay, and food rations for each of you and your families." This was received without any great show of enthusiasm.

"And in addition," Craig paused, "for each year of service completed, you will be given a fine young cow and the right to graze her upon the grass of Kingi Lingi, the right also to put her to my great bum so that she might bear you beautiful calves-" Th he!" they shouted, and stamped with joy, and at last Craig held up both hands.

"There might be some amongst you who will be tempted to lift that which belongs to me, or who will find a shady tree under which to spend the day instead of stringing fencing-wire or herding the cattle." He glared at them, so they quailed a little. "Now this wise government forbids a man to kick another with his foot but, be warned, I can kick you without using "my own foot." He stooped and in one deft movement plucked off his leg, and stood before them with it in his hand. They gaped in amazement.

"See, this is not my own food" Their expressions began to turn sickly, as through they were in the presence of terrible witchcraft. Ikey began to shuffle nervously and look around for escape.

"So," Craig shouted, "without breaking the law, I can kick who I wish." Making two swift hops, he used the momentum to swing the toe of the boot of his disembodied leg into the backside of the nearest warrior.

For a moment longer the stunned silence persisted, and then they were overwhelmed by their own sense of the ridiculous. They laughed until d -Leir cheeks were streaked with tears. They staggered in circles beating their own heads, they hugged each other, heaving and gasping with laughter. They surrounded the unfortunate whose backside had been the butt of Craig's joke, and abused him further, prodding him and shrieking with laughter. Shadrach, all princely dignity discarded, collapsed in the dust and wriggled helplessly as wave after wave of mirth overcame him.

Craig watched them fondly. Already they were his people, his special charges. Certainly, there would be rotters amongst them. He would have to weed them out.

Certainly, even the good ones would at times deliberately test his vigilance and his forbearance as was the African way, but in time also they would become a close-knit family and he knew that he would come to love them.

he fences were the first priority. They had fallen into a state of total disrepair: there were miles of barbed-wire missing, almost certainly stolen.

When Craig tried to replace it, he realized why. There was none for sale in Matabeleland. No import permits had been issued that quarter for barbed-wire.

"Welcome to the special joy of farming in black Zimbabwe," the manager of the Farmers" Co-operative Society in Bulawayo told him. "Somebody wangled an import permit for a million dollars" worth of candy and milk chocolate, but there was none for barbed-wire."

"For God's sake." Craig was desperate. "I've got to have fencing. I can't run stock without it. When will you receive a consignment?"

"That rests with some little clerk in the Department of Commerce in Harare," the manager shrugged, and Craig turned sadly back to the Land-Rover, when suddenly an idea came to him.

"May I use your telephone? "he asked the manager.

He dialled the private number that Peter Fungabera had given him, and after he had identified himself, a secretary put him straight through.

"Peter, we've got a big problem."

"How can I help you?" Craig told him, and Peter murmured to himself as he made notes. "How much do you need?"

"At least twelve hundred bales."

"Is there anything else?"

"Not at the moment oh yes, sorry to bother you, Peter, but I've been trying to find Sally-Anne. She doesn't answer the telephone or reply to telegrams."

"Phone me back in ten minutes," Peter Fungabera ordered, and when Craig did so, he told him, "Sally-Anne is out of the country. Apparently she flew up to Kenya in the Cessna. She is at a place called Kitchwa Tembu on the Masai Mara."

"Do you know when she will be back?"

"No, but as soon as she re-enters the country again I'll let you know." Craig was impressed at the reach of Peter Fungabera's arm, that he could follow a person's movements even outside Zimbabwe. Obviously, Sally' Anne was on some list for special attention, and the thought struck him that he himself was probably on that very same list.

Of course, he knew why Sally-Anne was at Kitchwa Tembu. Two years previo&ly Craig had visited that marvelous safari camp on the Mara plains at the invitation of the owners, Geoff and Jone Kent. This was the season when the vast herds of buffalo around the camp would start dropping their calves and the battles between the protective cows and the lurking packs of predators intent on devouring the newborn calves provided one of the great spectacles of the African veld. Sally-Anne would be there with her Nikon.

On his way back to King's Lynn, he stopped at the post office and sent her a telegram through Abercrombie and Kent's office in Nairobi: "Bring me back some tips for Zambezi Waters. Stop. Is the hunt still on. Query. Best Craig." Three days later a convoy of trucks ground up the hills of King's Lynn and a platoon of Third Brigade troopers offloaded twelve hundred bales of barbed wire into the roofless tractor sheds.

"Is there an invoice to pay?" Craig asked the sergeant in charge of the detail. "Or any papers to sign?"

"I do not know," he answered. "I know only I was ordered to bring these things and I have done so." Craig watched the empty trucks roar away down the hill, and there was an indigestible lump in his stomach. He suspected that there would never be an invoice. He knew also that this was Africa, and he did not like to contemplate the consequences of alienating Peter Fungabera.

For five days he worked with his Matabele fencing gangs, bared to the waist, with heavy leather gloves protecting his hands; he flung his weight on the wire strainers and sang the work chants with his men but all that time the lump of conscience was heavy in his belly, and he could not suffer it longer.

There was still no telephone on the estate, so he drove into Bulawayo. He reached Peter at the Houses of Parliament.

"My dear Craig, you really are making a fuss about nothing. The quartermaster general has not yet invoiced the wire to me. But if it makes you feel better, then send me a cheque and I will see that the business is settled immediately. Oh, Craig, make the cheque payable "Cash", will you?" ver the next few weeks, Craig discovered in himself the capacity to live on much less sleep than he had ever believed possible. He was up each morning at four-thirty and chivvied his Matabele gangs from their huts. They emerged sleepily, still blanket wrapped and shivering at the chill, coughing from the wood-smoke of the watch-fire, and grumbling without any real malice.

At noon, Craig found the shade of an acacia, and slept through the siesta as they all did. Then, refreshed, he worked through the afternoon until the ringing tone of the gong of railway-line suspended from the branch of a jacaranda tree below the homestead sounded the hour and the cry of "Shayile! It has struck!" was flung from gang to gang and they trooped back up the hills.

Then Craig washed off the sweat and dust in the concrete reservoir behind the cottage, ate a hasty meal and by the time darkness fell, he was sitting at the cheap deal table in the cottage in the hissing white light of the gas lantern with a sheet of paper in front of him and a ballpoint pen in his hand, transported into the other world of his imagination. Some nights he wrote through until long after midnight, and then at four-thirty was out in the dewy not-yet dawn again, feeling alert and vigorous.

The sun darkened his skin and bleached the cowlick of hair over his eyes, the had physical work toned up his muscles and tougheneciphis stump so he could walk the fences all day without discomfort. There was so little time to spare, that his cooking was perfunctory and the bottle of whisky remained in his bag with the seal unbroken so that he grew lean and hawk-faced.

Then one evening as he parked the Land-Rover under the jacaranda trees and started up towards the cottage, he was forced to stop. The aroma of roasting beef and potatoes was like running into a brick wall.

The saliva spurted from under his tongue and he started forward again, suddenly ravenous.

In the tiny makeshift kitchen a gaunt figure stood over the wood fire. His hair was soft and white as cotton wool, and he looked up accusingly as Craig stood in the doorway.

"Why did you not send for me?" he demanded in Sindebele. "Nobody else cooks on Kingi Lingi."

"Joseph!" Craig cried, and embraced him impetuously.

The old man had been Bawu's cook for thirty years. He could lay a formal banquet for fifty guests, or whip up a hunters" pot on a bush fire. Already there was bread baking in the tin trunk he had improvised as an oven and he had gleaned a bowl of salad from the neglected garden.

Joseph extricated himself from Craig's embrace, a little ruffled by this breach of etiquette. "Nkosana," Joseph still used the diminutive address, "your clothes were filthy and your bed was unmade," he lectured Craig sternly. "We have worked all day to tidy the mess you have made." Only then did Craig notice the other man in the kitchen.

Xapa-lola," he laughed delightedly, and the houseboy grinned and bobbed with pleasure. He was at work with the heavy black smoothing-iron filled with glowing coals.

All Craig's clothes and bed4 men had been washed and were being ironed to crisp perfection. The walls of the cottage had been washed down and the floor polished to a gloss. Even the brass taps on the sink shone like the buttons on a marine's dress uniform.

"I have made a list of the things we need," Joseph told Craig. "They will do for the time being, but it is unfitting that you should live like this in a hovel. Nkosi Bawu, your grandfather, would have disapproved. "Joseph the cook had a definite sense of style. "Thus, I have sent a message to my senior wife's uncle who is a master thatcher, and told him to bring his eldest son who is a bricklayer, and his nephew, who is a fine carpenter. They will be here tomorrow to begin repairing the damage that these dogs have done to the big house. As for the gardens, I know a man-" and he ticked off on his fingers what he considered necessary to restore King's Lynn to some sort of order. "Thus we will be ready to invite thirty important guests to Christmas dinner, like we used to in the old days. Now Nkosana, go and wash. Dinner will be ready in fifteen minutes." With the home paddocks securely fenced and the work on the restoration of the outbuildings and main homestead well in hand, Craig could at last begin the vital step of restocking. He summoned Shadrach and Joseph, and gave King's Lynn into their joint care during his absence. They accepted the responsibility gravely. Then Craig drove to the airport, left the Land-Rover in the car park and boarded the commercial flight southwards.

For the next three weeks he toured the great cattle stud ranches of Northern Transvaal, the province of South Africa whose climate and conditions most closely resembled those of Matabeleland. The purchases of blood cattle were not transactions that could be hurried. Each was preceded by days of discussion with the seller, and study of the beasts themselves, while Craig enjoyed the traditional hospitality of the Afrikaner country folk. His hosts were men whose ancestors had trekked northwards from the Cape of Good Hope, drawn by their oxen, and had lived all their lives close to their animals. So while Craig purchased their stock, he *rew upon their accumulated wisdom and experience and came from each transaction with his own knowledge and understanding of cattle immensely enriched. All he learned reinforced his desire h to follow Bawu's successful experiments wit cross-breeding the indigenous Afrikaner strain, known for its hardiness and disease- and drou lit-resistance, with the quicker yielding Santa Gertrudis strain. He bought young cows that had been artificially inseminate and were we in ca e pedigree from famous blood-lines, and laboured through the documentation and inspection and inoculation and quarantine and insurance that were necessary before they could be permitted to cross an international border. In the meantime he arranged for road transportation northwards to King's Lynn by contractors who specialized in carrying precious livestock.

He spent almost two million of his borrowed dollars before flying back to King's Lynn to make the final preparations for the arrival of his cattle. The deliveries of the blood-stock were to be staggered over a period of months, so that each consignment could be properly received and allowed to settle down before the arrival of the next batch.

The first to arrive were four young bulls, just ready to take up their stud duties. Craig had paid fifteen thousand dollars for each of them. Peter Fungabera was determined to make an important occasion out of their arrival. He persuaded two of his brother ministers to attend the welcoming ceremony, though neither the prime minister nor the minister of tourism, Comrade Tungata Zebiwe, was available on that day.

Craig hired a marquee tent, while Joseph happily and importantly prepared one of his legendary al fresco banquets. Craig was still smarting from having paid out two million dollars, so he went cheap on the champagne, ordering the imitation from the Cape of Good Hope rather than the genuine article.

The ministerial party arrived in a fleet of black Mercedes, accompanied by their heavily armed bodyguards, all sporting aviator, type sunglasses. Their ladies were dressed in full-length safari prints, of the wildest and most improbable colours. The cheap sweet champagne went down as though a plug had been pulled out of a bath, and they were all soon twittering and giggling likea flock of glossy starlings. The minister of education's senior wife unbuttoned her blouse, produced a succulent black bosom, and gave the infant on her hip an early lunch while herself taking on copious quantities of champagne. "Refuelling in flight," one of Craig's white neighbours, who had been an R.A.F bomber-pilot, remarked with a grin.

Peter Fungabera was the last to arrive, wearing full dress, and driven by a young aide, a captain in the Third Brigade whom Craig had noticed on several other occasions. This time Peter introduced him.

"Captain Timon Nbebi." He was so thin as to appear almost frail. His eyes behind the steel, rimmed spectacles were too vulnerable for a soldier, and his grip was quick and nervous. Craig would have liked to have spoken to him, but, by this time the transporter carrying the bulls was already grinding up the hills.

It arrived in a cloud of fine red dust before the enclosure of split poles that Craig had built to receive the bulls. The gangplank was lowered, but before the tailgate was raised Peter Fungabera climbed up onto the dais and addressed the assembly.

"Mr. Craig Mellow is a man who could have chosen any country in the world to live in and, as an internationally best selling writer, would have been welcomed there. He chose to return to Zimbabwe, and in doing so has declared to all the world that here is a land where men of any colour, of any tribe black Or white, Mashona or Matabele are free to live and wotk, unafraid and unmolested, safe in the rule of just laws After the political commercial, Peter Fungabera allowed himself a little joke. "We will now welcome to our midst these other new immigrants, in the sure knowledge that they will be the fathers of many fine sons and daughters, and contribute to the prosperity of our own Zimbabwe Peter Fungabera led the applause as Craig raised the gate and the first new immigrant emerged to stand blinking in the sunlight. He was an enormous beast, over a ton Of bulging muscles under the glistening red-brown hide. He had just endured sixteen hours penned up in a noisy, lurching machine. The tranquillizers he had been given had worn off, leaving him with a drug hangover and a bitter grudge against the entire world. Now he looked down on the clapping throng, on the swirling colours of the women's national costumes, and he found at last a focus for his irritation and frustration. He let out a long ferocious bellow, and, dragging his handlers behind him, he launched himself like an avalanche down the gangplank.

The handlers released their hold on the restrainers, and the split-pole barrier exploded before his charge, as did the ministerial party. They scattered like sardines at the rush Of a hungry barracuda.

High officials overtook their wives, in a race for the sanctuary of the jacaranda trees; infants strapped on the women's backs howled as loudly as their dams.

