Blood Ivory

CONTENTS

Dust Jacket: Read all about it first

Title Page

Copyright

Map 1: Overview

Map 2: The Ivory Run

Start Reading BLOOD IVORY

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Book Jacket

Mr McCoy gets on with the job of telling us exactly what it is like in the Heart of Darkness. He has the soldier's eye for terrain and the soldier's eye for character. This has the ring of truth.

John Braine, author of Room at the Top, in the Sunday Telegraph

***

BLOOD IVORY by Andrew McCoy

The equation is simple: on the day the last elephant in the world is shot, ivory will be more valuable than gold. Two men — one a merchant prince, the other a big-game hunter — are preparing for that day by acculumating vast hoards of the irreplaceable tusk. It is the hunter who makes the first mistake, and pays the price.

His widow engages Lance Weber on the lethal brief of reclaiming her inheritance from the very heart of war-torn Africa. Lance is on the run from the ghost of Bruun, a man believed by every authority to be dead, who is still killing Lance's employees, friends, parents, drawing concentric circles of terror ever tighter around Lance himself. Lance wants no ivory but he is driven by the need to avenge the many innocent dead and to expunge the evil of Bruun from the face of the earth. Bruun has shown that he too lusts for the ivory, so Lance sets himself, the ivory — and the beautiful widow — as bait for the mad predator. Their violent duel carves a scar across the face of the globe, from Sydney to Kent to Macao, from the harsh red grit of Africa to the suppurating green lushness of the Opium Triangle.

— dust-jacket blurb by John Blackwell, from the original hardcover edition

***

It did not occur to Mpengi that men would die in Macao, the China Seas, Brussels, Tokyo, the Burmese jungles, Africa and the Kent countryside because the bellies of his children were empty. He did not know of these places.

What Mpengi did that would have such disastrous effects around the world, what he did to relieve the gnawing mouse in the bellies of his children, was simplicity itself. He wenr to the camp of the Englishman with the red face and the luxuriant white moustache and told him where to find the last six elephants in the world.

— from BLOOD IVORY by Andrew McCoy

***

CoolMain Press will not only be reissuing the three previously published Lance Weber novels by Andrew McCoy, but has also commissioned two new full-length novels which will be published in chronological order in the LANCE WEBER series. The first volume, AFRICAN REVENGE, has already been published to critical acclaim.

Lance Weber Book 2

Series Editor: André Jute

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BLOOD IVORY

Andrew McCoy

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CoolMain Press

For JOHN BLACKWELL and THE ELEPHANTS in his bonnet

BLOOD IVORY

Copyright ©1983 & 2014 Andrew McCoy.

The author has asserted his moral right.

First published 1983 by Martin Secker & Warburg

New edition published by CoolMain Press 2014.

http://www.coolmainpress.com

info@coolmainpress.com

Series Editor: André Jute.

Associate Editor: Lynne Comery,

Cover Photo: M. Boulton, by courtesy of the World Wildlife Fund

This edition published at Smashwords.

All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced by any means without the written permission of the publisher.

Map 1: Overview

Map 2: The Ivory Run

BLOOD IVORY

Andrew McCoy

*

KENYA

It did not occur to Mpengi that men would die in Macao, the China Seas, Brussels, Tokyo, the Burmese jungles, Africa and the Kent countryside because the bellies of his children were empty. If it did, the knowledge would not have changed his course one whit. He did not know of these places, nor of the men who lived in them. They would have to look out for their own children, their own lives.

***

Lance Weber did not know Mpengi. It was true that, in general, he knew of the poachers and beat several he caught quite severely, then let them go rather than hand them over to the police. For this they thought him soft but, remembering the beatings, they kept clear of his twenty-one thousand-acre reserve. He also killed two poachers, one a white man, who had the temerity to raise their rifles against him on his own land. The reason he did not hand the black poachers over to the police was that there were strict laws about game protection in Kenya and they were rigorously applied. A black man who could not pay the fine — and he poached in the first instance because he lacked money — would be sent to jail with the inevitable result that his family starved or, at the very least, was broken up. Lance, a bachelor, was keen on the concept of family. He set his parents up in a house on the beach in the sleepy little resort of Kleinmond with the first money he ever earned, and he visited them at least twice every year.

