HUNGRY AS THE SEA

ELEPHANT SONG

WILD JUSTICE

WILBUR SMITH

MACMILLAN

HUNGRY AS THE SEA

Wilbur Smith was born in Central Africa in 1933. He was educated at Michaelhouse and Rhodes University. He became a full-time writer in 1964 after the successful publication of When the Lion Feeds, and has written over thirty novels, all meticulously researched on his numerous expeditions worldwide. His books are now translated into twenty-six languages.

WILBUR SMITH

HUNGRY AS THE SEA

PAN BOOKS

First published 1978 by William Heinemann Ltd

This edition published 1998 by Pan Books

This electronic edition published 2008 by Pan Books

an imprint of Pan Macmillan Ltd

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Copyright © Wilbur Smith 1978

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and Patents Act 1988.

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This book is for my wife and the jewel

of my life, Mokhiniso, with all

my love and gratitude for the enchanted

years that I have been married to her

Nicholas Berg stepped out of the taxi on to the floodlit dock and paused to look up at the Warlock. At this state of the tide she rode highagainst the stone quay, so that even though the cranes towered aboveher, they did not dwarf her.

Despite the exhaustion that fogged his mind and cramped his muscles until they ached, Nicholas felt a stir of the old pride, the old sense of value achieved, as he looked at her. She looked like a warship, sleek and deadly, with the high flared bows and good lines that combined to make her safe in any seaway.

The superstructure was moulded steel and glittering armoured glass, behind which her lights burned in carnival array. The wings of her navigation bridge swept back elegantly and were covered to protect the men who must work her in the cruellest weather and most murderous seas.

Overlooking the wide stern deck was the second navigation bridge, from which a skilled seaman could operate the great winches and drums of Cable, could catch and control the hawser on the hydraulically operated rising fairleads, could baby a wallowing oil rig or a mortally wounded liner in a gale or a silky calm.

Against the night sky high above it all, the twin towers replaced the squat single funnel of the old-fashioned salvage tugs - and the illusion of a man-of-war was heightened by the fire cannons on the upper platforms from which the Warlock could throw fifteen hundred tons of sea water an hour on to a burning vessel. From the towers themselves could be swung the boarding ladders over which men could be sent aboard a hulk, and between them was painted the small circular target that marked the miniature heliport. The whole of it, hull and upper decks, was fireproofed so she could survive in the inferno of burning petroleum from a holed tanker or the flaring chemical from a bulk carrier.

Nicholas Berg felt a little of the despondency and spiritual exhaustion slough away, although his body still ached and his legs carried him stiffly, like those of an old man, as he started towards the gangplank.

‘ The hell with them all ,’ he thought. ‘ I built her and she is strong and good.’ Although it was an hour before midnight, the crew of the Warlock watched him from every vantage point they could find; even the oilers had come up from the engine room when the word reached them, and now loafed unobtrusively on the stern working deck.

David Allen, the First Officer, had placed a hand at the main harbour gates with a photograph of Nicholas Berg and a five-cent piece for the telephone call box beside the gate, and the whole ship was alerted now.

David Allen stood with the Chief Engineer in the glassed wing of the main navigation bridge and they watched the solitary figure pick his way across the shadowy dock, carrying his own case.

‘ So that's him ,’ David's voice was husky with awe and respect. He looked like a schoolboy under his shaggy bush of sun-bleached hair.

‘ He's a bloody film star, ’ Vinny Baker, the Chief Engineer, hitched up his sagging trousers with both elbows, and his spectacles slid down the long thin nose, as he snorted.

‘ A bloody film star ,’ he repeated the term with utmost scorn.

‘ He was first to Jules Levoisin ,’ David pointed out, and in the note of awe as he intoned that name, ‘ and he is a tug man from way back. ’

'That was fifteen years ago. ’ Vinny Baker released his elbow grip on his trousers and pushed his spectacles up on to the bridge of his nose. Immediately his trousers began their slow but inexorable slide deckwards. ‘ Since then he's become a bloody glamour boy - and an owner. ’

‘ Yes, ’ David Allen agreed, and his baby face crumpled a little at the thought of those two legendary animals, master and owner, combined in one monster. A monster man which was on the point of mounting his gangway to the deck of Warlock.

‘ You'd better go down and kiss him on the soft spot ,’ V inny grunted comfortably, and drifted away. Two decks down was the sanctuary of his control room where neither masters nor owners could touch him. He was going there now.

David Allen was breathless and flushed when he reached the entry port. The new Master was halfway up the gangway, and he lifted his head and looked steadily at the mate as he stepped aboard.

Though he was only a little above average, Nicholas Berg gave the impression of towering height, and the shoulders beneath the blue cashmere of his jacket were wide and powerful. He wore no hat and his hair was very dark, very thick and brushed back from a wide unlined forehead. The head was big-nosed and gaunt -boned, with a heavy jaw, blue now with new beard, and the eyes were set deep in the cages of their bony sockets, underlined with dark plum - coloured smears, as though they were bruised.

But what shocked David Allen was the man's pallor. His face was drained, as though he had been bled from the jugular. it was the pallor of mortal illness or of exhaustion close to death itself, and it was emphasized by the dark eye-sockets. This was not what David had expected of the legendary Golden Prince of Christy Marine. It was not the face he had seen so often pictured in newspapers and magazines around the world. Surprise made him mute and the man stopped and looked down at him.

‘ Allen? ’ asked Nicholas Berg quietly. His voice was low and level, without accent, but with a surprising timbre and resonance.

‘ Yes, sir. Welcome aboard, sir. ’ When Nicholas Berg smiled, the edges of sickness and exhaustion smoothed away at his brow and at the corners of his mouth. His hand was smooth and cool, but his grip was firm enough to make David blink.

‘ I'll show you your quarters, sir. ’ David took the Louis Vuitton suitcase from his grip.

‘ I know the way, ’ said Nick Berg. ‘ I designed her. ’

He stood in the centre of the Master's day cabin, and felt the deck tilt under his feet, although the Warlock was fast to the stone dock, and the muscles in his thighs trembled.

‘ The funeral went off all right? ’ Nick asked.

‘ He was cremated, sir ,’ David said. ‘ That's the way he wanted it. I have made the arrangements for the ashes to be sent home to Mary. Mary is his wife, sir , ’ he explained quickly.

‘ Yes ,’ said Nick Berg. ‘ I know. I saw her before I left London. Mac and I were ship-mates once. ’

‘ He told me. He used to boast about that. ’

‘ Have you cleared all his gear? ’ Nick asked, and glanced around the Master's suite.

‘ Yes sir, we've packed it all up. There is nothing of his left in here. ’

‘ He was a good man! ’ Nick swayed again on his feet and looked longingly at the day couch, but instead he crossed to the port and looked out on to the dock. ‘ How did it happen? ’

‘ My report – ‘

‘ Tell me! ’ said Nicholas Berg, and his voice cracked like a whip.

‘ The main tow-cable parted, sir. He was on the afterdeck. It took his head off like a bullwhip. ’ Nick stood quietly for a moment, thinking about that description of tragedy. He had seen a tow part under stress once before. That time it had killed three men.

‘All right.’ Nick hesitated a moment, the exhaustion had slowed and softened him so that for a moment he was on the point of explaining why he had come to take command of Warlock himself, rather than sending another hired man to replace Mac.

It might help to have somebody to talk to now, when he was right down on his knees, beaten and broken and tired to the very depths of his soul. He swayed again, then caught himself and forced aside the temptation. He had never whined for sympathy in his life before.

‘ All right, ’ he repeated. ‘ Please give my apologies to your officers. I have not had much sleep in the last two weeks, and the flight out from Heathrow was murder, as always. I'll meet them in the morning. Ask the cook to send a tray with my dinner. ’

The cook was a huge man who moved like a dancer in a snowy apron and a theatrical chef's cap. Nick Berg stared at him as he placed the tray on the table at his elbow. The cook wore his hair in a shiny carefully coiffured bob that fell to his right shoulder, but was drawn back from the left cheek to display a small diamond earring in the pierced lobe of that ear.

He lifted the cloth off the tray with a hand as hairy as that of a bull gorilla, but his voice was as lyrical as a girl's, and his eyelashes curled soft and dark on to his cheek.

‘There’s a lovely bowl of soup, and a pot-a u -feu. It's one of my little special things. You will adore it ,’ he said, and stepped back. He surveyed Nick Berg with those huge hands on his hips. ‘ But I took one look at you as you came aboard and I just knew what you really needed. ’ With a magician's flourish, he produced a half-bottle of Pinch Haig from the deep pocket of his apron. ‘ Take a nip of that with your dinner, and then straight into bed with you, you poor dear. ’

No man had ever called Nicholas Berg dear before, but his tongue was too thick and slow for the retort. He stared after the cook as he disappeared with a sweep of his white apron and the twinkle of the diamond, and then he grinned weakly and shook his head, weighing the bottle in his hand.

‘ Damned if I don't need it ,’ he muttered, and went to find a glass. He poured it half full, and sipped as he came back to the couch and lifted the lid of the soup pot. The steaming aroma made the little saliva glands under his tongue spurt.

The hot food and whisky in his belly taxed his last reserves, and Nicholas Berg kicked off his shoes as he staggered into his night cabin.

He awoke with the anger on him. He had not been angry in two weeks which was a measure of his despondency.

But when he shaved, the mirrored face was that of a stranger still, too pale and ga unt and set. The lines that framed his mouth were too deeply chiselled, and the early sunlight through the port caught the dark hair at his temple and he saw the frosty glitter there and leaned closer to the mirror. It was the first time he had noticed the flash of silver hair - perhaps he had never looked hard enough, or perhaps it was something new.

‘ Forty ,’ he thought. ‘ I'll be forty years old next June. ’

He had always believed that if a man never caught the big one before he was forty, he was doomed never to do so. So what were the rules for the man who caught the big wave before he was thirty, and rode it fast and hard and high, then lost it again before he was forty and was washed out into the trough of boiling white water. Was he doomed also? Nick stared at himself in the mirror and felt the anger in him change its form, becoming directed and functional.

He stepped into the shower, and let the needles of hot water sting his chest. Through the tiredness and disillusion, he was aware, for the first time in weeks, of the underlying strength which he had begun to doubt was still there. He felt it rising to the surface in him, and he thought of what an extraordinary sea creature he was, how it needed only a deck under him and the smell of the sea in his throat.

He stepped from the shower and dried quickly. This was the right place to be now. This was the place to recuperate - and he realized that his decision not to replace Mac with a hired skipper had been a gut decision. He needed to be here himself.

Always he had known that if you wanted to ride the big wave, you must first be at the place where it begins to peak. It's an instinctive thing, a man just knows where that place is. Nick Berg knew deep in his being that this was the place now and, with his rising strength, he felt the old excitement, the old ‘ I'll show the bastards who is beaten, ’ excitement, and he dressed swiftly and went up the Master's private companionway to the Upper deck.

Immediately, the wind flew at him and flicked his dark wet hair into his face. It was force five from the south-east, and it came boiling over the great flat-topped mountain which crouched above the city and harbour. Nick looked at it and saw the thick white cloud they called the table cloth spilling off the heights, and swirling along the grey rock cliffs.

‘ The Cape of Storms ,’ he murmured. Even the water in the protected dock leaped and peaked into white crests which blew away like wisps of smoke.

The tip of Africa thrust southwards into one of the most treacherous seas on all the globe. Here two oceans swept turbulently together off the rocky cliffs of Cape Point, and then rolled over the shallows of the Agulhas bank.

Here wind opposed current in eternal conflict. This was the breeding ground of the freak wave, the one that mariners called the hundred-year wave,, because statistically that was how often it should occur.

But off the Agulhas bank, it was always lurking, waiting only for the right combination of wind and current, waiting for the in - phase wave sequence to send its crest rearing a hundred feet, high and steep as those grey rock cliffs of Table Mountain itself.

Nick had read the accounts of seamen who had survived that wave, and, at a loss for words, they had written only of a great hole in the sea into which a ship fell helplessly. When the hole closed, the force of breaking water would bury her completely. Perhaps the Waratah Castle was one which had fallen into that trough. Nobody would ever know. - a great ship of 9,000 tons burden, she and her crew of 211 had disappeared without trace in these seas.

Yet here was one of the busiest sea lanes on the globe, as a procession of giant tankers ploughed ponderously around that rocky Cape on their endless shuttle between the Western world and the oil Gulf of Persia . Despite their bulk, those supertankers were perhaps some of the most vulnerable vehicles yet designed by man.

Now Nick turned and looked across the wind-ripped waters of Duncan Dock at one of them. He could read her name on the stern that rose like a five-storied apartment block. She was owned by Shell Oil, 250,000 dead weight tons, and, out of ballast, she showed much of her rust-red bottom. She was in for repairs, while out in the roadstead of Table Bay, two other monsters waited patiently for their turn in the hospital dock.

So big and ponderous and vulnerable - and valuable. Nick licked his lips involuntarily - hull and cargo together, she was thirty million dollars, piled up like a mountain.

That was why he had stationed the Warlock here at Cape Town on the southernmost tip of Africa. He felt the strength and excitement surging upwards in him.

All right, so he had lost his wave. He was no longer cresting and racing. He was down and smothered in white water. But he could feel his head breaking the surface, and he was still on the break-line. He knew there was another big wave racing down on him. It was just beginning to peak and he knew he still had the strength to catch her, to get high and race again.

‘ I did it once - I'll damned well do it again ,’ he said aloud, and went down for breakfast.

He stepped into the saloon, and for a long moment nobody realized he was there. There was an excited buzz of comment and speculation that absorbed them all.

The Chief Engineer had an old copy of Lloyd's List folded at the front page and held above a plate of eggs as he read aloud. Nicholas wondered where he had found the ancient copy.

His spectacles had slid right to the end of his nose, so he had to tilt his head far backwards to see through them, and his Australian accent twanged like a guitar.

‘ In a joint statement issued by the new Chairman and incoming members of the Board, a tribute was paid to the fifteen years of loyal service that Mr. Nicholas Berg had given to Christy Marine. ’ The five officers listened avidly, ignoring their breakfasts, until David Allen glanced up at the figure in the doorway.

‘Captain, Sir, ’ he shouted, and leapt to his feet, while with the other hand, he snatched the newspaper out of Vinny Baker's hands and bundled it under the table.

‘ Sir, may I present the officers of Warlock. ’

Shuffling, embarrassed, the younger officers shook hands hurriedly and then applied themselves silently to their congealing breakfasts with a total dedication that precluded any conversation, while Nick Berg took the Master's seat at the head of the long table in the heavy silence and David Allen sat down again on the crumpled sheets of newsprint.

The steward offered the menu to the new Captain, and returned almost immediately with a dish of stewed fruit.

‘ I ordered a boiled egg ,’ said Nick mildly, and an apparition in snowy white appeared from the galley, with the chef's cap at a jaunty angle.

‘ The sailor's curse is constipation, Skipper. I look after my officers - that fruit is delicious and good for you. I'm doing you your eggs now, dear, but eat your fruit first. ’ And the diamond twinkled again as he vanished.

Nick stared after him in the appalled silence.

‘ Fantastic cook ,’ blurted David Allen, his fair skin flushed pinkly and the Lloyd's List rustled under his backside. ‘ Could get a job on any passenger liner, could Angel. ’

‘ If he ever left the Warlock, half the crew would go with him ,’ growled the Chief Engineer darkly, and hauled at his pants with elbows below the level of the table. ‘ And I'd be one of them. ’ Nick Berg turned his head politely to follow the conversation.

‘ He's almost a doctor, ’ David Allen went on, addressing the Chief Engineer.

‘ Five years at Edinburgh Medical School ,’ agreed the Chief solemnly.

‘ Do you remember how he set the seconds leg? Terribly useful to have a doctor aboard. ’

Nick picked up his spoon, and tentatively lifted a little of the fruit to his mouth. Every officer watched him intently as he chewed. Nick took another spoonful.

‘ You should taste his jams, ’ said David Allen addressing Nick directly at last. ‘ Absolutely Cordon Bleu stuff. ’

‘ Thank you, gentlemen, for the advice ,’ said Nick. The smile did not touch his mouth, but crinkled his eyes slightly. ‘ But would somebody convey a private message to Angel that if he ever calls me "dear" again I'll beat that ridiculous cap down about his ears. ’

In the relieved laughter that followed, Nick turned to David Allen and sent colour flying to his cheeks again by asking, ‘ You seem to have finished with that old copy Of the List, Number One. Do you mind if I glance at it again? ’ Reluctantly, David lifted himself and produced the newspaper, and there was another tense silence as Nick Berg rearranged the rumpled sheets and studied the old headlines without any apparent emotion.

THE GOLDEN PRINCE OF CHRISTY MARINE DEPOSED

Nicholas hated that name, it had been old Arthur Christy's quirk to name all of his vessels with the prefix Golden, and twelve years ago, when Nick had rocketed to head of operations at Christ y Marine, some wag had stuck that label on him.

ALEXANDER TO HEAD THE CHRISTY BOARD OF DIRECTORS

Nicholas was surprised by the force of his hatred for the m an.

They had fought like a pair of bulls for dominance of the herd and the tactics that Duncan Alexander had used had won. Arthur Christy had said once, ‘ Nobody gives a damn these days whether it is moral or fair, all that counts is, will it work and can you get away with it? ’ For Duncan it had worked, and he had got away with it in the grandest possible style.

As Managing-Director in charge of operations, Mr. Nicholas Berg helped to build Christy Marine from a small coasting and salvage company into one of the five largest owners of cargo shipping operating anywhere in the world.

After the death of Arthur Christy in 1968, Mr. Nicholas Berg succeeded him as Chairman, and continued the company's spectacular expansion.

At present, Christy Marine has in commission eleven bulk carriers and tankers in excess of 250,000 dead weight tons, and is building the 1,000,000 ton giant ultra-tanker Golden Dawn. it will be the largest vessel ever launched.

There it was, stated in the boldest possible terms, the labour of a man's lifetime. Over a billion dollars of shipping, designed, financed and built almost entirely with the energy and enthusiasm and faith of Nicholas Berg.

Mr. Nicholas Berg married Miss Chantelle Christy, the only child of Mr. Arthur Christy. However, the marriage ended in divorce in September of last year and the former Mrs. Berg has subsequently married Mr. Duncan Alexander, the new Chairman of Christy Marine.

He felt the hollow nauseous feeling in his stomach and in his head the vivid image of the woman. He not want to think of her now, but could not thrust the image aside. she was bright and beautiful as a flame - and, like a flame, you could not hold her. when she went, she took everything with her, everything. He should hate her also, he really should. Everything, he thought the company, his life's work, and the child. When he thought of the child, he nearly succeeded in hating her, and the newsprint shook in his hand.

He became aware again that five men were watching him, and without surprise he realized that not a flicker of his emotions had shown on his face. To be a player for fifteen years in one of the world's highest games of chance, inscrutability was a minimum requirement.

In a joint statement issued by the new Chairman and incoming members of the Board, a tribute was paid.

Duncan Alexander paid the tribute for one reason, Nick thought grimly. He wanted the 100,000 Christy Marine shares that Nick owned.

Those shares were very far from a controlling interest. Chantelle had a million shares in her own name, and there were another million in the Christy Trust, but insignificant as it was, Nick's holding gave him a voice in and an entry to the company's affairs.

Nick had bought and paid for every one of those shares.

Nobody had given him a thing, not once in his life. He had taken advantage of every stock option in his contract, had bartered bonus and salary for those options, and now those 100,00 0 shares were worth three million dollars, meagre reward for the labour which had built up a fortune of sixty million dollars for the Christy father and daughter.

It had taken Duncan Alexander almost a year to get those shares.

He and Nicholas had bargained with cold loathing. They had hated each other from the first day that Duncan had walked into the Christy building on Leadenhall Street. He had come as old Arthur Christy's latest Wunderkind. The financial genius fresh from his triumphs as financial controller of International Electronics, and the hatred had been instant and deep and mutual, a fierce smouldering chemical reaction between them.

In the end Duncan Alexander had won, he had won it all, except the shares, and he had bargained for those from overwhelming strength. He had bargained with patience and skill, wearing his man down over the months. Using all Christy Marine's reserves to block and frustrate Nicholas, forcing him back step by step, taxing even his strength to its limits, driving such a bargain that at the end Nicholas was forced to bow and accept a dangerous price for his shares. He had taken as full payment the subsidiary of Christy Marine, Christy Towage and Salvage, all its assets and all its debts. Nick had felt like a fighter who had been battered for fifteen rounds, and was now hanging desperately to the ropes with his legs gone, blinded by his own sweat and blood and swollen flesh, so he could not see from whence the next punch would come. But he had held on just long enough. He had got Christy Towage and Salvage - he had walked away with something that was completely and entirely his.

Nicholas Berg lowered the newspaper, and immediately his officers attacked their breakfasts ravenously and there was the clatter of cutlery.

‘ There is an officer missing ,’ he said.

‘ It's only the Trog, sir ,’ Dave Allen explained.

‘ The Trog? ’

‘ The Radio Officer, sir. Speirs, sir. We call him the Troglodyte. ’

‘ I'd like all the officers present. ’

‘ He never comes out of his cave ,’ Vinny Baker explained helpfully .

‘ All right ,’ Nick nodded. I will speak to him later.

They waited now, five eag er young men, even Vin Baker could not completely hide his interest behind the smeared lenses of his spectacles and the tough Aussie veneer.

‘ I wanted to explain to you the new set-up. The Chief has kindly read to you this article, presumably for the benefit of those who were unable to do so for themselves a year ago. ’

Nobody said anything, but Vin Baker fiddled with his porridge spoon.

‘ So you are aware that I am no longer connected in any way with Christy Marine. I have now acquired Christy Towage and Salvage. It becomes a completely independent company. The name is being changed. ’ Nicholas had resisted the vanity of calling it Berg Towage and Salvage. ‘ It will be known as Ocean Towage and Salvage. ’

He had paid dearly for it, perhaps too dearly. He had given up his three million dollars worth of Christy shares for God alone knew what. But he had been tired unto death.

‘ We own two vessels. The Golden Warlock and her sister ship which is almost ready for her sea trials, the Golden Witch. ’

He knew exactly how much the company owed on those two ships, he had agonized over the figures through long and sleepless nights. On paper the net worth of the company was around four million dollars; he had made a paper profit of a million dollars on his bargain with Duncan Alexander. But it was paper profit only, the company had debts of nearly four million more. If he missed just one month's interest payments on those debts - he dismissed the thought quickly, for on a forced sale his residue in the company would be worth nothing. He would be completely wiped out.

‘ The names of both ships have been changed also. They will become simply Warlock and Sea Witch. From now onwards "Golden" is a dirty word around Ocean Salvage. ’ They laughed then, a release of tension, and Nick smiled with them, and lit a thin black cheroot from the crocodile - skin case while they settled down.

‘ I will be running this ship until Sea Witch is commissioned. It won't be long, and there will be promotions then. ’

Nick superstitiously tapped the mahogany mess table as he said it. The dockyard strike had been simmering for a long time. Sea Witch was still on the ways, but costing interest, and further delay would prove him mortal.

‘ I have got a long oil-rig tow. Bight of Australia to South America. It will give us all time to shake the ship down. Y ou are all tug men, I don't have to tell you when the big one comes up, there will be no warning. ’

They stirred, and the eagerness was on them again. Even the oblique reference to prize money had roused them.

‘ Chief? ’ Nick looked across at him, and the Engineer snorted, as though the question was an insult.

‘ In all respects ready for sea ,’ he said, and tried simultaneously to adjust his trousers and his spectacles.

‘ Number One? ’ Nick looked at David Allen. He had not yet become accustomed to the Mate's boyishness. He knew that he had held a master mariner's ticket for ten years, that he was over thirty years of age and that MacDonald had hand-picked him - he had to be good. Yet that fair unlined face and quick high colour under the unruly mop of blond hair made him look like an undergraduate.

‘ I'm waiting on some stores yet, sir ,’ David answered quickly. ‘ The chandlers have promised for today, but none of it is vital. I could sail in an hour, if it is necessary. ’

‘ All right. ’ Nick stood up. ‘ I will inspect the ship at 0900 hours. You'd best get the ladies off the ship. ’ During the meal there had been the faint tinkle of female voices and laughter from the crew's quarters.

Nick stepped out of the saloon and Vin Baker's voice was pitched to reach him. It was a truly dreadful imitation of what the Chief believed to be a Royal Naval accent.

‘0900 , chaps. Jolly good show, what? ’

Nick did not miss a step, and he grinned tightly to himself. It's an old Aussie custom; you needle and needle until something happens. There is no malice in it, it's just a way of getting to know your man. And once the boots and fists have stopped flying, you can be friends or enemies on a permanent basis. It was so long since he had been in elemental contact with tough physical men, straight hard men who shunned all subterfuge and sham, and he found the novelty stimulating. Perhaps that was what he really needed now, the sea and the company of real men. He felt his step quicken and the anticipation of physical confrontation lift his spirits off the bottom.

He went up the companionway to the navigation deck, taking the steps three at a time, and the doorway opposite his suite opened. From it emerge d the solid grey stench of cheap Dutch cigars and a head that could have belonged to some prehistoric reptile. It too was pale grey and lined and wrinkled, the head of a sea-turtle or an iguana lizard, with the same small dark glittery eyes.

The door was that of the radio room. It had direct access to the main navigation bridge and was merely two paces from the Master's day cabin.

Despite appearances, the head was human, and Nick recalled clearly how Mac had once described his radio officer. He is the most anti-social bastard I've ever sailed with, but he can scan eight different frequencies simultaneously, in clear and morse, even while he is asleep. He is a mean, joyless, constipated son of a bitch - and probably the best radio man afloat.

‘ Captain ,’ said the Trog, in a reedy petulant voice. Nick did not ponder the fact that the Trog recognized him instantly as the new Master. The air of command on some men is unmistakable. ‘ Captain, I have an "all ships signify ” . ’

Nick felt the heat at the base of his spine, and the electric prickle on the back of his neck. It is not sufficient merely to be on the break line when the big wave peaks, it is also necessary to recognize your wave from the hundred others that sweep by.

‘ Coordinates? ’ he snapped, as he strode down the passageway to the radio room.

’ 72° 16 south 3 2° 12 west. ’

Nick felt the jump in his chest and the heat mount up along his spine, The high latitudes down there in the vast a nd lonely wastes. There was something sinister and menacing in the mere figures. What ship could be down there?

The longitudinal co - ordinates fitted neatly in the chart that Nick carried in his mind, like a war chart in a military operations room. She was south and west of the Cape of Good Hope - down deep, beyond Gough and Bouvet Island, in the Weddell Sea.

He followed the Trog into the radio room. On this bright, sunny and windy morning, the room was dark and gloomy as a cave, the thick green blinds drawn across the ports; the only source of light was the glowing dials of the banked communication equipment, the most sophisticated equipment that all the wealth of Christy Marine could pack into her, a hundred thousand dollars' worth of electronic magic, but the stink of cheap cigars was overpowering.

Beyond the radio room was the operator's cabin, the bunk unmade, a tray of soiled dishes on the deck beside it.

The Trog hopped up into the swivel seat, and elbowed aside a brass shell-casing that acted as an ashtray and spilled grey flakes of ash and a couple of cold wet chewed cigar butts on to the desk.

Like a wizened gnome, the Trog tended his dials; there w as a cacophony of static and electronic trash blurred with the sharp howl of morse.

‘ The copy? ’ Nick asked, and the Trog pushed a pad at him. Nick read off quickly.

CTM.Z. 0603 GMT. 7 2° 16 ’ S. 32° 12 ’ W. All ships in a position to render assistance, please signify. CTM.Z.

He did not need to consult the R. T. Handbook to recognize that call-sign ‘ CTMZ .’

With an effort of will he controlled the pressure that caught him in the chest like a giant fist. It was as though he had lived this moment before. It was too neat. He forced himself to distrust his instinct, forced himself to think with his head and not his guts.

Beyond him he heard his officers voices on the navigation bridge, quiet voices - but charged with tension. They were up from the saloon already.

‘ Christ! ’ he thought savagely. ‘ How do they know? So quickly? ’ It was as though the ship itself had come awake beneath his feet and trembled with anticipation.

The door from the bridge slid aside and David Allen stood in the opening with a copy of Lloyd's Register in his hands.

‘ CTMZ, sir, is the call sign of the Golden Adventurer. Twenty-two thousand tons, registered Bermuda 1975. Owners Christy Marine. ’

‘ Thank you, Number One, ’ Nick nodded. Nicholas knew her well; he personally had ordered her construction before the collapse of the great liner traffic. Nick had planned to use her on the Europe-to-Australia run.

Her finished cost had come in at sixty-two million dollars, and she was a beautiful and graceful ship under her tall light alloy superstructure. Her accommodation was luxurious, in the same class as the France or the United States, but she had been one of Nick's few miscalculations.

When the feas i bility of operation on the planned run had shown up prohibitive in the face of rising costs and diminishing trade, Nick had switched her usage. It was this type of flexible and intuitive planning and improvisation that had built Christy Marine into the goliath she was now.

Nick had innovated the idea of adventure cruises - and changed the ship's name to Golden Adventurer. Now she carried rich passengers to the wild and exotic corners of the globe, from the Galapagos Islands to the Amazon, from the remote Pacific islands to the Antarctic, in search of the unusual.

She carried guest lecturers with her, experts on the environments and ecology of the areas she was to visit, and she was equipped to take her passengers ashore to study the monoliths of Easter Island or to watch the mating displays of the wandering albatross on the Falkland Islands.

She was probably one of the very few cruise liners that was still profitable, and now she stood in need of assistance.

Nicholas turned back from the Trog. ‘ Has she been transmitting prior to this signify request? ’

‘ She's been sending in company code since midnight. Her traffic was so heavy that I was watching her. ’

The green glow of the sets gave the little man a bilious cast, and made his teeth black, so that he looked like an actor from a horror movie.

‘ You recorded? ’ Nick demanded, and the Trog switched on the automatic playback of his tape monitors, recapitulating every message the distressed ship had sent or received since the previous midnight. The jumbled blocks of code poured into the room, and the paper strip printed out with the clatter of its keys.

Had Duncan Alexander changed the Christy Marine code? Nick wondered. It would be the natural procedure, completely logical to any operations man. You lose a man who has the code, you change immediately. It was that simple. Duncan had lost Nick Berg, he should change. But Duncan was not an operations man. He was a figures and paper man, he thought in numbers, not in steel and salt water.

If Duncan had changed, they would never break it. Not even with the Decca. Nick had devised the basis of the code. It was a projection that expressed the alphabet as a mathematical function based on a random six-figure master, changing the value of each letter on a progression that was impossible to monitor.

Nick hurried out of the stinking gloom of the radio room with the print-out in his hands.

The navigation bridge of Warlock was gleaming chrome and glass, as bright and functional as a modern surgical theatre, or a futuristic kitchen layout.

The primary control console stretched the full width of the bridge, beneath the huge armoured windows. The old - fashioned wheel was replaced by a single steel lever, and the remote control could be carried out on to the wings of the bridge on its long extension cable, like the remote on a television set, so that the helmsman could con the ship from any position he chose.

Illuminated digital displays informed the master instantly of every condition of his ship: speed across the bottom at bows and stern, speed through the water at bows and stern, wind direction and strength, together with all the other technical information of function and mul ti function. Nick had built the ship with Christy money, and stinted not at all.

The rear of the bridge was the navigational area, and the chart-table divided it neatly with its overhead racks containing the 106 big blue volumes of the Global Pilot and as many other volumes of maritime publications. Below the table were the multiple drawers, wide and flat to contain the spread Admiralty charts that covered every corner of navigable water on the globe.

Against the rear bulkhead stood the battery of electronic navigational aids, like a row of fruit machines in a Vegas gambling hall.

Nick switched the big Decca Satellite Navaid into its computer mode and the display lights flashed and faded and relit in scarlet.

He fed it the six-figure control, numbers governed by the moon phase and date of dispatch. The computer digested this instantaneously, and Nick gave it the last arithmetical proportion known to him. The Decca was ready to decode and Nick gave it the block of garbled transmission - and waited for it to throw back gibberish at him. Duncan must have altered the code. He stared at the printout.

Chri sty Ma ri n e from Master of Adventurer. 2216 GMT.72° 16 ’ S. 32° 05 ’ W. Underwater ice damage sustained m idships starboard. Precautionary shutdown mains. Auxiliary generators activated during damage survey. Stand by.

So Duncan had let the code stand then. Nick groped for the croc-skin case of cheroots, and his hand was steady and firm as he held the flame to the top of the thin black tube. He felt the intense desire to shout aloud, but instead, he drew the fragrant smoke into his lungs.

‘ Plotted ,’ said David Allen from behind him. Already on the spread chart of the Antarctic he had marked in the reported position. The transformation was complete, the First Officer had become a grimly competent professional. There remained no trace of the high-coloured undergraduate.

Nick glanced at the plot, saw the dotted ice line far above the Adventurer's position, saw the outline of the forbidding continent of Antarctica groping for the ship with merciless fingers of ice and rock.

The Decca printed out the reply:

Master of Adventurer from Christy Marine. 22.22 GMT. Standing by.

The next message from the recording tape was flagged nearly two hours later, but was printed out almost continuously from the Trog's recording.

Christy Marine from Master of Adventurer. 0005 GMT. 72° 18 ’ S . 32° 05 ’ W. Water contained. Restarted mains. New course CAPE TOWN direct. Speed 8 knots. Stand by.

Dave Allen worked swiftly with parallel rulers and protractor.

‘ While she was without power she drifted thirty-four nautical miles, south-southeast - there is a hell of a wind or big current setting down there ,’ he said, and the other deck officers were silent and strained. Although none of them would dare crowd the Master at the Decca, yet in order of seniority they had taken up vantage points around the bridge best suited to follow the drama of a great ship in distress.

The next message ran straight out from the computer, despite the fact that it had been dispatched many hours later.

Christy Marine from Master of Adventurer. 0546 GMT. 72° 16 ’ S. 32° 12 ’ W. Explosion in flooded area. Emergency shutdown all. Water gaining. Request your clearance to issue ‘ all ships signify. ’ Standing by.

Master of Adventurer from Christy Marine. 0547 GMT. You are cleared to issue ‘ signify . ’ Break. Break. Break. You are expressly forbidden to contract tow or salvage without reference Christy Marine. Acknowledge.

Duncan was not even putting in the old chestnut, except in the event of danger to human life.

The reason was too apparent. Christy Marine underwrote most of its own bottoms through another of its subsidiaries. The London and European Insurance and Finance Company, The self-insurance scheme had been the brain-child of Alexander Duncan himself when first he arrived at Christy Marine. Nick Berg had opposed the scheme bitterly, and now he might live to see his reasoning being justified.

‘ Are we going to signify? ’ David Allen asked quietly.

‘ Radio silence ,’ snapped Nick irritably, and began to pace the bridge, the crack of his heels muted by the cork coating on the deck.

‘ Is this my wave? ’ Nick demanded of himself, applying the old rule he had set for himself long ago, the rule of deliberate thought first, action after.

The Golden Adventurer was drifting in the ice-fields two thousand and more miles south of Cape Town, five days and nights of hard running for the Warlock. If he made the go decision, by the time he reached her, she might have effected repairs and restarted, she might be under her own command again. Again, even if she was still helpless, Warlock might reach her to find another salvage tug had beaten her to the scene. So now it was time to call the roll.

He stopped his pacing at the door to the radio room and spoke quietly to the Trog.

‘ Open the telex line and send to Bach Wackie in Bermuda quote call the roll unquote. ’

As he turned away, Nick was satisfied with his own forethought in installing the satellite telex system which enabled him to communicate with his agent in Bermuda, or with any other selected telex station, without his message being broadcast over the open frequencies and monitored by a competitor or any other interested party. His signals were bounced through the high stratosphere where they could not be intercepted.

While he waited, Nicholas worried. The decision to go would mean abandoning the Esso oil-rig tow. The tow fee had been a vital consideration in his cash flow situation. Two hundred and twenty thousand sterling, without which he could not meet the quarterly interest payment due in sixty days ’ time - unless, unless ... He juggled figures in his head, but the magnitude of the risk involved was growing momentarily more apparent - and the figures did not add up. He needed the Esso tow. God, how badly he needed it!

‘ Bach Wackie are replying ,’ called the Trog above the chatter of the telex receiver, and Nick spun on his heel.

He had appointed Bach Wackie as the agents for Ocean Salvage because of their proven record of quick and aggressive efficiency. He glanced at his Rolex Oyster and calculated that it was about two o'clock in the morning local time in Bermuda, and yet his request for information on the disposition of all his major competitors was now being answered within minutes of receipt.

For Master Warlock from Bach Wackie latest reported positions. J ohn Ross dry dock Durban. Woltema Wolteraad Esso tow Torres Straits to Alaska Shelf .

That took care of the two giant Safmarine tugs; half of the top opposition was out of the race.

Wittezee Shell exploration tow Galveston to North Sea. Grootezee lying Brest –

That was the two Dutchmen out of it. The names and positions of the other big salvage tugs, each of them a direct and dire threat to Warlock, ran swiftly from the telex and Nicholas chewed his cheroot ragged as he watched, his eyes slitted against the spiralling blue smoke, feeling the relief rise in him as each report put another of his competitors in some distant waters, far beyond range of the stricken ship.

‘ La Mouette ,’ Nick's hands balled into fists as the name sprang on to the white paper sheet, ‘ La Mouette discharged Brazgas tow Golfo San Jorge on I4th reported enroute Buenos Aires. ’

Nick grunted like a boxer taking a low blow, and turned away from the machine. He walked out on to the open wing of the bridge and the wind tore at his hair and clothing.

La Mouette, the sea-gull, a fanciful name for that black squat hull, the old-fashioned high box of superstructure, the traditional single stack; Nick could see it clearly when he closed his eyes.

There was no doubt in his mind at all. Jules Levoisin was already running hard for the south, running like a hunting dog with the scent hot in its nostrils.

Jules had discharged in the southern Atlantic three days ago. He would certainly have hunkered at Co m odoro. Nick knew how Jules mind worked, he was never happy unless his bunkers were bulging.

Nick flicked the stub of his cigar away, and it was whisked far out into the harbour by the wind.

He knew that La Mouette had refitted and installed new engines eighteen months before. With a nostalgic twinge, he had read a snippet in Lloyd's List. But even nine thousand horsepower couldn't push that tubby hull at better than eighteen knots, Nick was certain of that. Yet even with Warlock's superior speed, La Mouette was better placed by a thousand miles. There was no room for complacency. And what if La Mouette had set out to double Cape Horn instead of driving north up the Atlantic? If that had happened, and with Jules Levoisin's luck it might just have happened, then La Mouette was a long way inside him already.

Anybody else but Jules Levoisin, he thought, why did it have to be him? And oh God, why now? Why now when I am so vulnerable - emotionally, physically and financially vulnerable. Oh God, why did it come now?

He felt the false sense of cheer and well-being, with which he had buoyed himself that morning, fall away from him like a cloak, leaving him naked and sick and tired again.

I am not ready yet, he thought; and then realized that it was probably the first time in his adult life he had ever said that to himself. He had always been ready, good and ready, for anything. But not now, not this time.

Suddenly Nicholas Berg was afraid, as he had never been before. He was empty, he realized, there was nothing in him, no strength, no confidence, no resolve. The depth of his defeat by Duncan Alexander, the despair of his rejection by the woman he loved, had broken him. He felt his fear turn to terror, knowing that his wave had come, and would sweep by him now, for he did not have the strength to ride it.

Some deep instinct warned him that it would be the last wave, there would be nothing after it. The choice was go now, or never go again. And he knew he could not go, he could not go against Jules Levoisin, he could not challenge the old master. He could not go - he could not reject the certainty of the Esso tow, he did not have the nerve now to risk all that he had left on a single throw. He had just lost a big one, he couldn't go at risk again.

The risk was too great, he was not ready for it, he did not have the strength for it.

He wanted to go to his cabin and throw himself on his bunk and sleep - and sleep. He felt his knees buckling with the great weight of his despair, and he hungered for the oblivion of sleep.

He turned back into the bridge, out of the wind. He was broken, defeated, he had given up. As he went towards the sanctuary of his day cabin, he passed the long command console and stopped involuntarily.

His officers watched him in a tense, electric silence.

His right hand went out and touched the engine telegraph, sliding the pointer from off to stand by .

‘ Engine Room ,’ he heard a voice speak in calm and level tones, so it could not be his own. ‘ Start main engines, ’ said the voice.

Seemingly from a great distance he watched the faces of his deck officers bloom with unholy joy, like old-time pirates savouring the prospect of a prize.

The strange voice went on, echoing oddly in his ears, ‘ Number One, ask the Harbour Master for permission to clear harbour immediately - and, Pilot, course to steer for the last reported position of Golden Adventurer, please. ’

From the corner of his eye, he saw David Allen punch the Third Officer lightly but gleefully on the shoulder before he hurried to the radio telephone.

Nicholas Berg felt suddenly the urge to vomit. So he stood very still and erect at the navigation console and fought back the waves of nausea that swept over him, while his officers bustled to their sea-going stations.

‘ Bridge. This is the Chief Engineer ,’ said a disembodied voice from the speaker above Nick's head. ‘ Main engines running. ’ A pause and then that word of special Aussie approbation. ‘ Beauty! –‘ but the Chief pronounced it in three distinct syllables, ‘Be-yew-dy!’

Warlock's wide-flared bows were designed to cleave and push the waters open ahead of her and in those waters below latitude 40° , she ran like an old bull otter, slick and wet and fast for the south.

Uninterrupted by any land-mass, the cycle of great atmospheric depressions swept endlessly across those cold open seas, and the wave patterns built up into a succession of marching mountain ranges.

Warlock was taking them on her starboard shoulder, bursting through each crest in a white explosion that leapt from her bows like a torpedo strike, the water coming aboard gre en and clear over her high fore dec k , and sweeping her from stern to stern as she twisted and broke out, dropping sheer into the valley that opened ahead of her. Her twin ferro-bronze propellers broke clear of the surface, the slamming vibration instantly controlled by the sophisticated variable-pitch gear, until she swooped forward and the propellers bit deeply again, the thrust of the twin Mirrlees diesels hurtling her towards the slope of the next swell.

Each time it seemed that she could not rise in time to meet the cliff of water that bore down on her. The water was black under the grey sunless sky. Nick had lived through typhoon and Caribbean hurricane, but had never seen water as menacing and cruel as this. It glittered like the molten slag that pours down the dump of an iron foundry and cools to the same iridescent blackness.

In the deep valleys between the crests, the wind was blanketed so they fell into an unnatural stillness, an eerie silence that only enhanced the menace of that towering slope of water.

In the trough, Warlock heeled and threw her head up, climbing the slope in a gut-swooping lift, that buckled the knees of the watch. As she went up, so the angle of her bridge tilted back, and that sombre cheerless sky filled the forward bridge windows with a vista of low scudding cloud.

The wind tore at the crest of the wave ahead of her, ripping it away like white cotton from the burst seams of a black mattress, splattering custard-thick spume against the armoured glass. Then Warlock put her sharp steel nose deeply into it. Gouging a fat wedge of racing green over her head twisting violently at the jarring impact, dropping sideways over the crest, and breaking out to fall free and repeat the cycle again.

Nick was wedged into the canvas m aster's seat in the corner of the bridge. He swayed like a camel-driver to the thrust of the sea and smoked his black cheroots quietly, his head turning every few minutes to the west, as though he expected at any moment to see the black ugly hull of La Mouette come up on top o f t h e next swell. But he kn ew she was a thousand miles away still, racing down the far leg of the triangle which had at its apex the stricken liner.

‘ If she is running ,’ Nick thought, and knew that there was no doubt. La Mouette was running as frantically as was Warlock - and as silently. Jules Levoisin had taught Nick the trick of silence. He would not use his radio until he had the liner on his radar scan. Then he would come through in clear, ‘ I will be in a position to put a line aboard you in two hours. Do you accept "Lloyd's Open Form"? ’

The Master of the distressed vessel, having believed himself abandoned without succour, would over react to the promise of salvation, and when La Mouette came bustling up over the horizon, flying all her bunting and with every light blazing in as theatrical a display as Jules could put up, the relieved Master would probably leap at the offer of 'Lloyd' s Open’ a decision that would surely be regretted by the ship's owners in the cold and unemotional precincts of an Arbitration court.

When Nick had supervised the design of Warlock, he had insisted that she look good as well as being able to perform. The master of a disabled ship was usually a man in a highly emotional state. Mere physical appearance might sway him in the choice between two salvage tugs coming up on him. Warlock looked magnificent; even in this cold and cheerless ocean, she looked like a warship. The trick would be to show her to the master of Golden Adventurer before he struck a bargain with La Mouette.

Nick could no longer sit inactive in his canvas seat. He judged the next towering swell and, with half a dozen quick strides, crossed the bridge deck in those fleeting moments as Warlock steadied in the trough. He grabbed the chrome handrail above the Decca computer.

On the keyboard he typed the function code that would set the machine in navigational mode, co - ordinating the transmissions she was receiving from the circling satellite stations high above the earth. From these were calculated Warlock's exact position over the earth's surface, accurate to within twenty-five yards.

Nick entered the ship's position and the computer compared this with the plot that Nick had requested four hours previously. It printed out quickly the distance run and the ship's speed made good. Nick frowned angrily and swung round to watch the helmsman.

In this fiercely running cross sea, a good man could hold Warlock on course more efficiently than any automatic steering device. He could anticipate each trough and crest and prevent the ship paying off across the direction of the swells, and then kicking back violently as she went over, wasting critical time and distance.

Nick watched the helmsman work, judging each sea as it came aboard, checking the ship's heading on the big repeating compass above the man's head. After ten minutes, Nick realized that there was no wastage; Warlock was making as good a course as was possible in these conditions.

The engine telegraph was pulled back to her maximum safe power-setting, the course was good and yet Warlock was not delivering those few extra knots of speed that Nick Berg had relied on when he had made the critical decision to race La Mouette for the prize.

Nick had relied on twenty-eight knots against the Frenchman's eighteen, and he was not getting it. Involuntarily, he glanced out to the west as Warlock came up on the top of the next crest. Through the streaming windows, from which the spinning wipers cleared circular areas of clean glass, Nick looked out across a wilderness of black water, forbidding and cold and devoid of other human presence.

Abruptly Nick crossed to the RT microphone.

‘ Engine Room confirm we are top of the green. ’

'Top of the green, it is, Skipper. ’

The Chief's casual tones floated in above the crash of the next sea coming aboard.

‘ Top of the green ’ was the maximum safe power-setting recommended by the manufacturers for those gigantic Mirrlees diesels. It was a far higher setting than top economical power, and they were burning fuel at a prodigious rate. Nick was pushing her as high as he could without going into the red, danger area above eighty per cent of full power, which at prolonged running might permanently damage her engines.

Nick turned away to his seat, and wedged himself into it. He groped for his cheroot case, and then checked himself, the lighter in his hand. His tongue and mouth felt furred over and dry. He had smoked without a break every waking minute since leaving Cape Town, and God knows he had slept little enough since then. He ran his tongue around his mouth with distaste before he returned the cheroot to his case, and crouched in his seat staring ahead, trying to work out why Warlock was running slow.

Suddenly he straightened and considered a possibility that brought a metallic green gleam of anger into Nick's eyes.

He slid out of his seat, nodded to the Third Officer who had the deck and ducked through the doorway in the back of the bridge into his day cabin. It was a ploy. He didn't want his visit below decks announced, and from his own suite he darted into the companionway.

The engine control room was as modern and gleaming as Warlock's navigation bridge. It was completely enclosed with double glass to cut down the thunder of her engines. The control console was banked below the windows, and all the ship's functions were displayed in green and red digital figures.

The view beyond the windows into the main engine room was impressive, even for Nick who had designed and supervised each foot of the layout.

The two Mirrlees diesel engines filled the white-painted cavern with only walking space between, each as long as four Cadillac Eldorados parked bumper to bumper and as deep as if another four Cadillacs had been piled on top of them.

The thirty-six cylinders of each block were crowned with a moving forest of valve stems and con-rod ends, each enormous powerhouse capable of pouring out eleven thousand usable horsepower.

it was only custom that made it necessary for any visitor, including the Master, to announce his arrival in the engine room to the Chief Engineer. Ignoring custom, Nick slipped quietly through the glass sliding doors, out of the hot burned-oil stench of the engine room into the cooler and sweeter conditioned air of the control room.

Vin Baker was deep in conversation with one of his electricians, both of them kneeling before the open doors of one of the tall grey steel cabinets which housed a teeming mass of coloured cables and transistor switches. Nick had reached the control console before the Chief Engineer uncoiled his lanky body from the floor and spun round to face him.

When Nick was very angry, his lips compressed in a single thin white line, the thick dark eyebrows seemed to meet above the snapping green eyes and large slightly beaked nose.

‘ You pulled the over-ride on me ,’ he accused in a flat, passionless voice that did not betray his fury. ‘ You're governing her out at seventy per cent of power. ’

‘ That's top of the green in my book, ’ Vin Baker told him. ‘ I'm not running my engines at eighty per cent in this sea. She'll shake the guts out of herself. ’ He paused and the stern was flung up violently as Warlock crashed over the top of another sea. The control room shuddered with the vibration of the screws breaking out of the surface, spinning wildly in the air before they could bite again.

‘ Listen to her, man. You want me to pour on more of it? ’

‘ She's built to take it. ’

‘ Nothing's built to run that hard, and live in this sea. ’

‘ I want the over-ride out ,’ said Nick flatly, indicating the chrome handle and pointer with which the engineer could cancel the power settings asked for by the bridge. ‘ I don't care when you do it - just as long as it's any time within the next five seconds. ’

‘ You get out of my engine room - and go play with your toys. ’

‘ All right ,’ Nick nodded, I'll do it myself. And he reached for the over-ride gear.

‘ You take your hands off my engines ,’ howled Vin Baker, and picked up the iron locking handle off the deck. ‘ You touch my engines and I'll break your teeth out of your head, you ice-cold Pommy bastard. ’ Even in his own anger, Nick blinked at the epithet, When he thought about the blazing passions and emotions that seethed within him, he nearly laughed aloud. Ice cold, he thought, so that's how he sees me.

‘ You stupid Bundaberg-swilling galah ’ he said quietly, as he reached for the over-ride. ‘ I don't really care if I have to kill you first, but we are going to eighty per cent! ’ It was Vin Baker's turn to blink behind his smeared glasses, he had not expected to be insulted in the colloquial. He dropped the heavy steel handle to the deck. It fell with a clang.

‘ I don't need it ,’ he announced, and tucked his spectacles into his back pocket and hoisted his trousers with both elbows. ‘ It will be more fun to take you to pieces by hand. ’

It was only then that Nick realized how tall the engineer was. His arms were ridged with the lean wiry taut muscle of hard physical labour. His fists, as he balled them, were lumpy with scar tissue across the knuckles and the size of a pair of nine-pound hammers. He went down into a fighter's crouch, and rode the plunging deck with an easy flexing of the long powerful legs.

As Nicholas touched the chrome over-ride handle, the first punch came from the level of Baker's knees, but it came so fast that Nick only just had time to sway away from it. It whistled up past his jaw and scraped the skin from the outside corner of his eye, but he counter-punched instinctively, swaying back and slamming it in under the armpit, feeling the blow land so solidly that his teeth jarred in his own head. The Chief's breath hissed, but he swung left-handed and a bony fist crushed the pad of muscle on the point of Nick's shoulder, bounced off and caught him high on the temple.

Even though it was a glancing blow, it felt as though a door had slammed in Nick's head, and resounding darkness closed behind his eyes. He fell forward into a clinch to ride the darkness, grabbing the lean hard body and smothering it in a bear hug as he tried to clear the singing darkness in his head.

He felt the Chief shift his weight, and was shocked at the power in that wiry frame, it took all his own strength to hold him. Suddenly and clearly he knew what was going to happen next. There were little white ridges of scar tissue half hidden by the widow's peak of flopping sandy hair on the Chief's forehead. Those scars from previous conflicts warned Nick.

Vin Baker reared back, like a cobra flaring for the strike, and then flung his head forward; it was the classic butt aimed for Nick's face and, had it landed squarely, it would have crushed in his nose and broken his teeth off level to the gums - but Nick anticipated, and dropped his own chin, tucking it down hard so that their foreheads met with a crack like a breaking oak branch.

The impact broke Nick's grip, and both of them reeled apart across the heaving deck, Vin Baker howling like a moon-sick dog and clutching his own head.

‘ Fight fair, you Pommy bastard! ’ he howled in outrage, and he came up short against the steel cabinets that lined the far side of the control room. The astonished electrician dived for cover under the control console, scattering tools across the deck.

Vin Baker lay for a moment gathering his lanky frame, and then, as Warlock swung hard over, rolling viciously in the cross sea, he used her momentum to hurl himself down the steeply tilting deck, dropping his head again like a battering ram to crush in Nick's ribs as he charged.

Nick turned like a cattle man working an unruly steer. He whipped one arm round Vin Baker's neck and ran with him, holding his head down and building up speed across the full length of the control room. They reached the armoured glass wall at the far end, and the top of Vin Baker's head was the point of impact with the weight of both their bodies behind it.

The Chief Engineer came round at the prick of the needle that Angel forced through the thick flap of open flesh on top of his head. He came round fighting drunkenly, but the cook held him down with one huge hairy arm.

‘ Easy, love. ’ Angel pulled the needle through the torn red weeping scalp and tied the stitch.

‘ Where is he, where is the bastard? ’ slurred the Chief.

‘ It's all over, Chiefie ’ Angel told him gently. ‘ And you are lucky he bashed you on the head - otherwise he might have hurt you. ’

The Chief winced as Angel pulled the thread up tight and knotted another stitch.

‘ He tried to mess with my engines. I taught the bastard a lesson. ’

"You've terrified him ,’ Angel agreed sweetly. ‘ Now you take a swig of this and lie still. I want you in this bunk for twelve hours - and I might come and tuck you in. ’

‘ I'm going back to my engines, ’ announced the Chief, and drained the medicine glass of brown spirit, then whistled at the bite of the fumes.

Angel left him and crossed to the telephone. He spoke quickly into it, and as the Chief lumbered off the bunk, Nick Berg stepped into the cabin, and nodded to the cook.

‘ Thank you, Angel. ’ Angel ducked out of the cabin and left them facing each other. The Chief opened his mouth to snarl at Nick.

‘ Jules Levoisin in La Mouette has probably made five hundred miles on us while you have been playing prima donna ,’ said Nick quietly, and Vin Baker's mouth stayed open, although no sound came out of it.

‘ I built this ship to run fast and hard in just this kind of contest, and now you are trying to do all of us out of prize money! ’ Nick turned on his heel and went back up the companionway to his navigation deck. He settled into his canvas chair and fingered the big purple swelling on his forehead tenderly. His head felt as though a rope had been knotted around it and twisted up tight. He wanted to go to his cabin and take something for the pain, but he did not want to miss the call when it came.

He lit another cheroot, and it tasted like burned tarred rope. He dropped it into the sandbox and the telephone at his shoulder rang once.

‘ Bridge, this is the Engine Room.

‘ Go ahead, Chief! ’

‘ We are going to eighty per cent now. ’

Nick did not reply, but he felt the change in the engine vibration and the more powerful rush of the hull beneath him.

‘ Nobody told me La Mouette was running against us. No way that frog-eating bastard's going to get a line on her first ,’ announced Vin Baker grimly, and there was a silence between them. Something more had to be said.

‘ I bet you a pound to a pinch of kangaroo dung ,’ challenged the Chief ‘you don’t know what a galah is and that you’ve never tasted a Bundaberg rum in your life.’

Nick found himself smiling, even through t he blinding pain in his head.

‘ Be-yew-dy! ’ Nick said, making three syllables of it and keeping the laughter out of his voice, as he hung up the receiver.

Dave Allen's voice was apologetic. ‘ Sorry to wake you, sir, but the Golden Adventurer is reporting. ’

‘ I'm coming ,’ mumbled Nick, and swung his legs off the bunk. He had been in that black death-sleep of exhaustion, but it took him only seconds to pull back the dark curtains from his mind. It was his old training as a watch-keeping officer.

He rubbed away the last traces of sleep, feeling the rasping black stubble of his beard under his fingers as he crossed quickly to his bathroom. He spent forty seconds in bathing his face and combing his tousled hair, and regretfully decided there was no time to shave. Another rule of his was to look good in a world which so often judged a man by his appearance.

When he went out on to the navigation bridge, he knew at once that the wind had increased its velocity. He guessed It was rising force six now, and Warlock's motion was more violent and abandoned. Beyond the warm, dimly lit capsule of the bridge, all those elements of cold water and vicious racing winds turned the black night to a howling tumult.

The Trog was crouched over his machines, grey and wizened and sleepless. He hardly turned his head to hand Nick the message flimsy.

‘ Master of Golden Adventurer to Christy Marine ,’ the Decca decoded swiftly, and Nick grunted as he saw the new position report. Something had altered drastically in the liner's circumstances. ‘ Main engines still unserviceable. Current setting easterly and increasing to eight knots. Wind rising force six from north-west. Critical ice danger to the ship. What assistance can I expect? ’ There was a panicky note to that last line, and Nick saw why when he compared the liner's new position on the spread chart.

‘ She's going down sharply on the lee shore ,’ David muttered as he worked quickly over the chart. ‘ The current and wind are working together - they are driving her down on to the land. ’ He touched the ugly broken points of Coatsland's shoreline with the tip of one finger.

‘S he ,s eighty miles offshore now. At the rate she is drifting, it will take her only another ten hours before she goes aground. ’

‘I f she doesn't hit an iceberg first ,’ said Nick. ‘ From the Master's last message, it sounds as though they are into big ice. ’

‘ That's a cheerful thought ,’ agreed David, and straightened up from the chart.

‘ What's our time to reach her? ’

‘ Another forty hours, sir ,’ David hesitated and pushed the thick white-gold lock of hair off his forehead, ‘ if we can make good this speed - but we may have to reduce when we reach the ice. ’ Nick turned away to his canvas chair. He felt the need to pace back and forward, to release the pent-up forces within him. However, any movement in this heavy pounding sea was not only difficult but downright dangerous, so he groped his way to the chair and wedged himself in, staring ahead into the clamorous black night.

He thought about the terrible predicament of the liner's Captain. His ship was at deadly risk, and the lives of his crew and passengers with it.

How many lives? Nick cast his mind back and came up with the figures. The Golden Adventurer's full complement of officers and crew was 235, and there was accommodation for 375 passengers, a possible total of over six hundred souls. If the ship was lost, Warlock would be hard put to take aboard that huge press of human life.

‘ Well, sir, they signed on for adventure ,’ David Allen spoke into his thoughts as though he had heard them, ‘ and they are getting their money's worth. ’ Nick glanced at him, and nodded. ‘ Most of them will be elderly. A berth on that cruise costs a fortune, and it's usually only the oldsters who have that sort of gold. If she goes aground, we are going to lose life! ’

‘ With respect, Captain .’ David hesitated, and blushed again for the first time since leaving port, ’ if her Captain knows that assistance is on the way, it may prevent him doing something crazy! ’ Nick was silent. The Mate was right, of course. It was cruel to leave them in the despair of believing they were alone down there in those terrible ice fields. The Adventurer's Captain could make a panic decision, one that could be averted if he knew how close succour was.

‘ The air temperature out there is minus five degrees, and if the wind is at thirty miles an hour, that will make it a lethal chill factor. If they take to the boats in that–‘ David was interrupted by the Trog calling from the radio room.

‘ The owners are replying. ’

I t was a long message that Christy Marine were sending to their Captain. It was filled with those same hollow assurances that a surgeon gives to a cancer patient, but one paragraph had relevance for Nick:

‘A ll efforts being made to contact salvage tugs rep orted operating South Atlantic.’

David Allen looked at him expectantly. It was the right humane thing to do. To tell them he was only eight hundred miles away, and closing swiftly.

Nervous energy fizzed in Nick's blood, making him restless and angry. On an impulse he left his chair and carefully crossed the heaving deck to the starboard wing of the bridge.

He slid open the door and stepped out into the gale. The shock of that icy air took his breath away and he gasped like a drowning man. He felt tears streaming from his eyes across his cheeks and the frozen spray struck into his face like steel darts.

Carefully he filled his lungs, and his nostrils flared as he smelt the ice. It was that un mistakeable dank smell he remembered so well from the northern Arctic seas. It was like the body smell of some gigantic reptilian sea monster and it struck the mariner's chill into his soul.

He could endure only a few seconds more of the gale, but when he stepped back into the cosy green-lit warmth of the bridge, his mind was clear, and he was thinking crisply.

‘ Mr. Allen, there is ice ahead. ’

‘ I have a watch on the radar, sir. ’

‘ Very good ,’ Nick nodded, ‘ but we'll reduce to fifty per cent of power. He hesitated, and then went on, ‘ and maintain radio silence. ’ The decision was hard made, and Nick saw the accusation in David Allen's eyes before he turned away to give the orders for the reduction in power. Nick felt a sudden and uncharacteristic urge to explain the decision to him. He did not know why - perhaps he needed the Mate's understanding and sympathy. Instantly Nick saw that as a symptom of his weakness and vulnerability. He had never needed sympathy before, and he steeled himself against it now.

His decision to maintain radio silence was correct. He was dealing with two hard men. He knew he could not afford to give an inch of sea room to Jules Levoisin. He would force him to open radio contact first. He needed that advantage.

The other man with whom he had to deal was Duncan Alexander, and he was a hating man, dangerous and vindictive. He had tried once to destroy Nick - and perhaps he had already succeeded. Nick had to guard himself now, he must pick with care his moment to open negotiations with Christy Marine and the man who had displaced him at its head. Nick must be in a position of utmost strength when he did so.

Jules Levoisin must be forced to declare himself first, Nick decided. The Captain of the Golden Adventurer would have to be left in the agonies of doubt a little longer, and Nick consoled himself with the thought that any further drastic change in the liner's circumstances or a decision by the Master to abandon his ship and commit his company to the lifeboats would be announced on the open radio channels and would give him a chance to intervene.

Nick was about to caution the Trog to keep a particular watch on Channel 16 for La Mouette's first transmission, then he checked himself. That was another thing he never did - issue unnecessary orders. The Trog's grey wrinkled head was wreathed in clouds of reeking cigar smoke but was bowed to his mass of electronic equipment, and he adjusted a dial with careful lover's fingers; his little eyes were bright and sleepless as those of an ancient sea turtle.

Nick went to his chair and settled down to wait out the few remaining hours of the short Antarctic summer night.

The radar screen had shown strange and alien capes and headlands above the sea clutter of the storm, strange islands, anomalies which did not relate to the Admiralty charts. Between these alien masses shone myriad other smaller contacts, bright as fireflies, any one of which could have been the echo of a stricken ocean liner - but which was not.

As Warlock nosed cautiously down into this enchanted sea, the dawn that had never been far from the horizon flushed out, timorous as a bride, decked in colours of gold and pink that struck splendorous splinters of light off the icebergs.

The horizon ahead of them was cluttered with ice, some of the fragments were but the size of a billiard table and they bumped and scraped down the Warlock's side, then swung and bobbed in her wake as she passed. There were others the size of a city block, weird and fanciful structures of honeycombed white ice, that stood as tall as Warlock's upperworks as she passed.

‘ White ice is soft ice ,’ Nick murmured to David Allen beside him, and then caught himself. it was an unnecessary speech, inviting familiarity, and before the Mate could answer, Nick turned quickly away to the radar-repeater and lowered his face to the eye-piece in the coned hood.

For a minute he studied the images of the surrounding ice in the darkened body of the instrument, then went back to his seat and stared ahead impatiently.

Warlock was running too fast, Nick knew it; he was relying on the vigilance of his deck officers to carry her through the ice. Yet still this speed was too slow for his seething impatience.

Above their horizon rose another shoreline, a great unbroken sweep of towering cliff which caught the low sun, and glowed in emerald and amethyst, a drifting tableland of solid hard ice, forty miles across and two hundred feet high.

As they closed with that massive translucent island, so the colours that glowed through it became more hauntingly beautiful. The cliffs were rent by deep bays, and split by crevasses whose shadowy depths were dark sapphire, blue and mysterious, paling out to a thousand shades of green.

‘ My God, it's beautiful, ’ said David Allen with the reverence of a men kneeling in a cathedral.

The crests of the ice cliffs blazed in clearest ruby; to windward, the big sea piled in and crashed against those cliffs, surging up them in explosive bursts of white spray. Yet the iceberg did not dip nor swing or work, even in that murderous sea.

‘ Look at the lee she is making ,’ Dave Allen pointed. ‘ You could ride out a force twelve behind her. ’

On the leeward side, the waters were protected from the wind by that mountain of sheer ice. Green and docile, they lapped those mysterious blue cliffs, and Warlock went into the lee, passing in a ship's length from the plunging rearing action of a wild horse into the tranquillity of a mountain lake, calm, windless and unnatural.

I n the calm, Angel brought trays piled with crisp brown baked Cornish pasties and steaming mugs of thick creamy cocoa, and they ate breakfast at three in the morning, marvelling at the fine pale sunlight and the towers of incredible beauty, the younger officers shouting and laughing when a school of five black killer whales passed so close that they could see their white cheek patterns and wide grinning mouths through the icy clear waters.

The great mammals circled the ship, then ducked beneath her hull, surging up on the far side with their huge black triangular fins shearing the surface as they blew through the vents in the top of their heads. The fishy stink of their breath pervaded the bridge, and then they were gone, and Warlock motored calmly along in the lee of the ice, like a holiday launch of day-trippers.

Nicholas Berg did not join the spontaneous gaiety. He munched one of Angel's delicious pies full of meat and thick gravy, but he could not finish it. His stomach was too tense. He found himself resenting the high spirits of his officers. The laughter offended him, now when his whole life hung in precarious balance. He felt the temptation to quell them with a few harsh words, conscious of the power he had to plunge them into instant consternation.

Nick listened to their carefree banter and felt old enough to be their father, despite the few years difference in their ages. He was impatient with them, irritated that they should be able to laugh like this when so much was at stake - six hundred human lives, a great ship, tens of millions of dollars, his whole future. They would probably never themselves know what it felt like to put a lifetime's work at risk on a single flip of the coin - and then suddenly, unaccountably, he envied them.

He could not understand the sensation, could not fathom why suddenly he longed to laugh with them, to share the companionship of the moment, to be free of pressure for just a little while. For fifteen years, he had not known that sort of hiatus, had never wanted it.

He stood up abruptly, and immediately the bridge was silent. Every officer concentrating on his appointed task, not one of them glancing at him as he paced once, slowly, across the wide bridge. It did not need a word to change the mood, and suddenly Nick felt guilty. it was too easy, too cheap.

Carefully Nick steeled himself, shutting out the weakness, building up his resolve and determination, bringing all his concentration to bear on the Herculean task ahead of him, and he paused at the door of the radio room. The Trog looked up from his machines, and they exchanged a single glance of understanding. Two completely dedicated men, with no time for frivolity.

Nick nodded and paced on, the strong handsome face stern and uncompromising his step firm and measured but when he stopped again by the side windows of the bridge and looked up at the magnificent cliff of ice, he felt the doubts surging up again within him.

How much had he sacrificed for what he had gained, how much joy and laughter had he spurned to follow the high road of challenge, how much beauty had he passed along the way without seeing it in his haste, how much love and warmth and companionship? He thought with a fierce pang of the wom a n who had been his wife, and who had gone now with the child who was his son. Why had they gone, and what had they left him with - after all his strivings?

Behind him, the radio crackled and hummed as the carrier beam opened Channel 16, then it pitched higher as a human voice came through in clear.

‘ Mayday. Mayday. Mayday. This is the Golden Adventurer! ’

Nick spun and ran to the radio room as the calm masculine voice read out the coordinates of the ship's position.

‘ We are in imminent danger of striking. We are preparing to abandon ship. Can any vessel render assistance? Repeat, can any vessel render assistance? ’

‘ Good God ,’ David Allen's voice was harsh with anxiety, ’ the current's got them, they're going down on Cape Alarm at nine knots - she's only fifty miles offshore and we are still two hundred and twenty miles from that position.

‘ Where is La Mouette? ’ growled Nick Berg. ‘ Where the hell is she?

‘ We'll have to open contact now, sir ,’ David Allen looked up from the chart. ‘ You cannot let them go down into the boats - not in this weather, sir. It would be murder. ’

‘ Thank you, Number One ,’ said Nick quietly. ‘Your advice is always welcome.’ David flushed, but there was anger and not embarrassment beneath the colour. Even in the stress of the moment, Nick noted that, and adjusted his opinion of his First Officer. He had guts as well as brains.

The Mate was right, of course. There was only one thing to consider now, the conservation of human life.

Nick looked up at the top of the ice cliff and saw the low cloud tearing off it, rolling and swirling in the wind, pouring down over the edge like boiling milk frothing from the lip of a great pot.

He had to send now. La Mouette had won the contest of silence. Nick stared up at the cloud and composed the message he would send. He must reassure the Master, urge him to delay his decision to abandon ship and give Warlock the time to close the gap, perhaps even reach her before she struck on Cape Alarm.

The silence on the bridge was deepened by the absence of wind. They were all watching him now, waiting for the decision, and in that silence the carrier beam of Channel 16 hummed and throbbed.

Then suddenly a rich Gallic accent poured into the silent bridge, a full fruity voice that Nick remembered so clearly, even after all the years.

‘ Master of Golden Adventurer this is the Master of salvage tug La Mouette. I am proceeding at best speed your assistance. Do you accept Lloyd's Open Form "No cure no pay ”?’

Nick kept his face from showing any emotion, but his heart barged wildly against his ribs. Jules Levoisin had broken silence.

‘ Plot his position report ,’ he said quietly.

‘ God! She's inside us ,’ David Allen's face was stricken as he marked La Mouette's reported position on the chart. ‘ She's a hundred miles ahead of us. ’

‘ No ,’ Nick shook his head, ‘ He's lying. ’

‘ Sir? ’

‘ He's lying. He always lies. ’ Nick lit a cheroot and when it was drawing evenly, h e spoke again to his radio officer.

‘ Did you get a bearing? ’ and the Trog looked up from his radio direction-finding compass on which he was tracing La Mouette's transmissions.

‘ I have only one coordinate, you won't get a fix –‘

But Nick interrupted him, ‘ We'll use his best course from Golfo San Jorge for a fix. ’ He turned back to David Allen. ‘ Plot that. ’

‘ There's a difference of over three hundred nautical miles. ’

‘ Yes .’ Nick nodded . ‘ That old pirate wouldn't broadcast an accurate position to all the world. We are inside him and running five knots better, we'll put a line over Golden Adventurer before he's in radar contact. ’

‘ Are you going to open contact with Christy Marine now, sir? ’

‘ No, Mr. Allen. ’

‘ But they will do a deal with La Mouette - unless we bid now. ’

‘ I don't think so ,’ Nick murmured, and almost went on to say, ‘ Duncan Alexander won't settle for Lloyd's Open Form while he is the underwriter, and his ship is free and floating. He'll fight for daily hire and bonus, and Jules Levoisin won't buy that package. He'll hold out for the big plum. They won't do a deal until the two ships are in visual contact - and by that time I'll have her in tow and I'll fight the bastard in the awards court for twenty-five per cent of her value -‘ But he did not say it. ‘ Steady as she goes, Mr. Allen ,’ was all he said, as he left the bridge.

He closed the door of his day cabin and leaned back against it, shutting his eyes tightly as he gathered himself.

It had been so very close, a matter of seconds and he would have declared himself and given the advantage to La Mouette.

Through the door behind him, he heard David Allen s voice. ‘ Did you see him? He didn't feel a thing - not a bloody thing. He was going to let those poor bastards go into the boats. He must piss ice-water. ’ The voice was muffled, but the outrage in it was tempered by awe.

Nick kept his eyes shut a moment longer, then he straightened up and pushed himself away from the door. He wanted it to begin now. It was in the waiting and the uncertainty which was eroding what was left of his strength.

‘ Please God, let me reach them in time. ’ And he was not certain whether it was for the lives or for the salvage award that he was praying.

Captain Basil Reilly, the Master of the Golden Adventurer, was a tall man, with a lean and wiry frame that promised reserves of strength and endurance. His face was very darkly tanned and splotched with the dark patches of benign sun cancer. His heavy m o ustache was silvered like the pelt of a snow fox, and though his eyes were set in webs of finely wrinkled and pouchy skin, they were bright and calm and intelligent.

He stood on the windward wing of his navigation bridge and watched the huge black seas tumbling in to batter his helpless ship. He was taking them broadside now, and each time they struck, the hull shuddered and heeled with a sick dead motion, giving reluctantly to the swells that rose up and broke over her rails, sweeping her decks from side to side, and then cascading off her again in a tumble of white that smoked in the wind.

He adjusted the life-jacket he wore, settling the rough canvas more comfortably around his shoulders as he reviewed his position once more.

Golden Adventurer had taken the ice in that eight-to-midnight watch traditionally allotted to the most junior of the navigating officers. The impact had hardly been noticeable, yet it had awoken the Master from deep sleep - just a slight check and jar that had touched some deep chord in the mariner's instinct.

The ice had been a growler, one of the most deadly of all hazards. The big bergs standing high and solid to catch the radar beams, or the eye of even the most inattentive deck watch, were easily avoided. However, the low ice lying awash, with its great bulk and weight almost completely hidden by the dark and turbulent waters, was as deadly as a predator in ambush.

The growler showed itself only in the depths of each wave trough, or in the swirl of the current around it, as though a massive sea-monster lurked there. At night, these indications would pass unnoticed by even the sharpest eyes, and below the surface, the wave action eroded the body of the growler, turning it into a horizontal blade that lay ten feet or more below the water level and reached out two or three hundred feet from the visible surface indications.

With the Third Officer on watch, and steaming at cautionary speed of a mere twelve knots, the Golden Adventurer had brushed against one of these monsters, and although the actual impact had gone almost unnoticed on board, the ice had opened her like the knife stroke which splits a herring for the smoking rack.

It was classic Titanic damage, a fourteen-foot rent through her side, twelve feet below the Pli m soll line, shearing two of her watertight compartments, one of which was her main engine room section.

They had held the water easily until the electrical explosion, and since then, the Master had battled to keep her afloat. Slowly, step by step, fighting all the way, he had yielded to the sea. All the bilge pumps were running still, but the water was steadily gaining.

Three days ago he had brought all his passengers up from below the main deck, and he had battened down all the watertight bulkheads. The crew and passengers were accommodated now in the lounges and smoking rooms.

The ship's luxury and opulence had been transformed into the crowded, unhygienic and deteriorating conditions of a city under siege.

It reminded him of the catacombs of the London underground converted to air-raid shelters during the blitz. He had been a lieutenant on shore-leave and he had passed one night there that he would remember for the rest of his life.

There was the same atmosphere on board now. The sanitary arrangements were inadequate. Fourteen toilet bowls for six hundred, many of them seasick and suffering from diarrhoea. There were no baths nor showers, and insufficient power for the heating of water in the hand basins. The emergency generators delivered barely sufficient power to work the ship, to run the pumps, to supply minimal lighting, and to keep the communicational and navigational equipment running. There was no heating in the ship and the outside air temperature had fallen to minus twenty degrees now.

The cold in the spacious public lounges was brutal. The passengers huddled in their fur coats and bulky life-jackets under mounds of blankets. There were limited cooking facilities on the gas stoves usually reserved for adventure tours ashore. There was no baking or grilling, and most of the food was eaten cold and congealed from cans; only the soup and beverages steamed in the cold clammy air, like the breaths of the waiting and helpless multitude.

The desalination plants had not been in use since the ice collision and now the supply of fresh water was critical; even hot drinks were rationed.

Of the 368 paying passengers, only forty-eight were below the age of fifty, and yet the morale was extraordinary. Men and women who before the emergency could and did complain bitterly at a dress shirt not ironed to crisp perfection or a wine served a few degrees too cold, now accepted a mug of beef tea as though it were a vintage Ch a teau Margaux, and laughed and chatted animatedly in the cold, shaming with their fortitude the few that might have complained. These were an unusual sample of humanity, men and women of achievement and resilience, who had come here to this outlandish corner of the globe in search of new experience. They were mentally prepared for adventure and even danger, and seemed almost to welcome this as part of the entertainment provided by the tour.

Yet, standing on his bridge, the Master was under no illusion as to the gravity of their situation. Peering through the streaming glass, he watched a work party, led by his First Officer, toiling heroically in the bows. Four men in glistening yellow plastic suits and hoods, drenched by the icy seas, working with the slow cold-numbed movements of automatons as they struggled to stream a sea-anchor and bring the ship's head up into the sea, so that she might ride more easily, and perhaps slow her precipitous rush down onto the rocky coast. Twice in the preceding days, the anchors they had rigged had been torn away by sea and wind and the ship's dead weight.

Three hours before, he had called his engineering officers up from below, where the risk to their lives had become too great to chance against the remote possibility of restoring power to his main engines. He had conceded the battle to the sea and now he was planning the final moves when he must abandon his command and attempt to remove six hundred human beings from this helpless hulk to the even greater dangers and hardships of Cape Alarm's barren and storm-rent shores.

Cape Alarm was one of those few pinnacles of barren black rock which thrust out from beneath the thick white mantle of the Antarctic cap, pounded free of ice like an anvil beneath the eternal hammering assault of storm and sea and wind.

The long straight ridge protruded almost fifty miles into the eastern extremity of the Weddell Sea, was fifty miles across at its widest point, and terminated in a pair of bull's horns which formed a small protected bay named after the polar explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton.

Shackleton Bay, with its steep purple-black beaches of round polished pebbles, was the nesting ground of a huge colony of chin-strap penguin, and for this reason was one of Golden Adventurer's regular ports of call.

On each tour, the ship would anchor in the deep and calm waters of the bay, while her passengers went ashore to study and photograph the breeding birds and the extraordinary geological formations, sculptured by ice and wind into weird and grotesque shapes.

Only ten days earlier, Golden Adventurer had weighed anchor in Shackleton Bay and stood out into the Weddell Sea. The weather had been mild and still, with a slow oily swell and a bright clear sun. Now, before a force seven gale, in temperatures forty-five degrees colder, and borne on the wild dark sweep of the current, she was being carried back to that same black and rocky shore.

There was no doubt in Captain Reilly's mind - they were going to go aground on Cape Alarm, there was no avoiding that fate with this set of sea and wind, unless the French salvage tug reached them first.

La Mouette should have been in radar contact already, if the tug's reported position was correct, and Basil Reilly let a little frown of worry crease the brown parchment skin of his forehead and shadows were in his eyes.

‘ Another message from head office, sir. ’ His Second Officer was beside him now, a young man with the shape of a teddy bear swathed in thick woollen jerseys and marine blue top coat. Basil Reilly's strict dress regulations had long ago been abandoned and their breaths steamed in the frigid air of the navigation bridge.

‘ Very well. ’ Reilly glanced at the flimsy. ‘ Send that to the tug master. ’ The contempt was clear in his voice, his disdain for this haggling between owners and salvors, when a great ship and six hundred lives were -at risk in the cold sea.

He knew what he would do if the salvage tug made contact before Golden Adventurer struck the waiting fangs of rock, he would override his owner s express orders and exercise his rights as Master by, immediately accepting the offer of assistance under Lloyd's Open Form.

‘ But let him come ,’ he murmured to himself. ‘ Please God, let him come ,’ and he raised his binoculars and slowly swept a long jagged horizon where the peaks of the swells seemed black and substantial as rock. He paused with a leap of his pulse when something white blinked in the field of the glasses and then, with a little sick slide, realized that it was only a random ray of sunlight catching a pinnacle of ice from the floating bergs.

He lowered the glasses and crossed from the windward wing of the bridge to the lee. He did not need the glasses now, Cape Alarm was black and menacing against the sow's-belly grey of the sky. Its ridges and valleys picked out with gleaming ice and banked snow, and against her steep shore, the sea creamed and leapt high in explosions of purest white.

‘ Sixteen miles, sir ,’ said the First Officer, coming to stand beside him. ‘ And the current seems to be setting a little more northerly now. ’ They were both silent, as they balanced automatically against the violent pitch and roll of the deck.

Then the Mate spoke again with a bitter edge to his voice, ‘ Where is that bloody frog? ’ And they watched the night of Antarctica begin to shroud the cruel lee shore in funereal cloaks of purple and sable, picked out with the ermine collarsand cuffs of ice.

She was very young, probably not yet twenty-five years of age, and even the layers of heavy clothing topped by a man's anorak three sizes too big could not disguise the slimness of her body, that almost coltish elegance of long fine limbs and muscle toned by youth and hard exercise.

Her head was set jauntily on the long graceful stem of her neck, like a golden sunflower, and the profuse mane of long hair was sun-bleached, streaked with silver and platinum and copper gold, twisted up carelessly into a rope almost as thick as a man's wrist and piled on top of her head. Yet loose strands floated down on to her forehead and tickled her nose so that she pursed her lips and puffed them away.

Her hands were both occupied with the heavy tray she carried, and she balanced like a skilled horsewoman against the ship's extravagant plunging as she offered it.

‘ Come on, Mrs. Goldberg, ’ she wheedled. ‘ It will warm the cockles of your tum . ’

‘ I don't think so, my dear ,’ the white-haired woman faltered.

‘ Just for me, then ,’ the girl wheedled.

‘ Well ,’ the woman took one of the m ugs and sipped it tentatively. ‘ It's good ,’ she said, and then quickly and furtively, ‘ Samantha, has the tug come yet? ’

‘ It will be here any minute now, and the Captain is a dashing Frenchman, just the right age for you, with a lovely tickly m o ustache. I'm goin g to introduce you first thing.’

The woman was a widow in her late fifties, a little overweight and more than a little afraid, but she smiled and sat up a little straighter.

‘ You naughty thing ,’ she smiled.

‘ Just as soon as I've finished with this ,’ Samantha indicated the tray, ‘ I'll come and sit with you. We'll play some klabrias, okay? ’ When Samantha Silver smiled, her teeth were very straight and white against the peach of her tanned cheeks and the freckles that powdered her nose like gold dust. She moved on.

They welcomed her, each of them, men and women, competing for her attention, for she was one of those rare creatures that radiate such warmth, a sort of shining innocence, like a kitten or a beautiful child, and she laughed and chided and teased them in return and left them grinning and heartened, but jealous of her going so they followed her with their eyes. Most of them felt she belonged to them personally, and they wanted all of her time and presence, making up questions or little stories to detain her for a few extra moments.

‘ There was an albatross following us a little while ago, Sam.

‘ Yes, I saw it through the galley window It was a wandering albatross, wasn't it, Sam!

‘ Oh, come on, Mr. Stewart! You know better than that. It was Diomedea melanophris, the black-browed albatross, but still it's good luck. All albatrosses are good luck that's a scientifically proved fact. ’

Samantha had a doctorate in biology and was one of the ship's specialist guides. She was on sabbatical leave from the University of Miami where she held a research fellowship in marine ecology.

Passengers thirty years her senior treated her like a favourite daughter most of the time. However, in even the mildest crisis they became childlike in their appeal to her and in their reliance on her natural strength which they recognized and sought instinctively. She was to them a combination of beloved pet and den-mother.

While a ship's steward refilled her tray with mugs, Samantha paused at the entrance to the temporary galley they had set up in the cocktail room and looked back into the densely packed lounge.

The stink of unwashed humanity and tobacco smoke was almost a solid blue thing, but she felt a rush of affection for them. They were behaving so very well, she thought, and she was proud of them.

‘W ell done, team, ’ she thought, and grinned. It was not often that she could find affection in herself for a mass of human beings. Often she had pondered how a creature so fine and noble and worthwhile as the human individual could, in its massed state, become so unattractive.

She thought briefly of the human multitudes of the crowded cities. She hated zoos and animals in cages, remembering as a little girl crying for a bear that danced endlessly against its bars, driven mad by its confinement. The concrete cages of the cities drove their captives into similar strange and bizarre behaviour. All creatures should be free to move and live and breathe, she believed, and yet man, the super-predator, who had denied that right to so many other creatures, was now destroying himself with the same single mindedness, poisoning and imprisoning himself in an orgy that made the madness of the lemmings seem logical in comparison. It was only when she saw human beings like these in circumstances like these that she could be truly proud of them - and afraid for them.

She felt her own fear deep down, at the very periphery of her awareness, for she was a sea-creature who loved and understood the sea - and knew its monumental might. She knew what awaited them out there in the storm, and she was afraid. With a deliberate effort she lifted the slump of her shoulders, and set the smile brightly on her lips and picked up the heavy tray.

At that moment the speakers of the public-address system gave a preliminary squawk, and then filtered the Captain's cultured and measured tones into the suddenly silent ship.

‘ Ladies and gentlemen, this is your Captain speaking. I regret to inform you that we have not yet established radar contact with the salvage tug La Mouette, and that I now deem it necessary to transfer the ship's company to the lifeboats.’ There was a sigh and stir in the crowded lounges, heard even above the storm. Samantha saw one of her favourite passengers reach for his wife and press her silvery-grey head to his shoulder.

You have all practised the lifeboat drill many times and you know your teams and stations. I am sure I do not have to impress upon you the necessity to go to your stations in orderly fashion, and to obey explicitly the orders of the ship's officers. Samantha set down her tray and crossed quickly to Mrs. Goldberg. The woman was weeping, softly and quietly, lost and bewildered, and Samantha slipped her arm around her shoulder.

‘ Come now ,’ she whispered. ‘ Don't let the others see you cry. ’

‘ Will you stay with me, Samantha? ’

‘ Of course I will. ’ She lifted the woman to her feet. ‘ It will be all right - you'll see. just think of the story you'll be able to tell your grandchildren when you get home. ’

Captain Reilly reviewed his preparations for leaving the ship, going over them item by item in his mind. He now knew by heart the considerable list he had compiled days previously from his own vast experience of Antarctic conditions and the sea.

The single most important consideration was that no person should be immersed, or even drenched by sea water during the transfer. Life expectation in these waters was four minutes. Even if the victim were immediately pulled from the water, it was still four minutes, unless the sodden clothing could be removed and heating provided. With this wind blowing, rising eight of the Beaufort scale at forty miles an hour and an air temperature of minus twenty degrees, the chill factor was at the extreme of stage seven which, translated into physical terms, meant that a few minutes exposure would numb and exhaust a man, and that mere survival was a matter of planning and precaution.

The second most important consideration was the physiological crisis of his passengers, when they left the comparative warmth and comfort and security of the ship for the shrieking cold and the violent discomfort of a life raft afloat in an Antarctic storm.

They had been briefed, and mentally prepared as much as was possible. An officer had checked each passenger's clothing and survival equipment, they had been fed high sugar tablets to ward off the cold, and the life-raft allocations had been carefully worked out to provide balanced complements, each with a competent crew member in command. It was as much as he could do for them, and he turned his attention to the logistics of the transfer.

The lifeboats would go first, six of them, slung three on each side of the ship, each crewed by a navigation officer and five seamen. While the great drogue of the sea-anchor held the ship's head into the wind and the sea, they would be swung outboard on their hydraulic derricks and the winches would lower them swiftly to the surface of a sea temporarily smoothed by the oil sprayed from the pumps in the bows.

Although they were decked-in, powered, and equipped with radio, the lifeboats were not the ideal vehicles for survival in these conditions. Within hours, the men aboard them would be exhausted by the cold. For this reason, none of the passengers would be aboard them. Instead, they would go into the big inflatable life-rafts, self-righting even in the worst seas and enclosed with a double skin of insulation. Equipped with emergency rations and battery powered locator beacons, they would ride the big black seas more easily and each provide shelter for twenty human beings, whose body warmth would keep the interior habitable, at least for the time it took to tow the rafts to land.

The motor lifeboats were merely the shepherds for the rafts. They would herd them together and then tow them in tandem to the sheltering arms of Shackleton Bay.

Even in these blustering conditions, the tow should not take more than twelve hours. Each boat would tow five rafts, and though the crews of the motor boats would have to change, brought into the canopy of the rafts and rested, there should be no insurmountable difficulties; Captain Reilly was hoping for a tow speed of between three and four knots.

The lifeboats were packed with equipment and fuel and food sufficient to keep the shipwrecked party for a month, perhaps two on reduced rations, and once the calmer shores of the bay had been reached, the rafts would be carried ashore, the canopies reinforced with slabs of packed snow and transformed into igloo-type huts to shelter the survivors. They might be in Shackleton Bay a long time, for even when the French tug reached them, it could not take aboard six hundred persons, some would have to remain and await another rescue ship.

Captain Reilly took one more look at the land. It was very close now, and even in the gloom of the onrushing night, the peaks of ice and snow glittered like the fangs of some terrible and avaricious monster.

‘ All right ,’ he nodded to his First Officer, ‘ we will begin .

The Mate lifted the small two-way radio to his lips. ‘ Fore deck . Bridge. You may commence laying the oil now. ’

From each side of the bows, the hoses threw up silver dragon-fly wings of sprayed diesel oil, pumped directly from the ship's bunkers; its viscous weight resisted the wind's efforts to tear it away, and it fell in a thick coating across the surface of the sea, broken by the floodlights into the colour spectrum of the rainbow.

Immediately, the sea was soothed, the wind-riven surface flattened by the weight of oil, so the swells passed in smooth and weighty majesty beneath the ship's hull.

The two officers on the wing of the bridge could feel the sick, waterlogged response of the hull. She was heavy with the water in her, no longer light and quick and alive.

‘ Send the boats away ,’ said the Captain, and the mate passed the order over the radio in quiet conversational tones.

The hydraulic arms of the derricks lifted the six boats off their chocks and swung them out over the ship's side, suspended one moment high above the surface; then, as the ship fell through the trough, the oil-streaked crest raced by only 6 feet below their keels. The officer of each lifeboat must judge the sea, and operate the winch so as to drop neatly onto the back slope of a passing swell - then instantly detach the automatic clamps and stand away from the threatening steel cliff of the ship's side.

In the floodlights, the little boats shone wetly with spray, brilliant electric yellow in colour, and decorated with garlands of ice like Christmas toys. In the small armoured-glass windows the officers faces also glistened whitely with the strain and concentration of these terrifying moments, as each tried to judge the rushing black seas.

Suddenly the heavy nylon rope that held the cone shaped drogue of the sea-anchor snapped with a report like a cannon shot, and the rope snaked and hissed in the air, a vicious whiplash which could have sliced a man in half.

It was like slipping the head halter from a wild stallion. Golden Adventurer threw up her bows, joyous to be freed of restraint. She slewed back across the scend of the sea, and was immediately pinned helplessly broadside, her starboard side into the wind, and the three yellow lifeboats still dangling.

A huge wave reared up out of the darkness. As it rushed down on the ship, one of the lifeboats sheared her cables and fell heavily to the surface, the tiny propeller churning frantically, trying to bring her round to meet the wave but the wave caught her and dashed her back against the steel side of the ship.

She burst like a ripe melon and the guts spilled out of her; from the bridge they saw the crew swirled helplessly away into the darkness. The little locator lamps on their lifejackets burned feebly as fire-flies in the darkness and then blinked out in the storm.

The forward lifeboa t was swung like a door-knocker against the ship, her forward cable jammed so she dangled stern upmost, and as each wave punched into her, she was smashed against the hull. They could hear the men in her screaming, a thin pitiful sound on the wind, that went on for many minutes as the sea slowly beat the boat into a tangle of wreckage.

The third boat was also swung viciously against the hull. The releases on her clamps opened, and she dropped twenty feet i nto the boil and surge of water, submerging completely and then bobbing free like a yellow fishing float after the strike. Leaking and settling swiftly, she limped away into the clamorous night.

‘ Oh, my God! ’ whispered Captain Reilly, and in the harsh lights of the bridge, his face was suddenly old and haggard. In a single stroke he had lost half his boats. As yet he did not mourn the men taken by the sea, that would come later - now it was the loss of the boats that appalled him, for it threatened the lives of nearly six hundred others.

‘ The other boats ’ - the First Officer's voice was ragged with shock –‘ the others got away safely, sir. ’ In the lee of the towering hull, protected from both wind and sea the other three boats had dropped smoothly to the surface and detached swiftly. Now they circled out in the dark night, with their spotlights probing like long white fingers. One of them staggered over the wildly plunging crests to take off the crew of the stricken lifeboat, and they left the cracked hull to drift away and sink.

‘ Three boats ,’ whispered the Captain, ‘ for thirty rafts. ’ He knew that there were insufficient shepherds for his flock - and yet he had to send them out, for even above the wind, he thought he could hear the booming artillery barrage of high surf breaking on a rocky shore. Cape Alarm was waiting hungrily for his ship.

‘ Send the rafts away ,’ he said quietly, and then again under his breath, ‘ And God have mercy on us all. ’

‘ Come on, Number 16, ’ called Samantha. ‘ Here we are, Number 16. ’ She gathered them to her, the eighteen passengers who made up the complement of her allotted life-raft. Here we are - all together now. No stragglers. ’

They were gathered at the heavy mahogany doors that opened on to the open forward deck.

‘ Be ready! ’ she told them. ‘ When we get the word, we have to move fast. ’

With the broadsiding seas sweeping the deck and cascading down over the lee, it would be impossible to embark from landing-nets into a raft bobbing alongside.

The rafts were being inflated on the open deck, the passengers hustled across to them and into the canopied interior between waves and then the laden rafts were lifted over the side by the clattering winches and dropped into the quieter waters afforded by the tall bulk of the ship. Immediately, one of the lifeboats picked up the tow and took each raft out to form the pitiful little convoy.

‘ Right! ’ the Third Officer burst in through the mahogany doors and held them wide. ‘ Quickly! ’ he shouted. A ll together. ’

‘ Let's go, gang! ’ sang out Samantha, and there was an awkward rush out on to the wet and slippery deck. It was only thirty paces to where the raft crouched like a monstrous yellow bull-frog gaping its ugly dark mouth, but the wind struck like an axe and Samantha heard them cry out in dismay. Some of them faltered in the sudden merciless cold.

‘ Come on ,’ Samantha shouted, pushing those ahead of her, half-supporting Mrs. Goldberg's plump body that suddenly felt as heavy and uncooperative as a full sack of wheat. ‘ Keep going. ’

‘ Let me have her ,’ shouted the Third Officer, and he grabbed Mrs. Goldberg's other arm. Between them they tumbled her through the entrance of the raft.

‘ Good on you, love ,’ the officer grinned at Samantha briefly. His smile was attractive and warm, very masculine and likeable, his name was Ken and he was five years her senior. They would probably have become lovers fairly soon, Samantha knew, for he had pursued her furiously since she stepped aboard in New York. Although she knew she did not love him, yet he had succeeded in arousing her and she was slowly succumbing to his obvious charms and her own passionate nature. She had made the decision to have him, and had been merely savouring it up until then. Now, with a pang, she realized that the moment might never come.

‘ I'll help you with the others. ’ She raised her voice above the hysterical shriek of the wind.

‘ Get in ,’ he shouted back, and swung her brusquely towards the raft. She crept into the crowded interior and looked back at the brightly lit deck that glistened in the arc lamps.

Ken had started back to where one of the women had slipped and fallen. She sprawled helplessly on the wet deck, while her husband stooped over her, trying to lift her back to her feet.

Ken reached them and lifted the woman easily; the three of them were the only ones out on the open deck now, and the two men supported the woman between them, staggering against the heavy sullen roll of the waterlogged hull.

Samantha saw the wave come aboard and she shrieked a warning.

‘ Go back, Ken! For God's sake go back! ’ But he seemed not to hear her. The wave came aboard; over the windward rail like some huge black slippery sea-monster, it came with a deep silent rush.

‘ Ken! ’ she screamed, and he looked over his shoulder an instant before it reached them. Its crest was higher than his head. They could reach neither the raft, nor the shelter of the mahogany doors. She heard the clatter of the donkey - winch and the raft lifted swiftly off the deck, with a swoop in g tug in her guts. The operator could not let the rushing power of the wave crash into the helpless raft, throwing it against the superstructure or tearing it's belly out on the ship's railing, for the frail plastic skin would rupture and it would collapse immediately.

Samantha hurled herself to the entrance and peered down. She saw the sea take the three figures in a black glittering rush. It cut them down, and swept them away. For a moment, she saw Ken clinging to the railing while the waters poured over him, burying his head in a tumbling fall of white and furious water. He disappeared and when the ship rolled sullenly back, shaking herself clear of the water, her decks were empty of any human shape.

With the next roll of the ship, the winch-operator high up in his glassed cabin swung the dangling raft outboard and lowered it swiftly and dexterously to the surface of the sea where one of the lifeboats circled anxiously, ready to take them in tow.

Samantha closed and secured the plastic door-cover, then she groped her way through the press of packed and terrified bodies until she found Mrs. Goldberg.

‘ Are you crying, dear? ’ the elderly woman quavered, clinging to her desperately.

‘ No .’ said Samantha, and placed one arm around her shoulders. ’ No, I'm not crying. ’ And with her free hand, she wiped away the icy tears that streamed down her cheeks.

The Trog lifted his headset and looked at Nick through the reeking clouds of cigar smoke.

‘ Their radio operator has screwed down the key of his set. He's sending a single unbroken homing beam. ’

Nick knew what that meant - they had abandoned Golden Adventurer. He nodded once but remained silent. He had wedged himself into the doorway from the bridge. The restless impatience that consumed him would not allow him to sit or be still for more than a few moments at a time. He was slowly facing up to the reality of disaster. The dice had fallen against him and his gamble had been with very survival. It was absolutely certain that Golden Adventurer would go aground and be beaten into a total wreck by this storm. He could expect a charter from Christy Marine to assist La Mouette in ferrying the survivors back to Cape Town, but the fee would be a small fraction of the Esso tow fee that he had forsaken for this wild and desperate dash south.

The gamble had failed and he was a broken man. Of course, it would take months still for the effects of his folly to become apparent, but the repayments of his loans and the construction bills for the other tug still building would slowly throttle and bring him down.

‘ We might still reach her before she goes aground ,’ said David Allen sturdily, and nobody else on the bridge spoke.

‘ I mean there could be a backlash of the current close inshore which could hold her off long enough to give us a chance - ‘ His voice trailed off as Nick looked across at him and frowned.

‘ We are still ten hours away from her, and for Reilly to make the decision to abandon ship, she must have been very close indeed. Reilly is a good man. ’ Nick had personally selected him to command the Golden Adventurer. ‘ He was a destroyer captain on the North Atlantic run, the youngest in the navy, and then he was ten years with P & O. They pick only the best –‘ He stopped talking abruptly. He was becoming garrulous. He crossed to the radarscope and adjusted it for maximum range and illumination before looking down into the eye-piece. There was much fuzz and sea clutter, but on the extreme southern edge of the circular screen there showed the solid luminous glow of the cliffs and peaks of Cape Alarm. In good weather they were a mere five hours steaming away, but now they had left the shelter of that giant iceberg and were staggering and plunging wildly through the angry night. She could have taken more speed, for Warlock was built for big seas, but always there was the deadly menace of ice, and Nick had to hold her at this cautionary speed, which meant ten hours more before they were in sight of Golden Adventurer - if she was still afloat.

Behind him, the Trog's voice crackled rustily with excitement. ‘ I'm getting voice - it's only strength one, weak and intermittent. One of the lifeboats is sending on a battery-powered transmitter. ’ He held his earphones pressed to his head with both hands as he listened.

‘ They are towing a batch of life-rafts with all survivors aboard to Shackleton Bay. But they've lost a life-raft ,’ he said, ‘ It's broken away from their tow-line, and they haven't got enough boats to search for it. They are asking La Mouette to keep a watch for it. ’

‘ Is La Mouette acknowledging? ’ The Trog shook his head. ‘ She's probably still out of range of this transmission. ’

‘ Very well. ’ Nick turned back into the bridge. He had still not broken radio silence, and could feel his officers disapproval, silent but strong. Again he felt the need for human contact, for the warmth and comfort of human conversation and friendly encouragement. He didn't yet have the strength to bear his failure alone.

He stopped beside David Allen and said, ‘ I have been studying the Admiralty sailing directions for Cape Alarm, David ,’ and pretended not to notice that the use of his Christian name had brought a startled look and quick colour to the mate's features. He went on evenly, ’ the shore is very steep-to and she is exposed to this westerly weather, but there are beaches of pebble and the glass is going up sharply again. ’

‘ Yes, sir ,’ David nodded enthusiastically. ’ I have been watching it. ’

‘ Instead of hoping for a cross-current to hold her off, I suggest you offer a prayer that she goes up on one of those beaches and that the weather moderates before she is beaten to pieces. There is still a chance we can put ground tackle on her before she starts breaking up. ’

‘ I'll say ten Hail Marys, sir ,’ grinned David. Clearly he was overwhelmed by this sudden friendliness from his silent and forbidding Captain.

‘ -And say another ten that we hold our lead on La Mouette ,’ said Nick, and smiled. It was one of the few times that David Allen had seen him smile, and he was a mazed at the change it made to the stern features. They lightened with a charm and warmth and he had not before noticed the clear green of Nick Berg's eyes and how white and even were his teeth.

‘ Steady as she goes .’ said Nick. ‘ Call me if anything changes ,’ and he turned away to his cabin.

‘ Steady as she goes, it is, sir ,’ said David Allen with a new friendliness in his voice.

The strange and marvel l ous lights of the Aurora Australis quivered and flickered in running streams of red and green fire along the horizon, and formed an incredible backdrop for the death agonies of a great ship.

Captain Reilly looked back through the small portholes of the leading lifeboat and watched her going to her fate. It seemed to him she had never been so tall and beautiful as in these terrible last moments. He had loved many ships, as if each had been a wonderful living creature, but he had loved no other ship more than Golden Adventurer, and he felt something of himself dying with her.

He saw her change her action. The sea was feeling the land now, the steep bank of Cape Alarm, and the ship seemed to panic at the new onslaught of wave and wind, as though she knew what fate awaited her there.

She was rolling through thirty degrees, showing the dull red streak of her belly paint as she came up short at the limit of each huge penduluming arc. There was a headland, tall black cliffs dropping sheer into the turbulent waters and it seemed that Golden Adventurer must go full on to them, but in the last impossible moments she slipped by, borne on the backlash of the current, avoiding the cliffs and swinging her bows on into the shallow bay beyond where she was hidden from Captain Reilly's view.

He stood for many minutes more, staring back across the leaping wave-tops and in the strange unnatural light of the heavens his face was greenish grey and heavily furrowed with the marks of grief.

Then he sighed once, very deeply, and turned away, devoting all his attention to guiding his pathetic limping little convoy to the safety of Shackleton Bay.

Almost immediately it was apparent that the fates had relented, and given them a favourable inshore current to carry them up on to the coast. The lifeboats were strung out over a distance of three miles, each of them with its string of bloated and clumsy rafts lumbering along in its wake. Captain Reilly had two-way VHF radio contact with each of them, and despite the brutal cold, they were all in good shape and making steady and unexpectedly rapid progress. Three or four hours would be sufficient, he began to hope. They had lost so much life already, and he could not be certain that there would be no further losses until he had the whole party ashore and encamped.

Perhaps the tragic run of bad luck had changed at last, he thought, and he picked up the small VH F radio. Perhaps the French tug was in range at last and he began to call her.

‘ La Mouette, do you read me? Come in, La Mouette….’

The lifeboat was low down on the wate r, and the output of the little set was feeble in the vastness yet he kept on calling.

They had accustomed themselves to the extravagant action of the disabled liner, her majestic roll and pitch, as regular as a gigantic metronome. They had adjusted to the cold of the unheated interior of the great ship, and the discomfort of her crowded and unsanitary conditions.

They had steeled themselves and tried to prepare themselves mentally for further danger and greater hardship but not one of the survivors in life-raft Number 16 had imagined anything like this. Even Samantha, the youngest, probably physically the toughest and certainly the one most prepared by her training and her knowledge and love of the sea, had not imagined what it would be like in the raft.

It was utterly dark, not the faintest glimmer of light penetrated the insulated domed canopy, once its entrance was secured against the sea and the wind.

Samantha, realized almost immediately how the darkness would crush their morale and, more dangerously, would induce disorientation and vertigo, so she ordered two of them at a time to switch on the tiny locator bulbs on their life-jackets. I t gave just a glimmering of light, enough to let them see each other ’ s faces and take a little comfort in the proximity of other humans.

Then she arranged their seating, making them form a circle around the sides with all their legs pointing inwards, to give the raft better balance and to ensure that each of them had space to stretch out.

Now that Ken had gone, she had naturally taken command, and, as naturally, the others had turned to her for guidance and comfort. It was Samantha who had gone out through the opening into the brutal exposure of the night to take aboard and secure the tow-rope from the lifeboat. She had come in again half-frozen, shaking in a palsy of cold, with her hands and face numbed. it had taken nearly half an hour of hard massage before feeling returned and she was certain that she had avoided frost-bite.

Then the tow began, and if the movement of the light raft had been wild before, it now became a nightmare of unco - ordinated movement. Each whim of sea and wind was transmitted directly to the huddling circle of survivors, and each time the raft pulled away or sheered off, the tow-rope brought it up with a violent lurch and jerk. The wave crests whipped up by the wind and feeling the press of the land were up to twenty feet high, and the raft swooped over them and dropped heavily into the troughs. She did not have the lateral stability of a keel, so she spun on her axis until the tow-rope jerked her up and she spun the other way. The first of them to start vomiting was Mrs. Goldberg and it spurted in a warm jet down the side of Samantha's anorak.

The canopy was almost airtight, except for the small ventilation holes near the apex of the roof, and immediately the sweetish acrid stench of vomit permeated the raft. Within minutes, half a dozen of the other survivors were vomiting also.

It was the cold, however, that frightened Samantha. The cold was the killer. It came up even through the flexible insulated double skin of the deck, and was transferred into their buttocks and legs. It came in through the plastic canopy and froze the condensation of their breaths, it even froze the vomit on their clothing and on the deck.

‘ Sing! ’ Samantha told them. ‘ Come on, sing! Let's do "Yankee Doodle Dandy", first. You start, Mr. Stewart, come on. Clap your hands, clap hands with your neighbour. ’ She hectored them relentlessly, not allowing any of them to fall into that paralytic state which is not true sleep but the trance caused by rapidly dropping body temperature. She crawled among them, prodding them awake, popping barley sugar from the emergency rations into their mouths.

‘ Suck and sing! ’ she commanded them, the sugar would combat the cold and the sea-sickness. ‘ Clap your hands. Keep moving we'll be there soon. ’

When they could sing no more, she told them stories and whenever she mentioned the word dog they must all bark and clap their hands, or crow like the rooster, or bray like the donkey.

Samantha's throat was scratchy with singing and talking and she was dizzy with fatigue and sick with cold, recognizing in herself the first symptoms of disinterest and lethargy, the prelude to giving up. She roused herself, struggling up into the sitting position from where she had slumped.

‘ I'm going to try and light the stove and get us a hot drink ,’ she sang out brightly. Around her there was only a mild stir and somebody retched painfully.

‘ Who's for a mug of beef tea –‘ she stopped abruptly. Something had changed. It took her a long moment to realize what it was. The sound of the wind had muted and the raft was riding more easily now, it was moving into a more regular rhythm of sweep and fall, without the dreadful jerk of the tow-rope snapping it back.

Frantically she crawled to the entrance of the raft, and with cold crippled fingers she tore at the fastenings.

O utside the dawn had broken into a clear cold sky of palest ethereal pinks and mauves. Although the wind had dropped to a faint whisper, the seas were still big and unruly, and the waters had changed from black to the deep bottle green of molten glass.

The tow-rope had torn away at the connecting shackle, leaving only a dangling flap of plastic. Number 16 had been the last raft in the line being towed by number three, but of the convoy, Samantha could now see no sign - though she crawled out through the entrance and clung precariously to the side of the raft, scanning the wave-caps about her desperately.

There was no sign of a lifeboat, no sight even of the rocky, ice-capped shores of Cape Alarm. They had drifted away, during the night, into the vast and lonely reaches of the Weddell Sea.

Despair cramped her belly muscles, and she wanted to cry out in protest against this further cruelty of fate, but she prevented herself doing so, and stayed out in the clear and frosty air, drawing it in carefully for she knew that it could freeze her lung tissue. She searched and searched until her eyes streamed with the cold and the wind and concentration. Then at last the cold drove her back into the dark and stinking interior of the raft. She fell wearily among the supine and quiescent bodies, and pulled the hood of her anorak more tightly around her head. She knew it would not take long for them to start dying now, and somehow she did not care. Her despair was too intense, she let herself begin sinking into the morass of despondency which gripped all the others, and the cold crept up her legs and arms. She closed her eyes, and then opened them again with a huge effort.

‘I'm not going to die,’ she told herself firmly. ’I refuse to just lie down and die,’ and she struggled up onto her knees. It felt as though she wore a rucksack filled with lead, such was the physical weight of her despair.

She crawled to the central locker that held all their emergency rations and equipment.

The emergency locator transmitter was packed in polyurethane and her fingers were clumsy with cold and the thick mittens, but at last she brought it out. It was the size of a cigar-box, and the instructions were printed on the side of it. She did not need to read them, but switched on the set and replaced it in its slot. Now for forty-eight hours, or until the battery ran out, it would transmit a DF homing-signal on 121,5 Mega Hertz.

It was possible, just possible, that the French tug might pick up that feeble little beam, and track it down to its source. She set it out of her mind, and devoted herself to the Herculean task of trying to heat half a mug of water on the small solid-fuel stove without scalding herself as she held the stove in her lap and balanced it against the raft's motion. While she worked, she searched for the courage and the words to tell the others of their predicament.

The Golden Adventurer, deserted of all human beings, her engines dead, but with her deck lights still burning, her wheel locked hard over, and the morse key in the radio room screwed down to transmit a single unbroken pulse, drifted swiftly down on the black rock of Cape Alarm.

The rock was of so hard a type of formation that the cliffs were almost vertical, and even exposed as they were to the eternal onslaught of this mad sea, they had weathered very little. They still retained the sharp vertical edges and the glossy polished planes of cleanly fractured faults.

The sea ran in and hit the cliff without any check. The impact seemed to jar the very air, like the concussion of bursting high explosive, and the sea shot high in a white fury against the unyielding rock of the cliff, before rolling back and forming a reverse swell.

It was these returning echoes from the cliff that held Golden Adventurer off the cliff. The shore was so steep-to that it dropped to forty fathoms directly below the cliffs. There was no bottom on which the ship could gut herself.

The wind was blanketed by the cliff and in the eerie stillness of air, she drifted in closer and closer, rolling almost to her limits as the swells took her broadside. Once she actually touched the rock with her superstructure on one of those rolls, but then the echo-wave nudged her away. The next wave pushed her closer, and its smaller weaker offspring pushed back at her. A man could have jumped from a ledge on the cliff on to her deck as she drifted slowly, parallel to the rock.

The cliff ended in an abrupt and vertical headland, where it had calved into three tall pillars of serpentine, as graceful as the sculptured columns of a temple of Olympian Zeus.

Again, Golden Adventurer touched one of those pillars, she bumped it lightly with her stern. It scraped paint from her side and crushed in her rail, but then she was past.

The light bump was just sufficient to push her stern round, and she pointed her bows directly into the wide shallow bay beyond the cliffs.

Here a softer, more malleable rock-formation had been eroded by the weather, forming a wide beach of purple-black pebbles, each the size of a man's head and water worn as round as cannon balls.

Each time the waves rushed up this stony beach, the pebbles struck against each other with a rattling roar, and the brash of rotten and mushy sea ice that filled the bay susurrated and clinked, as it rose and fell with the sea.

Now Golden Adventurer was clear of the cliff, she was more fully in the grip of the wind. Although the wind was dying, it still had force enough to move her steadily deeper into the bay, her bows pointed directly at the beach.

Unlike the cliff shore, the bay sloped up gently to the beach and this allowed the big waves to build up into rounded sliding humps.

They did not curl and break into white water because the thick layer of brash ice weighted and flattened them, so that these swells joined with the wind to throw the ship at the beach with smoothly gathering impetus.

She took the ground with a great metallic groan of her straining plates and canted over slowly, but the moving pebble beach moulded itself quickly to her hull, giving gradually, as the waves and wind thrust her higher and higher until she was firm aground; then, as the short night ended so the wind fell further, and in sympathy the swells moderated also and the tide drew back letting the ship settle more heavily.

By noon of that day, Golden Adventurer was held firmly by the bows on the curved purple beach, canted over at an angle of 10°. Only her after end was still floating, rising and falling like a see-saw on the swell patterns which still pushed in steadily, but the plummeting air temperature was rapidly freezing the brash ice around her stern into a solid sheet.

The ship stood very tall above the glistening wet beach. Her upperworks were festooned with rime and long rapier like stalactites of shining translucent ice hung from her scuppers and from the anchor fair-leads.

Her emergency generator was still running, and although there was no human being aboard her, her lights burned gaily and piped music played softly through her deserted public rooms.

Apart from the rent in her side, through which the sea still washed and swirled, there was no external evidence of damage, and beyond her the peaks and valleys of Cape Alarm, so wild and fierce, seemed merely to emphasize her graceful lines and to underline how rich a prize she was, a luscious ripe plum ready for the picking.

Down in her radio room, the transmitting key continued to send out an unbroken beam that could be picked up for five hundred miles around.

Two hours of deathlike sleep - and then Nick Berg woke with a wild start, knowing that something of direct consequence was about to happen. But it took fully ten seconds for him to realize where he was.

He stumbled from his bunk, and he knew he had not slept long enough. His skull was stuffed with the cotton wool of fatigue, and he swayed on his feet as he shaved in the shower, trying to steam himself awake with the scalding water.

When he went out on to the bridge, the Trog was still at his equipment. He looked up at Nick for a moment with his little rheumy pink eyes, and it was clear that he had not slept at all. Nick felt a prick of shame at his own indulgence.

‘We are still inside La Mouette,’ said the Trog, and turned back to his set. ‘I reckon we have an edge of almost a hundred miles.’

Angel appeared on the bridge, bearing a huge tray, and the saliva jetted from under Nick's tongue as he smelled it.

‘I did a little special for your brekker, Skipper,’ said Angel. ‘I call it "Eggs on Angel's Wings".’

‘I'm buying,’ said Nick, and turned back to the Trog with his mouth full and chewing. ‘What of the Adventurer?’

‘She's still sending a DF, but her position has not altered in almost three hours.’

‘What do you mean?’ Nick demanded, and swallowed heavily.

‘No change in position.’

‘Then she's aground,’ Nick muttered, the food in his hand forgotten, and at that moment David Allen hurried on to the bridge still shrugging on his pea-jacket. His eyes were puffy and his hair was hastily wetted and combed, but spiky at the back from contact with his pillow. It had not taken him long to hear that the Captain was on the bridge. ‘And in one piece, if her transmitter is still sending.’

‘It looks like those Hail Marys worked, David.’ Nick flashed his rare smile and David slapped the polished teak top of the chart table.

‘Touch wood, and don't dare the devil.’

Nick felt his early despair slipping away with his fatigue, and he took another big mouthful and savoured it as he strode to the front windows and stared ahead.

The sea had flattened dramatically, but a weak and butter-yellow sun low on the horizon gave no warmth, and Nick glanced up at the thermometer and read the outside air temperature at minus thirty degrees.

Down here below 60° south, the weather was so unstable, caught up on the wheel of endlessly circling atmospheric depressions, that a gale could rise in minutes and drop to a flat calm almost as swiftly. Yet foul weather was the rule. For a hundred days and more each year, the wind was at gale-force or above. The photographs of Antarctica always gave a completely false impression of fine days with the sun sparkling on pristine snow fields and lovely towering icebergs. The truth was that you cannot take photographs in a blizzard or a white-out.

Nick distrusted this calm, and yet found himself praying that it would hold. He wanted to increase speed again, and was on the point of taking that chance, when the officer of the watch called a sharp alteration of course.

Ahead of them, Nick made out the sullen swirl of hidden ice below the surface, like a lurking monster, and as Warlock altered course to avoid it, the ice broke the surface. Black ice, striated with bands of glacial mud, ugly and deadly. Nick did not pass the order for the increase in speed.

‘We should be raising Cape Alarm within the hour,’ David Allen gloated beside him. ‘If this visibility holds.’

‘It won't,’ said Nick. ‘We'll have fog pretty soon,’ and he indicated the surface of the sea, which was beginning to steam, emitting ghostly tendrils and eddies of seafret, as the difference between sea and air temperature widened.

‘We'll be at the Golden Adventurer in four hours more.’ David was bubbling with renewed excitement, and he slapped the teak table again. ‘With your permission, sir, I'll go down and double-check the rocket-lines and tow equipment.’

While the air around them thickened into a ghostly white soup, and blotted out all visibility to a few hundred yards, Nick paced the bridge like a caged lion, his hands clasped behind his back and a black unlit cheroot clamped between his teeth. He broke his pacing every time that the Trog intercepted another transmission from either Christy Marine, Jules Levoisin or Captain Reilly on his VHF radio.

At midmorning, Reilly reported that he and his slow convoy had reached Shackleton Bay without further losses, that they were taking full advantage of the moderating weather to set up an encampment, and he ended by urging La Mouette to keep a watch on 121,5 Mega Hertz to try and locate the missing life-raft that had broken away during the night. La Mouette did not acknowledge.

‘They aren't reading on the VHF,’grunted the Trog.

Nick thought briefly of the hapless souls adrift in this cold, and decided that they would probably not last out the day unless the temperature rose abruptly. Then he dismissed the thought and concentrated on the exchanges between Christy Marine and La Mouette.

The two parties had diametrically changed their bargaining standpoints.

While Golden Adventurer was adrift on the open sea, and any salvage efforts would mean that the tug should merely put a rocket-line across her, pass a messenger wire to carry the big steel hawser and then take her in tow, Jules Levoisin had pressed for Lloyd's Open Form ‘No cure no pay’ contract.

Since the ‘cure’ was almost certain, ‘pay’ would follow as a matter of course. The amount of payment would be fixed by the arbitration of the committee of Lloyd's in London under the principles of international maritime law, and would be a percentage of the salved value of the vessel. The percentage decided upon by the arbitrator would depend upon the difficulties and dangers that the salvor had overcome. A clever salvor in an arbitration court could paint a picture of such daring and ingenuity that the award would be in millions of dollars.

Christy Marine had been desperately trying to avoid a ‘No cure no pay’ contract. They had been trying to wheedle Levoisin into a daily hire and bonus contract, since this would limit the total cost of the operation, but they had been met by a Gallic acquisitiveness - right up to the moment when it became clear that Golden Adventurer had gone aground.

When that happened, the roles were completely reversed. Jules Levoisin, with a note of panic in his transmission, had immediately withdrawn his offer to go Lloyd's Open Form. For now the cure was far from certain, and the Adventurer might already be a total wreck, beaten to death on the rocks of Cape Alarm, in which case there would be no pay.

Now Levoisin was desperately eager to strike a daily hire contract, including the run from South America and the ferrying of survivors back to civilization. He was offering his services at $10,000 a day, plus a bonus Of 21.5% of any salved value of the vessel. They were fair terms, for Jules Levoisin had given up the shining dream of millions and he had returned to reality.

However, Christy Marine, who had previously been offering a princely sum for daily hire, had just as rapidly withdrawn that offer.

‘We will accept Lloyd's Open Form, including ferrying of survivors,’ they declared on Channel 16.

‘Conditions on site have changed,’ Jules Levoisin sent back, and the Trog got another good fix on him.

‘We are head-reaching on him handsomely,’ he Announced with satisfaction, blinking his pink eyes rapidly while Nick marked the new relative positions on the chart.

The bridge of Warlock was once again crowded with every officer who had an excuse to be there. They were all in their working thick blue boiler suits and heavy sea boots, bulked up with jerseys and balaclava helmets, and they watched the plot with total fascination, arguing quietly among themselves.

David Allen came in carrying a bundle of clothing. ‘I've working rig for you, sir. I borrowed it from the Chief Engineer. You are about the same size.’

‘Does the Chief know?’ Nick asked.

‘Not exactly, I just borrowed it from his cabin-‘

‘Well done, David,’ Nick chuckled. ‘Please put it in my day cabin.’ He felt himself warming more and more to the younger man.

‘Captain, sir,’ the Trog sang out suddenly. ‘I'm getting another transmission. It's only strength one, and it's on 121,5 Mega Hertz.’

‘Oh, shit!’ David Allen paused in the entrance to the Captain's day cabin. ‘Oh, shit!’ he repeated, and his expression was stricken. ‘It's that bloody missing life-raft.’

‘Relative bearing!’ snapped Nick angrily.

‘She bears 280° relative and 045° magnetic,’ the Trog answered instantly, and Nick felt his anger flare again.

The life-raft was somewhere out on their port beam, eighty degrees off their direct course to the Golden Adventurer.

The consternation on the bridge was carried in a babble of voices, that Nick silenced with a single black glance and they stared at the plot in dismayed hush.

The position of each of the tugs was flagged with a coloured pin and there was another, a red flag, for the position of the Golden Adventurer. It was so close ahead of them now, and their lead over La Mouette so slender, that one of the younger officers could not remain silent.

‘If we go to the raft, we'll be handing it to the bloody frog on a plate.’ The words ended the restraint and they began to argue again, but in soft controlled tones. Nick Berg did not look up at them, but remained bowed over the chart, with his fist on the table-top bunched so fiercely that the knuckles were ivory white.

‘Christ, they have probably all had it by now. We'd be throwing it all away for a bunch of frozen stiffs.’

‘There is no telling how far off course they are, those sets have a range of a hundred miles.’

‘La Mouette will waltz away with it.’

‘We could pick them up later - after we put a line on Golden Adventurer.’

Nick straightened slowly and took the cheroot out of his mouth. He looked across at David Allen and spoke levelly, without change of expression.

‘Number One, will you please instruct your junior officers in the rule of the sea.’

David Allen was silent for a moment, then he answered softly ‘The preservation of human life at sea takes precedent over all other considerations.’

‘Very well, Mr. Allen,’ Nick nodded. ‘Alter 80° to port and maintain a homing course on the emergency transmission.’

He turned away to his cabin. He could control his anger until he was alone, and then he turned and crashed his fist into the panel above his desk.

Out on the navigation bridge behind him nobody spoke nor moved for fully thirty seconds, then the Third Officer protested weakly.

‘But we are so close!’

David Allen roused himself, and spoke angrily to the helmsman.

‘New course 045° magnetic.’

And as Warlock heeled to the change, he flung the armful of clothing bitterly on to the chart-table and went to stand beside the Trog.

‘Corrections for course to intercept?’ he asked.

‘Bring her on to 050°,’ the Trog instructed, and then cackled without mirth. ‘First you call him an ice-water pisser - now you squeal like a baby because he answers a Mayday.’

And David Allen was silent as the Warlock turned away into the fog, every revolution of her big variable-pitch propellers carrying her directly away from her prize, and La Mouette's triumphant transmissions taunted them as the Frenchman raced across the last of the open water that separated her from Cape Alarm, bargaining furiously with the owners in London.

The fog seemed so thick that it could be chopped into chunks like cheese. From the bridge it was not possible to see Warlock's tall bows. Nick groped his way into it like a blind man in an unfamiliar room, and all around him the ice pressed closely.

They were in the area of huge tabular icebergs again. The echoes of the great ice islands flared green and malevolently on the radar screen and the awful smell and taste of the ice was on every breath they drew.

‘Radio Officer?’ Nick asked tensely, without taking his eyes from the swirling fog curtains ahead.

‘Still no contact,’ the Trog answered, and Nick shuffled on his feet. The fog had mesmerized him, and he felt the shift of vertigo in his head. For a moment he had the illusion that his ship was listing heavily to one side, almost as though it were a space vehicle. He forcibly rejected the hallucination and stared fixedly ahead, tensing himself for the first green loom of ice through the fog.

‘No contact for nearly an hour now,’ David muttered beside him.

‘Either the battery on the DF has run down, or they have snagged ice and sunk-,’ volunteered the Third Officer, raising his voice just enough for Nick to hear.

‘-or else their transmitter is blanketed by an iceberg,’ Nick finished for him, and there was silence on the bridge for another ten minutes, except for the quietly requested changes of course that kept Warlock zigzagging between the unseen but omnipresent icebergs.

‘All right,’ Nick made the decision at last. ‘We'll have to accept that the raft has floundered and break off the search.’ And there was a stir of reawakening interest and enthusiasm. ‘Pilot, new course to Golden Adventurer, please, and we'll increase to fifty per cent power.’

‘We could still beat the frog.’ Again speculation and rising hope buoyed the young officers. ‘She could run into ice and have to reduce –‘ They wished misfortune on La Mouette and her Captain, and even the ship beneath Nick's feet seemed to regain its lightness and vibrancy as she turned back for a last desperate run for the prize.

‘All right, David,’ Nick spoke quietly. ‘One thing is certain now, we aren't going to reach the prize ahead of Levoisin. So we are going to play our ace now –‘ he was about to elaborate, when the Trog's voice squeaked with excitement.

‘New contact, on 121½,’ he cried, and the dismay on the bridge was a tangible thing.

‘Christ!’ said the Third Officer. ‘Why won't they just lie down and die!’

‘The transmission was blanked by that big berg north of us,’ the Trog guessed. ‘They are close now. It won't take long.’

‘Just long enough to make certain we miss the prize.’

The berg was so big that it formed its own weather system about it, causing eddies and currents of both air and water, enough to stir the fog.

The fog opened like a theatre curtain, and directly ahead there was a heart-stopping vista of green and blue ice, with darker strata of glacial mud banding cliffs which disappeared into the higher layers of fog above as though reaching to the very heavens. The sea had carved majestic arches of ice and deep caverns from the foot of the cliff.

‘There they are!’

Nick snatched the binoculars from the canvas bin and focused on the dark specks that stood out so clearly against the backdrop of glowing ice.

‘No,’ he grunted. Fifty emperor penguins formed a bunch on one of the flat floes, big black birds s nearly as tall as a man's shoulder; even in the lens, they were deceptively humanoid.

Warlock passed them closely, and with sudden fright they dropped on to their bellies and used their stubby wings to skid themselves across the floe, and drop into the still and steaming waters below the cliff. The floe eddied and swung on the disturbance of Warlock's passing.

Warlock nosed on through solid standing banks of fog and into abrupt holes of clear air where the mirages and optical illusions of Antarctica's flawed air maddened them with their inconsistencies, turning flocks of penguins into herds of elephants or bands of waving men, and placing in their path phantom rocks and bergs which disappeared again swiftly as they approached.

The emergency transmissions from the raft faded and silenced, then beeped again loudly into the silence of the bridge, and seconds later were silent again.

‘God damn them,’David swore quietly and bitterly, his cheeks pink with frustration.’ Where the hell are they? Why don't they put up a flare or a rocket?’ And nobody answered as another white fog monster enveloped the ship, muting all sound aboard her.

‘I'd like to try shaking them up with the horn, sir,’ he said, as Warlock burst once more into sparkling and blinding sunlight. Nick grunted acquiescence without lowering his binoculars.

David reached up for the red-painted foghorn handle above his head, and the deep booming blast of sound, the characteristic voice of an ocean-going salvage tug, reverberated through the fog, seeming to make it quiver with the volume of the sound. The echoes came crashing back off the ice cliffs of the bergs like the thunder of the skies.

Samantha held the solid-fuel. stove in her lap using the detachable fibreglass lid of the locker as a tray. She was heating half a pint of water in the Aluminium pannikin, balancing carefully against the wallowing motion of the raft.

The blue flame of the stove lit the dim cavern of plastic and radiated a feeble glow of warmth insufficient to sustain life. They were dying already.

Gavin Stewart held his wife's head against his chest, and bowed his own silver head over it. She had been dead for nearly two hours now, and her body had already cooled, the face peaceful and waxen.

Samantha could not bear to look across at them, she crouched over the stove and dropped a cube of beef into the water, stirring it slowly and blinking against the tears of penetrating cold. She felt thin watery mucus run down her nostrils and it required an effort to lift her arm and wipe it away on her sleeve. The beef tea was only a little above blood warmth, but she could not waste time and fuel on heating it further.

The metal pannikin passed slowly from mittened hand to numbed and clumsy hand. They slurped the warm liquid and passed it on reluctantly, though there were some who had neither the strength nor the interest to take it.

‘Come on, Mrs. Goldberg,’ Samantha whispered painfully. The cold seemed to have closed her throat, and the foul air under the canopy made her head ache with grinding, throbbing pain. ‘You must drink!’ Samantha touched the woman's face, and cut herself off. The flesh had a puttylike texture and was cooling swiftly. It took long minutes for the shock to pass, then carefully Samantha pulled the hood of the old woman's parka down over her face. Nobody else seemed to have noticed. They were all, too far sunk into lethargy.

‘Here,’ whispered Samantha to the man beside her - and she pressed the pannikin into his hands, folding his stiff fingers around the metal to make certain he had hold of it. ‘Drink it before it cools.’

The air around her seemed to tremble suddenly with a great burst of sound, like the bellow of a dying bull, or the rumble of cannon balls across the roof of the sky. For long moments, Samantha thought her mind was playing tricks with her, and only when it came again did she raise her head.

‘Oh God,’ she whispered. ‘They've come. It's going to be all right. They've come to save us.’

She crawled to the locker, slowly and stiffly as an old woman.

‘They've come. It's all right, gang, it's going to be all right,’ she mumbled, and she lit the globe on her life-jacket. In its pale glow, she found the packet of phosphorus flares.

‘Come on now, gang. Let's hear it for Number 16.’ She tried to rouse them as she struggled with the fastenings of the canopy. ‘One more cheer,’ she whispered, but they were still and unresponsive, and as she fumbled her way out into the freezing fog, the tears that ran down her cheeks were not from the cold.

She looked up uncomprehendingly, it seemed that from the sky around her tumbled gigantic cascades of ice, sheer sheets of translucent menacing green ice. It took her moments to realize that the life raft had drifted in close beneath the precipitous lee of a tabular berg. She felt tiny and inconsequential beneath that ponderous mountain of brittle glassy ice.

For what seemed an eternity, she stood, with her face lifted, staring upwards -.then again the air resonated with the deep gut-shaking bellow of the siren. It filled the swirling fog-banks with solid sound that struck the cliff of ice above her and shattered into booming echoes, that bounded from wall to wall and rang through the icy caverns and crevices that split the surface of the great berg.

Samantha held aloft one of the phosphorus flares, and it required all the strength of her frozen arm to rip the igniter tab. The flare spluttered and streamed acrid white smoke, then burst into the dazzling crimson fire that denotes distress at sea. She stood like a tiny statue of liberty, holding the flare aloft in one hand and peering with streaming eyes into the sullen fog-banks.

Again the animal bellow of the siren boomed through the milky, frosted air; it was so close that it shook Samantha's body the way the wind moves the wheat on the hillside, then it went on to collide solidly with the cliff of ice that hung above her.

The working of sea and wind, and the natural erosion of changing temperatures had set tremendous forces at work within the glittering body of the berg. Those forces had found a weak point, a vertical fault line, that ran like an axe-stroke from the flattened tableland of the summit, five hundred feet down to the moulded bottom of the berg far below the surface.

The booming sound waves of Warlock's horn found a sympathetic resonance with the body of the mountain that set the ice on each side of the fault vibrating in different frequencies.

Then the fault sheared, with a brittle cracking explosion of glass bursting under pressure, and the fault opened. One hundred million tons of ice began to move as it broke away from the mother berg. The block of ice that the berg calved was in itself a mountain, a slab of solid ice twice the size of Saint Paul's cathedral - and as it swung out and twisted free, new pressures and forces came into play within it, finding smaller faults and flaws so that ice burst within ice and tore itself apart, as though dynamited with tons of high explosive.

The air itself was filled with hurtling ice, some pieces the size of a locomotive and others as small and as sharp and as deadly as steel swords; and below this plunging toppling mass, the tiny yellow plastic raft bobbed helplessly.

‘There,’ called Nick. ‘On the starboard beam. The phosphorus distress flare lit the fog-banks internally with a fiery cherry red and threw grotesque patterns of light against the belly of lurking cloud. David Allen blew one last triumphant blast on the siren.

‘New heading 150°,’ Nick told the helmsman and Warlock came around handily, and almost instantly burst from the enveloping bank of fog into another arena of open air.

Half a mile away, the life-raft bobbed like a fat yellow toad beneath a glassy green wall of ice. The top of the iceberg was lost in the fog high above, and the tiny human figure that stood erect on the raft and held aloft the brilliant crimson flare was an insignificant speck in this vast wilderness of fog and sea and ice. .

‘Prepare to pick up survivors, David,’ said Nick, and the mate hurried away while Nick moved to the wing of the bridge from where he could watch the rescue.

Suddenly Nick stopped and lifted his head in bewilderment. For a moment he thought it was gunfire, then the explosive crackling of sound changed to a rending shriek as of the tearing of living fibre when a giant redwood tree is falling to the axes. The volume of sound mounted into a rumbling roar, the unmistakeable roar of a mountain in avalanche.

‘Good Christ!’ whispered Nick, as he saw the cliff of ice begin to change shape. Slowly sagging outwards, it seemed to fold down upon itself. Faster and still faster it fell, and the hissing splinters of bursting ice formed a dense swirling cloud, while the cliff leaned further and further beyond its point of equilibrium and at last collapsed and lifted pressure waves from the green waters that raced out one behind the other, flinging Warlock's bows high as she rode them and then nosed down into the troughs between.

Since Nick's oath, nobody had spoken on the bridge.

They clutched for balance at the nearest support and stared in awe at that incredible display of careless might, while the water still churned and creamed with the disturbance and pieces of broken jagged ice, some the size of a country house, bobbed to the surface and revolved slowly, finding their balance as they swirled and bumped against each other.

‘Closer,’ snapped Nick. ‘Get as close as you can.’

Of the yellow life-raft there was no longer any sign. Jagged shards of ice had ripped open its fragile skin and the grinding, tumbling lumps had trodden it and its pitiful human cargo deep beneath the surface.

‘Closer,’ urged Nick. If by a miracle anybody had survived that avalanche, then they had four minutes left of life, and Nick pushed Warlock into the still rolling and broiling mass of broken ice - pushing it open with ice strengthened bows.

Nick flung open the bridge doors beside him and stepped out into the freezing air of the open wing. He ignored the cold, buoyed up by new anger and frustration. He had paid the highest price to make this rescue, he had given up his chance at Golden Adventurer for the lives of a handful of strangers, and now at this last moment, they had been snatched away from him. His sacrifice had been in vain, and the terrible waste of it all appalled him. Because there was no other outlet for his feelings, he let waves of anger sweep over him and he shouted at David Allen's little group on the fore-deck.

‘Keep your eyes open. I want those people!’

Red caught his eye, a flash of vivid red, seen through the green water, becoming brighter and more hectic as it rose to the surface.

‘Both engines half astern,’ he screamed. And Warlock stopped dead as the twin propellers changed pitch and bit into the water, pulling her up in less than her own length.

In a small open area of green water the red object broke out.

Nick saw a human head in a red anorak hood, supported by the thick inflated life-jacket. The head was thrown back, exposing a face as white and glistening with wetness as the deadly ice that surrounded it. The face was that of a young boy, smooth and beardless, and quite incredibly beautiful.

‘Get him!’ Nick yelled, and at the sound of his voice the eyes in that beautiful face opened. Nick saw they were a musty green and unnaturally large in the, glistening pale oval framed by the crimson hood.

David Allen was racing back, carrying life-ring and line.

‘Hurry. God damn you.’ The boy was still alive, and Nick wanted him. He wanted him as fiercely as he had wanted anything in his life, he wanted at least this one young life in return for all he had sacrificed. He saw that the boy was watching him. ‘Come on, David,’ he shouted.

‘Here!’ called David, bracing himself at the ship's rail and he threw the life-ring. He threw it with an expert round arm motion that sent it skimming forty feet to where the hooded head bobbed on the agitated water. He threw it so accurately that it hit the bobbing figure a glancing blow on the shoulder and then plopped into the water alongside, almost nudging the boy.

‘Grab it!’ yelled Nick. ‘Grab hold!’ The face turned slowly, and the boy lifted a gloved hand clear of the surface, but the movement was uncoordinated.

‘There. It's right next to you,’ David encouraged. ‘Grab it, man!’

The boy had been in the water for almost two minutes already, he had lost control of his body and limbs, he made two inconclusive movements with the raised hand, one actually bumped the ring but he could not hold it and slowly the life-ring bobbed away from him.

‘You bloody idiot,’ stormed Nick. ‘Grab it,’ And those huge green eyes turned back to him, looking up at him with the total resignation of defeat, one stiff arm still raised - almost a farewell salute.

Nick did not realize what he was going to do until he had shrugged off his coat and kicked away his shoes; then he realized that if he stopped to think about it, he would not go.

He jumped feet first, throwing himself far out to miss the rail below him, and as the water closed over his head he experienced a terrified sense of disbelief at the cold.

It seized his chest in a vice that choked the air from his lungs, it drove needles of agony deep into his forehead, and blinded him with the pain as he rose to the surface The cold rushed through his light clothing, it crushed his testicles and his stomach was filled with nausea. The marrow in the bones of his legs and arms ached so that he found it difficult to force his limbs to respond, but he struck out for the floating figure.

It was only forty feet, but halfway there he was seized by a panic that he was not going to make it. He clenched his teeth and fought the icy water as though it was a mortal enemy, but it sapped away his strength with the heat of his body.

He struck the floating figure with one outflung arm before he realized he had reached him, and he clung desperately to him, peering up at Warlock's deck.

David Allen had retrieved the ring by its line and he threw it again. The cold had slowed Nick down so that he could not avoid the ring and it struck him on the forehead, but he felt no pain, there was no feeling in his face or feet or hands.

The fleeting seconds counted out the life left to them as he struggled with the inert figure, slowly losing command of his own limbs as he tried to fit the ring over the boy's body. He did not accomplish it. He got the boy's head and one arm through, and he knew he could do no more.

‘Pull,’ he screamed in rising panic, and his voice was remote and echoed strangely in his own ears.

He took a twist of line around his arm, for his fingers could no longer hold, and he clung with the remains of his strength as they dragged them in.

jagged ice brushed and snatched at them, but he held the boy with his free arm.

‘Pull,’ he whispered. ‘Oh, for God's sake, pull!’ And then they were bumping against Warlock's steel side, were being lifted free of the water, the twist of line smearing the wet skin from his forearm, staining his sleeve with blood that was instantly dissolved to pink by sea water. He felt no pain.

With the other arm, he hung on to the boy, holding him from slipping out of the life-ring. He did not feel the hands that grabbed at him. There was no feeling in his legs and he collapsed face forward, but David caught him before he struck the deck and they hustled him into the steaming warmth of Angel's galley, his legs dragging behind him.

‘Are you okay, Skipper?’ David kept demanding, and when Nick tried to reply, his jaw was locked in a frozen rictus and great shuddering spasms shook his whole body.

‘Get their clothes off,’ grated Angel, and, with an easy swing of his heavily muscled shoulders lifted the boy's body on to the galley table and laid it out face upwards. With a single sweep of a Solingen steel butcher's knife he split the crimson anorak from neck to crutch and stripped it away.

Nick found his voice, it was ragged and broken by the convulsions of frozen muscles.

‘What the hell are you doing, David? Get your arse on deck and get this ship on course for Golden Adventurer,’ he grated, and would have added something a little more forceful, but the next convulsion caught him, and anyway David Allen had already left.

‘You'll be all right.’ Angel did not even glance up at Nick as he worked with the knife, ripping away layer after layer of the boy's clothing. A tough old dog like you - but I think we've got a ripe case of hypothermia here. Two of the seamen were helping Nick out of his sodden clothing, the cloth crackled with the thin film of ice that had already formed. Nick winced with the pain of returning circulation to half-frozen hands and feet.

‘Okay,’ he said, standing naked in the middle of the galley and scrubbing at himself with a rough towel. ‘I'll be all right now, return to your stations.’ He crossed to the kitchen range, tottering like a drunk, and welcomed the blast of heat from it, rubbing warmth into himself, still shaking and shuddering, his body mottled puce and purple with cold and his genitals shrunken and drawn up into the dense black bush at his crotch.

‘Coffee's boiling. Get yourself a hot drink, Skip,’ Angel told him, glancing up at Nick from his work. He ran a quick appreciative glance over Nick's body, taking in the wide rangy shoulders, the dark curls of damp hair that covered his chest, and the trim lines of hard muscle that moulded his belly and waist.

‘Put lots of sugar in it - it will warm you the best possible way,’ Angel instructed him, and returned his attention to the slim young body on the table.

Angel had put aside his camp airs, and worked with the brusque efficiency of a man who had been trained at his task.

Then suddenly he stopped and stood back for a moment.

‘Would you believe! No fun gun!’ Angel sighed.

Nick turned just as Angel spread a thick woollen blanket over the pale naked body on the table and began to massage it vigorously.

‘You better leave us girls alone together, Skipper,’ said Angel with a sweet smile and a twinkle of his diamond earrings, and Nick was left with the memory of a single fleeting glimpse of the stunningly lovely body of a young woman below the pale face and the thick sodden head of copper and gold hair.

Nick Berg was swaddled in a grey woollen blanket, over the boiler suit and bulk jerseys. His feet were in thick Norwegian trawlerman's socks and heavy rubber working boots. He held a china mug of almost boiling coffee in both hands, bending over it to savour the aroma of the steam. It was the third cup he had drunk in the last hour - and yet the shivering spasms still shook him every few minutes.

David Allen had moved his canvas chair across the bridge so he could watch the Trog and work the ship at the same time. Nick could see the loom of the black rock cliffs of Cape Alarm close on their port beam.

The morse beam squealed suddenly, a long sequence of code to which every man on the bridge listened with complete attention, but it needed the Trog to say it for them.

‘La Mouette has reached the prize.’ He seemed to take a perverse relish in seeing their expressions. ‘She's beaten us to it, lads. 12 ½ % salvage to her crew–‘

‘I want it word for word,’ snapped Nick irritably, and the Trog grinned spitefully at him before bowing over his pad.

‘La Mouette to Christy Marine. Golden Adventurer is hard aground, held by ice and receding tides. Stop. Ice damage to plating appears to be below surface. Stop. Hull is flooded and open to sea. Stop. Under no circumstances will Lloyd's Open Form be acceptable. Emphasize importance of beginning salvage work immediately. Stop. Worsening weather and sea conditions. My final hire offer of $8000 per diem plus 2½ % of salvaged value open until 1435 GMT. Standing by.’

Nick lit one of his cheroots and irrelevantly decided he must conserve them in future. He had opened his last box that morning. He frowned through the blue smoke and pulled the blanket closer around his shoulders.

Jules Levoisin was playing it tough and hard now. He was dictating terms and setting ultimatums. Nick's own policy of silence was paying off . Probably by now, Jules felt completely safe that he was the only salvage tug within two thousand miles, and he was holding a big-calibre gun to Christy Marine's head.

Jules had seen the situation of the Golden Adventurer's hull. If he had been certain of effecting salvage - no, even if there had been a fifty-fifty chance of a good salvage, Jules would have gone Open Form.

So Jules was not happy with his chances, and he had the shrewdest and most appraising eye in the salvage business. It was a tough one then. Golden Adventurer was probably held fast by the quicksand effect of beach and ice, and La Mouette could build up a mere nine thousand horse-power. It would mean throwing out ground-tackle, putting power on Adventurer's pumps - the problems and solutions passed in review through Nick's mind. It was going to be a tough one, but Warlock had twenty-two thousand rated horse-power and a dozen other high cards.

He glanced at his gold Rolex Oyster, and he saw that Jules had set a two-hour ultimatum.

‘Radio Officer,’ he said quietly, and every man on the bridge stiffened and swayed closer, so as not to miss a word.

‘Open the telex line direct to Christy Marine, London, and send quote "Personal for Duncan Alexander from Nicholas Berg Master of Warlock. Stop. I will be alongside Golden Adventurer in one hour forty minutes. Stop. I make firm offer Lloyd's Open Form Contract Salvage. Stop. Offer closes 1300 GMT".

The Trog looked up at him startled, and blinked his pink eyes swiftly.

‘Read it back,’ snapped Nick, and the Trog did it in a high penetrating voice and when he finished, waited quizzically, as if expecting Nick to cancel.

‘Send it,’ said Nick, and rose to his feet. ‘Mr. Allen,’ he turned to David, ‘I want you and the Chief Engineer in my day cabin right away.’

The buzz of excitement and speculation began before Nick had closed the door behind him.

David knocked and followed him three minutes later, and Nick looked up from the notes he was making.

‘What are they saying?’ Nick asked. ‘That I am crazy?’

‘They're just kids,’ shrugged David. ‘What do they know?’

‘They know plenty, and they're right. I am crazy to go Open Form on a site unseen! But it's the craziness of a man with no other option. Sit down, David.’

‘When I made the decision to leave Cape Town on the chance of this job - that was when I did the crazy thing.’ Nick could no longer keep the steely silence. He had to say it, to talk it out. ‘I was throwing dice for my whole bundle. When I turned down the Esso tow, that was when I went on the line for the whole company, Warlock and her sister the whole thing depended on the cash from the Esso tow.’

‘I see,’ muttered David, and his colour was pink and high, embarrassed by this confidence from Nick Berg.

‘What I am doing now is risking nothing. If I lose now, if I fail to pull Golden Adventurer out of there, I have lost nothing that is not already forfeit.’

‘We could have offered daily hire at a better rate than La Mouette,’ David suggested.

‘No. Duncan Alexander is my enemy. The only way I can get the contract is to make it so attractive, that he has no alternative. If he refuses my offer of Open Form, I will take him up before Lloyd's Committee and his own shareholders. I will make a rope of his own guts and hoist it around his neck. He has to go with me - whereas, if I had offered daily hire at a few thousand dollars less than La Mouette-‘ Nick broke off, reached for the box of cheroots on the corner of his desk, then arrested the gesture and swivelled in his chair at the heavy knock on the cabin door.

‘Come!’

Vin Baker's overalls were pristine blue, but the bandage around his head was smeared with engine grease, and he had recovered all the bounce and swagger that Nick had banged out of him against the engine-room windows.

‘Jesus!’ he said. ‘I hear you just flipped. I hear you blew your mind and jumped overboard - and when they fished you out, you up and went Open Form on a bomber that's beating herself to death on Cape Alarm.’

‘I'd explain it to you,’ offered Nick solemnly, ‘only I don't know enough words of one syllable.’ The Chief Engineer grinned wickedly at that and Nick went on quickly, ‘Just believe me when I tell you that I'm playing with someone else's chips. I'm not risking anything I haven't lost already.’

‘That's good business,’ the Australian agreed handsomely, and helped himself to one of Nick's precious cheroots.

‘Your share of 12 ½ % of daily hire is peanuts and apple jelly,’ Nick went on.

‘Too right,’ Vin Baker agreed, and hoisted at his waistline with his elbows.

‘But if we snatch Golden Adventurer and if we can plug her and pump her out, and if we can keep her afloat for three thousand miles, there will be a couple of big “M’s” - and that's beef and potatoes.’

‘You know something,’ Vin Baker grunted.’ For a Pommy, I'm beginning to like the sound of your voice.’ He said it reluctantly and shook his head, as if he didn't really believe it.

‘All I want from you now,’ Nick told him, ‘are your plans for getting power on to Golden Adventurer's pumps and anchor-winch. If she's up on the beach, we will have to kedge her off and we won't have much time.’

Kedging off was the technique of using a ship's own anchor and power winch to assist the pull of the tug dragging her off a stranding.

Vin Baker waved the cheroot airily. ‘Don't worry about that, I'm here.’ And at that moment the Trog put his head through the doorway again, this time without knocking.

‘I have an urgent and personal for you, Skipper.’ He brandished the telex flimsy like a royal flush in spades.

Nick glanced through it once, then read it aloud:

‘Master of Warlock from Christy Marine. Your offer Lloyd's Open Form "No cure no pay" accepted. Stop. You are hereby appointed main salvage contractor for wreck of Golden Adventurer. ENDS.’

Nick grinned with that rare wide irresistible flash of very white teeth. ‘And so, gentlemen, it looks as though we are still in business - but the devil knows for just how much longer.’

Warlock rounded the headland, where the three black pillars of serpentine rock stood into a lazy green sea, across which low oily swells marched in orderly ranks to push in gently against the black cliffs.

They came round to the sudden vista of the wide, ice-choked bay. The abandoned hulk of Golden Adventurer was so majestic, so tall and beautiful that not even the savage mountains could belittle her. She looked like an illustration from a child's book of fairy tales, a lovely ice ship, glistening and glittering in the yellow sunlight.

‘She's a beauty,’ whispered the Chief Engineer, and his voice captured the sorrow they all felt for a great ship in mortal distress. To every single man on the bridge of Warlock, a ship was a living thing for which at best they could feel love and admiration; even the dirtiest old tramp roused a grudging affection. But Golden Adventurer was like a lovely woman. She was something rare and special, and all of them felt it.

For Nick Berg, the bond was much more deeply felt. She was child of his inspiration, he had watched her lines take shape on the naval architect's drawing-board, he had seen her keel laid and her bare skeleton fleshed out with lovingly worked steel, and he had watched the woman who had once been his wife speak the blessing and then smash the bottle against her bows, laughing in the sunlight while the wine spurted and frothed.

She was his ship, and now, as he would never have believed possible, his destiny depended upon her.

He looked away from her at last to where La Mouette waited in the mouth of the bay at the edge of the ice. In contrast to the liner, she was small and squat and ugly, like a wrestler with all the weight in his shoulders. Greasy black smoke rose straight into the pale sky from her single stack, and her hull seemed to be painted the same greasy black.

Through his glasses, Nick saw the sudden bustle of activity on her bridge as Warlock burst into view. The headland would have blanketed La Mouette's radar and, with Nicks strict radio silence this would be the first time Jules Levoisin knew of Warlock's presence. Nick could imagine the consternation on her navigation bridge, and he noted wryly that Jules Levoisin had not even gone through the motions of putting a line on to Golden Adventurer. He must have been completely sure of himself, of his unopposed presence. In maritime law, a line on to a prize's hull bestowed certain rights, and Jules should have made the gesture.

‘Get La Mouette in clear,’ he instructed, and picked up the hand microphone as the Trog nodded to him.

‘Salut Jules, ca va? You pot-bellied little pirate, haven't they caught and hung you yet?’ Nick asked kindly in French, and there was a long disbelieving silence on Channel 16 before the fruity Gallic tones boomed from the overhead speaker.

‘Admiral James Bond, I think?’ and Jules chuckled, but unconvincingly. ‘Is that a battle-ship or a floating whorehouse? You always were a fancy boy, Nicholas, but what kept you so long? I expected to get a better run for my money.’

‘Three things you taught me, mon brave: the first was to take nothing for granted; the second was to keep your big yap shut tight when running for a prize; and the third was to put a line on it when you got there - you've broken your own rules, Jules.’

‘The line is nothing. I am arrived.’

‘And I old friend, am arrived also. But the difference is that I am Christy Marine's contractor.’

‘Tu rigoles! You are joking!’ Jules was shocked. ‘I heard nothing of this!’

‘I am not joking!’ Nick told him. ‘My James Bond equipment lets me talk in private. But go ahead, call Christy Marine and ask them - and while you are doing it, move that dirty old greaser of yours out the way. I've got work to do.’ Nick tossed the microphone back to the Trog. ‘Tape everything he sends,’ he instructed, and then to David Allen, ‘We are going to smash up that ice before it grabs too tight a hold on Golden Adventurer. Put your best man on the wheel.’

Nick was a man transformed, no longer the brooding, moody recluse, agonizing over each decision, uncertain of himself and reacting to each check with frustrated and undirected anger.

‘When he starts moving - he really burns it up,’ thought David Allen, as he listened to Nick on the engine-room intercom.

‘I want flank power on both, Chief. We are going to break ice. Then I want you in full immersion with helmet, we are going on board her to take a peek at her engine room.’ He swung back to David Allen. ‘Number One, you can stand by to take command.’ The man of action glorying in the end to inactivity, he almost seemed to dance upon his two feet, like a fighter at the first bell. ‘Tell Angel I want a hot meal for us before we go into the cold, plenty of sugar in it.’

‘I'll ask the steward,’ said David, ‘Angel is no good at the moment. He's playing dolls with the lass you pulled out the water. God, he'll be dressing her up and wheeling her around in a pram-‘

‘You tell Angel, I want food - and good food,’ growled Nick, and turned away to the window to study the ice that blocked the bay, ‘or I'll go down personally and kick his backside.’

‘He'd probably enjoy that,’ muttered David, and Nick rounded on him.

‘How many times have you checked out the salvage gear since we left Cape Town?’

‘Four times.’

‘Make it five. Do it again. I want all the diesel auxiliaries started and run up, then shut down for freezing and rigged to be swung out. I want to have power on Adventurer by noon tomorrow.’

‘Sir.’

But before he could go, Nick asked, ‘What is the barometric reading?’

‘I don't know-‘

‘From now until the end of this salvage, you will know, at any given moment, the exact pressure and you will inform me immediately of any variation over one millibar.’

‘Reading is 1018.’ David checked hastily.

‘It's too high,’ said Nick. And it's too bloody calm. Watch it. We are going to have a pressure bounce. Watch it like an eagle scout.’

‘Sir.’

‘I thought I asked you to check the gear.’

The Trog called out, ‘Christy Marine has just called La Mouette and confirmed that we are the main contractor but Levoisin has accepted daily hire to pick up a full load of survivors from Shackleton Bay and ferry them to Cape Town. Now he wants to speak to you again.’

‘Tell him I'm busy.’ Nick did not take his attention from the ice-packed bay, then he changed his mind. ‘No, I'll talk to him.’ He took the hand microphone.’ Jules?’

‘You don't play fair, Nicholas. You go behind the back of an old friend, a man who loves you like a brother.’

‘I'm a busy man. Did you truly call to tell me that?’

‘I think you made a mistake, Nicholas. I think you crazy to go Lloyd's Open on this one. That ship is stuck fast and the weather! Did you read the met from Gough Island? You got yourself a screaming bastard there, Nicholas. You listen to an old man.’

‘Jules, I've got twenty-two thousand horses running for me-‘

‘I still think you made a mistake, Nicholas. I think you're going to burn more than just your fingers.’

‘All revoir, Jules. Come and watch me in the awards court.’

‘I still think that's a whore-house, not a tug you are sailing. You can send over a couple of blondes and a bottle of wine-‘

‘Goodbye, Jules.’

‘Good luck, mon vieux.’

‘Hey, Jules - you say "good luck" and it's the worst possible luck. You taught me that.’

‘Oui, I know.’

‘Then good luck to you also, Jules.’ For a minute Nick looked after the departing tug. It waddled away over the oily swells, small and fat-bottomed and cheeky, for all the world like its Master and yet there was something dejected and crestfallen about her going.

He felt a prick of affection for the little Frenchman, he had been a true and good friend as well as a teacher, and Nick felt his triumph softening to regret.

He crushed it down ruthlessly. It had been a straight, hard but fair run, and Jules had been careless. Long ago, Nick had taught himself that anybody in opposition was an enemy, to be hated and beaten, and when you had done so, you despised them. You did not feel compassion, it weakened your own resolve.

He could not quite bring himself to despise Jules Levoisin. The Frenchman would bounce back, probably snatching the next job out from under Nick's nose, and anyway he had the lucrative contract to ferry the survivors from Shackleton Bay. It would pay the costs of his long run southwards and leave some useful change over.

Nick's own dilemma was not as easily resolved. He put Jules Levoisin out of his mind, turning away before the French tug had rounded the headland and he studied the ice-choked bay before him with narrow eyes and a growing feeling of concern. Jules had been right this was going to be a screaming bastard of a job.

The high seas that had thrown Golden Adventurer ashore had been made even higher by the equinoctial spring tides. Both had now abated and she was fast.

The liner's hull had swung also, so she was not aligned neatly at right angles to the beach. Warlock would not be able to throw a straight pull on to her. She would have to drag her sideways. Nick could see that now as he closed.

Still closer, he could see how the heavy steel hull, half filled with water, had burrowed itself into the yielding shingle. She would stick like toffee to a baby's blanket.

Then he looked at the ice, it was not only brash and pancake ice, but there were big chunks, bergie bits, from rotten and weathered icebergs, which the wind had driven into the bay, like a sheep dog with its flock.

The plunging temperatures had welded this mass of ice into a whole; like a monstrous octopus, it was wrapping thick glistening tentacles around Adventurer's stern. The ice had not yet had sufficient time to become impenetrable, and Warlock's bows were ice-strengthened for just such an emergency - yet Nick knew enough not to underestimate the hardness of ice. White ice is soft ice was the old adage, and yet here there were big lumps and hummocks of green and striated glacial ice in the mass, like fat plums in a pudding, any one of which could punch a hole through Warlock's hull.

Nick grimaced at the thought of having to send Jules Levoisin a Mayday.

He spoke to the helmsman quietly. ‘Starboard five - midships,’ lining Warlock up for a fracture-line in the ice pack. It was vital to come in at a right angle, to take the ice fully on the stern; a glancing blow could throw the bows off line and bring the vulnerable hull in contact with razor ice.

‘Stand by, engine room,’ he alerted them, and Warlock bore down on the ice at a full ten knots and Nick judged the moment of impact finely. Half a ship's length clear, he gave a crisp order.

‘Both half back.’

Warlock checked, going up on to the ice as she decelerated, but still with a horrid rasping roar that echoed through the ship. Her bows rose, riding up over the ice. It gave with a rending crackle, huge slabs of ice up-ending and tumbling together.

‘Both full back.’

The huge twin propellers changed their pitch smoothly into reverse thrust, and the wash boiled into the broken ice, sweeping it clear, as Warlock drew back into open water and Nick steadied her and lined her up again.

‘Both ahead full.’ Warlock charged forward, checking at the last moment, and again thick slabs of white ice broke away, and grated along the ship's side. Nick swung her stern first starboard then port, deftly using the twin screws to wash the broken ice free, then he pulled Warlock out and lined up again.

Butting and smashing and pivoting, Warlock worked her way deeper into the bay, opening a spreading web of cracks across the white sheet of ice.

David Allen was breathless, as he burst on to the bridge.

‘All gear checked and ready, sir.’

‘Take her,’ said Nick. ‘She's broken it up now - just keep it stirred up.’ He wanted to add a warning that the big variable-pitch propellers were Warlock's most vulnerable parts, but he had a high enough opinion now of his Mate's ability, so he went on instead, ‘I'm going down now to kit up.’

Vin Baker was in the aft salvage hold ahead of him, he had already half finished the tray of rich food and Angel hovered over him, but, as Nick came down the steel ladder, he lifted the cover off another steaming tray.

‘It's good,’ said Nick, although he could hardly force himself to swallow. The nerves in his stomach were bunched up too tightly. Yet food was one of the best defences against the cold.

‘Samantha wants to talk to you, skip.’

‘Who the hell is Samantha?’

‘The girl - she wants to thank you.’

‘Use your head, Angel, can't you see I have other things on my mind?’

Nick was already pulling on the rubber immersion suit over a full-length woollen undersuit. He needed the assistance of a seaman to enter the opening in the chest of the suit.

He had already forgotten about the girl as they closed the chest opening of the suit with a double ring seal, and then over the watertight bootees and mittens went another full suit of polyurethane. Nick and Vin Baker looked like a pair of fat Michelin men, as their dressers helped them into the full helmets, with wrap-around visors, built-in radio microphones and breathing valves.

‘Okay, Chief?’ Nick asked, and Vin Baker's voice squawked too loudly into his headphones.

‘Clear to roll.’

Nick adjusted the volume, and then shrugged into the oxygen rebreathing set. They were not going deeper than thirty feet, so Nick had decided to use oxygen rather than the bulky steel compressed-air cylinders.

‘Let's go,’ he said, and waddled to the ladder.

The Zodiac sixteen-foot inflatable dinghy swung overboard with the four of them in it, two divers and two picked seamen to handle the boat. Vin pushed one of them aside and primed the outboard himself.

‘Come on, beauty,’ he told it sternly, and the big Johnson Seahorse fired at the first kick. Gingerly, they began to feel their way through an open lead in the ice, with the two seamen poling away small sharp pieces that would have ripped the fabric of the Zodiac.

In Nick's radio headset, David Allen's voice spoke suddenly.

‘Captain, this is the First Officer. Barometric pressure is 1021 - it looks like it's going through the roof.’

The pressure was bouncing, as Nick had predicted. What goes up, must come down - and the higher she goes, the lower she falls.

Jules Levoisin had warned him it was going to be a screamer.

‘Did you read the last met from Gough Island?’

‘They have 1005 falling, and the wind at 320o and thirty-five knots.’

‘Lovely,’ said Nick. ‘We've got a big blow coming.’ And through the visor of his helmet he looked up at the pale and beautiful sun. It was not bright enough to pain the eye, and now it wore a fine golden halo like the head of a saint in a medieval painting.

‘Skipper, this is as close as we can get,’ Vin Baker told him, and slipped the motor into neutral. The Zodiac coasted gently into a small open pool in the ice-pack, fifty yards from Golden Adventurers stern.

A solid sheet of compacted ice separated them, and Nick studied it carefully. He had not taken the chance of working Warlock in closer until he could get a look at the bottom here. He wanted to know what depth of water he had to manoeuvre in, and if there were hidden snags, jagged rock to rip through the Warlock's hull, or flat shingle on which he could risk a bump.

He wanted to know the slope of the bottom, and if there was good holding for his ground-tackle, but most of all, he wanted to inspect the underwater damage to Golden Adventurer's hull.

‘Okay, Chief?’ he asked, and Vin Baker grinned at him through the visor.

‘Hey, I just remembered - my mommy told me not to get my feet wet. I'm going home.’

Nick knew just how he felt. There was thick sheet ice between them and Adventurer, they had to go down and swim below it. God alone knew what currents were running under the ice, and what visibility was like down there. A man in trouble could not surface immediately, but must find his way back to open water. Nick felt a claustrophobic tightening of his belly muscles, and he worked swiftly, checking out his gear, cracking the valve on his oxygen tank to inflate the breathing bag, checking the compass and Rolex Oyster on his wrist and clipping his buddy line on to the Zodiac, a line to return along, like Theseus in the labyrinth of the Minotaur.

‘Let's go,’ he said, and flipped backwards into the water.

The cold struck through the multiple layers of rubber and cloth and polyurethane almost instantly, and Nick waited only for the Chief Engineer to break through the surface beside him in a cloud of swirling silver bubbles.

‘God!’ Vin Baker's voice was distorted by the earphones, ‘it's cold enough to crack the gooseberries off a plaster saint.’ Paying out the line behind him, Nick sank down into the hazy green depths, looking for bottom. It came up dimly, heavy shingle and pebble, and he checked his depth gauge - almost six fathoms - and he moved in towards the beach.

The light from the surface was filtered through thick ice, green and ghostly in the icy depths, and Nick felt unreasonable panic stirring deep in him. He tried to thrust it aside and concentrate on the job, but it flickered there, ready to burst into flame.

There was a current working under the ice, churning the sediment so that the visibility was further reduced, and they had to fin hard to make headway across the bottom, always with the hostile ceiling of sombre green ice above them, cutting them off from the real world.

Suddenly the Golden Adventurer's hull loomed ahead of them, the twin propellers glinting like gigantic bronze wings in the gloom.

They moved in within arm Is length of the steel hull and swam slowly along it. It was like flying along the outer wall of a tall apartment block, a sheer cliff of riveted steel plate - but the hull was moving.

The Golden Adventurer was hoggmg on the bottom, the stern dipping and swaying to the pulse of the sea, the heaving ground-swell that came in under the ice; her stern bumped heavily on the pebbly bottom, like a great hammer beating time to the ocean.

Nick knew that she was settling herself in. Every hour now was making his task more difficult and he drove harder with his swim fins, pulling slightly ahead of Vin Baker. He knew exactly where to look for the damage. Reilly had reported it in minute detail to Christy Marine, but he came across it without warning.

It looked as though a monstrous axe had been swung horizontally at the hull, a clean slash, the shape of an elongated teardrop. The metal around it had been depressed, and the paint smeared away so that the steel gleamed as though it had been scoured and polished.

At its widest, the lips of the fifteen-foot rent gaped open by three feet or a little more, and it breathed like a living mouth - for the force of the ground-swell pushing into the gap built up pressure within the hull, then as the swell subsided the trapped water was forcibly expelled, sucking in and out with tremendous pressure.

‘It's a clean hole,’ Vin Baker's voice squawked harshly. ‘But it's too long to pump with cement.’

He was right, of course, Nick had seen that at once. Liquid cement would not plug that wicked gash, and anyway, there wasn't time to use cement, not with weather coming. An idea began forming in his mind.

‘I'm going to penetrate.’ Nick made the decision aloud, and beside him the Chief was silent for long incredulous seconds, then he covered the edge of fear in his voice with,

‘Listen, cobber, every time I've ever been into an orifice shaped like that, it's always meant big trouble. Reminds me of my first wife.’

‘Cover for me,’ Nick interrupted him. ‘If I'm not out in five minutes-‘

‘I'm coming with you,’ said the Chief. ‘I've got to take a look at her engine room. This is good a time as any.’

Nick did not argue with him.

‘I'll go first,’ he said and tapped the Chief's shoulder. ‘Do what I do.’

Nick hung four feet from the gash, finning to hold himself there against the current.

He watched the swirl of water rushing into the opening, and then gushing out again in a rash of silver bubbles. Then, as she began to breathe again, he darted forward.

The current caught him and he was hurled at the gap, with only time to duck his helmeted head and cover the fragile oxygen bag on his chest with both arms.

Raw steel snagged at his leg; there was no pain, but almost instantly he felt the leak of sea water into his suit. The cold stung like a razor cut, but he was through into the total darkness of the cavernous hull. He was flung into a tangle of steel piping, and he anchored himself with one arm and groped for the underwater lantern on his belt.

‘You okay?’ The Chief Is voice boomed in his headphones.

‘Fine.’

Vin Baker's lantern glowed eerily in the dark waters ahead of him.

‘Work fast,’ instructed Nick. ‘I've got a tear in my suit.’

Each of them knew exactly what to do and where to go. Vin Baker swam first to the water-tight bulkheads and checked all the seals. He was working in darkness in a totally unfamiliar engine room, but he went unerringly to the pump system, and checked the valve-settings; then he rose to the surface, feeling his way up the massive blocks of the main engines.

Nick was there ahead of him. The engine room was flooded almost to the deck above and the surface was a thick stinking scum of oil and diesel, in which floated a mass of loose articles, most of them undefinable, but in the beam of his lantern Nick recognized a gumboot and a grease pot floating beside his head. The whole thick stinking soup rose and fell and agitated with the push of the current through the rent.

The lenses of their lanterns were smeared with the oily filth and threw grotesque shadows into the cavernous depths, but Nick could just make out the deck above him, and the dark opening of the vertical ventilation shaft. He wiped the filth from his visor and saw what he wanted to see and the cold was spreading up his leg. He asked brusquely, ‘Okay, Chief?’

‘Let's get the hell out of here.’

There were sickening moments of panic when Nick thought they had lost the line to the opening. It had sagged and wrapped around a steam pipe. Nick freed it and then sank down to the glimmer of light through the gash.

He judged his moment carefully, the return was more dangerous than the entry, for the raw bright metal had been driven in by the ice, like the petals of a sunflower - or the fangs in a shark's jaw. He used the suck of water and shot through without a touch, turning and finning to wait for Vin Baker.

The Australian came through in the next rush of water, but Nick saw him flicked sideways by the current, and he struck the jagged opening a touching blow. There was instantly a roaring rush of escaping oxygen from his breathing bag, as the steel split it wide, and for a moment the Chief was obscured in the silver cloud of gas that was his life's breath.

‘Oh God, I'm snagged,’ he shouted, clutching helplessly at his empty bag plummeting sharply into the green depths at the drastic change in his buoyance. The heavily leaded belt around his waist had been weighted to counter the flotation of the oxygen bag, and he went down like a gannet diving on a shoal of sardine.

Nick saw instantly what was about to happen. The current had him - it was dragging him down under the hull, sucking him under that hammering steel bottom, where he would be crushed against the stony beach by twenty-two thousand tons of pounding steel.

Nick went head down, finning desperately to catch the swirling body which tumbled like a leaf in high wind. He had a fleeting glimpse of Baker's face, contorted with terror and lack of breath, the glass visor of his helmet already swamping with icy water as the pressure spurted through the non-return valve. The Chief's headset microphone squealed once and then went dead as the water shorted it out.

‘Drop your belt,’ yelled Nick, but Baker did not respond; he had not heard, his headset had gone and instead he fought ineffectually in the swirling current, drawn inexorably down to brutal death.

Nick got a hand to him and threw back with all his strength on his fins to check their downward plunge, but still they went down and Nick's right hand was clumsy with cold and the double thickness of his mittens as he groped for the quick-release on the Chief's belt.

He hit the rounded bottom of the great hull with his shoulder, and felt them dragged under to where clouds of sediment blew like smoke from the working of the keel. Locked together like a couple of waltzing dancers, they swung around and he saw the keel, like the blade of a guillotine, rise up high above them. He could not reach the Chief's release toggle.

There were only micro-seconds in which to go for his one other chance. He hit his own release and the thick belt with thirty-five pounds of lead fell away from Nick's waist; with it went the buddy line that would guide them back to the waiting Zodiac, for it had been clipped into the back of the belt.

The abrupt loss of weight checked their downward plunge, and fighting with all the strength of his legs, Nick was just able to hold them clear of the great keel as it came swinging downwards.

Within ten feet of them, steel struck stone with a force that rang in Nick's eardrum like a bronze gong but he had an armlock on the Chief's struggling body, and now at last his right hand found the release toggle on the other man's belt.

He hit it, and another thirty-five pounds of lead dropped away. They began to rise, up along the hogging steel hull, faster and faster as the oxygen in Nick's bag expanded with the release of pressure. Now their plight was every bit as desperate, for they were racing upwards to a roof of solid ice with enough speed to break bone or crack a skull.

Nick emptied his lungs, exhaling on a single continuous breath, and at the same time opened the valve to vent his bag, blowing away the precious life-giving gas in an attempt to check their rise - yet still they went into the ice with a force that would have stunned them both, had Nick not twisted over and caught it on his shoulder and outflung arm. They were pinned there under the ice by the cork-like buoyancy of their rubber suits and the remaining gas in Nick's bag.

With mild and detached surprise Nick saw that the lower side of the ice pack was not a smooth sheet, but was worked into ridges and pinnacles, into weird flowing shapes like some abstract sculpture in pale green glass. It was only a fleeting moment that he looked at it, for beside him Baker was drowning.

His helmet was flooded with icy water and his face was empurpled and his mouth contorted into a horrible rictus; already his movements were becoming spasmodic and uncoordinated, as he struggled for breath.

Nick realized that haste would kill them both now. He had to work fast but deliberately - and he held Baker to him as he cracked the valve on his steel oxygen bottle, reinflating his chest bag.

With his right hand, he began to unscrew the breathing pipe connection into the side of Baker's helmet. It was slow, too slow. He needed touch for this delicate work.

He thought, This could cost me my right hand, and he stripped off the thick mitten in a single angry gesture. Now he could feel - for the few seconds until the cold paralysed his fingers. The connection came free and while he worked, Nick was pumping his lungs like a bellows, hyperventilating, washing his blood with pure oxygen until he felt light-headed and dizzy.

One last sweet breath, and then he unscrewed his own hose connection; icy water flooded through the valve but he held his head at an angle to trap oxygen in the top of his helmet, keeping his nose and eyes clear, and he rescrewed his own hose into Baker's helmet with fingers that no longer had feeling.

He held the Chief's body close to his chest, embracing like lovers, and he cracked the last of the oxygen from his bottle. There was just sufficient pressure of gas left to expunge the water from Baker's helmet. It blew out with an explosive hiss through the valve, and Nick watched carefully with his face only inches from Baker's.

The Chief was choking and coughing, gulping and gasping at the rush of cold oxygen, his eyes watery and unseeing, his spectacles blown awry and the lenses obscured by sea water, but then Nick felt his chest begin to swell and subside. Baker was breathing again, ‘which is more than I am doing’ Nick thought grimly - and then suddenly he realized for the first time that he had lost the guide line with his weight belt.

He did not know in which direction was the shore, nor which way to swim to reach the Zodiac. He was utterly disorientated, and desperately he peered through his half flooded visor for sight of the Golden Adventurer's hull to align himself. She was not there, gone in the misty green gloom - and he felt the first heave of his lungs as they demanded air. And as he denied his body the driving need to breathe, he felt the fear that had flickered deep within him flare up into true terror, swiftly becoming cold driving panic.

A suicidal urge to tear at the green ice roof of this watery tomb almost overwhelmed him. He wanted to try and rip his way through it with bare freezing hands to reach the precious air.

Then, just before panic completely obliterated his reason, he remembered the compass on his wrist. Even then his brain was sluggish, beginning to starve for oxygen, and it took precious seconds working out the reciprocal of his original bearing.

As he leaned forward to read the compass, more sea water spurted into his helmet, spiking needles of icy cold agony into the sinuses of his cheeks and forehead, making the teeth ache in his jaws, so he gasped involuntarily and immediately choked.

Still holding Baker to him, linked by the thick black umbilical cord of his oxygen hose, Nick began to swim out on the reciprocal compass heading. Immediately his lungs began to pump, convulsing in involuntary spasms, like those of childbirth, craving air, and he swam on.

With his head thrown back slightly he saw that the sheet of ice moved slowly above him; at times, when the current held them it moved not at all, and it required all his self-control to keep finning doggedly, then the current relaxed its grip and they moved forward again, but achingly slowly.

He had time then to realize how exquisitely beautiful was the ice roof; translucent, wonderously carved and sculptured - and suddenly he remembered standing hand in hand with Chantelle beneath the arched roof of the Chartres cathedral, staring up in awe. The pain in his chest subsided, the need to breathe passed, but he did not recognize that as the sign of mortal danger, nor the images that formed before his eyes as the fantasy of a brain deprived of oxygen and slowly dying.

Chantelle's face was before him then, glowing hair soft and thick and glossy as a butterfly's wing, huge dark eyes and that wide mouth so full of the promise of delight and warmth and love.

‘I loved you,’ he thought. ‘I really loved you.’

And again the image changed. He saw again the incredible slippery explosive liquid burst with which his son was born, heard that querulous cry as he dangled pink and wet and hairless from the rubber-gloved hand, and felt again the soul-consuming wonder and joy.

‘A drowning man –‘ Nick recognized at last what was happening to him. He knew then he was dying, but the panic had passed, as the cold had passed also, and the terror. He swam on, dreamlike, into the green mists. Then he realized that his own legs were no longer moving; he lay relaxed not breathing, not feeling, and it was Baker's body that was thrusting and working against him.

Nick peered into the glass visor still only inches from his eyes, and he saw that Baker's face was set and determined. He was gulping the pure sweet oxygen and gained strength with each breath, driving on strongly.

‘You beauty,’ whispered Nick dreamily, and felt the water shoot into his throat, but there was no pain.

Another image formed before him, an Arrowhead-class yacht with spinnaker set, running free across a bright Mediterranean sea, and his son at the tiller, the dense tumble of curls that covered his small neat head fluttering in the wind, and the same velvety dark eyes as his mother's in the sun-tanned oval of his face as he laughed.

‘Don't let her run by the lee, Peter,’ Nicholas wanted to shout to his son, but the image faded into blackness. He thought for a moment that he had passed into unconsciousness, but then he realized suddenly that it was the black rubber bottom of the Zodiac only inches from his eyes, and that the rough hands that dragged him upwards, lifting him and tearing loose the fastening of his helmet, were not part of the fantasy.

Propped against the pillowed gunwale of the Zodiac, held by the two boatmen from falling backwards, the first breaths of sub-zero air were too rich for his starved lungs, and Nick coughed and vomited weakly down the front of his suit.

Nick came out of the shower cabinet. The cabin was thick with steam, and his body glowed dull angry red from the almost boiling water. He wrapped the towel around his waist as he stepped through into his night cabin.

Baker slouched in the armchair at the foot of his bunk. He wore fresh overalls, his hair stood up in little damp spikes around the shaven spot where Angel's cat-gut stitches still held the scabbed wound closed. One of the side frames of his spectacles had snapped during those desperate minutes below Golden Adventurer's stern, and Baker had repaired it with black insulating tape.

He held two glasses in his left hand, and, a big flat brown bottle of liquor in the other. He poured two heavy slugs into the glasses as Nick paused in the bathroom door, and the sweet, rich aroma smelled like the sugar-cane fields of northern Queensland.

Baker passed a glass to Nick, and then showed him the bottle's yellow label.

‘Bundaberg rum,’ he announced, the dinky die stuff, sport!

Nick recognized both the offer of liquor and the salutation as probably the highest accolade the chief would ever give another human being. Nick sniffed the dark honey-brown liquor and then took it in a single toss, swirled it once around his mouth, swallowed, shuddered like a spaniel shaking off water droplets, exhaled and said: ‘It's still the finest rum in the world.’ Dutifully, he said what was expected of him, and held out his glass.

‘The Mate asked me to give you a message,’ said Baker as he poured another shot for each of them. ‘Glass hit 1035 and now it‘s diving like a dingo into its hole - back to 1020 already. It's going to blow - is it ever going to blow!’

They regarded each other over the rims of the glasses.

‘We've wasted almost two hours, Beauty,’ Nick told him, and Baker blinked at the unlikely name, then grinned crookedly as he accepted it.

‘How are you going to plug that hull?’

‘I've got ten men at work already. We are going to fother a sail into a collision mat.’ Baker blinked again, then shook his head in disbelief.

‘That's Hornblower stuff-‘

‘The Witch of Endor,’ Nick agreed. ‘So you can read?’

‘You haven't got pressure to drive it home,’ Baker objected. The trapped air from the engine room will blow it out.’

‘I'm going to run a wire down the ventilation shaft of the engine room and out through the gash. We'll fix the collision mat outside the hull and winch it home with the wire.’

Baker stared at him for five seconds while he examined the proposition. A sail was fothered by threading the thick canvas with thousands of strands of unravelled oakum until it resembled a huge shaggy doormat. When this was placed over an aperture below a ship's waterline, the pressure of water forced it into the hole, and the water swelled the mass of fibre until it formed an almost watertight plug.

However, in Golden Adventurer's case the damage was extensive and as the hull was already flooded, there was no pressure differential to drive home the plug. Nick proposed to beat that by using an internal wire to haul the plug into the gash.

‘It might work.’ Beauty Baker was noncommittal.

Nick took the second rum at a gulp, dropped the towel and reached for his working gear laid out on the bunk.

‘Let's get power on her before the blow hits us,’ he suggested mildly, and Baker lumbered to his feet and stuffed the Bundaberg bottle into his back pocket.

‘Listen, sport,’ he said. ‘All that guff about you being a Pommy, don't take it too seriously.’

‘I won't,’ said Nick. ‘Actually, I was born and educated in Blighty, but my father's an American. So that makes me one also.

‘Christ.’ Beauty hitched disgustedly at his waist with both elbows. ‘If there's anything worse than a bloody Pom, it's a goddamned Yank.’

Now that Nick was certain that the bottom of the bay was clean and free of underwater snags, he handled Warlock boldly but with a delicately skilful touch which David Allen watched with awe.

Like a fighting cock, the Warlock attacked the thicker ice line along the shore, smashing free huge lumps and slabs, then washing them clear with the propellers, giving herself space to work about Golden Adventurer's stern.

The ominous calm of both sea and air made the work easier, although the vicious little current working below Adventurer's stern complicated the transfer of the big alternator.

Nick had two Yokohama fenders slung from Warlocks side, and the bloated plastic balloons cushioned the contact of steel against steel as Nick laid Warlock alongside the stranded liner, holding her there with delicate adjustments of power and rudder and screw pitch.

Beauty Baker and his working party, swaddled in heavy Antarctic gear, were already up on the catwalk of Warlock's forward gantry, seventy feet above the bridge and overlooking Adventurer's sharply canted deck.

As Nick nudged Warlock in, they dropped the steel boarding-ladder across the gap between the two ships and Beauty led them across in single file, like a troop of monkeys across the limb of a forest tree.

‘All across,’ the Third Officer confirmed for Nick, and then added, ‘Glass has dropped again, sir. Down to 1005.’

‘Very well,’ Nick drew Warlock gently away from the liner's stern, and held her fifty feet off. Only then did he flick his eyes up at the sky. The midnight sun had turned into a malevolent jaundiced yellow, while the sun itself was a ball of dark satanic red above the peaks of Cape Alarm, and it seemed that the snowfields and glaciers were washed with blood.

‘It's beautiful.’ Suddenly the girl was beside him. The top of her head was on a level with his shoulder, and in the ruddy light, her thick roped hair glowed like newly minted sovereigns in red gold. Her voice was low and a little husky with shyness, and touched a chord of response in Nick, but when she lifted her face to him he saw how young she was.

‘I came to thank you,’ she said softly. ‘It's the first chance I've had.’

She wore baggy, borrowed men's clothing that made her look like a little girl dressing up, and her face, free of cosmetics, had that waxy plastic glow of youth, like the polished skin of a ripe apple.

Her expression was solemn and there were traces of her recent ordeal beneath her eyes and at the corners of her mouth. Nick sensed the tension and nervousness in her.

‘Angel wouldn't let me come before,’ she said, and suddenly she smiled. The nervousness vanished and it was the direct warm unselfconscious smile of a beautiful child that has never known rejection. Nick was shocked by the strength of his sudden physical desire for her, his body moved, clenching like a fist in his groin, and he felt his heart pound furiously in the cage of his ribs.

His shock turned to anger, for she looked but fourteen or fifteen years of age; almost she seemed as young as his own son, and he was shamed by the perversity of his attraction. since the good bright times with Chantelle, he had not experienced such direct and instant involvement with a woman. At the thought of Chantelle, his emotions collapsed in a disordered tangle, from which only his lust and his anger emerged clearly.

He cupped the anger to him, like a match in a high wind, it gave him strength again. Strength to thrust this aside, for he knew how vulnerable he still was and how dangerous a course had opened before him, to be led by this child woman. Suddenly he was aware that he had swayed bodily towards the girl and had been staring into her face for many long seconds, that she was meeting his gaze steadily and that something was beginning to move in her eyes like cloud shadow across the sunlit surface of a green mountain lake. Something was happening which he could not afford, could not chance - and then he realized also that the two young deck officers were watching them with undisguised curiosity, and he turned his anger on her.

‘Young lady,’ he said. ‘You have an absolute genius for being in the wrong place at the wrong time.’ And his tone was colder and more remote than even he had intended it.

Before he turned away from her, he saw the moment of her disbelief turn to chagrin, and the green eyes misted slightly. He stood stiffly staring down the fore-deck where David Allen's team was opening the forward salvage hold.

Nick's anger evaporated almost at once, to be replaced by dismay. He realized clearly that he had completely alienated the girl and he wanted to turn back to her and say something gracious that might retrieve the situation, but he could think of nothing and instead lifted the hand microphone to his lips and spoke to Baker over the VFH radio.

‘How's it going, Chief?’

There were ten seconds of delay, and Nick was very conscious of the girl's presence near him.

‘Their emergency generator has burned out, it will need two days’ work to get it running again. We'll have to take on the alternator,’ Beauty told him.

‘We are ready to give it to you,’ Nick told him, and then called David Allen on the fore-deck.

‘Ready, David?’

‘All set.’ Nick began edging Warlock back towards the liner's towering stern, and now at last he turned back to the girl. Unaccountably, he now wanted her approbation, so his smile was ready - but she had already gone, taking with her that special aura of brightness.

Nick's voice had a jagged edge to it as he told David Allen, ‘Let's do this fast and right, Number One.’

Warlock nuzzled Adventurer's stern, the big black Yokoharna fenders gentling her touch, and on her fore-deck the winch whined shrilly, the lines squealing in their blocks and from the open salvage hatch the four-ton alternator swung out. It was mounted on a sledge for easy handling.

The diesel tanks were charged and the big motor primed and ready to start. It rose swiftly, dangling from the tall gantry, and a dozen men synchronized their efforts, in those critical moments when it hung out over Warlock's bows. A nasty freaky little swell lifted the tug and pushed her across, for the dangling burden was already putting a slight list on her, and it would have crashed into the steel side of the liner, had not Nick thrown the screws into reverse thrust and given her a burst of power to hold her off.

The instant the swell subsided, he closed down and slid the pitch to fine forward, pressing the cushioned bows lightly back against Adventurer's side.

‘He's good!’ David Allen watched Nicholas work. ‘He's better than old Mac ever was.’ Mackintosh, Warlock's previous skipper, had been careful and experienced, but Nicholas Berg handled the ship with the flair and intuitive touch that even Mac's vast experience could never have matched.

David Allen pushed the thought aside and signalled the winch man. The huge dangling machine dropped with the control of a roosting seagull on to the liner's deck. Baker's crew leapt on it immediately, releasing the winch cable and throwing out the tackle, to drag it away on its sledge.

Warlock drew off, and when Baker's crew was ready, she went in to drop another burden, this time one of the high-speed centrifugal pumps which would augment Golden Adventurer's own machinery - if Baker could get that functioning. It went up out of Warlock's forward hold, followed ten minutes later by its twin.

‘Both pumps secured.’ Baker's voice had a spark of jubilation in it, but at that moment a shadow passed over the ship, as though a vulture wheeled above on wide-spread pinions, and as Nick glanced up he saw the men on the fore-deck lift their heads also.

It was a single cloud seeming no bigger than a man's fist, a thousand or fifteen hundred feet above them, but it had momentarily obscured the lowering sun, before scuttling on furtively down the peaks of Cape Alarm.

‘There is still much to do,’ Nick thought, and he opened the bridge door and stepped out on to the exposed wing. There was no movement of air, and the cold seemed less intense although a glance at the glass confirmed that there were thirty degrees still of frost. No wind here, but high up it was beginning.

‘Number One,’ Nick snapped into the microphone. What's going on down there - do you think this is your daddy's yacht?’

And David Allen's team leapt to the task of closing down the forward hatch, and then tramped back to the double salvage holds on the long stern quarter.

‘I am transferring command to the stern bridge.’ Nick told his deck officers and hurried back through the accommodation area to the second enclosed bridge, where every control and navigational aid was duplicated, a unique feature of salvage-tug construction where so much of the work took place on the afterdeck.

This time from the aft gantries, they lifted the loaded pallets of salvage gear on to the liner's deck, another eight tons of equipment went aboard Golden Adventurer. Then they pulled away and David Allen battened down again. When he came on to the bridge stamping and slapping his own shoulders, red-cheeked and gasping from the cold, Nick told him immediately .

‘Take command, David, I'm going on board.’ Nick could not bring himself to wait out the uncertain period while Beauty Baker put power and pumps into action.

Anything mechanical was Baker's responsibility, as seamanship was strictly Nick's, but it could take many hours yet, and Nick could not remain idle that long.

From high on the forward gantry, Nick looked out across that satiny ominous sea. It was a little after midnight now and the sun was half down behind the mountains, a two dimensional disc of metal heated to furious crimson. The sea was sombre purple and the ice-bergs were sparks of brighter cherry red. From this height he could see that the surface- of the sea was crenellated, a small regular swell spreading across it like ripples across a pond, from some disturbance far out beyond the horizon.

Nick could feel the fresh movement of Warlock's hull as she rode this swell, and suddenly a puff of wind hit Nick in the face like the flit of a bat's wing, and the metallic sheen of the sea was scoured by a cat's-paw of wind that scratched at the surface as it passed.

He pulled the draw-suing of the hood of his anorak up more tightly under his chin and stepped out on to the open boarding-ladder, like a steeplejack, walking upright and balancing lightly seventy feet above Warlock's slowly rolling fore-deck.

He jumped down on to Golden Adventurer's steeply canted, ice-glazed deck and saluted Warlock's bridge far below in a gesture of dismissal.

‘I tried to warn you, dearie,’ said Angel gently, as she entered the steamy galley, for with a single glance he was aware of Samantha's crestfallen air. ‘He tore you up, didn't he?’

‘What are you talking about?’ She lifted her chin, and the smile was too bright and too quick. ‘What do you want me to do?’

‘You can separate that bowl of eggs,’ Angel told her, and stooped again over twenty pounds of red beef, with his sleeves rolled to the elbows about his thick and hairy arms, clutching a butcher's knife in a fist like that of Rocky Marciano.

They worked in silence for five minutes, before Samantha spoke again.

‘I only tried to thank him -,’ And again there was a grey mist in her eyes.

‘He's a lower-deck pig,’ Angel agreed.

‘He is not,’ Samantha came in hotly. ‘He's not a pig.’

‘Well, then, he's a selfish, heartless bastard - with jumped-up ideas.’

‘How can you say that?’ Samantha's eyes flashed now. ‘He is not selfish - he went into the water to get me!’

Then she saw the smile on Angel's lips and the mocking quizzical expression in his eyes, and she stopped in confusion and concentrated on cracking the egg shells and slopping the contents into the mixing basin.

‘He's old enough to be your father,’ Angel needled her, and now she was really angry; a ruddy flush under the smooth gloss of her skin made the freckles shine like gold dust.

‘You talk the most awful crap, Angel.’

‘God, dearie, where did you learn that language?’

‘Well, you're making me mad.’ She broke an egg with such force that it exploded down the front of her pants. ‘Oh, shit!’ she said, and stared at him defiantly. Angel tossed her a dish-cloth, she wiped herself violently and they went on working again.

‘How old is he?’ she demanded at last. ‘A hundred and fifty?’

‘He's thirty-eight,’ Angel thought for a moment, ‘or thirty-nine.’

‘Well, smart arse,’ she said tartly, ‘the ideal age is half the man's age, plus seven.’

‘You aren't twenty-six, dearie!’ Angel said gently.

‘I will be in two years’ time!’ she told him.

‘You really want him badly, hey? A fever of lust and desire?’

‘That's nonsense, Angel, and you know it. I just happen to owe him a rather large debt - he saved my life, - but as for wanting him, ha!’ She dismissed the idea with a snort of disdain and a toss of her head.

‘I'm glad,’ Angel nodded. ‘He's not a very nice person, you can see by those ferrety eyes of his -.’

‘He has beautiful eyes -,’ she flared at him, and then stopped abruptly, saw the cunning in his grin, faltered and then collapsed weakly on the bench beside him, with a cracked egg in one hand.

‘Oh, Angel, you are a horrible man and I hate you. How can you make fun of me now?’ He saw how close she was to tears, and became brisk and businesslike.

‘First of all, you better know something about him,’ and he began to tell her, giving her a waspish biography of Nicholas Berg, embellished by a vivid imagination and a wicked sense of humour, together with a quasi-feminine love of gossip, to which Samantha listened avidly, making an occasional exclamation of surprise.

‘His wife ran away with another man, she could be out of her mind, don't you think?’

‘Dearie, a change is like two weeks at the seaside.’

Or asking a question. ‘He owns this ship, actually owns it? Not just Master?’

‘He owns this ship, and its sister, and the company. They used to call him the Golden Prince. He's a high flyer, dearie, didn't you recognize it?’

‘I didn't.’

‘Of course you did. You're too much woman not to. There is no more powerful aphrodisiac than success and power, nothing like the clink of gold to get a girl's hormones revving up, is there?’

‘That's unfair, Angel. I didn't know a thing about him. I didn't know he was rich and famous. I don't give a damn for money-‘

‘Ho! Ho?’ Angel shook his curls and the diamond studs flashed in his ears. But he saw her anger flare again. ‘All right, dearie, I'm teasing. But what really attracts you is his strength and air of purpose. The way other men obey, and follow and fear him. The air of command, of power and with it, success.’

‘I didn't-‘

‘Oh, be honest with yourself, love. It was not the fact he saved your life, it wasn't his beautiful eyes nor the lump in his jeans-‘

‘You're crude, Angel.’

You're bright and beautiful, and you just can't help yourself. You're like a nubile little gazelle, all skittish and ready, and you have just spotted the herd bull. You can't help yourself, dearie, you're just a woman.’

‘What am I going to do, Angel?’

‘We'll make a plan, love, but one thing is certain, you're not going to trail around behind him, dressed like an escapee from a junk shop, breathing adoration and hero-worship. He's doing a job. He doesn't need to trip over you every time he turns. Play hard to get.’

Samantha thought about it for a moment.’ Angel, I don't want to play it that hard that I never get around to being got - if you follow me.

Beauty Baker had the work in hand well organized and going ahead as fast as even Nick, in his overwhelming impatience, could expect.

The alternator had been manhandled through the double doors into the superstructure on B deck, and it had been secured against a steel bulkhead and lashed down.

‘As soon as I have power, we'll drill the deck and bolt her down,’ he explained to Nick.

‘Have you got the lines in?’

‘I'll by-pass the main junction box on C deck, and I will select from the temporary box-‘

‘But you've identified the fore-deck winch circuit, and the pumps?’

‘Jesus, sport, why don't you go sail your little boat and leave me to do my work?’

On the upper deck one of Baker's gangs was already at work with the gas welding equipment. They were opening access to the ventilation shaft of the main engine room. The gas cutter hissed viciously and red sparks showered from the steel plate of the tall dummy smoke stack. The stack was merely to give the Golden Adventurer the traditional rakish lines, and now the welder cut the last few inches of steel plating. It fell away into the deep, dark cavern, leaving a roughly square opening six feet by six feet which gave direct access into the half-flooded engine room fifty feet below.

Despite Baker's advice, Nick took command here, directing the rigging of the winch blocks and steel wire cable that would enable a cable to be taken down into the flooded engine room and out again through that long, viciously fanged gash in the ship's side. When he looked at his Rolex Oyster again, almost an hour had passed. The sun had gone and a luminous green sky filled with the marvellous pyrotechnics of the Aurora Australis turned the night eerie and mysterious.

‘All right, bosun, that's all we can do now. Bring your team up to the bows.’

As they hurried forward along the open fore-deck, the wind caught them, a single shrieking gust that had them reeling and. staggering and grabbing for support, then it was past and the wind settled down to nag and whine and pry at their clothing as Nick directed the work at the two huge anchor winches; but he heard the rising sea starting to push and stir the pack-ice, making it growl and whisper menacingly.

They catted the twin sea-anchors and with two men working over Adventurer's side they secured collars of heavy chain to the crown of each anchor. Warlock would now be able to drag those anchors out, letting them bump along the - bottom, but in the opposite direction to that in which they had been designed to drag, so that the pointed flukes would not be able to dig in and hold.

Then, when the anchors were out to the full reach of their own chains, Warlock would drop them, the flukes would dig in and hold. This was the ground-tackle which might resist the efforts of even a force twelve wind to throw Golden Adventurer further ashore.

When Baker had power on the ship, the anchor winches would be used to kedge Golden Adventurer off the bank. Nick placed much reliance on these enormously powerful winches to assist Warlock's own engines, for even as they worked, he could feel through the soles of his feet how heavily grounded the liner was.

It was a tense and heavy labour, for they were working with enormous weights of dead-weight steel chain and shackles. The securing shackle, which held the chain collar on the anchor crown, alone weighed three hundred pounds and had to be manhandled by six men using complicated tackle.

By the time they had the work finished, the wind was rising force six, and wailing in the superstructure. The men were chilled and tired, and tempers were flashing.

Nick led them back to the shelter of the main superstructure. His boots seemed to be made of lead, and his lungs pumped for the solace of cheroot smoke, and he realized irrelevantly that he had not slept now for over fifty hours since he had fished that disturbing little girl from the water. Quickly he pushed the thought of her aside, for it distracted him from his purpose, and, as he stepped over the door-sill into the liner's cold but wind-protected accommodation, he reached for his cheroot-case.

Then he arrested the movement and blinked with surprise as suddenly garish light blazed throughout the ship deck lights and internal lights, so that instantly a festival air enveloped her and from the loudspeakers on the deck above Nicholas’ head wafted soft music as the broadcasting equipment switched itself in. It was the voice of Donna Summer, as limpid and ringing clear as fine-leaded crystal. The sound was utterly incongruous in this place and in these circumstances.

‘Power is on!’

Nick let out a whoop and ran through to B deck. Beauty Baker was standing beside his roaring alternator and hugging himself with glee.

‘Howzat, sport?’ he demanded. Nick punched his shoulder.

‘Right on, Beauty.’ He wasted a few moments and a cheroot by placing one of the precious black tubes between Baker's lips and flashing his lighter. The two of them smoked for twenty seconds in close and companionable silence.

‘Okay!’ Nick ended it. ‘Pumps and winches.’

‘The two emergency portables are ready to start, and I'm on my way to check the ship's main pumps.’

‘The only thing left is to get the collision mat into place.’

‘That is your trick,’ Baker told him flatly. You're not getting me into the water again, ever. I've even given up bathing.’

‘Yeah, did you notice I'm standing upwind?’ Nick told him. ‘But somebody has got to go down again to pass the line.’

‘Why don't you send Angel?’ Baker grinned evilly. ‘Excuse me, cobber - I've got work to do.’ He inspected the cheroot. ‘After we've pulled this dog off the ground, I hope you will be able to afford decent gaspers.’ And he was gone into the depths of the liner, leaving Nick with the one task he had been avoiding even thinking about. Somebody had to go down into that engine room. He could call for volunteers, of course, but then it was another of his own rules to never ask another man to do what you are afraid to do yourself.

‘I can leave David to lay out the ground-tackle, but I can't let anybody else put the collision mat in.’ He faced it now. He would have to go down again, into the cold and darkness and mortal danger of the flooded engine room.

The ground-tackle that David Allen had laid was holding Golden Adventurer handsomely, even in the aggravated swell which was by now pouring into the open mouth of the bay, driven on by the rising wind that was inciting it to wilder abandon.

David had justified Nick's confidence in the seamanlike manner in which he had taken the Golden Adventurer's twin anchors out and dropped them a cable's length offshore, at a finely judged angle to give the best purchase and hold.

Beauty Baker had installed and test-run the two big centrifugals and he had even resuscitated two of the liner's own forward pump assemblies which had been protected by the watertight bulkhead from the sea break-in. He was ready now to throw the switch on this considerable arsenal of pumps, and he had calculated that if Nick could close that gaping rent in the hull, he would be able to pump the liner's hull dry and clean in just under four hours.

Nick was in full immersion kit again, but this time he had opted for a single bottle Drager diving-set; he was off oxygen sets for life, he decided wryly.

Before going down, he paused on the open deck with the diving helmet under his arm. The wind must be rising seven now, he decided, for it was kicking off the tops of the waves in bursts of spray and a low scudding sky of dirty grey cloud had blotted out the rising sun and the peaks of Cape Alarm. It was a cold dark dawn, with the promise of a wilder day to follow.

Nick took one glance across at Warlock. David Allen was holding her nicely in position, and his own team was ready, grouped around that ugly black freshly burned opening in Adventurer's stack. He lifted the helmet on to his head, and while his helpers closed the fastenings and screwed down the hose connections, he checked the radio.

‘Warlock, do you read me?’

Allen's voice came back immediately, acknowledging and confirming his readiness, then he went on, ‘The glass just went through the floor, Skipper, she's 996 and going down. Wind's force six rising seven and backing. It looks like we are fair in the dangerous quadrant of whatever is coming.’

‘Thank you, David!’ Nick replied. ‘You warm my heart.’

He stepped forward, and they helped him into the canvas bosun's chair. Nick checked the tackle and rigging, that once-more-for-luck check, and then he nodded.

The interior of the engine room was no longer dark, for Baker had rigged floodlights high above in the ventilation shaft, but the water was black with engine oil, and as Nick was lowered slowly down, with legs dangling from the bosun's chair, it surged furiously back and across like some panic-stricken monster trying to break out of its steel cage. That wind-driven swell was crashing into Golden Adventurer's side and boiling in through the opening, setting up its own wave action, forming its own currents and eddies which broke and leaped angrily against the steel bulkheads.

‘Slower,’ Nick spoke into the microphone. ‘Stop!’ His downward progress was halted ten feet above the starboard main engine block, but the confined surge of water broke over the engine as though it were a coral reef, covering it entirely at one instant, and then sucking back and exposing it again at the next.

The rush of water could throw a man against that machinery with force enough to break every bone in his body, and Nick hung above it and studied the purchases for his blocks.

‘Send down the main block,’ he ordered, and the huge steel block came down out of the shadows and dangled in the floodlights.

‘Stop.’ Nick began directing the block into position. ‘Down two feet. Stop!’

Now waist-deep in the oily, churning water, he struggled to drive the shackle pin and secure the block to one of the main frames of the hull. Every few minutes a stronger surge would hurl the water over his head, forcing him to cling helplessly, until it relinquished its grip, and his visor cleared sufficiently to allow him to continue his task.

He had to pull out and rest after forty minutes of it.He sat as close as he could to the heat-exchangers of the running diesel engine of the alternator, taking warmth from them and drinking Angel's strong sweet Thermos coffee. He felt like a fighter between rounds, his body aching, every muscle strained and chilled by the efforts of fighting that filthy churned emulsion of sea water and oil, his flanks and ribs bruised from harsh contact with the submerged machinery. But after twenty minutes, he stood up again.

‘Let's go,’ he said and resettled the helmet. The hiatus had given him a chance to replan the operation, thinking his way around the problems he had found down there; now the work seemed to fall more readily into place, though he had lost all sense of time alone in the infernal resounding cavern of steel and he was not sure of the hour, or the phase of the day, when at last he was ready to carry the messenger out through the gap.

‘Send it down,’ he ordered into his headset, and the reel of light line came down, swinging and circling under the glaring floodlights to the ship's motion and throwing grotesque shadows into the far corners of the engine room.

The line was of finely plaited Dacron, with enormous strength and elasticity in relation to its thinness and tightness. One end was secured on the deck high above, and Nick threaded it into the sheave blocks carefully, so that it was free to run.

Then he clamped the reel of line on to his belt, riding it on his hip where it could be protected from snagging when he made the passage of the gap.

He realized then how close to final exhaustion he was, and he considered breaking off the work to rest again, but the heightened action of the sea into the hull warned him against further delay. An hour from now the task might be impossible, he had to go, and he reached for the reserve of strength and purpose deep inside himself, surprised to find that it was still there - for the icy chill of the water seemed to have penetrated his suit and entered his soul, dulling every sense and turning his very bones brittle and heavy.

It must be day outside, he realised, for light came through the gash of steel, pale light further obscured by the filthy muck of mixed oil and water contained in the hull.

He clung to one of the engine-room stringers, his head seven feet from the opening, breathing in the slow, even rhythm of the experienced scuba diver, feeling the ebb and flow through the hull, and trying to find some pattern in the action of the water. But it seemed entirely random, a hissing, bubbling ingestion followed by three or four irregular and weak inflows, then three vicious exhalations of such power that they would have windmilled a swimming man end over into those daggers of splayed steel.

He had to choose and ride a middling-sized swell, strong enough to take him through smoothly, without the dangerous power and turbulence of those viciously large swells.

‘I'm ready to go now, David,’ he said into his helmet. ‘Confirm that the work boat is standing by for the pick-up outside the hull.’

‘We are all ready.’ David Allen's voice was tense and sharp.

‘Here we go,’ said Nick, this was his wave now. There was no point in waiting longer.

He checked the reel on his belt, ensuring that the line was free to run, and watched the gash suck in clean green water, filled with tiny bright bubbles, little diamond chips that flew past his head to warn him of the lethal speed and power of that flood.

The inflow slowed and stopped as the hull filled to capacity, building up great pressures of air and water, and then the flow reversed abruptly as the swell on the far side subsided, and trapped water began to rush out again.

Nick released his grip on the stringer and instantly the water caught him. There was no question of being able to swim in that mill-race, all he could hope for was to keep his arms at his sides and his legs straight together to give himself a smoother profile, and to steer with his fins.

The accelerating speed appalled him as he was flung head first at that murderous steel mouth, he could feel the nylon line streaming out against his leg, the reel on his belt racing as though a giant marlin had struck and hooked upon the other end.

The rush of his progress seemed to leave his guts behind him as though he rode a fairground roller-coaster, and then a flick of the current turned him, he felt himself beginning to roll - and he fought wildly for control just as he hit.

He hit with a numbing shock, so his vision starred in flashing colour and light. The shock was in his shoulders and left arm, and he thought it might have been severed by that razor steel.

Then he was swirling, end over end, completely disorientated so he did not know which direction was up. He did not know if he was still inside Golden Adventurer's hull, and the nylon line was wrapping itself around his throat and chest, around the precious air tubes and cutting off his air supply like a stillborn infant strangled by its own umbilical cord.

Again he hit something, this time with the back of his head, and only the cushioning of his helmet saved his skull from cracking. He flung out his arms and found the rough irregular shape of ice above him.

Terror wrapped him again, and he screamed soundlessly into his mask, but suddenly he broke out into light and air, into the loose scum of slush and rotten ice mixed with bigger, harder chunks, one of which had hit him.

Above him towered the endless steel cliff of the liner's side and beyond that, the low bruised wind-sky, and as he struggled to disentangle himself from the coils of nylon, he realized two things. The first was that both his arms were still attached to his body, and still functioning, and the second was that Warlock's work boat was only twenty feet away and butting itself busily through the brash of rotten broken ice towards him.

The collision mat looked like a five-ton Airedale terrier curled up to sleep in the bows of the work boat, just as shaggy and shapeless, and of the same wiry, furry brown colour.

Nick had shed his helmet and pulled an Arctic cloak and hood over his bare head and suited torso. He was balanced in the stern of the work boat as she plunged and rolled and porpoised in the big swells; chunks of ice crashed against her hull, knocking loose chips off her paintwork, but she was steel-hulled, wide and sea-kindly. The helmsman knew his job, working her with calm efficiency to Nick's hand-signals, bringing her in close through the brash ice, under the tall sheer of Golden Adventurer's stern.

The thin white nylon line was the only physical contact with the men on the liner's towering stack of decks, the messenger which would carry heavier tackle. However it was vulnerable to any jagged piece of pancake ice, or the fangs of that voracious underwater steel jaw.

Nick paid out the line through his own numbed hands, feeling for the slightest check or jerk which could mean a snag and a break-off.

With hand-signals, he kept the work boat positioned so that the line ran cleanly into the pierced hull, around the sheave blocks he had placed with such heart-breaking labour in the engine room, from there up the tall ventilation, out of the square opening of the stack and around the winch, beside which Beauty Baker was supervising the recovery of the messenger.

The gusts tore at Nick's head so that he had to crouch to shield the small two-way radio on his chest, and Baker's voice was tinny and thin in the buffeting boom of wind.

‘Line running free.’

‘Right, we are running the wire now,’ Nick told him.

The second line was as thick as a man's index finger, and it was of the finest Scandinavian steel cable. Nick checked the connection between nylon and steel cable himself, the nylon messenger was strong enough to carry the weight of steel, but the connection was the weakest point.

He nodded to the crew, and they let it go over the side; the white nylon disappeared into the cold green water and now the black steel cable ran out slowly from the revolving drum.

Nick felt the check as the connection hit the sheave block in the engine room. He felt his heart jump. If it caught now, they would lose it all; no man could penetrate that hull again, the sea was now too vicious. They would lose the tackle, and they would lose Golden Adventurer, she would break up in the seas that were coming.

‘Please God, let it run,’ Nick whispered in the boom and burst of sea wind. The drum halted, made a half turn and jammed. somewhere down there the cable had snagged and Nick signalled to the helmsman to take the work boat in closer, to change the angle of the line into the hull.

He could almost feel the strain along his nerves as the winch took up the pull, and he could imagine the fibres of the nylon messenger stretching and creaking.

‘Let it run! Let it run!’ prayed Nick, and then suddenly he saw the drum begin to revolve again, the cable feeding out smoothly, and streaming down into the sea.

Nick felt light-hearted, almost dizzy with relief, as he heard Baker's voice over the VHF, strident with triumph.

‘Wire secured. Stand by,’ Nick told him. ‘We are connecting the two inch wire now.’

Again the whole laborious, touchy, nerve-scouring process as the massive two-inch steel cable was drawn out by its thinner, weaker forerunner - and it was a further forty vital minutes, with the wind and sea rising every moment, before Baker shouted, ‘Main cable secured, we are ready to haul!’

‘Negative’ Nick told him urgently. ‘Take the strain and hold.’ If the collision mat in the bows hooked and held on the work boat's gunwale, Baker would pull the bows under and swamp her.

Nick signalled to his crew and the five of them shambled up into the bows, bulky and clumsy in their electric-yellow oilskins and work boots. With hand-signals, Nick positioned them around the shaggy head-high pile of the collision mat before he signalled to the helmsman to throw the gear in reverse and pull back from Golden Adventurer's side.

The mass of unravelled oakum quivered and shook as the two-inch cable came up taut and they struggled to heave the whole untidy mass overboard.

There was nearly five tons of it and the weight would have been impossible to handle were it not for the reverse pull of the work boat against the cable. Slowly, they heaved the mat forward and outward, and the work boat took on a dangerous list under the transfer of weight. She was down at the bows and canting at an angle of twenty degrees, the diesel motor screaming angrily and her single propeller threshing frantically, trying to pull her out from under her cumbersome burden.

The mat slid forward another foot, and snagged on the gunwale, sea water slopped inboard, ankle-deep around their rubber boots as they strained and heaved at the reluctant mass of coarse fibre.

Some instinct of danger made Nick look up and out to sea. Warlock was lying a quarter of a mile farther out in the bay, at the edge of the ice, and beyond her, Nick saw the rearing shape of a big wave alter the fine of the horizon. It was merely a forerunner of the truly big waves that the storm was running before her, like hounds before the hunter, but it was big enough to make Warlock throw up her stern sharply, and even then the sea creamed over the tug's bows and streamed from her scuppers.

It would hit the exposed and hampered work boat in twenty-five seconds, it would hit her broadside while her bows were held down and anchored by mat and cable. When she swamped, the five men who made up her crew would die within minutes, pulled down by their bulky clothing, frozen by the icy green water.

‘Beauty,’ Nick's voice was a scream in the microphone, ‘heave all - pull, damn you, pull.’ Almost instantly the cable began to run, drawn in by the powerful winch on Golden Adventurer's deck; the strain pulled the work boat down sharply and water cascaded over her gunwale.

Nick seized one of the oaken oars and thrust it under the mat at the point where it was snagged, and using it as a lever he threw all his weight upon it.

‘Lend a hand,’ he yelled at the man beside him, and he strained until he felt his vision darkening and the fibres of his back-muscles creaking and popping.

The work boat was swamping, they were almost knee-deep now and the wave raced down on them. It came with a great silent rush of irresistible power, lifting the mass of broken ice and tossing it carelessly aside without a check.

Suddenly, the snag cleared and the whole lumpy massive weight of oakum slid overboard. The work boat bounded away, relieved of her intolerable burden, and Nick windmilled frantically with both arms to get the helmsman to bring her bows round to the wave.

They went up the wave with a gut-swooping rush that threw them down on to the floorboards of the half-flooded work boat, and then crashed over the crest.

Behind them the wave slogged into Golden Adventurer's stern, and shot up it with an explosion of white and furious water that turned to white driven spray in the wind.

The helmsman already had the work boat pushing heavily through the pack-ice, back towards the waiting Warlock.

‘Stop,’ Nick signalled him. ‘Back up.’

Already he was struggling out of his hood and oilskins, as he staggered back to the stern.

He shouted in the helmsman's face, ‘I'm going down to check,’ and he saw the disbelieving, almost pleading, expression on the man's face. He wanted to get out of there now, back to the safety of Warlock, but relentlessly Nick resettled the diving helmet and connected his air hose.

The collision mat was floating hard against Golden Adventurer's side, buoyant with trapped air among the mass of wiry fibre.

Nick positioned himself beneath it twenty feet from the maelstrom created by the gashed steel.

It took him only a few seconds to ensure that the cable was free, and he blessed Beauty Baker silently for stopping the winch immediately it had pulled the mat free of the work boat. Now he could direct the final task.

‘She's looking good,’ he told Baker. ‘But take her up slowly, fifty feet a minute on the winch.’

‘Fifty feet, it is!’ Baker confirmed.

And slowly the bobbing mat was drawn down below the surface.

‘Good, keep it at that.’

It was like pressing a field-dressing into an open bleeding wound. The outside pressure of water drove it deep into the gash, while from the inside the two-inch cable plugged it deeper into place. The wound was staunched almost instantly and Nick finned down, and swam carefully over it.

The deadly suck and blow of high pressure through the gap was killed now, and he detected only the lightest movement of water around the edges of the mat; but the oakum fibres would swell now they were submerged and, within hours the plug would be watertight.

‘It's done,’ said Nick into his microphone. ‘Hold a twenty-ton pull on the cable - and you can start your pumps and suck the bitch clean.’ It was a measure of his stress and relief and fatigue that Nick called that beautiful ship a bitch, and he regretted the word as it was spoken.

Nick craved sleep, every nerve, every muscle shrieked for surcease, and in his bathroom mirror his eyes were inflamed, angry with salt and wind and cold; the smears of exhaustion that underlined them were as lurid as the fresh bruises and abrasions that covered his shoulders and thighs and ribs.

His hands shook in a mild palsy with the need for rest and his legs could hardly carry him as he forced himself back to Warlock's navigation bridge.

‘Congratulations, sir,’ said David Allen, and his admiration was transparent.

‘How's the glass, David?’ Nick asked, trying to keep the weariness from showing.

‘994 and dropping, sir.’ Nick looked across at Golden Adventurer. Below that dingy low sky, she stood like a pier, unmoved by the big swells that marched on her in endless ranks, and she shrugged aside each burst of spray, hard aground and heavy with the water in her womb. However, that water was being flung from her, in solid white sheets.

Baker's big centrifugals were running at full power, and from both her port and starboard quarters the water poured.

It looked as though the flood gates had been opened on a concrete dam, so powerful was the rush of expelled water.

The oil and diesel mixed with that discharge formed a sullen, iridescent slick around her, sullying the ice and the pebble beach on which she lay. The wind caught the jets from the pump outlets and tore them away in glistening plumes, like great ostrich feathers of spray.

‘Chief,’ Nick called the ship. ‘What's your discharge rate?’

‘We are moving nigh on five hundred thousand gallons an hour.

‘Call me as soon as she alters her trim!’ he said, and then glanced up at the pointer of the anemometer above the control panel. The wind force was riding eight now, but he had to blink his stinging swollen eyes to read the scale.

‘David,’ he said, and he could hear the hoarseness in his voice, the flat dead tone. ‘It will be four hours before she will be light enough to make an attempt to haul her off, but I want you to put the main towing-cable on board her and make fast, so we will be ready when she is.’

‘Sir.’

‘Use a rocket-line,’ said Nick, and then stood dumbly, trying to think of the other orders he must give, but his brain was blank.

‘Are you all right, sir?’ David asked with quick concern, and immediately Nick felt the prick of annoyance. He had never wanted sympathy in his life, and he found his voice again. But he stopped the sharp words that came so quickly to his lips.

‘You know what to do, David. I won't give you any other advice.’ He turned like a drunkard towards his quarters. ‘Call me when you've done it, or if Baker reports alteration of trim - or if anything else changes, anything, anything at all, you understand.’ He made it to the cabin before his knees buckled and he dropped his terry robe as he toppled backwards on to his bunk.

At 60o south latitude, there runs the only sea-lane that circumnavigates the entire globe, unbroken by any land mass. This wide girdle of open water runs south of Cape Horn and Australasia and the Cape of Good Hope, and it has the fearsome reputation of breeding the wildest weather on earth. It is the meeting-ground of two vast air masses, the cold slumping Antarctic air, and the warmer, more buoyant airs of the sub-tropics. These are flung together by the centrifugal forces generated by the earth as it revolves on its own axis, and their movement is further complicated by the enormous torque of the coriolis force. As they strike each other, the opposing air masses split into smaller fragments that retain their individual characteristics. They begin to revolve upon themselves, gigantic whirlpools of tortured air, and as they advance, so they gain in strength and power and velocity.

The high-pressure system which had brought that ominously calm and silken weather to Cape Alarm, had bounced the pressure right up to 1035 millibars, while the great depression which pursued it so closely and swiftly had a centre pressure as low as 985 millibars. Such a sharp contrast meant that the winds along the pressure-gradient were ferocious.

The depression itself was almost fifteen hundred miles across its circumference, and it reached up to the high troposphere, thirty thousand feet above the level of the sea. The mighty winds it contained reached right off the maximum of the Beaufort scale of force twelve, gusting 120 miles an hour and more. They roared unfettered upon a terrible sea, unchecked by the bulwark of any land mass, nothing in their path, but the sudden jagged barrier of Cape Alarm.

While Nicholas Berg slept the deathlike sleep of utter exhaustion, and Beauty Baker tended his machines, driving them to their limits in an effort to pump Golden Adventurer free of her burden of salt water, the storm rushed down upon them.

When her knock was unanswered, Samantha stood uncertainly, balancing the heavy tray against the Warlock's extravagant action as she rode the rising swells at the entrance to the bay.

Her uncertainty lasted not more than three seconds, for she was a lady given to swift decisions. She tried the door-latch and when it turned, she pushed it open slowly enough to warn anybody on the far side, and stepped into the Captain's day cabin.

‘He ordered food,’ she justified her intrusion, and closed the door behind her, glancing swiftly around the empty cabin. It had been furnished in the high style of the old White Star liners. Real rosewood panelling and the couch and chairs were in rich brown calf hide, polished and buttoned, while the deck was carpeted in thick shaggy wool, the colour of tropical forest leaves.

Samantha placed the tray on the table that ran below the starboard portholes, and she called softly. There was no reply, and she stepped to the open doorway into the night cabin.

A white terry robe lay in a heap in the centre of the deck, and she thought for one disturbing moment that the body on the bed was naked, but then she saw he wore a thin pair of white silk boxer shorts.

‘Captain Berg,’ she called again, but softly enough not to disturb him, and with a completely feminine gesture picked up the robe from the floor, folded it and dropped it over a chair, moving forward at the same time until she stood beside his bunk.

She felt a quick flare of concern when she saw the bruises which stood out so vividly on the smooth pale skin, and concern turned to dismay when she realized how he lay like a dead man, his legs trailing over the edge of the bunk and his body twisted awkwardly, one arm thrown back over his shoulder and his head lolling from side to side as Warlock rolled.

She reached out quickly and touched his cheek, experiencing a lift of real relief as she felt the warmth of his flesh and saw his eyelids quiver at her touch.

Gently she lifted his legs and he rolled easily on to his side, exposing the sickening abrasion that wrapped itself angrily across back and shoulder. She touched it with a light exploring fingertip and knew that it needed attention, but she sensed that rest was what he needed more.

She stood back and for long seconds gave herself over to the pleasure of looking at him. His body was fined down, he carried no fat on his belly or flanks; clearly she could see the rack of his ribs below the skin, and the muscles of his arms and legs were smooth but well-defined, a body that had been cared for and honed by hard exercise. Yet there was a certain denseness to it, that thickening of shoulder and neck, and the distinctive hair patterns of the mature man.

It might not have the grace and delicacy of the boys she had known, yet it was more powerful than that of even the strongest of the young men who had until then filled her world. She thought of one of them whom she had believed she loved. They had spent two months in Tahiti together on the same field expedition. She had surfed with him, danced and drunk wine, worked and slept sixty consecutive days and nights with him; in the same period they had become engaged to marry, and had argued, and parted, with surprisingly little regret on her part - but he had had the most beautiful tanned and sculptured body she had ever known. Now, looking at the sleeping figure on the bunk, she knew that even he would not have been able to match this man in physical determination and strength.

Angel had been right. It was the power that attracted her so strongly. The powerful, rangy body with the dark coarse hair covering his chest and exploding in flak bursts in his armpits - this, together with the power of his presence.

She had never known a man like this, he filled her with a sense of awe. It was not only the legend that surrounded him, nor the formidable list of his accomplishments that Angel had recounted for her, nor yet was it only the physical strength which he had just demonstrated while the entire crew of Warlock, she among them, had watched and listened avidly over the VHF relay. She leaned over him again, and she saw that even in repose, his jawline was hard and uncompromising, and the little creases and lines and marks that life had chiselled into his face, around the eyes, at the corners of the mouth, heightened the effect of power and determination, the face of a man who dictated his own terms to life.

She wanted him, Angel was right, oh God, how she wanted him! They said there was no love at first sight - they had to be mad.

She turned away and unfolded the eiderdown from the foot of the bunk, spreading it over him, and then once again she stooped and gently lifted the fall of thick dark hair from his forehead, smoothing it back with a maternally protective gesture.

Although he had slept on while she lifted and covered him, strangely this lightest of touches brought him to the edge of consciousness and he sighed and twisted, then whispered hoarsely, ‘Chantelle, is that you?’

Samantha recoiled at the bitter sharp pang of jealousy with which another woman's name stabbed her. She turned away and left him, but in the day cabin she paused again beside his desk.

There were a few small personal items thrown carelessly on the leather-bound blotter, a gold money clip holding a mixed sheath of currency notes, five pounds sterling, fifty US dollars, Deutschmarks and francs, a gold Rolex Oyster perpetual watch, a gold Dunhill lighter with a single white diamond set in it, and a billfold of the smoothest finest calf leather. They described clearly the man who owned them and, feeling like a thief, she picked up the billfold and opened it.

There were a dozen cards in their little plastic envelopes, American Express, Diners, Bank American, Carte Blanche, Hertz No. 1, Pan Am VIP and the rest. But opposite them was a colour photograph. Three people: a man, Nicholas in a cable-stitch jersey, his face bronzed, his hair windruffled; a small boy in a yachting jacket with a curly mop of hair and solemn eyes above a smiling mouth - and a woman. She was probably one of the most beautiful women Samantha had ever seen, and she closed the billfold, replaced it carefully, and quietly left the cabin.

David Allen called the Captain's suite for three minutes without an answer, slapping his open palm on the mahogany chart table with impatience and staring through the navigation windows at the spectacle of a world gone mad.

For almost two hours, the wind had blown steadily from the north-west at a little over thirty knots, and although the big humpy seas still tumbled into the mouth of the bay, Warlock had ridden them easily, even connected, as she was, to Golden Adventurer by the main tow-cable.

David had put a messenger over the liner's stern, firing the nylon fine from a rocket gun, and Baker's men had retrieved the fine and winched across first the carrier wire and then the main cable itself.

Warlock had let the main cable be drawn out of her by Adventurer's winches, slowly revolving off the great winch drums in the compartment under the tug's stern deck, out through the cable ports below the after navigation bridge where David stood controlling each inch of run and play with light touches on the controls.

A good man could work that massive cable like a fly-fisherman playing a big salmon in the turbulent water of a mountain torrent, letting it slip against the clutch-plates, or run free, or recover slack, bringing it up hard and fast under a pull of five hundred tons - or, in dire emergency, he could hit the shear button, and snip through the flexible steel fibre, instantaneously relinquishing the tow, possibly saving the tug itself from being pulled under or being rushed by the vessel it was towing.

It had taken an hour of delicate work, but now the tow was in place, a double yoke made fast to Golden Adventurer's main deck bollards, one on her starboard and one on her port stern quarters.

The yoke was Y-shaped, drooping over the high stern to join at the white nylon spring, three times the thickness of a man’s thigh and with the elasticity to absorb sudden shock which might have snapped rigid steel cable. From the yoke connection, the single main cable looped back to the tug.

David Allen was lying back a thousand yards from the shore, holding enough strain on the tow-cable to prevent it sagging to touch and possibly snag on the unknown bottom. He was holding his station with gentle play on the pitch and power of the twin screws, and checking his exact position against the electronic dials which gave him his speed across the ground in both directions, accurate to within a foot a minute.

It was all nicely under control, and every time he glanced up at the liner, the discharge of water still boiled from her pump outlets.

Half an hour previously, he had been unable to contain his impatience, for he knew with a seaman's deep instinct what was coming down upon them out of the dangerous quadrant of the wind. He had called Baker to ask how the work on the liner was progressing. It had been a mistake.

‘You've got nothing better to do than call me out of the engine room to ask about my piles, and the FA Cup final? I'll tell you when I'm ready, believe me, sonny, I'll call you. If you are bored, go down and give Angel a kiss, but for God's sake, leave me alone.’

Beauty Baker was working with two of his men in that filthy, freezing steel box deep down in the liner's stern that housed the emergency steering-gear. The rudder was right across at full port lock. Unless he could get power on the steering machinery, she would be almost unmanageable, once she was under tow, especially if she was pulled off stern first. It was vital that the big ship was responding to her helm when Warlock tried to haul her off .

Baker cursed and cajoled the greasy machinery, knocking loose a flap of thick white skin from his knuckles when a spanner slipped, but working on grimly without even bothering to lift the injury to his mouth to suck away the welling blood. He let it drop on to the spanner and thicken into a sticky jelly, swearing softly but viciously as he concentrated all his skills on the obdurate steel mass of the steering gear. He knew every bit as well as the First Officer what was coming down upon them.

The wind had dropped to a gentle force four, a moderate steady breeze that blew for twenty minutes, just long enough for the crests of the waves to stop breaking over on themselves. Then slowly, it veered north - and without any further warning, it was upon them.

It came roaring like a ravening beast, lifting the surface of the sea away in white sheets of spray that looked as though red-hot steel had been quenched in it, It laid Warlock right over, so that her port rail went under and she was flung up so harshly on her main cable that her stern was pulled down sharply, water pouring in through her stern scuppers.

It took David by surprise, so that she paid off dangerously before he could slam open the port throttle and throw the starboard screw into full reverse thrust. As she came up, he hit the call to the Captain's suite, watching with rising disbelief as the mad world dissolved around him.

Nick heard the call from far away, it only just penetrated to his fatigue-drugged brain, and he tried to respond, but it felt as though his body was crushed under an enormous weight and that his brain was slow and sluggish as a hibernating reptile.

The buzzer insisted, a tinny, nagging whine and he tried to force his eyes open, but they would not respond. Then dimly, but deeply, he felt the wild anguished action of his ship and the tumult that he believed at first was in his own ears, but was the violent uproar of the storm about the tug's superstructure.

He forced himself up on one elbow, and his body ached in every joint. He still could not open his eyes but he groped for the handset.

‘Captain to the after bridge!’ He could hear something in David Allen's voice that forced him to his feet.

When Nick staggered on to the after navigation bridge, the First Officer turned gratefully to him.

‘Thank God you've come, sir.’

The wind had taken the surface off the sea, had stripped it away, tearing each wave to a shrieking fog of white spray and mingling it with the sleet and snow that drove horizontally across the bay.

Nick glanced once at the dial of the wind anemometer, and then discounted the reading. The needle was stuck at the top of the scale. It made no sense, a wind-speed of 120 miles an hour was too much to accept, the instrument had been damaged by the initial gusts of this wind, and he refused to believe it; to do so now would be to admit disaster, for nobody could salvage an ocean-going liner in wind velocities right off the Beaufort scale.

Warlock stood on her tail, like a performing dolphin begging for a meal, as the cable brought her up short and the bridge deck became a vertical cliff down which Nick was hurled. He crashed into the control panel and clung for purchase to the foul-weather rail.

‘We'll have to shear the cable and stand out to sea.’ David Allen's voice was pitched too high and too loud, even for the tumult of the wind and the storm.

There were men on board Golden Adventurer, Baker and sixteen others, Nick thought swiftly, and even her twin anchors could not be trusted to hold in this.

Nick clung to the rail and peered out into the storm. Frozen spray and sleet and impacted snow drove on the wind, coming in with the force of buckshot fired at point blank range, cracking into the armoured glass of the bridge and building up in thick clots and lumps that defeated the efforts of the spinning clear vision panels.

He looked across a thousand yards and the hull of the liner was just visible, a denser area in the howling, swirling, white wilderness.

‘Baker?’ he asked into the hand microphone. ‘What is your position?’

‘The wind's got her, she's slewing. The starboard anchor is dragging.’ And then, while Nick thought swiftly, ‘You'll not be able to take us off in this.’ It was a flat statement, an acceptance of the fact that the destinies of Baker and his sixteen men were inexorably linked to that of the doomed ship.

‘No,’ Nick agreed. ‘We won't be able to get you off.’ To approach the stricken ship was certain disaster for all of them.

‘Shear the cable and stand off,’ Baker advised. We'll try to get ashore as she breaks up. Then, with a hangman's chuckle, he went on, ‘Just don't forget to come and fetch us when the weather moderates - that is if there is anybody to fetch.’

Abruptly Nick's anger came to the surface through the layers of fatigue, anger at the knowledge that all he had risked and suffered was now to be in vain, that he was to lose Golden Adventurer, and probably with her sixteen men, one of whom had become a friend.

‘Are you ready to heave on the anchor winches?’ he asked. ‘We are going to pull the bitch off.’

‘Jesus!’ said Baker. ‘She's still half flooded-‘

‘We will have a lash at it, cobber,’ said Nick quietly.

‘The steering-gear is locked, you won't be able to control her. You'll lose Warlock as well as –‘ but Nicholas cut Baker short.

‘Listen, you stupid Queensland sheep-shagger, get on to those winches.’ As he said it, Golden Adventurer disappeared, her bulk blotted out completely by the solid, white curtains of the blizzard.

‘Engine room,’ Nick spoke crisply to the Second Engineer. ‘Disengage the override, and give me direct control of both power and pitch.’

‘Control transferred to bridge, sir,’ the Engineer confirmed, and Nick touched the shining stainless-steel levers with fingers as sensitive as those of a concert pianist. Warlock's response was instantaneous. She pivoted, shrugging aside a green slithering burst of water which came in over her shoulder and thundered down the side of her superstructure.

‘Anchor winches manned.’ Beauty Baker's tone was almost casual.

‘Stand by,’ said Nick, and felt his way through that white inferno. It was impossible to maintain visual reference, the entire world was white and swirling, even the surface of the sea was gone in torn streamers of white; the very pull of gravity, that should have defined even a simple up or down, was confused by the violent pitch and roll of the deck.

Nick felt his exhausted brain begin to lurch dizzily in the first attacks of vertigo. Swiftly he switched his attention to the big compass and the heading indicator.

‘David,’ he said, ‘take the wheel.’ He wanted somebody swift and bright at the helm now.

Warlock plunged suddenly, so viciously that Nick's bruised ribs were brought in brutal contact with the edge of the control console. He grunted involuntarily with the pain. Warlock was feeling her cable, she had come up hard.

‘Starboard ten,’ said Nick to David, bringing her bows up into that hideous wind.

‘Chief,’ he spoke into the microphone, his voice still ragged with the pain in his chest. ‘Haul starboard winch, full power.’

‘Full power starboard.’ Nick slid pitch control to fully fine, and then slowly nudged open the throttles, bringing in twenty-two thousand horse-power.

Held by her tail, driven by the great wind, and tortured by the sea, lashed by her own enormous propellers, Warlock went berserk. She corkscrewed and porpoised to her very limits, every frame in her hull shook with the vibration of all her screws as her propellers burst out of the surface and spun wildly in the air.

Nick had to clench his jaws as the vibration threatened to crack his teeth, and when he glanced across at the forward and lateral speed-indicators, he saw that David Allen's face was icy white and set like that of a corpse.

Warlock was slewing down on the wind, describing a slow left-hand circle at the limit of the cable as the engine torque and the wind took her around.

‘Starboard twenty,’ Nick snapped, correcting the turn, and despite the rigour of his features, David Allen's response was instantaneous.

‘Twenty degrees of starboard wheel on, sir!’

Nick saw the lateral drift stop on the ground speed indicator, and then with a wild lurch of elation he saw the forward speed indicator flicked into green. Its electronic digital read out changing swiftly - they were moving forward at 150 feet a minute.

‘We are moving her,’ Nick cried aloud, and he snatched up the microphone.

‘Full power both winches.’

‘Still full and holding,’ answered Baker immediately.

And Nick glanced back at the forward speed across the ground, 150, 110, 75 feet a minute, Warlock's forward impetus slowed, and Nick realized with a slide of dismay that it was merely the elasticity of the nylon spring that had given them that reading. The spring was stretching out to its limit.

For two or three seconds, the dial recorded a zero rate of speed. Warlock was standing still, the cable drawn out to the full limit of her strength, then abruptly the dial flicked into vivid red; they were going backwards, as the nylon spring exerted pressures beyond that of the twin diesels and the big bronze screws - Warlock was being dragged back towards that dreadful shore.

For another five minutes, Nick kept both clenched fists on the control levers, pressing them with all his strength to the limit of their travel, sending the great engines shrieking, driving the needles up around the dials, deep into the red ‘never exceed’ sectors.

He felt tears of anger and frustration scalding his swollen eyelids, and the ship shuddered and shook and screamed under him, her torment transmitted through the soles of his feet and the palms of his hands.

Warlock was held down by cable and power, so she could not rise to meet the seas that came out of the whiteness. They tumbled aboard her, piling up on each other, so she burrowed deeper and more dangerously.

‘For God's sake, sir,’ David Allen was no longer able to contain himself. His eyes looked huge in his bone-white face. ‘You'll drive her clean under.’

‘Baker,’ Nick ignored his Mate, ‘Are you gaining?’

‘No recovery either winch,’ Beauty told him. ‘She is not moving.’

Nick pulled back the stainless steel levers, the needles sank swiftly back around their dials, and Warlock reacted gratefully, shaking herself free of the piled waters.

‘You'll have to shear the tow.’ Baker's disembodied voice . was muted by the clamour of the storm. ‘We'll take our chances, sport.’

Beside him, David Allen reached for the red-painted steel box that housed the shear button. It was protected by the box from accidental usage; David Allen opened the box and looked expectantly, almost pleadingly at Nick.

‘Belay that!’ Nick snarled at him, and then to Baker, ‘I'm shortening tow. Be ready to haul again, when I am in position.’ David Allen stared at him, his right hand still on the open lid of the red box.

‘Close that bloody thing,’ Nick said, and turned to the main cable controls. He moved the green lever to reverse, and felt the vibration in the deck as below him in the main cable room the big drums began to revolve, drawing the thick ice-encrusted cable up over Warlock's stern.

Fighting every inch of the way like a wild horse on a head halter, Warlock was drawn in cautiously by her own winches , and the officers watched in mounting horror as out of the white terror of the blizzard emerged the mountainous ice-covered bulk of Golden Adventurer.

She was so close that the main cable no longer dipped below the surface of the sea, but ran directly from the liner's stern to the tug's massive fairleads on her stern quarter.

‘Now we can see what we are doing,’ Nick told them grimly. He could see now that much of Warlock's power had been wasted by not exerting a pull on exactly the same plane as Golden Adventurer's keel. He had been disoriented in the white-out of the blizzard, and had allowed Warlock to pull at an angle. It would not happen now.

‘Chief,’ he said. ‘Pull, pull all, pull until she bursts her guts!’ And again he slid the throttle handles fully home.

Warlock flung up against the elastic yoke, and Nick saw the water spurt from the woven fibres and turn instantly to ice crystals as it was whipped away on the shrieking wind.

‘She's not moving, sir,’ David cried beside him.

‘No recovery either winch,’ Baker confirmed almost immediately. 'She's solid!’

‘Too much water still in her!’ said David, and Nick turned on him as though to strike him to the deck.

‘Give me the wheel,’ he said, his voice cracking with his anger and frustration.

With both engines boiling the sea to white foam, and roaring like dying bulls, Nick swung the wheel to full port lock.

Wildly Warlock dug her shoulder in, water pouring on board her as she rolled, instantly Nick spun the wheel to full starboard lock and she lurched against the tow, throwing an extra ton of pressure on to it.

Even above the storm, they heard Golden Adventurer groan, the steel of her hull protesting at the weight of water in her and the intolerable pressure of the anchor winches and Warlock's tow cable.

The groan became a crackling hiss as the pebble bottom gave and moved under her.

‘Christ, she's coming!’ shrieked Baker, and Nick swung her to full port lock again, swinging Warlock into a deep trough between waves, then a solid ridge of steaming water buried her, and Nick was not certain she could survive that press of furious sea. It came green and slick over the superstructure and she shuddered wearily, gone slow and unwieldy. Then she lifted her bows and, like a spaniel, shook herself free, becoming again quick and light.

‘Pull, my darling, pull,’ Nick pleaded with her.

With a slow reluctant rumble, Golden Adventurer's hull began to slide over the holding, clinging bottom.

‘Both winches recovering,’ Baker howled gleefully, and Warlock's ground speed-indicator flicked into the green, its little angular figures changing in twinkling electronic progression as Warlock gathered way.

They all saw Golden Adventurer's stern swinging to meet the next great ridge of water as it burst around her.

She was floating, and for moments Nick was paralysed by the wonder of seeing that great and beautiful ship come to life again, become a living, vital sea creature as she took the seas and rose to meet them.

‘We've done it, Christ, we've done it!’ howled Baker, but it was too soon for self-congratulation. As Golden Adventurer came free of the ground and gathered sternway under Warlock's tow, so her rudder bit and swung her tall stern across the wind.

She swung, exposing the enormous windage of her starboard side to the full force of the storm. It was like setting a main-sail, and the wind took her down swiftly on the rocky headland with its sentinel columns that guarded the entrance to the bay.

Nick's first instinct was to try and hold her off, to oppose the force of the wind directly and he flung Warlock into the task, relying on her great diesels and the two anchors to keep the liner from going ashore again - but the wind toyed with them, it ripped the anchors out of the pebble bottom and Warlock was drawn stern first through the water, straight down on the jagged rock of the headland.

‘Chief, get those anchors up,’ Nick snapped into the microphone. 'They'll never hold in this.’

Twenty years earlier, bathing off a lonely beach in the Seychelles, Nick had been caught out of his depth by one of those killer currents that flow around the headlands of oceanic islands, and it had sped him out into the open sea so that within minutes the silhouette of the land was low and indistinct on his watery horizon. He had fought that current, swimming directly against it, and it had nearly killed him. Only in the last stages of exhaustion had he begun to think, and instead of battling it, he had ridden the current, angling slowly across it, using its impetus rather than opposing it.

The lesson he had learned that day was well remembered, and as he watched Baker bring Golden Adventurer's dripping anchors out of the wild water he was driving Warlock hard, bringing her around on her cable so the wind was no longer in her teeth, but over her stern quarter.

Now the wind and Warlock's screws were no longer opposed, but Warlock was pulling two points off the wind, as fine a course as Nick could judge barely to clear the most seaward of the rocky sentinels; now the liner's locked rudder was holding her steady into the wind - but opposing Warlock's attempt to angle her away from the land.

It was a problem of simple vectors of force, that Nick tried to work out in his head and prove in physical terms, as he delicately judged the angle of his tow and the direction of the wind, balancing them against the tremendous leverage of the liner's locked rudder, the rudder which was dragging her suicidally down upon the land.

Grimly, he stared ahead to where the black rock cliffs were still hidden in the white nothingness. They were invisible, but their presence was recorded on the cluttered screen of the radar repeater. With both wind and engines driving them, their speed was too high, and if Golden Adventurer went on to the cliffs like this, her hull would shatter like a water melon hurled against a brick wall.

It was another five minutes before Nick was absolutely certain they would not make it. They were only two miles off the cliffs now, he glanced again at the radar screen, and they would have to drag Golden Adventurer at least half a mile across the wind to clear the land. They just were not going to make it.

Helplessly, Nick stood and peered into the storm, waiting for the first glimpse of black rock through the swirling eddies of snow and frozen spray, and he had never felt more tired and unmanned in his entire life as he moved to the shear button ready to cut Golden Adventurer loose and let her go to her doom.

His officers were silent and tense around him, while under his feet Warlock shuddered and buffeted wildly, driven to her mortal limits by the sea and her own engines, but still the land sucked at them.

‘Look!’ David Allen shouted suddenly, and Nick spun to the urgency in his voice.

For a moment he did not understand what was happening. He knew only that the shape of Golden Adventurer's stern was altered subtly.

‘The rudder,’ shouted David Allen again. And Nick saw it revolving slowly on its stock as the ship lifted on another big sea.

Almost immediately, he felt Warlock making offing from under that lee shore, and he swung her up another point into the wind, Golden Adventurer answering her tow with a more docile air, and still the rudder revolved slowly.

‘I've got power on the emergency steering gear now!’ said Baker.

‘Rudder amidships,’ Nick ordered.

‘Amidships it is,’ Baker repeated, and now he was pulling her out stern first, almost at right angles across the wind.

Through the white inferno appeared the dim snow-blurred outline of the rock sentinels, and the sea broke upon them like the thunder of the heavens.

‘God, they are close,’ whispered David Allen. ‘So close that they could feel the backlash of the gale as it rebounded from the tall rock walls, moderating the tremendous force that was bearing them down - moderating just enough to allow them to slide past the three hungry rocks, and before them lay three thousand miles of wild and tumultuous water, all of it open sea room.

‘We made it. This time we really made it!’ said Baker, as though he did not believe it was true, and Nick pulled back the throttle controls taking the intolerable strain off her engines before they tore themselves to pieces.

‘Anchors and all,’ Nick replied. It was a point of honour to retrieve even the anchors. They had taken her off clean and intact - anchors and all.

‘Chief,’ he said,’ instead of sitting there hugging yourself, how about pumping her full of Tannerax?’ The anti-corrosive chemical would save her engines and much of her vital equipment from further sea-water damage, adding enormously to her salvaged value.

‘You just never let up, do you?’ Baker answered accusingly.

‘Don't you believe it,’ said Nick, he felt stupid and frivolous with exhaustion and triumph. Even the storm that still roared about them seemed to have lost its murderous intensity. ‘Right now I'm going down to my bunk to sleep for twelve hours - and I'll kill anybody who tries to wake me!’

He hung the mike on its bracket and put his hand on David Allen's shoulder. He squeezed once, and said: ‘You did well - you all did very well. Now take her, Number One, and look after her.’ Then he stumbled from the bridge.

It was eight days before they saw the land again. They rode out the storm in the open sea, eight days of unrelenting tension and heart-breaking labour.

The first task was to move the tow-cable to Golden Adventurer's bows. In that sea, the transfer took almost 24 hours, and three abortive attempts before they had her head-on to the wind. Now she rode more easily, and Warlock had merely to hang on like a drogue, using full power only when one of the big icebergs came within dangerous range, and it was necessary to draw her off.

However, the tension was always there and Nick spent most of those days on the bridge, watchful and worried, nagged by the fear that the plug in the gashed hull would not hold. Baker used timbers from the ship's store to shore up the temporary patch, but he could not put steel in place while Golden Adventurer plunged and rolled in the heavy seas, and Nick could not go aboard to check and supervise the work.

Slowly, the great wheel of low pressure revolved over them, the winds changed direction, backing steadily into the west, as the epicentre marched on down the sea lane towards Australasia - and at last it had passed.

Now Warlock could work up towing speed. Even in those towering glassy swells of black water that the storm had left them as a legacy, she was able to make four knots.

Then one clear and windy morning under a cold yellow sun, she brought Golden Adventurer into the sheltered waters of Shackleton Bay. It was like a diminutive guide dog leading a blinded colossus.

As the two ships came up into the still waters under the sheltering arm of the bay, the survivors came down from their encampment to the water's edge, lining the steep black pebble beach, and their cheers and shouts of welcome and relief carried thinly on the wind to the officers on Warlock's bridge.

Even before the liner's twin anchors splashed into the clear green water, Captain Reilly's boat was puttering out to Warlock, and when he came aboard, his eyes were haunted by the hardship and difficulties of these last days, by the disaster of a lost command and the lives that had been ended with it. But when he shook hands with Nick, his grasp was firm.

‘My thanks and congratulations, sir!’ He had known Nicholas Berg as Chairman of Christy Marine, and, as no other, he was aware of the magnitude of this most recent accomplishment. His respect was apparent.

‘Quite good to see you again,’ Nick told him. ‘Naturally you have access to my ship's communications to report to your owners.’

Immediately he turned back to the task of manoeuvring Warlock alongside, so that the steel plate could be swung up from her salvage holds to the liner's deck; it was another hour before Captain Reilly emerged from the radio room.

‘Can I offer you a drink, Captain?’ Nick led him to his day cabin, and began with tact to deal with the hundred details which had to be settled between them. It was a delicate situation, for Reilly was no longer Master of his own ship. Command had passed to Nicholas as salvage master.

‘The accommodation aboard Golden Adventurer is still quite serviceable, and, I imagine, a great deal warmer and more comfortable than that occupied by your passengers at present-’ 'Nick made it easier for him while never for a moment letting him lose sight of his command position, and Reilly responded gratefully.

Within half an hour, they had made all the necessary arrangements to transfer the survivors aboard the liner.

Levoisin on La Mouette had been able to take only one hundred and twenty supernumeraries on board his little tug. The oldest and weakest of them had gone and Christy Marine was negotiating for a charter from Cape Town to Shackleton Bay to take off the rest of them. Now that charter was unnecessary, but the cost of it would form part of Nick's claim for salvage award.

‘I won't take more of your time.’ Reilly drained his glass and stood. ‘You have much to do.’ There were another four days and nights of hard work.

Nick went aboard Golden Adventurer and saw the cavernous engine room lit by the eye-scorching blue glare of the electric welding flames, as Baker placed his steel over the wound and welded it into place. Even then, neither he nor Nick was satisfied until the new patches had been shored and stiffened with baulks of heavy timber. There was a hard passage through the roaring forties ahead of them, and until they had Golden Adventurer safely moored in Cape Town docks, the salvage was incomplete.

They sat side by side among the greasy machinery and the stink of the anti-corrosives, and drank steaming Thermos coffee laced with Bundaberg rum.

‘We get this beauty into Duncan Docks - and you are going to be a rich man,’ Nick said.

‘I've been rich before. With me it never lasts long - and it's always a relief when I've spent the stuff.’ Beauty gargled the rum and coffee appreciatively, before he went on, shrewdly. ‘So you don't have to worry about losing the best goddamned engineer afloat.’

Nick laughed with delight. Baker had read him accurately. He did not want to lose him.

With this Nick left him and went to see to the trim of the liner, studying her carefully and using the experience of the last days to determine her best points of tow, before giving his orders to David Allen to raise her slightly by the head.

Then there was the transfer from the liner's bunkers of sufficient bunker oil to top up Warlock's own tanks against the long tow ahead, and Bach Wackie in Bermuda kept the telex clattering with relays from underwriters and Lloyd's, with the first tentative advances from Christy Marine; already Duncan Alexander was trying out the angles, manoeuvring for a liberal settlement of Nick's claims, without, as he put it, the expense of the arbitration court.

‘Tell him I'm going to roast him,’ Nick answered with grim relish. ‘Remind him that as Chairman of Christy Marine I advised against underwriting our own bottoms and now I'm going to rub his nose in it.’

The days and nights blurred together, the illusion made complete by the imbalance of time down here in the high latitudes, so that Nick could often believe neither his senses nor his watch when he had been working eighteen hours straight and yet the sun still burned, and his watch told him it was three o'clock in the morning.

Then again, it did not seem part of reality when his senior officers, gathered around the mahogany table in his day cabin, reported that the work was completed - the repairs and preparation, the loading of fuel, the embarkation of passengers and the hundred other details had all been attended to, and Warlock was ready to drag her massive charge out into the unpredictable sea, thousands of miles to the southernmost tip of Africa.

Nick passed the cheroot-box around the circle and while the blue smoke clouded the cabin, he allowed them all a few minutes to luxuriate in the feeling of work done, and done well.

‘We'll rest the ship's company for twenty-four hours,’ he announced in a rush of generosity. ‘And take in tow at 0800 hours Monday. I'm hoping for a two speed of six knots - twenty-one days to Cape Town, gentlemen.’ When they rose to leave, David Allen lingered selfconsciously. ‘The wardroom is arranging a little Christmas celebration tonight, sir, and we would like you to be our guest.’

The wardroom was the junior officers’ club from which, traditionally, the Master was excluded. He could enter the small panelled cabin only as an invited guest, but there was no doubt at all about the genuine warmth of the welcome they gave him. Even the Trog was there. They stood and applauded him when he entered, and it was clear that most of them had made an early start on the gin. David Allen made a speech which he read haltingly from a scrap of paper which he tried to conceal in the palm of one hand. It was a speech full of hyperbole, cliches and superlatives, and he was clearly mightily relieved once it was over.

Then Angel brought in a cake he had baked for the occasion. It was iced in the shape of Golden Adventurer, a minor work of art, with the figures ‘12 ½ %’ picked out in gold on its hull, and they applauded him. That ‘12 ½ %’ had significance to set them all grinning and exclaiming.

Then they called on Nick to speak, and his style was relaxed and easy. He had them hooting with glee within minutes - a mere mention of the prize money that would be due to them once they brought Golden Adventurer into Cape Town had them in ecstasy.

The girl was wedged into a corner, almost swallowed in the knot of young officers who found it necessary to press as closely around her as was possible without actually smothering her.

She laughed with a clear unaffected exuberance, her voice ringing high above the growl of masculine mirth, so that Nick found it difficult not to keep looking across at her.

She wore a dress of green clinging material, and Nick wondered where it had come from, until he remembered that Golden Adventurer's passenger accommodation was intact and that earlier that morning, he had noticed the girl standing beside David Allen in the stern of the work boat as it returned from the liner, with a large suitcase at her feet. She had been to fetch her gear and she probably should have stayed aboard the liner. Nick was pleased she had not.

Nick finished his little speech, having mentioned every one of his officers by name and given to each the praise they deserved, and David Allen pressed another large whisky into his one hand and an inelegant wedge of cake into the other, and then left hurriedly to join the tight circle around the girl. It opened reluctantly, yielding to his seniority and Nick found himself almost deserted.

He watched with indulgence the open competition for her attention. She was shorter than any of them, so Nick saw only the top of that magnificent mane of sun-streaked hair, hair the colour of precious metal that shone as she nodded and tilted her head, catching the overhead lights.

Beauty Baker was on one side of her, dressed in a readymade suit of shiny imitation sharkskin that made a startling contrast to his plaid shirt and acid-yellow tie; the trousers of the suit needed hoisting every few minutes and his spectacles glittered lustfully as he hung over the girl.

David Allen was close on her other side, blushing pinkly every time she turned to speak to him, plying her with cake and liquor - and Nick found his indulgence turning to irritation.

He was irritated by the presence of a tongue-tied fourth officer who had clearly been delegated to entertain him, and was completely awed by the responsibility. He was irritated by the antics of his senior officers. They were behaving like a troupe of performing seals in their competition for the girl's attention.

For a few moments, the tight circle around her opened, and Nick was left with a few vivid impressions - The green of her dress matched exactly the brilliant sparkling green of her eyes. Her teeth were very white, and her tongue as pink as a cat's when she laughed. She was not the child he had imagined from their earlier encounters; with colour touched to her lips and pearls at her throat, he realized she was in her twenties, early twenties perhaps, but a full woman, nevertheless.

She looked across the wardroom and their eyes met. The laughter stilled on her lips, and she returned his gaze. It was a solemn enigmatic gaze, and he found himself once again regretting his previous rudeness to her. He dropped his gaze from hers and saw now that under the clinging green material, her body was slim and beautifully formed, with a lithe athletic grace. He remembered vividly that one nude glimpse he had been given.

Although the green dress was high-necked, he saw that her breasts were large and pointed, and that they were not trussed by any undergarments; the young shapely flesh was as strikingly arresting as if it had been naked.

It made him angry to see her body displayed in this manner. It did not matter that every young girl in the streets of New York or London went so uncorseted, here it made him angry to see her do the same, and he looked back into her eyes. Something charged there, a challenge perhaps, his own anger reflected? He was not sure. She tilted her head slightly, now it was invitation - or was it? He had known and handled easily so many, many women. Yet this one left him with a feeling of uncertainty, perhaps it was merely her youth, or was it some special quality she possessed? Nicholas Berg was uncertain and he did not relish the feeling.

David Allen hurried to her with another offering, and cut off the gaze that passed between them, and Nick found himself staring at the Chief Officer's slim, boyish back, and listening to the girl's laughter again, sweet and high.

But somehow it seemed to be directed tauntingly at Nick, and he said to the young officer beside him, ‘Please ask Mr. Allen for a moment of his time.’ Patently relieved the officer went to fetch him.

‘Thank you for your hospitality, David,’ said Nick, when he came.

‘You aren't going yet, sir? Nick took a small sadistic pleasure in the Mate's obvious dismay.

He sat at the desk in his day cabin and tried to concentrate. It was the first opportunity he had had to consider the paperwork that awaited him. The muted sounds of revelry from the deck below distracted him, and he found himself listening for the sounds of her laughter while he should have been composing his submissions to his London attorneys, which would be taken to the arbitrators of Lloyd's, a document and record of vital importance, the whole basis of his claim against Golden Adventurer's underwriters. And yet he could not concentrate.

He swung his chair away from the desk and began to pace the thick, sound-deadening carpet, stopping once to listen again as he heard the girl's voice calling gaily, the words unintelligible, but the tone unmistakable. They were dancing, or playing some raucous game which consisted of a great deal of bumping and thumping and shrieks of laughter.

He began to pace again, and suddenly Nick realized he was lonely. The thought stopped him dead again. He was lonely, and completely alone. It was a disturbing realization, especially for a man who had travelled much of life's journey as a loner. Before it had never troubled him, but now he felt desperately the need for somebody to share his triumph. Triumph it was, of course. Against the most improbable odds he had snatched spectacular victory, and he crossed slowly to the cabin portholes and looked across the darkened bay to where Golden Adventurer lay at anchor, all her lights burning, a gay and festive air about her.

He had been knocked off his perch at the top of the tree, deprived of a life's work, a wife and a son - yet it had taken him only a few short months to clamber back to the top.

With this simple operation, he had transformed Ocean Salvage from a dangerously insecure venture, a tottering cash-starved, problem-hounded long chance, into something of real value. He was off and running again now, with a place to go and the means of getting there. Then why did it suddenly seem of so little worth? He toyed with the idea of returning to the revelry in the wardroom, and grimaced as he imagined the dismay of his officers at the Master's inhibiting intrusion.

He turned away from the porthole and poured whisky into a glass, lit a cheroot and dropped into the chair. The whisky tasted like toothpaste and the cheroot was bitter.

He left the glass on his desk and stubbed the cheroot before he went through on to the navigation bridge.

The night lights were so dim after his brightly lit cabin that he did not notice Graham, the Third Officer, until his eyes adjusted to the ruby glow.

‘Good evening, Mr. Graham.’ He moved to the chart table and checked the log. Graham was hovering anxiously, and Nick searched for something to say.

‘Missing the party?’ he asked at last.

‘Sir.’ It was not a promising conversational opening, and despite his loneliness of a few minutes previously, Nick suddenly wanted to be alone again.

‘I will stand the rest of your watch. Go off and enjoy yourself.’ The Third Officer gawped at him.

‘You've got three seconds before I change my mind.’

‘That's jolly decent of you, sir,’ called Graham over his shoulder as he fled.

The party in the wardroom had by now degenerated into open competition for Samantha's attention and approbation.

David Allen, wearing a lampshade on his head and, for some unaccountable reason, with his right hand thrust into his jacket in a Napoleonic gesture, was standing on the wardroom bar counter and declaiming Henry's speech before Agincourt, glossing over the passages which he had forgotten with a ‘durn-de-dum.’ However, when Tim Graham entered, he became immediately the First Officer. He removed the lampshade and inquired frostily.

‘Mr. Graham, am I correct in believing that you are officer of the watch? Your station at this moment is on the bridge!’

The old man came and offered to stand my watch,’ said Tim Graham.

‘Good Lord!’ David replaced his lampshade, and poured a large gin for his Third Officer. ‘The old bastard must have come over all soft suddenly.’

Beauty Baker, who was hanging off the wall like a gibbon ape, dropped to his feet and drew himself up with rather unsteady dignity, hitched his trousers and announced ominously,

‘If anybody calls the old bastard a bastard, I will personally kick his teeth down his throat.’ He swept the wardroom with an eye that was belligerent and truculent, until it halted on Samantha. Immediately it softened. ‘That one doesn't count, Sammy!’ he said.

‘Of course not,’ Samantha agreed. ‘You can start again.’ Beauty returned to the starting point of the obstacle course, fortified himself with a draught of rum, pushed up his spectacles with a thumb and spat on his palms.

‘One to get ready, two to get steady - and three to be off!’ sang out Samantha, and clicked the stopwatch. Beauty Baker swung dizzily from the roof, clawing his way around the wardroom without touching the deck, cheered on by the entire company.

‘Eight point six seconds!’ Samantha clicked the watch, as he ended up on the bar counter, the finishing post. ‘A new world record.’

‘A drink for the new world champion.’

‘I'm next, time me, Sammy!’

They were like schoolboys. ‘Hey, watch me, Sammy!’ But after another ten minutes, she handed the stopwatch to Tim Graham, who as a late arrival was still sober.

‘I'll be back!’ she lied, picked up a plate with a large untouched hunk of Angel's cake upon it and was gone before any of them realized it was happening.

Nick Berg was working over the chart-table, so intent that he was not aware of her for many seconds. In the dramatic lighting of the single overhead lamp, the strength of his features was emphasized. She saw the hard line of his jawbone, the heavy brow and the alert widely spaced set of his eyes. His nose was large and slightly hooked, like that of a plains Indian or a desert Bedouin, and there were lines at the corners of his mouth and around his eyes that were picked out in dark shadow. In his complete absorption with the charts and Admiralty Pilot, he had relaxed his mouth from its usual severe line. She saw now that the lips were full without being fleshy, and there was a certain sensitivity and voluptuousness there that she had not noticed before.

She stood quietly, enchanted with him, until he looked up suddenly, catching the rapt expression upon her face.

She tried not to appear flustered, but even in her own ears her voice was breathless.

‘I'm sorry to disturb you. I brought some cake for Timmy Graham.’

‘I sent him below to join the party.’

‘Oh, I didn't notice him. I thought he was here.’

She made no move to leave, holding the plate in one hand, and they were silent a moment longer.

‘I don't suppose I could interest you in a slice? It's going begging.’

‘Share it,’ he suggested, and she came to the chart-table.

‘I owe you an apology,’ he said, and was immediately aware of the harshness in his own voice. He hated to apologize, and she sensed it.

‘I picked a bad moment,’ she said, and broke off a piece of the cake. ‘But this seems a better time. Thank you again, and I'm sorry for all the trouble I caused. I understand now that it nearly cost you the Golden Adventurer.’ They both turned to look out of the big armoured glass windows to where she lay.

‘She is beautiful, isn't she?’ said Nick, and his voice had lost its edge.

‘Yes, she's beautiful,’ Samantha agreed, and suddenly they were very close in the intimate ruddy glow of the night lights.

He began to talk, stiffly and self-consciously at first, but she drew him on, and with secret joy, she sensed him warming and relaxing. Only then did she begin to put her own ideas forward.

Nick was surprised and a little disconcerted at the depth of her view, and at her easy coherent expression of ideas, for he was still very much aware of her youth. He had expected the giddiness and the giggle, the shallowness, an uninformed self-interest of immaturity, but it was not there, and suddenly the difference in their ages was of no importance. They were very close in the night, touching only with their minds, but becoming each minute so much more closely involved in their ideas that time had no significance.

They spoke about the sea, for they were both creatures of that element and as they discovered this, so their mutual delight in each other grew.

From below came the faint unmelodious strains of Beauty Baker leading the ship's officers in a chorus of:

‘The working class can kiss my arse

I've got my 12½% at last.’

And at another stage in the evening, a very worried Tim Graham appeared on the bridge and blurted out, ‘Captain, sir, Doctor Silver is missing. She's not in her cabin and we have searched –‘ He saw her then, sitting in the Captain's chair and his worry turned to consternation. ‘Oh, I see. We didn't know - I mean we didn't expect - I'm sorry, sir. Excuse me, sir. Goodnight, sir!’ And again he fled the bridge.

‘Doctor?’ Nick asked.

‘I'm afraid so,’ she smiled, and then went on to talk about the university, explaining her research project, and the other work she had in mind. Nicholas listened silently, for like all highly competitive and successful men, he respected achievement and ambition.

The chasm that he imagined existed between them shrank rapidly, so that it was an intrusion when the eight-to-twelve watch ended, and the relief brought other human presence to the bridge, shattering the fragile mood they had created around themselves, and denying them further excuse for remaining together.

‘Goodnight, Captain Berg,’ she said.

‘Goodnight, Doctor Silver,’ he answered reluctantly. Until that night, he had not even known her name, and there was so much more he wanted to know now, but she was gone from the bridge; as he entered his own suite, Nick's earlier loneliness returned, but with even more poignancy.

During the long day of getting Golden Adventurer under tow, the hours of trim and accommodation to the sea, until she was following meekly settling down to the long journey ahead, Nick thought of the girl at unlikely moments; but when he changed his usual routine and dined in the saloon rather than his own cabin, she was surrounded by a solidly attentive phalanx of young men, and, with a small shock of self-honesty, Nick realized that he was actually jealous of them. Twice during the meal, he had to suppress the sharp jibes that came to his lips, and would have plunged the unfortunate recipient into uncomprehending confusion.

Nick ate no desert and took coffee alone in his day cabin. He might have relished Beauty Baker's company, but the Australian was aboard Golden Adventurer, working on her main engines. Then, despite the tensions and endeavours of the day, his bunk had no attractions for him. He glanced at the clock on the panelled bulkhead above his desk and saw that it was a few minutes after eight o'clock.

On impulse he went through to the navigation bridge, and Tim Graham leapt guiltily to his feet. He had been sitting in the Master's chair, a liberty which deserved at the least a sharp reprimand, but Nick pretended not to notice and made a slow round of the bridge, checking every detail from the cable tensions of the tow and power settings of Warlock's engines, to the riding lights on both ships and the last log entry.

‘Mr. Graham,’ he said, and the young officer stiffened to attention like the victim before a firing squad, ‘I will stand this watch - you may go and get some dinner.’ The Third Officer was so thunderstruck that he needed a large gin before he could bring himself to tell the wardroom of his good fortune.

Samantha did not look up from the board but moved a bishop flauntingly across the front of David Allen's queen, and when David pounced on it with a gurgle of glee, she unleashed her rook from the rear file and said, Mate in three, David.’

‘One more, Sam, give me my revenge,’ pleaded David, but she shook her head and slipped out of the wardroom.

Nicholas became aware of the waft of her perfume. it was an inexpensive but exuberant fragrance -'Babe', that was it, the one advertised by Hemingway's granddaughter. It suited Samantha perfectly. He turned to her, and it was only then that he was honest enough to admit to himself that he had relieved his Third Officer with the express intention of luring the girl up to the bridge.

‘There are whales ahead,’ he told her, and smiled one of those rare, irresistible smiles that she had come to treasure. ‘I hoped you might come up.’

‘Where? Where are they?’ she asked with unfeigned excitement, and then they both saw the spout, a golden feather of spray in the low night sunlight two miles ahead.

‘Balaenoptera musculus!’ she exclaimed.

‘I'll take your word for it, Doctor Silver, but to me it's still a blue whale.’ Nick was still smiling, and she looked abashed for a moment.

‘Sorry, I wasn't trying to dazzle you with science.’ Then she looked back at the humpy, uninviting cold sea as the whale blew again, a far and ethereal column of lonely spray.

‘One,’ she said, ‘only one.’ And the excitement in her voice cooled. ‘There are so few of them left now - that might be the last one we will ever see. So few that they cannot find each other in the vastness of the ocean to breed.’ Nick's smile was gone also, and again they talked of the sea, of their own involvement with it, their mutual concern at what man had done to it, and what he was still doing to it.

‘When the Marxist government of Mozambique took over from the Portuguese colonists, it allowed the Soviets to send in dredges - not trawlers, but dredges - and they dredged the weed beds of Delagoa Bay. They actually dredged the breeding grounds of the Mozambique prawn. They took out a thousand tons of prawn, and destroyed the grounds for ever - and they drove an entire species into extinction in six short months.’ Her outrage was in her voice as she told it.

‘Two months ago the Australians arrested a Japanese trawler in their territorial waters. She had in her freezers the meat of 120,000 giant clams that her crew had torn from the barrier reef with crow bars. The clam population of a single coral reef would not exceed 20,000. That means they had denuded six oceanic reefs in one expedition - and they fined the Captain a thousand pounds.’

‘It was the Japanese who perfected the "long line",’ Nick agreed, ‘the endless floating line, armed with specially designed hooks, and laid across the lanes of migration of the big pelagic surface-feeding fish, the tuna and the marlin. They wipe out the shoals as they advance - wipe them out to the last fish.’

‘You cannot reduce any animal population beyond a certain point.’ Samantha seemed much older as she turned her face up to Nick. ‘Look what they did to the whales.’

Together they turned back to the windows, gazing out in hope for a glimpse of that gentle monster, doomed now to extinction, one last look at another creature that would disappear from the seas.

‘The Japanese and the Russians again,’ said Nick. ‘They would not sign the whaling treaty until there were not enough blues left in the seas to make their killing an economic proposition. Then they signed it. When there were two or three thousand blue whales left in all the oceans, that is when they signed.’

‘Now they will hunt the Fin and the Sei and the Minke to extinction.’ As they stood side by side staring into the bizarre sun-lit night, searching vainly for that spark of life in the watery wilderness, without thinking Nick lifted his arm; he would have placed it around her shoulders, the age-old protective attitude of man to his woman, but he caught himself at the last moment before he actually touched her. She had felt his movement and tensed for it, swaying slightly towards him in anticipation, but he stepped away, letting his arm fall and stooped over the radarscope. She only realized then how much she had wanted him to touch her, but for the rest of that evening he stayed within the physical limits which he seemed to have set for himself.

The next evening she declined the wardroom's importunate invitations, and after dinner waited in her own cabin, the door an inch ajar so she heard Tim Graham leave the bridge, clattering down the companionway with exuberance, relieved once more of his watch. The moment he entered the wardroom, Samantha slipped from her cabin and ran lightly up to the bridge.

She was with him only minutes after he had assumed the watch and Nick was amused by the strength of his pleasure. They grinned at each other like school children in a successful piece of mischief.

Before the light went, they passed close by one of the big tabular bergs, and she pointed out the line of filth that edged the white ice like the ring around a bathtub that had been used by a chimney sweep.

‘Paraffin wax,’ she said, ‘and undissolved hydrocarbons.’

‘No,’ he said, ‘that's only glacial striation.’

‘It's crude oil,’ she answered him. ‘I've sampled it. It was one of the reasons I took the guide job on Golden Adventurer, I wanted first-hand knowledge of these seas.’

‘But we are two thousand miles south of the tanker lanes.’

‘The beach at Shackleton Bay is thick with wax balls and crude droplets. We found oil-soaked penguins on Cape Alarm, dead and dying. They hit an oil slick within fifty miles of that isolated shore.’

‘I can hardly believe –‘Nick started, but she cut across him.

‘That's just it!’ she said. ‘Nobody wants to believe it. Just walk on by, as though it's another mugging victim lying on the sidewalk.’

‘You're right,’ Nick admitted grudgingly. ‘Very few people really care.’

‘A few dead penguins, a few little black tar balls sticking to your feet on the beach. It doesn't seem much to shout about, but it's what we cannot see that should terrify us. Those millions of tons of poisonous hydrocarbons that dissolve into the sea, that kill slowly and insidiously, but surely. That's what should really terrify us, Nicholas!’

She had used his given name for the first time, and they were both acutely aware of it. They were silent again, staring intently at the big iceberg as it passed slowly. The sun had touched it with ethereal pinks and amethyst, but that dark line of poisonous filth was still there.

‘The world has to use fossil fuels, and we sailors have to transport them,’ he said at last.

‘But not at such appalling risks, not with an eye only to the profits. Not in the same greedy thoughtless grabbing petty way as man wiped out the whale, not at the cost of turning the sea into a stinking festering cesspool.’

‘There are unscrupulous owners!’ he agreed, and she cut across him angrily.

‘Sailing under flags of convenience, without control, ships built to dangerous standards, equipped with a single boiler-‘ she reeled out the charges and he was silent.

‘Then they waived the winter load-line for rounding the Cape of Good Hope in the southern winter, to enable them to carry that extra fifty thousand tons of crude. The Agulhas Bank, the most dangerous winter sea in the world, and they send overloaded tankers into it.’

‘That was criminal,’ he agreed.

‘Yet you were Chairman of Christy Marine, you had a representative on the Board of Control.’ She saw that she had made a mistake. His expression was suddenly ferocious. His anger seemed to crackle like electricity in the ruby gloom of the bridge. She felt an unaccountable flutter of real fear. She had forgotten what kind of man he was.

But he turned away and made a slow circuit of the bridge, elaborately checking each of the gauges and instruments, and then he paused at the far wing and lit a cheroot. She ached to offer some token of reconciliation, but instinctively she knew not to do so. He was not the kind of man who respected compromise or retreat.

He came back to her at last, and the glow of the cheroot lit his features so that she could see the anger had passed.

‘Christy Marine seems like another existence to me now,’ he said softly, and she could sense the deep pain of unhealed wounds. ‘Forgive me, your reference to it took me off balance. I did not realize that you know of my past history.’

‘Everybody on board knows.’

‘Of course,’ he nodded, and drew deeply on the cheroot before he spoke. ‘When I ran Christy Marine, I insisted on the highest standards of safety and seamanship for every one of our vessels. We opposed the Cape winter-line decision, and none of my tankers loaded to their summer-line on the Good Hope passage. None of my tankers made do with only one boiler, the design and engineering of every Christy Marine vessel was of the same standard as that ship there,’ he pointed back at Golden Adventurer, ’or this one here!’ and he stamped once on the deck.

‘Even the Golden Dawn?’ she asked softly, braving his anger again - but he merely nodded.

‘Golden Dawn,’ he repeated softly.’ It sounds such an absurdly presumptuous name, doesn't it? But I really thought of her as that, when I conceived her. The first million-ton tanker, with every refinement and safety feature that man has so far tested and proved. From inert gas scrubbers to independently articulated main tanks, not one boiler but four, just like one of the old White Star liners - she was really to be the golden dawn of crude oil transportation.’

‘However, I am no longer Chairman of Christy Marine, and I am no longer in control of Golden Dawn, neither her design nor her construction.’ His voice was hollow, and in the dim light his eyes seemed shrunken into their cavities like those of a skull. ‘Nor yet am I in control of her operation.’

It was all turning out so badly; she did not want to argue with him, nor make him unhappy. However, she had stirred memories and regrets within him, and she wished vainly that she had not disturbed him so. Her instinct warned her she should leave him now.

‘Goodnight, Doctor Silver,’ he nodded noncommittally at her sudden plea of tiredness.

‘My name is Sam!’ she told him, wishing that she could comfort him in some way, any way, ‘or Samantha, if you prefer it.’

‘I do prefer it,’ he said, without smiling. ‘Goodnight, Samantha.

‘She was angry with both herself and him, angry that the good feeling between them had been destroyed, so she flashed at him:

‘You really are old-fashioned, aren't you?’ and hurried from the bridge.

The following evening she almost did not go up to him, for she was ashamed of those parting words, for having pointed up their age difference so offensively. She knew he was aware of their differences, without being reminded. She had done herself harm, and she did not want to face him again.

While she was in the shower of the guest cabin, she heard Tim Graham come clattering down the stairs on the other side of the thin bulkhead. She knew that Nicholas had relieved him.

‘I'm not going up,’ she told herself firmly, and took her time drying and talcuming and brushing out her hair before she clambered naked and still pink from the hot water into her bunk.

She read for half an hour, a western that Beauty Baker had lent her, and it required all her concentration to follow the print, for her mind kept trying to wander. At last she gave an exclamation of self-disgust, threw back the blankets and began dressing.

His relief and pleasure, when she appeared beside him, were transparent, and his smile was a princely welcome for her. She was suddenly very glad she had come, and this night she effortlessly steered past all the pitfalls.

She asked him to explain how the Lloyd's Open Form contract worked, and she followed his explanations swiftly.

‘If they take into consideration the danger and difficulties involved in the salvage,’ she mused,’ you should be able to claim an enormous award.’

‘I'm going to ask for twenty per cent of the hull value.’

‘What is the hull value of Golden Adventurer?’

And he told her. She was silent a moment as she checked his mental arithmetic.

‘That's six million dollars,’ she whispered in awe.

‘Give or take a few cents,’ he agreed.

‘But there isn't that much money in the world!’ She turned and stared back at the liner.

Duncan Alexander is going to agree with you. Nick smiled a little grimly.

But, she shook her head, ‘What would anybody do with that much money?’

‘I'm asking for six - but I won't get it. I'll walk away with three or four millions.’

‘Still, that's too much. Nobody could spend that much not if they tried for a lifetime.’

‘It's spent already. It will just about enable me to pay off my loans, launch my other tug, and to keep Ocean Salvage going for another few months.’

‘You owe three or four million dollars?’ She stared at him now in open wonder. I'd never sleep, not one minute would I be able to sleep.’

‘Money isn't for spending,’ he explained. ‘There is a limit to the amount of food you can eat, or clothes you can wear. Money is a game, the biggest most exciting game in town.’

She listened attentively to it all, happy because tonight he was gay and excited with grand designs and further plans, and because he shared them with her.

‘What we will do is this, we'll come down here with both tugs and catch an iceberg.’

She laughed. ‘Oh, come on!’

‘I'm not joking,’ he assured her, but laughing also. ‘We'll put tow-lines on a big berg. It may take a week to build up tow speed, but once we get it moving nothing will stop it. We will guide it up into the middle forties, catch the roaring forties and, just like the old wool clippers on the Australian passage, we will run our castings down. He moved to the chart-table, selected a large-scale chart of the Indian Ocean and beckoned her to join him.

‘You're serious.’ She stopped laughing, and stared at him again. ‘You really are serious, aren't you?’

He nodded, still smiling, and traced it out with his finger. ‘Then we'll swing northwards, up into the Western Australian current, letting the flow carry us north in a great circle, until we hit the easterly monsoon and the north equatorial current!’ He described the circle, but she watched his face. They stood very close, but still not touching and she felt herself stirred by the timbre of his voice, as though to the touch of fingers. ‘We will cross the Indian Ocean to the east coast of Africa with the current pushing all the way, just in time to catch the south-westerly monsoon drift - right into the Persian Gulf!’ He straightened up and smiled again.

‘A hundred billion tons of fresh water delivered right into the driest and richest corner of the globe.’

‘But - but - she shook her head, it would melt!’

‘From a helicopter we spray it with a reflective polyurethane skin to lessen the effect of the sun, and we moor it in a shallow specially prepared dock where it will cool its own surrounds. Sure, it will melt, but not for a year or two and then we'll just go out and catch another one and bring it in, like roping wild horses.’

‘How would you handle it?’ she objected. ‘It's too big.’

‘My two tugs hustle forty-four thousand horses - we could pull in Everest, if we wanted.’

‘Yes, but once you get it to the Persian Gulf?’

‘We cut it into manageable hunks with a laser lance, and lift the hunks into a melting dam with an overhead crane.’

She thought about it. ‘It could work,’ she admitted.

‘It will work,’ he told her.’ I've sold the idea to the Saudis already. They are already building the dock and the dams. We'll give them water at one hundredth the cost of us nuclear condensers on sea water, and without the risk of radio-active contamination.’ She was absorbed with his vision, and he with hers. As they talked deep into the long watches of the night, they drew closer in spirit only.

Although each of them treasured those shared hours, somehow neither could bridge the narrow chasm between friendliness and real intimacy. She was instinctively aware of his reserves, that he was a man who had considered life and established his code by which to live it. She guessed that he did nothing unless it was deeply felt, and that a casual physical relationship would offer no attraction to him; she knew of the turmoil to which his life had so recently been reduced, and that he was pulling himself out of that by main strength, but that he was now wary of further hurt. There was time, she told herself, plenty of time - but Warlock bore steadily north by north-east, dragging her crippled ward up through the roaring forties; those notorious winds treated her kindly and she made good the six knots that Nick had hoped for.

On board Warlock, the attitude of the officers towards Samantha Silver changed from fawning adulation to wistful respect. Every one of them knew of the nightly ritual of the eight-to-midnight watch.

‘Bloody cradle-snatcher!’ groused Tim Graham.

‘Mr. Graham, it is fortunate I did not hear that remark,’ David Allen warned him with glacial coldness - but they all resented Nicholas Berg, it was unfair competition, yet they kept a new respectful distance from the girl, not one of them daring to challenge the herd bull.

The time that Samantha had looked upon as endless was running out now, and she closed her mind to it. Even when David Allen showed her the fuzzy luminescence of the African continent on the extreme range of the radar-screen, she pretended to herself that it would go on like this - if not for ever, at least until something special happened.

During the long voyage up from Shackleton Bay, Samantha had streamed a very fine-meshed net from Warlock's stern, collecting an incredible variety of krill and plankton and other microscopic marine life. Angel had grudgingly given her a small corner of his scullery in return for her services as honorary assistant under-chef and unpaid waitress, and she spent many absorbed hours there each day, identifying and preserving her specimens.

She was working there when the helicopter came out to Warlock. She looked up at the buffeting of the machine's rotors as they changed into fine pitch for the landing on Warlock's high-deck, and she was tempted to go up like every idle and curious hand on board, but she was in the middle of staining a slide, and somehow she resented the encroachment on this little island of her happiness. She worked on, but now her pleasure was spoiled, and she cocked her head when she heard the roar of the rotors as the helicopter rose from the deck again and she was left with a sense of foreboding.

Angel came in from the deck, wiping his hands on his apron and he paused in the doorway.

‘You didn't tell me he was going, dearie.’

‘What do you mean?’ Samantha looked up at him, startled.

‘Your boyfriend, darling. Socks and toothbrush and all.’ Angel watched her shrewdly. ‘Don't tell me he didn't even kiss you goodbye.’ She dropped the glass slide into the stainless steel sink and it snapped in half. She was panting as she gripped the rail of the upper deck and stared after the cumbersome yellow machine.

It flew low across the green wind-chopped sea, humpbacked and nose low, still close enough to read the operating company's name ‘COURTLINE’ emblazoned on its fuselage, but it dwindled swiftly towards the far blue line of mountains.

Nick Berg sat in the jump seat between the two pilots of the big S. 58T Sikorsky and looked ahead towards the flat silhouette of Table Mountain. It was overlaid by a thick mattress of snowy cloud, at the south-easterly wind swirled across its summit.

From their altitude of a mere thousand feet, there were still five big tankers in sight, ploughing stolidly through the green sea on their endless odyssey, seeming to be alien to their element not designed to live in harmony with it, but to oppose every movement of the waters. Even in this low sea, they wore thick garlands of white at their stubby rounded bows, and Nick watched one of them dip suddenly and take spray as high as her foremast. In any sort of blow, she would be like a pier with pylons set on solid ground.

The seas would break right over her. It was not the way a ship should be, and now he twisted in his seat and looked back.

Far behind them, Warlock was still visible. Even at this distance, and despite the fact that she was dwarfed by her charge, her lines pleased the seaman in him. She looked good, but that backward glance invoked a pang of regret that he had been so stubbornly trying to ignore - and he had a vivid image of green eyes and hair of platinum and gold.

His regret was spiced by the persistent notion that he had been cowardly. He had left Warlock without being able to bring himself to say goodbye to the girl, and he knew why he had done so. He would not take the chance of making a fool of himself. He grimaced with distaste, as he remembered her exact words, ‘You really are old-fashioned, aren't you?’ There was something vaguely repulsive in a middle-aged man lusting after young flesh - and he supposed he must now look upon himself as middle-aged. In six months he would be forty years of age, and he did not really expect to live to eighty. So he was in the middle of the road.

He had always scorned those grey, lined, balding, unattractive little men with big cigars, sitting in expensive restaurants with pretty young girls beside them, the young thing pretending to hang on every pearl-like word, while her eyes focused beyond his shoulder - on some younger man

But still, it had been cowardice. She had become a friend during those weeks, and she could hardly have been aware of the emotions that she had aroused in him during those long dark hours on Warlock's bridge. She was not to blame for his unruly passions, in no way had she encouraged him to believe that he was more than just an older man, not even a father figure, but just someone with whom to pass an otherwise empty hour. She had been as friendly and cheerful to everyone else on board Warlock, from the Mate to the cook.

He really had owed her the common courtesy of a handshake and an assurance of the pleasure he had taken from her company, but he had not been certain he could restrict it to that.

He winced again as he imagined her horror as he blurted out some sort of declaration, some proposal to prolong their relationship or alter its structure into something more intimate, her disenchantment when she realized that behind the facade of the mature and cultured man, he was just as grimy an old lecher as the furtive drooling browsers in the porno-shops of Times Square.

Let it go, he had decided. No matter that he was probably in better physical shape now than he had been at twenty-five, to Dr. Samantha Silver he was an old man and he had a frightening vision of an episode from his own youth.

A woman, a friend of his mother's, had trapped the nineteen-year-old Nicholas alone one rainy day in the old beach house at Martha's Vineyard. He remembered his own revulsion at the sagging white flesh, the wrinkles, the lines of strain across her belly and breasts, and the oldness of her.

She would then have been a woman of forty, the same as he was now, and he had done her the service she required out of some obligation of pity, but afterwards he had scrubbed his teeth until the gums bled and he had stood under the shower for almost an hour.

it was one of the cruel deceits of life that a person aged from the outside. He had thought of himself in the fullness of his physical and mental powers, especially now after bringing in Golden Adventurer. He was ready for them to lead on the dragons and he would tear out their jugulars with his bare hands - then she had called him an old-fashioned thing, and he had realized that the sexual fantasy which was slowly becoming an obsession must be associated with the male menopause, a sorry symptom of the ageing process of which he had not been conscious until then. He grinned wryly at the thought.

The girl would probably hardly notice that he had left the ship, at the worst might be a little piqued by his lack of manners, but in a week would have forgotten his name. As for himself, there was enough, and more than enough to fill the days ahead, so that the image of a slim young body and that precious mane of silver and gold would fade until it became the fairy tale it really was.

Resolutely he turned in the jump seat and looked ahead. Always look ahead, there are never regrets in that direction.

They clattered in over False Bay, crossing the narrow isthmus of the Cape Peninsula under the bulk of the cloud-capped mountain, from the Indian Ocean to the Atlantic in under ten minutes.

He saw the gathering, like vultures at the lion kill, as the Sikorsky lowered to her roost on the helipad within the main harbour area of Table Bay.

As Nick jumped down, ducking instinctively under the still-turning rotors, they surged forward, ignoring the efforts of the Courtline dispatcher to keep the pad clear; they were led by a big red-faced man with a scorched looking bald head and the furry arms of a tame bear.

‘Larry Fry, Mr. Berg,’ he growled. ‘You remember me?’

‘Hello, Larry.’ He was the local manager for Bach Wackie & Co, Nick's agents.

‘I thought you might say a few words to the Press.’ But the journalists swarmed around Nick now, demanding, jostling each other, their cameras firing flash bulbs.

Nick felt his irritation flare, and he needed a deep breath and a conscious effort to control his anger.

‘All right, lads and ladies.’ He held up both hands, and grinned that special boyish grin. They were doing a tough job, he reminded himself. It couldn't be easy to be forced daily into the company of rich and successful men, grabbing for titbits, and being grossly underpaid for your efforts with the long-term expectation of ulcers and cirrhosis of the liver.

‘Play the game with me and I'll play it with you,’ he promised, and thought for a moment how it would be if they didn't want to speak with him, how it would be if they didn't know who he was, and didn't care.

‘Where have you booked me?’ he asked Larry Fry now, and turned back to them. ‘In two hours’ time I'll be in my suite at the Mount Nelson Hotel. You're invited, and there'll be whisky.’ They laughed and tried a few more half-hearted questions, but they had accepted the compromise - at least they had got the pictures.

As they went up the palm-lined drive to the gracious old hotel, built in the days when space included five acres of carefully groomed gardens, Nick felt the stir of memory, but he suppressed that and listened intently to the list of appointments and matters of urgency from which Larry Fry read. The change in the big man's attitude was dramatic. When Nick had first arrived to take command of Warlock, Larry Fry had given him ten minutes of his time and sent a deputy to complete the business.

Then Nick had been touched by the mark of the beast, a man on his way down, with as much appeal as a leper.

Larry Fry had accorded him the minimum courtesy due the master of a small vessel, but now he was treating him like visiting royalty, limousine and fawning attention.

‘We have chartered a 707 from South African Airways to fly Golden Adventurer's passengers to London, and they will take scheduled commercial flights to their separate destinations from there.’

‘What about berthing for Golden Adventurer?’

‘The Harbour Master is sending out an inspector to check the hull before he lets her enter harbour.’

‘You have made the arrangements?’ Nick asked sharply. He had not completed the salvage until the liner was officially handed over to the company commissioned to undertake the repairs.

‘Courtline are flying him out now,’ Larry Fry assured him. ‘We'll have a decision before nightfall.’

‘Have the underwriters appointed a contractor for the repairs?’

‘They've called for tenders.’

The hotel manager himself met Nicholas under the entrance portico.

‘Good to see you again Mr. Berg.’ He waived the registration procedures. ‘We can do that when Mr. Berg has settled in.’ And then he assured Nick, ‘We have given you the same suite.’

Nick would have protested, but already they were ushering him into the sitting-room. If it had been a room lacking completely in character or taste, the memories might not have been so poignant. However, unlike one of those soulless plastic and vinyl coops built by the big chains and so often offered to travellers under the misnomer of ‘inns', this room was furnished with antique furniture, oil-paintings and flowers. The memories were as fresh as those flowers, but not as pleasing.

The telephone was ringing as they entered, and Larry Fry seized it immediately, while Nick stood in the centre of the room. It had been two years since last he stood here, but it seemed as many days, so clear was the memory.

‘The Harbour Master has given permission for Golden Adventurer to enter harbour.’ Larry Fry grinned triumphantly at Nick, and gave him the thumbs-up signal.

Nick nodded, the news was an anti-climax after the draining endeavours of the last weeks. Nick walked through to the bedroom. The wallpaper was a quietly tasteful floral design with matching curtains.

From the four-poster bed, Nick remembered, you could look out over the lawns. He remembered Chantelle sitting under that canopy, with a gossamer-sheer bed-robe over her creamy shoulders, eating thin strips of marmaladed toast and then delicately and carefully licking each slim tapered finger with a pink pointed tongue.

Nicholas had come out to negotiate the transportation of South African coal from Richards Bay, and iron ore from Saldanha Bay to Japan. He had insisted that Chantelle accompany him. Perhaps he had the premonition of imminent loss, but he had overridden her objections.

‘But Africa is such a primitive place, Nicky, they have things that bite.’

And she had in the end gone with him. He had been rewarded with four days of rare happiness. The last four days ever, for though he did not then even suspect it, he was already sharing her bed and body with Duncan Alexander. He had never tired in thirteen years of that lovely smooth creamy body; rather, he had delighted in its slow luscious ripening into full womanhood, believing without question that it belonged to him.

Chantelle was one of those unusual women who grew more beautiful with time; it had always been one of his pleasures to watch her enter a room filled with other internationally acclaimed beauties, and see them pale beside his wife. And suddenly, for no good reason, he imagined Samantha Silver beside Chantelle - the girl's coltish grace would be transmuted to gawkiness beside Chantelle's poise, her manner as gauche as a schoolgirl's beside Chantelle's mature control, a warm lovable little bunny beside the sleekly beautiful mink-

‘Mr. Berg, London.’ Larry Fry called from the sitting-room interrupting him, and with relief Nick picked up the telephone. ‘Just keep going forward,’he reminded himself, and before he spoke, he thought again of the two women, and wondered suddenly how much that thick rich golden mane of Samantha's hair would pale beside Chantelle's lustrous sable, and just how much of the mother-of-pearl glow would fade from that young, clear skin.

‘Berg,’ he said abruptly into the telephone.

‘Mr. Berg, good morning. Will you speak to Mr. Duncan Alexander of Christy Marine?’

Nick was silent for five full seconds. He needed that long to adjust to the name, but Duncan Alexander was the natural extension of his previous thoughts. In the silence he heard the banging of doors and rising clamour of voices, as the journalists converged on the liquor-cabinet next door.

‘Mr. Berg, are you there?’

‘Yes,’ he said, and his voice was steady and cool.’ Put him on.’

‘Nicholas, my dear fellow.’ The voice was glossy as satin, slow as honey, Eton and King's College, a hundred thousand pound accent, impossible to imitate, not quite foppish nor indolent, razor steel in a scabbard of velvet encrusted with golden filigree and precious stones - and Nicholas had seen the steel bared. 'It seems that it is impossible to hold a good men down.’

‘But you tried, young Duncan,’ Nick answered lightly. ‘Don't feel bad about it, indeed you tried.’

‘Come, Nicholas. Life is too short for recriminations. This is a new deck of cards, we start equal again.’ Duncan chuckled softly. ‘At least be gracious enough to accept my congratulations.’

‘Accepted,’ Nicholas agreed. ‘Now what do we talk about?’

‘Is Golden Adventurer in dock yet?’

‘She has been cleared to enter. She'll be tied up within twenty-four hours - and you'd better have your cheque book ready.’

