people in order to enforce their particular political vision. That, in my view, is a crime against humanity. When I frustrate their efforts, I strike a powerful blow for the little people.' 'Oh, Garry, you aren't a white knight. Don't pretend to be one - please!' 'Oh, yes, I am,' he contradicted her. 'I am one of the white knights of the capitalist system. Don't you see that?
The only way out of our dilemma in southern Africa is through the education and upliftment of the people, particularly the blacks, and by the creation of wealth. We must steer for a society based not on class or caste or race or creed, but on merit. A society in which every person can pull his full weight and be rewarded in proportion to that effort - that is the capitalistic way.' 'Garry, I have never heard you speak like that before, like a liberal.' 'Not a liberal, a capitalist. Apartheid is a primitive feudal system. As a capitalist, I abhor it as much or more than any of the sanctioneers.
Capitalism destroyed the ancient feudalism of medieval Europe. Capitalism cannot co-exist with a system that reserves power and privilege to a hereditary minority, a system which suppresses the free-market principles of labour and goods. Capitalism will destroy apartheid if it is allowed to do so. The sanctioneers would deny and inhibit that process. By their well-intentioned but misguided actions they bolster apartheid and they play into the hands of its perpetrators.' She stared at him. 'I've never thought about it that way before.' 'Poverty leads to repression. It is easy to oppress the poor. It is almost impossible to oppress an educated and prosperous people for ever.' 'So you will point the way to freedom through the economic rather than the political kingdom.' 'Precisely,' Garry nodded and then he boomed out that big laugh. 'And I'll set a fine capitalistic example by making myself seventy-five million pounds a year in the process.' He braked the truck and turned off the track, following the leading Toyota with Sean at the wheel down to the pools in the mopane forest.
These were shallow depressions, known in Africa as pans, filled with a muddy grey water. They were warmed by the sun and heavily laced with the pungent urine of the elephant herds that regularly bathed and drank in them. Despite the temperature and flavour of the water the flocks of doves preferred them to the clear running water of the river only two miles distant.
The birds came in the hour before sunset in flocks that filled the air like blue-grey smoke. In their tens of thousands they winged in along established flight- lanes.
Sean set up his guns on these lanes, five or six hundred metres from the water. He did not wish to prevent the birds from drinking by placing the guns over the pans.
Instead he forced them to run the gauntlet to reach the water. As a matter of honour, each gun was expected to observe strictly the daily bag-limit of fifty birds, and to attempt only the difficult challenging shots at high, swiftly flying doves.
The guns were placed in pairs. Not merely for company, but also to check each other and see fair play, and to provide an appreciative audience for those finely taken doubles or that beautifully led shot at a blue streak passing a hundred feet overhead at seventy miles an hour.
Quite naturally, Elsa paired with Shasa, and their cries of 'Bello! Molto hello!' and 'Jolly good shot! Well donev rang through the mopane as they encouraged each other.
Garry and Sean made a pair on the west side of the pans. Deliberately they placed themselves behind a tall stand of timber so that the doves were forced high and hurtled into their view over the tree-tops without warning, presenting a shot so fleeting as to call for lightning reflexes and instinctive calculation of lead.
Once Sean missed his bird, shooting two or three feet behind it. Garry swivelled with the long Purdy mounting to his shoulder and brought the escaping dove tumbling down on a trail of loose feathers. Then he looked across at his older brother with his spectacles glinting gleefully and boomed with laughter. Sean tossed back his hair and tried to ignore him, but his face darkened with fury.
Isabella was left with Sir Clarence at the south end of a grassy glen out of sight of the rest of the party. She was shooting the gold-engraved 2o-gauge Holland & Holland that her father had given her. However, she had not fired it for almost a year, and her lack of practice showed up in her shooting.
She clean missed the first three birds in succession and then pricked one.
She said: 'Damn! Double damn!' She hated to wound them.
Sir Clarence took an accomplished double, then set his shotgun against the trunk of a mopane tree and crossed to where she stood.
'I say, do you mind if I give you a few tips?' he asked.
When she smiled at him over her shoulder he came up behind her. 'You are allowing your right hand to overpower the gun.' He folded her in his arms and took her hands in his huge fists. 'Remember, your left hand must always dominate. The right hand is there only to pull the trigger.' He mounted the gun to her shoulder for her and squeezed her left hand on to the forestock for emphasis.
