Elephant Song

The falling tree gathered momentum, its death cry rose higher and shriller, until the trunk thudded into the red earth and the mass of foliage shivered, then lay still.

Daniel had to look away. Sepoo was perched beside him on a high branch, and he was weeping. The tears ran very slowly down his wrinkled old cheeks and dripped unheeded on to his naked chest. It was a terrible intimate grief, too painful for Daniel to watch.

He looked back just in time to see another tree fall and die, and then another. He unslung the VTR from his shoulder and lifted it to his eyes, focused the telephoto lens, and began to film.

He filmed the devastated bare red plain on which not a living thing remained, not an animal, or bird, or a green leaf.

He filmed the line of yellow machines grinding inexorably forward, keeping their formation rigidly, attended by an endless horde of container trucks, like worker ants behind the queen ant, carrying away the succession of eggs she laid.

He filmed the red poison spewing from the dump chutes at the rear of the MOMU, falling carelessly upon the savaged earth where the next rainstorm would carry it away and spread it into every stream and creek for a hundred miles down the contour.

He filmed the fall of the trees ahead of the line of yellow machines and the giant mechanical saws mounted on specially modified caterpillar tractors. Fountains of wet white sawdust flew high into the air as the spinning silver blades bit in and the tree-trunks fell into separate logs.

He filmed the mobile cranes lifting the logs on to the trailer beds of the logging vehicles.

He filmed the hordes of naked Uhali slaves working in the red mud to keep the roads open for the massive trucks and trailers to pass over, as they bore away the looted treasures of the forest.

He had hoped that the act of manipulating the camera and viewing the scene through the intervening lens might somehow isolate him from reality, might allow him to remain aloof and objective. It was a vain hope. The longer he watched the destruction, the more angry he became until his rage matched that of the woman who sat on the branch beside him.

Kelly did not have to give voice to her outrage. He could feel it like static electricity in the air around her. It did not surprise him that he was so in tune with her feelings. It seemed only right and natural.

They were very close now. A new bond had been forged between them, to reinforce the attraction and sympathy that they had already conceived for each other.

They stayed in the treetop until nightfall, and then they remained another hour, sitting in darkness as though they could not tear themselves away from the terrible fascination of it. They listened to the growl of engines in the night and watched the floodlights and the swinging headlights turn the forest and the devastated red plain to daylight. It never stopped, but went on and on, cutting, digging, roaring, spilling out poison and death.

When at last it began to rain again and the lightning and the thunder crashed overhead, they crept down from the treetop and made their way slowly and sadly back to where Pamba waited in the forest with the porters.

In the morning they started back through the steaming silent forest towards Gondola, stopping only for Daniel to film the polluted, bleeding rivers. Victor Omeru went down into the muck and stood knee-deep in it and spoke into the camera, giving articulate voice to all their sorrow and rage.

His voice was deep and compelling and filled with concern and compassion for his land and its people. His silver hair and dark noble features would hold the attention of any audience, and his credentials were impeccable. His international reputation was such that nobody could seriously doubt that what he described to them was the truth. If Daniel could show this to the outside world, he knew that he would be able to communicate his own sense of outrage.

They moved on slowly. The Bambuti porters were still subdued and dismayed. Although they had not witnessed the mining, Sepoo had described it to them and they had seen the bleeding rivers. Yet even before they reached the boundary between the heartland and their traditional hunting grounds they were given even greater cause for sorrow.

They cut the tracks of an elephant. They all recognized the spoor of the beast, and Sepoo, called him by name. The Old Man with One Ear, he said, and they all agreed. It was the bull with half his left ear missing.

They laughed for the first time in days as though they had met an old friend in the forest, but the laughter was short-lived as they studied the spoor.

Then they cried out and wrung their hands and whimpered with fear and horror.

Kelly called urgently to Sepoo. What is it, old friend? Blood, Sepoo answered her. Blood and urine from the elephant. He is wounded; he is dying. How has this happened? Kelly cried. She also knew the elephant like an old friend. She had come across him often in the forest when he had frequented the area round Gondola. A man has struck and wounded him.

Somebody is hunting the bull in the sacred heartland. It is against all law and custom. Look! Here ara the tracks of the man's feet lying over the spoor of the bull. He pointed out the clear imprints of small bare feet in the mud. The hunter is a Bambuti. He must be a man of our clan. It is a terrible sacrilege. It is an offence against the god of the forest. The little group of pygmies were shaken and horrified. They clustered together like lost children, holding each other's hands for comfort in these dreadful days when all they believed in was being turned upside down, first the machines in the forest and the bleeding rivers, and now this sacrilege committed by one of their own people. I know this man, Pamba shrieked. I recognize the mark of his feet. This man is Pirri. They wailed then and covered their faces, for Pirri had made his kill in the sacred places and the shame and the retribution of the forest god must come down upon all of them.

Pirri the hunter moved like a shadow. He laid his tiny feet down gently upon the great pad marks of the elephant, where the bull's weight had compacted the earth and no twig would snap and no dead leaf would rustle to betray him.

Pirri had been following the elephant for three days. During all that time Pirri's entire being had been concentrated upon the elephant, so that in some mystic way he had become part of the beast he was hunting.

Where the bull had stopped to feast on the little red berries of the Selepe tree, Pirri read the sip and could taste the tart acidic juice in his own throat. Where the elephant had drunk at one of the streams, Pirri stood upon the bank as he had done and felt in his imagination the sweet clear water squirt and gurgle into his own belly. Where the elephant had dropped a pile of yellow fibrous dung on the forest floor, Pirri felt his own bowels contract and his sphincter relax in sympathy.

Pirri had become the elephant, and the elephant had become Pirri.

When he came up with him at last, the bull was asleep on his feet in a matted thicket. The branches were interwoven and covered with thorns that were hooked and tipped with red; they could flay a man's skin from his limbs. As softly and slowly as Pirri moved, yet the elephant sensed his presence and came awake. He spread his ears, one wide and full as a mainsail, the other torn and deformed, and he listened.

However, he heard nothing, for Pirri was a master hunter.

The elephant stretched out his trunk, sucked up the air and blew it softly into his mouth. The olfactory glands in his top lip opened like pink rosebuds and he tasted the air, but he tasted nothing, for Pirri had come in below the tiny forest breeze and he had smeared himself from the top of his curly head to the pink soles of his feet with the elephant's own dung. There was no man-smell upon him.

Then the elephant made a sound, a gentle rumbling sound in his belly and a fluttering sound in his throat. It was the elephant song. The bull sang in the forest to learn if it was another elephant or a deadly enemy whose presence he sensed.

Pirri crouched at the edge of the thicket and listened to the elephant sing. Then he cupped his hand over his mouth and his nose and he gulped air into his throat and his belly and he let it out with a soft rumbling and fluttering sound.

Pirri sang the song of the elephant.

The bull sighed in his throat and changed his song, testing the unseen presence. Faithfully Pirri replied to him, following the cadence and the timbre of the song, and the elephant bull believed him.

The elephant flapped his ears, a gesture of contentment and trust.

He accepted that another elephant had found him and come to join him.

He moved carelessly and the thicket crackled before his bulk. He came ambling forward to meet Pirri, pushing the thorny branches aside.

Pirri saw the curved shafts of ivory appear high above his head.

They were thicker than his waist and longer than he could reach with his elephant spear.

The elephant spear was a weapon that Pirri had forged himself from the blade of a truck spring -that he had stolen from one of the dukas at the roadside. He had heated and beaten it until the steel had lost its temper and he was able to work it more easily. Then Pirri had shaped and sharpened it, and fitted it to a shaft of hard resilient wood and bound the blade in place with rawhide. When the rawhide dried it was hard and tight as the steel it held.

As the elephant's head loomed above him, Pirri sank down and lay like a log or a pile of dead leaves on the forest floor.

The elephant was so close that he could make out clearly every furrow and wrinkle in the thick grey hide. Looking up he could see the discharge from the glands in the elephant's head running like tears down his cheeks, and Pirri gathered himself.

Even with the spear he had made, which was sharp and heavy and almost twice as long as Pirri was tall, he could never drive the point through the hide and meat and the cage of ribs -to pierce the bull's heart or his lungs. The brain in its bony casket was far beyond his reach.

There was only one way that a man of Pirri's size could kill an enormous beast like this with a spear.

Pirri rolled to his feet and bounded up under the elephant's belly.

He stood between the bull's back legs and he braced himself and drove the point of the spear upwards into the angle of his groin.

The elephant squealed as the blade sliced through the baggy skin that hung around his crotch and lanced up into the sac of his bladder. The razor steel split his bladder open and the hot urine sprayed out in a yellow jet. He convulsed with agony, hunching his back, before he began to run.

The elephant ran screaming through the forest, and the foliage crashed and broke before him.

Pirri reatied on his bloody spear and listened to the elephant run out of earshot. He waited until the silence was complete and then he girded up his loincloth and began to follow the dribbled trail of blood and urine that steamed and reeked on the forest floor.

It might take many hours to die, but the elephant was doomed. Pirri, the hunter, had struck a mortal blow and he knew that before tomorrow's sunset the elephant would be dead.

Pirri followed him slowly, but he did not feel the fierce hunter's joy in his heart. There was only a sense of emptiness and the terrible guilt of sacrilege.

He had offended his god, and he knew that now his god must reject and punish him.

Pirri the hunter found the carcass of the elephant bull the next morning. The elephant was kneeling, with his legs folded up neatly beneath him.

His head was supported by the massive curves of ivory that were half buried in the soft earth.

The last rainstorm had washed his hide so that it was black and shiny and his eyes were open.

He appeared so lifelike that Pirri approached him with great caution and at last reached out with a long thin twig to touch the open staring eye fringed with thick lashes. The eyelid did not blink to the touch and Pirri noticed the opaque jelly-like sheen of death over the pupil.

He straightened up and laid aside his spear. The hunt was over.

By custom he should now sing a prayer of thanks to the forest god for such largesse. He actually uttered the first words of the prayer before he broke off guiltily. He knew that he could never sing the hunter's prayer again, and a profound sadness filled his being.

He made a small fire and cut the rich fatty meat out of the elephant's cheek and cooked it on a skewer over the coals. For once this choice morsel was tough and tasteless in his mouth.

He spat it into the fire and sat for a long time beside the carcass before he could rouse himself and shrug off the sense of sorrow that weighed him down.

He drew his machete from its sheath and began to chop one of the thick yellow tusks from its bony canal in the elephant's skull. The steel rang on the skull and the bone chips flew and fell about his feet as he worked.

That was how the men of his clan found him. They were drawn to Pirri by the sound of his machete hacking through bone. They came out of the forest silently, led by Sepoo and Pamba, and they formed a circle around Pirri and the elephant.

He looked up and saw them, and he let the machete fall to his side, and he stood with blood on his hands, not daring to meet their eyes. I will share the reward with you, my brothers, he whispered, but nobody answered him.

One at a time the Bambuti turned from him and disappeared back into the forest as silently as they had come, until only Sepoo remained.

Because of what you have done the forest god will sen the Molimo to us, said Sepoo, and Pirri stood with despair in his heart and could not raise his head to meet his brother's eyes.

Daniel began a review of the videotapes as soon as they reached Gondola.

Kelly set aside a corner of her laboratory for him to work in and Victor Omeru hovered over him, making comments and suggestions as he compiled his editing notes.

The quality of the material he had gathered was good. As a cameraman he rated himself as competent but lacking the artistry and brilliance of somebody like Bonny Mahon. What he compiled was an honest sober record of the mining and logging operation in the Wengu forest reserve, and of some of the consequences. It has no human warmth to it, he told Victor and Kelly at dinner that evening. It appeals to reason, not to the heart. I need something more. What is it you want? Kelly asked.

Tell me what it is and I'll get it for you. I want more of President Omeru, Daniel said. You have presence and style, sir. I want much more of you.

You shall have me.

Victor Omeru nodded. But don't you think it is time we dispensed with the formalities, Daniel? After all, we have climbed the sacred honey tree together. Surely that entitles us to use each other's Christian names? I'm sure it does, Victor, Daniel agreed. But even you won't be enough to convince the world. I have to show them what is happening to human beings. I have to show them the camps where the Uhali forced labour units are housed. Can we arrange that? Victor leaned forward.