‘I hoped that we might avoid going up before the Committee. There has been too much bitterness already. Let's try and keep it in the family, Nicholas.’

‘The family?’

‘Christy Marine is the family - you, Chantelle, old Arthur Christy - and Peter.’

It was the very dirtiest form of fighting, and Nick found suddenly that he was shaking like a man in fever and that his fist around the receiver was white with the force of his grip. It was the mention of his son that had affected him so.

‘I'm not in that family any more.’

‘In a way you will always be part of it, It is as much your achievement as any man's, and your son-‘

Nick cut across him brusquely, his voice gravelly.

‘You and Chantelle made me a stranger. Now treat me like one.’

‘Nicholas-‘

‘Ocean Salvage as main contractor for the recovery of Golden Adventurer is open to an offer.’

‘Nicholas –‘

‘Make an offer.’

‘As bluntly as that.’

‘I'm waiting.’

‘Well now. My Board has considered the whole operation in depth, and I am empowered to make you an outright settlement of three-quarters of a million dollars.’

Nick's tone did not alter. ‘We have been set down for a hearing at Lloyd's on the 27th of next month.’

‘Nicholas, the offer is negotiable within reasonable limits-‘

‘You. are speaking a foreign language,’ Nick cut him off. ‘We are so far apart that we are wasting each other's time.’

‘Nicholas, I know how you feel about Christy Marine, you know the company is underwriting its own.’

‘Now you are really wasting my time. '

‘Nicholas, it's not a third party, it's not some big insurance consortium it's Christy Marine-‘

He used his name again, though it scalded his tongue.

‘Duncan, you're breaking my heart. I'll see you on the 27th of next month, at the arbitration court.’ He dropped the receiver on to its bracket, and moved across to the mirror, swiftly combing his hair and composing his features, startled to see how hard and bleak his expression was, and how fierce his eyes.

However, when he went through to the lounge of the suite, he was relaxed and urbane and smiling.

‘All right, ladies and gentlemen. I'm all yours,’ and one of the ladies of the press, blonde, pretty and not yet thirty but with eyes as old as life itself, took another sip of her whisky as she studied him, then murmured huskily, I wouldn't mind at all, duckie.’

Golden Adventurer stood tall and very beautiful against the wharf of Cape Town harbour, waiting her turn to go into the dry dock.

Globe Engineering, the contractors who had been appointed to repair her, had signed for her and legally taken over responsibility from Warlock's First Officer. But David Allen still felt an immense proprietary pride in her.

From Warlock's navigation bridge, he could look across the main harbour basin and see the tall, snowy superstructure glistening in the bright hot summer sunshine, towering as high as the giraffe-necked steel wharf cranes; and in gloating self-indulgence, David dwelt on a picture of the liner, wreathed in snow, half obscured by driving sleet and sea fume, staggering in the mountainous black seas off Antarctica. It gave him a solid feeling of achievement, and he thrust his hands deeply into his pockets and whistled softly to himself, smiling and watching the liner.

The Trog thrust his wrinkled head from the radio room.

‘There's a call for you on the land-line,’ he said, and David picked up the handset.

‘David?’

‘Yessir.’ He drew himself to his full height as he recognized Nicholas Berg's voice.

‘Are you ready for sea?’

David gulped, then glanced at the bulkhead clock. ‘We discharged tow an hour and ten minutes ago.’

‘Yes, I know. How soon?’

David was tempted to lie, estimate short, and then fake it for the extra time he needed. Instinct warned him against lying deliberately to Nicholas Berg.

‘Twelve hours,’ he said.

‘It's an oil-rig tow, Rio to the North Sea, a semi-submersible rig.’

‘Yessir,’ David adjusted quickly, thank God he had not yet let any of his crew ashore. He had arranged for bunkering at 1300, hours. He could make it.’When are you coming aboard, sir?’

‘I'm not,’said Nick. ‘You're the new Master. I'm leaving for London on the five o'clock flight. I won't even get down to shout at you. She's all yours, David.’

‘Thank you, sir!’ David stuttered, feeling himself flush hot scarlet.

‘Bach Wackie will telex you full details of the tow at sea, and you and I will work out your own contract later. But I want you running at top economic power for Rio by dawn tomorrow.’

‘Yessir.’

‘I've watched you carefully, David.’ Nick's voice changed, becoming personal, warmer. ‘You're a damn good tug-man. Just keep telling yourself that.’

‘Thank you, Mr. Berg.’

Samantha had spent half the afternoon helping with the arrangements for taking off the remaining passengers from Golden Adventurer and embarking them in the waiting fleet of tourist buses which would distribute them to hotels throughout the city while they waited for the London charter flight.

It had been a sad occasion, farewell to many who had become friends and remembering those who had not come back from Cape Alarm with them - Ken, who might have been her lover, and the crew of raft Number 16 who had been her special charges.

Once the final bus had left, with the occupants waving for the last time to Samantha, ‘Take care, honey!’ ‘You come and visit with us now, hear!’ she was as lonely and forlorn as the silent ship. She stood for a long time staring up the liner's high side, the damage where sea and ice had battered her - then she turned and picked her way dejectedly along the edge of the basin, ignoring the occasional whistle or ribald invitation from the fishermen and crew members of the freighters on their moorings.

Warlock seemed as welcoming as home, rakish and gallant, wearing her new scars with high panache, already thrusting and impatient at the restraint of her mooring lines. And then Samantha remembered that Nicholas Berg was no longer aboard her, and her spirits sagged again.

‘God!’ Tim Graham met her at the gangplank. ‘I'm glad you got back. I didn't know what to do with your gear.’

‘What do you mean?’ Samantha demanded. ‘Are you throwing me off the ship?’

‘Unless you want to come with us to Rio.’ He thought about that for a moment, and then he grinned, ‘Hey, that's not a bad idea, how about it, old girl? Rio in Carnival time, you and me.’

‘Don't get carried away, Timothy,’ she warned him. Why Rio?’

‘The Captain-‘

‘Captain Berg?’

‘No, David Allen, he's the new skipper,’ and she lost interest.

‘When are you sailing?’

‘Midnight.’

‘I'd best go pack up.’ She left him on the quarter-deck, and Angel pounced on her as she passed the galley.

‘Where have you been?’ He was in a flutter, all wrists and tossing hair, ‘I've been beside myself, darling.’

‘What is it, Angel?’

‘It's probably too late already.’

‘What is it?’ She caught his urgency. ‘Tell me.’

‘He's still in town.’

‘Who?’ But she knew, they spoke of only one person in these emotional terms.

‘Don't be dense, luv. Your crumpet.’ She hated it when he referred to Nick like that, but now she let him go on. ‘But he won't be very much longer. His plane leaves at five o'clock, he is making the local flight to Johannesburg, and connecting there for London.’

She stared at him.

‘Well what are you waiting for?’ Angel keened. ‘It's almost four o'clock now, and it will take you at least half an hour to reach the airport.’

She did not move. ‘But, Angel,’ she almost wrung her hands in anguish, ‘but what do I do when I get there?’

Angel shook his head and twinkled his diamonds in exasperation. ‘Sweet merciful heavens, duckie.’ Then he sighed. ‘When I was a boy I had two guinea pigs, and they also refused to get it on. I think they were retarded, or something. I tried everything, even hormones, but neither of them survived the shots. Alas, their love was never consummated.’

‘Be serious, Angel.’

‘You could hold him down while I give him a hormone shot-’

‘I hate you, Angel.’ She had to laugh, even in her anxiety.

‘Dearie, every night for the past month you have tried to set him on fire with your dulcet silvery voice - and we haven't even passed "GO" and collected our first $200.’

‘I know, Angel. I know.’

‘It seems to me, sweetie, that it's time now to cut out the jawing and to ignite him with that magic little tinderbox of yours.’

‘You mean right there in the departure lounge of the airport?’ She clapped her hands with delight, then struck a lascivious pose. 'I'm Sam - fly me!’

‘Hop, poppet there is a taxi on the wharf - he's been waiting an hour, with his meter running.’

There is no first-class lounge in Cape Town's DF Malan Airport, so Nicholas sat in the snake-pit, amongst the distraught mothers and their whining, sticky offspring, the harassed tourists loaded like camels with souvenirs and the florid-faced commercial travellers, but he was alone in a multitude; with unconscious deference they allowed him a little circle of privacy and he used the Louis Vuitton briefcase on his knee as a desk.

It occurred to him suddenly how dramatically the balance had swung in the last mere forty days, since he had recognized his wave peaking, but had almost not been able to find the strength for it.

A shadow passed across his eyes, and the little creased crows foot appeared between them as he remembered the physical and emotional effort that it had taken to make the Go decision on Golden Adventurer, and he shivered slightly in fear of what might have happened if he had not gone. He would have missed his wave, and there would never have been another.

With a small firm movement of his head, he pushed that memory of fear behind him. He had caught his wave, and he was riding high and fast. Now it seemed that the fates were intent on smothering him with largesse: the oil-rig for Warlock, Rio to the Bravo Sierra field off Norway - then a back-to-back tow from the North Sea through Suez to the to the new South Australian field, would keep Warlock fully employed for the next six months. That was not all, the threatening dockyard strike at Construction Navale Atlantique had been smoothed over and the delivery date for the new tug had come forward by two months - At midnight the night before, a telephone call from Bach Wackie had awakened him to let him know Kuwait and Qatar were now also studying the iceberg-to-water project with a view to commissioning similar schemes; he would have to build himself another two vessels if they decided to go.

‘All I need now is to hear that I have won the football pools,’ he thought, and turned his head, started and caught his breath with a hiss, as though he had been punched in the ribs.

She stood by the automatic doors, and the wind had caught her hair and torn it loose from its thick twisted knot so that fine gold tendrils floated down on to her cheeks - cheeks that were flushed as though she had run fast, and her chest heaved so that she held one hand upon it, fingers spread like a star between those fine pointed breasts. She was poised like a forest animal that has scented the leopard, fearful, tremulous, but not yet certain in which direction to run. Her agitation was so apparent that he thrust aside his briefcase and stood up.

She saw him instantly, and her face lit with an expression of such unutterable joy, that he was halted in his intention of going towards her, while she in contrast wheeled and started to run towards him.

She collided with a portly, sweating tourist, nearly flooring him and shaking loose a rain of carved native curios and anonymous packets which clattered to the floor around her like ripe fruit.

He snarled angrily, then his expression changed as he looked at her. ‘Sorry!’ She stooped swiftly, picked up a packet, thrust it into his arms, hit him with her smile, and left him beaming bemusedly after her.

However, now she was more restrained, her precipitous rush calmed to that long-legged thrusting hip-swinging walk of hers, and the smile was a little uncertain as she pushed vainly at the loose streamers of golden hair, trying to tuck them up into the twisted rope on top of her head.

‘I thought I'd missed you.’ She stopped a little in front of him.

‘Is something wrong?’ he asked quickly, still alarmed by her behaviour.

‘Oh no!’ she assured him hurriedly.’ Not any more,’ and suddenly she was awkward and coltish again. ‘I thought,’ her voice hushed, ‘it was just that I thought I'd missed you.’ And her eyes slid away from him. ‘You didn't say goodbye.-‘

‘I thought it was better that way.’ And now her eyes flew back to his face, sparking with green fire.

‘Why?’ she demanded, and he had no answer to give her.

‘I didn't want to –‘ How could he say it to her, without making the kind of statement that would embarrass them both?

Above them, the public address system squawked into life.

‘South African Airways announces the departure of their Airbus flight 235 to Johannesburg. Will passengers please board at Gate Number Two.’

She had run out of time. ‘I'm Sam - Fly Me! Please!’ she thought, and felt the urge to giggle, but instead she said: ‘Nicholas, tomorrow you'll be in London - in midwinter.’

‘It's a sobering thought,’he agreed, and for the first time smiled; his smile closed like a fist around her heart and her legs felt suddenly weak.

‘Tomorrow or at least the day after, I'll be riding the long sea at Cape St Francis,’ she said. They had spoken of that, on those enchanted nights. He had told her how he had first ridden the surf at Waikiki Beach long ago before the sport had become a craze, and it had been part of their shared experience, part of their love of the sea, drawing them closer together.

‘I hope the surf's up for you,’ he said. Cape St Francis was three hundred and fifty miles north of Cape Town, simply another beach and headland in a shoreline that stretched in unbroken splendour for six thousand miles, and yet it was unique in all the world. The young and the young-at-heart came in almost religious pilgrimage to ride the long sea at Cape St Francis. They came from Hawaii and California, from Tahiti and Queensland, for there was no other wave quite like it.

At the departure gate, the shuffling queue was shortening, and Nick stooped to pick up his briefcase, but she reached out and laid her hand on his biceps, and he froze.

It was the first time she had deliberately touched him, and the shock of it spread through his body like ripples on a quiet lake. All the emotions and passions which he had so strenuously denied came tumbling back upon him, and it seemed that their strength had grown a hundred-fold while under restraint. He ached for her, with a deep, yearning wanting ache.

‘Come with me, Nicholas,’ she whispered, and his own throat closed so he could not answer. He stared at her, and already the ground hostesses at the gate were peering around irritably for their missing passenger.

She had to convince him and she shook his arm urgently, startled at the hardness of the muscle under her fingers.

‘Nicholas, I really want,’ she began, intending to finish, ‘you to,’ but her tongue played a Freudian trick on her, and she said, ‘I really want you., Oh God,’ she thought, as she heard herself say it, ‘I sound like a whore,’ and in panic she corrected herself.

‘I really want you to,’ and she flushed, the blood came up from her neck, dark under the peach of her tan so the freckles glowed on her skin like flakes of gold-dust.

‘Which one is it?’ he asked, and then smiled again.

‘There isn't time to argue.’ She stamped her foot, feigning impatience, hiding her confusion, then added, ‘Damn you!’ for no good reason.

‘Who is arguing?’ he asked quietly, and suddenly, like magic, she was in his arms, trying to burrow herself deeper and deeper into his embrace, trying to draw all the man smell of him into her lungs, amazed at the softness and warmth of his mouth and the hard rasp of new beard on his chin and cheek, making little soft mewing sounds of comfort deep in her throat as she clung to him.

‘Passenger Berg. Will passenger Berg please report to the departure gate,’ chanted the public address.

‘They're calling me,’ Nicholas murmured.

‘They can go right to the back of the queue,’ she mumbled into his lips.

Sunlight was made for Samantha. She wore it like a cloak that had been woven especially for her. She wore it in her hair, sparkling like jewellery, she used it to paint her face and body in lustrous shades of burnt honey and polished amber, she wore it glowing in golden freckles on her cheeks and nose.

She moved in sunlight with wondrous grace, barefooted in the white sand, so that her hips and buttocks roistered brazenly under the thin green stuff of her bikini, She sprawled in the sunlight like a sleeping cat, offering her face and her naked belly to it, so he felt that if he laid his hands against her throat he would feel her purr deep inside her chest.

She ran in the sunlight, light as a gull in flight, along the hard wet sand at the water's edge, and he ran beside her, tirelessly, mile after mile, the two of them alone in a world of green sea and sun and tall pale hot skies. The beach curved away in both directions to the limit of the eye, smooth and white as the snows of Antarctica, devoid of human life or the scars of man's petty endeavours, and she laughed beside him in the sunlight, holding his hand as they ran together.

They found a deep, clear rock pool in a far and secret place. The sunlight off the water dappled her body, exploding silently upon it like the reflections of light from a gigantic diamond, as she cast aside the two green wisps of her bikini, let down the thick rope of her hair and stepped into the pool, turning, knee-deep, to look back at him. Her hair hung almost to her waist, springing and thick and trying to curl in the salt and wind, it cloaked her shoulders and her breasts peeped through the thick curtains of it. Her breasts, untouched by the sun, were rich as cream and tipped in rose, so big and full and exuberant that he wondered that he had ever thought her a child; they bounced and swung as she moved, and she pulled back her shoulders and laughed at him shamelessly when she saw the direction of his eyes.

She turned back to the pool and her buttocks were white with the pinkish sheen of a deep-sea pearl, round and tight and deeply divided, and, as she bent forward to dive, a tiny twist of copper gold curls peeped briefly and coyly from the wedge where the deep cleft split into her tanned smooth thighs.

Through the cool water, her body was warm as bread fresh from the oven, cold and heat together, and when he told her this, she entwined her arms around his neck.

‘I'm Sam the baked Alaska, eat me!’ she laughed, and the droplets clung to her eyelashes like diamond chips in the sunlight.

Even in the presence of others, they walked alone; for them, nobody else really existed. Among those who had come from all over the world to ride the long sea at Cape St Francis were many who knew Samantha, from Florida and California, from Australia and Hawaii, where her field trips and her preoccupation with the sea and the life of the sea had taken her.

‘Hey, Sam!’ they shouted, dropping their boards in the sand and running to her, tall muscular men, burned dark as chestnuts in the sun. She smiled at them vaguely, holding Nicholas hand a little tighter, and replied to their chatter absentmindedly, drifting away at the first opportunity.

‘Who was that!’

‘It's terrible, but I can't remember - I'm not even sure where I met him or when.’ And it was true, she could concentrate on nothing but Nicholas, and the others sensed it swiftly and left them alone.

Nicholas had not been in the sun for over a year, his body was the colour of old ivory, in sharp contrast to the thick dark body hair which covered his chest and belly. At the end of that first day in the sun, the ivory colour had turned to a dull angry red.

‘You'll suffer,’ she told him, but the next morning his body and limbs had gone the colour of mahogany and she drew back the sheets and marvelled at it, touching him exploringly with the tip of her fingers.

‘I'm lucky, I've got a hide like a buffalo,’he told her.

Each day he turned darker, until he was the weathered bronze of an American Indian, and his high cheek-bones heightened the resemblance.

‘You must have Indian blood,’ she told him, tracing his nose with her finger-tip.

‘I only know two generations back,’ he smiled at her. ‘I've always been terrified to look further than that.’

She sat over him, cross-legged in the big bed and touched him, exploring him with her hands, touching his lips and the lobes of his ears, smoothing the thick dark curve of his eyebrows, the little black mole on his cheek, and exclaiming at each new discovery.

She touched him when they walked, reaching for his hand, pressing her hip against him when they stood, on the beach sitting between his spread knees and leaning back against his chest, her head tucked into his shoulder - it was as if she needed constant physical assurance of his presence.

When they sat astride their boards, waiting far out beyond the three-mile reef for the set of the wave, she reached across to touch his shoulder, balancing the board under her like a skilled horsewoman, the two of them close and spiritually isolated from the loose assembly of thirty or forty surf -riders strung out along the line of the long set.

This far out, the shore was a low dark green rind, above the shaded green and limpid blues of the water. In the blue distance, the mountains were blue on the blue of the sky and above them, the thunderheads piled dazzling silver, tall and arrogant enough to dwarf the very earth.

‘This must be the most beautiful land in the world,’ she said, moving her board so that her knee lay against his thigh.

‘Because you are here,’ he told her.

Under them, the green water breathed like a living thing, rising and falling, the swells long and glassy, sliding away towards the land.

Growing impatient, one of the inexperienced riders would move to catch a bad swell, kneeling on the board and paddling with both hands, coming up unsteadily on to his feet and then toppling and falling as the water left him, and the taunts and friendly catcalls of his peers greeted him as he surfaced, grinning sheepishly, and crawled back on to his board.

Then the ripple of excitement, and a voice calling, ‘A three set!’ the boards quickly rearranging themselves, sculled by cupped bare hands, spacing out for running room, the riders peering back eagerly over their dark burned shoulders, laughing and kidding each other as the wave set bumped up on the horizon, still four miles out at sea, but big enough so that they could count the individual swells that made up the set.

Running at fifty miles an hour, the swells took nearly five minutes, from the moment when they were sighted, to reach the line, and during that time Samantha. had a little ritual of preparation, First, she hoisted the bottom of her bikini which had usually slipped down to expose a pair of dimples and a little of the deep cleft of her buttocks, then she tightened her top hamper, pulling open the brassiere of her costume and cupping each breast in turn, settling it firmly in its sheath of thin green cloth, grinning at Nick as she did it.

‘You're not supposed to watch.

‘I know, it's bad for my heart.’

Then she plucked out a pair of hairpins and held them in her mouth as she twisted the wrist-thick plait of hair tighter until it hung down between her shoulder blades and pinned back the wisps over her ears.

‘All set?’ he called, and she nodded and answered,

‘Ride three?’

The third wave in the set was traditionally the big one, and they let the first one swing them high and drop them again into its trough. Half the other riders were up and away, only their heads still visible above the peak of the wave, the land obscured by the moving wall of water.

The second wave came through, bigger, more powerful, but swooping up and over the crest and most of the other riders went on it, two or three tumbling on the steep front of water, losing their boards, dragged under as the ankle lines came up taut.

‘Here we go!’ exulted Samantha, and three came rustling, green and peaking, and in the transparent wall of water four big bottle-nosed porpoises were framed, in perfect motion, racing in the wave, pumping their flat delta shaped tails and grinning that fixed porpoise grin of delight.

‘Oh look!’ sang Samantha. ‘Just look at them, Nicholas!’

Then the wave was upon them and they sculled frantically, weight high on the board, the heart-stopping moment when it seemed the water would sweep away and leave them, then suddenly the boards coming alive under them and starting to run, tipping steeply forward, with the hiss of the waxed fibre-glass through the water.

Then they were both up and laughing in the sunlight, dancing the intricate steps that balanced and controlled the boards, lifted high on the crest, so they could see the sweep of the beach three miles ahead, and the ranks of other riders on the twin waves that had gone before them.

One of the porpoises frolicked with them on the racing crest, ducking under the flying boards, turning on its side to grin up at Samantha, so she stooped and stretched out a hand to touch him, lost her balance, and almost fell while the porpoise grinned at her mischievously and flipped away to rise fin up on her far side.

Now, out on their right hand, the wave was feeling the reef and starting to curl over on itself, the crest arching forwards, holding that lovely shape for long moments, then slowly collapsing.

‘Go left,’ Nick called urgently to her, and they kicked the boards around and danced up on to the stubby prows, bending at the knees to ride the hurtling craft, their speed rocketing as they cut across the green face of the wave, but behind them the arching wave spread rapidly towards them, faster than they could run before it.

Now at their left shoulders, the water formed a steep vertical wall, and, glancing at it, Samantha found the porpoise swimming head-high beside her, his great tail pumping; powerfully, and she was afraid, for the majesty and strength of that wave belittled her.

‘Nicholas!’ she screamed, and the wave fanned out over her head, arcing across the sky, cutting out the sunlight, and now they flew down a long perfectly rounded tunnel of roaring water. The sides were smooth as blown glass, and the light was green and luminous and weird as though they sped through a deep submarine cavern, only ahead of them was the perfect round opening at the mouth of the tunnel - while behind her, close behind her, the tunnel was collapsing in a furious thunder of murderous white water, and she was as terrified and as exulted as she had ever been in her life.

He yelled at her, ‘We must beat the curl,’ and his voice was far away and almost lost in the roar of water, but obediently she went forward on her board until all her bare toes were curled over the leading edge.

For long moments they held their own, then slowly they began to gain, and at last they shot out through the open mouth of the tunnel into the sunlight again, and she laughed wildly, still high on the exultation of fresh terror.

Then they were past the reef and the wave firmed up, leaving the white water like lace on the surface far behind.

‘Let's go right!’ Samantha sang out to stay within the good structure of the wave, and they turned and went back, swinging across the steep face. The splatter of flung water sparkled on her belly and thighs, and the plait of her hair stood out behind her head like the tail of an angry lioness, her arms were extended and her hands held open, unconsciously making the delicate finger gestures of a Balinese temple dancer as she balanced; and miraculously the porpoise swam, fill up, beside her, following like a trained dog.

Then at last, the wave felt the beach and ran berserk, tumbling wildly upon itself, booming angrily, and churning the sand like gruel, and they kicked out of the wave, falling back over the crest and dropping into the sea beside the bobbing boards, laughing and panting at each other with the excitement and terror and the joy of it.

Samantha was a sea-creature with a huge appetite for the fruits of the sea, cracking open the crayfish legs in her fingers and sucking the white sticks of flesh into her mouth with a noisy sensuality, while her lips were polished with butter sauce, not taking her eyes from his face as she ate.

Samantha in the candlelight gulping those huge Knysna oysters, and then slurping the juice out of the shells.

‘You're talking with your mouth full.’

‘It's just that I've still got so much to tell you,’ she explained.

Samantha was laughter, laughter in fifty different tones and intensities, from the sleepy morning chortle when she awoke and found him beside her, to the wild laughter yelled from the crest of a racing wave.

Samantha was loving. With a face of thundering innocence and the virginal, guileless green eyes of a child, she combined hands and a mouth whose wiles and wicked cunning left Nick stunned and disbelieving.

‘The reason I ran away without a word was that I did not want to have your ravishment and violation on my conscience,’ he shook his head at her disbelievingly.

‘I wrote my PhD thesis in those subjects,’ she told him blithely, using her forefinger to twist spit-curls in his sweat-dampened chest hairs. ‘And what's more, buster, that was just the introductory offer - now we sign you up for a full course of treatment.’

Her delight in his body was endless, she must touch and examine every inch of it, exclaiming and revelling in it without a trace of self-consciousness, holding his hand in her lap and bending her head studiously over it, tracing the lines of his palm with her fingernail.

‘You are going to meet a beautiful wanton blonde, give her fifteen babies and live to be a hundred and fifty.’ She touched the little chiselled lines around his eyes and at the corners of his mouth with the tip of her tongue, leaving cool damp smears of saliva on his skin.

‘I always wanted a real craggy man all for myself.’ Then, when her examination became more intimate and clinical and he demurred, she told him severely, ‘Hold still, this is a private thing between me and himself.’

Then a little later.

‘Oh wow! He's real poison! Poison?’ his demanded, his manhood denigrated.

‘Poison,’ she sighed. ‘Because he just slays me!’

In fairness, she offered herself for his touch and scrutiny, guiding his hands, displaying herself eagerly.

‘Look, touch, it's yours - all yours,’ wanting his approval, not able to give him sufficient to satisfy her own need to give. ‘Do you like it, Nicholas? Is this good for you? Is there anything else you want, Nicholas, anything at all that I can give you?’

And when he told her how beautiful she was, when he told her how much he wanted her, when he touched and marvelled over the gifts she brought to him, she glowed and stretched and purred like a great golden cat so that when he learned that the Zodiacal sign of her birthday was Leo, he was not at all surprised.

Samantha was loving in the early slippery grey-pearl light of dawn, soft sleepy loving, with small gasps and murmurs and chuckles of deep contentment.

Samantha was loving in the sunlight, spread like a beautiful starfish in the fierce reflected sunlight of the sculptured dunes. The sand coated her body like crystals of sugar, and their cries rose together, high and ecstatic as those of the curious seagulls that floated above them on motionless white wings.

Samantha was loving in the green cool water, their two heads bobbing beyond the first line of breakers, his toes only just touching the sandy bottom and she twined about him like sea kelp about a submerged rock, clutching both their swim suits in one hand and gurgling merrily.

‘What's good enough for a lady blue whale is good enough for Samantha Silver! There blows Moby Dick!’

And Samantha was loving in the night, with her hair brushed out carefully and spread over him, lustrous and fragrant, a canopy of gold in the lamplight, and she kneeling astride him in almost religious awe, like a temple maid making the sacrifice.

But more than anything else, Samantha was vibrant, bursting life - and youth eternal.

Through her, Nicholas recaptured those emotions which he had believed long atrophied by cynicism and the pragmatism of living. He shared her childlike delight in the small wonders of nature, the flight of a gull, the presence of the porpoise, the discovery of the perfect translucent fan of papery nautilus shell washed up on the white sand with the rare tentacled creature still alive within the convoluted interior.

He shared her outrage when even those remote and lonely beaches were invaded by an oil slick, tank washings from a VLCC out on the Agulhas current, and the filthy clinging globules of spilled crude oil stuck to the soles of their feet, smeared the rocks and smothered the carcasses of the jackass penguins they found at the water's edge.

Samantha was life itself, just to touch the warmth of her and to drink the sound of her laughter was to be rejuvenated. To walk beside her was to feel vital and strong.

Strong enough for the long days in the sea and sun, strong enough to dance to the loud wild music half the night, and then strong enough to lift her when she faltered and carry her down to their bungalow above the beach, she in his arms like a sleepy child, her skin tingling with the memory of the sun, her muscles aching deliciously with fatigue, and her belly crammed with rich food.

‘Oh Nicholas, Nicholas - I'm so happy I want to cry.’

Then Larry Fry arrived; he arrived on a cloud of indignation, red-faced and accusing as a cuckolded husband.

‘Two weeks,’ he blared. London and Bermuda and St Nazaire have been driving me mad for two weeks!’ And he brandished a sheath of telex flimsies that looked like the galley proofs for the Encyclopaedia Britannica.

‘Nobody knew what had happened to you. You just disappeared.’ He ordered a large gin and tonic from the white jacketed bar-tender and sank wearily on to the stool beside Nick. ‘You nearly cost me my job, Mr. Berg, and that's the truth. You'd have thought I'd bumped you off personally and dumped your body in the bay. I had to hire a private detective to check every hotel register in the country.’ He took a long, soothing draught of the gin.

At that moment, Samantha drifted into the cocktail lounge. She wore a loose, floating dress the same green as her eyes, and a respectful hush fell on the pre-luncheon drinkers as they watched her cross the room. Larry Fry forgot his indignation and gaped at her, his bald scorched head growing shining under a thin film of perspiration.

‘Godstrewth,’ he Muttered. ‘I'd rather feel that, than feel sick.’ And then his admiration turned to consternation when she came directly to Nicholas, laid her hand on his shoulder and in full view of the entire room kissed him lingeringly on the mouth.

There was a soft collective sigh from the watchers and Larry Fry knocked over his gin.

‘We must go now, today,’ Samantha decided. ‘We mustn't stay even another hour, Nicholas, or we will spoil it. It was perfect, but now we must go.’ Nicholas understood. Like him she had the compulsion to keep moving forward. Within the hour, he had chartered a twin-engined Beechcraft Baron. It picked them up at the little earth strip near the hotel and put them down at Johannesburg's Jan Smuts Airport an hour before the departure of the UTA flight for Paris.

‘I always rode in the back of the bus before,’ said Samantha, as she looked around the first-class cabin appraisingly. ‘Is it true that up this end you can eat and drink as much as you like, for free?’

‘Yes.’ Then Nick added hastily, ‘But you don't have to take that as a personal challenge.’ Nicholas had come to stand in awe of Samantha's appetites.

They stayed overnight at the Georges V in Paris and caught the midmorning TAT flight down to Nantes, the nearest airfield to the shipyards at St Nazaire, and Jules Levoisin was there to meet them at the Chateau Bougon field.

‘Nicholas!’ he shouted joyfully, and stood on tiptoe to buss both his cheeks, enveloping him in a fragrant cloud of eau de Cologne and pomade. ‘You are a pirate Nicholas, you stole that ship from under my nose. I hate you.’ He held Nicholas at arm's length.’ I warned you not to take the job, didn't I?’

‘You did, Jules, you did.’

‘So why do you make a fool of me?’ he demanded, and twirled his moustaches. He was wearing expensive cashmere and an Yves St Laurent necktie; ashore, Jules was always the dandy.

‘Jules, I am going to buy lunch for you at La Rotisserie,’ Nicholas promised.

‘I forgive you,’ said Jules, it was one of his favourite eating-places - but at that moment Jules became aware that Nicholas was not travelling alone.

He stood back, took one long look at Samantha and it seemed that tricolors unfurled around him and brass bands burst into the opening bars of ‘La Marseillaise'. For if dalliance was the national sport, Jules Levoisin considered himself veteran champion of all France.

He bowed over her hand, and tickled the back of it with his still black moustache. Then he told Nicholas, She is too good for you, mon petit, I am going to take her away from you.’

‘The same way you did Golden Adventurer?’ Nick asked innocently.

Jules had his ancient Citroen in the car park. It was lovingly waxed and fitted with shiny gewgaws and dangling mascots. He handed Samantha into the front seat as though it was a Rolls Camargue.

‘He's beautiful,’ she whispered, as he scampered around to the driver's door.

Jules could not devote attention to both the road ahead and to Samantha, so he concentrated solely upon her, without deviating from the Citron's top speed, only occasionally turning to shout, ‘Cochon!’ at another driver or jerk his fist at them with the second finger pointed stiffly upwards in ribald salutation.

‘Jules’ great-great-grandfather charged with the Emperor's cavalry at Quatre Bras,’ Nick explained. ‘He is a man without fear.

‘You will enjoy La Rotisserie,’ Jules told Samantha. ‘I can only afford to eat there when I find somebody rich who wishes a favour of me.’

‘How do you know I want a favour?’ Nick asked from the back seat, clinging to the door-handle.

‘Three telegrams, a telephone call from Bermuda - another from Johannesburg,’ Jules chuckled fruitily and winked at Samantha. ‘You think I believe Nicholas Berg wants to discuss old times? You think I believe he feels so deeply for his old friend, who taught him everything he knows? A man who treated him like a son, and whom he blatantly robbed –‘ Jules sped across the Loire bridge and plunged into that tangled web of narrow one-way streets and teeming traffic which is Nantes, a way opened for him miraculously.

In the Place Briand, he handed Samantha gallantly from the Citron, and in the restaurant he puffed out his cheeks and made little anxious clucking and tut-tutting noises, as Nicholas discussed the wine list with the sommelier - but he nodded reluctant approval when they settled on a Chablis Moutonne and a Chambertin-Clos-de-Beze, then he applied himself with equal gusto to the food, the wine and Samantha, 'You can tell a woman who is made for life and love, by the way she eats,’ and when Samantha made wide lascivious eyes at him over her trout, Nicholas expected him to crow like a cockerel.

Only when the cognac was in front of them, and both he and Nick had lit cheroots, did he demand abruptly: ‘So, now, Nicholas, I am in a good mood. Ask me.’

‘I need a Master for my new tug,’ said Nick, and Jules veiled his face behind a thick blue curtain of cigar smoke.

They fenced like masters of epee all the way from Nantes to St Nazaire.

‘Those ships you build, Nicholas, are not tugs. They are fancy toys, floating bordellos - all those gimmicks and gadgets.’

‘Those gimmicks and gadgets enabled me to deal with Christy Marine while you still hadn't realized that I was within a thousand miles.’ Jules blew out his cheeks and muttered to himself.

‘Twenty-two thousand horsepower, c'est ridicule! They are over-powered.’

‘I needed every single one of those horses when I pulled Golden Adventurer off Cape Alarm. ‘

‘Nicholas, do not keep reminding me of that shameful episode.’ He turned to Samantha. ‘I am hungry, ma petite, and in the next village there is a patisserie,’ he sighed and kissed his bunched fingers,’ you will adore the pastry.’

‘Try me,’ she invited, and Jules had found a soul mate.

‘Those fancy propellers - variable pitch - ouf!’ Jules spoke through a mouthful of pastry, and there was whipped cream on his moustache.

‘I can make twenty-five knots and then slam Warlock into reverse thrust and stop her within her own length.’ Jules changed pace, and attacked from a new direction.

‘You'll never find full employment for two big expensive ships like that.’

‘I'm -going to need four, not two,’ Nick contradicted him. ‘We are going to catch icebergs,’ and Jules forgot to chew, as he listened intently for the next ten minutes. ‘One of the beauties of the iceberg scheme is that all my ships will be operating right on the tanker lanes, the busiest shipping lanes in all the oceans-’

‘Nicholas,’ Jules shook his head in admiration, ‘you move too fast for me. I am an old man, old-fashioned-‘

‘You're not old,’ Samantha told him firmly. ‘You're only just in your prime.’ And Jules threw up both hands theatrically.

‘Now you have a pretty girl heaping flattery on my bowed grey head,’ he looked at Nicholas; ‘is no trick too deceitful for you?’

It was snowing the next morning, a slow sparse sprinkling from a grey woollen sky, when they drove into St Nazaire from the little seaside resort of La Baule twenty-five kilometres up the Atlantic coast.

Jules had a small flat in one of the apartment blocks. It was a convenient arrangement, for La Mouette, his command, was owned by a Breton company and St Nazaire was her home port. It was a mere twenty-minute drive before they made out the elegant arch of the suspension bridge which crosses the estuarine mouth of the Loire River at St Nazaire.

Jules drove through the narrow streets of that area of the docks just below the bridge which comprises the sprawling ship-building yard of Construction Navale Atlantique, one of the three largest ship-building companies in Europe, The slipways for the larger vessels, the bulk carriers and naval craft, faced directly on to the wide smooth reach of the river; but the ways for the small vessels backed on to the inner harbour.

So Jules parked the Citron at the security gates nearest the inner harbour, and they walked through to where Charles Gras was waiting for them in his offices overlooking the inner basin.

‘Nicholas, it is good to see you again.’ Gras was one of Atlantique's top engineers, a tall stooped man with a pale face and lank black hair that fell to his eyebrows, he had the sharp foxy Parisian features and quick bright eyes that belied the morose unsmiling manner.

He and Nicholas had known each other many years, and they used the familiar ‘tu’ form of address.

Charles Gras changed to heavily accented English when he was introduced to Samantha, and back to French when he asked Nicholas, ‘If I know you, you will want to go directly to see your ship now, n'est-ce pas?’

Sea Witch stood high on her ways, and although she was an identical twin to Warlock, she seemed almost twice her size with her underwater hull exposed. Despite the fact that the superstructure was incomplete and she was painted in the drab oxide red of marine primer, yet it was impossible to disguise the symmetrically functional beauty of her lines.

Jules puffed, and muttered ‘Bordello’ and made remarks about 'Admiral Berg and his battleship', but he could not hide the gleam in his eye as he strutted about the uncompleted navigation bridge, or listened intently as Charles Gras explained the electronic equipment and the other refinements that made the ship so fast, efficient and manoeuvrable.

Nick realized that the two experts should be left alone now to convince each other; it was clear that although this was their first meeting the two of them had established immediate rapport.

‘Come.’ Nick quietly took Samantha's arm and they stepped carefully around the scaffolding and loose equipment, picking their way through groups of workmen to the upper deck.

The snow had stopped, but a razor of a wind snickered in from the Atlantic. They found a sheltered corner, and Samantha pressed close to Nick, snuggling into the circle of his arm.

High on her ways, Sea Witch gave them a sweeping view, through the forest of construction cranes, over the roofs of the warehouses and offices to the river slipways where the keels of the truly big hulls were laid down.

‘You spoke about Golden Dawn,’ Nick said. ‘There she is.’ It took some moments for Samantha to realize she was looking at a ship.

‘My God,’ she breathed. ‘It's so big.’

‘They don't come bigger, ’he agreed.

The structure of steel was almost a mile and a half long, three city blocks, and the hull was as tall as a five-storey building, while the navigation tower was another hundred feet higher than that.

Samantha shook her head. ‘It's beyond belief. It looks like - like a city! It's terrifying to think of that thing afloat.’

‘That is only the main hull, the tank pods have been constructed in Japan. The last I heard is that they are under tow direct to the Persian Gulf.’

Nick stared solemnly across the ship, blinking his eyes against the stinging wind.

‘I must have been out of my mind,’ he whispered, ‘to dream up a monster like that.’ But there was a touch of defiant pride in his tone.

‘It's so big - beyond imagination,’ she encouraged him to talk about it. ‘How big is it?’

‘It's not a single vessel,’ he explained. 'No harbour in the world could take a ship that size, it could not even approach the continental United States, for that matter, there just is not enough water to float it.’

‘Yes?’ She loved to listen to him expound his vision, she loved to hear the force and power of his convictions.

‘What you're seeing is the carrying platform, the accommodation and the main power source.’ He held her closer. ‘On to that, we attach the four tank pods, each one of them capable of carrying a quarter of a million tons of crude oil, each tank almost as large as the biggest ship afloat.’

He was still explaining the concept while they sat at lunch, and Charles Gras and Jules Levoisin listened as avidly as she did.

‘A single rigid hull of those dimensions would crack and break up in heavy seas,’ he took the cruet set and used it to demonstrate, ‘but the four individual pods have been designed so that they can move independently of each other. This gives them the ability to ride and absorb the movement of heavy seas. It is the most important principle of ship construction, a hull must ride the water - not try to oppose it.’

Across the table, Charles Gras nodded lugubrious agreement.

‘The tank pods hive on to the main hull, and are carried upon it like remora on the body of a shark, not using their own propulsion systems, but relying on the multiple boilers and quadruple screws of the main hull to carry them across the oceans.’ He pushed the cruet set around the table and they all watched it with fascination. ‘Then, when it reaches the continental shelf opposite the shore discharge site, the main hull anchors, forty or fifty, even a hundred miles offshore, detaches one or two or all of its pod tanks, and they make those last few miles under their own propulsion. In protected water and in chosen weather conditions, their propulsion systems will handle them safely. Then the empty pod ballasts itself and returns to hook on to the main hull.’

As he spoke, Nicholas detached the salt cellar from the cruet and docked it against Samantha's plate. The two Frenchmen were silent, staring at the silver salt cellar, but Samantha watched Nick's face. It was burned dark by the sun now, lean and handsome, and he seemed charged and vital, like a thoroughbred horse in peak of training, and she was proud of him, proud of the force of his personality that made other men listen when he spoke, proud of the imagination and the courage it took to conceive and then put into operation a project of this magnitude. Even though it were no longer his - yet his had been the vision.

Now Nicholas was talking again. ‘Civilization is addicted to liquid fossil fuels. Without them, it would be forced into withdrawal trauma too horrible to contemplate. If then we have to use crude, let's pipe it out of the earth, transport and ship it with all possible precautions to protect ourselves from its side effects-‘

‘Nicholas,’ Charles Gras interrupted him abruptly. ‘When last did you inspect the drawings of Golden Dawn?’

Nick paused, taken in full stride and a little off balance. He frowned as he cast back. ‘I walked out of Christy Marine just over a year ago.’ And the darkness of those days settled upon him, making his eyes bleak.

‘A year ago we had not even been awarded the contract for the construction of Golden Dawn.’ Charles Gras twisted the stem of his wine glass between his fingers, and thrust out his bottom lip. ‘The ship you have just described to us is very different from the ship we are building out there.’

‘In what way, Charles?’ Nick's concern was immediate, a father hearing of radical surgery upon his first-born.

‘The concept is the same. The mother vessel and the four tank pods, but –‘ Charles shrugged, that eloquent Gallic gesture, ‘it would be easier to show it to you. Immediately after lunch.’

‘D'accord,’ Jules Levoisin nodded. ‘But on the condition that it does not interfere with the further enjoyment of this fine meal.’ He nudged Nicholas. ‘If you eat with a scowl on your face, mon vieux, you will grow yourself ulcers like a bunch of Loire grapes.’

Standing beneath the bulk of Golden Dawn, she seemed to reach up into that low grey snow-sky, like a mighty alp of steel. The men working on the giddy heights of her scaffolding were small as insects, and quite unbelievably, as Samantha stared up at them, a little torn streamer of wet grey cloud, coming up the Loire basin from the sea, blew over the ship, obscuring the top of her navigation bridge for a few moments.

‘She reaches up to the clouds,’ said Nick beside her, and the pride was in his voice as he turned back to Charles Gras. ‘She looks good?’ It was a question, not a statement. ‘She looks like the ship I planned.’

‘Come, Nicholas.’

The little party picked its way through the chaos of the yard. The squeal of power cranes and the rumble of heavy steel transporters, the electric hissing crackle of the huge automatic running welders combined with the roaring gunfire barrage of the riveters into a cacophony that numbed the senses. The scaffolding and hoist systems formed an almost impenetrable forest about the mountainous hull, and steel and concrete were glistening wet and rimmed with thin clear ice.

It was a long walk through the crowded yard, almost twenty minutes merely to round the tanker’s stern - and suddenly Nicholas stopped so abruptly that Samantha collided with him and might have fallen on the icy concrete, but he caught her arm and held her as he stared up at the bulbous stern.

It formed a great overhanging roof like that of a medieval cathedral, so that Nick's head was flung back, and the grip on her arm tightened so fiercely that she protested. He seemed not to hear, but went on staring upwards.

‘Yes,’ Charles Gras nodded, and the lank black hair flopped like against his forehead. ‘That is one difference from the ship you designed.’

The propeller was in lustrous ferro-bronze, six-bladed, each shaped with the beauty and symmetry of a butterfly's wing, but so enormous as to make the comparison laughable. It was so big that not even the bulk of Golden Dawn's own hull could dwarf it, each separate blade was longer and broader than the full wingspan of a jumbo jet airliner, a gargantuan sculpture in gleaming metal.

‘One!’ whispered Nick. ‘One only.’

‘Yes,’ Charles Gras agreed, 'Not four - but one propeller only. Also, Nicholas, it is fixed pitch.’

They were all silent as they rode up in the cage of the hoist. The hoist ran up the outside of the hull to the level of the main deck, and though the wind searched for them remorselessly through the open mesh of the cage, it was not the cold that kept them silent.

The engine compartment was an echoing cavern, harshly lit by the overhead floodlights, and they stood high on one of the overhead steel catwalks looking down fifty feet on to the boiler and condensers of the main engine.

Nick stared down for almost five minutes. He asked no questions, made no but at last he turned to Charles Gras and nodded once curtly.

‘All right. I've seen enough,’ he said, and the engineer led them to the elevator station. Again they rode upwards. It was like being in a modern office block - the polished chrome and wood panelling of the elevator, the carpeted passageways high in the navigation tower along which Charles Gras led them to the Master's suite and unlocked the carved mahogany doorway with a key from his watch chain.

Jules Levoisin looked slowly about the suite and shook his head wonderingly. ‘Ah, this is the way to live,’ he breathed. 'Nicholas, I absolutely insist that the Master's quarters of Sea Witch be decorated like this.’

Nick did not smile, but crossed to the view windows that looked forward along the tanker's main deck to her round blunt unlovely prow a mile and a quarter away. He stood with his hands clasped behind his back, legs apart, chin thrust out angrily and nobody else spoke while Charles Gras opened the elaborate bar and poured cognac into the crystal brandy balloons. He carried a glass to Nick who turned away from the window.

‘Thank you, Charles, I need something to warm the chill in my guts.’ Nick sipped the cognac and rolled it on his tongue as he looked slowly around the opulent cabin.

It occupied almost half the width of the navigation bridge, and was large enough to house a diplomatic reception. Duncan Alexander had picked a good decorator to do the job, and without the view from the window it might have been an elegant Fifth Avenue New York apartment, or one of those penthouses high on the cliffs above Monte Carlo, overlooking the harbour.

Slowly Nick crossed the thick green carpet, woven with the house device, the entwined letters C and M for Christy Marine, and he stopped before the Degas in its place of honour above the marble fireplace.

He remembered Chantelle's bubbling joy at the purchase of that painting. It was one of Degas ballet pieces, soft, almost luminous light on the limbs of the dancers, and, remembering the unfailing delight that Chantelle had taken in it during the years, he was amazed that she had allowed it to be used on board one of the company ships, and that it was left here virtually unguarded and vulnerable. That painting was worth a quarter of a million pounds.

He leaned closer to it, and only then did he realize how clever a copy of the original it was. He shook his head in dismissal.

‘The owners were advised that the sea air may damage the original,’ Charles Gras shrugged, and spread his hands deprecatingly, 'and not many people would know the difference.’

That was typical of Duncan Alexander,’ Nicholas thought savagely. ‘It could only be his idea, the sharp accountant's brain. The conviction that it was possible to fool all of the people all of the time.’

Everybody knew that Chantelle owned that work, therefore nobody would doubt its authenticity. That's the way Duncan Alexander would reason it. It could not be Chantelle's idea. She had never been one to accept anything that was sham or dross; it was a measure of the power that he exerted over her, for her to go along with this cheap little fraud.

Nicholas indicated the forgery with his glass and spoke directly to Charles Gras.

‘This is a cheat,’ he spoke quietly, his anger contained and controlled, ‘but it is harmless.’ Now he turned away from it and, with a wider gesture that embraced the whole ship, went on, ‘But this other cheat, this enormous fraud,’ he paused to control the metallic edge that had entered his tone, going on quietly again, ‘this is a vicious, murderous gamble he is taking. He has bastardized the entire concept of the scheme. One propeller instead of four - it cannot manoeuvre a hull of these dimensions with safety in any hazardous situation, it cannot deliver sufficient thrust to avoid collision, to fight her off a lee shore, to handle heavy seas.’ Nick stopped, and his voice dropped even lower, yet somehow it was more compelling. ‘This ship cannot, by all moral and natural laws, be operated on a single boiler. My design called for eight separate boilers and condensers, the standard set for the old White Star and Cunard Lines. But Duncan Alexander has installed a single boiler system. ‘There is no back-up, no fail-safe - a few gallons of sea water in the system could disable this monster.’

Nicholas stopped suddenly as a new thought struck him. ‘Charles,’ his voice sharper still, ‘the pod tanks, the design of the pod tanks. He hasn't altered that, has he? He hasn't cut the corners there? Tell me, old friend, they are still self -propelled, are they not?’

Charles Gras brought the Courvoisier bottle to where Nicholas stood, and when Nick would have refused the addition to his glass, Charles told him sorrowfully, ‘Come, Nicholas, you will need it for what I have to tell you now.’

As he poured, he said, ‘The pod tankers, their design has been altered also.’ He drew a breath to tell it with a rush. ‘They no longer have their own propulsion units. They are now only dumb barges that must be docked and undocked from the main hull and manoeuvred only by attendant tugs.’

Nicholas stared at him, his lips blanched to thin white lines. ‘No. I do not believe it. Not even Duncan –‘

‘Duncan Alexander has saved forty-two million dollars by re-designing Golden Dawn and equipping her with only a single boiler and propeller.’ Charles Gras shrugged again. ‘And forty-two million dollars is a lot of money.’

There was a pale gleam of wintry sunlight that flickered through the low grey cloud and lit the fields not far from the River Thames with that incredible vivid shade of English green.

Samantha and Nicholas stood in a thin line of miserably cold parents and watched the pile of struggling boys across the field in their coloured jerseys; the light blue and black of Eton, the black and white of St Paul's, were so muddied as to be barely distinguishable.

‘What are they doing?’ Samantha demanded, holding the collar of her coat around her ears.

‘It's called a scrum,’ Nick told her. ‘That's how they decide which team gets the ball.

‘Wow. There must be an easier way.’

There was a flurry of sudden movement and the slippery egg-shaped ball flew back in a lazy curve that was snapped up by a boy in the Etonian colours. He started to run.

‘It's Peter, isn't it?’ cried Samantha.

‘Go it, Peter boy!’ Nick -roared, and the child ran with the ball clutched to his chest and his head thrown back.

He ran strongly with the reaching coordinated stride of an older boy, swerving round a knot of his opponents, leaving them floundering in the churned mud, and angling across the lush thick grass towards the white-painted goal line, trying to reach the corner before a taller more powerfully built lad who was pounding across the field to intercept him.

Samantha began to leap up and down on the same spot, shrieking wildly, completely uncertain of what was happening, but wild with excitement that infected Nicholas.

The two runners converged at an angle which would bring them to the white line at the same moment, at a point directly in front of where Nick and Samantha stood.

Nick saw the contortion of his son's face, and realized that this was a total effort. He felt a physical constriction of his own chest as he watched the boy drive himself to his utmost limits, the sinews standing out in his throat, his lips drawn back in a frozen rictus of endeavour that exposed the teeth clenched in his jaw.

From infancy, Peter Berg had brought to any task that faced him the same complete focus of all his capabilities. Like his grandfather, old Arthur Christy, and his own father, he would be one of life's winners. Nick knew this instinctively, as he watched him run. He had inherited the intelligence, the comeliness and the charisma, but he bolstered all that with this unquenchable desire to succeed in all he did. The single-minded determination to focus all his talents on the immediate project. Nick felt the pressure in his chest swell. The boy was all right, more than all right, and pride threatened to choke him.

Sheer force of will had driven Peter Berg a pace ahead of his bigger, longer-legged adversary, and now he leaned forward with the ball held in both hands, arms fully extended, reaching for the line to make the touch-down.

He was ten feet from where Nick stood, a mere instant from success, but he was unbalanced, and the St Paul's boy dived at him, crashing into the side of his chest, the impact jarring and brutal, hurling Peter out of the field of play with the ball spinning from his hands and bouncing away loosely, while Peter smashed into the earth on both knees, then rolled forward head over heels, and sprawled face down on the soggy turf.

‘It's a touch-down!’ Samantha was still leaping up and down.

‘No,’’ said Nick. ‘No, it isn't.’

Peter Berg dragged himself upright. His cheek was streaked with chocolate mud and both his knees were running blood, the skin smeared open by the coarse grass.

He did not glance down at his injuries, and he shrugged away the St Paul boy's patronizing hand, holding himself erect against the pain as he limped back on to the field. He did not look at his father, and the moisture that filled his eyes and threatened to flood over the thick dark lashes were not tears of pain, but of humiliation and failure, With an overwhelming feeling of kinship, Nick knew that for his son those feelings were harder to bear than any physical agony.

When the game ended he came to Nicholas, all bloodied and mud-smeared, and shook hands solemnly.

‘I am so glad you came, sir, he said. I wish you could have watched us win.’

Nick wanted to say: ‘It doesn't matter, Peter, it's only a game.’ But he did not. To Peter Berg, it mattered very deeply, so Nicholas nodded agreement and then he introduced Samantha.

Again Peter shook hands solemnly and startled her by calling her, 'M'am.’ But when she told him, ‘Hi, Pete. A great game, you deserved to slam them,’ he smiled, that sudden dazzling irresistible flash that reminded her so of Nicholas that she felt her heart squeezed. Then when the boy hurried away to shower and change, she took Nick's arm.

‘He's a beautiful boy, but does he always call you "sir"?’

‘I haven't seen him in three months, It takes us both a little while to relax.’

‘Three months is a long time-‘

‘It's all tied up by the lawyers. Access and visiting-rights what's good for the child, not what's good for the parents. Today was a special concession from Chantelle, but I still have to deliver him to her at five o'clock. Not five past five, five o'clock.’

They went to the Cockpit teashop and Peter startled Samantha again by pulling out her chair and seating her formally. While they waited for the best muffins in Britain to be brought to the table, Nicholas and Peter engaged each other in conversation that was stiff with self-consciousness.

‘Your mother sent me a copy of your report, Peter, I cannot tell you how delighted I was.’

‘I had hoped to do better, sir. There are still three others ahead of me.’

And Samantha ached for them. Peter Berg was twelve years of age. She wished he could just throw his arms around Nicholas neck and say, ‘Daddy, I love you,’ for the love was transparent, even through the veneer of public school manners. It shone behind the thick dark lashes that fringed the boy's golden brown eyes, and glowed on the cheeks still as creamy and smooth as a girl's.

She wanted desperately to help them both, and on inspiration she launched into an account of Warlock's salvage of Golden Adventurer, a tale with emphasis on the derring do of Warlock's Master, not forgetting his rescue of Samantha Silver from the icy seas of Antarctica.

Peter's eyes grew enormous as he listened, never leaving her face except to demand of Nicholas,’ Is that true, Dad?’ And when the story was told, he was silent for a long moment before announcing, ‘I'm going to be a tug captain when I'm big.’

Then he showed Samantha how to spread strawberry jam on her muffins in the correct way, and chewing together heartily with cream on their lips the two of them became fast friends, and Nicholas joined their chatter more easily, smiling his thanks to Samantha and reaching under the table to squeeze her hand.

He had to end it at last. ‘Listen, Peter, if we are to make Lynwood by five -'and the boy sobered instantly.

‘Dad, couldn't you telephone Mother? She might just let me spend the weekend in London with you.’

‘I already tried that.’ Nick shook his head. ‘It didn't work,’ and Peter stood up, his feeling choked by an expression of stoic resignation.

From the back of Nick's Mercedes 450 Coupe the boy leaned forward into the space between the two bucket seats, and the three of them were very close in the snug interior of the speeding car, their laughter that of old friends.

It was almost dark when Nicholas turned in through Lynwood's stone gateway, and he glanced at the luminous dial of his Rolex. We'll just make it. The drive climbed the hill in a series of broad even curves through the carefully tended woods, and the three-storied Georgian country house on the crest was ablaze with light in every window.

Nick never came here without that strange hollow feeling in the bottom of his stomach. Once this had been his home, every room, every acre of the grounds had its memories, and now, as he parked under the white columned portico, they came crowding back.

‘I have finished the model Spitfire you sent me for Christmas, Dad.’ Peter was playing desperately for time now. ‘Won't you come up and see it?’

‘I don't think so –‘ Nicholas began, and Peter blurted out before he could finish.

‘It's all right, Uncle Duncan won't be here. He always comes down late from London on Friday nights, and his Rolls isn't in the garage yet.’ Then, in a tone that tore at Nick like thorns, ‘Please.. .I won't see you again until Easter.’

‘Go,’ said Samantha. I'll wait here.’ And Peter turned on her, ‘You come too, Sam, please.’

Samantha felt herself infected by that fatal curiosity, the desire to see, to know more of Nick's past life; she knew he was going to demur further, but she forestalled him, slipping quickly out of the Mercedes.

‘Okay, Pete, let's go.’

Nick must follow them up the broad steps to the double oaken doors, and he felt himself carried along on a tide of events over which he had no control. It was a sensation that he never relished.

In the entrance hall Samantha looked around her quickly, feeling herself overcome by awe. It was so grand, there was no other word to describe the house. The stair way reached up the full height of the three storeys, and the broad staircase was in white marble with a marble balustrade, while on each side of the hall, glass doors opened on to long reception rooms. But she did not have a chance to look further, for Peter seized her hand and raced her up the staircase, while Nick followed them up to Peter's room at a more sedate pace.

The Spitfire had place of honour on the shelf above Peter's bed. He brought it down proudly, and they examined it with suitable expressions of admiration. Peter responded to their praise like a flower to the sun.

When at last they descended the staircase, the sadness and restraint of parting was on them all, but they were stopped in the centre of the hall by the voice from the drawing-room door on the left.

‘Peter, darling.’ A woman stood in the open doorway, and she was even more beautiful than the photograph that Samantha had seen of her.

Dutifully Peter crossed to her. ‘Good evening, Mother.’

She stooped over him, cupping his face in her hands, and she kissed him tenderly, then she straightened, holding his hand so he was ranged at her side, a subtle drawing of boundaries.

‘Nicholas,’ she tilted her head, you look marvellous - so brown and fit.

Chantelle Alexander was only a few inches taller than her son, but she seemed to fill and light the huge house with a shimmering presence, the way a single beautiful bird can light a dim forest.

Her hair was dark and soft and glowing, and her skin and the huge dark sloe eyes were a legacy from the beautiful Persian noblewoman that old Arthur Christy had married for her fortune, and come to love with an obsessive passion.

She was dainty. Her tiny, narrow feet peeped from below the long, dark green silk skirt, and the exquisite little hand that held Peter's was emphasized by a single deep throbbing green emerald the size of a ripe acorn.

Now she turned her head on the long graceful neck, and her eyes took the slightly oriental slant of a modern-day Nefertiti as she looked at Samantha.

For seconds only, the two women studied each other, and Samantha's chin came up firmly as she looked into those deep dark gazelle eyes, touched with all the mystery and intrigue of the East. They understood each other instantly. It was an intuitive flash, like a discharge of static electricity, then Chantelle smiled, and when she smiled the impossible happened - she became more beautiful than before.

‘May I present Dr. Silver?’ Nick began, but Peter tugged at his mother's hand.

‘I asked Sam to see my model. She's a marine biologist, and she's a professor at Miami University –‘

‘Not yet, Pete,’ Samantha corrected him, ‘but give me time.’

‘Good evening, Dr. Silver. It seems you have made a conquest.’ Chantelle let the statement hang ambiguously as she turned back to Nick. ‘I was waiting for you, Nicholas, and I'm so glad to have a chance to speak to you.’ She glanced again at Samantha. ‘I do hope you will excuse us for a few minutes, Dr. Silver. It is a matter of some urgency. Peter will be delighted to entertain you. As a biologist, you will find his guinea pigs of interest, I'm sure.’

The commands were given so graciously, by a lady in such control of her situation, that Peter went to take Samantha's hand and lead her away.

It was one of the customs of Lynwood that all serious discussion took place in the study. Chantelle led the way, and went immediately to the false-fronted bookcase that concealed the liquor cabinet, and commenced the ritual of preparing a drink for Nicholas. He wanted to stop her. It was something from long ago, recalling too much that was painful, but instead, he watched the delicate but precise movements of her hands pouring exactly the correct measure of Chivas Royal Salute into the crystal glass, adding the soda and the single cube of ice.

‘What a pretty young girl, Nicholas.’

He said nothing. On the ornate Louis Quatorze desk was a silver-framed photograph of Duncan Alexander and Chantelle together, and he looked away and moved to the fireplace, standing with his back to the blaze as he had done on a thousand other evenings.

Chantelle brought the glass to him, and stood close, looking up at him - and her fragrance touched a deep nostalgic chord. He had first bought Caleche for her on a spring morning in Paris; with an effort he forced the memory aside.

‘What did you want to speak to me about, is it Peter?

‘No. Peter is doing as well as we can hope for, in the circumstances, He still resents Duncan – but-‘ she shrugged, and moved away. He had almost forgotten how narrow was her waist, he would still be able to span it with both hands.

‘It's hard to explain, but it's Christy Marine, Nicholas. I desperately need the advice of someone I can trust.’

‘You can trust me?’ he asked.

‘Isn't it strange? I would still trust you with my life.’ She came back to him, standing disconcertingly close, enveloping him with her scent and heady beauty. He sipped at the whisky to distract himself.

‘Even though I have no right to ask you, Nicholas,’ still I know you won't refuse me, will you?’ She wove spells, he could feel the mesh falling like gossamer around him.

‘I always was a sucker, wasn't I?’

Now she touched his arm. ‘No, Nicholas, please don't be bitter.’ She held his gaze directly.

‘How can I help you?’ Her touch on his arm disturbed him, and, sensing this, she increased the pressure of her fingers for a moment, then lifted her hand and glanced at the slim white gold Piaget on her wrist.

‘Duncan will be home soon - and what I have to tell you is long and complicated. Can we meet in London early next week?’

‘Chantelle,’he began.

‘Nicky, please. Nicky,’ she was the only one who ever called him that. it was too familiar, too intimate.

‘When?’

‘You are meeting Duncan on Tuesday morning to discuss the arbitration of Golden Adventurer.’

‘Yes.’

‘Will you call me at Eaton Square when you finish? I'll wait by the telephone.’

‘Chantelle-‘

‘Nicky, I have nobody else to turn to.’

He had never been able to refuse her - which was part of the reason he had lost her, he thought wryly.

There was no engine noise, just the low rush of air past the body of the Mercedes.

‘Damn these seats, they weren't made for lovers,’ Samantha said.

‘We'll be home in an hour.’

‘I don't know if I can wait that long,’ Samantha whispered huskily. ‘I want to be closer to you.’

And they were silent again, until they slowed for the weekend traffic through Hammersmith.

‘Peter is a knockout. if only I were ten years old, I'd cash in my dolls.’

‘My guess is he would swop his Spitfire.’

‘How much longer?’

‘Another half hour.’

‘Nicholas, I feel threatened,’ her voice had a sudden panicky edge to it. ‘I have this terrible foreboding.’

‘That's nonsense.’

‘It's been too good - for too long.’

James Teacher was the head of Salmon Peters and Teacher, the lawyers that Nick had retained for Ocean Salvage. He was a man with a formidable reputation in the City, a leading expert on maritime law - and a tough bargainer. He was florid and bald, and so short that his feet did not touch the floorboards of the Bentley when he sat on the back seat.

He and Nick had discussed in detail where this preliminary meeting with Christy Marine should be held, and at last they had agreed to go to the mountain, but James Teacher had insisted on arriving in his chocolate-coloured Bentley, rather than a cab.

‘Smoked salmon, Mr. Berg, not fish and chips - that's what we are after.’

Christy House was one of those conservative smoke stained stone buildings fronted on to Leadenhall Street, the centre of Britain's shipping industry. Almost directly opposite was Trafalgar House, and a hundred yards further was Lloyd's of London. The doorman crossed the pavement to open Nicholas’ door.

‘Good to see you again, Mr. Berg sir!’

‘Hello, Alfred. You taking good care of the shop?’

‘Indeed, sir.’

The following cab, containing James Teacher's two juniors and their bulky briefcases, pulled up behind the Bentley and they assembled on the pavement like a party of raiding Vikings before the gates of a medieval city. The three lawyers settled their bowler hats firmly and then moved forward determinedly in spearhead formation.

In the lobby, the doorman passed them on to a senior clerk who was waiting by the desk.

‘Good morning, Mr. Berg. You are looking very well, sir.’ They rode up at a sedate pace in the elevator with its antique steel concertina doors. Nicholas had never brought himself to exchange them for those swift modern boxes. And the clerk ushered them out on to the top-floor landings.

‘Will you follow me, please, gentlemen?’ There was an antechamber that opened on to the board room, a large room, panelled and hung with a single portrait of old Arthur Christy on the entrance wall - fighting jaw and sharp black eyes under beetling white eyebrows. A log fire burned in the open grate, and there was sherry and Madeira in crystal decanters on the central table - another one of the old min's little traditions - that both James Teacher and Nick refused curtly.

They waited quietly, standing facing the door into the Chairman's suite. They waited for exactly four minutes before the door was thrown open and Duncan Alexander stepped through it.

His eyes flicked across the room and settled instantly on Nick, locking with his, like the horns of two great bull buffalo, and the room was very still.

The lawyers around Nick seemed to shrink back and the men behind Duncan Alexander waited, not yet following him into the antechamber, but all of them watched and waited avidly; this meeting would be the gossip of the City for weeks to come - It was a classic confrontation, and they wanted to miss not a moment of it.

Duncan Alexander was a strikingly good-looking man, very tall, two inches taller than Nick, but slim as a dancer, and he carried his body with a dancer's control. His face also was narrow, with the long lantern jaw of a young Lincoln, already chiselled by life around the eyes and at the corners of the mouth.

His hair was very dense and a metallic blond; though he wore it fashionably long over the ears, yet it was so carefully groomed that each gleaming wave seemed to have been sculptured.

His skin was smooth and tanned darker than his hair, sun lamp or skiing at Chantelle's lodge at Gstaad perhaps, and now when he smiled his teeth were dazzlingly white, perfect large teeth in the wide friendly mouth - but the eyes did not smile though they crinkled at the corners. Duncan Alexander watched from behind the handsome face like a sniper in ambush.

‘Nicholas,’ he said, without moving forward or offering a hand.

‘Duncan,’ said Nick quietly, not answering the smile, and Duncan Alexander adjusted the hang of his lapel. His clothes were beautifully cut, and the cloth was the finest, softest wool, but there were foppish little touches: the hacking slits in the tails of the jacket, the double-flapped pockets, and the waistcoat in plum-coloured velvet, Now he touched the buttons with his fingertips, another little distracting gesture, the only evidence of any discomfort.

Nicholas stared at him steadily, trying to measure him dispassionately, and now for the first time he began to see how it might have happened. There was a sense of excitement about the man, a wicked air of danger, the fascination of the leopard - or some other powerful predator. Nick could understand the almost irresistible attraction he had for women, especially for a spoiled and bored lady, a matron of thirteen years who believed there was still excitement and adventure in life that she was missing.

Duncan had done his cobra dance, and Chantelle had watched like a mesmerized bird of paradise - until she had toppled from the branch - or that's how Nicholas liked to think it had happened. He was wiser now, much wiser and more cynical.

‘Before we begin!’ Nick knew that anger was seething to his still surface, must soon bubble through unless he could give it release, ‘I should like five minutes in private.

‘Of course.’ Duncan inclined his head, and there was a hurried scampering as his minions cleared the doorway into the Chairman's suite. ‘Come through.’

Duncan stood aside, and Nick walked through. The offices had been completely redecorated, and Nick blinked with surprise, white carpets and furniture in chrome and perspex, stark abstract geometrical art in solid primary colours on the walls; the ceiling had been lowered by an egg design in chrome steel and free-swivelling studio spotlights gave selected light patterns on wall and ceiling. It was no improvement, Nick decided.

‘I was in St Nazaire last week.’ Nicholas turned in the centre of the wide snowy floor and faced Duncan Alexander as he closed the door.

‘Yes, I know.

‘I went over Golden Dawn.’

Duncan Alexander snapped open a gold cigarette case and offered it to Nick, then when he shook his head in refusal, selected one himself. They were special blend, custom-made for him by Benson and Hedges.

‘Charles Gras exceeded his authority,’ Duncan nodded. ‘Visitors are not allowed on Golden Dawn.’

‘I am not surprised you are ashamed of that death-trap you are building.’

‘But you do surprise me, Nicholas.’ Duncan showed his teeth again. ‘It was your design.

‘You know it was not. You took the idea, and bastardized it. Duncan, you cannot send that,’ Nick sought for the word, ‘that monster on to the open sea. Not with one propulsion unit, and a single screw. The risk is too appalling.’

‘I tell you this for no good reason, except perhaps that this was once your office,’ Duncan made a gesture that embraced the room, ‘and because it amuses me to point out to you the faults in your original planning. The concept was sound, but your soured the cream by adding those preposterous, shall we call them Bergean, touches. Five separate propulsion units, and a forest of boilers. It wasn't viable, Nicholas.’

‘It was good, the figures were right.’

‘The whole tanker market has changed since you left Christy Marine. I had to re-work it.’

‘You should have dropped the whole concept if the cost structure changed.’

'Oh no, Nicholas, I restructured. My way, even in these hard times, I will recover capital in a year, and with a five year life on the hull there is two hundred million dollars profit in it.’

‘I was going to build a ship that would last for thirty years,’ Nick told him. Something of which we could be proud.’

‘Pride is an expensive commodity. We aren't building dynasties any more, we are in the game of selling tanker space.’ Duncan's tone was patronizing, that impeccable accent drawn out, emphasizing the difference in their backgrounds. ‘I'm aiming at a five-year life, two hundred million profit, and then we sell the hull to the Greeks or Japs. It's a one-time thing.’

‘You always were a smash-and-grab artist,’ Nick agreed. But it isn't like dealing in commodities. Ships aren't wheat and bacon, and the oceans aren't the orderly market floors.’

‘I disagree, I'm afraid. The principles are the same - one buys, one sells.’

‘Ships are living things, the ocean is a battleground of all the elements.’

‘Come, Nicholas, you don't really believe that romantic nonsense.’ Duncan drew a gold Hunter from his waist pocket, and snapped open the lid to read the dial, another of his affectations which irritated Nicholas. ‘Those are very expensive gentlemen waiting next door.’

‘You will be risking human life, the men who sail her.’

‘Seamen are well paid – ‘

‘You will be taking a monstrous risk with the life of the oceans. Wherever she goes Golden Dawn will be a potential –‘

‘For God's sake, Nicholas, two hundred million dollars is worth some kind of risk.’

‘All right,’ Nick nodded. ‘Let's forget the environment, and the human life, and consider the important aspects the - money.’

Duncan sighed, and wagged that fine head, smiling as at a recalcitrant child.

‘I have considered the money - in detail.’

‘You will not get an Al rating at Lloyd's. You will not get insurance on that hull - unless you underwrite yourself, the same way you did with Golden Adventurer, and if you think that's wise, just wait until I've finished with my salvage claim.’

Duncan Alexander's smile twisted slowly, and blood darkened his cheeks under the snow-tan. ‘I do not need a Lloyd's rating, though I am sure I could get one if I wanted it. I have arranged continental and oriental underwriters. She will be fully insured.

‘Against pollution claims, also? If you burst that bag of crude on the continental shelf of America, or Europe, they'll hit you for half a billion dollars. Nobody would underwrite that.’

‘Golden Dawn is registered in Venezuela, and she has no sister ships for the authorities to seize, like they did with the Torrey Canyon. To whom will they address the pollution bill? A defunct South American Company? No, Nicholas, Christy Marine will not be paying any pollution bills.’

‘I cannot believe it, even of you.’ Nick stared at him. ‘You are cold-bloodedly talking about the possibility - no, the probability - of dumping a million tons of crude oil into the sea.’

'Your moral indignation is touching. It really is. However, Nicholas, may I remind you that this is family and house business - and you are no longer either family or house.’

‘I fought you every time you cut a corner,’ Nick reminded him. ‘I tried to teach you that cheap is always expensive in the long run.’

‘You taught me?’ For the first time Duncan taunted him openly. ‘What could you ever teach me about ships or money,’ and he rolled his tongue gloating around the next words, ‘or women?’ Nick made the first movement of lunging at him, but he caught himself, and forced himself to unclench his fists at his sides. The blood sang in his ears.

‘I'm going to fight you he said quietly. I'm going to fight you from here to the maritime conference, and beyond.’ He made the decision in that moment, he hadn't realized he was going to do it until then.

‘A maritime conference has never taken less than five years to reach a decision restricting one of its members. By that time Golden Dawn will belong to some Japanese, Hong-Kong-based company - and Christy Marine will have banked two hundred million.’

‘I'll have the oil ports closed to you.’

‘By whom? Oil-thirsty governments, with lobbies of the big oil companies?’ Duncan laughed lightly, he had replaced the urbane mask. ‘You really are out of your depth again. We have bumped heads a dozen times before, Nicholas - and I'm still on my feet. I'm not about to fold up to your fine threats now.’

After that, there was no hope that the meeting in the panelled board room would lead to conciliation. The atmosphere crackled and smouldered with the antagonism of the two leading characters, so that they seemed to be the only persons on the stage.

They sat opposite each other, separated by the glossy surface of the rosewood table top, and their gazes seldom disengaged. They leaned forward in their chairs, and when they smiled at each other, it was like the silent snarl of two old dog wolves circling with hackles erect.

It took an enormous effort of self-control for Nicholas to force back his anger far enough to be able to think clearly, and to allow his intuition to pick up the gut-impressions, the subtle hints of the thinking and planning that were taking place across the table behind Duncan Alexander's handsome mask of a face.

It was half an hour before he was convinced that something other than personal rivalry and antagonism was motivating the man before him.

His counter offer was too low to have any hope of being accepted, so low that it became clear that he did not want to settle. Duncan Alexander wanted to go to arbitration - and yet there was nothing he could gain by that. It must be obvious to everyone at the table, beyond any doubt whatsoever, that Nicholas claim was worth four million dollars. Nicholas would have settled for four, even in his anger he would have gone for four - risking that an arbitration board might have awarded six, and knowing the delay and costs of going to litigation might amount to another million. He would have settled.

Duncan Alexander was offering two and a half. It was a frivolous offer. Duncan was going through the motions only. There was no serious attempt at finding a settlement. He didn't want to come to terms, and it seemed to Nicholas that by refusing to settle he was gaining nothing, and risking a great deal. He was a big enough boy to know that you never, but never, go to litigation if there is another way out. It was a rule that Nicholas had graven on his heart in letters of fire. Litigation makes only lawyers fat.

Why was Duncan baulking, what was he to gain by this obstruction? Nicholas crushed down the temptation to stand up and walk out of the room with an exclamation of disgust. Instead, he lit another cheroot and leaned forward again, staring into Duncan Alexander's steely grey eyes, trying to fathom him, needling, probing for the soft rotten spot - and thinking hard.

What had Duncan Alexander to gain from not settling now? Why did he not try with a low, but realistic offer what was he to gain?

Then quite suddenly he knew what it was. Chantelle's enigmatic appeal for help and advice flashed back to him, and he knew what it was. Duncan Alexander wanted time. It was as simple as that. Duncan Alexander needed time.

‘All right.’ Satisfied at last, Nicholas leaned back in the deep leather-padded chair, and veiled his eyes. ‘We are still a hundred miles apart. There will be only one meeting ground. That's in the upper room at Lloyd's. It's set down for the 27th. Are we at least agreed on that date?’

‘Of course,’ Duncan leaned back also and Nicholas saw the shift of his eyes, the little jump of nerves in the point of his clenched jaws, the tightening of the long pianist's fingers that lay before him on the leather-bound blotter. ‘Of course,’ Duncan repeated, and began to stand up, a gesture of dismissal. He lied beautifully; had Nicholas not known he would lie, he might have missed the little telltale signs.

In the ancient lift, James Teacher was jubilant, rubbing his little fat hands together. ‘We'll give him a go!’ Nicholas glanced at him sourly. Win, lose or draw, James Teacher would still draw his fee, and Duncan Alexander's refusal to settle had quadrupled that fee. There was something almost obscene about the little lawyer's exultation.

‘They are going to duck,’ Nick said grimly, and James Teacher sobered slightly.

‘Before noon tomorrow, Christy Marine will have lodged for postponement of hearing,’ Nick prophesied. ‘You'll have to use Warlock with full power on both to pull them before the arbitration board.’

'Yes, you're right,’ James Teacher nodded. ‘They had me puzzled, I sensed something – ‘

‘I'm not paying you to be puzzled,’ Nick's voice was low and hard.’ I'm paying you to out-guess and out-jump them. I want them at the hearing on the 27th, get them there, Mr. Teacher. ‘He did not have to voice the threat, and in a moment, the exultation on James Teacher's rotund features had changed to apprehension and deep concern.

The drawing-room in Eaton Square was decorated in cream and pale gold, cleverly designed as a frame for the single exquisite work of art which it contained, the original of the group of Degas ballet-dancers whose copy hung in Golden Dawn's stateroom. It was the room's centre-piece; cunningly lit by a hidden spotlight, it glowed like a precious jewel. Even the flowers on the ivory grand piano were cream and white roses and carnations, whose pale ethereal blossoms put the painting into stronger contrast.

The only other flash of brightness was worn by Chantelle, she had the oriental knack of carrying vivid colour without it seeming gaudy. She wore a flaming Pucci that could not pale her beauty, and as she rose from the huge shaggy white sofa and came to Nicholas, he felt the soft warm melting sensation in his stomach spreading slowly through his body like a draught of some powerful aphrodisiac. He knew he would never be immune to her.

‘Dear Nicky, I knew I could rely upon you.’ She took his hand and looked up at him, and still holding his hand she led him to the sofa, and then she settled beside him, like a bright, lovely bird alighting. She drew her legs up under her, her calves and ankles flashed like carved and polished ivory before she tucked the brilliant skirt around them, and lifted the Wedgwood porcelain teapot.

‘Orange pekoe,’ she smiled at him, ‘No lemon and no sugar.’

He had to smile back at her. ‘You never forget,’ and he took the cup.

‘I told you that you looked well,’ she said, slowly and unselfconsciously studying him. ‘And you really do, Nicholas. When you came down to Lynwood for Peter’s birthday in June I was so worried about you. You looked terribly ill and tired - but now, she tilted her head critically, you look absolutely marvelous.’

Now he should tell her that she was beautiful as ever, he thought grimly, and then they would start talking about Peter and their old mutual friends.

‘What did you want to talk to me about?’ he asked quietly, and there was a passing shadow of hurt in her dark eyes.

‘Nicholas, you can be so remote, so –‘ she hesitated, seeking the correct word, so detached.’

‘Recently someone called me an ice-cold Pommy bastard,’ he agreed, but she shook her head.

‘No. I know you are not, but if only-‘

‘The three most dangerous and inflammatory phrases in the English language, he stopped her. 'They are "you always" and "you never" and “if only". Chantelle, I came here to help you with a problem. Let's discuss that - only.’

She stood up quickly, and he knew her well enough to recognize the fury in the snapping dark eyes and the quick dancing steps that carried her to the mantelpiece, and she stood looking up at the Degas with her small fists clenched at her sides.

‘Are you sleeping with that child?’ she asked, and now the fury was raw in her voice.

Nicholas stood up from the sofa.

‘Goodbye, Chantelle.’ She turned and flew to him, taking his arm.

‘Oh, Nicholas, that was unforgivable, I don't know what possessed me. Please don't go.’ And when he tried to dislodge her hand. ’I beg you, for the first time ever, I beg you, Nicholas. Please don't go.’

He was still stiff with anger when he sank back on the sofa, and they were silent for nearly a minute while she regained her composure.

‘This is all going so terribly badly, I didn't want this to happen.’

‘All right, let's get on to safer ground.’

‘Nicholas,’ she started, ‘you and Daddy created Christy Marine. If anything, it was more yours than his. The great days were the last ten years when you were Chairman, all the tremendous achievements of those years.’ He made a gesture of denial and impatience, but she went on softly.

‘Too much of your life is locked up in Christy Marine, you are still deeply involved, Nicholas.’

‘There are only two things I am involved with now,’ he told her harshly, ‘Ocean Salvage and Nicholas Berg.’

‘We both know that is not true,’ she whispered. ‘You are a special type of man.’ She sighed. It took me so long to recognize that. I thought all men were like you. I believed strength and nobility of mind were common goods on the market -'she shrugged. ‘Some people learn the hard way,’ and she smiled, but it was an uncertain, twisted little smile.

He said nothing for a moment, thinking of all that was revealed by those words, then he replied.

‘If you believe that, then tell me what is worrying you.’

‘Nicholas, something is terribly wrong with Christy Marine. There is something happening there that I don't understand.’

‘Tell me.’

She turned her head away for a moment, and then looked back at him. Her eyes seemed to change shape and colour, growing darker and sadder. ‘It is so difficult not to be disloyal, so difficult to find expression for vague doubts and fears,’ she stopped and bit her lower lip softly. ‘Nicholas, I have transferred my shares in Christy Marine to Duncan as my nominee, with voting rights.’

Nicholas felt the shock of it jump down his nerves and string them tight. He shifted restlessly on the sofa and stared at her, and she nodded.

‘I know it was madness. The madness of those crazy days a year ago. I would have given him anything he asked for.’

He felt the premonition that she had not yet told him all and he waited while she rose and went to the window, looked out guiltily and then turned back to him.

‘May I get you a drink?

He glanced at his Rolex. ‘The sun is over the yard-arm, what about Duncan?’

‘These days he is never home before eight or nine.’ She went to the decanter on the silver tray and poured the whisky with her back to him, and now her voice was so low that he barely caught the words.

‘A year ago I resigned as executrix of the Trust.’

He did not answer, it was what he had been waiting for, he had known there was something else. The Trust that old Arthur Christy had set up was the backbone and sinews of Christy Marine. One million voting shares administered by three executors, a banker, a lawyer and a member of the Christy family.

Chantelle turned and brought the drink to him.

‘Did you hear what I said?’ she asked, and he nodded and sipped the drink before he asked,

‘The other executors? Pickstone of Lloyd's and Rollo still?’

She shook her head and again bit her lip.

‘No, it's not Lloyd's any more, it's Cyril Forbes.’

‘Who is he?’ Nick demanded.

‘He is the head of London and European.’

‘But that's Duncan's own bank,’ Nick protested.

‘It's still a registered bank.’

‘And Rollo?’

‘Rollo had a heart attack six months ago. He resigned, and Duncan put in another younger man. You don't know him.’

‘My God, three men and each of them is Duncan Alexander - he has had a free hand with Christy Marine for over a year, Chantelle, there is no check on him.’

‘I know,’ she whispered. 'It was a madness. I just cannot explain it.’

‘It's the oldest madness in the world.’ Nick pitied her then; for the first time , he realized and accepted that she had been under a compulsion, driven by forces over which she had no control, and he pitied her.

‘I am so afraid, Nicholas. I'm afraid to find out what I have done. Deep down I know there is something terribly wrong, but I'm afraid of the truth,’

‘All right, tell me everything else.’

‘There isn't anything else.’

‘If you lie to me, I cannot help you,’ he pointed out gently.

‘I have tried to follow the new structuring of the company, it's all so complicated, Nicholas, London and European is the new holding company, and - and – ‘her voice trailed off. ‘It just goes round and round in circles, and I cannot pry too deep or ask too many questions.’

'Why not? he demanded.

‘You don't know Duncan.’

‘I am beginning to,’ he answered her grimly. ‘But, Chantelle, you have every right to ask and get answers.’

‘Let me get you another drink.’ She jumped up lightly.

‘I haven't finished this one.’

‘The ice has melted, I know you don't like that.’ She took the glass and emptied the diluted spirit, refilled it and brought it back to him.

‘All right,’ he said. ‘What else?

Suddenly she was weeping. Smiling at him wistfully and weeping. There was no sobbing or sniffing, the tears merely welled up slowly as oil or blood from the huge dark eyes, broke from the thick, arched lashes and rolled softly down her cheeks. Yet she still smiled.

‘The madness is over, Nicholas. It didn't last very long but it was a holocaust while it did.’

‘He comes home at nine o'clock now,’Nicholas said.

‘Yes, he comes home at nine o'clock.’ He took the linen handkerchief from his inner pocket and handed it to her.

‘Thank you.’ She dabbed away the tears, still smiling softly.

‘What must I do, Nicholas?’

‘Call in a team of auditors,’ he began, but she shook her head and cut him short.

‘You don't know Duncan,’ she repeated.

‘There is nothing he could do.’

‘He could do anything,’ she contradicted him. ‘He is capable of anything. I am afraid, Nicholas, terribly afraid, not only for myself, but for Peter also.’

Nicholas sat erect then.

‘Peter. Do you mean you are afraid of something physical?’

‘I don't know, Nicholas. I'm so confused and alone. You are the only person in the world I can trust.’

He could no longer remain seated. He stood up and began to pace about the room, frowning heavily, looking down at the glass in his hand and swirling the ice so that it tinkled softly.

‘All right,’ he said at last. ‘I will do what I can. The first thing is to find out just how much substance there is to your fears.’

‘How will you do that?’

‘It's best you don't know, yet.’

He drained his glass and she stood up, quick with alarm.

‘You aren't going, are you?’

'There is nothing else to discuss now. I will contact you when or if I learn anything.’

‘I'll see you down.’

‘In the hall she dismissed the uniformed West Indian maid with a shake of her head, and fetched Nicholas top coat from the closet herself.

‘Shall I send for the car? You'll not get a cab at five o'clock.’

'I'll walk,’he said.

‘Nicholas, I cannot tell you how grateful I am. I had forgotten how safe and secure it is to be with you.’ Now she was standing very close to him, her head lifted, and her lips were soft and glossy and ripe, her eyes still flooded and bright. He knew he should leave immediately.’ I know it's going to be all right now.’

She placed one of those dainty ivory hands on his lapel, adjusting it unnecessarily with that proprietary feminine gesture, and she moistened her lips.

‘We are all fools, Nicholas, every one of us. We all complicate our lives - when it's so easy to be happy.’

‘The trick is to recognize happiness when you stumble on it, I suppose.’

‘I'm sorry, Nicholas. That's the first time I've ever apologized to you. It's a day of many first times, isn't it? But I am truly sorry for everything I have ever done to hurt you. I wish with all my heart that it were possible to wipe it all out and begin again.’

‘Unfortunately, it doesn't work that way.’ With a major effort of will he broke the spell, and stepped back. In another moment he would have stooped to those soft red lips.

‘I'll call you if I learn anything,’ he said, as he buttoned the top of his coat and opened the front door.

Nicholas stepped out furiously with the cold striking colour into his cheeks, but her presence kept pace with him and his blood raced not from physical exertion alone.

He knew then, beyond all doubt, that he was not a man who could switch love on and off at will.

‘You old-fashioned thing.’ Samantha's words came back to him clearly - and she was right, of course. He was cursed by a constancy of loyalty and emotion that restricted his freedom of action. He was breaking one of his own rules now, he was no longer moving ahead. He was circling back.

He had loved Chantelle Christy to the limits of his soul, and had devoted almost half of his life to Christy Marine. He realized then that those things could never change, not for him, not for Nicholas Berg, prisoner of his own conscience.

Suddenly he found himself opposite the Kensington Natural History Museum in the Cromwell Road, and swiftly he crossed to the main gates - but it was a quarter to six and they were closed already.

Samantha would not have been in the public rooms anyway, but in those labyrinthine vaults below the great stone building. In a few short days, she had made half a dozen cronies among the museum staff. He felt a stab of jealousy, that she was with other human beings, revelling in their companionship, delighting in the pleasures of the mind - had probably forgotten he existed.

Then suddenly the unfairness of it occurred to him, how his emotions of a minute previously had been stirring and boiling with the memories of another woman. Only then did he realize that it was possible to be in love with two different people, in two entirely different ways, at exactly the same time.

Troubled, torn by conflicting loves, conflicting loyalties, he turned away from the barred iron gates of the museum.

Nicholas’ apartment was on the fifth floor of one of those renovated and redecorated buildings in Queen's Gate.

It looked as though a party of gypsies were passing through. He had not hung the paintings, nor had he arranged his books on the shelves. The paintings were stacked against the wall in the hallway, and his books were pyramided at unlikely spots around the lounge floor, the carpet still rolled and pushed aside, two chairs facing the television set, and another two drawn up to the dining-room table.

It was an eating and sleeping place, sustaining the bare minima of existence; in two years he had probably slept here on sixty nights, few of them consecutive. It was impersonal, it contained no memories, no warmth.

He poured a whisky and carried it through into the bedroom , slipping the knot of his tie and shrugging out of his jacket. Here it was different, for evidence of Samantha's presence was everywhere. Though she had remade the bed that morning before leaving, still she had left a pair of shoes abandoned at the foot of it, a booby trap to break the ankles of the unwary; her simple jewellery was strewn on the bedside table, together with a book, Noel Mostert's Supership, opened face down and in dire danger of a broken spine; the cupboard door was open and his suits had been bunched up in one corner to give hanging space to her slacks and dresses; two very erotic and transparent pairs of panties hung over the bath to dry; her talcum powder still dusted the tiled floor and her special fragrance pervaded the entire apartment.

He missed her with a physical ache in the chest, so that when the front door banged and she arrived like a high wind, shouting for him, ‘Nicholas, it's me’ as though it could possibly have been anyone else, her hair tangled and wild with the wind and high colour under the golden tan of her cheeks, he almost ran to her and seized her with a suppressed violence.

‘Wow,’ she whispered huskily. ‘Who is a hungry baby, then.’ And they tumbled on to the bed clinging to each other with a need that was almost desperation.

Afterwards they did not turn the light on in the room that had gone dark except for the dim light of the street lamps filtered by the curtains and reflected off the ceiling.

‘What was that all about?’ she asked, then snuggled against his chest, ‘not that I'm complaining, mind you.’

‘I've had a hell of a day. I needed you, badly.’

‘You saw Duncan Alexander?’

‘I saw Duncan.’

‘Did you settle?’

‘No. There was never really any chance.’

‘I'm hungry,’ she said. ‘Your loving always makes me hungry.’

So he put on his pants and went down to the Italian restaurant at the corner for pizzas. They ate them in bed with a white Chianti from whisky tumblers, and when she was finished, she sighed and said:

‘Nicholas, I have to go home.’

‘You can't go,’ he protested instantly.

‘I have work to do - also.’

‘But,’ he felt a physical nausea at the thought of losing her, ‘but you can't go before the hearing.’

‘Why not?’

‘It would be the worst possible luck, you are my fortune.’

‘A sort of good-luck charm?’ She pulled a face. ‘Is that all I'm good for?’

‘You are good for many things. May I demonstrate one of them?’

'Oh, yes please.’ An hour later Nick went for more pizzas.

‘You have to stay until the 27th,’ he said with his mouth full.

‘Darling Nicholas, I just don't know-‘

‘You can ring them, tell them your aunt died, that you are getting married.’

‘Even if I were getting married, it wouldn't lessen the importance of my work. I think you know that is something I will never give up.’

‘Yes, I do know, but it's only a couple of days more.’

‘All right, I'll call Tom Parker tomorrow.’ Then she grinned at him. ‘Don't look like that. I'll be just across the Atlantic, we'll be virtually next-door neighbours.’

'Call him now. It's lunchtime in Florida.’

She spoke for twenty minutes, wheedling and charming, while the blood-curdling transatlantic rumblings on the receiver slowly muted to reluctant and resigned mutterings.

‘You're going to get me into trouble one of these days, Nicholas Berg,’ she told him primly as she hung up.

‘Now there is a happy thought,’Nick agreed, and she hit him with her pillow.

The telephone rang at two minutes past nine the next morning. They were in the bath together and Nicholas swore and went through naked and steaming and dripping suds.

‘Mr. Berg?’ James Teacher's voice was sharp and businesslike. ‘You were right, Christy Marine petitioned for postponement of hearing late yesterday afternoon.’

‘How long?’ Nicholas snapped.

‘Ninety days.’

‘The bastard,’grunted Nick. ‘What grounds?’

‘They want time to prepare their submission.’

‘Block them,’Nick instructed.

‘I have a meeting with the Secretary at eleven. I'm going to ask for an immediate preliminary hearing to set down and confirm the return date.’

‘Get him before the arbitrators,’ said Nick.

‘We'll get him.’

Samantha welcomed him back to the tub by drawing her knees up under her chin. Her hair was piled on top of her head, but damp wisps hung down her neck and on to her cheeks. She looked pink and dewy as a little girl.

‘Careful where you put your toes, sir,’ she cautioned him, and he felt the tension along his nerves easing. She had that effect on him.

‘I'll buy you lunch at “Les A” if you can tear yourself away from your microscope and fishy-smelling specimens for an hour or two.”

‘Les Ambassadeurs? I've heard about it! For lunch there I'd walk across London on freshly amputated stumps.’

‘That won't be necessary, but you will have to charm a tribe of wild desert Sheikhs. I understand they are very sympathetic towards blondes.’

‘Are you going to sell me into a harem - sounds fun, I've always fancied myself in baggy, transparent bloomers.’

‘You, I'm not selling - icebergs, I am. I'll pick you up at the front gate of the museum at one o'clock sharp.’

She went with laughter and a great clatter and banging of doors and Nicholas settled at the telephone.

‘I'd like to speak to Sir Richard personally, it's Nicholas Berg.’ Sir Richard was at Lloyd's, an old and good friend.

Then he called and spoke to Charles Gras.

There were no new delays or threats to Sea Witch's completion date.

‘I am sorry for any trouble you had with Alexander.’

‘Ca ne fait rien, Nicholas. Good luck at the hearing. I will be watching the Lloyd's List.’ Nicholas felt a sense of relief. Charles Gras had risked his career to show him Golden Dawn. It could have been serious.

Then Nick spoke for nearly half an hour to Bernard Wackie of Bach Wackie in Bermuda. Warlock had reported on the telex two hours previously; she was making good passage with her oil-rig tow, would drop off at Bravo II on schedule and pick up her next tow as soon as she had anchored.

‘David Allen is a good youngster,’ Bernard told Nick. ‘But have you got Levoisin for Sea Witch?

‘Jules is playing the prima donna, he has not said yes, but he'll come.’

‘You'll have a good team, then. What's the latest date for Sea Witch?’

‘End March.’

‘The sooner the better, I've got contacts to keep both tugs running hard until the iceberg project matures.’

‘I'm having lunch with the Sheikhs today.’

‘I know. There's a lot of interest. I've got a good feeling. There is something big brewing, but they are a cagey bunch. The inscrutable smile on the face of the sphinx - when do we see you?’

'I'll come across just as soon as I've got Duncan Alexander into the arbitration court - end of the month, hopefully.’

‘We've got a lot to talk about, Nicholas.’

Nick hesitated for the time it took to smoke the first cheroot of the day before he called Monte Carlo - for the call would cost him at least fifty thousand dollars, probably closer to seventy-five. The best is always the cheapest, he reminded himself, picked up the receiver and spoke to a secretary in Monte Carlo, giving his name.

While he waited for the connection he thought how his life was complicating itself once more. Very soon Bach Wackie would not be enough, there would have to be a London branch of Ocean Salvage, offices, secretaries, files, accounts, and then a New York branch, a branch in Saudi, the whole cycle again. He thought suddenly of Samantha, uncluttered and simple happiness, life without its wearisome trappings - then the connection was made and he heard the thin, high, almost feminine voice.

‘Mr. Berg - Claud Lazarus.’ No other greeting, no expressions of pleasure at the renewal of contact. Nick imagined him sitting at his desk in the suite high above the harbour, like a human foetus - preserved in spirits, bottled on the museum shelf. The huge bald domed head, the soft putty-coloured rudimentary features, the nose hardly large enough to support the thick spectacles. The eyes distorted and startled by the lens, changing shape like those of a fish in an aquarium as the light moved. The body underdeveloped, as that of a foetus, narrow shoulders, seemingly tapering away to the bowed question mark of a body.

‘Mr. Lazarus. Are you in a position to undertake an in-depth study for me?’ It was the euphemism for financial and industrial espionage; Claud Lazarus’ network was not limited by frontiers or continents, it spanned the globe with delicately probing tentacles.

‘Of course,’ he piped softly.

‘I want the financial structuring, the lines of control and management, the names of the nominees and their principals, the location and inter-relationship of all the elements of the Christy Marine Group and London European Insurance and Banking Co. Group, with particular reference to any changes in structure during the previous fourteen months. Do you have that?’

‘This is being recorded, Mr. Berg.’

'Of course. Further, I want the country of registration, the insurers and underwriters of all bottoms traceable to their holdings.’

‘Please continue.’

‘I want an accurate estimate of the reserves of London and European Insurance in relations to their potential liability.’

‘Continue.’

‘I am particularly interested in the vessel Golden Dawn presently building at the yards of Construction Navale Atlantique at St Nazaire. I want to know if she has been chartered or has contracted with any oil company for carriage of crude and, if so, on what routes and at what rates.’

‘Yes? Lazarus squeaked softly.

‘Time is of the essence - and, as always, so is discretion.’

‘You need not have mentioned that, Mr. Berg.’

‘My contact, when you are ready to pass information, is Bach Wacky in Bermuda.’

‘I will keep you informed of progress.’

‘Thank you, Mr. Lazarus.’

‘Good day, Mr. Berg.’

It was refreshing not to have to pretend to be the bosom comrade of somebody who supplied essentials but nonetheless revolted him, Nick thought, and comforting to know he had the best man in the world for the job.

He looked at his watch. It was lunchtime, and he felt the quick lift of his spirits at the thought of being with Samantha.

Lime Street is a narrow alleyway, with tall buildings down each side of it, which opens off Leadenhall Street. A few yards from the junction, on the left hand side as you leave the street of shipping, is the covered entrance to Lloyd's of London.

Nicholas stepped out of James Teacher's Bentley and took Samantha on his arm. He paused a moment, with a feeling of certain reverence.

As a seaman, the history of this remarkable institution touched him intimately. Not that the building itself was particularly old or venerable. Nothing now remained of the original coffee house, except some of the traditions: the caller who intoned the brokers names like the offertory in the temple of some exotic religion, the stalls in which the underwriters conducted their business and the name and uniform of the institution's servants, the waiters with brass buttons and red collar tabs.

Rather it was the tradition of concern that was enshrined here, the concern for ships and for all men who went down to the sea in those ships and did their business in great waters.

Perhaps later, Nicholas would find time to take Samantha through the Nelson rooms and show her the displays of memorabilia associated with the greatest of Britain's sailors, the plate and letters and awards. Certainly he would have her as lunch guest in the big dining-room, at the table set aside specifically for visiting sea captains.

But now there were more important considerations to demand all his attention. He had come to hear the verdict given on his future - within a few hours he would know just how high and how fast the wave of his fortune had carried him.

‘Come,’ he said to Samantha, and led her up the short flight of steps into the lobby, where there was a waiter alerted to receive them.

We will be using the Committee Room today, sir. The earlier submissions by both parties had been heard in one of the smaller offices, leading off the high gallery above the vast floor of the exchange with its rows of underwriters stalls. However, due to the extraordinary nature of this action, the Committee of Lloyd's had made a unique decision - to have their arbitrators give their findings and make their award in surroundings more in keeping with the importance of the occasion.

They rode up in silence, all of them too tense to make the effort of small-talk. and the waiter led them down the wide corridor, past the Chairman's suite of offices and through the double doors into the grandeur of the room designed by Adam for Bowood House, the country home of the Marquess of Lansdowne. It had been taken to pieces, panel by panel, floor, ceiling, fireplace and plaster mouldings, transported to London and re-erected in its entirety with such care and attention that when Lord Lansdowne inspected it, he found that the floorboards squeaked in exactly the same places as they had before.

At the long table, under the massive glittering pyramids of the three chandeliers, the two arbitrators were already seated. Both of them were master mariners, selected for their deep knowledge and experience of the sea, and their faces were toughened and leathery from the effects of sea and salt water. They talked quietly together, without acknowledging in any way the rows of quietly attentive faces in the rows of chairs facing them - until the minute hand of the antique clock on the Adam fireplace touched its zenith. Then the President of the court looked across at the waiter who obediently closed the double doors and stood to attention before them.

‘This Arbitration Court has been set up under the Committee of Lloyd's and empowered to receive evidence in the matter between the Christy Marine Steamship Co. Ltd. and the Ocean Salvage and Towage Co. Ltd. This Court finds common ground in the following areas:

‘Firstly, a contract of salvage under Lloyd's Open Form "No cure no pay" for the recovery of the passenger liner Golden Adventurer, a ship of 22,000 tons gross burden and registered at Southampton, exists between the parties.

‘Secondly, that the Master of the Golden Adventurer while steaming on a south-westerly heading during the night of December 16th at or near 72 16 south and 32 12 west – ‘ The President let no dramatics intrude on his assembly of the facts. He recounted it all in the driest possible terms, succeeding in making Golden Adventurer's plight and the desperate endeavours of her rescuers sound boring. Indeed, his colleague seemed to descend into a condition of coma at the telling of it. His eyes slowly closed, and his head sagged gently sideways, his lips vibrating slightly at each breath - a volume not quite sufficient to make it a snore.

It took nearly an hour, with the occasional consultation of the ship's log books and a loose volume of hand-written and typed notes, before the President was satisfied that he had recounted all the facts, and now he rocked back in his chair and hooked his thumbs into his waistcoat. His expression became decisive, and while he surveyed the crowded room, his colleague stirred, opened his eyes, took out a white linen handkerchief and blew two sharp blasts, one for each nostril, like the herald angel sounding the crack of doom.

There was a stir of reawakened interest, they all recognized the moment of decision, and for the first time Duncan Alexander and Nicholas Berg looked directly at each other over the heads of the lawyers and company men. Neither of them changed expression, no smile nor scowl, but something implacable and clearly understood passed between them. They did not unlock their gaze, until the President began to speak again.

‘Taking into consideration the foregoing, this Court is of the firm opinion that a fair and good salvage of the vessel was effected by the salvors, and that therefore, they are entitled to salvage awards commensurate with the services rendered to the owners and underwriters.’

Nicholas felt Samantha's fingers groping for his. He took her hand, and it was slim and cold and dry; he interlocked their fingers and laid their hands upon his upper thigh.

‘This Court, in arriving at the value of the salvor's services, has taken into consideration, firstly, the situation and conditions existing on the site of operations. We have heard evidence that much of the work was carried out in extreme weather conditions. Temperatures of thirty degrees below freezing, wind forces exceeding twelve on the Beaufort scale, and extreme icing.

‘We have also considered that the vessel Golden Adventurer was no longer under command. That she had been abandoned by her passengers, her crew and her Master. She was aground on a remote and hostile coast.

‘We have further noted that the salvors undertook a voyage of many thousands of miles, without any guarantee of recompense, but merely in order to be in a position to offer assistance, should that have become necessary.’

Nicholas glanced across the aisle at Duncan Alexander. He sat at ease, as though he were in his box at Ascot. His suit was of sombre gunmetal grey, but on him it seemed flamboyant and the Zingari tie as rakish as any of Cardin's fantasies.

Duncan turned that fine leonine head and looked directly at Nicholas again. This time Nicholas saw the deep angry glow in his eyes as when a vagrant breeze fans the coals of an open fire. Then Duncan turned his face back towards the President, and he balanced his thrusting square chin on the clenched, carefully manicured fingers of his right fist.

‘Furthermore, we have taken into consideration the transportation of the survivors from the site of the striking, to the nearest port of succour, Cape Town in the Republic of South Africa.’

The President was summing up strongly in favour of Ocean Salvage. It was a dangerous sign; so often a judge about to deliver an unfavourable decision prefaced it by building a strong case for the loser and then tearing it down again.

Nicholas steeled himself, anything below three million dollars would not be sufficient to keep Ocean Salvage alive. That was the barest minimum he needed to keep Warlock afloat, and to put Sea Witch on the water for the first time. He felt the spasm of his stomach muscles as he contemplated his commitments - even with three million he would be at the mercy of the Sheikhs, unable to manoeuvre, a slave to any conditions they wished to set. He would not be off his knees even.

Nicholas squeezed Samantha's hand for luck, and she pressed her shoulder against his.

Four million dollars would give him a fighting chance, a slim margin of choice - but he would still be fighting hard, pressed on all sides. Yet he would have settled for four million, if Duncan Alexander had made the offer. Perhaps Duncan had been wise after all, perhaps he might yet see Nicholas broken at a single stroke.

‘Three.’ Nicholas held the figure in his head. ‘Let it be three, at least let it be three.’

‘This Court has considered the written reports of the Globe Engineering Co., the contractors charged with the repairing and refurbishing of Golden Adventurer, together with those of two independent marine engineering experts commissioned separately by the owners and the salvors to report on the condition of the vessel. We have also had the benefit of a survey carried out by a senior inspector of Lloyd's of London. From all of this, it seems apparent that the vessel sustained remarkably light damage. There was no loss of equipment, the salvors recovering even the main anchors and chains –‘

Strange how that impressed a salvage court. ‘We took her off, anchors and all, Nick thought,’ with a stir of pride.

‘Prompt anti-corrosion precautions by the salvors resulted in minimal damage to the main engines and ancillary equipment –‘

It went on and on. Why cannot he come to it now? I cannot wait much longer, Nicholas thought.

‘This Court has heard expert opinion and readily accepts that the residual value of the Golden Adventurer's hull, as delivered to the contractors in Cape Town can be fairly set at twenty-six million US dollars or fifteen million, three hundred thousand pounds sterling, and consideration of the foregoing, we are further of the firm opinion that the salvors are entitled to an award of twenty percent of the residual hull value –‘

For long cold seconds Nicholas doubted his hearing, and then he felt the flush of exultation burning on his cheeks.

‘In addition, it was necessary to compute the value of the passage provided to the survivors of the vessel –‘

It was six - six million dollars! He was clear and running free as a wild albatross sweeping across the oceans on wide pinions.

Nicholas turned his head and looked at Duncan Alexander, and he smiled. He had never felt so strong and vital and alive in his life before. He felt like a giant, immortal, and at his side was the vibrant young body pressing to him, endowing him with eternal youth.

Across the aisle, Duncan Alexander tossed his head, a gesture of dismissal and turned to speak briefly with his counsel who sat beside him. He did not look at Nicholas, however, and there was a waxen cast to his skin now as though it had a fine sheen of perspiration laid upon it, and the blood had drained away beneath the tan.

‘Anyway, another few days and you'd probably have started to find me a boring dolly bird, or one of us would have had a heart attack.’ Samantha smiled at him, a pathetic, lopsided little grin, nothing like her usual brilliant golden flashing smile. ‘I like to quit while I'm still ahead.’

They sat close on the couch in the Pan Am Clipper Lounge at Heathrow.

Nicholas was shocked by the extent of his own desolation. It felt as though he were about to be deprived of the vital forces of life itself, he felt the youth and strength draining away as he looked at her and knew that in a few minutes she would be gone.

‘Samantha,’ he said. ‘Stay here with me.’

‘Nicholas,’ she whispered huskily, ‘I have to go, my darling. It's not for very long but I have to go.’

‘Why?’ he demanded.

‘Because it's my life.’

‘Make me your life.’ She touched his cheek, as she countered his offer.

‘I have a better idea, give up Warlock and Sea Witch - forget your icebergs and come with me.’

‘You know I cannot do that.’

‘No,’ she agreed, ‘you could not, and I would not want you to. But, Nicholas, my love, no more can I give up my life.’

‘All right, then, marry me,’ he said.

‘Why, Nicholas?’

‘So I don't lose my lucky charm, so that you'd damn well have to do what I tell you.’

And she laughed delightedly and snuggled against his chest. ‘It doesn't work like that any more, my fine Victorian gentleman. There is only one good reason for marrying, Nicholas, and that's to have babies. Do you want to give me a baby?’

‘What a splendid idea.’

‘So that I can warm the bottles and wash the nappies while you go off to the ends of the oceans - and we'll have lunch together once a month?’ She shook her head. ‘We might have a baby together one day - but not now, there is still too much to do, there is still too much life to live.’

‘Dammit.’ He shook his head. ‘I don't like to let you run around loose. Next thing you'll take off with some twenty-five year-old oaf, bulging with muscles and-‘

‘You have given me a taste for vintage wine,’ she laughed in denial. ‘Come as soon as you can, Nicholas. As soon as you have done your work here, come to Florida and I'll show you my life.’

The hostess crossed the lounge towards them, a pretty smiling girl in the neat blue Pan Am uniform.

‘Dr. Silver? They are calling Flight 432 now.’

They stood and looked at each other, awkward as strangers.

‘Come soon,’ she said, and then she stood on tiptoe and placed her arms around his shoulders.’ Come as soon as you can.’

Nicholas had protested vigorously as soon as James Teacher advanced the proposition. ‘I don't want to speak to him, Mr. Teacher. The only thing I want from Duncan Alexander is his cheque for six million dollars, preferably guaranteed by a reputable bank - and I want it before the 10th of next month.’

The lawyer had wheedled and jollied Nicholas along. ‘Think of the pleasure of watching his face - indulge yourself, Mr. Berg, gloat on him a little.’

‘I will obtain no pleasure by watching his face, offhand I can think of a thousand faces I'd rather watch.’ But in the end Nicholas had agreed, stipulating only that this time the meeting should be at a place of Nicholas choice, an unsubtle reminder of whose hand now held the whip.

James Teacher's rooms were in one of those picturesque, stone buildings in the Inns of Court covered with ivy, surrounded by small velvety lawns, bisected with paved walkways that connected the numerous blocks, the entire complex reeking with history and tradition and totally devoid of modern comforts. Its austerity was calculated to instil confidence in the clients.

Teacher's rooms were on the third floor. There was no elevator and the stairs were narrow, steep and dangerous. Duncan Alexander arrived slightly out of breath and flushed under his tan. Teacher's clerk surveyed him discouragingly from his cubicle.

‘Mr. who!’ he asked, cupping his hand to one ear. The clerk was a man as old, grey and picturesque as the building. He even affected a black alpaca suit, shiny and greenish with age, together with a butterfly collar and a black string tie like that last worn by Neville Chamberlain as he promised peace in our time.

‘Mr. who?’ and Duncan Alexander flushed deeper. He was not accustomed to having to repeat his name.

‘Do you have an appointment, Mr. Alexander?’ the clerk inquired frostily, and laboriously consulted his diary before at last waving Duncan Alexander through into the spartan waiting-room.

Nicholas kept him there exactly eight minutes, twice as long as he himself had waited in the board room of Christy Marine, and he stood by the small electric fire in the fireplace, not answering Duncan's brilliant smile as he entered.

James Teacher sat at his desk under the windows, out of the direct line of confrontation, like the umpire at Wimbledon, and Duncan Alexander barely glanced at him.

‘Congratulations, Nicholas,’ Duncan shook that magnificent head and the smile faded to a rueful grin. ‘You turned one up for the books, you truly did.’

‘Thank you, Duncan. However, I must warn you that today I have an impossible schedule to meet, I can give you only ten minutes.’ Nicholas glanced at his watch. ‘Fortunately I can imagine only one thing that you and I have to discuss. The tenth of next month, either a transfer to the Bermuda account of Ocean Salvage, or a guaranteed draft by registered airmail to Bach Wackie.’

Duncan held up his hand in mock protest. ‘Come now, Nicholas - the salvage money will be there, on the due date set by the Court.’

‘That's fine,’ Nicholas told him, still smiling. ‘I have no taste for another brawl in the debtors court.’

‘I wanted to remind you of something that old Arthur Christy once said’

‘Ah! of course, our mutual father-in-law.’ Nicholas said softly, and Duncan pretended not to hear; instead he went on unruffled.

‘He said, with Berg and Alexander I have put together one of the finest teams in the world of shipping. The old man was getting senile towards the end.’ Nicholas had still not smiled.

‘He was right, of course. We just never got into step. My God, Nicholas, can you imagine if we had been working together, instead of against each other. You the best salt and steel man in the business, and-‘

‘I I'm touched, Duncan, deeply touched by this new and gratifying esteem in which I find myself held.’

‘You rubbed my nose in it, Nicholas. Just as you said you would. And I'm the kind of man who learns by his mistakes, turning disaster to triumph is a trick of mine.’

'Play your trick now,’ Nicholas invited. ‘Let's see you turn six million dollars into a flock of butterflies.’

‘Six million dollars and Ocean Salvage would buy you back into Christy Marine. We'd be on equal terms.’

The surprise did not show on Nicholas, face, not a flicker of an eyelid, not even a tightening of the lips, but his mind raced to get ahead of the man.

‘Together we would be unstoppable. We would build Christy Marine into a giant that controlled the oceans, we'd diversify out into ocean oil exploration, chemical containers.’ The man had immense presence and charm, he was almost - but not quite - irresistible, his enthusiasm brimming and overflowing, his fire flaring and spreading to light the dingy room, and Nicholas studied him carefully, learning more about him every second.

‘Good God, Nicholas, you are the type of man who can conceive of a venture like the Golden Dawn or salvage a giant tanker in a sub-zero gale, and I am the man who can put together a billion dollars on a wink and whistle. Nothing could stand before us, there would be no frontiers we could not cross.’ He paused now and returned Nicholas scrutiny as boldly, studying the effect of his words. Nicholas lit the cheroot he was holding, but his eyes watched shrewdly through the fine blue veil of smoke.

‘I understand what you are thinking,’ Duncan went on, his voice dropping confidentially. ‘I know that you are stretched out, I know that you need those six big M's to keep Ocean Salvage floating. Christy Marine will guarantee Ocean Salvage outstandings, that's a minor detail. The important thing is us together, like old Arthur Christy saw it, Berg and Alexander.’ Nicholas took the cheroot from his mouth and inspected the tip briefly before he looked back at him.

‘Tell me, Duncan,’ the asked mildly, ‘in this great sharing you envisage, do we put our women into the kitty also?’ Duncan's mouth tightened, and the flesh wrinkled at the corners of his eyes.

‘Nicholas,’ he began, but Nicholas silenced him with a gesture.

‘You said that I need that six million badly, and you were right. I need three million of it for Ocean Salvage and the other three to stop you running that monster you have built. Even if I don't get it, I will still use it to stop you. I'll slap a garnishee order on you by ten minutes past nine on the morning of the eleventh. I told you I would fight you and Golden Dawn. The warning still stands.’

‘You are being petty,’ Duncan said. ‘I never expected to see you join the lunatic fringe.’

‘There are many things you do not know about me, Duncan. But, by God, you are going to learn - the hard way.’

Chantelle had chosen San Lorenzo in Beauchamp Place when Nicholas had refused to go again to Eaton Square, He had learned that it was dangerous to be alone with her, but San Lorenzo was also a bad choice of meeting-ground.

It carried too many memories from the golden days. It had been a family ritual, Sunday lunch whenever they were in town. Chantelle, Peter and Nicholas laughing together at the corner table. Mara had given them the corner table again.

‘Will you have the osso bucco?’ Chantelle asked, peeping at him over the top of her menu.

Nicholas always had the osso bucco, and Peter always had the lasagne, it was part of the ritual, ‘I'm going to have a sole.’ Nicholas turned to the waiter who was hovering solicitously. ‘And we'll drink the house wine.’ Always the wine had been a Sancerre; Nicholas was deliberately down-grading the occasion by ordering the carafe.

‘It's good.’ Chantelle sipped it and then set the glass aside. ‘I spoke to Peter last night, he is in the san with flu, but he will be up today, and he sent you his love.’

‘Thank you,’ he spoke stiffly, stilted by the curious glances from some of the other tables where they had been recognized. The scandal would fly around London like the plague.

‘I want to take Peter to Bermuda with me for part of the Easter holidays,’ Nicholas told her.

‘I shall miss him - he's such a delight.’

Nicholas waited for the main course to be served before he asked bluntly, ‘What did you want to speak to me about?’

Chantelle leaned towards him, and her perfume was light and subtle and evocative.

‘Did you find out anything, Nicholas?’

‘No,’he thought to himself. 'That's not what she wants.’ It was the Persian in her blood, the love of secrecy, the intrigue. There was something else here.

‘I have learned nothing,’ he said. ‘If I had, I would have called you.’ His eyes bored into hers, green and hard and searching.

‘That is not what you wanted,’he told her flatly. She smiled and dropped her eyes from his.

‘No,’ she admitted, it wasn't.’

She had surprising breasts, they seemed small, but really they were too big for her dainty body. It was only their perfect proportions and the springy elasticity of the creamy flesh that created the illusion. She wore a flimsy silk blouse with a low lacy front, which exposed the deep cleft between them. Nicholas knew them so well, and he found himself staring at them now.

She looked up suddenly and caught his eyes, and the huge eyes slanted with a sly heart-stopping sexuality. Her lips pouted softly and she moistened them with the tip of her tongue.

Nick felt himself sway in his seat, it was a tell-tale mannerism of hers. That set of lips and movement of tongue were the heralds of her arousal, and instantly he felt the response of his own body, too powerful to deny, although he tried desperately.

‘What was it-‘ He did not hear the husk in his voice, but she did and recognized it as readily as he had the flicker of her tongue. She reached across the table and took his wrist, and she felt the leap of his pulse under her fingers.

‘Duncan wants you to come back into Christy Marine,’ she said. And so do I.’

‘Duncan sent you to me.’ And when she nodded, he asked, 'Why does he want me back? God knows what pains the two of you took to get rid of me.’ And he gently pulled his wrist from her fingers and dropped both hands into his lap.

‘I don't know why Duncan wants it. He says that he needs your expertise.’ She shrugged, and her breasts moved under the silk. He felt the tense ache of his groin, it confused his thinking. ‘It isn't the true reason, I'm sure of that. ‘But he wants you.’

‘Did he ask you to tell me that?’

‘Of course not.’ She fiddled with the stem of her glass; her fingers were long and perfectly tapered, the painted nails set upon them with the brilliance of butterflies’ wings. ‘It was to come from me alone.’

‘Why do you think he wants me?’

‘There are two possibilities that I can imagine.’ She surprised him sometimes with her almost masculine appraisal. That was what made her lapse so amazing; as he listened to her now, Nicholas wondered again how she could ever have let control of Christy Marine pass to Duncan Alexander - then he remembered what a wild and passionate creature she could be. ‘The first possibility is that Christy Marine owes you six million dollars, and he has thought up some scheme to avoid having to pay you Out.’

‘Yes,’ Nicholas nodded. ‘And the other possibility?’

‘There are strange and exciting rumours in the City about you and Ocean Salvage - they say that you are on the brink of something big. Something in Saudi Arabia. Perhaps Duncan wants a share of that.’

Nicholas blinked. The iceberg project was something between the Sheikhs and himself, then he remembered that others knew. Bernard Wackie in Bermuda, Samantha Silver, James Teacher - there had been a leak somewhere then.

‘And you? What are your reasons?’

‘I have two reasons, Nicholas,’ she answered. ‘I want control back from Duncan. I want the voting rights in my shares, and I want my rightful place on the Trust. I didn't know what I was doing, it was madness when I made Duncan my nominee. I want it back now, and I want you to get it for me.’

Nicholas smiled, a bitter wintry smile. ‘You're hiring yourself a gunman, just the way they do in the Western serials. Duncan and I alone on the deserted street, spurs clinking.’ The smile turned to a chuckle, but he was thinking hard, watching her - was she lying? It was almost impossible to tell, she was so mysterious and unfathomable. Then he saw tears well in the depths of those huge eyes, and he stopped laughing. Were the tears genuine, or all part of the intrigue?

‘You said you had two reasons.’ And now his voice was gentler. She did not answer immediately, but he could see her agitation, the rapid rise and fall of those lovely breasts under the silk, then she caught her breath with a little hiss of decision and she spoke so softly that he barely caught the words.

‘I want you back. That's the other reason, Nicholas.’ And he stared at her while she went on. ‘It was all part of the madness. I didn't realize what I was doing. But the madness is over now. Sweet merciful God, you'll never know how much I've missed you. You'll never know how I've suffered.’ She stopped and fluttered one small hand. ‘I'll make it up to you, Nicholas, I swear it to you. But Peter and I need you, we both need you desperately.’

He could not answer for a moment, she had taken him if by surprise and he felt his whole life shaken again and the separate parts of it tumbled like dice from the cup of chance.

‘There is no road back, Chantelle. We can only go forward.’

‘I always get what I want, Nicholas, you know that,’ she warned him.

‘Not this time, Chantelle.’ He shook his head, but he knew her words would wear away at him.

Duncan Alexander slumped on the luxurious calf-hide seat of the Rolls, and he spoke into the telephone extension that connected him directly with his office in Leadenhall Street.

‘Were you able to reach Kurt Streicher?’ he asked.

‘I'm sorry, Mr. Alexander. His office was unable to contact him. He is in Africa on a hunting safari. They did not know when to expect him back in Geneva.’

‘Thank you, Myrtle.’ Duncan's smile was completely lacking in humour. Streicher was suddenly one of the world's most industrious sportsmen - last week he had been skiing and was out of contact, this week he was in Africa slaughtering elephant, perhaps next week he would be chasing polar bears in the Arctic. And by then, it would be too late, of course.

Streicher was not alone. Since the salvage award on Golden Adventurer, so many of his financial contacts had become elusive, veritable will-o'-the-wisps skipping ahead of him with their cheque books firmly buttoned into their pockets.

‘I shall not be back at the office again today,’ he told his secretary. ‘Please have my pending tray sent round to Eaton Square. I will work on it tonight, and do you think you could get in an hour earlier tomorrow morning?’

‘Of course, Mr. Alexander.’

He replaced the handset and glanced out of the window. The Rolls was passing Regent's Park, heading in the direction of St John's Wood; three times in the last six months he had taken this route, and suddenly Duncan felt that hot scalding lump deep under his ribs, He straightened up in his seat but the pain persisted, and he sighed and opened the rosewood liquor cabinet, spilled a spoonful of the powder into a glass and topped it with soda-water.

He considered the turbid draught with distaste, then drank it at a gulp. It left an after-taste of peppermint on his tongue, but the relief was almost immediate. He felt the acid burn subside, and he belched softly.

He did not need a doctor to tell him that it was a duodenal ulcer, probably a whole bunch of them - or was that the correct collective noun, a tribe of ulcers, a convocation? He smiled again, and carefully combed his brazen waves of hair, watching himself in the mirror.

The strain did not show on his face, he was sure of that. The facade was intact, devoid of cracks. He had always had the strength, the courage to ride with his decisions. This had been a hard ride, however, the hardest of his life.

He closed his eyes briefly, and saw Golden Dawn standing on her ways. Like a mountain. The vision gave him strength, he felt it rising deep within him, welling up to fill his soul.

They thought of him only as a money-man, a paper man. There was no salt in his blood nor steel in his guts - that was what they said of him in the City. When he had ousted Berg from Christy Marine, they had shied off, watching him shrewdly, standing aside and waiting for him to show his guts, forcing him to live upon the fat of Christy Marine, devouring himself like a camel in the desert, running him thin.

‘The bastards,’ he thought, but it was without rancour. They had done merely what he would have done, they had played by the hard rules which Duncan knew and respected, and by those same rules, once he had shown his guts to be of steel, they would ply him with largesse. This was the testing time. It was so close now, two months still to live through - yet those sixty days seemed as daunting as the hard year through which he had lived already.

The stranding of Golden Adventurer had been a disaster. Her hull value had formed part of the collateral on which he had borrowed; the cash she generated with her luxury cruises was budgeted carefully to carry him through the dangerous times before Golden Dawn was launched. Now all that had altered drastically. The flow of cash had been switched off, and he had to find six million in real hard money - and find it before the 10th of the month. Today was the 6th, and time was running through his fingers like quicksilver.

If only he had been able to stall Berg. He felt a corrosive welling up of hatred again; if only he had been able to stall him. The bogus offer of partnership might have held him just long enough, but Berg had brushed it aside contemptuously. Duncan had been forced to scurry about in undignified haste, trying to pull together the money. Kurt Streicher was not the only one suddenly unavailable, it was strange how they could smell it on a man, he had the same gift of detecting vulnerability or weakness in others so he understood how it worked. It was almost as though the silver blotches showed on his hands and face and he walked the city pavements chanting the old leper's cry, ‘Unclean, Beware, Unclean.’

With so much at stake, it was a piddling amount, six million for two months, the insignificance of it was an insult, and he felt the tension in his belly muscles again and the rising hot acid sting of his digestive juices. He forced himself to relax, glancing again from the window to find that the Rolls was turning into the cul-de-sac of yellow-face brick apartments piled upon each other like hen-coops, angular and unimaginatively lower middle class.

He squared his shoulders and watched himself in the mirror, practising the smile. It was only six million, and for only two months, he reminded himself, as the Rolls slid to a halt before one of the anonymous buildings.

Duncan nodded to his chauffeur as he held the door open and handed Duncan the pigskin briefcase.

‘Thank you, Edward. I should not be very long.’ Duncan took the case and he crossed the pavement with the long, confident stride of an athlete, his shoulders thrown back, wearing his top coat like an opera cloak, the sleeves empty and the tails swirling about his legs, and even in the grey overcast of a March afternoon, his head shone like a beacon fire.

The man who opened the door to him seemed only half Duncan's height, despite the tall black Homburg hat that he wore squarely over his ears.

‘Mr. Alexander, shalom, shalom.’ His beard was so dense and bushy black that it covered the starched white collar and white tie, regulation dress of the strict Hasidic Jew. ‘Even though you come to me last, you still bring honour on my house,’ and his eyes twinkled, a mischievous sparkling black under thick brows.

‘That is because you have a heart of stone and blood like iced water,’ said Duncan, and the man laughed delightedly, as though he had been paid the highest compliment.

‘Come,’ he said, taking Duncan's arm. ‘Come in, let us drink a little tea together and let us talk.’ He led Duncan down the narrow corridor, and halfway they collided with two boys wearing yamulka on their curly heads coming at speed in the opposite direction.

‘Ruffians,’ cried the man, stooping to embrace them briefly and then send them on their way with a fond slap on their backsides. Still beaming and shaking the ringlets that dangled out from under the black Homburg, he ushered Duncan into a small crowded bedroom that had been converted to an office. A tall old-fashioned pigeon-holed desk filled one wall and against the other stood an overstuffed horse-hair sofa on which were piled ledgers and box files.

The man swept the books aside, making room for Duncan. Be seated, he ordered, and stood aside while a jolly little woman his size brought in the tea-tray.

‘I saw the award court's arbitration on Golden Adventurer in Lloyd's List,’ the Jew said when they were alone. ‘Nicholas Berg is an amazing man, a hard act to follow - I think that is the expression.’ He pondered, watching the sudden bloom of anger on Duncan's cheeks and the murderous expression in the pale eyes.

Duncan controlled his anger with an effort, but each time that somebody spoke that way of Nicholas Berg, he found it more difficult. There was always the comparison, the snide remarks, and Duncan wanted to stand up and leave this cluttered little room and the veiled taunts, but he knew he could not afford to, nor could he speak just yet for his anger was very close to the surface. They sat in silence for what seemed a long time.

‘How much?’ The man broke the silence at last, and Duncan could not bring himself to name the figure for it was too closely related to the subject that had just infuriated him.

‘It is not a large amount, and for a short period - sixty days only.’

‘How much?’

‘Six million,’ Duncan said. ‘Dollars.’

‘Six million is not an impossibly large amount of money, when you have it - but it is a great fortune when you do not.’ The man tugged at the thick black bush of his beard. ‘And sixty days can be an eternity.’

‘I have a charter for Golden Dawn,’ Duncan said softly. ‘A ten-year charter.’ He slipped the nine-carat gold catches on the slim, finely grained pigskin briefcase and brought out a batch of Xeroxed sheets. ‘As you see, it is signed by both parties already.’

‘Ten years?’ asked the man, watching the papers in Duncan's hand.

‘Ten years, at ten cents a hundred ton miles and a guaranteed minimum annual of 75,000 miles.’

The hand on the man's thick black beard stilled. ‘Golden Dawn has a burden of a million tons - that will gross a minimum of seventy-five million dollars a year.’ With an effort he managed to disguise his awe, and the hand resumed its gentle tugging at the beard. ‘Who is the charterer?’ The thick eyebrows formed two thick black question marks.

‘Orient Amex,’ said Duncan, and handed him the Xeroxed papers.

‘The El Barras field.’ The man's eyebrows stayed up as he read swiftly. ‘You are a brave man, Mr. Alexander. But I never once doubted that.’ He read on in silence for another minute, shaking his head slowly so that the ringlets danced on his cheeks. ‘The El Barras field.’ He folded the papers and looked up at Duncan. ‘I think Christy Marine may have found a worthy successor to Nicholas Berg - perhaps the shoes are even a little small, maybe they will begin to pinch your toes soon, Mr. Alexander.’ He squirmed down in his chair thinking furiously, and Duncan watched him, hiding his trepidation behind a remotely amused half-smile.

‘What about the environmentalists, Mr. Alexander? The new American Administration, this man Carter is very conscious of environmental dangers.’

‘The lunatic fringe,’ said Duncan. ‘There is too much invested already. Orient Amex have nearly a billion in the new cadmium cracking plants at Galveston, and three of the other oil giants are in it. Let them fuss, we'll still carry in the new cad-rich crudes.’

Duncan spoke with the force of complete conviction. ‘There is too much at stake, the potential profits are too large and the opposition is too weak. The whole world is sick of the doom-merchants, the woolly-headed sentimentalists,’ he dismissed them with a short abrupt gesture. ‘man has already adjusted to a little oil on the beaches, a little smoke in the air, a few less fish in the sea or birds in the sky, and he will go on adjusting.’

The man nodded, listening avidly. ‘Yes!’ he nodded. ‘You are a brave man. The world needs men like you.’

‘The important thing is a cadmium catalyst cracking system which breaks down the high carbon atoms of crude and gives back a 80% yield in low carbon instead of the 40% we hope for now. 90 % yield, double-double profits, double efficiency – ‘

‘- and double danger.’ The man smiled behind his beard.

‘There is danger in taking a bath. You might slip and crack your skull, and we haven't invested a billion dollars in bathing.’

‘Cadmium in concentrations of 100 parts to the million is more poisonous than cyanide or arsenic; the cad-rich crudes of the El Barras field are concentrated 2000 parts to the million.’

‘That's what makes them so valuable,’ Duncan nodded, ‘To enrich crude artificially with cadmium would make the whole cracking process hopelessly uneconomic. We've turned what appeared to be a hopelessly contaminated oilfield into one of the most brilliant advances in oil refining.’

‘I hope you have not underestimated the resistance to the transportation of -‘

Duncan cut him short. ‘There will be no publicity. The loading and unloading of the crude will be conducted with the utmost discretion, and the world will not know the difference. Just another ultra-tanker moving across the oceans with nothing to suggest that she is carrying cad-rich.’

‘But, just suppose the news did leak?’

Duncan shrugged. ‘The world is conditioned to accept anything, from DDT to Concorde, nobody really cares any more. Come hell and high water, we'll carry the El Barras oil. Nobody is strong enough to stop us.’

Duncan gathered his papers and went on softly, ‘I need six million dollars for sixty days - and I need it by noon tomorrow.’

‘You are a brave man!’ the man repeated softly. ‘But you are finely stretched out. Already my brothers and I have made a considerable investment in your courage. To be blunt Mr. Alexander, Christy Marine has exhausted its collateral. Even Golden Dawn is pawned down to her last rivet - and the charter for Orient Amex does not change that.’

Duncan took another sheaf of papers, bound in a brown folder, and the man lifted an eyebrow in question.

‘My personal assets,’ Duncan explained, and the man skimmed swiftly through the typed lists.

‘Paper values, Mr. Alexander. Actual values are 50% of those you list, and that is not six million dollars of collateral.’ He handed the folder back to Duncan. ‘They will do for a start, but we'll need more than that.’

‘What more is there?’

‘Share options, stock options in Christy Marine. If we are to share risk, then we must have a share of the winnings.’

‘Do you want my soul also?’ Duncan demanded harshly, and the man laughed.

‘We'll take a slice of that as well,’ the agreed amiably.

It was two hours later that Duncan sank wearily into the leather-work of the Rolls. The muscles in his thighs trembled as though he had run a long way and there was a nerve in the corner of his eye that jumped as though a cricket was trapped beneath the skin. He had made the gamble, everything - Christy Marine, his personal fortune, his very soul. It was all at risk now.

‘Eaton Square, sir?’ the chauffeur asked.

‘No!’ Duncan told him. He knew what he needed now to smooth away the grinding, destroying tension that wracked his body, but he needed it quickly without fuss and, like the peppermint-tasting powder, like a medicine.

‘The Senator Club in Frith Street,’ he told the chauffeur.

Duncan lay face down on the massage table in the small green-curtained cubicle. He was naked, except for the towel, and his body was smooth and lean. The girl worked up his spine with strong skilled fingers, finding the little knots of tension in the sleek muscle and unravelling them.

‘Do you want the soft massage, sir?’ she asked.

‘Yes,’ he said and rolled on to his back. She lifted away the towel from around his waist. She was a pretty blonde girl in a short green tunic with the golden laurel leaf club insignia on the pocket, and her manner was brisk and business like.

‘Do you want any extras, sir?’ Her tone was neutral, and she began to unbutton the green tunic automatically.

‘No,’ Duncan said, ‘No extras,’ and closed his eyes, surrendering himself completely to the touch of her expert fingers.

He thought of Chantelle, feeling the sneaking guilt of the moment, but it was so seldom these days that he had the energy for her smouldering demanding Persian passions. He did not have the strength for her, he was drained and weary, and all he wanted was the release, swift and simple. In two months’ time it would be different, he would have the strength and energy to pick the world up in his bare hands and shake it like a toy.

His mind was separated from his body, and odd disconnected images flitted across the red darkness of his closed eyelids. He thought again how long it had been since last he and Chantelle had made love together, and he wondered what the world would say if they knew of it.

Nicholas Berg left a big empty place in his bed also, they would say.

‘The hell with them,’ Duncan thought, but without the energy for real anger.

‘The hell with all of them.’ And he gave himself up to the explosion of light that burst against his eyelids and the dark, but too fleeting, peace that followed it.

Nicholas lay back in the rather tatty old brown leather armchair which was one of James Teacher's concessions to create comfort and he stared at the cheap hunting prints on the faded wallpaper through a thin fug of cheroot smoke. Teacher could have afforded a decent Gaugin or a Turner, but such vulgar display was frowned on in the Inns of Court. It might lead prospective clients to ponder the amount of the fees that they were to be charged.

James Teacher replaced the telephone and stood up behind his desk.

It did not make much difference to his height.

‘Well, I think we have covered all the entrances to the warren,’ he announced cheerfully, and he began to tick off the items on his fingers. ‘The sheriff of the South African supreme court will serve notice of attachment on the hull of Golden Adventurer at noon local time tomorrow. Our French correspondent will do the same on Golden Dawn.’ He spoke for three minutes more, and, listening to him, Nicholas reluctantly admitted to himself that he earned the greater proportion of his enormous fees.

‘Well, there it is, Mr. Berg. If your hunch is correct-’

‘It's not a hunch, Mr. Teacher. It's a certainty. Duncan Alexander has his backside pinched in the doorway. He's been rushing round the City like a demented man looking for money. My God, he even tried to stall me with that incredible offer of a partnership. No, Mr. Teacher, it's not a hunch. Christy Marine is going to default.’

‘I cannot understand that, Six millions is peanuts,’ said James Teacher. At least it's peanuts to a company like Christy Marine, one of the healthiest shipping owners.’

‘It was, a year ago,’ Nicholas agreed grimly.’ But since then, Alexander has had a clear run, no checks, it's not a public company, he administers the shares in the Trust.’ He drew on his cheroot. ‘I'm going to use this to force a full investigation of the company's affairs. I'm going to have Alexander under the microscope and we'll have a close look at all his pimples and warts.’

Teacher chuckled and picked up the telephone at the first ring, ‘Teacher,’ he chuckled, and then laughed out loud, nodding, ‘Yes,’ and ‘Yes!’ again. He hung up and turned to Nicholas, his face bright red with mirth, fat and round as the setting sun.

‘I have a disappointment for you, Mr. Berg.’ He guffawed. ‘An hour ago a transfer was made to the credit of Ocean Salvage in Bermuda by Christy Marine.’

‘How much?’

‘Every penny, Mr. Berg. In full and final payment. Six million and some odd dollars in the legal currency of the United States of America.’

Nicholas stared at him, uncertain as to which of his emotions prevailed - relief at having the money, or disappointment at being prevented from tearing Duncan Alexander to shreds.

‘He's a high roller and very fast on his feet,’ said Teacher. ‘It wouldn't pay to underestimate a man like Duncan Alexander.’

‘No, it would not,’ Nicholas agreed quietly, knowing that he had done so more than once and each time it had cost him dearly.

‘I wonder if your clerk could find out from British Airways when the next flight leaves for Bermuda?’

‘You are leaving so soon? Will it be in order to mark my brief and send it direct to Bach Wackie in Bermuda?’ Teacher asked delicately.

Bernard Wackie in person was waiting for Nicholas beyond the customs barrier. He was tall and lean and alert, burned by the sun dark as a stick of chew tobacco, and dressed in open-neck shirt and cotton trousers.

‘Nicholas, it's good to see you.’ His handshake was hard and dry and cool. He was under sixty and over forty, it was impossible to get nearer to his age, ‘I'm taking you directly to the office, there is too much to discuss. I don't want to waste time.’ And he took Nicholas’ arm and hurried him through burning sunlight into the shivery cold of the Rolls air-conditioning.

The car was too big for the island's narrow winding roads. Here ownership of automobiles was restricted to one per family unit, but Bernard made the most of his rights.

He was one of those men whose combination of energy and brilliance made it impossible for him to live in England and to subject himself to the punitive taxes of envy.

‘It's hard to be a winner, in a society dedicated to the glorification of the losers,’ he had told Nicholas, and had moved his whole operation to this taxless haven.

To a lesser man it would have been suicide, but Bernard had taken over the top floor of the Bank of Bermuda building, with a magnificent view across Hamilton Harbour, and had fitted out with a marine operations room and a communications system the equal of NATO Command.

From it, he offered a service so efficient, so personally involved, so orientated to every single facet of ship ownership and operation, that not only had his old clients followed him, but others had come flocking.

‘No taxes, Nicholas,’ he smiled, ‘And look at the view.’ The picturesque buildings of Hamilton town were painted in candy colours, strawberries and limes, plum and lemon and across the bay the cedar trees stood tall in the sunlight, and the yachts from the pink-painted clubhouse spread multi-coloured sails across green waters. ‘It's better than London in winter, isn't it?’

‘The same temperature,’ said Nicholas, and glanced up at the air-conditioning.

‘I'm a hot-blooded man,’ Bernard explained, and when his tall nubile secretary entered to his ring, bearing the Ocean Salvage files like a high priestess carrying the sacrament, Bernard fell into an awed silence, concentrating all his attention on her pneumatic bosoms; they bounced and strained against the laws of gravity as though filled with helium.

She flashed a dazzling, painted smile at Nicholas as she placed the files on Bernard's desk, and then she left with her perfectly rounded buttocks under the tightly tailored skirt, swinging and dancing to a distant music. ‘She can type too,’ Bernard assured Nick with a sigh, and shook his head as if to clear it, He opened the top file.

‘Right,’ he began. ‘The deposit from Christy Marine-‘

The money had come in, and only just in time. The next instalment on Sea Witch was already forty-eight hours overdue and Atlantique were becoming highly agitated.

‘Son of a gun,’ said Bernard. ‘You would not think six million was an easy sum of money to get rid of, would you?’

‘You don't even have to try,’ Nick agreed. ‘It just spends itself.’ Then with a scowl, ‘What's this?’

‘They've invoked the escalation clause again, another 3½ %. 'Sea Witch's builders had included a clause that related the contract price to the index cost of steel and the Union labour rates. They had avoided the threatened dockyard strike by capitulating to Union demands, and now the figures came back to Nicholas. They were big fat ugly figures. The clause was a festering canker to Nicholas draining his strength and money.

They worked on through the afternoon, paying, paying and paying. Bunkers and the other running costs of Warlock, interest and capital repayments on the debts of Ocean Salvage, lawyers’ fees, agents fees, the six million whittled away. One of the few payments that gave Nicholas any pleasure was the 12½% salvage money to the crew of Warlock. David Allen's share was almost thirty thousand dollars, Beauty Baker another twenty-five thousand - Nick included a note with that cheque, ‘Have a Bundaberg on me!’

‘Is that all the payments?’ Nicholas asked at last.

‘Isn't it enough,’

‘It's enough.’ Nick felt groggy with jet-lag and from juggling with figures. ‘What's next?’

‘Good news, next.’ Bernard picked up the second file. ‘I think I've squared Esso. They hate you, they have threatened never to use your tugs again, but they are not going to sue.’ Nicholas had breached contract when he deserted the Esso tow and ran south for Golden Adventurer; the breach of contract suit had been hanging since then, It was a relief to have it aside. Bernard Wackie was worth every penny of his hire.

‘Okay. Next?’

It went on for another six unbroken hours, piled on top of the jet-lag that Nicholas had accumulated across the Atlantic.

‘You okay?’ Bernard asked at last. Nicholas nodded though his eyes felt like hard-boiled eggs, and his chin was dark and raspy with beard.

‘You want something to eat?’ Bernard asked, and then Nick shook his head and realized that it was dark outside. ‘Drink?’ You'll need one for what comes next.’

‘Scotch,’ Nicholas agreed, and the secretary brought the tray through, and poured the drinks in another respectful hush.

‘That will be all, Mr. Wackie?’

‘For now, honey,’ Bernard watched her go, and then saluted Nicholas with his glass.

‘I give you the Golden Prince!’ And when Nicholas scowled, he went on swiftly, ‘No, Nicholas, I'm not shafting you. It's for real. You've done it again, The Sheikhs are fixing to make you an offer. They want to buy you out, take over the whole show, liabilities, everything. Of course, they'll want you to run it for them - two years, while you train one of their own men. A hell of a salary,’ he went on crisply, and Nicholas stared at him.

‘How much?’

‘Two hundred grand, plus 2½% profits.’

‘Not the salary,’ Nicholas told him. ‘How much are they offering for the company?’

‘They are Arabs, the first offer is just to stir the pot a little.’

‘How much?’ Nicholas asked impatiently.

‘The sum of five was delicately mentioned.’

‘What do you think they'll go to?’

‘Seven, seven and half - eight, perhaps.’

Through the fuzz of fatigue, far off like a lantern in the window on a winter's night, Nicholas saw the vision of a new life, a life such as Samantha had shown him. A life uncluttered, uncomplicated, shorn of all but joy and purpose.

‘Eight million dollars clear?’ Nicholas voice was husky, and he tried to wipe away the fatigue from his stinging eyelids with thumb and forefinger.

‘Maybe only seven,’ Bernard demurred, ‘but I'd try for eight.’

‘I'll have another drink,’ Nicholas said.

‘That's a splendid idea,’ Bernard agreed, and rang for his secretary with an anticipatory sparkle in his eyes.

Samantha wore her hair in twin braids down her back, and hacked-off denim pants which left her long brown legs bare and exposed a pale sliver of tight round buttock at each step as she walked away. She had sandals on her feet and sun-glasses pushed up on top of her head.

‘I thought you were never coming,’ she challenged Nick as he stepped through the barrier at Miami International, He dropped his bag and fielded her rush against his chest. She clung to him and he had forgotten the clean, sun-drenched smell of her hair.

She was trembling with a suppressed eagerness like a puppy, and it was only when a small quivering sob shook her shoulders that he realized she was weeping.

‘Hey now!’ He lifted her chin, and her eyes were flooded. She snuffled once loudly.

‘What's the trouble, little one?’

‘I'm just so happy,’ Samantha told him, and deeply Nicholas envied the ability to live so near the surface. To be able to cry with joy seemed to him at that moment to be the supreme human accomplishment, He kissed her and she tasted salty with tears. With surprise he felt a choke deep in his own throat.

The jaded airport crowds had to open and trickle around the two of them like water around a rock, and they were oblivious to it all.

Even when they came out of the building into the Florida sunlight, she had both arms around his waist, hampering his stride, as she led him to her vehicle.

‘Good God!’ exclaimed Nicholas, and he shied when he saw it. It was a Chevy van, but its paintwork had been restyled. ‘What's that? '

‘It's a masterpiece,’ she laughed. ‘Isn't it?’ It was rainbowed, in layers of vibrant colour and panels of fantastic landscapes and seascapes.

‘You did that?’ Nick asked, and he took his dark glasses from his breast pocket, and inspected the seagulls and palm trees and flowers through them.

‘It's not that bad,’ she protested. ‘I was bored and depressed without you. I needed something to brighten my life.’

One of the panels depicted the translucent green of a curling wave, and on the face of the wave a pair of human figures on Hawaii boards and a graceful dolphin shape flew in formation together. Nick leaned closer and barely recognized the male figure as himself each detail of the features had been rendered with loving attention, and he came out of it looking something between Clark Gable and Superman - only a little more glamorous.

‘From memory,’ she said proudly.

‘It's tremendous,’ he told her. ‘But I've got bigger biceps, and I'm more beautiful.’

Despite the wild choice of colour and the romantic style, he realized she had real talent.

‘You don't expect me to ride in that - what if one of my creditors saw me!’

‘Get your mind out of its stiff collar and blue suit, mister. You have just signed on for the voyage to never-never land by way of the moon.’

Before she started the engine she looked at him seriously out of those great shining green eyes.

‘How long, Nicholas?’ she asked. ‘How long have we got together this time?’

‘Ten days,’ he told her. ‘Sorry, but I must be back in London by the 25th. There is a big one coming up, the big one. I'll tell you about it.’

‘No.’ She covered her ears with both hands. ‘I don't want to hear about it, not yet.’

She drove the Chevy with careless unforced skill, very fast and efficiently, acknowledging the homage of other male drivers with a grin and a shake of her braids.

When she slipped off highway 95 and parked in the lot of a supermarket, Nicholas raised an eyebrow.

‘Food,’ she explained, and then with a lascivious roll of her eyes, 'I reckon to get mighty hungry later.’

She chose steaks, a bag full of groceries and a jug of California Riesling, and would not let him pay. ‘In this town, you are my guest.’

Then she paid the toll and took the Rickenbacker causeway across the water to Virginia Key.

‘That's the marine division of the University of Miami and that's my lab at the top of the jetty, just beyond that white fishing boat - see it?’

The low buildings were crowded into a corner of the island, between the sea-quarium and the wharves and jetties of the University's town lie the harbour.

‘We aren't stopping,’ Nicholas observed.

‘Are you kidding?’ she laughed at him, ‘I don't need a controlled scientific environment for the experiment I am about to conduct.’

And with no diminution of speed, the Chevy flew across the long bridge between Virginia Key and Key Biscayne, and three miles on she turned off sharply left on a narrow dirt track that twisted through a lush tropical maritime forest of banyan and palmetta and palm, and ended at a clapboard shack just above the water.

‘I live close to the shop,’ Samantha explained, as she clattered up on to the screened porch, her arms full of groceries.

‘This is yours?’ Nicholas asked. He could just make out the tops of big blocks of condominiums on each side; they were incompletely screened by the palms.

‘Pa left it to me. He bought it the year I was born,’ Samantha explained proudly. ‘My ground stretches from there to there.’

A few hundred yards, but Nicholas realized the value of it. Everybody in the world wants to live on the water, and those condominiums were pressing in closely.

‘It must be worth a million.’

‘There is no price on it,’ she said firmly. ‘That's what I tell those awful sweaty little men with their big cigars. Pa left it to me and it's not for sale.’

She had the door open now, bumping it with her denim-clad backside.

‘Don't just stand there, Nicholas,’ she implored him. ‘We've only got ten days.’

He followed her into the kitchen as she dumped her load into the sink, and whirled back to him.

‘Welcome by my house, Nicholas,’ and then as she slid her arms around his waist, jerked his shirt tails out of his belt and slid her hands up his bare back, ‘You'll never know just how welcome. Come, let me show you around - this is the living-room.’

It had spartan furniture, with Indian rugs and pottery, and Samantha's chopped-off denims were discarded in the centre of the floor along with Nicholas shirt.

‘And this - surprise! surprise - is the bed-room.’ She dragged him by one hand, and under the short tee-shirt her bottom reminded him of a chipmunk with its cheeks stuffed with nuts, chewing vigorously.

The tiny bedroom overlooked the beach. The sea breeze fluffed out the curtains and the sound of the low surf breathed like a sleeping giant, a deep regular hiss and sigh that filled the air around them.

The bed was too big for the room, all ornate antique brass, with a cloudy soft mattress and an old-fashioned patchwork quilt in a hundred coloured and patterned squares.

‘I don't think I could have lived another day without you,’ she said, and unwound the thick plaits of her hair. ‘You came like the cavalry, in the very nick of time.’

He reached up and took the golden tresses of hair, winding them thickly around his wrist, twining them in his fingers, and he pulled her gently down beside him.

Suddenly Nick's life was uncluttered and simple again. Suddenly he was young and utterly carefree again. The petty strivings, the subterfuge, the lies and the cheating did not exist in this little universe that encompassed a tiny wooden shack on the edge of the ocean, and a huge brass bed that clanged and rattled and banged and squeaked wholesale, the completely abandoned happiness that was the special miracle called Samantha Silver.

Samantha's laboratory was a square room, built on piles over the water, and the soft hum of the electric pumps blended with the slap of the wavelets below and the burble and blurp of the tanks.

‘This is my kingdom,’ she told him. ‘And these are my subjects.’ There were almost a hundred tanks, like the small glass-sided aquaria for goldfish, and suspended over each of them was a complicated arrangement of coils and bottles and electric wiring.

Nick sauntered across to the nearest of the tanks and peered into it. It contained a single large salt-water clam; the animal was feeding with the double shells agape, the pink soft flesh and frilly gills rippling and undulating in the gentle flow of pumped and filtered sea water. To each half of the shell, thin copper wires were attached with blobs of polyurethane cement.

Samantha came to stand beside him, touching, and he asked her, ’What's happening?’ She touched a switch and immediately the cylindrical scroll above the tank began to revolve slowly and a stylus, after a few preliminary jerks and quivers, began to trace out a regular pattern on the paper scroll, a trough and double peak, the second a fraction lower than the first, and then the trough again.

She said, ‘He's wired and bugged.’

‘You're a member of the CIA,’ he accused.

And she laughed. ‘His heart-beat. I'm passing an electric impulse through the heart - the heart is only a millimetre across - but each spasm changes the resistance and moves the stylus.’ She studied the curve for a moment. ‘This fellow is one very healthy cheerful Spisula solidissima.’

‘Is that his name? Nick asked. ‘I thought he was a clam.’

‘One of fifteen thousand bivalves who use that common generic,’ she corrected.

‘I had to pick an egghead,’ said Nicholas ruefully. ‘But what's so interesting about his heart?’

‘It's the closest and cheapest thing to a pollution metre that we have discovered so far - or rather,’ she corrected herself without false modesty, ‘that I have discovered.’

She took his hand and led him down the long rows of tanks. ‘They are sensitive, incredibly sensitive to any contamination of their environment, and the heart-beat will register almost immediately any foreign element or chemical, organic or otherwise, in such low concentrate that it would take a highly trained specialist with a spectroscope to detect otherwise.’

Nicholas felt his mild attention changing and growing into real interest as Samantha began to prepare samples of common pollutants on the single bench against the fore-wall of the cluttered little laboratory.

‘Here,’ she held up one test tube, ‘aromatic carbons, the more poisonous elements of crude petroleum - and here,’ she indicated the next tube, ‘mercury in a concentration of 100 parts to the million. Did you see the photographs of the human vegetables and the Japanese children with the flesh falling off their bones at Kiojo? That was mercury. Lovely stuff.’

She picked up another tube. ‘PCB, a by-product of the electrical industry, the Hudson River is thick with it. And these, tetrahydrofurane, cyclohexane, methylbenzene - all industrial by-products, but don't let the fancy names throw you. One day they will come back to haunt us , in newspaper headlines, as THF or CMB - one day there will be other human cabbages and babies born without arms or legs.’ She touched the other tubes. ‘Arsenic, old-fashioned Agatha Christie vintage poison. And then here is the real living and breathing bastard daddy of them all - this is cadmium; as a sulphide so it's easily absorbed. In 100 parts to the million it's as lethal as a neutron bomb.’

While he watched, she carried the tray of tubes across to the tanks and set the ECG monitors running. Each began to record the normal double-peaked heart-beat of a healthy clam.

‘Now,’ she said, ‘watch this.’

Under controlled conditions, she began to drip the weak poisoned solutions into the reticulated water systems, a different solution to each of the tanks.

‘These concentrations are so low that the animals will not even be aware of trauma, they will continue to feed and breed without any but long-term indications of systemic poisoning.’

Samantha was a different person, a cool quick-thinking professional. Even the white dust-coat that she had slipped over her tee-shirt altered her image and she had aged twenty years in poise and authority as she passed back and forth along the row of tanks.

‘There,’ she said, with grim satisfaction as the stylus on one recording drum made a slightly double beat at its peak and then just detectably flattened the second peak. ‘Typical aromatic carbon reaction.’

The distorted heart-beat was repeated endlessly on the slowly turning drum, and she passed on to the next tank.

‘See the pulse in the trough, see the fractional speeding up of the heart spasm? That's cadmium in ten parts to the million, at 100 parts it will kill all sea life, at five hundred it will kill man slowly, at seven hundred parts in air or solution it will kill him very quickly indeed.’

Nicholas’ interest became total fascination, as he helped Samantha record the experiments and control the flow and concentration in the tanks. Slowly they increased the dosage of each substance and the moving stylus dispassionately recorded the increasing distress and the final convulsions and spasmodic throes that preceded death.

Nicholas voiced the tickle of horror and revulsion he felt at watching the process of degeneration.

‘It's macabre.’

‘Yes.’ She stood back from the tanks. ‘Death always is. But these organisms have such rudimentary nervous systems that they don't experience pain as we know it.’ She shuddered slightly herself and went on. ‘But imagine an entire ocean poisoned like one of these tanks, imagine the incredible agonies of tens of millions of sea birds, of the mammals, seals and porpoises and whales. Then think of what would happen to man himself .’ Samantha shrugged off her white dust-coat.

‘Now I'm hungry,’ she announced, and then looking up at the fibreglass panels in the roof, ‘No wonder! It's dark already!’

While they cleaned and tidied the laboratory, and made a last check of the pumps and running equipment, Samantha told him, ‘In five hours we have tested over a hundred and fifty samples of contaminated water and got accurate indications of nearly fifty dangerous substances - at a probable cost of fifty cents a sample.’ She switched out the lights.’ To do the same with a gas spectroscope would have cost almost ten thousand dollars and taken a highly specialized team two weeks of hard work.’

‘It's a hell of a trick,’ Nicholas told her. ‘You're a clever lady - I'm impressed, I really am.’

At the psychedelic Chevy van she stopped him, and in the light of the street lamp looked up at him guiltily.

‘Do you mind if I show you off, Nicholas?’

‘What does that mean?’ he asked suspiciously.

‘The gang are eating shrimps tonight, Then they'll sleep over on the boat and have the first shot at fish tagging tomorrow - but we don't have to go. We could just get some more steaks and another jug of wine.’ But he could see she really wanted to go.

She was fifty-five foot, an old purse-seiner with the ungainly wheelhouse forward looking like a sentry box or an old-fashioned pit latrine. Even with her coat of new paint, she had an old-fashioned look.

She was tied up at the end of the University jetty, and as they walked out to her, so they could hear the voices and the laughter coming up from below decks.

‘Tricky Dicky,’Nicholas read her name on the high ugly rounded stern.

‘But we love her,’ Samantha said, and led him across the narrow, rickety gangplank. ‘She belongs to the University. She's only one of our four research vessels. The others are all fancy modern ships, two-hundred-footers, but the Dicky is our boat for short field trips to the gulf or down the Keys, and she's also the faculty clubhouse.’

The main cabin was monastically furnished, bare planking and hard benches, a single long table, but it was as crowded as a fashionable discotheque, packed solid with sunburned young people, girls and boys all in faded jeans and tee-shirts, impossible to judge sexes by clothing or by the length of their sun-tortured and wind-tangled hair.

The air was thick with the rich smell of broiling gulf shrimps and molten butter, and there were gallon jugs of California wine on the table.

‘Hey!’ Samantha shouted above the uproar of voices raised in heated dispute and jovial repartee. ‘This is Nicholas.’

A comparative silence descended on the gathering, and they looked him over with the curious veiled group hostility of any tribe for an interloper, an intruder in a closed and carefully guarded group. Nick returned the scrutiny calmly, met each pair of eyes, while realizing that despite the affected informality of their dress and some of the wildly unkempt hairstyles and the impressive profusion of beards, they were an elite group. There was not a face that was not intelligent, not a pair of eyes that was not alert and quick, and there was that special feeling of pride and self-confidence in all of them.

At the head of the table sat a big impressive figure, the oldest man in the cabin, perhaps Nick's age or a little older, for there were silver strands in his beard and his face was lined and beaten by sun and wind and time.

‘Hi, Nick,’ he boomed. ‘I won't pretend we've never heard of you. Sam has given us all cauliflower ears-‘

‘You cut that out, Tom Parker,’ Samantha stopped him sharply, and there was a ripple of laughter, a relaxation of tension and a casual round of greetings.

‘Hi, Nick, I'm Sally-Anne.’ A pretty girl with china-blue eyes behind wire-framed spectacles put a heavy tumbler of wine into his hand.

‘We are short of glasses, guess you and Sam will have to share.’

She slid up along the bench and gave them a few inches of space and Samantha perched in Nicholas’ lap. The wine was a rough fighting red, and it galloped, booted and spurred across his palate but Samantha sipped her share with the same relish as if it had been a ‘53 Chateau Lafitte, and she nuzzled Nicholas’ ear and whispered:

‘Tom is prof of the Biology Department, he's a honey. After you - he's my most favourite man in the world.’

A woman came through from the galley, carrying a huge platter piled high with bright pink shrimps and a bowl of molten butter. There was a roar of applause for her as she placed the dishes in the centre of the table, and they fell upon the food with unashamed gusto.

The woman was tall with dark hair in braids and a strong capable face, lean and supple in tight breeches, but she was older than the other women and she paused beside Tom Parker and draped one arm across his shoulders in a comfortable gesture of long-established affection.

‘That's Antoinette, his wife.’ The woman heard her name and smiled across at them, and with dark gentle eyes she studied Nicholas and then nodded and made the continental O of thumb and forefinger at Samantha, before slipping back into the galley.

The food did not inhibit the talk, the lively contentious flow of discussion that swung swiftly from banter to deadly seriousness and back again, bright trained informed minds clicking and cannoning off each other with the crispness of ivory billiard balls, while at the same time buttery fingers ripped the whiskered heads off the shrimps, delving for the crescent of sweet white flesh, then leaving greasy fingerprints on the wine tumblers.

As each of them spoke, Samantha whispered their names and credentials. ‘Hank Petersen, he's doing a PhD on the blue-fill tuna - spawning and a trace of its migratory routes. He's the one running the tagging tomorrow.’

‘That's Michelle Rand, she's on loan from UCLA, and she's porpoises and whales.’

Then suddenly they were all discussing indignantly a rogue tanker captain who the week before had scrubbed his tanks in the middle of the Florida straits and left a thirty-mile slick down the Gulf Stream, He had done it under cover of night, and changed course as soon as he was into the Atlantic proper.

‘We finger-printed him,’ Tom Parker like an angry bear, ‘we had him made, dead in the cross hairs.’ Nick knew he was talking of the finger-printing of oil residues, the breakdown of samples of the slick under gas spectroscopy which could match them exactly to the samples taken by the Coast Guard from the offender's tanks. The identification was good enough to bear up in an international court of law. ‘But the trick is getting the son-of-a-bitch into court.’ Tom Parker went on. 'He was fifty miles outside our territorial waters by the time the Coast Guard got to him, and he's registered in Liberia.’

‘We tried to cover cases like that in the set of proposals I put up to the last maritime conference.’ Nick joined the conversation for the first time. He told them of the difficulties of legislating on an international scale, of policing and bringing to justice the blatant transgressors; then he listed for them what had been done so far, what was in process and finally what he believed still should be done to protect the seas.

He spoke quietly, succinctly, and Samantha noticed again, with a swell of pride, how all men listened when Nicholas Berg talked. The moment he paused, they came at him from every direction, using their bright young minds like scalpels, tearing into him with sharp lancing questions. He answered them in the same fashion, sharp and hard, armed with total knowledge of his subject, and he saw the shift in the group attitude, the blooming of respect, the subtle opening of ranks to admit him, for he had spoken the correct passwords and they recognized him as one of their own number, as one of the elite.

At the head of the table, Tom Parker sat and listened, nodding and frowning, sitting in judgement with his arm around Antoinette's slim waist and she stood beside him and played idly with a curl of thick wiry hair on the top of his head.

Tom Parker found fish forty miles offshore where the Gulf Stream was setting blue and warm and fast into the north. The birds were working, falling on folded wings down the backdrop of cumulonimbus storm clouds that bruised the horizon. The birds were bright, white pinpoints of light as they fell, and they struck the dark blue water with tiny explosions of white spray, and went deep. Seconds later they popped to the surface, stretching their necks to force down another morsel into their distended crops, before launching into flight again, climbing in steep circles against the sky to join the hunt again. There were hundreds of them and they swirled and fell like snowflakes.

‘Anchovy,’ grunted Tom Parker, and they could see the agitated surface of the water under the bird flock where the frenzied bait-fish churned. ‘Could be bonito working under them.’

‘No" said Nick. ‘They are blues.’

‘You sure?’ Tom grinned a challenge.

‘The way they are bunching and holding the bait-fish, it's tuna,’ Nick repeated.

‘Five bucks?’ Tom asked, as he swung the wheel over, and Tricky Dicky's big diesel engine boomed as she went on to the top of her speed.

‘You're on,’ Nick grinned back at him, and at that moment, they both saw a fish jump clear. It was a brilliant shimmering torpedo, as long as a man's arm. It went six feet into the air, turned in flight and hit the water again with a smack they heard clearly above the diesel.

‘Blues,’ said Nick flatly. ‘Shoal blues - they'll go twenty pounds each.’

‘Five bucks,’ Tom grunted with disgust.’ Son of a gun, I don't think I can afford you, man,’ and he delivered a playful punch to the shoulder which rattled Nick's teeth, then he turned to the open window of the wheelhouse and bellowed out on to the deck, ‘Okay, kids, they are blues.’ There was a scramble and chatter of excitement as they rushed for lines and tagging poles. It was Hank's show, he was the bluefin tunny expert, he knew as much about their sex habits, their migratory routes and food chains as any man living but when it came to catching them, Nick observed drily, he could probably do a better job as a blacksmith.

Tom Parker was no fisherman either. He ran down the shoal, charging Tricky Dicky through the centre of it, scattering birds and fish in panic - but by sheer chance one of the gang in the stern hooked in, and after a great deal of heaving and huffing and shouted encouragement from his peers, dragged a single luckless baby blue-fin tuna over the rail. It skittered and jumped around the deck, its tail hammering against the planking, pursued by a shrieking band of scientists who slid and slipped in the fish slime, knocked each other down and finally cornered the fish against the rail. The first three attempts to affix the plastic tag were unsuccessful, Hank's lunges with the dart pole becoming wilder as his frustration mounted. He almost succeeded in tagging Samantha's raised backside as she knelt on the deck trying to cradle the fish in both arms.

‘You do this often?’ Nicholas asked mildly.

‘First time with this gang,’ Tom Parker admitted sheepishly. 'Thought you'd never guess.’

By now the triumphant band was solicitously returning the fish to the sea, the barbed dart of the plastic tag embedded dangerously near its vitals; and if that didn't eventually kill it, the rough handling probably would. It had pounded its head on the deck so heavily that blood oozed from the gill covers, It floated away, belly up on the stream oblivious of Samantha's anguished cries of:

‘Swim, fish, get in there and swim!’

‘Mind if we try it my way?’ Nick asked, and Tom relinquished command without a struggle.

Nicholas picked the four strongest and best coordinated of the young men, and gave them a quick demonstration and lecture on how to handle the heavy handlines with the Japanese feather lures, showing them how to throw the bait, and the recovery with an underhand flick that recoiled the line between the feet. Then he gave each a station along the starboard rail, with the second member of each team ready with a tagging pole and Hank Petersen on the roof of the wheel-house to record the fish taken and the numbers of the tags.

They found another shoal within the hour and Nicholas circled up on it, closing steadily at good trolling speed, helping the feeding tuna bunch the shoal of frenzied anchovy on the surface, until he could lock Tricky Dicky's wheel hard down starboard and leave her to describe her own sedate circles around the shoal. Then he hurried out on to the deck.

The trapped and surrounded fish thrashed the surface until it boiled like a porridge of molten, flashing silver; through it drove the fast dark torpedoes of the hungry tuna.

Within minutes Nick had his four fishermen working to the steady rhythm of throwing the lures into the frothing water, almost instantly striking back on the line as a tuna snatched the feathers, and then swinging hand over head, recovering and coiling line fast with minimum effort, swinging the fish out and up with both hands and then catching its streamlined body under the left armpit like a quarter back picking up a long pass, clamping it there firmly, although the cold firm silver bullet shape juddered and quivered and the tail beat in a blur of movement. Then he taught them to slip the hook from the jaw, careful not to damage the vulnerable gills, holding the fish firmly but gently while the assistant pressed the barbed dart into the thick muscle at the back of the dorsal fill. When the fish was dropped back over the side, there were so few after-affects that it almost immediately began feeding again on the packed masses of tiny anchovies.

Each plastic tag was numbered and imprinted with a request in five languages to mail it back to University of Miami with details of date and place of capture, providing a valuable trace of the movements of the shoals in their annual circumnavigation of the globe. From their spawning grounds somewhere in the Caribbean they worked the Gulf Stream north and cast across the Atlantic, then south down and around the Cape of Good Hope with an occasional foray down the length of the Mediterranean Sea although now the dangerous pollution of that landlocked water was changing their habits, From Good Hope east again south of Australia to take a gigantic swing up and around the Pacific, running the gauntlet of the Japanese long-liners and the California tunny men before ducking down under the terrible icy seas of the Horn and back to their spawning grounds in the Caribbean.

They sat up on the wheelhouse as the Dicky ran home in the sunset, drinking beer and talking. Nicholas studied them casually and saw that they possessed so many of the qualities he valued in his fellow humans; they were intelligent and motivated, they were dedicated and free of that particular avarice that mars so many others.

Tom Parker crumpled the empty beer can in a huge fist as easily as if it had been a paper packet, fished two more from the pack beside him and tossed one across to Nick. The gesture seemed to have some special significance and Nicholas saluted him with the can before he drank.

Samantha was snuggled down in luxurious weariness against his shoulder, and the sunset was a magnificence of purple and hot molten crimson. Nicholas thought idly how pleasant it would be to spend the rest of his life doing things like this with people like these.

Tom Parker's office had shelves to the ceiling, and they were sagging with hundreds of bottled specimens and rows of scientific papers and publications.

He sat well back in his swivel chair with ankles crossed neatly in the centre of the cluttered desk.

‘I ran a check on you, Nicholas. Damned nerve, wasn't it? You have my apology.’

‘Was it an interesting exercise?’ Nicholas asked mildly.

‘It wasn't difficult. You have left a trail behind you like a –‘ Tom sought for a comparison, ‘like a grizzly bear through a honey farm. Son of a gun, Nicholas, that's a hell of a track record you've got yourself.’

‘I've kept busy,’ Nicholas admitted.

‘Beer?’ Tom crossed to the refrigerator in the corner that was labelled Zoological Specimens. DO NOT OPEN.

‘It's too early for me.’

'Never too early,’ said Tom and pulled the tag on a dewy can of Millers and then picked up Nicholas’ statement. ‘Yes, you have kept busy. Strange, isn't it, that around some men things just happen.’

Nicholas did not reply, and Tom went on, ‘We need a man around here who can do. It's all right thinking it out, then you need the catalyst to transform thought and intention into action.’ Tom sucked at the can and then licked the froth off his moustache. ‘I know what you have done, I've heard you speak, I've seen you move, and those things count. But most important of all, I know you care. I've been watching you carefully, Nick, and you really care, down deep in your guts, the way we do.’

‘It sounds as though you're offering me a job, Tom.’

‘I'm not going to horse around, Nick, I am offering you a job.’ He waved a huge paw, like a bunch of broiled pork sausages. ‘Hell, I know you're a busy man, but I'd like to romance you into an associate professorship. We'd want a little of your time when it came to hassling and negotiating up in Washington, we'd call for you when we needed real muscle to put our case, when we need the right contacts, somebody with a big reputation to open doors, when we need a man who knows the practical side of the oceans and the men that use them and abuse them.

‘We need a man who is a hard-headed businessman, who knows the economics of sea trade, who has built and run tankers, who knows that human need is of paramount importance, but who can balance the human need for protein and fossil fuels against the greater danger of turning the oceans into watery deserts.’ Tom lubricated his throat with beer, watching shrewdly for some reaction from Nicholas, and when he received no encouragement, he went on more persuasively. ‘We are specialists, perhaps we have the specialist's narrow view; God knows, they think of us as sentimentalists, the lunatic fringe of doomsayers, long-haired intellectual hippies. What we need is a man with real clout in the establishment, - shit, Nicholas, if you walked into a Congressional committee they'd really jerk out of their geriatric trance and switch on their hearing-aids.’Nicholas was silent still and Tom was becoming desperate. What can we offer in return? I know you aren't short of cash, and it would be a lousy twelve thousand a year, but an associate professorship is a nice title. We start out holding hands with that. Then we might start going steady, a full professorship - chair of applied oceanology, or some juicy title like that which we'd think up. I don't know what else we can offer you, Nick, except perhaps the warm good feeling in your guts when you're doing a tough job that has to be done.’ He stopped again, running out of words, and he wagged his big shaggy head sadly.

‘You aren't interested, are you?’ he asked.

Nick stirred himself. ‘When do I start?’ he asked, and as Tom's face split into a great beaming grin, Nick held out his hand. ‘I think I'll take that beer now.’

The water was cool enough to be invigorating. Nick and Samantha swam so far out that the land was almost lost in the lowering gloom of dusk, and then they turned and swam back side by side. The beach was deserted; in their mood, the lights of the nearest condominiums were no more intrusive than the stars, the faint sound of music and laughter no more intrusive than the cry of gulls.

It was the right time to tell her, and he did it in detail beginning with the offer by the Sheikhs to buy out Ocean Salvage and Towage.

‘Will you sell,’ she asked quietly. ‘You won't will you?’

‘For seven million dollars clear? he asked. ‘Do you know how much money that is?’

‘I can't count that far,’ she admitted. ‘But what would you do if you sold? I cannot imagine you playing bowls or golf for the rest of your life.’

‘Part of the deal is that I run Ocean Salvage for them for two years, and then I've been offered a part-time assignment which will fill any spare time I've got left over.’

‘What is it?’

'Associate Professor at Miami University.’ She stopped dead and dragged him around to face her.

‘You're having me on!’ she accused.

‘That's a start only,’ he admitted. ‘In two years or so, when I've finished with Ocean Salvage, there may be a full chair of applied oceanology.’

‘It's not true!’ she said, and took him by the arms, shaking him with surprising strength.

‘Tom, wants me to ram-rod the applied aspects of the environmental research. I'll trouble-shoot with legislators and the maritime conference, a sort of hired gun for the Green-Peacers.’

‘Oh Nicholas, Nicholas!’

‘Sweet Christ!’ he accused. ‘You're crying again.’

‘I can't help it.’ She was in his arms still wet and cold and gritty with beach sand. She clung to him, quivering with joy. ‘Do you know what this means, Nicholas?

You don't, do you? You just don't realize what this means.’

‘Tell me,’he invited. ‘What does it mean?’

‘What it means is that, in future, we can do everything together, not just munch food and go boom in bed - but everything, work and play and, and live together like a man and woman should!’ She sounded stunned and frightened by the magnitude of the vision.

‘The prospect daunts me not at all,’ he murmured gently, and lifted her chin.

They washed off the salt and the sand, crowding together into the thick, perfumed steam of the shower cubicle and afterwards they lay together on the patchwork quilt in the darkness with the sound of the sea as background music to the plans and dreams they wove together.

Every time they both descended to the very frontiers of sleep, one of them would think of something vitally important and prod the other awake to say it.

‘I've got to be in London on Tuesday.’

‘Don't spoil it all, now,’ she murmured sleepily.

‘And then we're launching Sea Witch on the 7th April.’

‘I'm not listening,’ she whispered. ‘I've got my fingers in my ears.’

‘Will you launch her - I mean break the bottle of bubbly and bless her?’

‘I've just taken my fingers out again.’

‘Jules would love it.’

‘Nicholas, I cannot spend my life commuting across the Atlantic, not even for you. I've got work to do.’

‘Peter will be there, I'll work that as a bribe.’

'That's unfair pressure,’ she protested.

‘Will you come?’

‘You know I will,’ you sexy bastard. I wouldn't miss it for all the world.’ She moved across the quilt and found his ear with her lips. ‘I am honoured.

‘Both of you are sea witches,’ Nick told her.

‘And you are my warlock.’

‘Sea witch and warlock,’ he chuckled. 'Together we will work miracles.’

‘Look, I know it's terribly forward of me, but seeing that we are both wide awake, and it's only two o'clock in the morning I would be super ultra-grateful if you could work one of your little miracles for me right now.’

‘It will be a great pleasure,’ Nick told her.

Nicholas was early, he saw as he came out of the American Consulate and glanced at his Rolex, so he moderated his pace across the Place de la Concorde, despite the gentle misty rain that settled in minute droplets on the shoulders of his trench coat.

Lazarus was at the rendezvous ahead of him, standing under one of the statues in the corner of the square closest to the French Naval headquarters.

He was heavily muffled against the cold, dressed all in sombre blue with a long cashmere scarf wound around his throat and a dark blue hat pulled down so low as to conceal the pale smooth bulge of his forehead.

‘Let's find a warm place,’ Nick suggested, without greeting the little man.

‘No,’ said Lazarus, looking up at him through the thick distorting lenses of his spectacles. ‘Let us walk.’ And he led the way through the underpass on to the promenade above the embankment of the Seine, and set off in the direction of the Petit Palais.

In the middle of such an inclement afternoon they were the only strollers, and they walked in silence three or four hundred yards while Lazarus satisfied himself absolutely of this, and while he adjusted his mincing little steps to Nick's stride. It was like taking Toulouse-Lautrec for a stroll, Nick smiled to himself . Even when Lazarus began speaking, he kept glancing back over his shoulder, and once when two bearded Algerian students in combat jackets overtook them, he let them get well ahead before he went on.

‘You know there will be nothing in writing?’ he piped.

‘I have a recorder in my pocket,’ Nick assured him.

‘Very well, you are entitled to that.’

‘Thank you,’ murmured Nick dryly.

Lazarus paused, it was almost as though a new reel was being fitted into the computer, and when he began talking again, his voice had a different timbre, a monotonous almost electronic tone, as though he was indeed an automaton.

First, there was a recital of share movements in the thirty-three companies which make up the Christy Marine complex, every movement in the previous eighteen months.

The little man reeled them off steadily, as though he were actually reading from the share registers of the companies. He must have had access, Nicholas realized, to achieve such accuracy. He had the date, the number of the shares, the transferor and transferee, even the transfer of shares in Ocean Salvage and Towage to Nicholas himself, and the reciprocal transfer of Christy Marine stock, was faithfully detailed, confirming the accuracy of Lazarus’ other information. It was all an impressive exhibition of total knowledge and total recall, but much too complicated for Nicholas to make any sense of it. He would have to study it carefully. All that he would hazard was that somebody was putting up a smoke-screen.

Lazarus stopped on the corner of the Champs Elysees and the rue de la Boetie. Nicholas glanced down at him and saw his shapeless blob of a nose was an unhealthy purplish pink in the cold, and that his breathing had coarsened and laboured with the exertion of walking. Nick realized suddenly that the little man was probably asthmatic, and as if to confirm this, he took a little silver and turquoise pill-box from his pocket and slipped a single pink capsule into his mouth before leading Nicholas into the foyer of a movie house and buying two tickets.

It was a porno movie, a French version of Deep Throat entitled Gorge Profonde. The print was scratched and the French dubbing was out of synchronization. The cinema was almost empty, so they found two seats in isolation at the rear of the stalls.

Lazarus stared unblinkingly at the screen, as he began the second part of his report. This was a detailed breakdown of cash movements within the Christy Marine Group, and Nick was again amazed at the man's penetration.

He drew a verbal picture of the assemblage of enormous sums of money, marshalled and channelled into orderly flows by a master tactician. The genius of Duncan Alexander was as clearly identifiable as that flourishing signature with the flamboyant A and X which Nicholas had seen him dash off with studied panache. Then suddenly the cash-flow was not so steady and untroubled, there were eddies and breaks, little gaps and inconsistencies that nagged at Nicholas like the false chimes of a broken clock. Lazarus finished this section of his report with a brief summation of the Group's cash and credit position as at a date four days previously and Nicholas realized that the doubts were justified. Duncan had run the Group out along a knife-edge.

Nicholas sat hunched down in the threadbare velvet seat, both hands thrust into the pockets of his trench-coat, watching the incredible feats of Miss Lovelace on the screen, without really seeing them, while beside him Lazarus took an aerosol can from his pocket, screwed a nozzle on to it and noisily sprayed a fine mist down his own throat. It seemed to relieve him almost immediately.

‘Insurance and marine underwriting of vessels owned by the Christy Marine Group of companies.’ He began again with names and figures and dates, and Nicholas picked up his own trend. Duncan was using his own captive company, London and European Insurance and Banking, to lead the risk on all his vessels, and then he was reinsuring in the marketplace, spreading part of the risk, but carrying a whacking deductible himself, the principle of self-insurance that Nicholas had opposed so vigorously, and which had rebounded so seriously upon Duncan's head with the salvage of Golden Adventurer.

The last of the vessels in Lazarus recital was Golden Dawn, and Nicholas shifted restlessly in his seat at the mention of the name, and almost immediately he realized that something strange was taking place.

‘Christy Marine did not apply for a Lloyd's survey of this vessel.’ Nicholas knew that already. ‘But she has been rated first class by the continental surveyors.’ It was a much easier rating to obtain, and consequently less acceptable than the prestigious at Lloyd's.

Lazarus went on, lowering his voice slightly as another patron entered the almost deserted cinema and took a seat two rows in front of them.

‘And insurance has been effected outside Lloyd's.’ The risk was led by London and European Insurance. Again, Duncan was self-insuring, Nicholas noted grimly, but not all of it. ‘And further lines were written by –‘ Lazarus listed the other companies which carried a part of the risk, with whom Duncan had re-insured. But it was all too thin, too nebulous. Again, only careful study of the figures would enable Nicholas to analyse what Duncan was doing, how much was real insurance and how much was bluff to convince his financiers that the risk was truly covered, and their investment protected.

Some of the names of the re-insurers were familiar, they had been on the list of transferees who had taken stock positions in Christy Marine.

‘Is Duncan buying insurance with capital?’ Nicholas pondered. Was he buying at desperate prices. He must have cover, of course. Without insurance the finance houses, the banks and institutions which had loaned the money to Christy Marine to build the monstrous tanker would dig in against Duncan. His own shareholders would raise such hell - No, Duncan Alexander had to have cover, even if it was paper only, without substance, a mere incestuous circle, a snake eating itself tail first.

Oh, but the trail was so cleverly confused, so carefully swept and tied up, only Nicholas’ knowledge of Christy Marine made him suspicious, and might take a team of investigators years to unravel the tortured tapestry of deceit. In the first it had occurred to Nicholas that the easiest way to stop Duncan Alexander was to leak his freshly gleaned suspicions to Duncan's major creditors, to those who had financed the building of Golden Dawn, But he realized that this was not enough. There were no hard facts, it was all inference and innuendo. By the time the facts could be exhumed and laid out in all their putrefaction for autopsy, Golden Dawn would be on the high seas, carrying a million tons of crude. Duncan might have won sufficient time to make his profit and sell out to some completely uncontrollable Greek or Chinaman, as he had boasted he would do. It would not be so simple to stop Duncan Alexander, it was folly to have believed that for one moment. Even if his creditors were made aware of the flimsy insurance cover over Golden Dawn, were they too deeply in already? Would they not then accept the risks, spreading them where they could, and simply twist the financial rope a little tighter around Duncan's throat. No, it was not the way to stop him, Duncan had to be forced to remodify the giant tanker's hull, forced to make her an acceptable moral risk, forced to accept the standard Nicholas had originally stipulated for the vessel.

Lazarus had finished the insurance portion of his report and he stood up abruptly, just as Miss Lovelace was about to attempt the impossible. With relief, Nick followed him down the aisle and into the chill of a Parisian evening, and they breathed the fumes that the teeming city exhaled as Lazarus led him back eastwards through the VIII Arrondissement with those little dancing steps, while he recited the details of the charters of all Christy Marine's vessels, the charterer, the rates, the dates of expiry of contract; and Nicholas recognized most of them, contracts that he himself had negotiated, or those that had been renewed on expiry with minor alterations to the terms. He was relying on the recorder in his pocket, listening only with the surface layer of his mind, pondering all he had heard so far from this extraordinary little man - so that when it came he almost did not realize what he was hearing.

‘On 10th January Christy Marine entered a contract of carriage with Orient Amex. The tenure is ten years. The vessel to be employed is the Golden Dawn, The rate is 10 cents US per hundred ton miles with a minimum annual guaranteed usage Of 75,000 nautical miles.’

Nicholas registered the trigger word Golden Dawn and then he assimilated it all.

The price, ten cents per hundred miles, that was wrong, high, much too high, ridiculously high in this depressed market. Then the name, Orient Amex - what was there about it that jarred his memory?

He stopped dead, and a following pedestrian bumped him, Nicholas shouldered him aside thoughtlessly and stood thinking, ransacking his mind for buried items of information. Lazarus had stopped also and was waiting patiently, and now Nicholas laid a hand on the little man's shoulder.

‘I need a drink.’

He drew him into a brasserie which was thick with steam from the coffee machine and the smoke of Caporal and Disque Bleu, and sat him at a tiny table by the window overlooking the sidewalk.

Primly, Lazarus asked for a Vittel water and sipped it with an air of virtue, while Nicholas poured soda into his whisky.

‘Orient Amex,’ Nicholas asked, as soon as the waiter had left. ‘Tell me about it.’

‘That is outside my original terms of reference,’ Lazarus demurred delicately.

‘Charge me for it,’ Nicholas invited, and Lazarus paused as the computer reels clicked in his mind, then he began to speak.

‘Orient Amex is an American-registered company, with an capital of twenty-five million shares at a par value of ten dollars –‘ Lazarus recited the dry statistics. The company is presently undertaking substantial dry-land exploration in Western Australia and Ethiopia, and offshore exploration within the territorial waters of Norway and Chile. It has erected a refinery at Galveston in Texas to operate under the new atomic catalyst cracking process, first employed at its pilot plant on the same site. The plant is projected for initial operation in June this year, and full production in five years.

It was all vaguely familiar to Nicholas, the names, the process of cracking the low-value high-carbon molecules, breaking up the carbon atoms and reassembling them in volatile low-carbon molecules of high value.

The company operates producing wells in Texas, and in the Santa Barbara offshore field, in Southern Nigeria, and has proven crude reserves in the El Barras field of Kuwait, which will be utilized by the new cracking plant in Galveston.

‘Good God,’ Nicholas stared at him ‘The El Barras field - but it's cadmium-contaminated, it's been condemned by-‘

‘The El Barras field is a high cadmium field, naturally enriched with the catalyst necessary for the new process.’

‘What are the cadmium elements?’ Nicholas demanded.

‘The western area of the El Barras field has sampled at 2,000 parts per million, and the north and eastern anticline have sampled as high as 42,000 parts per million.’ Lazarus recited the figures pedantically. ‘The American and Nigerian crudes will be blended with the El Barras crudes during the revolutionary cracking process. It is projected that the yield of low-carbon volatiles will be increased from 40% to 85 % by this process, making it five to eight times more to profitable, and extending the life of the world's known reserves of crude petroleum by between ten and fifteen years.’

As he listened, Nicholas had a vivid mental image of the stylus in Samantha's laboratory recording the death throes of a cadmium-poisoned clam. Lazarus was talking on dispassionately. ‘During the cracking process, the cadmium sulphide will be reduced to its pure metallic, non-toxic form, and will be a valuable by-product, reducing the costs of refining.

Nicholas shook his head in disbelief, and he spoke aloud. ‘Duncan is going to do it. Across two oceans a million tons at a time, in that vulnerable jerry-built monster of his, Duncan is going to do what no other ship-owner has ever dared to do - he's going to carry the cad-rich crudes of El Barras!’

From the balcony windows of his suite in the Ritz, Nicholas could look out across the Place Vendome at the column in the centre of the square with its spiral bas-relief made from the Russian and Austrian guns and commemorating the little Corsican’s feats of arms against those two nations. While he studied the column and waited for his connection, he did a quick calculation and realized that it would be three o'clock in the morning on the eastern seaboard of North America. At least he would find her at home.

Then he smiled to himself. If she wasn't at home, he'd want to know the reason why.

The telephone rang and he picked it up without turning away from the window.

There was a confused mumbling and Nicholas asked, ‘Who is this?’

'It's Sam Silver - what's the time? Who is it? Good God, it's three o'clock. What do you want?’

‘Tell that other guy to put his pants on and go home.’

‘Nicholas!’ There was a joyous squeal, followed immediately by a crash and clatter that made Nicholas wince and lift the receiver well away from his ear.

‘Oh damn it to hell, I've knocked the table over. Nicholas, are you there? Speak to me, for God's sake!’

‘I love you.’

‘Say that again, please. Where are you?’

‘Paris. I love you.’

‘Oh,’her tone drooped miserably. ‘You sound so close. I thought -' Then she rallied gamely. I love you too - how's himself?

‘On the dole.’

‘Who is she?’

‘Dole is unemployment insurance – welfare.’ He sought the American equivalent. ‘I mean he is temporarily unemployed.’

‘Great. Keep him that way. Did I tell you I love you, I forget?’

‘Wake up. Shake yourself. I've got something to tell you.’

‘I'm awake - well, almost anyway.’

‘Samantha, what would happen if somebody dumped a million tons Of 40,000 parts concentration of cadmium sulphide in an emulsion of aromatic Arabian crude into the Gulf Stream, say thirty nautical miles off Key West?’

‘That's a freaky question, Nicholas. For three in the morning, that's a bomber.’

‘What would happen?’ he insisted.

‘The crude would act as a transporting medium,’ she was struggling to project a scenario through her sleepiness, ‘it would spread out on the surface to a thickness of quarter of an inch or so, so you'd end up with a slick of a few thousand miles long and four or five hundred wide, and it would keep going.’

‘What would be the results?’

‘It would wipe out most of the marine life on the Bahamas and on the eastern seaboard of the States, no, correct that - it would wipe out all marine life, that includes the spawning grounds of the tuna, the freshwater eels and the sperm whale, and it would contaminate –‘ she was coming fully awake now, and a stirring horror altered her tone –‘You're macabre, Nicholas, what a sick thing to think about, especially at three in the morning.’

‘Human life?’ the asked.

‘Yes, there would be heavy loss,’ she said. ‘As sulphide, it would be readily absorbed and in that concentration it would be poisonous on contact, fishermen, vacationers, anybody who walked on a contaminated beach.’ She was truly beginning to realize the enormity of it. ‘A large part of the population of the cities on the east coast - Nicholas, it could amount to hundreds of thousands of human beings, and if it was carried beyond America on the Gulf Stream, the Newfoundland Banks, Iceland, the North Sea, it would poison the cod fisheries, it would kill everything, man, fish, bird and animal. Then the tail of the Gulf Stream twists around the British Isles and the north continent of Europe - but why are you asking me this, what kind of crazy guessing game is this, Nicholas?’

‘Christy Marine has signed a ten-year contract to carry one million ton loads of crude from the El Barras field on the South Arabian Gulf to the Orient Amex refinery in Galveston. The El Barras crude has a cadmium sulphide constituent of between 2,000 and 40,000 parts per million.’

Now there was trembling outrage in her voice as she whispered, ‘A million tons! That's some sort of genocide, Nicholas, there has probably never been a more deadly cargo in the history of seafaring.’

‘In a few weeks time Golden Dawn will run down her ways at St Nazaire and when she does, the seeds of catastrophe will be sewn upon the oceans.’

‘Her route from the Arabian Gulf takes her around Good Hope.’

‘One of the most dangerous seas in the world, the home of the hundred-year wave,’ Nicholas agreed.

‘Then across the southern Atlantic-‘

‘-and into the bottle-neck of the Guff Stream between Key West and Cuba, into the Devil's Triangle, the breeding ground of the hurricanes-‘

‘You can't let them do it, Nicholas,’ she said quietly. ‘You just have to stop them.’

‘It won't be easy, but I'll be working hard on it this side, there are a dozen tricks I am going to try, but you have to take over on your side,’ he told her. ‘Samantha, you go get Tom Parker. Get him out of bed, if necessary. He has, to hit Washington with the news, hit all the media - television, radio and the press. A confrontation with Orient Amex, challenge them to make a statement.’

Samantha picked up the line he was taking. ‘We'll get the Green-Peacers to picket the Orient Amex refinery in Galveston, the one which will process the cadmium crudes. We'll have every environmental agency in the country at work - we'll raise a stink like that of a million corpses,’ she promised.

‘Fine,’ he said. ‘You do all that, but don't forget to get your chubby little backside across here for the launching of Sea Witch.

'Chubby obese, or chubby nice?’ she demanded.

‘Chubby beautiful,’ he grinned. ‘And I'll have room service ready to send up the food, in a front-end loader.’

Nicholas sat over the telephone for the rest of the day, having his meals brought up to the suite, while he worked systematically down the long list of names he had drawn up with the help of the tape-recording of Lazarus’ report.

The list began with all those who it seemed had loaned capital to Christy Marine for the construction of Golden Dawn, and then went on to those who had written lines of insurance on the hull, and on the pollution cover for the tanker.

Nicholas dared not be too specific in the summation he gave to each of them, he did not want to give Duncan Alexander an opportunity to throw out a smoke-screen of libel actions against him. But in each case, Nicholas spoke to the top men, mostly men he knew well enough to use their Christian names, and he said just enough to show that he knew the exact amount of their involvement with Christy Marine, to suggest they re-examine the whole project, especially with regard to Golden Dawn's underwriting and to her contract of carriage with Orient Amex.

In the quiet intervals between each telephone call, or while a name was tracked down by a secretary, Nicholas sat over the Place Vendome and carefully re-examined himself and his reasons for what he was doing.

It is so very easy for a man to attribute to himself the most noble motives. The sea had given Nicholas a wonderful life, and had rewarded him in wealth, reputation and achievement, Now it was time to repay part of that debt, to use some of that wealth to protect and guard the oceans, the way a prudent farmer cherishes his soil. It was a fine thought, but when he looked below its shining surface, he saw the shape and movement of less savoury creatures, like the shadows of shark and barracuda in the depths.

There was pride. Golden Dawn had been his creation, work, was going to be the culmination of a laurel crown on his career. But it had been taken from him, and bastardized - and when it failed, when the whole marvellous concept collapsed in disaster and misery, Nicholas Berg's name would still be on it. The world would remember then that the whole grandiose design had originated with him.

There was pride, and then there was hatred. Duncan Alexander had taken his woman and child. Duncan Alexander had wrested his very life from him. Duncan Alexander was the enemy, and by Nicholas’ rules, he must be fought with the same single-mindedness, with the same ruthlessness, as he did everything in his life.

Nicholas poured himself another cup of coffee and lit a cheroot; brooding alone in the magnificence of his suite, he asked himself the question:

‘If it had been another man in another ship who was going to transport the El Barras crudes - would I have opposed him so bitterly?’

The question needed no formal reply. Duncan Alexander was the enemy.

Nicholas picked up the telephone, and placed the call he had been delaying. He did not need to look in the red calf-bound notebook for the number of the house in Eaton Square.

‘Mrs. Chantelle Alexander, please.’

‘I am sorry, sir. Mrs. Alexander is at Cap Ferrat.’

‘Of course,’ he muttered. ‘Thank you.’

‘Do you want the number?’

‘That's all right, I have it.’ He had lost track of time. He dialled again, this time down to the Mediterranean coast.

‘This is the residence of Mrs. Alexander. Her son Peter Berg speaking.’

Nicholas felt the rush of emotion through his blood, so that it burned his cheeks and stung his eyes.

‘Hello, my boy.’ Even in his own ears his voice sounded stilted, perhaps pompous.

‘Father,’ undisguised delight. ‘Dad, how are you - sir?’

‘Did you get my letters?’

‘No, I didn't, where did you send them?’

"The flat - in Queen's Gate.’

‘I haven't been back there for,’ Nicholas thought, ‘for nearly a month. I got your cards, Dad, the one from Bermuda and the one from Florida. I just wrote to tell you -' and there was a recital of schoolboy triumphs and disasters.

‘That's tremendous, Peter. I'm really proud.’

Nicholas imagined the face of his son as he listened, and his heart was squeezed - by guilt, that he could do so little, could give him so little of his time, squeezed by longing for what he had lost. For it was only at times such as these that he could admit how much he missed his son.

‘That's great, Peter -' The boy was trying to tell it all at the same time, gabbling out the news he had stored so carefully, flitting from subject to subject, as one thing reminded him of another. Then, of course, the inevitable question:

‘When can I come to you, Dad?’

"I'll have to arrange that with your mother, Peter. But it will be soon. I promise you that.’ Let's get away from that, Nick thought, desperately.’ How is Apache? Have you raced her yet these holidays? ‘

"Oh yes, Mother let me have a new set of Terylene sails, in red and yellow. I raced her yesterday.’ Apache had not actually been placed first in the event, but Nicholas gained the impression that the blame lay not on her skipper but rather on the vagaries of the wind, the unsporting behaviour of the other competitors who bumped when they had the weather gauge, and finally the starter who had wanted to disqualify Apache for beating the gun. But, Peter went on, ‘I'm racing again on Saturday morning –‘

‘Peter, where is your mother?’

‘She's down at the boathouse.’

‘Can you put this call through there? I must speak to her, Peter.’

‘Of course. The disappointment in the child's voice was almost completely disguised. ‘Hey, Dad. You promised, didn't you. It will be soon?’

‘I promised.’

‘Cheerio, sir.’

There was a clicking and humming on the line and then suddenly her voice, with its marvelous timbre and serenity.

‘C'es t Chantelle Alexander qui parle.’

‘C'est Nicholas ici.’

‘Oh, my dear. How good to hear your voice. How are you?’

‘Are you alone?’

‘No, I have friends lunching with me. The Contessa is here with his new boyfriend, a matador no less!’

The "Contessa” was an outrageously camp and wealthy homosexual who danced at Chantelle's court. Nicholas could imagine the scene on the wide paved terrace, screened from the cliffs above by the sighing pines and the rococo pink boathouse with its turrets and rusty-coloured tiles. There would be gay and brilliant company under the colourful umbrellas.

‘Pierre and Mimi sailed across from Cannes for the day.’ Pierre was the son of the largest manufacturer of civil and military jet aircraft in Europe. ‘And Robert –‘

Below the terrace was the private jetty and small beautifully equipped yacht basin. Her visitors would have moored their craft there, the bare masts nodding lazily against the sky and the small Mediterranean-blue wavelets lapping the stone jetty. Nicholas could hear the laughter and the tinkle of glasses in the background, and he cut short the recital of the guest list.

‘Is Duncan there?’

‘No, he's still in London - he won't be out until next week.’

‘I have news. Can you get up to Paris?’

‘It's impossible, Nicky.’ Strange how the pet name did not jar from her.’ I must be at Monte Carlo tomorrow, I'm helping Grace with the Spring Charity.’

‘It's important, Chantelle.’

‘Then there's Peter. I don't like to leave him. Can't you come here? There is a direct flight at nine tomorrow. I'll get rid of the house guests so we can talk in private.’

He thought quickly, then ‘All right, will you book me a suite at the Negresco?’

‘Don't be silly, Nicky. We've thirteen perfectly good bedrooms here - we are both civilized people and Peter would love to see you, you know that.’

The Cote d'Azur was revelling in a freakish burst of early spring weather when Nicholas came down the boarding ladder at Nice Airport, and Peter was waiting for him at the boundary fence, hopping up and down and waving both hands above his head like a semaphore signaller. But when Nicholas came through the gate he regained his composure and shook hands formally.

‘It's jolly good to see you, Dad.’

‘I swear you've grown six inches!’ said Nicholas, and on impulse stooped and hugged the child. For a moment they clung to each other, and it was Peter who pulled away first. Both of them were embarrassed by that display of affection for a moment, then quite deliberately Nicholas placed his hand on Peter's shoulder and squeezed.

‘Where is the car?’ He kept his hand on the child's shoulder as they crossed the airport foyer, and as Peter became more accustomed to this unusual gesture of affection, so he pressed closer to his father, and seemed to swell with pride.

Characteristically, Nicholas wondered what had changed about him that made it easier for him to act naturally towards those he loved. The answer was obvious, it was Samantha Silver who had taught him to let go.

‘Let go, Nicholas-' He could almost hear her voice now.

The chauffeur was new, a silent unobtrusive man, and there were only the two of them in the back seat of the Rolls on the drive back through Nice, and along the coast road.

‘Mother has gone across to the Palace. She won't be back until dinner time.’

‘Yes, she told me. We've got the day to ourselves,’ Nicholas grinned, as the chauffeur turned in through the electric gates and white columns that guarded the entrance to the estate. ‘What are we going to do?’

They swam and they played tennis and took Peter's Arrowhead-class yacht Apache on a long reach up the coast as far as Menton and then raced back, gull-winged and spinnaker set on the wind with the spray kicking up over the bows and flicking into their faces. They laughed a lot and they talked even more, and while Nicholas changed for dinner, he found himself caught up in the almost post-coital melancholy of too much happiness - happiness that was transitory and soon must end. He tried to push the sadness aside, but it persisted as he dressed in a white silk roll-neck and double-breasted blazer and went down to the terrace room.

Peter was there before him, early as a child on Christmas morning, his hair still wet and slicked down from the shower and his face glowing pinkly from the sun and happiness.

‘Can I pour you a drink, Dad?’ he asked eagerly, already hovering over the silver drinks tray.

‘Leave a little in the bottle,’ Nicholas cautioned him not wanting to deny him the pleasure of performing this grown-up service, but with a healthy respect for the elephantine tots that Peter dispensed in a sense of misplaced generosity.

He tasted the drink cautiously, gasped, and added more soda, 'That's fine,’ he said, Peter looked proud, and at that moment Chantelle came down the wide staircase into the room.

Nicholas found it impossible not to stare. Was it possible she had grown more lovely since their last meeting or had she merely taken special pains this evening?

She was dressed in ivory silk, woven gossamer fine, so it floated about her body as she moved, and as she crossed the last ruddy glow of the dying day that came in from the french windows of the terrace, the light struck through the sheer material and put the dainty line of her legs into momentary silhouette. Closer to him, he saw the silk was embroidered with the same thread, ivory on ivory, marvelous understatement of elegance, and under it the shadowy outline of her breasts, those fine shapely breasts that he remembered so well, and the faint dusky rose suggestion of her nipples. He looked away quickly and she smiled.

‘Nicky,’ she said, ‘I'm so sorry to have left you alone.’

‘Peter and I have had a high old time!’ he said.

She had emphasized the shape and size of her eyes, and the planes of the bone structure of her cheeks and jawline, with a subtlety that made it appear she wore no make-up, and her hair had a springing electrical fire to it, a rich glowing sable cloud about the small head. The honeyed ivory of her skin had tanned to the velvety texture of a cream-coloured rose petal across her bare shoulders and arms.

He had forgotten how relaxed and gracious she could be, and this magnificent building filled with its treasures standing in its pine forest high above the darkening ocean and the fairy-lights of the coast was her natural setting. She filled the huge room with a special glow and gaiety, and she and Peter shared an impish sense of fun that had them all laughing at the old well-remembered jokes.

Nicholas could not sustain his resentment, could not bring himself to dwell on her betrayal in this environment, so the laughter was easy and the warmth un-contrived. When they went through to the small informal dining-room, they sat at the table as they had done so often before; they seemed to be transported back in time to those happy almost forgotten years.

There were moments which might have jarred, but Chantelle's instinct was so certain that she could skirt delicately around these. She treated Nicholas as an honoured guest, not as the master of the house; instead she made Peter the host. ‘Peter darling, will you carve for us?’ and the boy's pride and importance was almost overwhelming, although the bird looked as though it had been caught in a combine-harvester by the time he had finished with it. Chantelle served food and wine, a chicken stuffed in Creole style and a petit Chablis, that had no special associations from the past; and the choice of music was Peter's. ‘Music to develop ulcers by,’ as Nicholas remarked aside, to Chantelle.

Peter fought a valiant rearguard action to delay the passage of time, but finally resigned himself when Nicholas told him, ‘I'll come and see you up to bed.’ He waited while Peter cleaned his teeth with an impressive vigour that might have continued beyond midnight if Nicholas had not protested mildly. When at last he was installed between the sheets, Nicholas stooped over him and the boy wrapped both arms around his neck with a quiet desperation.

‘I'm so happy,’ he whispered against Nicholas neck and when they kissed he crushed Nicholas lips painfully with his mouth , ‘Wouldn't it be fabulous if we could be like this always?’ he asked. "If you didn't have to go away again, Dad?’

Chantelle had changed the wild music to the muted haunting melodies of Liszt, and as he came back into the room she was pouring cognac into a thin crystal balloon.

‘Did he settle down?’ she asked, and then answered herself immediately. ‘He's exhausted, although he doesn't know it.’

She brought him the cognac and then turned away and went out through the doors on to the terrace. He followed her out, and they stood at the stone balustrade side by side. The air was clear but chill.

‘It's beautiful,’ she said. The moon paved a wide silver path across the surface of the sea. ‘I always thought that the highway to my dreams.’

‘Duncan,’ he said. ‘Let's talk about Duncan Alexander,’ and she shivered slightly, folding her arms across her breasts and grasping her own naked shoulders, ‘What do you want to know?’

‘In what terms did you give him control of your shares?’

‘As an agent, my personal agent.’

‘With full discretion?’ She nodded, and he asked next, ‘Did you have an escape clause? In what circumstances can you reclaim control?’

‘The dissolution of marriage,’ she said, and then shook her head. ‘But I think I knew that no court would uphold the agreement if I wanted to change it. It's too Victorian. Anytime I want to I could simply apply to have the appointment of Duncan as my agent set aside.’

‘Yes, I think you're right,’Nicholas agreed. ‘But it might take a year or more, unless you could prove malafides, unless you could prove he deliberately betrayed the trust of agency.’

‘Can I prove that, Nicky?’ She turned to him now, lifting her face to him. ‘Has he betrayed that trust?’

‘I don't know yet,’ Nicholas told her cautiously, and she cut in.

‘I've made a terrible fool of myself, haven't I?’ He kept silent, and she went on tremulously, ‘I know there is no way I can apologize to you for what I did. There is no way that I can make it up to you, but believe me, Nicholas please believe me when I tell you, I have never regretted anything so much in all my life.’

‘It's past, Chantelle. It's over. There is no profit in looking back.’

‘I don't think there is another man in the world who would do what you are doing now, who would repay deceit and betrayal with help and comfort. I just wanted to say that.’

She was standing very close to him now, and in the cool night he could feel the warmth of her flesh across the inches that separated them, and her perfume had a subtlety altered fragrance on that creamy skin. She always wore perfume so well, the same way she wore her clothes.

‘It's getting cold,’ he said brusquely, took her elbow and steered her back into the light, out of that dangerous intimacy. ‘We still have a great deal to discuss.’

He paced the thick forest-green carpet, quickly establishing a beat as regular as that of a sentry, ten paces from the glass doors, passing in front of where she sat in the centre of the wide velvet couch, turning just before he reached the headless marble statue of a Greek athlete from antiquity that guarded the double oaken doors into the lobby, and then back in front of her again. As he paced, he told her in carefully prepared sequence all that he had learned from Lazarus.

She sat like a bird on the point of flight, turning her head to watch him, those huge dark eyes seeming to swell larger as she listened.

It was not necessary to explain it to her in layman's language, she was Arthur Christy's daughter, she understood when he told her how he suspected that Duncan Alexander had been forced to self-insure the hull of Golden Dawn and how he had used Christy stock to buy re-insurance, stock that he had probably already pledged to finance construction of the vessel.

Nicholas reconstructed the whole inverted pyramid of Duncan Alexander's machinations for her to examine, and almost immediately she saw how vulnerable, how unstable it was.

‘Are you certain of all this?’ she whispered, and her face was drained of all its lustrous rose tints.

He shook his head. ‘I've reconstructed the Tyrannosaurus from a jawbone,’ he admitted frankly. ‘The shape of it might be a little different, but one thing I am certain of is that it's a big and dangerous beast.

‘Duncan could destroy Christy Marine,’ she whispered again. ‘Completely!’ She looked around slowly, at the house - at the room and its treasures, the symbols of her life. ‘He has risked everything that's mine, and Peter's.’

Nicholas did not reply, but he stopped in front of her and watched her carefully as she absorbed the enormity of it all.

He saw outrage turn slowly to confusion, to fear and finally to terror. He had never seen her even afraid before - but now, faced with the prospect of being stripped naked of the armour which had always protected her, she was like a lost animal, he could even see that flutter of her heart under the pale swelling flesh of her bosom, and she shivered again.

‘Could he lose everything, Nicholas? He couldn't, could he?’ She wanted assurance, but he could not give it to her, all he could give her was pity. Pity was the one emotion, probably the only one, she had never aroused in him, not once in all the years he had known her.

‘What can I do, Nicholas?’ she pleaded. ‘Please help me. Oh God, what must I do?’

‘You can stop Duncan launching Golden Dawn - until the hull and propulsion has been modified, until it has been properly surveyed and underwritten - and until you have taken full control of Christy Marine out of his hands again.’ And his voice was gentle, filled with his compassion as he told her:

‘That's enough for one day, Chantelle. If we go on now, we will be chasing our tails. Tonight you know what could happen, tomorrow we will discuss how we can prevent it. Have you a Valium?’

She shook her head. ‘I've never used drugs to hide from things,’ It was true, he knew, that she had never lacked courage. ‘How much longer can you stay?’

‘I have a seat on the eleven o'clock plane. I have to be back in London by tomorrow night - we'll have time tomorrow morning.

The guest suite opened on to the second-floor balcony which ran along the entire front of the building overlooking the sea and the private harbour. The five main bedrooms all opened on to this balcony, an arrangement from fifty years previously when internal security against kidnapping and forcible entry had been of no importance.

Nicholas determined to speak to Chantelle about that in the morning. Peter was an obvious target for extortion, and he felt the goose bumps of horror rise on his arms as he imagined his son in the hands of those degenerate monsters who were everywhere allowed to strike and destroy with impunity. There was a price to pay these days for being rich and successful. The smell of it attracted the hyenas and vultures. Peter must be better protected, he decided.

In the sitting-room, there was a well-stocked liquor cabinet concealed behind mirrors, nothing so obvious and resoundingly middle-class as a private bar. The daily papers, in English, French and German were set out on the television table, France Soir, The Times, Allgemeine Zeitung, with even an airmail version of the New York Times.

Nicholas flipped open The Times and glanced quickly at the closing prices. Christy Marine common stock was at £5.32p, up 15p on yesterday's prices. The market had not sniffed corruption - yet.

He pulled off his silk roll-neck, and even though he had bathed three hours previously, the tension had left his skin feeling itchy and unclean. The bathroom had been lavishly redecorated in green onyx panels and the fittings were eighteen-carat gold, in the shape of dolphins. Steaming water gushed from their gaping mouths at a touch. It could have been vulgar, but Chantelle's unerring touch steered it into Persian opulence instead.

He showered, turning the setting high so that the stinging needles of water scalded away his fatigue and the feeling of being unclean. There were half a dozen thick white terry towelling robes in the glass-fronted warming cupboard, and he selected one and went through into the bedroom, belting it around his naked waist. In his briefcase there was a draft of the agreement of sale of Ocean Salvage and Towage to the Sheikhs. James Teacher and his gang of bright young lawyers had read it, and made a thick sheaf of notes. Nicholas must study these before tomorrow evening when he met them in London.

He took the papers from his case and carried them through into the sitting-room, glancing at the top page before dropping them carelessly on to the low coffee table while he went to pour himself a small whisky, heavily diluted, He brought the drink back with him and sprawled into the deep leather armchair, picked up the papers and began to work.

He became aware of her perfume first, and felt his blood quicken uncontrollably at the fragrance, and the papers rustled in his hand.

Slowly he lifted his head. She had come in utter silence on small bare feet. She had removed all her jewellery and had let down her hair brushing it out on to her shoulders.

It made her seem younger, more vulnerable, and the gown she wore was cuffed and collared in fine soft lace. She moved slowly towards his chair, timorous and for once uncertain, the eyes huge and dark and haunted, and when he rose from the armchair, she stopped and one hand went to her throat.

‘Nicholas,’ she whispered, ‘I'm so afraid, and so alone.’ She moved a step closer, and saw his eyes shift, his lips harden, and she stopped instantly.

Please,’ she pleaded softly, don't send me away, Nicky. Not tonight, not yet. I'm afraid to be alone - please.’

He knew then that this had been going to happen, he had hidden the certainty of it from himself all that evening, but now it was upon him, and he could do nothing to avoid it. It was as though he had lost the will to resist, he stood mesmerized, his resolve softening and melting like wax in the candle flame of her beauty, of the passions which she commanded so skilfully, and his thoughts lost coherence, began to tumble and swirl like storm surf breaking on rock.

She recognized the exact instant when it happened to him, and she came forward silently, with small gliding footsteps, not making the mistake of speaking again and pressed her face to his bare chest framed in the collar of his robe. The thick curling hair was springing over hard flat muscle, and she flared her nostrils at the clean virile animal smell of his skin.

He was still resisting, standing stiffly with his hands hanging at his sides. Oh, she knew him so well. The terrible conflict he must suffer before he could be made to act against that iron code of his own. Oh, she knew him, knew that he was as sexual and physical and animal as she was herself, that he was the only man who had ever been able to match her appetites. She knew the defences he had erected about himself, the fortressing of his passions, the controls and repressions, but she knew so well how to subvert these elaborate defences, she knew exactly what to do and what to say, how to move and touch. As she began now, she found the deliberate act of breaking down his resistance excited her so swiftly that it was pain almost, agony almost, and required all her own control not to advance too swiftly for him, to control the shaking of her legs and the pumping of her lungs, to play still the hurt and bewildered and frightened child, using his kindness, the sense of chivalry which would not allow him to send her away, in such obvious distress.

Oh God, how her body churned, her stomach cramped with the strength of her wanting, her breasts felt swollen and so sensitive that the contact of silk and lace was almost too painfully abrasive to bear.

‘Oh, Nicky, please - Just for a moment. Just once, hold me. Please, I cannot go on alone. just for a moment, please.’

She felt him lift his hands, felt the fingers on her shoulders, and the terrible pain of wanting was too much to bear, she could not control it - she cried out, it was a soft little whimper, but the force of it shook her body, and immediately she felt his reaction, Her timing had been immaculate, her natural womanly cunning had guided her. His fingers on her shoulders had been gentle and kindly, but now they hooked cruelly into her flesh.

His back arched involuntarily, his breath drummed from his chest under her ear, a single agonized exhalation like that of a boxer taking a heavy body punch. She felt his every muscle come taught, and she knew again the frightening power, the delirious giddy power she could still wield. Then, at last, joyously, almost fearfully, she experienced the great lordly lift and thrust of his loins - as though the whole world had moved and shifted about her.

She cried out again, fiercely, for now she could slip the hounds she had held so short upon the leash, she could let them run and hunt again. They had been too long denied, but now there was no longer need for care and restraint.

She knew exactly how to hunt him beyond the frontiers of reason, to course him like a flying stag, and his fingers tangled frantically in the foaming lace at her throat as he tried to free her tight swollen breasts. She cried out a third time, and with a single movement jerked open the fastening at his waist, exposing the full hard lean length of his body, and her hands were as frantic as his.

‘Oh, sweet God, you're so hard and strong - oh sweet God, I've missed you so.’

There was time later for all the refinements and nuances of love, but now her need was too cruel and demanding to be denied another moment. It had to happen this instant before she died of the lack.

Nicholas rose slowly towards the surface of sleep, aware of a brooding sense of regret. just before he reached consciousness, a dream image formed in his sleep-starved brain, he relived a moment from the distant past. A fragment of time, recaptured so vividly as to seem whole and perfect.

Long ago he had picked a deep-sea trumpet shell at five fathoms from the oceanic wall of the coral reef beyond the Anse Baudoin lagoon of Praslin Island, it was the size of a ripe coconut and once again he found himself holding the shell in both cupped hands, gazing into the narrow oval opening, around which the weed-furred and barnacle-encrusted exterior changed dramatically, flaring into the pouting lips and exposing the inner mother-of-pearl surfaces that were slippery to the touch, a glossy satin sheen, pale translucent pink, folded and convoluted upon themselves, shading darker into fleshy crimsons and wine purples as the passage narrowed and sank away into the mysterious lustrous depths of the shell.

Then abruptly, the dream image changed in his mind. The projected opening in the trumpet shell expanded, articulating on jaw-hinges and he was gaping into the deep and terrible maw of some great predatory sea-creature, lined with multiple rows of serrated triangular teeth, - sharklike, terrifying, so he cried out in half-sleep, startling himself awake, and he rolled quickly on to his side and raised himself on one elbow. Her perfume still lingered on his skin, mingled with the smell of his own sweat, but the bed beside him was empty, though warm and redolent with the memory of her body.

Across the room, the early sun struck a long sliver of light through a narrow chink in the curtains. It looked like a blade, a golden blade. It reminded him instantly of Samantha Silver. He saw her again wearing sunlight like a cloak, barefoot in the sand - and it seemed that the blade of sunlight was being driven up slowly under his ribs.

He swung his feet off the wide bed and padded softly across to the gold and onyx bathroom. There was a dull ache of sleeplessness and remorse behind his eyes and as he ran hot water from the dolphin's mouth into the basin, he looked at himself in the mirror although the steam slowly clouded the image of his own face. There were dark smears below his eyes and his features were gaunt, harsh angles of bone beneath drawn skin.

You bastard,’ he whispered at the shadowy face in the mirror. "You bloody bastard.’

They were waiting breakfast for him, in the sunlight on the terrace under the gaily coloured umbrellas. Peter had preserved the mood of the previous evening, and he ran laughing to meet Nicholas.

‘Dad, hey Dad.’ He seized Nicholas’ hand and led him to the table.

Chantelle wore a long loose housegown, and her hair was down on her shoulders, so soft that it stirred like spun silk in even that whisper of breeze. It was calculated, Chantelle did nothing by chance; the intimately elegant attire and the loose fall of her hair set the mood of domesticity - and Nicholas found himself resisting it fiercely.

Peter sensed his father's change of mood with an intuitive understanding beyond his years, and his dismay was a palpable thing, the hurt and reproach in his eyes as he looked at Nicholas; and then the chatter died on his lips and he bent his head studiously over his plate and ate in silence.

Nicholas deliberately refused the festival array of food, took only a cup of coffee, and lit a cheroot, without asking Chantelle's permission, knowing how she would resent that. He waited in silence and as soon as Peter had eaten he said:

‘I'd like to speak to your mother, Peter.’ The boy stood up obediently.

‘Will I see you before you leave, sir?’

‘Yes.’ Nicholas felt his heart wrung again. ‘Of course.’

‘We could sail again?’

‘I'm sorry, my boy. We won't have time. Not today.’

‘Very well, sir.’ Peter walked to the end of the terrace, very erect and dignified, then suddenly he began to run, taking the steps down two at a time, and he fled into the pine forest beyond the boathouse as though pursued, feet flying and arms pumping wildly.

‘He needs you, Nicky,’ said Chantelle softly.

‘You should have thought about that two years ago.’

She poured fresh coffee into his cup. ‘Both of us have been stupid - all right, worse than that. We've been wicked. I have had my Duncan, and you have had that American child.’

‘Don't make me angry now,’ he warned her softly. ‘You've done enough for one day.’

‘It's as simple as this, Nicholas. I love you, I have always loved you - God, since I was a gawky school-girl,’ she had never been that, but Nicholas let it pass, 'since I saw you that first day on the bridge of old Golden Eagle, the dashing ship's captain –‘

‘Chantelle. All we have to discuss is Golden Dawn and Christy Marine.’

‘No, Nicholas. We were born for each other, Daddy saw that immediately, we both knew it at the same time - it was only a madness, a crazy whim that made me doubt it for a moment.’

"Stop it, Chantelle.’

‘Duncan was a stupid mistake. But it's unimportant-‘

‘No, it's not unimportant. It changed everything. It can never be the same again, besides–‘

‘Besides, what? Nicky, what were you going to say?’

‘Besides, I am building myself another life now. With another very different person.’

‘Oh God, Nicky, you aren't serious?’ She laughed then, genuine amusement, clapping her hands delightedly. ‘My dear, she's young enough to be your daughter. It's the forty syndrome, the Lolita complex.’ Then she saw his real anger, and she was quick, retrieving the situation neatly, aware that she had carried it too far.

‘I'm sorry, Nicky. I should never have said that.’ She paused, and then went on.’I will say she's a pretty little thing, and I'm sure she's sweet - Peter liked her.’ She damned Samantha with light condescension, and then dismissed her as though she were merely a childlike prank of Nicholas', a light and passing folly of no real significance.

‘I understand, Nicholas, truly I do. However, when you are ready, as you will be soon, then Peter and I and Christy Marine are waiting for you still. This is your world, Nicholas.’ She made a gesture which embraced it all. ‘This is your world, you will never really leave it.’

‘You are wrong, Chantelle.’

‘No.’ She shook her head. ‘I am very seldom wrong, and on this I cannot be wrong. Last night proved that, it is still there - every bit of it. But let's discuss the other thing now, Golden Dawn and Christy Marine.

Chantelle Alexander lifted her face to the sky and watched the big silver bird fly. It climbed nose high, glinting in the sunlight, twin trails of dark unconsumed fuel spinning out behind it as the engines howled under the full thrust. With the wind in this quarter, the extended centreline of the main Nice runway brought it out over Cap Ferrat.

Beside Chantelle, only an inch or two shorter than she was, Peter stood and watched it also and she took his arm, tucking her small dainty hand into the crook of his elbow.

‘He stayed such a short time,’ Peter said, and overhead the big airbus turned steeply on to its crosswind leg.

‘We will have him with us again soon,’ Chantelle promised, and then she went on. ‘Where were you, Peter? We hunted all over when it was time for Daddy to go?’

‘I was in the forest,’ he said evasively. He had heard them calling, but Peter was hidden in the secret place, the smuggler's cleft in the yellow rock of the cliff; he would have killed himself rather than let Nicholas Berg see him weeping.

‘Wouldn't it be lovely if it was like the old times again?’ Chantelle asked softly, and the boy stirred beside her, but unable to take his gaze from the aircraft, ‘Just the three of us again?’

‘Without Uncle Duncan?’ he asked incredulously, and high above them the aircraft, with a last twinkle of sunlight, dove deeply into the banks of cumulus cloud that buttressed the northern sky. Peter turned at last to face her.

‘Without Uncle Duncan?’ he demanded again. ‘But that's impossible.’

‘Not if you help me, darling.’ She took his face in her cupped hands. ‘You will help me, won't you?’ she asked, and he nodded once, a sharply incisive gesture of assent; she leaned forward and kissed him tenderly on the forehead.

‘That's my man,’ she whispered.

‘Mr. Alexander is not available. May I take a message?’

‘This is Mrs. Alexander. Tell my husband that it's urgent.’

‘Oh, I'm terribly sorry, Mrs. Alexander.,’ The secretary's voice changed instantly, cool caution becoming effusive servility. ‘I didn't recognize your voice. The line is dreadful, Mr. Alexander will speak to you directly.’

Chantelle waited, staring impatiently from the study windows. The weather had changed in the middle of the morning with the cold front sweeping down off the mountains, and now icy wind and rain battered at the windows.

‘Chantelle, my dear,’ the rich glossy voice that had once so dazzled her, ‘is this my call to you?’

‘It's mine, Duncan. I must speak to you urgently.’

‘Good, he agreed with her. I wanted to speak to you also. Things are happening swiftly here. It's necessary for you to come up to St Nazaire next Tuesday, instead of my joining you at Cap Ferrat.’

‘Duncan-‘

But he went on over her protest, his voice as full of self-confidence, as ebullient as she had not heard it in over a year.

‘I have been able to save almost four weeks on Golden Dawn.’

‘Duncan, listen to me.’

‘We will be able to launch on Tuesday. it will be a makeshift ceremony, I'm afraid, at such short notice.’ He was inordinately proud of his own achievement. It annoyed her to hear him. ‘What I have arranged is that the pod tanks will be delivered direct to the Gulf from the Japanese yards. They are towing them in their ballast with four American tugs. I will launch the hull here, with workmen still aboard her, and they will finish her off at sea during the passage around Good Hope, in time for her to take on her tanks and cargo at El Barras. We'll save nearly seven and a half million-‘

‘Duncan! Chantelle cried again, and this time something in her tone stopped him.

‘What is it?’

‘This can't wait until Tuesday, I want to see you right away.’

‘That's impossible,’ he laughed, lightly, confidently.

‘It's only five days. Five days is too long. Tell me now,’ he invited. ‘What is it?’

‘All right,’ she said deliberately, and the vicious streak of Persian cruelty was in her voice. ‘I want a divorce, Duncan, and I want control of my shares in Christy Marine again.’

There was a long, hissing crackling silence on the line, and she waited, the way the cat waits for the first movement of the crippled mouse.

‘This is very sudden.’ His voice had changed completely, it was bleak and flat, lacking any timbre or resonance.

‘We both know it is not,’ she contradicted him.

‘You have no grounds.’ There was a thin edge of fear now. Divorce isn't quite as easy as that, Chantelle.’

‘How is this for grounds, Duncan?’ she asked, and there was a spiteful sting in her voice now. ‘If you aren't here by noon tomorrow, then my auditors will be in Leadenhall Street and there will be an urgent order before the courts-’

She did not have to go on, he spoke across her and there was a note of panic in his voice. She had never heard it before. He said, ‘You are right. We do have to talk right away.’ Then he was silent again, collecting himself, and his voice was once more calm and careful when he went on, ‘I can charter a Falcon and be at Nice before midday. Will that do?’

‘I'll have the car meet you,’ she said, and broke the connection with one finger. She held the bar down for a second, then lifted her finger.

‘I want to place an international call,’ she said in her fluent rippling French when the operator answered. ‘I do not know the number, but it is person to person. Doctor Samantha Silver at the University of Miami.’

‘There is a delay of more than two hours, madame.’

‘J’attendrai,’ she said, and replaced the receiver.

The Bank of the East is in Curzon Street, almost opposite the White Elephant Club. It has a narrow frontage of bronze and marble and glass, and Nicholas had been there, with his lawyers, since ten o'clock that morning. He was learning at first hand the leisurely age-old ritual of oriental bargaining.

He was selling Ocean Salvage, plus two years of his future labour - and even for seven million dollars he was beginning to wonder if it was worth it - and it was not a certain seven million either. The words tripped lightly, the figures seemed to have no substance in this setting. The only constant was the figure of the Prince himself, seated on the low couch, in a Saville Row suit but with the fine white cotton and gold-corded headdress framing his dark handsome features with theatrical dash.

Beyond him moved a shadowy, ever-changing background of unctuous whispering figures. Every time Nicholas believed that a point had been definitely agreed, another rose-pink or acid-yellow Rolls-Royce with Arabic script number-plates would deposit three or four more dark-featured Arabs at the front doors and they would hurry through to kiss the Prince on his forehead, on the bridge of his nose and on the back of his hand, and the hushed discussion would begin all over again with the newcomers picking up at the point they had been an hour previously.

James Teacher showed no impatience, and he smiled and nodded and went through the ritual like an Arab born, sipping the little thimbles of treacly coffee and watching patiently for the interminable whisperings to be translated into English before making a measured counter proposal.

‘We are doing fine, Mr. Berg,’ he assured Nicholas quietly. ‘A few more days.’

Nicholas had a headache from the strong coffee and he found it difficult to concentrate. He kept worrying about Samantha, For four days he had tried to contact her. He had to get out for a while and he excused himself to the Prince, and went down to the Enquiries Desk in the Bank's entrance hall and the girl told him,

‘I'm sorry, sir, there is no reply to either of those numbers.

‘There must be,’ Nicholas told her. One number was Samantha's shack at Key Biscayne and the other was her private number in her laboratory.

She shook her head. ‘I've tried every hour.’

‘Can you send a cable for me?’

‘Of course, sir.’

She gave him a pad of forms and he wrote out the message. ‘Please phone me urgently, reverse charges to-’ He gave the Queens Gate flat and James Teacher's rooms, then thought with the pen poised, trying to find the words to express his concern, but there were none. ‘I love you,’ he wrote. ‘I really do.’

Since Nicholas's midnight call to tell her of the carriage of cad-rich crude petroleum, Samantha Silver had been caught up in a kaleidoscope whirl of time and events.

After a series of meetings with the leaders of the Green-Peacers, and other conservation bodies in an effort to publicize and oppose this new threat to the oceans, she and Tom Parker had flown to Washington and met with a deputy director of the Environmental Protection Agency and with two young senators who spearheaded the conservation lobby but their efforts to go further had been frustrated by the granite walls of big oil interest. Even usually cooperative sources had been wary of condemning or speaking out against Orient Amex's new carbon-cracking technology. As one thirty-year-old Democrat senator had pointed out, ‘It's tough to try and take a shot at something that's going to increase the fossil fuel yield by fifty percent.’

‘That's not what we are shooting at,’ Samantha had flared, bitter with fatigue and frustration. ‘It's this irresponsible method of carrying the cad-rich through sensitive and highly vulnerable seaways we are trying to prevent.’ But when she presented the scenario she had worked out, picturing the effects on the North Atlantic deluged with a million tons of toxic crude, she saw the disbelief in the man's eyes and the condescending smile of the sane for the slightly demented.

‘Oh God, why is common sense the hardest thing in the world to sell?’ she had lamented.

She and Tom had gone on to meet the leaders of Green-Peace in the north, and in the west, and they had given advice and promises of support. The Californian Chapter counselled physical intervention as a last resort, as some of their members had successfully interposed small craft between the Russian whalers and the breeding Minkes they were hunting in the Californian Gulf In Galveston, they met the young Texans who would picket the Orient Amex refinery as soon as they were certain the ultra-tanker had entered the Gulf of Mexico.

However, none of their efforts were successful in provoking confrontation with Orient Amex. The big oil company simply ignored invitations to debate the charges on radio or television, and stone-walled questions from the media.

It's hard to stir up interest in a one-sided argument, Samantha found.

They managed one local Texas television show, but without controversy to give it zip, the producer cut Samantha's time down to forty-five seconds, and then tried to date her for dinner.

The energy crisis, oil tankers and oil pollution were joyless subjects. Nobody had ever heard of cadmium pollution, the Cape of Good Hope was half a world away, million tons was a meaningless figure, impossible to visualize, and it was all rather a bore.

The media let it drop flat on its face.

‘We're just going to have to smoke those fat cats at Orient Amex out into the open,’ Tom Parker growled angrily, ‘and kick their arses blue for them. The only way we are going to do that is through Green-Peace.’

They had landed back at Miami International, exhausted and disappointed, but not yet despondent. ‘Like the man said,’ Samantha muttered grimly, as she threaded her gaudy van back into the city traffic flow, ‘we have only just begun to fight.’

She had only a few hours to clean herself up and stretch out on the patchwork quilt before she had to dress again and race back to the airport. The Australian had already passed through customs and was looking lost and dejected in the terminal lobby.

‘Hi, I'm Sam Silver.’ She pushed away fatigue, and hoisted that brilliant golden smile like a flag.

His name was Mr. Dennis O'Connor and he was top man in his field, doing fascinating and important work on the reef populations of Eastern Australian waters, and he had come a long way to talk to her and see her experiments.

‘I didn't expect you to be so young.’ She had signed her correspondence Doctor Silver and he gave the standard reaction to her. Samantha was just tired and angry enough not to take it.

‘And I'm a woman. You didn't expect that either,’ she agreed. ‘It's a crying bastard, isn't it? But then, I bet some of your best friends are young females.’ He was a dinky-die Aussie, and he loved it.

He burst into an appreciative grin, and as they shook hands, he said, ‘You are not going to believe this, but I like you just the way you are.’

He was tall and lean, sunburned and just a little grizzled at the temples, and within minutes they were friends, and the respect with which he viewed her work confirmed that.

The Australian had brought with him, in an oxygenated container, five thousand live specimens of E. Digitalis, the common Australian water snail, for inclusion in Samantha's experimentation. He had selected these animals for their abundance and their importance in the ecology of the Australian inshore waters, and the two of them were soon so absorbed in the application of Samantha's techniques to this new creature that when her assistant stuck her head through and yelled, ‘Hey, Sam, there's a call for you,’ she shouted back, ‘Take a message. If they're lucky I'll call them back.’

‘It's international, person to person!’ and Samantha's pulse raced; instantly forgotten was the host of Spiral-coned sea snails.

‘Nicholas!’ she shouted happily, spilled half a pint of sea water down the Australian's trouser leg and ran wildly to the small cubicle at the end of the laboratory.

She was breathless with excitement as she snatched up the receiver and she pressed one hand against her heart to stop it thumping.

‘Is that Doctor Silver?’

‘Yes! It's me.’ Then correcting her grammar, ‘It is she!’

‘Go ahead, please,’ said the operator, and there was a click and pulse on the line as it came alive.

‘Nicholas!’ she exulted. ‘Darling Nicholas, is that you?’

‘No.’ The voice was very clear and serene, as though the speaker stood beside her, and it was familiar, disconcertingly so, and for no good reason Samantha felt her heart shrink with dread.

‘This is Chantelle Alexander, Peter's mother. We have met briefly.’

‘Yes.’ Samantha's voice was now small, and still breathless.

‘I thought it would be kind to tell you in person, before you hear from other sources - that Nicholas and I have decided to re-marry.’

Samantha sat down jerkily on the office stool.

‘Are you there?’ Chantelle asked after a moment.

‘I don't believe you,’ whispered Samantha.

‘I'm sorry,’ Chantelle told her gently. ‘But there is Peter, you see, and we have rediscovered each other - discovered that we had never stopped loving each other.’

‘Nicholas wouldn't –‘ her voice broke, and she could not go on.

‘You must understand and forgive him, my dear,’ Chantelle explained. ‘After our divorce he was hurt and lonely. I'm sure he did not mean to take advantage of you.’

‘But, but - we were supposed to, we were going to-‘

‘I know. Please believe me, this has not been easy for any of us. For all our sakes-‘

‘We had planned a whole life together.’ Samantha shook her head wildly, and a thick skein of golden hair came loose and flopped into her face, she pushed it back with a combing gesture.’I don't believe it, why didn't Nicholas tell me himself? I won't believe it until he tells me.’

Chantelle's voice was compassionate, gentle. ‘I so wanted not to make it ugly for you, my child, but now what can I do but tell you that Nicholas spent last night in my house, in my bed, in my arms, where he truly belongs.’

It was almost miraculous, a physical thing, but sitting hunched on the hard round stool Samantha Silver felt her youth fall away from her, sloughed off like a glittering reptilian skin. She was left with the sensation of timelessness, possessed of all the suffering and sorrow of every woman who had lived before. She felt very old and wise and sad, and she lifted her fingers and touched her own not dried cheek, mildly surprised to feel that the skin was and withered like that of some ancient crone.

‘I have already made the arrangements for a divorce from my present husband, and Nicholas will resume his position at the head of Christy Marine.’

It was true, Samantha knew then that it was true. There was no question, no doubt, and slowly she replaced the receiver of the telephone, and sat staring blankly at the bare wall of the cubicle. She did not cry, she felt as though she would never cry, nor laugh, again in her life.

Chantelle Alexander studied her husband carefully, trying to stand outside herself, and to see him dispassionately. She found it easier now that the giddy insanity had burned away.

He was a handsome man, tall and lean, with those carefully groomed metallic waves of coppery hair. Even the wrist that he shot from the crisp white cuff of his sleeve was covered with those fine gleaming hairs. She knew so well that even his lean chest was covered with thick golden curls, crisp and curly as fresh lettuce leaves. She had never been attracted by smooth hairless men.

‘May I smoke?’ he asked, and she inclined her head. His voice had also attracted her from the first, deep and resonant, but with those high-bred accents, the gentle softening of the vowel sounds, the lazy drawling of consonants. The voice and the patrician manner were things that she had been trained to appreciate - and yet, under the mannered cultivated exterior was the flash of exciting wickedness, that showed in the wolfish white gleam of smile, and the sharp glittering grey steel of his gaze.

He lit the custom-made cigarette with the gold lighter she had given him - her very first gift, the night they had become lovers, Even now, the memory of it was piquant, and for a moment she felt the soft melting warmth in her lower belly and she stirred restlessly in her chair. There had been reason, and good reason for that madness, and even now it was over, she would never regret it.

It had been a period in her life which she had not been able to deny herself. The grand sweeping illicit passion, the last flush of her youth, the final careless autumn that preceded middle age. Another ordinary woman might have had to content herself with sweaty sordid gropings and grapplings in anonymous hotel bedrooms, but not Chantelle Christy. Her world was shaped by her own whims and desires, and, as she had told Nicholas, whatever she desired was hers to take. Long ago, her father had taught her that there were special rules for Chantelle Christy, and the rules were those she made herself.

It had been marvellous, she shivered slightly at the lingering sensuality of those early days, but now it was over. During the past months she had been carefully comparing the two men. Her decision had not been lightly made.

She had watched Nicholas retrieve his life from the gulf of disaster. On his own, stripped naked of all but that invisible indefinable mantle of strength and determination, he had fought his way back out of the gulf. Strength and power had always moved her, but she had over the years grown accustomed to Nicholas. Familiarity had staled their relationship for her. But now her interlude with Duncan had freshened her view of him, and he had for her all the novel appeal of a new lover - yet with the proven values and qualities of long intimate acquaintance. Duncan Alexander was finished, Nicholas Berg was the future.

But, no, she would never regret this interlude in her life. It had been a time of rejuvenation, she would not even regret Nicholas involvement with the pretty American child. Later, it would add a certain perverse spice to her own sexuality, she thought, and felt the shiver run down her thighs and the soft secret stirring of her flesh, like the opening of a petalled rosebud. Duncan had taught her many things, bizarre little tricks of arousal, made more poignant by being forbidden and wicked. Unfortunately Duncan relied almost entirely on the tricks, and not all of them had worked for her - the corners of her mouth turned down with distaste as she remembered; perhaps it was just that which had begun the curdling process.

No, Duncan Alexander had not been able to match her raw, elemental sexuality and soaring abandon. Only one man had ever been able to do that. Duncan had served a purpose, but now it was over. It might have dragged on a little longer, but Duncan Alexander had endangered Christy Marine. Never had she thought of that possibility; Christy Marine was a fact of her life, as vast and immutable as the heavens, but now the foundations of heaven were being shaken. His sexual attraction had staled, she might have forgiven him that, but not the other.

She became aware of Duncan's discomfort. He twisted sideways in his chair, crossing and uncrossing his long legs, and he rolled the cigarette between his fingers, studying the rising spiral of blue smoke to avoid the level, expressionless gaze of her dark fathomless eyes. She had been staring at him, but seeing the other man, Now, with an effort, she focused her attention on him.

‘Thank you for coming so promptly,’ she said.

‘It did seem rather urgent.’ He smiled for the first time, glossy and urbane - but with fear down there in the cool grey eyes, and his tension was betrayed by the clenched sinew in the point of his jaw.

Looking closely, as she had not done for many months, she saw how he was fined down. The long tapered fingers were bony, and never still. There were new harder lines to his mouth, and a frown to the set of his eyes. The skin at the corners cracked like oil paint into hundreds of fine wrinkles that the deep brown snow-tan hid from a casual glance. Now he returned her scrutiny directly.

‘From what you told me yesterday-‘

She lifted her hand to stop him. "That can wait. I merely wanted to impress you with the seriousness of what is happening. What is really of prime importance now is what you have done with control of my shares and those of the Trust.’

His hands went very still. ‘What does that mean?’

‘I want auditors, my appointed auditors, sent in-‘

He shrugged. ‘All this will take time, Chantelle, and I'm not certain that I'm ready to relinquish control.’

He was very cool, very casual now and the fear was gone.

She felt a stir of relief, perhaps the horror story that Nicholas had told her was untrue, perhaps the danger was imaginary only. Christy Marine was so big, so invulnerable.

‘Not just at the moment, anyway. You'd have to prove to me that doing so was in the best interest of the company and of the Trust.’

‘I don't have to prove anything, to anyone,’ she said flatly.

‘This time you do. You have appointed me-‘

‘No court of law would uphold that agreement.’

‘Perhaps not, Chantelle, but do you want to drag all this through the courts - at a time like this?’

‘I'm not afraid, Duncan.’ She stood up quickly, light on her feet as a dancer. the lovely legs in loose black silk trousers, soft flat shoes making her seem still smaller, a slim gold chain emphasizing the narrowness of the tiny waist. ‘You know I'm afraid of nothing.’ She stood over him, and pointed the accuser's finger. The nails tipped in scarlet, the colour of fresh arterial blood. ‘You should be the one to fear.’

‘And precisely what is it you are accusing me of?’ And she told him, reeling off swiftly the lists of guarantees made by the Trust, the transfer of shares and the issues of new shares and guarantees within the Christy Marine group of subsidiaries, she listed the known layering of underwriting cover on Golden Dawn that Nicholas had unearthed.

‘When my auditors have finished, Duncan darling, not only will the courts return control of Christy Marine to me, but they will probably sentence you to five years at hard labour. They take this sort of thing rather seriously, you know.’

He smiled. He actually smiled! She felt her fury seething to the surface and the set of her eyes altered, colour tinted the smooth pale olive of her cheeks.

‘You dare to grin at me,’ she hissed. ‘I will break you for that.’

‘No,’ he shook his head. ‘No, you won't.’

‘Are you denying –‘ she snapped, but he cut her off with a raised hand, and a shake of that handsome arrogant head.

‘I am denying nothing, my love. On the contrary, I am going to admit it - and more, much more.’ He flicked the cigarette away, and it hissed sharply in the lapping blue wavelets of the yacht basin. While she stared at him, struck speechless, he let the silence play out like a skilled actor as he selected and lit another cigarette from the gold case.

‘For some weeks now I have been fully aware that somebody was prying very deeply into my affairs and those of the company.’ He blew a long blue feather of cigarette smoke, and cocked one eyebrow at her, a cynical mocking gesture which increased her fury, but left her feeling suddenly afraid and uncertain. ‘It didn't take long to establish that the trace was coming from a little man in Monte Carlo who makes a living at financial and industrial espionage. Lazarus is good, excellent, the very best. I have used him myself, in fact it was I who introduced him to Nicholas Berg. ‘He chuckled then, shaking his head indulgently. ’The silly things we do sometimes. The connection was immediate. Berg and Lazarus. I have run my own check on that even what they have come up with and estimate Lazarus could not have uncovered more than twenty-five percent of the answers. He leaned forward and suddenly his voice snapped with a new authority. You see, Chantelle dear, I am probably one of the best in the world myself. They could never have traced it all.’

‘You are not denying then –‘ She heard the faltering tone in her own voice, and hated herself for it. He brushed her aside contemptuously.

‘Be quiet, you silly little woman, and listen to me. I am going to tell you just how deeply you are in - I am going to explain to you, in terms that even you can understand, why you will not send in your auditors, why you will not fire me, and why you will do exactly what I tell you to do.’

He paused and stared into her eyes, a direct trial of strength which she could not meet. She was confused and uncertain, for once not in control of her own destiny. She dropped her eyes, and he nodded with satisfaction.

‘Very well. Now listen. I have put it all - everything that is Christy Marine - it is all riding on Golden Dawn.’

Chantelle felt the earth turn giddily under her feet and the sudden roaring rush of blood in her ears. She stepped back and the stone parapet caught the back of her knees. She sat down heavily.

‘What are you talking about?’ she whispered. And he told her, in substantial detail, from the beginning, how it had worked out. From the laying of Golden Dawn's keel in the times of vast tanker tonnage demand. ‘My calculations were based on demand for tanker space two years ago, and on construction costs of that time.

The energy crisis and collapse in demand for tankers had come with the vicious rise in inflation, bloating the costs of construction of Golden Dawn by more than double. Duncan had countered by altering the design of the gigantic tanker. He had reduced the four propulsion units to one, he had cut down the steel structuring of the hull reinforcement by twenty percent, he had done away with elaborate safety functions and fail-safe systems designed by Nicholas Berg, and he had cut it too fine. He had forfeited the Al Lloyd's rating, the mark of approval from the inspectors of that venerable body; without the insurance backing of that huge underwriting market, he had been forced to look elsewhere to find the cover to satisfy his financiers. The premiums had been crippling. He had to pledge Christy Marine stock, the Trust stock. Then the spiralling cost of production had overtaken him again and he needed money and more money, He had taken it where he could find it, at rates of interest that were demanded, and used more Christy stock as collateral.

Then the insurance cover had been insufficient to cover the huge increase in the cost of the ultra-tanker's hull.

‘When luck runs out –‘ Duncan shrugged eloquently, and went on, ‘I had to pledge more Christy stock, all of it. It's all at risk, Chantelle, every single piece of paper, even the shares we retrieved from your Nicholas - and even that wasn't enough. I have had to write cover through front companies, cover that is worthless.’ Then, Duncan smiled again, relaxed and unruffled, almost as though he was enjoying himself, ‘then, there was that awful fiasco when Golden Adventurer went up on the ice, and I had to find six million dollars to pay the salvage award. That was the last of it, I went out for everything then, all of it. The Trust, the whole of Christy Marine.’

‘I'll break you,’ she whispered. ‘I'll smash you. I swear before God –‘

‘You don't understand, do you?’ He shook his head sorrowfully, as though at an obtuse child. ‘You cannot break me, without breaking Christy Marine and yourself. You are in it, Chantelle, much much deeper than I am. You have everything every penny, this house, that emerald on your finger, the future of your brat - all of it is riding on Golden Dawn’

‘No.’ She closed her eyes very tightly, and there was no colour in her cheeks now.

‘Yes. I'm afraid it's yes,’ he contradicted. ‘I didn't plan it that way. I saw a profit of 200 millions in it, but we have been caught up in circumstances, I'm afraid.’

They were both silent, and Chantelle swayed slightly as the full enormity of it overwhelmed her.

‘If you whistle up your hounds now, if you call in your axe-men, there will be plenty for them to work on,’ he laughed again, ‘buckets of dung for us all to wallow in. And my backers will line up to cancel out, Golden Dawn will never run down her ways - she is not fully covered, as I explained to you. It all hangs on a single thread, Chantelle. If the launching of Golden Dawn is delayed now, delayed by a month - no, by a week even, it will all come tumbling down.’

‘I'm going to be sick,’ she whispered thickly.

‘No, you are not.’ He stood up and crossed quickly to her. Coldly he slapped her face, two hard open-handed back and forth blows, that snapped her head from side to side, leaving the livid marks of his fingers on her pale cheeks. it was the first time ever that a man had struck her, but she could not find the indignation to protest. She merely stared at him.

‘Pull yourself together,’ he snarled at her, and gripped her shoulders fiercely, shaking her as he went on. ‘Listen to me. I have told you the worst that can happen. Now, I will tell you the best. If we stand together now, if you obey me implicitly, without question, I will pull off one of the greatest financial coups of the century for you. All it needs is one successful voyage by Golden Dawn and we are home free - a single voyage, a few short weeks, and I will have doubled your fortune.’ She was staring at him, sickened and shaken to the core of her existence. ‘I have signed an agreement of charter with Orient Amex, that will pull us out from under with a single voyage, and the day Golden Dawn anchors in Galveston roads and sends in her tank pods to discharge, I will have a dozen buyers for her.’ He stepped back, and straightened the lapels of his jacket. ‘They are going to remember my name. In future when they talk of tankers, they are going to talk of Duncan Alexander.’

‘I hate you,’ she said softly. ‘I truly hate you.’

"That is not important.’ He waved it away. ‘When it is over, I can afford to walk away - and you can afford to let me go. But not a moment before.’

‘How much will you make from this, if it succeeds?’ she asked, and she was recovering, her voice firmer.

‘A great deal. A very great deal of money - but my real reward will be in reputation and achievement. After this, I will be a man who can write his own ticket.’

‘For once, you will be able to stand comparison with Nicholas Berg. Is that it?’ She saw she had scored immediately, and she pressed harder, trying to wound and destroy. ‘But you and I both know it is not true. Golden Dawn was Nicholas’ inspiration and he would not have had to descend to the cheat and sham-‘

‘My dear Chantelle - ,’

‘You will never be, could never be the man Nicholas is.’

‘Damn you.’ Suddenly he was shaking with anger, and she was screaming at him.

‘You're a cheat and a liar. For all your airs, you're still a cheap little barrow-boy at heart. You're small and shoddy-‘

‘I've beaten Nicholas Berg every time I've met him.’

‘No, you haven't, Duncan, It was I who beat him for you!’

‘I took you-‘

‘For a while,’ she sneered. ‘Just for a short fling, Duncan dear. But when he wanted me he took me right back again.’

‘What do you mean by that?’ he demanded.

‘The night before last, Nicholas was here, and he loved me in a way you never could. I'm going back to him, and I'll tell the world why.’

‘You bitch.’

‘He is so strong, Duncan. Strong where you are weak.’

‘And you are a whore.’ He half turned away, and then paused. ‘Just be at St Nazaire on Tuesday.’ But she could see he was hurt, at last she had cut through the carapace and touched raw quick nerves.

‘He loved me four times in one night. Duncan, magnificent soaring love. Did you ever do that?’

‘I want you at St Nazaire , smiling at the creditors on Tuesday.’

‘Even if you succeed with Golden Dawn, within six months Nicholas will have your job.’

‘But until then you'll do exactly what I say.’ Duncan braced himself, a visible effort, and began to walk away.

‘You are going to be the loser, Duncan Alexander,’ she screamed after him, her voice cracking shrilly with frustration and outrage. ‘I will see to that - I swear it to you.’

He subdued the urge to run, and crossed the terrace, holding himself carefully erect, and the storm of her hatred and frustration burst around him.

‘Go into the streets where you belong, into the gutter where I found you,’ she screamed, and he went up the stone staircase and out of her sight. Now he could hurry, but he found his legs were trembling under him, his breath was ragged and broken, and there was a tight knot of anger and jealousy turning his guts into a ball.

‘The bastard,’ he spoke aloud. ‘That bastard Berg.’

‘Tom? Tom Parker?’

‘That's right, who is this, please?’ His voice was so clear and strong, although the Atlantic Ocean separated them.

‘It's Nicholas, Nicholas Berg.’

‘Nick, how are you?’ the big voice boomed with genuine pleasure. ‘God, I'm glad you called. I've been trying to reach you. I've got good news. The best.’

Nicholas felt a quick lift of relief.

‘Samantha?’

‘No, damn it,’ Tom laughed. ‘It's the job. Your Job. It went up before the Board of Governors of the University yesterday. I had to sell it to them hard - I'll tell you that for free - but they okayed it. You're on, Nick, isn't that great?’

‘It's terrific, Tom.’

‘You're on the Biology faculty as an associate, it's the thin end of the wedge, Nicholas. We'll have you a chair by the end of next year, you wait and see.’

‘I'm delighted.’

‘Christ, you don't sound it,’ Tom roared. ‘What's bugging you, boy?’

‘Tom what the hell has happened to Samantha?’

And Nicholas sensed the mood change, the silence lasted a beat too long, and then Tom's tone was guileless.

‘She went off on a field trip - down the Keys, didn't she tell you?’

‘Down the Keys?’ Nicholas’ voice rose with his anger and frustration. ‘Damn it, Tom. She was supposed to be here in France. She promised to come over for the launching of my new vessel. I've been trying to get in touch with her for a week now.’

‘She left Sunday,’ said Tom.

‘What is she playing at?’

‘That's a question she might want to ask you sometime.’

‘What does that mean, Tom?’

‘Well, before she took off, she came up here and had a good weep with Antoinette - you know, my wife. She plays den mother for every hysterical female within fifty miles, she does.’

Now it was Nicholas turn to be silent, while the coldness settled on his chest, the coldness of formless dread.

‘What was the trouble?’

‘Good God, Nick, you don't expect me to follow the intimate details of the love life-‘

‘Can I speak to Antoinette?’

‘She isn't here, Nick. She went up to Orlando for a meeting. She won't be back until the weekend.’

The silence again.

‘All that heavy breathing's costing you a fortune, Nicholas. You're paying for this call.’

‘I don't know what got into Sam.’ But he did. Nicholas knew - and the guilt was strong upon him.

‘Listen, Nick. A word to the wise. Get your ass across here, boy. just as soon as you can. That girl needs talking to, badly. That is, if you care about it.’

‘I care about it,’ Nicholas said quickly, ‘But hell, I am launching a tug in two days’ time. I've got sea trials, and a meeting in London.’

Tom's voice had an air of finality. ‘A man's got to do what he's got to do.’

‘Tom, I'll be across there as soon as I possibly can.’

‘I believe it.’

‘If you see her, tell her that for me, will you?’

‘I'll tell her.’

‘Thanks, Tom.’

‘The governors will want to meet you, Nicholas. Come as soon as you can.’

‘It's a promise.’ Nicholas cradled the receiver, and stood staring out of the windows of the site office. The view across the inner harbour was completely blocked by the towering hull of his tug. She stood tall on her ways. Her hull already wore its final coat of glistening white and the wide flaring bows bore the name Sea Witch and below that the port of registration, Bermuda.

She was beautiful, magnificent, but now Nicholas did not even see her. He was overwhelmed by a sense of imminent loss, the cold premonition of onrushing disaster, Until that moment when he faced the prospect of losing her, he had not truly known how large a part that lovely golden girl had come to play in his existence, and in his plans for the future.

There was no way that Samantha could have learned of that single night of weakness, the betrayal that still left Nicholas sickened with guilt - there must be something else that had come between them. He bunched his right fist and slammed it against the sill of the window. The skin on his knuckles smeared, but he did not feel the pain, only the bitter frustration of being tied down here in St. Nazaire, weighed down by his responsibilities, he should have been free to follow the jack-o'-lantern of happiness.

The loudspeaker above his head gave a preliminary squawk, and then crackled out the message, ‘Monsieur Berg. Will Monsieur attend upon the bridge?’

It was a welcome distraction., and Nicholas hurried out into the spring sunshine. Looking upwards, he could see Jules Levoisin on the wing of the bridge. His portly figure foreshortened against the open sky, like a small pugnacious rooster, he stood facing the electronics engineer who was responsible for the installation of Sea Witch's communications system, and Jules cries of ‘Sacre bleu’ and ‘Merde’ and ‘Imbecil’ carried clearly above the cacophony of shipyard noises.

Nicholas started to run as he saw the engineer's arms begin to wave and his strident Gallic cries blended with those of Sea Witch's new Master. It was only the third time that Jules Levoisin had become hysterical that day, however it was not yet noon. As the hour of launching came steadily closer, so the little Frenchman's nerves played him tricks, he was behaving like a prima ballerina awaiting the opening curtain. Unless Nicholas reached the bridge within the next few minutes, he would need either a new Master or a new electronics engineer.

Ten minutes later, Nicholas had a cheroot in each of their mouths. The atmosphere was still tense but no longer explosive, and gently Nick took the engineer by the elbow, placed his other arm around Jules Levoisin's shoulders and led them both back into the wheelhouse.

The bridge installation was complete, and Jules Levoisin was accepting delivery of the special equipment from the contractors, a negotiation every bit as traumatic as the Treaty of Versailles.

‘I myself authorized the modification of the MK. IV transponder,’ Nicholas explained patiently. ‘We had trouble with the same unit on Warlock. I should have told you, Jules.’

‘You should have,’ agreed the little Master huffily.

‘But you were perceptive to notice the change from the specification,’ Nicholas soothed him, and Jules puffed out his chest a little and rolled the cheroot in his mouth.

‘I may be an old dog, but I know all the new tricks.’ He removed the cheroot and smugly blew a perfect smoke ring.

When Nicholas at last left them chatting amiably over the massed array of sophisticated equipment that lined the navigation area at the back of the bridge, they were paging him from the site office.

‘What is it?’ he asked, as he came through the door.

‘It's a lady,’ the foreman indicated the telephone lying on the littered desk below the window.

‘Samantha,’ Nick thought, and snatched up the receiver.

‘Nicky.’ He felt the shock of quick guilt at the voice.

‘Chantelle, where are you?’

‘In La Baule.’ The fashionable resort town just up the Atlantic coast was a better setting for Chantelle Alexander than the grubby port with its sprawling dockyards. ‘Staying at the Castille. God, it's too awful. I'd forgotten how awful it was.’ They had stayed there together, once long ago, in a different life it seemed now.

‘But the restaurant is still quite cute, Nicholas. Have lunch with me. I must speak to you.’

‘I can't leave here.’ He would not walk into the trap again.

‘It's important. I must see you.’ He could hear that husky tone in her voice, imagine clearly the sensuous droop of the eyelids over those bold Persian eyes. ‘For an hour, only an hour. You can spare that.’ Despite himself, he felt the pull of temptation, the dull ache of it at the base of his belly - and he was angry at her for the power she could still exert over him.

‘If it's important, then come here,’ he said brusquely, and she sighed at his intransigence.

‘All right, Nicholas. How will I find you?’

The Rolls was parked opposite the dockyard gates and Nicholas crossed the road and stepped through the door that the chauffeur held open for him.

Chantelle lifted her face to him. Her hair was cloudy dark and shot with light like a bolt of silk, her lips the colour of ripe fruit, moist and slightly parted. He ignored the invitation and touched her cheek with his lips before settling into the corner opposite her.

She made a little moue, and slanted her eyes at him in amusement.

‘How chaste we are, Nicky.’ Nicholas touched the button on the control console and the glass soundproof partition slid up noiselessly between them and the chauffeur.

‘Did you send in the auditors?’ he asked.

‘You look tired, darling, and harassed.’

‘Have you blown the whistle on Duncan?’ he avoided the distraction. The work on Golden Dawn is still going ahead. The arc lights were burning over her all night and the talk in the yards is that she is being launched at noon tomorrow, almost a month ahead of schedule. What happened, Chantelle?’

‘There is a little bistro at Mindin, it's just across the bridge-’

‘Damn it, Chantelle. I haven't time to fool around.’

But the Rolls was already gliding swiftly through the narrow streets. of the port, between the high warehouse buildings.

‘It will take five minutes, and the Lobster Armoricaine is the local speciality - not to be confused with Lobster Americaine. They do it in a cream sauce, it's superb,’ she chatted archly, and the Rolls turned out on to the quay. Across the narrow waters of the inner harbour humped the ugly camouflaged mounds of the Nazi submarine pens, armoured concrete so thick as to resist the bombs of the R.A.F. and the efforts of all demolition experts over the years since then.

Peter asked me to give you his love. He has got his junior team colours. I'm so proud.

Nicholas thrust his hands deep into his jacket pockets and slumped down resignedly against the soft leather seat.

‘I am delighted to hear it,’ he said.

And they were silent then until the chauffeur checked the Rolls at the toll barrier to pay before accelerating out on to the ramp of the St Nazaire bridge. The great span of the bridge rose in a regal curve, three hundred feet above the waters of the Loire River, The river was almost three miles wide here, and from the highest point of the bridge there was an aerial view over the dockyards of the town.

There were half a dozen vessels building along the banks of the broad muddy river, a mighty forest of steel scaffolding, tall gantries and half-assembled hulls, but all of it insignificant under the mountainous bulk of Golden Dawn. Without her pod tanks, she had an incomplete gutted appearance, as though the Eiffel Tower had toppled over and somebody had built a modernistic apartment block at one end. It seemed impossible that such a structure was capable of floating. God, she was ugly, Nick thought.

‘They are still working on her,’ he said. One of the gantries was moving ponderously along the length of the ship like an arthritic dinosaur, and at fifty paces the brilliant blue electric fires of the welding torches flickered; while upon the grotesquely riven hull crawled human figures reduced to antlike insignificance by the sheer size of the vessel.

‘They are still working,’ he repeated it as an accusation.

‘Nicholas, nothing in this life is simple.’

‘Did you spell it out for Duncan?’

‘-except for people like you.’

‘You didn't confront Duncan, did you?’ he accused bitterly.

‘It's easy for you to be strong. It's one of the things that first attracted me.’ And Nicholas almost laughed aloud. It was ludicrous to talk of strength, after his many displays of weakness with this very woman.

‘Did you call Duncan's cards?’ he insisted, but she put him off with a smile.

‘Let's wait until we have a glass of wine.’

‘Now,’ he snapped. ‘Tell me right now. Chantelle, I haven't time for games.’

‘Yes, I spoke to him,’ she nodded. ‘I called him down to Cap Ferrat, and I accused him of what you suspected.’

‘He denied it? If he denies it, I now have further proof.’

‘No, Nicholas. He didn't deny a thing. He told me that I knew only the half of it.’ Her voice rose sharply, and suddenly it all spilled out in a torrent of tortured words. Her composure was eroded swiftly away as she relived the enormity of her predicament. ‘He's gambled with my fortune, Nicholas. He's risked the family share of Christy Marine, the Trust shares, my shares, it's all at risk. And he gloated as he told me, he truly gloried in his betrayal.’

‘We've got him now.’ Nicholas had straightened slowly in his seat as he listened. His voice was grimly satisfied and he nodded. ‘That's it. We will stop the Golden Dawn, like that –‘ he hammered his bunched fist into the palm of the other hand with a sharp crack. ‘We will get an urgent order before the courts.’

Nicholas stopped suddenly and stared at her. Chantelle was shaking her head slowly from side to side. Her eyes slowly filled, making them huge and glistening, a single tear spilled over the lid and clung in the thick dark lashes like a drop of morning dew.

The Rolls had stopped now outside the tiny bistro. It was on the river front, with a view across the water to the dockyards. To the west the river debauched into the open sea and in the east the beautiful arch of the bridge across the pale blue spring sky.

The chauffeur held open the door and Chantelle was gone with her swift birdlike grace, leaving Nicholas no choice but to follow her.

The proprietor came through from his kitchen and fussed over Chantelle, seating her at the window and lingering to discuss the menu.

‘Oh, let's drink the Muscadet, Nicholas.’ She had always had the most amazing powers of recovery, and now the tears were gone and she was brittle and gay and beautiful, smiling at him over the rim of her glass. The sunlight through the leaded window panes danced in the cool golden wine and rippled on the smoky dark fall of her hair.

‘Here's to us, Nicholas darling. We are the last of the great.’ It was a toast from long ago, from the other life, and it irritated him now but he drank it silently and then set down the glass.

‘Chantelle, when and how are you going to stop Duncan?’

‘Don't spoil the meal, darling.’

‘In about thirty seconds I'm going to start becoming very angry.’

She studied him for a moment, and saw that it was true. ‘All right then,’ she agreed reluctantly.

‘When are you going to stop him?’

‘I'm not, darling.’

He stared at her. ‘What did you say?’ he asked quietly.

‘I'm going to do everything in my power to help him launch and sail the Golden Dawn.’

‘You don't understand, Chantelle. You're talking about risking a million tons of the most deadly poison-‘

‘Don't be silly, Nicky. Keep that heroic talk for the newspapers. I don't care if Duncan dumps a million tons of cadmium in the water supply of greater London just as long as he pulls the Trust and me out of the fire.’

‘There is still time to make the modifications to Golden Dawn.’

‘No, there isn't. You don't understand, darling. Duncan has put us so deeply into it that a delay of a few days even would bring us down. He has stripped the cupboard bare, Nicky. There no money for modifications, no time for anything, except to get Golden Dawn under way.’

‘There is always a way and a means.’

‘Yes, and the way is to fill Golden Dawn's pod tanks with crude.’

‘He's frightened you by-‘

‘Yes,’ she agreed, ‘I am frightened. I have never been so frightened in my life, Nicky. I could lose everything - I am terrified. I could lose it all.’ She shivered with the horror of it. ‘I would kill myself if that happened.’

‘I am still going to stop Duncan.’

‘No, Nicky. Please leave it, for my sake - for Peter's sake, it's Peter's inheritance that we are talking about. Let Golden Dawn make one voyage, just one voyage and I will be safe.’

‘It's the risk to an ocean, to God alone knows how many human lives, we are talking about.’

‘Don't shout, Nicky. People are looking.’

‘Let them look. I'm going to stop that monster.’

‘No, Nicholas. Without me, you cannot do a thing.’

‘You best believe it.’

‘Darling, I promise you, after her first voyage we will sell Golden Dawn. We'll be safe then, and I can rid myself of Duncan. It will be you and I again, Nicky. A few short weeks, that's all.’

It took all his self-control to prevent his anger showing. He clenched his fists on the starched white tablecloth, but his voice was cool and even.

‘Just one more question, Chantelle. When did you phone Samantha Silver?’

She looked puzzled for a moment as though she was trying to put a face to a name. ‘Samantha, oh, your little friend, Why should I want to telephone her?’ And then her expression changed. "Oh, Nicky, you don't really believe I'd do that? You don't really believe I would tell anybody about it, about that wonderful. –‘ Now she was stricken, again those huge eyes brimmed and she reached across and stroked the fine black hairs on the back of Nicholas big square hand. "You don't think that of me! I'm not that much of a bitch, I don't have to cheat to get the things I want. I don't have to inflict unnecessary hurt on people.’

‘No,’ Nicholas agreed quietly. ‘You'd not murder more than a million or poison more than a single ocean at a time, would you?’ He pushed back his chair.

‘Sit down, Nicky. Eat your lobster.’

‘Suddenly I'm not hungry.’ He stripped two one-hundred-franc notes from his money clip and dropped them beside his plate.

‘I forbid you to leave,’ she hissed angrily. ‘You are humiliating me, Nicholas.’

‘I'll send your car back,’ he said, and walked out into the sunlight. He found with surprise that he was trembling, and that his jaws were clenched so tightly that his teeth ached.

The wind turned during the night, and the morning was cold with drifts of low, grey, fast-flying cloud that threatened rain. Nicholas pulled up his collar against the wind and the tails of his coat flogged about his legs, for he was exposed on the highest point of the arched bridge of St Nazaire.

Thousands of others had braved the wind, and the guardrail was lined two and three deep, all the way across the curve of the northern span. The traffic had backed up and half a dozen gendarmes were trying to get it moving again; their whistles shrilled plaintively. Faintly the sound of a band floated up to them, rising and falling in volume as the wind caught it, and even with the naked eye Nicholas could make out the wreaths of gaily coloured bunting which fluttered on the high cumbersome stern tower of Golden Dawn.

He glanced at his wristwatch, and saw it was a few minutes before noon. A helicopter clattered noisily under the grey belly of cloud, and hovered about the yards of Construction Navale Atlantique on the gleaming silver coin of its rotor.

Nicholas lifted the binoculars and the eyepieces were painfully cold against his skin. Through the lens, he could almost make out individual features among the small gathering on the rostrum under the tanker's stern.

The platform was decorated with a Tricolor and a Union Jack, and as he watched the band fell silent and lowered their instruments.

Speech time, Nicholas murmured, and now he could make out Duncan Alexander, his bared head catching one of the fleeting rays of sun, a glimmer of coppery gold as he looked up at the towering stern of Golden Dawn.

His bulk almost obscured the tiny feminine figure beside him. Chantelle wore that particular shade of malachite green which she so dearly loved. There was confused activity around Chantelle, half a dozen gentlemen assisting in the ceremony she had performed so very often. Chantelle had broken the champagne on almost all of Christy Marine's fleet; the first time had been when she was Arthur Christy's fourteen-year-old darling - it was another of the company's many traditions.

Nicholas blinked, believing for an instant that his eyes had tricked him, for it seemed that the very earth had changed its shape and was moving.

Then he saw that the great hull of Golden Dawn had begun to slide forward. The band burst into the Marseillaise, the heroic strains watered down by wind and distance, while Golden Dawn gathered momentum.

It was an incredible, even a stirring sight, and despite himself, Nicholas felt the goose-bumps rise upon his forearms and the hair lift on the back of his neck. He was a sailor, and he was watching the birthing of the mightiest vessel ever built.

She was grotesque, monstrous, but she was part of him. No matter that others had bastardized and perverted his grand design - still the original design was his and he found himself gripping the binoculars with hands that shook.

He watched the massive wooden-wedged arresters kick out from under that great sliding mass of steel as they served to control her stern-first rush down the ways. Steel cable whipped and snaked upon itself like the Medusa's hair, and Golden Dawn's stern struck the water.

The brown muddy water of the estuary opened before her, cleaved by the irresistible rush and weight, and the hull drove deep, opening white-capped rollers that spread out across the channel and broke upon the shores with a dull roar that carried clearly to where Nicholas stood.

The crowd that lined the bridge was cheering wildly. Beside him, a mother held her infant up to watch, both of them screaming with glee.

While Golden Dawn's bows were still on the dockyard's ways her stern was thrusting irresistibly a mile out into the river; forced down by the raised bows it must now be almost touching the muddy bottom for the wave was breaking around her stern quarters.

God, she was huge! Nicholas shook his head in wonder. If only he had been able to build her the right way, what a ship she would have been. What a magnificent concept!

Now her bows left the end of the slips, and the waters burst about her, seething and leaping into swirling vortices.

Her stern started to rise, gathering speed as her own buoyancy caught her, and she burst out like a great whale rising to blow. The waters spilled from her, creaming and cascading through the steelwork of her open decks, boiling madly in the cavernous openings that would hold the pod tanks when she was fully loaded.

Now she came up short on the hundreds of retaining cables that prevented her from driving clear across the river and throw herself ashore on the far bank.

She fought against this restraint, as though having felt the water she was now eager to run. She rolled and dipped and swung with a ponderous majesty that kept the crowds along the bridge cheering wildly. Then slowly she settled and floated quietly, seeming to fill the Loire River from bank to bank and to reach as high as the soaring spans of the bridge itself.

The four attendant harbour tugs moved in quickly to assist the ship to turn its prodigious length and to line up for the roads and the open sea.

They butted and backed, working as a highly skilled team, and slowly they coaxed Golden Dawn around. Her sideways motion left a mile-wide sweep of disturbed water across the estuary. Then suddenly there was a tremendous boil under her counter, and Nicholas saw the bronze flash of her single screw sweeping slowly through the brown water. Faster and still faster it turned, and despite himself Nicholas thrilled to see her come alive. A ripple formed under her bows, and almost imperceptibly she began to creep forward, overcoming the vast inertia of her weight, gathering steerage way, under command at last.

The harbour tugs fell back respectfully, and as the mighty bows lined up with the open sea she drove forward determinedly.

Silver spouts of steam from the sirens of the tugs shot high, and moments later, the booming bellow of their salute crashed against the skies.

The crowds had dispersed and Nicholas stood alone in the wind on the high bridge and watched the structured steel towers of Golden Dawn’s hull blending with the grey and misted horizon. He watched her turn, coming around on to her great circle course that would carry her six thousand miles southward to Good Hope, and even at this distance he sensed her change in mood as she steadied and her single screw began to push her up to top economic speed.

Nicholas checked his watch and murmured the age-old Master's command that commenced every voyage.

‘Full away at 1700 hours,’ he said, and turned to trudge back along the bridge to where he had left the hired Renault.

It was after six o'clock and the site was empty by the time Nicholas got back to Sea Witch. He threw himself into a chair and lit a cheroot while he thumbed quickly through his address book. He found what he wanted, dialled the direct London code, and then the number.

‘Good afternoon. This is the Sunday Times. May I help you?’

‘Is Mr. Herbstein available?’ Nicholas asked.

‘Hold on, please.’ While he waited, Nicholas checked his address book for his next most likely contact, should the journalist be climbing the Himalayas or visiting a guerrilla training camp in Central Africa, either of which were highly likely - but within seconds he heard his voice.

‘Denis,’ he said. ‘This is Nicholas Berg, how are you? I've got a hell of a story for you.’

Nicholas tried to bear the indignity of it with stoicism, but the thick coating of pancake make-up seemed to clog the pores of his skin and he moved restlessly in the make-up chair.

‘Please keep still, sir!’ the make-up girl snapped irritably; there was a line of unfortunates awaiting her ministrations along the bench at the back of the narrow room. One of them was Duncan Alexander and he caught Nicholas eye in the mirror and raised an eyebrow in a mocking salute.

In the chair beside him, the anchor-man of ‘The Today and Tomorrow Show’ lolled graciously; he was tall and elegant with dyed and permanently waved hair, a carnation in his button-hole, a high camp manner and an ostentatiously liberal image.

‘I've given you the first slot. If it gets interesting, I'll run you four minutes forty seconds, otherwise I'll cut it off at two.’

Denis Herbstein's Sunday article had been done with high professionalism, especially bearing in mind the very short time he had to put it together. It had included interviews with representatives of Lloyd's of London, the oil companies, environmental experts both in America and England, and even with the United States Coast Guard.

‘Try to make it tight and hard,’ advised the anchor-man. ‘Let's not pussyfoot around.’ He wanted sensation, not too many facts or figures, good gory horror stuff - or a satisfying punch-up. The Sunday Times article had flushed them out at Orient Amex and Christy Marine; they had not been able to ignore the challenge for there was a question tabled for Thursday by a Labour member in the Commons, and ominous stirrings in the ranks of the American Coast Guard service.

There had been enough fuss to excite the interest of ‘The Today and Tomorrow Show.’ They had invited the parties to meet their accuser and both Christy Marine and Orient Amex had fielded their first teams. Duncan Alexander with all his charisma had come to speak for Christy Marine, and Orient Amex had selected one of their directors who looked like Gary Cooper. With his craggy honest face and the silver hairs at his temple he looked like the kind of man you wanted flying your airliner or looking after your money.

The make-up girl dusted Nicholas face with powder.

‘I'm going to invite you to speak first. Tell us about this stuff - what is it, cadmium?’ the interviewer checked his script.

Nicholas nodded, he could not speak for he was suffering the ultimate indignity. The girl was painting his lips.

The television studio was the size of an aircraft hangar, the concrete floor strewn with thick black cables and the roof lost in the gloomy heights, but they had created the illusion of intimacy in the small shell of the stage around which the big mobile cameras cluttered like mechanical crabs around the carcass of a dead fish.

The egg-shaped chairs made it impossible either to loll or to sit upright, and the merciless white glare of the arc lamps fried the thick layer of greasy make-up on Nicholas’ skin. it was small consolation that across the table Duncan looked like a Japanese Kabuki dancer in make-up too white for his coppery hair.

An assistant director in a sweatshirt and jeans clipped the small microphone into Nicholas lapel and whispered, ‘Give them hell, ducky.’

Somebody else in the darkness beyond the lights was intoning solemnly, ‘Four, three, two, one - you're on!’ and the red light lit on the middle camera.

‘Welcome to The Today and Tomorrow Show,’ the anchor-man's voice was suddenly warm and intimate and mellifluous. ‘Last week in the French ship-building port of St Nazaire, the largest ship in the world was launched-’ In a dozen sentences he sketched out the facts, while on the repeating screens beyond the cameras Nicholas saw that they were running newsreel footage of Golden Dawn's launching. He remembered the helicopter hovering over the dockyard, and he was so fascinated by the aerial views of the enormous vessel taking to the water that when the cameras switched suddenly to him, he was taken by surprise and saw himself start on the little screen as the interviewer began introducing him, swiftly running a thumbnail portrait and then going on:

‘Mr. Berg has some very definite views on this ship.

‘In her present design and construction, she is not safe to carry even regular crude petroleum oil,’ Nicholas said. ‘However, she will be employed in the carriage of crude oil that has been contaminated by cadmium sulphide in such concentrations as to make it one of the more toxic substances in nature.’

‘Your first statement, Mr. Berg, does anyone else share your doubts as to the safety of her design?’

‘She does not carry the Al rating by the marine inspectors of Lloyd's of London,’ said Nicholas.

‘Now can you tell us about the cargo she will carry - the so-called cad-rich crudes?’

Nicholas knew he had perhaps fifteen seconds to draw a verbal picture of the Atlantic Ocean turned into a sterile poisoned desert; it was too short a time, and twice Duncan Alexander interjected, skilfully breaking up the logic of Nicholas presentation and before he had finished, the anchor-man glanced at his watch and cut him short.

‘Thank you, Mr. Berg. Now Mr. Kemp is a director of the oil company.’

‘My company., Orient Amex, last year allocated the sum of two million U.S. dollars as grants to assist in the scientific study of world environmental problems. I can tell you folks, right now, that we at Orient Amex are very conscious of the problems of modern technology He was projecting the oil-company image, the benefactors of all humanity.’

‘Your company's profit last year, after taxation, was four hundred and twenty-five million dollars,’ Nicholas cut in clearly. ‘That makes point four seven percent on environmental research - all of it tax deductible. Congratulations, Mr. Kemp.’

The oil man looked pained and went on: ‘Now we at Orient Amex,’ plugging the company name again neatly, ‘are working towards a better quality of life for all peoples. But we do realize that it is impossible to put back the clock a hundred years. We cannot allow ourselves to be blinded by the romantic wishful thinking of amateur environmentalists, the weekend scientists and the doom-criers who –‘

‘Cry Torrey Canyon,’ Nicholas suggested helpfully, and the oil man suppressed a shudder and went on quickly. ‘-who would have us discontinue such research as the revolutionary cadmium cracking process, which could extend the world's utilization of fossil fuels by a staggering forty percent and give the world's oil reserves an extended life of twenty years or more.’ Again the anchor-man glanced at his watch, cut the oil off in mid-flow and switched his attention to Duncan Alexander.

‘Mr. Alexander, your so-called ultra-tanker will carry the cad-rich crudes. How would you reply to Mr. Berg?’

Duncan smiled, a deep secret smile. ‘When Mr. Berg had my job as head of Christy Marine, the Golden Dawn was the best idea in the world. Since he was fired, it's suddenly the worst.’ They laughed, even one of the cameramen out beyond the lights guffawed uncontrollably, and Nicholas felt the hot red rush of his anger.

‘Is the Golden Dawn rated Al at Lloyd's? asked the anchor-man.

‘Christy Marine has not applied for a Lloyd's listing, we arranged our insurance in other markets.’ Even through his anger Nicholas had to concede how good he was, he had a mind like quicksilver.

‘How safe is your ship, Mr. Alexander?’ Now Duncan turned his head and looked directly across the table at Nicholas.

‘I believe she is as safe as the world's leading marine architects and naval engineers can make her.’ He paused, and there was a malevolent gleam in his eyes now, ‘So safe, that I have decided to end this ridiculous controversy by a display of my personal confidence.’

‘What form will this show of faith take, Mr. Alexander?’ The anchor-man sensed the sensational line for which he had been groping and he leaned forward eagerly.

‘On Golden Dawn s maiden voyage, when she returns from the Persian Gulf fully laden with the El Barras crudes, I and my family, my wife and my step-son, will travel aboard her for the final six thousand miles of her voyage from Cape Town on the Cape of Good Hope to Galveston in the Gulf of Mexico.’ As Nicholas gaped at him wordlessly, he went on evenly, ‘That's how convinced I am that Golden Dawn is capable of performing her task in perfect safety.’

‘Thank you.’ The anchor-man recognized a good exit line, when he heard one. ‘Thank you, Mr. Alexander. You have convinced me - and I am sure many of our viewers. We are now crossing to Washington via satellite where-‘

The moment the red in use light flickered out on the television camera, Nicholas was on his feet and facing the real Duncan Alexander. His anger was fanned by the realization that Duncan had easily grandstanded him with that adroit display of showmanship, and by the stabbing anxiety at the threat to take Peter aboard Golden Down on her hazardous maiden voyage.

‘You're not taking Peter on that death trap of yours,’ he snapped.

‘That’s his mother's decision,’ said Duncan evenly. ‘As the daughter of Arthur Christy, she's decided to give the company her full support,’ he emphasized the word ‘full'.

‘I won’t let either of you endanger my son's life for a wild public-relations stunt.’

‘I'm sure you will try to prevent it,’ Duncan nodded and smiled, ‘and I'm sure your efforts will be as ineffectual as your attempts to stop Golden Dawn.’ He deliberately turned his back on Nicholas and spoke to the oil man. ’I do think that went off rather well,’ he said, ‘don't you?’

James Teacher gave a graphic demonstration of why he could charge the highest fees in London and still have his desk piled high with important briefs. He had Nicholas’ urgent application before a Judge-in-Chambers within seventy hours, petitioning for a writ to restrain Chantelle Alexander from allowing the son of their former marriage, one Peter Nicholas Berg, aged twelve years, to accompany her on an intended voyage from Cape Town in the Republic of South Africa to Galveston in the state of Texas aboard the bulk crude-carrier Golden Dawn, and/or to prevent the said Chantelle Alexander from allowing the child to undertake any other voyage aboard the said vessel.

The judge heard the petition during a recess in the criminal trial of a young post-office worker standing accused of multiple rape. The judge's oak-panelled book-lined chambers were overcrowded by the two parties, their lawyers, the judge's registrar and the considerable bulk of the judge himself.

Still in his wig and robes from the public court, the judge read swiftly through the written submission of both sides, listened attentively to James Teacher's short address and the rebuttal by his opposite number, before turning sternly to Chantelle.

‘Mrs. Alexander.’ The stern expression wavered slightly as he looked upon the devastating beauty which sat demurely before him.’ Do you love your son?’

‘More than anything else in this life.’ Chantelle looked at him steadily out of those vast dark eyes.

‘And you are happy to take him on this journey with you?’

‘I am the daughter of a sailor, if there was danger I would understand it. I am happy to go myself and take my son with me.’

The judge nodded, looked down at the papers on his desk for a moment.

‘As I understand the circumstances, Mr. Teacher, it is common ground that the mother has custody?’

‘That is so, my lord. But the father is the child's guardian.’

‘I'm fully aware of that, thank you,’ he snapped acidly. He paused again before resuming in the measured tones of judgement, ‘We are concerned here exclusively with the welfare and safety of the child. It has been shown that the proposed journey will be made during the holidays and that no loss of schooling will result. On the other hand, I do not believe that the petitioner has shown that there exists reasonable doubts about the safety of the vessel on which the voyage will be made. It seems to be a modern and sophisticated ship. To grant the petition would, in my view, be placing unreasonable restraint on the child's mother.’ He swivelled in his chair to face Nicholas and James Teacher. ‘I regret, therefore, that I see insufficient grounds to accede to your petition.’

In the back seat of James Teacher's Bentley, the little lawyer murmured apologetically. ‘He was right, of course, Nicholas. I would have done the same in his place. These domestic squabbles are always –‘

Nicholas was not listening. ‘What would happen if I picked up Peter and took him to Bermuda or the States?’

‘Abduct him?’ James Teacher's voice shot up an octave, and he caught Nicholas arm with genuine alarm. ‘I beg of you, dismiss the thought. They would have the police waiting for you - God!’ Now he wriggled miserably in his seat. ‘I can't bear to think of what might happen. Apart from getting you sent to gaol, your former wife might even get an order restraining you from seeing your boy again, she could get guardianship away from you. If you did that, you could lose the child, Nicholas. Don't do it. Please don't do it!’

Now he patted Nicholas arm ingratiatingly.’ You'd be playing right into their hands.’ And then with relief he switched his attention to the briefcase on his lap.

‘Can we read through the latest draft of the agreement of sale again?’ he asked, ‘We haven't got much time, you know.’ Then, without waiting for a reply, he began on the preamble to the agreement which would transfer all the assets and liabilities of Ocean Salvage and Towage to the Directors of the Bank of the East, as nominees for parties unnamed.

Nicholas slumped in the far corner of the seat, and stared thoughtfully out of the window as the Bentley crawled in the traffic stream out of the Strand, around Trafalgar Square with it wheeling clouds of pigeons and milling throngs of tourists, swung into the Mall and accelerated down the long straight towards the Palace.

‘I want you to stall them,’ Nicholas said suddenly, and Teacher broke off in the middle of a sentence and stared at him distractedly.

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘I want you to find a way to stall the Sheikhs.’

‘Good God, man.’ James Teacher was utterly astounded. ‘It's taken me nearly a month - four hard weeks to get them ripe to sign,’ his voice choked a little at the memory of the long hours of negotiation. ‘I've written every line of the agreement in my own blood.’

‘I need to have control of my tugs, I need to be free to act-‘

‘Nicholas, we are talking about seven million dollars.’

‘We are talking about my son,’ said Nicholas quietly. ‘Can you stall them?’

‘Yes, of course I can, if that's what you truly want.’ Wearily James Teacher closed the file on his lap. ‘How long?’

‘Six weeks - long enough for Golden Dawn to finish her maiden voyage, one way or the other.’

‘You realize that this may blow the whole deal, don't you?’

‘Yes, I realize that.’

‘And you realize also that there isn't another buyer?’

‘Yes.’

They were silent then, until the Bentley pulled up before the Bank building in Curzon Street, and they stepped out on to the pavement.

‘Are you absolutely certain?’ Teacher asked softly.

‘Just do it,’ Nicholas replied, and the doorman held the bronze and glass doors open for them.

Bermuda asserted its calming influence over Nicholas the moment he stepped out of the aircraft into its comfortable warmth and clean, glittering sunlight. Bernard Wackie's gorgeous burnt-honey-coloured secretary was there to welcome him. She wore a thin cotton dress the colour of freshly cut pineapple and a flashing white smile.

‘Mr. Wackie's waiting for you at the Bank, sir.’

‘Are you out of your mind, Nicholas?’ Bernard greeted him. ‘Jimmy Teacher tells me you blew the Arabs out of the window. Tell me it's not true, please tell me it's not true.’

‘Oh, come on, Bernard,’ Nicholas shook his head and patted him consolingly on the shoulder, ‘your commission would only have been a lousy point seven million, anyway.’

‘Then you did it!’ Bernard wailed, and tried to pull his hand out of Nicholas grip. ‘You screwed it all up.’

‘The Sheikhs have been screwing us up for over a month, Bernie baby. I just gave them a belt of the same medicine, and do you know what? They loved it. The Prince sat up and showed real interest for the first time. For the first time we were speaking the same language. They'll still be around six weeks from now.’

‘But why? I don't understand. Just explain to me why you did it.’

‘Let's go into the plot, and I'll explain it to you.’

In the plot Nicholas stood over the perspex map of the oceans of the globe, and studied it carefully for fully five minutes without speaking.

‘That's Sea Witch's latest position, she's making good passage.’

The green plastic disc that bore the tug's number was set in mid-Atlantic.

‘She reported two hours ago,’ Bernie nodded, and then with professional interest, ‘How did her sea trials go off?’

‘There were the usual wrinkles to iron out, that's what kept me in St Nazaire so long. But we got them straight and Jules has fallen in love with her.’

‘He's still the best skipper in the game.’

But already Nicholas’ attention had switched halfway across the world.

‘Warlock's still in Mauritius!’ his voice snapped like a whip.

‘I had to fly out a new armature for the main generator. It was just bad luck that she broke down in that God-forsaken part of the world.’

‘When will she be ready for sea?’

‘Allen promises noon tomorrow. Do you want to telex him for an update on that?’

‘Later.’ Nicholas wet the tip of a cheroot carefully, without taking his eyes off the plot, calculating distances and currents and speeds.

‘Golden Dawn? he asked, and lit the cheroot while he listened to Bernard's reply.

‘Her pod tanks arrived under tow at the new Orient Amex depot on El Barras three weeks ago.’ Bernie picked up the pointer and touched the upper bight of the deep Persian Gulf . They took on their full cargoes of crude and lay inshore to await Golden Dawn's arrival.’

For a moment, Nicholas contemplated the task of towing those four gigantic pod tanks from Japan to the Gulf, and then he discarded the thought and listened to Bernard.

‘Golden Dawn arrived last Thursday and, according to my agent at El Barras, she coupled up with her pod tanks and made her turn around within three hours.’ Bernard slid the tip of the pointer southwards down the eastern coast of the African continent. ‘I have had no report of her since then, but if she makes good her twenty-two knots, then she'll be somewhere off the coast of Mozambique, or Maputo as they call it now, and she should double the Cape within the next few days. I will have a report on her then, she'll be taking on mail as she passes Cape Town.’

‘And passengers,’ said Nicholas grimly; he knew that Peter and Chantelle were in Cape Town already. He had telephoned the boy the night before and Peter had been wildly elated at the prospect of the voyage on the ultra-tanker.

‘It's going to be tremendous fun, Dad,’his voice cracking with the onset of both excitement and puberty. ‘We'll be flying out to the ship in a helicopter.’

Bernard Wackie changed the subject, now picking up a sheaf of telex flimsies and thumbing swiftly through them.

‘Right, I've confirmed the standby contract for Sea Witch.’

Nicholas nodded, the contract was for Jules Levoisin and the new tug to stand by three offshore working rigs, standard exploration rigs, that were drilling in the Florida Bay, that elbow of shallow water formed by the sweep of the Florida Keys and the low swampy morass of the Everglades, ‘It's ridiculous to use a twenty-two-thousand-horsepower ocean-going tug as an oil rig standby,’ Bernard lowered the file, and could no longer contain his irritation, ‘Jules is going to go bananas sitting around playing nursemaid. You are going to have a mutiny on your hands - and you'll be losing money. The daily hire won't cover your direct costs.’

‘She will be sitting exactly where I want her,’ said Nicholas, and switched his attention back to the tiny dot of an island in the middle of the Indian Ocean. ‘Now Warlock.’

‘Right. Warlock.’ Bernie picked up another file. ‘I have tendered for a deep-sea tow.’

‘Cancel it,’ said Nicholas. ‘Just as soon as Allen has repaired his generator, I want him running top of the green for Cape Town.’

‘For Cape Town - top of the green?’ Bernard stared at him. ‘Christ, Nicholas. What for?’

‘He won't be able to catch Golden Dawn before she rounds the Cape, but I want him to follow her.’

‘Nicholas, you're out of your mind! Do you know what that would cost?’

‘If Golden Dawn gets into trouble he'll be only a day or two behind her. Tell Allen he is to shadow her all the way into Galveston roads.’

‘ Nicholas, you're letting this whole thing get out of all proportion. It's become an obsession with you, for God's sake!’

‘With her superior speed, Warlock should be up with her before she enters the-‘

'Listen to me, Nicholas. Let's think this all out carefully. What are the chances of Golden Dawn suffering structural failure or crippling breakdown on her maiden voyage - a hundred to one against it? It's that high?’

‘That's about right. Nicholas agreed. A hundred to one.’

‘What is it going to cost to hold one ocean-going salvage tug on standby, at a lousy fifteen hundred dollars a day and then to send another halfway around the world at top of the green?’ Bernard clasped his brow theatrically. ‘It's going to cost you a quarter of a million dollars, if you take into consideration the loss of earnings on both vessels that's the very least it's going to cost you. Don't you have respect for money any longer?’

‘Now you understand why I had, to stall the Sheikhs, I couldn't shoot their money on a hundred-to-one chance - but it's not their money yet. It's mine. Sea Witch and Warlock aren't their tugs, they are mine. Peter isn't their son, he's mine.’

‘You're serious,’ said Bernard incredulously. ‘I do believe you are serious.’

‘Right,’ Nicholas agreed. ‘Damned right, I am. Now get a telex off to David Allen and ask him for his estimated time of arrival in Cape Town.’

Samantha Silver had one towel wrapped around her head like a turban. Her hair was still wet from the luxurious shampooing it had just received. She wore the other towel tucked under her armpits, making a short sarong of it. She still glowed all over from the steaming tub and she smelled of soap and talcum powder.

After a long field trip, it took two or three of these soakings and scrubbings to get the salt and the smell of the mangroves out of her pores, and the Everglades mud from under her nails.

She poured the batter into the pan, the oil spitting and crackling with the heat and she sang out, ‘How many waffles can you eat?’ He came through from the bathroom, a wet towel wrapped around his waist, and he stood in the doorway and grinned at her. ‘How many have you got?’ he asked. She had still not accustomed her ear to the Australian twang'.

