African Dawn (37 page)

He wanted to tell her that she looked as beautiful as ever, but the words wouldn't come. ‘Yes … for, gosh, thirty years now.’

‘So many people have left the country. It's one of the biggest challenges we'll face in the future, getting the good ones back. Black and white.’

He nodded. He looked around the office. In truth it was tired and spartan, but he didn't underestimate her achievement or the effort it must have taken for her to get here. ‘You've done well for yourself, Thandi.’

She shrugged. ‘It hasn't been easy. I served ZANU–PF for many years after independence, but as things deteriorated I couldn't stay with them and sleep at night. When I changed sides, I thought for a while I might die a pauper, leaving my children nothing.’

He'd been foolish, he realised. He'd been reliving stolen, selfish moments of passion from forty years ago, but Thandi had more important things on her mind. He could only imagine how much of a battle her life must be, as a politician in a country that was still to all intents and purposes ruled by a dictator. She'd compartmentalised him and their affair and was living in the here and now. All the same, he had to think hard to make small talk with her. ‘Was it dangerous? We read stories about the violence and intimidation suffered by MDC politicians and activists.’

She tilted her head. ‘There were moments when I was concerned, more for my children than myself, but that is all water under the bridge. At least we now have a voice in government, even if ZANU–PF continues to frustrate our attempts to bring real change to the country.’

There was so much he wanted to ask her, about what she'd done during the war years, about her family, but he didn't know where or how to start.

Thandi looked at her slim gold watch. ‘George, I hate to sound abrupt, but what can I do for you?’

He felt silly again, thinking she might want to reminisce about old times. She was a busy woman and she'd made time for him. Quickly, he told her about the eviction notice that had been served on his parents, and his father's heart attack. ‘I'm flying to Bulawayo this afternoon to see him. I don't know if there is anything you can do, Thandi, but I thought that since your brother was involved you might get him to see reason. If the community is going to take over the ranch, perhaps my parents could at least stay on as managers, to help ensure the safety of the government's rhinos.’

‘Hmm,’ she said. ‘I've read about the problems at the ranch, but to tell you the truth I didn't know Emmerson was involved in this one. You say he's setting himself up as the chairman of the proposed community project that will run the rhino-breeding centre?’

‘Yes. Look, Thandi, I don't live in Zimbabwe, and all I know is what I read online and in the newspapers. Your brother does not have a very good reputation internationally, especially when it comes to rhinos.’

She frowned, but nodded. ‘Yes, I've read the same things. We barely speak these days. Corruption is rife in the government, and while there are some people who are dedicated to wildlife conservation, it would be naïve of anyone to suggest that there aren't senior politicians and bureaucrats who have been involved in poaching and the smuggling of wildlife products out of the country. There have been secret shipments of stockpiled ivory and rhino horn to Asia and the Middle East. I don't know if Emmerson is guilty of all the things people accuse him of, but as they say, where there's smoke …’ She shrugged.

‘My daughter, Natalie, was part of an operation that caught him in the middle of nowhere at a meeting with some rhino poachers. The government media said he killed two of the poachers, but Natalie thinks he was just covering his tracks.’

She nodded. ‘Yes, I read the same story. I also read that your father has been accused of dealing in rhino horn as well.’

George slumped back in his seat. ‘That's preposterous. My father's dedicated most of his life to saving these animals. He's hardly likely to start selling rhino horn on the black market at this stage of his life.’

‘I know, George. There are so many allegations flying around it's hard to know who is doing what these days. The truth is, as much as I hate to admit it, there is a power vacuum since our new Government of National Unity was formed. The police don't know who to listen to – us or ZANU–PF. We control law and order on paper, but it's no secret that ZANU–PF enforces its will through intimidation and patronage. I'm sure the investigation into your father is based on trumped-up charges, but someone darted a rhino and stole its horn on your father's ranch out from under his nose. It does seem like the work of someone with at least some concern for the animal's welfare, don't you think?’

George ground his teeth. He couldn't believe that his father would deal with the people who he'd fought for decades. They weren't rich, but neither were they struggling. It had to have been an inside job. He would have to thrash this out with Natalie and the Quilter-Phipps boys as soon as he got to Bulawayo. ‘I don't know what to think either, Thandi, but I do know that losing the ranch, and knowing their rhinos now have an uncertain future, will probably kill my parents.’

‘I don't doubt what you're saying, George. And I'd be lying if I said I wasn't concerned at the prospect of my brother taking over a rhino-breeding ranch. It would be like putting the lion in charge of the goat herd. Let me see what I can do. I still have some friends in ZANU–PF. Perhaps there's something I can do to at least make sure the rhinos are protected. They are the property of the people, after all.’

