Seven: Vengeance Falls

Victoria Falls, in the heart of Africa. The longest waterfall in the world. As you get off the train, you can hear a sound loud as thunder, see what seems to be a huge plume of smoke rising over the jungle, just outside the town.

There are two hotels, just past the station, one a Las Vegas-style horror version of Great Zimbabwe. Appropriately this hotel contains a Casino. However, the doorman is dressed as an Ndebele warrior (inappropriate as the Ndebele, refugee Zulus who were running from King Shaka because they'd kept a herd of cows, looted and burned Great Zimbabwe almost as soon as they arrived in the Zambezi valley.

The other Hotel, the Victoria Falls Hotel, is an old-fashioned Victorian establishment, and the service was impeccable back in 1998. Sadly, with the clamp-down on foreign travel, the office of the Green Man now has to make do with a hotel in Livingstone, the Zambian side of the Falls.

Arthur Salesbury, mercenary, was staying at the Victoria Falls hotel in 1998, resting after his massacre of 1,000 men, women and children in the Democratic Republic of Congo. This news reached the ever-alert ears of the Green Man.

At the hotel, Salesbury met a charming young redhead. She resisted his crude attempts at seduction, and soon he found himself falling truly in love, for the first time in his life. They took long walks by the Falls. She, in shorts and tee-shirt, stood and let him snap her in front of the Falls. She laughed with him, dined with him, kissed him, but when he suggested going further cut him off with a lively giggle. Fascinated, he continued his pursuit of her, even agreeing to leave his pistol in his room when they went for their long walks, as she said it dug into her when they cuddled.

One day, they drove to a lonely spot by the Zambezi, upstream from the Falls. There, after a long walk from the car, the Green Man overpowered Salesbury, helped by the redhead. He begged her to help, to consider his love for her. She laughed in his face and told him that he had not heeded the cries and begging of innocents. Salesbury was bound, and flung into the river. A good swimmer, he tried to make it to the other side, despite his bonds. He was, he thought, too far upstream to go over the Falls.

And he was right. But that far upstream, the crocodiles can also survive. The Green Man and the redhead watched while the crocodiles acted as mute agents of vengeance.

They found his arm a month later. The rest of him has never been recovered.