The Elephant's Tale (13 page)

Martine, who was conscious of time slipping away from them like salt through a timer, was too distracted to take much interest in the plant, which was quite ugly. The calls of a pair of sandgrouse birds attracted her attention and she wandered over to them. That’s when she noticed the circle of red earth. At its widest point it was probably the length Jemmy would be if he lay down, and it was perfectly round and bare. Not a blade of grass grew on it.

She touched it gingerly. The ground was firm and the soil was warm and crumbly. When she sifted it through her fingers, nothing happened. There was no blinding flash of light. No life-changing revelation.

“Gift,” she called. “Do you know anything about this circle?”

He came over. “Sure I do. That’s a fairy circle.”

“A
fairy
circle? You believe in fairies in Namibia?”

Gift laughed. “I don’t think anyone believes they’re created by actual fairies. Then again, nobody knows where they come from. They appear out of nowhere, a bit like crop circles do in places like Britain and America. Some people think they’re caused by termites or radioactive granite; others say a forest of Euphorbia trees grew here many years ago and poisoned the ground when they died.”

“What do you believe?” Ben asked.

“I think they were made by little green aliens,” Gift teased. “They’re extra-terrestrial landing pads!”

“You keep saying ‘they,’” Martine interrupted. “Is there another circle around here?”

Gift clutched at his forehead, as if that was the dumbest tourist question he’d heard. Motioning them to follow, he clambered up a rocky hillock. When they reached the top, sweating from the short climb, he waved an arm in the direction of the grassy plain on the other side. Martine peered over the edge and gulped. As far as the eye could see were dozens and dozens of circles.

The circle will lead you to the elephants,
Grace had told her.

“Which circle?” Martine thought in despair. And which elephants? If Grace was right, only one combination would lead her to the truth.

T
he next step in their investigation was Reuben James’s tourist lodge. Gift was friends with one of the guides there and he thought it possible the man might know something about Angel’s past. He was less willing to cooperate when it came to the lodge owner himself. “You’re wasting your time doing detective work on Reuben James,” he told them. “There’s nothing to find. But, hey, it’s your vacation.”

Martine said nothing on the drive over. She’d not yet recovered from the fairy circle blow. She’d expected to find one special circle that would make everything clear, not hundreds. Once again she was haunted by the notion that she and Ben might be in the wrong place at the wrong time. That by coming to Namibia in the vain hope of stumbling upon some last-ditch way of saving Sawubona and the animals, they might have ruined any chance Gwyn Thomas had of doing just that.

She shuddered to think what would happen if her grandmother arrived back at the game reserve unexpectedly to learn that not only had her granddaughter and Ben been missing for days, the police had not been called. She’d go berserk. She’d feel obliged to get a message to Ben’s mum and dad on their Mediterranean cruise and all hell would break loose. Grace, who’d promised to take care of Martine and Ben, would be in the biggest trouble of her life. So would Tendai, who was skeptical about Grace’s prophesies and would have been livid to discover that the
sangoma
had encouraged Martine to go off on some hare-brained adventure “to pluck out the thorn” that was hurting her.

Then there was the problem of the prophecy itself. Grace’s predictions were often obscure, but this latest one was either deceptively simple or just plain wrong. The circle hadn’t led Martine to the elephants. The elephants had, if anything, led her to the circle.

On top of all that, she was worried sick about Jemmy and Khan. Sawubona was crawling with Reuben James’s hired workers. What if one took a shine to the white giraffe and rare leopard and decided to steal them?

Gift’s voice broke into her thoughts. “Welcome to Hoodia Haven.”

Martine leaned out the window. They were pulling into a circular gravel driveway lined with beds of cacti and purple and scarlet desert flowers, shaped to spell the name of the lodge.

“That’s a strange name for a hotel,” Ben remarked.

“I think it’s quite a good one,” Gift said, parking beneath a shepherd’s tree. They all climbed out. “Those plump cacti are hoodia plants. The iKung Bushmen call them
‘xhoba.’
For thousands of years the San have used them as appetite suppressants and thirst quenchers. A piece the size of a cucumber used to keep the old hunters going for a week.”

“That would be handy right now,” remarked Martine. “It seems at least a century since we ate breakfast.”

Gift took a knife from his pocket and cut them each a piece of cactus, using a rag to protect his hands from the thorns. “When you’ve eaten that, why don’t you go and wait in the guest lounge? There’s an exhibition of my elephant photos in there. I’ll go and ask my friend about your elephant.”

Ben waited until he was out of earshot. “What’s our plan?” he asked, screwing up his nose at the bitterness of the cactus leaf, then straightening it again as he realized that it left a refreshing sweet taste on his tongue. “What exactly are we searching for?”

“We don’t know,” admitted Martine, wiping her hands on a tea-tree wipe Gift had provided. “Some proof that Mr. James is involved in diamond smuggling or mistreats animals or is employing slave labor or something. Proof of corruption. Why don’t we split up and see if we can find anything interesting?”

“Sounds good. Martine . . .”

“Yes?”

“Watch your back.”

Martine did not have much experience with five-star hotels, but there was no doubt that Hoodia Haven was the last word in luxury. The swimming pool looked as if it had been created from dissolved aquamarines. Over-tanned guests were draped around it in elegant poses, ice tinkling in their drinks. One had binoculars and was watching zebra drink from a distant water hole. Waiters glided around with platters of fruit, shellfish, and salad, or whisked away empty cocktail glasses with umbrellas sticking out of them.

The hoodia plant had taken the edge off Martine’s hunger, but the food looked so delicious it was hard not to want it. When she passed an unattended bowl of exotic fruit and nuts, she sneaked a handful of salted almonds into her mouth. A waiter noticed and smiled. A few minutes later he came over and kindly presented her with a plate of chopped pineapple.