George sensed the meeting was drawing to a close. He pushed back his chair and stood. ‘Thank you, Thandi. My parents are heartbroken at losing the ranch, but if they had some assurance that their life's work wasn't for nothing, it might help them cope.’

Thandi stood as well and smiled. ‘If what I plan comes off, then I think they might even be able to stay involved with the ranch. I can't make any promises, but leave it with me. When do you leave Zimbabwe?’

‘Assuming my father's OK, I have to leave in two weeks' time. I have to get back to my job in Australia.’ Looking into her eyes he wanted to add, ‘But I'd stay here in Zimbabwe, if it meant I could spend more time with you.’

‘I understand. Perhaps we could have dinner here in Harare when you are finished in Bulawayo?’

George's heart lurched. Good lord, she wanted to see him again. Thandi extended her hand and he took it and looked into those big dark eyes that were still as sexy and enticing as they had been when he'd last seen her, forty years ago. ‘I'd love to, Thandi.’

‘So would I, George.’ And she grinned back at him.

31

S
haron Quilter-Phipps poured tea from a chipped china pot. Natalie added some milk to her cup and sat back on the wrought-iron chair in the shade of the jacaranda tree. It was a beautiful afternoon and despite the traumatic events of the last few days it was great to have her father and grandparents all together again.

‘How are you feeling, Dad?’ George asked as he stirred in some sugar and passed a cup to Paul.

‘I'm fine. And stop asking me that,’ Paul grumbled. Grandma Pip patted him on the knee and told him not to be so rude, and that George was just worried about him. ‘I'm more worried about my rhinos,’ he retorted.

‘Your house and garden are looking lovely, Sharon,’ Philippa said.

‘Thanks, Pip,’ Sharon said. ‘I had a bit of a windfall recently from an old pension policy Fred had taken out in the UK years ago. I didn't know anything about it – Fred never let me have anything to do with the finances – then all of a sudden there were all these pounds sitting in my bank account.’

Natalie remembered the first time she'd been to Sharon's place, just a few weeks ago. The grass and garden had been overgrown and paint had been peeling from the house. Sharon, too, had undergone a transformation. She'd been wearing a threadbare house dress and her hair had been lank and greasy. Now she wore a new frock and her hair had been cut and permed. Sharon said she now had enough money to buy in water, and a large generator hummed away noisily behind the garage. The garden table was almost groaning under the weight of biscuits, scones and chocolates. Sharon was certainly doing nothing to hide her new-found wealth and it was nice to see at least one person in Zimbabwe for whom things seemed to be looking up.

Paul and Philippa were staying with Sharon for the time being until they could organise a house to rent in town. Philippa had been to see four real estate agents already, but had found out that rental properties were in high demand and rents were generally exorbitant. ‘The problem is there are plenty of people in the same situation as us,’ Philippa said after Sharon had asked how the house hunting had gone, ‘farmers who've been kicked off their land in this latest round of invasions.’

Philippa set her cup down and reached for a handkerchief. She started to dab her eyes.

‘Oh, Gran,’ Natalie said, putting her arm around Philippa, ‘you'll be OK. You'll find a lovely house.’

‘Yes,’ Pip sniffed, ‘but it won't be
my
house, will it?’

George set his cup down. ‘Natalie's right, Mom. You'll be fine, and who knows, Thandi might be able to do something. Now, Tate,’ he said, deliberately steering the conversation away from the depressing subject of housing, ‘tell me more about the rhino.’

Tate had arrived from Kariba late the previous evening and Paul himself had only been released from hospital early that morning. Natalie had collected him in one of the pickups they had moved off the farm. Sharon's backyard resembled a used-car lot at the moment, with the ranch's three
bakkies
, two Land Rover game-viewing vehicles, the Land Cruiser and the Mercedes station wagon Paul and Philippa used as their personal car.

Tate reached under his chair for a manila envelope. ‘I wanted to bring these to the hospital to show you, Paul, but Natalie ordered me to wait here for you.’ He pulled out a sheaf of photos. ‘She told me Philippa wouldn't let me into the hospital if I wanted to talk to you about rhinos.’

Pip had dried her eyes and she laughed.

