In the beginning of the.., p.11
In the Beginning of the Night, page 11
He waited for the conversation between Dacks and Anna Featherstone to stop for a moment and then tapped his friend on the shoulder.
“Can I see you for ten minutes?”
“Of course, Diogo. Will you all excuse me for a few moments? Korina will look after you. Put the drinks on my chits and I’ll sign them when I get back. Francine Mure and Harold Ackit should be along soon. Dinner is at nine-thirty in the continental style. Don’t eat too much of the crab or else you won’t enjoy the real seafood that Senhor de Almeida always provides straight from the sea via his kitchens.”
He followed the broad shoulders out of the bar with the smallest element of unease in his mind; his friend usually waited until he was alone and away from his guests before taking him aside to talk business.
Outside, they went down a flight of marble stairs curving down to a patio built out over the coral rocks with the sea lapping its feet. The marble had proved to be the most expensive shipment in the building costs but it had added a brilliant display of luxury and flamboyance. As they walked down, the marble reflected the strong light of the moon and the stars glittered in its surface. Dacks followed Diogo away from the terrace down another narrow flight of steps that had been cut into the coral then smoothed to eliminate the jagged edges.
His feet felt the soft smoothness of the crushed coral and seashell sand.
His puzzlement increased as they walked out around the head that jutted from the east side of the island. They moved into the main coconut grove and past the pockets of orchids that had been planted into the trunks of the palms. The palms grew straight from the sand. The path was patterned by the moon shadows of the straw-hatted palms with the feathery fronds unmoving in the still sea air.
The buildings and lights receded behind them and all that was suggestive of man’s presence finally was the clank of the turning wheel on a distant well sucking fresh water out of a deep hole in the sand. They moved quietly as if by instinct beneath the palms. Dacks looked up at the angled trunk of the tallest of them; its coconuts were silhouetted by the brilliant white of the moon beyond. The sky-smoothed fronds were spread out in giant protective arms from the growing centre of the nuts at the topmost height of the crescent trunk.
Diogo signalled him to get low to the ground, and they crept slowly from tree to tree, expertly walking up the moon-flung shadows of the coconut palms. Dacks strained to see through the grove and flexed his hands in readiness. He stopped abruptly. The air, some fifty yards up through the palm trees, was crackling with the static and distorted words of a short-wave radio receiver. Dacks strained to form the noise into words but without success. The noise shut out as quickly as it had come and was replaced by the soft monotone of a man’s voice that was free of static, indicating that it was being heard on Santa Salina by the naked ear. Again, however, the softly spoken words were unintelligible.
Dacks moved silently and swiftly forward, listening as he moved. A hard, metallic click stopped him again and the flesh crawled on his chest and spine. He saw movement between the trees and briefly the shape of a man’s shoulders with his head bent forward. He and Diogo quickened their pace but a sand dune came between them and the radio operator. With nothing to hide behind but sand, they broke into a run through the silent coconut palms. They slowed up as they topped the dune. To one side was the sea with the moon spangling the slight ripples. To the other side was the path leading up into the chalets that were lightless and silent. There was no sign of a man or of any movement. Dacks searched the sea with his eyes right out to the horizon but there were no boats either to swim to nor talk to with a short-range transmitter.
They moved up towards the path. They climbed up it together and quickly walked along past the fronts of the chalets staring darkly through the palms towards the glint of the moon-bathed, silent sea.
The concrete path led them to the steps that went up to the marble terrace, from where it was possible to pass on into the public rooms of the hotel. They went inside the building and along a corridor panelled with dark wood that gave off a rich, musty smell. The night always drew this scent. They turned off into the last room, Diogo’s office. Diogo closed the door behind them and switched on the powerful overhead light. There was one black, heavy desk in the centre of the room and a rush mat in front of its lion-clawed feet on the dark mukwa-block floor. The desk was as highly polished as the bar upstairs. Behind it, through the long, archer windows, the sea glinted under the moon, the waves just visible against the inside glare of the electric light.
Diogo de Almeida seated himself behind the desk in his high-armed wooden chair with its crude and powerful carvings on the arms and the tall, pointed back, like the Confessor’s chair except that this one had been created by Africans with the symbols of pagan power as their motive force. The effect was crude and powerful. There was a trace of Arab thinking in the snakes, lending the use of their bodies for the chair’s arms, but the lions roaring at the ends were all African.
Dacks moved a cane chair from the corner of the room beside the waist-high copper urn, by the simple expedience of lifting it in his right hand and putting it down again some fifteen paces further away in front of the writing table of massive proportions. Dacks sat himself down. The lion-headed snakes seemed to watch him carefully. He raised his eyes and looked straight at his friend. Momentarily, he raised both eyebrows in a question mark.
“I hoped you’d see who it was as well but that didn’t matter so much as you hearing that transistor set. I know the communications I permit the public on the island are a little slow and that it’s often quicker to post a letter after leaving the island, but it doesn’t explain someone radioing behind my back who is meant to have nothing in mind but a holiday. And, what’s more, Mark, it was one of your guests.”
