Rage of the Rhino Read online

  Identification was made easy when she almost screamed, ‘Al!’

  She pushed her way through the mass of people to greet them. ‘You devil! You never said you were coming too! And you must be Beck . . . Hello!’

  She was dressed pretty much as she had been in the first photo Al had found: checked shirt, long shorts – though her curly hair was now touched with grey at the temples. She had dark brown eyes and a smile that could have been seen from space.

  ‘So good to see you both! How was the flight? You got here just in time – the airport workers are about to walk out on strike. Here, come this way.’

  Beck was left trailing in their wake, pushing the luggage trolley while Athena and Al strolled along arm in arm. The crowd closed in around them and he had to swerve constantly to avoid bumping into the people coming towards him. At one point someone stumbled into him, and he was pushed sideways into the path of an oncoming group; he felt like a pinball caught between the paddles. But then at last he saw the exit ahead.

  Stepping out of the airport was always the moment when Beck knew he had arrived in a foreign country. It was when he took his first breath of the country’s air – air at its natural temperature, not recycled through the aircon. Air that had blown across different continents and oceans.

  In this case, it was like stepping into the blast of a warm hairdryer that blew all over his body. The air of South Africa’s late summer had been baked dry, with not a drop of moisture left in it. It was quite early in the morning, but the sun was already showing some muscle, and Beck quickly slipped on his sunglasses.

  In the car park Athena led them over to a battered Jeep with the Green Force logo on the doors. They slung their bags in the back.

  ‘Did you sleep much on the plane?’ she asked.

  ‘No,’ Al grumbled. He always found it hard to sleep on plane flights.

  ‘Just fine, thanks!’ Beck said with a smile.

  A great thing about flying to South Africa was that even though it was a long way, it was almost due south of the UK. That meant there was very little jet lag – Johannesburg was only an hour ahead of London time. You could eat and sleep on the plane at the usual sort of times, and you arrived feeling just fine.

  Most of the flight had been through the night. And Beck had loved staring down at the vast continent, miles beneath him, speckled with the occasional flicker of what could only be fires, oddly visible from 30,000 feet.

  They set off down a wide, three-lane highway into the hectic Johannesburg traffic. As they pulled away from the airport, Athena said it would be about a half-hour’s drive to where she lived when she was in town. They could spend the day and night there, to recover from the trip. Then, the following day, they would head off to the Kruger National Park so that Beck could make the video.

  Very soon he could see the skyscrapers of Johannesburg rising up on the horizon. All around them on the highway, brand-new, modern Land Cruisers rubbed shoulders with battered old crates that looked like they would fall apart if you sneezed. It was the first reminder that South Africa was a peculiar country; one where the developed world and the developing world co-existed, side by side. That strange blend of wealth and poverty.

  Chapter 5

  They didn’t talk much: Al was half asleep and Athena preferred to concentrate on driving – something Beck was very grateful for. The highway took them round the city, which passed by on their right. Eventually a sign told him that they were almost at Soweto.

  ‘Almost there,’ Athena said. ‘In fact, Beck, it’s not so far from where I first met your parents. We were all working in Soweto then.’

  ‘There’s rhinos in Soweto?’ Beck asked in surprise. As he understood it, Soweto was a township, a suburb of Johannesburg, not somewhere you would find wildlife. You found people there – hundreds of thousands of them, mostly living in shanty towns of corrugated iron and huts.

  Al chuckled sleepily. ‘They were jacks-of-all-trades,’ he said. ‘They did everything.’

  ‘Al’s right. Your father was the one who got involved with Green Force because of its wildlife work. Your mother was the humanitarian. She couldn’t bear to see suffering and poverty when there were people all around with so much to give. In fact, I say I met your parents in Soweto – but that is also where they met each other!’

  Book took a moment to absorb that fact. He hadn’t known . . . He had known, of course, that his parents must have met, once. Just like there had been a time when he didn’t exist, there must have been a time when they didn’t know each other.