Paul moved some teacups and spread the photos on the garden table so Natalie and the others could see. Braedan got up from his chair on the other side of the table and walked around behind Paul. He placed a hand on the old man's chair back and leaned in close between Paul and Natalie. Natalie noticed Braedan was wearing aftershave today. Tate's clothes were rumpled and, from the whiff she got every now and then, it seemed he hadn't even bothered to bathe or shower when he got in last night. Braedan, by contrast, was wearing a freshly ironed shirt and shorts. His muscled arms were one of his best features, Natalie thought, stealing a glance out of the corner of her eye. Natalie and Tate had only exchanged a few words since his return, and she expected he still felt as awkward about their fumblings in the hotel room as she did. There was a frailty about him that she guessed stirred some need in her to care for him. Maybe that's all that the chemistry between them had been – pity mixed with too much alcohol.

Braedan smiled at her and she felt her cheeks redden, wondering if he'd noticed her looking at him. Braedan didn't need anyone's pity.

‘This one,’ Tate said, pointing to a picture, ‘was taken by a camera trap I set up near a waterhole.’ The rhino's head had been raised at the moment the flash had gone off. ‘He bolted soon after, but at least I got him. I knew the flash would scare him, but it was the best way for me to get a good image.’

Paul picked up the photo and stared at it, saying nothing.

Tate fanned out three more enlargements. ‘You can see these others, taken at a different waterhole, aren't quite as good quality because I took them using a night-vision lens. It intensifies the ambient light, from the stars and moon, but I had a couple of cloudy nights so they're not as clear. It is the same animal, though, an old bull. You can see here how he's missing a chunk of his ear. Perhaps he was attacked by a lion or a hyena when he was a calf.’

Paul nodded slowly. ‘So there's just the one.’

‘That's all I've found evidence of. He's cautious, as you might expect of a forty or fifty-year-old animal that's evaded poachers for thirty years or more. I had to track him for two days after the first photo, to his next drinking place, but I photographed him twice there.’

‘You've done an incredible job, my boy,’ Paul said, picking up the other photos and studying them – again.

Philippa put her hand on Tate's arm. ‘Yes, Tate, remarkable.’

‘I don't see what this means, though, for your captive rhinos, Dad,’ George said.

Natalie thought her father was being as curmudgeonly as ever. He'd never struck her as a happy person and she supposed his generally glum attitude had something to do with his experiences in the war. He'd lost his country and his old job as a pilot and she assumed that was enough to make any man bitter. She had desperately wanted to sit down and talk to him, as an adult, and get him to open up about his earlier life and the war, but he had refused to have anything to do with her book.

Paul looked up from the photos and fixed George with a stare. ‘This means something, George. These pictures are a sign of hope – they tell us that nature can survive, even in the face of man's greed.’

George shook his head. ‘Can I give you a hand to clear up, Sharon?’

‘Oh, yes, of course. That's nice of you, George.’

‘I'll help you, Dad,’ Natalie said.

Natalie stacked the tray and her father picked up the side plates and they walked inside together. ‘I'm worried about them,’ her father said to her as they carried the used dishes to the kitchen.

‘I don't know if it's fully sunk in yet – the enormity of losing the ranch,’ she said.

George nodded. ‘This whole business of searching for rogue rhinos in the bush can't be helping. From what I know of it, Dad's paying all Tate's expenses, but he's just lost his only source of income. He can't afford to play the eccentric naturalist any more. We've got to look at some nursing homes for them, too, while I'm here, Nat. They can't stay with Sharon forever and I'm worried they're too old to care for themselves.’

‘They lived all right at the ranch,’ she said, annoyed by his condescending tone.

‘They had a small army of servants and workers there, Nat.’ He had a point.

‘Sharon's little windfall mustn't have been too little,’ her father said as they wandered slowly back down the hallway. ‘Fresh paint, new furniture, good food on the table. Mom told me a while back that lots of pensioners were doing it tough here, and she mentioned Sharon in particular.’

Braedan's muscular bulk filled the door leading out onto the garden terrace.

‘My mom was in financial trouble for a while,’ he said.

‘Oh,’ George said, then lowered his voice. ‘Braedan, I'm sorry for gossiping about your mother like that.’

Braedan waved a hand dismissively. ‘Forget it. No harm done. Have you two got a minute? I want to go out back for a cigarette. Mom doesn't like me smoking and Tate will have a hissy fit if I exhale in his general direction. Do you mind coming with me?’

George looked at Natalie and she shrugged. ‘Very well,’ her father said formally. She knew the two men didn't get on, and wondered what it was that Braedan wanted to say to them away from the others. They retraced their steps to the kitchen and walked out the back door.

Braedan pulled a pack from his khaki shirt and offered it to George.

‘No thank you. Not for about thirty years, in fact.’

‘Since the war?’

George nodded, but it was clear he wasn't prepared to indulge in small talk with Braedan.

