The Leopard Hunts in Darkness Page 24

  ‘What’s going on, Sergeant?’ Craig’s anger resurfaced, and this time the tall sergeant’s gesture was unmistakably hostile.

  Craig and Sally-Anne backed off before him into the dining-room and stood in the centre of the room beside the teak refectory table, facing the threatening rifle, Craig holding her protectively.

  Two troopers slipped in through the front door, and reported to the sergeant in a gabble of Shona that Craig could not follow. The sergeant acknowledged with a nod and gave them an order. They spread out obediently along the wall, their weapons turned unmistakably onto the dishevelled couple in the centre of the room.

  ‘Where are the lights?’ the sergeant asked, and when Craig told him, he went to the switch and white light flooded the room.

  ‘What is going on here, Sergeant?’ Craig repeated, angry and uncertain and starting to be afraid for Sally-Anne again.

  The sergeant ignored the question, and strode to the door. He called to one of the troopers on the lawn, and the man came at a run. He carried a portable radio transmitter strapped on his back, with the scorpion-tail aerial sticking up over his shoulder. The sergeant spoke softly into the handset of the radio and then came back into the room.

  They waited now in an unmoving tableau. To Craig it seemed like an hour passed in silence, but it was less than five minutes before the sergeant cocked his head slightly, listening. Craig heard it, the beat of an engine, in a different tempo from that of the diesel generator. It firmed, and Craig knew that it was a Land-Rover.

  It came up the driveway, headlights swept the windows, brakes squeaked and gravel crunched. The engine was cut, doors banged and then there were the footsteps of a group of men crossing the veranda.

  General Peter Fungabera led his staff in through the french doors. He wore his beret pulled down over one eye and a matching silk scarf at his throat. Except for the pistol in its webbing holster at his side, he was armed only with the leather-covered swagger-stick.

  Behind him Captain Nbebi was tall and round-shouldered, his eyes inscrutable behind the steel-rimmed spectacles. He carried a leather map-case in his hand, and a machine pistol on a sling over his shoulder.

  ‘Peter!’ Craig’s relief was tempered by wariness. It was all too contrived, too controlled, too menacing. ‘Some of my people have been killed. My induna is out there somewhere, badly wounded.’

  ‘There have been many enemy casualties,’ Peter Fungabera nodded.

  ‘Enemy?’ Craig was puzzled.

  ‘Dissidents,’ Peter nodded again. ‘Matabele dissidents.’

  ‘Dissidents!’ Craig stared at him. ‘Shadrach a dissident? That’s crazy – he’s a simple, uneducated cattleman, and doesn’t give a damn for politics—’

  ‘Things are often not what they seem.’ Peter Fungabera pulled back the chair at the head of the long table and placed one foot on it, leaning an elbow on his knee. Timon Nbebi placed the leather map-case on the table in front of him and stood back, in a position of guard behind his shoulder, holding the machine pistol by the grip.

  ‘Will somebody please tell me what in the hell is happening here, Peter?’ Craig was exasperated and nervous. ‘Somebody attacked my village – they’ve killed some of my people. God alone knows how many – why don’t you get after them?’

  ‘The shooting is over,’ Peter Fungabera told him. ‘We have cleaned out the vipers’ nest of traitors that you were breeding on this colonial-style estate of yours.’

  ‘What on earth are you talking about?’ Craig was now truly flustered. ‘You cannot be serious!’

  ‘Serious?’ Peter smiled easily. He straightened up and placed both feet back on the floor. He walked across to face them. ‘A puppy,’ he was still smiling. ‘How adorable.’

  He took Buster from Sally-Anne’s arms before she realized his intentions. He strolled back to the head of the table, fondling the little animal, scratching behind its ear. It was still half-asleep and it made little whimpering sounds, nuzzling against him, instinctively searching for its mother’s teat.

  ‘Serious?’ Peter repeated the original question. ‘I want to impress upon you just how serious I am.’

  He dropped the puppy onto the stone-flagged floor. It fell on its back, and lay stunned. He placed his boot upon its chest and crushed it with his full weight. The puppy screamed once only as its chest collapsed.

