Someone Wishes to Speak to You Read online

  About the author

  After leaving the regular army of the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland, Jeremy Mallinson joined the staff of Gerald Durrell’s newly formed zoological park in Jersey. During his forty-two year career in zoos and conservation he has studied animals in Africa, Asia and South America. He served as Gerald Durrell’s Deputy and Zoological Director and, after his mentor’s death in 1995, he was appointed Director of the renamed Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust. He has written more than two hundred papers and articles, addressed conferences in over twenty different countries, and is the author of ten books. He has received many awards for his service to animal conservation worldwide, including a DSc (Hon) from The University of Kent and the OBE in 1997. Jeremy Mallinson lives in Jersey.

  By the same author

  Okavango Adventure – In Search of Animals in Southern Africa (David & Charles, 1973)

  Earning Your Living with Animals (David & Charles, 1975)

  Modern Classic Animal Stories, Editor (David & Charles, 1977)

  The Shadow of Extinction – Europe’s Threatened Wild Mammals (Macmillan, 1978)

  The Facts about a Zoo (G. Whizzard, 1980)

  Travels in Search of Endangered Species (David & Charles, 1989)

  ‘Durrelliania’ – An Illustrated Checklist (Bigwoods, 1999)

  The Count’s Cats (Llumina Press, 2004)

  The Touch of Durrell – A Passion for Animals (Book Guild, 2009)

  Les Minquiers – Jersey’s Southern Outpost (Seaflower Books, 2011)

  SOMEONE WISHES TO

  SPEAK TO YOU

  Jeremy Mallinson

  Book Guild Publishing

  Sussex, England

  First published in Great Britain in 2014 by

  The Book Guild Ltd

  The Werks

  45 Church Road

  Hove, BN3 2BE

  Copyright © Jeremy Mallinson 2014

  The right of Jeremy Mallinson to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, transmitted, or stored in a retrieval system, in any form or by any means, without permission in writing from the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  While this book is set amid real events, it is a work of fiction.

  Typesetting in Sabon by

  Keyboard Services, Luton, Bedfordshire

  Printed in Great Britain by

  CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY

  A catalogue record for this book is available from

  The British Library.

  ISBN 978 1 909984 39 4

  ePub ISBN 978 1 910508 04 6

  Mobi ISBN 978 1 910508 05 3

  In memory of two of the greatest of friends,

  Colin C. Jones and Jay M. Duncan

  Contents

  Acknowledgements

  Part One In Pursuance of a Doctorate; 1965–1973

  1

  Adventurous Ambitions

  2

  Mount Kahuzi’s Kingdom of Gorillas

  3

  Conflicting Sentiments

  4

  A Moral Dilemma

  Part Two A Return to Africa; 1974–1979

  5

  Leopard’s Rock

  6

  Chief Chidzikwee

  7

  Spirit of Rhodesia

  8

  Change of Direction

  9

  An Imire Rendezvous

  10

  A Diversity of Decisions

  11

  The Reluctant Informer

  12

  A Paradox of Valour

  Postscript; ‘A Sadness to Behold’

  A Selected Chronology of African Events

  Glossary

  Bibliography

  Acknowledgements

  The book, which merges fact with fiction, has greatly benefited from advice and conversations with the following persons:

  A director general of MI5; a British ambassador; a British honorary consul; a lieutenant general (Rhodesian); a major general (British); an assistant commissioner (Colonial Police); a major (Household Brigade); an RAF pilot officer (Aden, 1965); an officer of the Psychological Warfare Action Group (Rhodesian); an international airline captain and flight lieutenant Rhodesian Air Force (Territorial); an equestrian expert; two American college and university graduates (Dickinson and Duke); the director/founder of Marwell Zoological Park; a director of Edinburgh Zoo; and an international primatologist.

  Finally, the author is greatly indebted to Imogen Palmer (editor on behalf of Book Guild Publishing), who greatly developed the book’s dialogue, fixed inconsistencies, and helped to more directly involve the reader with its main characters.

