Elephant Song

More than once. Three times in fact, the last time a week ago. He grinned at her. At the risk of sounding jejune, he teased her with her own phrase, I'm a fan. Yech! Bonny spoke for the first time in fifteen minutes. Excuse me while I throw up. Daniel had almost forgotten her existence, and now he reached out to take her freckled hand that lay on the table cloth beside him. Bonny pulled it away before he could touch it and placed it in her lap. I'd like some more wine, if anybody is interested, she pouted.

Daniel dutifully refilled her glass while Kelly concentrated tactfully on the last morsels of her steak.

At last Daniel broke the awkward silence. We were talking about the Bambuti. Tell me about them.

Kelly looked up at him again, but did not answer immediately. She seemed to be struggling with a difficult decision.

Daniel waited. Look here, Kelly said at last. You want to know about the Bambuti. All right, what would you say if instead of talking about them I actually took you into the forest and showed you?

How would you like to film them in their natural surroundings?

I could show you things that nobody else has ever filmed, sights that very few Westerners have ever seen. I'd jump at the chance, Kelly.

Hell, I can't think of anything I'd like more, but isn't there just one little problem? President Taffari hates your guts and will hang you from the highest tree the moment you put one foot across the border.

Kelly laughed. He was beginning really to enjoy the sound of her laughter. It had a delicious purring quality that made him feel good and want to laugh in sympathy. He's not much into hanging, is our boy Ephrem. He has other little tricks he prefers. So, how would you manage the guided tour of Ubomo without Taffari's blessing? She was still smiling. I've lived in the forest for almost five years.

Taffari's authority ends where the tall trees begin. I have many friends. Taffari has many enemies. How will I contact you?

Daniel insisted. You won't have to. I'll contact you. Tell me, Kelly, why are you risking your life to be back?

What work is so important that you must do it without a field grant, without any kind of support, and under the threat of arrest, and possible death?

She stared at him. "That's an amazingly stupid question.

There is enough work in the forests to keep me going for a lifetime.

Amongst other things, I'm doing work on the physiology of the Bambuti. I have been studying the dwarfism of the pygmies, attempting to determine the cause of their stunted growth. Of course, I'm not the first to do this type of research, but I think I've come up with a new angle. Up until now everybody has concentrated on the growth hormone .

. She broke off and smiled. I won't bore you with the details, but I believe it's the hormone receptors that are lacking. Oh, we aren't bored. Bonny made no effort to veil her sarcasm. We're fascinated.

Do you plan to give the pygmies an injection and turn them all into giants like the Hita? Kelly refused to be annoyed. The small stature of the Bambuti is a benevolent mutation. It makes them ideally suited for life in the rain forests. I don't understand, Daniel encouraged her.

Explain how being small is a benefit. Okay, you asked for it.

Firstly, there is heat dissipation.

Being so tiny they can shed the heat that builds up in the humid windless atmosphere beneath the forest canopy. Then again, their size makes them agile and nimble in the dense tropical growth. You will be astonished to see how the Bambuti move through the forest. The Egyptians and the early explorers truly believed that they had the power of invisibility. They can simply vanish before your eyes. Her own lovely eyes shone with enthusiasm and affection as she talked about these people whom she had made her own.

Daniel ordered dessert and coffee, and Kelly had still not exhausted the subject. The other area of my research is even more important than growth hormones and receptors. The Bambuti have a marvelous knowledge of plants and their properties, particularly medicinal properties. I estimate that there are well over half a million different species of plants growing in the rain forests, hundreds of them with already proven properties beneficial to man. I believe that the cure for most of our ills and diseases might be locked up in those plants, a cure for cancer, and for AIDS. I've had promising indications in all those directions.

Science fiction, Bonny scoffed, and filled her mouth with chocolate ice cream. Do shut up, Bonny, Daniel snapped at her. This is fascinating.

How advanced is your research? Kelly pulled a face. Not as far as I'd like. I have the old women of the Barnbuti helping me gather the leaves and barks and roots. They describe their properties and I try to catalogue and test them and isolate the active ingredient, but my laboratory is a thatched hut, and I am fresh out of money and friends.

.

. Still I'd like to see it. You will, she promised, and she was so carried away by Daniel's interest in her work that she laid her hand on his arm.

You'll come to Gondola where I live? Bonny was watching the other girl's hand on Daniel's tanned and muscular forearm. It was a small hand, like the rest of her body, neat and graceful. Sir Peter would be interested in the formula for curing AIDS, Bonny said, still staring at the hand.

BOSS could market it through their pharmaceutical company. It would be worth a billion--2BOSS? Sir Peter? Kelly jerked her hand off Daniel's arm and stared at Bonny. Sir Peter who? Which Sir Peter?

Tug Harrison, ducky, Bonny told her with relish. Tug is bank-rolling the production that Daniel is going to shoot in Ubomo. The idea is that Danny and I are going to show the world what a hell of a job BOSS are doing. They are going to call it "Ubomo, High Road to the African Future". Isn't that a cute title? It's going to be Danny's masterpiece Kelly didn't wait for her to finish. She leapt to her feet and knocked over her cup. Spilled coffee spread across the tablecloth and cascaded into Daniel's lap. You!

Kelly stared down at him. You and that monster Harrison! How could you? She whirled and ran from the restaurant, shoving her way through a pack of American tourists who were blocking the aisle.

Daniel was on his feet mopping the coffee that had soaked his trousers.

What the hell did you do that for? he snarled at Bonny. You and the tree doctor were getting just a mite too chummy for my taste. Damn you, Daniel flared. You've screwed up a chance to film something unique I'll talk to you later. He strode angrily after Kelly Kinnear.

She was not in the hotel lobby. Daniel headed for the front entrance and called the doorman. Did you see a woman- He broke off as he spotted Kelly on the far side of the road. She was astride a dusty cc Honda motor cycle, and at that moment she jumped on the kick-starter and the engine shrilled to life. She swung the handlebars hard over, banking the cycle into a tight turn, the engine whining and popping jets of oily blue exhaust smoke. Kelly!

Daniel shouted. "Wait! Give me a chance. I can explain. She wrenched the throttle grip fully open and the cycle reared up on its back wheel as it accelerated. She turned her face to him as she flew past where he stood. Her expression was at once angry and stricken and he could have sworn that there were tears on her cheeks. Hired gun!

she cried at him.

Judas!

And then the motor cycle howled away. She banked it sharply, the steel foot-rest raised a shower of sparks as it grazed the tarmac, and she weaved into the traffic in Kimathi Avenue.

Daniel ran down to the corner. He caught one more glimpse of her two hundred yards down the avenue, leaning over the handlebars like a jockey, her braid standing out stiffly from the back of her head in the wind.

He looked around for a taxi to follow her, and then realised the futility of even trying. With the lead she Had, and the Honda's manoeuvrability no car could hope to catch her.

He turned on his heel and marched back towards the hotel, intent on finding Bonny Mahon. Before he reached the entrance he realised the danger of confronting herein his present mood. It could only lead to bloody battle, and probably the break-up of their relationship. That did not worry him too much, but what restrained him was the danger of losing a cameraman. It might take weeks to find a replacement, and that could lead to a cancellation of his contract with BOSS, the end of his quest to follow the Lucky Dragon, and Ning Cheng Gong, into Ubomo.

He checked his stride and thought about it. It wasn't worth the pleasure of pinning back Bonny Mahon's ears.

I'd better go and cool off somewhere. He chose the Jambo, Bar, one of the notorious bars down near the station.

It was full of black soldiers in camouflage, and mate tourists and bar girls. Some of the girls were spectacular, Samburu and Kikuyu and Masai, in tight shiny skirts with beads and bright ribbons braided into their hair.

Daniel found a bar stool in the corner, and the antics of the middle-aged European tourists on the dance floor helped to alleviate his foul mood. A recent survey of the Nairobi bar girls had determined that ninety-eight percent of them were HIV positive. You had to have a death wish to enjoy fully all that these ladies had to offer.

An hour and two double whiskies later, Daniel's anger Had cooled sufficiently, and he headed back to the Norfolk Hotel.

He let himself into the cottage suite and saw Bonny's khaki slacks and panties in the centre of the sitting-room floor where she had dropped them. This evening her untidiness irritated him even more than usual.

The bedroom was in darkness, but the lights in the courtyard shone through the curtains sufficiently for him to make out Bonny's form under the sheet on her side of the bed. He knew, she was feigning sleep. He undressed in the darkness, slipped naked into his side of the bed, and lay still.

Neither of them moved or spoke for fully five minutes and then Bonny whispered, Is Daddy cross with his little girl? She used her simpering childish voice. His little girl was very naughty. . She touched him.

Her fingers were warm and silky down his flank. She wants to show him how sorry she is. He caught her wrist, but it was too late. She was cunning and quick and soon he didn't want her to stop. Damn it, Bonny, he protested. You screwed up a chance Shh! Don't talk, Bonny whispered. Little girl will make it better for Daddy. Bonny. . . His voice trailed away, and he released her wrist.

In the morning when Daniel checked the hotel bill before paying it, he noticed an item for 120 Kenya shillings. International telephone calls.

He taxed Bonny with it. Did you make an overseas call last night? I called my old mum to let her know I'm all right. I know how stingy you are, but you don't grudge me that, do you? Something in her defiant manner troubled him. When she went ahead to see her video equipment safely packed into the taxi, Daniel lingered in the suite. As soon as she was gone he called the telephone exchange and asked the operator for the overseas number that was on his bill. London 727 6464, sir.

Please get it for me again now. It's ringing, sir.

A voice answered on the third ring. Good morning, may I help you?

What number is that? Daniel asked, but the speaker was guarded. Who did you want, please? Daniel thought he recognized the voice, the strong African accent. He took a chance.

Is that you, Selibi? he asked in Swahili. Yes, this is Selibi. Do you want to speak to the Bwana Mkubwa? Who shall I say is calling?

Daniel hung up the receiver and stared at it.

Selibi was Tug Harrison's manservant. So Bonny had telephoned Tug's flat the previous evening while he had been at the Jambo Bar.

Curiouser and curiouser, Daniel muttered. Miss Bonny isn't all she pretends to be, unless her old mum lives in Holland Park. Every seat on the Air Ubomo flight to Kabali was taken. Most of the other passengers seemed to be businessmen or minor civil servants or politicians. There were half a dozen black Soldiers in camouflage and decoration ribbons, berets and dark glasses. There were, however, no tourists, not yet, not before BOSS opened the new casino on the lakeshore.

The hostess was a tall Hita girl in flamboyant national dress.

She handed out packets of sweet biscuits and plastic mugs of luke-warm tea with the haughty air of a queen distributing alms to her poor subjects. Halfway through the four-hour flight she disappeared into the toilet with one of the soldiers and all cabin service came to a halt.

They hit heavy clear-air turbulence over the eastern rim of the Great Rift Valley and a corpulent black businessman in one of the front seats entertained them all with a noisy regurgitation of his breakfast. The air hostess remained ensconced in the rear toilet.

At last they were over the lake. Although like most names with colonial overtones, its name had been changed, Daniel still preferred Lake Albert to Lake Mobutu. The waters were pure azure, flecked with white horses and the sails of fishing dhows, and so wide that for a while there was no shore in sight. Then slowly the western shoreline emerged from the haze.

Ubomo, Daniel whispered, more to himself than to Bonny.

The name had a romance and mystery that made the skin on his forearms tingle.

He would be following in the footsteps of the great African explorers.

Speke had passed this way, and Stanley and ten thousand other hunters and slavers, soldiers and adventurers.

He must try to instil some of that feeling of romance and history into his production. Across these waters had plied the ancient Arab dhows laden with ivory and slaves, the black and white gold that had once been the continent's major exports.

Some estimates were that five million souls had been captured like animals in the interior and herded down to the coast. To cross this lake they had been packed like sardines into the dhows, the first layer forced to lie on the bilge deck curled against each other, belly to back, like spoons. Then the removable deck planks were laid over them giving them eighteen inches of space, and another layer of human beings and another deck, until four decks were in place, crammed with howling, whining slaves.

With fair winds the crossing took two days and three nights.

The Arab slave-masters were satisfied with a fifty percent survival rate.

It was a process of natural selection. Only the strong came through.

On the eastern shore of the lake the living were lifted out of the holds coated with faeces and vomit. The dead were tossed overboard to the waiting crocodiles. The survivors were allowed to rest and gather strength for the last stage of the journey. When their masters deemed them fit, they were chained and yoked in long lines, each slave carrying a tusk of ivory, and they were marched down to the coast.

Daniel wondered if he could simulate some of the horrors of the trade with actors and a hired dhow. He anticipated the outcry that this would raise. So often he had been accused by reviewers and critics of depicting gratuitous violence and savagery in his productions. There was only one reply: Africa is a savage and violent continent. Anybody who tries to hide that from you is no true story-teller. Blood was the fertiliser that made the African soil bloom.

He looked northwards across the shining waters. Up there where the Nile debauched from the lake there was a triangular wedge of land that fronted on to the river called the Lada Enclave. It had once been the private estate of the King of Belgium. The herds of elephant that inhabited those lands were more prolific and prodigiously tusked than anywhere else on the continent, and the Belgians had guarded and cherished them.

By international treaty the ownership of the Lada Enclave passed to the Sudan at the death of the Belgian king. When this happened the Belgian colonial service withdrew precipitately from the Lada, leaving a power vacuum. The European ivorypoachers swarmed in to take advantage. They fell upon the elephant herds and slaughtered them.

Karamojo Bell describes in his autobiography how he followed a Lada herd from dawn until dusk, running to keep pace with them, shooting and running on again. In that single bloody day be killed twenty-three elephant.

Little had changed in the years since then, Daniel thought sadly.

The slaughter and the rapine continued. And Africa bled.

Africa cried to the civilised world for help, but what help was there to give? All the fifty member states of the Organization of African Unity combined were capable of generating only the same gross domestic product as little Belgium in the northern hemisphere.

How could the First World help Africa now? Daniel wondered. Aid poured into this vast continent was soaked up like a few raindrops upon the Saharan sands. A cynic had defined aid as simply the system by which poor white people in rich countries gave money to rich black people in poor countries to put into Swiss bank accounts. The sad truth was that Africa no longer mattered, particularly since the Berlin Wall had come down and Eastern Europe had started to emerge from the dark age of Communism. Africa was redundant. The rest of the world might give it passing sympathy, but Africa was beyond help. Europe would turn its attention to a more promising subject closer to home.

Daniel sighed and glanced at Bonny in the seat beside him.

He wanted to discuss his thoughts, but she had kicked off her sandals and had her bare knees up against the back of the seat in front of her.

She was chewing gum and reading a trashy science fiction paperback.

Instead Daniel looked out of the window again. The coast of Ubomo came up to meet them as the pilot began his descent.

The savannah was red-brown as the hide of an impala antelope and studded with acacia trees. Upon the lakeshore the fishing villages were strung like beads, bound together by the narrow strip of green gardens and shambas that the Lake waters nurtured. The village children waved as the aircraft passed overhead, and when the pilot turned on to final approach Daniel had a distant view of blue mountains clad with dark forest.

The air hostess re-emerged from the toilet, looking smug and adjusting her long green skirt, and ordered them in English and Swahili to fasten their seat-belts.

The unpainted galvanised roofs of the town flashed beneath them and they touched down heavily on the dusty strip. They taxied past the skeleton of steel and concrete beams that would have been the grand new Ephrem Taffari airport building if only the money had not run out, and came to a halt in front of the humbler edifice of unburnt brick that was a relic of Victor Omeru's reign.

As the door of the aircraft opened, the Heat pressed in upon them and they were sweating before they reached the airport building.

A Hira officer in camouflage battledress and maroon beret singled Daniel out of the straggling group of passengers and came out on the field to meet him. Doctor Armstrong? I recognized you from the photograph on the dust-jacket of your book. He held out his hand. I'm Captain Kajo. I will be your guide during your stay. The president, in person, has asked me to welcome you and assure you of our whole-hearted cooperation. Sir Peter Harrison is a personal friend of his, and President Taffari has expressed the wish to meet you as soon as you have recovered from the illeffects of your journey. In fact he has arranged a cocktail party to welcome you to Ubomo. Captain Kajo spoke excellent English. He was a striking young man, slim and -tall in the classical Hita mould. He towered over Daniel by a couple of inches. His jet eyes began to sparkle as he studied Bonny Mahon. This is my camera operator, Miss Mahon, Daniel introduced them, and Bonny looked back at Captain Kajo with equal interest.

In the army Landrover, piled with their luggage and video equipment, Bonny leaned close to Daniel and asked, Is it true what they say about Africans being. . . she sought the adjective, about them being large?

Never made a study of it, Daniel told her. But I could find out for you, if you'd like. Don't put yourself out, she grinned.

If necessary, I can do my own research.

Since he had learned about her secret phone call to Tug Harrison, Daniel's misgivings about her had increased. Now he didn't trust her at all, and he didn't even like her as much as he had only as recently as the previous day.

it was new moon, but the stars were clear and bright. Their reflections on the rue e waters. Kelly Kinnear sat in the bows of the small dhow. The rigging creaked to the gentle push of the night breeze as they tacked across the lake.

The stars were magnificent. She turned her face up to them and whispered the lyrical names of the constellations as she recognized each of them. The stars were one of the few things she missed in the forest, for they were for ever hidden by the high unbroken canopy of the tree-tops. She savoured them now, for soon she would be without them.

The helmsman was singing a soft repetitive refrain, an invocation to the spirits of the lake depths, the djinni who controlled the fickle winds that pushed the dhow across the dark waters.

Kelly's mood was changeable as the breeze, dropping and shifting and then rising again. She was elated at the prospect of going once more into the forest, and the reunion with dear friends she loved so well.

She was fearful of the journey and the dangers that still lay ahead before she could reach the safety of the tall trees. She was anxious that the political changes since the coup dWat would have destroyed and damaged much in her absence. She was saddened by the memory of damage already done, destruction already wrought upon the forest in the few short years since she had first entered their hushed cathedral depths.

At the same time, she was gladdened by the promises of support she had received and the interest she had been able to stir up during her visit to England and Europe, but disappointed that the support had been mainly moral and vocal rather than financial or constructive. She mustered all her enthusiasm and determination and forced herself to look ahead optimistically.

We'll win through. We must win through.

Then suddenly and irrelevantly she thought of Daniel Armstrong, and she felt angry and unhappy again. Somehow his treachery was all the more heinous by reason of the blind faith and trust that she had placed in him before she had actually met him.

She had prejudged him from what she had seen on the television screen and read in a few newspaper and magazine articles about him. From these she had formed a highly favourable opinion, not simply because he was handsome and articulate and his screen presence impressive, but because of the apparent depth of his understanding and his compassion for this poor wrecked continent which she had made her own.

She had written to him twice, addressing her letters to the television studio. Those letters could never have reached him or, if they did, they must have been overlooked in the huge volume of mail she was sure was addressed to him. In any event she had received no reply.

Then when the unexpected opportunity had presented itself in Nairobi, Daniel Armstrong had, at first meeting, borne out all the high hopes she had placed in him. He was warm and compassionate and approachable.

She had been aware of the instant rapport between them. They were people from the same world, with similar interests and concerns and, more than that, she knew that an essential spark had been struck between them.

The attraction had been mutual; they had both recognized it.

There had been a meeting and a docking of their minds as well as an undeniable physical attraction.

