The Leopard Hunts in Darkness (33 page)

‘You won’t make it,’ Sally-Anne whispered.

‘Probably not,’ he agreed grimly, ‘but can you think of anything else? When I say “Go”, I want you to throw yourself flat on the floor.’

Craig wriggled around in the seat, his leg hampering him, catching by the ankle on the lever of the four-wheel-drive selector. He kicked it free and gathered himself. He took a slow breath, and
glanced out of the rear window at the little group of grave-diggers.

‘Listen,’ he told her urgently. ‘I love you. I have never loved anyone the way I love you.’

‘I love you, too, my darling,’ she whispered back.

‘Be brave!’ he said.

‘Good luck!’ She was crouching down, and he almost made his move, but at that moment Timon Nbebi turned towards the Land-Rover. He saw Craig twisted around in the seat, and
Sally-Anne down below the sill. He frowned and came back to the vehicle with quick businesslike strides. At the open window he paused and spoke softly in English.

‘Don’t do it, Mr Mellow. We are all of us in great danger. Our only chance is for you to remain still and not to interfere or make any unexpected move.’ He took the ignition
keys from his pocket, and with his other hand loosened the flap of the webbing pistol-holster on his belt. He kept on talking softly, ‘I have effectively disarmed my men, and their attention
is on their work. When I enter the Land-Rover, do not hamper me or try to attack me. I am in as great a danger as you are. You must trust me. Do you understand?’

‘Yes,’ Craig nodded. Christ! Do I have any choice, he thought.

Timon opened the driver’s door of the Land-Rover, and slid in under the wheel. He glanced once at the three soldiers who were by now waist-deep in the two graves, then Timon slipped the
key into the ignition and turned it.

The engine turned over loudly, and the three soldiers looked up, puzzled. The starter-motor whirred and churned, and the engine would not fire. One of the troopers shouted, and jumped out of the
grave. His chest was snaked with sweat and powdered with grey dust. He started towards the stranded Land-Rover. Timon Nbebi pumped the accelerator, and kept turning the engine. He had a desperate,
terrified look on his face.

‘You’ll flood her,’ Craig told him. ‘Take your foot off!’

The trooper broke into a run towards them. He was shouting angry questions, and the starter went on – Whirr! Whirr! Whirr! – with Timon frozen to the wheel.

The running trooper was almost alongside, and now the others, slower and less alert, began to follow him. They were shouting also, one of them swinging his trenching-tool menacingly.

‘Lock the door!’ Craig shouted urgently, and Timon pushed down the handle into the lock position just as the trooper threw his weight on it. He heaved at the outside handle with all
his weight, and then darted to the rear door and before Sally-Anne could lock it, jerked it open. He reached in and caught Sally-Anne by the upper arm and began dragging her from the open door.

Craig was still hunched around in the front seat and now he lifted both manacled hands high and brought them down on the trooper’s shaven head. The sharp steel edge of the cuffs cut down
to the bone of the skull, and the man collapsed half in and half out of the open door.

Craig hit him again, in the centre of the forehead, and had a brief glimpse of white bone in the bottom of the wound before quick bright blood obscured it. The other two soldiers were only paces
away, baying like wolfhounds and armed with their spades.

At that moment the engine of the Land-Rover fired and roared into life. Timon Nbebi hit the gear-lever, and with a clash of metal it engaged and the Land-Rover shot forward. Craig was thrown
over the seat half on top of Sally-Anne, and the bleeding trooper was caught by his dangling legs in a thorn bush and ripped out through the rear door.

The Land-Rover swerved and bucked over the rough ground, with the two screeching black soldiers running behind it, and the open door flapping and banging wildly. Then Timon Nbebi straightened
the wheel and changed gear. The Land-Rover accelerated away, crashing over rock and fallen branches, and the pursuing troopers fell back. One of them hurled his spade despairingly after them. It
shattered the rear window, and broken glass spilled over the rear of the cab.

Timon Nbebi picked up their own incoming tracks through the high grass, and at last they were going faster than a man could run. The two troopers gave up and stood panting in the tracks, their
shouts of recrimination and anger dwindled and then were lost. Timon reached the bush track at the point that they had left it, and turned onto it, picking up speed.