The bull went into one side of the luncheon marquee, still at a dead run, gathering up the guy ropes on his massive shoulders, so the tent came down in graceful billows of canvas, trapping beneath it a horde of panic, stricken revellers. He emerged from the further side of the collapsing marquee just as one of the younger ministerial wives sprinted, shrilling with terror, across his path. He hooked at her with one long forward-raked horn, and the point caught mi the fluttering hem of her dress. The bull jerked his head up and the brightly coloured. material unwrapped from the girl's body like the string from a child's top. She spun into an involuntary pirouette, caught her balance, and then, stark naked, went bounding up the hill with long legs flashing and abundant breasts bouncing elastically.

"Two to one, the filly to win by a tit," howled the R.A.F

LIM

bomber-pilot ecstatically. He had also fuelled up on the cheap champagne.

The gaudy dress had wrapped itself around the bull's head. It served to goad him beyond mere anger into the deadly passion of the corrida bull facing the matador's cape. He swung his great armed head from side to side, the dress swirling rakishly likea battle ensign in a high wind, and exposing one of his wicked little eyes which lighted on the honourable minister of education, the least fleet, footed of the runners, who was making heavy weather of the slope.

The minister was carrying the burden of flesh that behaves a man of such importance. His belly wobbled mountainously beneath his waistcoat. His face was grey as last night's ashes, and he screamed in a girlish falsetto of terror and exhaustion, "Shoot it! Shoot the devilP His bodyguards ignored the instruction. They were leading him by fifty paces and rapidly widening the gap.

Craig watched helplessly from his grandstand position on the transporter, as the bull lowered his head and drove up the slope after the Aeeing minister. Dust spurted from under his hooves, and he bellowed again. The blast of sound, only inches from the ministerial backside, seemed physically to lift and propel the honourable minister the last few paces, and he turned out to be a much better climber than sprinter. Fk'went up the trunk of the first jacaranda likea squirrel and hung precariously in the lower branches with the bull directly beneath him.

The bull bellowed again in murderous frustration, glaring up at the cowering figure, tore at the earth with his front hooves, and gored the air with full-blooded swings of his vicious, white-tipped horns.

"Do something!" shrieked the minister. "Make it go away!" His bodyguards looked back over their shoulders and, seeing the impasse, regained their courage. They halted, unslung their weapons and began cautiously closing in on the bull and his victim.

"No! Craig yelled over the rattle of loading automatic weapons. "Don't shood" He was certain that his insurance did not cover "death by deliberate rifle-fire', and, quite apart from the fifteen thousand dollars, a volley would sweep the area behind the bull, which included the marquee and its occupants, a scattering of fleeing women and children and Craig himself.

One of the uniformed bodyguards raised his rifle and took aim. His recent exertions and terror did nothing for the steadiness of his hand. The muzzle of his weapon described widening circles in the air.

"No! Craig bellowed again and flung himself face down on the floor of d-te trailer. At that moment a tall, skinny figure stepped between the wavering rifle-muzzle and the great bull.

"Shadrach!" whispered Craig thankfully, as the old man imperiously pushed up the rifle-barrel and then turned to face the bull.

"I see you, Nkunzi Kakhulu! Great bull!" he greeted him courteously.

The bull swung its head to the sound of his voice, and very clearly he saw Shadrach also. He snorted and nodded threateningly.

"Haul Prince of cattle! How beautiful you are! Shadrach advanced a pace towards those vicious pike-sharp horns.

The bull pawed at the earth and then made a warning rush at him. Shadrach stood him down and the bull stopped.

"How noble your head! he crooned. "Your eyes are like dark moons!" The bull hooked his horns towards him, but the swing was less vicious and Shadrach answered with another step forward. The shrieks of terrorstruck women and children died away. Even the most fainthearted stopped running, and looked back at the old man and the red beast.

"Your horns are sharp as the stabbing assegai of great Mzilikazi." Shadrach kept moving forward and the bull blinked uncertainly and squinted at him with red, rimmed eyes.

"How glorious are your testicles," Shadrach murmured soothingly, 'like huge round boulders of granite. Ten thousand cows will feel their weight and majesty." The bull backed up a pace and gave another halfhearted toss of his head.

"Your breath is hot as the north wind, my peerless king of bulls." Shadrach stretched out his hand slowly, and they watched in breathless silence.

"My darling," Shadrach touched the glossy, wet, chocolate-coloured muzzle and the bull jerked away nervously, and' then came back cautiously to snuffle at Shadrach's fingers. "My sweet darling, father of great bulls-" gently Shadrach slipped his forefinger into the heavy bronze nose, ring and held the bull's head. He stooped and placed his mouth over the gaping, pink-lined nostrils and blew his own breath loudly into them. The bull shuddered, and Craig could clearly see the bunched muscle in his shoulders relaxing. Shadrach straightened and, with his finger still through the nose-ring, walked away and placidly the bull waddled after him with his dewlap swinging. A weak little cheer of relief and disbelief went up from his audienc and subsided as Shadrach cast a withering contemptuous eye around him.

"Nkosi!"he called to Craig. "Get these chattering Mashona monkeys off our land. They are upsetting my darling," he ordered, and Craig hoped fervently that none of his highly placed guests understood Sindebele.

Crai marvelled once again at the almost mystical bond that existed between the Nguni peoples and their cattle.

From that age, long obscured by the mists of time, when the first herds had been driven out of Egypt to begin the centuries-long migrations southwards, the destinies of black man and beast had been inexorably linked. This hump-backed strain of cattle had originated in India, their genus has indic us distinct from the European has taurus, but over the ages had become as African as the tribes that cherished and shared their lives with them. It was strange, Craig pondered, that the cattle, herding tribes see me always to have been the most dominant and warlike: people such as the Masai and Bechuana and Zulu had always lorded it over the mere tillers of the earth. Perhaps it was their constant need to search for grazing, to defend it against others and to protect their herds from predators, both human and animal, that made them so bellicose.

Watching Shadrach lead the huge bull away, there was no mistaking that lordly arrogance now, master and beast were noble in their alliance. Not so the minister of education, still clinging, catlike, to his perch in the jacaranda. Craig went to add his entreaties to those of his bodyguards, who were encouraging him to descend to earth once more.

Peter Fungabera was the last of the official party to leave. He accompanied Craig on a tour of the homestead, sniffing appreciatively the sweet odour of the golden thatching grass that already covered half the roof area.

"My grandfather replaced the original thatch with corrugated asbestos during the war," Craig explained. "Your RPG-7 rocket shells were hot little darlings."

"Yes," Peter agreed evenly. "We started many a good bonfire with them."

"To tell the truth, I am grateful for the chance to restore the building. Thatch is cooler and more picturesque, and both the wiring and plumbing needed replacing-"

"I

must congratulate you on what you have ac com pushed in such a short time. You will soon be living in the grand manner that your ancestors have always enjoyed since they first seized this land." Craig looked at him sharply, searching for malice, but Peter's smile was as charming and easy as always.

"All these improvements add vastly to the value of the property," Craig pointed out. "And you own a goodly share of them."

"Of course," Peter laid a hand placatingly on Craig's forearm. "And you still have much work ahead of you. The development of Zambezi Waters, when will you begin on that?"

"I am almost ready to do so as soon as the rest of the stock arrives, and I have Sally-Anne to assist with the details."

"Ah," said Peter. "Then you can begin immediately.

Sally-Anne Jay flew into Harare airport yesterday morning." Craig felt a tingle of rising pleasure and anticipation.

"I'll go into town this evening to phone her." Peter Fungabera clucked with annoyance. "Have they not installed your telephone yet? I'll see you have it tomorrow. In the me and me you can patch through on my radio The telephone linesman arrived before noon the fbllow ing day, and Sally Anne Cessna buzzed in from the east an hour later.

Craig had a smudge pot of old engine oil and rags burning to mark the disused airstrip and give her the wind direction, anJ she touched down and taxied to where he had parked the Land-Rover.

When she jumped down from the cab mi Craig found he had forgotten the alert, quick way she moved, and the shape of her legs in tight, fitting blue denim. Her smile was of genuine pleasure and her handshake firm and warm. She was wearing nothing beneath the cotton shirt. She noticed his eyes flicker down and then guiltily up again, but she showed no resentment.

"What a lovely ranch, from the air," she said.

"Let me show you," he offered, and she dropped her bag on the back seat of the Land-Rover and swung her leg over the door likea boy.

It was late afternoon when they got back to the homestead.

"Kapa-lola has prepared a room for you, and Joseph has cooked his number, one dinner. We have the generator running at last, so there are lights and the hot-water donkey has been boiling all day, so there is a hot bath or I could drive you in to a motel in town?"

"Let's save gas," she accepted with a smile.

She came out on the veranda with a towel wrapped likea turban round her damp hair, flopped down in the chair beside him and put her feet up on the half-wall.

"God, that was glorious." She smelled of soap and she was still pink and glowing from the bath.

"How do you like your whisky?"

"Right up and lots of ice." She sipped and sighed, and they watched the sunset. It was one of those raging red African skies that placed ffiem and the world in thrall; to speak during it would have been blasphemous. They watched the sun go in silence, and then Craig leaned across and handed her a thin sheaf of papers.

at is this?" She was curious.

"Part-payment for your services as consultant and visiting: lecturer at Zambezi Waters." Craig switched on the light above her chair.

She read slowly, going over each sheet three or four times, and then she sat with the sheaf of papers clutched protectively in her lap and stared out into the night.

"It's only a rough idea, just the first few pages. I have suggested the photographs that should face each text," Craig broke the silence awkwardly. "Of course, I've only a few. I am certain you have hundreds of others. I seen thought we would aim at two hundred and fifty pages, with the same number of your photographs all colour, of course." She turned her head slowly towards him. "You were afraid?" she asked. "Damn you, Craig Mellow now I am scared silly." He saw that there were tears in her eyes again. "This is so-" she searched for a word, and gave up. "If I put my photographs next to this, they will seem I don't know puny, I guess, unworthy of the deep love you express so eloquently for this land." He shook his head, denying it. She dropped her eyes to the writing and read it again.

"Are you sure, Craig, are you sure you want to do this book with me?"

"Yes very much indeed."

"Thank you," she said simply, and in that moment Craig knew at last, for sure, that they would be lovers. Not now, not tonight, it was still too soon but one day they would take each other. He sensed that she knew that too, for though after that they spoke very little, her cheeks darkened under her tan with shy young blood whenever he looked across at her, and she could not meet his eyes.

After dinner Joseph served coffee on the veranda, and when he left Craig switched out the lights and in darkness they watched the moon rise over the tops of the msasa trees that lined the hills acIbss the valley.

When at last she, itse to go to her bed, she moved slowly and lingered unnecessarily. She stood in front of him, the top of her head reaching to his chin, and once again said softly, "Thank you," tilted her head back, and went up on tiptoe to brush his cheek with soft lips.

But he knew she was not yet ready, and he made no effort to hold her.

y the time the last shipment of cattle arrived, the second homestead at Queen's Lynn five miles away was ready for occupation and Craig's newly hired white overseer moved in with his family. He was a burly, slow-speaking man who, despite his Afrikaner blood, had been born and lived in the country all his life. He spoke Sindebele as well as Craig did, understood and respected the blacks and in turn was liked and respected by them.

But best of all, he knew and loved cattle, like the true African he was.

With Hans Groenewald on the estate, Craig was able to concentrate on developing Zambezi Waters for tourism.

He chose a young architect who had designed the lodges on some of the most luxurious private game ranches in southern Africa, and had him fly up from Johannesburg.

The three of them, Craig, Sally-Anne and the architect, camped for a week on Zambezi Waters, and walked both banks of the Chizarira river, examining every inch of the terrain, choosing the sites of five guest-lodges, and the service complex which would support them. At Peter Fungabera's orders they were guarded by a squad of Third Brigade troopers under the command of Captain Timon Nbebi.

Craig's first impressions of this officer were confirmed as arne to know him better. He was a serious, scholarly he c young man, who spent all his leisure studying a correspondence course in political economics from the University of ether with London. He spoke English and Sindebele, tog his native Shana, and he and Craig and Sally-Anne held long conversations at night over the camp-fire, trying to arrive at some solution of the tribal enmities that were racking the country. Timon Nbebi's views were surprisingly moderate for an officer in the elite Shana brigade, and he seemed genuinely to desire a working accommodation between the tribes.

"Mr. Mellow," he said, "can we afford to live in a land divided by hatred? When I look to Northern Ireland or the Lebanon and see the fruits of tribal strife, I become afraid."

"But you are a Shana, Timon," Craig pointed out gently.

"Your allegiance surely lies with your own tribe." Tes," Timon agreed. "But first I am a patriot. I cannot ensure peace for my children with an AK 47 rifle. I cannot become a proud Shana by murdering all the Matabele. I These discussions could have no conclusion, but were made more poignant by the very necessity of an armed bodyguard even in this remote and seemingly peaceful area. The constant presence of armed men began to irk both Craig and Sally-Anne, and one evening towards the end of their stay at Zambezi Waters, they slipped their guards.

They were truly at ease with each other at last, able to share a friendly silence, or to talk for an hour without pause. They had begun to touch each other, still brief, seemingly casual contacts of which they were both, however, intensely aware. She might reach out and cover the back of his hand with hers to emphasize a point, or brush against him as they pored together over the architect's rough sketches of the lodges. Though she was certainly more agile than he was, Craig would take her elbow to help her jump across a rock-pool in the river or lean over her to point out a woodpecker's nest or a wild beehive in the treetops This day, alone at last, they found a clay anthill which rose above the levellbf the surrounding ebony and overlooked a rhino midden. It was a good stand from which to observe and photograph. Seated on it, they waited for a visit from one of the grotesque prehistoric monsters. They talked in whispers, heads close together, but this time not quite touching.

Suddenly Craig glanced down into the thick bush below them and froze. "Don't move," he whispered urgently. "Sit very still!"

Slowly she turned her head to follow his gaze, and he heard her little gasp of shock.

IWho are they?" she husked, but Craig did not reply.

There were two that he could see, for only their eyes were visible. They had come as silently as leopards, blending into the undergrowth with the skill of men who had lived all their lives in hiding.

"So, Kuphela," one of them spoke at last, his voice low but deadly. "You bring the Mashona. killer dogs to this place to hunt us."

"That is not so, Comrade Lookout," Craig answered him in a hoarse whisper. "They were sent by the government to protect me."

"You were our friend you did not need protection from US."