Kelly did not consider herself to be a sensual person. The only lovers she had ever taken were men whose intellects she admired. The first had been one of her professors at medical school, a fine man twenty-five years her senior. They were still friends. Two others were fellow students, and the fourth the man she eventually married.

Paul had been a medical doctor like herself. The two of them had qualified in the same year and had come out to Africa as a team. He had died from the bite of one of the deadly forest mambas within the first six months and at every opportunity she still visited his grave at the foot of a gigantic silk-cotton tree on the banks of the Ubomo River deep in the forest.

Four lovers in all her thirty-two years. No, she was not a sensual person, but she had been intensely aware of the strong pull that Daniel Armstrong had exerted upon her, and she Had experienced no great urge to resist it. He was the kind of man for her.

Then suddenly it was all a lie and a delusion, and he was just like the rest of them. A hired gun, she thought angrily, for BOSS and that monster Hawison. She tried to use her anger to shield herself against the sense of loss she felt at the destruction of an ideal. She had believed in Daniel -Armstrong. She had given him her trust and he had betrayed it.

Put him out of your mind, she determined. Don't think about him again.

He's not worth it. But she was honest enough to realise that it was not going to be that easy.

From the stern the helmsman of the dhow called softly to her in Swahili and she roused herself and looked forward. The shoreline was half a mile ahead, the low line of beach surf creaming softly in the starlight.

Ubomo. She was coming home. Her mood soared.

Suddenly there was a cry from the helm and she spun about.

The two crew men, naked except for their loin-cloths, ran forward.

In haste they seized the main sheet and brought the boom of the sail crashing down upon the deck. The lateen sail billowed and folded and they sprang upon it and furled it swiftly. Within seconds the stubby mast was bare and the dhow was wallowing low on the dark waters. What is it) Kelly called softly in Swahili, and the helmsman answered quietly, Patrol boat. She heard it then, the throb of the diesel engine above the wind and her nerves sprang tight. The crew of the dhow were all Uhati tribesmen, loyal to old President Omeru. They were risking their lives, just as she was, by defying the curfew and crossing the lake in darkness.

They crouched on the open deck and stared out into the darkness, listening to the beat of the engine swelling louder. The gunboat was the gift of an Arab oil sheikh to the new regime, a fast forty-foot assault craft with twin cannon in armoured turrets fore and aft. It had seen thirty years' service in the Red Sea. It spent most of its time tied-up in the port of Kahali, with engines broken down, awaiting spare parts.

However, they had picked a bad night for the crossing; the gunboat was for once seaworthy and dangerous.

Kelly saw the flash of foam at the bows of the oncoming patrol boat.

It was heading up from the south. Instinctively she crouched lower, trying to shield herself behind the bulwark as she considered her position. On its present course the patrol boat must surely spot them.

If Kelly were found on board the dhow, the crew would be shot without trial, one of those public executions on the beach of Kahali which were part of Ephrem Taffari's new style of government. Of course she would be shot alongside them, but that did not concern Kelly at that moment.

These were good men who had risked their lives for her. She had to do all in her power to protect them.

If she were not found on board, and there were no other contraband, the crew might have a chance of talking thereselves out of trouble.

They would almost certainly be beaten and fined, and the dhow might be confiscated, but they might escape execution.

She reached for her backpack that lay in the bows. Quickly she undid the straps that held the inflatable mattress strapped to the underside of the pack. She unrolled the nylon-covered mattress and frantically blew into the valve, filling her lungs and then exhaling long and hard, all the time watching the dark shape of the patrol boat loom out of the night.

it was coming up fast. There was no time to inflate the mattress fully. It was still soft and floppy as she closed the valve.

She stood up and slung the pack on her back and called back to the helmsman, Thank you, my friend. Peace be with you, and may Allah preserve you. The lake people were nearly all Muslim. And with you be peace, he called back. She could hear the relief and gratitude in his tone. He knew she was doing this for him and his crew.

Kelly sat on the bulwark and swung her legs overboard. She clutched the semi-inflated mattress to her chest and drew a deep breath before she dropped into the lake. The water closed over her head. It was surprisingly cold and the heavy pack on her back carried her deep before the buoyancy of the mattress asserted itself and lifted her back to the surface.

She broke through, gasping and with water streaming into her eyes.

it took her a few minutes to master the trim of the bobbing mattress, but at last she lay half across it, her legs dangling, the strap of the backpack hooked over her arm. It held her head clear, but she was low down in the water. The waves dashed into her face and threatened to overturn her precarious craft.

She looked for the dhow and was surprised to see how far she had drifted from it. As she watched, the boom was hoisted and the sail filled. The ungainly little boat turned to run free before the breeze, trying to get clear of the forbidden coast before the patrol boat spotted her.

Good luck, she whispered, and a wave broke into her face.

She choked and coughed, and when she looked again both the dhow and the patrol boat had disappeared into the night.

She kicked out gently, careful not to upset her balance, conserving her strength for the long night ahead. She knew that some monstrous crocodiles inhabited the lake; she had seen a photograph of one that measured eighteen feet from the tip of its hideous snout to the end of its thick crested tail. She put the picture out of her mind and kept kicking, lining herself up by the stars, swimming towards where Orion stood on his head upon the western horizon.

A few minutes later she glimpsed a flash of light far upwind.

It may have been the searchlight of the patrol boat as it picked up the shape of the dhow. She forced herself not to look back.

She didn't want to know the worst, for there was nothing more she could do to save the men who had helped her.

She kept swimming, kicking to a steady rhythm. After an hour she wondered if she had moved at all. The backpack was like a drogue anchor hanging below the half-inflated mattress.

However, she dared not jettison it. Without the basic equipment it contained, she was doomed.

She kept on swimming. Another hour and she was almost exhausted.

She was forced to rest. One calf was cramping badly. The breeze had dropped and in the silence she heard a soft regular rumbling, like an old man snoring in his sleep. It took her a moment to place the sound.

The beach surf, she whispered, and kicked out again with renewed strength.

She felt the water lift and surge under her as it met the shelving bottom. She swam on, torturously slowly, dragging herself and the sodden pack through the water.

Now She saw the ivory-nut palms above the beach silhouetted against the stars. She held her breath and reached down with both feet. Again the water closed over her head, but with her toes she felt the sandy bottom, six feet below the surface, and found enough strength for one last effort.

Minutes later she could stand. The surf knocked her sprawling, but she dragged herself up again and staggered up the narrow beach to find shelter in a patch of papyrus reeds. Her watch was a waterproof Rolex, a wedding gift from Paul. The time was a few minutes after four. It would be light soon. She must get in before a Hita patrol picked her up, but she was too cold and stiff and exhausted to move just yet.

While she rested she forced herself to open the pack with numb fingers and to empty out the water that almost doubled its weight. She wrung out her few spare items of clothing and wiped down the other equipment as best she could. While she worked she chewed a high-energy sugar bar and almost immediately felt better.

She repacked the bag, slung it, and started back northwards, keeping parallel to the lake, but well back from the soft beach sand which would record her footprints for a Hita patrol to follow.

Every few hundred yards there were the gardens and thatched buildings of the small sharnbas. Dogs barked and she was forced to detour round the huts to avoid detection. She hoped that she was heading in the right direction. She reasoned that the captain of the dhow would have come in upwind of his destination to give himself leeway in which to make his landfall so she must keep northwards.

She had been going for almost an hour, but reckoned that she had covered only a couple of miles when, with a surge of relief, she saw ahead of her the pale round dome of the little mosque shining like a bald man's head in the first pearly radiance of the dawn.

She broke into a weary trot, weighed down by the pack and her fatigue.

She smelt woodsmoke, and saw the faint glow of the fire under the dark tamarind tree, just where it should have been. Closer, she made out the figures of two men squatting close beside the fire.

Patrick! she called hoarsely, and one of the figures jumped up and ran towards her. Patrick, she repeated, and stumbled and would have fallen if he had not caught her. Kelly! Allah be praised. We had given you up. The patrol boat. . she gasped. Yes. We heard firing and saw the light. We thought they Had caught you.

Patrick Omeru was one of old President Omeru's nephews.

So far he had escaped the purges by Taffari's soldiers. He was one of the first friends that Kelly had made after her arrival in Ubomo.

He lifted the pack from her shoulders, and she groaned with relief.

The wet straps had abraded her delicate skin. Kill the fire, Patrick called to his brother, and he kicked sand over the coals. Between them they led Kelly to where the truck was parked in a grove of mango trees behind the derelict mosque. They helped her into the back and spread a tarpaulin over her as she lay on the dirty floorboards. The truck stank of dried fish.

Even though the truck jolted and crashed through the potholes, she was at last warm, and soon she slept. It was a trick she had learned in the forest, to be able to sleep in any circumstances of discomfort.

The sudden cessation of engine noise and movement woke her again.

She did not know how long she had slept, but it was light now and a glance at her watch showed her it was after nine in the morning. She lay quietly under her tarpaulin and listened to the sound of men's voices close alongside the truck.

She knew better than to disclose her presence.

Minutes later, Patrick pulled back the tarpaulin and smiled at her.

Where are we, Patrick? Kahali, in the old town. A safe place. The truck was parked in the small yard of one of the old Arab houses. The building was dilapidated, the yard filthy with chicken droppings and rubbish.

Chickens roosted under the eaves or scratched in the dirt. There was a strong smell of drains and sewage. The Omeru family had fallen on hard times since the old president's downfall.

In the sparsely furnished frontroom, with its stained walls on which old yellowed newspaper cuttings had been pasted, Patrick's wife had a meal ready for her. It was a stew of chicken spiced with chilli and served with a bowl of manioc and stewed plantains. She was hungry, and it was good.

While she ate, other men came to speak to her. They slipped in quietly and squatted beside her in the bare room. They told her what had happened in Ubomo during her absence, and she frowned while she listened. Very little of it was good tidings.

They knew where she was going and they gave her messages to take with her. Then they slipped. away again as quietly and furtively as they had arrived.

It was long after dark when Patrick stood up and told her quietly, It is time to go on.

The truck was now loaded with dried fish in woven baskets.

They had built a small hiding-place for her under the load. She crawled into it and Patrick passed her pack in to her, then seated the opening behind her with another basket of fish.

The truck started and rumbled out of the yard. This part of the journey was only three hundred miles. She settled down and slept again.

She woke every time the truck stopped. Whenever she heard voices, the loud arrogant voices of Hita speaking Swahili with the distinctive cutting accent, she knew they had halted at another military road-block.

Once Patrick stopped the truck along a deserted stretch of road and let her out of her hiding-place and-she went a short distance into the veld to relieve herself. They were still in the open grassland savannah below the rim of the Great Rift. She heard cattle lowing somewhere close and knew that there was a Hita manyatta nearby.

When she woke again it was to a peculiar new motion and to the chant of the ferrymen. It was a nostalgic sound and she knew she was nearly home.

During the night she had opened a small peephole from her little cave under the baskets of dried fish into the outside world. Through it she caught glimpses of the expanses of the Ubomo River touched with the hot orange and violet of the breaking dawn.

The silhouettes of the ferrymen passed back and forth in front of her peephole as they handled the lines that linked the ferry-boat from one bank of the river to the other. The ferry across the Ubomo River was almost at the edge of the great forest. She could imagine it as clearly as if she were actually looking at it.

The wide sweep of the river was the natural boundary between savannah and forest. The first time she had stood upon its bank she had been amazed by the abruptness with which the forest began. On the east bank the open grass and acacia dropped away towards the lake, while on the far bank stood a gigantic palisade of dark trees, a solid unbroken wall a hundred feet high, with some of the real giants towering another fifty feet above those. It had seemed to her at once both forbidding and frightening. On the far bank the road tunneled into the forest like a rabbit hole.

In the few short years since then, the forest had been hacked back as the land-hungry peasantry nibbled at its edges. They had toppled the great trees that had taken hundreds of years to grow and burned them where they fell for charcoal and fertiliser. The forest retreated before this onslaught. It was now almost five miles from the ferry to the edge of the tree-line.

In between sprawling shambas with fields of plantains and manioc.

The worked-out ground was being abandoned to weeds and secondary growth. The fragile forest soils could bear only two or three years of cultivation before they were exhausted and the peasant farmers moved on to clear more forest.

Even when it reached the retreating forest edge, the road was no longer a tunnel through the trees, roofed over with a high canopy of vegetation as it once had been. The verges of the road had been cut back half a mile on each side. The peasants had used the road as an access to the interior of the forest.

They had built their villages alongside the road and hacked out their gardens and plantations from the living forest that bordered it.

This was the terribly destructive slash and burncultivation method by which they felled the trees and burned them where they fell. Those true giants of the forest, whose girth defied the puny axes, they destroyed by building a slow fire around the base of the trunk. They kept it burning week after week until it ate through the hardwood core and toppled two hundred feet of massive trunk.

The road itself was like a deadly blade, a spear into the guts of the forest, steeped in the poison of civilisation. Kelly hated the road.

It was a channel of infection and corruption into the virginal womb of the forest.

Looking out of her peephole she saw that the road was wider now than she remembered it. The deep rutted tracks were churned by the wheels of logging and mining trucks and the other heavy traffic that had begun using it since President Omeru had been overthrown and the forest concession given to the powerful foreign syndicate to develop.

She knew from her studies and the meticulous records that she kept that already the road had altered the local rainfall patterns. The mile-wide cutline was unprotected by the umbrella of the forest canopy.

The tropical sun struck down on this open swathe and heated the unshielded earth, causing a vast updraught of air above the road. This dispersed the rain clouds that daily gathered over the green forest.

Nowadays little rain fell along the roadway, although it still teemed down at the rate of three hundred inches a year upon the pristine forests only a few miles away.

The roadside was dry and dusty and hot. The mango trees witted in the noonday heat and the people living beside the road built themselves barazas, thatched roofs supported by poles without walls, to shield them from the cloudless sky above the roadway. Without the forest canopy the whole Ubomo basin would soon become a little Sahara.

To Kelly the road was the Sodom and Gomorrah of the forest. it was temptation to her Bambuti friends. The truckdrivers had money and they wanted meat and honey and women. The Bambuti were skilled hunters who could provide both meat and honey, and their young girls, tiny and graceful, laughing and big-breasted, were peculiarly attractive to the tall bantu men.

The roadway seduced the Bambuti and lured them out of the fastness of the deep forest. It was destroying their traditional way of life. It encouraged the pygmies to over-hunt their forest preserves. Where once they had hunted only to feed themselves and their tribe, now they hunted to sell the meat at the roadside dukas, the little trading stores set up at each new village. , .

Game was each day scarcer in the forest and soon, Kelly knew, the Bambuti would be tempted to hunt in the heartland, that special remote centre of the forest where by tradition and religious restraint no Bambuti had ever hunted before.

At the roadside the Bambuti discovered palm wine and bottled beer and spirits. Like most stone-age people, from the Australian Aboriginals to the Inuit Eskimos of the Arctic, they had little resistance to alcohol. A drunken pygmy was a pitiful sight.

In the deep forest, there was no tribal tradition that restrained the Bambuti girls from sexual intercourse before marriage.

They were allowed all the experimentation and indulgence they wanted with the boys of the tribe, except only that intercourse must not be with a full embrace. The unmarried couple must hold each other's elbows only, not clasp each other chest to chest. To them the sexual act was a natural and pleasant expression of affection, and they were by nature friendly and full of fun. They were easy game for the sophisticated truckdrivers from the towns. Eager to please, they sold their favours for a trinket or a bottle of beer or a few shillings, and from the lopsided bargain they were left with syphilis or gonorrhoea or, most deadly of all, AIDS.

In her hatred of the road, Kelly wished there was some way to halt this intrusion, this accelerating process of degradation and destruction, but she knew that there was none. BOSS and the syndicate were behemoths on the march. The forest, its soil, its trees, its animals, birds and its people were all too fragile.

All she could hope for was to help retard the process and in the end to save some precious fragment from the melting-pot of progress and development, and exploitation.

Abruptly the truck swung off the road and in a cloud of red talcum dust drew up at the rear of one of the roadside dukes.

Peering from her peephole, Kelly saw that it was a typical roadside store with mud walls and roof, thatched with ilala palm fronds. There was a logging truck parked in front of it and the driver and his mate were haggling with the store-keeper for the purchase of sweet yams and strips of dried game meat blackened with smoke.

Patrick Omeru and his brother began to unload some of the baskets of dried fish to sell to the store-keeper and as they worked he spoke without looking at Kelly's hiding-place. Are you all right, Kelly, I'm fine, Patrick. I'm ready to move, she called back softly. Wait, Doctor. I must make certain that it is safe. The army patrols the road regularly. I'll speak to the store-keeper; he knows when the soldiers will come. Patrick went on unloading the fish.

in front of the duka the truck-driver completed his transaction and carried his purchases to the logging truck, He climbed on board and started up with a roar and cloud of diesel smoke, then pulled out into the rutted roadway towing two huge trailers behind the truck. The trailers were laden with forty-foot lengths of African mahogany logs, each five feet in diameter, the whole cargo comprising hundreds of tons of valuable hardwood.

As soon as the truck had gone, Patrick called to the Uhali store-keeper and they spoke together quietly. The store-keeper shook his head and pointed back along the road. Patrick hurried back to the side of the fish truck. Quickly, Kelly. The patrol will be coming any minute now, but we should hear the army vehicle long before it arrives.

The store-keeper says that the soldiers never go into the forest.

They are afraid of the forest spirits. He pulled away the fish baskets that covered the entrance to Kelly's hiding-place, and she scrambled out and jumped down to the sun-baked earth. She felt stiff and cramped, and she stretched her body to its full extent, lifting her hands over her head and twisting from the waist to get the kinks out of her spine.

You must go quickly, Kelly, Patrick urged her. The patrol!

I wish I had someone to go with you, to protect you. Kelly laughed and shook her head. Once I'm in the forest, I will be safe. She felt gay and happy at the prospect, but Patrick looked worried. The forest is an evil place. You are also afraid of the diinni, aren't you, Patrick? she teased him as she shrugged her pack on to her shoulders.

She knew that, like most Uhali or Hita, Patrick had never entered the deep forest. They were all terrified of the forest spirits. Whenever possible the Barnbuti were at pains to describe these malignant spirits and to invent horror stories of their own dreadful encounters with them. It was one of the Bambuti devices for keeping the big black men out of their secret preserves. Of course not, Kelly. Patrick denied the charge a little too hotly. I am an educated man; I do not believe in djinni or evil spirits.

But even as he spoke his eyes strayed towards the impenetrable wall of high trees that stood just beyond the halfmile wide strip of gardens and plantations. He shuddered and changed the subject. You will get a message to me in the usual way? he asked anxiously. We must know how he is. Don't worry. She smiled at him and took his hand. Thank you, Patrick. Thank you for everything. It is we who should thank you, Kelly. May Allah give you peace. Salaam aleikum, she replied. To you peace also, Patrick. And she turned and slipped away under the wide green fronds of the banana trees. Within a dozen paces she was hidden from the road.

As she went through the gardens she picked the fruits from the trees, filling the pockets of her backpack with ripe mangoes and plantains.

It was a Bambuti trick. The village gardens and the villages themselves were considered fair hunting grounds.

The pygmies borrowed anything that was left untended, but stealing was not as much fun as gulling the villagers into parting with food and valuables by elaborate confidence tricks.

Kelly smiled as she recalled the glee with which old Sepoo related his successful scams to the rest of the tribe whenever he returned from the villages to the hunting camps in the deep forest.