  ‘Could we go there? Could we see it?’ he asked suddenly.

  Athena smiled. ‘I’m not sure I know the exact place . . .’

  ‘Could we just see the township?’

  ‘Of course. If that’s all right with you, Al?’ Athena glanced across; he was still only half awake, but he shrugged. ‘Very well. I know some people . . . Green Force have an outpost there. I’m not sure if they knew your parents, but they’ll be very glad to see you.’

  She smiled at Beck in the rear-view mirror. ‘It was such a surprise when you got in touch! But you sounded so like your father in your letter. You had a good idea, you were determined to make it work—’

  ‘Hey, wait – what?’ Beck sat up, alert. ‘I didn’t get in touch. You got in touch! You sent me a letter on my birthday.’

  ‘I sent you . . .?’ Athena’s smile was baffled. ‘No, you wrote to me, remember? You had read about me in the Green Force newsletter and you thought maybe you could front a video campaign, since rhino poaching was so important to your parents . . .’

  By now Beck and Al were looking very confused. Al turned round in his seat to frown back at Beck, and Beck shrugged to indicated that he had no idea what was going on.

  ‘Hang on . . . Beck had his backpack beside him. He rummaged around and pulled out the letter Athena had sent. He tugged it out of its envelope, unfolded it and passed it to Al, who held it so that Athena could look at it and still drive.

  Her eyes went wide. ‘That’s not my hand-writing . . .’ She scanned it quickly, all the way to the last line. ‘And not my email address either.’

  For a while there was silence in the car as each of them tried to work this out.

  ‘Al,’ Athena said eventually, in a quiet, determined voice, ‘my bag is by your feet. Beck’s letter is in the front pocket. Could you get it out . . .?’

  Al did as she asked. There was silence again, until he passed the letter back to Beck to read. It began, Dear Athena, I don’t know if you remember me . . . and it was signed, Beck Granger.

  ‘Same handwriting,’ Beck murmured. ‘And also not my email address.’ Then, more loudly, ‘So how did we all get to be here? If you and I were both emailing the wrong address—’

  ‘Then whoever received those emails was passing them on to the right person – but in the meantime they were finding out all our plans,’ Al said grimly. He twisted round to look at Beck again. ‘You’ve been lured here, Beck. I wonder who it could be . . .’

  Beck groaned and let his head fall back. He could only think of one answer, and he knew that Al was thinking the same thing.

  Lumos.

  Chapter 6

  Athena pulled the car over into the shade of some trees and stopped. Wrapped up in the mystery of the letters, Beck hadn’t noticed that they had left the highway.

  She turned to face both of them. ‘Al, what is going on?’

  Al and Beck glanced at each other. Where to start . . .?

  Athena had heard about Beck’s exploits – but they had never said anything in public about Lumos. So she didn’t know anything about the threat from them.

  ‘Long story,’ said Al. ‘Let’s just say we’ve made enemies. Old enemies of Green Force who have decided to concentrate their attention on Beck.’

  ‘And you think you’re here because of them?’

  ‘That is exactly what I think.’

  Athena tapped the steering wheel in thought. ‘So they know everythi
ng that was in the emails . . .’

  ‘Yes. Athena, take us straight back to the airport, please. Beck is getting on the next plane out of this country, and I don’t care where it’s going.’

  ‘I want to stay,’ Beck said.

  ‘And I don’t care what you want.’

  ‘We’ve got a job to do,’ he insisted. ‘Mum and Dad wouldn’t have been scared off so easily, would they?’

  ‘Your mum and dad’s first priority would have been to keep you alive, and that’s what I intend to do.’ Beck opened his mouth again, and Al jabbed an angry finger at him. ‘No! I’m putting my foot down. Athena, the airport, if you please.’

  She was silent for a couple of moments. ‘The airport will be closed by now,’ she said with surprising calm. ‘Remember I said you got in just before the strike? There’ll be a backlog of flights already. You won’t get out of the country that way for a couple of days at least.’