***

What Mpengi did that would have such disastrous effects around the world, what he did to relieve the gnawing mouse in the bellies of his children, was simplicity itself. He went to the camp of the Englishman with the red face and the luxuriant white mustache and told him where to find the last six elephants in the world. It was common knowledge that the Englishman would pay, and pay well — in golden Theresas, Victoria sovereigns, Krugerrands, to the choice of his informant — for knowledge of the whereabouts of an elephant. Even a small elephant or a one-tusk elephant or an old elephant with worn and broken tusks. The English bwana would pay. He would take you to show him the elephant and when he saw the elephant, he would pay. Then he would kill the elephant.

He even, it was said, killed one elephant without any tusks. This not even the old men could understand for the Englishman would not, of course not, eat elephant meat or even elephant liver, a delicacy.

The Englishman was touched by the sun. That was not unusual. All Englishmen were touched by the sun. This one was probably bitten by a mad dog as well. But he paid in gold.

Mpengi traveled on foot, living off the land. On the third day he entered another country, but he did not know it. (He voted for Daniel Arap Moi, because the elders of his tribe showed him against which symbol to make his mark. He did not even know his country was called Kenya. This did not make him stupid: his skills were simply different.) Late in the afternoon he reached the camp of the white man who paid gold for sight of an elephant. He squatted on the periphery of the camp and waited patiently.

At sunset the Englishman came from his tent and sat in a canvas chair under the wing of his tethered airplane. He looked alertly around him and saw Mpengi. He did not nod or otherwise greet Moping. Instead he spoke to a servant, who took Mpengi a bottle of beer, cold and uncapped. Mpengi drank it in one draught and placed the empty bottle in front of him. Later, as darkness fell, he was brought a tin plate of food and another beer. One of the servants came and spoke to him but Mpengi shook his head: he did not understand. When the white man finished his meal, he approached. Mpengi remained seated as a sign of respect. The Englishman offered Mpengi a cigarette, and lit it for him. He tried snatches of greeting in several languages until he hit on Mpengi’s. Before independence he was a district officer, a good one.

Approach the fire, he invited Mpengi. Mpengi squatted near the man’s chair. You bring news?

They say the Bwana likes to hear of elephants.

I do. I pay well for news of elephants.

There are only a few left.

That is true. That is why I pay gold for news. It is the law of economics that drives prices up when scarcity occurs.

It was another far-off place Mpengi never heard of; they were welcome to their own tribal laws.

The Englishman stopped chuckling at his own wit, quite aware that the black man did not understand but unperturbed by the knowledge. Where is this elephant you know of?

Mpengi was shocked by the rude suddenness, the discourteous directness of the question, and the repulsive greed in the man’s voice. But his children were hungry. Elephants, he said. Six elephants, Bwana.

If I want to hear comedy, I can listen to the World News on my radio, the Englishman said abruptly.

Mpengi said nothing, hoping that this was not a wasted journey. But others were definitely paid gold coins for lesser news than his. One gold coin, exchanged at the bank in Nairobi, would be more silver coins than a man could carry away in three trips from the bank. Mpengi and his family could live for nearly two years on one such gold coin.

The Englishman tasted his gin and tonic and wiped his moustache with his forefinger. This grave tribesman did not seem to be lying. But it was incredible: six elephants! All in one place? Tell me about six elephants.

There are two bulls, two cows, one nurse — here Mpengi indicated by standing up and holding out his hand a half-grown calf, say about six years old — and a new calf. They all live inside the wire of The Man Who Runs With The Ball.

The Englishman was silent for a long time, trying to contain his rage. He should shoot this stupid black. Lance Weber, the ex-rugger international, advertised his game reserve and his six elephants (the last elephants in their natural surroundings anywhere in the world) with relentless persistence. He also protected them with an electrified fence that cost, according to press reports, one million dollars and ran for several miles around his property.

Finally the Englishman recovered his composure enough to speak. Those elephants are not news that I would pay for. What would be news I would pay for would be a break in the fence.

Mpengi nodded and waited.

