Fever Dream - Страница 2

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"Pendergast? For God's sake, where are you?"

"Upper Makwele Stream camp."

"Blast. I was hoping you were nearer the Banta Road. Why the devil don't you keep your SSB connected? I've been trying to reach you for hours!"

"May I ask what's happened?"

"Over at Kingazu Camp. A German tourist was killed by a lion."

"What idiot allowed that to happen?"

"It wasn't like that. The lion came right into camp in broad daylight, jumped the man as he was walking back to his hut from the dining tent, and dragged him screaming into the bush."

"And then?"

"Surely you can imagine 'and then'! The wife was hysterical, the whole camp went into an uproar, they had to bring in a helicopter to airlift out the tourists. The camp staff left behind are scared shiteless. This fellow was a well-known photographer in Germany--bloody bad for business!"

"Did you track the lion?"

"We have trackers and guns, but nobody who'll go into the bush after this lion. Nobody with the experience--or the ballocks. That's why we need you, Pendergast. We need you down here to track that bugger and... well... recover the remains of the poor German before there's nothing left to bury."

"You haven't even recovered the body?"

"Nobody will go out there after the bloody thing! You know what Kingazu Camp is like, all the dense brush that's come up because of the elephant poaching. We need a damned experienced hunter. And I needn't remind you that terms of your professional hunting license require you to deal with rogue man-eaters as, and if, it becomes necessary."

"I see."

"Where'd you leave your Rover?"

"At the Fala Pans."

"Get cracking as fast as you can. Don't bother breaking camp, just grab your guns and get down here."

"It'll take a day, at least. Are you sure there isn't anyone closer who can help you?"

"Nobody. At least, nobody I'd trust."

Pendergast glanced at his wife. She smiled, winked, mimed the shooting of a pistol with one bronzed hand. "All right. We'll get moving right away."

"One other thing." The DC's voice hesitated and there was a silence over the radio, filled with hissing and crackling.

"What?"

"Probably not very important. The wife who witnessed the attack. She said..." Another pause.

"Yes?"

"She said the lion was peculiar."

"How so?"

"It had a red mane."

"You mean, a little darker than usual? That's not so uncommon."

"Not darker than usual. This lion's mane was deep red. Almost blood red."

There was a very long silence. And then the DC spoke again. "But of course it can't be the same lion. That was forty years ago in northern Botswana. I've never heard of a lion living more than twenty-five years. Have you?"

Pendergast said nothing as he switched off the radio, his silvery eyes glittering in the dying twilight of the African bush.

Kingazu Camp, Luangwa River

THE LAND ROVER BANGED AND LURCHED ALONG the Banta Road, a bad track in a country legendary for them. Pendergast turned the wheel violently left and right to avoid the yawning potholes, some almost half as deep as the bashed-up Rover. The windows were wide open--the air-conditioning was broken--and the interior of the car was awash in dust blown in by the occasional vehicle passing in the other direction.

They had left Makwele Stream just before dawn, making the twelve-mile trek through the bush without guides, carrying nothing but their weapons, water, a hard salami, and chapati bread. They reached their car around noon. For several hours now they had been passing through sporadic, hardscrabble villages: circular buildings of lashed sticks with conical roofs of thatch, dirt streets clogged with loose cattle and sheep. The sky was a cloudless, pale, almost watery blue.

Helen Pendergast fiddled with her scarf, pulling it more tightly around her hair in a losing battle with the omnipresent dust. It stuck to every exposed inch of their sweaty skin, giving them a scrofulous appearance.

"It's strange," she said as they crawled through yet another village, avoiding chickens and small children. "I mean, that there isn't a hunter closer by to take care of this lion problem. After all, you're not exactly a crack shot." She smiled wryly; this was a frequent tease.

"That's why I'm counting on you."

"You know I don't like killing animals I can't eat."

"How about killing animals that can eat us?"

"Perhaps I can make an exception there." She angled the sun visor into a new position, then turned toward Pendergast, her eyes--blue with flecks of violet--narrowed by the bright light. "So. What was that business about the red mane?"

