had an aparpent in an old block in the avenues opposite Government House. He dropped her at the entrance.
'How about dinner?' he asked.
'I've got a lot of work to do, Craig.'
'Quick dinner, promise peace offering. I'll have you home by ten.' He crossed his heart theatrically, and she relented.
'Okay, seven o'clock here,' she agreed, and he watched the way she climbed the steps before he started the Volkswagen. Her stride was businesslike and brisk, but her backside in the blue jeans was totally frivolous.
Sally-Anne suggested a steakhouse where she was greeted like royalty by the huge, bearded proprietor, and where the beef was simply the best Craig had ever tasted, thick and juicy and tender. They drank a Cabernet from the Cape of Good Hope and from a stilted beginning their conversation eased as Craig drew her out.
'It was fine just as long as I was a mere technical assistant at Kodak, but when I started being invited on expeditions as official photographer and then giving my own exhibitions, he just couldn't take it,' she told him, 'first man ever to be jealous of a Nikon.'
'How long were you married?'
'Two years.'
'No children?'
'Thank God, no.' She ate like she walked, quickly, neatly and efficiently, yet with a sensuous streak of pleasure, and when she was finished she looked at her gold Rolex.
'You promised ten o'clock,' she said, and despite his protestations, scrupulously divided the bill in half and paid her share.
When he parked outside the apartment, she looked at him seriously for a moment before she asked, 'Coffee?'
'With the greatest of pleasure.' He started to open the door, but she stopped him.
'Right from the start, let's get it straight,' she said. 'The coffee is instant Nescaf6 and that's all. No gymnastics nothing else, okay?'
'Okay,' he agreed.
'Let's go.' Her apartment was furnished with a portable tape recorder, canvas covered cushions and a single camp-bed on which her sleeping-bag was neatly rolled. Apart from the cushions, the floor was bare but polished, and the walls were papered with her photographs. He wandered around studying them while she made the coffee in the kitchenette.
'If you want the bathroom, it's through there,' she called. 'Just be careful.' It was more darkroom than ablution, with a light-proof black nylon zip-up tent over the shower cabinet and jars of chemicals and packets of photographic paper where in any other feminine bathroom there would have been scents and soaps.
They lolled on the cushions, drank the coffee, played Beethoven's Fifth on the tape, and talked of Africa. Once or twice she made passing reference to his book, showing that she had read it with attention.
'I've got an early start tomorrow-' at last she reached across and took the empty mug out of his hand. 'Good night, Craig.'
'When can I see you again?'
'I'm not sure, I'm flying up into the highlands early tomorrow. I don't know how long.' Then she saw his expression and relented. 'I'll call you at the Mono when I get back, if you like?'
'I
like.'
'Craig, I'm beginning to like you as a friend, perhaps, but I'm not looking for romance. I'm still hurting just as long as we understand that,' she told him as they shook hands at the door of the apartment.
Despite her denial, Craig felt absurdly pleased with himself as he drove back to the Monomatapa. At this stage he did not care to analyse too deeply his feelings for her, nor to define his intentions towards her. It was merely a pleasant change not to have another celebrity boffer trying to add his name to her personal scoreboard.
Her powerful physical attraction for him was made more poignant by her reluctance, and he respected her talents and accomplishments and was in total sympathy with her love of Africa and her compassion for its peoples.
'That's enough for now,' he told himself as he parked the Volkswagen.
The assistant manager met him in the hotel lobby, wrin ing his hands with anguish, and led him through to his office.
'Mr. Mellow, I have had a visit from the police special branch while you were out. I had to open your deposit box for them, and let them into your room.'
'God damn it, are they allowed to do that?' Craig was outraged.
'You don't understand, here they can do whatever they like,' the assistant manager hurried on. 'They removed nothing from the box, Mr. Mellow I can assure you of that.'
'Nevertheless, I'd like to check it,' Craig demanded grimly.
He thumbed through his travellers' cheques and they tallied. His return air-ticket was intact, as was his passport but they had been through the 'survival kit' that Henry Pickering had provided. The gilt field assessor's identification badge was loose in its leather cover.