Yes, he said. You know that I am the leader of the resistance movement to Taffari's tyranny. We are growing stronger every day. At present it is all very much underground, but we are organising ourselves and recruiting all the-most important and influential people who reject Taffari.

Of course, we are mostly Uhali, but even some of Taffari's own Hita people are becoming disenchanted with his regime. We will be able to get you to see the ]about camps. Of course, you won't be able to get into the camps, but we should be able to get you close enough to film some of the daily atrocities which arc being perpetrated. Yes, Kelly asserted.

Patrick and the other young resistance leaders will be arriving here within the next few days for a conference with Victor. He will be able to arrange it. She broke off and thought for a moment. Then there are the Bambuti. You can show your audience how the destruction of the forest will affect the pygmies and destroy their traditional way of life. That's exactly the type of material I still need, Daniel replied. What do you suggest? The Molimo ceremony, Kelly said. Sepoo tells me that the Molimo is coming and he has agreed that you may witness it. Patrick, Victor Omeru's nephew, arrived at Gondola a day earlier than was expected. He was accompanied by a retinue of a dozen or so Uhali tribesmen. The pygmies had guided them through the forest.

Many of the delegation were also relatives of Victor Omeru, all of them educated and committed young men.

When Daniel showed them the tapes he had already filmed and described the material he still required, Patrick Omeru and his men were enthusiastic. Leave it to me, Doctor Armstrong, Patrick told him.

I'll arrange it for you. Of course, there will be some danger involved. The camps are well protected by the Hita, but we'll get you as close as is humanly possible. When Patrick and his men left Gondola, Daniel and Sepoo went with them.

The two of them returned to Gondola nine days later. Daniel was thin and gaunt. It was obvious that they had travelled hard and unremittingly. His clothing was mud-stained and tattered and Kelly saw at once that he was near the point of exhaustion as he stumbled up on the verandah of the bungalow.

Without thinking she ran to greet them and the next moment they were in each other's arms. It startled both of them. They clung to each other for a moment, but when Daniel turned his mouth down towards hers, Kelly broke away and shook his hand instead.

AVictor and I were so worried, she blurted, but she was blushing a deep rose colour that Daniel found enchanting, and she released his hand quickly.

That afternoon, after Daniel had bathed and eaten and slept for two hours, he showed them the new material. There were sequences of the forced labour gangs working along the logging roads. They had obviously been filmed, from a distance with a telephoto lens.

The Hita guards stood over the gangs with clubs in their hands, and they struck out seemingly at random at the half-naked men and women toiling in the mud and slush below them. I've got much too much of this, Daniel explained, but I'll edit it down, and keep only the most striking sequences. There were sequences of the gangs being marched in slow exhausted columns back to the camps at the end of the day's work, and other shots, taken through wire, of their primitive living conditions.

Then there were a series of interviews, shot in the forest, with prisoners who had escaped from the camps. One of the men stripped naked in front of the camera and displayed the injuries that the guards had inflicted- upon him. His back was cut to ribbons by the lash, and his skull was crisscrossed with scars and half-healed cuts where the clubs had fallen.

A woman showed her feet. The flesh was rotting and A young falling away from the bone. She spoke in soft Swahili, describing the conditions in the camp. We work all day in the mud, our feet are never dry. The cuts and scratches on them fester like this, until we cannot walk. We cannot work. She began to weep softly.

Daniel was sitting beside her on the log. He looked up at the camera which he had previously set up on a tripod. This is what the soldiers in the trenches of France during'World War One called "trench foot".

It's a contagious fungoidal infection that will cripple the sufferer, will literally rot his feet if it is not treated. Daniel turned back to the weeping woman and asked gently in Swahili, What happens when you can no longer work? The Hita say that they will not feed us, that we eat too much food and are no longer of any use. They take the sick people into the forest. . .

Daniel switched off the VTR and turned to Kelly and Victor. What you are about to see are the most shocking sequences I have ever filmed.

They're similar to the scenes of the Nazi death squads in Poland and Russia.

Some of the quality might be rather poor. We were filming from hiding.

It's horrible stuff.

You might prefer not to watch it, Kelly?

Kelly shook her head. I'll watch it, she said firmly. Okay, but I warned you. Daniel switched on the VTR and they leaned forward towards the tiny screen as it flickered and came alive again.

They were looking into a clearing in the forest. One of the UDC bulldozers was gouging a trench in the soft earth. The trench was forty or fifty yards long and at least ten feet deep, judging by the way the bulldozer almost disappeared into it. Patrick was able to find out from his spies where they were doing this, Daniel explained. So we could get into position the night before. The bulldozer completed the excavation and trundled up out of the trench. It parked nearby. The shot was cut off. This next sequence is about three hours later, Daniel told them.

The head of a column of prisoners appeared out of the forest, chivvied on by the Hita guards on the flanks. It was apparent that all the prisoners were sick or crippled. They staggered or limped slowly into sight. Some were supporting each other with arms around the shoulders, others were using crude crutches. A few were carried on litters by their companions.

One or two of the women had infants strapped on their backs. The guards marched them down into the trench and they disappeared from sight.

The guards formed up in a line on top of the excavation.

There were at least fifty of them in paratrooper overalls with sub-machine-guns carried on the hip. Quite casually they beganfiring down into the trench. The fusillade went on for a long time. As each paratrooper emptied his Uzi machine-gun, he reloaded it with a fresh magazine and recommenced firing.

Some of the men were laughing.

Suddenly one of the prisoners crawled up over the bank of the pit.

It was almost unthinkable that he could have survived this long. One of his legs was half shot away. He dragged himself along on his elbows. A Hita officer unholstered his pistol and stood over him and shot him in the back of his head.

The man collapsed on his face and the officer put his boot against his ribs and shoved him over the lip of the trench.

One at a time the soldiers stopped shooting. Some of them lit cigarettes and stood in groups along the edge of the grave, smoking and laughing and chatting.

The driver of the bulldozer climbed back on to his machine and eased it forward. He lowered the blade and pushed the piles of loose earth back into the trench. When the excavation was refilled he drove the bulldozer back and forth over it to compact the earth.

The soldiers formed up into a column and marched away along the track they had come. They were out of step and slovenly, chatting and smoking as they went.

Daniel switched off the VTR and the screen went blank.

Kelly stood up without a word and went out on to the verandah of the bungalow. The two men sat in silence until Victor Omeru said quietly, Help us please, Daniel. Help my poor people. The word went through the forest that the Molimo was coming, and the clans began to gather at the tribal meeting place below the waterfall at Gondola.

Some of the clans came from two hundred miles away, across the Zaire border, for the Bambuti recognized no territorial boundaries but their own.

From every clan area and from every remote corner of the forest they came, until there were over a thousand of the little people gathered together for the terrible Molimo visitation.

Each woman built her leafy hut with the doorway facing the doorway of a particular friend or a close and beloved relative, and they gathered in laughing groups throughout the encampment, for not even the threat of the Molimo could quench their high spirits or dull their cheerful nature.

The men met old cronies and hunting companions that they had not seen since the last communal net hunt, and they shared tobacco and tall stories, and gossiped with as much relish as the women at the cooking-fires. The children squealed and ran unchecked amongst the huts, tumbling over each other like puppies, and they swam in the pool below the waterfall like sleek otter cubs.

One of the last to arrive at the meeting place was Pirri the hunter.

His three wives staggered under the heavy sacks of tobacco they carried.

Pirri ordered his wives to build his hut with the doorway facing the doorway of his brother Sepoo. However, when the hut was finished, Pamba closed in the doorway of Sepoo's hut and built another opening facing in the opposite direction. In Bambuti custom this was a terrible snub, and it set the women at the cooking-fires chattering like parrots at roosting time.

Pirri called to old friends, See how much tobacco I have. It is yours to share. Come, fill your pouches. Pirri invites you, take as much as you wish. See here! Pirri has bottles of gin.

Come drink with Pirri. But not a man of all the Bambuti took advantage of the offer.

In the evening, when a group of the most famous hunters and story-tellers of the tribe were gathered around a single fire with Sepoo in their -midst, Pirri came swaggering out of the darkness with a bottle of gin in each hand and elbowed a place for himself at the fire.

He drank from the open gin bottle and then passed it to the man on his left.

Drink! he ordered. Pass it on, so that all may share Pirri's good fortune. The man placed the untouched bottle on one side and stood up and walked away from the fire. One after the other, the men stood up and followed him into the darkness until only Sepoo and Pirri were left.

Tomorrow the Molimo comes, Sepoo warned his-brother Softly, and then he also stood up and walked away.

Pirri the hunter was left with his gin and his bulging tobacc pouch, sitting alone in the night.

Sepoo came to the laboratory to call Daniel the following morning, and Daniel followed him into the forest, carrying the camera on his shoulder. They went swiftly, for Daniel had by now learned all the tricks of forest travel, and even his superior height and size were no great handicap. He could keep up with Sepoo.

They started off alone, but as they went others joined them, slipping silently out of the forest, or appearing like dark sprites ahead or behind them, until at last there was a multitude of Bambuti hurrying towards the place of the Molimo.

When they arrived there were already many others before them, squatting silently around the base of a huge silk-cotton tree in the depths of the forest. For once there was no laughter nor skylarking.

The men were all grave and silent.

Daniel squatted with them and filmed their sombre faces. All of them were looking up into the silk-cotton tree.

This is the home of the Molimo, Sepoo whispered softly. We have come to fetch him. Somebody in the ranks called out a name. Grivi! And a man stood up and moved to the base of the tree.

From another direction another name was called. Sepoo!

And Sepoo went to stand with the first man chosen.

Soon there were fifteen men at the base of the tree. Some were old and famous, some were mere striplings. Young or old, callow or proven, all men had equal right to take part in the ceremony of the Molimo.

Suddenly Sepoo let out a shout and the chosen band swarmed excitedly up into the tree. They disappeared into the high foliage and for a time there was only the sound of their singing and shouting. Then down they came again, bearing a length of bamboo.

They laid it on the ground at the foot of the tree and Daniel went forward to examine it. The bamboo was not more than fifteen feet long.

it was cured and dried out, and must have been cut many years before.

There were stylised symbols and crude animal caricatures scratched on it, but otherwise it was simply a length of bamboo. Is this the Molimo?

Daniel whispered to Sepoo while the men of the tribe gathered around it reverently.

yes, Kuokoa, this is the Molimo, Sepoo affirmed.

What is the Molimo? Daniel persisted. The Molimo is the voice of the forest, Sepoo tried to explain. It is the voice of the Mother and the Father. But before it can speak, it must be taken to drink. The chosen band took up the Molimo and carried it to the stream and submerged it in a cool dark pool. The banks of the pool were lined with ranks of little men, solemn and attentive, naked and bright-eyed.

They waited for an hour and then another while the Molimo drank the sweet water of the forest stream, and then they brought the Molimo to the bank.

It was shining and dripping with water. Sepoo went to the bamboo tube and placed his lips over the open end. His chest inflated as he drew breath and the Molimo, spoke from the tube. It was the startlingly clear sweet voice of a young girl singing in the forest, and all the men of the Bambuti shuddered and swayed like the top leaves of a tall tree -kit by a sudden wind.

Then the Molimo changed its voice, and cried like a duiker caught in the hunter's net. It chattered like the grey parrot in flight and whistled like the honey chameleon. it was all the voices and sounds of the forest. Another man replaced Sepoo at the tube, and then another.

There were voices of men and ghosts and other creatures that all men had heard of but none had ever seen.

Then suddenly the Molimo screamed like an elephant. It was a terrible angry sound and the men of the Bambuti swarmed forward, clustering around the Molimo in a struggling heaving horde. The simple bamboo tube disappeared in their midst, but still it squealed and roared, cooed and whistled and cackled with a hundred different voices.

Now a strange and magical thing took place. As Daniel watched, the struggling knot of men changed. They were no longer individuals, for they were pressed too closely together.

In the same way that a shoal of fish or a flock of birds is one beast, so the men of the Bambuti blended into an entity. They became one creature.