Now she helped herself to the garden produce with as little conscience as old Sepoo would have evinced. In London she would have been appalled by the notion of shoplifting in Selfridges, but as she approached the edge of the forest she was already beginning to think like a Barnbuti again.

It was the way of survival.

At the end of the, last garden there was a fence of thorn branches to keep out the forest creatures that raided the crops at night, and at intervals along this fence, set on poles were grubby spirit flags and juju charms to discourage the forest demons and diinni from approaching the villages. The Bambuti always howled with mirth when they passed this evidence of the villagers superstition. It was proof of the success of their own subtle propaganda.

Kelly found a narrow gap in the fence, just big enough to accommodate the pygmy who had made it and she slipped through.

The forest lay ahead of her. She lifted up her eyes and watched a flock of grey parrots flying shrieking along the treetops a hundred feet above her.

The entrance to the forest was thick and entangled. Where the sunlight had penetrated to the ground it had raised a thicket of secondary growth. There was a pygmy track through this undergrowth, but even Kelly was forced to stoop to enter it.

The average Bambuti was at least a foot shorter than she was, and with their machetes they cut the undergrowth just above their own head-height. When fresh, the raw shoots were easy to spot, but once they dried, they were sharp as daggers and on the level of Kelly's face and eyes. She moved with dainty care.

She did not realise it herself, but in the forest she had learned by example to carry herself with the same agile grace as a pygmy.

It was one of the Bambuti's derisive taunts that somebody walked like a wazungu in the forest. Wazungu was the derogatory term for any outsider, any foreigner. Even old Sepoo admitted that Kelly walked like one of the real people and not like a white wazungu.

The peripheral screen of dense undergrowth was several hundred feet wide.

it ended abruptly and Kelly stepped out on to the true forest floor.

It was like entering a submarine cavern, a dim and secret place. The sunlight was reflected down through successive layers of leaves, so that the entire forest world was washed with green, and the air was warm and moist and redolent of leaf mould and fungus, a relief from the heat and dust and merciless sunlight of the outside world. Kelly filled her lungs with the smell and looked around her, blinking as her eyes adjusted to this strange and lovely light. There was no dense undergrowth here, the great tree-trunks reached up to the high green roof and shaded away into the green depths, ahead, reminding her of the hall of pillars in the mighty temple of Karnak on the banks of the Nile.

Under her feet the dead leaves were thick and luxuriant as a precious oriental carpet. They gave a spring to her step and rustled under her feet to give warning to the forest creatures of her approach. it was unwise to come unannounced upon one of the wicked red buffalo or to step upon one of the deadly adders that lay curled upon the forest floor.

Kelly moved swiftly, lightly, with the susurration of dead Leaves under her feet, stopping once to cut herself a diggingstick and to sharpen the point with her clasp-knife as she went on.

She sang as she went, one of the praise songs to the forest that Sepoo's wife, Parnba, had taught her. It was a Bambuti hymn, for the forest itself is their god. They worship it as both Mother and Father.

They do not believe a jot in the hobgoblins and evil spirits whose existence they so solemnly endorse and whose depredations they recount with so much glee to the black villagers. For the Bambuti the forest is a living entity, a deity which can give up or withhold its bounty, which can give favours or wreak retribution on those who flout its laws and do it injury. Over the years she had lived under the forest roof Kelly had come more than halfway to accepting the Bambuti philosophy, and now she sang to the forest as she travelled swiftly across its floor.

In the middle of the afternoon it began to rain, one of those solid downpours that were a daily occurrence. The heavy drops falling thick and heavy as stones upon the upper galleries of the forest roared like a distant river in spare. Had it fallen on bare earth with such force, it would have ripped away the topsoil and raked deep scars, washed out plains and scoured the hillsides, flooding the rivers and wreaking untold harm.

In the forest the top galleries of the trees broke the force of the storm, cushioning the gouts of water, gathering them up and redirecting them down the trunks of the great trees, scattering them benevolently across the thick carpet of dead leaves and mould, so that the earth was able to absorb and restrain the rain's malevolent power. The rivers and streams, instead of becoming muddied by the torn earth and choked by uprooted trees, still ran sweet and crystal clear.

As the rain sifted down softly upon her, Kelly slipped off her cotton shirt and placed it in one of the waterproof pockets of her pack. The straps would cut into her bare shoulders so she rigged the headband around her forehead and kept her arms clear as the pygmy women do. She went on, not bothering to take shelter from the blood-warm rain.

Now she was bare-chested, wearing only a brief pair of cotton shorts and her canvas running shoes. Minimal dress was the natural forest way. The Bambuti wore only a loincloth of beaten bark.

When the first Belgian missionaries had discovered the Bambuti, they had been outraged by their nakedness and sent to Brussels for dresses and jackets and calico breeches, all in children's sizes, which they forced them to wear. In the humidity of the forest these clothes were always damp and unhealthy and the pygmies for the first time had suffered from pneumonia and other respiratory complaints.

After the constraints of city life, it felt good to be half-naked and free. Kelly delighted in the rain upon her body. Her skin was clear and creamy white, almost luminous in the soft green light and her small taut breasts joggled elastically to her stride.

She moved swiftly, foraging as she went, hardly pausing as she gathered up a scattering of mushrooms with glossy domed heads and brilliant orange gills. These were the most delicious of the thirty-odd edible varieties.

On the other hand there were fifty or more inedible varieties, a few of which were virulently toxic, dealing certain death within hours of a single mouthful.

The rain ceased but the trees still dripped.

Once she stopped and traced a slim vine down the trunk of a mahogany tree. She dug its pure white roots out of the rainsoaked leaf mould with a few strokes of her digging-stick. The roots were sweet as sugar cane and crunched scrumptiously as she chewed them. They were nutritious and filled her with energy.

The green shadows crowded closer as the day died away and the light faded. She looked for a place to camp. She did not want to be bothered with having to build a waterproof hut for herself, the hollow at the base of one of the giant tree-trunks would do admirably as a hearth for a single night. -Her feet still rustled through the dead leaves, even though they were now dampened. Suddenly there was an explosive sound, a rush of air under pressure like a burst motor-car tyre, only ten feet or so ahead of her. It was one of the most terrifying sounds in the forest, worse than the bellow of an angry buffalo or the roaring grunt of one of the huge black boars. Kelly leaped involuntarily backwards, from a steady run she rose two feet in the air and landed as far as that back in her own tracks.

Her hand was shaking as she flicked the headband off her forehead and dropped the backpack to the leafy floor. In the same movement she dipped into one of the pockets and brought out her slingshot.

Because of her slingshot the Bambuti had given her the nameBaby Archer.

Though they mocked her merrily, they were really impressed by her skill with the weapon. Even old Sepoo had never been able to master it, though Kelly had tutored him repeatedly. In the end he had abandoned the effort with a haughty declaration that the bow and arrow were the only real weapons for a hunter, and that this silly little thing was only suitable for children and babies. So she had become Baby Archer, KaraKi.

With one quick motion she slipped the brace over her wrist and drew the heavy surgical elastic bands to her right ear. The missile was a steel ball-bearing.

On the forest floor ahead of her something moved. It looked like a pile of dead leaves or an Afghan rug patterned in the colours. of the forest, golds and ochres and soft mauves, striped and starred with diamonds and arrowheads of black that tricked the eye. Kelly knew that what seemed to be an amorphous mass was in reality a serpentine body, coiled upon itself, each coil as thick as her calf, but laced and camouflaged with cunning and seductive colour. The gaboon adder is, except for the mamba, Africa's most venomous snake.

In the centre of this coiled pyramid of body, the head was drawn back like a nocked arrow upon the bend of the neck.

The head was pig-snouted, flattened and scaled, the eyes were raised on horny protuberances, the colour and lucidity of precious topaz. The pupils were bright as jet and focused upon her. The whole head was bigger than both her fists held together. The feathery black tongue flicked from between the thin grinning lips.

Kelly held her aim for only a fraction of a second and then let fly.

The silver ball-bearing hummed as it flew, glinting like a drop of mercury in the soft green light. It struck the gaboon adder on the point of its snout and split its skull with such force that jets of blood spurted from the nostrils and the grotesque head was whipped over backwards. With one last explosive hiss the adder writhed into its death throes, the great coils of its body sliding and twisting over themselves, convulsing and contorting, exposing the pale belly latticed with diagonal scales.

Kelly circled the adder cautiously, holding the pointed digging-stick at the ready. As the shattered head flopped clear she darted forward and pinned it to the earth. Holding it down with all her weight while the adder wound itself around the shaft, Kelly opened the blade of her claspknife with her small white teeth and with a single slash lopped off the snake's head.

She left the headless body to finish its last reflexive throes and looked around her for a campsite. There was a natural cave in the base of one of the tree-trunks nearby, a perfect night shelter.

The Bambuti had never fathomed the art of making fire and the women carried a live coal with them when they moved from hunting-camp to hunting-camp, but Kelly flicked her plastic Bic lighter and within minutes she had a cheerful little fire burning at the base of the tree.

She opened her pack and set up her camp. Then, armed with the digging-stick and claspknife, she returned to the carcass of the gaboon adder. It weighed almost ten kilos, far too much for her own needs.

Already the red serowe ants had found it. Nothing lay long on the forest floor before the scavengers arrived.

Kelly cut a thick section from the centre of the carcass, scraped the ants away, and skinned the portion with a few expert strokes. The meat was clean and white. She lifted two thick fillets from the bone and placed them over the coals of her fire on a skillet of green twigs.

She scattered a few leaves from one of the herby bushes over the fire and the smoke flavoured and perfumed the flesh. While it grilled, she strung the, orange-gilled mushrooms on another green twig. Like a kebab she placed it on the fire, turning it regularly.

The mushrooms had a richer fungus flavour than black truffles and the flesh of the adder tasted like a mixture of lobster and milk-fed chicken. The exertions of the day had sharpened her appetite and Kelly could not remember a more delicious meal. She washed it down with sweet water from the stream nearby.

During the night she was awakened by a loud snuffling and gulping close to where she lay in her tree-trunk shelter. She did . not need to see to know what had disturbed her. The giant forest hog can weigh as much as 650 pounds and stand three feet high at the shoulder. These pigs, the largest and rarest in the world, are as dangerous as a lion when aroused.

But Kelly felt no fear as she listened to it gobbling the remains of the adder's carcass. When it was finished the pig came snuffling around her camp, but she tossed a few twigs on the coals and when they flared up the pig grunted hoarsely and shambled away into the forest.

In the morning she bathed in the stream and combed out her hair and replaited it while it was still wet into a thick dark glistening braid that hung down her naked back.

She ate the rest of last night's adder steak and mushrooms cold and was on her way again as soon as it was light enough.

Although she had a compass in her pack, she navigated chiefly by the fungus plates and the serowe ant nests, which were attached only to the southern side of the tree-trunks, and by the flow and direction of the streams she crossed.

In the middle of the afternoon she-cut the well-defined trail she was searching for, and turned to follow it in a southwesterly direction.

Within the hour she recognized a landmark, a natural bridge across one of the streams formed by the massive trunk of an ancient tree that had fallen across the water-course.

Sepoo had told her once that the tree bridge had been there

,since the beginning of time, which meant in his living memory.

Time and numbers were not concrete concepts in the pygmy mind. They counted one, two, three, many. In the forest where the seasons made no difference to the rainfall or temperature, they regulated their lives on the phases of the moon, and moved from one camp to the next every full moon. Thus they never stayed long enough at one site to deplete the game or the fruits in the area, or to pollute the streams and sour the earth with their wastes.

The tree bridge was polished by generations of their tiny feet and Kelly inspected it minutely for fresh muddy tracks to judge how recently it had been used. She was disappointed and hurried on to the campsite nearby where she had hoped to find them. They were gone, but judging by the sign, this had been their last camp, they would have moved weeks previously at the full moon.

There were three or four other localities where they might be at this moment, the furthest almost a hundred miles away towards the heartland of the vast area which Sepoo's tribe looked upon as their own.

However, there was no telling which direction they had chosen. Like all tribal decisions, it would have been made at the last moment by a heated and lively debate in which all joined with equal voice. Kelly smiled as she guessed how the argument had probably been resolved. She had seen it so often.

One of the women, not necessarily the eldest or most senior, fed up with the silliness and obstinacy of the men, not least that of her own husband, would suddenly have picked up her bundle, adjusted her headband, bowed forward to balance the weight, and trotted off down the trail. The others, many of them still grumbling, would have followed her in a straggling line.

In the Bambuti community there were no chiefs or,leaders.

Every adult mate or female of whatever age had equal voice and weight.

Only in a few matters such as when and where to spread the hunting-nets, the younger members would probably defer to the experience of one of the famous older hunters, but only after suitable face-saving argument and discussion.

Kelly looked around the deserted campsite and was amused to see what the tribe had abandoned. There were a wooden pestle and mortar used for pounding manioc, a fine steel mattock, a disembowelled transistor radio and various other items obviously purloined from the villages-along the road. She was certain that the Bambuti were the least material people on earth. Possessions meant almost nothing to them, and after the fun of stealing them faded, they swiftly lost interest in them. Too heavy to carry, they explained to Kelly when she asked. We can always borrow another one from the wazungu, if we need one. Their eyes danced at the prospect, and they screamed with laughter and slapped each other on the back.

The only possessions they treasured enough to keep and hand down to their children were the hunting-nets of woven bark. Each family had a hundredfoot length which they strung together with all the others to make the long communal net.

The game was shared, with all the usual vehement debate, according to a time-honoured system amongst all those who had participated in the hunt.

Living within the bounty of the forest they had no need to accumulate wealth. Their clothing of bark-cloth could be renewed with a few hours work, stripping and beating out the pith with a wooden mallet. Their weapons were disposable and renewable. The spear and the bow were whittled from hardwood and strung with bark fibre. The arrow and the spear were not even tipped with iron, but the points were simply hardened in the fire. The broad mongongo leaves roofed over their buts of arched saplings and a small fire gave them warmth and comfort in the night.

The forest god gave them food in abundance, what need had they of other possessions? They were the only people Kelly had ever known who were completely satisfied with their lot, and this accounted for a great deal of their appeal.

Kelly had been looking forward to being reunited with them and she was downcast at having missed them. Sitting on a log in the deserted camp that was so swiftly reverting to jungle, she considered her next move. It would be futile to try and guess in which direction they had gone, and foolhardy to try and follow them. Their tracks would long ago have been obliterated by rain and the passage of other forest creatures, and she knew only this relatively small area of the forest with any certainty.

There were twenty thousand square. miles out there that she had never seen and where she might lose herself for ever.

She must give up trying to find them, and go on to her own base camp at Gondola, the place of the happy elephant. In time the Bambuti would find her there and she must be patient.

She sat a little longer and listened to the forest. It seemed at first to be a silent lonely place. Only when the ear had learned to hear beyond the quiet did one realise that the forest was always filled with living sound. The orchestra of the insects played an eternal background music, the hum and reverberation like softly stroked violins, the click and clatter like tiny castanets, the wails and whine and buzz like the wind instruments.

From the high upper galleries the birds called and sang and the monkeys crashed from branch to branch or [owed mournfully to the open sky, while on the leaf-strewn floor the dwarf antelope scuttled and scampered furtively.

Now when Kelly listened more intently still, she thought she heard far away and very faintly the clear whistle from high in the trees that old Sepoo solemnly swore was the crested chameleon announcing that the hives were overflowing and the honey season had begun.

Kelly smiled and stood up. She knew as a biologist that chameleons could not whistle. And yet . . . She smiled again, settled her pack and stepped back on to the dim trail and went on towards Gondola. More and more frequently there were landmarks and signposts she recognized along the trail, the shape of certain tree-trunks and the juncture of trails, a sandbank at a river crossing and blazes on the tree-trunks which she had cut long ago with her machete. She was getting closer and closer to home.

At a turning in the trail she came suddenly upon a steaming pile of yellow dung, as high as her knee. She looked about eagerly for the elephant that had dropped it, but already it had, disappeared like a grey shadow into the trees. She wondered if it might be the Old Man with One Ear, a heavily tusked bull elephant that was often in the forest around Gondola.

Once the elephant. herds had roamed the open savannah, along the shores of the lake and in the Lada Enclave to the north of the forest.

However, a century of ruthless persecution, first by the old Arab slavers and their minions armed with muzzle-loading black powder guns and then by the European sportsmen and ivory-hunters with their deadly rifled weapons had decimated the herds and driven the survivors into the fastness of the forest.

It gave Kelly a deep sense of satisfaction to know that, although she seldom saw them, she shared the forest with those great sagacious beasts, and that her home was named after one of them.

At the next stream she paused to bathe and comb her hair and don her Tshirt. She would be home in a few hours. She had just tied the thong in her braid and put away her comb when she chilled to a new sound, fierce and menacing. She came to her feet and seized her digging-stick. The sound came again, the hoarse sawing that roughened her nerves like sandpaper, and she felt her pulse accelerate and her breath come short.

It was unusual to hear a leopard call in daylight. The spotted cat was a creature of the night, but anything unusual in the forest was to be treated with caution. The leopard called again, a little closer, almost directly upstream on the bank of the river, and Kelly cocked her head to listen. There was something odd about this leopard.

A suspicion flitted across her mind, and she waited, crouching, holding the sharpened digging-stick ready. There was a long silence.

All the forest was listening to the leopard, and then it called again, that terrible ripping sound. it was on the riverbank above her, not more than fifty feet from where she crouched.

This time, listening to the call, Kelly's suspicion became certainty.

With a blood-curdling scream of her own, she launched herself at the creature's hiding-place brandishing her pointed stick. There was a sudden commotion amongst the lotus leaves on the bank and a small figure darted out and scampered away. Kelly took a full round-armed swing with her stick and caught it a resounding crack on bare brown buttocks.

There was an anguished bowl. You wicked old man! Kelly yelled, and swung again. You tried to frighten me. She missed as the pixie figure leaped over a bush ahead of her and took refuge behind it. You cruel little devil.

She hounded him out of the bush, and he darted around the side, shrieking with mock terror and laughter. I'll beat your backside blue as a baboon's, Kelly threatened, her stick swishing, and they went twice round the bush, the small figure dancing and ducking just out of range.

They were both laughing now. Sepoo, you little monster, I shall never forgive you! Kelly choked on her laughter. I am not Sepoo. I am a leopard. He staggered with mirth and she nearly caught him. He made a spurt to keep just out of range and squealed merrily.

In the end she had to give up and lean, exhausted with laughter, on her stick. Sepoo fell down in the leaves and beat his own belly and hiccuped and rolled over and hugged his knees and laughed until the tears poured down his cheeks and ran into the wrinkles and were channelled back behind his ears.

Kara-Ki. He belched and hiccuped and laughed some more. Kara-Ki, the fearless one, is frightened by old Sepoo! it was a joke that he would tell at every campfire for the next dozen moons.

It took some time for Sepoo to become rational again. He had to laugh himself out. Kelly stood by and watched him affectionately, joining in some of his wilder outbursts of hilarity.

Gradually these became less frequent, until at last they could converse normally.

They squatted side by side and talked. The Bambuti had long ago lost their own language, and had adopted those of the wazungu with whom they came in contact. They spoke a curious mixture of Swahili and Uhali and Hita with an accent and colourful idiom of their own.

With his bow and arrow Sepoo had shot a colobus monkey that morning.

He had salted the beautiful black and white pelt to trade at the roadside.

Now he built a fire and cooked the flesh for their lunch.

As they chatted and ate, she became aware of a strange mood in her companion. It was difficult for a pygmy to remain serious for long.