It took the Englishman, who saw the nod, a while to realize Mpengi was not going, slinking away into the night with his tail between his legs. Then hope and lust and greed flared in him and he signaled for a servant to bring the black man another beer.

You know of a break in the fence?

I do, Bwana.

When I see it with my own eyes, when I stand on the other side of that fence, I shall give you one gold piece for each of those elephants.

That will be fair, Bwana. Mpengi felt no elation. If this was not over quickly, the youngest of his children would die.

Tomorrow we will fly in my airplane to inspect the fence.

Mpengi shook his head. He was not entering that machine. He would return on foot.

If they mend the fence before we reach there, you get nothing.

Mpengi will go in the machine.

Later, before the man obsessed with elephants went into his tent, he stirred Mpengi, sleeping beside the fire, with his foot.

Tell me, Mpengi, how did you know of the break in the fence?

I saw the men who made it, Bwana.

Christ! Why didn’t you tell me?

Mpengi sat up. He hoped this would not put his gold coins, the food for his children, in jeopardy.

Who were they?

I do not know. White men.

Christ! Somebody else was after those six elephants. It was nearly five months since he killed the tuskless bull. That goddamn Weber’s six could well be the last elephants in the world outside a zoo. It was at least two months since he even heard of another elephant — and each report since the tuskless bull proved to be a mirage conjured up out of thin air and desperation by some hungry black man.

He had thought of going after Weber’s elephants. The problem was not getting over the electrified fence — he could fly over it. But he would need labor to cut out the tusks and for that he would have to get a Landrover loaded with blacks through the fence.

Now somebody else beat him to it. If they had not already come and gone.

How did they do it?

Mpengi recoiled from the snarl. This man was truly bitten by a rabid dog. He was even foaming at the mouth. He also gripped Mpengi fiercely by the shoulder. Mpengi told him quickly. They did it with a cutter, Bwana. And they left a dead zebra they brought with them lying against the wire.

Goddammit! The elephants were probably dead now, the tusks gone. He noticed his fingers digging into Mpengi’s shoulder and released the black man.

Tomorrow we will go there. He turned and walked to his tent, calming himself. Telling himself it did not really matter who killed the last elephant outside a zoo, as long as it was killed. The plan, to be commercially successful, required only that the last elephant die, no matter who killed it. But he was not a plan; he was a person. For years he looked forward to the day he would kill the last elephant. It was like when he felt the sap rising and his wife told him it was her time of the month.

He did not sleep.

***

The decapitated zebra against the fence enraged Lance Weber: did these people not know zebras were an endangered species? But then, he asked himself, which species isn’t, barring man and the insects? No serious damage was done to the fence except that the open wire which carried the alarm and would give humans a mild shock of warning was broken, snapped. They had run out of repair materials and Lance sent to Nairobi for more. Then he set out to track the poachers but lost them on the blacktop sixty miles away.

Though he never saw them, he knew a great deal about them: they drove a Toyota Landcruiser 4WD, they drank Lion beer, smoked Gunston and Texan cigarettes (both unfiltered and very strong) and were neither familiar with the terrain nor comfortable in it. There were six of them, all in city shoes, none over size seven.

Lance, not really perturbed but careful all the same, arranged for intermittent patrols round the perimeter of the fence. Nobody was taking them seriously. It was nearly Christmas; the last of the camera safaris from which they all made their living had returned to Sweden. Lance himself would be off to visit his parents in South Africa after the annual Christmas party. People kept dropping in by Landrover, car and light plane, bringing gifts, mostly of liquor.

Lance drank with the rangers from the official government game reserves and made deals to swap animals with them; if any of them were envious of the luxury of his private game reserve, they did not show it, though many spoke wistfully of having, some day, a fence like his around their reserves. Hoteliers and charter aircraft operators and victuallers flew up from Nairobi to drink Lance’s health: they did a lot of business with the camera safaris he brought from all the points of the compass to photograph the game on his reserve, especially the last wild elephants in the world.

A man from a zoo came, offering to swap any number of lions for an elephant. Lance laughed in his face. His was a firm policy of giving zoos absolutely nothing. Zoos were dangerous to the animals and to the ideal of conservation both. People thought that, because animals were preserved in zoos, the wild could be restocked; that was an impossible dream.