They became the Molimo. They became the godhead of the forest.

The Molimo was angry. It roared and squealed with the voice of the buffalo and the giant forest hog. It raged through the forest on a hundred legs that were no longer human. It revolved on its axis like a jellyfish in the current. It pulsed and changed shape, and dashed one way and then the other, flattening the undergrowth in its fury.

It crossed the river, kicking up a white foam of spray, and then slowly but with awakening purpose began to move towards the gathering place of the tribe below the waterfall at Gondola.

The women heard the Molimo coming from a long way off.

They left the cooking-fires and seized the children and ran to their huts, dragging the little ones with them. Wailing with terror, they closed the doors of the huts and crouched in the darkness with the children clutched to their breasts.

The Molimo rampaged through the forest, its terrible voice rising and falling, crashing through the undergrowth, charging one way and then the other, until at last it broke into the encampment. It trampled the cooking-fires and the children screamed as some of the flimsy huts were knocked askew by its ungoverned anger.

The great beast raged back and forth through the camp, seeming to quest for the source of its outrage. Suddenly it revolved and moved purposefully towards the far corner of the camp where Pirri had built his hut.

Pirri's wives heard it coming and they burst from the hut and fled into the jungle, but Pirri did not run. He had not gone to the silk-cotton tree with the other men to fetch the Molimo down from its home. Now he crouched in his hut, with. his hands over his head and waited. He knew there was no escape in flight, he had to wait for the retribution of the forest god.

The Molimo circled Pirri's hut like one of the giant forest millipedes, its feet stamping and kicking up the earth, screaming like a bull elephant in the agony of a ruptured bladder.

Then abruptly it charged at the hut in which Pirri was hiding. It flattened the hut, and trampled all Pirri's possessions.

It stamped his tobacco to dust. It shattered his bottles of gin and the pungent liquor soaked into the earth. It kicked the gold wristwatch into the fire and scattered all his treasures. Pirri made no attempt to fly its wrath or to protect himself.

The Molimo trampled him; squealing with rage it kicked and pommelled him.

It crushed his nose and broke his teeth; it cracked his ribs and bruised his limbs.

Then suddenly, it left him and rushed back into the forest from whence it had come. Its voice had changed, the rage was gone out of it. It wailed and lamented as though it mourned the death and the poisoning of the forest and the sins of the tribe that had brought disaster upon them all.

Slowly it retreated and its voice became fainter, until at last it faded into the distance.

Pirri picked himself up slowly. He made no effort to gather up his scattered treasures. He took only his bow and his quiver of arrows.

He left his elephant spear and his machete. He limped away into the forest.

He went alone. His wives did not go with him, for they were widows now.

They would find new husbands in the tribe. Pirri was dead. The Molimo had killed him. No man would ever see him again. Even when they met his ghost wandering amongst the tall trees, no man or woman would acknowledge it.

Pirri was dead to his tribe for ever.

Will you help us, Daniel? Victor Omeru asked. Yes, Daniel agreed.

I will help you. I will take the tapes to London. I will arrange to have them shown on public television in London and Paris and New York.

What else will you do to help us? Victor asked. What else do you want of me?

Daniel countered. What else is there I can do? You are a soldier, and a good one, from what I have heard.

Will you join us in our fight to regain our freedom? I was a soldier, long ago, Daniel corrected him, in a cruel unjust war. I learned to hate war in a way that no one can until they have experienced it.

Daniel, I am asking you to take part in a just war. This time I am asking you to make a stand against tyranny. I am no longer a soldier.

I am a journalist, Victor. It is not my war. You are a soldier still, Victor contradicted him. And it is your war. It is the war of any decent man. Daniel did not reply immediately. He glanced sideways at Kelly, on the point of asking for her support. Then he saw her expression. There was no comfort for him there. He looked back at Victor, and the old man leaned closer to him. We Uhali are a peaceful people. For that reason we, alone, do not have the skill necessary to overthrow the tyrant. We need weapons. We need people to teach us how to use them.

Help me, please, Daniel. I will find all the young brave men you need, if only you will promise to train and command them. I don't want - Daniel began, but Victor forestalled him.

Don't refuse me outright. Don't say anything more tonight.

Sleep on it. Give me your answer in the morning. Think about it, Daniel. Dream of the men and women you saw in the camps. Dream of the people you saw killed or deported at Fish Eagle Bay, and the mass grave in the forest. Give me your answer in the morning. Victor Omeru stood up. He paused beside Daniel's chair and placed his hand on his shoulder. Good night, Daniel, he said, and went down the steps and crossed in the moonlight to his own small bungalow beyond the gardens.

What are you going to do? Kelly asked softly. I don't know. I really don't know. Daniel stood up. I'll tell you tomorrow. But right now, I'll do what Victor suggested, I'm going to bed. Yes.

Kelly stood up beside him.

Good night, he said.

She was standing very close to him, her face tilted up towards him.

He kissed her. The kiss held for a long time.

She drew back only a few inches from his mouth and said, Come. And led him down the verandah to her bedroom.

It was still dark when he woke the next morning under the mosquito net with her.

Her arm was thrown over his chest. Her breath was warm on his neck.

He felt her come softly awake.

I'm going to do what Victor wants, he said.

She stopped breathing for a few moments then she said, It wasn't meant as a bribe. I know, he said. What happened between us last night is a thing apart, she said. I wanted it to happen from the first day I met you, no, from before that. From the first time I saw your images on the screen, I was half in love with you. I've also been waiting for you a long time, Kelly. I knew you were out there somewhere. At last I've found you. I hate to lose you so soon, she said, and kissed him. Please come back to me. Daniel left Gondola two days later. Sepoo and four Bambuti porters accompanied him.

He paused at the edge of the forest and looked back. Kelly was on the verandah of the bungalow. She waved. She looked very young and girlish, and he felt his heart squeezed. He did not want to go, not yet, not so soon after he had found her.

He waved and forced himself to turn from her.

As they climbed the lower slopes of the mountain the forest gave way to bamboo, which was so dense that in places they were forced to their hands and knees to crawl through the tunnels which the giant hog had burrowed.

The bamboo was solid overhead.

They climbed higher and came out at last on to the bleak heath slopes of the high mountains, twelve thousand feet above sea level, where the giant groundsel. stood like battalions of armoured warriors, their heads spiked with red flowers.

The Bambuti huddled in the blankets that Kelly had provided, but they were miserable and sickening, totally out of their element.

Before they reached the highest pass, Daniel sent them back.

Sepoo wanted to argue. Kuokoa, you will lose your way on the mountains without Sepoo to guide you and Kara-Ki will be angry. You have never seen her truly angry. It is not a sight for any but the brave. Look up there. Daniel pointed ahead to where the peaks showed through the cloud.

There is cold up there that no Bambuti has ever experienced. That shining white is ice and snow so cold that it will burn you like fire.

So Daniel went on alone, carrying the precious tapes inside his jacket close to his skin, and he crossed below the moraine of the Ruwatamagufa glacier and came down into Zaire two days after leaving Sepoo. He had frostbite on three of his fingers and one of his toes.

The-Zairean district commissioner at Mutsora was accustomed to refugees coming across the mountains, but seldom with white faces and British passports and fifty-dollar bills to dispense. He did not turn this one back.

Two days later, Daniel was on the steamer going down the Zaire River and ten days after that he landed at Heathrow. The tapes were still in his pocket.

From his Chelsea flat Daniel telephoned Michael Hargreave at the embassy in Kahali. Good Lord, Danny. We were told that you and Bonny Mahon disappeared in the forest near Sengi-Sengi. The army has had patrols out searching for you. How secure is this line, Mike? I wouldn't stake my reputation on it. Then I'll give you the full story when next we meet.

In the meantime e, will you send me that packet I gave you for safekeeping? Get it to me in the next diplomatic bag? Hold on, Danny.

I gave the package to Bonny Mahon. She told me that she was collecting it on your behalf. Daniel was silent for a beat as he worked it out. The little idiot. She played right into their hands.

Well, that settles it.

She's dead, Mike, as sure as fate. She handed over the package and they killed her. They thought I was dead, so they killed her. Nice and neat.

Who are "they"? Michael demanded. Not now, Mike. I can't tell you now.

Sorry about the package, Danny. She was very convincing.

But I shouldn't have fallen for it. Must be getting senile. No great harm done. I have some stronger medicine to replace it. When will I see you? Soon, I hope. I'll let you know.

Despite the short notice, the studio gave him a cutting-room to work in.

He worked without a break, it helped to allay his sadness and guilt at what had happened to Bonny Mahon. He felt responsible. The final cut of the videotape did not have to be perfect, and it was not necessary to dub the Swahili dialogue into English. He had a copy ready to show within forty-eight hours.

It was impossible to get through to Tug Harrison. All Daniel's calls were intercepted on the BOSS switchboard and were not returned. Of course, the number of the Holland Park address was not listed, and he could not remember the number that he had telephoned from Nairobi to check on Bonny Mahon. So he staked out the house, leaning against a car with a newspaper as though he were waiting for someone, and watching the front of the building.

He was fortunate. Tug's Rolls-Royce pulled up at the front door that same day a little after noon, and Daniel intercepted him as he climbed the front steps. Armstrong, Danny! Tug's surprise was genuine. I heard that you had disappeared in Ubomo. Not true, Tug. Didn't you get my messages? I telephoned your office half a dozen times. They don't pass them on to me. Too many freaks and funny bunnies in this world. I must show you some of the material I have been able to shoot in Ubomo, Daniel told him.

Tug hesitated and consulted his wristwatch dubiously. Don't mess me around, Tug. This stuff could sink you. And BOSS. Tug's eyes narrowed. That sounds like a threat. Just a friendly piece of advice.

All right, come in, Tug invited, and opened the front door. Let's have a look at what you have for me. Tug Harrison sat behind his desk and watched the tape run through from beginning to end without moving, without uttering a word.

When the tape was finished and the screen filled with an electronic snowstorm, he Pressed the remote control button, ran the tape back and then played it a second time, still without comment.

Then he switched off the tape and spoke without looking at Daniel.

It's genuine, he said. You couldn't have faked it. You know it's genuine, Daniel told him. You knew about the mining and logging. It's your bloody syndicate. You gave the orders. I meant the labour camps, and the use of arsenic. I knew nothing about that. Who is going to believe that, Tug? Tug shrugged and said, So Omeru is still alive.

Yes. He is alive and ready to give evidence against you. Tug changed the subject again. Of course, there are other copies of this tape? he said.

Silly question, Daniel agreed. So this is a direct threat? Another silly question, Daniel said again. You are going to go public with this?

That's three in a row, Daniel said grimly. Of course, I'm going public.

Only one thing will stop me. That is if you and I can make a deal.

What deal are you offering? Tug asked softly. I will give you time to get out. I will give you time to sell out your interest in Ubomo to Lucky Dragon or anyone else who will buy. Tug did not answer immediately but Daniel saw the faintest gleam of relief in his gaze.

Tug drew a breath. In return? You will finance Victor Omeru's counter-revolution against Taffari's regime. After all, it won't be the first coup in Africa that you have orchestrated, Tug, will it? How much will this cost me?

Tug asked. Only a small fraction of what you would lose if I were to release the tape before you have a chance to pull out. I could get a copy around to the Foreign Office and another to the American ambassador within thirty minutes. It could be on BBC 1 at six o'clock.

.

How much? Tug insisted. Five million in cash, paid into a Swiss account immediately. With you as the signatory? And Omeru as a counter-signatory. What else? You will intercede with the president of Zaire. He is a friend of yours, but no friend of Taffari's. We want him to allow clandestine passage of arms and munitions across his border with Ubomo. All he has to do is turn a blind eye. is that all?

That's the lot. Daniel nodded. All right. I agree, Tug said. Give me the account number and I'll deposit the money before noon tomorrow.

Daniel stood up. Cheer up. All is not lost, Tug, he advised.

Victor Omeru will be very kindly disposed towards you once he is reinstated in his rightful position. I am sure he will be prepared to renegotiate the contract with you, with the proper safeguards in place this time. After Daniel had left, Tug Harrison sat staring at his Picasso for fully five minutes.

