Wilbur Smith's Smashing Thrillers (132 page)

“Healthy greed is the fuel of the capitalist system,” Tug agreed.

“And the stupid unthinking greed of other men makes you and me rich, does it not?”

Tug inclined his head in agreement and they went on.

There were more paramilitary guards in silver helmets at the door of the museum. Tug knew without being told that their vigil was perpetual. Picked men.

Heng noticed his glance. “I trust them more than all these modern electronic devices.” Cheng relinquished his father’s arm for a moment to punch the entry code into the control box of the alarm system and the massive carved doors swung open automatically. He ushered them through.

The museum was without windows. There was no natural light, and the artificial lighting had been skilfully arranged. The air-conditioning was set to the correct humidity to preserve and protect the ivory. The carved doors closed with a pneumatic hiss behind them.

Tug took three paces into the spacious antechamber and then halted abruptly. He stared at the display in the centre of the marble floor.

“You recognize them?” Heng H’Sui asked.

“Yes, of course.” Tug nodded. “I saw them once, long ago, at the Sultan of Zanzibar’s palace before the revolution. There has been speculation ever since as to what happened to them.”

“Yes. I acquired them after the revolution in 1964 when the Sultan was exiled,” Heng H’Sui agreed. “Very few people know that I own them.”

The walls of the room were painted blue, that particular milky blue of an African noon sky. The colour was chosen to show off the exhibits to best effect and the dimensions of the antechamber had obviously been designed for the same purpose, to complement the pair of ivory tusks.

Each tusk was over ten feet long, and its diameter at the lip was larger than a virgin’s waist. The legend inked on each tusk was in Arabic script written a hundred years ago by a clerk of the Sultan Barghash recording the weight when it arrived in Zanzibar. Tug deciphered the writing: the heaviest tusk had weighed 235 pounds, the other only a few pounds less.

“They are lighter now,” Heng H’Sui anticipated his question. “Between them they have dried out by twenty-two pounds, but still it takes four men to carry one of them. Think of the mighty animal who originally bore them.”

They were the most famous tusks in existence. As a student of African history, Tug knew the story of these extraordinary objects. They had been taken a hundred years ago on the southern slopes of Kilimanjaro, by a slave named Senoussi. The slave’s master was a villain named Shundi. He was one of the cruellest and most unscrupulous slavers and ivory-traders on the African cast coast, an area notorious for the depredations of the slave-masters. When he had first come upon it, Senoussi had in awe delayed killing the old bull. He had crouched over his flintlock musket and studied this extraordinary creature with respect for several hours before he had summoned the courage to creep forward and send a lead ball through its heart.

According to Senoussi’s later account to his master, the bull ran off only a hundred yards before collapsing. He was an extremely old elephant with his fourth and last molars almost worn away, on the verge of the slow starvation of great age.

Although not particularly big-bodied, his neck and forequarters were overdeveloped to carry that great weight of ivory. Senoussi observed the bull had been forced to raise his head and lift the tips of his tusks free of the earth before he could move.

When Shundi displayed the tusks in the ivory market in Zanzibar they caused a sensation amongst traders accustomed to dealing with massive tusks. The Sultan had purchased the pair from Shundi for a thousand pounds sterling, which was a huge sum of money in those days. Tug had first seen them in the palace of the Sultan’s successors overlooking the Zanzibar waterfront.

Now he approached them with awe and stroked one of them, staring up at the massive ivory arches that almost met high above his head. This was legendary treasure. To Tug, somehow, these tusks seemed to embody the history and the soul of the entire African continent.

“Now let me show you the rest of my poor little collection,” Ning Heng H’Sui suggested at last, and led the way past the towering ivory columns to the archway artfully concealed in the rear wall of the antechamber.

The interior of the building was a labyrinth of dimly lit passages. The floor was carpeted with midnight-blue Wilton, soft and soundless to the tread. The walls were the same colour, but set flush into them on each side of the passage were the showcases. The proportions of each case were designed to the shape and size of the single exhibit it contained. The lighting of the cases was dramatically arranged so that each treasure was revealed in crisp detail and seemed to float airily and independently of the dim surroundings.