  Part One

  In Pursuance of a Doctorate; 1965–1973

  1

  Adventurous Ambitions

  ‘Captain Lumumba and his crew welcome you aboard – and we hope you enjoy your flight with us!’ said the tall, attractive flight stewardess as she showed Mathew Duncan to his window seat. He was one of the first passengers to board the Boeing 737 on its flight from Lubumbashi to Bukavu. The stewardess wore a long, green pagne with the head of President Mobutu Sésé Seko emblazoned prominently on the front of it, her hair combed with immense care and ingenuity into a series of neat rows, each with tightly plaited spike-like tufts erupting from the top. Soon the plane was seemingly at bursting point and the paraphernalia associated with such African travel appeared to block all access to emergency exits and even, in some places, to the aisle itself.

  Just after noon the plane landed at Kalémi, about half way up the west coast of the long sausage-like form of Lake Tanganyika. A couple of poorly camouflaged armoured cars were parked near the eastern edge of the airfield, close to a disorderly collection of khaki tents. A group of dishevelled-looking military personnel were lounging or standing about like a small flock of perplexed sheep. During the plane’s two-hour refuelling stop at Kalémi, the passengers had been allowed to disembark under the watchful eyes of a couple of soldiers in full battle dress, casually brandishing their lethal-looking AK-47s. In order to escape from the intense heat of the midday sun, the passengers were guided to an airless, corrugated-roofed reception area where an Air Congo ground staff member served lukewarm Coca Cola, packets of stale crisps and overripe bananas.

  On the plane’s onward flight to Bukavu, in order not to stray across an international border, it clung to Lake Tanganyika’s western shoreline casting its streamlined dolphin-like shadow on the water. Forming the central basin of the Rift Valley, the lake marks the boundary between Zaire and Tanzania and in the northern region, between Zaire and Rwanda Burundi. This was Mathew’s first visit to Africa, although he had read a great deal about the European scramble to colonise central Africa in the mid-nineteenth century.

  ‘Where to, Bwana?’ After a scramble at the airport, Mathew had managed to secure a battered diesel Mercedes 504 taxi, driven by a jovial middle-aged man called Alfonse who fortunately spoke fluent English as well as the local Bemba dialect. ‘The Hotel Metropole in Bukavu,’ Mathew replied. ‘Do you know it?’ After a brief haggle over the fare – Mathew was too tired to put up much of an argument – the taxi started to wind its way along the potholed tarmac road as the rays of the sun were just starting to melt behind the sombre forested slopes of Mount Kahuzi. First, some neat and lush-looking coffee estates could be seen on either side of the road, prior to such order of cultivation being disrupted by clusters of t
hatched-plumed mud-built dwellings, their female occupants starting the evening chore of preparing fires to cook upon. Other womenfolk walked in single file at the side of the road, returning to their huts with old oil cans filled with water balanced miraculously on top of their heads. Small groups of goats were nibbling at everything within their reach, while the ubiquitous poultry pecked incessantly at the ground, with some of their number narrowly missing being run over as the driver scattered them, speeding past with a degree of cavalier abandon.

  ‘So . . . what brings you to Bukavu?’ asked Alfonse, looking at his passenger in the rear-view mirror. ‘I’m here to visit the Kahuzi-Biega National Park,’ replied Mathew. ‘The gorillas . . .’ ‘This is it!’ interrupted Alfonse before Mathew had a chance to elaborate. The taxi had reached the attractive township, picking its way through a generous rash of market vendors and past the small port into the main street before drawing up in front of the Hotel Metropole. Mathew paid the fare and paused to take in the faded grandeur of the hotel’s exterior for a few moments before entering.