Then he glanced at his watch. There was a nine-hour time difference in Taipei. He picked up the telephone and dialled the international code, followed by Ning Heng H'Sui's private number. The old man's eldest son, Fang, screened the call, and then passed him on to his father. I have a very interesting proposition for you, Tug told the old man. I want to fly out to speak to you face to face. I can be in Taipei within twenty-four hours, will you be there? He made two other phone calls. One to his chief pilot's home number to warn him to get the Gulfstream ready, and the second to the Credit Swisse Bank in Zurich. Mr. Mulder, I will be making a large transfer from the number two account within the next twenty-four hours. Five million sterling.

Make certain there is no delay once you receive the code card instruction. Then he hung up the telephone and stared at the painting again without seeing it. He had to decide what reason he would give Ning for wanting to sell his share in UDC. Should he say that he was in a cash bind? Or that he needed to be liquid for a new acquisition?

Which would Ning fall for more readily?

What was his price? He mustn't set it too low, for that would arouse the cunning old oriental's suspicions immediately.

Not too high either. Low enough to excite his greed, high enough not to alarm him. It was a nice calculation. He would have the duration of the flight to Taipei to consider it. That young fool Cheng has dropped me in it. It's only right that his father be made to pay. He thought about Ning Cheng Gong. He has been too good a choice, Tug smiled bitterly. He had asked for a ruthless one, and got more than he bid for.

Of course, Tug had known about the forced ]about, but not the details of their treatment. He had not wanted to know.

Neither had he known for certain about the use of the arsenic reagents, though he had suspected that Cheng was using them.

The platinum recovery figures had been too high, the profits too good, for it not to be so. He had not wanted to know any of the unpleasant details. But, he thought philosophically, the enhanced profitability of the mining venture would make it easier to sell out his interests to Lucky Dragon.

Ning Heng H'Sui would think he was getting the bargain of his life.

Good luck, Lucky Dragon, Tug grunted. You're going to need all of it.

Three months to the day since his last crossing Daniel stood on the moraine below the Ruwatamagufa glacier. This time he was properly equipped for the alpine conditions; there would be no more frostbite.

And this time he was not alone.

The line of porters, each man bowed forward against the headband of his pack, stretched back as far as Daniel could see into the mountain mist.

They were all men of the Konjo tribe, dour mountaineers who could carry heavy loads at these high altitudes. There were six hundred and fifty porters, and each man carried an eighty-pound pack.

In all, that made twenty-six tons of arms and ammunition.

There were no sophisticated weapons in the loads, only the tried and true tools of the guerrilla and the terrorist, the ubiquitous AK 47 and the Uzi, the RPD light machine-gun and the RPG rocket-launcher, Tokarev automatic pistols and American M26 fragmentation grenades, or at least convincing copies of them made in Yugoslavia or Romania.

All of these were readily obtainable at short notice in any quantity required, as long as the buyer had cash. Daniel was amazed how easy it had been. Tug Harrison had supplied him with the names and telephone numbers of five dealers, one in Florida, two in Europe and two in the Middle East. Take your pick, Tug had invited. But check what you're getting before you pay. Some of that stuff has been floating around for forty years. Daniel and his instructors had personally opened every case and laboriously checked each piece.

Daniel had calculated that the very minimum number of instructors he needed was four. He went back to Zimbabwe to find them. They were all men he had fought with or against during the bush war. They were all Swahili speakers and they were all black. A white face attracted a lot of attention in Ubomo.

The leader of the group of four was an ex-sergeant-major in the Ballantyne Scouts, a man who had fought with men like Roland Ballantyne and Sean Courtney. He was a magnificent figure of a Matabele warrior called Morgan Tembi.

There was another recruit in the party, a cameraman to replace Bonny Mahon. Shadrach Mbeki was a black South African exile who had done good work for the BBC, the best man that Daniel could find at such short notice.

To the north Mount Stanley was hidden in clouds, and the cloud dropped down to form a grey cold ceiling only a hundred feet above their heads, but to the east below the cloud it was open. Daniel gazed down upon the forest almost ten thousand feet below. it looked like the ocean, green and endless, except to the north where a dark cancer had bitten into the green. The open mined area was deeper and wider than when Daniel had last seen it from this vantage point only a few short months ago.

The cloud and the mist dropped over them abruptly, blotting out the distant carnage, and Daniel roused himself and started down, the long column of porters unwinding behind him.

Sepoo was waiting for him where the bamboo forest began at the ten thousand foot level. It is good to see you again, Kuokoa, my brother.

Kara-Ki sends you her heart, he told Daniel. She asks that you come to her swiftly. She says she can wait no longer. The men of Sepoo's clan had cut out the trail through the bamboo, widening it so that the porters could pass through without having to stoop.

Below the bamboo where the true rain forest began at the six thousand foot level, Patrick Omeru was waiting with his teams of Uhali recruits to take over from the Konjo mountaineers.

Daniel paid off the Konjo and watched them climb back through the bamboo into their misty highlands. Then the Bambuti guided them on to the newly opened trail, back towards Gondola.

After Kelly's message Daniel could not restrain himself to the pace of the heavily laden convoy, and he and Sepoo hurried ahead. Kelly was on the trail coming to meet them, and they came upon each other suddenly around a bend in the forest path.

Kelly and Daniel came up short and stared at each other, neither of them seemed able to move or even to speak until Kelly said huskily, without taking her eyes from Daniel's face, Go on ahead, Sepoo. Far, far ahead!

Sepoo giggled happily and went without looking back.

During Daniel's absence, Victor Omeru had built his new headquarters in the edge of the forest beyond the waterfall at Gondola where it would be hidden from any possible aerial surveillance.

It was a simple baraza with half walls and a thatched roof. He sat with Daniel on the raised dais at one end of the hut.

Daniel was meeting the resistance leaders, many of them for the first time. They were seated facing the dais on long splitpole benches, like students in a lecture theatre. There were thirty-eight of them, mostly Uhali tribesmen, but six were influential Hita who were disenchanted with Taffari and had thrown in their lot with Victor Omeru as soon as they heard that he was still alive. These Hita were vital to the plan of action that Daniel had devised and discussed with Victor.

Two of them were highly placed in the army and one was a senior police officer. The other three were government officials who would be able to arrange permits and licences for travel and transport. All of them would be able to supply vital intelligence.

At first there had been some natural objection to Daniel's new cameraman filming the proceedings, but Victor had interceded and now Shadrach Mbeki was working so unobtrusively that they soon forgot his presence. As a reward for his assistance Victor Omeru had agreed that Daniel could make a film record of the entire campaign.

Daniel opened the meeting by introducing his four Marabele military instructors. As each man role and faced the audience, Daniel recited his curriculum vitae. They were all impressive men, but Morgan Tembi in particular they regarded with awe. Between them they have trained thousands of fighting men, Daniel told them.

They won't be interested in parade-ground drills or spit and polish.

They will simply teach you to use the weapons we have brought over the mountains and to use them to the best possible effect. He looked at Patrick Omeru in the front row. Patrick, can you come up here and tell us how many men you have at your disposal, and where they are at the present time? Patrick had been busy during Daniel's absence. He had recruited almost fifteen hundred young men. Well done, Patrick, that's more than we need, Daniel told him. I was planning on a core of a thousand men, four units of two hundred and fifty, each under the command of one of the instructors. More than that will be difficult to conceal and deploy. However, we will be able to use the others in noncombatant roles. The staff conference went on for three days. At the last session Daniel addressed them again. Our plans are simple.

That makes them good, there is less to go wrong. Our whole strategy is based on two principles.

Number one is that we have to move fast. We have to be in a position to strike within weeks rather than months. Number two is total surprise.

Our security must be iron-clad. if Taffari gets even a whiff of our plans he'll crack down so hard that we'll have no chance of success whatsoever. There it is, gentlemen, speed and stealth. We will meet again here on the first of next month. By then President Omeru and I will have a detailed plan of action drawn up. Until then you will be taking orders from your instructors in the training-camps. Good luck to all of us. Pirri was confused and angry and filled with formless despair and hatred.

For months now he had lived alone in the forest with not another man to talk to, or woman to laugh with. At night he lay alone in his carelessly built leaf hut far from the huts of other men and he thought of his youngest wife. She was sixteen years of age, with plump little breasts. He remembered the wetness and lubricious warmth of her body, and he moaned aloud in the darkness as he thought that he would never again know the comfort of a woman's body.

During the day he was lethargic and without care. He no longer hunted with his old intensity. Sometimes he sat for hours gazing into one of the dark forest pools. Twice he heard the honey chameleon call and he did not follow. He grew thin and his beard began turning white.

Once he heard a party of Bambuti women in the forest, laughing and chattering as they gathered mushrooms and roots. He crept close and spied upon them, and his heart felt as though it would break. He longed to join them, but knew he could not.

Then one day while wandering alone, Pirri cut the trail of a party of wazungu. He studied their tracks and read that there were twenty of them, and that they moved with purpose and determination as though on a journey. It was exceedingly strange to find other men in the forest, for the Hita and Uhali were afraid of hobgoblins and monsters, and never entered the tall trees if they could avoid doing so. Pirri recovered a little of his old curiosity, and he followed the tracks of the wazungu.

They were moving well, and it took him many hours to catch up with them.

Then he discovered a most remarkable thing.

Deep in the forest he found a camp where many men were assembled.

They were all armed with the Banduki that had a strange banana-shaped appendage hanging from beneath either a tail or a penis, Pirri was not certain. And while Pirri watched in astonishment from his hiding-place, these men fired their banduki and made a terrible clattering clamour that frightened the birds into flight and sent the monkeys scampering away across the forest galleries.

All this was extraordinary, but most marvelous of all was that these men were not Hita. These days only Hita soldiers in uniform carried banduki. These men were Uhali.

Pirri thought about what he had seen-for many days, and then the acquisitive instinct, which had been dormant in him since the coming of the Molimo, began to stir. He thought about Chetti Singh, and wondered if Chetti Singh would give him tobacco if he told him about the armed men in the forest.

He hated Chetti Singh who had cheated and lied to him but as he thought about the tobacco, the saliva jetted from under his tongue. He could almost taste it in his mouth. The old tobacco hunger was like a pain in his chest and his belly.

The next day he -went to find Chetti Singh and he whistled and sang as he went. He was coming alive again after the Molimo death. He stopped only once, to hunt a colobus monkey that he spied in the treetops eating the yellow fruit of the mongongo tree. His old skills came back to him and he crept to within twenty paces of the monkey without it suspecting his presence, and he shot a poisoned arrow that struck one of its legs.

The monkey fled shrieking through the branches, but it did not go far before it fell to earth, paralysed by the poison, its lips curled up in the dreadful rictus of agony as it frothed and trembled and shook before it died. The poison on Pirri's arrow was fresh and strong. He had found the nest of the little beetles only days before and had dug them up and crushed them to paste in a bark crucible and smeared his arrow-tips with the juices.

With his belly full of monkey meat and the wet skin folded into his barkfibre bag, he went on towards the rendezvous with the one-armed Sikh.

Pirri waited two days at the rendezvous, the clearing in the forest that had once been a logging camp but was now overgrown and reverting to jungle. He wondered if the Uhali storekeeper who kept the little duka on the side of the main highway had passed on his message to Chetti Singh.

Then he began to believe that Chetti Singh had received the message but would not come to him. Perhaps Chetti Singh had learned of the Molimo death and was also ostracising him.

Perhaps nobody would ever speak to Pirri again. His recent high spirits faded as he sat alone in the forest waiting for Chetti Singh to come, and the sense of despair and confusion overwhelmed him all over again.

Chetti Singh came on the afternoon of the second day. Pirri heard his Landrover long before it arrived and suddenly his anger and hatred had something on which to focus.

He thought how Chetti Singh had cheated and tricked him so many times before. He thought how he had never given him everything he had promised; always there was short-weight of tobacco, and water in the gin.

Then he thought how Chetti Singh had made him kill the elephant.

Pirri had never been as angry as he was now. He was too angry even to lash out at the trees around him, too angry to shout aloud. His throat was tight and closed, and his hands shook. Chetti Singh was the one who had brought the curse of the Molimo down upon him. Chetti Singh had killed his soul.