His irrepressible sense of fun and his merry laughter could not be suppressed. They kept bubbling to the surface, and yet beneath it there was something new that- had not been there when last Kelly had been with him. She could not define exactly what had changed. There was an air of preoccupation in Sepoo's mien, a worry, a sadness that dimmed the twinkle of his gaze and in repose made his mouth droop at the corners.

Kelly asked about the other members of the tribe, about Pambal his wife.

She scolds like a monkey from the treetops, and she mutters like the thunder of the skies. Sepoo grinned with love undimmed after forty years of marriage. She is a cantankerous old woman, but when I tell her that I will get a pretty young wife she replies that any girl stupid enough to take me, can have me. And he chortled at the joke and slapped his thigh, leaving monkey grease on the wrinkled skin. What of the others? Kelly pressed him, seeking the cause of Sepoo's unhappiness. Was there dissension in the tribe? How is your brother Pirri? That was always a possible cause of strife in the tribe. There was a sibling rivalry between the half-brothers. Sepoo and Pirri were the master hunters, the oldest male members of the small tribal unit.

They should have been friends as well as brothers, but Pirri was not a typical Bambuti. His father had been a Hita.

Long ago, further back than any of the tribe could remember, their mother while still a virgin had wandered to the edge of the forest where a Hita hunting-party had caught her. She had been young and pretty as a pixie and the Hita had held her in their camp for two nights and taken it in turns to have sport with her. Perhaps they might have killed her carelessly when they tired of her, but before that happened she escaped.

Pirri was born from this experience and he was taller than any other men of the tribe and lighter in colour and finerfeatured, with the mouth and thin nose of the Hita. He was different in character also, more aggressive and acquisitive than any Bambuti Kelly had ever met.

Pirri is Pirri, Sepoo replied evasively, but although the old antagonism was still evident, Kelly sensed that it was something other than his elder brother that worried him.

Although it was only a few hours journey to Gondola, the two of them talked the daylight away and evening found them still squatting at the cooking-fire with the threat of rain heavy in the air. Kelly used the last of the light to cut the thin supple wands of the selepe tree and, as Pamba had taught her, to plant them in a circle in the soft earth and bend them inwards and plait them into the framework of a traditional Bambuti hut. Meanwhile old Sepoo went off on his own. He returned just as she was completing the framework, and he was bowed under a burden of mongongo leaves with which to thatch the hut. The structure was complete within an hour of the work commencing. When the thunderstorm broke, they were huddled warm and dry in the tiny structure with a cheerful fire flickering, eating the last of the monkey steaks.

At last Kelly settled down on her inflated mattress in the darkness and Sepoo curled on the soft leaf mould close beside her, but neither of them slept immediately. Kelly was aware of the old man lying awake and she waited. With darkness as a cover for his unhappiness Sepoo whispered at last, Are you awake, Kara-Ki? I am listening, old father, she whispered back, and he sighed. It was a sound so different from his usual merry chuckles. Kara-Ki, the Mother and Father are angry. I have never known them so angry, Sepoo said, and she knew that he meant the god of the Bambuti, the twin godhead of the living forest, male and female in one. Kelly was silent for a while in deference to the seriousness of this statement. That is a grave matter, she replied at last. What has made them angry? They have been wounded, Sepoo said softly. The rivers flow red with their blood. This was a startling concept, and Kelly was silent again as she tried to visualize what Sepoo meant. How could the rivers run with the blood of the forest?

she wondered. She was finally forced to ask, I do not understand, old father. What are you telling me? It is beyond my humble words to describe, Sepoo whispered.

There has been a terrible sacrilege and the Mother and Father are in pain. Perhaps the Molimo will come. Kelly had been in camp with the Bambuti only once during the Molimo visitation. The women were excluded, and Kelly had remained in the huts with Pamba and the other women when the Molimo came, but she had heard its voice roaring like a bull buffalo and trumpeting like an enraged elephant as it rampaged through the forest in the night.

in the morning Kelly had asked Sepoo, What creature is the Molimo?

The Molimo is the Molimo, he had replied enigmatically. It is the creature of the forest. It is the voice of the Mother and the Father Now Sepoo suggested that the Molimo might come again, and Kelly shivered with a little superstitious thrill. This time she would not remain in the huts with the women, she promised herself. This time she would find out more about this fabulous creature. For the moment, however, she put it out of her mind and, instead, concerned herself with the sacrilege that had been committed somewhere deep in the forest.

Sepoo, she whispered. If you cannot tell me about this terrible thing, will you show me? Will you take me and show me the rivers that run with the blood of the gods? Sepoo snuffled in the darkness and hawked to clear his throat and spat into the coals of the fire. Then he grunted, Very well, Kara-Ki. I will show you. In the morning, before we -reach Gondola we will go out of our way and I will show you the rivers that bleed. In the morning Sepoo was full of high spirits again, almost as though their conversation in the night had never taken place.

Kelly gave him the present which she had brought for him, a Swiss army knife. Sepoo was enchanted with all the blades and implements and tools that folded out of the red plastic handle, and promptly cut himself on one of them. He cackled with laughter and sucked his thumb, then held it out to Kelly as proof of the marvelous sharpness of the little blade.

Kelly knew he would probably lose the knife within a week, or give it away to someone else in the tribe on an impulse, as he had done with all the other gifts she had given him. But for the moment his joy was childlike and complete. Now you must show me the bleeding rivers, she reminded him as she adjusted the headband of her pack, and for a moment his eyes were sad again. Then he grinned and pirouetted. Come along, Kara-Ki. Let us see if you still move in the forest like one of the real people. Soon they left the broad trail, and Sepoo led her swiftly through the secret unmarked ways. He danced ahead of her like a sprite and the foliage closed behind him, leaving no trace of his passing.

Where Sepoo moved upright, Kelly was forced to stoop beneath the branches, and at times she lost sight of him.

No wonder the old Egyptians believed the Bambuti had the power of invisibility, Kelly thought, as she extended herself to keep up with him.

If Sepoo had moved silently she might have lost him, but like all the pygmies he sang and laughed and chattered to her and the forest as he went. His voice ahead guided her, and warned the dangerous forest creatures of his approach so that there would be no confrontation.

She knew that he was moving at his best pace, to test and tease her, and she was determined not to fall too far behind.

She called replies back to him and joined in the chorus of the praise songs and when he stepped out on the bank of the river many hours later she was only seconds behind him.

He grinned at her until his eyes disappeared in the web, of wrinkles and shook his head in reluctant approval, but Kelly was not interested in his approbation. She was gazing at the river.

This was one of the tributaries of the Ubomo that had its source high up in the Mountains of the Moon, at the foot of one of the glaciers above fifteen thousand feet, the altitude where the permanent snowline stood.

This river found its way down through lakes and waterfalls, fed by the mighty rains that lashed this wettest of all mountain ranges, down through the treeless moors and heather, down through the forest of giant prehistoric ferns, until at last it entered the dense bamboo thickets which were the domain of gorilla and spiral-horned bongo antelope. From there it fell again another three thousand feet through rugged foothills until it reached its true rain forests with their galleried canopies of gigantic hardwoods.

The Bambuti called this river Tetwa, after the silver catfish that abounded in its sweet clear waters and shoaled on the yellow sandbanks.

The Bambuti women shed even their tiny loin-cloths when they went into the waters of the Tetwa to catch the barbeled catfish. Each of them armed with a fish basket of woven reeds and bark, they surrounded the shoal and splashed and shrieked with excitement as they flipped the struggling slippery silver fish from the sparkling water.

That had been before the river began to bleed. Now Kelly stared at it in horror.

The river was fifty yards wide and the forest grew right to the edge and formed a canopy that almost, but not quite, met overhead. There was a narrow irregular gleam of sky high above the middle of the river-course.

From bank to bank the river ran red, not the bright red of heart blood, but a darker browner hue. The sullied waters seemed almost viscous. They had lost their sparkle and were heavy and dull, running thick and slow as used engine oil.

The sand spits were red also, coated with a deep layer of thick mud.

The carcasses of the catfish were strewn on the red banks, thick as autumn leaves, piled upon each other in their multitudes. Their skulls were eyeless and the stench of their putrefying flesh was oppressive in the humid air below the forest canopy. What has done this, Sepoo?

Kelly whispered, but he shrugged and busied himself rolling a pinch of coarse black native tobacco in a leaf. While Kelly went down the bank, he lit his primitive cheroot from the live coal he carried wrapped in a pouch of green leaves around his neck. He puffed great clouds of blue smoke, squeezing his eyes tightly shut with pleasure.

As Kelly stepped out on to the sand spit, she sank almost knee-deep into the mud. She scooped up a handful of it and rubbed it between her fingers. It was slick as grease, fine as potter's clay, and it stained her skin a dark sang de boeuf. She tried to wash it off, but the colour was fast and her fingers were red as those of an assassin. She lifted a handful of mud to her nose and sniffed it. It had no alien smell.

She waded back to the bank and confronted Sepoo. What has done this, old father? What has happened?

He sucked on his cheroot, then coughed and giggled nervously, avoiding her gaze. Come on, Sepoo, tell me. I do not know, Kara-Ki.

Why not? Did you not go upstream to find out? Sepoo, examined the burning end of his green-leaf cheroot with great interest.

Why not? Kelly insisted. I was afraid, Kara-Ki, he mumbled, and Kelly suddenly realised that for the Bambuti this was some supernatural occurrence.

They would not follow the choked rivers upstream for fear of what they might find.

How many rivers are like this? Kelly demanded.

Many, many, Sepoo muttered, meaning moretban four. Name them for me, she insisted, and he reeled off the names of all the rivers she had ever visited in the region and some that she had only heard of. It seemed then that almost the entire drainage area of the Ubomo was affected.

This was notsome isolated local disturbance, but a large-scale disaster that threatened not only the Bambuti hunting areas but the sacred heartland of the forest as well. We must travel upstream, Kelly said with finality, and Sepoo, looked as though he might burst into tears.

They are waiting for you at Gondola, he squeaked, but Kelly did not make the mistake of beginning an argument. She had learned from the women of the tribe, from old Pamba in particular. She lifted her pack on to her back, adjusted the headband and started up the bank. For two hundred yards she was alone, and her spirits started to sink. The forest area ahead was completely unknown to her, and it would be folly to continue on her own if Sepoo could not be induced to accompany her.

Then she heard Sepoo's voice close behind her, protesting loudly that he would not take another step further. Kelly grinned with relief and quickened her pace.

For another twenty minutes Sepoo trailed along behind her, swearing that he was on the point of turning back and abandoning her, his tone becoming more and more plaintive as he realised that Kelly was not going to give in. Then quite suddenly he chuckled and began to sing.

The effort of remaining miserable was too much for him to sustain.

Kelly shouted a jibe over her shoulder and joined in the next refrain of the song. Sepoo slipped past her and took the lead.

For the next two days they followed the Tetwa River and with every mile its plight was more pitiful. The red clay clogged it more deeply.

The waters were almost pure mud, thick as Oatmeal porridge and there were dead roots and loose vegetation mixed into it already beginning to bubble with the gas of decay; the stink of it mingled with that of dead birds and small animals and rotting fish that had been trapped and suffocated by the mud. The carcasses were strewn upon the red banks or floated with balloon bellies upon the sullied waters.

Late in the afternoon of the second day they reached the far boundary of Sepoo's tribal hunting-grounds. There was no signpost or other indication to mark the line but Sepoo paused on the bank of the Tetwa, unstrung his bow and reversed his arrows in the rolled bark quiver on his shoulder, as a sign to the Mother and the Father of the forest that he would respect the sacred place and kill no creature, cut no branch nor light a fire within these deep forest preserves.

Then he sang a pygmy song to placate the forest, and to ask permission to enter its deep and secret place.

Oh, beloved mother of all the tribe, You gave us first suck at your breast And cradled us in the darkness.

Oh respected father, of our fathers You made us strong You taught us the ways of the forest And gave us your creatures as food.

We honour you, we praise you. . .

Kelly stood a little aside and watched him. It seemed presumptuous for her to join in the words, so she was silent.

In her book, The People of the Tall Trees, she had examined in detail the tradition of the forest heartland and discussed the wisdom of the Bambuti law. The heartland was the reservoir of forest life which spilled over into the hunting preserves, renewing and sustaining them.

It was also the buffer zone which separated each of the tribes from its neighbours, and obviated friction and territorial dispute between them.

This was only another example of the wisdom of the system that the Bambuti had evolved to regulate and manage their existence.

So, Kelly and Sepoo camped that night on the threshold of the sacred heartland. During the night it rained, which Sepoo proclaimed was a definite sign from the forest deities that they were aimenable to the two of them continuing their journey upstream.

Kelly smiled in the darkness. It rained, on average" three hundred nights a year in the Ubomo basin, and if it had not done so tonight Sepoo would probably have taken that as even more eloquent assent from the Mother and Father.

They resumed the journey at dawn. When one of the striped forest duiker trotted out of the undergrowth ahead of them and stood to regard them trustingly from a distance of five paces, Sepoo reached instinctively for his bow and then controlled himself with such an effort that he shook as though he were in malarial ague. The flesh of this little antelope was tender and succulent and sweet. Go! Sepoo yelled at it angrily. Away with you! Do not mock me! Do not tempt me! I am firm against your wiles.

The duiker slipped off the path and Sepoo turned to Kelly. Bear witness for me, Kara-Ki. I did not trespass. That creature was sent by the Mother and Father to test me. No natural duiker would be so stupid as to stand so close. I was strong, was I not, Kara-Ki? he demanded piteously, and Kelly squeezed his muscular shoulder. I am proud of you, old father. The gods love you.

They went on.

In the middle of that third afternoon Kelly paused suddenly in mid-stride and cocked her head to a sound she had never heard in the forest, before. It was still faint and intermittent, blanketed by the trees, but as she went on it became clearer and stronger with each mile until it resembled in Kelly's imagination the growling of lions on the kill, a terrible savage and feral sound that filled her with despair.

Now the River Tetwa no longer flowed, it was dammed with branches and debris, so that in places it had broken its banks and flooded the forest floor and they were forced to wade waist-deep through the stinking swamp.

Then abruptly, with a shock of disclosure, the forest ended and they were standing in sunlight where sunlight had not penetrated for a million years.

Ahead of them was such a sight as Kelly could not have conceived in her most hideous nightmares. She gazed upon it until night fell and mercifully hid it from her and then she turned away and went back.

In the night she came awake to find herself weeping aloud and Sepoo's hand stroking her arm to comfort her.

The return journey down the dying river was slower, as though she were burdened by her sadness and Sepoo shortened his stride to match her.

Five days later, Kelly and Sepoo reached Gondola.

Gondola was a site unique in this part of the forest. It was a glade of yellow elephant grass less than a hundred acres in extent. At the south end it rose to meet a line of forest-clad hills. For part of the day the tall trees threw a shadow across the clearing, keeping it cooler than if it had been exposed to the full glare of the tropical sun. Two small streams bounded this wedge of open ground, while the slope and elevation disclosed a sweeping vista over the treetops towards the northwest. It was one of the few vantage points in the Ubomo basin from which the view was not obscured by the great forest trees. The cool air in the open glade was less humid than that of the deep forest.

Kelly paused at the edge of the forest, as she always did, and looked out at the mountain peaks a hundred miles away.

Usually the Mountains of the Moon were bidden in their own perpetual clouds. This morning, as if to welcome her home, they had drawn aside the veil and stood clear in all their glistening splendour. The glaciated massif of Mount Stanley was forced upwards between the faults of the Great Rift Valley to a height of almost seventeen thousand feet.

It was pure icewhite and achingly beautiful.

She turned away from it reluctantly and looked across the clearing.

There was her homestead and laboratory, an ambitious building of log, clay plaster and thatch which had taken her almost three years to build, with a little help from her friends.

The gardens on the lower slopes were irrigated from the streams and fenced in to protect them from the forest creatures. There were no flowerbeds. The garden was not ornamental but provided the small community of Gondola with a large part of its sustenance.

As they left the forest, some of the women working in the garden spotted them and ran to greet Kelly, shrieking and laughing with delight. Some were Bambuti, but most were Uhah women in their traditional colourful long skirts. They surrounded her and escorted her up to the homestead.

The commotion brought a solitary figure out of the laboratory on to the wide verandah. He was an old man with hair as silver as the snows on Mount Stanley that faced him from a hundred miles away. He was dressed in a crisp blue safari suit and sandals. He shaded his eyes and recognized her and smiled.

His teeth were still white and perfect in his dark intelligent face.

Kelly. He held out both hands to her as she came up on to the verandah, and she ran to meet him. Kelly, he repeated, as he took her hands. I was beginning to worry about you. I expected you days ago.

it's good to see you. It's good to see you also, Mr. President. Come now, my child.

I am no longer that, at least not in Ephrem Taffari's view, and when did we last stand on ceremony, you and I? Victor, she corrected herself. I have missed you so, and I have so much to tell you. I don't know where to begin. Later. He shook his handsome grizzled head and embraced her.

She knew that he was over seventy years old but she could feel that his body had the strength and vigour of a man half that age. First let me show you how well I have taken care of your work during your absence. I should have remained a scientist rather than becoming a politician, he said. He took her hand and drew her into the laboratory, and immediately they were engrossed in technical discussion.

President Victor Omeru had studied in London as a young man. He had returned to Ubomo with a Master's degree in electrical engineering and for a short time had been employed in the colonial administration until he had resigned to lead the movement towards independence. Yet he had always retained his interest in the sciences and his learning and skills had always impressed Kelly.

When he had been overthrown in Ephrem Taffari's bloody coup, he had fled into the forest with a handful of loyal followers and sought sanctuary, with Kelly Kinnear at Gondola.

In the ten or so months since then, the settlement in the glade had become the headquarters of the Ubomo resistance movement against Taffari's tyranny, and Kelly had become one of his most trusted agents.

When he was not receiving visitors from outside the forest and planning the counter-revolution, he made himself Kelly's assistant and in a very short time had become invaluable to her.

For an hour the two of them were happily engrossed with slides and retorts and cages of laboratory rats. It was almost as though they were deliberately putting off the moment when they must discuss urgent and ugly reality.

Kelly's research was handicapped by inadequate equipment and shortage of expendable supplies. All of this had to be portered into Gondola, and since Kelly's field grant had been rescinded and Victor Omeru deposed, she had been even more restricted. Nevertheless, they had made some exciting discoveries. In particular they had been able to isolate an anti-malarial substance in the sap of the selepe tree. The selepe was a common plant of the forest that the pygmies used for the dual purposes of building their huts and treating fever.

Malaria was a resurgent menace in Africa where more and more frequently there appeared strains resistant to the synthetic prophylactics. Soon malaria might rank, once again, as the greatest killer on the continent, apart from AIDS. It seemed ironic that both these scourges should have their origin in the cradle of man himself, in the Great Rift Valley of East Africa, where man had stood upright and taken his first uncertain footsteps into glory and infamy. Was it not possible that the ultimate cure for both these diseases might yet come from this same area of the globe? They both reasserted that hope, as they had done a thousand times before.

In addition to the malarial cure, there were the other possibilities that Kelly and Victor Omeru were considering. The one disease to which the Bambuti were susceptible was cancer of the pancreas. This was caused by some factor of their diet or environment in the forest. The women of the tribe used an infusion of the root of a vine that contained a bitter milky sap to treat the disease, and Kelly had witnessed some seemingly miraculous cures. She and Victor Omeru had isolated an alkaloid from the sap which they hoped was the active agent in the cure, and they were testing it with encouraging results.

