Golden Fox

"In the West there is such a desire by American liberals and the European anti-apartheid movement to destroy the white rdgime in South Africa that they will make any sacrifice to that end. They will sacrifice Angola rather than let South Africans defend it. The moment the first South African crosses the border, our war will be won. There will be such an outcry from the American Democratic Party, and from the champions of so-called democracy in Europe, that the South Africans will never get to do any fighting. In the face of hysterical worldwide condemnation they will be forced to retire. Their attempted intervention will settle the matter firmly in our favour. Once the South Africans have tarnished the shield, no Western politician will dare to take it up again. Angola will be ours." They were all nodding agreement. All the generals and ministers. Castro had amazed Ramsey once again with his powers of rhetoric and persuasion. It was the main reason that Ramsey had prevailed upon him to come to Moscow in person. None of Castro's generals or ministers would have been able to swing the issue as he had just done. His shrewd and devious view would appeal irresistibly to the Russian mind.

"He calls me the Golden Fox,' Ramsey smiled to himself. 'But he is the king of all the foxes." However, Castro was not yet finished. His timing was consummate. He smiled genially down the long table, stroking the curling bush of his beard. 'Angola will be ours, but that will be only a beginning.

After Angola the ultimate prize is South Africa itself." They all leant forward eagerly, their eyes shining like a pack of wolves scenting blood.

"Once we have Angola, we will have South Africa surrounded, with bases on her very borders from which our black freedom fighters can strike with impunity. South Africa is the treasury and economic power-house of the whole of Africa. Once we have it, the rest of the continent will fall into our laps." He placed his huge hands palm-down on the table-top and leant forward over them.

"I pledge you all the fighting men we need to do the job, a hundred thousand if necessary. If you provide the weapons and equipment and transport, there is a ripe fruit for the plucking. Shall we do it, comrades? Shall we make the bold and courageous stroke together?"

Only a month later a group of Portuguese military officers, loyal to the Red Admiral Coutinho, handed over the strategic military airbase at Saurimo to Colonel Angel Botello, who was chief of logistics in the Cuban air force.

Saurimo was five hundred miles inland from the capital of Luanda, and therefore comparatively secure from surveillance by the CIA and other Western agencies.

The first Ilyushin Candid transport landed at Saurimo, twenty-four hours later. On board were a full cargo of military equipment and fifty Cuban'advisers'. The Russian military observer on the same aircraft was Colonel-General Ramsey Machado.

It was an exhausting but exciting period for Ramsey. His reputation and. his nickname were swiftly spreading the length and breadth of the continent.

The Cuban contingent brought the name with them from Havana.

"El Zorro,' they whispered it abroad, 'El Zorro has arrived. Now things will begin to happen." Like the fox, his namesake, he was constantly on the move. He seldom slept two consecutive nights in the same bed. Often there was no bed at all but the mud floor of a grass hut, the cramped seat of a light aircraft or the dirty wooden deck of a small launch threading its way through the swamps and sand-bars of a remote African river.

El Jefe had been right as usual. There was no concerted Western response to the Cuban build-up. Admiral Coutinho was able to head off the few timid enquiries, while Western journalists were successfully prevented from collecting hard evidence in the field. The arms and troops were flown in to Saurimo, or shipped to Brazzaville in the Congo and distributed from there by light aircraft and river-launch to the MPLA cadres in their camps deep in the bush.

Angola was only one of many operations that Ramsey was running simultaneously. There were Ethiopia and Mozambique to deal with, as well as his network of agents, and the co-ordination of the activities of the South African freedom fighters. Angola was a marvelous new springboard for the liberation movements. Ramsey set up training camps for both SWAPO, the South-West African People's Organization, and the ANC, the African National Congress.

The headquarters of the two organizations were sited in separate areas of the country. SWAPO were in the south where they were able to cross the border into South-West African Namibia readily and to operate amongst their own tribes, the Ovahimbo and Ovambo.

However, Ramsey maintained a particular interest in the ANC. He never lost sight for a moment of the fact that South Africa was the gateway to the entire continent and the ANC were the freedom fighters of South Africa.

Raleigh Tabaka, his old comrade from London, was promoted to ANC chief of logistics in Angola. Between them they chose the site for the main ANC base in northern Angola.

They flew hundreds of hours together in an Antonov military biplane. They scoured the northern seaside province of Kungo before they found a site suitable for their base.

It was a small fishing village situated on a lagoon and estuary of the Chicamba river. The mouth of the lagoon was open to the Atlantic, and at high tide vessels of two hundred or so tons burden could cross the bar and enter the river. In addition there were extensive fields of peasant cultivation a few miles upstream. Although these had been neglected during the savage decade of civil war, it would require very little effort to open a landing-strip over the level deforested fields. The fishing village had likewise been abandoned during the war and there was no local population which otherwise would have had to be evacuated or eliminated.

However, the main recommendation for the site was its distance from any South African border or base. The South Africans were formidable opponents.

Like the Israelis, they would not hesitate to violate any international border in hot pursuit of a guerrilla unit. Chicamba was out of range of the South African Alouette helicopters, and thousands of kilometres; of mountain had jungle isolating it from any overland hostile expedition by the Boers. They named the base Tercio.

Raleigh Tabaka took the first cadre of five hundred ANC recruits up to Tercio base in a fishing trawler requisitioned by Admiral Coutinho from the Portuguese canning factory in Luanda.

They began construction work on the airstrip and training camp immediately.

