Wilbur Smith's Smashing Thrillers (122 page)

The Park was another of Africa’s surprises. Within a few miles of the Lord Delamere bar in the Norfolk Hotel, it was possible to witness wild lions making their kills. The boundary of the Park ran hard up against the Jomo Kenyatta Airport an the grazing herds of antelope did not even raise their heads as the great jet aircraft on final approach howled only a few hundred feet above them.

Daniel had filmed in the Park many times over the past few years. The Park warden was an old friend. They greeted each other in Swahili and shook hands with the double grip, palm then thumb, of brothers. The warden delegated one of his senior rangers to escort and guide them, and gave Daniel carte blanche to go anywhere, even to disregard one of the strictest Park rules and leave the vehicle to film on foot.

The ranger led them to a stand of flat-topped acacia forest beside the river where a huge bull rhino was in ponderous courtship with a female in full oestrus. So absorbed were these antediluvian monsters with each other that Daniel and Bonny were able to leave the combi and creep up close.

Without making it obvious, Daniel was watching Bonny narrowly. The Sony video camera was a top-of-the-range model, sleek in design but heavy even for a man to carry. Daniel wanted to see how she handled it, and he made no offer to assist her. With a sharp warning in Swahili, he prevented the black ranger when be made an attempt to do so.

He had come to know Bonny’s body in the most intimate way over the past weeks. He knew that there was no fat on her and that her limbs were clad in sleek hard muscle. She was in the prime physical condition of a trained athlete. In their playful wrestling contests he had been forced to extend his full strength to subdue her and get her to the bed when she challenged him outrageously to do so. She enjoyed her lovemaking with plenty of rough and tumble.

Still, he was surprised at the ease with which she lifted the camera and her lightness and agility on her feet even in the heat of the acacia forest and over the broken ground. The earth was studded with the spoor of rhino and buffalo that had been deeply trodden into the wet clay of the rainy season and was now baked hard as terracotta. It could turn an unwary ankle and the wait-a-bit thorns were viciously hooked to catch in flesh or cloth. Bonny avoided these snares with ease.

The bull rhino was displaying aggressively for the benefit of the female who had wandered into his territory and who he was now holding captive to his lust. Every time she attempted to reach the boundary of his territory he headed her off, snorting and blowing-like a steam engine, raising gales of dust from under his high stamping feet.

The female swished her great grey backside from side to side in flirtatious refusal of his advances, affording him fleeting whiffs of her heady oestrus odours which drove him into further ecstasies of excitement. Every few minutes he rushed away to scent-mark the borders of his territory and warn off any possible rivals who might be tempted to trespass on this ardent courtship.

As soon as he reached the boundary, he pointed his rump at one of the trees or shrubs which were his signposts, curled his tail up on to his back, unsheathed his massive pink penis from the scabbard of grey wrinkled skin and, aiming backwards between his rear legs, released a cloud of urine with the force of a fire hose that almost flattened the target. Honour satisfied, he rushed back, grunting with passion to the bashful female, who immediately fled towards the furthest boundary of his domain with him in full pursuit.

At the best of times the rhino is afflicted with poor eyesight, but now these two were almost completely blinded by singleminded passion.

Daniel and Bonny had to be alert and ready to run or dodge at any instant, for the rushes of the two inflamed creatures were wild and erratic. Unless they were quick on their feet, they could be trampled by those horny pads or gutted by a random thrust of one of the long polished nose horns. It was hard dangerous work with death only an instant or a foot away, but Bonny showed no fear at all. Rather she seemed elated and excited by the danger. Her eyes shone and the sweat soaked her flaming hair and darkened the back of her shirt as they ran side by side through the forest or ducked behind one of the acacia trunks to avoid a sudden random rush by one of the animals.

Apart from her lack of fear, Bonny showed a physical stamina that impressed Daniel. He was unburdened by the equipment which she carried, and yet he was tiring in the heat and the dust while she seemed quite unaffected.

Suddenly the bull swirled without warning. Perhaps he had detected a breath of their body smell through the clouds of love perfume with which the female was filling his wide flaring nostrils. He charged straight at them and Daniel grabbed her arm. “Freeze!” he whispered urgently, and they sank to their knees and froze into utter stillness.

