ELEPHANT SONG [046-037-5.0]
By Wilbur Smith
Synopsis:
The rangers closed in firing steadily. Within minutes all the adult animals were down. Only the calves still raced in bewildered circles, stumbling over the bodies of the dead and dying. Six minutes after the first shot, a silence fell over the killing ground of Long Vlei.
In the blinding light of Zimbabwe's Chiwewe National Park, Dr. Daniel Armstrong, world-famous TV naturalist, films the slaughter of a herd of elephant. In London, anthropologist Kelly Kinnear is forced into violent confrontation with the shareholders of the most powerful conglomerate in the City of London, warning them of the destruction of an African country. Now the time has come to act. Together, Armstrong and Kinnear forge a passionate alliance - and begin the fight against the forces of greed, evil and corruption, attacking a land they would both give their lives to save. Combining breathtaking realism and the thrilling suspense, the new adventure from the world's master storyteller is a journey deep into the heart of a wild, magnificent continent, threatened forever by the destructive hand of man.
Wilbur Smith was born in Central Africa in 1933. He was educated at Michaelhouse and Rhodes University.
He became a full-time writer in 1964 after the successful publication of When the Lion Feeds, and has since written twenty-three novels, meticulously researched on his numerous expeditions worldwide.
He normally travels from November to February, often spending a month skiing in Switzerland, and visiting Australia and New Zealand for sea fishing. During his summer break, he visits environments as diverse as Alaska and the dwindling wildernesses of the African interior. He has an abiding concern for the peoples and wildlife of his native continent, an interest strongly reflected in his novels.
He is married to Danielle, to whom his last nineteen books have been dedicated.
WILBUR SMITH
The Courtneys: When the Lion Feeds
The Sound of Thunder
A Sparrow Falls
ELEPHANT
The Courtneys of Africa:
The Burning Shore
Power of the Sword
Rage
A Time To Die
Golden Fox
The Ballantyne novels: A Falcon Flies
Men of Men
The Angels Weep
The Leopard Hunts in Darkness
Also The Dark of the Sun
Shout at the Devil
Gold Mine
The Diamond Hunters
The Sunbird Eagle in the Sky
The Eye of the Tiger
Cry Wolf
Hungry as the Sea
Wild Justice
Elephant Song
The author wishes to make grateful acknowledgement to Colin Turnbull's The Forest People, published by Jonathan Cape, which he found invaluable in his research for this novel.
First published 1991 by Macmillan London Limited This edition published 1992 by Pan Books Ltd, Cavaye Place, London SW10 9PG in association with Macmillan London Limited The right of Wilbur Smith to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
ISBN 0-330-32326-1
Photoset by Doux International Limited
Printed in England by Clays Ltd, St Ives plc
For my wife and cherished companion, Danielle Antoinette This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher's prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser
Elephant Song by Wilbur Smith
It was a windowless thatched building of dressed sandstone blocks, that Daniel Armstrong had built with his own hands almost ten years ago. At the time he had been a junior game ranger in the National Parks administration. Since then the building had been converted into a veritable treasure house.
Johnny Nzou slipped his key into the heavy padlock, and swung open the double doors of hewn native teak. Johnny was chief warden of Chiwewe National Park. Back in the old days, he had been Daniel's tracker and gunbearer, a bright young Matabele whom Daniel had taught to read, write and speak fluent English by the light of a thousand campfires.
Daniel had lent Johnny the money to pay for his first correspondence course from the University of South Africa which had led much later to his degree of Bachelor of Science.
The two youngsters, one black and one white, had patrolled the vast reaches of the National Park together, often on foot or bicycle. In the wilderness they had forged a friendship which the subsequent years of separation had left undimmed.
Now Daniel peered into the gloomy interior of the go down, and whistled softly. Hell, Johnny boy, you have been busy since I've been away. The treasure was stacked to the roof beams, hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of it.
Johnny Nzou glanced at Daniel's face, his eyes narrowed as he looked for criticism in his friend's expression. The reaction was reflex, for he knew Daniel was an ally who understood the problem even better than he did. Nevertheless, the subject was so emotionally charged that it had become second nature to expect revulsion and antagonism.
However, Daniel had turned back to his cameraman. Can we get a light in here? I want some good shots of the interior. The cameraman trudged forward, weighed down by the heavy battery packs slung around his waist, and switched on the hand-held arc lamp. The high stacks of treasure were lit with a fierce blue-white light. Jock, I want you to follow me and the warden down the length of the warehouse, Daniel instructed, and the cameraman nodded and moved in closer, the sleek Sony video recorder balanced on his shoulder. Jock was in his middle thirties. He wore only a pair of short khaki pants, and open sandals.
In the Zambezi valley heat his tanned bare chest was shiny with sweat and his long hair was tied with a leather thong at the nape of his neck. He looked like a pop star, but was an artist with the big Sony camera. Got you, guy, he agreed, and panned the camera over the untidy stacks of elephant tusks, ending on Daniel's hand as it stroked one elegant curve of glowing ivory.
Then he pulled back into a full shot of Daniel.
It was not merely Daniel's doctorate in biology, nor his books and lectures, that had made him an international authority and spokesman on African ecology. He had the healthy outdoors looks and charismatic manner that came over so well on the television screen, and his voice was deep and compelling.
His accent had sufficient Sandhurst undertones remaining to soften the flat unmelodious vowel sounds of colonial speech.
His father had been a staff officer in a Guards regiment during World War II and had served in North Africa under Wavell and Montgomery.
After the war he came out to Rhodesia to grow tobacco. Daniel had been born in Africa but had been sent home to finish his education at Sandhurst, before coming back to Rhodesia to join the National Parks Service. Ivory, he said now, as he looked into the camera. Since the time of the pharaohs, one of the most beautiful and treasured natural substances. The glory of the African elephant, and its terrible cross.
Daniel began to move down between the tiers of stacked tusks, and Johnny Nzou fell in beside him. For two thousand years man has hunted the elephant to obtain this living white gold, and yet only a decade ago there still remained over two million elephant on the African continent. The elephant population seemed to be a renewable resource, an asset that was protected and harvested and controlled, and then something went terribly, tragically wrong. In these last ten years, almost a million elephant have been slaughtered. It is barely conceivable that this could have been allowed to happen. We are here to find out what went wrong, and how the perilous existence of the African elephant can be retrieved from the brink of extinction. He looked at Johnny. "With me today is Mr. John Nzou, chief warden of Chiwewe National Park, one of the new breed of African conservationists. By coincidence, the name Nzou in the Shana language means elephant. John Nzou is Mr. Elephant in more than name alone.