Now he forgot about the armed wazungu in the forest. He even forgot about the tobacco hunger, as he waited for Chetti Singh to come.

The mud-streaked Landrover butted its way into the clearing, pushing down the thick secondary growth of vegetation- ahead of it. It stopped and the door opened and Chetti Singh stepped down. He looked around him at the forest and wiped his, face with a white cloth. He had put on much weight recently. He was plumper now than he had been before he had lost the arm. His shirt was stained dark with sweat between his shoulder-blades where he had sat against the leather seat.

He mopped his face and adjusted his turban before he shouted into the forest, Pirri! Come out. Pirri sniggered with laughter and whispered aloud, mimicking the Sikh. Pirri! Come out! And then his voice was bitter Sechow he oozes grease like a joint of pork on the coals.

Pirri, come out!

Chetti Singh strutted around the clearing impatiently. After a while he opened his fly and urinated, then he zipped his trousers and looked at his wristwatch. Pirri, are you there? Pirri did not answer him, and Chetti Singh said something angrily in a language that Pirri did not understand, but he knew that it was an insult. I am going now, Chetti Singh shouted, and marched back to the Landrover. O master, Pirri called to him. I see you! Do not go! Chetti Singh spun around to face the forest. Where are you?

he shouted.

I am here, o master. I have something for you that will make you very happy. Something of great value. What is it? Chetti Singh asked. Where are you? Here I am. Pirri stepped out of the shadows with the bow slung over his shoulder. What stupidity is this? Chetti Singh demanded. Why do you hide from me? I am your slave. Pirri grinned ingratiatingly. And I have a gift for you. What is it?

Elephant teeth? Chetti Singh asked, and there was greed in his voice.

Better than that. Something of greater value.

Show me, Chetti Singh demanded. Will you give me tobacco? I will give you as, much tobacco as the gift is worth. I will show you, Pirri agreed. Follow me, o master. Where is it? How far is it? Only a short distance, only that far. Pirri indicated a small arc of the sky with two fingers, less than an hour's travel.

Chetti Singh looked dubious. it is a thing of great beauty and value, Pirri wheedled. You will be very pleased. All right, the Sikh agreed.

Lead me to this treasure. Pirri went slowly, allowing Chetti Singh to keep close behind him. He went in a wide circle through the densest part of the forest, crossing the same stream twice. There was no sun in the forest; a man steered by the fall of the land and the run of the rivers.

Pirri showed Chetti Singh the same river twice from different directions. By now, the Sikh was totally lost, blundering blindly after the little-pygmy with no sense of distance or direction.

After the second hour Chetti Singh was sweating very heavily and his voice was rough. How much further is it? he asked.

Very close, Pirri assured him. I will rest for a while, Chetti Singh said and sat down on a log. When he looked up again, Pirri had vanished.

Chetti Singh was not alarmed. He was accustomed to the elusive comings and goings of the Bambuti. Come back here! he ordered, but there was no reply. Chetti Singh sat alone for a long time. Once or twice he called out to the pygmy. Each time his voice was shriller.

The panic was building up in him.

After another hour he was pleading. Please, Pirri, I will give you.

anything you ask. Please show yourself. Pirri laughed. His laughter floated through the trees and Chetti Singh sprang to his feet and plunged off the faint track. He stumbled towards where he thought he had heard the laughter. Pirri! he begged. Please come to me. But the laughter came from a new direction. Chetti Singh ran towards it.

After a while he stopped, and looked about him wildly. He was streaming sweat and panting. Laughter, mocking and faint, trembled in the humid air. Chetti Singh turned around and staggered after it. it was like chasing a butterfly or a puff of smoke. The sound flitted and flirted through the trees, first from one direction, then the other.

Chetti Singh was weeping now. His turban had come loose and hooked on a branch and he did not stop to retrieve it. His hair and beard tumbled down, streaming down his chest and flying out behind him. His hair was soaked with sweat.

He fell and dragged himself up and ran on, his clothing stained with mud and leaf mould. He screamed his terror to the trees, and the laughter became fainter and fainter, until at last he heard it no more.

Chetti Singh fell on his knees and held up his hand in supplication.

Please, he whispered, with tears streaming down his face. Please don't leave me alone here.

And the forest was silent with dark menace.

Pirri followed him for two days, watching him stagger haphazardly, ranting and pleading, through the forest, watching him grow weaker and more desperate, stumbling over dead branches, falling into streams, crawling on his belly, shaking with terror and loneliness. His clothing was ripped off him by branch and thorn. Only a few rags still hung on his body. His skin was scratched and lacerated, and the flies and the stinging insects buzzed around the wounds. His beard and long hair were tangled and matted, and his eyes were wild and mad.

On the second day, Pirri stepped out of the forest ahead of him and Chetti Singh screamed like a woman with the shock and tried to drag himself to his feet again. Don't leave me alone again, he screamed.

Please, anything you ask, but not again. Like you, I am alone, Pirri said with hatred in his heart. I am dead. The Molimo has killed me.

You are talking to a dead man, to a ghost. You cannot ask mercy from the ghost of a man you murdered. Deliberately Pirri fitted an arrow to his little bow. The poison was black and sticky on the point.

Chetti Singh gaped stupidly. What are you doing? he blurted. He knew about the poison, he had seen animals die from Bambuti arrows.

Pirri lifted his bow and drew the arrow to his chin. No! Chetti Singh, held up his hand to ward off the arrow just as Pirri released it.

The arrow, aimed at his chest, hit Chetti Singh in the palm of his open hand and stuck firmly, its point buried between the bones of the first and second fingers.

Chetti Singh stared at it. Now we are both dead, said Pirri softly, and vanished into the forest.

Chetti Singh stared in horror at the arrow in his palm. The flesh around it was already stained purple by the poison. Then the pain began. It was stronger than anything that Chetti Singh had ever imagined. It was fire in his blood, he could feel it running up his arm into his chest. The pain was so terrible that for a long anguished moment it took his breath away and he could not scream.

Then he found his voice and the sound of his agony rang through the trees. Pirri paused for a while to listen to it. Only when the forest was silent again did he move on. We are ready, Daniel said quietly, but his voice carried to every man seated in the headquarters hut at Gondola.

They were the same men who had gathered here a month ago, and yet they were different.

There was an air of confidence and determination about them that had not been there before.

Daniel had spoken to his Matabele instructors before the meeting.

They were pleased. No man had been dropped from the training camps for any reason except sickness or injury.

They are amabutho now, Morgan Tembi had told Daniel. They are warriors now. You have done well, Daniel told them. You can be proud of what you have achieved in so short a time. He turned to the blackboard on the thatched wall behind him and pulled aside the cloth that had covered it.

The board was covered with diagrams and schedules. This, gentlemen, is our order of battle, Daniel said. We will go over it, not once but until every one of you can recite it in your sleep, he warned them.

Here are your four cadres, each of two hundred and fifty men. Each cadre is assigned different targets and objectives, the main army barracks, the airfield, the harbour, the labour camps. . . Daniel worked down the list. Now, most important of all, the radio and television studio in Kahali. Taffari's security forces are good.

Even with initial surprise we cannot hope to hold all our objectives longer than the first few hours, not without popular support. We have to secure the studio. President Omeru will be moved to the capital well ahead of time and will be in hiding in the old quarter, ready to come out and broadcast an appeal to the people. As soon as the populace sees him on television and realises that he is alive and leading the rising, we can expect every man and woman to join us. They will come out on to the streets and join the battle. Taffari's storm-troopers may be better armed than we are, but we will crush them by sheer weight of numbers.

However, there is one other condition that we have to fulfil in order to ensure success. We have to take out Taffari himself within the first hour. We have to crush the head of the snake.

Without Taffari they will collapse. There is nobody to replace him.

Taffari himself has seen to that. He has murdered all possible rivals.

He is a one-man band, but we have to get him with the first surprise stroke. That won't be so easy. Patrick Omeru came to his feet. He seems to have a kind of sixth sense. He has already survived two assassination attempts in the short time he has been in power. They are beginning to say he is using witchcraft, like Idi Amin-Sit down, Patrick, Daniel interrupted him sharply. Witchcraft was a dangerous word to use, even to a group of educated and intelligent men such as this.

They were still African, and witchcraft was rooted in the African soil.

Taffari is a cunning swine. We all know that. He seldom sticks to any routine. He changes plans at the very last moment.

He cancels appointments without reason and he sleeps at the home of a different wife each night, in random order. He's cunning, but he is no wizard. He'll bleed good red blood, I promise you that. They cheered him for that and the mood of the gathering improved. They were confident and eager again.

However, there is one routine that Taffari has established.

He visits the mining operation of Wengu at least once a month.

He likes to see his treasure coming out of the earth. At Wengu he is isolated. It is the one place in the entire country where he is most vulnerable. Daniel paused and looked down at them. We are fortunate to have some good intelligence from Major Fashoda. He indicated the Hita officer on the dais beside him. As you all know, Major Fashoda is the transport officer on Taffari's staff. He is the man responsible for arranging Taffari's personal transport. Taffari always uses a Puma helicopter to visit Wengu. He has ordered a Puma to stand by for Monday the 14th. This indicates a high probability that his next inspection tour to Wengu will be on that date. It gives us five days to make our final preparations. Ning Cheng Gong sat beside President Taffari on the padded bench in the fuselage of the airforce Puma helicopter. Through the open hatch he could see the green blur of the treetops as the Puma sped low across the forest. The wind buffeted them and it was noisy in the cabin. They had to raise their voices and shout to be heard. What news of Chetti Singh? Ephrem Taffari shouted, his mouth close to Cheng's ear. Nothing, Cheng shouted back. We found his Landrover, but no sign of him. It has been two weeks now. He must have died in the forest, as Armstrong did. He was a good man, Taffari said.

He knew how to get work out of the convict labour. He was good at keeping costs down. Yes, Cheng agreed. He will be very hard to replace. He spoke the language. He understood Africa. He understood.

.

. Cheng bit his lip. He had been on the point of using a derogatory term for black people. He understood the system, he ended lamely.

Even in the short time since his disappearance there has been a marked drop in production and profits. I'm working on it, Cheng assured him.

I have some good men coming to replace him. Mining men from South Africa, as good as Chetti Singh. They also know how to get the most work out of these people. Taffari nodded and stood up. He made his way down the length of the cabin to speak to his companion.

As usual, Taffari was travelling with a woman. His latest flame was a tall Hita girl, a blues singer in a night club in Kahali. She had a face like a black Nefertiti. Taffari was also accompanied by a detachment of his presidential guard. Twenty crack paratroopers under the command of Major Kajo. Kajo had received promotion after the disappearance of Bonny Mahon. Taffari appreciated loyalty and tact, and Kajo was a man on the way up.

Cheng had come to detest these presidential inspection tours of the mining and logging concessions. He hated low-flying in one of the ancient Pumas of the Ubomo airforce. The helicopter pilots were notorious daredevils. There had been two fatal crashes in the squadron since his arrival in Ubomo.

More even than the physical danger, Cheng was uncomfortable with Taffari's searching questions and penetrating eye for figures and production details. Under his dashing martial exterior he had an accountant's mind. He understood finance. He could form a shrewd judgement as to when profits were falling below estimate; he had an instinct for money, and he could sense when he was being cheated.

Of course, Cheng was milking the syndicate, but not excessively, not blatantly. He was merely showing a benign bias towards the Lucky Dragon. He had done it skilfully. Not even a trained auditor would have picked it up, but President Taffari was already suspicious.

Cheng used this respite, sitting between two heavily armed paratroopers, feeling slightly queasy with air sickness, to go over all his financial dispositions and to search for any weak spots in his system that Taffari might be able to pin-point.

At last he decided that, at least temporarily, it might be prudent to reduce the amount he was skimming. He knew that if Taffari's suspicions ever became certainty he would not hesitate to terminate his contract, permanently, with the seal of a Kalashnikov No.

There would be another unmarked grave in the forest along with those of Chetti Singh and Daniel Armstrong.

