a full and unreserved confession, I will have YOU escorted to the border, with your travel documents and any readily portable possessions and items of value you choose. I will have you set free, to go and trouble me and my people no more.' He waited, smiling, and the swagger, stick went tap tap tap on the table-top, likea dripping faucet. It distracted Craig. He found himself unable to think clearly. It had all Ell happened too swiftly. Peter Fungabera had kept him off balance, shifting and changing his attack. He had to have time to pull himself together, and to begin thinking clearly and logically again.
'A confession?' he blurted. What kind of confession?
One of your exhibitions before a people's court? A public humiliation?'
'No, I don't think we need go that far,' Peter Fungabera assured him. 'I will need only a written statement from you, an account of your crimes and the machinations of your masters. The confession will be properly witnessed, and then you will be escorted to the border and set at liberty. All very straightforward, simple and, if I may be allowed to say so, very civilized and humane.'
'You will, of course, prepare my confession for me to sign?' Craig asked bitterly, and Peter Fungabera chuckled.
'How very perceptive of you.' He selected one of the documents from the pile in front of him. 'Here it is. You need only fill in the date and sign it.' Even Craig was surprised at that.
J 'You've had it typed already?' Nobody replied, and Captain Nbebi brought the document to him.
'Please read it, Mr. Mellow,'he invited.
There were three typewritten foolscap sheets, much of them filled with denunciations of his 'imperialistic masters' and the hysterical cant of the extreme left. But in this mishmash, like plums in a stodgy pudding, were the hard facts of which Craig stood accused.
He read through it slowly, trying to force his numbed brain to function clearly, but it was all somehow dreamlike and unreal, seeming not really to affect him personally until he read the words that jerked him fully conscious again.
The words were so familiar, so well remembered, and they burned like concentrated acid into the core of his being.
J fully admit that by my actions I have proved myself to be an enemy of the state and the people of Zhnbabwe.' It was the exact wording used in another document he had signed, and suddenly he was able to see the design behind it all.
'King's Lynn,' he whispered, and he looked up from the typewritten confession at Peter Fungabera. 'That's what it's all about. You are after King's Lynn!' There was silence, except for the tap of the swagger stick on the table-top. Peter Fungabera did not miss a beat with it, and he was still smiling.
'You had it all worke4ut from the very beginning. The surety for my loan you wrote in that clause.' The numbness ahJ lethargy sloughed away, and Craig felt his anger rising again within him. He threw the confession on the floor. Captain Nbebi retrieved it, and stood with it held awkwardly in both hands. Craig found himself shaking with rage. He took a step forward towards the elegant figure seated before him, his hands reaching out involuntarily, but the tall Shana sergeant barred his way with the barrel of his rifle held across Craig's chest.
rill
'You bloody swine!' Craig hissed at Peter, and there was a little white froth of saliva on his lower lip. 'I want the police, I want the protection of the law.'
'Mr. Mellow,' Peter Fungabera replied evenly, 'in Matabeleland, I am the law. It is my protection that you are being offered.'
'I won't do it. I won't sign that piece of dung. I will go to hell first.'
'That might be arranged,' Peter Fungabera mused softly, and then persuasively, 'I really do urge you to put aside these histrionics and bow to the inevitable. Sign the paper and we can dispense with any further nastiness.' Crude words crowded to Craig's lips, and with an effort he resisted using them, not wanting to degrade himself in front of them.
'No,' he said instead. 'I'll never sign that thing. You'll have to kill me first.'
'I give you one last chance to change your mind.' 'No. Never! Peter Fungabera swivelled in his chair towards the tall sergeant.
'I give you the woman,' he said. 'You first and then your men, one at a time until they have all had their turn. Here, in this room, on this table.' Christ, you aren't human,' Craig blurted, and tried to hold Sally-Anne, but the troopers seized him from behind and hurled him back against the wall. One of them pinned him there with the point of a bayonet against his throat.
The other twisted Sally-Anne's wrist up between her shoulder blades and held her in front of the sergeant. She began to struggle wildly, but the trooper lifted her until just the toes of her running shoes touched the stone-flagged floor, and her face contorted with pain.