From a distance of twenty feet the big, creature confronted them, blowing and buffing and snorting. His piggy eyes bloodshot with passion and fury, he peered myopically at them, waiting for some small movement that would convince him that they were neither a rock nor a bush, and thus worthy of the full weight of his jealous wrath.

Daniel tried to hold his breath, but his lungs were scalding from his exertions and he choked to breathe. Suddenly he was aware of a faint electric whirring sound close to his left ear, and he swivelled his eyes in their sockets without moving his head. To his astonishment and incredulity, Bonny was still filming. The lens of the Sony was only feet from the rhino’s nose. They could see right up his wide nostrils to the shiny wet pinkness of his nasal mucosa, and she was filming it.

That impressed Daniel as nothing before had done. “I’ve got myself one hell of a camera jockey,” he thought. “Jock would have been on the next plane home by now.”

Suddenly the rhino switched around, a movement so quick and agile that it seemed impossible in such a massive creature. Love had triumphed over aggression. He rushed back to his paramour, buffing and puffing with eagerness.

Bonny was laughing. Daniel could not believe what he was hearing. “Come on!” She was on her feet again with a lithe bound.

By the time they caught up with the couple in a glade of pale grass beside the rocky watercourse, the cow had at last succumbed to the bull’s persistent courtship. She allowed him to place his chin on her rump, and she stood quiescent and submissive under this significant caress. “Get ready,” Daniel warned Bonny. “It’s going to happen at any moment.”

Suddenly the bull reared up over the female. Bonny captured every titanic convulse on, every straining, thrusting drive of the enormous bodies. And then very swiftly it was over, and the bull -dropped off the cow and stood heaving and blowing from the effort.

“You got it, and we’ve taken too many risks already,” Daniel whispered. “Let’s get out of here.”

He took her arm and drew her away. They retreated carefully, a pace at a time, watching the bull all the way.

A hundred yards from the two rhino, Daniel deemed them well out of harm’s way and they set off towards the combi, still elated by the thrill and the danger, laughing and chatting, not bothering to look backwards, until Daniel snapped abruptly, “Look out! He’s coming again.”

The bull was charging straight at them, an ungainly gallop that did not swerve or deviate, glaring malevolently at them over the wickedly curved horn. I think he’s got our wind. Daniel grabbed Bonny’s arm. He looked about them quickly. The nearest cover was a small thorn bush twenty paces ahead. Come on. They ran for it together and crawled under the outstretched branches. The hooked thorns raked their shirts and exposed skin.

“He’s still coming.” Bonny’s voice was hoarse with dust and exertion.

“Get down. Keep still.” They crouched on the stony ground and watched in helpless horror as the rhino rushed straight at their hiding-place. “This time, he’s not going to stop.”

For the first time Bonny showed signs of fear. Four tons of prehistoric monster, horned and menacing, towered over them. It sniffed the thorn leaves that gave them such flimsy shelter and its breath rattled the branches and blew into their faces. Then abruptly and unexpectedly, the bull switched around and presented them, at a range of only a few feet, with its fat rounded hindquarters.

They stared in horror as its penis unsheathed from between its back legs.

“We are on his boundary,” Daniel breathed. “He’s going to mark this bush!”

“Us!”

It pointed at them like a pink fire-hose. “We’re trapped,” Bonny wailed. The thorns hemmed them in. “What can we do?”

“Just close your eyes, and think of England.”

A steaming cloud engulfed them, blowing over them with the force of a tropical hurricane, not a simple jet but a storm of scalding liquid that sent Daniel’s bush hat flying from his head and soaked them both to the skin. The bull wriggled his tail with satisfaction, stamped his back feet and then charged away with the same impetuosity with which he had arrived.

Daniel and Bonny sat under the dripping thorn bush and stared at each other in horror. Their faces were running wet as though they had stood out in the monsoon rain and the dour was overpowering.

Daniel moved first. He wiped his face with the palm of his hand, a slow theatrical gesture beginning at the top of his forehead and ending at his chin. Then he inspected his hand. “Now that,” he said in a sepulchral tone, “really pisses me off!”

