she learns that this is the Leopard Rock Hotel. Behind her Jacob has gone silent. She hopes he just told them everything. It doesn't even matter whether their evidence gets out. There wasn't much to it anyways. She should have tried to explain that to Danton.
Two soldiers wait behind the reception desk. Gorokwe's troops have obviously taken over the whole property. After a brief Shona conversation she is propelled outside, down the circular driveway, and into a parking lot crowded with military Jeeps and black Mercedes and BMWs with opaque windows and no license plates. She is still handcuffed. The hands on her arms are firm but not crushing. Danton told the men who have taken her into custody several times that nobody was to touch her, no matter what. She supposes she should feel grateful.
She is hustled into the back of a black Mercedes. One man drives, the other sits beside her, the doors are locked. The road out of the Leopard Rock climbs upward, winding around the huge cliff that looms above the hotel, through dense forest on either side, very different from the dry plains of central Zimbabwe. These must be the eastern highlands near Mozambique that Lovemore described.
The route they take snakes through rippling ridges of steep, folded hills and valleys, covered by grassy plains and rainforest and shot through by tumbling rivers. The only signs of life come from clusters of crude wooden shelters whose denizens stare sullenly at the passing vehicle. Countless red dirt tributaries extend from the main road into the hills.
After a long descent they skirt a busy city, Mutare from the signs, climb around a huge koppie and back up into hills that seem more raw and rugged. Several times the road winds along the base of sheer forty-foot precipices. They pass a few slopes covered by burnt bare ground and sparse trees, with fire-blackened trunks jutting from the ground like fence stakes. They pass through a military checkpoint, and then another. Veronica supposes they're going to some kind of military base where she will be imprisoned.
She doesn't really believe she will ever be released. Maybe that's what Danton intends right now, in a sudden burst of guilty morality, but he will eventually come to realize that his own interests are best served by Veronica's death. And it seems likely Gorokwe will take matters into his own hands if necessary. Either way her imminent death feels as good as foreordained. She supposes she will probably at least outlive Mugabe, they have bigger things to worry about than her right now. She will live long enough to be a loose end, and then she will be tied up. She almost wishes they would just get it over with now.
The faded sign on the fence topped with barbed wire says REZENDE. The gate is guarded by two bored-looking soldiers. The gravel parking lot is occupied by Jeeps, white vans, and a few yellow Caterpillar industrial vehicles. Beyond, a complex of low and battered buildings is set into the side of a steep and rocky hill. Outside the fence, a dozen gargantuan heaps of yellow dirt, like termite mounds fifty metres high, loom above the scrub brush and trees.
The car doors open. Veronica emerges willingly, no sense resisting now, and is led past broken windows to a kind of courtyard where weeds grow through cracked concrete and patches of gravel. A generator buzzes somewhere inside the largest nearby building. Here a half-dozen armed soldiers guard what looks at first like some bizarre Rube Goldberg contraption. Four metal legs support a roof of corrugated tin over a massive piece of machinery festooned with gears, wheels, and pulleys. This machinery in turn holds a big metal cage directly above a hole in the ground. The cage is about three metres by two, the hole slightly larger. Four rusting chains dangle into the corners of the abyss. It takes Veronica most of the walk across the parking lot to figure out that the hole is a mineshaft, the contraption above an elevator, and the huge piles of yellow dirt are heaps of processed and discarded ore. This is a semi-abandoned mining complex. She thinks of the open-pit coltan mine in the Congo.
The men lead her to the cage and pause long enough to chat a little with the soldiers, she can't understand the words but can tell that they are asking about her, and are amused by the answers. Eventually the conversation ceases and the cage is