"The government does not know that." Craig tried to put a world of persuasion into his whisper. "Nobody knows that we have met. Nobody knows that you are here. That I swear on my life."

"Your life it may well be" Comrade Lookout agreed.

"Tell me quickly why you are here, if not to betray us."

"I have bought this land. That other white man in our party is a builder of homes. I wish to make a reserve here for tourists to visit. Like Wankie Park." They understood that. The famous Wankie National Park was also in Matabeleland, and for minutes the two guerrillas whispered together and then looked up at Craig again.

"What will become of us? "Comrade Lookout demanded.

"When you have built your houses?" ! e are friends," Craig reminded him. "There is room for you here. I will help you with food and money, and in return you will protect my animals and my buildings. You will secretly watch over the visitors who come here, and there will be no more talk of hostages. Is that an agreement between friends?" "How much is our friendship worth to you, Kuphela7

"Five hundred dollars every month."

"A thousand, "Comrade Lookout counter, offered

"Good friends should not argue over mere money," Craig agreed. "I have only six hundred dollars now, but the rest I will leave buried beneath the wild fig tree where we are camped."

"We will find it," Comrade Lookout assured him. "And every month we will meet either here or there." Lookout pointed out two rendezvous, both prominent hillocks well distanced from the river, their peaks only bluish silhouettes on the horizon. "The signal of a meeting will be a small fire of green leaves, or three rifle shots evenly spaced."

"It is agreed "Now, Kuphela, leave the money in that ant, bear hole at your feet and take your woman back to camp." Sally-Anne stayed very close beside him on the return, even taking his arm for reassurance every few hundred yards and looking back fearfully over her shoulder.

"My God, Craig, those were real shufta, proper dyed-in the-wool guerrillas. Why did they let us go?"

"The best reason in the world money." Craig's chuckle was a little hoarse and breathless even in his own ears, and the adrenalin still buzzed in his blood. "For a miserly thousand dollars a month, I have just hired myself the toughest bunch of bodyguards and gamekeepers on the market. Pretty good bargAn." "You're doing a deat with them?" Sally-Anne demanded.

"Isn't that dangerous? It's treason or something, surely?" "Probably, we just have to make sure that nobody finds out about it, won't we?" he architect turned out to be another bargain. His designs were superb; the lodges would be built of natural stone, indigenous timber and thatch. They would blend unobtrusively into the chosen sites along the river. Sally' Anne worked with him on the interior layouts and the furnishings, and introduced charming little touches of her own.

During the next few months, Sally-Anne's work with the World Wildlife Trust took her away for long periods at a time, but on her travels she recruited the staff that they would need for Zambezi Waters.

irstly, she seduced a Swiss-trained chef away from one of the big hotel chains. Then she chose five young safari guides, all of them African-born, with a deep knowledge and love of the land and its wildlife and, most importantly, with the ability to convey that knowledge and love to others.

Then she turned her attention to the design of the advertising brochures, using her own photographs and Craig's text. "A kind of dress rehearsal for our book," she pointed out when she telephoned him from Johannesburg, and Craig realized for the first time just what he had taken on in agreeing to work with her. She was a perfectionist. It was either right or it wasn't, and to get it right she would go to any lengths, and force him and the printers to do the same.

The result was a miniature masterpiece in which colour was carefully coordinated and even the layout of blocks of rint balanced her illustrations. She sent out cop pies to all the African travel specialists around the world, from Tokyo to Copen aagen.

"We have to set an opening date," she told Craig, "and make sure that our first guests are newsworthy. You'll have to offer them a freebie, I'm afraid."

"You aren't thinking of a pop star?" Craig grinned, and she shuddered.

J5

"I telephoned Daddy at the Embassy in London. He may be able to get Prince Andrew but I'll admit it's a big may be". Henry Pickering knows Jane Fonda-"

"My God, I never realized what an up-market broad you are."

"And while we are on the subject of celebrities, I think I can get a best-selling novelist who makes bad jokes and will probably drink more whisky than he is worth!" When Craig was ready to commence actual construction on Zambezi Waters, he complained to Peter Fungabera about the difficulty of finding labourers in the deep bush.

Peter replied, "Don't worry, I'll fix that." And five days later, a convoy of army trucks arrived carrying two hundred detainees from the rehabilitation centres.

"Slave labour, "Sally-Anne told Craig with distaste.

However, the access road to the Chizarira river was completed in just ten days, and Craig could telephone Sally-Anne in Harare and tell her, "I think we can confidently set the opening date for July lst." "That's marvelous, Craig."

"When can you come, up again? I haven't seen you for almost a month."

"It's only three weeks," she denied.

"I have done another twenty pages on our book," he offered as bait. "We must go over it together soon."

"Send them to me."

"Come and get them." A "Okay," she capitulated. "Next week, Wednesday. Where will you be, King's Lynn or Zambezi Waters?"

"Zambezi Waters. The electricians and plumbers are finishing up. I want to check it out." "I'll fly up." She landed on the open ground beside the river where Craig's labour gangs had surfaced a strip with gravel to make an all-weather landing ground and had even rigged a proper windsock for her arrival.

oe The instant she jumped down from the cockpit Craig could see that she was furiously angry.

"What is it?"

"You've lost two of your rhino." She strode towards him.

"I spotted the carcasses from the air."

"Where?" Craig was suddenly as angry as she was.

"In the thick bush beyond the gorge. It's poachers for certain. The carcasses are lying within fifty paces of each other. I made a few low passes, and the horns have been taken."

"Do you think they are Charlie and Lady Di?" he demanded.

From the air Craig and Sally-Anne had done a rhino count, and had identified twenty, seven individual animals on the estate, including four calves and nine breeding pairs of mature animals to whom they had given names. Charlie and Lady Di were a pair of young rhinoceros who had probably just come together. On foot Craig and Sally Anne had been able to get close to them in the thick jessie bush that the pair had taken as their territory. Both of the animals carried fine horns, the male's much thicker and heavier. The front horn, twenty inches long and weighing twenty pounds, would be worth at least ten thousand dollars to a poacher. The female, Lady Di, was a smaller animal with a thinner, finely curved pair of horns, and she had been heavily pregnant when last they saw her.

"Yes. It's them. I'm sure of it."

"There is some rough going this side of the gorge," Craig muttered. "We won't get there before dark."

"Not with the Land-Rover," SallyArme agreed, "but I think I have found a place where I can get down. It's only a mile or so from the kill." Craig unslung his rifle from the clips behind the driver's seat of the Land' Rover and checked the load.

"Okay. Let's go,"he said.

The poachers" kill was in the remotest corner of the estate, almost on the rim of the rugged valley wall that fell away to the great river in the depths. The landing-ground that Sally-Anne had spotted was a narrow natural clearing at the head of the river gorge, and she had to abort her first approach and go round again. At the second attempt, she sneaked in over the tree-tops, and hit it just right.

They left the Cessna in the clearing, and started down into the mouth of the gorge. Craig led, with the rifle cocked and ready. The poachers might still be at the kill.

The vultures guided them the last mile. They were roosting in every tree around the kill, like grotesque black fruit. The area around the carcasses was beaten flat and open by the scavengers, and strewn with loose vulture feathers. As they walked up, half a dozen hyena went loping away with their peculiar high, shouldered gait. Even their fearsomely toothed jaws had not been able completely to devour the thick rhinoceros hide, though the poachers had hacked open the belly cavities of their victims to give them easy access.

The carcasses were at least a week old, the stench of putrefaction was aggravated by that of the vulture dung which whitewashed the remains. The eyes had been picked from the sockets of the male's head, and the ears and cheeks had been gnawed away. As Sally-Anne had seen from the air, the horns were gone, the hack marks of an axe still clearly visible on the exposed bone of the animal's nose.

Looking down upqnoxhat ruined and rotting head, Craig found that he was shaking with anger and that the saliva had dried out in his mouth.

"If I could find them, I would kill them," he said, and beside him Sally-Anne was pale and grim.

"The bastards she whispered, "the bloody, bloody bastards." They walked across to the female. Here also the horns had been hacked off and her belly cavity opened. The hyena had dragged the calf out of her womb, and devoured most of it.

Sally-Anne squatted down beside the pathetic remains.

"Prince Billy," she whispered. "Poor little devil."

"There's nothing more we can do here." Craig took her arm and lifted her to her feet. "Let's go." She dragged a little in his grip as he led her away.

from. the peak of the hill that Craig had arranged as the rendezvous with Comrade Lookout, they looked out across the brown land to where the river showed as a lush serpentine sprawl of denser forest almost at the extreme range of their vision.

Craig had lit the signal fire of smoking green leaves a little after noon, and had fed it regularly since then. Now the sky was turning purple and blue and the hush and chill of evening fell over them, so that Sally-Anne shivered.

"Cold?" Craig asked.

"And sad." Sally' Anne tensed but did not pull away when he put his arm around her shoulders. Then slowly she relaxed and pressed against him for the warmth of his body. Darkness blotted out their horizon and crept in upon them.

ice was so close as to startle "I see you, Kuphela." The va them both, and Sally-Anne jerked away from Craig almost guiltily. "You summoned me." Comrade Lookout stayed outside the feeble glow of the fire.

"Where were you when somebody killed two of my beiane and stole their horns?" Craig accused him roughly.

"Where were you who promised to stand guard for me?

There was a long silence out in the darkness.

"Where did this thing happen?" Craig told him.

"That is far from here, far also from our camp. We did not know." His tone was apologetic, obviously Comrade rout felt he had failed in a bargain. "But we will find the ones who did this. We will follow them and find them."

"When you do, it is important that we know the name of the person who buys the horns from them," Craig ordered.

"I will bring the name of that person to you," Comrade Lookout promised. "Watch for our signal fire on this hill Twelve days later, through his binoculars, Craig picked up the little grey feather of smoke on the distant whaleback of the hill. He drove alone to the assignation for Sally Anne had left three days previously. She had wanted desperately to stay, but one of the directors of the Wildlife Trust was arriving in Harare and she had to be there to greet him.

I guess my grant for next year depends on it," she told Craig ruefully as she climbed into the Cessna, "but you phone me the minute you hear from your tame bandits Craig climbed the hill eagerly and on the crest he was breathing evenly and his leg felt strong and easy. He had grown truly hard and fit in these last months, and his anger was still strong upon him as he stood beside the smouldering remains of the signal fire.

Twenty minutes passed before Comrade Lookout moved silently at the edge of the forest, still keeping in cover and with the automatic rifle in the crook of his arm.

"You were not followed?" Craig shook his head reassure ingly. "We must alwayfbe careful, Kuphela."

"Did you find the men?"

"Did you bring the money?"

"Yes." Craig drew the thick envelope from the patch pocket of his bush-jacket. "Did you find the men7

"Cigarettes," Comrade Lookout teased him. "Did you bring cigarettes?" Craig tossed a pack to him, and Comrade Lookout lit one and inhaled deeply. "Haul'he said. "That is good."

"Tell me, "Craig insisted.

"There were three men. We followed their spoor from the kill though it was almost ten days old, and they had tried to cover it." Comrade Lookout drew on his cigarette until sparks flew from the glowing tip. "Their village is on the escarpment of the valley three days" march from here.

They were Batonka. apes," the Batonka are one of the primitive hunter-gatherer tribes that live along the valley of the Zambezi, "and they had the horns of your rhinoceros with them still. We took the three of them into the bush and we spoke to them for a long time." Craig felt his skin crawl as he imagined that extended conversation. He felt his anger subside to be replaced with a hollow feeling of guilt he should have cautioned Comrade Lookout on his methods.

"What did they tell you?" They told me that there is a man, a city man who drives a motor-car and dresses likea white man. He buys the horns of rhinoceros, the skins of leopards and the teeth of ivory, and he pays more money than they have ever seen in their lives."

"Where and when do they meet him?"

"He comes in each full moon, driving the road from Tuti Mission to the Shangani river. They wait on the road in the night for his coming." Craig squatted beside the fire and thought for a few minutes, then looked up at Comrade Lookout. "You will F tell these men that they will wait beside the road next full in oon with the rhinoceros horns until this man comes in his motor-can"

"That is not possible," Comrade Lookout interrupted him.

why?" Craig asked.

"The men are dead." Craig stared at him in utter dismay. "All three of them?"

"All three," Comrade Lookout nodded. His eyes were cold and flat and merciless.

"But--2 Craig couldn't bring himself to ask the question.

He had set the guerrillas onto the poachers. It must have been like setting a pack of fox-terriers onto a domesticated hamster. Even though he had not meant it to happen, he was surely responsible. He felt sickened and ashamed.

"Do not worry, Kuphela," Comrade Lookout reassured him kindly. "We have brought you the horns; of your be jane and the men were only dirty Batonka. apes anyway." Carrying the bark string bag of rhinoceros horns over his shoulder, Craig went down to the Land-Rover. He felt sick and weary and his leg hurt, but the draw-string bag cu tung into his flesh did not gall him as sorely as his own conscience.

he rhinoceros horns stood in a row on Peter Fungabera's desk. Four of them the tall front horns; and the shorter rear horns.

"Aphrodisiac," Peter murmured, touching one of them with his long, tapering fingers.

"That's a fallacy," Craig said. "Chemical analysis shows they contain no substance that could possibly be aphrodisiac in effect." "They are nothing wore than a type of agglutinated hair mass," Sally-Anne "explained. "The effects that the failing Chinese roue seeks when he crushes it to powder and takes it with a draught of rose water is merely sympathetic medicine the horn is long and hard, voilap "Anyway, the Arab oil men will pay more for their knife-handles than the cunning old Chinese will pay for their personal daggers," Craig pointed out.

"Whatever the final market, the fact is that there are two less rhino on Zambezi Waters than there were a month ago, and in another month how many more will have gone?" Peter Fungabera stood up and came around the desk on bare feet. His loincloth was freshly laundered and crisply ironed. He stood in front of them.

"I have been pursuing my own lines of investigation," he said quietly. "And all of it seems to point in the same direction as Sally-Anne's own reasoning led her. It seems absolutely certain that there is a highly organized poaching ring operating across the country.

The tribesmen in the game, rich areas are being enticed into poaching and gathering the valuable animal products. They are collected by middlemen, many of whom are junior civil servants, such as district officers and game department rangers. The booty is accumulated in various remote and safe caches until the value is sufficient to warrant a large single consignment being sent out of the country." Peter Fungabera began to pace slowly up and down the room.

