The Leopard Hunts in Darkness (41 page)

In that instant the bull was open, from his reaching chin to the soft folds of skin between his forelegs, and Peter Fungabera put the full weight of his body and all the momentum of his run
behind the silver blade.

The bull ran onto the point. It went into him with the sucking sound of a foot in mud, and the blade was swallowed by living flesh. It went in until the fingers of Peter’s right hand on
the shaft followed the blade into the wound and spurting blood drenched him to the shoulder. Peter released his grip on the assegai, and pirouetted away, spinning clear while the bull bucked
stiff-legged against the long steel in his chest cavity. He tried to follow Peter round, but came up short and stood with his thick stubby forelegs braced, staring at the naked man with a glaze
spreading over his eyes.

Peter Fungabera posed before him, with both arms lifted gracefully. ‘Ha, earth-shaker!’ he called in Shona. ‘Ha, you sky thunder!’

The bull made two plunging strides forward and something burst inside him. Blood erupted in a double gush from his flaring nostrils. He opened his jaws and bellowed, and blood shot up his throat
in a frothing bright cascade and drenched his chest. The great bull reeled, fighting to keep his balance.

‘Die, spawn of the black gods!’ Peter taunted. ‘Feel the steel of a future king – and die!’

The bull went down. The earth jumped beneath their feet as the weight of him struck.

Peter Fungabera stepped up to the huge bossed head in which the smouldering eyes were fading. He went down on one knee and, with his cupped hands, scooped up the rich hot blood as it streamed
from the bull’s gaping mouth, and he lifted his hands to his mouth and drank the blood like wine. It streamed down his arms and dribbled from his chin, and Peter laughed, a sound that made
even the Russian’s vinegary blood chill.

‘I have drunk your living blood, oh great bull. Now your strength is mine!’ he shouted, as the bull arched his back in the final spasm of death.

P
eter Fungabera had showered and changed into mess kit. His trousers were black with a burgundy watered-silk side stripe. His short bumfreezer
jacket was in the regiment’s same distinctive burgundy-red with black silk lapels. His white shirt was starch-fronted and wing-collared with a black bow-tie and he wore a double row of
miniature decorations.

The camp servants had set a table under the spread branches of a mhoba-hoba tree, on the edge of an open vlei of short lush green grass, out of sight and earshot of the main camp. On the table
was a bottle of Chivas Regal whisky and another of vodka, a bucket of ice and two crystal glasses.

Colonel Nikolai Bukharin sat opposite Peter. His long loose cotton shirt hung outside his baggy Cossack pants and was belted at the waist. His feet were thrust into boots of soft glove-leather.
He leaned forward and filled the glasses, and then passed one to Peter.

This time there was no flamboyant tossing back of liquor. They drank slowly, watching the African sky turn mauve and smouldering gold. The silence was the companionable accord of two men who
have risked their lives together and have each found the other worthy, a comrade to die with, or an adversary to fight to the death.

At last Colonel Bukharin placed his glass back on the table with a click.

‘And so, my friend, tell me what you want,’ he invited.

‘I want this land,’ said Peter Fungabera simply.

‘All of it?’ the colonel asked.

‘All of it.’

‘Not just Zimbabwe?’

‘Not just Zimbabwe.’

‘And we are to help you take it?’

‘Yes.’

‘In exchange?’

‘My friendship.’

‘Your friendship unto death?’ the colonel suggested drily. ‘Or until you have what you want and find a new friend?’

Peter smiled. They spoke the same language, they understood each other.

‘What tangible signs of this eternal friendship will you give us?’ the Russian insisted.

‘A poor little country like mine,’ Peter shrugged, ‘a few strategic minerals – nickel, chrome, titanium, beryllium – a few ounces of gold.’

The Russian nodded sagely. ‘They will be useful to us.’

‘Then, once I am the Monomatapa of Zimbabwe, my eyes will become restless, naturally—’

‘Naturally.’ The Russian watched his eyes. He did not like black men, this racist bigotry was a common Russian trait, he did not like their colour nor their smell – but this
one!

‘My eyes might turn southwards,’ Peter Fungabera said softly. Ha! Colonel Bukharin hid his glee behind a doleful expression. This one is different!