  ‘That is how serious I am.’ He was no longer smiling. ‘Your lives are as valuable to me as this animal was.’

  Sally-Anne made a small moaning sound and turned away, burying her face in Craig’s chest. She heaved with nausea, and Craig could feel her fighting to control it. Peter Fungabera kicked the soft yellow corpse into the fireplace and sat down.

  ‘We have wasted enough time on the theatricals,’ he said, and opened the leather map-case, spreading the documents on the table in front of him.

  ‘Mr Mellow, you have been acting as an agent provocateur in the pay of the notorious American CIA—’

  ‘That’s a bloody lie!’ Craig shouted, and Peter ignored the outburst.

  ‘Your local control was the American agent Morgan Oxford at the United States Embassy, while your central control and paymaster was a certain Henry Pickering, who masquerades as a senior official of the World Bank in New York. He recruited both you and Miss Jay—’

  ‘That’s not true!’

  ‘Your remuneration was sixty thousand dollars per annum, and your mission was to set up a centre of subversion in Matabeleland, which was financed by CIA monies channelled to you in the form of a loan from a CIA-controlled subsidiary of the World Bank – the sum allocated was five million dollars.’

  ‘Christ, Peter, that’s nonsense, and you know it.’

  ‘During the rest of this interrogation, you will address me as either “Sir” or “General Fungabera”, is that clear to you?’ He turned away to listen as there was sudden activity outside the french doors. It sounded like the arrival of a convoy of light trucks, from which more troops were disembarking with orders being called in Shona. Through the glass doors, Craig saw a dozen troopers carrying heavy crates up onto the veranda.

  Peter Fungabera glanced enquiringly at Timon Nbebi, who nodded in confirmation of the unspoken question.

  ‘Right!’ Peter Fungabera turned back to face Craig. ‘We can continue. You opened negotiations with known Matebele traitors, using your fluent knowledge of the language and the character of these intractable people—’

  ‘You can’t name one, because there aren’t any.’

  Peter Fungabera nodded to Timon Nbebi. He shouted an order.

  A man was led into the room between two troopers. He was barefooted, dressed only in ragged khaki shorts, and was emaciated to the point where his head appeared grotesquely huge. His pate was shaven and covered with lumps and fresh scabs, his ribs latticed with the scars of beatings – probably the wicked hippo-hide whips called sjamboks had been used on him.

  ‘Do you know this white man?’ Peter Fungabera demanded of him. The man stared at Craig. His eyes had an opaque dullness, as though they had been sprinkled with dust.

  ‘I’ve never seen him—’ Craig started, and then broke off as he recognized him. It was Comrade Dollar, the youngest and most truculent of the men from Zambezi Waters.

  ‘Yes?’ Peter Fungabera invited, smiling again. ‘What were you about to say, Mr Mellow?’

  ‘I want to see somebody from the British High Commission,’ Craig said, ‘and Miss Jay would like to make a telephone call to the United States Embassy.’

  ‘Of course,’ Peter Fungabera nodded. ‘All in good time, but first we must complete what we have already begun.’ He swung back to Comrade Dollar. ‘Do you know the white man?’

  Comrade Dollar nodded. ‘He gave us money.’

  ‘Take him away,’ Peter Fungabera ordered. ‘Care for him well, and give him something to eat. Now, Mr Mellow, do you still deny any contact with the subversives?’ He did not wait for a reply, but went on smoothly, ‘You built up an arsenal of
weapons on this estate to be used against the elected people’s government in a coup d’état which would place a pro-American dictator—’

  ‘No,’ Craig said quietly. ‘I have no weapons.’

  Peter Fungabera sighed. ‘Your denials are pointless – and tiresome.’ Then to the tall Shona sergeant, ‘Bring the two of them.’

  He led the way onto the wide veranda, to where his men had stacked the crates.

  ‘Open them,’ he commanded, and his men knocked back the clips and lifted the lids.

  Craig recognized the weapons that were packed into them. They were American Armalite 5.56 mm AR 18 automatic rifles. Six to the case, and brand-new, still in their factory grease.

  ‘These are nothing to do with me.’ Craig was at last able to deny it with vehemence.

  ‘You are testing my patience.’ Peter Fungabera turned to Timon Nbebi. ‘Fetch the other white man.’