  Mathew had been given a letter of introduction to the Chairman of the Metropole Hotel Group in Lubumbashi by the Managing Director of Amiza, a major Belgian company that had been trading in the Congo for many decades prior to the country’s independence in 1960. Such an introduction had come by way of the Belgian CEO of Amiza having been on a number of grouse shoots on Mathew’s father’s estate in the Yorkshire Dales. For after having heard that one of Sir Colin Duncan’s sons was about to undertake some field work in Zaire he had arranged, through his Amiza headquarters in Kinshasa, to sponsor Mathew’s accommodation in Bukavu. This generous gesture provided Mathew with a spacious room, complete with a dramatic view over Lake Kivu, nestling comfortably within the embrace of the surrounding mountains. The scene reminded Mathew of the Alpine environments around the Italian lakes of Maggiore and Como. However, although the hotel must have been quite luxurious in its pre-independence prime, he was soon to find that in keeping with the majority of manmade structures in this region, it had seen better days.

  In contrast with the beauty of the view from the window, the room itself was stark. The walls were bare, the mattress was thin with some uncomfortable-looking springs protruding and the bedding itself was rather threadbare – but all appeared to be reasonably clean and provided a perfectly serviceable base. He kicked off his shoes and lay down, grateful to have reached his destination.

  Mathew was the second son of Sir Colin and Lady Sally Duncan. Sir Colin’s father, Reginald Duncan, had been a wealthy Bradford land and mill owner who had purchased his baronetcy in 1914 at the start of the First World War. Sir Colin (and later, his two sons) had been brought up on the family’s 1,800-acre estate at Hartington Hall. The majority of Mathew’s formative years had been occupied by attending a preparatory boarding school on a large estate in Northumberland; horse riding, fox hunting, beagling and grouse shooting – all experiences which had led him to develop a fascination with natural history.

  Mathew was just over six feet in height, with a mop of blond hair, pale blue eyes, a Duke of Wellington nose (which no doubt highlighted his family’s Viking ancestry) and the overall bearing of an athlete. During his teenage years he was inclined to be rather shy with a self-effacing disposition, but possessed that detached, distinguished-looking presence which in certain company set him apart from the usual rank and file of society. In spite of his initial shyness, he had inherited an adventurous spirit and had always thrived on unexpected challenges in atmospheres of uncertainty. Also, whenever he had set his sights on achieving a particular objective, more often than not he would be successful in seeing it through. Although Mathew had been brought up in the traditional manner for an English gentleman, while studying for ‘A’ levels at Wellington College, a prestigious public school in Berkshire, he had decided that instead of going to either Oxford or Cambridge he wanted to go to a university in the USA to further his academic career. For he was very much of the opinion that such a course of action and change of social environment would provide him with a wider cultural awareness, in turn further stimulating his ever-inquisitive mind and spirit of adventure.

  So it had been during Mathew’s early days at Scaife University, an exclusive liberal arts college in Tupelo, Mississippi, that his liberal views on segregation had been tested to the extreme. In particular, when he had learned about George Corley Wallace’s inaugural speech as Governor of Alabama with his foretelling: ‘In the name of the greatest people that have ever trod this earth, I draw the line in the dust and toss the gauntlet before the feet of tyranny, and I say segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever’, and how in September 1963 Governor Wallace attempted to stop four black students from enrolling in four separate elementary schools in Huntsville.

  In spite of public segregation officially ending in the USA in 1964 with the Civil Rights Act, Mathew had been sensitive to the fact that there remained formidable forces resisting change in the Deep South and that, even among some of his Scaife University colleagues, there were some who were finding it difficult to come to terms with the act. The assassination of Dr Martin Luther King Jr in Memphis, Tennessee, in April 1968, which had occurred during Mathew’s final year at Scaife, had prompted him to join Tupelo’s local Civil Rights Movement and to participate in one of its protest marches. As a result of his support for the Civil Rights Movement, Mathew had been disappointed to sense how he had been, to a degree, socially ostracised by some of the university’s more hard-line students, who still considered that socially enforced segregation of African-Americans from other races should continue.

