"Wait ten! "This time it was shorter. "Dawn tomorrow." 'llnderstood,"Craig acknowledged. "We will be waiting."
"Over and out." He handed the microphone back to Sally-Anne.
"Border crossing in forty, three minutes," she told him.
"That mud pack suits you. I'm beginning to think it's an improvement."
"And you, beautiful, are a racing certainty for the cover of Vogue!" She blew the hair off her nose and stuck her tongue out at him.
hey crossed the border between Zimbabwe and Northern Botsw asa and seventeen minutes later they saw the kired Land-Rover standing exactly where they had left it on the edge of the wide white salt pan
(my God, Sarah's buddies are still there that's constancy for you." Craig made out the two tiny figures standing beside the vehicle. "We'd better warn them, or when they see die government markings they are going to start shooting." Sarah called down to the waiting Matabele through the sky-shout" loud hailer as they approached, reassuring them, and Craig saw them lower their rifles as the Super Frelon sank lower. He could make out the beatific grins on the upturned faces of the two young Matabele.
Jonas had shot a spring buck that morning, so there was a feast of broiled venison steaks and salted maize cakes that evening, and afterwards they drew lots for guard duty over the two prisoners.
They first heard the drone of an approaching aircraft when it was still pearly half-light the next morning, and Craig drove out onto the pan in the Land-Rover to light the smudge fires. It came in from the South, an enormous Lockheed cargo plane with US Air Force markings. Sally Anne recognized it. "That is the NASA machine based at Johannesburg to monitor the shuttle programme."
"They are really taking us seriously," Craig murmured, as the Lockheed lowered itself to earth.
"It has amazing short take-off and landing capability," Sally-Anne told him. "Just watch." The gigantic aircraft pulled up in the same distance that the Cessna had used. The nose section opened like the bill of a pelican and five men came down the ramp, led by Morgan Oxford.
"Like five sardines from a can," Craig observed, as they went forward to greet them. The visitors all wore tropical t.
suits, white shirts with button, down collars and neckties and they all moved with athletes" balance and awareness.
"Sally-Anne. Craig." Morgan Oxford shook hands tOf briefly, and then acknowledged Tungata. course, I know you, Mr. Minister, these are my colleagues." He did not introduce them, but went straight on, "Are these the subjects?" The two young Matabele brought the prisoners forward at gunpoint.
"Son of a gun!" Morgan Oxford exclaimed. "That's General Fungabera Craig, are you out of your mind?"
"Read what is in here." Craig proffered the attache case.
"And then you tell me."
"Wait here, please." Morgan accepted the case.
Jonas and Aaron led the two captives towards the aircraft and the Americans came forward to receive them.
Peter Fungabera was still bound at the wrists with the nylon straps from the helicopter. He seemed to have shrunk in physical stature, he was no longer an impressive debonair figure. The cloak of defeat weighed him down.
His skin had a grey tone and he did not lift his eyes as he came level with Tungata Zebiwe.
It was Tungata who reached out and seized his jaw in one hand, pressing his fingers into his cheeks, forcing his mouth open and twisting his head up so he could look into his face. For long seconds he stared into Peter Fungabera's eyes, and then contemptuously he pushed him away, so that Peter staggered and might have fallen had not one of the Americans steadied him.
"At the bottom of nearly every bully and tyrant lurks a coward," Tungata said in that deep rumbling voice. "You did right when you stopped me killing him, Pupho, a clean drop from the sky is too good for the likes of him. He goes now to a juster fate. Take him out of my sight, for he sickens me to the gut." Peter Fungabera and the Russian were led into the interior of the Lockhee4'and Craig and his party settled down to wait. It wasoa long wait. They sat in the shade thrown by the Land-Rover and chatted in a desultory distracted fashion, breaking off every now and then as the squawk and warble from the radio in the Lockheed carried to where they sat.
"They're talking to Washington," Craig guessed, "via satellite." It was after ten o'clock before Morgan came down the ramp again, accompanied by one of his colleagues.
IT his is Colonel Smith," he told them and the way he said it, he didn't mean to be taken literally. "We have appraised the items you have delivered to us, and we conclude, at this stage, anyway, that they are genuine."
"That's very generous of you," Craig deadpanned.
"Minister Tungata Zebiwe, we would be very grateful if you could spare us a deal of your valuable time. There are persons in Washington very anxious to talk to you. It will be to our mutual benefit, I assure you."
"I would like this young lady to accompany me. "Tungata indicated Sarah.
"Yes, of course." Morgan turned to Craig and Sally, Anne. "In your case it's not an invitation, it's an order you're coming with us." "What about the helicopter, and the Land-Rover?" Craig asked.
"Don't worry about them. Arrangements will be made to have them returned to their rightful owners." hree weeks later, at the United Nations building, a file was handed to the head of the Zimbabwe delegation. It contained excerpts from the three green files, and transcripts of the debriefing of General Peter Fungabera by persons unnamed. The file was rushed to Harare, and as a direct result an urgent request was made by the Zimbabwe government for the repatriation of General Fungabera. Two senior inspectors of the Zimbabwe police Special Branch flew to New York to escort the general home.