They were using the same alkaloid to treat three of the Uhali men in camp who were suffering from AIDS. It was too soon to be certain, but once again the results were most encouraging and exciting. Now they discussed them avidly. This excitement and the pleasure of reunion lasted them through the frugal lunch of salads that they shared on the verandah of the thatched bungalow.

Kelly revelled in the joy of conversing with such a cultured and erudite man. Victor Omeru's presence had transformed her lonely isolated life at Gondola. She loved her Bambuti friends, but they came and went without warning, and though their simple happy ways were always a joy, they were no substitute for the stimulation of a superior educated mind.

Victor Omeru was a man she could respect and admire and love without reservation. As far as Kelly was concerned, he was without vice, overflowing with humanity and compassion for his fellow men, and at the same time with a deep and abiding respect and concern for the world in which they lived and the other creatures that shared it with them.

She saw in him the true patriot, completely devoted to his little nation. He was, in addition, the only African Kelly had ever met who was above tribalism. He had spent his entire political life trying to appease and ameliorate the terrible curse that was, in both their views, the single most tragic fact of the African reality. He should have been an example to the rest of the continent, and to his peers in the high councils of the Organisation of African Unity.

When, almost single-handed, he had obtained independence from the colonial administration, the preponderance of his fellow Uhah tribesmen had swept him into the presidential office and overturned at a single stroke the centuries of brutal domination by the proud Hita aristocracy.

The greatest crisis of his presidency had come within the very first days of independence. The Uhali tribe had turned upon the Hita in a savage orgy of retribution. In five terrible days, over twenty thousand Hita had perished. The mob had torched their manyattas.

Those Hita who survived the flames were hacked to death with hoes and machetes. The tools with which the enslaved Uhali had tilled the fields and hewn the firewood for their masters were turned upon them.

The proud Hita women, tall and stately and beautiful, were stripped of their traditional ankle-length robes, and the elaborately plaited locks in which they gloried were hacked roughly from their heads. They were herded naked before the jeering Ubali mob, and petted with excrement.

Some of the women were lifted struggling and naked and impaled upon the poles of the manyattas outer stockade.

The younger women and girls had been yoked between two of their own oxen, secured with rawhide thongs by each ankle.

Then the mob had urged the oxen forward and the girls had been torn apart.

Kelly had not been there to witness these atrocities. She had been a schoolgirl in England at the time, but the legend had become history of how Victor Omeru had gone out to plead with the mob and physically to interpose himself between them and their Hita victims. With the sheer force of his personality he had brought the slaughter to an end, and virtually saved the Hita tribe from genocide and extinction.

Nevertheless, thousands of Hita perished and fifty thousand fled for sanctuary into the neighbouring countries of Uganda and Zaire.

It had taken a major exercise of statesmanship over decades of wise government for Victor Omeru to cool the terrible tribal animosities of his people, to persuade the exiled Hita to return to Ubomo, to restore their herds and their grazing lands to them, and to bring their young men in from the traditional pastoral ways to education and advancement in the modern Ubomo nation he was trying to build.

In recompense for those terrible first days of independence Victor had always thereafter erred on the side of leniency towards the Hita tribe.

To demonstrate his trust and faith in them he allowed them gradually to take control of Ubomo's little army and police force. Ephrem Taffari himself had travelled abroad to complete his education on a special scholarship provided by Victor Omeru out of his own meagre presidential salary.

Victor Omeru was paying for that generosity now. Once again the Uhali tribe groaned beneath the Hita tyranny. As so often happens in Africa, the cycle of oppression and brutality had run its full course, but even now as they sat on the wide verandah of the bungalow, immersed in discussion, Kelly could still detect the suffering and concern for his nation and all his people in Victor Omeru's dark eyes.

It seemed cruel to add to his misery but she could no longer keep it from him. Victor, there is something awful happening up there, in the rivers of the forest, in the sacred Bambuti heartland. Something so terrible that I hardly know how to describe it to you. He listened without interruption, but when she had finished he said quietly, Taffari is killing our people and our land. The vultures smell death in the air and they are gathering, but we will stop them. Kelly had never seen him so angry before. His face was hard and his eyes were dark and terrible.

They are powerfUL, Rich and powerful. There is no power to match that of honest men and a just cause, he replied, and his strength and determination were contagious. Kelly felt her despair slough away, leaving her feeling renewed and confident. Yes, she whispered. We will find a way to stop them. For the sake of this land we must find a way.

beautiful. The name was appropriate, Tug Harrison conceded, as the RollsRoyce Silver Spirit left the littoral plain and climbed up into the green mountains. The road swept around a shoulder of one of the peaks and for a moment Tug gazed out across the broad Formosa Straits and fancied he saw the loom of mainland China lurking like a dragon a, hundred and more miles out there in the blue distance. Then the road turned again and they were back into the forests of cypress and cedar.

They were four thousand feet above the humid tropical plain and the bustle of Taipei, one of the busiest and most affluent cities in Asia.

The air up here was sweet and cool; there was no need of the Rolls's superb air-conditioning system.

Tug felt relaxed and clear-headed. It was one of the joys of having your own jet aircraft, he smiled. The Gulfstream flew when he was ready, wherever he wanted to go. There was none of the aggravation of large airports and throngs of the great unwashed multitude. No miles of corridors to traverse nor luggage carousels at which to play the guessing game of will it come or won't it, no surly customs officials and porters and taxi-drivers.

Tug had taken it in easy stages from London. Abu Dhabi, Bahrain, Brunei, Hong Kong, he had spent a day or two in each of those centres in all of which he had major games in play.

The stop-over in Hong Kong had been particularly worthwhile. The richest and more prudent of the Hong Kong businessmen were intent on moving out their assets and relocating ahead of the termination of the treaty and the reversion of the territory to mainland China. In the permanent suite which he kept at the Peninsula Hotel, Tug had signed two agreements which should net him ten million pounds over the next few years. When his chief pilot touched down at Taipei airport, ground control directed Tug's Gulfstream to taxi to a discreet parking billet behind the Cathay Pacific hangars and the Rolls-Royce was waiting on the tarmac, with the younest son of the Ning;

family to meet him.

Customs and Immigration, in the shape of two uniformed officials, were ushered aboard, bobbing and smiling, by his host.

They stamped Tug's red diplomatic passport and placed the in bond'seals on hisprivatebarand departed, all within five minutes.

In the meantime Tug's matched set of Louis Vuitton luggage was being transferred to the boot of the Rolls by a team of white-jacketed and gloved servants. Within fifteen minutes of touchdown, the Rolls whisked him out of the airport gates.

Tug felt so good that he was inclined to philosophise. He compared other journeys he had made when he was young and poor and struggling.

On foot and bicycle and native bus he had crossed and recrossed the African continent. He remembered his first motor vehicle, a Ford V-8

truck with front mudguards like elephant ears, smooth tyres that never ran fifty miles without puncturing, and an engine held together with balingwire and hope. He had been immensely proud of it at the time.

Even his first air flight on one of the old Sunderland flying boats that once plied the African continent, landing to refuel on the Zambezi, the great lakes, and finally the Nile itself, had taken ten days to reach London.

Truly to appreciate luxury it is necessary to have withstood severe hardship, Tug believed. The early days had been tough.

He had revelled in each one of them but, hell, the touch of silk against his skin and the Rolls upholstery under his backside felt wonderful and he was looking forward to the negotiations that lay ahead. They would be hard and without quarter, but that was the way he liked it.

He loved the cut and thrust of the bargaining table. He enjoyed changing his style to match each adversary he faced.

He could flash the cutlass or palm the stiletto as the occasion warranted. When called for he could shout and bang the table and curse with the same vigour as an Australian opal miner or a Texan rough-neck on an oil rig, or he could smile and whisper honeyed hemlock as skilfully as could the man he was now going to meet. Yes, he loved every moment of it. It was what kept him young.

He smiled genially and turned to discuss oriental nctsukes and ceramics with the young man who sat beside him on the pale green leather back seat of the Rolls. Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek brought the cream of China's art treasures with him from the mainland inNing Cheng Gong was saying, and Tug nodded. All civilised men must be thankful for that, he agreed. if he had not done so, they would have been destroyed in Mao's cultural revolution.

As they chatted, Tug was studying his host's youngest son.

Even though he had not yet shown himself to be a force in the Ni g financial dynasty, and up until now had been overshadowed by his elder half-brothers, Tug had a full dossier on Cheng.

There was some indication that Cheng, even as the youngest son, was his father's favourite, the child of his old age, by his third wife, a beautiful English girl. As often happens, the admixture of oriental and Occidental blood seemed to have brought out the good traits of both parents. It seemed that Ning Cheng Gong had bred true, for he was clever, deviously ruthless, and lucky. Tug Harrison never discounted the element of luck. Some men had it and others, no matter how clever, did not.

It seemed that old Ning Heng H'Sui was bringing him on carefully, like a fine thoroughbred colt, preparing him for his first major race with patience and diligence. He had given Cheng all the advantages, without allowing him to grow up soft.

After his master's degree at Chiang Kai-shek University, Ning Cheng Gong had gone straight into the Taiwanese army for national service.

His father had made no effort to beat the draft on his behalf. Tug supposed that it was part of the toughening process.

Tug Harrison had a copy of the young man's military service record.

He had done well, very well, and had ended his call-up with the rank of captain and a job on the general staff. Of course, the commander of the Taiwanese army was a personal friend of Ning Heng H'Sui, but his selection would not have been entirely based on preferment rather than ability. There had been only one small shadow on Cheng's service record. A civilian complaint had been brought against Captain Ning, and investigated by the military police. It involved the death of a young girl in a Taipei brothel. The full report of the investigating officer had been carefully removed from Ning's service record and only the recommendation that there was no substance in the accusation remained, together with an endorsement by the Attorney-General that no charges be pursued.

Once again Tug Harrison scented the intervention of the Ning patriarch in this dossier. It increased Tug's respect for the power and influence of the family.

At the end of his national service, Ning Cheng Gong had gone into the Taiwanese diplomatic corps. Perhaps old Heng had not yet considered him ready to join the Lucky Dragon.

Once again young Cheng's progress had been meteoric, and he had been given an ambassadorship within four years, admittedly it was to a small and insignificant little African country, but by all accounts he had done well. Once again Tug had been able to obtain a copy of his service record from the Taiwanese foreign office. It had cost him ten thousand pounds sterling in bribes, but Tug considered it a bargain.

In this dossier he had again found some evidence of Cheng's unusual erotic tastes.

The body of a young black girl had been fished out of the Zambezi river only partially devoured by crocodiles. There was certain mutilation of the corpse's genital and mammary areas which had led the police to pursue further enquiries. They found that at the time the Chinese ambassador had been staying at a game lodge on the Zambezi south bank, near the girl's village. The missing girl had been seen entering Cheng's bungalow late on the evening before she disappeared.

She had not been seen again alive. This was as far as the enquiry had been allowed to run, before being quashed by a directive from the president's office.

Now the ambassador's term of office had run its course. He had resigned from the diplomatic service and returned to Taiwan to take up a position with the Lucky Dragon company, at last.

His father had given him the equivalent rank of vice-president, and Tug Harrison found him interesting. Not only was he clever but he was goodlooking to the Western eye. His mother's influence was discernible in his features; although his hair was jet black there were no epicanthic folds in his upper eyelids. His English was perfect. If Tug closed his eyes he could imagine he was conversing with a young upper-class Englishman. He was suave and urbane, with just the slightest perceptible streak of ruthlessness and cruelty in him. Yes, Tug decided, he was a young man with prospects. His father could be proud of him.

Tug felt the familiar stab of regret as he thought of his own feckless offspring, weaklings and wastrels all three. He could only console himself by believing that the fault must lie in their maternal line. They were the sons of three different women'all of whom he had chosen for their physical attractiveness. When you are young there is no reasoning with an erect penis, he shook his head regretfully, it seemed to inhibit the flow of the blood to the brain. He had married four women whom he would not have employed as, secretaries, and three of them had given him sons in their mirror image, beautiful and lazy and irresponsible.

Tug frowned at this shadow across his sunny mood. Most men give more thought and care to the breeding of their dogs and horses than they do to selecting a dam for their own children. Fatherhood was the only endeavour in his entire life in which Tug Harrison had failed dismally.

I am looking forward to viewing your father's collection of ivory, Tug told Cheng, putting unprofitable regret out of his mind.

My father will be pleased to show it to you, Cheng smiled. It is his chief delight, after the Lucky Dragon, of course. As he said it, the Rolls sailed around another hairpin and directly ahead stood the gates to the Ning estate. Tug had seen a photograph of them, but still he was not prepared for the actuality. They reminded him instantly of those gigantic garish sculptures in the Tiger Balm Gardens in Hong Kong.

The Lucky Dragon entwined itself around the gateway like a prehistoric monster, glittering with emerald-green ceramic tiles and gold leaf. Its talons were hooked and raised, its wings were spread fifty feet wide, its eyes glowed like live coals and its crocodile jaws were agape and lined with jagged fangs. My goodness!

said Tug mildly, and Cheng laughed lightly and deprecatingly. My father's little whimsy, he explained. The teeth are real ivory and the eyes are a pair of cabochon spinel-rubies from Sri Lanka. They weigh together a little over five kilos. They are unique and are valued at over a million dollars, hence the armed guards. The two guards came to attention as the Rolls slid through the gateway. They were dressed in paramilitary uniform with blancoed webbing and burnished stainless helmets similar to those worn by the honour guard at Chiang Kai-shek's tomb in Taipei. They carried automatic weapons and Tug Harrison guessed that they had other duties apart from guarding the Lucky Dragon's jewelled eyes. Tug had heard that young Cheng, using his military experience, had personally recruited these guards from the ranks of the Taiwanese marines, one of the elite regiments of the world, to protect his father.

Old Ning Heng H'Sui had left more than a few widows and orphans behind him as he hacked his way to power. Rumour had it that he had once been head of one of Hong Kong's powerful secret societies, and that he still maintained close ties with the Tongs. He might now be an art collector and artist and poet, but there were many who remembered the old days and would dearly love to pay off a few ancient scores.

Tug felt no repugnance at all for the old man's personal history, just as he felt none for the youngest son's sexual foibles. Tug had a few secrets of his own, and knew the whereabouts of more than one unmarked grave in the African wilderness. He had lived his whole life in the company of, and in competition with, ruthless predatory men. He made no moral judgements. He accepted mankind as he found it, and looked instead for the profit to be made from its strengths or weaknesses.

Cheng returned the salute of the silver-helmeted guards with a nod and the Rolls passed beneath the Lucky Dragon's arched belly and entered a fantasy land of gardens and lakes, pagodas and arched Chinese bridges.

Shoals of jewel-coloured khoi glided beneath the lake waters, and flocks of -snow-white pigeons swirled about the eaves of the pagodas.

The lawns were green and smooth as a silk kimono stretched over a pretty girl's thigh. The rhododendrons were in full bloom. it was peaceful and lovely, in contrast to the tasteless dragon sculpture at the main gateway.

The Rolls drew up at the entrance to a building that reminded Tug of a miniature of the Winter Palace in Peking. The fountains that surrounded it shot a sparkling lacework of foam high into the cool mountain air. A cortge of white-jacketed servants waited on each side of the entrance to welcome Tug, and they bowed deeply as Cheng led him into the vaulted interior.

The panelled walls had been slid aside so that the gardens seemed part of the decor. The furnishings were simple and exquisite. The floors of red cedar glowed and the cigar-box smell of the woodwork perfumed the air. A few ceramic treasures which would have graced any museum collection were arranged to full effect, and a single flower arrangement of cherry blossom was the centre-piece of the room. One of the maids will make tea for you, Sir Peter, Cheng told him, while the other draws your bath and unpacks your suitcases. Then you will want to rest for an hour. My father invites YOU to take lunch with him at twelve-thirty. I will return a few minutes before that time to take you up to the main house. Tug realised that this was simply one of the guest houses, but he showed no sign of being impressed and Cheng went on, Of course, all the servants are at your command. If there is anything you should want, Cheng placed a slight emphasis on the sentence, that turned it into a leer, you need only ask one of the servants. You are my father's honoured guest. He would he deeply humiliated if you were to lack anything at all. You and your father are too kind. Tug returned the young man's bow. There would have been a time, not too many years ago when Tug would have availed himself of the discreet invitation, but now he was thankful that the irrational and uncontrollable element of sexuality had faded from his existence. So much of his youthful time and energy had been spent in sexual pursuit.

At the end he had very little to show for all the effort, apart from three useless sons and a couple of million a year in alimony payments.

No, he was glad it was over. His existence now was calmer and saner.

Youth was an over-rated period in a man's life, filled with so much confusion and anxiety and unhappiness.

The two Chinese girls who helped him down the tiled steps into the steaming perfumed bath wore only brief white kilts and he could look upon their pale creamy skins and cherryblossom nipples with a connoisseur's appreciation and only a brief sweet nostalgic stirring of the loins. No, he reiterated as he sank into the water, I'm glad I'm not young any more. Tug spurned the embroidered robes that the girls had laid out for him and chose instead one of his dark Savile Row suits with a Turnbull and Asser shirt and MCC tie that the valet had steamed.

Damned fancy dress will make me feel like a clown. Old Heng knows it; that's why he tried to get me into it. Young Cheng was waiting for him at the appointed -time. His eyes flicked over Tug's suit but his expression never changed.

Didn't fall for it, did I? Tug thought smugly. I wasn't born yesterday, was I?

They strolled up the covered pathway, pausing to admire the lotus flowers and water-lilies and the rhododendrons until they turned through an arched gateway festooned with drapes of blue wistaria and abruptly the main house was disclosed.

It was stunning, a creation of unblemished white marble and ceramic rooftiles in peaks and gables, modern and yet timelessly classical.

Tug did not miss a stride, and sensed the young man's disappointment beside him. He had expected Tug, like all other visitors, to gawk.

The patriarch, Ning Heng H'Sui, was very old, older than Tug by ten years or more. His skin was dried and folded like that of the unwrapped mummy of Rameses II in the Cairo Museum, and spotted with the foxing of age. On his left cheek grew a mole the size and colour of a ripe mulberry. It is a common Chinese superstition that the hairs growing from a facial mole bring good luck, and Heng H'Sui had never shaved his. A bunch of hair sprouted from the little purple cauliflower and hung down in a silver tassel below his chin above the simple tunic of cream-coloured raw silk he wore.

So much for the dragon embroidery he tried to rig me with, Tug thought, as he took his hand. It was dry and cool and the bones were light as a bird's.

Heng was desiccated with age; only his eyes were bright and fierce.

Tug imagined that the giant man-eating dragons of Komodo might have eyes like that.

I trust you have rested after your journey, Sir Peter, and that you are comfortable in my poor house. His voice was thin and dry as the sound of the wind rustling the autumn leaves and his English was excellent.

They exchanged pleasantries while they measured and sized each other.

It was their first meeting. Alt Tug's negotiations up until this point had been with the elder sons.

All the sons were here now, waiting behind their father, the three elder brothers and Cheng.

One at a time Heng H'Sui waved them forward with a birdlike flutter of his pale dry hand, and they greeted Tug courteously in strict order of seniority.

Then Cheng helped his father back to his cushioned seat overlooking the garden. It was not lost on Tug that the youngest, rather than the eldest, was so honoured. Though there was no exchange of glances between the other brothers and no change of expression, Tug felt the sibling rivalry and jealousy so strong in the sweet mountain air that he could almost taste it. All this was good intelligence he was gathering about the family.