He was burned and brown as she was, and his hair was bleached at the ends, hanging now, wet from the shower, into his face.

They had worked well together, and she had learned much from him. The drift into intimacy had been gradual, but inevitable. In her hurt, she had turned to him for comfort, and also in deliberate spite of Nicholas. But now, if she turned her head away, she would not really be able to remember his features clearly. It took an effort to remember his name - Dennis, of course, Doctor Dennis O'Connor.

She was detached from it all, as though a sheet of armoured glass separated her from the real world. She went through the motions of working and playing, of eating and sleeping, of laughing and loving, but it was all a sham.

Dennis was watching her from the doorway now, with that slightly puzzled expression, the helpless look of a person who watches another drowning and is powerless to give aid.

Samantha turned away quickly. ‘Ready in two minutes,’ she said, and he turned back into the bedroom to finish dressing.

She flipped the waffles on to a plate and poured a fresh batch of batter.

Beside her, the telephone rang and she sucked her fingers clean and picked it up with her free hand.

‘Sam Silver,’ she said.

‘Thank God. I've been going out of my mind. What happened to you, darling?’ Her knees went rubbery under her, and she had to sit down quickly on one of the stools.

‘Samantha, can you hear me?’ She opened her mouth, but no sound came out.

‘Tell me what's happening –‘ She could see his face before her, clearly, each detail of it so vividly remembered, the clear green eyes below the heavy brow, the line of cheek-bone and jaw, and the sound of his voice made her shiver.

‘Samantha.’

‘How is your wife, Nicholas?’ she asked softly - and he broke off . She held the receiver to her ear with both hands, and the silence lasted only a few beats of her heart, but it was long enough. Once or twice, in moments of weakness during the last two weeks, she had tried to convince herself that it was not true, That it had all been the viciousness of a lying woman. Now she knew beyond any question that her instinct had been correct. His silence was the admission, and she waited for the lie that she knew would come next.

‘Would it help to tell you I love you?’ he asked softly, and she could not answer. Even in her distress, she felt the rush of relief. He had not lied. At that moment it was the important thing in her life. He had not lied. She felt most it begin to tear painfully, deep in her chest. Her shoulders shook spasmodically.

‘I'm coming to get you,’ he said into the silence.

‘I won't be here,’ she whispered, but she felt it welling up into her throat, uncontrollably. She had not wept before, she had kept it all safely bottled away - but now, the first sob burst from her, and with both hands she slammed the telephone back on to its cradle.

She stood there still, shaking wildly, and the tears poured down her cheeks and dripped from her chin.

Dennis came into the kitchen behind her, tucking his shirt into the top of his trousers, his hair shiny and wet with the straight lines of the comb through it, ‘Who was that?’ he asked cheerfully, and then stopped aghast, ‘What is it, love?’ He started forward again, ‘Come on now.’

‘Don't touch me, please,’ she whispered huskily, and he stopped again uncertainly. ‘We are fresh out of milk,’ she said without turning. ‘Will you take the van down to the shopping centre.’

By the time Dennis returned, she was dressed and she had rinsed her face and tied a scarf around her head like a gypsy. They chewed cold, un-appetising waffles in silence, until she spoke, ‘Dennis, we've got to talk.’

‘No,’ he smiled at her. It's all right, Sam, You don't have to say it. I should have moved on days ago, anyway.’

‘Thanks,’ she said.

‘It was Nicholas, wasn't it?’

She regretted having told him now, but at the time it had been vitally necessary to speak to somebody.

She nodded, and his voice had a sting to it as he went on.

‘I'd like to bust that bastard in the mouth.’

‘We levelled the score, didn't we? she smiled, but it was an unconvincing smile, and she didn't try to hold it.

‘Sam, I want you to know that for me it was not just another quick shack job.’

‘I know that.’ Impulsively she reached out and squeezed his hand. ‘And thanks for understanding - but is it okay if we don't talk about it anymore?’

Peter Berg had twisted round in his safety straps, so that he could press his face to the round perspex window in the fuselage of the big Sikorsky helicopter.

The night was completely, utterly black.

Across the cabin, the Flight Engineer stood in the open doorway, the wind ripping at his bright orange overalls, fluttering them around his body, and he turned and grinned across at the boy, then he made a windmilling gesture with his hand and stabbed downwards with his thumb. It was impossible to speak in the clattering, rushing roar of wind and engine and rotor.

The helicopter banked gently and Peter gasped with excitement as the ship came into view.

She was burning all her lights; tier upon tier, the brilliantly lit floors of her stern quarters rose above the altitude at which the Sikorsky was hovering, and, seeming to reach ahead to the black horizon, the tank deck was outlined with the rows of hooded lamps, like the street-lamps of a deserted city.

She was so huge that she looked like a city, there seemed to be no end to her, stretched to the horizon and towering into the sky.

The helicopter sank in a controlled sweep towards the white circular target on the heliport, guided down by the engineer in the open doorway. Skilfully the pilot matched his descent to the forward motion of the ultra-tanker, twenty-two knots at top economical - Peter had swotted the figures avidly - and the deck moved with grudging majesty to the scend of the tall Cape rollers pushing in unchecked from across the length of the Atlantic Ocean.

The pilot hovered, judging his approach against the brisk north-westerly cross-wind, and from fifty feet Peter could see that the decks were almost level with the surface of the sea, pressed down deeply by the weight of her cargo. Every few seconds, one of the rollers that raced down her length would flip aboard and spread like spilled milk, white and frothy in the deck lights, before cascading back over the side.

Made arrogant and unyielding by her vast bulk, the Golden Dawn did not woo the ocean, as other ships do. Instead, her great blunt bows crushed the swells, churning them under or shouldering them contemptuously aside.

Peter had been around boats since before he could walk, he too was a sea-creature. But though his eye was keen, it was as yet unschooled, so he did not notice the working of the long wide deck.

Sitting beside Peter on the bench seat, Duncan Alexander knew to look for the movement in the hull. He watched the hull twisting and hogging, but so slightly, so barely perceptibly, that Duncan blinked it away, and looked again. From bows to stern she was a mile and a half long, and in essence she was merely four steel pods held together by an elaborate flexible steel scaffolding and driven forward by the mighty propulsion unit in the stern. There was small independent movement of each of the tank pods, so the deck twisted as she rolled, and flexed like a longbow as she took the swells under her, The crest of these swells were a quarter of a mile apart. At any one time, there were four separate wave patterns beneath Golden Dawn's hull, with the peaks thrusting up and the troughs allowing the tremendous dead weight of her cargo to push downwards; the elastic steel groaned and gave to meet these shearing forces.

No hull is ever completely rigid, and elasticity had been part of the ultra-tanker's original design, but those designs had been altered. Duncan Alexander had saved almost two thousand tons of steel, by reducing the stiffening of the central pillar that docked the four pods together, and he had dispensed with the double skins of the pods themselves. He had honed Golden Dawn down to the limits at which his own architects had baulked; then he had hired Japanese architects to rework the designs. They had expressed themselves satisfied that the hull was safe, but had also respectfully pointed out that nobody had ever carried a million tons of crude petroleum in a single cargo before.

The helicopter sank the last few feet and bumped gently on to the insulated green deck, with its thick coat of plasticized paint which prevented the striking of spark, Even a grain of sand trodden between leather sole and bare steel could ignite an explosive air and petroleum gas mixture.

The ship's party swarmed forward, doubled under the swirling rotor. The luggage in its net beneath the fuselage was dragged away and strong hands swung Peter down on to the deck. He stood blinking in the glare of deck lamps and wrinkling his nose to the characteristic tanker stench. It is a smell that pervades everything aboard one of these ships, the food, the furniture, the crew's clothing - even their hair and skin.

It is the thin acrid chemical stench of under-rich fumes vented off from the tanks. Oxygen and petroleum gas are only explosive in a mixture within narrow limits: too much oxygen makes the blend under-rich and too much petroleum gas makes it over-rich, either of which mixtures are non-explosive, non-combustible.

Chantelle Alexander was handed down next from the cabin of the helicopter, bringing an instant flash of elegance to the starkly lit scene of bleak steel and ugly functional machinery. She wore a cat-suit of dark green with a bright green Jean Patou scarf on her head. Two ship's officers closed in solicitously on each side of her and led her quickly away towards the towering stern quarters, out of the rude and blustering wind and the helicopter engine roar.

Duncan Alexander followed her down to the deck, shook hands quickly with the First Officer.

‘Captain Randle's compliments, sir. He is unable to leave the bridge while the ship is in the inshore channel.’

‘I understand.’ Duncan flashed that marvelous smile. The great ship drew almost twenty fathoms fully laden and she had come in very close, as close as was prudent to the mountainous coastline of Good Hope with its notorious currents and wild winds. However, Chantelle Christy must not be exposed to the ear-numbing discomfort of the helicopter flight for a moment longer than was necessary, and so Golden Dawn had come in through the inner channel, perilously close to the guardian rocks of Robben Island that stood in the open mouth of Table Bay.

Even before the helicopter rose and circled away towards the distant glow of Cape Town city under its dark square mountain, the tanker's great blunt bows were swinging away towards the west, and Duncan imagined the relief of Captain Randle as he gave the order to make the offing into the open Atlantic with the oceanic depths under his cumbersome ship.

Duncan smiled again and reached for Peter Berg's hand.

‘Come on, my boy.

‘I'm all right, sir.’ Skilfully Peter avoided the hand and the smile, containing his wild excitement so that he walked ahead like a man, without the skipping energy of a little boy. Duncan Alexander felt the customary flare of annoyance. No, more than that - bare anger at this further rejection by Berg's puppy. They went in single file along the steel catwalk with the child leading. He had never been able to get close to the boy and he had tried hard in the beginning. Now Duncan stopped his anger with the satisfying memory of how neatly he had used the child to slap Berg in the face, and draw the fangs of his opposition.

Berg would be worrying too much about his brat to have time for anything else. He followed Chantelle and the child into the gleaming chrome and plastic corridors of the stern quarters. It was difficult to think of decks and bulkheads rather than floors and walls in here. It was too much like a modern apartment block, even the elevator which bore them swiftly and silently five storeys up to the navigation bridge helped to dispel the feelings of being ship-borne.

On the bridge itself, they were so high above the sea as to be divorced from it. The deck lights had been extinguished once the helicopter had gone, and the darkness of the night, silenced by the thick double-glazed windows, heightened the peace and isolation. The riding lights in the bows seemed remote as the very stars, and the gentle lulling movement of the immense hull was only just noticeable.

The Master was a man of Duncan Alexander's own choosing. The command of the flagship of Christy Marine should have gone to Basil Reilly, the senior captain of the fleet. However, Reilly was Berg's man, and Duncan had used the foundering of Golden Adventurer to force premature retirement on the old sailor.

Randle was young for the responsibility, just a little over thirty years of age, but his training and his credentials were impeccable, and he was an honours graduate of the tanker school in France. Here top men received realistic training in the specialized handling of these freakish giants in cunningly constructed lakes and scale-model harbours, working thirty-foot models of the bulk carriers that had all the handling characteristics of the real ships.

Since Duncan had given him the command, he had been a staunch ally, and he had stoutly defending the design and construction of his ship when the reporters, whipped up by Nicholas Berg, had questioned him. He was loyal, which heavily, tipping the balance for Duncan against his youth and inexperience.

He hurried to meet his important visitors as they stepped out of the elevator into his spacious, gleaming modern bridge, a short stocky figure with a bull neck and the thrusting heavy jaw of great determination or great stubbornness. His greeting had just the right mixture of warmth and servility, and Duncan noted approvingly that he treated even the boy with careful respect. Randle was bright enough to realize that one day the child would be head of Christy Marine. Duncan liked a man who could think so clearly and so far ahead, but Randle was not quite prepared for Peter Berg.

‘Can I see your engine room, Captain?’

‘You mean right now?’

‘Yes.’ For Peter the question was superfluous. ‘If you don't mind, sir!’ he added quickly. Today was for doing things and tomorrow was lost in the mists of the future. ‘Right now, would be just fine.’

‘Well now,’ the Captain realized the request was deadly serious, and that this lad could not be put off very easily, ‘we go on automatic during the night. There's nobody down there now - and it wouldn't be fair to wake the engineer, would it? It's been a hard day.’

‘I suppose not.’ Bitterly disappointed, but amenable to convincing argument, Peter nodded.

‘But I am certain the Chief would be delighted to have you as his guest directly after breakfast.’

‘The Chief Engineer was a Scot with three sons of his own in Glasgow, the youngest of them almost exactly Peter's age. He was more than delighted. Within twenty-four hours, Peter was the ship's favourite, with his own blue company-issue overalls altered to fit him and his name embroidered across the back by the lascar steward ,“PETER BERG”, He wore his bright yellow plastic hard hat at the same jaunty angle as the Chief did, and carried a wad of cotton waste in his back pocket to wipe his greasy hands after helping one of the stokers clean the fuel filters - the messiest job on board, and the greatest fun.

Although the engine control room with its rough camaraderie, endless supplies of sandwiches and cocoa and satisfying grease and oil that made a man look like a professional, was Peter's favourite station, yet he stood other watches.

Every morning he Joined the First Officer on his inspection. Starting in the bows, they worked their way back, checking each of the pod tanks, every valve, and every one of the heavy hydraulic docking clamps that held the pod tanks attached to the main frames of the hull. Most important of all they checked the gauges on each compartment which gave the precise indication of the gas mixtures contained in the air spaces under the main deck of the crude tanks.

Golden Dawn operated on the inert system to keep the trapped fumes in an over-rich and safe condition. The exhaust fumes of the ship's engine were caught, passed through filters and scrubbers to remove the corrosive sulphur elements and then, as almost pure carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide, they were forced into the air spaces of the petroleum tanks. The evaporating fumes of the volatile elements of the crude mingled with the exhaust fumes to form an over-rich, oxygen-poor, and unexplosive gas.

However, a leak through one of the hundreds of valves and connections would allow air into the tanks, and the checks to detect this were elaborate, ranging from an unceasing electronic monitoring of each tank to the daily physical inspection, in which Peter now assisted.

Peter usually left the First Officer's party when it returned to the stern quarters, he might then pass the time of day with the two-men crew in the central pump room.

From here the tanks were monitored and controlled, loaded and offloaded, the flow of inert gas balanced, and the crude petroleum could be pushed through the giant centrifugal pumps and transferred from tank to tank to make alterations to the ship's trim, during partial discharge, or when one or more tanks were detached and taken inshore for discharge.

In the pump room was kept a display that always fascinated Peter. It was the sample cupboard with its rows of screw-topped bottles, each containing samples of the cargo taken during loading. As all four of Golden Dawn's tanks had been filled at the same off-shore loading point and all with crude from the same field, each of the bottles bore the identical label.

EL BARRAS CRUDE

BUNKERS ‘C’

HIGH CADMIUM

Peter liked to take one of the bottles and hold it to the light. Somehow he had always expected the crude oil to be treacly and tarlike, but it was thin as human blood and when he shook the bottle, it coated the glass and the light through it was dark red, again like congealing blood.

‘Some of the crudes are black, some yellow and the Nigerians are green,’ the pump foreman told him. This is the first red that I've seen.’

‘I suppose it's the cadmium in it, Peter told him.’

‘Guess it is,’ the foreman agreed seriously; all on board had very soon learned not to talk down to Peter Berg, he expected to be treated on equal terms.

By this time it was mid-morning and Peter had worked up enough appetite to visit the galley, where he was greeted like visiting royalty. Within days, Peter knew his way unerringly through the labyrinthine and usually deserted passageways. It was characteristic of these great crude-carriers that you might wander through them for hours without meeting another human being. With their huge bulk and their tiny crews, the only place where there was always human presence was the navigation bridge on the top floor of the stern quarters.

The bridge was always one of Peter's obligatory stops.

‘Good-morning, Tug,’ the officer of the watch would greet him.

Peter had been christened with his nickname when he had announced at the breakfast table on his first morning:

‘Tankers are great, but I'm going to be a tug captain, like my dad.’

On the bridge the ship might be taken out of automatic to allow Peter to spell the helmsman for a while, or he would assist the junior deck officers while they made a sun shot as an exercise to check against the satellite navigational Decca; then, after socializing with Captain Randle for a while, it was time to report to his true station in the engine

‘We were waiting on you, Tug,’ growled the Chief. ‘Get your overalls on, man, we're going down the propeller shaft tunnel.’

The only unpleasant period of the day was when Peter's mother insisted that he scrub off the top layers of grease and fuel oil, dress in his number ones, and act as an unpaid steward during the cocktail hour in the elaborate lounge of the owner's suite.

It was the only time that Chantelle Alexander fraternized with the ship's officers and it was a painfully stilted hour, with Peter one of the major sufferers - but the rest of the time he was successful in avoiding the clinging restrictive rulings of his mother and the hated fiercely but silently resented presence of Duncan Alexander, his stepfather.

Still, he was instinctively aware of the new and disturbing tensions between his mother and Duncan Alexander. In the night he heard the raised voices from the master cabin, and he strained to catch the words. Once, when he had heard the cries of his mother's distress, he had left his bunk and gone barefooted to knock on the cabin door. Duncan Alexander had opened it to him. He was in a silk dressing-gown and his handsome features were swollen and flushed with anger.

‘Go back to bed.’

‘I want to see my mother,’ Peter had told him quietly.

‘You need a damned good hiding,’ Duncan had flared. Now do as you are told.’

‘I want to see my mother.’ Peter had stood his ground, standing very straight in his pyjamas with both his tone and expression neutral, and Chantelle had come to him in her nightdress and knelt to embrace him.

‘It's all right, darling. It's perfectly all right.’ But she had been weeping. After that there had been no more loud voices in the night.

However, except for an hour in the afternoon, when the swimming-pool was placed out of bounds to officers and crew, while Chantelle swam and sunbathed, she spent the rest of the time in the owner's suite, eating all her meals there, withdrawn and silent, sitting at the panoramic windows of her cabin, coming to life only for an hour, the evenings while she played the owner's wife to the ship's officers.

Duncan Alexander, on the other hand, was like a caged animal. He paced the open decks, composing long messages which were sent off regularly over the telex in company code to Christy Marine in Leadenhall Street.

Then he would stand out on the open wing of Golden Dawn's bridge, staring fixedly ahead at the northern horizon, awaiting the reply to his last telex, chafing openly at having to conduct the company's business at such long remove, and goaded by the devils of doubt and impatience and fear.

Often it seemed as though he were trying to forge the mighty hull onwards, faster and faster into the north, by the sheer power of his will.

In the north-western corner of the Caribbean basin, there is an area of shallow warm water, hemmed in on one side by the island chain of the great Antilles, the bulwark of Cuba and Hispaniola, while in the west the sweep of the Yucatan peninsula runs south through Panama into the great land-mass of South America - shallow warm trapped water and saturated tropical air, enclosed by land-masses which can heat very rapidly in the high hot sun of the tropics. However, all of it is gently cooled and moderated by the benign influence of the north-easterly trade winds so unvarying in strength and direction that over the centuries, seafaring men have placed their lives and their fortunes at risk upon their balmy wings, gambling on the constancy of that vast moving body of mild air.

But the wind does fail; for no apparent reason and without previous warning, it dies away, often merely for an hour or two, but occasionally - very occasionally - for days or weeks at a time.

Far to the south and east of this devil's spawning ground, the Golden Dawn ploughed massively on through the sweltering air and silken calm of the doldrums, northwards across the equator, changing course every few hours to maintain the great circle track that would carry her well clear of that glittering shield of islands that the Caribbean carries, like an armoured knight, on its shoulder.

The treacherous channels and passages through the islands were not for a vessel of Golden Dawn's immense bulk, deep draught and limited manoeuvrability. She was to go high above the Tropic of Cancer, and just south of the island of Bermuda she would make her westings and enter the wider and safer waters of the Florida Straits above Grand Bahamas. On this course, she would be constricted by narrow and shallow seaways for only a few hundred miles before she was out into the open waters of the Gulf of Mexico again.

But while she ran on northwards, out of the area of equatorial calm, she should have come out at last into the sweet cool airs of the trades, but she did not. Day after day, the calm persisted, and stifling still air pressed down on the ship. It did not in any way slow or affect her passage, but her Master remarked to Duncan Alexander:

‘Another corker today, by the looks of it.’

When he received no reply from his brooding, silent Chairman, he retired discreetly, leaving Duncan alone on the open wing of the bridge, with only the breeze of the ship's passage ruffling his thick coppery hair.

However, the calm was not merely local. It extended westwards in a wide, hot belt across the thousand islands and the basin of shallow sea they enclosed.

The calm lay heavily on the oily waters, and the sun beat down on the enclosing land-masses, Every hour the air heated and sucked up the evaporating waters; a fat bubble like a swelling blister began to rise, the first movement of air in many days. It was not a big bubble, only a hundred miles across, but as it rose, the rotation of the earth's surface began to twist the rising air, spinning it like a top, so that the satellite cameras, hundreds of miles above, recorded a creamy little spiral wisp like the decorative icing flower on a wedding cake.

The cameras relayed the picture through many channels, until at last it reached the desk of the senior forecaster of the hurricane watch at the meteorological headquarters at Miami in southern Florida.

‘Looks like a ripe one,’ he grunted to his assistant, recognizing that all the favourable conditions for the formation of a revolving tropical storm were present. ‘We'll ask Airforce for a fly-through.’

At forty-five thousand feet the pilot of the US Airforce B52 saw the rising dome of the storm from two hundred miles away. It had grown enormously in only six hours.

As the warm saturated air was forced upwards, so the icy cold of the upper troposphere condensed the water vapour into thick puffed-up silver clouds. They boiled upwards, roiling and swirling upon themselves. Already the dome of cloud and ferociously turbulent air was higher than the aircraft.

Under it, a partial vacuum was formed, and the surrounding surface air tried to move in to fill it. But it was compelled into an anti-clockwise track around the centre by the mysterious forces of the earth's rotation. Compelled to travel the long route, the velocity of the air mass accelerated ferociously, and the entire system became more unstable, more dangerous by the hour, turning faster, perpetuating itself by creating greater wind velocities and steeper pressure gradients.

The cloud at the top of the enormous rising dome reached an altitude where the temperature was thirty degrees below freezing and the droplets of rain turned to crystals of ice and were smeared away by upper-level jet-streams. Long beautiful patterns of cirrus against the high blue sky were blown hundreds of miles ahead of the storm to serve as its heralds.

The US Airforce B52 hit the first clear-air turbulence one hundred and fifty miles from the storm's centre. It was as though an invisible predator had seized the fuselage and shaken it until the wings were almost torn from their roots, and in one surge, the aircraft was flung five thousand feet straight upwards.

‘Very severe turbulence,’ the pilot reported, ‘We have vertical wind speeds of three hundred miles an hour plus.’ The senior forecaster in Miami picked up the telephone and called the computer programmer on the floor above him. ‘Ask Charlie for a hurricane code-name.’

And a minute later the programmer called him back. ‘Charlie says to call the bitch “Lorna”.’ Six hundred miles south-west of Miami the storm began to move forward, slowly at first but every hour gathering power, spiralling upon itself at unbelievable velocities, its high dome swelling upwards now through fifty thousand feet and still climbing. The centre of the storm opened like a flower, the calm eye extended upwards in a vertical tunnel with smooth walls of solid cloud rising to the very summit of the dome, now sixty thousand feet above the surface of the wind-tortured sea.

The entire mass began to move faster, back towards the east, in a directly contrary direction to the usual track of the gentle trade winds. Spinning and roaring upon itself, devouring everything in its path, the she-devil called Lorna launched itself across the Caribbean Sea.

Nicholas Berg turned his head to look down upon the impressive skyline of Miami Beach. The rampart of tall elegant hotel buildings followed the curve of the beach into the north, and behind it lay the ugly sprawled tangle of urban development and snarled highways.

The Eastern Airlines direct flight from Bermuda turned on to its base leg and then on to final approach, losing height over the beach and Biscayne Bay, Nicholas felt uncomfortable, the nagging of guilt and uncertainty. His guilt was of two kinds. He felt guilty that he had deserted his post at the moment when he was likely to be desperately needed.

Ocean Salvage's two vessels were out there somewhere in the Atlantic, Warlock running hard up the length of the Atlantic in a desperate attempt to catch up with Golden Dawn, while Jules Levoisin in Sea Witch was now approaching the eastern seaboard of America where he would refuel before going on to his assignment as standby tug on the exploration field in the Gulf of Mexico. At any moment, the Master of either vessel might urgently need to have his instructions.

Then there was Golden Dawn. She had rounded the Cape of Good Hope almost three weeks ago. Since then, even Bernard Wackie had been unable to fix her position.

She had not been reported by other craft, and any communications she had made with Christy Marine must have been by satellite telex, for she had maintained strict silence on the radio channels. However, she must rapidly be nearing the most critical part of her voyage when she turned west and began her approach to the continental shelf of North America and the passage of the islands into the Gulf - Peter Berg was on board that monster, and Nicholas felt the chill of guilt. His place was at the centre, in the control room of Bach Wackie on the top floor of the Bank of Bermuda building in Hamilton town. His post was there where he could assess changing conditions and issue instant commands to coordinate his salvage tugs.

Now he had deserted his post, and even though he had made arrangements to maintain contact with Bernard Wackie, still it would take him hours, perhaps even days, to get back to where he was needed, if there was an emergency.

But then there was Samantha. His instincts warned him that every day, every hour he delayed in going to her would reduce his chances of having her again.

There was more guilt there, the guilt of betrayal. It was no help to tell himself that he had made no marriage vows to Samantha Silver, that his night of weakness with Chantelle had been forced upon him in circumstances almost impossible to resist, that any other man in his position would have done the same, and that in the end the episode had been a catharsis and a release that had left him free for ever of Chantelle.

To Samantha, it had been betrayal, and he knew that much was destroyed by it. He felt terrible aching guilt, not for the act sexual intercourse without love is fleeting and insignificant - but for the betrayal and for the damage he had wrought.

Now he was uncertain, uncertain as to just how much he had destroyed, how much was left for him to build upon. All that he was certain of was that he needed her, more than he had needed anything in his life. She was still the promise of eternal youth and of the new life towards which he was groping so uncertainly. If love was needing, then he loved Samantha Silver with something close to desperation.

She had told him she would not be there when he came. He had to hope now that she had lied, he felt physically sick at the thought that she meant it.

He had only a single Louis Vuitton overnight valise as cabin luggage so he passed swiftly through customs, and as he went into the telephone booths, he checked his watch. It was after six o'clock, she'd be home by now.

He had dialled the first four digits of her number before he checked himself.

‘What the hell am I phoning for?’ he asked himself grimly. ‘To tell her I'm here, so she can have a flying start when she runs for the bushes?’

There is nothing so doomed as a timid lover. He dropped the receiver back on its cradle, and went for the Hertz desk at the terminal doors.

‘What's the smallest you've got?’ he asked.

‘A Cougar,’ the pretty blonde in the yellow uniform told him. In America, small is a relative term. He was just lucky she hadn't offered him a Sherman tank, The brightly painted Chevy van was in the lean-to shelter under the spread branches of the ficus tree, and he parked the Cougar's nose almost touching its tail-gate. There was no way she could escape now, unless she went out through the far wall of the shed. Knowing her, that was always a possibility, he grinned mirthlessly.

He knocked once on the screen door of the kitchen and went straight in. There was a coffee pot beside the range, and he touched it as he passed. It was still warm.

He went through into the living room, and called:

‘Samantha!’

The bedroom door was ajar. He pushed it open. There was a suit of denims, and some pale transparent wisps of underwear thrown carelessly over the patchwork quilt.

The shack was deserted, he went down the steps of the front stoop and straight on to the beach. The tide had swept the sand smooth, and her prints were the only ones. She had dropped her towel above the high-watermark but he had to shade his eyes against the ruddy glare of the lowering sun before he could make out her bobbing head - five hundred yards out.

He sat down beside her towel in the fluffy dry sand and lit a cheroot.

He waited, while the sun settled in a wild, fiery flood of light, and he lost the shape of her head against the darkening sea. She was half a mile out now, but he felt no urgency, and the darkness was almost complete when she rose suddenly, waist-deep from the edge of the gentle surf, waded ashore and came up the beach, twisting the rope of her hair over one shoulder to wring the water from it.

Nicholas felt his heart flop over and he flicked the cheroot away and stood up. She halted abruptly, like a startled forest animal, and stood completely still, staring uncertainly at the tall, dark figure before her. She was so young and slim and smooth and beautiful.

‘What do you want?’ she faltered.

‘You,’ he said.

‘Why? Are you starting a harem?’ Her voice hardened and she straightened; he could not see the expression of her eyes, but her shoulders took on a stubborn set.

He stepped forward and she was rigid in his arms and her lips hard and tightly unresponsive under his.

‘Sam, there are things I'll never be able to explain, I don't even understand them myself, but what I do know very clearly is that I love you, that without you my life is going to be flat and plain goddamned miserable.’

There was no relaxation of the rigid muscles. Her hands were still held stiffly at her sides and her body felt cold and wet and unyielding.

‘Samantha, I wish I were perfect - I'm not. But all I am sure of is that I can't make it without you.’

‘I couldn't take it again. I couldn't live through this again,’ she said tightly.

‘I need you. I am certain of that,’ he insisted.

‘You'd better be, you son of a bitch. You cheat on me one time more and you won't have anything left to cheat with - I'll take it off clean, at the roots.’ Then she was clinging to him. ‘Oh God, Nicholas, how I hated you, and how I missed you - and how long you took to come back,’ and her lips were soft and tasted of the sea.

He picked her up and carried her up through the soft sand. He didn't trust himself to speak, it would be so easy to say the wrong thing now.

‘Nicholas, I've been sitting here waiting for your call.’ Bernard Wackie's voice was sharp and alert, the tension barely contained. ‘How soon can you get yourself back here?’

‘What is it?’

‘It is starting to pop. I've got to hand it to you, baby, you've got a nose for it. You smelled this coming.’

‘Come on, Bernie!’ Nicholas snapped.

‘This call is going through three open exchanges,’ Bernie told him. ‘You want chapter and verse, or did nobody ever tell you that it's a tough game you are in? There is a lot of competition cluttering up the scene. The cheese-heads have one lying handy.’ Probably Wittezee or one of the other big Dutch tugs, Nicholas thought swiftly. ‘They could be streaming a towing wire within a couple of days, And the Yanks are pretty hot numbers, McCormick has one stationed in the Hudson River.’

‘All right,’ Nick cut through the relish with which Bernie was detailing the threat of hovering competition.

‘There is a direct flight at seven tomorrow morning - if I can't make that, I'll connect with the British Airways flight from Nassau at noon tomorrow. Meet me,’ Nick ordered.

‘You shouldn't have gone running off,’ said Bernard Wackie, showing amazing hindsight. Before he could deliver any more pearls of wisdom, Nicholas hung up on him.

Samantha was sitting up in the centre of the bed. She was stark naked, but she hugged her knees to her chest with both arms, and under the gorgeous tangle of her hair her face was desolate as that of a lost child and her green eyes haunted.

‘You're going again,’ she said softly. ‘You only just came, and now you're going again. Oh God, Nicholas, loving you is the toughest job I've ever had in my life. I don't think I have got the muscle for it.’ He reached for her quickly and she clung to him, pressing her face into the thick pad of coarse dark hair that covered his chest.

‘I have to go - I think it's Golden Dawn,’ he said, and she listened quietly while he told it to her, Only when he finished speaking did she begin to ask the questions which kept them talking quietly, locked in each other's arms in the old brass bed, until long after midnight.

She insisted on cooking his breakfast for him, even though it was still dark outside and she was more than half asleep, hanging on to the range for support and turning up the early morning radio show so that the music might shake her awake.

‘Good morning, early birds, this is W.W.O.K. with another lovely day ahead of you. A predicted 85o at Fort Lauderdale and the coast, and 80o inland with a 10% chance of rain. We've got a report on hurricane Lorna for you also. She's dipping away south, towards the lesser Antilles - so we can all relax, folks - relax and listen to Elton John.’

‘I love Elton John,’ Samantha said sleepily. ‘Don't you?’

.Who's he?’ Nicholas asked.

‘There! I knew right away we had a lot in common.’ She blinked at him owlishly. ‘Did you kiss me good morning? I forget.’

‘Come here,’ he instructed. ‘You're not going to forget this one.’

Then, a few minutes later, ‘Nicholas, you'll miss your plane.’

‘Not if I cut breakfast.’

‘It would have been a grotty breakfast anyway.’ She was coming awake fast now.

She gave him the last kiss through the open window of the Cougar.

‘You've got an hour - you'll just about make it’

He started the engine and still she held on to the sill.

‘Nicholas, one day we will be together - I mean all the time, like we planned? You and me doing our own thing, our own way? We will, won't we?’

‘It's a promise.’

‘Hurry back,’ she said, and he gunned the Cougar up the sandy driveway without looking back.

There were eight of them crowded into Tom Parker's office. Although there was only seating for three, the others found perches against the tiered shelves with their rows of biological specimens in bottles of formaldehyde or on the piles of reference books and white papers that were stacked against the walls.

Samantha sat on the corner of Tom's desk, swinging her long denim-clad legs, and answered the questions that were fired at her.

‘How do you know she will take the passage of the Florida Straits?’

‘It's an educated guess. She's just too big and clumsy to thread the needle of the islands.’ Samantha's replies were quick. ‘Nicholas is betting on it.’

‘I'll go along with that then,’ Tom grunted.

‘The Straits are a hundred miles wide-‘

‘I know what you're going to say,’ Samantha smiled, and turned to one of the other girls. ‘Sally-Anne will answer that one.’

‘You all know my brother is in the Coast Guard - all traffic through the Straits reports to Fort Lauderdale,’ she explained. ‘And the coastguard aircraft patrol out as far as Grand Bahama. ‘We'll have a fix on her immediately she enters the Straits - we've got the whole U.S. Coast Guard rooting for us.’

They argued and discussed for ten minutes more, before Tom Parker slapped an open palm on the desk in front of him and they subsided reluctantly into silence.

‘Okay,’ he said. Do I understand the proposal to be that this chapter of Green-Peace intercepts the tanker carrying cad-rich crudes before it enters American territorial waters and attempts to delay or divert the ship?’

‘That's exactly it,’ Samantha nodded, and looked about her for support. They were all nodding and murmuring agreement.

‘What are we trying to achieve? Do we truly believe that we will be able to hold up the delivery of toxic crudes to the refinery at Galveston? Let's define our objectives,’ Tom insisted.

‘In order for evil men to triumph it is necessary only that good men do nothing. We are doing something.’

‘Bullshit, Sam,’ Tom growled. "Let's cut down on the rhetoric - it's one of the things that does us more harm than good. You talk like a nut and you discredit yourself before you have begun.’

‘All right,’ Samantha grinned. ‘We are publicizing the dangers, and our opposition to them.’

‘Okay,’ Tom nodded. ‘That's better. What are our other objectives?’

They discussed that for twenty minutes more, and then Tom Parker took over again.

‘Fine, now how do we get out there in the Straits to confront this vessel - do we put on our water-wings and swim?’

Even Samantha looked sheepish now. She glanced around for support, but the others were studying their fingernails or gazing with sudden fascination out of the windows.

‘Well,’ Samantha began, and then hesitated. ‘We thought –‘

‘Go on,’ Tom encouraged her. ‘Of course, you weren't thinking of using University property, were you? There is actually a law in this country against taking other people's ships - it's called piracy.’

‘As a matter of fact -' Samantha gave a helpless shrug.

‘And as a senior and highly respected member of the faculty, you would not expect me to be party to a criminal act.’

They were all silent, watching Samantha, for she was their leader, but for once she was at a loss.

‘On the other hand, if a party of graduate researchers put in a requisition, through the proper channels, I would be quite happy to authorize an extended field expedition across the Straits to Grand Bahama on board the Dicky.’

‘Tom, you're a darling,’ said Samantha.

‘That's a hell of a way to speak to your Professor,’ said Tom, and scowled happily at her.

‘They came in on the British Airways flight from Heathrow yesterday afternoon. Three of them, here is a list of the names,’ Bernard Wackie slid a notepad across the desk, and Nicholas glanced at it quickly.

‘Charles Gras - I know him, he's Chief Engineer at Construction Navale Atlantique,’ Nicholas explained.

‘Right,’ Bernard nodded. ‘He gave his occupation and employer to Immigration.’

‘Isn't that privileged information?’

Bernard grinned. ‘I keep my ear to the ground,’ and then he was deadly serious again. ‘All right, so these three engineers have a small suitcase each and a crate in the hold that weighs three hundred and fifty kilos, and it's marked “Industrial Machinery”.’

‘Don't stop now,’ Nicholas encouraged him.

‘And there is an S61N Sikorsky helicopter sitting waiting for them on the tarmac. The helicopter has been chartered direct from London by Christy Marine of Leadenhall Street. The three engineers and the case of machinery are shuttled aboard the Sikorsky so fast that it looks like a conjuring trick, and she takes off and egg-beats for the south.

‘Did the Sikorsky pilot file a flight-plan?’

‘Sure did. Servicing shipping, course 196 magnetic. ETA to be reported.’

‘What's the range of the 61N - 500 nautical miles?’

‘Not bad,’ Bernard conceded. '533 for the standard, but this model has long-range tanks, she's good for 750. But that's one way, not the return journey. The helicopter hasn't returned to Bermuda yet.’

‘She could refuel aboard - or, if they aren't carrying avgas, she could stay on until final destination,’ Nicholas said. ‘What else have you got?’

‘You want more?’ Bernard looked aghast. ‘Doesn't anything ever satisfy you?’

‘Did you monitor the communications between Bermuda Control, the chopper, and the ship she was servicing?’

‘Nix,’ Bernard shook his head. ‘There was a box-up.’ He looked shamefaced. ‘It happens to the best of us.’

‘Spare me the details. Can you get information from Bermuda Control of the time the chopper closed her flight-plan?’

‘Jesus, Nicholas, you know better than that. It's an offence to listen in on the aviation frequencies, let alone ask them.’

Nicholas jumped up, and crossed swiftly to the perspex plot. He brooded over it, leaning on clenched fists, his expression smouldering as he studied the large-scale map.

‘What does all this mean to you, Nicholas?’ Bernard came to stand beside him.

‘It means that a vessel at sea, belonging to the Christy Marine fleet, has requested its head office to send machinery spares and specialist personnel by the fastest possible means, without regard to expense. Have you figured the air freight on a package Of 350 kilos?’

Nicholas straightened up and groped for the crocodile-skin cheroot case.

‘It means that the vessel is broken down or in imminent danger of breakdown somewhere in an area south-west of Bermuda, within an arc of four hundred and fifty miles probably much closer, otherwise she would have requested service from the Bahamas, and it's highly unlikely they would have operated the chopper at extreme range.’

‘Right,’ Bernard agreed. Nicholas lit his cheroot and they were both silent a moment.

‘A hell of a small needle in a bloody big haystack,’ said Bernard.

‘You let me worry about that,’ Nicholas murmured, still without taking his eyes from the plot.

‘That's what you are paid for,’ Bernard agreed amiably. ‘It's Golden Dawn, isn't it?’

‘Has Christy Marine got any other vessels in the area?’

‘Not as far as I know.’

‘Then that was a bloody stupid question.’

‘Take it easy, Nicholas.’

‘I'm sorry.’ Nicholas touched his arm. ‘My boy's on that pig,’ He took a deep draw on the cheroot, held it a moment, and then slowly exhaled. His voice was calm and businesslike, as he went on:

‘What's our weather?’

‘Wind at 060o and 15 knots. Cloud three eighths stratocumulus at four thousand feet. Long-range projection, no change.’

‘Steady trade winds again,’ Nicholas nodded. ‘Thank God for all small mercies.’

‘There is a hurricane warning out, as you know, but on its present position and track, it will blow itself out to sea a thousand miles south of Grand Bahama.’

‘Good ,’ Nicholas nodded again. ‘Please ask both Warlock and Sea Witch to report their positions, course, speed and fuel-conditions.’

Bernard had the two telex flimsies for him within twenty minutes.

‘Warlock has made a good run of it,’ Nicholas murmured, as the position of the tug was marked on the plot.

‘She crossed the equator three days ago,’ said Bernard.

‘And Sea Witch will reach Charleston late tomorrow,’ Nicholas observed. ‘Are any of the opposition inside us?’

Bernard shook his head. ‘McCormick has one in New York and Wittezee is halfway back to Rotterdam.’

‘We are in good shape,’ Nicholas decided, as he balanced the triangles of relative speeds and distances between the vessels.

‘Is there another chopper available on the island to get me out to Warlock?’

‘No,’ Bernard shook his head. ‘The 61N is the only one based on Bermuda.’

‘Can you arrange bunkering for Warlock, I mean immediate bunkering - here in Hamilton?’

‘We can have her tanks filled an hour after she comes in.’

Nicholas paused and then made the decision. ‘Please telex David Allen on Warlock, TO MASTER WARLOCK FROM BERG IMMEDIATE AND URGENT NEW SPEED TOP OF THE GREEN NEW COURSE HAMILTON HARBOUR BERMUDA ISLAND DIRECT REPORT EXPECTED TIME OF ARRIVAL ENDS.

‘You're going to run, then?’ Bernard asked. ‘You are going to run with both your ships?’

‘Yes,’ Nicholas nodded. ‘I'm running with everything I've got.

Golden Dawn wallowed with the dead heavy weight of one million tons of crude oil. Her motion was that of a waterlogged hulk. Broadside to the set of the swells, her tank decks were almost awash. The low seas broke against her starboard rail and the occasional crest flopped over and spread like pretty patches of white lace-work over the green plastic-coated decks.

She had been drifting powerlessly for four days now.

The main bearing of the single propeller shaft had begun to run hot forty-eight hours after crossing the equator, and the Chief Engineer had asked for shut-down to inspect the bearing and effect any repairs. Duncan Alexander had forbidden any shut-down, over-riding the good judgement of both his Master and Chief Engineer, and had only grudgingly agreed to a reduction in the ship's speed.

He ordered the Chief Engineer to trace any fault and to effect what repairs he could, while under reduced power.

Within four hours, the Chief had traced the damaged and leaking gland in the pump that force-lubricated the bearing, but even the running under reduced power setting had done significant damage to the main bearing, and now there was noticeable vibration, jarring even Golden Dawn's massive hull.

‘I have to get the pump stripped down or we'll burn her clear out,’ the Chief faced up to Duncan Alexander at last. ‘Then you'll have to shut down and not just a couple of hours either, It will take two days to fit new bearing shells at sea.’ The Chief was pale and his lips trembled, for he knew of this man's reputation. The engineer knew that he discarded those who crossed him, and he had the reputation of a special vindictiveness to hound a man until he was broken. The Chief was afraid, but his concern for the ship was just strong enough.

Duncan Alexander changed direction. ‘What was the cause of the pump failure in the first place? Why wasn't it noticed earlier? It looks like a case of negligence to me.’

Stung at last, the Chief blurted out, ‘If there had been a back-up pump on this ship, we could have switched to secondary system and done proper maintenance.’ Duncan Alexander flushed and turned away. The modifications he had personally ordered to Golden Dawn's design had excluded most of the duplicated back-up systems; anything that kept down the cost of construction had been ordered.

‘How long do you need?’ He stopped in the centre of the owner's stateroom and glared at his engineer.

‘Four hours,’ the Scot replied promptly.

‘You've got exactly four hours,’ he said grimly. ‘if you haven't finished by then you will live to regret it. I swear that to you.’

While the engineer stopped his engines, stripped, repaired and reassembled the lubrication pump, Duncan was on the bridge with the Master, ‘We've lost time, too much time,’ he said. ‘I want that made up.’

‘It will mean pushing over best economic speed,’ Captain Randle warned carefully.

‘Captain Randle, the value of our cargo is 85 dollars a ton. We have on board one million tons. I want the time made up.’ Duncan brushed his objection aside. ‘We have a deadline to meet in Galveston roads. This ship, this whole concept of carrying crude is on trial, Captain. I don't have to keep reminding you of that. The hell with the costs, I want to meet the deadline.’

‘Yes, Mr. Alexander,’ Randle nodded. ‘We'll make up the time.’

Three and a half hours later, the Chief Engineer came up to the bridge.

‘Well?’ Duncan turned on him fiercely as he stepped out of the elevator.

‘The pump is repaired, but –‘

‘What is it, man?’

‘I've got a feeling. We ran her too long. I've got a nasty feeling about that bearing. It wouldn't be clever to run her over 50% of power, not until it's been taken down and inspected.’

‘I'm ordering revolutions for 25 knots,’ Randle told him uneasily.

‘I wouldn't do that, man,’ the Chief shook his head mournfully.

‘Your station is in the engine room,’ Duncan dismissed him brusquely, nodded to Randle to order resumption of sailing, and went out to his customary place on the open wing of the bridge. He looked back over the high round stern as the white turbulence of the great propeller boiled out from under the counter and then settled in a long slick wake that soon reached back to the horizon. Duncan stood out in the wind until after dark, and when he went below, Chantelle was waiting for him. She stood up from the long couch under the forward windows of the stateroom.

‘We are under way again.’

‘Yes,’he said. ‘It's going to be all right.’

The engine control was switched to automatic at nine o'clock local time that night. The engine room personnel went up to dinner, and to bed, all except the Chief Engineer. He lingered for another two hours shaking his head and mumbling bitterly over the massive bearing assembly in the long narrow shaft tunnel. Every few minutes, he laid his hand on the massive casting, feeling for the heat and vibration that would warn of structural damage.

At eleven o'clock, he spat on the steadily revolving propeller shaft. It was thick as an oak trunk and polished brilliant silver in the stark white lights of the tunnel. He pushed himself up stiffly from his crouch beside the bearing.

In the control room, he checked again that all the ship's systems were on automatic, and that all circuits were functioning and repeating on the big control board, then he stepped into the elevator and went up.

Thirty-five minutes later, one of the tiny transistors in the board blew with a pop like a champagne cork and a puff of grey smoke. There was nobody in the control room to hear or see it. The system was not duplicated, there was no back-up to switch itself in automatically, so that when the temperature of the bearing began to rise again, there was no impulse carried to the alarm system, no automatic shutdown of power.

The massive shaft spun on while the over-heated bearing closed its grip upon the area of rough metal, damaged by the previous prolonged running, A fine sliver of metal lifted from the polished surface of the spinning shaft, and curled like a silver hair spring, was caught up and smeared into the bearing. The whole assembly began to glow a sullen cherry red and then the oxide paint that was daubed on the outer surfaces of the bearing began to blister and blacken. Still the tremendous power of the engine forced the shaft around.

What oil was still being fed between the glowing surfaces of the spinning shaft and the shells of the bearing turned instantly thin as water in the heat, then reached its flash point and burst into flame and ran in little fiery rivulets down the heavy casting of the main bearing, flashing the blistered paint-work alight. The shaft tunnel filled with thick billows of stinking chemical-tainted smoke, and only then did the fire sensors come to life and their alarms repeated on the navigation bridge and in the quarters of Master, First Officer and Chief Engineer.

But the great engine was still pounding along at 70% of power, and the shaft still turned in the disintegrating bearing, smearing heat-softened metal, buckling and distorting under unbearable strains.

The Chief Engineer was the first to reach the central console in the engine control room, and without orders from the bridge he began emergency shut-down of all systems.

It was another hour before the team under the direction of the First Officer had the fire in the shaft tunnel under control. They used carbon dioxide gas to smother the burning paint and oil, for cold water on the heated metal would have aggravated the damage done by heat distortion and buckling.

The metal of the main bearing casting was still so hot when the Chief Engineer began opening it up, that it scorched the thick leather and asbestos gloves worn by his team.

The bearing shells had disintegrated, and the shaft itself was brutally scored and pitted. If there was distortion, the Chief knew it would not be detected by eye. However, even a buckling of one ten thousandth of an inch would be critical.

He cursed softly as he worked, nuking the obscenities sound like a lullaby; he cursed the manufacturers of the lubricating pump, the men who had installed and tested it, the damaged gland and the lack of a back-up system, but mostly he cursed the stubbornness and intractability of the Chairman of Christy Marine whose ill-advised judgement had turned this functionally beautiful machinery into blackened smoking twisted metal.

It was mid-morning by the time the Chief had the spare bearing shells brought up from stores and unpacked from their wood shavings in the wooden cases; but it was only when they came to fit them that they realized that the cases had been incorrectly stencilled. The half-shells that they contained were obsolete non-metric types, and they were five millimetres undersized for Golden Dawn's shaft that tiny variation in size made them utterly useless.

It was only then that Duncan Alexander's steely urbane control began to crack; he raged about the bridge for twenty minutes making no effort to think his way out of the predicament, but abusing Randle and his engineer in wild and extravagant terms. His rage had a paralysing effect on all Golden Dawn's officers and they stood white-faced and silently guilty.

Peter Berg had sensed the excitement and slipped up unobtrusively to watch. He was fascinated by his stepfather's rage. He had never seen a display like it before, and at one stage he hoped that Duncan Alexander's eyeballs might actually burst like over-ripe grapes; he held his breath in anticipation, and felt cheated when it did not happen.

At last, Duncan stopped and ran both hands through his thick waving hair; two spikes of hair stood up like devil's horns. He was still panting but he had recovered partial control.

‘Now sir, what do you propose?’ he demanded of Randle, and in the silence Peter Berg piped up.

‘You could have new shells sent from Bermuda - it's only three hundred miles away. We checked it this morning.’

‘How did you get in here?’ Duncan swung round. ‘Get back to your mother.’ Peter scampered, appalled at his own indiscretion, and only when he left the bridge did the Chief speak.

We could have spares flown out from London to Bermuda There must be a boat–‘ Randle cut in swiftly.

‘Or an aircraft to drop it to us –‘

‘Or a helicopter –‘

‘Get Christy Main on the telex,’ snapped Duncan Alexander.

It was good to have a deck under his feet again, Nicholas exulted. He felt himself coming fully alive again.

‘I'm a sea-creature,’ he grinned to himself. ‘And I keep forgetting it.’

He looked back to the low silhouette of the Bermuda islands, the receding arms of Hamilton Harbour and the flecking of the multi-coloured buildings amongst the cedar trees, and then returned his attention to the spread charts on the navigation table before him.

Warlock was still at cautionary speed. Even though the channel was wide and clearly buoyed, yet the coral reef on each hand was sharp and hungry, and David Allen's full attention was on the business of conning Warlock out into the open sea. But as they passed the 100 fathom line, he gave the order to his deck officer,

‘Full away at 0900, hours, pilot,’ and hurried across to join Nicholas.

‘I didn't have much of a chance to welcome you on board, sir.’

‘Thank you, David. It's good to be back.’ Nicholas looked up and smiled at him. ‘Will you bring her round on to 240° magnetic and increase to 80% power?’

Quickly David repeated his order to the helm and then shifted from one foot to the other, beginning to flush under the salt-water tan.

‘Mr. Berg, my officers are driving me mad. They've been plaguing me since we left Cape Town, - are we running on a job - or is this a pleasure cruise?’

Nicholas laughed aloud then. He felt the excitement of the hunt, a good hot scent in the nostrils, and the prospect of a fat prize. Now he had Warlock under him, his concern for Peter's safety had abated. Whatever happened now, he could get there very fast. No, he felt good, very good.

‘We're hunting, David,’ he told him. ‘Nothing certain yet,’ -he paused, and then relented, ‘Get Beauty Baker up to my cabin, tell Angel to send up a big pot of coffee and a mess of sandwiches - I missed breakfast - and while we eating, I'll fill both of you in.’

Beauty Baker accepted one of Nicholas cheroots.

‘Still smoking cheap,’ he observed, and sniffed at the four-dollar cheroot sourly, but there was a twinkle of pleasure behind the smeared lenses of his spectacles. Then, unable to contain himself, he actually grinned.

‘Skipper tells me we are hunting, is that right?’

‘This is the picture –‘ Nicholas began to spell it out to them in detail, and while he talked, he thought with comfortable self-indulgence, ‘I must be getting old and soft I didn't always talk so much.’

Both men listened in silence, and only when he finished did the two of them begin bombarding him with the perceptive penetrating questions he had expected.

‘Sounds like a generator armature,’ Beauty Baker guessed, as he puzzled the contents of the wooden case that had been flown out to Golden Dawn. ‘I cannot believe that Golden Dawn doesn't carry a full set of mechanical spares.’

While Baker was fully preoccupied with the mechanics of the situation, David Allen concentrated on the problems of seamanship. ‘What was the range of the helicopter? Has it returned to base yet? With her draught, she must be heading for the Florida Straits. Our best bet would be to shape a course for Matanilla Reef at the mouth of the Straits.’

There was a peremptory knock on the door of the guest cabin, and the Trog stuck his grey wrinkled tortoise head through. He glanced at Nicholas, but did not greet him.

‘Captain, Miami is broadcasting a new hurricane alert. "Lorna" has kicked northwards, they're predicting a track of north north-west and a speed over the ground of twenty knots.’

He closed the door and they stared at each other in silence for a moment.

Nicholas spoke at last.

‘It is never one single mistake that causes disaster,’ he said. ‘It is always a series of contributory errors, most of them of small consequence in themselves - but when taken with a little bad luck –‘he was silent a moment and then, softly, ‘Hurricane Lorna could just be that bit of bad luck.’ He stood up and took one turn around the small guest cabin, feeling caged and wishing for the space of the Master's suite which was now David Allen's. He turned back to Beauty Baker and David Allen, and suddenly he realized that they were hoping for disaster. They were like two old sea wolves with the scent of the prey in their nostrils. He felt his anger rising coldly against them, they were wishing disaster on his son.

‘Just one thing I didn't tell you,’ he said. ‘My son is on Golden Dawn.’

The immense revolving storm that was code-named Lorna was nearing full development. Her crest was reared high above the freezing levels so she wore a splendid mane of frosted white ice particles that streamed out three hundred miles ahead of her on the jet stream of the upper troposphere.

From one side to the other, she now measured one hundred and fifty miles across, and the power unleashed within her was of unmeasurable savagery.

The winds that blew around her centre tore the surface off the sea and bore it aloft at speeds in excess of one hundred and fifty miles an hour, generating precipitation that was as far beyond rain as death is beyond life. Water filled the dense cloud-banks so that there was no clear line between sea and air.

It seemed now that madness fed upon madness, and like a blinded and berserk monster, she blundered across the confined waters of the Caribbean, ripping the trees and buildings, even the very earth from the tiny islands which stood in her path.

But there were still forces controlling what seemed uncontrollable, dictating what seemed to be random, for, as she spun upon a spinning globe, the storm showed the primary trait of gyroscopic inertia, a rigidity in space that was constant as long as no outside force was applied, Obeying this natural law, the entire system moved steadily eastwards at constant speed and altitude above the surface of the earth, until her northern edge touched the land-mass of the long ridge of land that forms the greater Antilles.

Immediately another gyroscopic law came into force, the law of precession. When a deflecting force is applied to the rim of a spinning gyro, the gyro moves not away from, but directly towards that force.

Hurricane Lorna felt the land, and, like a maddened bull at the flirt of the matador's cape, she turned and charged towards it, crossing the narrow high strips of Haiti in an orgy of destruction and terror until she burst out of the narrow channel of the Windward Passage into the open beyond.

Yet still she kept on spinning and moving. Now, barely three hundred miles ahead of her, across those shallow reefs and banks prophetically named Hurricane Flats after the thousands of other such storms that had followed the same route during the memory of man, lay the deeper waters of the Florida Straits and the mainland of the continental United States of America.

At twenty miles an hour, the whole incredible heaven-high mass of crazed wind and churning clouds trundled north-westwards.

Duncan Alexander stood under the bogus Degas ballet dancers in the owner's stateroom. He balanced easily on the balls of his feet and his hands were clasped lightly behind his back, but his brow was heavily furrowed with worry and his eyes darkly underscored with plum-coloured swollen bags of sleeplessness.

Seated on the long couch and on the imitation Louis Quatorze chairs flanking the fireplace, were the senior officers of Golden Dawn - her Captain, Mate and Chief Engineer, and in the leather -studded wing-backed chair across the wide cabin sat Charles Gras, the engineer from Atlantique. It seemed as though he had chosen his seat to keep himself aloof from the owner and officers of the crippled ultra-tanker.

He spoke now in heavily accented English, falling back on the occasional French word which Duncan translated quickly, The four men listened to him with complete attention, never taking their eyes from the sharp pale Parisian features and the foxy bright eyes.

‘My men will have completed the re-assembly of the main bearing by noon today. To the best of my ability, I have examined and tested the main shaft. I can find no evidence of structural damage, but I must emphasize that this does not mean that no damage exists. At the very best, the repairs must be considered to be temporary.’ He paused and they waited, while he turned deliberately to Captain Randle. ‘I must urge you to seek proper repair in the nearest port open to you, and to proceed there at the lowest speed which will enable you efficiently to work the ship.’

Randle twisted uncomfortably in his seat, and glanced across at Duncan. The Frenchman saw the exchange and a little steel came into his voice.

‘If there is structural distortion in the main shaft, operation at speeds higher than this may result in permanent and irreversible damage and complete breakdown. I must make this point most forcibly.’

Duncan intervened smoothly. ‘We are fully burdened and drawing twenty fathoms of water. There are no safe harbours on the eastern seaboard of America, that is even supposing that we could get permission to enter territorial waters with engine trouble. The Americans aren't likely to welcome us. Our nearest safe anchorage is Galveston roads, on the Texas coast of the Gulf of Mexico - and then only after the tugs have taken off our pod tanks outside the 100 fathom line.’

The tanker's First Officer was a young man, probably not over thirty years of age, but he had so far conducted himself impeccably in the emergencies the ship had encountered. He had a firm jaw and a clear level eye, and he had been the first into the smoke-filled shaft tunnel.

‘With respect, sir,’ and they all turned their heads towards him, 'Miami has broadcast a revised hurricane alert that includes the Straits and southern Florida. We would be on a reciprocal course to the hurricane track, a directly converging course.’

‘Even at fifteen knots, we would be through the Straits and into the Gulf with twenty-four hours to spare,’ Duncan stated, and looked to Randle for confirmation.

‘At the present speed of the storm's advance - yes,’ Randle qualified carefully. ‘But conditions may change-‘

The Mate persisted. ‘Again, with respect, sir. Our nearest safe anchorage is the lee of Bermuda Island-‘

‘Do you have any idea of the value of this cargo?’ Duncan rasped. ‘No, you do not. Well, I will inform you. It is $85,000,000. The interest on that amount is in the region of $25,000 a day.’ His voice rose a note, again that wild note to it. 'Bermuda does not have the facilities to effect major repairs-‘

The door from the private accommodation opened silently and Chantelle Alexander stepped into the stateroom. She wore no jewellery, a plain pearl silk blouse and a simple dark woollen skirt, but her skin had been gilded by the sun and she had lightly touched her dark eyes with a make-up that emphasized their size and shape. Her beauty silenced them all and she was fully aware of it as she crossed to stand beside Duncan.

‘It is necessary that this ship and her cargo proceed directly to Galveston,’ she said softly.

‘Chantelle -' Duncan began, and she silenced him with a brusque gesture of one hand.

‘There is no question about the destination and the route that is to be taken.’

Charles Gras looked to Captain Randle, waiting for him to assert the authority vested in him by law. But when the young Captain remained silent, the Frenchman smiled sardonically and shrugged a world-weary dismissal of further interest. ‘Then I must ask that arrangements be made for my two assistants and myself to leave this ship immediately we have completed the temporary repairs.’ Again Gras emphasized the word temporary'.

Duncan nodded. ‘If we resume our sailing when you anticipate, and even taking into consideration the low fuel condition of the helicopter, we will be within easy range of the east coast of Florida by dawn tomorrow.’ Chantelle had not taken her eyes from the Golden Dawn's officers during this exchange, and now she went on in the same quiet voice.

‘I am quite prepared to accept the resignation of any of the officers of this ship who wish to join that flight.’

Duncan opened his mouth to make some protest at her assumption of his authority, but she turned to him with a small lift of the chin, and something in her expression and the set of her head upon her shoulders reminded him forcibly of old Arthur Christy. There was the same toughness and resilience there, the same granite determination; strange that he had not noticed it before.

‘Perhaps I have never looked before,’ he thought. Chantelle recognized the moment of his capitulation, and calmly she turned back to face Golden Dawn's officers.

One by one, they dropped their eyes from hers; Randle was the first to stand up.

‘If you will excuse me, Mrs. Alexander, ‘I must make preparations to get under way again.’ Charles Gras paused and looked back at her, and he smiled again, as only a Frenchman smiles at a pretty woman.

‘Magnifique!’ he murmured, and lifted one hand in a graceful salute of admiration before he stepped out of the stateroom.

When Chantelle and Duncan were alone together, she turned to him slowly, and she let the contempt show in her expression.

‘Any time you feel you have not got the guts for it, let me know, will you?’

‘Chantelle –‘

‘You have got us into this, me and Christy Marine. Now you'll get us out of it, even if it kills you.’ Her lips compressed into a thinner line and her eyes slitted vindictively. ‘And it would be nice if it did,’ she said softly.

The pilot of the Beechcraft Baron, pulled back the throttles to 22o of boost on both engines, and slid the propellers into fully fine pitch, simultaneously beginning a gentle descending turn towards the extraordinary-looking vessel that came up swiftly out of the low early morning haze that spilled over from the islands.

The same haze had blotted the low silhouette of the Florida coast from the western horizon, and even the pale green water and shaded reefs of little Bahamas Bank were washed pale by the haze, and partially obscured by the intermittent layer of stratocumulus cloud at four thousand feet.

The Baron pilot selected 20o of flap to give the aircraft a nose down attitude which would afford a better forward vision, and continued his descent down through the cloud. It burst in a brief grey puff across the windshield before they were out into sunlight again.

‘What do you make of her?’ he asked his co-pilot.

‘She's a big baby!’ the co-pilot tried to steady his binoculars. 'Can't read her name.’

The enormously wide low bows were pushing up a fat sparkling pillow of churning water, and the green decks seemed to reach back almost to the limits of visibility before rising sheer into the stern quarters.

‘Son of a gun,’ the pilot shook his head. ‘She looks like the vehicle-assembly building on Cape Kennedy.’

‘She does too,’ agreed his co-pilot. The same square unlovely bulk of that enormous structure was repeated in smaller scale by the navigation bridge of the big ship. ‘I'll give her a call on 16.’ The co-pilot lowered his binoculars and thumbed the microphone as he lifted it to his lips.

‘South-bound bulk carrier, this is Coast Guard November Charlie One Five Niner overhead. Do you read me?’

There was the expected delay; even in confined and heavily trafficked waters, these big bastards kept a sloppy watch and the spotter fumed silently.

‘Coast Guard One Five Niner, this is Golden Dawn. Reading you five by five - Going up to 22.’

Two hundred miles away the Trog knocked over the shell-casing, spilling damp and stinking cigar butts over the deck, in his haste to change frequency to channel 22 as the operator on board Golden Dawn had stipulated, at the same time switching in both the tape recorder and the radio direction-finder equipment.

High up in Warlock's fire-control tower, the big metal ring of the direction-finding aerial turned slowly, lining up on the transmissions that boomed so clearly across the ether, repeating the relative bearing on the dial of the instrument on the Trog's cluttered bench.

‘Good morning to you, Golden Dawn,’ the lilting Southern twang of the coastguard navigator came back. ‘I would be mightily obliged for your port of registry and your cargo manifest.’

‘This ship is registered Venezuela.’ The Trog dexterously made the fine tuning, scribbled the bearing on his pad, ripped off the page and darted into Warlock's navigation bridge.

‘Golden Dawn is sending in clear,’ he squeaked with an expression of malicious glee.

‘Call the Captain,’ snapped the deck officer, and then as an afterthought, ‘and ask Mr. Berg to come to the bridge.’

The conversation between coastguard and ultra-tanker was still going on when Nicholas burst into the radio room, belting his dressing-gown.

‘Thank you for your courtesy, sir,’ the coastguard navigator was using extravagant Southern gallantry, fully aware that Golden Dawn was outside United States territorial waters, and officially beyond his government's jurisdiction. ‘I would appreciate your port of final destination.’

‘We are en route Galveston for full discharge of cargo.

'Thank you again, sir. And are you apprised of the hurricane alert in force at this time?’

‘Affirmative.’

From Warlock's bridge, David Allen appeared in the door-way, his face set and flushed.

‘She must be under way again,’ he said, his disappointment so plain that it angered Nicholas yet again. ‘She is into the channel already.’

'I'd be obliged if you would immediately put this ship on a course to enter the Straits and close with her as soon as is possible,’ Nicholas snapped, and David Allen blinked at him once then disappeared on to his bridge, calling for the change in course and increase in speed as he went.

Over the loudspeaker, the coastguard was being politely persistent.

‘Are you further apprised, sir, of the up-date on that hurricane alert predicting storm passage of the main navigable channel at 1200 hours local time tomorrow?’

‘Affirmative.’ Golden Dawn's replies had become curt.

‘May I further trouble you, sir, in view of your sensitive cargo and the special weather conditions, for your expected time of arrival abeam of the Dry Tortugas Bank marine beacon and when you anticipate clearing the channel and shaping a northerly course away from the predicted hurricane track?’

‘Stand-by.’ There was a brief hum of static while the operator consulted the deck officer and then the Golden Dawn came back, ‘Our ETA Dry Tortugas Bank beacon is 0130 tomorrow.’

There was a long pause now as the coastguard consulted his headquarters ashore on one of the closed frequencies, and then:

‘I am requested respectfully, but officially, to bring to your attention that very heavy weather is expected ahead of the storm centre and that your present ETA Dry Tortugas Bank leaves you very fine margins of safety, sir.’

‘Thank you, coastguard One Five Niner. Your transmission will be entered in the ship's log. This is Golden Dawn over and out.’

The coastguard's frustration was evident, clearly he would have loved to order the tanker to reverse her course. ‘We will be following your progress with interest, Golden Dawn. Bon voyage, this is coastguard One Five Niner over and out.’

Charles Gras held his blue beret on with one hand, while with the other he lugged his suitcase. He ran doubled up, instinctively avoiding the ear-numbing clatter of the helicopter's rotor.

He threw his suitcase through the open fuselage door and then hesitated, turned and scampered back to where the ship's Chief Engineer stood at the edge of the white painted helipad target on Golden Dawn's tank deck.

Charles grabbed the Engineer's upper arm and leaned close to shout in his ear.

‘Remember, my friend, treat her like a baby, like a tender virgin - if you have to increase speed, do so gently - very gently.’ The Engineer nodded., his sparse sandy hair fluttering in the down-draught.

‘Good luck,’ shouted the Frenchman. ‘Bonne chance!’ He slapped the man's shoulder. ‘I hope you don't need it!’

He darted back and scrambled up into the fuselage of the Sikorsky, and his face appeared in one of the portholes. He waved once, and then the big ungainly machine rose slowly into the air, hovered for a moment and then banked low over the water, setting off in its characteristic away nose-down attitude for the mainland, still hidden by haze and distance.

Dr. Samantha Silver, dressed in thigh-high rubber waders and with her sleeves rolled up above the elbows, staggered under the weight of two ten-gallon plastic buckets of clams as she climbed the back steps of the laboratory building.

‘Sam!’ down the length of the long passageway, Sally-Anne screamed at her. ‘We were going to leave without you!’

‘What is it?’ Sam dumped the buckets with relief, slopping salt water down the steps.

‘Johnny called - the anti-pollution patrol bespoke Golden Dawn an hour ago. She's in the Straits, she was abeam Matanilla reef when they spotted her and she will be abeam of Biscayne Key before we can get out there, if we don't leave now.’

‘I'm coming.’ Sam hefted her heavy buckets, and broke into a rubber-kneed trot. ‘I'll meet you down on the wharf - did you call the TV studio?’

‘There's a camera team on the way,’ Sally-Anne yelled back as she ran for the front doors. Hurry, Sam - fast as you like!’

Samantha dumped the clams into one of her tanks, switched on the oxygen and as soon as it began to bubble to the surface, she turned and raced from the laboratory and out of the front doors.

Golden Dawn's deck officer stopped beside the radarscope, glanced down at it idly, then stooped with more attention and took a bearing on the little glowing pinpoint of green light that showed up clearly inside the ten-mile circle of the sweep.

He grunted, straightened, and walked quickly to the front of the bridge. Slowly, he scanned the green wind-chopped sea ahead of the tanker's ponderous bows.

‘Fishing boat,’ he said to the helmsman. ‘But they are under way.’ He had seen the tiny flash of a bow wave. ‘And they are right in the main navigational channel - they must have seen us by now, they are making a turn to pass us to starboard.’ He dropped the binoculars and let them dangle against his chest. ‘Oh thank you.’ He took the cup of cocoa from the steward, and sipped it with relish as he turned away to the chart-table.

One of the tanker's junior officers came out of the radio room at the back of the bridge.

‘Still no score’ he said, ‘and only injury time left now,’ and they fell into a concerned discussion of the World Cup soccer match being played under floodhghts at Wembley Stadium on the other side of the Atlantic.

‘If it's a draw then it means that France is in the-‘

There was an excited shout from the radio room, and the junior officer ran to the door and then turned back with an excited grin. ‘England has scored!’

The deck officer chuckled happily. ‘That will wrap it up.’ Then with a start of guilt he turned back to his duties, and had another start, this time of surprise, when he glanced into the radarscope.

‘What the hell are they playing at!’ he exclaimed irritably, and hurried forward to scan the sea ahead.

The fishing boat had continued its turn and was now bows on.

‘Damn them. We'll give them a buzz.’ He reached up for the handle of the foghorn and blew three long blasts, that echoed out mournfully across the shallow greenish water of the Straits. There was a general movement among the officers to get a better view ahead through the forward bridge windows.

‘They must be half asleep out there.’ The deck officer thought quickly about calling the Captain to the bridge. If it came to manoeuvring the ship in these confined waters, he flinched from the responsibility. Even at this reduced speed, it would take Golden Dawn half an hour and seven nautical miles to come to a stop; a turn in either direction would swing through a wide arc of many miles before the ship was able to make a 90° change, of course - God, then there was the effect of the wind against the enormously exposed area of the towering stern quarters, and the full bore of the Gulf Stream driving out of the narrows of the Straits. The problems of manoeuvring the vessel struck a chill of panic into the officer - and the fishing boat was on collision course, the range closing swiftly under the combined speeds of both vessels. He reached for the call button of the intercom that connected the bridge directly to the Captain's quarters on the deck below, but at that moment Captain Randle came bounding up the private staircase from his day cabin.

‘What is it?’ he demanded. ‘What was that blast on the horn?’

'Small vessel holding on to collision course, sir.’ The officer's relief was evident, and Randle seized the handle of the foghorn and hung on to it.

‘God, what's wrong with them?’

‘The deck is crowded,’ exclaimed one of the officers without lowering his binoculars.’ Looks as though they have a movie camera team on the top deck.’ Randle judged the closing range anxiously; already the small fishing vessel was too close for the Golden Dawn to stop in time.

‘Thank God,’ somebody exclaimed. ‘They are turning away. They are streaming some sort of banner. Can anybody read that?’

‘They are heaving-to,’ the deck officer yelled suddenly. ‘They are heaving-to right under our bows.’

Samantha Silver had not expected the tanker to be so big. From directly ahead, her bows seemed to fill the horizon from one side to the other, and the bow wave she threw up ahead of her creamed and curved like the set of the long wave at Cape St Francis when the surf was up.

Beyond the bows, the massive tower of her navigation bridge stood so tall it looked like the skyline of The Miami beach, one of those massive hotel buildings seen from close inshore.

It made her feel distinctly uneasy to be directly under that on-rushing steel avalanche.

‘Do you think they have seen us?’ Sally-Anne asked beside her, and when Samantha heard her own unease echoed by the pretty girl beside her, it steeled her.

‘Of course they have,’ she announced stoutly so that everyone in the small wheelhouse could hear her. ‘That's why they blew their siren. We'll turn aside at the last minute.’

‘They aren't slowing down,’ Hank Petersen, the helmsman, pointed out huskily, and Samantha wished that Tom Parker had been on board with them. However, Tom was up in Washington again, and they had taken the Dicky to sea with a scratch crew, and without Tom Parker's written authorization. ‘What do you want to do, Sam?’ And they all looked at her.

‘I know a thing that size can't stop, but at least we're going to make them slow down.’

‘Are the TV boys getting some stuff?’ Samantha asked, to delay the moment of decision. ‘Go up, Sally-Anne, and check them.’ Then to the others, ‘You-all get the banner ready, we'll let them get a good look at that.’

‘Listen, Sam.’ Hank Petersen's tanned intelligent face was strained. He was a tunny expert, and was not accustomed to handling the vessel except in calm and uncluttered waters. ‘I don't like this, we're getting much too close. That thing could churn us right under, and not even notice the bump. I want to turn away now.’ His voice was almost drowned by the sudden sky-crashing blast of the tanker's fog-horns.

‘Son of a gun, Sam, I don't like playing chicken-chicken with somebody that size.’

‘Don't worry, we'll get out of their way at the last moment. All right!’ Samantha decided. ‘Turn 90° to port, Hank. Let's show them the signs, I'm going to help them on deck.’

The wind tore at the thin white canvas banner as they tried to run it out along the side of the deckhouse, and the little vessel was rolling uncomfortably while the TV producer was shouting confused stage directions at them from the top of the wheelhouse.

Bitterly Samantha wished there was somebody to take command, somebody like Nicholas Berg - and the banner tried to wrap itself around her head.

The Dicky was coming around fast now, and Samantha shot a glance at the oncoming tanker and felt the shock of it strike in the pit of her stomach like the blow of a fist. It was huge, and very close - much too close, even she realized that.

At last she managed to get a turn of the thin line that secured the banner around the stern rail - but the light canvas had twisted so that only one word of the slogan was readable. ‘POISONER', it accused in scarlet, crudely painted letters followed by a grinning skull and crossed bones.

Samantha dived across the deck and struggled with the flapping canvas; above her head the producer was shouting excitedly; two of the others were trying to help her; Sally-Anne was screaming 'Go back! Go back!’ and waving both arms at the great tanker. ‘You poison our oceans!’ Everything was becoming confused and out of control, the Dicky swung ahead into the wind and pitched steeply, the person next to her lost his footing and knocked painfully into Samantha, and at that moment she felt the change of the engine beat.

Tricky Dicky's diesel had been bellowing furiously as Hank opened the throttle to its stop, using full power to bring the little vessel around from under the menace of those steel bows.

The smoking splutter of the exhaust pipe that rose vertically up the side of the deckhouse, had made all speech difficult - but now it died away, and suddenly there was only the sound of the wind.

Even their own raised voices were silenced, and they froze, staring out at Golden Dawn as she bore down on them without the slightest check in her majestic approach.

Samantha was the first one to recover, She ran across the plunging deck to the wheelhouse.

Hank Petersen was down on his knees beside the bulkhead, struggling ineffectually with the conduit that housed the controls to the engine room on the deck below.

‘Why have you stopped?’ Samantha yelled at him, and he looked up at her as though he were mortally wounded.

‘It's the throttle linkage,’ he said.’ It's snapped again.’

‘Can't you fix it?’ and the question was a mockery. A mile away, Golden Dawn came down on them - silent, menacing, unstoppable.

For ten seconds Randle stood rigid, both hands gripping the foul weather rail below the sill of the bridge windows. His face was set, pale and finely drawn , as he watched the stern of the wallowing fishing boat for the renewed churning of its prop.

He knew that he could not turn nor stop his ship in time to avoid collision, unless the small vessel got under way immediately, and took evasive action by going out to starboard under full power.

‘Damn them to hell,’ he thought bitterly, they were in gross default. He had all the law and the custom of the sea behind him; a collision would cause very little damage to Golden Dawn, perhaps she would lose a little paint, at most a slightly buckled plate in the reinforced bows - and they had asked for it He had no doubts about the object of this crazy, irresponsible seamanship. There had been controversy before the Golden Dawn sailed. He had read the objections and seen the nut-case environmentalists on television. The scarlet painted banner with the ridiculously melodramatic Jolly Roger made it clear that this was a boatload of nutters attempting to prevent Golden Dawn entering American waters.

He felt his anger boiling up fiercely. These people always made him furious - if they had their way, there would be no tanker trade, and now they were deliberately threatening him, placing him in a position which might prejudice his own career. He already had the task of taking his ship through the Straits ahead of the hurricane. Every moment was vital - and now there was this.

He would be happy to maintain course and speed, and to run them down. They were flaunting themselves, challenging him to do it - and, by God, they deserved it. However, he was a seaman, with a seaman's deep concern for human life at sea. It would go against all his instincts not to make an effort to avoid collision, no matter how futile that effort would be. Then beside him one of his officers triggered him.

‘There are women on board her - look at that! Those are women!’ That was enough. Without waiting for confirmation, Randle snapped at the helmsman beside him.

‘Full port rudder!’ And with two swift paces he had reached the engine room telegraph. It rang shrilly as he pulled back the chromed handle to ‘Full Astern'.

Almost immediately, the changed beat came up through the soles of his feet, as the great engine seven decks below the bridge thundered suddenly under all emergency power, and the direction of the spinning main propeller shaft was abruptly reversed.

Randle spun back to face ahead. For almost five minutes, the bows held steady on the horizon without making any answer to the full application of the rudder. The inertia of a million tons of crude oil, the immense drag of the hull through water and the press of wind and current held her on course, and although the single ferro-bronze propeller bit deeply into the green waters, there was not the slightest diminution of the tanker's speed.

Randle kept his hand on the engine telegraph, pulling back on the silver handle with all his strength, as though this might arrest the great ship's forward way through the water.

‘Turn!’ he whispered to the ship, and he stared at the fishing boat that still lay, rolling wildly, directly in Golden Dawn's path. He noticed irrelevantly that the tiny human figures along the rear rail were waving frantically, and that the banner with its scarlet denunciation had torn loose at one end and was now whipping and twisting like a Tibetan prayer flag over the heads of the crew.

‘Turn,’ Randle whispered, and he saw the first response of the hull; the angle between the bows and the fishing boat altered, it was a noticeable change, but slowly accelerating and a quick glance at the control console showed a small check in the ship's forward speed.

‘Turn, damn it, turn.’ Randle held the engine telegraph locked at full astern, and felt the sudden influence of the Gulf Stream current on the ship as she began to come across the direction of flow.

Ahead, the fishing boat was almost about to disappear from sight behind Golden Dawn's high blunt bows.

He had been holding the ship at full astern for almost seven minutes now, and suddenly Randle felt a change in Golden Dawn, something he had never experienced before.

There was harsh, tearing, pounding vibration coming up through the deck. He realized just how severe that vibration must be, when Golden Dawn's monumental hull began to shake violently - but he could not release his grip on the engine telegraph, not with that helpless vessel lying in his track.

Then suddenly, miraculously, all vibration in the deck under his feet ceased altogether. There was only the calm press of the hull through the water, no longer the feel of the engine's thrust, a sensation much more alarming to a mariner than the vibration which had preceded it, and simultaneously, a fiery rash of red warning lights bloomed on the ship's main control console, and the strident screech of the full emergency audio-alarm deafened them all.

Only then did Captain Randle push the engine telegraph to ‘stop'. He stood staring ahead as the tiny fishing boat disappeared from view, hidden by the angle from the navigation bridge which was a mile behind the bows.

One of the officers reached across and hit the cut-out on the audio-alarm. In the sudden silence every officer stood frozen, waiting for the impact of collision.

Golden Dawn's Chief Engineer paced slowly along the engine-room control console, never taking his eyes from the electronic displays which monitored all the ship's mechanical and electrical functions.

When he reached the alarm aboard, he stopped and frowned at it angrily. The failure of the single transistor, a few dollars’ worth of equipment, had been the cause of such brutal damage to his beloved machinery. He leaned across and pressed the test button, checking out each alarm circuit, yet, while he was doing it, recognizing the fact that it was too late. He was nursing the ship along, with God alone knew what undiscovered damage to engine and main shaft only kept in check by this reduced power setting - but there was a hurricane down there below the southern horizon, and the Chief could only guess at what emergency his machinery might have to meet in the. next few days.

It made him nervous and edgy to think about it. He searched in his back pocket, found a sticky mint humbug, carefully picked off the little pieces of lint and fluff before tucking it into his cheek like a squirrel with a nut, sucking noisily upon it as he resumed his restless prowling up and down the control console.

His on-duty stokers and the oilers watched him surreptitiously. When the old man was in a mood, it was best not to attract attention.

‘Dickson!’ the Chief said suddenly. ‘Get your lid on. We are going down the shaft tunnel again.’

The oiler sighed, exchanged a resigned glance with one of his mates and clapped his hard-hat on his head. He and the Chief had been down the tunnel an hour previously. It was an uncomfortable, noisy and dirty journey.

The oiler closed the watertight doors into the shaft tunnel behind them, screwing down the clamps firmly under the Chief's frosty scrutiny, and then both men stooped in the confined headroom and started off along the brightly lit pale grey painted tunnel.

The spinning shaft in its deep bed generated a high-pitched whine that seemed to resonate in the steel box of the tunnel, as though it was the body of a violin. Surprisingly, the noise was more pronounced at this low speed setting, it seemed to bore into the teeth at the back of the oiler's jaw like a dentist's drill.

The Chief did not seem to be affected. He paused beside the main bearing for almost ten minutes, testing it with the palm of his hand, feeling for heat or vibration. His expression was morose, and he worried the mint humbug in his cheek and shook his head with foreboding We are going on up the tunnel.

When he reached the main gland, he squatted down suddenly and peered at it closely. With a deliberate flexing of his jaw he crushed the remains of the humbug between his teeth, and his eyes narrowed thoughtfully.

There was a thin trickle of seawater oozing through the gland and running down into the bilges. The Chief touched it with his finger. Something had shifted, some balance was disturbed, the seal of the gland was no longer watertight - such a small sign, a few gallons of seawater, could be the first warning of major structural damage.

The Chief shuffled around, still hunched down beside the shaft bed, and he lowered his face until it was only inches from the spinning steel main shaft. He closed one eye, and cocked his head, trying once again to decide if the faint blurring of the shaft's outline was real or merely his over-active imagination, whether what he was seeing was distortion or his own fears.

Suddenly, startlingly, the shaft slammed into stillness. The deceleration was so abrupt that the Chief could actually see the torque transferred into the shaft bed, and the metal walls creaked and popped with the strain.

He rocked back on to his heels, and almost instantly the shaft began to spin again, but this time in reverse thrust. The whine built up swiftly into a rising shriek. They were Pulling emergency power from the bridge, and it was madness, suicidal madness.

The Chief seized the oiler by the shoulder and shouted into his ear, ‘Get back to control - find out what the hell they are doing on the bridge.’

The oiler scrambled away down the tunnel; it would take him ten minutes to negotiate the long narrow passage, open the watertight doors and reach the control room and as long again to return.

The Chief considered going after him, but somehow he could not leave the shaft now. He lowered his head again, and now he could clearly see the flickering outline of the shaft. It wasn't imagination at all, there was a little ghost of movement. He clamped his hands over his ears to cut out the painful shriek of the spinning metal, but there was a new note to it, the squeal of bare metal on metal and before his eyes he saw the ghost outline along the edge of the shaft growing, the flutter of machinery out of balance, and the metal deck under his feet began to quiver.

‘God! They are going to blow the whole thing!’ he shouted, and jumped up from his crouch. Now the deck was juddering and shaking under his feet. He started back along the shaft, but the entire tunnel was agitating so violently that he had to grab the metal bulkhead to steady himself, and he reeled drunkenly, thrown about like a captive insect in a cruel child's box.

Ahead of him, he saw the huge metal casting of the main bearing twisting and shaking, and the vibration chattered his teeth in his clenched jaw and drove up his spine like a jack hammer.

Disbelievingly he saw the huge silver shaft beginning to rise and buckle in its bed, the bearing tearing loose from its mountings.

‘Shut down!’ he screamed. ‘For God's sake, shut down!’ but his voice was lost in the shriek and scream of tortured metal and machinery that was tearing itself to pieces in a suicidal frenzy.

The main bearing exploded, and the shaft slammed it into the bulkhead, tearing steel plate like paper.

The shaft itself began to snake and whip. The Chief cowered back, pressing his back to the bulkhead and covering his ears to protect them from the unbearable volume of noise.

A sliver of heated steel flew from the bearing and struck him in the face, laying open his upper lip to the bone, crushing his nose and snapping off his front teeth at the level of his gums.

He toppled forward, and the whipping, kicking shaft seized him like a mindless predator and tore his body to pieces, pounding him and crushing him in the shaft bed and splattering him against the pale metal walls.

The main shaft snapped like a rotten twig at the point where it had been heated and weakened. The unbalanced weight of the revolving propeller ripped the stump out through the after seal, as though it were a tooth plucked from a rotting jaw.

The sea rushed in through the opening, flooding the tunnel instantly until it slammed into the watertight doors - and the huge glistening bronze propeller, with the stump of the main shaft still attached, the whole unit weighing one hundred and fifty tons, plummeted downwards through four hundred fathoms to embed itself deeply in the soft mud of the sea bottom.

Freed of the intolerable goad of her damaged shaft, Golden Dawn was suddenly silent and her decks still and steady as she trundled on, slowly losing way as the water dragged at her hull.

Samantha had one awful moment of sickening guilt. She saw clearly that she was responsible for the deadly danger into which she had led these people, and she stared out over the boat's side at the Golden Dawn.

The tanker was coming on without any check in her speed; perhaps she had turned a few degrees, for her bows were no longer pointed directly at them, but her speed was constant.

She was achingly aware of her inexperience, of her helplessness in this alien situation. She tried to think, to force herself out of this frozen despondency.

‘Life-jackets!’ she thought, and yelled to Sally-Anne out on the deck, ‘The life-jackets are in the lockers behind the wheelhouse.’ Their faces turned to her, suddenly stricken. Up to this moment it had all been a glorious romp, the old fun-game of challenging the money-grabbers, prodding the establishment, but now suddenly it was mortal danger.

‘Move!’ Samantha shrieked at them, and there was a rush back along the deck.

‘Think!’ Samantha shook her head, as though to clear it. ‘Think!’ she urged herself fiercely. She could hear the tanker now, the silken rustling sound of the water under its hull, the sough of the bow wave curling upon itself.

The Dicky's throttle linkage had broken before, when they had been off Key West a year ago. It had broken between the bridge and the engine, and Samantha had watched Tom Parker fiddling with the engine, holding the lantern for him to see in the gloomy confines of the smelly little engine room. She had not been certain how he did it, but she remembered that he had controlled the revolutions of the engine by hand - something on the side of the engine block, below the big bowl of the air filter.

Samantha turned and dived down the vertical ladder into the engine room. The diesel was running, burbling away quietly at idling speed, not generating sufficient power to move the little vessel through the water.

She tripped and sprawled on the greasy deck, and pulled herself up, crying out with pain as her hand touched the red-hot manifold of the engine exhaust.

On the far side of the engine block, she groped desperately under the air filter, pushing and tugging at anything her fingers touched. She found a coil spring, and dropped to her knees to examine it.

She tried not to think of the huge steel hull bearing down on them, of being down in this tiny box that stank of diesel and exhaust fumes and old bilges. She tried not to think of not having a life-jacket, or that the tanker could tramp the little vessel deep down under the surface and crush her like a matchbox.

Instead, she traced the little coil spring to where it was pinned into a flat upright lever. Desperately she pushed the lever against the tension of the spring - and instantly the diesel engine bellowed deafeningly in her ears, startling her so that she flinched and lost the lever. The diesel's beat died away into the bumbling idle and she wasted seconds while she found the lever again and pushed it hard against its stops once more. The engine roared, and she felt the ship picking up speed under her. She began to pray incoherently.

She could not hear the words in the engine noise, and she was not sure she was making sense, but she held the throttle open, and kept on praying.

She did not hear the screams from the deck above her. She did not know how close the Golden Dawn was, she did not know if Hank Petersen was still in the wheelhouse conning the little vessel out of the path of the onrushing tanker - but she held the throttle open and prayed.

The impact when it came was shattering, the crash and crackle of timbers breaking, the rending lurch and the roll of the deck giving to the tearing force of it.

Samantha was hurled against the hot steel of the engine, her forehead striking with such a force that her vision starred into blinding white light; she dropped backwards, her body loose and relaxed, darkness ringing in her ears, and lay huddled on the deck.

She did not know how long she was unconscious, but it could not have been for more than a few seconds; the spray of icy cold water on her face roused her and she pulled herself up on to her knees.

In the glare of the single bare electric globe in the deck above her, Samantha saw the spurts of water jets through the starting planking of the bulkhead beside her.

Her shirt and denim pants were soaked, salt water half blinded her, and her head felt as though the skull were cracked and someone was forcing the sharp end of a bradawl between her. Dimly she was aware that the diesel engine was idling noisily, and that the deck was sloshing with water as the boat rolled wildly in some powerful turbulence. She wondered if the whole vessel had been trodden under the tanker.

Then she realized it must be the wake of the giant hull which was throwing them about so mercilessly, but they were still afloat.

She began to crawl down the plunging deck. She knew where the bilge pump was, that was one thing Tom had taught all of them - and she crawled on grimly towards it.

Hank Petersen ducked out of the wheelhouse, flapping his arms wildly as he struggled into the life-jacket. He was not certain of the best action to take, whether to jump over the side and begin swimming away from the tanker's slightly angled course, or to stay on board and take his chances with the collision which was now only seconds away.

Around him, the others were in the grip of the same indecision; they were huddled silently at the rail staring up at the mountain of smooth rounded steel that seemed to blot out half the sky, only the TV cameraman on the wheelhouse roof, a true fanatic oblivious of all danger, kept his camera running. His exclamations of delight and the burr of the camera motor blended with the rushing sibilance of Golden Dawn's bow wave. It was fifteen feet high that wave, and it sounded like wild fire in dry grass.

Suddenly the exhaust of the diesel engine above Hank's head bellowed harshly, and then subsided into a soft burbling idle again. He looked up at it uncomprehendingly, now it roared again, fiercely, and the deck lurched beneath him. From the stern he heard the boil of water driven by the propeller, and the Dicky shrugged off her lethargy and lifted her bows to the short steep swell of the Gulf Stream.

A moment longer Hank stood frozen, and then he dived back into the wheelhouse and spun the spokes of the wheel through his fingers, sheering off sharply, but still staring out through the side glass.

The Golden Dawn's bows filled his whole vision now, but the smaller vessel was scooting frantically out to one side, and the tanker's bows were swinging majestically in the opposite direction.

A few seconds more and they would be clear, but the bow wave caught them and Hank was flung across the wheelhouse. He felt something break in his chest, and heard the snap of bone as he hit, then immediately afterwards there was the crackling rending tearing impact as the two hulls came together and he was thrown back the other way, sprawling wildly across the deck.

He tried to claw himself upright, but the little fishing boat was pitching and cavorting with such abandon that he was thrown flat again.

There was another tearing impact as the vessel was dragged down the tanker's side, and then flung free to roll her tails under and bob like a cork in the mill race of the huge ship's wake.

Now, at last, he was able to pull himself to his feet, and doubled over, clutching his injured ribs, he peered dazedly through the wheelhouse glass.

Half a mile away, the tanker was lazily turning up into the wind, and there was no propeller wash from under her counter. Hank staggered to the doorway, and looked out, The deck was still awash, but the water they had taken on was pouring out through the scuppers. The railing was smashed, most of it dangling overboard and the planking was splintered and torn, the ripped timber as white as bone in the sunlight.

Behind him, Samantha came crawling up the ladder from the engine room. There was a purple swelling in the centre of her forehead, she was soaking wet and her hands were filthy with black grease. He saw a livid red burn across the back of one hand as she lifted it to brush tumbled blonde hair out of her face.

‘Are you all right, Sam?’

‘Water's pouring in,’ she said. ‘I don't know how long the pump can hold it.’

‘Did you fix the motor?’ he asked.

Samantha nodded. ‘I held the throttle open,’ she said, and then with feeling, ‘but I'll be damned to hell if I'll do it again. Somebody else can go down there, I've had my turn.’

‘Show me how,’ Hank said, ‘and you can take the wheel. The sooner we get back to Key Biscayne, the happier I'll be.’

Samantha peered across at the receding bulk of Golden Dawn.

‘My God!’ she shook her head with wonder. ‘My God! We were lucky!’

‘Mackerel skies and mares' tails,

Make tall ships carry short sails.’

Nicholas Berg recited the old sailor's doggerel to himself, shading his eyes with one hand as he looked upwards.

The cloud was beautiful as fine lacework; very high against the tall blue of the heavens it spread swiftly in those long filmy scrolls. Nicholas could see the patterns developing and expanding as he watched, and that was a measure of the speed with which the high winds were blowing. That cloud was at least thirty thousand feet high, and below it the air was clear and crisp - only out on the western horizon the billowing silver and the blue thunderheads were rising, generated by the land-mass of Florida whose low silhouette was still below their horizon.

They had been in the main current of the Gulf Stream for six hours now. It was easy to recognize this characteristic scend of the sea, the short steep swells marching close together, the particular brilliance of these waters that had been first warmed in the shallow tropical basin of the Caribbean, the increased bulk flooding through into the Gulf of Mexico and there heated further, swelling in volume until they formed a hillock of water which at last rushed out through this narrow drainhole of the Florida Straits, swinging north and east in a wide benevolent wash, tempering the climate of all countries whose shores it touched and warming the fishing grounds of the North Atlantic.

In the middle of this stream, somewhere directly ahead of Warlock's thrusting bows, the Golden Dawn was struggling southwards, directly opposed to the current which would clip eighty miles a day off her speed, and driving directly into the face of one of the most evil and dangerous storms that nature could summon.

Nicholas found himself brooding again on the mentality of anybody who would do that; again he glanced upwards at the harbingers of the storm, those delicate wisps of lacy cloud.

Nicholas had sailed through a hurricane once, twenty years ago, as a junior officer on one of Christy Marine's small grain carriers, and he shuddered now at the memory of it.

Duncan Alexander was a desperate man even to contemplate that risk, a man gambling everything on one fall of the dice. Nicholas could understand the forces that drove him, for he had been driven himself - but he hated him now for the chances he was taking, Duncan Alexander was risking Nicholas son, and he was risking the life of an ocean and of the millions of people whose existence was tied to that ocean. Duncan Alexander was gambling with stakes that were not his to place at hazard.

Nicholas wanted one thing only now, and that was to get alongside Golden Dawn and take off his son. He would do that, even if it meant boarding her like a buccaneer, In the Master's suite, there was a locked and sealed arms cupboard with two riot guns, automatic 12 gauge shotguns and six Walther PK-38 Pistols. Warlock had been equipped for every possible emergency in any ocean of the world, and those emergencies could include piracy or mutiny aboard a vessel under salvage. Now Nicholas was fully prepared to take an armed party on board Golden Dawn, and to take his chances in any court of law afterwards.

Warlock was racing into the chop of the Gulf Stream and scattering the spray like startled white doves, but she was running too slowly for Nicholas and he turned away impatiently and strode into the navigation bridge.

David Allen looked up at him, a small frown of preoccupation marring the smooth boyish features.

‘Wind is moderating and veering westerly,’ he said, and Nicholas remembered another line of doggerel:

‘When the wind moves against the sun

Trust her not for back she'll run.’

He did not recite it, however, he merely nodded and said:

‘We are running into the extreme influence of Lorna. The wind will back again as we move closer to the centre.’

Nicholas went on to the radio room and the Trog looked up at him. It was not necessary for Nicholas to ask, the Trog shook his head. Since that long exchange with the coastguard patrol early that morning, Golden Dawn had kept her silence.

Nicholas crossed to the radarscope and studied the circular field for a few minutes; this usually busy seaway was peculiarly empty. There were some small craft crossing the main channel, probably fishing boats or pleasure craft scuttling for protection from the coming storm. All across the islands and on the mainland of Florida the elaborate precautions against the hurricane assault would be coming into force. Since the highway had been laid down on the spur of little islands that formed the Florida Keys, more than three hundred thousand people had crowded in there, in the process transforming those wild lovely islands into the Taj Mahal of ticky-tacky. If the hurricane struck there, the loss of life and property would be enormous, it was probably the most vulnerable spot on a long exposed coastline. For a few minutes, Nicholas tried to imagine the chaos that would result if a million tons of toxic crude oil was driven ashore on a littoral already ravaged by hurricane winds. It baulked his imagination, and he left the radar and moved to the front of the bridge. He stood staring down the narrow throat of water at a horizon that concealed all the terrors and desperate alarms that his imagination could conjure up.

The door to the radio shack was open and the bridge was quiet, so that they all heard it clearly; they could even catch the hiss of breath as the speaker paused between each sentence, and the urgency of his tone was not covered by the slight distortion of the VHF carrier beam.

‘Mayday! Mayday! Mayday! This is the bulk oil carrier Golden Dawn. Our position is 79o 50'West 25o 43'North.’

Before Nicholas reached the chart-table, he knew she was still a hundred miles ahead of them, and, as he pored over the table, he saw his estimate confirmed.

'We have lost our propeller with main shaft failure and we are drifting out of control.’

‘Nicholas’ head flinched as though he had been hit in the face. He could imagine no more dangerous condition and position for a ship of that size - and Peter was on board.

‘This is Golden Dawn calling the United States Coast Guard service or any ship in a position to afford assistance –‘

Nicholas reached the radio shack with three long strides, and the Trog handed him the microphone and nodded.

‘Golden Dawn this is the salvage tug Warlock. I will be in a position to render assistance within four hours-‘

Damn the rule of silence, Peter was on board her.

‘- Tell Alexander I am offering Lloyd's Open Form and I want immediate acceptance.’

He dropped the microphone and stormed back on to the bridge, his voice clipped and harsh as he caught David Allen's arm.

‘Interception course and push her through the gate,’ he ordered grimly. ‘Tell Beauty Baker to open all the taps.’ He dropped David's arm and spun back to the radio room.

‘Telex Levoisin on Sea Witch. I want him to give me a time to reach Golden Dawn at his best possible speed,’ and he wondered briefly if even the two tugs would be able to control the crippled and powerless Golden Dawn in the winds of a hurricane.

Jules replied almost immediately. He had bunkered at Charleston, and cleared harbour six hours previously. He was running hard now and he gave a time to Golden Dawn's position for noon the next day, which was also the forecast time of passage of the Straits for hurricane Lorna, according to the meteorological update they had got from Miami two hours before, Nicholas thought as he read the telex and turned to David Allen.

‘David, there is no precedent for this that I know of but with my son on board Golden Dawn I just have to assume command of this ship, on a temporary basis, of course.’

‘I'd be honoured to act as your First Officer again, sir,’ David told him quietly, and Nicholas could see he meant it.

‘If there is a good salvage, the Master's share will still be yours,’ Nicholas promised him, and thanked him with a touch on the arm. ‘Would you check out the preparations to put a line aboard the tanker?’

David turned to leave the bridge, but Nicholas stopped him. 'By the time we get there, we will have the kind of wind you have only dreamed about in your worst nightmares - just keep that in mind.’

'Telex,’ screeched the Trog. ‘Golden Dawn is replying to our offer.’ Nicholas strode across to the radio room, and read the first few lines of message as it printed out.

‘OFFER CONTRACT OF DAILY HIRE FOR TOWAGE THIS VESSEL FROM PRESENT POSITION TO GALVESTON ROADS’

‘The bastard,’ Nicholas snarled. ‘He's playing his fancy games with me, in the teeth of a hurricane and with my boy aboard.’ Furiously he punched his fist into the palm of his other hand. ‘Right!’ he snapped. ‘We'll play just as rough! Get me the Director of the U.S. Coast Guard at the Fort Lauderdale Headquarters - get him on the emergency coastguard frequency and I will talk to him in clear.’

The Trog's face lit with malicious glee and he made the contact.

‘Colonel Ramsden,’ Nicholas said. ‘This is the Master of Warlock. I'm the only salvage vessel that can reach Golden Dawn before passage of Lorna, and I'm probably the only tug on the eastern seaboard of America with 22,000 horsepower. Unless the Golden Dawn's Master accepts Lloyd's Open Form within the next sixty minutes, I shall be obliged to see to the safety of my vessel and crew by running for the nearest anchorage - and you're going to have a million tons of highly toxic crude oil drifting out of control into your territorial waters, in hurricane conditions.’

The Coast Guard Director had a deep measured voice, and the calm tones of a man upon whom the mantle of authority was a familiar garment.

‘Stand by, Warlock, I am going to contact Golden Dawn direct on Channel 16.

Nicholas signalled the Trog to turn up the volume on Channel 16 and they listened to Ramsden speaking directly to Duncan Alexander.

‘In the event your vessel enters United States territorial waters without control or without an attendant tug capable of exerting that control, I shall be obliged under the powers vested in me to seize your vessel and take such steps to prevent pollution of our waters as I see fit. I have to warn you that those steps may include destruction of your cargo.’

Ten minutes later the Trog copied a telex from Duncan Alexander personal to Nicholas Berg accepting Lloyd's Open Form and requesting him to exercise all dispatch in taking Golden Dawn in tow.

‘I estimate we will be drifting over the 100-fathom line and entering U.S. territorial waters within two hours,’ the message ended.

While Nicholas read it, standing out on the protected wing of Warlock's bridge, the wind suddenly fluttered the paper in his hand and flattened his cotton shirt against his chest. He looked up quickly and saw the wind was backing violently into the east, and beginning to claw the tops of the Gulf Stream swells. The setting sun was bleeding copiously across the high veils of cirrus cloud which now covered the sky from horizon to horizon.

There was nothing more that Nicholas could do now. Warlock was running as hard as she could, and all her crew were quietly going about their preparations to pass a wire and take on tow. All he could do was wait, but that was always the hardest part.

Darkness came swiftly but with the last of the light, Nicholas could just make out a dark and mountainous shape beginning to hump up above the southern horizon like an impatient monster. He stared at it with awful fascination, until mercifully the night hid Lorna's dreadful face.

The wind chopped the Gulf Stream up into quick confused seas, and it did not blow steadily, but flogged them with squally gusts and rain that crackled against the bridge windows with startling suddenness.

The night was utterly black, there were no stars, no source of light whatsoever, and Warlock lurched and heeled to the patternless seas.

‘Barometer's rising sharply,’ David Allen called suddenly. ‘It's jumped three millibars - back to 1005’

‘The trough,’ said Nicholas grimly. It was a classic hurricane formation, that narrow girdle of higher pressure that demarcated the outer fringe of the great revolving spiral of tormented air. ‘We are going into it now.’

And as he spoke the darkness lifted, the heavens began to burn like a bed of hot coals, and the sea shone with a sullen ruddy luminosity as though the doors of a furnace had been thrown wide.

Nobody spoke on Warlock's bridge, they lifted their faces with the same awed expressions as worshippers in a lofty cathedral and they looked up at the skies.

Low cloud raced above them, cloud that glowed and shone with that terrible ominous flare, Slowly the light faded and changed, turning a paler sickly greenish hue, like the shine on putrid meat. Nicholas spoke first.

‘The Devil's Beacon,’ he said, and he wanted to rationalize it to break the superstitious mood that gripped them all. It was merely the rays of the sun below the western horizon catching the cloud peaks of the storm and reflected downwards through the weak cloud cover of the trough but somehow he could not find the right words to denigrate that phenomenon that was part of the mariner's lore, the malignant beacon that leads a doomed ship on to its fate.

The weird light faded slowly away leaving the night even darker and more foreboding than it had been before.

‘David,’ Nicholas thought quickly of something to distract his officers, ‘have we got a radar contact yet?’ and the new Mate roused himself with a visible effort and crossed to the radarscope.

‘The range is very confused,’ he said, his voice still subdued, and Nicholas joined him at the screen.

The sweeping arm lit a swirling mass of sea clutter, and the strange ghost echoes thrown up by electrical discharges within the approaching storm. The outline of the Florida mainland and of the nearest islands of the Grand Bahamas bank were firm and immediately recognizable. They reminded Nicholas yet again of how little sea-room there was in which to manoeuver his tugs and their monstrous prize.

Then, in the trash of false echo and sea clutter, his trained eye picked out a harder echo on the extreme limits of the set's range. He watched it carefully for half a dozen revolutions of the radar's sweep, and each time it was constant and clearer.

‘Radar contact,’ he said. ‘Tell Golden Dawn we are in contact, range sixty-five nautical miles. ‘Tell them we will take on tow before midnight.’ And then, under his breath, the old sailor's qualifications, ‘God willing and weather permitting.’

The lights on Warlock's bridge had been rheostatted down to a dull rose glow to protect the night vision of her officers, and the four of them stared out to where they knew the tanker lay.

Her image on the radar was bright and firm, lying within the two mile ring of the screen, but from the bridge she was invisible.

In the two hours since first contact, the barometer had gone through its brief peak as the trough passed, and then fallen steeply.

From 1005 it had crashed to 990 and was still plummeting, and the weather coming in from the east was blustering and squalling. The wind mourned about them on a forever rising note, and torrential rain obscured all vision outside an arc of a few hundred yards. Even Warlock's twin searchlights, set seventy feet above the main deck on the summit of the fire-control gantry, could not pierce those solid white curtains of rain.

Nicholas groped like a blind man through the rain fog, using pitch and power to close carefully with Golden Dawn, giving his orders to the helm in a cool impersonal tone which belied the pale set of his features and the alert brightness of his eyes as he reached the swirling bank of rain.

Abruptly another squall struck Warlock. With a demented shriek, it heeled the big tug sharply and shredded the curtains of rain, ripping them open so that for a moment Nicholas saw Golden Dawn.

She was exactly where he had expected her to be, but the wind had caught the tanker's high navigation bridge like the mainsail of a tall ship, and she was going swiftly astern.

All her deck and port lights were burning, and she carried the twin red riding lights at her stubby masthead that identified a vessel drifting out of control. The following sea driven on by the rising wind piled on to her tank decks, smothering them with white foam and spray, so that the ship looked like a submerged coral reef.

‘Half ahead both,’ Nicholas told the helmsman. ‘Steer for her starboard side.’ He closed quickly with the tanker, staying in visual contact now; even when the rain mists closed down again, they could make out the ghostly shape of her and the glow of her riding lights.

David Allen was looking at him expectantly and Nicholas asked, 'What bottom?’ without taking his eyes from the stricken ship.

‘One hundred sixteen fathoms and shelving fast.’ They were being blown quickly out of the main channel, on to the shallow ledge of the Florida littoral.

‘I'm going to tow her out stern first,’ said Nicholas, and immediately David saw the wisdom of it. Nobody would be able to get up into her bows to secure a tow-line, the seas were breaking over them and sweeping them with ten and fifteen feet of green water.

‘I'll go aft -' David began, but Nicholas stopped him.

‘No, David. I want you here - because I'm going on board Golden Dawn!’

‘Sir,’ David wanted to tell him that it was dangerous to delay passing the towing cable - with that lee shore waiting.

‘This will be our last chance to get passengers off her before the full hurricane hits us,’ said Nicholas, and David saw that it was futile to protest. Nicholas Berg was going to fetch his son.

From the height of Golden Dawn's towering navigation bridge, they could look directly down on to the main deck of the tug as she came alongside.

Peter Berg stood beside his mother, almost as tall as she was. He wore a full life-jacket and a corduroy cap pulled down over his ears.

‘It will be all right,’ he comforted Chantelle. ‘Dad is here. It will be just fine now.’ And he took her hand protectively.

Warlock staggered and reeled in the grip of wind as she came up into the tanker's lee, rain blew over her like dense white smoke and every few minutes she put her nose down and threw a thick green slice of sea water back along her decks.

In comparison to the tug's wild action, Golden Dawn wallowed heavily, held down by the oppressive weight of a million tons of crude oil, and the seas beat upon her with increasing fury, as if affronted by her indifference. Warlock edged in closer and still closer.

Duncan Alexander came through from the communications room at the rear of the bridge. He balanced easily against Golden Dawn's ponderous motion but his face was swollen and flushed with anger.

‘Berg is coming on board,’ he burst out. ‘He's wasting valuable time. I warned him that we must get out into deeper water.’

Peter Berg interrupted suddenly and pointed down at Warlock, ‘Look’ he cried.

Until that moment, the night and the storm had hidden the small huddle of human shapes in the tug’s high forward tower. They wore wet, glistening oilskins and their life-jackets gave them a swollen pregnant look. They were lowering the boarding gantry into the horizontal position.

‘There is dad!’ Peter shouted. ‘That’s him in front.’

At the extremity of her roll, Warlock’s boarding gantry touched the railing of the tanker’s quarter-deck, ten feet above the swamped tank deck – and the leading figure on the tug’s upperworks ran out lightly along the gantry, balanced for a moment high above the roaring, racing green water and then leapt across five feet of open space, caught a hand hold and then pulled himself over Golden Dawn’s rail.

Immediately the tug sheered off and fell in fifty yards off the tanker’s starboard side, half hidden in the rain mists, but holding her station steadily, despite al the wind’s and sea’s spiteful efforts to separate the two vessels.

The whole manoeuvre had been performed with an expertise which made it seem almost casual.

‘Dad’s carried a line across,’ Peter said proudly, and Chantelle, looking down, saw that a delicate white nylon thread was being hove in by two seamen on the tanker’s quarter-deck, while from the tug’s fire-control tower a canvas bosun’s chair was being winched across.

The elevator doors slid open with a whine and Nicholas Berg strode on to the tanker’s bridge. His oilskins still ran with rainwater that splattered on to the deck at his feet.

‘Dad!’ Peter ran to meet him and Nicholas stooped and embraced him fiercely before straightening; with one arm still about his son’s shoulders, he confronted Chantelle and Duncan Elexander.

‘ I hope both of you are satisfied now,’ he said quietly, ’but I for one don’t rate our chances of saving this ship very highly, so I’m taking off everybody who is not needed on board to handle her.’

‘Your tug,’ burst out Duncan, ‘you’ve got 22,000 horse-power, and can-‘

‘There is a hurricane on its way,’ said Nicholas coldly, and he shot a out at the roaring night. ‘This is just the overture.’ He turned back to Randle. ‘How many men do you want to keep on board?’

Randle thought a moment. ‘Myself, a helmsman, and five seamen to handle the tow-lines and work the ship.’ He paused and then went on. ‘And the pump-room personnel to control the cargo.’

‘You will act as helmsman, I will control the pump-room, and I’ll need only three seamen. Get me volunteers,’ Nicholas decided. ‘Send everyone else off.’

‘Sir,’ Randle began to protest.

‘May I remind you, Captain, that I am salvage master, my authority now supersedes yours.’ Nicholas dis not wait for a reply. ‘Chantelle,’ he picked her out, ‘take Peter down to the quarter-deck. ‘You’ll go across first.’

‘Listen here, Berg,’ Duncan could no longer contain himself, ‘I insist you pass the towing cable, This ship is in danger.’

‘Get down there with them,’ Nicholas snapped, ‘I’ll decide the procedures.’

‘Do as he says, darling,’ Chantelle smiled up at her husband vindictively. ‘You’ve lost. Nicholas is the only winner now.’

‘Shut up, damn you,’ Duncan hissed at her.

‘Get down to the afterdeck,’ Nicholas’ voice cracked like breaking ice.

‘I’m staying on board this ship,’ said Duncan abruptly. ‘It’s my responsibility. I said I’d see it out and by God I will. I am going to be here to make sure you do your job, Berg.’

Nicholas checked himself, studied him for a long moment, and then smiled mirthlessly.

‘Nobody ever called you a coward,’ he nodded reluctantly. ‘Other things - but not a coward. Stay if you will, we might need an extra hand,’ Then to Peter, ‘Come, my boy.’ And he led him towards the elevator.

At the quarter-deck rail, Nicholas hugged the boy, holding him in his arms, their cheeks pressed tightly together, and drawing out the moment while the wind cannoned and thrummed about their heads.

‘I love you, Dad.’

‘And I love you, Peter, more than I can ever tell you but you must go now.’

He broke the embrace and lifted the child into the deep canvas bucket of the bosun's chair, stepped back and windmilled his right arm. Immediately, the winch party in Warlock's upperworks swung him swiftly out into the gap between the two ships and the nylon cable seemed as fragile and insubstantial as a spider's thread.

As the two ships rolled and dipped, so the line tightened and sagged, one moment dropping the white canvas bucket almost to the water level where the hungry waves snatched at it with cold green fangs, and the next, pulling the line up so tightly that it hummed with tension, threatening to snap and drop the child back into the sea, but at last it reached the tug and four pairs of strong hands lifted the boy clear. For one moment, he waved back at Nicholas and then he was hustled away, and the empty bosun's chair was coming back.

Only then did Nicholas become aware that Chantelle was clinging to his arm and he looked down into her face. Her eyelashes were dewed and stuck together with the flying raindrops. Her face ran with wetness and she seemed very small and childlike under the bulky oilskins and life-jacket. She was as beautiful as she had ever been but her eyes were huge and darkly troubled.

‘Nicholas, I've always needed you,’ she husked. ‘But never as I need you now.’

Her existence was being blown away on the wind, and she was afraid.

‘You and this ship are all I have left.

‘No, only the ship,’ he said brusquely, and he was amazed that the spell was broken. That soft area of his soul which she had been able to touch so unerringly was now armoured against her. With a sudden surge of relief, he realized he was free of her, for ever. It was over; here in the storm, he was free at last.

She sensed for the fear in her eyes changed to real terror.

‘Nicholas, you cannot desert me now. Oh Nicholas, what will become of me without you and Christy Marine?’

‘I don't know,’ he told her quietly, and caught the bosun's chair as it came in over Golden Dawn's rail. He lifted her as easily as he had lifted his son and placed her in the canvas bucket.

‘And to tell you the truth, Chantelle, I don't really care,’ he said, and stepping back, he windmilled his right arm. The chair swooped out across the narrow water, swinging like a pendulum in the wind. Chantelle shouted something at him but Nicholas had turned away, and was already going aft in a lurching run to where the three volunteers were waiting.

He saw at a glance that they were big, powerful, competent-looking men.

Quickly Nicholas checked their equipment, from the thick leather gauntlets to the bolt cutters and jemmy bars for handling heavy cable.

‘You'll do,’ he said. ‘We will use the bosun's tackle to bring across a messenger from the tug - just as soon as the last man leaves this ship.’

Working with men to whom the task was unfamiliar, and in rapidly deteriorating conditions of sea and weather, it took almost another hour before they had the main cable across from Warlock secured by its thick nylon spring to the tanker's stern bollards - yet the time had passed so swiftly for Nicholas that when he stood back and glanced at his watch, he was shocked. Before this wind they must have been going down very fast on the land. He staggered into the tanker's stern quarters, and left a trail of sea water down the passageway to the elevators.

On the bridge, Captain Randle was standing grim-faced at the helm, and Duncan Alexander snapped accusingly at him.

‘You've cut it damned fine.’ A single glance at the digital print-out of the depth gauge on the tanker's control console bore him out. They had thirty-eight fathoms of water under them now, and the Golden Dawn’s swollen belly sagged down twenty fathoms below the surface. They were going down very swiftly before the easterly gale winds. It was damned fine, Nicholas had to agree, but he showed no alarm or agitation as he crossed to Randle's side and unhooked the hand microphone.

‘David,’ he asked quietly, ‘are you ready to haul us off?’

‘Ready, sir,’ David Allen's voice came from the speaker above his head.

‘I'm going to give you full port rudder to help your turn across the wind,’ said Nicholas, and then nodded to Randle. ‘Full port rudder.’

‘Forty degrees of port rudder on,’ Randle reported.

They felt the tiny shock as the tow-cable came up taut, and carefully Warlock began the delicate task of turning the huge ship across the rising gusting wind and then dragging her out tail first into the deeper water of the channel where she would have her best chance of riding out the hurricane.

It was clear now that Golden Dawn lay directly in the track of Lorna, and the storm unleashed its true nature upon them. Out there upon the sane and rational world, the sun was rising, but here there was no dawn, for there was no horizon and no sky. There was only madness and wind and water, and all three elements were so intermingled as to form one substance.

An hour - which seemed like a lifetime - ago, the wind had ripped away the anemometer and the weather-recording equipment on top of the navigation bridge, so Nicholas had no way of judging the wind's strength and direction.

Out beyond the bridge windows, the wind took the top off the sea; it took it off in thick sheets of salt water and lifted them over the navigation bridge in a shrieking white curtain that cut off visibility at the glass of the windows.

The tank deck had disappeared in the racing white emulsion of wind and water, even the railing of the bridge wings six feet from the windows was invisible.

The entire superstructure groaned and popped and whimpered under the assault of the wind, the pressed aluminium bulkheads bulging and distorting the very deck flexing and juddering at the solid weight of the storm.

Through the saturated, racing, swirling air, a leaden and ominous grey light filtered, and every few minutes the electrical impulses generated within the sixty-thousand foot-high mountain of racing, spinning air released themselves in shattering cannonades of thunder and sudden brilliance of eye-searing white lightning.

There was no visual contact with Warlock. The massive electrical disturbance of the storm and the clutter of high seas and almost solid cloud and turbulence had reduced the radar range to a few miles, and even then was unreliable.

Radio contact with the tug was drowned with buzzing squealing static. It was possible to understand only odd disconnected words from David Allen.

Nicholas was powerless, caged in the groaning, vibrating box of the navigation bridge, blinded and deafened by the unleashed powers of the heavens. There was nothing any of them could do.

Randle had locked the ultra-tanker's helm amidships, and now he stood with Duncan and the three seamen by the chart-table, all of them clinging to it for support, all their faces pale and set as though carved from chalk.

Only Nicholas moved restlessly about the bridge; from the stern windows where he peered down vainly, trying to get a glimpse of either the tow-cable and its spring, or of the tug's looming shape through the racing white storm, then he came forward carefully, using the foul-weather rail to steady himself against the huge ship's wild and unpredictable motion, and he stood before the control console, studying the display of lights that monitored the pod tanks and the ship's navigational and mechanical functions.

None of the petroleum tanks had lost any crude oil and in all of them the nature of the inert gas was constant, there had been no ingress of air to them; they were all still intact then, One of the reasons that Nicholas had taken the tanker in tow stern first was so that the navigation tower might break the worst of wind and sea, and the fragile bloated tanks would receive some protection from it.

Yet desperately he wished for a momentary sight of the tank deck, merely to reassure himself. There could be malfunction in the pump control instruments, the storm could have clawed one of the pod tanks open, and even now Golden Dawn could be bleeding her poison into the sea. But there was no view of the tank decks through the storm, and Nick stooped to the radarscope. The screen glowed and danced and flickered with ghost images and trash - he wasn't too certain if even Warlock's image was constant, the range seemed to be opening, as though the tow-line had parted. He straightened up and stood balanced on the balls of his feet, reassuring himself by the feel of the deck that Golden Dawn was still under tow. He could feel by the way she resisted the wind and the sea that the tow was still good.

Yet there was no means of telling their position. The satellite navigational system was completely blanketed, the radio waves were distorted and diverted by tens of thousands of feet of electrical storm, and the same forces were blanketing the marine radio beacons on the American mainland.

The only indication was the ship's electronic log which gave Nicholas the speed of the ship's hull through the water and the speed across the sea bottom, and the depth finder which recorded the water under her keel.

For the first two hours of the tow, Warlock had been able to pull the ship back towards the main channel at three and a half knots, and slowly the water had become deeper until they had i 5o fathoms under them.

Then as the wind velocity increased, the windage of Golden Dawn’s superstructure had acted as a vast mainsail and the storm had taken control. Now, despite all the power in Warlock's big twin propellers, both tug and tanker were being pushed once more back towards the 100-fathom line and the American mainland.

‘Where is Sea Witch?’ Nicholas wondered, as he stared helplessly at the gauges. They were going towards the shore at a little over two knots, and the bottom was shelving steeply. Sea Witch might be the ace that took the trick, if she could reach them through these murderous seas and savage winds, and if she could find them in this wilderness of mad air and water.

Again, Nicholas groped his way to the communications room, and still clinging to the bulkhead with one hand he thumbed the microphone.

‘Sea Witch. Sea Witch. This is Warlock. Calling Sea Witch.’

He listened then, trying to tune out the snarl and crackle of static, crouching over the set. Faintly he thought he heard a human voice, a scratchy whisper through the interference and he called again and listened, and called again. There was the voice again, but so indistinct he could not make out a single word.

Above his head, there was a tearing screech of rending metal. Nicholas dropped the microphone and staggered through on to the bridge. There was another deafening banging and hammering and all of them stood staring up at the metal roof of the bridge. It sagged and shook, there was one more crash and then with a scraping, dragging rush, a confused tangle of metal and wire and cable tumbled over the forward edge of the bridge and flapped and swung wildly in the wind.

It took a moment for Nicholas to realize what it was.

‘The radar antennae!’ he shouted. He recognized the elongated dish of the aerial, dangling on a thick coil of cable, then the wind tore that loose also, and the entire mass of equipment flapped away like a giant bat and was instantly lost in the teeming white curtains of the storm.

With two quick paces, he reached the radarscope, and one glance was enough. The screen was black and dead. They had lost their eyes now, and, unbelievably, the sound of the storm was rising again.

It boomed against the square box of the bridge, and the men within it cowered from its fury.

Then abruptly, Duncan was screaming something at Nicholas, and pointing up at the master display of the control console. Nicholas, still hanging on to the radarscope, roused himself with an effort and looked up at the display. The speed across the ground had changed drastically. It was now almost eight knots, and the depth was ninety-two fathoms.

Nicholas felt icy despair clutch and squeeze his guts. The ship was moving differently under him, he could feel her now in mortal distress; that same gust which had torn away the radar mast had done other damage.

He knew what that damage was, and the thought of it made him want to vomit, but he had to be sure. He had to be absolutely certain, and he began to hand himself along the foul-weather rail towards the elevator doors.

Across the bridge the others were watching him intently, but even from twenty feet it was impossible to make himself heard above the clamorous assault of the storm.

One of the seamen seemed suddenly to guess his intention, He left the chart-table and groped his way along the bulkhead towards Nicholas.

‘Good man!’ Nicholas grabbed his arm to steady him, and they fell forward into the elevator as Golden Dawn began another of those ponderous wallowing rolls and the deck fell out from under their feet.

The ride down in the elevator car slammed them back and forth across the little coffin-like box, and even here in the depths of the ship they had to shout to hear each other.

‘The tow cable,’ Nicholas yelled in the man's ear. ‘Check the tow cable.’ From the elevator they went carefully aft along the central passageway, and when they reached the double storm doors, Nicholas tried to push the inner door open, but the pressure of the wind held it closed.

‘Help me,’ he shouted at the seaman, and they threw their combined weight against it. The instant that they forced the jamb open a crack, the vacuum of pressure was released and the wind took the three-inch mahogany doors and ripped them effortlessly from their hinges, and whisked them away, as though they were a pair of playing cards and Nicholas and the seaman were exposed in the open doorway.

The wind flung itself upon them, and hurled them to the deck, smothering them in the icy deluge of water that ripped at their faces as abrasively as ground glass.

Nicholas rolled down the deck and crashed into the stern rail with such jarring force that he thought his lungs had been crushed, and the wind pinned him there, and blinded and smothered him with salt water.

He lay there helpless as a new-born infant, and near him he heard the seaman screaming thinly. The sound steeled him, and Nicholas slowly dragged himself to his knees, desperately clutching at the rail to resist the wind.

Still the man screamed and Nicholas began to creep forward on his hands and knees. It was impossible to stand in that wind and he could move only with support from the rail.

Six feet ahead of him, the extreme limit of his vision, the railing had been torn away, a long section of it dangling over the ship's side, and to this was clinging the seaman. His weight driven by the wind must have hit the rail with sufficient force to tear it loose, and now he was hanging on with one arm hooked through the railing and the other arm twisted from a shattered shoulder and waving a crazy salute as the wind whipped it about. When he looked up at Nicholas his mouth had been smashed in. It looked as though he had half chewed a mouthful of black currants, and the jagged stumps of his broken front teeth were bright red with the juice.

On his belly, Nicholas reached for him, and as he did so, the wind came again, unbelievably it was stronger still, and it took the damaged railing with the man still upon it and tore it bodily away. They disappeared instantly in the blinding white-out of the storm, and Nicholas felt himself hurled forward towards the edge. He clung with all his strength to the remaining section of the rail, and felt it buckle and begin to give.

On his knees still he clawed himself away from that fatal beckoning gap, towards the stern, and the wind struck him full in the face, blinding and choking him. Sightlessly, he dragged himself on until one outstretched arm struck the cold cast iron of the port stern bollard, and he flung both arms about it like a lover, choking and retching from the salt water that the wind had forced through his nose and mouth and down his throat.

Still blind, he felt for the woven steel of Warlock's main tow-wire. He found it and he could not span it with his fist but he felt the quick lift of his hopes.

The cable was still secured. He had catted and prevented it with a dozen nylon strops, and it was still holding. He crawled forward, dragging himself along the tow-cable, and immediately he realized that his relief had been premature.

There was no tension in the cable and when he reached the edge of the deck it dangled straight down. It was not stretched out into the whiteness, to where he had hoped Warlock was still holding them like a great sea anchor.

He knew then that what he had dreaded had happened. The storm had been too powerful, it had snapped the steel cable like a thread of cotton, and Golden Dawn was loose, without control, and this wild and savage wind was blowing her down swiftly on to the land.

Nicholas felt suddenly exhausted to his bones. He lay flat on the deck, closed his eyes and clung weakly to the severed cable. The wind wanted to hurl him over the side, it ballooned his oilskins and ripped at his face. It would be so easy to open his fingers and to let go - and it took all his resolve to resist the impulse.

Slowly, as painfully as a crippled insect, he dragged himself back through the open, shattered doorway into the central passageway of the stern quarters - but still the wind followed him. it roared down the passageway, driving in torrents of rain and salt water that flooded the deck and forced Nicholas to cling for support like a drunkard.

After the open storm, the car of the elevator seemed silent and tranquil as the inner sanctum of a cathedral. He looked at himself in the wall mirror, and saw that his eyes were scoured red and painful-looking by salt and wind, and his cheeks and lips looked raw and bruised, as though the skin had been rasped away. He touched his face and there was no feeling in his nose nor in his lips. The elevator doors slid open and he reeled out on to the navigation bridge. The group of men at the chart-table seemed not to have moved, but their heads turned to him.

Nicholas reached the table and clung to it. They were silent, watching his face.

‘I lost a man!’ he said, and his voice was hoarse and roughened by salt and weariness. ‘He went overboard. The wind got him.’ Still none of them moved nor spoke, and Nicholas coughed, his lungs ached from the water he had breathed. When the spasm passed, he went on.

‘The tow-cable has parted. We are loose - and Warlock will never be able to re-establish tow. Not in this.’

All their heads turned now to the forward bridge windows, to that impenetrable racing whiteness beyond the glass, that was lit internally with its glowing bursts of lightning.

Nicholas broke the spell that held them all. He reached up to the signal locker above the chart-table and brought down a cardboard packet of distress flares. He broke open the seals and spilled the flares on to the table. They looked like sticks of dynamite, cylinders of heavily varnished waterproof paper. The flares could be lit, and would spurt out crimson flames, even if immersed in water, once the self -igniter tab at one end was pulled.

Nicholas stuffed half a dozen of the flares into the inner pockets of his oilskins.

‘Listen!’ he had to shout, even though they were only feet away. ‘We are going to be aground within two hours. This ship is going to start breaking up immediately we strike.’

He paused and studied their faces; Duncan was the only one who did not seem to understand. He had picked up a handful of the signal flares from the table and he was looking inquiringly at Nicholas.

‘I will give you the word; as soon as we reach the twenty-fathom line and she touches bottom, you will go over the side. We will try and get a raft away. There is a chance you could be carried ashore.’

He paused again, and he could see that Randle and his two seamen realized clearly just how remote that chance was.

‘I will give you twenty minutes to get clear. By then, the pod tanks will have begun breaking up -'He didn't want this to sound melodramatic and he searched for some way to make it sound less theatrical, but could think of none.

‘Once the first tank ruptures, I will ignite the escaping crude with a signal flare.’

‘Christ!’ Randle mouthed the blasphemy, and the storm censored it on his lips. Then he raised his voice. ‘A million tons of crude. It will fireball, man.’

‘Better than a million-ton slick down the Gulf Stream,’ Nicholas told him wearily.

‘None of us will have a chance. A million tons. It will go up like an atom bomb.’ Randle was white-faced and shaking now. ‘You can't do it!’

‘Think of a better way,’ said Nicholas and left the table to stagger across to the radio room. They watched him go, and then Duncan looked down at the signal flares in his hand for a moment before thrusting them into the pocket of his jacket.

In the radio room, Nicholas called quickly into the microphone. ‘Come in, Sea Witch - Sea Witch, this is Golden Dawn.’ And only the static howled in reply.

‘Warlock, Come in, Warlock. This is Golden Dawn.’ Something else went in the wind, they heard it tear loose, and the whole superstructure shook and trembled.

The ship was beginning to break up, it had not been designed to withstand winds like this. Through the open radio room door, Nicholas could see the control console display. There were seventy-one fathoms of water under the ship, and the wind was punching her, flogging her on towards the shore.

‘Come in, Sea Witch,’ Nicholas called with quiet desperation. ‘This is Golden Dawn. Do you read me?’

The wind charged the ship, crashing into it like a monster, and she groaned and reeled from the blow.

‘Come in, Warlock.’

Randle lurched across to the forward windows, and clinging to the rail he bowed over the gauges that monitored the condition of the ship's cargo. Checking for tank damage.

‘At least he is still thinking.’ Nicholas watched above the Captain's head, the sounding showed sixty-eight fathoms.

Randle straightened slowly, began to turn, and the wind struck again.

Nicholas felt the blow in his stomach, it was a solid thing like a mountain in avalanche, a deafening boom of sound and the forward bridge window above the control console broke inwards.

It burst in a glittering explosion of glass shards that engulfed the figure of Captain Randle standing directly before it. In a fleeting moment of horror, Nicholas saw his head half severed from his shoulders by a guillotine of flying glass, then he crumpled to the deck and instantly the bright pulsing hose of his blood was diluted to spreading pale pink in the torrent of wind and blown water that poured in through the opening, and smothered the navigation bridge.

Charts and books were ripped from their shelves and fluttered like trapped birds as the wind blustered and swirled in the confines of glass and steel.

Nicholas reached the Captain's body, protecting his own face with an arm crooked across it, but there was nothing he could do for him. He left Randle lying on the deck and shouted to the others.

‘Keep clear of the windows.’

He gathered them in the rear of the bridge, against the bulkhead where stood the Decca and navigational systems. The four of them kept close together, as though they gained comfort from the close proximity of other humans, but the wind did not relent.

It poured in through the shattered window and raged about the bridge, tearing at their clothing and filling the air with a fine mist of water, flooding the deck ankle deep so that it sloshed and ran as the tanker rolled almost to her beam ends.

Randle's limp and sodden body slid back and forth in the wash and roll, until Nicholas left the dubious security of the after bulkhead, half -lifted the corpse under the arms, and dragged it into the radio room and wedged it into the radio operator's bunk. Swift blood stained the crisply ironed sheets, and Nicholas threw a fold of the blanket over Randle and staggered back into the bridge.

Still the wind rose, and now Nicholas felt himself numbed by the force and persistence of it.

Some loose material, perhaps a sheet of aluminium from the superstructure, or a length of piping ripped from the tank deck below, smashed into the tip of the bridge like a cannonball and then flipped away into the storm, leaving a jagged rent which the wind exploited, tearing and worrying at it, enlarging the opening, so that the plating flapped and hammered and a solid deluge of rain poured in through it.

Nicholas realized that the ship's superstructure was beginning to go; like a gigantic vulture, soon the wind would begin stripping the carcass down to its bones.

He knew he should get the survivors down nearer the water line, so that when they were forced to commit themselves to the sea, they could do so quickly. But his brain was numbed by the tumult, and he stood stolidly. It needed all his remaining strength merely to brace himself against the tearing wind and the ship's anguished motion.

In the days of sail, the crew would tie themselves to the main mast, when they reached this stage of despair.

Dully, he registered that the depth of water under the ship was now only fifty-seven fathoms, and the barometer was reading 955 millibars. Nicholas had never heard of a reading that low; surely it could not go lower, they must be almost at the centre of the revolving hurricane.

With an effort, he lifted his arm and read the time. It was still only ten o'clock in the morning, they had been in the hurricane for only two and a half hours.

A great burning light struck through the torn roof, a light that blinded them with its intensity, and Nicholas threw up his hands to protect his eyes. He could not understand what was happening, He thought his hearing had gone, for suddenly the terrible tumult of the wind was muted, fading away.

Then he understood. ‘The eye,’ he croaked, we are into the eye,’ and his voice resounded strangely in his own ears. He stumbled to the front of the bridge.

Although the Golden Dawn still rolled ponderously, describing an arc of almost forty degrees from side to side, she was free of the unbearable weight of the wind and brilliant sunshine poured down upon her. It beamed down like the dazzling arc lamps of a stage set, out of the throat of a dark funnel of dense racing swirling cloud.

The cloud lay to the very surface of the sea, and encompassed the full sweep of the horizon in an unbroken wall. Only directly overhead was it open, and the sky was an angry unnatural purple, set with the glaring, merciless eye of the sun.

The sea was still wild and confused, leaping into peaks and troughs and covered with a thick frothy mattress of spindrift, whipped into a custard by the wild winds. But already the sea was subsiding in the total calm of the eye and Golden Dawn was rolling less viciously.

Nicholas turned his head stiffly to watch the receding wall of racing cloud. How long would it take for the eye to pass over them, he wondered.

Not very long, he was sure of that, half an hour perhaps an hour at the most - and then the storm would be on them again, with its renewed fury every bit as sudden as its passing. But this time, the wind would come from exactly the opposite direction as they crossed the hub and went into the far side of the revolving wall of cloud.

Nicholas jerked his eyes away from that racing, heaven-high bank of cloud, and looked down on to the tank deck. He saw at a single glance that Golden Dawn had already sustained mortal damage. The forward port pod tank was half torn from its hydraulic coupling, holding only by the bows and lying at almost twenty degrees from the line of the other three tanks. The entire tank deck was twisted like the limb of an arthritic giant, it rolled and pitched out of sequence with the rest of the hull.

Golden Dawn's back was broken, It had broken where Duncan had weakened the hull to save steel. Only the buoyancy of the crude petroleum in her four tanks was holding her together now. Nicholas expected to see the dark, glistening ooze of slick leaking from her; he could not believe that not one of the four tanks had ruptured and he glanced at the electronic cargo monitor. Loads and gas contents of all tanks were still normal. They had been freakishly lucky so far, but when they went into the far side of the hurricane he knew that Golden Dawn's weakened spine would give completely, and when that happened it must pinch and tear the thin skins of the pod tanks.

He made a decision then, forcing his mind to work, not certain how good a decision it was but determined to act on it.

‘Duncan,’ he called to him across the swamped and battered bridge. 'I'm sending you and the others off on one of the life-rafts. This will be your only chance to launch one. I'll stay on board to fire the cargo when the storm hits again.’

‘The storm has passed.’ Suddenly Duncan was screaming at him like a madman. ‘The ship is safe now. You're going to destroy my ship, - you're deliberately trying to break me.’ He was lunging across the heaving bridge. ‘It's deliberate, you know I've won now. It's the only way can stop me now.’ He swung a clumsy round-arm blow. Nicholas ducked under it and caught Duncan around the chest.

‘Listen to me,’ he shouted, trying to calm him. ‘This is only the eye!’

‘You'd do anything to stop me. You swore you would stop me –‘

'Help me,’ Nicholas called to the two seamen, and they grabbed Duncan's arms. He bucked and fought like a madman, screaming wildly at Nicholas, his face contorted and swollen with rage, sodden hair flopping into his eyes. ‘You'd do anything to destroy me, to destroy my ship-‘

‘Take him down to the raft deck,’ Nicholas ordered the two seamen. He knew he could not reason with Duncan now, and he turned away and stiffened suddenly.

‘Wait!’ he stopped them leaving the bridge.

Nicholas felt the terrible burden of weariness and despair slip from his shoulders, felt new strength rippling through his body, recharging his courage and his resolution for a mile away, from behind that receding wall of dreadful grey cloud, Sea Witch burst abruptly into the sunlight, tearing bravely along with the water bursting over her bows and flying back as high as her bridgework, running without regard to the hazard of sea and storm.

‘Jules,’ Nicholas whispered.

Jules was driving her like only a tugman can drive a ship, racing to beat the far wall of the storm.

Nicholas felt his throat constricting and suddenly the scalding tears of relief and thankfulness half-blinded him - for a mile out on Sea Witch's port side, and barely a cable-length astern of her, Warlock came crashing out of the storm bank, running every bit as hard as her sister ship.

‘David,’ Nicholas spoke aloud. ‘You too, David.’ He realized only then that they must have been in radar contact with him through those wild tempestuous hours of storm passage, hovering there, holding station on Golden Dawn's crippled bulk and waiting for their first opportunity .

Above the wail and crackle of static from the overhead loud-speaker boomed Jules Levoisin's voice. He was close enough and in the clear eye the interference allowed a readable radio contact.

‘Golden Dawn, this is Sea Witch. Come in, Golden Dawn.’ Nicholas reached the radio bench and snatched up the microphone.

‘Jules.’ He did not waste a moment in greeting or congratulations. ‘We are going to take the tanks off her, and let the hull go. Do you understand?’

‘I understand to take off the tanks,’ Jules responded immediately.

Nicholas’ brain was crisp and clear again, he could see just how it must be done. ‘Warlock takes off the port tanks first - in tandem.

In tandem, the two tanks would be strung like beads on a string, they had been designed to tow that way.

‘Then you will take off the starboard side-‘

‘You must save the hull.’ Duncan still fought the two seamen who held him. ‘Goddamn you, Berg. I'll not let you destroy me.’ Nicholas ignored his ravings until he had finished giving his orders to the two tug masters. Then he dropped the microphone and grabbed Duncan by the shoulders. Nicholas seemed to be possessed suddenly by supernatural strength, and he shook him as though he were a child. He shook him so his head snapped back and forth and his teeth rattled in his head.

‘You bloody idiot,’ he shouted in Duncan's face. ‘Don't you understand the storm will resume again in minutes?’ He jerked Duncan's body out of the grip of the two seamen and dragged him bodily to the windows overlooking the tank deck.

‘Can't you see this monster you have built is finished, finished! There is no propeller, her back is broken, the superstructure will go minutes after the wind hits again.’

He dragged Duncan round to face him, their eyes were inches apart.

‘It's over, Duncan. We will be lucky to get away with our lives. We'll be luckier still to save the cargo.’

‘But don't you understand - we've got to save the hull - without it-‘

Duncan started to struggle, he was a powerful man, and quickly he was rousing himself, within minutes he would be dangerous - and there was no time, already Warlock was swinging up into her position on Golden Dawn's port beam for tank transfer.

‘I'll not let you take off –‘ Duncan wrenched himself out of Nicholas grip, there was a mad fanatic light in his eyes.

Nicholas swivelled; coming up on to his toes and swinging from the shoulders he aimed for the point of Duncan's jaw, just below the ear and the thick sodden wedge of Duncan's red-gold sideburns. But Duncan rolled his head with the punch, and the blow glanced off his temple, and Golden Dawn rolled back the other way as Nicholas was unbalanced.

He fell back against the control console, and Duncan drove at him, two running paces like a quarter-back taking a field goal, and he kicked right-legged for Nicholas' lower body.

‘I'll kill you, Berg,’ he screamed, and Nicholas had only time to roll sideways and lift his leg scissoring it to protect his crotch. Duncan's kick caught him in the upper thigh. An explosion of white pain shot up into his belly and numbed his leg to the thigh, but he used the control console and his good leg to launch himself into a counterpunch, hooking with his right again, under the ribs - and the wind went out of Duncan's lungs with a whoosh as he doubled. Nicholas transferred weight smoothly and swung his left fist up into Duncan's face. It sounded like a watermelon dropped on a concrete floor, and Duncan was hurled backwards against the bulkhead, pinned there for a moment by the ship's roll. Nicholas followed him, hobbling painfully on the injured leg, and he hit him twice more. Left and right, short, hard, hissing blows that cracked his skull backwards against the bulkhead, and brought quick bright rosettes of blood from his lips and nostrils.

As his legs buckled, Nicholas caught him by the throat with his left hand and held him upright, searching his eyes for further resistance, ready to hit again, but there was no fight left in him.

Nicholas let him go, and went to the signal locker. He snatched three of the small walkie-talkie radios from the radio shelves and handed one to each of the two seamen.

‘You know the pod tank undocking procedures for a tandem tow?’ he asked.

We've practised it,’ one of them replied.

‘Let's go,’ said Nicholas.

It was a job that was scheduled for a dozen men, and there were three of them. Duncan was of no use to them, and Nicholas left him in the pump control room on the lowest deck of Golden Dawn's stern quarter, after he had closed down the inert gas pumps, sealed the gas vents, and armed the hydraulic releases of the pod tanks for undocking.

They worked sometimes neck-deep in the bursts of green, frothing water that poured over the ultra-tanker's fore-deck. They took on board and secured Warlock's main cable, unlocked the hydraulic clamps that held the forward pod tank attached to the hull and, as David Allen eased it clear of the crippled hull, they turned and lumbered back along the twisted and wind-torn catwalk, handicapped by the heavy sea-boots and oilskins and the confused seas that still swamped the tank-deck every few minutes.

On the after tank, the whole laborious energy-sapping procedure had to be repeated, but here it was complicated by the chain coupling which connected the two half-mile-long pod tanks. Over the walkie-talkie Nicholas had to coordinate the efforts of his seamen to those of David Allen at the helm of Warlock.

When at last Warlock threw on power to both of her big propellers and sheered away from the wallowing hull, she had both port pod tanks in tow. They floated just level with the surface of the sea, offering no windage for the hurricane winds that would soon be upon them again.

Hanging on to the rail of the raised catwalk Nicholas watched for two precious minutes with an appraising professional eye. It was an incredible sight, two great shiny black whales, their backs showing only in the troughs, and the gallant little ship leading them away. They followed meekly, and Nicholas’ anxiety was lessened. He was not confident, not even satisfied, for there was still a hurricane to navigate - but there was hope now.

‘Sea Witch,’ he spoke into the small portable radio. ‘Are you ready to take on tow?’

Jules Levoisin fired the rocket-line across personally. Nicholas recognized his portly but nimble figure high in the fire-control tower, and the rocket left a thin trail of snaking white smoke high against the backdrop of racing, grey hurricane clouds. Arching high over the tanker's tank-deck, the thin nylon rocket-line fell over the catwalk ten feet from where Nicholas stood.

They worked with a kind of restrained frenzy, and Jules Levoisin brought the big graceful tug in so close beside them that glancing up Nicholas could see the flash of a gold filling in Jules' white smile of encouragement. It was only a glance that Nicholas allowed himself, and then he raised his face and looked at the storm.

The wall of cloud was slippery and smooth and grey, like the body of a gigantic slug, and at its foot trailed a glistening white slimy line where the winds frothed the surface of the sea. It was very close now, ten miles, no more, and above them the sun had gone, cut out by the spiralling vortex of leaden cloud. Yet still that open narrow funnel of clear calm air reached right up to a dark and ominous sky.

There was no hydraulic pressure on the clamps of the starboard forward pod tank. Somewhere in the twisted damaged hull the hydraulic line must have sheared. Nicholas and one of the seamen had to work the emergency release, pumping it open slowly and laboriously by hand.

Still it would not release, the hull was distorted, the clamp jaws out of alignment.

‘Pull,’ Nicholas commanded Jules in desperation. ‘Pull all together.’ The storm front was five miles away, and already he could hear the deadly whisper of the wind, and a cold puff touched Nicholas uplifted face.

The sea boiled under Sea Witch's counter, spewing out in a swift white wake as Jules brought in both engines. The tow-cable came up hard and straight; for half a minute nothing gave, nothing moved - except the wall of racing grey cloud bearing down upon them.

Then, with a resounding metallic clang, the clamps slipped and the tank slid ponderously out of its dock in Golden Dawn's hull - and as it came free, so the hull, held together until that moment by the tank’s'bulk and buoyancy, began to collapse.

The catwalk on which Nicholas stood began to twist and tilt so that he had to grab for a handhold, and he stood frozen in horrified fascination as he watched Golden Dawn begin the final break-up.

The whole tank deck, now only a gutted skeleton, began to bend at its weakened centre, began to hinge like an enormous pair of nutcrackers - and caught between the jaws of the nutcracker was the starboard after pod tank. It was a nut the size of Chartres Cathedral, with a soft liquid centre, and a shell as thin as the span of a man's hand.

Nicholas broke into a lurching, blundering run down the twisting, tilting catwalk, calling urgently into the radio as he went.

‘Shear!’ he shouted to the seamen almost half a mile away across that undulating plane of tortured steel. ‘Shear the tandem tow!’

For the two starboard pod tanks were linked by the heavy chain of the tandem, and the forward tank was linked to Sea Witch by the main tow-cable. So Sea Witch and the doomed Golden Dawn were coupled inexorably, unless they could cut the two tanks apart and let Sea Witch escape with the forward tank which she had just undocked.

The shear control was in the control box halfway back along the tank deck, and at that moment the nearest seaman was two hundred yards from it.

Nicholas could see him staggering wildly back along the twisting, juddering catwalk. Clearly he realized the danger, but his haste was fatal, for as he jumped from the catwalk, the deck opened under him, gaping open like the jaws of a steel monster and the seaman fell through, waist deep, into the opening between two moving plates, then as he squirmed feebly, the next lurch of the ship's hull closed the plates, sliding them across each other like the blades of a pair of scissors.

The man shrieked once and a wave burst over the deck, smothering his mutilated body in cold, green water. When it poured back over the ship’s side there was no sign of the man, the deck was washed glisteningly clean.

Nicholas reached the same point in the deck, judged the gaping and closing movement of the steel plate and the next rush of sea coming on board, before he leapt across the deadly gap.

He reached the control box, and slid back the hatch, pressing himself into the tiny steel cubicle as he unlocked the red lid that housed the shear button. He hit the button with the heel of his hand.

The four heavy chains of the tandem tow lay between the electrodes of the shear mechanism. With a gross surge of power from the ship's generators and a flash of blue electric flame, the thick steel links sheared as cleanly as cheese under the cutting wire - and, half a mile away, Sea Witch felt the release and pounded ahead under the full thrust of her propellers taking with her the forward starboard tank still held on main tow.

Nicholas paused in the opening of the control cubicle, hanging on to the sill for support and he stared down at the single remaining tank, still caught inextricably in the tangled moving forest of Golden Dawn's twisting, contorting hull. It was as though an invisible giant had taken the Eiffel Tower at each end and was bending it across his knee.

Suddenly there was a sharp chemical stink in the air, and Nicholas gagged on it. The stink of crude petroleum oil gushing from the ruptured tank.

‘Nicholas! Nicholas!’ The radio set slung over his shoulder squawked, and he lifted it to his lips without taking his eyes from the Golden Dawn's terrible death throes.

‘Go ahead, Jules.’

‘Nicholas, I am turning to pick you up.’

‘You can't turn, not with that tow.’

‘I will put my bows against the starboard quarterdeck rail, directly under the forward wing of the bridge. Be ready to jump aboard.’

‘Jules, you are out of your head!’

‘I have been that way for fifty years,’ Jules agreed amiably. ‘Be ready.’

'Jules, drop your tow first,’ Nicholas pleaded. It would be almost impossible to manoeuvre the Sea Witch with that monstrous dead weight hanging on her tail. ‘Drop tow. We can pick up again later.’

‘You teach your grandfather to break eggs,’ Jules blithely mangled the old saying, giving it a sinister twist.

‘Listen Jules, the No. 4 tank has ruptured. I want you to shut down for fire. Do you understand? Full fire shut down. Once I am aboard, we will put a rocket into her and burn off cargo.’

‘I hear you, Nicholas, but I wish I had not.’

Nicholas left the control cubicle, jumped the gaping, chewing gap in the decking and scrambled up the steel ladder on to the central catwalk.

Glancing over his shoulder, he could see the endlessly slippery grey wall of racing cloud and wind; its menace was overpowering, so that for a moment he faltered before forcing himself into running back along the catwalk towards the tanker's stern tower half a mile ahead.

The single remaining seaman was on the catwalk a hundred yards ahead of him, pounding determinedly back towards the pick-up point. He also had heard Jules Levoisin's last transmission.

A quarter of a mile across the roiling, leaping waters, Jules Levoisin was bringing Sea Witch around. At another time Nicholas would have been impressed by the consummate skill with which the little Frenchman was handling his ship and its burdensome tow, but now there was time and energy for one thing only.

The air stank. The heavy fumes of crude oil burned Nicholas’ pumping lungs, and constricted his throat. He coughed and gasped as he ran, the taste and reek of it coated his tongue and seared his nostrils.

Below the catwalk, the bloated pod-tank was punctured in a hundred places by the steel lances of the disintegrating hull, pinched and torn by moving steel girders, and the dark red oil spurted and dribbled and oozed from it like the blood from the carcass of a mortally wounded poisonous dragon.

Nicholas reached the stern tower, barged in through the storm doors to the lowest deck and reached the pump control room.

Duncan Alexander turned to him, as he entered, his face swollen and bruised where Nicholas had beaten him.

‘We are abandoning now,’ said Nicholas. Sea Witch is taking us off.’

‘I hated you from that very first day,’ Duncan was very calm, very controlled, his voice even, deep and cultured. Did you know that?’

‘There's no time for that now.’ Nicholas grabbed his arm, and Duncan followed him readily into the passageway.

‘That's what the game is all about, isn't it, Nicholas, power and wealth and women - that's the game we played.’

Nicholas was barely listening. They were out on to the quarter-deck, standing at its starboard rail, below the bridge, the pick-up point that Jules had stipulated. Sea Witch was turning in, only five hundred yards out, and Nicholas had time now to watch Jules handle his ship.

He was running out the heavy tow-cable on free spool, deliberately letting a long bight of it form between the tug and its enormous whale-like burden, and he was using the slack in the cable to cut in towards Golden Dawn's battered, sagging hulk. He would be alongside for the pickup in less than a minute.

‘That was the game we played, you and I,’ Duncan was still talking calmly. ‘Power and wealth and women-‘

Below them Golden Dawn poured her substance into the sea in a slick, stinking flood. The waves, battering against her side, churned the oil to a thick filthy emulsion, and it was spreading away across the surface, bleeding its deadly poison into the Gulf Stream to broadcast it to the entire ocean.

‘I won,’ Duncan went on reasonably. ‘I won it all, every time –‘ He was groping in his pockets, but Nicholas hardly heard him, was not watching him. ‘- until now.’

Duncan took one of the self-igniting signal flares from his pocket and held it against his chest with both hands, slipping his index finger through the metal ring of the igniter tab.

‘And yet I win this one also, Nicholas,’ he said. ‘Game, set and match.’ And he pulled the tab on the flare with a sharp jerk, and stepped back, holding it aloft.

It spluttered once and then burst into brilliant sparkling red flame, white phosphorescent smoke billowing from it.

Now at last Nicholas turned to face him, and for a moment he was too appalled to move. Then he lunged for Duncan's raised hand that held the burning flare, but Duncan was too fast for him to reach it.

He whirled and threw the flame in a high spluttering arc, out over the leaking, stinking tank-deck.

It struck the steel tank and bounced once, and then rolled down the canted oil-coated plating.

Nicholas stood paralysed at the rail staring down at it. He expected a violent explosion, but nothing happened, the flare rolled innocently across the deck, burning with its pretty red twinkling light.

‘It's not burning,’ Duncan cried. ‘Why doesn't it burn?’

Of course, the gas was only explosive in a confined space, and it needed spark, Out here in the open air the oil had a very high flashpoint, it must be heated to release its volatiles.

The flare caught in the scuppers and fizzled in a black pool of crude, and only then the crude caught. It caught with a red, slow, sulky flame that spread quickly but not explosively over the entire deck, and instantly, thick billows of dark smoke rose in a dense choking cloud.

Below where Nicholas stood, the Sea Witch thrust her bows in and touched them against the tanker's side. The seaman beside Nicholas jumped and landed neatly on the tug's bows, then raced back along Sea Witch's deck.

‘Nicholas,’ Jules voice thundered over the loudhailer. ‘Jump, Nicholas.

Nicholas spun back to the rail and poised himself to jump.

Duncan caught him from behind, whipping one arm around his throat, and pulling him backwards away from the rail.

‘No,’ Duncan shouted. ‘You're staying my friend. You are not going anywhere. You are staying here with me.’

A greasy wave of black choking smoke engulfed them, and Jules’ magnified voice roared in Nicholas’ ears.

‘Nicholas, I cannot hold her here. Jump, quickly, jump!’

Duncan had him off-balance, dragging him backwards, away from the ship's side, and suddenly Nicholas knew what he must do.

Instead of resisting Duncan's arm, he hurled himself backwards and they crashed together into the superstructure - but Duncan bore the combined weight of both their bodies.

His armlock around the throat relaxed slightly and Nicholas drove his elbow into Duncan's side below the ribs, then wrenched his body forward from the waist, reached between his own braced legs and caught Duncan's ankles. He straightened up again, dragging Duncan off his feet and the same instant dropped backwards with his full weight on to the deck.

Duncan gasped and his arm fell away, as Nicholas bounced to his feet again, choking in the greasy billows of smoke, and he reached the ship's side.

Below him, the gap between Sea Witch's bows and the tanker's side was rapidly widening and the thrust of the sea and the drag of the tug pulled them apart.

Nicholas vaulted on to the rail, poised for an instant and then jumped. He struck the deck and his teeth cracked together with the impact; his injured leg gave under him and he rolled once, then he was up on his hands and knees.

He looked up at Golden Dawn. She was completely enveloped now in the boiling column of black smoke. As the flames heated the leaking crude, so it burned more readily. The bank of smoke was shot through now with the satanic crimson of high, hot flame.

As Sea Witch sheered desperately away, the first rush of the storm hit them, and for a moment it smeared the smoke away, exposing the tanker's high quarter-deck.

Duncan Alexander stood at the rail above the roaring holocaust of the tank-deck. He stood with his arms extended, and he was burning, his clothing burned fiercely and his hair was a bright torch of flame. He stood like a ritual cross, outlined in fire, and then slowly he seemed to shrivel and he toppled forward over the rail into the bubbling, spurting, burning cargo of the monstrous ship that he had built - and the black smoke closed over him like a funeral cloak.

As the crude oil escaping from the pierced pod tank fed the flames, so the heat built up swiftly, still sufficient to consume only the volatile aromatic spirits which constituted less than half the bulk of the cargo.

The heavy carbon elements, not yet hot enough to burn, boiled off in that solid black column of smoke, and as the returning winds of the hurricane raced over the Golden Dawn once more, so that filthy pall was mixed with air and lifted into the cloud bank of the storm, rising first a thousand, then ten, then twenty thousand feet above the surface of the ocean.

And still Golden Dawn burned, and the temperatures of the gas and oil mixture trapped in her hull rocketed steeply. Steel glowed red, then brilliant white, ran like molten wax, and then like water - and suddenly the flashpoint of heavy carbon smoke in a mixture of air and water vapour was reached in the womb of this mighty furnace.

Golden Dawn and her entire cargo turned into a fireball.

The steel and glass and metal of her hull disappeared in an instantaneous explosive combustion that released temperatures like those upon the surface of the sun. Her cargo, a quarter of a million tons of it, burned in an instant, releasing a white blooming rose of pure heat so fierce that it shot up into the upper stratosphere and consumed the billowing pall of its own hydrocarbon gas and smoke.

The very air burst into flame, the surface of the sea flamed in that white fireball of heat and even the clouds of smoke burned as the oxygen and hydrocarbon they contained exploded.

Once an entire city had been subjected to this phenomena of fireball, when stone and earth and air had exploded, and five thousand German citizens of the city of Cologne had been vaporized, and that vapour burned in the heat of its own release.

But this fireball was spawned by a quarter of a million tons of volatile liquids.

‘Can't you get us further away?’ Nicholas shouted above the thunder of the hurricane. His mouth was only inches from Jules Levoisin's ear.

They were standing side by side, hanging from the overhead railing that gave purchase on this wildly pitching deck.

‘If I open the taps I will part the tow wire,’ Jules shouted back.

Sea Witch was alternately standing on her nose and then her tail. There was no forward view from the bridge, only green washes of sea water and banks of spray.

The full force of the hurricane was on them once more, and a glance at the radarscope showed the glowing image of Golden Dawn's crippled and bleeding hull only half a mile astern.

Suddenly the glass of the windows was obscured by an impenetrable blackness, and the light in Sea Witch's navigation bridge was reduced to only the glow of her fire-lights and the electronic instruments of her control console.

Jules Levoisin turned his face to Nicholas, his plump features haunted by green shadows in the gloom.

‘Smoke bank,’ Nicholas shouted an explanation. There was no reek of the filthy hydrocarbon in the bridge, for Sea Witch was shut down for fire drill, all her ports and ventilators sealed, her internal air-conditioning on a closed circuit, the air being scrubbed and recharged with oxygen by the big carrier until above the main engine room. ‘We are directly downwind of the Golden Dawn.’

A fiercer rush of the hurricane winds laid Sea Witch over on her side, the lee rail deep under the racing green sea, and held her there, unable to rise against the careless might of the storm for many minutes. Her crew hung desperately from any hand hold, the irksome burden of her tow helping to drag her down further; the propellers found no grip in the air, and her engines screamed in anguish.

But Sea Witch had been built to live in any sea, and the moment the wind hesitated, she fought off the water that had come aboard and began to swing back.

‘Where is Warlock?’ Jules bellowed anxiously. The danger of collision preyed upon him constantly, two ships and their elephantine tows manoeuvring closely in confined hurricane waters was nightmare on top of nightmare.

‘Ten miles east of us.’ Nicholas picked the other tug's image out of the trash on the radarscope. ‘They had a start, ahead of the wind-‘

He would have gone on, but the boiling bank of hydrocarbon smoke that surrounded Sea Witch turned to fierce white light, a light that blinded every man on the bridge as though a photograph flashlight had been fired in his face.

‘Fireball!’ Nicholas shouted, and, completely blinded, reached for the remote controls of the water cannons seventy feet above the bridge on Sea Witch's fire-control tower.

Minutes before, he had aligned the four water cannons, training them down at their maximum angle of depression, so now as he locked down the multiple triggers, Sea Witch deluged herself in a pounding cascade of sea water.

Sea Witch was caught in a furnace of burning air, and despite the torrents of water she spewed over herself, her paintwork was burned away in instantaneous combustion so fierce that it consumed its own smoke, and almost instantly the bare scorched metal of her exposed upperworks began to glow with heat.

The heat was so savage that it struck through the insulated hull, through the double glazing of the two-inch armoured glass of her bridge windows, scorching and frizzling away Nicholas eyelashes and blistering his lips as he lifted his face to it.

The glass of the bridge windows wavered and swam as they began to melt - and then abruptly there was no more oxygen. The fireball had extinguished itself, consumed everything in its twenty seconds of life, everything from sea level to thirty thousand feet above it, a brief and devastating orgasm of destruction.

It left a vacuum, a weak spot in the earth's thin skin of air, it formed another low pressure system smaller, but much more intense, and more hungry to be filled than the eye of hurricane Lorna itself.

It literally tore the guts out of that great revolving storm, setting up counter winds and a vortex within the established system that ripped it apart.

New gales blew from every point about the fireball's vacuum, swiftly beginning their own dervish spirals and twenty miles short of the mainland of Florida, hurricane Lorna checked her mindless, blundering charge, fell in upon herself and disintegrated into fifty different willy-nilly squalls and whirlpools of air that collided and split again, slowly degenerating into nothingness.

On a morning in April in Galveston roads, the salvage tug Sea Witch dropped off tow to four smaller harbour tugs who would take the Golden Dawn No. 3 Pod tank up the narrows to the Orient Amex discharge installation below Houston.

Her sister ship Warlock, Captain David Allen Commanding, had dropped off his tandem tow of No. 1 and No. 2 pod tanks to the same tugs forty-eight hours previously.

Between the two ships, they had made good salvage under Lloyd's Open Form of three-quarters of a million tons of crude petroleum valued at $85-5 U.S. a ton. To the prize would be added the value of the three tanks themselves - not less than sixty-five million dollars all told, Nicholas calculated, and he owned both ships and the full share of the salvage award. He had not sold to the Shiekhs yet, though for every day of the tow from Florida Straites to Texas there had been frantic telex messages from James Teacher in London. The Sheikhs were desperate to sign now, but Nicholas would let them wait a little longer.

Nicholas stood on the open wing of Sea Witch's bridge and watched the four smaller harbour tugs bustling importantly about their ungainly charge.

He lifted the cheroot to his lips carefully, for they were still blistered from the heat of the fireball - and he pondered the question of how much he had achieved, apart from spectacular riches.

He had reduced the spill from a million to a quarter of a million tons of cad-rich crude, and he had burned it in a fireball. Nevertheless, there had been losses, toxins had been lifted high above the fireball. They had spread and settled across Florida as far as Tampa and Tallahassee, poisoning the pastures and killing thousands of head of domestic stock. But the American authorities had been quick to extend the hurricane emergency procedures.

There had been no loss of human life. He had achieved that much.

Now he had delivered the salvaged pod tanks to Orient Amex. The new cracking process would benefit all mankind, and nothing that Nicholas could do would prevent men carrying the cad-rich crudes of El Barras across the oceans. But would they do so in the same blindly irresponsible manner that Duncan Alexander had attempted?

He knew then with utter certainty that it was his appointed life's work, from now on, to try and ensure that they did not. He knew how he was to embark upon that work. He had the wealth that was necessary, and Tom Parker had given him the other instruments to do the job.

He knew with equal certainty, who would be his companion in that life's work - and standing on the fire-scorched deck of the gallant little vessel he had a vivid image of a golden girl who walked forever beside him in sunlight and in laughter.

‘Samantha.’

He said her name aloud just once, and suddenly he was very eager to begin.

WILBUR SMITH

ELEPHANT SONG

PAN BOOKS

ELEPHANT SONG

Wilbur Smith was born in Central Africa in 1933. He was educated at Michaelhouse and Rhodes University. He became a full-time writer in 1964 after the successful publication of When the Lion Feeds, and has written over thirty novels, all meticulously researched on his numerous expeditions worldwide. His books are now translated into twenty-six languages.

The author wishes to make grateful acknowledgement to Colin Turnbull’sThe Forest People, published by Jonathan Cape, which he found invaluable in his research for this novel.

This book is for my wife

MOKHINISO

who is the best thing

that has ever happened to me

Chapter 1

It was a windowless thatched building of dressed sandstone blocks, that Daniel Armstrong had built with his own hands almost ten years ago. At the time he had been a junior game ranger in the National Parks administration. Since then the building had been converted into a veritable treasure house.

Johnny Nzou slipped his key into the heavy padlock, and swung open the double doors of hewn native teak. Johnny was chief warden of Chiwewe National Park. Back in the old days, he had been Daniel’s tracker and gunbearer, a bright young Matabele whom Daniel had taught to read, write and speak fluent English by the light of a thousand campfires. Daniel had lent Johnny the money to pay for his first correspondence course from the University of South Africa which had led much later to his degree of Bachelor of Science.

The two youngsters, one black and one white, had patrolled the vast reaches of the National Park together, often on foot or bicycle. In the wilderness they had forged a friendship which the subsequent years of separation had left undimmed.

Now Daniel peered into the gloomy interior of the godown and whistled softly. “Hell, Johnny boy, you have been busy since I’ve been away.” The treasure was stacked to the roof beams, hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of it.

Johnny Nzou glanced at Daniel’s face, his eyes narrowed as he looked for criticism in his friend’s expression. The reaction was reflex, for he knew Daniel was an ally who understood the problem even better than he did. Nevertheless, the subject was so emotionally charged that it had become second nature to expect revulsion and antagonism.

However, Daniel had turned back to his cameraman. “Can we get a light in here? I want some good shots of the interior.” The cameraman trudged forward, weighed down by the heavy battery packs slung around his waist, and switched on the hand-held arc lamp. The high stacks of treasure were lit with a fierce blue-white light. “Jock, I want you to follow me and the warden down the length of the warehouse,” Daniel instructed, and the cameraman nodded and moved in closer, the sleek Sony video recorder balanced on his shoulder. Jock was in his middle thirties. He wore only a pair of short khaki pants, and open sandals.

In the Zambezi valley heat his tanned bare chest was shiny with sweat and his long hair was tied with a leather thong at the nape of his neck. He looked like a pop star, but was an artist with the big Sony camera. “Got you, guy,” he agreed, and panned the camera over the untidy stacks of elephant tusks, ending on Daniel’s hand as it stroked one elegant curve of glowing ivory. Then he pulled back into a full shot of Daniel.

It was not merely Daniel’s doctorate in biology, nor his books and lectures, that had made him an international authority and spokesman on African ecology. He had the healthy outdoors looks and charismatic manner that came over so well on the television screen, and his voice was deep and compelling. His accent had sufficient Sandhurst undertones remaining to soften the flat unmelodious vowel sounds of colonial speech.

His father had been a staff officer in a Guards regiment during World War II and had served in North Africa under Wavell and Montgomery. After the war he came out to Rhodesia to grow tobacco.

Daniel had been born in Africa but had been sent home to finish his education at Sandhurst, before coming back to Rhodesia to join the National Parks Service. “Ivory,” he said now, as he looked into the camera. “Since the time of the pharaohs, one of the most beautiful and treasured natural substances. The glory of the African elephant, and its terrible cross.” Daniel began to move down between the tiers of stacked tusks, and Johnny Nzou fell in beside him.

“For two thousand years man has hunted the elephant to obtain this living white gold, and yet only a decade ago there still remained over two million elephant on the African continent. The elephant population seemed to be a renewable resource, an asset that was protected and harvested and controlled, and then something went terribly, tragically wrong. In these last ten years, almost a million elephant have been slaughtered. It is barely conceivable that this could have been allowed to happen. We are here to find out what went wrong, and how the perilous existence of the African elephant can be retrieved from the brink of extinction.” He looked at Johnny. “With me today is Mr. John Nzou, chief warden of Chiwewe National Park, one of the new breed of African conservationists. By coincidence, the name Nzou in the Shana language means elephant. John Nzou is Mr. Elephant in more than name alone.

“As warden of Chiwewe, he is responsible for one of the largest and healthiest elephant herds that still flourish in the African wilderness. Tell us, Warden, how many tusks do you have in this store room here at Chiwewe National Park?”

“There are almost five hundred tusks in store at present four hundred and eighty-six to be exact, with an average weight of seven kilos.”

“On the international market ivory is worth three hundred dollars a kilo,” Daniel cut in, “so that is well over a million dollars. Where does it all come from?”

“Well, some of the tusks are pick-ups, ivory from elephant found dead in the Park, and some is illegal ivory that my rangers have confiscated from poachers. But the great majority of tusks are from the culling operations that my department is forced to undertake.”

The two of them paused at the far end of the godown and turned back to face the camera. “We will discuss the culling programme later, Warden. But first can you tell us a little more about poaching activity in Chiwewe. How bad is it?”

“It is getting worse every day.” Johnny shook his head sadly. “As the elephant in Kenya and Tanzania and Zambia are wiped out, so the professionals are turning their attention to our healthy elephant herds further south. Zambia is just across the Zambezi river, and the poachers that come across this side are organised and better armed than we are. They shoot to kill men as well as elephant and rhino. We have been forced to do the same. If we run into a band of poachers, we shoot first.”

“All for these…” Daniel laid his hand on the nearest pile of tusks. No two of the ivory shafts were the same; each curve was unique. Some were almost straight, long and thin as knitting needles; others were bent like a drawn longbow. Some were sharp-tipped as javelins; others were squat and blunt. There were pearly shafts, and others were of buttery alabaster tone; still others were stained dark with vegetable juices, and scarred and worn with age.

Most of the ivory was female or immature; a few tusks were no longer than a man’s forearm, taken from small calves. A very few were great curved imperial shafts, the heavy mature ivory of old bulls.

Daniel stroked one of these, and his expression was not simply for the camera. Once again, he felt the full weight of the melancholy that had first caused him to write about the passing and destruction of the old Africa and its enchanted animal kingdom. “A sage and magnificent beast has been reduced to this,” his voice sank to a whisper. “Even if it is unavoidable, we cannot escape the inherently tragic nature of the changes that are sweeping through this continent. Is the African elephant symbolic of the land? The elephant is dying. Is Africa dying?”

His sincerity was absolute. The camera recorded it faithfully. It was the most compelling reason for the enormous appeal of his television programmes around the world.

Now Daniel roused himself with an obvious effort, and turned back to Johnny Nzou. “Tell us, Warden, is the elephant doomed? How many of these marvelous animals do you have in Zimbabwe and how many of those are in Chiwewe National Park?”

“There are an estimated fifty-two thousand elephant in Zimbabwe, and our figures for Chiwewe are even more accurate. Only three months ago, we were able to conduct an aerial survey of the Park sponsored by the international Union for the Conservation of Nature. The entire area of the Park was photographed, and the animals counted from the high-resolution prints.”

“How many?” Daniel asked.

“In Chiwewe alone, eighteen thousand elephant.”

“That’s a huge population, something approaching a third of all the remaining animals in the country, all in this area.” Daniel raised an eyebrow. “In the climate of gloom and pessimism that prevails, this must give you a great deal of encouragement?”

Johnny Nzou frowned. “On the contrary, Doctor Armstrong, we are extremely concerned by these numbers.”

“Can you explain that please, Warden?”

“It’s simple, Doctor. We cannot support that many elephant. We estimate that thirty thousand elephant would be an ideal population for Zimbabwe. A single beast requires up to a ton of vegetable matter each day, and he will push over trees that have taken many hundreds of years to grow, even trees with trunks four feet in diameter, to obtain that food. What will happen if you allow that huge herd to flourish and to breed? Quite simply, in a very short period they will reduce this park to a dust bowl, and when that happens the elephant population will collapse. We will be left with nothing, no trees, no park, no elephant.”

Daniel nodded encouragement. When the film was edited he would cut in at this point a series of shots he had taken some years previously in Kenya’s Amboseli Park. These were haunting vistas of devastation, of bare red earth and dead black trees stripped of bark and leaves holding up their naked branches in agonized supplication to a hard blue African sky, while the desiccated carcasses of the great animals lay like discarded leather bags where famine and poachers had destroyed them.

“Do you have a solution, Warden?” Daniel asked softly.

“A drastic one, I’m afraid.”

“Will you show us what it is?”

Johnny Nzou shrugged. “It is not very pretty to watch, but, yes, you may witness what has to be done.”

Chapter 2

Daniel woke twenty minutes before sunrise.

Even the intervening years spent in cities out of Africa, and the passage of so many other dawns in northern climes, or in the fluid time zones of jet aircraft travel, had not dulled the habit that he had first acquired in this valley. Of course, the habit had been reinforced during the years of that terrible Rhodesian bush war, when he had been called up to serve in the security forces.

For Daniel the dawn was the most magical time of each day, and especially so in this valley. He rolled out of his sleepingbag and reached for his boots. He and his men had slept fully clothed on the sun-baked earth, with the embers of the campfire in the centre of the huddle of their prostrate forms. They had not built a boma of thorn branches to protect themselves, although at intervals during the night lions had grunted and roared along the escarpment.

Daniel laced up his boots and slipped quietly out of the circle of sleeping men. The dew that hung like seed pearls upon the grass stems soaked his trouser legs to the knees as he moved out to the promontory of rock at the head of the cliff. He found a seat on the rough grey granite knoll and huddled into his anorak.

The dawn came on with stealthy and deceptive speed and painted the clouds above the great river in subtle talcum shades of pink and grey. Over the Zambezi’s dark green waters the river mist undulated and pulsed like ghostly ectoplasm and the dawn flights of duck were very dark and crisp against the pale background, their formations precise and their wingbeats flickering quick as knife-blades in the uncertain light.

A lion roared, near at hand, abrupt gales of sound that died away in a descending series of moaning grunts. Daniel shivered with the thrill of that sound. Though he had heard it countless times, it always had the same effect upon him. There was no other like it in all the world. For him it was the veritable voice of Africa.

Then he picked out the great cat shape below him at the edge of the swamp. Full-bellied, dark-maned, it carried its massive head low and swung it from side to side to the rhythm of its stately arrogant walk. Its mouth was half open and its fangs glinted behind thin black lips.

He watched it vanish into the dense riverine bush and sighed with the pleasure it had given him.

There was a small sound close behind him. As he started up, Johnny Nzou touched his shoulder to restrain him and settled down on the granite slab beside him.

Johnny lit a cigarette. Daniel had never been able to talk him out of the habit. They sat in companionable silence as they had so often before and watched the dawn come on more swiftly now, until that religious moment when the sun thrust its burning rim above the dark mass of the forest. The light changed and all their world was bright and glazed as a precious ceramic creation fresh from the firing oven.

“The trackers came into camp ten minutes ago. They have found a herd,” Johnny broke the silence, and the mood.

Daniel stirred and glanced at him. “How many?” he asked.

“About fifty.”

That was a good number. They would not be able to process more, for flesh and hide putrefy swiftly in the heat of the valley, and a lower number would not justify all this use of men and-expensive equipment.

“Are you sure you want to film this?” Johnny asked.

Daniel nodded. “I have considered it carefully. To attempt to conceal it would be dishonest.”

“People eat meat and wear leather, but they don’t want to see inside the abattoir,” Johnny pointed out. “This is a complex and emotional subject we are examining.”

“People have a right to know.”

“In anyone else I would suspect journalistic sensationalism,” Johnny murmured, and Daniel frowned.

“You are probably the only person I would allow to say that because you know better.”

“Yes, Danny, I know better,” Johnny agreed.

“You hate this as much as I do, and yet you first taught me the necessity of it.”

“Let’s go to work,” Daniel suggested gruffly, and they stood up and walked back in silence to where the trucks were parked.

The camp was astir, and coffee was brewing on the open fire. The rangers were rolling their blankets and sleeping-bags and checking their rifles. There were four of them, two black lads and two white, all of them in their twenties. They wore the plain khaki uniform of the Parks Department with green shoulder flashes, and though they handled their weapons with the casual competence of veterans they kept up a cheerful high-spirited banter. Black and white treated each other as comrades, although they were just old enough to have fought in the bush war and had probably been on opposing sides. It always amazed Daniel that so little bitterness remained.

Jock, the cameraman, was already filming. It often seemed to Daniel that the Sony camera was a natural excrescence of his body, like a hunchback.

“I’m going to ask you some dumb questions for the camera, and I might needle you a little,” Daniel warned Johnny. “We both know the answers to the questions, but we have to fake it, okay?”

“Go ahead.” Johnny looked good on film. Daniel had studied the rushes the previous night. One of the joys of working with modern video equipment was the instant replay of footage.

Johnny resembled the younger Cassius Clay before he became Mohammed Ali. However, he was leaner in the face and his bone structure finer and more photogenic. His expression was mobile and expressive and the tones of his skin were not so dark as to make too severe a contrast and render photography difficult.

They huddled over the smoky campfire and Jock brought the camera in close to them.

“We are camped here on the banks of the Zambezi River with the sun just rising, and not far out there in the bush your trackers have come across a herd of fifty elephant, Warden,” Daniel told Johnny, and he nodded. “You have explained to me that the Chiwewe Park cannot support such numbers of these huge animals, and that this year alone at least a thousand of them must be removed from the Park, not only for the good of the ecology, but for the very survival of the remaining elephant herds. How do you intend removing them?”

“We will have to cull them,” Johnny said curtly.

“Cull them?” Daniel asked. “That means kill, doesn’t it?”

“Yes. My rangers and I will shoot them.”

“All of them, Warden? You are going to kill fifty elephant today?”

“We will cull the entire herd.”

“What about the young calves and the pregnant cows? Won’t you spare a single animal?”

“They all have to go,” Johnny insisted.

“But why, Warden? Couldn’t you catch them, dart and drug them, and send them elsewhere?”

“The costs of transporting an animal the size of an elephant are staggering. A big bull weighs six tons, an average cow around four. Look at this terrain down here in the valley.” Johnny gestured towards the mountainous heights of the escarpment and the broken rocky kopjes; and wild forest. “We would require special trucks and we would have to build roads to get them in and out. Even if that were possible, where would we take them? I have told you that we have a surplus of almost twenty thousand elephant in Zimbabwe. Where would we take these elephant? There simply isn’t space for them.”

“So, Warden, unlike the other countries to the north such as Kenya and Zambia who have allowed their elephant herds to be almost wiped out by poaching and unwise conservation policy, you are in a Catch 22 situation. Your management of your herds of elephant has been too good. Now you have to destroy and waste these marvelous animals.”

“No, Doctor Armstrong, we won’t waste them. We will recover a great deal of value from their carcasses, ivory and hides and meat which will be sold. The proceeds will be ploughed back into conservation, to prevent poaching and to protect our National Parks. The death of these animals will not be a complete abomination.”

“But why do you have to kill the mothers and the babies?” Daniel insisted.

“You are cheating, Doctor,” Johnny warned him. “You are using the emotive, slanted language of the animal rights groups, mothers and babies. Let’s rather call them cows and calves, and admit that a cow eats as much and takes up as much space as a bull, and that calves grow very swiftly into adults.”

“So you feel–” Daniel started, but despite his earlier warning, Johnny was becoming angry.

“Hold on,” he snapped. “There’s more to it than that. We have to take out the entire herd. It is absolutely essential that we leave no survivors. The elephant herd is a complex family group. Nearly all its members are blood relatives, and there is a highly developed social structure within the herd. The elephant is an intelligent animal, probably the most intelligent after the primates, certainly more intelligent than a cat or dog, or even a dolphin. They know, I mean, they really understand…” he broke off, and cleared his throat. His feelings had overcome him, and Daniel had never liked nor admired him more than he did at that moment. “The terrible truth is,” Johnny’s voice was husky as he went on, “that if we allowed any of them to escape the cull, they would communicate their terror and panic to the other herds in the Park. There would be a swift breakdown in the elephant-social behaviour.”

“Isn’t that a little far-fetched, Warden?” Daniel asked softly.

“No. It has happened before. After the war there were ten thousand surplus elephant in the Wankie National Park. At that time, we knew very little about the techniques or effects of massive culling operations. We soon learned. Those first clumsy efforts of ours almost destroyed the entire social structure of the herds. By shooting the older animals, we wiped out their reservoir of experience and transferable wisdom. We disrupted their migratory patterns, the hierarchy and discipline within the herds, even their breeding habits. Almost as though they understood that the holocaust was upon them, the bulls began to cover the barely mature young cows before they were ready.

“Like the human female, the elephant cow is ripe for breeding at fifteen or sixteen years of age at the very earliest. Under the terrible stress of the culling, the bulls in Wankie went to the cows when they were only ten or eleven years of age, still in puberty, and the calves born of these unions were stunted little runts.” Johnny shook his head. “No, we have to take out the whole herd at one stroke.”

Almost with relief, he looked up at the sky. They both picked up the distant insect drone of an aircraft engine beyond the towering cumulus clouds. “Here comes the spotter plane,” he said quietly, and reached for the microphone of the radio. “Good morning, Sierra Mike. We have you visual due south of our position approximately four miles. I will give you yellow smoke.” Johnny nodded at one of his rangers, who pulled the tab on a smoke marker.

Sulphur-yellow smoke drifted in a heavy cloud across the treetops.

“Roger, Parks. I have your smoke. Give me an indication on the target, please.”

Johnny frowned at the word target and laid emphasis on the alternative word as he replied. “At sunset yesterday evening the herd was moving north towards the river five miles southeast of this position. There are fifty-plus animals.”

“Thank you, Parks. I will call again when we locate them.”

They watched the aircraft bank away eastwards. It was an ancient single-engined Cessna that had probably served on fireforce duties as a K-Car, or killer car, during the bush war.

Fifteen minutes later the radio crackled to life again. “Hello, Parks. I have your herd. Fifty-plus and eight miles from your present position.”

The herd was spread out down both banks of a dry river-course that was gouged through a low line of flinty hills. The forest was greener and more luxuriant here in the drainage where the deep roots had found subterranean water. The acacia trees were in heavy pod. The pods looked like long brown biscuits, clustered at the tips of the branches sixty feet above ground level.

Two cows moved in on one of the heavily laden trees. They were the herd matriarchs, both of them over seventy years of age, gaunt old dowagers with tattered ears and rheumy eyes. The bond between them was over half a century strong. They were half-sisters, successive calves of the same mother. The elder had been weaned at the birth of her sibling and had helped to nursemaid her as tenderly as would a human elder sister. They had shared a long life, and had drawn from it a wealth of experience and wisdom to add to the deep ancestral instinct with which they had both been endowed at birth.

They had seen each other through drought and famine and sickness. They had shared the joy of good rains and abundant food. They knew all the secret hideaways in the mountains and the water-holes in the desert places. They knew where the hunters lurked, and the boundaries of the sanctuaries within which they and the herd were secure. They had played midwife to each other, leaving the herd together when the time was come upon one of them, and by their presence had fortified each other in the tearing agony of birth. They had stripped the foetal sac from each other’s newborn calves, and helped discipline them, instruct them and rear them to maturity.

Their own breeding days were long past, but the herd and its safety were still their duty and their main concern. Their pleasure and their responsibility were the younger cows and the new calves that carried their own blood-lines.

Perhaps it was fanciful to endow brute animals with such human emotions as love and respect, or to believe that they understand blood relationships or the continuity of their line, but no one who had seen the old cows quieten the boisterous youngsters with raised ears and a sharp angry squeal, or watched the herd follow their lead with unquestioning obedience, could doubt their authority. No one who had seen them caress the younger calves with a gentle trunk or lift them over the steep and difficult places on the elephant roads could question their concern. When danger threatened they would push the young ones behind them and rush forward to the defence with ears spread wide and trunks rolled ready to fling out and strike down an enemy.

The great bulls with towering frames and massive girth might overshadow them in size, but not in cunning and ferocity. The bulls tusks were longer and thicker, sometimes weighing well over one hundred pounds.

The two old cows had spindly misshapen ivory, worn and cracked and discoloured with age, and the bones showed through the scarred grey skin, but they were constant in their duty to the herd.

The bulls kept only a loose association with the breeding herd. As they grew older they often preferred to break away and form smaller bachelor groups of two or three males, visiting the cows only when the heady scent of oestrus drew them in. However, the old cows stayed with the herd. They formed the solid foundation on which the social structure of the herd was based. The tight-knit community of breeding cows and their calves relied heavily upon their wisdom and experience for its everyday needs and survival.

Now the two sisters moved in perfect accord to the giant acacia laden with seed pods, and each took up her position on either side of the trunk. They laid their foreheads against the rough bark. The trunk was over four feet in diameter, unyielding as a column of marble. A hundred feet above the ground the high branches formed an intricate tracery and the pods and green leaves a cathedral dome against the sky.

The two old cows began to rock back and forth in unison with the tree-trunk between their foreheads. At first the acacia was rigid, resisting even their great strength. The cows worked on doggedly, pushing and heaving, first one then the other throwing her weight in opposite directions, and a tiny shudder ran up the tree and, high above them, the top branches trembled as though a breeze had passed.

Still they worked rhythmically and the trunk began to move.

A single ripe pod came loose from its twig and fell a hundred feet to crack against the skull of one of the cows. She closed her watery old eyes tightly but never broke the rhythm of her heaves. Between them the tree-trunk swayed and shuddered, ponderously at first and then more briskly. Another pod and then another plopped down as heavily as the first drops of a thunderstorm.

The young animals of the herd realised what they were up to, they flapped their ears with excitement and hurried forward. The acacia pods, rich in protein, were a favourite delicacy. They crowded gleefully around the two cows, snatching up the scattering of pods as they fell and stuffing them far down their throats with their trunks.

By now the great tree was whipping back and forth, its branches waving wildly and its foliage thrashing. The pods and loose twigs showered down thick as hail, rattling and bouncing from the backs of the elephants crowded beneath.

The two cows, still braced like a pair of book ends, kept doggedly at it until the shower of falling pods began to dry up.

Only when the last one was shaken from the branches did they step back from the tree-trunk. Their backs were sprinkled with dead leaves and twigs, bits of dry bark and velvety pods, and they stood ankle-deep in the fallen debris. They reached down and delicately picked out the golden pods with the dextrous fleshy tips of their trunks and curled them up into their gaping mouths, their triangular bottom lips drooping open.

The ooze from their facial glands wetting their cheeks like tears of pleasure, they began to feed.

The herd was pressed closely around them at the feast that they had laid. As their long serpentine trunks swung and curled, and the pods were shovelled into their throats, there was a soft sound that seemed to reverberate through each of their great grey frames. It was a gentle rumbling in many different keys, and the sound was interspersed with tiny creaking gurgling squeaks barely audible to the human ear. It was a strangely contented chorus, in which even the youngest beasts joined.

It was a sound that seemed to express joy of life and to confirm the deep bond that linked all the members of the herd.

It was the song of the elephant.

One of the old cows was the first to detect a threat to the herd.

She transmitted her concern to them with a sound high above the register of the human ear and the entire herd froze into utter stillness. Even the very young calves responded instantly.

The silence after the happy uproar of the feast was eerie, and the buzz of the distant spotter plane was loud in contrast. The old cows recognised the sound of the Cessna engine. They had heard it many times over the last few years and had come to associate it with the periods of increased human activity, of tension and of unexplained terror that they felt transmitted telepathically through the wilderness from the other groups of elephant in the Park.

They knew that the sound in the air was the prelude to a popping chorus of distant gunfire and to the stench of elephant blood on the currents of heated air along the rim of the escarpment. Often after the sounds of aircraft and gunfire had faded, they had come across wide areas of the forest floor caked with dried blood, and they had smelt the odour of fear and pain and death exuded by members of their own race which still mingled with the reek of blood and of rotting entrails.

One of the old cows backed away and shook her head angrily at the sound in the sky. Her tattered ears flapped loudly against her shoulders, a sound like the mainsail of a tall ship filling with wind.

Then she wheeled and led the herd away at a run.

There were two mature bulls with the herd, but at the first threat they peeled away and disappeared into the forest. Instinctively recognising that the herd was vulnerable, they sought safety in solitary flight. The younger cows and the calves bunched up behind the matriarchs and fled, the little ones racing to keep up with the longer stride of their dams; in different circumstances their haste might have been comical.

“Hello, Parks. The herd is breaking southwards towards the Imbelezi pass.”

“Roger, Sierra Mike. Please head them towards the Maria Pools turn-off.”

The old cow was leading the herd towards the hills. She wanted to get off the valley bottom into the had ground where pursuit would be impeded by the rock and severe gradients, but the sound of the aircraft hummed across her front, cutting her off from the mouth of the pass.

She pulled up uncertainly and lifted her head to the sky, where tall silvery mountains of cumulus cloud were piled up as high as the heavens. She spread wide her ears, riven and weathered by time and thorn, and turned her ancient head to follow that dreadful sound.

Then she saw the aircraft. The early sunlight flashed from its windshield as it banked steeply across her front, and it dived back towards her, low over the tops of the forest trees, the sound of its engine rising to a roar. The two old cows spun together and started back towards the river.

Behind them the herd wheeled like an untidy mass of cavalry, and as they ran the dust rose in a fine pale cloud even higher than the treetops.

“Parks, the herd is heading your way now. Five miles from the turn-off.”

“Thank you, Sierra Mike; keep them coming nice and easy. Don’t push them too hard.”

“Will-do, Parks.”

“All K-Units.” Johnny Nzou changed his call-sign. “All K-Units, converge on the Mana Pools turn-off.”

The K-Units, or kill teams, were the four Landrovers that were deployed along the main track that ran down from Chiwewe headquarters on the escarpment to the river. Johnny had put them in as a stop line, to head off the herd if it broke awkwardly. It did not look as though that would be necessary now. The spotter plane was working the herd into position with professional expertise.

“Looks as though we’ll make it on the first try,” Johnny muttered as he reversed the Landrover and swung it in a full 180-degree turn, then sent it flying down the track. A ridge of grass grew between the sandy wheel-tracks, and the Landrover rocked and rattled over the bumps. The wind whipped around their heads and Daniel pulled his hat from his head and stuffed it into his pocket.

Jock was filming over his shoulder as a herd of buffalo, disturbed by the sound of the Landrover, came pouring out of the forest and crossed the track just ahead of them.

“Damn it!” Johnny hit the brakes and glanced at his wristwatch. “Stupid nyati are going to screw us up.”

Hundreds of the dark bovine shapes came in a solid phalanx, galloping heavily, raising white dust, grunting and lowing and splattering liquid green dung on the grass as they flattened it.

Within minutes they had passed and Johnny accelerated into the standing dust-cloud and rattled over the loose earth that the herd had ploughed up with their great cloven hoofs. Around a bend in the track they saw the other vehicles parked at the crossroads. The four rangers were standing in a group beside them, rifles in their hands and faces turned back expectantly.

Johnny skidded the Landrover to a halt and snatched up the microphone of his radio. “Sierra Mike, give me a position report, please.”

“Parks, the herd is two miles from you, just approaching Long Vlei.”

A vlei is a depression of open grassland, and Long Vlei ran for miles parallel to the river. In the rainy season it was a marsh, but now it made an ideal killing ground. They had used it before.

Johnny jumped down from the driver’s seat and lifted his rifle from the rack. He and all his rangers were armed with cheap mass-produced magnums loaded with solid ammunition for maximum penetration of bone and tissue. His men were chosen for this work on account of their superior marksmanship. The kill must be as swift and humane as possible. They would shoot for the brain and not take the easier but lingering body shot.

“Let’s go!” Johnny snapped. There was no need to give instructions. These were tough young professionals, yet even though they had done this work many times before their expressions were sombre. There was no excitement, no anticipation in their eyes. This was not sport. They clearly did not enjoy the prospect of the bloody work ahead.

They were stripped down to shorts and velskoen without socks, light running gear. The only heavy items they carried were their cheap weapons and the bandoliers of ammunition strapped around their waists. All of them were lean and muscled, and Johnny Nzou was as hard as any of them. They ran to meet the herd.

Daniel fell into position behind Johnny Nzou. He believed that he had kept himself fit with regular running and training, but he had forgotten what it was like to be hunting and fighting fit as were Johnny and his rangers.

They ran like hounds, streaming through the forest effortlessly, their feet seeming to find their own way between scrub and rock and fallen branches and antbear holes. They barely touched the earth in passing.

Daniel had run like that once, but now his boots were slamming down heavily and he stumbled once or twice in the rough footing. He and the camera man began to fall behind.

Johnny Nzou gave a hand signal and his rangers fanned out into a long skirmish line, fifty yards separating each of them. Ahead, the forest gave way abruptly to the open glade of Long Vlei. It was three hundred yards wide; the dry beige-coloured grass was waist-high.

The line of killers stopped at the edge of the forest and looked to Johnny at the centre, but his head was thrown back, watching the spotter plane out there above the forest. It was banking steeply, standing vertically on one wing.

Daniel caught up with him, and found that both he and Jock were panting heavily although they had run less than a mile. He envied Johnny. “There they are,” Johnny called softly. “You can see the dust.”

It lay in a haze on the treetops between them and the circling aircraft. Coming on fast.

Johnny wind-milled his right arm and obediently his skirmish line extended and shifted into a concave shape like the horns of a bull buffalo with Johnny at the centre. At the next signal they trotted forward into the glade. The light breeze was in their faces; the herd would not scent them.

Although originally the herd had instinctively fled into the wind so as not to run into danger, the aircraft had turned them back downwind.

The elephant’s eyesight is not sharp; they would make nothing of the line of human figures until it was too late. The trap was set and the elephants were coming straight into it, chivvied and sheep-dogged by the low-flying Cessna.

The two old cows burst out of the tree-line at full run, their bony legs flying, ears cocked back, loose grey folds of skin shuddering and wobbling with each jarring footfall. The rest of the herd were strung out behind them. The youngest calves were tiring, and their mothers pushed them along with their trunks.

The line of executioners froze, standing in a half circle like the mouth of a gill net extended to take in a shoal of fish. The elephants would pick up movement more readily than they would recognize the blurred manshapes that their weak, panic stricken eyes disclosed to them.

“Get the two old grannies first,” Johnny called softly. He had recognised the matriarchs and he knew that with them gone the herd would be disorganized and indecisive. His order was passed down the line.

The leading cows pounded down directly towards where Johnny stood. He let them come on. He held the rifle at high port across his chest.

At a hundred yards distance the two dowager elephants started to turn away from him, angling off to the left, and Johnny moved for the first time.

He lifted his rifle and waved it over his head and shouted in Sindebele, “Nanzi Inkosikaze, here I am respected old lady.”

For the first time the two elephants recognised that he was not a tree-stump but a deadly enemy. Instantly they swung back towards him, and focusing all their ancestral hatred and terror and concern for the herd upon him, they burst together into full charge.

They squealed their fury at him, extending their stride so that the dust spurted from under their colossal footpads. Their ears were rolled back along the top edge, sure sign of their anger. They towered over the group of tiny human figures.

Daniel wished vehemently that he had taken the precaution of arming himself. He had forgotten how terrifying this moment was, with the nearest cow only fifty yards away and coming straight in at forty miles an hour.

Jock was still filming, although the angry shrieks of the two cows had been taken up by the entire herd. They came down upon them like an avalanche of grey granite, as though a cliff had been brought rumbling down with high explosive.

At thirty yards Johnny Nzou mounted the rifle to his shoulder and leaned forward to absorb the recoil. There was no telescopic sight mounted above the blue steel barrel. For close work like this he was using open express sights.

Since its introduction in 1912, thousands of sports and professional hunters had proved the .375 Holland & Holland to be the most versatile and effective rifle ever to have been brought to Africa. It had all the virtues of inherent accuracy and moderate recoil, while the 300-grain solid bullet was a ballistic marvel, with flat trajectory and extraordinary penetration.

Johnny aimed at the head of the leading cow, at the crease of the trunk between her myopic old eyes. The report was sharp as the lash of a bullwhip, and an ostrich feather of dust flew from the surface of her weathered grey skin at the precise point upon her skull at which he had aimed.

The bullet sliced through her head as easily as a steel nail driven through a ripe apple. It obliterated the top of her brain, and the cow’s front legs folded under her, and Daniel felt the earth jump under his feet as she crashed down in a cloud of dust.

Johnny swung his aim on to the second cow, just as she came level with the carcass of her sister. He reloaded without taking the butt of the rifle from his shoulder, merely flicking the bolt back and forward. The spent brass case was flung high in a glinting parabola and he fired again. The sound of the two rifle shots blended into each other; they were fired so swiftly as to cheat the ear into hearing a single prolonged detonation.

Once again the bullet struck exactly where it had been aimed and the cow died as the other had done, instantaneously. Her legs collapsed and she dropped and lay on her belly with her shoulder touching that of her sister. In the centre of each of their foreheads a misty pink plume of blood erupted from the tiny bullet-holes.

Behind them the herd was thrown into confusion. The bewildered beasts milled and circled, treading the grass flat and raising a curtain of dust that swirled about them, blanketing the scene so their forms looked ethereal and indistinct in the dust-cloud. The calves huddled for shelter beneath their mothers bellies, their ears flattened against their skulls with terror, and they were battered and kicked and thrown about by the frantic movements of their dams.

The rangers closed in, firing steadily. The sound of gunfire was a long continuous rattle, like hail on a tin roof. They were shooting for the brain. At each shot one of the animals flinched or flung up its head, as the solid bullets cracked on the bone of the skull with the sound of a well struck golf ball. At each shot one of the animals went down dead or stunned. Those killed cleanly, and they were the majority, collapsed at the back legs first and dropped with the dead weight of a maize sack.

When the bullet missed the brain but passed close to it, the elephant reeled and staggered and went down kicking to roll on its side with a terrible despairing moan and grope helplessly at the sky with lifted trunk.

One of the young calves was trapped and pinned beneath its mother’s collapsing carcass, and lay broken-backed and squealing in a mixture of pain and panic. Some of the elephant found themselves hemmed in by a palisade of fallen animals and they reared up and tried to scramble over them. The marksmen shot them down so that they fell upon the bodies of those already dead, while others tried to climb over these and were in their turn shot down.

It was swift. Within minutes all the adult animals were down, lying close together or piled upon each other in bleeding mounds and hillocks.

Only the calves were still racing in bewildered circles, stumbling over the bodies of the dead and dying, squealing and tugging at the carcasses of their mothers.

The riflemen walked forward slowly, a tightening ring of gunmetal around the decimated herd. They fired and reloaded and fired again as they closed in. They picked off the calves, and when there remained not a single standing animal, they moved quickly into the herd, scrambling over the gigantic sprawling bodies, pausing only to fire a finishing bullet into each huge bleeding head. Most often there was no response to the second bullet in the brain, but occasionally an elephant not yet dead shuddered and straightened its limbs and blinked its eyes at the shot, then slumped lifelessly.

Within six minutes of Johnny’s first shot, a silence fell over the killing ground on Long Vlei. Only their ears still sang to the brutal memory of gunfire. There was no movement; the elephant lay in windrows like wheat behind the blades of the mower, and the dry earth soaked up the blood. The rangers were still standing apart from each other, subdued and awed by the havoc they had wrought, staring with remorse at the mountain of the dead. Fifty elephant, two hundred tons of carnage.

Johnny Nzou broke the tragic spell that held them. He walked slowly to where the two old cows lay at the head of the herd. They lay side by side, shoulders touching, with their legs folded neatly under them, kneeling as though still alive with only the pulsing fountain of life-blood from their foreheads to spoil the illusion.

Johnny set the butt of his rifle on the ground and leaned upon it, studying the two old matriarchs for a long regretful moment. He was unaware that Jock was filming him. His actions and his words were completely unstudied and unrehearsed. “Hamba gashle, Amakbulu,” he whispered. “Go in peace, old grandmothers. You are together in death as you were in life. Go in peace, and forgive us for what we have done to your tribe.” He walked away to the edge of the tree-line. Daniel did not follow him.

He understood that Johnny wanted to be alone for a while now. The other rangers also avoided each other. There was no banter, nor self-congratulation; two of them wandered amongst the mountainous dead with a strangely disconsolate air; a third squatted where he had fired his last shot, smoking a cigarette and studying the dusty ground between his feet, while the last one had laid aside his rifle and, with hands thrust in his pockets and shoulders hunched, stared at the sky and watched the vultures gather.

At first the carrion birds were tiny specks against the glaring alps of cumulus cloud, like grains of pepper sprinkled on a tablecloth. Then they soared closer overhead, forming circling squadrons, turning on their wide wings in orderly formations, a dark wheel of death high above the killing-ground, and their shadows flitted over the piled carcasses in the centre of Long Vlei.

Forty minutes later Daniel heard the rumble of the approaching trucks, and saw them coming slowly through the forest. A squad of half-naked axemen ran ahead of the convoy, cutting out the brush and making a rough track for them to follow.

Johnny stood up with obvious relief from where he had been sitting alone at the edge of the trees, and came to take charge of the butchering.

The piles of dead elephant were pulled apart with winches and chains.

Then the wrinkled grey skin was sliced through down the length of the belly and the spine. Again the electric winches were brought into play and the skin was flensed off the carcass with a crackling sound as the subcutaneous tissue released its grip. It came off in long slabs, grey and corrugated on the outside, gleaming white on the inside. The men laid each strip on the dusty earth and heaped coarse salt upon it The naked carcasses looked strangely obscene in the bright sunlight, wet and marbled with white fat and exposed scarlet muscle, the swollen bellies bulging as though to invite the stroke of the flensing knives.

A skinner slipped the curved point of the knife into the belly of one of the old cows at the point where it met the sternum. Carefully controlling the depth of the cut so as not to puncture the entrails, he walked the length of the body drawing the blade like a zipper down the belly pouch so that it gaped open and the stomach sac bulged out, glistening like the silk of a parachute. Then the colossal coils of the intestines slithered after it. These seemed to have a separate life. Like the body of an awakening python, they twisted and unfolded under the impetus of their own slippery weight.

The chainsaw men set to work. The intrusive clatter of the two-stroke engines seemed almost sacrilegious in this place of death, and the exhausts blew snorting blue smoke into the bright air. They lopped the limbs off each carcass, and a fine mush of flesh and bone chips flew in a spray from the teeth of the spinning steel chains.

Then they buzzed through the spine and ribs, and the carcasses fell into separate parts that were winched into the waiting refrigerator trucks.

A special gang went from carcass to carcass with long boat-hooks, poking in the soft wet mounds of spilled entrails to drag out the wombs of the females. Daniel watched as they split open one of the engorged wombs, dark purple with its covering of enlarged blood vessels. From the foetal sac, in a flood of amniotic fluid the foetus, the size of a large dog, slid out and lay in the trampled grass.

It was only a few weeks from term, a perfect little elephant covered with a coat of reddish hair that it would have lost soon after birth.

It was still alive, moving its trunk feebly. “Kill it,” Daniel ordered harshly in Sindebele. It was improbable that it could feel pain, but he turned away in relief as one of the men struck off the tiny head with a single blow of his panga. Daniel felt nauseated, but he knew that nothing from the cull should be wasted. The skin of the unborn elephant would be finegrained and valuable, worth a few hundred dollars for a handbag or a briefcase.

To distract himself he walked away across the killing-ground. All that remained now were the heads of the great animals and the glistening piles of their entrails. From the guts nothing of value could be salvaged and they would be left for the vultures and hyena and jackal.

The ivory tusks, still embedded in their castles of bone, were the most precious part of the cull. The poachers and the ivoryhunters of old would not risk damaging them with a careless axe-stroke, and customarily would leave the ivory in the skull until the cartilaginous sheath that held it secure rotted and softened and released its grip.

Within four or five days the tusks could usually be drawn by hand, perfect and unmarked.

However, there was no time to waste on this procedure. The tusks must be cut out by hand. The skinners who did this were the most experienced men, usually older, with grey woolly heads and bloodstained loincloths. They squatted beside the heads and tapped patiently with their native axes.

While they were engaged in this painstaking work Daniel stood with Johnny Nzou. Jock held the Sony VTR on them as Daniel commented, “Gory work.”

“But necessary,” Johnny agreed shortly. “On an average each adult elephant will yield about three thousand dollars in ivory, skin and meat. To many people that will sound pretty commercial, especially as they have just witnessed the hard reality of the cull.”

Daniel shook his head. “You must know that there is a very strong campaign, led by the animal rights groups, to have the elephant placed on Appendix One of CITES, that is the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species.”

“Yes, I know.”

“If that happens it would prohibit the trade in any elephant products, skin, ivory or meat. What do you think of that, Warden?”

“It makes me very angry.” Johnny dropped his cigarette and ground it under his heel. His expression was savage.

“It would prevent any further culling operations, wouldn’t it?” Daniel persisted.

“Not at all,” Johnny contradicted him. “We would still be forced to control the size of the herds. We would still be forced to cull. The only difference would be that we could not sell the elephant products. They would be wasted, a tragic criminal waste. We would lose millions of dollars of revenue which at present is being used to protect and enlarge and service the wildlife sanctuaries…” Johnny broke off and watched as a tusk was lifted out of the channel in the spongy bone of the skull by two of the skinners and laid carefully on the dry brown grass. Skilfully one of them drew the nerve, a soft grey gelatinous core, from the hollow end of the tusk.

Then Johnny went on, “That tusk makes it easier for us to justify the continued existence of the Parks and the animals they contain to the local tribes-people living in close contact with wild animals on and near the boundaries of the national wilderness areas.”

“I don’t understand,” Daniel encouraged him. “Do you mean the local tribes resent the Parks and the animal population?”

“Not if they can derive some personal benefit from them. If we can prove to them that a cow elephant is worth three thousand dollars and that a foreign safari hunter will spend fifty or even a hundred thousand dollars to hunt a trophy bull, if we can show them that a single elephant is worth a hundred, even a thousand of their goats or scrawny cattle and that they will see some of that money coming to them and their tribe, then they will see the point of conserving the herds.”

“You mean the local peasants do not place a value on wildlife simply for its own sake?”

Johnny laughed bitterly. “That’s a First World luxury and affectation. The tribes here live very close to subsistence level. We are talking about an average family income of a hundred and twenty dollars a year, ten dollars a month. They cannot afford to set aside land and grazing for a beautiful but useless animal to live on. If the wild game is to survive in Africa it has to pay for its supper. There are no free rides in this harsh land.”

“One would think that living so close to nature they would have an instinctive feeling for it,” Daniel persisted.

“Yes, of course, but it is totally pragmatic. For millennia primitive man, living with nature, has treated it as a renewable resource. As the Eskimo lived on the caribou and seal and whale, or the American Indian on buffalo herds, they understood instinctively the type of management that we have never achieved. They were in balance with nature, until the white man came with explosive harpoon and Sharpe’s rifle, or, here in Africa, came with his elite game department and game laws that made it a crime for the black tribesman to hunt on his own land, that reserved the wildlife of Africa for a select few to stare at and exclaim over.”

“You are being a racist,” Daniel chided him gently. “The old colonial system preserved the wild game.”

“So how did it survive for a million years before the white man arrived in Africa? No, the colonial system of game management was protectionist, not conservationist.”

“Aren’t they the same thing, protection and conservation?”

“They are diametrically opposed. The protectionist denies man’s right to exploit and harvest nature’s bounty. He would deny that man has a right to kill a living animal, even if that threatens the survival of the species as a whole. If he were here today, the protectionist would prohibit us from this cull, and he would not want to look to the final consequence of that prohibition which, as we have seen, would be the eventual extinction of the entire elephant population and the destruction of this forest. However, the most damaging mistake that the old colonial protectionists made was to alienate the black tribesman from the benefits of controlled conservation. They denied him his share of the spoils, and built up in him a resentment towards the wild game. They broke down his natural instinct for management of his resources. They took away his control of nature and placed him in competition with the animals. The end result is that the average black peasant is hostile towards the game.

“The elephants raid his gardens and destroy the trees he uses for firewood. The buffalo and antelope eat the grass on which he feeds his cattle. The crocodile ate his grandmother, and the lion killed his father… Of course, he has come to resent the game herds.”

“The solution, Warden? Is there one?”

“Since independence from the colonial system we have been trying to change the attitude of our people,” Johnny told him. “At first they demanded that they be allowed to enter the National Parks that the white man had proclaimed. They wanted to be allowed to go in and cut the trees and feed their cattle and build their villages. However, we have had a great deal of success in educating them to the value of tourism, safari-hunting and controlled culling. For the first time they they are allowed to participate in the profits, and there is a new understanding of conservation and sensible exploitation, especially amongst the younger generation.

“However, if the protectionist do-gooders of Europe and America were to force a ban on safari-hunting or the sale of ivory, it would set back all our efforts. It would probably be the death knell of the African elephant and eventually the end of all the game.”

“So in the end it is all a matter of economics?” Daniel asked.

“Like everything else in this world, it is a matter of money,” Johnny agreed. “If you give us enough money we will stop the poachers. If you make it worth their while, we will keep the peasants and their goats out of the Parks. However, the money must come from somewhere. The newly independent states of Africa with their exploding human populations cannot afford the First World luxury of locking away their natural assets. They must exploit them and conserve them. If you prevent us doing that, then you will be guilty of contributing to the extinction of African wildlife.” Johnny nodded grimly. “Yes, it’s a matter of economics. If the game can pay, then the game can stay.”

It was perfect, Daniel signalled Jock to stop filming and clasped Johnny’s shoulder. “I could make a star out of you. You’re a natural.” He was only half joking. “How about it, Johnny? You could do a hell of a lot more for Africa on the screen than you can here.”

“You want me to live in hotels and jet aircraft instead of sleeping under the stars?” Johnny feigned indignation. “You want me to build up a nice little roll around my belly.” He prodded Daniel’s midriff. “And puff and pant when I run a hundred yards? No thank you, Danny. I’ll stay here where I can drink Zambezi water, not Coca-Cola, and eat buffalo steaks, not Big Macs.”

They loaded the last rolls of salted elephant-hide and immature calf tusks by the glare of truck headlights, and climbed back up the rough winding road to the rim of the escarpment and the headquarters of the Park at Chiwewe in the dark.

Johnny drove the green Landrover at the head of the slow convoy of refrigerator trucks and Daniel sat beside him on the front seat. They talked in the soft desultory manner of old friends in perfect accord.

“Suicide weather,” Daniel wiped his forehead on the sleeve of his bush shirt. Even though it was almost midnight, the heat and the humidity were enervating.

“Rains will break soon. Good thing you’re getting out of the valley,” Johnny grunted. “That road turns into a swamp in the rain and most of the rivers are impassable.”

The tourist camp at Chiwewe had been closed a week previously in anticipation of the onslaught of the rainy season.

“I don’t look forward to leaving,” Daniel admitted. “It’s been like old times again.”

“Old times,” Johnny nodded. “We had some fun. When are you coming back to Chiwewe?”

“I don’t know, Johnny, but my offer is genuine. Come with me. We made a good team once; we would be good again. I know it.”

“Thanks, Danny.” Johnny shook his head. “But I’ve got work to do here.”

“I won’t give up,” Daniel warned him, and Johnny grinned.

“I know. You never do.”

Chapter 3

In the morning, when Daniel climbed the small kopje behind the headquarters camp to watch the sunrise, the sky was filled with dark and mountainous cloud and the heat was still oppressive.

Daniel’s mood matched that sombre dawn, for although he had captured some wonderful material during his stay, he had also rediscovered his friendship and affection for Johnny Nzou. The knowledge that it might be many years before they met again saddened him.

Johnny had invited him to breakfast on this, his last day. He was waiting for Daniel on the wide mosquito-screened verandah of the thatched bungalow that had once been Daniel’s own home.

Daniel paused below the verandah and glanced around the garden. It was still the way that Vicky had planned it and originally laid it out.

Vicky had been the twenty-year-old bride that Daniel had brought to Chiwewe all those years ago a slim cheerful lass with long blonde hair and smiling green eyes, only a few years younger than Daniel at the time. She had died in the front bedroom overlooking the garden that she had cherished. An ordinary bout of malaria had turned without warning to the pernicious cerebral strain. It had been all over very swiftly, even before the flying doctor could reach the Park.

The eerie sequel to her death was that the elephants, who had never entered the fenced garden before, despite its laden citrus trees and rich vegetable plot, came that very night. They came at the exact hour of Vicky’s death and completely laid waste the garden. They even ripped out the ornamental shrubs and rose bushes. Elephant seem to have a psychic sensitivity to death. It was almost as if they had sensed her passing, and Daniel’s grief.

Daniel had never married again and had left Chiwewe not long after.

The memories of Vicky were too painful to allow him to remain. Now Johnny Nzou lived in the bungalow and his pretty Matabele wife Mavis tended Vicky’s garden. If Daniel had been able to choose, he would have had it no other way.

This morning Mavis had prepared a traditional Matabele breakfast of maize porridge and sour milk, thickened in a calabash gourd, the beloved amasi of the Nguni pastoral tribes.

Afterwards, Johnny and Daniel walked down towards the ivory godown together. Halfway down the hill Daniel checked and shaded his eyes as he stared towards the visitors’ camp. This was the game-fenced area on the river bank where the thatched cottages with circular walls stood under the wild fig trees. These structures, peculiar to southern Africa, were known as rondavels.

“I thought you told me that the Park was closed to visitors,” Daniel said. “One of the rondavels is still occupied, and there’s a car parked outside it.”

“That’s a special guest, a diplomat, the Ambassador of the Taiwanese Republic of China to Harare,” Johnny explained. “He is extremely interested in wildlife, particularly elephants, and has contributed a great deal to conservation in this country. We allow him special privileges. He wanted to be here without other tourists, so I kept the camp open for him–” Johnny broke off, then exclaimed, “There he is now!”

Three men stood in a group at the foot of the hill. It was still too far to make out their features. As they started towards them, Daniel asked, “What happened to the two white rangers who helped with the cull yesterday?”

“They were on loan from Wankie National Park. They left to go home early this morning.”

Closer to the group of three men Daniel made out the Taiwanese ambassador. He was younger than he would have expected a man of such rank to be. Although it was often difficult for a Westerner to judge the age of an oriental, Daniel put him at a little over forty. He was tall and lean with straight black hair that was oiled and combed back from a high intelligent forehead. He was good-looking with a clear, almost waxen, complexion.

There was something about his, features that suggested that his ancestry was not pure Chinese, but mixed with European blood. Though his eyes were liquid jet-black in colour, their shape was rounded and his upper eyelids lacked the characteristic fold of skin at the inner corner.

“Good morning, Your Excellency,” Johnny greeted him with obvious respect. “Warm enough for you?”

“Good morning, Warden.” The ambassador left the two black rangers and came to meet them. “I prefer it to the cold.” He was wearing an open-necked short-sleeved blue shirt and slacks, and indeed looked cool and elegant.

“May I present Doctor Daniel Armstrong?” Johnny asked. “Daniel, His Excellency the Ambassador of Taiwan, Ning Cheng Gong.”

“No introduction is necessary, Doctor Armstrong is a famous man.” Cheng smiled charmingly as he took Daniel’s hand. “I have read your books and watched your television programmes with the greatest of interest and pleasure.” His English was excellent, as though he were born to the language, and Daniel warmed to him.

“Johnny tells me that you are very concerned about the African ecology, and that you have made a great contribution to conservation in this country.”

Cheng made a deprecatory gesture. “I only wish I could do more.” But he was staring at Daniel thoughtfully.

“Forgive me, Doctor Armstrong, but I did not expect to find other visitors at Chiwewe at this time of year.” I was assured that the Park was closed.

Although his tone was friendly, Daniel sensed that the question was not an idle one. “Don’t worry, Your Excellency. My camera man and I are leaving this afternoon. You will soon have the whole of Chiwewe to yourself,” Daniel assured him.

“Oh, please don’t misunderstand me. I am not so selfish as to wish you gone. In fact, I am sorry to hear you are leaving so soon. I am sure we would have had a great deal to discuss.”

Despite the denial, Daniel sensed that Cheng was relieved that he was leaving. His expression was still warm and his manner friendly, but Daniel was becoming aware of depths and layers below the urbane exterior.

The ambassador fell in between them, as they walked down to the ivory warehouse, and chatted in a relaxed manner, and then stood aside to watch as the rangers and a team of porters began to unload the newly culled ivory from the truck parked at the door to the warehouse. By this time Jock was there with his Sony camera filming the work from every angle.

As each tusk was brought out, still crusted with freshly congealed blood, it was weighed on the old-fashioned platform scale that stood at the entrance to the warehouse. Johnny Nzou sat at a rickety deal table and recorded the weight of each tusk in a thick leather-bound ledger. He then allocated a registration number to it and one of his rangers stamped that number into the ivory with a set of steel dies.

Registered and stamped, the tusk was now legal ivory and could be auctioned and exported from the country.

Cheng watched the procedure with a lively interest. One pair of tusks, although not heavy or massive, was of particular beauty. They were delicately proportioned shafts with fine grain and elegant curves, an identical and perfectly matched pair.

Cheng stepped forward and squatted beside them as they lay on the scale.

He stroked them with a lover’s sensual touch. “Perfect,” he purred. “A natural work of art.” He broke off as he noticed Daniel watching him.

Daniel had been vaguely repelled by this display of cupidity, and it showed on his face.

Cheng stood up and explained smoothly. “I have always been fascinated by ivory. As you probably know, we Chinese consider it to be a highly propitious substance. Few Chinese households are without any ivory carving; it brings good luck to its owner.

“However, my family interest goes even deeper than common superstition. My father began his working life as an ivorycarver, and so great was his skill that by the time I was born he owned shops in Taipei and Bangkok, Tokyo and Hong Kong, all of them specialising in ivory artefacts. Some of my earliest memories are of the look and feel of ivory. As a boy, I worked as an apprentice ivory-carver in the store in Taipei, and I came to love and understand ivory as my father does. He has one of the most extensive and valuable collections–” he stopped himself. “Forgive me, please. I sometimes get carried away by my passion, but that is a particularly beautiful set of tusks. It is very rare to find a pair so perfectly matched. My father would be ecstatic over them.”

He watched longingly as the tusks were carried away and packed with the hundreds of others in the warehouse.

“Interesting character,” Daniel remarked, after the last tusk had been registered and locked away, and he and Johnny were making their way up the hill to the bungalow for lunch. “But how does the son of an ivory-carver get to be an ambassador?”

Johnny chuckled. “Wing Cheng Gong’s father may have come from a humble background, but he didn’t remain there. I understand he still has his ivory shops and his collection, but those are merely his hobbies now. He is reputed to be one of the richest men, if not the richest man. in Taiwan, and that, as you can imagine, is very rich indeed. From what I hear he has his fingers in all the juiciest pies around the Pacific rim as well as some in Africa. He has a large family of sons and Cheng is the youngest and, they say, the brightest. I like him, don’t you?”

“Yes, he seems pleasant enough, but there is just something a little odd. Did you notice his face as he fondled that tusk? It was–” Daniel searched for the word, “unnatural?”

“You writers!” Johnny shook his head ruefully. “If you can’t find something sensational, you make it up.” And they both laughed.

Chapter 4

Ning Cheng Gong stood with one of the black rangers at the foot of the hill and watched Daniel and Johnny disappear amongst the msasa trees. “I do not like the white man being here,” said Gomo. Under Johnny Nzou, he was Chiwewe’s senior ranger. “Perhaps we should wait until another time.”

“The white man leaves this afternoon,” Cheng told him coldly. “Besides which you have been well paid. Plans have been made that cannot be altered now. The others are already on their way and cannot be sent back.”

“You have only paid us half of what we agreed,” Gomo protested.

“The other half when your work is done, not before,” Cheng said softly, and Gomo’s eyes were like the eyes of a snake. “You know what you have to do,” Cheng went on.

Gama was silent for a moment. The foreigner had indeed paid him a thousand US dollars, the equivalent of six months’ salary, with the promise of another year’s salary to follow after the job was done.

“You will do it?” Cheng insisted.

“Yes,” Gomo agreed. “I will do it.”

Cheng nodded. “It will be tonight or tomorrow night, not later. Be ready, both of you.”

“We will be ready,” Gomo promised, and climbed into his Landrover, where the second black ranger waited, and they drove away.

Cheng walked back to his rondavel in the deserted visitors’ camp.

The cottage was identical to the other thirty which during the dry cool season usually housed a full complement of tourists. He fetched a cool drink from the refrigerator and sat on the screen porch to wait out the hottest hours of the noonday. He felt nervous and restless. Deep down he shared Gomo’s misgivings about the project. Although they had considered every possible eventuality and planned for each of them, there was always the unforeseeable, the unpredictable, such as the presence of Armstrong.

It was the first time he had attempted a coup of this magnitude. It was his own initiative. Of course, his father knew about and thoroughly approved of the other lesser shipments, but the risk was far greater this time, in proportion to the rewards. If he succeeded he would earn his father’s respect, and that was more important to him even than the material profits. He was the youngest son, and he had to strive that much harder to win his place in his father’s affections. For that reason alone he must not fail.

In the years that he had been at the embassy in Harare, he had consolidated his place in the illicit ivory and rhino-horn trade. It had begun with a deceptively casual remark at a dinner-party by a middle-ranking government official about the convenience of diplomatic privilege and access to the diplomatic courier service. With the business training that his father had given him, Cheng recognised the approach immediately for what it was, and made a non-committal but encouraging response.

A week of delicate negotiations followed and then Cheng was invited to play golf with another higher official. His driver parked the ambassadorial Mercedes in the car park at the rear of the Harare golf club and as instructed left it unattended while Cheng was out on the course. Cheng was officially a ten handicap golfer but could play well below that when he chose.

On this occasion he allowed his opponent to win three thousand US dollars and paid him in cash in front of witnesses in the club house.

When he returned to his official residence he ordered the driver to park the Mercedes in the garage and then dismissed him. In the boot he found six large rhino horns packed in layers of hessian cloth.

He sent these out in the next diplomatic pouch to Taipei and they were sold through his father’s shop in Hong Kong for sixty thousand US dollars. His father was delighted with the transaction and wrote Cheng a long letter of approbation and reminded his son of his deep interest in, and love of, ivory. Cheng let it be known discreetly that he was a connoisseur of ivory as well as of rhino horn, and he was offered at bargain prices various pieces of unregistered and unstamped ivory. It did not take long for the word to spread in the small closed world of the poachers that there was a new buyer in the field.

Within months he was approached by a Sikh businessman from Malawi who was ostensibly looking for Taiwanese investment in a fishing venture that he was promoting on Lake Malawi. Their first meeting went very well. Cheng found that Chetti Singh’s figures added up attractively, and passed them on to his father in Taipei. His father approved the estimates and agreed a joint venture with Chetti Singh. When the documents were signed at the embassy, Cheng invited him to dinner, and during the meal Chetti Singh remarked, “I understand that your illustrious father is loving very much the beautiful ivory. As a token of my utmost esteem I could be arranging for a regular supply. I am sure that you would be forwarding the goods to your father without too much scarlet tape. Most miserably the ivory will be unstamped, never mind.”

“I have a deep distaste for red tape,” Cheng assured him.

Within a short time it became obvious to Cheng that Chetti Singh was head of a network that operated in all those African countries that still had healthy populations of elephant and rhino. From Botswana and Angola, Zambia, Tanzania and Mozambique, he gathered in the white gold and the horn. He controlled all aspects of his organization down to the actual composition of the armed gangs who raided regularly into the National Parks in those countries.

At first Cheng was merely another customer of his, but once the fishing partnership on Lake Malawi began to flourish and they were netting hundreds of tons of tiny kapenta fish each week, drying them and exporting them to the east, their relationship began to change. It became more cordial and trusting.

Finally Chetti Singh offered Cheng and his father a proprietary stake in the ivory trade. Naturally he asked for a substantial investment to allow him to expand the scope and range of the partnership’s operations, and another larger payment for his share of goodwill in the enterprise.

In all, it amounted to almost a million dollars. Cheng, on his father’s behalf, was able by astute bargaining to reduce this initial fee by fifty percent.

Only once he was a full partner could Cheng appreciate the extent and range of the operation. In each of the countries which still harboured elephant herds, Chetti Singh had been able to put in place clandestine circles of accomplices in government. Many of his contacts went as high as ministerial level.

Within most of the major National Parks he had informers and officials on his payroll. Some were merely game scouts or rangers, but others were the actual chief wardens in charge of the Parks, those appointed as guardians and protectors of the herds.

The partnership was so lucrative that when Cheng’s original term of appointment as ambassador expired, his father arranged through friends high in the Taiwanese government for it to be extended for a further three-year term.

By this time Cheng’s father and brothers had become fully aware of the investment opportunities that Africa offered. Beginning with the small but profitable fishing venture and then the ivory partnership, the family had been attracted more and more to the dark continent.

Neither Cheng nor his father had any scruples about apartheid and began investing heavily in South Africa. They were well aware that world condemnation and the policy of economic sanctions had depressed the prices of land and other valuable assets in that country to a point where sensible businessman could not resist them.

“Honoured parent,” Cheng had told his father on one of his frequent returns to Taipei, “within ten years apartheid and white minority rule will have passed from the face of the land. Once that happens, prices in South Africa will rise to find their true levels.”

They purchased great ranches of tens of thousands of acres for the same price as a three-room flat in Taipei. They purchased factories and office blocks and shopping centres from American companies forced by their government to disinvest from South Africa. They paid five and ten cents for a dollar’s worth of value.

However, Cheng’s father, who had been among other things a steward of the Hong Kong race club, was too astute a gambler to place all his bets on a single horse. They invested in other African countries. An agreement had just been negotiated between South Africa and Cuba and Angola and America for the independence of Namibia. The family invested in property in Windhoek and fishing licences and mineral rights in that country. Through Chetti Singh, Cheng was introduced to ministers of government in Zambia and Zaire and Kenya and Tanzania who for financial considerations were inclined to look favourably on Taiwanese investment in their countries, at prices which Cheng’s father found acceptable.

Nevertheless, despite all these other major investments, Cheng’s father, for sentimental reasons, was still drawn to the original ivory venture which had first provoked his interest in the dark continent.

At their last meeting he had remarked to Cheng, as his son knelt in front of him to ask his blessing, “My son, it would please me greatly if, once you return to Africa, you were able to find a large quantity of registered and stamped ivory.”

“Illustrious father, the only sources of legal ivory are the government auction–” Cheng broke off as he saw his father’s expression of scorn.

“Ivory purchased at government auctions leaves very little margin of profit,” the old man hissed. “I had expected you to show better sense than that, my son.”

His father’s censure rankled deeply, and Cheng spoke to Chetti Singh at the very next opportunity. Chetti Singh stroked his rolled beard thoughtfully. He was a handsome man and the immaculate white turban added to his stature. “I am now thinking of but one single solitary source of registered ivory,” he said. “And that is being the government warehouse.”

“You are suggesting that the ivory might be taken from the warehouse before the auction?”

“Perhaps…” Chetti Singh shrugged, “but it would be calling for great and meticulous laying of plans. Let me run my mind over and around this vexing problem.”

Three weeks later they met again at Chetti Singh’s office in Lilongwe. “I have occupied my mind greatly, and a solution has occurred to me,” the Sikh told him.

“How much will it cost?” Cheng’s first question was instinctive.

“Kilo for kilo, no more than the acquisition of unregistered ivory, but as there will be only opportunity to procure a single and solitary shipment we will be wise to be making it as large as possible. The contents of an entire warehouse, never mind! How would your father be struck by that?”

Cheng knew his father would be delighted. Registered ivory had three or four times the value of illicit ivory in the international marketplace.

“Let us consider which country will provide us with this merchandise,” Chetti Singh suggested, but it was obvious that he had already decided.

“Not Zaire or South Africa. Those are two countries where I do not have an effective Organization. Zambia and Tanzania and Kenya have very little ivory remaining. We are left with Botswana, where there is no large-scale culling, or finally Zimbabwe.”

“Good,” Cheng nodded with satisfaction.

“The ivory is accumulated in the game department ware houses at Wankie and Harare and Chiwewe until is being undertaken the bi-annual auction. We would acquire the merchandise from one of those centres.”

“Which one?”

“The warehouse in Harare is too well guarded.” Chetti Singh held up three fingers of his one hand and, having discarded Harare, he folded one down, leaving two fingers raised. “Wankie is the largest National Park. However, it is far from the Zambian border.” He folded down another finger. “Which leaves Chiwewe. I have trustworthy agents on the Park’s staff there. They tell me that the warehouse is almost full of registered ivory at the present time, and the Park headquarters are less than thirty miles from the Zambezi River and the Zambian border. One of my teams could cross the river and be there in a day’s march, never mind!”

“You intend to rob the warehouse?” Cheng leaned forward over his desk.

“Without the shade or fraction of a doubt.” Chetti Singh lowered his raised finger and looked surprised. “Was that not also your intention all along?”

“Perhaps,” Cheng replied carefully. “But is it feasible?”

“Chiwewe is in a remote and isolated area of the country, but it lies on the river, which is an international boundary. I would send in a raiding party of twenty men armed absolutely with automatic weapons and led by one of my best and most reliable hunters. In darkness they cross the river from Zambia in canoes and in a day’s hard marching they reach the Park’s headquarters and fall upon it. They dispose of all witnesses…” Cheng coughed nervously and Chetti Singh paused and looked at him questioningly. “These would not amount to more than four or five persons. The permanent rangers are in my pay. The visitors’ camp will be closed against the rainy season and the bulk of the staff will have returned to their villages on leave. The only remaining personnel will be the Park warden and two or three other skeleton staff.”

“Still, is there no way that we can avoid disposing of them?” It was not a matter of scruples that made Cheng hesitate. It was prudent not to take unnecessary risks, if they could be avoided.

“If you can be suggesting alternatives, I would be pleased to cast my mind over them,” Chetti Singh told him, and after a moment’s thought Cheng shook his head.

“No, not at the moment, but please go on. Let me hear the rest of your plan.”

“Very well. My men dispose of all witnesses and burn down the ivory warehouse and then immediately retreat across the river.” The Sikh stopped speaking, but he watched Cheng s face with ill-concealed glee, anticipating his next question.

It annoyed Cheng that he must ask it, for it sounded naive even to his own ears. “But what about the ivory?”

Chetti Singh smirked mysteriously, forcing him to ask again. “Will your poachers take the ivory? You say they will be a small party. Surely they will not be able to carry that much, will they?”

“That is the absolute beauty of my plan. The raid is a dead herring for the Zimbabwe police.” And this time Cheng smiled at the solecism. “We want them to believe that the poachers have taken the ivory. Then they will not think to look for it inside their own country, will they?”

Now, as he sat on his verandah in the midday heat, Cheng nodded grudgingly. Chetti Singh’s plan was ingenious, except, of course, that it did not take into account the presence of Armstrong and his television crew. In fairness, however, none of them could have foreseen that.

Once again he considered delaying or cancelling the operation entirely, but almost immediately rejected the idea. By this time, Chetti Singh’s men would be across the river and marching on the camp. There was no way he could reach them, and warn them to turn back. They were far past the point of no return. If Armstrong and his camera man were still here when Chetti Singh’s men arrived, then they would have to be disposed of along with the warden and his family and staff.

Cheng’s train of thought was interrupted by the ringing of the telephone at the far end of the verandah. The VIP cottage was the only one in the visitors camp equipped with a telephone. He jumped up and went to it quickly. He had been expecting the call. It had been prearranged and was part of Chetti Singh’s plan.

“Ambassador Ning,” he said, and Johnny Nzou answered.

“Sorry to trouble you, Your Excellency, but there is a call from your embassy in Harare. A gentleman calling himself Mr. Huang. He says he is your charge. Will you take the call?”

“Thank you, Warden. I will speak to Mr. Huang.” He knew that it was a party line that crossed a hundred and fifty miles of wild bush from the district telephone exchange at the little village of Karoi, and the voice of his charge relayed from Harare was a whisper that seemed to come from some far corner of the galaxy. The message was the one he had expected, and afterwards Cheng cranked the handle of the antiquated telephone and Johnny Nzou came on the line again. “Warden, my presence is required in Harare urgently. It is most unfortunate; I was looking forward to a few more days of relaxation.”

“I also regret that you are forced to leave. My wife and I would have liked you to have dinner with us.”

“Perhaps some other time.”

“The refrigerator trucks are taking the elephant meat up to Karoi this evening. It might be best if you travelled in convoy with them. Your Mercedes does not have four-wheel drive, and it looks as though it might rain at any time.”

That also was part of Chetti Singh’s plan. The raid had been timed to coincide with the elephant cull and the departure of the refrigerator trucks. However, Cheng hesitated deliberately before he asked, “When are the trucks leaving?”

“One of them has engine trouble.” Gomo the ranger had sabotaged the alternator. The object was to delay the departure of the convoy until the arrival of the raiding party. “However, the driver tells me that they should be ready to leave around six o’clock this evening.” Johnny Nzou’s voice changed as a thought struck him. “Of course, Doctor Armstrong is leaving almost immediately, you could drive in convoy with him.”

“No. No!” Cheng cut in quickly. “I cannot leave that soon. I will wait for the trucks.”

“As you wish.” Johnny sounded puzzled. “However, I cannot guarantee when the convoy will be ready to leave and I am sure Doctor Armstrong would agree to delay an hour or so.”

“No,” Cheng told him firmly. “I will not inconvenience or delay Doctor Armstrong. I will travel with your convoy Thank you, Warden.” To end the conversation and forestall any further discussion, he hung up the receiver. He frowned. Armstrong’s presence was becoming increasingly troublesome. The sooner he disappeared the happier Cheng would be.

However, it was another twenty minutes before he heard the sound of a diesel engine coming from the direction of the warden’s bungalow. He stood up and went to the screen door of the verandah and watched the Toyota Landcruiser coming down the hill. On the door of the truck was painted the logo of Armstrong Productions, a disembodied -arm with the wrist encircled by a spiked bracelet, and the elbow bent and tensed in a body-builder’s stylised pose to raise a heroic bulge of biceps.

Doctor Armstrong was at the driver’s wheel and his camera man was in the front seat beside him. They were leaving at last. Cheng nodded with satisfaction and glanced at his wristwatch. It was a few minutes after one o’clock. They would have at least four hours to get well clear before the attack on the headquarters was launched.

Daniel Armstrong saw him and braked the truck. He rolled down the side window and smiled across at Cheng. “Johnny tells me you are also leaving today, Your Excellency,” he called. “Are you sure that we can’t be of assistance?”

“Not at all, Doctor.” Cheng smiled politely. “It is all arranged. Please do not worry about me.” Armstrong made him feel uneasy. He was a big man with thick curly hair that gave him a tousled outdoors appearance. His gaze was direct and his smile was lazy. Cheng thought that to the eyes of a Westerner he might appear extremely attractive, especially if the Westerner were female, but to Cheng’s Chinese eye, his nose was grotesquely large and his wide mouth had a mobile childlike expression. He might have dismissed him as offering no serious threat, except for the eyes. Those eyes made Cheng uneasy. They were alert and penetrating.

Armstrong stared at him for a full five seconds before be smiled again and thrust his hand out of the Toyota’s rolled down window. “Well then, I’ll say cheerio, Your Excellency. Let’s hope we get an opportunity for that chat one day soon.” He engaged the gearshift, raised his right hand in salutation and drove down towards the main gates of the camp.

Cheng watched the truck out of sight and then turned and stared down along the crests of the hills. They were jagged and uneven as a crocodile’s teeth. Twenty miles or so to the west, one of the dark Cumulus thunder-heads was abruptly shot through by vivid lightning. Even as he watched, rain began to fall from the drooping belly of the cloud mass, first in pale blue streamers and then in a sullen deluge, as impenetrable as a sheet of lead, that obscured the far hills.

Chetti Singh could not have timed it better. Soon the valley and its escarpment would be a morass. A police team sent to investigate any suspicious occurrence at Chiwewe would not only find the road impassable, but if they did succeed in reaching the Park headquarters, the torrential rain would have scoured the hills and washed away all clues and signs of the raiding party’s progress. Just let them arrive soon, he hoped fervently. Make it today and not tomorrow. He checked his wristwatch. It was not quite two o’clock. Sunset at seven-thirty, although with the dense cloud cover it would probably be dark before that. Let it be today, he reiterated.

He fetched his binoculars and his battered copy of Roberts Birds of South Africa from the table on the verandah of the cottage. He was at pains to demonstrate to the warden that he was an ardent naturalist. That was his excuse for being here.

He climbed into his Mercedes and drove down to the warden’s office behind the ivory godown. Johnny Nzou was at his desk. Like any other civil service employee, half the warden’s work was made up of filling in forms and requisitions and registers and reports. Johnny looked up from his piles of paper as Cheng stood in the doorway. “I thought that while I was waiting for the refrigerator truck to be repaired, I might as well go down to the water-hole at FigTree Pan,” he explained, and Johnny smiled sympathetically as he noticed the binoculars and field guide. Both were the paraphernalia of the typical bird-watcher, and he always felt welldisposed towards anybody who shared his love of nature.

“I’ll send one of my rangers to call you when the convoy is ready to leave, but I can’t promise it will be this evening,” Johnny told him. “They tell me that the alternator on one truck is burned out. Spare parts are a terrible problem in this country; there just isn’t sufficient foreign exchange to pay for everything we need.”

Cheng drove down to the man-made water-hole. Less than a mile from Chiwewe headquarters a borehole had been sunk at the head of a small vlei. From it a windmill pumped a trickle of water into a muddy pond to attract birds and animals to the proximity of the camp.

As Cheng parked the Mercedes in the observation area overlooking the pool, a small herd of kudu that had been drinking from it took fright and scattered into the surrounding bush. They were large beige-coloured antelope, striped with pale chalk lines across their backs, with long legs and necks, and huge trumpet-shaped ears. Only the males carried wide corkscrewed horns.

Cheng was too agitated to use his binoculars, although clouds of birds descended to drink at the water-hole. The fire finches burned like tiny scarlet flames, and the starlings were a shining iridescent green that reflected the sunlight. Cheng was a talented artist not only with ivory carver’s knives but also with water colours. One of his favourite subjects had always been wild birds which he depicted in traditional romantic Chinese style.

Today he could not concentrate on them as they settled at the water.

Instead he fitted a cigarette into his ivory holder and puffed at it restlessly. This was the spot he had chosen as the rendezvous with the leader of the poachers, and Cheng scanned the encroaching bush anxiously as he fidgeted and smoked.

Still, the first indication he had that someone was there was the sound of a voice through the open window of the Mercedes beside him.

Cheng started uncontrollably and turned quickly to the man who stood beside the motor car. He had a scar that ran down from the corner of his left eye into the line of his top lip. The lip was puckered upwards on that side giving him an uneven sardonic smile. Chetti Singh had warned Cheng about the scar. It was an infallible point of recognition. “Sali?” Cheng’s voice was breathless. The poacher had startled him. “You are Sali?”

“Yes,” the man agreed, smiling with only half his twisted mouth. “I am Sali.”

His skin was almost purple black, the scar a livid pink upon it. He was short in stature but with broad shoulders and muscular limbs. He wore a tattered shirt and shorts of faded khaki drill that were crusted and stained with sweat and filth.

He had obviously travelled hard, for his bare legs were floured with dust to the knee. In the heat he stank of stale sweat, a goary and rancid odour that made Cheng draw away fastidiously. The gesture was not wasted on the poacher and his smile broadened into a genuine grin.

“Where are your men?” Cheng demanded, and Sali prodded his thumb towards the dense encircling bush. “You are armed?” he insisted, and Sali’s grin became insolent. He did not deign to reply to such a famous question. Cheng realised that relief and nervousness had made him garrulous.

He determined to contain himself, but the next question slipped out before he could prevent it. “You know what has to be done?” With a fingertip Sali rubbed the glossy streak of scar tissue down his cheek and nodded. “You are to leave no witnesses.” Cheng saw from his eyes that the poacher had not understood, so he repeated, “You must kill them all. When the police come there must be no one for them to talk to.”

Sali inclined his head in agreement. Chetti Singh had explained to him in detail. The orders had been agreeable. Sali had a bitter feud against the Zimbabwe Parks Department. Only a year previously Sali’s two younger brothers had crossed the Zambezi with a small group of men to hunt rhinoceros. They had run into one of the Parks anti-poaching units who were all exguerrilla fighters and armed, like them, with AK 47 assault rifles.

In the fierce fire-fight that ensued, one of his brothers had been killed and the other shot through the spine and crippled for life. Despite his wound they had brought him to trial in Harare and he had been sentenced to seven years imprisonment. Thus Sali the poacher felt no great affection for the Parks rangers and it showed in his expression as he agreed. “We will leave nobody.”

“Except the two rangers, Cheng Qua and David. You know them.”

“I know them.” Sali had worked with them before.

“They will be at the workshops with the two big trucks. Make sure all your men understand that they are not to touch them or damage the trucks in any way.”

“I will tell them.”

“The warden will be in his office. His wife and their three children are at the bungalow on the hill. There are four camp servants and their families in the domestic compound. Make sure it is surrounded before you open fire. Nobody must get away.”

“You chatter like a monkey in a wild plum tree,” Sali told him scornfully. “I know all these things. Chetti Singh has told me.”

“Then go and do as you have been told,” Cheng ordered sharply, and Sali leaned in through the Mercedes window forcing the Chinaman to hold his breath and draw away from him.

Soli rubbed his thumb and forefinger together in the universal sign for money. Cheng reached across and opened the cubbyhole in the Mercedes dashboard. The ten-dollar bills were in bundles of a hundred, each secured by a rubber band. He counted them into Sali’s open hand, three bundles of a thousand dollars each. It would work out to approximately five dollars a kilo for the vast store of ivory in the camp warehouse, ivory that would be worth a thousand dollars a kilo in Taipei.

On the other hand, to Sali the sheaves of green bills represented an enormous fortune. He had never in his entire life held that amount of money in his hand at one time.

His usual reward for poaching a good elephant, for risking his life against the anti-poaching teams by penetrating deep into forbidden territory, for risking his life again by firing at the great beasts with the light bullets of the AK 47, for cutting out the tusks and carrying their galling weight back over heavy broken ground, his usual reward for all that risk and labour amounted to around thirty dollars an elephant killed, say, a dollar a kilo.

The treasury bills that Cheng placed in his hands represented the reward he could expect from five years of hard and dangerous labour. So, compared to that, what was the killing of a few Parks officials and their families? It entailed very little additional effort and minimal risk.

For three thousand dollars, it would be a pleasure indeed. Both men were mightily pleased with their bargain.

“I will wait here until I hear the guns,” Cheng told him delicately, and Sali smiled so broadly that he showed all his large brilliant white teeth right to the wisdoms in the back of his jaw.

“You will not have to wait long,” he promised, and then as silently as he had appeared, he vanished back into the bush.

Chapter 5

Daniel Armstrong drove at a sedate pace. The road was fairly good by central African standards; it was graded regularly, for few of the visitors to the park drove four-wheel-drive vehicles. Nevertheless, Daniel was in no hurry and did not push it. His Toyota was equipped with a full range of camping equipment. He never stayed at motels or other formal lodgings if he could avoid them. Not only were they few and far between in this country, but in most cases the food and comforts they offered were much below the standard that Daniel could provide in his own temporary camps.

This evening he would keep going until a little before sunset and then find some inviting stand of forest or pleasant stream at which to pull well off the road and break out the tucker box and Chivas bottle.

He doubted that they would get as far as Mana Pools, and certainly they would not reach the main metalled highway that ran from the Chirundu bridge on the Zambezi, south to Karoi and Harare.

Jock was pleasant company. It was one of the reasons that Daniel had hired him. They had worked together on and off over the past five years.

Jock was a freelance cameraman and Daniel called him up on contract whenever he had a new project signed up and financed. They had covered huge tracts of Africa together, from the forbidding beaches of the Skeleton Coast in Namibia to the drought and famine-ravaged mountains and ambas of Ethiopia and the depths of the Sahara. Although they had not succeeded in forging a deep or committed friendship, they had spent weeks together in the remote wilderness and there had seldom been any friction between them.

They chatted amicably as Daniel took the heavily laden truck down the twisting escarpment road. Whenever a bird or animal or unusual tree caught their attention Daniel parked the truck and made notes and observations while Jock filmed.

Before they had covered twenty miles they came to a section of the road over which a large herd of elephant had fed during the previous night.

They had pulled down branches and pushed over many of the large mopane trees. Some of these had fallen across the roadway, blocking it entirely. From those trees still standing they had stripped the bark, leaving the trunks naked white and weeping with sap. “Naughty beggars,” Daniel grinned as be contemplated the destruction. “They seem to delight in blocking the roads.” Yet it was, clear demonstration, if any were needed, that regular culling of the herds was absolutely necessary. The mopane forest could survive only a limited amount of this destructive feeding.

They were able to pull off the road and detour around many of the fallen trees, although once or twice they were forced to hitch up a tree-trunk to the Toyota’s tow chain and bodily haul it aside before they could pass. Thus it was after four o’clock before they reached the valley bottom and turned eastwards through the mopane forest towards the Maria Pools turn-off, near which they had filmed the elephant cull.

At this stage both of them were engrossed in a discussion of how best Daniel could edit the huge volume of film that they now had on tape.

Daniel was experiencing the heightened anticipation he always felt at this stage of a production. It was all in the can. Now he could return to London where, in a hired editing room at Castle Film Studios, he would spend long weeks and months sequestered in a dark room absorbed in the exacting but infinitely rewarding labour of cutting each scene into the next and composing the commentary to support it.

Even though the forefront of his mind was focused on what Jock was saying, he was fully aware of his surroundings. Nevertheless he almost missed it. He drove over it and went on for almost two hundred yards before it fully registered that he had passed something unusual. Perhaps it was a relic of his experiences during the bush war when any extraneous mark on the roadway could give warning of a land mine and violent death buried in the tracks. In those days he would have been much quicker to register and react, but the intervening years had blunted his reflexes.

He braked the truck and Jock broke off what he was saying and glanced at him quizzically. “What is it?”

“Don’t know.” Daniel swivelled in the seat as he reversed the Landcruiser back down the track. “Probably nothing,” he murmured, but there was a tiny niggling doubt in the back of his mind.

He stopped and pulled on the handbrake and climbed down out of the cab.

“I can’t see anything.” Jock hung out of the window on the far side.

“That’s just it,” Daniel agreed. “There is a blank spot here.”

He pointed down the dusty roadway whose surface was dimpled and pocked by the marvelous graffiti of the bush. The tiny v-shaped spurs of francolin and other birds, the serpentine tracks of insects and lizards, the larger hoof-prints of various species of antelope and hare, mongoose and jackal were woven into an intricate tapestry of sign except at one point in the roadway where the soft surface was smooth and unblemished. Daniel squatted beside it and studied it for a moment. “Somebody has swept signs,” he said.

“So what’s so bloody extraordinary about that?” Jock climbed down out of the truck and came to join him.

“Nothing, perhaps.” He stood up. “Or everything. Depends on how you look at it.”

“Shoot?” Jock invited him.

“Only human beings cover their tracks, and only when they’re up to no good. Besides that, there aren’t supposed to be people wandering around on foot in the middle of a National Park.”

Daniel skirted the area of soft earth that had been carefully swept with a leafy branch and stepped off the track into the stand of tussocked grass on the verge. Immediately he saw other signs of anti-tracking. The grass clumps had been crushed and flattened as a party of men on foot had used them as stepping stones. It seemed to be a large party and Daniel felt the hair on his forearms and at the back of his neck prickle and lift.

Contact! he thought. It was like the old days with the Scouts when they first picked up the sign of a group of guerrilla terrorists. He experienced that same breathless feeling of excitement and the same stone of fear heavy in his bowels.

It took an effort to thrust those feelings aside. Those dangerous days were long past. Still he followed the sign. Although the chase had taken some elementary precautions, they were perfunctory. A cadre of Zanu in the war days would have been more professional. Within fifty yards of the road Daniel found the first clear print of a shod human foot, and a few yards further on the band had joined a narrow game track and formed in Indian file, abandoning all further attempts at anti-tracking. They had struck out in the direction of the escarpment and Chiwewe base camp with determined stride.

Daniel was amazed to find how large the band was. He counted the tracks of between sixteen and twenty individuals in the group.

After following them another two or three hundred yards Daniel stopped and thought about it carefully. Considering the size of the group and the direction from which they had come, the most obvious assumption was that they were a band of Zambian poachers who had crossed the Zambezi River on a raid for ivory and rhino horn. That would also explain the precautions they had taken to cover their tracks.

What he should do now was to warn Johnny Nzou so that he could get an anti-poaching unit in as fast as possible for a follow-up action. Daniel pondered the best way to do this. There was a telephone in the ranger’s office at Mana Pools only an hour’s drive ahead, or Daniel could turn back to Chiwewe headquarters and take the warning in person.

The decision was made for him as he made out the line of telephone poles in the forest not far ahead. These were cut from native timber and steeped in black creosote to discourage the attack of termites.

Between the poles the draped copper telephone wires gleamed in the late sunlight, except between two of the poles directly ahead.

Daniel hurried forward and then stopped abruptly.

The telephone wires had been cut and dangled from the white ceramic insulators at the top of the nearest pole. Daniel reached out for the end of one wire, and peered at it. There was no question about it. It had been deliberately cut. The shear marks made by the cutting edge of a pair of pliers were evident in the malleable red metal of the cable.

There were the milling tracks of many men at the base of the pole.

Why the hell would a poacher want to cut the telephone lines? Daniel wondered aloud, and his sense of unease turned to alarm. This begins to look really ugly. “I have to warn Johnny. He has to get on to these gentlemen damned quickly.”

Only one way to warn him now. At a run he started back to where he had left the Landcruiser.

“What the hell is going on?” Jock wanted to know as he jumped up into the cab and started the motor.

“I don’t know, but I don’t like it, whatever it is,” Daniel told him as he reversed off the road and then swung back on to it, headed in the opposite direction.

Daniel drove fast now, ripping up a long bank of dust behind the Landcruiser, slowing only for the fords through the steep dry water-courses and then accelerating away again. As he drove, it occurred to him that the gang could reach the headquarters camp by cutting across the loop that the road made down the pass of the escarpment. It would be a steep climb up on to the plateau, but on foot they could cut almost thirty miles off the longer route that Daniel was forced to follow. He estimated that the telephone lines had been cut about five or six hours earlier. He arrived at that estimate by a process of fieldcraft deduction which included a study of the erosion of the spoor and the recovery time of trodden-down grass and vegetation.

He could not think of any reason why a gang of poachers should want to visit Chiwewe headquarters. On the contrary, he would expect them to give it the widest possible berth. However, their tracks were headed resolutely in that direction, and they had cut the telephone wires. Their conduct was brazen and aggressive. If Chiwewe was indeed their destination then they could be there already. He glanced at his wristwatch.

Yes, they could have climbed the escarpment and, by hard marching, have reached the headquarters camp an hour or so ago. But why? There were no tourists. In Kenya and other countries further north the poachers, having depleted the elephant herds, had taken to attacking and robbing foreign tourists.

Perhaps this gang had taken a tip from their northern counterparts. But there are no tourists at Chiwewe. “There’s nothing of value–” he broke off as the fallacy of that assumption occurred to him. “Shit!” he whispered. “The ivory.” Suddenly dread chilled the sweat on his cheeks. “Johnny,” he whispered. “And Mavis and the kids.”

The Landcruiser was flying down the track now and he slid her into the first hairpin bend that led on to the slope of the escarpment. As he came through the corner at speed a huge white vehicle filled the road directly ahead of him. Even as Daniel hit the brakes and swung the Toyota hard over he realised that it was one of the refrigerator trucks.

He missed its front wing by a foot as he went up on to the verge and tore into a patch of scrub. He came to rest with the nose of the Toyota almost touching the trunk of a big mopane. Jock was thrown up against the dashboard by the deceleration.

Daniel jumped out of the Toyota and ran back to where the refrigerator truck had managed to pull up, blocking his tailgate.

He recognized Gomo, the senior ranger, at the wheel and called to him. “Sorry! My fault. Are you okay?”

Gomo looked shaken by the near collision but he nodded. “I’m okay, Doctor.”

“When did you leave Chiwewe?” Daniel demanded, and Gomo hesitated. For some reason the question seemed to disconcert him. “How long ago?” Daniel insisted.

“I don’t know for sure…”

At that moment there was the sound of other vehicles approaching down the escarpment road and Daniel glanced around to see the second truck come grinding through the next bend. It was running in low gear to combat the gravity of the steep gradient. Fifty yards behind the truck followed Ambassador Ning Cheng Gong’s blue Mercedes. The two vehicles slowed and then pulled up behind Gomo’s truck and Daniel strode towards the Mercedes.

As he approached, Ambassador Ning opened his door and stepped out into the dusty track. “Doctor Armstrong, what are you doing here?” He seemed agitated but his voice was soft, barely audible.

“When did you leave Chiwewe?” Daniel ignored the question. He was desperate to know that Johnny and Mavis were safe and the Ambassador’s reaction puzzled him.

Cheng’s agitation increased. “Why do you ask that?” he whispered. “Why are you returning? You were supposed to be on your way to Harare.”

“Look here, Your Excellency. All I want to know is that there has been no trouble at Chiwewe.”

“Trouble? What trouble? Why should there be trouble?” The ambassador reached into his pocket and brought out a handkerchief. “What are you suggesting, Doctor?”

“I’m not suggesting anything.” Daniel found it hard to conceal his exasperation. “I picked up the tracks of a large party of men crossing the road and heading in the direction of Chiwewe. I am worried that they may be a gang of armed poachers and I am on my way back to warn the warden.”

“There is no trouble,” Cheng assured him. Daniel noticed that a faint sheen of perspiration bloomed on his forehead. “Everything is well. I left there an hour ago. Warden Nzou is just fine. I spoke to him when we left and there was no sign of any trouble.” He wiped his face with the handkerchief.

“An hour ago? Daniel asked, and checked his stainless steel Rolex. He felt a vast sense of relief at Ambassador Ning’s reassurance. “So you left there at about five-thirty?”

“Yes, Yes.” Cheng’s tone sharpened with affront. “Are you questioning my word? Do you doubt what I am telling you?”

Daniel was surprised by his tone and the strength of his denials. “You misunderstand me, Your Excellency. Of course I don’t doubt what you say.” Cheng’s prestige as an ambassador was the main reason that Chetti Singh had insisted that he be present at Chiwewe.

Cheng’s natural inclination had been assiduously to avoid the scene of the raid, and even to fly to Taipei while it was in progress to give himself an infallible alibi. However, Chetti Singh had threatened to call off the operation unless Cheng was present to vouch for the fact that the raid had taken place after the convoy of trucks had left Chiwewe. That was the whole crux of the operation. As an accredited ambassador, Cheng’s word would carry enormous weight in the subsequent police investigation. The testimony of the two black rangers alone might not have been accepted implicitly. The police might even have decided to give them a little earnest questioning in a back cell at Chikurubi prison and Chetti Singh was not confident that they would have withstood that treatment.

No, the police must be made to believe that when Cheng had left Chiwewe with the convoy all had been well. That way they must assume that the raiders had carried the ivory away With them or that it had been destroyed in the fire that consumed the godown.

“I’m sorry if I gave you the impression that I was doubting your word Your Excellency,” Daniel placated him. “It was just that I am worried about Johnny, about the warden.”

“Well, I assure you that you have no reason to worry.” Cheng stuffed the handkerchief in his hip pocket and reached for the packet of cigarettes in the top pocket of his open-neck shirt. He tapped one out of the pack but his fingers were slightly unsteady and he let the cigarette drop into the dust between his feet.

Daniel’s eyes were instinctively drawn down as Cheng stooped quickly to retrieve the fallen cigarette. He wore white canvas training shoes and Daniel noticed that the side of one shoe and the cuff of his blue cotton slacks were smeared with a stain that looked at first glance like dried blood.

This puzzled Daniel for a moment, until he remembered that Cheng had been present that morning when the fresh tusks had been unloaded from the truck and stored in the godown. The explanation for the stains on his clothing was obvious; he must have picked them up from a puddle of congealed elephant blood in which the tusks had lain.

Cheng noticed the direction of his gaze and stepped back quickly, almost guiltily, into the driver’s seat of the Mercedes and slammed the door.

Unthinkingly Daniel noticed the unusual fish-scale pattern that the soles of his training shoes left in the fine dust of the roadway.

“Well, I am happy to have been able to set your fears at rest, Doctor.” Cheng smiled at him through the window of the Mercedes. He had regained his composure and his smile was once again suave and charming. “I’m glad to have saved you an unnecessary journey all the way back to Chiwewe. I am sure you will want to join the convoy and get out of the Park before the rains break.” He started the Mercedes. Why don’t you take the lead position ahead of the trucks?”

“Thank you, Your Excellency.” Daniel shook his head and stepped back. “You go on with the trucks. I won’t be joining you. I want to go back anyway. Somebody has to warn Johnny Nzou.”

Cheng’s smile evaporated. “You are giving yourself a great deal of unnecessary trouble, I assure you. I suggest you telephone him from Mana Pools or Karoi.”

“Didn’t I tell you? They cut the telephone wires.”

“Doctor Armstrong, that is preposterous. I am sure you, are mistaken. I think you are exaggerating the seriousness of this–”

“You think what you like,” said Daniel with finality. “I’m going back to Chiwewe.” He stepped back from the window of the Mercedes.

“Doctor Armstrong,” Cheng called after him, “look at those rain clouds. You could be trapped here for weeks.”

“I’ll take the chance,” Daniel told him blithely, but to himself he thought, just why is he being so insistent? Something is starting to smell distinctly rotten here.

He walked quickly back towards the Landcruiser. As he passed the trucks he noticed that neither of the rangers had dismounted from the driver’s cabs. They were both looking sullen and neither of them said anything as he passed close beside them.

“All right, Gomo,” he called, “pull your truck forward so I can get past you.” Without a word the ranger obeyed. Then the second truck rumbled past and finally the Ambassador’s Mercedes came level. Daniel lifted a hand in farewell.

Cheng barely glanced in his direction but gave him a perfunctory salute before following the trucks around the bend and heading on down towards the Mana Pools turn-off.

“What did the Chink have to say?” Jock asked as Daniel reversed back into the roadway and put the Toyota to the steep gradient.

“He says it was all quiet at Chiwewe when he left there an hour ago,” Daniel replied.

“That’s a fair do.” Jock reached into the cold box and fished out a can of beer. He offered it to Daniel who shook his head and concentrated on the road ahead. Jock opened the can for himself, took a long slug, and belched happily.

The light began to fade and a few heavy drops of rain splattered against the windscreen but Daniel did not slacken speed. it was completely dark before they reached the crest of the escarpment. The lightning blazed through the darkness, illuminating the forest with a crackling blue radiance and thunder rolled across the sky and cannonaded the ridges of granite which rose on each side of the road.

The rain began to fall like silver arrows in the headlights, each drop exploding in a white blur against the glass then streaming down it so copiously that the wipers could not clear the windshield fast enough.

Soon it was oppressively humid in the closed cab and the windscreen began to mist over. Daniel leaned forward to wipe it clear with his hand but when it smeared he gave up the effort and opened his side window a few inches to let in the fresh night air. Almost immediately he wrinkled his nose and sniffed.

Jock smelt it at almost the same moment. “Smoke,” he exclaimed. “How far are we from the camp?”

“Almost there,” Daniel replied. “Just over the next ridge.” The odour of smoke thinned out. Daniel thought that it might have come from the cooking-fires in the servants compound.

Ahead of them in the path of the headlights the gates of the main camp sprang out of the darkness. Each whitewashed column was crowned by the bleached skull of an elephant.

The sign read:

WELCOME TO CHIWEWE CAMP THE HOME OF THE ELEPHANTS

and then in smaller letters,

All arriving visitors must report immediately to the Warden’s Office.

The long driveway, lined on each side with dark Casia trees, was running ankle deep with storm water and the Toyota’s tires threw up a dense fog of spray as Daniel headed for the main block of buildings.

Suddenly the reek of smoke was thick and rank in their nostrils. It was the smell of burning thatch and wood with a foul underlay of something else, flesh or bone or ivory, perhaps, although Daniel had never smelt ivory burning.

“No lights,” Daniel grunted as he saw the loom of dark buildings in the rain ahead.

The camp generator was not running; the entire camp was in darkness. Then he became aware of a diffused ruby light that shimmered over the wet Casia trees and played gently on the walls of the buildings. One of the buildings is on fire.

Jock sat forward in his seat. “That’s where the smoke is coming from.”

The Toyota’s headlights cut a broad swathe through the gloom and then focused on a huge amorphous dark pile ahead of them. The misted windscreen obscured his vision and for some moments Daniel could not decide what it was. The strange glow seemed to emanate from it. Only as they drove closer and the lights lit it more clearly could he recognize it as the blackened, smouldering ruins of the ivory godown.

Horrified by what he saw, Daniel let the Toyota roll to a halt and he stepped down into the mud and stared at the ruin.

The heat of the flames had cracked the walls and most of them had collapsed. The fire must have been an inferno to have produced such heat. It still burned and smouldered despite the cascading rain. Oily streamers of smoke drifted across the headlights of the truck and occasionally the flames flared up fiercely until the heavy raindrops beat them down again.

Daniel’s sodden shirt clung to his body and the rain soaked his hair, smearing his thick curls over his forehead and into his eyes. He pushed them back and scrambled up on to the tumbled masonry of the wall. The collapsed roof was a thick mattress of black ash and charred beams that clogged the interior of the devastated godown. Despite the rain the smoke was still too dense and the heat too fierce to allow him to approach any closer and discover how much of the ivory still lay under that blackened pile. Daniel backed away and ran to the truck. He climbed into the cab and wiped the rain out of his eyes with the palm of his hand.

“You were spot on,” Jock said. “It looks as if the bastards have hit the camp.”

Daniel did not answer. He started the engine and gunned the Toyota up the hill to the warden’s cottage. “Get the flashlight out of the locker,” he snapped.

Obediently Jock knelt on the seat and groped in the heavy tool-locker that was bolted to the truck bed, and came out with the big Maglite.

Like the rest of the camp the warden’s cottage was in darkness. The rain streamed down from the eaves in a silver torrent so that the headlights could not illuminate the screened verandah beyond. Daniel snatched the torch from Jock’s hand and jumped out into the rain.

“Johnny!” he yelled. “Mavis!” He ran to the front door of the cottage.

The door had been smashed half off its hinges and hung open. He ran through on to the verandah. The furniture was shattered and thrown about in confusion. He played the torch-beam over the chaos. Johnny’s cherished collection of books had been tumbled from their cases along the wall and lay in heaps with their pages fanned and their spines broken.

“Johnny!” Daniel shouted. “Where are you?”

He ran through the open double doors into the sitting-room. Here the destruction was shocking. They had hurled all Mavis’s ornaments and vases at the stone fireplace and the broken shards glittered in the torch beam. They had ripped the stuffing out of the sofa and easy chairs. The room stank like an animal cage and he saw that they had defecated on the carpets and urinated down the walls.

Daniel stepped over the reeking piles of faeces and ran through into the passageway that led to the bedrooms. Johnny! he shouted in anger and despair, as he played the torch-beam down the length of the passage.

On the end wall was a decoration that had not been there before. It was a dark star-shaped splash of paint that covered most of the white-painted surface. For a moment Daniel stared at it uncomprehendingly and then he dropped the beam to the small huddled shape that lay at the foot of the wall.

Johnny and Mavis had named their only son after him, Daniel Robert Nzou.

After two daughters, Mavis had finally given birth to a son and both parents had been overjoyed.

Daniel Nzou had been four years old. He lay on his back. His eyes were open but sightlessly staring into the beam of the torch.

They had killed him in the old barbaric African way, in the same way that Chaka’s and Mzilikazi’s impis had dealt with the male children of a vanquished tribe. They had seized little Daniel by the ankles and swung him head-first against the wall, crushing his skull and beating his brains out against the brickwork. His splattering blood had daubed that crude mural on the white surface.

Daniel stooped over the little boy. Despite the deformation of the crushed skull his resemblance to his father was still marked. Tears prickled the rims of Daniel’s eyelids and he stood up slowly and turned to the bedroom door. It stood half open but Daniel dreaded pushing it all the way. He had to force himself to do it. The hinges of the door whined softly as it swung open.

For a moment Daniel stared down the beam of the Maglite as he let it play around the bedroom and then he reeled back into the passageway and leaned against the wall, gagging and gasping for breath.

He had witnessed scenes such as these during the days of the bush war, but the years had eroded his conditioning and softened the shell that he had built up to protect himself. He was no longer able to look dispassionately on the atrocity that man is able to perpetrate on his fellows.

Johnny’s daughters were older than their brother. Miriam was-ten and Suzie almost eight. They lay naked and spreadeagled on the floor at the foot of the bed. They had both been raped repeatedly. Their immature genitalia were a torn and bloody mush. Mavis was on the bed. They had not bothered to strip her entirely, but had merely pushed her skirts up around her waist.

Her arms were pulled up above her head and tied by the wrists to the wooden headboard. The two little girls must have died of shock and loss of blood during the prolonged assault upon them. Mavis had probably survived until they were finished with her, then they had put a bullet through her head.

Daniel forced himself to enter the room. He found where Mavis kept her extra bed-linen in one of the built-in cupboards and covered each of the corpses with a sheet. He could not bring himself to touch any of the girls, not even to close their wide staring eyes in which the horror and the terror was still deeply imprinted.

“Sweet Mother of God,” Jock whispered from the doorway. “Whoever did this isn’t human. They must be ravaging bloody beasts.”

Daniel backed out of the bedroom and closed the door. He covered Daniel Nzou’s tiny body. “Have you found Johnny?” he asked Jock. His voice was hoarse and his throat felt rough and abraded with horror and grief.

“No.” Jock shook his head, then turned and fled down the passage. He blundered out across the verandah and into the rain. Daniel heard him retching and vomiting in the flowerbed below the step.

The sound of the other man’s distress served to steady Daniel. He fought back his own repugnance and anger and sorrow and brought his emotions back under control. “Johnny,” he told himself. “Got to find Johnny–” He went swiftly through the other two bedrooms and the rest of the house. There was no sign of his friend, and he allowed himself the first faint hope. “He might have got away, he told himself. He might have made it into the bush.”

It was a relief to get out of that charnel house. Daniel stood in the darkness and lifted his face to the rain. He opened his mouth and let it wash the bitter bile taste from his tongue and the back of his throat. Then he turned the torch-beam on to his feet and saw the clotted blood dissolve from his shoes in a pink stain. He scrubbed the soles in the gravel of the driveway to clean them and then shouted to Jock “Come on, we have to find Johnny!”

In the Toyota he drove down the back of the hill to the domestic compound that housed the camp servants. The compound was still enclosed with an earthen embankment and barbed-wire fence from the war days. However the fence was in a ruinous state and the gate was missing.

They drove through the gateway and the smell of smoke was strong. As the headlights caught them Daniel saw that the row of servants-cottages was burnt out. The roofs had collapsed and the windows were empty. The rain had quenched the flames, although a few tendrils of smoke still drifted like pale wraiths in the lights.

The ground around the huts was sown with dozens of tiny objects which caught the headlights and sparkled like diamond chips. Daniel knew what they were, but he stepped down from the truck and picked one of them out of the mud. It was a shiny brass cartridge case. He held it to the light and inspected the familiar Cyrillic head stamp in the brass. 7. 62mm, of East European manufacture, it was the calibre of the ubiquitous AK 47 assault rifle, staple of violence and revolution throughout Africa and the entire world.

The gang had shot up the compound, but had left no corpses. Daniel guessed that they had thrown the dead into the cottages before torching-them. The breeze shifted towards him so that he caught the full stench of the burned huts and had his suspicions confirmed. Underlying the smell of smoke was the odour of scorched flesh and hair and bone.

He spat out the taste of it and walked down between the huts.

“Johnny!” he shouted into the night. “Johnny, are you there?” But the only sound was the creak and pop of the doused flames and the sough of the breeze in the mango trees that brought the raindrops pattering down from the branches.

He flicked the torch left and right as he passed between the huts, until he saw the body of a man lying in the open. “Johnny” he shouted, and ran to him and fell on his knees beside him.

The body was horribly burned, the khaki Parks uniform burned half away, and the skin and flesh sloughing off the exposed torso and the side of the face. The man had obviously dragged himself out of the burning hut into which they had thrown him, but he was not Johnny Nzou. He was one of the junior rangers.

Daniel jumped up and hurried back to the track.

“Did you find him?” Jock asked, and Daniel shook his head. “Christ, they’ve murdered everybody in the camp. Why would they do that?”

“Witnesses” Daniel started the truck. “They wiped out all the witnesses.”

“Why? What do they want? It doesn’t make sense.”

“The ivory. That’s what they were after.”

“But they burned down the warehouse!”

“After they cleaned it out.” He swung the Toyota back on to the track and raced up the hill.

“Who were they, Danny? Who did this?”

“How the hell do I know? Shifta? Bandits? Poachers? Don’t ask stupid questions.” Daniel’s anger was only just beginning. Up until now he had been numbed by the shock and the horror. He drove back past the dark bungalow on the hill and then down again to the main camp.

The warden’s office was still standing intact; although when Daniel played the beam of the torch over the thatched roof he saw the blackened area on which someone had thrown a burning torch. Well-laid thatch does not burn readily, however, and the flames had not caught fairly or perhaps had been extinguished by the rain before they could take hold.

The rain stopped with the suddenness which is characteristic of the African elements. One minute it was falling in a furious cascade that limited the range of the headlights to fifty yards, and the next it was over. Only the trees still dripped, but overhead the first stars pricked through the dispersing thunder clouds that were being carried away on the rising breeze.

Daniel barely noticed the change. He left the truck and ran up on to the wide verandah.

The exterior wall was decorated with the skulls of the animals of the Park. Their empty eye-sockets and twisted horns in the torch-beam gave a macabre touch to the scene and heightened Daniel’s sense of doom as he strode down the long covered verandah. He now realised that he should have searched here first, instead of rushing up to the bungalow.

The door of Johnny’s office stood open and Daniel paused on the threshold and steered himself before he stepped through.

A snowstorm of papers covered the floor and desk. They had ransacked the room, sweeping the stacks of forms off the cupboard shelves and hauling the drawers out of Johnny’s desk, then spilling out the contents. They had found Johnny’s keys and opened the old green-painted door to the Milner safe that was built into the wall. The keys were still in the lock but the safe was empty.

Daniel’s torch-beam darted about the room and then settled on the crumpled form that lay in front of the desk. “Johnny,” he whispered. “Oh, Christ, no!”

Chapter 6

“I thought that while I was waiting for the refrigerator truck to be repaired, I might as well go down to the water-hole at Fig Tree Pan.” Ambassador Ning’s voice interrupted Johnny Nzou’s concentration, but he felt no resentment as he looked up from his desk.

In Johnny’s view one of his major duties was to make the wilderness accessible to anybody who had an interest in nature. Ning Cheng Gong was certainly one of those. Johnny smiled at his accoutrements, the field guide and the binoculars.

He rose from his desk, glad of the excuse to escape from the drudgery of paperwork and went with the Ambassador out on to the verandah and down to his parked Mercedes, where he stood and chatted to him for a few minutes, making suggestions as to where he might get a glimpse of the elusive and aptly named gorgeous bush shrike that Cheng wanted to observe.

When Cheng drove away, Johnny walked down to the vehicle workshops where ranger Gomo was stripping and reassembling the alternator of the unserviceable truck. He was dubious about Gama’s ability to effect the repair. In the morning he would probably have to ring the warden at Mana Pools and ask him to send a mechanic to do the job.

One consolation was that the elephant meat would keep indefinitely in the cold storage of the hull. The truck’s refrigerating equipment was plugged in now to the camp generator and the thermometer registered twenty degrees below freezing when Johnny checked it. The meat would be processed and turned into animal feed by a private contractor in Harare.

Johnny left ranger Gomo to his labour over the dismembered alternator and went back to his own office under the Casia trees. No sooner had he left the workshop than Gomo looked up and exchanged a significant glance with David, the other black ranger. The alternator he was tinkering with was a worn out piece of equipment that he had retrieved from the scrap heap in Harare for just this purpose. The truck’s original alternator, in perfect working order, was hidden under the driver’s seat in the cab. It would take less than ten minutes to bolt it back in place and reconnect the wiring.

Back in his office Johnny settled to the monotony of his forms and ledgers. Once he glanced at his wristwatch and found that it was a few minutes before one o’clock, but wanted to finish the week’s reports before knocking off for lunch. Of course, it was a temptation to go up to the house early. He liked to be with the children for a while before lunch, especially with his son, but he resisted the impulse and worked on conscientiously. Anyway he knew that Mavis would probably send the children down to fetch him soon. She liked to serve his lunch promptly.

He smiled in anticipation of their arrival as he heard a sound at the door and looked up. The smile faded. A stranger stood in the doorway, a stocky man with bow legs, dressed in filthy rags. Both his hands were behind his back as though he was concealing something. “Yes?” Johnny asked shortly. “Who are you? What do you want?”

The man smiled. His skin was very dark with purple black highlights. When he smiled the scar that ran down one cheek pulled his mouth out of shape and the smile was malicious and humourless.

Johnny stood up from the desk and went towards him. “What do you want?” he repeated, and the man in the doorway said, “You!”

From behind his back he brought out an AK 47 rifle and lifted the barrel towards Johnny’s belly. Johnny was caught totally off guard in the centre of the room. However, his recovery was almost instantaneous. His reflexes were those of a hunter and a soldier. The armoury door was ten paces to his left and he went for it.

The Parks weapons were kept in there. Through the door he could see the rack of firearms on the far wall. With despair turning his legs as heavy as concrete, Johnny realised that none of the weapons in the rack was loaded. That was his own strict safety rule. The ammunition was kept in the locked steel cupboard under the gun-rack.

All this passed through his mind as he leaped for the door.

From the corner of his eye he saw the scar-faced brigand swing the AK on to him and halfway across the room Johnny tumbled forward like an acrobat, ducking under the blast of automatic fire that swept across the room.

As he rolled smoothly to his feet he heard the man curse and Johnny dived forward once more for the doorway. He realised that his assailant was fooled. He had seen that he was a killer in the practised way he handled the rifle. It was a miracle that he had been able to evade that first close-range volley.

The air was filled with a haze of plaster dust that the bullets had battered from the wall and Johnny dived through it, but he knew he was not going to make it. The man with the AK 47 was too good. He could not be fooled again. The shelter of the doorway was too far for Johnny to reach before the next burst came.

The clock in Johnny’s head was running; he anticipated how long it would take for the man to recover his balance. The muzzle of the AK 47 always rode up uncontrollably in automatic fire; it would take him the major part of a second to bring it down, and line up for the second burst.

Johnny judged it finely and twisted his body violently aside, but he was a fraction late.

The gunman aimed low to compensate for the rise of the AK.

One bullet sliced through the flesh of Johnny’s thigh, missing the bone, but the second cut through the lower curve of his buttock and smashed into the joint at the femur, shattering the head and the cup of bone of the pelvis.

The other three bullets of the burst flew wide as Johnny threw himself to one side. However, his left leg was gone and he fell against the door jamb and tried to hold himself from falling. His impetus sent him sliding sideways along the wall, and his fingernails screeched as they gouged the plaster. He ended up facing back into the room standing on one leg. His left leg hung from the shattered joint, and his arms were flung open like a crucifix as he tried to hold his balance.

Still smiling, the gunman clicked the rate-of-fire selector on to single-shot. He wanted to conserve ammunition. A single round cost him ten Zambian kwacha, and had to be carried hundreds of miles in his pack. Each cartridge was precious, and the warden was maimed and completely at his mercy. One more bullet would be enough.

“Now,” he said softly. “Now you die.” And he shot Johnny Nzou in the stomach.

The bullet drove the breath from Johnny’s lungs with an explosive exhalation. He was slammed hard against the wall and doubled over by the brutal force of the impact and then he toppled forward. Johnny had been hit before, during the war, but he had never received a full body strike and the shock of it was beyond his worst expectations. He was numbed from the waist down but his brain stayed clear, crystalline, as though the rush of adrenalin into his bloodstream had sharpened his perception to its limits.

“Play dead!” he thought, even as he was going down. His lower body was paralysed, but he forced his torso to relax. He hit the floor with the loose unresisting weight of a flour sack and did not move again.

His head was twisted to one side, his chest pressed to the cold cement floor. He lay still. He heard the gunman cross the floor, the rubber soles of the combat boots squeaking softly.

Then his boots entered Johnny’s field of vision. They were dusty and worn almost through the uppers. He wore no socks and the stink of his feet was rancid and sour as he stood within inches of Johnny’s face.

Johnny heard the metallic snick of the mechanism as the Zambian moved the rate-of-fire selector again, and then felt the cold hard touch of the muzzle against his temple as the man lined up for the coup de grace.

Don’t move, Johnny steeled himself.

It was his last despairing hope. He knew that the slightest movement must trigger the shot. He had to convince the gunman he was dead.

At that moment there was a burst of shouting from outside the room, and then a volley of automatic fire, followed by more shouting. The pressure of the rifle muzzle was lifted from Johnny’s temple. The stinking boots turned away and retreated across the floor towards the doorway. “Come on! Don’t waste time!” the scar-faced gunman yelled through the open door. Johnny knew enough of the northern Chinianja dialect to understand. “Where are the trucks? We must get the ivory loaded!” The Zambian ran out of the office leaving Johnny lying alone on the cement floor.

Johnny knew that he was mortally hit. He could feel the arterial blood squirting out of the wound in his groin and he rolled on his side and swiftly loosened the top of his trousers. Immediately he smelled his own faeces and knew that the second bullet had ripped open his intestines. He reached down into his crotch and pressed his fingers into the wound in his groin. Blood spurted hotly over his hand.

He found the open artery and pinched off the end of the severed femoral.

Mavis, and the babies! That was his next thought. What could he do for them? At that moment he heard more firing from up the hill, in the direction of the domestic compound and his own cottage.

It’s a gang of them, he realised with despair. They are all over the camp. They are attacking the compound. And then, My babies. Oh, God! My babies!

He thought about the weapons in the room next door, but he knew he could not get that far. Even if he did, how could he handle a rifle with half his guts shot away and his life-blood spreading in a pool under him?

He heard the trucks. He recognised the beat of the big diesels and knew that they were the refrigerator trucks. He felt a surge of hope.

Gomo, he thought. David… But it was short-lived. Lying on his side, clinging to his severed artery, he looked across the room and realised that he could see through the open door.

One of the white refrigerator trucks pulled into his view. It reversed up against the door of the ivory godown. As soon as it parked, Gomo jumped out of the cab and began a heated, gesticulating discussion with the scar-faced leader of the gang In his confused and swiftly weakening condition, it took Johnny several seconds to work it out.

Gomo, he thought. Gomo is one of them. He set it up.

It should not have come as such a shock. Johnny knew how pervasive was the corruption in the government, in all departments, not only the Parks Administration. He had given evidence before the official commission of enquiry that was investigating the corruption, and had pledged to help stamp it out. He knew Gomo well. He was arrogant and self-seeking. He was just the type, but Johnny had never expected treachery on this scale.

Suddenly the area around the godown that Johnny could see was teeming with the other members of the gang. Swiftly Scarface organised them into a work-party. One of them shot the lock off the door of the warehouse and the bandits laid aside their weapons and swarmed into the building. There were shouts of greedy joy as they saw the piles of ivory and then they formed a human chain and began passing out the tusks, and loading them into the truck.

Johnny’s vision began to fade. Clouds of darkness passed across his eyes and there was a soft singing in his ears.

I’m dying, he thought without emotion. He could feel the numbness spreading from his paralysed legs up through his chest.

He forced the darkness back from his eyes and thought that he must be fantasising, for now Ambassador Ning stood in the late sunlight below the verandah. He still had the binoculars slung over his shoulder and his manner was impossibly cool and urbane. Johnny tried to shout a warning to him, but it came out of his throat in a soft croak that did not carry beyond the room in which he lay.

Then to his astonishment he saw the scar-faced leader of the gang come to where the ambassador stood and salute him, if not respectfully, at least with recognition of his authority.

Ning. Johnny forced himself to believe it. It really is Ning. I’m not dreaming it.

Then the voices of the two men carried to where he lay.

They were speaking in English. “You must hurry your men,” Ning Cheng Gong said. “They must get the ivory loaded, I want to leave here immediately.”

“Money,” answered Sali . One thousand dollars…” His English was atrocious.

“You have been paid.” Cheng was indignant. “I have paid you your money.”

“More money. More one thousand dollars.” Sali grinned at him. “More money or I stop. We go, leave you, leave ivory.”

“You are a scoundrel,” Cheng snarled.

“Not understand ‘scoundrel’, but think you also ‘scoundrel’, maybe. Sali’s grin widened. “Give money now.”

“I haven’t any more money with me,” Cheng told him flatly.

“Then we go! Now! You load ivory yourself.”

“Wait.” Cheng was obviously thinking quickly. “I haven’t got money. You take the ivory, as much as you want. Take everything you can carry.”

Cheng had realised that the poachers would be able to take only a negligible number of tusks from the hoard. They could not possibly manage more than a single tusk each. Twenty men, twenty tusks, it was a small price.

Soli stared at him while he considered the offer. Clearly he had milked every possible advantage from the situation, so at last he nodded. “Good! We take ivory.” He began to turn away.

Ambassador Ning called after him. “Wait, Sali ! What about the others? Did you take care of them?”

“They all dead.”

“The warden and his woman and children? Them too?”

“All dead,” Sali repeated. “Woman is dead, and her piccanins. My men make jig-jig with all three women first. Very funny, very nice jig-jig. Then kill.”

“The warden? Where is he?”

Sali the poacher jerked his head towards the door of Johnny’s office. “I shoot him boom, boom. He dead like a ngulubi, dead like a pig.” He laughed. “Very good job, hey?” He walked away with the rifle over his shoulder, still chuckling, and Cheng followed him out of Johnny’s field of vision.

Anger came to arm Johnny and give him just a little more strength. The poacher’s words conjured up a dreadful vision of the fate that had overtaken Mavis and the children. He could see it as clearly as if he had been there; he knew about rape and pillage. He had lived through the bush war.

He used the strength of his anger to begin to wriggle across the floor towards his desk. He knew he could not use a weapon. All he could hope for now in the few minutes of life that remained to him was to leave some sort of message. Papers had spilled off his desk and littered the floor. If he could just get to a single sheet, and write on it and hide it, the police would find it later.

He moved like a maimed caterpillar, lying on his back, still clutching the severed artery. He drew up his good knee, dug in his heel and pushed himself painfully across the floor, sliding on his back a few inches at a time, his own blood lubricating his passage. He moved six feet towards the desk and reached out for one of the sheets of paper. He saw then that it was a sheet from the wages register.

He had not touched it when the intensity of the light in the room altered. Somebody was standing in the doorway. He turned his head and Ambassador Ning was staring at him. He had come up on to the verandah. His rubber-soled training shoes made no sound at all. Now he stood petrified with shock in the doorway, and for a moment longer he stared at Johnny.

Then he yelled shrilly, “He is still alive. Sali, come quickly, he is still alive.” Cheng; disappeared from the doorway and ran down the verandah still shouting for the poacher. “Sali, come quickly.”

It was all over, and Johnny knew it. Only seconds remaining to him. He rolled on his side reached out and snatched up the register sheet. He pressed the sheet flat on the floor with one hand, and then released the severed artery and drew his blooddrenched hand out of the front of his trousers. Immediately he felt the artery begin to pulse and fresh blood jetted from the wound.

With his forefinger he scrawled on the blank sheet of paper, writing in his own blood. He formed the letter N in a large lopsided character, and dizziness made his senses swirl. and It was more difficult to concentrate. The down stroke of the I was elongated and curved, too much like a J. Painfully he dotted the letter to Make its meaning clearer.

For a moment his finger was glued lightly to the paper with his sticky blood. He pulled it free. He started on the second N. It was crude and childlike. His finger would not follow the dictates of his mind. He heard the ambassador still calling for Sali, and the poacher’s answering shout filled with alarm and consternation. NIN, Johnny began the G but his finger wandered off at an angle and the wet red letters wiggled and swam before his eyes like tadpoles.

He heard running feet come pounding down the verandah and Sali’s voice. “I thought he was dead. I finish him good now!” Johnny crumpled the sheet of paper in his left hand, the hand that was clean of blood, and be thrust his closed fist into the front of his tunic and rolled over onto his belly with his arm trapped under him, concealing the balled note.

He did not see Sali come in at the door. His face was pressed to the concrete floor. He, heard the poacher’s boots squeak and slip on the blood, and then the click of the safety-catch on the rifle as he stood over Johnny’s prostrate form.

Johnny felt no fear, only a vast sense of sorrow and resignation. He thought about Mavis and the children as he felt the muzzle of the rifle touch the back of his head. He was relieved that he would not be left alone after they were gone. He was glad that he would never see what had happened to them, would never be forced to witness the signs of their agony and degradation.

He was already dying before the bullet from the AK 47 tore through his skull and buried itself in the concrete under his face. “Shit,” said Sali . He stepped back and shouldered the rifle, a faint feather of gunsmoke still drifting from the muzzle. “A hard man to kill. He made me waste many bullets, each one ten kwacha. Too much!”

Ning Cheng Gong advanced into the room. “Are you sure that you’ve finished the job, at last?” he asked.

“His head gone,” Sali grunted as he picked up Johnny’s keys from the desk and went to ransack the Milner safe. “Kufa! He dead, for sure.”

Cheng moved closer to the corpse, and stared at it with fascination. The killing had excited him. He was sexually aroused, not as much as if it had been a young girl who had died, but aroused, nevertheless. The smell of blood filled the room. He loved that smell. He was so absorbed that he did not notice that he was standing in a puddle of blood until Gomo called him from below the verandah.

“All the ivory is loaded. We are ready to go.”

Cheng stepped back and exclaimed with disgust as he saw the stain on the cuff of his crisply ironed blue cotton slacks. “I’m going now,” he told Sali. “Burn the ivory godown before you leave.”

In the safe Sali had found the canvas bank bag that contained the month’s wages for the camp staff, and he grunted without looking up from the contents. “I burn everything for sure.”

Cheng ran down the verandah steps and climbed into the Mercedes. He signalled to Gomo and the two refrigerator trucks pulled away. The ivory was packed into the holds and then covered with the dismembered carcasses of the culled beasts. A casual inspection would not reveal the hoard, but there was nobody to stop the convoy. They were protected by the badges of the National Parks Board painted on the trucks, and by the khaki uniforms and shoulder flashes of Gomo and David, the two rangers. Not even one of the frequent roadblocks was likely to delay them. The security forces were intent on catching political dissidents, not ivory-runners.

It had all gone as Chetti Singh had planned it. Cheng glanced at the rear-view mirror of the Mercedes. The ivory godown was already ablaze.

The poachers were forming up into a column for the return march. Each of them carried a large tusk from the hoard.

Cheng smiled to himself. Perhaps Sali’s greed would work to his advantage. If the police ever caught up with the gang, the disappearance of the ivory would be neatly explained by both the fire and the loads the poachers were carrying.

At Cheng’s insistence they had left forty tusks in the burning godown, to provide traces of charred ivory for the police forensic laboratory. As Chetti Singh might have said, “Another dead herring.”

This time Cheng laughed aloud. He was elated. The success of the raid and the thrill of violence and death and blood warmed his belly and filled him with a sense of power. He felt masterful and sexually charged, and suddenly he was aware that he had a hard throbbing erection. He determined that next time he would do the killing himself. It was quite natural to believe that there would be a next time, and many more times after that. Death had made Cheng feel immortal.

Chapter 7

“Johnny. Oh, God. Johnny.” Daniel squatted beside him and reached out to touch the side of his throat just below the ear feeling for the pulse of the carotid. It was an instinctive gesture, for the bullet entry wound in the back of Johnny’s skull was conclusive.

Johnny’s skin was cool and Daniel could not yet bring himself to turn him over and look at the exit wound. He let him lie a little longer and rocked back on his heels, letting his anger flourish to replace the enervating chill of grief. He cherished his rage, as though it were a candle flame on a dark night. It warmed the cold empty place in his soul that Johnny had left.

Daniel stood up at last. He played the torch-beam on the floor ahead of him, and stepped over the pools and smears of Johnny’s blood as he went to the armoury.

The remote control for the generator was on the mains panel beside the door. Daniel threw the switch and heard the distant clatter of the diesel engine in the power house down near the main gates to the camp. The diesel engine ran up to speed an settled at a steady beat, then the generator kicked in and the lights flickered and bloomed. Through the window he saw the street lamps lining the driveway light up and in their glow the Casia trees were vivid green and shiny with raindrops.

Daniel fetched the bunch of keys that still hung in the lock of the Milner safe and strode through into the armoury. Along with the .375 culling rifles, there were five AK 47 assault rifles on the rack.

These were used on anti-poaching patrols when the rangers needed equivalent fire-power to take on the gangs of poachers. Ammunition was stored in the cupboard below the gunrack. He unlocked the steel door. There were four magazines of AK ammunition in each pouched webbing belt hanging. on the hooks.He slung one of these over his shoulder, then lifted an automatic rifle down from the rack and loaded it with deft movements; the old warlike arts once learned were never forgotten.

Armed and angry, he ran down the verandah steps. Start with the ivory godown, he decided. They’ll been there for sure. He circled the burned-out building, searching for sign by the light of the street lamps, flashing his torch at anything that caught his attention. If he had allowed himself to think about it, he would have realised he was wasting his time. The only prints that had withstood the erosion of the rain were those protected by the overhanging verandah roof, a set of heavy tyre tracks in the mud at the front entrance to the ivory godown.

Even these were almost erased and only just recognisable.

Daniel ignored them; he was after the gang and they would not be using vehicles. Quickly he widened the circles of his search, trying to pick up an outgoing set of tracks, concentrating on the northern side of the camp’s perimeter, for the gang would almost certainly head back to the Zambezi River.

It was useless, as he had known deep down that it would be. After twenty minutes he gave it up. There were no tracks to follow. He stood under the dark trees and raged with frustration and sorrow.

“If only I could get a shot at the bastards,” he lamented.

It meant little to him in his present mood that he was one man against twenty or more professional killers. Jock was a cameraman, not a soldier. He would be of no help in a fight. The memory of those mutilated bodies in the bedroom of the bungalow and of Johnny’s shattered head overpowered all rational thought. Daniel found that he was physically shaking with the strength of his anger, and that put him on the road to recovering his scattered wits.

“While I’m wasting time here, they’re getting clean away,” he told himself. “The only way is to cut them off on the river. I need help.” He thought of the Parks camp at Mana Pools. The warden there was a good man. Daniel knew him well from the old days. He had an anti-poaching team and a fast boat. They could get downstream and patrol the river crossing to catch the gang as it attempted to get back on to the Zambian side. Daniel was already starting to think logically as he started back towards the warden’s office. From Mana Pools they could ring Harare and get the police to send in a spotter plane.

