The Delta (10 page)

Slogging through the thick red sand had sapped the last of his strength. He'd eaten nothing but grubs and lizards for three days and his stomach had protested vociferously at the physical effort. When he came within sight of the vehicle his heart sank. It was an ageing, rusted four-wheel-drive camper. A young man with long blond dreadlocks was alternating between blowing the truck's horn and returning to the rear of the vehicle, which was bogged to the axles in sand. With no shovel, the man was furiously trying to scoop loose sand away from the stuck tyres.

‘I have become stuck!' the man called out to him in a German accent.

Sam dutifully started filming, then turned the camera on himself. ‘One of the first rules of survival in the outback is don't travel without the correct gear.'

As he approached the stranded motorist the man dropped to his knees. ‘Thank you, thank you,' he cried. ‘I have no water and I am thinking I am going to die out here in the outback.'

‘One of the other rules,' Sam told the camera, ‘is that if you see a fellow traveller in trouble, always stop and see if you can assist.'

At that moment, the rear doors of the camper swung open. A beautiful tall red-haired Australian girl dressed in denim shorts, a white T-shirt and a chef's hat climbed from the truck, carrying
a covered silver platter. He recalled her immediately – one of the cooks from the resort who had asked him for his autograph after he'd sent his compliments to the kitchen. From further up the sandy road, emerging from behind a red anthill not dissimilar from the one he had just climbed, came the crew. The survival exercise was over and the redhead lifted the lid on a mouthwatering dinner of freshwater crayfish. The German actor shook his hand and reached inside the Land Cruiser for a dew-frosted beer.

Sam wondered now if there would be a happy ending to this survival program, or if Stirling would be waiting for him with a gun at Xakanaxa Camp. Unbidden, an image of the Australian girl's milk-white skin below her tan line, on either side of a trimmed strip of red hair, filled his mind. ‘Stop it,' he told himself out loud.

As he clipped the canvas dome to the second tent pole he swore. He tossed the pole on the ground and unclipped the other one. ‘Fucking Coyote Sam's World Survival, my ass.'

He had forgotten to set up the camera on its tripod. If he finished the three days without some vision of him setting up his tent then Cheryl-Ann would make him do it all over again.

Uh-roo, Uh-roo
.

‘Hear that?' Sam said as loud as he dared, looking into the lens of the camera on its tripod. ‘That's the King of Beasts, the African lion. They call on dusk, signalling the members of their pride to come together … for the hunt. I just hope it's me on the menu … aw, fuck it.'

He started his monologue once more, leaning closer to the camera as he said the last line again. ‘I just hope it's
not
me on the menu for tonight.'

Fortunately, the box of matches in his backpack had not been
tampered with and he was able to light a fire in a modest pile of dead wood he'd been able to scrounge without venturing too far from his camp site. This part of the documentary was being filmed in a privately managed concession outside the Moremi Game Reserve, on the southern fringe of the reserve.

‘I wouldn't be allowed out at night by myself inside the game reserve, on the other side of the river, or to light a fire like I've just done, in the middle of nowhere. But these flames will keep the lions away – so the theory goes.'

‘Poor bugger. He didn't look too happy,' said John Little, the New Zealand pilot of the helicopter as they lifted away from the lone man on the ground. Little was the antithesis of his name; he was tall and broad shouldered and very easy on the eye, Cheryl-Ann thought.

‘He'll be fine,' Cheryl-Ann said. ‘He's done this sort of thing before.'

‘Better him than me,' John said. ‘If the lions don't get him the crocs will. Fancy taking the scenic route back to Xakanaxa?'

‘Sure,' Cheryl-Ann said. She could play the hard arse until the cows came home – she had to be tough to get along in the cutthroat world of television – but in truth she was dreading the confrontation with Stirling and Tracey. This had all the elements of a class-A fuck-up. Most stars she knew screwed around when on tour, but she'd believed Sam up until now when he'd said that he only went for single girls. What had he been thinking going off into the dark with Tracey?

‘Nice giraffe down there,' John said, pointing off to the right.