At that moment the Puma banked sharply and Cheng clutched at his seat.

Through the open fuselage hatch he had a glimpse of the bare red earth of the mining cut and the line of yellow MOMUs strung out along the edge of the forest. They had arrived at Wengu.

Daniel watched the Puma circle the landing-pad, slow down in flight and at last hover, nose-heavy, against a backdrop of purple cumulus cloud.

There were puddles of rainwater on the concrete pad and the windsock flapped, sodden on its pole.

A small delegation of Taiwanese and black managers and officials were gathered in front of the main administrative building, confirming that Daniel's intelligence had been correct.

Ephrem Taffari was on board the hovering helicopter.

Daniel's perch in the middle branches of the mahogany tree was three hundred and twenty yards from the landing pad. He had climbed to his perch during the night. Sepoo had waited at the base of the tree and when Daniel lowered the light nylon rope, he had hooked on the bundle of sniper's equipment.

By dawn Daniel was settled close in against the main trunk of the tree, beneath a tangle of vines and leafy climbing plants.

He had cut a narrow window in the foliage which gave him a clear view of the helicopter pad. He wore a full camouflage sniper's coverall and mesh face-mask. His hands were covered with gloves.

His rifle was a 7mm Remington Magnum and he had chosen a 160 grain softpoint bullet, a compromise between velocity and high ballistic coefficient that would not be too severely affected by a cross-wind.

He had tested the rifle extensively and it was shooting consistent four-inch groups at 350 yards. That wasn't good enough for any fancy head shots. He would aim for the centre of the chest. The expanding bullet could be expected to rip out Taffari's lungs.

It felt vaguely obscene to be thinking like this again. The last time had been ten years previously when the Scouts had staked out a ZANU cadre leader's kraal in Matabeleland. The man had been too wily and elusive for them to attempt an arrest.

They had culled him without warning. Daniel had fired the shot and had felt sick for days afterwards.

Daniel thrust the memory aside. It might dilute his determination.

Thinking like that might make his trigger finger just that crucial thousandth of a second slow when the image in the Zeiss lens was right.

If Taffari was on board the Puma, then Cheng must be with him. Cheng was the chief executive officer of UDC and he had accompanied every other presidential tour of the workings. If he could take Taffari with the first shot, then he could rely on a moment of utter astonishment and paralysis amongst his retinue. There would be a chance to get Cheng with the second shot, if he were quick enough. - There would be no hesitation about that kill. Deliberately he conjured up the memory of Johnny Nzou and his family to steel himself. He recalled every dreadful detail of the murder scene at Chiwewe and felt the sour hatred and rage swell in his chest. Ning Cheng Gong was his real reason for being in Ubomo at all.

The second bullet was for him.

Then there was Chetti Singh. Daniel doubted that even if the Sikh were a member of the presidential party he would get the opportunity of a third shot. The paratrooper guards were trained soldiers. He might get a second shot, but not a third before they reacted.

Chetti Singh would be taken care of later, once the rising succeeded.

He was in charge of the labour camps. Daniel's film of the executions in the forest would be damning evidence at his trial. He could afford to wait for Chetti Singh.

In the short time that it took the Puma to sink down towards the landing-pad, Daniel reviewed his dispositions, even though it was too late to change them now.

Victor Omeru was in Kabali. He had travelled down to the lakeside in one of the logging trucks, disguised as the mate of the Uhali driver.

The arms and ammunition had been distributed in the same manner, transported in the UDC trucks. It was a nice irony, using the tyrant's own system to defeat him.

At this moment there were two revolutionary commandos in the capital, waiting for the word to strike. As soon as it was received, a detachment would storm the Tv and radio studios.

Victor Omeru would broadcast to the nation, calling upon them to rise. He would tell them that Taffari was dead and promise them an end to their suffering.

Meanwhile the other two commandos were deployed here at Wengu and Sengi-Sengi. Their first objectives would be to wipe out Taffari's Hita escort and to release the thirty thousand captives.

The signal for the rising to begin would be the shot that Daniel fired through Ephrem Taffari's lungs. Victor and Patrick Omeru would be informed by radio the moment that happened.

There was a powerful radio in the UDC administrative building beside the landing-pad, but they would probably not be able to reach that immediately. As a back-up Daniel had a portable VHF transmitter, with which they could contact the headquarters at Gondola. Kelly was the radio operator who would transmit the signal that the rising had begun.

Daniel had drawn up four fall-backs and alternative plans to deal with every foreseeable contingency, but everything hinged on getting Taffari with the first shot. If Daniel failed there, he could expect Taffari to react with the speed and fury of a wounded lion. He would rally his men, it didn't bear thinking about. Daniel put the possibility out of his mind. He had to get Taffari.

The Puma was only fifty feet above the concrete landing-pad, sinking towards it slowly.

Daniel laid his cheek against the burtstock of his rifle and stared into the brilliant field of the telescopic sight. It was set to nine magnifications. He could see the expressions on the faces of the little reception committee at the landing-pad.

He lifted his aim, and captured the image of the helicopter.

The lens was too high-powered to show him more than the hatchway in the Puma's fuselage. The flight engineer stood in the opening, directing the aircraft's descent. Daniel focused his attention on him, keeping the crossbar of the telescope on his chest, using the buckle of his safety strap as an aiming point.

Suddenly another head appeared over the engineer's shoulder.

Beneath the maroon beret with its glittering brass cap-badge were Ephrem Taffari's noble aquiline features. He's come, Daniel exulted.

It's him.

He lifted the cross-hairs of the sight and tried to hold between Taffari's dark eyes. The movement of the helicopter, his own heart beat and hand shake, the inherent inaccuracy of the rifle all made it an impossible shot, but he concentrated all his mind and his will on Taffari. He purged himself of any last vestige of conscience and of mercy. Once again he forced upon himself the cold hard determination of the assassin.

At that moment the first raindrop struck the back of his neck. It startled him, his aim trembled, then another raindrop splashed against the lens of the Zeiss scope, and a soft wavering line of rain water ran down across the glass and dimmed the brilliance of the telescopic image.

Then it started to rain in real earnest, that sudden tropical deluge that seemed to turn the air to mist and blue water. It was like standing beneath a torrent in a mountain stream.

Daniel's vision dissolved. The crisply detailed human shapes he had been watching an instant before became dim blurs of movement. The men waiting on the landing-pad raised coloured umbrellas, and swarmed forward to meet the president, to offer him protection from the roaring rain.

There was misty movement and confusion. The colours; of the umbrellas ran and starred and confused his eye. He saw a distorted image of Ephrem Taffari vault down lightly from the hatchway.

Daniel had expected him to pose theatrically above the heads of the crowd and perhaps make a brief speech, but he vanished instantly.

Though Daniel tried desperately to keep the cross-hairs on him, somebody raised a wet umbrella and held it over him.

Ning Cheng Gong's misty figure appeared in the hatchway, distracting Daniel's concentration. He swung the sight, back towards Cheng, and then stopped himself. It had to be Taffari first. Desperately he swung the telescope back and forth, questing for a view of his target.

The welcoming delegation had crowded around Taffari, umbrellas raised, obscuring him completely.

The rain struck the concrete pad with such force that each drop exploded in a burst of spray.

Rain was splattering against the lens of the telescopic sight and streaming down Daniel's face beneath the mask.

Hita paratroopers were jumping down from the helicopter and clustering around their president. No sign of Taffari now, and everybody was running towards the waiting Landrovers, crouched down under the lofted umbrellas, splashing through the pools of rain water.

Taffari appeared again, stepping out fast in the slanting rain, heading for the leading vehicle. Even at a walking pace and taking into account the velocity of the 7mm bullet, Daniel would have to lead him by two feet or more. He could barely distinguish him through the clouded lens.

It was an almost impossible shot, but he tightened up on the trigger, just as one of the Hita bodyguards ran forward to assist his master.

The shot went off before Daniel could stop himself. He saw the Hita paratrooper spin round and go down, shot through the chest. It would have killed Taffari as cleanly, if the man had not covered him.

The whole pattern of moving men in the rain exploded.

Taffari threw down the umbrella he carried and darted forward.

All around him men were running in confusion.

Daniel jacked another round into the chamber of the rifle and fired again, a snap shot at Taffari. It had no effect, a clean miss.

Taffari kept running. He reached the Landrover and before Daniel could reload, he had jerked open the door and thrown himself into the front seat of the vehicle.

Daniel glimpsed Ning Cheng Gong in the thick of it, and fired again.

He saw another paratrooper go down on his knees, hit low in the body, and then the other soldiers were blazing away wildly towards the edges of the forest, uncertain from which direction Daniel's shots were coming.

Daniel was still trying desperately to get another shot at Taffari, but the Landrover was pulling away. He fired at the head he could see behind the windscreen, not certain whether it was Taffari or a driver.

The windscreen shattered, but the vehicle did not check or swerve.

He emptied the magazine at the accelerating vehicle. Then as he tried to reload from the bandolier at his waist, he saw three or four of the Hita guards and the civilian officials take hits and go down sprawling in the rain. There was the swelling clatter of small-arms fire.

The men of his own commando had opened fire from their positions in the forest outside the perimeter.

The uprising had begun, but Taffari was still alive.

Daniel saw the Landrover make a wide circle, swinging past the office building and come back round under the hovering helicopter. The Puma was hanging twenty feet above the ground, almost hidden by the falling curtains of rain. Taffari was leaning out of the driver's window, signalling frantically for the pilot to pick him up again.

At that moment a man appeared out of the jungle on the far side of the clearing. Even at that distance Daniel recognized Morgan Tembi, the Matabele instructor. He carried the tube of an RPG rocket-launcher on his shoulder as he raced forward.

None of the Hita bodyguard seemed to have spotted him. A hundred paces from the hovering Puma, Morgan dropped on one knee, steadied himself and fired a rocket.

It rode on a tail of white smoke, whooshing in to hit the Puma well forward, almost in line with the Puma pilot's canopy.

The cockpit and the pilot in it were obliterated by the burst of smoke and flame. The Puma performed a lazy cartwheel in the air and fell to earth on its back. The spinning rotors smashed themselves into tiny fragments on the concrete landing-pad. An instant later a ball of fire and black smoke devoured the machine.

Morgan Tembi jumped to his feet and ran back towards the edge of the forest. He never made it. The Hita bodyguards shot him down long before he could reach cover, but he had cut off Taffari's escape.

It had taken less than a minute but already the Hita were recovering from the shock of the surprise attack. They were piling into Landrovers and following Taffari as he drove for the roadway beyond the office building.

Taffari must have realised the strength and numbers of the attackers and decided that his best bet would be to try and break out and reach the nearest road-block on the Sengi-Sengi road which was manned by his own men.

Three Landrovers filled with his own guards were flying after him.

Most of the civilian officials were lying flat on the ground, trying to keep below the wild cross-fire, although some of them were running for the shelter of the office buildings. Daniel saw Cheng amongst them.

His blue safari suit was distinctive, even in the rain mist. Before he could get a shot at him Cheng reached the building and ducked through the front door.

Daniel turned his attention back to the four escaping Landrovers.

They had almost reached the main road into the forest and the fire that the Uhali commando was turning upon them was furious but inaccurate.

It seemed to be totally ineffectual. With Morgan Tembi dead they were blazing away without aiming, like the raw untried recruits they truly were.

Taffari was already out of range from where Daniel was perched in the mahogany tree. He was going to get clear away.

The whole attack was becoming a fiasco. The Uhali were forgetting all their training. The plan was falling to pieces. The rising was doomed within minutes of beginning.

At that moment a huge yellow D10 caterpillar lumbered out of the forest.

At least somebody has remembered his orders, Daniel snarled to himself.

He was angry at his failure, taking the full blame on himself.

The caterpillar tractor waddled forward, straddling the roadway, cutting off the flying convoy of Landrovers.

A small band of Uhali emerged from the forest and ran behind it dressed in blue denim and other civilian clothing.

They used the tractor as a barricade and opened fire on the leading Landrover as it raced towards them.

At close range their concentrated fire was at last effective.

Taffari, in the leading Landrover, saw his escape cut off and spun the truck in a hard 180-degree turn. The other trucks followed him round.

