cleaned out the vipers' nest of traitors that you were breeding on this colonial-style estate of yours.'
'What on earth are you talking about?' Craig was now truly flustered. 'You cannot be serious!'
'Serious?' Peter smiled easily. He straightened up and placed both feet back on the floor. He walked across to face them. 'A puppy, 'he was still smiling. 'How adorable.' He took Buster from Sally-Anne's arms before she realized his intentions. He strolled back to the head of the table, fondling the little animal, scratching behind its ear.
it was still half-asleep and it made little whimpering sounds, nuzzling against him, instinctively searching for its mother's teat.
'Serious?' Peter repeated the original question. 'I want to impress upon you just how serious I am.' He dropped the puppy onto the stone-flagged floor. It fell on its back, and lay stunned. He placed his boot upon its chest and crushed it with his full weight. The puppy screamed once only as its chest collapsed.
'That is how serious I am.' He was no longer smiling.
'Your lives are as valuable to me as this animal was.' Sally-Anne made a small moaning sound and turned away, burying her face. in Craig's chest. She heaved with nausea, and Craig could feel her fighting to control it.
Peter Fungabera kicked the soft yellow corpse into the fireplace and sat down.
'We have wasted enough time on the theatricals,' he said, and opened the leather map-case, spreading the documents on the table t front of him.
'Mr. Mellow, you kave been acting as an agent provocateur in the pay of the notorious American CIA-'
'That's a bloody lie! Craig shouted, and Peter ignored the outburst.
'Your local control was the American agent Morgan Oxford at the United States Embassy, while your central control and paymaster was a certain Henry Pickering, who masquerades as a senior official of the World Bank in New York. He recruited both you and Miss Jay'
'That's not true!'
'Your remuneration was sixty thousand dollars per annum, and your mission was to set up a centre of subversion in Matabeleland, which was financed by CIA monies channelled to you in the form of a loan from a CIA-controlled subsidiary of the World Bank the sum allocated was five million dollars.'
'Christ, Peter, that's nonsense, and you know it.'
'During the rest of this interrogation, you will address me as either 'Sir' or 'General Fungabera', is that clear to you?' He turned away to listen as there was sudden activity outside the french doors. It sounded like the arrival of a convoy of light trucks, from which more troops were disembarking with orders being called in Shana. Through the glass doors, Craig saw a dozen troopers carrying heavy crates up onto the veranda.
Peter Fungabera glanced enquiringly at Timon Nbebi, who nodded in confirmation of the unspoken question.
'Right!' Peter Fungabera turned back to face Craig. 'We can continue. You opened negotiations with known Matebele traitors, using your fluent knowledge of the language and the character of these intractable people-'
'You can't name one, because there aren't any.' Peter Fungabera. nodded to Timon Nbebi. He shouted an order.
A man was led into the room between two troopers. He was barefooted, dressed only in ragged khaki shorts, and was emaciated to the point where his head appeared grotesquely huge. His pate was shaven and covered with lumps and fresh scabs, his ribs latticed with the scars of beatings probably the wicked hippo-hide whips called siamboks had been used on him.
'Do you know this white man?' Peter Fungabera demanded of him. The man stared at Craig. His eyes had an opaque dullness, as though they had been sprinkled with dust.
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'I've never seen him-' Craig started, and then broke off as he recognized him. It was Comrade Dollar, the youngest and most truculent of the men from Zambezi Waters.
'Yes?' Peter Fungabera invited, smiling again. 'What were you about to say, Mr. Mellow?'
'I want to see somebody from the British High Commission,' Craig said, 'and Miss Jay would like to make a telephone call to the United States Embassy.'
'Of course,' Peter Fungabera nodded. 'All in good time, but first we must complete what we have already begun.' He swung back to Comrade Dollar. 'Do you know the white man?' Comrade Dollar nodded. 'He gave us money.'