"A lot of nonsense. There's an old legend knocking about this part of Africa concerning a red-maned, man-eating lion."

"Tell me about it." Her eyes sparkled with interest; the local stories fascinated her.

"Very well. About forty years ago--the story goes--a drought struck the southern Luangwa Valley. Game grew very scarce. A pride of lions that hunted in the valley starved to death, one by one, until only a single survivor remained--a pregnant lioness. She survived by digging up and eating the corpses at a local Nyimba cemetery."

"How horrible," Helen said with relish.

"They say she gave birth to a cub with a flaming red mane."

"Go on."

"The villagers were angry with this continuing desecration of their burial grounds. Eventually they tracked down the lioness, killed her, skinned her, and nailed her hide to a frame in the village square. Then they held a dance to celebrate her demise. At dawn, while the villagers were sleeping off the effects of all the maize beer they'd downed, a red-maned lion snuck into the village, killed three of the sleeping men, then carried off a boy. They found his gnawed bones a couple of days later in a stand of long grass a few miles off."

"Good Lord."

"Over the years, the Red Lion, or the Dabu Gor as it was called in the Bemba language, killed and ate a large number of locals. It was very clever, they said: as clever as a man. It shifted ranges frequently and sometimes crossed borders to evade capture. The local Nyimba claimed the Red Lion could not survive without the nourishment of human flesh--but with it, he would live forever."

Pendergast paused to circumnavigate a pothole almost lunar in its depth and extent.

"And?"

"That's the story."

"But what happened to the lion? Was he ever killed?"

"A number of professional hunters tried to track him, without success. He just kept killing until he died of old age--if he did die, that is." Pendergast rolled his eyes toward her dramatically.

"Really, Aloysius! You know it can't be the same lion."

"It might be a descendant, carrying the same genetic mutation."

"And perhaps the same tastes," said Helen, with a ghoulish smile.

As the afternoon turned to evening, they passed through two more deserted villages, the usual cries of children and lowing of cattle replaced by the drone of insects. They arrived at Kingazu Camp after sunset, as a blue twilight was settling over the bush. The camp stood on the Luangwa River, a cluster of rondevaals arranged along the banks, with an open-air bar and a dining shelter.

"What a delightful setting," Helen said as she looked around.

"Kingazu is one of the oldest safari camps in the country," Pendergast replied. "It was founded in the 1950s, when Zambia was still part of Northern Rhodesia, by a hunter who realized that taking people out to photograph animals could be just as exciting as killing them--and a lot more remunerative."

"Thank you, Professor. Will there be a quiz after the lecture?"

When they pulled into the dusty parking area, the bar and dining shelter were empty, the camp staff having taken refuge in the surrounding huts. All the lights were on, the generator chugging full blast.

"Nervous bunch," said Helen, flinging open the door and climbing out into the hot evening, the air shrill with cicadas.

The door of the closest rondevaal opened, striping yellow light across the beaten earth, and a man in pressed khakis with knife-edge creases, leather bush-boots, and high socks stepped out.

"The district commissioner, Alistair Woking," Pendergast whispered to his wife.

"I'd never have guessed."

"And the fellow with him in the Australian cowboy hat is Gordon Wisley, the camp concessionaire."

"Come inside," said the district commissioner, shaking their hands. "We can talk more comfortably in the hut."

"Heavens, no!" said Helen. "We've been cooped up in a car all day--let's have a drink at the bar."

"Well...," the commissioner said dubiously.

"If the lion comes into camp, so much the better. Then we won't have the bother of stalking him in the bush. Right, Aloysius?"

"Flawlessly argued."

She lifted the soft-canvas bag that held her gun out of the back of the Land Rover. Pendergast did the same, hefting a heavy metal canister of ammunition over his shoulder.

"Gentlemen?" he said. "To the bar?"

"Very well." The DC eyed their heavy-bore safari guns with a certain look of reassurance. "Misumu!"

An African in a felt fez and red sash ducked his head out a door of the staff camp.

"We'd like a drink at the bar," said Woking. "If you don't mind."

They retired to the thatched bar, the barman taking his place behind the polished wood counter. He was sweating, and not because of the heat.