Servants brought them pale jasmine tea in bowls so fine that Tug could see the outline of his own fingers through the china.

He recognized the cream on white leaf design, so subtle and understated as almost to elude casual examination. The bowl was a masterpiece of a fifteenth-century potter of the Ching emperor of the Ming dynasty.

Tug drained the bowl and then, as he was about to set it down on the lacquered tray, he let it slip from his fingers. It struck the cedarwood floor and shattered into a hundred precious fragments. I am so sorry, he apologised. How clumsy of me.

It is nothing. Heng H'Sui inclined his head graciously, and gestured for a servant to sweep away the broken shards. The servant was trembling as he knelt to the task. He sensed his master's wrath. I do hope it was not valuable? Tug asked, testing him, trying to unsettle him, paying him back for the trick with the dragon robe. An angry man, one with hatred in his heart, has his judgement impaired. Tug studied Heng H'Sui for a reaction.

They both knew that Tug was fully aware that the bowl was priceless.

It was of no value, I assure you, Sir Peter. A mere trifle.

Think no more of it, the old man insisted, but Tug saw that he had got to him. There was a man of passion lurking behind that dried-out mask with the tasselled cheek piece. However, the old man was exhibiting class and style and control. A worthy adversary, Tug decided, for he had no illusion as to any fiduciary relationship between them merely on account of the mutually convenient and probably transient partnership of BOSS and the Lucky Dragon.

With the breaking of the bowl he had achieved a momentary advantage over the patriarch. He had thrown him off balance.

The old man sipped the last of the pale tea from his own bowl which was identical to the one which Tug had broken, and then held out his hand with a quiet word of command.

One of the servants knelt and placed a square of silk in his wrinkled paw. Heng H'Sui wiped out the bowl carefully and then wrapped it in the silk and handed it to Tug. A gift for you, Sir Peter. I hope that our friendship will not be as frail as this little bauble.

Tug conceded that Heng had snatched back the advantage.

Tug was left with no option but to accept the extravagant gift and the loss of face that the subtle rebuke entailed.

I will treasure it for the generosity of the giver, he said. My son, Heng indicated him with a flick of his blue-yeincd hand, tells me that you have expressed a desire to see my collection of ivory. Do you also collect ivory, Sir Peter? I don't, but I'm interested in all things African. I flatter myself that I know more than the average man about the African elephant. I know how much value your people place on ivory.

Indeed, Sir Peter, never dispute the efficacy of charms with a Chinese, especially those of ivory. Our entire existence is ruled by astrology and the courting of fortune. The Lucky Dragon? Tug suggested. The Lucky Dragon, certainly. Heng's parchment dry cheeks seemed about to tear as he smiled. And the Dragon at my gate has fangs of pure ivory. I have been caught up in the spell of ivory all my life. I started my career as an ivory-carver in my father's shop.

Yes, I know that the netsuke that bears your personal chop fetches prices equivalent to those of the great master carvers of antiquity, Tug told him. Ah, those were made when my eye was sharp and my hand steady. Heng shook his head modestly, but did not deny the value of his own creations. I would dearly love to see some examples of your work, Tug suggested, and Heng gestured to his youngest son to help him rise. So you shall, Sir Peter.

So you shall.

The ivory museum was at a distance from the main house.

They went slowly along the covered walkway through the gardens, holding back for Heng H'Sui's short laboured pace.

He stopped to feed the khoi in one of the ornamental pools, and as the fish roiled the water in a feeding frenzy, the old man smiled at their antics. Greed, Sir Peter; without greed where would you and I be?

Healthy greed is the fuel of the capitalist system, Tug agreed. And the stupid unthinking greed of other men makes you and me rich, does it not?

Tug inclined his head in agreement and they went on.

There were more paramilitary guards in silver helmets at the door of the museum. Tug knew without being told that their vigil was perpetual.

Picked men. Heng noticed his glance. I trust them more than all these modern electronic devices. Cheng relinquished his father's arm for a moment to punch the entry code into the control box of the alarm system and the massive carved doors swung open automatically. He ushered them through.

The museum was without windows. There was no natural light, and the artificial lighting had been skilfully arranged. The air-conditioning was set to the correct humidity to preserve and protect the ivory. The carved doors closed with a pneumatic hiss behind them.

Tug took three paces into the spacious antechamber and then halted abruptly. He stared at the display in the centre of the marble floor.

You recognize them? Heng H'Sui asked. Yes, of course. Tug nodded.

I saw them once, long ago, at the Sultan of Zanzibar's palace before the revolution. There has been speculation ever since as to what happened to them. Yes. I acquired them after the revolution in 1964

when the Sultan was exiled, Heng H'Sui agreed. Very few people know that I own them.

The walls of the room were painted blue, that particular milky blue of an African noon sky. The colour was chosen to show off the exhibits to best effect and the dimensions of the antechamber had obviously been designed for the same purpose, to complement the pair of ivory tusks.

Each tusk was over ten feet long, and its diameter at the lip was larger than a virgin's waist. The legend inked on each tusk was in Arabic script written a hundred years ago by a clerk of the Sultan Barghash recording the weight when it arrived in Zanzibar. Tug deciphered the writing: the heaviest tusk had weighed 235 pounds, the other only a few pounds less.

They are lighter now, Heng H'Sui anticipated his question. Between them they have dried out by twenty-two pounds, but still it takes four men to carry one of them. Think of the mighty animal who originally bore them.

They were the most famous tusks in existence. As a student of African history, Tug knew the story of these extraordinary objects.

They had been taken a hundred years ago on the southern slopes of Kilimanjaro, by a slave named Senoussi. The slave's master was a villain named Shundi.

He was one of the cruellest and most unscrupulous slavers and ivory-traders on the African cast coast, an area notorious for the depredations of the slave-masters. When he had first come upon it, Senoussi had in awe delayed killing the old bull. He had crouched over his flintlock musket and studied this extraordinary creature with respect for several hours before he had summoned the courage to creep forward and send a lead ball through its heart.

According to Senoussi's later account to his master, the bull ran off only a hundred yards before collapsing. He was an extremely old elephant with his fourth and last molars almost worn away, on the verge of the slow starvation of great age.

Although not particularly big-bodied, his neck and forequarters were overdeveloped to carry that great weight of ivory. Senoussi observed the bull had been forced to raise his head and lift the tips of his tusks free of the earth before he could move.

When Shundi displayed the tusks in the ivory market in Zanzibar they caused a sensation amongst traders accustomed to dealing with massive tusks. The Sultan had purchased the pair from Shundi for a thousand pounds sterling, which was a huge sum of money in those days. Tug had first seen them in the palace of the Sultan's successors overlooking the Zanzibar waterfront.

Now he approached them with awe and stroked one of them, staring up at the massive ivory arches that almost met high above his head. This was legendary treasure. To Tug, somehow, these tusks seemed to embody the history and the soul of the entire African continent. Now let me show you the rest of my poor little collection, Ning Heng H'Sui suggested at last, and led the way past the towering ivory columns to the archway artfully concealed in the rear wall of the antechamber.

The interior of the building was a labyrinth of dimly lit passages.

The floor was carpeted with midnight-blue Wilton, soft and soundless to the tread. The walls were the same colour, but set flush into them on each side of the passage were the showcases.

The proportions of each case were designed to the shape and size of the single exhibit it contained. The lighting of the cases was dramatically arranged so that each treasure was revealed in crisp detail and seemed to float airily and independently of the dim surroundings.

Firstly, there were religious and sacred objects, a Bible with covers of carved ivory and precious stones bearing the doubleheaded eagle of Imperial Russia. Peter the Great, Heng murmured. His personal Bible.

There was a copy of the Torah, the yellow parchment rolled n ivory case wi on to an ivory distaff, and contained in the Star of David carved upon it. Salvaged from the great synagogue at Constantinople when it was destroyed by the Byzantine emperor Theodosius, Heng explained.

Amongst other treasures there were icons of ivory set with diamonds and Hindu statuettes of Vishnu, a copy of the Koran covered with beaten gold and ivory, and ancient Christian statues of the Virgin and the saints, all carved from ivory.

Then, as they moved along the dim passageway, the nature of the exhibits became more profane, and secular. There were women's fans and combs and necklaces from ancient Rome and Greece, then an extraordinary object shaped like a two-foot rolling pin with a rooster head carved at one end.

Tug did not recognize it and Heng explained expressionlessly. It belonged to Catherine the Great of Russia. Her physicians convinced her that ivory was a sovereign specific against syphilis. It is an ivory dildo, made to her own design. Occasionally Heng instructed his son to open one or two of the cases so that Tug could handle the exhibits and examine them more closely. The true joy of ivory lies in the feel of it in the hand, Heng suggested. it is as sensuous as the skin of a lovely woman. See the grain, Sir Peter, that lovely subtle cross-hatching that no synthetic substance can duplicate. There was one object the size and shape of a football, carved like lacework.

Within it were eight more balls, free and complete, one within the other like the layers of an onion. The artist had carved the inner balls through the minute apertures in the outer layers. In the centre of the ball was a carving of a rose bud, perfect in every detail. Three thousand hours of work.

Five years from the life of a master craftsman. How can you place a value on that? CHeng asked.

Two hours after entering the museum they came at last to the room that contained the netsukes.

During the Tokugawa Shogunate in Japan, only the aristocracy were allowed to wear personal adornment. Amongst the newly emerging and affluent middle class the netsuke button, worn on the sash and used to secure a pill box or tobacco pouch, was an essential article of dress.

The beauty and intricacy of the carving enhanced the owner's prestige.

Heng had assembled a collection of over ten thousand pieces.

However, as he explained to Tug, he could only display a few of his favourites, and amongst them were his own creations.

These were cased separately, and once again Tug was invited to take them in his hand and to admire the craftsmanship. Of course, I was obliged to seek out and buy back my own work. Heng smiled and tugged at the tassel of hair that hung from his cheek. I have agents around the world still searching; for my creations. I estimate there are at least a hundred that have so far eluded me. Ten thousand dollars if you find one, Sir Peter, he promised. And worth every cent, Tug agreed as he examined one of the tiny ivory buds. The detail and rendition was extraordinary and the subject matter covered a wide range of humanity and the animal world, from birds and mammals to men and beautiful women and children in every possible pose and indulging in every activity, from war to love, from death to childbirth.

Somehow, Heng the artist had managed to transform even the mundane into something remarkable and exciting. Subjects that might have been merely pornographic and coarse were instead spiritual, ethereal and moving. You have a rare gift, Tug acknowledged. The heart and eye of a great artist. For a short while the two men were in accord, and then they left the treasure house and returned to the main house where servants had set out writing materials and light refreshments at a long lacquer-work table. They removed their footwear and settled themselves on cushions about the table and, at last, the real work began.

In London, Tug had negotiated and signed a document of intent with the elder Ning sons. This was subject to ratification by the patriarch. Tug had never expected this to be a simple procedure and he was not to be disappointed.

A [it-tic after midnight they adjourned and Tug was escorted back to the guesthouse by Cheng. The two female servants were waiting-for him with tea and refreshments. They helped him change into his night clothes, then drew back the quilts on the low wide bed and waited expectantly.

Tug dismissed them and they left at once. He had not been able to discover where the video camera and microphone were concealed, but he was certain they were there. He switched off the light and lay for a while, well pleased with the progress he had made. Then he slept soundly and awoke eager for the fray.

In the middle of the following afternoon, Tug and Heng H'Sui shook hands.

From all that Tug had learned about the old man, he believed that like himself Heng was a man of peculiar integrity. Between them that handshake was as good as any formal document. Of course, the lawyers on both sides would now come in and complicate and muddy the issues, but even they could never weaken the central pillars of the agreement.

Between Tug and Heng it was sacrosanct, the honour of buccaneers.

There is one other matter I would like to discuss with you, Heng murmured, and Tug frowned. No, no, Sir Peter. It is a personal matter, not part of our agreement. And Tug relaxed. I will do what I can to help you. What is it about? Elephant, Heng said. Ivory. Ah.

Tug smiled and nodded.

Why didn't I guess? At the time that bloodthirsty madman Idi Amin took over Uganda, the largest elephant still alive on the African continent were in the Uganda National Park near the Murchison Falls at the headwaters of the Nile, Heng explained. Yes, Tug agreed. I saw a dozen animals in that Park that had tusks over a hundred pounds a side.

They were wiped out by Idi Amin's henchmen and the ivory stolen by him. Not all of them, Sir Peter. I have it on good authority that some of those animals, the largest of them, escaped annihilation.

They crossed the border into Ubomo and reached the rain forests on the slopes of the Mountains of the Moon, that area which now forms part of our syndicate's concession. it is possible, Tug conceded. It is more than that. It is fact, Heng contradicted him. My son Cheng, he indicated the man at his side, has a reliable agent in Ubomo. An Indian who has cooperated with us on many occasions. His name is Chetti Singh.

Do you know him? I have heard of him, vaguely. Tug frowned again.

Let me think . . . Yes, he is connected with the illegal export of ivory and rhino horn. I have heard he is the mastermind behind all African poaching. Chetti Singh has been in the forests of the Ubomo basin within the last ten days, Heng went on. He has seen with his own eyes an elephant bull with tusks almost as large as those I showed you today.

How can I help you? Tug insisted. I want those tusks, Heng murmured, the passion of. the collector barely concealed behind the time-eroded mask of his face. More than the ore and the hardwoods of the forest, I want that ivory. President Taffari can sign a special Protected Game licence.

I believe there is provision for that in the constitution. If there isn't, it can be changed. I presume that your man Chetti Singh will be able to arrange for the ivory to be harvested. He is the master poacher. If that is the case, I will send my Gulfstream to Ubomo to pick up the tusks and ferry them to you here. I can foresee no problems, Mr. Ning. Thank you, Sir Peter, Heng smiled. Is there anything I can do for you in exchange? Yes. Tug leaned forward. As a matter of fact there is. You only have to ask, Heng invited. Before I do that, I must explain something of the new hysteria that is sweeping the Western world. Fortunately for YOU, you are not subject to the same pressures. There is a new thinking, especially amongst the young but also, regrettably, amongst those who should know better. This philosophy is that we have no right to utilise the natural assets of our planet. We cannot be allowed to mine the earth of its bounty, because our excavations will disfigure the beauty of nature. We cannot be allowed to cut the trees for timber, because they belong not to us but to posterity. We cannot be allowed to kill a living creature for its meat or fur or ivory, because all life is somehow sacred. This is nonsense.

Heng dismissed it with a brusque gesture, his dark eyes sparkling.

Man is what he is today because he has always done these things. He touched the cedar panels of the wall beside him, the hem of his silk tunic, the gold and ivory ring on his finger, the precious ceramic bowl on the table before him. All these were mined or felled or killed, as is the very food we eat. You and I, we know that, Tug agreed. But this new madness is a force to be reckoned with, almost an unreasoning religious fanaticism. A jihad, if you like, a holy war. I mean no disrespect, Sir Peter, but the Occidental is emotionally immature. I like to think that we of the cast have more sophistication.

We are not so readily caught up by such exaggerated behaviour. That is why I appeal to you, sir. My company, BOSS, has recently become a victim of this campaign. The attention of the British public has been drawn to our operations in Ubomo by groups of these people who call themselves childish names such as "Greenpeace" or "The Friends of the Earth". Heng grimaced at the title, and Tug nodded. I know it sounds silly and harmless, but one such Organisation is led by a fanatical young woman.

She has chosen my company as her target. She has already managed to do us some damage. There is a small but noticeable decline in sales and income that is directly attributable to her campaign. Some of our major markets in the United Kingdom and the United States are getting nervous, and asking us to back off from Ubomoi or at least to play down our involvement, and I personally have received hate mail and death threats.

You do not take those seriously? No, Mr. Ning, I do not, although these are from people who blow up animal experimentation laboratories and set fire to furrier's shops. However, I think it might be prudent to play down BOSS's role in Ubomo, or at least to give it better public relations. What do you propose, Sir Peter? Firstly, I have already hired an independent film-producer, quite well-known in Europe and America, to film a television feature on Ubomo with particular emphasis on the benefits to the country of our involvement.

You do not plan to expose all the syndicate's operations to the camera, Sir Peter? There was a tone of alarm in Heng's question. Of course not, Mr. Ning. The film-producer will be carefully guided to show our syndicate in the best possible light. It may even be necessary to prepare some exhibits for him to film. To put on a little show for his benefit? Heng suggested. Exactly, Mr. Ning. We will keep him away from the sensitive areas of our operations. Heng nodded.

That is wise. You seem to have arranged matters without my help. You are in a better position than I am, Mr. Ning. These so called green people cannot reach you here in Taiwan. Your own Chinese people are too pragmatic to take up such an immature attitude to mining and forestry, especially as nearly all the products that we reap will be shipped here. You are invulnerable to this childish but dangerous influence. Yes. Heng nodded. I see that all you have said makes good sense, but where does it lead us? I want Lucky Dragon to become the figurehead of the syndicate. I want one of your best men, rather than one of mine, to go to Ubomo and take charge of the operations there.

I will pull out my geologists and forestry experts and architects; you will put in Chinese experts. I will gradually sell off my share of the syndicate to Hong Kong front companies and other oriental nominees.

Although you and I will meet regularly and discreetly to direct the syndicate operations, BOSS will gradually withdraw from the scene. You will become the invisible man, Sir Peter.

Heng chuckled with genuine amusement. The invisible man, I like that.

Tug laughed with him. May I know who it is that you would send to Ubomo to take charge there. Ning Heng H'Sui stopped laughing and tugged thoughtfully at the silver tuft that hung from his cheek.

His sons, sitting below him at the long lacquer table, leaned forward, trying not to display their eagerness, watching their father's face with impassive expressions that were betrayed by their eyes.

Ha! Heng coughed and wet his lips from the tea bowl. That will require some consideration, Sir Peter. Will you give me a week or so to decide?

Of course, Mr. Ning. It is not a decision to be taken lightly.

We will need somebody clever and dedicated and. . . he hesitated as he weighed the adjective, discarding ruthless as too explicit, and strong, yet diplomatic. I will telephone you with my decision. Where will you be, Sir Peter? Well, I am flying to Sydney tomorrow morning, and from there I will go on directly to Nairobi and Kahali in Ubomo to meet President Taffari. However, my aircraft has direct satellite communication. You can contact me in flight as easily as if I were in the next room. These modern miracles. Heng shook his head.

Sometimes it is difficult for an old man to adjust. it seems to me that you are old only in experience and sagacity, Mr. Ning. In courage and dash you are young, sir. Tug said, not entirely in flattery, and Ning Heng H'Sui inclined his head graciously.

Cheng had waited patiently for exactly the right moment to present his father with the gift that he had brought for him from Africa. It was almost two weeks since Sir Peter Harrison had visited Taiwan and still his father had made no announcement within the family as to which of his sons he was sending to run the syndicate's operation in Ubomo.

All the brothers knew it must be one of them. They had known it the moment that the Englishman had made the request. Cheng had noticed the others lean forward at the words, and he had seen his own excitement and expectation mirrored in their eyes. Ever since then, the brothers had been walking around each other like dogs with stiff legs. The extent of Lucky Dragon's investment in the Ubomo syndicate was unprecedented. When the project was fully financed and developed, the family would be committed to raising almost a thousand million dollars, much of it borrowed from banks in Hong Kong and Japan.