Firstly, there were religious and sacred objects, a Bible with covers of carved ivory and precious stones bearing the doubleheaded eagle of Imperial Russia. “Peter the Great,” Heng murmured. His personal Bible.

There was a copy of the Torah, the yellow parchment rolled on to an ivory distaff contained within an ivory case with the Star of David carved upon it. “Salvaged from the great synagogue at Constantinople when it was destroyed by the Byzantine emperor Theodosius,” Heng explained.

Amongst other treasures there were icons of ivory set with diamonds and Hindu statuettes of Vishnu, a copy of the Koran covered with beaten gold and ivory, and ancient Christian statues of the Virgin and the saints, all carved from ivory.

Then, as they moved along the dim passageway, the nature of the exhibits became more profane, and secular. There were women’s fans and combs and necklaces from ancient Rome and Greece, then an extraordinary object shaped like a two-foot rolling pin with a rooster head carved at one end.

Tug did not recognize it and Heng explained expressionlessly. “It belonged to Catherine the Great of Russia. Her physicians convinced her that ivory was a sovereign specific against syphilis. It is an ivory dildo, made to her own design.”

Occasionally Heng instructed his son to open one or two of the cases so that Tug could handle the exhibits and examine them more closely. “The true joy of ivory lies in the feel of it in the hand,” Heng suggested. “It is as sensuous as the skin of a lovely woman. See the grain, Sir Peter, that lovely subtle cross-hatching that no synthetic substance can duplicate.”

There was one object the size and shape of a football, carved like lacework. Within it were eight more balls, free and complete, one within the other like the layers of an onion. The artist had carved the inner balls through the minute apertures in the outer layers. In the centre of the ball was a carving of a rose bud, perfect in every detail. Three thousand hours of work.

“Five years from the life of a master craftsman. How can you place a value on that?” Cheng asked.

Two hours after entering the museum they came at last to the room that contained the netsukes. During the Tokugawa Shogunate in Japan, only the aristocracy were allowed to wear personal adornment. Amongst the newly emerging and affluent middle class the netsuke button, worn on the sash and used to secure a pill box or tobacco pouch, was an essential article of dress. The beauty and intricacy of the carving enhanced the owner’s prestige.

Heng had assembled a collection of over ten thousand pieces. However, as he explained to Tug, he could only display a few of his favourites, and amongst them were his own creations. These were cased separately, and once again Tug was invited to take them in his hand and to admire the craftsmanship.

“Of course, I was obliged to seek out and buy back my own work.” Heng smiled and tugged at the tassel of hair that hung from his cheek. “I have agents around the world still searching; for my creations. I estimate there are at least a hundred that have so far eluded me. Ten thousand dollars if you find one, Sir Peter,” he promised.

“And worth every cent,” Tug agreed as he examined one of the tiny ivory buds. The detail and rendition was extraordinary and the subject matter covered a wide range of humanity and the animal world, from birds and mammals to men and beautiful women and children in every possible pose and indulging in every activity, from war to love, from death to childbirth.

Somehow, Heng the artist had managed to transform even the mundane into something remarkable and exciting. Subjects that might have been merely pornographic and coarse were instead spiritual, ethereal and moving.

“You have a rare gift,” Tug acknowledged. “The heart and eye of a great artist.”

For a short while the two men were in accord, and then they left the treasure house and returned to the main house where servants had set out writing materials and light refreshments at a long lacquer-work table. They removed their footwear and settled themselves on cushions about the table and, at last, the real work began.

In London, Tug had negotiated and signed a document of intent with the elder Ning sons. This was subject to ratification by the patriarch. Tug had never expected this to be a simple procedure and he was not to be disappointed.

A little after midnight they adjourned and Tug was escorted back to the guesthouse by Cheng. The two female servants were waiting for him with tea and refreshments. They helped him change into his night clothes, then drew back the quilts on the low wide bed and waited expectantly.

Tug dismissed them and they left at once. He had not been able to discover where the video camera and microphone were concealed, but he was certain they were there. He switched off the light and lay for a while, well pleased with the progress he had made. Then he slept soundly and awoke eager for the fray.

