Ivory Nation Andy Maslen (best short novels of all time TXT) 📖

tusk came off even easier than the first.

The Englishman killed the engine and dropped the chainsaw. He picked up one of the tusks and held it aloft in triumph.

Witaarde was pleased. More than pleased. Delighted. He had what he wanted. More ivory to trade. And a ready-made private army of battle-hardened soldiers he could use to smash the opposition. He’d like to see the Botswanans try and shut him down now.

‘Come and take a look,’ the Englishman called out.

No need for silence now they’d killed the elephants.

Witaarde walked forward, trying to ignore the ringing in his ears. It felt like it was located exactly halfway between them, right at the centre of his brain. Like a damn mosquito had crawled into one of his ears and burrowed in, right there. He shook his head and took a few more steps, then came to a stop in front of the Englishman.

He looked at the tusk. Odd. Up close, he couldn’t see any blood. Normally the root end was a mess of severed tissue, soaked in the stuff for a foot up towards the point. And why was it forked like that?

He looked at the Englishman.

There was something wrong with his eyes. They were, what was the word, flickering. No. Flicking. Left, right, left, right. The ringing in his ears grew louder. He tried to follow the Englishman’s eyes with his own, but the damn noise was too loud.

It stopped. Just like that. He blinked. He could hear birdsong. The swish of the tall grass. His own laboured breathing. The Englishman’s voice.

‘…three, two, one.’

Witaarde blinked. He looked around him and frowned. It made no sense.

Amadou lay a few feet away, a hole you could put a fist through blown clear through his chest. A red mess already swarming with flies. The other three Congolese poachers lay sprawled in tortured postures.

One was missing half his face and his right hand, red craters blowing out from his khaki shirt. One lay face-up with his belly ripped open and slimy purple-grey intestines coiled beside him. One was on his front, gaping exit wounds in his back revealing splintered ribs and the mushy interior where his internal organs had once been.

He looked back at the Englishman. The tusk he’d been holding was gone. He held a bone-white tree branch in his hand.

‘What?’ was all Witaarde could manage.

His heart was racing and sparks were shooting off at the edge of his vision. He tried again.

‘Where are they?’

The Englishman shook his head.

‘They were never here, Witaarde.’

Witaarde grabbed for the revolver on his belt.

55

Even if Gabriel hadn’t just brought Witaarde out of a post-hypnotic trance, the clumsy grab for the revolver would have been child’s play to defeat. He brought the branch round in a short swing that connected with Witaarde’s left temple and sent him to the ground. Gabriel stooped and retrieved the 629.

Witaarde came round a couple of minutes later. Gabriel was leaning back against the dead tree he’d so recently attacked with the chainsaw, removing two of its lower limbs.

‘Get up,’ Gabriel said, holding the 629 steady, aimed at Witaarde’s midsection.

‘What the fuck did you just do?’

‘I planted a post-hypnotic suggestion in your whisky-soaked brain last night.’

‘No! I saw them. The elephants. We shot them.’

Gabriel pushed himself upright and took a couple of strides towards Witaarde, who fell back.

‘Look around you, Witaarde. Do you see any dead elephants? Oh, wait. They got up and walked away after shooting your Congolese friends dead.’

‘It was us,’ Witaarde said in a defeated whisper.

‘Yes, it was. I killed Amadou with your Dakota. You killed the others.’

‘But, why?’ Witaarde asked, his eyes wide.

‘You murdered the Paras. I’m an ex-Para. I’m here to kill you in their memory.’

‘But the men you promised me.’

Gabriel sprang at Witaarde and delivered a hard-palmed slap to his left cheek.

‘Don’t you get it? There aren’t any men. There never were. I traced you from Botswana to Hong Kong, Dubai and Vientiane, Witaarde.’

Witaarde’s face closed in on itself.

‘It’s him, isn’t it? He sent you. He’s double-crossed me,’ he murmured in a dangerous, low voice.

‘Who?’

‘You know perfectly well, you kaffir-loving cunt. I’m not playing games with you.’

Gabriel shook his head.

‘I don’t know who you’re talking about, but it doesn’t matter.’

‘Tammerlane! It’s Tammerlane. Your own precious prime minister,’ Witaarde yelled.

‘Joe Tammerlane?’

Witaarde’s eyes bulged out of their sockets.

‘Yes! Of course! How many other Tammerlanes are there?’

Gabriel heard the unmistakable sound of pieces clicking into place.

‘Tell me.’

‘And you’ll let me live?’

‘Tell me. And I’ll think about it.’

‘We met at Oxford. Balliol College. We were all undergraduates together.’

‘Wait. You said, “all”. Not “both”?’

‘Me. Joe Tammerlane. And Horatio Bokara. He’s the—’

‘President of South Africa.’

As the Englishman identified Bokara, Witaarde closed his eyes. He was remembering a meeting, not so very long ago. Just a few years.

They had chosen their meeting spot carefully. At the heart of the Kruger National Park, five hundred kilometres from Pretoria. The three Oxford graduates, each, in his own way, an idealist, stood beside each other on the south bank of the Letaba River. Here, they felt, they could meet safely.

And safety was key. All three men had to please constituencies who would be shocked if they knew with whom their leaders were consorting. Left, right, black, white: all held fast to their own world views. All were sceptical at best, and downright hostile at worst, to any countervailing belief-system.

They had spent many evenings and nights as undergraduates debating, disputing and, on one memorable night, fighting, about politics.

No two shared the same point of view. Yet each recognised in the others the same ferocious fire. The same obsessional single-mindedness. The same visionary clarity of mind that said, ‘I am right. And one day I will prove it’.

Over the intervening years they had followed each other’s fortunes as they waxed and waned. And now they had found the perfect confluence of money, power and ideas that would help them achieve their goals.

Three vehicles, a Range Rover, a Mercedes G-Wagen and a Toyota Hilux pickup sat beneath the broiling