When Ramsey flew in ten days later the airstrip had been cleared and levelled and was in the process of being surfaced in red clay and gravel that would set like concrete and ensure a good all-weather runway.

On his second inspection, Ramsey was so impressed by the remoteness and security of the area that he decided to set up a separate compound near the mouth of the river, overlooking the beach.

He planned this as his own private headquarters. He always needed a secure base for communications where sensitive KGB training and planning could be undertaken, and where intense interrogation and elimination of captives could be undertaken without risk of discovery or interference.

He ordered Raleigh Tabaka's men to give construction of his own beach compound the utmost priority. On his next visit he found that the fencing and defences had already been laid out and that work on the interrogation block and the officers' quarters was far advanced.

On his return to Havana, he requisitioned the necessary radio and electronic equipment and had it flown out to Tercio base on the next available transport.

On his frequent visits to Havana and Moscow, Ramsey kept well abreast of all the dozens of projects he had in progress down the length of the African continent, in particular his own personal case, the operation and control of Red Rose.

Looking back down the years to her recruitment in London and Spain he realized that he had underestimated just how valuable Red Rose would one day become.

Since she had entered the South African Senate she had served on five house bodies. From all of these she had delivered extraordinary intelligence in the form of reports and recommendations on all the various subjects covered by those committees.

Then in February she was made a member of the Senate Advisory Board on African Affairs. Through her Ramsey received the information, only hours old, that President Ford and Henry Kissinger through the CIA had signalled Pretoria that they would not oppose a military adventure by the South African army into southern Angola. He learnt from Red Rose that the CIA had promised South Africa diplomatic support and military equipment to support their thrust towards Luanda.

After alerting his superiors in the Lubyanka, Ramsey flew to Havana to consult Castro.

"You were right all the way, El Jefe,' he told him admiringly. 'The Yankees are sending in the Boers to do their dirty work for them." 'We must let them stick their head into the trap,' Castro smiled. 'I want you to return to Angola immediately. Take my personal orders. Pull back our forces and hold them on a defensive line on the rivers south of the capital. Let them come in before we tweak Uncle Sam's beard and kick the Boers in the cojones." In October the South African cavalry crossed the Cunene river and made a spectacular dash northwards in their fast Panhard armoured cars. In a matter of days they had swept to within a hundred and fifty miles of the capital. They were superbly trained and well-led young fighting men, and their morale was high, but they lacked bridging equipment to cross the rivers and artillery to engage heavy armour.

When they reached the river, Ramsey sent a signal to Havana.

"Now,' said Castro grimly, 'we pull out the rug. Let the armour loose." The South Africans were held on the rivers by the Russian T-54 tanks and assault-helicopters. Ramsey released the news of the South African presence to the Western media and the diplomatic storm broke just as Castro had predicted.

Nigeria, after South Africa the most powerful nation in Africa, switched its support within days of the South African presence being disclosed to the world by Russian and Cuban intelligence. It abandoned Savimbi and his UNITA movement and formally recognized the Sovietsupported MPLA government.

To emphasize its position, Nigeria sent thirty million dollars in aid to Agostinho Neto in Luanda.

In the United States Senate, Dick Clark, the Democratic representative from Iowa, began the process of making certain that the South African expeditionary force in Angola was isolated and deprived of support. He accused the CIA of co-operating illegally with South Africa, and Kissinger and the CIA took evasive action. Members of the joint chiefs threatened to resign unless American support was withdrawn immediately. In December the Clark amendment was rushed through the Senate and all American military aid to Angola was cut off. It had all worked exactly as Castro had planned it.

Another African nation was delivered, trussed and tied, to Soviet sovereignty, and millions of black Angolans were condemned to another decade of brutal civil war.

In Moscow Colonel-General Ramsey Machado was awarded the Order of Lenin, first class, and the medal was pinned on his chest by General Secretary Brezhnev personally.

Then Ramsey was called urgently to Ethiopia. The creeping revolution there had reached a crucial stage.

As the Ilyushin began its descent into Addis Ababa, Ramsey sat behind the Russian pilot on the flight-deck so he had an uninterrupted view of the savage mountainous country ahead.

Over the centuries all the trees around the capital had been cut down for firewood, so the hills were bare and desolate. In the misty blue distance rose the peculiar flat topped mountains known as the Ambas that were so characteristic of this mysterious corner of eastern Africa below the great horn. The sheer sides of the Ambas dropped many thousands of feet into the rocky valleys, in the depths of which great torrents gouged ever deeper into the red earth.

It was an ancient land into which the Egyptian pharaohs had first sent their armies marauding for slaves and ivory and other exotic treasures.

The Ethiopians were a fiercely proud and warlike people, most of them Christians, but members of the Coptic Church, an ancient branch of the Catholic Church that had its origins in Alexandria in Egypt.

Since the country had been ruled by the Negus Negusti, the Supreme Emperor, Haile Selassie. He was the last absolute monarch of history who ruled by decree. All his decrees were formally ratified by his Derg, a council made up of nobles and great rases and chieftains. So complete was his power that he personally ordered every facet of his country's government from the most momentous decisions of state down to the appointment of middle ranking provincial civil servants.

Despite these absolute powers and the feudal organization of his government he was a benevolent dictator much loved by the common people for his almost saintly virtues and his total incorruptibility. In stature he was small and delicately boned, with tiny feminine feet and hands and delicate facial features.

In his personal habits he was austere and abstemious. Except on occasions of state, he dressed in unadorned clothing and ate frugally and simply.

Unlike other African rulers he accumulated no great personal wealth. His main, perhaps his only, concern was for the welfare of his people.

