Ivory Nation by Andy Maslen (free children's ebooks online txt) 📕

pay is good, and the action. They wouldn’t mind getting into it with some local law enforcement or kaffir soldiers.’

Witaarde nodded. Saw himself at the head of a private army. His own Boer fighters, buttressed by thirty battle-hardened Brits. And who knew, once they’d seen the paradise of the Northern Cape, he’d persuade them to stay on. Join him and Klara. Take wives, build homesteads, raise kids. Witaarde wasn’t averse to mingling blood, as long as it was all white. As white as the ivory that was paying for it all.

Standing under the boiling sun, facing the man who had just admitted killing the Paras, Gabriel had to suppress the urge to do him immediately. Witaarde was on guard. His body language showed that, and although Gabriel could try hypnosis, that would require Witaarde to be closer, off his guard and not already highly suspicious. And although he could take Witaarde’s truck, which had alerted him way before the drifting aftershave, there was every chance Witaarde would have set up a call-back with one of his men, or the redoubtable Klara. If he didn’t call in, they’d be out looking for Gabriel.

Something else was needed.

‘Any chance of a lift back to town?’ he asked. ‘If we’re going to talk terms, I’d like to get changed and get a drink.’

Witaarde spread his hands wide.

‘Sure! I don’t know what the fuck you were doing out here but it’s liable to give you sunstroke. Come on, my bakkie’s behind those trees.’

Back in New Hope, Witaarde drove straight to his house and ushered Gabriel inside.

‘Klara, we’re back,’ he yelled. ‘Coffee!’

Klara’s face was blotched red beneath her tan. She glared at Gabriel as she caught him looking. He looked away.

Once she had served them coffee and left again, Witaarde spoke.

‘I’m sorry about the rough welcome we gave you, Gabriel. But look at it from my perspective. I was well within my rights to have you shot and fed to the hogs, or the wild animals.’

Gabriel sipped the coffee. He shrugged.

‘I get it. You’re under siege here, politically if not physically. I would have done the same in your shoes.’

‘Yah, well, thanks. But now I have a different plan. How about a business partnership? You bring in your mates and don’t even worry about the guns. I know how hard it is to get them in England, let alone fly them out. Anyway, we have plenty of them over here.’

‘Hunting rifles? Shotguns?’

‘Sure,’ Witaarde said, then grinned. ‘Plus M16s, Glocks, even a couple of Vektor SS-77s. You know what they are?’

‘General purpose machine guns.’

‘That’s right. Ivory money buys all kinds of stuff if you know who to talk to.’

‘Let’s talk about money. My boys get four hundred a day a man, cash, plus rations and a place to sleep.’

‘What’s your day-rate?’ Witaarde asked, sipping his coffee.

‘No day-rate. I want a partnership.’

‘What kind of a partnership?’

‘I run your new military wing and handle relations with the White Koi in return for ten per cent of the profits.’

‘That’s a lot of money. What if I tell you to go fuck yourself and we’ll carry on the way we were?’

Gabriel smiled, enjoying his newfound role.

‘Simple. I call Mei and tell her you’re not interested. Then, one day when you’ve forgotten all about me, a Chinese-made fighter-bomber arrives in that beautiful African sky above this town and then New Hope gets a new name.’ A beat. ‘No Hope. Anyone who survives the bombing will be shot. Then we take over the whole trade. I know it sounds brutal, Julius, but it’s how they operate.’

He watched as Witaarde’s jaw worked, the muscles bunching and relaxing as if he were chewing a particularly tough piece of bushmeat.

‘Five per cent.’

‘Eight.’

‘Seven and a half.’

Gabriel smiled and held out his hand. Witaarde took it and shook it perfunctorily.

‘We could take over Yusuf’s factory, too,’ Gabriel said. ‘In time. Mei’s very keen on vertical integration.’

Witaarde smiled. An odd expression that got nowhere near his eyes, just that bow-shaped top lip curling.

‘I bet she is. I tell you what, Gabriel. How about this? Come on a hunting trip with me. We’ll go up to Bots and shoot a couple of elephants, take a chainsaw to them. I want to see whether you can handle the messy side of the business. I need to know I can trust you.’

Gabriel knew he couldn’t afford to hesitate. But shooting dead an elephant then butchering it with a chainsaw to get the tusks? Not good. Even if it meant having a chance to deal with Witaarde away from New Hope.

‘Fine. I’ll get a chance to show you what I can do with the Dakota.’

Witaarde grinned. Gabriel realised the man facing him entirely lacked a sense of humour. Witaarde explained he was going to fly into Botswana in the Cessna and meet Gabriel there. Ruud would be his escort and driver. And my guard.

It was fine. Witaarde was approaching his destiny. Just not the one he had planned for himself.

52

KGALAGADI TRANSFRONTIER PARK, BOTSWANA

Four hours in Ruud’s company was enough to confirm Gabriel’s opinion of the man. Leave his politics out of it, and what remained was a cold-hearted killer. He’d boasted on the four-hour drive of torturing and killing journalists, activists and government security agents. With so little regard for human life, Gabriel could see why slaughtering elephants wouldn’t raise a quiver of moral doubt from the man.

And he’d confirmed, willingly, that he’d been a member of the group of poachers, under Witaarde’s personal command, who’d murdered the Paras and the Botswana soldiers. Good enough for what was coming to him.

As they entered the park, the black guard on duty shot Ruud a look that Gabriel read as easily as a book. Complicity. He waited until the pearlescent Range Rover was a few miles inside the park.

‘That guard know you?’

‘On the payroll.’

‘So you don’t mind using the kaffirs when it suits you?’

‘Ha! Why should we? Throw them a few dollars and they’d shoot their own mothers. They’re useful, nothing