‘Give me your hands,’ he ordered, and when Craig offered his manacled hands, Timon unlocked the cuffs. ‘Here!’ he gave Craig the key. ‘Do the same for Miss
Jay.’

She rubbed her wrists. ‘My God, Craig, I truly thought that was the end of the line.’

‘A close-run thing,’ Timon Nbebi agreed, with all his attention on the track. ‘Napoleon said that, I think.’ And then, before Craig could correct him, ‘Please to
arm yourself with one of the rifles, Mr Mellow, and place the other beside me.’

Sally-Anne passed the short, ugly weapons over to the front seat. The Third Brigade was the only unit of the regular army still armed with AK 47s, a legacy from their North Korean
instructors.

‘Do you know how to use it, Mr Mellow?’ Timon Nbebi asked.

‘I was an armourer in the Rhodesian Police.’

‘Of course, how stupid of me.’

Swiftly Craig checked the curved ‘banana’ magazine and then reloaded the chamber. The weapon was new and well cared for. The weight of it in Craig’s hands changed his whole
personality. Minutes before, he had been mere flotsam on the stream, swept along by events over which he had no control, confused and uncertain and afraid – but now he was armed. Now he could
fight back, now he could protect his woman and himself, now he could shape events rather than be shaped by them. It was the primeval, atavistic instinct of primitive man, and Craig revelled in it.
He reached over the seat and took Sally-Anne’s hand. He squeezed it briefly, and fervently she returned the pressure.

‘Now we have a fighting chance, at least.’ The new tone of his voice reached her. Her spirits lifted a little, and she gave him the first smile he had seen that night. He freed his
hand, found the bottle of cane spirit in the cubbyhole, and passed it to her. After she had drunk, he gave it to Timon Nbebi.

‘All right, Captain, what the hell is going on here?’

Timon gasped at the sting of the liquor and his voice was roughened by it as he replied.

‘You were perfectly correct, Mr Mellow, my orders from General Fungabera were to take you and Miss Jay into the bush and execute you. And you were also correct in guessing that your
disappearance would be blamed on the Matabele dissidents.’

‘Well, why didn’t you obey your orders?’

Before replying, Timon handed the bottle back to Craig, and then glanced over his shoulder at Sally-Anne.

‘I am sorry that I had to go through the preparations for your execution, without being able to reassure you, but my men speak English. I had to make it look real. It galled me, for I
didn’t want to inflict more on you, after what you have already suffered.’

‘Captain Nbebi, I forgive you everything and I love you for what you are doing, but why, in God’s name, are you doing it?’ Sally-Anne demanded.

‘What I am about to tell you, I have never told a living soul before. You see, my mother was a full-blooded Matabele. She died when I was very young, but I remember her well and honour
that memory.’ He did not look at them, but concentrated on the track ahead. ‘I was raised as a Shona by my father, but I have always been aware of my Matabele blood. They are my people,
and I can no longer stomach what is being done to them. I am certain that General Fungabera has become aware of my feelings, though I doubt that he knows about my mother, but he knows that I have
reached the end of my usefulness to him. Recently there have been small signs of it. I have lived too close to the man-eating leopard for too long not to know its moods. After I had buried you,
there would have been something for me also, an unmarked grave – or Fungabera’s puppies.’

Timon used the Sindebele,
amawundhla ka Fungabera
, and Craig was startled. Sarah Nyoni, the schoolteacher at Tuti Mission, had used the same phrase.

‘I have heard that expression before – I do not understand it.’

‘Hyena,’ Timon explained. ‘Those who die or are executed at the rehabilitation centres are taken into the bush and laid out for the hyena. The hyena leaves nothing, not a chip
of bone nor a tuft of hair.’

‘Oh God,’ said Sally-Anne in a small voice. ‘We were at Tuti. We heard the brutes, but didn’t understand. How many have gone that way?’

Timon Nbebi said, ‘I can only guess – many thousands.’

‘It’s scarcely believable.’

‘General Fungabera’s hatred for the Matabele is a kind of madness, an obsession. He is planning to wipe them out. First it was their leaders, accused of treason – falsely
accused, like Tungata Zebiwe—’

‘Oh no!’ Sally-Anne said miserably. ‘I can’t bear it – was Zebiwe innocent?’

