‘I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes,’ he said. ‘I thought matron was going to have apoplexy. Don’t you know that this is the most exclusive private hospital in downtown Mawanga?’
‘I’m just beginning to find out how little I do know,’ she answered ruefully. ‘My name is Ann Cable and I don’t even know how I’m going to get back to my hotel.’
The grin darkened. ‘A dangerous admission to make here or anywhere,’ he warned. ‘A dangerous predicament, even for a good Samaritan. But this time you’re lucky. My name is Robert Gardiner. I work for the United Nations High Commission for Refugees. I’ve read your books. I’ll take you back to your hotel.’
‘I don’t want to go back to my hotel. I want to go and find out what’s really going on out there.’
‘If you’re really serious about it, I can show you that, too.’
‘Let’s go then.’
‘It’s been quite a week for you,’ Robert said as the Cessna settled into level flight, the great cliff fell back into a thunderous purple shadow on the left and the bush began to unroll before them.
‘Tell me about it. I feel like I’ve been re-educated the hard way.’
‘I fear your education is just beginning, my dear. You’ve been at the edge of things so far. We’re going into the heart of it now. On the roads, at the aid stations and the camps I’ve taken you to visit, there have been only the survivors. Victims, yes; but the lucky ones, relatively speaking. I am concerned that we may soon be seeing people who have been much less lucky.’
‘You’re telling me it’s going to be dangerous? Or just disgusting?’
‘Both. But very dangerous.’
‘Then why are you bringing me?’
‘Because I want you to see. I desperately need someone influential to see what is going on. Someone with some influence.’
‘But surely you have influence, Robert.’
‘With the wrong people. I write my reports and they get considered and precious little gets done. Oh, I know they’ve set up the Mau Club now and they say they’re trying to move this iceberg but I ask you! What sort of a response is that to a situation like this? It’s a joke! Laughable! No. I need someone with influence where it counts: in the media.’
‘But I won’t even have a film crew here for another three days!’
‘That may be time enough. We’ll meet my contact, have a sniff around, see if there’s any truth in what he’s saying and get back to Mawanga tomorrow. One day to get a bit of a safari set up and your film crew and you could have decent footage by the weekend. Just in time for the Sunday papers. It’s worth the risk. If there is something going on out here, something even worse than the drought, something which is driving the N’Kuru off their land, maybe we’ll find out about it. You could really blow the lid off this. Like John Pilger did in Cambodia. Like Kate Adie in the Gulf. Get things moving with a vengeance.’
‘Is that true, what you said? That the United Nations is trying to send an iceberg here?’
‘Nothing official yet. It’s so laughable they probably daren’t admit it. But yes. That’s what I’ve been told. They’ve hired some ships — tugs, I suppose — and they’re trying to bring an iceberg here as an answer to the drought.’
It wasn’t only empty desert down below. The outlines of the communal farms and the sharp grids of the irrigation system showed where cultivation had been tried, and would be again, but there were no men there over great swathes of dry red land, and here the animals had returned. At first there were thinly dotted groups of zebra and wildebeest, grazing on the ruins of whatever crops had been left unattended and whatever greenery had sprung up in damp hollows of the untended ground, but as they roared further and further into the bush, the neat cultivation began to falter and the sad regimentation of the failed farms began to break down as the indigenous vegetation reasserted itself. Then came a circle of huts with a thorn wall and a stockade. ‘N’Kuru village,’ said Robert. His first words in some time. They went low and circled. It was deserted.
After another half an hour, there was a kind of patchy green covering to the ground. Not grass, but some kind of plant. The regular pattern of the irrigation ditches, far behind, was replaced here by the organic, root-like patterns of dry water courses. But where the rule-straight, man-made channels had simply been marks across the desert, here the wandering branches carried vegetation which gave some faint promise of water underground. Tall palms appeared, singly and in clumps, thorn scrub, umbrella acacias and baobabs. And, as the vegetation increased, so did the animal life. The zebra were in herds here, as were the wildebeest. In the shade of some of the bigger clumps stood kudu and impala in small family groups. Enough wildlife to support some lean lions. Robert obediently circled the first somnolent pride they found while Ann took photographs.
It was not until they were close to the eastern border that they saw the first gleam of surface water. ‘Here we are,’ said Robert and the Cessna began to settle. ‘That thicker forest up ahead is the beginning of a forest which stretches into Congo Libre. This is the wildest country Mau has except for some of the jungle up on the ridge in the high country and it has always supported a fair number of wild N’Kuru — those of the tribe who wanted nothing to do even with Julius Karanga. It’s always been dangerous out here. It’s where the N’Kuru Lions made their base before they were destroyed and sent away to Angola and Congo Libre to lick their wounds and learn about communism. Ironic really, that the least civilised part of the country should be the most self-sufficient now. But to be fair, it had help.’
The vegetation — it was thick thorn bush, with increasing forest cover — fell back to reveal a wide, shallow lake. The Cessna went down near the water only to bank away sharply as flamingoes exploded into the air. Ann’s heart skipped at their beauty. This was the Africa she had dreamed of. ‘That’s proper bush down there,’ said Robert, sounding almost proud. ‘Impala, sassaby, kudu, hippos, crocodiles, elephants, the lot. In Mau they call it the outback and this is all that’s left of it.’ As if to prove his words a family of waterbuck flew from the water’s edge to the shelter of the trees, away from the sound of the engine.
The Cessna skipped across the trees and a flat landing strip abruptly opened out beneath them. At the far end were some huts, outside which a battered Land Rover was sitting.
‘The lake is the heart of it and it doesn’t compare with the Masai Mara or any of the others, but this was going to be Mau’s great gift to conservation.’
The wheels touched the red earth of the runway.
‘Welcome to the Dr Julius Karanga Game Reserve.’
He throttled back.
‘There’s somebody there,’ she almost shouted.
‘I know. He’s come to meet us.’
‘How does he know we’re here? You didn’t use the radio.’
‘He heard the engine. It’s an uncommon sound out here, nowadays.’
The man who was waiting for them was a slight white man who wore a wide-brimmed bush hat turned up at one side and the uniform of bush shirt and shorts, long socks and desert boots which went with it. He wore a double holster like a cowboy, with two businesslike handguns protruding convenient to his hands. He had been carrying a powerful-looking rifle under his right arm and it was not until he recognised Robert that he hefted it up and slid it through the Land Rover’s window. Then he was striding towards them, hand held out.