Leopard Hunts in Darkness - Smith Wilbur - Страница 21
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"Good boy, "Jock nodded. "No sense messing with those Matabele shufta bandits the lot of them."
"Did you hear from Zarich?" Jock shook his head. "Only sent the telex at nine o'clock local time. They are an hour behind us."
"Can I use your telephone? A few private calls?"
"Local? I don't want you chatting up your birds in New York at my expense."
"Of course."
"Right as long as you mind the shop for me, while I'm out." Craig installed himself at Jock's desk, and consulted the cryptic notes that he had made from Henry Pickering's file.
His first call was to the American Embassy in Harare, the capital three hundred miles north-east of Bulawayo.
"Mr. Morgan Oxford, your cultural attache, please," he asked the operator.
"Oxford." The accent was crisp Boston and Ivy League.
"Craig Mellow. A mutual friend asked me to call you and give you his regards."
"Yes, I was expecting you. Won't you come in here any time and say hello?"
"I'd enjoy that," Craig told him, and hung up.
Henry Pickering was as good as his word. Any message handed to Oxford would go out in the diplomatic bag, and be on Pickering's desk within twelve hours.
His next call was to the office of the minister of tourism and information, and he finally got through to the minister's secretary. Her attitude changed to warm co-operation when he spoke to her in Sindebele.
"The comrade minister is in Harare for the sitting of Parliament," she told him, and gave Craig his private number at the House.
Craig got through to a parliamentary secretary on his fourth attempt. The telephone system had slowly begun deteriorating, he noticed. The blight of all developing countries was lack of skilled artisans; prior to independence all linesmen had been white, and since then most of them had taken the gap.
This secretary was Mashona and insisted on speaking English as proof of her sophistication.
"Kindly state the nature of the business to be discussed." She was obviously reading from a printed form.
"Personal. I am acquainted with the comrade minister."
"Ah yes. P-e-r-s-o-n-n-e-l." The secretary spelled it out laboriously as she wrote it.
"No that's p-e-r-s-o-n-a-I," Craig corrected her patiently. He was beginning to adjust to the pace of Africa again.
"I will consult the comrade minister's schedule. You will be obliged to telephone again." Craig consulted his list. Next was the government registrar of companies, and this time he was lucky. He was put through to an efficiiInt and helpful clerk who made a note of his requirem%nts.
"The Share Register, Articles and Memorandum of Association of the company trading as Rholands Ltd, formerly known as Rhodesian Lands and Mining Ltd." He heard the disapproval in the clerk's tone of voice. "Rhodesian" was a dirty word nowadays, and Craig made a mental resolution to change the company's name, if ever he had the power to do so. "Zimlands" would sound a lot better to an African ear.
"I will have Roneoed copies ready for you to collect by four o'clock," the clerk assured him. "The search fee will be fifteen dollars." Craig's next call was to the surveyor general's office, and again he arranged for copies of documents this time the titles to the company properties the ranches King's Lynn, Queen's Lynn and the Chizarira estates.
Then there were fourteen other names on his list, all of whom had been ranching in Matabeleland when he left, close neighbours and friends of his family, those that grandpa Bawu had trusted and liked.
Of the fourteen he could contact only four, the others had all sold up and taken the long road southwards. The remaining families sounded genuinely pleased to hear from him. "Welcome back, Craig. We have all read the book and watched it on TV." But they clammed up immediately he started asking questions. "Damned telephone leaks likea sieve," said one of them. "Come out to the ranch for dinner.
Stay the night. Always a bed for you, Craig. Lord knows, there aren't so many of the old faces around any more." Jock Daniels returned in the middle of the afternoon, red-faced and sweating. "Still burning up my telephone?" he growled. "Wonder if the bottle store has another bottle of that Dimple Haig." Craig responded to this subtlety by crossing the road and bringing back the pinch bottle in a brown paper bag
"I forgot that you have to have a cast-iron liver to live in this country." He unscrewed the cap and dropped it into the waste-paper basket.
At ten minutes to five o'clock he telephoned the minister's parliamentary office again.
"The Comrade Minister Tungata Zebiwe has graciously consented to meet you at ten o'clock on Friday morning.
He can allow you twenty minutes."
"Please convey my sincere thanks to the minister." That gave Craig three days to kill and meant he would have to drive the three hundred miles to Harare.
"No reply from Zurich?" He sweetened Jock's glass.
"If you made me an offer like that, I wouldn't bother to answer either," Jock grumped, as he took the bottle from Craig's hand and added a little more to the glass.
Over the next few days Craig availed himself of the invitations to visit Bawu's old friends, and was smothered with traditional old Rhodesian hospitality.
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