‘I’m sorry, Miss Jay,’ Timon Nbebi confirmed it. ‘Fun-gabera had to be very careful when he tackled Zebiwe. He knew if he seized him for his political activities, he
would have the entire Matabele tribe in revolt. You and Mr Mellow provided him with the perfect opportunity – a non-political crime. A crime of greed.’

‘I’m being stupid,’ said Sally-Anne. ‘If Zebiwe wasn’t the master poacher, was there ever a poacher? And if there was – who was it?’

‘General Fungabera himself,’ said Timon Nbebi simply.

‘Are you sure?’ Craig was incredulous.

‘I was personally in charge of many of the shipments of animal contraband that left the country.’

‘But that night on the Karoi road?’

‘That was easily arranged. The general knew that sooner or later Zebiwe would be going to Tuti Mission again. Zebiwe’s secretary informed us of the exact time and date. We arranged
for the truck loaded with contraband, driven by a Matabele detainee we had bribed, to be waiting for him on the Tuti road. Of course, we had not anticipated Tungata Zebiwe’s violent reaction
– that was merely a bonus for us.’

Timon drove as fast as the track would allow, while Sally-Anne and Craig hunched down in their seats, their artificial elation at their escape rapidly giving way to fatigue and shock.

‘Where are we heading?’ Craig asked.

‘Botswana border.’

That was the landlocked state to the south and west which had become an established staging post for political fugitives from its neighbours.

‘On our way I hope you will have a chance to see what is really happening to my people. No one else will bear witness. General Fungabera has sealed off the whole of south-western
Matabeleland. No journalists are allowed in, no clergymen, no Red Cross—’

He slowed for an area where ant bears had dug their holes in the track, burrowing for the nests of termites, and then he accelerated again.

‘The pass I have from General Fungabera will take us a little further, but not as far as the border. We will have to use side roads and back roads until we can find a crossing place. Very
soon General Fungabera will learn of my defection, and we will be hunted by the whole of the Third Brigade. We must make as much distance as we can before that happens.’

They reached the main fork in the track and Timon stopped, but kept the motor running. He took a large-scale map from his leather map-case and studied it attentively.

‘We are just south of the railway line. This is the road to Empandeni Mission Station. If we can get through there before the alarm goes out for us, then we can try for the border between
Madaba and Matsumi. The Botswana police run a regular patrol along the fence.’

‘Let’s get on with it.’ Craig was impatient and becoming fearful, the comfort of the weapon across his lap beginning to fade. Timon folded the map and drove on.

‘Can I ask you some more questions?’ Sally-Anne spoke after a few minutes.

‘I will try to answer,’ Timon agreed.

‘The murder of the Goodwins, and the other white families in Matabeleland – were those atrocities ordered by Tungata Zebiwe? Is he responsible for those gruesome murders?’

‘No, no, Miss Jay. Zebiwe has been trying desperately to control those killers. I believe that he was on his way to Tuti Mission for just such a reason – to meet with the radical
Matabele elements and try to reason with them.’

‘But the writing in blood, “Tungata Zebiwe Lives”?’

Now Timon Nbebi was silent, his face contorted as though he fought some inner battle, and they waited for him to speak. At last he sighed explosively, and his voice had changed.

‘Miss Jay, please try to understand my position, before you judge me for what I am about to tell you. General Fungabera is a persuasive man. I was carried along by his promises of glory
and reward. Then suddenly I had gone too far and I was not able to turn back. I think the English expression is “riding the tiger”. I was forced to move on from one bad deed to another
even worse.’ He paused, and then, in a rush, ‘Miss Jay, I personally recruited the killers of the Goodwin family from the rehabilitation centre. I told them where to go, what to do
– and what to write on the wall. I supplied their weapons, and arranged for them to be driven to the area in transport of the Third Brigade.’

There was silence again, broken only by the throb of the Land-Rover engine, and Timon Nbebi had to break it, speaking as though words were an opiate for his guilt.

‘They were Matabele, veterans, war-hard men, men who would do anything for the return of their personal liberty, the chance to carry weapons again. They did not hesitate.’

‘And Fungabera ordered it?’ Craig asked.

‘Of course. It was his excuse to begin the purge of the Matabele. Now perhaps you understand why I am fleeing with you. I could not continue along this path.’

‘The other murders – the killing of Senator Savage and his family?’ Sally-Anne asked.