He knew that speed was vital now. Within the next ten hours the gang would be back across the river. However, he could not leave Johnny like that, lying in his own blood. It meant wasting a few more minutes, but he had to show him some last respect and at the very least cover him decently.

Daniel paused in the doorway to Johnny’s office. The overhead lights were brutally explicit; they left nothing of the horror concealed. He set aside the AK 47 and looked around for a covering for his friend’s corpse. The curtains over the front windows were green government issue, faded by sunlight, but they would do as a makeshift shroud. He took one of them down, and went with it to where Johnny lay.

Johnny’s attitude was tortured. One arm was twisted up under his chest and his face lay in a pool of thick congealing blood. Gently Daniel rolled him over. The body had not yet stiffened in rigor mortis. He winced as he looked at Johnny’s face, for the bullet had come out through his right eyebrow. He used a corner of the curtain to wipe his face clean, then arranged him in a comfortable attitude on his back.

Johnny’s left hand was thrust into the front of his tunic and his fist was tightly clenched. Daniel’s interest quickened as he saw the balled up sheet of paper in his hand. He prised Johnny’s fingers open and freed the wad. He stood up, crossed to the desk and spread the paper on it.

He saw at once that Johnny had scrawled on it, using his own blood, and Daniel shivered at the macabre characters. NJNC. The letters were childlike and crude, smeared and barely legible. They made no sense, although perhaps the J was an I. Daniel studied it. NINC. Still there was nothing obvious in the message. Either it was gibberish or had some obscure meaning that only made sense to a dying man.

Suddenly Daniel felt a stirring in his subconscious, something was trying to surface. He closed his eyes for a minute to give it a chance. Often it helped to let his mind go blank when searching for an elusive idea or memory, rather than to harry the point and drive it further under. It was there, very close now, a shadow just below his conscious mind like the shape of a man-eating shark under the surface of a turgid sea.

NINC.

He opened his eyes again and found himself looking at the floor. There were bloody footprints left by his own boot soles and by those of the killer. He was not thinking about them; he was still grappling with that single cryptic word that Johnny had left for him.

Then he found his eyes had focused on one of the footprints, and his nerves jumped tight and shrieked like the strings of a violin slashed with the bow. The footprint was chequered with a fish-scale pattern.

NINC. It resounded through his mind and then that distinctive footprint turned the sense of it and the echo came back, altered and compelling.

NING. Johnny had tried to write NING! Daniel found that he was cold and trembling with the shock of the discovery. Ambassador Ning, Ning Cheng Gong. How was it possible? And yet there were the bloody footprints to confirm the impossible. Ning had been here after Johnny was shot. Ning had been lying when he said that he had left, Daniel broke that train of thought as another memory struck him like a bolt from a cross-bow.

The blood on the cuff of the blue cotton slacks, the tracks of Ning’s training shoes and the blood, Johnny’s blood. At last his rage had a target on which to focus, but now it was a cold constructive rage. He pressed the bloody note back into Johnny’s hand and folded his fingers around it for the police to find. Then he spread the green curtain over Johnny’s body, covering the shattered head. He stood over him for a few seconds.

“I’ll get the bastard for you, old friend. For you and Mavis and the babies. I promise you, Johnny, on the memory of our friendship. I swear it.” Then he snatched up the rifle and ran from the office, down the steps to where Jock waited beside the parked Landcruiser.

In the few seconds that it took him to reach the truck, the last details fell into place in his mind. He remembered Cheng’s perturbation when he thought Daniel might be staying longer at Chiwewe, and his obvious relief when he learned that Daniel was leaving.

He glanced back towards the ruins of the ivory godown and the tyre treads were still just visible in the mud. It was simple and ingenious. Let the gang of poachers draw the pursuit, while they ferried the ivory out in the Parks Board’s own trucks.

Daniel remembered the surly unnatural behaviour of Gomo and the other driver when he had met them on the road. Now it made good sense. They had been sitting on a load of stolen ivory. No wonder they were acting strangely.

As he slipped behind the wheel of the Landcruiser and ordered Jock to climb aboard, he glanced at his wristwatch. it was almost ten o’clock, nearly four hours since he had passed Cheng and the trucks on the escarpment road. Could he catch them before they reached the main highway and disappeared?

He realised that it had been so carefully planned that they must have worked out an escape route and some means of disposing of the ivory.

He started the Landcruiser and hit the gear-lever. “You aren’t going to get away with it, you dirty bastard!”

In many places the recent storm waters had scoured the escarpment road, gouging knee-deep gulleys across the tracks and exposing boulders the size of cannonballs. Daniel pushed the Landcruiser over them so violently that Jock seized the grab handle on the dashboard for support. “Slow down, Danny, damn it. You’ll kill us both. Where the hell are we going? What’s the rush?” In as few words as possible Daniel told him the bare outlines. “You can’t touch an ambassador,” Jock grunted as the bouncing truck slammed the words out of him. “If you’re wrong, they’ll crucify you, man.”

“I’m not wrong,” Daniel assured him. “On top of Johnny’s note, I feel it in my guts.”

The rain waters had rushed down the slope of the escarpment, but when they reached the floor of the valley they slowed and piled up upon themselves.

Only hours before, Daniel had crossed and re-crossed a dry river-bed at the foot of the escarpment. Now he pulled up on the approach to the ford and stared down the beam of the headlights.

“You’ll never get through there,” Jock muttered with alarm.

Daniel left the motor running and jumped down into ankledeep mud. He ran to the edge of the crazy water. It was the colour of creamed coffee, racing past in a muddy blur, carrying small tree-trunks and uprooted bushes with it. It was almost fifty yards across.

One of the trees growing beside the ford draped its branches out over the torrent, in places just touching the swirling waters with its lowest twigs. Daniel grabbed the main branch for support and let himself down into the river. He edged out across the flood and it took all the strength of his arms to prevent himself from being swept away.

The drag of the water was overpowering and his feet were continually lifted clear of the bottom. However, he worked himself out to the deepest section of the river.

It was as deep as his lowest rib. The branch to which he was clinging was creaking and bowing like a fishing-rod to the strain as he began to work his way back to the bank. He emerged from the torrent with water streaming down his lower body, his sodden clothing clinging to his legs and his boots squelching.

“It’ll go,” he told Jock, as he clambered back into the cab.

“You’re crazy mad,” Jock exploded. “I’m not going in there.”

“Okay! Fine! You’ve got just two seconds to get out,” Daniel told him grimly, and changed the gearing of the Toyota into four-wheel drive and low ratio.

“You can’t leave me here,” Jock howled. “The place is lousy with lions. What happens to me?”

“That’s your problem, mate. Are you coming or going.”

“Okay, go ahead! Drown us!” Jock capitulated and grabbed the sides of his seat.

Daniel rolled the Landcruiser down the steep approach to the ford, and into the brown waters. He kept her rolling at an even pace and within a few yards the water was above the level of the wheels, but still the nose of the truck was tilted steeply downwards as the bottom fell away. There was a whoosh of steam as water rushed through the engine compartment and swamped the hot metal of the block.

The headlights were obscured as they sank below the surface, becoming two luminous glows in the turgid water. A bow wave rose ahead of the bonnet, as the water came up to the level of the windshield. A petrol engine would have swamped and stalled, but the big diesel pushed them stolidly forward into the flood. Water was pouring in around the door posts. They were calf-deep where they sat.

“You really are crazy,” Jock yelled, and put his feet up on the dashboard. “I want to go home to mother!” Now even the Landcruiser was faltering as the air trapped in the body floated her high and her spinning tires lost traction on the rock-strewn bottom. “Oh, my God!” Jock cried, as a huge up-rooted tree came hurtling down upon them out of the darkness.

It crashed into the side of the truck, hitting one of the windows, and slewing the whole chassis around. They were hurled downstream, spinning slowly under the weight of the floating tree. As they made one full revolution the mortal embrace of the tree mass was broken. Released from its grip, they floated free, but they were sinking fast as the trapped air was expelled from the Landcruiser’s body. Water began to seep in, and soon they were sitting waist-deep.

“I’m getting out,” Jock yelled, and threw his weight against the door. it won’t budge. He was panicking, as the pressure of water held the door tightly closed.

Then suddenly Daniel felt the wheels touch bottom again.

The flood had swept them into a bend of the river and pushed them in against the far bank. The engine was still running. The modified airintake pipe and filter reached up as high as the cab roof. Daniel had installed it for just such an emergency. In the shallows, the wheels caught at the jagged rock bottom and heaved the Landcruiser’s bulk forward. “Come on, darling,” Daniel pleaded. “Get us out of here.”

And the sturdy truck responded. She shuddered and bounced and tried to drag herself from the waters. The headlights pushed through the surface and blazed out suddenly, lighting the far bank. The flood had cast them up on the shelving mudbank and the truck canted steeply nose-up as her spinning front wheels clawed up the slope.

Ahead of them was a low spot in the riverbank. The Landcruiser slipped and slewed and crabbed up it, the engine roaring, ferociously tearing out small bushes that had survived the flood and ploughing deep ruts in the soft earth, until suddenly her lugged tires gained full purchase and hurled her for-ward up out of the flood. Sheets of water streamed from her bodywork like a surfacing submarine and the big diesel engine bellowed triumphantly as they roared into the mopane forest.

“I’m alive,” Jock whispered. “Hallelujah!”

Daniel turned parallel with the riverbank, weaving the Landcruiser back and forth between the tree-trunks of the standing mopane until they bumped over the verge on to the roadway. He kicked her out of low ratio and gunned the motor. They sped away towards the Mana Pools turn-off.

“How many more like that?” Jock asked with trepidation.

For the first time since Johnny’s death Daniel smiled, but it was a grim little smile. “Only four or five, he answered. A Sunday afternoon stroll. Nothing to it.”

He glanced at his watch. Cheng and the refrigerator trucks had almost four hours start on them. They must have got through the fords before the drainage of storm waters off the slope of the escarpment had flooded them. The earth beneath the mopane trees was melted like warm chocolate by the rain. This black cotton soil was notorious for bogging down vehicles when it was wet. The Landcruiser slithered and laboured and left deep glutinous ruts behind the churning wheels.

“Here’s the next river.” Daniel warned, as the road gradient altered and thick dark riverine bush pressed in close on each side of the narrow track. “Get your life-jacket on.”

“I can’t stand another one like the last.” Jock turned to him, pale-faced in the glow of the instrument panel. “I promise ten ‘Hail Mary’s’ and fifty ‘Our Father’s’.

“The price is right, it’ll be a breeze,” Daniel assured him as the headlights lit the ford.

In Africa a flash flood drops almost as abruptly as it rises. The rain had stopped almost two hours earlier, and the slope of the valley was by now almost drained. There was a high-water mark on the far bank of the river almost six feet above the present surface of the shrunken waters, to show how swiftly they had subsided. This time the Landcruiser made light of the crossing. The waters did not even cover the headlights before she triumphantly climbed the far bank.

“The power of prayer,” Daniel grunted. “Keep it up, Jock. We’ll make a believer of you yet.” The next river had fallen even lower, to the level of the tops of the wheels, and Daniel did not bother to change gear ratios as they splashed through. Forty minutes later, Daniel parked the truck at the front door of the warden’s bungalow at Mana Pools Camp.

While Jock leaned on the horn button and sounded a long urgent peal, Daniel pounded with both fists on the warden’s door. The warden came stumbling out onto the screened verandah, dressed only in a pair of underpants. “Who is it?” he called in Shana. “What the hell is going on?” He was a lean, muscled forty-year-old named Isaac Mtwetwe.

“Isaac? It’s me,” Daniel called. “There’s big trouble, man. Get your arse into gear. You’ve got work to do.”

“Danny?” Isaac shaded his eyes against the glare of the Landcruiser’s headlights. “Is that you, Danny?” He flashed his torch into Daniel’s face. “What is it? What has happened?”

Daniel answered him in fluent Shana. “A big gang of armed poachers has hit Chiwewe camp. They wiped out Johnny Nzou and his family, and the entire camp staff.”

“Good God!” Isaac came fully awake. “My guess is that they’re from the Zambian side,” Daniel went on. “I reckon they’re heading back to cross the Zambezi about twenty miles downstream from here. You’ve got to get your antipoaching team there to head them off.”

Swiftly Daniel gave him all the other information he had gleaned, the estimated size of the gang, their weapons, the time that they had left Chiwewe and their probable line and speed of march. Then he asked, “Did the refrigerator trucks come through here from Chiwewe on their return to Harare?”

“At about eight o’clock,” Isaac confirmed. “They just got through before the rivers flooded. There was a civilian with them, a Chinese in a blue Mercedes. One of the trucks was towing him. The Mercedes was no good in the mud.” Isaac was dressing as he spoke. “What are you going to do, Danny? I know Johnny Nzou was your friend. If you come with us you might get a shot at these swine.” Although they had fought on opposite sides during the bush war, he knew Daniel’s reputation.

However, Daniel shook his head. “I am going on after the trucks, and that Mercedes.”

“I don’t understand.” Isaac looked up from lacing his boots and his tone was puzzled.

“I can’t explain now, but it’s all part of Johnny’s murder. Trust me.” Daniel couldn’t tell Isaac about the ivory and Ambassador Ning, not until he had proof. “Trust me,” he repeated, and Isaac nodded.

“Okay, Danny, I’ll get those murdering swine for you before they get away across the river,” he promised. “You go ahead. Do what you have to do.”

Daniel left Isaac on the Zambezi bank, assembling his strike force of anti-poacher rangers and embarking them into the twenty-foot fast assault craft. There was a big ninety horsepower Yamaha onboard on the stern. Like the rest of them, the boat was a veteran of the bush war.

Daniel drove on westwards into the night, following the track that ran parallel to the Zambezi. Now the tyre tracks of the convoy were even more deeply ploughed into the muddy earth. In the headlights they looked as fresh as if they had been laid only minutes before.

Certainly they had been made since the last downpour of rain. The pattern of the treads was clearly moulded in black cotton clay of the roadway. Obviously one of the trucks was still towing the Mercedes. Daniel could pick out the scuff-marks where the tow rope had touched the earth at intervals. The tow would slow them down considerably, Daniel thought with satisfaction. He must be gaining on them rapidly now.

He peered ahead eagerly, half expecting to see the red glow of the Metcedes’s tail-lights appear out of the darkness, and he reached out to touch the AK 47 rifle propped between the seats.

Jock noticed the gesture and warned him softly, “Don’t do anything stupid, Danny. You don’t have any proof, man. You can’t just go, blowing the ambassador’s head off on suspicion. Cool it, man.”

It seemed that they were further behind the convoy than Daniel had hoped. It was after midnight when they intersected the Great North Road, the metalled highway that crossed the Chirundu bridge over the Zambezi to the north, and to the south climbed the escarpment of the valley on its serpentine route to Harare, the capital of Zimbabwe.

Daniel pulled the Landcruiser into the verge at the road junction. He jumped out with the Maglite in his hand. In all probability the convoy would have turned south towards Harare.

They couldn’t have hoped to get two huge government trucks loaded with fresh game meat and ivory through both the Zimbabwean and Zambian customs posts, not even with the dispensation of the most princely bribes.

Daniel found confirmation of his deduction almost immediately. The tires of the trucks and the Mercedes had been caked with clinging black clay. They left clear tracks on the tarmac of the highway. The tracks gradually faded out as the last vestiges of clay were spun off the tires, but for almost a mile further the moulded bars of mud from between the treads of the tires, littered the tarmac like squares of chocolate.

“South,” said Daniel, as he climbed back behind the drivingwheel. “They’re heading south, and we’re catching up with them every minute.” He pushed the Landcruiser hard and kicked in the Fairey overdrive. The speedometer needle touched 90 miles per hour and the heavy tires whined shrilly on the black tarmac surface of the highway. “They can’t be much further ahead,” Daniel muttered. As he said it he saw the glow of headlights in front of them.

He touched the stock of the AK rifle again, and Jock glanced at him nervously. “For Chrissake, Danny. I don’t want to be an accessory to bloody murder. They say Chikurubi prison isn’t exactly five-star accommodation.” The lights were closer now and Daniel switched on the Landcruiser’s powerful spotlights, then exclaimed with disappointment.

He had expected to see the distinctive hull of the refrigerator truck standing up tall and polar white in the beam of the spotlight. Instead he found a vehicle that he had never seen before. It was a gigantic MAC truck, a twenty-tonner, towing an equally large eight-wheel trailer. Both the hull of the truck and the body of the trailer were covered by heavyduty green nylon tarpaulin and roped down with a hook-and-eye arrangement that securely protected the cargo. This massive road-rig was pulled off the highway and parked in a lay-by at the roadside facing back northwards towards Chirundu Bridge.

Three men were working around the trailer, adjusting the ropes that held the tarpaulin in place. The beam of the spotlight froze them, and they stared back at the approaching Landcruiser. Two of the men were black Africans dressed in faded overalls. The third was a dignified figure in a khaki safari suit. He was also dark-complexioned but bearded and wearing some sort of white headgear.

It was only when Daniel got closer that he realised that it was a neatly bound white turban and that the man was a Sikh. His beard was carefully curled and rolled up into the folds of the turban. As Daniel slowed the Landcruiser and pulled in in front of the parked truck, the Sikh spoke sharply to the two Africans.

All three of them turned and hurried back to the front of the truck and climbed aboard. “Hold it a second!” Daniel shouted, and jumped out of the Landcruiser. “I want to talk to you.” The Sikh was already seated behind the wheel. “Hold on!” Daniel called urgently, and came level with the cab.

The Sikh was five feet above the level of his head and he leaned out of the window and peered down at Daniel. “Yes, what is it?”

“Sorry to trouble you,” Daniel told him. “Have you passed two large white trucks on the road?” The Sikh stared down at him without answering and Daniel added, “Very big trucks, you couldn’t miss them. Travelling together in convoy. There might have been a blue Mercedes saloon with them.” The Sikh pulled his head in and spoke to the two Africans in a dialect that Daniel could not understand. While he waited impatiently for a reply, Daniel noticed a company logo painted on the front door-panel of the truck.

CHETTI SINGH LIMITED IMPORT AND EXPORT P. O. BOX 52 LILONGWE MALAWI

Malawi was the small sovereign state that nestled between the three much larger territories of Zambia, Tanzania and Mozambique. it was a country of mountains and rivers and takes, whose population was as prosperous and happy under its octogenarian dictator Hastings Banda as any state on the poverty- and tyranny-ridden continent of Africa.

“Mr. Singh, I’m in a desperate hurry,” Daniel called. “Please tell me if you’ve seen those trucks.”

The Sikh popped his head back out the window in alarm. “How do you know my name?” he demanded, and Daniel pointed at the logo on the door. “Ha! You are one very observant and erudite fellow, never mind.” The Sikh looked relieved. “Yes, my men reminded me that two trucks passed us one hour ago. They were heading south. We did not see a Mercedes with them. I am totally certain of that salient fact. No Mercedes. Absolutely.”

He started the engine of the MAC truck. “I am happy to have served you. I am also in desperate haste. I must return home to Lilongwe. Farewell, my friend, safe journey and happy landings.” He waved cheerily and let the huge truck roll forward.

Something about his airy manner struck a false note in Daniel’s mind.

As the heavily loaded trailer rumbled past him, Daniel caught hold of one of the steel slats and swung himself up on to the footplate below the trailer’s tailgate. The headlights of the parked Landcruiser gave him enough light to peer between the steel slats of the bodywork and the edge of the tarpaulin cover. The trailer seemed to be packed with a full load of gunny sacks.

Stencilled on one of the sacks that he could see was the legend Dried Fish. Product of… The country of origin was obscured. Daniel’s nose confirmed the contents of the sacks. The smell of half-rotten fish was powerful and unmistakable.

The truck was gathering speed swiftly and Daniel dropped off and let his own momentum carry him forward as he hit the ground. He ran with it for a dozen paces and then pulled up and stared after the dwindling tail-lights.

His instinct warned him that something was as fishy as the stink from under the tarpaulin of the departing trailer, but what could he do about it? He tried to think. His main concerns were still the convoy of refrigerator trucks and Ning in his Mercedes which were heading southwards, while the Sikh in his MAC truck was rumbling away in the opposite direction.

He couldn’t follow both of them even if he could Prove a connection between them, which he could not. “Chetti Singh,” he repeated the name and the box number to fix it firmly in his mind. Then ran back to where Jock waited in the Landcruiser.

“Who was that? What did he say?” Jock wanted to know.

“He saw the refrigerator trucks heading south about an hour ago. We’re going after them.” He pulled out of the lay-by and they raced on southwards at their top speed.

The road began to climb the hills that led up on to the high central plateau, and the Landcruiser’s speed bled off slowly, but still they were doing around 70 miles an hour.

Jock had not spoken again since they had met Chetti Singh, but his features were drawn and nervous in the light reflected from the instrument panel. He kept glancing sideways at Daniel as if he were about to protest, but then thought better of it.

The road went into a series of gentle curves as it followed the gradient of the hills. They came through the next curve and without warning one of the white refrigerator trucks blocked the road ahead of them. It was travelling at half the speed of the Landcruiser and diesel smoke belched out of its exhausts as it laboured upwards in low gear. The driver was holding the middle line of the highway, not leaving sufficient space for Daniel to pass him.

Daniel sounded his horn and flicked his spotlights on and off to induce the truck to move over, but it never wavered. “Move over, you murdering bastard,” Daniel snarled, and hit the horn button with another prolonged blast.

“Take it easy, Daniel,” Jock pleaded. “You’re going over the top. Cool it, man.”

Daniel swung the Landcruiser out on to the far verge of the road, into an overtaking position, and he sounded the horn again. Now he could see the wing mirror on the cab of the truck and reflected in it the face of the driver.

The driver was Gomo. He was watching Daniel in the mirror but making no effort to give way and let him pass. His expression was a mixture of fear and ferocity, of guilt and bitter resentment. He was deliberately blocking the road, swinging wide on the corners and weaving the truck back and across when Daniel tried to pass him on the wrong side. “He knows it’s us,” Daniel told Jock angrily. “He knows we’ve been back to Chiwewe and seen the bloody business there. He knows we suspect him, and he’s trying to hold us off.”

“Come on, Danny. That’s all in your head, man. There could be a dozen explanations for why he’s behaving like this. I don’t want any part of this crazy business.”

“Too late, my friend,” Daniel told him. “Like it or not, you’re part of it now.”

Daniel pulled the Landcruiser sharply back in the opposite direction. For once Gomo was slow to react and get across the road to block him. Daniel dropped a gear and thrust the accelerator flat. The Landcruiser jumped forward and got round the truck’s tall tail-end. Still holding the accelerator flat to the floorboards, Daniel drew level with the cab, squeezing through the gap between the steel side of the hull and the edge of the road.

Only the nearside wheels of the Landcruiser had purchase on the tarmac surface, the off-side wheels were on the verge of the highway, throwing up a spray of loose gravel, dangerously close to the edge that fell away steeply into the Zambezi valley below them.

“Danny, you mad bastard,” Jock yelled angrily. “You’ll get us both killed. I’ve had enough of this bullshit, man.”

The Landcruiser hit one of the concrete road-markers with its reflective cat’s-eye that warned of the dangerous drop. With a crash they snapped off the road sign, and swayed dangerously, but Daniel held grimly to the outside berth and inched up alongside the cab of the lumbering truck.

Gomo stared down at the Landcruiser from the vantage point of the high cab. Daniel leant forward to see him, lifted one hand from, the wheel and made a peremptory hand signal for him to pull over and stop. Gomo nodded and obeyed, swinging the truck back to the left, giving way to the Landcruiser.

“That’s more like it,” Daniel grated, and edged back into the space alongside the truck that Gomo had opened for him. He had fallen into the trap and let down his guard. The two vehicles were still grinding along side by side, and Gomo suddenly spun the driving-wheel hard back in the opposite direction. Before Daniel could react, the truck crashed into the side of the Landcruiser and a shower of sparks blazed from the violent contact of steel against steel. The weight and momentum of the huge truck flung the smaller vehicle back over the verge.

Daniel fought the wheel to try and resist the thrust but the struts flew through his fingers and he thought for a moment that his left thumb was dislocated. The pain numbed him to the elbow. He hit the brakes hard and the Landcruiser slowed and allowed the truck to pull ahead, with a shriek of metal between the two vehicles as they disengaged. The Landcruiser came to rest, half over the embankment with one front wheel hanging over the cliff face.

Daniel wrung his injured hand, tears of agony welling into his eyes. Gradually he felt strength return, and with it his anger. By now the truck was five hundred yards ahead and pulling away rapidly.

With the Landcruiser in four-wheel drive, Daniel flung her into reverse. Only three of her wheels had purchase, but she heaved herself gamely back from the drop. Her near side was scraped down to bare gleaming metal where the truck had struck her.

“Okay,” Daniel snarled at Jock. “Do you want any more proof? That was a deliberate attempt to write us off. That bastard Gomo is guilty as hell.”

The truck had disappeared from view around the next curve of the highway, and Daniel hurled the Landcruiser in pursuit. “Gomo isn’t going to let us get ahead of him,” Daniel told Jock. “I’m going to get on to that truck and take him out of it.”

“I want no more part of this business,” Jock muttered. “Leave it to the police now, damn it.”

Daniel ignored his protest and pushed the Landcruiser to its top speed. As they came through the bend the refrigerator truck was only a few hundred yards ahead. The gap between them closed swiftly.

Daniel studied the other vehicle. The scrape marks down its side were not as extensive as the damage to the Landcruiser and Gomo was making better speed now as the slope of the hill eased away towards the crest of the escarpment.

The double rear doors into the cargo hold were locked with a heavy vertical bar. The airtight seals were black rubber around the edge of the doors. On the nearside of the hull a steel ladder gave access to the flat roof where the cooling fans of the refrigeration equipment were housed in fibreglass pods. “I’m going to get on that ladder,” Daniel told Jock. “As soon as I’m gone, you slide over and grab the wheel.”

“Not me, man. I told you, I’ve had a gutful. Count me out.”

“Fine.” Daniel did not even glance at him. “Don’t steer! Let her crash and you with her. What’s one stupid prick less in this naughty world?”

Daniel was judging the speed and distance between the two converging vehicles. He opened his side door. The retaining catch on the door had been removed to allow unimpeded photography through the opening so the door hinged fully open, to lie flat against the side of the bonnet.

Steering with one hand, Daniel leaned out of the open door. “Take her, she’s yours,” he shouted at Jock.

Daniel hauled himself up on to the roof, the pain in his thumb forgotten. At that moment Gomo once again swung across to block the Landcruiser. As the two vehicles came together Daniel leaped across the narrow gap. He caught the rung of the side ladder and hauled his lower body out from between the steel sides of the vehicles as they clashed together again.

He had a glimpse of Jock at the driver’s wheel, pale-faced and sweating in the reflected headlights. Then the Landcruiser swerved away and fell behind the white truck, Jock steering it erratically, letting the slope slow it, finally bringing it to a halt on the side of the road.

Daniel clambered upwards, hand over hand, agile as an ape on the narrow steel rungs, and reached the flat roof of the truck. The fan housing was in the centre of the roof and a low grab-rail ran the length of the hull, fore and aft. On hands and knees Daniel worked his way forward, falling flat on his belly and clinging grimly to the rail when the centrifugal force of the truck through the bends threatened to throw him from the roof.

It took him fully five minutes to get forward above the articulated driver’s cab. He was pretty certain that Gomo had not seen him come aboard. The bulk of the cargo hold would have blocked his rear view. By now he must be fairly confident that he had discouraged the driver of the Landcruiser, for its headlights were no longer visible on the empty road behind the truck.

Daniel worked his way gingerly across to the passenger side of the cab and peered over. There was a running-board below the passenger door, and the sturdy wing mirror standing out from the side of the cab would give him a secure handhold. It only remained to find out if Gomo had taken the precaution of locking the passenger door. There was no reason why he should, Daniel comforted himself, as he looked ahead down the beams of the truck’s powerful headlights.

He waited until the road turned left. The pull would hold him against the side of the cab, rather than throwing him clear. He slid over the side and clutched at the wing mirror. For a moment his feet were kicking in air, then they hit the wide steel running-board andfound a hold. He was facing inwards, hanging on to the mirror and peering in through the side window of the cab.

Gomo turned a startled face towards him and shouted something. He tried to reach across to the locking handle of the door, but the full width of the passenger seat separated him from it and the truck slewed wildly and nearly left the road, for Gomo to grab the wheel again.

Daniel jerked open the side door and threw himself into the cab, sprawling half across the seat. Gomo punched at his face. The fist caught Daniel under the left eye and stunned him for only a moment, then Daniel seized the handle of the vacuum brake control and heaved it full on.

All the gigantic wheels of the truck locked simultaneously and, in a shrieking billow of blue smoke and scorching rubber, the truck skidded and swayed down the highway. Gomo was hurled forward out of his seat. The steering-wheel caught him in the chest and his forehead cracked against the windshield with enough force to star the glass.

Then the next wild swing of the vehicle flung him back, only semi-conscious, into his seat. Daniel reached across him and seized the steering-wheel. He held the truck straight until it came to a halt, half off the highway, with its offside wheels in the drainage ditch.

Daniel switched off the ignition and reached across Gomo to open the driver’s door. He grabbed Gomo’s shoulder and shoved him roughly out of the cab. Gomo fell the six feet to the ground and ended up on his knees. There was a lump the size and colour of a ripe fig in the centre of his forehead where he had hit the windscreen.

Daniel jumped down and stooped to catch hold of the collar of his uniform tunic. “All right.” He twisted the collar like a garotte. “You killed Johnny Nzou and his family.”

Gomo’s face was swelling and turning purple black in the vague light reflected from the truck’s headlamps. “Please, Doctor, I don’t understand. Why are you doing this?” His voice was a breathless whine as Daniel choked him.

“You lying bastard, you are as guilty–”

Gomo reached under the hem of his tunic. He wore a skinning knife in a leather sheath on his belt. Daniel heard the snap of the buckle as he released the retaining strap and caught the glint of the blade as it came free of the sheath. Daniel released his collar and jumped back as Gomo slashed upwards.

He was only just quick enough, for the blade caught in a loose fold of his shirt and sliced it like a razor. He felt the sting of it as it nicked his skin and left a shallow graze across his lower ribs.

Gomo came to his feet, holding the knife in a low underhand grip. “I kill you,” he warned, shaking his head to clear it, weaving the glittering blade in the typical knife-fighter’s on-guard stance, aiming the point at Daniel’s belly. “I kill you, you white shit-eater.” He feinted and cut in a sidearm slash and Daniel jumped back as the blade hissed an inch from his stomach.

“Yah!” Gomo chuckled thickly. “Jump, you white baboon. Run, you little white monkey.” He cut again, forcing Daniel to give ground, and then rushed at him in a furious prolonged attack that forced Daniel to scramble and dance to keep clear of the darting blade.

Gomo changed the angle of his thrusts, going lower, trying to cut Daniel’s thighs and cripple him, but always keeping the knife well covered so that Daniel could not grab at his wrist. Moving backwards, Daniel pretended to stumble on the rough footing. He dropped on one knee and put his left hand to the ground to regain his balance.

“Yah”Gomo thought he saw his opportunity and came in to finish it, but Daniel had snatched up a handful of gravel and now he pushed off and used his momentum to hurl the handful into Gomo’s face. It was an old knife-fighter’s trick, but Gomo fell for it. The gravel slashed his eyes, and deflected his thrust. Instinctively he threw up his hands to cover his face, and Daniel seized his knife-hand and wrenched it over.

They were chest to chest now, the knife held above their heads at the full stretch of their arms. Daniel snapped his head forward, butting for Gomo’s face, and caught him with the top of his forehead across the bridge of his nose. Gomo gasped and reeled backwards; and Daniel brought up his right knee into Gomo’s crotch, catching him squarely, crushing his genitals.

This time Gomo screamed and his right arm lost its force.

Daniel swung it down and slammed the knuckles of the clenched knife-hand against the steel side of the truck. The knife spun from Gomo’s nerveless fingers, and Daniel hooked him behind the heels with one foot, and heaved him backwards so that he tripped and went sprawling into the drainage ditch beside the highway.

Before Gomo could recover his balance and rise, Daniel had snatched up the knife and was standing over him. He placed the point of the blade under Gomo’s chin and pricked the soft skin of his throat so that a single droplet of blood welled out on to the silver steel like a bright cabochon ruby.

“Keep still,” he grated, “or I’ll cut your gizzard out, you murdering bastard.” It took a few seconds for him to recover his breath. “All right. Now get up, slowly.”

Gomo came to his feet, clutching his injured genitals. Daniel forced him back against the side of the truck, the knife still pressed to his throat. “You’ve got the ivory in the truck,” he accused. “Let’s have a look at it, my friend.”

“No,” Gomo whispered. “No ivory. I don’t know what you want. You are mad, man.”

“Where are the keys to the hold?” Daniel demanded, and Gomo swivelled his eyes without moving his head.

“In my pocket.”

“Turn around, slowly,” Daniel ordered. “Face the side of the truck.” Gomo obeyed Daniel whipped his arm around his throat in a stranglehold from behind and shoved him forward so that his lumped forehead cracked against the steel hull. Gomo cried out with the pain. “Give me an excuse to do that again,” Daniel whispered in his ear. “The sound of your pig squeals is sweet music.”

He pressed the knife into Gomo’s back at the level of his kidneys, just hard enough to let him feel the point of it through the cloth of his tunic. “Get the keys.” He pricked him a little harder and Gomo reached into his pocket. The keys tinkled as he brought them out.

Still holding him in a strangler’s grip, Daniel frog-marched him to the rear of the truck.

“The lock,” he snapped. Gomo fitted the key and the open mechanism turned easily. “Okay, now get the handcuffs off your belt,” he ordered. The steel manacles were regulation issue for all rangers on anti-poaching duty. “Snap one link over your right wrist,” Daniel told him. “And give me the key.”

The cuffs dangling from his wrist, Gomo passed the key over his shoulder. Daniel slipped it into his pocket, then snapped the second link of the handcuffs over the steel bracing of the hull. Now Gomo was securely chained to the bodywork of the truck and Daniel released his grip on him and turned the locking handle of the rear double doors.

He swung them open. A gust of icy air flowed out of the refrigerated interior and the smell of elephant meat was gamey and rank. The inside of the hold was in darkness, but Daniel jumped up onto the tailgate and groped for the lightswitch. The striplight on the roof flickered and then lit up the refrigerated compartment with a cold blue glow. Hunks of butchered carcass streaked and marbled with white fat hung from the rows of meat-hooks along the roof rails. There were tons of flesh, packed in so closely that Daniel could see only the first rank of carcasses. He dropped on his knees and peered into the narrow space below them. The steel floor was puddled with dripping blood, but that was all.

Daniel felt a sudden swoop of dismay in his guts. He had expected to see piles of tusks packed beneath the hanging carcasses. He scrambled to his feet and pushed his way into the compartment. The cold took his breath away, and the touch of the raw frozen flesh as he brushed against it was loathsome and disgusting, but he wriggled his way deeper into the hold, determined to find where they had concealed the ivory.

He gave up after ten minutes. There was no place where they could have hidden such a bulky cargo. He jumped down to ground level. His clothing was stained from contact with the raw meat. On hands and knees he crawled under the chassis of the truck, searching for a secret compartment.

When he crawled out again, Gomo crowed at him gleefully, “No ivory, truck. I tell you, no ivory. You break government. You beat me. Plenty trouble for you now, white boy.”

“We haven’t finished yet,” Daniel promised him. “We haven’t finished until you sing me a little song, the song about what you and the Chinaman did with the ivory.”

“No ivory,” Gomo repeated, but Daniel grabbed his shoulder and swung him around to face the side of the truck.

With one deft movement he unlocked the link of the cuffs from the bodywork, twisted both Gomo’s wrists up behind his back and locked them there. “Okay, brother,” he muttered grimly. “Let’s go where we have a little light to work in.” He lifted Gomo’s manacled hands up between his shoulderblades and marched him to the front of the truck. He handcuffed him to the front fender between the headlights. Both Gomo’s hands were pinned behind his back. He was helpless. “Johnny Nzou was my friend,” he told Gomo softly. “You raped his wife and his little daughters. You beat his son’s brains out all over the wall. You shot Johnny–”

“No, not me. I know nothing,” Gomo screamed. “I kill nobody. No ivory, no kill.”

Daniel went on quietly, as though Gomo had not interjected. “You must believe me when I tell you that I’m going to enjoy doing this. Every time you squeal, I will think of Johnny Nzou, and I’ll be glad.”

“I know nothing. You mad.”

Daniel slipped the knife-blade under Gomo’s belt and sliced through the leather. His khaki uniform trousers sagged down around his hips. Daniel pulled the waistband open and thrust the blade into his trouser top. “How many wives have you got, Gomo?” he asked. “Four? Five? How many?” He slit through the waistband and Gomo’s trousers slid down around his ankles. “I think your wives want you to tell me about the ivory, Gomo. They want you to tell me about Johnny Nzou and how he died.”

Daniel pulled the elasticised top of Gomo’s underpants down around his knees. “Let’s have a look at what you’ve got.” He smiled coldly. “I think your wives are going to be very unhappy, Gomo.” Daniel took the front tails of Gomo’s tunic and ripped them apart so violently that the buttons popped off and flew away into the darkness beyond the headlights. He pulled the separate flaps of the tunic back over Gomo’s shoulders, so that he was naked from the throat to the knees. Gomo’s body hair covered his chest and paunch with tight black balls of wool.

His genitals were massively bunched at the base of his belly, nestled in their own flocculent pelt.

“Sing me a little song about the ivory and Mr. Ning,” Daniel invited, and used the flat of the blade to separate Gomo’s dangling penis from the bunch. Gomo gasped and tried to shrink away from the cold metallic touch, but the radiator grill pressed against his back and he could not move.

“Talk, Gomo, even if it is only to say goodbye to your own matondo.”

“You are mad,” Gomo gasped. “I don’t know what you want.”

“What I want,” said Daniel, “is to cut this off at the root.” The thick tube of flesh was draped over the flat of the blade. It looked like the trunk of a new-born elephant, long and dark, knotted with veins and with a wrinkled and hooded tip. “I want to cut this off and force you to kiss it goodbye, Gomo.”

“I didn’t kill Johnny Nzou.” Gomo’s voice broke. “It wasn’t me.”

“What about his wife and daughters, Gomo? Did you use this big ugly rod of yours on them?”

“No, no! You are mad. I didn’t…”

“Come on, Gomo. All I have to do is turn the knife a little, like this. Daniel rolled his wrist slowly, bringing the razor edge uppermost.

Gomo’s organ was dangling over it, and then the thin skin split. It was just a scratch, but Gomo screamed. “Stop!” he bleated. “I will tell you. Yes, all right, I will tell you everything I know. Stop, please stop!”

“That’s good.” Daniel encouraged him. “Tell me about Chetti Singh…” He introduced the name with assurance. It was a flier, but Gomo accepted.

“Yes,” I tell you about him, “if you don’t cut me. Please don’t cut me.”

“Armstrong.” Another voice startled Daniel. He had not heard the Landcruiser come up. It must have arrived while he was searching the cold compartment of the truck, but now Jock stood in the peripheral shadows of the headlights. “Leave him, Armstrong.” Jock’s voice was rough with determination. “Get away from that man,” he ordered.

“You keep out of this,” Daniel snapped at him, but Jock stepped closer and with a start Daniel saw that he carried the AK rifle. He handled it with surprising competence and authority.

“Leave him alone,” Jock ordered. “You’ve gone too far much too far.”

“The man is a murderer and a criminal,” Daniel protested, but he was forced to step back before the menace of the AK 47.

Jock was pointing it at his belly. “You haven’t any proof. There is no ivory,” Jock told him. “You don’t have anything.”

“He was confessing,” Daniel told him angrily. “If you just keep out of it–”

“You were torturing him,” Jock answered as angrily. “You had a knife to his balls. Of course, he was confessing. He has rights; you can’t abuse those rights. Unchain him now; let him go!”

“You are a bleeding heart,” Daniel turned. “This is an animal–”

“He is a human being,” Jock contradicted. “And I have to stop you abusing him, or else I’m as guilty as you are. I don’t want to spend the next ten years in prison. Turn him loose.”

“He will confess first, or I’ll cut his balls out. Daniel seized a handful of Gomo’s genitals and pulled. The loose skin and flesh stretched like shiny black rubber and Daniel held the knifeblade threateningly over it.

Gomo screamed, and Jock lifted the AK 47 and fired. He aimed a foot over Daniel’s head. The muzzle blast whipped through Daniel’s thick sweatsoaked curls and sent him reeling backwards clutching his ears.

“I warned you, Daniel.” Jock’s expression was grim. “Give me the keys of the handcuffs.”

Daniel was dazed by the blast, and Jock fired again. The bullet ploughed into the gravel between Daniel’s boots. “I mean it, Danny. I swear it. I’ll kill you before I let you suck me any further into this business.”

“You saw Johnny…” Daniel shook his head and held his ears, but the muzzle blast had temporarily stunned him. “I also saw you threaten to emasculate this man. That’s enough. Give me the keys or the next shot is through one of your knee-caps.”

Daniel saw that he meant it and reluctantly tossed him the keys. All right, now stand well back, Jock ordered. He kept the rifle pointed at Daniel’s belly as he unlocked one of the cuffs from Gomo’s wrist, and handed him the key.

“You bloody idiot,” Daniel swore with frustration. “Another minute, and I would have had him. I would have found out who killed Johnny and what happened to the ivory.”

Gomo unlocked his other wrist and swiftly pulled up his trousers and closed his tunic. Now that he was unchained and dressed, Gomo recovered his bravado. “He is talking shit!” His voice was loud and defiant. “I didn’t say nothing. I don’t know about Nzou. He was alive when we left Chiwewe.”

“All right. You can tell all that to the police,” Jock stopped Gomo. “I’m taking you to Harare in the truck. Fetch my camera and bag from the Landcruiser. They are on the front seat.”

Gomo hurried back to where the Landcruiser was parked.

“Listen, Jock. Just give me another five minutes,” Daniel pleaded, but Jock waved the rifle at him. “You and I are finished, Danny. First thing I’m going to do when I reach Harare is make a full report to the police. I’m going to give them chapter and verse.” Gomo came back, lugging the Sony video recorder and Jock’s canvas duffel bag.

“Yes, you tell the police you saw this mad white shit-eater cut my cock,” Gomo shouted. “You tell them no ivory…”

“Get in the truck,” Jock ordered him. And start up.” When Gomo obeyed he turned back to Daniel. “I’m sorry, Danny. You’re on your own. You get no more help from me. I’ll give evidence against you if they ask me to. I’ve got to cover my own arse, man.”

“You can’t help being a yellow belly,” Daniel nodded. “But weren’t you the one always sounding off about justice, what about Johnny and Mavis?”

“What you were doing didn’t have anything to do with justice,” Jock raised his voice above the rumble of the truck’s diesel engine. “You were playing the sheriff and the posse and the hangman, Danny. That wasn’t justice; it was vengeance. I want no part of it. You know my address. You can send the money you owe me there. So long, Danny. Sorry it had to end this way.”

He climbed up to the passenger side of the cab. “Don’t try to stop us again.” He brandished the AK 47. I know how to use this. Jock slammed the door and Gomo swung the truck back on to the highway.

Daniel was left standing in the darkness, staring after the bright red gemstones of the tail-lights until a bend in the road hid them.

His ears were still singing from the concussion of the rifle blast. He felt dizzy and nauseous. He staggered slightly as he walked back to where Jock had left the Landcruiser parked, and slumped into the driver’s seat. For a little longer his anger sustained him, anger at Cheng and his accomplices, at Gomo, and most of all at Jock and his interference.

Then slowly his anger evaporated and the seriousness of his own predicament began to sink in. He had acted wildly and dangerously. He had made accusations which he could not support; he had damaged property, and he had endangered life and committed aggravated assault on a government official, if not grievous bodily harm. They could get him on half a dozen charges.

Then once again he thought of Johnny and his family, and his personal peril was of no significance.

“I was so close to breaking the whole scheme,” he thought bitterly. “Another few minutes with Gomo and I would have had them. I almost had them for you, Johnny.”

He had to decide on his next actions, but his head was aching, and it was hard to think logically. There was no point in chasing after Gomo. He was alerted, and he had somehow managed to get rid of the ivory.

What other courses of action were open to him? Ning Cheng Gong, of course. He was the key to the entire plot. However, the only connection to him, now that the ivory had disappeared, was Johnny’s cryptic note and the footprint he had left at the murder scene.

Then there was Chetti Singh. Gomo had tacitly admitted that he knew the Sikh. What had he said when Daniel had tried him with the name?

“Yes, I tell you about him, if you don’t cut me…”

There was also the band of poachers. He wondered if Isaac Mtwetwe had been able to intercept the gang on the Zambezi crossing, and take prisoners. Isaac would not have the same scruples as Jock. Johnny had also been Isaac’s friend. He would know how to get information out of a captured poacher.

I’ll ring Mana Pools from the police post at Chirundu, he decided, and started the Landcruiser. He U-turned and headed back down the escarpment. The Chirundu bridge police station was closer than Karoi. He had to make a statement to the police and make sure that a police investigation was under way as soon as possible. The police must be warned about Johnny’s note and the bloody footprints.

Daniel’s head still ached. He stopped the Landcruiser for a few minutes while he found a bottle of Panadol tablets in the first-aid kit and washed down a couple of them with a mug of coffee from the vacuum flask. While he drove on the pain abated and he started to put his thoughts into order.

It was almost four o’clock in the morning when he reached Chirundu bridge. There was a solitary corporal in the police charge office. His arms were folded on the desk in front of him, cradling his head. He was so soundly asleep that Daniel had to shake him vigorously, and his eyes were swollen and bloodshot when at last he raised his head, and blinked uncomprehendingly at Daniel. I want to report a murder, a multiple murder. Daniel began the long laborious process of getting the official machinery in motion.

When the corporal seemed unable to decide upon the correct procedure, Daniel sent him to call the member-in-charge from his rondavel at the back of the station house. When the sergeant came into the charge office at last, he was dressed in full uniform, including Sam Browne belt and cap, but he was still half asleep. “Ring CID in Harare,” Daniel urged him. “They must send a unit to Chiwewe.”

“First you must make a statement,” the sergeant insisted.

There was no typewriter in the charge office; this was a remote rural station. The sergeant took down Daniel’s statement in halting childlike longhand. His lips moved as he spelled out each separate letter silently. Daniel wanted to take the ballpoint away from him and get it down himself.

“Damn it, sergeant. Those dead people are lying out there. The killers are getting away while we sit here.” The sergeant went on placidly with his composition, and Daniel corrected his spelling and turned with exasperation.

However, the pace of the dictation allowed him to phrase his statement carefully. He set down the timetable of the previous day’s events: the time that he had left Chiwewe and said goodbye to Johnny Nzou; the time he had found the signs of the raiding party and decided to return to the headquarters camp with a warning; and the time that he had met the refrigerator trucks on the road in company with the ambassador’s Mercedes.

He described his conversation with Ambassador Ning and hesitated, wondering whether to mention the bloodstain that he had noticed on his blue slacks. it would sound like an accusation. The hell with protocol, he decided, and described in detail the blue slacks and the training shoes with fish-scale patterned soles. They’ll have to investigate now. He felt a grim satisfaction, as he went on to describe his return to Chiwewe and the carnage he had found there.

He made sure to mention the note in Johnny’s hand and the fishscale pattern of the bloody footprint on the office floor without specifically relating either to the Taiwanese ambassador. Let them make their own inferences.

He had a great deal of difficulty when it came to describing his pursuit of the Mercedes and the refrigerator trucks. He had to give his motives without incriminating himself, or pointing too definitely at the suspicions he entertained towards Ning Cheng Gong.

“I followed the convoy to ask them if they had any knowledge of the missing ivory,” he dictated. “Although I was unable to catch up with Ambassador Ning and the leading truck, I did speak to Ranger Gomo whom I met on the Karoi road and who was driving the second refrigerator truck. He denied any knowledge of these events and allowed me to inspect the contents of the truck. I found no ivory.”

It galled him to have to admit this, but he had to cover himself against any charges that Gomo might bring against him later. “I then determined that my duty was to contact the nearest police station and report the deaths of the Chiwewe warden, his family and staff, and the burning and destruction of buildings and other property.”

It was well after daybreak when Daniel could at last sign the handwritten statement, and only then would the police sergeant respond to his urging to telephone CID headquarters in Harare. This led to a protracted telephone discussion between the sergeant and a series of increasingly senior detectives in Harare as one passed him on to the other. This was the pace of Africa and Daniel gritted his teeth.

“AWA,” he told himself. “Africa Wins Again.”

At last it was ordered that the sergeant should drive out to Chiwewe camp in the station Landrover while a team of detectives flew down from Harare to land at the Park’s airstrip. “Do you want me to come out with you to Chiwewe?” Daniel asked, when the sergeant finally relinquished the telephone and began preparations for his expedition to the camp.

The sergeant looked nonplussed by the question. He had received no instructions from CID as to what to do with the witness. “You leave an address and telephone number where we can contact you if we need you,” he decided, after a great deal of frowning thought.

Daniel was relieved to be turned loose. Since arriving at the Chirundu police station, he had had many hours in which to consider the situation, and make his plans to cover every contingency.

If Isaac Mtwetwe had been able to capture any of the poachers, that would still be the swiftest path to Ning Cheng Gong, but he had to talk to Isaac before he handed over his prisoners to the police.

“I want to use your telephone,” he told the police corporal as soon as the station commander and his unit of armed constables had driven away in the green Landrover, heading for Chiwewe.

“Police telephone. “The corporal shook his head. “Not public telephone.”

Daniel produced a blue ten Zim dollar note and laid it on the desk in front of him. “It is only a local call,” he explained, and the banknote vanished miraculously. The corporal smiled and waved him towards the telephone. Daniel had made a friend.

Isaac Mtwetwe answered the call almost immediately the Karoi telephone exchange made the connection to Mana Pools.

“Isaac,” Daniel blurted with relief. “When did you get back?”

“I have just walked into my office this minute,” Isaac told him. “We got back ten minutes ago. I have one man wounded. I must get him to hospital.”

“You made contact, then?”

“Yes, we made contact. Like you said, Danny, a big gang, bad guys.”

“Did you get any prisoners, Isaac?” Daniel demanded eagerly. “If you managed to grab a couple of them, we’re home and dry.”

Chapter 8

Isaac Mtwetwe stood at the wheel of the twenty-foot assault craft and ran downriver in the night. His rangers squatted on the deck below the gunwale and huddled into their greatcoats, for it was cold out on the water with the wind of their passage accentuating the chill of the river mist.

The outboard motor was running rough and cutting out intermittently. Twice Isaac had to let the boat drift while he went back to work on it. It badly needed a full overhaul, but there was never enough foreign exchange available for spares to be imported. He got her running again and pointed the bows downstream.

A thick slice of moon spiked up above the dark trees that lined the bank of the Zambezi. It gave Isaac just enough light to push the boat up to top speed. Although he knew each curve and stretch of the river intimately for the next fifty miles, right down to Tete and the Mozambique border, the shallows and rocky outcrops were too complex even for him to run in complete darkness. The glow of moonlight turned the patches of river mist to iridescent pearl dust and gave to the open water a lustre like polished black obsidian. The subdued hum of the motor and the speed of their progress gave no advance warning. They drew level with the hippopotamuses feeding in the reedbanks before the monstrous amphibians were aware of their arrival.

In panic they tobogganed down the steep and slippery paths into the river, and went through the surface in a welter of spray. The flocks of wild duck roosting in the lagoons and quiet backwaters were more alert. The assault boat’s approach sent them aloft on whistling wings, silhouetted against the rising moon.

Isaac knew exactly where he was heading. He had been a freedom fighter during the bush war and he had crossed this same river to raid the white farms and harass the security forces of Ian Smith’s illegal regime. He knew all the techniques and tricks that the poachers employed. Some of them had been his comrades-in-arms in the struggle, but they were the new enemy now. He hated them as much as he had ever hated the Selous Scouts or the Rhodesian Light Infantry.

The Zambezi was almost half a mile wide along this stretch below Chirundu and Mana Pools. The raiders would need craft to cross its mighty green flood. They would get them the same way the guerrillas once had, from the local fisherfolk.

The Zambezi supports an itinerant population of fishermen who build their villages upon her banks. The villages are impermanent, for the tenor of their lives is dictated by the Zambezi’s moods. When the river floods her banks and inundates the flood plains, the people must move to higher ground.

They must follow the migrations of the shoals of tilapia and tiger fish and barbeled catfish on which they live, so every few months the clusters of rude thatched huts with their fishsmoking racks and smouldering fires are abandoned and allowed to fall into decay as the tribe moves on.

It was part of Isaac’s duty to monitor the movements of the fisherfolk, for their exploitation of the river had a profound effect on the river ecology. Now he smelled the smoke and the odour of drying fish on the night air, and throttled back the motor. Softly he crept in towards the northern bank. If the poachers had come from Zambia, that was where they would return.

The odour of fish was stronger and tendrils of smoke drifted out low across the water to mingle with the mist. There were four huts with shaggy thatched roofs in an angle of the bank, and four long dugout canoes drawn up on the narrow beach below them.

Isaac nosed the assault craft on to the beach and jumped ashore, leaving one of his rangers to hold the bows. An old woman crawled out of the low door of one of the huts. She wore only a skirt of lechwe antelope. skins around her waist and her breasts were empty and pendulous.

“I see you, old mother,” Isaac greeted her respectfully. He always took pains to maintain good relations with the riverfolk.

“I see you, my son, the old woman giggled,” and Isaac smelled the rank odour of cannabis on her. The Batonka people pound the weed into a paste, then mould it with fresh cow-dung into balls which they dry in the sun and smoke in clay pipes with reed mouthpieces.

The Government had granted them special dispensation to continue the tradition. It was particularly prevalent amongst the old women of the tribe. “Are all your men in their huts?” Isaac asked quietly. “Are all the canoes on the beach?”

The old woman blew her nose before she replied. She blocked one nostril with her thumb and from the other shot a shaft of silver mucus into the fire. She wiped the residue from her upper lip with the palm of her hand. “All my sons and their wives are asleep in the huts, and their children with them,” she cackled.

“You saw no strange men with guns who wished you to ferry them across the river?” Isaac insisted, and the old woman shook her head and scratched herself.

“We saw no strangers.”

“I honour you, old mother,” Isaac told her formally, and pressed a small paper packet of sugar into her withered paw. “Stay in peace.”

He ran back to the assault craft. The ranger cast off and jumped aboard as soon as Isaac started the motor. The next village was three miles further downstream. Once again Isaac went ashore. He knew the headman of this village and found him sitting alone in the smoke from the fish-drying fires to keep off the singing clouds of malarial mosquitoes. Twenty years before, the headman-had lost one of his feet to a crocodile, but he was still one of the most intrepid boatmen on the river.

Isaac greeted him and gave him a packet of cigarettes and squatted beside him in the smoke. “You sit alone, Babo. Why can’t you sleep? Are there things that trouble you?”

“An old man has many memories to trouble him.” The headman was evasive. “Like strangers with guns who demand passage in your canoes?” Isaac asked. “Did you give them what they wanted, Babo?”

The headman shook his head. “One of the children saw them crossing the flood plains and ran to warn the village. We had time to hide the canoes in the reedbeds and run away into the bush.”

“How many men?” Isaac encouraged him.

The old man showed the fingers of both hands twice. “They were hard men with guns, and faces like lions,” he whispered. “We were afraid.”

“When was this, Babo?”

“The night before last,” the headman replied. “When they found no people in the village and no canoes, they were angry. They shouted at each other and waved their guns, but in the end they went away.” He pointed with his chin, eastwards down the river. “But now I am afraid they will return. That is why I sit awake while the village sleeps.”

“Are the people of Mbepura still camped at the place of the Red Birds?” Isaac asked, and the headman nodded.

“I think that after these hard men left here, they went down to Mbepura’s village.”

“Thank you, old father.”

The place of the Red Birds was named for the flocks of carmine-breasted bee-eaters which burrow their nests into the steep cutaway bank of the river at that point. Mbepura’s village was on the north bank, across the river from the clay cliff of the breeding colony. Isaac approached it with the engine idling softly, allowing the flow of the Zambezi to drift him down. All his rangers were alert. They had discarded their greatcoats and now crouched down below the gunwale with their weapons ready.

With a soft burst of the engine, Isaac pushed in closer to the bank.

Mbepura’s village was another tiny group of shaggy huts near the water’s edge. They seemed deserted and the drying fires below the fish-racks had been allowed to burn out. However, he saw in the gleam of the moon that the mooring poles for the canoes were still standing in the shallow muddy landing, but the canoes were missing. The fisherfolk lived by their canoes, their most precious possession.

Isaac let the assault craft drift on downstream well below the village before he gunned the motor and cut back across the flow of the Zambezi, crossing half a mile of open water to the south bank. If the gang had crossed here, then they would be coming back the same way.

Isaac checked the time, turning the luminous dial of his wristwatch to catch the moonlight. He calculated the distance from Chiwewe headquarters and divided it by the probable rate of march of the poachers, and made allowance for the fact that they were probably carrying heavy loads of plundered ivory.

He looked up at the moon. Already it was paling at the approach of dawn. He could expect the returning raiders to get back to the Zambezi bank any time within the next two or three hours.

“If I can find where they have cached the canoes,” he muttered.

His guess was that they had commandeered Mbepura’s entire flotilla of canoes. He recalled that on his last visit to the village there had been seven or eight of these frail craft, each of them hollowed out from a massive log of the Kigelia tree. Each of them could accommodate six or seven passengers for the journey across the great river.

The gang would probably have dragooned the men from the village to act as boatmen. The handling of the canoes required skill and experience, for the canoes were cranky and unstable, especially under a heavy load. He guessed that they would probably have left the boatmen under guard on the south bank while they marched on to Chiwewe.

“If I can find the canoes, I’ve got them cold,” Isaac decided. He turned the assault boat in towards the south bank a little downstream from where he judged that the canoes would have crossed.

When he found the entrance to a lagoon he pressed the sharp bows into the dense stand of papyrus reeds that blocked the mouth. He cut the engine and his rangers used handfuls of the tough papyrus stems to pull themselves deeper into the reedbed while Isaac stood in the bows and sounded for bottom with a paddle.

As soon as it was shallow enough, Isaac and one of his senior rangers waded ashore, leaving the rest of the party to guard the boat. On dry land Isaac gave his ranger whispered orders, sending him down-river to search for the canoes and check the bank for signs of the passage of a large party of marauders. When he had gone, Isaac set off in the opposite direction, upstream. He went alone, swiftly and silently, moving like a wraith in the river mist.

He had judged it accurately. He had not gone more than half a mile upstream when he smelt smoke. It was too strong and fresh to originate from the village on the far side of the broad river, and Isaac knew that there were no habitations on this bank. This was part of the National Park.

He moved in quietly towards the source of the smoke. At this point the bank was a sheer red clay cliff into which the bee eaters burrowed their subterranean nests. However, there was a break in the cliff directly below where he crouched. it was a narrow gulley, choked with riverine bush that formed a natural landing-place from the river.

The faint glimmer of coming dawn gave Isaac just sufficient light to make out the encampment in the gulley below him. The canoes were drawn up well out of the water so that they would be concealed from anyone searching from a boat. There were seven canoes, the entire flotilla from Mbepura’s village across the river.

Nearby, the boatmen were lying around two small smoky fires. They were wrapped in karosses of animal skin and, as protection from mosquitoes, each of them had drawn the covering completely over his head, so they looked like corpses laid out in a morgue. An armed poacher sat at each fire with his AK 47 rifle across his lap, guarding the sleeping boatmen and making certain that none of them sneaked away to the beached canoes nearby. “Danny figured it exactly right,” Isaac told himself. “They are waiting for the return of the raiding party.”

He drew back from the cliff edge and silently circled inland. Within two hundred yards he intersected a well-trodden game trail that left the river and headed directly southward in the direction of Chiwewe headquarters camp.

Isaac followed it for a short distance until the game trail dipped through a shallow dry water-course. The bed of the water-course was of sugary white sand and the prints that it held were plain to decipher even in the uncertain pre-dawn light. A large party of men in Indian file had trodden deeply, but their tracks were eroded and overlaid by the tracks of both large and small game. Twenty-four hours old, Isaac estimated.

This was the route on their outward march. Almost the raiding party had take certainly they would use the same trail on their return march to rejoin the waiting canoes.

Isaac found a vantage point from which he was able to overlook a long stretch of the trail while remaining well concealed in a patch of dense Jesse bush. At his back there was a secure escape route for him down a shallow donga, the banks of which were screened with a heavy growth of rank elephant grass. He settled in to wait. The light strengthened swiftly and within minutes he could make out the full length of the game trail winding away into the mopane forest.

The sunrise chorus of birds began with the noisy duet of a pair of Heughlin robins in the donga behind him, and then the first flight of wild duck sped overhead. Their arrowhead formation was crisp and black against the tangerine and heron blue of the dawn sky.

Isaac crouched in his ambush position. There was no way that he could be certain how long the poachers might take on the return march from Chiwewe. Danny had reckoned on ten hours or so. If he were correct they would be arriving any minute now. Isaac checked his wristwatch again.

However, Danny’s estimate might be wildly inaccurate. Isaac prepared himself for a long wait. During the war, they had at times lain in ambush position for days on end, once for five days when they had slept and eaten and defecated without rising from where they lay. Patience was the hunter’s and the soldier’s single most important virtue.

In the distance he heard a baboon bark, that booming alarm call with which the wily ape greets the appearance of a predator. The cry was taken up by other members of the troop, and then gradually silence returned as the danger receded or the baboons retreated deeper into the forest. Now Isaac’s nerves were strung out with tension. He knew that the apes might have barked at a leopard, but they would have reacted the same way to the passing of a file of human beings.

Fifteen minutes later and much closer he heard a grey lourie cry “Go away! Go away!” in a harsh screech. Another one of the sentinels of the bush was reacting to the presence of danger.

Isaac never stirred, but he blinked his eyes rapidly to clear his vision. Minutes later, he picked out another less obtrusive sound from the subtle orchestra of the wilderness. It was the whirring chatter of a honey guide. The sound told him where to look and he spotted the small nondescript brown bird in the top branches of a mopane far ahead. It flitted above the game trail, flicking its wings, darting from tree to tree and uttering seductive entreaties. If they were prepared to follow the bird, it would lead the honey badger or man to a hive of wild bees.

While they robbed the hive the honey guide would hover in close waiting for its share of the comb and the grubs that it contained. The bird’s specially adapted digestive system was capable of breaking down the beeswax and deriving nourishment where no other creature could. Legend maintained that if you failed to leave the bird his portion of the spoils, then the next time he would lead you to a deadly mamba or a man-eating lion.

The honey guide drew closer to where Isaac waited, and suddenly he discerned obscure movement in the forest below the fluttering bird. Swiftly the shadowy shapes resolved into a column of men moving down the game trail. The head of the column drew level with the head of the donga where Isaac lay.

Although they were dressed in tattered and filthy clothing with an eclectic selection of hcadwear that ranged from baseball caps to faded military floppies, each of them carried an AK 47 rifle and an elephant tusk.

Some of them carried the tusk balanced upon their heads, the natural curve of the ivory drooping down fore and aft. Others carried it over the shoulder, using one hand to balance the burden while the other hand held the assault rifle. Most of them had woven a pad of bark string and soft grass to cushion the galling weight of the ivory on their scalps or collar-bones.

The agony that their loads were causing after all these hours and miles of trek was evident on their contorted faces. Yet to each of the raiders the tusk they carried represented an enormous fortune, and they would suffer permanent physical damage rather than abandon it.

The man leading the column was short and squat, with thick bow-legs and a bull neck. The mellow early light caught the glossy scar down the side of his face. “Sali,” Isaac hissed as he recognised him. He was the most notorious of all the Zambian poachers. Twice before their paths had crossed, and each time it had cost the lives of good men.

He passed close to where Isaac lay at a swinging jog-trot, carrying the thick honey-coloured tusk balanced on his head. He alone of all his men showed no signs of distress from the long march.

Isaac counted the poachers as they passed his position. The slower and weaker ones had fallen far behind the killing pace that Sali set, so the column was strung out. It took almost seven minutes by Isaac’s wristwatch for all of them to go by.

Nineteen. Isaac counted the last pair as they limped past. Greedily they had selected tusks too heavy for their own strength and they were paying the price now.

Isaac let them go, but the moment they disappeared in the direction of the river, he rose from his ambush position and slipped away into the donga. He moved with extreme caution for he could not be certain that there were not still other members of the gang on the trail behind him.

The assault boat was where he had left it, moored in the reeds at the entrance to the lagoon. Isaac waded out alongside the boat and swung himself in over the gunwale. He noticed that the man he had sent down river had returned.

Quietly he told his men what he had found, and he watched their expressions. They were good men, all three of them, but the odds were formidable even for them, and the enemy were hard men with faces like lions, as the headman had described them. “We will take them on the water,” Isaac told them. “And we will not wait for them to fire the first shot. They are armed, and they are carrying ivory in the Park. That is enough. We will take them by surprise when they expect us least.

Robert Mugabe, the president of Zimbabwe, had issued a directive that was unequivocal. They had the right to shoot on sight. Too many Parks men had been killed in these clashes to justify the usual niceties of a formal challenge.

The expressions of the listening rangers hardened and they hefted their weapons with renewed confidence. Isaac ordered them to work the boat out of the reeds and as soon as they reached open water he cranked the starter motor. The engine balked and fired roughly and cut out.

He cranked it again and again until the battery became sluggish.

They were drifting away swiftly down stream.

Muttering angrily, Isaac hurried back and pulled the cover off the motor.

While he worked on it he was vividly aware that upstream the gang would be loading the plundered ivory into the canoes and preparing to cross back into their own territory and safety.

He left the motor uncovered and ran forward to the controls.

This time the motor fired and ran, surged and then faded. He pumped the throttle and she surged again and then settled to a steady beat. The engine whined shrilly as he turned across the current and ran back upstream.

The sound of the unmuted motor carried far ahead, and it must have alerted the gang. As Isaac drove the assault boat around the next bend, all the canoes were strung out across the river racing for the north shore.

The rising sun was behind Isaac’s back and the broad stretch of water was lit like a theatre stage. The Zambezi was bright emerald green, the papyrus beds were crowned with gold where the sun’s rays struck them. The canoes were starkly lit. Each of the frail craft carried a boatman and three passengers, together with a full load of ivory. Their free-board was only the width of a man’s hand, and they lay so low in the water that the men seemed to be crouched on the very surface.

The boatmen were paddling frantically. Their long spearshaped paddles flashed in the sunlight as they drove for the far bank. The leading canoe was already within a hundred yards of the Zambian papyrus beds.

The propeller of the Yamaha carved a lacy wake from the glossy green surface as Isaac swung the boat in a long curving trajectory to head off the leading canoe from the sanctuary of the reeds.

As the two vessels closed, Isaac made out the scarred visage of Sali . He squatted in the warped bows, turning his head awkwardly to glare back at them, unable to move without upsetting the delicate trim of the canoe.

“This time we’ve got you,” Isaac whispered, as he pushed the throttle forward to the stop, and the Yamaha shrieked.

Suddenly Sali rose to his feet and the canoe rocked wildly under him. Water slopped in over the wooden sides and the canoe began to flood and settle. Sali shouted a threat at Isaac and he lifted the AK his face was contorted into a mask of fury and fired a long continuous burst at the boat racing down on him.

Bullets slammed into the hull and one of the instrument gauges on the control console in front of Isaac exploded. He ducked, but held her on course to ram the canoe.

Soli flicked the empty magazine out of the rifle, and loaded another from his bandolier. He fired again. The bright brass cases sparkled in the sunlight as they were spewed from the breech. One of the rangers in the front of the assault boat cried out and clutched at his stomach as he tumbled to the deck, and at that moment the bows of the assault boat crashed into the side of the canoe at thirty knots. The brittle kigelia wood shattered, and the men in her were hurled into the river.

At the last moment before the collision, Sali threw the AK 47 aside and dived overboard. He tried to force his body deep beneath the water to escape the speeding hull. He thought he could cover the last few yards to the edge of the reedbed without surfacing and showing himself again.

However, his lungs were full of air and the buoyancy prevented him diving deeply enough. Although his head and body were angled downwards, his feet were only a few inches below the surface.

The propeller of the Yamaha was spinning at peak revolutions as it passed over his left leg. It took his foot off cleanly at the ankle and went over his calf muscles like the blade of a bread-slicing machine, shredding the meat down to the bone.

Then the assault boat was past, turning back steeply with Isaac spinning the wheel. She leaned out into the turn as he lined up the bows for the next canoe in the straggling line. He hit it without a check, steering into the fragile hull and spilling its crew into the river, driving it under and running on, swinging into the next turn like a slalom racer weaving through the poles.

The men in the third canoe saw them coming and threw themselves over the side an instant before the bows struck and then they were splashing and screaming as the swift green current carried them away.

Isaac spun the wheel back the other way, and the next canoe was dead ahead. The crew were shouting and pleading and firing wildly. The volleys of bullets kicked up fountains of spray all around the approaching assault craft in the moments before it struck and trod the shattered canoe under.

The remaining canoes had turned back and were paddling desperately for the south bank. Isaac overtook them effortlessly and smashed in the stern of the nearest vessel. He felt the engine check and shudder as the spinning propeller bit into living human flesh and then it surged forward again.

The last canoes reached the south bank and the poachers spilled out of them and tried to clamber up the sheer cliff. The red clay crumbled under their clawing fingers.

Isaac throttled back and turned the bows upstream holding the assault boat against the current. “I am a Parks warden,” Isaac yelled across at them. “You are under arrest. Stand where you are. Do not try to escape or I will fire upon you.” One of the poachers still clutched his rifle in his hand. He almost reached the top of the bank before the clay broke away under his feet and he slid down to the water’s edge. Sitting in the red mud, he threw up the rifle and aimed at the men in the assault boat.

The two unwounded rangers were kneeling at the rail, their rifles cocked and levelled.

“Bulala! Kill!” Isaac snapped, and they opened up together, a massed volley of fire that swept the riverbank. They were hand-picked members of the anti-poaching unit, both good marksmen, and they hated the gangs that plundered the elephant herds, savaged their comrades and threatened their own lives. They laughed as they shot the panic-stricken gang members off the bank. They made a game of allowing them almost to reach the top of the red clay wall before bringing them flopping and kicking back into the river with a short crisp burst of fire.

Isaac made no effort to restrain them. He had a long-outstanding score to settle with these men, and a few years imprisonment was not enough punishment for their crimes. As the last of them rolled down the bank and sank slowly into the clear green water, he spun the boat and raced back across the river.

Scar-faced Sali was the leader. These others were mere brainless thugs and cannon-fodder. Sali could recruit a new regiment of them for a few dollars a head. Sali was the brains and the guts of the trade, and without him this day’s work would count for little. Unless Isaac stopped him now, Sali would be back again next week or next month with another gang of ruffians. He had to crush the head of the mamba or it would strike again.

He raced in close to the edge of the reeds on the north bank, to the spot at which he had rammed the first canoe. Then Isaac turned into the current and throttled back the Yamaha and allowed the current to drift them downstream, using bursts of engine to keep within a few yards of the edge of the reeds.

The two rangers stood at the port rail, and eagerly scrutinised the reedbed as they drifted by. There was no telling how far the Zambezi current had carried the poacher before he had been able to reach the cover of the papyrus.

Isaac would make only one sweep from the boat for a mile downstream. Then he would go ashore with his men and heat back along the north bank on foot to pick up any sign that Sali might have left as he dragged himself from the reeds on to dry land and tried to escape. Then they would follow him, for as far and as long as it took.

Strict interpretation of the law gave Isaac no powers of arrest on the Zambian side of the river, but this was a hot pursuit of a murderer and a notorious bandit. Isaac was prepared to fight if challenged, and put a bullet through his prisoner’s head if the Zambian police tried to intervene and take Sali away from him.

At that moment something caught his eye in the reedbed directly opposite the drifting assault boat. Isaac touched the throttle and held the boat stationary against the current.

A small area of reeds had been disturbed, as if something had been dragged through them, a crocodile possibly, or a large leguan lizard, except that clumps of reeds had been twisted and broken as though used as handholds. Crocodiles don’t have hands, Isaac grunted, and manoeuvred the boat in closer. The disturbance must have taken place only minutes before, for under his eyes the flattened reeds were still straightening and rising into their original upright position. Then Isaac smiled thinly.

He reached over the side and snapped one of the reeds and held it to the sunlight. The smear of colour along its fibrous stem came a way wet and red on Isaac’s fingers and he showed it to the ranger who stood at his shoulder. “Blood,” the ranger nodded. “He is hurt. The prop–”

Before he could finish the sentence somebody screamed in the reeds ahead of them. It was a high ringing cry of utter terror that froze them all for an instant. Isaac recovered first and nudged the throttle, forcing the bows into the dense stand of reeds. Somewhere ahead of them the human voice screamed and screamed again.

Deep in the river Sali felt the boat run over him. His head was filled with the deafening shriek of the spinning propeller blades. The sound had no direction but assaulted his senses from every angle.

Then something struck his left leg a blow that seemed to dislocate his hip and the force of it spun him end over end in the water and disoriented him. He tried to lunge for the surface but his left leg would not respond. There was no pain, just a great heavy numbness as though the limb was encased in a block of concrete that was drawing him down into the green Zambezi depths.

He kicked out wildly with his good leg and suddenly his head broke the surface. Through streaming eyes he saw the assault boat weaving and zigzagging across the river, smashing up the flotilla of canoes and throwing their crews, splashing and screaming, into the river.

Sali welcomed the respite that this attack on the other canoes had afforded him. He knew that he had a few minutes before the boat came roaring back to find him.

He turned his head. The edge of the reedbed was close. With the strength of his fighting anger and outrage still strong upon him, he struck out for it. His leg was a dead weight, a heavy drogue anchor that hampered and slowed him, but he swam with great sweeping overhead strokes of his powerful arms and seconds later grabbed the first handful of papyrus stems.

Desperately he dragged himself into the cover of the reeds, sliding his body over the springing mattress of papyrus, the maimed leg slithering after him. Deep in the reeds, he paused at last and rolled on to his back to look back the way that he had come. His breathing whistled in his throat as he saw the trail of blood that he had laid through the water.

He grabbed his own knee, lifted the wounded leg above the surface and stared at it in disbelief. His foot was gone and white bone protruded from the mangled flesh. His blood spurted and dribbled from the severed vessels so that he floated in a red-brown cloud. Tiny silver fish, excited by the smell of it, darted through the stained water, gobbling the strings and morsels of tattered meat.

Quickly Sali lowered his good leg and tried to touch bottom. The water closed over his head, but his right foot groped unavailingly for the Zambezi’s mud bed. He came to the surface again coughing and choking. He was well out of his depth, with only the thick reeds to support him.

Far away across the river he heard the sound of gunfire, and then the high-pitched whine of the returning assault craft. It drew closer and closer, until abruptly it sank to a faint burbling sound and he heard voices. He realised that they were searching the edge of the reedbeds for him, and he shrank down lower in the water.

A cold lethargy was stealing over him as his life-blood leaked away into the river, but he forced himself to rally and began to edge away, deeper into the reeds, towards the Zambian bank of the river. He pushed gently into an opening in the reeds It was the size of a tennis court enclosed by a palisade of tall swaying papyrus. The surface was paved with the flat circular green leaves of the water-lilies and their blooms raised lovely cerulean heads to the early sunlight. Their perfume was sweet and delicate on the still air.

Suddenly Sali froze with only his head above the surface. Something moved beneath the water-lilies. The water pushed and bulged while the blossoms nodded their heads to the weighty and stealthy movement passing beneath them.

Soli knew what it was. His thick liver-coloured lips split open and he drooled with terror. His blood drifted away on the lily-strewn waters and the thing beneath moved with greater authority and determination, homing in on the tantalizing taste of blood.

Soli was a brave man. Very few things in this world could frighten him. However, this was a creature from another world, the secret cold world beneath the waters. His bowels evacuated uncontrollably as terror released his sphincter muscle, and this fresh odour in the water brought the creature to the surface.

A head like a log, black and gnarled and shiny with wetness, pushed through the lilies. Its beady saurian eyes were set on protruding barklike knobs and it grinned at Sali with ragged fangs protruding over uneven lips. The wreath of lily blossoms draped across its hideous brow gave the creature a sardonic menace.

Suddenly the great tail broke the surface, double-ridged and crested as it threshed the surface to foam, driving the long scaly body forward with astonishing speed.

Sali screamed.

Isaac stood at the control console and drove the long hull deeper into the papyrus. The tough fibrous stems wrapped around the propeller shaft and slowed the boat, bringing it to a gradual standstill.

They ran to the bows and, grabbing handfuls of papyrus, dragged themselves forward until abruptly they burst into a small patch of open water. Directly in front of the bows there was an enormous disturbance in the water. Sheets of spray were thrown into the sunlight, and splattered over their heads.

In the foam an enormous scaly body rolled and roiled, flashing its butter yellow belly, the long tail cockscombed with sharp scales thrashing the water white.

For an instant a human arm was flung upwards. It was a gesture of entreaty, of terrified supplication. Isaac leaned over the side and seized the wrist. The skin was wet and slippery but Isaac reinforced his grip with both hands and leaned back with all his weight. He could not hold Sali and the weight of the reptile together. The wrist began to slip through his grip until one of the rangers leapt to his side and grabbed Sali’s arm at the elbow.

Together, inch by inch, they dragged the man’s body from the water. He was stretched out between the men at one end and the dreadful reptile below the surface like a man on the torture rack.

The other ranger leaned out over the gunwale and fired a burst of automatic fire into the water. The high-velocity bullets exploded on the surface as though they had hit a steel plate and had no effect except to send needles of spray into the eyes of Isaac and the ranger at the rail.

“Stop it,” Isaac panted at him. “You’ll hit one of us!”

The ranger dropped the rifle and seized Sali’s free arm.

Now there were three men taking sides in the gruesome tug-of-war. Slowly they dragged Sali’s body from the water, until the reptile’s huge scaly head was exposed.

Its fangs were buried in the front of Sali’s belly. The crocodile’s teeth lack shearing edges. It dismembers its prey by locking on and then rolling its entire body in the water to twist off a limb or a hunk of flesh. As they held Sali stretched over the gunwale, the creature flicked its tail and rolled. Ssali’s belly was ripped open. The crocodile heaved backwards with its fangs still locked in his flesh and stripped Sali’s entrails out of him.

With the release of the strain at one end, the three men were able to heave Sali’s body on board. However, the crocodile still held its grip. Although his writhing form lay on the deck, Sali’s entrails were stretched over the side, a glistening fleshy tangle of tubes and ribbons like some grotesque umbilical cord that linked him to his fate.

The crocodile jerked again with the full weight and strength of the long tail. The ribbon of guts snapped and Sali screamed for the last time and died on the bloody deck.

For a while there was silence in the boat broken only by the hoarse panting of the three men who had tried to rescue him.

They stared in horrified fascination at Sali’s mutilated corpse until Isaac Mtwetwe whispered softly, “I could not have chosen a more fitting death for you.” He spoke in formal ceremonial Shana. “Go not peacefully, O Sali, evil one, and may all your foul deeds accompany you on your journey.”

Chapter 9

“There were no prisoners, Isaac told Daniel Armstrong.”

“Did you say none?” Daniel shouted. The telephone connection was scratchy and faint, with heavy atmospheric interference from the thunderstorm raging further down the valley.

“None, Danny,” Isaac raised his voice. “Eight dead ones, but the rest of the gang were either eaten by crocs or escaped back into Zambia.”

“What about ivory,” Isaac? “Did they have tusks with them?”

“Yes, they were all carrying ivory, but it was lost in the river when the canoes went down.”

“Damn it to hell,” Daniel muttered. It would be much more difficult now to convince the authorities that the bulk of the ivory was taken out from Chiwewe in the refrigerator trucks. The trail to Ning Cheng Gong was growing colder with every hour that passed.

“There is a police unit on its way from here to the headquarters camp at Chiwewe,” he told Isaac.

“Yes, Danny. They are here at the moment. I’m going to join them as soon as I have made arrangements to fly my wounded ranger out to Harare. I want to see what these bastards did to Johnny Nzou.”

“Listen, Isaac, I’m going to follow up the only lead I’ve got on who was responsible for this business.

“Be careful, Danny. These people don’t mess about. You could get badly hurt. Where are you headed?”

“I’ll see you around, Isaac.” Daniel avoided the question. He dropped the telephone back on its cradle and went out to the Landcruiser. He sat behind the wheel and thought about it. He realised that this was merely a respite. Pretty soon now the Zimbabwean police were going to want to talk to him again, a little more seriously than before. There was only one place to be, and that was outside the country. In any event that was where the trail was leading him.

He drove down to the customs and immigration post and parked in the lot before the barrier. Naturally, he had his passport with him and the papers for the Landcruiser were all in order. The departure formalities took less than half an hour, which by African standards was almost record time.

Daniel drove out across the steel-girdered bridge that spanned the Zambezi and he was aware that he was not entering paradise. Zambia was, after Uganda and Ethiopia, one of the poorest and sorriest countries on the African continent. Daniel grimaced. A cynic might put that down to the fact that it had been independent from British colonial rule longer than most others. There had been more time for the policies of structured chaos and ruination to take full effect.

Under private ownership the great mines of the Copper-belt had once been amongst the most profitable on the continent, rivalling even the fabulous gold mines further south. After independence, President Kenneth Kaunda had nationalised them and instituted his Africanisation policy. This amounted to firing those skilled and experienced engineers and managers who did not have black faces, a kind of affirmative action.

Within a few short years he had miraculously transformed an annual profit of many hundreds of millions into a loss of the same magnitude.

Daniel steeled himself for his encounter with Zambian officialdom.

“Can you tell me if a friend of mine passed through here last night on his way to Malawi,” he asked the uniformed officer who sauntered out of the customs building to search his Landcruiser for contraband.

The man opened his mouth to protest his outrage at being asked to divulge official information but Daniel forestalled him by producing a five-dollar bill. The Zambian currency, the kwacha, named for the dawn of freedom from colonial oppression had once held value equivalent to the US dollar. Numerous subsequent devaluations had readjusted the official exchange rate to 30:1. The black-market rate was closer to 300:1. The customs officer’s scruples evaporated. He was looking at a month’s salary.

“What is your friend’s name?” he asked eagerly.

“Mr. Chetti Singh. He was driving a large truck with a cargo of dried fish.”

“Wait.” The officer disappeared into the station and was back within minutes. “Yes…” he nodded. “Your friend passed through after midnight.” He showed no further interest in searching the Landcruiser and stamped Daniel’s passport. His step was jaunty as he returned to his post.

Daniel felt a little chill of unease as he left the border post and headed northwards towards Lusaka, the territory’s capital. In Zambia, the rule of law ended at the edge of the built-up areas. In the bush the police manned their road-blocks, but were never so foolhardy as to respond to appeals for assistance from travellers on the lonely rutted roads.

During twenty-five years of independence, the roads had fallen into an interesting state of disrepair. In some places the potholes through the eroded tarmac were almost knee deep. Daniel kept the speed down to twenty-five miles an hour and weaved his way around the worst patches as though he were negotiating a minefield.

The countryside was lovely. He drove through magnificent open forests and glades of golden grass known as damboes. The hills and kopjes seemed to have been built in antiquity by a giant’s hand. The walls and turrets of stone were tumbled and eroded into spectacular chaos. The numerous rivers were deep and clear.

Daniel came to the first of the road-blocks. A hundred yards from the barrier Daniel slowed down to a crawl and kept both hands on the wheel. The police were jumpy and trigger-happy.

As he stopped, a uniformed constable wearing mirrored sunglasses thrust the barrel of a sub-machinegun through the window and greeted him arrogantly. “Hello, my friend.” His finger was on the trigger and the muzzle was pointed at Daniel’s belly. “Get out!”

“Do you smoke?” Daniel asked. As he stepped down into the road he produced a packet of Chesterfield cigarettes and thrust it into the constable’s hand. The constable withdrew the barrel of the machine pistol while he checked that the packet was unopened. Then he grinned and Daniel relaxed slightly.

At that moment another vehicle drew up behind Daniel’s Landcruiser. It was a truck owned by one of the hunting safari companies. The back was piled with camp stores and equipment, and the gunbearers and trackers sat on top of the load. At the driving-wheel was the professional hunter, bearded, tanned and weatherbeaten. Beside him his client seemed urbane and effete despite his new safari jacket and the zebra skin hatband around his stetson.

“Daniel!” The hunter leaned out of the side window. “Daniel Armstrong,” he shouted happily.

Then Daniel remembered him. They had met briefly three years previously while Daniel was filming the documentary on hunting safaris in Africa, Man is the Hunter. For a moment he couldn’t remember the fellow’s name, but they had shared a bottle of Haig at a campfire in the Luangwa valley. Daniel remembered him as a blow-hard, with a reputation more as a hard drinker than a hard hunter. He had consumed more than his fair share of the Haig, Daniel recalled. Stoffel. The name came back to him with relief. He needed an ally and a protector now. The hunters of the safari companies were a class of minor aristocracy in the deep bush.

“Stoffel van der Merwe,” he cried.

Stoffel climbed down from the truck, big and beefy and grinning. Like most professional hunters in Zambia, he was an Afrikaner from South Africa. “Hell, man, it’s good to see you again.” He covered Daniel’s hand with a hairy paw. “They giving you any uphill here?”

“Well…” Daniel let it hang there, and Stoffel rounded on the police constable.

“Hey, Juno, this man is my friend. You treat him good, you hear me?”

The constable laughed agreement. It always amazed Daniel to watch how well Afrikaners and blacks got along on a personal level once politics were left out of it; perhaps it was because they were all of them Africans and understood each other. They had been living together for almost three hundred years, Daniel smiled to himself; by this time they damned well should. “You want your meat, don’t you?” Stoffel went on to tease the constable. “You give Doctor Armstrong here a hard time and no meat for you.”

The hunters had their regular routes to and from the hunting concessions in the remote bush, and they knew the guards manning the road-blocks by name. Between them they had set up a regular tariff of bonsela. “Hey!” Stoffel turned to shout at his trackers on top of the truck. “Give Juno here a leg of fat buffalo. Look how skinny He’s getting. We have to feed him up a bit.”

From under the tarpaulin cover they dragged out a haunch of buffalo, still in its thick black skin, dusty and buzzing with bluebottle flies. The hunters had access to unlimited supplies of game meat, legally hunted and shot by their clients. “These poor bastards are starved for protein,” Stoffel explained to his client as the American sportsman came to join them. “For a leg of buffalo he would sell you his wife; for two he would sell you his soul; for three he would probably sell you the whole bloody country. And any one of those. would be a bad bargain!” He roared with laughter and introduced his client to Daniel. “This is Steve Conrack from California.”

“I know you, of course,” the American interjected. “Great honour to meet you, Doctor Armstrong. I always watch your stuff on TV. Just by chance I’ve got a copy of your book with me. I’d love an autograph for my kids back home. They’re great fans of yours.”

Inwardly Daniel winced at the price of fame but when the client returned from the truck with a copy of one of his earlier books, he signed the fly-leaf.

“Where are you headed?” Stoffel asked. “Lusaka? Let me go ahead and run interference for you, otherwise anything could happen. It could take you a week or all eternity to get there.”

The police guard, still grinning, lifted the barrier and saluted them as they drove through. From there onwards their progress was a royal procession, with lumps of raw meat appearing regularly from under the tarpaulin. “Roses, roses all the way, and buffalo steaks strewn in our path like mad.” Daniel grinned to himself and put his foot down to keep up with the safari truck. They were driving through the fertile plains that were irrigated from the Kafue River. This was an area of sugar and maize and tobacco production and the farms were owned almost entirely by white Zambians. Prior to independence, the farmers had vied with each other to beautify their properties.

From the main road the white-painted homesteads had glistened, set like pearls in the green and lovingly tended home paddocks. The fences had been meticulously maintained and sleek cattle had grazed within view of the road.

These days the dilapidated appearance of the properties was a deliberate attempt by the owners to divert envious and acquisitive eyes. If you look too good, one of them had explained to Daniel, they’re going to take it away from you. He didn’t have to explain who they were. The golden rule in this country is: if you’ve got it, for God’s sake don’t flaunt it. The white farmers lived as a tiny separate tribe in their own little enclave. Rather like their pioneering ancestors, they made their own soap and other commodities which were simply unobtainable from the bare shelves of the local trading stores.

They lived mostly on the products of their own lands, yet they enjoyed a reasonably good life with their golf clubs and polo clubs and theatrical societies.

They sent their children to school and university in South Africa with the small amounts of fiercely rationed foreign exchange they were granted; they kept their heads down below the parapet and took care not to draw attention to themselves.

Even the powers that presided in the government halls in Lusaka realised that without them the precarious economy would collapse completely. The maize and sugar they produced kept the rest of the population from true starvation and their tobacco crops eked out the tiny dribble of foreign exchange brought in by the ruined copper mines.

“Where could we go?” Daniel’s informant put the rhetorical question. “If we leave here, we go in our underclothes. They won’t let us take a penny or a stick with us. We’ve just got to make the best of it.”

As the two-vehicle convoy approached the capital town of Lusaka, Daniel was given a demonstration of one of the many distressing phenomena of the new Africa, the mass movement of rural populations to the urban centres. Daniel smelt the slum odour as they passed the outskirts of the town. It was a miasma of smoke from the cooking-fires, the stench of pit latrines and festering garbage heaps, of sour illicit beer brewing in open drums, and human bodies without running water or rivers in which to bathe. It was the smell of disease and starvation and poverty and ignorance, the ripe new smell of Africa.

Daniel stood Stoffel and his client a drink in the bar of the Ridgeway Hotel, then excused himself and went to the reception desk to check in. He was given a room overlooking the swimming-pool, and went to shower away the grime and exhaustion of the past twenty-four hours. Then he reached for the telephone, and called the British High Commission. He caught the telephonist there before the close of the day’s business.

“May I speak to Mr. Michael Hargreave, please?” He held his breath.

Mike Hargreave had still been in Lusaka two years previously, but he could have been transferred anywhere in the world by now.

“I’m putting you through to Mr. Hargreave,” the girl replied after a few moments, and Daniel let his breath out.

“Michael Hargreave speaking.”

“Mike, it’s Danny Armstrong.”

“Good Lord, Danny, where are you?”

“Here in Lusaka.”

“Welcome back to fairyland. How are you?”

“Mike, can I see you? I need another favour.”

“Why don’t you come to dinner tonight? Wendy will be charmed.”

Michael had one of the diplomatic residences on Nabs Hill, within walking distance of Government House. As with every other house in the street it was fortified like the Maze Prison. The ten-foot perimeter walls were topped with rolled barbed wire and two malondo, night watchmen, guarded the gate.

Michael Hargreave quieted his pair of Rortweiler guard dogs, and greeted Daniel enthusiastically.

“You aren’t taking chances, Mike.” Daniel gestured towards the security precautions and Michael grimaced.

“On this street alone we average one break-in a night, despite the wire and dogs.”

He led Daniel into the house and Wendy came to kiss him. Wendy was a rosebud, with soft blonde hair and one of those incredible English complexions.

“I had forgotten that you are even more handsome in the flesh than on television.” She smiled at him.

Michael Hargreave resembled an Oxford don more than a spook, but he was indeed an MI6 man. He and Daniel had first met in Rhodesia towards the end of the war. At the time Daniel had been sick and dispirited with what he had come to realize was not only a lost cause, but an unjust one.

The breaking point had come when Daniel led a column of the Selous Scouts into the neighbouring state of Mozambique. The target was a guerrilla camp. Rhodesian intelligence had told them it was a training camp for ZANLA recruits, but when they hit the cluster of huts they found mostly old men and women and children. There had been almost five hundred of these unfortunate people. They had left none of them alive.

On the return match Daniel had found himself weeping uncontrollably as he staggered along in the darkness. Years of ever-present danger and endless call-up for active service had worn his nerves thin and brittle. Only much later Daniel realised that he had suffered a breakdown, but at that critical moment he was approached by the clandestine Alpha Group.

The war had dragged on for so many years that a small group of police and army officers had come to realize the facility of it all. Even more they had realised that they were on the side, not of the angels, but of the devil himself.

They decided that they must strive for an end to the bitter civil war, that they must force the white supremacist Smith government to accept a truce negotiated by Great Britain, and thereafter agree to a democratic and free election and the process of national reconciliation between the races. All the members of the Alpha Group were men whom Daniel admired; many were senior officers and most of them had been decorated for their courage and leadership. Daniel was drawn irresistibly to them.

Michael Hargreave had been the head of station for British intelligence in Rhodesia. They had first met once Daniel had committed himself to the Alpha Group. They had worked together closely and Daniel had played a minor role in the process that finally led to the end of those dreadful sufferings and excesses, and that culminated in the Lancaster House Agreement.

Daniel had not been in Zimbabwe when Ian Smith’s white regime finally capitulated. His disloyalty had been discovered by Rhodesian intelligence. Warned of his impending arrest by other members of his group, Daniel had fled the country. Had he been captured he would certainly have faced a firing squad. He had only dared return once the country had changed its name to Zimbabwe and the new order, led by Robert Mugabe, had come to power.

When first he had met him, Daniel’s relationship with Michael had been detached and professional, but mutual respect and trust had finally transformed it into genuine friendship, which had survived the years.

Michael poured him a whisky and they chatted and reminisced until Wendy called them to the dinner-table. Home cooking was a treat for Daniel, and Wendy glowed with gratification at his performance with knife and fork.

With the brandy Michael asked, “So what about this favour?”

“Two favours, actually.”

“Runaway inflation, speak up, my lad.”

“Could you possibly arrange to have my film tapes sent back to London in the diplomatic bag? They are more valuable than life itself. I wouldn’t trust them to the Zambian post office.”

“That’s an easy one,” Michael nodded. “I’ll get them away in tomorrow’s bag. What about the other favour?”

“I need some information on a gentleman named Ning Cheng Gong.”

“Are we likely to know him?” Michael asked.

“You should. He’s Taiwan’s ambassador to Harare.”

“In that case, we will certainly have a file on him. Is he friend or foe, Danny?”

“I’m not sure, not at this stage, anyway.”

“Don’t tell me, then.” Michael sighed and pushed the brandy decanter across to Daniel. “I should have a computer print-out for you before noon tomorrow. Shall I send it around to the Ridgeway?”

“Bless you, old son. I owe you another one.”

“And don’t you forget it, Danny boy.”

It was an enormous relief to get rid of the tapes that Jock had shot. They represented a gruelling year’s labour and almost Daniel’s entire worldly wealth. He believed so strongly in this new project that he had decided that, contrary to his usual practice, he would not seek outside financing. He had put everything he owned at risk, almost half a million dollars that he had painfully accumulated over the last ten years since he had become a fulltime out or and television producer.

So Daniel’s tapes went out the following morning with the diplomatic courier on the British Airways flight and would be in London within twelve hours. Daniel had consigned them to Castle Studios where they would be in safe keeping until he could begin the editorial work to transform it into another one of his productions. He had almost settled on a title for the series, Is Africa Dying?

Rather than entrust it to a messenger, Michael Hargreave personally delivered the computer print-out on Ning Cheng Gong to Daniel at the hotel. “Nice lad you’ve picked on,” he commented. “I haven’t read it all, just enough to find out that the Ning family is not one to trifle with. Take it easy, Danny; these are big boys.” He handed over the sealed envelope. “Just one condition. As soon as you have read it, I want you to burn it. Do I have your word on that?”

Daniel nodded in agreement and Michael went on, I’ve brought along an askari from the High Commission to guard your Landcruiser for you. You daren’t leave a vehicle untended on the street, not in Lusaka. Daniel took the envelope up to his hotel room and ordered a pot of tea. When it arrived he locked the door, stripped to his underpants and lay on the bed. The print-out ran to eleven pages, all of them fascinating.

Johnny Nzou had given him only an inkling of the wealth and importance of the Ning family. Ning Heng H’Sui was the patriarch. His holdings were so diversified and cross-pollinated with international companies and offshore holdings in Luxembourg, Geneva and Jersey that the author of the report admitted laconically at the end of this section, List of holdings probably incomplete. Going over the data more attentively, Daniel thought he perceived a subtle shift in investment emphasis dating from about the time of Ning Cheng Gong’s appointment to his ambassadorial post in Africa. Although the Ning family holdings were still centred on the Pacific rim, the investments in Africa and in Africa-based companies had risen to a significant percentage of the entire portfolio.

Turning the page, he discovered that the computer had analysed this and determined that within six years the African section had increased from zero to just under twelve percent of the total. There were large holdings in South African mining conglomerates, and in African land and food production companies, and even larger holdings in forestry estates, paper pulp mills and cattle and sheep ranches, all in Africa, south of the Sahara. It didn’t take any clairvoyant gift to surmise that Ning Cheng Gong had pointed the family in this direction.

On page four of the computer print-out, Daniel read that Ning Cheng Gong was married to a Chinese girl from another rich Taiwanese family. The marriage had been arranged by the respective families. The couple had two children: a son born in 1982 and a daughter in 1983. Cheng’s interests were listed as oriental music and theatre and collecting oriental art, especially jade and ivory artefacts.

He was an acknowledged expert on ivory netsuke. He played golf and tennis and sailed. He was also an expert in the martial arts, having reached the Fourth Dan. He smoked moderately and drank alcohol socially. He did not use any type of narcotic and the only weakness which the report suggested might be used as leverage or influence was that Ning Cheng Gong regularly patronised the high-class brothels of Taipei. His special sexual tastes seemed to lean towards acting out elaborate fantasies of an overtly sadistic nature. In 1987 one of the brothel girls had died during one of these performances. The family had obviously been able to quell any scandal, for no charges were ever brought against Cheng. Mike was right, Daniel conceded as he laid aside the print out. He is a big boy and well protected. Best take it one careful step at a time. Chetti Singh first. If I can establish a connection, that might be the key.

As he dressed for dinner he kept turning the pages of the report on the dressing-table to make certain he had not overlooked any connection with Malawi or with Chetti Singh. There was none and he went down to dinner feeling depressed and discouraged. The role he had chosen for himself as Johnny Nzou’s avenger was daunting.

There were both smoked Scotch salmon and roast sirloin of milk-fed Charollais beef on the five-page menu. However, when he ordered these the waiter shook his head regretfully. “Sorry, no got.” It swiftly developed into a guessing game. “Sorry, no got.” The waiter looked genuinely distressed as Daniel worked his way unsuccessfully through the menu until Daniel noticed that everyone else in the dining-room was eating stringy roast chicken and rice. “Yes, got chicken and rice.” The waiter beamed approval. “What you want for dessert?” By now Daniel had learned the trick. He checked the other tables.

“How about banana custard?” The waiter shook his head.

“No got.” But Daniel could tell by his expression that he was getting warm. Daniel stood up and crossed to a Nigerian businessman at the next table.

“Excuse me, sir, what is that you are eating?” He returned to his own table. “I’ll have Banana Delight,” he said, and the waiter nodded happily.

“Yes, tonight got Banana Delight.”

This little comedy restored Daniel’s good humour and sense of the ridiculous. AWA, Daniel reassured him. Africa Wins Again. And the waiter looked delighted at such obvious praise and encouragement.

The next morning Daniel headed eastwards towards Chipata and the Malawi border. There was not much point in expecting a sustaining breakfast from the hotel and anyway he was away long before the kitchens opened. He had covered almost a hundred miles before the sun rose, and he kept going most of the day, stopping only to eat beside the road.

He reached the border the following morning and crossed into Malawi with a lightening of his spirits. Not only was this tiny country even more spectacularly beautiful than the one he was leaving, but in comparison the mood of its people was contented and carefree. Malawi was known as the Switzerland of Africa for its grand mountains and highland plateaux and its lakes and lovely rivers. Its people were famous throughout the southern continent for their intelligence and adaptability. They were sought after at every level of employment from domestic servants to miners and industrial workers. Lacking viable mineral deposits, Malawi’s most valuable asset and export were her people.

Under the benevolent despotism of their octogenarian president-for-life, the special talents and strengths of the Malawian people were encouraged and fostered. The rural areas were not neglected and the urban migration was checked. Each family was ordered by the leader to build its own home and make itself self-sufficient in food.

As cash crops they grew cotton and ground-nuts. On the large Mountainside estates they raised a superior leaf of tea.

As Daniel drove towards the capital, Lilongwe, the contrast with the country he had just left was striking. The villages he passed were clean and orderly and prosperous. The people on the roadside were sleek, well-dressed and smiling. Most of the handsome women favoured a full-length skirt printed with the national colours and a portrait of Kamuzu Hastings Banda, the president. Short skirts were forbidden in Malawi by presidential decree, as was long hair on men.

Along the roadside, food and carved wooden curios were offered for sale. It was strange to see a surplus of food in any African country. Daniel stopped to buy eggs and oranges, mandarins, luscious red tomatoes and roasted ground-nuts, and also to exchange cheerful banter with the vendors.

After the misery and deprivation he had witnessed in the country he had so recently left, his mood was uplifted by these delightful people. Given the circumstances to make a good life, there are few peoples on earth so friendly and charming as those of Africa. Daniel found his regard for them strengthened and renewed. “If you don’t like black people, then you shouldn’t be living in Africa,” Daniel’s father had once said to him. It was a remark that had remained in his memory all these years, the validity of it growing ever more evident.

As he approached Lilongwe Daniel was struck even more forcefully by the contrast with other capitals of the continent. It was a recent capital, planned and built with architectural advice and financial help from South Africa. There was no slum stench here. Instead it was a pretty town, modern and functional. Daniel found it good to be back again.

The Capital Hotel was surrounded by parks and lawns but conveniently situated close to the centre of the town. As soon as he was alone in his room, Daniel checked the local telephone directory which he found in the bedside drawer.

Chetti Singh was a big man in town and obviously enjoyed the sound of his own name. There was a string of numbers listed. He seemed to have his fingers in every honey pot: Chetti Singh Fisheries, Chetti Singh Supermarkets, Chetti Singh Tannery, Cheti Singh Sawmills and Lumber, Chetti Singh Garages and Toyota Agency. The list took up half the page.

“Not a difficult bird to point,” Daniel admitted to himself. “Now let’s see if we can get him to flush for a good sporting shot.”

While he shaved and showered an attentive room servant carted his travel-stained clothing off to the laundry and ironed a clean but crumpled bush jacket to starchy perfection. Good excuse.

“I need to restock the tucker box,” Daniel told himself as he went downstairs and asked the receptionist directions to Chetti Singh’s supermarket.

“Across the park.” The man pointed.

With assumed nonchalance Daniel sauntered across the park. It occurred to him that he was hardly the most inconspicuous visitor in town, with his London tailored bush jacket, silk scarf, and the spectacularly travel-dusted and battered Landcruiser with his strong-arm motif emblazoned all over it. Let’s pray that Chetti Singh never got a good look at me or the truck that night. Chetti Singh’s supermarket was on Main Street in a new four-storey building of modern layout, with clean tiled floors and walls. The shelves were piled with abundant wares, all reasonably priced, and the premises were thronged with customers. In Africa this was unusual.

While Daniel joined the relays of housewives wheeling their shopping trolleys down the aisles between the shelves, he was studying the building and its staff. Four young Asian girls sat at the cash registers guarding the exit. They were quick and efficient. Under their graceful brown fingers the registers tinkled to the sweet music of Mammon. Chetti Singh’s daughters, Daniel guessed as he noted the family resemblance. They were pretty as sunbirds, in their brightly coloured saris.

In the centre of the floor a middle-aged Asian lady sat at a tall dais from which she could keep a beady eye on every corner of the shop. She wore her hair in an iron-grey plait and though her said was more subdued in colour, it was edged with gold thread and the diamonds on her fingers ranged from the size of peas to sparrows eggs. Mama Singh, Daniel decided. When it came to handling the cash, Asian businessmen liked to keep it close to home, which was probably one of the reasons for their universal success. He took his time selecting groceries, hoping for a glimpse of his quarry, but there was no sign of the turbaned Sikh.

At last Mama Singh left her seat on the dais and made an elephantine but dignified progress down the length of the store, until, with her long silken sari sweeping the treads, she mounted a flight of stairs set so discreetly in a corner of the food hall that Daniel had not noticed them before.

She entered a door at a higher level and now Daniel noticed a mirrored window in the wall beside the elevated door. It was obviously a one-way glass. An observer in the room beyond the door would have a clear view over the supermarket floor and Daniel had no doubt that it was Chetti Singh’s office.

He turned away from that inscrutable square of glass, aware that he might have been under observation for the past half hour, and that the precaution was probably too late. He made his way to one of the girls at the cash registers and while she totted up his purchases he kept his face averted from the window in the rear wall.

Chetti Singh stood at the observation window as his wife came into the office. She saw instantly that he was disturbed. He was plucking thoughtfully at his beard and his eyes were slitted. “That white man.” He nodded towards the store floor below the window. “Did you notice him?”

“Yes.” She came to his side. “I noticed him as he came in. I thought he might be a soldier or a policeman.”

“What made you think that?” Chetti Singh demanded.

She made an eloquent gesture with those lovely hands that were so incongruous on a female of her bulk. They were the hands of the young girl he had married almost thirty years ago, and the pale palms were dyed with henna. “He stands tall, and walks with pride,” she explained. “Like a soldier.”

“I think I know him,” Chetti Singh said. “I saw him very recently, but it was at night and I cannot be absolutely certain.” He picked up the telephone from his desk and dialed two digits.

Standing at the window, he watched his second daughter pick up the telephone from beside her cash register. Treasure, he spoke in Hindi. “The man at your till. Is he paying with a credit card?”

“Yes, father.” She was the brightest of all his children, as much value to him as a second son, almost.

“Get his name and ask him where he is staying in town.” Chetti Singh hung up and watched the white man pay for his purchases and leave the store heavily laden. As soon as he had gone, Chetti Singh dialled again.

“His name is Armstrong,” his daughter told him. “D. A. Armstrong. He says that he is staying at the Capital Hotel.”

“Good. Let me speak to Chavve quickly.” Below him his daughter swivelled her seat and called one of the uniformed security guards from the main doors.

She held out the telephone receiver to him and as he placed it to his ear Chetti Singh asked, “Chawe, did you recognize the malungu who has just left? The tall one with thick curly hair.” Chetti had switched to Angoni.

“I saw him,” the guard replied in the same language. “But I did not recognize him.”

“Four nights ago,” Chetti Singh prompted him. “On the road near Chirundu just after we had loaded the truck. The one who stopped and spoke to us.”

There was silence as Chawe considered the question. Chetti Singh saw him begin to pick at a nostril with his forefinger, a sign of uncertainty and embarrassment. “Perhaps,” Chavve said at last. “I am not sure.” He removed the thick forefinger from his nose and inspected it minutely. He was a man of the Angoni, a distant relative of the royal line of Zulu. His tribe had migrated this far north two hundred years before the time of King Chaka. He was a warrior, not a man given to deep thought.

“Follow him,” Chetti Singh ordered. “Do not let him see you. Do you understand?”

“I understand, Nkosi.” Chawe looked relieved to be ordered into action and he left through the main doors with a spring in his step.

He returned half an hour later, hangdog and crestfallen. As soon as he came in through the main doors Chetti Singh telephoned his daughter again. “Send Chawe up to my office right away!”

Chawe stood in the doorway at the head of the stairs, as big as a gorilla, and Chetti Singh demanded, “Well, did you follow him as I ordered?”

“Nkosi, it is the same man.” Chawe shuffled his feet. Despite his size and strength, he was terrified of Chetti Singh. He had seen what happened to those who displeased the master. In fact, it was Chawe himself who was usually responsible for enforcing his master’s discipline. He did not look directly into his eyes as he went on. “It is the man who spoke to us on the night,” he said, and Chetti Singh frowned quickly.

“Why are you sure now, when you were uncertain before?” Chetti Singh demanded.

“The truck,” Chawe explained. “He went to his truck and put the goods he had bought from us into it. It is the same truck, with a man’s arm painted on the side, Mambo.”

“Good.” Chetti Singh nodded approval. “You did well. Where is the man now?”

“He drove away in the truck.” Chawe looked apologetic. “I could not follow him. I am sorry, Nkosi Kakulu.”

“Never mind. You did well,” Chetti Singh repeated. “Who is on duty at the warehouse tonight?”

“I am, Mambo…” Chawe grinned suddenly, his teeth were large and even and very white, “and, of course, Nandi.”

“Yes, of course.” Chetti Singh stood up. “I will come down to the warehouse this evening after business is closed. I want to make sure that Nandi is ready to do her job. I think we may have trouble tonight. I want everything prepared. Have Nandi in the small cage. I don’t want any mistakes. Do you understand, Chawe?”

“I understand, Mambo.”

“At six o’clock, at the warehouse.” Sometimes it was as well to repeat instructions to Chawe.

“Nkosi.” Chawe sidled from the room, still not looking directly at his master.

After he had gone, Chetti Singh sat staring at the closed door for many minutes before he picked up the telephone again. Direct-dialling to an international exchange was always a lottery in Africa. Zimbabwe was almost a neighbouring state; only the narrow Tete corridor of Mozambique separated them. Nevertheless, it took him a dozen attempts and twenty frustrating minutes before he heard a ringing tone at the other end of the line and was through to the number in Harare.

“Good afternoon. This is the embassy of the Republic of Taiwan. May I help you?”

“I wish speech with the ambassador.”

“I’m sorry. His Excellency is not available at present. May I take a message or put you through to another member of the staff.”

“I am Chetti Singh. We are abundantly acquainted.”

“Please hold on, sir.”

A minute later Cheng came on the line. “You are not to telephone me at this number. We agreed.”

Chetti Singh told him firmly, “This is urgent.”

I absolutely cannot speak on this line. I will call you back within the hour. Give me your number there and wait for me.” The private unlisted telephone on Chetti Singh’s desk rang forty minutes later. “This line is secure,” Cheng told him as he picked it up. “But be discreet.”

“Do you know a white chap named Armstrong? Doctor Armstrong?”

“Yes. I know him.”

“This is the one you met at Chiwewe, and who accosted you on the road regarding certain stains on your clothing, is it not?”

“Yes.” Cheng’s tone was non-committal. “It’s all right, don’t worry. He knows nothing.”

“Then why has he pitched up in Lilongwe?” Chetti Singh demanded. “You still want me not to worry?”

There was a silence. “Lilongwe?” Cheng said at last. “Did he also see you that night on the Chirundu road?”

“Yes.” Chetti Singh tugged at his beard. “He stopped and spoke to me. He asked if I had seen the Parks trucks.”

“When was that? “After we had transferred the ivory to you—?”

“Careful!” Chetti Singh snapped. “But yes, it was after we had parted our separate ways. My men and I were tying down the tarpaulins when this white chap in a truck pulled up–”

Cheng cut in, “How long did you speak to him?”

“A minute, no more than that. Then he went south towards Harare. I think he was following you, without a morsel of doubt.”

“He caught up with Gomo and forced him off the road.” Cheng’s voice was sharp and agitated. “He searched the Parks truck. Of course, he didn’t find anything.”

“He is suspicious, indubitably.”

“Indubitably,” Cheng agreed sarcastically. “But if he spoke to you for only a minute, he cannot connect you. He doesn’t even know who you are.”

“My name and address are boldly imprinted upon my truck,” Chetti-Singh said.

Cheng was silent again for a slow count of five. “I did not notice. That was imprudent, my friend. You should have covered it.”

“It is no good closing the stable door after the bird has flown,” Chetti Singh pointed out.

“Where is the–? Cheng broke off. “Where are the goods? Have you shipped them?”

“Not yet. They will go out tomorrow.”

“Can’t you get rid of them sooner?”

“That is beyond the bounds of possibility.”

“You will have to deal with Armstrong then, if he becomes too curious.”

“Yes,” said Chetti Singh. “I will deal with him most firmly and resolutely. Your side? Is everything taken care of? Your Mercedes?”

“Yes.”

“The two drivers?”

“Yes.”

“Have the authorities visited you?”

“Yes, but, it was routine,” Cheng assured him. “There were no surprises. They have not mentioned your name to me. But you must not telephone me at the embassy again. Use this number only. My security people have cleared this line.”

He gave Chetti Singh the number and he wrote it down carefully. “I will let you know about this chap. He is an absolute nuisance,” Chetti Singh went on.

“I hope not for too much longer.” Cheng cradled the receiver and instinctively reached for one of the assembly of ivory netsuke that were arranged on his desk top. It was an exquisite miniature carving of a young girl and an old man.

The beautiful child sat on the old man’s lap staring with a daughter’s adoration into his noble, lined and bearded face. Each tiny detail had been executed three hundred years ago by one of the great artists of the Tokugawa dynasty. The ivory had been polished by the touch of human fingers until it glowed like amber. Only when the group was inverted was it disclosed that beneath their flowing robes the couple were naked and that the old man’s member was buried almost to the hilt between the girl’s thighs.

The humour of it appealed to Cheng. It was one of his favourite pieces from all his vast collection, and he caressed it now between thumb and forefinger like a worry bead. As always, the silken feet of the ivory soothed him and encouraged him to think more clearly. He had been expecting to hear more of Daniel Armstrong, but this had not lessened the shock of Chetti Singh’s message. The Sikh’s questions aroused old doubts and for the thousandth time he went over all the precautions that he had taken.

Chapter 10

After leaving the headquarters camp at Chiwewe he had not noticed the blood on his shoes and clothing until Daniel Armstrong had drawn his attention to it. This evidence of his guilt had preyed on his mind for the rest of that arduous journey out of the Zambezi valley. When at last they reached the main highway and found Chetti Sing waiting at the rendezvous, he had confided his worries to the Sikh and showed him the stains on his clothing.

“You were not supposed to go near the scene of the killing. That was foolish, never mind.”

“I had to make sure the job was done, and it was just as well I did. The warden was still alive.”

“You will have to burn that clothing.”

It was unlikely that there would be other traffic this late at night but they took no chances. They reversed the trucks well off the highway and transferred the ivory from the Parks trucks to Chetti Singh’s pantechnicon behind a screen of trees. Even with Chetti Singh’s gang of men to assist the two drivers, the removal took almost two hours. It was a huge quantity of ivory to move.

In the meantime Chetti Singh watched Cheng build a small fire. When it was burning hotly the ambassador stripped to his underwear. As he dressed again in fresh clothing from his luggage, Chetti Singh squatted beside the fire and burned all the soiled items. The rubber soles of the training shoes flared up fiercely when they caught. He used a stick to poke the charred scraps into the centre of the flames and make certain that they were reduced to fine ash.

“There will still be abundant traces of blood in the Mercedes,” Chetti pointed out as he stood up from it. “On the accelerator and brake pedals.” He removed the floor mat and the rubber covers from the control pedals and burned these as well. The stink of the black smoke made his eyes run, but still he was not satisfied. “We will have to get rid of that car.” He told Cheng what to do. “I will arrange the rest of it.”

Cheng was the first to leave the rendezvous. Even before the transfer of the ivory to the Sikh’s truck was complete he was on his way back to Harare. He drove fast, as though trying to escape from his involvement with the raid. The reaction was setting in now. It was the same after one of his sexual pantomimes in the Myrtle Blossom Lady’s house in Taipei. Afterwards he felt shaky and nauseated. He always promised himself it would never happen again.

The ambassador’s residence was one of many large sprawling; colonial buildings in the avenues near the golf club. He reached it well after midnight. He went directly to his own bedroom suite. He had arranged for his wife and the children to fly back to Taiwan the previous week to stay with her family. He was alone in the residence.

He stripped once again and, even though he had not worn it at the scene, placed all his clothing in a plastic bag. He was concerned that the faintest trace of blood might linger upon it. Then he showered. He stood under the steaming spray for almost half an hour, shampooing his hair twice and scrubbing his hands and fingernails with a stiff brush.

When he felt that he had washed away every last trace of blood or gunpowder, he dressed in fresh clothing from his dressing-room and carried the plastic bag containing his clothing; back to the Mercedes parked in the residence garage. He placed the plastic bag in the boot beside his canvas grip. He was anxious to get rid of every single item that he had taken to Chiwewe, even his binoculars and his bird-book.

He reversed the Mercedes out of the garage and parked it in the front driveway of the residence. The gates were open and he left the key in the ignition.

Although it was by now after two in the morning and it had been a day and night filled with activity and intense nervous strain Cheng could not sleep. In a brocaded silk robe he paced his bedroom restlessly, until he heard the starter of the Mercedes whirl. He switched off the bedside lamp and darted to the window overlooking the front driveway.

He was just in time to see his car, with darkened headlights, pull out of the driveway and turn into the deserted street. He sighed with relief and at last went to bed.

As he composed himself to sleep he thought how swiftly Chetti Singh had arranged it. Chetti Singh’s son managed the, Harare branch of the family interests. He was almost as astute and reliable as his father.

In the morning, after breakfast, Cheng telephoned the police and reported the theft of the Mercedes. They found it twenty-four hours later, out near Hatfield on the way to the airport. It had been stripped of tires. and engine and set on fire. The fuel tank had exploded and nothing was left of the vehicle but the soot-blackened carapace. He knew that the insurance company would pay out in full, without too much delay or protest.

The following morning an anonymous caller on Cheng’s unlisted line spoke without introduction or explanation. “Look at page five of today’s Herald,” he said, then broke the connection, but the accent had been Asian, very similar to Chetti Singh’s manner of speech.

Cheng found the article at the foot of the page. It was six lines under an insignificant heading,

Stabbed in Drunken Brawl. Gomo Chisonda, a ranger employed by the National Parks Service, had been stabbed to death by an unknown assailant during an argument in a township beerhall.

The next day the same anonymous caller told Cheng, “Page seven.” This time Cheng was certain that he recognised the voice of Chetti Singh’s son.

The heading of the newspaper article was Railway Accident, squib read,

The body of David Shiri, an off-duty and the ranger in the National Parks Service, was found on the railway line near Hartley.

The dead man had a high blood alcohol level. A spokesman for Zimbabwe Railways warned the public of the danger of using unguarded crossings.

This is the fourth accident of the same kind on the Hartley line since the beginning of the year. As Chetti Singh had promised, there were no longer any surviving witnesses or accomplices.

Three days later, Cheng received a telephone call from the commissioner of police in person. “I am very sorry indeed to disturb you, Your Excellency. I presume you have read about the murderous attack on Chiwewe Camp. I believe that you may be able to assist our enquiries into this most unfortunate incident. I understand that you were a visitor at the camp on that day, and that you left only hours before the attack.”

“That is correct, Commissioner.”

“Would you have any objection to making a statement to assist us? You know that there is no obligation for you to do so. You are fully protected by diplomatic privilege.”

“I will cooperate in any way possible. I particularly admired and liked the warden who was murdered. I will do all I can to help you apprehend the perpetrators of this foul crime.”

“I am most grateful to you, Your Excellency. May I send one of my senior inspectors to call upon you?”

The inspector was a burly Shana in plain clothes. He was accompanied by a sergeant in the smart uniform of the Zimbabwean police, and both of them were elaborately obsequious.

With profuse apologies the inspector took Cheng through a recital of his visit to Chiwewe, including his departure with the convoy of refrigerator trucks. Cheng had rehearsed all this and he went through it faultlessly. He was careful to mention his meeting with Daniel Armstrong.

When he had finished, the inspector fidgeted uncomfortably before asking, “Doctor Armstrong has also made a statement, Your Excellency. His account confirms everything you have told me, except that he mentioned that he noticed there were bloodstains on your clothing.

“When was that?” Cheng looked puzzled.

“When he encountered you and the Parks trucks, as he was returning to Chiwewe, after having seen the tracks of the raiders on the road.”

Cheng’s expression cleared. Ah yes. I had been an interested spectator of the Parks elephant culling. As you can imagine, there was much blood about during the operation, I could easily have stepped in a puddle.”

The inspector was sweating with embarrassment at this stage. “Do you remember what you were wearing that evening, Your Excellency?”

Cheng frowned as he tried to remember. “I was wearing an open-neck shirt, blue cotton slacks, and probably a pair of comfortable running shoes. That is my usual casual attire.”

“Do you still have those items?”

“Yes, of course. The shirt and slacks will have been laundered by now, and the shoes will have been cleaned. My valet is very efficient…” He broke off and smiled as though a thought had only just occurred to him. “Inspector, do you want to see these items? You might even wish to take them away for examination.”

Now the police inspector’s embarrassment was painful. He squirmed in his chair. “We have no right to ask for that kind of cooperation, Your Excellency. However, in view of the statement made by Doctor Armstrong. If you had no objection.”

“Of course not.” Cheng smiled reassuringly. “As I told the commissioner of police, I want to cooperate in every possible way.” He glanced at his wristwatch. “However, I am due at lunch with the president at State House in an hour. Do you mind if I send the clothing down to your headquarters with a member of my staff?”

Both police officers sprang to their feet. “I am very sorry to have inconvenienced you, Your Excellency. We appreciate your help. I am sure the commissioner of police will be writing to you to tell you that himself.”

Without rising from his desk, Cheng stopped the inspector at the door. “There was a report in the Herald that the raiders had been apprehended,” he asked. “Is that correct? Were you able to recover the stolen ivory?”

“The bandits were intercepted at the Zambezi as they tried to cross back into Zambia. Unfortunately all of them were either killed or escaped, and the ivory was destroyed by fire or lost in the river.”

“What a pity…” Cheng sighed. “They should have been made to answer for these brutal killings. However, it has simplified your work, has it not?”

“We are closing the file,” the inspector agreed. “Now that you have helped us tidy up the loose ends, the commissioner will write to convey his appreciation and that will be the end of the matter.”

The packet of clothing that Cheng selected from his wardrobe and sent to police headquarters, although agreeing with the description he had given the inspector, had never been worn anywhere near Chiwewe or the Zambezi valley.

Cheng sighed now as he thought about it. He replaced the ivory netsuke on his desk and stared at it morosely. But it was not the end of the matter, not now that Doctor Daniel Armstrong was nosing around, making trouble.

Could he rely on Chetti Singh once again, he wondered. It was one thing to get rid of two lowly Parks rangers, but Armstrong was game of a larger kind. He had international reputation and fame, there would be questions if he disappeared.

He touched the intercom button and spoke into the microphone on his desk in Cantonese. “Lee, come in here please.” He could have asked his question without ordering his secretary through, but he liked to look at her. Although she was of peasant stock from the hills, she was bright and nubile. She had done well at Taiwan University, but Cheng had not chosen her for her academic achievements.

She stood to the side of his desk, close enough for him to touch if he had wished to, in an attitude of servility and submission. Despite her modern accomplishments, she was a traditionally raised girl with the correct attitude to men, and in particular to her master. “Have you confirmed the reservations with Qantas Airlines?” he asked. With Armstrong sniffing around in Lilongwe, it was as well that the return to Taipei was imminent. He would never have taken the risk of the Chiwewe adventure if he had planned to stay on at the embassy. Already his wife and family had left. He would follow at the end of the month, only eight days from now.

“Yes, the reservations have been confirmed, Your Excellency,” Lee whispered respectfully. To him her voice was as sweet as that of the nightingale in his father’s lotus garden in the mountains. It stirred him. “When are the packers coming in?” he asked, and touched her. She trembled slightly under his hand and that stirred him further. “They will come in first thing on Monday, my lord.” She used the traditional title of respect.

Her straight black hair hung to her shoulders and shimmered with light. Cheng ran his fingers lightly up the thigh slit of her cheongsam; her skin was as smooth as the ivory netsuke. “You have warned them of the value and fragility of my art collection?” he asked, and pinched her beneath the skirt. He took a nip of that ivory skin between the nails of his thumb and second finger and she winced and bit her lower lip.

“Yes, my lord,” she whispered, with a catch of pain in her voice. He pinched a little harder. It would leave a tiny purple star on the flawless swell of her small firm buttock, a mark that would still be there when she came to him tonight.

The power of pain made him feel elated. He forgot about Doctor Daniel Armstrong and any trouble he might be brewing. For now, the police were off the track, and Lee Wang was lovely and compliant. He had eight days while he was separated from his wife in which to enjoy her to the full. Then he would return home, to his father’s approbation.

Chapter 11

Dan unlocked the rear door of the Landcruiser and packed the groceries and supplies that he had purchased from Chetti Singh’s supermarket into his depleted tucker box. Then he went round to the cab and sat at the wheel. While he let the engine warm, he checked his notebook for the list of the Sikh’s other business premises.

With help from a few obliging pedestrians he found his way into the light industrial area of the town, down near the railway line and the station.

Here it seemed that Chetti Singh owned four or five acres of industrial sites. Some of these were undeveloped and overgrown with rank bush and weed. On one of the vacant lots a large signboard declared:

ANOTHER CHETTI SINGH PROJECT SITE OF PROPOSED COTTON CARDING FACTORY

Development! Employment! Prosperity! Upliftment for MALAWI!

On one side of the open plot, behind a barbed-wire security fence, stood the workshops of Chetti Singh’s Toyota agency.At least a hundred new Toyota vehicles were parked in the front lot. They were still coated with the filth of the long rail journey up from the coast on open goods trucks. Clearly they were awaiting delivery service in the main workshop building.

Through the open front doors Daniel could see a team of mechanics at work. Though the foremen appeared all to be Asians, some in Sikh turbans, most of the overalled mechanics were black. The enterprise appeared prosperous and well managed.

Daniel drove into the forecourt and left the Landcruiser parked at the reception bay. He spoke to one of the foremen in a blue dust-coat. Under the pretext of arranging a service for the Landcruiser he managed to get a good look around the workshop and administration building. There was no obvious place where a shipment of stolen ivory could be hidden.

While he made a booking to bring the Landcruiser in the following morning at eight o’clock, he chatted casually to the workshop foreman and learned that the sawmill and the Chetti Singh Trading Company warehouse were in the next street, backing on to the vehicle workshop.

He drove away and circled the block. It was easy to pick out the sawmill, even from the far end of the street. A dozen railway trucks stood at the private railway siding, every one of them piled high with heavy logs of indigenous timber cut in the heavily forested mountains.

The shrieks of the circular saws carried clearly up the street.

As he drove past the gates he looked into the open sheds where the saws were housed. The spinning discs shone like quicksilver, and spurts of yellow sawdust flew from the rough logs as the blades bit into them. The resinous smell of freshly cut timber was pungent in the hot sunlight and mountains of raw planks were piled in the extensive yards, ready to be loaded on to the waiting railway trucks.

Daniel drove past slowly. Diagonally opposite the sawmill closed by stood the warehouse complex. It, was a high diamond-mesh fence, green plastic-coated wire on sturdy concrete poles with offset tops angled out towards the street and festooned with barbed wire.

The warehouse was in five semi-detached units; the valleys and peaks of the common roof formed a saw-tooth pattern of unpainted corrugated asbestos sheeting. The walls were also of the same corrugated asbestos.

Each of the five units had separate doors of the roller type usually seen on aircraft hangars.

This time the signboard at the gates read

CHETTI SINGH TRADING COMPANY CENTRAL DEPOT AND WAREHOUSE

He was certainly not shy about advertising his name, Daniel thought wryly. There was a swinging boom and a brick-built gatehouse at the entrance and Daniel noticed at least one uniformed guard at the gate. As he drew level with the last building, he saw that the tall asbestos doors had been rolled open and he was able to look down the length of the cavernous warehouse.

Suddenly he leaned forward and his pulse accelerated as he recognised the huge pantechnicon parked in the centre of the warehouse. It was the vehicle that he had last seen on the Chirundu road four nights previously. The ten-wheel trailer with the green tarpaulin cover was still hitched behind it and the red dust that coated it matched that on his own Landcruiser.

The rear doors of the trailer were open and a team of a dozen or so black labourers assisted by a forklift truck were loading a cargo of brown sacks that could have contained maize, sugar or rice. He could not see any of the distinctive dried fish bags that had been the cargo which he had seen in the Zambezi valley.

He lowered the side window, hoping for a whiff of fish, but he smelled only dust and diesel fumes. Then he was past. He thought about making a U-turn and another passing inspection.

“Hell, I’ve drawn enough attention already,” he told himself. “Like the circus coming to town.” He drove back to the Capital Hotel the way he had come left the truck in the guests car park and went up to his room.

He ran a bath, as deep and hot as he could stand it, and soaked the dust and grime of the African roads out of his pores, while his skin turned a rich puce. As the water cooled he twiddled the tap with his toe, adding fresh steaming gouts. At last he stood to lather his nether regions and regarded himself seriously in the dewy mirror over the washbasin.

“Look here, Armstrong. The sensible thing to do is go to the police with our suspicions. It’s their job, let them get on with it.”

“Since when,” Armstrong, he replied, “did we ever do the sensible thing? Besides, this is Africa. It will take the police three or four days to stir their butts, and Mr. Singh has had quite enough time already to get rid of any ivory he may just have lying around. By tomorrow it will probably be too late to catch him at it.”

“You are trying to tell me, Armstrong, that time is of the essence?”

“Precisely, old chap.”

“It couldn’t be that you’d enjoy a touch of cloak and dagger, a bit of boy-scouting, a spot of amateur sleuthing?”

“Who me? Don’t be silly! You know me.”

“Indeed I do,” he agreed with a wink at his image, and subsided back into the steamy suds, which slopped over the bath rim on to the tiled floor.

The dinner was a vast improvement on his last public meal.

The fillets of bream were fresh from the lake and the wine was a delicious Hamilton-Russell Chardonnay from the Cape of Good Hope. Reluctantly he rationed himself to half the bottle. Work to do, he muttered ruefully. and went up to the room to make his preparations.

There was no hurry. He couldn’t move until after midnight. When he was ready he lay on the bed and enjoyed the sensation of excitement and anticipation. He kept looking at his wristwatch. It seemed to have stopped and he held it to his ear. The waiting was always the worst part.

Chetti Singh watched the security guards usher the last customer from the supermarket and close the double glass doors. The wall clock pointed to ten minutes past five.

The sweepers were already at work and his daughters were busy at the tills, cashing up the day’s receipts. The girls were as devout as virgins ministering at the altar of some arcane religion, and his wife stood over them as dignified as the high priestess. This was the high point of the daily ritual.

At last the procession left the tills and made its way across the shop floor, in strict order of precedence, his wife leading and her daughters following, the eldest first and the youngest last. They entered his office and laid the day’s take on his desk in neatly banded bundles of currency notes, and canvas bags of coins, while his wife handed him the print-outs from the tills. “Oh, good!” Chetti Singh told them in Hindi. “The best day since Christmas Eve, I am sure.” He could recite the figures over the last six months without consulting his ledgers.

He entered the take in the day-book, and while his family watched respectfully, locked the cash and credit-card vouchers into the big Chubb safe built into the back wall. “I will be late home for dinner, he told his wife. I must go down to the warehouse to attend to certain matters.”

“Papaii, your meal will be ready when you return.” She clasped her hands to her lips in a graceful gesture of respect, and her daughters imitated her example and then filed from his office. Chetti Singh sighed with pleasure. They were good girls but if only they had been boys. It was going to be the devil’s own job finding husbands for all of them.

He drove down to the industrial area in the Cadillac. The car was not new. Dearth of foreign exchange would not permit an ordinary citizen to import such a luxurious vehicle. Chetti Singh had, as always, a system. He contacted newly appointed members of the American diplomatic staff before they left Washington. Malawi customs regulations allowed them to import a new car and sell it locally at the end of their term.

Chetti Singh paid them twice the US value of the Cadillac in Malawi kwacha on arrival. They could live in princely style on this amount for the full three years of their tour in Malawi while still retaining use of the car and saving their official salaries.

When they left, Chetti Singh took over the vehicle, ran it for a year, until the next arrangement matured at which time he placed the Cadillac on the showroom floor of his Toyota agency with a price tag of three times its original US value. It was usually sold within the week. No profit was too small to despise; no loss was too small to abhor. It was not by accident that over the years Chetti Singh had amassed a fortune the full extent of which not even his, wife could guess at.

At the warehouse gates Chawe swung open the boom to allow him to drive the Cadillac through.

“Yes?” Chetti Singh asked the big Angoni.

“He came,” Chawe replied. “As you said he would. He drove by on this road at ten minutes past four. He was in the truck with the man’s arm painted on the door. He drove slowly and he was staring through the fence all the time.”

Chetti Singh frowned with annoyance. “This chap is becoming an absolute pest. Never mind,” he said aloud, and Chawe looked bemused. His English was rudimentary. “Come with me,” Chetti Singh ordered, and Chawe climbed into the back seat of the Cadillac. He would never be so presumptuous as to sit beside his master.

Chetti Singh drove slowly along the front of the warehouse complex. All the call doors were already closed and locked for the night. There were no burglar alarms guarding the area; at night even the perimeter fence was unlit by floodlights.

There had been a period two or three years back during which he had suffered from repeated burglaries and break-ins. Alarms and floodlights had done little to prevent these depredations. In desperation he had consulted the most famous Sangorna in all the territory. This old witch-doctor lived in dread isolation up on the top of the misty Mlanje plateau attended only by his acolytes.

For a fee commensurate with his reputation, the witch-doctor descended from the mountain with his entourage and, with great fanfare and ceremony, he placed the warehouse under the protection of the most powerful and malevolent of the spirits and demons that he controlled.

Chetti Singh invited all the idlers and loafers of the town to witness the ceremony. They watched with interest and trepidation as the witch-doctor decapitated a black cockerel at each of the five doors of the warehouse and sprinkled its blood on the portals. After this, to suitable incantations, he placed the skull of a baboon on each corner-post of the perimeter fence. The spectators had been much impressed and the word spread swiftly through the townships and the beerballs that Chetti Singh was under magic protection.

For six months thereafter there were no further break-ins.

Then one of the township gangs worked up the courage to test the efficacy of the spell, and they got away with a dozen television sets and nearly forty transistor radios.

Chetti Singh sent for the witch-doctor and reminded him that his services carried a guarantee. They haggled until finally Chetti Singh agreed to buy from him at a bargain price the ultimate deterrent. Her name was Nandi. Since Nandi’s arrival there had been only a single break-in.

The burglar had died in Lilongwe hospital the following day with his scalp ripped off his skull and his bowels bulging out of the rents in his belly. Nandi had solved the problem, permanently.

Chetti Singh drove the Cadillac around the peripheral pathway inside the fence. The fence was in good order, even the baboon skulls still grinned down from the tops of the cornerposts, but the infra-red alarms were gone. Chetti Singh had sold them at a good price to a Zambian customer. After Nandi’s arrival they had become redundant.

Completing the circuit of the fence, Chetti Singh parked the Cadillac at the rear of the warehouse, beside a neat shed of the same corrugated sheeting as the main building. This was obviously a later addition, tacked on as an afterthought to the rear wall of the warehouse.

As Chetti Singh stepped out of the Cadillac, his nostrils flared to the faint but rank odour that wafted from the single small window in the shed. This was set high up and was heavily barred.

He glanced at Chawe. “Is she safe?”

“She is in the small cage, as you ordered, Mambo.”

Despite the assurance, Chetti Singh peered through the peephole in the door before he opened it and stepped into the shed. The only light came from the high window and the room was in semi-darkness, made more intense by the contrast of the late sunshine outside.

The smell was stronger now, a pungent wild scent, and suddenly from the gloom there was a spitting snarl so vicious that Chetti Singh stepped back involuntarily. My goodness. he chuckled to hide his nerves. We are in absolutely foul mettle today. An animal moved behind the bars of the cage, a dark shape on silent pads and there was a gleam of yellow eyes. Nandi. Chetti Singh smiled. ‘The sweet one’. Nandi had been the name of King Chaka’s mother.

Chetti Singh reached out to the switch beside the door and the fluorescent tube in the ceiling spluttered and then lit the shed with a cold blue light. In the cage a female leopard shrank away against the far wall, crouching there, staring at the man with murderous eyes, her upper lip lifting in a creased and silent snarl to reveal her fangs.

She was a huge cat, over seven feet from nose to tail, one of the animals from Mlanje mountain forest, who would turn the scale at 120 pounds. A wild creature captured by the old witchdoctor in her maturity, she had once been a notorious goat and dog-killer, terrorising the villages on the slopes of the mountain. Shortly before her capture she had savagely mauled a young herdboy who had tried to defend his flock against her.

The forest cats were darker than those of the open savanna, the jet-black rosettes that dappled her skin were close-set, so that she was close in coloration to the melanistic panther. Her tail curled and flicked like a metronome, the gauge of her temper. She watched the man unblinkingly. The force of her hatred was as thick as the wild animal stench in the small hot room.

“Are you angry?” Chetti Singh asked, and her lip lifted higher to the sound of his voice. She knew him well. Not angry enough, Chetti Singh decided, and reached for the cattle prod on the rack beside the light switch.

The cat reacted immediately. She knew the sting of the electric prod.

Her next snarl was a crackling rattle and she ran back and forth trying to escape from the torment she had come to expect. At the end nearest the main wall of the warehouse the steel mesh cage narrowed into a bottleneck just wide enough to admit the leopard’s body, a low tunnel that ended against a steel sliding door in the warehouse wall.

The prod was bolted on to a long aluminium pole. Chetti Singh slipped it between the cage bars and reached out to touch the leopard. Her movements became frantic as she tried to avoid the device, and Chetti Singh laughed at her antics as he pursued her around the cage. He was trying to drive her into the bottle-necked tunnel.

At last she flung herself against the bars of the cage, ripping at the steel with her claws as she tried to reach him, coughing and grunting with fury, but the length of the pole kept Chetti Singh out of range.

“Goodness gracious me!” he said, and touched the side of her neck with the points of the prod. Blue electricity flashed and the leopard recoiled from the sting of it and bounded to the tunnel at the end of the cage. Chawe was ready for this, and he dropped the mesh door behind her.

Now she was trapped. Her nose was against the steel hatch in the warehouse wall, while at her heels the mesh door prevented her backing away. The tunnel was so low that it almost touched her back and she could not rear up, it was so narrow that she could not turn her head to protect her heaving flanks. She was helplessly pinioned and Chetti Singh handed the prod to Chawe.

He returned to the table near the door and uncoiled the lead of a small electric soldering iron and plugged it into the wall socket.

With the plastic-covered lead trailing behind him he came back to where the leopard crouched in the tunnel. He reached through the bars and stroked her back. Her pelt was thick and silky, and she could not avoid his touch. Her whole body seemed to swell with her fury and she snarled and tried to twist her neck to savage his hand but the bars prevented it.

Chetti Singh lifted the soldering iron and spat on the copper point to test its heat. His spittle sizzled and evaporated in a puff of steam. He grunted with satisfaction and reached through the bars once again. He grasped the leopard’s tail and lifted it high, exposing her fluffy genitalia and the tight puckered black collar of her anus.

The leopard hissed with outrage and ripped at the cement floor with her claws fully extended. She knew what was coming and she tried to lower her tail and cover her delicate parts. Help me, Chetti Singh grunted, and Chawe seized the tail. It writhed like a serpent in his grip but he forced it upwards, allowing his master free use of both hands.

Chetti Singh inspected the delicate flesh thoughtfully. It was dimpled and cratered with healed scars, some so fresh that the cicatrice was stilt pink and glossy. He reached out gently with the hot iron, choosing the spot to burn with care, avoiding the freshly healed skin.

The cat felt the heat of the approaching iron and her body convulsed in anticipation. “Just a little one, my beauty,” Chetti Singh assured her. “Just enough to make you very angry if you should meet Doctor Armstrong tonight.”

Unmolested, leopards are not a serious threat to human beings. Man does not form a part of their natural prey, and their instinctive fear is enough to make them avoid rather than attack him. However, once injured or wounded, or particularly when they are deliberately tormented, they are, amongst the most dangerous and vicious of all African animals.

Chetti Singh touched the glowing iron to the soft rim of the leopard’s anus. There was a puff of smoke and the stink of burned skin and hair. The leopard shrieked with pain and bit at the steel bars.

Chetti Singh inspected the injury. With practice he could inflict a burn that was exquisitely painful, but which would heal within the week and would not damage the animal’s appearance nor hamper her movements when she attacked. Good! he congratulated himself. The iron had only superficially penetrated the outer skin. It was a shallow painful little wound, yet it had infuriated the golden cat.

He laid the soldering iron back on the table and picked up a bottle of disinfectant. It was raw iodine, dark yellow and pungent on the swab that he pressed against the open wound. The sting of it would increase her fury.

The leopard shrieked and hissed and struggled wildly against the restraining bars. Her eyes were huge and yellow and froth lined her open snarling lips. “That’s enough. Open the hatch,” Chetti Singh ordered, and the Angoni released the cat’s tail. She whipped it down between her legs to protect herself.

Chawe went to the handle of the steel hatch and raised it. With one last snarl the leopard bounded through the opening and disappeared into the warehouse beyond.

At first it had been difficult to get the cat to leave the warehouse at dawn each morning, but with free use of the electric prod and the lure of the goat’s meat on which she was fed, she had at last been trained to return to her cage in the shed on command.

It was the only training she had received. All night she prowled the warehouse, tormented and murderous. At dawn she returned to the shed and crouched there in the gloom, growling softly to herself and licking her deliberately inflicted injuries, awaiting the first opportunity to avenge her humiliation and pain.

Chawe closed the hatch behind the leopard and followed his master out into the last glow of the sunset. Chetti Singh mopped his face with a white handkerchief It had been hot in the fetid little shed. “You will remain in your guardhouse at the main gate,” he commanded. Do not patrol the fence or attempt to stop the white man from entering the warehouse. If he does get in, Nandi will warn you.”

They both smiled at the thought. They remembered the last intruder and his condition as they took him down to the casualty department of the general hospital. When you hear Nandi working on him, ring me from the main gate. The telephone is beside my bed. Do not enter the warehouse until I arrive. It will take fifteen or twenty minutes for me to get here. By that time Nandi may have saved us a great deal of trouble.

His wife had one of her magnificent curries prepared for his dinner. She did not question where he had been. She was a good and dutiful wife.

After dinner he worked on his accounts for two hours. His was a complicated system of accountancy: he kept two, separate sets of books, one for the civil tax collector which reflected a fictitious profit figure, and another authentic set which was meticulously correct. From this Chetti Singh calculated the tithe that he paid to the temple. it was one thing to cheat on income tax, but a prudent man did not mess around with the gods.

Before he went to bed he unlocked the steel safe built into the back of his wardrobe and took out the double-barrelled twelve-bore shotgun and a packet of SSG cartridges. He had an official police permit for the firearm, for, whenever possible and convenient, he was a law-abiding man.

His wife gave him a puzzled look, but made no comment. He did not satisfy her curiosity, but propped the weapon in the corner nearest the door, ready to hand. He switched out the lights and under the sheets made love to her with his customary dispatch. Ten minutes later he was snoring sonorously.

The telephone beside his bed rang at seven minutes past two in the morning. On the first peal Chetti Singh was awake, and before it could ring again he had the receiver to his ear.

“In the warehouse, Nandi is singing a pretty, song,” said Chawe in Angoni.

“I am coming,” Chetti Singh replied, and swung his legs off the bed.

Chapter 12

There were no street lights, which makes the job a little easier, Daniel murmured as he parked the Landcruiser on one of the open plots three hundred yards from the boundary fence of Chetti Singh’s central depot. He had driven the last mile at walking speed without headlights.

Now he switched off the engine and stepped out into the darkness. He stood listening for almost ten minutes before he checked his wristwatch. It was a little after one o’clock.

He already wore navy-blue slacks and a black leather jacket. Now he pulled a soft balaclava cap of dark wool over his head. He strapped a small nylon bag around his waist that contained the few items of equipment which he had selected from the tool-box.

Bolted to the Landcruiser’s roof were two light aluminium extension ladders that he carried for laying as corduroy when negotiating soft sand or deep mud. They weighed less than seven pounds each. He carried both of them under one arm as he set out across the weed-choked wasteland towards the depot. He kept off the road, well back amongst the scrub.

The plot had been used as a rubbish dump. There were piles of garbage. A broken bottle or jagged piece of scrap iron could cut through the canvas and rubber boots he wore. He picked his way with care.

Fifty feet from the fence he laid down the ladders and crouched behind a rusty car body. He studied the depot. There were no lights burning in the warehouse, no floodlights illuminating the fence. That seemed odd.

“Too good? Too easy?” he asked himself, and crept closer. The only light was in the guardhouse at the front gate. It gave him sufficient back lighting with which to examine the fence. He saw at once that it was not electrified, and he could discover no trip-wire for an alarm system.

He moved stealthily to the corner-post at the rear of the property. If there were an infri alarm system, the eye would be mounted here.

Something white gleamed on top of the post, but on closer inspection he realised that it was the bleached skull of a chacma baboon, and he grimaced. He felt vaguely uneasy as he went back to fetch the ladders from where he had left them beside the wrecked car.

Back at the corner of the fenced area, he settled down to watch for a guard making his rounds. After half an hour he had convinced himself that the fence was unguarded.

He moved in. The quickest and safest method of entry would have been to use the wire-cutters, but if possible he wanted to leave no trace of his visit. He extended both ladders to their full length. Then steeling himself for the squeal of a hidden alarm, he propped one of the ladders against the concrete corner-post.

He let out his breath when no alarm sounded.

Carrying the second ladder, he scaled to the top of the fence. Balancing on the top rung, leaning backwards to avoid the offset barbed wire on the summit, he swung the spare ladder over and inwards.

He had intended lowering it carefully on the far side, but it slipped from his grip. Although it fell on grass, which cushioned the impact, the sound was like the report of a .357 magnum in his own ears. He teetered on the top of the ladder, his nerves screwed tight and waited for a shouted challenge or a shot.

Nothing happened, and after a minute he breathed again. He reached into the front of his clothing under the polo-neck jersey, and brought out the roll of foam rubber which he used as a pillow when sleeping under the stars. It was an inch thick, just enough to pad the top strand of barbed wire. He spread it carefully over the top of the fence.

He took a firm grip between the spikes of the wire with his gloved hands and rolled smoothly over, dropping nine feet to the lawn on the far side.

He broke his fall with a forward somersault and crouched low, listening again, peering into the darkness. Nothing.

Quickly he set up the second ladder against the inside of the fence, ready for a speedy retreat. The unpainted aluminium gleamed like a beacon to catch the eye of a patrolling guard. Nothing we can do about that, he told himself, and crossed to the side wall of the warehouse.

He slipped along the wall, thankful for the darkness, and reached the corner. He crouched there for a minute, listening. Somewhere far away a dog barked, and there was the distant sound of a locomotive shunting in the railway yards. Apart from that, nothing.

He glanced round the corner, and then crept down the long back wall of the warehouse. There was no opening here, except for a single row of the skylight windows very high up under the caves of the saw-backed roof, at least thirty feet above him.

Ahead he made out a small shed in the gloom. it was attached to the rear wall of the warehouse, but its roof was much lower than that of the main building. As he approached it, he became aware of a faint but foul odour, like guano fertiliser or untanned hides.

The smell was stronger as he circled the shed, but he thought little of it. He was studying the shed. There was a downpipe in the angle where the shed’s wall joined that of the main warehouse. He tested the pipe with his weight, and then went up it easily, hand over hand.

Within seconds he was lying stretched out on the roof of the shed, looking up at the row of skylights in the main wall now only ten feet above him. Two of the panels stood open.

From the bag in the small of his back he brought out a coil of nylon rope and quietly tied a Turk’s head knot in one end to give it weight.

Balancing on the peak of the shed’s roof he flicked the rope out and then got it swinging in an easy circle. With a snap of the wrist he shot the weighted knot upwards. It struck the jamb between the two open panels and then dropped back in a tangle around his shoulders. He tried again with the same result. At the fifth attempt the knot dropped through the open skylight, and immediately he tugged and it whipped back and made three natural turns around the jamb. He pulled back hard and the wraps held. Keeping pressure on the line he began to climb.

He used the rubber soles of his canvas boots for purchase against the unpainted asbestos wall, and went up with the agility of a monkey. He had almost reached the windows when he felt the end of the line start to unravel. With a sickening lurch he dropped back a foot and then it held again. Daniel gathered himself and lunged upwards. A gloved hand over the bottom frame of the open skylight steadied him.

He hung thirty feet above the ground, his feet kicking and slipping against the wall and the steel frame cutting into his fingers, even through the glove. Then with another convulsive effort he flung his right hand up and got a double grip. Now with the strength of both arms he was able to draw himself up smoothly and straddle the frame of the skylight.

He took a few seconds to catch his breath and listen for any sound from the dark interior of the building, then he unzipped the bag and groped for the Maglite flashlight. Before he left the hotel room he had screwed a red plastic shade over the lens.

The shaft of light which he shot downwards was a discreet -ruby glow that was unlikely to attract attention from outside the building. Below him the warehouse floor was piled with towers and walls of packing cases in a multitude of sizes and shapes. Oh no! he groaned aloud. He had not expected such abundance. It would take a week to examine all of them, and there were four other bays to the warehouse complex.

He flashed the torch-beam down the wall. The corrugated cladding was fixed to a framework of intricately welded angle iron. The frames formed an easy ladder for him to reach the cement floor thirty feet below. He swarmed down and switched off the flashlight.

Swiftly he changed position in the darkness. If a guard was creeping up on him he wanted to confuse the attack. He crouched between two cases, listening to the silence. He was about to move again, when he froze.

There was something, a sound so small that it was just within the range of his comprehension, he felt it with his nerve ends rather than truly heard it. It ceased, if it had ever been.

He waited for a hundred beats of his racing heart but it did not come again. He switched on the torch and the light dispelled his unease.

He moved softly down the aisle between the masses of trade goods and bales and crates. He had seen the pantechnicon parked in the end bay. That’s the place to start, he assured himself and he sniffed the dark air for the smell of dried fish.

He stopped abruptly and switched off the torch. Once again he had sensed something, not definite enough to pin-point, not loud enough to be a sound, just a premonition that something was close by in the darkness. He held his breath and there was a whisper of movement, or of his imagination. He could not be certain, but he thought it might be the brush of stealthy footfalls perhaps, or the gentle sough of breathing.

He waited. No. It was nothing but his nerves. He moved on down the dark warehouse. There were no interior walls in the building, only pillars of angle iron supporting the roof, separating the spaces between each of the bays. He stopped again, and sniffed. There it was at last. The smell of dried fish. He went forward more rapidly, and the smell was stronger.

They were stacked against the end wall of the furthest bay, a high pile of sacks, reaching almost to roof level. The smell was strong. Printed on each sack were the words: Dried fish.Product of Malawi. together with a stylised rising sun emblem with a crowing cockerel surmounting it.

Daniel groped in his bag and brought out a twelve-inch screwdriver. He squatted before the pile of fish sacks and began to probe them, stabbing the point of the screwdriver through the weave of the jute sacks, and then working it around to feel for any hard object packed beneath a layer of dried fish. He worked quickly, five or six quick stabs to each sack as he passed, reaching up to the sacks above his head, and then scrambling up the pyramid to reach the summit.

At last he stopped and thought about it. He had presumed that the ivory would be packed inside the fish sacks, but now he reconsidered and discovered the fallacy of his original theory.

If Ning Cheng Gong had indeed transferred the ivory from the refrigerator trucks to Chetti Singh’s pantechnicon, then there certainly would not have been the opportunity to repack it in the sacks and seal them during the few hours before Daniel had intercepted Chetti Singh on the Chirundu road. The very best they could have done was to lay the ivory on the floor of the cargo bed and pile the fish sacks over it.

Daniel clucked his tongue with annoyance at his own impetuosity. Of course, the fish sacks were too small to contain the larger tusks of the hoard, and they would make an impossibly flimsy packing in which to smuggle the ivory out of Africa to its final destination, wherever that might be. The heavy pointed tusks would surely work their way through the outer layer of fish and rupture the woven jute sacks. Damn fool.

Daniel shook his head. “I had a fixed idea.”

He flashed the shaded ruby beam of the torch about, and his nerves jumped tight. He thought he saw something big and dark move in the shadows at the extreme range of the beam, the glint of animal eyes, but when he steadied the torch and stared hard, he realised that it was his imagination again.

“Getting old and windy,” he rebuked himself.

He slid down the pyramid of fish sacks to the floor, then he hurried along the aisle between the mountains of goods. He examined the labelling on the packing cases as he passed. Defy Refrigerators, Koo Canned Peaches, Sunlight Soap Powder.

Each case consigned to Chetti Singh Trading Company. It was all incoming cargo. He was looking for an outgoing cargo.

Ahead of him he made out the shape of a fork-lift truck standing high on the loading ramp near the main doors. As he moved towards it he saw a large case balanced on the fork arms of the truck. Beyond it, almost blocking the ramp, was a high pile of identical cases. They were ready for loading on to the empty railway truck that stood waiting in the bay below the ramp.

Obviously, this was an outgoing cargo and he almost ran down the length of the bay. As he approached he realised that they were traditional tea chests, with sturdy plywood sides and solid frames, bound with flexible steel straps.

Then he felt an electric tickle of excitement lift the hair on his arms as he read the address stencilled on the side of the nearest chest:

LUCKY DRAGON INVESTMENTS 1555 CHUNGCHING S ROAD TAIPEI TAIWAN

“Son of a gun!” Daniel grinned happily. “The Chinese connection! Lucky Dragon. Lucky for some!” He crossed to the fork-lift truck and reached across to the controls. He clicked on the master switch and operated the controls. The electric motor putted and the chest rose silently.

At head-height Daniel stopped it. He slipped beneath the suspended case.

He did not want to leave any trace of his visit by interfering with the lid or sides of the case.

Working between the forked arms of the trunk, he thrust upwards into the bottom of the tea-chest with the screwdriver.

The plywood crackled as he punched out a circular opening just large enough to admit his hand. He found that the interior of the case was lined with a heavy-duty yellow plastic sheet that resisted his efforts to tear through. He paused to find the clasp-knife in his bag, and then slit out a flap of the sheeting.

There was the familiar smell of dried tea leaves, and he began to dig into the compressed black vegetable mass, spilling the tea out on to the concrete floor. Soon he had dug into the full length of the screwdriver without encountering any alien object hidden in the case.

He felt the first prickle of doubt. There were hundreds of tea-chests piled on the ramp; any of them could contain the tusks, or none of them.

He widened the hole with a few more blows of the screwdriver, then he drove the steel point up into the mass of tea with all the strength of his doubt and frustration.

It hit something solid with a force that jarred his wrist, and he almost shouted aloud with triumph. He ripped at the edges of the hole until he could get both hands into the chest, and he dug out lumps of tea that fell on to the ramp around his feet.

Now at last he could touch the hard object buried in the tea.

It was round and smooth. Crouching under the chest he twisted his neck to look up into the aperture, slitting his eyes against the soft rain of dried tea leaves that trickled from the hole. In the beam of the torch he made out the soft creamy alabaster gleam.

With the point of the screwdriver he attacked the exposed surface of the object, stabbing and prising it, until at last a splinter lifted and he pulled it loose. It was the size of his thumb. “No more doubts,” he whispered, as he examined the sample and picked out the distinctive chicken-wire pattern of the ivory grain. “Now I’ve got you, you murdering bastards.”

Quickly he stuffed the torn flap of plastic back into the hole to prevent any more tea spilling out on to the ramp. Then he swept up the fallen leaves and scooped them into his pockets. It wasn’t a very effectual job of tidying up, but he hoped that the loaders would be careless enough, not to notice anything amiss when they started work again in the morning.

He went to the controls of the fork-lift and lowered the tea chest to its original place on the ramp. He flashed the beam of the torch around to make certain he had left no other evidence of his visit, and this time he saw it clearly. A great dark shape crouched at the edge of the ramp, watching him with eyes that glowed like opals even in the muted beam of the torch.

As the light struck it the creature seemed to dissolve like a puff of smoke, almost supernatural in its uncanny stealth. Daniel recoiled instinctively against the side of the fork-lift, trying to probe the darkness with the torch.

Then suddenly there was a sound that ripped across his nerve ends like an emery wheel. It echoed through the dark cavern of the warehouse and rang against the high roof. It was a hacking cadence, like a wood-saw cutting metal, and it set his teeth on edge. He knew what it was instantly, but he found it difficult to believe what he was hearing.

“Leopard!” he breathed, and with a chill in his guts he realised his danger. All the advantage was with the beast. The night was its natural environment. Darkness made it bold; darkness made it aggressive.

He pulled the red filter off the lens of the torch and now the bright white shaft of light sprang out across the warehouse. He swept it back and around, and he glimpsed the cat again. It had moved in behind him, circling in. That was the most hostile manoeuvre. The predator circles its prey before rushing in for the kill.

As the light hit it, the leopard flashed away. With one lithe bound, it disappeared behind the wall of tea-chests, and its fierce chorus of hatred echoed through the darkness once again. “It’s hunting me!”

Whilst he was warden of Chiwewe one of his rangers had been mauled by a leopard, and Daniel had been first on the scene to rescue him. Now he recalled vividly the terrible injuries the beast had inflicted.

The other dangerous cat of Africa, the lion, does not have the instinctive knowledge of how best to attack the upright two-legged figure of a man. He will charge in and knock a victim down and then will bite and claw indiscriminately at whatever part of the man’s body he can reach, often gnawing and crunching a single limb until the victim is rescued.

The leopard, on the other hand, understands the human anatomy. Baboons form a large part of the leopard’s prey, and it knows how to go directly for the head and the vulnerable guts of the primate. Its usual attack is to leap on to its victim and hook into his shoulders with the front claws, while its back legs kick like those of a domestic cat playing with a ball of wool.

The long talons, unsheathed, will disembowel a man with half a dozen swift kicks, stripping his guts out. At the same time the leopard sinks his teeth into the face or throat and with one front claw reaches over to hook the back of its victim’s scalp and tear it off the skull.

Often the dome of the skull comes away with the scalp, like the top sheared off a softboiled egg, leaving the brain exposed. All this flashed through Daniel’s mind as the leopard circled him, its wild savage call echoing through the open bays of the warehouse.

Still crouched beside the fork-lift, Daniel zipped his leather jacket tightly up under the chin to protect his throat and slid the nylon bag around from the small of his back to cover his stomach. Then he shifted the screwdriver to his right hand, and with his left swung the torch to cover the leopard’s menacing circles. “My God, he’s a huge brute!” Daniel realised, as he saw the true size of the cat. In the torchlight it was panther black. Bushlore has it that the dark-coloured cats are the most ferocious of the breed.

It was impossible to hold the leopard in the beam of light. It was as elusive as a shadow. Daniel knew he would never make it back to where he had broken into the warehouse. It was too far to go with his back unprotected. The cat would be on him before he had covered half the distance. He flicked the torch beam away for a second, seeking another avenue of escape.

The fish sacks. He saw the pyramid piled against the near wall, reaching as high as the windows, thirty feet above the warehouse floor.

“If I can just reach the skylight,” he whispered. There was a long drop down the outside wall, but he had the nylon rope to lower himself at least part of the way.

“Move!” he told himself. “You’re running out of time. It’s going to rush you any moment now.”

He screwed up his nerve to leave the haven of the fork-lift. The machine covering his back was a solid comfort, while in the open he was vulnerable and puny against the speed and strength of the leopard.

The moment he left the shelter of the fork-lift, the leopard sawed again, its savage cry more vicious and eager. “Get out of it,” Daniel yelled at it, hoping to disconcert it with the sound of a human voice.

The cat ducked sideways and disappeared behind a pile of packing cases, and Daniel made his mistake. It was a stupid, unforgivable mistake. He, of all people, knew that you must never run from a wild beast. In particular you must never turn your back on one of the cats. Their instinct is to pursue. If you run, they must charge, just as a domestic cat cannot resist the flight of the mouse.

Daniel thought that he might just be able to reach the pyramid of fish sacks. He turned and ran, and the leopard exploded in a silent rush out of the darkness behind him. He never even heard it come. It landed with all its weight and the full momentum of its charge in the middle of his back, between his shoulder-blades. Daniel was hurled forward. He felt its claws bite in and hold, and for a moment he thought they were hooked into his own flesh.

Instead of bearing him down to the concrete floor the leopard slammed him into the pile of sacks. They cushioned the impact, but still it drove half the air from Daniel’s lungs and he felt as though his ribs had collapsed. The leopard was still mounted high on his shoulders, but as Daniel staggered under its weight he realized that its claws were hooked into the leather of his jacket and the thick woollen sweater beneath it.

Somehow Daniel managed to keep on his feet, supporting himself against the sloping wall of sacks. He could feel the cat on his back gather itself, bringing up its back legs, coiling its body like a spring, ready to lash downwards across his buttocks and the back of his thighs. It would open his flesh to the bone, slicing through blood vessels and arteries, a crippling injury from which he would probably bleed to death within minutes.

Daniel pushed off from the sacks with both arms, flipping backwards, rolling his body into a ball with his knees up under his chin. The leopard’s claws tugged at the nylon belt of the bag and then kicked on downwards, but Daniel had drawn his legs up and clear. The cat’s back paws with the curved claws outspread, struck at air, missing his flesh.

Now man and beast with their combined weight crashed to the concrete floor. Daniel was a big man and the leopard was underneath him. A single hissing snarl was forced from its lungs by the impact and Daniel felt its claws release their hold in the leather of his jacket. He twisted violently and reached over his shoulder with one hand, the screwdriver still clutched in the other. As he came to his knees, he seized a thick fold of skin at the scruff of the leopard’s neck and, with the strength of his terror, tore the creature from his back and hurled it against the pile of packing-cases.

It rebounded at him like a rubber ball.

The torch had been knocked from his grip by the leopard’s first charge. It rolled across the concrete floor until it came up against one of the packing-cases. Its beam was angled upwards now and reflected from the pale plywood case. The reflection gave Daniel just enough light to anticipate the leopard’s charge.

Its jaws were open to their full gape, and its extended front paws reached for his shoulders. As it smashed into him, chest cocked up, its back legs in the instinctive disembowelling movement, its head shot forward to sink its fangs into his face and throat. This was the classic leopard attack and Daniel countered with the screwdriver held sideways between both his hands, thrusting it like a curb bit into the leopard’s open mouth.

One of the beast’s front fangs broke off cleanly at the gum as it struck steel, and then Daniel was on his back holding the leopard off his face with the screwdriver. It snarled again and a hot mist of spittle blew into his face, the stink of carrion and death filled his nostrils.

He felt one forepaw stretch out over his shoulder, reaching out to the back of his scalp to rip it off his skull. At the same time the back legs jack-knifed up, claws fully extended to tear out the front of his belly. However, the back of Daniel’s head was pressed up hard against one of the fish sacks and the leopard hooked its claws, not into the thin flesh of his scalp, but into the coarse jute of the sack only an inch from his ear. Then the cat slashed down with both back legs together, but instead of unzipping his belly, the claws bit into the tough nylon belt of the bag at his stomach.

For a moment the animal’s attack was stalled. It ripped at the jute sack, seeming not to realize its error, and the back legs kicked downward spasmodically, tearing the nylon with a sharp rending sound.

As it struggled, the leopard pulled back its head, trying to avoid the steel shaft that Daniel was still forcing deeply between its open jaws.

Instantly Daniel whipped the screwdriver back, releasing his grip on the sharpened end and then drove it forward again, aiming the point at one of the leopard’s eyes.

His aim was wild, the point of the screwdriver shot into the cat’s flaring nostril, but instead of finding the nasal channel into the brain, it deflected slightly, penetrated the gristle of the nose, and ran along the outside of the cheekbone below the dappled skin. The point emerged from beneath the leopard’s ear, and the cat screamed with the shock and agony. For a moment it relaxed its attack. Daniel rolled over, and threw the leopard off him.

It seemed a miracle that up to now the leopard had not drawn blood, but as Daniel threw it backwards, the cat held on instinctively with one paw.

The claws raked down Daniel’s arm, slicing through the leather and wool and reaching the muscle of his forearm. It felt like a sword cut, and the pain goaded Daniel to throw in his last desperate reserve of strength. He kicked out with both feet together, and his heels crashed into the feline body just as it gathered itself for the next charge. The kick drove it backwards in a snarling, snapping ball of dark fur that gleaned and rippled in the torchlight.

There was a space between the fish sacks at Daniel’s back, it was just wide enough to admit his body. He flung himself backwards into the narrow cave. Now his back and flanks were protected, and the leopard could only attack from directly in front.

It thrust its head, growling and gaping into the narrow space, trying to reach him. Daniel stabbed for its eyes with the screwdriver. Again he missed, but the steel point lacerated the leopard’s curling pink tongue, and it leaped backwards, hissing and spitting with pain. “Go on! Get out of it,” he howled, more to bolster his own courage than with any hope of driving off the infuriated beast.

He drew his legs up under him and worked his way as far as he could into the narrow gap between the fish sacks.

The leopard paced back and forth across the entrance, blotting out the feeble torchlight with each pass. Once it stopped and sat on its haunches, wiping its wounded nose with one paw, like a domestic cat, and then licking its own blood from the fur. Then it bounded forward, blocking the entrance to the narrow cave, and stretched in one forepaw to try and reach Daniel again.

He stabbed at the groping limb and felt it hit and penetrate. The leopard spat explosively and pulled back. It began to patrol the entrance to his cave, pausing every few minutes to lower its head and let out one of those terrible sawing roars.

Daniel felt the blood sliming down his forearm under the sleeve and dripping from his fingers. He held the screwdriver between his knees, ready to fend off the next attack, and then, one-handed, bound his handkerchief around the torn arm to stem the bleeding. He pulled the knot tight with his teeth. The wound seemed superficial. The leather sleeve had saved him from serious injury, but the arm was already beginning to throb. Daniel knew how truly dangerous even the lightest scratch from a carnivore’s teeth or claws could be, if untreated.

That was only one of his worries. The leopard had him trapped and soon it would be morning. It was a wonder that the roars of the animal had not yet attracted attention. He could expect a guard to arrive at any moment.

As he thought it, the warehouse was suddenly flooded with light. It was so brilliant that the leopard recoiled on to its haunches and blinked in confusion. Daniel heard the faint rumble as the main doors rolled open, driven by their electric motor. It was followed immediately by the sound of a motor car coming in through the opening.

The leopard snarled and slunk back towards the rear of the warehouse, carrying its head low and looking back over its shoulder.

Then, somebody shouted, “Hey, Nandi! Back to your cage! Back! Back!” Daniel recognised Chetti Singh’s voice.

The leopard broke into a crouching run, and disappeared from Daniel’s sight.

Chetti Singh spoke again. “Lock the leopard in the cage quickly!” and there was the metallic clang of a cage door being slammed. “Can you see the white man? Be careful, he may still be alive.”

Daniel shrank back as far as he could into the narrow opening between the sacks. He had no real hope of avoiding detection, and the screwdriver was not much of a weapon. “There is a torch lying over there, still burning. And over there, by the fish sacks. That looks like blood.”

Cautious footsteps approached. “Nandi has done her work.” Give me the torch. The voices were closer.

Suddenly a pair of legs came into Daniel’s view and then the man stooped and flashed the torch into the dark crack where Daniel squatted. “My goodness!” the same voice said in English. “Here the fellow is, and he is still in excellent fettle. How do you do, Doctor Armstrong? I am delighted to make your formal acquaintance at last.”

Daniel glared silently into the dazzling torch-beam and Chetti Singh went on in a jocular tone. “You won’t be needing that weapon, never mind. Please be good enough to hand it over.”

Daniel made no move to obey and Chetti Singh chuckled. “This is a shotgun of fine English construction, dear sir, made by Mr. Purdey, no less. It is loaded with bullshot cartridges. The Malawi police are very understanding on the little matter of defending self. I beg you most humbly to entertain my request for cooperation.”

With resignation Daniel tossed the screwdriver at his feet, and Chetti Singh kicked it away. “You may now emerge from your kennel, Doctor.”

Daniel crawled out, and holding his injured arm to his chest, rose to his feet.

Chetti Singh pointed the shotgun at his belly and spoke to the uniformed guard in Angoni. “Chawe, check the cases. See if the malungu has opened any of them.”

Daniel recognised the black guard from the supermarket. He was a big dangerous-looking brute. “I prefer the leopard for a sparring partner,” Daniel thought wryly as he watched the Angoni stride away down the ramp towards the fork-lift.

Before he reached the machine Chawe exclaimed and went down on one knee to scoop up a handful of spilled tea that Daniel had overlooked. Quickly he followed the trail of tea to the broached case on the fork-lift.

“Lift the case, Chawe!” Chetti Singh ordered and Chawe climbed behind the controls of the fork-lift and raised the case high.

A trickle of black tea leaves dribbled from under it. Chawc jumped down and thrust his arm into the hole that Daniel had gouged out of the plywood. “You are a jolly clever fellow.” Chetti Singh shook his head at Daniel in mock admiration. “Just like Sherlock Holmes, no less. But sometimes it is not wise to be too clever, my dear sir.”

Looking into the Sikh’s eyes, Daniel discounted the man’s stilted clownish speech. Those eyes were deadly. This was no clown.

“Chawe, where did the white man leave his truck?” he asked without moving the aim of the shotgun from the pit of Daniel’s belly.

“He came without lights, but I heard the truck on the south side. I think he parked in the open land there.” They were speaking in Angoni believing that Daniel could not understand it, but his knowledge of Zulu and Ndebele allowed him to make sense of it.

“Go! Fetch the truck,” Chetti Singh ordered.

After Chawe had gone, Daniel and Chetti Singh confronted each other in silence. Daniel was looking for some sign of weakness or indecision. The Sikh was calm and contained, the shotgun steady in his hands.

“My arm is badly hurt,” Daniel said at last.

“My sincere commiseration, my dear Doctor.”

“There is danger of infection.”

“No.” Chetti Singh smiled. “You will be dead before infection can manifest itself.”

“You intend killing me?”

“That is an amazingly facetious question, Doctor. What alternative do I have? You have been clever enough to discover my little secret. As I have often concluded, too much knowledge is a terminal disease.”

“Ha, ha! If I’m going to die, why don’t you satisfy my curiosity and tell me about Chiwewe? Who proposed the raid, you or Ning Cheng Gong?”

“Alas, dear sir. I know nothing of Chiwewe or this other fellow. Besides I do not feel in a talkative frame of mind.”

“You have nothing to lose by telling me. Who owns the Lucky Dragon Investment Company?”

“I am afraid, Doctor, that you will have to take your curiosity to the grave with you.”

They heard the Landcruiser coming and Chetti Singh stirred. “That did not take Chawe long. You could not have been at many pains to conceal your vehicle. Let us go to the main door to greet him. Will you lead the way, please, Doctor, and bear in mind that Mr. Purdey’s excellent firearm is only a foot from your spinal column.”

Still nursing his injured arm Daniel set off towards the warehouse doors. As they emerged from the aisle between the rows of packing-cases he saw a green Cadillac parked beside the empty railway truck. Probably Chetti Singh had remained safely in the Cadillac until the leopard had returned to its cage. Daniel remembered the shed at the back of the building, and the foul animal smell that he-had noticed earlier.

He was piecing it all together, working out where the leopard was kept and how it was controlled. Even so, it was clear that neither Chetti Singh nor his henchman trusted the animal. On the contrary they had been extremely nervous when the leopard was loose.

When they reached the main doors, Chetti Singh motioned Daniel to a standstill. Then abruptly the heavy door began to roll aside, revealing Daniel’s Toyota parked facing the entrance with its headlights burning.

Chawe was standing at the external control box of the electrically operated door. When the door was- fully opened, he withdrew his key-card from the lock of the control box. It was on a short key-chain and he dropped it into his hip pocket.

“Everything is ready,” he told Chetti Singh.

“You know what to do,” Chetti Singh replied. “I don’t want any birds to fly back to settle on my roof. Make sure you leave no sign. It must be an accident, a nice simple accident on the mountain road. You understand that?” They were speaking Angoni again, secure in the belief that Daniel could not understand.

“There will be an accident,” Chawe agreed. “And perhaps a little fire.”

Chetti Singh turned his attention back to Daniel. “Now, dear sir. Kindly mount to the controls of your automobile. Chawe will tell you where to go. Please obey him most faithfully. He shoots very well with the shotgun.”

Obediently Daniel climbed up into the cab of the Landcruiser and, at a word from Chetti Singh, Chawe took the seat directly behind him. Once they were settled, Chetti Singh passed the shotgun to the big Angoni. It was done as quickly and as neatly as an expert loader serving his gun in a Scottish grouse butt.

Before Daniel could take any advantage, the double barrel was pressed firmly into the back of his neck, held there by Chawe.

Chetti Singh stepped back to the open window beside Daniel. Chawe’s English is absolutely atrocious, never mind, he said jovially, and then switched to the lingua franca of Africa. “Wena kuluma Fanikalo, you speak like this?”

“Yes,” Daniel agreed in the same language.

“Good, then you and Chawe will have no difficulty understanding each other. Just do as he orders, Doctor. At that range the shotgun will make a most unsightly mess of your coiffure, no doubt.” Chetti Singh stepped back, and at Chawe’s command Daniel reversed the Landcruiser, swung it in a U-turn and drove out through the main gates into the public road.

In the rear-view mirror he saw Chetti Singh walk back to the green Cadillac and open the driver’s door. Then the angle changed and Daniel could no longer see into the warehouse.

From the back seat Chawe gave curt directions, emphasising each with a jab of the shotgun muzzle into the back of Daniel’s neck. They drove through the silent and deserted streets of the sleeping town, heading east towards the lake and the mountains.

Once they were out into the country Chawe urged him to increase speed. The road was good, and the Landcruiser buzzed along merrily. By now Daniel’s wounded arm was stiff and painful. He nursed it on his lap, driving with one hand trying to ignore the pain.

Within an hour the gradient changed and the road began a series of hairpins as it climbed the first slopes of the mountain. On each side the forest was denser and darker, pressing in upon the highway and the Landcruiser’s speed bled off as she climbed.

The dawn came on stealthily, and beyond the shafts of the headlights Daniel saw the shapes of the forest trees emerging from the gloom. Soon he could see their high tops defined against the dawn sky. He turned his wrist and glanced at his watch. His sleeve was stiff with dried blood, but it was light enough now to read the dial clearly. Seven minutes past six.

He had had plenty of time to consider his predicament and to assess the man who held the gun to his head. He judged him to be a tough opponent. There was not the least doubt that he would kill without hesitation or compunction, and he handled the shotgun with a disheartening competence. On the other hand it was an awkward weapon to use in the confines of the Landcruiser’s cab.

Daniel considered his alternatives. He quickly discarded the idea of attacking Chawe in the truck. He would have his head blown off before he could turn to face him.

He might kick open the side door and throw himself out of the cab, but that meant that he would have to reduce the Landcruiser’s speed below fifty to avoid serious injury when he hit the ground. Gradually he lifted his-foot from the accelerator.

Almost immediately Chawe sensed the change in the engine beat and thrust the shotgun into the nape of his neck. “Kawaleza! Go faster!”

That horse wouldn’t run. Daniel grimaced and obeyed. On the other hand Chawe wasn’t likely to shoot him at this speed and risk the sudden loss of control and the inevitable pile-up.

He expected an order to stop or pull off the road when they reached their destination, wherever that might be. That would be the time to make his play. Daniel settled down to wait until then.

Suddenly the road was steeper, and the bends sharper. The dawn was grey. As they came through each turn in the road, Daniel had glimpses of the valley below. It was filled with silver mist banks, through which he made out the white cascades of a mountain river, running deep in its gloomy gorge.

Another bend loomed ahead and as he braced himself to negotiate it, Chawe spoke sharply, “Stop! Pull in to the edge. Over there.”

Daniel braked and pulled over, on to the verge. They were at the top of a cliff. The edge of the road was guarded by a line of white-painted rocks. Beyond that the chasm gaped. It was a drop of two or three hundred feet to the rocky riverbed below.

Daniel pulled on the handbrake and felt his heart bounding against his rib cage. Would the shot come now? he wondered. It would be a stupid thing to do if they wanted to make it look like an accident, but then the big Angoni did not seem to be labouring under a heavy burden of brains. “Switch off the engine,” he ordered.

Daniel did as he was told.

“Put your hands on your head,” Chawe ordered, and Daniel felt a small lift of relief. He had a few seconds longer. He obeyed and waited.

He heard the click of the door latch, but the pressure of the steel muzzle against his spine never slackened. He felt the cool draught of air as Chawe swung the back door open. “Do not move,” he warned Daniel, and slid sideways from his seat still aiming the shotgun in through the open door. Now he was standing alongside the car. “Open your door slowly.” The shotgun was aimed through the side window into Daniel’s face. He opened the door. “Now come out.” Daniel stepped down.

Still covering him with the shotgun, holding it in one hand like a horse pistol, Chawe reached out with his left hand through the open door. Daniel saw that he had the steel jackhandle lying on the rear seat. During the journey he must have taken it from under the front seat. In that instant Daniel understood how Chawe planned to get rid of him.

Chawe would prod him to the edge of the precipice with the shotgun, and then a single blow to the back of the skull with the jack-handle would tumble him two hundred feet into the rocky gorge. After that the Landcruiser, with the driver’s door open and probably with a burning rag stuffed into the filter of the fuel tank, would. be pushed over the cliff on top of him.

It would look like another tourist killed by negligent driving on a notorious stretch of mountain road. Nothing to excite police suspicion, or to tie the incident to Chetti Singh and a cargo of contraband ivory in Lilongwe a hundred miles from the scene.

At that moment Daniel saw his opportunity.

Chawe was reaching in through the open door, and he was just marginally off balance. Although the shotgun was still pointed at Daniel’s guts, he would be slow to adjust his aim if Daniel moved quickly.

Daniel hurled himself forward, not at the man or the gun but at the door.

He crashed into it with his full weight, and it slammed shut with Chawe’s arm trapped between steel edge and jamb.

Chawe screamed in agony. The sound of it did not cover the crack of breaking bone, sharp as a stick of dry kindling snapped across the knee.

His forefinger, thick as a blood sausage, slipped across the trigger, firing one of the barrels. The blast of shot missed Daniel’s head by a foot, though the detonation fluttered his hair and made him wince. The recoil threw the barrel high.

Using his momentum Daniel charged him head on, seizing the shotgun with both hands, at buttstock and hot barrel.

Chawe’s grip on the weapon was single-handed and weakened by the agony of broken bone trapped in the door. He fired the second barrel, but the shot flew harmlessly into the sky.

Daniel slammed the side of the breech into his face, catching him across the upper lip, crushing his nose and shearing off all his upper teeth at the gum. Chawe bellowed through a mouthful of blood and broken teeth, as he tried to pull his arm from the steel trap of the door.

Daniel had the advantage of a double-handed grip on the shotgun and used it to tear the weapon from Chawe’s right hand. He lifted the shotgun high, reversed it and drove the steel butt-plate into Chawe’s face, catching him in the side of the jaw with the full force of the blow.

Chawe’s jawbone shattered at the hinge and his face changed shape, sagging at one side as the bone collapsed. Stunned and uncoordinated he fell backwards, held only by his trapped arm.

Daniel yanked the door handle and it flew open, releasing Chawe’s arm when he was not expecting it.

Chawe reeled backwards, not in control of his legs, windmilling his arms to try and retain his balance, the shattered arm flapping uselessly below the joint of the elbow. One of the white-washed boulders at the edge of the cliff caught his heels and he jerked backwards, as though plucked on a wire, and disappeared over the precipice.

Daniel heard him scream. The sound receded swiftly as he fell and was cut off abruptly on the rocks at the bottom. The silence afterwards was profound.

Daniel found himself leaning against the Landcruiser with the shotgun still clutched to his chest, panting from those few seconds of wild exertion. It took a moment to gather himself and then he went to the edge of the cliff and looked over.

Chawe lay on his face on the rocks at the edge of the waterfall directly below, his limbs spread like a crucifix. There was no scuff mark at the brink of the precipice to mark his fall.

Daniel thought swiftly. Report the attack? Tell the police about the ivory? Hell, no! A white man had better not kill a black man in Africa, even in self-defence, even in a civilised state like Malawi. They would crucify him.

His mind was made up by the sound of a heavy vehicle descending the mountain road in low gear. Swiftly he slipped the shotgun on to the floorboards of the Landcruiser and pulled a light tarpaulin over it.

Then he crossed to the edge of the cliff, unzipped the fly of his trousers and forced himself to urinate over the drop.

The descending truck appeared around the bend of the road above him. It was a timber lorry piled with cut logs that were chained to the cargo bed. There were two black men in the cab, the driver and his assistant. Daniel made a show of shaking off the drops and zipping his fly closed.

The black driver grinned and waved at him as the lorry rumbled past and Daniel waved back.

As soon as it was out of sight he ran to the Landcruiser and drove on up the mountain. Within two hundred yards he found a disused logging track that branched off the main road. . He drove through the dense secondary growth that clogged the track until he was out of sight of the road. He left the Landcruiser there and went back on foot, ready to duck into cover at the sound of another vehicle.

At the top of the cliff he checked that Chawe’s body still lay on the rocks below. His instinct was to leave him there and get far away from the scene as quickly as possible. He suspected that a Malawian prison was no great improvement on any other in Africa. His arm was very painful now. He could feel the first fires of infection kindling, but he didn’t want even to look at it until he had cleaned up the evidence against himself.

He skirted the top of the cliff until he found a way down. It was a game path used by hyrax and klipspringer, steep and precarious. It took him twenty minutes to reach Chawe’s body.

The skin was cold as a reptile’s when Daniel touched Chawe’s throat. There was no need to check for a pulse. He was dead meat. Swiftly Daniel turned out his pockets. He found that a greasy well-thumbed passbook was the only piece of identification. He wanted to get rid of that.

Apart from a filthy tattered handkerchief and some loose coins, the only other items were four SSG shotgun cartridges and the key-card for the control box of the electric door on the warehouse that Daniel had seen him operate. That might come in useful.

Satisfied that he had made it as difficult as he could for the police to identify the corpse, if they ever found it, Daniel rolled Chawe to the river edge, his broken arm flopping and catching under him, and shoved him into the racing water.

He watched the body splash as it struck, then swirl and roll as it was carried swiftly downstream and disappeared around the next bend.

He hoped that it would hang up on a snag somewhere in the inaccessible depths of the gorge long enough for the crocodiles to get a decent meal and further complicate the process of identification.

By the time he had climbed back up the cliff and reached the Landcruiser again, his arm felt as though it were on fire. Sitting at the driver’s wheel, with his medical box on the passenger seat beside him, he stripped back the torn blood-caked sleeve and pulled a face at what he found beneath it. The claw wounds were not deep but already they were weeping yellow watery fluid and the flesh around them was swollen a hot crimson.

He packed the lacerations with thick yellow Betadine paste and bandaged it, then he filled a disposable syringe with a broad-spectrum antibiotic and shot it into the biceps of his own left arm.

All this took time. It was almost eight o’clock when he checked his wristwatch again. He reversed back down the logging trail and on to the main mountain road. He drove slowly past the top of the cliff, and the tracks of his tires and the imprint of his feet showed clearly in the soft earth of the verge. He considered trying to obliterate them, and thought about the driver of the timber lorry who had seen him there. I’ve hung around here long enough, he decided. If I’m going to stop Chetti Singh, I’ve got to get back to Lilongwe.

And he set off back towards the capital.

Chapter 13

As he drew closer to the urban areas, the traffic on the road was heavier. He drove sedately, avoiding drawing attention to himself. Many of the vehicles he passed were Landrovers or Toyotas, so his truck was not remarkable. However, he regretted the touch of vanity that had led him to display his personal logo so prominently.

“Never thought I’d make a fugitive from justice,” he muttered, but still he knew that he could no longer parade around Lilongwe in the Landcruiser. He drove to the airport and left the truck in the public carpark. He took his spare toilet-kit and a clean shirt from his sports grip and went to the men’s washrooms in the airport building to clean up. He bundled his torn and blood-stained shirt and jersey and stuffed them into the refuse bin. Although it was still stiff and sore, he did not want to disturb the wound.

After he had shaved, he dressed in a clean shirt whose long sleeves covered his bandaged arm. When he checked his image in the washroom mirror he was reasonably respectable-looking and he headed for the public telephone booths in the main concourse.

A South African Airways flight from Johannesburg had just landed and the concourse was crowded with tourists and their luggage. No one paid him any attention. The police emergency number was prominently displayed on the wall above the payphone. He disguised his voice by muffling it with a folded handkerchief over the mouthpiece and by speaking in Swahili. “I want to report a robbery and a murder, he told the female police operator. Give me a senior officer urgently.”

“This is Inspector Mopola.” The voice was deep and authoritative. “You have information of a murder?”

“Listen carefully,” Daniel told him, still in Swahili. “I’m only going to say this once. The ivory stolen from Chiwewe National Park is here in Lilongwe. At least eight people were murdered during the robbery. The stolen goods are hidden in tea-chests which are being stored at the warehouses of the Chetti Singh Trading Company in the light industrial area. You had better hurry. They will be moved soon.”

“Who is this speaking, please?” the inspector asked.

“That isn’t important. just get down there fast and get that ivory,” Daniel told him, and hung up.

He went to the Avis car rental counter in the airport concourse. The Avis girl gave him a sweet smile and allotted him a blue Volkswagen Golf. “I’m sorry. Without a reservation that is all we have available.”

Before he left the carpark, he stopped beside his dusty old Landcruiser and surreptitiously transferred the shotgun wrapped in tarpaulin to the boot of the Volkswagen. Then he retrieved his Zeiss binoculars and slipped them into the cubbyhole. As he drove away, he checked that the Landcruiser was tucked away at the furthest end of the crowded lot where it would escape casual observation.

He kept to the south side of the railway tracks, and found his way through the streets of the business area to the open-air market that he had noticed during his earlier explorations of the town.

At ten-thirty in the morning the market was crowded with vendors displaying their wares and shoppers haggling over them. Dozens of trucks and mini-buses thronged the area around it. They gave him cover. He parked the little blue Volkswagen amongst them, positioning her carefully. The market was on rising ground that overlooked the railway tracks and the light industrial area beyond.

He found himself less than half a mile from the Chetti Singh warehouse and the Toyota workshops, so close that he could read the huge lettering of the company signboard on the buildings with the naked eye. Through the nine-power lens of the Zeiss binoculars he had a fine view of the front of the warehouse and the main doors. He could almost make out the expressions on the faces of the men working on the loading ramps.

A regular stream of trucks passed in and out of the main warehouse gates, amongst them he recognised the big pantechnicon and trailer. However, there was no sign yet of any police activity and it was almost forty minutes since he had made his phone call to them.

“Come on, people! Get the lead out,” he muttered impatiently.

As he said it he saw a shunting locomotive come puffing up the main line to the rail spur that entered the warehouse complex. It was running in reverse, the engine-driver leaning out of his side window. As it approached, one of the warehouse guards swung open the mesh gate on the boundary fence and the loco rolled through, slowing as it entered the open doors of the warehouse.

It passed out of Daniel’s sight, but seconds later he heard the faint but characteristic clash of steel as the coupling engaged. There was another delay and then the loco re-emerged from the warehouse, drawing three trucks behind it. It gathered speed gradually as the heavily laden trucks gained momentum. The goods trucks were each covered by heavy-duty canvas covers.

Daniel stared at them through the Zeiss binoculars but could make out no definite indication that the tea-chests were under those covers. He lowered the binoculars and hammered his clenched fist against the steering-wheel of the Volkswagen and groaned aloud with frustration.

Where the hell were the police? It was at least an hour and a half since he had phoned them. Even in his agitation, he realised that it would certainly take them longer than that to obtain a search warrant.

“It just has to be the ivory,” he muttered to himself. There was no other outbound cargo stacked on that ramp. “It’s the ivory, I’d take any odds, and it’s on its way to Taiwan.”

The loco was drawing the three trucks sedately down the curving rail spur towards the main line and the goods yards, but it had to pass very close to where Daniel was parked on the outskirts of the market-place. Daniel started the Volkswagen and pulled out into the main road. He accelerated, passing a heavily laden lorry, and sped down to the level-crossing which the loco must cross to reach the main goods yard.

The red warning lights were flashing, the warning bell trilling, and the swinging barrier came down in front of him to guard the crossing, forcing him to brake to a halt. The loco rumbled slowly over the crossing directly in front of the stationary Volkswagen, moving not much above walking speed.

Daniel pulled on the handbrake, and, leaving the engine running, jumped down into the road and slipped under the barrier. The first truck rolled past close enough to touch.

The railways consignment card was clipped into the holder on the side of the truck, and he read it easily as it came level and passed slowly in front of him. CONSIGNEE: LUCKY DRAGON INVESTMENT CO Destination: Taiwan via Beira Cargo: 250 cases Tea The last lingering doubt was dispelled. Daniel stared angrily after the departing train. They were going to get away with it, right under his nose.

The warning lights switched off, the bell fell silent and the barrier began to rise as the loco and its rolling stock pulled away.

Immediately the drivers of the traffic backed up behind the Volkswagen began to sound their horns and flash their lights impatiently. Daniel strode back to the hire car and drove on. He took the first road to the left, running parallel to the railway tracks and found another place to park from where he had a view into the railway goods yard.

He watched through the binoculars as the three trucks were shunted and coupled on to the end of a long goods train. The caboose was locked on behind them and, finally, the whole assembly of coaches and goods trucks pulled out of the yard. With a green mainline loco pulling them, it set off for Mozambique and the port of Beira five hundred miles away on the seaboard of the Indian Ocean.

There was nothing he could do to stop it happening. Wild fantasies flashed through his mind, of trying to hijack the loco, of rushing down to police headquarters and demanding that they take immediate action before it was too late and the train crossed the border. Instead, he drove back to his original vantage point beside the open-air market and resumed his vigil through the binoculars.

He felt tired and dispirited, and remembered that he had not slept at all the previous night. His arm was stiff and sore. He unwrapped the bandage and was relieved to see that there were no further obvious signs of infection. On the contrary the rips in his forearm were beginning to scab over as well as he could have hoped for. He replaced the bandage.

While he watched the warehouse, he tried to work out some means of stopping the ivory shipment, but he knew that his hands were tied. In the end it all came down to the death of Chawe. Chetti Singh had only to point at him, and he stood accused of murder. He dared not draw official attention to himself.

While he waited and watched, he thought about Johnny Nzou and Mavis and their children, mourning them and nursing his hatred for their murderers.

Almost two hours after the goods train had left, he noticed sudden activity around the warehouse. Chetti Singh’s green Cadillac drew up at the main gates, followed by two greypainted police Landrovers, each filled with uniformed constables. There was a short discussion with the guards at the gates, then the three vehicles drove into the property and parked beside the open warehouse doors. Eleven police constables led by an officer climbed out of the Landrovers. The officer spoke briefly to Chetti Singh beside the Cadillac. Through the binoculars Daniel saw that the Sikh appeared dapper and unconcerned; his turban was crisp and white above his darkly handsome face.

The police officer led his men into the warehouse, only to emerge again an hour later, strolling along at Chetti Singh’s side. The officer was gesticulating and talking persuasively, very obviously apologising to Chetti Singh, who smiled and waved away his protestations and finally shook his hand magnanimously.

The contingent of police constables reboarded their Landrovers and drove away. Standing beside the green Cadillac, Chetti Singh watched them go, and it seemed to Daniel through the binocular lens that he was no longer smiling. “Bastard!” Daniel whispered. “You haven’t got away with it yet.”

He finally got control of his anger and started to think rationally once again. Could he stop the shipment before it left the country? he wondered. And almost immediately he abandoned the idea. He knew that the goods train was on a non-stop run and would reach the border within hours.

What about intercepting it at the port of Beira, before it was loaded on a tramp steamer bound for the Far East? This was a better bet, but-still long odds. From what little he had learned about Chetti Singh so far, it was clear that he had a network of influence and bribery that extended over many countries in central Africa, certainly over Zimbabwe and Zambia, and why not over Mozambique, one of the most corrupt and chaotic states on the continent?

He was certain that a great deal of contraband passed through that warehouse over there, and Chetti Singh would have secured his pipeline to the outside world. As Malawi was a land-locked state, that pipeline must include the port captain and the Mozarnbiquan army, police force and customs service. They would be paid off by Chetti Singh and would protect him.

Still, he decided, it was worth a try.

Daniel drove down to the main post office in the town centre. It was highly unlikely that the Malawi Police had the sophisticated equipment to trace a telephone call swiftly, but once again, he took the precaution of making his message short and of muffling his voice with a handkerchief and speaking in Swahili. “Tell Inspector Mopola that the stolen ivory was shipped out of the warehouse at eleven thirty-five a.m. by goods train to Beira. It is hidden in a shipment of tea-chests consigned to Lucky Dragon Investment Company in Taipei.” Before the operator on the police exchange could ask for his name he cradled the receiver, and crossed to a small general dealer’s store on the opposite side of the street. If the police weren’t going to do anything, it was all up to him.

He purchased a packet of safety-matches, a roll of Sellotape, a box of mosquito coils and two kilos of frozen minced meat, then drove back to the Capital Hotel. As soon as he entered his hotel room he was aware that somebody had searched it. When he opened his canvas valise he saw that the contents had been disarranged. “Nothing for Chetti Singh there,” he muttered with grim satisfaction. He had deposited his passport and traveller’s cheques in the hotel safe at the cashier’s desk downstairs, but the search of his possessions confirmed his estimate of Chetti Singh. He’s not only a tough bastard, but a cunning one. He’s organised and he hasn’t missed a trick so far. Let’s see if we can spoil his record, but first I need some shut-eye. He changed the dressing on his arm, and gave himself another shot of antibiotic and then fell on the bed.

He slept until dinner-time, then showered and changed. He felt refreshed and more cheerful. His arm was less painful and the stiffness had eased. It seemed that his mind had been busy even while he slept, for the details of his plan were clear as he sat down at the writing-desk and laid his small purchases out in front of him. He lit one end of a mosquito coil and left it smouldering as he worked, timing the rate at which it burned.

Using his clasp-knife he snipped the heads off the safetymatches. He used up the entire package of matches and discarded the decapitated sticks in the waste-paper bin. He stuffed the match heads back into the paper wrapping, and taped it all up. It made a neat package the size of his fist, a very functional little incendiary bomb.

He checked the burning rate of the mosquito coil. It was approximately two inches per half hour. The acrid insecticidal smoke made him sneeze, so he took the coil to the bathroom and flushed it down the toilet.

He returned to the desk and cut two fresh coils five inches long, to give a delay of a little over one hour. They were the time-fuses of his makeshift bomb, one as a back-up should the other fail. He pierced the paper packet of match heads, inserted the ends of the coils in the punctures and taped them carefully in place.

Then he went downstairs and stood himself a good dinner and half a bottle of Chardonnay.

After dinner he checked Chetti Singh’s residential address in the telephone directory, and found the street in the town map provided so thoughtfully by the Lilongwe Chamber of Commerce.

Then he went down to the Volkswagen in the hotel parking lot and drove through the almost deserted streets. He passed the lighted shop-front of Chetti Singh’s supermarket, then circled the block. in the alley behind the building he noted the bags of garbage and empty cardboard boxes piled against the rear wall of the supermarket, awaiting collection. He smiled with satisfaction as he noticed the smoke-detector of the firewarning system high on the wall above the piles of garbage.

From there he drove out to the airport. The Landcruiser was now conspicuous in the almost deserted airport carpark. He gave the attendant a ten kwacha note and asked him to keep an eye on it. Then he opened the back doors of the truck and rummaged around in his medical box until he found the plastic canister of sleeping capsules.

Parked under a street light he opened the plastic bag of minced meat in his lap. By this time it had defrosted. With his thumbnail he split open the sleeping capsules and poured the white powder over the meat. He used fifty capsules. That should be enough to stun a bull elephant, he decided with satisfaction, and thoroughly mixed the drug into the chopped meat.

Then he drove out to Chetti Singh’s home in the elite suburb behind State House and the main government buildings. The house was the grandest on the street, set in two or three acres of lawns and flowering shrubs. He parked the Volkswagen further down the street in an unlit section and walked back along the sidewalk.

As he came level with the fence surrounding Chetti Singh’s property, two dark shapes detached themselves from the shadows and hurled themselves against the wire mesh. German Rottweilers, Daniel noted, as the two guard dogs clamoured for his blood. My least favourite animals, after the hyena. On the other side of the fence, they kept pace with him as he followed the sidewalk to the end of the property.

As he passed the gates at the entrance to the driveway he noted that the padlock on the chain was of simple construction. Two minutes’ work with a paper-clip.

He left the two Rottweilers staring after him hungrily and turned the corner into an unlit side street. From his pocket he brought out the packet of doped minced meat and divided it into two equal portions. Then he walked back the way he had come. The dogs were waiting for him. He tossed a portion of the meat over the fence and one of the dogs sniffed it and then gulped it down. Then he threw the second portion to the other dog and watched while it was devoured.

He returned to the Volkswagen and drove back into town. He parked a block away from the supermarket. Still sitting in the front seat, he lit the ends of the mosquito coils protruding from the packet of match heads. He blew on them gently to make sure they were burning evenly, then left the Volkswagen and sauntered down the alley behind the supermarket. It was dark and deserted. With barely a check in his stride, he dropped the incendiary bomb into one of the cardboard cartons that made up the pile of rubbish and sauntered out of the alley.

Back in the Volkswagen he checked the time; it was a few minutes before ten o’clock. He drove back and parked three blocks away from Chetti Singh’s home. He pulled on the black leather gloves. From under the driver’s seat he brought out the twelve-gauge shotgun still wrapped in its sheet of light tarpaulin. He broke down the weapon into its three component parts and wiped them down meticulously, made certain there were no fingerprints. Then he refitted the forestock to the double barrels.

When he stepped out of the Volkswagen he slipped the barrels down one leg of his trousers, while the breech and buttstock section he tucked under his leather jacket. The barrels in his pants hampered his gait, but it was better to lien a little than parade fully armed through the streets. He had no idea how often the police patrolled this area. He checked his pockets to make sure that he had the spare cartridges and Chawe’s warehouse keys. Then he limped on one stiff leg towards the Sikh’s home.

There were no guard dogs to greet him when he reached the corner fence of the property, and neither of them appeared even when he whistled softly for them. The dosage of the drug he had given them might have put them out for good and all. At the gates to the driveway it took him even less than the two minutes he had estimated to deal with the padlock. He left the gates wide open and moved quietly across the lawns, avoiding the crunching gravel of the driveway.

Daniel was prepared for a challenge from a night-watchman; even though Malawi was not as lawless and uncontrolled as Zambia there might have been a guard. However, Chetti Singh seemed to place more faith in animals than in humans. No challenge came, and from the shelter of a spreading bougainvillaea arbour he surveyed the main house. It was in low ranch-house style with large picture windows, most of which were curtained and lit.

Occasionally he saw the shadows of the occupants flit across the curtains and he could distinguish between the silhouettes of Mama Singh and her more sylphlike daughters.

The double garage was attached to the main house. One of the doors stood open and through it he made out the gleaming chrome work of the Cadillac. Chetti Singh was at home.

Still standing in shadow, Daniel reassembled the shotgun and slipped two cartridges into the breeches. At close range they would almost cut a man in half. He closed the action, and set the safety-catch.

Turning the dial of his wristwatch to catch the light from the windows he read the luminous numerals. In something under twenty minutes, depending on the burning rate of the mosquito coils, the packet of match beads would explode into bright phosphorous flame. The garbage pile should burn with a heavy outpouring of smoke and within seconds the fire alarms would detect it.

Daniel moved quickly across the open lawn, watching the windows of the house. The gravel crunched lightly under his feet and then he was into the garage. He tensed for any outcry, and when none came he checked the doors of the Cadillac. They were all locked.

In the garage wall nearest the driver’s side of the Cadillac there was a door that obviously connected with the main house. Chetti Singh would have to come through that. He probably had another fifteen minutes before the fire alarm was reported and Chetti Singh came rushing into the garage to drive to the scene of the fire. It was a long time for Daniel to wait, and he tried to put from his mind any consideration of the morality of what he was about to do.

Killing Chawe had been an act of self-defence, but Daniel had killed deliberately before, during the bush war. However, he had never derived any pleasure or satisfaction from it, as some of the others had done. Even though it had been his duty as a soldier, the sickening guilt and remorse after each episode had built. up slowly within him. That guilt had contributed overwhelmingly to the final revulsion and rejection of the whole ethic of the war which had led him to join the Alpha group.

Yet here he was preparing to kill again, in a much more cold blooded and calculating manner. Those other nameless victims that he had left as blood-soaked bundles lying in the battlescorched veld had been patriots too, in their own light, brave black men, almost certainly braver than he, who had been prepared to die for their own vision of freedom and justice. In the end they had succeeded where he had failed. Even though long dead, their vision still burned brightly where his had dimmed and faded away. The Rhodesia he had fought for no longer existed. For him those long-ago killings had been an obscene ritual, without passion and, he now realised, without morality.

On the other hand, could he justify what he was about to do by the memory of Johnny Nzou? Could he convince himself of the justice of it, become executioner when no judge had passed sentence? Was there enough angry fire in his belly to carry it through? Then he remembered Mavis Nzou and her children, and the fire burned up brightly. He knew he could not turn away from it. He had to do it. He knew he would be sick with guilt after the fire of his anger had turned to cold grey ash, but he had to do it.

Somewhere in the house beyond the door he heard a telephone ring.

Daniel stirred, shaking himself like a spaniel coming from the water on to the bank, throwing off the doubts and uncertainty. He tightened his grip on the stock of the shotgun and lifted it to high port.

There were hurried footsteps beyond the door, the lock turned and then it was thrown open. A man came through. The light was behind him and for a moment Daniel did not recognize Chetti Singh without his turban. He stooped beside the Cadillac. His keys tinkled as he searched for the lock, and cursed softly when he could not find it and turned back to the light switch on the wall.

Light flooded the garage. Chetti Singh was bare-headed. His long, never-trimmed hair and beard twisted up into a top-knot on his head were lightly streaked with grey. His back was still half-turned to Daniel as he fingered the bunch of keys, and then thrust one of them into the Cadillac’s door lock.

Daniel stepped up behind him and poked the muzzle of the shotgun into his back. “Don’t do anything heroic, Mr. Singh. Mr. Purdey is looking down your spine.” Chetti Singh’s body froze, but his head swivelled slowly until he was gawking at Daniel over one shoulder.

“I thought…” he said, and then caught himself.

Daniel shook his head. “It didn’t work out that way. Chawe wasn’t very bright, I’m afraid. You should have fired him long ago, Mr. Singh. Now move around to the other side of the car, but move slowly. Please let us keep our dignity.”

He jabbed the gun into the Sikh’s back, hard enough to bruise him through the thin cotton shirt which was all he wore above a pair of khaki slacks and sandals. Chetti Singh had obviously dressed in great haste.

They moved in close file around the front of the Cadillac’s fancy radiator grille to the passenger door.

“Open the door. Get in,” Daniel instructed.

Chetti Singh settled himself on the gleaming leather upholstery, and looked up into the barrel of the shotgun only inches from his face. He was sweating more heavily than the warm night air warranted. Beads of sweat twinkled on his beaky nose and slid down his cheeks into the plaited beard. He smelt of curry spices and fear, but there was a tiny spark of hope in his eyes as he offered the keys of the Cadillac to Daniel through the open door. “Are you going to drive? Here are the keys; take them. I place myself in your hands, absolutely.”

“Nice try, Mr. Singh,” Daniel smiled coldly. “But you and Mr. Purdey are not going to be separated for a moment. Just slide across to the driver’s seat, nice and slowly.”

Awkwardly Chetti Singh moved his big frame across the console between the seats, grunting with the effort, and Daniel prodded him with the shotgun. “That’s it. You are doing very well, Mr. Singh.” He slid into the passenger seat as Chetti Singh settled at the wheel. He held the shotgun across his lap, out of sight of any casual observer, but with the muzzle still pushed hard into the Sikh’s lower ribs. With his free hand he closed the door.

“All right. Start up. Drive out.”

As the headlights swept across the lawns, they lit the body of one of the Rottweilers lying on the grass. “My dogs, my daughter is very fond of them.”

“She has my commiserations.” Daniel gave the taunt back to him. “But the animal is doped, not dead.”

They drove out into the street.

“My shop, my supermarket in town is on fire. I think this is your doing, Doctor. It is an investment of several millions.”

“Again, you have my commiserations,” Daniel nodded. “It’s a tough life, Mr. Singh, but worse for the insurance company than for you, I imagine. Now drive to the warehouse please.”

“The warehouse? Which warehouse?”

“Where you and Chawe and I met earlier today, Mr. Singh. That warehouse.”

Chetti Singh turned in the correct direction, but he was still sweating. The smell of curry and garlic was very strong in the confined interior of the Cadillac. With his free hand Daniel adjusted the air-conditioning.

Neither of them spoke but Chetti Singh kept glancing in the rearview mirror, obviously hoping for assistance. However, the streets were deserted until they stopped at a traffic light at the entrance to the industrial area. Then headlights flooded the interior from the rear, and a Landrover pulled up alongside them. It was painted grey and when Daniel glanced sideways at it, he made out the peaked cap brims of the two police constables in the front seat.

Beside him he felt Chetti Singh stiffen and gather himself.

Stealthily the Sikh reached out for the door handle at his side.

“Please, Mr. Singh, Daniel said pleasantly. Don’t do it. Blood and guts all over the upholstery will ruin your Caddie’s resale value.” Chetti Singh deflated slowly. One of the police constables was now staring across at them. “Smile at him,” Daniel instructed. Chetti Singh turned his head and snarled like a rabid dog.

The constable looked away hurriedly. The lights changed and the Landrover pulled forward. “Let them get ahead,” Daniel instructed. At the next intersection the police vehicle turned left.

“You did that well,” Daniel congratulated him. “I am pleased with you.”

“Why are you victimising me in such a barbarous fashion, please, Doctor?”

“Don’t spoil your record by asking facetious questions,” Daniel advised him. “You know why I’m doing this.”

“The ivory was no concern of yours, surely, Doctor?”

“The theft of the ivory is the concern of any decent man, but you are correct. That is not the main reason.”

“The business with Chawe. That was not personal. You brought that upon yourself. You should not blame me for trying to protect myself. I am a very wealthy man, Doctor. I would be glad to make up to you any injury to your dignity or person you might have suffered. Let us discuss a figure. Ten thousand dollars, US, of course,” Chetti Singh babbled.

“Is that your final offer? I find it miserly,” Mr. Singh.

“Yes, you are right. Let’s say twenty-five, no, make that fifty. Fifty thousand US.”

“Johnny Nzou was one of the best friends I ever had,” Daniel said softly. “His wife was a lovely lady, they had three children, two girls and a little boy. They named the boy after me.”

“Now you have me at a loss.”

“Never mind.”

“Who is Johnny Nzou?” Chetti Singh asked. “Let’s say fifty thousand for him, as well. One hundred thousand US dollars. I give it to you, and you walk away. We forget this foolishness. It never happened Am I correct, Doctor?”

“A little late for that, Mr. Singh. Johnny Nzou was the warden at Chiwewe National Park.”

Chetti Singh let out his breath softly. “I am terribly sorry about that, Doctor. Those were not my orders…” There was the brittle edge of panic in his voice. “I had nothing to do-with that. It was, it was the Chinaman.”

“Tell me about the Chinaman.”

“If I tell you, will you swear not to harm me?”

Daniel seemed to consider this at length. “Very well, he nodded at last. We will go to your warehouse where we can have a private uninterrupted chat. You will tell me all you know about Ning Cheng Gong, and afterwards I will release you, immediately, unharmed.” Chetti Singh turned to stare at him in the reflected light from the instrument panel.

“I trust you, Doctor Armstrong. I think you are a man of integrity. I believe you will keep your word.”

“To the letter, Mr. Singh,” Daniel assured him. “Now just keep heading for the Warehouse.”

They passed the sawmills. The lumberyard was brightly lit and the teams of sawyers were at work in the long sheds. The squeal of the saw-blades slicing into timber carried clearly even into the air-conditioned interior of the Cadillac.

“Business must be good, Mr. Singh. You are working nightshift.”

“I have a large consignment going to Australia at the end of the week.”

“You will want to survive long enough to enjoy those profits. Just keep cooperating.”

At the end of the street the warehouse stood in darkness. Chetti Singh stopped at the main gates. The gatehouse was deserted and unlit. “Left-hand drive,” Chetti Singh remarked, indicating the controls of the Cadillac with an apologetic shrug. “You must operate the gate from your side.” He handed Daniel a plastic coated electronic key-card similar to the one retrieved from Chawe’s corpse, and lowered the electric window.

Daniel leaned out and pressed the card into the slot of the control-box. The gate boom rose and Chetti Singh drove through. Behind them the boom dropped again automatically.

“Your guard leopard must save you a great deal in the way of wages.” Daniel’s tone was mild and conversational but he kept a firm pressure of the shotgun into Chetti Singh’s ribs. “But I don’t understand how you have made the animal so vicious. In my experience, leopards will not attack a man unless provoked.”

“That is true.” Chetti Singh was more relaxed since they had struck their bargain. He had stopped sweating and now he chuckled for the first time. “I was advised by the man who sold it to me. Every once in a while it is necessary to give the brute a little gingering up, never mind. I use a hot iron under its tail.” He chuckled again, this time with genuine amusement. “My goodness, it makes the animal very angry indeed. You never heard such a racket.”

“You deliberately torment it to make it vicious?” Daniel asked, shocked despite himself. His tone made evident his disgust and contempt, and Chetti Singh bridled.

“You English and your love of animals. It is merely a form of training to make it more efficient. The injuries are superficial and heal readily.” They drew up outside the warehouse and once again Daniel used the electronic key-card to open the roller door. As they drove through, the door tumbled closed behind them.

“Park over there on the loading ramp,” Daniel ordered.

The headlights swept powerfully down to the girders and corrugated sheeting of the wall at the far end of the cavernous building. The floor was as cluttered as before with a vast array of trade goods.

For an instant the leopard was caught in the full beam as the Cadillac drove on to the ramp and the headlights were deflected upwards. The great cat was crouched on the summit of a neatly squared pile of packing-cases. As the light struck it, the leopard crouched, yellow-eyed, and puckered its lips into a snarl. The light glinted on its exposed canine fangs. Then it dropped out of sight behind the pile of cases.

“Did you notice the injury to its face?” Chetti Singh asked virtuously. “You did that, and yet you accuse me of cruelty, Doctor Armstrong. The brute is extremely aggressive and impossible to control at the moment. I may have to destroy it. It is too dangerous, even to me and my men.”

“This will do.” Daniel ignored the rebuke. “We can talk here. Switch off the engine and the headlights.” Daniel reached up to the cabin light in the centre of the roof and a soft glow replaced the harsh white glare as the headlights faded.

They sat in silence for a while longer, and then Daniel asked quietly, “So, Mr. Singh, how and when did you first meet Ning Cheng Gong?”

“It was about three years ago. A mutual friend told me he was interested in ivory and other commodities which I could supply,” Chetti Singh answered.

“What were they, these other commodities?” When Chetti Singh hesitated, Daniel jabbed him sharply with the shotgun barrels. “Let us both keep to our side of the bargain,” he suggested mildly.

“Diamonds…” Chetti Singh wriggled away from the shotgun. “From Namibia and Angola. Emeralds from Sandwana. Rare Tanzanite gemstones from the mines at Arusha in Tanzania, some dagga from Zululand.”

“You seem to have access to many sources of supply Mr. Singh.”

“I am a businessman, Doctor. I think I am good, probably the best. That is why Mr. Ning dealt with me.”

“It was mutually beneficial, then?”

Chetti Singh shrugged. “He was able to use the diplomatic bag. Absolutely secure shipment…”

“Except when the products were too bulky,” Daniel pointed out. “As was this last consignment of ivory.”

“As you say,” Chetti Singh agreed. “But even then his family connections were abundantly useful. Taiwan is a convenient entryport.”

“Give me the details of your transactions. Dates, commodities, values.”

“There were many,” Chetti Singh protested, “I cannot remember them all.”

“You have just told me that you are a good businessman.” Daniel prodded him again, and Chetti Singh tried to avoid the shotgun barrel but he was already hard up against the door and could move no further. “I’m sure you remember every single transaction.”

“All right,” he capitulated. “The first was in early February three years ago. Ivory, value five thousand dollars. It was a trial shipment. It went well. At the end of that month there was a second transaction, rhino horn and ivory, sixty-two thousand dollars. In May of the same year, emeralds, four hundred thousand.”

Daniel had trained his memory over the years as an interviewer. He knew he could retain the details until he had a chance to write them down. The recital went on for almost twenty minutes. Chetti Singh was quick and incisive until suddenly he ended on a home note. “Then this last shipment, the one you know about.”

“Good.” Daniel nodded. “We come to the Chiwewe raid, at last. Whose idea was that, Mr. Singh?”

“The ambassador. It was his idea,” Chetti Singh blurted.

“I think you are lying. It is highly unlikely that he could have known about the ivory godown. Its whereabouts are not public knowledge. I think that it was more likely your area of expertise.”

“All right,” Chetti Singh agreed. “I have known about it for some years. I was awaiting an opportunity. However, Ning told me he wanted a large coup. His term of office was almost expired. He was returning home and he wanted to impress his family, his father.”

“But you recruited the raiders, didn’t you? Ning could not have done that. He did not have your contacts.”

“I didn’t give the orders to kill your friend,” Chetti Singh’s voice trembled. “I didn’t want that to happen.”

“You were just going to leave them alive to tell their story, to explain to the police about Ning?”

“Yes, no, no! It was Ning’s idea. I do not believe in killing, Doctor.”

“Is that why you sent Chawe and me into the mountains together?”

“No! You gave me no choice, Doctor Armstrong. Please, you must understand. I am a businessman, not a brigand.”

“All right, let’s leave that for the moment. Now tell me, what was your further arrangement with Ning? Surely you were going to continue such a lucrative partnership, even after he returned to Taiwan?”

“No!”

“Please don’t lie to me. That is breaking our agreement.” Daniel jammed the steel muzzles into him so hard that he squealed.

“Yes, all right, please you are hurting me. I can’t speak if you do that.”

Daniel relaxed the pressure a little. “I must warn you, Mr. Singh, that I would be delighted if you gave me an opportunity to break our contract. Johnny Nzou’s two daughters were about ten and eight years old. Your men raped them. His son Daniel, my godson, was just four. They beat his brains out against the wall. It was not a pretty sight. I’d enjoy it if you reneged on our bargain. Yes, I would.”

“I don’t want to hear these things, please, Doctor. I am a family man, myself. You must believe that I didn’t want–”

“Let’s talk about Ning rather than your delicate sensibilities, Mr. Singh. You and Ning have plans for the future, don’t you?”

“We have discussed certain possibilities,” Chetti Singh admitted. “The Ning family have vast holdings in Africa. After this last shipment of ivory, Cheng’s status in the family will be absolutely enhanced. Cheng has expectations that his father will place him in charge of the African division of Lucky Dragon, that is the family holding company.”

“You have a niche in these plans, don’t you? Your expert services will be in demand. Surely you have discussed it with Ning?”

“No,” Chetti Singh squealed again as the steel eyes of the shotgun barrels burrowed into his flesh. “Please don’t do that, Doctor. I suffer from high blood pressure; this uncivilized behaviour is absolutely prejudicial to my health.”

“What are your arrangements with Cheng?” Daniel insisted. “Where will you operate next?”

Chetti Singh squeaked. “Lucky Dragon plans to move into Ubomo.”

“Ubomo?” There was surprise in Daniel’s tone. “President Omeru?”

The sovereign state of Ubomo was one of the few success stories of the continent. Like Malawi, it nestled on the escarpment of the Great Rift Valley, a country of lakes and mountains, on the eastern flank of Africa, where open savannah and primeval equatorial forest met. Like Hastings Banda, President Omeru was another benevolent despot, ruling in the age-old African fashion. Thanks to him his country was free of debt, and not as yet divided or ravaged by tribal warfare.

Daniel knew that Omeru lived in a small brick cottage with a corrugated-iron roof and drove his own Landrover. No marble palaces, no stretched black Mercedes, no executive jet for him. He flew to the meetings of the Organization of African Unity in the tourist class cabin of a commercial airline as a deliberate example to his people. He was a beacon of hope, not the type to deal with Lucky Dragon.

“Omeru? I don’t believe it,” Daniel said emphatically.

“Omeru is yesterday’s man. He is old, redundant. He resists change and development. Soon he will go. It is being arranged.”

“Soon there will be a new man in Ubomo, young, dynamic…”

“And greedy,” Daniel suggested. “What will Cheng; and Lucky Dragon have to do with all this?”

“I do not know the details. Cheng does not trust me that far. All I know is that he has asked me to deploy my people in Ubomo, to make my dispositions. Ready for the day.”

“When will it be?”

“I do not know. I told you. But I think soon.”

“This year? Next year?”

“I do not know, you must believe me, Doctor. I have held nothing back from you. I have fulfilled my part of the bargain. Now you must keep yours. I think you are a man of honour, an Englishman, a gentleman. Am I correct, Doctor?”

“What was our bargain, Mr. Singh? Refresh my memory,” Daniel asked, never relaxing the pressure of the shotgun for a moment.

“After I told you all I know about Cheng, you promised to release me immediately, unharmed.”

“Have I harmed you, Mr. Singh?”

“No, not yet.” But Chetti Singh was sweating again now, more copiously than before. The expression on the white man’s face was murderous.

Daniel reached across him, and seized the door handle. It was so unexpected, so quick that Chetti Singh had no chance to react. He was hunched against the door, trying to get away from the shotgun. “You are free to go, Mr. Singh,” Daniel said softly. With one hand he wrenched open the driver’s door of the Cadillac and laced his other hand in the centre of Chetti Singh’s chest. With all the strength of his anger and disgust, he shoved.

The door flew open. Chetti Singh was leaning his full weight against it. The thrust of Daniel’s arm hurled him outwards. He fell on his back on to the cement floor of the warehouse, and rolled over twice. He lay there stunned and paralysed with shock.

Daniel slammed the door of the Cadillac shut and locked it. He switched on the headlights. For a moment nothing changed. Chetti Singh lay on the floor outside the vehicle and Daniel stared down at him mercilessly through the shatterproof glass.

Somewhere in the dim depths of the warehouse the leopard sawed hoarsely.

Chetti Singh bounded to his feet and threw himself against the side of the Cadillac, scrabbling at the window with his bare hands. His face contorted. “You cannot do this to me. The leopard… Please, Doctor.” His voice was muted by the intervening glass, but still the raw panic was shrill in his voice and a dribble of saliva broke from the corner of his mouth.

Daniel regarded him dispassionately, his arms folded and his jaw clenched. “Anything,” screamed Chetti Singh. “I’ll give you anything.” He glanced over his shoulder, and his expression was wild with terror as he turned back to Daniel. He had glimpsed that deadly shadow, circling silently in the gloom. “Money,” he mouthed imploringly, slapping his pink palms on the glass. “Please, I’ll give you as much, a million dollars. I will give you anything. just let me in. Please, please, I beg you, Doctor. Don’t leave me out here.” The leopard coughed, an abrupt explosion of sound filled with infinite menace. Chetti Singh spun round to face the darkness, cowering against the side of the vehicle.

“Get back, Nandi” His voice was a high-pitched shriek. “Back! Back to your cage!” They both saw the leopard then, crouched in the alley between two walls of packing-cases. Its eyes reflected the headlights, yellow and glittering. Its tail flicked back and forth with a mesmeric rhythm. It was watching Chetti Singh. “No!” screamed Chetti Singh. “No, you can’t leave me to that brute. Please, Doctor. Please I implore you.”

The leopard raised its lip in a silent snarl of hatred and Chetti Singh urinated in a steady stream down the front of his khaki slacks. It puddled on the cement floor around his sandalled feet. “It’s going to kill me! This is inhuman. Please … You can’t allow this, please let me in.”

Suddenly Chetti Singh’s nerve snapped. He pushed himself off the side of the Cadillac and ran for the closed main doors of the warehouse, a hundred feet away in the looming darkness. He had not covered half that distance before the cat was on him. It came from behind, snaking low across the bare cement floor, and rose to settle upon Chetti Singh’s shoulders.

They looked like some grotesque hunchbacked creature with two heads, and then Chetti Singh was thrown forward by the leopard’s weight and borne to the floor. In a kicking clawing tangle they rolled together, Chetti Singh’s screams blending with the rattling growls of the leopard.

For a moment the man came to his knees, but instantly the leopard was on him again, going for his face. Chetti Singh tried to hold it off with his bare hands, thrusting them into its open jaws and the leopard clamped down on his wrist. Even in the closed sedan Daniel heard the bones of the wrist go, crunching like dry toast, and Chetti Singh screamed on a shriller note.

Goaded to superhuman effort by the pain he came to his feet with the leopard hanging on his arm. He staggered in an erratic circle, beating at the cat with his fist, trying to break its grip on his other wrist. The leopard’s back legs were slashing down the front of his thighs, ripping the khaki slacks, blood and urine mingling as the hooked yellow claws opened his flesh from groin to knee.

Chetti Sing blundered into a high pile of cardboard cartons, bringing them tumbling down around himself, and then his strength could no longer sustain the weight of the animal upon him. He collapsed again with the leopard still on top of him.

The leopard ripped and bit and worried, and Chetti Singh’s movements were becoming uncoordinated. Like an electric toy with a weakening battery he was slowing down. His screams were becoming feebler.

Daniel slid across to the controls of the Cadillac. As he started the engine, the leopard sprang back from its victim and stared at the vehicle uncertainly. Its tail lashed from side to side.

Daniel reversed slowly down off the loading ramp, and then manoeuvred the Cadillac so that its bulk would be between him and the leopard when he left the car and went to the door. He left the engine running and the headlights on and stepped out of the Cadillac. He watched the leopard steadfastly as he backed the few paces to the control-box.

The leopard was almost thirty yards from him but he never took his eyes off it as he inserted the key into its slot and the heavy door rumbled open. He left the key in the slot, and then dropped the shotgun and backed out through the door.

He was careful not to run or to make any other hurried movement that might provoke the leopard, even though the body of the Cadillac should inhibit a charge, and the animal already had its victim. Daniel was now well out of the cat’s attack circle.

Daniel turned at last and strode away into the night.

He used Chawe’s key-card to let himself out into the street, closed the main gates behind him and then broke into a jogtrot.

When they found Chetti Singh in the morning it would be apparent that for some unexplained reason he had gone to the wrong premises in response to the fire alarm call, and he had been attacked by his own animal while he was in the process of opening the warehouse door. The police would reason that left-hand drive controls of the Cadillac had made it necessary for him to leave the vehicle in order to operate the door controls.

Daniel had left no fingerprints or other incriminating evidence behind him.

When he reached the furthest corner of the perimeter fence, Daniel paused and looked back. The glow of the Cadillac’s headlights still lit the open warehouse door. He saw a dark feline shape, low and slinky, slip out through the door and streak to the high mesh of the perimeter fence.

The leopard went over the fence with the ease of a bird taking flight.

Daniel smiled. He knew that the poor tormented brute would head unerringly for its home in the misty forested mountains. After what it had suffered, it deserved that freedom at least, he thought.

Thirty minutes later he reached the hired Volkswagen. He drove to the airport and parked it in one of the Avis bays. He dropped the keys in the return box of the locked and deserted Avis office and then went to his Landcruiser in the public carpark.

At the Capital Hotel he packed quickly, stuffing his few possessions into the canvas valise. He used one of his neckties as a sling for his arm.

All that exertion had aggravated the injury. The sleepy night clerk at the hotel cashier’s desk printed his credit card and he carried his own bag out to the Landcruiser.

Unable to restrain his curiosity he drove past the Chetti Singh supermarket. There was no damage to the main building, although in the back alley a couple of firemen were still hosing down the pile of scorched garbage and the smoke-stained rear wall, watched by a dozen or so local residents in their nightclothes.

He turned westwards and left Lilongwe, heading back towards the Zambian border post. It was a three-hour drive. He turned on the radio and tuned to the early-morning service of Radio Malawi, listening to the music and news reports. He was approaching the border post when it came on the six o’clock news.

It was the second item after a report on the breaching of the Berlin Wall and the flood of East Germans to the West. Meanwhile, here in Lilongwe we have just received a report that a prominent Malawi businessman and entrepreneur has been savagely mauled by his own pet leopard. Mr. Chetti Singh was rushed to the Lilongwe General Hospital where he is now in the intensive-care unit. A hospital spokesman said that Mr. Singh was suffering from extensive injuries and his condition is described as critical. The circumstances of the attack are unknown, but the police are seeking an employee of Mr. Singh’s, a certain Mr. Chawe Gundwana, who they hope will be able to assist them with their enquiries. Any person knowing the whereabouts of Mr. Gundwana is asked to report to the nearest police station.

Daniel switched off the radio and parked outside the Malawi customs and immigration post. He was expecting trouble. There might be an APB out on him already, especially if Chetti Singh was in a condition to speak and had given Daniel’s name to the police. Chetti Singh’s survival had not been part of Daniel’s calculations. He had expected the leopard to do a more thorough job. His mistake had been in moving the Cadillac too soon. It had distracted the leopard from its victim.

One thing was certain: Chetti Singh was going to need a few gallons of blood transfusion. In Africa that involved an additional hazard.

He hummed his own version of the old song:

Ashes to ashes and dust to dust.

if the leopard don’t get him, then I must.

Then with some trepidation, he took his passport into the border post. He need not have worried. The law was all smiles and courtesy.

“Did you enjoy your holiday in Malawi? We are always pleased to see you, sir. Come again soon, sir.” Old Hastings Banda had them well trained. They all appreciated the vital role that tourism played in their lives.

There was none of the have-not resentment that was so evident in other parts of the continent.

Chapter 14

He folded a five-dollar bill into his Passport as he approached the post on the Zambian side, a hundred yards in distance but, it seemed to him, a mighty leap back into the dark ages as he passed between the two countries.

He telephoned Michael Hargreave within an hour of arriving in Lusaka, and Michael invited him to dinner that evening.

“Where are you heading next, you roving bedouin you?” Wendy demanded as she served him a second helping of her famous Yorkshire pudding. “God, what a lovely adventurous, romantic life you lead. I really must find you a wife; you make all our husbands restless. How long will you be with us?”

“That depends on what Michael can tell me about a mutual acquaintance called Ning Cheng Gong. If he’s still in Harare, that’s where I will be heading. If not, well, it’s back to London, or possibly Taiwan.”

“You’re still chasing after the Chink?” Michael asked, as he pulled the cork from a bottle of reasonable deuxime cru claret that had come out in the diplomatic bag. “Are we allowed to know what it’s all about yet?”

Daniel glanced at Wendy, and she pulled a face. “Do you want me to go to the kitchen?”

“Don’t be an ass, Wendy. I’ve never had any secrets from you,” Daniel soothed her, and then turned back to her husband. “I have proved to my own satisfaction that Ning Cheng Gong arranged the attack on the Chiwewe ivory godown.”

Michael arrested the claret glass on the way to his lips. “Oh dear. Now I see what it’s all about. Johnny Nzou was your pal, I remember. But Ning! Are you sure? He’s an ambassador, not a gangster.”

“He’s both,” Daniel disagreed. “His hatchet man was a Sikh from Lilongwe, name of Chetti Singh. They have quite a few secrets between them. Not only ivory, but everything else from drugs to diamonds.”

“Chetti Singh. I’ve heard that name recently.” Mike thought for only a second. “Yes, on the news this morning. He was mauled by his own pet leopard, wasn’t he?” His expression changed again. “Just about the time you were in Lilongwe. What a coincidence, Danny. Has it got anything to do with your arm being in a sling, and your smug expression?”

“I’m a reformed character, you know me,” Daniel assured him. “Would never dream of any rough stuff, but I did find out something from Chetti Singh during my brief chat to him before the unfortunate incident with the leopard. It’s something that might interest you spooks at MI6.”

Michael looked pained. “Ladies present, old boy. We don’t mention the firm like that. It’s bad form.”

Wendy stood up. “On second thoughts, I will go and keep an eye on Cheffie. I’ll be ten minutes, enough time for boy talk, I hope.” She took her wine-glass with her.

“Coast clear,” Michael murmured. “Fire away, Danny.”

“Chetti Singh tells me that there is a coup being set up in Ubomo. Omeru is going to get the chop.”

“Oh, dear me; not Omeru. He wears a white hat. One of the good guys. That will never do. Have you any details?”

“Not many, I’m afraid. Ning Cheng Gong is in it, and his family, but not as principals, I suspect. I think they are merely eager sponsors of the proposed revolution, with expectations of rights and privileges later on.”

Michael nodded. “Usual set-up. They get a slice of the pie when the new ruler of Ubomo divides it up. No idea who he will be?”

“None, I’m afraid, but it will be soon. My bet is within the next few months.”

“We’ll have to get a warning to Omeru. The PM might want to fly in an SAS battalion to guard him. I know she’s particularly pro the old boy and Ubomo is, after all, a member of the Commonwealth.”

“I’d be obliged if you could check up on Ning Cheng Gong while you’re at it, Mike.”

“He’s gone, Danny. Flown the coop. Spoke to my opposite number in Harare only this morning. Of course, I knew of your interest in him, so I dropped the question into the conversation. Ning held a farewell party at the Chinese embassy on Friday evening and flew home on Saturday.”

“Damn it,” Daniel exclaimed. “That shoots down all my plans. I was going to go down to Harare.”

“Wouldn’t have been a good idea,” Michael broke in. “It’s one thing feeding an ordinary law-abiding citizen to his own leopard, but one can’t go around beating up ambassadors. It’s considered very poor form indeed.”

“He’s no longer ambassador,” Daniel pointed out. “I could follow him to Taiwan.”

“Another very mediocre idea, if you don’t mind my saying so. Taiwan is Ning’s home wicket. From what I hear, his family all but owns the island. Whole place is sure to be bristling with Ning’s uglies. If you’re determined to play the avenging angel, best bide your time. If what you tell me is correct, Ning will be back in Africa soon. Ubomo is a nice neutral turf, better than Taiwan. At least I could back you up there. We’ve got an office in Kahah, the capital, in fact there is a chance that–” Michael broke off. “Bit premature, but there is talk that I may be sent to Kahah on my next posting.”

Daniel stared into his glass, swilling the contents slowly as though admiring the ruby lights in the wine. At last he sighed and nodded. “You’re right, as always.” He grinned at Michael ruefully. “I was getting carried away, besides which I’m terrifyingly short of cash. Doubt I could raise the airfare to Taipei.”

“Never have believed it of you, old boy. Thought you were rolling in the filthy stuff. Always been green with envy. All those million-dollar TV contracts.”

“Everything I have is wrapped up in those video cassettes you sent to London for me. Not worth a damn until I cut and dub them. That’s what I’ll have to do right now.”

“Before you go, you’d better give me a briefing on all you know about this pair, Singh and Ning. I’ll follow up on my side, in case…”

“In case anything happens to me,” Daniel finished for him.

“Never said that, old boy. Perish the thought. Although this time you do seem to have picked on a pair of heavyweights.”

“I’d like to leave my Landcruiser and all my gear here in Lusaka with you in the usual way, if that isn’t inconvenient?”

“Pleasure, dear boy. My home is your home. My garage is your garage. Feel free.”

The next morning Daniel returned to the Hargreaves’ home. Michael was at work, but Wendy and her domestic staff helped him unpack the Landcruiser. His equipment was stiff with dust and the accumulated filth of six months bush living. Between them they cleaned it all and repacked it into the vehicle. They threw away the perishables and Daniel made a list of replacements.

Then he parked the Landcruiser in the spare garage, and put the battery on charge, ready for his next expedition, whenever that might be.

When Michael came home for lunch from the High Commission, he and Daniel spent an hour sequestered in his study. After that the three of them split a bottle of wine, sitting under the marula trees beside the swimming-pool.

“I passed on your message to Lcmdon,” Michael told him. “Apparently Omeru is in London at the moment. The Foreign Office had an urgent word with him, but it didn’t do much good, by all accounts. Without chapter and verse, and your intelligence was rather vague, the old boy pooh-poohed the idea of a coup.”

“My people love me,” he said, or words to that effect. “I am their father. ” Turned down the PM’s offer of support.

“Nevertheless Omeru is cutting short his visit, and going back to Ubomo, so we might have done some good.”

“Probably sent him straight into the jaws of the lion,” Daniel said morosely, and watched Wendy heaping his plate with fresh salad grown in her own vegetable garden.

“Probably,” Michael agreed cheerfully. “Poor old brighter. Speaking of lion’s jaws, and that sort of thing, I have more news for you. I buzzed our man in Lilongwe. Your friend Chetti Singh is off the danger list. Hospital describes his condition as ‘serious but stable,’ although they did have to amputate one arm. Seems as though the leopard chewed it up rather thoroughly.”

“Wish it had been his head.”

“Can’t have everything, can we? Must be thankful for small mercies. Anyway, I’ll keep you posted while you are in London.”

“Have you still got that flat in Chelsea, near Sloane Square?”

“It’s not a flat, said Wendy. Bachelor house of ill-repute, more like it.”

“Nonsense, old girl,” Michael twitted her. “Danny is a monk; never touches the stuff, do you?”

“Is the telephone number the same, 730-something? I’ve got it written down somewhere.”

“Yes, same address. Same number. I’ll ring you if anything comes up.”

“What can I bring you from London when I come back, Wendy?”

“You can bring me the entire stock of Fortnum’s,” she sighed. “No, I’m joking. just some of those special biscuits in the yellow tin; I hallucinate about them. And some Floris soap, and perfume, Fracas. Oh! And undies from Janet Reger the same as you brought last time, and while you’re about it, some real English tea, Earl Grey.”

“Easy, old girl,” Michael chided her. “Lad’s not a camel, you know. Keep it down to a ton.”

Later that afternoon, they drove Daniel out to the airport and put him on the British Airways flight. It landed at Heathrow at seven the next morning.

Chapter 15

That same evening the telephone in Daniel’s Chelsea flat rang. Nobody knew he was back in town. He debated with himself whether to make the effort to answer it, and gave in after the tenth peal. He couldn’t ignore such persistence.

“Danny, is it really you, or that cursed answering machine? I refuse to talk to a robot, matter of principle.”

He recognized Michael Hargreave’s voice immediately. “What is it, Mike? Is Wendy okay? Where are you?”

“Still in Lusaka. Both of us fine, old boy. More than I can say for your pal, Omeru. You were right, Danny. News has just broken. He’s got the axe. Military coup. We’ve just had a signal from our office in Kahah.”

“What’s happened to Omeru? Who’s the new man in power?”

“Don’t know to both questions. Sorry, Danny. It’s all a bit confused still. Should be on the BBC news your end, but I’ll ring again tomorrow as soon as I have any more details.”

That evening it was tucked in at the end of the news on BBC 1 over a file photograph of President Victor Omeru. just a bare statement of the coup d’tat in Ubomo, and the takeover by a military junta. On the Tv screen Omeru was a craggily handsome man in his late sixties. His hair was a silver fleece and he was light-skinned, the colour of old amber. His gaze from the television screen was calm and direct. Then the weather forecast came on and Daniel was left with a sense of melancholy.

He had met Victor Omeru only once, five years ago, when the President had granted him an interview covering the dispute with Zaire and Uganda over the fishing rights in Lake Albert. They had spent only an hour together, but Daniel had been impressed by the old man’s eloquence and presence, and even more so by his obvious commitment to his people, to all the various tribal groupings that made up his little state, and to the preservation of the forest, savannah and lakes that were their national heritage.

“We see the riches of our lakes and forests as an asset that must be managed for posterity, not something that is to be devoured at a single sitting. We look upon nature’s bounty as a renewable resource which all the people of Ubomo have the right to share, even those generations as yet unborn. That is why we resist the plunder of the lakes by our neighbours,” Victor Omeru had told him, and it was wisdom of a kind that Daniel had seldom heard from any other statesman. His heart had gone out to someone who shared his own love and concern for the land that had given them birth. Now Victor Omeru was gone and Africa would be a poorer, sadder place for his passing.

Daniel spent the whole of Monday in the City talking to his bank-manager and his agent. It went well and Daniel was in a far better mood when he returned to the flat at nine-thirty that evening.

There was another message from Michael on the answering machine. “God, I hate this contraption. Call me when you come in, Danny.”

It would be two hours later in Lusaka, but he took Michael at his word. “Did I get you out of bed, Mike?”

“No matter, Danny. Hadn’t turned the light off yet. Just one bit of news for you. The new man in Ubomo is Colonel Ephrem Taffari. Forty-two years old. Apparently educated at London School of Economics and University of Budapest. Other than that, nobody knows much about him except that he has already changed the country’s name to the People’s Democratic Republic of Ubomo. In African Socialist-speak ‘democratic’ means ‘tyrannical’. There have been reports of executions of members of the former government, but one expects that.”

“What about Omeru?” Daniel demanded. it was strange how strongly his sympathies inclined towards someone he had known for such a short time so long ago.

“Not specifically mentioned on the butcher’s bill, but presumed to be amongst those put to the wall.”

“Let me know if you pick up anything about my friends Chetti Singh or Ning Cheng Gong.”

“Will do, Danny.”

Now Daniel put the events in Ubomo out of his mind and his world shrank down to the space enclosed by the four walls of the cutting-room at the studio in Shepherd’s Bush. Day after day, he sat in the semi-darkness, concentrating his entire being on the small glowing screen of the editing console.

In the evenings, dizzy with mental exhaustion and red-eyed with strain, he staggered out into the street and caught a taxi back to the flat, stopping only at Partridge’s in Sloane Street to pick up the makings of a sandwich supper. Each morning he awoke in darkness before dawn and was back at the studio long before the daily commuter invasion of the city was under way.

He was caught up in an ecstasy of creative endeavour. It heightened his emotional awareness to the point where all of his existence was in those lambent images that flashed before his eyes. The words to describe them bloomed in his mind so that he spoke into the microphone of the recorder with only occasional references to his notes.

He relived every moment of the scenes that unfolded before him to the point where he could smell the hot dusty musky perfume of Africa and hear the voices of her people and the cries of her animals ringing in his ears as he worked.

So great was Daniel’s absorption in the creative process of dubbing and fine cutting his series that over the weeks that followed the recent events in Africa retreated into the mists of distance. It was only when, with a shock that started his adrenalin flowing, he saw Johnny Nzou’s face looking at him out of the small screen and heard his voice speak from beyond the grave, that it all rushed back upon him and he felt his determination grow stronger.

Alone in the darkened cutting-room he replied to Johnny’s image, “I’m coming back. I haven’t forgotten you. They haven’t got away with what they did to you. I promise you that, old friend.”

By the end of February, three months after he had started the editing, he had a rough cut of the first four episodes of the series ready to show his agent.

Eina Markham had sold his very first production and they had been together ever since. He trusted her judgement, and stood in awe of her business acumen. She had an uncanny ability to judge to within a dollar just how much the trade would bear, and then to squeeze that very last dollar out of the deal. She wrote a formidable contract which covered every conceivable contingency, and several that fell outside that definition.

She had once written a spin-off clause into one of his contracts. He had smiled at it when he read it, but two years later it had yielded a wholly unexpected royalty of fifty thousand dollars from Japan, a country that hadn’t even entered into Daniel’s original calculations.

At forty years of age, Eina was tall and willowy with dark Jewish eyes and a figure like a Vogue model. Once or twice over the years, they had almost become lovers. The closest they had come to it was three years previously, when they had shared a bottle of Dam Perignon in his flat to celebrate a particularly lucrative sale of subsidiary rights.

She had drawn back from the very brink. “You are one of the most attractive men I have ever met, Danny, and I’m sure we’d make tremendous music together, but still you’re more valuable to me as a client than as just another good romp.” She had buttoned up her blouse and left him to the agonies of sexual frustration.

Now they spent the morning in the preview theatre at the studios watching the first four episodes straight through, back to back. Eina made no comment until the last tape was played out, then she stood up. “I’ll take you to lunch,” she said.

In the taxi she talked of everything but the production. She took him to Mosimann’s in West Halkin Street. The club that Anton Mosimann had fashioned out of an old church was now a high cathedral of gastronomy. Anton himself, resplendent in his whites and his tall chef’s hat, rosy-complexioned as a cherub, came out of his kitchens to chat to them at their table, an honour afforded only to his more favoured members.

Daniel was in a fever of anxiety to learn Eina’s opinion of his work, but this was an old trick of hers to build up tension and expectation. He played along with her, discussing the menu and chatting unconcernedly about irrelevancies. Only when she ordered a bottle of Carton-Charlemagne did he know for certain that she liked it.

Then she flashed dark Jewish eyes at him over the rim of the glass and said in that husky sexy voice, “Marvellous, Armstrong, bloody marvelous. Your best yet, I kid you not. I want four copies immediately.”

He laughed with relief. “You can’t sell it yet, it’s not finished.”

“Can’t I? You just watch my dust.”

She showed it to the Italians first. They always favoured his work. The Italians had an historical and emotional interest in Africa, and over the years Italy had proved to be one of Daniel’s best markets. He loved the Italians and they loved him. A week later Eina brought the draft Italian contract around to his flat.

Daniel contributed a plateful of smoked salmon sandwiches and a bottle to the proceedings and they sat on the floor, put Beethoven on the CD player and ate the sandwiches while Eina went over the contract with him. “They liked it as much as I did, she told him. I’ve jacked them up twenty-five percent on the last advance they gave us.”

“You’re a witch,” Daniel told her.

“It’s black magic.”

The Italian advance almost covered the entire cost of production of the series. The rest of it would all be profit. The big gamble had paid off handsomely, and he had no backers to share it with. After Eina had taken her commission, it was all his.

He tried to estimate what his ultimate pay-off would be. Half a million certainly; probably a lot more, depending on the Americans. When all the world rights had been sold, it might be as much as three million dollars. He had impressed even himself.

After ten years of hard work, he had broken clear. No more overdrafts; no more taking his begging bowl from one arrogant sponsor to another. From now on he had charge of his own destiny; he had creative and artistic control over his work, and the rights to the final cut. In future it would be the way he wanted it, not the view imposed upon him by his backers. It was a good feeling, a bloody wonderful feeling.

“What have you got lined up for the future?” Eina asked as she helped herself to the last of the smoked salmon.

“I haven’t thought about it yet,” he lied. He always had two or three projects in the warming oven of his mind. “I still have to finish the last two episodes.”

“I’ve had a few approaches from interested parties with money to invest. One of the big oil companies wants you to do a series on the South African apartheid society and the effect of sanctions on–”

“Hell, no!” It was marvelous to be able to turn down an offer of work in such a peremptory fashion. “That’s all cold porridge and last night’s leftovers. The world is changing. Just look at Eastern Europe. Apartheid and sanctions are yesterday’s news. They won’t even exist by this time next year. I want something fresh and exciting. I’ve been thinking about the rain forests not the Brazilian forests, that’s been done and overdone, but the African I equatorial region. It’s one of the very few unknown parts left on this planet, yet ecologically it’s of vast importance.”

“Sounds good. When will you start?”

“My God, you are a hard taskmistress. I haven’t even finished the last one and you’re on to me about the next.”

“Since Aaron divorced me, somebody has to keep me in the style to which I’ve grown accustomed.”

“All the duties of matrimony with none of the privileges and pleasures.” He sighed dramatically.

“You still on about that, silly boy. You could talk me into it yet, and you might not like it. Aaron didn’t.”

“Aaron was a big prick,” Daniel said.

“That was part of the trouble.” she chuckled, huskily sexy. “He wasn’t.” Then she changed the subject. “By the way, what happened between you and Jock? I had a very strange phone call from him. He said you’d had a major punch-up. He implied that you had blown your mind and gone over the top, nearly got him into all sorts of trouble. He said that you and he would not be working together again. Is that right?”

“Not to put too fine a point on it, yes, that’s right. We have come to a parting of the ways.”

“Pity. He has done some fantastic work on this “Africa Dying” series. Do you have a replacement cameraman in mind?”

“I don’t. Do you?”

She thought about it for a while. “Would you have any objection to working with a female?”

“I can’t think why I should, as long as she can stand the pace. Africa is a raw, rough country. It takes a certain resilience and toughness to cope with the physical conditions.”

Eina smiled. “The lady I have in mind is tough enough and talented enough. You have my word on it. She’s just done a piece for the BBC on the Arctic and the Inuit Indians, Eskimos to you. It’s good, very good.”

“I’d like to see it.”

“I’ll get you a print.”

Eina sent the tape round to the studio the next day but Daniel was so totally involved in his own work that he dropped it into a drawer of his desk. He meant to view it that evening, but instead he let it slide. Three days after he had finished the series, the tape was still in his desk, forgotten in the excitement of all the other things which were happening around him.

Then Michael Hargreave called from Lusaka again. “Danny, I’m going to send you a bill for these calls. Costing HM Government a ruddy fortune.”

“I’ll buy you a case of bubbly next time I see you.”

“You must be in the chips, dear boy, but I’ll accept the offer. The good news is that your friend, Chetti Singh, is out of hospital.”

“Are you sure, Mike?”

“Good as new. Remarkable recovery, so they tell me. I had our man in Lilongwe check it for me. Only one arm, but apart from that Chetti Singh is back in business. You’ll have to send him another leopard for Christmas, the last one didn’t work.”

Daniel chuckled ruefully. “Did you hear anything of my other pal? The Chink?”

“Sorry, not a dickie bird. Gone home to Daddy and the Lucky Dragon.”

“Let me know if he pitches up. I won’t be able to leave London for a couple of months at least. It’s all happening here.”

Daniel was not exaggerating. Eina had just sold the Africa Dying series to Channel 4 for the highest price ever paid for an independent production. They were also breaking their advance planning and screening the first episode at prime time on Sunday evening six weeks from now.

“I’m going to throw a viewing party for you on the big night,” Eina told him. “Oh God, Danny, I always knew you were the, tops. It’s so good to be able to prove it. I’ve invited people from all the Continental and North American stations to watch it. This is going to take them by storm, believe me.”

The Saturday before the party she rang Daniel at his flat. “Have you had a chance to look at that tape I sent you?”

“Which one?”

“Which means you haven’t,” she groaned. “The tape about the Arctic, ‘Arctic Dream’, the one shot by that camerawoman, Bonny Mahon. Don’t be obtuse, Danny.”

“I’m sorry, Eina, I just haven’t had a chance to get around to it.”

“I’ve invited her to the party,” she warned him

“. I’ll look at it now, right away,” he promised, and went to rescue the tape from his desk drawer.

He had been intending to skip-view the tape, but found that he was not able to give it such a cavalier treatment. From the opening sequence he found himself captivated. It opened with an aerial sequence of the eternal ice of the far north, and the images-which followed were striking and unforgettable.

There was a particular sequence of a vast herd of caribou swimming across one of the open leads in the ice. The low yellow sun was behind them so that when the herd bull rose from the dark water and shook himself, he filled the air around him with a cloud of golden droplets which framed him in a precious nimbus like an animal deity from some pagan religion.

Daniel found himself enthraled to the point where his professional judgement was suspended. Only after the tape had run to its conclusion did he attempt to analyse how the camerawoman had achieved her effects. Bonny Mahon had understood how to use the extraordinary light to endow it with a texture and mood that reminded him overpoweringly of the luminous and ethereal masterpieces of Turner.

If he were ever to work in the gloomy depths of the equatorial forests, that use of available light would be critical. There was no doubt that she had the gift of exploiting it. He looked forward to meeting her.

For the viewing party Eina Markham had hired half a dozen extra television sets, and placed them in strategic positions in her flat, including the guest toilet. She was determined that no one should have an excuse for missing the event that they had all assembled to celebrate.

As befitted the guest of honour, Daniel arrived half an hour late and had to fight his way in through the front door. Eina’s parties were extremely popular, and the large drawing-room was bulging at the seams. Fortunately it was a balmy May evening, and the guests had overflowed on to the terrace overlooking the river.

For six months Daniel had lived like a recluse. it was good to have human contact again. Of course, he knew most of those present and his reputation was such that they sought him out eagerly. He was the centre of an ever-changing circle of admirers, most of them old friends, and he was vain enough to enjoy the attention, although he knew just how ephemeral it could be in this business, you were only as good as your last production.

Despite the gay and amusing company, Daniel felt his nerves screwing up right as the hour approached, and he found it harder to concentrate on the clever conversation and repartee that flitted and sparkled in the air around his head like a flock of humming-birds. Not even the prettiest of the many lovely ladies present could hold his attention for long.

Finally Eina clapped her hands and called them to order. “People! People! This is it!” And she went from room to room, switching on the television sets, tuning them to Channel 4.

There was a noisy chatter of expectation as the opening credits began to roll and the theme music swelled and then the first sequence of Daniel’s production opened with a view that was the spirit of Africa distilled to its essence.

There was a scorched sepia plain on which the scattered acacia trees stood dark green with twisted stems and flat anvil heads. A single elephant strode across the plain, an old bull, grey and wrinkled, his tusks stained with vegetable juices, thick and curved and massive. He moved with ponderous majesty, while around him fluttered a shining cloud of white egrets, their wings pearly and translucent. On the far horizon, against the aching African blue of the sky, waited the snowy pyramid of Kilimanjaro, detached from the burned ochre earth by the heat mirage. It had the same ethereal delicacy as the egrets’ wings.

The tipsy laughter and chatter quietened and the crowded rooms fell silent, captivated by the timeless and eternal majesty of the vision that Daniel evoked for them.

Then they gasped with shock as the two old matriarchs of the Zambezi herd charged together headlong from the screen, tattered ears flapping, red earth dashed from under their great pads, until their wild infuriated squeals were cut off abruptly by the crash of gunfire. The bullet-strikes were an ostrich feather of dust dancing for an instant on the scared grey skin of each of their foreheads, and then the mountainous carcasses fell to earth, twitching and shuddering in the dreadful palsy of the brain shot.

For forty-five minutes Daniel led his audience captive in golden chains of imagination through the majestic and ravaged continent. He showed them unearthly beauty and cruelty and ugliness, by contrast all the more shocking.

As the last image faded, the silence persisted for several seconds. Then they began to stir and come back to reality across six thousand miles. Someone clapped softly and the applause swelled and went on and on.

Eina came to stand beside Daniel. She said nothing but took his hand and squeezed it.

After a while Daniel felt that he had to escape the crush of human bodies, and the boisterous congratulations. He needed space to breathe.

He slipped out on to the terrace. He stood alone at the railing and looked down, but did not see the boat lights on the dark Thames. Already he was experiencing the first reaction to the heady elation that had buoyed him up through the first part of the evening. His own images of Africa had moved him and saddened him. He should have been inured to them by now, but it was not so. Particularly disturbing had been the sequence with Johnny Nzou and the elephants. Johnny had been there all the time, at the periphery of his conscious mind all these months, but now his full-blown memory emerged again. Suddenly, overpoweringly, the urge to return to Africa came upon Daniel with all its old force. He felt restless and discontented.

Others might applaud what he had done, but for him it was over. His nomadic soul urged him onwards. Already it was time to move, to make for the next horizon, the next tantalizing adventure.

Somebody touched his arm. For a moment he did not respond. Then he turned his head to find a girl beside him. She had red hair. That was the first impression he had of her, thick bushy, flaring red hair. The hand on his arm had a disconcerting, almost masculine, strength. She was tall, almost-as tall as he was, and her features were generous, a wide mouth and full lips, a large nose saved from masculinity by the upturned tip and delicately sculpted nostrils.

“I’ve been trying to get to you all evening,” she said. Her voice was deep with a self-assured timbre. “But you’re the man of the moment.” She was not pretty. Her skin was heavily freckled from sun and wind, but she had a clean outdoors glow. In the terrace lights her eyes were bright and green, fringed with lashes as dense and thick as bronze wire filaments. They gave her a candid and quizzical air. “Eina promised to introduce us, but I’ve given up waiting for it to happen. I’m Bonny Mahon.” She grinned like a tomboy and he liked her.

“Eina gave me a tape of yours.” He offered his hand and she took it in a firm strong grip. All right, he thought, she’s tough, as Eina said she was. Africa won’t daunt her. You’re good. You have an eye and an instinct for the light. You’re very good.”

“So are you.” Her grin widened. “I’d like to work with you some time.”

She was direct, unaffected. He liked her even more. Then he smelt her. She wore no perfume. It was the true undisguised smell of her skin, warm, strong and aphrodisiac.

“It could happen, he told her. It could happen sooner than either of us suspects.” He was still holding her hand and she made no effort to withdraw it. They were both aware of the sexual ambiguity in his last remark. He thought that it would be exciting to take this woman to Africa with him.

Some miles north of where Daniel and Bonny stood on the terrace and appraised each other both professionally and physically, another person had watched the first episode of Africa Dying.

Sir Peter Tug Harrison was the major shareholder and CEO of British Overseas Steam Ship Co. Ltd.

Although BOSS was still listed under Shipping on the London Stock Exchange it had changed its nature entirely in the fifty years since Tug Harrison had acquired a controlling interest in it.

It had started out in the late Victorian era running a small fleet of tramp steamers to Africa and the Orient, but it had never prospered greatly and Tug had taken it over at the outbreak of the Second World War for a fraction of its value. With the profits of its wartime operation Tug had branched out in many directions and BOSS was now one of the most powerful conglomerates listed on the London Stock Exchange.

Tug had always been sensitive to the vagaries of public opinion and to the image that his company projected. He had as strong an instinct for these subtleties as he had for the commodity index and the fluctuations on the world stock markets. It was one of the reasons for his huge success. “The mood is green,” he had told his board only a month ago. “Bright green. Whether or not we agree with this new passion for nature and the environment, we have to take cognisance of it. We have to ride the green wave.”

Now he sat in his study on the third floor of his home in Holland Park. The house stood in the centre of a row of magnificent townhouses. It was one of the most prestigious addresses in London. The study was panelled in African hardwood from BOSS’s concessions in Nigeria. The panels were selected and matched and polished so that they glowed like precious marble. There were only two paintings hanging on the panels, for the wood grain itself was a natural work of art. The painting facing the desk was a Madonna and Child from Paul Gauguin’s first sojourn in the South Pacific islands, and the other painting, which hung behind him, was a Picasso, a great barbaric and erotic image of a bull and a nude woman. The pagan and profane set off the lyrical and luminous quality of the Mother and God-child.

Guarding the doorway was a set of rhinoceros horns. There was a burnished spot on one of the horns, polished by Tug Harrison’s right hand over the decades. He stroked it each time he entered or left the room. It was a superstitious ritual. The horns were his good-luck charms.

As an eighteen-year-old lad, penniless and hungry, owning nothing but an old rifle and a handful of cartridges, he had followed that rhino bull into the shimmering deserts of the Sudan. Thirty miles from the banks of the Nile, he had killed the bull with a single bullet to the brain. Blood from a severed artery in its head had washed a little runnel in the desert earth, and from the bottom of the shallow excavation Tug Harrison had picked out a glassy stone with a waxy sheen that had almost filled the palm of his hand.

That diamond was the beginning. His luck had changed from the day of the rhino. He had kept the horns, and still be reached out to them every time he was within arm’s length of them. To him they were more valuable than either of the fabulous paintings that flanked them.

He had been born in Liverpool’s slums during the First World War, son of a drunken market porter, and had run away to sea at the age of sixteen. He had jumped ship at Dares Salaam to escape the sexual attentions of a brutal first mate, and had discovered the mystery and the beauty and promise that was Africa. For Tug Harrison that promise had been fulfilled. The riches that he had wrested from the harsh African soil had made him one of the hundred richest men in the entire world.

The television set was artistically concealed behind the hardwood panelling. The controls were set into the intercom panel on his desk-top. Like most intelligent and busy men, he shunned the mindless outpourings of the television programmes, limiting his viewing to selected programmes, mostly the news and current affairs items.

However, anything African was his vital interest and he had noted the title Africa Dying and punched the programme time into his desk-top alarm. The discreet electronic chimes aroused him from his study of the financial statements which lay on the pigskin blotter in front of him. He touched the controls, and the panel in the wall directly across the figured-silk Quin carpet from his desk slid open. He adjusted the volume of sound as the theme music floated into the room.

Then the image of a great elephant and a snowy peak filled the screen, and instantly he was transported back fifty years and thousands of miles in time and space. He watched without moving until the final frame faded. Then he reached out to touch the controls. The screen went black and the silent panel closed like a sleepy eyelid.

Tug Harrison sat for a long time in silence. At last he picked up the eighteen-carat gold pen from the desk set and scribbled a name on his note-pad. Daniel Armstrong. Then he swivelled his chair and took down his copy of Who’s Who from the bookshelf.

Daniel walked from Shepherd’s Bush to Holland Park. just because he was a potential millionaire didn’t mean he should toss away a fiver on a few minutes taxi ride. The weather was bright and warm and the trees in the squares and parks were decked in early summer greenery. As he strode along, glancing with abstract appreciation at the girls in their thin dresses and short skirts, he was thinking about Tug Harrison. Ever since Eina Markham had phoned him to pass on Harrison’s invitation, he had been intrigued. Of course, he knew of the man. Harrison’s tentacles reached into every corner of the African continent, from Egypt to the banks of the Limpopo river.

Daniel knew the power and wealth of BOSS and its influence in Africa but little about the man behind it. Tug Harrison was a man who seemed to have a knack for steering well clear of public controversy and the attentions of the tabloid press. Wherever Daniel travelled in Africa these days he could discern Tug Harrison’s influence, like the Spoor of a cunning old man-eating lion. He left his tracks, but like the beast he was seldom seen in the flesh.

Daniel pondered the reasons for Harrison’s peculiar success on the African continent. He understood the African mind as few white men could. He had learned as a lad in the lonely hunting and prospecting camps in the remote wilderness, when his only companions for months on end had been black men. He spoke a dozen African languages but, more important, he understood the oblique and lateral reasoning of the African. He liked Africans, felt comfortable in their company, and knew how to inspire their trust. On his African travels Daniel had met men and women of mixed blood whose mothers were Turkana or Shana or Kikuyu, and who boasted that Tug Harrison was their true father. There was never any proof of their claims, of course, but often these people were in positions of influence and affluence.

There were very seldom news reports or photographs of Harrison’s visits to the African continent, but his Gulfstream executive jet was often parked discreetly at the furthest end of the airport tarmac in Lusaka or Kinshasa or Nairobi.

Rumour placed him as an honoured guest and confidant in Mobutu’s marble palaces or at Kenneth Kaunda’s presidential residence in Lusaka.

They said that he was one of the very few who had access to the shadowy Renamo guerrillas in Mozambique as well as to the guerrilla bush camps of Savimbi in Angola. He was also welcomed by the legitimate regimes that they opposed. They said that he could pick up the telephone at any hour of the day or night and within minutes be speaking to de Klerk or Mugabe or Daniel Arap Moi.

He was the broker, the courier, the adviser, the banker, the go-between, and the negotiator for the continent.

Daniel was looking forward to meeting him. He had tried many times before, without success. Now as an invited guest he stood outside the imposing front door and felt a little tickle of nerves. That premonition had served him well in the African bush; it had warned him so often of dangerous beasts and even more dangerous men.

A black servant in flowing white kanza and red fez opened the front door. When Daniel spoke to him in fluent Swahili, the wooden mask of his face cracked into a huge white smile.

He led Daniel up the wide marble staircase. There were fresh flowers in the niches of the landings, and Daniel recognised some of the paintings from Harrison’s fabled art collection gracing the walls, Sisley, Duly and Matisse. Before the tall double doors of red Rhodesian teak, the servant stood aside and bowed. Daniel strode into the room and paused in the centre of the silk Quin carpet.

Tug Harrison rose from behind his desk. It was at once obvious how he had earned his nickname. He was big-boned but compact, although the exquisitely tailored pin-stripe suit smoothed the raw powerful angles of his frame and the heavy jut of his belly.

He was bald, except for a fringe of silver hair like that of a tonsured monk. His pate was pale and smooth while the skin of his face was thickened and creased and tanned where it had been unprotected by a hat from the tropical sun. His jaw was determined and his eyes were sharp and piercing, giving warning of the ruthless intelligence behind them.

“Armstrong,” he said. “Good of you to come.” His voice was warm as molasses, too soft for the rest of him. He held out his hand across the desk, forcing Daniel to come to him, a subtle little dominance ploy.

“Good of you to ask me, Harrison.” Daniel took his cue and eschewed the use of his title, setting equal terms. The older man’s eyes crinkled in acknowledgement.

They shook hands, examining each other, feeling the physical power of each other’s grip without letting it develop into a boyish contest of strength. Harrison waved him to the buttoned leather chair beneath the Gauguin and spoke to the servant. “Letta chai, Selibi. You will take tea, won’t you, Armstrong?”

While the servant poured the tea, Daniel glanced at the rhino horns on the entrance wall. “You don’t see trophies like that often,” he said, and Harrison left his desk and crossed to the doorway.

He stroked one of the horns, caressing it as though it were the limb of a beautiful and beloved woman. “No, you don’t, he agreed. I was a boy when I shot them. Followed the old bull for fifteen days. It was November and the temperature at midday was 120 degrees in the shade. Fifteen days, two hundred miles through the desert.” He shook his head. “The crazy things we do when we are young.”

“The crazy things we do when we are older,” Daniel said, and Harrison chuckled.

“You are right. Life is no fun unless you are at least a touch crazy.” He took the cup that the servant offered him. “Thank you, Selibi. Close the doors when you leave.” The servant drew the double doors closed and Harrison went back to his desk. “I watched your production on Channel 4 the other night,” he said, and Daniel inclined his head and waited.

Harrison sipped his tea. The delicate porcelain cup looked fragile in his hands. They were battler’s hands, scarred and ravaged by tropical sun and hard physical labour and ancient conflicts. The knuckles were enlarged but the nails were carefully manicured.

Harrison put the cup and saucer down on the desk in front of him and looked up at Daniel again. “You got it right,” he said. “You got it exactly right.” Daniel made no comment. He sensed that any modest or deprecating comment would only irritate this man. “You got your facts straight, and you drew the right conclusions. It was a refreshing change after all the sentimental and ill-informed crap that we hear every day. You put your finger on the roots of Africa’s problems, tribalism and overpopulation and ignorance and corruption. The solutions you suggested made sense.” Harrison nodded. “Yes, you got it right.” He stared at Daniel thoughtfully. Harrison’s faded blue eyes gave him a strangely enigmatic expression, like a blind man.

“Don’t relax,” Daniel warned himself. “Not for a moment. Don’t let the flattery soften you up. This is what it’s all about. He’s stalking you like an old lion.”

“Someone in your position is able to influence public opinion as others are never able to do,” Harrison murmured. “You have a reputation, an international audience. People trust your vision. “They base their view on what you tell them. That’s good.” He nodded even more emphatically. “That’s very good. I would like to help and encourage you.”

“Thank you.” Daniel let a small ironical smile lift one side of his mouth. One thing he was certain of: Tug Harrison did nothing without good reason. He made no free gifts of his help and encouragement. “What do they call you, your friends? Daniel, Dan, Danny?”

“Danny.”

“My friends call me Tug. Our thinking is so much in accord. We share the same commitment to Africa. I think we should be friends, Danny.”

“All right, Tug.”

Harrison smiled. “You have every reason to be suspicious I understand. I have a certain reputation. One should not always judge a man on his reputation, however.”

“That is true.” Daniel smiled back at him. “Now tell me what you want from me.”

“Damn it!” Harrison chuckled. “I like you. I think we understand each other. We both believe that man has a right to exist upon this planet, and that, as the dominant animal species, he has the right to exploit the earth for his own benefit, just as long as he does so on a basis of sustained and renewable yield.”

“Yes,” Daniel agreed. “I believe that. It is the balanced, pragmatic view.”

“I would expect no less of a man of your intelligence. In Europe man has been farming the earth, felling the forests and killing the animals for centuries, and yet the earth is more fertile, the forests denser, the animals more numerous than they were a thousand years ago.”

“Except downwind of Chernobyl, or where the acid rain falls,” Daniel pointed out. “But yes, I agree; Europe isn’t in bad shape.”

“Africa is another story.” Harrison cut in, “You and I love Africa. I feel that it is our duty to combat its evils. I can do something to alleviate the grinding poverty in some parts of the continent, and by investment and guidance offer some of the African people a better way of life. You, with your special gifts, are in a position to counter much of the ignorance that exists about Africa. You can clear the woolly-headed confusion of the armchair-conservationists and urban animal rights fanatics, those who are so cut off from the earth and the forests and the animals that they are actually menacing the elements of nature which they believe they are protecting.”

Daniel nodded thoughtfully and noncommittally. It was weak tactics to disagree with the man until he had listened to everything he had to say, and heard the full proposal that Harrison was obviously working towards. “In principle all you say makes excellent sense. However, if you could be a little more specific, Tug.”

“Right,” Harrison agreed. “Of course you know the state of Ubomo, don’t you?”

Daniel felt a little electric shock tickle the hair at the back of his neck. It was so unexpected and yet, in some bizarre manner, he felt that it was predestined. Something had been leading him inexorably in that direction. It took him a moment to recover himself, then he said, “Ubomo, the land of the red earth. Yes, I have been there, though I can’t claim to be an expert on the country. Since independence from Britain in the sixties, it has been a little backwater.”

Harrison shrugged. “There wasn’t much to know about it. It was the fief of an arrogant old dictator who resisted all change and progress.”

“Victor Omeru,” Daniel said. “I met him once, but it was years ago, when he was bickering with his neighbours about the fishing rights in the lake.”

“That was typical of the man. He resisted all change on principle. He wanted to keep to the traditional ways and customs. He wanted to keep his people docile and compliant.” Harrison shook his head. “Anyway, that is all history. Omeru has gone and there is a dynamic young man at the head of government. President Ephrem Taffari is there to open up the country and bring his people into the twentieth century. Apart from the fishing rights, Ubomo has considerable natural assets. Timber and minerals. For twenty years I have tried to convince Omeru that these should be developed for the benefit of his people. He has resisted with a blind intransigence.”

“Yes. He was stubborn,” Daniel agreed. “But I liked him.”

“Oh, yes, he was a lovable old codger,” Harrison agreed. “But that is no longer relevant. The country is ripe and ready for development and, on behalf of an international consortium of which BOSS is the leading member, I have negotiated the concession to undertake a major part of this development.”

“Doesn’t sound as though you need me, then.”

“I wish it were as easy as that.” Harrison shook his head. “We are being overtaken by the wave of hysteria that is sweeping the world. It is a psychological law that every mass popular movement is hi-jacked by fanatics and pushed beyond the dictates of reason and common sense. The pendulum of public feeling always swings too far in each direction.”

“You are running into opposition to your plans to develop the natural resources of Ubomo. Is that what you are trying to tell me, Tug?”

Harrison cocked his head on one side. He looked like an eagle when he did that, a great bald-headed bird of prey. “You are direct, young man, but I should have expected that.” He sat down behind his desk and picked up an ivory-handled duelling pistol which he used as a paper weight. He spun it on his forefinger and the gold inlay on the barrel sparkled like a Catherine-wheel. “There was a female scientist working in Ubomo during Omeru’s presidency,” he went on at last. “She and the old man had a close relationship and he gave her all sorts of special privileges that he denied other journalists and researchers. She published a book on the forest-dwellers of Ubomo. You and I would call them pygmies, although that term is unfashionable in today’s climate. The title was…” Harrison paused to think, and Daniel intervened.

“The title was The People of the Tall Trees. Yes, I have read the book.”

“The author’s name is Kelly Kinnear. Have you met her?” Harrison demanded.

“No.” Daniel shook his head. “But I would like to. She writes well. Her style reminds me of Rachel Carson. She is a–”

“She is a trouble-maker,” Harrison cut in bluntly. “She is a shit-stirrer.” The coarse term seemed uncharacteristic of him.

“You’ll have to explain that to me.” Daniel kept his voice even and his expression neutral. He didn’t want to declare his sentiments until he had heard Harrison out.

“When he came to power, President Taffari sent for this woman. She was working in the forest at the time. He explained to her his plans for the advancement and development of the country, and asked for her support and her assistance. The meeting was not a success. Kelly Kinnear had some misguided sense of loyalty to old President Omeru and she resisted President Taffari’s overtures of friendship. She is entitled to her views, of course, but then she began a campaign of agitation within Ubomo’s borders. She accused Taffari of violations of human rights. She also accused him of planning to rape the country’s natural resources by uncontrolled exploitation.”

Harrison threw up those powerful scarred hands. “In fact she went into female hysterics and attacked the new government in every way she was able. There was no logic nor reason nor even factual basis for these attacks. Taffari had no alternative but to send her packing. He chucked her out of Ubomo. She is, as you probably know, a British subject, and she ended up back here in the UK. However, she had not learned her lesson and she continues her campaign against the government of Ubomo.”

“BOSS has nothing to fear from someone like that, surely?” Daniel probed gently, and Harrison looked across at him sharply, searching for traces of irony in the question.

Then he transferred his attention back to the duelling pistol in his right hand. “Unfortunately, the woman has built up a foundation of influence on the strength of her writings. She is articulate and–” he hesitated, “and personable. She manages to hide her fanaticism under a cloak of reasoned logic which is, needless to say, based on false assumptions and distorted facts. She has managed to recruit the support of the Green Party in this country and on the Continent. You are right, BOSS has nothing to fear from such an obvious charlatan, but she is a nuisance. She looks good on television. Now she has come to know of our interest in Ubomo and the plans that our consortium has to develop the area. She and her supporters are making a great deal of noise. You might have seen that piece in the Guardian recently?”

“No.” Daniel shook his head. “I don’t read the Guardian, and I’ve been pretty busy recently. I’m a little out of touch.”

“Well, take my word for it then, it is making life just a trifle uncomfortable for me. I have shareholders to answer to and an annual general meeting coming up. Now, I’ve just learned that this woman has acquired a small block of shares in BOSS, which gives her the right to attend the AGM and to speak. You can be certain she will have the radical press and a bunch of those lunatics from ‘Friends of the Earth’ there with her. She will make a circus of the occasion.”

“That’s awkward, Tug.” Daniel nodded, stifling his smile. “How can I help you?”

“Your influence in public and scientific circles is far greater than Kelly Kinnear’s. I have spoken to many people in various disciplines and diverse walks of life about you. You are well respected your views on Africa are taken seriously. What I propose is that you go to Ubomo and make a documentary that sets out the true facts and examines the issues that this Kinnear woman has raised. It would blow her away like a puff of smoke. Television is a much more powerful medium than the printed word, and I could guarantee you maximum exposure. BOSS owns extensive media interests.”

Daniel listened to him with rising incredulity. It was like listening to a client propositioning a prostitute for the performance of a particularly lurid perversion. He felt the urge to laugh with outrage, to reject violently this insult to his integrity. This man truly believed that he was for sale. it took an effort for him to sit still and listen expressionlessly.

“Of course, I could also guarantee that you would receive the whole-hearted cooperation of President Taffari and his government. They would provide everything that you require. You need only ask and there would be military transport, helicopters, lake patrol boats, at your disposal. You could go anywhere, even into the closed area of the forest reservations. You could speak to anybody…”

“To political prisoners?” Daniel could not help himself. It slipped out.

“Political prisoners?” Harrison repeated. “What the Hell would you want to speak to politicals for? This will be a documentary on the environment and the development of a backward society.”

“Just suppose I did want to talk to political detainees,” Daniel insisted.

“Look here, young man. Taffari is a progressive leader, one of the few honest and committed leaders on the continent. I don’t think he is holding any political prisoners. It isn’t his style.”

“What happened to Omeru?” Daniel asked, leaning forward intently, and Harrison laid the duelling pistol on the blotter in front of him. Its barrels were pointing at Daniel’s chest.

“Do I detect hostility towards the Ubomo government?” He asked softly. “Towards my proposition?”

“No,” Daniel denied it. “I just have to know what I’m getting myself into. I’m a businessman, like you, Tug. I want the hard facts, not the hard sell. You understand that. I’m sure you’d want the same, if you were in my position. If I’m going to put my name to something, I must know what it is.”

“All right.” Harrison relaxed. He understood that explanation. “Omeru was an obstinate old man. Taffari had no option but to hold him incommunicado during the transition period. He was under house-arrest, being treated well. He had access to his lawyers and his doctor when he died of a heart attack. Taffari has not announced his death yet.”

“It would seem to point in undesirable directions. Like summary execution without trial,” Daniel suggested. He felt a pang of mourning for the old president.

“It might look like that, Harrison agreed, although I am assured by Taffari, and I have every reason to believe him that it was not the case.”

“All right, I accept your assurance on that point,” Daniel said.

“Now what about the costs of this production? it wouldn’t be cheap. Off the top of my head, I would estimate. the cost at a couple of million. I take it that you would want a first-rate job. Who pays for that? BOSS?”

“That would be a little obvious,” Harrison demurred. “It would reduce the stature of your production to a simple piece of company propaganda. No, I would arrange outside finance. The money would come through a far eastern company. Although it is a member of the consortium, it is not openly associated with BOSS at this stage. They own a film company in Hong Kong which we would use as a front.”

“What is the name of the parent company? And where is it based?” Daniel asked. He felt the first tiny premonition, that sense of predestination that had disturbed him before.

“The parent company is Taiwanese, not well known but very rich, very powerful. First-class people to deal with, I assure you, but of course. “I’d personally underwrite any contract that you have with them.”

“What is the company’s name?”

“It’s a rather flamboyant name, but typically Chinese. The Lucky Dragon Company.” Daniel stared at him, unable to speak for a moment. In some strange fashion Ning Cheng Gong’s destiny had been linked with his by the murder of Johnny Nzou. He knew that it had to be played out to the very end.

“Is something worrying you, Danny?” Harrison looked concerned and Daniel realised that he had allowed his agitation to show.

“No. I was just considering your proposal. On principle I accept the assignment.” He took a grip on himself. “Subject to contract, of course. There would be many items to negotiate. I would want a percentage of the total gross, an agreed advertising budget, choice of my own crew, especially the cameraman, and I’d want final cut. I am sure we’ll be able to come together on the details.”

Harrison smiled, and with one finger rotated the duelling pistol until the barrels were no longer pointed at Daniel’s chest. “Ask your agent to call me as soon as she can. And now I think the sun is definitely over the yard-arm. We can drink to our arrangement in something a little more substantial than Darjeeling.”

Chapter 17

“Look here, Bonny, it would be much easier if you had an agent,” Daniel told her seriously. “I don’t enjoy haggling with you. I believe an artist’s job is to be creative, not to waste talent examining the fine print in a contract. You’ve been honest with me.”

“I’ll be frank with you, Danny. I don’t like shelling out twenty percent of my hard-corned gelt to a middleman. Besides which, I don’t agree with you. Writing a contract of employment can be as creatively satisfying as painting a picture or setting up a camera angle.” She kicked off her shoes. Her bare feet were strong and shapely as her hands. She twisted her long denim-clad legs under her and settled back on his buttoned leather sofa. “Let’s talk business.”

“Okay, let’s do it,” he capitulated. “On principle I won’t pay a crew by the hour, and I don’t recognize overtime. We work whenever there is work to do, and for as long as it takes. We go wherever I say, and we live off the land. No five-star accommodation.”

“That sounds to me like two thousand a week,” she said sweetly.

“Dollars?”

“This isn’t New York, brother Dan. It’s London. Pounds.”

“That’s stiff. I don’t get anywhere near that myself,” he protested.

“No, but you probably get twenty percent of the gross, whereas I will have to be content with a lousy five percent.”

“Five percent of the gross on top of two thousand a week.” Daniel looked horrified. “You have to be joking.”

“If I were joking, I’d be smiling.”

“I have never given a cut to a cameraman, forgive me, a camera person before.”

“Once you get used to the idea, you won’t find it unbearably painful.”

“I tell you what, let’s call it twelve hundred a week, and forget about any percentage.”

“The acoustics are terrible in here. I can’t believe what I thought I just heard. I mean, you wouldn’t want to insult me, would you, Danny boy?”

“Would you do me a favour, Miss Mahon? Would you do up the top button of your shirt while we talk?” The upper part of her chest was freckled like her face. It showed in the deep cleft of her open neck, but below a clear line where the sun had not stained it, her skin was as white as buttermilk. Under the thin cotton shirt her breasts, unfettered by any brassiere, were tight and firm.

She glanced down into her deep cleavage. “Is there something wrong with them?” She grinned slyly.

“No. Nothing at all. That’s what I’m complaining about.”

“She closed the button.”

“Did I hear you say seventeen-fifty and four percent?” she asked.

“You are right. There is something wrong with the acoustics,” he agreed. “I said fifteen hundred and one and a half percent.”

“Two percent,” she wheedled him, and when he sighed and agreed, she added craftily, “and a hundred a day location allowance.”

It took them almost three hours to hammer out the terms of her employment and at the end he found his liking for her tempered by respect. She was a hard lassie.

“Do we need a letter of intent?” he asked. “Or will a handshake do?”

“A handshake will do fine,” she answered. “As long as I have a letter of intent to back it up.”

He went through to his office and tapped out a draft of their agreement on his word-processor, and called her through to check the text on the screen. She stood behind him and leaned over his shoulder to read it. One of her breasts pressed taut and weightily on his shoulder. It was warm as a tsama melon that had lain in the desert under the Kalahari sun.

“You didn’t put in the bit about first-class air tickets,” she pointed out. “And the salary to commence from date of signature.” The smell of her skin that he had noticed on their first meeting was more pronounced. He inhaled it with pleasure. It reminded him forcefully that he had been celibate for almost a year. “Good boy,” she complimented him as he made the alterations she requested. “That will do very nicely indeed.

The timbre of her voice had altered, it was softer and more resonant. There was also a subtle change in the odour of her body as well. He recognised the heady musk of female arousal; she was pumping the air full of pheromones which put his own hormones on red alert.

He was having difficulty concentrating as he ran off four copies of the agreement, one for each of them and another each for Eina and BOSS’s legal department.

Bonny reached over him to sign all four copies, and now she pressed herself against his back and her breath was hot on his cheek. She handed the pen to him and he signed below her.

“Handshake?” hee asked, and offered his open right hand. She ignored it, and instead reached over his shoulder and unbuttoned his shirt. She ran her hand down inside it.

“I can-think of something more binding than a plain little old handshake,” she whispered, and pinched his nipple between her fingernails. He gasped; it was more pleasure than pain. “Danny boy, you and I are going to be alone in the jungle for six months or so. I’m a girl of healthy appetites. It’s going to happen sooner or later. It might as well be sooner. It would be hell if we waited until we got out there and then found that we didn’t like it. Don’t you agree?”

“Your logic is irrefutable,” he laughed, but it was shaky and rough. She took a pinch of his chest curls and used it as a goad to force him to his feet.

“Where’s the bedroom? We might as well be comfortable.”

“Follow me.” He took her by the hand and led her to the door.

Standing in the centre of the bedroom floor she stepped back when he tried to embrace her. “No, she said. Don’t touch me. Not yet. I want to draw it out until it’s unbearable.” She stood facing him, an arm’s length between them. “Do what I do, she ordered,” and began to unbutton her shirt. Her nipples were tiny, like miniature rosebuds, carved from pale pink coral. “You’re as hairy and muscular as a grizzly bear. It gives me goose bumps,” she said, and he saw her nipples rise into rosy points.

The colour darkened and the skin surrounding them puckered. His own flesh responded even more dramatically, and she stared at him shamelessly and chuckled as she unbuckled her own belt. Her jeans were tight and she wriggled and squirmed to get them down.

“Exodus,” he said, “chapter three.”

“That’s not original.” She glanced down at herself complacently. “I’ve had the quotation applied to myself before — the burning bush.” She combed her fingernails lingeringly through the thick mop of flaming curls at the base of her flat white belly. It was so crisp and dense that it rustled. It was one of the most excruciatingly erotic gestures he had ever watched. “Come on,” she encouraged him. “You’re falling behind.”

“He dropped his own trousers around his ankles.”

“Who have we here?” She studied him frankly. “Standing to attention and positively aching to sacrifice himself in the burning bush?” And she reached out to capture him expertly. “Come along, my little mannikin,” she murmured throatily, grinning that sly tomboy grin and led him to bed.

Chapter 18

BOSS’s head office was at Blackfriars in the City, just opposite the pub that stood on the site of the old monastery that gave the area its name. Daniel and Bonny came out of the entrance of the tube station and paused to stare at the building.

“Shit!” said Bonny sweetly. “It’s imperial Roman rococo, with just a touch of Barnum and Bailey.”

BOSS House made the Unilever building down the street look insubstantial. For each of Unilever’s Greek columns it had four, for each of Unilever’s statues of the Olympian gods, it had a dozen. Where Unilever had used granite, BOSS had built in marble.

“If I’d seen this first I’d have held out for five thousand a week.” Bonny squeezed his arm. “I think I’ve been done in more ways than one.”

They climbed the steps to the main entrance, while the statues of the gods frowned down at them from the pediment, and went in through the revolving glass doors. The floor of the entrance lobby was in a chessboard pattern of black and white marble. The roof was vaulted and gilded, with panels in the rococo style depicting either the Last judgement or the Ten Commandments. It wasn’t easy to tell which, but there was a great deal of action in progress between the nymphs and cherubs and seraphim.

“Bless us, Father, for we have sinned.” Bonny rolled her eyes at the ceiling cheerfully.

“Yes, but wasn’t it fun!” Daniel murmured.

The senior public relations officer was waiting for them at the reception counter. He wore a dark three-piece suit and projected the BOSS image of the young executive. “Hello, I’m Pickering,” he greeted them. “You must be Doctor Armstrong and Miss Mahon.” He took Bonny’s hand and eyed her quickly from the top of her flaming coiffure to her cowboy boots, clearly torn between disapproval of her denims and beaded leather waistcoat and hearty approval of her bosom. “I’m supposed to set up a Ubomo briefing for you.”

“Fine. Let’s get on with it then.” Daniel managed to divert his attention from Bonny’s cleavage, and Pickering led them up the sweeping opera house staircase, giving them his tourist-guide patter as they went.

He pointed out the mirrored panels. “French, of course, from Versailles after the Revolution. And those two are Gainsboroughs; the tapestry is Aubusson; that’s a Constable…”

They left behind them the splendours of the public rooms and plunged into labyrinthine corridors in the upper rear of the building, passing scores of tiny offices divided by prefabricated partitions in which the BOSS battalions laboured under the humming air-conditioning units. Very few people raised their heads as the three of them passed.

“Cattle.” Bonny nudged Daniel. “How can they stand life in this abattoir of the spirit?”

Eventually Pickering ushered them into a conference room. Clearly it was the venue of the lower and middle-ranking executives. The floors were covered with industrial stud-rubber tiles and the partition walls displayed charts of the company’s administrative Organization and departmental structures. The furniture was laminate and chrome, with plastic upholstery.

Daniel smiled as he imagined how this room would probably contrast with the magnificence of the main boardroom that must be situated somewhere in the front of the building, close to Tug Harrison’s personal office.

There were four men waiting for them, clustered around the table of snacks and refreshments in the corner. Pickering introduced them. “This is George Anderson, one of our senior geologists; he is in charge of the Ubomo mineral developments. This is his assistant Jeff Aitkens. And this is Sidney Green who coordinates the timber and fishing concessions in Ubomo, and this is Neville Lawrence from our legal section. He will also be able to answer any questions you may have on the financial projections.

“Now, may I offer you a sherry?” Bonny Mahon’s presence did more than the cheap sherry to relax the atmosphere. Pickering allowed them ten minutes, then he shepherded them to their plastic-covered chairs at the imitation-walnut veneered conference table.

“Well, now. I’m not going to stand too much on ceremony here. This is enfamille. My instructions are that this is to be a totally frank and open briefing. You must feel free, Doctor Armstrong, to ask whatever questions occur to you, and we will try our best to answer them. First of all just let me say how delighted and excited we are that BOSS is to be associated with this enormous project to uplift the Ubomo economy and to develop the rich natural resources of that beautiful little country for the good of all its citizens.”

He allowed himself a sanctimonious smirk and then adopted a more businesslike tone. “BOSS’s concessions fall into four categories. Firstly, there are the mining and mineral deposits. Secondly, the timber and agricultural developments. Thirdly, the fishing and aquaculture projects, and lastly, the hotel, casino and tourist industry. We hope that the development of all these resources will eventually lead to Ubomo becoming one of the most prosperous little countries on the African continent. Before I ask our experts to discuss the economic potential of Ubomo in detail, I’m going to give you some background figures and facts. Let’s put the map of Ubomo up on the screen.”

Pickering turned to the console of the audio-visual equipment and adjusted the overhead lighting. “All right. Here we go.” The map of Ubomo appeared on the screen on the end wall. “The People’s Democratic Republic of Ubomo,” he intoned, “is situated between Lakes Albert and Edward on the escarpment of the Great Rift Valley in eastern central Africa. It is-bounded on the west by Zaire, the former Belgian Congo, and on the east by Uganda …” Pickering pointed out the boundaries and the main features. “The capital, Kabati, lies on the lakeshore below the foothills of the Ruwenzori range or, as they are more romantically known, the Mountains of the Moon. The first European explorer to chronicle the existence of these mountains was Captain John Hanning Speke who travelled in this area in 1862.”

Pickering changed the display on the screen. “The total population of Ubomo is estimated at four million, although there has never been a census. You can see the breakdown into tribes. The largest tribe is the Ubali. However, the new President Taffari and most of his military council are Hita. In all a total of eleven tribal groups are represented in Ubomo, the smallest of which is the Bambuti, commonly known as the pygmies. About twenty-five thousand of these diminutive people live in the northern equatorial rain forests of the country. This is where BOSS’s major mineral concessions are situated.”

Pickering was good at his job. He had assembled his information carefully and presented it in a lively and interesting fashion. However, there was very little he had to tell them that Daniel did not already know.

Bonny asked a few questions and Pickering addressed his replies to her bosom. Daniel found that Pickering’s inability to take his eyes off those protuberances was beginning to irritate him. Daniel had conceived a proprietary interest of his own in this area.

After Pickering, the other company experts rose in succession to elaborate on BOSS’s plans. Sidney Green showed them architect’s impressions of the resorts and casinos that they would build upon the lakeshore. “We anticipate the main tourist trade would come from southern Europe, particularly Italy and France. Flying time from Rome under eight hours. We are looking at an eventual half-million visitors a year. Apart from tourism we are planning a major aquaculture industry…” He went on to explain how the Lake waters would be pumped into shallow dams in which freshwater shrimp and other exotic aquatic life would be cultured. “We are aiming for an eventual annual harvest of a million tons of dried protein from aquaculture, together with another million tons of dried and frozen fish from the lakes themselves. We are considering the possibility of introducing high-yield fish populations to the lakes to augment the indigenous species.”

“What about the effect of these enterprises on the ecology of the lake itself?” Daniel asked diffidently. “Particularly the construction of the marinas and yacht harbours and the introduction of exotic species such as carp and Asian shrimp to the lake waters.”

Green smiled like a second-hand car salesman. “These are at present being fully investigated by a team of experts. We expect their report to be ready by the middle of the year. However, we do not anticipate any problems in that area.”

“Quite right,” Daniel thought. “They aren’t going to make waves if my new and good friend Tug is hiring and firing.”

Sidney Green swept forward, still smiling, to discuss the agricultural potential. “In the low-lying wooded savannah that covers the eastern half of the country the tsetse fly, glossina morsitans, closes a great deal of prime country to cattle-ranching. At the earliest opportunity we, in cooperation with the Ubomo government, will undertake a programme of aerial spraying to eradicate this insect menace. Once this is done, beef production will be of great importance to the economy.”

“Aerial spraying?” Daniel asked. “What chemicals will be used?”

“I am pleased to say that BOSS has acquired several thousand tons of Selfrin at most favourable prices.”

“Would the favourable price have anything to do with the fact that Selfrin has been banned in the continental United States and in the European Common Market countries?”

“I assure you, Doctor Armstrong,” Green smiled blandly, “that the use of Selfrin has not been banned in Ubomo.”

“Oh, that’s good.” Daniel nodded, and returned his smile. He had smelled Selfrin in the Okavango swamps and the Zambezi valley. He had seen the devastation of entire insect species and the birds and small mammals that fed upon them. “As long as it’s legal, nobody can have any objection, can they?”

“Quite so, Doctor Armstrong.” Sidney Green changed the display on the lecture screen. “Those areas of the savannah that are unsuitable for cattlebreeding will be planted with cotton and sugar cane. Irrigation water will be pumped from the lakes. The swamps and wetlands in the north will be drained, but these, of course, are long-term projects. Our immediate cash flow will be assured by logging operations in the timber-rich forests of the western mountain range.

“The ‘Tall Trees’”,Daniel murmured.

“I beg your pardon?”

“No, nothing of importance. Please continue. I’m finding this fascinating.”

“Of course, the logging operation will be carried out in concert with the mining operations. Neither project on its own would be profitable, but carried out in unison each becomes highly lucrative. In fact the timber will cover the direct cost of the development and the mineral recovery will be almost entirely profit. However, I will leave George Anderson, our senior geologist, to explain all this to you.”