They came back across the open ground in a line, and they were within range again. Daniel fired at Taffari's head, but the Landrover was doing sixty miles an hour and bouncing over the rough track. Daniel never saw the strike of his bullets, and the line of the Landrovers tore away down the track that led to where the MOMU units were working.

That direction was a dead end. The road ended at the mining excavation. The situation had been retrieved from total disaster by the driver of the caterpillar tractor.

By now the column of Landrovers was out of sight from where Daniel was perched in the mahogany tree.

He left the rifle hanging on its strap and swung out of the branch.

He used the nylon rope to abseil down the trunk of the tree, kicking himself outwards with both feet, dropping so swiftly that the rope scorched the palms of his hands. As he hit the ground Sepoo ran forward and handed him his AK 47 assault rifle and the haversack that contained the spare magazines and four M26 grenades. Where is Kara-Ki?

he demanded, and Sepoo pointed back into the forest. They ran together.

Two hundred yards further into the forest Kelly was crouched over the VHF radio transmitter. She jumped up when she saw Daniel. What happened? she shouted. Did you get him? It's a total balls-up, Daniel told her grimly. Taffari's still out there. We haven't got control of the radio station at Wengu. Oh God, what happens now?

Transmit! He made the decision.

Give Victor the go-ahead.

We are committed now. We can't turn back. But if Taffari- Damn it, Kelly, just do it! I'm going to try and retrieve the ball. At least Taffari didn't get clear away. We are still in with a chance. For the present we've got him bottled up here at Wengu. Kelly did not argue again, she knelt beside the radio set and lifted the microphone to her lips. Forest Base, this is Mushroom. Do you read me? The portable transmitter did not have the range to reach Kahali on the lakeshore direct. They must relay through the more powerful set at Gondola.

Mushroom, this is Forest Base, the voice of Kelly's male nurse from the Gondola clinic came back immediately. He was a trusted Uhali retainer of many years standing. This is a relay for Silver Head in Kabali. Message reads, "The Sun has Risen." I say again, "The Sun has Risen." Stand by, Mushroom. There was a few minutes silence, then Gondola came back on the air. Mushroom, Silver Head acknowledges "The Sun has Risen." The revolution was launched. Within the hour Victor Omeru would be on television announcing it to his nation. But Taffari was still alive. Kelly, listen to me. Daniel took her arm and dragged her up to face him, making sure he had her full attention. Stay here.

Try and keep in contact with Gondola. Don't go wandering off.

Taffari's storm-troopers will be scattered everywhere. Stay here until I come back for you. She nodded. Be careful, darling. Sepoo.

Daniel looked down at the little man. Stay here.

Look after Kara-Ki. With my life! Sepoo told him.

Kiss me! Kelly demanded of Daniel.

Just a quick one. More to follow, Daniel promised.

He left her and ran back towards the UDC buildings.

Before he had gone a hundred yards he heard men in the forest ahead.

Omeru! he shouted. It was the password. Omeru! they shouted back.

The Sun has Risen! Not yet, it bloody hasn't, Daniel muttered, and went forward.

There were a dozen men of the commando, the blue denim jackets were almost a uniform.

Come on! He gathered them up.

Before they reached the road that ran down to the mining cut he had thirty men with him. The rain had stopped by now, and Daniel paused on the edge of the forest. Before them stretched the endless plain of churned earth that the MOMU units had devoured. The, line of machines was ahead of them, ranged along the boundary where forest and red mud met. They looked like a line of battleships in a storm.

Closer still were the four Landrovers, scattered at abandoned angles on the muddy plain. As Daniel watched, the Hita guards were straggling across the open ground towards the nearest MOMU.

Daniel recognized Ephrem Taffari's tall uniformed figure leading them. It was clear that he had selected the nearest MOMU as the most readily defensible strong-point available to him, and Daniel conceded grimly that it was a good choice.

The steel sides of the gigantic machine would offer almost complete protection from small-arms fire. Even the RPG rockets would make no impression on its massive construction.

To reach it an attacker would have to cross soft open ground that could be covered by fire from the upper platforms of the MOMU. just as important, the steel fortress was manoeuvrable.

Once he was in control of it, Taffari could drive it anywhere.

Daniel looked about him quickly, by now there were fifty or so Uhali guerrillas congregated around him. They were noisy.

and over-excited, behaving like green troops after their first taste of fire. Some of them were cheering and firing at the distant figures of Taffari and his guards. They were well out of range, and it was a dangerous waste of their precious stocks of ammunition.

There was no point in trying to get them under control. He had to attack before they lost their wild spirits, and before Taffari reached the MOMU and organised its defence. Come on! Daniel shouted. Omeru!

"The Sun has Risen. He led them out on to the open ground, and they followed him in a rabble, cheering wildly. Omeru! they yelled.

Daniel had to keep the momentum going.

The mud was ankle-deep in places, knee-deep in others.

They passed the abandoned Landrovers. Ahead of them Daniel saw Taffari reach the MOMU and haul himself up one of the steel boarding ladders. As they ploughed on through the mud, their progress slowed to a plodding walk.

Taffari was organising his men as they came aboard the MOMU. They were taking cover behind the massive steel machinery. Bullets started slashing amongst the attackers, plugging into the mud, cracking around their heads. The man beside Daniel was hit. He went down face first in the mud.

The attack slowed, bogging down in the mud. The Hita on the MOMU were lodging in, hidden behind steel bulkheads.

They were shooting accurately, and more of Daniel's men were falling.

The attack stalled, some of the Uhali broke and started to stumble back towards the forest. Others crouched behind the stranded Landrovers. They were not soldiers. They were clerks and truck-drivers and university students faced by crack paratroopers in an impregnable steel fortress. Daniel could not blame them for breaking, even though the revolution was dying in the mud with them.

He could not go on alone. Already the Hita had singled him out.

Their fire was concentrating on him. He stumbled back to the nearest Landrover and crouched behind its chassis.

He saw the crew of the MOMU desert their stations and huddle helplessly on the lower platform. One of the Hita paratroopers gestured to them imperiously and with obvious relief they swarmed down the steel ladder and dropped into the mud like sailors abandoning a sinking ocean liner.

The engine of the MOMU was still running. The excavators were chewing into the earth, but now with no direction the gigantic rig was wandering out of its formation. The crews of the other rigs in the line saw what was happening and they too abandoned their posts and streamed overboard, trying to escape the bursts of gunfire that rattled and clanged against the steel plating.

It was a stand-off. Taffari's men had command of the MOMU and Daniel's commando were stalled in the mud unable to advance or retreat.

He tried to think of some way to break the impasse. He could not expect his shattered and demoralised survivors to mount another charge.

Taffari had fifteen or twenty men up there, more than enough to hold them off.

At that moment he became aware of another eerie sound, like the mewling of seagulls or the cry of lost souls. He looked back and at first saw nothing. Then something moved at the edge of the forest. At first he could not make it out. It was not human, surely?

Then he saw other movement. The forest was coming alive.

Thousands of strange creatures, as numerous as insects, like a column of safari ants on the march. They were red in their myriads, and the wild plaintive cry rose louder and more urgently from them as they swarmed out of the forest into the open.

Suddenly he realised what he was seeing. The gates of the labour camps were open. The guards had been overwhelmed and the Uhali slaves had risen out of the mud. They were red with it, coated with it, naked as corpses exhumed from the grave, starved to stick-like emaciation.

They swarmed forward in their legions, in their thousands, women and men and children, sexless in their coating of mud, only their white and angry eyes glaring in the muddy red masks of their faces. Omeru! they cried, and the sound was like a stormy sea on a rocky headland.

The fire of the Hita paratroopers was blanketed by the roar of their voices. The bullets of the AK 47 assault rifles made no impression on the densely packed ranks, where one man fell a dozen more swarmed forward to replace him. On the MOMU fortress the Hita guards were running out of ammunition. Even at this distance Daniel could sense their panic. They threw aside their empty rifles, the barrels hot as though from the furnace.

Unarmed they climbed the steel ladders to the highest platform of the ungainly yellow rig. Helplessly they stood at the railing and watched the naked red horde reach the machine and climb up towards them.

Daniel recognized Ephrem Taffari amongst the Hita on the upper deck.

He was trying to speak to the slaves, spreading his arms in an oratorical gesture, trying to reason with them. In the end, when the front rank was almost upon him Taffari drew his pistol and fired down into them. He kept firing as they engulfed him.

For a time Daniel lost him in the struggling red mass of naked humanity.

He was like a fly absorbed by a gigantic jelly fish. Then he saw Taffari again, lifted high above the heads of the mob by hundreds of upraised arms. They passed him forward struggling wildly.

Then they hurled him from the top of the MOMU.

Ephrem Taffari turned in the air, ungainly as a bird trying to fly with a broken wing. He dropped seventy feet, into the spinning- silver blades of the excavator head. The blades sucked him in and in a single instant chopped him to a paste so fine that his blood did not leave so much as a stain on the wet earth.

Daniel stood up slowly.

On the MOMU they were killing the Hita paratroopers, tearing them to pieces with their bare hands, swarming over them screaming and exulting.

Daniel turned away. He started back -towards where he had left Kelly.

His progress was slow. Men of the commando clustered around him, shaking his hand, thumping him on the back, laughing and shouting and singing.

There was still some desultory small-arms fire in the forest.

The administrative offices were on fire. Flames leapt high, crackling and pouring out black smoke. A roof collapsed.

People were trapped in there, burning to death. The mob raged everywhere, chasing the guards and officials and engineers and clerks of the company, black and Taiwanese, anybody connected with the hated oppressor. They caught them and killed them, kicking and beating them as they writhed on the earth, hacking at them with spades or machetes, throwing their dismembered bodies into the flames. It was savage. It was Africa.

Daniel turned away from the horror. One man could not stop the orgy.

They had suffered too long; their hatred was too fierce. He left the track and went into the forest to find Kelly.

He had not gone a hundred yards before he saw a small figure running towards him through the trees. Sepoo! he called, and the pygmy darted to his side and seized his arm and shook it. Kara-Ki! he screeched incoherently, there was a gash in his scalp and he was bleeding heavily.

Where is she? Daniel demanded.

What has happened to her? Kara-Ki! He has taken her. He has taken her into the forest.

Kelly knelt in front of the radio set, gently manipulating the fine-tuning knob of, the receiver. Although her transmitter did not have the range to reach the capital of Kahali on the lakeshore, Sepoo had climbed into the silk-cotton tree above her and strung the aerial wire from the top branches. She was picking up the transmission of Radio Ubomo on the twenty-five metre band with very little atmospheric disturbance. This next request is for Miriam Seboki of Kabute who is eighteen years old today, from your boy friend, Abdullah, who wishes you many happy returns and says he loves you very much. He has requested, "Like a Virgin" by Madonna, so here it is just for you, Miriam. The harsh cacophony of the music was aberrant in the forest silences and Kelly turned down the volume. immediately she was aware of other sounds even more obscene, the distant fusillade of gunfire and the wild screams of fighting and dying men.

She tried to blot the sounds from her mind, tried to calm her anxiety and fear for the progress of the rising. She waited, powerless and afraid, for something to happen.

Suddenly the music was cut off, and the only sound from the speaker was the whistle and crackle of static. Then abruptly a new voice came on the air. People of Ubomo. This station is now under the control of the Freedom Army of Ubomo. We bring you the President of Ubomo, Victor Omeru, speaking to you in person from the radio studio in Kahali.

There was a burst of martial music, the old national anthem, that Ephrem Taffari had banned when he seized power. Then the music ended.

There was a pause and at last the thrilling voice that Kelly loved so well reverberated from the speaker. My beloved people of Ubomo, you who have suffered so much beneath the yoke of the oppressor, this is Victor Omeru.

I know that most of you believed that I was dead. But this is not a voice from the grave. It is indeed i, Victor Omeru, who call upon you now. - Victor was speaking in Swahili, and he went on, I bring you tidings of hope and of great joy. Ephrem Taffari, the bloody tyrant, is dead. A loyal and true band of patriots has overthrown his cruel and brutal regime and given him the punishment he so justly deserves.

