Elephant Song

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. Arc 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 heat 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 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 admired. 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? NoChetti 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 toUbomo, 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 immigration post. He was expecting trouble.

customs a 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.

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. Never bruit it about. had 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 Ubonio 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 Ubonio 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 Morula 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.

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 ligbr-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.

had sign. 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 coptes 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? ] 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 Damn!

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 barren ground 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, ated 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. now, Daniel said. 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 throw 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. an 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 won 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. 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, wouldn't 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 ! 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?

He 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 lo ic 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.

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-walnutveneered 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 2 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 id 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, Daniettold the driver recklessly, 2nd whEnthcy 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, Pa] 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 torn 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 torn? Is that it? For a moment she looked mystified by the question, and then she dismissed it lightheartedly. Of course. What else is there, ]over?

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.

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 c Nichols and 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.

When 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, mydear. 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. White 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.

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's 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 the "shoot it" 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 BossFShame! 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 set 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 ball 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 cruet 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.

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 Ubomc; 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 Jorno 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 at-tempted 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 coot 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 This grill room that opened on to the court.

yard. 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 flower's and tinkling piano of the This 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. I 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 moram under six foot three is considered a midget. Their women arc 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.