‘Natalie, Mr B, I'm worried about something that happened at the ranch.’

‘Yes, well, the ranch is no more,’ George said, folding his arms.

Braedan ignored the sarcasm. ‘It's about the last rhino incident, the one that was darted and its horn removed. I –’

‘Well,’ George interrupted, ‘I can assure you there's no way my father would have anything to do with trade in rhino horn, despite what these local keystone kops say.’

‘I agree,’ Braedan said. ‘But someone tranquillised that rhino, dehorned it, gave the animal the antidote and then sold the horn. That's a sophisticated operation that wasn't carried out by your usual run-of-the-mill poacher.’

‘Maybe it was Emmerson Ngwenya?’ Natalie said. ‘He knew security at the ranch was good, and that my grandfather had employed you to tighten it up. He would have known that gunfire would have alerted the security detail. Also, if he was pretty sure he was going to be taking over the ranch soon, maybe he didn't want to kill a rhino that would soon be his, and which he'd eventually be able to dehorn again.’

George nodded. ‘You think Ngwenya wants to get into the business of sustainable rhino horn farming?’

‘It's a possibility,’ Natalie said.

Braedan exhaled cigarette smoke away from them. ‘You're partly right, I think – someone wanted to get into sustainable harvesting of rhino horn, but I don't think it was Ngwenya.’

‘Why not?’ Natalie asked.

‘You can't just send one of your foot soldiers in to dart a rhino with M99 and expect them to be able to revive the animal as well. M99's a controlled substance – you can't just go to a pharmacy or a veterinary surgery and buy or steal some. Even if you could, it's a very precise science, especially administering the antidote. It's pretty easy to kill a rhino with a dose of M99, but to care for it while it's down, and then revive it, is specialised work.’

‘I don't understand,’ George said. ‘Are you saying there's a crooked vet involved with this? Surely the number of people in that category could be counted on one hand in Zimbabwe these days, and I wouldn't imagine any of them would do such a thing.’

Braedan took a pace to his left and looked through the kitchen, down the hallway. When he was sure no one was in earshot he ground out his cigarette. ‘I really hate having to say what I'm about to say, but my mom, you know, she's not all there.’

‘What do you mean, Braedan? She's lovely,’ Natalie said.

‘
Ja
, she is, but she's very old and I think she's suffering from dementia.’ He looked over his shoulder again. ‘I don't think there was any long-lost insurance policy from the UK. I don't think that's where she got the cash to fix up the house and start living like a human being again. And, I'm sorry to say, the money didn't come from me.’

‘Braedan, no!’ Natalie whispered, putting her hand over her mouth.

‘Where do you think it came from then?’ George asked.

Natalie's mind raced back to the night she'd spent with Tate at the Victoria Falls Safari Lodge. ‘My God, Dad, sustainable farming of rhinos for their horns – I've heard someone else talking about that.’

‘Who?’

Natalie looked at Braedan, who said nothing. ‘Tate.’

‘Tate? You're kidding. He's the biggest bunny-hugger I've ever met in my life,’ George said. ‘Always has been. Part of his problem, if you ask me. He couldn't relate to people so he immersed himself in wildlife.’

Natalie recognised the reference to Hope, and she wondered if Braedan had caught it as well. She felt dizzy as the pieces of the puzzle spun through her mind and fell neatly into place. ‘Don't you see, Dad, it's
because
Tate cares so much about the plight of the rhinos that he's actually in favour of farming them. He's accepted that he won't be able to save them all from the poachers, so he's actually advocating farming and controlled dehorning. He wants to dehorn the remaining rhinos, sell the products to the Chinese or Vietnamese or whoever, and use that money to promote more conservation and captive breeding. He knows better than anyone in Zimbabwe how to use the drugs to put a rhino under and to wake it up again.’

‘This makes me feel terrible,’ Braedan said. ‘I mean, on the one hand I really don't blame him if he's done something crazy like this to help our mom. There was no way either of us could have afforded care for her here, or to move her to a nursing home. I looked at the email that advised my mother about the money being transferred into her bank account. She barely knows how to operate the computer and it was Tate who was checking her email account and clearing it for her. She hadn't looked at her messages for weeks. At first I thought the message was one of those Nigerian internet scams, but it said all she had to do was check her bank account. Tate offered to check it for her, just before he left for Kariba, and when he came back with the statement it showed that the money really was there. I told Tate it didn't look kosher, but he just said she was lucky to have the money.’

Natalie sat down on the back doorstep. The news was like a body blow.

George's face started to colour. ‘The stupid, thieving bastard.’