'Take him away,' Peter Fungabera ordered. 'Care for him well, and give him something to eat. Now, Mr. Mellow, do you still deny any contact with the subversives?' He did not wait for a reply, but went on smoothly, 'You built up an arsenal of weapons on this estate to be used against the elected people's government in a coup d'gtat which would place a pro-American dictator-'
'No,' Craig said quietly. 'I have no weapons.' Peter Fungabera sighed. 'Your denials are pointless and tiresome.' Then to the tall Shana sergeant, 'Bring the two of them.' He led the way onto the wide veranda, to where his men had stacked the crates.
'Open them,' he commanded, and his men knocked back the clips and lifwd the lids.
Craig recognized the weapons that were packed into them. They were American Armalite 5.56 men all 18 automatic rifles. Six to the case, and brand-new, still in their factory grease.
'These are nothing to do with me.' Craig was at last able to deny it with vehemence.
'You are testing my patience.' Peter Fungabera turned to Timon Nbebi. 'Fetch the other white man.' Hans Groenewald, Craig's overseer, was dragged from the cab of one of the parked trucks, and led to the veranda.
His hands were manacled behind his back, and he was terrified. His broad tanned face seemed to have deflated into heavy wrinkles and folds of loose skin likea diseased bloodhound, and his dark suntan had faded to the colour of creamed coffee. His eyes were bloodshot and rheumy, like those of a drunkard.
'You stored these weapons in the tractor sheds on this ranch?' Peter Fungabera asked, and Groenewald's reply was inaudible.
'Speak up, man.'
'Yes I stored them, sit.'
'On whose orders?' Groenewald looked piteously at Craig, and suddenly Craig's heart was sheathed in ice, and the cold spread down into his belly and his loins.
'Whose orders?' Peter Fungabera repeated patiently.
'Mr. Mellow's orders, sit.'
'Take him away.' As the guards led him back to the track, Groenewald's head was screwed around, his eyes still on Craig's face, his expression harrowed. Suddenly he shouted, 'I'm sorry, Mr. Mellow, I've got a wife and kids-' One of the guards swung the butt of his rifle into Groenewald's stomach, just below the ribs. Groenewald gasped, and doubled over. He would have fallen but they seized his arms and swung him up into the cab. The driver of the truck started the engine and the big machine roared away down the hill.
Peter Fungabera led them back into the dining- room and resumed his seat at the head of the table. While he rearranged and studied the papers from the map, case he ignored Craig and Sally-Anne. They, were forced to stand against the opposite wall, a trooper on each side of them,
JW
and the silence stretched out. Even though Craig realized this silence was deliberate, he wanted to break it, to shout out his innocence, to protest against the web of lies and half-truths and distortions in which they were being slowly enmeshed.
Beside him Sally-Anne stood upright, gripping her own hands at waist level to prevent them trembling. Her face had a sick greenish hue, under a light sheen of sweat, and she kept turning her eyes towards the fireplace where the puppy's crushed carcass lay likea discarded toy.
At last Peter Fungabera pushed the papers aside and rocked back in his chair, tapping lightly on the table-top with his swagger, stick
'A hanging matter,' he said, 4a capital offence for both you and Miss Jay---2
'it has nothing to do with her.' Craig put a protective arm around her shoulders.
'Women's lower organs are less able to withstand the downward shock of the hangman's drop,' Peter Fungabera remarked. 'The effect can be quite bizarre or at least, so I am told.' It conjured up an image that sickened Craig, saliva of nausea flooded his mouth. He swallowed it down and could not speak.
'Fortunately, it need not come to that. The choice will be yours.' Peter rolled the swagger-stick lightly between his fingers. Craig found himself staring fixedly at Peter's hands.
The palms and insides of his long powerful fingers were a soft delicate pink.
J believe that you are the dupes of your imperialistic masters.' Peter smiled again. 'I'm going to let you go.' Both their heads jerked up, and they watched his face.
'Yes, you look disbelieving, but I mean it. Personally I have grown quite fond of both of you. To have you hanged would give me no special pleasure. Both of you possess artistic talents which it would be wasteful to terminate, and from now on you will be unable to do any further harm.' Still they were silent, beginning to hope, and yet fearful, sensing that it was all part of a cruel cat's game.
'I am prepared to make you an offer. If you make a clean breast of it,