"The consignment is usually exported on a commercial Air Zimbabwe flight to Danes-Salaam on the Tanzania coast. We are not sure what happens at that end, but it probably goes out on a Soviet or Chinese freighter."

"The Soviets have no qualms about wildlife conservation," Sally-Anne nodded. "Sable-fur production and whaling are big foreign-exchange-earners for them." o Air Zimbabwe operations fall under?"

"What portfolio d Craig asked suddenly.

AL "The portfolio of the minister of tourism, the honourable Tungata Zebiwe," Peter replied smoothly, and they were all silent for a few moments before he went on. "When a consignment is due, the products are brought into Harare, all on the same day, or night. They are not stored, but go directly onto the aircraft under tight security conditions and are flown out almost immediately."

"How often does this happen?" Craig asked and Peter Fungabera glanced enquiringly at his aide who was standing unobtrusively at the back of the room.

"That varies," Captain Timon Nbebi replied. "In the rainy season the grass is long and the conditions in the bush are bad. There is little hunting activity, but during the dry months the poachers can work more efficiently.

However, we have learned through our informant that a consignment is almost due and will in fact go out within the next two weeks-" "Thank you, Captain," Peter Fungabera interrupted him with a small frown of annoyance; obviously he had wanted to deliver that information himself. "What we have also learned is that the head of the organization often takes an active part in the operation. For instance, that massacre of elephant in the abandoned minefield," Peter looked across at Sally-Anne, "the one that you photographed so vividly well, we have learned that a government minister, we do not know for certain which one, went to the site in an army helicopter. We know that on two further occasions a high government official; reputedly of ministerial rank, was present when consignments were brought in to the airport for shipment."

"He probably does not trust his own men not to cheat him, "Craig murmured.

"With the bunch of cut-throats he's got working for him, who can blame hir& Sally-Anne's voice was hoarse with her outrage, but Etter Fungabera seemed unaffected.

"We believe that we will be forewarned of the next consignment. As I have intimated, we have infiltrated a man into their organization.

We will watch the movements of our suspect as the date approaches and, with luck, catch him red-handed. If not, we will seize the consignment at the airport, and arrest all those handling it. I am certain we will be able to convince one of them to turn state's evidence." Watching his face, Craig recognized that same cold, flat, merciless expression that he had last seen when Comrade Lookout reported the death of the three poachers. It was only a fleeting glimpse behind the urbane manner and then Peter Fungabera had turned back to his desk.

"For reasons that I have already explained to you, I require independent and reliable witnesses to any arrest that we might be fortunate enough to make. I want both of you to be there. So I would be obliged if you could hold yourselves ready to move at very short notice, and if you could inform Captain Nbebi where you may be contacted at all times over the next two or three weeks." As they rose to leave, Craig asked suddenly, "What is the maximum penalty for poaching?" and Peter Fungabera looked up from the papers he was rearranging on his desk.

"As the law stands now, it is a maximum of eighteen months" hard labour for any one of a dozen or so of fences under the act-"

"That's not enough." Craig had a vivid mental image of the violated and rotting carcasses of his animals.

"No," Peter agreed. "It's not enough. Two days ago in the House I introduced an amendment to the bill, as a private member's motion. It will be read for the third time on Thursday, and I assure you it has the full support of the party. It will become law on that day."

"And," Sally'Arme asked, "what are the new penalties to be?"

"For unauthorized dealing in the trophies of certain scheduled wild game, as opposed to mere poaching or hunting, for buying and reselling and exporting, the' maximum penalty will be twelve years at hard labour and a fine not exceeding one hundred thousand dollars." They thought about that for a moment, and then Craig nodded.

"Twelve years yes, that is enough." eter Fungabera's summons came in the early morning, when Craig and Hans Groenewald, his overseer, had just returned to the homestead from the dawn patrol of the pastures. Craig was in the middle of one of Joseph's gargantuan breakfasts when the telephone rang, and he was still savouring the homemade beef sausage as he answered it.

"Mr. Mellow, this is Captain Nbebi. The General wants you to meet him as soon as possible at his operationalheadquarters, the house at Macillwane. We are expecting our man to move tonight. How soon can you be here?"

"It's a six-hour drive," Craig pointed out.

"Miss Jay is already on her way to the airport. She should be at King's Lynn within the next two hours to pick you up." Sally-Anne arrived within the two hours, and Craig was waiting on the airstrip. They flew directly to Harare airport and Sally-Anne drove them out to the house in the Macillwane hills.

As they drove through the gates, they were immediately aware of the unusual activity in the grounds. On the front lawn stood a Super Frelon helicopter. The pilot and his engineer were leaning against the frise lage smoking and chatting to each other. They looked up expectantly as Sally-Anne and Craig came up the driveway, and then dismissed them as unimportant. There were four sand, coloured army trucks dra A Wn up in a line behind the house, with Third Brigade. 4oopers in full battle, kit grouped around them. Craig could sense their excitement, like hounds being whipped in for the hunt.

Peter Fungabera's office had been turned into operational headquarters. Two camp tables had been set up facing the huge relief map on the wall.

At the first table were seated three junior officers.

There was a radio apparatus on the second table, and Timon Nbebi was leaning over the operator's shoulder, speaking into the microphone in low rippling Shana that Craig could not follow, breaking off abruptly to give an order to the black sergeant at the map, who immediately moved one of the coloured markers to a new position.

Peter Fungabera greeted Craig and Sally-Anne perfunctorily and waved them to stools, then went on speaking into the telephone. When he hung up he explained quickly, "We know the location of three of the dumps one is at a shamba in the Chimanimani mountains, it's mostly leopard, skins and some ivory. The second is at a trading, post near Chiredzi in the south that's mostly ivory. And the third is coming from the north. We think that it's being held at Tuti Mission Station.

It's the biggest and most valuable shipment, ivory and rhino horn." He broke off as Captain Nbebi handed him a note, read it swiftly and said, "Good, move two platoons up the north road as far as Karoi," and then turned back to Craig.

The operation is code-named "Bada", that is Shana for "leopard". Our suspect will be referred to as Bada during the entire operation." Craig nodded. "We have just heard that Bada has left Harare. He is in his official Mercedes with a driver and two bodyguards all three of them Matabele, of course."

"Which way?" Sally-Anne asked quickly.

"At this stage, he seems to be heading north, but it's still too early to be sure."

"To meet the big shipment-" there was the light of battle in Sally-Anne's eyes, and Craig could feel his own excitement tickling the hairs at the back of his neck.

"We must believe that is so," Peter agreed. "Now let me explain our disposition if Bada moves north. The shipments from Chimanimani and Chiredzi will be allowed through unhindered as far as the airport. They will be seized as soon as they arrive, and the drivers, together with the reception committee, arrested, to be used as witnesses later.

Of course, their progress will be under surveillance at all times from the moment the trucks are loaded. The owners of the two warehouses will be arrested as soon as the trucks leave and are clear of the area.) Both Craig and Sally-Anne were listening intently, as Peter went on, "If Bada moves either east or south, we will switch the focus of the operation to that sector. However, we had anticipated that as the most valuable shipment was in the north, that's where he will go if, of course, he goes at all. It looks as though we were right. As soon as we are certain, then we can move ourselves."

"How are you planning to catch them?" Sally-Anne demanded.

"It will be very much a matter of opportunity, and what we will do depends necessarily on Bada's actions. We have to try and make a physical connection between him and the consignment. We will watch both the vehicle carrying the contraband and his Mercedes, and as soon as they come together, we will pounce-" Peter Fungabera emphasized this act of pouncing by slapping his leather, covered swagger-stick into the palm of his hand with a crack likea pistol shot, and Craig found that he was already so keyed up that he started nervously and then grinned sheepishly at Sally' Anne

The radio set crackled and the side-band hummed, then a disembodied voice spoke in Shana, and Captain Nbebi acknowledged curtly, and glanced across at Peter.

"It's confirmed, sit. BJda is moving north on the Karoi road at speed."

"All right, Captain, we can go up to condition three," Peter ordered, and strapped on the webbing belt with his bolstered sidearm. "Do you have anything from the surveillance teams on the Tuti road?" Captain Nbebi called three times into the microphone, and was answered almost immediately. The reply to his question was brief.

"Negative at this time, General, he reported to Peter.

"It's still too early." Peter adjusted his burgundy-red beret to a rakish angle, and the silver leopard's head glinted over his right eye.

"But we can begin moving into our forward positions now." He led the way through the french doors onto the veranda.

"Me helicopter crew saw him, quickly dropped their -te hatch.

cigarettes, ground them out and vaulted up into d Peter Fungabera climbed up into the fuselage and the starter -motor whined and the rotors began to spin overhead.

As they settled down on the bench seats and clinched their waist, belts Craig asked impulsively the question that had been troubling him, but he asked it in a voice low enough not to be heard by the others in the rising bellow of the main engine.

"Peter, this is a full-scale military operation, almost a crusade.

Why not merely hand it over to the police?"

"Since they fired their white officers, the police have become a bunch of heavyhanded bunglers- then Peter gave him a rake-hell smile and after all, old boy, they are my rhino also." The helicopter lifted off with a gut-sliding swoop, and its nose rotated onto a northerly heading. Keeping low, hugging the contours, it bore away, and the rush of air through the open hatch made further conversation impossible.

They kept well to the west of the main northern road, not risking a sighting by the occupants of the Mercedes.

An hour later, as the helicopter hovered and then began its descent to the small military fort at Karoi, Craig glanced at his wristwatch. It was after four o'clock.

Peter Fungabera saw the gesture and nodded. "It looks as though it's going to be a night operation, "he agreed.

The village of Karoi had once been a centre for the white, owned ranches in the area, but now it was a single street of shabby trading-stores, a service station, a post office and a small police station. The military base was a little beyond the town, still heavily fortified from the days of the bush war with a barbed-wire surround and sloped walls of sandbags twenty feet thick.

The local commandant, a young black 2nd lieutenant, was clearly overawed by the importance of his visitor, and saluted theatrically every time Peter Fungabera spoke.

"Get this idiot out of my sight," Peter snarled at Captain Nbebi, as he took over the command post. "And get me the at est report on Bas position."

"Bac a passe trou Sinoia twenty-three minutes ago.

Captain Nbebi looked up from the radio set.

"Right. Do we have an accurate description of the vehicle?"

"It's a dark blue Mercedes 280 SE with a ministerial pennant on the bonnet. Registration PL 674. No motorcycle outriders, nor other escort vehicle. Four occupants."

"Make sure that all units have that description and repeat once more that there is to be no slooting. Ba( a is to be taken unharmed. Harm him and we could well have another Matabele rebellion on our hands. Nobody is to fire at him or his vehicle, even to save their own lives. Make that clear. Any man who disobeys will have to face me personally." Nbebi called each ugit individually, repeated Peter's orders and waited while they were acknowledged. Then they waited impatiently, drinking tea from chipped enamel mugs and watching the radio set.

It crackled abruptly to life and Timon Nbebi sprang to it.

"We have located the truck," he translated triumphantly.

"It's a green five-ton Ford with a canvas canopy. A driver and a passenger in the cab. Heavily laden, well down on the suspension and using extra low gear on the inclines. It crossed the drift on the Sanyati river ten minutes ago, heading from the direction of Tuti Mission towards the road junction twenty-five miles north of here." "So, Bada and the truck are on a course to intercept each other," said Peter Fungabera softly, and there was the hunter's gleam in his eyes.

aw the radio set was the focus of all their attention, each time it came alive all their eyes instantly swivelled to it.

The reports came in regularly, tracing the swift progress of the Mercedes northwards towards them and that of the lumbering truck, grinding slowly down the dusty rutted secondary road from the opposite direction. In the periods between each report, they sat in silence, sipping the strong over-sweetened tea and munching sandwiches of coarse brown bread and canned bully beef.

Peter Fungabera ate little. He had tilted back his chair and placed his feet on the commandant's desk. He tapped the swagger, stick against the lacings of his rubber-soled jungle boots with a monotonous rhythm that began to irritate Craig. Suddenly Craig found himself craving for a cigarette again, the first time in months, and he stood up and began to pace the small office restlessly.

Timon Nbebi acknowledged another report and when he replaced the microphone, translated from the Shana, "I'he Mercedes has reached the village. They have stopped at the service station to refill with gasoline." Tungata Zebiwe was only a few hundred yards from where they sat. Craig found the knowledge disconcerting.

Up to now, it had been more an intellectual exercise than an actual life, and-death chase. He had ceased to think of Tungata as a man, he was merely "Bada', the quarry, to be outguessed and hunted into the trap. Now suddenly he remembered him as a man, a friend, an extraordinary human being, and he was once more torn between his residual loyalty of friendship and his desire to see a criminal brought to justice.

The command post was suddenly claustrophobic, and he went out into the tiny yard enclosed by high thick walls and sandbags. The sun had set, and the brief African twilight purpled the sky overhead. He stood staring up at it. There was a light footstep beside him and he glanced down.

"Don't be too unhappy," Sally-Anne pleaded softly. He was touched by her concern.

"You don't have to go," she went on. "You could stay here." He shook his head. "I want to be sure I want to see it for myself," he said. "But I'll not hate it any less." 11 know" she said. "I respect you for that." He looked down on her upturned face and knew that she wanted him to kiss her. The moment for which he had waited so long and so patiently had arrived. She was ready for him at last, her need as great as his.

Gently he touched her cheek with his fingertips, and her eyelids fluttered half-closed. She swayed towards him, and he realized that he loved her. The knowledge took his breath away for a moment. He felt an almost religious awe.

"Sally-Anne," he whispered, and the door of the corn Peter Fungabera strode out "We are moving out," he snapped, and they drew apart.

Craig saw her shake herself lightly as though waking from sleep and her eyes came back into focus.

Side by side, they followed Peter and Timon to the open Land' Rover at the gate of the fort.

command post crashed open into the yard.

he evening was chill after the heat of the day, and the wind clawed at them, for the windscreen had been strapped down on the Land-Rover's bonnet.

