The Devil's Breath Read Online Free PDF Page A

his notes, wrapped in a gazelle skin, across two hundred kilometers of desert and wasteland in the care of a Bushman.”
    “That’s right. The Kalahari Bushmen are nomadic; they’re the last indigenous people in Africa to live like that, and your father must have established a rapport with them. The Bushman took these notes to a farmer who runs a wildlife sanctuary, a sort of private game park, and who is, I suppose, someone either your father or the Bushman knew.”
    “And he sent them to you.”
    “To a literary agent I use in Johannesburg. That was the instruction Tom, I mean your father, had written. Max, he was so far out in the wilderness, there was no communication. There are so few people out there. He saw something he shouldn’t have, is my guess.” Farentino averted his eyes.
    “What?” Max asked him.
    Farentino shrugged and gave a small, noncommittal gesture. “Maybe it’s nothing. No, maybe it is.” He hesitated. “The literary agent I used. His office was destroyed by fireand he was badly injured. Yesterday. The same day you were attacked.”
    Max let that sink in. Obviously a big effort was being made to stop any information about Max’s dad or what he’d discovered from getting out.
    “Who knows about these notes?” asked Max.
    “No one else. I’m not letting anyone know anything until I can work through them. Trouble is, the gazelle skin has sweated acids into the paper. It’s going to take weeks for us to separate the pages.”
    “Are there any clues at all in what Dad wrote?” Max asked hopefully.
    “We haven’t found anything extraordinary yet; they’re so incomplete we can’t make much sense of them.” Farentino sipped his wine. “But the place the Bushman delivered them to is hundreds of kilometers away from where I thought your dad was working.”
    “Is anyone looking for him?”
    Farentino winced; he unwrapped one of his expensive cigars, rolled it in his fingers, sniffed it.
    Max waited. “Angelo, tell me.”
    Farentino looked hard at Max. “No one is looking. Not really. I have tried to do what I can. The Foreign Office has asked local police and game rangers to keep an eye out.” He dabbed the cigar between his lips in a small, nervous gesture. Max knew there was more to come and he felt a tightening in his stomach muscles. Maybe the pizza hadn’t been such a good idea after all.
    Farentino opened a file on the desk and showed Max some corporate reports and press clippings concerning aninternational exploration company called Shaka Spear Exploration. Every picture featured a man as big as an international rugby player—in fact, he looked like a Maori, except that his head was shaved and he wore a topknot of hair like the Chinese warriors Max had seen in the movies. “That’s Shaka Chang,” Farentino told him. “His father was a Zulu, his mother Chinese. He has connections that would make the president of the United States envious. He has a fearsome reputation as a corporate businessman, but he also has an incredible track record for helping the underprivileged, so he’s pretty much untouchable.”
    Max gazed at the man who controlled one of the biggest exploration companies in the world. In none of the pictures was Shaka Chang smiling. “Namibia has enormous deposits of diamonds. Is that what Dad was looking for?” Max asked.
    “No. A dam is being built there. It has created much controversy. Not everyone is happy. Ecologists are trying to stop it. It will create a massive hydroelectric scheme and bring a lot of wealth to the country. It’ll be worth billions. Shaka Chang is behind it.”
    “If the dam is already planned, what was Dad doing there?”
    “That I am not sure about,” Farentino replied anxiously. “From what I understand, it will not only flood ancient Bushman burial grounds but will have a huge impact on Namibia’s unique ecosystem. So he was searching for aquifers.”
    “I don’t know what that means,” Max said.
    “Think of deep