Leopard Hunts in Darkness - Smith Wilbur - Страница 32
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"Okay," she said. "Twenty-two minutes" flying time with this wind." While they flew, and Sally-Anne studied the terrain and compared it to her map, Craig brooded over the Matabele girl's words. Tungabera's puppies." Somehow it sounded menacing, and her use of the name "Kuphela" troubled him even more. There was only one explanation: she was in touch with, and was probably a member of, the group of dissident guerrillas. What had she meant by the leopard and crocodile Oegory, and Fungabera's puppies?
And whatever it was, just how unbiased and reliable would she be if she were a guerrilla sympathizer?
"There is the river," said Sally' Anne as she eased the throttle closed and began a shallow descending turn towards the glint of waters through the forest-tops.
She flew very low aloig the river-bank, and despite the thick cloak of vegetation, picked out herds of game animals, even once with a squeal of glee, the great rocklike hulk of a black rhinoceros in the ebony thickets.
Then suddenly she pointed ahead. "Look at thad" In a loop of the river, there was a strip of open land hedged in with tall riverine trees, where the grass had been grazed likea lawn by the zebra herds who were already raising dust as they galloped away in panic from the approaching aircraft.
"I bet I could get down there," Sally-Anne said and pulled on the flaps, slowing the Cessna and lowering the nose to give herself better forward vision. Then she let down the landing-gear.
She made a series of slow passes over the open ground, each lower than the previous one, until at the fourth pass her wheels were only two or three feet above the ground and they could see each individual hoof print of the zebra in the dusty earth.
"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.
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