  Al thumped the side of the car in frustration, but Athena smiled. ‘You want to stay one step ahead of them? Let’s go on to the township. They don’t know we’ve been discussing that. It wasn’t in the emails. Beck can look around, and maybe you’ll have a chance to decide what to do in peace.’

  Beck saw a barrier ahead as the Jeep nosed down a lane. It was a makeshift arrangement of a pole and some oil drums. The large men standing in front of it scowled. They wore no uniforms but were very clearly toting guns – semi-automatic rifles slung over their shoulders. Their attitude was obvious – We’re on guard here and we’re not letting you in.

  But Athena waved and sounded the horn in a series of beeps like a kind of code. The scowls broke into grins and the men stepped aside. One of them raised the barrier and waved the Jeep through.

  Beck’s first impression was of a sea of corrugated-iron roofs. Beneath this was a small city of shacks, cobbled together from concrete, iron sheeting, wire, bricks and the remains of old cars. Dirt tracks ran between them. The red soil of South Africa made Beck think of blood vessels – the paths of trampled mud were the veins and arteries of the shanty town.

  But if the town was grubby, the people were certainly not. Every few paces, it seemed, there was a washing line draped with clothes and sheets hanging out to dry, all vibrantly coloured and patterned. Men, women, children – all carried themselves with confidence and dignity, but Beck also sensed they were reserved. They looked warily at the Jeep as it passed by, and they would smile or wave only when they saw the Green Force logo. Sometimes Athena waved back, or gave a friendly beep.

  They pulled up on a hard-packed dirt space next to a cluster of shipping containers. The nearest was a cross between a butcher’s and a barbecue. Inside, Beck caught a glimpse of red slabs of meat and piles of unidentifiable animal parts. Outside, they were being grilled on large metal drums and sold cheap to passers-by. They looked revolting, but the smell made Beck’s mouth water.

  Another container had several thick black telephone cables leading into it. It looked like it might be the local telephone exchange.

  A third bore the Green Force logo.

  Athena peered in. ‘No one about,’ she said. ‘Let me give you the tour, then.’

  Chapter 7

  The three of them walked slowly down a crowded, narrow canyon between the shacks. Athena received a friendly nod from some of the locals, but most just watched the three white people impassively.

  An open drain had been cut into the red soil and it glistened with stagnant water and waste. Beck was still in the comfortable shoes he had worn for the flight. He was forced to step from side to side over the drain, to let other people pass by. He wished he had changed into proper boots.

  But compared to what these people faced, he thought to himself, spoiling a good pair of shoes wasn’t such a big deal.

  ‘No heating, no electricity, no running water,’ said Athena.

  As they walked, Beck looked around. Most of the huts had sheets instead of doors across the openings. Hardly any had glass in the windows.

  ‘If a fire gets out of control, then it spreads immediately,’ she went on, turning to Beck, ‘and there’s no way to fight it because there are no standpipes for the fire services. And there will be fires. It’s warm enough now, but many people will die from the cold during the winter.’

  In front of one of the shacks, a sheet was partially drawn back and a small child peered out. She – Beck was pretty sure it was a she – had eyes so large they seemed to take up most of her head, and her body was so thin that he wondered how she could stand.

  He smiled his brightest smile. ‘Hi.’

  She vanished instantly, the sheet falling back over the doorway.

  ‘Almost all the children suffer from malnutrition,’ Athena continued. ‘They don’t develop properly; their bones don’t grow. If they do eat, then there’s a good chance the food is contaminated by rats or cockroaches, so there’s dysentery and gastroenteritis. Any food either comes straight back up or goes straight through and comes out as water at the other end. No running water means no proper toilets, no proper sewers or sanitation. So disease spreads like wildfire. Human waste gets into the water, and that leads to cholera. A bad attack of that will kill you in a few hours – you get dehydrated because all your body fluids come squirting out, in one direction or another.’

  Beck could only stare. He felt like a gawping tourist, but he couldn’t help it. And he felt anger growing inside him.