Ino could order a search like this?' he asked the assistant manager as they relocked the box.
'Only someone pretty high up.'
'Tungata Zebiwe,' he thought bitterly. 'You vicious, nosy bastard how you must have changed.' raig took his report of his visit to Tuti Rehabilitation Centre for Henry Pickering up to the embassy, and Morgan Oxford accepted it and offered him coffee.
J might be here a longer time than I thought,' Craig told him, 'and I just can't work in an hotel room.'
'Apartments are hell to find,' Morgan shrugged. 'I'll see what I can do.' He phoned him the next day. 'Craig, one of our girls is going home on a month's vacation. She is a fan of yours, and she will sub-let her flat for six hundred dollars. She leaves tomorrow.' The apartment was a bed-sitter, but it was comfortable and airy. There was a broad table that would do as a writing, desk Craig set a pile of blank Typer bond paper in the centre of it with a brick as a paper-weight, his Concise Oxford Dictionary beside that and said aloud: 'Back in business.' He had almost forgotten how quickly the hours could pass in never-never land, and in the deep pure joy of watching the finished sheets of paper pile up at the far end of the table.
Morgan Oxford phoned him twice during the next few days, each time to invite him to diplomatic parties, and each time Craig refused, and finally unplugged the telephone. When he relented on the fourth day and plugged the extension in again6, the telephone rang almost immediately.
'Mr. Mellow.' Itwas an African voice. 'We have had great difficulty finding you. Hold on, please, for General Fungabera.' 'Craig, it's Peter.' The familiar heavy accent and charm.
'Can we meet this afternoon? Three o'clock? I will send a driver.' Peter Fungabera's private residence was fifteen miles out of town on the hills overlooking Lake Macillwane. The house had originally been built in the 1920s by a rich remittance man, black sheep younger son of an English aircraft manufacturer. It was surrounded firstly by wide verandas and white fretwork eaves and then by five acres of lawns and flowering trees.
A bodyguard of Third Brigade troopers in full battle dress checked Craig and his driver carefully at the gate before allowing them up to the main house. When Craig climbed the front steps, Peter Fungabera. was waiting for him at the top. He was dressed in white cotton slacks and a crimson short-sleeved silk shirt, which looked magnificent against his velvety black skin. With a friendly arm around Craig's shoulders, he led him down the veranda to where a small group was seated.
'Craig, may I introduce Mr. Musharewa, governor of the Land Bank of Zimbabwe. This is Mr. Kapwepwe, his assistant, and this is Mr. Cohen, my attorney. Gentlemen, this is Mr. Craig Mellow, the famous author.'
They shook hands. 'A drink, Craig? We are drinking Bloody Marys.'
'That will do very well, Peter.' A servant in a flowing white kanza, reminiscent of colonial days, brought Craig his drink and when he left, Peter Fungabera said simply, 'The Land Bank of Zimbabwe has agreed to stand as your personal surety for a loan of five million dollars from the World Bank or its associate bank in New York.' Craig gaped at him.
'Your connection with the World Bank is not a particularly closely guarded secret, you know. Henry Pickering is well known to us too Peter smiled, and went on quickly.
'Of course, there are certain conditions and stipulations, but I don't think they will be prohibitive.' He turned to his white attorney.
'You have the documents, Izzy? Good, will you give Mr. Mellow a copy, and then read through them for us, please.'
VP
Isadore Cohen adjusted his spectacles, squared up the thick pile of documents on the table in front of him and began.
'Firstly, this is a land purchase approval,' he said.
'Authority for Craig Mellow, a British subject and a citizen of Zimbabwe, to purchase a controlling interest in the land-owning private company, known as Rholands (Pry) Ltd. The approval is signed by the state president and countersigned by the minister of agriculture.' Craig thought of Tungata Zebiwe's promise to quash that approval and then he remembered that the minister of agriculture was Peter Fungabera's brother-in-law. He glanced across at the general, but he was listening intently to his lawyer's recitation.