'Head up,' he said. 'Both eyes open. Watch the bird, not the gun.' He smelt masculine. The perfume of his aftershave lotion did not entirely conceal the odour of fresh male sweat. His arms around her felt very agreeable.
'Oh,' she said. 'You mean like this?' And she pushed backwards gently with her hard round buttocks as she aimed over the barrels.
'Precisely.' There was a catch in his voice. 'You have got it exactly right.' 'Goodness gracious me!' She used one of Nana's cherished expressions to herself 'He is size fourteen all over.' She had to work hard to prevent herself giggling like a schoolgirl.
Sir Clarence was warming rapidly to his self-appointed task as tutor, and Isabella told herself firmly: 'That's enough already. We don't want to spoil him.' And gently freed herself from his embrace.
'Let me try it,' she said, and shot the next dove so cleanly that it did not even flutter a wing.
'You are a natural,' he murmured, and she turned her head away to conceal her smile at the double entendre.
'I understand from your brother that you are also a first-class horsewoman,' he pursued relentlessly, not waiting for her reply. 'I have recently purchased a magnificent Arab stallion. I doubt there is another like him in Africa. I'd love to show him to you.' 'Oh?' she asked with feigned lack of interest, concentrating on loading the shotgun. 'Where is he?' 'On my ranch at Rusape. We could have the Alouette drop us off there on the way back to Salisbury tomorrow afternoon.' 'I might enjoy that,' she agreed. 'I'd like to meet your wife. I've heard that she is a delightful lady.' He fielded it without a blink. 'Alas, my wife is in Europe at the moment.
She'll be away for another month at the least. You'd have to put up with me alone.' He gave the last sentence another subtle emphasis, and this time she could not prevent herself smiling.
'I'll have to think about that, Sir Clarence,' she said. 'I imagine that you are rather a large handful to put up with.' And this time his grave expression cracked and he smiled back at her.
'Nothing that you couldn't handle, my dear.' She wondered what the reward from her mysterious masters would be if she could present them with not only the anti- sanctions strategy but also the complete Rhodesian order of battle. 'All in the line of duty,' she assured herself.
'Full bag!' Shasa called across to Elsa. He broke open his shotgun and placed it across the crook of his arm. He called to the two black children: Takamisa! Pick them UPV They scampered away to pick up the last two doves. Shasa and Elsa sauntered back to where the trucks were parked beyond the pan. The sun was almost on the treetops, and the thin stratum of cloud above it was gilded to brightest gold - the colour of a wedding ring, Shasa decided for no apparent reason.
'All right,' Elsa said suddenly, as though she had reached a difficult decision.
'Forgive me' - he was puzzled -'what is all right?' 'I trust you,' she said. 'There will be conditions attached, but I will give you the blueprint for the plant and the formula for Cyndex 25.' He drew a slow breath. 'I will try to be worthy of your trust.' That evening, as they sat at the camp-fire withdrawn from the rest of the party, she set down the conditions.
'You will, give me your personal guarantee that Cyndex will never be used except on the express authority of the prime minister or his successors in office.' Shasa glanced across the flames to make certain that they were not overheard. 'I swear that to you. I will obtain the prime minister's written agreement.' 'Now, as to the rules of engagement, Cyndex will never be used on any section of the South African people,' Elsa went on carefully. 'It will never be used in internal political or civil conflict. It will never be used to quell an uprising of the populace or in a future civil war.' 'I agree.' 'It may be used only to repel a military invasion by troops of a foreign power. Then only when the use of conventional arms fails.' 'I agree.' 'There is one other condition - a little more personal.' 'Name it.' 'You will come to Lausanne personally to arrange the details.' 'That will be my particular pleasure.' It was the last morning of safari. The guests had packed and were ready to leave Chizora. Their luggage was stacked outside each tent, ready for the camp staff to collect.
The business was done, and the contracts signed. Elsa Pignatelli had agreed to assist with the marketing of Rhodesian tobacco and chrome - for a princely fee - while Garry Courtney had undertaken to provide shipping and false documentation for these materials from South African ports. His rewards for these services would include extension of the Chizora hunting concessions as well as his monetary commissions.
The entire party was due to be ferried back to Salisbury in the
