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‘No need for that, Courtney. You can stay here and see to the refuelling of the Butterfly for the flight back to Nairobi. I will take Fräulein von Wellberg with me. She will be bored sitting in camp.’

I would do my best to entertain her if you gave me half a chance, Leon thought, but kept the sentiment to himself. ‘As you wish, Graf,’ he acquiesced.

Hennie was overawed to have such illustrious company travelling with him in the truck, even for the short ride to where the carcasses lay. As he climbed into the driver’s seat, Graf Otto put him more at ease by offering him a cigar. After the first few puffs Hennie had relaxed to the point at which he was able to answer the man’s questions coherently, rather than in an embarrassed mumble.

‘So, du Rand, they tell me you are South African, ja?’

‘No, sir. I am a Boer.’

‘Is that different?’

‘Ja, it is very different. South Africans have British blood. My blood is pure. I am one of a chosen Volk.’

‘To me it sounds as though you do not like the British very much.’

‘I like some of them. I like my boss, Leon Courtney. He is a good Sout Piel.’

‘Sout Piel? What is that?’

Hennie glanced unhappily at Eva. ‘It is man’s talk, sir. Not fit for the ears of young ladies.’

‘Do not worry. Fräulein von Wellberg speaks no English. Tell me what it is.’

‘It means “salty penis”, sir.’

Graf Otto began to grin, anticipating a good joke. ‘Salty prick? Explain this to me.’

‘They have one foot in London and the other in Cape Town, with their cocks dangling in the Atlantic,’ Hennie said.

Graf Otto let out a hearty guffaw. ‘Sout Piel! Ja. I like it! It is a good joke.’ His chuckles died away, and then he picked up the conversation from where it had been diverted. ‘So, you do not like the British? You fought against them in the war, did you?’

Hennie thought about the question carefully, while he nursed the vehicle over a particularly rough stretch of the track. ‘The war is finished,’ he said at last, his tone flat and noncommittal.

‘Ja, it is finished, but it was a bad war. The British burned your farms and killed your cattle.’

Hennie did not reply, but his eyes shaded. ‘They put your women and children in the camps. Many died there.’

‘Ja. It is true,’ Hennie whispered. ‘Many died.’

‘Now the land is ruined and there is no food for the children, and your Volk are slaves to Britain, nein? That is why you left, to escape the memories.’

Hennie’s eyes were filled with tears. He wiped them away with a calloused thumb.

‘Which commando did you ride with?’

Hennie looked directly at him for the first time. ‘I did not say I rode with any commando.’

‘Let me guess,’ Graf Otto suggested. ‘Perhaps you rode with Smuts.’

Hennie shook his head with an expression of bitter distaste. ‘Jannie Smuts is a traitor to his people. He and Louis Botha have gone over to the khaki. They are selling our birthright to the British.’

‘Ah!’ Graf Otto exclaimed, with the air of a man who already knew the answer to his question. ‘You hate Smuts and Botha. I know then who you rode with. It must have been Koos de la Rey.’ He did not wait for an answer. ‘Tell me, du Rand, what manner of man was General Jacobus Herculaas de la Rey? I have heard tell that he was a great soldier, better than Louis Botha and Jannie Smuts put together. Is that true?’

‘He was no ordinary man.’ Hennie stared at the track ahead. ‘To us he was a god.’

‘If there were ever to be another war, would you follow de la Rey again, Hennie?’

‘I would follow him through the gates of hell.’

‘The others of your commando, would they follow him also?’

‘They would. We all would.’

‘Would you like to meet de la Rey again? Would you like to shake his hand one more time?’

‘That is not possible,’ Hennie mumbled.

‘With me everything is possible. I can make anything happen. Say nothing to anybody else. Not even to your Sout Piel boss, whom you like. This is between you and me alone. One day soon I will take you with me to see General de la Rey.’

Eva was crammed in beside him. She was obviously uncomfortable and swiftly becoming bored with the conversation in a language she did not understand. Graf Otto knew that her only languages were German and French.

Leon refuelled the Butterfly from one of the fifty-gallon drums that had been brought from Nairobi by Gustav in the big Meerbach truck. While he was doing this he sent Manyoro and Loikot to the top of the hill above the camp to join in with the Masai grapevine and gather any news that might be of interest. Once or twice he looked up from refuelling to listen to the shrill distant voices, calling to each other from hilltop to hilltop. The chungaji used a type of verbal shorthand, and he could make out a few isolated words but he could not follow the whole sense of their exchanges.