African Pursuit Read Online Free

flask with an English label. She bent down and read:
     
    Danger!
    Methyl alcohol. Use only as instructed.
    Poisonous substance. Ingestion may cause blindness or death.
     
    The flask was empty.
    Despite the devastation wrought in her village Mzuri felt a spasmof sympathy and sorrow for the young rebels – conscripted probably against their will into an uprising that had led them to a ghastly end because of their inability to read a label. The front door was open and she ran out to see the smoking remnants of the Bonaventure house. She picked her way gingerly through the charred rubble and there, in the garden behind the house, lay Big Mama. The body of her father, Mlinzi, who had died trying to protect his wife, was lying nearby. Of the Bonaventures there was no sign. Mzuri knelt and rocked her mother’s body in her arms and wept. She was there until the sun was flooding the garden with the light and heat of a new day, when she heard the baby crying and remembered that she now had a new responsibility. She covered her parents as best she could with bricks and stones and then hurried back to see to the baby.
    Later that day, praying that she would not meet further rebels, she put the baby and some supplies into the basket of her bicycle and set off along the dusty road, strewn with cartridge cases, to her uncle’s village. She had only cycled a hundred yards or so when a thought struck her. She stopped, torn between what she had just remembered and her desire to escape from the dreadful scene behind her as soon as possible. Soon, she had made her decision and reluctantly turned and cycled back to the Bonaventures’ house; it was to be a decision with far-reaching consequences. Mercifully, the baby was fast asleep. She propped the bike against the blackened trunk of a tree and, averting her eyes from her parents’ little cairn, dashed back into the ruined dwelling. She ran into the room that had been Dr Bonaventure’s study and looked anxiously about her. The desk and all the filing cabinets had been destroyed, but the fireproof wall safe was intact. Its feet were cemented to the floor and its back screwed into the wall. Its solid steel door was pockmarked by bullets and the lock bore thescratchmarks of knives and bayonets, but the rebels had failed to open it. They had intended to return later with explosives but their plans, as Mzuri well knew, had come to an abrupt end in her own clinic. She knelt down and felt for the piece of Blu-Tack stuck behind the back foot of the safe. To her relief the key was there, embedded in the adhesive. She had never opened the safe but had been told where the key was, so that she could leave it undisturbed when cleaning the room. She hurriedly found what she sought: the passports that would prove the parentage of the baby now in her care. She also removed as many research files as she could manage: one day, she was sure, the child would be proud of her parents’ discoveries. Soon she was back on her bike and cycling away as fast as she could.
    As was the case in many such insurrections the fighting had been sporadic – at least in this area – and though her uncle’s village was only a few miles away it was further from the main road, had no strategic importance, and had been completely unaffected by the fighting. Her uncle and aunt were horrified to hear her story and immediately took her and the baby in.
    Mzuri wanted to report the baby to the authorities so that she could be reunited with her parents if they were still alive, but after some thought her aunt and uncle advised her against it.
    ‘In these troubled times,’ her uncle said, ‘we can trust no-one. The fact that you worked for the English scientists may upset some of those in authority who are not friends with the UN. Others may be upset because you survived the massacre when others didn’t, meaning you may be in sympathy with the rebels. If you talk to anyone you will put yourself and the baby in danger – and