Anderson’s expression was as stony as one of his geological samples. His style was terse and dry. “The only viable mineral deposits so far discovered in Ubomo lie in the north-western quadrant, below the forests that cover the lower northern slopes of the mountain range and lie within the basin of the Ubomo River.” He moved the cursor on the map display in a slow northern sweep. “This forest cover consists of almost fifty varieties of economically significant trees, amongst which are the African oak, the African mahogany, the African walnut, the red cedar and the silk-cotton tree. I will not weary you with their botanical names, but suffice it to say that their existence holds out major economic advantages, as my colleague has pointed out.” He nodded wearily at Green, who flashed his bright salesman smile in return.

“The forest soils are for the most part leached laterites, the colour of which gives the Ubomo River its name, the Red River, and indeed the country itself, the Land of Red Earth. Fortunately, these soils are very thin, generally less than fifty feet in depth, and below them lies a folded pre-Cambrian formation.” He gave a dry and weary little smile. “Again, I will not tax you with the technicalities, but these soils contain significant quantities of the rare earth, monazite, together with viable deposits of platinum almost evenly distributed in the upper levels. This series is unique. There is no other known formation that comprises this particular spectrum of minerals. Each of these individual minerals occurs in low concentrates, in some cases they are mere traces. Separately none of these would be profitable, but taken together they will be highly lucrative, and their profitability will be enhanced by the valuable stands of timber harvested in the process of exposing the ore body.”

Excuse me, Mr. Anderson,” Daniel interrupted. “Are you considering strip-mining the Ubomo river basin?” George Anderson looked as though he had experienced a sudden stomach cramp.

“Doctor Armstrong, the term ‘strip-mining’ is an emotionally charged one, filled with negative undertones. BOSS has never undertaken strip-mining operations anywhere in the world. I must be very firm on that issue.”

“I beg your pardon, I thought that the company’s copper mines at Quantra in Chile were strip-mines.”

Anderson looked affronted. “Open-cast mines, Doctor Armstrong, not strip-mines.”

“Is there a difference?”

“Of course there is. However, I think that this is neither the time nor the place to examine those differences. just let me say that the open-cast mines that we intend developing in Ubomo will take full account of the sensitive environment of the area. We will operate on a refill-and-renew policy. BOSS has a green approach to nature. In fact, Doctor Armstrong, we are convinced that in the long term the environment will be significantly improved by what we are going to do for the country.”

He looked at Daniel challengingly, and Daniel almost rose to accept it. Then with an effort he forced himself to smile and nod. “You must excuse me playing the devil’s advocate, Mr. Anderson. These are the kind of questions people will ask, and I must be able to answer them. That’s what BOSS is paying me for.”

Anderson looked mollified. “Yes, of course. However, I must reiterate. BOSS is a green company. It’s Sir Peter’s firm policy. I know he is even considering altering the company logo. As you know the present design is a miner’s pickaxe and a ploughshare. Well, he intends adding a green tree, to show our concern for nature.”

“I think that’s very tasteful.” Daniel smiled placatingly. He knew that this discussion would be reported to Tug Harrison, there was even a likelihood that at this moment it was being recorded. If he displayed open hostility and opposition to the company, his free ticket to Ubomo and his contact with the Lucky Dragon and Ning Cheng Gong would evaporate. “With the assurances that you gentlemen have given me, I will be able to go to Ubomo with a clear conscience and I will endeavour to show the world the enormous benefits that will accrue to the country from the intensive development that the BOSS consortium is undertaking.” He spoke for the benefit of the hidden microphones, and then paused for emphasis. “Now, what I want from you is an architectural mock-up of the hotel and casino development on the lakeshore. I’d like to film the area as it is today, and then superimpose the concept over it, to bring out the best features of the design and how it blends into the natural background.”

“Sidney Green will take care of that, I’m sure.” Pickering nodded.

“Right, then I want details of the present per capita income of the average Ubomo citizen, and an estimate of what that income will be in, say, five or ten years time, after the full benefits of the development programme begin to make themselves felt.”

“You’ll see to that, won’t you, Neville?”

The meeting ran on for another half hour before Daniel summed up with a note of finality. “As a film-maker, I have to have a theme for this production. The general concept of Africa these days is one of a continent in trauma, plagued by seemingly insurmountable problems, demographic, economic and political. I want to strike a different note here. I want to show the world how it could be, how it should be. I see the theme of my production as…” He paused for dramatic effect, and then held up his hand to frame an imaginary screen. ‘Ubomo, High Road to the African Future’. The men at the table burst into spontaneous applause, and Pickering refilled the sherry-glasses.

As he escorted Daniel and Bonny back to the front of the building Pickering told them jovially, “I say, that went rather well. I think you both made a very good impression.” He beamed like an approving schoolmaster. “And now a little treat in store for you. Sir Peter Harrison, himself…” his voice took on a reverential tone, as though he had mentioned the name of a deity, “Sir Peter in person has expressed the wish to have a word with you and Miss Mahon.”

He did not wait for their agreement but led them to the elevators.

They waited a mere five minutes in the antechamber to Tug Harrison’s office, barely long enough to appreciate the priceless works of art displayed on the walls and in the glass-fronted cabinets. Then one of three comely secretaries looked up and smiled. “Please follow me. Sir Peter is expecting you.”

As she led them towards the door at the far end of the antechamber, Pickering dropped away. “I’ll be waiting for you outside. Don’t stay more than three minutes. Sir Peter is a busy man.”

The tall windows of Harrison’s office looked out across the Thames to the National Theatre. As he turned from the window, the sunlight flashed off his bald head like a heliograph.

“Danny, He said, offering his gnarled right hand. Have they looked after you?”

“Couldn’t be better,” Daniel assured him. “On the strength of what they’ve told me, I have come up with a theme for the production, ‘Ubomo, High Road to the African Future’.”

“I like it,” said Tug Harrison without hesitation, but he was studying Bonny Mahon as he said it. The approbation could have been as much for her as for Daniel’s title.

Exactly three minutes after they had entered the inner sanctum of BOSS, Tug Harrison drew back the cuff of his Turnbull and Asset shirt. Both his cuff-links and his wristwatch were of gold and diamonds. “It was good to see you, Danny. Very pleasant meeting you, Miss Mahon, and now, if you’ll excuse me…”

At the front doors of the BOSS building, Pickering had a taxi waiting for them. “It’s on the company account,” he said, shaking hands and giving Bonny’s bosom a wistful farewell appraisal. “It will take you wherever you want to go.”

“Caviar Kaspia,” Daniel told the driver recklessly.

When they were seated at a window table in the discreetly panelled frontroom of the lovely little restaurant, Bonny whispered, “Who is paying?”

“BOSS,” He assured her.

“In that case I’ll have 250 grams of the Beluga, with hot blinis and cream.”

“Spot on,” Daniel agreed. “I’ll join you and we’ll split a bottle of bubbly. What do you fancy, Pal Roger, or the Widow?”

“What I truly fancy can wait until after lunch when we get back to your flat, but in the meantime a glass of the Widow will help to pass the time, and build up your strength.” She slanted her eyes lewdly. “You are going to need it. That’s a direct threat.”

Bonny tucked into the caviar with the relish and appetite of a schoolboy at half-term.

“So what did you think of Boss?” Daniel asked.

“I think Tug Harrison is one very sexy man. The smell of serious money and power is a stronger aphrodisiac than caviar and champagne.” She grinned at him with sour cream rimming the fine coppery down on her upper lip. “Does that make you jealous? If it doesn’t, it was meant to.”

“I am devastated. But apart from Harrison’s sex appeal, what did you think of BOSS’s plans for Ubomo?”

“Mind-boggling!” she enthused through a half-chewed blini. It was an expression that particularly irritated Daniel. “Awesome!” That was even worse. “If only you paid me enough to enable me to buy a block of BOSS shares! Someone is going to make a bagful of corn in Ubomo.”

“That’s all there is to it?” Daniel smiled to make a joke of it. Yet was this the girl who had conjured up that hauntingly evocative sequence of caribou in the Arctic sunlight? “A bagful of corn? Is that it?”

For a moment she looked mystified by the question, and then she dismissed it lightheartedly. “Of course. What else is there, lover?” She mopped up the last grains of the Beluga with a scrap of blini pancake. “Do you think that your newly acquired expense account could run to another pot of fish eggs? Not often a poor working girl gets a shot at them.”

Chapter 19

Bonny Mahon was nervous. It was an unfamiliar sensation. The skirt and stockings felt just as unfamiliar. She was accustomed to the firmer embrace of denim. However, the occasion was sufficiently unusual to call for a change of her customary attire.

She had even gone to the extraordinary lengths of visiting a hairdressing salon. Usually she managed or, she grinned at the thought, mismanaged her own hairstyle. She had to admit that the girl at Michael John had done a better job.

She considered her reflection in one of the gilt-framed antique mirrors opposite where she sat in the lobby of the Ritz Hotel in Piccadilly. “Not bad,” she admitted. “I could pass for a lady at a hundred paces.” She preened her new curls which were fashionably anointed with gel. It was an uncharacteristic gesture, a symptom of the nervous anticipation with which she regarded the coming meeting.

The female secretary who had arranged the meeting over the telephone had suggested that the car pick her up at her lodgings. Bonny had shied away from the idea. She didn’t want anybody to see her digs; she was economising and the area of south London where she presently resided was hardly salubrious.

The Ritz was the first alternative rendezvous that came to mind. It was more the image that she wished to project. Even though his secretary had arranged the date she had high hopes for what would come out of it. “I mean, it just has to be a proposition, doesn’t it?” she reassured herself. There was no doubt about the way he looked at me. “I’ve never been wrong about that before. He’s got a head of steam for me.”

She glanced at her wristwatch. It was exactly seven-thirty. He was the type who would make a point of being punctual, she thought, and when she looked expectantly towards the main doors a page was already coming towards her. She had taken the precaution of tipping the doorman and telling him where to find her. “Your car has arrived, madam,” the page informed her.

A Rolls-Royce stood at the kerb. It was an iridescent pearly grey and the windows were smoked and opaque, giving the magnificent vehicle a surrealistic appearance. The handsome young chauffeur, who wore a dove-grey uniform and cap with a patent-leather brim, greeted her as she came down the steps.

“Miss Mahon?”

“Good evening.”

He opened the rear passenger door and stood aside for her.

Bonny settled into the sensual embrace of the soft grey Connally leather. “Good evening, my dear,” Tug Harrison greeted her in that dark-molasses voice that sent a shiver of unease and anticipation up her spine.

The chauffeur closed the door behind her, and sealed her in a cocoon of wealth and privilege. She inhaled the rich expensive smell of leather and cigar-smoke and some marvelous aftershave, the aroma of power. “Good evening, Sir Peter. It was so good of you to invite me,” she said, and bit her own lip in anger. It sounded wrong, too gushing and subservient. She had planned to be cool and unimpressed by his condescension.

“Chez Nico,” Tug Harrison told the chauffeur, and then touched the button on the arm-rest that operated the soundproof glass division between the driver and passenger seats. “You don’t mind my cigar, I hope?” he asked Bonny.

“No. I enjoy the smell of a good cigar. It’s a Davidoff, isn’t it?” It wasn’t a guess. She had noticed the discarded hand tucked into the ashtray. She had an eye for detail; it was the secret of her success as a photographer.

“Oh!” Tug Harrison acknowledged. “A connoisseur.” He seemed amused.

She hoped he had not noticed her little cheat, and she changed the subject quickly. “I’ve never been to Chez Nico. Mind you, that’s not surprising. Even if I could get a reservation, I’d never be able to meet the bill. They say you have to book weeks in advance. is that true?”

“Some people might have to.” Tug Harrison smiled again. “I really don’t know. I’ll ask my secretary; she makes my arrangements.”

God, it was all going wrong. Every time she said anything, it came out sounding callow and gave him reason to despise her. For the remainder of the short journey she let him do the talking, yet despite her poor start to the evening, Bonny’s imagination was running riot. If only she played her cards correctly from now on, this could be her future, Rolls-Royce barge account at Harrods and Harvey and dinner at Nico’s, a flat in Mayfair or Kensington, holidays in Acapulco and Sydney and Cannes and a sable coat. Pleasures and riches without end. This could be the big casino. “Just cool it, girl.”

She had spent most of the afternoon tucked up in bed with Danny, but that seemed like a hundred years ago in another half-forgotten land. Now there was Sir Peter Harrison and a new world of promise.

The restaurant surprised her. She had expected a pompous dimly lit atmosphere, and instead it was gay and the lighting was cheerful. The lovely stained-glass ceiling was in green garden colours and captured a mood of art nouveau. Her own mood expanded and lightened in sympathy.

As they were ushered to the special table in the elbow of the L-shaped room, the conversation at the other tables faltered and all heads revolved to follow them and then came back close together to whisper his name and barter the latest gossip about him. Tug Harrison was the stuff of legend. It felt good to be at his side and savour the envious glances of other women.

Bonny knew just how striking were her tall athletic body and her flaming hair. She knew everyone would be jumping to conclusions about her status in Sir Peter’s life. “Please God, just let it come true. I’d better remember to take it easy on the wine. Perrier and a quick wit, those are the watch-words for this evening.”

It was easier than she expected. Tug Harrison was urbane and attentive. He made her feel pampered and very special by directing all his attention and charm upon her.

Nico Ladenis came up from his kitchen, especially to speak to Tug Harrison. With his dark satanic good looks Nico had a fearsome reputation. If he served the best food in England, he expected it to be treated with respect. If you ordered a gin and tonic to ruin your palate at the beginning of one of his celestial repasts you had to expect his wrath and contempt. Tug Harrison ordered a chilled La Ina for himself and a Dubonnet for Bonny. Then he and Nico discussed the menu with the same serious attention that Tug would give to BOSS’s quarterly report.

Then Nico left, sending one of his underlings to take their order.

Tug turned to Bonny to ask what she had chosen, but she feigned a girlish confusion “Oh, it all sounds so gorgeous that I can’t possibly make up my mind. Won’t you order for me, Sir Peter?” He smiled and she sensed that she was on the right track at last.

She was getting the feel of the relationship, her intuition working up to cruise speed. Clearly, he liked to be in charge of any situation, even to choosing the meal.

She went very gently on the Chevalier-Montracket that he ordered to complement her salmon. She encouraged him to relate the adventures of his young days in Africa. It was not difficult to show intense interest in his conversation, for he was a fine raconteur. His voice was like the caress of velvet gloves, and it didn’t matter that he was old and that his skin was wrinkled and bagged and foxed by the tropical sun. Recently she had read somewhere, perhaps in the Sunday Times Magazine, that his personal fortune was over three hundred million pounds. At that price, what were a few wrinkles and scars?

“Well, my dear.” At last Tug dabbed his leathery lips with the folded table-napkin. “May I suggest that we take coffee at Holland Park. There are a few small matters that I would like to discuss with you.”

Modestly she hesitated a moment. Could she afford to make herself too readily available? Shouldn’t she play just a little hard to get? Should she hold out until the second time of asking? But what if there were no second time? She quailed at the thought. “Go for it now, honcychild,” she counselled herself, and smiled at him.

“Thank you, Sir Peter. I’d love that.” She was awed by the splendour of the Holland Park house. It was hard not to rubberneck like a tourist as he led her up to his study and settled her into a deep leather armchair.

It was a masculine room with a set of rhinoceros horns on the panelled wall. She noticed the two paintings and shivered as she recognised their value.

“Are you cold, my dear?” He was solicitous and motioned the black servant in flowing white kanza to close the window. Sir Peter brought the coffee cup to her with his own hands. “Kenya Blue,” he told her. “Specially picked from my private plantation on the slopes of Mount Kenya.”

He dismissed the servant and lit a cigar. “And now, my dear…” He blew a streamer of cigar smoke towards the ceiling. “Tell me, are you sleeping with Daniel Armstrong?”

It was so unexpected, so brusque and alarming that she lost her equilibrium. Before she could prevent herself she flared at him, “Just who the hell do you think you’re talking to?” He raised a beetling silver eyebrow at her.

“Ah, a temper to match the colour of your hair, I see. However, that’s a fair question, and I’ll answer straight. I think I am talking to Thelma Smith. That’s the name on your birth certificate, isn’t it? Father unknown. My information is that your mother died in 1975 of an overdose. Heroin, I believe. That was the period when a shipment of had stuff got loose in the city.”

Bonny felt a cold nauseous sweat break out on her forehead. She stared at him. “Like your mother’s, your own career has been, shall we say, chequered. At the age of fourteen, a juvenile school of correction for shop-lifting and possession of marijuana. Then at eighteen, a nine-months sentence for theft and prostitution. It seems you robbed one of your clients. While in women’s gaol you developed your interest in photography. You served only three months of your sentence. Time off for good behaviour.” He smiled at her. “Please correct me if I have got any of these facts wrong.” Bonny felt herself shrinking down into the huge chair. She still felt sick and cold. She kept silent.

“You changed your name to the more glamorous version and got your first job in photography with Peterson Television in Canada. Dismissed in May 1981 for stealing and selling video equipment belonging to the company. They declined to press charges. Since then a clean record. Reformed, perhaps, or just getting a little more clever? Whichever is the case, it seems you are not burdened by too many moral qualms and that you’ll do almost anything for money.”

“You bastard,” she hissed at him. “You’ve been leading me on. I thought…”

“Yes, you thought that I was lusting after all that decidedly palatable flesh.” He shook his head with regret. “I am an old man, my dear. As the flames burn lower, I find my appetite becomes more refined. With due respect for your obvious charms, I would class you as Beaujolais nouveau, a hearty young wine, tasty but lacking integrity or distinction. The wine for a younger palate, like Danny Armstrong’s perhaps. At my age I prefer something like a Latour or a Margaux, older, smoother and with more class to it.”

“You old bastard! Now you insult me.”

“That was not my intention. I merely wanted us to understand each other. I want something other than your body. You want money. We can do a deal. It’s a purely commercial arrangement. Now to return to my original question. Are you sleeping with Daniel Armstrong?”

“Yes,” she snarled at him. “I’m screwing his arse off.”

An expressive turn of phrase. I take it that no mawkish sentiments complicate this relationship? That is, not on your side at least?

“There is only one person I love, and she’s sitting right here in this room.”

“Total honesty,” he smiled. “Better and better, especially as Danny Armstrong is not the type to treat it so lightly. You have a certain influence and leverage over him, so you and I can do business now. What would you say to twenty-five thousand pounds?” The sum startled Bonny, but she screwed up her courage and followed her intuition. She dismissed the offer scornfully, I’d say “Up yours, mate! I read somewhere that you paid ten times more than that for a horse.”

“Ah, but she was a thoroughbred filly of impeccable bloodlines. You wouldn’t set yourself in that class, surely?” He held up his hands to forestall her furious response. “Enough my dear; it was just a little joke, a poor one, I agree. Please forgive me. I want us to be business associates, not lovers, nor even friends.”

“Then before we talk about a price, you’d better explain what I have to do.” Her expression was bright and foxy. He felt the first vestiges of respect for her.

“It’s very simple really…” And he told her what he wanted.

Chapter 20

Daniel had spent every day that week at the Reading Room of the British Museum. This was invariably his practice before leaving on an assignment. In addition to books specifically on Ubomo, he asked the librarian for every publication that she could find on the Congo, the Rift Valley and its lakes, and the African equatorial forest.

He started with the books of Speke and Burton, Mungo Park and Alan Moorehead, re-reading them for the first time in years. He skipped through them rapidly, merely refreshing his mind on the half-forgotten descriptions of the nineteenth-century explorations of the region. He moved on to the more recent publications. Amongst these he found Kelly Kinnear’s book, The People of the Tall Trees, listed in the bibliography.

He called for a copy of her book and studied the author’s photograph on the inside of the dust-jacket. She was rather pretty, with a strong and interesting face. The blurb did not give her birth date but it listed her honours and degrees. She was primarily a medical doctor, although she also had a PhD. in Anthropology from Bristol University. When not conducting research in the field, Doctor Kinnear shares a cottage in Cornwall with two dogs and a cat. That was the only personal information that the blurb contained and Daniel returned to the photograph.

In the background of the photograph was a palisade formed by the trunks of large tropical trees. It seemed as though she stood in a forest clearing. She was bare-headed, dark hair pulled back from her face and twisted into a thick plait that had fallen forward over one shoulder and hung down her chest. She wore a man’s shirt. It was difficult to tell what her figure was like, but she seemed slim and small-breasted. Her neck was long, with clean graceful lines, and her collar-bones formed a sculptured cup at the base of her throat.

Her head sat well on the column of her neck, strong square jaw and high cheekbones like an American Indian. Her nose was thin and rather bony and her mouth was determined, perhaps obstinate. Her eyes were probably her best feature, wideset and almond-shaped, and she stared coolly at the camera. He judged that she had been in her early thirties when the photograph was taken, but there was no indication as to how old she was now.

A handful, Daniel decided. No wonder she has my friend Tug running scared. This is a lady who gets her own way. He flicked through to the first dozen pages of People of the Tall Trees, and read the introduction in which Kelly Kinnear explored the first references to the pygmies in the writings of antiquity.

This began with the report of the Egyptian leader Harkbuf to his child-Pharaoh Neferkare. Two thousand five hundred years before the birth of Christ, Harkhuf had led an expedition southwards to discover the source of the Nile river. In his field report, discovered four and a half thousand years later in Pharaoh’s tomb, Harkhuf described how he had come to a mighty forest to the west of the Mountains of the Moon, and how in that dark and mysterious place he had encountered a tiny people who danced and sang to their god. Their god was the very forest itself and the description of their dancing and worship was so tantalizing that Pharaoh despatched a messenger ordering Harkhuf to capture some of these tiny god dancers and bring them back to Memphis. Thus the pygmies became familiar figures in ancient Egypt.

Over the ages since then, many strange legends have grown up around these tiny forest people, and much that is fanciful and apocryphal has been written about them. Even their name was based on a misconception. Tugme was a Greek unit of measurement, from elbow to knuckle, an imaginative estimate of their height by people who had never seen them.

Daniel had read all this before and he passed quickly to the more enjoyable portion of the book, the author’s description of three years spent living with a pygmy clan in the depths of. the equatorial forests of Ubomo.

Kinnear was a trained and professional anthropologist with a keenly observant eye for detail and the ability to marshal her meticulously garnered facts and extract from them reasoned conclusions, and yet she possessed the ear and heart of a storyteller. These were not dry scientific subjects she was describing but human beings, each with his own character and idiosyncrasies; here was a warm, loving and lovable people pictured against the awe-inspiring grandeur of the great forest, a merry people, wonderfully in tune with nature, expressing themselves with songs and dances and impish humour.

At the end the reader was forced to share with the writer her obvious affection for and understanding of her subject, but even more, her deep concern for the forest in which they lived.

Daniel closed the book and sat for a while in the pleasant glow of wellbeing that it had inspired. Not for the first time he felt a desire to meet and talk to the woman who had created this small magic, but now at last he knew how and when to do so.

The annual general meeting of the shareholders of BOSS was set for a week before his departure for Ubomo, and Pickering in public relations arranged an invitation for Daniel and Bonny to attend. The AGM was always held in the ballroom of BOSS’s own magnificent headquarters in Blackfriars. The AGM was always held on the last Friday of July and began at seven-thirty in the evening. It ran for an hour and twenty-five minutes: ten minutes to read the previous minutes, an hour of sonorous prose from Sir Peter as he made his chairman’s report and, finally, fifteen minutes of appreciation by the members of his board, capped by a vote of thanks and approbation, proposed by an individual planted in the body of the shareholders. The vote was always passed unanimously by a show of hands.

That’s the way it always went. It was company tradition.

Security at the door was very strict. The name of every person entering was checked against the current register of shareholders and special invitations were scrutinised by uniformed members of BOSS’s security staff.

Sir Peter didn’t want wild Irishmen or anti-Rushdie fundamentalists letting off bombs in the middle of his carefully rehearsed speech, nor did he want freelance journalists or trade unionists, or other free-loading riffraff making pigs of themselves at the heavily laden buffet table and complimentary bar.

Daniel had mistimed their departure from the flat in Chelsea. They would have been at Blackfriars thirty minutes earlier but Bonny had, at the last minute, begun feeling very healthy. She had made a suggestion which Daniel, always the perfect gentleman, had been unable to refuse. Afterwards it had been necessary to take a shower together during which Bonny had started a water fight which had reduced the bathroom to a sodden shambles with water running out under the door into the passageway.

All this took time, and then they had battled to find a taxi. When they finally flagged one down in the King’s Road they ran into traffic along the Embankment and only arrived at the BOSS building after Sir Peter was in full stride, mesmerising his audience with an account of BOSS’ performance over the previous twelve months.

All seats were taken and the overflow crowded the back of the hall.

They sneaked in, and Daniel shepherded Bonny into a corner near the bar, and pressed a large whisky and soda into her hand. “That should hold you for half an hour,” he whispered. “Just please don’t start feeling healthy again until we get home.”

“Chicken.” She grinned at him. You can’t take it, Armstrong.

The shareholders around them frowned and shushed disapproval and they settled down contritely to an appreciation of Sir Peter Tug Harrison’s wit and erudition.

On the dais Sir Peter faced them from the centre of the long table with a microphone in front of him and the members of his board spread out on each side of him. Amongst them there was an Indian maharajah, an earl, an East European pretender and a number of run-of-the-mill baronets. All were names and titles that looked good on the company letter-head, but not a person in the room that evening had any illusion as to where the true power and might of BOSS lay.

Sir Peter stood with his left hand thrust into his jacket pocket, occasionally extending the forefinger of his right hand and pointing at his audience. As he made each point, he stabbed his forefinger like a pistol barrel at them, and even Daniel found himself flinching and blinking as though a shot had been fired at his head.

Everything Sir Peter had to tell them was good news, from the results of offshore oil drilling in the Pemba channel, to the cotton harvests and ground-nut crop of Zambia, and the increase in both pretax profits and declared dividends. The audience hummed with delight at each fresh revelation.

Sir Peter glanced at his watch. He had been running for fifty minutes, ten to go. It was time to move on to future plans and projections. He took a sip of water, and when he resumed, his voice was velvety and seductive. “My lords, ladies and gentlemen, I have given you the bad news…” He paused for laughter and a volley of applause. “Now let me move on to the good news. The good news is Ubomo, the People’s Democratic Republic of Ubomo and your company’s participation in a new era for that beautiful little country, the opportunity that we have, not only to provide employment but also prosperity for a sadly disadvantaged population of four million souls.”

For nine minutes more he enthraled them with the promise of bright new profits and skyrocketing dividends and then he ended, “And so, ladies and gentlemen, what we see before us is Ubomo, the high road to the future of the African continent.”

“Hell!” Daniel whispered, his voice blanketed by the applause. “That’s a blatant case of plagiarism. The old bastard lifted it straight from me.”

When Sir Peter sat down the company secretary gave them two minutes to express their approval fully before he leaned over his microphone. “My lords, ladies and gentlemen, I am now opening the meeting to the floor. Are there any shareholders questions, please? Your chairman and board will endeavour to answer them to the best of their ability.”

His magnified voice was still reverberating through the ball when another voice cut in. “I have a question for the chairman.” It was a feminine voice, clear, self-assured, and surprisingly loud, so loud that on the dais Sir Peter winced.

Up until then Daniel had been trying to identify Doctor Kinnear in the body of the crowded hall, but without success. She was either not present or she was obscured by the crush of other shareholders. He had given up the search.

Now there was no mistaking her. She was very much present, standing on her chair, three rows from the front. Daniel grinned with delight. The echoing volume of Kelly Kinnear’s voice was explained. She had armed herself with an electronic bull-horn. How she had smuggled the device past the hawk-eyed security guards was a mystery, but now she was wielding it with telling effect.

So often at other meetings that Daniel had attended, the questions from the floor, no matter how pertinent or penetrating, had lost all their force simply because they were not audible to the bulk of the audience. “What did he say?” and “Speak up!” were the cries that greeted them, and the game was lost with the first delivery. This was not happening to Kelly Kinnear.

Perched high on her chair, in full view of the entire audience, she was lashing Sir Peter Harrison at a range of thirty paces in a ringing young voice. She was smaller than Daniel had expected, but her neat little body was poised and graceful, almost birdlike, and there was a force and presence about her that transcended her physical size. “Mr. Chairman, BOSS has very recently included the image of a green tree in the company emblem. What I want to know is whether this is to enable you to cut it down?”

There was a stunned silence. Her sudden appearance had been greeted with amused and admiring smiles from most of the audience, the natural masculine reaction to a pretty girl, but now the smiles were replaced by puzzled expressions. “For thirty years, Sir Peter,” Kelly Kinnear went on, “ever since you have been chairman of BOSS, the slogan of the company has been ‘Dig it up!’ ‘Chop it down!’ or ‘Shoot it!’ The puzzled expressions turned to frowns, shareholders exchanged worried glances. “For many years BOSS employed professional hunters to massacre wild animals. The meat was used to feed the company’s thousands of employees. The policy of cheap food was only discontinued relatively recently. That was the1shoot it1 philosophy.”

The back of Kelly Kinnear’s slim sun-tanned neck was flushing with her mounting anger. The thick dark braid of hair hanging down between her shoulder-blades twitched like the tail of a lioness. “For thirty years, BOSS has been ripping the mineral riches from Africa’s soil and leaving gaping craters and devastation in its wake. That’s the ‘dig it up’ mentality.

“For thirty years, BOSS has been slashing down the natural forests and putting the land to cotton and ground-nuts and other cash crops that drain the soil, that poison it with nitrate fertilisers, that contaminate the streams and rivers. That’s the ‘chop it down’ philosophy.” Her whole body quivered with indignation, a phenomenon that intrigued Daniel. “Those cash crops produce no food for the people who once lived upon the land. They are forced to trek away from the devastation that BOSS has created to live in the odious slums of Africa’s sprawling new towns. These people are turned into outcasts by BOSS’s greed.”

Sir Peter turned his head and raised an eyebrow at the company secretary. Obediently the secretary leapt to his feet. “Will you please state your name, and put your question briefly and clearly?”

“My name is Doctor Kelly Kinnear, and I am putting my question. Will you just give me a chance?”

“That is not a question. You are haranguing…”

“Listen to me,” she ordered, and hopped around on the chair to face the ballroom filled with shareholders. “For most of us, our personal welfare ranks far ahead of tropical forests and lakes in a faraway land. The princely dividends paid by BOSS are more important to us than exotic birds and unfamiliar animals and tribes of indigenous people. It’s so easy to pay lip service to the environment as long as it doesn’t affect our own pockets–”

“Order! Order, please!” bawled the company secretary. “You are out of order, Doctor Kinnear. You are not asking a question.”

“All right,” Kelly rounded on him. “I’ll ask a question. Is the chairman of BOSS aware that while we sit here, the tropical rain forests of Ubomo are being destroyed?” She glared at him. “Does the chairman realize that over fifty species of wildlife have become extinct in Ubomo as a direct result of the activities of Boss?”

“Shame!”

“Sit down!”

“The death of a species affects us directly. It will lead in the end to our own extinction, the death of man on earth.” There was a hum of indignation and outrage from the shareholders.

Sir Peter Harrison smiled and shook his head pityingly, making no attempt to respond to her attack. He knew where the loyalty of his shareholders lay.

“Sit down!” somebody shouted again. “You silly bitch!”

“Doctor Kinnear,” the company secretary called, “I must ask you to resume your seat at once. This is a deliberate attempt to disrupt our proceedings.”

I accuse you, Mr. Chairman, Kelly pointed a quivering finger at Sir Peter, I accuse you of rape. There were shouts of protest, some of the other shareholders were on their feet. Shame!

The woman’s a lunatic One of them attempted to pull Kelly down off her chair, but it was obvious that she had surrounded herself with a small group of supporters of her own, half a dozen young men and women in casual dress, but with determined expressions. They closed up around her. One of the young men pushed her attackers away. Let her speaK!

“I accuse you of the rape of Ubomo. Already your bulldozers are ripping into the forest–”

“Get her out of here!”

“Doctor Kinnear, if you don’t heed the chair I will have no alternative but to have you forcibly removed.”

“I’m a shareholder. I have every right–”

“Throw her out!”

There, was confusion and uproar in the front of the hall, while on the dais Sir Peter Harrison looked bored and detached.

“Answer me!” Kelly yelled at him, surrounded by her struggling cohorts. “Fifty species doomed to extinction so that you can drive around in your Rolls–”

“Ushers! Ushers!” yelped the company secretary, and from every corner of the room the uniformed security men leapt, into the fray.

As one of them elbowed Daniel aside and charged forward, Daniel could not help himself. He thrust out his right foot, a cunning little ankle-tap that knocked one of the usher’s large black boots across his own ankle. The man tripped himself and was hurled forward by his own momentum. He flew headlong into a row of chairs and, amidst loud cries of protest and outrage, knocked the occupants into a heap. Chairs crashed, and women screamed.

The press photographers loved it, and their flashes bloomed and lit the hall with a flickering like summer lightning.

“While you mouth your sanctimonious platitudes and put a little green tree on the BOSS emblem, your bulldozers are tearing the guts out of one of the most vulnerable and precious forests in the world.” Kelly Kinnear’s amplified voice rose above the uproar. She was still on her chair, but swaying precariously in the storm that raged around her, a small heroic figure in the confusion. “Those forests do not belong to you. They do not belong to the cruel military tyrant who has seized power in Ubomo and who is your accomplice in this atrocity. Those forests belong to the Barnbuti pygmies, a tribe of gentle inoffensive people who have lived there since time immemorial. We, the friends of the earth, and all decent people everywhere say ‘keep your greedy hands off the–”

Three of the BOSS ushers formed a scrimmage line; in their black uniforms they resembled a New Zealand front rank. They broke through her ring of defenders and reached up to drag Kelly Kinnear down from her perch. “Leave me alone,” she yelled at them, and turned her bullhorn into an offensive weapon, raining blows upon them until the trumpet cracked and shattered and she was defenceless. Between them they dragged her down off her perch and bore her, kicking and clawing and biting, from the hall.

A kind of awed calm returned. Like the survivors of a bomb blast, the shareholders picked up the chairs and straightened their clothing and examined themselves for injuries.

On the dais Sir Peter rose unhurriedly to his feet and resumed his place at the microphone. “Ladies and gentlemen, the floor show was unscheduled, I assure you. On behalf of BOSS and my board, I sincerely apologize for this outburst. If it served any useful purpose at all, it was as a graphic illustration of the difficulties we face when we try to improve the lot of our fellow men.”

Those who had been distracted gathered themselves and turned to listen to his rich dark seductive tones. After the shrill denunciations and accusations, it was a soothing balm.

“Doctor Kelly Kinnear is notorious for her intemperate views. She has declared a one-woman war on the government of President Taffari of Ubomo. She has, in fact, made as much of a nuisance of herself in that country as she did here tonight. You have seen her in action, ladies and gentlemen, so you will not be particularly surprised to hear that she was deported from Ubomo, and formally declared an undesirable. The vendetta that she is waging is personal and spiteful. She sees herself as an injured party, and she is taking her revenge.”

He paused again, and shook his head. “However, we must not make the mistake of believing that what we have witnessed tonight was the isolated act of some poor misguided soul. Unfortunately, ladies and gentlemen, in this crazy new world of ours we are surrounded by the loonies of the left. This lady, who has just left us–” They laughed uncertainly, beginning to recover from the effects of Kelly Kinnear’s attempt at persuasion, “this lady is one of those who prefers that tens of thousands of her fellow human beings suffer starvation and misery, rather than that a single tree be cut down, rather than that a single plough should run a furrow, rather than that a single animal should die.” He paused and scowled at them sternly, exerting the full force of his personality, reasserting his control that for a minute had been shaken by the small determined woman with the loud-hailer. “This is nonsense. Man has as much right to life as any other species on this planet. However, BOSS recognizes its responsibility to the environment. We are a green company committed to the wellbeing of all creatures on this earth, men and animals and plants. Last year we spent over a hundred thousand pounds on environmental studies prior to proceeding with some of our enterprises. One hundred thousand pounds, ladies and gentlemen, is a great deal of money.” He paused for the applause from his audience.

Daniel noted that he was careful not to compare this great deal of money to BOSS’s taxable profits for the same period, profits of almost one billion pounds.

As the applause died away he continued. “We spent that money, not to impress anybody, not as some grand public relations gesture, but in a genuine and sincere attempt to do the right thing by all the world. We know in our hearts that what we are doing is right and proper. So do you, who are the most important members of BOSS, the shareholders. Our conscience is clear, ladies and gentlemen! We can go forward with confidence and enthusiasm to keep our company what it has always been, one of the great forces for good in an otherwise sad and naughty world.”

The meeting overran its usual duration by almost twenty minutes, a great deal of extra time being devoted to a standing ovation for the chairman’s impromptu speech.

For once the traditional vote of thanks was passed not by a show of hands, but by thunderous acclaim. Tug hammers loony Greens was the headline in the tabloid press the following morning and the general consensus in the media was that it had been not so much a confrontation, as a massacre of the innocents.

Chapter 21

There was no direct flight from Heathrow to Kahali in Ubomo.

Although the airport had been renamed the Ephrem Taffari airport, and twenty-five million dollars had been loaned by the World Bank to extend the main runway to accommodate intercontinental jet aircraft and to refurbish the airport buildings, there had been a series of delays in the construction work due to the fact that much of the original loan capital seemed to have evaporated. Rumour in the streets of Kahali suggested that the missing funds had found a happy home in a numbered Swiss bank account. Another twenty-five million was needed to complete the project and the World Bank was demanding unreasonable assurances and guarantees before supplying it. In the meantime travellers were forced to travel to Ubomo via Nairobi.

Daniel and Bonny took the British Airways flight to Nairobi, and Daniel paid almost five hundred pounds in excess baggage charges for Bonny’s video equipment. In Nairobi they were obliged to overnight at the Norfolk Hotel before they could catch the scheduled flight to Kahali on Air Ubomo; which operated between the two capitals.

With a day to spare, Danny asked Bonny to shoot some background and filler footage. What he really wanted was the opportunity to watch her in action and to get used to working with her in the field. This was to be a dress rehearsal. He hired a combi with a cut-out roof and a Kikuyu driver. They drove out to the Nairobi National Park on the outskirts of the city.

The Park was another of Africa’s surprises. Within a few miles of the Lord Delamere bar in the Norfolk Hotel, it was possible to witness wild lions making their kills. The boundary of the Park ran hard up against the Jomo Kenyatta Airport an the grazing herds of antelope did not even raise their heads as the great jet aircraft on final approach howled only a few hundred feet above them.

Daniel had filmed in the Park many times over the past few years. The Park warden was an old friend. They greeted each other in Swahili and shook hands with the double grip, palm then thumb, of brothers. The warden delegated one of his senior rangers to escort and guide them, and gave Daniel carte blanche to go anywhere, even to disregard one of the strictest Park rules and leave the vehicle to film on foot.

The ranger led them to a stand of flat-topped acacia forest beside the river where a huge bull rhino was in ponderous courtship with a female in full oestrus. So absorbed were these antediluvian monsters with each other that Daniel and Bonny were able to leave the combi and creep up close.

Without making it obvious, Daniel was watching Bonny narrowly. The Sony video camera was a top-of-the-range model, sleek in design but heavy even for a man to carry. Daniel wanted to see how she handled it, and he made no offer to assist her. With a sharp warning in Swahili, he prevented the black ranger when be made an attempt to do so.

He had come to know Bonny’s body in the most intimate way over the past weeks. He knew that there was no fat on her and that her limbs were clad in sleek hard muscle. She was in the prime physical condition of a trained athlete. In their playful wrestling contests he had been forced to extend his full strength to subdue her and get her to the bed when she challenged him outrageously to do so. She enjoyed her lovemaking with plenty of rough and tumble.

Still, he was surprised at the ease with which she lifted the camera and her lightness and agility on her feet even in the heat of the acacia forest and over the broken ground. The earth was studded with the spoor of rhino and buffalo that had been deeply trodden into the wet clay of the rainy season and was now baked hard as terracotta. It could turn an unwary ankle and the wait-a-bit thorns were viciously hooked to catch in flesh or cloth. Bonny avoided these snares with ease.

The bull rhino was displaying aggressively for the benefit of the female who had wandered into his territory and who he was now holding captive to his lust. Every time she attempted to reach the boundary of his territory he headed her off, snorting and blowing-like a steam engine, raising gales of dust from under his high stamping feet.

The female swished her great grey backside from side to side in flirtatious refusal of his advances, affording him fleeting whiffs of her heady oestrus odours which drove him into further ecstasies of excitement. Every few minutes he rushed away to scent-mark the borders of his territory and warn off any possible rivals who might be tempted to trespass on this ardent courtship.

As soon as he reached the boundary, he pointed his rump at one of the trees or shrubs which were his signposts, curled his tail up on to his back, unsheathed his massive pink penis from the scabbard of grey wrinkled skin and, aiming backwards between his rear legs, released a cloud of urine with the force of a fire hose that almost flattened the target. Honour satisfied, he rushed back, grunting with passion to the bashful female, who immediately fled towards the furthest boundary of his domain with him in full pursuit.

At the best of times the rhino is afflicted with poor eyesight, but now these two were almost completely blinded by singleminded passion.

Daniel and Bonny had to be alert and ready to run or dodge at any instant, for the rushes of the two inflamed creatures were wild and erratic. Unless they were quick on their feet, they could be trampled by those horny pads or gutted by a random thrust of one of the long polished nose horns. It was hard dangerous work with death only an instant or a foot away, but Bonny showed no fear at all. Rather she seemed elated and excited by the danger. Her eyes shone and the sweat soaked her flaming hair and darkened the back of her shirt as they ran side by side through the forest or ducked behind one of the acacia trunks to avoid a sudden random rush by one of the animals.

Apart from her lack of fear, Bonny showed a physical stamina that impressed Daniel. He was unburdened by the equipment which she carried, and yet he was tiring in the heat and the dust while she seemed quite unaffected.

Suddenly the bull swirled without warning. Perhaps he had detected a breath of their body smell through the clouds of love perfume with which the female was filling his wide flaring nostrils. He charged straight at them and Daniel grabbed her arm. “Freeze!” he whispered urgently, and they sank to their knees and froze into utter stillness.

From a distance of twenty feet the big, creature confronted them, blowing and buffing and snorting. His piggy eyes bloodshot with passion and fury, he peered myopically at them, waiting for some small movement that would convince him that they were neither a rock nor a bush, and thus worthy of the full weight of his jealous wrath.

Daniel tried to hold his breath, but his lungs were scalding from his exertions and he choked to breathe. Suddenly he was aware of a faint electric whirring sound close to his left ear, and he swivelled his eyes in their sockets without moving his head. To his astonishment and incredulity, Bonny was still filming. The lens of the Sony was only feet from the rhino’s nose. They could see right up his wide nostrils to the shiny wet pinkness of his nasal mucosa, and she was filming it.

That impressed Daniel as nothing before had done. “I’ve got myself one hell of a camera jockey,” he thought. “Jock would have been on the next plane home by now.”

Suddenly the rhino switched around, a movement so quick and agile that it seemed impossible in such a massive creature. Love had triumphed over aggression. He rushed back to his paramour, buffing and puffing with eagerness.

Bonny was laughing. Daniel could not believe what he was hearing. “Come on!” She was on her feet again with a lithe bound.

By the time they caught up with the couple in a glade of pale grass beside the rocky watercourse, the cow had at last succumbed to the bull’s persistent courtship. She allowed him to place his chin on her rump, and she stood quiescent and submissive under this significant caress. “Get ready,” Daniel warned Bonny. “It’s going to happen at any moment.”

Suddenly the bull reared up over the female. Bonny captured every titanic convulse on, every straining, thrusting drive of the enormous bodies. And then very swiftly it was over, and the bull -dropped off the cow and stood heaving and blowing from the effort.

“You got it, and we’ve taken too many risks already,” Daniel whispered. “Let’s get out of here.”

He took her arm and drew her away. They retreated carefully, a pace at a time, watching the bull all the way.

A hundred yards from the two rhino, Daniel deemed them well out of harm’s way and they set off towards the combi, still elated by the thrill and the danger, laughing and chatting, not bothering to look backwards, until Daniel snapped abruptly, “Look out! He’s coming again.”

The bull was charging straight at them, an ungainly gallop that did not swerve or deviate, glaring malevolently at them over the wickedly curved horn. I think he’s got our wind. Daniel grabbed Bonny’s arm. He looked about them quickly. The nearest cover was a small thorn bush twenty paces ahead. Come on. They ran for it together and crawled under the outstretched branches. The hooked thorns raked their shirts and exposed skin.

“He’s still coming.” Bonny’s voice was hoarse with dust and exertion.

“Get down. Keep still.” They crouched on the stony ground and watched in helpless horror as the rhino rushed straight at their hiding-place. “This time, he’s not going to stop.”

For the first time Bonny showed signs of fear. Four tons of prehistoric monster, horned and menacing, towered over them. It sniffed the thorn leaves that gave them such flimsy shelter and its breath rattled the branches and blew into their faces. Then abruptly and unexpectedly, the bull switched around and presented them, at a range of only a few feet, with its fat rounded hindquarters.

They stared in horror as its penis unsheathed from between its back legs.

“We are on his boundary,” Daniel breathed. “He’s going to mark this bush!”

“Us!”

It pointed at them like a pink fire-hose. “We’re trapped,” Bonny wailed. The thorns hemmed them in. “What can we do?”

“Just close your eyes, and think of England.”

A steaming cloud engulfed them, blowing over them with the force of a tropical hurricane, not a simple jet but a storm of scalding liquid that sent Daniel’s bush hat flying from his head and soaked them both to the skin. The bull wriggled his tail with satisfaction, stamped his back feet and then charged away with the same impetuosity with which he had arrived.

Daniel and Bonny sat under the dripping thorn bush and stared at each other in horror. Their faces were running wet as though they had stood out in the monsoon rain and the dour was overpowering.

Daniel moved first. He wiped his face with the palm of his hand, a slow theatrical gesture beginning at the top of his forehead and ending at his chin. Then he inspected his hand. “Now that,” he said in a sepulchral tone, “really pisses me off!”

For a moment Bonny continued to stare at him, and then she let out a shriek of wild mirth and they fell against each other and laughed. Clinging together, sodden and stinking, they laughed until they couldn’t stand up, and then they laughed some more. Rhino urine had lacquered their hair into sticky dreadlocks, and stained their clothing with interesting patterns.

They sneaked into the Norfolk Hotel through the rear entrance behind the kitchens and fled across the lawns to their cottage suite, where they stood under the shower for twenty minutes and, still giggling, shampooed and soaped each other until their bodies glowed.

Later, in a towelling bathrobe, Daniel sat in front of the television set while Bonny connected up her equipment. He gave all his attention to the screen and, from the first minute, knew that he had made the right choice in hiring Bonny Mahon. Her technique was of superbly professional quality, and she had a fine eye and sense of timing. She knew when she needed to be close in and when to pull back, but more important, and infinitely rarer, she had a distinctive style, the style that he had first recognized in her Arctic film.

“You’re good,” he told her when the screen went blank. “You’re damn good.”

“You don’t know how good,” she grinned at him. “I’m only just starting to get the feel of the light here. It’s different, you know. Each place is different. Give me another week and I’ll show you just how good I am.”

An hour later, dressed in clean clothing, they sauntered across the courtyard in the cool Kenyan dusk and stopped for a minute beside the aviary of wild birds in the centre of the lawn to admire the brilliant colours of the turacos and the goldbreasted starlings behind the wire.

Other guests were also drifting in the direction of the grill room.

Daniel had paid no attention to the small figure standing near them, until she turned towards him and greeted him by name. “Please forgive the intrusion. You are Daniel Armstrong, aren’t you?”

Daniel started as he recognized her. “Doctor Kinnear! The last time I saw you was at BOSS’s annual general meeting.”

“Oh, were you there?” She laughed. “I didn’t notice you.”

“No, you did seem to have other things on your mind at the time.” Daniel smiled back at her. “What happened to your bullhorn? Were you ever able to get it repaired?”

“Japanese rubbish,” Kelly Kinnear said. “A couple of good shots to the head and it falls to pieces.” She had a sense of humour of course – he knew that from her writing, but her eyes were even lovelier than the photograph on the dust-jacket had suggested. He liked her instantly.

It must have been obvious, for Bonny pulled her hand out of his, and he felt a twinge of guilt. “May I introduce you to my assistant, Bonny Mahon?”

“Actually, I’m a lighting cameraman, not an assistant,” Bonny corrected him tartly.

“Yes,” Kelly agreed. “I know your work. You filmed Arctic Dream. It was very good.” She had a disarmingly direct gaze and Bonny looked slightly abashed by the praise.

“Thank you. But I must warn you, I haven’t read your book, Doctor Kinnear.”

“That puts you in a majority of several hundred million, Miss Mahon.” Kelly sensed the antagonism in the other woman but showed no sign of offence, and turned back to Daniel. “I think I have seen every one of your productions over the years. In fact, you are responsible for me being in Africa at all. When I graduated I was going to Borneo to work with the Penan tribe. Then I saw one of your earlier series on the lakes of the Rift Valley. That changed my mind. After that I just had to come to Africa…” Kelly broke off and laughed softly with embarrassment. “I know that this will sound terribly jejune, but I am a fan of yours. The truth is I’ve been hanging around here, just hoping to bump into you ever since I heard that you were in Nairobi. I just had to talk to you. You aren’t staying here at the Norfolk, then?”

Daniel was feeling better disposed to her every minute. It is difficult to dislike someone who admits to being your fan.

“Good Lord, no.” Kelly laughed again with surprising gusto. She had perfect teeth, even her molars were free of fillings. “I’m not a successful TV producer. I’m just a poor disadvantaged field researcher without a sponsor. The Smithsonian pulled my grant after I was slung out of Ubomo by Taffari.”

“Let me stand you a steak then,” Daniel offered.

“A steak! I salivate at the thought. I’ve been living on groundnuts and dried lake-fish since I got back.”

“Yes, why don’t you join us, Doctor Kinnear?” said Bonny in a voice of poisoned honey, placing emphasis on the plural pronoun.

“How sweet of you, Miss Mahon.” Kelly glanced at her coolly, and hostility flashed between them like a discharge of static electricity. Their method of communication was too esoteric for Daniel to appreciate, and he smiled amiably.

“Let’s go and find some food,” he said, and led them towards the doors of the grill room that opened on to the courtyard.

“Are you going to film in Kenya?” Kelly asked. “What are you doing in Nairobi, Doctor Armstrong?”

“Danny,” he invited her to drop the formalities. “We are on our way to Ubomo, as a matter of fact.”

“Ubomo!” Kelly stopped dead and looked up at him. “That’s marvelous It’s a perfect subject for you, a microcosm of emerging Africa. You are one of the few people who could do it properly.”

“Your trust is flattering, but daunting.” Daniel smiled down at her. For a moment he had forgotten Bonny, until she squeezed his arm to remind him that she was there.

“I’ll pay for my supper by telling you all I know about the country, Kelly offered.

“Deal,” Daniel agreed, and they went into the mellow lighting and flowers and tinkling piano of the room.

As the two women studied the menu, Daniel surreptitiously compared one with the other. The obvious difference between them was size. Bonny was almost six feet tall. Kelly was six inches shorter, and they were different in many other ways, from the colour of their hair and eyes to their skin tones. However, Daniel sensed that the differences extended far beyond physical characteristics.

Bonny was bold, direct and almost mannish-in her attitude to life. Even from the earliest days of their relationship, Daniel had detected depths in her which he would rather leave unexplored. On the other hand Kelly Kinnear’s manner seemed totally feminine, although he knew from her book that she was determined and fearless. It took a special kind of courage to live alone in the great forests with only the Bambuti for companions.

He also knew from the book that she was intelligent and gentle, that her concern was for the spiritual rather than the material values of life, but in the ballroom at BOSS House he had witnessed a graphic demonstration of her contradictory, aggressive and warlike spirit.

Both women were attractive in totally different ways. Bonny was brazen, she hit you in the eye at fifty paces, a copper-headed Valkyrie. Kelly was shaded with delicate nuances. She was softer and more discreet, with facets that changed when viewed from different angles. In repose her face was almost plain, her nose and mouth austere, but when she smiled her entire face softened.

As he had first noted from the photograph on the dust-jacket of her book, her eyes were her best feature. They were large and dark and expressive. They could glow with a merry impish light, or burn with a passionate sincerity and intelligence. And something else that the photograph didn’t show, Daniel grinned to himself. Her boobs were miniature works of art.

Kelly looked up from the menu and caught the direction of his eyes. With a moue of disappointment, as though she had expected better of him, she moved the menu slightly to screen her bosom from his appraisal. ‘When are you leaving for Ubomo?”

“We are flying in tomorrow,” Bonny answered for him, but Kelly did not acknowledge the interruption.

She directed the next question at Daniel. “Have you been in since the coup?”

“No, I was last there four years ago.”

“That was when Victor Omeru was president,“Kelly stated.

“Yes, I met Omeru. I liked him. What happened to him?”

“I heard that it was a heart attack?” Kelly shrugged noncommittally, then changed the subject as the head-waiter came to take their orders.

“May I really order a steak, or were you just being cruel?”

“Have the porterhouse,” Daniel invited magnanimously.

When the food was in front of them Daniel returned to the subject. “I heard that you and Omeru got on particularly well together.”

“Who told you that?” Kelly looked up sharply, and Daniel caught himself just in time. Tug Harrison was not a name to bandy about in front of this lady.

“I think I read it in an article somewhere,” he hedged. “It was some time ago.”

“Oh yes.” Kelly gave him release. “Probably the Sunday Telegraph. They did, a profile on Victor, on President Omeru and they gave me an honourable mention.”

“That was it. What is happening in Ubomo? You promised to brief me. You said it was a microcosm of emerging Africa. Explain that.”

“Ubomo has got all the major problems common to every other African state: tribalism, population explosion, poverty, illiteracy. And now that President Omeru has gone and that swine Taffari has taken over, it’s got itself another set of problems, such as one-party tyranny, a president for life, foreign exploitation and corruption and incipient civil war.”

“Sounds like the perfect society. Let’s start with tribalism in Ubomo. Tell me about it.”

“Tribalism, the single greatest curse of Africa!” Kelly took a bite of underdone porterhouse and for a moment closed her eyes in ecstasy. “Heaven,” she whispered. “Bliss!

“All right, tribalism in Ubomo. There are six tribes but only two really count for anything. The Uhali are the most numerous, almost three out of four million. Traditionally they are an agrarian and lakeside people, tillers of the soil and fishermen. They are gentle, industrious people. Yet for centuries they have been enslaved and in the thrall of the much smaller tribe, the Hita.

“The Hita are fierce, aristocratic people closely related to the Masai and Samburu of Kenya and Tanzania. They are pastoralists and warriors. They live with and for their cattle, and despise the rest of humanity, including us Europeans, I may add, as inferior animals. They are beautiful people, tall and willowy. Any Hita woman under six foot three is considered a midget. Their women are magnificent with regal Nilotic faces; they would grace the catwalk at any Paris fashion show. Yet they are a cruel, arrogant and brutal people.”

“You are taking sides. You are as much a tribalist as any of them, Kelly,” Daniel accused.

“Live long enough in Africa, as you know, Danny, and you come to be like them, a tribalist.” Kelly shook her head ruefully. “But in this case, it’s justified. Before the British pulled out of Ubomo back in 1969, they held a Westminster-style election and, of course, the Uhali by weight of numbers, took power and Victor Omeru became president.

“He was a good president. I’m not suggesting he was a saint, but he was as good as any other ruler in Africa, and a damned sight better than most. He tried to accommodate all his people, all the tribes, but the Hita were too proud and bloody-minded. As natural warriors and killers they gradually took over the army and, of course, the outcome was inevitable. Ephrem Taffari is now despot, tyrant and president for life. A million Hita totally dominate a majority of three million other tribes including the Uhali and my beloved little Bambuti.”

“Tell me about your Bambuti, the ‘people of the tall trees’”, Daniel invited, and she smiled with pleasure.

“Oh, Danny, you know the title of my book!”

“Not only do I know it, but I’ve actually read it. More than once. Three times in fact, the last time a week ago.” He grinned at her. “At the risk of sounding jejune,” he teased her with her own phrase, “I’m a fan.”

“Yech!” Bonny spoke for the first time in fifteen minutes. “Excuse me while I throw up.”

Daniel had almost forgotten her existence, and now he reached out to take her freckled hand that lay on the table cloth beside him. Bonny pulled it away before he could touch it and placed it in her lap. “I’d like some more wine, if anybody is interested,” she pouted.

Daniel dutifully refilled her glass while Kelly concentrated tactfully on the last morsels of her steak.

At last Daniel broke the awkward silence. “We were talking about the Bambuti. Tell me about them.”

Kelly looked up at him again, but did not answer immediately. She seemed to be struggling with a difficult decision.

Daniel waited. “Look here,” Kelly said at last. “You want to know about the Bambuti. All right, what would you say if instead of talking about them I actually took you into the forest and showed you? How would you like to film them in their natural surroundings? I could show you things that nobody else has ever filmed, sights that very few Westerners have ever seen.”

“I’d jump at the chance, Kelly. Hell, I can’t think of anything I’d like more, but isn’t there just one little problem? President Taffari hates your guts and will hang you from the highest tree the moment you put one foot across the border.”

Kelly laughed. He was beginning really to enjoy the sound of her laughter. It had a delicious purring quality that made him feel good and want to laugh in sympathy. “He’s not much into hanging, is our boy Ephrem. He has other little tricks he prefers.”

“So, how would you manage the guided tour of Ubomo without Taffari’s blessing?”

She was still smiling. “I’ve lived in the forest for almost five years. Taffari’s authority ends where the tall trees begin. I have many friends. Taffari has many enemies.”

“How will I contact you?” Daniel insisted.

“You won’t have to. I’ll contact you.”

“Tell me, Kelly, why are you risking your life to be back? What work is so important that you must do it without a field grant, without any kind of support, and under the threat of arrest, and possible death?”

She stared at him. “That’s an amazingly stupid question. There is enough work in the forests to keep me going for a lifetime. Amongst other things, I’m doing work on the physiology of the Bambuti. I have been studying the dwarfism of the pygmies, attempting to determine the cause of their stunted growth. Of course, I’m not the first to do this type of research, but I think I’ve come up with a new angle. Up until now everybody has concentrated on the growth hormone…” She broke off and smiled. “I won’t bore you with the details, but I believe it’s the hormone receptors that are lacking.”

“Oh, we aren’t bored.” Bonny made no effort to veil her sarcasm. “We’re fascinated. Do you plan to give the pygmies an injection and turn them all into giants like the Hita?”

Kelly refused to be annoyed. “The small stature of the Bambuti is a benevolent mutation. It makes them ideally suited for life in the rain forests.”

“I don’t understand,” Daniel encouraged her. “Explain how being small is a benefit.”

“Okay, you asked for it. Firstly, there is heat dissipation. Being so tiny they can shed the heat that builds up in the humid windless atmosphere beneath the forest canopy. Then again, their size makes them agile and nimble in the dense tropical growth. You will be astonished to see how the Bambuti move through the forest. The Egyptians and the early explorers truly believed that they had the power of invisibility. They can simply vanish before your eyes.” Her own lovely eyes shone with enthusiasm and affection as she talked about these people whom she had made her own.

Daniel ordered dessert and coffee, and Kelly had still not exhausted the subject. “The other area of my research is even more important than growth hormones and receptors. The Bambuti have a marvelous knowledge of plants and their properties, particularly medicinal properties. I estimate that there are well over half a million different species of plants growing in the rain forests, hundreds of them with already proven properties beneficial to man. I believe that the cure for most of our ills and diseases might be locked up in those plants, a cure for cancer, and for AIDS. I’ve had promising indications in all those directions.”

“Science fiction,” Bonny scoffed, and filled her mouth with chocolate ice cream.

“Do shut up, Bonny,” Daniel snapped at her. “This is fascinating. How advanced is your research? “

Kelly pulled a face. “Not as far as I’d like. I have the old women of the Barnbuti helping me gather the leaves and barks and roots. They describe their properties and I try to catalogue and test them and isolate the active ingredient, but my laboratory is a thatched hut, and I am fresh out of money and friends…”

“Still I’d like to see it.”

“You will,” she promised, and she was so carried away by Daniel’s interest in her work that she laid her hand on his arm. “You’ll come to Gondola where I live?”

Bonny was watching the other girl’s hand on Daniel’s tanned and muscular forearm. It was a small hand, like the rest of her body, neat and graceful. “Sir Peter would be interested in the formula for curing AIDS,” Bonny said, still staring at the hand. “BOSS could market it through their pharmaceutical company. It would be worth a billion–”

“BOSS? Sir Peter?” Kelly jerked her hand off Daniel’s arm and stared at Bonny. “Sir Peter who? Which Sir Peter?”

“Tug Harrison, ducky,” Bonny told her with relish. “Tug is bank-rolling the production that Daniel is going to shoot in Ubomo. The idea is that Danny and I are going to show the world what a hell of a job BOSS are doing. They are going to call it ‘Ubomo, High Road to the African Future’. Isn’t that a cute title? It’s going to be Danny’s masterpiece–”

Kelly didn’t wait for her to finish. She leapt to her feet and knocked over her cup. Spilled coffee spread across the tablecloth and cascaded into Daniel’s lap. “You!” Kelly stared down at him. “You and that monster Harrison! How could you?” She whirled and ran from the restaurant, shoving her way through a pack of American tourists who were blocking the aisle.

Daniel was on his feet mopping the coffee that had soaked his trousers.

“What the hell did you do that for?” he snarled at Bonny.

“You and the tree doctor were getting just a mite too chummy for my taste.”

“Damn you,” Daniel flared. “You’ve screwed up a chance to film something unique. I’ll talk to you later.”

He strode angrily after Kelly Kinnear. She was not in the hotel lobby. Daniel headed for the front entrance and called the doorman. “Did you see a woman–” He broke off as he spotted Kelly on the far side of the road. She was astride a dusty 50cc Honda motor cycle, and at that moment she jumped on the kick-starter and the engine shrilled to life. She swung the handlebars hard over, banking the cycle into a tight turn, the engine whining and popping jets of oily blue exhaust smoke.

“Kelly!” Daniel shouted. “Wait! Give me a chance. I can explain.”

She wrenched the throttle grip fully open and the cycle reared up on its back wheel as it accelerated. She turned her face to him as she flew past where he stood. Her expression was at once angry and stricken and he could have sworn that there were tears on her cheeks. “Hired gun!” she cried at him. “Judas!” And then the motor cycle howled away. She banked it sharply, the steel foot-rest raised a shower of sparks as it grazed the tarmac, and she weaved into the traffic in Kimathi Avenue.

Daniel ran down to the corner. He caught one more glimpse of her two hundred yards down the avenue, leaning over the handlebars like a jockey, her braid standing out stiffly from the back of her head in the wind. He looked around for a taxi to follow her, and then realised the futility of even trying. With the lead she had, and the Honda’s manoeuvrability no car could hope to catch her.

He turned on his heel and marched back towards the hotel, intent on finding Bonny Mahon. Before he reached the entrance he realised the danger of confronting here in his present mood. It could only lead to bloody battle, and probably the break-up of their relationship. That did not worry him too much, but what restrained him was the danger of losing a cameraman. It might take weeks to find a replacement, and that could lead to a cancellation of his contract with BOSS, the end of his quest to follow the Lucky Dragon, and Ning Cheng Gong, into Ubomo.

He checked his stride and thought about it. It wasn’t worth the pleasure of pinning back Bonny Mahon’s ears. “I’d better go and cool off somewhere.” He chose the Jambo, Bar, one of the notorious bars down near the station.

It was full of black soldiers in camouflage, and male tourists and bar girls. Some of the girls were spectacular, Samburu and Kikuyu and Masai, in tight shiny skirts with beads and bright ribbons braided into their hair.

Daniel found a bar stool in the corner, and the antics of the middle-aged European tourists on the dance floor helped to alleviate his foul mood. A recent survey of the Nairobi bar girls had determined that ninety-eight percent of them were HIV positive. You had to have a death wish to enjoy fully all that these ladies had to offer.

An hour and two double whiskies later, Daniel’s anger Had cooled sufficiently, and he headed back to the Norfolk Hotel. He let himself into the cottage suite and saw Bonny’s khaki slacks and panties in the centre of the sitting-room floor where she had dropped them. This evening her untidiness irritated him even more than usual.

The bedroom was in darkness, but the lights in the courtyard shone through the curtains sufficiently for him to make out Bonny’s form under the sheet on her side of the bed. He knew, she was feigning sleep. He undressed in the darkness, slipped naked into his side of the bed, and lay still.

Neither of them moved or spoke for fully five minutes and then Bonny whispered, “Is Daddy cross with his little girl?” She used her simpering childish voice. “His little girl was very naughty…” She touched him. Her fingers were warm and silky down his flank. “She wants to show him how sorry she is.”

He caught her wrist, but it was too late. She was cunning and quick and soon he didn’t want her to stop. “Damn it, Bonny,” he protested. “You screwed up a chance…”

“Shh! Don’t talk,” Bonny whispered. “Little girl will make it better for Daddy.”

“Bonny…” His voice trailed away, and he released her wrist.

Chapter 22

In the morning when Daniel checked the hotel bill before paying it, he noticed an item for 120 Kenya shillings. International telephone calls. He taxed Bonny with it. Did you make an overseas call last night? “I called my old mum to let her know I’m all right. I know how stingy you are, but you don’t grudge me that, do you?”

Something in her defiant manner troubled him. When she went ahead to see her video equipment safely packed into the taxi, Daniel lingered in the suite. As soon as she was gone he called the telephone exchange and asked the operator for the overseas number that was on his bill. “London 727 6464, sir.”

“Please get it for me again now.”

“It’s ringing, sir.”

A voice answered on the third ring. “Good morning, may I help you?”

“What number is that?” Daniel asked, but the speaker was guarded.

“Who did you want, please?” Daniel thought he recognized the voice, the strong African accent. He took a chance.

“Is that you, Selibi?” he asked in Swahili. “Yes, this is Selibi. Do you want to speak to the Bwana Mkubwa? Who shall I say is calling?”

Daniel hung up the receiver and stared at it. Selibi was Tug Harrison’s manservant. So Bonny had telephoned Tug’s flat the previous evening while he had been at the Jambo Bar. “Curiouser and curiouser,” Daniel muttered. “Miss Bonny isn’t all she pretends to be, unless her old mum lives in Holland Park.”

Every seat on the Air Ubomo flight to Kabali was taken. Most of the other passengers seemed to be businessmen or minor civil servants or politicians. There were half a dozen black Soldiers in camouflage and decoration ribbons, berets and dark glasses. There were, however, no tourists, not yet, not before BOSS opened the new casino on the lakeshore.

The hostess was a tall Hita girl in flamboyant national dress. She handed out packets of sweet biscuits and plastic mugs of luke-warm tea with the haughty air of a queen distributing alms to her poor subjects. Halfway through the four-hour flight she disappeared into the toilet with one of the soldiers and all cabin service came to a halt.

They hit heavy clear-air turbulence over the eastern rim of the Great Rift Valley and a corpulent black businessman in one of the front seats entertained them all with a noisy regurgitation of his breakfast. The air hostess remained ensconced in the rear toilet.

At last they were over the lake. Although like most names with colonial overtones, its name had been changed, Daniel still preferred Lake Albert to Lake Mobutu. The waters were pure azure, flecked with white horses and the sails of fishing dhows, and so wide that for a while there was no shore in sight. Then slowly the western shoreline emerged from the haze.

“Ubomo,” Daniel whispered, more to himself than to Bonny. The name had a romance and mystery that made the skin on his forearms tingle. He would be following in the footsteps of the great African explorers. Speke had passed this way, and Stanley and ten thousand other hunters and slavers, soldiers and adventurers. He must try to instil some of that feeling of romance and history into his production. Across these waters had plied the ancient Arab dhows laden with ivory and slaves, the black and white gold that had once been the continent’s major exports.

Some estimates were that five million souls had been captured like animals in the interior and herded down to the coast. To cross this lake they had been packed like sardines into the dhows, the first layer forced to lie on the bilge deck curled against each other, belly to back, like spoons. Then the removable deck planks were laid over them giving them eighteen inches of space, and another layer of human beings and another deck, until four decks were in place, crammed with howling, whining slaves. With fair winds the crossing took two days and three nights. The Arab slave-masters were satisfied with a fifty percent survival rate. It was a process of natural selection. Only the strong came through.

On the eastern shore of the lake the living were lifted out of the holds coated with faeces and vomit. The dead were tossed overboard to the waiting crocodiles. The survivors were allowed to rest and gather strength for the last stage of the journey. When their masters deemed them fit, they were chained and yoked in long lines, each slave carrying a tusk of ivory, and they were marched down to the coast.

Daniel wondered if he could simulate some of the horrors of the trade with actors and a hired dhow. He anticipated the outcry that this would raise. So often he had been accused by reviewers and critics of depicting gratuitous violence and savagery in his productions. There was only one reply: Africa is a savage and violent continent. Anybody who tries to hide that from you is no true story-teller. Blood was the fertiliser that made the African soil bloom.

He looked northwards across the shining waters. Up there where the Nile debauched from the lake there was a triangular wedge of land that fronted on to the river called the Lada Enclave. It had once been the private estate of the King of Belgium. The herds of elephant that inhabited those lands were more prolific and prodigiously tusked than anywhere else on the continent, and the Belgians had guarded and cherished them.

By international treaty the ownership of the Lada Enclave passed to the Sudan at the death of the Belgian king. When this happened the Belgian colonial service withdrew precipitately from the Lada, leaving a power vacuum. The European ivorypoachers swarmed in to take advantage. They fell upon the elephant herds and slaughtered them.

Karamojo Bell describes in his autobiography how he followed a Lada herd from dawn until dusk, running to keep pace with them, shooting and running on again. In that single bloody day be killed twenty-three elephant.

Little had changed in the years since then, Daniel thought sadly. The slaughter and the rapine continued. And Africa bled.

Africa cried to the civilised world for help, but what help was there to give? All the fifty member states of the Organization of African Unity combined were capable of generating only the same gross domestic product as little Belgium in the northern hemisphere.

How could the First World help Africa now? Daniel wondered. Aid poured into this vast continent was soaked up like a few raindrops upon the Saharan sands. A cynic had defined aid as simply the system by which poor white people in rich countries gave money to rich black people in poor countries to put into Swiss bank accounts. The sad truth was that Africa no longer mattered, particularly since the Berlin Wall had come down and Eastern Europe had started to emerge from the dark age of Communism. Africa was redundant. The rest of the world might give it passing sympathy, but Africa was beyond help. Europe would turn its attention to a more promising subject closer to home.

Daniel sighed and glanced at Bonny in the seat beside him. He wanted to discuss his thoughts, but she had kicked off her sandals and had her bare knees up against the back of the seat in front of her. She was chewing gum and reading a trashy science fiction paperback.

Instead Daniel looked out of the window again. The coast of Ubomo came up to meet them as the pilot began his descent. The savannah was red-brown as the hide of an impala antelope and studded with acacia trees. Upon the lakeshore the fishing villages were strung like beads, bound together by the narrow strip of green gardens and shambas that the Lake waters nurtured. The village children waved as the aircraft passed overhead, and when the pilot turned on to final approach Daniel had a distant view of blue mountains clad with dark forest.

The air hostess re-emerged from the toilet, looking smug and adjusting her long green skirt, and ordered them in English and Swahili to fasten their seat-belts.

The unpainted galvanised roofs of the town flashed beneath them and they touched down heavily on the dusty strip. They taxied past the skeleton of steel and concrete beams that would have been the grand new Ephrem Taffari airport building if only the money had not run out, and came to a halt in front of the humbler edifice of unburnt brick that was a relic of Victor Omeru’s reign.

As the door of the aircraft opened, the Heat pressed in upon them and they were sweating before they reached the airport building.

A Hira officer in camouflage battledress and maroon beret singled Daniel out of the straggling group of passengers and came out on the field to meet him. “Doctor Armstrong? I recognized you from the photograph on the dust-jacket of your book.” He held out his hand. “I’m Captain Kajo. I will be your guide during your stay. The president, in person, has asked me to welcome you and assure you of our whole-hearted cooperation. Sir Peter Harrison is a personal friend of his, and President Taffari has expressed the wish to meet you as soon as you have recovered from the ill effects of your journey. In fact he has arranged a cocktail party to welcome you to Ubomo.” Captain Kajo spoke excellent English. He was a striking young man, slim and tall in the classical Hita mould. He towered over Daniel by a couple of inches. His jet eyes began to sparkle as he studied Bonny Mahon.

“This is my camera operator, Miss Mahon,” Daniel introduced them, and Bonny looked back at Captain Kajo with equal interest.

In the army Landrover, piled with their luggage and video equipment, Bonny leaned close to Daniel and asked, “Is it true what they say about Africans being…” she sought the adjective, “about them being large?”

“Never made a study of it,” Daniel told her. “But I could find out for you, if you’d like.”

“Don’t put yourself out,” she grinned. “If necessary, I can do my own research.”

Since he had learned about her secret phone call to Tug Harrison, Daniel’s misgivings about her had increased. Now he didn’t trust her at all, and he didn’t even like her as much as he had only as recently as the previous day.

Chapter 23

It was new moon, but the stars were clear and bright. Their reflections on the still waters. Kelly Kinnear sat in the bows of the small dhow. The rigging creaked to the gentle push of the night breeze as they tacked across the lake.

The stars were magnificent. She turned her face up to them and whispered the lyrical names of the constellations as she recognized each of them. The stars were one of the few things she missed in the forest, for they were for ever hidden by the high unbroken canopy of the tree-tops. She savoured them now, for soon she would be without them.

The helmsman was singing a soft repetitive refrain, an invocation to the spirits of the lake depths, the djinni who controlled the fickle winds that pushed the dhow across the dark waters.

Kelly’s mood was changeable as the breeze, dropping and shifting and then rising again. She was elated at the prospect of going once more into the forest, and the reunion with dear friends she loved so well.

She was fearful of the journey and the dangers that still lay ahead before she could reach the safety of the tall trees. She was anxious that the political changes since the coup d’etat would have destroyed and damaged much in her absence. She was saddened by the memory of damage already done, destruction already wrought upon the forest in the few short years since she had first entered their hushed cathedral depths.

At the same time, she was gladdened by the promises of support she had received and the interest she had been able to stir up during her visit to England and Europe, but disappointed that the support had been mainly moral and vocal rather than financial or constructive. She mustered all her enthusiasm and determination and forced herself to look ahead optimistically.

“We’ll win through. We must win through.”

Then suddenly and irrelevantly she thought of Daniel Armstrong, and she felt angry and unhappy again. Somehow his treachery was all the more heinous by reason of the blind faith and trust that she had placed in him before she had actually met him.

She had prejudged him from what she had seen on the television screen and read in a few newspaper and magazine articles about him. From these she had formed a highly favourable opinion, not simply because he was handsome and articulate and his screen presence impressive, but because of the apparent depth of his understanding and his compassion for this poor wrecked continent which she had made her own.

She had written to him twice, addressing her letters to the television studio. Those letters could never have reached him or, if they did, they must have been overlooked in the huge volume of mail she was sure was addressed to him. In any event she had received no reply.

Then when the unexpected opportunity had presented itself in Nairobi, Daniel Armstrong had, at first meeting, borne out all the high hopes she had placed in him. He was warm and compassionate and approachable. She had been aware of the instant rapport between them. They were people from the same world, with similar interests and concerns and, more than that, she knew that an essential spark had been struck between them. The attraction had been mutual; they had both recognized it.

There had been a meeting and a docking of their minds as well as an undeniable physical attraction.

Kelly did not consider herself to be a sensual person. The only lovers she had ever taken were men whose intellects she admired. The first had been one of her professors at medical school, a fine man twenty-five years her senior. They were still friends. Two others were fellow students, and the fourth the man she eventually married.

Paul had been a medical doctor like herself. The two of them had qualified in the same year and had come out to Africa as a team. He had died from the bite of one of the deadly forest mambas within the first six months and at every opportunity she still visited his grave at the foot of a gigantic silk-cotton tree on the banks of the Ubomo River deep in the forest.

Four lovers in all her thirty-two years. No, she was not a sensual person, but she had been intensely aware of the strong pull that Daniel Armstrong had exerted upon her, and she had experienced no great urge to resist it. He was the kind of man for her.

Then suddenly it was all a lie and a delusion, and he was just like the rest of them. A hired gun, she thought angrily, for BOSS and that monster Hawison. She tried to use her anger to shield herself against the sense of loss she felt at the destruction of an ideal. She had believed in Daniel Armstrong. She had given him her trust and he had betrayed it.

“Put him out of your mind,” she determined. “Don’t think about him again. He’s not worth it.” But she was honest enough to realise that it was not going to be that easy.

From the stern the helmsman of the dhow called softly to her in Swahili and she roused herself and looked forward. The shoreline was half a mile ahead, the low line of beach surf creaming softly in the starlight.

Ubomo. She was coming home. Her mood soared.

Suddenly there was a cry from the helm and she spun about. The two crew men, naked except for their loin-cloths, ran forward.

In haste they seized the main sheet and brought the boom of the sail crashing down upon the deck. The lateen sail billowed and folded and they sprang upon it and furled it swiftly. Within seconds the stubby mast was bare and the dhow was wallowing low on the dark waters.

“What is it?”

Kelly called softly in Swahili, and the helmsman answered quietly, “Patrol boat.” She heard it then, the throb of the diesel engine above the wind and her nerves sprang tight. The crew of the dhow were all Uhati tribesmen, loyal to old President Omeru. They were risking their lives, just as she was, by defying the curfew and crossing the lake in darkness.

They crouched on the open deck and stared out into the darkness, listening to the beat of the engine swelling louder. The gunboat was the gift of an Arab oil sheikh to the new regime, a fast forty-foot assault craft with twin cannon in armoured turrets fore and aft. It had seen thirty years’ service in the Red Sea. It spent most of its time tied-up in the port of Kahali, with engines broken down, awaiting spare parts. However, they had picked a bad night for the crossing; the gunboat was for once seaworthy and dangerous.

Kelly saw the flash of foam at the bows of the oncoming patrol boat. It was heading up from the south. Instinctively she crouched lower, trying to shield herself behind the bulwark as she considered her position. On its present course the patrol boat must surely spot them.

If Kelly were found on board the dhow, the crew would be shot without trial, one of those public executions on the beach of Kahali which were part of Ephrem Taffari’s new style of government. Of course she would be shot alongside them, but that did not concern Kelly at that moment. These were good men who had risked their lives for her. She had to do all in her power to protect them.

If she were not found on board, and there were no other contraband, the crew might have a chance of talking thereselves out of trouble. They would almost certainly be beaten and fined, and the dhow might be confiscated, but they might escape execution.

She reached for her backpack that lay in the bows. Quickly she undid the straps that held the inflatable mattress strapped to the underside of the pack. She unrolled the nylon-covered mattress and frantically blew into the valve, filling her lungs and then exhaling long and hard, all the time watching the dark shape of the patrol boat loom out of the night.

It was coming up fast. There was no time to inflate the mattress fully. It was still soft and floppy as she closed the valve. She stood up and slung the pack on her back and called back to the helmsman, “Thank you, my friend. Peace be with you, and may Allah preserve you.”

The lake people were nearly all Muslim. “And with you be peace, he called back.” She could hear the relief and gratitude in his tone. He knew she was doing this for him and his crew.

Kelly sat on the bulwark and swung her legs overboard. She clutched the semi-inflated mattress to her chest and drew a deep breath before she dropped into the lake. The water closed over her head. It was surprisingly cold and the heavy pack on her back carried her deep before the buoyancy of the mattress asserted itself and lifted her back to the surface.

She broke through, gasping and with water streaming into her eyes. It took her a few minutes to master the trim of the bobbing mattress, but at last she lay half across it, her legs dangling, the strap of the backpack hooked over her arm. It held her head clear, but she was low down in the water. The waves dashed into her face and threatened to overturn her precarious craft.

She looked for the dhow and was surprised to see how far she had drifted from it. As she watched, the boom was hoisted and the sail filled. The ungainly little boat turned to run free before the breeze, trying to get clear of the forbidden coast before the patrol boat spotted her.

“Good luck,” she whispered, and a wave broke into her face. She choked and coughed, and when she looked again both the dhow and the patrol boat had disappeared into the night.

She kicked out gently, careful not to upset her balance, conserving her strength for the long night ahead. She knew that some monstrous crocodiles inhabited the lake; she had seen a photograph of one that measured eighteen feet from the tip of its hideous snout to the end of its thick crested tail. She put the picture out of her mind and kept kicking, lining herself up by the stars, swimming towards where Orion stood on his head upon the western horizon.

A few minutes later she glimpsed a flash of light far upwind. It may have been the searchlight of the patrol boat as it picked up the shape of the dhow. She forced herself not to look back. She didn’t want to know the worst, for there was nothing more she could do to save the men who had helped her.

She kept swimming, kicking to a steady rhythm. After an hour she wondered if she had moved at all. The backpack was like a drogue anchor hanging below the half-inflated mattress. However, she dared not jettison it. Without the basic equipment it contained, she was doomed. She kept on swimming. Another hour and she was almost exhausted. She was forced to rest.

One calf was cramping badly. The breeze had dropped and in the silence she heard a soft regular rumbling, like an old man snoring in his sleep. It took her a moment to place the sound. “The beach surf,” she whispered, and kicked out again with renewed strength.

She felt the water lift and surge under her as it met the shelving bottom. She swam on, torturously slowly, dragging herself and the sodden pack through the water.

Now she saw the ivory-nut palms above the beach silhouetted against the stars. She held her breath and reached down with both feet. Again the water closed over her head, but with her toes she felt the sandy bottom, six feet below the surface, and found enough strength for one last effort.

Minutes later she could stand. The surf knocked her sprawling, but she dragged herself up again and staggered up the narrow beach to find shelter in a patch of papyrus reeds. Her watch was a waterproof Rolex, a wedding gift from Paul. The time was a few minutes after four. It would be light soon. She must get in before a Hita patrol picked her up, but she was too cold and stiff and exhausted to move just yet.

While she rested she forced herself to open the pack with numb fingers and to empty out the water that almost doubled its weight. She wrung out her few spare items of clothing and wiped down the other equipment as best she could. While she worked she chewed a high-energy sugar bar and almost immediately felt better. She repacked the bag, slung it, and started back northwards, keeping parallel to the lake, but well back from the soft beach sand which would record her footprints for a Hita patrol to follow.

Every few hundred yards there were the gardens and thatched buildings of the small sharnbas. Dogs barked and she was forced to detour round the huts to avoid detection. She hoped that she was heading in the right direction. She reasoned that the captain of the dhow would have come in upwind of his destination to give himself leeway in which to make his landfall so she must keep northwards.

She had been going for almost an hour, but reckoned that she had covered only a couple of miles when, with a surge of relief, she saw ahead of her the pale round dome of the little mosque shining like a bald man’s head in the first pearly radiance of the dawn.

She broke into a weary trot, weighed down by the pack and her fatigue. She smelt woodsmoke, and saw the faint glow of the fire under the dark tamarind tree, just where it should have been. Closer, she made out the figures of two men squatting close beside the fire.

“Patrick!” she called hoarsely, and one of the figures jumped up and ran towards her. “Patrick,” she repeated, and stumbled and would have fallen if he had not caught her.

“Kelly! Allah be praised. We had given you up.”

“The patrol boat…” she gasped.

“Yes. We heard firing and saw the light. We thought they Had caught you.”

Patrick Omeru was one of old President Omeru’s nephews. So far he had escaped the purges by Taffari’s soldiers. He was one of the first friends that Kelly had made after her arrival in Ubomo. He lifted the pack from her shoulders, and she groaned with relief. The wet straps had abraded her delicate skin.

“Kill the fire,” Patrick called to his brother, and he kicked sand over the coals. Between them they led Kelly to where the truck was parked in a grove of mango trees behind the derelict mosque. They helped her into the back and spread a tarpaulin over her as she lay on the dirty floorboards. The truck stank of dried fish.

Even though the truck jolted and crashed through the potholes, she was at last warm, and soon she slept. It was a trick she had learned in the forest, to be able to sleep in any circumstances of discomfort.

The sudden cessation of engine noise and movement woke her again. She did not know how long she had slept, but it was light now and a glance at her watch showed her it was after nine in the morning. She lay quietly under her tarpaulin and listened to the sound of men’s voices close alongside the truck. She knew better than to disclose her presence. Minutes later, Patrick pulled back the tarpaulin and smiled at her.

“Where are we, Patrick?”

“Kahali, in the old town. A safe place.” The truck was parked in the small yard of one of the old Arab houses. The building was dilapidated, the yard filthy with chicken droppings and rubbish. Chickens roosted under the eaves or scratched in the dirt. There was a strong smell of drains and sewage. The Omeru family had fallen on hard times since the old president’s downfall.

In the sparsely furnished frontroom, with its stained walls on which old yellowed newspaper cuttings had been pasted, Patrick’s wife had a meal ready for her. It was a stew of chicken spiced with chilli and served with a bowl of manioc and stewed plantains. She was hungry, and it was good.

While she ate, other men came to speak to her. They slipped in quietly and squatted beside her in the bare room. They told her what had happened in Ubomo during her absence, and she frowned while she listened. Very little of it was good tidings.

They knew where she was going and they gave her messages to take with her. Then they slipped. away again as quietly and furtively as they had arrived.

It was long after dark when Patrick stood up and told her quietly, “It is time to go on.”

The truck was now loaded with dried fish in woven baskets. They had built a small hiding-place for her under the load. She crawled into it and Patrick passed her pack in to her, then seated the opening behind her with another basket of fish.

The truck started and rumbled out of the yard. This part of the journey was only three hundred miles. She settled down and slept again.

She woke every time the truck stopped. Whenever she heard voices, the loud arrogant voices of Hita speaking Swahili with the distinctive cutting accent, she knew they had halted at another military road-block.

Once Patrick stopped the truck along a deserted stretch of road and let her out of her hiding-place and-she went a short distance into the veld to relieve herself. They were still in the open grassland savannah below the rim of the Great Rift. She heard cattle lowing somewhere close and knew that there was a Hita manyatta nearby.

When she woke again it was to a peculiar new motion and to the chant of the ferrymen. It was a nostalgic sound and she knew she was nearly home.

During the night she had opened a small peephole from her little cave under the baskets of dried fish into the outside world. Through it she caught glimpses of the expanses of the Ubomo River touched with the hot orange and violet of the breaking dawn. The silhouettes of the ferrymen passed back and forth in front of her peephole as they handled the lines that linked the ferry-boat from one bank of the river to the other. The ferry across the Ubomo River was almost at the edge of the great forest. She could imagine it as clearly as if she were actually looking at it.

The wide sweep of the river was the natural boundary between savannah and forest. The first time she had stood upon its bank she had been amazed by the abruptness with which the forest began. On the east bank the open grass and acacia dropped away towards the lake, while on the far bank stood a gigantic palisade of dark trees, a solid unbroken wall a hundred feet high, with some of the real giants towering another fifty feet above those. It had seemed to her at once both forbidding and frightening. On the far bank the road tunneled into the forest like a rabbit hole.

In the few short years since then, the forest had been hacked back as the land-hungry peasantry nibbled at its edges. They had toppled the great trees that had taken hundreds of years to grow and burned them where they fell for charcoal and fertiliser. The forest retreated before this onslaught. It was now almost five miles from the ferry to the edge of the tree-line.

In between sprawling shambas with fields of plantains and manioc. The worked-out ground was being abandoned to weeds and secondary growth. The fragile forest soils could bear only two or three years of cultivation before they were exhausted and the peasant farmers moved on to clear more forest.

Even when it reached the retreating forest edge, the road was no longer a tunnel through the trees, roofed over with a high canopy of vegetation as it once had been. The verges of the road had been cut back half a mile on each side. The peasants had used the road as an access to the interior of the forest. They had built their villages alongside the road and hacked out their gardens and plantations from the living forest that bordered it.

This was the terribly destructive slash and burn cultivation method by which they felled the trees and burned them where they fell. Those true giants of the forest, whose girth defied the puny axes, they destroyed by building a slow fire around the base of the trunk. They kept it burning week after week until it ate through the hardwood core and toppled two hundred feet of massive trunk.

The road itself was like a deadly blade, a spear into the guts of the forest, steeped in the poison of civilisation. Kelly hated the road. It was a channel of infection and corruption into the virginal womb of the forest.

Looking out of her peephole she saw that the road was wider now than she remembered it. The deep rutted tracks were churned by the wheels of logging and mining trucks and the other heavy traffic that had begun using it since President Omeru had been overthrown and the forest concession given to the powerful foreign syndicate to develop.

She knew from her studies and the meticulous records that she kept that already the road had altered the local rainfall patterns. The mile-wide cutline was unprotected by the umbrella of the forest canopy. The tropical sun struck down on this open swathe and heated the unshielded earth, causing a vast updraught of air above the road. This dispersed the rain clouds that daily gathered over the green forest.

Nowadays little rain fell along the roadway, although it still teemed down at the rate of three hundred inches a year upon the pristine forests only a few miles away.

The roadside was dry and dusty and hot. The mango trees wilted in the noonday heat and the people living beside the road built themselves barazas, thatched roofs supported by poles without walls, to shield them from the cloudless sky above the roadway. Without the forest canopy the whole Ubomo basin would soon become a little Sahara.

To Kelly the road was the Sodom and Gomorrah of the forest. it was temptation to her Bambuti friends. The truckdrivers had money and they wanted meat and honey and women. The Bambuti were skilled hunters who could provide both meat and honey, and their young girls, tiny and graceful, laughing and big-breasted, were peculiarly attractive to the tall bantu men.

The roadway seduced the Bambuti and lured them out of the fastness of the deep forest. It was destroying their traditional way of life. It encouraged the pygmies to over-hunt their forest preserves. Where once they had hunted only to feed themselves and their tribe, now they hunted to sell the meat at the roadside dukas, the little trading stores set up at each new village.

Game was each day scarcer in the forest and soon, Kelly knew, the Bambuti would be tempted to hunt in the heartland, that special remote centre of the forest where by tradition and religious restraint no Bambuti had ever hunted before.

At the roadside the Bambuti discovered palm wine and bottled beer and spirits. Like most stone-age people, from the Australian Aboriginals to the Inuit Eskimos of the Arctic, they had little resistance to alcohol. A drunken pygmy was a pitiful sight.

In the deep forest, there was no tribal tradition that restrained the Bambuti girls from sexual intercourse before marriage. They were allowed all the experimentation and indulgence they wanted with the boys of the tribe, except only that intercourse must not be with a full embrace. The unmarried couple must hold each other’s elbows only, not clasp each other chest to chest. To them the sexual act was a natural and pleasant expression of affection, and they were by nature friendly and full of fun. They were easy game for the sophisticated truckdrivers from the towns. Eager to please, they sold their favours for a trinket or a bottle of beer or a few shillings, and from the lopsided bargain they were left with syphilis or gonorrhoea or, most deadly of all, AIDS.

In her hatred of the road, Kelly wished there was some way to halt this intrusion, this accelerating process of degradation and destruction, but she knew that there was none. BOSS and the syndicate were behemoths on the march. The forest, its soil, its trees, its animals, birds and its people were all too fragile. All she could hope for was to help retard the process and in the end to save some precious fragment from the melting-pot of progress and development, and exploitation.

Abruptly the truck swung off the road and in a cloud of red talcum dust drew up at the rear of one of the roadside dukes. Peering from her peephole, Kelly saw that it was a typical roadside store with mud walls and roof, thatched with ilala palm fronds. There was a logging truck parked in front of it and the driver and his mate were haggling with the store-keeper for the purchase of sweet yams and strips of dried game meat blackened with smoke.

Patrick Omeru and his brother began to unload some of the baskets of dried fish to sell to the store-keeper and as they worked he spoke without looking at Kelly’s hiding-place. “Are you all right, Kelly?”

“I’m fine, Patrick. I’m ready to move,” she called back softly.

“Wait, Doctor. I must make certain that it is safe. The army patrols the road regularly. I’ll speak to the store-keeper; he knows when the soldiers will come.” Patrick went on unloading the fish.

In front of the duka the truck-driver completed his transaction and carried his purchases to the logging truck, He climbed on board and started up with a roar and cloud of diesel smoke, then pulled out into the rutted roadway towing two huge trailers behind the truck. The trailers were laden with forty-foot lengths of African mahogany logs, each five feet in diameter, the whole cargo comprising hundreds of tons of valuable hardwood.

As soon as the truck had gone, Patrick called to the Uhali store-keeper and they spoke together quietly. The store-keeper shook his head and pointed back along the road. Patrick hurried back to the side of the fish truck. “Quickly, Kelly. The patrol will be coming any minute now, but we should hear the army vehicle long before it arrives. The store-keeper says that the soldiers never go into the forest. They are afraid of the forest spirits.”

He pulled away the fish baskets that covered the entrance to Kelly’s hiding-place, and she scrambled out and jumped down to the sun-baked earth. She felt stiff and cramped, and she stretched her body to its full extent, lifting her hands over her head and twisting from the waist to get the kinks out of her spine.

“You must go quickly, Kelly,” Patrick urged her. “The patrol! I wish I had someone to go with you, to protect you.”

Kelly laughed and shook her head. “Once I’m in the forest, I will be safe.” She felt gay and happy at the prospect, but Patrick looked worried.

“The forest is an evil place.”

“You are also afraid of the diinni, aren’t you, Patrick?” she teased him as she shrugged her pack on to her shoulders. She knew that, like most Uhali or Hita, Patrick had never entered the deep forest. They were all terrified of the forest spirits. Whenever possible the Barnbuti were at pains to describe these malignant spirits and to invent horror stories of their own dreadful encounters with them. It was one of the Bambuti devices for keeping the big black men out of their secret preserves.

“Of course not, Kelly.” Patrick denied the charge a little too hotly. “I am an educated man; I do not believe in djinni or evil spirits.” But even as he spoke his eyes strayed towards the impenetrable wall of high trees that stood just beyond the halfmile wide strip of gardens and plantations. He shuddered and changed the subject. “You will get a message to me in the usual way?” he asked anxiously. “We must know how he is.”

“Don’t worry.” She smiled at him and took his hand. “Thank you, Patrick. Thank you for everything.”

“It is we who should thank you, Kelly. May Allah give you peace.”

“Salaam aleikum,” she replied. “To you peace also, Patrick.” And she turned and slipped away under the wide green fronds of the banana trees. Within a dozen paces she was hidden from the road.

As she went through the gardens she picked the fruits from the trees, filling the pockets of her backpack with ripe mangoes and plantains. It was a Bambuti trick. The village gardens and the villages themselves were considered fair hunting grounds. The pygmies borrowed anything that was left untended, but stealing was not as much fun as gulling the villagers into parting with food and valuables by elaborate confidence tricks.

Kelly smiled as she recalled the glee with which old Sepoo related his successful scams to the rest of the tribe whenever he returned from the villages to the hunting camps in the deep forest.

Now she helped herself to the garden produce with as little conscience as old Sepoo would have evinced. In London she would have been appalled by the notion of shoplifting in Selfridges, but as she approached the edge of the forest she was already beginning to think like a Barnbuti again. It was the way of survival.

At the end of the, last garden there was a fence of thorn branches to keep out the forest creatures that raided the crops at night, and at intervals along this fence, set on poles were grubby spirit flags and juju charms to discourage the forest demons and diinni from approaching the villages. The Bambuti always howled with mirth when they passed this evidence of the villagers superstition. It was proof of the success of their own subtle propaganda.

Kelly found a narrow gap in the fence, just big enough to accommodate the pygmy who had made it and she slipped through. The forest lay ahead of her. She lifted up her eyes and watched a flock of grey parrots flying shrieking along the treetops a hundred feet above her.

The entrance to the forest was thick and entangled. Where the sunlight had penetrated to the ground it had raised a thicket of secondary growth. There was a pygmy track through this undergrowth, but even Kelly was forced to stoop to enter it.

The average Bambuti was at least a foot shorter than she was, and with their machetes they cut the undergrowth just above their own head-height. When fresh, the raw shoots were easy to spot, but once they dried, they were sharp as daggers and on the level of Kelly’s face and eyes. She moved with dainty care.

She did not realise it herself, but in the forest she had learned by example to carry herself with the same agile grace as a pygmy. It was one of the Bambuti’s derisive taunts that somebody walked like a wazungu in the forest. Wazungu was the derogatory term for any outsider, any foreigner. Even old Sepoo admitted that Kelly walked like one of the real people and not like a white wazungu.

The peripheral screen of dense undergrowth was several hundred feet wide. It ended abruptly and Kelly stepped out on to the true forest floor. It was like entering a submarine cavern, a dim and secret place. The sunlight was reflected down through successive layers of leaves, so that the entire forest world was washed with green, and the air was warm and moist and redolent of leaf mould and fungus, a relief from the heat and dust and merciless sunlight of the outside world. Kelly filled her lungs with the smell and looked around her, blinking as her eyes adjusted to this strange and lovely light. There was no dense undergrowth here, the great tree-trunks reached up to the high green roof and shaded away into the green depths, ahead, reminding her of the hall of pillars in the mighty temple of Karnak on the banks of the Nile.

Under her feet the dead leaves were thick and luxuriant as a precious oriental carpet. They gave a spring to her step and rustled under her feet to give warning to the forest creatures of her approach. It was unwise to come unannounced upon one of the wicked red buffalo or to step upon one of the deadly adders that lay curled upon the forest floor.

Kelly moved swiftly, lightly, with the susurration of dead leaves under her feet, stopping once to cut herself a digging stick and to sharpen the point with her clasp-knife as she went on. She sang as she went, one of the praise songs to the forest that Sepoo’s wife, Parnba, had taught her. It was a Bambuti hymn, for the forest itself is their god. They worship it as both Mother and Father.

They do not believe a jot in the hobgoblins and evil spirits whose existence they so solemnly endorse and whose depredations they recount with so much glee to the black villagers. For the Bambuti the forest is a living entity, a deity which can give up or withhold its bounty, which can give favours or wreak retribution on those who flout its laws and do it injury. Over the years she had lived under the forest roof Kelly had come more than halfway to accepting the Bambuti philosophy, and now she sang to the forest as she travelled swiftly across its floor.

In the middle of the afternoon it began to rain, one of those solid downpours that were a daily occurrence. The heavy drops falling thick and heavy as stones upon the upper galleries of the forest roared like a distant river in spare. Had it fallen on bare earth with such force, it would have ripped away the topsoil and raked deep scars, washed out plains and scoured the hillsides, flooding the rivers and wreaking untold harm.

In the forest the top galleries of the trees broke the force of the storm, cushioning the gouts of water, gathering them up and redirecting them down the trunks of the great trees, scattering them benevolently across the thick carpet of dead leaves and mould, so that the earth was able to absorb and restrain the rain’s malevolent power. The rivers and streams, instead of becoming muddied by the torn earth and choked by uprooted trees, still ran sweet and crystal clear.

As the rain sifted down softly upon her, Kelly slipped off her cotton shirt and placed it in one of the waterproof pockets of her pack. The straps would cut into her bare shoulders so she rigged the headband around her forehead and kept her arms clear as the pygmy women do. She went on, not bothering to take shelter from the blood-warm rain.

Now she was bare-chested, wearing only a brief pair of cotton shorts and her canvas running shoes. Minimal dress was the natural forest way. The Bambuti wore only a loincloth of beaten bark.

When the first Belgian missionaries had discovered the Bambuti, they had been outraged by their nakedness and sent to Brussels for dresses and jackets and calico breeches, all in children’s sizes, which they forced them to wear. In the humidity of the forest these clothes were always damp and unhealthy and the pygmies for the first time had suffered from pneumonia and other respiratory complaints.

After the constraints of city life, it felt good to be half-naked and free. Kelly delighted in the rain upon her body. Her skin was clear and creamy white, almost luminous in the soft green light and her small taut breasts joggled elastically to her stride.

She moved swiftly, foraging as she went, hardly pausing as she gathered up a scattering of mushrooms with glossy domed heads and brilliant orange gills. These were the most delicious of the thirty-odd edible varieties. On the other hand there were fifty or more inedible varieties, a few of which were virulently toxic, dealing certain death within hours of a single mouthful.

The rain ceased but the trees still dripped.

Once she stopped and traced a slim vine down the trunk of a mahogany tree. She dug its pure white roots out of the rainsoaked leaf mould with a few strokes of her digging-stick. The roots were sweet as sugar cane and crunched scrumptiously as she chewed them. They were nutritious and filled her with energy.

The green shadows crowded closer as the day died away and the light faded. She looked for a place to camp. She did not want to be bothered with having to build a waterproof hut for herself, the hollow at the base of one of the giant tree-trunks would do admirably as a hearth for a single night. Her feet still rustled through the dead leaves, even though they were now dampened. Suddenly there was an explosive sound, a rush of air under pressure like a burst motor-car tyre, only ten feet or so ahead of her. It was one of the most terrifying sounds in the forest, worse than the bellow of an angry buffalo or the roaring grunt of one of the huge black boars. Kelly leaped involuntarily backwards, from a steady run she rose two feet in the air and landed as far as that back in her own tracks.

Her hand was shaking as she flicked the headband off her forehead and dropped the backpack to the leafy floor. In the same movement she dipped into one of the pockets and brought out her slingshot. Because of her slingshot the Bambuti had given her the name Baby Archer.

Though they mocked her merrily, they were really impressed by her skill with the weapon. Even old Sepoo had never been able to master it, though Kelly had tutored him repeatedly. In the end he had abandoned the effort with a haughty declaration that the bow and arrow were the only real weapons for a hunter, and that this silly little thing was only suitable for children and babies. So she had become Baby Archer, KaraKi.

With one quick motion she slipped the brace over her wrist and drew the heavy surgical elastic bands to her right ear. The missile was a steel ball-bearing.

On the forest floor ahead of her something moved. It looked like a pile of dead leaves or an Afghan rug patterned in the colours. of the forest, golds and ochres and soft mauves, striped and starred with diamonds and arrowheads of black that tricked the eye. Kelly knew that what seemed to be an amorphous mass was in reality a serpentine body, coiled upon itself, each coil as thick as her calf, but laced and camouflaged with cunning and seductive colour. The gaboon adder is, except for the mamba, Africa’s most venomous snake.

In the centre of this coiled pyramid of body, the head was drawn back like a nocked arrow upon the bend of the neck. The head was pig-snouted, flattened and scaled, the eyes were raised on horny protuberances, the colour and lucidity of precious topaz. The pupils were bright as jet and focused upon her. The whole head was bigger than both her fists held together. The feathery black tongue flicked from between the thin grinning lips.

Kelly held her aim for only a fraction of a second and then let fly. The silver ball-bearing hummed as it flew, glinting like a drop of mercury in the soft green light. It struck the gaboon adder on the point of its snout and split its skull with such force that jets of blood spurted from the nostrils and the grotesque head was whipped over backwards. With one last explosive hiss the adder writhed into its death throes, the great coils of its body sliding and twisting over themselves, convulsing and contorting, exposing the pale belly latticed with diagonal scales.

Kelly circled the adder cautiously, holding the pointed digging-stick at the ready. As the shattered head flopped clear she darted forward and pinned it to the earth. Holding it down with all her weight while the adder wound itself around the shaft, Kelly opened the blade of her claspknife with her small white teeth and with a single slash lopped off the snake’s head.

She left the headless body to finish its last reflexive throes and looked around her for a campsite. There was a natural cave in the base of one of the tree-trunks nearby, a perfect night shelter.

The Bambuti had never fathomed the art of making fire and the women carried a live coal with them when they moved from hunting-camp to hunting-camp, but Kelly flicked her plastic Bic lighter and within minutes she had a cheerful little fire burning at the base of the tree.

She opened her pack and set up her camp. Then, armed with the digging-stick and claspknife, she returned to the carcass of the gaboon adder. It weighed almost ten kilos, far too much for her own needs. Already the red serowe ants had found it. Nothing lay long on the forest floor before the scavengers arrived.

Kelly cut a thick section from the centre of the carcass, scraped the ants away, and skinned the portion with a few expert strokes. The meat was clean and white. She lifted two thick fillets from the bone and placed them over the coals of her fire on a skillet of green twigs.

She scattered a few leaves from one of the herby bushes over the fire and the smoke flavoured and perfumed the flesh. While it grilled, she strung the, orange-gilled mushrooms on another green twig. Like a kebab she placed it on the fire, turning it regularly.

The mushrooms had a richer fungus flavour than black truffles and the flesh of the adder tasted like a mixture of lobster and milk-fed chicken. The exertions of the day had sharpened her appetite and Kelly could not remember a more delicious meal. She washed it down with sweet water from the stream nearby.

During the night she was awakened by a loud snuffling and gulping close to where she lay in her tree-trunk shelter. She did not need to see to know what had disturbed her. The giant forest hog can weigh as much as 650 pounds and stand three feet high at the shoulder. These pigs, the largest and rarest in the world, are as dangerous as a lion when aroused.

But Kelly felt no fear as she listened to it gobbling the remains of the adder’s carcass. When it was finished the pig came snuffling around her camp, but she tossed a few twigs on the coals and when they flared up the pig grunted hoarsely and shambled away into the forest.

In the morning she bathed in the stream and combed out her hair and replaited it while it was still wet into a thick dark glistening braid that hung down her naked back. She ate the rest of last night’s adder steak and mushrooms cold and was on her way again as soon as it was light enough.

Although she had a compass in her pack, she navigated chiefly by the fungus plates and the serowe ant nests, which were attached only to the southern side of the tree-trunks, and by the flow and direction of the streams she crossed.

In the middle of the afternoon she-cut the well-defined trail she was searching for, and turned to follow it in a southwesterly direction. Within the hour she recognized a landmark, a natural bridge across one of the streams formed by the massive trunk of an ancient tree that had fallen across the water-course.

Sepoo had told her once that the tree bridge had been there since the beginning of time, which meant in his living memory. Time and numbers were not concrete concepts in the pygmy mind. They counted one, two, three, many. In the forest where the seasons made no difference to the rainfall or temperature, they regulated their lives on the phases of the moon, and moved from one camp to the next every full moon. Thus they never stayed long enough at one site to deplete the game or the fruits in the area, or to pollute the streams and sour the earth with their wastes.

The tree bridge was polished by generations of their tiny feet and Kelly inspected it minutely for fresh muddy tracks to judge how recently it had been used. She was disappointed and hurried on to the campsite nearby where she had hoped to find them. They were gone, but judging by the sign, this had been their last camp, they would have moved weeks previously at the full moon.

There were three or four other localities where they might be at this moment, the furthest almost a hundred miles away towards the heartland of the vast area which Sepoo’s tribe looked upon as their own. However, there was no telling which direction they had chosen. Like all tribal decisions, it would have been made at the last moment by a heated and lively debate in which all joined with equal voice.

Kelly smiled as she guessed how the argument had probably been resolved. She had seen it so often. One of the women, not necessarily the eldest or most senior, fed up with the silliness and obstinacy of the men, not least that of her own husband, would suddenly have picked up her bundle, adjusted her headband, bowed forward to balance the weight, and trotted off down the trail. The others, many of them still grumbling, would have followed her in a straggling line.

In the Bambuti community there were no chiefs or leaders. Every adult male or female of whatever age had equal voice and weight. Only in a few matters such as when and where to spread the hunting-nets, the younger members would probably defer to the experience of one of the famous older hunters, but only after suitable face-saving argument and discussion.

Kelly looked around the deserted campsite and was amused to see what the tribe had abandoned. There were a wooden pestle and mortar used for pounding manioc, a fine steel mattock, a disembowelled transistor radio and various other items obviously purloined from the villages along the road. She was certain that the Bambuti were the least material people on earth. Possessions meant almost nothing to them, and after the fun of stealing them faded, they swiftly lost interest in them. Too heavy to carry, they explained to Kelly when she asked. We can always borrow another one from the wazungu, if we need one. Their eyes danced at the prospect, and they screamed with laughter and slapped each other on the back.

The only possessions they treasured enough to keep and hand down to their children were the hunting-nets of woven bark. Each family had a hundredfoot length which they strung together with all the others to make the long communal net.

The game was shared, with all the usual vehement debate, according to a time-honoured system amongst all those who had participated in the hunt.

Living within the bounty of the forest they had no need to accumulate wealth. Their clothing of bark-cloth could be renewed with a few hours work, stripping and beating out the pith with a wooden mallet. Their weapons were disposable and renewable. The spear and the bow were whittled from hardwood and strung with bark fibre. The arrow and the spear were not even tipped with iron, but the points were simply hardened in the fire. The broad mongongo leaves roofed over their buts of arched saplings and a small fire gave them warmth and comfort in the night.

The forest god gave them food in abundance, what need had they of other possessions? They were the only people Kelly had ever known who were completely satisfied with their lot, and this accounted for a great deal of their appeal.

Kelly had been looking forward to being reunited with them and she was downcast at having missed them. Sitting on a log in the deserted camp that was so swiftly reverting to jungle, she considered her next move. It would be futile to try and guess in which direction they had gone, and foolhardy to try and follow them. Their tracks would long ago have been obliterated by rain and the passage of other forest creatures, and she knew only this relatively small area of the forest with any certainty.

There were twenty thousand square. miles out there that she had never seen and where she might lose herself for ever. She must give up trying to find them, and go on to her own base camp at Gondola, the place of the happy elephant. In time the Bambuti would find her there and she must be patient.

She sat a little longer and listened to the forest. It seemed at first to be a silent lonely place. Only when the ear had learned to hear beyond the quiet did one realise that the forest was always filled with living sound. The orchestra of the insects played an eternal background music, the hum and reverberation like softly stroked violins, the click and clatter like tiny castanets, the wails and whine and buzz like the wind instruments.

From the high upper galleries the birds called and sang and the monkeys crashed from branch to branch or [owed mournfully to the open sky, while on the leaf-strewn floor the dwarf antelope scuttled and scampered furtively. Now when Kelly listened more intently still, she thought she heard far away and very faintly the clear whistle from high in the trees that old Sepoo solemnly swore was the crested chameleon announcing that the hives were overflowing and the honey season had begun.

Kelly smiled and stood up. She knew as a biologist that chameleons could not whistle. And yet … She smiled again, settled her pack and stepped back on to the dim trail and went on towards Gondola. More and more frequently there were landmarks and signposts she recognized along the trail, the shape of certain tree-trunks and the juncture of trails, a sandbank at a river crossing and blazes on the tree-trunks which she had cut long ago with her machete. She was getting closer and closer to home.

At a turning in the trail she came suddenly upon a steaming pile of yellow dung, as high as her knee. She looked about eagerly for the elephant that had dropped it, but already it had, disappeared like a grey shadow into the trees. She wondered if it might be the Old Man with One Ear, a heavily tusked bull elephant that was often in the forest around Gondola.

Once the elephant. herds had roamed the open savannah, along the shores of the lake and in the Lada Enclave to the north of the forest. However, a century of ruthless persecution, first by the old Arab slavers and their minions armed with muzzle-loading black powder guns and then by the European sportsmen and ivory-hunters with their deadly rifled weapons had decimated the herds and driven the survivors into the fastness of the forest.

It gave Kelly a deep sense of satisfaction to know that, although she seldom saw them, she shared the forest with those great sagacious beasts, and that her home was named after one of them.

At the next stream she paused to bathe and comb her hair and don her Tshirt. She would be home in a few hours. She had just tied the thong in her braid and put away her comb when she chilled to a new sound, fierce and menacing. She came to her feet and seized her digging-stick. The sound came again, the hoarse sawing that roughened her nerves like sandpaper, and she felt her pulse accelerate and her breath come short.

It was unusual to hear a leopard call in daylight. The spotted cat was a creature of the night, but anything unusual in the forest was to be treated with caution. The leopard called again, a little closer, almost directly upstream on the bank of the river, and Kelly cocked her head to listen. There was something odd about this leopard. A suspicion flitted across her mind, and she waited, crouching, holding the sharpened digging-stick ready. There was a long silence.

All the forest was listening to the leopard, and then it called again, that terrible ripping sound. it was on the riverbank above her, not more than fifty feet from where she crouched. This time, listening to the call, Kelly’s suspicion became certainty.

With a blood-curdling scream of her own, she launched herself at the creature’s hiding-place brandishing her pointed stick. There was a sudden commotion amongst the lotus leaves on the bank and a small figure darted out and scampered away. Kelly took a full round-armed swing with her stick and caught it a resounding crack on bare brown buttocks.

There was an anguished bowl. “You wicked old man!” Kelly yelled, and swung again. “You tried to frighten me.” She missed as the pixie figure leaped over a bush ahead of her and took refuge behind it. “You cruel little devil.” She hounded him out of the bush, and he darted around the side, shrieking with mock terror and laughter. “I’ll beat your backside blue as a baboon’s,” Kelly threatened, her stick swishing, and they went twice round the bush, the small figure dancing and ducking just out of range.

They were both laughing now. “Sepoo, you little monster, I shall never forgive you!” Kelly choked on her laughter.

“I am not Sepoo. I am a leopard.” He staggered with mirth and she nearly caught him. He made a spurt to keep just out of range and squealed merrily. In the end she had to give up and lean, exhausted with laughter, on her stick. Sepoo fell down in the leaves and beat his own belly and hiccuped and rolled over and hugged his knees and laughed until the tears poured down his cheeks and ran into the wrinkles and were channelled back behind his ears.

“Kara-Ki.” He belched and hiccuped and laughed some more. “Kara-Ki, the fearless one, is frightened by old Sepoo!” It was a joke that he would tell at every campfire for the next dozen moons.

It took some time for Sepoo to become rational again. He had to laugh himself out. Kelly stood by and watched him affectionately, joining in some of his wilder outbursts of hilarity. Gradually these became less frequent, until at last they could converse normally.

They squatted side by side and talked. The Bambuti had long ago lost their own language, and had adopted those of the wazungu with whom they came in contact. They spoke a curious mixture of Swahili and Uhali and Hita with an accent and colourful idiom of their own.

With his bow and arrow Sepoo had shot a colobus monkey that morning. He had salted the beautiful black and white pelt to trade at the roadside. Now he built a fire and cooked the flesh for their lunch.

As they chatted and ate, she became aware of a strange mood in her companion. It was difficult for a pygmy to remain serious for long. His irrepressible sense of fun and his merry laughter could not be suppressed. They kept bubbling to the surface, and yet beneath it there was something new that- had not been there when last Kelly had been with him. She could not define exactly what had changed. There was an air of preoccupation in Sepoo’s mien, a worry, a sadness that dimmed the twinkle of his gaze and in repose made his mouth droop at the corners.

Kelly asked about the other members of the tribe, about Pambal his wife.

“She scolds like a monkey from the treetops, and she mutters like the thunder of the skies.” Sepoo grinned with love undimmed after forty years of marriage. “She is a cantankerous old woman, but when I tell her that I will get a pretty young wife she replies that any girl stupid enough to take me, can have me.” And he chortled at the joke and slapped his thigh, leaving monkey grease on the wrinkled skin.

“What of the others?” Kelly pressed him, seeking the cause of Sepoo’s unhappiness. “Was there dissension in the tribe? How is your brother Pirri?” That was always a possible cause of strife in the tribe. There was a sibling rivalry between the half-brothers. Sepoo and Pirri were the master hunters, the oldest male members of the small tribal unit. They should have been friends as well as brothers, but Pirri was not a typical Bambuti. His father had been a Hita.

Long ago, further back than any of the tribe could remember, their mother while still a virgin had wandered to the edge of the forest where a Hita hunting-party had caught her. She had been young and pretty as a pixie and the Hita had held her in their camp for two nights and taken it in turns to have sport with her. Perhaps they might have killed her carelessly when they tired of her, but before that happened she escaped.

Pirri was born from this experience and he was taller than any other men of the tribe and lighter in colour and finer-featured, with the mouth and thin nose of the Hita. He was different in character also, more aggressive and acquisitive than any Bambuti Kelly had ever met.

“Pirri is Pirri,” Sepoo replied evasively, but although the old antagonism was still evident, Kelly sensed that it was something other than his elder brother that worried him.

Although it was only a few hours journey to Gondola, the two of them talked the daylight away and evening found them still squatting at the cooking-fire with the threat of rain heavy in the air. Kelly used the last of the light to cut the thin supple wands of the selepe tree and, as Pamba had taught her, to plant them in a circle in the soft earth and bend them inwards and plait them into the framework of a traditional Bambuti hut. Meanwhile old Sepoo went off on his own. He returned just as she was completing the framework, and he was bowed under a burden of mongongo leaves with which to thatch the hut. The structure was complete within an hour of the work commencing. When the thunderstorm broke, they were huddled warm and dry in the tiny structure with a cheerful fire flickering, eating the last of the monkey steaks.

At last Kelly settled down on her inflated mattress in the darkness and Sepoo curled on the soft leaf mould close beside her, but neither of them slept immediately. Kelly was aware of the old man lying awake and she waited.

With darkness as a cover for his unhappiness Sepoo whispered at last, “Are you awake, Kara-Ki?”

“I am listening, old father,” she whispered back, and he sighed. It was a sound so different from his usual merry chuckles.

“Kara-Ki, the Mother and Father are angry. I have never known them so angry,” Sepoo said, and she knew that he meant the god of the Bambuti, the twin godhead of the living forest, male and female in one. Kelly was silent for a while in deference to the seriousness of this statement.

“That is a grave matter,” she replied at last. “What has made them angry?”

“They have been wounded,” Sepoo said softly. “The rivers flow red with their blood.”

This was a startling concept, and Kelly was silent again as she tried to visualize what Sepoo meant. How could the rivers run with the blood of the forest? she wondered. She was finally forced to ask, “I do not understand, old father. What are you telling me?”

“It is beyond my humble words to describe,” Sepoo whispered. “There has been a terrible sacrilege and the Mother and Father are in pain. Perhaps the Molimo will come.”

Kelly had been in camp with the Bambuti only once during the Molimo visitation. The women were excluded, and Kelly had remained in the huts with Pamba and the other women when the Molimo came, but she had heard its voice roaring like a bull buffalo and trumpeting like an enraged elephant as it rampaged through the forest in the night. In the morning Kelly had asked Sepoo, “What creature is the Molimo?”

“The Molimo is the Molimo,” he had replied enigmatically. “It is the creature of the forest. It is the voice of the Mother and the Father.” Now Sepoo suggested that the Molimo might come again, and Kelly shivered with a little superstitious thrill. This time she would not remain in the huts with the women, she promised herself. This time she would find out more about this fabulous creature. For the moment, however, she put it out of her mind and, instead, concerned herself with the sacrilege that had been committed somewhere deep in the forest.

“Sepoo,” she whispered. “If you cannot tell me about this terrible thing, will you show me? Will you take me and show me the rivers that run with the blood of the gods?”

Sepoo snuffled in the darkness and hawked to clear his throat and spat into the coals of the fire. Then he grunted, “Very well, Kara-Ki. I will show you. In the morning, before we reach Gondola we will go out of our way and I will show you the rivers that bleed.”

In the morning Sepoo was full of high spirits again, almost as though their conversation in the night had never taken place. Kelly gave him the present which she had brought for him, a Swiss army knife. Sepoo was enchanted with all the blades and implements and tools that folded out of the red plastic handle, and promptly cut himself on one of them. He cackled with laughter and sucked his thumb, then held it out to Kelly as proof of the marvelous sharpness of the little blade.

Kelly knew he would probably lose the knife within a week, or give it away to someone else in the tribe on an impulse, as he had done with all the other gifts she had given him. But for the moment his joy was childlike and complete. “Now you must show me the bleeding rivers,” she reminded him as she adjusted the headband of her pack, and for a moment his eyes were sad again.

Then he grinned and pirouetted. “Come along, Kara-Ki. Let us see if you still move in the forest like one of the real people.” Soon they left the broad trail, and Sepoo led her swiftly through the secret unmarked ways. He danced ahead of her like a sprite and the foliage closed behind him, leaving no trace of his passing.

Where Sepoo moved upright, Kelly was forced to stoop beneath the branches, and at times she lost sight of him. No wonder the old Egyptians believed the Bambuti had the power of invisibility, Kelly thought, as she extended herself to keep up with him.

If Sepoo had moved silently she might have lost him, but like all the pygmies he sang and laughed and chattered to her and the forest as he went. His voice ahead guided her, and warned the dangerous forest creatures of his approach so that there would be no confrontation.

She knew that he was moving at his best pace, to test and tease her, and she was determined not to fall too far behind. She called replies back to him and joined in the chorus of the praise songs and when he stepped out on the bank of the river many hours later she was only seconds behind him.

He grinned at her until his eyes disappeared in the web, of wrinkles and shook his head in reluctant approval, but Kelly was not interested in his approbation. She was gazing at the river. This was one of the tributaries of the Ubomo that had its source high up in the Mountains of the Moon, at the foot of one of the glaciers above fifteen thousand feet, the altitude where the permanent snowline stood.

This river found its way down through lakes and waterfalls, fed by the mighty rains that lashed this wettest of all mountain ranges, down through the treeless moors and heather, down through the forest of giant prehistoric ferns, until at last it entered the dense bamboo thickets which were the domain of gorilla and spiral-horned bongo antelope. From there it fell again another three thousand feet through rugged foothills until it reached its true rain forests with their galleried canopies of gigantic hardwoods.

The Bambuti called this river Tetwa, after the silver catfish that abounded in its sweet clear waters and shoaled on the yellow sandbanks. The Bambuti women shed even their tiny loin-cloths when they went into the waters of the Tetwa to catch the barbeled catfish. Each of them armed with a fish basket of woven reeds and bark, they surrounded the shoal and splashed and shrieked with excitement as they flipped the struggling slippery silver fish from the sparkling water.

That had been before the river began to bleed. Now Kelly stared at it in horror. The river was fifty yards wide and the forest grew right to the edge and formed a canopy that almost, but not quite, met overhead. There was a narrow irregular gleam of sky high above the middle of the river-course. From bank to bank the river ran red, not the bright red of heart blood, but a darker browner hue. The sullied waters seemed almost viscous. They had lost their sparkle and were heavy and dull, running thick and slow as used engine oil.

The sand spits were red also, coated with a deep layer of thick mud. The carcasses of the catfish were strewn on the red banks, thick as autumn leaves, piled upon each other in their multitudes. Their skulls were eyeless and the stench of their putrefying flesh was oppressive in the humid air below the forest canopy. “What has done this, Sepoo?” Kelly whispered, but he shrugged and busied himself rolling a pinch of coarse black native tobacco in a leaf. While Kelly went down the bank, he lit his primitive cheroot from the live coal he carried wrapped in a pouch of green leaves around his neck. He puffed great clouds of blue smoke, squeezing his eyes tightly shut with pleasure.

As Kelly stepped out on to the sand spit, she sank almost knee-deep into the mud. She scooped up a handful of it and rubbed it between her fingers. It was slick as grease, fine as potter’s clay, and it stained her skin a dark sang de boeuf. She tried to wash it off, but the colour was fast and her fingers were red as those of an assassin. She lifted a handful of mud to her nose and sniffed it. It had no alien smell.

She waded back to the bank and confronted Sepoo. “What has done this, old father? What has happened?”

He sucked on his cheroot, then coughed and giggled nervously, avoiding her gaze. “Come on, Sepoo, tell me.”

“I do not know, Kara-Ki.”

“Why not? Did you not go upstream to find out?” Sepoo, examined the burning end of his green-leaf cheroot with great interest. “Why not?” Kelly insisted.

“I was afraid, Kara-Ki,” he mumbled, and Kelly suddenly realised that for the Bambuti this was some supernatural occurrence. They would not follow the choked rivers upstream for fear of what they might find.

“How many rivers are like this?” Kelly demanded.

“Many, many, Sepoo” muttered, meaning more than four.

“Name them for me,” she insisted, and he reeled off the names of all the rivers she had ever visited in the region and some that she had only heard of. It seemed then that almost the entire drainage area of the Ubomo was affected. This was not some isolated local disturbance, but a large-scale disaster that threatened not only the Bambuti hunting areas but the sacred heartland of the forest as well. “We must travel upstream,” Kelly said with finality, and Sepoo, looked as though he might burst into tears.

“They are waiting for you at Gondola,” he squeaked, but Kelly did not make the mistake of beginning an argument. She had learned from the women of the tribe, from old Pamba in particular. She lifted her pack on to her back, adjusted the headband and started up the bank. For two hundred yards she was alone, and her spirits started to sink. The forest area ahead was completely unknown to her, and it would be folly to continue on her own if Sepoo could not be induced to accompany her.

Then she heard Sepoo’s voice close behind her, protesting loudly that he would not take another step further. Kelly grinned with relief and quickened her pace. For another twenty minutes Sepoo trailed along behind her, swearing that he was on the point of turning back and abandoning her, his tone becoming more and more plaintive as he realised that Kelly was not going to give in. Then quite suddenly he chuckled and began to sing. The effort of remaining miserable was too much for him to sustain.

Kelly shouted a jibe over her shoulder and joined in the next refrain of the song. Sepoo slipped past her and took the lead. For the next two days they followed the Tetwa River and with every mile its plight was more pitiful. The red clay clogged it more deeply.

The waters were almost pure mud, thick as oatmeal porridge and there were dead roots and loose vegetation mixed into it already beginning to bubble with the gas of decay; the stink of it mingled with that of dead birds and small animals and rotting fish that had been trapped and suffocated by the mud. The carcasses were strewn upon the red banks or floated with balloon bellies upon the sullied waters.

Late in the afternoon of the second day they reached the far boundary of Sepoo’s tribal hunting-grounds. There was no signpost or other indication to mark the line but Sepoo paused on the bank of the Tetwa, unstrung his bow and reversed his arrows in the rolled bark quiver on his shoulder, as a sign to the Mother and the Father of the forest that he would respect the sacred place and kill no creature, cut no branch nor light a fire within these deep forest preserves.

Then he sang a pygmy song to placate the forest, and to ask permission to enter its deep and secret place. “Oh, beloved mother of all the tribe, You gave us first suck at your breast And cradled us in the darkness. Oh respected father, of our fathers You made us strong You taught us the ways of the forest And gave us your creatures as food. We honour you, we praise you…”

Kelly stood a little aside and watched him. It seemed presumptuous for her to join in the words, so she was silent. In her book, The People of the Tall Trees, she had examined in detail the tradition of the forest heartland and discussed the wisdom of the Bambuti law. The heartland was the reservoir of forest life which spilled over into the hunting preserves, renewing and sustaining them.

It was also the buffer zone which separated each of the tribes from its neighbours, and obviated friction and territorial dispute between them. This was only another example of the wisdom of the system that the Bambuti had evolved to regulate and manage their existence.

So, Kelly and Sepoo camped that night on the threshold of the sacred heartland. During the night it rained, which Sepoo proclaimed was a definite sign from the forest deities that they were amenable to the two of them continuing their journey upstream. Kelly smiled in the darkness. It rained, on average three hundred nights a year in the Ubomo basin, and if it had not done so tonight Sepoo would probably have taken that as even more eloquent assent from the Mother and Father.

They resumed the journey at dawn. When one of the striped forest duiker trotted out of the undergrowth ahead of them and stood to regard them trustingly from a distance of five paces, Sepoo reached instinctively for his bow and then controlled himself with such an effort that he shook as though he were in malarial ague. The flesh of this little antelope was tender and succulent and sweet.

“Go!” Sepoo yelled at it angrily. “Away with you! Do not mock me! Do not tempt me! I am firm against your wiles.”

The duiker slipped off the path and Sepoo turned to Kelly. “Bear witness for me, Kara-Ki. I did not trespass. That creature was sent by the Mother and Father to test me. No natural duiker would be so stupid as to stand so close. I was strong, was I not, Kara-Ki?” he demanded piteously, and Kelly squeezed his muscular shoulder.

“I am proud of you, old father. The gods love you.”

They went on.

In the middle of that third afternoon Kelly paused suddenly in mid-stride and cocked her head to a sound she had never heard in the forest, before. It was still faint and intermittent, blanketed by the trees, but as she went on it became clearer and stronger with each mile until it resembled in Kelly’s imagination the growling of lions on the kill, a terrible savage and feral sound that filled her with despair.

Now the River Tetwa no longer flowed, it was dammed with branches and debris, so that in places it had broken its banks and flooded the forest floor and they were forced to wade waist-deep through the stinking swamp.

Then abruptly, with a shock of disclosure, the forest ended and they were standing in sunlight where sunlight had not penetrated for a million years. Ahead of them was such a sight as Kelly could not have conceived in her most hideous nightmares. She gazed upon it until night fell and mercifully hid it from her and then she turned away and went back.

In the night she came awake to find herself weeping aloud and Sepoo’s hand stroking her arm to comfort her.

The return journey down the dying river was slower, as though she were burdened by her sadness and Sepoo shortened his stride to match her. Five days later, Kelly and Sepoo reached Gondola.

Chapter 24

Gondola was a site unique in this part of the forest. It was a glade of yellow elephant grass less than a hundred acres in extent. At the south end it rose to meet a line of forest-clad hills. For part of the day the tall trees threw a shadow across the clearing, keeping it cooler than if it had been exposed to the full glare of the tropical sun. Two small streams bounded this wedge of open ground, while the slope and elevation disclosed a sweeping vista over the treetops towards the northwest. It was one of the few vantage points in the Ubomo basin from which the view was not obscured by the great forest trees. The cool air in the open glade was less humid than that of the deep forest.

Kelly paused at the edge of the forest, as she always did, and looked out at the mountain peaks a hundred miles away. Usually the Mountains of the Moon were bidden in their own perpetual clouds. This morning, as if to welcome her home, they had drawn aside the veil and stood clear in all their glistening splendour. The glaciated massif of Mount Stanley was forced upwards between the faults of the Great Rift Valley to a height of almost seventeen thousand feet. It was pure icewhite and achingly beautiful.

She turned away from it reluctantly and looked across the clearing. There was her homestead and laboratory, an ambitious building of log, clay plaster and thatch which had taken her almost three years to build, with a little help from her friends.

The gardens on the lower slopes were irrigated from the streams and fenced in to protect them from the forest creatures. There were no flowerbeds. The garden was not ornamental but provided the small community of Gondola with a large part of its sustenance.

As they left the forest, some of the women working in the garden spotted them and ran to greet Kelly, shrieking and laughing with delight. Some were Bambuti, but most were Uhah women in their traditional colourful long skirts. They surrounded her and escorted her up to the homestead.

The commotion brought a solitary figure out of the laboratory on to the wide verandah. He was an old man with hair as silver as the snows on Mount Stanley that faced him from a hundred miles away. He was dressed in a crisp blue safari suit and sandals. He shaded his eyes and recognized her and smiled. His teeth were still white and perfect in his dark intelligent face.

“Kelly.” He held out both hands to her as she came up on to the verandah, and she ran to meet him. “Kelly,” he repeated, as he took her hands. “I was beginning to worry about you. I expected you days ago. It’s good to see you.”

“It’s good to see you also, Mr. President.”

“Come now, my child. I am no longer that, at least not in Ephrem Taffari’s view, and when did we last stand on ceremony, you and I?”

“Victor,” she corrected herself. “I have missed you so, and I have so much to tell you. I don’t know where to begin.”

“Later.” He shook his handsome grizzled head and embraced her. She knew that he was over seventy years old but she could feel that his body had the strength and vigour of a man half that age. “First let me show you how well I have taken care of your work during your absence. I should have remained a scientist rather than becoming a politician,” he said. He took her hand and drew her into the laboratory, and immediately they were engrossed in technical discussion.

President Victor Omeru had studied in London as a young man. He had returned to Ubomo with a Master’s degree in electrical engineering and for a short time had been employed in the colonial administration until he had resigned to lead the movement towards independence. Yet he had always retained his interest in the sciences and his learning and skills had always impressed Kelly.

When he had been overthrown in Ephrem Taffari’s bloody coup, he had fled into the forest with a handful of loyal followers and sought sanctuary, with Kelly Kinnear at Gondola.

In the ten or so months since then, the settlement in the glade had become the headquarters of the Ubomo resistance movement against Taffari’s tyranny, and Kelly had become one of his most trusted agents. When he was not receiving visitors from outside the forest and planning the counter-revolution, he made himself Kelly’s assistant and in a very short time had become invaluable to her.

For an hour the two of them were happily engrossed with slides and retorts and cages of laboratory rats. It was almost as though they were deliberately putting off the moment when they must discuss urgent and ugly reality.

Kelly’s research was handicapped by inadequate equipment and shortage of expendable supplies. All of this had to be portered into Gondola, and since Kelly’s field grant had been rescinded and Victor Omeru deposed, she had been even more restricted. Nevertheless, they had made some exciting discoveries. In particular they had been able to isolate an anti-malarial substance in the sap of the selepe tree. The selepe was a common plant of the forest that the pygmies used for the dual purposes of building their huts and treating fever.

Malaria was a resurgent menace in Africa where more and more frequently there appeared strains resistant to the synthetic prophylactics. Soon malaria might rank, once again, as the greatest killer on the continent, apart from AIDS. It seemed ironic that both these scourges should have their origin in the cradle of man himself, in the Great Rift Valley of East Africa, where man had stood upright and taken his first uncertain footsteps into glory and infamy. Was it not possible that the ultimate cure for both these diseases might yet come from this same area of the globe? They both reasserted that hope, as they had done a thousand times before.

In addition to the malarial cure, there were the other possibilities that Kelly and Victor Omeru were considering. The one disease to which the Bambuti were susceptible was cancer of the pancreas. This was caused by some factor of their diet or environment in the forest. The women of the tribe used an infusion of the root of a vine that contained a bitter milky sap to treat the disease, and Kelly had witnessed some seemingly miraculous cures. She and Victor Omeru had isolated an alkaloid from the sap which they hoped was the active agent in the cure, and they were testing it with encouraging results.

They were using the same alkaloid to treat three of the Uhali men in camp who were suffering from AIDS. It was too soon to be certain, but once again the results were most encouraging and exciting. Now they discussed them avidly. This excitement and the pleasure of reunion lasted them through the frugal lunch of salads that they shared on the verandah of the thatched bungalow.

Kelly revelled in the joy of conversing with such a cultured and erudite man. Victor Omeru’s presence had transformed her lonely isolated life at Gondola. She loved her Bambuti friends, but they came and went without warning, and though their simple happy ways were always a joy, they were no substitute for the stimulation of a superior educated mind.

Victor Omeru was a man she could respect and admire and love without reservation. As far as Kelly was concerned, he was without vice, overflowing with humanity and compassion for his fellow men, and at the same time with a deep and abiding respect and concern for the world in which they lived and the other creatures that shared it with them.

She saw in him the true patriot, completely devoted to his little nation. He was, in addition, the only African Kelly had ever met who was above tribalism. He had spent his entire political life trying to appease and ameliorate the terrible curse that was, in both their views, the single most tragic fact of the African reality. He should have been an example to the rest of the continent, and to his peers in the high councils of the Organisation of African Unity.

When, almost single-handed, he had obtained independence from the colonial administration, the preponderance of his fellow Uhah tribesmen had swept him into the presidential office and overturned at a single stroke the centuries of brutal domination by the proud Hita aristocracy.

The greatest crisis of his presidency had come within the very first days of independence. The Uhali tribe had turned upon the Hita in a savage orgy of retribution. In five terrible days, over twenty thousand Hita had perished. The mob had torched their manyattas. Those Hita who survived the flames were hacked to death with hoes and machetes. The tools with which the enslaved Uhali had tilled the fields and hewn the firewood for their masters were turned upon them.

The proud Hita women, tall and stately and beautiful, were stripped of their traditional ankle-length robes, and the elaborately plaited locks in which they gloried were hacked roughly from their heads. They were herded naked before the jeering Ubali mob, and pelted with excrement.

Some of the women were lifted struggling and naked and impaled upon the poles of the manyattas outer stockade. The younger women and girls had been yoked between two of their own oxen, secured with rawhide thongs by each ankle. Then the mob had urged the oxen forward and the girls had been torn apart.

Kelly had not been there to witness these atrocities. She had been a schoolgirl in England at the time, but the legend had become history of how Victor Omeru had gone out to plead with the mob and physically to interpose himself between them and their Hita victims. With the sheer force of his personality he had brought the slaughter to an end, and virtually saved the Hita tribe from genocide and extinction.

Nevertheless, thousands of Hita perished and fifty thousand fled for sanctuary into the neighbouring countries of Uganda and Zaire.

It had taken a major exercise of statesmanship over decades of wise government for Victor Omeru to cool the terrible tribal animosities of his people, to persuade the exiled Hita to return to Ubomo, to restore their herds and their grazing lands to them, and to bring their young men in from the traditional pastoral ways to education and advancement in the modern Ubomo nation he was trying to build.

In recompense for those terrible first days of independence Victor had always thereafter erred on the side of leniency towards the Hita tribe. To demonstrate his trust and faith in them he allowed them gradually to take control of Ubomo’s little army and police force. Ephrem Taffari himself had travelled abroad to complete his education on a special scholarship provided by Victor Omeru out of his own meagre presidential salary.

Victor Omeru was paying for that generosity now. Once again the Uhali tribe groaned beneath the Hita tyranny. As so often happens in Africa, the cycle of oppression and brutality had run its full course, but even now as they sat on the wide verandah of the bungalow, immersed in discussion, Kelly could still detect the suffering and concern for his nation and all his people in Victor Omeru’s dark eyes.

It seemed cruel to add to his misery but she could no longer keep it from him. Victor, there is something awful happening up there, in the rivers of the forest, in the sacred Bambuti heartland. Something so terrible that I hardly know how to describe it to you. He listened without interruption, but when she had finished he said quietly, Taffari is killing our people and our land. The vultures smell death in the air and they are gathering, but we will stop them. Kelly had never seen him so angry before. His face was hard and his eyes were dark and terrible.

They are powerful, rich and powerful. There is no power to match that of honest men and a just cause, he replied, and his strength and determination were contagious. Kelly felt her despair slough away, leaving her feeling renewed and confident.

“Yes,” she whispered. “We will find a way to stop them. For the sake of this land we must find a way.”

Chapter 25

Beautiful. The name was appropriate, Tug Harrison conceded, as the Rolls Royce Silver Spirit left the littoral plain and climbed up into the green mountains. The road swept around a shoulder of one of the peaks and for a moment Tug gazed out across the broad Formosa Straits and fancied he saw the loom of mainland China lurking like a dragon a, hundred and more miles out there in the blue distance. Then the road turned again and they were back into the forests of cypress and cedar.

They were four thousand feet above the humid tropical plain and the bustle of Taipei, one of the busiest and most affluent cities in Asia. The air up here was sweet and cool; there was no need of the Rolls’s superb air-conditioning system.

Tug felt relaxed and clear-headed. It was one of the joys of having your own jet aircraft, he smiled. The Gulfstream flew when he was ready, wherever he wanted to go. There was none of the aggravation of large airports and throngs of the great unwashed multitude. No miles of corridors to traverse nor luggage carousels at which to play the guessing game of will it come or won’t it, no surly customs officials and porters and taxi-drivers.

Tug had taken it in easy stages from London. Abu Dhabi, Bahrain, Brunei, Hong Kong, he had spent a day or two in each of those centres in all of which he had major games in play.

The stop-over in Hong Kong had been particularly worthwhile. The richest and more prudent of the Hong Kong businessmen were intent on moving out their assets and relocating ahead of the termination of the treaty and the reversion of the territory to mainland China. In the permanent suite which he kept at the Peninsula Hotel, Tug had signed two agreements which should net him ten million pounds over the next few years. When his chief pilot touched down at Taipei airport, ground control directed Tug’s Gulfstream to taxi to a discreet parking billet behind the Cathay Pacific hangars and the Rolls-Royce was waiting on the tarmac, with the youngest son of the Ning family to meet him.

Customs and Immigration, in the shape of two uniformed officials, were ushered aboard, bobbing and smiling, by his host. They stamped Tug’s red diplomatic passport and placed the in bond seals on his private bar and departed, all within five minutes.

In the meantime Tug’s matched set of Louis Vuitton luggage was being transferred to the boot of the Rolls by a team of white-jacketed and gloved servants. Within fifteen minutes of touchdown, the Rolls whisked him out of the airport gates.

Tug felt so good that he was inclined to philosophise. He compared other journeys he had made when he was young and poor and struggling. On foot and bicycle and native bus he had crossed and recrossed the African continent. He remembered his first motor vehicle, a Ford V-8 truck with front mudguards like elephant ears, smooth tyres that never ran fifty miles without puncturing, and an engine held together with baling wire and hope. He had been immensely proud of it at the time.

Even his first air flight on one of the old Sunderland flying boats that once plied the African continent, landing to refuel on the Zambezi, the great lakes, and finally the Nile itself, had taken ten days to reach London.

Truly to appreciate luxury it is necessary to have withstood severe hardship, Tug believed. The early days had been tough. He had revelled in each one of them but, hell, the touch of silk against his skin and the Rolls upholstery under his backside felt wonderful and he was looking forward to the negotiations that lay ahead. They would be hard and without quarter, but that was the way he liked it.

He loved the cut and thrust of the bargaining table. He enjoyed changing his style to match each adversary he faced. He could flash the cutlass or palm the stiletto as the occasion warranted. When called for he could shout and bang the table and curse with the same vigour as an Australian opal miner or a Texan rough-neck on an oil rig, or he could smile and whisper honeyed hemlock as skilfully as could the man he was now going to meet. Yes, he loved every moment of it. It was what kept him young.

He smiled genially and turned to discuss oriental netsukes and ceramics with the young man who sat beside him on the pale green leather back seat of the Rolls. “Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek brought the cream of China’s art treasures with him from the mainland,” Ning Cheng Gong was saying, and Tug nodded.

“All civilised men must be thankful for that,” he agreed. “If he had not done so, they would have been destroyed in Mao’s cultural revolution.”

As they chatted, Tug was studying his host’s youngest son. Even though he had not yet shown himself to be a force in the Ning financial dynasty, and up until now had been overshadowed by his elder half-brothers, Tug had a full dossier on Cheng.

There was some indication that Cheng, even as the youngest son, was his father’s favourite, the child of his old age, by his third wife, a beautiful English girl. As often happens, the admixture of oriental and occidental blood seemed to have brought out the good traits of both parents. It seemed that Ning Cheng Gong had bred true, for he was clever, deviously ruthless, and lucky. Tug Harrison never discounted the element of luck. Some men had it and others, no matter how clever, did not.

It seemed that old Ning Heng H’Sui was bringing him on carefully, like a fine thoroughbred colt, preparing him for his first major race with patience and diligence. He had given Cheng all the advantages, without allowing him to grow up soft.

After his master’s degree at Chiang Kai-shek University, Ning Cheng Gong had gone straight into the Taiwanese army for national service. His father had made no effort to beat the draft on his behalf. Tug supposed that it was part of the toughening process.

Tug Harrison had a copy of the young man’s military service record. He had done well, very well, and had ended his call-up with the rank of captain and a job on the general staff. Of course, the commander of the Taiwanese army was a personal friend of Ning Heng H’Sui, but his selection would not have been entirely based on preferment rather than ability. There had been only one small shadow on Cheng’s service record. A civilian complaint had been brought against Captain Ning, and investigated by the military police. It involved the death of a young girl in a Taipei brothel. The full report of the investigating officer had been carefully removed from Ning’s service record and only the recommendation that there was no substance in the accusation remained, together with an endorsement by the Attorney-General that no charges be pursued.

Once again Tug Harrison scented the intervention of the Ning patriarch in this dossier. It increased Tug’s respect for the power and influence of the family.

At the end of his national service, Ning Cheng Gong had gone into the Taiwanese diplomatic corps. Perhaps old Heng had not yet considered him ready to join the Lucky Dragon.

Once again young Cheng’s progress had been meteoric, and he had been given an ambassadorship within four years, admittedly it was to a small and insignificant little African country, but by all accounts he had done well. Once again Tug had been able to obtain a copy of his service record from the Taiwanese foreign office. It had cost him ten thousand pounds sterling in bribes, but Tug considered it a bargain.

In this dossier he had again found some evidence of Cheng’s unusual erotic tastes. The body of a young black girl had been fished out of the Zambezi river only partially devoured by crocodiles. There was certain mutilation of the corpse’s genital and mammary areas which had led the police to pursue further enquiries. They found that at the time the Chinese ambassador had been staying at a game lodge on the Zambezi south bank, near the girl’s village. The missing girl had been seen entering Cheng’s bungalow late on the evening before she disappeared. She had not been seen again alive. This was as far as the enquiry had been allowed to run, before being quashed by a directive from the president’s office.

Now the ambassador’s term of office had run its course. He had resigned from the diplomatic service and returned to Taiwan to take up a position with the Lucky Dragon company, at last.

His father had given him the equivalent rank of vice-president, and Tug Harrison found him interesting. Not only was he clever but he was goodlooking to the Western eye. His mother’s influence was discernible in his features; although his hair was jet black there were no epicanthic folds in his upper eyelids. His English was perfect. If Tug closed his eyes he could imagine he was conversing with a young upper-class Englishman. He was suave and urbane, with just the slightest perceptible streak of ruthlessness and cruelty in him. Yes, Tug decided, he was a young man with prospects. His father could be proud of him.

Tug felt the familiar stab of regret as he thought of his own feckless offspring, weaklings and wastrels all three. He could only console himself by believing that the fault must lie in their maternal line. They were the sons of three different women’all of whom he had chosen for their physical attractiveness. When you are young there is no reasoning with an erect penis, he shook his head regretfully, it seemed to inhibit the flow of the blood to the brain. He had married four women whom he would not have employed as, secretaries, and three of them had given him sons in their mirror image, beautiful and lazy and irresponsible.

Tug frowned at this shadow across his sunny mood. Most men give more thought and care to the breeding of their dogs and horses than they do to selecting a dam for their own children. Fatherhood was the only endeavour in his entire life in which Tug Harrison had failed dismally.

“I am looking forward to viewing your father’s collection of ivory,” Tug told Cheng, putting unprofitable regret out of his mind.

“My father will be pleased to show it to you,” Cheng smiled. “It is his chief delight, after the Lucky Dragon, of course.” As he said it, the Rolls sailed around another hairpin and directly ahead stood the gates to the Ning estate. Tug had seen a photograph of them, but still he was not prepared for the actuality. They reminded him instantly of those gigantic garish sculptures in the Tiger Balm Gardens in Hong Kong.

The Lucky Dragon entwined itself around the gateway like a prehistoric monster, glittering with emerald-green ceramic tiles and gold leaf. Its talons were hooked and raised, its wings were spread fifty feet wide, its eyes glowed like live coals and its crocodile jaws were agape and lined with jagged fangs.

“My goodness!” said Tug mildly, and Cheng laughed lightly and deprecatingly.

“My father’s little whimsy,” he explained. “The teeth are real ivory and the eyes are a pair of cabochon spinel-rubies from Sri Lanka. They weigh together a little over five kilos. They are unique and are valued at over a million dollars, hence the armed guards.”

The two guards came to attention as the Rolls slid through the gateway. They were dressed in paramilitary uniform with blancoed webbing and burnished stainless helmets similar to those worn by the honour guard at Chiang Kai-shek’s tomb in Taipei. They carried automatic weapons and Tug Harrison guessed that they had other duties apart from guarding the Lucky Dragon’s jewelled eyes. Tug had heard that young Cheng, using his military experience, had personally recruited these guards from the ranks of the Taiwanese marines, one of the elite regiments of the world, to protect his father.

Old Ning Heng H’Sui had left more than a few widows and orphans behind him as he hacked his way to power. Rumour had it that he had once been head of one of Hong Kong’s powerful secret societies, and that he still maintained close ties with the Tongs. He might now be an art collector and artist and poet, but there were many who remembered the old days and would dearly love to pay off a few ancient scores.

Tug felt no repugnance at all for the old man’s personal history, just as he felt none for the youngest son’s sexual foibles. Tug had a few secrets of his own, and knew the whereabouts of more than one unmarked grave in the African wilderness. He had lived his whole life in the company of, and in competition with, ruthless predatory men. He made no moral judgements. He accepted mankind as he found it, and looked instead for the profit to be made from its strengths or weaknesses.

Cheng returned the salute of the silver-helmeted guards with a nod and the Rolls passed beneath the Lucky Dragon’s arched belly and entered a fantasy land of gardens and lakes, pagodas and arched Chinese bridges. Shoals of jewel-coloured khoi glided beneath the lake waters, and flocks of snow-white pigeons swirled about the eaves of the pagodas.

The lawns were green and smooth as a silk kimono stretched over a pretty girl’s thigh. The rhododendrons were in full bloom. it was peaceful and lovely, in contrast to the tasteless dragon sculpture at the main gateway.

The Rolls drew up at the entrance to a building that reminded Tug of a miniature of the Winter Palace in Peking. The fountains that surrounded it shot a sparkling lacework of foam high into the cool mountain air. A cortege of white-jacketed servants waited on each side of the entrance to welcome Tug, and they bowed deeply as Cheng led him into the vaulted interior.

The panelled walls had been slid aside so that the gardens seemed part of the decor. The furnishings were simple and exquisite. The floors of red cedar glowed and the cigar-box smell of the woodwork perfumed the air. A few ceramic treasures which would have graced any museum collection were arranged to full effect, and a single flower arrangement of cherry blossom was the centre-piece of the room.

“One of the maids will make tea for you, Sir Peter,” Cheng told him, “while the other draws your bath and unpacks your suitcases. Then you will want to rest for an hour. My father invites you to take lunch with him at twelve-thirty. I will return a few minutes before that time to take you up to the main house.”

Tug realised that this was simply one of the guest houses, but he showed no sign of being impressed and Cheng went on, “Of course, all the servants are at your command. If there is anything you should want,” Cheng placed a slight emphasis on the sentence, that turned it into a leer, “you need only ask one of the servants. You are my father’s honoured guest. He would he deeply humiliated if you were to lack anything at all.”

“You and your father are too kind.” Tug returned the young man’s bow. There would have been a time, not too many years ago when Tug would have availed himself of the discreet invitation, but now he was thankful that the irrational and uncontrollable element of sexuality had faded from his existence. So much of his youthful time and energy had been spent in sexual pursuit. At the end he had very little to show for all the effort, apart from three useless sons and a couple of million a year in alimony payments. No, he was glad it was over. His existence now was calmer and saner. Youth was an over-rated period in a man’s life, filled with so much confusion and anxiety and unhappiness.

The two Chinese girls who helped him down the tiled steps into the steaming perfumed bath wore only brief white kilts and he could look upon their pale creamy skins and cherryblossom nipples with a connoisseur’s appreciation and only a brief sweet nostalgic stirring of the loins. “No,” he reiterated as he sank into the water, “I’m glad I’m not young any more.” Tug spurned the embroidered robes that the girls had laid out for him and chose instead one of his dark Savile Row suits with a Turnbull and Asser shirt and MCC tie that the valet had steamed.

“Damned fancy dress will make me feel like a clown. Old Heng knows it; that’s why he tried to get me into it.” Young Cheng was waiting for him at the appointed time. His eyes flicked over Tug’s suit but his expression never changed. “Didn’t fall for it, did I?” Tug thought smugly. “I wasn’t born yesterday, was I?”

They strolled up the covered pathway, pausing to admire the lotus flowers and water-lilies and the rhododendrons until they turned through an arched gateway festooned with drapes of blue wistaria and abruptly the main house was disclosed.

It was stunning, a creation of unblemished white marble and ceramic rooftiles in peaks and gables, modern and yet timelessly classical. Tug did not miss a stride, and sensed the young man’s disappointment beside him. He had expected Tug, like all other visitors, to gawk.

The patriarch, Ning Heng H’Sui, was very old, older than Tug by ten years or more. His skin was dried and folded like that of the unwrapped mummy of Rameses II in the Cairo Museum, and spotted with the foxing of age. On his left cheek grew a mole the size and colour of a ripe mulberry. It is a common Chinese superstition that the hairs growing from a facial mole bring good luck, and Heng H’Sui had never shaved his. A bunch of hair sprouted from the little purple cauliflower and hung down in a silver tassel below his chin above the simple tunic of cream-coloured raw silk he wore.

So much for the dragon embroidery he tried to rig me with, Tug thought, as he took his hand. It was dry and cool and the bones were light as a bird’s.

Heng was desiccated with age; only his eyes were bright and fierce. Tug imagined that the giant man-eating dragons of Komodo might have eyes like that.

“I trust you have rested after your journey, Sir Peter, and that you are comfortable in my poor house.” His voice was thin and dry as the sound of the wind rustling the autumn leaves and his English was excellent. They exchanged pleasantries while they measured and sized each other. It was their first meeting. All Tug’s negotiations up until this point had been with the elder sons. All the sons were here now, waiting behind their father, the three elder brothers and Cheng.

One at a time Heng H’Sui waved them forward with a birdlike flutter of his pale dry hand, and they greeted Tug courteously in strict order of seniority.

Then Cheng helped his father back to his cushioned seat overlooking the garden. It was not lost on Tug that the youngest, rather than the eldest, was so honoured. Though there was no exchange of glances between the other brothers and no change of expression, Tug felt the sibling rivalry and jealousy so strong in the sweet mountain air that he could almost taste it. All this was good intelligence he was gathering about the family.

Servants brought them pale jasmine tea in bowls so fine that Tug could see the outline of his own fingers through the china. He recognized the cream on white leaf design, so subtle and understated as almost to elude casual examination. The bowl was a masterpiece of a fifteenth-century potter of the Ching emperor of the Ming dynasty.

Tug drained the bowl and then, as he was about to set it down on the lacquered tray, he let it slip from his fingers. It struck the cedarwood floor and shattered into a hundred precious fragments. “I am so sorry, he apologised. How clumsy of me.”

“It is nothing.” Heng H’Sui inclined his head graciously, and gestured for a servant to sweep away the broken shards. The servant was trembling as he knelt to the task. He sensed his master’s wrath.

“I do hope it was not valuable?” Tug asked, testing him, trying to unsettle him, paying him back for the trick with the dragon robe. An angry man, one with hatred in his heart, has his judgement impaired. Tug studied Heng H’Sui for a reaction. They both knew that Tug was fully aware that the bowl was priceless.

“It was of no value, I assure you, Sir Peter. A mere trifle. Think no more of it,” the old man insisted, but Tug saw that he had got to him. There was a man of passion lurking behind that dried-out mask with the tasselled cheek piece. However, the old man was exhibiting class and style and control. A worthy adversary, Tug decided, for he had no illusion as to any fiduciary relationship between them merely on account of the mutually convenient and probably transient partnership of BOSS and the Lucky Dragon.

With the breaking of the bowl he had achieved a momentary advantage over the patriarch. He had thrown him off balance. The old man sipped the last of the pale tea from his own bowl which was identical to the one which Tug had broken, and then held out his hand with a quiet word of command.

One of the servants knelt and placed a square of silk in his wrinkled paw. Heng H’Sui wiped out the bowl carefully and then wrapped it in the silk and handed it to Tug. “A gift for you, Sir Peter. I hope that our friendship will not be as frail as this little bauble.”

Tug conceded that Heng had snatched back the advantage. Tug was left with no option but to accept the extravagant gift and the loss of face that the subtle rebuke entailed.

“I will treasure it for the generosity of the giver,” he said.

“My son,” Heng indicated him with a flick of his blue-yeincd hand, “tells me that you have expressed a desire to see my collection of ivory. Do you also collect ivory, Sir Peter?”

“I don’t, but I’m interested in all things African. I flatter myself that I know more than the average man about the African elephant. I know how much value your people place on ivory.”

“Indeed, Sir Peter, never dispute the efficacy of charms with a Chinese, especially those of ivory. Our entire existence is ruled by astrology and the courting of fortune.”

“The Lucky Dragon?” Tug suggested.

“The Lucky Dragon, certainly.” Heng’s parchment dry cheeks seemed about to tear as he smiled. “And the Dragon at my gate has fangs of pure ivory. I have been caught up in the spell of ivory all my life. I started my career as an ivory-carver in my father’s shop.”

“Yes, I know that the netsuke that bears your personal chop fetches prices equivalent to those of the great master carvers of antiquity,” Tug told him.

“Ah, those were made when my eye was sharp and my hand steady.” Heng shook his head modestly, but did not deny the value of his own creations.

“I would dearly love to see some examples of your work,” Tug suggested, and Heng gestured to his youngest son to help him rise.

“So you shall, Sir Peter. So you shall.”

The ivory museum was at a distance from the main house. They went slowly along the covered walkway through the gardens, holding back for Heng H’Sui’s short laboured pace.

He stopped to feed the khoi in one of the ornamental pools, and as the fish roiled the water in a feeding frenzy, the old man smiled at their antics. “Greed, Sir Peter; without greed where would you and I be?”

“Healthy greed is the fuel of the capitalist system,” Tug agreed.

“And the stupid unthinking greed of other men makes you and me rich, does it not?”

Tug inclined his head in agreement and they went on.

There were more paramilitary guards in silver helmets at the door of the museum. Tug knew without being told that their vigil was perpetual. Picked men.

Heng noticed his glance. “I trust them more than all these modern electronic devices.” Cheng relinquished his father’s arm for a moment to punch the entry code into the control box of the alarm system and the massive carved doors swung open automatically. He ushered them through.

The museum was without windows. There was no natural light, and the artificial lighting had been skilfully arranged. The air-conditioning was set to the correct humidity to preserve and protect the ivory. The carved doors closed with a pneumatic hiss behind them.

Tug took three paces into the spacious antechamber and then halted abruptly. He stared at the display in the centre of the marble floor.

“You recognize them?” Heng H’Sui asked.

“Yes, of course.” Tug nodded. “I saw them once, long ago, at the Sultan of Zanzibar’s palace before the revolution. There has been speculation ever since as to what happened to them.”

“Yes. I acquired them after the revolution in 1964 when the Sultan was exiled,” Heng H’Sui agreed. “Very few people know that I own them.”

The walls of the room were painted blue, that particular milky blue of an African noon sky. The colour was chosen to show off the exhibits to best effect and the dimensions of the antechamber had obviously been designed for the same purpose, to complement the pair of ivory tusks.

Each tusk was over ten feet long, and its diameter at the lip was larger than a virgin’s waist. The legend inked on each tusk was in Arabic script written a hundred years ago by a clerk of the Sultan Barghash recording the weight when it arrived in Zanzibar. Tug deciphered the writing: the heaviest tusk had weighed 235 pounds, the other only a few pounds less.

“They are lighter now,” Heng H’Sui anticipated his question. “Between them they have dried out by twenty-two pounds, but still it takes four men to carry one of them. Think of the mighty animal who originally bore them.”

They were the most famous tusks in existence. As a student of African history, Tug knew the story of these extraordinary objects. They had been taken a hundred years ago on the southern slopes of Kilimanjaro, by a slave named Senoussi. The slave’s master was a villain named Shundi. He was one of the cruellest and most unscrupulous slavers and ivory-traders on the African cast coast, an area notorious for the depredations of the slave-masters. When he had first come upon it, Senoussi had in awe delayed killing the old bull. He had crouched over his flintlock musket and studied this extraordinary creature with respect for several hours before he had summoned the courage to creep forward and send a lead ball through its heart.

According to Senoussi’s later account to his master, the bull ran off only a hundred yards before collapsing. He was an extremely old elephant with his fourth and last molars almost worn away, on the verge of the slow starvation of great age.

Although not particularly big-bodied, his neck and forequarters were overdeveloped to carry that great weight of ivory. Senoussi observed the bull had been forced to raise his head and lift the tips of his tusks free of the earth before he could move.

When Shundi displayed the tusks in the ivory market in Zanzibar they caused a sensation amongst traders accustomed to dealing with massive tusks. The Sultan had purchased the pair from Shundi for a thousand pounds sterling, which was a huge sum of money in those days. Tug had first seen them in the palace of the Sultan’s successors overlooking the Zanzibar waterfront.

Now he approached them with awe and stroked one of them, staring up at the massive ivory arches that almost met high above his head. This was legendary treasure. To Tug, somehow, these tusks seemed to embody the history and the soul of the entire African continent.

“Now let me show you the rest of my poor little collection,” Ning Heng H’Sui suggested at last, and led the way past the towering ivory columns to the archway artfully concealed in the rear wall of the antechamber.

The interior of the building was a labyrinth of dimly lit passages. The floor was carpeted with midnight-blue Wilton, soft and soundless to the tread. The walls were the same colour, but set flush into them on each side of the passage were the showcases. The proportions of each case were designed to the shape and size of the single exhibit it contained. The lighting of the cases was dramatically arranged so that each treasure was revealed in crisp detail and seemed to float airily and independently of the dim surroundings.

Firstly, there were religious and sacred objects, a Bible with covers of carved ivory and precious stones bearing the doubleheaded eagle of Imperial Russia. “Peter the Great,” Heng murmured. His personal Bible.

There was a copy of the Torah, the yellow parchment rolled on to an ivory distaff contained within an ivory case with the Star of David carved upon it. “Salvaged from the great synagogue at Constantinople when it was destroyed by the Byzantine emperor Theodosius,” Heng explained.

Amongst other treasures there were icons of ivory set with diamonds and Hindu statuettes of Vishnu, a copy of the Koran covered with beaten gold and ivory, and ancient Christian statues of the Virgin and the saints, all carved from ivory.

Then, as they moved along the dim passageway, the nature of the exhibits became more profane, and secular. There were women’s fans and combs and necklaces from ancient Rome and Greece, then an extraordinary object shaped like a two-foot rolling pin with a rooster head carved at one end.

Tug did not recognize it and Heng explained expressionlessly. “It belonged to Catherine the Great of Russia. Her physicians convinced her that ivory was a sovereign specific against syphilis. It is an ivory dildo, made to her own design.”

Occasionally Heng instructed his son to open one or two of the cases so that Tug could handle the exhibits and examine them more closely. “The true joy of ivory lies in the feel of it in the hand,” Heng suggested. “It is as sensuous as the skin of a lovely woman. See the grain, Sir Peter, that lovely subtle cross-hatching that no synthetic substance can duplicate.”

There was one object the size and shape of a football, carved like lacework. Within it were eight more balls, free and complete, one within the other like the layers of an onion. The artist had carved the inner balls through the minute apertures in the outer layers. In the centre of the ball was a carving of a rose bud, perfect in every detail. Three thousand hours of work.

“Five years from the life of a master craftsman. How can you place a value on that?” Cheng asked.

Two hours after entering the museum they came at last to the room that contained the netsukes. During the Tokugawa Shogunate in Japan, only the aristocracy were allowed to wear personal adornment. Amongst the newly emerging and affluent middle class the netsuke button, worn on the sash and used to secure a pill box or tobacco pouch, was an essential article of dress. The beauty and intricacy of the carving enhanced the owner’s prestige.

Heng had assembled a collection of over ten thousand pieces. However, as he explained to Tug, he could only display a few of his favourites, and amongst them were his own creations. These were cased separately, and once again Tug was invited to take them in his hand and to admire the craftsmanship.

“Of course, I was obliged to seek out and buy back my own work.” Heng smiled and tugged at the tassel of hair that hung from his cheek. “I have agents around the world still searching; for my creations. I estimate there are at least a hundred that have so far eluded me. Ten thousand dollars if you find one, Sir Peter,” he promised.

“And worth every cent,” Tug agreed as he examined one of the tiny ivory buds. The detail and rendition was extraordinary and the subject matter covered a wide range of humanity and the animal world, from birds and mammals to men and beautiful women and children in every possible pose and indulging in every activity, from war to love, from death to childbirth.

Somehow, Heng the artist had managed to transform even the mundane into something remarkable and exciting. Subjects that might have been merely pornographic and coarse were instead spiritual, ethereal and moving.

“You have a rare gift,” Tug acknowledged. “The heart and eye of a great artist.”

For a short while the two men were in accord, and then they left the treasure house and returned to the main house where servants had set out writing materials and light refreshments at a long lacquer-work table. They removed their footwear and settled themselves on cushions about the table and, at last, the real work began.

In London, Tug had negotiated and signed a document of intent with the elder Ning sons. This was subject to ratification by the patriarch. Tug had never expected this to be a simple procedure and he was not to be disappointed.

A little after midnight they adjourned and Tug was escorted back to the guesthouse by Cheng. The two female servants were waiting for him with tea and refreshments. They helped him change into his night clothes, then drew back the quilts on the low wide bed and waited expectantly.

Tug dismissed them and they left at once. He had not been able to discover where the video camera and microphone were concealed, but he was certain they were there. He switched off the light and lay for a while, well pleased with the progress he had made. Then he slept soundly and awoke eager for the fray.

In the middle of the following afternoon, Tug and Heng H’Sui shook hands.

From all that Tug had learned about the old man, he believed that like himself Heng was a man of peculiar integrity. Between them that handshake was as good as any formal document. Of course, the lawyers on both sides would now come in and complicate and muddy the issues, but even they could never weaken the central pillars of the agreement.

Between Tug and Heng it was sacrosanct, the honour of buccaneers.

“There is one other matter I would like to discuss with you,” Heng murmured, and Tug frowned. “No, no, Sir Peter. It is a personal matter, not part of our agreement.” And Tug relaxed.

“I will do what I can to help you. What is it about?”

“Elephant,” Heng said. “Ivory.”

“Ah.” Tug smiled and nodded. “Why didn’t I guess?”

“At the time that bloodthirsty madman Idi Amin took over Uganda, the largest elephant still alive on the African continent were in the Uganda National Park near the Murchison Falls at the headwaters of the Nile,” Heng explained.

“Yes,” Tug agreed. I saw a dozen animals in that Park that had tusks over a hundred pounds a side. “They were wiped out by Idi Amin’s henchmen and the ivory stolen by him.”

“Not all of them, Sir Peter. I have it on good authority that some of those animals, the largest of them, escaped annihilation. They crossed the border into Ubomo and reached the rain forests on the slopes of the Mountains of the Moon, that area which now forms part of our syndicate’s concession.

“It is possible,” Tug conceded.

“It is more than that. It is fact,” Heng contradicted him. “My son Cheng,” he indicated the man at his side, “has a reliable agent in Ubomo. An Indian who has cooperated with us on many occasions. His name is Chetti Singh. Do you know him?”

“I have heard of him, vaguely.” Tug frowned again. “Let me think … Yes, he is connected with the illegal export of ivory and rhino horn. I have heard he is the mastermind behind all African poaching.”

“Chetti Singh has been in the forests of the Ubomo basin within the last ten days,” Heng went on. “He has seen with his own eyes an elephant bull with tusks almost as large as those I showed you today.”

“How can I help you?” Tug insisted.

“I want those tusks,” Heng murmured, the passion of the collector barely concealed behind the time-eroded mask of his face. “More than the ore and the hardwoods of the forest, I want that ivory.”

“President Taffari can sign a special Protected Game licence. I believe there is provision for that in the constitution. If there isn’t, it can be changed. I presume that your man Chetti Singh will be able to arrange for the ivory to be harvested. He is the master poacher. If that is the case, I will send my Gulfstream to Ubomo to pick up the tusks and ferry them to you here. I can foresee no problems, Mr. Ning.”

“Thank you, Sir Peter,” Heng smiled. “Is there anything I can do for you in exchange?”

“Yes.” Tug leaned forward. “As a matter of fact there is.”

“You only have to ask,” Heng invited.

“Before I do that, I must explain something of the new hysteria that is sweeping the Western world. Fortunately for you, you are not subject to the same pressures. There is a new thinking, especially amongst the young but also, regrettably, amongst those who should know better. This philosophy is that we have no right to utilise the natural assets of our planet. We cannot be allowed to mine the earth of its bounty, because our excavations will disfigure the beauty of nature. We cannot be allowed to cut the trees for timber, because they belong not to us but to posterity. We cannot be allowed to kill a living creature for its meat or fur or ivory, because all life is somehow sacred.”

“This is nonsense.” Heng dismissed it with a brusque gesture, his dark eyes sparkling. “Man is what he is today because he has always done these things.” He touched the cedar panels of the wall beside him, the hem of his silk tunic, the gold and ivory ring on his finger, the precious ceramic bowl on the table before him. “All these were mined or felled or killed, as is the very food we eat.”

“You and I, we know that,” Tug agreed. “But this new madness is a force to be reckoned with, almost an unreasoning religious fanaticism. A jihad, if you like, a holy war.”

“I mean no disrespect, Sir Peter, but the Occidental is emotionally immature. I like to think that we of the cast have more sophistication. We are not so readily caught up by such exaggerated behaviour.”

“That is why I appeal to you, sir. My company, BOSS, has recently become a victim of this campaign. The attention of the British public has been drawn to our operations in Ubomo by groups of these people who call themselves childish names such as ‘Greenpeace’ or ‘The Friends of the Earth’.” Heng grimaced at the title, and Tug nodded. “I know it sounds silly and harmless, but one such Organisation is led by a fanatical young woman. She has chosen my company as her target. She has already managed to do us some damage. There is a small but noticeable decline in sales and income that is directly attributable to her campaign. Some of our major markets in the United Kingdom and the United States are getting nervous, and asking us to back off from Ubomo or at least to play down our involvement, and I personally have received hate mail and death threats.”

“You do not take those seriously?”

“No, Mr. Ning, I do not, although these are from people who blow up animal experimentation laboratories and set fire to furrier’s shops. However, I think it might be prudent to play down BOSS’s role in Ubomo, or at least to give it better public relations.”

“What do you propose, Sir Peter?”

“Firstly, I have already hired an independent film-producer, quite well-known in Europe and America, to film a television feature on Ubomo with particular emphasis on the benefits to the country of our involvement.”

“You do not plan to expose all the syndicate’s operations to the camera, Sir Peter?” There was a tone of alarm in Heng’s question.

“Of course not, Mr. Ning. The film-producer will be carefully guided to show our syndicate in the best possible light.”

“It may even be necessary to prepare some exhibits for him to film. To put on a little show for his benefit?” Heng suggested.

“Exactly, Mr. Ning. We will keep him away from the sensitive areas of our operations.”

Heng nodded. “That is wise. You seem to have arranged matters without my help.”

“You are in a better position than I am, Mr. Ning. These so called green people cannot reach you here in Taiwan. Your own Chinese people are too pragmatic to take up such an immature attitude to mining and forestry, especially as nearly all the products that we reap will be shipped here. You are invulnerable to this childish but dangerous influence.”

“Yes.” Heng nodded. “I see that all you have said makes good sense, but where does it lead us?”

“I want Lucky Dragon to become the figurehead of the syndicate. I want one of your best men, rather than one of mine, to go to Ubomo and take charge of the operations there. I will pull out my geologists and forestry experts and architects; you will put in Chinese experts. I will gradually sell off my share of the syndicate to Hong Kong front companies and other oriental nominees.

“Although you and I will meet regularly and discreetly to direct the syndicate operations, BOSS will gradually withdraw from the scene.”

“You will become the invisible man, Sir Peter.” Heng chuckled with genuine amusement.

“The invisible man, I like that.” Tug laughed with him. “May I know who it is that you would send to Ubomo to take charge there.”

Ning Heng H’Sui stopped laughing and tugged thoughtfully at the silver tuft that hung from his cheek. His sons, sitting below him at the long lacquer table, leaned forward, trying not to display their eagerness, watching their father’s face with impassive expressions that were betrayed by their eyes.

“Ha!” Heng coughed and wet his lips from the tea bowl. “That will require some consideration, Sir Peter. Will you give me a week or so to decide?”

“Of course, Mr. Ning. It is not a decision to be taken lightly. We will need somebody clever and dedicated and…” he hesitated as he weighed the adjective, discarding ruthless as too explicit, and strong, “yet diplomatic.”

“I will telephone you with my decision. Where will you be, Sir Peter?”

“Well, I am flying to Sydney tomorrow morning, and from there I will go on directly to Nairobi and Kahali in Ubomo to meet President Taffari. However, my aircraft has direct satellite communication. You can contact me in flight as easily as if I were in the next room.

“These modern miracles.” Heng shook his head. “Sometimes it is difficult for an old man to adjust.

“It seems to me that you are old only in experience and sagacity, Mr. Ning. In courage and dash you are young, sir.” Tug said, not entirely in flattery, and Ning Heng H’Sui inclined his head graciously.

Chapter 26

Cheng had waited patiently for exactly the right moment to present his father with the gift that he had brought for him from Africa. It was almost two weeks since Sir Peter Harrison had visited Taiwan and still his father had made no announcement within the family as to which of his sons he was sending to run the syndicate’s operation in Ubomo.

All the brothers knew it must be one of them. They had known it the moment that the Englishman had made the request. Cheng had noticed the others lean forward at the words, and he had seen his own excitement and expectation mirrored in their eyes. Ever since then, the brothers had been walking around each other like dogs with stiff legs. The extent of Lucky Dragon’s investment in the Ubomo syndicate was unprecedented. When the project was fully financed and developed, the family would be committed to raising almost a thousand million dollars, much of it borrowed from banks in Hong Kong and Japan.

It must be one of the sons. Ning Heng H’Sui would never put so much trust in an outsider. Only his age forced him to delegate the task to one of them. Not long ago he would have taken command in Ubomo into his own hands, but now his sons knew he had to give it to one of them, and each of them would kill for the honour. That command would be the ultimate accolade which would show clearly whom Heng had chosen as his heir.

Cheng longed for the honour with a passion so intense that it denied him sleep and spoiled his appetite. In the two weeks since Sir Peter’s visit, Cheng had lost weight and become pale and hollow-cheeked. Now, when he exercised in the gymnasium with his hired sparring partners, his body was lean to the point of emaciation. Every rib showed through the hard rubbery casing of muscle. However, his blows and kicks had lost none of their fury. As he fought, his dark eyes, sunken into bruisedlooking cavities, glittered with a feverish intensity.

He found every excuse to be in his father’s company. Even when the old man was painting, or meditating with the Confucian priests at the shrine in the gardens of the estate, or cataloguing his ivory collection, Cheng; tried to be with him, keeping himself close. Yet he sensed that the moment was not exactly right to make the gift. He believed that his father’s choice must in the end come down to that between his second brother, Wu, and Cheng himself.

The eldest brother, Fang, was tough and ruthless, but lacking in guile and cunning, a good hatchet man but not a leader. The third son, Ling, possessed an unreliable temperament. He was clever, as clever as either Wu or Cheng, but he was easily panicked and inclined to fly into a rage when things went against him. Ling would never head Lucky Dragon. He might become Number Two perhaps, but never Number One. No, Cheng reasoned, the choice must be between himself and Wu.

As a child he had recognized Wu as his main rival and in consequence he hated him with a single-minded malevolence.

While she had been alive, Cheng’s English mother had protected him from his half-brothers. But after she died he had been at their mercy. It had taken all these years to learn to hold his own and insinuate himself ever deeper into his father’s favour.

Cheng recognized that this would be his chance, his only chance for supremacy. His father was old, more than old, he was ancient. Despite his seemingly boundless strength and energy, Cheng sensed that his father was near death. It might come at any moment of any day, and he went cold at the thought.

He knew that unless he consolidated his accession while his father still lived, Wu would wrest it from him with the help of his two full brothers, the moment his father died. He sensed also that his father was on the point of deciding on the Ubomo project. He knew that this was his moment. This was the slack water of the tide of his fortunes, and now they must turn and begin to flood, or he would be for ever stranded on the mudbanks.

“Honourable Father, I have something for you. A small and humble token of the respect and gratitude I feel for you. May I present it?”

Fortune seemed to conspire with Cheng to provide an appropriate opportunity. The old man was spry today, his mind quick and his waning bodily strength in some measure restored. He had eaten a ripe fig and an apple for breakfast, and had composed a classical stanza while Cheng walked him down to the shrine. It was an ode to the mountain peak that stood above the estate. The poem began: Beloved of clouds who caress her face …

It was good, although not as good as his father’s paintings and ivory carvings, Cheng thought. However, when the old man recited it, Cheng clasped his hands. “I am awed that so much genius resides in one person. I wish only that I had inherited a few grains of it for myself.”

He thought he might have overdone it a little, but the old man accepted the praise and for a moment tightened his grip on Cheng’s arm. “You are a good son,” he said. And your mother…” his voice trailed off mournfully, “your mother was a woman.” He shook his head and Cheng thought incredulously that the old man’s eyes had moistened. It must have been his imagination. His father was not prey to weakness and sentimentality.

When he looked again his father’s eyes were clear and bright, and the old man was smiling.

That morning Heng stayed on at the shrine much longer than he usually did. He wanted to inspect the work on his own tomb. One of the most famous geomancers on the island had come to position the tomb precisely and to orientate it so that it stood neither on an earth dragon’s head nor on his tail. That would have disturbed the old man’s death sleep.

The georriancer had worked with a compass and a magic bag for almost an hour, directing the efforts of the priests and the servants to get the marble sarcophagus laid properly.

All this preparation for his own funeral put Heng into a pleasant relaxed mood, and when they were finished Cheng seized the moment and asked to be allowed to present his gift. Heng smiled and nodded. “You may bring it to me, my son.”

“Alas, father, the nature of the gift makes that impossible. I must take you to it.”

Heng’s expression changed. These days he seldom left the estate. He seemed about to refuse. However, Cheng had anticipated his reaction. All he needed to do was lift one hand and the Rolls that was parked behind the clipped privet hedger, beyond the lotus pools slid silently forward. Before the old man could protest, Cheng had helped him into the back seat and settled him comfortably with a cashmere rug over his knees. The chauffeur knew where to take them.

As the Rolls came down the mountain road on to the littoral plain, Heng and Cheng were isolated and protected from the heat and humidity, and from the teeming humanity that clogged the road with Vespa motorcycles and buses, wild chicken taxis and heavily laden trucks.

When they entered Chung Ching South Road in the Hsimending area of the city the chauffeur slowed and turned in through the gates of the Lucky Dragon company’s main city warehouse.

The guards jumped to attention as they recognized the couple in the back seat.

One of the warehouse doors stood open and after the car drove through, the steel shutter doors rolled closed behind it.

The Rolls parked on one of the loading ramps and Cheng helped his father out of the back door and took his elbow to lead him to a carved teak chair that stood like a throne, covered with embroidered silk cushions, overlooking the floor below the ramp.

As soon as his father was comfortable, Cheng signaled one of the servants to bring freshly made tea. He sat on one of the cushions lower than Heng and they drank tea and talked quietly of unrelated subjects.

Cheng was drawing out the moment, trying to spice his father’s anticipation. If he succeeded, the old man did not show it. He barely glanced towards the floor below.

Ten brawny workmen knelt in a row facing the throne. Cheng had dressed them in black tunics, with red headbands, and the emblem of the Lucky Dragon embroidered on their backs also in red. He had rehearsed them carefully and they were motionless, heads bowed respectfully.

Finally, after ten minutes of talk and tea, Cheng told his father, “This is the present I have brought you from Africa.” He indicated the rows of chests, arranged behind, the workmen. “It is such a poor little present that now I am ashamed to offer it to you.”

“Tea?” Heng smiled. “Cases of tea? Enough tea to last me the rest of my lifetime. it is a fine gift, my son.”

“It is a poor gift, but may I open the cases for you?” Cheng asked, and the old man nodded his permission.

Cheng clapped his hands and the ten workmen sprang to their feet and ran to seize one of the tea-chests and bring it forward. They worked swiftly, efficiently. With half a dozen blows of a slap-hammer and a twist of a jernmy bar, they lifted the lid off the first case.

Heng showed the first sign of animation and leaned forward in the high chair. Two of the workmen lifted out the first tusk from its bed of caked black tea.

Cheng had long ago arranged that it should be one of the largest and most finely shaped tusks in the entire shipment of stolen ivory. He had asked Chetti Singh to mark the case that contained it before the shipment left the Indian’s warehouse in Malawi.

The tusk was long, over seven feet long, but not as thick and blunt as one of the typical massively heavy tusks from further north than Zimbabwe. Yet from an entirely aesthetic point of view this one was more pleasing, its girth more in proportion to its length and the curve and taper were elegant. It was neither cracked nor damaged and the patina above the lip was creamy yellow.

Involuntarily Heng clapped his hands with pleasure and exclaimed aloud. “Bring it to me!”

Two of the workmen, struggling under the burden, climbed the concrete steps and knelt before him offering the lovely tusk. Heng stroked the ivory and his eyes sparkled in the cobweb of wrinkles that surrounded them.

“Beautiful!” he murmured. “The most beautiful of all nature’s creations, more beautiful than pearls or the feathers of the brightest tropical birds.” He broke off abruptly as his fingers detected the rough patch on the tusk. He leaned closer and peered at it and exclaimed again. “But this tusk bears a government stamp. ‘ZW’. That is a Zimbabwe government number. This is legal ivory, Cheng.” He clapped his hands again. Legal ivory, my son, many more times more valuable for those numbers. How did you do it? How many more tusks are there?”

His father’s unrestrained pleasure was giving Cheng huge face.

He must be careful to remain humble and dutiful. “Every one of those cases is filled with ivory, honoured Father. Every tusk is stamped.”

“Where did you get them?” Heng insisted, and then raised his hand to prevent Cheng replying. “Wait! he ordered. Wait. Do not tell me!” He was silent, staring at his son for a while, and then he said, “Yes. That is it. I know where this ivory comes from.”

With a wave of his hand he sent the black-clad workmen out of earshot and leaned closer to Cheng, dropping his voice to a whisper. “I read some time ago that there was a raid by a gang of poachers on a government ivory store in Zimbabwe. A place called Chiwewe? The gangsters were wiped out, but the ivory was not recovered, is that not so, my son?”

“I read the same newspaper article, honoured Father.” Cheng dropped his eyes and waited while the silence drew out.

Then Heng spoke again. “The man who planned that raid was clever and bold. He was not afraid to kill for what he wanted,” he whispered. “The kind of man that I admire. The kind of man that I was once, when I was young.”

“The kind of man that you still are, Father,” Cheng said, but Heng shook his head.

“The kind of man that I would be proud to have as my son,” Heng went on. “You may present the rest of your gift to me now.”

Now Cheng’s standing, in his father’s eyes, was so enormous that he wriggled in his seat with pleasure and shouted for the workmen to open the other cases.

For the next two hours Heng examined the shipment of tusks. He gloated over every single piece, picking out a dozen or so of the loveliest or most unusual for his special collection.

He was particularly interested in deformed ivory. The nerve of one of the tusks had been damaged, while it was still immature, by a hand-hammered lead ball from a native poacher’s musket. The result was that the tusk had split into four separate shafts and these had twisted around each other in the same way as the strands of a hemp rope. The original lead musket-bullet, heavily corroded, was still embedded in the root of the tusk, and the entwined spirals of ivory resembled the horns of the legendary unicorn. Heng was delighted with it.

Cheng had seldom seen him so animated and voluble, but at the end of the two hours he was obviously fatigued, and Cheng helped him back into the Rolls and ordered the chauffeur to return to the estate.

Heng laid his head back on the soft Connally leather and closed his eyes.

When Cheng was sure the old man was asleep, he gently adjusted the cashmere rug over him. One of Heng’s hands had dropped on to the seat beside him. Cheng lifted it into his lap and before he covered it with the cashmere he caressed it so gently as not to wake his father. The hand was thin and bony and the skin was cool as that of a corpse.

Suddenly the long thin fingers tightened on Cheng’s wrist and the old man spoke without opening his eyes. “I am not afraid of death, my son,” he whispered. “But I am terrified that all that I have achieved will be destroyed by careless hands. Your brother Wu is strong and clever, but he does not have my spirit. He does not care for fine and beautiful things. He does not love poetry or painting or ivory.” Heng opened his eyes and turned his head to stare at his son with those bright implacable lizard’s eyes. “I knew that you had inherited my spirit, Cheng, but until today I doubted that you had the warrior’s steel. That is the reason why I hesitated to choose between you and Wu.

“However, this gift that you have given to me today has changed that thinking. I know how you obtained that ivory. I know that it was necessary to squeeze the juice from the ripe cherry.” This was Heng’s euphemism for drawing blood. “And I know that you did not shrink from it. I know also that you succeeded in a difficult enterprise, whether by luck or cunning I do not really care. I prize both luck and cunning equally.” He tightened his grip until it was painful but Cheng did not wince or pull away. “I am sending you to Ubomo, my son, as the representative of the Lucky Dragon.”

Cheng bowed his head over his father’s hand and kissed it. “I will not fail you,” he promised, and a single tear of joy and of pride fell from the corner of his eye and sparkled like a jewel on the pale dry skin of his father’s hand.

Ning Heng H’Sui made the formal announcement of his selection the following morning. He made it while seated at the head of the lacquer table overlooking the garden.

Cheng; watched the faces of his brothers while the old man spoke. Wu remained as impassive as the ivory carving his father had made of him years ago. His face was bland, smooth and creamy yellow, but his eyes were terrible as he returned Cheng’s stare across the table. When the old man finished speaking there was a moment’s silence which seemed to last an eternity as the three elder brothers contemplated the world that had changed for them.

Then Wu spoke. “Honourable Father, you are wise in all things. We, your sons, bow to your will as the rice stalks bow to the north wind.”

All four of them bowed so low that their foreheads almost touched the table-top, but when they straightened the other three were looking at Cheng. Cheng realised at that moment that it might be possible to attain too much face. His face was greater than that of all his half-brothers combined and he felt an icicle of fear slide down his spine, for his brothers were watching him with the eyes of crocodiles.

He knew that he dare not fail in Ubomo. They would be waiting to rend him if he did.

Once Cheng was back in his own apartment, the fear fell away to be replaced by the clarion of success. There was so much work to do before he returned to Africa, but for the moment he could not concentrate his mind upon it. Tomorrow certainly, but not now. He was too charged with excitement, his mind restless and unfocused. He needed to steady’himself, to burn off the excess energy that made him both physically and mentally overwrought.

He knew exactly how to achieve this. He had his own special ritual for purging his soul. Of course, it was dangerous, terribly dangerous.

On more than one occasion before it had brought him to the very brink of disaster. However, the danger was part of the efficacy of the ritual. He knew that if anything went wrong he would have lost all.

The monumental successes of these last few days, his father’s selection and the ascendancy over his brothers would all be wiped away.

The risk was enormous, completely out of proportion to the fleeting gratification that he would achieve. Perhaps it was the gambler’s urge to flirt with self-destruction. After each episode he always promised himself that he would never indulge in the madness again, but always the temptation proved too strong, particularly at a time such as this.

As soon as he entered his apartment his wife made tea for him, and then called the children to pay him their respects. He spoke to them for a few minutes and took his infant son on his lap, but he was distracted and soon dismissed them. They left with obvious relief. These formal interviews were a strain for all of them. He was not good with children, even his own.

“My father has chosen me to go to Ubomo,” he told his wife.

“It is a great honour,” she said. “I offer you my felicitations. When will we leave?”

“I shall go alone,” he told her, and saw the relief in her eyes. It annoyed him that she made it so obvious. “Of course, I will send for you as soon as I have made the arrangements.”

She dropped her eyes. “I will await your summons.” But he could not concentrate on her. The excitement was fizzing in his head. “I will rest for an hour. See that I am not disturbed. Then I have to go down to the city. There is much work to do before I leave. I will not return tonight, and I shall probably stay at the apartment in Tunhua Road. I shall send you a message before I return.”

Alone in his own room he teased himself with the telephone. He placed the cordless instrument on the table and stared at it, rehearsing every word he would say and his breathing was short and quick as though he had run up a flight of stairs. His fingers trembled slightly when at last he reached out for it. The telephone was fitted with a special coding scrambler. It could not be tapped and it was impossible for any other person, Civil or military or police, to trace the special number that he punched into the key panel.

Very few people had this number. She had told him once that she had given it to only six of her most valued clients. She answered it on the second ring and she recognized his voice instantly. She greeted him with the special code name she had assigned him. “You have not been to see me for almost two years, Green Mountain Man.”

“I have been away.”

“Yes, I know, but still I missed you.”

“I want to come tonight.”

“Will you want the special thing?”

“Yes.” Cheng felt his stomach clench at the thought of it. He thought he might be sick with fear and loathing and excitement.

“It is very short notice,” she said. “And the price has risen since your last visit.”

“The price does not matter. Can you do it?” He heard the high strained tones of his own voice.

She was silent, and he knew she was baiting him. He wanted to scream at her and then she said, “You are fortunate.” Her voice changed. It became obscenely soft and slimy. “I have received new merchandise; I can offer you a choice of two.”

Cheng gulped and cleared his throat of a plug of phlegm before he could ask. “Young?”

“Very young. Very tender. Untouched.”

“When will you be ready?”

“Ten o’clock tonight, she said. “Not before.”

“At the sea pavilion?” he asked.

“Yes,” she replied. “They will expect you at the gate. Ten o clock,” she repeated. “Not earlier, not later.”

Cheng drove to the apartment building in Tunbua Road. It was in the most prestigious part of the city and the accommodation was expensive, but it was paid for by Lucky Dragon.

He left his Porsche in the underground garage and rode up to the top floor apartment in the elevator. By the time he had showered and changed it was still only six o’clock and he had plenty of time in which to prepare himself.

He left the apartment building on foot and set off down Tunhua Road. He loved the Renao of Taipei. It was one of the things that he missed most while he was away. Renao was a concept that was almost impossible to translate from the Chinese to any other language. It meant festive, lively, joyous and noisy all at the same time.

It was now the ghost month, the seventh lunar month when the ghosts return from hell to haunt the earth and have to be placated with gifts of ghost money and food. It was also necessary to keep them at a distance with fireworks and dragon processions.

Cheng paused to laugh and applaud one of the processions led by a monstrous dragon with a huge papier-michi head and fifty pairs of human legs beneath its serpentine body. The jumping-jack fireworks popped with spurts of blue smoke about the ankles of the spectators and the band beat drums and gongs and the children shrieked. It was good renao and it heightened Cheng’s excitement.

He threaded his way through the crowds and the bustle until he reached the East Garden area of the city and left the main thoroughfare to enter a back, alley.

The fortune-teller was one Cheng, had used for ten years. He was an old man with thin wispy grey hair and a facial mole like Cheng’s father had. He wore traditional robes and a mandarin cap and sat cross-legged in his curtained cubicle with his paraphernalia around him.

Cheng greeted him respectfully and at his invitation squatted facing him.

“I have not seen you for a long time,” the old man accused him, and Cheng apologised. “I have been away from Taiwan.”

They discussed the fee and the divination that Cheng required. “I am about to undertake a task,” Cheng explained. “I wish to have spirit guidance.” The old man nodded and consulted his almanacs and star guides, nodding and mumbling to himself. Finally he handed Cheng a ceramic cup filled with bamboo rods.

Cheng shook this vigorously and then spilled the rods on to the mat between them. Each rod was painted with characters and emblems and the old man studied the pattern in which they had fallen. “This task will not be undertaken here in Taiwan, but in a land across the ocean,” he said, and Cheng relaxed a little. The old man had not lost his touch.

He nodded encouragement.

“It is a task of great complexity and there are many people involved. Foreigners, foreign devils.”

Again Cheng nodded.

“I see powerful allies, but also powerful enemies who will oppose you.”

“I know my allies, but I do not know who will be my enemies,” Cheng interjected.

“You already know your enemy. He has opposed you before. On that occasion you overcame him.”

“Can you describe him?”

The fortune-teller shook his head. “You will know him when you see him again.”

“When will that be?”

“You should not travel during the ghost month. You must prepare yourself here in Taiwan. Leave only on the first day of the eighth lunar month.

“Very well.” That suited Cheng’s plans. “Will I overcome this enemy once again?”

To answer that question it will be necessary to make a further divination, the old man whispered, and Cheng grimaced at this device for doubling the fee.

“Very well” he agreed, and the fortune-teller replaced the bamboo sticks in the bowl and Cheng shook them out on to the mat.

“There are two enemies now.” The fortune-teller picked two rods out of the pile. “One is the man that you know, the other is a woman whom you have not yet met. Together they will oppose your endeavours.”

“Will I overcome them?” Cheng asked anxiously, and the old man examined the fall of the bamboo rods minutely.

“I see a snow-capped mountain and a great forest. These will be the battleground. There will be evil spirits and demons…” The old man’s voice trailed away, and he lifted one of the bamboo sticks from the pile.

“What else do you see?” Cheng insisted, but the old man coughed and spat and would not look up at him. The bamboo sliver was painted white, the colour of death and disaster. That is all. I can see no more, he mumbled.

Cheng took a new thousand Taiwan dollar note from his top pocket and laid it beside the pile of bamboo rods. “Will I overcome my enemies?” Cheng asked, and the note disappeared like a conjuring trick under the old man’s bony fingers.

“You will have great face, he promised,” but still he would not look directly at his client, and Cheng left the cubicle with some of his good feelings dissipated by the ambiguous reply. More than ever now he needed solace, but it was still only a little after eight o’clock. She had told him not to come before ten.

It was only a short walk to Snake Alley, but on his way Cheng paused in the forecourt of the Dragon Mountain Temple and burned a pile of ghost money in one of the gaudy pyramid furnaces to placate the ancestral ghosts who would be prowling the night around him.

He left the temple and cut through the night market where the stall-holders offered a bewildering array of wares and the prostitutes plied their trade in flimsy wooden sheds in the back areas of the market. Both storekeepers and painted ladies haggled loudly with their potential customers, and the spectators joined in with comment and suggestion and laughter. It was good renao, and Cheng’s spirits revived.

He entered -Snake Alley down which the shops were crowded closely together. Outside each stall were piled snake baskets of steel mesh and the front windows were filled with the largest and most spectacularly coloured of the serpents which gave the alley its name.

Many of the shops had a live mongoose tethered outside the front door. Cheng stopped to watch an arranged contest between one of these sleek little predators and a four-foot cobra.

The cobra reared up as it confronted the mongoose, and the crowd gathered quickly and shrieked with delight. With its striped hood fully extended, the cobra revolved and swayed like a flower on its stalk to watch the circling mongoose with unblinking bright eyes while its feathery black tongue tasted the scent of its adversary on the air.

The mongoose danced in and then leapt back as the cobra struck. For an instant the snake was off balance and fully extended and the mongoose darted in for the kill. It seized the back of the glistening scaled head and its needle teeth crunched into bone. The snake’s body whipped and coiled in its death throes and the proprietor of the shop separated the mongoose from its victim and carried the writhing reptile into his shop, followed by two or three eager male customers.

Cheng did not join them. He had his own special shop, and he wanted a particular type of snake, the rarest, the most expensive, the most effective.

The snake-doctor recognized Cheng over the heads of the crowd that thronged the alley. His shop was famous. He did not have to stage mongoose fights to attract his customers. He beamed and bowed, and ushered Cheng through to the back room which was curtained off from the public gaze.

It was not necessary for Cheng to state his requirements. The shop owner knew him well, over many years. it was Cheng who had arranged his supply of the most virulently poisonous reptiles from Africa. It was Cheng who had introduced him to Chetti Singh, and made the first consignments of snakes through the diplomatic bag. Of course, Cheng; took a commission on each shipment.

Cheng had also persuaded him to deal in rare African birds. Once again these had been supplied by Chetti Singh and the trade was now worth over a quarter of a million US dollars a year. There were collectors in Europe and America who would pay huge sums for a pair of saddle-billed storks or bald ibis. The African parrots, although not as colourful as the South American varieties, were also much sought after. Chetti Singh could supply all these, and once again Cheng took his commission.

However, the main source of the snake-doctor’s income was still the supply of venomous snakes. The more venomous, the more valuable they were to Chinese gentlemen with faltering potency. The African mamba had been entirely unknown in Taiwan or mainland China until Chetti Singh had made the first shipment. Now they were the most prized of all snakes on the island, and commanded a price of two thousand US dollars apiece.

The snake-doctor had a particularly beautiful specimen ready in a mesh cage on his stainless-steel-topped table. Now he drew on a pair of elbow-length gloves, a precaution that he would have scorned had he been dealing with a cobra.

He opened the sliding lid of the cage a crack and slipped in a long steel forked rod. Deftly he pinned the mamba’s head and the snake hissed sharply and twined itself around the steel rod.

Now the snake-doctor opened the lid fully and seized the mamba behind the head, careful to get thumb and forefinger aligned behind the protuberances of the skull so the snake could not pull free of his grip.

The instant he released the pressure of the forked rod, the snake wrapped itself in tight coils around his forearm. it was six feet long and angry. it exerted all its rippling scaled strength to pull its head free, but the snake-doctor prevented the points of the skull from being drawn through his fingers.

The mamba’s jaws gaped wide open and its short fangs were erect in the pate soft mucous lining of its mouth. The clear venom oozed down the open channel in the fangs and dripped from the points like dew from a rose-thorn.

The snake-doctor held the reptile’s head on a small anvil and with a sharp blow of a wooden mallet crushed the skull. The snake’s body whipped around wildly in the death frenzy.

Cheng watched impassively as the snake-doctor hung the writhing body on a meat hook and then used a razor to slit open the belly cavity and drain the blood- into a cheap glass tumbler. With a surgeon’s skill he removed the venom sacs from the mamba’s neck and placed them in a glass bowl.

After that he lifted out the liver and gall bladder and placed them in a separate bowl.

Next he peeled off the snake’s skin, ringing the neck with the razor and stripping the skin like a nylon stocking from a girl’s leg. The naked body was pink and glistening. The snake doctor took it down from the meat hook and laid it on the steel tabletop.

With half a dozen blows of a cleaver he chopped it into pieces, and dropped them into a soup kettle that was already boiling on the burner of a gas stove at the rear of the shop. As he added herbs and spices to the kettle he intoned a magical incantation that had remained unchanged since the Han dynasty of 200 BC when the first snake-doctors had developed their art.

Once the soup was cooking, the snake-doctor turned back to his table.

He spilled the gall bladder and liver into a small mortar and pounded them to pulp with a ceramic pestle. Then he looked up at Cheng enquiringly. “Do you wish to take the tiger juice?” he asked. It was a rhetorical question. Cheng always drank the venom.

Again it was part of the gambler’s thrill to flirt with death, for if he had a tiny gum boil or a scratch on his tongue, a bleeding rash in his throat or a raw spot in his guts, even a duodenal or gastric ulcer, the mamba venom would find it and kill him within minutes, and it would be an excruciating death.

The snake-doctor added the translucent sacs of venom to the mortar and pounded them in with the liver. Then he scraped the pulp into the glass tumbler of dark blood and while he stirred it he added a dash of medicine from each of three other bottles.

The concoction was black, and thick as honey. He handed the tumbler to Cheng.

Cheng drew a deep breath and then tossed back the liquid at a single gulp. It was bitter with gall. He placed the empty glass on the metal table-top, and folded his hands in his lap. He sat without showing any emotion, while the snake-doctor recited spells from his magic book over him. If the venom did not kill him, Cheng knew that the potion would arm his manhood. It would transform his flaccid penis into a steel lance. It would turn his testicles into cannonballs of iron.

He waited quietly for the first symptoms of poisoning. After ten minutes he felt no ill-effects, but his penis stirred and swelled into a semi-erection. He moved a little to give it space in his trousers and the snake-doctor smiled and nodded happily at the success of his treatment.

He went to fetch the soup kettle from the gas burner and poured some of the liquid into a rice bowl and then added a piece of mamba flesh, cooked white and flaking. He offered the bowl and a pair of ivory chopsticks to Cheng.

Cheng ate the meat and drank the soup and when he had finished he accepted a second bowl. At the end of the meal he belched loudly to show his appreciation, and again the snake doctor nodded and smiled.

Cheng consulted his wristwatch. It was nine o’clock. He rose to his feet and bowed. “Thank you for your assistance,” he said formally.

“I am honoured that my humble efforts have pleased you. I wish you a sword of steel and many happy hours in the velvet scabbard.”

There was no question of payment. The snake-doctor would make a deduction from Cheng’s commission on the supply of African snakes and wild birds.

Cheng walked back quickly to the apartment building in Tunhua Road. He sat in the black leather driving seat of the Porsche and for a few minutes enjoyed the tight full sensation of his erection before he started the engine and drove out of the garage.

It took him forty minutes to reach the sea pavilion. The grounds were surrounded by a high wall topped with a ridge of ceramic tiles, except on the open sea side. Coloured paper lanterns hung from the traditionally-shaped pediment of the gate. It looked like the entrance to a pleasure garden or fairground. Cheng knew that the lanterns had been lit especially to welcome him. The guards had been warned to expect him and they made no effort to detain him.

Cheng drove through and parked above the rocky headland. He locked the Porsche and stood for a moment inhaling the kelp odour of the sea. There was a fast motor launch moored at the private jetty. It would be needed later.

Cheng knew that in less than two hours the speed boat could be over the thousand yard sounding, over the oceanic depths of the East China Sea. A weighted object, such as a human body, dropped overboard from there would fall into the primeval ooze of the sea-bed, never to be recovered. He smiled. His erection had abated only slightly.

He went up to the pavilion It was also of traditional architecture. It reminded Cheng of the house in the willow-tree pattern on the blue porcelain plates. A servant met him at the door, led him into an inner room and brought him tea.

It was exactly ten o’clock when she entered the room from behind the bead curtain.

She was slim as a boy in her tight brocaded tunic and silk pantaloons. He had never been able to guess her age for she wore a mask of make-up like a player in a Peking opera. Her almond eyes were starkly outlined in jet black, while her lids and cheeks were hectically rouged to the carmine colour that the Chinese find so attractive. Her forehead and the bridge of her nose were ash white and her lips a deep startling scarlet.

“Welcome to my house, Green Mountain Man,” she lisped, and Cheng bowed.

“I am honoured, Myrtle Blossom Lady.”

She sat on the sofa beside Cheng and they exchanged formal and polite conversation, until Cheng indicated the cheap imitation leather briefcase he had placed on the table in front of him.

She appeared to notice it for the first time, but did not deign to touch it herself. She inclined her head and her assistant glided into the room on slippered feet. She must have been watching them from behind the beaded curtain. She left again as silently as she had entered, taking the briefcase with her.

It took her a few minutes to count the money in the back room and to put it in a safe place. Then she returned and knelt beside her mistress. They exchanged a glance. The money was all there.

“You say that there is a choice of two?” Cheng asked.

“Yes,” she agreed. “But would you like to make sure the room is to your taste, and that the equipment is in order?” She led Cheng through to the special room at the back of the pavilion.

The central piece of furniture was a gynaecologist’s couch, complete with stirrups. It was fitted with a plastic cover that could be removed and destroyed after use, and there was also a plastic sheet laid over the floor. The walls and ceiling were tiled and washable.

Like an operating theatre, it could be scrubbed down to its present sterile condition.

Cheng moved to the table on which the instruments were laid out. There was a selection of silk cords of various lengths and thicknesses arranged in neat coils on the tray. He picked up one of these and ran it through his fingers. His erection, which had softened, revived strongly.

Then he turned his attention to the other items on the table, a full set of stainless steel gynaccological instruments.

“Very good,” he told her.

“Come,” she said, and took his hand. “You may choose now.”

She led him to a small window in the near wall. They stood hand-in-hand in front of it and looked through the one-way glass into the room beyond. After a few moments the female assistant led two children into the room.

They were both dressed in white. In the Chinese tradition, white was the colour of death. Both the little girls had long dark hair and pretty little nut-brown pug faces. Cambodian or Vietnamese, Cheng guessed.

“Who are they?” he asked.

“Boat people,” she said. “Their boat was captured by pirates in the South China Sea. All the adults were killed. They are orphans, nameless and stateless. Nobody knows they exist; nobody will miss them.” The female assistant began to undress the two little girls. She did it skilfully, titillating the hidden audience like a strip-tease artiste.

One girl was at least fourteen. Once she was naked Cheng saw that she had full breasts and a dark tussock of pubic hair, but the other girl was barely pubescent. Her breasts were flower buds, and the fine haze of pubic down did not conceal the plump cleft of her pudenda.

“The young one!” Cheng whispered hoarsely. “I want the young one.”

“Yes,” she said. “I thought that would be your choice. She will be brought to you in a few minutes. You may take as long as you wish. There is no hurry.”

She left the room, and suddenly the music swelled from hidden speakers, loud Chinese music with gongs and drums that would cover any other sound, such as a little girl’s screams.

Chapter 27

The colonials of Victorian times had sited Ubotno’s Government House with care on high ground above the lake, with a view out across the waters, and they had surrounded it with lawns and exotic trees brought out from Europe to remind them of home. in the evenings the breeze came down from the Mountains of the Moon in the west, with the memory of glaciers and eternal snows, to take the edge off the heat.

Government House was still as it had been in the colonial era, no more pretentious than a comfortable redbrick ranch house with high ceilings, enclosed on all sides by a wide flyscreened verandah. Victor Omeru had kept it that way. He would not spend money on grand public buildings while his people were in want. The aid that he received from Ameria and Europe had all gone into agriculture, health and education, not personal aggrandisement.

Tonight the verandahs and lawns were crowded as Daniel Armstrong and Bonny drove up in the army Landrover that had been placed at their disposal. A Hita corporal in camouflage overalls, with a submachine-gun slung over one shoulder, waved them into a parking slot between two other vehicles with diplomatic licence plates.

“How do I look?” Bonny asked anxiously as she checked her lipstick in the rear-view mirror.

“Sexy,” Daniel told her truthfully. She had teased her hair out into a great tawny red mane and she wore a green mini-skirt tight around her buttocks and high on her thighs. For such a big girl she had shapely legs.

“Give me a hand. Damned skirts!” The Landrover stood high and her skirt rode up as she slid down. She showed a flash of lace pantie that rocked the Hita corporal on to his heels.

There were floodlights in the jacaranda trees and an army band belted out popular jazz with a distinctive African beat that lifted Daniel’s spirits and put a spring in his step.

“All this in your honour,” Bonny chuckled.

“I bet Taffari tells that to all his guests.” Daniel smiled.

Captain Kajo, who had met them at the airport, hurried towards them as soon as they stepped on to the lawn. He was looking at Bonny’s legs from twenty paces away, but he addressed Daniel. “Ah, Doctor Armstrong, the president has been asking for you. You are the guest of honour tonight.”

He led them up the front steps on to the verandah. Daniel picked out President Taffari instantly, even though he had his back turned to them. He was the tallest in a room full of tall Hita officers. He wore a maroon mess jacket of his own design, although his head was bare.

“Mr. President.” Captain Kajo addressed his back deferentially, and Taffari turned and smiled and displayed the medals on his chest. “May I present Doctor Daniel Armstrong and his assistant Miss Mahon?”

“Doctor!” Taffari greeted Daniel. “I am a great admirer of your work. I could not have chosen anybody more qualified to show my country to the world. Up until now we have been kept in obscurity and medieval isolation by the reactionary old tyrant we overthrew.” “It is time that Ubomo came into its own. You will help us, Doctor. You will help us bring my beloved country into the twentieth century by focusing world attention upon us.”

“I’ll do all in my power,” Daniel assured him cautiously. Although he had seen photographs of him, Daniel was unprepared for Taffari’s eloquence and presence. He was a striking looking man, exuding power and confidence. He stood a full head taller than Daniel’s six feet and had the features of an Egyptian pharaoh carved in amber.

His eyes slid past Daniel and settled on Bonny Mahon. She stared back at him boldly and wet her bottom lip with the tip of her tongue.

“You are the photographer. Sir Peter Harrison sent me a videotape of ‘Arctic Dream’. If you can photograph Ubomo with the same understanding and craft, I will be well pleased, Miss Mahon.” He looked down at her bosom, at the big golden freckles on her upper chest that gave way to a narrow strip of unblemished creamy skin above the top of her green dress. The exposed cleavage between her breasts was deep and tightly compressed.

“You are very kind,” Mr. President, she said, and Taffari laughed softly.

“Nobody has ever called me that before,” he admitted, and then changed the subject. “What do you think of my country so far?”

“We only arrived today,” Bonny pointed out. “But the lake is lovely and the people are so tall, the men so handsome.” She made it a personal compliment.

“The Hita are tall and handsome,” Taffari agreed. “But the Uhali are small and ugly as monkeys, even their women.” The Hita officers of his staff laughed delightedly and Bonny gulped with shock.

“Where I come from we don’t talk disparagingly of other ethnic groups. It’s called racism, and it’s unfashionable,” she said.

He stared at her for a moment. Clearly he was unaccustomed to being corrected. Then he smiled, a thin, cool little smile. “Well, Miss Mahon, in Africa we tell the truth. If people are ugly or stupid we say so. It’s called tribalism, and I assure you it’s extremely fashionable.” His staff roared with laughter, and Taffari turned back to Daniel.

“Your assistant is a woman of strong views, Doctor, but I believe you were born in Africa. You have a keener understanding. It shows in your work. You have put your finger on the problems that face this continent, and poverty is the most crippling of those. Africa is poor, Doctor, and Africa is passive and supine. I intend to change that. I intend to endow my country with the spirit and confidence to exploit our natural wealth and to develop the strength and native genius of our people. I want you to record our endeavours.” His staff officers, all in the same marooncoloured mess jackets, applauded this statement.

“I’ll do my best,” Daniel promised.

“I’m sure you will, Doctor Armstrong.” He was looking at Bonny again, but he went on speaking to Daniel. “The British ambassador is here tonight. I’m sure you will want to pay your respects.”

He summoned Kajo to him. “Captain, please take Doctor Armstrong to meet Sir Michael.” Bonny began to follow Daniel, but Taffari stopped her with a touch on the arm. “Don’t go yet, Miss Mahon. There are a few things I would like to explain to you, such as the differences between the Uhali and the tall handsome Hita whom you so admire.” Bonny turned back to him, thrust out one hip in a provocative stance and crossed her arms beneath her breasts, pushing them up so that they threatened to pop out of the green dress into his face. “You should not judge Africa by the standards of Europe,” he told her. “We do things differently here.”

From the corner of her eye Bonny saw that Daniel had left the verandah and followed Kajo down on to the floodlit lawn. She leaned close to Taffari, her eyes not much below the level of his.

“Goody!” she said. “I’m always looking for new and different ways.”

Daniel paused at the bottom of the steps and began to grin as he picked out the familiar figure on the crowded lawn. Then he hurried forward and seized his hand. “Sir Michael, forsooth! British ambassador no less, you sly dog. When did all this happen?”

Michael Hargreave gripped his elbow in a momentary display of un-British and undiplomatic affection. “Didn’t you get my letter? All very sudden. Hauled me out of Lusaka before you could say ‘Bob’s your uncle’. Sword on both shoulders from H. M. ‘Arise, Sir Michael’, and all that. Shot me down here. But you did get my letter?”

Daniel shook his head.” Congratulations, Sir Michael. Long overdue. You deserve it.”

Hargreave looked embarrassed and dropped Daniel’s hand. “Where’s your drink, dear boy? Don’t touch the whisky. Locally made. Convinced it’s actually bottled crocodile piss. Try the gin.” He summoned a waiter. “Can’t think why you didn’t get my letter. Tried to ring you at the flat in London. No reply.”

“Where’s Wendy?”

“Sent her back to Lusaka to pack up. New chap there has agreed to look after your Landcruiser and gear. Wendy will be here in a couple of weeks.Sends her love, by the way.”

“Did she know you’d see me here?” Daniel was puzzled.

“Tug Harrison gave us the word that you’d be in Ubomo. You know Harrison?”

“Everybody in Africa knows Tug. Finger in most pies.”

“Asked me to keep an eye on you. Told me about your assignment here. You’re going to film Taffari and make him and BOSS look good; that’s what he told me. Right?”

“A little bit more complicated than that, Mike.”

“Don’t I know it! Complications you haven’t dreamed of yet.” He drew Daniel away to a deserted corner of the lawn, out of earshot of the other guests. “But first of all, what do you think of Taffari?”

“I wouldn’t buy a second-hand country from him without checking the tyres.”

“Check the engine as well, while you’re about it,” Michael smiled. “The indications are that he’s going to make Idi Amin look like Mother Theresa. I saw him giving you fifty lyrical words on his plan for peace and prosperity in the land.”

“Rather more than fifty,” Daniel corrected him.

“What it actually amounts to is peace for the Hita, prosperity for Ephrem Taffari, and screw the Uhah. My pals at MI6 tell me that he already has his numbered bank accounts in Switzerland and the Channel Islands all set up, and nice little sums tucked away in them. American foreign aid.”

“That shouldn’t surprise you. Everybody’s doing it, aren’t they?”

“Par for the course; got to admit it. But he is being rather naughty to the Uhali. Chopped old Victor Omeru, who was rather a decent sort, and now he’s kicking the manure out of the rest of the Uhali tribe. Some nasty rumours flying about, dark deeds. We don’t really approve. Even the PM is a bit browned off with him already, which reminds me, got some news of a pal of yours.”

“A pal of mine?”

“The Lucky Dragon. Rings a bell, doesn’t it? And you’ll never guess who they’re sending out to run the operation here.”

“Ning Cheng Gong,” Daniel said quietly. It had to be. That was the reason he was here in Ubomo. He had sensed it all along. This was where he would meet Cheng again.

“You’ve been reading my mail,” Michael accused. “Ning Cheng Gong is right. He arrives next week. Taffari is giving another party to welcome him. Any excuse for a party with our Ephrem, even you.” He broke off and stared at Daniel. “You all right, dear boy? Taking your anti-malarial, are you? Gone as white as a sheet.”

“I’m fine.” But Daniel’s voice was hoarse and scratchy. He had a terrible mental image of the bedroom of the cottage at Chiwewe, and of the desecrated bodies of Mavis Nzou and her daughters. it left him feeling sick and shaken. He wanted to think of something else, anything but Ning Cheng Gong. “Tell me everything about Taffari and Ubomo that I need to know,” he demanded of Michael Hargreave.

“Tall order, dear boy. Can only give you the headlines now, but if you drop in at the embassy, I’ll give you a full briefing, and a peep at some of the files. Your eyes only, of course. Even got a couple of bottles of genuine Chivas tucked away.”

Daniel shook his head. “We’re going up the lakesbore tomorrow to start filming. Taffari has put the entire navy at our disposal. One clapped-out World War Two gunboat. But I could drop in at the embassy tomorrow evening.”

When it was time to go, Daniel looked around for Bonny Mahon but could not find her. He saw Captain Kajo with a group of other officers at the bar and went across to him. “I’m leaving now, Captain Kajo.”

“That’s all right, Doctor. President Taffari has left already. You are free to go.”

You could only tell that Kajo was drunk by his eyes. They had that coffee-coloured haze over the whites. In a white man they would have been bloodshot.

“We will meet tomorrow morning, Captain? What time?”

“Six o’clock at the guest house, Doctor. I will pick you up. We must not be late. The navy will be waiting for us.”

“Have you seen Miss Mahon?” Daniel asked.

One of the other Hita officers sniggered drunkenly and Kajo grinned. “No, Doctor. She was here earlier on. But I haven’t seen her in the last hour. She must have left. Yes, come to think of it now, I did see her leave.” He turned away, and Daniel tried not to scowl and look abandoned as he went out to the Landrover in the carpark.

The government guest house was in darkness when he drove up and parked under the verandah. She might be in bed, already asleep with the light out. Despite his altered opinion of her, he felt a stab of disappointment when he switched on the bedroom light and saw that the servants had turned down the beds and rigged the mosquito nets. She had given him the excuse to end it, why was he not more pleased that it was over?

He had drunk just enough of the local gin to have a headache.

He picked up Bonny’s bag from the foot of the bed and carried it through to the second bedroom. Then he went into the bathroom and swept her toiletries and cosmetics into her sponge bag and dumped them in the washbasin of the second bathroom down the passage. Then he held his head under the cold tap and took three Anadin tablets. He dropped his clothes on the floor and climbed naked under the mosquito net.

He woke with headlights sweeping the front of the guest house and shining through the curtains on to the wall above his bed. Tyres crunched on the gravel drive. There were voices, and then a car door slammed and the vehicle pulled away. He heard her come up the verandah steps and open the front door.

A minute later the bedroom door opened stealthily and she crept into the room. He switched on the bedside light and she froze in the middle of the floor. She carried her shoes in one hand and her bag in the other. Her hair was in a wild tangle, sparkling like copper wire in the light, and her lipstick was smeared over her chin.

She giggled and he realised she was drunk. “Have you any idea of the risk you’re taking, you silly bitch?” he asked bitterly. “This is Africa. What you’ll get is a four-letter word and it’s not the one you’re thinking of, sweetheart. It’s spelled A I D S.”

“Tut Tut! jealous, are we? How do you know what I’ve been doing, darling?”

“It’s no big secret. Everybody at the party knew. You’ve been doing what any good little whore does.” She took a wild round-arm swing at his head. He ducked under the blow, and the momentum carried her on to the bed. She pulled the mosquito net down on top of herself and fell in a tangle of long legs. The mini-skirt pulled up almost as high as her waist, her buttocks were bare and white as ostrich eggs.

“By the way,” he said, “you’ve left your knickers with Ephrem.”

She crawled up on to her knees and pulled down the green skirt. “They are in my handbag, ducky.” She got unsteadily to her feet. “Where the hell are my things?”

“In your room, your new room across the passage.”

She flashed at him. “So that’s the way you want it?”

“You didn’t really think I’d want to pick up Ephrem’s leftovers, did you?” Daniel tried to keep his tone reasonable. “Off you go, there’s a good little harlot.”

She picked up her handbag and shoes and marched to the door. There she turned back to him, swaying with a drunkard’s dignity. “It’s all true, what they say,” she told him with vindictive relish. “They are big. Bigger and better than you’ll ever be!” She slammed the door behind her.

Daniel was on his second cup of breakfast tea when Bonny came out on to the verandah and, without greeting him, took her place at the breakfast table opposite him. She wore her usual working uniform of faded blue jeans and denim top, but her eyes were puffy and her expression disgruntled with hangover.

The guest house chef was an anachronism from the colonial era and he served a traditional English breakfast. Neither of them spoke while Bonny demolished her plateful of eggs and bacon.

Then she looked up at him. “So what happens now?”

“You make a film,” he said. “Just the way it’s written in your contract.”

“You still want me around?”

“As a cameraman, yes. But from now on it’s a business relationship.”

“That suits me just fine, she agreed. It was getting to be a bit of a strain; I’m not good at faking it.”

Daniel stood up abruptly, and went to fetch his gear from the bedroom. He was still too angry to risk getting into an argument with her. Before he was ready, Captain Kajo arrived with three soldiers in the back of his Landrover. They helped carry out the heavy video equipment and load it into the back of the truck. Daniel let Bonny sit up in the cab beside Captain Kajo, while he rode in the back with the heavily armed Hita soldiers.

The town of Kahali was very much as he remembered it from his last visit. The streets were wide and dusty where the potholes had eaten, cancerlike, through the tarmac. The buildings looked like those from the movie set of an old-fashioned Western.

The main difference that Daniel noticed was the mood of the people. The Uhali women still wore their colourful ankle-length robes and turbans, the Moslem influence apparent in their demeanour, but the expressions on their faces were guarded and neutral. There were few smiles and no laughter in the open-air market where the women squatted in lines with their wares spread out on sheets of cloth in front of them. There were army patrols in the market-place and on the street corners. The populace averted their eyes as the Landrover passed.

There were very few tourists, and these were dusty, unshaven and rumpled, probably members of an overland safari making their way down the length of the African continent in a huge communal truck. They were haggling for tomatoes and eggs in the market.

Daniel grinned. They were paying for a glimpse of purgatory. The overland safari meant amoebic dysentery and punctures, five thousand miles of potholes and army roadblocks, probably the only package holiday on the globe with no repeat customers. Once was enough to last a lifetime.

The gunboat was waiting for them at the wharf. Seamen in navy blue uniforms and bare feet carried the video equipment up the gangplank and the captain shook hands with Daniel as he came aboard. “Peace be with you,” he greeted him in Swahili. “I have orders to take you where you want to go.”

They left the harbour and turned northwards, parallel to the lakeshore. Daniel stood out on the foredeck and his good spirits returned swiftly. The water was a dark and lovely blue, sparkling in the sunlight. There was a single cloud on the northern horizon, as white as a seagull and not much larger. It was the spray column where the lake spilled over its rocky rim into a deep gorge and became the infant Nile.

The ultimate source of the White Nile had been debated for two thousand years and had still not been entirely agreed upon. Was it those falls where the Victoria Nile out of Lake Victoria joined the Albert Nile in Lake Albert and spilled over at the beginning of the incredible journey down to Cairo and the Mediterranean Sea? Or was it higher still, as Herodotus had written long before the birth of Christ? Did it spring from a bottomless lake lying between the two mountains Crophi and Mophi and fed by their eternal snows?

With the lake-spray in his face, Daniel turned to look westward, trying to make out the loom of the romantic mountain peaks in the distance, but today, as on most days, it was a diffuse blue cloud mass, blending with the blue of the African sky. Many of the earlier explorers had passed close by the Mountains of the Moon without ever dreaming of their existence.

Even Henry Morton Stanley, that ruthless, driven, Americanised Welsh bastard, had lived for months in their shadow before the perpetual clouds had opened and astonished him with a vista of snowy peaks and shining glaciers. It gave Daniel a mystic feeling to sail upon these waters that were the lifeblood pumped from the heart mountains of this savage continent.

He turned and glanced up at the open bridge of the gunboat. Bonny Mahon was filming. She had the Sony camera balanced on her shoulder and pointed towards the shore. He grimaced with reluctant approval. Whatever their personal problems, she was a true professional. At the end she’d probably get a good shot of the devil on her way through hell, and the thought made him grin and took the edge off his antagonism towards her.

He went back to the chartroom below the bridge and spread the survey maps and architect’s drawings that BOSS had provided for him on the table. The site that had been chosen for the hotel and casino was seven miles up the coast from the port of Kahati. Daniel saw that it was a natural bay with an island garding the entrance. The Ubomo River, pouring down the escarpment of the Rift Valley from the great forests and snowy mountain ranges, debauched into the bay. On the map it looked an ideal site for the holiday complex that Tug Harrison hoped would make Ubomo one of the more desirable holiday destinations for tourists from southern Europe.

To Daniel there seemed to be only one drawback. There was already a large fishing village sited on the bay. He wondered what Tug Harrison and Ning Cheng Gong planned to do about that. European sunbathers would not want to share the beach with native fishermen and their nets, while the odour of sundried fish on the racks would not encourage the appetite or add much to the romantic attractions of Fish Eagle Bay Lodge, as the project had already been named.

The captain hailed Daniel from above. He left the chart-table and went out to the open deck, just as the gunboat rounded the headland and Fish Eagle Bay opened ahead of them. Daniel saw at once why the name had been chosen. The island at the mouth of the bay was heavily forested. Nourished by the lake’s sweet clear waters, the ficus and wild mahogany trees had grown into giants with branches spreading out high over the rocky shore and the surrounding lake waters. Hundreds of mating pairs of fish eagles had built their nests in the high branches. With russet and chestnut plumage and glistening white heads, these were the most spectacular of all the African raptors. The great birds sat on every prominent perch, while still others sailed overhead on wide pinions, throwing back their heads in flight to utter the wild yelping chant that is so much a part of the African pageant.

The gunboat anchored and launched an inflatable Zodiac to take Daniel and Bonny to the island. For an hour they filmed the eagle colony. Captain Kajo threw dead fish off the rocky cliff and Bonny captured exciting sequences of rival eagles contending for the offerings and engaging in ritual aerial combat by hooking each other’s talons and spinning and swirting in flight.

Daniel helped her lug the Sony camera up the smooth, massive trunk of a wild fig tree to film the eagle chicks in the nest. The parent birds attacked them both on the exposed branch, coming in on screaming power-dives with talons extended and curved yellow beaks agape, pulling away at the last possible moment so that the draught of the great wings buffeted them on their exposed perch.

By the time Bonny and Daniel reached the ground, their personal antagonism had been shelved and they were operating as a professional film crew again.

They returned to the Zodiac and ran out to the gunboat. As they came aboard, the captain weighed anchor and pushed on slowly into the bay. It was a spectacular site with volcanic rock cliffs climbing sheer out of the blue water and bright orange sand beaches in between the black rock.

Once again they climbed into the Zodiac and landed on one of the beaches near the mouth of the Ubomo River. Leaving Captain Kajo and the two seamen on the beach with the boat, Daniel and Bonny climbed to the highest point on the cliffs and were rewarded with a panoramic view over the bay and the lake.

They could look down on the large fishing village at the mouth of the Ubomo River. Twenty or so dhow-rigged boats were drawn up on the beach while as many more were dotted out upon the lake waters. On gull-winged sails the fleet was bearing in towards the bay, the night’s fishing over, coming in to land the catch. Along the head of the beach the fishing-nets were spread out in the sunlight to dry and the smell of fish carried up to them, even on the top of the cliff. Naked black children played upon the beach and splashed in the lake. Men worked on the dhows or sat cross-legged with needle and palm to repair the festooned nets.

In the village the women moved gracefully in their long skirts as they pounded grain in the tall wooden mortars, swinging rhythmically to the rise and fall of the pestles in their hands, or squatted over the cooking-fires on which stood the black three-legged pots. Daniel pointed out the various features which he wanted filmed and Bonny followed his instructions and turned the camera lens to record it all.

“What will happen to the villagers?” she asked, still peering into the viewfinder of the Sony.

“They’re scheduled to start digging the foundations of the casino in three weeks… I expect they’ll move them to another site,” Daniel told her. In the new Africa people are moved about by their rulers like chess pieces He broke off and shaded his eyes, peering out along the road that led back along the lakeshore towards the capital.

Red dust blew in a slow sullen cloud out across the blue lake waters, carried on the mountain breeze from up-country. “Let me have a look through your telephoto lens,” he asked Bonny, and she handed him the camera. Swiftly Daniel zoomed the lens to full power and picked up the approaching column of vehicles. “Army trucks, he told her. And transporters. I’d say those were bulldozers on the transporters.”

He handed her back the camera, and Bonny studied the approaching column. “Some kind of army exercise?” she guessed. “Are we allowed to film it?”

“Anywhere else in Africa I wouldn’t take the chance of pointing a camera at anything military, but here we’ve got President Taffari’s personal firman. Shoot away!”

Quickly Bonny set up the light tripod she used only for longrange telephoto shots and zoomed in on the approaching military convoy. Meanwhile, Daniel moved to the edge of the cliff and looked down on the beach. Captain Kajo and the sailors from the gunboat were stretched out on the sand. Kajo was probably sleeping off the previous evening’s debauch. Where he lay he was out of sight of the village.

Daniel strolled back to watch Bonny at work.

The convoy was already approaching the outskirts of the village. A mob of children and stray dogs ran out to greet it. The children skipped along beside the trucks, laughing and waving, while the dogs yapped hysterically. The vehicles drew up in the open ground in the centre of the village which was both soccer pitch and village square.

Soldiers in camouflage uniform, armed with AK 47 rifles, jumped down and formed up into their platoons on the soccer ground. A Hita officer climbed on to the cab of the leading truck and began to harangue the villagers through a bull-horn. The sound of his electronically distorted voice carried intermittently to the crest of the cliff on which Daniel was standing. He lost the sense of some of the Swahili as the breeze rose and fell, but the gist of it was clear.

The officer was accusing the villagers of harbouring political dissidents, obstructing the economic and agricultural reforms of the new government, and engaging in counter-revolutionary activities. While he was speaking, a squad of soldiers trotted down to the beach and rounded up the children and fishermen there. They herded them back to the village square.

The villagers were becoming agitated. The children hid amongst the skirts of the women and the men were protesting and gesticulating at the officer on the cab of the truck. Now soldiers began moving through the village, ordering people out of the thatched huts. One old man tried to resist being dragged from his home, and a soldier clubbed him with the butt of an AK 47. He fell in a huddle on the dusty earth and they left him there and moved on, kicking open the doors of the huts and shouting at the occupants. On the beach another group of soldiers was meeting the incoming fishing fleet and prodding the fishermen ashore at bayonet point.

Bonny never looked up from the viewfinder of her camera. “This is great stuff! God, this is the real thing. This is Emmy Award territory, I kid you not.”

Daniel did not reply. Her gloating excitement should not have offended him as much as it did. He was a journalist himself. He understood the need to find fresh and provocative material to stir the jaded emotions of a television audience reared on a diet of turmoil and violence, but what they were witnessing here was as obscene as scenes of SS troopers clearing out the ghettoes of Europe.

The soldiers were beginning to load the fisherfolk on to the waiting trucks, women were screaming and trying to find their own children in the throng. Some villagers had managed to collect a pathetic bundle of possessions, but most of them were empty-handed.

The two yellow bulldozers rolled down off their low trailer beds with engines pulsing and blue diesel smoke blowing from the exhaust stacks. One of them swung in a tight circle with a track locked, and lowered the massive frontal blade. Gleaming in the afternoon sunlight the blade sliced into the wall of the nearest but and the thatched roof collapsed.

“Beauty!” Bonny murmured. “I couldn’t have staged it better. That was an incredible shot!”

The women were wailing and ululating, that peculiar chilling sound of African grief. One of the men broke away and ran towards the cover of the nearest field of sorghum. A soldier shouted a warning at him, but he put his head down and ran faster. A short burst of automatic rifle-fire popped like a string of fire-crackers and the man collapsed and rolled in the dust and lay still.

A woman screamed and ran towards the fallen body carrying an infant strapped in a shawl on her back and an older child in her arms. A soldier barred her path with a bayoneted rifle and turned her back towards the truck.

“I got it!” Bonny exulted. “The whole thing. The shooting and all. It’s in the can. Shit, this is great!”

The soldiers were drilled and ruthless. It all went very quickly. Within half an hour the entire populace of the village had been rounded up, except for the fishermen still out on the lake. The first truck, fully loaded, pulled away, heading back the way it had come.

The huts were collapsing one after the other as the two bulldozers moved down the rows. “God, I hope I don’t run out of film,” Bonny muttered anxiously. “This is a once-in-a-lifetime chance.”

Daniel had not spoken since the operation had begun. He was part of Africa. He had seen other villages wiped out. He remembered the guerrilla camp in Mozambique. Since then he had seen Renamo rebels work over a village, and he had witnessed forced removals by the minions of apartheid in South Africa, but he had never grown hardened to the suffering of the African people. He was sick to his guts as he watched the rest of the little drama unfold.

The remaining fishing-boats ran in unsuspectingly to the beach, where the soldiers were waiting to drag the crews ashore. The last truckload of villagers rolled away in a column of red dust, and as soon as it was out of sight, one of the yellow bulldozers waddled down on to the beach and swept the abandoned fishing-boats into a pile, like firewood kindling.

Four soldiers brought the body of the old man and the one who had tried to escape, carrying them by ankles and wrists, dead heads lolling backwards. They tossed them on to the funeral pyre of shattered hulls and torn sails. One of the soldiers hurled a lighted torch of thatch on to the top of the pile. The flames took hold and burned so fiercely that the soldiers were driven backwards, holding up their hands to protect their faces.

The bulldozers crawled back and forth over the remains of the huts, flattening them under the steel tracks. A whistle shrilled and the soldiers formed up quickly and re-embarked into the waiting troop-carriers. The yellow bulldozers crawled back on to their transporters, and the entire column wound away.

After they had gone, the only sound was the hushed whisper of the evening breeze along the cliff face and the distant crackle of the flames.

“Well,” Daniel tried to keep his tone neutral, “the site is clear for the new casino. Taffari’s investment in happiness for his people is secure…” his voice broke. He could not go on. “The bastard!” he whispered. “The murderous bloody bastard.” He found that he was shaking with anger and outrage. It required an immense effort of will to bring his emotions under control. He strode to the edge of the cliff overlooking the beach. The gunboat was still anchored out in the deeper water in the middle of the bay and the Zodiac was drawn up on the beach with one of the soldiers guarding it, but Captain Kajo and the other sailor were no longer asleep on the sand. it was obvious that they had been awakened by the sound of gunfire and activity in the destroyed village.

Daniel looked around for Kajo and picked him out at last. He was climbing the cliff face half a mile away, and it was clear from his manner that he was agitated. He was searching for them, stopping every few minutes to shout through cupped hands and peer about him anxiously.

Daniel ducked back out of sight and snapped at Bonny. “Nobody must know that we shot that footage. It’s dynamite.”

“Gotcha!” she agreed.

“Give me the tape. I’ll take care of it, in case they want to check what you’ve filmed.” Bonny ejected the tape from the camera and handed it over. He wrapped it in a jersey and stuffed it into the bottom of his rucksack. “All right, let’s get out of here before Kajo finds us. He must never guess that we saw what we saw.”

Bonny gathered up her equipment swiftly and followed Daniel as he cut inland away from the remains of the village and the lakeshore. Within minutes they were into the tall grass and scrub of the savannah. Daniel circled back through the elephant grass and scrub until he reached the lakeshore again near the mouth of the bay, opposite Fish Eagle Island. They scrambled down the cliff to the beach and Daniel paused to let Bonny catch her breath.

“I don’t understand how they let a film crew loose in the area on the very day they were going to wipe out the village,” she gasped.

“Typical African screw-up,” Daniel told her. “Somebody forgot to tell somebody else. The last coup attempt they made in Zambia, one of the conspirators broke into the radio station and announced the revolution while all his co-conspirators were still in barracks eating breakfast. He had the wrong day. It was supposed to be the following Sunday. AWA. Are you ready to go on?”

Bonny stood up. “AWA?” she asked.

“Africa Wins Again,” Daniel smiled grimly. “Let’s go!”

Assuming a casual manner they set off side by side along the firm damp sand at the edge of the water. They could see the beached Zodiac in the distance, but the demolished village was still hidden by the bulge of the cliff face. They had not covered more than two hundred yards before Kajo hailed them from the cliff top. They stopped and looked up at him, waving as though they had only just noticed him for the first time.

“He’s peeing in his pants,” Bonny murmured. “He doesn’t know if we witnessed the raid or not.”

Kajo came pelting down the cliff path, slipping and sliding on the steep places. He was out of breath when he reached the beach and confronted them.

“Where have you been?” he demanded.

“Out at the point,” Daniel told him. “We filmed the casino site. Now we are going down to film the hotel site at the river mouth, where the fishing village is.”

“No! No!” Kajo grabbed Daniel’s arm. “That is enough. No more filming. We must go back to the boat. it is finished for today.”

Daniel shrugged off his hand and argued with him for a while. Then finally, with a show of reluctance, he allowed himself to be led towards the Zodiac and ferried aboard the gunboat. As soon as he reached the bridge, Kajo held a whispered discussion with the ship’s captain and they both looked to the head of the bay.

There were still streamers of smoke from the burning fishing boats drifting out over the water. The ship’s captain looked worried and gave orders to get under way in unnecessarily loud and agitated tones.

Before Daniel could prevent her, Bonny walked to the stern rail and aimed the Sony camera back towards the shore. Captain Kajo scrambled down the bridge Ladder and ran down the deck shouting. “No! Wait! You must not film that!”

“Why not? It’s only a bush fire, isn’t it?”

“No! Yes It’s a bush fire, but it’s classified material.”

“A top secret bush fire?” Bonny teased him, but she obediently lowered the camera.

As soon as they were alone Daniel scolded her. “Don’t get too damned clever. That little joke could have backfired on us.”

“On the contrary, I convinced Kajo that we are innocent,” she argued. “When are you going to let me have my tape back?”

“I’ll keep it,” he answered. “Kajo’s still suspicious. My bet is that when we reach Kahali, he’ll check your equipment.”

It was after dark when the gunboat tied up at its berth. During the transfer of Bonny’s video equipment from the vessel to the army Landrover on the wharf, the aluminium case that contained her tapes disappeared. Although she screamed at Kajo, and shook her finger in his face and threatened to report his inefficiency to President Taffari, Kajo just kept on smiling blandly. “Don’t worry, Miss Mahon. It will turn up. I give you my personal guarantee.”

Kajo arrived at the guest house the following morning, all smiles and apologies, carrying the missing case. “All present and correct, Miss Mahon. One of those stupid Uhali porters mislaid it. Please accept my heartfelt apologies.”

“You can be damned certain they scanned every tape in the box,” Daniel assured her when Kajo had gone. He tapped the buttoned pocket of his bush jacket. “I’m going to get this tape of the raid down to Mike at the British embassy. It’s the only safe place for it. Are you coming?”

“I have an engagement.” She looked defiant.

“If you’re going to visit your new boy friend, just be careful. That’s my advice to you. You’ve seen his style.”

“Ephrem is an honorable guy! I don’t believe he knew anything about that raid.”

“Believe what you want, but don’t tell anybody about this tape. Not even Tug Harrison.”

Bonny froze and stared at him. She had gone very pale. “What are you talking about?” she demanded.

“Come on, Bonny, give me some credit. I checked that phone call you made from the Norfolk Hotel in Nairobi. Of course you’re reporting to Tug Harrison. How much is he paying you to spy on me? “

“You’re crazy.” She tried to brazen her way out of it.

“Yes, I probably am. I fell for you, didn’t I? But you’ll be crazy if you tell Tug about this tape.”

He left her staring after him and he drove down the hill towards the British embassy. The grounds of the embassy were walled and the gates were guarded by soldiers of President Taffari’s personal bodyguard in camouflage uniforms and maroon berets.

Michael Hargreave came out of his office to greet Daniel. “Morning, Sir Mickey.”

“Danny boy! I spoke to Wendy last night. She sends you her love.”

“When is she arriving?”

“Not for another few weeks, more’s the pity Her mother is unwell, so Wendy has to go home first instead of coming directly from Lusaka.” Still chatting, he led Daniel into his office but as soon as he closed the door his manner changed. “News for you, Danny. The Chinaman has arrived. Landed this morning in BOSS’s executive jet. My information is he came from Taiwan via Nairobi. Moved into BOSS headquarters in Lake House immediately to take over as head of the syndicate, and Taffari is throwing one of his bashes for him on Friday evening. Expect you’ll get an invitation from Government House.”

“That should be interesting.” Daniel smiled grimly. “I’m looking forward to seeing that gentleman again.”

“That may be sooner than you think.” Michael Hargreave glanced at his wristwatch. “Have to leave you, dear boy. Making a luncheon speech to the assembled Rotarians of Ubomo, would you believe? Those files I promised you are all with my secretary. She’ll give you a room to work in. Have a peep at them, then give them back to her. No notes nor photostats, please, Danny. Eyes only.”

“Thanks, Mike; you’re a hero. But one other favour, please?”

“Fire away. Anything to please. Hargreave family motto, don’t you know?”

“Will you keep an envelope in your personal safe for me, Mike?” Michael locked the sealed envelope containing the Fish Eagle Bay tape into his strong room, then shook hands and excused himself.

Daniel watched him from the verandah as he was driven away by his uniformed chauffeur in the ambassadorial car. Despite the Union Jack pennant on the bonnet, it was a ten-year-old Rover in need of a paint job. The ambassador to Ubomo did not rate a RollsRoyce.

Daniel went back to the files that Michael’s secretary had laid out for him in a back room. When he left the embassy three hours later, his original impression of Ephrem Taffari had been reinforced a hundredfold. “He’s a tough and wily bird,” Daniel muttered as he started the Landrover. “He and Bonny Mahon should have fun together.”

Chapter 28

The motorcycle escort, sirens wailing, was forced to moderate its speed by the condition of the road through the new area of squatters slums that had grown up around the capital. The tarmac was pitted with sharp-edged craters, while chickens and pigs scattered, cackling and grunting, ahead of the outriders.

The presidential car, another recent gift from the same middle eastern oil potentate, was a black Mercedes. It was a mark of his high regard that President Taffari had sent it down to Lake House on the waterfront to fetch his guest to the audience.

Ning Cheng Gong sat behind the chauffeur and studied these first glimpses of Ubomo with interest. After what he had observed in Asia and the other parts of Africa in which he had served, the poverty and degradation of the slums through which they drove neither repelled nor shocked him. From his father he had learned to look upon swarming humanity as either a source of cheap labour, or a market for the goods and services he had to sell. Without human beings there is no profit, his father had pointed out on numerous occasions. The more people the better. Always when human lives are cheap, there are great fortunes to be made. We, the Lucky Dragon, must resist any effort to limit population growth in the Third World.

“People are our basic stock-in-trade.” Cheng smiled at his father’s wisdom, derived from a study of history. His father’s view was that only when human populations had been checked and limited by extraneous factors had the common man regained dignity and a measure of control over his own destiny. The terrible depredations of the great plagues of medieval times had broken the slavery of the feudal system of Europe. They had reduced human populations to the point where men had scarcity value and could bargain for their labour once again.

The great wars of this century had smashed the class system of inherited privilege and fortune, and ushered in this aberrant age of human rights, in which the common men of inferior races were taught that they were the equal of their betters. In Cheng’s view, and that of his father, common men had no such divine rights, any more than the antelope in the wild deserved special protection from the lion.

When the mass of humanity reached such proportions that human life was cheap, that was the age of opportunity for the great predators to emerge. Predators like Lucky Dragon. In Africa that time was fast approaching as populations swarmed like hiving bees.

He thought about the little Cambodian boat girl, whose corpse now lay in the dark depths of the China Sea. There were millions and tens of millions more like her, in India and China and Africa and South America, for men like him. Cheng had recognized in the burgeoning populations of Africa a unique opportunity.

That was the main reason that Lucky Dragon was drawn so irresistibly to this continent. That was why he was going now to a meeting with the president of this country which would soon be made to render up its wealth to him. He would suck the juice from it, throw away the empty skin, and pluck another from the tree. He smiled at the metaphor and raised his eyes to the green hill above the town on which Government House stood.

President Ephrem Taffari had an honour guard in maroon uniforms and white sun-helmets drawn up to welcome him and a red carpet laid across the green lawn. He came down the to meet Ning Cheng Gong personally and to shake his hand. He led him up on to the wide verandah and seated him in one of the carved armchairs under the revolving fan that hung from the ceiling.

An Uhali servant in ankle-length white robes, scarlet sash and tasselled fez offered him a silver tray of frosted glasses. Cheng refused the champagne and chose a glass of freshly squeezed orange juice.

Ephrem Taffari took the armchair opposite him and crossed one long leg clad in crisp white cotton trousers over the other. He smiled at Cheng with all his charm. “I wanted our first meeting to be informal and relaxed,” he explained, and made a deprecatory gesture towards his own open-neck sports shirt and sandals. “So you will excuse my casual attire and the fact that I have none of my ministers with me.”

“Of course, Your Excellency.” Cheng sipped the orange juice. “I am also delighted by this opportunity to get to know you and to be able to speak freely without the inhibition of having other people present.”

“Sir Peter Harrison speaks very highly of you, Mr. Ning. He is a man whose opinion I value. I am sure that our relationship will be mutually rewarding.”

For another ten minutes they traded compliments and protestations of friendship and goodwill. Both of them were at ease with this flowery circumlocution; it was part of their separate cultures and they understood instinctively the moves and countermoves as they circled and closed in on the real business of their meeting.

Finally Cheng took a sealed envelope from the inside pocket of his white silk tropical suit. It was a piece of expensive stationery, glossy and cream-coloured with a dragon motif embossed on the back flap. “My father and I want you to believe, Mr. President, that our commitment to your country is unswerving. We would like you to accept this as an earnest token of our friendship and concern.”

Cheng made his offering seem like a free and unsolicited gift, whereas both of them were aware that it had been the subject of intense and protracted bargaining. There had been other bidders in the market, not least of them the Arab oil sheikh who had provided the gunboat and the presidential Mercedes. It had taken all Sir Peter Harrison’s influence to secure the deal for the BOSS and Lucky Dragon syndicate.

The envelope contained the second instalment due to Ephrem Taffari in his personal capacity. The first instalment had been paid over ten months previously, on signature of the original agreement.

President Taffari picked up the envelope and turned it over to examine the seal. His fingers were long and elegantly shaped, and very dark against the stiff creamy paper.

He split the corner of the envelope with his thumbnail and unfolded the two documents it contained. One was a deposit receipt to a numbered bank account in Switzerland. The amount of the deposit was ten million US dollars. The other was a share transfer document, notarised in Luxembourg. A total of thirty percent of the syndicate’s share equity was now registered in the name of Ephrem Taffari. The syndicate’s formally registered name was The Ubomo Development Corporation.

The president returned the documents to the open envelope and slipped it into the pocket of his flowered sports shirt. “Progress has not been as rapid as I had hoped,” he said, his tone still courteous but underlaid with steel. “I hope that will change with your arrival, Mr. Ning.”

“I am aware of the delays. As you know, my field-manager has been in Kahali for the last week or so. He has given me a full report of the situation. I believe that some of the blame must attach to the previous management, put in place by BOSS. There has been some reluctance to exploit all the available assets.”

Cheng made a delicately pejorative gesture. “Mr. Purvis of BOSS, who is now safely on his way back to London, was a sensitive man. You know how squeamish these Englishmen can be. My field-manager informs me that we are short of labour.”

“I assure you, Mr. Ning, that you will have all the labour you require.” Taffari’s smile became strained at the thinly veiled complaint.

“Thirty thousand,” Cheng said softly. “That was the original estimate approved by you, Your Excellency. So far we have been given fewer than ten thousand.”

“You will have the rest before the beginning of next month.” Taffari was no longer smiling. “I have given orders to the army. All political detainees and dissidents are to be rounded up and sent to the labour camps in the forest.”

“These will be members of the Uhah tribe?” Cheng asked.

“Of course,” Taffari snapped. “You didn’t think for a moment that I would send you Hita, did you?”

Cheng smiled at the absurdity of that notion. “My fieldmanager tells me that the Uhali are good workers, hardy and intelligent and compliant. We will need most of them in the forest to begin with. It seems that we are experiencing problems there caused by the terrain and the climate. The roads are bad and machinery is bogging down, We will be forced to use more men.”

“Yes, I warned the BOSS people of that,” Taffari agreed. “They were reluctant to use what they considered to be…” He hesitated. “That man Purvis referred to our convict labour as slave labour.” He looked mildly amused by such pedantic definitions.

“These Westerners,” Cheng sympathized, “The English are bad enough, but the Americans are even-worse. They do not understand Africa or the orient. Their minds stop at Suez…” he broke off. “I assure you, Mr. President, that an easterner is now in control of the syndicate’s operation. You will find that I do not suffer from these Western scruples.”

“It is a relief to be able to work with somebody who understands the necessities of life,” Taffari agreed. “Which brings me to the hotel and casino project at Fish Eagle Bay. I understand from my field-manager that nothing has been done there, apart from the original survey of the area. He tells me that there is still a fishing village on the hotel site.”

“Not any longer,” Taffari smiled. “The area was cleared two days ago, soon after Purvis left for London. The village was a hotbed of counter-revolutionary activity. My soldiers rounded up all the dissidents. Two hundred able-bodied prisoners are already on their way to the concession area in the forest to join your labour force. The hotel site is ready for construction to begin.”

“Your Excellency, I can see that you and I are going to work well together. May I show you the modifications that I have made to the schedule of works drawn up by Purvis?” He opened his briefcase and unfolded a large computer spreadsheet that covered the entire table between them.

Taffari, leaned forward and listened with interest as Cheng pointed out the way in which he had restructured almost the entire syndicate operation. At the end of the lecture Taffari’s admiration was unconcealed. “You have accomplished all this in the short time since you arrived in Ubomo?” he asked, but Cheng shook his head.

“Not all of it, Your Excellency. Some of the replanning was done before I left Taipei. I had the benefits of my father’s advice and the assistance of his headquarters staff at Lucky Dragon. Only part of the planning was necessitated after my arrival in Kahali, on the advice of my field-manager, and his report on the conditions and problems we have encountered in the forest.”

“Remarkable!” Taffari shook his head. “Sir Peter Harrison’s opinion of you seems to be well founded.”

“Planning is one thing,” Cheng pointed out modestly. “Execution is another thing entirely.”

“I am sure that you will bring the same energy and drive to that part of the operation.” Taffari looked at his wristwatch. “I am expecting a guest for lunch.”

“I am sorry, Your Excellency. I have overstayed my welcome.” Cheng made as if to rise.

“Not at all, Mr. Ning. I absolutely insist that you join us for lunch. It may amuse you to meet my other guest, a member of the film team which Sir Peter Harrison has hired.”

“Ah, yes.” Cheng looked dubious. “Sir Peter explained to my father and myself why he had invited a film company to Ubomo. I am not certain that I agree with him, however. The English have a saying about sleeping dogs. In my view, it may be better not to draw world attention to our operations. I would like to cancel the project and send the film team out of Ubomo.”

“I am afraid it is too late for that.” Taffari shook his head. “We have already received a great deal of adverse publicity. There is a woman, a protegee of the previous presidents Omeru…”

For another ten minutes they discussed Sir Peter’s plan to defuse Kelly Kinnear’s propaganda campaign by a countercampaign of their own. “In any event,” Taffari pointed out, “we can always suppress anything we don’t like about this film production. Sir Peter Harrison has an approval clause written into the contract. We can even suppress the final product completely, and destroy all copies of the film, if we feel that is advisable.”

“Of course, you are taking precautions to make certain that these people do not get to see any of our sensitive areas? The convict labour camps, the main logging operations, and the refill mining?”

“Trust me, Mr. Ning. They will see the pilot scheme only. I have a reliable military officer accompanying them at all times.” He broke off at the sound of an approaching vehicle.” Ah! That would be the person we are discussing, the cameraman and Captain Kajo.”

“Cameraman?” Cheng asked, as ihey watched Bonny Mahon and Captain Kajo cross the lawn towards them.

“Inaccurate, I agree,” Taffari chuckled. “But is there such a term as camerawoman, I wonder?” He stood up and went to meet his guest.

Captain Kajo came to attention and saluted. Taffari ignored him. Kajo’s job was done. He had delivered Bonny. He turned on his heel and returned to wait in the army Landrover. He knew it might be a long wait.

Cheng studied the woman as Taffari led her down the verandah. She was too big and bosomy. She had no delicacy of bone structure nor refinement of feature. Both her nose and mouth were too large for his taste. Her freckled skin and coppery hair repelled him. Her voice and laughter, as she joked with Taffari, were loud and vulgar. Her confident attitude and powerful limbs made Cheng feel threatened as though she were challenging his masculinity. He did not like a woman to be as strong and assertive as a man. He compared her unfavourably with the dainty ivory-skinned women of his own race, with their straight black hair and submissive self-effacing manner.

However, he rose politely and smiled and shook her hand, and saw that Taffari was quite smitten by the woman. He knew that Taffari had a dozen Hita wives who were amongst the most beautiful of the tribe, but he supposed that the president was attracted by the novelty of this gross creature.

Perhaps he felt that it would add to his status to have a white woman as a plaything. However, Cheng guessed shrewdly that he would tire of her soon enough and discard her as casually as he had taken her up.

“Mr. Ning is the chief executive officer of the Ubomo Development Corporation,” Taffari told Bonny. “Technically he is your boss.”

Bonny chuckled. “Well, I can report that we are doing a hell of a job, boss.”

“I am delighted to hear that, Miss Mahon!” Cheng was unsmiling. “It is an important task that you are undertaking. What have you accomplished so far?”

“We’ve been working here in Kahali and on the lake. We’ve already filmed the site of the new hotel and casino.”

Both Cheng and Taffari listened seriously to her report. “Where are you moving to after this?” Cheng wanted to know.

“After we finish here we are driving up-country to the forest area. A place called Sengi-Sengi. Have I got that right, Your Excellency?” She looked at Taffari.

“Quite right, my dear Miss Mahon,” Taffari assured her. “Sengi-Sengi is the corporation’s pilot scheme for utilising the forest assets.”

Cheng nodded. “I will be visiting the project myself at the very first opportunity.”

“Why don’t you come up to Sengi-Sengi while we are filming?” Bonny suggested. “It would give much more weight to the production to have you in it, Mr. Ning.” She paused as another thought struck her, and then with a boyish grin she turned to Ephrem Taffari. But it would really be terrific to have you in the production, Mr. President. We could interview you on the site of the project at Sengi-Sengi. You could explain to us your hopes and dreams for your country. “Just think of that, Your Excellency.”

Ephrem Taffari smiled and shook his head. “I’m a busy man. I don’t think I could spare the time.” But she could see he was tempted. He was enough of a politician to relish the prospect of favourable exposure to a wide audience.

“It would be very valuable,” she urged him. “For both Ubomo and your personal image. People out there in the big world have heard about you only vaguely. If they could see you, it would change their whole perception. I assure you from a professional point of view that you would look plain bloody marvelous on the screen. You are tall and handsome and your voice is sensational. I swear I’d make you look like a film star.”

He liked the idea. He liked the flattery. “Well, perhaps…” They both realised that he wanted to be persuaded just a little longer.

“You could fly up to Sengi-Sengi by helicopter,” Bonny pointed out. “It would take half a day, no more…” She paused and pouted suggestively and touched his arm. “Unless, of course, you decided to stay over for a day or two. That would be okay by me, also.”

Chapter 29

Daniel and Bonny, accompanied as always by Captain Kajo, drove up from Kahah. Although it was only a little over two hundred miles it took them two full days, for much of that time was spent not in travelling but in filming the changing countryside and the rural tribes in their traditional manyattas that they found along the way.

Captain Kajo was able to smooth the way and negotiate with the tribal elders. For a few Ubomo shillings he arranged that they had the run of any of the Hita villages that they passed. They filmed the young girls at the water-holes, clad only in tiny beaded skirts as they bathed and plaited each other’s hair. The unmarried girls dressed their coiffures with a mixture of cow dung and red clay until it was an intricate sculpture on top of their heads, adding inches to their already impressive height.

They filmed the married women as they returned to the village in long files clad in flowing red matronly togas, swaying gracefully under brimming calabashes of water drawn from the spring.

They filmed the herds of dappled, multi-coloured cattle with their wide horns and humped backs against a background of flat-topped acacia and golden savanna grasslands.

They filmed the herdboys bleeding a great black bull, twisting a leather thong around its neck to raise the congested vein beneath the skin, then piercing it with the point of an arrow and capturing the scarier stream of blood in a bottle-shaped calabash. When the gourd was half filled they sealed the wound in the bull’s neck with a handful of clay, and topped up the calabash with milk stripped directly from the udder. Then they added a dash of cow’s urine to curdle the mixture into thick cheesy curds.

“Low cholesterol,” Daniel pointed out when Bonny gagged theatrically. “And look at those Hita figures.”

“I’m looking, Bonny assured him. Oh, hallelujah, I’m looking.”

The men wore only a red blanket over one shoulder, held with a belt at the waist. They allowed the skirts to flap open casually in the breeze, especially when Bonny was nearby. They let her film as much as she wished of everything they possessed, staring into the lens with masculine arrogance, the elongated loops of their earlobes stopped with bone and ivory earrings.

On the main road their Landrover passed ore trucks and logging trailers coming in the opposite direction. The weight of these massive vehicles, even though spread over a dozen axles and banks of massive tyres, rutted the road deeply and raised a fog of dust that covered the trees for a mile on both sides of the roadway with a thick coating of dark red talcum. Bonny gloried in the effect of the sunlight through the dust cloud and the shapes of the trucks lumbering out of it like prehistoric monsters.

When at last, on the second day, they crossed the river on the ferry and reached the edge of the great forests, even Bonny was awed by the height and girth of the trees. They’re like pillars holding up the sky, she breathed as she turned her camera upon them. The quality of the air and light changed as they left the dry savannah behind them and entered this humid and lush forest world.

At first they followed the main highway with its milewide open verges. Then, after fifty miles, they turned off on to one of the new development roads, freshly cut into the virgin forest. The deeper they journeyed into the forest, the closer the trees crowded the roadway, until at last their high branches met overhead and they were in a tunnel filled with dappled and greenish light.

Even the bellow of the truck engines that passed them seemed muted, as though the trees were blanketing and absorbing the alien and offensive sound. The surface of the road had been corduroyed with logs laid side by side, and over this was spread a layer of flinty gravel to give the great trucks footing.

“The returning ore trucks bring the gravel back from the quarries near the lakeshore,” Captain Kajo explained. “If they did not, the road would become a bottomless swamp of mud. It rains almost every day here. Every mile or so there were gangs of hundreds of men and women working on the road, spreading gravel and laying new logs to hold the surface together.”

“Who are they?” Daniel asked.

“Convicts,” Kajo dismissed them lightly. “Instead of spending money keeping them locked up and fed, we let them work off their debt to society.”

“A lot of convicts for such a small country,” Daniel pointed out. “You must have a lot of crime in Ubomo.”

“The Uhali are a bunch of rogues, thieves and troublemakers,” Kajo explained and then shuddered as he looked beyond the toiling lines of prisoners to the impenetrable forest behind them.

Kajo was standing in front of Daniel, obscuring him for the moment with his six foot six height. Now he moved aside, and Daniel and the field-manager confronted each other. “Mr. Chetti Singh,” Daniel said softly. “I never expected to see you again. What a great pleasure this is.”

The bearded Sikh stopped as though he had walked into a glass wall and stared at Daniel. “You know each other?” Captain Kajo asked. “What a happy coincidence.”

“We are old friends,” Daniel replied. “We share a common interest in wildlife, especially elephants and leopards.” He was smiling as he extended his hand to Chetti Singh. “How are you, Mr. Singh? Last time we met you had suffered a little accident, hadn’t you?”

Chetti Singh had turned a ghastly ashen colour beneath his dark complexion, but with an obvious effort he rallied from the shock. For a moment his eyes blazed and Daniel thought he might attack him. Then he accepted Daniel’s pretence of friendliness, and tried to smile, but it was like an animal baring its teeth.

He reached out to accept Daniel’s proffered handshake, but he used his left hand. His right sleeve was empty, folded back and pinned upon itself. The blunt outline of the stump showed through the striped cotton. Daniel saw that the amputation was below the elbow. It was a typical mauling injury. The leopard would have chewed the bone into fragments that no surgeon could knit together again. Although there were no scars or other injuries apparent at a glance, Chetti Singh’s once portly body had been stripped of every ounce of superfluous fat and flesh. He was thin as an AIDS victim, and the white of his eyes had an unhealthy yellowish tinge. It was obvious that he had been through a bad time, and that he was not yet fully recovered. His beard was still thick and glossy, curled up under his chin, the ends tucked into his spotless white turban.

“Indeed, what an absolute pleasure to see you again, Doctor.” His eyes gave the lie to the words.

“Thank you for your kind sympathy, but happily I am fully recovered, except for my missing appendage.” He wiggled the stump. “It’s a nuisance, but I expect to receive full compensation for my loss from those responsible, never mind.” His touch was cool as a lizard’s skin, but he withdrew his hand from Daniel’s and turned to Bonny and Kajo.

His smile became more natural and he greeted them cordially. When he turned back to Daniel he was no longer smiling. “And so, Doctor, you have come to make us all famous with your television show. We shall all be film stars…” He was watching Daniel’s face with a strange greedy expression, like a python looking at a hare.

The shock of the meeting had been almost as great to Daniel as it had obviously been to the Sikh. Of course, Mike Hargreave had told him that Chetti Singh had survived the leopard attack, but that had been months ago and he had never expected Chetti Singh to turn up here in Ubomo, thousands of miles from where he had last seen him. Then, when he thought about it, he realised that he should really have been prepared for this.

There was a strong link between Ning Cheng Gong and the Sikh. If Ning were placed in charge in Ubomo, he would naturally appoint as his assistant somebody who knew every wrinkle of the local terrain, and who had his networks securely in place.

In retrospect, it was obvious that Chetti Singh had been the perfect choice for Ning. The Sikh’s organisation had infiltrated every country in central Africa. He had agents in the field. He knew whom to bribe and whom to intimidate. But most of all, he was totally unscrupulous and bound to Ning Cheng Gong in loyalty and fear and greed.

Daniel should have expected Chetti Singh to be lurking in Ning’s shadow, should have been prepared to face his vengeance. It did not need the expression in Chetti Singh’s eyes to warn him that he was in mortal danger. The only escape from Sengi-Sengi was along the single roadway through the forest, every mile of which was controlled by company guards and numerous military road-blocks. Chetti Singh was going to try to kill him. There could not be a single doubt of that. He had no weapon nor any other form of defence. Chetti Singh commanded the ground and could choose the time and the place to do it.

Chetti Singh had turned back and was chatting to Captain Kajo and Bonny.

“It is too late already for me to offer to show you around. It will be dark in a short while. You will want to move into the quarters we have prepared for you.” He paused and beamed at them genially. “Besides which, I have exciting news for you. I have just this minute received a fax from Government House in Kahali. President Taffari, in the very flesh, is coming to Sengi-Sengi by helicopter. He will arrive tomorrow morning and he has most graciously consented to a film interview on the site of our operation here. It is a great honour, I assure you. President Taffari is not a man to be taken lightly, and he will be accompanied by the chief executive officer of UDC, none other than our own Mr. Ning Cheng Gong. He is another eminently important personage. Perhaps he will also consent to play a part in your production.”

It was raining again as Chetti Singh’s secretary showed them to the quarters that had been set aside for them. The rain rattled like birdshot on the roofs of the buildings and the already saturated earth steamed with a mist that was blue as smoke in the twilight beneath the forest canopy.

Wooden catwalks had been laid between the buildings and the secretary provided them with cheap plastic umbrellas gaudily emblazoned with the slogan: UDC means a better life for all.

The guest quarters were a row of small rooms like stables in a long Nissen hut. Each room contained rudimentary furniture bed, chair, cupboard and desk. There was a communal washroom and lavatory in the centre of the long hut.

Daniel checked his own room carefully. The door had a lock that was so flimsy that it would yield to any determined pressure, besides which Chetti Singh certainly had a duplicate key. The window was covered by a mosquito screen and there was a mosquito net hanging above the bed, none of which was any protection. The walls were so thin that he could hear Kajo moving around in the room beside his. It was going to be a pleasant stay.

“Okay, folks, we’ll have a competition,” he grinned ruefully to himself. “Guess when Chetti Singh will make his first attempt to bump us off. “First prize is a week’s holiday at Sengi-Sengi. Second prize is two weeks holiday at Sengi-Sengi.”

Dinner was served in the mess for senior staff. It was another Nissen hut comfortably furnished as a bar and canteen. When Daniel and Bonny entered there was a mixed bag of Taiwanese and British engineers and technicians filling the mess with cigarette smoke and noisy chatter. Nobody took much notice of him, but Bonny caused a mild sensation, as usual, especially with the group of Brits playing darts and drinking lager at the bar.

The Taiwanese seemed to be keeping to themselves and Daniel sensed a tension between the two groups. This was confirmed when one of the British engineers told Daniel that since Ning had taken over UDC, he had been ousting the British engineers and managers and replacing them with his own Taiwanese.

Bonny was instantly adopted by the British contingent and after dinner Daniel left her playing darts with a couple of beefy mining engineers.

She intercepted Daniel heading for the door and she grinned at him maliciously as she whispered, “Enjoy your lonely bed, lover.” He grinned back at her as icily.

“I never did like a crowd.” As he made his way through the darkness along the slippery mud-caked catwalk, a spot in the centre of his back itched.

It was the spot into which somebody sneaking up behind him might stick a knife. He quickened his pace. When he reached the door of his room in the Nissen hut, he pushed it open but hung back for a minute. There could be somebody waiting for him in the darkened room. He gave them a chance to move before he slipped his arm around the door frame and switched on the overhead light. Only then did he venture in cautiously. He locked the flimsy door and drew the curtains and sat on the bed to unlace his boots.

There were just too many ways that Chetti Singh could choose to do it. He knew he couldn’t guard against them all. At that moment he felt something move under the bedclothes on which he was sitting. It was a slow, stealthy, reptilian sliding movement beneath the thin sheet and it touched his thigh. An icy dart of fear shot up his spine, stiffening every muscle in his body.

He had always had an unreasoning fear of snakes. One of his earliest memories was of a cobra in his nursery. It had only been a few months after his fourth birthday, but he vividly remembered the grotesque shadow that the reptile’s extended hood had thrown upon the nursery wall as it reared in the diffuse beam of the nightlight that his mother had placed beside his bed. He remembered the explosive hisses with which the snake had challenged his own wild and terrified screams, before his father had burst into the nursery in his pyjamas.

Now he knew with the utmost certainty that the thing beneath the sheet was a snake. He knew that Chetti Singh or one of his men had placed it there. It must be one of the more deadly species, one of the mambas, slim and glittering with their thin grinning lips, or a forest cobra, black as death, or one of the thick repulsive gaboon adders.

Daniel sprang from the bed and spun around to face it. His heart hammered wildly as he looked around for a weapon. He snatched up the flimsy chair, and with the strength of his fear tore off one of the legs. With this weapon in his hand he regained control of himself. He was still breathing rapidly and he experienced a quick rush of shame. As a game ranger he had stood down the determined charges of buffalo and elephant and the great killer cats. As a soldier he had parachuted into enemy territory and fought it out in hand-to-hand combat, but now he was panting and shaking at a phantom of his imagination.

He steeled himself to go back to the bed. With his left hand he took the corner of the sheet, raised the chair leg with the other hand and flung back the bedclothes. A striped forest mouse was in the centre of the white sheet. It had long white whiskers and its bright inquisitive button eyes blinked rapidly in the sudden light.

Daniel was barely able to arrest the blow that he had already launched at it, and he and the tiny creature stared at each other in astonishment. Then his shoulders sagged and shook with nervous laughter. The mouse squeaked and leapt off the bed. It darted across the floor and vanished into a hole in the wainscoting and Daniel collapsed on to the bed and doubled up with laughter. “My God, Chetti Singh,” he gasped. “You won’t stop at anything, will you? What other nefarious tricks have you got up your sleeve?”

The helicopter came in from the east. They heard the whoppity-wop of its rotors long before it appeared in the hole in the forest canopy high above. It descended into the clearing with all the grace of a fat lady lowering herself on to a lavatory seat. The helicopter was a French-built Puma and it was obvious that it had seen many years of hard service, probably with a few other airforces, before it had reached Ubomo.

The pilot cut the motors and the rotors slowed and stopped. President Taffari vaulted down from the main hatch. He was lithe and vitally handsome in combat fatigues and parachutist’s boots. Bonny moved in with the camera and he flashed a smile as bright and almost as wide as the medal ribbons on his chest, and stepped forward to greet the reception committee headed by Chetti Singh.

Behind him Ning Cheng Gong used the boarding ladder to descend from the Puma. He was dressed in a cream-coloured tropical suit. His skin was almost a matching creamy yellow that contrasted strongly with his eyes, dark and bright as polished onyx. He looked around quickly, searching for somebody or something; and he saw Daniel standing back, out of camera shot.

Ning Cheng Gong’s eyes licked Daniel’s face for only an instant, like the black tongue of an adder, and then were past. His expression did not change. There was not the least sign of recognition, but Daniel knew with certainty that Chetti Singh had managed to get a message to his master, to warn him of Daniel’s presence in Ubomo. Daniel was startled by his own reaction. He had known that Cheng would be on the helicopter.

He had steeled himself for the first sight of him, but still it was as much of a physical shock as a punch under the ribs. It required an effort to respond normally to President Taffari’s handshake and greeting. “Ah, Doctor; as you see, Mohammed has come to the mountain. I have set aside the afternoon to cooperate with your filming. What do you want me to do? I am yours to command.”

“I am very grateful, Mr. President. I have drawn up a shooting schedule. In all, I will need about five hours of your time, that includes make-up and rehearsal.

Daniel resisted the temptation to glance in Cheng’s direction, until Chetti Singh intervened. “Doctor Armstrong, I’d like you to meet the managing director, head of UDC, Mr. Ning.”

Daniel was almost overcome by a strange sense of unreality as he shook Ning’s hand and smiled and said. “We know each other. We met briefly in Zimbabwe, when you were ambassador there. I don’t suppose you recall?”

“Forgive me.” Cheng shook his head. “I met so many people in the course of my official duties.” He pretended not to remember and Daniel forced himself to keep smiling.

It seemed incredible that the last time he had seen this man was on the escarpment of the Zambezi valley, only hours before he discovered the mutilated and abused corpses of Johnny and his family. It was as though all the sorrow and anger in him had grown stronger and more bitter for being bottled up all this time. He wanted to shout out his rage, “You filthy, greedy butcher!” He wanted to clench his fists and attack that smooth bland face, to batter it into pulp and feel the bones break under his knuckles. He wanted to gouge out those implacable shark’s eyes and pop them between his fingers. He wanted to wash his hands in Ning Cheng Gong’s blood.

He turned away as soon as he could. He could trust himself no longer. For the first time, he faced what he had to do. He had to kill Ning Cheng Gong, or be killed in the attempt. He expected no personal gratification from it. It was the fulfilment of the oath he had sworn over the body of his friend. It was a simple duty and a debt to the memory of Johnny Nzou.

“You may think that I am standing on the bridge of a battleship…” Ephrem Taffari smiled into the lens of Bonny’s camera, “but I assure you that I am not. This is in fact the command platform of Mobile Mining Unit Number One, known here by the affectionate acronym MOMU.”

Although Taffari was the only person in camera-shot, the rest of the platform was crowded with company personnel. The chief engineer and the geologist had briefed the president on his spiel, making certain that he had a grasp of all the technical details. The crew of the unit were still at the command console of MOMU. The operation of the complex machine could not be interrupted even for such an important visitor as the state president.

Daniel was directing the sequence, and both Chetti Singh and Cheng were spectators, although they kept in the background.

Bonny had seen to Taffari’s make-up herself. She was as good as any specialist make-up artist that Daniel had worked with.

“I am standing seventy feet above the ground,” Taffari went on. “And I am racing forward at the breathless speed of a hundred yards an hour.” He smiled at his own burnout.

Daniel had to admit that he was a natural actor, completely at ease in front of the camera. With those looks and with that voice he could grab the complete attention of any female audience anywhere in the world.

“The vehicle on which I am riding weighs one thousand tons…”

Daniel was making editing notes on his schedule as Taffari spoke. At this point he would cut away to a full shot of the gigantic MOMU vehicle riding on its banks of tracks. There were twelve separate sets of steel tracks each of them ten feet wide to give it stability over the most uneven terrain.

Steel hydraulic rams automatically adjusted the trim of the main platform keeping it on an even keel, tilting and dipping to counterbalance the ponderous wallowing, pitching movements of the tracks as they climbed and fell over the contours of the forest floor.

The size of the machine was not much less than the battleship that Taffari had suggested in his opening remarks. It was over one hundred and fifty yards long and forty wide.

Taffari turned and pointed forward over the railing. “Down there, he said, are the jaws and fangs of the monster. Let’s go down and take a look.”

It was easily said on camera, but it meant moving down to a new vantage point and setting up the angles, then rehearsing the new shot. However, Taffari was a joy to work with, Daniel admitted. He needed only one walk-through and he knew his lines. He delivered them with natural timing and without fluffing once, even though he was forced to raise his voice to a shout to compete with the noise of the machinery.

This shot was good cinema. The excavators were on long gantries. Like the necks of a herd of steel giraffe drinking at a water-hole, they moved independently, rising and falling. The excavator blades rotated ferociously, slicing out the earth and throwing it back on to the conveyor belts.

“These excavators can reach down thirty yards below the surface. They are cutting a trench sixty yards wide and digging out over ten thousand tons of ore an hour. They never stop. Day and night they keep on burrowing away.”

Daniel looked down into the cavernous trench that the MOMU was opening into the red earth. It would be a good place to dispose of a corpse, his corpse. He glanced up without warning; both Ning Cheng Gong and Chetti Singh were watching him intently. They were still standing on the command platform seventy feet above him. Their heads were close together, almost touching, and they were talking, their voices wiped out by the roar of the great spinning excavator heads and the thunder of the conveyor belts. From their expressions Daniel was left with no doubt about the subject of their discussion. For an instant he caught their eyes and then they both looked away and moved back from the rail. After that it was difficult for Daniel to concentrate on the work in hand, yet he had to take advantage of every minute that Ephrem Taffari was available to him.

Once again the camera crew climbed the steel ladder up to the central platform of the MOMU. Chetti Singh and Ning Cheng Gong had disappeared, and that made Daniel even more uneasy. From the height of the platform they could look down on to the tube mills. These were four massive steel drums, lying horizontally on the deck of the MOMU, and revolving like the spin-dryer in a domestic washing-machine. However, these drums were forty yards long, and each one was loaded with one hundred tons of cast-iron cannonballs. The red earth coming up from the excavated trench on the conveyor belts was continually being dumped into the open mouths of the drums.

As the earth passed down the length of the drum, the clods and rocks were pounded to fine talcum by the tumbling iron balls. The red powder that poured from the far end of the tube mills went directly into the separator tanks. The film team moved down the steel catwalks until they were above the separators, and here Taffari continued his explanation for the benefit of Bonny’s camera.

“The two valuable minerals that we are after are either very heavy or magnetic. The rare earth monazite is collected by powerful electromagnets.” His voice was almost drowned by the roar of the machinery. That didn’t worry Daniel. Later he would have Taffari make another clear recording of his speech and in the studio be would dub the tape to give it good sound. “Once we have taken out the monazite, the remainder goes into the separator tanks in which we float out the light material and capture the heavy ore of platinum.”

Taffari went on, “This is a very sensitive part of the operation. If we were to use chemical catalysts and reagents in the separator tanks we would be able to recover over ninety percent of the platinum. However, the chemical effluent from the tanks would be poisonous. It would be absorbed into the earth and washed by rain into the rivers to kill everything that came in contact with it animals, birds, insects, fish and plant life. As president of the Democratic People’s Republic of Ubomo, I have given an inviolable instruction that no chemical reagents of any kind are to be used during platinum mining operations in this country.” Taffari paused and stared into the camera levelly. “You have my absolute assurance on that point. Without using reagents, our recovery of ore drops to sixty-five percent. That means tens of millions of dollars are lost from the process. However, my government and I are determined to accept that loss, rather than to run any risk of chemical pollution of our environment. We are determined to do all in our power to make this a safe and happy world for our children, and your children, to enjoy.”

He was utterly convincing. When you listened to that deep reassuring voice and looked at that noble face, you could not possibly doubt his sincerity. Even Daniel was moved, and his critical faculties were suspended for the moment. This bastard could sell pork pies in a synagogue. He tried to get his cynical professional judgement functioning again.

“Cut,” he snapped. “That’s a wrap. That was marvelous, Mr. President. Thank you very much. If you’d like to go back to the mess for lunch, we’ll finish up here. Then this afternoon we’ll film the final sequences with the maps and models.”

Chetti Singh reappeared, like a turbaned genie from a lamp, to usher Taffari down from the MOMU and to drive him back to the base camp where Daniel knew a sumptuous buffet lunch was awaiting him. The food and liquor had been flown up from Kahali in the Puma helicopter.

Once the others had left, Daniel and Bonny captured the last sequences on the MOMU which didn’t require Taffari to be present. They filmed the heavy platinum concentrates pouring into the ore bins in a fine dark stream. Each bin had a capacity of a hundred tons and when it was full it dropped automatically on to the bed of a waiting trailer and was towed away.

It was three o’clock before they had wrapped up all the shots that Daniel wanted on the MOMU and by the time they got back to the base camp at Sengi-Sengi, the presidential lunch was just ending.

In the centre of the conference room of the headquarters hut was an elaborate scale model of a typical mining scenario, employing the MOMU unit. It was designed to illustrate the entire procedure. The model had been built by BOSS technicians in London. It was an impressive piece of work, complete in detail, authentic in scale. Daniel planned to alternate between shots of the model and helicopter shots from the Puma of the actual forest terrain with the real MOMU in action. He believed that on the screen it would be difficult to tell the difference between them.

The scale model showed the mining track, sixty yards wide, cut and cleared through the forest by the team of loggers and bulldozers working ahead of the MOMU. Daniel planned to devote a few days filming to the logging operation itself. The felling of the tall trees would yield riveting footage. The ponderous arabesques of the yellow bulldozers dragging the logs out of the jungle, the gangs loading them on to the logging trucks, would all be good cinema.

In the meantime Daniel must take full advantage of the day’s filming in which Taffari had agreed to participate. He watched Bonny fussing over him, whispering and giggling as she powdered his face. She was making it very obvious to anyone watching that they were lovers. Taffari had drunk enough to lower his inhibitions and he caressed her openly, staring at the big breasts that she thrust only inches from his nose.

“She really sees herself as First Lady of Ubomo,” Daniel marveled. “She hasn’t the least idea how the Hita treat their wives. I’d love it to happen. She deserves anything that comes her way.”

He stood up and interrupted the flagrant display. “If you’re ready, Mr. President, I’d like you standing here, beside the table. Bonny, I want the shot from this side. Try to get both General Taffari and the model in focus.”

Taffari moved to his mark and they rehearsed the shot. He got it right at the first attempt. “Very good, sir. We’ll go for it now. Are you ready, Bonny?”

Taffari’s military swagger-stick was of polished ivory and rhino horn, the shaft topped by a miniature carving of an elephant. It looked more like a field marshal’s baton than that of a general officer.

Perhaps he was anticipating the day when he would promote himself, Daniel thought wryly.

Now Taffari used the baton to point out the features of the model on the table in front of him. “As you can see, the mining track is a narrow pathway through the forest, only sixty yards wide. It is true that along that track we are felling all the trees and removing the undergrowth for the MOMU to follow. He paused seriously, and looked up at the camera. This is not wanton destruction but a prudent harvest, like that of a farmer husbanding his fields. Less than one percent of the forest is affected by this narrow strip of activity, and behind the MOMU comes a span of bulldozers to refill the mining trench and to compact and consolidate the soil. The trench itself is painstakingly following the land contours to avoid soil erosion.

“As soon as the trench is refilled, a team of botanists follows up to replant the open ground with seeds and saplings. These plants have been carefully selected. Some of them are quickgrowing to act as a ground cover; others are slower growing, but in fifty years from now will be fully mature and ready to be harvested. I will not be there when this happens, but my grandchildren will. The way that this operation has been planned, we will never harvest more than one single percent of the forest each year. You don’t have to be a mathematician to realise that it will be the year AD 2090 before we have worked it all, and by that time the trees that we plant now, in 1990, will be a hundred years old and we can safely begin the whole cycle over again.”

He smiled reassuringly into the lens, handsome and debonair. “A thousand years from now the forests of Ubomo will still be yielding up their largesse to generations yet unborn, and offering a haven for the same living creatures that they do now.” It all made sense, Daniel decided. He had seen the proof of it in operation. That narrow track through the forest could not seriously threaten any species with extinction. Taffari was proposing exactly the same philosophy in which Daniel himself believed so implicitly, the philosophy of sustained yield, the disciplined and planned utilisation of the earth’s resources, so that they were always renewing themselves.

For the moment, his animosity towards Ephrem Taffari was forgotten. He felt like applauding him.

Instead he cleared his throat and said, “Mr. President, that was an extraordinary performance. It was inspirational. Thank you, sir.”

Chapter 30

Sitting on the tailboard of the Landrover, Chetti Singh smoothed the document over his own thigh. He had developed a remarkable dexterity with his left hand.

“This scrap of paper takes all the fun out of it, he remarked.”

“It is not meant to be fun,” Ning Cheng Gong said flatly. “It is meant to be a present for my honourable father.”

“It is meant to be work.” Chetti Singh glanced up at him and smiled blandly and insincerely. He did not like the change that was so apparent since Ning had returned from Taipei. There was a new force and strength in him now, a new confidence and determination. For the first time Chetti Singh found that he was afraid of him. He did not enjoy the sensation.

“Still, work goes better when it is fun,” Chetti Singh argued to bolster himself, but found he could not meet Ning’s dark implacable stare. He dropped his eyes to the document and read,

PEOPLE’s DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF Ubomo Special Presidential Game Licence. The bearer, Mr. Ning Cheng Gong, or his authorised agent, is hereby empowered by special presidential decree to hunt, trap or kill the following protected species of wild game anywhere in the Republic of Ubomo. To wit, five specimens of Elephant (Loxodonta Africana).

He is further empowered for reasons of scientific research to collect and have in his possession, to export or sell, any part of the aforesaid specimens including the skins, bones, meat and, or ivory tusks thereof.

Signed, Ephrem Taffari President of the Republic.

The licence was a rush job. There was no precedent for the form or wording of it and at Cheng’s request the president had scribbled it out on a scrap of notepaper and the government printer had set it up under the coat of arms of the Republic of Ubomo, and delivered it within twelve hours for President Taffari to sign.

“I am a poacher,” Chetti Singh explained, “the best in Africa. This piece of paper turns me into a mere agent, an underling, a butcher’s apprentice…”

Cheng turned away impatiently. The Sikh was annoying him. There were things other than this petty carping to occupy him.

He paced the forest clearing, lost in thought. The ground was muddy and rutted underfoot and the humidity steamed up the lenses of his sunglasses. He removed them and slipped them into the breast-pocket of his open-neck shirt. He glanced around him at the solid green wall of jungle that hemmed in the clearing. It was dark and menacing and he suppressed the sense of unease that it evoked and instead glanced at his wristwatch. “He is late,” he said sharply. “When will he come?”

Chetti Singh shrugged and folded the game licence with one hand. “He does not have the same sense of time that we do. He is a pygmy. He will come when it suits him. Perhaps he is already here, watching us. Perhaps he will come tomorrow or next week.”

“I cannot waste any more time,” Cheng snapped. “There is other important work to do.”

“More important than your honourable father’s gift?” Chetti Singh asked, and his smile was ironical.

“Damn these black people.” Cheng turned away again. “They are so unreliable.”

“They are monkeys,” Chetti Singh agreed, “but useful little monkeys.”

Cheng made another turn around the clearing, his feet squelching in the red mud, and then stopped in front of Chetti Singh again. “What about Armstrong?” he asked. “We have to deal with him.”

“Ah, yes!” Chetti Singh grinned. “That will be fun, indeed.” He massaged the stump of his missing arm. “I have dreamed about Doctor Armstrong every night for nearly a year. And yet I never thought to have him delivered so neatly to Sengi-Sengi. Like a trussed chicken, never mind. “

“You will have to deal with him while he is still here,” Cheng insisted. “You can’t allow him to leave here alive.”

“Perish the thought,” Chetti Singh agreed. “I have been devoting much contemplation to the problem. I wish the good doctor’s demise to be suitably symbolic and painful, and yet to be adequately explainable as a most unfortunate accident of fate.”

“Don’t wait too long,” Cheng warned!

“I have five more days,” Chetti Singh pointed out complacently. I have seen the filming schedule. He cannot finish his work at Sengi-Sengi before that-Cheng cut in impatiently.

“What about the red-haired woman, his assistant?”

“At the moment President Taffari is having some bonking fun with her, but nevertheless I think it might be prudent to arrange for her to accompany Doctor Armstrong on the long journey–” Chetti Singh broke off abruptly and stood up. He peered into the forest and when Cheng opened his mouth to speak he silenced him with an imperative gesture. For another minute he stood listening with his head cocked before he spoke again. “I think he is here.”

“How do you know?” Despite himself Cheng’s voice was a cautious whisper and he cleared his throat nervously as he peered into the jungle.

“Listen,” said Chetti Singh. “The birds.”

“I hear nothing.”

“Precisely.” Chetti Singh nodded. They have fallen silent.”

He stepped towards the green wall and raised his voice, calling in Swahili. “Peace be with you, son of the forest. Come forward, so that we may greet each other as friends.”

The pygmy appeared like a trick of the light in a hole in the wall of vegetation. He was framed in a wreath of shining green leaves, and a ray of sunshine through the top branches that surrounded the clearing danced upon his glossy skin and threw each muscle of his powerful little body into high relief. His head was small and neat. His nose was broad and flat and he wore a goatee beard of soft curling black wool, laced with silvery grey.

“I see you, Pirri, the great hunter,” Chetti Singh greeted him with flattery and the little man came into the clearing with a lithe and graceful step.

“Did you bring tobacco?” he asked in Swahili, with a childlike directness, and Chetti Singh chuckled and handed him a tin of Uphill Rhodesian.

Pirri unscrewed the lid. He scooped out a loose ball of yellow tobacco and wadded it under his top lip and hummed with pleasure.

“He is not as small as I thought he would be,” Cheng remarked as he studied him. “Or as dark.”

“He is not a full-blooded Bambuti,” Chetti Singh explained. “His father was a Hita, or so it is said.”

“Can he hunt?” Cheng asked dubiously. “Can he kill an elephant?”

Chetti Singh laughed. “He is the greatest hunter of all his tribe, but that is not all. He has other virtues, not possessed by his brethren, by reason of his mixed blood.”

“What are they?” Cheng wanted to know.

“He understands the value of money,” Chetti Singh explained. “Wealth and property mean nothing to the other Bambuti, but Pirri is different. He is civilised enough to know the meaning of greed.”

Pirri was listening to them. Not understanding the English words, his head turned to each of them as they spoke, and he sucked his wad of tobacco. He was dressed only in a brief loincloth of bark cloth, his bow standing up behind his shoulder and his machete in a wooden scabbard at his waist.

Abruptly he interrupted their discussion of him. “Who is this wazungu?” he asked in Swahili, indicating Cheng with his woolly bearded chin.

“He is a famous chief, and rich,” Chetti Singh assured him, and Pirri strode across the clearing on muscular legs with bulging calves and looked up at Cheng curiously.

“His skin has the malaria colour and his eyes are the eyes of the mamba,” he announced without guile.

Cheng understood just enough Swahili to bristle. “He may know greed, but he does not know respect.”

“It is the Bambuti way,” Chetti Singh tried to placate him. “They are like children; they say whatever comes into their heads.”

“Ask him about the elephant,” Cheng instructed, and Chetti Singh changed his tone of voice and smiled ingratiatingly at Pirri.

“I have come to ask you about elephant,” he said, and Pirri scratched his crotch, taking a large handful of the contents of his loin-cloth and joggling it thoughtfully.

“Ah, elephant,” he said vaguely. “What do I know about elephant?”

“You are the greatest hunter of all the Bambuti,” Chetti Singh pointed out. “Nothing moves in the forest but Pirri knows of it.”

“That is true,” Pirri agreed, and studied Cheng reflectively. “I like the bracelet on this rich wazungu’s wrist,” he said. “Before we talk of elephant he should give me a gift.”

“He wants your watch,” Chetti Singh told Cheng.

“I understood!” Cheng snapped. “He is impertinent. What would a savage do with a gold Rolex?”

“He would probably sell it to one of the truck-drivers for one hundredth of its value,” Chetti Singh replied, enjoying Cheng’s anger and frustration.

“Tell him I will not be blackmailed. I will not give him my watch,” Cheng stated flatly, and Chetti Singh shrugged.

“I will tell him,” he agreed, “but that will mean no gift for your honourable father.” Cheng hesitated and then unclipped the gold bracelet from his wrist and handed it to the pygmy. Pirri cooed with pleasure and held the wristwatch in both hands, turning it so that the small diamonds around the dial sparkled.

“It is pretty,” he giggled. So pretty that suddenly I remember about the elephant in the forest.”

“Tell me about the elephant,” Chetti Singh invited.

“There were thirty elephant cows and calves in the forest near Gondola,” Pirri said. “And two large bulls with long white teeth.”

“How long?” Chetti Singh demanded, and Cheng who had followed the conversation thus far leaned forward eagerly.

“One elephant is larger than the other. His teeth are this long,” said Pirri, and unslung his bow from his shoulder and held it above his head and stood on tiptoe. “This long,” he repeated. “As high as I can reach with my bow, from the tip of the tooth to the lip, but not counting the part concealed in the skull.”

“How thick?” Cheng asked in atrocious Swahili, his voice coarse with lust, and Pirri turned to him and halfcircled his own waist with his dainty childlike hands.

“This thick,” he said. “As thick as I am.”

“That is a great elephant,” Chetti Singh murmured with disbelief, and Pirri bridled.

“He is the greatest of all elephants and I have seen him with my own eyes. I, Pirri, say this thing and it is true.”

“I want you to kill this elephant and bring me his tusks,” Chetti Singh said softly, and Pirri shook his head.

“This elephant is no longer at Gondola. When the machines of yellow iron came into the forest, he ran from their smoke and noise. He has gone into the sacred heartland where no man may hunt. It is decreed by the Mother and the Father. I cannot kill this elephant in the heartland.”

“I will pay you a great deal for the teeth of this elephant,” Chetti Singh whispered seductively, but Pirri shook his head firmly.

“Offer him a thousand dollars,” Cheng said in English, but Chetti Singh frowned at him.

“Leave this to me, he cautioned. We don’t want to ruin the trade with impatience.” He turned back to Pirri and said in Swahili, “I will give you ten bolts of pretty cloth which the women love, and fifty handfuls of glass beads, enough to make a thousand virgins spread their thighs for you.”

Pirri shook his head. “It is the sacred heartland,” he said. “The Mother and the Father will be angry if I hunt there.”

“In addition to the cloth and beads, I will give you twenty iron axe-heads and ten fine knives with blades as long as your hand.” Pirri wriggled his whole body like a puppy.

“It is against law and custom. My tribe will hate me and drive me out.”

“I will give you twenty bottles of gin,” Chetti Singh said. “And as much tobacco as you can lift from the ground.” Pirri massaged his crotch frantically and rolled his eyes.

“As much tobacco as I can carry!” His voice was hoarse. “I cannot do it. They will call out the Molimo. They will bring down the curse of the Mother and Father.”

“And I will give you a hundred silver Maria Theresa dollars.” Chetti Singh reached into the pocket of his bush jacket and brought out a handful of silver coins. He juggled them in one hand, jingling them together and making them sparkle in the sunlight.

For a long moment Pirri stared at them hungrily. Then he let out a shrill yelp and sprang in the air and drew his machete.