Come forth, my people, a new sun rises over Ubomo. His voice was so compelling, so sincere, that for a moment Kelly almost believed what he was saying, that Taffari was already dead and the revolution was secure.

Then she heard the sound of gunfire and she glanced over her shoulder.

There was a man standing close to her. He had come up soundlessly behind her. He was an Asian, almost certainly Chinese. He wore a blue safari suit damp with rain or sweat and stained with mud and blood.

His long straight black hair hung down over his forehead. There was a shallow cut in his cheek from which the blood had dripped to stain the front of his jacket.

He carried a Tokarev pistol in one hand, and there was a wild and hunted look in his eyes, eyes so dark that there was no division between iris and pupil, black eyes like a mako shark. His mouth was contorted with fear or anger, and the hand that held the pistol twitched and trembled.

Although she had never seen him before, Kelly knew who he was. She had heard Daniel speak of him so often. She had seen his photograph in the out-of-date copies of the Ubomo Herald newspaper that occasionally reached Gondola. She knew that he was the Taiwanese managing-director of UDC, the man who had murdered Daniel's friend, Johnny Nzou. Ning, she said, and scrambled to her feet trying to back away from him, but he sprang forward and seized her wrist.

She was shocked by his strength. He twisted her arm up behind her back.

A white woman, he said in English. A hostage. . . Sepoo rushed at him, trying to help her, but Cheng swung the pistol in a short vicious arc and the barrel struck the little man above the ear, splitting open his scalp.

He dropped at Cheng's feet. Still holding Kelly with the other hand, Cheng stretched down and aimed the pistol at Sepoo's temple. No, screamed Kelly, and threw herself back against Cheng's chest. It spoiled his aim, and the bullet ploughed into the earth six inches from Sepoo's face. the shot roused him, and Sepoo rolled to his feet and darted away. Cheng fired another shot at him as he ran, but Sepoo vanished into the undergrowth.

Cheng twisted her arm savagely, pulling her up on to her toes with the agony in her shoulder-blade.

You're hurting me, she cried. Yes, Cheng agreed. And I will kill you if you resist me again. Walk! he ordered. Yes, like that. Keep going if you don't want me to hurt you again. Where are we going?

Kelly asked, trying to keep the pain out of her voice, trying to be calm and persuasive. There is no escape into the forest. With you there is, Cheng said. Don't talk.

Be quiet! Keep going. He pushed and dragged her onwards, and she dared not resist. She sensed that he was desperate enough to do anything.

She remembered what Daniel had told her about him, about the murdered Matabele family in Zimbabwe, about the rumours of children and young girls tortured for his perverted pleasure.

She realised that her best chance, perhaps her only chance, was to comply with anything he ordered her to do.

They covered half a mile, staggering and stumbling, made clumsy by the wrist-lock that Cheng had on her, and by his wild haste. When they came out suddenly on to the bank of a narrow stream she realised that it was the Wengu, the small river that gave the area its name. It was one of the tributaries of the main Ubomo River.

It was also one of the bleeding rivers, clogged with the poison effluent from the MOMU vehicles. It was stinking and treacherous.

Even Cheng seemed to realize the danger of trying to wade across it.

He forced Kelly to her knees, and stood over her, panting and looking about him uncertainly.

Please. . . she whispered. Be silent he ranted at her. I told you not to speak! he screwed her wrist to enforce the order, and despite herself she whimpered aloud.

After another few moments, he asked suddenly, Is this the Wengu River?

Which direction does it run? Does it go southwards towards the main road? Instantly she realised which way his mind was working. Of course, he would have an intimate knowledge of the area. It was his concession. He would have studied the maps. He would certainly know that the Wengu made a circle to the south, an ox-bow that intersected the main road. He would know that there was a Hita military post at the bridge. Is it the Wengu? he repeated, twisting her wrist until she screamed, and she almost answered truthfully before she caught herself. I don't know. she shook her head. I don't know anything about the forest.

You lie, he accused, but he was obviously uncertain.

"Who are you? he demanded. I'm just a nurse with the World Health Organization. i don't know about the forest. All right. He hauled her to her feet.

Get going! He shoved her forward, but now they turned southwards following the bank of the Wengu River. Cheng had made up his mind.

Kelly deliberately kicked and scuffed the soft earth as he pushed her along. She put all her weight on her heels, trying to lay as good a spoor as possible for Sepoo to follow. She knew Sepoo would be coming, and with him must come Daniel.

She tried to snap any green twig that came within reach as Cheng forced her through the undergrowth. She managed to tear a button off her shirt and drop it, an identification for Sepoo to pick up. At every opportunity she tripped over a dead branch or fell into a hole and dropped to her knees, holding him up as much as possible, slowing down their progress, giving Sepoo and Daniel a chance to catch up.

She began whining and whimpering loudly and when Cheng raised the pistol threateningly, she screamed, No, please! Please don't hit me!

She knew her cries would carry, that Sepoo with his sensitive, forest-trained ears would hear her at a distance of quarter of a mile and pin-point her position.

Sepoo picked the shirt button out of the leaf trash of the forest floor, and showed it to Daniel. See, Kuokoa, Kara-Ki is laying sign for us to follow, he whispered. She is clever as the colobus, and brave as the forest buffalo. Keep going. Daniel prodded him impatiently. Make your speeches later, old man. They went on along the spoor, quick, silent and alert. Sepoo pointed out the sign that Kelly had left, the broken twigs, the heel marks and the places where she had deliberately fallen to her knees. We are close now. He touched Daniel's arm. Very close. .

Be careful not to run into him. He might lay an ambush. .

Kelly screamed in the forest ahead of them. No, please!

Please don't hit me! And for an instant Daniel lost control. He lunged forward, rushing to her defence, but Sepoo seized his wrist and hung on doggedly. - No! No! Kara-Ki is not hurt. She is warning us.

Don't rush in like a stupid wazungu. Use your head now. Daniel pulled himself together, but he was still trembling with rage. All right, he whispered. He doesn't know I am here but he has seen you.

I'm going to circle round them and lie downstream. You must drive him on to me, just as you drive the duiker in the net hunt. Do you understand, Sepoo?

I understand. give the call of a grey parrot when you are ready.

Daniel screwed the folding bayonet off the muzzle of his AK 47 and propped the rifle against the tree beside him. Cheng was using Kelly as a shield.

The rifle was useless. He abandoned it.

Armed only with the bayonet, he circled out swiftly away from the river-bank. Twice more he heard Kelly's voice, pleading and whining, giving him a pin-point on her position.

It took him less than five minutes to get downstream of Cheng and Kelly and to flatten himself against the hole of one of the trees growing on the bank. He cupped his hands over his mouth and gave an imitation of the squawk of a roosting parrot. Then he crouched down with the bayonet at the ready.

Sepoo's voice shrilled through the trees. He was using the high ventriloquist's tone that would deceive the listener as to direction and distance. Hey, wazungu - Let Kara-Ki go. I am watching you from the trees. Let her go, or I will put a poison arrow into you. Daniel doubted that Cheng could understand the Swahili words, but the effect would be the same, to concentrate Cheng's attention upstream while driving him down to where Daniel was waiting.

He crouched and listened. A few minutes later, Sepoo called again, Hey, wazungu, do you hear me? Silence fell again and Daniel strained his eyes and his hearing.

Then a branch rustled just ahead of him, and he heard Kelly's voice, muffled and terrified. Please don't. . . she began, but was cut off by Cheng's brusque whisper. Shut your mouth, woman, or I will break your arm.

They were very close to where Daniel waited. He tightened his grip on the hilt of the bayonet. Then he saw movement in the undergrowth, and a moment later made out the blue of Cheng's jacket.

Cheng was moving backwards, holding Kelly against his chest, facing the direction of Sepoo's voice, aiming the Tokarev pistol over Kelly's shoulder, ready to fire the moment Sepoo showed himself. He was backing directly towards the tree where Daniel waited.

Daniel knew that Cheng was an exponent of the martial arts.

In any hand-to-hand combat, Daniel would be at a terrible disadvantage.

There was one sure way. That was to drive the point of the bayonet into his kidneys from behind. It would cripple him instantly.

He stepped out from behind the tree with the bayonet held low and underhand. He launched the stroke, but at the same instant Cheng twisted violently sideways. Daniel never knew what had alerted him, for he had made no sound. it could only have been the almost supernatural instinct of the Kung Fu fighter.

The bayonet caught Cheng in the flank, an inch above the hip bone.

It went in to the hilt, but Cheng's turn tore the weapon from Daniel's grip.

Cheng released kelly, shoving her away from him and brought the Tokarev round to fire into Daniel's face. Daniel grabbed the wrist of his pistol hand and forced it upwards. The first shot went into the branches above their heads.

Cheng twisted in Daniel's grip, and as Daniel tried to hold him, he whipped his body back again and his knee came up, aimed for Daniel's crotch. Daniel caught the kick on his thigh, but the force of it paralysed his leg.

From the corner of his eye he saw Cheng's left hand, stiff as an axe-blade, flick towards his head, aimed at his neck below the ear. He hunched his shoulders and caught it on the thick muscle of his upper biceps. The strength and power of it sickened him. His grip on Cheng's pistol hand slackened.

The hand flicked at him again, and this time Daniel knew it would snap his neck like a dry twig. Kelly had not fallen, despite the vicious shove Cheng had given her between the shoulder-blades. She gathered herself and hurled herself back at him, shoulder first into Cheng's side, into the flank that the bayonet had laid open. The force of it turned the blow aside from Daniel's exposed neck and Cheng stumbled against him and dropped the pistol with a shout of pain.

Desperately Daniel locked his free arm around the back of Cheng's head and threw himself backwards, in the direction in which Cheng had been thrown by Kelly's charge. Cheng could not resist and they fell, locked together, down the sheer bank of the river, dropping six feet into the thick red ooze, going under completely.

Almost immediately their heads broke out through the surface. Both of them were gasping for breath, still locked together.

Daniel's leg was still paralysed. Cheng was wiry and quick.

Daniel realised that he could not hold him. Kelly saw he was in distress and stooped. She picked up the bayonet, and in the same movement threw herself feet first down the bank, sliding on her backside, the bayonet poised.

Cheng squirmed over the top of Daniel, whipping one arm around his neck from behind. His back was turned to Kelly, the jacket of his safari suit shining wetly with red mud.

Kelly stabbed from as high as she could reach. Her first blow struck one of Cheng's ribs and was deflected. Cheng grunted and convulsed.

She lifted the bayonet and stabbed again and this time the point found a gap between his ribs.

Cheng released the armlock from Daniel's neck and wriggled around to face Kelly in the mud. The bayonet was still lodged high in his back, the blade half buried.

Cheng reached out for Kelly with both hands, his mud daubed features contorted with an animal ferocity. Daniel recovered and threw himself forward on to Cheng's back, locking both arms around his throat, bearing him down with all his weight. The hilt of the bayonet was trapped between them and the blade was forced all the way home. A mouthful of blood burst over Cheng's lips and poured down his chin.

Daniel heaved and shoved his head below the surface, and held it there.

As Cheng was struggling in the red mud, one of his arms broke out and groped blindly for Daniel's face, trying to reach his eyes with hooked fingers. Daniel held on grimly, and the hand fell away. Cheng's.

movements in the mud became feebler and more erratic.

Kelly waded to the bank and crouched there, watching in fascinated horror.

Suddenly a rush of slow fat bubbles rose out of the red ooze and burst upon the surface as Cheng's lungs emptied. Only Daniel's head was clear of the mud. He lay there for a long time, never relaxing his grip on Cheng's submerged throat.

He's dead, Kelly whispered at last. He must be dead by now. Slowly Daniel released his grip. There was no movement below the surface.

Daniel dragged himself to the bank, like an insect moving through treacle.

Kelly helped him up the bank. His injured leg trailed behind him.

On the top the two of them knelt together clinging to each other. They stared down into the river bed.

Slowly something rose to the surface like a dead log. The mud coated Cheng's corpse so thickly that it almost obscured the human shape.

They stared at it for fully five minutes before either of them spoke.

He drowned in his own cesspool" Daniel whispered. I couldn't have chosen a better way.