In the forty-five years since he had been crowned emperor he had steered Ethiopia through rebellion and foreign invasion and turbulent times with a quiet wisdom and tenacity to duty.

Only five years after his coronation, his mountainous kingdom had been invaded by Mussolini's generals and he had been driven into exile in England. His nation had resisted the invader, fighting tanks and modem aircraft and poison gas with muzzle-loading rifles and swords and often with their bare hands.

After the defeat of the axis powers Haile Selassie returned to his Ethiopian throne and ruled in his old benign fashion. However, there were new forces let loose in the world. In his cautious efforts to modernize his country and bring this largely pastoral and agrarian society into the mainstream of the twentieth century, Haile Selassie allowed the virus to enter his little kingdom.

The infection began in the new university that he endowed in Addis Ababa.

Long-haired wild-eyed Europeans began to preach to his young students a strange and heady philosophy that all men were equal, and that kings and nobles had no divine rights. As the ageing emperor's physical strength waned, so the very elements seemed to conspire against him. Africa is a land of savage extremes where heat follows icy cold, and drought succeeds flood, and the eartk turns bountiful or hostile with neither rhythm nor reason.

A terrible drought fell upon Ethiopia, and with it rode the other ghostly horseman, famine. The crops failed, the rivers and wells dried, and the s ' oil turned to dust and blcw away on the desert winds. The flocks and the herds died, and at their mothers' withered dugs the infants were tiny skeletal figures with huge haunted eyes in skull heads too large for their wasted bodies.

The land cried out in agony.

African famine was an old story of no particular interest, and Africa was far away. The world took no notice, until the BBC sent Richard Dimbleby to Ethiopia with a television crew. Dimbleby filmed the dreadful suffering in the villages. He also attended a state banquet in Addis Ababa.

With calculated malevolence he intercut scenes of famine and lingering death with those of feasting nobles dressed in scarlet and gold lace and flowing white robes and the emperor seated at a board that groaned with rich food.

Dimbleby had an enormous following. The world took notice. The young students from Addis Ababa University, trained by their carefully selected mentors, began to march and agitate. The Church and the missionaries preached against total power vested in one man, and dreamt of that elusive Utopia where man would love his fellow-man and the lion would lie down with the lamb.

Many of the members of the Derg saw the opportunity to settle old scores and for personal advancement. In a Ve totally unrelated but significant development, the Arab oil-producers doubled the price of oil and held the world to ransom. In Ethiopia the cost of living soared, placing unbearable hardships on a populace already hard hit by famine. There was runaway inflation. Those who were able hoarded food, and those who could not went on strike or rioted and looted the food-shops.

Many of the young army officers were products of Addis Ababa University, and they led the mutiny of the Army. These rebels formed a revolutionary committee and seized control of the Derg.

They arrested the prime minister and the members of the royal family and isolated the emperor in his palace. They spread rumours that Haile Selassie had stolen huge sums of public money and transferred them to his Swiss bank account. They organized demonstrations of students and malcontents outside the palace. The mob clamoured for his abdication. The priests of the Coptic Church and the Muslim leaders joined in the chorus of accusation and demands for his abdication and the installation of a people's democracy.

The military council now felt strong enough to take the next significant step. Through the Derg they issued a formal declaration deposing the emperor, and sent a deputation of young army officers to arrest him and remove him from the palace.

As they led him down the palace steps the frail old man remarked quietly: 'If what you do is for the good of my people, then I go gladly, and I pray for the success of your revolution." To humiliate him they confined him in a sordid little hut on the outskirts of the city, but the common people gathered in their thousands outside the single room to offer their condolences and pledge their loyalty. At the order of the military council the guards drove them away at bayonet point.

The country was ripe, but it was all teetering in the balance when the Ilyushin touched down at Addis Ababa Airport and taxied to the far end of the field where twenty jeeps and troop-trucks of the Ethiopian army were drawn up to welcome it.

Ramsey was the first man out of the aircraft as the loading-ramp touched the ground.

"Welcome, Colonel-General.' Colonel Getachew Abebe jumped down from his command-jeep and strode forward to meet him.

They shook hands briefly. 'Your arrival is timely,'Abebe told him, and they both turned and shaded their eyes as they looked into the sun.

The second Ilyushin made its final approach and touched down. As it taxied towards them, a third and then a fourth gigantic aircraft turned across the sun and one after the other landed.

As they pulled up in a staggered row and switched off their engines, the men poured out of the cavernous bellies. They were paratroopers of the crack Che Guevara Regiment.

"What is the latest position?'Ramsey demanded brusquely.

The Derg has voted for Andom,' Abebe told him, and" Ramsey looked serious.

General Aman Andom was the head of the Army. He was a man of high integrity and superior intelligence, popular with both the Army and the civilian populace. His election as the new leader of the nation came as no surprise.

"Where is he now?" 'He is in his palace - about five miles from here." "How many men?" 'A bodyguard of fifty or sixty.

Ramsey turned to watch his paratroopers disembarking.

"How many members of the Derg stand for you?" Abebe reeled off a dozen names, all young left-wing army officers.

"Tafu?' Ramsey demanded, and Abebe nodded. Colonel Tafu commanded a squadron of Russian T-53 tanks, the most modern unit in the Army.

"All right,' Ramsey said softly. 'We can do it - but we must move swiftly now." He gave the order to the commander of the Cuban paratroopers. Carrying their weapons at the trail, the long ranks of camouflage-clad assault-troops trotted forward and began to board the waiting trucks.