‘Really?' She had a shot list a mile long to get through in the next three days so she and Ray and Gerry would not be sitting on their backsides while Coyote Sam lazed around his camp site, starving. ‘Light's pretty good now. Let's get some giraffe shots, Ray.'

‘Yes ma'am,' replied the cameraman.

‘Can you take us lower?'

‘Not a problem. You're the guys with the greenbacks,' John grinned.

Cheryl-Ann felt her stomach lurch as the Kiwi – she liked the sound of that – brought the chopper around the giraffes in a wide arc, losing altitude as he set them up for the shot, with the sun behind them. He was professional and courteous, and had obviously worked with film crews and professional photographers before. Plus, he had a nice arse in those shorts.

‘Nice,' she said into her microphone.

‘Thanks,' John said, glancing back over his shoulder at her again. ‘Shit!'

A warning siren blared loudly above the background hum of the engines, filling the helicopter's passengers with instant fear.

‘What's that?' Cheryl-Ann asked.

Little ignored them, his fingers roving across the panel in front of him. ‘Mayday, mayday, mayday …'

Sam checked his watch for the fourth time in twelve minutes. It was still three minutes to go until seven o'clock. It wasn't that he was scared of the lion – it still sounded a long way off – but the hyena seemed much closer.

Woooo-oooop
, it called again. Another replied. Sam stoked the fire and tossed on another undersized piece of wood. The bundle he had collected had diminished quickly, as much of it was rotten, reduced to the weight of cardboard by termites. He doubted there would be enough to keep the fire going all night. Tomorrow he would have to look for a log, and remember to check for snakes. Stirling had stopped the Land Rover on the first day beside a fallen tree and they had all wondered what he was looking at, until the rock python raised its huge head and tested
the air with its tongue. ‘We often stop here for sundowners and some of the tourists sit on that tree,' he'd said, not attempting to hide his patronising tone.

Sam unzipped the tent, which he had kept closed since he erected it, in case anything wanted to slither or crawl inside. He knew that during the night he should keep the flap zipped closed, no matter how hot it got, or what he heard going on outside. He checked his watch again, sighed, then pressed the record button on the camera.

‘As long as I stay zipped inside my tent tonight I
should
be OK.' He could see his face in the flip-out LED screen, which was reversible so that he could check his image while the camera recorded. The camera had a night-vision function and his features were captured in atmospheric but slightly blurry lime-green light. ‘That's a hyena you can hear in the distance, and they've been known to rip into tents if they smell food inside. Luckily,' he laughed for effect, ‘my crew hasn't left me any food to eat, so I should be safe from the hyenas. As for those lions you heard earlier, they hunt by sight and sound, much the same way as your house cat does. If they see something moving, they'll investigate and pounce on it. However, they don't have great depth perception so when they see my tent, the theory is they'll think it's a solid object, like an anthill or a rock. If I unzip and stick my head out to take a peek at them, they might just jump on me, like a cat pouncing on a mouse. Difference is, these cats can weigh in at around six hundred pounds. Now I know how a mouse feels.'

He switched off the camera and checked his watch. He wondered if his monologues would look as lame on TV as they sounded to him now. One thing about Cheryl-Ann, she had a good eye for editing and timing. She'd make him look good, even if she made him feel like shit for the rest of the trip. It was
finally seven o'clock. He rummaged in his rucksack for the satellite phone and slipped it out of its black nylon case. Cheryl-Ann's number was pre-set, so he scrolled down and pressed send.

The phone rang.

Outside the lion called and was answered by another. Great, Sam thought, stereophonic death.

The phone rang.

‘Come on,' he said, checking his watch.

‘
The service you are calling is not responding. Please try again later
,' a transcontinental-accented female voice echoed from the other end of the line.

Having drinks by the river, he presumed. He wondered what the mood was like between Cheryl-Ann and Stirling and Tracey. Perhaps they were locked in a heated debate right now about whether to hang, draw or quarter him. Sam dialled the number again.

He drummed his fingers on the plastic-coated floor of the tent while he waited for Cheryl-Ann to answer. Nothing.