One dark eyebrow rose and formed another question.
“I don’t know his name, and there again I didn’t go up and shake his hand in broad daylight to get the best of looks, but I’m pretty certain it was that guy who caught the shark on the Cara Mia this afternoon.”
“What would Harold Ackit want to stand out on a deserted beach and prattle into a radio transmitter for?”
“That’s the big question. Keep an eye on him. I’ll have Yasani go through his clothes to see what can be found.”
“Funny, his partner came on the trip last year. They’re big commercial bankers in Lombard Street but he’s told me more than once that he doesn’t wish to think of business on the trip, let alone hear about it. Sure, make a search. He must have something to hide with a set like that, and even if he is harmless I’d like to know who he was talking to from the beach just now.”
Diogo de Almeida leaned forward and pulled open the small cupboard on the right of his desk, clicked open the hidden door of the refrigerator and took out a crystal decanter of white wine, which he placed on its waiting stand on top of his desk. With two quick movements he closed both the doors and opened the corresponding door on the other side and drew out two long-stemmed, elegantly bowled and lipped, minutely thin-glassed glasses. He placed them on the highly-polished table with one hand and closed the well-made door with the other. He removed the heavy glass stopper from the decanter and without apparent effort lifted the wine decanter to the nearest glass and poured, cut back, moved it across, and poured into the second glass. The cold, yellow wine frosted the glasses outside and the harsh electric light made liquid patterns through the glass.
Dacks accepted the proffered glass and raised it towards his friend before bringing it across to his mouth and taking a long pull of the dry full-bodied wine that cooled for that moment the whole of his body.
“Where has the pick-up been arranged and when, Diogo?”
“Tomorrow night. It’s been said you must bring a lot of money as the pile of stones now on the island of Bagota is very high and very wide. There will be much celebrating, so they say, when the transfer takes place. Many people from many places are on the island now. They are the top collectors who know your business and have sworn to keep silent. They say many of the stones have come from a newly-found diamond deposit near Sofala. I have heard that the stones are very good, but are becoming more difficult to find as the diggers are now many feet below the surface, and the face of the big hole crumbles when it rains so that it has to be dug out again with spades. It is difficult to get the earth out. Only ten people can work in the hole at the same time. One of the tribe worked in a mine at Kimberley and has told them about conveyor belts and mechanical grabs. They’re going to ask you tomorrow to spend some of their money on this machinery and to bring it to Sofala for them.”
“Mine machinery is heavy stuff and if we start shifting it in large quantities the authorities will soon realise someone’s found something and will want to know who and where.”
“Can’t you find an area in Rhodesia that isn’t an exclusive prospecting area and stake a diamond claim?”
“I’d have the Mines Department snooping and taking samples and the income tax people wanting to see my books. If this salting had been possible we’d have done it instead of smuggling. To operate in an environment protection zone you have to do it unnoticed. And then again if I said I’d found diamonds in a free area they’d make me sell through the central selling organisation, as I couldn’t sell legally in quantities elsewhere. And in most places the rock history would show to the Mines Department that I was crazy to think diamonds were there at all. All the likely places have an EPA slapped on them already. The big corporations can afford to spend the required millions on prospecting in their EPAs and government knows it’s the only way to get an intensive search. It’s a vicious circle that only the very rich and Mark Dacks can win.”
“What are you thinking?”
“We’ll have to smuggle through the equipment in pieces and make the pieces look as though they’re meant for something else. We can take them to our side of the Zambezi by Land Rover and have trucks waiting on the other side, upstream some fifty miles from Sofala. It’ll need a lot of organisation but there are only a few police and the Game Department in that part of the country. The tsetse fly have seen to that; not a good place to spend any length of time in. I’ll talk to them at Bagota and find out what kind of soil and rocks surround the deposit and whether there’s water nearby. With plenty of water, sorting the loose rock and soil is easy as the diamonds sink to a certain level and stick on a belt coated with an oil slime that holds the stones. They’ll find many thousands more diamonds that way. Thanks, I’ll have another. The wine you keep in your blasted desk is the best on the island.”
“Of course.”
“And you always have it decanted so no one knows the name of the vineyard.”
“Of course. You think I’m crazy enough to tell everyone? When no one knows about a good wine it stays cheap.”
“You should have collected enough at two and half per cent of sales not to worry about the price.”
“So I have, Mark, but having created the mystery wine I like to keep it that way. Shall we go and join the ladies upstairs? We have been away half an hour. I want to look again at this Harold Ackit and then there is also Korina.”
“Yes, you are right… There is Korina.”
“Delightful.”
“Here again, we agree.”
“I know... And here is the pity... Such a waste for the girl. Saúde. I will tell you the name of my wine in my will.”
“Most kind of you.”
“Always a friend. Even when dead.”
“I will leave you Korina in mine.”
“Not, I’m afraid, a fair exchange, Mark. She is even much better than my wine.”
“From you, Diogo, that is the greatest compliment. After you, Don Juan.”