Timon Nbebi drove with Peter Fungabera in the passig and Sally-Anne were crowded enger seat. Cra into the back seat with the radio operator. Timon drove cautiously with parking lights only burning, and the two open army trucks packed with Third Brigade troopers in full battle gear kept close behind them.

The Mercedes was less than half a mile ahead.

Occasionally they could see the glow of its tail-lights as it climbed the road up one of the heavily wooded hills.

Peter Fungabera checked the odometer. "We've come twenty, three miles. The turn-off to the Sanyati and Tuti is only two miles ahead." He tapped Timon on the shoulder with the swagger-stick. "Pull over. Call the unit at the junction." Craig found himself shivering as much from excitement as the cold. With the engine still running, Timon called ahead to the road, junction where the forward observation team was concealed.

"Ah! That's it! Timon could not keep the elation from his voice. "Bada has turned off the main road, General.

The target truck has stopped and is parked two miles from the crossroads. It has to be a prearranged meeting, sit."

"Get going," Peter Fungabera ordered. "Follow them!" Now Timon Nbebi drove fast, using the glow of his arking lights to hold the verge of the road.

p "There's the turning!" Peter snapped, as the unmade road showed dusty pale out of the dark.

Timon slowed and swung onto it. A sergeant of the Third Brigade stepped out of the darkness of the encroaching bush. He jumped up onto the foot board and managed to salute with his free hand.

"They passed here a minute ago, General," he blurted.

"The truck is just ahead. We have set up a road-block behind it and we will block here as soon as you are passed, sit. We have them bottled up."

"Carry on, Sergeant," Peter nodded, then turned to Timon Nbebi. "The road drops steeply down from here to the drift. Have the trucks cut their engines as soon as we are rolling. We'll coast down." The silence was eerie after the growl of heavy engines.

The only sound was the squeak of the Land-Rover's suspension, the crunch of the tyres over gravel, and the rustle of the wind around their ears.

The twists in the rough track sprang at them out of the night with unnerving speed, and Timon Nbebi wrenched the wheel through them as they careered down the first drop of the great escarpment. The two trucks were guided by their tail-lights. They made monstrous black shapes looming out of the darkness close behind. Sally-Anne reached out for Craig's hand as they were thrown together into the turns, and she hung on to it tightly all the way down.

"There they are!" Peter Fungabera snarled abruptly, his voice roughened with excitement.

Below them they saw the headlights of the Mercedes flickering beyond the trees. They were closing up swiftly.

For a few seconds the headlights were blanketed by another turn in the winding road, and then they burst out again two long beams burning th pale dust surface of the track, to be answered suddenly 6y another glaring pair of headlights facing in the oppbsite direction, even at this range, blindingly white. The second pair of headlights flashed three times, obviously a recognition signal, and immediately the Mercedes slowed.

"We've got them," Peter Fungabera exulted, and switched off the parking lights.

Below them a canopied truck was trundling slowly from the verge where it had been parked in darkness, into the middle of the road. Its headlights flooded the Mercedes which pulled to a halt. Two men climbed out of the Mercedes and crossed to the cab of the truck. One of them Haiti carried a rifle. They spoke to the driver through the open window.

The Land-Rover raced silently in complete darkness towards the brightly lit tableau in the valley below. Sally Anne was clinging to Craig's hand with startling strength.

In the road below, one of the men began to walk back towards the rear of the parked truck, and then paused and looked up the dark road towards the racing Land-Rover.

They were so close now that even over the engine noise of the Mercedes and truck, he must have heard the crunch of tyres.

Peter Fungabera switched on the headlights of the Land Rover. They blazed out with stunning brilliance and at the same moment he lifted an electronic bull-horn to his mouth.

"Do not move!" his magnified voice bellowed into the night, and came crashing back in echoes from the close pressed hills. "Do not attempt to escape!" The two men whirled and dived back towards the Mercedes. Timon Nbebi started the engine with a roar and the Land' Rover jerked forward.

"Stay where you are! Drop your weapons!" The men hesitated, then the armed one threw down his rifle and they both raised their hands in surrender, blinking into the dazzle of headlights.

Timon Nbebi swung the Land-Rover in front of the Mercedes, blocking it. Then he jumped down and ran to the open window and pointed his Uzi submachine-gun into the interior.

"Oud'he shouted. "Everybody oud" Behind them the two trucks came to a squealing halt, clouds of dust boiling out from under their double rear wheels. Armed troopers swarmed out of them, rushing forward to club down the two unarmed men onto the gravel of the road. They surrounded the Mercedes, tearing open the doors and dragging out the driver and another man from the back seat.

There was no mistaking the tall, wide-shouldered figure.

The headlights floodlit his dark, craggy features and exaggerated the rocky strength of his lantern jaw. Tungata Zebiwe shrugged off the grip of his captors, and glared about him, forcing them to fall back involuntarily.

"Back, you yapping jackals! Do you dare touch me?" He was dressed in dark slacks and a white shirt. His cropped head was round and black as a cannon ball.

"Do you know who I am?" he demanded. "You'll wish your twenty-five fathers had taught you better mariners." His arrogant assurance drove them back another pace, and they looked towards the Land' Rover Peter Fungabera stepped out of the darkness behind the headlights, and Tungata Zebiwe recognized him instantly.

"You!" he growled. "Of course, the chief butcher."

"Open the truck," Peter Fungabera ordered, without taking his eyes off the other man. They stared at each other with such terrible hatred, that it rendered insignificant everything else around them. It was an elemental confrontation, seeming to embody all the savagery of a continent, two powerful men stripped of any vestige of civilized restraint, their antagonism so strong as to be barely supportable to them.

Craig had jumped dbwn from the Land' Rover and started forward, but Itow he stopped beside the Mercedes in astonishment. He had not expected anything remotely like this. This almost tangible hatred was not a thing of that moment, it seemed that the two of them would launch themselves at each other like embattled animals, tearing with bare hands at each other's throats. This was a passion of deep roots, a mutual rage based on a monumental foundation of long-standing hostility.

From the back of the captured truck the troopers were hurling out bales and crates. One of the crates burst open as it hit the road, and long yellow shafts of ivory glowed like amber in the headlights. A trooper hooked open one of the bales and pulled out handfuls of precious fur, the golden dappled skin of leopard, the thick red pelts of lynx.

"That's it! Peter Fungabera's voice was choking with triumph and loathing and vindictive gloating. "Seize the Matabele dog!" "WI-iatever this is will rebound on your own head," Tungata growled at him, "you son of a Shana whore! "Take him!" Peter urged his men, but they hesitated, held at bay by the invisible aura of power that emanated from this tall imperial figure.

In the pause, Sally-Anne jumped down from the Land Rover, and started towards the treasure of fur and ivory lying in the road. For a second she screened Tungata Zebiwe from his captors, and he moved with a blur of speed, like the strike of an adder, almost too fast to follow with the eye.

He seized Sally-Arme's arm, twisted and lifted her off her feet, holding her as a shield in front of him as he ducked low and scooped up the discarded rifle from the dust at his feet. He had chosen the moment perfectly.

They were all crowded in upon each other. The troopers pressed so closely that none of them could fire without hitting one of their own.

Tungata's back was protected by the Land-Rover, his front by Sally-Anne's body.

"Don't shood" Peter Fungabera bellowed at his men. "I want the Matabele bastard for myself." Tungata swung the barrel of the rifle up under Sally Anne armpit, holding it by the pistol grip singlehanded, and he aimed at Peter Fungabera, as he fell back towards the Land-Rover, dragging Sally' Anne with him. The Land Rover's engine was still running.

"You'll not escape," Peter Fungabera gloated. "The road is blocked, I have a hundred men. I've got you, at last." Tungata slipped the rate-of-fire selector across with his thumb and dropped his aim to Peter Fungabera's belly.

Craig was standing diagonally behind his left shoulder, he saw the slight deflection of the rifle barrel at the instant before Tungata fired. Craig realized that he had deliberately aimed an inch to one side of Peter's hip. The clattering roar of automatic fire was deafening, and the group of men leapt apart as they went for cover.

The rifle rode up high in Tungata's singlehanded grip.

Bullets smashed into the parked truck, leaving dark rents through the body work, each surrounded by a halo of bright bare metal. Peter Fungabera hurled himself aside, spinning away along the truck body to fall flat in the road and wriggle frantically behind the truck wheels.

Gunsmoke and dust shrouded the blazing headlights, and troopers scattered, blanketing each other's field of fire, while in the chaos, Tungata lifted Sally-Anne bodily and threw her into the passenger, seat of the Land-Rover. In the same movement, he" vaulted up into the driver's seat, threw the vehicle into gear and the engine roared as it leapt forward.

"Don't shoot!" Peter Fungabera shouted again, there was a desperate urgency in his voice. "I want him alive!" A trooper jumped in fk6nt of the Land-Rover, "in a futile attempt to stop it. "he impact sounded likea lump of bread-dough dropped "on the kneading board, as the bonnet hit him squarely in the chest and he fell. There was a series of jolting bumps as he was dragged under the chassis, then, he rolled out into the road and the Land-Rover was boring away up the dark hill.

Without conscious thought, Craig jerked open the driver's door of the abandoned ministerial Mercedes and slipped into the seat. He locked the wheel into a hard 180-degree turn and gunned her into it. The Mercedes" tail crabbed around, tyres spinning and he hit the high earth bank a glancing blow with the right front wing that swung her nose through the last few degrees of the turn. Craig lifted his foot off the accelerator, met the skid, centred the wheel, and then trod down hard. The Mercedes shot forward, and through the open window he heard Peter Fungabera shout, "Craig! Wait!" He ignored the call, and concentrated on the first sharp bend of the escarpment road as it flashed up at him. The Mercedes" steering was deceptively light, he almost over steered and the off-wheels hammered over the rough verge.

Then he was through the bend and ahead the red taillights of the Land-Rover were almost obscured in their own boiling white dust cloud.

Craig dropped the automatic transmission to sports mode, the engine shrieked and the needle of the rev the red sector above 5000, and she counter spun up into arrowed up the hill, gaining swiftly on the Land-Rover.

It was swallowed by the next turn, and the dust blinded Craig so that he was forced to lift his right foot and grope through the turn, again he almost missed it and his rear wheels tore at the steep drop, inches from disaster before he took her through.

He was getting the feel of the machine, and four hundred yards ahead he had a brief glimpse of the Land Rover through the dust. His headlights spotlit Sally-Anne.

She was half-twisted over the side, trying to climb out and m the fleeing vehicle, but Tungata shot throw herself fro out a long arm and caught her shoulder, plucking her back and forcing her down into the seat.

The scarf flew off her head, winging up likea night bird to be lost in the darkness, and her thick dark hair broke out and tangled about her head and face. Then dust obscured the Land-Rover again and Craig felt his anger hit him in the chest with a force that made him choke. In that moment, he hated Tungata Zebiwe as he had never hated another human being in his life before. He took the next bend cleanly, tracking neatly through and pouring on full power again at the moment he was clear.

The Land-Rover was three hundred yards ahead, the gap shrinking at the rush of the Mercedes, then Craig was braking for the next twist of the road and when he came out the Land-Rover was much closer. Sally-Anne was craning around, looking back at him. Her face was white, almost luminous, in the headlights, her hair danced in a glossy tide around it, seeming at moments almost to smother her, and then the next bend snatched her away.

Craig followed them into it, meeting the brake of the tail as she floated in the floury dust and then as he came through he saw the road-block ahead.

There was a three-ton army truck parked squarely across the road, and the gaps between it and the bank had been filled with recently felled thorn trees. The entwined branches formed a solid mattress and the heavy trunks had been chained together. Craig saw the steel links glinting in the headlights. That barrier would stop a bulldozer.

Five troopers stood before the barrier, waving their rifles in an urgent command to the LanRover to halt. That they hadn't already opened fire made Craig hope that Peter Fungabera had reached them on the radio, yet he felt a nauseating rush of anxiety when he saw how vulnerable Sally-Anne was in the opbn vehicle. He imagined a volley of automatic fire tearing into that lovely young body and face.

"Please don't shoot," he whispered, and pressed so hard on the accelerator that the cup of his artificial leg bit painfully into his stump. The nose of the Mercedes was fifty feet from the Land-Rover's tail and gaining.

A hundred yards from the solid barrier across the road was a low place in the right-hand bank. Tungata swerved into it and the ugly blunt-nosed vehicle flew up it, all four wheels clawing as it went over the top and tore likea combine-harvester into the high yellow stand of elephant grass beyond.

Craig knew he could not follow him. The low-slung Mercedes would tear her guts out on the bank. He raced past it, and then hit the brakes as the road-block loomed up and filled his windshield. The Mercedes broadsided to a dead stop in a storm of its own dust and Craig threw hi.

weight on the door and tumbled out into the road.

He caught his balance and scrambled up the right, hand bank. The Land-Rover was twenty yards away, engine roaring in low gear, crashing and bouncing over the broken ground , mowing down the dense yellow grass whose stems were thick as a man's little finger and taller than his head, weaving between the forest trees, its speed reduced by the terrain to that of a running man. Craig saw that Tungata would succeed in detouring around the road-block, and he ran to head off the Land-Rover. Anger and fear for Sally Anne seemed to guide his feet, he stumbled only once on the rough footing.

Tungata Zebiwe saw him coming and lifted the rifle one-handed, aiming over the bonnet of the jolting, roaring Land-Rover, but Sally' Anne threw herself across the weapon, clinging to it with both arms, her weight forcing the barrel down and Tungata could not take his other hand from the wheel as it kicked and whipped in his grip.

They were past the road-block now, and Craig was losing round to them; realizing with a slide in his chest that he could not catch them, he floundered along behind the roaring vehicle.

Sally-Anne and Tungata were struggling confusedly together, until the big black man tore his arm free and, using the hand as a blade, chopped her brutally under the ear. She slumped face forward onto the dashboard, and Tungata swung the wheel over. The vehicle swerved, giving Craig a few precious yards" advantage, and then it seemed to hover for an instant on the high bank beyond the road-block before it leapt over the edge and dropped into the roadway with a clangour of metal and spinning tyres.

Craig used the last of his reserves of strength and determination and raced forward to reach the place on the bank an instant after it had disappeared.

Ten feet below him, the Land' Rover was miraculously still the right way up, and Tungata, badly shaken, his mouth bleeding from impact with the steering, wheel was struggling for control.