You and I both know zoos have so many lions they can’t give them away for free, Lance said. He took a skull with a big hole in the cranium from a shelf. Female leopard. Paid twelve thousand for her in Germany, hoping against hope… The first day we let her free here, the male I wanted her to mate with did that. She didn’t even know enough not to trespass on his territory. I can’t take your lions even if I want to. Mine would kill them.

The zoo director left to try his luck on somebody less well informed — or without any lions at all. When he was gone, Lance stood beside the landing strip and wondered if the man knew that zoo-bred lions, even when freed in a lion-less environment, would still have to be fed; they would not know how to hunt and fend for themselves, nor how to teach their cubs to survive. He shrugged. The man ran a great zoo; presumably he knew. If he did not, whoever took his lions would probably know, or would find out.

Lance long since lost his childhood belief that those in authority know best — or even what they are doing.

On the porch he found Peter Brazenose, his chief ranger.

Despite the physical spread of land, the whole operation was run by Lance himself, Peter, Peter’s wife, and an acidulous ex-missionary of indeterminate age who was an excellent cook, with labor recruited from the villages on Lance’s land.

I wonder where that little so-and-so is, Mr Weber. Brazenose at fifty-eight was thirty years older than his employer and insisted, despite repeated invitations to call him by his Christian name, on the formal mode of address. He was referring to the man they sent in the Landrover to Nairobi to bring wire for fixing the fence.

Don’t worry about it, Lance said. He’s saying hello to all his cousins. He’ll be here in a couple of days, hungover and shamefaced.

If he dents the Landrover I shall take it out on his skin, Brazenose said darkly. His bark was worse than his bite.

They watched the small plane flying over. Suddenly it dropped out of sight. I wonder what that fool thinks he’s doing, Brazenose said. I should think he landed pretty near our fence up there. Between the gates.

If he comes over again, Peter, we’ll tell him he’s frightening our animals and ask him to fly round.

All right: I’ll keep an eye on it. Or mention it when he comes to pay his respects. Lance nodded. It was a colonial hangover: white people, few and far between, would call on each other if they happened to be in the neighborhood. Here’s one coming now.

They watched the twin-engined plane fly low over the runway, repeat the process the other way, then land neatly.

Professional pilot, never been here before, not local, Brazenose said. Are we open for business? Very occasionally someone, usually Americans, would drop out of the sky unannounced and without reservations and expect to be received like royalty.

Tell them this is a safari park, not a hotel. Send them on their way, Lance said. It was only midday and his remote corner of Kenya was turning in to the crossroads of the world: this must be the day’s eighth or ninth plane. Sometimes weeks would pass without a single plane coming in, except their own, sent once a week to fetch the post and their guests.

Brazenose looked relieved. He and his wife were looking forward to the arrival of their daughter and son-in-law for Christmas, complete with first grandchild. They did not want their holiday disturbed. You sure?

Lance laughed. Don’t worry, Peter. The banks won’t foreclose just because we turned down one party for a few days. It was no secret from Peter that the fence nearly broke him and that part of it was financed by the bank.

But, while the amount was large enough to impress a man on a salary, against the value of the game reserve it was minuscule.

The operation broke even two years running now and Lance was expecting a small profit in the coming year. Lance was still smiling when he saw the man climbing down from the plane. He stiffened: his face settled into straight lines and his eyes chilled over. Brazenose, who was of the opinion that young Mr Weber was at the best of times an awkward customer to cross, saw this once before, when his employer killed the two poachers who shot at them. They never referred to it since; Brazenose did not even tell his wife.

Who is he?

A ghost from the past, Lance said, his voice level and controlled.

Brazenose studied the man as he walked towards them. He was just under middle height, middle aged, his wavy hair thinning and graying, streaks of ginger still surviving. He looked fit and walked erect in his salt-and-pepper brown suit, cream silk shirt, brown knit tie and brown shoes. Even his sunglasses were tinted brown. He was a symphony in brown, thought Brazenose, who was given to reading in the long nights.