It must be one of the sons. Ning Heng H'Sui would never put so much trust in an outsider. Only his age forced him to delegate the task to one of them. Not long ago he would have taken command in Ubomo into his own hands, but now his sons knew he had to give it to one of them, and each of them would kill for the honour. That command would be the ultimate accolade which would show clearly whom Heng had chosen as his heir.

Cheng longed for the honour with a passion so intense that it denied him sleep and spoiled his appetite. In the two weeks since Sir Peter's visit, Cheng had lost weight and become pale and hollow-cheeked. Now, when he exercised in the gymnasium with his hired sparring partners, his body was lean to the point of emaciation. Every rib showed through the hard rubbery casing of muscle. However, his blows and kicks had lost none of their fury. As he fought, his dark eyes, sunken into bruisedlooking cavities, glittered with a feverish intensity.

He found every excuse to be in his father's company. Even when the old man was painting, or meditating with the Confucian priests at the shrine in the gardens of the estate, or cataloguing his ivory collection, Cheng; tried to be with him, keeping himself close. Yet he sensed that the moment was not exactly right to make the gift. He believed that his father's choice must in the end come down to that between his second brother, Wu, and Cheng himself.

The eldest brother, Fang, was tough and ruthless, but lacking in guile and cunning, a good hatchet man but not a leader. The third son, Ling, possessed an unreliable temperament. tie was clever, as clever as either Wu or Cheng, but he was easily panicked and inclined to fly into a rage when things went against him. Ling would never head Lucky Dragon. He might become Number Two perhaps, but never Number One. No, Cheng reasoned, the choice must be between himself and Wu.

As a child he had recognized Wu as his main rival and in consequence he hated him with a single-minded malevolence.

While she had been alive, Cheng's English mother had protected him from his half-brothers. But after she died he had been at their mercy.

It had taken all these years to learn to hold his own and insinuate himself ever deeper into his father's favour.

Cheng recognized that this would be his chance, his only chance for supremacy. His father was old, more than old, he was ancient. Despite his seemingly boundless strength and energy, Cheng sensed that his father was near death. It might come at any moment of any day, and he went cold at the thought.

He knew that unless he consolidated his accession while his father still lived, Wu would wrest it from him with the help of his two full brothers, the moment his father died. He sensed also that his father was on the point of deciding on the Ubomo project. He knew that this was his moment. This was the slack water of the tide of his fortunes, and now they must turn and begin to flood, or he would be for ever stranded on the mudbanks.

Honourable Father, I have something for you. A small and humble token of the respect and gratitude I feel for you. May I present it?

Fortune seemed to conspire with Cheng to provide an appropriate opportunity. The old man was spry today, his mind quick and his waning bodily strength in some measure restored.

He had eaten a ripe fig and an apple for breakfast, and had composed a classical stanza while Cheng walked him down to the shrine. It was an ode to the mountain peak that stood above the estate. The poem began: Beloved of clouds who caress her face . . .

It was good, although not as good as his father's paintings and ivory carvings, Cheng thought. However, when the old man recited it, Cheng clasped his hands. I am awed that so much genius resides in one person.

I wish only that I had inherited a few grains of it for myself. He thought he might have overdone it a little, but the old man accepted the praise and for a moment tightened his grip on Cheng's arm. You are a good son, he said. And your mother his voice trailed off mournfully, your mother was a woman He shook his head and Cheng thought incredulously that the old man's eyes had moistened. It must have been his imagination.

His father was not prey to weakness and sentimentality.

When he looked again his father's eyes were clear and bright, and the old man was smiling.

That morning Heng stayed on at the shrine much longer than he usually did. He wanted to inspect the work on his own tomb. One of the most famous geomancers on the island had come to position the tomb precisely and to orientate it so that it stood neither on. an earth dragon's head nor on his tail. That would have disturbed the old man's death sleep.

The georriancer had worked with a compass and a magic bag for almost an hour, directing the efforts of the priests and the servants to get the marble sarcophagus laid properly.

All this preparation for his own funeral put Heng into a pleasant relaxed mood, and when they were finished Cheng seized the moment and asked to be allowed to present his gift.

Heng smiled and nodded. You may bring it to me, my son. Alas, father, the nature of the gift makes that impossible. I must take you to it.

Heng's expression changed. These days he seldom left the estate. He seemed about to refuse. However, Cheng had anticipated his reaction.

All he needed to do was lift one hand and the Rolls that was parked behind the clipped privet hedger, beyond the lotus pools slid silently forward.

Before the old man could protest, Cheng had helped him into the back seat and settled him comfortably with a cashmere rug over his knees.

The chauffeur knew where to take them. As the Rolls came down the mountain road on to the littoral plain, Heng and Cheng were isolated and protected from the heat and humidity, and from the teeming humanity that clogged the Toad with Vespa motorcycles and buses, wild chicken taxis and heavily laden trucks.

When they entered Chung Ching South Road in the Hsimending area of the city the chauffeur slowed and turned in through the gates of the Lucky Dragon company's main city warehouse.

The guards jumped to attention as they recognized the couple in the back seat.

One of the warehouse doors stood open and after the car drove through, the steel shutter doors rolled closed behind it.

The Rolls parked on one of the loading ramps and Cheng helped his father out of the back door and took his elbow to lead him to a carved teak chair that stood like a throne, covered with embroidered silk cushions, overlooking the floor below the ramp.

As soon as his father was comfortable, Cheng signaled one of the servants to bring freshly made tea. He sat on one of the cushions lower than Heng and they drank tea and talked quietly of unrelated subjects.

Cheng was drawing out the moment, trying to spice his father's anticipation. If he succeeded, the old man did not show it. He barely glanced towards the floor belok.

Ten brawny workmen knelt in a row facing the throne.

Cheng had dressed them in black tunics, with red headbands, and the emblem of the Lucky Dragon embroidered on their backs also in red. He had rehearsed them carefully and they were motionless, heads bowed respectfully.

Finally, after ten minutes of talk and tea, Cheng told his father, This is the present I have brought you from Africa. He indicated the rows of chests, arranged behind, the workmen. It is such a poor little present that now I am ashamed to offer it to you. Tea? Heng smiled.

Cases of tea? Enough tea to last me the rest of my lifetime. it is a fine gift, my son. It is a poor gift, but may I open the cases for you? Cheng asked, and the old man nodded his permission.

Cheng clapped his hands and the ten workmen sprang to their feet and ran to seize one of the tea-chests and bring it forward. They worked swiftly, efficiently. With half a dozen blows of a slap-hammer and a twist of a jernmy bar, they lifted the lid off the first case.

Heng showed the first sign of animation and leaned forward in the high chair. Two of the workmen lifted out the first tusk from its bed of caked black tea.

Cheng had long ago arranged that it should be one of the largest and most finely shaped tusks in the entire shipment of stolen ivory. He had asked Chetti Singh to mark the case that contained it before the.

shipment left the Indian's warehouse in Malawi.

The tusk was long, over seven feet long, but not as thick and blunt as one of the typical massively heavy tusks from further north than Zimbabwe. Yet from an entirely aesthetic point of view this one was more pleasing, its girth more in proportion to its length and the curve and taper were elegant. It was neither cracked nor damaged and the patina above the lip was creamy yellow.

Involuntarily Heng clapped his hands with pleasure and exclaimed aloud.

Bring it to me! Two of the workmen, struggling under the burden, climbed the concrete steps and knelt before him offering the lovely tusk.

Heng stroked the ivory and his eyes sparkled in the cobweb of wrinkles that surrounded them.

Beautiful! he murmured. The most beautiful of all nature's creations, more beautiful than pearls or the feathers of the brightest tropical birds. He broke off abruptly as his fingers detected the rough patch on the tusk. He leaned closer and peered at it and exclaimed again. But this tusk bears a government stamp. "ZW". That is a Zimbabwe government number.

This is legal ivory, Cheng. He clapped his hands again. Legal ivory, my son, many more times more valuable for those numbers. How did you do it?

How many more tusks are there?

His father's unrestrained pleasure was giving Cheng huge face.

He must be careful to remain humble and dutiful. Every one of those cases is filled with ivory, honoured Father. Every tusk is stamped.

Where did you get them? Heng insisted, and then raised his hand to prevent Cheng replying. Wait! he ordered. Wait. Do not tell me! He was silent, staring at his son for a while, and then he said, Yes.

That is it.

I know where this ivory comes from. With a wave of his hand he sent the black-clad workmen out of earshot and leaned closer to Cheng, dropping his voice to a whisper. I read some time ago that there was a raid by a gang of poachers on a government ivory store in Zimbabwe. A place called Chiwewe?

The gangsters were wiped out, but the ivory was not recovered, is that not so, my son? I read the same newspaper article, honoured Father.

Cheng dropped his eyes and waited while the silence drew out.

Then Heng spoke again. The man who planned that raid was clever and bold. He was not afraid to kill for what he wanted, he whispered. The kind of man that I admire. The kind of man that I was once, when I was young. The kind of man that you still are, Father, Cheng said, but Heng shook his head. The kind of man that I would be proud to have as my son, Heng went on. You may present the rest of your gift to me now.

Now Cheng's standing, in his father's eyes, was so enormous that he wriggled in his seat with pleasure and shouted for the workmen to open the other cases.

For the next two hours Heng examined the shipment of tusks. He gloated over every single piece, picking out a dozen or so of the loveliest or most unusual for his special collection.

He was particularly interested in deformed ivory. The nerve of one of the tusks had been damaged, while it was still immature, by a hand-hammered lead ball from a native poacher's musket.

The result was that the tusk had split into four separate shafts and these had twisted around each other in the same way as the strands of a hemp rope. The original lead musket-bullet, heavily corroded, was still embedded in the root of the tusk, and the entwined spirals of ivory resembled the horns of the legendary unicorn. Heng was delighted with it.

Cheng had seldom seen him so animated and voluble, but at the end of the two hours he was obviously fatigued, and Cheng helped him back into the Rolls and ordered the chauffeur to return to the estate.

Heng laid his head back on the soft Connally leather and closed his eyes.

When Cheng was sure the old man was asleep, he gently adjusted the cashmere rug over him. One of Heng's hands had dropped on to the seat beside him. Cheng lifted it into his lap and before he covered it with the cashmere he caressed it so gently as not to wake his father. The hand was thin and bony and the skin was cool as that of a corpse.

Suddenly the long thin fingers tightened on Cheng's wrist and the old man spoke without opening his eyes. I am not afraid of death, my son, he whispered. But I am terrified that all that I have achieved will be destroyed by careless hands. Your brother Wu is strong and clever, but he does not have my spirit. He does not care for fine and beautiful things. He does not love poetry or painting or ivory. Heng opened his eyes and turned his head to stare at his son with those bright implacable lizard's eyes. I knew that you had inherited my spirit, Cheng, but until today I doubted that you had the warrior's steel.

That is the reason why I hesitated to choose between you and Wu.

However, this gift that you have given to me today has changed that thinking. I know how you obtained that ivory. I know that it was necessary to squeeze the juice from the ripe cherry. This was Heng's euphemism for drawing blood. And I know that you did not shrink from it. I know also that you succeeded in a difficult enterprise, whether by luck or cunning I do not really care. I prize both luck and cunning equally. He tightened his grip until it was painful but Cheng did not wince or pull away. I am sending you to Ubomo, my son, as the representative of the Lucky Dragon. Cheng bowed his head over his father's hand and kissed it.

I will not fail you, he promised, and a single tear of joy and of pride fell from the corner of his eye and sparkled like a jewel on the pale dry skin of his father's hand.

Ning Heng H'Sui made the -formal announcement of his selection the following morning. He made it while seated at the head of the lacquer table overlooking the garden.

Cheng; watched the faces of his brothers while the old man spoke. Wu remained as impassive as the ivory carving his father had made of him years ago. His face was bland, smooth and creamy yellow, but his eyes were terrible as he returned Cheng's stare across the table. When the old man finished speaking there was a moment's silence which seemed to last an eternity as the three elder brothers contemplated the world that had changed for them.

Then Wu spoke. Honourable Father, you are wise in all things. We, your sons, bow to your will as the rice stalks bow to the north wind.

All four of them bowed so low that their foreheads almost touched the table-top, but when they straightened the other three were looking at Cheng. Cheng realised at that moment that it might be possible to attain too much face. His face was greater than that of all his half-brothers combined and he felt an icicle of fear slide down his spine, for his brothers were watching him with the eyes of crocodiles.

He knew that he dare not fail in Ubomo. They would be waiting to rend him if he did.

Once Cheng was back in his own apartment, the fear fell away to be replaced by the clarion of success. There was so much work to do before he returned to Africa, but for the moment he could not concentrate his mind upon it. Tomorrow certainly, but not now. He was too charged with excitement, his mind restless and unfocused. He needed to steady'himself, to burn off the excess energy that made him both physically and mentally overwrought.

He knew exactly how to achieve this. He had his own special ritual for purging his soul. Of course, it was dangerous, terribly dangerous.

On more than one occasion before it had brought him to the very brink of disaster. However, the danger was part of the efficacy of the ritual. He knew that if anything went wrong he would have lost all.

The monumental successes of these last few days, his father's selection and the ascendancy over his brothers would all be wiped away.

The risk was enormous, completely out of proportion to the fleeting gratification that he would achieve. Perhaps it was the gambler's urge to flirt with self-destruction. After each episo he always promised himself that he would never indulge in the madness again, but always the temptation proved too strong, particularly at a time such as this.

As soon as he entered his apartment his wife made tea for him, and then called the children to pay him their respects. He spoke to them for a few minutes and took his infant son on his lap, but he was distracted and soon dismissed them. They left with obvious relief.

These formal interviews were 2 strain for all of them. He was not good with children, even his own.

My father has chosen me to go to Ubomo, he told his wife.

It is a great honour, she said. I offer you my felicitations.

When will we leave? I shall go alone, he told her, and saw the relief in her eyes.

It annoyed him that she made it so obvious. Of course, I will send for you as soon as I have made the arrangements. She dropped her eyes.

I will await your summons. But he could not concentrate on her. The excitement was fizzing in his head. I will rest for an hour. See that I am not disturbed. Then I have to go down to the city. There is much work to do before I leave. I will not return tonight, and I shall probably stay at the apartment in Tunhua Road. I shall send you a message before I return.

Alone in his own room he teased himself with the telephone.

He placed the cordless instrument on the table and stared at it, rehearsing every word he would say and his breathing was short and quick as though he had run up a flight of stairs. His fingers trembled slightly when at last he reached out for it. The telephone was fitted with a special coding scrambler. It could not be tapped and it was impossible for any other person, Civil or military or police, to trace the special number that he punched into the key panel.

Very few people had this number. She had told him once that she had given it to only six of her most valued clients. She answered it on the second ring and she recognized his voice instantly. She greeted him with the special code name she had assigned him. You have not been to see me for almost two years, Green Mountain Man. I have been away.

Yes, I know, but still I missed you.

I want to come tonight. Will you want the special thing? Yes.

Cheng felt his stomach clench at the thought of it. He thought he might be sick with fear and loathing and excitement. It is very short notice, she said. And the price has risen since your last visit. The price does not matter. Can you do it?

He heard the high strained tones of his own voice. She was silent, and he knew she was baiting him. He wanted to scream at her and then she said, You are fortunate. Her voice changed. It became obscenely soft and slimy. I have received new merchandise; I can offer you a choice of two. Cheng gulped and cleared his throat of a plug of phlegm before he could ask. Young? Very young. Very tender. Untouched.

When will you be ready? Ten o'clock tonight, she said. Not before.

At the sea pavilion? he asked. Yes, she replied. They will expect you at the gate. Ten o clock, she repeated. Not earlier, not later.

Cheng drove to the apartment building in Tunbua Road. It was in the most prestigious part of the city and the accommodation was expensive, but it was paid for by Lucky Dragon.

He left his Porsche in the underground garage and rode up to the top floor apartment in the elevator. By the time he had showered and changed it was still only six o'clock and he had plenty of time in which to prepare himself.

He left the apartment building on foot and set off down Tunhua Road.

tHe lo ed the renao of Taipei. It was one of the things that he missed most while he was away. Renao was a concept that was almost impossible to translate from the Chinese to any other language. It meant festive, lively, joyous and noisy all at the same time.

It was now the ghost month, the seventh lunar month when the ghosts return from hell to haunt the earth and have to be placated with gifts of ghost money and food. It was also necessary to keep them at a distance with fireworks and dragon processions.

Cheng paused to laugh and applaud one of the processions led by a monstrous dragon with a huge papier-michi head and fifty pairs of human legs beneath its serpentine body. The jumping-jack fireworks popped with spurts of blue smoke about the ankles of the spectators and the band beat drums and gongs and the children shrieked. It was good renao and it heightened Cheng's excitement.

He threaded his way through the crowds and the bustle until he reached the East Garden area of the city and left the main thoroughfare to enter a back, alley.

The fortune-teller was one Cheng, had used for ten years. He was an old man with thin wispy grey hair and a facial mole like Cheng's father had.

He wore traditional robes and a mandarin cap and sat cross-legged in his curtained cubicle with his paraphernalia around him.

Cheng greeted him respectfully and at his invitation squatted facing him.

I have not seen you for a long time, the old man accused him, and Cheng apologised. I have been away from Taiwan.

They discussed the fee and the divination that Cheng required. I am about to undertake a task, Cheng explained. I wish to have spirit guidance. The old man nodded and consulted his almanacs and star guides, nodding and mumbling to himself. Finally he handed Cheng a ceramic cup filled with bamboo rods.

Cheng shook this vigorously and then spilled the rods on to the mat between them. Each rod was painted with characters and emblems and the old man studied the pattern in which they had fallen. This task will not be undertaken here in Taiwan, but in a land across the ocean, he said, and Cheng relaxed a little. The old man had not lost his touch.

He nodded encouragement. it is a task of great complexity and there are many people involved. Foreigners, foreign devils.

Again Cheng nodded. I see powerful allies, but also powerful enemies who will oppose you. I know my allies, but I do not know who will be my enemies, Cheng interjected.

You already know your enemy. He has opposed you before.

On that occasion you overcame him. Can you describe him? The fortune-teller shook his head. You will know him when you see him again.

When will that be? You should not travel during the ghost month.

You must prepare yourself here in Taiwan. Leave only on the first day of the eighth lunar month. "Very well. That suited Cheng's plans.

Will I overcome this enemy once again? To answer that question it will be necessary to make a further divination, the old man whispered, and Cheng grimaced at this device for doubling the fee. Very well" he agreed, and the fortune-teller replaced the bamboo sticks in the bowl and Cheng shook them out on to the mat. There are two enemies now.

The fortune-teller picked two rods out of the pile. One is the man that you know, the other is a woman whom you have not yet met.

Together they will oppose your endeavours. Will I overcome them?

Cheng asked anxiously, and the old man examined the fall of the bamboo rods minutely.

I see a snow-capped mountain and a great forest. These will be the battleground. There will be evil spirits and demons The old man's voice trailed away, and he lifted one of the bamboo sticks from the pile. What else do you see? Cheng insisted, but the old man coughed and spat and would not look up at him. The bamboo sliver was painted white, the colour of death and disaster.

That is all. I can see no more, he mumbled.

Cheng took a new thousand Taiwan dollar note from his top pocket and laid it beside the pile of bamboo rods. Will I overcome my enemies?

Cheng asked, and the note disappeared like a conjuring trick under the old man's bony fingers. You will have great face, he promised, but still he would not look directly at his client, and Cheng left the cubicle with some of his good feelings dissipated by the ambiguous reply.