Chetti Singh and Cheng stepped back nervously, expecting him to attack them, but instead, Pirri whirled and, with the blade held high above his head, rushed at the wall of the forest and swung a hissing stroke at the first bush. Shouting with anger and temptation, he hacked and slashed at the forest growth. Leaves and twigs flew, and branches were sliced through. Slabs of bark and white wood rained down from the bleeding trunks under his onslaught.

At last Pirri stopped and rested on his blade, his muscular chest heaving, sweat pouring down his face and dripping into his beard, sobbing with exertion and self-loathing. Then he straightened up and came back to where Chetti Singh stood and said, “I will kill this elephant for you, and bring you his teeth. then you will give me all those things you promised me, not forgetting the tobacco.”

Chetti Singh drove the Landrover back along the rudimentary forest track. it took almost an hour for them to reach the main corduroy roadway on which the convict gangs were working, and over which the great ore-carriers and the logging trucks rumbled and roared.

As they left the overgrown logging track and joined the heavy flow of traffic towards Sengi-Sengi, Chetti Singh turned to grin at the man beside him. “That takes care of the gift for your father. Now we must apply all our ingenuity and brains to a little gift for me, the head of Doctor Daniel Armstrong on a silver platter, with an apple in his mouth.”

Chapter 31

Daniel had been waiting for this moment, praying for it. He was high on the command deck of the MOMU and it was raining. The air was blue and thick with falling rain, and visibility was down to fifty feet or less. Bonny was sheltering in the command cabin at the end of the platform, keeping her precious video equipment out of the rain. The two Hita guards had gone down to the lower deck and for a moment Daniel was alone on the upper deck.

Daniel had become hardened to the rain. Since arriving at Sengi-Sengi he seemed always to be wearing wet clothing. He was standing now in the angle of the steel wall of the command cabin and the flying bridge, only partially shielded from the driving rain. Every now and then a harder gust would throw heavy drops into his face and force him to slit his eyes.

Suddenly the door to the command cabin opened and Ning Cheng Gong came out on to the flying bridge. He had not seen Daniel and he crossed to the forward rail under cover of the canvas sun awning and leaned on the rail, peering down at the great shining excavator blades that were tearing into the earth seventy feet below his perch.

It was Daniel’s moment. For the first time they were alone and Cheng was vulnerable. “This one is for Johnny,” he whispered, and crossed the steel plates of the bridge on silent rubber soles. He came up behind Cheng. All he had to do was stoop and seize his ankles. A quick lift and shove, and Cheng would be hurled over the rail and dropped into the deadly blades. It would be instantaneous and the chopped and dismembered corpse would be fed into the tube mills and pounded to paste and mixed with hundreds of tons of powdered earth.

Daniel reached out to do it, but before he could touch him he hesitated involuntarily, suddenly appalled at what he was about to do. It was cold-blooded, calculated murder. He had killed before as a soldier, but never like this, and for a moment he was sick with self-loathing. “For Johnny,” he tried to convince himself, but it was too late.

Cheng whirled to face him. He was quick as a mongoose confronted by a cobra. His hands came up, the stiff-fingered blades of the martial arts expert, and his eyes were dark and ferocious as he stared into Daniel’s face.

For a moment they were poised on the edge of violence, then Cheng whispered, “You missed your chance, Doctor. There will not be another.”

Daniel backed away. He had let Johnny down with such weakness. In the old days it would not have happened. He would have taken Cheng out swiftly and competently and rejoiced at the kill. Now the Taiwanese was alerted and even more dangerous.

Daniel turned away, sickened by his failure, and then he started. One of the Hita guards had come up the steel ladder silently as a leopard. He was leaning against the rear rail of the bridge with his maroon beret cocked over one eye and the Uzi submachine-gun on his hip pointed at Daniel’s belly. He had been watching it all.

That night Daniel lay awake until after midnight, unnerved by the narrowness of his escape and sickened by the savage streak in himself that allowed him to pursue such a brutal vengeance. Yet even this attack of conscience did not shake his determination to act as the vehicle of justice and in the morning he awoke to find his lust for revenge undiminished, and only his temper and his nerves shaky and uncertain. This led directly to his final bust-up with Bonny Mahon.

It began when she was late to start the day’s assignment, and kept him waiting in the teeming rain for almost forty minutes before she finally sauntered out to meet him. “When I said five o’clock, I didn’t mean in the afternoon,” he snarled at her, and she grinned at him, all rosy and smug.

“What do you want me to do, commit hara-kiri, Master?” she asked.

He was about to let fly a verbal broadside, when he realised that she must have come directly from Taffari’s bed without bathing, for he caught a whiff of the musky odour of their lovemaking on her, and had to turn away. He felt so furious that he could not trust himself not to strike her. “For Chrissake, Armstrong, get a hold on yourself,” he cautioned himself silently, “you’re going to pieces.”

They worked in brittle antagonism for the rest of the morning, filming the bulldozers and chainsaws as they cleared the mining track for the monstrous MOMU to waddle down.

It was heavy going in the mud and rain, and dangerous with falling tree trunks and powerful machinery working all around them. This did nothing to improve his mood but Daniel managed to keep a check on his tongue until just before noon when Bonny announced that she had run out of tape and had to break off to return to the main camp to fetch new stock from the cold rooms.

“What kind of half-baked cameraman runs out of stock in the middle of a shoot?” Daniel wanted to know, and she rounded on him.

“I know what’s eating you up, lover boy. It’s not shortage of film, it’s shortage of good rich fruitcake. You hate me for what Ephrem is getting and you’re not. It’s the old green-eyed monster.”

“You’ve got an inflated idea of the value of what you sit on,” Daniel came back as angrily.

It escalated rapidly from there until Bonny yelled into his face, “Nobody talks to me like that, Buster. You can stick your job and your insults up your left earhole, or in any other convenient orifice.” And she sloshed and slipped in the red mud back to where the Landrover was parked.

“Leave the camera in the Landrover,” Daniel shouted after her. It was all hired video equipment. “You’ve got your return ticket to London and I’ll send you a cheque for what I owe you. You’re fired.”

“No, I’m not, lover boy. You’re way too late. I resigned! And don’t you forget it.” She slammed the door of the Landrover and raced the engine. All four wheels spinning wildly and throwing up sheets and clods of red mud, Bonny tore up the track and left him glaring after her. His bad temper increased as he belatedly thought of a dozen other clever retorts that he should have thrown at her while he had the chance.

Bonny was as angry, but her mood was longer-lasting and more vindictive. She racked her imagination for the cruellest revenge she could conjure up, and just before she reached the main camp at Sengi-Sengi it came to her in a creative flash. “You are going to regret every single lousy thing you said to me, Danny boy,” she promised aloud, grinning mercilessly. “You aren’t going to shoot another tape in Ubomo, not you, nor any other cameraman that you hire to replace me. I’m going to make damned double sure of that.”

Chapter 32

His body was long and supple. In the dim light beneath the mosquito-net his skin shone like washed coal, still damp with the sweat of love. Ephrem Taffari lay on his back on the rumpled white sheet and she thought he was probably the most beautiful man she had ever seen.

Slowly she lowered her head and laid her cheek against his naked chest. It was smooth and hairless, and his dark skin felt cool. She blew softly on his nipple and watched it pucker and harden in response. She smiled. She felt aglow with well-being. He was a wonderful lover, better than any white man she had ever had.

There had never been anyone else like him. She wanted to do something for him. “There is something I must tell you, she whispered against his chest, and with one lazy hand he stroked the thick glistening coppery bush of hair back off her face.”

“What is it?” he asked, is voice so and deep and replete, almost uninterested.

She knew she would have his complete attention again with her next statement, and she delayed the moment. It was too sweet to waste. She wanted to draw every last possible enjoyment from it. it was double pleasure, her revenge on Daniel Armstrong and her offering to Ephrem Taffari which would prove to him her loyalty and her worth.

“What is it?” he repeated. He took a handful of her hair and twisted it just hard enough to hurt. He was a master in inflicting pain, and her breath caught with masochistic pleasure.

“I’m telling you this to show you how completely I am yours, how much I love you,” she whispered. “After tonight you’ll never be able to doubt where my loyalties lie.”

He chuckled and shook her head gently from side to side, his fingers still locked in her hair, still hurting exquisitely. “Let me judge that, my little red lily. Tell me this terrible thing.”

“It is a terrible thing, Ephrem. On the instructions of Daniel Armstrong I filmed the forced removal of the villagers from Fish Eagle Bay to make way for the new casino.”

Ephrem Taffari stopped breathing. For twenty beats of his heart under her ear he held his breath. Then he let it out softly, and his pulse rate was slightly elevated as he said quietly, “I don’t know what you arc talking about. Explain this to me.”

“Daniel and I were on top of the cliff when the soldiers came to the village. Daniel ordered me to film them.”

“What did you see?”

“We saw them bulldoze the village and burn the boats. We saw them load the people into the trucks and take them away.” She hesitated.

“Go on,” he ordered. “What else did you see?”

“We saw them kill two people. They clubbed an old man to death and they shot another when he tried to escape. They threw their bodies on the fire.”

“You filmed all that?” Ephrem asked, and there was something in his tone that made her suddenly uncertain and afraid.

“Daniel forced me to film it.”

“I do not know anything about these events, this atrocity. I gave no orders,” he said, and with a surge of relief she believed him.

“I was sure you didn’t know about it.”

“I must see this film. It is evidence against those who perpetrated this atrocity. Where is the film?”

“I gave it to Daniel.”

“What did he do with it?” Ephrem demanded, and now his voice was terrible.

“He said that he had lodged it with the British Embassy in Kahali. The ambassador, Sir Michael Hargreave, is an old friend of his.”

“Did he show the film to the ambassador?” Ephrem wanted to know.

“I don’t think so. He said that it was dynamite, that he wouldn’t use it until the time was ripe.”

“You and Armstrong are-the only ones who know about it, who know that the film exists?”

She hadn’t thought of it that way, and now it gave her an uneasy feeling. “Yes, I suppose so. Unless Daniel has told anybody. I haven’t.”

“Good.” Ephrem released her hair and stroked her cheek. “You are a good girl. I am grateful to you. You have proved your friendship to me.”

“It is more than friendship, Ephrem. I have never felt about another man the way I feel for you.”

“I know, he whispered,” and lifted her head and kissed her on the lips. “You are a wonderful woman. My own feelings for you grow stronger all the time.” Gratefully she pressed her own full body to his sleek feline length. “We must get that film back from Sir Michael. It could do untold damage to this country and to me as the president.”

“I should have told you sooner,” she said. “But only now I realise how much I love you.”

“It is still not too late,” he assured her. “I will speak to Armstrong in the morning. I will give him my word that the guilty persons will be brought to justice. He must give me the film to be used in evidence.”

“I don’t think he will do that,” she said. “That tape is too sensational. It is worth a million to him. He won’t want to give it up.”

“Then you will have to help me get it back. After all, it is your film. Will you help me, my beautiful red and white lily?”

“You know I will, Ephrem. I’ll do anything for you,” she murmured, and without another word he made love to her, that beautiful devastating love of which only he was capable.

Afterwards she slept. When she awoke it was raining again. It always seemed to be raining in this terrible green hell of jungle. The rain clattered and drummed on the roof of the VIP guest bungalow, and the darkness was complete. She groped instinctively for Ephrem but the bed beside her was empty. The sheets on which he had lain were already cool. He must have left her some time ago. She thought he might have gone to the bathroom, and felt the pressure in her own bladder which had woken her.

She lay and listened for him to return, but after five minutes when he had not come, she crept out from under the mosquito net and groped her way through the darkness to the bathroom door. She bumped into a chair and stubbed her bare toe before she reached it. She found the light switch and blinked in the sudden glare of white tiles.

The bathroom was empty, but the toilet seat was raised to prove he had been there before her. She flapped it down and perched naked upon it, still groggy with sleep, her red hair tangled over her eyes.

Outside the rain battered down and a sudden flare of lightning hit the window. Bonny reached across to the side wall for the roll of toilet paper in its holder and her ear was inches from the thin prefabricated partition wall of the bungalow. She heard voices, indistinct but masculine, from the room beyond.

She was slowly coming fully awake, and her interest was aroused. She pressed her ear to the wall and she recognized Ephrem’s voice. It was crisp and commanding. Somebody answered him but the sound of the rain intruded and she could not recognize the speaker.

“No,” Ephrem replied. “Tonight. I want it done immediately.”

Bonny was fully alert now, and at that moment the rain stopped with dramatic suddenness. In the silence she heard the reply and recognized the speaker.

“Will you sign a warrant, Mr. President?” It was Chetti Singh. His accent was unmistakable. “Your soldiers could carry out the execution.”

“Don’t be a fool, man. I want it done quietly. Get rid of him. You can get Kajo to help you, but do it. No questions, no written records. Just get rid of him.”

“Ah, yes. I understand. We will say that he went to film in the jungle. Later we can send a search party to find no trace of him. A great pity. But what about the woman? She is also a witness to our arrangements at Fish Eagle Bay. Do you want me to take care of her at the same time?”

“No, don’t be an idiot!” I will need her to recover the tape from the embassy. “Afterwards, when the tape is safely in my hands, I will reconsider the problem of the woman. In the meantime just take Armstrong out into the jungle and get rid of him.”

“I assure you, Mr. President, that nothing would give me more pleasure. it will take me an hour or so to make the arrangements with Kajo, but it will be all over before daylight. I give you my solemn promise.” There was the sound of a chair being pushed back and heavy footsteps, then a door slammed and there was silence from the sitting-room of the bungalow.

Bonny sat frozen for a moment, chilled by what she had heard. Then she sprang to her feet and darted across the floor to the light switch and plunged the bathroom into darkness. Swiftly she groped her way to the bed and crept under the mosquito net. She lay rigid under the sheet, expecting Ephrem Taffari to return at any moment.

Her mind was racing. She was frightened and confused. She had not expected any of this. She had thought that Ephrem might seize the videotape and arrest Daniel, then deport him immediately and declare him an undesirable alien, or something like that. She hadn’t been too clear as to what Ephrem would do to Daniel, but she had never dreamed for a moment that he would have him killed, squashed like an insect without pity or remorse. With a jolt she realised just how naive she had been.

The shock was almost too much to bear. She had never hated Daniel. Far from it, she had been as fond of him as she was capable of, until he had begun to bore and irritate her. Of course, after Ephrem had taken over Daniel had insulted and fired her, but she had given him some reason for that and she didn’t hate him, not to the point of wanting him killed.

“Keep out of it,” she warned herself. “It’s too late now. Danny has to take his own chances.” She lay waiting for Ephrem to come back to bed, but he did not come and she thought of Daniel again. He was one of the few men she had ever genuinely admired and liked. He was decent and good and funny and handsome … She broke that chain of thought.

“Don’t be a bleeding heart,” she thought. “It didn’t turn out the way you expected but that’s tough on Danny.” And yet there had been a veiled threat to her in what Ephrem had said. When the tape is safely in my hands I will reconsider the problem of the woman. Ephrem still hadn’t come. She sat up in bed and listened.

The rain had stopped completely. Reluctantly she slipped out from under the mosquito-net and picked her robe from the foot of the bed. She crossed to the door that opened on to the verandah of the bungalow and opened it quietly. She crept down the verandah. The light from the sittingroom windows beamed out on to the verandah floor. She moved into a position from where she could see into the sittingroom while remaining in shadow.

Ephrem Taffari sat at the desk against the far wall. His back was to her. He was dressed in a khaki T-shirt and camouflage trousers. He was smoking a cigarette and studying the papers that were strewn across the desk-top. He seemed to be settled to his work. It would take her less than ten minutes to reach the row of guest bungalows at the east side of the compound and get back to the bedroom.

The wooden catwalks were wet and red with mud. She was barefoot. Daniel might not be in his room. She thought of every excuse for not going to warn him.

“I owe him nothing,” she thought, and heard Ephrem’s voice again in her imagination: Just take Armstrong out into the jungle and get rid of him.

She backed away from the lighted window, not yet certain what she would do until she found herself running along the catwalk beneath the dark trees that dripped with rain. She slipped and fell on her knees but jumped up and kept running. There was red mud on the front of her robe.

She saw through the trees that there was one light on in the row of guest rooms. The rest of them were in darkness. As she came closer she saw with relief that the light was in Daniel’s room. She did not go up on to the verandah of the guest house, but jumped down off the catwalk and made her way round the back of the building.

Daniel’s window was curtained. She scratched softly on the mosquito-mesh screen that covered it, and at once heard a chair scrape back on the wooden floor. She scratched again and Daniel’s voice asked softly, “Who is it?”

“For God’s sake, Danny, it’s me. I have to talk to you.”

“Come inside. I’ll open the door.”

“No, no. Come out here. It’s desperate. They mustn’t see me. Hurry, man, hurry.”

Half a minute later his broad-shouldered form loomed out of the darkness, backlit by the lighted bungalow window.

“Danny, Ephrem knows about the Fish Eagle Bay tape.”

“How did he find out?”

“That doesn’t matter.”

“You told him, didn’t you? Damn you to hell.”

“I have come to warn you. He’s issued orders for your immediate execution. Chetti Singh and Kajo are coming for you. They’re going to take you into the jungle. They don’t want any evidence.”

“How do you know this?”

“Don’t ask bloody fool questions. Believe me, I know. I can’t waste another minute. I’ve got to get back. He’ll find I’m gone.”

She turned away, but he seized her arm. “Thanks, Bonny,” he said. “You’re a better person than you think you are. Do you want to make a break for it with me?”

She shook her head. “I’ll be all right,” she said. “Just get out of here. You’ve got an hour, tops. Get going!”

She pulled out of his grip and hurried away through the trees. He caught one last glimpse of her: the lights from the bungalow transformed her tumbled hair into a roseate halo and the long white robe made her look like an angel.

“Some angel,” Daniel muttered, and stood for a full minute in the darkness deciding what he could do. While there had been only Chetti Singh and Ning Cheng Gong to deal with he had stood a chance. Like him, they had been constrained by the necessity of working in secrecy. None of them had been able to attack the other openly, but now Chetti Singh had open sanction to kill him, a special presidential licence.

Daniel grinned as mirthlessly as a wolf. He could expect the Sikh to act swiftly and ruthlessly. Bonny was right. He had to get out of Sengi-Sengi within the next few minutes, before the executioners arrived.

From the angle of the building he threw a quick glance down the verandah and around the compound. All was quiet and dark. He slipped back into his room, and lifted his small travel bag down from the cupboard. It contained all his personal documents, passport, airline tickets, credit cards and travellers cheques. Apart from his clothing and toilet bag there was nothing else of value in the room.

He pulled on a light wind-cheater and checked that the key of the Landrover was in his pocket. He extinguished the lights and went out. The Landrover was parked at the far end of the verandah. He opened the door quietly and threw his bag on to the passenger seat. All the hired VTR equipment was packed into the rear compartment and there was a selection of basic camping and first-aid equipment in the lockers, but there was no weapon of any kind, apart from his old hunting knife.

He started the Landrover. The engine noise seemed excessively loud in the darkness. He did not switch on the headlights and he let in the clutch gently, keeping the engine revs down. He drove slowly through the darkened compound towards the main gates. He knew that the gates were never closed at night, and that a single guard was on duty there.

Daniel was under no illusion as to just how far he was going to get in the Landrover. There was only one road from Sengi Sengi to the Ubomo river ferry, and there was a road-block every five miles. A radio call from Sengi-Sengi would alert every one of them.

The guards would be waiting for him with their fingers on the triggers of their AK 47s. No, he would be lucky to make it through the first block, and then he would have to take to the jungle. He didn’t relish that prospect. He had been trained for survival and warfare in the drier bushveld of Rhodesia, a long way further south. He would not be nearly as adept in the rain forest, but there was no other way open to him.

The first thing was to get clear of Sengi-Sengi. After that he would face each problem as it arose. “And this is number one,” he thought grimly as suddenly the floodlights at the main gates switched on in a bright halogen dawn. The entire compound was brightly lit.

There were half a dozen figures running from the barrack area where guards were quartered. It was obvious they had dressed hastily; some were in undervests and shorts. Daniel recognized both Captain Kajo and Chetti Singh.

Kajo was brandishing an automatic pistol and Chetti Singh was trotting along behind him, shouting and waving at the approaching Landrover, his white turban very visible in the glare of the floodlights. One of the guards was trying to shut the gates. He already had one wing of the steel-framed mesh gate half across the roadway.

Daniel switched on his headlights, put his hand flat on the horn and drove hard at him, the hooter blaring. The guard dived nimbly aside, and the Landrover slammed into the unlocked leaf of the gate and whipped it aside. He roared through.

Behind him he heard the rattling clamour of automatic riflefire. He felt half a dozen bullets slam into the aluminium bodywork of the Landrover, but he crouched low over the wheel and kept his foot hard down on the accelerator. The first bend in the roadway rushed towards him in the headlights.

Another burst of automatic fire splattered against the rear of the vehicle. The rear window exploded in a storm of glass splinters and something struck him high in the back within an inch of his spine. He had been hit by a bullet before, in that long-ago war, and he recognized the sensation. From the position of the wound, high and close to the spine, it had to be a lung shot, a mortal wound. He expected to feel the choking flood of arterial blood into his lungs.

“Keep going as long as you can,” he thought, and swung the Landrover into the bend at full throttle. She went up on two wheels but didn’t roll. When he glanced in the rear-view mirror the camp lights were obscured by forest trails, a dwindling glow in the darkness behind.

He could feel hot blood, running down his back, but there was no choking, no weakness, not yet anyway. The wound was numb. He could think clearly, He could keep going.

He knew exactly where the first road-block was situated. Approximately five miles ahead, he reminded himself. On the first river crossing. He tried to remember how the road ran to reach it. He had driven over it half a dozen times during the last three days filming. He could remember almost every twist, every track that led off it.

He made his decision. He leaned back against the seat. The wound stabbed him like a knife in the back, but he wasn’t losing much blood.

“Internal bleeding,” he thought. “You aren’t going to walk away from this one, Danny boy.” But he kept going, waiting for the weakness to overcome him.

There were five logging roads branching off from the main highway before it reached the first road-block. Some of them were disused and overgrown, but at least two were still being subjected to heavy daily traffic. He chose the first of these, two miles from Sengi-Sengi and turned on to it, heading westwards.

The Zaire border was ninety miles in that direction, but the logging track only ran five miles through the forest before it intersected the MOMU excavation.

He would have to dump the Landrover and try to make the remaining eighty miles on foot through uncharted forest. The last part of the journey would be over high mountains, glaciers and alpine snowfields.

Then he thought about the bullet wound in his back and knew he was dreaming. He wasn’t going to get that far.

The logging track he was on had been deeply rutted and chopped up by the gigantic treaded tyres of the trucks and heavy trailers. It was a morass of mud the consistency and colour of faeces, and the Landrover churned through it in fourwheel drive, pounding through the knee-deep ruts.

Flying mud stuck to the glass of the headlights and dimmed the beams to a murky glow that barely lit the roadway twenty paces ahead.

The wound in his back was beginning to ache, but his head was still clear. He touched the end of his own nose with his forefinger to check his coordination. No sign of losing it yet.

Suddenly he was aware of lights far ahead of him on the track. One of the logging trucks was coming towards him, and instantly he realised the possibility it offered. He slowed the Landrover and searched the verge of unbroken jungle that pressed in upon the track. He sensed rather than saw a break in the foliage and swung the Landrover boldly into it.

For fifty paces or so he forced his way through almost impenetrable undergrowth. It scraped along both sides of the bodywork, and small trees and branches thumped along beneath the chassis. The soft forest floor sucked at the wheels and the Landrover’s speed bled off until at last she was high-centred and stranded.

Daniel cut the engine and switched off the headlights. He sat in the darkness and listened to the logging truck rumble past, headed eastwards towards Sengi-Sengi along the road he had come. When the sound of the huge diesel engine had dwindled into silence, he leaned forward in the seat and steeled himself to examine the bullet wound in his back.

Reluctantly he twisted one arm up behind him and groped towards the centre of pain.

Suddenly he exclaimed and jerked his hand away. He switched on the interior lights and examined the razor scratch on his forefinger. Then quickly he reached behind himself again, and cautiously fingered the wound. He laughed aloud with relief. A shard of flying glass from the rear window had sliced open his back, and lodged against his ribs. It was a long superficial wound with the sharp glass still buried in it.

He worked it loose and examined it in the overhead light. It was bloody and jagged, and the bleeding had started again. “But you aren’t going to die from it,” he reassured himself, and tossed the splinter out of the side window and reached for the first-aid kit which was under the VTR equipment in the back of the vehicle.

It was difficult to treat the wound in his own back, but he managed to smear it liberally with Betadine ointment and strap an untidy dressing over it and knot the ends of the bandage in front of his chest. All the time he was listening for other vehicles on the logging road, but he heard only the small jungle sounds of bird and insect and beast.

He found the Maglite in his kit and went back on foot to the road.

From the verge he examined the muddy rutted tracks. As he had hoped, the logging truck had completely obliterated the Landrover’s tracks with its own massive multiple wheels. Only the spot where he had driven over the verge still carried the Landrover’s prints. He picked up a dead branch and swept them away carefully. Then he turned his attention to the foliage that the Landrover had damaged as it crashed into the forest.

He rearranged it as naturally as possible and smeared mud on the raw broken ends of branches and twigs so they would not catch the eye. After half an hour’s work he was certain that nobody would suspect that a vehicle had left the road here and was hidden only fifty feet away in the dense undergrowth.

Almost immediately his work was put to the test. He saw headlights approaching from the direction of Sengi Sengi. He drew back a little way into the forest and dropped flat. He smeared his face with a handful of mud and then covered the backs of his hands. His wind-cheater was dark forest green in colour; it would not show up in the lights. He watched the vehicle approaching along the logging track.

It was moving slowly an as it drew level with his hiding-place he saw that it was an army transport painted in brown and green camouflage. The rear was crowded with Hita. soldiers and he thought he glimpsed Chetti Singh’s white turban in the driver’s cab, but he couldn’t be certain. One of the soldiers in the rear was flashing a spotlight along the verges of the road.

They were obviously searching for him.

Daniel dropped his face into the crook of his arm as the beam of the spotlight played over where he lay. The truck passed on without slowing and was soon out of sight.

Daniel stood up and hurried back to the stranded Landrover. Swiftly he made a selection of items from the lockers, most importantly the hand-bearing compass. He packed them into the small day pack. From the first-aid kit he took field dressings and antiseptic and anti-malarial tablets. There was no food in the truck.

He’d have to live off the forest. He could not carry the pack the normal way without restarting the bleeding so he slung it over the other shoulder. He guessed that the wound really required stitching, but there was no way in which he could even attempt that.

“I have to get across the MOMU track before first light,” he thought. “That’s the one place I’ll be in the open and vulnerable.”

He left the Landrover and struck out westwards. It was difficult to orientate in darkness and the dense forest. He was forced to flash the torch and study the compass every few hundred yards. The going was soft and uneven and his progress was slow as he found his way between the trees. When he reached the MOMU excavation the open sky above it was flushing with dawn’s first light.

He could make out the trees on the far side of the clearing, but the MOMU itself had passed on weeks before and was already working six or seven miles further north. This part of the forest should be deserted, unless Kajo and Chetti Singh had sent a patrol down the strip to cut him off.

It was a chance he had to take. He left the shelter of the forest and started across. He sank to his ankles in the red mud and it sucked at his boots. Every second he expected to hear a shout or a shot, and he was panting with exertion when at last he reached the far tree-line.

He kept going for another hour before he took his first rest. Already it was hot and the humidity was like a Turkish bath.

He stripped off all his clothing, except for shorts and boots, rolled it into a ball and buried it in the thick soft loam of the forest floor. His skin was toughened by sun and weather and he had a natural resistance to insect stings. In the Zambezi valley he had been able to tolerate even the bite of the swarming tsetse fly. As long as he kept the wound on his back covered he should be all right, he decided.

He stood up and went on. He navigated by compass and wristwatch, timing his average stride to give him an estimate of distance covered.

Every two hours he rested for ten minutes. By nightfall he calculated he had covered ten miles. At that rate it would take eight days to reach the Zaire border but, of course, he wouldn’t be able to keep it up. There were mountains ahead, and glaciers and snowfields, and he had abandoned most of his clothing. it was going to be interesting out on the glaciers in his present attire, he decided, as he made a nest in the moist leaf mould and composed himself for sleep.

When he woke it was just light enough to see his hand in front of his face. He was hungry and the wound in his back was stiff and painful. When he reached to touch it he found it was swollen and the flesh hot.

“All we need is a nice little infection,” he thought, and renewed the dressing as best he could.

By noon he was ravenously hungry. He found a nest of fat white grubs under the bark of a dead tree. They tasted like raw egg yolks. “What doesn’t kill you, makes you fat,” he assured himself, and kept on towards the west, the compass in his hand. In the early afternoon he thought he recognized a type of edible fungus and nibbled a small piece as a trial.

In the late afternoon he reached the bank of a small clear stream, and as he was drinking he noticed a dark cigar shape lying at the bottom of the pool. He cut a stake and sharpened one end, carving a crude set of barbs above the point. Then he cut down one of the hanging ant’s nests from the branches of a silk-cotton tree and sprinkled the big red ants on the surface of the pool, taking care to stand well back from the edge with the crude spear in his right hand.

Almost immediately the fish rose from the bottom and began to gulp down the struggling insects trapped in the surface film.

Daniel drove the point of his fish spear into its gils and brought it out flapping and kicking on to the bank. It was a barbeled catfish, as long as his arm. He ate his fill of the fatty yellow flesh and the rest of the carcass he smoked over a fire of green leaves. it should keep him going for a couple more days, he decided. He wrapped it in a package of leaves and put it in his pack.

However, when he woke the next morning his back was excruciatingly painful, and his stomach was swollen with gas and dysentery. He couldn’t tell whether it was the insect grubs, the fungus or the stream water that had caused it, but by noon he was very weak. His diarrhea was almost unremitting, and the wound felt like a red-hot coal between his shoulder-blades.

It was about that time that Daniel had the first sensation that he was being followed. It was an instinct that he had realised he possessed when he was a patrol leader with the Scouts in the valley. Johnny Nzou had trusted this sixth sense of his implicitly and it had never let them down. It was almost as though Daniel was able to pick up the malevolent concentration of the hunter following on his tracks.

Even in his pain and weakness Daniel looked back and felt a presence. He knew that he was out there, the hunter.

“Anti-tracking,” he told himself, knowing that it would slow his progress, but it would almost certainly throw off his real or imaginary pursuer, unless he was very good indeed, or unless Daniel’s anti-tracking skills had atrophied.

At the next river-crossing he took to the water, and from then on he used every ruse and subterfuge to cover his tracks and throw off the pursuit.

Every mile he grew slower and weaker. The diarrhea never let up, his wound was beginning to stink, and he knew with clairvoyant certainty that the unseen hunter was still after him, and drawing closer every hour.

Chapter 33

Over the years Chetti Singh, the master poacher, had developed various systems of contacting his hunters. In some areas it was easier than others. In Zambia or Mozambique he had only to drive out to a remote village and talk to a wife or brother, and rely on them to pass the message.

In Botswana or Zimbabwe he could even rely on the local postal authority to deliver a letter or telegram, but contacting a wild pygmy in the Ubomo rain forest was the most uncertain and time-consuming of all.

The only way to do it was to drive down the main highway and stop at every duka or trading-store, to accost every halftame Bambuti that he met upon the roadside and bribe them to get a message to Pirri in the forest.

It was amazing how the wild pygmies maintained a network of communication over those vast and secret areas of the rain forest, but then they were garrulous and sociable people. A honey-seeker from one tribe would meet a woman from another tribe who was gathering medicine plants far from her camp, and the word would be passed on, shouted from a forested hilltop in a high penetrating sing-song to another wanderer across the valley, or carried by canoe, along the big rivers, until at last it reached the man for whom it was intended. Sometimes it took weeks, sometimes, if the sender was fortunate, it might take only a few days.

This time Chetti Singh was extremely lucky. Two days after he had given the message to a straggling group of pygmy women at one of the river crossings, Pirri came to the rendezvous in the forest. As always he appeared with the dramatic suddenness of a forest sprite and asked for tobacco and gifts.

“Have you killed my elephant?” Chetti Singh asked pointedly, and Pirri picked his nose and scratched himself between the legs with embarrassment.

“If you had not sent for me, the elephant would by now be dead.”

“But he is not dead,” Chetti Singh pointed out. “And thus you have not earned those marvelous gifts I promised you.”

“Just a little tobacco?” Pirri pleaded. “For I am your faithful slave, and my heart is full of love for you. Just a small handful of tobacco?”

Chetti Singh gave him half what he asked for and while Pirri squatted down to suck and enjoy it, he went on, “All I have promised you, I will give you that much again if you kill another creature for me, and bring me its head.”

“What creature is this?” Pirri asked guardedly, narrowing his eyes suspiciously. “Is it another elephant?”

“No,” said Chetti Singh. “It is a man.”

“You want me to kill a man!” Pirri stood up with alarm. “If I do that the wazungu will come and take me and put a rope around my neck.”

“No,” said Chetti Singh. “The wazungu will reward you as richly as I will.” And be turned to Captain Kajo. “Is that not so?”

“It is so,” Kajo confirmed. “The man we wish you to kill is a white man. He is an evil man who has escaped into the forest. We, the men of the government, will reward you for hunting him.”

Pirri looked at Kajo, at his uniform and gun and dark glasses and knew he was a powerful government wazungu, so he thought about it carefully. He had killed white wazungu before in the Zaire war when he was a young man. The government had paid him for it then and it had been easy. The white wazungu were stupid and clumsy in the forest. They were easy to follow and easy to kill. They never even knew he was there until they were dead.

“How much tobacco?” he asked.

“From me, as much tobacco as you can carry,” said Chetti Singh.

“From me also, as much tobacco as you can carry,” said Captain Kajo.

“Where will I find him?” asked Pirri, and Chetti Singh told him where to begin his search, and where he thought the man was heading.

“You want only his head?” Pirri asked. “To eat?”

“No. Chetti Singh was not offended. “So that I know you have killed the right man.”

“First I will bring you this man’s head,” said Pirri happily. “Then I will bring you the teeth of the elephant and I will have more tobacco than any man in the world.” And like a little brown ghost he disappeared into the forest.

Chapter 34

In the early morning, before the heat built up, Kelly Kinnear was working in the Gondola clinic. She had more patients than usual, most of them suffering from tropical yaws, those great suppurating ulcers that would eat down to the bone unless they were treated.

Others were malarial or had swollen eyes running with flyborne or ophthalmia. There were also two new cases of AIDS. She didn’t need blood slides to recognize the symptoms, the swelling of the lymph glands and the thick white thrush that coated their tongues and throats like cream cheese.

She consulted Victor Omeru and he agreed that they should try the new treatment on them, the herbal extract of the selepi tree bark that was looking so promising. He helped her prepare the dose. The amount was necessarily an arbitrary decision, and they were discussing it when there was a sudden commotion outside the clinic front door.

Victor glanced out of the window and smiled. Your little friends have arrived, he told Kelly, and she laughed with pleasure and went out into the sunshine.

Sepoo and his wife Pamba were squatting below the verandah, chatting and laughing with the other waiting patients. When they saw her they both squealed with delight and came running, competing with each other to take her hands and tell her all the news since their last meeting, trying to shout each other down to be the first to impart the choicest morsels of scandal and sensation from the tribe.

One on each hand they led her to her usual seat on the top step of the verandah and sat beside her, still chattering in unison. “Swilli has had a baby. It is a boy and she says she will bring it to show you at the next full moon,” said Pamba.

“There will be a great net hunt soon, and all the tribes will join…” said Sepoo.

“I have brought you a bundle of the special roots I told you about last time we met,” shrilled Pamba, not to be outdone by her husband.

Her bright eyes were almost hidden in a cobweb of wrinkles and half her teeth were missing. “I shot two colobus monkeys,” boasted Sepoo. “And I have brought you one of the skins to make a beautiful hat, Kara-Ki.”

“You are kind, Sepoo,” Kelly thanked him. “But what news from Sengi-Sengi? What about the yellow machines that eat the earth and gobble up the forest? What news of the big white man with curly hair and the woman with hair like fire who looks into the little black box all the time?”

“Strange,” said Sepoo importantly. “There is strange news. The big man with curly hair has run away from Sengi-Sengi. He has run into the forest to hide.” Sepoo was gabbling it out to prevent Pamba from getting in before him. “And the government wazungu at Sengi-Sengi have offered Pirri my brother, vast treasure and reward to hunt the man and kill him.”

Kelly stared at him in horror. “Kill him? she blurted. They want Pirri to kill him? And cut off his head,” Sepoo confirmed with relish. “Is it not strange and exciting?”

“You have to stop him!” Kelly sprang to her feet, dragging Sepoo up with her. “You must not let Pirri kill him. You must rescue the white man and bring him here to Gondola. Do you hear me, Sepoo? Go, now! Go swiftly! You must stop Pirri.”

“I will go with him to see that he does what you tell him, Kara-Ki,” Pamba announced. “For he is a stupid old man, and if he hears the honey chameleon whistle or meets one of his cronies in the forest, he will forget everything you have told him.” She turned to her husband. “Come on, old man.” She prodded him with her thumb. “Let us go and find this white wazungu and bring him back to Kara-Ki. Let us go before Pirri kills him and takes his head to Sengi-Sengi.”

Pirri the hunter went down on one knee in the forest and examined the tracks. He adjusted the hang of the bow on his shoulder and shook his head with reluctant admiration. “He knows that I am here, close behind him,” he whispered. “How does he know that? Unless of course he is one of the fundis.”

He touched the spoor where the wazungu had left the water. “He had done it with great skill, leaving only traces that someone as good as Pirri could detect. Yes, you know I am following you,” Pirri nodded. “But where did you learn to move and cover your tracks almost as well as a Bambuti?” he muttered.

He had picked up the wazungu’s tracks where he had crossed the broad road that the big yellow earth-eating tree-gobbling machine had left through the forest. The earth there was soft and the wazungu had left tracks that a blind man could follow on a dark night. He was heading westwards towards the mountains, as Chetti Singh had said he would.

Pirri thought immediately that it would be an easy hunt and a quick kill, especially when he had found where the wazungu had broken off a piece of poisonous fungus from a dead tree and eaten a little of it.

He found the man’s teeth marks in the piece of fungus that he had discarded, and Pirri laughed. “Your bowels will turn to water and run like the great river, O stupid wazungu. And I will kill you while you squat to shit.” Sure enough, he had found the place where the wazungu had slept the previous night and close by where he had voided his bowels for the first time. “You will not go far now,” he chuckled, “before I catch you and kill you.”

Pirri glided onwards, softly as a wisp of dark smoke blending with the gloom and shadows and sombre colours of the deep forest, following the easy trail at twice the speed of the man who had laid it. At intervals he found dribbles of his poisoned yellow dung, and then the trail reached the bank of a small stream and went into the water and vanished.

Pirri worked for almost half a day, casting both banks for a mile both upstream and down before he found where the wazungu had left the water again. “You are clever,” he conceded. “But not as clever as Pirri.” And he took the spoor again, going slowly now, for the man he was following was good. He laid back trails and false sign and used the water, and Pirri had to unravel each of his tricks, frowning while he worked it out and then grinning with approbation. “Ah yes, you will be a worthy one to kill. You would long ago have got clean away from a lesser hunter. But I am Pirri.”

In the late afternoon of the second day he had reached a clearing and he caught his first glimpse of the wazungu. At first he thought it was one of the rare forest antelope on the opposite hillside. He caught just a tiny flicker of movement in one of the forest glades, almost a mile distant across the valley.

For an instant even Pirri’s phenomenal eyesight was cheated. It did not seem to be a man, certainly not a white man, and then as he disappeared into the tall trees at the edge of the forest he realised that the man had covered himself with mud from head to foot and wore a hat of bark and leaves which distorted the outline of his head and made it difficult to make out his human shape. “Ha!” Pirri rubbed his belly with delight and granted himself another small pinch of tobacco under his upper lip to reward himself for the sighting. “Yes, you are good, my wazungu. Even I will not be able to catch you before darkness falls, but in the morning your head will be mine.” That night Pirri Slept without a fire at the edge of the clearing where last he had seen the white man, and was moving again just as soon as it was light enough to make out the sign.

In the middle of the morning he found the wazungu. He was lying at the foot of one of the towering African mahogany trees and at first Pirri thought he was already dead. He had tried to cover himself with dead leaves, a pathetic last effort to thwart the remorseless little hunter. Pirri moved in very slowly, taking every precaution, trusting nothing. He carried his broad-bladed machete ready in his right hand, and the weapon was honed to a razor edge.

When at last he stood over Daniel Armstrong he realised that although he was sick and wasted, he was not yet dead. He was unconscious, breathing with a soft bubbling sound in the back of his throat, curled like a sick dog under the blanket of leaf trash. His head was tilted at an angle, and the sweat had washed away the mud camouflage below his jaw line, leaving a white line. A perfect aiming mark for the decapitating stroke.

Pirri tested the edge of the blade of the machete with his thumb. It was sharp enough to shave his beard. He lifted it high above his head with both hands. The man’s neck was no thicker than that of one of the forest duikers which were Pirri’s usual prey. The machete would hack through meat and bone just as readily, and the head would spring away from the trunk with the same startling alacrity. He would hang it by its thick curly hair from a branch for an hour or so, to allow the blood to drain from the severed neck, then he would smoke it over a slow fire of green leaves and herbs to preserve it, before slinging it in a small carrying net of bark string and bearing it back to his poaching master, Chetti Singh, to collect his reward.

Pirri felt a little cold gust of regret as he paused at the top of his stroke before sending the blade hissing down. Because he was a true hunter he always experienced this sadness for his quarry at the moment of the kill, the creed of his tribe was to respect and honour the animals he killed, especially when the quarry had been cunning and brave and worthy.

“Die swiftly,” he made his silent entreaty.

He was on the point of slashing downwards when a voice said quietly behind him, “Hold your blade, my brother, or I will put this poison arrow through your liver.” Pirri was so startled that he leapt in the air and whirled to face about.

Sepoo was five paces behind him. His bow was arched and the arrow was drawn to his cheek, the poison on the tip of the arrow was black and sticky as toffee and it was pointed unwaveringly at Pirri’s chest.

Y”ou are my own brother! Pirri gasped with the shock. You are the fruit of my own mother’s womb. You would not let your arrow fly?”

“If you believe that, Pirri, my brother, you are even more stupid than I believe you to be. Kara-Ki wants this white wazungu alive. If you tap a single drop of his blood, I will put this arrow through you, from brisket to backbone.”

“And I,” said Pamba his wife from the forest shadows behind him, “I will sing and dance around you as you lie writhing on the ground.”

Pirri backed away sharply. He knew he could talk Sepoo into or out of almost anything, but not Pamba. He had a vast respect for and healthy fear of his sister-in-law. “They have offered me great treasure to kill this wazungu.” His voice was shrill. “I will share it equally with you. As much tobacco as you can carry! I will give it to you.”

“Shoot him in the belly,” ordered Pamba cheerfully, and Sepoo’s arm trembled with the strain of his draw as he closed one eye to correct his aim.

“Wait,” shrieked Pirri. “I love you, my dear sister; you would not allow this old idiot to kill me.”

“I am going to take a little snuff,” said Pamba coldly. “If you are still here when I finish sneezing–”

“I am going,” howled Pirri, and took another dozen paces backwards. “I am going.” He ducked into the undergrowth and the instant he was out of the line of fire he screamed, “You foul old monkey woman… “They could hear him slashing out with his machete at the bushes around him in fury and frustration.

“Only a decrepit venereal baboon like Sepoo would marry a drooling old hag.” The sounds of his ranting fury gradually diminished as he retreated into the forest and Sepoo lowered his bow and turned to his wife.

“I haven’t enjoyed myself so much since the day Pirri fell into his own trap on top of the buffalo that was already in the pit!” he guffawed.

“But he described you well, my lovely wife.” Pamba ignored him and went to where Daniel Armstrong lay unconscious, half buried in dirt and dead leaves. She knelt beside him and examined him quickly but thoroughly, plucking the ants from the corners of his eyes and his nostrils.

“I will have to work hard to save him for Karl-Ki,” she said as she reached into her medicine bag. “If I lose this one, I don’t know where I will find another one for her.”

While Pamba ministered to Daniel, Sepoo built a hut over him where he lay and then lit a little fire to disperse the mosquitoes and the humidity. He squatted in the doorway and watched his wife work.

She was the most skilled medicine woman of all the Bambuti, and her fingers were swift and dextrous as she cleaned the wound in the wazungu’s back and applied a poultice of mashed and boiled roots and leaves. Then she forced him to drink copious quantities of a hot infusion of herbs that would bind his bowels and replace the fluid that his body had shed.

She crooned and muttered encouragement to the unconscious man as she worked, her bare dugs swinging wrinkled and empty as a pair of leather tobacco pouches from her bony chest and her necklace of ivory and beads clicking each time she moved.

Within three hours Daniel had regained consciousness. He looked up dazedly at the two little old people crouched over him in the smoky hut and asked in Swahili, “Who are you?”

“I am Sepoo,” said the man. A famous hunter and a renowned sage of the Bambuti.

“And I am Pamba, the wife of the greatest liar in all the forest of Ubomo,” said the woman, and cackled with laughter.

By the next morning Daniel’s diarrhea had dried up and he could eat a little of the stew of monkey meat and herbs that Pamba had prepared for him. By the following morning the infection of the wound in his back had abated and he was strong enough to begin the journey to Gondola.

Daniel went slowly at first, using a staff to steady himself, for his legs were still wobbly and his head seemed to be filled with wool and floating clear of his shoulders. Pamba kept him company, leading him at a gentle pace through the forest and keeping up a constant chattering punctuated with shrieks of merry laughter, Sepoo ranged afar hunting and scavenging in the usual Bambuti manner.

Daniel had already guessed the identity of the mysterious Kara-Ki who had sent the pygmies to rescue him, but as soon as Pamba gave him an opportunity he questioned her further trying to get her to describe her patron in detail.

“Kara-Ki is very tall,” Pamba told him, and Daniel realised that to a Bambuti everybody else in the world is very tall. “And she has a long pointed nose.” All Bambuti noses were flat and broad. Pamba’s description could apply to any wazungu, so Daniel gave up and hobbled on after the little woman.

Towards dusk Sepoo suddenly appeared again from the forest with the carcass of a duiker he had killed hanging over his shoulder. That night they feasted on grilled liver and fillets.

The next morning Daniel was strong enough to discard his staff and Pamba increased the pace of the march. They reached Gondola the following afternoon. The pygmies had given Daniel no warning that they had arrived, and as he stepped out of the forest he was presented with the dramatic view of the little community. Its open gardens and streams, and the high snow-capped mountains forming a grand backdrop to the scene.

“Daniel,” Kelly Kinnear greeted him as he climbed the verandah steps, and even though he had half expected it, Daniel was unprepared for his own pleasure at meeting her again. She looked fresh and vital and attractive, but he sensed a reserve in her as she came to him and shook his hand. “I was so worried that Sepoo might not get to you in time…” Then she broke off and stood back. “God, you look awful. What on earth happened to you?”

“Thanks for the compliment,” he grinned ruefully. “But to answer your question, a great deal has happened to me since we last met.”

“Come into the surgery. Let’s have a look at you, before we do anything else.”

“Couldn’t I have a bath first? I find it difficult even being near myself.”

She laughed. “You are rather strong on the nose, but so are most of my patients. I’m used to it.”

She took him into the surgery and laid him on the examination table. After she had gone over him thoroughly and inspected the wound on his back, she remarked, “Pamba has done a pretty good job. I’ll give you a shot of antibiotic and I’ll put a fresh dressing on your back after your bath. It should have had stitches but it’s too late for that now. You’ll have a new interesting scar to add to all the others.”

As she washed her hands in the basin, she smiled at him over her shoulder. “You look as though you’ve been in a fight or two.”

“Always the other guy’s fault,” he assured her.

“Talking about fights, you never let me explain myself at our last meeting. You jumped on your motorbike before I had a chance.”

“I know. It’s my Irish blood.”

“Can I explain now?”

“How about a bath first?”

The bathroom was a thatched hut, and the bath was a galvanised iron tub just large enough to contain him if he kept his knees up under his chin. The camp servants filled it with buckets of steaming water heated on the fire outside. There was clothing laid out for him: khaki shorts and shirt, faded and worn but clean and crisply ironed, together with a pair of rawhide sandals. one of the servants took away his stinking blood-stained shorts and muddy boots.

Kelly was waiting for him in her surgery when he had dressed. “What a transformation,” she greeted him. “Let’s fix that back.”

He sat on the single chair and she stood behind him. Her fingers were cool and light and quick on his skin. When she spoke he could feel her breath on the back of his neck and smell her. He liked the feel of her hands and the sweet clean smell of her breath.

“I didn’t thank you for sending your pygmies to save my life,” he said.

“All in the day’s work. Think nothing of it.”

“I owe you one.”

“I’ll call on you.”

“You were the very last person I’d have expected to find here,” Daniel told her. “But when Pamba described you I began to suspect who you were. How did you get into the country? And what the hell are you doing here? If Taffari gets hold of you it will be a shooting party on the beach or a head-dress of hornets.

“Oh, so you’re beginning to find out the truth about Ephrem Taffari, that he’s not the saint and saviour you thought he was?”

“Don’t let’s fight again,” he pleaded. “I’m still too weak to defend myself.”

“You’re as weak as a bull. Look at all that muscle. Okay, now it’s time for your shot. Lie on the bed and drop your shorts.”

“Hey! Can’t I have it in the arm?”

“You haven’t got anything I haven’t seen before. Get on the table.”

Grumbling he lay face down, and lowered his shorts halfway. “Nothing to be ashamed of, in fact, not bad at all,” she assured him, and slid the needle home. “Okay, that does it. Get dressed and come to dinner. I’ve got another surprise for you. A dinner guest, somebody you haven’t seen for years.”

In the sunset they crossed from the clinic to Kelly’s living quarters at the end of the clearing. On the way they stopped for a minute to watch the sunset turn the Mountains of the Moon to a splendour of gold and flames. “I carry the memory of this beauty wherever I travel in the world,” Kelly whispered. “It’s one of the things that draws me back.”

And Daniel was moved as much by her reaction to it as by the grandeur of the scene itself. To express his accord with her he wanted to take her arm and squeeze it, but he kept his distance and after a while they moved on.

There was a dinner-table laid on the verandah of Kelly’s bungalow and a solitary figure seated at it, who rose as they approached. “Doctor Armstrong. How good to see you again.” Daniel stared at him in astonishment and then hurried forward. “I heard that you were dead, Mr. President, that you had died of a heart-attack or been shot by Taffari.”

“The news of my death was slightly exaggerated.” Victor Omeru chuckled and took Daniel’s hand.

“I found a flask of whisky in my medical chest,” Kelly said. “Tonight seems like an auspicious occasion to administer it.” She poured a little of the golden liquid into each of their glasses and offered them the toast. “To Ubomo! May it soon be released from the tyrant.”

Dinner was a simple meat of fish from the river and vegetables from the gardens of Gondola, but there was plenty of it and the conversation at the table never slackened or palled. Victor Omeru explained to Danny the circumstances of the revolution and his overthrow, his escape into the forest and his activities since then.

“With Kelly’s help, I have been able to turn Gondola into the headquarters of the resistance to Taffari’s brutal dictatorship,” he ended, but Kelly pressed him eagerly.

“Victor, tell Daniel what Taffari has done to the country and its people since he seized power. Daniel has been duped into believing that Taffari is a black Christ figure. In fact, Daniel is here to shoot a production that was to extol Taffari’s virtues…”

“No, Kelly,” Daniel interrupted her. “That’s not the way it was. It’s far more complicated than that. Originally I accepted the commission to make the film for personal and private reasons.” He went on to explain the murder of Johnny Nzou and his family. He told them of Ning Cheng Gong’s involvement and how he had traced the Lucky Dragon to Ubomo. He told them about Chetti Singh.

“I’ll be frank with you both,” he said at last. “I wasn’t concerned with Taffari and Ubomo’s real problems when I came here. I wanted my revenge and the film contract was only a means to that end. Then, after my arrival, I began to find out more about what was really going on in the country.”

He told them about the atrocity at Fish Eagle Bay and the forced labour he had witnessed and filmed. Victor Omeru and Kelly exchanged glances, and then Victor nodded and turned back to Daniel. Taffari has seized at least thirty thousand of the Uhali people to work in the mines and the logging camps. They are slaves, kept in the most appalling conditions. They are dying like flies in the camps, starved, beaten, shot. I cannot begin to describe to you the horror of it.

“And he is devastating the forest,” Kelly cut in. “He is destroying millions of acres of the rain forest.”

“I saw the mining unit at work,” Daniel said. “Actually, what he is doing there at least is in line with my own convictions on controlled use of a country’s natural assets on a renewable and sustainable yield basis.”

Both Kelly and Victor stared at him in disbelief, and then Kelly blurted out angrily, “You approve of what he is doing to the forest? Are you out of your mind? It’s rape and pillage. I was right about you the first time! You are one of the plunderers!”

“Hold it, Kelly.” Victor held up his hands. “Don’t use inflammatory language. Let Daniel tell us what he saw and what he filmed.”

With an obvious effort Kelly brought herself under control, but she was still pale with anger and her eyes blazed. “All right, Daniel Armstrong, tell us what Taffari showed you and let you film.”

“He showed me the MOMU unit at work…”

“The MOMU,” Kelly interjected. “MOMU singular–”

“Kelly, please.” Victor stopped her again. “Let Daniel finish before you interrupt.”

She was breathing heavily, but she nodded and sat back as Daniel went on. “Bonny and I filmed the MOMU and Taffari explained how the track of the vehicle would be replanted after it had passed.”

“Replanted!” Kelly snapped, and Victor shrugged helplessly and let her continue. “My God! Did he tell you about the chemical reagents they’ve started using in the past few weeks to refine the platinum as it passes through the tube mills of the MOMU.”

Daniel shook his head. “He told us of his determination that no reagents nor catalysts were to be used during the mining process. Even though it meant a forty percent drop in the production of platinum and monazite.”

“And you believed him?” Kelly demanded.

“I saw it with my own eyes,” Daniel told her. He was starting to get angry. “I filmed it. Of course I believed him.”

Kelly jumped up from the table and fetched a map of Ubomo from the next room. She spread it in front of Daniel. “Show me where you saw the MOMU in action,” she ordered.

Daniel considered the map and then placed his finger on a spot just north of Sengi-Sengi. “Hereabouts,” he said. “A few miles north of the camp.”

“Sucker!” Kelly blazed at him. “Taffari set you up. He showed you the pilot scheme. It was a little show for your benefit. The main mining operation is here.” She placed her fist over an area fifty miles further north. “Here at Wengu. And it’s a damned sight different from what Taffari showed you.”

“How is it different?” Daniel demanded. “And by the way, I don’t like being called a sucker.”

“You let yourself be conned.” Kelly moderated her tone. “But I’ll tell you how the main operation is different from the pilot. First of all, it is –”

“Hold on, Kelly,” Victor Omeru intervened gently. “Don’t tell him about it. It would be much more impressive, and he’d be more likely to believe you if you showed him.”

For a moment Kelly stared at Victor and then she nodded. “You’re right, Victor. I’ll take him up to Wengu and show him.”

“And while we are there, you can film just what that bastard is doing to the forest, and show it to your great pal Sir Tug Bloody Harrison, if he doesn’t know already.”

“I’m not a cameraman,” Daniel objected.

“If you don’t know how to use a VTR after being around them for so many years, then you aren’t very bright, Doctor Daniel.”

“All right, I could use a camera. Not very artistically but adequately, if only I had one. Where do you suggest I find a VTR in the middle of the forest?

“What happened to the one your red-haired girlfriend had?” Kelly demanded.

“Bonny isn’t my girlfriend. You’re a great one for hurling accusations,” he began, and then broke off and stared at Kelly. “Damn it he said. You’re right. I left the VTR in the Landrover. If Taffari’s lads haven’t found it yet, then it’s still there.”

“Why don’t you go back and fetch it?” Kelly enquired sweetly. “I’ll send Sepoo with you.”

Chapter 35

“I have brought you the head of the white wazungu,” Pirri, the hunter, announced dramatically and unslung the net bag of plaited bark fibre from his shoulder and dropped it in front of Chetti Singh. The head rolled out of the bag and Chetti Singh jumped back and exclaimed with revulsion. There was no skin left on the head. The raw meat was putrefying and the stench was fierce enough to make him gag.

“How do I know that this is the head of the white wazungu?” Chetti Singh demanded.

“Because I, Pirri the hunter, say it is so.”

“That’s not the highest recommendation. Never mind,” Chetti Singh said in English, and then reverted to Swahili. “This man has been dead a long time; the ants and the worms have half eaten him. You did not kill him, Pirri.”

“No,” Pirri admitted. “This stupid wazungu had eaten a poison mushroom and died in the forest before I could find him and kill him. The ants had eaten him, as you say, but I have brought you his head, and that was our bargain.” Pirri mustered all his dignity and drew himself up to his full four foot six inches. “Now you must give me what you promised me, especially the tobacco.” It was a long and forlorn hope. Even Pirri realised that.

To obtain this head Pirri had exhumed one of the mass graves that the Hita guards had dug in the forest for the corpses of the slave labourers who died in the camps. “You are certain that this is the head of the white wazungu?” Chetti Singh demanded. He did not believe the pygmy, but on the other hand he had to placate both Ning Cheng Gong and President Taffari. He dared not admit to them that there was a possibility that Armstrong had escaped. Pirri was offering him an easy exit from his dilemma.

“It is the wazungu,” Pirri affirmed, and Chetti Singh thought about it for a while. “Take this he touched the reeking head with his toe, take it back into the forest and bury it.”

“What about my reward? Especially the tobacco?” Pirri’s tone became an ingratiating whine.

“You did not bring me the whole head. The skin and hair were missing. Therefore I cannot give you the whole reward. And I will give it to you only when you bring me the teeth of the elephant, as we agreed.” Pirri let out a shout of anger and drew his machete.

“Put that knife away,” said Chetti Singh reasonably. “Or I will shoot your head off with this.” He showed the pygmy the Tokarev pistol concealed in the pocket of his bush jacket.

Pirri’s scowl became a beatific smile. “It was only a little joke, O master. I am your slave.” And he sheathed the machete. “I will go and fetch the teeth of the elephant as you command.”

He picked up the severed head. But as he skipped away into the forest Pirri’s guts and chest were filled with so much anger that he thought they might burst. “Nobody cheats Pirri,” he whispered, and slashed at a treetrunk with the machete as he ran. “Pirri will kill the man who cheats him,” he promised. “You want a head, O one-armed and greasy man. I will give you a head. Your own.”

“Daniel Armstrong is dead,” Chetti Singh told them. “The Bambuti brought me his head He died in the forest.”

“There can be no doubt?” President Taffari demanded.

“None at all,” Chetti Singh affirmed. “I saw the head with my personal eyes.”

“That means the woman is the only living witness.” Ning Cheng Gong looked relieved. “You should get rid of her immediately, Your Excellency. She should disappear in the forest, just the way that Armstrong did.”

Ephrem Taffari picked up his empty glass and rattled the ice cubes. Captain Kajo hurried across the room and took the glass from his hand. At the small bar in the corner of the president’s office he poured gin and tonic.

“Aren’t you forgetting the videotape?” Taffari asked, as Kajo respectfully handed him the drink.

“Of course not,” Cheng said. “But once she has recovered the tape from the embassy we must get rid of her.” He hesitated. “I could arrange that personally.”

Ephrem Taffari smiled at him over the rim of the glass. “Ah, yes.” He nodded. “I have heard that you have a rather unusual hobby, Mr. Ning.”

“I am not quite sure what you are implying, Mr. President,” he answered stiffly. “I was merely offering to make certain that the job was done properly. We don’t want any more loose ends.”

“Quite right, Mr. Ning,” Taffari agreed. “The woman is becoming a bore. I have lost interest in her. Once we have recovered the tape, she is yours. just make certain that there are no mistakes.”

“Trust me, Mr. President.”

“Oh yes, Mr. Ning, I trust you just as completely as you trust me. After all, we are partners, are we not?”

Chapter 36

“My arrangement with Danny was that he would pick it up personally.” Sir Michael Hargreave inspected his fingernails with some interest and then placed his hand in his pocket and went to the window of his office in the British embassy. He looked out over the lake. “Daniel didn’t say anything about handing it over to a third party. You must understand my position, Miss Mahon.”

The punkah fan on the ceiling squeaked and whirled and Bonny thought quickly. She knew that she must not appear too eager, even though she was acutely aware of what the consequences might be if she returned to Ephrem empty-handed. “I didn’t realise it would be a problem.” She stood up. “Danny asked me to pick it up. He’ll probably be bitter with me for not bringing it back, but I don’t imagine the tape is of any real importance. I’m sorry I didn’t think to ask Danny for a note. Anyway, thank you for your time and I’ll explain to Danny that you couldn’t see your way clear to handing the tape to me.” She held out her hand and gave him her sexiest smile, thrusting out her bosom. Sir Michael’s gaze wavered from her eyes, and then he seemed to make up his mind.

“Look here, I suppose it will be all right. I mean, you are Danny’s assistant. Not as though you were a total stranger.”

He hesitated. “I don’t want you to do anything you feel is not right, Bonny told him. I’m sure Danny will understand that you didn’t trust me.”

“Good Lord, my dear young lady, it. isn’t a case of not trusting you.”

“Oh, that’s what I thought it was.” She fluttered her eyelids at him.

“Would you mind signing a receipt? Sorry to be so awkward, but I must cover myself with Danny.”

“I understand,” Sir Michael. He scribbled out a receipt on a sheet of the embassy stationery and she signed it and wrote out her full name and passport number at the foot of the page.

Sir Michael went into the adjoining room and she heard him put a key into a lock and then the metallic sound of the door lugs of a steel safe opening and closing. A few minutes later he returned and handed her a bulky manila envelope with Daniel’s name printed on it. She tried not to make her relief apparent, but her hand shook as he handed it to her.

“Please give Danny my best salaams.” Sir Michael walked her to the front door of the embassy. “When is he coming back from Sengi-Sengi?”

“I’m flying up to join him this afternoon.” Bonny had her nerves under control and chatted easily. They shook hands at the door.

“Having one of our regular cocktail parties next Saturday,” Sir Michael said. “If you and Danny are back in town by then, you must come along. I’ll have Miss Rogers send you an invitation to the guest house.”

The news of Daniel Armstrong’s disappearance had not yet been reported to the embassy. Ephrem Taffari wanted all the loose ends tidied up before the alarm was raised.

Bonny went out to where Captain Kajo was waiting at the wheel of an army Landrover. She clutched the envelope in her lap, but managed another smile and wave for Sir Michael as they pulled out of the embassy gates. Then she let out a deep breath and fell back against the seat.

“President Taffari is waiting for you on his yacht, Miss Mahon,” Captain Kajo told her, and took the lakeside road down to the harbour. The yacht was moored at the naval jetty beyond the fish factory. The vessel had been the toy of a wealthy Asian businessman, one of those whom Taffari had deported and sent back to the United Kingdom when he came to power. of course, he had confiscated all the Asian’s property, and this vessel was now the presidential yacht.

It was a forty-five-footer Camper and Nicholson with lovely lines, equipped with every luxury, although most of the electronic equipment had long ago failed and had not been replaced, and the paintwork and sails were no longer pristine. However, the bar was well stocked and since the yacht very seldom left its berth, the lack of navigational and sailing gear was not critical.

There were two men in the main cabin, seated at the red teak saloon table facing each other.

President Taffari was perusing the monthly operating report and profit-and-loss accounts of UDC, smiling and nodding as he did so.

Ning; Cheng Gong was watching him expectantly.

When Taffari lowered the document and looked up, Cheng answered his smile. “I am impressed, Mr. Ning. It is only a very short time since you arrived in Ubomo to take control of the company, but the results are really quite spectacular.”

“You are very gracious, Your Excellency.” Cheng bowed slightly. “But I can truthfully say that I expect an even greater improvement in the months ahead. There were many problems that my English predecessor left for me, but these are being resolved.”

“What about the vehicle maintenance depot? This is one of my major areas of concern.” Taffari’s smile faded.

“And rightly so, Mr. President. We have over a thousand heavy vehicles in service, not counting the actual MOMU installations. Our maintenance costs were running at over three million dollars a month when I took over. As you can see, I have managed to reduce these by almost forty percent.”

Their discussion lasted another hour before there were footsteps on the deck outside and a polite knock on the cabin door.

“Who is it?” Taffari called.

“Captain Kajo, Mr. President, and Miss Mahon.”

Taffari glanced at Cheng significantly and the Chinaman nodded. This was the reason that the meeting was being held on board the yacht, rather than in the boardroom at Lake House. “Come in!” Taffari ordered, and the door slid aside. Kajo stooped his long frame into the cabin and saluted awkwardly

“I have Miss Mahon waiting in the Landrover on the dock,” he reported.

“Did she pick up the packet?” Taffari asked anxiously.

“Yes, sir. She has it with her.”

Again Taffari and Cheng exchanged glances, but now both of them were smiling again. “All right, Captain.” Taffari nodded. “You have your orders.”

“Yes, Mr. President. I am to accompany Mr. Ning and Miss Mahon on the expedition to Lamu Island and I am to –”

“No need to repeat them, Captain,” Taffari interrupted. “Just carry them out to the letter. Now you may bring Miss Mahon aboard.”

She burst into the cabin and went directly to Ephrem Taffari, ignoring the other man at the table.

“I’ve got it, Ephrem,” she gloated. “Here it is.” She laid the envelope in front of him and he picked it up, tore it open and shook out the video cassette.

“Are you sure this is the one?”

“Yes, that’s my notation on the label. My handwriting. It’s the one, all right.”

“Well done. I am extremely pleased with you,” Taffari told her. “Come and sit beside me, my dear.” She accepted the offer with alacrity and Taffari laid his hand on her thigh below the table-top.

“Captain Kajo,” Taffari ordered. “There is a bottle of champagne in the refrigerator. This calls for a celebration.”

Kajo went to the bar and busied himself with the bottle. The cork popped and a little froth gushed on to the carpet. It was Australian rather than French, but none of them complained.

Kajo turned back to the bar, screening the row of glasses on the bar while he poured the wine. He gave Bonny her glass firsttand then served the others in order of their seniority.

Taffari lifted his glass towards Bonny. “To you, my dear. You have saved me and my country from a potentially damaging situation.”

“Thank you, Mr. President.” Bonny took a mouthful of the champagne. She noticed but did not remark on the slightly bitter aftertaste, for she had learned not to give him the least pretext for offence. And when Kajo refilled her glass, she drank it without question. The unpleasant taste was less noticeable now.

“I thought we might go for a sunset cruise on the lake,” Taffari told her, and Bonny smiled at him but her cheeks felt strangely numb.

“That would be fun,” she tried to say, but it came out slurred and jumbled. Bonny broke off and stared at them. Their faces were receding and there was a ringing sound in her head. It became louder and her vision was darkening. There was only a tiny hole in the centre of the blackness in which she could see Ephrem’s face, as though through the reverse end of a telescope, small and remote.

His voice boomed and echoed in her drugged brain. “Goodbye, my dear,” he said, and her head dropped forward on to the table-top.

There was silence in the cabin for a full minute after Bonny Mahon had collapsed. Then President Taffari gathered his papers and placed them in his briefcase. He stood up and Kajo hurried to open the door for him. Taffari paused in the doorway and looked back. Ning Cheng Gong was still seated opposite the unconscious girl. He was watching her with a strange pale intensity.

At the head of the gangplank Taffari paused to talk to Captain Kajo. “Make sure the yacht is washed thoroughly before you bring her back to port. You know how to use the pressure hose?”

“I do, Your Excellency.”

Taffari went down the gangplank to his Mercedes and Kajo stood to attention and saluted as he drove away.

The yacht’s diesel engine was already running, the exhausts bubbling softly under the stern. Kajo cast off the lines and went to the wheel. He eased the yacht away from the jetty and turned her bows towards the harbour entrance. It was a two-hour run out to Lamu Island, and the sun had already set when he dropped anchor in the lee of the uninhabited horseshoe-shaped rock.

“We have arrived, Mr. Ning,” he said into the voice tube.

“Help me, please, Captain.”

Kajo went down into the cabin. Bonny Mahon was lying, still unconscious, on the carpeted deck. Between them they carried her up into the open cockpit and while Kajo held her upright Ning strapped her wrists and ankles to the stainless steel railings.

He spread a nylon sheet under her with the end hanging over the stern, to make it easier to hose down the deck later. “I don’t need any further assistance,” he told Kajo. “Take the rubber dinghy and go ashore on the island. Stay there until I call you. No matter what you may hear you will remain ashore. Do you understand?”

“Yes, Mr. Ning.”

Cheng stood by the stern rail and watched Kajo in the stern of the dinghy disappear into the darkness. The little three hp outboard puttered softly, and the beam of Kajo’s flashlight threw an erratic beam in the darkness. At last he reached the island and the outboard motor cut out into silence. The flashlight was extinguished.

Cheng turned back to the girl. She sagged against her bonds. She looked very pale in the cockpit lights and her hair was an untidy copper bush. Cheng took a few moments longer to savour the moment.

Physically the woman was unattractive to him, and she was much older than he liked, but none the less he felt his excitement mounting. Soon he would, be so absorbed and transported that such small adverse considerations would be of no account.

He looked around him carefully, taking his time, considering the circumstances. Lamu Island was twelve miles from the mainland and the lake crocodiles infested the waters around it. They would immediately devour any offal that was dropped overboard. On top of which he was under the protection of President Taffari.

He went back to the girl and adjusted the tourniquet around her upper arm, massaging the veins in the inside of her elbow until they stood out thick and blue in the cockpit lights. He had used the drug on many previous occasions, and he kept the antidote and disposable syringe available at all times.

Only seconds after he injected the antidote, Bonny Mahon opened her eyes and peered at him groggily.

“Good evening, Miss Mahon.” Cheng’s voice was throaty with excitement. “You and I are going to have a little fun together.”

Chapter 37

There had been an almost immediate rapport between Daniel and Sepoo. It was strange for in every way they were completely different: in size and colour and shape and mentality there was no similarity whatsoever.

It had to be a thing of the spirit, Daniel decided as he followed Sepoo through the forest. They were children of Africa, its pulse beat in both of them, its soul was their soul. They understood and loved this land’s beauty and savagery and treasured its bounty. They understood and loved its creatures and counted themselves merely one amongst this multitude of species.

When they camped that night they sat close to each other beside the fire and talked quietly. Sepoo spoke to him of the secrets and the mystery of the forest and the deeply felt beliefs of his people, and Daniel understood. In some measure they were his beliefs too and he accepted the reasons for the customs of these people as Sepoo explained them, and admired the wisdom and virtue of their lore. Sepoo called him Kuokoa, which meant The one I rescued. Daniel accepted the name, even though he knew it was meant as a monument to Sepoo’s deed and a reminder of his debt to the old man.

They came to the MOMU track through the forest near Sengi-Sengi in the late afternoon and lay up at the forest edge until it was dark. Then they crossed the open ground in the night.

Sepoo led Daniel to the logging road where he had abandoned the Landrover almost ten days previously but even Sepoo could not lead him directly to the stranded vehicle. It was only the following day that they at last found the Landrover exactly as Daniel had left it behind its screen of dense undergrowth, sunk to its axles in the soft forest floor.

There were no fresh human tracks around it and the video equipment was still in its aluminum carrying cases. Daniel laid it out on the tailboard of the vehicle and checked it quickly. The camera was not working. Either the batteries were flat after standing so long, or else the moisture had penetrated the mechanism.

Daniel noticed droplets behind the glass of the lens and condensation beaded the casing. It was a bitter disappointment, but Danny could only hope that the batteries could still be recharged or that a rudimentary cleaning and drying, once he reached Gondola, would get the camera serviceable again.

He gave Sepoo the case of cassettes to carry while he took for himself the camera, the lens and the spare battery packs, a burden of almost seventy pounds to lug through the steaming forest. Heavily laden as he was, the return took almost twice as long as the outward march and it rained most of the time.

As soon as he reached Gondola, Daniel recruited Victor Omeru’s assistance. He knew that Victor was a qualified electrical engineer. Victor had built and installed a turbine generator beneath the waterfall at the head of the Gondola glade. It generated 220 volts and almost ten kilowatts of power, sufficient to supply the community with lighting and to operate Kelly’s laboratory equipment.

So Victor was able to place the battery packs for the video on charge and found only one of them was defective. The camera and the lens were a different problem altogether. Daniel would not have known where to begin to look for the fault, but Victor stripped the camera and cleaned the condensed moisture. He checked the circuits and found one of the transistors was blown. He replaced it with one that he cannibalised from Kelly’s gas spectroscope.

Within twenty-four hours he had the VTR functioning again, then he took down the lenses and cleaned and dried them out and reassembled them.

Daniel realised just what a difficult task the old man had undertaken in such primitive conditions. “If you never get your country back, I’ve always got a job for you, sir,” he told Victor.

“That’s not such a good idea,” Kelly warned him. “You’d probably end up working for him.”

“All right,” Daniel said. “I’ve got a camera. Now what do you want me to film?”

“We leave tomorrow morning at first light,” Kelly told him.

“I’m coming along, Kelly,” Victor Omeru told her.

“I don’t think that is very wise, Victor.” She looked dubious. “You’re much too valuable.”

“After all my hard work, I deserve a little reward, don’t you think?” He turned to Daniel. “Besides which, you might have another breakdown in the equipment. Come on, Doctor Armstrong, put in a good word for me.”

“Chauvinists, both of you,” Kelly protested. “You’re ganging up on me just because I am a female. I’ll have to call Pamba to my aid.”

“Hell no!” Daniel shook his head. “That is using too much gun!” But he shared Kelly’s misgivings. Victor Omeru was over seventy years of age and the going would be tough. It was almost fifty miles to Wengu.

He was about to say so when Victor intervened quietly. “Seriously, Ubomo is my country. I cannot rely on second-hand reports. I have to see for myself what Taffari is doing to my people and my land.”

Neither of them could argue with that, and when the safari started out from Gondola the following morning, Victor Omeru was with them.

Sepoo had recruited eight men from his clan to act as porters and Pamba appointed herself as caravan manager to make certain that they applied themselves and did not lose interest in the typical Bambuti fashion, dropping their bundles to wander off fishing or honey hunting.

Every man in the clan stood in awe of Pamba’s tongue.

On the third day they reached the first of the bleeding rivers and the Bambuti men lowered their loads to the ground and huddled on the bank. There was no laughter nor banter. Even Pamba was silent and subdued.

Daniel climbed down into the stinking morass of red mud, dead animals and poisoned vegetation, and scooped a handful of it. He sniffed it and then threw it from him and tried to wipe the filth from his hands. “What is it, Kelly?” He looked up at her on the bank above him. “What caused this?”

“It’s the reagent that Taffari swore to you that he would never use.” She was dressed only in a cotton T-shirt and shorts with a coloured headband around her brow, and her small neat body seemed to quiver with outrage. “Victor and I have been monitoring the effluent from the mining operation. At first it was pure mud. That was bad enough. Then recently, in the last few weeks, there’s been a change. They have begun using a reagent. You see, the platinum molecules are coated with sulphides. The sulphides reduce the efficiency of the recovery process by forty percent. They are using a reagent to dissolve the sulphide coating and to free the platinum.”

“What does the reagent consist of?” Daniel demanded.

“Arsenic.” She spat the word like an angry cat. “They are using a two percent solution of white arsenic to break down the sulphide coating.”

He stared at her in disbelief. “But that’s crazy.”

“You said it,” Kelly agreed. “These aren’t sane or responsible people. They are poisoning the forest in a murderous orgy of greed.”

He climbed up out of the dead river and stood beside her. Slowly he felt her outrage seep into his own conscience. “The bastards,” he whispered.

It was as though she realised the moment of his total commitment to her cause, for she reached out and took his hand. It was not a gentle or an affectionate gesture. Her grip was fierce and compelling. “You haven’t seen it all yet. This is just the beginning. The real horror lies ahead at Wengu.” She shook his arm demandingly. “Come!” she ordered. “Come and look at it. I challenge you to remain on the sidelines after you have seen it.”

The little column moved on, but after another five hours’ march the Bambuti porters abruptly halted and dropped their packs and whispered together.

“Now what is the trouble?” Victor wanted to know, and Kelly explained.

“We have reached the boundary of the clan hunting area.” She pointed ahead. “From here onwards we will be entering the sacred heartland of the Bambuti. They are deeply troubled and perplexed. So far only Sepoo has seen what is happening at Wengu. The others are reluctant to go on. They are afraid of the wrath of the forest god, the Mother and Father of the forest. They understand that a terrible sacrilege has been committed and they are terrified.”

“What can we do to persuade them?” Daniel asked, but Kelly shook her head. “We must keep out of it. It is clan business. We must leave it to Pamba to convince them.”

The old lady was at her best now. She spoke to them, sometimes haranguing them shrilly, at others dropping her voice to a dovelike cooing and taking one of their faces in her cupped hands to whisper into an ear. She sang a little hymn to the forest and smeared ointment on each of their bare chests to absolve them. Then she performed a solitary dance, shuffling and leaping as she circled. Her withered breasts bounced against her belly and her skirt of bark cloth flipped up at the back to expose her surprisingly neat and glossy little buttocks as she cavorted.

After an hour one of the porters suddenly picked up his load and started along the path. The others, grinning sheepishly, followed his example and the safari went forward into the sacred heartland.

They heard the machines at dawn the next morning and as they went on the sound became louder. The rivers they crossed were waist-deep and thick as honey with the fearful red poisoned mud.

Apart from the distant growl and roar of the machines, the forest was silent. They saw no birds or monkeys or antelope, and the Bambuti were silent also. They kept close together and they were afraid, darting anxious glances into the forest around them as they scurried forward.

At noon Sepoo halted the column and conferred with Kelly in a whisper. He pointed towards the east and Kelly nodded and beckoned Daniel and Victor to her.

“Sepoo says we are very close now. Sounds in the forest are very deceptive. The machines are working not more than a few miles ahead. We dare not approach closer for there are company guards at the forest edge.”

“What are you going to do?” Victor asked.

“Sepoo says there’s a line of hills to the east. From there we’ll be able to overlook the mining and logging area. Pamba will stay here with the porters. just the four of us, Sepoo and I, you, Daniel and Victor, will go up on to the hills.”

Daniel unpacked the VTR and he and Victor checked it. “Come on,” Kelly ordered, before the light goes or it begins to rain again.

They climbed the hills in Indian file with Sepoo leading. However, even when they came out on the top they were still hemmed in by the forest. The great trees soared high overhead and the undergrowth pressed in closely about them, limiting visibility to twenty or thirty feet. They could hear the bellow of diesels below them, closer and clearer than before.

“What now?” Daniel wanted to know. “Can’t see a damned thing from here.”

“Sepoo will give us a grandstand view,” Kelly promised, and almost as she said it, they reached the base of a tree that was a giant amongst a forest of great trees. “Twenty pygmies holding hands can’t encircle this tree,” Kelly murmured. “We’ve tried it. It’s the sacred honey tree of the tribe.”

She pointed at the primitive ladder that scaled the massive trunk. The pygmies had driven wooden pegs into the smooth bark to reach the lowest branches and from there they had strung liana ropes and lashed wooden steps that ascended until they passed out of sight into the forest galleries a hundred feet above where they stood.

“This is a Bambuti temple,” Kelly explained. “Up there in the high branches they pray and leave offerings to the forest god.”

Sepoo went first for he was the lightest and some of the pegs and steps were rotten. He cut new ones and hammered them into place with the blade of his machete, and then signaled the others to follow him. Kelly went next and reached down to give Victor a hand when he faltered. Daniel came last, carrying the VTR slung over his shoulder and reaching up to place Victor’s feet on the ladder rungs when he could not find them for himself.

It was slow progress, but they helped the old man up and reached the upper gallery of the forest safely.

This was like the land at the top of Jack’s beanstalk, an aerial platform formed by interlinked branches and fallen debris. New plants had taken root in the suspended leaf mould and trash and formed a marvelous hanging garden where strange and beautiful flowers bloomed and a whole new spectrum of life flourished closer to the sun. Daniel saw butterflies with wings spread as wide as his hands, and flying insects that sparkled like emeralds and princely rubies. There were even lilies and wild gardenias growing in this fairyland. Daniel caught the flash of a bird so jewelled and splendid that he doubted his own eyes as it vanished like a puff of brilliant smoke amongst the foliage.

Sepoo barely allowed them to rest before he began to climb again. The trunk of the tree was half as thick at this level, but still as huge as its neighbours had been at their bases. As they went higher so the light changed. It was like coming up from the depths of the ocean. The green submarine glow brightened until abruptly they burst out into the sunlight and exclaimed with wonder. They were on the top branches of the sacred honey tree.

They looked down upon the carpet of the forest roof. It spread away, undulating like the billows of the ocean, green and unbroken on every side, except in the north. All their eyes turned in that direction and their cries of wonder faded and they stared in horror and disbelief.

In the north the forest was gone. From the base of the green hill below them, as far as they could see to the north, to the very foothills of the snowclad mountains the forest had been erased. A red plain of desolation lay where once the tall trees had stood.

None of them could speak or move. They clung to their lofty perch and stared speechlessly, turning their heads slowly from side to side to encompass the enormity of the bare devastated expanse.

The earth seemed to have been raked by the claws of some rapacious beast, for it had been scoured by the torrential rain waters. The topsoils had been torn away, leaving stark canyons of erosion; the fine red mud had been washed down to clog and choke the rivers through the forest. It was a desolate lunar landscape.

“Merciful God!” Victor Omeru was the first to speak. “It is an abomination. How much land has he defiled? What is the full extent of this destruction?”

“It’s impossible to calculate,” Kelly whispered. Even though she had seen it before, she was still stunned by the horror of it. “Half a million, a million acres, I don’t know. But remember, they’ve been at work here for less than a year. Think of the destruction in another year from now. If those monsters–” she pointed at the line of MOMU vehicles that were strung along the edge of the forest at the foot of the hill, “if those monsters are allowed to continue.”

It was an effort for Daniel to drag his eyes from the wide vista of destruction and to concentrate on the line of yellow machines. From their high vantage point they seemed as tiny and innocuous as a small boy’s toys left in the sandbox. The MOMU were in a staggered formation, like a line of combine-harvesters reaping one of those endless wheat fields on the Canadian prairie. They were moving so slowly that they appeared to be standing still.

“How many?” Daniel asked, and counted them aloud. “Eight, nine, ten” he exclaimed. “Running side by side that gives them a cutline almost four hundred yards wide. It doesn’t seem possible that just ten machines have been able to inflict such terrible damage.”

Victor’s voice shook uncertainly. “They are like giant locusts, remorseless, insensate, terrible. The caterpillar tractors were working ahead of the line of MOMUs, scything the forest to make way for the monstrous earth-eating machines to follow.”

Even as they watched, one of the tall trees quivered and swayed. Then it began to move, swinging ponderously as the steel blades ate through the base of its trunk. Even at this distance they heard the scream of living timber rending. It sounded like the death throes of a wounded animal. The falling tree gathered momentum, its death cry rose higher and shriller, until the trunk thudded into the red earth and the mass of foliage shivered, then lay still.

Daniel had to look away. Sepoo was perched beside him on a high branch, and he was weeping. The tears ran very slowly down his wrinkled old cheeks and dripped unheeded on to his naked chest. It was a terrible intimate grief, too painful for Daniel to watch.

He looked back just in time to see another tree fall and die, and then another. He unslung the VTR from his shoulder and lifted it to his eyes, focused the telephoto lens, and began to film.

He filmed the devastated bare red plain on which not a living thing remained, not an animal, or bird, or a green leaf.

He filmed the line of yellow machines grinding inexorably forward, keeping their formation rigidly, attended by an endless horde of container trucks, like worker ants behind the queen ant, carrying away the succession of eggs she laid.

He filmed the red poison spewing from the dump chutes at the rear of the MOMU, falling carelessly upon the savaged earth where the next rainstorm would carry it away and spread it into every stream and creek for a hundred miles down the contour.

He filmed the fall of the trees ahead of the line of yellow machines and the giant mechanical saws mounted on specially modified caterpillar tractors. Fountains of wet white sawdust flew high into the air as the spinning silver blades bit in and the tree-trunks fell into separate logs.

He filmed the mobile cranes lifting the logs on to the trailer beds of the logging vehicles.

He filmed the hordes of naked Uhali slaves working in the red mud to keep the roads open for the massive trucks and trailers to pass over, as they bore away the looted treasures of the forest.

He had hoped that the act of manipulating the camera and viewing the scene through the intervening lens might somehow isolate him from reality, might allow him to remain aloof and objective. It was a vain hope. The longer he watched the destruction, the more angry he became until his rage matched that of the woman who sat on the branch beside him.

Kelly did not have to give voice to her outrage. He could feel it like static electricity in the air around her. It did not surprise him that he was so in tune with her feelings. It seemed only right and natural. They were very close now. A new bond had been forged between them, to reinforce the attraction and sympathy that they had already conceived for each other.

They stayed in the treetop until nightfall, and then they remained another hour, sitting in darkness as though they could not tear themselves away from the terrible fascination of it. They listened to the growl of engines in the night and watched the floodlights and the swinging headlights turn the forest and the devastated red plain to daylight. It never stopped, but went on and on, cutting, digging, roaring, spilling out poison and death.

When at last it began to rain again and the lightning and the thunder crashed overhead, they crept down from the treetop and made their way slowly and sadly back to where Pamba waited in the forest with the porters.

In the morning they started back through the steaming silent forest towards Gondola, stopping only for Daniel to film the polluted, bleeding rivers. Victor Omeru went down into the muck and stood knee-deep in it and spoke into the camera, giving articulate voice to all their sorrow and rage. His voice was deep and compelling and filled with concern and compassion for his land and its people. His silver hair and dark noble features would hold the attention of any audience, and his credentials were impeccable. His international reputation was such that nobody could seriously doubt that what he described to them was the truth. If Daniel could show this to the outside world, he knew that he would be able to communicate his own sense of outrage.

They moved on slowly. The Bambuti porters were still subdued and dismayed. Although they had not witnessed the mining, Sepoo had described it to them and they had seen the bleeding rivers. Yet even before they reached the boundary between the heartland and their traditional hunting grounds they were given even greater cause for sorrow.

They cut the tracks of an elephant. They all recognized the spoor of the beast, and Sepoo, called him by name. “The Old Man with One Ear,” he said, and they all agreed. It was the bull with half his left ear missing. They laughed for the first time in days as though they had met an old friend in the forest, but the laughter was short-lived as they studied the spoor. Then they cried out and wrung their hands and whimpered with fear and horror.

Kelly called urgently to Sepoo. “What is it, old friend?”

“Blood,” Sepoo answered her. “Blood and urine from the elephant. He is wounded; he is dying.”

“How has this happened?” Kelly cried. She also knew the elephant like an old friend. She had come across him often in the forest when he had frequented the area round Gondola.

“A man has struck and wounded him. Somebody is hunting the bull in the sacred heartland. It is against all law and custom. Look! Here are the tracks of the man’s feet lying over the spoor of the bull.” He pointed out the clear imprints of small bare feet in the mud. “The hunter is a Bambuti. He must be a man of our clan. It is a terrible sacrilege. It is an offence against the god of the forest.”

The little group of pygmies were shaken and horrified. They clustered together like lost children, holding each other’s hands for comfort in these dreadful days when all they believed in was being turned upside down, first the machines in the forest and the bleeding rivers, and now this sacrilege committed by one of their own people. I know this man, Pamba shrieked. I recognize the mark of his feet. This man is Pirri. They wailed then and covered their faces, for Pirri had made his kill in the sacred places and the shame and the retribution of the forest god must come down upon all of them.

Pirri the hunter moved like a shadow. He laid his tiny feet down gently upon the great pad marks of the elephant, where the bull’s weight had compacted the earth and no twig would snap and no dead leaf would rustle to betray him.

Pirri had been following the elephant for three days. During all that time Pirri’s entire being had been concentrated upon the elephant, so that in some mystic way he had become part of the beast he was hunting.

Where the bull had stopped to feast on the little red berries of the Selepe tree, Pirri read the sip and could taste the tart acidic juice in his own throat. Where the elephant had drunk at one of the streams, Pirri stood upon the bank as he had done and felt in his imagination the sweet clear water squirt and gurgle into his own belly. Where the elephant had dropped a pile of yellow fibrous dung on the forest floor, Pirri felt his own bowels contract and his sphincter relax in sympathy.

Pirri had become the elephant, and the elephant had become Pirri.

When he came up with him at last, the bull was asleep on his feet in a matted thicket. The branches were interwoven and covered with thorns that were hooked and tipped with red; they could flay a man’s skin from his limbs. As softly and slowly as Pirri moved, yet the elephant sensed his presence and came awake. He spread his ears, one wide and full as a mainsail, the other torn and deformed, and he listened.

However, he heard nothing, for Pirri was a master hunter.

The elephant stretched out his trunk, sucked up the air and blew it softly into his mouth. The olfactory glands in his top lip opened like pink rosebuds and he tasted the air, but he tasted nothing, for Pirri had come in below the tiny forest breeze and he had smeared himself from the top of his curly head to the pink soles of his feet with the elephant’s own dung. There was no man-smell upon him.

Then the elephant made a sound, a gentle rumbling sound in his belly and a fluttering sound in his throat. It was the elephant song. The bull sang in the forest to learn if it was another elephant or a deadly enemy whose presence he sensed.

Pirri crouched at the edge of the thicket and listened to the elephant sing. Then he cupped his hand over his mouth and his nose and he gulped air into his throat and his belly and he let it out with a soft rumbling and fluttering sound.

Pirri sang the song of the elephant.

The bull sighed in his throat and changed his song, testing the unseen presence. Faithfully Pirri replied to him, following the cadence and the timbre of the song, and the elephant bull believed him. The elephant flapped his ears, a gesture of contentment and trust. He accepted that another elephant had found him and come to join him.

He moved carelessly and the thicket crackled before his bulk. He came ambling forward to meet Pirri, pushing the thorny branches aside. Pirri saw the curved shafts of ivory appear high above his head. They were thicker than his waist and longer than he could reach with his elephant spear.

The elephant spear was a weapon that Pirri had forged himself from the blade of a truck spring -that he had stolen from one of the dukas at the roadside. He had heated and beaten it until the steel had lost its temper and he was able to work it more easily. Then Pirri had shaped and sharpened it, and fitted it to a shaft of hard resilient wood and bound the blade in place with rawhide. When the rawhide dried it was hard and tight as the steel it held.

As the elephant’s head loomed above him, Pirri sank down and lay like a log or a pile of dead leaves on the forest floor.

The elephant was so close that he could make out clearly every furrow and wrinkle in the thick grey hide. Looking up he could see the discharge from the glands in the elephant’s head running like tears down his cheeks, and Pirri gathered himself.

Even with the spear he had made, which was sharp and heavy and almost twice as long as Pirri was tall, he could never drive the point through the hide and meat and the cage of ribs to pierce the bull’s heart or his lungs. The brain in its bony casket was far beyond his reach.

There was only one way that a man of Pirri’s size could kill an enormous beast like this with a spear.

Pirri rolled to his feet and bounded up under the elephant’s belly. He stood between the bull’s back legs and he braced himself and drove the point of the spear upwards into the angle of his groin.

The elephant squealed as the blade sliced through the baggy skin that hung around his crotch and lanced up into the sac of his bladder. The razor steel split his bladder open and the hot urine sprayed out in a yellow jet. He convulsed with agony, hunching his back, before he began to run.

The elephant ran screaming through the forest, and the foliage crashed and broke before him.

Pirri leaned on his bloody spear and listened to the elephant run out of earshot. He waited until the silence was complete and then he girded up his loincloth and began to follow the dribbled trail of blood and urine that steamed and reeked on the forest floor.

It might take many hours to die, but the elephant was doomed. Pirri, the hunter, had struck a mortal blow and he knew that before tomorrow’s sunset the elephant would be dead.

Pirri followed him slowly, but he did not feel the fierce hunter’s joy in his heart. There was only a sense of emptiness and the terrible guilt of sacrilege. He had offended his god, and he knew that now his god must reject and punish him.

Pirri the hunter found the carcass of the elephant bull the next morning. The elephant was kneeling, with his legs folded up neatly beneath him. His head was supported by the massive curves of ivory that were half buried in the soft earth.

The last rainstorm had washed his hide so that it was black and shiny and his eyes were open.

He appeared so lifelike that Pirri approached him with great caution and at last reached out with a long thin twig to touch the open staring eye fringed with thick lashes. The eyelid did not blink to the touch and Pirri noticed the opaque jelly-like sheen of death over the pupil.

He straightened up and laid aside his spear. The hunt was over. By custom he should now sing a prayer of thanks to the forest god for such largesse. He actually uttered the first words of the prayer before he broke off guiltily. He knew that he could never sing the hunter’s prayer again, and a profound sadness filled his being.

He made a small fire and cut the rich fatty meat out of the elephant’s cheek and cooked it on a skewer over the coals. For once this choice morsel was tough and tasteless in his mouth. He spat it into the fire and sat for a long time beside the carcass before he could rouse himself and shrug off the sense of sorrow that weighed him down.

He drew his machete from its sheath and began to chop one of the thick yellow tusks from its bony canal in the elephant’s skull. The steel rang on the skull and the bone chips flew and fell about his feet as he worked.

That was how the men of his clan found him. They were drawn to Pirri by the sound of his machete hacking through bone. They came out of the forest silently, led by Sepoo and Pamba, and they formed a circle around Pirri and the elephant. He looked up and saw them, and he let the machete fall to his side, and he stood with blood on his hands, not daring to meet their eyes. “I will share the reward with you, my brothers, he whispered,” but nobody answered him.

One at a time the Bambuti turned from him and disappeared back into the forest as silently as they had come, until only Sepoo remained.

“Because of what you have done the forest god will send the Molimo to us,” said Sepoo, and Pirri stood with despair in his heart and could not raise his head to meet his brother’s eyes.

Chapter 37

Daniel began a review of the videotapes as soon as they reached Gondola.

Kelly set aside a corner of her laboratory for him to work in and Victor Omeru hovered over him, making comments and suggestions as he compiled his editing notes.

The quality of the material he had gathered was good. As a cameraman he rated himself as competent but lacking the artistry and brilliance of somebody like Bonny Mahon. What he compiled was an honest sober record of the mining and logging operation in the Wengu forest reserve, and of some of the consequences.

“It has no human warmth to it,” he told Victor and Kelly at dinner that evening. “It appeals to reason, not to the heart. I need something more.”

“What is it you want?” Kelly asked. “Tell me what it is and I’ll get it for you.”

“I want more of President Omeru,” Daniel said. “You have presence and style, sir. I want much more of you.”

“You shall have me.” Victor Omeru nodded. “But don’t you think it is time we dispensed with the formalities, Daniel? After all, we have climbed the sacred honey tree together. Surely that entitles us to use each other’s Christian names?”

“I’m sure it does, Victor,” Daniel agreed. “But even you won’t be enough to convince the world. I have to show them what is happening to human beings. I have to show them the camps where the Uhali forced labour units are housed. Can we arrange that?”

Victor leaned forward. “Yes,” he said. “You know that I am the leader of the resistance movement to Taffari’s tyranny. We are growing stronger every day. At present it is all very much underground, but we are organising ourselves and recruiting all the most important and influential people who reject Taffari. Of course, we are mostly Uhali, but even some of Taffari’s own Hita people are becoming disenchanted with his regime. We will be able to get you to see the labour camps. Of course, you won’t be able to get into the camps, but we should be able to get you close enough to film some of the daily atrocities which arc being perpetrated.”

“Yes,” Kelly asserted. “Patrick and the other young resistance leaders will be arriving here within the next few days for a conference with Victor. He will be able to arrange it.” She broke off and thought for a moment. “Then there are the Bambuti. You can show your audience how the destruction of the forest will affect the pygmies and destroy their traditional way of life.”

“That’s exactly the type of material I still need,” Daniel replied. “What do you suggest?”

“The Molimo ceremony,” Kelly said. “Sepoo tells me that the Molimo is coming and he has agreed that you may witness it.”

Patrick, Victor Omeru’s nephew, arrived at Gondola a day earlier than was expected. He was accompanied by a retinue of a dozen or so Uhali tribesmen. The pygmies had guided them through the forest. Many of the delegation were also relatives of Victor Omeru, all of them educated and committed young men.

When Daniel showed them the tapes he had already filmed and described the material he still required, Patrick Omeru and his men were enthusiastic. “Leave it to me, Doctor Armstrong,” Patrick told him. “I’ll arrange it for you. Of course, there will be some danger involved. The camps are well protected by the Hita, but we’ll get you as close as is humanly possible.”

When Patrick and his men left Gondola, Daniel and Sepoo went with them. The two of them returned to Gondola nine days later. Daniel was thin and gaunt. It was obvious that they had travelled hard and unremittingly. His clothing was mud-stained and tattered and Kelly saw at once that he was near the point of exhaustion as he stumbled up on the verandah of the bungalow.

Without thinking she ran to greet them and the next moment they were in each other’s arms. It startled both of them. They clung to each other for a moment, but when Daniel turned his mouth down towards hers, Kelly broke away and shook his hand instead.

“Victor and I were so worried,” she blurted, but she was blushing a deep rose colour that Daniel found enchanting, and she released his hand quickly.

That afternoon, after Daniel had bathed and eaten and slept for two hours, he showed them the new material. There were sequences of the forced labour gangs working along the logging roads. They had obviously been filmed, from a distance with a telephoto lens.

The Hita guards stood over the gangs with clubs in their hands, and they struck out seemingly at random at the half-naked men and women toiling in the mud and slush below them. I’ve got much too much of this, Daniel explained, but I’ll edit it down, and keep only the most striking sequences. There were sequences of the gangs being marched in slow exhausted columns back to the camps at the end of the day’s work, and other shots, taken through wire, of their primitive living conditions.

Then there were a series of interviews, shot in the forest, with prisoners who had escaped from the camps. One of the men stripped naked in front of the camera and displayed the injuries that the guards had inflicted- upon him. His back was cut to ribbons by the lash, and his skull was crisscrossed with scars and half-healed cuts where the clubs had fallen.

A young woman showed her feet. The flesh was rotting and falling away from the bone. She spoke in soft Swahili, describing the conditions in the camp. “We work all day in the mud, our feet are never dry. The cuts and scratches on them fester like this, until we cannot walk. We cannot work.” She began to weep softly.

Daniel was sitting beside her on the log. He looked up at the camera which he had previously set up on a tripod. “This is what the soldiers in the trenches of France during’World War One called ‘trench foot’. It’s a contagious fungoidal infection that will cripple the sufferer, will literally rot his feet if it is not treated.”

Daniel turned back to the weeping woman and asked gently in Swahili, “What happens when you can no longer work?”

“The Hita say that they will not feed us, that we eat too much food and are no longer of any use. They take the sick people into the forest…”

Daniel switched off the VTR and turned to Kelly and Victor. “What you are about to see are the most shocking sequences I have ever filmed. They’re similar to the scenes of the Nazi death squads in Poland and Russia. Some of the quality might be rather poor. We were filming from hiding. It’s horrible stuff. You might prefer not to watch it, Kelly?”

Kelly shook her head. “I’ll watch it,” she said firmly.

“Okay, but I warned you.” Daniel switched on the VTR and they leaned forward towards the tiny screen as it flickered and came alive again.

They were looking into a clearing in the forest. One of the UDC bulldozers was gouging a trench in the soft earth. The trench was forty or fifty yards long and at least ten feet deep, judging by the way the bulldozer almost disappeared into it. Patrick was able to find out from his spies where they were doing this, Daniel explained. So we could get into position the night before. The bulldozer completed the excavation and trundled up out of the trench. It parked nearby. The shot was cut off. This next sequence is about three hours later, Daniel told them.

The head of a column of prisoners appeared out of the forest, chivvied on by the Hita guards on the flanks. It was apparent that all the prisoners were sick or crippled. They staggered or limped slowly into sight. Some were supporting each other with arms around the shoulders, others were using crude crutches. A few were carried on litters by their companions.

One or two of the women had infants strapped on their backs. The guards marched them down into the trench and they disappeared from sight. The guards formed up in a line on top of the excavation.

There were at least fifty of them in paratrooper overalls with sub-machine-guns carried on the hip. Quite casually they began firing down into the trench. The fusillade went on for a long time. As each paratrooper emptied his Uzi machine-gun, he reloaded it with a fresh magazine and recommenced firing. Some of the men were laughing.

Suddenly one of the prisoners crawled up over the bank of the pit. It was almost unthinkable that he could have survived this long. One of his legs was half shot away. He dragged himself along on his elbows. A Hita officer unholstered his pistol and stood over him and shot him in the back of his head. The man collapsed on his face and the officer put his boot against his ribs and shoved him over the lip of the trench.

One at a time the soldiers stopped shooting. Some of them lit cigarettes and stood in groups along the edge of the grave, smoking and laughing and chatting.

The driver of the bulldozer climbed back on to his machine and eased it forward. He lowered the blade and pushed the piles of loose earth back into the trench. When the excavation was refilled he drove the bulldozer back and forth over it to compact the earth.

The soldiers formed up into a column and marched away along the track they had come. They were out of step and slovenly, chatting and smoking as they went.

Daniel switched off the VTR and the screen went blank.

Kelly stood up without a word and went out on to the verandah of the bungalow. The two men sat in silence until Victor Omeru said quietly, “Help us please, Daniel. Help my poor people.”

The word went through the forest that the Molimo was coming, and the clans began to gather at the tribal meeting place below the waterfall at Gondola. Some of the clans came from two hundred miles away, across the Zaire border, for the Bambuti recognized no territorial boundaries but their own.

From every clan area and from every remote corner of the forest they came, until there were over a thousand of the little people gathered together for the terrible Molimo visitation.

Each woman built her leafy hut with the doorway facing the doorway of a particular friend or a close and beloved relative, and they gathered in laughing groups throughout the encampment, for not even the threat of the Molimo could quench their high spirits or dull their cheerful nature.

The men met old cronies and hunting companions that they had not seen since the last communal net hunt, and they shared tobacco and tall stories, and gossiped with as much relish as the women at the cooking-fires. The children squealed and ran unchecked amongst the huts, tumbling over each other like puppies, and they swam in the pool below the waterfall like sleek otter cubs.

One of the last to arrive at the meeting place was Pirri the hunter. His three wives staggered under the heavy sacks of tobacco they carried.

Pirri ordered his wives to build his hut with the doorway facing the doorway of his brother Sepoo. However, when the hut was finished, Pamba closed in the doorway of Sepoo’s hut and built another opening facing in the opposite direction. In Bambuti custom this was a terrible snub, and it set the women at the cooking-fires chattering like parrots at roosting time.

Pirri called to old friends, “See how much tobacco I have. It is yours to share. Come, fill your pouches. Pirri invites you, take as much as you wish. See here! Pirri has bottles of gin. Come drink with Pirri.” But not a man of all the Bambuti took advantage of the offer.

In the evening, when a group of the most famous hunters and story-tellers of the tribe were gathered around a single fire with Sepoo in their midst, Pirri came swaggering out of the darkness with a bottle of gin in each hand and elbowed a place for himself at the fire. He drank from the open gin bottle and then passed it to the man on his left.

“Drink!” he ordered. “Pass it on, so that all may share Pirri’s good fortune.” The man placed the untouched bottle on one side and stood up and walked away from the fire. One after the other, the men stood up and followed him into the darkness until only Sepoo and Pirri were left.

“Tomorrow the Molimo comes,” Sepoo warned his brother Softly, and then he also stood up and walked away.Pirri the hunter was left with his gin and his bulging tobacco pouch, sitting alone in the night.

Sepoo came to the laboratory to call Daniel the following morning, and Daniel followed him into the forest, carrying the camera on his shoulder. They went swiftly, for Daniel had by now learned all the tricks of forest travel, and even his superior height and size were no great handicap. He could keep up with Sepoo.

They started off alone, but as they went others joined them, slipping silently out of the forest, or appearing like dark sprites ahead or behind them, until at last there was a multitude of Bambuti hurrying towards the place of the Molimo.

When they arrived there were already many others before them, squatting silently around the base of a huge silk-cotton tree in the depths of the forest. For once there was no laughter nor skylarking. The men were all grave and silent.

Daniel squatted with them and filmed their sombre faces. All of them were looking up into the silk-cotton tree.

“This is the home of the Molimo,” Sepoo whispered softly. “We have come to fetch him.”

Somebody in the ranks called out a name. “Grivi!” And a man stood up and moved to the base of the tree. From another direction another name was called. “Sepoo!” And Sepoo went to stand with the first man chosen.

Soon there were fifteen men at the base of the tree. Some were old and famous, some were mere striplings. Young or old, callow or proven, all men had equal right to take part in the ceremony of the Molimo.

Suddenly Sepoo let out a shout and the chosen band swarmed excitedly up into the tree. They disappeared into the high foliage and for a time there was only the sound of their singing and shouting. Then down they came again, bearing a length of bamboo.

They laid it on the ground at the foot of the tree and Daniel went forward to examine it. The bamboo was not more than fifteen feet long. It was cured and dried out, and must have been cut many years before. There were stylised symbols and crude animal caricatures scratched on it, but otherwise it was simply a length of bamboo.

“Is this the Molimo?” Daniel whispered to Sepoo while the men of the tribe gathered around it reverently.

“Yes, Kuokoa, this is the Molimo,” Sepoo affirmed.

“What is the Molimo?” Daniel persisted. “The Molimo is the voice of the forest,” Sepoo tried to explain. “It is the voice of the Mother and the Father. But before it can speak, it must be taken to drink.” The chosen band took up the Molimo and carried it to the stream and submerged it in a cool dark pool. The banks of the pool were lined with ranks of little men, solemn and attentive, naked and bright-eyed.

They waited for an hour and then another while the Molimo drank the sweet water of the forest stream, and then they brought the Molimo to the bank.

It was shining and dripping with water. Sepoo went to the bamboo tube and placed his lips over the open end. His chest inflated as he drew breath and the Molimo, spoke from the tube. It was the startlingly clear sweet voice of a young girl singing in the forest, and all the men of the Bambuti shuddered and swayed like the top leaves of a tall tree hit by a sudden wind.

Then the Molimo changed its voice, and cried like a duiker caught in the hunter’s net. It chattered like the grey parrot in flight and whistled like the honey chameleon. it was all the voices and sounds of the forest. Another man replaced Sepoo at the tube, and then another.

There were voices of men and ghosts and other creatures that all men had heard of but none had ever seen.

Then suddenly the Molimo screamed like an elephant. It was a terrible angry sound and the men of the Bambuti swarmed forward, clustering around the Molimo in a struggling heaving horde. The simple bamboo tube disappeared in their midst, but still it squealed and roared, cooed and whistled and cackled with a hundred different voices.

Now a strange and magical thing took place. As Daniel watched, the struggling knot of men changed. They were no longer individuals, for they were pressed too closely together. In the same way that a shoal of fish or a flock of birds is one beast, so the men of the Bambuti blended into an entity. They became one creature. They became the Molimo. They became the godhead of the forest.

The Molimo was angry. It roared and squealed with the voice of the buffalo and the giant forest hog. It raged through the forest on a hundred legs that were no longer human. It revolved on its axis like a jellyfish in the current. It pulsed and changed shape, and dashed one way and then the other, flattening the undergrowth in its fury.

It crossed the river, kicking up a white foam of spray, and then slowly but with awakening purpose began to move towards the gathering place of the tribe below the waterfall at Gondola.

The women heard the Molimo coming from a long way off. They left the cooking-fires and seized the children and ran to their huts, dragging the little ones with them. Wailing with terror, they closed the doors of the huts and crouched in the darkness with the children clutched to their breasts.

The Molimo rampaged through the forest, its terrible voice rising and falling, crashing through the undergrowth, charging one way and then the other, until at last it broke into the encampment. It trampled the cooking-fires and the children screamed as some of the flimsy huts were knocked askew by its ungoverned anger.

The great beast raged back and forth through the camp, seeming to quest for the source of its outrage. Suddenly it revolved and moved purposefully towards the far corner of the camp where Pirri had built his hut.

Pirri’s wives heard it coming and they burst from the hut and fled into the jungle, but Pirri did not run. He had not gone to the silk-cotton tree with the other men to fetch the Molimo down from its home. Now he crouched in his hut, with. his hands over his head and waited. He knew there was no escape in flight, he had to wait for the retribution of the forest god.

The Molimo circled Pirri’s hut like one of the giant forest millipedes, its feet stamping and kicking up the earth, screaming like a bull elephant in the agony of a ruptured bladder. Then abruptly it charged at the hut in which Pirri was hiding. It flattened the hut, and trampled all Pirri’s possessions. It stamped his tobacco to dust. It shattered his bottles of gin and the pungent liquor soaked into the earth. It kicked the gold wristwatch into the fire and scattered all his treasures. Pirri made no attempt to fly its wrath or to protect himself.

The Molimo trampled him; squealing with rage it kicked and pommelled him. It crushed his nose and broke his teeth; it cracked his ribs and bruised his limbs.

Then suddenly, it left him and rushed back into the forest from whence it had come. Its voice had changed, the rage was gone out of it. It wailed and lamented as though it mourned the death and the poisoning of the forest and the sins of the tribe that had brought disaster upon them all.

Slowly it retreated and its voice became fainter, until at last it faded into the distance.

Pirri picked himself up slowly. He made no effort to gather up his scattered treasures. He took only his bow and his quiver of arrows. He left his elephant spear and his machete. He limped away into the forest. He went alone. His wives did not go with him, for they were widows now.

They would find new husbands in the tribe. Pirri was dead. The Molimo had killed him. No man would ever see him again. Even when they met his ghost wandering amongst the tall trees, no man or woman would acknowledge it.

Pirri was dead to his tribe for ever.

Chapter 38

“Will you help us, Daniel?” Victor Omeru asked.

“Yes,” Daniel agreed. “I will help you. I will take the tapes to London. I will arrange to have them shown on public television in London and Paris and New York.”

“What else will you do to help us?” Victor asked.

“What else do you want of me?” Daniel countered. “What else is there I can do?”

“You are a soldier, and a good one, from what I have heard. Will you join us in our fight to regain our freedom?”

“I was a soldier, long ago,” Daniel corrected him, “in a cruel unjust war. I learned to hate war in a way that no one can until they have experienced it.”

“Daniel, I am asking you to take part in a just war. This time I am asking you to make a stand against tyranny.”

“I am no longer a soldier. I am a journalist, Victor. It is not my war.”

“You are a soldier still,” Victor contradicted him. “And it is your war. It is the war of any decent man.”

Daniel did not reply immediately. He glanced sideways at Kelly, on the point of asking for her support. Then he saw her expression. There was no comfort for him there. He looked back at Victor, and the old man leaned closer to him.

“We Uhali are a peaceful people. For that reason we, alone, do not have the skill necessary to overthrow the tyrant. We need weapons. We need people to teach us how to use them. Help me, please, Daniel. I will find all the young brave men you need, if only you will promise to train and command them.”

“I don’t want –” Daniel began, but Victor forestalled him.

“Don’t refuse me outright. Don’t say anything more tonight. Sleep on it. Give me your answer in the morning. Think about it, Daniel. Dream of the men and women you saw in the camps. Dream of the people you saw killed or deported at Fish Eagle Bay, and the mass grave in the forest. Give me your answer in the morning.

Victor Omeru stood up. He paused beside Daniel’s chair and placed his hand on his shoulder. “Good night, Daniel,” he said, and went down the steps and crossed in the moonlight to his own small bungalow beyond the gardens.

“What are you going to do?” Kelly asked softly.

“I don’t know. I really don’t know.” Daniel stood up. “I’ll tell you tomorrow. But right now, I’ll do what Victor suggested, I’m going to bed.”

“Yes.” Kelly stood up beside him.

“Good night,” he said.

She was standing very close to him, her face tilted up towards him. He kissed her. The kiss held for a long time.

She drew back only a few inches from his mouth and said, “Come.” And led him down the verandah to her bedroom.

It was still dark when he woke the next morning under the mosquito net with her. Her arm was thrown over his chest. Her breath was warm on his neck. He felt her come softly awake.

“I’m going to do what Victor wants,” he said.

She stopped breathing for a few moments then she said, “It wasn’t meant as a bribe.”

“I know,” he said.

“What happened between us last night is a thing apart,” she said. “I wanted it to happen from the first day I met you, no, from before that. From the first time I saw your images on the screen, I was half in love with you.”

“I’ve also been waiting for you a long time, Kelly. I knew you were out there somewhere. At last I’ve found you.”

“I hate to lose you so soon,” she said, and kissed him. “Please come back to me.”

Chapter 39

Daniel left Gondola two days later. Sepoo and four Bambuti porters accompanied him. He paused at the edge of the forest and looked back. Kelly was on the verandah of the bungalow. She waved. She looked very young and girlish, and he felt his heart squeezed. He did not want to go, not yet, not so soon after he had found her.

He waved and forced himself to turn from her.

As they climbed the lower slopes of the mountain the forest gave way to bamboo, which was so dense that in places they were forced to their hands and knees to crawl through the tunnels which the giant hog had burrowed. The bamboo was solid overhead.

They climbed higher and came out at last on to the bleak heath slopes of the high mountains, twelve thousand feet above sea level, where the giant groundsel. stood like battalions of armoured warriors, their heads spiked with red flowers.

The Bambuti huddled in the blankets that Kelly had provided, but they were miserable and sickening, totally out of their element. Before they reached the highest pass, Daniel sent them back.

Sepoo wanted to argue. “Kuokoa, you will lose your way on the mountains without Sepoo to guide you and Kara-Ki will be angry. You have never seen her truly angry. It is not a sight for any but the brave.”

“Look up there.” Daniel pointed ahead to where the peaks showed through the cloud. “There is cold up there that no Bambuti has ever experienced. That shining white is ice and snow so cold that it will burn you like fire.”

So Daniel went on alone, carrying the precious tapes inside his jacket close to his skin, and he crossed below the moraine of the Ruwatamagufa glacier and came down into Zaire two days after leaving Sepoo. He had frostbite on three of his fingers and one of his toes.

The-Zairean district commissioner at Mutsora was accustomed to refugees coming across the mountains, but seldom with white faces and British passports and fifty-dollar bills to dispense. He did not turn this one back.

Two days later, Daniel was on the steamer going down the Zaire River and ten days after that he landed at Heathrow. The tapes were still in his pocket.

From his Chelsea flat Daniel telephoned Michael Hargreave at the embassy in Kahali. “Good Lord, Danny. We were told that you and Bonny Mahon disappeared in the forest near Sengi-Sengi. The army has had patrols out searching for you.”

“How secure is this line, Mike?”

“I wouldn’t stake my reputation on it.”

“Then I’ll give you the full story when next we meet. In the meantime will you send me that packet I gave you for safekeeping? Get it to me in the next diplomatic bag?”

“Hold on, Danny. I gave the package to Bonny Mahon. She told me that she was collecting it on your behalf.” Daniel was silent for a beat as he worked it out.

“The little idiot. She played right into their hands. Well, that settles it. She’s dead, Mike, as sure as fate. She handed over the package and they killed her. They thought I was dead, so they killed her. Nice and neat.”

“Who are ‘they’?” Michael demanded.

“Not now, Mike. I can’t tell you now.”

“Sorry about the package, Danny. She was very convincing. But I shouldn’t have fallen for it. Must be getting senile.”

“No great harm done. I have some stronger medicine to replace it.”

“When will I see you?”

“Soon, I hope. I’ll let you know.”

Despite the short notice, the studio gave him a cutting-room to work in.

He worked without a break, it helped to allay his sadness and guilt at what had happened to Bonny Mahon. He felt responsible. The final cut of the videotape did not have to be perfect, and it was not necessary to dub the Swahili dialogue into English. He had a copy ready to show within forty-eight hours.

It was impossible to get through to Tug Harrison. All Daniel’s calls were intercepted on the BOSS switchboard and were not returned. Of course, the number of the Holland Park address was not listed, and he could not remember the number that he had telephoned from Nairobi to check on Bonny Mahon. So he staked out the house, leaning against a car with a newspaper as though he were waiting for someone, and watching the front of the building.

He was fortunate. Tug’s Rolls-Royce pulled up at the front door that same day a little after noon, and Daniel intercepted him as he climbed the front steps.

“Armstrong, Danny!” Tug’s surprise was genuine. “I heard that you had disappeared in Ubomo.”

“Not true, Tug. Didn’t you get my messages? I telephoned your office half a dozen times.”

“They don’t pass them on to me. Too many freaks and funny bunnies in this world.”

“I must show you some of the material I have been able to shoot in Ubomo,” Daniel told him.

Tug hesitated and consulted his wristwatch dubiously.

“Don’t mess me around, Tug. This stuff could sink you. And BOSS.”

Tug’s eyes narrowed. “That sounds like a threat.”

“Just a friendly piece of advice.”

“All right, come in,” Tug invited, and opened the front door.” Let’s have a look at what you have for me.”

Tug Harrison sat behind his desk and watched the tape run through from beginning to end without moving, without uttering a word. When the tape was finished and the screen filled with an electronic snowstorm, he pressed the remote control button, ran the tape back and then played it a second time, still without comment.

Then he switched off the tape and spoke without looking at Daniel. “It’s genuine, he said. You couldn’t have faked it.”

“You know it’s genuine,” Daniel told him. “You knew about the mining and logging. It’s your bloody syndicate. You gave the orders.”

“I meant the labour camps, and the use of arsenic. I knew nothing about that.”

“Who is going to believe that, Tug?” Tug shrugged and said, “So Omeru is still alive.”

“Yes. He is alive and ready to give evidence against you.”

Tug changed the subject again. “Of course, there are other copies of this tape?” he said.

“Silly question,” Daniel agreed.

“So this is a direct threat?”

“Another silly question,” Daniel said again.

“You are going to go public with this?”

“That’s three in a row,” Daniel said grimly. “Of course, I’m going public. Only one thing will stop me. That is if you and I can make a deal.”

“What deal are you offering?” Tug asked softly.

“I will give you time to get out. I will give you time to sell out your interest in Ubomo to Lucky Dragon or anyone else who will buy.” Tug did not answer immediately but Daniel saw the faintest gleam of relief in his gaze.

Tug drew a breath. “In return?”

“You will finance Victor Omeru’s counter-revolution against Taffari’s regime. After all, it won’t be the first coup in Africa that you have orchestrated, Tug, will it?”

“How much will this cost me?” Tug asked.

“Only a small fraction of what you would lose if I were to release the tape before you have a chance to pull out. I could get a copy around to the Foreign Office and another to the American ambassador within thirty minutes. It could be on BBC 1 at six o’clock.”

“How much?” Tug insisted.

“Five million in cash, paid into a Swiss account immediately. With you as the signatory? And Omeru as a counter-signatory.”

“What else?”

“You will intercede with the president of Zaire. He is a friend of yours, but no friend of Taffari’s. We want him to allow clandestine passage of arms and munitions across his border with Ubomo. All he has to do is turn a blind eye.”

“Is that all?”

“That’s the lot.” Daniel nodded.

“All right. I agree,” Tug said. “Give me the account number and I’ll deposit the money before noon tomorrow.”

Daniel stood up. “Cheer up. All is not lost, Tug,” he advised.

Victor Omeru will be very kindly disposed towards you once he is reinstated in his rightful position. I am sure he will be prepared to renegotiate the contract with you, with the proper safeguards in place this time.

After Daniel had left, Tug Harrison sat staring at his Picasso for fully five minutes. Then he glanced at his watch. There was a nine-hour time difference in Taipei. He picked up the telephone and dialled the international code, followed by Ning Heng H’Sui’s private number. The old man’s eldest son, Fang, screened the call, and then passed him on to his father.

“I have a very interesting proposition for you,” Tug told the old man. I want to fly out to speak to you face to face. I can be in Taipei within twenty-four hours, will you be there?”

He made two other phone calls. One to his chief pilot’s home number to warn him to get the Gulfstream ready, and the second to the Credit Swisse Bank in Zurich. “Mr. Mulder, I will be making a large transfer from the number two account within the next twenty-four hours. Five million sterling. Make certain there is no delay once you receive the code card instruction.”

Then he hung up the telephone and stared at the painting again without seeing it. He had to decide what reason he would give Ning for wanting to sell his share in UDC. Should he say that he was in a cash bind? Or that he needed to be liquid for a new acquisition?

Which would Ning fall for more readily?

What was his price? He mustn’t set it too low, for that would arouse the cunning old oriental’s suspicions immediately. Not too high either. Low enough to excite his greed, high enough not to alarm him. It was a nice calculation. He would have the duration of the flight to Taipei to consider it.

That young fool Cheng has dropped me in it. It’s only right that his father be made to pay. He thought about Ning Cheng Gong. He has been too good a choice, Tug smiled bitterly. He had asked for a ruthless one, and got more than he bid for.

Of course, Tug had known about the forced labour, but not the details of their treatment. He had not wanted to know. Neither had he known for certain about the use of the arsenic reagents, though he had suspected that Cheng was using them. The platinum recovery figures had been too high, the profits too good, for it not to be so. He had not wanted to know any of the unpleasant details. But, he thought philosophically, the enhanced profitability of the mining venture would make it easier to sell out his interests to Lucky Dragon.

Ning Heng H’Sui would think he was getting the bargain of his life.

“Good luck, Lucky Dragon,” Tug grunted. “You’re going to need all of it.”

Chapter 40

Three months to the day since his last crossing Daniel stood on the moraine below the Ruwatamagufa glacier. This time he was properly equipped for the alpine conditions; there would be no more frostbite. And this time he was not alone.

The line of porters, each man bowed forward against the headband of his pack, stretched back as far as Daniel could see into the mountain mist. They were all men of the Konjo tribe, dour mountaineers who could carry heavy loads at these high altitudes. There were six hundred and fifty porters, and each man carried an eighty-pound pack.

In all, that made twenty-six tons of arms and ammunition. There were no sophisticated weapons in the loads, only the tried and true tools of the guerrilla and the terrorist, the ubiquitous AK 47 and the Uzi, the RPD light machine-gun and the RPG rocket-launcher, Tokarev automatic pistols and American M26 fragmentation grenades, or at least convincing copies of them made in Yugoslavia or Romania.

All of these were readily obtainable at short notice in any quantity required, as long as the buyer had cash. Daniel was amazed how easy it had been. Tug Harrison had supplied him with the names and telephone numbers of five dealers, one in Florida, two in Europe and two in the Middle East. “Take your pick, Tug had invited. But check what you’re getting before you pay. Some of that stuff has been floating around for forty years.” Daniel and his instructors had personally opened every case and laboriously checked each piece.

Daniel had calculated that the very minimum number of instructors he needed was four. He went back to Zimbabwe to find them. They were all men he had fought with or against during the bush war. They were all Swahili speakers and they were all black. A white face attracted a lot of attention in Ubomo.

The leader of the group of four was an ex-sergeant-major in the Ballantyne Scouts, a man who had fought with men like Roland Ballantyne and Sean Courtney. He was a magnificent figure of a Matabele warrior called Morgan Tembi.

There was another recruit in the party, a cameraman to replace Bonny Mahon. Shadrach Mbeki was a black South African exile who had done good work for the BBC, the best man that Daniel could find at such short notice.

To the north Mount Stanley was hidden in clouds, and the cloud dropped down to form a grey cold ceiling only a hundred feet above their heads, but to the east below the cloud it was open. Daniel gazed down upon the forest almost ten thousand feet below. it looked like the ocean, green and endless, except to the north where a dark cancer had bitten into the green. The open mined area was deeper and wider than when Daniel had last seen it from this vantage point only a few short months ago.

The cloud and the mist dropped over them abruptly, blotting out the distant carnage, and Daniel roused himself and started down, the long column of porters unwinding behind him.

Sepoo was waiting for him where the bamboo forest began at the ten thousand foot level. “It is good to see you again, Kuokoa, my brother. Kara-Ki sends you her heart,” he told Daniel. “She asks that you come to her swiftly. She says she can wait no longer.”

The men of Sepoo’s clan had cut out the trail through the bamboo, widening it so that the porters could pass through without having to stoop.

Below the bamboo where the true rain forest began at the six thousand foot level, Patrick Omeru was waiting with his teams of Uhali recruits to take over from the Konjo mountaineers. Daniel paid off the Konjo and watched them climb back through the bamboo into their misty highlands. Then the Bambuti guided them on to the newly opened trail, back towards Gondola.

After Kelly’s message Daniel could not restrain himself to the pace of the heavily laden convoy, and he and Sepoo hurried ahead. Kelly was on the trail coming to meet them, and they came upon each other suddenly around a bend in the forest path.

Kelly and Daniel came up short and stared at each other, neither of them seemed able to move or even to speak until Kelly said huskily, without taking her eyes from Daniel’s face, “Go on ahead, Sepoo. Far, far ahead!”

Sepoo giggled happily and went without looking back.

During Daniel’s absence, Victor Omeru had built his new headquarters in the edge of the forest beyond the waterfall at Gondola where it would be hidden from any possible aerial surveillance.

It was a simple baraza with half walls and a thatched roof. He sat with Daniel on the raised dais at one end of the hut. Daniel was meeting the resistance leaders, many of them for the first time. They were seated facing the dais on long splitpole benches, like students in a lecture theatre. There were thirty-eight of them, mostly Uhali tribesmen, but six were influential Hita who were disenchanted with Taffari and had thrown in their lot with Victor Omeru as soon as they heard that he was still alive. These Hita were vital to the plan of action that Daniel had devised and discussed with Victor.

Two of them were highly placed in the army and one was a senior police officer. The other three were government officials who would be able to arrange permits and licences for travel and transport. All of them would be able to supply vital intelligence.

At first there had been some natural objection to Daniel’s new cameraman filming the proceedings, but Victor had interceded and now Shadrach Mbeki was working so unobtrusively that they soon forgot his presence. As a reward for his assistance Victor Omeru had agreed that Daniel could make a film record of the entire campaign.

Daniel opened the meeting by introducing his four Matabele military instructors. As each man rose and faced the audience, Daniel recited his curriculum vitae. They were all impressive men, but Morgan Tembi in particular they regarded with awe.

“Between them they have trained thousands of fighting men,” Daniel told them. “They won’t be interested in parade-ground drills or spit and polish. They will simply teach you to use the weapons we have brought over the mountains and to use them to the best possible effect.”

He looked at Patrick Omeru in the front row. “Patrick, can you come up here and tell us how many men you have at your disposal, and where they are at the present time?” Patrick had been busy during Daniel’s absence. He had recruited almost fifteen hundred young men. “Well done, Patrick, that’s more than we need,” Daniel told him. “I was planning on a core of a thousand men, four units of two hundred and fifty, each under the command of one of the instructors. More than that will be difficult to conceal and deploy. However, we will be able to use the others in noncombatant roles.” The staff conference went on for three days.

At the last session Daniel addressed them again. “Our plans are simple. That makes them good, there is less to go wrong. Our whole strategy is based on two principles. Number one is that we have to move fast. We have to be in a position to strike within weeks rather than months. Number two is total surprise. Our security must be iron-clad. If Taffari gets even a whiff of our plans he’ll crack down so hard that we’ll have no chance of success whatsoever. There it is, gentlemen, speed and stealth. We will meet again here on the first of next month. By then President Omeru and I will have a detailed plan of action drawn up. Until then you will be taking orders from your instructors in the training-camps. Good luck to all of us.”

Chapter 41

Pirri was confused and angry and filled with formless despair and hatred.

For months now he had lived alone in the forest with not another man to talk to, or woman to laugh with. At night he lay alone in his carelessly built leaf hut far from the huts of other men and he thought of his youngest wife. She was sixteen years of age, with plump little breasts. He remembered the wetness and lubricious warmth of her body, and he moaned aloud in the darkness as he thought that he would never again know the comfort of a woman’s body.

During the day he was lethargic and without care. He no longer hunted with his old intensity. Sometimes he sat for hours gazing into one of the dark forest pools. Twice he heard the honey chameleon call and he did not follow. He grew thin and his beard began turning white.

Once he heard a party of Bambuti women in the forest, laughing and chattering as they gathered mushrooms and roots. He crept close and spied upon them, and his heart felt as though it would break. He longed to join them, but knew he could not.

Then one day while wandering alone, Pirri cut the trail of a party of wazungu. He studied their tracks and read that there were twenty of them, and that they moved with purpose and determination as though on a journey. It was exceedingly strange to find other men in the forest, for the Hita and Uhali were afraid of hobgoblins and monsters, and never entered the tall trees if they could avoid doing so. Pirri recovered a little of his old curiosity, and he followed the tracks of the wazungu.

They were moving well, and it took him many hours to catch up with them. Then he discovered a most remarkable thing. Deep in the forest he found a camp where many men were assembled. They were all armed with the Banduki that had a strange banana-shaped appendage hanging from beneath either a tail or a penis, Pirri was not certain. And while Pirri watched in astonishment from his hiding-place, these men fired their banduki and made a terrible clattering clamour that frightened the birds into flight and sent the monkeys scampering away across the forest galleries.

All this was extraordinary, but most marvelous of all was that these men were not Hita. These days only Hita soldiers in uniform carried banduki. These men were Uhali.

Pirri thought about what he had seen for many days, and then the acquisitive instinct, which had been dormant in him since the coming of the Molimo, began to stir. He thought about Chetti Singh, and wondered if Chetti Singh would give him tobacco if he told him about the armed men in the forest.

He hated Chetti Singh who had cheated and lied to him but as he thought about the tobacco, the saliva jetted from under his tongue. He could almost taste it in his mouth. The old tobacco hunger was like a pain in his chest and his belly.

The next day he went to find Chetti Singh and he whistled and sang as he went. He was coming alive again after the Molimo death. He stopped only once, to hunt a colobus monkey that he spied in the treetops eating the yellow fruit of the mongongo tree. His old skills came back to him and he crept to within twenty paces of the monkey without it suspecting his presence, and he shot a poisoned arrow that struck one of its legs.

The monkey fled shrieking through the branches, but it did not go far before it fell to earth, paralysed by the poison, its lips curled up in the dreadful rictus of agony as it frothed and trembled and shook before it died. The poison on Pirri’s arrow was fresh and strong. He had found the nest of the little beetles only days before and had dug them up and crushed them to paste in a bark crucible and smeared his arrow-tips with the juices.

With his belly full of monkey meat and the wet skin folded into his barkfibre bag, he went on towards the rendezvous with the one-armed Sikh.

Pirri waited two days at the rendezvous, the clearing in the forest that had once been a logging camp but was now overgrown and reverting to jungle. He wondered if the Uhali storekeeper who kept the little duka on the side of the main highway had passed on his message to Chetti Singh.

Then he began to believe that Chetti Singh had received the message but would not come to him. Perhaps Chetti Singh had learned of the Molimo death and was also ostracising him. Perhaps nobody would ever speak to Pirri again. His recent high spirits faded as he sat alone in the forest waiting for Chetti Singh to come, and the sense of despair and confusion overwhelmed him all over again.

Chetti Singh came on the afternoon of the second day. Pirri heard his Landrover long before it arrived and suddenly his anger and hatred had something on which to focus.

He thought how Chetti Singh had cheated and tricked him so many times before. He thought how he had never given him everything he had promised; always there was short-weight of tobacco, and water in the gin.

Then he thought how Chetti Singh had made him kill the elephant. Pirri had never been as angry as he was now. He was too angry even to lash out at the trees around him, too angry to shout aloud. His throat was tight and closed, and his hands shook. Chetti Singh was the one who had brought the curse of the Molimo down upon him. Chetti Singh had killed his soul. Now he forgot about the armed wazungu in the forest. He even forgot about the tobacco hunger, as he waited for Chetti Singh to come.

The mud-streaked Landrover butted its way into the clearing, pushing down the thick secondary growth of vegetation- ahead of it. It stopped and the door opened and Chetti Singh stepped down. He looked around him at the forest and wiped his, face with a white cloth. He had put on much weight recently. He was plumper now than he had been before he had lost the arm. His shirt was stained dark with sweat between his shoulder-blades where he had sat against the leather seat.

He mopped his face and adjusted his turban before he shouted into the forest, “Pirri! Come out.”

Pirri sniggered with laughter and whispered aloud, mimicking the Sikh. “Pirri! Come out!” And then his voice was bitter. “See how he oozes grease like a joint of pork on the coals.”

“Pirri, come out!” Chetti Singh strutted around the clearing impatiently. After a while he opened his fly and urinated, then he zipped his trousers and looked at his wristwatch. “Pirri, are you there?”

Pirri did not answer him, and Chetti Singh said something angrily in a language that Pirri did not understand, but he knew that it was an insult.

“I am going now,” Chetti Singh shouted, and marched back to the Landrover.

“O master, Pirri called to him. I see you! Do not go!” Chetti Singh spun around to face the forest.

“Where are you?” he shouted.

“I am here, o master. I have something for you that will make you very happy. Something of great value.”

“What is it?” Chetti Singh asked. “Where are you?”

“Here I am.” Pirri stepped out of the shadows with the bow slung over his shoulder.

“What stupidity is this?” Chetti Singh demanded. “Why do you hide from me?”

“I am your slave.” Pirri grinned ingratiatingly. “And I have a gift for you.”

“What is it? Elephant teeth?” Chetti Singh asked, and there was greed in his voice.

“Better than that. Something of greater value.”

“Show me,” Chetti Singh demanded.

“Will you give me tobacco?”

“I will give you as, much tobacco as the gift is worth.”

“I will show you,” Pirri agreed. “Follow me, O master.”

“Where is it? How far is it?”

“Only a short distance, only that far.” Pirri indicated a small arc of the sky with two fingers, less than an hour’s travel.

Chetti Singh looked dubious. “It is a thing of great beauty and value,” Pirri wheedled. “You will be very pleased.”

“All right,” the Sikh agreed. “Lead me to this treasure.”

Pirri went slowly, allowing Chetti Singh to keep close behind him. He went in a wide circle through the densest part of the forest, crossing the same stream twice. There was no sun in the forest; a man steered by the fall of the land and the run of the rivers.

Pirri showed Chetti Singh the same river twice from different directions. By now, the Sikh was totally lost, blundering blindly after the little-pygmy with no sense of distance or direction. After the second hour Chetti Singh was sweating very heavily and his voice was rough. “How much further is it?” he asked.

“Very close,” Pirri assured him.

“I will rest for a while,” Chetti Singh said and sat down on a log. When he looked up again, Pirri had vanished.

Chetti Singh was not alarmed. He was accustomed to the elusive comings and goings of the Bambuti. Come back here! he ordered, but there was no reply. Chetti Singh sat alone for a long time. Once or twice he called out to the pygmy. Each time his voice was shriller.

The panic was building up in him.

After another hour he was pleading. “Please, Pirri, I will give you anything you ask. Please show yourself.”

Pirri laughed. His laughter floated through the trees and Chetti Singh sprang to his feet and plunged off the faint track. He stumbled towards where he thought he had heard the laughter. “Pirri!” he begged. “Please come to me.” But the laughter came from a new direction. Chetti Singh ran towards it.

After a while he stopped, and looked about him wildly. He was streaming sweat and panting. Laughter, mocking and faint, trembled in the humid air. Chetti Singh turned around and staggered after it. It was like chasing a butterfly or a puff of smoke. The sound flitted and flirted through the trees, first from one direction, then the other.

Chetti Singh was weeping now. His turban had come loose and hooked on a branch and he did not stop to retrieve it. His hair and beard tumbled down, streaming down his chest and flying out behind him. His hair was soaked with sweat.

He fell and dragged himself up and ran on, his clothing stained with mud and leaf mould. He screamed his terror to the trees, and the laughter became fainter and fainter, until at last he heard it no more.

Chetti Singh fell on his knees and held up his hand in supplication.

“Please,” he whispered, with tears streaming down his face. “Please don’t leave me alone here.”

And the forest was silent with dark menace.

Pirri followed him for two days, watching him stagger haphazardly, ranting and pleading, through the forest, watching him grow weaker and more desperate, stumbling over dead branches, falling into streams, crawling on his belly, shaking with terror and loneliness. His clothing was ripped off him by branch and thorn. Only a few rags still hung on his body. His skin was scratched and lacerated, and the flies and the stinging insects buzzed around the wounds. His beard and long hair were tangled and matted, and his eyes were wild and mad.

On the second day, Pirri stepped out of the forest ahead of him and Chetti Singh screamed like a woman with the shock and tried to drag himself to his feet again. “Don’t leave me alone again,” he screamed. “Please, anything you ask, but not again.”

“Like you, I am alone, Pirri said with hatred in his heart. I am dead. The Molimo has killed me. You are talking to a dead man, to a ghost. You cannot ask mercy from the ghost of a man you murdered.” Deliberately Pirri fitted an arrow to his little bow. The poison was black and sticky on the point.

Chetti Singh gaped stupidly. “What are you doing?” he blurted. He knew about the poison, he had seen animals die from Bambuti arrows.

Pirri lifted his bow and drew the arrow to his chin.

“No!” Chetti Singh, held up his hand to ward off the arrow just as Pirri released it.

The arrow, aimed at his chest, hit Chetti Singh in the palm of his open hand and stuck firmly, its point buried between the bones of the first and second fingers. Chetti Singh stared at it.

“Now we are both dead,” said Pirri softly, and vanished into the forest.

Chetti Singh stared in horror at the arrow in his palm. The flesh around it was already stained purple by the poison. Then the pain began. It was stronger than anything that Chetti Singh had ever imagined. It was fire in his blood, he could feel it running up his arm into his chest. The pain was so terrible that for a long anguished moment it took his breath away and he could not scream.

Then he found his voice and the sound of his agony rang through the trees. Pirri paused for a while to listen to it. Only when the forest was silent again did he move on.

Chapter 42

“We are ready,” Daniel said quietly, but his voice carried to every man seated in the headquarters hut at Gondola. They were the same men who had gathered here a month ago, and yet they were different. There was an air of confidence and determination about them that had not been there before.

Daniel had spoken to his Matabele instructors before the meeting. They were pleased. No man had been dropped from the training camps for any reason except sickness or injury.

“They are amabutho now,” Morgan Tembi had told Daniel. “They are warriors now.”

“You have done well,” Daniel told them. “You can be proud of what you have achieved in so short a time.”

He turned to the blackboard on the thatched wall behind him and pulled aside the cloth that had covered it. The board was covered with diagrams and schedules.

“This, gentlemen, is our order of battle,” Daniel said. “We will go over it, not once but until every one of you can recite it in your sleep,” he warned them. “Here are your four cadres, each of two hundred and fifty men. Each cadre is assigned different targets and objectives, the main army barracks, the airfield, the harbour, the labour camps…” Daniel worked down the list. “Now, most important of all, the radio and television studio in Kahali. Taffari’s security forces are good. Even with initial surprise we cannot hope to hold all our objectives longer than the first few hours, not without popular support. We have to secure the studio.

“President Omeru will be moved to the capital well ahead of time and will be in hiding in the old quarter, ready to come out and broadcast an appeal to the people. As soon as the populace sees him on television and realises that he is alive and leading the rising, we can expect every man and woman to join us. They will come out on to the streets and join the battle. Taffari’s storm-troopers may be better armed than we are, but we will crush them by sheer weight of numbers.

“However, there is one other condition that we have to fulfil in order to ensure success. We have to take out Taffari himself within the first hour. We have to crush the head of the snake. Without Taffari they will collapse. There is nobody to replace him. Taffari himself has seen to that. He has murdered all possible rivals. He is a one-man band, but we have to get him with the first surprise stroke.”

“That won’t be so easy.” Patrick Omeru came to his feet. “He seems to have a kind of sixth sense. He has already survived two assassination attempts in the short time he has been in power. They are beginning to say he is using witchcraft, like Idi Amin.”

“Sit down, Patrick,” Daniel interrupted him sharply. “Witchcraft was a dangerous word to use, even to a group of educated and intelligent men such as this.” They were still African, and witchcraft was rooted in the African soil.

“Taffari is a cunning swine. We all know that. He seldom sticks to any routine. He changes plans at the very last moment. He cancels appointments without reason and he sleeps at the home of a different wife each night, in random order. He’s cunning, but he is no wizard. He’ll bleed good red blood, I promise you that.” They cheered him for that and the mood of the gathering improved. They were confident and eager again.

“However, there is one routine that Taffari has established. He visits the mining operation of Wengu at least once a month. He likes to see his treasure coming out of the earth. At Wengu he is isolated. It is the one place in the entire country where he is most vulnerable.” Daniel paused and looked down at them. “We are fortunate to have some good intelligence from Major Fashoda.” He indicated the Hita officer on the dais beside him. “As you all know, Major Fashoda is the transport officer on Taffari’s staff. He is the man responsible for arranging Taffari’s personal transport. Taffari always uses a Puma helicopter to visit Wengu. He has ordered a Puma to stand by for Monday the 14th. This indicates a high probability that his next inspection tour to Wengu will be on that date. It gives us five days to make our final preparations.”

Ning Cheng Gong sat beside President Taffari on the padded bench in the fuselage of the airforce Puma helicopter. Through the open hatch he could see the green blur of the treetops as the Puma sped low across the forest. The wind buffeted them and it was noisy in the cabin. They had to raise their voices and shout to be heard.

“What news of Chetti Singh?” Ephrem Taffari shouted, his mouth close to Cheng’s ear.

“Nothing,” Cheng shouted back. “We found his Landrover, but no sign of him. It has been two weeks now.”

“He must have died in the forest, as Armstrong did. He was a good man,” Taffari said. “He knew how to get work out of the convict labour. He was good at keeping costs down.”

“Yes,” Cheng agreed. “He will be very hard to replace. He spoke the language. He understood Africa. He understood…” Cheng bit his lip. He had been on the point of using a derogatory term for black people. “He understood the system,” he ended lamely.

“Even in the short time since his disappearance there has been a marked drop in production and profits.”

“I’m working on it,” Cheng assured him. “I have some good men coming to replace him. Mining men from South Africa, as good as Chetti Singh. They also know how to get the most work out of these people.”

Taffari nodded and stood up. He made his way down the length of the cabin to speak to his companion. As usual, Taffari was travelling with a woman. His latest flame was a tall Hita girl, a blues singer in a night club in Kahali. She had a face like a black Nefertiti. Taffari was also accompanied by a detachment of his presidential guard. Twenty crack paratroopers under the command of Major Kajo. Kajo had received promotion after the disappearance of Bonny Mahon. Taffari appreciated loyalty and tact, and Kajo was a man on the way up.

Cheng had come to detest these presidential inspection tours of the mining and logging concessions. He hated low-flying in one of the ancient Pumas of the Ubomo airforce. The helicopter pilots were notorious daredevils. There had been two fatal crashes in the squadron since his arrival in Ubomo.

More even than the physical danger, Cheng was uncomfortable with Taffari’s searching questions and penetrating eye for figures and production details. Under his dashing martial exterior he had an accountant’s mind. He understood finance. He could form a shrewd judgement as to when profits were falling below estimate; he had an instinct for money, and he could sense when he was being cheated.

Of course, Cheng was milking the syndicate, but not excessively, not blatantly. He was merely showing a benign bias towards the Lucky Dragon. He had done it skilfully. Not even a trained auditor would have picked it up, but President Taffari was already suspicious.

Cheng used this respite, sitting between two heavily armed paratroopers, feeling slightly queasy with air sickness, to go over all his financial dispositions and to search for any weak spots in his system that Taffari might be able to pin-point.

At last he decided that, at least temporarily, it might be prudent to reduce the amount he was skimming. He knew that if Taffari’s suspicions ever became certainty he would not hesitate to terminate his contract, permanently, with the seal of a Kalashnikov. There would be another unmarked grave in the forest along with those of Chetti Singh and Daniel Armstrong.

At that moment the Puma banked sharply and Cheng clutched at his seat. Through the open fuselage hatch he had a glimpse of the bare red earth of the mining cut and the line of yellow MOMUs strung out along the edge of the forest. They had arrived at Wengu.

Daniel watched the Puma circle the landing-pad, slow down in flight and at last hover, nose-heavy, against a backdrop of purple cumulus cloud.

There were puddles of rainwater on the concrete pad and the windsock flapped, sodden on its pole.

A small delegation of Taiwanese and black managers and officials were gathered in front of the main administrative building, confirming that Daniel’s intelligence had been correct. Ephrem Taffari was on board the hovering helicopter.

Daniel’s perch in the middle branches of the mahogany tree was three hundred and twenty yards from the landing pad. He had climbed to his perch during the night. Sepoo had waited at the base of the tree and when Daniel lowered the light nylon rope, he had hooked on the bundle of sniper’s equipment.

By dawn Daniel was settled close in against the main trunk of the tree, beneath a tangle of vines and leafy climbing plants. He had cut a narrow window in the foliage which gave him a clear view of the helicopter pad. He wore a full camouflage sniper’s coverall and mesh face-mask. His hands were covered with gloves.

His rifle was a 7mm Remington Magnum and he had chosen a 160 grain softpoint bullet, a compromise between velocity and high ballistic coefficient that would not be too severely affected by a cross-wind. He had tested the rifle extensively and it was shooting consistent four-inch groups at 350 yards. That wasn’t good enough for any fancy head shots. He would aim for the centre of the chest. The expanding bullet could be expected to rip out Taffari’s lungs.

It felt vaguely obscene to be thinking like this again. The last time had been ten years previously when the Scouts had staked out a ZANU cadre leader’s kraal in Matabeleland. The man had been too wily and elusive for them to attempt an arrest.

They had culled him without warning. Daniel had fired the shot and had felt sick for days afterwards. Daniel thrust the memory aside. It might dilute his determination. Thinking like that might make his trigger finger just that crucial thousandth of a second slow when the image in the Zeiss lens was right.

If Taffari was on board the Puma, then Cheng must be with him. Cheng was the chief executive officer of UDC and he had accompanied every other presidential tour of the workings. If he could take Taffari with the first shot, then he could rely on a moment of utter astonishment and paralysis amongst his retinue. There would be a chance to get Cheng with the second shot, if he were quick enough. There would be no hesitation about that kill. Deliberately he conjured up the memory of Johnny Nzou and his family to steel himself. He recalled every dreadful detail of the murder scene at Chiwewe and felt the sour hatred and rage swell in his chest. Ning Cheng Gong was his real reason for being in Ubomo at all.

The second bullet was for him.

Then there was Chetti Singh. Daniel doubted that even if the Sikh were a member of the presidential party he would get the opportunity of a third shot. The paratrooper guards were trained soldiers. He might get a second shot, but not a third before they reacted.

Chetti Singh would be taken care of later, once the rising succeeded. He was in charge of the labour camps. Daniel’s film of the executions in the forest would be damning evidence at his trial. He could afford to wait for Chetti Singh.

In the short time that it took the Puma to sink down towards the landing-pad, Daniel reviewed his dispositions, even though it was too late to change them now.

Victor Omeru was in Kabali. He had travelled down to the lakeside in one of the logging trucks, disguised as the mate of the Uhali driver.

The arms and ammunition had been distributed in the same manner, transported in the UDC trucks. It was a nice irony, using the tyrant’s own system to defeat him.

At this moment there were two revolutionary commandos in the capital, waiting for the word to strike. As soon as it was received, a detachment would storm the TV and radio studios. Victor Omeru would broadcast to the nation, calling upon them to rise. He would tell them that Taffari was dead and promise them an end to their suffering.

Meanwhile the other two commandos were deployed here at Wengu and Sengi-Sengi. Their first objectives would be to wipe out Taffari’s Hita escort and to release the thirty thousand captives.

The signal for the rising to begin would be the shot that Daniel fired through Ephrem Taffari’s lungs. Victor and Patrick Omeru would be informed by radio the moment that happened.

There was a powerful radio in the UDC administrative building beside the landing-pad, but they would probably not be able to reach that immediately. As a back-up Daniel had a portable VHF transmitter, with which they could contact the headquarters at Gondola. Kelly was the radio operator who would transmit the signal that the rising had begun.

Daniel had drawn up four fall-backs and alternative plans to deal with every foreseeable contingency, but everything hinged on getting Taffari with the first shot. If Daniel failed there, he could expect Taffari to react with the speed and fury of a wounded lion. He would rally his men, it didn’t bear thinking about. Daniel put the possibility out of his mind. He had to get Taffari.

The Puma was only fifty feet above the concrete landing-pad, sinking towards it slowly.

Daniel laid his cheek against the burtstock of his rifle and stared into the brilliant field of the telescopic sight. It was set to nine magnifications. He could see the expressions on the faces of the little reception committee at the landing-pad.

He lifted his aim, and captured the image of the helicopter.

The lens was too high-powered to show him more than the hatchway in the Puma’s fuselage. The flight engineer stood in the opening, directing the aircraft’s descent. Daniel focused his attention on him, keeping the crossbar of the telescope on his chest, using the buckle of his safety strap as an aiming point.

Suddenly another head appeared over the engineer’s shoulder. Beneath the maroon beret with its glittering brass cap-badge were Ephrem Taffari’s noble aquiline features. He’s come, Daniel exulted.

It’s him.

He lifted the cross-hairs of the sight and tried to hold between Taffari’s dark eyes. The movement of the helicopter, his own heart beat and hand shake, the inherent inaccuracy of the rifle all made it an impossible shot, but he concentrated all his mind and his will on Taffari. He purged himself of any last vestige of conscience and of mercy. Once again he forced upon himself the cold hard determination of the assassin.

At that moment the first raindrop struck the back of his neck. It startled him, his aim trembled, then another raindrop splashed against the lens of the Zeiss scope, and a soft wavering line of rain water ran down across the glass and dimmed the brilliance of the telescopic image. Then it started to rain in real earnest, that sudden tropical deluge that seemed to turn the air to mist and blue water. It was like standing beneath a torrent in a mountain stream.

Daniel’s vision dissolved. The crisply detailed human shapes he had been watching an instant before became dim blurs of movement. The men waiting on the landing-pad raised coloured umbrellas, and swarmed forward to meet the president, to offer him protection from the roaring rain.

There was misty movement and confusion. The colours; of the umbrellas ran and starred and confused his eye. He saw a distorted image of Ephrem Taffari vault down lightly from the hatchway.

Daniel had expected him to pose theatrically above the heads of the crowd and perhaps make a brief speech, but he vanished instantly. Though Daniel tried desperately to keep the cross-hairs on him, somebody raised a wet umbrella and held it over him.

Ning Cheng Gong’s misty figure appeared in the hatchway, distracting Daniel’s concentration. He swung the sight, back towards Cheng, and then stopped himself. It had to be Taffari first. Desperately he swung the telescope back and forth, questing for a view of his target.

The welcoming delegation had crowded around Taffari, umbrellas raised, obscuring him completely. The rain struck the concrete pad with such force that each drop exploded in a burst of spray. Rain was splattering against the lens of the telescopic sight and streaming down Daniel’s face beneath the mask.

Hita paratroopers were jumping down from the helicopter and clustering around their president. No sign of Taffari now, and everybody was running towards the waiting Landrovers, crouched down under the lofted umbrellas, splashing through the pools of rain water.

Taffari appeared again, stepping out fast in the slanting rain, heading for the leading vehicle. Even at a walking pace and taking into account the velocity of the 7mm bullet, Daniel would have to lead him by two feet or more. He could barely distinguish him through the clouded lens.

It was an almost impossible shot, but he tightened up on the trigger, just as one of the Hita bodyguards ran forward to assist his master.

The shot went off before Daniel could stop himself. He saw the Hita paratrooper spin round and go down, shot through the chest. It would have killed Taffari as cleanly, if the man had not covered him.

The whole pattern of moving men in the rain exploded. Taffari threw down the umbrella he carried and darted forward. All around him men were running in confusion.

Daniel jacked another round into the chamber of the rifle and fired again, a snap shot at Taffari. It had no effect, a clean miss. Taffari kept running. He reached the Landrover and before Daniel could reload, he had jerked open the door and thrown himself into the front seat of the vehicle.

Daniel glimpsed Ning Cheng Gong in the thick of it, and fired again. He saw another paratrooper go down on his knees, hit low in the body, and then the other soldiers were blazing away wildly towards the edges of the forest, uncertain from which direction Daniel’s shots were coming.

Daniel was still trying desperately to get another shot at Taffari, but the Landrover was pulling away. He fired at the head he could see behind the windscreen, not certain whether it was Taffari or a driver.

The windscreen shattered, but the vehicle did not check or swerve. He emptied the magazine at the accelerating vehicle. Then as he tried to reload from the bandolier at his waist, he saw three or four of the Hita guards and the civilian officials take hits and go down sprawling in the rain. There was the swelling clatter of small-arms fire.

The men of his own commando had opened fire from their positions in the forest outside the perimeter.

The uprising had begun, but Taffari was still alive.

Daniel saw the Landrover make a wide circle, swinging past the office building and come back round under the hovering helicopter. The Puma was hanging twenty feet above the ground, almost hidden by the falling curtains of rain. Taffari was leaning out of the driver’s window, signalling frantically for the pilot to pick him up again.

At that moment a man appeared out of the jungle on the far side of the clearing. Even at that distance Daniel recognized Morgan Tembi, the Matabele instructor. He carried the tube of an RPG rocket-launcher on his shoulder as he raced forward.

None of the Hita bodyguard seemed to have spotted him. A hundred paces from the hovering Puma, Morgan dropped on one knee, steadied himself and fired a rocket.

It rode on a tail of white smoke, whooshing in to hit the Puma well forward, almost in line with the Puma pilot’s canopy. The cockpit and the pilot in it were obliterated by the burst of smoke and flame. The Puma performed a lazy cartwheel in the air and fell to earth on its back. The spinning rotors smashed themselves into tiny fragments on the concrete landing-pad. An instant later a ball of fire and black smoke devoured the machine.

Morgan Tembi jumped to his feet and ran back towards the edge of the forest. He never made it. The Hita bodyguards shot him down long before he could reach cover, but he had cut off Taffari’s escape.

It had taken less than a minute but already the Hita were recovering from the shock of the surprise attack. They were piling into Landrovers and following Taffari as he drove for the roadway beyond the office building.

Taffari must have realised the strength and numbers of the attackers and decided that his best bet would be to try and break out and reach the nearest road-block on the Sengi-Sengi road which was manned by his own men. Three Landrovers filled with his own guards were flying after him.

Most of the civilian officials were lying flat on the ground, trying to keep below the wild cross-fire, although some of them were running for the shelter of the office buildings. Daniel saw Cheng amongst them.

His blue safari suit was distinctive, even in the rain mist. Before he could get a shot at him Cheng reached the building and ducked through the front door. Daniel turned his attention back to the four escaping Landrovers.

They had almost reached the main road into the forest and the fire that the Uhali commando was turning upon them was furious but inaccurate.

It seemed to be totally ineffectual. With Morgan Tembi dead they were blazing away without aiming, like the raw untried recruits they truly were.

Taffari was already out of range from where Daniel was perched in the mahogany tree. He was going to get clear away. The whole attack was becoming a fiasco. The Uhali were forgetting all their training. The plan was falling to pieces. The rising was doomed within minutes of beginning.

At that moment a huge yellow D10 caterpillar lumbered out of the forest.

“At least somebody has remembered his orders,” Daniel snarled to himself. He was angry at his failure, taking the full blame on himself.

The caterpillar tractor waddled forward, straddling the roadway, cutting off the flying convoy of Landrovers. A small band of Uhali emerged from the forest and ran behind it dressed in blue denim and other civilian clothing. They used the tractor as a barricade and opened fire on the leading Landrover as it raced towards them.

At close range their concentrated fire was at last effective.

Taffari, in the leading Landrover, saw his escape cut off and spun the truck in a hard 180-degree turn. The other trucks followed him round.

They came back across the open ground in a line, and they were within range again. Daniel fired at Taffari’s head, but the Landrover was doing sixty miles an hour and bouncing over the rough track. Daniel never saw the strike of his bullets, and the line of the Landrovers tore away down the track that led to where the MOMU units were working. That direction was a dead end. The road ended at the mining excavation. The situation had been retrieved from total disaster by the driver of the caterpillar tractor.

By now the column of Landrovers was out of sight from where Daniel was perched in the mahogany tree. He left the rifle hanging on its strap and swung out of the branch. He used the nylon rope to abseil down the trunk of the tree, kicking himself outwards with both feet, dropping so swiftly that the rope scorched the palms of his hands. As he hit the ground Sepoo ran forward and handed him his AK 47 assault rifle and the haversack that contained the spare magazines and four M26 grenades. “Where is Kara-Ki?” he demanded, and Sepoo pointed back into the forest. They ran together.

Two hundred yards further into the forest Kelly was crouched over the VHF radio transmitter. She jumped up when she saw Daniel. “What happened?” she shouted. “Did you get him?”

“It’s a total balls-up,” Daniel told her grimly. “Taffari’s still out there. We haven’t got control of the radio station at Wengu.”

“Oh God, what happens now?”

“Transmit!” He made the decision. “Give Victor the go-ahead. We are committed now. We can’t turn back.”

“But if Taffari–”

“Damn it, Kelly, just do it! I’m going to try and retrieve the ball. At least Taffari didn’t get clear away. We are still in with a chance. For the present we’ve got him bottled up here at Wengu.”

Kelly did not argue again, she knelt beside the radio set and lifted the microphone to her lips. “Forest Base, this is Mushroom. Do you read me?” The portable transmitter did not have the range to reach Kahali on the lakeshore direct. They must relay through the more powerful set at Gondola.

“Mushroom, this is Forest Base,” the voice of Kelly’s male nurse from the Gondola clinic came back immediately. He was a trusted Uhali retainer of many years standing. “This is a relay for Silver Head in Kabali. Message reads, ‘The Sun has Risen.’ I say again, ‘The Sun has Risen.’”

“Stand by, Mushroom.”

There was a few minutes silence, then Gondola came back on the air. “Mushroom, Silver Head acknowledges ‘The Sun has Risen.’”

The revolution was launched. Within the hour Victor Omeru would be on television announcing it to his nation. But Taffari was still alive.

“Kelly, listen to me.” Daniel took her arm and dragged her up to face him, making sure he had her full attention. “Stay here. Try and keep in contact with Gondola. Don’t go wandering off. Taffari’s storm-troopers will be scattered everywhere. Stay here until I come back for you.”

She nodded. “Be careful, darling.”

“Sepoo.” Daniel looked down at the little man. “Stay here. Look after Kara-Ki.”

“With my life!” Sepoo told him.

“Kiss me!” Kelly demanded of Daniel.

“Just a quick one. More to follow,” Daniel promised.

He left her and ran back towards the UDC buildings. Before he had gone a hundred yards he heard men in the forest ahead.

“Omeru!” he shouted. It was the password.

“Omeru!” they shouted back. “The Sun has Risen!”

“Not yet, it bloody hasn’t,” Daniel muttered, and went forward.

There were a dozen men of the commando, the blue denim jackets were almost a uniform. “Come on! He gathered them up.

Before they reached the road that ran down to the mining cut he had thirty men with him. The rain had stopped by now, and Daniel paused on the edge of the forest. Before them stretched the endless plain of churned earth that the MOMU units had devoured. The, line of machines was ahead of them, ranged along the boundary where forest and red mud met. They looked like a line of battleships in a storm.

Closer still were the four Landrovers, scattered at abandoned angles on the muddy plain. As Daniel watched, the Hita guards were straggling across the open ground towards the nearest MOMU.

Daniel recognized Ephrem Taffari’s tall uniformed figure leading them. It was clear that he had selected the nearest MOMU as the most readily defensible strong-point available to him, and Daniel conceded grimly that it was a good choice. The steel sides of the gigantic machine would offer almost complete protection from small-arms fire. Even the RPG rockets would make no impression on its massive construction.

To reach it an attacker would have to cross soft open ground that could be covered by fire from the upper platforms of the MOMU. just as important, the steel fortress was manoeuvrable. Once he was in control of it, Taffari could drive it anywhere.

Daniel looked about him quickly, by now there were fifty or so Uhali guerrillas congregated around him. They were noisy and over-excited, behaving like green troops after their first taste of fire. Some of them were cheering and firing at the distant figures of Taffari and his guards. They were well out of range, and it was a dangerous waste of their precious stocks of ammunition.

There was no point in trying to get them under control. He had to attack before they lost their wild spirits, and before Taffari reached the MOMU and organised its defence.

“Come on!” Daniel shouted. “Omeru! The Sun has Risen.”

He led them out on to the open ground, and they followed him in a rabble, cheering wildly. “Omeru!” they yelled. Daniel had to keep the momentum going. The mud was ankle-deep in places, knee-deep in others.

They passed the abandoned Landrovers. Ahead of them Daniel saw Taffari reach the MOMU and haul himself up one of the steel boarding ladders. As they ploughed on through the mud, their progress slowed to a plodding walk.

Taffari was organising his men as they came aboard the MOMU. They were taking cover behind the massive steel machinery. Bullets started slashing amongst the attackers, plugging into the mud, cracking around their heads. The man beside Daniel was hit. He went down face first in the mud.

The attack slowed, bogging down in the mud. The Hita on the MOMU were lodging in, hidden behind steel bulkheads. They were shooting accurately, and more of Daniel’s men were falling.

The attack stalled, some of the Uhali broke and started to stumble back towards the forest. Others crouched behind the stranded Landrovers. They were not soldiers. They were clerks and truck-drivers and university students faced by crack paratroopers in an impregnable steel fortress. Daniel could not blame them for breaking, even though the revolution was dying in the mud with them.

He could not go on alone. Already the Hita had singled him out. Their fire was concentrating on him. He stumbled back to the nearest Landrover and crouched behind its chassis. He saw the crew of the MOMU desert their stations and huddle helplessly on the lower platform. One of the Hita paratroopers gestured to them imperiously and with obvious relief they swarmed down the steel ladder and dropped into the mud like sailors abandoning a sinking ocean liner.

The engine of the MOMU was still running. The excavators were chewing into the earth, but now with no direction the gigantic rig was wandering out of its formation. The crews of the other rigs in the line saw what was happening and they too abandoned their posts and streamed overboard, trying to escape the bursts of gunfire that rattled and clanged against the steel plating.

It was a stand-off. Taffari’s men had command of the MOMU and Daniel’s commando were stalled in the mud unable to advance or retreat.

He tried to think of some way to break the impasse. He could not expect his shattered and demoralised survivors to mount another charge. Taffari had fifteen or twenty men up there, more than enough to hold them off.

At that moment he became aware of another eerie sound, like the mewling of seagulls or the cry of lost souls. He looked back and at first saw nothing. Then something moved at the edge of the forest. At first he could not make it out. It was not human, surely? Then he saw other movement. The forest was coming alive.

Thousands of strange creatures, as numerous as insects, like a column of safari ants on the march. They were red in their myriads, and the wild plaintive cry rose louder and more urgently from them as they swarmed out of the forest into the open.

Suddenly he realised what he was seeing. The gates of the labour camps were open. The guards had been overwhelmed and the Uhali slaves had risen out of the mud. They were red with it, coated with it, naked as corpses exhumed from the grave, starved to stick-like emaciation.

They swarmed forward in their legions, in their thousands, women and men and children, sexless in their coating of mud, only their white and angry eyes glaring in the muddy red masks of their faces. “Omeru!” they cried, and the sound was like a stormy sea on a rocky headland.

The fire of the Hita paratroopers was blanketed by the roar of their voices. The bullets of the AK 47 assault rifles made no impression on the densely packed ranks, where one man fell a dozen more swarmed forward to replace him. On the MOMU fortress the Hita guards were running out of ammunition. Even at this distance Daniel could sense their panic. They threw aside their empty rifles, the barrels hot as though from the furnace.

Unarmed they climbed the steel ladders to the highest platform of the ungainly yellow rig. Helplessly they stood at the railing and watched the naked red horde reach the machine and climb up towards them.

Daniel recognized Ephrem Taffari amongst the Hita on the upper deck. He was trying to speak to the slaves, spreading his arms in an oratorical gesture, trying to reason with them. In the end, when the front rank was almost upon him Taffari drew his pistol and fired down into them. He kept firing as they engulfed him.

For a time Daniel lost him in the struggling red mass of naked humanity.

He was like a fly absorbed by a gigantic jelly fish. Then he saw Taffari again, lifted high above the heads of the mob by hundreds of upraised arms. They passed him forward struggling wildly.

Then they hurled him from the top of the MOMU.

Ephrem Taffari turned in the air, ungainly as a bird trying to fly with a broken wing. He dropped seventy feet, into the spinning silver blades of the excavator head. The blades sucked him in and in a single instant chopped him to a paste so fine that his blood did not leave so much as a stain on the wet earth.

Daniel stood up slowly.

On the MOMU they were killing the Hita paratroopers, tearing them to pieces with their bare hands, swarming over them screaming and exulting.

Daniel turned away. He started back towards where he had left Kelly. His progress was slow. Men of the commando clustered around him, shaking his hand, thumping him on the back, laughing and shouting and singing.

There was still some desultory small-arms fire in the forest. The administrative offices were on fire. Flames leapt high, crackling and pouring out black smoke. A roof collapsed.

People were trapped in there, burning to death. The mob raged everywhere, chasing the guards and officials and engineers and clerks of the company, black and Taiwanese, anybody connected with the hated oppressor. They caught them and killed them, kicking and beating them as they writhed on the earth, hacking at them with spades or machetes, throwing their dismembered bodies into the flames. It was savage. It was Africa.

Daniel turned away from the horror. One man could not stop the orgy. They had suffered too long; their hatred was too fierce. He left the track and went into the forest to find Kelly.

He had not gone a hundred yards before he saw a small figure running towards him through the trees. “Sepoo!” he called, and the pygmy darted to his side and seized his arm and shook it.

“Kara-Ki!” he screeched incoherently, there was a gash in his scalp and he was bleeding heavily.

“Where is she?” Daniel demanded. “What has happened to her?”

“Kara-Ki! He has taken her. He has taken her into the forest.”

Kelly knelt in front of the radio set, gently manipulating the fine-tuning knob of, the receiver. Although her transmitter did not have the range to reach the capital of Kahali on the lakeshore, Sepoo had climbed into the silk-cotton tree above her and strung the aerial wire from the top branches. She was picking up the transmission of Radio Ubomo on the twenty-five metre band with very little atmospheric disturbance.

“This next request is for Miriam Seboki of Kabute who is eighteen years old today, from your boy friend, Abdullah, who wishes you many happy returns and says he loves you very much. He has requested, ‘Like a Virgin’ by Madonna, so here it is just for you, Miriam.”

The harsh cacophony of the music was aberrant in the forest silences and Kelly turned down the volume. immediately she was aware of other sounds even more obscene, the distant fusillade of gunfire and the wild screams of fighting and dying men. She tried to blot the sounds from her mind, tried to calm her anxiety and fear for the progress of the rising. She waited, powerless and afraid, for something to happen.

Suddenly the music was cut off, and the only sound from the speaker was the whistle and crackle of static. Then abruptly a new voice came on the air. “People of Ubomo. This station is now under the control of the Freedom Army of Ubomo. We bring you the President of Ubomo, Victor Omeru, speaking to you in person from the radio studio in Kahali.” There was a burst of martial music, the old national anthem, that Ephrem Taffari had banned when he seized power. Then the music ended.

There was a pause and at last the thrilling voice that Kelly loved so well reverberated from the speaker. “My beloved people of Ubomo, you who have suffered so much beneath the yoke of the oppressor, this is Victor Omeru. I know that most of you believed that I was dead. But this is not a voice from the grave. It is indeed I, Victor Omeru, who call upon you now.”

Victor was speaking in Swahili, and he went on, “I bring you tidings of hope and of great joy. Ephrem Taffari, the bloody tyrant, is dead. A loyal and true band of patriots has overthrown his cruel and brutal regime and given him the punishment he so justly deserves. Come forth, my people, a new sun rises over Ubomo.”

His voice was so compelling, so sincere, that for a moment Kelly almost believed what he was saying, that Taffari was already dead and the revolution was secure. Then she heard the sound of gunfire and she glanced over her shoulder.

There was a man standing close to her. He had come up soundlessly behind her. He was an Asian, almost certainly Chinese. He wore a blue safari suit damp with rain or sweat and stained with mud and blood. His long straight black hair hung down over his forehead. There was a shallow cut in his cheek from which the blood had dripped to stain the front of his jacket.

He carried a Tokarev pistol in one hand, and there was a wild and hunted look in his eyes, eyes so dark that there was no division between iris and pupil, black eyes like a mako shark. His mouth was contorted with fear or anger, and the hand that held the pistol twitched and trembled.

Although she had never seen him before, Kelly knew who he was. She had heard Daniel speak of him so often. She had seen his photograph in the out-of-date copies of the Ubomo Herald newspaper that occasionally reached Gondola. She knew that he was the Taiwanese managing-director of UDC, the man who had murdered Daniel’s friend, Johnny Nzou.

“Ning,” she said, and scrambled to her feet trying to back away from him, but he sprang forward and seized her wrist. She was shocked by his strength. He twisted her arm up behind her back.

“A white woman, he said in English. A hostage…”

Sepoo rushed at him, trying to help her, but Cheng swung the pistol in a short vicious arc and the barrel struck the little man above the ear, splitting open his scalp. He dropped at Cheng’s feet. Still holding Kelly with the other hand, Cheng stretched down and aimed the pistol at Sepoo’s temple.

“No,” screamed Kelly, and threw herself back against Cheng’s chest. It spoiled his aim, and the bullet ploughed into the earth six inches from Sepoo’s face. the shot roused him, and Sepoo rolled to his feet and darted away. Cheng fired another shot at him as he ran, but Sepoo vanished into the undergrowth.

Cheng twisted her arm savagely, pulling her up on to her toes with the agony in her shoulder-blade.

“You’re hurting me, she cried.”

“Yes,” Cheng agreed. “And I will kill you if you resist me again. Walk!” he ordered. “Yes, like that. Keep going if you don’t want me to hurt you again.”

“Where are we going?” Kelly asked, trying to keep the pain out of her voice, trying to be calm and persuasive. “There is no escape into the forest.”

“With you there is,” Cheng said. “Don’t talk. Be quiet! Keep going.” He pushed and dragged her onwards, and she dared not resist. She sensed that he was desperate enough to do anything.

She remembered what Daniel had told her about him, about the murdered Matabele family in Zimbabwe, about the rumours of children and young girls tortured for his perverted pleasure. She realised that her best chance, perhaps her only chance, was to comply with anything he ordered her to do.

They covered half a mile, staggering and stumbling, made clumsy by the wrist-lock that Cheng had on her, and by his wild haste. When they came out suddenly on to the bank of a narrow stream she realised that it was the Wengu, the small river that gave the area its name. It was one of the tributaries of the main Ubomo River. It was also one of the bleeding rivers, clogged with the poison effluent from the MOMU vehicles. It was stinking and treacherous. Even Cheng seemed to realize the danger of trying to wade across it.

He forced Kelly to her knees, and stood over her, panting and looking about him uncertainly.

“Please…” she whispered.

“Be silent he ranted at her. I told you not to speak!” he screwed her wrist to enforce the order, and despite herself she whimpered aloud.

After another few moments, he asked suddenly, “Is this the Wengu River? Which direction does it run? Does it go southwards towards the main road?”

Instantly she realised which way his mind was working. Of course, he would have an intimate knowledge of the area. It was his concession. He would have studied the maps. He would certainly know that the Wengu made a circle to the south, an ox-bow that intersected the main road. He would know that there was a Hita military post at the bridge.

“Is it the Wengu?” he repeated, twisting her wrist until she screamed, and she almost answered truthfully before she caught herself. “I don’t know.” she shook her head. “I don’t know anything about the forest.”

“You lie,” he accused, but he was obviously uncertain. “Who are you? he demanded.”

“I’m just a nurse with the World Health Organization. I don’t know about the forest.”

“All right.” He hauled her to her feet. “Get going!” He shoved her forward, but now they turned southwards following the bank of the Wengu River. Cheng had made up his mind.

Kelly deliberately kicked and scuffed the soft earth as he pushed her along. She put all her weight on her heels, trying to lay as good a spoor as possible for Sepoo to follow. She knew Sepoo would be coming, and with him must come Daniel.

She tried to snap any green twig that came within reach as Cheng forced her through the undergrowth. She managed to tear a button off her shirt and drop it, an identification for Sepoo to pick up. At every opportunity she tripped over a dead branch or fell into a hole and dropped to her knees, holding him up as much as possible, slowing down their progress, giving Sepoo and Daniel a chance to catch up.

She began whining and whimpering loudly and when Cheng raised the pistol threateningly, she screamed, “No, please! Please don’t hit me!”

She knew her cries would carry, that Sepoo with his sensitive, forest-trained ears would hear her at a distance of quarter of a mile and pin-point her position.

Sepoo picked the shirt button out of the leaf trash of the forest floor, and showed it to Daniel. “See, Kuokoa, Kara-Ki is laying sign for us to follow,” he whispered. “She is clever as the colobus, and brave as the forest buffalo.”

“Keep going.” Daniel prodded him impatiently. “Make your speeches later, old man.”

They went on along the spoor, quick, silent and alert. Sepoo pointed out the sign that Kelly had left, the broken twigs, the heel marks and the places where she had deliberately fallen to her knees. “We are close now.” He touched Daniel’s arm. “Very close…”

“Be careful not to run into him. He might lay an ambush…”

Kelly screamed in the forest ahead of them. “No, please! Please don’t hit me!” And for an instant Daniel lost control. He lunged forward, rushing to her defence, but Sepoo seized his wrist and hung on doggedly.

“No! No! Kara-Ki is not hurt. She is warning us. Don’t rush in like a stupid wazungu. Use your head now.”

Daniel pulled himself together, but he was still trembling with rage. “All right,” he whispered. “He doesn’t know I am here but he has seen you. I’m going to circle round them and lie downstream. You must drive him on to me, just as you drive the duiker in the net hunt. Do you understand, Sepoo?”

“I understand. Give the call of a grey parrot when you are ready.”

Daniel screwed the folding bayonet off the muzzle of his AK 47 and propped the rifle against the tree beside him. Cheng was using Kelly as a shield. The rifle was useless. He abandoned it. Armed only with the bayonet, he circled out swiftly away from the river-bank. Twice more he heard Kelly’s voice, pleading and whining, giving him a pin-point on her position.

It took him less than five minutes to get downstream of Cheng and Kelly and to flatten himself against the hole of one of the trees growing on the bank. He cupped his hands over his mouth and gave an imitation of the squawk of a roosting parrot. Then he crouched down with the bayonet at the ready.

Sepoo’s voice shrilled through the trees. He was using the high ventriloquist’s tone that would deceive the listener as to direction and distance. “Hey, wazungu – Let Kara-Ki go. I am watching you from the trees. Let her go, or I will put a poison arrow into you.” Daniel doubted that Cheng could understand the Swahili words, but the effect would be the same, to concentrate Cheng’s attention upstream while driving him down to where Daniel was waiting.

He crouched and listened. A few minutes later, Sepoo called again, “Hey, wazungu, do you hear me?” Silence fell again and Daniel strained his eyes and his hearing. Then a branch rustled just ahead of him, and he heard Kelly’s voice, muffled and terrified. “Please don’t…” she began, but was cut off by Cheng’s brusque whisper.

“Shut your mouth, woman, or I will break your arm.”

They were very close to where Daniel waited. He tightened his grip on the hilt of the bayonet. Then he saw movement in the undergrowth, and a moment later made out the blue of Cheng’s jacket. Cheng was moving backwards, holding Kelly against his chest, facing the direction of Sepoo’s voice, aiming the Tokarev pistol over Kelly’s shoulder, ready to fire the moment Sepoo showed himself. He was backing directly towards the tree where Daniel waited.

Daniel knew that Cheng was an exponent of the martial arts. In any hand-to-hand combat, Daniel would be at a terrible disadvantage. There was one sure way. That was to drive the point of the bayonet into his kidneys from behind. It would cripple him instantly.

He stepped out from behind the tree with the bayonet held low and underhand. He launched the stroke, but at the same instant Cheng twisted violently sideways. Daniel never knew what had alerted him, for he had made no sound. it could only have been the almost supernatural instinct of the Kung Fu fighter.

The bayonet caught Cheng in the flank, an inch above the hip bone.

It went in to the hilt, but Cheng’s turn tore the weapon from Daniel’s grip.

Cheng released Kelly, shoving her away from him and brought the Tokarev round to fire into Daniel’s face. Daniel grabbed the wrist of his pistol hand and forced it upwards. The first shot went into the branches above their heads.

Cheng twisted in Daniel’s grip, and as Daniel tried to hold him, he whipped his body back again and his knee came up, aimed for Daniel’s crotch. Daniel caught the kick on his thigh, but the force of it paralysed his leg.

From the corner of his eye he saw Cheng’s left hand, stiff as an axe-blade, flick towards his head, aimed at his neck below the ear. He hunched his shoulders and caught it on the thick muscle of his upper biceps. The strength and power of it sickened him. His grip on Cheng’s pistol hand slackened.

The hand flicked at him again, and this time Daniel knew it would snap his neck like a dry twig. Kelly had not fallen, despite the vicious shove Cheng had given her between the shoulder-blades. She gathered herself and hurled herself back at him, shoulder first into Cheng’s side, into the flank that the bayonet had laid open. The force of it turned the blow aside from Daniel’s exposed neck and Cheng stumbled against him and dropped the pistol with a shout of pain.

Desperately Daniel locked his free arm around the back of Cheng’s head and threw himself backwards, in the direction in which Cheng had been thrown by Kelly’s charge. Cheng could not resist and they fell, locked together, down the sheer bank of the river, dropping six feet into the thick red ooze, going under completely.

Almost immediately their heads broke out through the surface. Both of them were gasping for breath, still locked together. Daniel’s leg was still paralysed. Cheng was wiry and quick.

Daniel realised that he could not hold him. Kelly saw he was in distress and stooped. She picked up the bayonet, and in the same movement threw herself feet first down the bank, sliding on her backside, the bayonet poised.

Cheng squirmed over the top of Daniel, whipping one arm around his neck from behind. His back was turned to Kelly, the jacket of his safari suit shining wetly with red mud.

Kelly stabbed from as high as she could reach. Her first blow struck one of Cheng’s ribs and was deflected. Cheng grunted and convulsed.

She lifted the bayonet and stabbed again and this time the point found a gap between his ribs.

Cheng released the armlock from Daniel’s neck and wriggled around to face Kelly in the mud. The bayonet was still lodged high in his back, the blade half buried.

Cheng reached out for Kelly with both hands, his mud daubed features contorted with an animal ferocity. Daniel recovered and threw himself forward on to Cheng’s back, locking both arms around his throat, bearing him down with all his weight. The hilt of the bayonet was trapped between them and the blade was forced all the way home. A mouthful of blood burst over Cheng’s lips and poured down his chin.

Daniel heaved and shoved his head below the surface, and held it there.

As Cheng was struggling in the red mud, one of his arms broke out and groped blindly for Daniel’s face, trying to reach his eyes with hooked fingers. Daniel held on grimly, and the hand fell away. Cheng’s movements in the mud became feebler and more erratic.

Kelly waded to the bank and crouched there, watching in fascinated horror.

Suddenly a rush of slow fat bubbles rose out of the red ooze and burst upon the surface as Cheng’s lungs emptied. Only Daniel’s head was clear of the mud. He lay there for a long time, never relaxing his grip on Cheng’s submerged throat.

“He’s dead,” Kelly whispered at last. “He must be dead by now.”

Slowly Daniel released his grip. There was no movement below the surface. Daniel dragged himself to the bank, like an insect moving through treacle. Kelly helped him up the bank. His injured leg trailed behind him. On the top the two of them knelt together clinging to each other. They stared down into the river bed.

Slowly something rose to the surface like a dead log. The mud coated Cheng’s corpse so thickly that it almost obscured the human shape.

They stared at it for fully five minutes before either of them spoke.

“He drowned in his own cesspool” Daniel whispered. “I couldn’t have chosen a better way.”

WILBUR SMITH

WILD

JUSTICE

PAN BOOKS

First published in Great Britain 1979 by William Heinemann Ltd

This edition published 1998 by Pan Books

This electronic edition published 2008 by Pan Books

an imprint of Pan Macmillan Ltd

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Copyright © Wilbur Smith 1979

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

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This book is for my wife and the jewel

of my life, Mokhiniso, with all my love

and gratitude for the enchanted years

that I have been married to her

There were only fifteen joining passengers for the British Airways flight at Victoria Airport on the island of Malic in the oceanic republic of the Seychelles.

Two couples formed a tight group as they waited their turn for departure formalities. They were all young, all deeply tanned and they seemed still carefree and relaxed by their holiday in that island paradise. However, one of them made her three companions seem insignificant by the sheer splendour of her physical presence.

She was a tall girl, with long limbs and her head set on a proud, shapely neck. Her thick, sun-gilded blonde hair was twisted into a braid and coiled high on top of her head, and the sun had touched her with gold and brought out the bloom of youth and health upon her skin.

As she moved with the undulating grace of one of the big predatory cats, bare feet thrust into open sandals, so the big pointed breasts joggled tautly under the thin cotton of her tee-shirt and the tight round buttocks strained the faded denim of her hacked-off shorts.

Across the front of her tee-shirt was blazoned the legend "I AM A LOVE NUT" and below it was drawn the suggestive outline of a coco-de-mer.

She smiled brilliantly at the dark-skinned Seychellois immigration officer as she slid the green United States passport with its golden eagle across the desk to him, but when she turned to her male companion she spoke in quick fluent German. She retrieved her passport and led the others through into the security area.

Again she smiled at the two members of the Seychelles

Police Force who were in charge of the weapons search, and she swung the net carry bag off her shoulder.

"You want to check these?" she asked, and they all laughed. The bag contained two huge coco-de-mer; the grotesque fruit, each twice the size of a human head, were the most popular souvenirs of the Islands.

Each of her three companions carried similar trophies in net bags, and the police officer ignored such familiar objects and instead ran his metal detector in a perfunctory manner over the canvas flight bags which made up the rest of their hand luggage. It buzzed harshly on one bag and the boy who carried it shamefacedly produced a small Nikkormat camera. More laughter and then the police officer waved the group through into the final Departure Lounge.

It was already crowded with transit passengers who had boarded at Mauritius, and beyond the lounge windows the huge Boeing 747 jumbo squatted on the tarmac, lit harshly by floodlights as the refuelling tenders fussed about her.

There were no free seats in the lounge and the group of four formed a standing circle under one of the big revolving punk ah fans, for the night was close and humid and the mass of humanity in the closed room sullied the air with tobacco smoke and the smell of hot bodies.

The blonde girl led the gay chatter and sudden bursts of laughter, standing inches above her two male companions and a full head above the other girl, so that they were a focus of attention for the hundreds of other passengers.

Their manner had changed subtly since they entered the lounge; there was a sense of relief as though a serious obstacle had been negotiated, and an almost feverish excitement in the timbre of their laughter. They were never still, shifting restlessly from foot to foot, hands fiddling with hair or clothing.

Although they were clearly a closed group, quarantined by an almost conspiratorial air of camaraderie, one of the transit passengers left his wife sitting and stood up from his seat across the lounge.

"Say, do you speak English?" he asked, as he approached the group.

He was a heavy man in his middle fifties with a thick thatch of steel-grey hair, dark horn-rimmed spectacles, and the easy confident manner of success and wealth.

Reluctantly the group opened for him, and it was the tall blonde girl who answered, as if by right.

"Sure, I'm American also."

"No kidding?" The man chuckled. "Well, what do you know." And he was studying her with open admiration. "I just wanted to know what those things are." He pointed to the net bag of nuts that lay at her feet.

"They are coco-de-mer," the blonde answered.

"Oh yeah, I've heard of them."

"They call them "love nuts"," the girl went on, stooping to open the heavy bag at her feet. "And you can see why." She displayed one of the fruit for him.

The double globes were joined in an exact replica of a pair of human buttocks.

"Back end." She smiled, and her teeth were so white they appeared as translucent as fine bone china.

"Front end." She turned the nut, and offered for his inspection the perfect mons vener is complete with a feminine gash and a tuft of coarse curls, and now it was clear she was flirting and teasing; she altered her stance, thrusting her hips forward slightly, and the man glanced down involuntarily at her own plump mons beneath the tight blue denim, its deep triangle bisected by the fold of material which had tucked up into the cleft.

He flushed slightly and his lips parted with a small involuntary intake of breath.

"The male tree has a stamen as thick and as long as your arm." She widened her eyes to the size and colour of blue pansies, and across the lounge the man's wife stood up and came towards them, warned by some feminine instinct. She was much younger than her husband and very heavy and awkward with child.

"The Seychellois will tell you that in the full moon the male pulls up its roots and walks around to mate with the females---"

"As long and as thick as your arm-" smiled the pretty little dark-haired girl beside her, " wow!" She was also teasing now, and both girls dropped their gaze deliberately down the front of the man's body. He squirmed slightly, and the two young men who flanked him grinned at his discomfort.

His wife reached him and tugged at his arm. There was a red angry rash of prickly heat on her throat and little beads of perspiration across her upper lip, like transparent blisters.

"Harry, I'm not feeling well, "she whined softly.

"I've got to go now," he mumbled with relief, his poise and confidence shaken, and he took his wife's arm and led her away.

"Did you recognize him?" asked the dark-haired girl in German, still smiling, her voice pitched very low.

"Harold McKevitt," the blonde replied softly in the same language.

"Neurosurgeon from Forth Worth. He read the closing paper to the convention on Saturday morning." She explained. "Big fish very big fish," and like a cat she ran the pink tip of her tongue across her lips.

Of the four hundred and one passengers in the final Departure Lounge that Monday evening three hundred and sixty were surgeons, or their wives. The surgeons, including some of the most eminent in the world of medicine, had come from Europe and England and the United States, from Japan and South America and Asia, for the convention that had ended twenty-four hours previously on the island of Mauritius, five hundred miles to the south of Malic island. This was one of the first flights out since then and it had been fully booked ever since the convention had been convoked.

"British Airways announces the departure of Flight BA 070 for Nairobi and London; will transit passengers please board now through the main gate. "The announcement was in the soft singsong of the Creole accent, and there was a massed movement towards the exit.

"Victtoria Control this is Speedbird Zero Seven Zero request push back and start clearance."

"Zero Seven Zero you are cleared to start and taxi to holding point for runway Zero One."

"Please copy amendment to our flight plan for Nairobi.

Number of Pax aboard should be 401. We have a full house."

"Roger, Speedbird, your flight plan is amended." The gigantic aircraft was still in its nose-high climb configuration and the seat belt and no-smoking lights burned brightly down the length of the firstclass cabin. The blonde girl and her companion sat side by side in the roomy seats and directly behind the forward bulkhead that partitioned off the command area and the first-class galley. The seats that the young couple occupied had been reserved many months previously.

The blonde nodded to her companion and he leaned forward to screen her from the passengers across the aisle while she slipped one of the coco-de-mer from its net bag and held it in her lap.

Through its natural division the nut had been carefully sawn into two sections to allow removal of the milk and the white flesh, then the two sections had been glued together again just as neatly. The joint was only apparent after close inspection.

The girl inserted a small metal instrument into the joint and twisted it sharply, and with a soft click the two sections fell apart like an Easter egg.

In the nests formed by the double husk of the shells, padded with strips of plastic foam, were two smooth, grey, egg-like objects each the size of a baseball.

They were grenades of East German manufacture, with the Warsaw Pact command designation. The outer layer of each grenade was of armoured plastic, of the type used in land mines to prevent discovery by electronic metal detectors. The yellow stripe around each grenade indicated that it was not a fragmentation type, but was designed for high impact concussion.

The blonde girl took a grenade in her left hand, unlatched her lap belt and slipped quietly from her seat.

The other passengers paid her only passing interest as she ducked through the curtains into the galley area. However, the purser and the two stewardesses, still strapped into their fold-down seats, looked up sharply as she entered the service area.

I'm sorry, madam, but I must ask you to return to your seat until the captain extinguishes the seat-belt lights." The blonde girl held up her left hand and showed him the shiny grey egg.

This is a special grenade, designed for killing the occupants of a battle tank," she said quietly. "It could blow the fuselage of this aircraft open like a paper bag or kill by concussion any human being within fifty yards." She watched their faces, saw the fear bloom like an evil flower.

"It is fused to explode three seconds after it leaves my hand."

She paused again, and her eyes glittered with excitement and her breath was quick and shallow.

"You." she selected the purser, take me to the flight deck; you others stay where you are. Do nothing, say nothing." When she ducked into the tiny cockpit, hardly large enough to contain the members of the flight crew and its massed banks of instruments and electronic equipment, all three men turned to look back at her in mild surprise and she lifted her hand and showed them what she carried.

They understood instantly.

"I am taking command of this aircraft," she said, and then, to the flight engineer, "Switch off all communications equipment." The engineer glanced quickly at his captain, and when he nodded curtly, began obediently to shut down his radios the very high frequency sets, then the high frequency. the ultra high frequency And the satellite relay," the girl commanded. He glanced up at her, surprised by her knowledge.

"And don't touch the bug." He blinked at that. No body, but nobody outside the company should have known about the special relay which, when activated by the button beside his right knee, would instantly alert Heathrow Control to an emergency and allow them to monitor any conversation on the flight deck. He lifted his hand away.

"Remove the fuse to the bug circuit." She indicated the correct box above his head, and he glanced at the captain again, but her voice stung like the tail of a scorpion: "Do what I tell you." Carefully he removed the fuse and she relaxed slightly.

"Read your departure clearance," she instructed.

"We are cleared to radar departure on track for Nairobi and an unrestricted climb to cruise altitude of thirty-nine thousand feet."

"When is your next "operations normal" due?" Operations normal was the routine report to Nairobi to assure them that the flight was proceeding as planned.

"In eleven minutes and thirty-five seconds. "The engineer was a young, dark-haired, rather handsome man with a deep forehead, pale skin and the quick, efficient manner instilled by his training.

The girl turned to the captain of the Boeing and their gazes locked as they measured each other. The captain's hair was more grey than black and cropped close to his big rounded skull. He was bull-necked, and had the beefy, ruddy face of a farmer or of a butcher but his eyes were steady and his manner calm and unshakeable. He was a man to watch, the girl recognized instantly.

"I want you to believe that I am committed entirely to this operation," she said, "and that I would welcome the opportunity to sacrifice my life to my cause." Her dark blue eyes held his without fear, and she read the first growth of respect in him. That was good,

all part of her careful calculations.

"I believe that," said the Pilot, and nodded once.

"Your duty is to the four hundred and seventeen lives aboard this aircraft," she went on. He did not have to reply.

They will be safe, just as long as you follow my commands implicitly. That I promise you."

"Very well."

"Here is our new destination." She handed him a small white typewritten card. "I want a new course with forecast winds, and a time of arrival. Your turn onto the new heading to commence immediately after your next "operations normal" report in-" She glanced back at the engineer for the time.

"Nine minutes fifty-eight seconds, "he said promptly.

" and I want your turn to the new heading to be very gentle,

very balanced. We don't want any of the passengers to spill their champagne do we?" In the few minutes that she had been on the flight deck she had already established a bizarre rapport with the captain; it was a blend of reluctant respect and overt hostility and of sexual awareness. She had dressed deliberately to reveal her body, and in her excitement her nipples had hardened and darkened, pushing out through the thin cotton shirt with its suggestive legend, and the musky woman's smell of her body again intensified by her excitement filled the confined cockpit.

Nobody spoke again for many minutes, then the flight engineer broke the silence.

Thirty seconds to "operations normal"."

"All right, switch on the

FIF and make the report."

"Nairobi Approach this is Speedbird Zero

Seven Zero."

"Go ahead Speedbird Zero Seven Zero."

"Operations normal, "said the engineer into his headset.

"Roger, Zero Seven Zero. Report again in forty minutes."

"Zero

Seven Zero." The blonde girl sighed with relief. "All right, shut down the set." Then to the captain, "Disengage the flight director and make the turn to the new heading by hand; let's see how gentle you can be.".

The turn was a beautiful exhibition of flying, two minutes to make a change of 76" of heading, the needles of the turn and-balance indicator never deviating a hair's breadth, and when it was completed,

the girl smiled for the first time.

It was a gorgeous sunny flash of very white teeth.

"Good," she said, smiling directly into the captain's face.

"What is your name?"

"Cyril," he replied after a moment's hesitation.

"You can call me Ingrid,"she invited.

There was no set routine to the days in this new command of Peter Stride's, except the obligatory . . lkhour on the range with pistol and automatic weapons. No member of Thor Command not even the technicians were spared daily range practice.

The rest of Peter's day had been filled with unrelenting activity, beginning with a briefing on the new electronic communications equipment that had just been installed in qK1, V his command aircraft. This had taken half the morning, and he had been only just in time to join his striker force in the main cabin of the Hercules transport for the day's exercise.

Peter jumped with the first stick of ten men. They jumped from five hundred feet, the parachutes seeming to snap open only seconds before they hit the ground. However, the crosswind had been strong enough to spread them out a little even from that height. The first landing had not been tight enough for Peter. They had taken two minutes fifty-eight seconds from jump to penetration of the deserted administration block standing forlornly in one of the military zones of Salisbury Plain.

"If they had been holding hostages in here, we'd have arrived just in time to start mopping up the blood," Peter told his men grimly. "We'll do it again!

This time they had cut one minute fifty seconds off their time, falling in a tightly steered pattern about the building beating the time of Colin Noble's No 2 striker team by ten seconds.

To celebrate Peter had scorned the military transports and they had run the five miles to the airstrip, each man in full combat kit and carrying the enormous bundle of his used parachute silk.

The Hercules was waiting to fly them back to base, but it was after dark before they landed and taxied into Thor Command's security compound at the end of the main runway.

For Peter the temptation to leave the debriefing to Colin Noble had been strong indeed. His driver would have picked up Melissa-Jane at East Croydon Station and she would already be waiting alone in the new cottage, only half a mile from the base gates.

He had not seen her for six weeks, not since he had taken command of Thor, for in all that time he had not allowed himself a single day's respite. He felt a tickle of guilt now, that he should be allowing himself this indulgence, and so he lingered a few minutes after the briefing to transfer command to Colin Noble.

"Where are you going for the weekend?"Colin demanded.

"She's taking me to a pop concert tomorrow night The Living

Dead, no less, Peter chuckled. "Seems I haven't lived until I hear the

Dead."

"Give M.J. my love, and a kiss Colin told him.

Peter placed high value on his new-found privacy. He had lived most of his adult life in officers" quarters and messes, constantly surrounded by other human beings.

However, this command had given him the opportunity to escape.

The cottage was -only four and a half minutes" drive from the compound but it might have been an island. It had come furnished and at a rental that surprised him pleasantly.

Behind a high hedge of dog rose, off a quiet lane, and set in a sprawling rather unkempt garden, it had become home in a few weeks. He had even been able to unpack his books at last. Books accumulated over twenty years, and stored against such an opportunity. It was a comfort to have them piled around his desk in the small front room or stacked on the tables beside his bed, even though there had been little opportunity to read much of them yet. The new job was a tough one.

Melissa-Jane must have heard the crunch of gravel under the

Rover's tyres, and she would certainly have been waiting for it. She came running out of the front door into the driveway, directly into the beam of the headlights, and Peter had forgotten how lovely she was. He felt his heart squeezed.

When he stepped out of the car she launched herself at him and clung with both arms around his chest. He held her for a long moment,

neither of them able to speak. She was so slim and warm, her body seeming to throb with life and vitality.

At last he lifted her chin and studied her face. The huge violet eyes swam with happy tears, and she sniffed loudly.

Already she had that old-fashioned English porcelain beauty; there would never be the acne and the agony of puberty for Melissa-jane.

Peter kissed her solemnly on the forehead. "You'll catch your death, he scolded fondly.

"Oh, Daddy, you are a real fusspot." She smiled through the tears and on tip-toe she reached up to kiss him full on the mouth.

They ate lasagne and cas sata at an Italian restaurant in Croydon,

and Melissa-Jane did most of the talking. Peter watched and listened,

revelling in her freshness and youth.

It was hard to believe she was not yet fourteen, for physically she was almost fully developed, the breasts under the white turtle-neck sweater no longer merely buds; and she conducted herself like a woman ten years older, only the occasional gleeful giggle betraying her or the lapse as she used some ghastly piece of Roedean slang, - "grotty" was one of these.

Back at the cottage she made them Ovaltine and they drank it beside the fire, planning every minute of the weekend ahead of them and skirting carefully around the pitfalls, the unwritten taboos of their relationship which centred mostly on "Mother'.

When it was time for bed she came and sat in his lap and traced the lines of his face with her fingertip.

"Do you know who you remind me of?"

"Tell me,"he invited.

"Gary Cooper only much younger, of course," she added hurriedly.

"Of course," Peter chuckled. "But where did you ever hear of Gary

Cooper? "They had High Noon as the Sunday movie on telly last week."

She kissed him again and her lips tasted of sugar and Ovaltine, and her hair smelled sweet and clean.

"How old are you, anyway, Daddy?"

"I'm thirty-nine."

"That isn't really so terribly old." She comforted him uncertainly.

"Sometimes it's as old as the dinosaurs-" and at that moment the bleeper beside his empty cup began its strident, irritating electronic tone, and Peter felt the slide of dread in his stomach.

Not now, he thought. Not on this day when I have been so long without her.

The bleeper was the. size of a cigarette pack, the globe of its single eye glared redly, insistent as the audio-signal.

Reluctantly Peter picked it up and, with his daughter still in his lap, he switched in the miniature two-way radio and depressed the send button.

"Thor One,"he said.

The reply was tinny and distorted, the set near the limit of its range.

"General Stride, Atlas has ordered condition Alpha." Another false alarm, Peter thought bitterly. There had been a dozen Alphas in the last month, but why on this night. Alpha was the first stage of alert with the teams embarked and ready for condition Bravo which was the GO.

"Inform Atlas we are seven minutes from Bravo." Four and a half of those would be needed for him to reach the compound, and suddenly the decision to rent the cottage was shown up as dangerous self-indulgence.

In four and a half minutes innocent lives can be lost.

"Darling," he hugged Melissa-Jane swiftly, "I'm sorry."

"That's all right." She was stiff and resentful.

"There will be another time soon, I promise."

"You always promise," she whispered, but she saw he was no longer listening. He dislodged her and stood up, the heavy jawline clenched and thick dark brows almost meeting above the narrow, straight, aristocratic nose.

"Lock the door when I'm gone, darling. I'll send the driver for you if it's Bravo. He will drive you back to Cambridge and I will let your mother know to expect YOU." He stepped out into the night, still shrugging into his duffle coat, and she listened to the whirl of the starter, the rush of tyres over gravel and the dwindling note of the engine.

The controller in Nairobi tower allowed the British Airways flight from Seychelles to run fifteen seconds past its reporting time. Then he called once, twice and a third time without reply. He switched frequencies to the channels reserved for information, approach, tower and, finally, emergency, on one at least of which 070 should have been maintaining listening watch. There was still no reply.

Speedbird 070 was forty-five seconds past "operations normal"

before he removed the yellow slip from his approach rack and placed it in the emergency "lost contact" slot, and immediately search and rescue procedures were in force.

Speedbird 070 was two minutes and thirteen seconds past "operations normal" when the telex pull sheet landed on the British Airways desk at Heathrow Control, and sixteen seconds later Atlas had been informed and had placed Thor Command on condition Alpha.

The moon was three days short of full, its upper rim only slightly indented by the earth's shadow. However, at this altitude it seemed almost as big as the sun itself and its golden light was certainly more beautiful.

In the tropical summer night great silver cloud ranges towered into the sky, and mushroomed into majestic thunder heads, and the moonlight dressed them in splendour.

The aircraft fled swiftly between the peaks of cloud, like a monstrous black bat on back-swept wings, it bored into the west.

Under the port-side wing a sudden dark chasm opened in the clouds like the mouth of hell itself, and deep in its maw there was the faint twinkle of far light, like a dying star.

"That will be Madagascar," said the captain, his voice over-loud in the quiet cockpit. "We are on track." And behind his shoulder the girl stirred and carefully transferred the grenade into her other hand before she spoke for the first time in half an hour.

"Some of our passengers might still be awake and notice that." She glanced at her wristwatch. "It's time to wake up the others and let them know the good news." She turned back to the flight engineer.

"Please switch on all the cabin lights and the seat-belt lights and let me have the microphone." Cyril Watkins, the captain, was reminded once again that this was a carefully planned operation. The girl was timing her announcement to the passengers when their resistance would be at its lowest possible ebb; at two o'clock in the morning. after having been awoken from the disturbed rest of intercontinental flight their immediate reaction was likely to be glum resignation.

"Cabin and seat-belt lights are on," the engineer told her, and handed her the microphone.

"Good mornin', ladies and gentlemen." Her voice was warm, clear and bright. "I regret having to waken you at such an inconvenient hour. However, I have a very important announcement to make and I want all of you to pay the most careful attention." She paused, and in the cavernous and crowded cabins there was a general stir and heads began to lift, hair tousled and eyes unfocused and blinking away the cobwebs of sleep. "You will notice that the seat-belt lights are on. Will you all check that the persons beside you are fully awake and that their seat belts are fastened. Cabin staff please make certain that this is done." She paused again;

the belts would inhibit any sudden movement, any spontaneous action at the first shock. Ingrid noted the passage of sixty seconds on the sweep hand of her wristwatch before going on.

"First let me introduce myself. My name is Ingrid. I am a senior officer of the Action Commando for Human Rights,-" Captain Watkins curled his lip cynically at the pompous self-righteous title, but kept silent, staring ahead into the starry, moonlit depths of space. and this aircraft is under my command. Under no circumstances whatsoever will any of you leave your seats without the express permission of one of my officers. if this order is disobeyed, it will lead directly to the destruction of this aircraft and all aboard by high explosive." She repeated the announcement immediately in fluent German, and then in less proficient but clearly intelligible French before reverting to English once again.

"Officers of the Action Commando will wear red shirts for immediate identification and they will be armed." As she spoke her three companions in the front of the first-class cabin were stripping out the false bottoms from their canvas flight bags. The space was only two inches deep by fourteen by eight, but it was sufficient for the brokendown twelve bore pistols, and ten rounds of buckshot cartridges. The barrels of the pistols were fourteen inches long, the bores were Smooth and made of armoured plastic.

This material would not have withstood the passage of a solid bullet through rifling or any of the newer explosive propellants but it had been designed for use with the lower velocity and pressures of multiple shot and cordite. The breech piece was of plastic as were the double pistol grips, and these clipped swiftly into position. The only metal in the entire weapon was the case-steel firing pin and spring, no bigger than one of the metal studs in the canvas flight bag, so they would not have activated the metal detectors of the security check at Malik airport. The ten cartridges contained in each bag had plastic cases and bases; again only the percussion caps were of aluminium foil, which would not disturb an electrical field. The cartridges were packed in looped cartridge belts which buckled around the waist.

The weapons were short, black and ugly; they required reloading like a conventional shotgun, the spent shells were not self-ejecting and the recoil was so vicious that it would break the wrists of the user who did not bear down heavily on the pistol grips. However, at ranges up to thirty feet the destructive power was awesome, at twelve feet it would disembowel a man and at six feet it would blow his head off cleanly yet it did not have the penetrating power to hole the pressure hull of an intercontinental airliner.

It was the perfect weapon for the job in hand, and within a few seconds three of them had been assembled and loaded and the two men had slipped on the bright scarlet shirts that identified them over their tee-shirts and moved to their positions, one in the back of the first-class cabin and one in the back of the tourist cabin, they stood with their grotesque weapons ostentatiously displayed.

"MON The slim pretty, dark-haired German girl stayed in her seat a little longer, working swiftly and neatly as she opened the remaining coco-de-mer and transferred their contents into two of the netting bags. These grenades differed only from the one carried by Ingrid in that they had double red lines painted around the middle. This signified that they were electronically fused.

Now Ingrid's clear young voice resumed over the cabin address system, and the long rows of passengers all fully awake now sat rigid and attentive, their faces reflecting an almost uniform expression of shock and trepidation.

The officer of the action commando who is moving down the cabin at this time is placing high explosive grenades,-" The dark-haired girl started down the aisle, and every fifteen rows she opened one of the overhead lockers and placed a grenade in it, closed the locker and moved on.

The passengers" heads revolved slowly in unison as they watched her with the fascination of total horror. "A single one of those grenades has the explosive power to destroy this aircraft, they were designed to kill by concussion the crew of a battle tank protected by six inches of armour. the officer is placing fourteen of these devices along the length of this aircraft. They can be detonated simultaneously by an electronic transmitter under my control,-" the voice contained a hint of mischief now, a little undercurrent of laughter, and if that happened they'd hear the bang at the North Pole!"

The passengers stirred like the leaves of a tree in a vagrant breeze;

somewhere a woman began to weep. It was a strangled passionless sound and nobody even looked in her direction.

"But don't worry yourselves. "That isn't going to happen.

Because everybody is going to do exactly as they are told, and when it's all over you are going to be proud of your part in this operation. We are all partners in a noble and glorious mission, we are all warriors for freedom and for the dignity of man. Today we take a mighty step forward into the new world a world purged and cleansed of injustice and tyranny and dedicated to the welfare of all its peoples."

The woman was still weeping, and now a child joined her on a higher, more strident note.

The dark-haired girl returned to her seat and now she retrieved the camera that had activated the metal detector at Malic airport. She slung it around her neck and crouched again to assemble the two remaining shot pistols; carrying them and the cartridge belts, she hurried forward to the flight deck where the big blonde kissed her delightedly and unashamedly on the lips.

"Karen, Liebling, you were wonderful. "And then she took the camera from her and slung it around her own neck.

"This-" she explained to the captain " is not what it appears to be. It is the remote radio detonator for the grenades in the fuselage." He nodded without replying, and with obvious relief Ingrid disarmed the grenade that she had carried for so long by replacing the safety pin. She handed it to the other girl.

"How much longer to -the coast?" she asked as she strapped and buckled the cartridge belt around her waist.

"Thirty-two minutes," said the flight engineer promptly, and Ingrid opened the breech of the pistol, checked the load and then snapped it closed again.

"You and Henri can stand down now," she told Karen.

"Try and sleep." The operation might last many days still, and exhaustion would be the most dangerous enemy they would have to contend with. It was for this reason alone that they had employed such a large force. From now on, except in an emergency, two of them would be on duty and two would be resting.

"You have done a very professional job," said the pilot, Cyril Watkins," so far."

"Thank you." Ingrid laughed, and over the back of his seat placed a comradely hand on his shoulder. "We have practised very hard for this day." Peter Stride dipped his lights three times as he raced down the long narrow alley that led to the gates of the compound without slowing the Rover, and the sentry swung the gate open just in time for him to roar through.

There were no floodlights, no bustling activity just the two aircraft standing together in the echoing cavern of the hangar.

The Lockheed Hercules seemed to fill the entire building, that had been built to accommodate the smaller bombers of World War II. The tall vertical fin of its epinage reached to within a few feet of the roof girders.

Beside it the Hawker Siddeley HS 125 executive jet seemed dainty and ineffectual. The differing origins of the machines emphasized that this unit was a co-operative venture between two nations.

This was underscored once more when Colin Noble hurried forward to meet Peter as he cut the Rover's engine and lights.

"A grand night for it, Peter. "There was no mistaking the drawl of mid-Western America, although Colin looked more like a successful used-car salesman than a colonel in the U.S. Marines. In the beginning

Peter had believed that this strict apportioning of material and manpower on equal national lines might weaken the effectiveness of Atlas. He no longer had those doubts.

Colin wore the nondescript blue overalls and cloth cap, both embroidered with the legend "THOR COMMUNICATIONS" which deliberately made him look more of a technician than a soldier.

Colin was Peter's second in command. They had known each other only the six weeks since Peter had assumed command of Thor but after a short period of mutual wariness the two men had formed one of those fast bonds of liking and mutual respect.

Colin was of medium height, but none the less a big man. First glance might have given the impression that he was fat, for his body had a certain toad-like spread to it.

There was no fat upon his frame, however, it was all muscle and bone. He had boxed heavyweight for Princeton and the marines, and his nose above the wide laughing mouth had been broken just below the bridge, it was lumped and twisted slightly.

Colin cultivated the boisterous bluff manner of a career athlete, but his eyes were the colour of burned toffee and were brightly intelligent and all-seeing. He was tough and leery as an old alley cat. It was not easy to earn the respect of Peter Stride. Colin had done so in under six weeks.

He stood now between the two aircraft, while his men went about their Alpha preparation with quick understated efficiency.

Both aircraft were painted in commercial airline style, blue and white and gold, with a stylized portrait of the Thunder God on the tail fin and the "THOR COMMUNICATIONS" title down the fuselage. They could land at any airport in the world without causing undue comment.

"What is the buzz, Colin?" Peter Stride demanded as he slammed the Rover's door and hurried to meet the American. It had taken him some time and conscious effort to adapt his language and mode of address to fit in with his new second-in-command. He had learned very early not to expect that, merely because he was the youngest major general in the British army, Colonel Colin Noble was going to call him "Sir" every time he spoke.

"Missing aircraft." It could have been a train, an embassy, even an ocean liner, Peter realized. "British Airways. For Chrissake let's get out of the cold." The wind was flapping the legs of Colin's overalls and tugging at his sleeves.

"Where?"

"Indian Ocean."

"Are we set for Bravo?" Peter asked as they climbed into his command plane.

"All set." The interior of the Hawker had been restyled to make it a compact headquarters and communications centre.

There was comfortable seating for four officers directly behind the flight deck. Then the two electronic engineers and their equipment occupied a separate rear compartment, beyond which were the small toilet and galley in the extreme rear.

One of the technicians looked through the communicating door as Peter stooped into the cabin. "Good evening, General Stride we have a direct link with Atlas established."

"Put him on the screen," he ordered as he sank into the padded leather of his chair behind the small working desk.

There was a single fourteen-inch main television screen in the panel directly facing Peter, and above it four smaller six-inch screens for conference communication. The main screen came alive, and the image of the big noble leonine head firmed.

"Good afternoon, Peter." The smile was warm, charismatic, compelling.

"Good evening, sir." And Dr. Kingston Parker tilted his head slightly to acknowledge the reference to the time difference between Washington and England.

"Right at this moment we are in the dark completely. All we have is that BA 070 with four hundred and one passengers and sixteen crew on a flight from Malic to Nairobi has not reported for thirty-two minutes."

Parker was Chairman of the Intelligence Oversight Board, among other duties, and he reported directly to the President of the United States in that capacity. He was the President's personal and trusted friend.

They had been in the same class at Annapolis, both of them had graduated in the top twenty but, unlike the President, Parker had gone directly into government.

Parker was an artist, a talented musician, the author of four scholarly works of philosophy and politics, and a grand master of chess. A man of overwhelming presence, of vast humanity and towering intelligence. Yet also he was a secret man, avoiding the glaring scrutiny of the media, hiding his ambitions, if ambitions he had although the presidency of the United States would not be an impossible dream to such a man only taking up with rare skill and strength any burden that was thrust upon him.

Peter Stride had met him personally on half a dozen occasions since being seconded to Thor. He had spent a weekend with Parker at his New York home, and his respect for the man had become boundless.

Peter realized that he was the perfect head for such a complex concept as Atlas: it needed the philosopher's tempering influence over trained soldiers, it needed the tact and charisma of the diplomat to deal directly with the heads of two governments, and it needed that steely intellect to make the ultimate decision that could involve hundreds of innocent lives and incur fearsome political consequences.

Now swiftly and incisively he told Peter what little they knew of Flight 070 and what search and rescue routine was already in force, before going on, "Without being alarmist, this does seem to be the perfect target. The flight carries most of the world's leading surgeons, and the convention was public knowledge eighteen months ago.

Doctors have the necessary image to appeal to public sentiment and their nationalities are nicely mixed American, British, French, Scandinavian, German, Italian, three of those countries have notoriously soft records with militant activity. It's a British aircraft, and the final destination would probably have been chosen to further complicate the issue and inhibit any counter-action." Parker paused, and a small crease of worry appeared for a moment in the broad smooth forehead.

"I have put Mercury on condition Alpha as well if this M is a strike the final destination could just as easily be eastwards of the aircraft's last reported position." Atlas's offensive arm comprised three identical units.

Thor would be used only in Europe or Africa. Mercury was based on the American Naval base in Indonesia and covered Asia and Australasia, while Diana was in Washin ton itself and ready for counteraction in either of the American continents.

"I have Tanner of Mercury on the other relay now. I will be back to you in a few seconds, Peter."

"Very well, sir." The screen went blank, and in the chair beside him Colin Noble lit one of his expensive

Dutch cheroots and crossed his ankles on the desk in front of him.

"Seems the great god Thor came down to earth for a little poon tang When he'd finished pleasuring one of the vestal virgins he thought he'd let her know the honour she'd been given. "I'm Thor," he told her. ""Tho she agreed, "but it wath loth of fun."" Peter shook his head sorrowfully. "That's funny?" he asked.

"Helps to while away the time." Colin glanced at his wristwatch.

"If this is another false alarm, it's going to make it thirteen straight." He yawned. There was nothing to do.

It had all been done before. Everything was in the ultimate state of readiness. In the huge Hercules transport, every item of a comprehensive arsenal of equipment was ready for instant use. The thirty highly trained soldiers were embarked. The flight crews of both aircraft were at their stations, the communications technicians had set up their links with satellites and through them to the available fligence computers in Washington and London. It remained only to wait the greater part of a soldier's life was spent waiting, but Peter had never become hardened to it. It helped now to have the companionship of Colin Noble.

In a life spent in the company of many men it was difficult to form close relationships. Here in the smaller closed ranks of Thor in shared endeavour they had achieved that and become friends, and their conversation was relaxed and desultory, moving casually from subject to subject, but without relaxing the undercurrent of alertness that gripped both men.

At one stage Kingston Parker came on the screen again to tell them that search and rescue aircraft had found no indications at the last reported position of 070, and that a photographic run by the "Big Bird" reconnaissance satellite had been made over the same area, but that film would not be ready for appraisal for another fourteen hours.

Speedbird 070 was now one hour six minutes past "operations normal" and suddenly Peter remembered Melissa-Jane. He asked communications for a telephone line and dialled the cottage. There was no reply, so the driver would have collected her already. He hung up and rang Cynthia in Cambridge.

"Damn it, Peter. This really is most inconsiderate of you."

Freshly aroused from sleep, her voice was petulant, immediately awakening only Antipathies. "Melissa has been looking forward to this-"

"Yes, I know, and so have U and George and I had arranged-"

George, her new husband, was a Political History don; despite himself Peter quite liked the man. He had been very good to Melissa-Jane.

"The exigencies of the service." Peter cut in lightly and her voice took on a bitter edge.

"How often I had to listen to that I hoped never to hear it again." They were on the same futile old treadmill and he had to stop it.

"Look, Cynthia. Melissa is on her way" In front of him the big television screen lit and Kingston Parker's eyes were dark with regret, as though he mourned for all mankind.

"I have to go," Peter told the woman whom once he had loved, and broke the connection, leaning forward attentively towards the image on the screen.

"The South African radar de fences have painted an unidentified target approaching their airspace," Kingston Parker told him. "Its speed and position correspond with those of 070. They have scrambled a Mirage flight to intercept but in the meantime I'm assuming that it's a militant strike and we'll go immediately to condition Bravo, if you please, Peter."

"We are on our way, sir." And beside him Colin Noble took his feet off the desk and thumped them together onto the floor. The cheroot was still clamped between his teeth.

The target was live and the pilot of the leading Mirage F1 interceptor had his flight computer in "attack" mode and all his weaponry missiles and cannon were armed. The computer gave him a time to intercept of thirty-three seconds, and the target's heading was constant at 210" magnetic and its ground speed at 483 knots.

Ahead of him the dawn was rising in wildly theatrical display.

Avalanches of silver and pink cloud tumbled down the sky, and the sun, still below the horizon, flung long lances of golden light across the heavens. The pilot leaned forward against his shoulder straps and lifted the Polaroid visor of his helmet with one gloved hand, straining ahead for the first glimpse of the target.

His trained gunfighter's eye picked out the dark speck against the distracting background of cloud and sunlight and he made an almost imperceptible movement of the controls to avoid the direct head-on approach to the target.

The speck swelled in size with disturbing rapidity as they converged at combined speeds of nearly fifteen hundred miles per hour, and at the instant he was certain of his identification the leader took his flight, still in a tight "finger five" , up into a vertical climb from which they rolled out neatly five thousand feet above the target and on the same heading, immediately reducing power to conform in speed to the big aircraft far below.

"Cheetah, this is Diamond leader we are visual, and target is a Boeing 747 bearing British Airways markings."

"Diamond Leader, this is Cheetah, conform to target, maintain five thousand feet separation and avoid any threatening attitudes. Report again in sixty seconds."

Major-General Peter Stride's executive jet was arrowing southwards and leaving its enormous protege lumbering ponderously along in its wake.

Every minute increased the distance between the two aircraft, and by the time they reached their ultimate destination wherever that might be there would probably be a thousand miles or more separating them.

However, the big Hercules's slow speed became a virtue when the need arose to take its heavy load of men and equipment into short unsurfaced strips in unlikely corners of the earth perhaps in the "hot and high" conditions that a pilot most dreads.

It was the Hawker's job to get Peter Stride to the scene of terrorist activity as swiftly as possible, and the general's job once there to stall and procrastinate and bargain until Colin Noble's assault team caught up with him.

The two men were still in contact, however, and the small central television screen in front of Peter was permanently lit with a view of the interior of the Hercules's main hold. When he lifted his head from his work, Peter Stride could see a picture of his troops, all in the casual Thor overalls, lounging or sprawled in abandoned attitudes of relaxation down the central aisle of the Hercules. They also were veterans at the hard game of waiting, while in the foreground Colin Noble sat at his small work desk, going through the voluminous check list for "condition Charlie" which was the next state of alert when terrorist activity was confirmed.

Watching Colin Noble at work, Peter Stride found a moment to ponder once again the enormous cost of maintaining Atlas, most of it paid by the United States intelligence budget, and the obstacles and resistance that had been overcome to launch the project in the first place. Only the success of the Israelis at Entebbe and of the Germans at Mogadishu had made it possible, but there was still violent opposition in both countries to maintaining a dual national counteraction force.

With a preliminary click and hum the central screen of Peter's communications console came alive and Dr. Parker spoke before his image had properly hardened.

"I'm afraid it's condition Charlie, Peter," he said softly, and Peter was aware of the rush of his blood through his veins. It was natural for a soldier whose entire life had been spent in training for a special moment in time to welcome the arrival of that moment yet he found contempt for himself in that emotion; no sane man should anticipate violence and death, and all the misery and suffering which attended them.

the South Africans have intercepted and identified 070. It entered their airspace forty-five seconds ago."

"Radio contact?" Peter asked.

"No." Parker shook his great head. "It is declining contact, and we must assume that it is under the control of militants so now I'm going to be at this desk until this thing is settled." Kingston Parker never used the emotive word terrorist" and he did not like to hear it from his subordinates either.

"Never hate your adversary blindly," he had told Peter once.

"llnderstand his motives, recognize and respect his strengths and you will be better prepared to meet him."

"What co-operation can we expect?" Peter asked.

"All African States that we have so far been able to contact have offered full co-operation, including overflight, landing and refuelling facilities and the South Africans are being helpful. I have spoken to their defence minister and he has offered the fullest possible co-operation. They will refuse 070 landing clearance, of course, and I anticipate that it will have to go on to one of the black states farther north, which is probably the militants" intention anyway. I think you know my views about South Africa but in this instance I must say they are being very good." Parker brought into the television shot a black briar pipe with a big round bowl, and began to stuff it with tobacco.

His hands were large, like the rest of his body, but the fingers were long and sup pleas those of a pianist which of course he was.

And Peter remembered the scented smell of the tobacco he smoked. Even though he was a non-smoker, Peter had not found-the odour offensive.

Both men were silent, deep in thought, Parker frowning slightly as he seemed to concentrate on his pipe. Then he sighed and looked up again.

"All right, Peter. Let's hear what you have." Peter shuffled through the notes he had been making. "I have prepared four tentative scenarios and our responses to each, sir. The most important consideration is whether this is a strike "A Vallemande" or "A l'italienne'!--" Parker nodded, listening; although this was well-travelled ground they must go over it again. A strike in the Italian fashion was the easier to resolve, a straight demand for cash.

The German tradition involved release of prisoners, social and political demands that crossed national boundaries.

They worked on for another hour before they were interrupted again.

"Good God." It was a measure of Kingston Parker's astonishment that he used such strong language. "We have a new development here." It was only when 070 joined the eastern airway and began to initiate a standard approach and let down, without however obtaining air traffic control clearance, that South African Air force Command suddenly realized what was about to happen.

Immediately emergency silence was imposed on all the aviation frequencies while the approaching flight was bombarded by urgent commands to immediately vacate national airspace. There was no response whatsoever, and one hundred and fifty nautical miles out from Jan Smuts International Airport the Boeing reduced power and commenced a sedate descent to enter controlled airspace.

"British Airways 070 this is Jan Smuts Control, you are expressly refused clearance to join the circuit. Do you read me, 070?"

"British Airways 070 this is Air force Command. You are warned that you are in violation of national airspace. You are ordered to climb immediately to thirty thousand feet and turn on course for Nairobi." The Boeing was a hundred nautical miles out and descending through fifteen thousand feet.

"Diamond Leader, this is Cheetah. Take the target under command and enforce departure clearance."

The long sleek aircraft in its mottled green and brown battle camouflage dropped like a dart, rapidly overhauling the huge multi-engined giant, diving down just behind the tailplane and then pulling up steeply in front of the gaily painted red, white and blue nose.

Skilfully the Mirage pilot stationed his nimble little machine one hundred feet ahead of the Boeing and rocked his wings in the Follow me" command.

The Boeing sailed on serenely as though it had not seen or understood. The Mirage pilot nudged his throttles and the gap between the two aircraft narrowed down to fifty feet. Again he rocked his wings and began a steady rate-one turn onto the northerly heading ordered by Cheetah.

The Boeing held rock steady on its standard approach towards Johannesburg, forcing the Mirage leader to abandon his attempts to lead her away.

He edged back alongside, keeping just above the jet-blast of the Boeing's port engines until he was level with the cockpit and could stare across a gap of merely fifty feet.

"Cheetah, this is Diamond One. I have a good view into target's flight deck. There is a fourth person in the cockpit.

It's a woman. She appears to be armed with a machine pistol." The faces of the two pilots were white as bone as they turned to watch the interceptor. The woman leaned over the back of the left-hand seat, and lifted the clumsy black weapon in an ironic salute. She smiled and the

Mirage pilot was close enough to se how white her teeth were.

a young woman, blonde hair, the Mirage pilot reported. "Pretty very pretty."

"Diamond One, this is Cheetah.

Position for head-on attack." The Mirage thundered instantly ahead and climbed away swiftly, the other four aircraft of the flight sweeping in to resume their tight "finger five" formation as they went out in a wide turn ahead of the Boeing.

"Cheetah. We are in position for a head-on attack."

"Diamond Flight. Simulate. Attack in line astern. Fivesecond intervals.

Minimum separation. Do not, I say again, do not open fire. This is a simulated attack. I say again, this is a simulated attack."

"Diamond One understands simulated attack." And the Mirage F.1 winged over and dived, its speed rocketing around the mach scale, booming through the sonic barrier in a fearsomely aggressive display.

Cyril Watkins saw him coming from seven miles ahead.

"Jesus," he shouted. "This is real," and he lunged forward to take manual control of the Boeing, to pull her off the automatic approach that the electronic flight director was performing.

"Hold her steady." Ingrid raised her voice for the first time.

"Hold it." She swung the gaping double muzzles of the shot pistol onto the flight engineer. "We don't need a navigator now." The captain froze, and the Mirage howled down on them, seemed to grow until it filled the whole view through the windshield ahead. At the last possible instant of time the nose lifted slightly and it flashed only feet overhead, but the supersonic turbulence of its passage struck and tossed even that huge machine like a piece of thistledown.

"Here comes another, "Cyril Watkins shouted.

"I mean it." Ingrid pressed the muzzles so fiercely into the back of the flight engineer's neck that his forehead struck the edge of his computer console, and there was the quick bright rose of blood on the pale skin.

The jet blasts struck the Boeing one after the other as the Mirages attacked. Ingrid clutched wildly for support with her free hand, but kept the pistol jammed into the navigator's neck. "I mean it," she kept shouting. "I'll kill him and they could hear the screams of the passengers even through the bulkhead of the flight deck.

Then the last Mirage was passed and gone and the Boeing's flight director recovered from the battering of close separation and quickly realigned the aircraft on the radio navigational beacons of Jan Smuts Airport.

"They won't buzz us again." Ingrid stepped back from the flight engineer, allowing him to lift his head and wipe away the trickle of blood on the sleeve of his shirt. "They can't come again. We are into controlled airspace." She pointed ahead. "Look!" The Boeing was down to five thousand feet, but the horizon was obscured by the haze of smog and summer heat.

To the right rose the smooth silhouette of the Kempton Park Power Station cooling towers and, closer at hand, the poisonous yellow tablelands of the mine dumps squatted on the flat and featureless plain of the African high veld Around them human habitation was so dense that hundreds of windowpanes caught the early morning sun and glittered like beacons.

Closer still was the long, straight, blue streak of the main runway of Jan Smuts Airport.

"Take her straight in on runway 21 ingrid ordered.

"We can't,-"

"Do it," snapped the girl. "Air traffic control will have cleared the circuit. They can't stop us."

"Yes, they can," Cyril Watkins answered. "Just take a look at the runway apron." They were close enough now to count five fuel tenders, to see the Shell company insignia on the tanks.

"They are going to block the runway." With the tankers were five brilliant red vehicles of the fire service and two big white ambulances. They bumped wildly over the grass verge of the runway and then, one after the other, tenders and fire control vehicles and ambulances parked at intervals of a few hundred yards down the white-painted centre line of the runway.

"We can't land," said the captain.

"Take her off automatic and fly her in by hand." The girl's voice was different, hard, cruel.

The Boeing was sinking through a thousand feet, lined up for runway 21 and directly ahead the revolving red beacons on top of the fire vehicles seemed to flash a direct challenge.

"I can't pile into them," Cyril Watkins decided, and there was no longer hesitation nor doubt in his tone. "I'm going to overshoot and get out of here."

"Land on the grass," the girl shrieked. "There is open grass on the left of the runway put her down there." But Cyril Watkins had leaned forward in his seat and rammed the bank of throttles forward. The engines howled and the Boeing surged into a nose-high climb.

The young flight engineer had swivelled his stool and was staring ahead through the windscreen. His whole body was rigid, his expression intense and the smear of blood across his forehead was in vivid contrast to the pallor of his skin.

With his right hand he gripped the edge of his desk, and the knuckles of his fist were white and shiny as eggshell.

Without seeming to move the blonde girl had pinned the wrist of that rigid right hand, pressing the muzzles of the pistol into it.

There was a crash of sound, so violent in the confines of the cabin that it seemed to beat in their eardrums. The weapon kicked up as high as the girl's golden head and there was the immediate acrid stench of burned cordite.

The flight engineer stared down incredulously at the desk top.

There was a hole blown through the metal as big as a teacup, and the edges were jagged with bright bare metal.

The blast of shot had amputated his hand cleanly at the wrist.

The severed member had been thrown forward into the space between the pilots" seats, with the shattered bone protruding from the mangled meat. It twitched like a crushed and maimed insect.

"Land," said the girl. "Land or the next shot is through his head."

"You bloody monster," shouted Cyril Watkins, staring at the severed hand.

"Land or you will be responsible for this man's life." The flight engineer clutched the stump of his arm against his belly and doubled over it silently, his face contorted by the shock.

Cyril Watkins tore his stricken gaze from the severed hand and looked ahead once more. There was wide open grass between the runway markers and the narrow taxiway.

The grass had been mown knee-high, and he knew the ground beneath it would be fairly smooth.

Cyril's hand on the throttle bank pulled back smoothly, almost of its own volition, the engine thunder died away and the nose dropped again.

He held his approach aligned with the main runway until he was well in over the threshold lights. He did not want to alert the drivers of the blocking vehicles to his intention while they still had time to counter it.

"You murderous bitch," he said under his breath. "You filthy murderous bitch." He banked the Boeing steeply, realigned it with the long strip of open grass and cut the throttles completely, bringing her in nose-high and just a fraction above the stall, flaring out deliberately low and banging the Boeing down into the grass for positive touch down.

The huge machine settled to the rough strip, jolting and lurching wildly as Cyril Watkins fought the rudders to keep them lined up, holding his nose wheel off with the control yoke, while his co-pilot threw all her giant engines into reverse thrust and trod firmly down on the main landing gear brakes.

The fire engines and fuel tankers flashed past the starboard wing tip. The startled faces of their crews seemed very close and white then 070 was past, her speed bleeding off sharply so her nose wheel dropped and she rocked and swayed gradually to a dead stop just short of the brick building which housed the approach and landing beacons, and the main radar installations.

It was 7.25 a.m. local time and Speedbird 070 was down.

"Well, they are down," intoned Kingston Parker.

"And you can well understand the extreme efforts that were made to prevent them. Their choice of final destination settles one of your queries, Peter."

" Peter nodded. "It's got to be political.

I agree, sir."

"And you and I must now face in dreadful reality what we have discussed only in lofty theory-" Parker held a taper to his pipe and puffed twice before going on.

Morally justifiable militancy."

"Again we have to differ, sir."

Peter cut in swiftly. "There is no such thing."

"Is there not?" Parker asked, shaking his head. "What of the German officers killed in the streets of Paris by the French resistance?"

"That was war," Peter exclaimed.

"Perhaps the group that seized 070 believes that they are at war "With innocent victims?" Peter shot back.

"The Haganah took innocent victims yet what they were fighting for was right and just." As an Englishman, Dr. Parker you cannot expect me to condone the murder of British women and children." Peter had stiffened in his chair.

"No," Parker agreed. "So let us not speak of the MauMau in Kenya, nor of present-day Ireland then but what of the French Revolution or the spreading of the Catholic faith by the most terrible persecution and tortures yet devised by man were those not morally justifiable militancy?"

"I would prefer to call it understandable but reprehensible. Terrorism in any form can never be morally justifiable."

Provoked himself, Peter used the word deliberately to provoke and saw the small lift of Parker's thick bushy eyebrows.

"There is terrorism from above as well as from below." Parker picked up the word and used it deliberately. "If you define terrorism as extreme physical or physiological coercion used to induce others to submit to the will of the terrorist there is the legal terror threat of the gallows, the religious terror threat of hell fire, the paternal terror threat of the cane are those more morally justifiable than the aspiration of the weak, the poor, the politically oppressed, the powerless victims of an unjust society? Is their scream of protest to be strangled-" Peter shifted uncomfortably in his chair. "Protest outside the law-" "Laws are made by man, almost always by the rich and the powerful laws are changed by men, usually only after militant action. The women's suffragette movement, the civil rights campaign in this country-" Parker broke off and chuckled. "I'm sorry, Peter.

Sometimes I confuse myself.

It's often more difficult to be a liberal than it is to be a tyrant. At least the tyrant seldom has doubts." Parker lay back in his chair, a dismissive gesture. "I propose to leave you in peace for an hour or two now. You will want to develop your plans in line with the new developments. But I personally have no doubts now that we are dealing with politically motivated militants, and not merely a gang of old-fashioned kidnappers after a fast buck. Of one or " her thing I am certain: before we see this one through we will be forced to examine our own consciences very closely."

Make the second right," said Ingrid quietly, and the Boeing swung off the grass onto the taxiway. There seemed to be no damage to her landing gear, but now that she had left her natural element, the aircraft had lost grace and beauty and became lumbering and ungainly.

The girl had never been on the flight deck of a grounded jumbo before, and the height was impressive. It gave her a feeling of detachment, of being invulnerable.

"Now left again," she instructed, and the Boeing turned away from the main airport building towards the southern end of the runway. The observation deck of the airport's flat roof was already lined with hundreds of curious spectators, but all activity on the apron was suspended. The waiting machines and tenders were deserted, not a single human figure on the tarmac.

"Park there." She pointed ahead to an open area four hundred yards from the nearest building, midway between the terminal and the cluster of service hangars and the main fuel depot. "Stop on the intersection." Grimly silent, Cyril Watkins did as he was ordered, and then turned in his seat.

"I must call an ambulance to get him off." The co-pilot and a stewardess had the flight engineer stretched out on the galley floor, just beyond the door to the flight deck. They were using linen table napkins to bind up the arm and try and staunch the bleeding. The stench of cordite still lingered and mingled with the taint of fresh blood.

"Nobody leaves this aircraft." The girl shook her head.

"He knows too much about us already." My God, woman. He needs medical attention."

"There are three hundred doctors aboard-" she pointed out indifferently. "The best in the world. Two of them may come forward and attend to him." She perched sideways on the flight engineer's blood-splattered desk, and thumbed the internal microphone.

Cyril Watkins noticed even in his outrage that it needed only a single demonstration and Ingrid was able to work the complicated communications equipment. She was bright and very well trained.

"Ladies and gentlemen, we have landed at Johannesburg Airport. We will be here for a long time perhaps days, even weeks. All our patience will be tried, so I must warn you that any disobedience will be most severely dealt with.

Already one attempt at resistance has been made and in consequence a member of the crew has been shot and gravely wounded. He may die of this wound. We do not want a repetition of this incident.

However, I must again warn you that my officers and I will not hesitate to shoot again, or even to detonate the explosives above your heads if the need arises." She paused and watched a moment as two selected doctors came forward and knelt on each side of the flight engineer. He was shaking like a fever victim with shock, his white shirt splashed and daubed with blood. Her expression showed no remorse, no real concern, and her voice was calm and light as shement on.

"Two of my officers will now pass down the aisles and they will collect your passports from you. Please have these documents ready."

Her eyes flicked sideways, as movement caught her eye.

From beyond the service hangars a line of four armoured cars emerged in line ahead. They were the locally manufactured version of the French Panhard with heavily lugged tall tyres, a raked turret and the disproportionately long barrels of the cannons trained forward.

The armoured vehicles circled cautiously and parked three hundred yards out, at the four points wing tips, tail and nose around the aircraft, with the long cannon trained upon her.

The girl watched them disdainfully until one of the doctors pushed himself in front of her. He was a short, chubby little man, balding but brave.

"This man must be taken to a hospital immediately."

"That is out of the question."

"I insist. His life is in danger."

"All our lives are in danger, doctor." She paused and let that make its effect. "Draw up a list of your requirements. I will see that you get them." They have been down for sixteen hours now and the only contact has been a request for medical supplies and for a power link-up to the electrical mains." Kingston Parker had removed his jacket and loosened the knot of his tie, but was showing no other ill effects of his vigil.

Peter Stride nodded at the image on the screen. "What have your medics made of the supplies? "he asked.

"Looks like a gunshot casualty. Whole blood type AB Positive, that's rare but one of the crew is cross-matched AB Positive on his service record. Ten lit res of plasmalyte B, a blood-giving set and syringes, morphine and intravenous penicillin, tetanus toxoid all the equipment needed to treat massive physical trauma."

"And they are on mains power?" Peter asked.

"Yes, four hundred people would have suffocated by now without the air-conditioning. The airport authority has laid a cable and plugged it into the external socket. All the aircraft's support system even the galley heating will be gfully functional."

"So we will be able to throw the switch on them at any time." Peter made a note on the pad in front of him. "But no demands yet? No negotiator called for?"

"No, nothing. They seem fully aware of the techniques of bargaining in this type of situation unlike our friends, the host country. I am afraid we are having a great deal of trouble with the Wyatt Earp mentality-"

Parker paused.

"I'm sorry, Wyatt Earp was one of our frontier marshals-"

"I saw the movie, and read the book, Peter answered tartly.

"Well, the South Africans are itching to storm the aircraft, and both our ambassador and yours are hard pressed to restrain them. They are all set to kick the doors of the saloon open and rush in with six-guns blazing. They must also have seen the movie." Peter felt the crawl of horror down his spine. "That would be a certain disaster," he said quickly. "These people are running a tight operation."

"You don't have to convince me," Parker agreed. "What is your flying time to Jan Smuts now?"

"We crossed the Zambesi River seven minutes ago." Peter glanced sideways through the perspex bubble window, but the ground was obscured by haze and cumulus cloud. "We have another two hours ten minutes to fly but my support section is three hours forty behind us."

"All right, Peter. I will get back onto them. The South African Government convened a full cabinet meeting, and both our ambassadors are sitting in as observers and advisers. I think I am going to be obliged to tell them about the existence of Atlas." He paused a moment.

"Here at last we are seeing Atlas justified, Peter. A single unit, cutting across all national considerations, able -to act swiftly and independently. I think you should know that I have already obtained the agreement of the President and of your Prime Minister to condition Delta at my discretion." Condition Delta was the kill decision.

but again I emphasize that I will implement Delta only as a last possible resort. I want to hear and consider the demands first, and in that respect we are open to negotiation fully open-" Parker went on speaking, and Peter Stride shifted slightly, dropping his chin into the cup of his hand to hide his irritation. They were into an area of dispute now and once again Peter had to voice disagreement.

"Every time you let a militant walk away from a strike you immediately create the conditions for further strikes, to free the captive."

"I have the clearance for condition Delta," Parker reiterated with a trace of acid in his tone now, "but I am making it clear that it will be used only with the greatest discretion.

We are not an assassination unit, General Stride." Parker nodded to an assistant off-screen. "I am going through to the South Africans now to explain Atlas." The image receded into darkness.

Peter Stride leapt up abruptly and tried to pace the narrow aisle between the seats, but there was insufficient headroom for his tall frame and he flung himself angrily into the seat again.

Kingston Parker stood up from his communications desk in the outer office of his suite in the west wing of the Pentagon. The two communications technicians scurried out of his way and his personal secretary opened the door to his inner office.

He moved with peculiar grace for such a large man, and there was no excess weight on his frame, his big heavy bones lean of flesh. His clothes were of fine cloth, well cut the best that Fifth Avenue could offer but they were worn almost to the point of shoddiness, the button-down collar slightly frayed, the Italian shoes scuffed at the toes as though material trappings counted not at all with him.

Nevertheless he wore them with a certain unconscious panache, and he looked ten years younger than his fifty.

only a few silver strands in the thick bushy mane of hair.

The inner office was Spartan in its furnishings, all of it U.S. Government issue, utilitarian and impersonal, only the books that filled every shelf and the grand piano were his own. The piano was a

Bechstein grand and much too large for the room. Parker ran his right hand lightly across the keyboard as he passed it but he went on to the desk.

He dropped into the swivel chair and shuffled through the dozen intelligence folders on his desk. Each of them contained the latest computer print-outs that he had requested. There were personal histories, appraisals, and character studies of all the personalities that had so far become involved in the taking of Speedbird 070.

Both the ambassadors their pink files signified the best security ratings, and were marked "Heads of Departments only'. Four other files in lower echelon green were devoted to the South African Government personalities with decision-making capabilities in an emergency. The thickest file was that of the South African Prime Minister and once again Parker noted wryly that the man had been imprisoned by the pro-British government of General Jan Smuts during World War II as a militant opponent of his country's involvement in that war. He wondered just how much sympathy he would have for other militants now.

There were files for the South African Ministers of Defence and of justice, and still slimmer green files for the Commissioner of Police and for the Assistant Commissioner who had been given the responsibility of handling the emergency. Of them all only the Prime Minister emerged as a distinct personality a powerful bulldog figure, not a man easily influenced or dissuaded, and instinctively Kingston Parker recognized that ultimate authority rested here.

There was one other pink file at the bottom of the considerable stack, so well handled that the cardboard cover was splitting at the hinge. The original print-out in this file had been requisitioned two years previously, with quarterly up-dates since that time.

"STRIDE PETER CHARLES" it was headed and reclassified "Head of Atlas only'.

A Kingston Parker could probably have recited its contents by heart but he untied the ribbons now, and opened it in his lap.

Puffing deliberately at his pipe he began to turn slowly through the loose pages.

There were the bare bones of the subject's life. Born 1939, one of twin war-time babies of a military family, his father killed in action three years later when the armoured brigade of guards he commanded was overrun by one of Erwin Rommel's devastating drives across the deserts of North Africa. The elder twin brother had inherited the baronetcy and Peter followed the well-travelled family course, Harrow and Sandhurst, where he must have disconcerted the family by his academic brilliance and his reluctance to participate in team sports preferring the loner activities of golf and tennis and long-distance running.

Kingston Parker pondered that a moment. They were pointers to the man's character that had disconcerted him as well. Parker had the intellectual's generalized contempt for the military, and he would have preferred a man who conformed more closely to his ideal of the brass-headed soldier.

Yet when the young Stride had entered his father's regiment, it seemed that the exceptional intelligence had been diverted into conventional channels and the preference for independent thought and action held in check, if not put aside completely until his regiment was sent to Cyprus at the height of the unrest in that country. Within a week of arrival the young Stride had been seconded, with his commanding officer's enthusiastic approval, to central army intelligence. Perhaps the commanding officer had already become aware of the problems involved in harbouring a wonder-boy in the tradition-bound portals of his officers" mess.

For once the military had made a logical, if not an outright brilliant, choice. Stride in the sixteen years since then had not made a single mistake, apart from the marriage which had ended in divorce within two years. Had he remained with his regiment that might have affected his career but since Cyprus Stride's progress had been as unconventional and meteoric as his brain.

In a dozen different and difficult assignments since then, he had honed his gifts and developed new talents; rising against the trend of reduced British expenditure on defence, he had reached staff rank before thirty years of age.

At NATO Headquarters he had made powerful friends and admirers on both sides of the Atlantic, and at the end of his three-year term in Brussels he had been promoted to major-general and been transferred to head British Intelligence in Ireland, bringing his own particular dedication and flair to the job.

A great deal of the credit for containing the sweep of Irish terrorism through Britain was his, and his in-depth study of the urban guerrilla and the mind of the militant, although classified depart mentally was probably the definitive work on the subject.

The Atlas concept was first proposed in this study, and so it was that Stride had been on the short list to head the project. It seemed certain the appointment would be made the Americans had been impressed with his study and his friends from NATO had not forgotten him. His appointment was approved in principle. Then at the last moment there had developed sudden and intense opposition to the appointment of a professional soldier to head such a sensitive agency.

The opposition had come from both Whitehall and Washington simultaneously, and had prevailed.

Kingston Parker knocked out his pipe, and carried the file across the room and laid it open on the music rack of the piano. He seated himself at the keyboard and, still M studying the printout sheets, began to play.

The stream of music, the lovely ethereal strains of Liszt, did not interrupt his thoughts but seemed to buoy them brightly upwards.

Parker had not wanted Stride, had considered from the very first that he was dangerous, sensing in him ambitions and motivations which would be difficult to control. Parker would have preferred his own nominees Tanner, who now commanded the Mercury arm of Atlas, or Colin Noble and had expected that Stride would have declined a command so far below his capability.

However, Stride had accepted the lesser appointment and headed Thor. Parker suspected that there was unusual motivation in this, and had made every effort to study the man at first hand. On five separate occasions he had ordered Stride to Washington, and focused upon him the full strength of his charisma and personality. He had even invited him to stay with him in his New York home, spending many hours with him in deep far-ranging discussions from which he had developed a prudent respect for the man's mind, but had been able to reach no firm conclusions as to his future in Atlas.

Parker turned a page of the character appraisal. When he looked for the weakness in an opponent, Parker had long ago learned to start at the groin. With this man there was no evidence of any unnatural sexual leanings. Certainly he was not homosexual, if anything too much the opposite.

There had been at least a dozen significant liaisons with the opposite sex since his divorce. However, all of these had been discreet and dignified. Although three of the ladies had been married, none of them were the wives of his subordinates in the armed services, nor of brother officers or of men who might be able to adversely affect his career.

The women he chose all had certain qualities in common they all tended to be tall, intelligent and successful. One was a journalist who had her own syndicated column, another was a former fashion model who now designed and marketed her clothes through her own prestigious outlets in London and on the continent. Then there was an actress who was a leading female member of the Royal Shakespeare Company Parker skimmed the list impatiently, for Parker himself had no sympathy nor patience with a man who succumbed to the dictates of his body.

Parker had trained himself to be totally celibate, channelling all his sexual energies into pursuits of the mind, while this man Stride, on the other hand, was not above conducting two or three of his liaisons concurrently.

Parker moved on to the second area of weakness. Stride's inheritance had been decimated by the punitive British death duties yet his private income even after savage aviation was still a little over twenty thousand pounds sterling a year, and when this was added to his salary and privileges as a general officer, it enabled him to live in good style. He could even indulge in the mild extravagance of collecting rare books and, Parker observed acidly, the greater extravagance of collecting rare ladies.

However, there was no trace of any illicit hoard no Swiss bank accounts, no deposits of gold bullion, no foreign properties, no shares in offshore companies held by nominees and Parker had searched diligently for them, for they would have indicated payments received, perhaps from foreign governments. A man like Stride had much to sell, at prices he could set himself but it seemed he had not done so.

Stride did not smoke; Parker removed the old black briar from his own mouth, regarded it affectionately for a moment. It was his one indulgence, a harmless one despite what the surgeon-general of the United States had determined, and he took the stem firmly between his teeth again.

Stride took alcohol in moderation and was considered knowledgeable on the subject of wine. He raced occasion ally, more as a social outing than as a serious punter, and the odd fifty pounds he could well afford. There was no evidence of other gambling. However, he did not hunt, nor did he shoot traditional pursuits of the English gentleman.

Perhaps he had moral objections to blood sports, Parker thought, though it seemed unlikely, for Stride was a superlative marksman with rifle, shotgun and pistol. He had represented Britain at the Munich Olympics as a pistol shot, winning a gold in the fifty metre class, and he spent at least an hour every day on the range.

Parker turned to the page of the print-out that gave the man's medical history. He must be superbly fit as well his body weight at the age of thirty-nine was one pound less than it had been at twenty-one, and he still trained like a front-line soldier. Parker noticed that he had logged sixteen parachute jumps the previous month.

Since joining Atlas he had no opportunity or time for golf, though when he was with NATO Stride had played off a handicap of three.

Parker closed the folder and played on softly, but neither the sensual polished feel of cool ivory beneath his fingertips nor the achingly lovely lilt of the music could dispel his sense of disquiet.

Exhaustive as the report was, yet it left unanswered questions, like why Stride had downgraded himself to accept the command of Thor he was not the kind of man who acted ill-advisedly. Yet the most haunting questions that nagged at Parker were just how strong were his qualities of resilience and independent thought, just how strongly was he driven by his ambitions and that penetrating intellect and just how great a threat such a man would present to the evolution of Atlas into its ultimate role.

"Doctor Parker, sir," his assistant knocked lightly and entered, "there are new developments." Parker sighed softly. "I'm coming," he said, and let the last sad and beautiful notes fall from his long, powerful fingers before he stood up.

The Hawker slid almost silently down the sky. The pilot had closed down power at five thousand feet and made his final approach without touching the throttles again. He was ten knots above the stall as he passed over the boundary fence and he touched down twenty feet beyond the chevron markings of the threshold of runway One five, instantly applying maximum safe braking. One five was the secondary cross-wind runway and the Hawker's roll-out was so short that every part of the approach and landing had been screened by the buildings of the main airport terminal from where Speedbird 070 stood at the southern intersection of the main taxiway.

The pilot swung the Hawker through 360" and backtracked sedately up runway 15, using just enough power to keep her rolling.

"Well done," grunted. Peter Stride, crouching behind the pilot's seat. He was almost certain that nobody aboard 070 had remarked their arrival.

"They've prepared a slot for us, with hook up to the electrical mains at the north-" Peter broke off as he saw the apron marshal waving them in with the bats, and beyond him a tight group of four men waiting. Three of them wore camouflage battle dress and the other the trim blue uniform, cap and gold insignia of a senior South African police officer.

The uniformed officer was the first to greet Peter as he came down the Hawker's fold-out air-stairs.

"Prinsloo." He shook hands. "Lieutenant-General." He ranked Peter, but it was a police, not a military appointment. He was a stocky man, with steel-rimmed spectacles, a little paunchy, and not less than fifty-five years of age. He had the rather heavy features, the fleshiness of jowl and lips, that Peter had noticed so often in Belgian and Dutch peasants during his NATO tour in the Netherlands.

A man of the earth, dour and conservative.

"Let me introduce Commandant Boonzaier." This was a military rank, equivalent to that of colonel, and he was a younger man, but with the same thick accent and his features cast in the same mould. A tall man, however, only an inch or so shorter than Peter but both of the South Africans were suspicious and resentful, and the reason was immediately apparent.

"I have been instructed to take my orders from you, General," and there was a subtle shift of position, the two officers ranging themselves beside Peter, but facing each other, and he was aware instantly that not all the hostility was directed at him. There had been friction between police and military already and the basic value of Atlas was underlined yet again.

A single clean-cut line of command and of responsibility was absolutely essential Peter's mind flicked back to the shoot-out at Larnaca Airport between Egyptian commandos and Cypriot national guardsmen, from which the hijackers of the grounded jet emerged unscathed while the airfield was littered with the burning wreckage of the Egyptian transport aircraft and dozens of dead and dying Cypriots and Egyptians.

The first principle of terrorist strategy was to strike at the point where national responsibilities were blurred. Atlas cut through that.

"Thank you." Peter accepted command without flaunting it. "My backup team will land in just over three hours" time. We will, of course, use force only as a last resort but if it comes to that, I will use exclusively Atlas personnel in any counter-strike. I would like to make that quite clear immediately." And he saw the line of the soldier's mouth harden with disappointment.

"My men are the elite "It's a British aircraft, most of the hostages are British or American nationals it's a political decision, Colonel. But I would value your help in other areas." Peter turned him aside tactfully.

"Firstly, I want you to suggest a position where I can place my surveillance equipment and then we will go over the ground together."

Peter had no difficulty selecting his forward observation post. The service manager's roomy, sparsely furnished office on the third floor of the terminal building overlooked the entire service area and the southern portion of the taxiway where the Boeing stood.

The windows had been left open when the offices were evacuated, so there was no need to change the external appearance of the room.

The overhang of the observation balcony on the floor above shaded the interior, and the office was deep enough to ensure that an observer out there in the bright glare of sunshine would not be able to see into the room, even with a powerful lens. The militants would expect surveillance from the glass control tower high above any deception, however trivial, was worth while.

The surveillance equipment was lightweight and compact, the television nm eras were neither of them bigger than a super 8 mm. home movie camera and a man could carry in one hand both of the aluminium extension tripods.

However, the cameras could zoom to 800 mm. focal length, and then repeated on the screens of the command console in the cabin of the Hawker, while the image was simultaneously stored on videotape.

The audio intensifier was more bulky, but no heavier. It had a four-foot dish antenna, with the sound collector in the centre.

The telescopic sight could aim the intensifier at a sound source with the accuracy of a sniper's rifle. It could focus on the lips of a human being at eight hundred yards" distance and clearly record normal conversation at that range, passing sound directly to the command console and at the same time storing it on the big magnetic tape spools.

Two of Peter's communications team were posted here, with a plentiful supply of coffee and doughnuts, and Peter, accompanied by the South African colonel and his staff, went up in the elevator to the glass house of the control tower.

from the air traffic control tower there was an unobstructed view across the airfield and over the apron and service areas around the terminal. The observation platform below the tower had been cleared of all but military personnel.

I have road blocks at all the main entrances to the airfield.

Only passengers with confirmed reservations and current tickets are being allowed through, and we are using only the northern section of the terminal for traffic." Peter nodded and turned to the senior controller. "What is the state of your traffic pattern?"

"We have refused clearance to all private flights, incoming and departing. All domestic scheduled flights have been re-routed to Lanseria and Germiston airports, and we are landing and despatching only international scheduled flights but the backlog has delayed departures by three hours."

"What separation are you observing from 070?" Peter asked.

"Fortunately the international departures terminal is the farthest from the aircraft, and we are not using the taxiways or the apron of the southern section. As you see, we have cleared the entire area except for those three S.A. Airways aircraft which are undergoing overhaul and servicing, there are no other aircraft within a thousand yards of 07O."

"I may have to freeze all traffic, if-" Peter paused, "or should I say, when we have an escalation."

"Very well, sir."

"In the meantime, you may continue as you are at present." Peter lifted his binoculars and once again very carefully examined the huge Boeing.

It stood in stately isolation, silent and seemingly abandoned. The bright, almost gaudy marking gave her a carnival air.

Red and blue and crisp sparkling white in the brilliant sunlight of the high veld She was parked fully broadside to the tower, and all her hatches and doors were still armed and locked.

Peter traversed slowly along the line of perspex windows down the length of the fuselage but over each of them the sunshades had been firmly closed from the interior, turning them into the multiple eyes of a blinded insect.

Peter lifted his scrutiny slightly onto the windshield and side panels of the flight deck. These again had been screened with blankets, hung over them from inside, completely thwarting any glimpse of the crew or their captors and certainly preventing a shot into the flight deck, although the range from the nearest corner of the terminal was not more than four hundred yards, and with the new laser sights one of Thor's trained snipers could pick through which eye of the human head he would put a bullet.

Snaking across the open tarmac of the taxiway was the thin black electrical cable that connected the aircraft to the mains supply, a long, vulnerable umbilical cord. Peter studied it thoughtfully, before turning his attention to the four Panhard armoured cars. A little frown of irritation crossed his forehead.

"Colonel, please recall those vehicles." He tried not to let the irritation come through in his tone. "With the turrets battened down, your crews will be roasting like Christmas geese

"General, I feel it my duty-" Boonzaier began, and Peter lowered the glasses and smiled. It was a charming, friendly grin that took the man by surprise, after the previous stern set of features and yet the eyes were devoid of humour, cracking blue and hard in the craggy granite of the face.

"I want to defuse the atmosphere as much as possible." The necessity to explain irked Peter, but he maintained the smile.

"Somebody with four great cannons aimed at him is more likely to make a bad decision, and pull the trigger himself. You may keep them in close support, but get them out of sight into the terminal car park, and let your men rest." With little grace the colonel passed the order over the walkie-talkie on his belt, and as the vehicles started up and slowly pulled away behind the line of hangars, Peter went on remorselessly.

"How many men have you got deployed?" He pointed to the line of soldiers along the parapet of the observation balcony, and then to the heads visible as specks between the soaring blue of the African sky and the silhouette of the service hangars.

"Two hundred and thirty."

"Pull them out," Peter instructed, "and let the occupants of the aircraft see them go."

"All of them?" incredulously.

"All of them," Peter agreed, and now the smile was wolfish, "and quickly, please, colonel." The man was learning swiftly, and he lifted the miniaturized walkie-talkie to his mouth again. There were a few moments of scurrying and confusion among the troops on the observation deck below before they could be formed up and marched away in file.

Their steel helmets, like a bobbing line of button mushrooms, and the muzzles of their slung weapons would show above the parapet, and would be clearly visible to an observer in the Boeing.

"If you treat these people, these animals-" the colonel's voice was choked slightly with frustration, if you treat them soft-" Peter knew exactly what was coming, "and if you keep waving guns in their faces, you will keep them alert and on their toes, Colonel. Let them settle down a little and relax, let them get very confident." He spoke without lowering the binoculars. With a soldier's eye for ground he was picking the site for his four snipers. There was little chance that he would be able to use them they would have to take out every single one of the enemy at the same instant but a remote chance might just offer itself, and he decided to place one gun on the service hangar roof, there was a large ventilator which could be pierced and would command the port side of the aircraft, two guns to cover the flight deck from both sides he could use the drainage ditch down the edge of the main runway to get a man into the small hut that housed the approach radar and ILS beacons. The hut was in the enemy's rear. They might not expect fire from that quarter. point by point from his mental checklist Peter planned his dispositions, scribbling his decisions into the small leather-covered notebook, poring over the large-scale map of the airport, converting gradients and angles into fields of fire, measuring "ground to cover" and "time to target" for an assault force launched from the nearest vantage points, twisting each problem and evaluating it, striving for novel solutions to each, trying to think ahead of an enemy that was still faceless and infinitely menacing.

It took him an hour of hard work before he was satisfied.

Now he could pass his decisions to Colin Noble on board the incoming Herc, and within four minutes of the big landing wheels hitting tarmac his highly trained team with their complex talents and skills would be in position.

Peter straightened up from the map and tucked the notebook under the flap of his button-down breast pocket.

Once again he scrutinized every inch of the silent, battened-down aircraft through his glasses but this time he allowed himself the luxury of gut emotion.

He felt the anger and the hatred rise from some hidden depth of his soul and flush his blood and tighten the muscles of his belly and thighs.

Once again he was confronted by the many-headed monster. It crouched out there in ambush, waiting for him as it had so often before.

He remembered suddenly the shards of splintered glass littering the cobbles of a Belfast street and glittering like diamond chips in the arc lamps, the smell of explosives and blood thick in the air.

He remembered the body of a young woman lying in the gutted interior of a fashionable London restaurant. Her lovely young body stripped by the blast of all but a flimsy pearl-coloured pair of French lace panties.

He remembered the smell of a family, father, mother and three small children, burning in the interior of their saloon car, the bodies blackening and twisting in a slow macabre ballet as the flames scorched them. Peter had not been able to eat pork since that day.

He remembered the frightened eyes of a child, through a mask of blood, a dismembered arm lying beside her, the pale fingers still clutching a grubby little rag doll.

The images flashed in disjointed sequences across his memory, feeding his hatred until it pricked and stung behind his eyes and he had to lower the binoculars and wipe his eyes with the back of his hand.

It was the same enemy that he had hunted before, but his instincts warned him that it had grown even stronger and more inhuman since last he had met and fought it. He tried to suppress the hatred now, lest it cloud his judgement, lest it handicap him during the difficult hours and days that he knew lay ahead but it was too powerful, had been too long nurtured.

He recognized that hatred was the enemy's vice, that from it sprang their twisted philosophy and their monstrous actions, and that to descend to hatred was to descend to their sub-human levels yet still the hatred persisted.

Peter Stride understood clearly that his hatred was not only for the ghastly death and mutilation that he had witnessed so often. More it was fostered by the threat that he recognized to an entire society and its civilized rule of law. If this evil should be allowed to triumph, then in the future laws would be made by the wild-eyed revolutionary, with a gun in his fist the world would be run by the destroyers instead of the builders, and Peter Stride hated that possibility more even than the violence and the blood, and those he hated as a soldier hates. For only a soldier truly knows the horror of war.

His soldier's instinct now was to immediately engage the enemy and destroy him but the scholar and philosopher in him warned that this was not the moment, and with an enormous effort of will he held that fighting man's instinct in check.

Yet still he was deeply aware that it was for this moment, for this confrontation of the forces of evil, that he had jeopardized his whole career.

When command of Atlas had been plucked away and a political appointee named in his place, Peter should have declined the offer of a lesser position in Atlas. There were other avenues open to him, but instead he had elected to stay with the project and he hoped that nobody had guessed at the resentment he felt. God knows, Kingston Parker had no cause for complaint since then. There was no harder working officer on Atlas, and his loyalty had been tested more than once.

Now all that seemed worth while, and the moment for which he had worked had arrived. The enemy waited For him out there on the burning tarmac under an African sun, not on a soft green island in the rain nor in the grimy streets of a crowded city but still it was the same old enemy, and Peter knew his time would come.

His communications technicians had Colin Noble on the main screen as Peter ducked into the Hawker's cabin that was now his command headquarters, and settled into his padded seat. On the top right screen was a panoramic view of the southern terminal area, with the Boeing squatting like a brooding eagle upon its nest in the centre of the shot. On the next screen beside it was a blow-up through the 800 mm. zoom lens of the Boeing's flight deck. So crisp was the detail that Peter could read the maker's name on the tab of the blanket that screened the windshield. The third small screen held a full shot of the interior of the air traffic control tower. In the foreground the controllers in shirt sleeves sitting over the radar repeaters, and beyond them through the floor to ceiling windows still another view of the Boeing. All these were being shot through the cameras installed an hour earlier in the terminal building. The remaining small screen was blank, and Colin Noble's homely, humorous face filled the main screen.

"Now if only it had been the cavalry instead of the U.S. Marines, Peter said, you'd have been here yesterday-"

"What's your hurry, pal. Doesn't look like the party has started yet." Colin grinned at him from the screen and pushed his baseball cap to the back of his head.

"Damned right," Peter agreed. "We don't even know who is throwing the party. What's your latest estimate on arrival time?"

"We've picked up a good wind one hour twenty-two minutes to fly now,"Colin told him.

"Right, let's get down to it," Peter said, and he began his briefing, going carefully over the field notes he had taken.

When he wanted to emphasize a point, Peter called for a change of shot from his cameramen, and they zoomed in or panned to his instruction, picking up the radar shed or the service hangar ventilator where Peter was siting his snipers.

The image was repeated not only on the command console but in the cavernous body of the approaching Hercules so that the men who would be called to occupy those positions could study them now and prepare themselves thoroughly for the moment. The same images were hurled across the stratosphere to the circling satellite and from there bounced down to appear, only slightly distorted, on the screens of Atlas Command in the west wing of the Pentagon. Sagging like an old lion in his armchair, Kingston Parker followed every word of the briefing, rousing himself only when a long telex message was passed to him by his assistant, then he nodded a command to have his own televised image superimposed on Peter's command console.

"I'm sorry to interrupt you, Peter, but we've got a useful scrap here. Assuming that the militant group boarded 070 at Malic, we asked the Seychelles Police to run a check on all joining passengers. There were fifteen of them, ten of whom were Seychelles residents. A local merchant and his wife, and eight unaccompanied children between nine and fourteen years of age. They are the children of expatriate civil servants employed on contract by the Seychelles (3overnment, returning to schools in England for the new term." Peter felt the weight of dread bring down upon him like a physical burden. Children, the young lives seemed somehow more important, somehow more vulnerable. But Parker was reading from the telex flimsy in his left hand, the right scratching the back of his neck with the stem of his pipe.

"There is one British businessman, Shell Oil Company, and well -known on the island, and there are four tourists, an American, a Frenchman and two Germans. These last four appeared to be travelling in a group, the immigration and security officers remember them well.

Two women and two men, all young. Names Sally-Anne Taylor, twenty-five years, American, Heidi Hottschauser, twenty-four and Gunther Retz, twenty-five, the two Germans and Henri Larousse, twenty-six, the Frenchman. The police have run a back check on the four. They stayed two weeks at the Reef Hotel outside Victoria, the women in one double room and the two men in another. They spent most of the time swimming and sunbathing until five days ago when a small ocean-going yacht called at Victoria. Thirty-five foot, single-hander around the world, skippered by another American. The four spent time on board her every day of her stay, and the yacht sailed twenty-faut hours before the departure of the 07O."

"If the yacht delivered their arms and munitions, then this operation has been planned for a long time," Peter pondered, land damn well planned." Peter felt the tingling flush of his blood again, the form of the enemy was taking shape now, the outline of the beast becoming clearer, and always it was uglier and more menacing.

"You have run the names through the computer?" he asked.

"Nothing," Parker nodded. "Either there is no intelligence record of them, or the names and passports are false-" He broke off as there was sudden activity on the screen that monitored the air traffic control tower, and another voice boomed out of the secondary speaker; the volume was set too high, and the technician at the control board adjusted it swiftly. It was a female voice, a fresh, clear young voice speaking English with the lilt and inflexion of the west coast of America in it.

"Jan Smuts tower, this is the officer commanding the task force of the Action Commando for Human Rights that has control of Speedbird 070.

Stand by to copy a message."

"Contact!" Peter breathed. "Contact at last." On the small screen Colin Noble grinned and rolled his cheroot expertly from one side of his mouth to the other.

"The party has begun," he announced, but there was the razor edge in his voice not entirely concealed by his jocular tone.

The three-man crew had been moved back from the flight deck, and were held in the first class seats vacated by the group of four.

Ingrid had made the cockpit of the Boeing her headquarters, and she worked swiftly through the pile of passports, filling in the name and nationality of each passenger on the seating plan spread before her.

The door to the galley was open and except for the hum of the air-conditioning, the huge aircraft was peculiarly silent.

Conversation in the cabins was prohibited, and the aisles were patrolled by the red-shirted commandos to enforce this edict.

They also ordered the use of the toilets: a passenger must return to his seat before another was allowed to rise. The toilet doors had to remain open during use, so that the commandos could check at a glance.

Despite the silence, there was a crackling atmosphere of tension down the full length of the cabin. Very few of the passengers, mostly the children, were asleep, but the others sat in rigid rows, their faces taut and strained watching their captors with a mixture of hatred and of fear.

Henri, the Frenchman, slipped into the cockpit.

"They are pulling back the armoured cars," he said. He was slim, with a very youthful face and dreaming poet's eyes. He had grown a drooping blond gunfighter's mustache, but the effect was incongruous.

Ingrid looked up at him. "You are so nervous," She shook her head. "it will all be all right."

"I am not nervous," he answered her stiffly.

She chuckled fondly, and reached up to touch his face.

"I did not mean it as an insult." She pulled his face down and kissed him, thrusting her tongue deeply into his mouth.

"You have proved your courage often," she murmured.

He dropped his pistol onto the desk with a clatter and reached for her. The top three buttons of her red cotton shirt were unfastened, and she let him grope and find her breasts.

They were heavy and pointed and his breathing went ragged as he teased out her nipples. They hardened erect like jelly beans but when he reached down with his free hand for the zipper of her shorts, she pushed him away roughly.

"Later," she told him brusquely, "when this is over. Now get back into the cabin." And she leaned forward and lifted a corner of the blanket that screened the side window of the cockpit. The sunlight was very bright but her eyes adjusted swiftly and she saw the row of helmeted heads above the parapet of the observation deck. So they were pulling back the troops as well. It was nearly time to begin talking but she would let them stew in their own juice just a little longer.

She stood up, buttoned her shirt and adjusted the camera on its strap around her neck, paused in the galley to rearrange the shiny mass of golden hair and then walked slowly back down the full length of the central aisle, pausing to adjust the blanket over a sleeping child, to listen attentively to the complaints of the pregnant wife of the Texan neurosurgeon.

"You and the children will be the first off this plane I promise you." When she reached the prone body of the flight engineer, she knelt beside him.

"How is he?"

"He is sleeping now. I shot him full of morphine,"

the fat little doctor muttered, not looking at her, so she could not read the hatred in his expression. The injured arm was elevated to control the bleeding, sticking up stiffly in its cocoon of pressure bandages, oddly foreshortened with the bright ooze of blood through the dressing.

"You are doing good-" She touched his arm. "Thank you." And now he glanced at her startled, and she smiled such a radiant lovely smile, that he began to melt.

"Is that your wife?" Ingrid dropped her voice, so that he alone could hear and he nodded, glancing at the plump little Jewish woman in the nearest seat. "I will see she is amongst the first to leave,"

she murmured, and his gratitude was pathetic. She stood and went on down the aircraft.

The red-shirted German stood at the head of the tourist cabin, beside the curtained entrance to the second galley.

He had the intense drawn face of a religious zealot, dark burning eyes, long black hair falling almost to his shoulders a white scar twisted the corner of his upper lip into a perpetual smirk.

"Kurt, everything is all right?" she asked in German.

"They are complaining of hunger."

"We will feed them in another two hours but not as much as they expect-" and she ran a contemptuous glance down the cabin. "Fat," she said quietly, "big fat bourgeoisie pigs," and she stepped through the curtains into the galley and looked at him in invitation. He followed her immediately, drawing the curtains behind them.

"Where is Karen?" Ingrid asked, as he unbuckled his belt.

She needed it very badly, the excitement and the blood had inflamed her.

"She is resting at the back of the cabin." Ingrid slipped the button that held the front of her shorts together and drew down the zipper. "All right Kurt," she whispered huskily, "but quickly, very quickly." Ingrid sat in the flight engineer's seat; at her shoulder stood the dark-haired girl. She wore the cartridge belt across the shoulder of her bright red shirt, like a bandolier and she carried the big ugly pistol on her hip.

Ingrid held the microphone to her lips, and combed the fingers of her other hand through the thick golden tangle of her tresses as she spoke. One hundred and ninety-eight British subjects. One hundred and forty-six American nationals-" She was reading the list of her captives. "There are one hundred and twenty-two women on board, and twenty-six children under the age of sixteen years." She had been speaking for nearly five minutes and now she broke off and shifted in her seat, turning to smile at Karen over her shoulder. The darkhaired girl smiled in return and reached across to caress the fine mass of golden hair with a narrow bony hand, before letting it drop back to her side.

"We have copied your last transmission."

"Call me Ingrid." She spoke into the mike with the smile turning into a wicked grin. There was a moment's silence as the controller in the tower recovered from his shock.

"Roger, Ingrid. Do you have any further messages for us?"

"Affirmative, Tower. As this is a British aircraft and as three hundred and forty-four of my passengers are either British or American, I want a spokesman, representing the embassies of those countries. I want him here in two hours" time to hear my terms for the release of passengers."

"Stand by, Ingrid. We will be back to you immediately we have been able to contact the ambassadors."

"Don't horse around, Tower." Ingrid's voice snapped. "We both know damned well they are breathing down your neck.

Tell them I want a man here in two hours otherwise I am going to be forced to put down the first hostage." Peter Stride was stripped down to a pair of bathing trunks, and he wore only canvas sneakers on his feet.

Ingrid had insisted on a face-to-face meeting, and Peter had welcomed the opportunity to assess at close range.

"We'll be covering you every inch of the way there and back," Colin Noble told Peter, fussing over him like a coach over his fighter before the gong. "I'm handling the gunners, personally." The snipers were armed with specially hand-built .222 magnums with accurized barrels that threw small light bullets with tremendous velocity and striking power. The ammunition was match-grade, each round lovingly hand finished and polished. The infra-red telescopic sights were readily interchangeable with the laser sights, making the weapon deadly accurate either in daylight or at night. The bullet had a clean, flat trajectory up to seven hundred yards.

They were perfectly designed man-killers, precision weapons that reduced the danger to bystanders or hostages. The light bullet would slam a man down with savage force, as though he had been hit by a charging rhinoceros, but it would break up in his body, and not over-penetrate to kill beyond the target.

"You're getting into a lather," Peter grunted. "They want to talk, not shoot not yet, anyway."

"The female of the species-" Colin warned, that one is real poison."

"More important than the guns are the cameras, and sound equipment."

"I went up there and kicked a few arses.

You'll get pictures that will win you an Oscar my personal guarantee." Colin checked his wristwatch. "Time to go. Don't keep the lady waiting." He punched Peter's shoulder lightly.

"Hang loose," he said, and Peter walked out into the sunshine, lifting both hands above his shoulders, palms open, fingers extended.

The silence was as oppressive as the dry fierce heat, but it was intentional. Peter had frozen all air traffic, and had ordered the shut down of all machinery in the entire terminal area. He did not want any interference with his sound equipment.

There was only the sound of his own footfalls, and he stepped out briskly but still it was the longest walk of his life, and the closer he got to the aircraft, the higher it towered above him. He knew that he had been required to strip almost naked, not only to ensure that he carried no weapons, but to place him at a disadvantage to make him feel ill at ease, vulnerable. It was an old trick the Gestapo always stripped the victim for an interrogation so he held himself proud and tall, pleased that his body was so lean and hard and muscled like an athlete's. He would have hated to drag a big, pendulous gut and sagging old-man's tits across those four hundred yards.

He was half-way there when the forward door, just behind the cockpit, slid back and a group of figures appeared in the square opening. He narrowed his eyes: there were two uniformed figures, no three British Airways uniforms, the two pilots and between them the shorter slimmer feminine figure of a stewardess.

They stood shoulder to shoulder, but beyond them he could make out another head, a blonde head but the angle and the light were against him.

Closer, he saw that the older pilot was on the right, short-cropped grey curls, ruddy round face that would be Watkins, the commander. He was a good man, Peter had studied his service record.

He ignored the co-pilot and stewardess and strained for a glimpse of the figure beyond them, but it was only when he stopped directly below the open hatch that she moved to let him get a clear view of her face.

Peter was startled by the loveliness of that golden head, by the smooth gloss of young sun polished skin and the thundering innocence of wide-set, steady, green eyes for a moment he could not believe she was one of them, then she spoke.

"I am Ingrid," she said. Some of the most poisonous flowers are the loveliest, he thought.

"I am the accredited negotiator for the British and American Governments," he said, and switched his gaze to the beefy red face of Watkins. "How many members of your commando are aboard? "he asked.

"No questions!" Ingrid snapped fiercely, and Cyril Watkins extended four fingers of his right hand down his thigh without a change of expression.

It was vital confirmation of what they already suspected, and Peter felt a rush of gratitude towards the pilot.

"Before we discuss your terms, Peter said, "and out of common humanity, I would like to arrange for the wellbeing and comfort of your hostages."

"They are well cared for."

"Do you need food or drinking water?" The girl threw back her head and laughed delightedly.

"So you can dope it with laxative and have us knee-deep in shit?

Stink us out, hey?" Peter did not pursue it. The doped trays had already been prepared by his doctor"

"You have a gunshot casualty on board?"

"There are no wounded aboard," the girl denied flatly, cutting her laughter short but Watkins made the circular affirmative sign of thumb and forefinger, effectively contradicting her, and Peter noticed the spots of dried blood on the sleeves of his white shirt. "That's enough," Ingrid warned Peter. "Ask one more question and we'll break off-"

"All right," Peter agreed quickly. "No more questions."

"The objective of this commando is the ultimate downfall of the brutally fascist, inhuman, neo-imperialistic regime that holds this land in abject slavery and misery denying the great majority of the workers and the proletariat their basic rights as human beings." And that, thought Peter bitterly, even though it's couched in the garbled jargon of the lunatic left, is every bit as bad as it can be. Around the world hundreds of millions would have immediate sympathy, making Peter's task just that little bit more difficult. The hijackers had picked a soft target.

The girl was still speaking, with an intense, almost religious fervour, and as he listened Peter faced the growing certainty that the girl was a fanatic, treading the thin line which divided sanity from madness. Her voice became a harsh screech as she mouthed her hatred and condemnation, and when she had finished he knew that she was capable of anything no cruelty, no baseness was beyond her. He knew that she would not stop even at suicide, the final act of destroying the Boeing, its passengers and herself he suspected she might even welcome the opportunity of martyrdom, and he felt the chill of it tickle up along his spine.

They were silent now, staring at each other, while the hectic flush of fanaticism receded from the girl's face and she regained her breath, and Peter waited, controlling his own . misgivings, waiting for her to calm herself and Continue.

"Our first demand-" the girl had steadied and was watching Peter shrewdly now, 4 our first demand is that the statement I have just made be read on every television network in Britain and the United

States, and also here upon the South African network." Peter felt his loathing of that terrible little box rise to the surface of his emotions.

That mind-bending electronic substitute for thought, that deadly device for freezing, packaging and distributing opinion. He hated it, almost as much as the violence and sensation it purveyed so effectively. "It must be read at the next occurrence of 7 p.m. local time in LOS Angeles, New York, London and Johannesburg-" Prime time, of course, and the media would gobble it up hungrily, for this was their meat and their drink the pornographers of violence!

High above him in the open hatch the girl brandished a thick buff envelope. "This contains a copy of that statement for transmission it contains also a list of names. One hundred and twenty-nine names,

all of them either imprisoned or placed under banning orders by this monstrous police regime. The names on this list are the true leaders of South Africa." She flung the envelope, and it landed at Peter's feet.

"Our second demand is that every person on that list be placed aboard an aircraft provided by the South African Government. Aboard the same aircraft there will be one million gold Kruger Rand coins also provided by the same government. The aircraft will fly to a country chosen by the freed political leaders. The gold will be used by them to establish a government in exile, until such time as they return to this country as the true leaders of the people." Peter stooped and picked up the envelope. He was calculating swiftly. A single Kruger Rand coin was worth $170 at the very least. The ransom demand was, therefore, worth one hundred and seventy million dollars.

There was another calculation. "One million Krugers will weigh well over forty -tons," he told the girl. "How are they going to get all that on one aircraft?" The girl faltered. It was a little comfort to Peter to realize that they hadn't thought out everything perfectly.

If they made one small mistake, then they were capable of making others.

"The government will provide sufficient transport for all the gold and all the prisoners," the girl said sharply. The hesitation had been momentary only.

"Is that all?" Peter asked; the sun was stinging his naked shoulders and a cold drop of sweat tickled down his flank.

He had never guessed it could be this bad.

"The aircraft will depart before noon tomorrow, or the execution of hostages will begin then." Peter felt the crawl of horror.

"Execution." She was using the jargon of legality, and he realized at that moment that what she promised she would deliver.

"When those aircraft arrive at the destination chosen by the occupants, a pre-arranged code will be flashed to us, and all women and children aboard this aircraft will immediately be released."

"And the men?" Peter asked.

"On Monday the sixth three days from now, a resolution is to be tabled before the General Assembly of the United Nations in New

York. It will call for immediate total mandatory economic sanctions on South Africa including withdrawal of all foreign capital, total oil and trade embargoes, severance of all transport and communications links, blockade of all ports and air borders by a U.N. peace-keeping force pending free elections under universal suffrage supervised by U.N. inspectors-" Peter's mind was racing to keep ahead of the girl's demands. He knew of the U.N. motion, of course, it had been tabled by Sri Lanka and Tanzania. It would be vetoed in the Security Council. That was a certainty but the girl's timing brought forward new and frightening considerations. The beast had changed shape again, and what he had heard sickened him. It surely could not be merely coincidence that the resolution was to be tabled within three days of this strike the implications were too horrible to contemplate. The connivance, if not the direct involvement, of world leaders and governments in the strategy of terror.

The girl spoke again deliberately. "If any member of the Security Council of the U.N. America, Britain or France uses the veto to block the resolution of this General Assembly, this aircraft and all aboard her will be destroyed by high explosive." Peter had lost the power of speech. He stood gaping up at the lovely blonde child, for child she seemed, so young and fresh.

When he found his voice again, it croaked hoarsely. "I don't believe you could have got high explosive aboard this aircraft to carry out that threat," he challenged her.

The blonde girl said something to somebody who was out of Sight, and then a few moments later she tossed a dark round object down to Peter.

"Catch!" she shouted, and he was surprised by the weight of it in his hands. It took only a moment to recognize it.

"Electronically fused!" The girl laughed. "And we have so many I can afford to give you a sample." The pilot, Cyril Watkins, was trying to tell him something, touching his own chest but Peter was occupied with the explosive in his hands. He knew that a single one of these would be fully capable of destroying the Boeing and all aboard her.

What was Watkins trying to tell him? Touching his neck again.

Peter transferred his attention to the girl's neck. She wore a small camera slung around her neck. Something connecting camera and grenade perhaps? Is that what the pilot was trying to tell him?

But now the girl was speaking again. "Take that to your masters,

and let them tremble. The wrath of the masses is upon them. The revolution is here and now," she said, and the door of the hatchway was swung closed. He heard the lock fall into place.

Peter turned and began the long walk back, carrying an envelope in one hand, a grenade in the other, and sick loathing in his guts.

Colin Noble's rugged frame almost filled the hatchway of the Hawker, and for once his expression was deadly serious, no trace of laughter in his eyes or at the corners of the wide friendly mouth.

"Doctor Parker is on the screen." He greeted Peter who was still buttoning his overalls as he hurried to the command plane. "We copied every word, and he was hooked into the system."

"Christ, it's had, Colin," Peter grunted.

"That was the good news," Colin told him. "When you have finished with Parker, I've got the bad news for you."

"Thanks, pal." Peter shouldered his way past him into the cabin, and dropped into his leather command chair.

On the screen Kingston Parker was hunched over his desk, poring over the teleprinter sheet on which the entire conversation between Ingrid and Peter had been recorded, the cold empty pipe gripped between his teeth, the broad brow creased with the weight of his responsibility as he studied the demands of the terrorist commando.

The communications director's voice from off-screen alerted Parker.

"General Stride, sir. "And Parker looked up at the camera.

"Peter. This is you and me alone. I have closed the circuit and we will restrict to single tape recording. I want your first reaction,

before we relay to Sir William and Constable-" Sir William Davies was the British Ambassador and Kelly Constable was the United States Ambassador to Pretoria.

"I want your first reaction."

"We are in serious trouble, sir,"

Peter said, and the big head nodded.

"What is the militant capability?"

"I am having my explosives team take down the grenade but I have no doubt that they have the physical capability to destroy 070, and all aboard. I reckon they have an overkill potential of at least ten."

"And the psychological capability."

"In my view, she is the child of Bakunin and Jean Paul Sartre-" Again Parker nodded heavily and Peter went on.

"The anarchist conception that destruction is the only truly creative act, that violence is man recreating himself. You know Sartre said that when the revolutionary kills, a tyrant dies and a free man emerges."

"Will she go all the way?" Parker insisted.

"Yes, sir." Peter answered without hesitation. "If she is pressed she'll go all the way you know the reasoning. If destruction is beautiful, then self-destruction is immortality.

In my view, she'll go all the way." Parker sighed and knocked the stem of his pipe against his big white teeth.

"Yes, it squares with what we have on her."

"You have read her?"

Peter asked eagerly.

"We got a first-class voice print, and the computer cross matched with her facial structure print."

"Who is she?" Peter cut in impatiently; he did not have to be told that the sound intensifier and the zoom video cameras had been feeding her voice and image into the intelligence computer even as she issued her demands.

"Her born name is Hilda Becker. She is a third-generation American of German extraction. Her father is a successful dentist widowed in 1959. The girl is thirty-one years old-" Peter had thought her younger, that fresh young skin had misled him. "- I.Q. 138. University of Columbia 1965-68, Master's degree in Modern Political History. Member of SDS that's Students for a Democratic Society-"

"Yes." Peter was impatient. "I know." Activist in Vietnam war protests. Worker for the draft evasion pipeline to Canada. One arrest for possession of marijuana 1967, not convicted. Implicated with Weathermen and one of the leaders of on-campus rioting in the spring of 1968. Arrested for bombing of Butler University and released. Left America in 1970 for further study at Dusseldorf. Doctorate in

Political Economics 1972. Known association with Gudrun Ensslin and Horst Mahler of the Baader-Meinhof. Went underground in 1976 after suspicion of implication in the abduction and murder of Heinrich Kohler, the West German industrialist--2 Her personal history was an almost classical development of the modern revolutionary, Peter reflected bitterly, a perfect picture of the beast. "Believed to have received advanced training from the PFLP in Syria during 1976 and 1977.

No recorded contact since then. She is a habitual user of cannabis-based drugs, reported voracious sexual activity with members of both sexes-" Parker looked up. "That's all we have, he said.

"Yes," Peter repeated softly. "She'll go all the way."

"What is your further assessment?"

"I believe that this is an operation organized at high level possibly governmental-"

"Substantiate!" Parker snapped.

"The coordination with UNO. proposals sponsored by the unaligned nations points that way."

"All right, go on."

"For the first time we have a highly organized and heavily supported strike that is not seeking some obscure, partisan object. We've got demands here about which a hundred million Americans and fifty million Englishmen are going to say in unison, "Hell, these aren't unreasonable.""

"Go on, "said Parker.

"The militants have picked a soft target which is the outcast pariah of Western civilization. That U.N. resolution is going to be passed a hundred to nil, and those millions of Americans and Englishmen are going to have to ask themselves if they are going to sacrifice the lives of four hundred of their most prominent citizens to support a government whose racial policies they abhor."

"Yes?" Parker was leaning forward to stare into the screen.

"Do you think they'll do a deal?"

"The militants? They might." Peter paused a moment and then went on. "You know my views, sir. I oppose absolutely dealing with these people."

"Even in these circumstances?" Parker demanded.

"Especially now. My views of the host country's policies are in accord with yours, Doctor Parker. This is the test.

No matter how much we personally feel the demands are just, yet we must oppose to the death the manner in which they are presented. If these people win their objects, it is a victory for the gun and we place all mankind in jeopardy."

"What is your estimate for a successful counter strike Parker demanded suddenly, and even though he had known the question must come, still Peter hesitated a long moment.

"Half an hour ago I would have put the odds at ten to one in our favour that I could pull off condition Delta with only militant casualties."

"And now?"

"Now I know that these are not fuddle-headed fanatics.

They are probably as well trained and equipped as we are, and they have had years to set this operation up."

"And now? "Parker insisted.

"We have a four to one in our favour of getting them out with a Delta strike, with say less than ten casualties."

"What is the next best chance?"

"I would say there is no middle ground. If we failed, we would be into a situation with one hundred per cent casualties we would lose the aircraft and all aboard, including all Thor personnel involved."

"All right then, Peter." Parker leaned back in his chair, the gesture of dismissal. "I am going to speak with the President and the Prime Minister, they are setting up the link now. Then I will brief the ambassadors and be back to you within the hour." His image flickered into darkness, and Peter realized that all his hatred was suppressed. He felt cold, and functional as the surgeon's blade.

Ready to do the job for which he had trained so assiduously, and yet able to assess and evaluate the enemy and the odds against success.

He pressed the call button. Colin had been waiting beyond the soundproof doors of the command cabin, and he came through immediately.

"The explosives boys have taken down the grenade. It's a dandy.

The explosive is the new Soviet Q composition, and the fusing is factory manufacture. Professional stuff and it will work. Oh, baby, will it ever work. Peter hardly needed this confirmation, and Colin went on as he flung himself untidily in the chair opposite Peter.

"We put the list of names and the text of the militant statement on the teleprinter for Washington,-" He leaned forward and spoke into the cabin intercom. "Run that loop without sound first." Then he told

Peter grimly. "Here's the bad news I promised." The loop of video tape began to run on the central screen. It had clearly been shot from the observation post in the office overlooking the service area.

It was a full shot of the Boeing, the background flattened by the magnification of the lens and swimming and wavering with heat mirage rising from the tarmac of the main runway beyond the aircraft.

In the foreground were Peter's own naked back and shoulders as he strode out towards the aircraft. The lens had again flattened the action so that Peter appeared to be marking time on the same spot without advancing at all.

Suddenly the forward hatch of the Boeing changed shape as the door was slid aside, and the cameraman instantly zoomed in for the closer shot.

The two pilots and the air hostess in the doorway, the camera checked for a few frames and then zoomed closer.

The aperture of the lens adjusted swiftly, compensating for the gloom of the interior, and the shot was close and tight on the blonde girl's head for a heartbeat, then the head turned slightly and the lovely line of her lips moved as she spoke it seemed like three words before she turned back full face to the camera.

"Okay," Colin said. "Run it again with neutral balance on the sound." The entire loop reran, the cabin door opened, there were the three hostages, the fine golden head turned, and then the words "Let's slide," from Ingrid, but there was background hiss and clutter.

"Let's slide? "Peter asked.

"Run it again with the bass density filter on the sound, Colin ordered.

The same images on the screen, the golden head turning on the long neck.

"It's slide."" Peter could not quite catch it.

"Okay," Colin told the technician. "Now with full filter and resonance modulation." The repetitive images, the girl's head, the full lips parting, speaking to somebody out of sight in the body of the aircraft.

Very clearly, unmistakably, she said, "It's Stride." And Peter felt it jolt in his belly like a fist.

"She recognized you," said Colin. "No, hell, she was expecting you!" The two men stared at each other, Peter's handsome craggy features heavy with foreboding. Atlas had one of the highest security classifications. Only twenty men outside the close ranks of Atlas itself were privy to its secrets. One of those was the President of the United States another was the Prime Minister of Great Britain.

Certainly only four or five men knew who commanded the Thor arm of Atlas and yet there was no mistaking those words the girl had spoken.

"Run it again," Peter ordered brusquely.

And they waited tensely for those two words, and when they came they were in the clear tilt of that fresh young voice.

"It's Stride,"said Ingrid, and the screen went blank.

Peter massaged his closed eyelids with thumb and forefinger. He realized with mild surprise that he had not slept for nearly forty-eight hours, but it was not physical weariness that assailed him now but the suddenly overwhelming knowledge of treason and betrayal and of undreamed-of evil.

"Somebody has blown Atlas," said Colin softly. "This is going to be a living and breathing bastard. They'll be waiting for us at every turn of the track." Peter dropped his hand and opened his eyes. "I

must speak to Kingston Parker again," he said. And when Parker's image reappeared on the main screen he was clearly agitated and angry.

"You have interrupted the President."

"Doctor Parker-" Peter spoke quickly. Circumstances have altered. In my opinion the chances of a successful Delta strike have dropped. We have no better than an even chance."

"I see." Parker checked the anger. "That's important. I will inform the President." The lavatories were all blocked by this time, the bowls almost filled, and the stench permeated all the cabins despite the air-conditioning.

Under the strict rationing of food and water most of the passengers were suffering from the lethargy of hunger, and the children were petulant and weepy.