  Hans Groenewald, Craig’s overseer, was dragged from the cab of one of the parked trucks, and led to the veranda. His hands were manacled behind his back, and he was terrified. His broad tanned face seemed to have deflated into heavy wrinkles and folds of loose skin like a diseased bloodhound, and his dark suntan had faded to the colour of creamed coffee. His eyes were bloodshot and rheumy, like those of a drunkard.

  ‘You stored these weapons in the tractor sheds on this ranch?’ Peter Fungabera asked, and Groenewald’s reply was inaudible.

  ‘Speak up, man.’

  ‘Yes I stored them, sir.’

  ‘On whose orders?’

  Groenewald looked piteously at Craig, and suddenly Craig’s heart was sheathed in ice, and the cold spread down into his belly and his loins.

  ‘Whose orders?’ Peter Fungabera repeated patiently.

  ‘Mr Mellow’s orders, sir.’

  ‘Take him away.’

  As the guards led him back to the truck, Groenewald’s head was screwed around, his eyes still on Craig’s face, his expression harrowed. Suddenly he shouted, ‘I’m sorry, Mr Mellow, I’ve got a wife and kids—’

  One of the guards swung the butt of his rifle into Groenewald’s stomach, just below the ribs. Groenewald gasped, and doubled over. He would have fallen but they seized his arms and swung him up into the cab. The driver of the truck started the engine and the big machine roared away down the hill.

  Peter Fungabera led them back into the dining-room and resumed his seat at the head of the table. While he rearranged and studied the papers from the map-case, he ignored Craig and Sally-Anne. They were forced to stand against the opposite wall, a trooper on each side of them, and the silence stretched out. Even though Craig realized this silence was deliberate, he wanted to break it, to shout out his innocence, to protest against the web of lies and half-truths and distortions in which they were being slowly enmeshed.

  Beside him Sally-Anne stood upright, gripping her own hands at waist level to prevent them trembling. Her face had a sick greenish hue, under a light sheen of sweat, and she kept turning her eyes towards the fireplace where the puppy’s crushed carcass lay like a discarded toy.

  At last Peter Fungabera pushed the papers aside and rocked back in his chair, tapping lightly on the table-top with his swagger-stick.

  ‘A hanging matter,’ he said, ‘a capital offence for both you and Miss Jay—’

  ‘It has nothing to do with her.’ Craig put a protective arm around her shoulders.

  ‘Women’s lower organs are less able to withstand the downward shock of the hangman’s drop,’ Peter Fungabera remarked. ‘The effect can be quite bizarre – or at least, so I am told.’ It conjured up an image that sickened Craig, saliva of nausea flooded his mouth. He swallowed it down and could not speak.

  ‘Fortunately, it need not come to that. The choice will be yours.’

  Peter rolled the swagger-stick lightly between his fingers. Craig found himself staring fixedly at Peter’s hands. The palms and insides of his long powerful fingers were a soft delicate pink.

  ‘I believe that you are the dupes of your imperialistic masters.’ Peter smiled again. ‘I’m going to let you go.’

  Both their heads jerked up, and they watched his face.

  ‘Yes, you look disbelieving, but I mean it. Personally I have grown quite fond of both of you. To have you hanged would give me no special pleasure. Both of you possess artistic talents which it would be wasteful to terminate, and from now on you will be unable to do any further harm.’

  Still they were silent, beginning to hope, and yet fearful, sensing that it was all part of a cruel cat’s game.

  ‘I am prepared to make you an offer. If you make a clean breast of it, a full and unreserved confession, I will have you escorted to the border, with your travel documents and any readily portable possessions and items of value you choose. I will have you set free, to go and trouble me and my people no more.’

  He waited, smiling, and the swagger-stick went tap tap tap on the table-top, like a dripping faucet. It distracted Craig. He found himself unable to think clearly. It had all happened too swiftly. Peter Fungabera had kept him off balance, shifting and changing his attack. He had to have time to pull himself together, and to begin thinking clearly and logically again.

  ‘A confession?’ he blurted. ‘What kind of confession? One of your exhibitions – before a people’s court? A public humiliation?’