‘The direction in which your own eyes have been focused all along,’ Peter went on, and the Russian could have chortled.

‘What will you see in the south, Comrade General?’

‘I will see a people enslaved and ripe for emancipation.’

‘And what else?’

‘I will see the gold of the Witwatersrand and the Free State fields, I will see the diamonds of Kimberley, the uranium, the platinum, the silver, the copper – in short, I will see
one of the great treasure houses of this earth.’

‘Yes?’ the Russian probed with delight. This one is quick, this one has brains, and this one has the courage that it would take.

‘I will see a base that divides the western world, a base that controls both the south Atlantic and the Indian oceans, that sits upon the oil lines between the Gulf and Europe, between the
Gulf and the Americas.’

The Russian held up a hand. ‘Where will these thoughts lead you?’

‘It will be my duty to see this land to the south elevated to its true place in the community of nations, in the tutelage of and under the protection of that greatest of all lovers of
freedom, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.’

The Russian nodded, still watching his eyes. Yes, this black man had seen the design behind it all. The south was the grand prize, but to win it they needed to take it in the strangler’s
grasp. To the east they already had Mozambique, to the west Angola was theirs and Namibia would soon be also. They needed only the north to isolate the prize. The north was Zimbabwe, like the
strangler’s thumb on the windpipe, and this man could deliver it to them.

Colonel Bukharin sat forward in his canvas camp-chair and became businesslike and brisk.

‘Opportunity?’

‘Economic chaos, and intertribal warfare, the breakdown of central government.’ Peter Fungabera counted them off on his fingers.

‘The present government is meeting you more than halfway in creating its own economic breakdown,’ the Russian observed, ‘and you are already doing fine work in fanning tribal
hatreds.’

‘Thank you, comrade.’

‘However, the peasants must begin to starve a little before they become manageable—’

‘I am pushing in the Cabinet for the nationalization of the white-owned farms and ranches. Without the white farmers I can produce you a goodly measure of starvation,’ Peter
Fungabera smiled.

‘I hear you have already made a start. I congratulate you on the recent acquisition of your own estate, King’s Lynn? That is the name is it not?’

‘You are well informed, Colonel.’

‘I take pains to ensure that I am. But when the moment comes to seize the reins of state, what kind of man will the people look to?’

‘A strong man,’ Peter answered without hesitation. ‘One whose ruthlessness has been demonstrated.’

‘As yours was during the
chimurenga
, and more recently in Matabeleland.’

‘A man of charisma and presence, a man well known to the people.’

‘The women sing your praises in the streets of Harare, not a single day passes without your image on the television screens or your name on the front page of the newspapers.’

‘A man with force behind him.’

‘The Third Brigade,’ the Russian nodded, ‘and the blessing of the people of the USSR. However,’ he paused significantly, ‘two questions need answers, Comrade
General.’

‘Yes?’

‘The first is a mundane and distasteful question to raise between men such as you and I – money. My paymasters become restless. Our expenses have begun to exceed by a considerable
amount the shipments of ivory and animal products that you have sent us—’ He held up his hand again to forestall argument. It was an old man’s hand, dappled with withered dark
spots and criss-crossed with prominent blue veins. ‘I know that we should do these things merely for the love of freedom, that money is a capitalist obscenity, but nothing is perfect in this
world. In short, Comrade General, you are reaching the limits that Moscow has set on your credit.’

‘I understand,’ Peter Fungabera nodded. ‘What is your second question?’

‘The Matabele tribe. They are a warlike and difficult people. I know that you have been forced to stir up enmity, to cause dissension and strife and to bring upon the present government
the disapproval of the Western powers by your campaign in Matabeleland. But what happens afterwards? How do you control them once you yourself have seized power?’

‘I answer both questions with a single name,’ Peter Fungabera replied.

‘The name?’

‘Tungata Zebiwe.’

‘Ha! Yes! Tungata Zebiwe. The Matabele leader. You had him put away. I presumed that by now he had been liquidated.’

‘I am holding him in great secrecy and safety at one of my rehabilitation centres near here.’

‘Explain.’

‘Firstly, the money.’

‘From what we know, Tungata Zebiwe is not a rich man,’ the Russian demurred.