Craig did not hesitate. He launched himself out over the bank, and the drop sucked his breath away. The Land, Rover was accelerating away, and he dropped half over the tail-gate. He felt his ribs crunch on metal, his breath whistled in his throat as it was driven from his lungs, and his vision starred for an instant but he found a " the radio set and hung on blindly. grip on He felt the Land-Rover surging forward under him, and heard Sally-Anne whimpering with pain and terror. The sound steeled him, his vision cleared. He was hanging over the back of the tail-gate, his feet dangling and dragging.

Behind him the army truck was swinging out of the road-block, engine thundering and headlights glaring in pursuit, while just ahead the main-road T-junction was coming up with a rush as the Land-Rover built up to her top speed again.

Craig braced himself for the turn, but even so when it came his upper arms were almost torn from their shoulder sockets, as Tungata took the left fork on two wheels. Now he was heading north. Of course, the Zambian border was only a hundred miles ahead. The road went down into the great escarpment, and there was no human settlement in that tsetse-fly-infested, heat, baked wilderness before the border post and the bridge over the Zambezi at Chirundu.

With a hostage it was just possible he could reach it. If Craig gave up, he could reach it or get himself and Sally Anne killed in the attempt.

By inches Craig dragged himself back into the Land Rover. Sally-Anne was crumpled down in the seat, her head lolling from side to side with each jerk and sway of the vehicle, and Tungata was tall and heavy-shouldered beside her, his white shirt gleaming in the reflected glare of the headlights.

Craig released his grip with one hand and made a grab for the back of the seat to pull himself on board. Instantly the Land-Rover swerved violently and in that same instant he saw the glint of Tungata's eyes in the rear-view mirror.

He had been watching Craig, waiting to catch him off balance and throw him.

The centrifugal force rolled Craig over and out over the side of the vehicle. He had a hold with his left hand only, and the muscles and tendons crackled with the strain as his full weight was thrown on it. He gasped with the agony as it tore up his arm into his chest, but he held on, hanging injured overboard with the steel edge catching him in his ribs again.

Tungata swerved a second time, running his wheels over the verge, and Craig saw the bank rushing at him in the headlights. Tungata was attempting to wipe him off the Land-Rover on the bank, trying to shred him to pieces between shaly rock and sharp metal. Craig screamed involuntarily with the effort as he jack-knifed his knees up and over. There was a rushing din of metal and stone as the Land-Rover brushed the bank. Something struck his leg a blow that jarred him to his hip and he heard -the straps part as his leg was torn. away. If it had been flesh and bone he would have been fatally maimed. Instead, as the Land' Rover swung back onto the road he used the momentum to roll across the back seat and whip his free arm around Tungata's neck from behind.

it was a strangle-hold and as he threw all his strength into it, he felt the give of Tungata's larynx in the crook of his elbow, and the loaded feel of the vertebrae, like the tension of a dry twig on the point of snapping. He wanted to kill him, he wanted to tear his head off his body, but he could not anchor himself to apply those last few ounces of pressure.

Tungata lifted both hands off the wheel, tearing at Craig's wrist and elbow, making a glottal, cawing sound, and the untended steering-wheel spun wildly. The Land, Rover charged off the road, plunged over the unprotected verge onto the steep rocky slope, and with a rending screech of metal crashed end over end.

Craig's grip was torn open and he was flung clear. He hit hard earth, cartwheeled, and lay for a second, his ears humming and his body crushed and helpless until he rallied and pulled himself to his knees.

The Land' Rover lay on its back. The headlights still blazed, and thirty paces down the slope, full in their beam, lay Sally-Anne. She looked likea little girl asleep. Her eyes closed and he mouth relaxed, the lips very red against her pallor, but from her hairline a thin dark serpent of blood crawled down across her pale brow.

He started to crawl towards her, when another figure rose out of the intervening darkness, a great, dark, wideshouldered figure. Tungata was clearly stunned, staggering in a half-circle, clutching his injured throat. At the sight of him Craig went hers&k with grief. and rage.

He hurled himself at Tungata and they came together, chest to chest. Long ago, as friends, they had often wrestled, but Craig had forgotten the sheer bull strength of the man. His muscles were hard and resilient and black as the cured rubber of a transcontinental truck tyre, and, one legged Craig was unbalanced. Dazed as he was, Tungata heaved him off his foot.

As he went down, Craig kept his grip and despite his own strength, Tungata could not break it. They went down together, and Craig used his stump, driving up with the hard rubbery pad at the end of it, using the swing of it and Tungata's own falling weight to slog into Tungata's lower body.

Tungata grunted and the strength went out of him.

Craig rolled out from under him, reared back onto his shoulders, and used all his body to launch himself forward again to hit with the stump. It sounded like an axe swung double-handed against a tree trunk, and it caught Tungata.

in the middle of his chest, right over the heart.

Tungata dropped over backwards and lay still- Crai crawled to him and reached for his unprotected throat with both hands. He felt the ropes of muscle framing the sharp hard Jump of the thyroid cartilage and he drove his thumbs deeply into it, and, at the feet of ebbing life under his hands, his rage fell away he found he could not kill him.

He opened his hands and drew away, shaking and gasping.

He left Tungata lying crumpled on the rocky earth and crawled to where Sally-Anne lay. He picked her up and sat with her in his lap, cradling her head against his shoulder, desolated by the slack and lifeless feel of her body. With one hand he wiped away the trickle of blood before it reached her eyes.

Above them on the road the following truck pulled up with a metallic squeal of brakes and armed men came swarming down the slope, baying likea pack of hounds at the kill. In his arms I ikea child waking from sleep, Sally Anne stiffed and mumbled softly.

She was alive, still alive and he whispered to her, "My darling, oh my darling, I love you so!" our of Sally-Anne's ribs were cracked, her right ankle was badly sprained, and there was serious bruising and swelling on her neck from the blow she had received. However, the cut in her scalp was superficial and the X-rays showed no damage to the skull. Nevertheless, she was held for observation in the private ward that Peter Fungabera had secured for her in the overcrowded public hospital.

It was here that Abel Khori, the public prosecutor assigned to the Tungata Zebiwe case, visited her. Mr. Khori was a distinguished-looking Shana who had been called to the London bar and still affected the dress of Lincoln's Inn Fields, together with a penchant for learned, if irrelevant, Latin phrases.

"I am visiting you to clarify in my own mind certain points in the statement that you have already made to the police. For it would be highly improper of me to influence in any way the evidence that you will give," Khori explained.

He showed Craig and Sally-Arme the reports of spontaneous Matabele demonstrations for Tungata's release, which had been swiftly broken up by the police and units of the Third Brigade, and which the Shana editor of the Herald had relegated to the middle pages.

"We must always bear in mind that this man is ipso jure accused of a criminal act,. and he should not be allowed to become a tribal martyr. -You see the dangers. The sooner we can have the er*ire business settled mutatis mutandis, the better for everybody." Craig and Sally-Anne were at first astonished and then made uneasy at the despatch with which Tungata Zebiwe was to be brought to trial. Despite the fact that the rolls were filled for seven months ahead, his case was given a date in the Supreme Court ten days hence.

"We cannot nudis Verb keep a man of his stature in gaol for seven months," the prosecutor explaine "and to grant him bail and allow him liberty to inflame his followers would be suicidal folly." Apart from the trial, there were other lesser matters to occupy both Craig and Sally Anne Her Cessna was due for its thousand, hour check and 'certificate of airworthiness'. There were no facilities for this in Zimbabwe, and j they had to arrange for a fellow pilot to fly the machine down to Johannesburg for her. "I will feel likea bird with its wings clipped," she complained.

"I know the feeling," Craig grinned ruefully, and banged his crutch on the floor.

"Oh, I'm sorry, Craig."

"No, dorA be. Somehow I no longer mind talking about my missing pin. Not with you, anyway."

"When will it be back?"

"Morgan Oxford sent it out in the diplomatic bag and Henry Pickering has promised to chase up the technicians at Hopkins Orthopaedic - I should have it back for the trial." The trial. Everything seemed to come back to the trial, even the running of King's Lynn and the final preparations for the opening of the lodges at Zambezi Waters could not seduce Craig away from Sally-Anne's bedside and the preparations for the trial. He was fortunate to have Hans Groenewald at King's Lynn and Peter Younghusband, the young Kenyan manager and guide whom Sally-Anne had chosen, had arrived to take over the daily running of Zambezi Waters. Though he spoke to these two every day on either telephone or radio, Craig stayed on in Harare close to Sally-Anne.

Craig's leg arrived back the day before Sally-Anne's discharge from hospital. He pulled up his trouser-cuff to show it to her.

"Straightened, panel-beaten, lubricated and thoroughly reconditioned," he boasted. "How's your head?"

"The same as your leg," she laughed. "Although the doctors have warned me off bouncing on it again for at least the next few weeks." She was using a cane for her ankle, and her chest was still strapped when he carried her bag down to the Land, Rover the following morning.

"Ribs hurting?" He saw her wince as she climbed into the vehicle.

"As long as nobody squeezes them, I'll pull through."

"No squeezing. Is that a rule?" he asked.

"I guess-" she paused and regarded him for a moment before she lowered her eyes and murmured demurely, "but then rules are for fools, and for the guidance of wise men." And Craig was considerably heartened.

umber Two Court of the Mashonaland division of the Supreme Court of the Republic of Zimbabwe still retained all the trappings of British justice.

The elevated bench with the coat of arms of Zimbabwe above the judge's seat dominated the courtroom; the tiers of oaken benches faced it, and the witness box and the dock were set on either hand. The prosecutors, the asses, sors and the attorneys charged with the defence wore long black robes, while the judpe was splendid in scarlet. Only the colour of the faces had changed, their blackness accentuated by the tight snowy curls of their wigs and the starched white swallow-tail collars.

The courtroom was packed, and when the standing room at the back was filled, the ushers closed the doors, leaving the crowd overflowing into the passages beyond.

The crowds were orderly and grave, almost all of them Matabele who had made the long bus journey across the Country from Matabeleland, many of them wearing the rosettes of the ZAPU party. Only when the accused was led into the dock was there a stir and murmur, and at the man dressed in ZAFU colours rear of the court a black wa cried hysterically "Bayete, Nkosi Nkulu!" and gave the clenched-fist salute.

r out The guards seized her immediately and hustled he through the doors. Tungata Zebiwe stood in the dock and watched impassively, by his sheer presence belittling every other person in the room. Even the judge, Mr. justice Domashawa, a tall, emaciated Mashona, with a delicately bridged atypical Egyptian nose and small, bright, birdlike eyes, although vested in all the authority of his scarlet robes, seemed ordinary in comparison. However, Mr. Justice Domashawa had a formidable reputation, and the prosecutor had rejoiced in his selection when he told Craig and SallyAxme of it.

"Oh, he is indeed persona grato and now it is very much in grentio legis, we will see justice done, never fear." While the country had still been Rhodesia, the British jury system had been abandoned. "The judge would reach a verdict with the assistance of the two black-robed assessors who sat with him on the bench. Both these assessors were Shana: one was an expert on wildlife conservation, and the other a senior magistrate. The judge could call upon but the final verdict their expert advice if he so wished would be his alone.

Now he settled his robes around him, the way an ostrich shakes out its feathers as it settles on the nest, and he fixed Tungata Zebiwe with his bright dark eyes while the clerk the charge sheet in English.

of the court read out There were eight main charges- dealing in and exporting the products of scheduled wild animals, abducting and holding a hostage, assault with a deadly weapon, assault with intent to do grievous bodily harm, attempted murder, violently resisting arrest, theft of a motor vehicle, and erty. There were also twelve malicious damage to state prop lesser charges.

By God," Craig whispered to Sally-Anne, "they are throwing the bricks from the walls at him."

"And the tiles off the floor," she agreed. "Good for them, I'd love to see the bastard swing."

"Sorry, my dear, none of them are capital charges." And yet all through the prosecution's opening address, Craig was overcome by a sense of almost Grecian tragedy, in which an heroic figure was surrounded and brought low by lesser, meaner men.

Despite his feelings, Craig was aware that Abel Khori was doing a good businesslike job of laying out his case in his opening address, even displaying restraint in his use of Latin maxims. The first of a long list of prosecution witnesses was General Peter Fungabera. Resplendent in full dress, he took the oath and stood straight-backed and martial with his swagger-stick held loosely in one hand.

His testimony was given without equivocation, so direct and impressive that the judge nodded his approval from time to time as he made his notes.

The Central Committee of the ZAPU party had briefed a London barrister for the defence, but even Mr. Joseph Petal QC could not shake General Fungabera and very soon realized the futility of the effort, so he retired to wait for more vulnerable prey.

The next witness was the driver of the truck containing the contraband. He was an ex-ZIPRA guerrilla, recently released from one of th. rehabilitation centres and his testimony was given, I ire the vernacular and translated into English by the court interpreter.

"Had you ever met the accused before the night you were arrestedf Abel Khori demanded of him after establishing his identity.

"Yes. I was with him in the fighting."

"Did you see him again after the war?"

"Yes."

"Will you tell the court when that was?"

_aWm

"Last year in the dry season."

"Before you were placed in the rehabilitation centrer "Yes, before that."

"Where did you meet Minister Tungata Zebiwe?"

"In the valley, near the great river."

"Will you tell the court about that meeting?"

"We were hunting elephant for the ivory."

"How did you hunt them?"

"We used tribesmen, Batonka tribesmen, and a helicopeld." ter, to drive them into the old minefi object to this line of questioning, my lord." Mr. Petal QC jumped up. "This has nothing to do with the charges."

"It has reference to the first charge," Abel Khori insisted.

"Your objection is overruled, Mr. Petal. Please continue Mr. Prosecutor."

"How many elephant did you kill?" many, many elephant." "Can you estimate how many?"

"Perhaps two hundred elephant, I am not sure." that the Minister Tungata Zebiwe was "And you state there?"

"He came after the elephant had been killed. He came to count the ivory and take it away in his helicopter-2

"What helicopter?"

"A government helicopter." 41 object, your lordship, the Point is irrelevant."