Ramsey took the seat beside Abebe in the command-jeep, and the long column rolled away towards the city. Parched to talcum by drought and fierce sunlight, the red dust rose in a dense cloud behind the column and rolled away on the wind that came down hot from the deserts to the north.

On the outskirts of the city they met caravans of camels and mules. The men with them watched the column pass without showing any emotion. In these dangerous days since the emperor had been deposed they had become accustomed to the movement of armed men on the roads. They were men from the Danakil desert and the mountains, turbaned Muslims in flowing robes or bearded Copts with bushy hair and broadswords on their belts and round steel shields on their shoulders.

At an order from Colonel Abebe, the jeep swung on to a side-road and skirted the city, speeding down rutted roads between the crowded flat-roofed hovels. Abebc used the radio, speaking swiftly in Amharic and then translating for Ramsey.

"I have men watching Andom's palace,' he explained. 'He seems to have called a meeting of all the officers in the Derg who support him. They are assembling now." 'Good. All the chickens will be in one nest." The column turned away from the city and sped through open fields. They were bare and desiccated. The drought had left no blade of grass or green leaf The chalky rocks that littered the earth were white as skulls.

"There.' Abebe pointed ahead.

The general was a member of the nobility, and his residence stood a few miles outside the city on the first of a series of low hills. The hills were bare except for the grove of Australian eucalyptus trees that surrounded the P9 palace. Even these drooped in the heat and the drought. The palace was surrounded by a thick wall of red terra cotta. At a glance Ramsey saw that it was a formidable fortification. It would require artillery to breach it.

Abebe had read his thoughts. 'We have surprise on our side,' he pointed out. 'There is a good chance that we will be able to drive in through the gate..." 'No,' Ramsey contradicted him. 'They will have seen the aircraft arriving.

That is probably why Andom has called his council." Out on a rocky plain between them and the palace, a staff car was speeding towards the open gate.

"Pull in here,' Ramsey ordered, and the column halted in a fold of ground.

Ramsey stood on the rear scat of the open jeep and focused his binoculars on the gateway in the palace wall. He watched the staff car drive through it, and then the massive wooden gate swung ponderously closed.

"Where is Tafu with his tanks?" 'He is still in barracks, on the other side of the city." 'How long to get them here?" 'Two hours." 'Every minute is vital.' Ramsey spoke without lowering his binoculars.

"Order Tafu to bring his armour in as quickly as possible - but we cannot wait until he arrives." Abebe turned to the radio, and Ramsey dropped the binoculars on to his chest and jumped down from the jeep. The commander of the paratroopers and his company leaders gathered around him, and he gave his orders quietly, pointing out the features of the terrain as he spoke.

Abebe hung up the microphone of the radio and came to join them. "Colonel Tafu has one T-53 in the city, guarding the emperor's palace. He is sending it to us. It will be here in an hour. The rest of the squadron will follow." 'Very good,' Ramsey nodded. 'Now describe the layout of the interior of Andom's palace over there. Where will we find Andom himself?"

They squatted in a circle while Abebe sketched in the dust, and then Ramsey gave his final orders.

Once again the column moved forward, but now there was a large white flag on the bonnet of the command-jeep, a bed-sheet that fluttered on its makeshift flagpole. The trucks kept in tight formation. The paratroopers were concealed beneath the hoods of the troop-carriers, and all weapons were kept out of sight.

As they approached the palace a line of heads appeared over the wall above the gate, but the flag of truce had an inhibiting effect and no shot was fired.

The lead jeep drew up in front of the gate, and Ramsey assessed its strength. The gate was of weathered teak, almost a foot thick, reinforced with bands of wrought iron. The hinges were rebated into the columns on each side of the gateway. He abandoned any idea of driving a truck through it.

From the top of the wall twenty feet above them the captain of the guard challenged them in Amharic, and Abebe stood up to reply. They haggled for a few minutes, with Abebe repeating that he had an urgent despatch for General Andom and demanding entrance. The guard shouted back his refusal, and the exchange became heated.

As soon as Ramsey was certain that all the guard's attention was on the jeep he spoke softly into the two-way radio. The trucks behind the jeep roared forward and then peeled off left and right. They bumped over the rocky ground on each side of the roadway and drew up below the walls. From under the canvas hoods, paratroopers clambered on to the roofs of the vehicles.

Ten of them were armed with grappling-hooks which they swung around their heads and then heaved up over the top of the wall. The nylon ropes streamed out behind them and dangled down.

"Open fire!' Ramsey snapped into the radio, and a storm of automatic fire swept the top of the wall, kicking lumps of clay and brick from the rim.

The ricochets whined away into the branches of the blue gum trees. The heads of guards disappeared instantly, some of them ducking away but at least one of them hit by a bullet. Ramsey saw his helmet spin into the air and the top lift off his skull. A pink mist of blood and brain hung in the air for an instant after he was snatched away.

Now the paratroopers were swarming up the wall, three or four of them on each dangling rope at the same time. They were as agile as monkeys, and within seconds thirty of them were over and into the palace grounds. There were bursts of automatic fire and the thump of a single grenade. Seconds later the great wooden gate swung open and Ramsey urged the jeep-driver forward.

The bodies of the palace guards lay in the courtyard where they had been shot down. Ramsey saw one of his paras huddled beside the gateway clutching his belly with blood oozing through his fingers. The other paras grabbed on to the jeep as it roared forward.

