Rhodesia Read online

  Inside the club the girls, resplendent in their colorful gowns, were introduced to a dozen men. All were young and most were handsome, two wore uniforms, and for solidity there were two older citizens, one with a distinguished grouping of decorations on his dinner jacket.

  A long table was reserved for the party in an ell of the main dining room, adjacent to the dance floor, and with its own service bar. After the introductions and pleasant chat, they discovered place cards which cleverly seated each girl between two men. Nick and Gus found themselves side by side at the far end of the table.

  The senior escort murmured, "Ian is a good operator. This makes a hit with the women. They see enough of you and me."

  "Look where he put Booty. Next to old Sir Humphrey Condon. Ian knows she's VIP. I didn't tell him."

  "Maybe Manny sent along her old man's credit rating in the confidential advices."

  "With that body she can do all right without a push. She looks class, maybe he guessed." Gus chuckled. "Don't fret You'll have plenty of time with her."

  "I haven't been making time lately. But Ruth is good company. Anyway, I've got some worries about Booty..."

  "What! Not this soon. Its only been three days — you couldn't have..."

  "Not what you're thinking. She's cool. Something's wrong. If we're going into the gold business I suggest we keep an eye on her."

  "Booty! Could she be dangerous... spying..."

  "You know how these kids like adventure. The CIA has fallen into a lot of messes using kindergarten snoops. Usually they do it for the money, but a gal like Booty might go for the glamour. Little Miss Jane Bond."

  Gus took a deep swallow of his wine. "Wow — now that you mention it, this fits in with what happened while I was dressing. She called and said she wouldn't go with the group tomorrow morning. The afternoon is free time for shopping anyway. She has hired a car and is going off on her own. I tried to pin her down and she sounded secretive. Said she wanted to visit something in the Motoroshanga district. I tried to talk her out of it, but hell — if they've got the funds they can do anything they please. She got the car from Selfridge's Self-Drive Cars."

  "She could have gotten one easily from Masters, couldn't she?"

  "Yes." Gus trailed off the word with sibilant s sounds, his eyes narrow and thoughtful "You may be right about her. I thought she just wanted to be independent, the way some of them do. Showing you they can operate all right on their own..."

  "Can you reach Selfridge's and find out about the car and time of delivery?"

  "They have a night number. Give me a moment." He was back in five minutes, his expression slightly grim. "A Singer Vogue. At the hotel at eight. It looks like you're right. She had arranged credit and a permit by cable. Why didn't she ever mention that to us?"

  "Part of the intrigue, old man. When you have a chance, ask Masters to have a self-drive at the hotel for me at seven. Make sure it's as fast as that Singer."

  Later in the evening, between the roast and the sweets, Gus told Nick, "Okay. A BMW-1800 for you at seven. Ian promises it'll be in perfect shape."

  Just after eleven Nick said polite good nights and left the club. He wouldn't be missed. Everyone seemed to be having better than a good time. The food had been excellent, the wines plentiful, and the music sweet Ruth Crossman was with a dashing lad who looked as if fun, fellowship, and virility were his prime qualities.

  Nick returned to Meikles, soaked his battered body again in hot and cold tubs, and checked his gear. He always felt better when every item was in place, oiled, cleaned, saddle-soaped, or polished according to its needs. Your mind seemed to function faster when you had no small doubts or worries.

  He removed the packets of bills from a khaki money belt and replaced them with four blocks of explosive plastique shaped and wrapped like bars of Cadbury chocolate. With them he put eight fuses that normally traveled among his pipe cleaners, identified only by tiny blobs of solder on one end of the wire. He turned on a small transmitter beeper, which had a signal good for eight or ten miles under fair conditions, and noted the directional response to his transistor radio, the size of a pocketbook. Edge toward the transmitter, strong signaL Flat toward the beeper, weakest signal.

  He turned in and was grateful that no one disturbed him until the desk called him at six. His travel alarm went off with a burr-r-r-r just as he hung up.

  At seven he met one of the muscular young men who had been at the party the night before, John Patton. Patton handed him a set of keys and pointed to a blue BMW gleaming in the fresh morning air. "Full of gas and checked out, Mr. Grant. Mr. Masters said you particularly wanted it in perfect shape."