‘He has the key to a fortune which might easily exceed two hundred million US dollars.’

The Russian raised a silver eyebrow in the gesture of disbelief that Peter was coming to know well, and which was beginning to irritate him.

‘Diamonds,’ he said.

‘The mother country is one of the world’s largest producers.’ The Russian spread his hands disparagingly.

‘Not industrial rubbish, not black boart, but gem stones of the first water, large stones, huge stones, some of the finest ever mined anywhere.’

The Russian looked thoughtful. ‘If it is true—’

‘It is true! But I will not explain further. Not yet.’

‘Very well. At least I can hold out some sort of promise to the money-sucking leeches in our treasury department? And the second question. The Matabele? You cannot plan to obliterate them,
man, woman and child?’

Peter Fungabera shook his head regretfully. ‘No. Though it would be the better way, America and Britain would not allow it. No, my answer is Tungata Zebiwe again. When I take over the
country, he will reappear – it will be almost miraculous. He will come back from the dead. The Matabele tribe will go wild with joy and relief. They will follow him, they will dote upon him,
and I will make him my vice-president.’

‘He hates you. You destroyed him. If you ever free him, he will seek to revenge that.’

‘No,’ Peter shook his head. ‘I will send him to you. You have special clinics for difficult cases, do you not? Institutes where a mentally sick man can be treated with drugs
– and other techniques to make him rational and reasonable once more?’

This time the Russian actually began to chortle, and he poured himself another vodka, shaking with silent laughter. When he looked up at Peter, there was respect in those pale eyes for the first
time.

‘I drink to you, Monomatapa of Zimbabwe, may you reign a thousand years!’

He set down his glass and turned to stare down the long open vlei to the distant waterhole. A herd of zebra had come down to drink. They were nervous and skittish, for the lions lie in ambush at
the water. At last they waded in, knee-deep and in a single rank, dipped their lips to touch the surface in unison. They formed an overlapping frieze of identical heads like an infinity of mirror
images until the old stallion sentinel snorted in nervous alarm and the pattern exploded in foaming water and wildly galloping forms.

‘The treatment of which you speak is drastic.’ Colonel Bukharin watched the zebra herd tear away into the forest. ‘Some patients do not survive it. Those that do
are—’ he searched for the word ‘ – altered.’

‘Their minds are destroyed.’ Peter said it for him.

‘In plain terms – yes,’ the colonel nodded.

‘I need his body, not his brain. I need a puppet, not a human being.’

‘We can arrange that. When will you send him to us?’

‘The diamonds first,’ Peter replied.

‘Of course, the diamonds first. How long will that take?’

Peter shrugged. ‘Not long.’

‘When you are ready I will send a doctor to you, with the appropriate medications. We can bring this Tungata Zebiwe out on the same route as the ivory: Air Zimbabwe to Dar-es-Salaam and
one of our freighters from there to Odessa.’

‘Agreed.’

‘You say that he is being held near here? I would like to see him.’

‘Is it wise?’

‘Indulge me, please!’ From Colonel Bukharin it was an order rather than a request.

T
ungata Zebiwe stood in the flat white glare of the noonday sun. He stood facing a whitewashed wall that caught the sun’s rays and flung them
back like a huge mirror. He had stood there since before the rise of the sun, when the frost had crusted the sparse brown grass at the edge of the parade ground.

Tungata was stark naked, as were the two men that flanked him. All three of them were so thin that every rib showed clearly, and the crests of their spines stood out like the beads of a rosary
down the centre of their backs. Tungata had his eyes closed to slits to keep out the glare of sunlight off the wall, but he concentrated on a mark in the plaster to counter the effects of giddy
vertigo which had already toppled the men on each side of him more than once. Only heavy lashing by the guards had forced them to their feet again. They were still swaying and reeling as they
stood.

‘Courage, my brothers,’ Tungata whispered in Sindebele. ‘Do not let the Shona dogs see you beaten.’

He was determined not to collapse, and he stared at the dimple in the wall. It was the mark of a bullet strike, painted over with limewash. They limewashed the wall after every execution –
they were meticulous about it.

‘
Amanzi
,’ husked the man on his right, ‘water!’