More than ever now he needed solace, but it was still only a little after eight o'clock. She had told him not to come before ten.

It was only a short walk to Snake Alley, but on his way Cheng paused in the forecourt of the Dragon Mountain Temple and burned a pile of ghost money in one of the gaudy pyramid furnaces to placate the ancestral ghosts who would be prowling the night around him.

He left the temple and cut through the night market where the stall-holders offered a bewildering array of wares and the prostitutes plied their trade in flimsy wooden sheds in the back areas of the market. Both storekeepers and painted ladies haggled loudly with their potential customers, and the spectators joined in with comment and suggestion and laughter. It was good renao, and Cheng's spirits revived.

He entered -Snake Alley down which the shops were crowded closely together. Outside each stall were piled snake baskets of steel mesh and the front windows were filled with the largest and most spectacularly coloured of the serpents which gave the alley its name.

Many of the shops had a live mongoose tethered outside the front door.

Cheng stopped to watch an arranged contest between one of these sleek little predators and a four-foot cobra.

The cobra reared up as it confronted the mongoose, and the crowd gathered quickly and shrieked with delight. With its striped hood fully extended, the cobra revolved and swayed like a flower on its stalk to watch the circling mongoose with unblinking bright eyes while its feathery black tongue tasted the scent of its adversary on the air.

The mongoose danced in and then leapt back as the cobra struck. For an instant the snake was off balance and fully extended and the mongoose darted in for the kill. It seized the back of the glistening scaled head and its needle teeth crunched into bone. The snake's body whipped and coiled in its death throes and the proprietor of the shop separated the mongoose from its victim and carried the writhing reptile into his shop, followed by two or three eager male customers.

Cheng did not join them. He had his own special shop, and he wanted a particular type of snake, the rarest, the most expensive, the most effective.

The snake-doctor recognized Cheng over the heads of the crowd that thronged the alley. His shop was famous. He did not have to stage mongoose fights to attract his customers. He beamed and bowed, and ushered Cheng through to the back room which was curtained off from the public gaze.

It was not necessary for Cheng to state his requirements. The shop owner knew him well, over many years. it was Cheng who had arranged his supply of the most virulently poisonous reptiles from Africa. It was Cheng who had introduced him to Chetti Singh, and made the first consignments of snakes through the diplomatic bag. Of course, Cheng; took a commission on each shipment.

Cheng had also persuaded him to deal in rare African birds.

Once again these had been supplied by Chetti Singh and the trade was now worth over a quarter of a million US dollars a year. There were collectors in Europe and America who would pay huge sums for a pair of saddle-billed storks or bald this. The African parrots, although not as colourful as the South American varieties, were also much sought after. Chetti Singh could supply all these, and once again Cheng took his commission.

However, the main source of the snake-doctor's income was still the supply of venomous snakes. The more venomous, the more valuable they were to Chinese gentlemen with faltering potency. The African mamba had been entirely unknown in Taiwan or mainland China until Chetti Singh had made the first shipment. Now they were the most prized of all snakes on the island, and commanded a price of two thousand US dollars apiece.

The snake-doctor had a particularly beautiful specimen ready in a mesh cage on his stainless-steel-topped table. Now he drew on a pair of elbow-length gloves, a precaution that he would have scorned had he been dealing with a cobra.

He opened the sliding lid of the cage a crack and slipped in a long steel forked rod. Deftly he pinned the mamba's head and the snake hissed sharply and twined itself around the steel rod.

Now the snake-doctor opened the lid fully and seized the mamba behind the head, careful to get thumb and forefinger aligned behind the protuberances of the skull so the snake could not pull free of his grip.

The instant he released the pressure of the forked rod, the snake wrapped itself in tight coils around his forearm. it was six feet long and angry. it exerted all its rippling scaled strength to pull its head free, but the snake-doctor prevented the points of the skull from being drawn through his fingers.

The mamba's jaws gaped wide open and its short fangs were erect in the pate soft mucous lining of its mouth. The clear venom oozed down the open channel in the fangs and dripped from the points like dew from a rose-thorn.

The snake-doctor held the reptile's head on a small anvil and with a sharp blow of a wooden mallet crushed the skull. The snake's body whipped around wildly in the death frenzy.

Cheng watched impassively as the snake-doctor hung the writhing body on a meat hook and then used a razor to slit open the belly cavity and drain the blood- into a cheap glass tumbler. With a surgeon's skill he removed the venom sacs from the mamba's neck and placed them in a glass bowl.

After that he lifted out the liver and gall bladder and placed them in a separate bowl.

Next he peeled off the snake's skin, ringing the neck with the razor and stripping the skin like a nylon stocking from a girl's leg. The naked body was pink and glistening. The snake doctor took it down from the meat hook and laid it on the steel tabletop.

With half a dozen blows of a cleaver he chopped it into pieces, and dropped them into a soup kettle that was already boiling on the burner of a gas stove at the rear of the shop. As he added herbs and spices to the kettle he intoned a magical incantation that had remained unchanged since the Han dynasty of 200 Bc when the first snake-doctors had developed their art.

Once the soup was cooking, the snake-doctor turned back to his table.

He spilled the gall bladder and liver into a small mortar and pounded them to pulp with a ceramic pestle. Then he looked up at Cheng enquiringly.

Do you wish to take the tiger juice? he asked. It was a rhetorical question. Cheng always drank the venom.

Again it was part of the gambler's thrill to flirt with death, for if he had a tiny gum boil or a scratch on his tongue, a bleeding rash in his throat or a raw spot in his guts, even a duodenal or gastric ulcer, the mamba venom would find it and kill him within minutes, and it would be an excruciating death.

The snake-doctor added the translucent sacs of venom to the mortar and pounded them in with the liver. Then he scraped the pulp into the glass tumbler of dark blood and while he stirred it he added a dash of medicine from each of three other bottles.

The concoction was black, and thick as honey. He handed the tumbler to Cheng.

Cheng drew a deep breath and then tossed back the liquid at a single gulp. It was bitter with gall. He placed the empty glass on the metal table-top, and folded his hands in his lap. He sat without showing any emotion, while the snake-doctor recited spells from his magic book over him.

If the venom did not kill him, Cheng knew that the potion would arm his manhood. It would transform his flaccid penis into a steel lance.

It would turn his testicles into cannonballs of iron. He waited quietly for the first symptoms of poisoning.

After ten minutes he felt no ill-effects, but his penis stirred and swelled into a semi-erection. He moved a little to give it space in his trousers and the snake-doctor smiled and nodded happily at the success of his treatment.

He went to fetch the soup kettle from the gas burner and poured some of the liquid into a rice bowl and then added a piece of mamba flesh, cooked white and flaking. He offered the bowl and a pair of ivory chopsticks to Cheng.

Cheng ate the meat and drank the soup and when he had finished he accepted a second bowl. At the end of the meal he belched loudly to show his appreciation, and again the snake doctor nodded and smiled.

Cheng consulted his wristwatch. It was nine o'clock. He rose to his feet and bowed. Thank you for your assistance, he said formally. I am honoured that my humble efforts have pleased you. I wish you a sword of steel and many happy hours in the velvet scabbard. There was no question of payment. The snake-doctor would make a deduction from Cheng's commission on the supply of African snakes and wild birds.

Cheng walked back quickly to the apartment building in Tunhua Road.

He sat in the black leather driving seat of the Porsche and for a few minutes enjoyed the tight full sensation of his erection before he started the engine and drove out of the garage.

It took him forty minutes to reach the sea pavilion. The grounds were surrounded by a high wall topped with a ridge of ceramic tiles, except on the open sea side. Coloured paper lanterns hung from the traditionally-shaped pediment of the gate. It looked like the entrance to a pleasure garden or fairground.

Cheng knew that the lanterns had been lit especially to welcome him.

The guards had been warned to expect him and they made no effort to detain him. Cheng drove through and parked above the rocky headland.

He locked the Porsche and stood for a moment inhaling the kelp odour of the sea. There was a fast motor launch moored at the private jetty.

It would be needed later. Cheng knew that in less than two hours the speed boat could be over the thousand yard sounding, over the oceanic depths of the East China Sea. A weighted object, such as a human body, dropped overboard from there would fall into the primeval ooze of the sea-bed, never to be recovered. He smiled. His erection had abated only slightly.

He went up to the pavilion It was also of traditional architecture.

It reminded Cheng of the house in the willow-tree pattern on the blue porcelain plates. A servant met him at the door, led him into an inner room and brought him tea.

it was exactly ten o'clock when she entered the room from behind the bead curtain.

She was slim as a boy in her tight brocaded tunic and silk pantaloons. He had never been able to guess her age for she wore a mask of make-up like a player in a Peking opera. Her almond eyes were starkly outlined in jet black, while her lids and cheeks were hectically rouged to the carmine colour that the Chinese find so attractive. Her forehead and the bridge of her nose were ash white and her lips a deep startling scarlet.

Welcome to my house, Green Mountain Man, she lisped, and Cheng bowed.

I am honoured, Myrtle Blossom Lady. She sat on the sofa beside Cheng and they exchanged formal and polite conversation, until Cheng indicated the cheap imitation leather briefcase he had placed on the table in front of him.

She appeared to notice it for the first time, but did not deign to touch it herself. She inclined her head and her assistant glided into the room on slippered feet. She must have been watching them from behind the beaded curtain. She left again as silently as she had entered, taking the briefcase with her.

It took her a few minutes to count the money in the back room and to put it in a safe place. Then she returned and knelt beside her mistress.

They exchanged a glance. The money was all there.

You say that there is a choice of two? Cheng asked. Yes, she agreed.

But would you like to make sure the room is to your taste, and that the equipment is in order? She led Cheng through to the special room at the back of the pavilion.

The central piece of furniture was a gynaecologist's couch, complete with stirrups. It was fitted with a plastic cover that could be removed and destroyed after use, and there was also a plastic sheet laid over the floor. The walls and ceiling were tiled and washable.

Like an operating theatre, it could be scrubbed down to its present sterile condition.

Cheng moved to the table on which the instruments were laid out.

There was a selection of silk cords of various lengths and thicknesses arranged in neat coils on the tray. He picked up one of these and ran it through his fingers. His erection, which had softened, revived strongly.

Then he turned his attention to the other items on the table, a full set of stainless steel gynaccological instruments.

Very good, he told her.

Come, she said, and took his hand. You may choose now.

She led him to a small window in the near wall. They stood hand-in-hand in front of it and looked through the one-way glass into the room beyond.

After a few moments the female assistant led two children into the room.

They were both dressed in white. In the Chinese tradition, white was the colour of death. Both the little girls had long dark hair and pretty little nut-brown pug faces.

Cambodian or Vietnamese, Cheng guessed.

Who are they? he asked. Boat people, she said. Their boat was captured by pirates in the South China Sea. All the adults were killed.

They are orphans, nameless and stateless. Nobody knows they exist; nobody will miss them. The female assistant began to undress the two little girls. She did it skilfully, titillating the hidden audience like a strip-tease artiste.

One girl was at least fourteen. Once she was naked Cheng saw that she had full breasts and a dark tussock of pubic hair, but the other girl was barely pubescent. Her breasts were flower buds, and the fine haze of pubic down did not conceal the plump cleft of her pudenda.

The young one! Cheng whispered hoarsely. I want the young one. Yes, she said. I thought that would be your choice. She will be brought to you in a few minutes. You may take as long as you wish. There is no hurry. She left the room, and suddenly the music swelled from hidden speakers, loud Chinese music with gongs and drums that would cover any other sound, such as a little girl's screams.

The colonials of Victorian times had sited Ubotno's Government House with care on high ground above the lake, with a view out across the waters, and they had surrounded it with lawns and exotic trees brought out from Europe to remind them of home. in the evenings the breeze came down from the Mountains of the Moon in the west, with the memory of glaciers and eternal snows, to take the edge off the heat.

Government House was still as it had been in the colonial era, no more pretentious than a comfortable redbrick ranch house with high ceilings, enclosed on all sides by a wide flyscreened verandah. Victor Omeru had kept it that way. He would not spend money on grand public buildings while his people were in want. The aid that he received from Ameria and Europe had all gone into agriculture, health and education, not personal aggrandisement.

Tonight the verandahs and lawns were crowded as Daniel Armstrong and Bonny drove up in the army Landrover that had been placed at their disposal. A Hita corporal in camouflage overalls, with a submachine-gun slung over one shoulder, waved them into a parking slot between two other vehicles with diplomatic licence plates. How do I look? Bonny asked anxiously as she checked her lipstick in the rear-view mirror. Sexy, Daniel told her truthfully.

She had teased her hair out into a great tawny red mane and she wore a green mini-skirt tight around her buttocks and high on her thighs.

For such a big girl she had shapely legs. Give me a hand. Damned skirts!

The Landrover stood high and her skirt rode up as she slid down. She showed a flash of lace pantie that rocked the Hita corporal on to his heels.

There were floodlights in the jacaranda trees and an army band belted out popular jazz with a distinctive African beat that lifted Daniel's spirits and put a spring in his step.

All this in your honour, Bonny chuckled.

I bet Taffari tells that to all his guests. Daniel smiled.

Captain Kajo, who had met them at the airport, hurried towards them as soon as they stepped on to the lawn. He was looking at Bonny's legg from twenty paces away, but he addressed Daniel. Ah, Doctor Armstrong, the president has been asking for you. You are the guest of honour tonight.

He led them up the front steps on to the verandah. Daniel picked out President Taffari instantly, even though he had his back turned to them.

He was the tallest in a room full of tall Hita officers. He wore a maroon mess jacket of his own design, although his head was bare. Mr.

President. Captain Kajo addressed his back deferentially, and Taffari turned and smiled and displayed the medals on his chest. May I present Doctor Daniel Armstrong and his assistant Miss Mahon? Doctor! Taffari greeted Daniel. I am a great admirer of your work. I could not have chosen anybody more qualified to show my country to the world. Up until now we have been kept in obscurity and medieval isolation by the reactionary old tyrant we overthrew. it is time that Ubomo came into its own. You will help us, Doctor. You will help us bring my beloved country into the twentieth century by focusing world attention upon us.

I'll do all in my power, Daniel assured him cautiously.

Although he had seen photographs of him, Daniel was unprepared for Taffari's eloquence and presence. He was a striking looking man, exuding power and confidence. He stood a full head taller than Daniel's six feet and had the features of an Egyptian pharaoh carved in amber.

His eyes slid past Daniel and settled on Bonny Mahon. She stared back at him boldly and wet her bottom lip with the tip of her tongue.

You are the photographer. Sir Peter Harrison sent me a videotape of "Arctic Dream". If you can photograph Ubomo with the same understanding and craft, I will be well pleased, Miss Mahon. He looked down at her bosom, at the big golden freckles on her upper chest that gave way to a narrow strip of unblemished creamy skin above the top of her green dress. The exposed cleavage between her breasts was deep and tightly compressed. You are very kind, Mr. President, she said, and Taffari laughed softly.

Nobody has ever called me that before, he admitted, and then changed the subject. What do you think of my country so far? We only arrived today, Bonny pointed out. But the lake is lovely and the people are so tall, the men so handsome. She made it a personal compliment. The Hita are tall and handsome, Taffari agreed. But the Uhali are small and ugly as monkeys, even their women. The Hita. officers of his staff laughed delightedly and Bonny gulped with shock. Where I come from we don't talk disparagingly of other ethnic groups. It's called racism, and it's unfashionable, she said.

He stared at her for a moment. Clearly he was unaccustomed to being corrected. Then he smiled, a thin, cool little smile. Well, Miss Mahon, in Africa we tell the truth. If people are ugly or stupid we say so.

It's called tribalism, and I assure you it's extremely fashionable.

His staff roared with laughter, and Taffari turned back to Daniel.

Your assistant is a woman of strong views, Doctor, but I believe you were born in Africa. You have a keener understanding. It shows in your work. You have put your finger on the problems that face this continent, and poverty is the most crippling of those. Africa is poor, Doctor, and Africa is passive and supine. I intend to change that. I intend to endow my country with the spirit and confidence to exploit our natural wealth and to develop the strength and native genius of our people. I want you to record our endeavours. His staff officers, all in the same marooncoloured mess jackets, applauded this statement.

I'll do my best, Daniel promised. I'm sure you will, Doctor Armstrong.

He was looking at Bonny again, but he went on speaking to Daniel.

The British ambassador is here tonight. I'm sure you will want to pay your respects. He summoned Kajo to him. Captain, please take Doctor Armstrong to meet Sir Michael. Bonny began to follow Daniel, but Taffari stopped her with a touch on the arm. Don't go yet, Miss Mahon.

There are a few things I would like to explain to you, such as the differences between the Uhali and the tall handsome Hita whom you so admire. Bonny turned back to him, thrust out one hip in a provocative stance and crossed her arms beneath her breasts, pushing them up so that they threatened to pop out of the green dress into his face. You should not judge Africa by the standards of Europe, he told her. We do things differently here. From the corner of her eye Bonny saw that Daniel had left the verandah and followed Kajo down on to the floodlit lawn.

She leaned close to Taffari, her eyes not much below the level of his.

Goody! she said. I'm always looking for new and different ways.

Daniel paused at the bottom of the steps and began to grin as he picked out the familiar figure on the crowded lawn. Then he hurried forward and seized his hand. Sir Michael, forsooth! British ambassador no less, you sly dog. When did all this happen? Michael Hargreave gripped his elbow in a momentary display of un-British and undiplomatic affection. Didn't you get my letter? All very sudden. Hauled me out of Lusaka before you could say "Bob's your uncle". Sword on both shoulders from H. M.

"Arise, Sir Michael", and all that. Shot me down here.

But you did get my letter? Daniel shook his head. Congratulations, Sir Michael. Long overdue. You deserve it.

Hargreave looked embarrassed and dropped Daniel's hand. Where's your drink, dear boy? Don't touch the whisky. Locally made. Convinced it's actually bottled crocodile piss. Try the gin. He summoned a waiter.

Can't think why you didn't get my letter. Tried to ring you at the flat in London. No reply.

Where's Wendy? Sent her back to Lusaka to pack up. New chap there has agreed to look after your Landcruiser and gear. Wendy will be here in a couple of weeks. Sends her love, by the way. Did she know you'd see me here? Daniel was puzzled.

Tug Harrison gave us the word that you'd be in Ubomo. You know Harrison? Everybody in Africa knows Tug. Finger in most pies. Asked me to keep an eye on you. Told me about your assignment here. You're going to film Taffari and make him and BOSS look good; that's what he told me.

Right? A little bit more complicated than that, Mike. Don't I know it!

Complications you haven't dreamed of yet . He drew Daniel away to a deserted corner of the lawn, out of earshot of the other guests. But first of all, what do you think of Taffari? I wouldn't buy a second-hand country from him without checking the tyres. Check the engine as well, while you're about it, Michael smiled. The indications are that he's going to make Idi Amin look like Mother Theresa. I saw him giving you fifty lyrical words on his plan for peace and prosperity in the land.

Rather more than fifty, Daniel corrected him. What it actually amounts to is peace for the Hita, prosperity for Ephrem Taffari, and screw the Uhah. My pals at MI6 tell me that he already has his numbered bank accounts in Switzerland and the Channel Islands all set up, and nice little sums tucked away in them. American foreign aid.

That shouldn't surprise you. Everybody's doing it, aren't they?

Par for the course; got to admit it. But he is being rather naughty to the Uhali. Chopped old Victor Omeru, who was rather a decent sort, and now he's kicking the manure out of the rest of the Uhali tribe.