  "Thanks, John. That was a nice party last night. Did you have a good rime?"

  "Grand. Wonderful group you brought Have a nice trip."

  Patton walked briskly away. Nick grinned slightly. Patton had not betrayed by the flicker of an eyelid what he meant by wonderful, but he had been snuggling Janet Olson, and Nick had seen him drink a goodly amount Stout fellow.

  Nick reparked the BMW out of sight, checked himself out on the controls, explored the trunk space, and inspected the motor. He checked the underframe as best he could, then used his receiver to see if the car was bugged. There were no betraying emissions. He worked his way all around the car, scanning all the frequencies his special set could receive, before deciding the car was clean. He went up to Gus's room and found the senior escort hurrying his shaving, his eyes foggy and bloodshot in the glare of the bathroom lights. "Big evening," Gus said. 'You were smart to cut out. Whooh! I got in at five."

  "You ought to live the clean life. I turned in early."

  Gus inspected Nick's face. "That eye shows black even under the paint. You look almost as bad as I do."

  "Sour grapes. You'll feel better after some breakfast I'll need a bit of help. Escort Booty out to her car when it comes, then get her back into the hotel on some excuse. How about having them put up a box lunch and then take her back inside to get it Don't tell her what it is — shell make some excuse not to get it or she probably has one ordered already."

  Most of the girls were late for breakfast. Nick haunted the lobby, watched the street, and saw a cream-colored Singer Vogue park in one of the angled spaces at exactly eight o'clock. A young man in a white jacket entered the hotel and the PA system paged Miss DeLong. Through a window Nick watched Booty and Gus meet the delivery man near the desk and go out to the Singer. They talked. The lad in the white jacket left Booty and Gus went back into the hotel. Nick slipped out the door near the arcade.

  He walked swiftly behind the parked cars and pretended to drop something at the rear of a Rover parked beside the Singer. He went down out of sight When he came up, the beeper-emitter was fastened under the Singer's rear frame.

  From the corner he watched Booty and Gus come out of the hotel carrying a small box and Booty's large handbag. They paused under the portico. Nick watched until Booty got into the Singer and started the engine, then he hurried back to the BMW. When he eased up to the turn the Singer was halfway down the block. Gus spotted him and waved, a small motion with an upward flick of his hand. "Good luck," it seemed to semaphore.

  Booty drove north. The day was gorgeous, the bright sun baking a landscape that looked like Southern California in a dry spell — not the desert areas, but the near-mountain country, with thick vegetation and strange rock formations. Nick followed, staying far back, confirming contact by the ba-beep of the radio receiver braced against the back of the seat at his side.

  The more he saw of the country the more he liked it — climate, landscape, and people. The blacks looked calm and often prosperous, driving all sorts of cars and trucks. He reminded himself that he was seeing a developed, commercial section of the country and ought to withhold opinion.

  He saw an elephant grazing near an irrigation pump, and by the astonished looks of the bystanders he concluded they were as surprised as he was. The animal probably had been driven into civilization by the drought.
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  The hallmark of England was everywhere and it fitted very well, as if a sun-splashed countryside and hardy tropical vegetation was just as good a background as the mild-damp cloudy landscape of the British Isles. The baobab trees caught his attention. They cast weird arms toward space, looking like the banyan or fig trees of Florida. He passed one that must have measured thirty feet across, and came to an intersection. The signs included Ayrshire, Eldorado, Picaninyamba, Sinoia. Nick stopped, picked up his radio and rotated it The strongest signal came from dead ahead. He went straight and tested the ba-heep again. Right out in front and loud and clear.

  He rounded a turn, saw Booty's Singer stopped at a roadside gate; he stamped the BMW's brakes and hid it handily in a turnout evidently used by trucks. He jumped out of the car and peered past the neatly clipped bushes that screened a cluster of rubbish cans. There was no traffic on the road. The Singer's horn bleated four times. After a considerable wait a black man, wearing khaki shorts, shirt, and a peaked cap, trotted up the side road and unlocked the gate. The Singer drove in and the man fastened the gate, got in the car, and drove it down the grade and out of sight Nick waited a moment, then drove the BMW to the gate.