Martine kept expecting to be outed as an imposter and evicted, but nobody took any notice of her. She sat nibbling the pineapple, which tasted and smelled like nectar. When she’d finished it, she thanked the waiter and set off along a corridor marked “Spa” and “Gift Shop.”

With every step, her hopes of finding a clue that might save Sawubona evaporated. Everything about the lodge appeared eco-friendly and aboveboard. The staff had warm smiles and were going about their work contentedly. The guests were in a state of bliss. There could hardly have been a place in Namibia that looked less like a den of corruption.

She rounded a corner and there was Reuben James. He was strolling toward her, but he was focused on his companion, who was speaking.

Martine wanted to move, but her limbs felt heavy and useless, and her brain functioned at half speed, as if its batteries were almost flat. At the last conceivable moment, she bounded sideways into the gift shop.

From a small office at the back of the store, a disembodied voice called: “I’ll be with you as soon as I can, honey. I’m just finishing up an order. If you want to try anything on, the changing room is free. I’m Theresa. Give me a yell if you need help.”

“Thanks, Theresa, I will,” said Martine.

She snatched a couple of T-shirts off a shelf and shot into the changing room just as Reuben James came into view. Soon afterward, she heard his voice raised in cheerful greeting outside in the parking lot. She stood on the cubicle stool and peered through the slits in the air vent. Reuben had his hand on Gift’s shoulder and was congratulating him on his exhibition of photographs. Gift was smiling.

When Gift moved away, Reuben’s companion, who was in shadow and could only partially be seen from Martine’s angle, said, “You genuinely care for that boy, don’t you? How can you look him in the eye?”

“Easily,” Reuben James responded shortly. “First, because what he doesn’t know isn’t going to hurt him. Second, because very soon I’m going to put everything right. And lastly, because I’m thinking about the bigger picture. What I’m doing is for the good of everyone in Namibia.”

“Oh, sure,” drawled his companion. “You’re all heart.”

“Look around you,” Reuben James said heatedly. “Can you not see that global warming is a devastating threat to the already impossibly hard lives of the desert tribes and animals here?”

Martine was startled to hear global warming mentioned twice in one morning. She strained her ears, trying not to miss a word.

Reuben James went on: “Can’t you see that the Ark Project is going to transform the lives of thousands, including that of the boy?”

“I can see how it’s going to transform your bank balance.”

“And yours.”

“To be sure,” said the stranger. He moved slightly, revealing the back of his head and his broad shoulders. His hair had the shiny blue-blackness of a crow’s wing. “But then I’m not pretending I’m going to save the planet.”

He cocked his glossy black head and studied the other man. “What I want to know is, are you prepared for the catastrophic effect that this is going to have? Are you prepared for
war?”

Reuben James rounded on him angrily. “What are you talking about, Callum? There’s not going to be a war.”

“Are you sure about that? Can you say that for certain? And anyway, I thought you told me you were prepared to do whatever it took. I wouldn’t like to think that you were going soft on me at the eleventh hour. I might have to take drastic measures. I might have to, say, call in that loan.”

Reuben James looked at him with contempt. “I meant what I said. I
will
do whatever it takes. But when this is over, I don’t ever want to lay eyes on you again.” And with that he climbed into a sleek silver car and sped away in a plume of dust.

The stranger watched him go. “Don’t worry,” he said so softly that Martine barely caught the words. “You won’t.”

As if some instinct told him he was being observed, he whipped around and stared straight at the vent.

Martine leaped clumsily off the stool, knocking it over in her haste.

“Is everything okay in there?” called Theresa.

To buy herself time, Martine called, “These T-shirts are lovely, but I need a smaller size.”

A cocoa-brown hand with red-painted nails slipped around the curtain and took them from her. “I should say so, honey. These are men’s extra-large. They’d look like dresses on you. I’ll nip out to the storeroom and see if we’ve got them in kids’ sizes.”

The gift shop fell silent. Martine’s head was spinning.
Are you prepared for war?
That was the sentence that kept going through her mind over and over. She had to talk to Ben. If she was quick, she could get out to the parking lot before Theresa returned. She pulled back the curtain.

Standing at the shop counter, half turned away from her but looking every bit as surly as he had when she last saw him at Sawubona, was Lurk.

T
he brass rings screeched as Martine wrenched shut the curtain. Had he seen her or hadn’t he? She thought he might have, but she couldn’t be sure.

The seconds stretched into minutes. The gift shop stayed silent. Martine stood pressed up against the back wall of the cubicle, praying for Theresa’s return. She seemed to have been gone forever. Then she heard footsteps—not the saleswoman’s clicking heels, but the heavy, deliberate tread of a man’s shoe. They came around the counter and stopped outside the changing room.

Martine’s heart almost stopped with them. She could hear Lurk breathing. He slid back the curtain.

Martine screamed.

A henna-haired Damara woman she took to be Theresa came rushing in, followed by Gift. Martine caught a glimpse of Ben close on their heels, but he spotted the chauffeur in the nick of time and took rapid evasive action.

“Lurk, have you lost your mind? What do you mean by terrorizing my customers?” the saleswoman demanded.

“Yes, Lurk, have you lost your mind?” parroted Gift, unable to resist the opportunity to make fun of the man he loathed.

The chauffeur glowered at him. “I know this girl,” he told Theresa, pointing rudely at Martine. “She from South Africa. Very bad witch. She make buffalo rise from the dead and the elephant to chase me.”

Theresa went red with annoyance. “What rubbish are you talking, Lurk? As if a young girl could resurrect buffaloes and order elephants to charge you. Have you been drinking?”