In the middle of the following afternoon, Tug and Heng H’Sui shook hands.

From all that Tug had learned about the old man, he believed that like himself Heng was a man of peculiar integrity. Between them that handshake was as good as any formal document. Of course, the lawyers on both sides would now come in and complicate and muddy the issues, but even they could never weaken the central pillars of the agreement.

Between Tug and Heng it was sacrosanct, the honour of buccaneers.

“There is one other matter I would like to discuss with you,” Heng murmured, and Tug frowned. “No, no, Sir Peter. It is a personal matter, not part of our agreement.” And Tug relaxed.

“I will do what I can to help you. What is it about?”

“Elephant,” Heng said. “Ivory.”

“Ah.” Tug smiled and nodded. “Why didn’t I guess?”

“At the time that bloodthirsty madman Idi Amin took over Uganda, the largest elephant still alive on the African continent were in the Uganda National Park near the Murchison Falls at the headwaters of the Nile,” Heng explained.

“Yes,” Tug agreed. I saw a dozen animals in that Park that had tusks over a hundred pounds a side. “They were wiped out by Idi Amin’s henchmen and the ivory stolen by him.”

“Not all of them, Sir Peter. I have it on good authority that some of those animals, the largest of them, escaped annihilation. They crossed the border into Ubomo and reached the rain forests on the slopes of the Mountains of the Moon, that area which now forms part of our syndicate’s concession.

“It is possible,” Tug conceded.

“It is more than that. It is fact,” Heng contradicted him. “My son Cheng,” he indicated the man at his side, “has a reliable agent in Ubomo. An Indian who has cooperated with us on many occasions. His name is Chetti Singh. Do you know him?”

“I have heard of him, vaguely.” Tug frowned again. “Let me think … Yes, he is connected with the illegal export of ivory and rhino horn. I have heard he is the mastermind behind all African poaching.”

“Chetti Singh has been in the forests of the Ubomo basin within the last ten days,” Heng went on. “He has seen with his own eyes an elephant bull with tusks almost as large as those I showed you today.”

“How can I help you?” Tug insisted.

“I want those tusks,” Heng murmured, the passion of the collector barely concealed behind the time-eroded mask of his face. “More than the ore and the hardwoods of the forest, I want that ivory.”

“President Taffari can sign a special Protected Game licence. I believe there is provision for that in the constitution. If there isn’t, it can be changed. I presume that your man Chetti Singh will be able to arrange for the ivory to be harvested. He is the master poacher. If that is the case, I will send my Gulfstream to Ubomo to pick up the tusks and ferry them to you here. I can foresee no problems, Mr. Ning.”

“Thank you, Sir Peter,” Heng smiled. “Is there anything I can do for you in exchange?”

“Yes.” Tug leaned forward. “As a matter of fact there is.”

“You only have to ask,” Heng invited.

“Before I do that, I must explain something of the new hysteria that is sweeping the Western world. Fortunately for you, you are not subject to the same pressures. There is a new thinking, especially amongst the young but also, regrettably, amongst those who should know better. This philosophy is that we have no right to utilise the natural assets of our planet. We cannot be allowed to mine the earth of its bounty, because our excavations will disfigure the beauty of nature. We cannot be allowed to cut the trees for timber, because they belong not to us but to posterity. We cannot be allowed to kill a living creature for its meat or fur or ivory, because all life is somehow sacred.”

“This is nonsense.” Heng dismissed it with a brusque gesture, his dark eyes sparkling. “Man is what he is today because he has always done these things.” He touched the cedar panels of the wall beside him, the hem of his silk tunic, the gold and ivory ring on his finger, the precious ceramic bowl on the table before him. “All these were mined or felled or killed, as is the very food we eat.”

“You and I, we know that,” Tug agreed. “But this new madness is a force to be reckoned with, almost an unreasoning religious fanaticism. A jihad, if you like, a holy war.”

“I mean no disrespect, Sir Peter, but the Occidental is emotionally immature. I like to think that we of the cast have more sophistication. We are not so readily caught up by such exaggerated behaviour.”