11
The Deep Blue Sea
Mark Dacks propped his elbows on the smooth white sand, put his square-cut chin into the palms of his hands, dug his bare toes behind him into the hot sand to find the cooler moisture underneath and looked out to sea over the searing reflection of the ten o’clock sun.
The palm tree above him swayed in the morning breeze and the uniform line of tassels along each side of the crescent wands rustled gently and gave an illusion of coolness. The sharp shadows playing on Dacks’s shoulders rippled the sun but the depth of his tan was so rich that it wouldn’t go any darker. The tan was a good contrast to the white sand and large white towel underneath him.
His eyes swivelled gently away from the sea, and the one snorkel furrowing the blue ocean some thirty yards off shore, and contemplated a tall girl in a black lace bathing costume that left little to the imagination from a distance. A two-inch black circular felt band went smoothly around her long white throat and similar smaller bands were secured around her ankles. Her sandals were held on by leather thongs. The thongs were studded with the rich red, green and opal-coloured stones of the East. Around her hips, and held up by the firm and inviting curves of her perfect body, was a chain of fine gold that let one end pass through an elaborate black padlock in filigree imitation iron and dangled invitingly in line with the central juncture of her long, curved, fishnet-stockinged legs.
She carried a glass tray with three yellow pineapples on top. She was the latest inspired idea of Diogo de Almeida’s, all of which, when added together, had made his hotel more than pay. His latest invention also happened to provide a changing pattern for his evening life. The girls flocked to the agency in Salisbury which employed them and sent them out for three weeks at a time. The young ladies achieved a holiday for nothing and, depending on their charms, either got some good exercise or a fortune. They enjoyed themselves, as there was no rule about sitting with the guests either in the day or at night.
This one had a manner that attracted Dacks more than usual. He kept his gaze directly on her sunglasses and sensed she was looking directly into the thoughts behind his eyes.
The top of the pineapples had been sliced away, allowing a silver spoon to jut from each fruit and glint in the sunlight. She stopped a yard short in front of him so that he was only able to study her well-formed, firm feet and the delightful turn of her ankles. As she bent with the tray held down to him, he could smell the young musk of an inviting perfume. He wrinkled his nostrils in appreciation. She took one of the pineapples on its glass plate from the tray and put it down on the white towel in front of him and gave him, as additional comfort, an even more delightful view of those few inches of normally hidden flesh that propriety said he shouldn’t have been able to see on a beach, even the beach of Santa Salina, when the two concerned were not alone. He placed the index finger of his right hand on the imitation ruby just above her big toe and pressed. She stood up and released another wave of the very inviting musk, and his finger slipped on to her skin.
“Go and give the couple over there your other two pineapples and then come back and tell me your name.”
He let his finger move off the smooth white skin and, instead of turning to the fruit, allowed himself the pleasure of watching her rear move away from him. It rose and fell in the jerked, caressing movements of a most sex-inviting walk. His more barbarous instinct rose to the fore as she bent down with her back to him and, with her legs straight, placed the two large fruits in front of first Anna Featherstone, who greeted it with glee, and then Herman Small. Herman was not so enthusiastic about the pineapple, as he too had been distracted from the plate to the same few inches of well-moulded, smooth and most inviting flesh that had had so much written about its sins.
Dacks stretched for a First Lord that he took out by fumbling inside the packet. He lit it by instinct without once taking his eyes off the girl who was again walking towards him. With the cigarette in his mouth, he rolled on to his back, held his left elbow propped behind him and patted the clean expanse of his towel with his right hand.
She put down the tray and knelt on the towel, sinking an inch into the sand beneath, then sat down beside him, stretching her long legs out parallel to Dacks’s. He considered them again at leisure as he offered her a First Lord from the box. He lit her cigarette and decided that her legs were perfect. The eyes he looked into as she hooked her heavy dark glasses off her nose were green.
“I’m Mark Dacks.”
“Yes… I know. I’m called Anna-Marie, which is quite enough really. I mean one doesn’t need all the other names. What are those things?”
“Snorkels and masks. I always bring an extra pair in case I meet someone like you and then I can watch for the fish in good company. That thing there is a spear gun. Have you looked at the fish?”
“No, I only got here last night. It is beautiful, you can say.”
“It is a jewel among islands.”
“The sand is so white and the sea is so blue.”
“And the fish are every colour of the rainbow. Many of them have been given the names of game, birds and fish. Out there, just down under the blue surface, are the big, twenty-pound parrot fish with beaks just like the birds and bodies that are fat and pale translucent-blue with yellow and emerald green stripes. Then there are the zebra fish in black stripes as well as orange. There are the good eating fish like the sea bream. There are grouper down in the deeper water, big ugly fish with heavy flake meat that is perfect when cooked in the French herbs. There is the coral in all its colours and growing shapes, and the walking shell fish. It has been said that just out there and further is the most exciting sea in the world. The sword-nosed marlin come in close to the reef. Further out are the sharks, the ragged-tooth, the sand shark, the tiger and the grey shark. It is an exciting sea. Come, I’ll take you out.”
“What about the sharks?”