Ramsey was standing behind the 5o-calibre Browning heavy machine-gun that was mounted above the driver's seat. He fired a long raking burst at the remaining guards as they fled like rabbits into the maze of adobe buildings on the far side of the courtyard.

One of the guards whirled and dropped on his knee. He raised the launcher of the RPG rocket he carried to his shoulder and aimed at the approaching jeep. Ramsey swivelled the Browning on to him, but at that moment the front wheels struck one of the corpses and the jeep bounced wildly, throwing his aim high.

The guard fired the rocket and it whooshed across the open courtyard and hit the jeep full in the centre of the radiator. There was a flash and a roar as the rocket exploded. Although the engine block smothered most of the blast, the front suspension collapsed and the vehicle cartwheeled end over end.

They were all thrown clear, but the shattered body of the jeep blocked the entrance and the troop-trucks were backed up beyond the open gateway.

The attack was stalling already, and the defence was rallying. Automatic fire was stuttering from the windows and doorways of the palace building.

The Cuban paras sprang out of the stationary trucks and rushed forward, but another rocket hissed down the alley facing them. It flashed inches over Ramsey's head, blinding him with smoke, and struck the leading truck, ripping the bonnet open and shattering the windscreen. Diesel fuel spilled from the ruptured tank and ignited with a sullen roar. Black smoke billowed over the courtyard.

There was shouting and more firing in front of them. Beside Ramsey another para was hit and went sprawling.

Ramsey snatched up his machine-pistol and waved the attack forward, just as a heavy machine-gun opened up on them from one of the windows. Ramsey rolled under the blast of shot and came up against the mud wall directly below the window. The machine-gun was firing over his head, and the muzzle-blast drove in his eardrums.

Ramsey snatched a grenade from his webbing pocket, pulled the pin and went up on one knee to post it through the window. He ducked and covered his ears.

There was a wild shout, and the machine-gun fell silent. Moments later the grenade exhaled in a fiery breath above his head.

"Come on,' Ramsey yelled again, and led half a dozen paras through the shattered window. The gun had been knocked off its mounting and the floor was wet and slippery with blood.

It was room-to-room, and hand-to-hand now. The advantage passed to the defenders as they retreated through the maze of rooms and alleys and courtyards, doggedly holding each strongpoint until they were driven from it.

Slowly the attack lost impetus and, although Ramsey threatened and swore and tried to inspire them with his example, they bogged down in the twisting alleys and interconnecting passageways and rooms. He realized that Andom was certainly radioing for reinforcements of loyal troops, and that minutes lost now could mean the defeat and failure of the revolution.

He heard Abebe's voice raised angrily, urging his men on in a fog of smoke and dust, and Ramsey crawled across to him and seized his shoulder. Face to dusty smoke-grimed face, they shouted at each other to make themselves heard above the cacophony of guns.

"Where is that bloody tank?" 'How long since I called?" 'It's over an hour.' Was it that long? It seemed that minutes had passed since the attack began.

"Get back to the radio,' Ramsey yelled. 'Tell them.

At that moment they both heard it, the shrill metallic squeal and the rumble of the tracks.

"Come on!' Ram. en lunged to his feet, and they ran together, doubled over, with bullets fluttering in the air around their heads, back through the blood-smeared rooms with walls pocked by bullets and shrapnel.

As they reached the entrance courtyard the tank butted its way in through the blocked gateway. The turret was reversed, the long 55-millimetre gun-barrel pointed backwards. The carcass of the rocket-shattered jeep was forced forward by the mass of armour and it rolled clear of the gateway.

The T-53 burst into the courtyard with its diesels bellowing. The turret was open, the commander's helmeted head protruded from the hatch.

Ramsey windmilled his right arm in the cavalry signal to advance and pointed into the tangle of alleys and buildings.

The tank pivoted on its churning steel tracks and crashed into the nearest wall. The mud bricks collapsed before it, and the roof tilted and sagged and buried the T-53 beneath it.

The tank shook itself free and roared forward. Ramsey and his paras poured into the breach it had opened. Walls toppled and timbers crackled as the steel monster crawled forward, tilting and rocking over piles of rubble and human bodies.

The screams of the defenders rose higher than the uproar, and their firing died away. They came stumbling out of the rained buildings, throwing down their weapons and raising their arms in surrender.

"Where is Andom? Ramsey's throat was rough and sore with the dust and the shouting. 'We must get him. Don't let him escape." The general was amongst the last to surrender. Only when the T-53 flattened the thick mud walls of the main hall did he come out with four of his senior officers. There was a blood-soaked bandage around his forehead an dover his left eye. His beard was thick with dust and blood, and one of the scarlet tabs was torn from his collar.

His good eye was fierce. Despite his wound, his voice was firm and his bearing dignified. 'Colonel Abebe,' he challenged. 'This is mutiny and treachery. I am the president of Ethiopia - my appointment was confirmed by the Derg this morning." Ramsey nodded to his paratroopers. They seized the general's arms and forced him to his knees. Ramsey opened the flap of his holster and handed his Tokarev pistol to Abebe.

The colonel placed the muzzle between the captive's eyes and said quietly: 'President Aman Andom, in the name of the people's revolution, I call upon you to resign.' And he blew the top off the general's skull.

The corpse fell face-forward, splattering custard-yellow brains on to Abebe's boots.

Abebe clicked the safety on the Tokarev, reversed it and handed it butt-first to Ramsey.

"Thank you, Colonel-General,' he said.

"I am honoured to have been of service.' Ramsey bowed formally as he accepted the weapon back.