He also thought the man looked inoffensive enough: except for the trim waistline and alert bearing, possibly, probably even, a contemptible city slicker. Then he saw the man’s eyes, a sort of deeply colorless washed-out blue, very unlike the sky-blue of young Mr Weber’s. The common factor was the chill that seemed to drag you in. Here was another who would kill two men with two shots, two single impossible shots, drive over to look at their bodies, and say, without the slightest trace of emotion. Get me the spade from the Landrover, will you?

Well, I’ll be off then, Brazenose said. He felt he should fetch a shotgun and cover his employer’s back. He felt irritably stupid, old and useless. It was a new experience for him. The visitor moved faster than appearances would suggest.

He was upon them before Brazenose could turn round.

Lance offered no greeting. Colonel Rocco Burger, Peter Brazenose, he said automatically.

Brigadier since we last met. A look of pain passed over Lance Weber’s face. Brazenose wondered what catastrophe occurred at that last meeting.

He shook the other man’s hand and was surprised to find it warm and dry. How’d you do sir. Neither Lance nor Burger offered to shake hands with the other. Lance stood aside so that Burger could enter the shade of the house. My pilot— Burger said.

Get him out of that tin can before he fries, Lance said to Brazenose, giving him a look which Brazenose interpreted as meaning And don’t let him out of your sight.

Burger stood looking around the main block. The whole of the ground floor of the large building was open, except for a strip across the back that was the kitchen and stores. Dining room, living-room and entrance area were differentiated by steps in the sapele floor. A wide gallery ran around the walls and from this led doors to what Burger guessed, correctly, were the guest bedrooms. The whole thing was pleasantly cool under the high shadowed thatch roof.

You only take twenty guests at a time, Burger said.

Generally more like twelve.

Easier to control?

We like to give personal service. You can take a large party to see, say, lions or elephants. But to sit in a blind and view dik-dik, four’s the most. Or to climb a cliff and photograph an eagle’s egg, you can only take one person. Maybe two.

And it’s the small touches like that you charge for?

We’re expensive for many reasons, Brigadier. The small touches is one. It creates another: repeat business, which in turn creates demand we don’t really wish to fulfill. Would you like a drink? Lance waved the older man to a cane chair.

No thank you. Burger sat, pulling at the creases in his trousers. This is very different, taking people on camera safaris, from being the world’s biggest mass slaughterer of animals. How many crocodiles did you blow to kingdom come? A million?

Something like that. They were vermin, eating people. Lance was in no hurry to hear whatever unpleasantness Burger decided to visit upon him.

And the proceeds bought this. Burger watched as another spasm of pain crossed the younger man’s face. He was probably remembering the lives it cost to wrench his fortune from the river and the jungle and the greed of men. Good. As a matter of interest, is it true the going rate for taking someone to shoot a rhinoceros is twenty-five thousand pounds sterling?

That was about a year ago. It’s probably higher now.

You must be doing well if, instead, you fence your rhino in.

Would you believe, Brigadier, my brother and Jacques Roux loved Africa.

I never doubted it for a minute.

Lance remembered. Burger had been friendly with the Roux family. Jacques’ death was an accident of war caused by an over-eager young man under Burger’s command. Lance killed the young man without even paying conscious thought to the decision. His brother had died in the flames under an oil tanker only minutes before. It was a very disturbed time.

My brother was a conservationist. This place is in part in his memory and—

And to keep you away from the gambling lights of the cities.

Lance ignored the vicious dig. He had not gambled for money for seven years. —and in part simply good business. In a radius of six hundred miles there are nine surviving rhino.

Burger pursed his lips, a sign of surprise that there were so few.

I have two, a pair, male and female. When people tell me, after I refuse their offer for shooting one, that they don’t understand, do I want more money? — I tell them it’s better business to let people shoot my rhino with cameras rather than rifles. After the camera safari they’re still alive for the next camera safari. You’d be surprised how quickly it mounts up.

Makes sense. Is it true the horn of the rhino is an aphrodisiac? I hear it now costs more by weight than pure heroin. Lance pulled a hair from the side of his head and held it up in forefinger and thumb. The light falling through the windows glinted golden on it. Is that an aphrodisiac?

No.

That’s all rhinoceros horn is, hair.

I once knew some men who made a very good living taking rich men to shoot the biggest game in the world — a black man.

I never heard about that.

It was before your time.