  It had been at Scaife University that Mathew had studied under a renowned Professor of Psychology and Animal Behavior, Professor Ralph Candland, and on the completion of his BA he had been awarded the highly coveted Emerson D. Miller Prize for Academic Achievement in Animal Behavior. As a result of this success, Mathew decided to go directly into a PhD programme and due to his academic prowess, was readily accepted by the Zoology Department at Emory University, Georgia. It had been at Emory that he had been able to carry out his doctorate studies with some of his coursework being directly involved with the captive gorilla population at the Yerkes Regional Primate Research Center in Atlanta, which had its main research building located on a 25-acre tract of land on the Emory University campus. The Yerkes Center was one of the world’s oldest scientific institutes for the study of primates; in 1929 its founders Robert and Ada Yerkes had published The Great Apes, in which they brought together all available knowledge about the gorilla and other apes.

  During Mathew’s initial behavioural research on the centre’s gorilla population, he had worked within the department overseen by Professor W.C. Osman Hill, the Associate Director. It had been the professor who had guided Mathew in his selection of a specific dissertation topic and had advised him that his future academic studies should have as their main tenet to carry out comparative work between captive and wild populations of gorillas. Also, on behalf of Emory University, Osman Hill as a ‘major professor’ had agreed to be responsible overall for the supervision of Mathew’s academic programme, and it was decided that once Mathew had completed his initial studies at the Yerkes Center, he would be given the opportunity to go to Africa to study gorillas in the wild. With this in mind, Mathew took the opportunity to read as much as possible about the African travels of some of the great nineteenth-century explorers. These included books by David Livingstone, Samuel Baker, Richard Burton, John Speke, Henry Morton Stanley and Paul du Chaillu, all of whom had provided him with a longing to travel to Africa at the earliest opportunity. For, as far as his academic work was concerned, he could not help feeling that the natural social interactions of captive gorillas would be significantly different from those living in the wild state.

  Through the Yerkes Research Center’s many contacts and, in one particular case, as a result of Emory University’s support for a specific in situ conservation programme, Osman Hill was conf
ident that he would be able to arrange for Mathew to go to Zaire to spend several months studying the social interactions of a habituated group of eastern lowland gorillas on the western shores of Lake Kivu, as the university had been a significant donor to the conservation work being carried out at the newly created Kahuzi-Biega National Park. So it had been this much-desired goal that had provided Mathew with an additional stimulus to concentrate the first year of his studies on the captive population at the primate centre, as well making some comparative observations on the gorillas at the Atlanta Zoo.

  Prior to flying to Zaire, Mathew had completed the initial writing-up of his research work, which Osman Hill had been most complimentary about. Now that Mathew had arrived in Africa, he could not have been more delighted to leave behind the intense clamour of Atlanta’s traffic-congested streets and the jostle of overcrowded pavements, to have escaped the overall claustrophobic effect of city life. In spite of Mathew’s concern about the attitudes towards racial segregation he had witnessed from some of his peers at Scaife University, he had found the majority of his time in the Deep South to be most stimulating and enjoyable. However, there could hardly be more of a contrast between the environment of an American metropolis and that of Bukavu in Central Africa – a contrast that appealed greatly to Mathew’s curiosity for the unknown. He would soon be embarking upon the challenges involved with his field research work in furthering the methodology he had been working on at Yerkes; studies which he hoped would usefully contribute by more clearly defining the cognitive skills of the gorilla kingdom and their relevance to human communication.

  Osman Hill had provided Mathew with a letter of introduction to Adrien Deschryver, Director of the Kahuzi-Biega National Park, who had agreed to cooperate with Mathew and to allow him to study his habituated group of eastern lowland gorillas, Gorilla g. graueri. Such assistance had resulted from the sizeable grant that Emory University had made in support of Deschryver’s long-term conservation activities in the park, as well supporting their anti-poaching patrols.