"How many members of the Derg voted for Andom? he asked as the column sped back towards Addis Ababa.

"Sixty-three." 'Then we still have much work to do before the revolution is secure." Abebe radioed ahead to Colonel Tafu's squadron of T-53 tanks. They were entering from the eastern side of the city, and he ordered them to surround the building that housed the Derg and to train their guns upon it. Elements of the Army were ordered to seal off all foreign embassies and consulates. No legation staff were allowed to leave the premises, for their own safety.

All foreigners in the country, especially journalists or television personnel, were rounded up and escorted to the airport for immediate evacuation. There were to be no witnesses of what followed.

Small units of Abebe's most loyal troops, backed up by Cuban paratroopers, were rushed to the homes of the members of the military council and the Derg who had declared for Andom. They were stripped of weapons and badges of rank, dragged out and thrown into the waiting trucks and driven back to the Derg, where a revolutionary court awaited them in the main assembly-chamber.

The court consisted of Colonel Abebe and two of his junior officers. ~You are accused of counter-revolutionary criminal acts against the people's democratic government. Have you anything to say before sentence of death is passed upon you?" They were taken out directly from the trial into the courtyard of the building, placed against the north wall of the chamber and executed by firing squad. The executions were carried out in full view of the revolutionary judges and those prisoners still awaiting trial. The volleys of rifle-fire periodically interrupted the proceedings of the court.

The corpses were tied in bunches by the heels and dragged behind a truck through the streets to the main rubbish-dump outside the city limits.

"The populace must witness the course of revolutionary justice and the price of disobedience,' Ramsey explained the necessity of these exhibitions.

The court ruled that the corpses should not be removed from the rubbish-dump, and their families were forbidden to indulge in the ritual of mourning or to exhibit any public signs of grief. The grim work went on until after midnight, 32e and the last batch of criminals was executed in the beams of the headlights of the trucks waiting to drag them to the rubbish-tip.

Although they were both exhausted, neither Ramsey nor the future president could afford to sleep until the revolution was secure. Ramsey had a bottle of vodka in his pack. He and Abebe shared it as they sat beside the radio and listened to the reports coming in.

One after the other, Abebe's loyal officers with Cuban support took over command of the various units of the Army and seized all the important points in the city and its surroundings.

As the sun rose, they had control of the airport and railway station, the radio and television broadcasting studios, and all the military forts and barracks. Only then could they snatch a few hours' sleep. Guarded by Ramsey's paras, they stretched out on mattresses on the chamber floor, but at noon they were in fresh uniforms for the meeting of the purified Derg.

There were armed paras at the door of the chamber and T-53 tanks drawn up in the street outside' As Colonel-General Machado congratulated Abebe, he said quietly: 'If you kill Brutus, then you must kill all the sons of Brutus. In io, Niccolb Machiavelli said that, Mr. President, and it is still the best-possible advice." 'So we must begin at once." "Yes,' agreed Ramsey. 'The Red Terror must be allowed to run its course."

"The Red Terror shall flourish.' The hastily printed posters in four languages were pasted on every street-corner, and the hourly radio and television broadcasts proclaimed the new president and exhorted the populace to denounce an traitors and counter-revolutionaries.

There was so much work to do that Abebe divided the city into forty cells and appointed a separate revolutionary court for each cell. The presidenv; of these courts were loyal junior officers who were given full power to'undertake revolutionary action'. Each had a team of executioners working under him. They began with the members of the nobility, the rases and the chieftains and their families.

"The Red Terror is a proven tool of the revolution,' Ramsey Machado explained. 'We know those who will prove awkward later. We know those who will oppose the pure doctrine of Marxism. It is more expedient to eliminate them now, in the first wild flush of victory, rather than undertake the tedious business of dealing with them piecemeal at a later date.' He lifted his cap and raked his fingers through his thick dark curls. He was tired, his marvelous classical features were strained and drawn. Dark smudges underlined his eyes, but there was no uncertainty in those deadly green eyes. Abebe was at once grateful for this strength and awed by this iron resolution.

"We must root out every rotten apple from the barrel. We must eliminate not only the opposition, but also the thought of opposition. We must break the nation's will to resist. They must be cowed and deprived of any sense of self or self-determination. The board must be swept entirely clean. Only then will we be in a position to rebuild the nation in its new and shining image.' The corpses of the nobles and the petty chieftains and their entire families were piled like garbage on the street-corners. The revolutionary patrols drove through the city and picked up at random the children they found playing in the streets.

"Where do you live? Take us to your parents' home." The parents were dragged out of their houses and forced to watch as their children were shot in the head at pointblank range. The little corpses were left at the front door, swelling and stinking in the heat. The parents were forbidden to remove them or to mourn them.

"The Red Terror will flourish,' decreed the posters, but in the mountains some of the old warriors and their families resisted the death squads.

The tanks surrounded the villages, and the women and children and old men were driven into their huts. The huts were set on fire, and the screams mingled with the crackle of the flames. The men were marched to the fields and forced to lie face-down in rows. The tanks drove over them, locking their tracks to pivot on the piles of bodies and grind them into a paste with the drought-stricken earth.

"Now for the priests,' Ramsey said.

"The priests were instrumental in the overthrow of the monarchy,' Abebe pointed out.