  He was used to living rough and he had seen people who had very little. He had made many friends among them, and had learned a lot. But he had never witnessed poverty like this.

  Some people were poor by Western standards, but they had everything they needed and they were happy. Some people were poor but, through hard work, could earn enough to keep going. But this kind of poor was something else. These people would never have enough and it didn’t matter how hard they worked: they would stay poor because the system was unjust and it made sure they stayed that way.

  Beck’s anger grew. How dare anyone let people live like this? How dare they?

  And this was what his mum had been fighting? He felt so proud of her . . .

  A mother and two children crouched by an open fire, silently watching the three of them pass by. The little girl whimpered and shivered in her mother’s arms. Her eyes were closed but her head twitched as though she had a fever, and she was scratching her leg, where the skin was rubbed almost raw.

  Beck’s anger came bursting out.

  He strode forward and took the child’s hand to stop her scratching. The mother didn’t move. She just stared sullenly at him.

  ‘She’s got ticks,’ Beck prompted.

  There were three black dots embedded in the girl’s skin. Beck was no stranger to ticks. The tiny insects buried their heads in the skin of their host and stayed there for days on end, drinking blood until they got bored or full. Their abdomens slowly swelled until they looked like black berries attached to the skin.

  ‘I think she knows, Beck,’ Athena said quietly. She turned to the woman respectfully – ‘Sawubona, mother’ – and received a grave nod in return.

  ‘The girl has tick-bite fever. Very common. Not fatal, but it causes a temperature and headaches,’ she told Beck.

  Ticks also carried bacteria in their guts that could get into the victim’s blood. Beck had heard of it but not seen it. Scratching a tick bite just made it worse – the skin was scraped raw and infection got in faster.

  He was still angry. It was such a simple thing to cure.

  ‘Right. I know how to get rid of them.’

  Athena spoke in Zulu to the woman, who simply nodded again.

  Beck looked around for inspiration and saw a pile of brushwood. He selected a small twig and held its tip in the fire until it began to smoulder.

  Then he crouched down beside the girl and slowly held the smouldering tip out to touch the nearest tick. The girl’s eyes half opened and she moaned when she saw him.

  ‘Shh . . . It’s OK . . . Shh . . .’<
br />
  Being very careful not to touch her skin, Beck held the hot tip against the black dot of the tick. Almost immediately it began to writhe and wriggle, and then it came loose. Beck quickly brushed it off her and took great pleasure in stamping the thing into the ground.

  ‘OK, same again?’ he asked cheerfully. He blew on the tip of the twig to heat it up, and turned his attention to the next tick on the girl’s leg. It wasn’t long before they’d all gone.

  Athena spoke with the mother again. ‘I’m telling her to bring the girl to the Green Force office. We’ll give her something to help the fever.’

  For the first time the mother showed some emotion. She looked at Beck, and said, ‘Ngiyabonga.’

  ‘It means “thank you”,’ Athena translated.

  The little boy, who had been watching the procedure silently, suddenly flashed Beck a huge grin that took up most of his face. He thrust his arm forward. There was a tick just above the elbow.

  Al laughed. ‘I think you’ve found yourself a job, Beck.’

  Chapter 8

  The sun was high in the sky before Beck, Al and Athena returned to the Green Force office. Al was almost dead on his feet. Beck felt the comfortable glow inside that comes from knowing you’ve worked hard at something that was worth while.

  ‘Hasn’t anyone told them how to do this before?’ he had asked as he removed what seemed like the thousandth tick from the hundredth kid.

  ‘They probably have. Problem is, they always know the ticks will come back. It goes with the territory.’

  Beck ground his teeth in frustration. He had always pictured his parents as warriors against the evil forces that wanted to ruin whole areas of the planet and drive animals into extinction, all because of greed. They had died doing battle, but they hadn’t been defeated. It had been proof of how successful they were. Evil had felt threatened by them and it had lashed back the only way it knew how.

  Maybe he could do just as much good working somewhere like this, helping people who were helpless.