  ‘No, I don’t think we need go that far,’ Peter Fungabera assured him. ‘I will need only a written statement from you, an account of your crimes and the machinations of your masters. The confession will be properly witnessed, and then you will be escorted to the border and set at liberty. All very straightforward, simple and, if I may be allowed to say so, very civilized and humane.’

  ‘You will, of course, prepare my confession for me to sign?’ Craig asked bitterly, and Peter Fungabera chuckled.

  ‘How very perceptive of you.’ He selected one of the documents from the pile in front of him. ‘Here it is. You need only fill in the date and sign it.’

  Even Craig was surprised at that.

  ‘You’ve had it typed already?’

  Nobody replied, and Captain Nbebi brought the document to him.

  ‘Please read it, Mr Mellow,’ he invited.

  There were three typewritten foolscap sheets, much of them filled with denunciations of his ‘imperialistic masters’ and the hysterical cant of the extreme left. But in this mish mash, like plums in a stodgy pudding, were the hard facts of which Craig stood accused.

  He read through it slowly, trying to force his numbed brain to function clearly, but it was all somehow dreamlike and unreal, seeming not really to affect him personally – until he read the words that jerked him fully conscious again. The words were so familiar, so well remembered, and they burned like concentrated acid into the core of his being.

  ‘I fully admit that by my actions I have proved myself to be an enemy of the state and the people of Zimbabwe.’

  It was the exact wording used in another document he had signed, and suddenly he was able to see the design behind it all.

  ‘King’s Lynn,’ he whispered, and he looked up from the typewritten confession at Peter Fungabera. ‘That’s what it’s all about. You are after King’s Lynn!’

  There was silence, except for the tap of the swagger-stick on the table-top. Peter Fungabera did not miss a beat with it, and he was still smiling.

  ‘You had it all worked out from the very beginning. The surety for my loan – you wrote in that clause.’

  The numbness and lethargy sloughed away, and Craig felt his anger rising again within him. He threw the confession on the floor. Captain Nbebi retrieved it, and stood with it held awkwardly in both hands. Craig found himself shaking with rage. He took a step forward towards the elegant figure seated before him, his hands reaching out involuntarily, but the tall Shona sergeant barred his way with the barrel of his rifle held across Craig’s chest.

  ‘You bloody swine!’ Craig hissed at Peter, and there was a little white froth of saliva on
his lower lip. ‘I want the police, I want the protection of the law.’

  ‘Mr Mellow,’ Peter Fungabera replied evenly, ‘in Matabeleland, I am the law. It is my protection that you are being offered.’

  ‘I won’t do it. I won’t sign that piece of dung. I will go to hell first.’

  ‘That might be arranged,’ Peter Fungabera mused softly, and then persuasively, ‘I really do urge you to put aside these histrionics and bow to the inevitable. Sign the paper and we can dispense with any further nastiness.’

  Crude words crowded to Craig’s lips, and with an effort he resisted using them, not wanting to degrade himself in front of them.

  ‘No,’ he said instead. ‘I’ll never sign that thing. You’ll have to kill me first.’

  ‘I give you one last chance to change your mind.’

  ‘No. Never!’

  Peter Fungabera swivelled in his chair towards the tall sergeant.

  ‘I give you the woman,’ he said. ‘You first and then your men, one at a time until they have all had their turn. Here, in this room, on this table.’

  ‘Christ, you aren’t human,’ Craig blurted, and tried to hold Sally-Anne, but the troopers seized him from behind and hurled him back against the wall. One of them pinned him there with the point of a bayonet against his throat.

  The other twisted Sally-Anne’s wrist up between her shoulder blades and held her in front of the sergeant. She began to struggle wildly, but the trooper lifted her until just the toes of her running shoes touched the stone-flagged floor, and her face contorted with pain.

  The sergeant was expressionless, neither leering nor making any obscene gesture. He took the front of Sally-Anne’s T-shirt in both hands, and tore it open from neck to waist. Her breasts swung out. They were very white and tender-looking, their pink tips seemed sensitive and vulnerable.

  ‘I have one hundred and fifty men,’ Peter Fungabera remarked. ‘It will be some time before they have all finished.’