"Yes, the church and the mosque, the bishops and priests and the imams and the ayatollahs are always useful in the beginning. The revolution can be nurtured in the pulpit, for the priests are by their training unworldly and idealistic creatures who respond to a vision of freedom and equality and brotherly love. They can be easily persuaded, but always remember that.

they are also in competition with us for the souls of men. When they witness the revolution in action they will challenge us. We cannot brook that competition. The priests must be disciplined and controlled - just as all other men must be." They entered the great mosque and arrested the imam's fourteen-year-old daughter. They put out her eyes and cut out her tongue, then they placed two ounces of raw chili pepper in her vagina and took her back to her father's house. They locked her in a room of the house with guards at the door. Her parents were forced to squat outside the door and listen to their daughter's death agonies.

The sons of the abuna, the archbishop of the Coptic Church, were taken to one of the revolutionary courts and were tortured. Their hands and feet were crushed in steel vices and their bodies were burnt with electricity.

Their eyes were gouged out and left dangling by the optic nerves on to their cheeks. Their genitalia were cut off and forced into their mouths.

Then they were taken home and placed outside the front door. Once again the parents were forbidden to remove their bodies for Christian burial.

The radio and television broadcasts harangued against the decadence and revisionism of the Church, and the death squads waited at the doors of the mosque when the muezzin began his chant. The faithful stayed at home.

"All the sons of Brutus are dead,' Abebe told Ramsey, as they toured the quiescent city.

"Not all of them,' Ramsey disagreed, and Abebe turned to stare at him. He knew what Ramsey meant.

"It must be done,' Ramsey insisted. 'Then there can be no turning back. The ancient bourgeois taboo will be shattered for ever, as it was on the guillotine in the Place de la Concorde and in the Russian cellar when Tsar Nicholas and his family died. Once it is done, there will be no return and the revolution will be secure." 'Who will do it?' Abebe asked, and Ramsey answered without hesitation.

(I will. P 'It would be best that way,' Abebe agreed, and looked away to conceal the relief he felt. 'Do it as soon as possible." Ramsey drove dowry through the old quarter of the city. He was alone at the wheel of the open jeep. The streets were deserted, except for the revolutionary patrols. The windows of the houses were shuttered and curtained. No face peered out at him, no children romped in the yards, no voices or sounds of laughter came from behind the closed doors of the mud-brick hovels.

The revolutionary posters were pasted to the cracked and chipped plaster of the walls. 'The Red Terror shall flourish." There had been no hygienic services since the Red Terror began. The rubbish clogged the streets, and the sewagebuckets overflowed and puddled in the gutters. The bodies of the victims of the Terror were heaped like cords of firewood at the street-comers. They were so bloated and bullet-riddled that they were no longer recognizable as human. Gas-filled bellies stretched their clothing until it burst at the seams, and their flesh was empurpled and blackened by the sun. The only living things were the crows and kites and vultures that hopped and picked at the piles of the dead, and the fat gorged rats that scuttled away in front of the jeep.

Ramsey wrapped his silk scarf across his mouth and nose to protect them from the stench, but apart from that he was unmoved by what he saw around him, as a victorious general is unaffected by the carnage of the battlefield.

The hut was at the end of a noisome alleyway, and there were two guards at the front door. They recognized Ramsey as he parked the jeep and picked his way through the accumulated filth. They saluted him respectfully.

"You are relieved of your duties. You may go,' Ramsey ordered.

He watched them hurry to the end of the alley before he opened the door and stooped under the lintel.

It was semidark in the room, and he removed his sunglasses. The walls were limed but bare except, for a silver Coptic cross suspended above the bed.

There were rush mats on the stone floor. The room smelt of sickness and old age. An old woman sat on the floor at the foot of the bed. She wailed and pulled the hood of her robe over her head when she saw Ramsey.

"Go.' He gestured to the door, and she crawled across the floor, her head stiff covered, making obeisance and wailing and drooling with terror.

With the heel of his combat boot Ramsey pushed the door closed behind her and studied the figure that lay on the bed.

"Negus Negusti, King of Kings,' he said with a dry irony, and the old man stirred and looked up at him.

He was dressed in a spotless white robe, but his head was bare. He was thin, impossibly thin. Ramsey knew that he suffered from the ailments of great age, his prostate and digestion were diseased, but his mind was clear. His feet and hands protruding from the folds of the white robe were childlike and emaciated. Each tiny bone showed clearly through the waxen amber skin. His beard and hair were untrimmed and entirely bleached to the lustre of platinum. The flesh had melted from his face, so the nose was thin and aquiline. His lips had shrunk and drawn back. His teeth were yellow and too large for the delicate bones of his cheeks and brow. His eyes were enormous, black as pools of tar, bright as those of a biblical prophet.

"I recognize you,' he said softly.

"We have never met,' Ramsey corrected him.

"Still, I know you well. I recognize the smell of you. I know every line of your face and the inflection and timbre of your voice." 'Who am I, then;" Ramsey challenged him softly.

"You are the first of a legion - and your name is Death." 'You are wise and perceptive, old man,' Ramsey told him, and advanced to the bed.

"I forgive you for what you do to me,' said Haile Selassie, Negus Negusti, Emperor of Ethiopia. 'But I cannot forgive you for what you have done to my people." 'Commend yourself to your God, old man,' said Ramsey as he picked up the pillow from the bed. 'This world is no longer for you." He pressed the pillow down over the old man's face and leant his weight upon it.

Haile Selassie's struggles were like those of a trapped bird. His thin fingers clutched lightly at Ramsey's wrists and plucked softly at his sleeves. He kicked and danced, and the robe rode up above his knees. His legs were thin and dark as sticks of dried tobacco, and the knees were enlarged knots out of all proportion to the skinny shanks.