The terrible strain was beginning to show on the hijackers themselves. They were standing a virtual non-stop watch, four hours of broken rest followed by four of ceaseless vigil and activity. The red cotton shirts were rumpled and sweat-stained at the armpits, the sweat of nervous and physical strain, eyes bloodshot and tempers uncertain.

just before nightfall, the dark-haired girl, Karen, had lost her temper with an elderly passenger who had been slow to respond to her command to return to his seat after using the toilet. She had worked herself up into an hysterical shrieking rage, and repeatedly struck the old man in the face with the short barrel of her shot pistol, laying his cheek open to the bone. Only Ingrid had been able to calm her,

leading her away to the curtained tourist galley where she pampered and hugged her.

"It will be all right, Liebchen." She stroked her hair. "Only a little longer now. You have been so strong. In a few more hours we will all take the pills. Not long now." And within minutes Karen had controlled the violent trembling of her hands, and although she was pale, she was able to take her position at the rear of the tourist cabin again.

Only Ingrid's strength seemed without limits. During the night she passed slowly down the aisles, pausing to talk quietly with a sleepless passenger, comforting them with the promise of imminent release.

"Tomorrow morning we will have an answer to our demands, and all the women and children will be free. it's going to be all right, you just wait and see." A little after midnight the little roly-poly doctor sought her out in the cockpit.

"The navigator is very ill," he told her. "Unless we get him to a hospital immediately we will lose him." Ingrid went back and knelt beside the flight engineer.

His skin was dry and burning hot and his breathing rasped and sawed.

"It's renal failure," said the doctor, hovering over them.

"Breakdown of the kidneys from delayed shock. We cannot treat him here. He must be taken to hospital." Ingrid took the semi-conscious flight engineer's uninjured hand. "I'm sorry, but that's impossible."

She went on holding his hand for another minute.

"Don't you feel anything?" the doctor demanded of her bitterly.

"I feel pity for, him as I do for all mankind," she answered quietly. "But he is only one. Out there are millions." The towering flat-topped mountain was lit by floodlights. It was high holiday season and the fairest cape in all the world was showing her beauty to the tens of thousands of tourists and holiday makers.

On the penthouse deck of the tall building, named for a political mediocrity as are so many buildings and public works in South Africa, the cabinet and its special advisers had been in session for most of the night.

At the head of the long table brooded the heavily built figure of the Prime Minister, bulldog-headed, powerful and unmovable as one of the granite kopjes of the African veld.

He dominated the large panelled room, although he had hardly spoken, except to encourage the others with a nod or a few gruff words.

At the far end of the long table sat the two ambassadors, shoulder to shoulder, to emphasize their solidarity. At short intervals the telephones in front of them would ring, and they would listen to the latest reports from their embassies or instructions from the heads of their governments.

On the Prime Minister's right hand sat the handsome moustached

Minister of Foreign Affairs, a man with enormous charisma and a reputation for moderation and common sense but now he was grim and hard faced.

"Your own governments have both pioneered the policy of non-negotiation, of total resistance to the demands of terrorists why now do you insist that we take the soft line?"

"We do not insist, minister, we have merely pointed out the enormous public interest that this affair is generating in both the United

Kingdom and in my own country." Kelly Constable was a Slim, handsome man, intelligent and persuasive, a democratic appointee of the new

American administration. "It is in your government's interest even more than ours to see this through to a satisfactory conclusion. We merely suggest that some accommodation to the demands might bring that about."

"The Atlas Commander on the spot has assessed the chances of a successful counter-strike as low as fifty-fifty.

My government considers that risk unacceptable." Sir William Davies was a career diplomat approaching retirement age, a grey, severe man with gold-rimmed spectacles, his voice high pitched and querulous.

"My men think we can do better than that ourselves, said the Minister of Defence, also bespectacled, but he spoke in the thick blunt accent of the Afrikaaner.

"Atlas is probably the best equipped and most highly trained anti-terrorist group in the world, Kelly Constable said, and the Prime Minister interrupted harshly.

"At this stage, gentlemen, let us confine ourselves to finding a peaceful solution."."

"I agree, Prime Minister. "Sir William nodded briskly.

"However, I think I should point out that most of the demands made by the terrorists are directly in line with the representations made by the government of the United States-"

"Sir, are you expressing sympathy with these demands?" the Prime Minister asked heavily, but without visible emotion.

"I am merely pointing out that the demands will find sympathy in my country, and that my government will find it easier to exercise its veto on the extreme motion of the General Assembly on Monday if some concessions are made in other directions."

"Is that a threat, sir?" the Prime Minister asked, a small humourless smile hardly softening the question.

"No, Prime Minister, it's common sense. If that U.N. motion was carried and implemented, it would mean the economic ruin of this country. It would be plunged into anarchy and political chaos, a ripe fruit for luther Soviet encroachment. My government does not desire that however, nor does it wish to endanger the lives of four hundred of its citizens." Kelly Constable smiled. "We have to find a way out of our mutual predicament, I'm afraid."

"My Minister of Defence has suggested a way out."

"Prime Minister, if your military attack the aircraft without the prior agreement of both the British and American heads of state, then the veto will be withheld in the Security Council and regretfully we will allow the majority proposal to prevail."

"Even if the attack is successful?"

"Even if the attack is successful. We insist that military decisions are made by Atlas only," Constable told him solemnly; and then, more cheerfully, "Let us examine the minimum concessions that your government would be prepared to make. The longer we can keep open the lines of communication with the terrorists, the better our chances of a peaceful solution. Can we offer to fulfill even one small item on the list of demands?" "Ingrid supervised the serving of breakfast personally.

Each passenger was allowed one slice of bread and one biscuit with a cup of heavily sweetened coffee. Hunger had lowered the general resistance of the passengers, they were apathetic and listless once they had gobbled their meagre meal.

Ingrid went amongst them again, passing out cigarettes from the duty-free store. Talking gently to the children, stopping to sympathize with a mother smiling and calm.

Already the passengers were calling her "the nice one".

When Ingrid reached the firstclass galley she called her companions to her one at a time, and they each ate a full breakfast of eggs and buttered toast and kippers. She wanted them as strong and alert as the arduous ordeal would allow.

She could not begin to use the stimulants until midday.

The use of drugs could only be continued for seventy-two hours with the desired effects. After that the subject would become unpredictable in his actions and decisions. Ratification of the sanctions vote by the Security Council of the United Nations would take place at noon New York time on the following Monday that was seven p.m. local time on Monday night.

Ingrid had to keep all her officers alert and active until then, she dared not use the stimulants too early and risk physical disintegration before the decisive hour, and yet she realized that lack of sleep and tension were corroding even her physical reserves; she was jumpy and nervous, and when she examined her face in the mirror of the stinking firstclass toilets, she saw how inflamed her eyes were, and for the first time noticed the tiny lines of ageing at the corners of her mouth and eyes. This angered her unreasonably. She hated the thought of growing old, and she could smell her own unwashed body even in the overpowering stench from the lavatory.

The German, Kurt, was slumped in the pilot's seat, his pistol in his lap, snoring softly, his red shirt unbuttoned to the waist and his muscular hairy chest rising and falling with each breath. He was unshaven and the lank, black hair fell over his eyes. She could smell his sweat, and somehow that excited her, and she studied him carefully.

There was an air of cruelty and brutality about him, the machismo of the revolutionary, which always attracted her strongly, had perhaps been the original reason for her radical leanings so many years ago.

Suddenly she wanted him very badly.

However, when she woke him with a hand down the front of his thin linen slacks, he was bleary-eyed and foul breathed, not even her skilful kneading could arouse him, and in a minute she turned away with an exclamation of disgust.

As a displacement activity, she picked up the microphone, switched on the loudspeakers of the passenger cabins. She knew she was acting irrationally, but she began to speak.

"Now listen to me, everybody, I have something very important to tell you." Suddenly she was angry with them.

They were of the class that had devised and instituted the manifestly unjust and sick society against which she was in total rebellion. They were the fat, complacent bourgeoisie.

They were like her father and she hated them as she hated her father. As she began to speak she realized that they would not even understand the language she was using, the language of the new political order, and her anger and frustration against them and their society mounted. She did not realize she was raving, until suddenly she heard as from afar the shriek of outrage in her own voice, like the death wail of a mortally wounded animal and she stopped abruptly.

She felt giddy and light-headed, so she had to clutch at the desk top for support and her heart banged wildly against her ribs. She was panting as though she had run a long way, and it took nearly a full minute for her to bring herself under control.

When she spoke again, her tone was still ragged and breathless.

"It is now nine o'clock," she said. "If we do not hear from the tyrant within three hours I shall be forced to begin executing hostages. Three hours-" She repeated ominously, only three hours." Now she prowled the aircraft like a big cat paces along the bars of its cage as feeding time approaches.

"Two hours," she told them, and the passengers shrank away from her as she passed.

"One hour." There was a bright sadistic splinter of anticipation in her voice. "We will choose the first hostages now.

"But you promised," pleaded the fat little doctor as Ingrid pulled his wife out of her seat and the Frenchman hustled her forward towards the flight deck.

Ingrid ignored him, and turned to Karen. "Get children, a boy and a girl-" she instructed, " oh yes, and the pregnant one. Let them see her big belly. They won't be able to resist that." Karen herded the hostages into the forward galley and forced them at pistol point to sit in a row upon the fold down air-crew seats.

The door to the flight deck was open and Ingrid's voice carried clearly to the galley, as she explained to the Frenchman Henri, speaking in English.

"It is of the utmost importance that we do not allow a deadline to pass without retaliating strongly. If we miss one deadline, then our credibility is destroyed. It will only be necessary once, we must show the steel at least once. They must learn that every one of our deadlines are irrevocable, not negotiable-" The girl began to cry. She was thirteen years old, able to understand the danger. The plump doctor's wife put her arm around her shoulders and hugged her gently.

"Speedbird 070-'-the radio squawked suddenly, we have a message for Ingrid."

"Go ahead, Tower, this is Ingrid." She had jumped up to take the microphone, pushing the door to the flight deck closed.

"The negotiator for the British and American governments has proposals for your consideration. Are you ready to copy?"

"Negative."

Ingrid's voice was flat and emphatic. "I say again negative. Tell the negotiator I will talk only face to face and tell him we are only forty minutes to the noon deadline. He had better get out here fast," she warned. She hooked the microphone and turned to Henri.

"All right. We will take the pills now it has truly begun at last." It was another cloudless day, brilliant sunlight that was flung back in piercing darts of light from the bare metal parts of the aircraft. The heat came up through the soles of his shoes and burned down upon Peter's bare neck.

The forward hatch opened, as it had before, when Peter Stride was half-way across the tarmac.

This time there were no hostages on display, the hatchway was a dark empty square. Suppressing the urge to hurry, Peter carried himself with dignity, head up, jaw clenched firmly.

He was yards from the aircraft when the girl stepped into the opening. She stood with indolent grace, her weight all on one leg, the other cocked slightly, long, bare, brown legs. She carried the big shot pistol on one hip, and the cartridge belt emphasized the narrow waist.

She watched Peter come on, with a half-smile on her lips.

Suddenly a medallion of light appeared on her chest, a dazzling speck like a brilliant insect and she glanced down at it contemptuously.

"This is provocation," she called. Clearly she knew that the bright speck was the beam thrown by the laser sight of one of the marksmen covering her from the airport building.

A few ounces more of pressure on the trigger would send a .222 bullet crashing precisely into that spot, tearing her heart and lungs to bloody shreds.

Peter felt a flare of anger at the sniper who had activated his laser sight without the order, but his anger was tempered by reluctant admiration for the girl's courage. She could sneer at that mark of certain death upon her breast.

Peter made a cut out sign with his right hand, and almost immediately the speck of light disappeared as the gunner switched off his laser sight.

"That's better," the girl said, and she smiled, running her gaze appraisingly down Peter's body.

"You've a good shape, baby," she said, and Peter's anger flared again under her scrutiny.

"Nice flat belly-" she said, good legs, and you didn't get those muscles sitting at a desk and pushing a pen." She pursed her lips thoughtfully. "You know I think you're a cop or a soldier. That's what I think, baby. I think you're a goddamned pig." Her voice had a new harsh quality, and the skin seemed drier and drawn older than it had been before.

He was close enough now to see the peculiar diamantine glitter in her eyes, and he recognized the tension that seemed to rack her body, the abrupt restless gestures. She was onto drugs now. He was certain of it. He was dealing with a political fanatic, with a long history of violence and death, whose remaining humane traits would be now entirely suppressed by the high of stimulant drugs. He knew she was more dangerous now than a wounded wild animal, a cornered leopard, a maneating shark with the taste of blood exciting it to the killing frenzy.

He did not reply, but held her gaze steadily, keeping his hands in view, coming to a halt below the open hatchway.

He waited quietly for her to begin, and the itch of the drug in her blood would not allow her to stand still; she fidgeted with the weapon in her hands, touched the camera still hanging from around her neck. Cyril Watkins had tried to tell him something about that camera and suddenly Peter realized what it was. The trigger for the fuses? he pondered, as he waited. Almost certainly, he decided, that was why it was with her every moment. She saw the direction of his eyes, and dropped her hand guiltily, confirming his conclusion.

"Are the prisoners ready to leave?" she demanded. "Is the gold packed? Is the statement ready for transmission?"

"The South African Government has ac cesse to urgent representations by the governments of Great Britain and the United States of America."

"Good. "She nodded.

"As an act of common humanity the South Africans have agreed to release all the persons on your list of detainees and banned persons-"

"Yes."

"They will be flown to any country of their choice."

"And the gold?"

"The South African Government refuses categorically to finance or to arm an unconstitutional foreign-based opposition. They refuse to provide funds for the persons freed under this agreement."

"The television transmission?"

"The South African Government considers the statement to be untrue in substance and in fact and to be extremely prejudicial to the maintenance of law and order in this country. It refuses to allow transmission of the statement."

"They have accepted only one of our demands? " The girl's voice took on an even more strident tone, and her shoulders jerked in an uncontrolled spasm.

"The release of political detainees and banned persons is subject to one further condition-" Peter cut in swiftly.

"And what is that-" The girl demanded, two livid burning spots of colour had appeared in her cheeks.

"In return for the release of political prisoners, they demand the release of all hostages, not only the women and children, all persons aboard the aircraft and they will guarantee safe passage for you and all members of your party to leave the country with the released detainees." The girl flung back her head, the thick golden mane flying wildly about her head as she screeched with laughter.

The laughter was a wild, almost maniacal sound, and though it went on and on, there was no echo of mirth in her eyes.

They were fierce as eagles" eyes, as she laughed. The laughter was cut off abruptly, and her voice was suddenly flat and level.

"So they think they can make demands, do they? They think they can draw the teeth from the U.N. proposals, do they? They think that without hostages to account for, the fascist governments of Britain and

America can again cast their veto with impunity?" Peter made no reply.

"Answer me!" she screamed suddenly. "They do not believe we are serious, do they?"

"I am a messenger only," he said.

"You're not," she screamed in accusation. "You're a trained killer. You're a pig!" She lifted the pistol and aimed with both hands at Peter's face.

"What answer must I take back?" Peter asked, without in any way acknowledging the aim of the weapon.

"An answer-" Her voice dropped again to an almost conversational level. Of course, an answer." She lowered the pistol and consulted the stainless steel Japanese watch on her wrist. "It's three minutes past noon three minutes past the deadline, and they are entitled to an answer, of course." She looked around her with an almost bewildered expression. The drug was having side effects, Peter guessed.

Perhaps she had overdosed herself, perhaps whoever had prescribed it had not taken into account the forty-eight sleepless hours of strain that preceded its use.

"The answer," he prodded her gently, not wanting to provoke another outburst.

"Yes. Wait," she said, and disappeared abruptly into the gloom of the interior.

Karen was standing over the four hostages on the fold down seats.

She looked around at Ingrid with smouldering dark eyes. Ingrid nodded once curtly, and Karen turned back to her prisoners.

"Come," she said softly, "we are going to let you go now." Almost gently she lifted the pregnant woman to her feet with a hand on her shoulder.

Ingrid left her and passed swiftly into the rear cabins.

She nodded again to Kurt, and with a toss of his head he flicked the lank locks of hair from his eyes and thrust the pistol into his belt.

From the locker above his head he brought down two of the plastic grenades. Holding one in each fist he pulled the pins with his teeth and held the rings hooked over his little fingers.

With his arms spread like a crucifix, he ran lightly down the aisle.

"These grenades are primed. Nobody must move, nobody must leave their seats no matter whatever happens. Stay where you are." The fourth hijacker took up the cry from him, holding primed grenades in both hands above his head.

"Nobody move. No talking. Sit still. Everybody still." He repeated in German and in French and his eyes had the same hard, glossy glitter of the drug high.

Ingrid turned back towards the flight deck.

"Come, sweetheart." She placed an arm round the girl's shoulder, shepherding her towards the open hatchway but the child shrank away from her with dread.

"Don't touch me, "she whispered, and her eyes were huge with terror. The boy was younger, more trusting. He took Ingrid's hand readily.

He had thick curly hair, and honey brown eyes as he looked up at her. "Is my daddy here?" he asked.

"Yes, darling." Ingrid squeezed his hand. "You be a good boy now, and you'll see your daddy very soon." She led him to the open hatchway.

"Stand there," she said.

Peter Stride was uncertain what to expect, as the boy stepped into the open hatchway high above him.

Then next to him appeared a plump middle-aged woman in an expensive but rumpled, high-fashion silk dress, probably a Nina Ricci,

Peter decided irrelevantly. The woman's elaborate lacquered hairstyle was coming down in wisps around her ears, but she had a kindly humorous face and she placed a protective arm about the boy-child's shoulders.

The next person was a taller and younger woman, with a pale sensitive skin; her nostrils and eyelids were inflamed pink from weeping or from some allergy and there were blotches of angry prickly heat on her throat and upper arms.

Under the loose cotton maternity dress her huge belly bulged grotesquely, throwing her off balance; she stood with her thin white legs knock-kneed awkwardly and blinked in the brilliant sparkling sunshine, her eyes still attuned to the shaded gloom of the cabin.

The fourth and last person was a young girl, and with a sudden blinding stab of agony below the ribs Peter thought it was

Melissa-Jane. It took a dozen racing beats of his heart before he realized it was not her but she had the same sweet Victorian face, -the classical English skin of rose petals, the finely bred body of almost woman wit h delicate breast-buds and long coltish legs below narrow boyish hips.

There was naked terror in her huge eyes, and almost instantly she seemed to realize that Peter was her hope of salvation. The eyes turned on him pleading, hope starting to awaken.

"Please," she whispered. "Don't let them hurt us." So softly that Peter could hardly catch the words. "Please, sir. Please help us."

But Ingrid was there, her voice rising stridently.

"You must believe that what we promise, we mean. You and your evil capitalist masters must understand completely that we will not let a single deadline pass without executions. We have to prove that for the revolution we are without mercy. You must be made to understand that our demands must be met in full, that they are not negotiable. We must demonstrate the price for missing a deadline." She paused. "The next deadline is midnight tonight. If our demands are not met in full by then you must know the price you will be made to pay." She halted again, and then her voice rose into that hysterical shriek.

"This is the price!" and she stepped back out of sight.

Helpless with dread, Peter Stride tried to think of some way to prevent the inevitable.

"Jump!" he shouted, lifting both hands towards the girl.

"Jump, quickly. I will catch you!" But the child hesitated, the drop was almost thirty feet, and she teetered uncertainly.

Behind her, ten paces back, the dark-haired Karen and the blonde lion-maned girl stood side by side, and in unison they lifted the short, big bored pistols, holding them in the low double-handed grip, positioning themselves at the angle and range which would allow the mass of soft heavy lead beads with which the cartridges were packed to spread sufficiently to sweep the backs of the four hostages.

"Jump!" Peter's voice carried clearly into the cabin, and Ingrid's mouth convulsed in a nervous rictus, an awful parody of a smile.

"Now!" she said, and the two women fired together. The two shots blended in a thunderous burst of sound, a mind-stopping roar, and blue powder smoke burst from the gaping muzzles, flying specks of burning wadding hurled across the cabin, and the impact of lead shot into living flesh sounded like a handful of watermelon pips thrown against a wall.

Ingrid fired the second barrel a moment before Karen, so this time the two shots were distinct stunning blurts of sound, and in the dreadful silence that followed the two men in the passenger cabins were screaming wildly.

"Nobody move! Everybody freeze!" For Peter Stride those fractional seconds seemed to last for long hours. They seemed to play on endlessly through his brain, like a series of frozen frames in a grotesque movie. Image after image seemed separated from the whole, so that forever afterwards he would be able to recreate each of them entire and undistorted and to experience again undiluted the paralysing nausea of those moments.

The pregnant woman took the full blast of one of the first shots.

She burst open like an overripe fruit, her swollen body pulled out of shape by the passage of shot from spine to navel, and she was flung forward so she somersaulted out into space. She hit the tarmac in a loose tangle of pale thin limbs, and was completely still, no flicker of life remaining.

The plump woman clung to the boy beside her, and they teetered in the open doorway around them swirled pale blue wisps of gunsmoke.

Though she kept her balance, the tightly stretched beige silk of her dress was speckled with dozens of tiny wounds, as though she had been stabbed repeatedly with a sharpened knitting needle. The same wounds were torn through the boy's white school shirt, and little scarlet flowers bloomed swiftly around each wound, spreading to stain the cloth. Neither of them made any sound, and their expressions were startled and uncomprehending. The next blasts of sound and shot struck them solidly, and they seemed boneless and without substance as they tumbled forward, still locked together. Their fall seemed to continue for a very long time, and then they sprawled together over the pregnant woman's body.

Peter ran forward to catch the girl-child as she fell, and her weight bore him to his knees on the tarmac. He came to his feet running, carrying her like a sleepy baby, one arm under her knees and the other around her shoulders. Her lovely head bumped against his shoulder, and the fine silken hair blew into his face, half blinding him.

"Don't die," he found himself grunting the words in time to his pounding feet. "Please don't die." But he could feel the warm wet leak of blood down his belly, soaking into his shorts, and dribbling down the front of his thighs.

At the entrance to the terminal buildings Colin Noble ran out a dozen paces and tried to take the child from his arms, but Peter resisted him fiercely.

Peter relinquished the frail, completely relaxed body to the Thor doctor and he stood by without word or expression of regret as the doctor worked swiftly over her.

Peter's face was stony and his wide mouth clamped in a hard line when the doctor looked up at last.

"I'm afraid she's dead, sir." Peter nodded curtly and turned away.

His heels cracked on the echoing marble of the deserted terminal hall and Colin Noble fell in silently beside him. His face was as bleak and expressionless as Peter's, as they climbed into the cabin of the Hawker command aircraft.

Sir William, you point at us for holding enemies of the State without trial." The Foreign Minister leaned forward to point the accuser's finger. "But you British discarded the citizen's right of Habeas Corpus when you passed the Prevention of Terrorism Act, and in Cyprus and Palestine you were holding prisoners without trial long before that. Now your block in Ulster is that any better than what we are forced to do here?" Sir William, the British Ambassador, gobbled indignantly, while he collected his thoughts.

Kelly Constable intervened smoothly. "Gentlemen, we are trying to find common ground here not areas of dispute. There are hundreds of lives at stake-" A telephone shrilled in the air-conditioned hush of the room and Sir William lifted the receiver to his ear with patent relief, but as he listened, all blood drained from his face, leaving it a jaundiced, putty colour.

"I see," he said once, and then, "very well, thank you," and replaced the receiver. He looked down the length of the long polished imbuia wood table to the imposing figure at the end.

"Prime Minister-" his voice quavered a little I regret to inform you that the terrorists have rejected the compromise proposals offered by your government, and that ten minutes ago they murdered four hostages. " There was a gasp of disbelief from the attentive circle of listening men.

" The hostages were two women and two children a boy and a girl they were shot in the back and their bodies thrown from the aircraft. The terrorists have set a new deadline midnight tonight for the acceptance of their terms. Failing which there will be further shootings." The silence lasted for almost a minute as head after head turned slowly, until they were all staring at the big hunched figure at the head of the table.

"I appeal to you in the name of humanity, sir." It was Kelly Constable who broke the silence. "We must save the women and children at least. The world will not allow us to sit by as they are murdered."

"We will have to attack the aircraft and free the prisoners," said the Prime Minister heavily.

But the American Ambassador shook his head. "My government is adamant, sir as is that of my British colleague-" he glanced at Sir William, who nodded support we cannot and will not risk a massacre.

Attack the aircraft and our governments will make no attempt to moderate the terms of the U.N. proposals, nor will we intervene in the Security Council to exercise the veto."

"Yet, if we agree to the demands of these these animals-" the last words were said fiercely we place our nation in terrible danger."

"Prime Minister, we have only hours to find a solution then the killing will begin again."

"you yourself have placed the success chances of a Delta strike as low as even," Kingston Parker pointed out, staring grimly at Peter Stride out of the little square screen. "Neither the President nor I find those odds acceptable."

"Doctor Parker, they are murdering women and children out there on the tarmac." Peter tried to keep his tone neutral, his reasoning balanced.

"Very strong pressure is being brought to bear on the South African Government to accede to the terms for release of the women and children."

"That will solve nothing." Peter could not restrain himself "It will leave us with exactly the same situation tomorrow night."

"If we can secure the release of the women and children, the number of lives at risk will be reduced, and in forty hours the situation might have changed. we are buying time, Peter, even if we have to pay for it with a heavy coin."

"And if the South Africans do not agree? If we come to the midnight deadline without an agreement with the hijackers, what happens then, Doctor Parker?"

"This is a difficult thing to say, Peter, but if that happens-" Parker spread those long graceful hands in a gesture of resignation, we may lose another four lives, but that is better than precipitating the massacre of four hundred. And after that the South Africans will not be able to hold out. They will have to agree to free the women and children at any cost." Peter could not truly believe what he had heard. He knew he was on the very brink of losing his temper completely, and he had to give himself a few seconds to steady himself.

He dropped his eyes to his own hands that were interlocked on the desk top in front of him. Under the fingernails of his right hand were black half moons, the dried blood of the child he had carried back from the aircraft. Abruptly he unlocked his fingers and thrust both hands deeply into the pockets of his blue Thor overalls. He took a long deep breath, held it a moment, then let it out slowly.

"If that was difficult to say, Doctor Parker console yourself that it was a bloody sight harder to listen to."

"I understand how you feel, Peter."

"I don't think you do, sir." Peter shook his head slowly.

"You are a soldier-" and only a soldier knows how to really hate violence, Peter finished for him.

"Our personal feelings must not be allowed to intrude in this."

Kingston Parker's voice had a sharp edge to it now.

"I must once again forcibly remind you that the decision for condition Delta has been delegated to me by the President and your Prime Minister. No strike will be made without my express orders. Do you understand that, General Stride?"

"I understand, Doctor Parker," Peter said flatly. "And we hope to get some really good videotapes of the next murders. I'll let you have copies for your personal collection." The other 747 had been grounded for servicing when the emergency began, and it was parked in the assembly area only a thousand yards from where Speedbird 070 stood, but the main service hangars and the corner of the terminal buildings effectively screened it from any observation by the hijackers.

Although it wore the orange and blue of South African Airways with the flying Springbok on the tail, it was an almost identical model to its sister ship. Even the cabin configurations were very close to the plans of Speedbird 070, which had been tele printed from British Airways Headquarters at Heathrow. It was a fortunate coincidence, and an opportunity that Colin Noble had seized immediately. He had already run seven mock Deltas on the empty hull.

"All right, you guys, let's try and get our arses out of low gear on this run. I want to better fourteen seconds from the "go" to penetration-" His strike team glanced at one another as they squatted in a circle on the tarmac, and there were a few theatrical rollings of eyes. Colin ignored them. "Let's go for nine seconds, gang," he said and stood up.

There were sixteen men in the actual assault group seventeen when Peter Stride joined them. The other members of Thor were technical experts electronics and communications, four marksmen snipers, a weapons quart erA master, and a bomb disposal and explosives sergeant, doctor, cook, three engineering NCOs under a lieutenant, the pilots and other flight personnel a big team, but every man was indispensable.

The assault group wore single-piece uniforms of close fitting black nylon, for low night visibility. They wore their gas masks loosely around their necks, ready for instant use.

Their boots were black canvas lace-ups, with soft rubber soles for silence. Each man wore his specialized weapons and equipment either in a back pack or on his black webbing belt. No bulky bulletproof flak jackets to impede mobility or to snag on obstacles, no hard helmets to tap against metal and tell tales to a wary adversary.

Nearly all the group were young men, in their early twenties, hand picked from the U.S. Marine corps or from the British 22.SAS regiment that Peter Stride had once commanded. They were superbly fit, and honed to a razor's edge.

Colin Noble watched them carefully as they assembled silently on the marks he had chalked on the tarmac, representing the entrances to the air terminal and the service hangars nearest to 070. He was searching for any sign of slackness, any deviation from the almost impossible standards he had set for Thor. He could find none. "All right, ten seconds to flares," he called. A Delta strike began with the launching of phosphorus flares across the nose of the target aircraft. They would float down on their tiny parachutes, causing a diversion which would hopefully bunch the terrorists in the flight deck of the target aircraft as they tried to figure out the reason for the lights. The brilliance of the flares would also sear the retina of the terrorists" eyes and destroy night vision for many minutes afterwards.

"Flares!" shouted Colin, and the assault group went into action.

The two "stick" men led them, sprinting out directly under the gigantic tail of the deserted aircraft. Each of them carried a gas cylinder strapped across his shoulder, to which the long stainless steel probes were attached by flexible armoured couplings these were the "sticks" that gave them their name.

The leader carried compressed air in the tank upon his back at a pressure of 250 atmospheres, and on the tip of his twenty-foot probe was the diamond cutting bit of the air drill He dropped on one knee under the belly of the aircraft ten feet behind the landing gear and reached up to press the point of the air-drill against the exact spot, carefully plotted from the manufacturer's drawing, where the pressure hull was thinnest and where direct access to the passenger cabins lay just beyond the skin of alloy metal.

The whine of the cutting drill would be covered by the revving of the jet engines of aircraft parked in the southern terminal. Three seconds to pierce the hull, and the second stick" man was ready to insert the tip of his probe into the drill hole.

"Power A" Colin grunted; at that moment electrical power from the mains to the aircraft would be cut to kill the air-conditioning.

The second man simulated the act of releasing the gas from the bottle on his back through the probe and saturating the air in the aircraft's cabins. The gas was known simply as FACTOR V. It smelled faintly of newly dug truffles, and when breathed as a five per cent concentration in air would partially paralyse a man in under ten seconds, loss of motor control of the muscles, uncoordinated movement,

slurred speech and distorted vision, were initial symptoms.

Breathed for twenty seconds the symptoms were total paralysis, for thirty seconds loss of consciousness; breathed for two minutes, pulmonary failure and death. The antidote was fresh air or, better still, pure oxygen, and recovery was rapid with no long-term after-effects.

The rest of the assault group had followed the "stick" men and split into four teams. They waited poised, squatting under the wings, gas masks in place, equipment and weapons ready for instant use.

Colin was watching his stopwatch. He could not chance exposing the passengers to more than ten seconds of Factor V. There would be elderly people, infants, asthma sufferers aboard; as the needle reached the ten-second mark, he snapped.

"Power on." Air-conditioning would immediately begin washing the gas out of the cabins again, and now it was "Go!" Two assault teams poured up the aluminium. scaling ladders onto the wing roots, and knocked out the emergency window panels. The other two teams went for the main doors, but they could only simulate the use of slap-hammers to tear through the metal and reach the locking device on the interior nor could they detonate the stun grenades.

"Penetration." The assault leader standing in for Peter Stride on this exercise signalled entry of the cabins, and Colin clicked his stopwatch.

"Time?" asked a quiet voice at his shoulder, and he turned quickly.

So intent on his task, Colin had not heard Peter Stride come up behind him.

"Eleven seconds, sir." The courteous form of address was proof of Colonel Colin Noble's surprise. "Not bad but sure as hell not good either. We'll run it again."

"Rest them" Peter ordered. "I want to talk it out a bit." They stood together at the full windows in the south wall of the air traffic control tower, and studied the big red, white and blue aircraft for the hundredth time that day.

The heat of the afternoon had raised thunderheads, great purple and silver mushroom bursts of cloud that reached to the heavens.

Trailing grey skirts of torrential rain they marched across the horizon, forming a majestic backdrop that was almost too theatrical to be real, while the lowering sun found the gaps in the cloud and shot long groping fingers of golden light through them, heightening the illusion of theatre.

"Six hours to deadline," Colin Noble grunted, and groped for one of his scented black cheroots. "Any news of concessions by the locals?"

"Nothing. I don't think they will buy it."

"Not until the next batch of executions." Colin bit the end from the cheroot and spat it angrily into a corner. "For two years I break my balls training for this, and now they tie our hands behind our backs."

"If they gave you

Delta, when would you make your run?" Peter asked.

"As soon as it was dark,"Colin answered promptly.

"No. They are still revved up high on drugs," Peter demurred.

"We should give them time to go over the top, and start downing. My guess is they will dope again just before the next deadline. I would hit them just before that-" He paused to calculate. " - I'd hit them at fifteen minutes before eleven seventy-five minutes before the deadline."

"If we had Delta,"Colin grunted.

"If we had Delta," Peter agreed, and they were silent for a moment. "Listen, Colin, this has been wearing me down. If they know my name, what else does that gang of freaks know about Thor? Do they know our contingency planning for taking an aircraft?"

"God, I hadn't worked it out that far."

"I have been looking for a twist, a change from the model, something that will give us the jump even if they know what to expect."

"We've taken two years to set it up tightly-" Colin looked dubious. "There is nothing we can change."

"The flares," said Peter. "If we went, we would not signal the Delta with the flares, we would go in cold!

"The uglies would be scattered all through the cabins, mixed up with passengers and crew-"

"The red shirt Ingrid was wearing. My guess is, all four of them will be uniformed to impress their hostages. We would hose anything and everybody in red. If my guess is wrong, then we would have to do it Israeli style." Israeli style was the shouted command to lie down, and to kill anyone who disobeyed or who made an aggressive move.

"The truly important one is the girl. The girl with the camera.

Have your boys studied the videotapes of her?"

"They know her face better than they do Fawcett Majors'," Colin grunted, and then, "the bitch is so goddamned lovely I had to run the video of the executions three times for them, twice in slow motion, to wipe out a little of the old chivalry bit." It is difficult to get a man to kill a pretty girl,

and a moment of hesitation would be critical with a trained fanatic like Ingrid. "I also made them take a look at the little girl before they put her in a basket and took her down to the morgue. They're in the right mood." Colin shrugged. "But what the hell, Atlas isn't going to call Delta. We're wasting our time."

"Do you want to play make-believe?" Peter asked, and then without waiting for an answer, "Let's make believe we have a Delta approval from Atlas. I want you to set up a strike timed to "go" at exactly 10-45 local time tonight. Do it as though it was the real thing get it right in every detail."

Colin turned slowly and studied his commander's face, but the eyes were level and without guile and the strong lines of jaw and mouth were unwavering.

"Make-believe?"Colin Nobleasked quietly.

"Of course," Peter Stride's tone was curt and impatient, and Colin shrugged.

"Hell, I only work here," and he turned away.

Peter lifted the binoculars and slowly traversed the length of the big machine from tail to nose, but there was no sign of life, every port and window still carefully covered and reluctantly he let his binoculars sink slightly until he was staring at the pitiful pile of bodies that still lay on the tarmac below the forward hatch.

Except for the electrical mains hook-up, the delivery of medicines and the two occasions when Peter himself had made the long trip out there, nobody else had been allowed to approach the machine. No refuelling, no refuse nor sanitary removals, no catering not even the removal of the corpses of the murdered hostages. The hijackers had learned the lesson of previous hijacking attempts when vital information had been smuggled off the aircraft in refuse and sewerage at Mogadishu, and at Lad where the storming party had come disguised as caterers.

Peter was still gazing at the bodies, and though he was accustomed to death in its most obscene forms, these bodies offended him more deeply than any in his life before. This was a contemptuous flaunting of all the deepest rooted taboos of society. Peter was grimly content now with the decision of the South African police not to allow any television teams or press photographers through the main gates of the airport.

Peter knew that the world media were howling outrage and threats, protesting in the most extreme terms against the infringement of their God-given rights to bring into the homes of all civilized people images of dreadful death and mutilation, lovingly photographed in gorgeous colour with meticulous professional attention to all the macabre details.

Without this enthusiastic chronicling of their deeds, international terrorism would lose most of its impetus and his job would be a lot easier. For sneaking moments he envied the local police the powers they had to force irresponsibles to act in the best interests of society, then as he carried the thought a step further, he came up hard once "again against the question of who was qualified to make such decisions on behalf of society. If the police made that decision and exerted it, was it not just another form of the terrorism it was seeking to suppress? "Christ," thought Peter angrily, "I'm going to drive myself mad." He stepped up beside the senior air traffic controller.

"I want to try again," Peter said, and the man handed him the microphone.

"Speedbird 070 this is the tower. Ingrid, do you read me?

Come in, Ingrid." He had tried a dozen times to make contact in the last few hours, but the hijackers had maintained an ominous silence.

"Ingrid, come in please." Peter kept trying, and suddenly there was the clear fresh voice.

"This is Ingrid. What do you want?"

"Ingrid, we request your clearance to have an ambulance remove the bodies, Peter asked.

"Negative, Tower. I say again, negative. No one is to approach this aircraft." There was a pause. "We will wait until we have a round dozen bodies for you to remove-" The girl giggled, still on the drug high, wait until midnight, and we'll make it really worth your while."

And the radio clicked into silence.

"We are going to give you dinner now," Ingrid shouted cheerfully, and there was a stir of interest down the length of the cabin. "And it's my birthday today. So you're going to have champagne,

isn't that great!" But the plump little Jewish doctor rose suddenly to his feet. His grey sparse hair stood up in comical wisps, and his face seemed to have collapsed, like melting wax, ravaged and destroyed by grief He no longer seemed to be aware of what had been said or what was happening. "You had no right to kill her." His voice sounded like a very old man. "She was a good person. She never hurt anyone " He looked about him with a confused, unfocused look, and ran the fingers of one hand through his disordered hair. "You should not have killed her, he repeated.

"She was guilty," Ingrid called back at him. "Nobody is innocent you are all the cringing tools of international capitalism-" Her face twisted, in an ugly spasm of hatred.

" You are guilty, all of you, and you deserve to die,-" She stopped short, controlled herself with an obvious effort of will, and then smiled again; going forward to the little doctor, she put an arm around his shoulders.

"Sit down, she said, almost tenderly, "I know just how you feel, please believe me, I wish there had been another way. He sank down slowly, his eyes vacant with sorrow and his fingers plucking numbly at themselves.

"You just sit there quietly," Ingrid said gently. "I'm going to bring you a glass of champagne now." Prime Minister." Kelly Constable's voice was husky with almost two days and nights of unceasing tension,

it's after ten o'clock already. We must have a decision soon, in less than two hours-" The Prime Minister lifted one hand to silence the rest of "Yes, we all know what will happen then." An airforce jet has delivered a copy of the videotape from Johannesburg, a thousand miles away, and the cabinet and the ambassadors had watched the atrocity in detail, recorded by an 800 men. lens. There was not a man at the table who did not have children of his own. The toughest right-wingers amongst them wavered uncertainly, even the puckish little Minister of Police could not meet the ambassador's eyes as he swept the table with a compelling gaze.

"And we all know that no compromise is possible, we must meet the demands in full or not at all."

"Mr. Ambassador-" the Prime Minister broke the silence at last, " if we agree to the terms, it will be only as an act of humanity. We will be paying a very high price indeed for the lives of your people but if we agree to that price, can we be absolutely assured of your support the support of both Britain and the United States in the Security Council the day after tomorrow at noon?"

"The President of the United States has empowered me to pledge his support in return for your co-operation," said Kelly Constable.

"Her Britannic Majesty's Government has asked me to assure you of the same support," intoned Sir William. "And our governments will make good the 170 million dollars demanded by the hijackers."

"Still I cannot make the decision on my own. It is too onerous for one man," the Prime Minister sighed. "I am going to ask my ministers, the full cabinet-" he indicated the tense, grim faces around him, to vote. I am going to ask you gentlemen to leave us alone now for a few minutes while we decide." And the two ambassadors rose together and bowed slightly to the brooding, troubled figure before leaving the room.

"Where is Colonel Noble?" Kingston Parker asked.

"He is waiting-" Peter indicated with a jerk of his head the sound-proof door of the Hawker's command cabin.

"I want him in on this, please," Parker said from the screen, and Peter pressed the call button.

Colin Noble came in immediately, stooping slightly under the low roof, a chunky powerful figure with the blue Thor cap pulled low over his eyes.

"Good evening, sir." He greeted the image on the screen and squeezed into the seat beside Peter.

"I'm glad Colonel Noble is here." Peter's voice was crisp and businesslike. "I think he will support my contention that the chances of a successful Delta counter strike will he greatly enhanced if we can launch our attack not later than ten minutes before eleven o'clock." He tugged back the cuff of his sleeve, and glanced at his watch. "That is forty minutes from now. We reckon to catch the militants at the moment when the drug cycle is at its lowest, before they take more pills and begin to arouse themselves to meet their deadline. I believe that if we strike then, we will have an acceptable risk-"

"Thank you, General

Stride-" Parker interrupted him smoothly, " but I wanted Colonel Noble present so there could be no misunderstanding of my orders.

Colonel Noble," Parker's eyes shifted slightly as he changed the object of his attention. "Commander of Thor has requested an immediate Delta strike against Speedbird 070. "I am now, in your presence, disapproving that request. Negotiations with the South African Government are at a critical state, and under no circumstances must there be either overt or covert hostile moves towards the militants. Do I make myself entirely clear?"

"Yes, sir. "Colin Noble's expression was stony.

"General Stride?"

"I understand, sir."

"Very well. I want you to stand by, please. I am going to confer with the ambassadors. I will re-establish contact as soon as I have further concrete indications."

The image receded rapidly, and the screen went dark.

Colonel Colin Noble turned slowly and looked at Peter Stride, his expression changed slightly at what he saw, and quickly he pressed the censor button on the command console, stopping all recording tapes, killing the video cameras so there would be no record of his words now.

"Listen, Peter, you're in line for that NATO command, everybody knows that. From there the sky is the limit, pat.

Right up there to the joint chiefs just as far as you want to go Peter said nothing, but glanced once more at the gold Rolex wristwatch. It was seventeen minutes past ten o'clock.

"Think, Peter. For God's sake, man. It's taken you twenty heart-breaking years of hard work to get where you are.

They would never forgive you, buddy. You'd better believe it.

They'll break you and your career. Don't do it, Peter.

Don't do it. You're too good to waste yourself. just stop and think for one minute."

"I'm thinking," said Peter quietly. "I haven't stopped thinking since-" he checked, always it comes back to this. If I let them die then I am as guilty as that woman who pulls the trigger."

"Peter, you don't have to beat your head in. The decision is made by someone else." it would be easier to believe that, wouldn't it,"

Peter snapped, "but it won't save those people out there." Colin leaned across and placed a large hairy paw on Peter's upper arm. He squeezed slightly. "I know, but it eats me to see you have to throw it all away. In my book, you're one of the tops, buddy." It was the first time he had made any such declaration, and Peter was fleetingly moved by it.

"You can duck this one, Colin. It doesn't have to touch you or your career."

"I never was very hot at ducking." Colin dropped his hand away. "I think I'll go along for the ride,"

"I want you to record a protest, no sense us all getting ourselves fired," said Peter, as he switched on the recording equipment, both audio and video; now every word would be recorded.

"Colonel Noble," he said distinctly, "I am about to lead an immediate Delta assault on Flight 070. Please make the arrangements."

Colin turned to face the camera. "General Stride, I must formally protest at any order to initiate condition Delta without express approval from Atlas Command."

"Colonel Noble, your protest is noted," Peter told the camera gravely, and Colin Noble hit the censor button once again, cutting tapes and camera.

"Okay, that's enough crap for one day." He came nimbly to his feet. "Let's get out there and take the bastards." Ingrid sat at the flight engineer's desk, and held the microphone of the on-board loudspeaker system to her lips. There was a greyish tone beneath the sun-gilded skin; she frowned a little at the throbbing pulse of pain behind her eyes and the hand that held the microphone trembled slightly. She knew these were all symptoms of the drug hangover. She regretted now having increased the initial dosage beyond that recommended on the typed label of the tablet phial but she had needed that extra lift to be able to carry out the first executions. Now she and her officers were paying the price, but in another twenty minutes she would be able to issue another round of tablets.

This time she would stay exactly within the recommended dosage, and she anticipated the rush of it through her blood, the heightened vision and energy, the tingling exhilaration of the drug. She even anticipated the thought of what lay ahead; to be able to wield absolute power, the power of death itself, was one of life's most worthwhile experiences.

Sartre and Bakunin and Most had discovered one of the great truths of life that the act of destruction, of total destruction, was a catharsis, a creation, a reawakening of the soul. She looked forward, even through the staleness and ache of the drug let-down, she looked forward to the next executions.

"My friends-" she spoke into the microphone, we have not heard from the tyrant. His lack of concern for your lives is typical of the fascist imperialist. He does not concern himself with the safety of the people, though he sucks and bloats himself on the blood and sweat. outside the aircraft the night was black and close.

Thunderheads blotted out half the sky, and every few minutes lightning lit the clouds internally. Twice since sundown abrupt fierce downpours of torrential rain had hammered briefly against the Boeing hull, and now the airport lights glinted on the puddled tarmac.

We have to show the face of unrelenting courage and iron purpose to the tyrant. We cannot afford to show even a moment's hesitation.

We must now choose four more hostages. It will be done with the utmost impartiality and I want you all to realize that we are now all part of the revolution together, you can be proud of that-" Lightning exploded suddenly, much closer, a crackling greenish, iridescent flaming of the heavens that lit the field in merciless light, and then the flail of the thunder beat down upon the aircraft. The girl Karen exclaimed involuntarily and sprang nervously to her feet and crossed quickly to stand beside Ingrid. Her dark eyes were now heavily underscored by the dark kohl of fatigue and drug withdrawal; she trembled violently, and Ingrid caressed her absently the way she -might calm a frightened kitten as she went on speaking into the microphone.

We must all of us learn to welcome death, to welcome the opportunity to take our place and add our contribution, no matter how humble it might be, to man's great reawakening." Lightning burst in fierce splendour once again, but Ingrid went on talking into the microphone, the senseless words somehow hypnotic and lulling so that her captives sat in quietly lethargic rows, not speaking, unmoving, seeming no longer capable of independent thought.

"I have drawn lots to choose the next martyrs of the revolution.

I will call out the seat numbers and my officers will come to fetch you. Please co-operate by moving quickly forward to the first-class galley." There was a pause, and then Ingrid's voice again. "Seat number 63B. Please stand up.) The scarred German in the red shirt and with the lank black hair hanging over his eyes had to force the thin,

middle-aged man to his feet, twisting his wrist up between his shoulder blades. The man's white shirt was crumpled and he wore elastic braces over his shoulders and oldfashioned narrow trousers.

"You can't let them," the man pleaded with his fellow passengers, as Henri pushed him up the aisle. "You can't let them kill me, please." And they looked down at their laps.

Nobody moved, nobody spoke.

"Seat number 43F." It was a handsome dark-haired woman in her middle thirties, and her face seemed to dissolve slowly as she read the number above her seat, and she covered her mouth with one hand to prevent herself crying out but from the seat exactly across the aisle from her a sprightly old gentleman with a magnificent mane of silver-grey hair rose swiftly to his feet and adjusted his tie.

"Would you care to change seats with me, madam?" he said softly in a clipped English accent, and strode down the aisle, on long, thin, stork-like legs, contemptuously brushing past the blond moustached Frenchman who came hurrying forward to escort him. Without a glance to either side, and with thin shoulders thrown back, he disappeared through the curtains into the forward galley.

The Boeing had a blind spot that extended back from the side windows of the flight deck at an angle of 20 to the tail, but the hijackers were so well equipped and seemed to have considered every eventuality in such detail that there was no reason to fear that they had worked out some arrangement to keep the blind spot under surveillance.

Peter and Colin discussed the possibility quietly as they stood in the angle of the main service hangar, and both of them carefully studied the soaring shape of the Boeing tailplane and the sagging underbelly of the fuselage for the glint of a mirror or some other device. They were directly behind the aircraft and there was a little over four hundred yards to cover, half of that through knee-high grass and the rest over tarmac.

The field was lit only by the blue periphery lights of the taxiway, and the glow of the airport buildings.

Peter had considered dousing all the airport lights, but discarded the idea as self-defeating. It would certainly alert the hijackers,

and would slow the crossing of the assault team.

"I can't see anything," Colin murmured.

"No," agreed Peter and they both handed their night glasses to a hovering NCO they wouldn't need them again. The assault team had stripped all equipment down to absolute essentials.

All that Peter carried was a lightweight eleven-ounce VHF transceiver for "communicating with his men in the terminal building and in a quick-release holster on his right hip a Walther PK 38 automatic pistol.

Each member of the assault team carried the weapon of his own choice. Colin Noble favoured the Browning Hi-power .45 for its massive killing power and large fourteen-round magazine, while Peter liked the pinpoint accuracy and light recoil of the 9 men. parabellum Walther with which he could be certain of a snap head-shot at fifty metres.

One item was standard equipment for all members of the assault team. Every one of their weapons was loaded with Super Velex explosive bullets which trebled the knockdown power at impact, breaking up in the human body and thereby reducing the risk of over-penetration and with it the danger to innocents. Peter never let them forget they would nearly always be working with terrorist and victim closely involved.

Beside Peter, Colin Noble unclipped the thin gold chain from around his neck which held the tiny Star of David, twinkling gold on the black bush of his chest hair. He slipped the ornament into his pocket and buttoned down the flap.

"I say, old chap-" Colin Noble gave an atrocious imitation of a Sandhurst accent shall we toddle along then?" 4 Peter glanced at the luminous dial of his Rolex. It was sixteen minutes to eleven o'clock.

The exact moment at which my career ends, he thought grimly, and raised his right arm with clenched fist, then pumped it up and down twice, the old cavalry signal to advance.

Swiftly the two men raced out ahead, absolutely silent on soft rubber soles, carrying their probes at high port to prevent them clattering against tarmac or against the metal parts of the aircraft, dark hunchbacked figures under the burden of the gas cylinders they carried.

Peter gave them a slow count of five, and while he waited he felt the adrenalin charge his blood, every nerve and muscle of his body coming under tension, and he heard his own words to Kingston Parker echo in his ears like the prophecy of doom.

"There is no middle ground. The alternative is one hundred per cent casualties. We lose the aircraft, the passengers and all the Thor personnel aboard her." He thrust the thought aside, and repeated the signal to advance. In two neat files, bunched up close and well in hand, the assault teams went out, at the run. Three men carrying each of the aluminium alloy scaling ladders, four with the sling-bags of stun grenades, others with the slap hammers to tear out the door locks, and each with his chosen weapon always a big calibre handgun for Peter

Stride would trust nobody with an automatic weapon in the crowded interior of a hijacked aircraft, and the minimum requirement for every member of the assault teams was marksmanship with a pistol that would enable him to pick a small moving target and hit it repeatedly and quickly without endangering innocents.

They ran in almost total silence; the loudest sound was Peter's breathing in his own ears, and he had time now for a moment's regret.

It was a gamble which he could never win, the best that could happen was the utter ruin of his life's work, but he steeled himself brutally and thrust aside the thought. He ran on into the night.

Just ahead of him now, silhouetted by the lights of the terminal building, the dark figures of the "stick" men were in position under the bulging silver belly; and lightning flared suddenly, so that the tall silver thunderheads rippled with intense white fire, and the field was starkly lit, the double column of black-clad figures standing out clearly against the paler grass. If they were observed, it would come now, and the crash of thunder made Peter's nerves jump, expecting detonation and flame of a dozen percussion grenades.

Then it was dark again, and the sponginess of wet grass beneath his feet gave way to flat hard tarmac. Then suddenly they were under the Boeing fuselage, like chickens under the protective belly of the hen, and the two columns split neatly into four separate groups and still in tight order every man dropped onto his left knee, and at the same moment, with the precision of repeated rehearsals, every member of the team lifted his gas mask to cover his nose and mouth.

Peter swept one quick glance back at them, and then depressed the transmit button on his transceiver. He would not speak a word from now until it was over; there was always a remote possibility that the hijackers were monitoring this frequency.

The click of the button was the signal to the members of his team in the terminal and almost immediately, there was a rising whistling howl of jet engines running up.

Even though the aircraft were parked up in the northern international departures area, they had been turned so the jet exhausts were pointed at the service area, and there were five intercontinental jet liners co-operating. The combined sound output of twenty big jet engines was deafening even at that range and Peter gave the open hand signal.

The "stick" man was waiting poised, and at the signal he reached up and placed the drill bit against the belly of the fuselage. Any sound of the compressed air spinning the drill was effectively drowned,

and there was only the slight jerk of the long probe as it went through the pressure hull.

Instantly the second "stick" man placed the tip of his probe into the tiny hole, and glanced at Peter. Again the open hand signal, and the gas was spurting into the hull. Peter was watching the sweep hand of his watch.

Two clicks on the transmit button, and the lights behind the row of shaded portholes blinked out simultaneously as the mains power was cut and the air-conditioning in the Boeing's cabins with it.

The howl of combined jet engines continued a few seconds longer and Peter signalled the ladder men forward.

Gently the rubber-padded tops of the ladders were hooked onto the leading edges of the wings and into the door sills high above them by black-costumed, grotesquely masked figures working with deceptively casual speed.

Ten seconds from discharge of the Factor V gas into the hull, and Peter clicked thrice. Instantly mains power to the Boeing was resumed and the lights flicked on. Now the air-conditioning was running again, washing the gas swiftly from the cabins and flight deck.

Peter drew one long, slow deep breath and tapped Colin's shoulder.

They went up the ladders in a concerted silent rush, Peter and Colin leading the teams to each wing surface.

ten minutes to eleven," said Ingrid to Karen. She lifted her voice slightly above the din of jet engines howling somewhere out there in the night. Her throat was dry and sore from the drug withdrawal and a nerve jumped involuntarily in the corner of her eye.

Her headache felt as though a knotted rope was being twisted slowly tighter around her forehead. "It looks as though Caliph miscalculated. The South Africans aren't going to give in. -" She glanced with a small anticipatory twist of her lips back through the open door of the flight deck at the four hostages sitting in a row on the fold-down seats. The silver-haired Englishman was smoking a

Virginia cigarette in a long amber and ivory holder, and he returned her gaze with disdain, so that Ingrid felt a prickle of annoyance and raised her voice so he could hear her next words. "It's going to be necessary to shoot this batch also."

"Caliph has never been wrong before." Karen shook her head vehemently. "There is still an hour to deadline-" and at that instant the lights flickered once and then went out.

With all the portholes shaded the darkness was complete, and the hiss of the air-conditioning faded into silence before there was a murmur of surprised comment.

Ingrid groped across the control panel for the switch which transferred the flight deck onto the power from the aircraft's own batteries, and as the soft ruddy glow of the panel lights came on her expression was tense and worried.

"They've switched off the mains," she exclaimed. "The air-conditioning this could be Delta." W "No." Karen's voice was shrill. "There are no flares."

"We could be-" Ingrid started but she could hear the drunken slur in her own voice. Her tongue felt too large for her mouth, and Karen's face started to distort before her eyes, the edges blurring out of focus.

"Karen-" she said, and now in her nostrils the unmistakable aroma of truffles and on her tongue the taste of raw mushrooms.

"Christ!" she screamed wildly and lunged for the manual oxygen release. Above each seat the panels dropped open and the emergency oxygen masks dangled down into the cabins on their corrugated hoses.

"Kurt! Henry!" Ingrid shrieked into the cabin intercom.

"Oxygen! Take oxygen! It's Delta. They are going to Delta." She grabbed one of the dangling oxygen masks and sucked in deep pumping breaths, cleansing the numbing paralysing gas from her system. In the first-class galley one of the hostages collapsed slowly forward and tumbled onto the deck, another slumped sideways.

Still breathing oxygen, Ingrid unslung the camera from around her neck, and Karen watched her with huge terrified dark eyes. She lifted the oxygen mask from her face to ask: "You're not going to blow,

Ingrid?" Ingrid ignored her and used the oxygen in her lungs to shout into the microphone.

"Kurt! Henri! They will come as soon as the mains are switched on again. Cover your eyes and ears for the stun grenades and watch the doors and wing windows." Ingrid slapped the oxygen mask back over her mouth and panted wildly.

"Don't blow us up, Ingrid!" Karen pleaded around her mask.

"Please, if we surrender Caliph will have us free in a month. We don't have to die." At that moment the lights of the cabin came on brightly,

and there was the hiss of the air-conditioning. Ingrid took one last breath of oxygen and ran back into the first-class cabin, jumping over the unconscious figures of the hostages and of two air hostesses. She grabbed another of the dangling oxygen masks above a passenger seat and looked down the long fuselage.

Kurt and Henri had obeyed her orders. They were breathing oxygen from the roof panels. The German was ready at the port wing panel, and Henri waited at the rear doorway hatch both of them had the short big-mouthed shot pistols ready, but their faces were covered with the yellow oxygen masks, so Ingrid could not see nor judge their expressions.

Only a small number of the passengers had been quick enough and sensible enough to grab the dangling oxygen masks and remain conscious but hundreds of others slumped in their seats or had fallen sideways into the aisles.

A thicket of dangling, twisting, swinging oxygen hoses filled the cabin like a forest of ha has obscuring and confusing the scene, and after the darkness the cabin lights were painfully bright.

Ingrid held the camera in her free hand, for she knew that they must continue breathing oxygen. It would take the air-conditioning many minutes longer to cleanse the air of all trace of Factor V, and she held a mask over her mouth and waited.

Karen was beside her, with her shot pistol dangling from one hand and the other pressing a mask to her mouth.

"Go back and cover the front hatch," Ingrid snapped at her.

"There will be-"

"Ingrid, we don't have to die," Karen pleaded, and with a crash the emergency exit panel over the port wing burst inward, and at the same instant two small dark objects flew threw the dark opening into the cabin.

"Stun grenades!" Ingrid howled. "Get down!" Peter Stride was light and jubilant as an eagle in flight.

His feet and hands hardly seemed to touch the rungs of the ladder, now in the swift all-engulfing rush of action there were no longer doubts, no more hesitations he was committed, and it was a tremendous soaring relief.

He went up over the smooth curved leading edge of the wing with a roll of his shoulders and hips, and in the same movement was on his feet, padding silently down the broad glistening metal pathway. The raindrops glittered like diamonds under his feet, and a fresh wind tugged at his hair as he ran.

He reached the main hull, and dropped into position at the side of the panel, his fingertips finding the razor-tight joint while his number-two man knelt swiftly opposite him.

The grenade men were ready facing the panel, balanced like acrobats on the curved slippery upper surface of the great wing.

"Under six seconds." Peter guessed at the time it had taken them to reach this stage from the "go. It was as swift and neat as it had never been in training, all of them armed by the knowledge of waiting death and horror.

In unison Peter and his number two hurled their combined strength and weight onto the releases of the emergency escape hatch, and it flew inwards readily, for there was no pressurization to resist, and at exactly the same instant the 7 stun grenades went in cleanly, thrown by the waiting grenade men, and all four members of Peter's team bowed like Mohammedans in prayer to Mecca, covering eyes and ears.

Even outside the cabin, and even with ears and eyes covered, the thunder of the explosions was appalling, seeming to beat in upon the brain with oppressive physical force, and the glare of burning phosphorus powder painted an X-ray picture of Peter's own fingers on the fleshy red of his closed eyelids. Then the grenade men were shouting into the interior, "Lie down! Everybody down! They would keep repeating that order Israeli sty leas long as it lasted.

Peter was a hundredth of a second slow, numbed by the blast, fumbling slightly at the butt of the Walther, thumbing the hammer as it snapped out of the quick-release holster, and then he went in feet first through the hatch, like a runner sliding for home base. He was still in the air when he saw the girl in the red shirt running forward brandishing the camera, and screaming something that made no sense, though his brain registered it even in that unholy moment.

He fired as his feet touched the deck and his first shot hit the girl in the mouth, punching a dark red hole through the rows of white teeth and snapping her head back so viciously that he heard the small delicate bones of her neck crack leas they broke.

Ingrid used both arms to cover eyes and ears, crouching forward into the appalling blast of sound and light that swept through the crowded cabins like a hurricane wind, and even when it had passed she was reeling wildly clutching for support at a seat back, trying to steady herself and judge the moment when the attackers were into the hull.

Those outside the hull would escape the direct force of the explosives she was about to detonate; there was a high survival chance for them. She wanted to judge the moment when the entire assault team penetrated the hull, she wanted maximum casualties, she wanted to take as many with her as possible, and she lifted the camera above her head with both hands.

"Come on!" she shrieked, but the cabin was thick with swirling clouds of white acrid smoke, and the dangling hoses twisted and writhed like the head of the Medusa. She heard the thunder of a shot pistol and somebody screamed, voices were chanting, "Lie down" Everybody down"

It was all smoke and sound and confusion, but she watched the dark opening of the emergency hatchway, waiting for it, finger on the detonator button of the camera.

A supple black-clad figure in a grotesque mask torpedoed feet first into the cabin, and at that same instant Karen shrieked beside her.

"No, don't kill us," and snatched the camera from Ingrid's raised hands, jerking it away by the strap, leaving Ingrid weaponless. Karen ran down the aisle through the smoke, still screaming, Don't kill us!"

holding the camera like a peace offering. "Caliph said we would not die." She ran forward screaming frantically. "Caliph-" and the black-clad and masked figure twisted lithely in the air, arching his back to land feet first in the centre of the aisle; as his feet touched the deck so the pistol in his right hand jerked up sharply but the shot seemed muted and un-warlike after the concussion of the stun grenades.

Karen was running down the aisle towards him, screaming and brandishing the camera, when the bullet took her in the mouth and wrenched her head backwards at an impossible angle. The next two shots blended into a single blurt of sound, fired so swiftly as to cheat the hearing, and from such Close range that even the Velex explosive bullets ripped the back out of Karen's shirt and flooded it with a brighter wetter scarlet as they erupted from between her shoulder blades. The camera went spinning high across the cabin, landing in the lap of an unconscious passenger slumped in one of the central seats between the aisles.

Ingrid reacted with the instinctive speed of a jungle cat, diving forward, flat on the carpet aisle below the line Of fire; shrouded by the sinking white smoke of the grenades she wriggled forward on her belly to reach the camera.

It was twenty feet to where the camera had landed, but Ingrid moved with the speed of a serpent; she knew that the smoke was hiding her, but she knew also that to reach the camera she would have to come to her feet again and reach across two seats and two unconscious bodies.

Peter landed in balance on the carpeted aisle, and he killed the girl swiftly, and danced aside, clearing space for his number two to land.

The next man landed lightly in the space Peter had made for him, and the German in the red shirt jumped out from the angle of the rear galley and hit him in the small of the back with a full charge of buckshot. It almost blew his body into two separate parts, and he seemed to break in the middle like a folding penknife as he collapsed against Peter's legs.

Peter whirled at the shot, turning his back on Ingrid as she crawled forward through the phosphorous smoke.

Kurt was desperately trying to pull down the short, thick barrel of the pistol, for the recoil had thrown it high above his head. His scarlet shirt was open to the navel, shiny hard brown muscle and thick whorls of black body hair, mad glaring eyes through a greasy fringe of black hair, the scarred lip curled in a fixed snarl.

Peter hit him in the chest, taking no chance, and as he reeled backwards still fighting to aim the pistol, Peter hit again, in the head through the temple just in front of the left ear; the eyelids closed tightly over those wild eyes, his features twisted out of shape like a rubber mask and he went down face first into the aisle.

"Two." Peter found that, as always in these desperate moments, he was functioning very coldly, very efficiently.

His shooting had been as reflexively perfect as if he were walking a combat shoot with jump-up cardboard targets.

He had even counted his shots, there were four left in the Walther.

"And two more of them," he thought, but the smoke was still so thick that his visibility was down to under fifteen feet, and the swirling forest of dangling oxygen hose still agitated by the grenade blasts cut down his visibility further.

He jumped over the broken body of his number two, the blood squelching under his rubber soles, and suddenly the chunky black figure of Colin Noble loomed across the cabin.

He was in the far aisle, having come in over the starboard wing.

In the writhing smoke he looked like some demon from the pit, hideous and menacing in his gas mask. He dropped into the marksman's crouch, holding the big Browning in a double-handed grip, and the clangour of the gun beat upon the air like one of the great bronze bells of Notre Dame.

He was shooting at another scarlet-shirted figure, half seen through the smoke and the dangling hoses, a man with a round boyish face and drooping sandy mustache. The big Velex bullets tore the hijacker to pieces with the savagery of a predator's claws. They seemed to pin him like an insect to the central bulkhead, and they smashed chunks of living flesh from his chest and splinters of white bone from his skull.

"Three," thought Peter. "One left now and I must get the camera." He had seen the black camera in the hands of the girl he had killed, had seen it fall, and he knew how deadly important it was to secure the detonator before it fell into the hands of the other girl, the blonde one, the dangerous one.

It had been only four seconds since he had penetrated the hull, yet it seemed like a dragging eternity. He could hear the crash of the slap-hammers tearing out the door locks, both fore and aft. Within seconds there would be Thor assault teams pouring into the Boeing through every opening, and he had not yet located the fourth hijacker, the truly dangerous one.

"Get down! Everybody down!" chanted the grenade men, and Peter spun lightly, and ran for the flight deck. He was certain the blonde girl would be there at the control centre.

Then, in front of him lay the girl he had shot down, the long, dark hair spread out around her pale, still terrified face. Her hair was already sodden with dark blood, and the black gap in her white teeth made her look like an old woman. She blocked the aisle with a tangle of slim boneless limbs.

The forward hatch crashed open as the lock gave way, but there were still solid curtains of white smoke ahead of him. Peter gathered himself to jump over the girl's body, and at that instant the other girl, the blonde girl, bounded up from the deck, seeming to appear miraculously from the smoke, like some beautiful but evil apparition.

She dived half across the block of central seating, groping for the camera, and Peter was slightly off balance, blocking himself in the turn to bring his gun hand on to her. He changed hands smoothly, for he was equally accurate with either, but it cost him the tenth part of a second, and the girl had the strap of the camera now and was tugging desperately at it. The camera seemed to be snagged, and Peter swung on her, taking the head shot for she was less than ten paces away, and even in the smoke and confusion he could not miss.

One of the few passengers who had been breathing oxygen from his hanging mask, and was still conscious, ignored the chanted orders "Get down! Stay down!" and suddenly stumbled to his feet, screaming, "Don't shoot! Get me out of here! Don't shoot!" in a rising hysterical scream.

He was directly between Peter and the red-shirted girl, blocking Peter's field of fire, and Peter wrenched the gun off him at the moment that he fired. The bullet slammed into the roof, and the passenger barged into Peter, still screaming.

"Get me out! I want to get out!" Peter tried desperately to clear his gun hand, for the girl had broken the strap of the camera and was fumbling with the black box. The passenger had an arm around Peter's gun arm, was shaking him wildly, weeping and screaming.

From across the central block of seats, Colin Noble fired once.

He was still in the starboard aisle and the angle was almost impossible, for he had to shoot nine inches past Peter's shoulder, and through the forest of dangling hose.

His first shot missed, but it was close enough to flinch the girl's head violently, the golden hair flickered with the passage of shot, and she stumbled backwards, groping with clumsy fingers for the detonator.

Peter chopped the hysterical passenger in the throat with the stiffened fingers of his right hand and hurled him back into his seat, trying desperately to line up for a shot at the girl knowing he must get the brain and still her fingers instantly.

Colin fired his second shot, one hundredth of a second before Peter, and the big bullet flung the girl aside, jerking her head out of the track of Peter's shot.

Peter saw the strike of Colin's bullet, it hit her high in the right shoulder, almost in the oint of the scapula and the humerus, shattering the bone with such force that her arm was flung upwards in a parody of a communist salute, twisting unnaturally and whipping above her head; once again the camera was flung aside and the girl's body was thrown violently backwards down the aisle as though she had been hit by a speeding automobile.

Peter picked his shot, waiting for a clean killing hit in the head as the girl tried to drag herself upright but before he could fire, a mass of black-costumed figures swarmed out of the smoke, and covered the girl, pinning her kicking and screaming on the carpet of the aisle.

The Thor team had come in through the forward hatch, just in time to save her life, and Peter clipped the Walther into his holster and stooped to pick up the camera gingerly. Then he pulled off his mask with his other hand.

"That's it. That's all of them, he shouted. "We got them all.

Cease fire. It's all over." Then into the microphone of the transceiver, "Touch down! Touch down!" The code for total success.

Three of his men were holding the girl down, and despite the massive spurting wound in her shoulder, she fought like a leopard in a trap.

"Get the emergency chutes down," Peter ordered, and from each exit the long plastic slides inflated and drooped to the tarmac already his men were leading the conscious passengers to the exits and helping them into the slide.

From the terminal building a dozen ambulances with sirens howling, gunned out across the tarmac. The back-up members of Thor were running out under the glare of floodlights, cheering thinly. "Touch down!

Touch down!" Like prehistoric monsters the mechanical stairways lumbered down from the northern apron, to give access to the body of the Boeing.

Peter stepped up to the girl, still holding the camera in his hands, and he stood looking down at her. The icy coldness of battle still gripped him, his mind felt needle sharp and his vision clear, every sense enhanced.

The girl stopped struggling, and looked back at him. The image of a trapped leopard was perfect. Peter had never seen eyes so fierce and merciless, as she glared at him. Then she drew her head back like a cobra about to strike, and spat at him. White frothy spittle splattered down the front of Peter's legs.

Colin Noble was beside Peter now, pulling off his gas mask.

"I'm sorry, Peter. I was going for the heart."

"You'll never hold me," shrieked the girl suddenly. "I'll be free before Thanksgiving!" And Peter knew she was right. "The punishment that a befuddled world society meted out to these people was i usually only a few months" imprisonment, and that often suspended. He remembered the feel of the dying child in his arms, the warm trickle of her blood running over his belly and legs.

"My people will come for me," the girl spat again, this time into the face of one of the men who held her down.

"You will never hold me. My people will force you to free me."

Again she was right, her capture was a direct invitation for further atrocity, the wheel of vengeance and retribution was set in motion.

For the life of this trapped and vicious predator, hundreds more would suffer, and dozens more would die.

The reaction was setting in now, the battle rage abating, and Peter felt the nausea cloying his bowels. It had been in vain, he thought; he had thrown away a lifetime's strivings and endeavour to win only a temporary victory. He had checked the forces of evil, not beaten them and they would regroup and attack again, stronger and more cunning than ever, and this woman would lead them again.

"We are the revolution." The girl lifted her uninjured arm in the clenched fist salute. "We are the power. Nothing, nobody can stop us." When this woman had fired a load of buckshot through the swollen body of the pregnant woman it had distorted her shape completely. The image was recaptured entire and whole in Peter's memory, the way she had burst open like the pod of a ripe fruit.

The blonde woman shook the clenched fist into Peter's face.

"This is only the beginning the new era has begun." There was a taunt and a sneering threat in her voice, uttered in complete confidence and Peter knew it was not misplaced. There was a new force unleashed in the world, something more deadly than he had believed Possible, and Peter had no illusions as to the role that blind fortune had played in his small triumph. He had no illusion either that the beast was more than barely wounded; next time it would be more powerful, more cunning, having learned from this inconsequential failure and with the reaction from battle came a powerful wave of dread and despair that seemed to overwhelm his soul. It had all been in vain.

"You can never win," taunted the woman, splattered with her own blood, but undaunted and unrepentant, seeming to read his very thoughts.

"And we can never lose," she shrieked.

Gentlemen." The South African Prime Minister spoke with painful deliberation. "My cabinet and I are firmly of the opinion that to accede to the terrorists" demands is to take a seat on the back of the tiger, from which we will never be able to dismount." He stopped, hung his great granite-hewn head for a moment and then looked up at the two ambassadors. "However, such is the duty we owe to humanity and the dignity of human life, and such is the pressure which two great nations can bring to bear upon one much smaller, that we have decided unanimously to agree in full to all the conditions necessary for the release of the women and children, -" A telephone on the table top in front of the American Ambassador began to shrill irritatingly, and the Prime Minister paused, frowned slightly.

"However, we place complete faith in the undertaking given by your governments-" He stopped again for the telephone insisted. You had better answer that, sir! he told Kelly Constable.

"Excuse me, Prime Minister." The American lifted the receiver, and as he listened an expression of utter disbelief slowly changed his features. "Hold the line, "he said into the receiver, and then, covering the mouthpiece with his hand, he looked up. "Prime Minister it is a very great pleasure to inform you that three minutes ago the Thor assault team broke into Flight 070 and killed three of the terrorists they wounded and captured a fourth terrorist, but there were no casualties among the passengers. They got them all out, every last one of them. Safe and sound." The big man at the head of the table sagged with relief in his seat, and as the storm of jubilation and self, congratulation broke about him, he started to smile. It was a smile that transformed his forbidding features, the smile of an essentially fatherly and kindly man. "Thank you, sir," he said, still smiling. "Thank you very much."

"You are guilty of blatant dereliction of your duty, General Stride, "Kingston Parker accused grimly.

"My concern was entirely with the lives of hostages and the force of moral law." Peter answered him quietly; it was less than fifteen minutes since he had penetrated the hull of the Boeing in a blaze of fire and fury.

His hands were still shaking slightly and the nausea still lay heavily on his guts.

"You deliberately disobeyed my specific orders." Parker was an enraged lion, the mane of thick shot-silver hair seemed to bristle, and he glowered from the screen; the vast power of his personality seemed to fill the command cabin of the Hawker. "I have always had grave reservations as to your suitability for the high command with which you have formal been entrusted. I have already expressed those reservations in writing to your superiors, and they have been fully justified."

"I understand by all this that I have been removed from command of Thor," Peter cut in brusquely, his anger seething to the surface, and Parker checked slightly.

Peter knew that even Kingston Parker could not immediately fire the hero of such a successful counter-strike. It would take time, a matter of days, perhaps, but Peter's fate was sealed. There could be no doubt of that, and Parker went on to confirm this.

"You will continue to exercise command under my direct surveillance. You will make no decision without referring directly back to me, no decision whatsoever. Do you understand that, General Stride?" Peter did not bother to reply; he felt a wildly reckless mood starting to buoy his sagging spirits, a sense of freedom and choice of action such as he had never known before.

For the first time in his career he had deliberately disobeyed a superior officer, and luck or not, the outcome had been a brilliant success.

"Your first duty now will be to withdraw all Thor units, and swiftly and in as good an order as possible. The militant you have taken will be returned to London for questioning and trial-"

"Her crimes were committed here. She should be tried here for murder I have already had demands from the local-"

"Arrangements are being made with the South African authorities." Parker's anger had not abated but he had it better under control. "She will return to Britain aboard your command aircraft, with the Thor doctor in attendance." Peter remembered what had happened to the terrorist Leila Khaled, dragged from the El Al airliner where she was being held by Israeli security agents. As a guest of the British police, she had spent six short days in captivity, and then been released in a blaze of publicity and glory, heroine of the communications media, Joan of Arc of terror released to plan and execute the death and destruction of hundreds more innocents, to lead the attack on the foundations of civilization, to shake the columns that held aloft the rule of law and society.

"I want this woman in London within twenty-four hours.

She is to be strictly guarded at all times against retaliation.

We cannot afford another blood bath like the one you led on 070."

Peter Stride walked very erect, very tall into the echoing,

marble-columned domestic departures hall of the airport, and his men called to him as he came.

"Well done, sir."

"Great stuff, General."

"Way to go-" AM They were tending the released passengers, re-assembling their scattered gear, dismantling the security and communications equipment and packing it away within the hour they would be ready to pull out but now they left their tasks to crowd about him, competing to shake his hand.

The passengers realized that this must be the architect of their salvation and they cheered him as he passed slowly through the hall, and now he was smiling, acknowledging their pitiful gratitude, stopping to talk with an old lady, and submitting to her tearful embrace.

"God bless you, my boy. God bless you." And her body trembled against him. Gently Peter set her aside and went on, and though he smiled it was with his lips only, for there was steel in his heart.

There were Thor guards on the main administrative offices on the mezzanine floor armed with submachine guns, but they stood aside for him and Peter went through.

Colin Noble was still in his black skin-tight assault suit with the big .45 on his hip, and a cheroot clamped between his teeth.

"Take a look at this lot," he called to Peter. The desk was covered with explosives and weapons. "Most of it's ironcurtain stuff but God alone knows where they got these." He indicated the double-barrelled shot pistols. "If they had these custom built, it would have cost them plenty."

"They have got plenty," Peter answered drily. "The ransom for the OPEC ministers was one hundred and fifty million dollars, for the Braun brothers twenty five million, for Baron Altmann another twenty million that's the defence budget for a nation." He picked up one of the shot pistols and opened the breech.

It had been unloaded.

"Is this the one she used to gun down the hostages?" Colin shrugged. "Probably, it's been fired through both barrels." Colin was right, there were black specks of burned powder down the short smooth bores.

Peter loaded it with buckshot cartridges from the pile on the desk, and walked on down the long office with the covered typewriters on the deserted desks and the airline travel posters decorating the wall.

Along one wall the three bodies of the hijackers were laid out in a neat row, each encapsulated in its separate translucent plastic envelope.

Two Thor men were assembling the contents of their pockets personal jewellery, meagre personal effects and they were packing them into labelled plastic bags.

The body of Peter's Number Two was against the far wall, also in his plastic body-bag, and Peter stooped over him. Through the plastic he could make out the features of the dead man's face. The eyes were wide and the jaw hung open slackly. Death is always so undignified, Peter thought, and straightened up.

Still carrying the shot pistol, Peter went on into the inner office, and Colin Noble followed him.

They had the girl on another stretcher, a plasma drip suspended above her, and the Thor doctor and his two orderlies were working over her quietly, but the young doctor looked up irritably as Peter pushed open the door, then his expression changed as he recognized Peter.

"General, if we are going to save this arm, I have to get her into theatre pretty damned quickly. The joint of the shoulder is shattered-" The girl rolled the lovely head towards Peter. The thick springing golden hair was matted with drying blood, and there was a smear of it across one cheek.

Now her face was completely drained of all colour, like the head of an angel carved out of white marble. The skin had a waxen, almost translucent, lustre and only the eyes were still fierce, not dulled by the painkilling drugs that they had injected into her.

I have asked the South Africans for co-operation-" the doctor went on, they have two top orthopaedic surgeons standing by, and they have offered a helicopter to fly her into the Central Hospital at Edenvale."

Already she was being treated, even by Thor, as the major celebrity she was. She had taken her first step along the rose-strewn pathway to glory, and Peter could imagine how the media would extol her beauty they had gone berserk with extravagant praise for the swarthy ferrety-eyed Leila Khaled with her fine dark mustache they would go over the top for this one.

Peter had never known any emotion so powerful as the emotion that gripped him now.

"Get out," he said to the doctor.

Sir? "The man looked startled.

"Get out," Peter repeated, "all of you." And he waited until the opaque glass door closed behind them, before he spoke to the girl in conversational tones.

"You have made me abandon my own principles, and descend to your level." The girl watched him uncertainly, her eyes flickered to the shot pistol that Peter held dangling from his right hand.

"You have forced me, a career soldier, to disobey the orders of a superior officer in the face of the enemy." He paused. "I used to be a proud man, but when I have done what I must do now I will no longer have much of which to be proud."

"I demand to see the American Ambassador," said the girl huskily, still watching the pistol. "I am an American citizen. I demand the protection-" Peter interrupted her, again speaking quickly. "This is not revenge. I am old and wise enough to know that revenge has the most bitter taste of all human excesses."

"You cannot do it-" The girl's voice rose, the same strident tones, but now shriller still with fear. "They will destroy you." But Peter went on as though she had not spoken. "It is not revenge, he repeated. "You, yourself, gave the reason clearly. If you continue to exist, they will come to get you back. As long as you live, others must die and they will die stripped of all human dignity. They will die in terror, the same way you murdered-"

"I am a woman. I am wounded. I am a prisoner of war," screamed the girl, trying to struggle upright.

"Those are the old rules, Peter told her. "You tore up the book, and wrote a new one I am playing to your rules now. I have been reduced to your level."

"You cannot kill me," the girl's voice range wildly. "I still have work-"

"Colin," Peter said quietly, without looking at the man.

"You'd better get out now." Colin Noble hesitated, his right hand on the butt of the Browning, and the girl rolled her head towards him imploringly.

"You can't let him do it."

"Peter, -" Colin said.

"You were right Colin." Peter spoke quietly. "That kid did look a lot like Melissa-Jane." Colin Noble dropped his hand from the pistol and turned to the door. Now the girl was shrieking obscenity and threat, her voice incoherent with terror and hatred.

Colin closed the door softly and stood with his back to it. The single crash of shot was shockingly loud, and the stream of filthy abuse was cut off abruptly. The silence was even more appalling than the harrowing sounds which had preceded it. Colin did not move. He waited four, five seconds before the door clicked open and General Peter Stride came out into the main office. He handed the shot pistol to Colin and one barrel was hot in his hand.

Peter's handsome aristocratic features seemed ravaged, as though by a long wasting disease. The face of a man who had leapt into the abyss.

Peter Stride left the glass door open, and walked away without looking back. Despite the terrible expression of despair, he still carried himself like a soldier and his tread was firm.

Colin Noble did not even look through the open door.

"All right," he called to the doctor. "She's all yours now." And he followed Peter Stride down the broad staircase.

There was a long hard gallop over good going and open pasture to the crest of the ridge, with only one gate. Melissa-Jane led on her bay filly, her Christmas gift from Uncle Steven. She was in the midst of the passionate love affair that most pubescent girls have with horses, and she looked truly good astride the glistening thoroughbred.

The cold struck high colour into her cheeks and the braid of honey-coloured hair thumped gaily down her back at each stride. She had blossomed even in the few weeks since last Peter had seen her and he realized with some awe and considerable pride that she was fast becoming a great beauty.

Peter was up on one of Steven's hunters, a big rangy animal with the strength to carry his weight, but the gelding was slogging hard to hold the flying pair that danced ahead of him.

At the hedge, Melissa-Jane scorned the gate, gathered the filly with fine strong hands and took her up and over.

Her little round bottom lifted out of the saddle as she leaned into the jump, and clods of black earth flew from the filly's hooves.

As soon as she was over she swivelled in the saddle to watch him, and Peter realized that he was under challenge.

The hedge immediately appeared to be head-high and he noticed for the first time how the ground fell away at a steep angle beyond. He had not ridden for almost two years, and it was the first time he had been up on this gelding but the horse went for the jump gamely, and they brushed the top of the hedge, landed awkwardly, stumbled with Peter up on his neck for an appalling instant of time in which he was convinced he was to take a toss in front of his daughter's critical eye; caught his balance, held the gelding's head up and they came away still together.

"Super-Star!" Melissa-Jane shouted laughing, and by the time he caught her she had dismounted under the yew tree at the crest, and was waiting for him with her breath steaming in the crisp calm air.

"Our land once went right as far as the church-" Peter pointed to the distant grey needle of stone that pricked the belly of the sky, " and there almost to the top of the downs." He turned to point in the opposite direction.

"Yes." Melissa-Jane slipped her arm through his as they stood close together under the yew. "The family had to sell it when Grandfather died. You told me. And that's right too. One family shouldn't own so much." Peter glanced down at her, startled. "My God, a comrnu rust in the family. An asp in the bosom." She squeezed his arm. "Don't worry, Daddy darling. It's Uncle Steven who is the bloated plutocrat. You're not a capitalist you aren't even employed any more-" And the instant she had said it, her laughter collapsed around her and she looked stricken. Oh, I didn't mean that. I truly didn't." It was almost a month now since Peter's resignation had been accepted by the War Office, but the scandal had not yet run out of steam.

The first heady paeans of praise for the success of Thor's Delta strike had lasted only a few days. The glowing editorials, the full front pages, the lead news item on every television channel, the effusive messages of congratulations from the leaders of the Western governments, the impromptu triumph for Peter Stride and his little band of heroes, had quickly struck an odd note, a sudden souring of the ecstasies.

The racist Government of South Africa had actually agreed to the release of political prisoners before the assault, one of the hijackers had been taken alive, and died of gunshot wounds received in the terminal buildings. Then one of the released hostages, a freelance journalist who had been covering the medical convention in Mauritius and was returning aboard the hijacked aircraft, published a sensational eye-witness account of the entire episode, and a dozen other passengers supported his claims that there had been screams from the fourth hijacker, screams for mercy, before she was shot to death after her capture.

A storm of condemnation and vilification from the extreme left of the British Labour Government had swept through the Westminster parliament, and had been echoed by the Democrats in the American Congress. The very existence of the Thor Command had come under scrutiny and been condemned in extravagant tenons. The Communist parties of France and Italy had marched, and the detonation of an M-26 hand grenade one of those stolen by the Baader-Meinhof gang from the American base in Metz amongst the crowd leaving the Parc des Princes football stadium in Paris had killed one and injured twenty-three. A telephone call to the offices of France Soir by a man speaking accented French claimed that this fresh atrocity was revenge for the murder of four hijackers by the Imperialist execution squad.

Pressure for Peter's discharge had come initially from the Pentagon, and there was very little doubt that Dr. Kingston Parker was the accuser, though, as head of Atlas, he was never identified, total secrecy still surrounding the project.

The media had begun to demand an investigation of all the circumstances surrounding Thor. And if it is ascertained that criminal irregularities did indeed exist in the conduct of the operation, that the person or persons responsible be brought to trial either by a military tribunal or the civil courts." Fortunately the media had not yet unravelled the full scope of Atlas Command. Only Thor was under scrutiny; they did not yet suspect the existence of either Mercury or Diana.

Within the War Office and the governments of both America and Britain, there had been much sympathy and support for Peter Stride but he had made it easier for his friends and for himself by rendering his resignation. The resignation had been accepted, but still the left was clamouring for more. They wanted blood, Peter Stride's blood Now Melissa-Jane's huge pansy violet eyes flooded with the tears of mortification. "I didn't mean that. I truly didn't."

"One thing about being out of a job I have more time to be with my favourite girl." He smiled down at her, but she would not be mollified.

"I don't believe the horrible things they are saying. I know you are a man of honour, Daddy."

"Thank you." And he felt the ache of it, the guilt and the sorrow. They were silent a little longer, still standing close together, and Peter spoke first.

"You are going to be a palaeontologist-'he said.

"No. That was last month. I've changed my mind. I'm not interested in old bones any more. Now I'm going to be a doctor, a child specialist."

"That's good." Peter nodded gravely. "But let's go back to old bones for a moment. The age of the great reptiles. The dinosaurs why did they fade into extinction?"

"They could not adapt to a changing environment." Melissa-jane had the answer promptly.

Peter murmured," - A concept like honour. Is it outdated in today's world, I wonder?" Then he saw the puzzlement, the hurt in her eyes, and he knew they had wandered onto dangerous ground. His daughter had a burning love for all living things, particularly human beings. Despite her age, she had a developed political and social conscience, distinguished by total belief in shining ideals and the essential beauty and goodness of mankind. There would be time in the years ahead for the agony of disillusion. The term "man or woman of honour" was Melissa-Jane's ultimate accolade.

No matter that it could be applied to any of her current heroes or heroines the Prince of Wales, or the singer of popular songs with an outrageous name that Peter could never remember, to Virginia Wade, the former Wimbledon champion, or to the Fifth Form science teacher at Roedean who had aroused Melissa-Jane's interest in medicine, Peter knew that he should feel proper gratitude for being included in this exalted company.

"I will try to live up to your opinion of me." He stooped and kissed her, surprised at the strength of his love for this child-woman.

"And now it's too cold to stand here any longer, and Pat will never forgive us if we are late for lunch." They clattered over the stone cobbles of the stable yard, riding knee to knee, and before he dismounted, Peter indulged himself in the pleasure of his favourite view of the house that had always been home, even though it belonged now, together with the title, to Steven, the older brother, older by three hours only, but older none the less.

The house was red brick with a roof that ran at fifty different unlikely angles. It missed being hideous by a subtle margin and achieved a fairytale enchantment. Peter could never grudge it to Steven, who loved the sprawling edifice with something close to passion.

Perhaps the desire to own the house and to restore it to its former magnificence was the goad which had pricked Steven to the superhuman effort that a British resident must make against taxation and socialist restrictions in order to amass anything like a fortune.

Steven had made that effort and now Abbots Yew stood immaculate and well-beloved in glorious gardens, and Sir Steven kept baronial style.

His affairs were so complicated, spread over so many continents that even the British taxman must have been daunted. Peter had once skirted this subject with his twin brother, and Steven had replied quietly.

"When a law is patently unjust, such as our tax law is, it's the duty of an honest man to subvert it." Peter's old-fashioned sense of rightness had baulked at such logic, but he let it pass.

It was strange that it had worked this way for the two brothers, for Peter had always been the brilliant one, and the family had always referred to "Poor Steven'. Nobody was very surprised when Steven left Sandhurst amid dark whispers halfway through his final year but two years later Steven was already a millionaire while Peter was a lowly second lieutenant in the British Army. Peter grinned without rancour at the memory. He had always been particularly fond of his elder brother but at that moment his train of thought was interrupted as his eye caught the mirror-like finish of the silver limousine parked at the end of the stable yard. It was one of those long Mercedes-Benz favoured by pop stars, Arab oil men, or heads of staTe, The chauffeur was uniformed in sober navy blue and was busy burnishing the paintwork to an even higher gloss. Even Steven did not run to that sort of transportation, and Peter felt mildly intrigued. House guests at Abbots Yew were always interesting. Steven Stride did not concern himself with those who did not wield either power, wealth or extraordinary talent. Beyond the Mercedes 600 was parked another smaller model; this one was black and the two men in it had the hard closed faces that marked them as bodyguards.

Melissa-Jane rolled her eyes at the automobile. "Another bloated plutocrat, I expect," she muttered. It was the currently favoured term of extreme disapproval, a great advance on "grotty" which had preceded it, Peter could not help thinking as he helped his daughter unsaddle and then rub down the horses. They went up through the rose garden, arm in arm, and then laughing together into the main drawing-room.

"Peter old boy!" Steven came to meet him, as tall as his brother, and once he had been as lean, but good living had thickened his body while at the same time the strains of being a professional deal maker had greyed his hair at the temples and laced his mustache with silver bristles. His face was not quite a mirror image of Peter's, slightly more fleshy and florid but the twin resemblance was still strongly marked, and now his face was alive with pleasure.

"Thought you'd broken your bloody neck, what?" Steven carefully cultivated the bluff manner of the country squire to shield his quick and shrewd intelligence.

Now he turned to Melissa-Jane and hugged her with barely a touch of incestuous pleasure. "How did Florence Nightingale go?"

"She's a darling, Uncle Steven. I will never be able to thank you."

"Peter, I would like you to meet a very charming lady-" She had been talking to Patricia Stride, Steven's wife, and now as she turned, the winter sunshine through the bay windows behind lit her with a soft romantic aura.

Peter felt as though the earth had tilted under his feet, and a fist closed around his ribs constricting his breathing and inhibiting the action of his heart.

He recognized her immediately from the photographs in the official file during the long-drawn-out kidnapping and subsequent murder of her husband. At one stage it had seemed that the kidnappers had crossed the Channel with their victim, and Thor had gone to condition Alpha for almost a week. Peter had studied the photographs that had been assembled from a dozen sources, but even the glossy coloured portraits from Vogue and Jours de France had not been able to capture the magnificence of the woman.

Surprisingly, he saw his own immediate recognition reflected.

There was no change in her expression, but it flared briefly like dark-green emerald fire in her eyes. There was no question in Peter's mind but that she had recognized him, and as he stepped "towards her he realized she was tall, but the fine proportion of her body had not made that immediately apparent. Her skirt was of a fine wool crepe which moulded the long, stately legs of a dancer.

"Baroness, may I present my brother. General Stride."

"How do you do General." Her English was almost perfect, a low husky voice, the slight accent very attractive, but she pronounced his rank as three distinct syllables.

"Peter, this is Baroness Altmann." Her thick glossy black hair was scraped back severely from the forehead with a perfect arrowhead of widow's peak at the centre, emphasizing the high Slavic cheekbones and the unblemished perfection of her skin but her jawline was too square and strong for beauty, and the mouth had an arrogant determined line to it. Magnificent, but not beautiful and Peter found himself violently attracted. The breathless wholesale feeling he had not experienced for twenty years.

She seemed to epitomize everything he admired in a woman.

Her body was in the condition of a trained athlete.

Beneath the oyster silk of her blouse her arms were delicately sculpted from toned muscle, the waist narrow, the breasts very small and unfettered, their lovely shape pressing clearly through fine material, her clean lightly tanned skin glowed with health and careful grooming. All this contributed to his attraction.

However, the greater part was in Peter's own mind. He knew she was a woman of extraordinary strength and achievement, that was pure aphrodisiac for him, and she exuded also the challenging air of being un-attainable. The regal eyes mocked his evident masculinity with the untouchable aloofness of a queen or a goddess. She seemed to be smiling inwardly, a cool patronizing smile at his admiration, which she realized was no more than her due.

Quickly Peter reviewed what he knew of her.

She had begun her association with the Baron as his private secretary, and in five years had become indispensable to him. The Baron had recognized her ability by rapidly elevating her to the boards of directors, first of some of the group's lesser subsidiaries, and finally to that of the central holding company. When the Baron's physical strength had begun to decline in his losing battle with an inexorable cancer, he came to rely more upon her, trust well placed as it soon turned out. For she ran the complex empire of heavy industrial companies, of electronics and armaments corporations, of banking and shipping and property developments, like the son he never had. When he married her he was fifty-eight years of age, almost thirty years her senior, and she had been a perfect wife as she had been a perfect business partner.

She had assembled and personally delivered the massive ransom demanded by his abductors, against the advice of the French police, going alone and unguarded to a meeting with killers, and when they had returned the Baron's fearfully mutilated corpse to her, she had mourned him and buried him and continued to run the empire she had inherited, with vision and strength so far beyond her years.

She was twenty-nine years old. No, that had been two years ago, Peter realized, as he bowed over her hand, not quite touching the smooth cool fingers with his lips. She would be thirty-one years old now. She wore a single ring on her wedding finger, a solitaire diamond, not a particularly large diamond, not more than six carats but of such a perfect whiteness and fire that it seemed to be endowed with its own life. It was the choice of a woman of immense wealth and even greater style.

As Peter straightened, he realized that she was appraising him as carefully as he was her. It seemed that he would be unable to conceal anything from those slanted emerald eyes, but he returned her gaze steadily, knowing without conceit that he could withstand any such scrutiny; still intrigued, however, with the certainty that she had known him.

"Your name has been much in the news recently she said, as if in explanation.

There were sixteen for lunch, including Steven and Pat's three children and Melissa-Jane. It was a happy, relaxed meal, but the Baroness was seated at a distance that made it impossible for Peter to speak directly to her, and though he strained to follow her conversation, her voice was low and addressed mostly to Steven and the editor of one of the national daily newspapers who flanked her. Peter found himself fully occupied in fending off the breathless attention of the pretty but feather brained blonde on his left. She was a starlet who had married well and divorced even better.

She had been handpicked by Pat Stride. Peter's sister-inlaw was indefatigable in her efforts to find him a suitable replacement for Cynthia. Twelve years of straight failures had not daunted her in the least.

There was still time for Peter to notice that though the Baroness sipped once or twice at her wine, the level in the glass never fell, and she picked only lightly at her plate.

Though Peter watched her covertly, the Baroness never glanced once in his direction. It was only as they went through for coffee that she came directly and unaffectedly to his side.

"Steven tells me there are Roman ruins on the estate, she said.

"I could show them to you. It is a lovely walk up through the woods."

"Thank you. I do have some business to discuss with Steven before that; shall we meet at three o'clock?" She had changed into a loose tweed skirt and jacket that would have looked bulky on a shorter or plumper woman, and high boots in the same lavender tinted brown.

Under it she wore a cashmere roll-neck jersey, and a scarf of the same fine wool hung down her back. A wide-brimmed hat with a bright feather in the band was pulled down over her eyes.

She walked in silence, hands thrust deeply into the big pockets of her jacket, making no effort to protect the expensive boots from mud, thorns or damp bracken. She moved with a flowing, long-legged grace, swinging from the hips so that her shoulder and head seemed to float beside Peter, at a not much lower level than his own. Had she not been a world leader in finance and industry, she might have made a great model, he decided. She had a talent for making clothes look important and elegant, while treating them with indifference.

Peter respected her silence, pleased to be able to step out to match her pace, as they went up through the dark dripping woods that smelt of leaf mould and cold rain, the oaks bare and moss-pelted, seeming to beseech a purple grey sky with arthritic limbs held high.

They came out on the higher open ground without having stopped once, although the path had been steep and the ground soft underfoot.

She was breathing deeply but evenly, and she had coloured just sufficiently to flatter the high Slavic cheeks.

She must be in peak physical condition, he thought.

"Here they are." Peter indicated the barely discernible grass-covered ditch that circled the hilltop. "They are not very impressive, but I didn't want to warn you in advance She smiled now.

"I have been here before," she said in that intriguing husky accent.

"Well, we are off to a flying start. We have both deceived each other at our first meeting-" Peter chuckled.

"I came all the way from Paris, she explained. "It was most inconvenient really the business I had to discuss with Sir Steven could have been completed by telephone in five minutes. What I had to discuss with you could only be done face by face-" She corrected herself immediately.

"I am sorry, face to face" It was a rare slip. Steven had been strangely insistent that Peter spend this particular weekend at Abbots Yew, and was certainly party to this encounter.

"I am flattered by the interest of such a beautiful lady-"

Instantly she frowned, and with a gesture of irritation cut short the compliment as frivolous.

"Very recently you were approached by the Narmco section of Seddler StLel with an offer to head their Sales Division," she said, and Peter nodded. Since his resignation had been accepted by the War Office, there had been many offers. "The terms of employment offered were extraordinarily generous."

"That is true."

"You prefer the cloistered academic life, perhaps?" she asked, and though Peter's expression did not change, he was taken off balance. It seemed impossible that she could know of the offer of the Chair of Modern Military History that he had been offered by a leading American university, an offer with which he was still toying idly.

"There are some books I want to read and write," Peter said.

"Books. You have an important collection, and I have read those you have written. You are an interesting contradiction, General Stride. The man of direct action, and at the same time of deep political and social thought."

"I confuse myself at times," Peter smiled. "So what chance do you have to understand me?" She did not rise to the smile. "A great deal of your writing coincides with my own conviction. As for your action, if I had been a man and in your position, I might have acted as you did." Peter stiffened, resenting any allusion to the taking of Flight 070, and again she seemed to understand instinctively.

"I refer to your entire career, General. From Cyprus to Johannesburg and including Ireland." And he relaxed slightly.

"Why did you refuse the Narmco offer? "she asked.

"Because it was presented with the unstated conviction that I could not refuse. Because the terms were so generous that they left a strange unsatisfying odour in my nostrils.

Because I believe that I would have been required to perform duties in line with the reputation I seem to have acquired since the taking of Flight 070."

"What reputation is that?" She leaned slightly towards him, and he smelled her particular aroma. The way perfume reacted upon that pet ally-smooth skin, heated by the exertion of the climb up the hill. She smelled faintly of crushed lemon blossom and clean healthy mature woman.

He felt himself physically aroused by it, and had an almost undesirable impulse to reach out and touch her, to feel the warmth and glossiness of her skin.

A man who makes accommodations, perhaps, he answered, "What did you think you might have been asked to do?" This time he shrugged.

"Perhaps carry bribes to my onetime colleagues in NATO Command, to induce them to consider favourably the products of Narmco."

"Why would you believe that?"

"I was once a decision making officer in that Command." She turned away from him and looked out across the special greens of an English winter landscape, the orderly fields and pastures, the dark wedges and geometrical shapes of the woods and copses.

"Do you know that through Altmann Industries and other companies I control a majority shareholding in Seddler Steel, and naturally in Narmco?"

"No," Peter admitted. "But I cannot say I am surprised."

"Did you know that the offer from Narmco was in reality from me personally?"

This time he said nothing.

"You are quite right, of course, your contacts with the upper echelon of NATO and with the British and American high commands would have been worth every centime of the extravagant salary you were offered. As for bribes-" She smiled then suddenly, and it altered her face entirely, making her seem many years younger, and there was a warmth and a sense of fun that he would not have suspected, this is a capitalist society, General. We prefer to talk about commissions and introducer's fees." He found himself smiling back at her, not because of what she had said, but simply because her smile was irresistible.

"However, I give you my solemn word that you would never have been expected to offer or carry, no, since Lockheed were indiscreet, it has changed. Nothing disreputable could ever be traced back to Narmco, and certainly not to the top men there. Certainly not to you."

"It's all academic now, , Peter pointed out. "I've refused the offer."

"I disagree, General Stride. The brim of the hat covered her eyes as she looked down. "I hope that when you hear what I had hoped to achieve you may reconsider. I made the error of trying to keep us at arms" length to begin with.

I relied on the generosity of the offer to sway you. I do not usually misjudge people so dismally-" and she looked up and smiled again, and this time reached out and touched his arm. Her fingers were like her limbs, long and slim, but they were delicately tapered and the nails were shaped and lacquered to a glossy fleshy pink. She left them on his arm as she went on speaking.

"My husband was an extraordinary man. A man of vast vision and strength and compassion. Because of that they tortured and killed him, -" her voice had sunk to a hoarse catchy whisper " they killed him in the most vile manner-" She stopped, but made no attempt to turn her head away, she was unashamed of the tears that filled both eyes but did not break over the lower lids. She did not even blink, and it was Peter who looked away first. Only then she moved her hand, slipping it lightly into the crook of Peter's elbow and coming beside him so her hip almost touched his.

"It will rain soon," she said, her voice level and controlled.

"We should go down." And as they started, she went on talking.

"The butchers who did that to Aaron went free, while an impotent society looked on. A society which has systematically stripped itself of defence against the next attack.

America has virtually disbanded its intelligence system, and so shackled and exposed what is left that it is powerless.

Your own country is concerned only with its particular problems, as are we in the rest of Europe there is no international approach to a problem that is international in scope. Atlas was a fine concept, limited as it was by the fact that it was a force that could only be used in retaliation and then only in special circumstances. However, if they ever suspect that it exists, the denizens of the left will mass to tear it down like a hunting pack of hyena." She squeezed his arm lightly, and looked sideways at him with a solemn slant of the emerald eyes. "Yes, General, I do know about Atlas but do not ask me how." Peter said nothing, and they entered the forest, stepping carefully, for the path was slick and steep.

"After the death of my husband, I began to think a great deal about how we could protect the world that we know, while still remaining within the laws which were first designed to do that. With

Altmann Industries I had inherited a comprehensive system of international information gathering; naturally it was attuned almost entirely to commercial and industrial considerations, -" She went on talking in that low intense voice that Peter found mesmeric, describing how she had gradually used her massive fortune and influence to reach across borders closed to most to gain the overall view of the new world of violence and intimidation. " - I was not tied by considerations such as that of Interpol, forbidden by suicidal laws to involve itself in any crime that has political motivation. It was only when I was able to pass on what I had learned that I found myself coming up against the same self-destructive state of mind that masquerades as democracy and individual freedom. Twice I was able to anticipate a terrorist strike and to warn the authorities, but intention is not a crime, I was told, and both the culprits were quietly escorted to the border and turned free to prepare themselves almost openly for the next outrage. The world must wait and cringe for the next stroke, prohibited from making any pre-emptive strike to prevent it, and when it comes they are hampered by confused national responsibilities and by the complicated concept of minimum force " The Baroness broke off. "But you know all this! You have written in depth of the same subject."

"It's interesting to hear it repeated."

"I will come soon enough to the interesting part but we are almost back at the house."

"Come," Peter told her, and led her past the stables to the swimming pool pavilion.

The surface of the heated pool steamed softly, and lush tropical plants were in odd contrast to the wintry scene beyond the glass walls.

They sat side by side on a swing seat, close enough to be able to talk in subdued tones, but the intense mood was broken for the moment.

She took off her hat, scarf and jacket, and tossed them onto the cane chair opposite, and she sighed as she settled back against the cushions.

"I understand from Sir Steven that he wants you to go into the bank." She slanted her eyes at him. "it must be difficult to be so sought after."

"I don't think I have Steven's reverence for money."

"It's a readily acquired taste, General Stride, she assured him. "One that can become an addiction." At that moment the children of both Stride brothers arrived in a storm of shouted repartee and laughter, which moderated only marginally when they realized that Peter and the Baroness were in the swing seat.

Steven's youngest son, bulging over the top of his costume with puppy-fat and with silver braces on his front teeth, rolled his eyes in their direction and in a stage whisper told Melissa-Jane, Je t'aime, ma cliMe, swoon!

swoon!" His accent was frighteningly bad and he received a hissed rebuke and a shove in the small of the back that hurled him into the deep end of the pool.

The Baroness smiled. "Your daughter is very protective-" she turned slightly to examine Peter's face again or is it merely jealousy?" Without waiting for an answer she went straight on to ask another question. Against the background of shouts and splashes, Peter thought he had mis-heard.

"What did you say?" he asked carefully, certain that his expression had revealed nothing, and she repeated.

"Does the name Caliph mean anything to you?" He frowned slightly, pretending to consider, while his memory darted back to the terrible micro-seconds of mortal combat, of smoke and flame and gunfire and a dark-haired girl in a scarlet shirt screaming: "Don't kill us! Caliph said we would not die. Caliph-" And his own bullets stopping the rest of it, smashing into the open mouth. The word had haunted him since then, and he had tried a thousand variations, looking for sense and meaning, considering the possibility that he had mis-heard. Now he knew he had not.

"Caliph?" he asked, not knowing why he was going to deny it, merely because it seemed vital that he keep something in reserve, that he were not carried headlong on the torrent of this woman's presence and personality. "It's a Mohammedan title I think it literally means the heir of Mohammed, the successor to the prophet."

"Yes." She nodded impatiently. "It's the title of a civil and religious leader but have you heard it used as a code name?"

"No. I am sorry, I have not.

What is the significance?"

"I am not sure, even my own sources are obscure and confused." She sighed, and they watched Melissa-Jane in silence. The child had been waiting for Peter's attention, and when she had it she ran lightly out along the springboard and launched herself, light as a swallow in flight, into a clean one-and-a-half somersault, entering the water with hardly a ripple and surfacing immediately with fine pale hair slick down across her face, immediately looking again for Peter's approval.

"She's a lovely child," said the Baroness. "I have no children.

Aaron wanted a son but there was not one." And there was real sorrow in the green eyes that she masked quickly. Across the pool Melissa-Jane climbed from the pool and quickly draped a towel around her shoulders, covering her bosom which was now large enough and yet so novel as to provide her with a constant source of embarrassment and shy pride.

"Caliph," Peter reminded the Baroness quietly, and she turned back to him.

"first heard the name two years ago, in circumstances I shall never forget-" She hesitated. "May I take it that you are fully aware of the circumstances surrounding my husband's kidnapping and murder? I

do not wish to repeat the whole harrowing story unless it is necessary."

"I know it," Peter assured her.

"You know that I delivered the ransom, personally."

"Yes."

"The rendezvous was a deserted airfield near the East German border. They were waiting with a light twin-engined aircraft, a Russian-built reconnaissance machine with its markings sprayed over." Peter remembered the meticulous planning and the special equipment used in the hijacking of 070. It all tallied. " There were four men, masked. They spoke Russian, or rather two of them spoke Russian. The other two never spoke at all. It was bad Russian-" Peter remembered now that the Baroness spoke Russian and five other languages. She had a Middle European background.

Peter wished he had studied her intelligence file more thoroughly.

Her father has escaped with her from her native Poland when she was a small child. "Almost certainly, the aircraft and the Russian were intended to cover their real identity," she mused. "I was with them for some little time. I had forty-five million Swiss francs to deliver and even in notes of large denomination it was a bulky and heavy cargo to load aboard the aircraft. After the first few minutes, when they realized that I had no police escort, they relaxed and joked amongst themselves as they worked at loading the money. The word "Caliph" was used in the English version, in a Russian exchange that roughly translates as "He was right again" and the reply "Caliph is always right". Perhaps the use of the English word made me remember it so clearly-" She stopped again, grief naked and bleak in the green eyes.

"You told the police?" Peter asked gently, and she shook her head.

"No. I don't know why not. They had been so ineffectual up to that time. I was very angry and sad and confused.

Perhaps even then I had already decided that I would hunt them myself and this was all I had."

"That was the only time you heard the name?" he asked, and she did not reply immediately. They watched the children at play and it seemed fantasy to be discussing the source of evil in such surroundings, against a background of laughter and innocent high spirits.

When the Baroness answered, she seemed to have changed direction completely.

"There had been that hiatus in international terrorism.

The Americans seemed to have beaten the hijacking problem with their Cuban agreement and the rigorous airport searches. Your own successful campaign against the Provisional wing of the IRA in this country, the Entebbe raid and the German action at Mogadishu were all hailed as breakthrough victories. Everybody was beginning to congratulate themselves that it was beaten. The Arabs were too busy with the war in the Lebanon and with inter-group rivalries. It had been a passing thing." She shook her head again. "But terrorism is a growth industry the risks are less than those of financing a major movie. There is a proven sixty-seven per cent chance of success, the capital outlay is minimal, with outrageous profits in cash and publicity, with instant results and potential power not even calculable.

Even in the event of total failure, there is still a better than fifty per cent survival rate for the participants." She smiled again, but now there was no joy and no warmth in it. "Any businessman will tell you it's better than the commodity markets."

"The only thing against it is that the business is run by amateurs," Peter'said, "or by professionals blinded by hatred or crippled by parochial interests and limited goals." And now she turned to him, wriggling around in the canvas swing seat, curling those long legs up under her in that double-jointed woman's manner, impossible for a man.

"You are ahead of me, Peter." She caught herself. "I am sorry, but General Stride is too much to say, and I have the feeling I have known you so long." The smile now was fleeting but warm. "My name is Magda," she went on simply.

"Will you use it?"

"Thank you, Magda."

"Yes." She picked up the thread of conversation again.

"The business is in the hands of amateurs but it is too good to stay that way."

"Enter Caliph," Peter guessed.

"That is the whisper that I have heard; usually there is no name.

Just that there was a meeting in Athens, or Amsterdam or East Berlin or Aden only once have I heard the name Caliph again. But if he exists already he must be one of the richest men in the world, and soon he will be the most powerful."

"One man?" Peter asked.

"I do not know. Perhaps a group of men perhaps even a government. Russia, Cuba, an Arab country? Who knows yet?"

"And the goals?"

"Money, firstly. Wealth to tackle the political objectives and finally power, raw power. "Magda Altmann stopped herself, and made a self-deprecating gesture. "This is guesswork again, my own guessing based only on past performance.

They have the wealth now, provided by OPEC and myself amongst others. Now he or they have started on the political objectives, a soft target first. An African racist minority government unprotected by powerful allies. It should have succeeded. They should have won an entire nation a mineral-rich nation for the price of a dozen lives.

Even had they failed to gain the main prize, the consolation prize was forty tons of pure gold. That's good business, Peter. It should have succeeded. It had succeeded.

The Western nations actually put pressure on the victims, and forced them to accede to the demands it was a trial run, and it worked perfectly, except for one man."

"I am afraid," said Peter softly, "as afraid as I have ever been in my life."

"Yes, I am also,

Peter. I have been afraid ever since that terrible phone call on the night they took Aaron, and the more I learn the more afraid I become."

"What happens next?"

"I do not know but the name he has chosen has the hint of megalomania, perhaps a man with visions of godlike domination-" She spread her fine narrow hands and the diamond flashed white fire. " We cannot hope to fathom the mind of a man who could embark on such a course.

Probably he believes that what he is doing is for the eventual good of mankind. Perhaps he wants to attack the rich by amassing vast wealth, to destroy the tyrant with universal tyranny, to free mankind by making it a slave to terror. Perhaps he seeks to right the wrongs of the world with evil and injustice." She touched his arm again, and this time the strength of those long fingers startled Peter. "You have to help me find him, Peter. I am going to put everything into the hunt, there will be no reservations, all the wealth and influence that I control will be at your disposal."

"You choose me because you believe that I murdered a wounded woman prisoner?" Peter asked. "Are those my credentials?" And she recoiled from him slightly, and stared at him with the slightly Mongolian slant of eyes, then her shoulders slumped slightly.

"All right, that is part of it, but only a small part of it.

You know I have read what you have written, you must know that I have studied you very carefully. You are the best man available to me, and finally you have proved that your involvement is complete. I know that you have the strength and skill and ruthlessness to find Caliph and destroy him before he destroys us and the world we know." Peter was looking inwards. He had believed that the beast had a thousand heads, and for each that was struck off a thousand more would grow but now for the first time he imagined the full shape of the beast, it was still in ambush, not clear yet, but there was only a single head.

Perhaps, after all, it was mortal.

"Will you help me, Peter?"she asked.

"You know I will," he answered quietly. "I do not have any choice." She flew in the brilliance of high sunlight reflected from snow fields of blazing white, jetting through her turns with flowing elegance, carving each turn with a crisp rush of flying snow, swaying across the fall line of the mountain in an intricate ballet of interlinked movement.

She wore a slim-fitting skin suit of pearly grey, trimmed in black at the shoulders and cuffs, she was shod with gleaming black Heierling snow birds and her skis were long, narrow, black Rossignol professionals.

Peter followed her, pressing hard not to lose too much ground, but his turns were solid Christies without the stylish fallback un weighting of the jet turn which gave her each time a fractional gain.

The dun he ran like a stag of ten But the mare like a new roused fawn Kipling might have been describing them, and she was a hundred yards ahead of him as they entered the forest.

The pathway was barred with the shadows of the pines, and sugary ice roared under his skis as he pushed the narrow corners dangerously fast. Always she was farther ahead, flickering like a silver-grey wraith on those long lean legs, her tight round buttocks balancing the narrow waist and swinging rhythmically into the turns, marvelous controlled broadsides where the icy roadway denied purchase, coming out fast and straight, leaning into the rush of the wind, and her faint sweet laughter came back to Peter as he chased.

There is an expertise that must be learned in childhood, and he remembered then that she was Polish, would probably have skied before she was weaned, and suppressed the flare of resentment he always felt at being outclassed by another human being, particularly by the woman who was fast becoming his driving obsession.

He came round another steeply banked turn, with the sheer snow wall rising fifteen feet on his right hand and on his left the tops of the nearest pines at his own level, so steep the mountain fell away into the valley.

The ice warning signs flashed past, and there was a wooden bridge, its boards waxen, opalescent with greenish ice. He felt control go as he hit the polished iron-hard surface. The bridge crossed a deep sombre gorge, with a frozen waterfall skewered to the black mountain rock by its own cruel icicles, like crucifixion nails.

To attempt to edge in, or to stem the thundering rush across the treacherous going, would have invited disaster, to lean back defensively would have brought him down instantly and piled him into the sturdy wooden guide rails.

At the moment he was lined up for the narrow bridge Peter flung himself forward so that his shins socked into the pads of his boots,

and in a swoop of terror and exhilaration he went through, and found that he was laughing aloud though his heart leaped against his ribs and his breathing matched the sound of the wind in his own ears.

She was waiting for him where the path debouched onto the lower slopes. She had pushed her goggles to the top of her head, and stripped off her gloves, both sticks planted in the snow beside her.

"You'll never know how much I needed that." She had flown into Zurich that morning in her personal Lear jet.

Peter had come in on the Swissair flight from Brussels, and they had motored up together. "You know what I wish, Peter?"

"Tell me,"he invited.

"I wish that I could take a whole month, thirty glorious days, to do what I wish. To be ordinary, to be like other people and not feel a moment's guilt." He had seen her on only three occasions in the six weeks since their first meeting at Abbots Yew. Three too brief and, for Peter, unsatisfying meetings.

Once in his new office suite at the Narmco headquarters in Brussels, again at La Pierre Brute, her country home outside Paris, but then there had been twenty other guests for dinner. The third time had been in the panelled and tastefully decorated cabin of her Lear jet on a flight between Brussels and London.

Though they had made little progress as yet in the hunt for Caliph, Peter was still exploring the avenues that had occurred to him and had cast a dozen lines, baited and hooked.

During their third meeting Peter had discussed with her the need to restructure her personal safety arrangements.

He had changed her former bodyguards, replacing them with operatives from a discreet agency in Switzerland which trained its own ryien. The director of the agency was an old and trusted friend.

They had come to this meeting now so that Peter might report back on his progress to Magda. But for a few hours the snow had seduced them both.

"There is still another two hours before the light goes." Peter glanced across the valley at the village church. The gold hands of the clock showed a little after two o'clock.

"Do you want to run the Rheinhorn?" She hesitated only a moment.

"The world will keep turning, I'm sure." Her teeth were very white, but one of them was slightly crooked, a blemish that was oddly appealing as she smiled up at him. "Certainly it will wait two hours." He had learned that she kept unbelievable hours, begining her day's work when the rest of the world still slept, and still hard at it when the offices of Altmann Industries in Boulevard Capucine were deserted,

except her own office suite on the top floor. Even during the drive up from Zurich she had gone through correspondence and dictated quietly to one of her secretaries. He knew that at the chalet across the valley her two secretaries would be waiting already, with a pile of telex flimsies for her consideration and the line held open for her replies.

"There are better ways to die than working yourself to death." He was suddenly out of patience with her single mindedness and she laughed easily with high colour in her cheeks and the sparkle of the last run in the green eyes.

"Yes, you are right, Peter. I should have you near to keep reminding me of that. "That's the first bit of sense I've had from you in six weeks." He was referring to her opposition to his plans for her security. He had tried to persuade her to change established behaviour patterns, and though the smile was still on her lips, her eyes were deadly serious as she studied his face.

"My husband left me a trust-" she seemed suddenly sad beneath the laughter a duty that I must fulfill. One day I should like to explain that to you but now we only have two hours." It was snowing lightly, and the sun had disappeared behind the mountains of rock and snow and cloud as they walked back through the village. The lights were burning in the richly laden shop windows and they were part of the gaily clad stream returning from the slopes, clumping along the frozen sidewalks in their clumsy ski boots, carrying skis and sticks over one shoulder and chattering with the lingering thrill of the high pi ste that even the lowering snow-filled dusk could not suppress.

"It feels good to be free of my wolves for a while." Magda caught his arm as her snow birds skidded on dirty ridged ice, and after she had regained her balance she left her gloved hand there.

Her wolves were the bodyguards that Peter had provided, the silent vigilant men who followed her either on foot or in a second car. They waited outside her offices while she worked, and others guarded the house while she slept.

That morning, however, she had told Peter, "Today I have as a companion a gold medal Olympic pistol champion, I don't need my wolves." Narmco marketed its own version of the 9-men parabellum pistol.

It was called "Cobra', and after a single morning in the underground range Peter had taken a liking to the weapon. It was lighter and flatter than the Walther he was accustomed to, easier to carry and conceal, and the single action mechanism saved a flicker of time with the first shot, for there was no need to cock the action. He had had no trouble obtaining a permit to carry one as a trade sample, although it was necessary to check it before every commercial flight, but it carried neatly in a quick-release shoulder holster.

He had felt theatrical and melodramatic at first, but with a little sober thought had convinced himself that to follow on Caliph's tracks unarmed was shortening the odds against himself.

Now it was becoming habit, and he was barely aware of the comforting shape and weight in his armpit, until Magda spoke.

"I am close to dying from thirst," she went on, and they racked their skis and went into the jovial warmth and clouds of steam that billowed from one of the coffee shops that lined the main street.

They found a seat at a table already crowded with young people, and they ordered glasses of steaming hot GUhuvin.

Then the four-piece hand thumped out a popular dance tune and their table companions swarmed onto the tiny dance floor.

Peter raised a challenging eyebrow at her and she asked with amusement, "Have you ever danced in ski boots?"

"There has to be a first time for everything." She danced like she did everything else, with complete absorption, and her body was strong and hard and slim against his.

It was completely dark as they climbed the narrow track above the village and went in through the electronically controlled gate in the protective wall around the chalet.

It was somehow typical of her that she had avoided the fashionable resorts, and that externally the chalet seemed not much different from fifty others that huddled in the edge of the pine forest. There was patent relief amongst her entourage at her return, and she seemed almost defiant at their concern as though she had just proved something to herself but still she did not change from her sports clothes before disappearing into the office suite on the first floor with her two male secretaries. "I work better with men," she had explained to Peter once. As Peter dressed in slacks, blazer and silk roll neck after a scalding shower, he could still hear the clatter of the telex machine from the floor below, and it was an hour later when she called him on the house telephone.

The entire top floor was her private domain and she was standing at the windows looking out over the snow-fuzzed lights of the valley as he entered.

She wore green slacks tucked in aprs-ski boots, and a blouse of the same colour, a perfect match for her eyes. The moment Peter entered, she pressed a concealed switch and the curtains slid silently closed, then she turned to him.

"A drink, Peter?"she asked.

Not if we are going to talk."

"We are going to talk," she said positively, and indicated the soft squashy leather armchair across from the fireplace.

She had resisted the traditional Swiss cuckoo-clock and knotty pine decor, and the carpeting was thick Wilton to match the curtains, the furniture low and comfortable but modern, sporty and good fun, the very best made to appear natural and unaffected, blending easily with the modern art on the walls and abstract sculpture in marble and grained wood.

She smiled suddenly at him. "I had no idea that I had found myself a gifted Sales Director for Narmco - I really am impressed with what you have done in so short a time."

"I had to establish a plausible coven" Peter deprecated the compliment. "And I used to be a soldier the job interests me."

"You English!" she told him with mock exasperation.

"Always so modest." She did not seat herself but moved about the room; although never at rest, neither did she give the feeling of restlessness. "I am informed that there is to be a definite NATO testing of Kestrel after almost two years of procrastination."

Kestrel was Narmco's medium-range ground-to-ground infantry portable missile.

"I am further informed that the decision was made to test after you had met with some of your former colleagues."

"The whole world runs on the old boy system-" Peter chuckled, "you should know that."

"And you are on old boy terms with the Iranians?" She cocked her head at him.

"That was a small stroke of luck. Five years ago I was on a staff college course with their new military adviser."

"Luck again." She smiled. "Isn't it strange that luck so often favours those who are clever and dedicated and who move faster than the pack?"

"I have had less luck in other directions, Peter pointed out, and immediately there was no trace of laughter left upon her lips nor in the emerald eyes, but Peter went on.

"So far I have been unsuccessful with the contact we spoke about on our last meeting-" They had discussed the possibility of access to the Atlas computer link, of requisitioning a printout on'Caliph'from the Central Intelligence bank, if there was one programmed.

"As I explained, there was the one remote possibility of access, somebody who owed me a favour. He was of no help. He believes that if there is a "Caliph" listing, it's blocked and buzzed." Which meant that any unauthorized requisition would sound an alarm in intelligence control.

"We'd trigger a Delta condition in Atlas if we put in a printout requisition."

"You did not give him the name?" Magda asked sharply.

"No. No names, just a general discussion over dinner at Brooks's but all the implications were there."

"Do you have any further avenues ?"

"I think so. One more, but it's a last resort," Peter said.

"Before we come to that, though, perhaps you can tell me if you have anything further from your sources."

"My sources-" Magda had never made more explicit descriptions, and Peter had instinctively known not to pry.

There was a certain finality to the way she said it. "My sources have been mostly negative. The seizure of the Netherlands Embassy in Bonn was unconnected with Caliph. It was exactly what it purported to be South Moluccan extremists. The hijackers of Cathay Airlines and Transit Airlines were both enthusiastic amateurs, as evidence the methods and the outcome " She smiled drily and drifted back across the room to touch the Hundedwasser collage that hung on the side wall, rearranging the hang of the frame in an essentially feminine gesture. There is only one recent act that has the style of Caliph."

"Prince Hassled Abdel Hayek?" Peter asked, and she turned to face him, thrusting out one hip with her hand upon it, the nails very red against the light-green cloth and the marquise cut diamond sparkling.

"What did you make of it?" she asked. The Prince had been shot dead, three bullets of .22 calibre in the back of the head while asleep in his rooms on the Cambridge campus. A nineteen-year-old grandson of King Khalid of Saudi Arabia, not one of the particular favourites of the king, a bespectacled scholarly youth who seemed content to remain outside the mainstream of palace power and politics.

There had been no attempt at abduction, no sign of a struggle, no evidence of robbery the young Prince had no close friends nor apparent enemies.

"It does not seem to have reason or motive," Peter admitted.

"That's why I thought of Caliph."

"The deviousness of Caliph-" Magda turned away and her haunches rippled under the elastic of her green slacks.

There was no ruck line of panties, and her buttocks were perfect spheres, with the shadow of the deep cleft between them showing through the thin material. Peter watched her legs as she paced, realizing for the first time that her feet were long and narrow as her hands, fine and graceful bones in perfect proportion.

"If I told you that Saudi Arabia last week made clear to the other members of OPEC that, far from supporting a rise in the price of crude, she will press for a five per cent reduction in the world price at the organization's next meeting-" Peter straightened up in his chair slowly and Magda went on softly " and that she will be supported by Iran in her proposal. If I told you that, what would you think?"

"The King has other, more favoured grandchildren grandsons and sons as well, brothers, nephews" Seven hundred of them," Magda agreed, and then went on musing. "The Shah of Iran has children that he divorced one wife to obtain-"

"The Shah paid his hundred-million-dollar ransom promptly to save his oil minister during the Carlos abduction what would he do for his own children?" Peter stood up now, unable to stay still with the itch of new ideas.

"And the King of Saudi-Arabia is an Arab. You know how Mohammedans are about sons and grandsons." Magda came to stand so close to him that he could feel the warmth of her flesh through the narrow space between them, and her perfume subtly underlined the ripe sweet woman's smell of her body, disturbing him, but strangely heightening his awareness. "Perhaps King Khalid has also been reminded of his own mortality."

"All right." Peter hunched his shoulders and frowned in concentration. "What are we suggesting? That Caliph has struck another easy formula? Two men who control the economic destiny of the Western world? Two men who make decisions at the. personal level, who are not answerable to cabinets or causes or governments?"

"Men who are therefore vulnerable to personal terrorism, who have records of appeasement to terrorist pressure." Magda paused. "The old truths are still good. "Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown." Both the Shah and the King will be no strangers to the fear of the assassin's blade.

They will understand the law of the knife, because they have always lived by it."

"Hell, you have to admire it." Peter shook his head.

"There is no need to take and hold hostages. No need for exposure. You kill one obscure member of a large royal family, and you promise that there will be others, each one more important, closer to the head."

"Both families have a high profile. The Shah loves the bright lights. He's up at Gstaad right this moment. It would need only a sniper up in the treeline to pick one of his children. His sister Shams is in Mauritius now. As for the King's family any time you want to drop into the Dorchester you'll find one of his sons or grandsons sipping coffee in the public lounge. They are soft targets, and there are plenty of them. You might even have to kill two princelings; or three but secretly the world will feel that they had it coming to them anyway. There will not be oceans wept for men who have themselves held the world to ransom." Peter's frown smoothed away, and he grinned wryly. "Not only do you have to admire it you've got to have a sneaking sympathy for the object. A dead brake to the crippling inflation of the world, a slowing of disruptive imbalance in trade." And Magda's expression was fierce as he had never seen it before. "That is the trap, Peter. To see the end only, and to harden yourself to the means. That was the trap that Caliph set with the taking of 070. His demands coincided with those of the Western powers, and they placed additional pressure on the victim. Now, if we are correct and Caliph is pressuring the oil dictators for a moderation of their demands, how much more support can he expect from the Western capitalist powers?"

"You are a capitalist," Peter pointed out. "If Caliph succeeds you will be one of the first to benefit."

"I am capitalist, yes. But before that I am a human being, and a thinking human being. Do you really believe that if Caliph succeeds now that this will be the last we hear of him?"

"Of course not." Peter spread his hands in resignation.

"Always his demands will be harsher with each success he must become bolder."

"I think we can have that drink now," Magda said softly, and turned away from him. The black onyx top of the coffee table slid aside at her touch to reveal the array of bottles and glasses beneath.

"Whisky, isn't it?" she asked, and poured a single malt Glenlivet into one of the cut glass tumblers. As she handed it to him their fingers touched and he was surprised at how cool and dry her skin felt.

She poured half a flute glass of white wine and filled it with Perrier water. As she replaced the wine bottle in the ice bucket, Peter saw the label. It was Le Montrachet 1969.

Probably the greatest white wine in the world, and Peter had to protest at the way in which she had desecrated it.

"Alexander Dumas said it should be drunk only on bended knee and with head reverently bared-"

" He forgot the mineral water," Magda purred with throaty laughter. "Anyway you can't trust a man who employed other people to write his books for him." She lifted the adulterated wine to him. "Long ago I decided to live my life on my own terms. To hell with Messrs Dumas and Caliph."

"Shall we drink to that?" Peter asked, and they watched each other over the rims. The level of Magda's glass had not lowered and she set the glass aside, moving across to adjust the bowl of hothouse tulips in the chunky free-form crystal bowl.

"If we are right. If this is Caliph at work then it disturbs the instinctive picture I had formed of him." Peter broke the silence.

"How?" she asked without looking up from the flowers.

"Caliph it's an Arabic name. He is attacking the leader of the Arab world."

"The deviousness of Caliph. Was the name deliberately chosen to confuse the hunters or perhaps there are other demands apart from the oil price perhaps pressure is also being put on Khalid for closer support of the Palestinians, or one of the other extremist Arab movements. We do not know what else Caliph wants from Saudi Arabia."

"But then, the oil price. It is Western orientated. Somehow it has always been accepted that terrorism is a tool of the far left,"

Peter pointed out, shaking his head. "The hijacking of 070 even the kidnapping of your husband were both aimed against the capitalist society."

"He kidnapped Aaron for the money, and killed him to protect his identity. The attack on the South African Government, the attack on the oil cartel, the choice of name, all point to a person with god-like pretensions." Magda broke the head off one of the tulips with an abrupt, angry gesture, and crushed it in her fist. She let the petals fall into the deep onyx ashtray. "I feel so helpless, Peter.

We seem to be going round in futile circles." She came back to him as he stood by the curtained windows. "You said earlier that there was one sure way to flush out Caliph?"

"Yes," Peter nodded.

"Can you tell me?"

"There was an old trick of the Indian shikari.

When he got tired of following the tiger in thick jungle without a sight of the beast, he used to stake out a goat and wait for the tiger to come to it."

"A goat?"

"My Zodiacal sign is Capricorn the goat."

Peter smiled slightly.

"I don't understand."

"If I were to put the word out that I was hunting Caliph, he smiled again. "Caliph knows me. The hijacker spoke my name,

clearly, un mistakenly She had been warned. So I believe that Caliph would take me seriously enough to consider it necessary to come after me." He saw the lingering colour drain dramatically from her high cheeks, and the sudden shadow in the depths of her eyes.

"Peter-"

"That's the only way I'm going to get close to him."

"Peter-" She placed her hand on his forearm, but then she could not go on. Instead she stared at him silently and her eyes were green and dark and unfathomable. He saw there was a pulse that throbbed softly in her long graceful neck, just below the ear. Her lips parted, as though she were about to speak. They were delicately sculptured lips, and she touched them with the pink tip of her tongue, leaving them moist and soft and somehow defenceless. She closed them, without speaking, but the pressure of her fingers on his arm increased, and the carriage of her whole body altered. Her back arched slightly so her lower body swayed towards him and her chin lifted slightly.

"I have been so lonely," she whispered. "So lonely, for so very long. I only realized how lonely today while I was with you." Peter felt a choking sensation in his throat, and the prickle of blood behind his eyes.

"I don't want to be lonely again, ever." he had let her hair come down. It was very thick and long. It fell in a straight rippling curtain shot through with glowing lights, to her waist.

She had parted it in the centre; a thin straight line of white scalp divided the great black wings and they framed her face, making it appear pale and childlike with eyes too large and vulnerable, and as she came towards where Peter lay the glossy sheets of hair slid silently across the brocade of her gown.

The hem of the gown swept the carpet, and her bare toes peeped out from under it with each step. Narrow finely boned feet, and the nails were trimmed and painted with a colourless lacquer. The sleeves of the gown were wide as batwings and lined internally with sat in, the collar buttoned up in a high Chinese style.

Beside the bed she stopped and her courage and poise seemed to desert her, her shoulders slumped a little and she clasped the long narrow fingers before her in a defensive gesture.

"Peter, I don't think I am going to be very good at this." The throaty whisper was barely audible, and her lips trembled with the strength of her appeal. "And I want so badly to be good." Silently he reached out one hand towards her, palm upwards. The bedclothes covered him to the waist, but his chest and arms were bare, lightly tanned and patterned with dark wiry body hair. As he reached for her the muscle bunched and expanded beneath the skin, and she saw that there was no surplus flesh on his waist, nor on his shoulders and upper arms. He looked lean and hard and tempered, yet leas the lash of a bullwhip, and she did not respond immediately to the invitation, for his masculinity was overpowering.

He folded back the thick down-filled duvet between them, and the sheet was crisp and smoothly ironed in the low rosy light.

"Come,"he ordered gently, but she turned away and with her back to him she undid the buttons of the embroidered gown, beginning at the throat and working downwards.

She slipped the gown from her shoulders, and held it for a moment in the crook of her elbows. The smooth pale flesh gleamed through the fall of dark hair, and she seemed to steel herself like a diver bracing for the plunge into unknown depths.

She let the gown drop with a rustling slide down the full length of her body, and it lay around her ankles in a shallow puddle of peacock colours.

She heard him gasp aloud, and she threw the hair back from her shoulders with a toss of the long, swan-white neck.

The hair hung impenetrably to the small of her back; just above the deep cleft of her lower body it ended in a clean line and her buttocks were round and neat and without blemish, but even as he stared the marble smoothness puckered into a fine rash of gooseflesh as though his eyes had physically caressed her, and she had responded with an appealingly natural awareness that proved how her every sense must be aroused and tingling. At the knowledge Peter felt his heart squeezed.

He wanted to rush to her and sweep her into his arms, but instinct warned him that she must close the last gap herself, and he lay quietly propped on one elbow, feeling the deep ache of wanting spread through his entire body.

She stooped to pick up the gown, and for a moment the long legs were at an awkward coltish angle to each other and the spheres of her buttocks altered shape. No longer perfectly symmetrical, but parted slightly, and in the creamy niche they formed with her thighs there was an instant's heart-stopping glimpse of a single dense tight curl of hair and the light from beyond tipped the curl with glowing reddish highlights, then she had straightened again, once more lithe and tall, and she dropped the robe across the low couch and in the same movement turned back to face Peter.

He gasped again and his sense of continuity began to break up into a mosaic of distinct, seemingly unconnected images and sensations.

Her breasts were tiny as those of a pubescent child, but the nipples were startlingly prominent, the colour and texture of ripening young berries, dark wine-red, already fully erect and hard as pebbles.

The pale plain of her belly, with the deep pit of the navel at its centre, that ended at last on the plump darkly furred mound pressed into the deep wedge between her thighs, like a small frightened living creature crouching from the stoop of the falcon.

The feel of her face pressed to his chest, and the tickle of her quick breath stirring his body hair, the almost painful grip of slim powerful arms locked with desperate strength around his waist.

The taste of her mouth as her lips parted slowly, softly, to his and the uncertain flutter of her tongue becoming bolder, velvety on top and slick and slippery on the underside.

The sound of her breathing changing to a deep sonorous pulse in his ears, seeming to keep perfect time with his own.

The smell of her breath, heavy with the aromatic musk of her arousal, and blending with the orangy fragrance of her perfume and the ripe woman smell of her body.

And always the feel of her the warmth and the softness, the hardness of toned muscle and the running ripple of long dark hair about his face and down his body, the crisp electric rasp of tight, tense curls parting to unbearable heat and going on for ever to depths that seemed to reach beyond the frontier of reality and reason.

And then later the stillness of complete peace that reached out from the centre where she lay against his heart and seemed to spread to the farthest corners of his soul.

"I knew that I was lonely," she whispered. "But I did not realize just how terribly deeply." And she held him as though she would never relinquish her grip.

Magda woke him in the cold utter darkness three hours before dawn, and it was still dark when they left the chalet. The headlights of the following Mercedes that carried her wolves swept the interior of their saloon through each bend in the steep twisting road down from the mountains.

On take-off from Zurich Magda was in the Lear jet's left-hand seat, flying as pilot in-command, and she handled the powerful machine with the sedate lack of ostentation which marks the truly competent aviator.

Her personal pilot, a grizzled and taciturn Frenchman, who was flying now as her co-pilot, evidently held her skill in high regard and watched over her with an almost fatherly pride and approval as she cleared Zurich controlled airspace and levelled out at cruise altitude for Paris Orly before she left him to monitor the auto-pilot and came back to the main cabin. Though she sat beside Peter in the black calfskin armchairs, her manner was unchanged from the way it had been during their last flight together in this machine. reserved and polite so that he found it difficult to believe the wonders they had explored together the previous night.

She worked with the two dark-suited secretaries opposite her, speaking her fluent rippling French with the same enchanting trace of accent that marked her English. In the short time since he had joined Narmco, Peter had been forced to make a crash revision of his own French. Now once again he could manage, if not with eclat, at least with competence, in technical and financial discussion. Once or twice Magda turned to him for comment or opinion, and her gaze was serious and remote, seeming as impersonal and efficient as an electronic computer and Peter understood that they were to make no show of their new relationship before employees.

Immediately she proved him wrong, for her co-pilot called her over the cabin speaker.

"We will join the Orly circuit in four minutes, Baroness." And she turned easily and naturally and kissed Peter's cheek, still speaking French.

"Pardon me, chill. I will make the landing. I need the flying time in my logbook." She greased the sleek swift aircraft onto the runway as though she was spreading butter on hot toast. The co-pilot had radioed ahead so that when she parked in the private hangar there were a uniformed immigration poficier and a douanier already waiting.

As they came aboard, they saluted her respectfully and then barely glanced at her red diplomatic passport. They took a little longer with Peter's blue and gold British passport, and Magda murmured to Peter with a trace of a smile.

"I must get you a little red book. It's so much easier." Then to the officials. "It is a cold morning, gentlemen, I hope you will take a glass." And her white-jacketed steward was hovering already. They left the two Frenchmen removing their kepis and pistol belts, settling down comfortably in the leather armchairs to make a leisurely selection of the cigars and cognac that the steward had produced for their approval.

There were three cars waiting for them, parked in the back of the hangar with drivers and guards. Peter's lip curled as he saw the Maserati.

"I told you not to drive that thing," he said gruffly. "It's like having your name in neon lights." They had argued about this vehicle while Peter was reorganizing her personal Security, for the Maserati was an electric silver-grey, one of her favourite colours, a shimmering dart of metal. She swayed against him with that husky little chuckle of hers.

"Oh, that is so very nice to have a man being masterful again. It makes me feel like a woman."

"I have other ways of making you feel like that." know, he agreed, with a wicked flash of green eyes.

"And I like those even better, but not now please! What in the world would my staff think!" Then seriously, "You take the Maserati, I ordered it for you, anyway. Somebody may as well enjoy it. And please do not be late this evening.

I have especially made it free for us. Try and be at La Pierre Benite by eight o'clock will you please?" By the time Peter had to slow for the traffic along the Pont Neuilly entrance to Paris, he had accustomed himself to the surging power and acceleration of the Maserati, and, as she had suggested, he was enjoying himself. Even in the mad Parisian traffic he used the slick gear box to knife through the merest suspicion of an opening, hulling out of trouble or overtaking with the omnipotent sense of power that control of the magnificent machine bestowed upon its driver.

He knew then why Magda loved it so dearly, and when he parked it at last in the underground garage on the Champs-Elyses side of Concorde he grinned at himself in the mirror.

"Bloody cowboy!" he said, and glanced at his Rolex. He had an hour before his first appointment, and as a sudden thought unclipped the holster of the Cobra and, with the pistol still in it, locked it in the glove compartment of the Maserati. He grinned again as he pondered the in advisability of marching into French Naval Headquarters armed to the teeth.

The drizzle had cleared, and the chestnut trees in the Elys& gardens were popping their first green birds as he came out into Concorde. He used one of the call boxes in the Concorde Metro station to make a call to the British Embassy. He spoke to the Military Attach for two minutes, and when he hung up, he knew the ball was probably already in play. If Caliph had penetrated the Atlas Command eeply enough to know him personally as the commander of Thor then it would not be too long before he knew that the former commander had picked up the spoor. The Military Attache at the Paris Embassy had other more clandestine duties than kissing the ladies" hands at diplomatic cocktail parties.

Peter reached the main gates of the Marine Headquarters on the corner of the rue Royale with a few minutes to spare, but already there was a secretary waiting for him below the billowing Tricolour. He smoothed Peter's way past the sentries, and led him to the armaments committee room on the third floor overlooking a misty grey view of the Seine and the gilded arches of the Pont Neuf. Two of Peter's assistants from Narmco were there ahead of him with their briefcases Unpacked and the contents spread upon the polished walnut table.

The French Flag captain had been in Brussels, and on one unforgettable evening he had conducted Peter on a magic carpet tour of the brothels of that city. He greeted him now with cries of Gallic pleasure and addressed him as Itu" and "tai" which all boded very well for the meeting ahead.

At noon precisely, the French captain moved that the meeting adjourn across the street to a private room on the first floor of Maxim's, blissful in the certainty that Narmco would pick up the tab, if they were really serious about selling the Kestrel rocket motors to the French Navy.

It required all Peter's tact not to make it obvious that he was taking less than his share of the Clos de Vougeot or of the Rmy Martin, and more than once he found that he had missed part of the discussion which was being conducted at a steadily increasing volume. He found that he was thinking of emerald eyes and small pert bosoms.

From Maxim's back to the Ministry of Marine, and later it required another major act of diplomacy on Peter's part when the captain smoothed his mustache and cocked a knowing eye at Peter. "There is a charming little club, very close and wonderfully friendly." By six o'clock Peter had disentangled himself from the Frenchman's company, with protestations of friendship and promises to meet again in ten days" time. An hour later Peter left his two sales assistants at the hotel Meurice after a quick but thorough summation of the day's achievements.

They were, all three, agreed that it was a beginning but a long, long road lay ahead to the ending.

He walked back along Rivoli; despite the frowsiness of a long day of endless talk and the necessity for quick thinking in a language which was still strange on the tongue, despite a slight ache behind the eyes from the wine and cognac and despite the taste of cigar and cigarette smoke he had breathed, he was buoyed by a tingling sense of anticipation, for Magda was waiting, and he stepped out briskly.

As he paused for traffic lights, he caught a glimpse of his own reflection in a shop window. He was smiling without realizing it.

While he waited on the ramp of the parking garage for his turn to pay and enter the traffic stream, with the Maserati engine whispering impatiently, he glanced in the rear view mirror. He had acquired the habit long ago when one of the captured Provo death lists had begun with his name; since then he had learned to look over his shoulder.

He noticed the Citron two back in the line of vehicles because the windshield was cracked and there was a scrape which had dented the mudguard and exposed a bright strip of bare metal.

He noticed the same black Citron still two back as he waited for pedestrian: lights in the Champs-Elysees, and when he ducked his head slightly to try and get a look at the driver, the headlights switched on as though to frustrate him and at that moment the lights changed and he had to drive on.

Going around the ttoile, the Citroen had fallen back four places in the grey drizzling dusk of early autumn, but he spotted it once again when he was halfway down the Avenue de la Grande Armee, for by now he was actively searching for it. This time it changed lanes and slipped off the main thoroughfare to the left. It was immediately lost in the maze of side streets and Peter should have been able to forget it and concentrate on the pleasure of controlling the Maserati, but there lingered a sense of foreboding and even after he had shot the complicated junction of roads that got him onto the periphery route and eventually out on the road to Versailles and Chartres, he found himself changing lanes and speed while he scanned the road behind in the mirror.

Only when he left Versailles and was on the Rambouillet road did he have a clear view back a mile down the straight avenue of plane trees, and he was certain there was no other vehicle on the road. He relaxed completely and began to prepare himself for the final turn off that would bring him at last to La Pierre BMite.

The shiny wet black python of road uncoiled ahead of him and then humped abruptly. Peter came over the rise at 150 kilometres an hour and instantly started to dance lightly on brake and clutch, avoiding the temptation of tramping down hard and losing adhesion on the slippery uneven tarmac. Ahead of him there was a gendarme in a shiny white plastic cape, wet with rain, brandishing a torch with a red lens; there were reflective warning triangles bright as rubies, a Peugeot in the ditch beside the road with headlights glaring at the sky, a dark blue police Kombi van half blocking the road, and in the stage lit by the Kombi's headlights two bodies were laid out neatly, and all of it hazed by the soft insistent mantle of falling rain. - a typical roadside accident scene.

Peter had the Maserati well in hand, bringing her neatly down through the gears to a crawl, and as he was lowering the side window, the electric motor whining softly and the icy gust of night air into the heated interior, the gendarme gestured with the flashlight for him to pull over into the narrow gap between hedge and the parked Kombi, and at that moment the unexpected movement caught Peter's eye.

It was one of the bodies lying in the roadway under the headlights. The movement was the slight arch of the back that a man makes before rising from the prone position.

Peter watched him lift his arm, not more than a few inches, but it was just enough for Peter to realize he had been holding an object concealed down the outside of his thigh, and even in the rain and the night Peter's trained eye recognized the perforated air-cooled sleeve enclosing the short barrel of a fold-down machine pistol.

Instantly his brain was racing so that everything about him seemed to be taking place in dreamy slow motion.

The Maserati! he thought. They're after Magda.

The gendarme was coming round to the driver's side of the Maserati, and he had his right hand under the white plastic cape, at the level of his pistol belt.

Peter went flat on the gas pedal, and the Maserati bellowed like a bull buffalo shot through the heart. The rear wheels broke from the wet surface, and with a light touch Peter encouraged the huge silver machine to swing like a scythe at the gendarme. It should have cut him down, but he was too quick. As he dived for the hedge, Peter saw that he had brought the pistol out from under his cape but was too busy at that moment to use it.

The side of the Maserati touched the hedge with a fluttering rustle of foliage, and Peter lifted his right foot, caught the enraged charge of the machine and swung her the other way. The moment she was lined up he hit the gas again, and the Maserati howled. This time she burned blue rubber smoke off her rear wheels.

There was a driver at the wheel of the blue police Kombi, and he tried to pull across to block the road completely, but he was not fast enough.

The two vehicles touched, with a crackle and scream of metal that jarred Peter's teeth, but what concerned him was that the two bodies in the headlights were no longer flat.

The nearest was on one knee and he was swinging the short stubby machine pistol it looked like a Stirling or the new Sidewinder, but he was using the fold-down wire butt, wasting vital fractions of a second to get the weapon to his shoulder. He was also blocking the field of fire of the man who crouched behind him with another machine pistol pinned to his hip, pointing with index finger and forearm, ready to trigger with his second finger "That's the way it should be done." Peter recognized professional skill, and his brain was running so swiftly that he had time to applaud it.

The Maserati cannoned off the police Kombi, and Peter lifted his right foot to take traction off the rear wheels, and spun the wheel the hard lock to the right. The Maserati swung her tail with a screech of rubber and went into a left side slide towards the two figures in the road, and Peter ducked down below the level of the door. He had deliberately induced the left-hand slide, so that he had some little protection from the engine compartment and body work.

As he ducked he heard the familiar sound, like a giant ripping heavyweight canvas, an automatic weapon throwing bullets at a cyclic rate of almost two thousand rounds a minute, and the bullets tore into the side of the Maserati, beating in the metal with an ear-numbing clangor, while glass exploded in upon Peter like the glittering spray as a storm-driven wave strikes a rock. Glass chips pelted across his back, and stung his cheek and the back of his neck.

They sparkled like a diamond tiara in his hair.

Whoever was doing the shooting had certainly emptied the magazine in those few seconds, and now Peter bobbed up in his seat, slitting his eyes against the cloud of glass splinters. He saw a looming nightmare of dark hedges and spun the wheel back to hold the Maserati. She swayed to the limits of her equilibrium and Peter had a glimpse of the two gunmen in the road rolling frantically into the half filled ditch, but at that moment his off-rear wheel hit the lip and he was slammed up short against his safety belt with a force that drove the air from his lungs, and the Maserati reared like a stallion smelling the mare and tail-walked, swinging in short vicious surges back and forth across the road, as he desperately fought for control with gear and brake and wheel. He must have spun full circle, Peter realized, for there was a giddy dazzle of light beams and of running and rolling figures, everything hazy and indistinct in the rain, then the open road ahead again, and he sent the car at it with a great howling lunge, at the same moment glancing up at his mirror.

In the headlights he saw the burned blue clouds of smoke and steam thrown up by his own tyres, and through it the figure of the second gunman obscured from the waist by the ditch. He had the machine pistol at his waist, and the muzzle flash bloomed about him.

Peter heard the first burst hit the Maserati and he could not duck again, for there was a bend ahead in the rain, coming up at dazzling speed and he clenched his jaws waiting for it.

The next burst hit the car, like the sound of hail on a tin roof, and he felt the rude tugging, numbing jerk in his upper body.

"Tagged!" he realized. There was no mistaking it, he had been hit before. The first time when he led a patrol into an ambush a very long time ago, and at the same moment he was evaluating the hit calmly finding he still had use of both hands and all his senses. Either it was a ricochet, or the bullet had spent most of its force in penetrating the rear windshield and seat back.

The Maserati tracked neatly into the bend, and only then he felt the engine surge and falter. Almost immediately the sharp stink of gasoline filled the cab of the Maserati.

"Fuel line," he told himself, and there was the warm, uncomfortable spread of his own blood down his back and side, and he placed his wound low in the left shoulder. If it had penetrated it would be a lung hit, and he waited for the coppery salt taste of blood in his throat or the bubbling froth of escaping air in his chest cavity.

The engine beat checked again, surged and checked, as it starved for fuel. That first traversing burst of automatic fire must have ripped through the engine compartment, and Peter thought wryly that in the movies the Maserati would have immediately erupted in spectacular pyrotechnics like a miniature Vesuvius though in reality it didn't happen like that, still gasoline from the severed lead would be spraying over plugs and points.

One last glance backwards, before the bend hid it and he saw three men running for the police van three men and the driver, that was lousy odds. They would be after him immediately, and the crippled machine made a final brave leap forward that carried them five hundred yards more, and then it died.

Ahead of him, at the limits of the headlight beam, Peter saw the white gates of La Pierre Benite. They had set the ambush at the point where they could screen out most extraneous traffic, and gather only the silver Maserati in their net.

He cast his mind back swiftly, recalling the lie of the land beyond the main gates of the estate. He had been here only once before, and it had been dark then also but he had the soldier's eye for ground, and he remembered thick forest on both sides of the road, down to a low bridge over a narrow fast flowing stream with steep banks, a hard left hander and a climb up to the house. The house was half a mile beyond the gates, a long way to go with a body hit and at least four armed men following, and no guarantee that he would be safe there either.

The Maserati was coasting down the slight incline towards the gates, slowing as it ran out of momentum, and now there was the hot smell of oil and burning rubber. The paintwork of the engine hood began to blister and disco lour Peter switched off the ignition to stop the electric pump spraying more fuel onto the burning engine and he slipped his hand into his jacket. He found the wound where he had expected it low and left. It was beginning to sting and his hand came away sticky and slick with blood. He wiped it on his thigh.

Behind him was the reflected glow of headlights in the rain, a halo of light growing stronger. At any moment they would come through the bend, and he opened the glove compartment.

The 9 men. Cobra gave some little comfort as he slipped it from its holster and thrust it into the front of his belt.

There was no spare magazine and the breech was empty, a safety consideration which he now regretted, for it left him with only nine rounds in the magazine one more might make a lot of difference.

Pretty little fingers of bright flame were waving at him from under the bonnet of the engine compartment, finding the hinge and joint, probing the ventilation slot on the top surface. Peter released his seat belt, held open the door and steered with his other hand for the verge. Here the road was banked and dropped away steeply.

He flicked the wheel back the opposite way and let the change of direction eject him neatly, throwing him clear, while the Maserati swerved back into the centre of the road and rolled away, slowing gradually.

He landed as though from a parachute drop, feet and knees together cushioning the impact and then rolled into it. Pain flared in his -shoulder and he felt something tear.

He came up in a crouch and ran doubled over for the edge of the woods, and the burning auto lit the dark trees with flickering orange light.

The fingers of his left hand felt swollen and numb as he pumped a round into the chamber of the Cobra, and at that moment the headlights beyond the bend flared with shocking brilliance and Peter had the illusion of being caught in front stage centre of the Palladium. He went down hard on his belly in the soft rain-sodden earth, but still his wound jarred and he felt the warm trickle of running blood under his shirt as he crawled desperately for the tree line.

The police van roared down the stretch of road. Peter flattened and pressed his face to the earth, and it smelled of leaf mould and fungus. The van roared past where he lay.

Three hundred yards down the road the Maserati had coasted to a halt, two wheels still on the road, the offside wheels over the verge so she stood at an abandoned angle, burning merrily.

The van pulled up at a respectful distance from it, aware of the danger of explosion, and a single figure, the gendarme in his plastic cape, ran forward, took one look into the cab and shouted something. The language sounded like French, but the flames were beginning to drum fiercely and the range too long to hear clearly.

The van locked into a U-turn, bumped over the verge, and then started back slowly. The two erstwhile accident victims, still carrying their machine pistols, running ahead like hounds on leash, one on each side of the road, heads down as they searched for signs in the soft shoulders of the road. The white-caped gendarme rode on the running-board of the van, calling encouragement to the hunters.

Peter was up again, doubled over, heading for the edge of the forest, and he ran into the barbed wire fence at full stretch. It brought him down heavily. He felt the slash of steel through the cloth of his trousers, and as he gathered himself again, he thought bitterly.

One hundred and seventy guineas. The suit had been tailored in Savile Row. He crawled between the strands of armed wire, and there was a shout behind him. They had picked up his spoor, and as he dodged across the last few yards of open ground, another sharper, more jubilant shout.

They had spotted him in the towering firelight of the blazing Maserati, and again there was the tearing rip of automatic fire; but it was extreme range for the short barrel and low velocity ammunition. Peter heard passing shot like a whisper of bats" wings in the darkness above him and then he reached the first trees and ducked behind one of them.

He found he was breathing deeply, but with a good easy rhythm. The wound wasn't handicapping him yet, and he was into the cold reasoning rage that combat always instilled in him.

The range to the barbed wire fence was fifty metres, he judged, it was one of his best distances International pistol standard out-of-hand with a 50-men. X circle but there were no judges out here and he took a double-handed grip, and let them run into the fence just as he had done.

It brought two of them down, and the cries of angry distress were definitely in French; as they struggled to their feet again they were precisely back-lit by the flames, and the Cobra had a luminous foresight. Peter went for the midsection of one of the machine gunners.

The 9 men. had a vicious whip-crack report, and punched into flesh and bone with 385 foot-pounds of energy. The strike of the bullet sounded like a watermelon hit with the full swing of a baseball bat. It lifted the man off his feet, and threw him backwards, and Peter swung onto the next target, but they were pros. Even though the fire from the edge of the woods had come as a complete surprise, they reacted instantly, and disappeared flat against the dark earth. They gave him no target, and Peter was too low on ammunition to throw down holding fire.

One of them fired a burst of automatic and it tore bark and wood and leaves along the edge of the trees. Peter fired at the muzzle flash only once as a warning and then ducked away and, keeping his head down to avoid lucky random fire, sprinted back into the woods.

They would be held up for two or three minutes by the fence and by the threat of coming under fire again, and Peter wanted to open some ground between them during that time.

The glow of the burning Maserati kept him well orientated and he moved quickly towards the river; however, before he had covered two yards he was starting to shiver uncontrollably. His two-piece city suit was soaked by the persistent drizzle and by the shower from each bush he brushed against. His shoes were light calf leather with leather soles and he had stepped in puddles of mud, and the knee-high grass, was sodden. The cold struck through his clothing; he could feel his wound stiffening agonizingly and the first nauseating grip of shock tightened his belly, but he paused every fifty yards or so and listened for sounds of pursuit. Once he heard the sound of a car engine from the direction of the road, passing traffic probably, and he wondered what they would make of the abandoned police vehicle and the blazing Maserati. Even if it was reported to the real police, it would be all over before a patrol arrived and Peter discounted the chance of assistance from that quarter.

He was beginning now to be puzzled by the total lack of any sign of further pursuit, and he looked for and found a good stance in which to wait for it. There was a fallen oak tree and he wriggled in under the trunk, with a clear avenue of retreat, good cover and a low position from which any pursuer would be silhouetted against the sky glow of the burning Maserati. There were only three pursuers now, and seven cartridges in the Cobra. If it were not for the cold and the demoralizing ache through his upper body, he might have felt more confident, but the nagging terror of the hunted animal was still on him.

He waited five minutes, lying completely still, every sense tuned to its finest, the Cobra held out in extended double grip, ready to roll left or right and take the shot as it came. There was no sound but the drip and plop of the rain-soaked woods.

Another ten minutes passed before it occurred to him suddenly that the pursuers must now realize that the wrong quarry had sprung their trap. They were setting for Magda Altmann, and it must be clear to them that they had a man, and an armed one at that. He pondered their reaction.

Almost certainly they would pull out now, or had already done so.

Instead of a lady worth twenty or thirty million dollars in ransom money, they must realize they had one of her employees, probably an armed bodyguard, who was driving the Maserati either as a decoy or merely as delivery driver.

Yes, he decided, they would pull out take their casualty and melt away, and Peter was sure they would leave no clues to their identity. He would have enjoyed the opportunity to question one of them, he thought, and grimaced at a new lance of pain in the shoulder.

He waited another ten minutes, utterly still and alert, controlling the spasms of cold and reaction that shook him, then he rose quietly and moved back towards the river. The Maserati must have burned out completely now for the sky was black again and he had to rely on his own sense of direction to keep orientated. Even though he knew he was alone, he paused every fifty yards to listen and look.

He heard the river at last. It was directly ahead and very close.

He moved a little faster and almost walked off the bank in the dark. He squatted to rest for a moment, for the shoulder was very painful now, and the cold was draining his energy.

The prospect of wading the river was particularly uninviting The rain had fallen without a break for days now, and the water sounded powerful and swift it would certainly be icy cold, and probably shoulder deep rather than waist deep. The bridge must be only a few hundred yards downstream, and he stood up and moved along the bank.

Cold and pain can sap concentration very swiftly, and Peter had to make a conscious effort to keep himself alert, and he felt for every foothold before transferring his weight forward. He held the Cobra hanging at full stretch of his right arm, but ready for instant use, and he blinked his eyes clear of the fine drizzle of rain and the cold sweat of pain and fear.

Yet it was his sense of smell that alerted him. The rank smell of stale Turkish tobacco smoke on a human body, it was a smell that had always offended him, and now he picked it up instantly, even though it was just one faint whiff.

Peter froze in mid stride while his brain raced to adjust to the unexpected. He had almost convinced himself that he was alone.

Now he remembered the sound of a car engine on the main road, and he realized that men who had set up such an elaborate decoy the faked motor accident, the police van and uniform would certainly have taken the trouble to plot and study the ground between the ambush point and the victim's intended destination.

They would know better than Peter himself the layout of woods and river and bridge, and would have realized immediately they had taken their first casualty that futility of blundering pursuit through the dark. It was the smart thing to circle back and wait again, and they would choose the river bank or the bridge itself.

The only thing that troubled Peter was their persistence.

They must know it was not Magda Altmann, and then even in this tense moment of discovery he remembered the Citroin that had followed him down the Champs-Elyses nothing was what it appeared to be, and slowly he completed the step in which he had frozen.

He stood utterly still, poised every muscle and every nerve screwed to its finest pitch, but the night was black and the rush of the river covered all sound. Peter waited.

The other man will always move if you wait long enough, and he waited with the patience of the stalking leopard, although the cold struck through to his bones and the rain slid down his cheeks and neck.

The man moved at last. The squelch of mud and the unmistakeable brush of undergrowth against cloth, then silence. He was very close, within ten feet, but there was no glimmer of light, and Peter shifted his weight carefully to face the direction of the sound. The old trick was to fire one shot at the sound and use the muzzle flash to light the target for a second shot which followed it in almost the same instant of time but there were three of them and at ten feet that machine pistol could cut a man in half. Peter waited.

Then from upstream there was the sound of a car engine again, still faint but fast approaching. Immediately somebody whistled faintly, a rising double note in the night up towards the bridge, clearly some prearranged signal. A car door banged shut, much closer than the sound of the approaching engine and a starter whirred, another harsher engine roared into life, headlights flared through the rain, and Peter blinked as the whole scene ahead of him lit up.

A hundred yards ahead the bridge crossed the stream, the surface of the water was shiny and black as new-mined coal as it flowed about the supporting piles.

The blue van had parked on the threshold of the bridge, obviously to wait for Peter, but now it was pulling out, probably alarmed by -the approach of the other more powerful engine from the direction of La Pierre Benite. The driver was heading back towards the main road, the phoney gendarme scrambling alongside with his cape flapping as he tried to scramble through the open offside door and out of the darkness, close to Peter, a voice cried out with alarm.

"Attender!" The third man had no desire to be left by his companions, and he ran forward, abandoning all attempt at concealment. He had his back to Peter now, waving the machine pistol frantically, clearly outlined by the headlights of the van, and the range was under ten feet. It was a dead shot, and Peter went for it instinctively and only at the very instant of trigger pressure that would have sent a 95 gram bullet between his shoulder blades was Peter able to check himself.

The man's back was turned and the range would make it murder; Peter's training should have cured him of such nice gentlemanly distinctions. However, what really held his trigger finger was the need to know. Peter had to know who these people were and who had sent them, and what they had been sent to do, who they were after.

Now that the man was being deserted, he had abandoned all stealth and was running as though he were chasing a bus, and Peter saw the chance to take him. Roles had been exchanged completely, and Peter darted forward, transferring the Cobra to his injured left hand.

He caught the man in four paces, keeping low to avoid his peripheral vision, and he whipped his good right arm around the throat, going for the half nelson and the spin that would disorientate the man before he slammed the barrel of the Cobra against the temple.

The man was quick as a cat, something warned him perhaps the squelch of Peter's sodden shoes, and he ducked his chin onto his chest rolling his shoulders and beginning to turn back into the line of Peter's attack.

Peter missed the throat and caught him high, the crook of his elbow locking about the man's mouth, and the unexpected turn had thrown him slightly off balance. If he had had full use of his left arm, he could still have spun his victim, but in an intuitive flash he realized that he had lost the advantage, already the man was twisting his head out of the arm lock bulking his shoulders, and by the feel of him, Peter knew instantly that he was steel-hard with muscle.

The barrel of the machine pistol was short enough to enable him to press the muzzle into Peter's body just as soon as he completed his turn; it would tear Peter to pieces like a chain saw.

Peter changed his grip slightly, no longer opposing the man's turn, but throwing all his weight and the strength of his right arm into the same direction; they spun together like a pair of waltzing dancers, but Peter knew that the moment they broke apart the man would have the killing advantage again.

The river was his one chance, he realized that instinctively, and before the advantage passed back from him to his adversary, he hurled himself backwards, keeping his grip on the man's head.

They went out into black space, falling together in a short gut-swooping drop with Peter underneath. If there was rock below the steep bank of the river, he realized he would be crushed by the other's weight.

They struck the surface of the fast water, and freezing cold struck like a club so that Peter almost released the air from his lungs as a reflex.

The shock of cold water seemed to have stunned the man in his grip momentarily, and Peter felt the whoosh of air from his lungs as he let go. Peter changed his grip, wedging his elbow under the chin, but not quite able to get at the throat immediately the man began the wild panic stricken struggles of somebody held under icy water with empty lungs.

He had lost the machine pistol, for he was tearing at Peter's arms and face with both hands as the water swirled them both end over end down towards the bridge.

Peter had to keep him from getting air, and as he held his own precious single breath, he tried to get on top and stay there.

Fingers hooked at his closed eyes, and then into his mouth as the man reached back desperately over his own shoulders. Peter opened his mouth slightly and the other man thrust his fingers deeply in, trying to tear at his tongue.

Immediately Peter locked his teeth into the fingers with a force that made his jaw ache at the hinges, and his mouth filled with the sickening warm spurt of the other man's blood.

Fighting his own revulsion, he hung on desperately with teeth and arms. He had lost his own weapon, dropping it into the black flood from numbed and crippled fingers, and the man was fighting now with the animal strength of his starved lungs and mutilated fingers; every time he tried to yank his hand out of Peter's mouth the flesh tore audibly in Peter's ears and fresh blood made him gag and choke.

They came out on the surface and through streaming eyes Peter had one glimpse of the bridge looming above him. The blue van had disappeared, but Magda Altmann's Mercedes limousine was parked in the centre of the bridge, and in the wash of its headlights he recognized her two bodyguards. They were leaning far out over the guardrail, and Peter had a moment's dread that one of them might try a shot then they were flung into the concrete piles of the bridge with such force that they lost the death lock they had upon each other.

The back eddy beyond the bridge swung them in towards the bank. Gasping and swallowing with cold and exhaustion and pain, Peter fought for footing on gravel and rock. The machine-gunner had found bottom also and was stumbling desperately towards the bank. In the headlights of the limousine Peter saw Magda's two bodyguards racing back across the bridge to head him off.

Peter realized that he would not be able to catch the man before he reached the bank.

"Carl!" he screamed at the bodyguard who was leading.

"Stop him. Don't let him get away."

The bodyguard vaulted over the guardrail, landing cat like in complete balance, with the pistol double-handed at the level of his navel.

Below him the machine-gunner dragged himself waist deep towards the bank. It was only then that Peter realized what was going to happen.

"No!" He choked on blood and water. "Take him alive.

Don't kill him, Carl!" The bodyguard had not heard, or had not understood.

The muzzle blast seemed to join him and the wallowing figure in the river below him, a blood-orange rope of flame and thunderous explosion. The bullets smacked into the machine-gunner's chest and belly like an axe man cutting down a tree.

"No!" Peter yelled helplessly. "Oh Jesus, no! No!" Peter lunged forward and caught the corpse before it slid below the black water, and he dragged it by one arm to the bank. The bodyguards took it from him and hauled it up, the head lolling like an idiot's, and the blood diluted to pale pink in the reflected headlights.

Peter made three attempts to climb the bank, each time slithering back tiredly into the water, then Carl reached down and gripped his wrist.

Peter knelt on the muddy bank, still choking with the water and blood he had swallowed, and he retched weakly.

"Peter!" Magda's voice rang with concern, and he looked up and wiped his mouth on the back of his forearm. She had slipped out of the back door of the limousine and was running back along the bridge, long-legged in black boots and ski-pants, her face dead white with concern and her eyes frantic with worry.

Peter pushed himself onto his feet and swayed drunkenly.

She reached him and caught him, steadying him as he teetered.

"Peter, Oh God, darling. What happened-"

"This beauty and some of his friends wanted to take you for a ride and they got the wrong address." They stared down at the corpse. Carl had used a .357 magnum and the damage was massive. Magda turned her head away.

"Nice work," Peter told the bodyguard bitterly. "He's not going to answer any questions now, is he?"

"You said to stop him." Carl growled as he reloaded the pistol.

"I wonder what you would have done if I'd said to really clobber him." Peter began to turn away with disgust, and pain checked him. He gasped.

"You're hurt." Magda's "concern returned in full strength.

"Take his other arm," she ordered Carl, and they helped him over the parapet to the limousine.

Peter stripped off the torn and sodden remains of his clothing and Magda wrapped him in the Angora wool travel rug before examining his wound under the interior light of the cab.

The bullet hole was a perfect little blue puncture in the smooth skin, already surrounded by a halo of inflammation, and the bullet was trapped between his ribs and the sheet of flat, hard trapezium muscles.

She could see the outline of it quite clearly, the size of a ripe acorn in his flesh, swollen out angry purple.

"Thank God-" she whispered, and unwound the jean Patou scarf from her long pale throat. She bound the wound carefully. "We'll take you directly to the hospital at Versailles. Drive fast, Carl." She opened the walnut-fronted cocktail cabinet in the body work beside her and poured half a tumbler of whisky from the crystal decanter.

It washed the taste of blood from Peter's mouth and then went warmly all the way down his throat to soothe the cramps of cold and shock in his belly.

"What made you come?" he asked, his voice still rough with the fierce spirit, the timely arrival nagged at his sense of rightness.

"a report a car smash they knew the Maserati, and the inspector rang La Pierre Benite immediately. I guessed something bad-" At that moment they reached the gates at the main road. The remains of the Maserati lay smouldering on the side of the road; around it like boy scouts around a camp fire were half a dozen gendarmes in their white plastic capes and pillbox kepis. They seemed uncertain of what they should do next.

Carl slowed the limousine and Magda spoke tersely through the window to a sergeant, who treated her with immense respect. "Oui, madame la Baronne, d'accord. Tout d fait vrai-" She dismissed him with a final nod, and he and his men saluted the departing limousine.

"They will find the body at the bridge-"

"There may be another one on the edge of the forest there-"

"You are very good, aren't you?" She slanted her eyes at him.

"The really good ones don't get hit," he said, and smiled at her. The whisky had taken some of the sting and stiffness out of the wound and unknotted his guts. It was good to still be alive, he started to appreciate that again.

"You were right about the Maserati then they were waiting for it."

"That's why I burned it," he told her, but she did not answer his smile.

"Oh, Peter. You'll never know how I felt. The police told me that the driver of the Maserati was still in it and had been burned. I thought I felt as though part of me had been destroyed. It was the most terrifying feeling-" She shivered. "I nearly did not come, I didn't want to see it. I nearly sent my wolves, but then I had to know. Carl saw you in the river as we turned onto the bridge. He said it was you, I just couldn't believe it-" She stopped herself and shuddered at the memory. "Tell me what happened, tell me all of it," she demanded and poured more whisky into his tumbler.

For some reason that he was not sure of himself, Peter did not mention the Citroin that had followed him out of Paris. He told himself that it could not have been relevant.

It must have been a coincidence, for if the driver of the Citron had been one of them he would have been able to telephone ahead and warn the others that Baroness Magda Altmann was not in the Maserati, so that would have meant that they were not after her but after him, Peter Stride, and that didn't make sense because he had only set himself up as bait that very morning, and they would not have had time yet. He stopped the giddy carousel of thoughts shock and whisky, he told himself. There would be time later to think it all out more carefully. Now he would simply believe that they were waiting for Magda, and he had run into their net. He told it that way, beginning from the moment that he had seen the police van parked in the road. Magda listened with complete attention, the huge eyes clinging to his face, and she touched him every few moments as if to reassure herself.

When Carl parked under the portico of the emergency entrance of the hospital, the police had radioed ahead and there were an intern and two nurses waiting for Peter with a theatre trolley.

Before she opened the door to let them take Peter, Magda leaned to him and kissed him full on the lips.

"I'm so very glad to have you still," she whispered, and then with her lips still very close to his ear she went on. "It was Caliph again, wasn't it?" He shrugged slightly, grimaced at the stab of pain, and answered, "I can't think of anyone else offhand that would do such a professional job." Magda walked beside the trolley as far as the theatre doors, and she was beside his bed in the curtained cubic leas he struggled up through the deadening, suffocating false death of the anaesthetic.

The French doctor was with her, and he produced the gruesome blood-clotted souvenir with a magician's flourish.

"I did not have to cut," he told Peter proudly. "Probe only." The bullet had mushroomed impressively, had certainly lost much of its velocity in penetrating the body work of the Maserati. "You are a very lucky man," the doctor went on. "You are in fine condition, muscles like a racehorse that stopped the bullet going deep. You will be well again very soon."

"I have promised to look after you, so he is letting you come home now." Magda hovered over him also. "Aren't you, doctor?" "You will have one of the world's most beautiful nurses." The doctor bowed gallantly towards Magda with a certain wistfulness in his expression.

The doctor was right, the bullet wound gave him less discomfort than the tears in his thighs from the barbed wire, but Magda Altmann behaved as though he were suffering from an irreversible and terminal disease.

When she did have to go up to her office suite in the Boulevard des Capucines the next day, she telephoned three times for no other reason than to make sure he was still alive and to ask for his size in shoes and clothing. The cavalcade of automobiles carrying her and her entourage were back at La Pierre Brute while it was still daylight.

"You are keeping civil service hours," he accused when she came directly to the main guest suite overlooking the terraced lawns and the artificial lake.

"I knew you were missing me," she explained, and kissed him before beginning to scold him. "Roberto tells me you have been wandering around in the rain. The doctor said you were to stay in bed. Tomorrow I will have to stay here to take care of you myself." "Is that a threat?" he grinned at her. "For that sort of punishment I would let Caliph shoot another hole-" Swiftly she laid her fingers on his lips. "Peter, cuM, don't joke like that." And the shadow that passed across her eyes was touched with fear, then immediately she was smiling again. "Look what I have bought you." Peter's valise had been in the trunk of the Maserati, and she had replaced it with one in black crocodile from Hennes. To fill it she must have started at the top end of the Faubourg St. Honore and worked her way down to the Place Vendeme.

"I had forgotten how much fun it is to buy presents for one who you-" She did not finish the sentence, but held up a brocade silk dressing-gown. " Everybody in St. Laurent knew what I was thinking when I chose this." She had forgotten nothing. Shaving gear, silk handkerchiefs and underwear, a blue blazer, slacks and shoes from Gucci, even cufflinks in plain gold, each set with a small sapphire.

"You have such blue eyes," she explained. "Now I will go and make myself respectable for dinner. I told Roberto we would eat here, for there are no other guests tonight." She had changed from the gunmetal business suit and turban into floating cloud-light layers of gossamer silk, and her hair was down to her waist, more lustrous than the cloth.

"I will open the champagne," she said. "It needs two hands." He wore the brocade gown, with his left arm still in a sling, and they stood and admired each other over the top of the champagne glasses.

"I was right." She nodded comfortably. "Blue is your colour. You must wear it more often." And he had to smile at the quaint compliment, and touched her glass with his.

The crystal pinged musically and they saluted each other before they drank. Immediately she set the glass aside, and her expression became serious.

"I spoke with my friends in the Sorete. They agree that it was a kidnap attempt against me, and because I asked it, they will not trouble you to make a statement until you feel better. I told them to send a man tomorrow to speak to you.

There was no sign of the second man you shot at on the edge of the woods, he must have been able to walk or been carried by his friends." "And the other man?" Peter asked. "The dead one."

"They know him well.

He had a very ugly past. Algeria with the par as The mutiny." She spread her hands eloquently. "My friends were very surprised that he had not killed you when he tried to do so. I did not say too much about your own past. It is better, I think?"

"It's better," Peter agreed.

"When I am with you like this, I forget that you also are a very dangerous man." She stopped and examined his face carefully. "Or is it part of the reason I find you so-" she searched for the word " so compelling? You have such a gentle manner, Peter. Your voice is so soft and-" She shrugged. "But there is something in the way you smile sometimes, and in certain light your eyes are so blue and hard and cruel. Then I remember that you have killed many men. Do you think that is what attracts me?"

"I hope it is not."

"Some women are excited by blood and violence the bullfight, the prize ring, there are always as many women as men at these, and I have watched their faces. I have thought about myself, and still I do not know it all. I know only that I am attracted by strong men, powerful men.

Aaron was such a man. I have not found many others since then."

"Cruelty is not strength," Peter told her.

"No, a truly strong man has that streak of gentleness and compassion. You are so strong, and yet when you make love to me it is with extreme gentleness, though I can always feel the strength and cruelty there, held in hate, like the falcon under the hood." She moved away across the room furnished in cream and chocolate and gold, and she tugged the embroidered bell-pull that dangled from the corruced ceiling with its hand-painted panels, pastoral scenes of the type that Marie Antoinette had so admired. Peter knew that much of the furnishing of La Pierre Brute had been purchased at the auction sales with which the revolutionary committee dispersed the accumulated treasures of the House of Bourbon. With the other treasures there were flowers, wherever Magda Altmann went there were flowers.

She came back to him as Roberto, the Italian butler, supervised the entry of the dinner trolley, and then Roberto filled the wine glasses himself, handling the bottles with white gloves as though they were part of the sacrament, and stationed himself ready to serve the meal, but Magda dismissed him with a curt gesture and he bowed himself out silently.

There was a presentation-wrapped parcel at Peter's place setting, tissue paper and an elaborately tied red ribbon. He looked up at her inquiringly as she served the soup into fragile Limoges bowls.

"Once I began buying presents, I could not stop myself," she explained. "Besides, I kept thinking that bullet might have been in my back." Then she was impatient. "Are you not going to open it?" He did so carefully, and then was silent.

"Africa, it is your speciality, is it not?" she asked anxiously. "Nineteenth-century Africa?" He nodded, and reverently opened the cover of the volume in its bed of tissue paper. It was fully bound in maroon leather, and the state of preservation was quite extraordinary, only the dedication on the flyleaf in the author's handwriting was faded yellow.

"Where on earth did you find this?" he demanded. "It was at Sotheby's in 1971. I bid on it then." He had dropped out of the bidding at five thousand pounds.

"You do not have a first edition of Cornwallis Harris?" she asked again anxiously, and he shook his head, examining one of the perfectly preserved colour plates of African big game.

"No, I do not. But how did you know that?"

"Oh, I know as much about you as you do yourself," she laughed. "Do you like it?"

"It is magnificent. I am speechless." The gift was too extravagant, even for someone of her fortune. It troubled him, and he was reminded of the comedy situation of the husband who brings home flowers unexpectedly and is immediately accused by his wife. "Why do you have a guilty conscience?"

"Do you truly like it? I know so little about books."

"It is the one edition I need to complete my major works," he said. "And it is probably the finest specimen left outside the British Museum." "I'm so glad." She was genuinely relieved. "I was truly worried." And she put down the silver soup ladle and lifted both arms to welcome his embrace.

During the meal she was gay and talkative, and only when Roberto had wheeled away the trolley and they settled side by side on the down-filled couch before the fire did her mood change again.

"Peter, today I have been unable to think of anything but this business you and me and Caliph. I have been afraid, and I am still afraid. I keep thinking of Aaron, what they did to him and then I think of you and what nearly happened." They were silent, staring into the flames and sipping "JAVA coffee from the demi-tosses, then suddenly she had changed direction again. He was growing accustomed to these mercurial switches in thought.

"I have an island not one island, but nine little islands and in the cintre of them is a lagoon nine kilometres wide. The water is so clear you can see the fish fifty feet down. There is an airstrip on the main atoll. just under two hours" flying time to Tahiti. Nobody would ever know we were there. We could swim all day, walk in the sand, make love under the stars. You would be king of the islands, and I would be your queen. No more Altmann Industries I would find somebody as good or better than myself to run it. No more danger. No more fear. No more Caliph no more-" She stopped abruptly, as though she had been about to commit herself too far, but she went on quickly.

"Let's go there, Peter. Let's forget all this. Let's just run away and be happy together, for ever."

"It's a pretty thought." He turned to her, feeling deep and genuine regret.

"It would work for us. We would make it work." And he said nothing, just watching her eyes, until she looked away and sighed.

"No." She mirrored his regret. "You are right. Neither of us could ever give up living like that. We have to go on but, Peter, I am so afraid. I am afraid of what I know about you and of what I do not know. I am afraid of what you do not know about me, and what I never can tell you but we must go on. You are right. We have to find Caliph, and then destroy him. But, oh God, I pray we do not destroy ourselves, what we have found together I pray we will be able to keep that intact."

"The best way to conjure up emotional disaster is to talk about it."

"All right, let's play riddles instead. My turn first. What is the most miserable experience known to the human female?"

"I give up."

"Sleeping alone on a winter's night."

"Salvation is at hand, "he promised her.

"But what about your poor shoulder?"

"If we combine our vast talents and wisdom, I am sure we will manage something."

"I think you are right," she purred and nestled against him like a sleek and silken cat. "As always." There is always a delightfully decadent feeling about buying underwear for a beautiful woman, and Peter was amused by the knowing air of the middle-aged sales lady. She clearly had her own ideas about the relationship, and slyly produced a tray filled with filmy lace and iniquitously expensive wisps of silk.

"Yes," Melissa Jane approved rapturously. "Those are exactly-" She held one of them to her cheek, and the sales lady preened at her own foresight. Peter hated to disillusion her, and he played the role of sugar-daddy a few moments longer as he glanced up at the mirror behind her head.

The tail was still there, a nondescript figure in a grey overcoat, browsing through a display of brassieres across the hall with the avid interest and knowledgeable air of a closet queen.

"I don't really think your mother will approve, darling," Peter said, and the sales woman looked startled.

"Oh, please, Daddy. I will be fourteen next month." They had had a tail on him since he had arrived at Heathrow the previous afternoon, and Peter could not decide who they were. He began to regret he had not yet replaced the Cobra he had lost in the river.

"I think we'd better play it safe-" Peter told his daughter, and both Melissa-Jane and the sales lady looked crestfallen.

"Not bloomers!" Melissa-Jane wailed. "Not elastic legs."

"Compromise," Peter suggested. "No elastic legs but no lace, not until you're sixteen. I think painted fingernails is enough for right now."

"Daddy, you can be so medieval, honestly!" He glanced at the mirror again, and they were changing the guard across the sales hall. The man in the shabby grey overcoat and checked woollen scarf drifted away and disappeared into one of the lifts. It would take some little time for Peter to spot his replacement and then he grinned to himself-, no it would not. Here he came now. He wore a tweed sports jacket in a frantic hounds tooth pattern, above Royal Stewart tartan trews and a grin like an amiable toad.

"Son of a gun. This is a surprise." He came up behind Peter and hit him an open-handed blow between the shoulder blades that made Peter wince. At least he knew who they were at last.

"Colin." He turned and took the massive paw with its covering of wiry black hair across the back. "Yes, it is a surprise. I've been falling over your gorillas since yesterday." oafs" Colin Noble agreed amiably. "All of them, oafs!" And turned to seize Melissa-Jane. "You're beautiful, he told her and kissed her with more than avuncular enthusiasm.

"Uncle Colin. You come straight from heaven." Melissa Jane broke from the embrace and displayed the transparent panties. "What do you think of these?"

"It's you, honey. You've just got to have them." "Tell my father, won't you?" Colin looked around the Dorchester suite and grunted. "This is really living. You don't get it this good in this man's army."

"Daddy is truly becoming a bloated plutocrat just like Uncle Steven, "Melissa-jane agreed.

"I notice that you and Vanessa and the other comrades all wear lace panties," Peter counter-attacked his daughter.

"That's different." Melissa-Jane back-tracked swiftly, and hugged the green Harrod's package defensively. "You can have a social conscience without dressing like a peasant, you know."

"Sounds like a good life." Peter threw his overcoat across the couch and crossed to the liquor cabinet. "Bourbon?"

"On the rocks," said Colin.

"Is there a sweet sherry?" Melissa-Jane asked.

"There is Coke," Peter answered. "And you can take it through to your own room, young lady."

"Oh Daddy, I haven't seen Uncle Colin for ages."

"Scat, said Peter, and when she had gone, sweet sherry, forsooth."

"It's a crying bastard when they start growing up and they look like that." Colin took the glass from Peter and rattled the ice cubes together as he lay back in the armchair.

"Aren't you going to congratulate me?"

"With pleasure." Peter took his own glass and stood at the windows, against the backdrop of bare branches and grey misty skies over Hyde Park. "What did you do?"

"Come on, Pete! Thor they gave me your job, after you walked out."

"Before they fired me."

"After you walked out," Colin repeated firmly. He took a sip of the Bourbon and gargled it loudly. "There are a lot of things we don't understand "Ours not to reason why, ours but to do and die." Shakespeare." He was still playing the buffoon, but the small eyes were as honey bright and calculating as those of a brand new teddy bear on Christmas morning. Now he waved his glass around the suite.

"This is great. Really it's great. You were wasted in Thor everybody knew that. You must be pulling down more than all the joint-chiefs put together now."

"Seven gets you five that you've already seen a Xeroxed copy of my contract of employment with Narmco." "Narmco!" Colin whistled. "Is that who you're working for? No kidding, Pete baby, that's terrific!" And Peter had to laugh, it was a form of capitulation.

He came across and took the seat opposite Colin.

"Who sent you, Colin?"

"That's a lousy question-"

"That's just an opener."

"Why should somebody have sent me? Couldn't I just want to chew the fat with an old buddy?"

"He sent you because he worked it out that I might bust the jaw of anybody else."

"Sure now and everybody knows we love each other like brothers."

"What's the message, Colin?" "Congratulations, Peter baby, I am here to tell you that you have just won yourself a return ticket to the Big Apple." He placed one hand across his heart and sang with a surprisingly mellow baritone. "New York, New York, it's a won erful town." Peter sat staring impassively at Colin, but he was thinking swiftly. He knew he had to go. Somehow he was certain that something was surfacing through muddied waters, the parts were beginning to click together. This was the sort of thing he had hoped for when he put the word on the wind.

"When?"

"There is an airforce jet at Croydon right now." "Melissa-Jane?"

"I've got a driver downstairs to take her home."

"She's going to hate you."

"Story of my life," Colin sighed. "Only the dogs love me." They played gin-rummy and drank teeth-blackening airforce coffee, all the way across the Atlantic.

Colin Noble did most of the talking, around the stub of his cheroot. It was shop, Thor shop, training and personnel details, small anecdotes about men and things they both knew well and he made no effort to question Peter about his job and Narmco, other than to remark that he would have Peter back in London for the series of Narmco meetings he had arranged starting on the following Monday. It was a deliberate and not very subtle intimation of just how much Atlas knew about Peter and his new activities.

They landed at Kennedy a little after midnight, and there was an army driver to take them to a local Howard Johnson for six hours" sleep, that kind of deep black coma induced by jet-lag.

Peter still felt prickly-eyed and woollen-headed as he watched with a feeling of disbelief as Colin devoured one of those amazing American breakfasts of waffles and maple syrup, wieners and bacon and eggs, sugar cakes and sticky buns, washed down with countless draughts of fruit juice and coffee. Then Colin lit his first cheroot and announced, "Hell, now I know I'm home. Only now I realize I've been slowly fading away with malnutrition for two years." The same army driver was waiting for them at the front entrance of the motel. The Cadillac was an indication of their status in the military hierarchy. Peter looked out with detachment from the air-conditioned and padded interior onto the brooding ghettoes of Harlem. From the elevated highway along the East River, it reminded Peter of a deserted battle ground where a few survivors lurked in dark doorways or scuttled along the littered and pitted sidewalks in the cold misty morning. Only the graffiti that adorned the bare brick walls had passion and vitality.

Their drive caught the junction of Fifth and One Hundred and Eleventh Street, and ran south down the park past the Metropolitan Art Museum in the thickening rush, hour traffic, then slipped off and into the cavernous mouth of a parking garage beneath one of the monolithic structures that seemed to reach to the grey cold heavens.

The garage entrance was posted "Residents Only', but the doorman raised the electronically controlled grid and waved them through. Colin led Peter to the bank of elevators and they rode up with the stomach-dropping swoop while the lights above the elevator door recorded their ascent to the very top of the building.

There they stepped out into a reception area protected by ornamental, but none the less functional screens.

A guard in military police uniform and wearing a sidearm surveyed them through the grille and checked Colin's Atlas pass against his register before allowing them through.

The apartment occupied the entire top level of the building, for there were hanging gardens beyond the sliding glass panels and a view across the sickening canyons of space to the other tall structures farther down Island the Pan Am building and the twin towers of the World Trade Center.

The decor was Oriental, stark interiors in which were displayed works of art that Peter knew from his previous visit were of incalculable value antique Japanese brush paintings on silk panels, carvings in jade and ivory, a display of tiny netsuke and in an atrium through which they passed was a miniature forest of Bonsai trees in their shallow ceramic bowls, the frozen contortions of their trunks and branches a sign of their great age.

Incongruously, the exquisite rooms were filled with the thunder of von Karajan leading the Berlin Philharmonic orchestra through the glories of the Eroica.

Beyond the atrium was a plain door of white oak, and Colin Noble pressed the buzzer beside the lintel and almost immediately the door slid open.

Colin led into a long carpeted room, the ceiling of which was covered with acoustic tiles. The room contained besides the crowded bookshelves and work table an enormous concert piano, and down the facing wall an array of hi-fi turntables and loudspeakers that would have been more in place in a commercial recording studio.

Kingston Parker stood beside the piano, a heroic figure, tall and heavy in the shoulder, his great shaggy head hanging forward onto his chest, his eyes closed and an expression of almost religious ecstasy glowing upon his face.

The music moved his powerful frame the way the storm wind sways a giant of the forest. Peter and Colin stopped in the doorway, for it seemed an intrusion on such a private, such an intimate moment, but it was only a few seconds before he became aware of them and lifted his head. He seemed to shake off the spell of the music with the shudder that a spaniel uses to shake itself free of water when it reaches dry land, and he lifted the arm of the turntable from the spinning black disc.

The silence seemed to tingle after the great crashing chords of sound.

"General Stride," Kingston Parker greeted him. "Or may I still call you Peter?"

"Mr. Stride will do very nicely," said Peter, and Parker made an eloquent little gesture of regret, and without offering to shake hands indicated the comfortable leather couch across the room.

"At least you came," he said, and as Peter settled into the couch, he nodded.

"I have always had an insatiable curiosity."

"I was relying on that," Kingston Parker smiled. "Have you breakfasted?"

"We've had a snack,"Colin cut in but Peter nodded.

"Coffee then," said Parker, and spoke quietly into the intercom set, before turning back to them.

"Where to begin?" Parker combed the thick greying hair back with both hands, leaving it even more tousled than it had been.

"Begin at the beginning," Peter suggested. "As the King of Hearts said to Alice."

"At the beginning-" Parker smiled softly. All right, at the beginning I opposed your involvement with Atlas."

"I know."

"I did not expect that you would accept the Thor command, it was a step backwards in your career. You surprised me there, and not for the first time." A Chinese manservant in a white jacket with brass buttons carried in a tray. They were silent as he offered coffee and cream and coloured crystal sugar and then, when he had gone, Parker went on.

"At that time, my estimate of you, General Stride, was that although you had a record of brilliance and solid achievement, you were an officer of rigidly old-fashioned thought. The Colonel Blimp mentality more suited to trench warfare than to the exigencies of war from the shadows the kind of wars that we are fighting now, and will be forced to fight in the future." He shook the great shaggy head and unconsciously his fingers caressed the smooth cool ivory keyboard, and he settled down on the stool before the piano.

"You see, General Stride, I saw the role of Atlas to be too limited by the original terms of reference placed upon it. I did not believe that Atlas could do what it was designed for if it was only an arm of retaliation. If it had to wait for a hostile act before it could react, if it had to rely entirely on other organizations with all their internecine rivalries and bickerings for its vital intelligence. I needed officers who were not only brilliant, but who were capable of unconventional thought and independent action. I did not believe you had those qualities, although I studied you very carefully. I was unable to take you fully into my confidence." Parker's slim fingers evoked a fluent passage from the keyboard as though to punctuate his words, and for a moment he seemed completely enraptured by his own music, then he lifted his head again.

"If I had done so, then the conduct of your rescue operation of Flight 070 might have been completely different. I have been forced radically to revise my estimate of you, General Stride and it was a difficult thing to do. For by demonstrating those qualities which I thought you lacked, you upset my judgement. I admit that personal chagrin swayed my reasoned judgement and by the time I was thinking straight again you had been provoked into offering your resignation-" "I know that the resignation was referred to you personally, Doctor Parker and that you recommended that it be accepted." Peter's voice was very cold, the tone clipped with controlled anger and Parker nodded.

"Yes, you are correct. I endorsed your resignation."

"Then it looks as though we are wasting our time here and now." Peter's lips were compressed into a thin, unforgiving line, and the skin across his cheeks and over the finely chiselled flare of his nostrils seemed tightly drawn and pa leas porcelain.

"Please, General Stride let me explain first." Parker reached out one hand to him as though to physically restrain him from rising, and his expression was earnest, compelling. Peter sank back into the couch, his eyes wary and his lips still tight.

"I have to go back a little first, in order to make any sense at all." Parker stood up from the piano and crossed to the rack of pipes on the work table between the hi-fi equipment.

He selected one carefully, a meerschaum mellowed to the colour of precious amber. He blew through the empty pipe and then tramped back across the thick carpet to stand in front of Peter.

"Some months before the hijacking of 070 six months to be precise, I had begun to receive hints that we were entering a new phase in the application of international terrorism. Only hints at first, but these were confirmed and followed by stronger evidence." Parker was stuffing the meerschaum from a leather wallet as he spoke, now he zipped this closed and tossed it onto the piano top. "What we were looking at was a consolidation of the forces of violence under some sort of centralized control we were not sure what form this control was taking." He broke off and studied Peter's expression, seemed to misinterpret it for utter disbelief, for he shook his head. "Yes, I know it sounds far-fetched, but I will show you the files. There was evidence of meetings between known militant leaders and some other shadowy figures, perhaps the representatives of an Eastern government. We were not sure then, nor are we now. And immediately after this a complete change in the conduct and apparent motivation of militant activity. I do not really have to detail this for you. Firstly the systematic accumulation of immense financial reserves by the highly organized and carefully planned abduction of prominent figures, starting with the ministers of OPEC, then leading industrialists and financial figures-" Parker struck a match and puffed on his pipe and perfumed smoke billowed around his head.

So that it appeared that the motivation had not really changed and was still entirely self gain or parochial political gain. Then there was the taking of 070. "I had not confided in you before and once you were on your way to Johannesburg it was too late. I could do nothing more than try to control your actions by rather heavy-handed commands. I could not explain to you that we suspected that this was the leading wave of the new militancy, and that we must allow it to reveal as much as possible. It was a terrible decision, but I had to gamble a few human lives for vital information and then you acted as I had believed you were incapable of acting." Parker removed his pipe from his mouth and he smiled; when he smiled you could believe anything he said and forgive him for it, no matter how outrageous. "I admit, General Stride, that my first reaction was frustrated rage.

I wanted your head, and your guts also. Then suddenly I began using my own head instead. You had just proved you were the man I wanted, my soldier capable of unconventional thought and action. If you were discredited and cast adrift, there was just a chance that this new direction of militancy would recognize the same qualities in you that I had been forced to recognize. If I allowed you to ruin your career, and become an outcast an embittered man, but one with vital skills and invaluable knowledge, a man who had proved he could be ruthless when it was necessary-" Parker broke off and made that gesture of appeal. I am sorry, General Stride, but I had to recognize the fact that you would be very attractive to-" he made an impatient gesture I do not have a name for them, shall we just call them "the enemy". I had to recognize the fact that you would be of very great interest to the enemy. I endorsed your resignation." He nodded sombrely. "Yes, I endorsed your resignation, and without your own knowledge you became an Atlas agent at large. It seemed perfect to me.

You did not have to-act a role you believed it yourself.

You were the outcast, the wronged and discredited man ripe for subversion."

"I don't believe it," Peter said flatly, and Parker went back to the work table, selected an envelope from a Japanese ceramic tray and brought it back to Peter.

It took Peter a few moments to realize that it was a Bank Statement Credit Suisse in Geneva the account was in his name, and there were a string of deposits. No withdrawals MAde or debits. Each deposit was for exactly the same amount, the net salary of a major-general in the British Army.

"You see," Parker smiled "you are still drawing your Atlas salary. You are still one of us, Peter. And all I can say is that I am very sorry indeed that we had to subject you to the pretence but it seems it was all worth while." Peter looked up at him again, not entirely convinced, but with the hostility less naked in his expression.

"What do You mean by that, Doctor Parker?"

"It seems that you are very much back in play again."

"I am Sales Director for Northern Armaments Company," he said flatly.

"Yes, of course, and Narmco is part of the Altmann Industrial Empire and Baron Altmann and his lovely wife are, or rather were, an extraordinarily interesting couple.

For instance, did you know that the Baron was one of the top agents of Mossad in Europe?" impossible," Peter shook his head irritably. "He was a Roman Catholic. Israeli intelligence does not make a habit of recruiting Catholics."

"Yes," Parker agreed. "His grandfather converted to Catholicism and changed the name of the family home to La Pierre Brute. It was a business decision, that we are certain of, there was not much profit in being Jewish in nineteenth-century France. However, the young Altmann was much influenced by his grandmother and his own mother. He was a Zionist from a very early age, and he unswervingly used his enormous wealth and influence in that cause right up until the time of his murder. Yet he did it so cunningly, with such subtlety that very few people were aware of his connections with uda ism and Zionism.

He never made the mistake of converting back to his ancestral religion, realizing that he could be more effective as a practising Christian." Peter was thinking swiftly. If this was true, then it all had changed shape again. It must affect the reasons for the Baron's death and it would change the role of Magda Altmann in his life.

"The Baroness?" he asked. "Was she aware of this?"

"Ah, the Baroness!" Kingston Parker removed his pipe from between his teeth, and smiled with reluctant admiration. "What a remarkable lady. We are not certain of very much about her except her beauty and her exceptional talents. We know she was born in Warsaw. Her father was a professor of medicine at the university there, and he escaped to the West when the Baroness was still a child. He was killed a few years later, a traffic accident in Paris. Hit and run driver, while the professor was leaving his faculty in the Sorbonne. A small mystery still hangs around his death. The child seems to have drifted from family to family, friends of her father, distant relatives. She already was showing academic leanings, musical talent, at thirteen a chess player of promise then for a period there is no record of her. She seems to have disappeared entirely. The only hint is from one of her foster mothers, a very old lady now, with a fading memory. "I think she went home for a while she told me she was going home."" Parker spread his hands. "We do not know what that means. Home?

Warsaw? Israel? Somewhere in the East?"

"You have researched her very carefully," Peter said. What he had heard had left him uneasy.

"Of course, we have done so to every contact you have made since leaving Atlas Command. We would have been negligent not to do so but especially we have been interested in the Baroness. She has been the most fascinating, you understand that, I am sure." Peter nodded, and waited. He did not want to ask for more. Somehow it seemed disloyal to Magda, distrustful and petty but still he waited and Parker went on quietly.

"Then she was back in Paris. Nineteen years of age now a highly competent private secretary, speaking five languages fluently, beautiful, always dressed in the height of fashion, soon with a string of wealthy, influential and powerful admirers the last of these was her employer, Baron Aaron Altmann." Parker was silent then, waiting for the question, forcing Peter to come to meet him.

"Is she Mossad also?"

"We do not know. It is possible but she has covered herself very carefully. We are rather hoping you will be able to find that out for us."

"I see."

"She must have known that her husband was a Zionist.

She must have suspected that it had something to do with his abduction and murder. Then there are the missing six years of her life from thirteen to nineteen, where was she?"

"Is she Jewish?" Peter asked. "Was her father Jewish?"

"We believe so, although the professor showed no interest in religion and did not fill in the question on his employment application to the Sorbonne. His daughter showed the same lack of religious commitment we know only that her marriage to the Baron was a Catholic ceremony followed by a civil marriage in Rambouillet."

"We have drifted a long way from international terrorism," Peter pointed out.

"I do not think so." Kingston Parker shook his big shaggy head. "The Baron was a victim of it, and almost as soon as you one of the world's leading experts on militancy and urban warfare as soon as you are associated with her there is an assassination attempt, or an abduction attempt made on the Baroness." Peter was not at all surprised that Parker knew of that night on the road to La Pierre Benite it was only a few days since Peter's arm had been out of the sling.

"Tell me, Peter. What was your estimate of that affair? I have seen an excerpt of the statement that you made to the French police but what can you add to that?" Peter had a vivid cameo memory of the Citroen that had followed him out of Paris, and then almost simultaneously the tearing sound of automatic fire in the night.

"They were after the Baroness," Peter said firmly.

"And you were driving her car?"

"That's right."

"You were at the place at the time that the Baroness usually passed?"

"Right "Who suggested that? You?"

"I told her that the car was too conspicuous." "So you suggested taking it down to La Pierre enite that night." "Yes." Peter lied without knowing why he did so.

"Did anybody else know that the Baroness would not be driving?" "Nobody." Except her bodyguards, the two chauffeurs who had met them on their return from Switzerland, Peter thought.

"You are certain?" Parker persisted.

"Yes," Peter snapped. "Nobody else." Except Magda, only Magda. He pushed the thought aside angrily.

"All right, so we must accept that the Baroness was the target but was it an assassination or an abduction attempt?

That could be significant. If it was assassination, it would indicate that it was the elimination of a rival agent, that the Baroness was probably also a Mossad agent, recruited by her husband. On the other hand, an abduction would suggest that the object was monetary gain. Which was it, Peter?"

"They had blocked the road-" he said, but not completely he remembered. "And the police impersonator signalled me to stop-" or at least to slow down, he thought, slow down sufficiently to make an easy target before they started shooting " and they did not open fire until I made it clear that I was not going to stop." But they had been ready to begin shooting at the instant Peter made the decision to send the Maserati through the roadblock. The intention of the two machine-gunners had seemed evident.

I would say the object was to seize the Baroness alive."

"All right," Parker nodded. "We will have to accept that for the time being." He glanced at Colin. "Colonel Noble?

You had a question?"

"Thank you, Doctor. We haven't heard from Peter in "what terms he was approached by Narmco or the Baroness.

Who made the first contact?"

"I was approached by a London firm who specializes in A making top executive placements. They came directly from the Narmco Board-" And I turned them down flat, he thought. It was only later at Abbots Yew'I see." Colin frowned with disappointment. "There was no question of a meeting with the Baroness?"

"Not at that stage."

"You were offered the sales appointment no mention of any other duties, security, industrial intelligence "No, not then." later?"

"Yes. When I met the Baroness, I realized her personal security arrangements were inadequate. I made changes."

"You never discussed her husband's murder?"

"Yes, we did "And?"

"And nothing." Peter was finding it difficult to improvise answers, but he used the old rule of telling as much of the truth as possible.

"There was no mention by the Baroness of a hunt for her husband's murderers? You were not asked to use your special talents to lead a vendetta?" Peter had to make a swift decision. Parker would know of his leak to the British military attache in Paris the bait he had so carefully placed to attract Caliph. Of course Parker would know: he was head of Atlas with access to the Central Intelligence computer. Peter could not afford to deny it.

"Yes, she asked me to relay any information which might point to her husband's murderers. I asked G.2 in Paris for any information he might have. He couldn't help me." Parker grunted. "Yes. I have a note that G.2 filed a routine report but I suppose her request was natural enough." He wandered back to his work table to glance at a pad on which was scribbled some sort of personal shorthand.

"We know of eight sexual liaisons that the Baroness formed prior to her marriage, all with politically powerful or wealthy men. Six of them married men-" Peter found himself trembling with anger so intense that it surprised him. He hated Parker for talking like this of Magda.

With a huge effort he kept his expression neutral, the hand in his lap was relaxed and the fingers spread naturally, though he felt a driving desire to bunch it and drive it into Parker's face. all these affairs were conducted with utmost discretion. Then during her marriage there is no evidence of any extra-marital activity.

Since the Baron's murder there have been three others, a minister in the French Government, an American businessman head of the world's second largest oil company-" He dropped the pad back on the desk and swung back to face Peter. "And recently there has been one other." He stared at Peter with a bright penetrating gaze. "The lady certainly believes in mixing business with pleasure. All her partners have been men who are able to deliver very concrete proof of their affections. I think this rule probably applies to her latest choice of sexual partner." Colin Noble coughed awkwardly, and shifted in his chair, but Peter did not even glance at him, he went on staring impassively at Kingston Parker. He and Magda had made very little secret of their relationship still it was bitterly distasteful to have to discuss it with anybody else.

"I think that you are in a position now to gather vital intelligence. I think that you are very near the centre of this nameless and formless influence I think that you will be able to make some sort of contact with the enemy, even if it is only another military brush with them. The only question is whether or not you find any reason, emotional or otherwise, that might prevent you fulfilling this duty?" Kingston Parker cocked his head on one side, making the statement into a question.

"I have never let my private life interfere with my duty, Doctor, Peter said quietly.

"No," Kingston Parker agreed. "That is true. And I am sure that now you know a little more about Baroness Altmann you will appreciate just how vital is our interest in that lady."

"Yes, I do." Peter had his anger under control completely.

"You want me to use a privileged relationship to spy on her.

"Is that correct?"

"Just as we can be sure she is using the same relationship to her own ends-" Parker broke off as an odd thought seemed to occur. "I do hope I have not been too blunt, Peter. I haven't destroyed some cherished illusion." Now Parker's attitude was dismissive. The interview was over.

"At my age, Doctor a man has no more illusions." Peter rose to his feet. "Do I report to you direct?"

"Colonel Noble will make the arrangements for all communications." Kingston Parker held out his hand. "I would not have asked this of you if I had a choice." Peter did not hesitate, but took the hand. Parker's hand was cool and dry. Although he made no show of it, Peter could sense the physical power in those hard pianist's fingers.

"I understand, sir," said Peter and he thought grimly, and even if that is also a lie, I'm going to understand pretty damned soon.

Peter made the excuse of tiredness to avoid the gin rummy game, and pretended to sleep during most of the long trans-Atlantic flight. With his eyes closed he tried to marshal his thoughts into some sort of pattern, but always they seemed to come around full circle and leave him chasing his tail. He could not even achieve any about his feelings and loyalties to Magda Altmann.

cer taint They seemed to keep changing shape every time he examined them, and he found himself brooding on irrelevancies.

"Sexual liaisons" what a ridiculously stilted expression Parker had used, and why had it angered Peter so much?

Eight liaisons before marriage, six with married men, two others since marriage all wealthy or powerful. He found himself trying to flesh out these bare statistics, and with a shock of bitter resentment imagined those faceless, formless figures with the slim smooth body, the tiny, perfectly shaped breasts, and the long smoky fall of shimmering hair. He felt somehow betrayed, and immediately scorned himself for this adolescent reaction.

There were other more dire questions and chances that Kingston Parker had raised, the Mossad connection, the six missing years in Magda's life and yet he came back again to what had happened between them. Was she capable of such skilful deception, or was it not deception? Was he merely suffering from hurt pride now, or somehow unbeknown to him had she been able to force him into a more vulnerable position? Had she succeeded in making him fall in love with her?

How did he feel about her? At last he had to face that question directly and try to answer it, but when they landed again he still had no answer, except that the prospect of seeing her again pleased him inordinately and the thought that she had deliberately used him to her own ends and was capable of discarding him as she had done those others left him with an aching sense of dismay. He dreaded the answer for which he had to search, and suddenly he remembered her suggestion of an island to which they could escape together. He realized then that she was a victim of the same dread, and with a clairvoyant shudder he wondered if they were somehow preordained to destroy each other.

There were three separate messages from her at the Dorchester. She had left the Rambouillet number, each time. He telephoned immediately he reached the suite.

"Oh, Peter. I was so worried. Where were you?" And it was hard to believe her concern was faked, and it was even harder to discount the pleasure when, the following noon, she met him at Charles de Gaulle Airport herself instead of sending a chauffeur.

"I needed to get out of the office for an hour," she explained, and then she tucked her hand into the crook of his elbow and pressed herself against him. "That's a lie, of course. I came because I couldn't wait the extra hour to see you." Then she chuckled huskily. "I am behaving shamelessly, I can't imagine what you must think of me!" They were with a party of eight that evening, dinner at Le Doyen and then the theatre at the Palais de Chaillot.

Peter's French was still not up to Moli&e, so he took his pleasure in surreptitiously watching Magda, and for a few hours he succeeded in suppressing all those ugly questions; only on the midnight drive back to La Pierre Brute did he begin the next move in the complicated game.

"I couldn't tell you on the telephone-" he said in the intimate darkness and warmth of her limousine. "I had an approach from Atlas. The head of Atlas summoned me to New York. That's where I was when you called. They are also onto Caliph." She sighed then, and her hand stole into his. "I was waiting for you to tell me, Peter," she said simply, and she sighed again. "I knew you'd gone to America, and I had a terrible premonition that you were going to lie to me. I don't know what I would have done then." And Peter felt a lance of conscience driven up under his ribs, and with it the throb of concern she had known of his journey to New York, but how? Then he remembered her sources'.

"Tell me," she said, and he told her everything, except the nagging question marks which Kingston Parker had placed after her name.

The missing years, the Mossad connection with the Baron, and those ten nameless men.

"They don't seem to know that Caliph uses that name," Peter told her. "But they seem to be pretty certain that you are hunting him, and you've hired me for that purpose." They discussed it quietly as the small cavalcade of cars rushed through the night, and later when she came to his suite, they went on talking, holding each other as they whispered in the night, and Peter was surprised that he could act so naturally, that the doubts seemed to evaporate so easily when he was with her.

"Kingston Parker still has me as a member of Atlas," Peter explained. "And I did not deny it, nor protest. We want to find Caliph, and if I still have status with Atlas it will be useful, of that I am certain,"

"I agree. Atlas can help us especially now that they are also aware that Caliph exists." They made love in the dawn, very deeply satisfying love that left bodies and minds replete, and then keeping her discretion she slipped away before it was light, but they met again an hour later for breakfast together -in the Garden Room.

She poured coffee for him, and indicated the small parcel beside his plate.

"We aren't quite as discreet as we think we are, She chuckled. "Somebody seems to know where you are spending your evenings." He weighed the parcel in his right palm; it was the size of a roll of 35 men. film, wrapped in brown paper, sealed with red wax.

"Apparently it came special delivery yesterday evening." She broke one of the crisp croissants into her plate, and smiled at him with that special slant of her green eyes.

The address was typed on a stick-on label, and the stamps were British, franked in south London the previous morning.

Suddenly Peter was assailed with a terrifying sense of foreboding; the presence of some immense overpowering evil seemed to pervade the gaily furnished room.

"What is it, Peter?" Her voice cracked with alarm.

"Nothing,"he said. "It's nothing."

"You suddenly went deadly pale, Peter. Are you sure you are all right?"

"Yes. I'm all right." He used his table knife to lift the wax seal and then unrolled the brown paper.

It was a small screw-topped bottle of clear glass, and the liquid it contained was clear also. Some sort of preservative, he realized immediately, spirits or formaldehyde.

Hanging suspended in the liquid was a soft white object.

"What is it?"Magda asked.

Peter felt cold tentacles of nausea closing around his stomach.

The object turned slowly, floating free in its bottle, and there was a flash of vivid scarlet.

"Does your mother allow you to wear nail varnish now, Melissa-Jane?" He heard the question echoed in his memory, and saw his daughter flirt her hands, and the scarlet flash of her nails. The same vivid scarlet.

"Oh yes though not to school, of course. You keep forgetting I'm almost fourteen, Daddy." The floating white object was a human finger. It had been severed at the first joint, and the preservative had bleached the exposed flesh a sickly white. The skin had puckered and wrinkled like that of a drowned man. Only the painted fingernail was unaltered, pretty and festively gay.

The nausea caught Peter's throat, choking him and he coughed and retched drily as he stared at the tiny bottle.

The telephone rang three times before it was answered.

"Cynthia Barrow." Peter recognized his ex-wife's voice, even though it was ragged with strain and grief.

"Cynthia, it's Peter."

"Oh, thank God, Peter. I have been trying to find you for two days."

"What is it?"

"Is Melissa-Jane with you, Peter?"

"No." He felt as though the earth had lurched under his feet.

"She's gone, Peter. She's been gone for two nights now.

I'm going out of my mind."

"Have you informed the police?"

"Yes, of course. "The edge of hysteria was in her voice.

"Stay where you are," Peter said. "I'm coming to England right now, but leave any message for me at the Dorchester." He hung up quickly, sensing that her grief would overflow at any moment and knowing that he could not handle it now.

Across the ormolu Louis Quatorze desk Magda was pale, tense, and she did not have to ask the question, it was in the eyes that seemed too large for her face.

He did not have to reply to that question. He nodded once, an abrupt jerky motion, and then he dialled again and while he waited he could not take his eyes from the macabre trophy that stood in its bottle in the centre of the desk.

"Colonel Noble." Peter snapped into the mouthpiece.

"Tell him it's General Stride and it's urgent."

Colin came on within a minute. ""They've taken Melissa-Jane."

"Who? I don't understand."

"The enemy. They've taken her."

"Jesus God! Are you sure?"

"Yes, I'm sure. They sent me her finger in a bottle." Colin was silent for a few seconds, and then his voice was subdued. "That's sick. Christ, that's really sick."

"Get onto the police. Use all your clout. They must be keeping quiet on it. There has been no publicity.

I want to be in on the hunt for these animals. Get Thor involved, find out what you can. I'm on my way now. I'll let you know what flight I am on."

"I'll keep a listening watch at this number round the clock, Colin promised. "And I'll have a driver meet you." Colin hesitated. "Peter, I'm sorry. You know that."

"Yes. I know."

"We will all be with you, all the way." Peter dropped the receiver onto its arm, and across the desk Magda stood up resolutely.

"I'll come with you to London, she said, and Peter reached out and took her hand.

"No," he said gently. "Thank you, but no. There will be nothing for you to do."

"Peter, I want to be with you through this terrible thing.

I feel as though it's all my fault."

"That's not true."

"She's such a lovely child."

"You will be more help to me here, said Peter firmly.

"Try through all your sources, any little scrap of information." "Yes, very well." She accepted the decision, without further argument. "Where can I find you if I have anything?" He gave her Colin Noble's private number at Thor, scribbling it on the pad beside the telephone. "Either there or at the Dorchester," he said.

"At least I will come with you as far as Paris," she said.

Heathrow Airport. It was on the front page of the Evening Standard and Peter snatched a copy off the news Stand and read it avidly during the drive up to London.

The victim was abducted At the front gate of her home in Leaden Street, Cambridge at eleven o'clock on Thursday. A neighbour saw her speak to the occupants of a maroon Triumph saloon car, and then enter the back door of the vehicle, which drove off immediately.

"I thought there were two people in the car," Mrs. Shirley Callon, 32, the neighbour, told our correspondent, and Melissa-Jane did not seem alarmed. She appeared to enter the Triumph quite willingly. I know that her father, who is a senior officer in the army, often sends different cars to fetch her or bring her home. So I thought nothing about it." The alarm was not raised for nearly twenty-four hours, as the missing girl's mother also believed that she might be with her ex-husband.

Only when she was unable to contact Major -General Stride, the girl's father, did she inform the police. The Cambridge police found a maroon Triumph abandoned in the car park at Cambridge railway station. The vehicle had been stolen in London the previous day, and immediately a nation-wide alert was put in force for the missing girl.

Chief-Inspector-Alan Richards is the police officer in charge of the investigation and any person who may be able to provide information should telephone There followed a London number and a detailed description of Melissa-Jane and the clothes she was wearing at the time she disappeared.

Peter crumpled the newspaper and dropped it on the front seat. He sat staring ahead, cupping his anger to him like a flame, husbanding it carefully because the heat was infinitely more bearable than the icy despair which waited to engulf him.

Inspector Alan Richards was a wiry little man, more like a jockey than a policeman. He had a prematurely wizened face, and he had combed long wisps of hair across his balding pate to disguise it. Yet his eyes were quick and intelligent, and his manner direct and decisive.

He shook hands when Colin Noble introduced them. "I must make it very clear that this is a police matter, General.

However, in these very special circumstances I am prepared to work very closely with the military." Swiftly Richards went over the ground he had already covered. He had mounted the investigation from the two offices set aside for him on the third floor of Scotland Yard, with a view over chimney pots of the spires of Westminster Abbey and the Houses of Parliament.

Richards had two young policewomen answering the telephone calls coming in through the number they had advertised in the Press and on television. So far they had accepted over four hundred of these. "They range from long shots to the completely crazy, but we have to investigate all of them." For the first time his expression softened. "It's going to be a long, slow process, General Stride, but we have a few more leads to follow come through." The inner office was furnished in the same nondescript Public Works Department furniture, solid and characterless but there was a kettle boiling on the gas ring, and Richards poured the tea as he went on.

"Three of my men are taking the kidnap car to pieces.

We are sure it is the right car. Your ex-wife has identified a purse found on the floor of the vehicle. It is your daughter's.

We have lifted over six hundred fingerprints, and these are now being processed. It will take some time until we can isolate each and hope for an identification of any alien prints.

However, two of these correspond to prints lifted from your daughter's room Sugar? Milk?" Richards brought the cup to Peter as he went on.

The neighbour, Mrs. Callon, who saw the pick-up, is working on an identikit portrait of the driver, but she did not get a very good view of him. That is a very long shot." Richards sipped his tea. "However, we will show the final picture on television and hope for another lead from it. I am afraid that in cases like this, this is all we can do. Wait for a tip, and wait for the contact from the kidnappers. We do not expect the contact will be made through your ex wife but of course we have a tap on her telephone and men watching over her." Richards spread his hands. "That's it, General Stride. Now it's your turn. What can you tell us?

Why should anybody want to snatch your daughter?" Peter exchanged a glance with Colin Noble, and was silent as he collected his thoughts, but Inspector Richards insisted quietly: "I understand you are not a very wealthy man, General but your family? Your brother?" Peter dismissed the idea with a shake of his head. "My brother has children of his own. They would be the more logical targets."

"Vengeance? You were very active against the Provos in Ireland. You commanded the recapture of Flight 070."

"It's possible."

"You are no longer connected with the army, I understand." Peter was not going to be drawn further in that direction.

"I do not think this type of guesswork will profit us much.

We will know the motive as soon as the kidnappers make their demands known."

"That is true." Richards rattled his teacup, a little nervous gesture. "They could not have sent you her" He broke off as he saw Peter's expression change.

It is horrible and terribly distressing, but we have to accept the finger as proof that your daughter is still alive and that the contact, when it comes, will be made to you. It was an expression of their earnest intention, and a threat but-" The telephone on his desk rang shrilly and Richards snatched it up.

"Richards!" he snapped, and then listened at length, occasionally grunting encouragement to the caller. When he hung up the receiver he did not speak immediately, but offered Peter a rumpled pack of cigarettes. When Peter refused, the policeman lit one himself and his voice was diffident.

"That was the laboratory. You know your daughter was a white cell donor, don't you?" Peter nodded. It was part of Melissa-Jane's social commitment. If she had not been tactfully dissuaded, she would have donated her blood and marrow by the bucketful.

"We were able to get a tissue typing from the Cambridge hospital. The amputated finger matches your daughter's tissue type. I'm afraid we must accept that it is hers I cannot imagine that the kidnappers would have gone to the lengths of finding a substitute of the same type." Peter had been secretly cherishing the belief that it was a bluff. That he had been sent the fingertip from a corpse, from a medical sample, from the casualty ward of a city hospital and now as that hope died he was assailed by the cold spirit-sapping waves of despair. They sat in silence for fully a minute, and now it was Colin Noble who broke it.

"Inspector, you are aware of the nature of the Thor Command?" "Yes, of course. There was a great deal of publicity at the time of the Johannesburg hijacking. It is an anti-terrorist unit."

"We, are probably the most highly trained specialists in I'm sorry, General. the world at removing hostages safely from the hands of militants--"

"I understand what you are trying to tell me, Colonel," Richards murmured drily. "But let us track down our militants first, and then any rescue attempts will be entirely under the control of the Commissioner of Police." It was after three o'clock in the morning when Peter Stride checked in with the night receptionist at the Dorchester Hotel in Park Lane.

"We have been holding your suite since midday, General."

"I'm sorry." Peter found himself slurring his words, exhaustion and nervous strain, he realized. He had only left Police Headquarters when he could convince himself that everything possible was being done, and that he could place complete trust in Chief-Inspector Richards and his team.

He had Richards's solemn undertaking that he would be informed, no matter at-what time of day or night, as soon as there was any new development.

Now he signed the register, blinking at the gritty swollen feeling of his eyelids.

"There are these messages for you, General."

"Thank you again, and goodnight." In the elevator he glanced at the mail the clerk had given him.

The first was a telephone slip.

"Baroness Altmann asks you to return her call to either the Paris or Rambouillet number." The second was another telephone slip.

"Mrs. Cynthia Barrow called. Please call her at Cambridge 699 313." The third was a sealed envelope, good-quality white paper, undistinguished by crest or monogram.

His name had been printed in capitals, very regular Win lettering, an old-fashioned copper-plate script. No stamp, so it would have been delivered by hand.

Peter split the flap with his thumb, and withdrew a single sheet of lined writing paper, again good but undistinguished.

There would be a stack of these sheets in any stationery department throughout the United Kingdom.

The writing was the same regular, unnatural script, so that Peter realized that the writer had used a stencil to form each letter, one of those clear plastic cut-out stencils obtainable from any toy store or stationery department. A completely effective method of disguising handwriting.

A finger you have already, next you will have the hand, then another hand, then a foot, then another foot and at last the head.

The next package will arrive on April 20th, and there will be another delivery every seven days.

To prevent this you must deliver a life for a life. The day Dr. Kingston Parker dies, your daughter will return to you immediately, alive and suffering no further harm, Destroy this letter and tell nnobody, or the head will be delivered immediately.

The letter was signed with the name which had come to loom so largely in Peter's life:

"CALIPH'

The shock of it seemed to reach to the extremities of his soul. To see the name written. To have complete confirmation of all the evil that they had suspected, to see the mark of the beast deeply printed and unmistakable.

The shock was made greater, almost unbearable, by the contents of the letter. Peter found that such cruelty, such utter ruthlessness, tested his credibility to its limits.

The letter was fluttering in his hands, and he realized with a start of surprise that he was shaking like a man in high fever. The porter carrying his black crocodile valise was staring at him curiously, and it required a huge physical effort to control his hands and fold the sheet of white paper.

He stood rigidly, as though on the parade ground, until the elevator door opened and then he marched stiffly down the passage to his suite. He gave the porter a banknote, without glancing at it, and the moment the latch clicked closed, he unfolded the sheet again, and standing in the centre of the living-room floor, scanned the stilted script again, and then again until the words seemed to melt together and lose coherence and meaning.

He realized that for the first time in his life he was in complete panic, that he had lost all resolution and direction.

He took a deep breath and closed his eyes, counting slowly to one hundred, emptying his mind completely, and then giving himself the command: "Think!" All right, Caliph knew his movements intimately. Even to when he was expected at the Dorchester. that? Cynthia, Colin Noble, Magda Altmann and the secretary at Rambouillet who had made the reservation, Colin's secretary at Thor, the Dorchester staff, and anybody else who had made even an idle study of Peter's movements would know he always stayed at the Dorchester. That was a cul-de-sac.

"Think!" Today was April fourth. There were sixteen days before Caliph sent him Melissa-Jane's severed hand. He felt the panic mounting again, and he forced it back.

"Think!" Caliph had been watching him, studying him in detail, assessing his value. Peter's value was that he could move unsuspected in high places. He could reach the head of Atlas by simply requesting an audience. More than that, he could probably get access to any head of state if he wanted it badly enough.

For the first time in his life Peter felt the need for liquor.

He crossed quickly to the cabinet and fumbled with the key. A stranger's face stared at him out of the gilt-framed mirror above it.

The face was pale, haggard, with deep parentheses framing the mouth.

There were plum-coloured bruises of fatigue below the eyes, and the gaunt, bony jaw was gun-metal blue with a new beard and the sapphire blue of the eyes had a wild deranged glitter. He looked away from his own image. It only increased his sense of unreality.

He poured half a tumbler of Scotch whisky, and drank half of it straight off. He coughed at the sting of the liquor and a drop of it broke from the corner of his mouth and trickled down his chin. He wiped it away with his thumb, and turned back to study the sheet of white paper again. It was crumpled already, where he had gripped it too hard. He smoothed it carefully.

"Think!" he told himself. This was how Caliph worked, then.

Never exposing himself. Picking his agents with incredible attention to detail. Fanatics, like the girl, Ingrid who had led the taking of Flight 070. Trained assassins, like the man he had killed in the river at La Pierre Brute.

Experts in high places, like General Peter Stride. Studying them, assessing them and their capabilities, and finally finding their price.

Peter had never believed the old law that every man had his price.

He had believed himself above that general rule.

Now he knew he was not and the knowledge sickened him.

Caliph had found his price, found it unerringly. Melissa-Jane.

Suddenly Peter had a vivid memory of his daughter on horseback, swivelling in the saddle to laugh and call back to him.

"Super-Star!" And the sound of her laughter on the wind.

Peter shivered, and without realizing it he crumpled the sheet of paper to a ball in his fist.

Ahead of him he saw the road that he was destined to follow. With a new flash of insight, he realized that he had already taken his first steps along the road. He had done so when he had put the gun to Ingrid in the terminal. of Johannesburg Airport, when he had made himself judge and executioner.

Caliph had been responsible for that first step on the road to corruption, and now it was Caliph who was driving him farther along it.

With a sudden prophetic glimpse ahead, Peter knew it would not end with the life of Kingston Parker. Once he was committed to Caliph, it would be for ever or until one of them, Peter Stride, or Caliph, was completely destroyed.

Peter drank the rest of the whisky in the tumbler.

Yes, Melissa-Jane was his price. Caliph had made the correct bid.

Nothing else would have driven him to it.

Peter picked the booklet of matches off the liquor cabinet and like a sleepwalker moved through to the bathroom. He twisted the sheet of paper into a taper and lit the end of it, holding it over the toilet bowl. He held it until the flame scorched his fingers painfully, then dropped it into the bowl and flushed the ash away.

He went back into the lounge, and refilled the glass with whisky.

He picked the comfortable armchair below the window and sank into it.

Only then did he realize how very weary he was. The nerves in his thighs quivered and twitched uncontrollably.

He thought about Kingston Parker. A man like that had an incalculable amount to offer mankind. It will have to look like an assassination attempt aimed at me, Peter thought. One that finds the wrong victim.

"A bomb," Peter thought. He hated the bomb. Somehow it seemed to be the symbol of the senseless violence which he hated. He had seen it used in Ireland and in London town, and he hated it. The undirected destruction, mindless, merciless.

"It will have to be a bomb," he decided, and with surprise he found that his hatred had found a new target. Again for the first time ever, he hated himself for what he was going to do.

Caliph had won. He knew that against an adversary of that calibre there was no chance they would find where Melissa-Jane was hidden.

Caliph had won, and Peter Stride sat the rest of the night planning an act which he had dedicated his life, until then, to prevent.

cannot understand why we haven't had the demand A contact yet."

Inspector Richards ran his hand distractedly across his pate, disturbing the feathery wisps that covered it and leaving them standing out at a startled angle.

"It's five days now. Still no demands."

"They know where to contact Peter," Colin Noble agreed.

"The interview he gave covered that." Peter Stride had appeared on BBC TV to broadcast an appeal to the kidnappers not to maim his daughter further, and to the general public to offer any information that might lead to her rescue.

On the same programme they had displayed the police identikit portrait of the driver of the maroon Triumph prepared by the one witness.

The response had been overwhelming, jamming the switchboard at Inspector Richards's special headquarters, and a mixed bag had fallen into the net.

A fourteen-year-old runaway had the police barge into the Bournemouth apartment where she was in bed with her thirty-two-year-old lover. She was returned weeping bitterly to the bosom of her family, and had again disappeared within twenty-four hours.

In North Scotland the police sadly bungled a raid on a remote cottage hired by a man with the same lank dark hair and gunfighter's mustache as the identikit portrait. He turned out to be a cottage-industry manufacturer of LSD tablets, and he and his four assistants, one of them a young girl who vaguely fitted the description of Melissa-Jane in that she was female and blonde, had scattered across the Highlands before being overtaken and borne to earth by sweating pounding members of the Scottish Constabulary.

Peter Stride was furious. "If it had been Melissa-Jane, they would have had fifteen minutes in which to put her down-" He raged at Richards. "You've got to let Thor go in to the next raid." Through the Thor communications net he spoke directly to Kingston Parker on the video screens.

We'll put all our influence into it," Parker agreed, and then with deep compassion in his eyes, "Peter, I'm living every minute of this with you. I cannot escape the knowledge that I have placed you into this terrible situation. I did not expect the attack would come through your daughter. I think you know that you can call on me for any support you need."

"Thank you, sir," said Peter and for a moment felt his resolve weaken. In ten days he would have to execute this man. He steeled himself by thinking of a puckered dead white finger floating in its tiny bottle.

Kingston Parker's influence worked immediately. Six hours later the order came down from Downing Street via the Commissioner of Police, that the next raid on a suspect hideout would be conducted by Thor Command.

The Royal Air Force placed two helicopters at Thor's disposal for the duration of the operation, and Thor's assault unit went into intensive training for penetration and removal under urban conditions.

Peter trained with them, he and Colin swiftly re-establishing the old rapport of concerted action.

When they were not practising and refining the exit and assembly from the hovering helicopters, Peter spent much of his time in the enclosed pistol range, trying to drown his awareness in the crash of gunfire, but the days passed swiftly in a series of false alarms and misleading clues.

Each night when Peter examined his face in the mirror above the liquor cabinet, it was more haggard, the blue eyes muddied by fatigue and terrible gut eroding terror of what the next day might bring forth.

There were six days left when Peter left the hotel room before breakfast, caught the tube at Green Park and left it again at Finsbury

Park. In a garden supplies shop near the station he purchased a twenty-pound plastic bag of ammonium nitrate garden fertilizer. He carried it back to the Dorchester in a locked Samsonite suitcase and stored it in the closet behind his hanging trenchcoat.

That night, when he spoke to Magda Altmann, she pleaded once again to be allowed to come to London.

"Peter I know I can be of help to you. Even if it's just to stand beside you and hold your hand."

"No. We've been over that." He could hear the brutal tone in his own voice, but could not control it. He knew that he was getting very close to the edge. "Have you heard anything?"

"I'm sorry, Peter. Nothing, absolutely nothing. My sources are doing all that is possible." Peter bought the dieseline from a pump at the Lex Garage in Brewer Street. He took five lit res in a plastic screw-topped container that had contained a household detergent. The pump attendant was a pimply teenager in dirty overalls. He was completely uninterested in the transaction.

In his bathroom Peter worked on the dieseline and the nitrate from the garden shop. He produced twenty-one pounds of savagely weight-efficient high explosive that was, none the less, docile until activated by a blasting cap such as he had devised with a flashlight bulb.

It would completely devastate the entire suite, utterly destroying everybody and everything in it. However, the damage should be confined to those three rooms.

It would be a simple matter to lure Kingston Parker to the suite under the pretence of having urgent information about Caliph to deliver, information so critical that it could only be delivered in person and in private.

That night the face in the mirror above the liquor cabinet was that of a man suffering from a devouring terminal disease, and the whisky bottle was empty. Peter broke the seal on a fresh bottle; it would make it easier to sleep, he told himself.

The wind came off the Irish Sea like the blade of a harvester's scythe, and the low lead-coloured cloud fled up the slopes of the Wicklow hills ahead of it.

There were weak patches in the cloud layer through which a cold and sickly sun beamed swiftly across the green forested slopes. As it passed so the rain followed icy grey rain slanting in on the wind.

A man came up the deserted street of the village. The tourists had not yet begun the annual invasion, but the "Bed and Breakfast"

signs were already out to welcome them on the fronts of the cottages.

The man passed the pub, in its coat of shocking salmon pink paint and lifted his head to read the billboard above the empty car park.

"Black is Beautiful drink Guinness" it proclaimed, and the man did not smile but lowered his head and trudged on over the bridge that divided the village in two.

On the stone balustrades of the bridge a midnight artist had used an aerosol paint can to spray political slogans in day-glo colours.

"BRITS OUT" on the left-hand balustrade and "STOP BLaCK TORTURE" on the other. This time the man grimaced sourly.

Below him the steely grey water boiled about the stone piers before hissing down towards the sea.

The man wore a cyclist's plastic cape and a narrow brimmed tweed cap pulled down over his eyes. The wind dashed at him, flogging the skirts of the cape against his Wellington boots.

He seemed to cringe to the wind, hunching down against its cold fury, as he trudged on past the few buildings of the village. The Street was deserted, though the man knew that he was being watched from curtained windows.

This village on the lower slopes of the Wicklow hills, a mere thirty miles from Dublin, would not have been his choice. Here isolation worked against them, making them conspicuous. He would have preferred the anonymity of the city. However, his preferences had never been asked for.

This was only the third time he had left the house since they had arrived. Each time it had been for some emergency something that a little more forethought might provision have prevented, which should have been included when the old house was stocked for their stay. That came from having to rely on a drinking man, but here again he had not been consulted.

He was discontented and in a truculent, smouldering mood. it had rained most of the time, and the oil-fired central heating was not working, the only heating was the smoking peat fires in the small fireplaces in each of the two big rooms they were using. The high ceilings and sparse furnishings had made the rooms more difficult to warm and he had been cold ever since they had arrived. They were using only the two rooms, and had left the rest of the house locked and shuttered. It was a gloomy building, with the smell of damp pervading it. He had only the company of a whining alcoholic, day after cold rainy day. The man was ripe and over-ripe for trouble, for any diversion to break the grinding monotony but now he was reduced to errand boy and house servant, roles for which he was unsuited by temperament and training, and he scowled darkly as he trudged over the bridge towards the village store, with its row of petrol pumps standing before it like sentries.

The storekeeper saw him coming, and called through into the back of the shop.

"It's himself from down at the Old Manse." His wife came through, wiping her hands on her apron, a short plump woman with bright eyes and ready tongue.

"City people have no more sense than they need, out in this weather."

"Sure and it's not baked beans nor Jameson whiskey he's afteTbuying." Speculation about the new occupant of the Old Manse had swiftly become one of the village's main diversions, with regular bulletins broadcast by the girl on the local telephone exchange two overseas telephone calls, by the postman no mail deliveries, by the dustman the disposals into the dustbins were made up mainly of empty Heinz baked beans cans and Jameson whiskey bottles.

"I still think he's from the trouble up north," said the shopkeeper's wife. "He's got the look and the sound of an Ulster man."

"Hush, woman." Her husband cautioned her. "You'll bring bad luck upon us. Get yourself back into the kitchen now." The man came in out of the rain and swept the tweed cap off his head, beating the water from it against the jamb of the door. He had black straight hair, cut into a ragged fringe above the dark Irish visage and fierce eyes, like those of a falcon when first the leather hood is slipped.

"The top of the morning to you, Mr. Barry," the shopkeeper greeted him heartily. "Like as not it will stop raining, before it clears."

The man they knew as Barry grunted, and as he slipped the waterproof cape from his shoulders, swept the cluttered interior of the little general dealer's store with a quick, all, embracing glance.

He wore a rough tweed jacket over a cable-stitched jersey and brown corduroys tucked into the top of the Wellington boots.

"You finished writing on your book, have you?" Barry had told the milkman that he was writing a book about Ireland.

The Wicklow hills were a stronghold of the literary profession, there were a dozen prominent or eccentric writers living within twenty miles, taking advantage of Ireland's tax concessions to writers and artists.

"Not yet," Barry grunted, and went across to the shelves nearest the till. He made a selection of half a dozen items and laid them on the worn counter top.

"When it's good and wrote I'm going to ask the library to keep a copy for me," the shopkeeper promised, as though that was exactly what a writer would want to hear, and began to ring up the purchases on his register.

Barry's upper lip was still unnaturally smoother and paler than the rest of his face. He had shaved away the dark droopy mustache the day before arriving in the village, and at the same time had cut the fringe of his hair that hung almost to his eyes.

The shopkeeper picked up one of the purchases and looked inquiringly at Barry, but when the dark Irish face remained impassive and he volunteered no explanation, the shopkeeper dropped his eyes self-consciously and rang up the package with the other purchases and dropped it into a paper carrier.

"That will be three pounds twenty pence," he said, and closed the cash drawer with a clang, waiting while Barry stung the cape over his shoulders and adjusted the tweed cap.

"God be with you then, Mr. Barry." There was no reply and the shopkeeper watched him set off back across the bridge before he called his wife again.

"He's a surly one, all right, he is."

"He's got him a girlfriend down there." The shopkeeper was bursting with the importance of his discovery. "He's up to a nice little bit of hanky-panky."

"How do you know that?"

"He was after buying women's things you know." He hooded a knowing eye.

"No, I don't know, "his wife insisted.

"For the curse you know. Women's things," and his wife glowed with the news, and began to untie her apron.

"You're sure now? "she demanded.

"Would I ever be lying to you?"

"I think I'll go across to Mollie for a cup pa tea," said his wife eagerly; the news would make her the woman of the hour throughout the village.

The man they knew as Barry trudged into the narrow, high-walled lane that led up to the Old Manse. It was only the heavy boots and voluminous cape that gave him a clumsy gait, for he was a lithe, lean man in prime physical condition, and under the brim of his cap the eyes were never still, hunter's eyes probing and darting from side to side.

The wall was twelve feet high, the stonework blotched with silver-grey lichen, and although it was cracked and sagging at places, yet it was still substantial and afforded complete privacy and security to the property beyond.

At the end of the lane there was a pair of rotten and warping double doors, but the lock was a bright new brass Yale and the cracks in the wood and the gaping seams had been covered with fresh white strips of pine so that it was impossible to see into the interior of the garage.

Barry unlocked the brass Yale lock and slipped through, pulling the latch closed behind him.

There was a dark blue Austin saloon car parked facing the doors for immediate departure. It had been stolen in Ulster two weeks before, re sprayed and fitted with a roof rack to alter its appearance, and with new licence plates.

The engine had been tuned and checked and Barry had paid nearly twice its market value.

Now he slipped behind the wheel and turned the key in the ignition. The engine fired and caught immediately. He grunted with satisfaction; seconds could mean the difference between success and failure, and in his life failure and death were synonymous. He listened to the engine beat for half a minute, checking the oil pressure and fuel gauges before switching off the engine again and going out through the rear door of the garage into the overgrown kitchen yard.

The old house had the sad unloved air of approaching dereliction.

The fruit trees in the tiny orchard were sick with fungus diseases and surrounded by weed banks.

The thatch roof was rotten-green with moss, and the windows were blindman's eyes, unseeing and uncaring.

Barry let himself in through the kitchen door and dropped his cape and cap on the scullery floor and set the carrier on the draining board of the sink. Then he reached into the cutlery drawer and brought out a pistol. It was a British officer's service pistol, had in fact been taken during a raid on a British Army arsenal in Ulster three years previously.

Barry checked the handgun with the expertise of a long.

familiarity and then thrust it into his belt. He had felt naked and vulnerable for the short time that he was without the weapon but he had reluctantly decided not to risk carrying it in the village.

Now he tapped water into the kettle, and at the sound a voice called through from the dim interior.

"Is that you?"

"None other," Barry answered drily, and the other man came through and stood in the doorway to the kitchen.

He was a thin, stooped man in his fifties with the swollen inflamed face of the very heavy drinker.

"Did you get it?" His voice was husky and rough with whiskey, and he had a seedy run-down air, a day's stubble of grey hairs that grew at angles on the blotchy skin.

Barry indicated the package on the sink.

"It's all there, doctor."

"Don't call me that, I'm not a doctor any more," the man snapped irritably.

"Oh, but you are a damned fine one. Ask the girls who dropped their bundles-"

"Leave me alone, damn you." Yes, he had been a damn fine doctor. Long ago, before the whiskey, now however it was the abortions and the gunshot wounds of fugitives, and jobs like this one.

He did not like to think about this one. He crossed to the sink and sorted through the packages.

"I asked you for adhesive tape, "he said.

"They had none. I brought the bandage."

"I cannot-" the man began, but Barry whirled on him savagely, his face darkening with angry blood.

"I've had a gutsful of your whining. You should have brought what you needed, not sent me to get it for you."

"I did not expect the wound-"

"You didn't expect anything but another dram of Jamesons, man.

There is no adhesive tape. Now get on with it and tie the bitch's hand up with the bandage." The older man backed away swiftly, picked up the packages and shuffled through into the other room.

Barry made the tea and poured it into the thick china mug, spooned in four spoons of sugar and stirred noisily, staring out of the smeared panes. It was raining again. He thought that the rain and the waiting would drive him mad.

The doctor came back into the kitchen, carrying a bundle of linen soiled with blood and the yellow ooze of sepsis.

"She is sick he said. "She needs drugs, antibiotics. The finger-"

"Forget it, "said Barry.

From the other room there was a long-drawn-out whimper, followed by the incoherent gabble of a young girl deep in the delirium induced by fever and hypnotic drugs.

"If she is not taken to proper care, I won't be responsible."

"You'll be responsible," Barry told him heavily. "I'll see to that."

The doctor dropped the bundle of linen into the sink and let the water run over it.

"Can I have a drink now?" he asked.

Barry made a sadistic display of consulting his watch.

"No. Not yet, "he decided.

The doctor poured soap flakes into the sink.

"I don't think I can do the hand," he whispered, shaking his head.

"The finger was bad enough but I can't do the hand."

"You'll do the hand" said Barry. "Do you hear me, you whiskey-guzzling old wreck?

You'll do the hand, and anything else I tell you to do." Sir Steven

Stride offered a reward of fifty thousand pounds to anyone giving information that led to the recovery of his niece, and the offer was widely reported on television and in the press with reprints of the identikit portrait. It led to a revival of the flagging public interest in the case.

Inspector Richards had been able to reduce his telephone answering staff to one the last few days, but with the renewed spate of informers and speculators, he had to ask for the other policewoman to return to the third floor, and he had two sergeants processing the material that flowed in.

"I feel like Littlewoods," he growled to Peter. "Everybody taking a ticket on the pools, or getting his three-pence worth of advertising." He picked up another message slip.

"Here is another claim for responsibility the Democratic People's Party for the Liberation of Hong Kong Have we ever heard of them before?"

"No, sir." The senior sergeant looked up from his lists.

"But that makes one hundred and forty-eight confessions or claims for responsibility so far."

"And "Enry the Eighth was on again half an hour ago." One of the girls at the switchboard turned and smiled around her mouthpiece. "Hasn't missed a day."

"Enry the Eighth was a sixty-eight-year-old pensioner who lived in a council estate in South London. His hobby was confessing to the latest spectacular crime from rape to bank robbery, and he had called regularly every morning.

"Come and get me," he challenged each time. "But I warn you I won't come peaceful like. -" When the local constable had made a courtesy call, while on his regular beat, "Enry the Eighth had his suitcase packed and ready to go. His disappointment was heart-rending when the bobby tactfully explained that they weren't going to arrest him, but when the bobby assured him that they would be keeping him under close surveillance as the Commissioner considered him a very dangerous man, he brightened up considerably and offered the constable a cup of tea.

"The trouble is we dare not dismiss any of it, even the real loonies, it all has to be checked out," Richards sighed, and motioned Peter to go through to the inner office.

"Still nothing?" Richards asked. It was an unnecessary question.

They had a tap on his telephone, at the hotel and at Thor Headquarters, to record any contact from the kidnappers.

"No, nothing," Peter lied, but the lie had become easy now just as he had learned to accept whatever else was necessary for Melissa-Jane's release.

"I don't like it, General. I really don't like the fact that there has been no attempt to contact you. I don't want to be despondent, but every day of silence makes it look more like an act of vengeance, " Richards broke off and covered his embarrassment by lighting a cigarette. "Yesterday the Deputy-Commissioner telephoned me. He wanted my opinion as to how much longer I thought it necessary to maintain this special unit."

"What did you tell him?" Peter asked.

"I told him that if we did not have some firm evidence within ten days, at least some sort of demand from the kidnappers then I would have to believe that your daughter was no longer alive."

"I see." Peter felt a fatalistic calm. He knew. He was the only one who knew. There were four days to Caliph's deadline, he had worked out his timetable.

Tomorrow morning he would request his urgent meeting with Kingston Parker. He expected it would take less than twelve hours to arrange it, he would make it too attractive for Parker to refuse.

Parker would have to come, but against the remote possibility that he did not, Peter had left himself three clear days before the deadline in which to put into action his alternative plan. This would mean going to Kingston Parker.

The first plan was the better, the more certain but if it failed, Peter would accept any risk.

Now he realized that he had been standing in the centre of Richards's office, staring vacantly at the wall above the little inspector's head. He started as he realized that Richards was staring at him with a mingling of pity and concern.

"I am sorry, General. I understand how you feel but I cannot keep this unit functioning indefinitely. We just do not have enough people-"

"I understand." Peter nodded jerkily, and wiped his face with an open hand. It was a weary, defeated gesture.

"General, I think you should see your doctor. I really do."

Richards's voice was surprisingly gentle.

"That won't be necessary I'm just a little tired."

"A man can take just so much."

"I think that's what these bastards are relying on," Peter agreed. "But I'll be all right." From the next door office there was the almost constant tinkle of telephone bells, and the murmur of female voices as the two policewomen answered the incoming stream of calls. It had become a steady background effect, so that when the call for which they had prayed and pleaded and waited finally came, neither of the two men was aware of it, and there was no excitement on the switchboard. in front of The two girls sat side by side on swivel stools the temporary switchboard. The blonde girl was in her middle twenties, she was pretty and pert, with big round breasts buttoned primly under her blue uniform jacket. The blonde hair was twisted into a bun at the back of her neck to free her ears, but the headset made her appear older and businesslike.

The bell pinged and a panel lit in front of her; she plugged in the switch and spoke into the headset, "Good morning. This is the Police Special Information Unit-" She had a pleasant middle-class accent, but was unable to keep the trace of boredom out of it. She had been on this job for twelve days now. There was the warning tone of a public telephone and then the click of small change fed into the slot.

"Can you hear me?" The accent was foreign.

"Yes, sir."

"Listen carefully. Gilly O'Shaughnessy has hen" No, it was an imitation, the foreign accept slipped a little with the pronunciation of the name.

"Gilly O'Shaughnessy,"the police girl repeated.

"That's right. He's holding her at Laragh."

"Spell that, please."

Again the accent slipped as the man spelled the name.

"And where is that, sir?"

"County Wicklow, Ireland."

"Thank you, sir. What is your name, please?" There was the clack of a broken connection and the hum of the dialling tone. The girl shrugged, and scribbled the message on the pad before her, glancing at her wristwatch simultaneously.

"Seven minutes to tea time," she said. "Roll on death, battle with the angels." She tore the sheet off the pad and passed it over her shoulder to the burly, curly-headed sergeant who sat behind her.

"I'll buy you a sticky bun, "he promised.

"I'm on a diet, "she sighed.

"That's daft, you look a treat-" The sergeant broke off.

Gil ly O'Shaughnessy. Why do I know that name?" The older sergeant looked up sharply.

"Gilly O'Shaughnessy?" he demanded. "Let me see that." And he snatched the sheet, scanning it swiftly, his lips moving as he read the message. Then he looked up again.

"You know the name because you've seen it on the wanted posters, and heard it on the telly. Gilly O'Shaughnessy, strew the man, he's the one who bombed the Red Lion at Leicester, and shot the Chief Constable in Belfast." The curly-headed policeman whistled softly. "This looks like a hot one. A real hot one-" But his colleague was already barging into the inner office without the formality of knocking.

Richards had the connection to the Dublin police within seven minutes.

"Impress upon them that there must be no attempt-" Peter fretted, while they waited, and Richards cut him short.

"All right, General. Leave this to me. I understand what has to be done-- At that moment the Dublin connection was made, and Richards was transferred quickly to a Deputy, Commissioner. He spoke quietly and earnestly for nearly ten minutes before he replaced the receiver.

"They will use the local constabulary, not to waste time in sending a man down from Dublin. I have their promise that no approach will be made if a suspect is located." Peter nodded his thanks.

"Laragh," he said. "I have never heard of it. It cannot have a population of more than a few hundred."

"I've sent for a map," Richards told him, and when it came they studied it together.

"It's on the slopes of the Wicklow hills ten miles from the coast-" And that was about all there was to learn from the large-scale map.

"We'll just have to wait for the Dublin police to call back-"

"No," Peter shook his head. "I want you to call them again, and ask them to contact the surveyor-general. He must have trig maps of the village, aerial photographs, street layouts. Ask them to get them down with a driver to Enniskerry Airfield-"

"Should we do that now? What if this turns out to be another false alarm."

"We'll have wasted a gallon of petrol and the driver's time-" Peter was no longer able to sit still, he jumped out of the chair and began to pace restlessly about the office; it was too small for him suddenly, he felt as though he were on the point of suffocation. "I don't think it is, however. I have the smell of it. The smell of the beast."

Richards looked startled and Peter deprecated the exaggerated phrase with a dismissive gesture. "A manner of speech" he explained,and then stopped as a thought struck him. "The helicopters will have to refuel, they haven't got the range to make it in one hop, and they are so bloody slow!" He paused and reached a decision, then leaned across Richards's desk to pick up the telephone and dialled Colin Noble's private number at Thor.

"(2bun." He spoke curtly with the tension that gripped him like a mailed fist. "We've just had a contact. It's still unconfirmed, but it looks the best yet."

"Where?" Colin broke in eagerly.

"Ireland."

"That's to hell and gone."

"Right, what's the flight time for the whirlybirds to reach Enniskerry?"

"Stand by." Peter heard him talking to somebody else probably one of the RAF. pilots. He came back within the minute.

"They will have to refuel en route--2 eyes?" Peter demanded impatiently "Four and a half hours,"Colin told him.

"It's twenty past ten now almost three o'clock before they reach Enniskerry. With this weather it will be dark before five." Peter thought furiously; if they sent the Thor team all the way to Ireland on a false trail and while they were there the correct contact was made in Scotland, or Holland, or'It's got the smell. It's got to be right," he told himself, and took a deep breath. He could not order Colin Noble to go to Bravo. Peter was no longer commander of Thor.

"Colin," he said. "I think this is it. I have the deep-down gut feel for it. Will you trust me and go to Bravo now? If we wait even another half hour we'll not get Melissa-Jane out before nightfall if she is there." its There was a long silence, broken only by Colin Noble's light quick breath.

"Hell, it can only cost me my job," he said easily at last. okay, Pete baby, it's Bravo, we'll be airborne in five minutes.

We'll pick you up from the helipad in fifteen minutes; be ready." The cloud was breaking up, but the wind was still bitter and spiteful, and up on the exposed helipad it cut cruelly through Peter's trench coat, blazer and roll-neck jersey. They looked out across the churned surface of the River Thames, eyes watering in the wind, for the first glimpse of the helicopters.

"What if we have a confirmation before you reach Enniskerry?"

"You can reach us on the RAF frequencies, through Biggin Hill," Peter told him.

"I hope I don't have bad news for you." Richards was holding his bowler hat in place with one hand, the skirts of his jacket slapping around his skinny rump and his face blotchy with the cold.

The two ungainly craft came clattering in, low over the rooftops, hanging on the whirling silver coins of their rotors.

At a hundred feet Peter could plainly recognize the broad shape of Colin Noble in the open doorway of the fuselage, just forward of the brilliant RAF. rounders, and the down draught of the rotors boiled the air about them. "Good hunting." Richards raised his voice to a shout. "I wish I was coming with you." Peter ran forward lightly, and jumped before the helicopter gear touched the concrete pad. Colin caught him by the upper arm and helped to swing him aboard without removing the cheroot from his wide mouth.

"Welcome aboard, buddy. Now let's get this circus on the road. "And he hitched the big .45 pistol on his hip.

"She's not eating." The doctor came through from the inner room and scraped the plate into the rubbish bin below the sink. "I'm worried about her. Very worried." Gilly O'Shaughnessy grunted but did not look up from his own plate. He broke a crust off the slice of bread and very carefully wiped up the last of the tomato ketchup. He popped the bread into his mouth and followed it with a gulp of steaming tea, and while he chewed it all together, he leaned back on the kitchen chair and watched the other man.

The doctor was on the verge of cracking up. He would probably not last out the week before his nerve went completely; Gilly O'Shaughnessy had seen better men go to pieces under less strain.

He realized then that his own nerves were wearing away.

It was more than just the rain and the waiting that was working on him. He had been the fox for all of his life, and he had developed the instincts of the hunted animal. He could sense danger, the presence of the pursuers, even when there was no real evidence. It made him restless to stay longer in one place than was necessary, especially when he was on a job. He had been here twelve days, and it was far too long. The more he thought about it the more uneasy he became. Why had they insisted he bring the brat to this isolated, and therefore conspicuous, little dead-end? There was only one road in and out of the village, a single avenue of escape. Why had they insisted that he sit and wait it out in this one place? He would have liked to keep moving. If he had had the running of it, he would have bought a second-hand caravan, and kept rolling from one park to another his attention wandered for a few moments as he thought how he would have done it if he had been given the planning of it.

He lit a cigarette and gazed out of the rain-blurred window panes, hardly aware of the muttered complaints and misgivings of his companion. What they should have done was crop the brat's fingers and bottle all of them to send to her father at intervals, and then they should have held a pillow over her face and buried her in the vegetable garden or weighted her and dumped her out beyond the hundred fathom line of the Irish Sea that way they would not have had to bother with a doctor, and the nursing Everything else had been done with professional skill, starting with the contact they had made with him in the favela of Rio de Janeiro, where he was hiding out in a sleazy one-room shack with the half-caste Indian woman, and down to his last fifty quid.

That had given him a real start, he thought he had covered his tracks completely, but they had him made.

They had the passport and travel papers in the name of Barry, and they did not look like forgeries. They were good papers, he was sure of it, and he knew a lot about papers.

Everything else had been as well planned, and swiftly delivered.

The money a thousand pounds in Rio, another five thousand the day after they grabbed the brat, and he was confident that the final ten would be there as it was promised. It was better than an English gaol,

the "Silver City" as the Brits called their concentration camp at the Maze. That was what Caliph had promised, if he didn't take the job.

Caliph, now that was a daft name, Gilly O'Shaughnessy decided for the fiftieth time as he dropped the stub of his cigarette into the dregs of his teacup and it was extinguished with a sharp hiss. A real daft name, but somehow it had the ability to put a chill on the blood, and he shivered not only from the cold.

He stood up and crossed to the kitchen window. It had all been done with such speed and purpose and planning everything so clearly thought out, that when there was a lapse it was more troubling.

Gilly O'Shaughnessy had the feeling that Caliph did nothing without good reason then why had they been ordered to back themselves into this dangerously exposed bottleneck, without the security of multiple escape routes, and to sit here and wait?

He picked up the cyclist cape and tweed cap. "Where are you going?" the doctor demanded anxiously. "I'm going to take a shufti,"Gilly O'Shaughnessy grunted as he pulled the cap down over his eyes.

"You're always prowling around," the doctor protested.

"You make me nervous." The dark Irishman pulled the pistol from under his jacket and checked the load before thrusting it back into his belt.

"You just go on playing nursemaid," he said brusquely. "And leave the man's work to me." The small black Austin crawled slowly up the village street, and the rain hammered on the cab and bonnet in tiny white explosions that blurred the outline, giving the machine a softly focused appearance, and the streaming windscreen effectively hid the occupants.

It was only when the Austin parked directly in front of Laragh's only grocery store and both front doors opened that the curiosity of watchers from behind the curtained windows all down the street was satisfied.

The two members of the Irish constabulary wore the service blue winter uniform with darker epaulettes. The soft rain speckled the patent leather peaks of their caps as they hurried into the shoP.

"Good morning, Maeve, me old love," the sergeant greeted the plump red-faced lady behind the counter.

"Owen O'Neill, I do declare-" She chuckled as she recognized the sergeant there had been a time, thirty years before, when the two of them had given the priest some fine pickings at the confessional. "And what brings you all the way up from the big city?" That was a generous description of the quaint seaside resort town of Wicklow, fifteen miles down the road.

"The sight of your blooming smile-2 They chatted like old friends for ten minutes, and her husband came through from the little storeroom when he heard the rattle of teacups.

"So what is new in Laragh, then?" the sergeant asked at last.

"Any new faces in the village?"

"No, all the same faces. Nothing changes in Laragh, bless the Lord for that." The shopkeeper wagged his head. "No, indeed only new face is the one down at the Old Manse, he and his lady friend-" he winked knowingly but seeing as how he's a stranger, we aren't after counting him." The sergeant ponderously delved for his notebook, opened it and extracted a photograph from it;

it was the usual side view and full face of police records. He held the name covered with his thumb as he showed it to them.

"No." The woman shook her head positively. "Himself down at the manse is ten years older than that, and he does not have a mustache."

"This was taken ten years ago," said the sergeant.

"Oh, well, why didn't you say so." She nodded. "Then that's him.

That's Mr. Barry for certain sure."

"The Old Manse, you say." The sergeant seemed to inflate visibly with importance, as he put the photograph back into his notebook. "I'm going to have to use your telephone now, dear."

"Where will you be after telephoning?" The shopkeeper asked suspiciously.

"Dublin," the sergeant told him. "It's police business."

"I'll have to charge you for the call," the shopkeeper warned him quickly.

"There," said the wife as they watched the sergeant making his request to the girl on the village switchboard. "I told you he had the look of trouble, didn't I? The first time I laid eyes on him I knew he was from up in the North, and carrying trouble like the black angel."

Gilly O'Shaughnessy kept close in under the stone wall, keeping out of the slanting rain and out of the line of sight of a casual watcher on the slope beyond the river. He moved carefully and quietly as a tomcat on his midnight business, stopping to examine the earth below the weakened or tumbled places in the wall where a man could have come over, studying the wet drooping weeds for the brush marks where a man might have passed.

At the farthest corner of the garden, he stepped up onto the leaning main stem of an apple tree to see over the wall, wedging himself against the lichen-encrusted stone, so that the silhouette of his head did not show above the wall.

He waited and watched for twenty minutes, with the absolute animal patience of the predator, then he jumped down and went on around the perimeter of the wall, never for a moment relaxing his vigilance, seemingly oblivious to the discomfort of the cold and the insistent rain.

There was nothing, not the least sign of danger, no reason for the nagging disquiet but still it was there. He reached another vantage point, the iron gate that led into the narrow walled alley, and he leaned against the stone jamb, cupping his hands to protect match and cigarette from the wind, and then shifting slightly so he could see through the crack between wall and gate and cover the walled lane, and the road beyond as far as the bridge.

Once again he assumed the patient watching role, closing his mind against the physical discomfort and letting his eyes and his brain work at their full capacity.

Not for the first time he pondered the unusual system of signals and exchanges of material that Caliph had insisted upon.

The payments had been made by bearer deposit certificates, in Swiss francs, sent through the post to his Rio address and then to his collection address in London.

He had made one delivery to Caliph, the bottle and its contents and two telephone calls. The delivery had been made within two hours of grabbing the girl, while she was still under the effects of the initial shot of the drug. The doctor Dr. Jameson, as Gilly O'Shaughnessy liked to think of him had done the job in the back of the second car. It had been waiting in the car park at Cambridge railway station, a little green Ford delivery van with a completely enclosed rear compartment. They had moved the girl from the maroon Triumph to the Ford in the covering dusk of the autumn evening, and they had parked again in the lot of a roadside cafe on the A10 while Dr. Jameson did the job.

All the instruments had been ready for him in the van, but he had botched it badly, his hands shaking with nerves and the need for liquor. The brat had bled copiously, and now the hand was infected.Gilly O'Shaughnessy felt his irritation rising sharply when he thought of the doctor. Everything he touched seemed to turn to disaster.

He had delivered the bottle to a pick-up car that had been exactly where he was told it would be, and it had dipped its headlights in the prearranged signal. Gilly had hardly stopped, but merely drawn up alongside and handed the bottle across, then driven straight into the West, and caught the early morning ferry long before any general alarm was out for the girl.

Then there were the telephone calls. They worried Gilly O'Shaughnessy as much as anything else in this whole bloody business.

He had made the first call immediately they reached Laragh. It was an international call, and he had to say one sentence: "We arrived safely." And then hang up. A week later a call to the same number, and again only one sentence: "We are enjoying ourselves." And then immediately break the connection.

Gilly remembered how each time the girl on the local exchange had called him back to ask if the contact had been satisfactory and each time she had sounded puzzled and intrigued.

It was not the way Caliph had worked up until then, it was leaving a trail for the hunters to follow and he would have protested if there had been somebody to protest to, but there was only the international telephone number, no other way of contacting Caliph. He decided as he stood by the gate that he would not make the next telephone call to that number which was due in four days" time.

Then he remembered that was the day the hand was due and he would probably receive his orders for delivery of the hand when he made the call but he didn't like it. Not even for the money and suddenly his mind went back to an incident long ago.

They had wanted to pass false information to the English, details of an intended operation which would in fact take place at a different place and a different time.

They had fed the detailed but duff information to a young unreliable Provo, one who they knew would not hold out under interrogation, and they had put him in a safe house in the Shankhill Road and that was where the English took him.

Gilly O'Shaughnessy felt a little electric prickle run down his spine like ghost-fire, and that feeling had never let him down before never. He looked at his cheap Japanese wristwatch; it was almost four o'clock, and evening was lowering on the hills of grey and cold green.

When he looked up again, there was movement on the road.

From the top of the hill a vehicle was following the curve of the road, down towards the bridge. It was a small black saloon car, and it went out of sight behind the hedge.

Gilly O'Shaughnessy watched for it to reappear without particular interest, still worrying about those two telephone calls. Trying to find the need for them, why Caliph should want to take that chance.

The small black car turned onto the bridge, and came directly down towards the Manse, but the light was wrong and Gilly could make out only the shape of two heads beyond the rhythmically flogging windscreen wipers.

The car began to slow up, coming down almost to walking speed, and Gilly straightened up instinctively, suddenly completely alert as he peered through the slit.

There was the pale blur of faces turned towards him, and the car slowed almost to a halt. The nearest side window was lowered slowly and for the first time he could see clearly into the interior. He saw the peak of the uniform cap, and the silver flash of a cap badge above the straining white face. The ghost-fire flared up Gilly

O'Shaughnessy's spine and he felt his breath suddenly scalding his throat.

The small black car disappeared beyond the corner of the stone wall, and he heard it accelerate away swiftly.

Gilly O'Shaughnessy whirled with the cape ballooning around him and he ran back to the house. He felt very cold and sure and calm now that the moment of action had come.

The kitchen was empty and he crossed it in half a dozen strides, and threw open the door to the second room.

The doctor was working over the bed and he looked up angrily.

"I've told you to knock." They had argued this out before. The doctor still retained some bizarre vestige of professional ethics in his treatment of his patient. He might surgically mutilate the child for the money he so desperately needed, but he had protested fiercely when Gilly O'Shaughnessy had lingered at the doorway to ogle the maturing body whenever the doctor stripped it for cleansing, treatment or for the performance of its natural functions.

The dark Irishman had halfheartedly attempted to force him to back down, but when he had encountered surprisingly courageous opposition he had abandoned his voyeuristic pleasures and had returned to the inner room only when called to assist.

Now the child lay face down on the soiled sheets. Her blonde hair was matted and snarled into greasy tresses; the doctor's attempts at cleanliness were as bumbling and gin ineffectual as his surgery.

The infection and the use of drugs had wasted the flesh off the tender young body, each knuckle of her spine stood out clearly and her naked buttocks seemed pathetically vulnerable, shrunken and pale.

Now the doctor pulled the grubby sheet up to her shoulders, and turned to stand protectively over her. It was an absurd gesture, when you looked at the untidy, stained dressing that bound up her left hand and Gilly O'Shaughnessy snarled at him fiercely.

"We are getting out."

"You can't move her now, protested the doctor. "She's really sick."

"Suit yourself," Gilly agreed grimly.

"Then we'll leave her." He reached under the dripping cape, and brought out the pistol. He thumbed back the hammer and stepped up to the bed.

The doctor grabbed at his arm, but Gilly pushed him away easily, sending him reeling back against the wall.

"You are right, she'll be a nuisance," he said, and placed the muzzle of the pistol against the base of the child's skull.

"No," shrieked the doctor. "No, don't do that. We'll take her."

"We are leaving as soon as it's dark." Gilly stepped back and uncocked the pistol. "Be ready by then, "he warned.

The two helicopters flew almost side by side, with the number two only slightly behind and higher than the leader; below them the Irish Sea was a sheet of beaten lead flecked with feathers of white water.

They had refuelled at Caemarvon and had made good time since leaving the Welsh coast, for the wind drove them on, but still the night was overtaking them and Peter Stride fretted, glancing at his wristwatch every few seconds.

It was only ninety miles of open water to cross, but to Peter it seemed like the entire Atlantic. Colin slumped beside him on the bench that ran the length of the hold, with the cold stump of a cheroot in the corner of his mouth in deference to the "No smoking" light that burned on the bulkhead behind the flight deck. The rest of the Thor team had adopted their usual attitudes of complete relaxation, some of them sprawled on the deck using their equipment as pillows, the others stretched out full length on the benches.

Peter Stride was the only one tensed up, as though his blood fizzed with nervous energy. He stood up once again to peer through the perspex window, checking the amount of daylight and trying to judge the height and position of the sun through the thick cloud cover.

"Take it easy, Colin counselled him as he dropped back into his seat. "You will give yourself an ulcer."

"Colin, we've got to decide. What are our priorities on this strike?" He had to shout above the racket of wind and motor.

"There are no priorities. We have only one object to get Melissa-Jane out, and out safety."

"We aren't going to try for prisoners to interrogates"

"Peter baby, we are going to hit anything and everything that moves in the target area, and we are going to hit them hard." Peter nodded with satisfaction. "They will only be goons anyway, you can be certain that their paymaster will not let them connect to him but what about Kingston Parker, he would want prisoners?"

"Kingston Parker?" Colin removed the stub of cheroot from his mouth. "Never heard of him around here it's Uncle Colin makes the decisions." And he grinned at Peter, that friendly lopsided grin, and at that moment the flight engineer crossed the cabin and yelled at Colin.

"Irish coast ahead we'll be landing at Enniskerry in seven minutes, sir." The traffic control at Enniskerry had been apprised of the emergency. They stacked the other traffic in holding pattern above circuit altitude and cleared the two RAF. helicopters for immediate landing.

They came clattering out of the low grey cloud and rain, and settled on the hangar apron. Immediately a police car with headlights burning in the gloom, sped out from between the hangars and parked beside the leading machine. Before the rotors had stopped turning, two members of the Irish Constabulary and a representative of the surveyor general's office were scrambling up into the camouflaged fuselage.

"Stride." Peter introduced himself quickly. He was dressed now in Thor assault gear, the one piece fitted black suit and soft boots, the pistol on its webbing belt strapped down to his right thigh.

"General, we've had a confirmation," the police inspector Aware told him while they were still shaking hands. "Local people have identified O'Shaughnessy from a police photograph.

He is staying in the area all right."

"Have they found where?"

Peter demanded.

"They have, sir. It's an old rambling building on the edge of the village-" He motioned the bespectacled surveyor to come forward with the file he was clutching to his chest.

There was no chart table in the stripped-out hull of the helicopter, and they spread the survey map and photographs on the deck.

Colin Noble ordered across the team from the second helicopter, and twenty men crowded into a huddle about the maps. "There, that's the building." The surveyor placed a circle on the map with a blue pencil.

"Right," grunted Colin. "We've got good fixes we pick up either the river or the road and follow it to the bridge and the church. The target is between them."

"Haven't we got a blow-up of the building, a plan of the interior?" one of the Thor team asked.

"Sorry, there wasn't time to do a proper search," the surveyor apologized.

"The local police reported again a few minutes ago, and we got a relay on the radio. They say the house is enclosed by a high stone wall and that there are no signs of activity."

"They haven't been near it?" Peter demanded. "They were strictly ordered not to approach the suspects."

"They drove past once on the public road. "The inspector looked slightly abashed. "They wanted to make certain that-"

"If it's O'Shaughnessy, he needs only one sniff and he'll be gone " Peter's expression was stony, but his eyes sparkled blue with anger. " Why can't these people do what they are told?" He turned quickly to the helicopter pilot in his yellow life jacket and helmet with its built-in microphone and earphones.

"Can you get us in?" The pilot did not answer immediately but glanced up at the nearest window; a fresh gout of rain splashed against the pane.

"It will be dark in ten minutes, or even earlier, and the ceiling is down to the deck now, we only got down here using the airport VOR. beacons- He looked dubious.

" There is nobody aboard who will recognize the target, hell I don't know I could get you in at first light tomorrow."

"It has to be tonight, now. Right now."

"If you could get the local police to mark the target-" the pilot suggested, with torches or a flare."

"There is no chance of that we have to go in cold, and the longer we sit here talking the less our chances. Will you give it your best shot?"

Peter was almost pleading, the go decision is one that cannot be forced on a pilot, even air traffic control cannot force a pilot-in command to operate beyond his personal judgement.

"We will have to try and keep ground contact all the way; it's classic conditions for trouble, rising terrain and deteriorating weather-"

"Try it." Peter said, please The pilot hesitated five seconds longer.

"Let's go!" he said abruptly, and there was a concerted rush for the hatchway as the second Thor team made for the other machine, and the police and surveyor made certain they were not included on the passenger list.

Turbulence slogged the helicopter like the punches of a heavyweight prize fighter, and she dipped and staggered to them with a nauseatingly giddy action.

The ground flickered past under them, very close, and yet darkly insubstantial in the wild night. The headlights of a solitary vehicle on a lonely country road, the cluttered lights of a village, each a distinct yellow rectangle they were so close, these were the only landmarks with any meaning the rest was dark patches of woods, the threads of hedges and stone walls drawn lightly across sombre fields, and every few minutes even that was gone as a fresh squall of grey clouds and rain washed away all vision, and the pilot concentrated all his attention on the dull glow of the flight instruments arranged in their distinctive T layout in front of him.

Each time they emerged from cloud, the light seemed to have diminished and the dark menace of earth loomed more threateningly as they were forced lower and lower to keep contact.

Peter was squeezed into the jump seat of the helicopter's flight deck, between the two pilots, and Colin crowded in behind him, all of them peering ahead, all silent and tense as the ungainly machines lumbered low and heavy over the earth, groping for the shoreline.

They hit the coast, the ghostly white line of surf flared with phosphorescence only fifty feet below them, and the pilot swung them to run south with it and seconds later another brighter field of lights appeared below them.

"Wicklow," said the pilot, and his co-pilot called the new heading; now they had made a fix they could head for Laragh directly.

They swung onto the new heading, following the road inland.

"Four minutes to -target," the co-pilot shouted at Peter, stabbing ahead with his finger, and Peter did not try to answer in the clatter and roar of the rotors, but he reached down and checked the Walther in its quick-release holster; it came out cleanly in his fist.

Gilly O'Shaughnessy threw his few personal possessions into the blue canvas airways grip, a change of underclothing and his shaving gear. Then he pulled the iron bedstead away from the wall, ripped back the skirting board and cleared out the hiding-place he had made there by removing a single brick.

There were the new papers and passports. Caliph had even provided papers for the brat Helen Barry his daughter. Caliph had thought of everything. With the papers was six hundred pounds sterling in travellers" cheques, and a package of spare ammunition for the pistol.

He thrust these into the pocket of his jacket, and took one last look around the bare bleak room. He knew that he had left nothing to lead the hunters, because he never carried anything that could be used to identify him. Yet he was obsessed by the need to destroy all sign of his passing. He had long ago ceased to think of himself by the name of Gilly O'Shaughnessy. He had no name, and only one purpose that purpose was destruction.

The magnificent passion to reduce all life to decay and mortification.

He could recite by heart most of Bakunin's The Revolutionary Catechism, especially the definition of the true revolutionary: The lost man, who has no belongings, no outside interest, no personal ties of any sort not even a name.

Possessed of but one thought, interest and passion the revolution. A man who has broken with society, broken with its laws and conventions. He must despise the opinions of others, and be prepared for death and torture at any time. Hard towards himself, The MUSt. be hard to others, and in his heart there must be no place for love, friendship, gratitude or even honour.

As he stood now in the empty room, he saw himself in a rare moment of revelation, as the man he had set out to become the true revolutionary, and his head turned for a moment to indulge in the vanity of regarding his own image in the mirror screwed to the peeling wallpaper above the iron bedstead.

It was the dark cold face of the lost man, and he felt proud to belong to that elite class, the cutting edge of the sword, that was what he was.

He picked up the canvas grip, and strode through into the kitchen.

"Are you ready? "he called.

"Help me." He dropped the grip and stepped to the window. The last of the light was fading swiftly, glowing pink and mother of-pearl within the drooping, pregnant belly of the sky. It seemed so close he could reach out and touch it. Already the trees of the unkempt orchard were melding into the darkness as the night encroached.

"I cannot carry her on my own," the doctor whined, and he swung away from the window. It was time to go again.

In his life there was always the moving onwards, and always the hunters baying hard upon his scent. It was time to run again, run like the fox.

He went through into the second room. The doctor had the child wrapped in a grey woollen blanket, and he had tried to lift her from the bed, but had failed. She was sprawled awkwardly, half onto the floor.

"Help me," repeated the doctor.

"Get out of the way." Gilly O'Shaughnessy pushed him roughly aside, and stooped over the girl. For a second their faces were within inches of each other.

Her eyes were opened, half conscious, although the pupils were widely dilated by the drug. The lids were pink rimmed and there were little butter-yellow lumps of mucus in the corners. Her lips were dried to white scales, and cracked through to the raw flesh at three places.

"Please tell my daddy," she whispered. "Please tell him I'm here." His nostrils flared at the sick sour smell of her body, but he picked her up easily with an arm under her knees and the other under her shoulders, and carried her out across the kitchen, kicking open the door so the lock burst and it slammed back against its hinges.

Quickly he carried her across the yard to the garage, with the doctor staggering along after them carrying a carton of medical supplies and equipment against his chest, cursing miserably at the cold, and sliding and slipping in the treacherous footing.

Gilly O'Shaughnessy waited while the doctor opened the rear door of the car, and then he bundled her in so roughly that the child cried out weakly. He ignored her and went to the double garage doors and dragged them open. It was so dark now that he could not see as far as the bridge.

"Where are we going? "bleated the doctor.

"I haven't decided yet," Gilly told him brusquely. "There is a safe house up North, or we might go back across the sea to England-" He thought of the caravan again, that was a good one, But why are we leaving now, so suddenly?" He did not bother to reply but left the garage and ran back into the kitchen. Always he was obsessed by the need to cover his tracks, to leave no sign for the hunters.

Though he had brought little with him, and was taking that now, yet he knew the old house contained signs, even if it was only his fingerprints. There was also the single remaining appetite for destruction to assuage.

He ripped the wooden doors off the kitchen cupboards and smashed them to splinters under his heel, piled them in the centre of the wood floor. He crumpled the newspapers piled on the table and added them to the pile, threw the table and chairs upon it.

He lit a match and held it to the crumpled newsprint. It flared readily, and he straightened and opened the windows and doors. The flames fed on the cold fresh air and climbed greedily, catching on the splintered doors.

Gilly O'Shaughnessy picked up the canvas grip and stepped out into the night, crouching to the wind and the rain but halfway to the garage he straightened again abruptly and paused to listen.

There was a sound on the wind, from the direction of the coast.

It might have been the engine note of a heavy truck coming up the hills, but there was a peculiar thin whistling sound mingled with the engine beat, and the volume of sound escalated too sharply to be that of a lumbering truck. It was coming on too swiftly, the sound seemed to fill the air, to emanate from the very clouds themselves.

Gilly O'Shaughnessy stood with his face lifted to the fine silver drizzle, searching the belly of the clouds, until a throbbing regular glow began to beat like a pulse in the sky, and it was a moment until he recognized it as the beacon light of a low-flying aircraft, and at the same moment he knew that the shrill whistle was the whirling of rotors bringing the hunters.

He cried aloud in the certainty of betrayal and onrushing death.

"Why? God, why?" He called to the god he had so long ago denied, and he began to run.

It's no good." The pilot twisted his neck to shout at Peter without taking his eyes from the flight instruments which kept the great ungainly machine level and on course. They had lost contact with the other machine.

"We are socked in, blind." The cloud frothed over the canopy like boiling milk over the lip of the pot. "I'm going to have to climb out, and head back for Enniskerry before we run into my number two." The risk of collision with the other helicopter was now real and imminent.

The beacon light throbbed above them, reflected off the impenetrable press of soft cloud but the other pilot would not see it until too late.

"Hold on. Just another minute," Peter shouted back at him, his expression tortured in the glow of the instrument panel. The entire operation was disintegrating about him, would soon end in tragedy or in fiasco, but he must go on.

"It's no good-" the pilot began, and then shouted with fright and hurled the helicopter over onto its side, at the same instant altering pitch and altitude so the machine shuddered and lurched as though she had run into a solid obstruction, and then bounded upwards, gaining a hundred feet in a swoop.

The spire of a church had leapt at them out of the cloud, like a predator from ambush, and now it flickered by only feet from where they crouched in the flight deck, but it had disappeared again instantly as they roared past.

"The church!" Peter yelled. "That's it! Turn back." The pilot checked the machine, hovering blindly in the chaos of rain and cloud churned to a fury by the down draught of their own rotor.

"I can't see a damned thing, "shouted the pilot.

"We've got one hundred and seventy feet on the radio altimeter," his co-pilot called; that was actual height from the ground and still they could see nothing below them.

"Get us down. For God's sake, get us down," Peter pleaded.

"I can't take the chance. We don't have any idea of what is under us." The pilot's face was sickly orange in the instrument glow, his eyes the dark pits of a skull. "I'm climbing out and heading back-"

Peter reached down and the butt of the Walther jumped into his hand, like a living thing. He realized coldly that he was capable of killing the pilot, to force the co-pilot to land but at the moment there was a hole in the cloud, just enough to make out the dark loom of the earth below them.

"Visual," Peter shouted. "We've visual, get us down!" And the helicopter sank swiftly, breaking out suddenly into the clear.

"The river." Peter saw the glint of water. "And the bridge-"

"There's the churchyard-" Colin roared eagerly, and that's the target."

The thatched roof was a black oblong, and light spilled from the windows of one side of the building, so they could see the high enclosing wall. The pilot spun the helicopter on its axis like a compass needle, and dived towards the building.

Colin Noble scrambled down into the cabin, shouting to his team.

"Delta! We are going to Delta-" And the flight engineer slid the hatch cover open. Immediately a fine swirling mist filled the cabin as the down-draught of the rotors churned the rain filled air.

The Thor team were on their feet, forming up on each side of the open hatch, while Colin towered over the flight engineer as he took lead position "point" as he always called it.

The dark earth rushed up to meet them, and Colin spat out the cheroot stub and braced himself in the doorway.

"Hit anything that moves," he yelled. "But for Chrissake watch out for the kid. Let's go, gang. Let's go!" Peter was jammed into the jump seat by the swooping drop of the machine, unable to follow, wasting precious seconds but he had a clear view ahead through the canopy.

The light in the windows of the building wavered unnaturally, and Peter realized that it was burning. Those were flames, and his concern was heightened by the knowledge, but he did not have a chance to ponder this new development. In the shadows of the walled yard he saw movement, just the dark blur of it in the glow of the flames, and what was left of the daylight but it was the shape of a man, running,

crouched low, disappearing almost immediately into one of the outbuildings that flanked the narrow stone walled lane.

Peter dragged himself out of the seat against the G force, scrambling awkwardly down into the cabin as the helicopter dropped the last few feet, and then hung, swaying slightly, suspended ten feet above the open yard at the rear of the house and black-clad figures spilled out of her, dropping lightly onto their feet and racing forward as they touched ground, seeming to disappear again miraculously through the doors and windows of the building. Even in the grinding tension of the moment Peter felt the flare of pride in the way it was done, instant and seemingly effortless penetration, the lead man using the sandbags to break in glass and wooden shutters and the man behind him going in with a clean controlled dive.

Peter was the last man left aboard, and something made him check in the open hatchway before jumping. Perhaps it was that glimpse of movement outside the main building that he had been given; he looked back that way, and suddenly lights leapt in solid white lances down the walled lane the headlights of a motor vehicle, and at the same moment the vehicle launched itself from the dark derelict outbuilding and rocketed away down the lane.

Peter teetered in the open hatch, for he had been in the very act of jumping, but he caught his balance now, grabbing wildly at the nylon line above the door. The vehicle slowed for the turn into the main road at the bridge and Peter caught the flight engineer and shook his shoulder violently, pointing after the escaping vehicle. His lips were inches from the man's face.

"Don't let it get away!" he screamed, and the flight engineer was quick and alert; he spoke urgently into his microphone, directly to the pilot in the flight deck above them, and obediently the helicopter swung around and the beat of the engines changed as the rotors altered pitch and roared in forward thrust the machine lunged forward, skimming the garage roof by mere feet and then hammered out into the night in pursuit of the dwindling glow of headlights.

Peter had to hang out of the hatchway to see ahead, and the wind clamoured around his head and tore at his body, but they were swiftly overhauling the vehicle as it raced down the twisting narrow road towards the coast.

It was two hundred yards ahead, and the dark tree tops seemed to rush by at the same level as the hatch in which Peter stood. A hundred yards ahead now, the headlights blazing through the drivel of rain, etching fleeting cameos of hedges and starkly lit stone walls from the night.

They were close enough now for Peter to make out that it was a smallish vehicle with an estate car body, not quite large enough to be -a station wagon the driver was throwing it through the curves and twists of the road with reckless skill, but the helicopter crept up behind him.

"Tell him to switch off the beacon light." Peter swung inboard to shout in the flight engineer's ear. He did not want to warn the driver that he was being followed, but as the engineer lifted the microphone to his mouth the headlights snapped -out into darkness. The driver had become aware, and after the brilliance of the headlights the night seemed totally dark, and the car disappeared into it.

Peter felt the helicopter lurch, as the pilot was taken by surprise, and his own dismay was a lance.

We have lost them, he thought, and he knew that it was suicide to fly on in darkness only a few feet above the treetops, but the pilot of the helicopter steadied the craft and then suddenly the earth below them was lit by a blaze of stark white light that startled Peter until he realized that the pilot had switched on his landing lights. There were two of them, one on each side of the fuselage; they were aimed down and slightly forward.

The escaping car was caught fairly in their brilliance.

The helicopter dropped lower, edging in between the telegraph poles and trees that lined the narrow road.

Now Peter could see that the car was a dark blue Austin, with a carrying rack bolted to the long roof. It was that carrying rack which decided him. Without it no human being could have hoped for purchase on the smooth rounded roof of the lurching, swaying car.

the doctor in the back seat of the Austin had been the one who spotted the helicopter. The engine noise and the drumming of the wind had covered the whistling whine of the rotors, and Gilly O'Shaughnessy had chuckled with grim triumph and self-congratulation.

He had deliberately waited for the helicopter to discharge its load of fighting men before he had switched on his headlights and roared out of the garage into the lane.

He knew it would be many minutes before the assault team realized that the burning house was empty and that it would take as long again to regroup and board the helicopter to continue the hunt and by that time he would be clear; there was a safe house in Dublin or there had been, four year previously. Perhaps it was blown now; in that case he would have to get rid of the brat and Dr. Jameson, a bullet each in the back of the head, and drive the Austin into the Irish Sea.

The wild exhilaration of danger and death was upon him again, the waiting was over at last and he was living again the way he had chosen the fox running ahead of the hounds, he was alive again, with his right foot thrust flat to the floor boards and the Austin rocketing through the night.

The girl was screaming weakly from the back seat, in pain and panic; the doctor was trying to quieten her, and Gilly laughed aloud.

The tyres screeched wildly as he skidded out in the turn, brushing the hedge with the side before he was through.

"They are following," screamed the doctor, as he straightened the car into the next stretch, then Gilly glanced back over his shoulder.

He could see nothing through the rear windows.

"What?"

"The helicopter-" Gilly lowered his window and, driving with one hand, thrust his head out. The flashing aircraft beacon was close behind and above, and he ducked back in and looked ahead to make sure that the road ran straight, then he switched off the headlights.

In total darkness he did not diminish speed, and now when he laughed it was a wild and reckless sound.

"You're mad , the doctor shrieked. "You'll kill us all!"

"Right you are, doctor!" But his night vision was clearing and he caught the Austin before she wandered into the stone wall on the left-hand side, and at the same moment he jerked the pistol from under his cape and laid it on the seat beside him.

"There is not going to be, -" he began and then broke off as the blinding light burst over them. The helicopter had switched on its landing lights the road ahead was brightly lit, and he skidded into the next turn with rubber squealing.

"Stop!" the doctor pleaded, trying to hold the semiconscious child from being hurled about in the swaying cab.

"Let's give up now, before they kill us."

"They've got no fighting men on board," Gilly yelled back at him. "There's nothing they can do."

"Give up," the doctor whined. "Let's get out of this alive." And Gilly O'Shaughnessy threw back his head and roared with laughter.

"I'm keeping three bullets, doctor, one for each of us-"

"They're right on top of us." Gilly snatched up the pistol and once again thrust his head and right shoulder out, twisting to look upwards.

The eye-searing lights beamed down upon him, very close above. It was all he could see and he fired at them, the crash of the shots lost in the clattering whistling roar of the rotors and the tearing rush of the wind.

oised in the hatchway, Peter counted the bright orange spurts of gunfire. There were five of them, but there was no sound of passing shot, no thump of the strike.

"Get lower!" he shouted at the engineer, reinforcing the order with urgent hand signals, and obediently the big machine sank down upon the racing Austin.

Peter gathered himself, judging his moment carefully, and when it came he launched himself clear of the hatchway, and his guts seemed to cram into his throat as he dropped.

He dropped with all four limbs spread and braced to land together, but for a moment he thought he had misjudged it and would fall behind the Austin, into the metal led roadway, to be crushed and shredded by the forward impetus of the low-flying helicopter.

Then the Austin swerved and checked slightly and Peter crashed into its roof with stunning force; he felt the metal buckle and sag under him, and then he was rolling and slipping sideways. His whole left side was numbed by the force of impact, and he clutched wildly with his right hand, his fingernails tearing at the paintwork, but still he slid towards the edge, his legs kicking wildly in dark rushing space.

At the last instant before he was hurled into the roadway, his clawed fingers hooked in the framework of the roof rack, and he hung bat-like from his one arm. It had taken only a small part of a second, and immediately the driver of the Austin realized that there was a man on the roof. He slewed the little car from one side of the road to the other, short wrenching turns that brought her over on two outside wheels before slamming back and twisting the other way.

"The tyres squealed harsh protest, and Peter was flung brutally back and forth, the muscle and tendons of his right arm popping and creaking with the strain of holding on but feeling was flooding swiftly back into his numbed left side.

He had to move quickly, he could not survive another of those wrenching swerves, and he gathered himself, judged the Austin's momentum, and used it to roll and grab with his free hand; at the same moment the toes of his soft boots found purchase on one of the struts of the roof carrier, and he pressed himself belly down, clinging with both arms and legs to the wildly swinging machine.

The Austin checked and steadied as a steep turn appeared ahead in the arc lights of the helicopter which still hung over them. The driver shot the car into the corner, and ahead of them was a long extended drop as the road twisted down the-hills towards the coast.

Peter half lifted himself and was about to slide forward when the metal six inches in front of his nose exploded outwards, leaving a neatly punched hole through the roof, and tiny fragments of flying metal stung his cheek; at the same moment the concussion of the pistol shot beat in upon his eardrums. The driver of the Austin was firing blindly up through the coach work and he had misjudged Peter's position above him by inches. Peter threw himself desperately to one side, for an instant almost losing his grip on the struts of the carrier and another pistol bullet clanged out through the metal roof, that one would have taken him through the belly, and Peter had a fleeting image of the kind of wound that it would have inflicted, the bullet would have been mushroomed and deformed by the roof and would have broken up inside his body.

Desperately Peter threw himself back the opposite way, trying to outguess the gunman below him, and once again the crash of the shot and the metal roof erupted in a little jagged pockmark, flecking the paintwork away so the rim of the bullet hole shone like polished silver shilling. Again it would have hit him, if he had not moved.

Peter rolled again, tensing his belly muscles in the anticipation of the tearing, paralysing impact, expecting the gun shot which did not come. Only then he remembered the wasted pistol fire the driver had thrown up at the hovering helicopter. He had emptied his pistol and as the realization dawned on Peter there was another completely compelling sound, very faint in the drumming rush of the wind and the engine roar but unmistakable. It was the sound of a young girl screaming and it galvanized Peter as nothing else, even the threat of death, could have done.

He came up on toes and fingers, like a cat, and he went forward and to the right, until he was directly above the driver's seat.

The girl screamed again, and he recognized Melissa-Jane's voice.

There was no question of it, and he slipped the Walther from its quick-release holster and cocked the hammer with the same movement, one glance ahead and they were rushing down on another turn in the narrow road. The driver would be using both hands to control the swaying and bucking little machine.

"Now!" he told himself, and dropped forward, so that he was peering backwards and upside-down through the windScreen directly into the driver's pale face and at a distance of only eighteen inches.

In the thousandth part of a second Peter recognized the dark, wolfish features and the cold, merciless eyes of the killer. He had hunted this man for many years and studied his photograph endlessly when the hunting of the Provo terrorists had been his life's work.

Gilly O'Shaughnessy was driving with both hands, the pistol still gripped in one of them and the chamber open for reloading. He snarled at Peter like an animal through the bars of its cage, and Peter fired with the muzzle of the Walther touching the glass of the windscreen.