  It was an interesting barrier: unobtrusive and insurmountable, though it looked flimsy. A bar of three-inch steel swung on a pivot post with a counterbalance. It was painted with red and white stripes and you might mistake it for wood. Its free end was locked with a sturdy chain and fist-size English padlock.

  Nick knew he could pick it or break it, but there was the question of strategy. From the center of the pole a long oblong sign hung down lettered in neat block-yellow — SPARTACUS FARM, PIETER VAN PREZ, PRIVATE ROAD.

  There was no fence on either side of the gate, but the ditch from the highroad formed a moat impassable even for a jeep. Nick decided it had been cleverly dug that way with a backhoe.

  He returned to the BMW, drove it farther into the bushes, and locked it Carrying the little radio he cut through the bundu on a course parallel to the side road. He crossed several dry creeks that reminded him of New Mexico in the dry season. Much of the vegetation seemed to have desert characteristics, able to hold its own moisture through drought periods. He heard a strange growling sound from a clump of brush and circled it, wondering if Wilhelmina could stop a rhino or whatever you ran into around here.

  Keeping the road in sight, he saw the roof of a small house and approached it until he could inspect the terrain. The house was of cement or stucco, with a large kraal or cattle enclosure and neat fields stretching up a valley to the west and on out of sight. The road ran past the house and on into the bush, to the north. He took out his little brass telescope and studied details. Two small horses grazed under a shade roof like a Mexican ramada; a small, windowless building looked like a garage. Two large hounds sat looking in his direction, their jowls gravely thoughtful as they came through his lens like sad giants.

  Nick crawled back and continued to parallel the road until he was a mile past the house. The bundu was getting thicker and the going rough. He reached the road and followed it, opening and closing two cattle gates. His receiver showed the Singer to be ahead of him. He trotted on, watchful but covering ground.

  The parched road was gravel-surfaced and looked as if it drained well, not that it mattered in this weather. He saw dozens of cattle under trees, some very far away, A small snake scuttled off the gravel as he trotted by, and once he saw a lizard-like creature on a log that would take any ugliness prize — in its six-inch length it had varied colors, scales, horns, glaring eyes, and vicious-looking teeth. He stopped and mopped his head and it regarded him gravely without moving.

  Nick looked at his watch — 1:06. He had been on foot two hours; estimated distance covered: seven miles. Using a handkerchief, he made a pirate's cap for protection from the searing sun. He reached a pump installation where a diesel purred smoothly and pipes vanished into the bundu. There was a spigot at the pump house and he drank after smelling and examining the water. It had to come from deep underground and was probably all right; he needed it badly. He mounted a rise in the road and looked ahead cautiously, like a cavalry picket He took out his telescope and extended it.

  The powerful little lens showed him a large California-style ranch house amid a cluster of trees and well-trimmed vegetation. There were several outbuildings and kraals. The Singer was in the big looping drive, along with a Land Rover, a sporty-looking MG, and a classic car he did not recognize, a long-hooded roadster that must be thirty years old and looked three.

  On a spacious screened patio at one side of the house he saw several people seated in colorful chairs. He focused carefully — Booty, an old man with weathered skin who gave the impression of being the host and leader, even at this distance, three other white men in shorts, two blacks...

  He stared. One of them was John J. Johnson — last seen in New York's East Side Air Terminal, described by Hawk as a rare man with a hot trumpet. He had given Booty an envelope then. Nick decided he had come to pick it up. Very clever. The tour group, with its familiar credentials, came through customs easily, with hardly a piece of luggage opened.

  Nick crawled back from the rise, made a 180-degree turn, and surveyed his backtrail. He felt uneasy. He had seen nothing behind him, actually, yet he fancied he had heard a short call that did not fit in with the animal noises. Intuition, he wondered? Or just overcaution in this strange country. He studied the road and the bundu — nothing.

