A Time to Die - Smith Wilbur - Страница 175

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The Hind settled to the rutted road and the pilot throttled back the turbos; the rotors slowed and the engine noise sank to a low whistle. General China opened the armored canopy, jumped lightly to the ground, and turned to face the group of men on the stoep of the general dealer's store.

"Tippoo Tip," he said, and opened his arms wide in fraternal greeting. "How good to see you again." He raised his voice above the engine whistle.

General Tippoo Tip came down the steps to meet him, his thick arms held wide as a crucifix. They embraced with the utmost insincerity of two fierce rivals who knew that one day they might have to kill each other.

"My old friend," said China, holding him at arm's length and smiling warmly and lovingly upon him.

Tippoo Tip was not his real name; he had taken it as his norn de guerre from one of the most notorious of the old Arab slave traders and ivory runners of the previous century. However, the name and its associations suited him to perfection, China thought as he looked down upon him. Here stood a rogue and brigand cast in the classic mold, a man to admire and to treat with great caution.

He was short, the top of his head on a level with China's chin, but everything else about him was massive. His chest was like that of a bull gorilla and his thick arms hung in similar fashion, so that his knuckles were at the level of his knees. His head was like one of those gigantic Rhodesian granite boulders balanced on the pinnacle of a rocky kopJe. He had shaved his pate, but his beard was a thick mattress of woolly black curls that hung onto his chest. The forehead and nose above it were broad and his lips full and fleshy.

He wore a gaily colored strip of cotton cloth bound around his forehead, while a vest of tanned kudu hide was open down the front to expose his naked chest. His chest was covered with black peppercorns of wool, and the naked arms protruding from the short sleeves were thick and roped with muscle.

He smiled back at China and his teeth were brilliant as mother of-pearl, in contrast to the smoky yellow whites of his eyes, which were laced with a network of veins. your presence has perfumed my day with the scent of mimosa blossoms" he said in Shangane, but his eyes slid Past China's face and returned to the huge helicopter from which he had disembarked. Tippoo Tip's envy was so unconcealed that China felt he could smell and taste it like burning sulfur in the air.

That machine had altered the fine trim and balance of the relationship between these two most powerful of all the Renamo warlords. Tippoo Tip could not keep his eyes off it. it was obvious he wanted to examine it more closely, but China took his arm and led him back toward the shade of the veranda. The pilot had not killed the engines, and as China and his host stepped out of the circle of ors he gunned the Hind and pulled on his collective. The the rot great machine rose and turned away.

Tippoo Tip twisted out of China's grip and shaded his eyes to watch it. His smoky yellow eyes were as hungry as though he were watching a beautiful naked woman performing an obscene act.

China let him yearn after it until it passed out of sight. He had sent the Hind away purposely because he knew and understood Tippoo Tip.

He knew that if the machine had remained, the temptation might have become too strong for him to resist, and treachery was as natural to both of them as breathing was to other men. The Hind was China's joker, his wild card.

Tippoo Tip shook himself and laughed for no apparent reason.

"They told me you had destroyed the squadron and captured one ong men and he is of those, and I said, "China is a lion am MY brother." Come, my brother," Cjiina agreed. "It is hot in the sun."

"There were stools rca4 for them on the veranda in the shade, and two of Tippoo Tip's young women brought them clay pots of beer, thick as gruel' and refreshingly tart. The girls were both in their teens, pretty little things with eyes like fawns. TipPoo Tip liked women and always surrounded himself with them. It was one of his weaknesses, China thought, and he smiled a cold, superior smile. He himself could take a boy or a girl with equal enjoyment, but only as a brief diversion and not as a necessity of life, and the women engaged his attention for only a fleeting moment before he turned back to his host.

The bodyguards had retired out of earshot, and Tippoo Tip waved the girls away.

"And you, my brother?" China asked. "How goes the battle? I hear that you have taken the head of Frelimo and pushed it down between their knees to give them a close-up view of their own fundament. Is that true?"

It was not true, of course. As commander of the southern division of Renamo, Tippoo Tip was closer to the capital and port of Maputo, the center of government power. He was therefore more compromised by the withdrawal of South African military assistance, and he stood in the front line of Frelimo counterattacks and reprisals. China knew that in the last few months Tippoo Tip had experienced heavy reversals and lost many men and much territory in the south, but now Tippoo Tip chuckled and nodded.

"We have eaten everything that Frelimo has sent against us.

Swallowed them without a belch or a fart."

They sparred lightly over the beer pots, smiling and laughing but watching each other like lions over a kill, on guard and ready at any instant to pounce or defend themselves, until at last China murmured, "I am pleased to hear that all goes so well with you. I had come to see if my Hind gunship could assist you against Frelimo." He spread his hands in a deprecating gesture. "But I see you have no need of help from me."

It was a Machiavellian ploy, and China watched as the point slid through Tippoo Tip's guard and his expression changed.

China knew it would have been a serious tactical error to ask a man like this for assistance. Tippoo Tip had the nose of a hyena for sineffing out weakness. Instead China had offered the bait of the Hind dangled it for an instant before his eyes, and then with craft; sleight of hand made it disappear again.

Tippoo blinked, and behind his grin he searched for a response.

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