For a moment Bonny continued to stare at him, and then she let out a shriek of wild mirth and they fell against each other and laughed. Clinging together, sodden and stinking, they laughed until they couldn’t stand up, and then they laughed some more. Rhino urine had lacquered their hair into sticky dreadlocks, and stained their clothing with interesting patterns.

They sneaked into the Norfolk Hotel through the rear entrance behind the kitchens and fled across the lawns to their cottage suite, where they stood under the shower for twenty minutes and, still giggling, shampooed and soaped each other until their bodies glowed.

Later, in a towelling bathrobe, Daniel sat in front of the television set while Bonny connected up her equipment. He gave all his attention to the screen and, from the first minute, knew that he had made the right choice in hiring Bonny Mahon. Her technique was of superbly professional quality, and she had a fine eye and sense of timing. She knew when she needed to be close in and when to pull back, but more important, and infinitely rarer, she had a distinctive style, the style that he had first recognized in her Arctic film.

“You’re good,” he told her when the screen went blank. “You’re damn good.”

“You don’t know how good,” she grinned at him. “I’m only just starting to get the feel of the light here. It’s different, you know. Each place is different. Give me another week and I’ll show you just how good I am.”

An hour later, dressed in clean clothing, they sauntered across the courtyard in the cool Kenyan dusk and stopped for a minute beside the aviary of wild birds in the centre of the lawn to admire the brilliant colours of the turacos and the goldbreasted starlings behind the wire.

Other guests were also drifting in the direction of the grill room.

Daniel had paid no attention to the small figure standing near them, until she turned towards him and greeted him by name. “Please forgive the intrusion. You are Daniel Armstrong, aren’t you?”

Daniel started as he recognized her. “Doctor Kinnear! The last time I saw you was at BOSS’s annual general meeting.”

“Oh, were you there?” She laughed. “I didn’t notice you.”

“No, you did seem to have other things on your mind at the time.” Daniel smiled back at her. “What happened to your bullhorn? Were you ever able to get it repaired?”

“Japanese rubbish,” Kelly Kinnear said. “A couple of good shots to the head and it falls to pieces.” She had a sense of humour of course – he knew that from her writing, but her eyes were even lovelier than the photograph on the dust-jacket had suggested. He liked her instantly.

It must have been obvious, for Bonny pulled her hand out of his, and he felt a twinge of guilt. “May I introduce you to my assistant, Bonny Mahon?”

“Actually, I’m a lighting cameraman, not an assistant,” Bonny corrected him tartly.

“Yes,” Kelly agreed. “I know your work. You filmed
Arctic Dream
. It was very good.” She had a disarmingly direct gaze and Bonny looked slightly abashed by the praise.

“Thank you. But I must warn you, I haven’t read your book, Doctor Kinnear.”

“That puts you in a majority of several hundred million, Miss Mahon.” Kelly sensed the antagonism in the other woman but showed no sign of offence, and turned back to Daniel. “I think I have seen every one of your productions over the years. In fact, you are responsible for me being in Africa at all. When I graduated I was going to Borneo to work with the Penan tribe. Then I saw one of your earlier series on the lakes of the Rift Valley. That changed my mind. After that I just had to come to Africa…” Kelly broke off and laughed softly with embarrassment. “I know that this will sound terribly jejune, but I am a fan of yours. The truth is I’ve been hanging around here, just hoping to bump into you ever since I heard that you were in Nairobi. I just had to talk to you. You aren’t staying here at the Norfolk, then?”

Daniel was feeling better disposed to her every minute. It is difficult to dislike someone who admits to being your fan.

“Good Lord, no.” Kelly laughed again with surprising gusto. She had perfect teeth, even her molars were free of fillings. “I’m not a successful TV producer. I’m just a poor disadvantaged field researcher without a sponsor. The Smithsonian pulled my grant after I was slung out of Ubomo by Taffari.”

“Let me stand you a steak then,” Daniel offered.

“A steak! I salivate at the thought. I’ve been living on groundnuts and dried lake-fish since I got back.”

“Yes, why don’t you join us, Doctor Kinnear?” said Bonny in a voice of poisoned honey, placing emphasis on the plural pronoun.

“How sweet of you, Miss Mahon.” Kelly glanced at her coolly, and hostility flashed between them like a discharge of static electricity. Their method of communication was too esoteric for Daniel to appreciate, and he smiled amiably.