  It took him an hour to circle, using the five-stall garage to shield him from the patio, and approach the house. He crawled within sixty feet of the group behind the screens and hid behind a fat gnarled tree; the rest of the manicured shrubs and colorful plantings were too small to hide a midget. He focused his telescope through a notch in the branches. At this angle there would be no revealing sunflash from the lens.

  He could hear only bits of talk. They seemed to be having a pleasant meeting. There were glasses and cups and bottles on the tables. Evidently Booty had arrived for and enjoyed a good lunch. He wished he had. The patriarch who looked like the host did a good deal of talking, as did John Johnson and the other black man, a wiry, smallish type in dark-brown shirt and pants and heavy boots. After he had been watching for at least half an hour he saw Johnson lift a packet from the table that he recognized as the one Booty had received in New York — or its twin. Nick never jumped to conclusions. He heard Johnson say, "...not much... twelve thousand... to us vital... we like to pay... nothing for nothing..."

  The older man said, "...contributions were better before... sanctions... good will..." He spoke evenly and in a low tone, but Nick thought he heard the words "golden tusks."

  Johnson unfolded a sheet of paper from the packet Nick heard, "Thread and needles... ridiculous code but clear..."

  His rich baritone traveled better than the other voices. He went on, "...they are good guns and the cartridges are dependable. The explosives always work, at least so far. Better than the A16..." Nick lost the rest of it in the chuckles.

  A car's motor sounded from back along the road Nick had used. A dusty Volkswagen came into view and was parked in the drive. A woman of about forty went into the house and was greeted by the older man and introduced to Booty as Martha Ryerson. The woman moved as if she spent much of her time outdoors; her stride was brisk, her coordination excellent. Nick decided she was almost beautiful, with intense, open features and neat, short brown hair that stayed in place when she took off her wide-brimmed hat Who would...

  A heavy voice behind Nick said, "Don't move quickly."

  Very quickly — Nick did not move a muscle. You can tell when they mean it — and probably have something to back it up. The deep voice with its musical British accent said to someone Nick could not see, "Zanga — tell Mr. Prez." Then, louder, "You can turn around now."

  Nick turned. A Negro of medium height clad in white shorts and a pale-blue sports shirt stood with a double-barreled shotgun cradled under his arm, aimed just to the left of N
ick's knees. The gun was an expensive one, engravings clear and deep in the metal, and it was ten-gauge — a portable short-range cannon.

  These thoughts passed through his mind as he calmly watched his captor. He had no intention of moving or speaking first — that made some people nervous. A movement to one side caught his eye. The two dogs he had seen at the small house at the beginning of the road walked up to the Negro and then looked at Nick as if to say, "Our lunch?"

  They were Rhodesian Ridgebacks, sometimes called lion dogs, weighing about a hundred pounds each. They can break a deer's leg with a grip and twist, knock down good-size game with their battering-ram charge, and three of them can hold a lion. The Negro said, "Stay, Gymba. Stay, Jane."

  They sat down beside him and lolled their tongues in Nick's direction. The other man looked down at them. Nick turned and leaped away, angling to keep the tree between himself and the shotgun.

  He was counting on several things. The dogs had just been told to "stay." It might hold them still a moment. The Negro probably wasn't the leader here — not in "white" Rhodesia — and perhaps he had been told not to shoot.

  Blam! It sounded like both barrels. Nick heard the whine and shriek of light shot as it cut the air where he had been an instant before. It whacked against the garage he was approaching, forming a jagged circular pattern to his right. He saw it as he leaped up, hooked a hand over the garage roof, and threw his body up and onto the top in a one-hock mount and roll.

  As he twisted out of sight he heard the scampering feet of the dogs and the heavier sounds of the running man. The dogs each gave a loud, gruff bark that carried a long way as if to say, "Here he is!"

  Nick could imagine them with their forepaws up on the side of the garage, those great mouths with the inch-long teeth that reminded him of crocodiles', open hopefully. Two black hands gripped the edge of the roof. The Negro's angry features rose into view. Nick whipped Wilhelmina out and writhed around, putting the barrel an inch from the man s nose. They were both still for an instant, looking into each other's faces. Nick shook his head negatively, said, "No."