The sergeant was expressionless, neither leering nor making any obscene gesture. He took the front of Sally Anne T-shirt in both hands, and tore it open from neck to waist. Her breasts swung out. They were very white and tender-looking, their pink tips seemed sensitive and vulnerable.
'I have one hundred and fifty men,' Peter Fungabera remarked. 'It will be some time before they have all finished.' The sergeant hooked his thumbs into the waistband of her shorts and yanked, them down. He let them fall in a tangle around her ankles. Craig strained forward, but the point of the bayonet pierced the skin at his throat. A few drops of blood dribbled down his shirtfront. Sally-Anne tried to cover the dark triangular mound of her pudenda with her free hand. It was a pathetically ineffectual gesture.
'I know how fiercely even a so-called white liberal like you resents the thought of black flesh penetrating his worn an.' Peter Fungabera's tone was almost conversational.
'It will be interesting to see just how many times you will allow it to hap pi The sergeant and the trooper lifted Sally-Anne between them and laid her on her back on the refectory table. The sergeant freed the silk-shorts that bound her ankles but left the running shoes on her feet, and the tatters of her shirt around her upper body.
Expertly they pulled her knees up against her chest and then forced them down, tucking them under her armpits.
They must have done this often before. She was helpless, doubled over, wide op and completely defenceless. Every man in the room.wls staring into her body's secret depths.
The sergeant began to unbuckle his webbing belt with his free hand.
'Craig!' Sally-Anne screamed, and Craig's body bucked involuntarily as though to the stroke of a whip.
'I'll sign it,' he whispered. 'Just let her go, and I'll sign it.' Peter Fungabera gave an order in Shana, and immediately they released Sally-Anne. The trooper stood back and the sergeant helped her to her feet. Politely, he handed her back her shorts, and she hopped on one foot, sobbing softly and trembling, as she pulled them on.
Then she rushed to Craig and threw both her arms about him. She could not speak but she choked and gulped down her tears. Her body shook wildly and Craig held her close and made incoherent soothing noises to her.
'The sooner you sign, the sooner you can go.' Craig went to the table, still holding Sally-Anne in the curve of his left arm.
Captain Nbebi handed him a pen and he initialled the two top sheets of the confession, and signed the last one in full. Both Captain Nbebi and Peter Fungabera witnessed his signature, and then Peter said, 'One last formality. I want both you and Miss Jay to be examined by the regimental doctor for any signs of ill-treatment or undue coercion.'
'God damn you, hasn't she had enough?'
'Humour me, please, my dear fellow.' The doctor must have been waiting in one of the trucks outside. He was a small dapper Shana and his manner was brisk and businesslike.
'You may examine the woman in the bedroom, Doctor.
In particular, please satisfy yourself that she has not been forcibly penetrated,' Peter Fungabera instructed him, and then as they left the dining-room, he turned to Craig. 'In the meantime, you may open the safe in your office and take out your passport and whatever other documents you need for the journey.' may Two troopers escorted Craig to his office at the far end of the veranda, and waited while he struck the combination of the safe. He took out his passport, the wallet containing his credit cards and World Bank badge, three folders of American Express travellers' cheques, and the bundle of manuscript for the new novel. He stuffed them into a British Airways flight bag and went back to the dining-room.
Sally-Anne and the doctor came back from the bed, room. She had changed into a blue cashmere jersey, shirt and jeans, and she had controlled her hysteria to an occasional gulping sob, though she was still shivering in little convulsive fits. She dragged her camera bag and under one arm carried the art folder of photographs and text for their book.
'Your turn,' Peter Fungabera invited Craig to follow the doctor, and when he returned Sally-Anne was seated in the back seat of a Land-Rover parked in front of the veranda. Captain Nbebi was beside her, and there were two armed troopers in the back of the vehicle. The seat beside the driver was empty for Craig.
Peter Fungabera was waiting on the veranda. 'Goodbye, Craig,' he said, and Craig stared at him, trying to project the full venom he felt for him.
'You didn't really believe that I would allow you to rebuild your family's empire, did you?' Peter asked without rancour. 'We fought too hard to destroy that world.' As the Land-Rover drove