"Objection overruled, Mr. Petal, please continue." When his turn came for crossexamination, Mr. Joseph Petal went into the attack immediately.

u that you were never a member of 11 put it toyo e fighters. That you Minister Tungata Zebiwe's resistanc never, in fact, met the minister until that night on the Karoi road--2

"I object, your lordship," Abel Khori shouted indigthe witness in nantly. "The defence is trying to discredit the knowledge that no records of patriotic soldiers exist and that the witness cannot, therefore, prove his gallant service to the cause."

"Objection sustained. Mr. Petal, please confine your questions to the matter in hand and do not bully the witness."

"Very well, your lordship." Mr. Petal was rosy-faced with frustration as he turned back to the witness.

"Can you tell the judge when you were released from the rehabilitation centre?"

"I forget. I cannot remember."

"Was it a long time or a short time before your arrest?"

"A short time," the witness replied sulkily, looking down at his hands in his lap.

"Were you not released from the prison camp on the condition that you drove the truck that night, and that you aereed to 2I've evidence-" "My lord!" shrieked Abel Khori, and the judge's voice was as shrill and indignant.

"Mr. Petal, you will not refer to state rehabilitation centres as prison camps."

"As your lordship pleases." Mr. Petal continued, "Were You made any promises when you were released from the rehabilitation centre?"

"No. "The witness looked about him unhappily.

"Were you visited in the centre, two days before your release, by a Captain Timon Nbebi of the Third Brigade?"

"No.

"Did you have anyovisitors in the camp?"

"No! NaP "No visitors at all, are you sure?"

"The witness has already answered that question," the judge stopped him, and Mr. Petal sighed theatrically, and threw up his hands.

"No further questions, my lord."

"Do you intend calling any further witnesses, Mr. Khorir Craig knew that the next witness should have been Timon Nbebi, but unaccountably Abel Khori passed over him and called instead the trooper who had been knocked down by the Land-Rover.

Craig felt an uneasy little chill Of doubt at the change in the prosecution's tactics. Did the prosecutor want to protect Captain Nbebi from cross examination? Did he want to prevent Mr. Petal from pursuing the question of a visit by Timon Nbebi to the rehabilitation centre? If this was so, the implications were so Craig forced himself to put his doubts unthinkable, aside.

The necessity for all questions and replies to be translated made the entire court process long-drawn-out and tedious, so it was only on the third day that Craig was called to the witness stand.

and before Abel after Craig had taken the oath, illation, he glanced Khori had begun his exam towards the dock. Tungata Zebiwe was watching him intently and as their eyes locked, Tungata made a sign with his right hand.

In the old days when they had worked together as rangers in the Game Department, Craig and Tungata had developed this sign language to a high degree. During the dangerous work of closing in on a breeding herd to begin the bloody elephant culls during which it had been their -populating duty to destroy surplus animals that were over the reserves, or when they were stalking a marauding cattle-killing pride of lions, they had communicated silently and swiftly with this private language.

Now Tungata gave him the clenched fist, his powerful black fingers closing over the clear pink of his palm in the sign that said "Beware! Extreme danger." The last time Tungata had given him that sign, he had had only microseconds to turn and meet the charge of the enraged lung-wounded lioness as she came grunting in bloody pink explosive gasps of breath out of heavy brush cover, launching herself likea golden thunderbolt upon him, so that even though the bullet from his458 magnum had smashed through her heart, her momentum had hurled Craig off his feet.

Now Tungata's sign made his nerves tingle and the hair on his forearms rise, at the memory of danger past and the promise of danger present. Was it a threat or a warning, Craig wondered, staring at Tungata. He could not be certain, for Tungata was now expressionless and unmoving.

Craig gave him the signal, "Query? I do not understand," but Tungata ignored it, and Craig abruptly realized that he had missed Abel Khori's opening question.

"I'm sorry will you repeat that?" Swiftly Abel Khori led him through his questions.

"Did you see the driver of the truck make any signal as the Mercedes approached?"

"Yes, he flashed his lights."

"And what was the response?"

"The Mercedes stopped and two of the occupants left the vehicle and went to speak with the driver of the truck."

"In your opinion, was this a prearranged meeting?"

"Objection, your lordship, the witness cannot know that."

"Sustained. The witnes will disregard the question."

"We come now to ydhr gallant rescue of Miss Jay from the evil clutches of tl* accused."

"Objection the word "evil"."

"You will discontinue the use of the adjective "evil"."

"As your lordship pleases." After that hand-signal, and during the rest of Craig's testimony, Tungata Zebiwe sat immovable as a figure carved in the granite of Matabeleland, with his chin sunk in his chest, but his eyes never left Craig's face.

As Mr. Petal rose to cross-examine, he moved for the first time, leaning forward to rumble a few terse words. Mr. Petal seemed to protest, but Tungata made a commanding gesture.

"No questions, your lordship," Mr. Petal acquiesced, and sank back in his seat, freeing Craig to leave the witness box without harassment.

Sally-Anne was the last of the prosecution witnesses and, after Peter Fungabera, perhaps the most telling.

She was still limping with her sprained ankle, so that Abel Khori hurried forward to help her into the witness box. The dark shadow of the bruise on her neck was the only blemish on her skin, and she gave her evidence without hesitation in a clear pleasing voice.

"When the accused seized you, what were your feelings?"

"I was in fear of my life."

"You say the accused struck you. Where did the blow land?"

"Here on my neck you can see the bruise."

"You state that the accused aimed the stolen rifle at Mr. Mellow. What was your reaction?

will you tell the court whether you sustained any tAnd other injuries." Abel Khori made the most of such a lovely witness, and very wisely, Mr.

Petal once again declined to crossexamine.

The prosecution closed its case on the evening of the third day, leaving Craig troubled and depressed.

ourite steakhouse, and He and Sally-Anne ate at her fay a bottle of good Cape wine did not cheer him.

even "That business about the driver never having met Tungata before, and being released only on a promise to drive the truck-"

"You didn't believe that?" Sally-Anne scoffed. "Even the judge made no secret of how far-fetched he thought that I was.

After he dropped her at her apartment, Craig walked alone through the deserted streets, feeling lonely and AA

betrayed though he could not find a logical reason for the feeling.

r Joseph Petal QC opened his defence by calling Tungata Zebiwe's chauffeur.

He was a heavily built Matabele, although young, already running to fat, with a round face that should have been jovial and smiling, but was now troubled and clouded. His head had been freshly shaved, and he never looked at Tungata once during his time on the witness stand.

"On the night of your arrest, what orders did Minister Zebiwe give you?"

"Nothing. He told me nothing." Mr. Petal looked genuinely puzzled and consulted his notes.

"Did he not tell you where to drive? Did you not know where you were going?"

"He said "Go straight", "Turn left here,"

"Turn right here"," the driver muttered, "I did not know where we were going." Obviously Mr. Petal was not expecting this reply.

"Did Minister Zebiwe not order you to drive to Tuti Mission?"

"Oh ection, your lordship."

"Do not lead the witness, Mr. Petal." Mr. Joseph Petal was clearly thinking on his feet. He shuffled his papers, glanced at Tungata Zebiwe, who sat completely impassive, and then switched his line of questioning.

"Since the night of your arrest, where have you been?"

"In prison."

"Did you have any visitors?"

"MY wife came."

"No others?" "No. "The chauffeur ducked his head defensively.

"What are those marks on your head? Were you beaten?" For the first time Craig noticed the dark lumps on the chauffeur's shaven pate.

"Your lordship, I object most strenuously," Abel Khori cried plaintively.

"Mr. Petal, what is the purpose of this line of questioning?" Mr. justice Domashawa demanded ominously.

"My lord, I am trying to find why the witness's evidence conflicts with his previous statement to the police." Mr. Petal struggled to obtain a clear reply from the sulky and uncooperative witness, and finally gave up with a gesture of resignation.

"No further questions, your lordship." And Abel Khori rose smiling to cross-examine.

"So the truck flashed its lights at you?"

"Yes."

"And what happened then?" I do not understand."

"Did anybody in the Mercedes say or do anything when you saw the truck?"

"My lord-2 Mr. Petal began.

"I think that is a fair question the witness will answer." all, and The chauffeur frowned with the effort of rec "Comrade Minister Zebiwe said, "There it then mumbled, is pull over and stop.""

""There it is'T Abel Khori repeated slowly and clearly.

""Pull over and stop'I That is what the accused said when he saw the truck, is that correct?"

"Yes. He said it." No further questions, your lordship." all Sarah Tandiwe Nyoni." Mr. Joseph Petal introduced his surprise witness, and Abel Khori frowned and conferred agitatedly with his two assistant prosecutors. One of them rose, bowed to the bench and hurriedly left the court.

Sarah Tandiwe Nyoni entered the witness stand and took the oath in perfect English. Her voice was melodious and sweet, her manner as reserved and shy as the day that Craig and Sally-Anne had first met her at Tuti Mission.

She wore a lime-green cotton dress with a white collar and simple low-heeled white shoes. Her hair was elaborately braided in traditional style, and the moment she finished reading the oath, she turned her soft gaze onto Tungata Zebiwe in the dock. He neither smiled nor altered his expression, but his right hand, resting on the railing of the dock, moved slightly, and Craig realized that he was using the secret sign-language to the girl.

"Courage!" said that signal. "I am with you!" And the girl took visible strength and confidence from it. She lifted her chin and faced Mr. Petal squarely.

"Please state your name."

"I am Sarah Tandiwe Nyoni," she replied.

Tandiwe Nyoni, her Matabele name, meant' Beloved Bird'and Craig translated softly to Sally-Anne.

"It suits her perfectly," she whispered back.

"What is your profession?"

"I am the headmistress'bf Tuti State Primary School."

"Will you tell the c&lrt your qualifications." Joseph Petal established swiftly that she was an educated and responsible young woman. Then he went on: "Do you know the accused, Tungata Zebiwe?" She looked at Tungata again before answering, and her face seemed to glow. "I do, oh yes, I do, she whispered huskily.

"Please speak up, my dear." 11 know him."

"Did he ever visit you at Tuti Mission Station?"

"Yes" she nodded.

"How often?"

"The Comrade Minister is an important and busy man, I am a school-teacher-" Tungata made a small gesture of denial with his right hand. She saw it and a little smile formed on her perfectly sculptured lips.

"He came as often as he could, but not as often as I would have wished."

"Were you expecting him on the night in question?" I was." "Why?) "We had spoken together, on the telephone, the previous morning.

He promised me he would come. He said he would drive up, and arrive before midnight." The smile faded from her lips, and her eyes grew dark and desolate. "I waited until daylight but he did not come."

"As far as you know was there any particular reason that he was going to visit you that weekend?"

"Yes." Sarah's cheeks darkened, and Sally-Anne was fascinated. She had never seen a black girl blush before.

"Yes, he said he wished to speak to my rathe r. I had arranged the meeting."

"Thank you, my dear," said Joseph Petal gently.

During Mr. Petal's examination, the prosecutor's assistant had slipped back into his seat and handed Abel Khori a handwritten sheet of notes. Abel Khori was holding these in his hand as he rose to crossexamine.

"Miss Nyoni, can you tell the court the meaning of the Sindebele word, Isifebi?" Tungata Zebiwe growled softly and began to rise, but the police guard laid a hand on his shoulder to restrain him.

it means a harlot," Sarah answered quietly.

"Does it not also mean an unmarried woman who lives with a man-" "My lord!" Joseph Petal's plea was belated but outraged, and Mr. Justice Domashawa sustained it.

"Miss Nyoni," Abel Khori tried again. "Do you love the accused? Please speak up. We cannot hear you." This time Sarah's voice was firm, almost defiant. "I do."

"Would you do anything for him?"

"I

would."

"Would you lie to save him?"

"I object, your lordship. "Joseph Petal leapt to his feet.

"And I withdraw the question." Abel Khori forestalled the judge's intervention. "Let me rather put it to you, Miss Nyoni, that the accused had asked you to provide a warehouse at your school where illegal ivory and leopard skins could be stored!"

"No." Sarah shook her head. "He never would-"

"And that he had asked you to supervise the loading of those tusks into a truck, and the despatch of the truck-" "No! NoVshe cried.

"When you spoke to" him on the telephone, did he not order you to prepare a shipment of-2

"No! He is a good man, Sarah sobbed. "A great and good man. He would never have done that."

"No further questions, your lordship." Looking very pleased with himself, A441 Khori sat down and his assistant leaned over to whisp! his congratulations.

"call the accusd, the Minister Tungata Zebiwe, to the stand." That was a risky move on Mr. Petal's part. Even as a layman, Craig could see that Abel Khori had shown himself to be a hardy scrapper.

Joseph Petal began by establishing Tungata's position in the community, his services to the revolution, his frugal life-style.

"Do you own any fixed property?"

"I own a house in Harare." (Will you tell the court how much you paid for it?"

"Fourteen thousand dollars."

"That is not a great deal to pay for a house, is it?"

"It is not a great deal of house." Tungata's reply was deadpan, and even the judge smiled.

"A motor-car?"

"I have a ministerial vehicle at my disposal." "Foreign bank accounts?"

"None."

"Wives?"

"None--2 he glanced in the direction of Sarah Nyoni who sat in the back row of the gallery" yet," he finished.

"Common-law wives? Other women?"

"My elderly aunt lives in my home. She supervises my household."

"Coming now to the night in question. Can you tell the court why you were on the Karoi road?"

"I

was on my way to Tuti Mission Station."

"For what reason?"

"To visit Miss Nyoni and to speak to her father on a personal matter."

"Your visit had been arranged?"

"Yes, in a telephone conversation with Miss Nyoni."

"You have visited her before on more than one occasion?" "That is so."

"What accommodation did you use on those occasions?" "There was a thatched ffidlu set aside for my use."

"A hut? With a sleeping-mat and open fire?"

"Yes.

"You did not find such lodgings beneath you?"

"On the contrary, I enjoy the opportunity of returning to the traditional ways of my people."

"Did anyone share these lodgings with you?"

"My driver and my bodyguards."

"Miss Nyoni did she visit you in these lodgings?"

"That would have been contrary to our custom and tribal law."

"The prosecutor used the word isifebi what do you make of that?"

"He might aptly apply that word to women of his acquaintance. I know nobody whom it might fit." Again the judge smiled, and the prosecutor's assistant nudged Abel Khori playfully.