What happened to them?

They fell out among themselves and killed each other before I could do it.

A black man wearing long white trousers and a white coat but barefoot padded up to near them and stood waiting patiently.

Coffee please, Lance said. Would you like something stronger, Brigadier?

Coffee will be fine.

They sat silently until the servant brought the coffee and rusks.

Burger took a rusk and inspected it. Homemade butter milk rusks, he said with approval and dunked it in his coffee.

Lance sat staring into his coffee, his thoughts seven years old, loaded with suppressed anguish of those years. Then another thought interrupted, a thought of the here and now. The plane that flew over and landed near their fence. It was not the first time. He heard it, whining low across the reserve and then suddenly dropping away, in the stillness of the dawn just before he was woken with his morning coffee. There was some significance to that but Burger was speaking again.

I didn’t come all this way to chew over the good old days with you.

You hardly could, considering that we only had one single bitter day together, Lance snapped. Then he realized that Burger was acutely embarrassed. It gave him a delicious thrill of power to see the all-powerful boss of BOSS reduced to speechlessness.

Burger tapped the file he brought with him with his forefinger. He was now sorry he had given in to the surge of compassion in bringing the news to this young man himself. He could have sent a subordinate. But he felt, irrationally, some responsibility for the new anguish the young man would suffer. It was, he now realized, ridiculous to feel like that: Lance Weber was capable of looking after himself. Very capable indeed. Perhaps he saw in Lance the son he had never fathered, he thought, a son with all his own negative qualities but none the less a spiritual twin. Bury the psychology, Burger, he told himself. All you have in common with this boy is that you’re both killers. The difference is that he has six inches on you, not to mention twenty-five years, several million in the bank, and is besides as handsome as a film star.

Put like that, it was difficult to feel sorry for him. Still, the Weber family were close.

In the end, Burger said nothing. He simply took a photograph from his file and handed it to Lance. Burger was, as a superior had once noted on his file, never more brutal than he had to be.

Lance looked at the photograph. At first it did not register.

Then he felt the breath escape him and the blood rush to his head. He half rose in his chair and then sank back.

Burger watched him closely. Considering the gory detail of the color photo, Lance was taking it well. He was pale, true, but that was all.

I know only one man who kills like this and he’s dead, Lance said. You know that. So why show me this? He waved the photograph by one stiff corner. He only waved it once.

Do you recognize her?

Hardly. But it’s Briony Roux, widow of Colonel Jacques Roux.

Burger leaned over to point. That’s her boy, the bloody little bundle in the corner.

Lance looked fleetingly at the photograph and made a sound like someone swallowing back vomit by force of will. He stared into the shadows of the ceiling.

Lance decided to let Burger get it off his chest. He could not guess what the man’s game was. But there was no way he could help solve the murder by some deranged maniac of a woman he had not seen in seven years. He would ask no more questions. Boils burst in time even without prodding.

You knew she bore a little colored boy after she was raped? Lance nodded.

She was put in some kind of institution for a while but recovered her sanity before the child was born. She refused an abortion on religious grounds. Burger paused to look at Lance. He wanted to know whether Lance was as surprised as he to find that the foul-mouthed Briony Roux had religious scruples. Nothing showed on Lance’s face. Did you know?

About her religion? No. But I could have guessed. Jacques was quite a biblical scholar, my brother told me.

Old Testament eye-for-an-eye scholar to be precise, Burger thought but said nothing. She claimed the child and left South Africa to live in Britain in a village near Brighton. She lived quietly, bringing up the child. Funny that, from such a racist.

Funny that, coming from the chief strong-arm of the South African racist government, Lance said.

Burger ignored the taunt. Lance knew better than to draw black and white lines; he was still disturbed. Motherhood. That which there is nothing sweeter before the Lord… Then, six days ago. Burger tapped the photograph still in Lance’s hand though Lance was no longer looking at it. Burger waited but Lance said nothing.

Brigadier Rocco Burger sighed and took another photograph from his folio. He slid it on top of the other one in Lance’s hand.

I tried to prepare you, he said but Lance was already halfway across the room, a strangled sound coming from him, his hand to his mouth. He crashed through a door at the back of the building. The door swung to