Leopard Hunts in Darkness - Smith Wilbur (книга бесплатный формат .TXT) 📗

"What will become of us? "Comrade Lookout demanded.

"When you have built your houses?" ! e are friends," Craig reminded him. "There is room for you here. I will help you with food and money, and in return you will protect my animals and my buildings. You will secretly watch over the visitors who come here, and there will be no more talk of hostages. Is that an agreement between friends?" "How much is our friendship worth to you, Kuphela7

"Five hundred dollars every month."

"A thousand, "Comrade Lookout counter, offered

"Good friends should not argue over mere money," Craig agreed. "I have only six hundred dollars now, but the rest I will leave buried beneath the wild fig tree where we are camped."

"We will find it," Comrade Lookout assured him. "And every month we will meet either here or there." Lookout pointed out two rendezvous, both prominent hillocks well distanced from the river, their peaks only bluish silhouettes on the horizon. "The signal of a meeting will be a small fire of green leaves, or three rifle shots evenly spaced."

"It is agreed "Now, Kuphela, leave the money in that ant, bear hole at your feet and take your woman back to camp." Sally-Anne stayed very close beside him on the return, even taking his arm for reassurance every few hundred yards and looking back fearfully over her shoulder.

"My God, Craig, those were real shufta, proper dyed-in the-wool guerrillas. Why did they let us go?"

"The best reason in the world money." Craig's chuckle was a little hoarse and breathless even in his own ears, and the adrenalin still buzzed in his blood. "For a miserly thousand dollars a month, I have just hired myself the toughest bunch of bodyguards and gamekeepers on the market. Pretty good bargAn." "You're doing a deat with them?" Sally-Anne demanded.

"Isn't that dangerous? It's treason or something, surely?" "Probably, we just have to make sure that nobody finds out about it, won't we?" he architect turned out to be another bargain. His designs were superb; the lodges would be built of natural stone, indigenous timber and thatch. They would blend unobtrusively into the chosen sites along the river. Sally' Anne worked with him on the interior layouts and the furnishings, and introduced charming little touches of her own.

During the next few months, Sally-Anne's work with the World Wildlife Trust took her away for long periods at a time, but on her travels she recruited the staff that they would need for Zambezi Waters.

irstly, she seduced a Swiss-trained chef away from one of the big hotel chains. Then she chose five young safari guides, all of them African-born, with a deep knowledge and love of the land and its wildlife and, most importantly, with the ability to convey that knowledge and love to others.

Then she turned her attention to the design of the advertising brochures, using her own photographs and Craig's text. "A kind of dress rehearsal for our book," she pointed out when she telephoned him from Johannesburg, and Craig realized for the first time just what he had taken on in agreeing to work with her. She was a perfectionist. It was either right or it wasn't, and to get it right she would go to any lengths, and force him and the printers to do the same.

The result was a miniature masterpiece in which colour was carefully coordinated and even the layout of blocks of rint balanced her illustrations. She sent out cop pies to all the African travel specialists around the world, from Tokyo to Copen aagen.

"We have to set an opening date," she told Craig, "and make sure that our first guests are newsworthy. You'll have to offer them a freebie, I'm afraid."

"You aren't thinking of a pop star?" Craig grinned, and she shuddered.

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"I telephoned Daddy at the Embassy in London. He may be able to get Prince Andrew but I'll admit it's a big may be". Henry Pickering knows Jane Fonda-"

"My God, I never realized what an up-market broad you are."

"And while we are on the subject of celebrities, I think I can get a best-selling novelist who makes bad jokes and will probably drink more whisky than he is worth!" When Craig was ready to commence actual construction on Zambezi Waters, he complained to Peter Fungabera about the difficulty of finding labourers in the deep bush.

Peter replied, "Don't worry, I'll fix that." And five days later, a convoy of army trucks arrived carrying two hundred detainees from the rehabilitation centres.

"Slave labour, "Sally-Anne told Craig with distaste.

However, the access road to the Chizarira river was completed in just ten days, and Craig could telephone Sally-Anne in Harare and tell her, "I think we can confidently set the opening date for July lst." "That's marvelous, Craig."

"When can you come, up again? I haven't seen you for almost a month."

"It's only three weeks," she denied.

"I have done another twenty pages on our book," he offered as bait. "We must go over it together soon."

"Send them to me."

"Come and get them." A "Okay," she capitulated. "Next week, Wednesday. Where will you be, King's Lynn or Zambezi Waters?"

"Zambezi Waters. The electricians and plumbers are finishing up. I want to check it out." "I'll fly up." She landed on the open ground beside the river where Craig's labour gangs had surfaced a strip with gravel to make an all-weather landing ground and had even rigged a proper windsock for her arrival.

oe The instant she jumped down from the cockpit Craig could see that she was furiously angry.