"Now, Mr. Minister, was anybody else aware of your intention of visiting Tuti Mission?"

"I made no secret of my intention. I wrote it down in MY desk-diary."

"Do you have that diary?"

"No. I requested my secretary to hand it over to the defence. It is, however, missing from my desk."

"I see. When you ordered your chauffeur to prepare the car, did you inform him of your destination?"

"I did."

"He says you did not."

"Then his memory is at fault or has been affected." Tungata shrugged.

"Very well. Now, on the night that you were driving on the road between Karoi ajl Tud Mission, did you encounter any other vehicle?", "Yes. There was a- truck parked in darkness, off the road, but facing in our direction."

"Will you tell the court what transpired then?"

"The truck-driver switched on his lights, and then flicked them three times.

At the same time he drove forward into the road."

"In such a way as to force your car to halt?"

"That is correct."

"What did you do then?"

"I

said to my driver, "Pull over but be careful. This could be an ambush.""

"You were not expecting to meet the truck then?"

"I was not." "Did you say, "There it is! Pull over!"I "I did not."

"What did you mean by the words: "This could be an ambush'T "Recently, many vehicles have been attacked by armed bandits, shufta, especially on lonely roads at night."

"So what were your feelings?"

"I was anticipating trouble." "What happened then?"

"Two of my bodyguards left the Mercedes, and went to speak to the driver of the truck."

"From where you were seated in the Mercedes, could you see the truck-driver?"

"Yes. He was a complete stranger to me. I had never seen him before."

"What was your reaction to this?"

"I was by this time extremely wary."

"Then what happened?" "Suddenly there were other headlights on the road behind us. A voice on a bull-horn ordering my men to surrender and throw down their arms. My Mercedes was surrounded by armed men and I was forcibly dragged from it."

"Did you recognize any of these men?"

"Yes. When I was pulled from the Mercedes, I recognized General Fungabera."

"Did this allay your suspicions?"

"On the contrary, I was now convinced that I was in danger of my life."

"Why was that, Mr. Minister?"

"General Fungabera commands a brigade which is notorious for its ruthless acts against prominent Matabele-"

"I object, your lordship the Third Brigade is a unit of the regular army of the state, and General Fungabera a well-known and respected officer, "Abel Khori cried.

"The prosecution is totally justified in its objection." The judge was suddenly trembling with anger. "I cannot allow the accused to use this courtroom to attack a prominent soldier and his gallant men. I cannot allow the accused to stand before me and disseminate tribal hatreds and prejudices. Be warned I will not hesitate to find you guilty of gross contempt if you continue in this vein." Joseph Petal took fully thirty seconds to let his witness recover from this tirade.

"You say you felt that your life was in danger?"

"Yes," said Tungata quietly.

"You were strung up and on edge?"

"Yes.) "Did you see the soldiers unloading ivory and furs from the truck?" 11 did."

"What was your reaction?"

"I believed that these would somehow, I was not certain how but I believed they would incriminate me, and be used as an excuse to kill me."

"I object, your lordship," Abet Khori called out.

"I will not warn the accused again," Mr. Justice Domashawa promised threateningly.

"What happened then?"

"Miss Jay left the vehicle in which she was travelling and she came near me. The soldiers were distracted. I believed that this would be my last chance. I took hold of Miss Jay to prevent the soldiers firing and attempted to escape in the Land-Rover." "Thank you, Mr. Minister." Mr. Joseph Petal turned to the judge. "My lord, my witness has had a tiring examination.

May I suggest that the court rise until tomorrow morning to allow him a chance to recover?" Abel Khori was instantly up on his feet, lusting for blood.

"It is barely noon yet, and the accused has been on the stand for less than thirty minutes, and his counsel has dealt with him recte et suaviter. For a trained and hardened soldier, that is a mere bagatelle per se." Abel Khori, in his agitation, lapsed into Latin.

"We will continue, Mr. Petal," said the judge, and Joseph Petalshrugged.

"Your witness, Mr. Khori." Abel Khori was in his element, becoming lyrical and poetic. "You testified that you were in fear of your life but I put it to you that you were attacked by guilt, that you were in deadly fear of retribution, that you were terrified by the prospect of facing the exemplary process of this very people's court, of facing the wrath of that learned and just scarlet, clad figure you now see before you."

"No." That it was nothing more than craven guilty conscience that made you embark on a series of heinous and callous criminal actions-" "No. That is not so."

"When you seized the lovely Miss Jay, did you not use E excessive physical force to twist her young and tender limbs?

Did you not rain brutal blows upon her?"

"I struck her once to prevent her hurling herself from the speeding vehicle and injuring herself seriously."

"Did you not aim a deadly weapon to wit, a military assault rifle which you knew to be loaded, at the person of General Peter Fungabera?"

"I threatened him with the rifle yes, that is true."

"And then you fired deliberately at his nether regions to wit, his abdomen?"

"I did not fire at Fungabera. I aimed to miss him."

"I

put it to you that you tried to murder the general, and only his marvelous reflexes saved him from your attack."

"If I had tried to kill him," said Tungata softly, "he would be dead."

"When you stole the Land-Rover, did you realize that it was state property?

"Did you aim the rifle at Mr. Craig Mellow? And were you only prevented from murdering him by Miss Jay's brave intervention?" For almost another hour Abel Khori flew at the impassive figure in the dock, extracting from him a series of damning admissions, so that when at last Abel Khori sat down, preening likea victorious game cock, Craig judged that Mr. Joseph Petal had paid in heavy coin for any small advantage he might have gained by placing his client on the witness stand.

However, Mr. Petal's closing address was finely pitched to incite sympathy, and to explain and justify Tungata Zebiwe's actions on that night, without flouting the judge's patriotic or tribal instincts in the process.

"I will reserve my judgment until tomorrow," Mr. Justice Domashawa announced, and the court rose, the spectators humming with excited comment as they streamed out into the passage.

Over dinner Sally-Anne admitted, "For the first time in this whole business, I felt so try when Sarah went on the stand she is such a sweet*hild."

"Child? I guess she ois a year or two older than you," Craig chuckled, that' makes you a babe in arms." She ignored his levity and went on seriously, "She so obviously believes in him that for a moment or two even I began to doubt what I knew then, Of course, Abel Khori brought me back to earth." r Justice Domashawa read out his judgment in his precise, old-maidish voice that somehow did not suit the gravity of the subject. Firstly, he covered the events that were common cause between prosecution and defence, and then went on, "The defence has based its case on two main pillars. The first of these is the testimony of Miss Sarah Nyoni that the accused was on his way to what, for want of a better word, we are led to believe was a love-tryst, and that his meeting with the truck was a coincidence or contrived in some unexplained manner by persons unknown.

"Now Miss Nyoni impressed this court as being a naive and unworldly young lady, and by her admission is completely under the influence of the accused. The court has had, perforce, to consider the prosecution's postulation that Miss Nyoni might even have been, in fact, so influenced by the accused as to consent to act as an accomplice in arranging the consignment of contraband.

"In view of the foregoing, the court has rejected the testimony of Miss Nyoni as potentially biased and unreliable "The second pillar of the defence's case rests on the premise that the life of the accused was threatened, or that he believed it to be threatened, by the arresting officers, and in this belief embarked on a series of unreasoned and unreasoning acts of self-protection.

"General Peter Fungabera is an officer of impeccable reputation, a high official of the state. "Me Third Brigade is an elite unit of the state's regular army, its members, although battle-hardened veterans, are disciplined and trained soldiers.

"The court, therefore, categorically rejects the accused's contention that either General Fungabera or his men could have, even in the remotest possibility, constituted a threat to his safety, let alone his life. The court also rejects the contention that the accused believed this to be the case.

"Accordingly, I come to the first charge. Namely, that of trading or dealing in the products of scheduled wild animals. I find the accused guilty as charged and I sentence him to the maximum penalty under the law. Twelve years at hard labour.

"On the second charge of abducting and holding a hostage, I find the accused guilty as charged and I sentence him to ten years at hard labour.

"On the third charge of assault with a deadly weapon, I find the accused guilty and sentence him to six years at hard labour Assault with intent to do grievous bodily harm six years at hard labour.

Attempted murder six years at hard labour I order that these sentences run consecutively and that no part of them be suspended-" Even Abel Khori's head jerked up at that. The sentences totalled forty years. With full remission for good behaviour, Tungata could still expect to serve over thirty years, the rest of his useful life.

At the back of the -court a black woman shrieked in Sindebele, "Babo! The father! They are taking our father from us!" Others took up the cry. "Father of the people!

Our father is dead to us." A man began to sing in a soaring baritone voice.

"Why do you weep, widows of Shangani... Why do you weep, little sons of the Moles, When your' fathers did the king's bidding?" It was one of the ancient fighting songs of the imp is of King Lobengula, and the singer was a man in his prime with a strong intelligent face and a short-cropped, spade shaped beard barely speckled with grey. As he sang, the tears ran down his cheeks into his beard. In another time he might have been an induna of one of the royal imp is

His song was taken up by the men around him, and Mr. justice Domashawa came to his feet in a fury.

"If there is not silence this instant, I will have the court cleared and the offenders charged with contempt," he shouted over the singing, but it was five minutes more of pandemonium before the ushers could restore order.

Through it all, Tungata Zebiwe stood quietly in the dock, with just the barest hint of a mocking smile on his lips. When at last it was over, but before his guards led him away, he gazed across the courtroom at Craig Mellow and he made a last hand-signal. They had only used it playfully before, perhaps after a hard-contested bout of wrestling or some other friendly competition. Now Tungata used it in deadly earnest. The sign meant: "We are equal the score is levelled," and Craig understood completely. Craig had lost his leg and Tungata had lost his freedom. They were equal.

He wanted to call out to the man who had once been his friend that it was a sorry bargain, not of his choosing, but Tungata had turned away. His warders were trying to lead him out of the dock, but Tungata pulled back, his head turning as he searched for someone else in the crowded court.

Sarah Nyoni climbed up onto her bench, and over the heads of the crowd she reached out both hands towards him. Now Tungata made his last hand signal to her. Craig read it clearly. "Take cover! Tungata ordered her. "Hide your se If. You are in danger." By the altered expression on her face, Craig saw that the girl had understood the command, and then the warders were dragging Tungata Zebiwe down the stairs that led to the prison cells below ground.

raig Mellow shoved his way through the singing, lamenting crowds of Matabele who overflowed the buildings of the Supreme Court and disrupted the lunch-hour traffic in the broad causeway that it fronted.

He dragged Sally-Anne by her wrist and brusquely shouldered aside the press photographers who tried to block his way.

In the car park he boosted Sally-Anne into the front seat of the Land-Rover, and ran around to the driver's side, threatening with a raised fist the last and most persistent photographer in his path. He drove directly to her apartment and halted at the front door. He did not turn off the engine.

"And now?" Sally' Anne asked.

"I don't understand the question, "he snapped.

"Hey!" she said. "I'm your friend remember me?"

"I'm sorry." He slumped over the wheel. J feel rotten plain bloody rotten." She did not reply, but her eyes were full of compassion for him.

"Forty years," he whispered. "I never expected that. If only I'd known-"

"There was nothing you could do then, or now." He balled his fist and hammered it on the steering wheel "The poor bastard forty years!"

"Are you coming up?" she asked softly, but he shook his head.

"I have to get back to King's Lynn. I've neglected everything while this awful bloody business has been going on."

"You're going right now?" She was startled.

"Yes."

"Alone?" she asked, and he nodded.

"I want to be alone."

"So you can torture yourself." Her voice firmed. "And I'll be damned if I'll allow that. I'm coming with you. Wait! I am going to throw some things in a bag you needn't even kill the engine, I'll be that quick." She was five minutes, and then ran back down the stairs lugging her rucksack and her camera bag. She slung them into the back of the Land-Rover.

"Okay, let's go." They spoke very little on the long journey, but soon Craig was thankful to have her beside him, grateful for her smile when he glanced at her, for the touch of her hand on his when she sensed the black mood too strong upon him, and for her undemanding silence.

They drove up the hills of King's Lynn in the dusk.

Joseph had seen them from afar, and was waiting on the front veranda.

"I see you, Nkosazana." From their first meeting Joseph had taken an instant liking to Sally-Anne. Already she was his "little mistress" and his welcoming grin kept breaking through his solemn dignity as he ordered his servants to unload her meagre luggage.

"I run bath for you very hot."

"That will be marvelous, Joseph." After her bath she came back to the veranda and Craig went to the drinks table and mixed a whisky for her the way she liked it, and another one for himself that was mainly Scotch and very little soda.

"Here's to judge Domashawa," he lifted his glass ironically, "and to Mashona justice. All forty years of it." Sally-Anne refused wine at dinner despite his protest.

"Baron Rothschild would be frightfully affronted. His very best stuff. My last bottle, smuggled in personally." Craig's In gaiety was forced.

After dinner he lifted the brandy decanter and as he was about to pour, she said, "Craig, please don't get drunk." He paused with the decanter over the snifter and studied her face.

"No," she shook her head. "I'm not being bossy I'm being entirely selfish. Tonight I want you sober." He set down the decanter, pushed back his chair and came around the table to her. She stood up to meet him.

He paused in front of her. "Oh, my darling, I've waited so "I know, "she whispered. "Me too." He took her carefully into his arms, something precious and fragile, and felt her changing slowly. She seemed to soften, and her body became malleable, shaping itself to his own, so he could feel her against him from knees to firm young bosom, the heat of her soaking quickly through their thin clothing.

He bowed his head as she lifted her chin and their mouths came together. Her lips were cool and dry, but almost immediately he felt the heat rising in them and they parted, moist and sweet as a sun-warmed fig freshly plucked and splitting open with its ripe juices.

He looked into her eyes as he kissed her, and marvelled at the colours and the patterns that formed a nimbus around her pupils, green shot through wid-i golden arrowheads, and then her eyelids fluttered down over them, and her long crisp lashes interlocked. He closed his own eyes, and the earth seemed to tilt and swing under him, he rode it easily, holding her to him, but not trying yet to explore her body, content with t4b wonder of her mouth, and the velvet feel of her tongge against his.

Joseph opened the door from the kitchen, and stood for a moment with the coffee tray in his hands, and then he smiled smugly and drew back, closing the door behind him.