The glass starred into a glittering sheet, white and opaque, and then it collapsed inwards with the force of the wind, filling the interior of the Austin with flying diamond chips of sparkling glass.

Gilly O'Shaughnessy had thrown up both hands to his face, but bright blood burst from between them, spattering his chest and soaking swiftly into the lank black hair.

Still hanging upside down across the Austin's cab, Peter thrust the Walther in "through the shattered windscreen until it almost touched the man's body and he fired twice more into his chest, where the explosive Velex bullets would break up against bone, and would not over penetrate to harm anybody else in the interior. Melissa-Jane's screams still rang clearly in his ears, as he killed Gilly O'Shaughnessy. He did it as coldly as a veterinary surgeon would put down a rabid dog, and with as little pleasure, and the bullets punched Gilly O'Shaughnessy back on the bucket seat, head lolling from side to side, and Peter expected the howl of the engine to cut out now as the dead man's foot slipped from the accelerator.

It did not happen. There was no change in the engine beat, the body had slid forward and jammed, the knee under the dashboard bearing down fully on the pedal, and the little car flew down the slope of the hill, the stone walls on each side blurring past as though down a tunnel in the depths of the earth.

Peter wriggled forward and thrust both arms through the shattered windscreen and caught the untended wheel as it began to spin aimlessly.

He checked the Austin and swung her back into the road but she had been driven to her limits, rocking and swaying crazily before she righted herself and flew down the hill.

It was almost impossible to judge the control needed to keep her on the road.

Peter was hanging head down, gripping only with knees and toes, and he had to manipulate the wheel from this inverted position with his upper arms sawing across the teeth of jagged glass still remaining in the frame of the windscreen.

The wind whipped and clawed him, and Gilly O'Shaughnessy's body flopped forward bonelessly onto the wheel, jamming it at a critical moment, so that while Peter used one hand to shove him backwards, the side of the Austin touched the stone wall with a screech of rending metal and a shower of orange sparks. Peter wrenched her back into the road, and she began a series of uncontrolled broadsides, swinging wildly from side to side, touching the wall with another jarring shock, then swinging back sideways to bounce over the verge, then back again.

She was going over, Peter knew it, and he would be crushed under the metal roof and smeared along the abrasive surface of the macadam road. He should jump now, and take his chances but grimly he stayed with the crazed machine, for Melissa-Jane was in her and he could not leave.

She survived one more skid, and ahead Peter had the glimpse of a barred wooden gate in the wall. Deliberately he turned the front wheels into the direction of the next skid, no longer trying to counteract it, but aggravating it steering directly for the gate, and the Austin smashed into it.

A wooden beam cartwheeled over Peter's head, and a scalding cloud of steam from the shattered radiator stung his face and hands, and then the Austin was into the open field, bouncing and thudding over the rocks that studded it, the drag of soft muddy earth slowing her, and the steep slope of the hillside against her within fifty feet the front end dropped heavily into a drainage ditch, and the little car shuddered to a halt, canted at an abandoned angle.

Peter slipped over the side and landed on his feet. He jerked open the rear door and a man half fell from the cab.

He dropped onto his knees in the mud, blubbering incoherently and Peter drove his right knee into his face. Bone and cartilage crunched sharply and there was the crackle of breaking teeth.

His voice was cut off abruptly and, as he dropped, Peter chopped him with the stiffened blade of his right hand, a controlled blow judged finely to immobilize but not to kill, and before the unconscious body dropped, Peter had gone in over it, He lifted his daughter out of the Austin, and the frail wasted body felt unsubstantial in his arms, and the heat of fever and infection burned against his chest.

He was possessed by an almost uncontrollable desire to crush her body to him with all the strength of his arms, but instead he carried her as though she was made of some precious and fragile substance, stepping carefully over the uneven rocky surface of the field to where the helicopter was settling cumbersomely out of the darkness.

The Thor doctor was still aboard her; he jumped clear before the helicopter touched and ran towards Peter in the brilliant glare of the landing lights.

Peter found he was crooning so. "It's all right now, darling.

It's all over now. It's all finished, my baby I'm here, little one"

Then Peter made another discovery. It was not sweat running down his cheeks and dripping from his chin, and he wondered unashamedly when last it was he had wept.

He could not remember, and it did not seem important, not now, not with his daughter in his arms.

Synthia came down to London, and Peter relived some of those horrors from their marriage.

"Everybody around you always has to suffer, Peter.

"Now it's Melissa-Jane's turn." He could not avoid her, nor her martyred expression, for she was always at Melissa-Jane's bedside.

While he bore her recriminations and barbed accusations, he wondered that she had ever been gay and young and attractive. She was two years younger than he was but she already had the shapeless body and greying mind that made her seem twenty years older.

Melissa-Jane responded almost miraculously to the antibiotics, and although she was still weak and skinny and pale, the doctor discharged her on the third day, and Peter and Cynthia had their final degrading haggling and bargaining session which Melissa-Jane settled for them.

mummy, I'm still so afraid. Can't I go with Daddy just for a few days?" Finally Cynthia agreed with sighs and pained airs that left them both feeling a little guilty. On the drive down to Abbots Yew, where Steven had invited them for as long as was necessary for Melissa-Jane's convalescence, she sat very quietly beside Peter, her left hand still in the sling and the finger wearing a small neat white turban. She spoke only after they had passed the Heathrow turn off on the M4.

"All the time I knew you were going to come. I can't remember much else. It was always dark and giddy making things kept changing.

"I'd look at a face and it would fade away, and then we'd be somewhere else-"

"It was the drug they were giving you," Peter explained.

"Yes, I know that. I remember the prick of the needle-"

Reflexively she rubbed her upper arm, and shivered briefly.

"But even with the drug I always knew you were going to come. I remember lying in the darkness listening for your voice. -" There was the temptation to try to pretend it had never happened, and Melissa-Jane had not spoken about it until now but Peter knew she must be allowed to talk it out.

"Would you like to tell me about it?" he invited gently, knowing that it was essential to the healing process. He listened quietly as she spilled out drug-haunted memories, disjointed scraps of conversation and impressions. The terror was back in her voice when she spoke of the dark one.

"He looked at me sometimes. I remember him looking at me-" And Peter remembered the cold killer's eyes.

"He is dead now, darling."

"Yes, I know. They told me." She was silent for a moment, and then went on. "He was so different from the one with grey hair. I liked him, the old one. His name was Doctor Jameson."

"How did you know that?" Peter asked.

"That's what the dark one called him." She smiled.

"Doctor Jameson, I remember he always smelled like cough mixture and I liked him-" The one who had done the amputation, and would have taken her hand as well, Peter thought grimly.

"I never saw the other one. I knew he was there, but I never saw him."

"The other one?" Peter turned to her sharply. "Which other one, darling?"

"There was another one and even the dark one was afraid of him. I knew that, they were all afraid of him."

"You never saw him?"

"No, but they were always talking about him, and arguing about what he would do--"

"Do you remember his name?" Peter asked, and Melissa-Jane frowned in concentration.

"Did he have a name?" Peter prompted.

"Usually they just talked about him, but, yes, I remember now.

The dark one called him "Casper"."

"Casper?"

"No, not that, not Casper.

Oh, I can't remember." Her voice had risen, a shrill note in terror that ripped at Peter's nerves.

"Don't worry about it." He tried to soothe her, but she shook her head with frustration.

"Not Casper, a name like that. I knew he was the one who really wanted to hurt me they were just doing what he told them. He was the one I was truly afraid of." Her voice ended with a sob, and she was sitting bolt upright in the seat.

"It's over now, darling." Peter swung into the verge of the road and braked to a halt. He reached for her but she was rigid in his arms and at his touch she began to shake uncontrollably. Peter's alarm flared, and he held her to his chest.

"Caliph!" she whispered. "That's his name. Caliph." And she relaxed against him softly, and sighed. The shaking stopped slowly.

Peter went on holding her, trying to control the terrible consuming waves of anger that engulfed him, and it was some little time before he realized suddenly that Melissa-Jane had fallen asleep.

It was as though uttering the name had been a catharsis for her terror, and now she was ready to begin the healing inside.

Peter laid her gently back in the seat and covered her with the angora rug before he drove on, but every few seconds he glanced across to make sure she was at peace.

Twice Peter called Magda Altmann from Abbots Yew, both times to her private number, but she was unobtainable and there was no message for him.

That was five days he had not been able to reach her, not since the Delta Strike which had freed Melissa-jane. She seemed to have disappeared completely, and Peter pondered the implications during the quiet days when he was almost always alone with his daughter.

Then Dr. Kingston Parker arrived at Abbots Yew, and Sir Steven Stride was delighted to have as his guest such a distinguished statesman.

Kingston Parker's giant personality seemed to fill the beautiful old home. When he put himself out, his graciousness was irresistible. Steven was delighted with him, particularly when he discovered that despite Parker's image as a liberal and his well-known concern with human rights, he was also a champion of the capitalist system, and determined that his country should take more seriously its responsibilities as leader of the Western world. They both deplored the loss of the BI bomber and the delaying of the neutron bomb programme, and the restructuring of America's intelligence agencies.

They spent much of the first afternoon in Steven's redwood-panelled study exploring each other's views, and came out of it fast friends.

When they emerged, Parker completed his conquest of the Stride household by showing he shared with Patricia Stride a scholarly knowledge and love of antique porcelain.

His concern and warmth for Melissa-Jane and his relief at her safety were too spontaneous not to be entirely genuine.

His conquest of that young lady's affections was complete when he went down with her to the stables to meet Florence Nightingale and prove that he was also a fair judge of horseflesh.

"He's a lovely man. I think he is truly an honourable man," Melissa-Jane told Peter, when he went up to her bedroom to bid her goodnight "And he's so kind and funny-" Then, lest there be any question of disloyalty, "But you are still my most favourite man in all the world." Her cure and convalescence seemed almost complete, and as Peter went down to rejoin the company he marvelled again at the resilience of young flesh and young minds.

As usual at Abbots Yew there was glittering and stimulating company at dinner, with Kingston Parker at its centre, but afterwards he and Peter exchanged a single glance down the length of Pat Stride's silver- and candle decorated table and they left them to the port and cognac and cigars and slipped out unobtrusively into the walled rose garden.

While they paced side by side on the crunching gravel pathway, Kingston Parker stoked his meerschaum and then began to talk quietly.

Once his bodyguard coughed in the shadows where he waited just out of range of their subdued voices, but that was the only intrusion and the spring night was still and balmy. Their conversation seemed utterly incongruous in these surroundings, talk of death and violence, the use and abuse of power, and the manipulations of vast fortunes by a single mysterious figure.

"It's been five days since I arrived in England-" Kingston Parker shrugged. "One does not rush through the echoing passages of Whitehall. There was much to discuss-" Peter knew that he had met with the Prime Minister on two separate occasions " and it wasn't just Atlas business, I'm afraid-" Parker was one of the President's confidants. They would have taken full advantage of his visit to exchange views with the British Government. "However, we did discuss Atlas in depth and detail. You know very well that Atlas has opponents and critics on both sides of the Atlantic. They tried very hard to squash it, and when they could not they saw to it that its power and duties were severely curtailed-" Parker paused and his pipe gurgled.

He flicked out the juices from the mouthpiece onto the gravel path.

"The opponents of Atlas are all highly intelligent concerned and informed men. Their motives and their reasoning in opposing Atlas are laudable. I find myself a little in sympathy despite myself. If you create a strike force such as Atlas, where enormous powers are placed in the hands of a single man or a small elite leadership, you could very well be creating a Frankenstein a monster more frightening than you are setting out to destroy."

"That depends on the man who controls it, Dr. Parker. I believe that they have the right man."

"Thank you, Peter." Parker turned his big shaggy head and smiled. "Won't you please call me Kingston." Peter nodded agreement, while Parker went on. "Atlas has had some spectacular successes at Johannesburg and now in Ireland but that makes it more danger--us. There will be a readier acceptance of the whole concept by the public; if Atlas asks for wider powers, it is more likely they would be granted. And, believe me, if it is to do the job it needs wider powers, Peter. I find myself torn down the centre-"

"And yet,"

Peter pointed out, "we cannot take on the most dangerous animal in the world, man the killer, we cannot do it without arming ourselves in every possible way." Kingston Parker sighed. "And if Atlas achieves those powers, who can say when they will be abused, when will the rule of force supersede the rule of law?"

"The rules have changed. The rule of law is so often powerless in the face -of those who have no respect for the law."

"There is another aspect, Peter. One that I have thought about half my life. What about the rule of unjust law? The laws of oppression and greed. A law that enslaves or deprives a man because of the colour of his face or the god he worships? If a duly constituted parliament makes racial laws or if the General Assembly of the United Nations declares that Zionism is a form of Imperialism and must be outlawed. What if a handful of men gain control of the world's resources and legally manipulate them in a manner dictated by personal greed to the detriment of all mankind, such as the Committee of the OPEC, the Shah and the King of Saudi Arabia-" Kingston Parker made a helpless gesture, spreading those long sensitive fingers. "Must we respect those laws? The rule of law, even unjust law, is it sacrosanct?"

"Balance," said Peter. "There has to be a balance between law and force."

"Yes, but what is the balance, Peter?" He abruptly closed his hands into fists. "I have asked for greater powers for Atlas, wider scope for its use, and I think these will be granted.

When they are, we will have need of good men, Peter." Kingston Parker reached out and took Peter's shoulder in a surprisingly powerful grip.

"Just men, who can recognize when the rule of law has either failed or is unjust, and who have the courage and the vision to act to restore the balance that you spoke of a moment ago." His hand was still on Peter's shoulder and he left it there.

It was a natural gesture, without affectation.

"I believe you are one of those men." He let the hand drop, and his manner changed. "Tomorrow I have arranged that we meet with

Colonel Noble. He has been busy breaking down and examining the entire

Irish operation, and I hope he will have come up with something for us to get our teeth into. Then there is much else to discuss. Two o'clock at Thor Command, will it suit you, Peter?"

"Of course."

"Now let's go in and join the company."

"Wait." Peter stopped him. "I have something I must tell, Kingston. It's been tearing at my guts, and after you you have heard it you may alter your opinion of me my suitability for my role at Atlas."

"Yes?" Parker turned back and waited quietly.

"You know that the people who kidnapped my daughter made no demands for her return, made no attempt to contact me or the police to negotiate."

"Yes," Parker answered. "Of course. It was one of the puzzling things about the whole business."

"It was untrue. There was a contact and a demand."

"I don't understand." Parker frowned and thrust his face closer to Peter's, as though trying to study his expression in the poor light from the windows.

"The kidnappers contacted me. A letter which I destroyed-"

"Why?"

Parker shot at him.

"Wait. I'll explain," Peter replied. "There was a single condition for my daughter's release, and a deadline of two weeks. If I did not meet the condition by that time, they would have sent me parts of my daughter's body her hands, her feet, and finally her head."

"Diabolical," Parker whispered. "Inhuman. What was the condition?"

"A life for a life," said Peter. "I was to kill you in exchange for Melissa-Jane." Parker started, throwing back his head with shock.

"They wanted me?" Peter did not reply, and they stood staring at each other, until Parker raised his hand and combed at his hair, a distracted gesture.

"That changes it all. I will have to think it out carefully but it makes a whole new scenario." He shook his head.

They were going for the head of Atlas. Why? Because I was the champion of Atlas, and they opposed its formation? No! That's not it. There seems only one logical explanation. I told you last time I saw you that I suspected the existence of a central figure the puppetmaster who was taking control of all known militant organizations and welding them into a single cohesive and formidable entity.

Well, Peter, I have been hunting this figure. I have learned much to confirm my suspicions since last we met. I believe this person, or assembly of persons, does in fact exist part of the new powers I have asked for Atlas were to be used to hunt and destroy this organization before it does grave damage before it succeeds in so terrifying the nations of the world that it becomes itself a world power.-" Parker stopped as though to gather his thoughts, and then went on in quiet,

more measured tones. "I think now that this is absolute proof that it does exist, and that it is aware of my suspicions and intentions to destroy it. When I set you up as Atlas agent at large, I believed you would make contact with the enemy but, God knows, I did not expect it to come like this." He paused again, considering it. "Incredible!"he marvelled.

"The one person whom I would never have suspected, you Peter. You could have reached me at any time, one of the few people who could.

And the leverage! Your daughter the protracted mutilations I may have just misjudged the cunning and ruthlessness of the enemy."

"Have you ever heard the name Caliph?" Peter asked.

"Where did you hear that?" Parker demanded harshly.

"The demand letter was signed Caliph, and Melissa-Jane heard her captors discussing it."

"Caliph." Parker nodded. "Yes, I have heard the name, Peter. Since I last spoke to you. I have heard the name. Indeed I have." He was silent again, sucking distractedly on his pipe, then he looked up. "I will tell you how and when tomorrow when we meet at Thor, but now you have given me much to keep me awake tonight." He took Peter's arm and led him back towards the house.

Warm yellow light and laughter spilled out from the downstairs windows, welcoming and gay, but both of them were withdrawn and silent as they trudged up the smoothly raked path.

At the garden door Kingston Parker paused, holding Peter back from entering.

"Peter, would you have done it?" he asked gruffly.

Peter answered him levelly without attempting to avoid his eyes.

"Yes, Kingston, I would have done it."

"How?"

"Explosives."

"Better than poison," Parker grunted. "Not as good as a gun." And then angrily, "We have to stop him, Peter. It is a duty that supersedes every other consideration."

"What I have just told you does not alter our relationship?" Peter asked. "The fact that I would have been your assassin does not change it?"

"Strangely enough, it merely confirms what I have come to believe of you, Peter. You are a man with the hard ruthless streak we need, if we are to survive." He smiled bleakly. "I might wake up sweating in the night but it doesn't alter what we have to do. Colin Noble with his cheroot, and opposite him Kingston Parker with the amber meerschaum, seemed to be in competition as to who could soonest render the air in the room incapable of supporting human life. It was already thick and blue, and the temporary headquarters of Thor Command lacked air-conditioning, but within minutes Peter had become so immersed in what he was hearing that the discomfort was forgotten.

Colin Noble was going over the details of the Irish operation, and all that had been gleaned from it.

"The house, the Old Manse, was burned to the ground, of course.

The Irish constabulary had twenty men sifting through the ashes-" He spread his hands. "A big nix.

Nothing at all."

"Next the contents of the Austin and its provenance how do you like that word, Peter baby? Provenance, that's a classy word." Parker smiled indulgently. "Please go on, Colin."

"The Austin was stolen in Dublin, and refitted with the roof carrier. It contained nothing, no papers, nothing in the glove compartment or boot, it had been stripped and cleaned out by an expert-"

"The men," Parker prompted him.

ly of Gerald es, sir. The men. The dead one first. Name known as "Gilly", born Belfast 1946-" O'Shaughnessy, also As he spoke Colin picked up the file that lay on the table in front of him. It was five inches thick. " Do we want to read all of it? It's a hell of a story. The guy had a track record-" "Only as far as it concerns Atlas," Parker told him.

There is no evidence as to when or how he became involved with this business-" Colin sketched the facts swiftly and succinctly. " So we end with the contents of his pockets. Six hundred pounds sterling, thirty-eight rounds of .38 ammunition, and papers in the name of Edward and Helen Barry forged, but beautifully forged." Colin closed the file with a slap. "Nothing,"he repeated. "Nothing we can use. Now the other man. Morrison Claude Bertram Morrison celebrated abortionist and dedicated alcoholic.

Struck off the medical rolls in 1969-" Again he recounted the sordid history swiftly and accurately. " His price for the digital surgery was three thousand pounds half in advance. Hell, that's cheaper than the Blue Cross." Colin grinned but his eyes were black and bright with anger. "I am pleased to report that he can expect a sentence of approximately fifteen years. They are going to throw the book at him. There is only one item of any possible interest which he could give us. Gilly O'Shaughnessy was the leader from whom he took his orders, O'Shaughnessy in turn took his orders from somebody called-" He paused dramatically.

"Yes, that's right. The name we have all heard before.

Caliph." just one point here," Kingston Parker interrupted.

"Caliph likes to use his name. He signs it on his correspondence.

Even his lowliest thugs are given the name to use. Why?"

"I think I can answer that." Peter stirred and raised his head. "He wants us to know that he exists. We must have a focal point for our fear and hatred. When he was merely a nameless, faceless entity he was not nearly as menacing as he is now."

"I think you are right." Parker nodded his head gravely.

"By using the name he is building up a store of credibility which he will draw upon later. In future when Caliph says he will kill or mutilate we know he is in deadly earnest, there . will be no compromise. He will do exactly as he promises. The man, or men, are clever psychologists."

"There is just one aspect of the Irish operation we have not yet considered," Peter broke in, frowning with concentration. "That is who was it that tipped us off, and what was the reason for that telephone call?" They were all silent, until Parker turned to Colin.

"What do you think of that one?"

"I have discussed it with the police, of course. It was one of the first things that puzzled us.

The police believe that Gilly O'Shaughnessy picked his hideout in Ireland because he was familiar with the terrain, and had friends there. It was his old stamping ground when he was with the Provos.

He could move and disappear, get things fixed." Colin paused and saw the sceptical expression on Peter's face.

"Well, look at it this way, Peter baby. He had a woman negotiate the lease on the Old Manse Kate Barry, she called herself and signed it on the lease so that was one ally. There must have been others,

because he was able to buy a stolen and reworked automobile he would have had difficulty doing that in Edinburgh or London without the word getting about." Peter nodded reluctantly. "All right, having the Irish connection helped him, Ad But there was the other side of the coin. O'Shaughnessy had enemies, even in the Provos. He was a ruthless bastard with a bloody record. We can only believe that one of those enemies saw the chance to make a score the one who sold him the stolen auto, perhaps. We have had the recording of the tip-off call examined by language experts and had a run against the voice prints on the computer. Nothing definite. The voice was disguised, probably through a handkerchief and nose plugs, but the general feeling is that it was an Irishman who made the call. The boffins from the telephone department were able to test the loading of the line and guess it was a call from a foreign country very likely Ireland, although they cannot be certain of that." Peter Stride raised one eyebrow slightly, and Colin chuckled weakly and waved the cheroot at him in a wide gesture of invitation.

"Okay. That's my best shot," he said. "Let's hear you do better.

If you don't like my theories, you must have one of your own."

"You are asking me to believe it was all a coincidence; that O'Shaughnessy just happened to run into an old enemy who just happened to tip us off twenty-four hours before the deadline for Melissa-Jane's hand to be amputated. Then it just so happened that we reached Laragh at exactly the same moment as O'Shaughnessy was pulling out and making a run for it. Is that what you want me to believe?"

"Something like that,"Colin admitted.

"Sorry, Colin. I just don't like coincidence."

"Shoot!" Colin invited. "Let's hear how it really happened."

"I don't know," Peter grinned phicatingly. "It is just that I have this feeling that Caliph doesn't deal in coincidence either. I have this other feeling that somehow Gilly O'Shaughnessy had the death mark on his forehead from the beginning. I have this feeling it was all part of the plan."

"it must be great fun to have these feelings." Colin was prickling a little.

"But they sure as hell aren't much help to me.) "Take it easy." Peter held up one hand in surrender. "Let's accept tentatively that it happened your way, then-"

"But?"Colin asked.

"No buts not until we get some more hard evidence-"

"Okay, buster." There was no smile on Colin's face now, the wide mouth clamped in a grim line. "You want hard evidence, try this one for size-"

"Hold it, Colin," Parker shot in quickly, authoritatively.

"Wait for a moment before we come to that." And Colin Noble deflated with a visible effort, the cords in his throat smoothing out and the line of mouth relaxed into the old familiar grin as he deferred to Kingston Parker.

"Let's backtrack here a moment," Parker suggested. "Peter came up with the name Caliph. In the meantime we had picked up the same name but from an entirely different source. I promised Peter I would tell him about our source because I think it gives us a new insight into this entire business." He paused and tinkered with his pipe, using one of those small tools with folding blades and hooks and spikes with which pipe smokers arm themselves. He scraped the bowl and knocked a nub of half-burned tobacco into the ashtray, before peering into the pipe-the way a rifleman checks the bore of his weapon. Peter realized that Parker used his pipe as a prop for his performances, the way a magician distracts his audience with flourishes and mumbo jumbo He was not a man to underestimate, Peter thought again for the hundredth time.

Kingston Parker looked up at him and smiled, a conspiratorial smile as if to acknowledge that Peter had seen through his little act.

"Our news of Caliph comes from an unlikely direction or rather, considering the name, a more likely direction.

East. Riyadh to be precise. Capital city of Saudi Arabia, seat of King Khalid's oil empire. Our battered and beleaguered Central Intelligence Agency has received an appeal from the King following the murder of one of his grandsons. You recall the case, I'm sure--Peter had a strange feeling of deji-vu as he, listened to Kingston Parker confirming exactly the circumstances that he and Magda Altmann had discussed and postulated together, was it only three weeks before?

You see the King and his family are in a very vulnerable position really. Did you know that there are at least seven hundred Saudi princes who are multimillionaires, and who are close to the King's affections and power structure? It would be impossible to guard that many potential victims adequately. It's really damned good thinking you don't have to seize a hostage with all the attendant risks. There is virtually an unlimited supply of them walking around, ripe for plucking, and an inexhaustible supply of assassins to be either pressured or paid to do the job, just as long as you have the information and leverage, or just enough money. Caliph seems to have all that."

"What demand has been made upon Khalid?"Peter asked.

"We know for certain that he has received a demand, and that he has appealed to the CIA for assistance to protect and guard his family.

The demand came from an agency or person calling himself Caliph. We do not know what the demand is but it may be significant that Khalid and the Shah of Persia have both agreed that they will not support a crude oil price increase at the next pricing session of OPEC, but on the contrary they will push for a five per cent decrease in the price of crude."

"Caliph's thinking has paid off again," Peter murmured.

"It looks like it, doesn't it." Parker nodded, and then chuckled bitterly. "And once again you get the feeling, as with his demands to the South African Government, that his final objective is desirable even if the way he goes about procuring it is slightly unconventional, to say the least."

"To say the very least," Peter agreed quietly, remembering the feel of Melissa-Jane's fever-racked body against his chest.

"So there is no doubt now that what we feared, is fact.

Caliph exists-" said Parker.

"Not only exists, but flourishes," Peter agreed.

"Alive and well with a nice house in the suburbs." Colin lit the stub of his cheroot before going on. "Hell! He succeeded at

Johannesburg. He is succeeding at Riyadh where does he go from there why not the Federation of Employers in West Germany? The Trade Union leaders in Great Britain? Any group powerful enough to affect the fate of nations, and small enough to be terrorized as individuals."

"It's a way to sway and direct the destiny of the entire world you just cannot guard all the world's decision makers from personal attack, Peter agreed. "And it's no argument to point out that because his first two targets have been South Africa and the oil monopoly, then the long term results will be to the benefit of mankind. His ultimate target will almost certainly be the democratic process itself.

I don't think there can be any doubt that Caliph sees himself as a god. He sees himself as the paternal tyrant. His aim is to cure the ills of the world by radical surgery, and to maintain its health by unrestrained force and fear." Peter could remain seated no longer. He pushed back his chair and crossed to the windows, standing there in the soldier's stance, balanced on the balls of his feet with both hands clasped lightl behind his back. There was an uninspiring view of the high barbed-wire fence, part of the airfield and the corrugated sheet wall of the nearest hangar.

A Thor sentry paced before the gates with a white MP helmet on his head and side arm strapped to his waist. Peter watched him without really seeing him, and behind him the two men at the table exchanged a significant glance.

Colin Nobleasked a silent question and Parker answered with a curt nod of affirmative.

"All right, Peter," Colin said. "A little while back you asked for hard facts. I promised to give you a few." Peter turned back from the window and waited.

"Item One. During the time that Gilly O'Shaughnessy held Melissa-Jane in Laragh, two telephone calls were made from the Old Manse. They were both international calls.

They both went through the local telephone exchange. The first call was made at seven p.m. local time on the first of this month.

That would have been the first day that they could have reached the hideout. We have to guess it was an "All Well" report to the top management. The second call was exactly seven days later again at seven o'clock local time precisely. To the same number. We have to guess that it was another report, "All is still well". Both calls were less than one minute in duration. Just time enough to pass a prearranged code message-" Colin broke off and looked again at Kingston Parker.

"Go on," Parker instructed.

"The calls were to a French number. Rambouillet 47-87-47." Peter felt it hit him in the stomach, a physical blow, and he flinched his head, for a moment closing both his eyes tightly. He had called that number so often, the numerals were graven on his memory.

"No." He shook his head, and opened his eyes. "I'm not going to believe it."

"It's true, Peter," Parker said gently.

Peter walked back to his seat. His legs felt rubbery and shaky under him. He sat down heavily.

The room was completely silent. Neither of the other two looked directly at Peter Stride.

Kingston Parker made a gesture to Colin and obediently he slid the red box file, tied with red tapes, across the cheap vinyl topped table.

Parker untied the tapes and opened the file. He shuffled the papers, scanning them swiftly. Clearly he was adept at speed reading and was able to assimilate each typed double spaced page at a glance but now he was merely waiting for Peter to recover from the shock. He knew the contents of the red file almost by heart.

Peter Stride slumped in the steel-framed chair with its uncushioned wooden seat, staring sightlessly at the bulletin board on the opposite wall on which were posted the Thor rosters.

He found it hard to ride the waves of dismay that flooded over him. He felt chilled and numbed, the depth of this betrayal devastated him, and when he closed his eyes again he had a vivid image of the slim, tender body with the childlike breasts peeping through a silken curtain of dark hair.

He straightened in his seat, and Kingston Parker recognized the moment and looked up at him, half closing the file and turning it towards him.

The cover bore the highest security gradings available to Atlas Command and below them was typed:

ALTMANN MAGDA IRENE. Born KUTCHINSKY

Peter realized that he had never known her second name was Irene.

Magda Irene. Hell, they were really ugly names made special only by the woman who bore them.

Parker turned the file back to himself and began to speak quietly.

"When last you and I met, I told you of the special interest we had in this lady. That interest has continued, unabated, since then, or rather it has gathered strength with every fresh item of information that has come to us." He opened the file again and glanced at it as if to refresh his memory. "Colin has been very successful in enlisting the full co-operation of the intelligence agencies of both our countries, who in turn have been able to secure that of the French and believe it or not the Russians. Between the four countries we have been able to at last piece together the woman's history-" He broke off.

"Remarkable woman," and shook his head in admiration. "Quite incredible really.

I can understand how she is able to weave spells around any man she chooses. I can understand, Peter, your evident distress. I am going to be utterly blunt now we have no time nor space in which to manoeuvre tactfully around your personal feelings. We know that she has taken you as a lover. You notice that I phrase that carefully.

Baroness Altmann takes lovers, not the other way around. She takes lovers deliberately -and with careful forethought. I have no doubt that once she has made the decision, she accomplishes the rest of it with superb finesse." Peter remembered her coming to him and the exact words she had used. "I am not very good at this, Peter, and I want so badly to be good for you." The words had been chosen with the finesse that Kingston Parker had just spoken of. They were exactly timed to make herself irresistible to Peter and afterwards she had given the gentle lie to them with the skill and devilish cunning of her hands and mouth and body.

"You see, Peter. She had special and expert training in all the arts of love. There are probably few women in the Western world who know as much about reading a man, and then pleasing him. What she knows she did not learn in Paris or London or New York-" Kingston Parker paused and frowned at Peter. "This is all theory and hearsay, Peter.

You are in a better position to say just how much of it is false?"

The ultimate skill in pleasing a man is to fuel his own belief in himself, Peter thought, as he returned Parker's inquiring gaze with expressionless eyes. He remembered how with Magda Altmann he had felt like a giant, capable of anything. She had made him feel like that with a word, a smile, a gift, a touch that was the ultimate skill.

He did not answer Parker's question. "Go on please, Kingston," he invited. Externally, he had himself completely under control now. His right hand lay on the table top, with the fingers half open, relaxed.

"I told you that even as a child she showed special talents. In languages, mathematics her father was an amateur mathematician of some importance chess and other games of skill. She attracted attention. Especially she attracted attention because her father was a member of the Communist Party-" Parker broke off as Peter lifted his head in sharp inquiry. i - I'm sorry, Peter. We did not know that when last we met. We have learned it since from the French, they have access to the party records in Paris it seems, and it was confirmed by the Russians themselves.

Apparently the child used to accompany her father to meetings of the Party, and soon showed a precocious political awareness and understanding. Her father's friends were mostly party members, and after his death there still remains a mystery around his death.

Neither the French nor the Russians are forthcoming on the subject. Anyway, after his death, Magda Kutchinsky was cared for by these friends. It seemed she was passed on from family to family" Kingston Parker slid a postcard-sized photograph from a marbline envelope and passed it across the table to Peter, from this period." It showed a rather skinny girl in short skirts and dark stockings, wearing the yoked collar and straw bonnet of the French schoolgirl. Her hair was in two short braids, tied with ribbons, and she-held a small fluffy white dog in her arms. The background was a Parisian summer park scene, with a group of men playing boule and chestnut trees in full leaf.

The child's face was delicately featured with huge beautiful eyes, somehow wise and compassionate beyond her age, and yet still imbued with the fresh innocence of childhood.

"You can see she already had all the markings of spectacular beauty." Kingston Parker grunted, and reached across to take back the photograph. For a moment Peter's fingers tightened instinctively; he would have like to have kept it, but he relaxed and let it go. Parker glanced at it again and then slipped it back into the envelope.

"Yes. She attracted much interest, and very soon an uncle from the old country wrote to her. There were photographs of her father and the mother she had never known, anecdotes of her infancy and her father's youth. The child was enchanted. She had never known she had an uncle.

Her father had never spoken of his relatives, but now at last the little orphan found she had family. It took only a few more letters, exchanges of delight and affection, and then it was all arranged. The uncle came to fetch her in person and Magda Kutchinsky went back to Poland." Parker spread his hands. "It was easy as that."

"The missing years," Peter said, and his Voice SOLinded strange in his own ears. He cleared his throat and shifted uncomfortably under Parker's piercing but understanding gaze.

"No longer missing, Peter. We have been fed a little glimmering of what happened during those years and we have been able to fill in the rest of it from what we knew already."

"The Russians?" Peter asked, and when Parker nodded, Peter went on with a bitter tang to his voice.

"They seem to be very forthcoming, don't they? I have never heard of them passing information at least not valuable information so readily."

"They have their reasons in this case," Parker demurred.

"Very good reasons as it turns out but one will come to those in due course." "Very well." The child returned with her uncle to Poland, Warsaw.

And there was an extravagant family reunion. We are not certain if this was her real family, or whether the child was provided with a foster family for the occasion. In any event, the uncle soon announced that if Magda would submit to examination there was an excellent chance that she would be provided with a scholarship to one of the elite colleges of the USSR. We can imagine that she passed her examination with great distinction and her new masters must have congratulated themselves on their discovery.

"The college is on the shores of the Black Sea near Odessa. It does not have a name, nor an old school tie. The students are very specially selected, the screening is rigorous and only the brightest and most talented are enrolled. They are soon taught that they are an elite group, and are streamed in the special direction that their various talents dictate. In Magda's case it was languages and politics, finance and mathematics. She excelled and at the age of seventeen graduated to a higher, more specialized branch of the Odessa college. There she was trained in special memory techniques, the already bright mind was honed down to a razor edge. I understand that one of the less difficult exercises was to be given access to a list of a hundred diverse items for sixty seconds. The list had to be repeated from memory, in the correct order, twenty-four hours later." Parker shook his head again, expressing his admiration.

"At the same time she was also trained to fit naturally into upper-class international Western society. Dress, food, drink, cosmetics, manners, popular music and literature, cinema theatre, democratic politics, business procedures, the operation of stocks and commodities markets, the more mundane secretarial skills, modern dancing, the art of lovemaking and pleasuring men that and much else, all of it taught by experts flying, skiing, weapons, the rudiments of electronics and mechanical engineering and every other skill that a top-class agent might have to call upon.

"She was the star of her course and emerged from it much as the woman you know. Poised, skilled, beautiful, motivated and deadly.

"At the age of nineteen she knew more, was capable of more, than most other human beings, male or female, twice her age. The perfect agent, except for a small flaw in her make-up that only showed up later. She was too intelligent and too personally ambitious." Kingston

Parker smiled for the first time in twenty minutes. Which of course is a pseudonym for greed. Her masters did not recognize it in her, and perhaps at that age it was only latent greed. She had not yet been fully exposed to the attractions of wealth nor of unlimited power."

Kingston Parker broke off, leaned across the table towards Peter. then seemed to cLinge direction then, smiling an inward knowledgeable stude, as though pondering a hidden truth.

"Greed for wealth alone belongs essentially to the lower levels of human intelligence. It is only the developed and advanced mind that can truly appreciate the need for power-" He saw the protest in Peter's expression. No, no, I don't mean merely the power to control one's own limited environment, merely the power of life and death over a few thousand lives not that, but true power. Power to change the destiny of nations, power such as Caesar or Napoleon wielded, such as the President of the United States wields that is the ultimate greed, Peter. A magnificent and noble greed." He was silent a moment, as though glimpsing some vision of splendour. Then he went on: "digress. Forgive me," and turned to Colin Noble. "Do we have some coffee, Colin? I think we could all do with a cup now. Colin went to the machine that blooped and gurgled and winked its red eye in the corner, and while he filled the cups, the charged atmosphere in the room eased a little, and Peter tried to arrange his thoughts in some logical sequence. He looked for the flaws and weak places in the story but could find none instead he remembered only the feel of her mouth, the touch of her hands on his body. Oh God, it was a stab of physical pain, a deep ache in the chest and groin, as he remembered how she had coursed him like a running stag, driving and goading him on to unvisited depths of his being. Could such skills be taught, he wondered, and if so, by whom? He had a horrifying thought of a special room set on the heights above the Black Sea, with that slim, vulnerable tender body practising its skills, learning love as though it were cookery or small arms practice and then he shut his mind firmly against it, and Kingston Parker was speaking again, balancing his coffee cup primly with his pinky finger raised, like an old maid at a tea party.

"So she arrived back in Paris and it fell at her feet. It was a triumphant progress." Kingston Parker prodded in the file with his free hand, spilling out photographs of Magda Magda dancing in the ballroom of the Elysee Palace, Magda leaving a Rolls-Royce limousine outside Maxim's in the rue Royale, Magda skiing, riding, beautiful, smiling, poised and always there were men. Rich, well-fed, sleek men.

"I told you once there were eight sexual liaisons." Kingston Parker used that irritating expression again. "We have had reason to revise that figure. The French take a very close interest in that sort of thing, they have added to the list." He flicked over the photographs. "Pierre Hammond, Deputy Minister of Defence-" And another. "Mark Vincent, head of mission at the American Consulate-"

"Yes," Peter cut in short, but still there was a sickly fascination in seeing the faces of these men. He had imagined them accurately, he realized, without particular relish.

"Her masters were delighted as you can imagine. With a male agent it is sometimes necessary to wait a decade or more for results while he moles his way into the system.

With a young and beautiful woman she has her greatest value when those assets are freshest. Magda Kutchinsky gave them magnificent value. We do not know the exact extent of her contributions our Russian friends have not bared everything to us, I'm afraid, but I estimate that it was about this time they began to realize her true potential. She had the magical touch, but her beauty and youth could not last for even" Kingston Parker made a deprecating gesture with the slim pianist's hands. "We do not know if Aaron Altmann was a deliberate choice by her masters. But it seems likely. Think of it one of the richest and most powerful men in Western Europe, one who controlled most of the steel and heavy engineering producers, the single biggest armaments complex, electronics all associated and sensitive secondary industries. He was a widower, childless, so under French law his wife could inherit his entire estate.

He was known to be fighting a slowly losing battle with cancer, so his life term was limited and he was also a Zionist and one of the most trusted and influential members of Mossad. It was beautiful.

Truly beautiful" said Kingston Parker. "Imagine being able to undermine a man of that stature, perhaps being able to double him!

Though that seemed an extravagant dream not even the most beautiful siren of history could expect to turn a man like Aaron Altmann. He is a separate study on his own, another incredible human being with the strength and courage of a lion until the cancer wore him out. Again I digress, forgive me. Somebody, either the Director of the NKVD in Moscow, or Magda Kutchinsky's control at the Russian Embassy in Paris, who was, incidentally, the Chief NKVD Commissar for Western Europe, such was her value, or Magda Kutchinsky herself, picked Aaron Altmann.

Within two years she was indispensable to him. She was cunning enough not to use her sexual talents upon him immediately.

Altmann could have any woman who took his fancy, and he usually did. His sexual appetites were legendary, and they probably were the cause of his remaining childless. A youthful indiscretion resulted in a venereal disease with complications. It was later completely cured, but the damage was irreversible, he never produced an heir." He was a man who would have toyed with her and cast her aside as soon as he tired of her, if she had been callow enough to make herself immediately available to him.

First, she won his respect and admiration. Perhaps she was the first woman he had ever met whose brain and strength and determination matched his own Kingston Parker selected another photograph and passed it across the table. Fascinated, Peter stared at the black and white image of a heavily built man with a bull neck, and a solid thrusting jaw. Like so many men of vast sexual appetite, he was bald except for a Friar Tuck frill around the cannon ball dome of his skull. But there were humorous lines chiselled about his mouth, and his eyes, though fierce, looked as though they too could readily crinkle with laughter lines. Portrait of Power, Peter thought.

"When at last she gave him access to her body, it must have been like some great electrical storm." Kingston Parker seemed to be deliberately dwelling on her past love affairs, and Peter would have protested had not the information he was receiving been so vital.

"This man and woman must have been able to match each other once again.

Two very superior persons, two in a hundred million probably it is interesting to speculate what might have happened if they had been able to produce a child." Kingston Parker chuckled. "It would probably have been a mongolian idiot life is like that." Peter moved irritably, hating this turn in the conversation, and Parker went -on smoothly.

"So they married, and NKVD had a mole in the centre of Western industry. Narmco, Altmann's armaments complex, was manufacturing top secret American, British and French missile hardware for NATO. The new Baroness was on the Board, was in fact Deputy Chairman of Narmco. We can be sure that armaments blueprints were passed, not by the sheet but by the truckload. Every night, the leaders and decision-makers of the Western world sat at the new Baroness's board and swilled her champagne. Every conversation, every nuance and indiscretion was recorded by that specially trained memory, and slowly, inevitably, the Baron's strength was whittled away. He began to rely more and more upon her. We do not know exactly when she began to assist him with his Mossad activities but when it happened the Russians had succeeded in their design. In effect they had succeeded in turning Baron Aaron Altmann, they had his right hand and his heart for by this time the dying Baron was completely besotted by the enchantress.

They could expect to inherit the greater part of Western European heavy industry. It was all very easy until the latent defect in the Baroness's character began to surface.

We can only imagine the alarm of her Russian imislers when they detected the first signs that the Baroness was working for herself alone. She was brighter by far than any of the men who had up until that time controlled her, and she had been given a taste of real power.

The taste seemed very much to her liking. We can only imagine the gargantuan battle of wills between the puppet masters and the beautiful puppet that had suddenly developed a mind and ambitions of her very own quite simply her ambition now was to be the most wealthy and powerful woman since Catherine of Russia, and the makings were almost within her pretty hands except-" Kingston Parker stopped; like a born storyteller, he knew instinctively how to build up the tension in his audience.

He rattled his coffee cup.

"This talking is thirsty business." Colin and Peter had to rouse themselves with a physical effort. They had been mesmerized by the story and the personality of the storyteller. When Parker had his cup refilled, he sipped at it, then went on speaking.

"There was one last lever her Russian masters had over her. They threatened to expose her. It was quite a neat stroke, really. A man like Aaron Altmann would have acted like an enraged bull if he had known how he had been deceived. His reaction was predictable. He would have divorced Magda immediately. Divorce is difficult in France but not for a man like the Baron. Without his protection Magda was nothing, less than nothing, for her value to the Russians would have come to an end. Without the Altmann Empire her dreams of power would disappear like a puff of smoke. It was a good try it would have worked against an ordinary person, but of course they were not dealing with an ordinary person-" Parker paused again; it was clear he was as wrapped up by the story as they were, and he was drawing out the pleasure of the telling of it.

"I have been doing a lot of talking," he smiled at Peter.

"I'm going to let you have a chance now, Peter. You know her a little, you have learned a lot more about her in the last hour. Can you guess what she did?" Peter began to shake his head and then it crashed in upon him with sickening force, and he stared at Parker, the pupils of his eyes dilating with the strength of his revulsion.

"I think you have guessed." Parker nodded. "Yes, we can imagine that by this stage she was becoming a little impatient herself The Baron was taking a rather long time to die."

"Christ, it's horrible." Peter grunted, as though in pain.

" From one point of view, I agree." Parker nodded. "But if you look at it like a chess player, and remember she is a player of Grand Master standard, it was a brilliant stroke.

She arranged that the Baron be kidnapped. There are witnesses to the fact that she insisted on the Baron accompanying her that day. He was feeling very bad, and he did not want to go sailing, but she insisted that the sun and fresh air would be good for him. He never took his bodyguard when he went sailing. There were just the two of them. A very fast cruiser was waiting offshore-" He spread his hands.

"You know the details?"

"No," Peter denied it.

"The cruiser rammed the yacht. Picked the Baron out of the water, but left the Baroness. An hour later there was a radio message to the coast guard they went out and found her still clinging to the wreckage.

The kidnappers were very concerned that she survived."

"They may have wanted a loving wife to bargain with," Peter suggested swiftly.

"That is possible, of course, and she certainly played the role of the bereaved wife to perfection. When the ransom demand came it was she who forced the Board of Altmann Industries to ante up the twenty-five million dollars. She personally took the cash to the rendezvous alone." Parker paused significantly.

"She didn't need the money."

"Oh, but she did," Parker contradicted. "The Baron was not in his dotage, you know, His hands were still very firmly on the reins and the purse strings. Magda had as much as any ordinary wife could wish for, furs, jewellery, servants, clothes, cars, boats pocket money, around two hundred thousand dollars a year, paid to her as a salary from Altmann Industries. Any ordinary wife would have been well content but she was not an ordinary wife. We must believe she had already planned how to carry forward her dreams of unlimited power and it needed money, not thousands but millions. Twenty-five million would be a reasonable stopgap, until she could get her pretty little fingers on the big apple. She drove with the cash, in thousand-Swiss-franc bills, I understand; she drove alone to some abandoned airfield and had a plane come pick it up and fly it out to Switzerland. Damned neat."

"But-" Peter searched for some means of denial. But the Baron was mutilated. She couldn't-"

"Death is death, mutilation may have served some obscure purpose. God knows, we're dealing with an Eastern mind, devious, sanguinary perhaps the mutilation was merely to make any suspicion of the wife completely farfetched just as you immediately used it to protect her." He was right, of course. The mind that could plain and execute the rest of such a heinous scheme would not baulk at the smaller niceties of execution. He had no more protest to make.

"So let us review what she had achieved by this stage.

She was rid of the Baron, and the restrictions he placed upon her.

An example of these restrictions, for we will find it significant later: she was very strongly in favour of Narmco banning the sale of all weapons and armaments to the South African Government. The Baron, ever the businessman, looked upon that country as a lucrative market.

There was also the South African sympathy for Zionism. He overruled her, and Narrnco continued to supply aircraft, missiles and light armaments to that country right up until the official UN resolution to enforce a total arms embargo, with France ratifying it. Remember the Baroness's anti south African attitude. We come to it again later.

"She was rid of the Baron. She was rid of her Russian control, well able to maintain a small army to protect herself. Even her former Russian masters would hesitate to take revenge on her. She was a French Grande Dame now.

She had gained significant working capital twenty-five million for which she was not accountable to another living human being. She had gained an invincible power base at Altmann Industries. Although she was still under certain checks and safeguards-from the Board of Directors, yet she had access to all its information-gathering services, to its vast resources. As the head of such a colossus she had the respect of and sympathy of the French Government, and as a fringe benefit limited but significant access to their intelligence systems. Then there was the Mossad connection: was she not the heir to Aaron Altmann's position-" Peter suddenly remembered Magda speaking (if her sources" and never identifying them. Was she really able to use the French and Israeli intelligence as her own private agencies? It seemed impossible. But he was learning swiftly that when dealing with Magda Altmann, anything was A possible as Kingston Parker had pointed out, she was not an ordinary person but Parker was speaking again.

"There was a period then of consolidation, a time when she gathered up the reins that Aaron had dropped. There were changes amongst the top management throughout Altmann Industries as she replaced those who might oppose her with her own minions. A time of planning and organizing, and then the first attempt to govern and prescribe the destiny of nations. She chose the nation which most offended her personal view of the new world she was going to build. We will never know what made her choose the name of Caliph-"

"You have to be wrong." Peter squeezed his eyelids closed with thumb and forefinger.

"You just don't know her."

"I don't think anybody knows her, Peter,"

Kingston Parker murmured, and fiddled with his pipe. "I'm sorry, we are going pretty fast here. Do you want to back up and ask any questions?"

"No, it's all right." Peter opened his eyes again. "Go on, will you, Kingston?"

"One of the most important lessons that Baroness Altmann had learned was the ease with which force and violence can be used, and their tremendous effect and profitability. Bearing this lesson in mind, the Baroness chose her first act as the new ruler of mankind, and the choice was dictated by her early political convictions, those convictions formed at her father's knee and at the Communist Party meetings that she had attended as a precocious child in Paris. There is a further suggestion that the choice was reinforced by the Altmann banking corporation's interests in South African gold sales, for by this time the Baroness had tempered her socialist and communist leanings with a good healthy dollop of capitalistic self-interest. We can only guess, but if the scheme to bring out forty tons of gold and a black-based government-in-exile had succeeded, it would not have taken very long for Caliph to gain control of both government and gold-" Parker shrugged]. We just cannot say how ambitious, even grandiose, those plans were. But we can say that Caliph, or the Baroness, recruited her team for the execution of the plan with the skill she brought to anything she handled." He broke Off, and smiled.

"I think all three of us remember the taking of Flight 070 vividly enough not to have to go once more over the details.

Let me just remind you that it would have succeeded, in fact it had actually succeeded, when Peter here made his unscheduled move that brought it all down. But it succeeded. That was the important thing. Caliph could afford to congratulate herself. Her information was impeccable.

She had chosen the right people for the job. She even knew the name of the officer who would command the antiterrorist force which would be sent to intervene, and her psychology had been excellent. The execution of the four hostages had so shocked and numbed the opposition that they were powerless -the cup had been dashed from her lips by one man alone. Inevitably her interest in that man was aroused. Possibly with feminine intuition she was able to recognize in him the qualities which could be turned to her own purpose. She had that indomitable streak in her make-up that is able to recognize even in the dust of disaster that material for future victory-" Parker shifted his bulk, and made a small deprecatory gesture. " - I hope this will not seem immodest if I bring myself into the story at this stage. I had been given the hint that something like Caliph existed. In fact this may not have been her first act after the killing of Aaron Altmann. Two other successful kidnappings have her style one of them the OPEC ministers in Vienna but we cannot be sure. I had been warned and I was waiting for Caliph to surface. Dearly I would have loved a chance to interrogate one of the hijackers-"

"They would have had nothing to tell you," Peter objected brusquely. "They were merely pawns, like the doctor we captured in Ireland." Parker sighed. "Perhaps you are right, Peter.

But at the time I believed that our only lead to Caliph had been severed. Later when the thing had been done and I had recovered from the shock of it, it suddenly occurred to me that the lead was still there stronger than ever. You were that lead, Peter. That was why I recommended that your resignation be accepted. If you had not resigned, I would have forced you out anyway, but you played along superbly by resigning-" He smiled again. I have never thanked you for that."

"Don't mention it," said Peter grimly. "I like to be of service."

"And you were. Almost immediately you were on the loose, the Baroness began making her approach. First she collected every known fact about you. Somehow she even got a computer run on you. That's a fact. An unauthorized run was made on the Central Intelligence computer four days after your resignation. She must have liked what she got, for there was the Narmco offer through conventional channels. Your refusal must have truly excited her interest, for she used her connections to have herself invited down to Sir Steven's country house." Parker chuckled. "My poor Peter, you found yourself without warning in the clutches of one of history's most accomplished enchantresses. I know enough about the lady to guess that her approach to you was very carefully calculated from the complete information that she had on you. She knew exactly what type of woman attracted you. Fortunately, she fitted the general physical description-"

"What is that?" Peter demanded. He was unaware that he had a specific type of physical preference.

"Tall, slim and brunette," Parker told him promptly.

"Think about it," he invited. "All your women have been that." He was right, of course, Peter realized. Hell, even at thirty-nine years of age it was still possible to learn something about yourself.

"You're a cold-blooded bastard, Kingston. Did anybody ever tell you that?"

"Frequently." Kingston smiled. "But it's not true, and compared to Baroness Altmann I am Father Christmas." And he became serious again. "She wanted to find out what we at Atlas know about her activities. She knew by this stage that we had our suspicions, and through you she had an inside ear. Of course, your value would deteriorate swiftly the longer you were out of Thor but you could still be useful in a dozen other ways. As a bonus you could be expected to do a good job at Narmco. All her expectations were fulfilled, and exceeded. You even thwarted an assassination attempt on her life-" Peter lifted an eyebrow in inquiry.

On the road to Rambouillet that night. Here we are only guessing, but it's a pretty well-informed guess. The Russians had by this time despaired of returning her to the fold. They had also suspicions as to her role as Caliph. They decided on a radical cure for their one-time star agent. They either financed and organized the assassination attempt themselves, or they tipped off Mossad that she had murdered Aaron Altmann. I would be inclined to believe that they hired the killers themselves because the Mossad usually do their own dirty work. Anyway, with NKVD or Mossad as paymasters, an ambush was set up on the Rambouillet road and you drove into it. I know you don't like coincidence, Peter, but I believe it was merely coincidence that you were driving the Baroness's Maserati that night."

"All right," Peter murmured. "If I swallow the rest of the hog, that little crumb goes down easily enough."

"That attempt severely alarmed the Baroness. She was not certain who had been the author. I think she believed it was Atlas Command, or at the very least that we had something to do with it. Almost immediately after that you were able to confirm our interest in her, and our knowledge that Caliph existed. I invited you to America, Colin brought you to meet me, and when you returned you either told her about it, or in some way confirmed her suspicions of Atlas Command and Kingston Parker. I am guessing again but how close am I, Peter? Be honest." Peter stared at him, trying to keep his face expressionless while his mind raced. That was exactly how it had happened.

"We were all hunting Caliph. You saw no disloyalty in discussing it with her." Parker prompted him gently, and Peter nodded once curtly.

"You believed that we had common goals," Parker went on with deep understanding and compassion. "You thought we were all hunting Caliph. That is right."

"She knew I had been to America to see you before I told her. I don't know how but she knew," Peter said stiffly. He felt like a traitor.

"understand" Parker said simply. He reached across the table and once again placed his hand on Peter's shoulder.

He squeezed it while he looked into Peter's eyes, a gesture of affirmation and trust. Then he laid both hands on top of the table.

"She knew who was the hunter then, and she knew enough about me to know I was dangerous. You were probably the only man in the world who could reach me and do the job but you had to be motivated. She picked the one and only lever that would move you. She picked it unerringly just as she had done everything else. It would have worked in one stroke she would have gotten rid of the hunter, and she would have acquired a top-class assassin.

When you had done the job, you would have belonged to Caliph for all time. She would have used you to kill again and again, and each time you killed you would be more deeply enmeshed in her net. You really were a very valuable prize, Peter. Valuable enough for her to find it worthwhile to use her sexual wiles upon you." He saw the lumps of clenched muscle at the corner of Peter's jaw, and the fire in his eyes.

"You are also a very attractive man, and who knows but she felt the need to combine business and pleasure? She is a lady with strongly developed sexual appetites." Peter felt a violent urge to punch him in the face. He needed some outlet for his rage. He felt belittled, soiled and used.

"She was clever enough to realize that the sex was not enough of a hold to force you to commit murder. So she took your daughter, and immediately had her mutilated just as at Johannesburg she had executed hostages without hesitation. The world must learn to fear Caliph."

There was no smile on Parker's face now.

"I truly believe that if you had not been able to deliver my head by the deadline, she Would not have hesitated to carry on to the next mutilation, and the one after that." Again Peter was assailed by a wave of nausea as he remembered that shrivelled white lump of flesh with the scarlet fingernail floating horribly in its tiny bottle.

"We were saved from that by the most incredible piece of luck.

The Provo informer," said Parker. "And again the understandable eagerness of the Russians to co-operate with us. It is a wonderful opportunity for them to hand us their problem. They have let us have an almost full account of the lady and her history."

"But what are we going to do about it?" Colin Nobleasked. "Our hands are tied. Do we just have to wait for the next atrocity do we have to hope we will get another lucky break when Caliph kills the next Arab prince, or machine-guns the Shah's sister?"

"That will happen unless they push through the OPEC decision," Parker predicted levelly. "The lady has converted very easily to the capitalist system now that she owns half of Europe's industry. A reduction in the Oil price would benefit her probably more than any other individual on earth and at the same time it will also benefit the great bulk of humanity. How nicely that squares all her political and personal interests."

"But if she gets away with it-" Colin insisted, what will be her next act of God?"

"Nobody can predict that," Parker murmered, and they both turned their heads to look at Peter Stride.

He seemed to have aged twenty years. The lines at the corners of his mouth were cut in deeply like the erosion of weathered granite.

Only his eyes were blue and alive and fierce as those of a bird of prey.

"I want you to believe what I am going to say now, Peter.

I have not told you all this to put pressure on you, Parker assured him quietly. "I have told you only what I believe is necessary for you to know to protect yourself if you should elect to return to the lion's den. I am not ordering you to do so. The risks involved cannot be overestimated. With a lesser man I would term it suicidal.

However, now that you are forewarned, I believe you are the one man who could take Caliph on her own ground. Please do not misunderstand what I mean by that. I am not for a moment suggesting assassination.

In fact I expressly forbid you to even think in that direction. I would not allow it, and if you acted independently, I would do my utmost to see that you were brought to justice. No, all I ask is that you keep close to Caliph and try to outguess her. Try to expose her so we can lawfully act to take her out of action. I want you to put out of your mind the emotional issues those hostages at Johannesburg,

your own daughter try to forget them, Peter. Remember we are neither judge nor executioner-" Parker went on speaking quietly and insistently, and Peter watched his lips with narrowed eyes, hardly listening to the words, trying to think clearly and see his course ahead but his thoughts were a children's carousel, going around and around with fuss and fury but returning with every revolution to the one central conclusion.

There was only one way to stop Caliph. The thought of attempting to bring someone like Baroness Magda Altmann to justice in a French court was laughable. Peter tried to force himself to believe that vengeance had no part in his decisions, but he had lived too long with himself to be able to pull off such a deceit. Yes, vengeance was part of it and he trembled with the rage of remembrance, but it was not all of it. He had executed the German girl Ingrid, and Gilly O'Shaughnessy and had not regretted the decision to do so. If it was necessary for them to die then surely Caliph deserved to die a thousand times more.

And there is only one person who can do it, he realized.

Her voice was quick and light and warm, with just that fascinating trace of accent; he remembered it so well, but had forgotten the effect it could have upon him. His heart pounded as though he had run a long way.

"Oh, Peter. It's so good to hear your voice. I have been so worried. Did you get my cable?"

"No, which cable?"

"When I heard that you had freed Melissa-Jane. I sent you a cable from Rome."

"I didn't get it but it doesn't matter."

"I sent it to you via Narmco in

Brussels."

"It's probably waiting for me there. I haven't been in touch."

"How is she, Peter?"

"She is fine now-" He found it strangely difficult to use her name, or any form of endearment. He hoped that the strain would not sound in his voice. "But we went through a hell of a time."

"I know. I understand. I felt so helpless. I tried so hard, that's why I was out of contact, Peter but day after day there was no news."

"It's all over now," Peter said gruffly.

don't think SO" she said swiftly. "Where are you calling from?"

"London."

"When will you come back?"

"I telephoned Brussels an hour ago. Narmco wants me back urgently. I am taking a flight this afternoon."

"Peter, I have to see you. I've been too long without you but, (Mon Dieu, I have to be in Vienna tonight. Wait, let me see, if I sent the Lear to fetch you now we could meet, even for an hour.

You could take the late flight from Orly to Brussels and I could go on to Vienna with the Lear please, Peter. I missed you so. We could have an hour together." the sub managers -of the airport met Peter as he disembarked from the Lear and led him to one of the VIP lounges above the main concourse.

Magda Altmann came swiftly to meet him as he stepped into the lounge and he had forgotten how her presence could fill a room with light.

She wore a tailored jacket over a matching skirt, severe gun-metal grey and tremendously effective. She moved like a dancer on long graceful legs which seemed to articulate from the narrow waist and

Peter felt awkward and heavy footed for the awareness that he was in the presence of evil sat heavily upon him, weighting him down.

"Oh, Peter. What have they done to you?" she asked with quick concern flaring in those huge compassionate eyes.

She reached up to touch his cheek.

The strain and horror of the last days had drawn him out to the edge of physical endurance. His skin had a greyish, sickly tone against which the dark new beard darkening his jaws contrasted strongly. There were more fine silver threads at his temples, gull's wings against the thicker darker waves of his hair, and his eyes were haunted. They had sunk deeply into their sockets.

"Oh, darling, darling," she whispered, low enough so that the others in the room could not hear her, and she reached up with her mouth for his.

Peter had carefully schooled himself for this meeting. He knew how important it was that he should not in any way betray the knowledge he had. Magda must never guess that he had found her out. That would be deadly dangerous. He must act completely naturally. It was absolutely vital, but there was just that instant's remembrance of his daughter's pale wasted fever-racked features, and then he stooped and took Magda's mouth.

He forced his mouth to soften, as hers was soft and warm and moist, tasting of ripe woman and crushed petals. He made his body welcoming as hers was melting and trusting against his and he thought he had succeeded completely until she broke from his embrace and leaned back, keeping those slim strong hips still pressed against his. She studied his face again, a swift probing, questioning gaze, and he saw it change deep in her eyes. The flame going out of them leaving only a cold merciless green light, like the beautiful spark in the depths of a great emerald.

She had seen something; no there had been nothing to see. She had sensed something in him, the new Awareness.

Of course, she would have been searching for it. She needed only the barest confirmation the quirk of expression on his mouth, the new wariness in his eyes, the slight stiffness and reserve in his body all of which he thought he had been able to control perfectly.

"Oh, I am glad you are wearing blue now." She touched the lapel of his casual cashmere jacket. "It does suit you so well, my dear." He had ordered the jacket with her in mind, that was true but now there was something brittle in her manner.

It was as though she had withdrawn her true self, bringing down an invisible barrier between them.

"Come." She turned away, leading him to the deep leather couch below the picture windows. Some airport official had been able to find flowers, yellow tulips, the first blooms of spring, and there was a bar and coffee machine.

She sat beside him on the couch, but not touching him, and with a nod dismissed her secretary. He moved across the room to join the two bodyguards, her grey wolves, and the three of them remained out of earshot, murmuring quietly amongst themselves.

"Tell me, please, Peter." She was still watching him, but the cold green light in her eyes had been extinguished she was friendly and concerned, listening with complete attention as he went step by step over every detail of Melissa-Jane's kidnapping.

It was an old rule of his to tell the complete truth when it would serve and it served now, for Magda would know every detail. He told her of Caliph's demand for Kingston Parker's life, and his own response.

"I would have done it," he told her frankly, and she hugged her own arms and shuddered once briefly.

"God, such evil can corrupt even the strongest and the best-" and now there was understanding softening her lips.

Peter went on to tell her of the lucky tip-off and the recovery of Melissa-Jane. He went into details of the manner in which she had been abused, of her terror and the psychological damage she had suffered and he watched Magda's eyes carefully. He saw something there, emphasized by the tiny frown that framed them. He knew that he could not expect feelings of guilt. Caliph would be far beyond such mundane emotion but there was something there, not just stagey compassion.

"I had to stay with her. I think she needed those few days with me, he explained.

"Yes. I am glad you did that, Peter." She nodded, and glanced at her wristwatch. "Oh, we have so little time left," she lamented.

"Let's have a glass of champagne. We have a little to celebrate. At least Melissa-Jane is alive, and she is young and resilient enough to recover completely." Peter eased the cork and when it popped he poured creaming pate yellow Dam Perignon into the flutes, and smiled at her over the glass as they saluted each other.

"It's so good to see you, Peter." She was truly a superb actress; she said it with such innocent spontaneity that he felt a surge of admiration for her despite himself. He crushed it down and thought that he could kill her now and here.

He did not really need a weapon. He could use his hands if he had to, but the Cobra parabellum was in the soft chamois leather holster under his left armpit. He could kill her, and the two bodyguards across the room would gun him down instantly. He might take one of them, but the other one would get him. They were top men. He had picked them himself. They would get him.

"I'm sorry we will not be together for very long," he countered, still smiling at her.

"Oh, cheri. I know, so am I." She touched his forearm, the first touch since the greeting embrace. "I wish it were different. There are so many things that we have to do, you and I, and we must forgive each other for them." Perhaps the words were meant to have a special significance; there was a momentary flash of the warm green fire in her eyes, and something else perhaps a deep and unfathomable regret.

Then she sipped the wine, and lowered the long curled lashes across her eyes, shielding them from his scrutiny.

"I hope we will never have anything terrible to forgive. For the first time he faced the act of killing her. Before it had been something clinical and academic, and he had avoided considering the deed itself. But now he imagined the impact of an explosive Velex bullet into that smooth sweet flesh. His guts lurched, and for the first time he doubted if he were capable of it.

"Oh, Peter, I hope so. More than anything in life, I hope that."

She lifted her lashes for a moment, and her eyes seemed to cling to his for an instant, pleading for something forgiveness, perhaps. If he did not use the gun, then how would he do it, he wondered. Could he stand the feeling of cartilage and bone snapping and crackling under his fingers, could he hold the blade of knife into her flat hard belly and feel her fight it like a marlin fights the gleaming curved hook of the gaff?

The telephone on the bar buzzed, and the secretary picked it up on the second ring. He murmured into it.

"Oui, oui. D'accord." And hung up. "Madam Baronne, the aircraft is refuelled and ready to depart."

"We will leave immediately, she told him, and then to Peter, "I am sorry."

"When will I see you?" he asked.

She shrugged, and a little shadow passed over her eyes.

"It is difficult. I am not sure I will telephone you. But now I must go Peter. Adieu, my darling." When she had gone, Peter stood at the windows overlooking the airfield. It was a glorious spring afternoon, the early marguerites were blooming wild along the grassy verges of the main runways, like scattered gold sovereigns, and a flock of black birds hopped amongst them, probing and picking for insects, completely undisturbed by the jet shriek of a departing Swissair flight.

Peter ran his mind swiftly over the meeting. Carefully identifying and isolating the exact moment when she had changed. When she had ceased to be Magda Altmann and become Caliph.

There was no doubt left now. Had there ever been, he wondered, or had it merely been his wish to find doubt?

Now he must harden himself to the act. It would be difficult, much more difficult than he had believed possible.

Not once had they been alone, he realized then always the two grey wolves had hovered around them. It was just another sign of her new wariness. He wondered if they would ever be alone together again now that she was alerted.

Then abruptly he realized that she had not said "Au revoir, my darling" but instead she had said "Adieu, MY darling'.

Was there a warning in that? A subtle hint of death for if Caliph suspected him, he knew what her immediate reaction must be. Was she threatening, or had she merely discarded him, as Kingston Parker had warned that she would?

He could not understand the desolate feeling that swamped him at the thought that he might never see her again except through the gunsight.

He stood staring out of the window, wondering how his career and his life had begun to disintegrate about him since first he had heard the name Caliph.

A polite voice at his shoulder startled him and he turned to the airport sub-manager. "They are calling the KLM flight to Brussels now, General Stride." Peter roused himself with a sigh and picked up his overcoat and the crocodile skin Hermes briefcase that had been a gift from the woman he must kill.

here was such a volume of correspondence and urgent business piling the long desk in his new office that Peter had an excuse to put aside the planning of the preemptive strike against Caliph.

To his mild surprise he found himself enjoying the jostle and haggle, the driving pace and the challenge of the market place. He enjoyd pitting wits and judgement against other sharp and pointed minds, he enjoyed the human interaction and for the first time understood the fascination which this type of life had exerted over his brother Steven.

"Three days after arriving back at his desk, the Iranian Air Force made their first order of the Narmco Kestrel missiles. One hundred and twenty units, over a hundred and fifty million dollars" worth. It was a good feeling, and could grow stronger, could finally become addictive, he realized.

He had always looked upon money as rather a nuisance, those degrading and boring sessions with bank managers and clerks of the income tax department, but now he realized that this was a different kind of money. He had glimpsed the world in which

Caliph existed, and realized how once a human being became accustomed to manipulating this kind of money, then dreams of godlike power became believable, capable of being transmuted into reality.

He could understand, but could never forgive, and so at last, seven days after his return to Brussels, he forced himself to face up to what he must do.

Magda Altmann had withdrawn. She had made no further contact since that brief and unsatisfactory hour at Orly Airport.

He must go to her, he realized. He had lost his special inside position which would have made the task easier.

He could still get close enough to kill her, of that he was certain. just as he had the opportunity to do so at Orly.

However, if he did it that way it would be suicidal. If he survived the swift retribution of her guards, there would be the slower but inexorable processes of the law. He knew without bothering to consider it too deeply that he would be unable to use the defence of the Caliph story. No court would believe it. It would sound like the rantings of a maniac without the support of Atlas or the Intelligence systems of America and Britain. That support would not be forthcoming of that he was certain, If he killed Caliph they would be delighted, but they would let him go to the guillotine without raising a voice in his defence. He could imagine the moral indignation of the civilized world if they believed that an unorthodox organization such as Atlas was employing assassins to murder the prominent citizens of a foreign and friendly nation.

No. He was on his own, completely. Parker had made that quite clear. And Peter realized that he did not want to die. He was not prepared to sacrifice his life to stop Caliph not unless there was no other way. There had to be another way, of course.

As he planned it he thought of the victim only as Caliph never as Magda Altmann. That way he was able to bring a cold detachment to the problem. The where, the when, and the how of it.

He had complicated the task by replanning her personal security, and his major concern when he did so had been to make her movements as unpredictable as possible. Her social calendar was as closely guarded as a secret of state, there were never any -forward press reports of attendance at public or state events.

If she were invited to dine at the tlysee Palace, the fact was reported the day after, not the day before but there were some annual events that she would never miss.

Together they had discussed these weaknesses in her personal security.

"Oh, Peter you cannot make a convict of me." She had laughed in protest when he mentioned them. "I have so few real pleasures you would not take them from me, would you?" The first seasonal showing of

Yves St. Laurent's collections, that she would never miss or the Grande Semaine of the spring racing season which culminates with the running of the Grand Prix de Paris at Longchamp. This year she had high hopes of victory with her lovely and courageous bay mare, Ice Leopard. She would be there. It was absolutely certain.

Peter began to draw up the list of possible killing grounds, and then crossed off all but the most likely. The estate at La Pierre Benite, for instance. It had the advantage of being familiar ground for Peter. With a soldier's eye he had noticed fields of fire across the wide terraced lawns that dropped down to the lake; there were stances for a sniper in the forests along the far edge of the lake, and in the little wooded knoll to the north of the house which commanded the yard and stables. However, the estate was well guarded and even there the victim's movements were unpredictable.

It would be possible to lie in ambush for the week when she was in Rome or New York. Then again the escape route was highly risky, through a sparsely populated area with only two access roads both easily blocked by swift police action.

No, La Pierre Benite was crossed from the list.

In the end Peter was left with the two venues that had first sprung to mind the members' enclosure at Longchamp or Yves St. Laurent's premises, at 46 Avenue Victor Hugo.

Both had the advantages of being public and crowded, circumstances favouring pickpockets and assassins, Peter thought wryly. Both had multiple escape routes, and crowds into which the fugitive could blend.

There were good stances for a sniper in the grandstands and buildings overlooking the members" enclosure and the saddling paddock at Longchamp or in the multi-storied buildings opposite No 46 in Avenue Victor Hugo.

It would probably be necessary to rent an office suite in one of the buildings with the attendant risks, even if he used a false name, which put the probability slightly in favour of the racecourse.

However, Peter delayed the final decision until he had a chance to inspect each site critically.

There was one last advantage in doing it this way. It would be a stand-off kill. He would be spared the harrowing moments of a kill at close range, with handgun or knife or garrotte.

There would be the detached view of Caliph through the lens of a telescopic sight. The flattened perspectives and the altered colour balances always made for a feeling of unreality. The intervening distance obviated the need for confrontation. He would never have to watch the green light go out in those magnificent eyes, nor hear the last exhalation of breath through the soft and perfectly sculptured lips that had given him so much joy quickly he thrust those thoughts aside. They weakened his resolve, even though the rage and the lust for vengeance had not abated.

If he could get one of the Thor .222 sniper rifles it would be the perfect tool for this task. With the extra long, accurized barrels designed for use with match grade ammunition and the new laser sights,

the weapon could throw a three-inch group at seven hundred yards.

The sniper had only to depress the button on the top of the stock with the forefinger of his left hand. This activated the laser and the beam swept precisely down the projected flight of the bullet. It would show as a bright white coin the size of a silver dime. The sniper looked for the spot of light through the telescopic lens of the sight, and the moment it was exactly on the target he pressed the trigger.

Even an unskilled marksman could hardly miss with this sight, in Peter's hands it would be infallible and Colin Noble would give him one. Not only would Colin give him one, hell, he would probably have it delivered with the compliments of the American Marine Corps by the senior military attache of the U.S. Embassy in Paris.

Yet Peter found himself drawing out the moment of action, going over his plans so often and with such a critical eye that he knew he was procrastinating.

The sixteenth day after his return to Brussels was a Friday.

Peter spent the morning on the NATO range north of the city at a demonstration of the new electronic shield that Narmco had developed to foil the radar guidance on short-range anti-tank missiles. Then he helicoptered back with the three Iranian officers who had attended the demonstration and they lunched at tpaule de Mouton, a magnificent and leisurely meal. Peter still felt guilty spending three hours at the lunch table, so he worked until eight o'clock that evening, on the missile contracts.

It was long after dark when he left through the rear entrance, taking all his usual precautions against the chance that Caliph had an assassin waiting for him in the dark streets. He never left at the same time nor followed the same route, and this evening he bought the evening papers from a Marchand du tab ac in the Grand' Place and stopped to read them at one of the outdoor cafes overlooking the square.

He began with the English papers, and the headlines filled the page from one side to the other; black and bold, they declared:

DROP IN PRICE OF CRUDE OIL

Peter sipped the whisky thoughtfully as he read the article through, turning to Page Six for the continuation.

Then he crumpled the newsprint in his lap, and stared at the passing jostle of spring tourists and early evening revellers.

Caliph had achieved her first international triumph.

From now on there would be no bounds to her ruthless rampage of power and violence.

Peter knew he could delay no longer. He made the go decision then, and it was irrevocable. He would arrange to visit London on

Monday morning, there was excuse enough for that. He would ask Colin to meet him at the airport, and it would be necessary to tell him of his plan. He knew he could expect full support. Then he could move on to Paris for the final reconnaissance and choice of killing ground.

There was still two weeks until the showing of the spring collections two weeks to plan it so carefully that there would be no chance of failure.

He felt suddenly exhausted, as though the effort of decision had required the last of his reserves. So exhausted that the short walk back to the hotel seemed daunting. He ordered another whisky and drank it slowly before he could make the effort.

Narmco maintained two permanent suites at the Hilton for their senior executives and other important visitors.

Peter had not yet made the effort of finding private accommodation in the city, and he was living out of the smaller of the two suites.

It was merely a place to wash and sleep and leave his clothes, for he could not shake off the feeling of impermanence, of swiftly changing circumstances by which he found himself surrounded.

My books are in storage again, he thought with a little chill of loneliness. His collection of rare and beautiful books had been in storage-for the greater part of his life, as he roamed wherever his duty took him, living out of barracks and hotel rooms. His books were his only possessions, and as he thought about them now he was filled with an unaccustomed longing to have a base, a place that was his Own and immediately he thrust it aside, smiling cynically at himself as he strode through the streets of another foreign city, alone again.

It must be old age catching up with me, he decided.

There had never been time for loneliness before but now, but now? Unaccountably he remembered Magda Altmann coming into his arms and saying quietly: "Oh, Peter, I have been alone for so long." The memory stopped him dead, and he stood in the light of one of the street lamps, a tall figure in a belted trench coat with a gaunt and haunted face.

A blonde girl with lewdly painted lips sauntered towards him down the sidewalk, pausing to murmur a proposition, and it brought Peter back to the present.

"Merd" He shook his head in curt refusal and walked on.

As he passed the bookstall in the lobby of the Hilton, a rack of magazines caught his attention and he stopped at the shelf of women's magazines. There would be announcements of the Paris haute couture showings soon, and he thumbed the pages of Vogue looking for mention of Yves St. Laurent's show instead he was shocked by the image of a woman's face that leapt out of the page at him.

The elegant cheekbone structure framing the huge slanted Slavic eyes. The shimmering fall of dark hair, the feline grace of movement frozen by the camera flash.

In the photograph she was in a group of four people. The other woman was the estranged wife of a pop singer, the sulky expression, slightly skew eyes and bee-stung lips a landmark on the Parisian social scene. Her partner was a freckled, boyish-faced American actor in a laid-back velvet suit with gold chains around his throat, more famous for his sexual exploits than his film roles. They were not the type of persons with whom Magda Altmann habitually associated, but the man beside her, on whose arm she leaned lightly, was much more her style.

He was fortyish, dark and handsome in a fleshy heavily built way, with dense wavy hair, and he exuded the special aura of power and confidence that befitted the head of the biggest German automobile manufacturing complex. The caption below the photograph had them attending the opening of an exclusive new Parisian discotheque again this was not Magda Altmann's habitual territory, but she was smiling brilliantly at the tall handsome German, so obviously enjoying herself that Peter felt a stinging shaft of emotion thrust-up under his ribs.

Hatred or jealousy he was not certain and he slapped the magazine closed and returned it to its rack.

In the impersonal antiseptically furnished suite he stripped and showered, and then standing naked in the small lounge of the suite he poured himself a whisky. It was his third that evening.

Since the kidnapping he had been drinking more than ever before in his life, he realized. It could exert an insidious hold when a man was lonely and in grave doubt. He would have to begin watching it. He took a sip of the smoky amber liquid and turned to look at himself in the mirror across the room.

Since he had been back in Brussels, he had worked out each day in the gymnasium at the NATO officers" club where he still had membership, and his body was lean and hard with a belly like -a greyhound's only the face was ravaged by strain and worry and, it seemed, by some deep unutterable regret.

He turned back towards the bedroom of the suite, and the telephone rang.

"Stride," he said into the mouthpiece, standing still naked with the glass in his right hand.

"Please hold on, General Stride. We have an international call for you." The delay seemed interminable with heavy buzzing and clicking on the line, and the distant voices of other operators speaking bad French or even worse English.

Then suddenly her voice, but faint and so far away that "Peter, are you there?" it sounded like a whisper in a vast and empty hall.

"Magda?" He felt the shock of it, and his voice echoed back at him from the receiver; there was the click before she spoke again, that switch of carrier wave that told him they were on a radio telephone link.

"I have to see you, Peter. I cannot go on like this. Will you come to me, please, Peter?"

"Where are you?"

"Les Neuf Poissons." Her voice was so faint, so distorted, that he asked her to repeat it.

"Les Neuf Poissons The Nine Fishes," she repeated.

"Will you come, Peter?"

"Are you crying?" he demanded, and the silence echoed and clicked and hummed so he thought they had lost contact, and he felt a flare of alarm so his voice was harsh as he asked again. "Are you crying?"

"Yes." It was only a breath, he might have imagined it.

"Why?"

"Because I am sad and frightened, Peter. Because I am alone, Peter. Will you come, please will you come?"

"Yes," he said.

"How do I get there?"

"Ring Gaston at La Pierre Benite. He will arrange it. But come quickly, Peter. As quickly as you can."

"Yes.

As soon as I can but where is it?" He waited for her reply, but now the distances of the ether echoed with the sound of utter finality.

"Magda? Magda?" He found himself shouting desperately, but the silence taunted him and reluctantly he pressed a finger down on the cradle of the telephone.

"Les Neuf Poissons," he repeated softly, and lifted the finger.

"Operator," he said, "please get me a call to France Rambouillet 47-87-47." And while he waited he was thinking swiftly.

This was what he had been subconsciously waiting for, he realized.

There was a feeling of inevitability to it, the wheel could only turn it could not roll sideways. This was what had to happen.

Caliph had no alternative. This was the summons to 3.38 execution. He was only surprised that it had not come sooner. He would see why Caliph would have avoided the attempt in the cities of Europe or England. One such attempt well planned and executed with great force had failed that night on the road to Rambouillet. It would have been a warning to Caliph not to underestimate the victim's ability to retaliate for the rest, the problems would have been almost the same as those that Peter had faced when planning the strike against Caliph herself.

The when and the where and the how and Caliph had the edge here.

She could summon him to the selected place but how incredibly skilfully it had been done. As he waited for the call to Rambouillet,

Peter marvelled at the woman afresh. There seemed no bottom to her well of talent and accomplishments despite himself, knowing full well that he was listening to a carefully rehearsed act, despite the fact that he knew her to be a ruthless and merciless killer, yet his heart had twisted at the tones of despair in her voice, the muffled weeping perfectly done, so he had only just been able to identify it.

"This is the residence-of Baroness Altmann."

"Gaston?"

"Speaking, sir."

"General Stride."

"Good evening, General. I was expecting your call. I spoke to the Baroness earlier. She asked me to arrange your passage to Les Neuf Poissons. I have done so."

"Where is it, Gaston?"

"Les Neuf Poissons it's the Baroness's holiday island in the Iles sous le Vent it is necessary to take the UTA flight to Papeete-Faaa on Tahiti where the Baroness's pilot will meet you. It's another hundred miles to Les Neuf Poissons and unfortunately the airstrip is too short to accommodate the Lear jet one has to use a smaller aircraft."

"When did the Baroness go to Les Neuf Poissons?"

"She left seven days ago, General, "Gaston answered, and immediately went on in the smooth, efficient secretarial voice to give Peter the details of the UTA flight. " The ticket will be held at the UTA check-in counter for you, General, and I have reserved a nonsmoking seat at the window."

"You think of everything. Thank you, Gaston." Peter replaced the receiver, and found that his earlier exhaustion had left him he felt vital and charged with new energy. The elation of a trained soldier facing the prospect of violent action, he wondered, or was it merely the prospect of an end to the indecision and the fear of unknown things? Soon, for good or for evil, it would be settled and he welcomed that.

He went through into the bathroom and pitched the whisky that remained in his glass into the hand basing.

The UTA DC 10 made its final approach to Tahiti from the east, slanting down the sky with the jagged peaks of Moorea under the port wing. Peter remembered the spectacularly riven mountains of Tahiti's tiny satellite island as the backdrop of the musical movie South Pacific that had been filmed on location here. The volcanic rock was black and un weathered so that its crests were as sharp as sharks fangs.

They arrowed down across the narrow channel between the two islands, and the runway seemed to reach out an arm into the sea to welcome the big silver machine.

The air was heavy and warm and redolent with the perfume of frangipani blossoms, and there were luscious brown girls swinging and swaying gracefully in a dance of welcome. The islands reached out with almost overpowering sweetness and friendliness but as Peter picked his single light bag out of the hold luggage and started for the exit doors, something unusual happened. One of the Polynesian customs officers at the gate exchanged a quick word with his companion and then politely stepped into Peter's path.

"Good afternoon, the smile was big and friendly, but it did not stretch as far as the eyes. "Would you be kind enough to step this way." The two customs men escorted Peter into the tiny screened office.

"Please open your bags, sir." Swiftly but thoroughly they went through his valise and crocodile-skin briefcase; one of them even used a measuring stick to check both cases for a hidden compartment.

"I must congratulate you on your efficiency," said Peter, smiling also, but his voice tight and low.

"A random check, sir." The senior officer answered his smile.

"You were just unlucky to be the ten thousandth visitor. Now, sir, I hope you won't object to a body search?"

"A body search?" Peter snapped, and would have protested further, but instead he shrugged and raised both arms. "Go ahead." He could imagine that Magda Altmann was as much the Grande Dame here as she was in mother France. She owned the entire island group and it would need only a nod to have an incoming visitor thoroughly searched for weapons of any sort.

He could imagine also that Caliph would be very concerned that the intended victim should be suitably prepared for execution, lest he should inadvertently become the executioner.

The one customs Officer checked his arms and flanks from armpit to waist, while the other knelt behind him and checked inside the outside of his legs from crotch to ankle.

Peter had left the Cobra in the safe deposit box in the Hilton in Brussels. He had anticipated something like this, it was the way Caliph would work.

"Satisfied?" he asked.

"Thank you for your co-operation, sir. Have a lovely stay on our island." Magda's personal pilot was waiting for Peter in the main concourse, and hurried forward to shake his hand.

"I was worried that you were not on the flight."

"A small delay in customs," Peter explained.

"We should leave immediately, if we are to avoid a night landing on Les Neuf Poissons the strip is a little difficult." Magda's Gates

Lear was parked on the hardstand near the service area, and beside it the Norman Britten Tri Islander looked small and ungainly, a stork-like ugly aircraft capable of the most amazing performance in short take-off and landing situations.

The body of the machine was already loaded with crates and cantons of supplies, everything from toilet rolls to Veuve Cliquot champagne, all tied down under a wide meshed nylon net.

Peter took the right-hand seat, and the pilot started up and cleired with control, then to Peter: "One hour's flying. We will just make it." The setting sun was behind them as they came in from the west and Les Neuf Poissons lay like a precious necklace of emeralds upon the blue velvet cushion of the ocean.

There were nine islands in the characteristic circular pattern of volcanic formation, and they enclosed a lagoon of water so limpid that every whorl and twist of the coral outcrops showed through as clearly as if they were in air.

"The islands had a Polynesian name when the Baron purchased them back in 1945," the pilot explained in the clearly articulated rather pedantic French of the Midi. "They were given by one of the old kings as a gift to a missionary he favoured and the Baron purchased them from his widow.

The Baron could not pronounce the Polynesian name so he changed it-" The pilot chuckled. " The Baron was a man who faced the world on his own terms." Seven of the islands were merely strips of sand and fringes of palms, but the two to the east were larger with hills of volcanic basalt glittering like the skin of a great reptile in the rays of the lowering sun.

As they turned onto their downwind leg, Peter had a view through the window at his elbow of a central building with its roof of palm thatch elegantly curved like the prow of a ship in the tradition of the islands, and around it half-hidden in luscious green gardens were other smaller bungalows. Then they were over the lagoon and there were a clutter of small vessels around the long jetty which reached out into the protected waters Hobie-cats with bare masts, a big powered schooner which was probably used to ship the heavy stores such as dieseline down from Papeete, power boats for skiing and diving and fishing. One of them was out in the middle of the lagoon, tearing a snowy ostrich feather of wake from the surface as it ran at speed; a tiny figure towed on skis behind it lifted an arm and waved a greeting.

Peter thought it might be her, but at that moment the Tri-Islander banked steeply onto its base leg and he was left with only a view of cumulus cloud bloodied by the setting sun.

The runway was short and narrow, hacked from the palm plantation on the strip of level land between beach and hills. It was surfaced with crushed coral. They made their final approach over a tall palisade of palm trees. Peter saw that the pilot had not exaggerated by calling it a little difficult. There was a spiteful crosswind rolling in and breaking over the hills and it rocked the Tri-Islander's wings sickeningly. The pilot crabbed her in, heading half into the wind, and as he skimmed in over the palm tops, closed the throttles, kicked her straight with the rudders, lowered a wing into the wind to hold her from drifting and dropped her neatly fifty feet over the threshold, perfectly aligned with the short runway so she kissed and sat down solidly; instantly the pilot whipped the wheel to full lock into the crosswind to prevent a ground loop and brought her up short.

Tarfait!" Peter grunted with involuntary admiration, and the man looked slightly startled as though the feat deserved no special mention. Baroness Altmann employed only the very best.

There was an electric golf cart driven by a young Polynesian girl waiting at the end of the strip amongst the palm trees. She wore only a pa reo wrapped around her body below the armpits, a single length of crimson and gold patterned cloth that fell to mid thigh. Her feet were bare, but around her pretty head she wore a crown of fresh flowers the ma eva of the islands.

She drove the golf cart at a furious pace along narrow winding tracks through the gardens that were a rare collection of exotic plants, skilfully laid out, so that there was an exquisite Surprise around each turn of the path.

His bungalow was above the beach with white sand below the verandah and the ocean stretching to the horizon, secluded as though it were the only building on the island. Like a child the island girl took his hand, a gesture of perfect innocence, and led him through the bungalow, showing him the controls for the air-conditioning, lighting and the video screen, explaining it all in lisping French patois, and giggling at his expression of pleasure.

There was a fully stocked bar and kitchenette, the small library contained all the current best-sellers, and the newspapers and magazines were only a few days old. The offerings on the video screen included half a dozen recent successful features and Oscar winners.

"Hell, Robinson Crusoe should have landed here," Peter chuckled, and the girl giggled and wriggled like a friendly little puppy in sympathy.

She came to fetch him again two hours later, after he had showered and shaved and rested and changed into a light cotton tropical suit with open shirt and sandals.

Again she held his hand and Peter sensed that if a man had taken the gesture as licence the girl would have been hurt and confused. By the hand she led him along a path that was demarcated by cunningly concealed glow lights, and the night was filled with the murmur of the ocean and the gentle rustle and clatter of palm fronds moving in the wind.

Then they came to the long ship-roofed building he had seen from the air. There was soft music and laughter, but when he stepped into the light the laughter stopped and half a dozen figures turned to him expectantly.

Peter was not sure what he had expected, but it was not this gay, social gathering, tanned men and women in expensive and elegant casual wear, holding tall frosted glasses filled with ice and fruit.

"Peter!" Magda Altmann broke from the group, and came to him with that gliding hip-swinging walk.

She wore a soft, shimmering, wheaten-gold dress, held high at the throat with a thin gold chain, but completely nude across the shoulders and down her back to within an inch of the cleft of her buttocks. It was breathtaking for her body was smooth as a rose petal and tanned to the colour of new honey. The dark hair was twisted into a rope as thick as her wrist and piled up onto the top of her head, and she had touched her eyes with shadows so they were slanting and green and mysterious.

"Peter," she repeated, and kissed him lightly upon the lips, a brush like a moth's wing, and her perfume touched him as softly, the fragrance of Quadrille flowering with the warmth and magic of her body.

He felt his senses tilt. With all he knew of her, yet he was still not hardened to her physical presence.

She was cool and groomed and poised as she had ever been, there was no trace at all of the confusion and fearsome loneliness that he had heard in those muffled choked-down sobs from halfway across the world not until she stepped back to tilt her head on one side, surveying him swiftly, smiling lightly.

"Oh, cheri, you are looking so much better. I was so worried about you when last I saw you." Only then he thought he was able to detect the shadows deep in her eyes, and the tightness at the corners of her mouth.

"And you are more beautiful than I remembered." It was true, so he could say it without reserve, and she laughed, a single soft purr of pleasure.

"You never said that before," she reminded him, but still her manner was brittle. Her show of affection and friendliness might have convinced him at another time, but not now. "And I am grateful." Now she took his arm, her fingers in the crook of his elbow, and she led him to the waiting group of guests as though she did not trust herself to be alone with him another moment lest she reveal some forbidden part of herself.

There were three men and their wives: an American Democrat senator of considerable political influence, a man with a magnificent head of silver hair, eyes like dead oysters, and a beautiful wife at least thirty years his junior who looked at Peter the way a lion looks at a gazelle and held his hand seconds longer than was necessary.

There was an Australian, heavy in the shoulder and big in the gut.

His skin was tanned leathery and his eyes were framed in a network of wrinkles. They seemed to be staring through dust and sun glare at distant horizons. He owned a quarter of the world's known uranium reserves, and cattle stations whose area was twice the size of the British Isles.

His wife was as tanned and her handshake was as firm as his.

The third man was a Spaniard whose family name was synonymous with sherry, an urbane and courtly Don, but with that fierce Moorish rake to his thin features. Peter had read somewhere that the sherry and cognac ageing in this man's cellars was valued at over five hundred million dollars, and that formed only a small part of his family's investments.

His wife was a darkly brooding Spanish beauty with an extraordinary streak of chalk white through the peak of her otherwise black hair.

As soon as the group had assimilated Peter, the talk turned back easily to the day's sport. The Australian had boated a huge black marlin that morning, a fish over one thousand pounds in weight and fifteen feet from the point of its bill to the tip of its deep sickle tail, and the company was elated.

Peter took little part in the conversation, but watched Magda Altmann covertly. Yet she was fully aware of his scrutiny; he could see it in the way she held her hand, and the tension in her whole long slim body, but she laughed easily with the others and glanced at Peter only once or twice, each time with a smile, but the shadows were in the green depths of her eyes.

Finally she clapped her hands. "Come, everybody, we are going to open the feast." She linked arms with the senator and the Australian and led them down onto the beach.

Peter was left to cope with the senator's wife, and pushed her bosom against his upper arm and ran her tongue lightly over her lips as she clung to him.

Two of the Polynesian servants were waiting beside a long mound of white beach sand, and at Magda's signal they attacked it with shovels, swiftly exposing a thick layer of seaweed and banana leaves from which poured columns of thick and fragrant steam. Below that was a rack of banyan wood and palm fronds which suspended the feast over another layer of seaweed and live coals.

There were exclamations of delight as the aroma of chicken and fish and pork mingled with those of breadfruit and plantains and spices.

"Ah, a success," Magda declared gaily. "If any air is allowed to enter the bake we lose it all. It burns, poof! And we are left with only charcoal." While they feasted and drank the talk and laughter became louder and less restrained, but Peter made the single drink last the evening and waited quietly not joining the conversation and ignoring the blandishments of the senator's wife.

He was waiting for some indication of when and from what direction it would come. Not here, he knew, not in this company. When it came it would be swift and efficient as everything else that Caliph did.

And suddenly he wondered at his own conceit, that had allowed him to walk, entirely unarmed and unsupported, into the arena selected and prepared by his enemy. He knew his best defence was to strike first, perhaps this very night if the opportunity offered. The sooner the safer, he realized, and Magda smiled at him across the table set under the palm trees and laden with enough food to feed fifty. When he smiled back at her, she beckoned with a slight inclination of her head, and then while the men argued and bantered loudly, she murmured an apology to the women and slipped unobtrusively into the shadows.

Peter gave her a count of fifty before he followed her.

She was waiting along the beach. He saw the flash of her bare smooth back in the moonlight and he went forward to where she stood staring out across the wind-ruffled waters of the lagoon

He came up behind her, and she did not turn her head but her voice was a whisper.

"I am so glad you came, Peter."

"I am so glad you asked me to." He touched the back of her neck, just behind her ear.

The ear had an almost elfin point to it that he had not noticed before and the un swept hair at her nape was silken under his fingertips. He could just locate the axis, that delicate bone at the base of the skull which the hangman aims to crush with the drop. He could do it with the pressure of thumb and it would be as quick as the knot.

am so sorry about the others," she said. "But I am getting rid of them with almost indecent haste, I'm afraid." She reached up over her shoulder and took his hand from her neck, and he did not resist.

Gently she spread the hand, and then pressed the open palm to her cheek. "They will leave early tomorrow. Pierre is flying them back to Papeete, and then we will have Les Neuf Poissons to ourselves just you and I-" And then that husky little chuckle." And thirty-odd servants." He could understand exactly why it would be that way.

The only witnesses would be the faithful retainers of the Grande Dame of the islands.

"Now we MUSt. go back. Unfortunately my guests are very important, and I cannot ignore them longer but tomorrow will come. Too slowly for me, Peter but it will come." She turned in the circle of his arms and kissed him with a sudden startling ferocity, so his lips were crushed against his teeth, and then she broke from him and whispered close to his ear.

"Whatever way it goes, Peter, we have had something of value, you and I. Perhaps the most precious thing I have had in my life. They can never take that away from me." And then she was out of his arms with that uncanny speed and grace of movement and gliding back along the path towards the lights. He followed her slowly, confused and uncertain as to what she had meant by those last words, concluding finally that the purpose had been exactly that to confuse and unbalance him, and at that moment he sensed rather than heard movement behind him, and instantly whirled and ducked.

The man was ten paces behind him, had come like a leopard, silently from the cover of a fall of lianas and flowering creepers beside the path; only some Minimal instinct had warned Peter and his body flowed into the fighting stance, balanced, strung like a nocked arrow, at once ready both to attack and meet attack.

"Good evening, General Stride." Peter only just managed to arrest himself, and he straightened slowly but with each hand still extended stiffly at his side like the blade of a meat cleaver, and as lethal.

"Carl! he said. So the grey wolves had been close, within feet of them, guarding their mistress even in that intimate moment.

"I hope I did not alarm you," said the bodyguard and though Peter could not see the man's expression, there was a faint mockery in his voice, If there was confirmation needed, complete and final, this was it. Only Caliph would have need of a guard on a romantic assignment. Peter knew then beyond any doubt that either he or Magda Altmann would be dead by sunset the following evening before going into the bungalow he made a stealthy -prowling circuit of the bushes and shrubs that surrounded it. He found nothing suspicious but in the interior the bed had been prepared and his shaving gear cleaned and neatly rearranged. His soiled clothing had been taken for cleaning and the other clothing had been pressed and rearranged more neatly than his own unpacking. He could not therefore be certain that his other possessions had not been searched, but it was safe to presume they had.

Caliph would not neglect such an elementary precaution. " The locks on doors and windows were inadequate, had probably not been used in years, for there had been no serpents in this paradise, not until recently. So he placed chairs and other obstacles in such a way that an intruder should stumble over them in the dark, and then he rumpled the bed and arranged the pillows to look like a sleeping figure, but took a single blanket to the long couch in the private lounge. He did not really expect an attempt before the other guests left the island, but if it came he would confuse Caliph's scenario as much as possible.

He slept fitfully, jerking awake when a falling palm frond rattled across the roof, or the moon threw picture shadows on the wall across the room. just before dawn he fell into a deeper sleep and his dreams were distorted and nonsensical, only the sharp clear image of Melissa-Jane's terror-stricken face and her silent screams of horror remained with him when he woke. The memory roused in him the cold lust for vengeance which had abated a little in the weeks since her rescue and he felt reaffirmed, possessed of a steely purpose once more, determined to resist the softening, fatal allure of Caliph.

He rose in the slippery pearl light of not yet dawn, and went down to the beach. He swam out a mile beyond the reef, and had a long pull back against a rogue current, but he came ashore feeling good and hard and alert as he had not been in weeks.

All right, he thought grimly. Let it come. I'm as ready as I'll ever be.

There was a farewell breakfast for the departing guests, on the sugary sands of the beach that had been swept smooth by the night tide pink Laurent Perrier champagne and hothouse strawberries flown in from Auckland, New Zealand.

Magda Altmann wore brief green pants that showed off her long shapely legs to perfection, and a matching "boob tube" across her small neat breasts but her belly and shoulders and back were bare. It was the body of a finely trained athlete, but drawn by a great artist.

She seemed unnaturally elated to Peter, her gaiety was slightly forced and the low purring laughter just a little too ready and with a saw-edge to it. It was almost as though she had made some hard decision, and was steeling herself to carry it through. Peter thought of them as true opponents who had trained carefully for the coming configuration like prize fighters at the weigh-in.

After the breakfast they rode up in a cavalcade of electric carts to the airfield. The senator, revved-up with pink champagne and sweating lightly in the rising heat, gave Magda an over-affectionate farewell, but she skilfully avoided his hands and shunted him expertly into the Tri Islander after the other passengers.

Pierre, Magda's pilot, stood on the brakes at the end of the runway while he ran all three engines up to full power.

Then he let her go, and the moment she had speed he rotated her into a nose-high obstacle-clearance attitude.

The Ungainly machine itimped into the sky and went over the palms at the end of the short strip with five hundred feet to spare and Magda turned to Peter ecstatically.

"I hardly slept last night, "she admitted, as she kissed him.

"Neither did I," Peter told her and then he added silently" for the same reasons, I'm sure."

"I've planned a special day for us," she went on. "And I don't want to waste another minute of it." The head boatman had Magda's big forty-five-foot Chriscraft Fisherman singled up at the end of the jetty. It was a beautiful boat, with long low attacking lines that made it seem to be flying even when on its mooring lines, and loving care had very obviously been lavished upon it. The paintwork was unmarked and the stainless steel fittings were polished to a mirror finish. The boatman beamed happily when Magda commended him with a smile and a word.

"Tanks are full, Baronne. The scuba bottles are charged and the light rods are rigged. The water-skis are in the main racks, and the chef came down himself to check the icebox." However, his wide white smile faded when he learned that Magda was taking the boat out alone.

"Don't you trust me? "she laughed.

"Oh, of course, Baronne-" But he could not hide his chagrin at having to give over his charge even to such a distinguished captain.

He handled the lines himself, casting her off, and calling anxious last-minute advice to Magda as the gap between jetty and vessel opened.

"Ne t'kquiet pas!" she laughed at him, but he made a dejected figure standing on the end of the jetty as Magda slowly opened up both diesels and the Chris-craft came up on the plane and seemed almost to break free of the surface.

Her wake was scored deep and clean and straight through the gin-clear water of the lagoon, a tribute to the design of her hull, and then it curved out gracefully behind them as Magda made the turn between the channel markers and lined her up for the passage through the reef, and out into the open Pacific.

"Where are we going?"

"There is an old Japanese aircraft carrier lying in a hundred feet of water beyond the reef. Yankee aircraft sank her back in "forty-four It is a beautiful site for scuba diving. We will go there first-" How? Peter wondered. Perhaps one of the scuba bottles had been partially filled with carbon monoxide gas. It was simply done, with a hose from the exhaust of the diesel generator:

simply pass the exhaust gases through a charcoal filter to remove the taste and smell of unconsumed hydra carbons and the remaining carbon monoxide gas would be undetectable. Fill the bottle to 30 atmospheres of pressure then top it up with clean air to its operating pressure of 10 atmospheres. It would be swift, but not too swift to alarm the victim, a gentle long sleep. When the victim lost his mouthpiece, the bottles would purge themselves of any trace of the gas. That would be a good way to do it.

"After that we can go ashore on The des Oiseaux. Since Aaron stopped the islanders stealing the eggs to eat, we've got one of the biggest nesting colonies of terns and noddies and frigate birds in the Southern Pacific-" Perhaps a spear gun That would be direct and effective.

At short range, say two feet, even below the surface, the spear arrow would go right through a human torso in between the shoulder blades and out through the breast bone.

And afterwards we can water-ski-" With an unsuspecting skier in the water, awaiting the pick-up, what could be more effective than opening up both those tremendously powerful diesels to the gates and running the victim down? If the hull did not crush him, the twin screws turning at 500 revolutions per minute would cut him up as neatly as a loaf of pre-sliced bread.

Peter found himself intrigued with the guessing-game.

He found himself regretting the fact that he would never know what she intended, and he looked back from where they stood side by side on the tall flying bridge of the Chriscraft. The main island was lowering itself into the water already they were out of sight of anybody who did not have a pair of powerful binoculars.

Beside him Magda pulled the retaining ribbon out of her hair, and shook loose a black rippling banner that streamed in the wind behind her.

"Let's do this for ever," she shouted above the wind and the boom of the engines.

"Sold to the lady with the sexy backside," Peter shouted back, and he had to remind himself that she was one of the most carefully trained killers he would ever meet. He must not allow himself to be lulled by the laughter and the beauty and he must not allow her to make the first stroke, His chances of surviving that were remote.

He glanced back again at the land. Any minute now, he thought, and moved as though to glance over the side, getting slightly into her rear, but still in the periphery of her vision; she shifted slightly towards him still smiling.

"At this state of the tide there are always amberjack in the channel. I promised the chef I would bring him a couple of them kicking fresh, she explained. "Won't you go down and get two of the light rods ready, cheri? The feather lures are in the forward starboard seat locker."

"Okay,"he nodded.

"I'll throttle back to trolling speed when I make the turn into the channel put the lines in then."

OK."

"And then on an impulse. "But kiss me first." She held up her face to him, and he wondered why he had said that. It was not to take farewell of her. He was sure of that. It was to lull her just that fraction, and yet as their lips met he felt the deep ache of regret that he had controlled for so long and as her mouth spread slowly and moistly open under his, he felt as though his heart might break then. For a moment he felt that he might die himself before he could do it; dark waves of despair poured over him.

He slid his hand over her shoulder to the nape of her neck and her body flattened against his; he caressed her lightly, feeling for the place, and then settling thumb and forefinger a second, another second passed, and then she pulled him back softly.

"Hey, now!" she whispered huskily. "You stop that before I pile up on the reef." He had not been able to do it with his bare hands. He just could not do it like that but he had to do it quickly, very quickly. Every minute delayed now led him deeper and deeper into deadly danger.

"Go!" she ordered, and struck him a playful blow on the chest.

"We've got time for that later all the time in the world. Let's savour it, every moment of it." He had not been able to do it, and he turned away. It was only as he went down the steel ladder into the cockpit of the Chris-craft that it suddenly occurred to him that during the lingering seconds of that kiss the fingers of her right hand had cupped lovingly under his chin. She could have crushed his larynx, paralysing him with a thumb driven up into the soft vulnerable arch of his throat at the first offensive pressure of his thumb and forefinger.

As his feet hit the deck of the cockpit another thought came to him. Her other hand had lain against his body, stroking him softly under the ribs. That hand could have struck upwards and inwards to tear through his diaphragm his instincts must have warned him. She had been poised for the stroke, more so than he was; she had been inside the circle of his arms, inside his de fences waiting for him and he shivered briefly in the hot morning sun at the realization of how close he had been to death.

The realization turned instantly to something else, that slid down his spine cold as water down a melting icicle. It was fear, not the crippling fear of the craven, but fear that edged him and hirdened him. Next time he would not hesitate he could not hesitate.

He was instinctively carrying out her instructions as his mind raced to catch up with the problem. He lifted the lid of the seat locker. In the custom-fitted interior were arranged trays of fishing gear, swivels of brass and stainless steel in fifty different sizes; sinkers shaped for every type of water and bottom; lures of plastic and feathers, of enamel and bright metal; hooks for gigantic bill fish or for fry and in a separate compartment in the side tray a bait knife.

The knife was a fifty-dollar Ninja with a lexan composition handle, cheque red and moulded for grip. The blade was seven inches of hollow ground steel, three inches broad at the hilt and tapering to a stiletto point. It was a brutal weapon, you could probably chop through an oak log with it, as the makers advertised. Certainly it would enter human flesh and go through bone as though it were Cheddar cheese.

It balanced beautifully in Peter's fist as he made one testing slash and return cut with it. The blade hissed in the air, and when he tested the edge too hurriedly it stung like a razor and left a thin line of bright blood across the ball of his thumb.

He kicked off his canvas sneakers, so the rubber soles did not squeak on the deck. He was dressed now in only a thin cotton singlet and boxer type swimming trunks, stripped down for action.

He went up the first three rungs of the ladder on bare silent feet, and lifted his eyes above the level of the flying bridge.

Magda Altmann stood at the controls of the Chris-craft, conning the big vessel into the mouth of the channel, staring ahead in complete concentration.

Her hair still flew in the wind, snaking and tangling into thick shimmering tresses. Her naked back was turned to him, the deeply defined depression running down her spine and the crest of smooth hard muscle rising on each side of it.

One leg of her pants had tucked up slightly exposing a half-moon of round white buttock, and her legs were long and sup pleas a dancer's as she balanced on the balls of her narrow feet, raising herself to see ahead over the bows.

Peter had been gone from the bridge for less than ten seconds, and she was completely unaware, completely unsuspecting.

Peter did not make the same mistake again; he went up the ladder in a single swift bound, and the bellow of the diesels covered any sound he might have made.

With the knife you never take the chance of the point turning against bone, if you have a choice of target.

Peter picked the small of the back, at the level of the kidneys where there was no bone to protect the body cavity.

It is essential to put the blade in with all possible power; this decreases the chance of bone-deflection and it peaks the paralysing effect of impact-shock.

Peter put the full weight of his rush behind the thrust.

The paralysis is total if the blade is twisted a half-turn at the same instant that the blade socks in hilt-deep.

The muscles in Peter's right forearm were bunched in anticipation of the moment in which he would twist the blade viciously in her flesh, quadrupling the size and the trauma of the wound.

The polished stainless steel fascia of the Chris-craft's control panel reflected a distorted image, like those funny mirrors of the fairground. Only at the moment that Peter had committed himself completely, at the moment when he had thrown all his weight into the killing stroke, did he realize with a sickening flash that she was watching him in the polished steel control panel; she had been watching him from the moment he reappeared at the head of the ladder.

The curved Surface of the steel distorted] her face, so that it appeared to consist only of two enormous eyes; it distracted him in that thousandth part of a second before the point of the blade entered flesh. He did not see her move.

Blinding, numbing agony shot down his right flank and arm, from a point in the hollow where his collar bone joined the upper arm, while at the same instant something hit him on the inside of his forearm just below the elbow.

The knife stroke was flung outwards, passing an inch from her hip, and the point of the blade crashed into the control panel in front of her, scaring the metal with a deep bright scratch, but Peter's numbed fingers could not keep hold on the hilt. The weapon spun from his grip, ringing like a crystal wine glass as it struck the steel handrail and rebounded over the side of the bridge into the cockpit behind him.

He realized that she had struck backwards at him, not turning to face him but using only the reflection in the control panel to judge her blow with precision into the pressure point of his shoulder.

Now pain had crippled him and the natural reaction was to clutch at the source of it. Instead with some reflexive instinct of survival he flung up his left hand to protect the side of his neck and the next blow, also thrown backwards, felt as though it had come from a full-blooded swing of a baseball bat. He hardly saw it, it came so fast and hard there was just the flicker of movement across his vision, like the blur of a hummingbird's wing, and then the appalling force of it crushing into the muscle of his forearm.

Had it taken him in the neck where it was aimed, it would have killed him instantly; instead it paralysed his other arm, and she was turning into him now effortlessly matching his bull strength with a combination of speed and control.

He knew he must try and keep her close, smother her with his weight and size and strength and he hooked at her with the clawed crippled fingers of his knife hand; they caught for a moment and then she jerked free. He had ripped away the flimsy strip of elasticized cloth that covered her breasts, and she spun lightly under and out of the sweep of his other arm as he. tried desperately to club her down with his forearm.

He saw that her face was bone-white with the adrenalin overdose coursing through her blood. Her lips were drawn back into a fixed snarl of concentration and fury and her teeth seemed as sharp as those of a female leopard in a trap.

It was like fighting a leopard; she attacked him with an unrelenting savagery and total lack of fear, no longer human, dedicated only to his total destruction.

The long hair swirled about him, at one moment flicking like a whiplash into his eyes to blind and unbalance him, and she weaved and dodged and struck like a mongoose at the cobra, every movement flowing into the next, her taunting red-tipped breasts dancing and jerking with each blow she hurled at him.

With a jar of disbelief, Peter realized that she was beating him down. So far he had managed barely to survive each blow that he caught on arm and shoulder; each time her bare feet crashed into his thigh or lower belly, each time her knees drove for his groin and jarred against the bone of his pelvis, he felt a little more of his strength dissipate, felt his reactions becoming more rubbery, just that instant slower. He had countered her attack with luck and instinct, but any instant she must land solidly and drop him, for she was never still, cutting him with hands and feet, keeping him off balance and he had not hurt her yet, had not touched her with any of his counter-strokes.

Still there was no feeling in his hands and fingers. He needed respite, he needed a weapon, and he thought desperately of the knife that had fallen into the cockpit behind him.

He gave ground to her next attack, and the bridge rail caught him in the small of the back; at the same moment another of her strokes aimed at the soft of his throat deflected off his arm and crunched into his nose. Instantly his eyes flooded with tears, and he felt the warm salt flood of blood over his upper lip and down the back of his throat; he doubled over swiftly, then in the same movement he threw himself backwards, like a diver making a one-and-ahalf from the three-metre board. The rail behind him helped his turn in the air, and he had judged it finely. He landed like a cat on both feet on the deck of the cockpit ten feet below the bridge, flexing at the knees to absorb the shock, and flicking the tears from his eyes, wringing his arms to return blood and feeling.

As he spun into a crouch he saw the knife. It had slid down the cockpit into the stern scuppers. He went for it.

The dive had taken her by surprise, just as she was poised for the final killing stroke to the back of his exposed neck, but she swirled to the head of the ladder and gathered herself while below her Peter launched himself across the cockpit for the big ugly Ninja knife.

She went for him feet first, dropping from ten feet, and the bare soles of her feet hit him together, the impetus of her falling body enhanced by the stabbing kick that she released at the moment that she hit him.

She caught him high in the back, hurling him forward so that the top of his head cracked into the bulkhead and darkness rustled through his head. He felt his senses going, and it required all of his resolve to roll over and pull his knees swiftly to his chest, to guard himself against the next killing stroke. He caught it on his shins, and once again launched himself after the knife. His fingers felt swollen and clumsy on the rough cheque red surface of the hilt, and at the moment they touched he unwound his doubled-up body like a steel coil spring, lashing out with both feet together.

It was a blind stroke, delivered in complete desperation.

It was the first solid blow he had landed; it caught her at the moment when she had already launched herself into her next onslaught; both his feet slammed into her belly just below the ribs, and had the flesh there been soft or yielding it would have ended it; but she was just able to absorb the force of it with flat hard muscle though it hurled her backwards across the cockpit with the breath hissing from her lungs and the long slim body doubling over in an agonized convulsion.

Peter realized that this was the only chance that he had had, and the only one he would ever have yet his body was racked with such pain that he could hardly drag himself up onto his elbow, and his vision swam and blurred with tears and blood and sweat.

He did not know how he had managed it, some supreme exertion of will, but he was on his feet with the knife in his hand, instinctively extending the blade down the back of his right thigh to keep it protected until the moment it had to be used, crouching as he went in, left arm raised as a shield and knowing that now he had to end it swiftly, he could not go on longer. "this was his last effort.

Then she had a weapon also. Moving so swiftly that it had happened before she was halfway across the cockpit, she had knocked the retaining clip off the boat hook that stood in the rack beside the cabin entrance.

It was eight feet of heavy varnished ash, with an ornate but vicious brass head, and she cut at him with a low swinging warning blow to hold him off while she forced air back into her empty lungs.

She was recovering swiftly, much more swiftly than Peter himself.

He could see the cold killing light rekindle in her eyes. He knew he could not go on much longer, he must risk it all in one last total effort.

He threw the knife, aiming at her head. The Ninja, not designed as a throwing weapon, rolled out of line of flight, hilt foremost but still it forced her to lift the staff of the boat hook and deflect it.

It was the distraction he had wanted.

Peter used the momentum of his throw to go in under the swinging staff, and he hit her with his shoulder while her arms were raised.

Both of them reeled backwards into the cabin bulkhead, and Peter groped desperately for a grip. He found it in the thick lustrous tresses of her hair, and he wove his fingers into it.

She fought like a dying animal with strength and fury and courage that he could never have believed possible, but now at last he could pit his superior weight and strength directly against hers.

He smothered her against his chest, trapping one arm between their bodies, while he was able to pull her head backwards at an impossible angle, exposing the long smooth curve of her throat.

And then he scissored his thighs across her, so that those lethal feet and legs were unable to reach him, and they crashed over onto the deck.

She managed with an incredible effort to swing her weight so that she landed on top of him, her breasts sliding against his chest, lubricated by sweat and blood that dribbled down from his nose, but Peter heaved all his remaining strength into his shoulders and rolled back on top of her.

They were locked breast to chest and groin to groin in some bizarre parody of the act of love, only the stock of the boat hook between them.

Peter twisted down hard on the rope of hair in his left hand, pinning her head to the deck so that her eyes were only six inches from his and blood from his nose and mouth dripped onto her upturned face.

Neither of them had spoken a word, the only sound the hiss and suck of laboured breathing, the explosive grunt of a blow delivered or the involuntary gasp of pain as it landed.

They glared into each other's eyes, and at that moment neither of them was a human being, they were two animals fighting to the death, and Peter shifted quickly so the stock of the boat hook fell across her unprotected throat. She had not been ready for that and she ducked her chin too late.

Peter knew he could not dare to release his grip on her hair, nor the arm around her body, nor the scissors that enfolded her legs. He -could feel the steely tension of her whole body, that required all his own strength to hold. If he relaxed his grip in the slightest, she would twist away, and he would not have the strength to go on after that.

With the elbow of the hand that held her hair, he began to bear down on the ash staff of the boat hook, slowly crushing down into her throat.

She knew it was over then, but still she fought on. As she weakened Peter was able to transfer more and more of his weight onto the stock of the boat hook. Slowly blood suffused her face, turning it dark mottled plum, her lips quivered with each painful rasping breath and a little frothy saliva broke from the corners of her mouth and ran back down her cheek.

Watching her die was the most horrible thing Peter had ever had to do. He shifted cautiously, going for the few extra ounces of weight which would force the heavy wooden Stock down that last eighth of an inch and crush in her throat, and she recognized the moment in her eyes.

She spoke for the first time. It was a croak slurred through swollen and gaping lips.

"They warned me." He thought he had mis-heard her, and he checked the final thrust downwards which would pinch out the last spark of life. "I couldn't believe it." The faintest whisper, only just intelligible. "Not you." Then the last resistance went out of her, her body relaxed, the complete acceptance of death at last. The fierce green light went out in her eyes, replaced at the very end with a sadness so heavy that it seemed to acknowledge the ultimate betrayal of all goodness and trust.

Peter could not force himself to make the final thrust downwards that would end it. He rolled off her and flung the heavy wooden stock across the cockpit. It crashed into the bulkhead and he sobbed as he crawled painfully across the deck, turning his back to her completely, knowing that she was still alive and therefore still as dangerous as she had ever been yet no longer caring. He had gone as far as he could go. It didn't matter any more if she killed him; something in him even welcomed the prospect of release.

He reached the rail and tried to drag himself onto his feet, expecting at any moment the killing blow into the nape of his neck as she attacked him again.

It did not come, and he managed to get onto his knees, but his whole body was trembling violently so that his teeth chattered in his jaws and every strained and bnlised tendon and muscle screamed for surcease. Let her kill me, he thought, it doesn't matter. Nothing matters now.

Half supporting himself on the rail, he turned slowly and his vision swam and flickered with patches of darkness and little shooting stars of crimson and white flame. Through the swirl of senses at the end of their usefulness, he saw that she was kneeling in the centre of the cockpit, facing him.

Her naked torso was splattered and smeared with his blood and the smooth tanned skin oiled with slippery sweat of near death. Her face was still and swollen and inflamed, wreathed in a great tangle of matted and disordered hair.

There was a flaming livid weal across her throat where the stock had crushed her, and as she fought for breath her small pert breasts lifted and dropped to the painful pumping of her chest.

They stared at each other, far beyond speech, driven to the very frontiers of their existence.

She shook her head, as though trying desperately to deny the horror of it all, and at last she tried to speak; no sound came and she licked her lips and lifted one slim hand to her throat as though to ease the pain of it.

She tried again, and this time she managed one word.

"Why?" He could not reply for fully half a minute, his own throat seemed to have closed, grown together like an old wound.

He knew that he had failed in his duty and yet he could not yet hate himself for it. He formed the words in his own mind, as though he were trying to speak a foreign language, and when he spoke his voice was a stranger's broken and coarsened by the knowledge of failure.

"I couldn't do it," he said.

She shook her head again, and tried to frame the next question.

But she could not articulate it, only one word came out, the same word again.

"Why ?" And he had no answer for her.

She stared at him, then slowly her eyes filled with tears; they ran down her cheeks and hung from her chin like early morning dew on the leaf of the vine.

Slowly she pitched forward onto the deck, and for many seconds he did not have the strength to go to her, and then he lurched across the deck and dropped to his knees beside her; he lifted her upper body in his arms suddenly terrified that he had succeeded after all, that she was dead.

His relief soared above the pain of his battered body as he felt her breathing still sawing through her damaged throat, and as her head rolled against his shoulder he realized that fat oily tears still welled out from between her closed eyelids.

He began to rock her like a child in his arms, a completely useless gesture, and only then did her words begin to make any sense to him.

"They warned me, "she had whispered.

"I couldn't believe it," she had said.

"Not you." He knew then that had she not spoken he would have gone through with it. He would have killed her and weighted her body and dropped it beyond the 1,000-fathom line but the words, although they did not yet make sense, had reached deep into some recess of his mind.

She stiffed against his chest. She said something, it sounded like his name. It roused him to reality. The big Chris-craft was still roaring blindly through the channels and reefs of the outer passage.

He laid her back gently on the deck, and scrambled up the ladder to the flying bridge. The whole of that horrific conflict had taken less than a minute, from his knife-stroke to her collapse under him.

The steering of the Chris-craft was locked into the automatic pilot and the vessel had run straight out through the channel into the open sea. It reinforced his knowledge that she had been ready for his attack. She had been acting that total concentration in steering the vessel, luring him into the attack while the Chris-craft was on automatic pilot and she was ready to throw that backward blow at him.

It did not make sense, not yet. All that he knew was that he had made some terrible miscalculation. He threw out the switch of the automatic steering, and shut down both throttles to the idle position before disengaging the main drive. The diesels bur bled softly, and she rounded up gently into the wind and wallowed beam-on to the short steep blue seas of the open ocean.

Peter took one glance back over the stern. The islands were just a low dark smudge on the horizon, and then he was stumbling back to the ladder.

Magda had dragged herself into a half sitting position, but she recoiled swiftly as he came to her an this time he saw fear pass like cloud shadow across her eyes.

"It's all right," he told her, his own voice still ragged. Her fear offended him deeply. He did not want her ever to be afraid of him again.

He took her up in his arms, and her body was stiff with uncertainty, like that of a cat picked up against its will, but too sick to resist.

"It's all right," he repeated awkwardly, and carried her down into the saloon of the Chris-craft. His own body felt battered as though his very bones were bruised and cracked, but he handled her so tenderly that slowly the resistance went out of her and she melted against him.

He lowered her onto the leather padded bench, but when he tried to straighten up she slid one arm around his neck and restrained him, clinging to him.

"I left the knife there," she whispered huskily. "It was a test."

"Let me get the medicine chest. "He tried to pull away.

"No." She shook her head and winced at the pain in her throat.

Don't go away, Peter. Stay with me. I am so afraid.

I was going to kill you if you took the knife. I nearly did.

Oh, Peter, what is happening to us, are we both going mad?" She held him desperately and he sank to his knees on the deck and bowed over her.

"Yes," he answered her, holding her to his chest. "Yes, we must be going mad. I don't understand myself or any of it any more."

"Why did you have to take the knife, Peter? Please you must tell me. Don't lie, tell me the truth, I have to know why."

"Because of Melissa-Jane because of what you had done to her." He felt her jerk in his arms as though he had struck her again. She tried to speak but now her voice was only a croak of despair, and Peter went on to explain it to her.

"When I discovered that you were Caliph, I had to kill you." She seemed to be gathering herself for some major effort, but then when she spoke it was still in that scratchy broken whisper. "Why did you stop yourself, Peter?"

"Because-" He knew the reason then. Because I suddenly I knew that I loved you. Nothing else counted." She gasped and was silent again for nearly a minute.

"Do you still think that I am Caliph?"she asked at last.

"I don't know. I don't know anything any more except that I love you. That's all that matters."

"What happened to us, Peter?" She lamented softly. "Oh God, what has happened to us?"

"Are you Caliph, Magda?"

"But Peter, you tried to kill me. That was the test with the knife. You are Caliph." On Magda's direction Peter took the Chris craft in through a narrow passage in the coral reef that surrounded The des Oiseaux, while the seabirds wheeled about them in a raucous cloud, filling the air with their wingbeats.

He anchored in five fathoms in the protected lee, and then called the main island on the VHF radio, speaking to the head boatman.

"The Baronne has decided to sleep on board overnight," he explained. "Don't worry about us." When he went down to the saloon again Magda had recovered sufficiently to be sitting up. She had pulled on one of the terry to welling track suits from the clothes locker, and she had wound a clean towel around her throat to protect it and to hide the fierce fresh bruise that was already staining her skin like the squeezed juice of an overripe plum.

Peter found the medicine box in a locker above the toilet bowl of the heads, and she protested when he brought two Temprapain capsules for the pain, and four tablets of Brufin for the swelling and bruising of her throat and body.

"Take them," he commanded and held the glass while she did so.

Then he carefully unwrapped the towel from her throat and lightly rubbed a creamy salve into the bruise with his fingertips.

"That feels better already," she whispered, but now she had lost her voice almost entirely.

"Let's have a look at your stomach." He pushed her down gently on her back on the long padded bench and unzipped the top of the to welling suit to the waist. The bruise where he had kicked her had spread from just below her small pale breasts to the tiny sculpted navel in the flat hard plane of her belly; again he massaged the soothing cream into her skin and she sighed and murmured with the comfort of it.

When he finished she was able to hobble, still painfully doubled over, to the heads. She locked herself in for fifteen minutes while Peter tended his own injuries, and when she emerged again she had bathed her face and combed out her hair.

He poured two crystal old-fashioned glasses half full of Jack Daniel's Bourbon and he handed one to her as she sank onto the padded bench beside him. "Drink it. For your throat," he ordered, and she drank and gasped at the sting of the liquor and set the glass aside.

"And you, Peter?" she husked with sudden concern. "Are you all right?" Just one thing," he said. "I'd hate you to get really mad at me." Then he smiled, and she started to chuckle but choked on the pain and ended up clinging to him.

"When can we talk?" he asked her gently. "We have to talk this out."

"Yes, I know, but not yet, Peter. Just hold me for a while." And he was surprised at the comfort that it afforded him.

The warm woman shape pressed to him seemed to ease the pain of body and of mind, and he stroked her hair as she nuzzled softly against his throat.

"You said you loved me, "she murmured at last, making it a question. Seeking reassurance, as lovers always must.

"Yes. I love you. I think I knew it all along, but when I learned that you were Caliph, I had to bury it deep. It was only there at the end I had to admit to myself."

"I'm glad," she said simply.

"Because you see I love you also. I thought I would never be able to love. I had despaired of it, Peter. Until you. And then they told me you would kill me. That you were Caliph. I thought then I would die having found you and then lost you. It was too cruel, Peter. I had to give you the chance to prove it wasn't true!"

"Don't talk," he commanded. "Just lie there and listen.

There is nothing wrong with my voice, so I will tell it first.

The way it was with me, and how I knew you were Caliph." And he told it to her, holding her to him and speaking softly, steadily. The only other sounds in the cabin were the slap of the wavelets against the hull and the subdued hum of the air-conditioning unit.

"You know everything up to the day Melissa-Jane was taken, all of it. I told you all of it, without reservation and without lying, not once-" He started, and then he went on to tell her in detail of the hunt for Melissa-Jane.

I think something must have snapped in my mind during those days.

I was ready to believe anything, to try anything to get her back. I would wake up in the night and go to the toilet and vomit with the thought of her hand in a glass jar." He told her how he had planned to kill Kingston Parker to meet Caliph's demands, exactly how he intended doing it, the detailed how and where, and she shuddered against him.

"The power to corrupt even the best," she whispered.

"Don't talk-" he admonished her, and went on to tell her of the tip-off that had led them at last to the Old Manse in Laragh.

"When I saw my daughter like that, I lost what little was left of my reason. When I held her and felt the fever and heard her scream with lingering terror, I would have killed-" He broke off and they were silent until she protested with a small gasp and he realized that his hand had closed on her upper arm and his fingers were biting into her flesh with the force of his memories.

"I'm sorry." He relaxed his grip, and lifted the hand to tuch her cheek. "Then they told me about you." to "Who?" she whispered "The Atlas Command."

"Parker?"

"Yes, and Colin Noble."

"What did they tell you?"

"They told me how your father brought you to Paris when you were a child. They told me that even then you were bright and pretty and special-" He began to recite it for her. " When your father was killed-" and she moved restlessly against his chest as he said it you went to live with foster parents, all of them members of the party, and in the end you were so special that they sent somebody to take you back to Poland. Somebody who posed as your uncle-"

"I believed he was-" She nodded. For ten years I believed it. He used to write to me-" She stopped herself with an effort, was silent a moment and then, "he was all I ever had after Papa."

"You were selected to go to Odessa," Peter went on, and felt her go very still in his arms, so he repeated it with the harshness unconcealed in his tone, to the special school in Odessa."

"You know about Odessa?" she whispered. "Or you think you know but nobody who has never been there could ever really know."

"I know they taught you to-" He paused, imagining again a beautiful young girl in a special room overlooking the Black Sea, learning to use her body to trap and beguile a man, any man. They taught you many things."

He could not make the accusation.

"Yes,"she murmured. "Many, many things."

"Like how to kill a man with your hands."

"I think that subconsciously I could not bring myself to kill you, Peter. God knows you should not have survived. I loved you, even though I hated you for betraying me, I could not really do it-" She sighed again, a broken gusty sound.

And when I thought that you were going to kill me it was almost a relief. I was ready to accept that, against living on without the love that I thought I had found."

"You talk too much." He stopped her.

"You'll damage your throat further." He touched her lips with his fingers, to silence her, and then went on. "And at Odessa you became one of the chosen, one of the elite."

"It was like entering the church, a beautiful mystic thing-" she whispered. "I cannot explain it. I would have done everything or anything for the State, for what I knew was right for "Mother Russia"."

"All of this is true?" He marvelled that she made no effort to deny it.

"All of it," she nodded painfully. "I will never lie to you Peter. I swear it."

"Then they sent you back to France to Paris?" he asked, and she nodded.

"You did your job, even better than they had expected you to do it. You were the best, the very best. No man could resist you." She did not answer, but she did not lower her eyes from his. It was not a defiance but merely a total acceptance of what he was saying.

"There were men. Rich and powerful men-" His voice was bitter now. He could not help himself. "Many, many men. Nobody knows how many, and from each of them you gathered harvest."

"Poor Peter," she whispered. "Have you tortured yourself with that?"

"It helped me to hate you, "he said simply.

"Yes, I understand that. There is nothing that I can give you for your comfort except this. I never loved a man until I met you." She was keeping her word. There were no more lies nor deceptions now. He was certain of it.

"Then they decided that you could be used to take over control of Aaron Altmann and his Empire-"

"No," she whispered, shaking her head.

"I decided on Aaron. He had been the only one man who I had not been able to-" Her voice pinched out and she took a sip of the bourbon and let it trickle slowly down her throat before she went on. "He fascinated me. I had never met a man like that before. So strong, such raw power."

"All right," Peter agreed. "You might even have grown tired of the other role by then-"

"It's hard work being a courtesan--"

She smiled for the first time since he had begun speaking, but it was a sad self mocking smile. "You went about it exactly the right way. First you made yourself indispensable to him. Already he was a sick man, beginning to need a crutch, somebody he could trust entirely.

"You gave him that-" She said nothing, but memories passed across her eyes, changing the green shadows like sunlight through a deep still pool.

And when he trusted you there was nothing you could not supply to your masters. Your value had increased a hundredfold." He went on talking quietly while outside the day died in a fury of crimsons and royal purples, slowly altering the light in the cabin and dimming it down so that her face was all that existed in the soft gloom. A pale intense expression, listening quietly to the accusations, to the recitation of betrayals and deceits. Only occasionally she made a little gesture Of denial, a shake of her head or the pressure of fingers on his arms. Sometimes she closed her eyes briefly as though she could not accept some particularly cruel memory, and once or twice an exclamation was wrung from her in that strained and tortured whisper.

"Oh God, Peter! It's true!" He told her how she had gradually developed the taste for the power she was able to wield as Aaron Altmann's wife, and how that flourished as Aaron's strength declined.

How she at last even opposed the Baron on some issues.

"Like that of supplying arms to the South African Government," Peter said, and she nodded and made one of her rare comments.

"Yes. We argued. That was one of the few times we argued." And she smiled softly, as though at a private memory that she could not share even with him.

He told her how the taste of power and the trappings of power gradually eroded her commitment to her earlier political ideals, how her masters slowly realized they were losing their hold over her and of the pressures they attempted to apply to force her back into the fold.

"But you were too powerful now to respond to the usual pressures.

You had even succeeded in penetrating Aaron's Mossad connections, and had that protection."

"This is incredible!" she whispered. "It's so close, so very close that it is the truth." He waited for her to elaborate, but instead she motioned him to continue.

"When they threatened to expose you to the Baron as a communist agent, you had no choice but to get rid of him and you did it in such a way that you not only got rid of the threat to your existence but you also achieved control of Altmann Industries, and to put the cherry on the top of the pie you got yourself twenty-five million in operating capital.

You arranged the abduction and killing of Aaron Altmann, you paid yourself the twenty-five million and personally supervised its transfer, probably to a numbered account in Switzerland-"

"Oh God, Peter!" she whispered, and in the dark of the cabin her eyes were fathomless and huge as the empty cavities of a skull.

"Is it true?" Peter asked for confirmation for the first time.

"It's too horrible. Go on please."

"It worked so well that it opened up a new world of possibilities for you. just about this time you truly became Caliph. The taking of Flight 070 was possibly not the first stroke after the kidnapping of Aaron Altmann there may have been others. Vienna and the OPEC ministers, the Red Brigade activities in Rome but 070 was the first time you used the name Caliph. It worked, except for the dereliction of duty by a subordinate officer."

He indicated himself. "That was all that stopped it and that was how I attracted your attention originally." Now it was almost totally dark in the cabin and Magda reached across and switched on the reading light beside them, adjusting the rheostat down to a soft golden glow. In its light she studied his face seriously as he went on.

By this time you were aware through your special sources, probably the Mossad connection and almost certainly through the French SID, that somebody was onto Caliph. That somebody turned out to be Kingston Parker and his Atlas organization, and I was the ideal person to firstly confirm that Parker was the hunter and secondly, to assassinate him. I had the special training and talents for the job, I could get close to him without arousing his suspicions, and I needed only to be sufficiently motivated-"

"No," she whispered, unable to take her eyes from his face.

"It holds together," he said. "All of it." And she had no reply.

"When I received Melissa-Jane's finger, I was ready for anything--"

"I think I am going to be sick."

"I'm sorry." He gave her the glass and she drank the shot of dark liquor it contained, gagging a little on it. Then she sat for a few moments with her eyes closed and her hand on her bruised throat.

"All right? "he asked at last.

"Yes. All right now. Go on."

"It worked perfectly except for the tip-off to the hideout in Ireland. But nobody could have foreseen that, not even Caliph."

"But there was no proof!" she protested. "It was all conjecture. No proof that I was Caliph."

"There was," he told her quietly. "O'Shaughnessy, the head of the gang that kidnapped Melissa-Jane, made two telephone calls. They were traced to Rambouillet 47-87-47." She stared at him wordlessly.

"He was reporting to his master to Caliph, you see." And he waited for her reply. There was none, so after a minute of silence he went on to tell her the arrangements he had made for her execution the sites he had chosen at Longchamp race course and in the Avenue

Victor Hugo, and she shuddered as though she had felt the brush of the black angels" wings across her skin.

"I would have been there," she admitted. "You chose the two best sites. Yves has arranged a private showing for me on the sixth of next month. I would have gone to it." Then you saved me the trouble. You invited me here.

I knew that it was an invitation to die, that you knew I had become aware, that I had learned you were Caliph. I saw it in your eyes during that meeting at Orly Airport, I saw it proven by the way you were suddenly avoiding me, the way you were giving me no opportunity to do the job I had to do."

"Go on."

"You had me searched when I landed at Tahiti-Faaa." She nodded.

"You had the grey wolves search my room again last night, and you set it up for today. I knew I had to strike first, and I did."

"Yes"

she murmured. "You did." And rubbed her throat again.

He went to recharge the glasses from the concealed liquor cabinet behind the bulkhead, and came back to sit beside her.

She shifted slightly, moving inside the circle of his arm, and he held her in silence. The telling of it had exhausted him, and his body ached relentlessly, but he was glad it was said, somehow it was like lancing a malignant abscess the release of poisons was a relief, and now the healing process could begin.

He could feel his own exhaustion echoed in the slim body that drooped against him, but he sensed that hers was deeper, she had taken too much already and when he lifted her in his arms again she made no protest, and he carried her like a sleeping child through to the master cabin and laid her on the bunk.

He found pillows and a blanket in the locker below. He slid into the bunk with her, under the single blanket, and she fitted neatly into the curve of his body, pressing gently against him, her back against his chest, her hard round buttocks against the front of his thighs, and her head pillowed into the crook of his arm, while with his other arm he cuddled her close and his hand naturally cupped one of her breasts.

They fell asleep like that, pressing closely, and when he rolled over she moved without waking, reversing their positions, moulding herself to his back and pressing her face into the nape of his neck, clasping him with one arm and with a leg thrown over his lower body as though to enfold him completely.

Once he woke and she was gone, and the strength of his alarm surprised him, a hundred new doubts and fears assailed him from the darkness, then he heard the liquid puff in the bowl of the heads and he relaxed. When she returned to the bunk, she had stripped off the terry to welling track suit and her naked body felt somehow very vulnerable and precious in his arms.

They woke together with sunlight pouring into the cabin through one porthole like stage lighting.

"My God it must be noon." She sat up, and tossed back the long mane of dark hair over her tanned bare shoulders but when Peter tried to rise, he froze and groaned aloud.

"Qu'a tu, cheri?"

"I must have got caught in a concrete mixer," he moaned.

His bruises had stiffened during the night, torn muscle and strained sinews protested his slightest movement.

"There is only one cure for both of us," she told him. "It's in three parts." And she helped him off the bunk as though he was an old man. He exaggerated the extent of his injuries a little to make her chuckle. The chuckle was a little hoarse, but her voice was stronger and clearer and she favoured her own bruises only a little as she led him up onto the deck.

Her powers of recuperation were those of a young and superbly fit thoroughbred animal.

They swam from the diving platform over the Chriscraft's stern.

"It's working," Peter admitted as the support of warm saltwater soothed his battered body. They swam side by side, both naked, slowly at first and then faster, changing the sedate breast-stroke for a hard overarm crawl, back as far as the reef, treading water there and gasping at the exertion.

"Better?" she panted with her hair floating around her like the tendrils of some beautiful water plant.

"Much better."

"Race you back." They reached the Chris-craft together and clambered up into the cockpit, cascading water and laughing and panting, but when he reached for her, she allowed only a fleeting caress before pulling away.

"First Phase Two of the cure." She worked in the galley with only a floral apron around her waist which covered the dark bruises of her belly.

"I never thought an apron could be provocative before."

"You are supposed to be doing the coffee," she admonished him and gave him a lewd little bump and grind with her bare backside.

Her omelettes were thick and golden and fluffy, and they ate them in the early sunlight on the upper deck. The trade wind was sheep-dogging a flock of fluffy silver cloud across the heavens, and in the gaps the sky was a peculiar brilliant blue.

They ate with huge appetites, for the bright new morning seemed to have changed the mood of doom that had overpowered them the previous night. Neither of them wanted to break this mood, and they chattered inconsequential nonsense, and exclaimed at the beauty of the day and threw bread crusts to the seagulls, like two children on a picnic.

At last she came to sit in his lap, and made a show of taking his pulse.

"The patient is much improved, "she announced; "is now probably strong enough for Phase Three of the cure."

"Which is?"he asked.

"Peter cheri, even if you are English, you are not that dense. "And she wriggled her bottom in his lap.

They made love in the warm sunlight, on one of the foam mattresses, with the trade wind teasing their bodies like unseen fingers.

It began in banter and with low gurgles of laughter, little gasps of rediscovery, and murmurs of welcome and encouragement then suddenly it changed, it became charged with almost unbearable intensity, a storm of emotion that sought to sweep all the ugliness and doubt. They were caught up in the raging torrent that carried them helplessly beyond mere physical response into an unknown dimension from which there seemed no way back, a total affirmation of their bodies and their minds that made all else seem inconsequential.

"love you," she cried at the very end, as though to deny all else that she had been forced to do. "I have loved only you." It was a cry torn from the very depths of her soul.

It took a long time for them to return from the far place to which they had been driven, to become two separate people again, but when they did somehow they both sensed that they would never again be completely separated; there had been a deeper more significant union than just that of their two bodies, and the knowledge sobered them and yet, at the same time, gave them both new strength and a deep elation that neither had to voice it was there, and they both simply knew it.

They slid the big inflatable Avon dinghy over the stern, and went ashore, pulling the rubber craft above the high-water level and mooring it to one of the slanting palm holes.

Then they wandered inland, picking their way hand in hand between the seabird nests that had been crudely scraped in the earth. Half a dozen different species of birds were breeding together in one sprawling colony that covered most of the twenty-acre island. Their eggs varied from as big as that of a goose's, to others the size of a pullet's and speckled and spotted in lovely free-form designs.

The chicks were either grotesquely ugly with bare parboiled bodies or were cute as Walt Disney animations. The entire island was pervaded by an endless susurration of thousands of wings and the uproar of squawking, screeching, feuding and mating birds.

Magda knew the zoological names of each species, its range and its habits, and its chances of survival or extinction in the changing ecosystems of the oceans.

Peter listened to her tolerantly, sensing that behind this chatter and studied gaiety she was steeling herself to answer the accusations that he had levelled at her.

At the far end of the island was a single massive takamaka tree, with dense green foliage spreading widely over the fluffy white sand.

By now the sun was fiercely bright and the heat and humidity smothered them like a woollen blanket dipped in hot water.

They sought the shade of the takamaka gratefully, and sat close together on the sand staring out across the unruffled waters of the lagoon to the silhouette of the main island, five miles away. At this range and angle there was no sign of the buildings nor of the jetty, and Peter had an illusion of the primeval paradise with the two of them the first man and woman on a fresh and innocent earth.

Magda's next words dispelled that illusion entirely.

"Who ordered you to kill me, Peter? How was the command given? I must know that before I tell you about myself."

"Nobody,"he answered.

"Nobody? There was no message like the one you received ordering you to kill Parker?"

"No."

"Parker himself or Colin Noble? They did not order you to do it or suggest it?"

"Parker expressly ordered me not to do it. You were not to be touched until you could be taken in jeopardy."

"It was your own decision?" she insisted.

"It was my duty."

"To avenge your daughter?" He hesitated, would have qualified it, then nodded with total self-honesty. "Yes, that was the most part of it, Melissa-Jane, but I saw it also as my duty to destroy anything evil enough to envisage the taking of 070, the abduction of Aaron Altmann and the mutilation of my daughter."

"Caliph knows about us. Understands us better than we understand ourselves. I am not a coward, Peter, but now I am truly afraid."

"Fear is the tool of his trade," Peter agreed, and she moved slightly, inviting physical contact. He placed one arm about her bare brown shoulders and she leaned lightly against him.

"All that you told me last night was the truth, only the inferences and conclusions were false. Papa's death, the lonely years with strangers as foster-parents of that period my clearest memories are of lying awake at night and trying to muffle the sound of my weeping with a false blanket. The return to Poland, yes, that was right, and the Odessa school all of that. I will tell you about

Odessa one day, if you truly want to hear it ?"

"I don't think I do" he said.

"Perhaps you are wise; do you want to hear about the return to Paris?"

"Only what is necessary."

"All right, Peter. There were men.

That was what I had been selected and trained for. Yes, there were men-" She broke Off, and reached up to take his face between her hands, turning it so she could look into his eyes. "Does that make a difference between us, Peter?"

"I love you, "he replied firmly.

She stared into his eyes for a long time looking for evidence of deceit, and then when she found none, "Yes. It is so. You really mean that." She sighed with relief and laid her head against his shoulder, speaking quietly with just that intriguing touch of accent and the occasional unusual turn of phrase.

"I did not like the men, either, Peter. I think that was why I chose Aaron Altmann. One man, yes I could still respect myself-" She shrugged lightly. "I chose Aaron, and Moscow agreed. It was, as you said, delicate work. First I had to win his respect. He had never respected a woman before. I proved to him I was as good as any man, at any task he wished to set me. After I had his respect, all else followed-" She paused and chuckled softly. Life plays naughty tricks.

I found firstly that I liked him, then I grew to respect him also. He was a great ugly bull of a man, but the power ... A huge raw power, like some cosmic force, became the centre of my existence." She lifted her head to touch Peter's cheek with her lips in reassurance. "No. Peter, I never came to love him. I never loved before you. But I stood in vast awe of him, like a member of a primitive tribe worships the lightning and the thunder. It was like that. He dominated my existence more than a father, more than a teacher, as much as a god but less, very much less than a lover. He was crude and strong. He did not make love, he could only rut and tup like the bull he was." She broke off and looked seriously at him. "Do you understand that, Peter?

Perhaps I explained it badly?" No," he assured her. "You explained it very well."

"Physically he did not move me, his smell and the hairiness. He had hair on his shoulders and like a pelt down his back.

His belly was bulging and hard as iron-" She shivered briefly. " But I had been trained to be able to ignore that. To switch off something in the front of my brain.

Yet in all other ways he fascinated me. He goaded me to think forbidden thoughts, to open vaults of my mind that my training had securely locked. All right, he taught me about power and its trappings. You accused me of that, Peter, and I admit it. The flavour of power and money was to my taste. I like it. I like it very much indeed. Aaron introduced me to that. He showed me how to appreciate fine and beautiful things, for he was only physically a bull and he had a wonderful appreciation of the refinements of life he made me come completely alive. Then he laughed at me. God, I can still hear the bellow of his laughter, and see that great hairy belly shaking with it." She paused to remember it, almost reverently, and then she chuckled her own husky little laugh.

"My fine little communist lady,"" he mocked me. "Yes, Peter, it was I who was deceived, he had known from the beginning who I was. He also knew about the school at Odessa. He had accepted me as a challenge, certainly he loved me or his version of love, but he took me knowingly and corrupted my pure ideological convictions. Only then did I learn that all the information which I had been able to pass to Moscow had been carefully screened by Aaron.

He doubled me, as I had been sent to double him. He was Mossad, but of course you know that. He was a Zionist, you know that also.

And he made me realize that I was a Jewess, and what it meant to be that. He showed me every fatal flaw in the doctrine of Universal Communism, he convinced me of democracy and the Western Capitalist system and then he recruited me to Mossad-" She stopped again, and shook her head vehemently.

To believe that I could have wished to destroy such a one. That I could have ordered his abduction and mutilation Towards the end, when he was getting weak, when the pain was very bad, that was the closest I ever came to loving him, the way a mother loves a child. He became pathetically dependent upon me; he used to say the only thing that could lull the pain was my touch. I used to sit for hours rubbing that hairy belly feeling that awful thing growing bigger inside him each day, like a cauliflower or a grotesque foetus. He would not let them cut it. He hated them, "butchers" he called them. "Butchers with their knives and rubber tubes "" She broke off and Peter realized that her eyes were filled with tears. He hugged her a little more firmly and waited for her to recover.

"It must have been about this time that Caliph made contact with Aaron. Thinking back I can remember the time when he became suddenly terribly agitated. It made little sense to me then, but he held long diatribes about right-wing tyranny being indistinguishable from tyranny of the left. He never mentioned the name Caliph, I do not think Caliph had yet used that name and I do believe that Aaron would eventually have told me of the contact if he had lived. It was -the way he was, even with in detail, me, he could be as wary and subtle as he could be overpowering. He would have told me of Caliph but Caliph saw to it that he did not." She pulled away from Peter's arms so she could again see his face.

"You must understand, cheri, that much of this I have learned only recently in the last few weeks. Much of it I can only piece together like a jig puzzle pardon, a jig-saw puzzle." She corrected herself swiftly. "But this is what must have happened. Caliph contacted Aaron with a proposition.

It was a very simple proposition. He was invited to become a partner of Caliph. Aaron was to make a substantial financial contribution to Caliph's war-chest, and to place his privileged knowledge and lines of influence at Caliph's disposal. In return he would have a hand in engineering Caliph's brave new world. It was a miscalculation On Caliph's part, perhaps the only mistake he has made up to now. He had misjudged Aaron Altmann. Aaron turned him down flat but much more dangerously Caliph had made the mistake of revealing his identity to Aaron. I expect that he had to do that in an effort to convince Aaron. You see, Aaron was not a man who would indulge in a game of code names and hidden identities. That much Caliph had divined correctly. So he had to confront Aaron face to face, and when he discovered that Aaron would not join in a campaign of murder and extortion no matter how laudable the ultimate ends Caliph had no choice. He took Aaron, killed him after torturing him hideously for information that could have been useful, mainly information about his Mossad connection I imagine. Then he persuaded me to pay the ransom. He won two major tricks with a single card.

He silenced Aaron, and he gained the twenty-five million for his war-chest."

"How did you learn this? If only you had explained to me before " Peter heard the bitterness in his own voice.

"I did not know it when we first met, please believe me. I will tell you how I learned it, but please be patient with me. Let me tell it as it happened."

"I am sorry, "he said simply.

"The first time I heard the name "Caliph" was the day I delivered the ransom. I told you about that, didn't I?"

"Yes."

"So we come now to your part. I heard of you for the first time with the Johannesburg me hunt down Caliph. I found out about you, Peter. I was even able to have a computer printout on you-" She paused, and there was that mischievous flash in her eye again. "- I will admit to being very impressed with the formidable list of your ladies." Peter held up both hands in a gesture of surrender.

"Never again," he pleaded. "Not another word agreed?"

"Agreed."

She laughed, and then, "I'm hungry, and my throat is sore again with all this talking." They crossed the island again, with their bare feet baking on the sun-heated sand, and went back on board the Chris, craft.

The chef had stocked the refrigerator with a cornucopia of food, and Peter opened a bottle of Veuve Cliquot champagne.

"You've got expensive tastes," he observed. "I don't know if I can afford to keep you on my salary."

"I'm sure we could arrange a raise from your boss," she assured him with the twinkle in her eyes.

In tacit agreement they did not mention Caliph again until they had eaten.

There is one other thing you must understand, Peter. I am of Mossad, but I do not control them. They control me. It was the same with Aaron. Both of us were and are very valuable agents, possibly amongst the most valuable of all their networks, but I do not make decisions, nor am I able to have access to all their secrets.

"Mossad's single-minded goal is the safety and security of the state of Israel. It has no other reason for existence. I was certain that Aaron had made a full report to Mossad of Caliph's identity, that he had detailed the proposition that Caliph had proposed and I suspect that Mossad had ordered Aaron to co-operate with Caliph-"

"Why?" Peter demanded sharply.

"I do not know for certain but I can think of two reasons.

Caliph must have been such a powerful and influential man that his support would have been valuable.

Then again I suspect that Caliph had pro-Israeli leanings, or professed to have those leanings. Mossad finds allies where it can, and does not question their morals. I think they ordered Aaron to co-operate with Caliph but-"

"But?" Peter prompted her.

"But you do not order a man like Aaron to go against his deepest convictions, and under that forbidding exterior Aaron Altmann was a man of great humanity. I think that the reason for his agitation was the conflict of duty and belief that he was forced to endure. His instinct warned him to destroy Caliph, and his duty-" She shrugged, and picked up her fluted champagne glass, twisting it between those long slim fingers and studying the pinpricks of bubbles as they rose slowly through the pale golden wine. When she spoke again she had changed direction disconcertingly.

"A thousand times I had tried to discover what was so different between you and me than with the other men I have known. Why none of them could move me and yet with you it was almost instantaneous--"

She looked up at him again as though she was still seeking the reason.

Of course, I knew so much about you. You had the qualities I admire in another human being, so I was disposed favourably but there are other qualities you cannot detail on a computer printout nor capture in a photograph. There was something about you that made me " She made a helpless gesture as she searched for the word. You made me tingle."

"That's a good word, Peter smiled.

"And I had never tingled before. So I had to be very sure.

It was a new experience to want a man merely because he is gentle and strong and-" she chuckled, " just plain sexy.

You are sexy, you know that, Peter, but also you are something else-" She broke off. "No, I am not going to flatter you any more. I do not want you to get swollen ankles-" mixing the French idiom quaintly with the English, and this time not correcting herself. She went straight on. "Caliph must have realized that I had recruited a dangerous ally. He made the attempt to kill you that night on the Rambouillet road-"

"They were after you," Peter cut in.

"Who, Peter? Who was after me?"

"The Russians by that time they knew you were a double agent."

"Yes, they knew-" She cocked her head and narrowed her eyes. "I had thought about it, of course, and there had been two previous attempts on me, but I do not think the attempt on the Rambouillet road was Russian."

"All right, Caliph then, but after you not me," Peter suggested.

"Perhaps, but again I do not think so. My instinct tells me they had the right target. They were after you."

"I would have to agree,"

Peter said. "I think I was followed when I left Paris that evening-" and he told her about the Citroen. I think they knew that I was alone in the Maserati."

"Then we accept it was Caliph,"she stated flatly.

Or Mossad, Peter murmured, and her eyes slowly widened, turning a darker thoughtful green as Peter went on.

"What if Mossad did not want an Atlas man getting close to their star agent, they didn't want you to have an ally in your hunt for

Caliph? What if they just didn't want me cluttering up the carefully rehearsed scenario?"

"Peter, it's very deep water-" and there are packs of sharks."

"Let's leave that night on the Rambouillet road for the moment," she suggested. "It merely complicates the story I am trying to tell you."

"All right," Peter agreed. "We can come back to it, if we have to."

"The next significant move was the abduction of Melissa-Jane," she said, and Peter's expression changed, becoming flat and stony.

"The choice of the victim was genius-inspired," she said.

"But it required no special knowledge of you or your domestic arrangements. There was no secret that you had an only child, and it needed but a casual appraisal of your character to understand how powerful a lever she could be.

Magda dipped the tip of her finger into the champagne and then sucked it thoughtfully, pursing her lips and frowning slightly.

"You must understand that by this time I had faced the fact that I was in love with you. The gift was supposed to affirm that-" She flushed slightly under her honey tan, and it was appealing and child-like. He had never seen her blush before and it twisted something in his chest.

"The book," he remembered. "The Cornwallis Harris first edition."

"My first love gift ever. I bought it when I finally admitted it to myself but I was determined that I would not admit it to you. I am old-fashioned enough to believe the man must speak first."

"I did."

"God, I'll never forget it," she said fervently, and they both thought of the savage confrontation the previous day which had ended incongruously in a declaration of love.

"I try to be unconventional," he said, and she shook her head smiling.

"You succeed, mon amour, oh how you succeed." Then she sobered again. "I was in love with you. Your distress was mine. The child was a lovely girl, she had captivated me when we met and on top of all that I felt deadly responsible for her plight. I had inveigled you into joining my hunt for Caliph, and because of that you had lost your daughter." He bowed his head slightly, remembering how he had believed that she had engineered it. She recognized the gesture.

"Yes, Peter. For me it was the cruel lest stroke. That you should believe it of me. There was nothing that I would not have done to give her back to you and yet there seemed nothing that I could do.

My contacts with French intelligence had nothing for me. They had no inkling of how or where the child was being held and my control at Mossad was unaccountably evasive. Somehow I had the feeling that Mossad had the key to the kidnapping. If they were not directly involved they knew more than anybody else. I have already explained that I believed Aaron had given them the identity of Caliph. If that was so, then they must know something that could have helped you to recover your child but from Paris I was powerless to gather that information.

I had to go in person to Israel and confront my control there. It was the one chance that I could get them to cooperate. They might believe my value as an agent was worth enough to give me a lead to Melissa-Jane-"

"You threatened Mossad with resignation?" Peter asked wonderingly. "You would have done that for me?"

"Oh, Peter, don't you understand? I loved you and I had never been in love before. I would have done anything for you."

"You make me feel humble, he said.

She did not reply, but let the statement stand as though she were savouring it, then she sighed contentedly and went on. "I left everything in Paris. I have an established routine for disappearing when it is necessary. Pierre took me to Rome in the Lear; from there I telephoned you but I could not tell you what I was going to do. Then I switched identity and took a commercial flight to Tel Aviv. My task in Israel was difficult, much more difficult than I had bargained for. It was five days before my control would see me. He is an old friend.

No! perhaps not a friend, but we have known each other a long time.

He is the deputy director of Mossad. That is how highly they value my services, to give me such an important controller, but still it took five days before he would see me, and he was cold.

There was no help they could give me, he said. They knew nothing." She chuckled. "You have never seen me when I want something really badly, Peter. Ha! What a battle.

There is much I knew that would embarrass Mossad with her powerful allies of the West with France and Great Britain and the U.S.A. - I threatened to hold a Press conference in New York. He became less cold, he told me that the security of the State took precedence over all personal feelings, and I said something very rude about the security of the State, and reminded him of some outstanding business which I would happily leave outstanding. He became warmer but all this was taking time, days, many days, too many days. I was going crazy. I remembered how they had found Aaron's body, and I could not sleep at night for worrying about that lovely child. And you, oh Peter, you will never know how I prayed to a god that I was not too sure of. You will never know how I wanted to be with you to comfort you. I wanted so desperately just to hear your voice but I could not break my cover from Tel Aviv.

I could not even telephone you, nor send you a letter She broke off. I hoped you would not believe bad things of me. You would not believe that I did not care. That I was not prepared to help you. I could only hope that I would be able to bring you some information of value to prove it was not true but I never dreamed that one day you would believe that it was I who had taken your daughter and tortured her."

"I'm sorry, "he said quietly.

"No, do not say you are sorry. We were both Caliph's playthings.

There is no blame on you." She laid her hand upon his arm and smiled at him. "It was not you alone who believed bad things. For at last I had prevailed on my Mossad control to give me some little scraps of information.

At first he denied completely that they had ever heard of Caliph, but I risked lying to him. I told him that Aaron had told me he had reported the Caliph contact. He gave ground. Yes, he admitted.

They knew of Caliph, but they did not know who he was. I hammered on, demanding to see my controller each day, driving him as mad as I was until he threatened to have me deported even. But each time we met I wheedled and bullied a little more from him.

"At last he admitted, "All right, we know Caliph but he is very dangerous, very powerful and he will become more powerful God willing, he will become one of the most powerful men in the world, and he is a friend of Israel. Or rather we believe he is a friend of Israel."

"I bullied some more and he told me, "We have put an agent close to Caliph, very close to him, and we cannot jeopardize this agent. He is a valuable agent, very valuable but very vulnerable to Caliph. We cannot take the chance that Caliph could trace information back to him.

We have to protect our man. "Now I threatened, and he told me the agent's code name to protect both of us should we ever have to make contact. The code-name is "CACTUS FLOWER"."

"That was all?" Peter asked, with evident disappointment.

"No, my control gave me another name. As a sop and as a warning. The name they gave me was so close to Caliph as to be virtually the same. Again he warned me that he was giving me the name for my own protection."

"What was it?" Peter demanded eagerly.

"Your name," she said softly. "Stride." Peter made an irritable gesture of dismissal. "My name is nonsensical. Why would I kidnap and mutilate my own daughter and Cactus Flower. He might as well have said, "Kentucky Fried Chicken"."

"Now it's my turn to say I'm sorry."

Peter caught himself, realizing suddenly that he had been too quick to dismiss these scraps of information. He stood up and paced the deck of the Chris-craft with choppy, agitated steps, frowning heavily. "Cactus

Flower," he repeated. "Have you ever heard it before?"

"No," she shook her head.

"Since then?"

"No,"again.

He searched his memory, trying for a sympathetic echo.

There was none.

"All right." He accepted that as having no immediate If value.

"We'll just remember it for now. Let's come to my name Peter Stride.

What did you make of that?"

"It didn't mean anything then, except as a shock.

Strangely enough I did not immediately think of you, but I thought of confusion between the kidnapper and the Victim's dna." Stride?" he asked. "Peter Stride? I don't understand."

"No, well Melissa-Jane is a Stride also."

"Yes, of course. They didn't give you the name

Peter Stride then?"

"No. Just Stride."

"I see." Peter stopped in mid-pace as an idea struck him and stared out thoughtfully to where the ocean met a blue horizon.

"But they gave me your full name later," she interrupted his thoughts.

"When?"

"After we received the news that Melissa-Jane had been rescued. Of course, I wanted to return to Paris immediately to be with you. I was able to get onto a flight from Ben, Gurion Airport six hours after we heard the news. My heart was singing, Peter.

Melissa-Jane was safe, and I was in love.

I was going to be with you very soon. At the airport, while I was going through the security check before departure, the policewoman took me aside to the security office. My control was waiting for me there. He had rushed out from Tel Aviv to catch me before I left for home, and he was very worried. They had just received an urgent message from Cactus Flower. General Peter Stride was now definitely Caliph -motivated, and would assassinate me at the first opportunity, he told me. And I laughed at him but he was deadly serious. "My dear Baroness, Cactus Flower is a firstclass man. You must take this warning seriously," he kept repeating." Magda shrugged. "I still did not believe it, Peter. It was impossible. I loved you, and I knew you loved me although perhaps you had not yet realized that yourself. It was crazy.

But on the aircraft I had time to think. My control at Mossad has never been wrong before. Can you imagine my dilemma now how dearly I wanted to be with you, and yet I was now terrified not that you would kill me. That did not seem important but that you would truly turn out to be Caliph. That was what really frightened me. You see, I had never loved a man before. I don't think I could have stood it." She was quiet for a while, remembering the pain and confusion, and then she shook her head so that the thick fall of dark shimmering hair rustled around her shoulders.

"Once I reached Paris, my first concern was to learn that you and Melissa-Jane were safe at Abbots Yew, and then I could begin to try and find out how much substance there was in Cactus Flower's warning but until I could count on how safe it was I could not take the chance of being alone with you. Every time you attempted to contact me, I had to deny you, and it felt as though some little part of me was dying." She reached across and took his hand now, opened the fingers and bowed her head to kiss the palm and then held it to her cheek as she went on.

"A hundred times I convinced myself that it could not be true, and I was on the point of going to you. Oh, Peter finally I could take it no longer. I decided to meet you at Orly that day and find out one way or the other, end the terrible uncertainty, I had the grey wolves with me, a" you remember, and they had been warned to expect trouble I didn't tell them to watch you," she explained quickly, as if You were part of Caliph, you see, and it would have been the wise thing to do.

I admit that I thought of it, Peter. Have you killed, before you could kill V: me but it was only a thought and it did not go farther than that. Instead I went on with the business of living, work has always been an opiate for me. If I work hard enough I can forget anything but this time it didn't turn out that way. I've said it before, but it explains so much that I will say it again. I had never been in love before, Peter, and I could not turn it off. It tormented me, and I cherished doubts about Cactus Flower's warning and what I had seen so clearly in the lounge at Orly Airport. It couldn't be, it just couldn't be true I loved you and you loved me, and you just couldn't be plotting to kill me. I almost convinced myself of that." She laughed curtly, but it had no humour in the sound, only the bitterness of disillusion.

"I came out here-" she made a gesture that embraced sea and sky and islands to be away from the temptation of going to you. A sanctuary where I could recover from my wounds and begin to get over you. But it didn't work, Peter.

It was worse here. I had more time to think, to torture myself with wild speculation and grotesque theories. There was only one way.

Finally I recognized that. I would bring trying to dispel any memory of disloyalty, "but if you had tried to get at me they would have "She broke off, and let his hand fall away from her cheek. "The moment you walked into the private lounge at Orly, I saw it was true. I could sense it, there was an aura of death around you. It was the most frightening and devastating moment of my life, you looked like a different man not the Peter Stride I knew your whole face seemed to be altered and restructured by hatred and anger. I kissed you goodbye, because I knew we could never meet again." Remembering it her face darkened with sadness, as though a cloud shadow had passed over them.

"I even thought that I had to protect myself by" She gagged the words "you out here and give you the chance to kill me." She laughed again, and now there was the old husky warmth in it. "It was the most crazy thing I have ever done in my life but thank God, I did it."

"We went right to the very brink," Peter agreed.

"Peter, why didn't you ask me outright if I was Caliph?" she wanted to know.

"The same reason you didn't ask me outright if I was plotting to kill you." she agreed. "We were just caught up in the web that Caliph had spun for us. I have only one more question, Peter cheri.

If I was Caliph, do you truly believe that I would have been so stupid as to give my telephone number at Rambouillet to the man who kidnapped Melissa-Jane, and instruct him to ring me for a friendly chat whenever he felt like it?" Peter looked startled, "I thought-" he began, then stopped. No, I didn't think. I wasn't thinking clearly at all. Of course, you wouldn't have done that and yet, even the cleverest criminals make the most elementary mistakes."

"Not those who have been trained at the Odessa school," she reminded him, and seemed immediately to regret the words, for she went on quickly. "So there is my side of the story, Peter. I may have left something out if you can think of anything, then ask me, darling, and I'll try to fill in any missing pieces." And so they started once again at the very beginning, and went over the ground minutely, searching for anything they might have overlooked at the first telling of it, this time exhaustively re-examining each fact from every angle, both of them applying their trained minds to the full without being able to come up with more than they already had.

"One thing we must never let out of sight for a moment is the quality of the opposition." Peter summed it up as the sun began lowering itself towards the western horizon, its majestic progress flanked by cohorts of cumulonimbus cloud rising into towering anvil heads over the scattered islands, like silent nuclear explosions.

"There are layers upon layers, reasons behind reasons, the kidnapping of Melissa-Jane was not merely to force me to assassinate Kingston Parker, but you as well the proverbial two birds with a third bird to follow. If I had succeeded I would have been hooked into Caliph for ever."

"Where do you and I go from here, Peter?" she asked, tacitly transferring ultimate decision-making to him.

"How about home, right now," he suggested. "Unless you fancy another night out here." Peter found that his possessions had been discreetly moved from the guest bungalow to the owner's significant private quarters on the north tip of the island.

His toilet articles had been laid out in the mirrored master bathroom, which flanked that of the mistress. His clothing, all freshly cleaned and pressed, was in the master's dressing-room where there was one hundred and fifty-five feet of louvred hanging space Peter paced it out and calculated it would take three hundred suits of clothing.

There were specially designed swinging shelves for another three hundred shirts and racks for a hundred pairs of shoes although all were empty.

His light cotton suit looked as lonely as a single camel in the midst of the Sahara desert. His shoes had been burnished to a gloss that even his batman had never been able to achieve. Despite himself he searched the dressing-room swiftly for the signs of previous occupancy and was ridiculously relieved to find none.

"I could learn to rough it like this," he told his reflection in the mirror as he combed the damp, darkly curling locks off his forehead.

The sitting-room off the suite was on three levels, and had been decorated with cane furniture and luxuriant tropical plants growing in ancient Greek wine amphoras or in rookeries that were incorporated into the flowing design of the room. The creepers and huge glossy leaves of the plants toned in artistically with jungle-patterned curtaining and the dense growth of exotic plants beyond the tall picture windows yet the room was cool and inviting, although the sound of air-conditioning was covered by the twinkle of a waterfall down the cunningly contrived rock face that comprised one curved wall of the room. Tropical fish floated gracefully in the clear pools into which the waterfall spilled, and the perfume of growing flowers pervaded the room, and their blooms glowed in the subdued lighting.

One of the little golden Polynesian girls brought a tray of four tall frosted glasses for Peter to choose from. They were all filled with fruit and he could smell the sweet warm odour of rum mingled with the fruit. He guessed they would be almost lethal and asked for a whisky, then relented with the girl's eyes flooded with disappointment.

"I make them myself," she wailed.

"In that case "He sipped while she waited anxiously.

Tarfait!" He exclaimed, and she giggled with gratification, and went off wriggling her bottom under the brief pa reo like a happy puppy.

Magda came then in a chiffon dress so gossamer-light that it floated about her like a fine green sea mist, through which her limbs gleamed as the light caught them.

He felt the catch in his breathing as she came towards him, and he wondered if he would ever accustom himself to the impact of her beauty.

She took the glass from his hand and tasted it.

"Good," she said, and handed it back. But when the girl brought the tray she refused with a smile.

They moved about the room, Magda on his arm as she pointed out the rarer plants and fishes.

"I built this wing after Aaron's death," she told him, and he realized that she wanted him to know that it contained no memories of another man. It amused him that she should find that important and then he remembered his own furtive search of the dressing-room for signs of a lover before him, and the amusement turned inward.

One wall of the private dining-room was a single sheet of armoured glass, beyond which the living jewels of coral fish drifted in subtly-lit sea caverns and the fronds of magnificent sea plants waved in gentle unseen currents.

Magda ordered the seating changed so they could be side by side in the low lovers seat facing the aquarium.

"Do not like you to be far away any more," she explained, and she picked special tit bits from the serving dishes for his plate.

"This is a speciality of Les Neuf Poissons. You will eat it nowhere else in the world." She selected small deep-sea crustaceans from a steaming creole sauce of spices and coconut cream and at the end of the meal she peeled chilled grapes from Australia with those delicate fingers, using the long shell-pink nails with the precision of a skilled surgeon to remove the pips and then placing them between his lips with thumb and forefinger.

"You spoil me,"he smiled.

"I never had a doll when I was a little girl," she explained, smiling.

A circular stone staircase led to the beach fifty feet below the dining-room and they left their shoes on the bottom step and walked bare-footed on the smooth, damp sand, compacted as hard as cement by the receding tide. The moon was a few days past full, and its reflection drew a pathway of yellow light to the horizon.

"Caliph must be made to believe that he has succeeded," Peter said abruptly, and she shivered against him.

:"I wish we could forget Caliph for one night." We cannot afford to forget him for a moment."

"No, you are right. How do we make him believe that?"

"You have to die, He felt her stiffen. or at least appear to do so. It has to look as though I killed you."

"Tell me, "she invited quietly.

"You told me that you have special arrangements for when you want to disappear."

"Yes, I do."

"How would you disappear from here if you had to do so?" She thought for only a moment. "Pierre would fly me to

Bora-Bora. I have friends there. Good friends. I would take the island airline to Tahiti-Faaa on another passport and then a scheduled airline in the same name to California or New Zealand."

"You have other papers?" he demanded.

"yes, of course." She sounded so surprised by the question, that he expected her to ask." doesn't everybody?"

"Fine, he said. "And we'll arrange a suspicious accident here. A scuba diving accident, shark attack in deep water, no corpse.."

"What is the point of all this, Peter?"

"If you are dead Caliph is not going to make another attempt to have you killed. "GoodV she agreed.

"So you stay officially dead until we flush Caliph out," Peter told her, and it sounded like an order but she did not demur as he went on. "And if I carry out Caliph's evident wishes by killing you, it's going to make me a very valuable asset I will have proved myself, and so he will cherish me.

It will give me another chance to get close to him. At least it will give me a chance to check out a few wild hunches."

"Don't let's make my death too convincing, my love. I am a great favourite of the police on Tahiti," she murmured.

"I'd hate to have you end up under the guillotine at Tuarruru."

Peter woke before her and raised himself on one elbow over her to study her face, delighting to find new planes and angles to her high broad cheekbones, gloating in the velvety texture of her skin, so fine that the pores were indefinable from farther than a few inches. Then he transferred his attention to the curve of her eyelashes that interlocked into a thick dark palisade seeming to seal her eyelids perpetually in sleep yet they sprang open suddenly, the huge black pools of her pupils shrinking rapidly as she focused, and for the first time he realized that the irises were not pure green but were flecked and shot through with gold and violet.

The surprise of finding him over her changed slowly to pleasure, and she stretched her arms out over her head and arched her back, the way a lazy panther does when it rouses itself. The satin sheet slid down to her waist and she prolonged the stretch a little longer than was necessary, a deliberate display of her body.

"Every other morning of my life that I woke without you there was wasted," she murmured huskily, and raised her arms still at full stretch to him, folding them gracefully around his neck, still holding her back arched so that the prominent dark-red nipples brushed lightly against the crisp dark mat of curls that covered his own chest.

"Let's pretend this will last for ever," she whispered, with her lips an inch from his, and her breath was rich as an overblown rose,

heavy with the smell of vital woman and rising passion; then her lips spread softly, warmly against his and she sucked his tongue deeply into her mouth, with a low moan of wanting and the hard slim body began to work against his, the hands breaking from his neck and hunting down his spine, long curved nails pricking and goading him just short of pain.

His own arousal was so swift and so brutally hard that she moaned again, and the tension went out of her body, it seemed to soften and spread like a wax figure held too close to the flame, her eyelids trembling closed and her thighs falling apart.

"So strong-" she whispered, deep in her throat and he reared up over her, feeling supreme, invincible.

"Peter, Peter," she cried. "Oh yes like that. Please like that."

Both of them striving triumphantly for the moment of glory when each was able to lose self and become for a fleeting instant part of the godhead.

Long afterwards they lay side by side in the enormous bed, both of them stretched out flat upon their backs, not touching except for the fingers of one hand intertwined as their bodies had been.

"I will go away-" she whispered, but not now. Not yet." He did not reply, the effort was beyond him, and her own voice was languorous with a surfeit of pleasure.

"I will make a bargain with you. Give me three days more. Only three days, to be happy like this. For me it is the first time. I have never known this before, and it may be the last time-" He tried to rouse himself to deny it, but she squeezed his fingers for silence and went on.

" It may be the last," she repeated. "And I want to have it all. Three days, in which we do not mention Caliph, in which we do not think of the blood and striving and suffering out there. If you give me that I will do everything that you want me to do. Is it a bargain, Peter? Tell me we can have that."

"Yes. We can have that."

"Then tell me you love me again, I do not think I can hear you say it too often."

because I have to, He said it often during those magic days, and she had spoken the truth, each time he told her she accepted with as much joy as the last time, and always each seemed to be within touching distance of the other.

Even when tearing side by side across the warm. flat waters of the lagoon, leaning back with straight arms on the tow lines, skis hissing angrily and carving fiercely sparkling wings of water from the surface as they wove back and forth in a pas de deux across the streaming, creaming water, laughing together in the wind and the engine roar of the Chris-craft, Hapiti the Polynesian boatman on the flying bridge looking back with a great white grin of sympathy for their joy.

Finning gently through mysterious blue and dappled depths, the only sound the wheezing suck and blow of their scuba valves and the soft clicking and the eternal echoing susurration that is the pulse beat of the ocean, holding hands as they sank down to the long abandoned hull of the Japanese aircraft carrier, now overgrown with a waving forest of sea growth and populated by a teeming fascinating multitude of beautiful and bizarre creatures.

Flying silently down the sheer steel cliff of the canted flight deck, which seemed to reach down into the very oceanic depths, so that there was the eerie fear of suddenly being deprived of support and falling down to where the surface light blued out in nothingness.

Pausing to peer through their glass face-plates into the still gaping wounds rent into the steel by aerial bombs and high explosive, and then entering through those cruel caverns cautiously as children into a haunted house and emerging victoriously with carrier nets of trophies, coins and cutlery, brass and porcelain.

Strolling on the secluded beaches of the outer islands, still hand in hand, naked in the sunlight.

Fishing the seething tide-race through the main channel at full spring tide, and shouting with excitement as the golden amberjack came boiling up in the wake, bellies flashing like mirrors, to hit the dancing feather lures, and send the Penn reels screeching a wild protest, and the fibreglass rods nodding and kicking.

Out in the humbling silences of the unrestricted ocean, when even the smudge of the islands disappeared beyond the wave crests for minutes at a time, with only the creak and whisper of the rigging, the trembling pregnancy of the main sail, and the rust leas the twin hulls of the big Hobie cat knifed the tops off the swells.

Strolling the long curving beaches in the moonlight, searching for the heavenly bodies that so seldom show through the turbid skies of Europe Orion the hunter and the Seven Sisters exclaiming at the stranger constellations of this hemisphere governed by the great fixed cross in the southern heavens.

Each day beginning and ending in the special wonder and mystery of the circular bed, in loving that welded their bodies and their souls together each time more securely.

Then on the fourth day day Peter woke to find her gone, and for a moment experienced an appalling sensation of total loss.

When she came back to him he did not recognize her for a breath of time.

Then he realized that she had cut away the long dark tresses of her hair, cropped it down short so that it curled close against her skull, like the petals of a dark flower. It had the effect of making her seem even taller. Her neck like the stem of the flower,

longer, and the curve of the throat accentuated so that it became delicate and swan-like.

She saw his expression, and explained in a matter-of-fact tone.

"I thought some change was necessary, if I am to leave under a new identity. It will grow again, if you want it that way." She seemed to have changed completely herself, the languid amorous mood given way to the brisk business-like efficiency of before. While they ate a last breakfast of sweet yellow papaya and the juice of freshly squeezed limes she explained her intentions, as she went swiftly through the buff envelope that her secretary had silently laid beside her plate.

There was a red Israeli diplomatic passport in the envelope.

"I will be using the name Ruth Levy-" and she picked up the thick booklet of airline tickets, and I have decided to go back to Jerusalem.

I have a house there. It's not in my name, and I do not think anybody else outside of Mossad is aware of it. It will be an ideal base, close to my control at Mossad. I will try to give you what support I can,

try to get further information to assist you in the hunt-" She passed him a typed sheet of notepaper.

That is a telephone number at Mossad where you can get a message to me. Use the name Ruth Levy." He memorized the number while she went on talking, and then shredded the sheet of paper.

"I have modified the arrangements for my departure," she told him.

"We will take the Chris-craft across to Bora-Bora.

It's only a hundred miles. I will radio ahead. My friends will meet me off the beach after dark." They crept in through a narrow passage in the coral with all the lights on the Chris-craft doused,

Magda's boatman using only what was left of the waning moon and his own intimate knowledge of the islands to take her in.

"I wanted Hapiti to see me go ashore alive, "she whispered quietly, leaning against Peter's chest to draw comfort from their last minutes together. "I did not exaggerate the danger you might be in if the local people thought what we want Caliph to think. Hapiti will keep his mouth shut-" she assured him and will back up your story of a shark attack, unless you order him to tell the truth."

"You think of everything."

"I have only just found you, monsieur she chuckled. "I do not want to lose you yet. I have even decided to speak a word to the Chief of Police on Tahiti, when I pass through.

He is an old friend. When you get back to Les Neuf Poissons, have my secretary radio Tahiti-" She went on quietly, covering every detail of her arrangements, and he could find no emissions. She was interrupted by a soft hail from out of the darkness and Hapiti throttled the diesels back to idle. They drifted down closer to the loom of the island. A canoe bumped against the side, and Magda turned quickly in his arms, reaching up for his mouth with hers.

"Please be careful, Peter," was all that she said, and then she broke away and stepped down into the canoe as Hapiti handed down her single valise. The canoe pushed away immediately, and was lost in the dark. There was nothing to wave at, and Peter liked it better that way, but still he stared back over the stern into the night as the Chris-craft groped blindly for the channel again.

There was a hollow feeling under his ribs, as though part of himself was missing; he tried to fill it with a memory of Magda that had amused him because it epitomized for him her quick and pragmatic mind.

When the news of your death hits the market, the bottom is going to drop out of Altmann stock." He had realized this halfway through their final discussion that morning. "I hadn't thought of that." He was troubled by the complication.

"I had," she smiled serenely. "I estimate it will lose a hundred francs a share within the first week after the news breaks."

"Doesn't that worry you?"

"Not really." She gave that sudden wicked grin. "I telexed a buying order to Zurich this morning. I expect to show a profit of not less than a hundred million francs when the stock bounces back." Again the mischievous flash of green eyes "I do have to be recompensed for all this inconvenience, tu the senses pas?" And although he still smiled at the memory, the hollow place remained there inside him.

ierre flew the Tahitian police out to Les Neod Poissons in the Tri-Islander, and there followed two days of questions and statements.

Nearly every member of the community wished to make a statement to the police, there had seldom been such entertainment and excitement available on the islands.

Nearly all of the statements were glowing eulogies to To Baronne"

delivered to the accompaniment of lamentation and weeping. Only Hapiti had first-hand information and he made the most of this position of importance, embroidering and gilding the tale. He was even able to give a positive identification of the shark as a "Dead White' The English name startled Peter until he remembered that the movie Jaws was in the island's cassette video library and was undoubtedly the source of the big boatman's inspiration.

Hapiti went on to describe its fangs as long and sharp as cane knives, and to give a gruesome imitation of the sound they made as they closed on "La Baronne" Peter would willingly have gagged him to prevent those flights of imagination, which were not supported by Peter's own statement, but the police sergeant was greatly impressed and encouraged Hapiti to further acts of creation with cries of astonishment.

On the last evening there was a funeral feast on the beach for Magda. It was a moving ritual, and Peter found himself curiously affected when the women of the island, swaying and wailing at the water's edge, cast wreaths of frangipani blooms onto the tide to be carried out beyond the reef.

Peter flew back to Tahiti-Faaa with the police the following morning, and they stayed with him, flanking him discreetly, on the drive to the headquarters of gendarmerie in the town. However, his interview with the Chief of Police was brief and courteous clearly Magda had been there before him and if there was no actual exchange of winks and nudges, the commissioner's handshake of farewell was firm and friendly.

"Any friend of La Baronne is a friend here." And he used the present tense, then sent Peter back to the airport in an official car.

The UTA flight landed in California through that sulphurous eye-stinging layer of yellow air trapped between sea and mountains.

Peter did not leave the airport, but after he had shaved and changed his shirt in the men's room he found a copy of the Wail Street Journal in the first-class Pa nAm Clipper lounge. It was dated the previous day, and the report of Magda Altmann's death was on Page Three. It was a full column, and Peter was surprised by the depth of the Altmann Industries involvement in the American financial scene. The complex of. holdings was listed, followed by a resume of Baron Aaron Altmann's career and that of his widow. The cause of death as given by the Tahitian police was "Shark Attack" while scuba diving in the company of a friend General Peter Stride Peter was grimly satisfied that his name was mentioned. Caliph would read it, wherever he was, and draw the appropriate conclusion. Peter could expect something to happen now; he was not quite sure what, but he knew that he was being drawn closer to the centre like a fragment of iron to the magnet.

He managed to sleep for an hour, in one of the big armchairs, before the hostess roused him for the Pan-Am Polar flight to London's Heathrow.

He called Pat Stride, his sister-in-law, from Heathrow Airport.

She was unaffectedly delighted to hear his voice.

Steven is in Spain, but I am expecting him home tomorrow before lunch, that is if his meetings go the way he wants them. They want to build a thirty-six hole golf course at San Istaban-" Steven's companies owned a complex of tourist hotels on the Spanish coast " and Steven had to go through the motions with the Spanish authorities. But, why don't you come down to Abbots Yew tonight? Alex and Priscilla are here, and there will be an amusing house party for the weekend-" He could hear the sudden calculating tone in Pat's voice as she began instinctively to run through the shortlist of potential mates for Peter.

After he had accepted and hung up, he dialled the Cambridge number and was relieved that Cynthia's husband, George Barrow, answered.

Give me a Bolshevik intellectual over a neurotic ex-wife any day, he thought as he greeted Melissa-Jane's stepfather warmly. Cynthia was at a meeting of the Faculty Wives Association, and Melissa-Jane was auditioning for a part in i a production of Gilbert and Sullivan by the local drama society.

"How is she?" Peter wanted to know.

"I think she is well over it now, Peter. The hand is completely healed. She seems to have settled down.-They spoke for a few minutes more, then ran out of conversation.

The two women were all they had in common.

"Give Melissa-Jane my very best love," Peter told him, and picked up a copy of The Financial Times from a news, stand on his way to the Avis desk. He hired a compact and while waiting for it to be delivered he searched swiftly through the newspaper for mention of Magda Altmann.

It was on an inside page, clearly a followup article to a previous report of her death. There had been a severe reaction on the London and European stock exchanges the hundred4raric drop in Altmann stock that Magda had anticipated had already been exceeded on the Bourse and again there was a brief mention of his own name in a repetition of the circumstances of her death. He was satisfied with the publicity, and with Magda's judgement in buying back her own stock. Indeed it all seemed to be going a little too smoothly. He became aware of the fateful prickle of apprehension down his spine, his own personal barometer of impending danger.

As always Abbots Yew was like coming home, and Pat met him on the gravel of the front drive, kissed him with sisterly affection and linked her arm through his to lead him into the gracious old house.

"Steven will be delighted," she promised him. "I expect he will telephone this evening. He always does when he is away." There was a buff cable envelope propped on the bedside table of the guest room overlooking the stables that was always reserved for Peter. The message originated at BenGurion Airport, Tel Aviv, and was a single word the code he had arranged with Magda to let him know that she arrived safely and without complication. The message gave him a sharp pang of wanting, and he lay in a deep hot bath and thought about her, remembering small details of conversation and shared experience that suddenly were of inflated value.

While he towelled himself he regarded his image in the steamed mirror with a critical eye. He was lean and hard and burned dark as a desert Arab by the Pacific sun. He watched the play of muscle under the tanned skin as he moved, and he knew that he was as fit and as mentally prepared for action as he had ever been, glad that Magda was safely beyond the reach of Caliph's talons so that he could concentrate all his energies on what his instincts told him must be the final stage of the hunt.

He went through to his bedroom with the towel around his waist and stretched out on the bed to wait for the cocktail hour in Pat Stride's rigidly run household.

He wondered what made him so certain that this was the lead which would carry him to Caliph, it seemed so slim a chance and yet the certainty was like a steel thread, and the steel was in his heart.

That made him pause. Once again he went carefully over the changes which had taken place within him since his first exposure to Caliph's malignant influence; the fatal miasma of corruption that seemed to spread around Caliph like the poisonous mists from some evil swamp seemed to have engulfed Peter entirely.

He thought again of his execution of the blonde girl at Johannesburg what seemed like a thousand years before, but with mild surprise realized was months not years ago.

He thought of how he had been prepared to kill both Kingston Parker and Magda Altmann and realized that contact with violence was brutalizing, capable of eroding the principles and convictions which he had believed inviolate after almost forty years of having lived with them.

If this was so, then after Caliph if he succeeded in destroying him what was there after Caliph? Would he ever be the same man again? Had he advanced too far beyond the frontiers of social behaviour and conscience?

Would he ever go back? he wondered. Then he thought about Magda Altmann and realized she was his hope for the future, after Caliph there would be Magda.

These doubts were weakening, he told himself. There must be no distractions now, for once again he was in the arena with the adversary. No distraction, no doubts only total concentration on the conflict ahead.

He stood up from the bed and began to dress.

Steven was delighted to have Peter at Abbots Yew again, as Pat had predicted.

He also was tanned from the short stay in Spain, but he had again put on weight, only a few pounds, but it would soon be a serious problem, good food and drink were two of the occupational hazards of success: the most evident but not the most dangerous temptations that face a man who has money enough to buy whatever idly engages his fancy.

Peter watched him covertly during the lunch, studying the handsome head which was so very much like his own, the same broad brow and straight aristocratic nose, and yet was so different in small but significant details, and it was not only Steven's thick dark mustache.

All right, it's easy to be wise afterwards, Peter told himself, as he watched his twin brother. Seeing again the little marks, which only now seemed to have meaning. The narrower set of eyes, slightly too close together, so that even when he laughed that deep bluff guffaw of his they seemed still to retain a cold cruel light, the mouth that even in laughter was still too hard, too determined, the mouth of a man who would brook no check to his ambitions, no thwarting of his desires. Or am I imagining it now? Peter wondered. It was so easy to see what you looked for expectantly.

The conversation at lunch dwelt almost exclusively on the prospects for the flat-racing season which had opened at Doncaster the previous weekend, and Peter joined it knowledgeably; but as he chatted he was casting back along the years, to the incidents that might have troubled him more if he had not immediately submerged them under an instinctive and unquestioning loyalty to his twin brother.

There was Sandhurst when Steven had been sent down, and Peter had known unquestioningly that it was unjust.

No Stride was capable of what Steven had been accused of, and he had not even had to discuss it with his brother. He had affirmed his loyalty with a handshake and a few embarrassed muttered words.

"Thank you, Peter. I'll never forget that," Steven had told him fervently, meeting Peter's gaze with steady clear eye.

Since then Steven's rise had been meteoric through the post-war years in which it seemed almost impossible for even the most able man to amass a great fortune, a man had to have special talents and take terrible risks to achieve what Steven had.

Now sitting at his brother's board, eating roast saddle of lamb and the first crisp white asparagus shoots of the season flown in from the Continent, Peter was at last covering forbidden ground, examining loyalties which until then had been unquestioned. Yet they were straws scattered by the winds of time, possibly without significance. Peter transferred his thoughts to the present.

"Stride," Magda's control at Mossad in Tel-Aviv had said.

Just the two names: "Cactus Flower" and "Stride." That was fact and not conjecture.

Down the length of the luncheon table Sir Steven Stride caught his brother's eye.

"Wine with you, my dear fellow." Steven lifted the glass of claret in the old salute.

"Enchanted, I'm sure." Peter gave the correct reply, a little ritual between them, a hangover from Sandhurst days, and Peter was surprised at the depth of his regret. Perhaps Caliph has not yet succeeded in corrupting me entirely, Peter thought, as he drank the toast.

After lunch there was another of their brotherly rituals.

Steven signalled it with a jerk of the head and Peter nodded agreement. Peter's old army duffle coat was in the cupboard below the back staircase with his Wellingtons, and he and Steven changed into rough clothing sitting side by side on the monk's bench in the rear entrance hall as they had so often before.

Then Steven went through into the gunroom, took down a Purdey Royal shotgun from the rack, and thrust a handful of cartridges in his coat pocket.

"Damned vixen has a litter of cubs somewhere in the bottoms, playing merry hell with the pheasant chicks--" he explained as Peter asked a silent question. "It goes against the grain a bit to shoot a fox but I must put a stop to her haven't had a chance at her yet-" and he led the way out towards the stream.

It was almost a formal beating of the bounds, the leisurely circuit of the estate boundaries that the two brothers always made on

Peter's first day at Abbots Yew, another old comfortable tradition which allowed them time to have each other's news and reaffirm the bond between them They sauntered along the riverbank, side by side, moving into single file with Steven leading when the path narrowed and turned away from the stream and went up through the woods.

Steven was elated by the success of his visit to Spain, and he boasted of his achievements in obtaining another parcel of prime seaftont property on which to build the new golf course and to extend the hotel by another five hundred rooms.

"Now's the time to buy. Mark my words, Peter we are on the verge of another explosion."

"The cut-back in oil price is going to help, "I'd expect, Peter agreed.

"That's not the half of it, old boy." Steven turned to glance back over his shoulder and he winked knowingly at Peter. "You can expect another five per cent cut in six months, take my word on it. The Arabs and the Shah have come to their senses." Steven went on swiftly, picking out those types of industry which would benefit most dramatically from the reduction in crude prices, then selecting the leading companies in those sectors. If you have a few pounds lying idle, that's where to put it." Steven's whole personality seemed to change when he spoke like this of power and great wealth. Then he came out from behind the fao de of the English country squire which he was usually at such pains to cultivate; the glitter in his eyes was now undisguised and his bushy mustache bristled like the whiskers of some big dangerous predator.

He was still talking quickly and persuasively as they left the woods and began to cross the open fields towards the ruins of the Roman camp on the crest of the low hills.

These people have still to be told what to do, you know. Those damned shop stewards up in Westminster may have thrown the Empire away, but we still have our responsibilities." Steven changed the Purdey shotgun from one arm to the other, carrying it in the crook of the arm, the gun broken open and the shining brass caps of the cartridges showing in the breeches. Government only by those fit to govern." Steven enlarged on that for a few minutes.

Then suddenly Steven fell silent, almost as though he had suddenly decided that he had spoken too much, even to somebody as trusted as his own younger twin. Peter was silent also, trudging up the curve of the hill with his boots squelching in the soft damp earth. There was something completely unreal about the moment, walking over well remembered ground in the beautiful mellow sunlight of an English spring afternoon with a man he had known from the day of his birth and yet perhaps had never known at all.

It was not the first time he had heard Steven talk like this, and yet perhaps it was the first time he had ever listened. He shivered and Steven glanced at him.

"Cold?" A "Goose walked over my grave," Peter explained, and Steven nodded as they clambered up the shallow earth bank that marked the perimeter of the Roman camp.

They stood on the lip under the branches of a lovely copper beech, resplendent in its new spring growth of russet.

Steven was breathing hard from the pull up the hill, that extra weight was already beginning to tell. There was a spot of high unhealthy colour in each cheek, and little blisters of sweat speckled his chin.

He closed the breech of the shotgun with a metallic clash, and leaned the weapon against the trunk of the copper beech as he struggled to regain his breath.

Peter moved across casually and propped his shoulder against the copper beech, but his thumbs were hooked into the lapels of the duffle coat, not thrust into pockets, and he was still in balance, weight slightly forward on the balls of his feet. Although he seemed to be entirely relaxed and at rest he was in fact coiled like a spring, poised on the brink of violent action and the shotgun was within easy reach of his right hand.

He had seen that Steven had loaded with number four shot. At ten paces it would disembowel a man. The safety catch on the top of the pistol grip of the butt engaged automatically when the breech was opened and closed again, but the right thumb would instinctively slip the catch forward as the hand closed on the grip.

Steven took a silver cigarette case from the side pocket of his coat and tapped down a cigarette on the lid.

"Damned shame about Magda Altmann," he said gruffly, not meeting Peter's eyes.

"Yes, Peter agreed softly.

"Glad they handled it in a civilized fashion. Could have made it awkward for you, you know."

"I suppose they could have," Peter agreed.

"What about your job at Narmco?"

"I don't know yet. I will not know until I get back to Brussels."

"Well, my offer still stands, old boy. I could do with a bit of help. I really could. Somebody I could trust. You'd be doing me a favour."

"Damned decent of you, Steven."

"No, really, I mean it." Steven lit the cigarette with a gold Dunhill lighter and inhaled with evident pleasure, and after a moment Peter asked him: "I hope you were not in a heavy position in Altmann stock.

I see it has taken an awful tumble." It's strange that," Steven shook his head. "Pulled out of Altmann's a few weeks ago, actually. Needed the money for San Istaban."

"Lucky," Peter murmured, or much more than luck. He wondered why Steven admitted the share transaction so readily. Of course" he realized, "it would have been very substantial and therefore easily traced." He studied his brother now, staring at him with a slight scowl of concentration. Was it possible? he asked himself.

Could Steven really have masterminded something so complex, where ideology and self-interest and delusions of omnipotence seemed so inextricably snarled and entwined.

"What is it, old boy?" Steven asked, frowning slightly in sympathy.

"I was just thinking that the whole concept and execution has been incredible, Steven. I would never have suspected you were capable of it."

"I'm sorry, Peter. I don't understand. What are you talking about?"

"Caliph," Peter said softly.

It was there! Peter saw it instantly. The instant of utter stillness, like a startled jungle animal but the flinch of the eyes, followed immediately by the effort of control.

The expression of Steven's face had not altered, the little frown of polite inquiry held perfectly, then turning slowly, deeper into puzzlement.

"I'm afraid you just lost me there, old chap." It was superbly done. Despite himself Peter was impressed. There were depths to his brother which he had never suspected but that was his own omission.

No matter which way you looked at it, it took an extraordinary ability to achieve what Steven had achieved in less than twenty years, against the most appalling odds. No matter how he had done it, it was the working of a particular type of genius.

He was capable of running Caliph, Peter accepted the fact at last and immediately had a focal point for the corroding hatred he had carried within him for so long.

"Your only mistake so far, Steven, was to let Aaron Altmann know your name," Peter went on quietly. "I suspect you did not then know that he was a Mossad agent, and that your name would go straight onto the Israeli intelligence computer. Nobody, nothing, can ever wipe it from the memory rolls, Steven. You are known." Steven's eyes flickered down to the shotgun; it was instinctive, uncontrollable, the final confirmation if Peter needed one.

"No, Steven. That's not for you." Peter shook his head.

"That's my work. You're fat and out of condition, and you have never had the training. You must stick to hiring others to do the actual killing. You wouldn't even get a hand on it." Steven's eyes darted back to his brother's face. Still the expression of his face had not altered.

"I think you've gone out of your head, old boy." Peter ignored it.

"You of all people should know that I am capable of killing anybody.

You have conditioned me to that."

"We are getting into an awful tangle now," Steven protested. "What on earth should you want to kill anybody for?"

"Steven, you are insulting both of us. I know. There is no point in going on with the act. We have to work out between us what we are going to do about it." He had phrased it carefully, offering the chance of compromise. He saw the waver of doubt in Steven's eyes, the slight twist of his mouth, as he struggled to reach a decision.

But please do not underestimate the danger you are in, Steven." As he spoke Peter produced an old worn pair of dark leather gloves from his pocket and began to pull them on. There was something infinitely menacing in that simple act, and again Steven's eyes were drawn irresistibly.

"Why are you doing that?" For the first time Steven's voice croaked slightly.

"I haven't yet touched the gun," Peter explained reasonably. "It has only your prints upon it."

"Christ, you'd never get away with it, Peter."

"Why, Steven? It is always dangerous to carry a loaded shotgun over muddy and uneven ground."

"You couldn't do it, not in cold blood. "The edge of terror was in Steven's voice.

"Why not? You had no such qualms with Prince Hassled Abdel Hayek."

"I am your brother he was only a bloody wag-- Steven choked it off, staring now at Peter with stricken eyes, the expression of his face beginning at last to crack and crumb leas he realized that he had made the fateful admission.

Peter reached for the shotgun without taking his eyes from his brother's.

"Wait!" Steven cried. "Wait, Peter!"

"For what?"

"You've got to let me explain."

"All right, go ahead."

"You can't just say go ahead,

like that. It's so complicated."

"All right, Steven. Let's start at the beginning with Flight 070. Tell me why?"

"We had to do it, Peter. Don't you see? There is over four billions of British investment in that country, another three billions of American money.

It's the major world producer of gold and uranium, chrome and a dozen other strategic minerals. My God, Peter. Those ham-handed oafs in control now are on a suicide course. We had to take it away from them, and put in a controllable government. If we don't do that the Reds will have it all within ten years probably much less."

"You had an alternative government chosen?"

"Of course," Steven told him urgently,

persuasively, watching the shotgun that Peter still held low across his hips. "It was planned in every detail. It took two years."

"All right." Peter nodded. "Tell me about the murder of Prince Hassled."

"It wasn't murder, for God's sake, man, it was absolutely essential.

It was a matter of survival. They were destroying Western civilization with their childlike irresponsibility.

Drunk with power, they were no longer amenable to reason, like spoiled children in a sweet shop we had to put a stop to it, or face a breakdown of the capitalist system. They have probably done irreparable damage to the prestige of the dollar, they have taken sterling hostage and hold it in daily jeopardy with the threat of withdrawing those astronomic balances from London. We had to bring them to their senses, and look how small a price. We can reduce the price of crude oil gradually to its 1970 level. We can restore sanity to the currencies of the Western world and secure real growth and prosperity for hundreds of millions of peoples all at the cost of a single life."

"And anyway, he was only a bloody wag. Wasn't he?"

Peter agreed reasonably.

"Look here, Peter. I said that but I didn't mean it. You are being unreasonable."

"I will try not to be," Peter assured him mildly.

"Tell me where it goes from here. Who do you bring under control next the British Trade Union movement, perhaps?" And Steven stared at him wordlessly for a moment.

"Damn it, Peter. That was a hell of a guess. But could you imagine if we had a five-year wage freeze, and no industrial action during that time. It's them or us, Peter.

We could get back to being one of the major industrial powers of the Western world. Great Britain! We could be that again."

"You are very convincing, Steven," Peter acknowledged.

"There are only a few details that worry me a little."

"What are they, Peter?"

"Why was it necessary to arrange the murder of Kingston

Parker and Magda Altmann-" Steven stared at him, his jaw unhinging slightly and the hard line of his mouth going slack with astonishment.

"No," he shook his head. "That's not so." and why was it necessary to kill Baron Altmann, and torture him to death?"

"That was not my doing all right, it was done. And I knew it was done but I had nothing to do with it, Peter.

Not the murder at least. Oh God, all right I knew it had to be done, but-His voice tailed off, and he stared helplessly at Peter.

"From the beginning again, Steven. Let's hear it all-" Peter spoke almost gently.

"I cannot, Peter. You don't understand what might happen, what will happen if I tell you-" Peter slid the safety catch off the Purdey shotgun. The click of the mechanism was unnaturally loud in the silence, and Steven Stride started and stepped back a pace, blinking at his brother, fastening all his attention on Peter's eyes.

"God,"he whispered. "You would do it too."

"Tell me about Aaron

Altmann."

"Can I have another cigarette?" Peter nodded and Steven lit it with hands that trembled very slightly.

"You have to understand how it worked, before I can explain."

"Tell me how it worked," Peter invited.

"I was recruited-"

"Steven, don't lie to me you are Caliph."

"No, God, no, Peter. You have it all wrong," Steven cried. "It's a chain. I am only a link in Caliph's chain. I am not Caliph."

"You are a part of Caliph, then?"

"Only a link in the chain," Steven repeated vehemently.

"Tell me, Peter invited with a small movement of the shotgun barrel that drew Steven's eyes immediately.

"There is a man I have known a long time. We have worked together before. A man with greater wealth and influence than I have. It was not an immediate thing. It grew out of many discussions and conversations over a long time, years, in which we both voiced our concern with the way that power had shifted to blocks of persons unfit to wield it-"

"All right," Peter nodded grimly. "I understand your political and ideological sentiments. Leave them out of the account."

"Very well," Steven agreed. Well, finally this man asked me if I would be prepared to join an association of Western world political and industrial leaders dedicated to restoring power to the hands of those fitted by training and upbringing to govern."

"Who was this man?"

"Peter, I cannot tell you."

"You have no choice," Peter told him, and there was a long moment as they locked eyes and wills; then Steven sighed in capitulation.

"It was-" The name was that of a mining magnate who controlled most of the free world supply of nuclear fuel and gold and precious stones.

"So he is the one who would have been in control of the new South African government with which you intended replacing the present regime in that country, if the taking of 070 had succeeded?" Peter demanded, and Steven nodded wordlessly.

"All right," Peter nodded. "Go on."

"He had been recruited as I was," Steven explained. "But I was never to know by whom. In my turn I was to recruit another desirable member but I would be the only one who knew who that was. It was how the security of the chain was to be maintained. Each link would know only the one above and below him, the man who had recruited him and the one who he recruited in his turn-"

"Caliph?" Peter demanded. "What about Caliph?"

"Nobody knows who he is."

"Yet he must know who you are."

"Yes, of course."

"Then there must be some way for you to get a message to Caliph," Peter insisted. "For instance, when you recruit a new member, you must be able to pass on the information?

When he wants something from you, he must be able to contact you."

"Yes."

"How?"

"Christ, Peter. It's more than my life is worth."

"We'll come back to it," said Peter impatiently. "Go on, tell me about Aaron Altmann."

"That was a disaster. I chose Aaron as the man I would recruit. He seemed exactly the kind of man we needed. I had known him for years. I knew he could be very tough when it was necessary. So I

approached him. He seemed very eager at first, leading me on. Getting me to explain the way Caliph would work. I was delighted to have recruited such an important man. He intimated that he would contribute twenty-five million dollars to the funds of the association, so I

passed a message to Caliph. I told him that I had almost succeeded in recruiting Baron Altmann-" Steven stopped nervously, and dropped the stub of his cigarette onto the damp turf, grinding it out under his heel.

"What happened then?" Peter demanded.

"Caliph responded immediately. I was ordered to break off all contact with Aaron Altmann at once. I realized I must have chosen a potentially dangerous person. You tell me now he was Mossad. I did not know that but Caliph must have known it. I did as I was told and dropped Aaron like a hot chestnut and four days later he was abducted. I had nothing to do with it, Peter. I swear to you. I liked the man immensely. I admired him-"

"Yet he was abducted and horribly tortured. You must have known that Caliph had done it, and that you were responsible?"

"Yes." Steven said the word flatly, without evasion. Peter felt a small stir of admiration for that.

"They tortured him to find out if he had passed the information you had given him about Caliph to Mossad," Peter insisted.

"Yes I expect so. I do not know."

"If the picture I have of Aaron Altmann was correct they received no information from him."

"No.

He was like that. They must have lost patience with him in the end to do what they did to him. It was my first moment of disillusionment with Caliph," Steven muttered sombrely.

They were both silent now, until Peter burst out angrily.

"My God, Steven, can't you see what a disgusting business you are mixed up in? "And Steven was mute. "Couldn't you see it?" Peter insisted, the anger raw in his voice. "Couldn't you realize it from the beginning?"

"Not at the beginning." Steven shook his head miserably.

"It seemed a brilliant solution for all the diseases of the Western world and then once I began it was like being on board a speeding express train. It was just impossible to get off again."

"All right. So then you tried to have me assassinated on the Rambouillet road?"

"Good God, no." Steven was truly appalled. "You're my brother, good God-"

"Caliph did it to stop me getting close to Aaron's widow who was out to avenge him."

"I didn't know a thing about it, I swear to you. If Caliph did it, he knew better than to let me in on it." Steven was pleading now. "You must believe that." Peter felt a softening of his resolve, but forced back the knowledge that this man was his brother, someone who had been very dear over a lifetime.

"What was your next operation for Caliph then?" He asked without allowing the softness to reach his voice.

"There wasn't-"

"Damn you, Steven, don't lie to me." Peter's voice cracked like a whiplash. "You knew about Prince Hassled Abdel HayeV

"All right. I arranged that. Caliph told me what to do and I did it."

"Then you kidnapped Melissa-Jane and had her mutilated-"

"Oh God! No!"

Steven's voice was a sob.

To force me to assassinate Kingston Parker-"

"No, Peter. No!"

"And then to kill Magda Altmann-"

"Peter, I swear to you. Not Melissa-Jane. I love her like one of my own daughters. You must know that. I had no idea it was Caliph." Steven was pleading wildly now.

You have to believe me. I would never have allowed that to happen. That is too horrible." Peter watched him with a steely merciless glint of blue in his eyes, cold and cutting as the edge of the executioner's blade.

"I will do anything to prove to you I had nothing to do with Melissa-Jane. Anything you say, Peter. I'll take any chance to prove it to you. I swear it to you." Steven Stride's dismay and sincerity were beyond question. His face was drained of all colour and his lips were marble white and trembling with the strength of his denial.

Peter handed the shotgun to his brother without a word.

Startled, Steven held it for a moment at arm's length.

"You are in bad trouble, Steven," Peter said quietly. He knew that from now on he needed Steven's unreserved and whole-hearted commitment. He could not be forced to do what he must do at the point of a shotgun.

Steven recognized the gesture, and slowly lowered the gun. With his thumb he pushed across the breech-locking mechanism, and the weapon hinged open. He pulled the cartridges from the double eyes of the breeches and dropped them into the pocket of his shooting jacket.

"Let's get down to the house, Steven said, his voice still unsteady with the trauma of the last minutes. "I need a stiff whisky-"

"There was a log fire burning in the deep walk-in fireplace of Steven's study. The portals were magnificently carved altar surrounds from a sixteenth century German church, salvaged from the ruins of World War II Allied bombing and purchased by Steven from a Spanish dealer, after -having been smuggled out through Switzerland.

Opposite the fireplace, bow windows with leaded panes and ancient wavy glass looked out over the rose garden.

The other two walls housed Steven's collection of rare books, each boxed in its individual leather-bound container and lettered in gold leaf. The shelves reached from floor to the high moulded ceiling. It was a passion that the brothers shared.

Steven stood now in the fireplace with his back to the flames, one hand clasped in the small of his back, hoisting up the skirts of his tweed jacket to warm his backside. In the other hand he held a deep crystal tumbler, still half filled with whisky, hardly diluted by the soda he had dashed into it from the syphon.

Steven still looked shaken and pale, and every few minutes he shivered uncontrollably, although the room was oppressively heated by the blazing fire and all the windows were closed tightly.

Peter sprawled in the brocade-upholstered Louis Quatorze chair across the room, his legs thrust out straight and crossed at the ankles, hands thrust deeply into his pockets, and his chin lowered on his chest in deep thought.

"How much was your contribution to Caliph's war chest?" Peter asked abruptly.

"I was not in the same class as Aaron Altmann," Steven answered quietly. "I pledged five millions in sterling over five years."

"So we must imagine a network extending across all international boundaries.

Powerful men in every country, each contributing enormous sums of money and almost unlimited information and influence-" Steven nodded and took another swallow of his dark, toned whisky.

There is no reason to believe that it was only one man in each country. There may be a dozen in England, another dozen in Western Germany, fifty in the United States-"

"It's possible," Steven agreed.

"So that Caliph could very easily have arranged the kidnapping of Melissa-Jane through another of his chain in this country."

"You must believe I had nothing to do with it, Peter." Peter dismissed this new protestation impatiently, and went on thinking out aloud.

"It is still possible that Caliph is a committee of the founder members not one man at all."

"I don't think so--" Steven hesitated.

I had a very strong impression that it all was one man. I do not think a committee would be capable of such swift and determined action." He shook his head, trying to cast his mind back for the exact words which had formed his impressions. You must remember that I have only discussed Caliph with one other person, the man who recruited me.

However, you can be certain that we discussed it in depth and over an extended period. I was not about to put out five million on something that didn't satisfy me entirely. No, it was one man who would make the decision for all of us but the decisions would be in the interest of all."

"Yet there was no guarantee that any individual member of the chain would be informed of every decision?"

"No. Of course not. That would have been madness.

Security was the key to success."

"You could trust somebody you had never met, whose identity was hidden from you you could trust him with vast sums of money, and the destiny of the world as we know it?"

Steven hesitated again as if seeking the right words.

"Caliph has an aura that seems to envelop all of us. The man who recruited me-" Steven seemed reluctant to repeat the name again, proof to Peter of the influence that Caliph exerted is a man whose judgement

I respect tremendously. He was convinced, and this helped to convince me."

"What do you think now?" Peter asked abruptly. "Are you still convinced?" Steven drained the whisky glass, and then smoothed his mustache with a little nervous gesture.

"Come on, Steven," Peter encouraged him.

"I still think Caliph had the right idea " he said reluctantly.

The rules have changed, Peter. We were fighting for survival of the world as we know it. We were merely playing to the new morality-" He crossed to the silver tray on the corner of his desk and refilled the whisky glass.

Up to now we have had one hand tied behind our backs, while the

Reds and the extreme left and the members of the Third World have had both hands to fight with and a dagger in each one. All Caliph did was to take off our shackles."

"What has made you change your mind then?"

Peter asked.

"I'm not sure that I have changed my mind." Steven turned back to face him. "I still think it was the right idea-"

"But?" Peter insisted.

Steven shrugged. "The murder of Aaron Altmann, the mutilation of Melissa-Jane-" He hesitated. Other acts of which I suspect Caliph was the originator. They were not for the common good. They were merely to protect Caliph's personal safety, or to satisfy what I am beginning to believe is vaunted and unbridled lust for power." Steven shook his head again. "I believed Caliph to be noble and dedicated but there is no nobility in some of the things he has done.

He has acted like a common criminal. He has acted for personal advantage and glorification. I believe in the concept of Caliph but I know now we have chosen the wrong man. He has been corrupted by the power that we placed in to his hands." Peter listened to him carefully, his head cocked to one side, his blue eyes clear and quietly searching.

"All right, Steven. So we discover that Caliph is not a deity but a man with a man's petty greed and self-interest."

"Yes, I suppose

I do." Steven's handsome florid face was heavy with regret. "Caliph is not what I believed he might be "Do you accept now that he is evil truly evil?"

"Yes, I accept that. "Then, fiercely, "But God, how I wish Caliph had been what I believed he was at the beginning." Peter could understand that and he nodded.

"It was what this crazy world of ours needed-" Steven went on bitterly. We need somebody, a strong man to tell us what to do. I thought it was Caliph. I wanted it so badly to be him."

"So now, do you accept that Caliph was not that man?"

"Yes," said Steven simply.

"But if there was a man like that I would follow him again, unquestioningly."

"You said you would do anything to prove to me that you had nothing to do with Melissa-Jane will you help me to destroy Caliph?"

"Yes." Steven did not hesitate.

"There will be great personal risk," Peter pointed out, and now Steven met his eyes steadily.

"I know that. I know Caliph better than you." Peter found that his affection for his brother was now reinforced with admiration.

Steven lacked very few of the manly virtues, he thought. He had strength and courage and brains, perhaps his major vice was that he had too much of each.

"What do you want me to do, Peter?"

"I want you to arrange a meeting with Caliph face to face."

"Impossible." Steven dismissed it immediately.

"You said that you had means of getting a message to him?"

"Yes, but Caliph would never agree to a meeting."

"Steven, what is the single the only weakness that Caliph has shown so far?"

"He has shown no weakness."

"Yes, he has," Peter denied.

"What is it?"

"He is obsessed with protecting his personal identity and safety," Peter pointed out. "As soon as that is threatened, he immediately reverts to abduction and torture and murder."

"That isn't a weakness-" Steven pointed out. "It's a strength."

"If you can get a message to him that his identity is in jeopardy. That somebody, an enemy, has penetrated his security screen and has managed to get close to him," Peter suggested, and Steven considered it long and carefully.

"He would react very strongly," Steven agreed. "But it would not take him very long to find out that I was lying.

That would immediately discredit me, and as you said earlier I would be at grave risk for no good reason."

"It isn't a lie," Peter told him grimly. "There is a Mossad agent close to Caliph. Very close to him."

"How do you know that?" Steven asked sharply.

"I cannot tell you," Peter said. "But the information is iron-clad. I even know the agent's code-name. I give you my word that the information is genuine."

"In that case-" Steven thought it out again Caliph would probably already be suspicious and would be prepared to accept my warning. However, all he would do would be to ask me to give him the name pass it to him along his usual communications channel. That would be it."

"You would refuse to pass the information except face to face. You will protest that the information is much too sensitive. You would protest that your personal safety was at stake. What would be his reaction?"

"I would expect him to put pressure on me to divulge the name. If you resisted?"

"I suppose he would have to agree to a meeting. As you have pointed out, it is his major obsession. But, if he met me face to face, his identity would be revealed anyway."

"Think, Steven. You know how his mind works." It took a few seconds, then Steven's expression changed, consternation twisting his lips as though he was in pain.

"Good God of course. If I forced him to a face-to-face meeting, I would be highly unlikely to survive it."

"Exactly," Peter nodded.

"If we baited it with something absolutely irresistible, Caliph would have to agree to meet you but he would make arrangements to have you silenced immediately, before you had a chance to pass on his identity to anyone else."

"Hell, Peter, this is creepy. As you told me earlier today, I am fat and out of condition. I wouldn't be much of a match against Caliph."

"Caliph would take that into consideration when deciding whether to meet you or not," Peter agreed.

"It sounds like suicide," Steven persisted.

"You just signed on to be tough," Peter reminded him.

"Tough is one thing, stupid is another."

"You would be in no danger until you delivered the message. Caliph would not dare dispose of you until you delivered your message," Peter pointed out. "And I give you my word that I will never call on you to go to an assignation with Caliph."

"I can't ask for more than that, I suppose." Steven threw up his hands. "When do you want me to contact him?"

"How do you do it the contact?"

"Advert in the Personal column," Steven told him, and Peter grinned with reluctant admiration. Neat, efficient and entirely untraceable.

"Do it as soon as you can," Peter instructed.

"Monday morning, "Steven nodded, and went on studying his brother with a peculiarly intent expression.

"What is it, Steven?"

"I was just thinking. If only Caliph had been somebody like you, Peter."

"huh?" For the first time Peter was truly startled.

"The warrior king utterly ruthless in the pursuit of the vision of justice and rightness and duty."

"I am not like that." Peter denied it.

"Yes, you are," Steven said positively. "You are the type of man that I hoped Caliph might be. The type of man we needed." Peter had to presume that Caliph was watching him.

After his murder of Baroness Altmann, Caliph's interest would be intense. Peter had to act predictably.

He caught the early Monday flight back to Brussels, and before midday was at his desk in Narmco headquarters.

Here also he was the centre of much interest and power play Altmann Industries had lost its chief executive and there were strong undercurrents and court intrigues already 4 afoot. Despite a number of subtle approaches Peter stayed aloof from the struggle.

On Tuesday evening Peter picked up the newspaper from the news-stand in the Hilton lobby. Steven's contact request was in the small-ads section.

Children of Israel asked counsel of the Lord, saying, shall I go up again to battle? judges. 20:23.

The quotation that Caliph had chosen seemed to epitomize his view of himself. He saw himself as godlike, set high above his fellow men.

Steven had explained to Peter that Caliph took up to forty-eight hours to answer.

Steven would wait each day after the appearance of the personal announcement at his desk in his office suite in Leadenhall Street, from noon until twenty minutes past the hour. He would have no visitors nor appointments for that time, and he would make certain that his direct unlisted telephone line was un-engaged to receive the incoming contact.

There was no contact that Wednesday, but Steven had not expected one. On the Thursday Steven paced restlessly up and down the antique silk Kirman carpet as he waited for the call. He was already wearing the jacket of his suit, and his bowler and rolled umbrella were on the corner of the ornate French ormolu desk that squatted like some benign monster beneath the windows which looked across the street at Lloyds Exchange.

Steven Stride was afraid. He acknowledged the fact with direct self-honesty. Intrigue was part of his existence, had been for nearly all of his life but always the game had been played to certain rules.

He knew he was entering a new jungle, a savage wilderness where those few rules ceased entirely to exist. He was going in over his head; Peter had pointed out to him that this was not his way, and he knew Peter was right. Peter was right, and Steven was afraid as he had never been in his life. Yet he knew that he was going ahead with it.

He had heard that it was the mark of true courage to be able to meet and acknowledge fear, and yet control it sufficiently to be able to go ahead and do what duty dictated must be done.

He did not feel like a brave man.

The telephone rang once, too loud, too shrill and every nerve in his body jumped taut and he found himself frozen, paralysed with fear in the centre of the beautiful and precious carpet.

The telephone rang again, the insistent double note sounded in his ears like the peal of doom, and he felt his bowels filled with the hot oily slime of fear, hardly to be contained.

The telephone rang the third time, and with an enormous effort he forced himself to make the three paces to his desk.

He lifted the telephone receiver, and heard the sharp chimes of the interference from the public telephone system.

Stride: he said. His voice was strained, high and almost shrill, and he heard the drop of the coin.

The voice terrified him. It was an electronic drone, inhuman, without gender, without the timbre of living emotion, without neither high nor low notes.

"Aldgate and Leadenhall Street,"said the voice.

Steven repeated the rendezvous and immediately the connection was broken.

Steven dropped the receiver onto its cradle and snatched up his bowler and umbrella as he hurried to the door.

His secretary looked up at him and smiled expectantly.

She was a handsome grey-haired woman who had been with Steven ten years.

"Sir?" She still called him that.

I'm popping out for half an hour, May," Steven told her.

"Look after the shop, there is a dear." And he stepped into his private elevator and rode down swiftly to the underground garage where his Rolls was kept, together with the private vehicles of his senior executives.

In the elevator mirror he checked the exact angle of his bowler, a slightly raffish tilt over the right eye, and rearranged the bloom of the crimson carnation in the buttonhole of the dark blue Savile Row suit with its faint and elegant chalk stripe. It was important that he looked and acted entirely naturally during the next few minutes.

His staff would remark on any departure from the normal.

In the garage he did not approach the dark-maroon Rolls-Royce which glowed in the subdued lighting like some precious gem. Instead he went towards the wicket gate in the steel roll-up garage door, and the doorman in his little glassed cubicle beside the door looked up from his football pools coupons, recognized the master and leaped to his feet.

"Afternoon, guy." Good day, Harold. I won't be taking the car.

just stepping out for a few minutes." He stepped over the threshold of the gate, into the street and turned left, down towards the junction of Leadenhall Street and Aldgate. He walked fast, without seeming to hurry. Caliph spaced his intervals very tight, to make it difficult for the subject to pass a message to a surveillance unit. Steven knew he had only minutes to get from his office to the call box on the corner. Caliph seemed to know exactly how long it would take him.

The telephone in the red-framed and glass call box started to ring when he was still twenty paces away. Steven ran the distance.

"Stride," he said, his voice slightly puffed with exertion, and immediately the coin dropped and the same electronic droning voice gave him the next contact point. It was the public call box at the High

Street entrance to Aid ate tube station. Steven confirmed and the voice troubled him deeply, it sounded like that of a robot from some science fiction movie. It would not have been so bad if he had felt human contact.

The two receiving stations, neither of which was predictable, and the distances between them, had been carefully calculated to make it only just possible to reach them in time, to make it impossible for the call to be traced while the line was still open. Caliph or his agent was clearly moving from one call box to the next in another part of the city. Tracing them even a minute after he had left would be of no possible use in trying to establish identity.

The voice distorter that Caliph was using was a simple device no bigger than a small pocket calculator. Peter had told Steven that it could be purchased from a number of firms specializing in electronic surveillance, security and counter-measure equipment. It cost less than fifty dollars, and so altered the human voice phasing out all sound outside the middle range that even the most sophisticated recording device would not be able to lift a useable voice.

print to compare with a computer bank memory. It would not even be able to determine whether the speaker was a man, a woman or a child.

Steven had an unusually clear path to the station, and found himself waiting outside the call box in the crowded entrance to the station while a young man in paint-speckled overalls, with long greasy blond hair, finished his conversation. Caliph's system allowed for prior use of the chosen public telephone, and as soon as the scruffy youth finished his leisurely chat, Steven pushed into the booth and made a show of consulting the directory.

The phone rang, and even though he was expecting it, Steven jumped with shock. He was perspiring now, with the walk and the tension, and his voice was ragged as he snatched the receiver.

"Stride," he gulped.

The coin dropped and Caliph's impersonal tones chilled him again.

"Yesr :1 have a message." Yes?"

"There is danger for Caliph."

"Yesr "A government intelligence agency has put an agent close to him, close enough to be extremely dangerous."

"Say the source of your information."

"My brother. General Peter Stride." Peter had instructed him to tell the truth, as much as was possible.

"Say the government agency involved."

"Negative. The information is too sensitive. I must have assurance that Caliph receives it personally."

"Say the name or position of the enemy agent."

"Negative.

For the same reasons." Steven glanced at his gold Cartier tank watch with its black alligator strap. They had been speaking for fifteen seconds he knew the contact would not last longer than thirty seconds. Caliph would not risk exposure beyond that time. He did not wait for the next question or instruction.

"I will pass the information only to Caliph, and I must be certain it is him, not one of his agents. I request a personal meeting."

"That is not possible, "droned the inhuman voice.

"Then Caliph will be in great personal danger." Steven found courage to say it.

"I repeat, say the name and position of enemy agent." Twenty-five seconds had passed.

"I say again, negative. You must arrange a face-to-face meeting for transfer of this information." A single droplet of sweat broke from the hairline of Steven's temple and ran down his cheek. He felt as though he were suffocating in the claustrophobic little telephone box.

"You will be contacted," droned the voice and the line clicked dead.

Steven took the white silk handkerchief from his top pocket and dabbed at his face. Then he carefully rearranged the scrap of silk in his pocket, not folded into neat spikes but with a deliberately casual drape.

He squared his shoulders, lifted his chin and left the booth. Now for the first time he felt like a brave man. It was a feeling he relished, and he stepped out boldly swinging the rolled umbrella with a small flourish at each pace.

Peter had been within call of the telephone all that week, during the hours of involvement with the series of Narmco projects which he had put in train before his departure for Tahiti, and which all seemed to be maturing simultaneously. There were meetings that began in the morning and lasted until after dark, there were two separate day journeys, one to Oslo and another to Frankfurt, catching the early businessman's plane and back in the Narmco office before evening.

Always he was within reach of a telephone and Steven Stride knew the number; even when he was in the NATO Officers Club gymnasium, sharpening his body to peak physical condition, or practising until after midnight in the underground pistol range until the 9-mm. Cobra was an extension of his hands either hand, left or right, equally capable of grouping the X circle at fifty metres, from any position, standing, kneeling or prone, always he was within reach of the telephone.

Peter felt like a prize fighter in training camp, concentrating all his attention on the preparations for the confrontation he knew lay ahead.

At last the weekend loomed, with the prospect of being boring and frustrating. He refused invitations to visit the country home of one of his Narmco colleagues, another to fly down to Paris for the Saturday racing and he stayed alone in the Hilton suite, waiting for the call from Steven.

On Sunday morning he had all the papers sent up to his room, English and American and French German which he could read better than he spoke, and even the Dutch and Italian papers which he could stumble through haltingly, missing every third word or so.

He went through them carefully, trying to find a hint of Caliph's activity. New abductions, hijackings or other acts which might give him a lead to some new Caliph-dominated pressures.

Italy was in a political uproar. The confusion so great that he could only guess at how much of it was from the left and how much from the right. There had been an assassination in Naples of five known members of the Terrorist Red Brigade, all five taken out neatly with a single grenade.

The grenade type had been determined as standard NATO issue, and the execution had been in the kitchen of a Red Brigade safe apartment in a slum area of the city. The police had no leads. It sounded like Caliph. There was no reason to believe that his "chain" did not include prominent Italian businessmen. A millionaire Italian living in his own country had to be the earth's most endangered species after the blue whale, Peter thought wryly, and they might have called on Caliph to go on the offensive.

Peter finished the continental papers, and turned with relief to the English and American. It was a little before Sunday noon, and he wondered how he could live out the desolate hours until Monday morning.

He was certain that there would be no reply to Steven's request for a meeting before then.

He started on the English-language newspapers, spinning them out to cover the blank time ahead.

The British Leyland Motor Company strike was in its fifteenth week with no prospect of settlement. Now there was a case for Caliph, Peter smiled wryly, remembering his discussion with Steven. Knock a few heads together for their own good.

There was only one other item of interest in his morning's reading.

The President of the United States had appointed a special negotiator in another attempt to find a solution to the Israeli occupation of the disputed territories in the Middle East. The man he had chosen was Dr. Kingston Parker, who was described as a personal friend of the President and one of the senior members of his inner circle of advisors, a man well thought of by all parties in the dispute, and an ideal choice for the difficult job. Again Peter found himself in agreement. Kingston Parker's energies and resources seemed bottomless.

Peter dropped the last paper and found himself facing a void of boredom that would extend through until the following day. There were three books he should read beside his bed, and the Hermes crocodile case was half-filled with Narmco material, yet he knew that he would not be able to concentrate not with the prospect of the confrontation with Caliph overshadowing all else.

He went through into the mirrored bathroom of the suite, and found the package that he had purchased the previous day in the cosmetic section of Galeries Anspach, one of the city's largest departmental stores.

The wig was of good-quality human hair, not the obviously shiny nylon substitute. It was in his own natural colour, but much longer than Peter wore his hair. He arranged it carefully along his own hairline, and then set to work with a pair of scissors, trimming and tidying it. When he had it as close to his liking as possible, he began to tint the temples with "Italian Boy" hair silvering.

It took him most of the afternoon, for he was in no hurry, and he was critical of his own work. Every few minutes he consulted the snapshot which Melissa-Jane had taken with her new Polaroid camera,

Peter's Christmas t present to her, at Abbots Yew on New Year's Day.

It was a good likeness of both the Stride brothers, Peter and Steven, standing full face and smiling indulgently at Melissa-Jane's command to do so.

It highlighted the resemblances of the two brothers, and also pointed out their physical differences. The natural hair colouring was identical but Steven's was fashionably longer, curling on his collar at the back, and appreciably greyer at the temples and streaked at the front.

Steven's face was heavier, with the first trace of jowls, and his colour was higher, perhaps the first ruddy warnings of heart malfunction or merely the banner of good living in his cheeks. Yet with the wig on his head, Peter's own face seemed much fuller.

Next Peter shaped the mustache, trimming it down into the infantry officer model that Steven favoured. There had been a good selection of artificial moustaches to choose from in the cosmetic section, amongst a display of artificial eyelashes and eyebrows, but none had been exactly right.

Peter had to work on it carefully with the scissors, and then tint it with a little silver.

When he fastened it in place with the special adhesive gum, the result was quite startling. The mustache filled out his face even further, and of course the eyes of the twins were almost exactly the same shape and colour. Their noses were both straight and bony.

Peter's mouth was a little more generous, and did not have the same hard relentless line of lip but the mustache concealed much of that.

Peter stood back and examined himself in the full-length mirror.

He and Steven were within a quarter of an inch in height, they had the same breadth of shoulder. Steven was heavier in the gut, and his neck was thickening, giving him a thrusting bull-like set to his head and shoulders. Peter altered his stance slightly. It worked. He doubted that anybody who did not know both of them intimately would be able to detect the substitution. There was no reason to believe that Caliph or any of his closest lieutenants would have seen either Steven or Peter in the flesh.

He spent an hour practising Steven's gait, watching himself in the mirror, trying to capture the buoyant cockiness of Steven's movements, searching for little personal mannerisms, the way Steven stood with both hands clasped under the skirts of his jacket; the way he brushed his mustache with one finger, from the parting under his nose left and right.

Clothing was not a- serious problem. Both brothers had used the same tailor since Sandhurst days, and Steven's dress habits were invariable and inviolable. Peter's knew exactly what he would wear in any given situation.

Peter stripped off wig and mustache and repacked them carefully in their Galeries Anspach plastic packets, then buttoned them into one of the interior divisions of the Hermes case.

Next he removed the Cobra parabellum from another division. It was still in the chamois leather holster, and he bounced the familiar weight of the weapon in the palm of his hand. Reluctantly he decided he could not take it with him. The meeting would almost certainly be in England, The contact that Steven had had on Thursday had clearly originated in London. He had to believe the next contact would be in that same city. He could not take the chance of walking through British customs with a deadly weapon on his person. If he was stopped, there would be publicity.

It would instantly alert Caliph. He would be able to get another weapon from Thor Command once he was in England. Colin Noble would supply him, just as soon as Peter explained the need, he was certain of that.

Peter went down and checked the Cobra pistol into the safe deposit box of the hotel reception office, and returned to his room to face the wearying and indefinite wait. It was one of a soldier's duties to which he had never entirely accustomed himself he always hated the waiting.

However, he settled down to read Robert Asprey's War in the Shadows, that definitive tome on the history and practice of guerrilla warfare down the ages. He managed to lose himself sufficiently to be mildly surprised when he glanced at his watch and saw it was after eight o'clock. He ordered an omelette to be sent up by room service, and ten seconds after he replaced the receiver, the telephone rang.

He thought it might be a query from the kitchen about his dinner order.

"Yes, what is it?" he demanded irritably.

"Peter?"

"Steven?"

"He has agreed to a meeting." Peter felt his heart lunge wildly.

"When? Where?"

"I don't know. I have to fly to Orly tomorrow.

There will be instructions for me at the airport." Caliph covering and backtracking. Peter should have expected it. Desperately he cast his mind back to the layout of Orly Airport. He had to find a private place to meet Steven and make the change-over. He discarded swiftly the idea of meeting in one of the lounges or washrooms. That left one other location.

"What time will you be there?" Peter demanded.

"Cooks have got me onto the early flight. I'll be there at eleven fifteen."

"I'll be there before you" Peter told him. He knew the Sabena timetable by heart and all senior Narmcc, executives had special VIP cards which assured a seat on any flight.

"I wil I book a room at the Air Hotel on the fourth floor of Orly South terminal in your name," he told Steven now.

"I'll wait in the lobby. Go directly to the reception desk and ask for your key. I will check behind you to make certain you are not followed. Do not acknowledge me in any way.

Have you got that, Steven?"

"Yes."

"Until tomorrow, then." Peter broke the connection, and went through into the bathroom. He studied his. own face in the mirror.

"Well, that takes care of getting a weapon from Thor." Caliph had not set the meeting in England. It was clear now that Paris was only a staging point, and that in his usual careful fashion Caliph would move the subject on from there perhaps through one or more staging points, to the final rendezvous.

The subject would go in unarmed, and unsupported and Peter was certain that afterwards Caliph would take his usual pains to ensure that the subject would be unable to carry back a report of the meeting.

I am drawing two cards inside for a straight flush, and Caliph is the dealer from a pack that he has had plenty of time to prepare, Peter thought coldly, but at least the waiting was over. He began to pack his toilet articles into the waterproof Gucci bag.

Sir Steven Stride marched into the lobby of Orly South Air Hotel at five minutes past noon, and Peter smiled to himself in self-congratulation. Steven was wearing a blue double-breasted blazer, white shirt and cricket-club tie, above grey woollen slacks and black English handmade shoes none of your fancy Italian footwear for Steven.

It was Steven's standard informal dress, and Peter had only been wrong about the tie he had guessed that it would be an I Zingari pattern. Peter himself wore a doublebreaster and grey slacks under his trench coat and his shoes were black Barkers.

Steven's eyes flickered around the lobby, passing over Peter sitting in a far corner with a copy of Le Monde, then Steven moved authoritively to the reception desk.

"My name is Stride, do you have a reservation for me?" Steven spoke slowly, in rich plummy tones, for very few of these damned people spoke English. The clerk checked swiftly, nodded, murmured a welcome and gave Steven the form and the key.

"Four One Six." Steven checked the number loudly enough for Peter to hear. Peter had been watching the entrance carefully; fortunately there had been very few guests entering the lobby during the few minutes since Steven's arrival, and none of those could possibly have been Caliph surveillance. Of course, if this was a staging point, as Peter was certain it was, then Caliph would have no reason to put surveillance on Steven not until he got much closer to the ultimate destination.

Steven moved to the elevator with a porter carrying his single small valise, and Peter drifted across and joined the small cluster of guests waiting at the elevators.

He rode up shoulder to shoulder with Steven in the crowded elevator, neither of them acknowledging the other's existence, and when Steven and the porter left at the fourth stage Peter rode on up three floors, walked the length of the corridor and back, then took the descending elevator to Steven's floor.

Steven had left the door to 416 off the catch, and' Peter pushed it open and slipped in without knocking.

"My dear boy." Steven was in his shirt sleeves. He had switched on the television, but now he turned down the sound volume and hurried to greet him with both affection and vast relief.

"No problems?" Peter asked.

"Like clockwork," Steven told him. "Would you like a drink? I got a bottle in the duty-free." While he hunted for glasses in the bathroom, Peter checked the room swiftly. A view down towards the square functional buildings of the market that had replaced the picturesque Les Halles in central Paris, matching curtains and covers on the twin beds, television and radio sets, between the beds, modern soulless furniture it was a room, that was the most and the least that could be said for it.

Steven carried in the glasses and handed one to Peter.

"Cheers!" Peter tasted his whisky. It was too strong and the Parisian tap water tasted of chlorine. He put it aside.

"How is Caliph going to get instructions to you?"

"Got them already." Steven went to his blazer, hanging over the back of the chair, and found a long white envelope in the inside pocket. - "This was left at the Air France Information Desk." Peter took the envelope and as he split the flap he sank onto one of the armchairs. There were three items in the envelope.

A first-class Air France airline ticket, a voucher for a chauffeur-driven limousine and a hotel reservation voucher.

The air ticket could have been purchased for cash at any Air France outlet or agency, the limousine and hotel bookings could have been made equally anonymously.

There was no possibility of a trace back from any of these documents.

Peter opened the Air France ticket and read the destination.

Something began to crawl against his skin, like the loathsome touch of body vermin. He closed the ticket and checked the two vouchers; now the sick feeling of betrayal and evil spread through his entire body,

numbing his fingertips and coating the back of his tongue with a bitter metallic taste like copper salts.

The air ticket was for this evening's flight from Orly to Ben-Gurion Airport in Israel, the hired-car voucher was good for a single journey from there to Jerusalem, the hotel voucher was for a room in the King David Hotel in that ancient and holy city.

"What is it, Peter?"

"Nothing," said Peter, only then aware that the sickness must have shown on his face. "Jerusalem," he went on.

"Caliph wants you in Jerusalem." There was one person in Jerusalem at that moment.

Somebody who had been in his thoughts almost unceasingly since last he had embraced her in the darkness of Bora-Bora Island so very long ago.

Caliph was in Jerusalem, and Magda Altmann was in Jerusalem and the sickness was heavy in the pit of his stomach.

The deviousness of Caliph.

No, he told himself firmly. I have travelled that road already.

It cannot be Magda.

The genius of Caliph, evil and effortless.

It is possible. He had to admit it then. With Caliph, anything is possible. Every time Caliph shook the dice box the numbers changed, different numbers, making different totals but always completely plausible, always completely believable.

It was one of the basic proven theorems of his trade that a man, any man, was blinded and deafened and rendered senseless by love.

Peter was in love, and he knew it.

All right. So now I have to try and free my mind and think it all over again, as though I were not besotted.

"Peter, are you all right?" Steven demanded again, now with real concern. It was impossible to think with Steven hovering over him. He would have to put it aside.

"I am going to Jerusalem in your place," Peter said.

"Come again, old boy?" We are changing places you and U "You won't get away with it." Steven shook his head decidedly. "Caliph will take you on the full toss." Peter picked up his Hermes case and went through into the bathroom. He worked quickly with the wig and artificial mustache and then called.

"Steven, come here." They stood side by side and stared at themselves in the mirror.

"Good God!" Steven grunted. Peter altered his stance slightly, conforming more closely to his brother.

"That's incredible. Never knew you were such a good-looking brighter," Steven chuckled, and wagged his head wonderingly. Peter imitated the gesture perfectly.

"Damn it, Peter." The chuckle dried on Steven's lips.

"That's enough. You're giving me the creeps." Peter pulled the wig off his head. "It will work."

"Yes," Steven conceded. "It will work but how the hell did you know I would be wearing a blazer and greys?"

"Trick of the trade, Peter told him. "Don't worry about it.

Let's go through the paperwork now." In the bedroom they laid out their personal documents in two piles, and went swiftly through them.

The passport photographs would pass readily enough.

"You have to shave your soup-strainer," Peter told him, and Steven stroked his mustache with one finger, left and right lingeringly, regretfully.

"Is that absolutely necessary? Id feel like I was walking around in public with no trousers on." Peter took the slim gold ball-point from his inside pocket and a sheaf of hotel stationery from the drawer.

He studied Steven's signature in the passport for a minute, and then dashed it off on the top sheet.

"No." He shook his head, and tried again. It was like Steven's walk, cocky and confident, the "T" was crossed with a flourishing sword stroke of the pen.

In sixty seconds he had it perfected.

"With that wig on your head you could walk into my bank any day and sign for the whole damned bundle," Steven muttered uneasily. "Then go home and climb into bed with Pat."

"Now, there is an idea." Peter looked thoughtful.

"Don't joke about it," Steven pleaded.

"Who's joking?" Peter went through the credit cards, club membership cards, driver's licence and all the other clutter of civilized existence.

Steven's mastery of his brother's signature was not nearly as effective, but after twenty minutes" practice was just adequate for hotel registration purposes.

"Here is the address of a hotel on the left bank. Magnificent restaurant, and the management are very understanding if you should want to invite a young lady up to your room for a drink."

"Perish the thought." Steven looked smug at the prospect.

"It should only be for a few days, Steven. Just keep very low.

Pay cash for everything. Keep clear of the George V or the Meurice, Le Doyen and Maxim's all the places where they know you." They went carefully over the last details of the exchange of identity, while

Steven shaved off the mustache and anointed the bare patch tenderly with Eau de Sauvage.

"You'd better move now," Peter told him at last. "Wear this--" It was Peters buff trenchcoat that would cover his blazer. And let's change ties." Steven was ready, and he stood rather awkwardly by the door, in the tightly fitting trenchcoat.

"Steven, can I ask you a question?" Peter did not know why he had to know now, it had been buried so deeply for so long and yet at this moment it was deadly important to know.

"Of course, old boy." Steven seemed to welcome the postponement of the moment of parting.

"Sandhurst." Peter tried to keep the embarrassment out of his voice. "I never asked you before but you didn't do it, did you, Steven?" Steven met his eyes calmly, steadily. "No, Peter. I did not do it. My word on it." Peter took his brother's proffered right hand and squeezed it hard. It was ridiculous to feel so relieved.

"I'm glad, Steven."

"Take care of yourself, old boy."

"I will,"

Peter nodded. "But if anything happens," Peter" hesitated, " Melissa-Jane--

"Don't worry. I'll take care of it." Why do Englishmen have such difficulty talking to each other, Peter wondered, let alone communicating affection and gratitude?

"Well, I'll be getting along then," said Steven.

"Take a guard on your middle stump, and don't be caught in the slips," Peter cautioned him with the old inanity.

"Count on it," said Steven, and went out into the passage, closing the door behind him firmly, leaving his brother to think about Jerusalem.

the name had changed from Lad to BenGurion otherwise the Arrivals Hall was as Peter remembered it. One of the few airports on the globe which has sufficient luggage trolleys, so that the passengers do not have to fight for possession.

In the Arrivals Hall there was a young Israeli driver with the name: Sir Steven Stride printed in white chalk on a schoolboy's black slate.

The driver wore a navy-blue cap with a black patent leather peak.

It was his only item of uniform, otherwise he was dressed in sandals and a white cotton shirt. His English had the usual strong American turn to it, and his attitude was casual and friendly he might be driving the limousine today, but tomorrow he could be at the controls of a Centurion tank, and he was as good a man as his passenger any day.

"Shalom, Shalom," he greeted Peter. "Is that all your luggage?"

"Yes." TeseMer. Let's go." He did not offer to push Peter's trolley, but chatted amicably as he led him out to the limousine.

It was a stretched-out 240 D Mercedes Benz almost brand new, lovingly polished but somebody had painted a pair of squinting eyes on each side of the chrome three pointed star on the boot of the vehicle.

They had hardly pulled out through the airport gates when one of the characteristic aromas of Israel filled the cab of the Mercedes the smell of orange blossom from the citrus orchards that lined each side of the road.

For some reason the smell made Peter feel uneasy, a sensation of having missed something, of having neglected some vital aspect. He tried to think it all out again, from the beginning, but the driver kept up a running commentary as they pulled up the new double highway, over the hills through the pine forests towards Jerusalem, and the voice distracted him.

Peter wished he had kept the list that he had drawn up in the hotel room at Orly instead of destroying it. He tried to reconstruct it in his mind.

There were a dozen items on the plus side. The third was: Magda told me about Cactus Flower. Would she have done so if she was Caliph?

And then directly opposite, in the'minus'column: If Magda is Caliph, then "Cactus Flower" does not exist.

It was an invention for some undisclosed reason.

This was the item that pricked him like a burr in a woollen sock.

He kept coming back to it; there was a link missing from the logic of it and he tried to tease it loose. It was there just below the surface of his mind, and he knew instinctively that if he missed it the consequences would be dire.

The driver kept chatting, turning to glance back at him every few minutes with a cheerful demand for recognition.

"That's right, isn't it?" Peter grunted. The man was irritating him the missing item was there, just beginning to surface. He could see the shape of it. Why had the smell of orange blossom worried him?

The smell of flowers? Cactus flower? There was something there, something missing from the list.

If Magda is not Caliph then- Was that it? He was not certain. " Will that be all right, then?" The driver was insisting again.

"I'm sorry what was that?"

"I said, I had to drop a parcel off at my mother-in-law," the driver explained again. "It's from my wife."

"Can't you do that on your way back?"

"I'm not going back tonight-" The driver grinned winningly over his shoulder.

right on our way. It won't take five minutes. I promised my wife I'd get it to her mother today."

"Oh, very well then," Peter snapped.

There was something about the man he did not like, and he had lost track of the item that had been worrying him.

He felt as though he was in a chess game with a vastly superior opponent, and he had overlooked a castle on an open file, or a knight in a position to fork simultaneous check on his king and queen.

"We turn off here," the driver explained, and swung off into a section of new apartment blocks, all of them built of the custard-yellow Jerusalem stone, row upon row Of them, Israel's desperate attempt to house its new citizens. At this time of evening the streets were deserted, as families gathered for the evening meal.

The driver jinked through the maze of identical-seeming streets with garrulous confidence and then braked and parked in front of one of the square, boxlike, yellow buildings.

"Two minutes," he promised, and jumped out of the Mercedes, scampered around to the rear and opened the boot. There was a scratching sound, a small bump and then the lid of the boot slammed and the driver came back into Peter's line of vision carrying a brown paper parcel.

He grinned at Peter, with the ridiculous cap pushed onto the back of his head, mouthed another assurance through the closed window: "Two minutes " and went into the main door of the apartment.

Peter hoped he might be longer. The silence was precious. He closed his eyes, and concentrated.

If Magda is not Caliph then then- There was the ticking sound of the engine cooling, or was it the dashboard clock? Peter thrust the sound to the back of his mind.

then then Cactus Flower exists. Yes, that was it!

My mother-in-law lives Cactus Flower exists, and if he exists he is close enough to Caliph to know of Sir Steven Stride's threat to expose him. Peter sat upright, rigid in his seat. He had believed. that Steven Stride would be perfectly safe until after the meeting with Caliph. "That was the terrible mistake. Cactus Flower must stop Steven Stride reaching Caliph! Yes, of course. Christ, how had he not seen it before. Cactus Flower was Mossad, and Peter was sitting in a street of Jerusalem Mossad's front yard dressed as Steven Stride.

Christ! He felt the certainty of mortal danger. Cactus Flower probably made the arrangements himself. If Magda Altmann is not Caliph, then I am walking right into Cactus Flower's sucker punch I The -racking damned clock kept ticking, a sound as nerve as a leaky faucet.

I am in Cactus Flower's city in Cactus Flower's limo The ticking.

Oh God! It was not coming from the dashboard. Peter turned his head.

It was coming from behind him; from the boot. the driver had opened and in which he had moved something. Something that was now ticking away quietly.

Peter wrenched the door handle and hit the door with his shoulder, instinctively grabbing the Hermes case with his other hand.

They would have stripped out the metal partition between the boot and the back seat to allow the blast to cut through. There was probably only the leather upholstery between him and whatever was ticking. That was why he had heard it so clearly.

Time seemed to have slowed, so he was free to think it out as the seconds dropped as lingeringly as spilled honey.

Infernal machine, he thought. Why that ridiculously nineteenth-century term should occur to him now, he could not guess, a relic from the childhood days when he read Boy's Own Paper, perhaps.

He was out of the Mercedes now, almost losing his balance as his feet hit the unsurfaced and broken sidewalk.

It is probably plastic explosive with a clockwork timer on the detonator, he thought, as he started to run. What delay would they use? Thirty seconds? No, the driver had to get well away. He had said two minutes, said it twice The thoughts raced through his mind, but his legs seemed to be shackled, dragging against an enormous weight. Like trying to run waist deep in the sucking surf of a sandy beach.

It will be two minutes, and he has been gone that long. Ten paces ahead of him there was a low wall that had been built as a flower box around the apartment block. It was knee high, a double brick wall with the cavity filled with dry yellow earth and precariously sustaining the life of a few wizened oleander bushes.

Peter dived head first over the wall, breaking his fall with shoulder and forearm, and rolling back hard under the protection of the low wall.

Above his head were the large windows of the ground floor apartments. Lying on his side, peering up at them, Peter saw the reflection of the parked Mercedes as though in a mirror.

He covered his ears with the palms of both hands. The Mercedes was only fifty feet away. He watched it in the glass, his body braced, his mouth wide open to absorb blast shock in his sinuses.

The Mercedes erupted. It seemed to open quite sedately, like one of those time-elapse movies of a rose blooming.

The shining metal spread and distorted like grotesque black petals, and bright white flame shot through it that was all Peter saw, for the row of apartment windows disappeared, blown away in a million glittering shards by the blast wave, leaving the windows gaping like the toothless mouths of old decrepit men, and at the same moment the blast smashed into Peter.

Even though it was muted by the thick wall of the flower box, it crushed him, seemed to drive in his ribs, and the air whooshed from his lungs. The fearsome din of the explosion clamoured in his head, filling his skull with little bright chips of rainbow light.

He thought he must have lost consciousness for a moment, then there was the patter of falling debris raining down around him and something struck him a painful blow in the small of his back. It spurred him.

He dragged himself to his feet, struggling to refill his empty lungs. He knew he had to get away before the security forces arrived, or he could expect intensive interrogation which would certainly disclose the fact that he was not Sir Steven.

He started to run. The street was still deserted, although he could hear the beginning of the uproar which must follow. The cries of anguish and of fear.

He reached the corner and stopped running. He walked quickly to the next alley behind an apartment block. There were no street lights and he paused in the shadows. By now a dozen figures shouting questions and conjecture were hurrying towards the smoke and dust of the explosion.

Peter recovered his breath and dusted down his blazer and slacks, waiting until the confusion and shouting were at their peak. Then he walked quietly away.

On the main road he joined a short queue at the bus stop. The bus dropped him off in the Jaffa Road.

He found a cafe opposite the bus stop and went through into the men's room. He was unmarked, but pale and strained; his hands still shook from the shock of the blast as he combed his hair.

He went back into the cafe, found a corner seat and ordered falafel and pitta bread with coffee.

He sat there for half an hour, considering his next move, If Magda Altmann is not Caliph- he repeated the conundrum which he had solved just in time to save his life.

Magda Altmann is not Caliph! He knew it then with utter certainty. Cactus Flower had tried to stop Sir Steven Stride reaching Caliph with his denunciation. Therefore Magda had told him the truth.

His relief flooded his body with a great warm glow and his first instinct was to telephone her at the Mossad number she had given him.

Then he saw the danger. Cactus Flower was Mossad. He dared not go near her not yet.

What must he do then? And he knew the answer without having to search for it. He must do what he had come to do. He must find Caliph, and the only fragile thread he had to follow was the trail that Caliph had laid for him.

He left the cafe and found a taxi at the rank on the corner, "David Hotel, "Peter said, and sank back in the seat.

At least I know the danger of Cactus Flower now, he thought grimly. I won't walk into the next one blind.

Peter took one glance around the room that had been reserved for him. It was in the back of the hotel and across the road the tall bell tower of the YMCA.

made a fine stance from which a sniper could command the two windows.

"I ordered a suite," Peter snapped at the reception clerk who had led him up.

"I'm sorry, Sir Steven." The man was immediately flustered.

"There must have been a mistake." Another glance around the room and Peter had noted half a dozen sites at which Cactus Flower might have laid another explosive charge to back up the one that had failed in the back of the Mercedes. He would prefer to spend a night in a pit full of cobras rather than accept the quarters that Cactus Flower had prepared for him.

Peter stepped back into the passage and fixed the clerk with his most imperious gaze. The man scampered and returned within five minutes looking mightily relieved.

"We have one of our best suites for you." Number 122 commanded a magnificent view across the valley to the Jaffa Gate in the wall of the Old City, and in the centre of this vista towered the Church of the Last Supper.

The gardens of the hotel were lush with lawns and tall graceful palms, children shrieked gleefully around the swimming pool while a cool light breeze broke the heat.

The suite abutted onto the long open terrace, and the moment he was alone, Peter lowered the heavy roller shutters across the terrace door. Cactus Flower could too easily send a man in that way. Then Peter stepped out onto the private balcony.

On the tall stone battlements of the French Consulate adjoining the gardens they were lowering the Tricolour against the flaming backdrop of the sunset. Peter watched it for a moment then concentrated again on the security of the suite.

There was possible access from the room next door, an easy step across from window to balcony. Peter hesitated then decided to leave the balcony unshuttered. He could not bring himself to accept the claustrophobic effect of a completely shuttered room.

Instead he drew the curtains and ordered a large whisky and soda from room service. He needed it. It had been a long hard day.

Then he stripped off tie and shirt, wig and mustache and washed away some of the tensions. He was to welling himself when there was a tap on the door.

"Damned quick service," he muttered, and clapped the wig on his head and stepped into the lounge, just as a key rattled in the lock and the door swung open. Peter lifted the towel and pretended to be still drying his face to cover the lack of mustache on his lip.

"Come in," he gruffed through the towel, and then froze in the doorway, and a vice seemed to close around his heart and restrict his breathing.

She wore a man's open-neck shirt, with patch pockets on the breasts, and khaki combat breeches hugged her narrow hips. The long legs were thrust into soft-soled canvas boots. Yet she carried herself with the same unforced chic as if she had been dressed in the height of Parisian fashion.

"Sir Steven." She closed the door swiftly behind her, and Peter saw her palm the slim metal pick with which she had turned the lock.

"I'm Magda Altmann, we have met before.

I have come to warn you that you are in very grave danger." The abundant short curls formed a dark halo around her head, and her eyes were huge and green with concern.

"You must immediately leave this country. I have my private executive jet aircraft at an airfield near here-" Peter lowered the towel enough to allow himself to speak.

"Why are you telling me this?" he interrupted her brusquely. "And why should I believe you?" He saw the quick roses of anger bloom in her cheeks.

"You are dabbling in things you do not understand."

"Why should you want to warn me?" Peter insisted.

"Because-" she hesitated and then went on sharply, because you are Peter Stride's brother. For that reason and no other I would not want you killed." Peter tossed the towel back into the bathroom and with the same movement pulled off the wig and dropped it onto the chair beside him.

"Peter!" Astonishment riveted her and she stared at him, the colour that anger had painted in her cheeks fled and her eyes turned a deep luminous green. He had forgotten once again how beautiful she was.

"Well, don't just stand there," he said, and she ran to him on those long, graceful legs and flung her arms around his neck.

They strained together silently, neither of them found words necessary for many minutes. Then she broke away.

"Peter, darling I cannot stay long. I took a terrible chance coming here at all. They are watching the hotel and the girls on the switchboard are Mossad. That is why I could not telephone-"

"Tell me everything you can," he ordered.

"All right, but hold me, Cheri. I do not wish to waste a minute of this little time we have together." She hid in the bathroom when the waiter brought the whisky, then joined Peter on the couch.

"Cactus Flower reported to control that Steven had requested a meeting with Caliph, and that he intended to denounce him. That was all I knew until yesterday but I could build on that. First of all I

was amazed that Steven was the subject of the first Cactus Flower report and not you, Peter-" She caressed the smooth hard brown muscle of his chest as she spoke.." It had never occured to me, even when we discussed the fact that the report mentioned no Christian name."

"It didn't occur to me either, not until I'd already left Les Neuf Poissons."

"Then, of course, I guessed that you had taxed Steven with it, and told him the source of your information. It would have been a crazy thing to do not your usual style, at all. But I thought that being your brother-" She trailed off.

"That is exactly what I did-" Peter, we could still talk if we were on the bed," she murmured. "I have been without you for so long."

Her bare skin felt like hot satin, and they lay entwined with the hard smooth plain of her belly pressed to his. Her mouth was against his ear.

Steven's request for a meeting went directly to Caliph through a channel other than Cactus Flower. He had no chance to head it off-"

"Who is Cactus Flower, have you found that out?"

"No." She shook her head. "I still do not know." And she raked her long fingernails lightly down across his belly.

"If you do that I cannot think clearly," he protested.

"I am sorry." She brought her hand up to his cheek.

"Anyway, Caliph instructed Cactus Flower to arrange the meeting with Steven. I did not know what arrangements were being made until I saw Sir Steven's name on the immigration lists this evening. I was not particularly looking for his name, but as soon as I saw it I guessed what was happening. I guessed that Cactus Flower had enticed him here to make his interception easier. It took me three hours to find where Sir Steven would be staying." They were both silent now, and she lowered her face and pressed it into the soft of his neck, sighing with happiness.

oh God, Peter. How I missed you."

"Listen, my darling. You must tell me everything else you have." Peter lifted her chin tenderly so he could see her face and her eyes came back into focus.

"Did you know that there was to be an assassination attempt on Steven?"

"No but it was the logical step for Mossad to protect Cactus Flower."

"What else?"

"Nothing." You don't know if actual arrangements have been made for a meeting between Caliph and Steven?" if "No, I don't know, "she admitted.

"You still have no indication at all of Caliph's identity?"

"No, none at all." They were silent again, but now she propped herself on one elbow and watched his face as he spoke.

Cactus Flower would have to make the arrangements for the" meeting as Caliph instructed. He would not be able to take the chance of faking it not with Caliph." Magda nodded in silent agreement.

"Therefore we have to believe that at this moment Caliph is close, very close."

"Yes. "She nodded again, but reluctantly.

"That means that I have to go on impersonating Steven."

"Peter, no. They will kill you."

"They have already tried-" Peter told her grimly, and quietly outlined the destruction of the Mercedes. She touched the bruise in the small of his back where he had been struck by flying debris from the explosion.

"They won't let you get close to Caliph."

"They may have no choice," Peter told her. "Caliph is so concerned for his own safety he is going to insist on the meeting."

"They will try and kill you again, "she implored him.

"Perhaps, but I'm betting the meeting with Caliph is arranged to take place very soon. They won't have much opportunity to set up another elaborate trap like the Mercedes, and I'll be expecting it I've got to go ahead with it, Magda."

"Oh, Peter-" But he touched her lips, silencing the protest, and he was thinking aloud again.

"Let's suppose Mossad knew that I was not Steven Stride, that my real purpose was not to denounce Cactus Flower?

What difference would that make to the thinking at Mossad?" She considered that. "I'm not certain."

"If they knew it was Peter Stride impersonating Steven Stride he insisted, "would that make them curious enough to let the meeting go ahead?"

"Peter, are you suggesting I turn in a report to my control at Mossad ?"

"Would you do that?"

"Sweet merciful God," she whispered. "I could be signing your death warrant, Peter my darling." or you could be saving my life."

"I don't know." She sat up erect in the bed and ran the fingers of both hands through the short dark curls, the lamplight glowed on her skin with a pale, smooth opalescence and the small fine breasts changed shape as she moved her arms. "Oh, Peter, I don't know."

"It could be our only chance to ever get close to Caliph," he insisted, and the lovely face was naked with indecision.

"Caliph believes I have killed you, he believes that I have transmitted a warning to him through my brother. He will have his guard as low as ever it will be. We will never have a chance again like this "I am so afraid for you, Peter. I am so afraid for myself without you-" She did not finish it, but pulled up her long naked legs and hugged her knees to her breasts. It was a defensive foetal position.

"Will you do it?" he asked gently.

"You want me to tell my control your real identity, to tell him that I believe your real purpose is not to denounce Cactus Flower but some other unknown-"

"That is right." She turned her head and looked at him.

"I will do it in exchange for your promise," she decided.

"What is that?"

"If I judge from my control at Mossad that you are still in danger, and that they still intend intercepting you before you reach Caliph then I want your promise that you will abandon the attempt. That you will immediately go to where the Lear is waiting and that you will allow Pierre to fly you out of here to a safe place."

"You will be honest with me?" he asked. "You will judge Mossad's reaction fairly and even if there is a half-decent chance of me reaching Caliph you will allow me to take that chance?" She nodded, but he went on grimly, making certain of it.

"Swear it to me!"

"I would not try to prevent you just as long as there is a chance of success."

"Swear it to me, Magda."

"On my love for you, I swear it," she said quietly, and he relaxed slightly.

"And I in turn swear to you that if there is no chance of meeting Caliph I will leave on the Lear." She turned against his chest, wrapping both her arms around his neck.

"Make love to me, Peter. Now! Quickly! I have to have that at least." As she dressed she went over the arrangements for communicating.

"I cannot come through the switchboard here I explained why," she told him as she laced the canvas boots.

"You must stay here, in this room where I can reach you. If there is danger I will send someone to you. It will be somebody I trust. He will say simply. "Magda sent me," and you must go with him. He will take you to Pierre and the Lear jet." She stood up and belted the khaki breeches around her narrow waist, crossing to the mirror to comb out the dark damp tangle of her curls.

"If you hear nothing from me it will mean that I judge there is still a chance of reaching Caliph-" Then she paused and her expression altered. "Are you armed, Peter?" She was watching him in the mirror as she worked with her hair. He shook his head.

"I could get a weapon to you a knife, a pistol, And again he shook his head. "They will search me before I am allowed near Caliph.

If they find a weapon-" He did not have to finish it.

"You are right, "she agreed.

She turned back to him from the mirror, buttoning the shirt over the nipples of her breasts, which were still swollen and dark rosy red from their loving.

"it will all happen very quickly now, Peter. One way or the other it will be over by tomorrow night. I have a feeling here " She touched herself between the small breasts that pushed out the cotton of her shirt. "Now kiss me. I have stayed too long already for the safety of both of us." Peter slept very little after Magda left him, even though he was very tired. A dozen times he started awake during the night with every nerve strung tightly, rigid and sweating in his bed.

He was up before first light, and ordered one of those strange Israeli breakfasts of salads and hard-boiled eggs with pale green centres to be sent up to his room.

Then he settled down once more to wait.

He waited the morning out, and when there had been no message from Magda by noon, the certainty increased that Mossad had decided not to prevent the meeting with Caliph. If there had been any doubt in Magda's mind she would have sent for him. He had a light lunch sent up to the room.

The flat bright glare of noon gradually mellowed into warm butter-yellow, the shadows crept out timidly from the foot of the palm trees in the garden as the sun wheeled across a sky of clear high aching blue, and still Peter waited.

When there was an hour left of daylight, the telephone rang again.

It startled him, but he reached for it quickly.

"Good evening, Sir Steven. Your driver is here to fetch you," said the girl at the reception desk.

"Thank you. Please tell him I will be down directly," said Peter.

He was fully dressed, had been ready all that day to move immediately. He needed only to place the -crocodile skin case in the cupboard and lock it, then he left the room and strode down the corridor to the elevators.

He had no way of knowing if he was going to meet Caliph, or if he was about to be spirited out of Israel in Magda's Lear jet.

"Your limousine is waiting outside," the pretty girl at the desk told him. "Have a nice evening."

"I hope so," Peter agreed. "Thank you." The car was a small Japanese compact, and the driver was a woman,

plump and grey-haired with a friendly, ugly face like Golda Meir, Peter thought.

He let himself into the back seat, and waited expectantly for the message, "Magda sent me." Instead, the woman bade him "Shalom Shalom" politely, started the engine, switched on the headlights and drove serenely out of the hotel grounds.

They swept sedately around the outer walls of the old city in the gathering dusk, and dropped down in the valley of Kidron. Glancing back Peter saw the elegant new buildings of the Jewish quarter rising above the tops of the walls.

When last he had been in Jerusalem that area had been a deserted ruin, deliberately devastated by the Arabs.

The resurrection of that holy quarter of Judaism seemed to epitomize the spirit of these extraordinary people, Peter thought.

It was a good conversational opening, and he remarked on the new development to his driver.

She replied in Hebrew, clearly denying the ability to speak English. Peter tried her in French with the same result.

The lady has been ordered to keep her mouth tight shut, he decided.

The night came down upon them as they skirted the lower slopes of the Mount of Olives, and left the last straggling buildings of the Arab settlements. The lady driver settled down to a comfortable speed, and the road was almost deserted. It dropped gently down through a dark shallow valley, with the crests of a desolate desert landscape humped up on each side of the wide metal led road.

0 The sky was empty of cloud or haze, and the stars were brighter white and clearer, as the last of the day faded from the western sky behind them.

The road had been well sign-posted, ever since they had left the city. Their direction was eastward towards the Jordan, the Dead Sea and Jericho and twenty-five minutes after leaving the King David,

Peter glimpsed in the headlights the signpost on the right-hand side of the road, declaring in English, Arabic and Hebrew that they were now descending below sea level into the valley of the Dead Sea.

Once again Peter attempted to engage the driver in conversation, but her reply was monosyllabic. Anyway, Peter decided, there was nothing she would be able to tell him. The car was from a hire company. There was a plastic nameplate fastened onto the dashboard giving the company's name, address and hire rates. All she would know was their final destination and he would know that soon enough himself.

Peter made no further attempt to speak to her, but remained completely alert; without detectable movement he performed the prejurnp paratrooper exercises, pitting muscle against muscle so that his body would not stiffen with long inactivity but would be tuned to explode from stillness into instant violent action.

Ahead of them the warning signals of the crossroads caught the headlights, and the driver slowed and signalled the left turn. As the headlights caught the signpost, Peter saw that they had taken the Jericho road, turning away from the Dead Sea, and heading up the valley of the Jordan towards Galilee in the north.

Now the bull's horns of the new moon rose slowly over the harsh mountain peaks across the valley, and gave enough light to pick out small features in the dry blasted desert around them.

Again the driver slowed, this time for the town of Jericho itself, the oldest site of human communal habitation on this earth for six thousand years men had lived here and their wastes had raised a mountainous hill hundreds of feet above the desert floor.

Archaeologists had already excavated the collapsed walls that Joshua had brought crashing down with a blast of his ram's horns.

"A hell of a trick." Peter grinned in the darkness. "Better than the nuke bomb." Just before they reached the hill, the driver swung off the main road. She took the narrow secondary road between the clustered buildings souvenir stalls, Arab cafes, antique dealers and slowed for the twisting uneven surface.

They ground up onto higher dry hills in low gear, and at the crest the driver turned again onto a dirt track. Now fine talcum dust filled the interior and Peter sneezed once at the tickle of it.

Half a mile along the track a notice board stood on trestle legs, blocking the right of way.

"Military Zone," it proclaimed. "No access beyond this point." A The driver had to pull out onto the rocky verge to avoid the notice, and there were no sentries to enforce the printed order.

Quite suddenly Peter became aware of the great black cliff face that rose sheer into the starry night ahead of them blotting out half the sky.

Something stirred in Peter's memory the high cliffs above

Jericho, looking out across the valley of the Dead Sea; of course, he remembered then this was the scene of the temptation of Christ. How did Matthew record it? Peter cast for the exact quotation: Again, the devil taketh him up into an exceeding high mountain, and sheweth him all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them. Had Caliph deliberately chosen this place for its mystical association, was it all part of the quasi-religious image that Caliph had of himself?

He shall give his angels charge concerning thee: and in their hands they shall bear thee up. Did Caliph truly see himself as the heir to ultimate power over all the kingdoms of the world that power that the ancient chroniclers had referred to as "The Sixth Order of Angels'?

Peter felt his spirits quail in the face of such monumental madness, such immense and menacing vision, compared to which he felt insignificant and ineffectual. Fear fell over him like a gladiator's net, enmeshing his resolve, weakening him. He struggled with it silently, fighting himself clear of its mesh before it could render him helpless in Caliph's all embracing power.

The driver stopped abruptly, turned in the seat and switched on the cab light. She studied him for a moment.

Was there a touch of pity in her old and ugly face, Peter wondered?

"Here,"she said gently.

Peter drew his wallet from the inner pocket of his blazer.

"No, No you owe nothing."

"Toda raba." Peter thanked her in his fragmentary Hebrew, and opened the side door.

The desert air was still and cold, and there was the sagey smell of the low thorny scrub.

"Shalom," said the woman through the open window; then she swung the vehicle in a tight turn. The headlights swept the grove of date palms ahead of them, and then turned back towards the open desert.

Slowly the small car pitched and wove along the track in the direction from which they had come.

Peter turned his back on it, allowing his eyes to become accustomed to the muted light of the yellow homed moon and the whiter light of the fat desert stars.

After a few minutes he picked his way carefully into the palm grove. There was the smell of smoke from a dung fire, and the fine blue mist of smoke hung amongst the trees.

Somewhere in the grove he heard a goat bleat plaintively, and then the high thin wail of a child there must be a Bedouin encampment in the oasis. He moved towards it, and came abruptly into an opening surrounded by the palms. The earth had been churned by the hooves of many beasts, and Peter stumbled slightly in the loose footing and then caught his balance.

In the centre of the opening was the stone parapet which guarded a deep fresh-water well. There was a primitive windlass set above the parapet and another dark object which Peter could not immediately identify, dark and shapeless, crouching upon the parapet.

He went towards it cautiously, and felt his heart tumble within him as it moved.

It was a human figure, in some long voluminous robe that swept the sandy earth, so that it seemed to float towards him in the gloom.

The figure stopped five paces from him, and he saw that the head was covered by a monk's cowl of the same dark woollen cloth, so that the face was in a forbidding black hole beneath the cowl.

"Who are you?" Peter demanded, and his voice rasped in his own ears. The monk did not reply, but shook one hand free of the wide sleeve and beckoned to him to follow, then turned and glided away into the palm grove.

Peter went after him, and within a hundred yards was stepping out hard to keep the monk in sight. His light city shoes were not made for this heavy going, loose sand with scattered outcrops of shattered rock.

They left the palm grove and directly ahead of them, less than a quarter of a mile away, the cliff fell from the sky like a vast cascade of black stone.

The monk led him along a rough but well-used footpath, and though Peter tried to narrow the distance between them, he found that he would have to break into a trot to do so for although the monk appeared to be a broad and heavy man beneath the billowing robe, yet he moved lithely and lightly.

They reached the cliff, and the path zigzagged up it, at such a gradient that they had to lean forward into it. The surface was loose with shale and dry earth becoming progressively steeper. Then underfoot the path was paved, the worn steps of solid rock.

On one hand the drop away into the valley was deeper always and the sheer cliff on the other seemed to lean out as though to press him over the edge.

Always the monk was ahead of him, tireless and quick, his feet silent on the worn steps, and there was no sound of labouring breath.

Peter realized that a man of that stamina and bulk must be immensely powerful. He did not move as you might expect a man of God and prayer to move. There was the awareness and balance of a fighting man about him, the unconscious pride and force of the warrior. With Caliph nothing was ever as it seemed, he thought.

The higher they climbed, so the moonlit panorama below them became more magnificent, a soaring vista of desert and mountain with the great shield of the Dead Sea a brilliant beaten silver beneath the stars. All the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them, Peter thought.

They had not paused to rest once on the climb. How high was it, Peter wondered a thousand feet, fifteen hundred perhaps? His own breathing was deep and steady, he was not yet fully extended and the light sweat that de wed his forehead cooled in the night air.

Something nudged his memory, and he sniffed at the faintly perfumed aroma on the air. It was not steady, but he had caught it faintly once or twice during the climb.

Peter was plagued by the non-smoker's acute sense of smell; perfumes and odours always had special significance for him and this smell was important, but he could not quite place it now. It nagged at him, but then it was lost in a host of other more powerful odours the smell of human beings in community.

The smell of cooking smoke, of food and the underlying sickly taint of rotting garbage and primitive sewage disposal.

Somewhere long ago he had seen photographs of the ancient monastery built into the top of these spectacular Cliffs, the caves and subterranean chambers honeycombed the crest of the rock face, and walls of hewn rock had been built above them by men dead these thousand years.

Yet the memory of that faint perfumed aroma lingered with Peter, as they climbed the last hundred feet of that terrifying drop and came out suddenly against the stone tower and thick fortification, into which was set a heavy timber door twelve feet high and studded. with iron bolts.

At their approach the door swung open. There was a narrow stone passageway ahead of them lit by a single storm lantern in a niche at the corner of the passageway.

As Peter stepped through the gate, two other figures closed on each side of him out of the darkness and he moved instinctively to defend himself, but checked the movement and stood quiescent with his hand half raised as they searched him with painstaking expertise for a weapon.

Both these men were dressed in single-piece combat suits, and they wore canvas paratrooper boots. Their heads were covered by coarse woollen scarves wound over mouth and nose so only their eyes showed.

Each of them carried the ubiquitous Uzi sub-machine guns, loaded and cocked and slung on shoulder straps.

At last they stood back satisfied, and the monk led Peter on through a maze of narrow passages. Somewhere there was the sound of monks at their devotions, the harsh chanting of the Greek Orthodox service. The sound of it, and the smoky cedar wood aroma of burning incense, became stronger, until the monk led Peter into a cavernous, dimly lit church nave hewn from the living rock of the cliff.

In the gloom the old Greek monks sat like long embalmed mummies in their tall dark wooden pews. Their time-worn faces masked by the great black bushes of their beards. Only their eyes glittered, alive as the jewels and precious metals that gilded the ancient religious icons on the stone walls.

The reek of incense was overpowering, and the hoarse chant of the office missed not a single beat as Peter and the robed monk passed swiftly amongst them.

In the impenetrable shadows at the rear of the church, the monk seemed abruptly to disappear, but when Peter reached the spot he discovered that one of the carved pews had been swung aside to reveal a dark secret opening in the rock.

Peter went into it cautiously. It was totally dark but his feet found shallow stone steps, and he climbed a twisting stairway through the rock counting the steps to five hundred, each step approximately six inches high.

Abruptly he stepped out into the cool desert night again.

He was in a paved open courtyard, with the brilliant panoply of the stars overhead, the cliff rising straight ahead and a low stone parapet protecting the sheer drop into the valley behind him.

Peter realized that this must be one of the remotest and most easily defensible rendezvous that Caliph could have chosen and there were more guards here.

Again they came forward, two of them, and searched him once again even more thoroughly than at the monastery gate.

While they worked Peter looked around him swiftly. The level courtyard was perched like an eagle's eyrie on the brink of the precipice, the parapet wall was five feet high.

Across the courtyard were the oblong entrances to caves carved into the cliff face. They would probably be the retreats of the monks seeking solitude.

There were other men in the courtyard, wearing the same uniform with heads hidden by the Arab shawl headgear. Two of them were setting out flashlight beacons in the shape of a pyramid.

Peter realized they were beacons for an aircraft. Not an aircraft. A helicopter was the only vehicle which would be able to get into this precarious perch on the side of the precipice.

All right then, the beacons would serve to direct a helicopter down into the level paved courtyard.

One of the armed guards ended his body search by checking the buckle of Peter's belt, tugging it experimentally to make certain it was not the handle of a concealed blade.

He stood back and motioned Peter forward. Across the courtyard the big monk waited patiently at the entrance to one of the stone cells that opened onto the Courtyard.

Peter stooped through the low entrance. The cell was dimly lit by a stinking kerosene lamp set in a stone niche above the narrow cot.

There was a crude wooden table against one wall, a plain crucifix above it and no other ornamentation.

Hewn from the rock wall was a ledge which acted as a shelf for a dozen heavy battered leather-bound books and a few basic eating utensils. It was also a primitive seat.

The monk motioned him towards it, but himself remained standing by the entrance to the cell with his hands thrust into the wide sleeves of his cassock, his face turned away and still masked completely by the deep hood.

There was utter silence from the courtyard beyond the doorway, but it was an electric waiting silence.

Suddenly Peter was aware of the perfumed aroma again, here in the crude stone cell, and then with a small tingling shock he recognized it. The smell came from the monk.

He knew instantly who the big man in the monk's cowl was, and the knowledge confused him utterly, for long stricken moments.

Then like the click of a well-oiled lock slipping home it all came together. He knew oh God he knew at last.

The aroma he had recognized was the faint trace of the perfumed smoke of expensive Dutch cheroots, and he stared fixedly at the big hooded monk.

Now there was a sound on the air, a faint flutter like moth's wings against the glass of the lantern, and the monk cocked his head slightly, listening intently.

Peter was balancing distances and times and odds in his head.

The monk, the five armed men in the courtyard, the approaching helicopter The monk was the most dangerous factor. Now that Peter knew who he was, he knew also that he was one of the most highly trained fighting men against whom he could ever match himself.

The five men in the yard Peter blinked with sudden realization. They would not be there any longer. It was as simp leas that. Caliph would never allow himself to be seen by any but his most trusted lieutenants, and by those about to die. The monk would have sent them away. They would be waiting close by, but it would take them time to get back into action.

There were only the monk and Caliph. For he knew that the dinning of rotor and engine was bringing Caliph in to the rendezvous. The helicopter sounded as though it were already directly overhead. The monk's attention was on it.

Peter could see how he held his head under the cowl, he was off-guard for the first time.

Peter heard the sound of the spinning rotors change as the pilot altered pitch for the vertical descent into the tiny courtyard. The cell was lit through the doorway by the reflection of the helicopter's landing lights beating down into the courtyard with a relentless white glare.

Dust began to swirl from the down-draught of the rotors, it smoked in pale wisps into the cell and the monk moved.

He stepped to the doorway, the empty dark hole in the cowl which was his face turned briefly away from Peter as he glanced out through the entrance of the cell.

It was the moment for which Peter had waited, his whole body was charged, like the S in an adder's neck before it strikes. At the instant that the monk turned his head away, Peter launched himself across the cell.

He had ten feet to go, and the thunder of the helicopter's engines covered all sound yet still some instinct of the fighting man warned the huge monk, and he spun into the arc of Peter's attack. The head under the cowl dropped defensively, so that Peter had to change his stroke. He could no longer go for the kill at the neck, and he chose the right shoulder for a crippling blow. His hand was stiff as a headman's blade and it slogged into the monk's shoulder between the neck and the humerus joint of the upper arm.

Peter heard the collar bone break with a sharp brittle crack, high above even the roar of the helicopter's engines.

With his left hand Peter caught the monk's crippled arm at the elbow and yanked it up savagely, driving the one edge of shattered bone against the other so it grated harshly, twisting it so the bone shards were razor cutting edges in their own living flesh and the monk screamed, doubling from the waist to try and relieve the intolerable agony in his shoulder.

Shock had paralysed him, the big powerful body went slack in Peter's grasp.

Peter used all his weight and the impetus of his rush to drive the monk's head into the doorjamb of the cell; skull met stone with a solid clunk and the big man dropped facedown to the paved floor.

Peter rolled him swiftly and pulled up the skirts of the cassock.

Under it the man wore paratrooper boots and the blue full-length overalls of Thor Command. On his webbing belt was the blue steel and polished walnut butt of the Browning Hi-power .45 pistol in its quick-release holster.

Peter sprang it from its steel retaining clamp and cocked the pistol with a sweep of the left hand. It would be loaded with Velex explosives.

The woollen folds of the cowl had fallen back from Colin Noble's head, the wide generous mouth now hanging open slackly, the burned-toffee eyes glazed with concussion, the big crooked prize-fighter's nose all the well-remembered features, once so dearly cherished in comradeship.

Blood was streaming from Colin's thick curling hairline, running down his forehead and under his ear but he was still conscious.

Peter put the muzzle of the Browning against the bridge of his nose. The Velex bullet would cut the top off his skull.

Peter had lost his wig in those desperate seconds, and he saw recognition spark in Colin's stunned eyes.

"Peter! No!" croaked Colin desperately.

I'm Cactus Flower!" The shock of it hit Peter solidly, and he released the pressure on the Browning's trigger. It held him for only a moment and then he turned and ducked through the low doorway leaving Colin sprawling on the stone floor of the cell." The helicopter had settled into the courtyard. It was a five-seater Bell jet Ranger, painted in the blue and gold colours of Thor Command and on its side was the

Thor emblem and the words:

THOR COMMUNICATIONS

There was a pilot still at the controls, and one other man who had already left the cabin of the machine and was coming towards the entrance of the cell.

Even though he was doubled over to avoid the swirling rotor blades, there was no mistaking the tall powerful frame.

The high wind of the rotors tumbled the thick greying leonine curls about the noble head, and the landing lights lit him starkly like the central character in some Shakespearian tragedy - a towering presence that transcended his mere physical stature.

Kingston Parker straightened as he came out from under the swinging rotor, and for an earth-stopping instant of time he stared at Peter across the stone-paved courtyard. Without the wig he recognized Peter instantly.

Kingston Parker stood for that instant like an old lion brought to bay.

"Caliph!" Peter called harshly, and the last doubt was gone as Kingston Parker whirled, incredibly swiftly for such a big man. He had almost reached the cabin door of the Jet Ranger before Peter had the Browning up.

The first shot hit Parker in the back, and flung him Now forward through the open door, but the gun had thrown high and right. It was not a killing shot, Peter knew it, and now the helicopter was rising swiftly, turning on its own axis, rising out over the edge of the precipice.

Peter ran twenty feet and jumped to the parapet of the hewn stone wall. The jet Ranger soared above him, its belly white and bloated like that of a man-eating shark, the landing lights blazing down, half dazzling Peter. It swung out over the edge of the cliff.

Peter took the Browning double-handed, shooting directly Upwards, judging the exact position of the fuel tank in the rear of the fuselage, where it joined the long stalk like tail and he pumped the big heavy explosive shells out of the gun, the recoil pounding down his outflung arms and jolting into his shoulders.

He saw the Velex bullets biting into the thin metal skin of the underbelly, the tiny wink of each bullet as it burst, but still the machine reared away above him and he had been counting his shots.

The Browning was almost empty.

Seven, eight then suddenly the sky above him filled with flame, and the great whooshing concussion of air jarred the stone under his feet.

The jet Ranger turned over on her back, a bright bouquet of flame, the engine howling its death cry, and it toppled beyond the edge of the precipice and plunged, burning savagely, into the dark void below where Peter stood.

Peter began to turn back towards the courtyard, and he saw the armed men pouring in through the stone gateway.

They were Thor men, picked fighting men, men he had trained himself. There was one bullet left in the Browning.

He knew he was not going to make it but he made a try for the entrance to the stairway, his only escape route.

He ran along the top of the stone wall like a tightrope artist, and he snapped the single remaining bullet at the running men to distract them.

The crackle of passing shot dinned in his head, and he flinched and missed his footing. He began to fall, twisting sideways away from the edge of the precipice but then the bullets thumped into his flesh.

He heard the bullets going into his body with the rubbery socking sound of a heavyweight boxer hitting the heavy punch bag, and then he was flung out over the wall into the bottomless night.

He expected to fall for ever, a thousand feet to the desert floor below, where already the helicopter was shooting a hundred-foot fountain of fire into the air to mark Caliph's funeral pyre.

There was a narrow ledge ten feet below the parapet where a thorny wreath of desert scrub had found a precarious hold. Peter fell into it, and the curved thorns hooked into his clothing and into his flesh.

He hung there over the drop, and his senses began to fade.

His last clear memory was Colin Noble's bull bellow of command to the five Thor guards.

"Cease fire! Don't shoot again!" And then the darkness filled Peter's head.

In the darkness there were lucid moments, each disconnected from the other by eternities of pain and confused nightmare distortions of the mind.

He remembered being lifted up through the hatchway of an aircraft, lying in one of the light body-fitting Thor stretchers, strapped to it tightly, helpless as a newborn infant.

There was the memory of the inside cabin of Magda Altmann's Lear jet. He recognized the hand-painted decoration of the curved cabin roof. There were plasma bottles suspended above him; the whole blood was the beautiful ruby colour of fine claret in a crystal glass, and when he rolled his eyes downwards he saw the tubes connected to the thick bright needles driven into his arms but he was terribly tired, an utter weariness that seemed to have bruised and crushed his soul and he closed his eyes.

When he opened his eyes again, there was the roof of a long brightly lit corridor passing swiftly in front of his eyes.

The feeling Of motion, and the scratchy squeak of the wheels of a theatre trolley.

Quiet voices were speaking in French, and the bottle of beautiful bright blood was held above him by long slim hands that he knew so well.

He rolled his head slightly and he saw Magda's beloved face swimming on the periphery of his vision.

"I love you," he said, but there was no sound and he realized that his lips had not moved. He could no longer support the weariness and he let his eyelids droop closed.

"How bad is it?" he heard Magda's voice speaking in that beautiful rippling French, and a man replied.

"One bullet is lying very close to the heart we must remove it immediately." Then the prick of something into his flesh searching for the vein, and the sudden musty taste of Pentothal on his tongue, followed by the abrupt singing plunge back into the darkness.

He came back very slowly out of the darkness, conscious first of the bandages that swathed his chest and restricted his breathing.

The next thing he was aware of was Magda Altmann, and how beautiful she was. It seemed that she must have been there all along while he was in the darkness. He watched the joy bloom in her face as she saw that he was conscious.

"Thank you," she whispered. "Thank you for coming back to me, my darling." Then there was the room at La Pierre Benite, with its high gilded ceilings and the view through the tall sash windows across the terraced lawns down to the lake. The trees along the edge of the water were in full leaf, and the very air seemed charged with spring and the promise of new life. Magda had filled the room with banks of flowers, and she was with him during most of each day.

"what happened when you walked back into the boardroom at Altmann Industries?" was one of the first questions he asked her.

"Consternation, cheri." She chuckled, that husky little laugh of hers. "They had already divided the spoils." The visitor came when Peter had been at La Pierre benite for eight days, and was able to sit in one of the brocaded chairs by the window.

Magda was standing beside Peter's chair, ready to protect him from over-exertion physically or emotionally.

Colin Noble came into the room like a sheepish St. Bernard dog.

His right arm was strapped and carried in a sling across his chest. He touched it with his good hand.

"If I'd known it was you and not Sir Steven I'd never have turned my back on you," he told Peter, and grinned placatingly.

Peter had stiffened, his face had transformed into a white rigid mask. Magda laid her hand upon his shoulder.

"Gently, Peter,"she whispered.

"Tell me one thing Peter hissed. "Did you arrange the kidnapping of Melissa-Jane?" Colin shook his head. "My word on it.

Parker used one of his other agents. I did not know it was going to happen." Peter stared at him, hard and unforgiving.

"Only after we had recovered Melissa-Jane, only then I knew that Caliph had planned it. If I had known I would never have let it happen. Caliph must have known that.

That is why he did not make me do it." Colin was speaking quickly, urgently.

"What was Parker's object?" Peter's voice was still a vicious hiss.

"He had three separate objects. Firstly, to convince you that he was not Caliph. that's why his first order was to have you kill Parker himself. Of course, you never would have got near him. Then you were allowed to recover your daughter. It was Caliph himself who gave us O'Shaughnessy's name and where to find him. Then you were turned onto Magda Altmann-" Colin glanced at her apologetically. "Once you had killed her, you would have been bound to Caliph by guilt."

"When did you learn this?" Peter demanded.

"The day after we found Melissa-Jane. By then there was nothing I could do that would not expose me as Cactus Flower all I could do was to pass a warning to Magda A through Mossad."

"It's true, Peter," said Magda quietly.

Slowly the rigidity went out of Peter's shoulders.

"When did Caliph recruit you as his Chief Lieutenantr he asked, his voice also had altered, softened.

"As soon as I took over Thor Command from you, He was never certain of you, Peter, that was why he opposed your appointment to head of Thor and why he jumped at the first chance to have you fired.

That was why he tried to have you killed on the Rambouillet road. Only after the attempt failed did he realize your potential value to him."

"Are the other Atlas unit commanders Caliph's lieutenants Tanner at Mercury Command, Peterson at Diana?"

"All three of us. Yes!" Colin nodded, and there was a long silence.

"What else do you want to know, Peter?" Colin asked softly. "Are there any other questions?"

"Not now." Peter shook his head wearily.

"There will be many others later." Colin looked up at Magda Altmann inquiringly. "Is he strong enough yet?" he asked. "Can I tell him the rest of it?" She hesitated a moment. "Yes," she decided. "Tell him now."

"Atlas was to be the secret da get in the sleeve of Western civilization a civilization which had emasculated itself and abased itself before its enemies. For once we would be able to meet naked violence and piracy with raw force.

Atlas is a chain of powerful men of many nations banded together, and Caliph was to be its executive chief. Atlas is the only agency which transcends all national boundaries, and has as its object the survival of Western society as we know it. Atlas still exists, its structure is complete only Caliph is dead. He died in a most unfortunate air accident over the or dan valley but Atlas still exists. It has to go on, once that part which Caliph has perverted is rooted out.

It is our hope for the future in a world gone mad." Peter had never heard him speak so articulately, so persuasively.

"You know, of course, Peter, that you were the original choice to command Atlas. However, the wrong man superseded you although nobody could know he was the wrong man at that time. Kingston Parker seemed to have all the qualities needed for the task but there were hidden defects which only became apparent much later." Colin began enumerating them, holding up the fingers of his uninjured arm.

"Firstly, he lacked physical courage. He became obsessed with his own physical safety grossly abusing his powers to protect himself.

"Secondly, he was a man of unsuspected and overbearing ambition, with an ungoverned lust for raw power. Atlas swiftly became the vehicle to carry him to glory. His first goal was the Presidency of the United States. He was using Atlas to destroy his political opponents. Had he succeeded in achieving the presidency, no man can tell what his next goal would have been." Colin dropped his hand and balled it into a fist.

"The decision to allow you to reach the rendezvous with Kingston Parker on the cliffs above Jericho was made by more than one man in more than one country." Colin grinned again, boyishly, disarmingly.

"I did not even know it was you. I believed it was Steven Stride, right up until the moment I turned my back on you!"

"Tell him," said Magda quietly, "Get it over with, Colin.

He is still very weak."

"Yes," Colin agreed. "I'll do it now.

Yesterday at noon, your appointment to succeed Doctor Kingston Parker as head of Atlas Command was secretly confirmed." For Peter it was as though a door had at last opened, a door so long closed and locked, but through it now he could see his destiny stretching out ahead of him; clearly he could see it for the first time.

"You are the man best suited by nature and by training to fill the void which Kingston Parker has left." Even through the weakness of his abused body, Peter could feel a deep well of strength and determination within himself which he had never before suspected. It was as though it had been reserved expressly for this time, for this task.

"Will you accept the command of Atlas?" Colin asked.

"What answer must I take back with me?" Magda's long fingers tightened on his shoulder, and they waited while he made his decision.

It came almost immediately. There was no alternative open to him, Peter knew that it was his destiny.

"Yes, , he said clearly. "Tell them I accept the responsibility."

It was a solemn moment, nobody smiled nor spoke for long seconds, and then: "Caliph is dead," Magda whispered. "Long live Caliph." Peter Stride raised his head to look at her, but his voice when he replied was so cold that it seemed to frost upon his lips.

"Never," he said, "call me that again, ever." Magda made a small gesture of acquiescence, of total accord, then she stooped to kiss him on the mouth.

Table of Contents

Hungry as the Sea

Elephant Song

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Wild Justice