Sonja clapped her hands. ‘Shoo!' she commanded the trio of tancoloured mangy African dogs. The heavily pregnant wart-hog didn't pause to acknowledge her intervention, and continued snuffling in the overturned rubbish bin as she had been when the dogs were nipping at her hindquarters.

‘
Eish
, you must be eating for four or five, my girl,' Sonja said to the grunting, farting creature as she passed it.

Sonja walked on, through the dusty car park of the small shopping centre near the entrance to the Chobe Safari Lodge. Chipchase had done a good job of cleaning and stitching the holes in her thigh. The skin was pink, there was no blood, and while her leg still ached she had been well enough to walk on it by the second day. She still hadn't confirmed to him that it was she who had tried to assassinate the President of Zimbabwe, although she hadn't denied it and he had stopped probing her for more information for the time being.

She wanted to buy some food for the road, and to cook a meal for him in part payment for his kindness. Also, despite his offering her the use of his laptop and mobile phone to check emails, she wanted to do that in privacy, from an anonymous computer.

Near the Choppies supermarket was a
bureau de change
with half a dozen internet computers. ‘Fifteen pula fifteen minutes,' the bored African woman behind the counter said to her. Sonja sat down on a buckled plastic chair and opened the browser. She went to her Hotmail account and logged in as sallytravelling. Apart
from the usual spam there was one message from steeleman1043@yahoo.

Where are you?
read the subject line of the email. She clicked on it and the full message was equally brief and to the point.
No answer on your satphone. Advise locstat asap. Too bad about the job, but I have another. M
.

‘Too bad?' she said out loud. An African man two terminals down looked at her and she smiled an apology. She wasn't sure she wanted her locstat – her location – posted anywhere on the internet. She doubted the Zimbabwean CIO possessed state-of-the-art cyber monitoring equipment, but perhaps they had friends in North Korea or China who did. She hit the reply button and typed:
Satphone US. I'm heading for home
.
You know where to find me
.

Her satellite phone really was useless, as it had been squashed at some point during her escape. She had bought a cheap phone and a prepaid SIM card at an Indian shop in Kasane on her walk the day before, but she couldn't risk giving that to Martin, as it would be easily traceable.

Sonja looked over her shoulder to make sure she was still alone in the
bureau de change
and logged into her Channel Islands bank account. True to his word – and she had no reason to doubt him – Martin had deposited her share of the first payment for the Zimbabwean job. It was some small comfort that she had received a reasonable payment for nearly losing her life. No matter what her daughter thought of her as a mother, Emma would inherit enough to see her way through university, plus a very tidy nest egg. Sonja gave a small nod of satisfaction as she double-checked the balance and closed out of her account and logged off. If she'd lived in England for every second of Emma's childhood they would have barely scraped by. Standing, she painfully stretched her injured leg, then paid the girl behind the steel grille. Her work had its risks, she thought as she walked out into the sun and
towards the supermarket, but she might have died from the inside out if she hadn't fallen in with Martin after the army.

The Choppies supermarket hadn't been there when she'd last stayed at the safari lodge with Stirling. It was a sign of progress, an indicator that Botswana really was doing well. If you could afford to shop in airconditioned comfort and buy fruit from the Cape and seafood from Mozambique, then your government was doing something right. She ordered a kilogram of fillet steak at the butchery counter and bought some ice cream for dessert. She paid cash for the food, not wanting to leave a paper trail by using a credit card, and stopped in at the liquor store for a bottle of South African red – a nice Alto Rouge – a six-pack of St Louis beer, and a copy of the
Daily News
.

Sonja walked back into the Safari Lodge, through reception and along the edge of the verandah that took in a spectacular view of the Chobe River, whose shiny, still surface was broken here and there by grassy emerald islands, in turn punctuated with the dark dots of grazing buffalo and elephant. Waiters doted on tourists lounging around the swimming pool and children splashed in the clear waters. Not a hundred kilometres away was a country where people starved and died of cholera. That was Africa, Sonja thought.