Gradually his struggles grew weaker, and there was a soft spluttering under his robes as his sphincter relaxed and his bowels voided. Ramsey leant on the pillow for five minutes after the old man was completely still. He felt an almost religious ecstasy come over him. Nothing he had done before had ever given him this sense of gratification. It was physical and emotional, it was spiritual and at the same time deeply sexual.

He had killed a king.

He straightened up and removed the pillow. He plumped it up and then lifted the old man's head and set the pillow beneath it. He pulled the hem of the robe down to Haile Selassie's ankles, and folded the little childlike hands upon his breast. Then with thumb and forefinger he drew down his eyelids.

He -stood for a long time studying the emperor's deathface. He wanted to fix the image in his mind for ever. He was unaware of the heat and the stench in the closed room. He sensed that this was one of the high points in his life. The frail body epitomized all that he had pledged to destroy in this world.

He wanted the memory of that destruction to be strong and vivid enough to last a lifetime.

All possible opposition had been eliminated. The voice of dissent was silenced. The sons of Brutus were all of them dead, and the revolution was secure.

There were many other important issues needing Ramsey's attention elsewhere in Africa. With a clear conscience he could hand over his position as security adviser to the People's Democratic Government of Ethiopia. His successor in office was a general in the security police of the German Democratic Republic. He was almost as skilled as Rarnen Machado in the enforcement of pragmatic democracy on a recalcitrant population.

Ramsey embraced Abebe and boarded one of the Ilyushin transports that now flew regularly in and out of Addis. It was a most convenient port of entry to the entire continent.

They refuelled in Brazzaville and then flew south and west to land on the new airstrip at Tercio base on the Chicamba river just as the sun set into the blue Atlantic Ocean.

Raleigh Tabaka met him. During the drive from the airstrip to Ramsey's new headquarters compound in the palm grove above the white coral beach, Raleigh brought him fully up to date with developments during his absence.

Ramsey's private quarters were austere. A thatched roof and large unglazed windows with roll-up blinds of split bamboo; bare uncarpeted floors and chunky but comfortable furniture made by a local carpenter from hand-sawn indigenous timber. Only the electronic communications equipment was modem. He had direct satellite links to Moscow and Luanda and Havana and Lisbon.

As Ramsey entered this simple dwelling he was reminded forcefully of the cottage at Buenaventura in Cuba. He felt immediately at home here, with the trade winds in the palms and the ocean breathing heavily on the white beach below his window.

He was exhausted. This deep bone-weariness had accumulated over the weeks and months. As soon as Raleigh Tabaka left him, he dropped his combat uniform in a heap on the mud floor and crawled under the mosquito-net. The gentle warm gusts of the trades through the open window billowed the mosquito-net and caressed his naked body.

He felt replete. He had performed a difficult but infinitely worthwhile task with skill and success. He knew that he had earned new honours and rewards, but none would be as satisfying as this deep sense of achievement that buoyed his weary spirit.

His creation surpassed that of a Mozart or a Michelangelo. He had used as his raw materials a land and a people, mountains and valleys and lakes and rivers and plains and millions of human beings. He had mixed them on his palette and then, in blood and flames and gunfire, he had fashioned and worked them into a masterpiece. His creation surpassed that of any artist who had lived before him. He knew that there was no God - at least, not as the bishops and imams whom he had so recently disciplined and humiliated imagined God to be. The god that Ramsey knew was of this world. He was the twin god of power and political mastery - and Ramsey was his prophet. The work had only just begun. First a single nation, he thought, and then another and another, until finally an entire continent. His elation staved off sleep for a few minutes longer, but as he succumbed his mind took another turn.

Maybe it was the hut and the wind and the sound of the sea - whatever the association of ideas, he thought of Nicholas. In the night he dreamt of his son. He saw again his shy reluctant smile, and heard his voice and his laughter in his head, and felt the small warm hand curled in his hand like the timorous body of a tiny creature.

When he awoke the longing was even more intense. While he worked at his desk the image of his son's face receded and he could concentrate on the coded messages from Havana and Moscow that flashed down from the orbiting satellite. However, when he stood up from his desk and looked down through the open window to the beach, he imagined he saw a slim tanned little body splashing in the green surf and heard the sweet treble cries of the child.

Perhaps it was merely a reaction from the slaughter in the streets of Addis Ababa, or the memory of the corpses of the sons of the abuna with their eyeballs hanging on their cheeks and their inunature genitals stuffed into their mouths, but over the next few days the desire to see his son became an obsession.

He could not leave Tercio base now, not with so much in play, so many prizes at stake on the great gaming-board of Africa. Instead he sent a satellite message to Havana and within an hour had his reply.

After Ethiopia they would deny him nothing. Nicholas and Adra were on the next transport flight from Cuba. Ramsey was waiting at the airstrip when the Ilyushin landed at Tercio base.

He watched his son come down the ramp. He walked ahead of Adra, no longer clinging to her hand like a baby. There was alertness in the way he carried his head, a spring to his step, and a sparkle of curiosity and intelligence in his eyes as he paused at the bottom of the ramp and looked about him keenly.

Ramsey felt an extraordinary emotion, an intensification of the longing and pride with which he had anticipated the boy's arrival. No other human being had ever moved him in this way. For long aching moments he watched his son in secret, concealed in the throng of disembarking troops and swarming porters, his eyes hidden behind sunglasses. He was reluctant to give a name to this emotion he felt.

He would never have entertained the word 'love'.

Then Nicholas picked him out. He saw the boy's entire attitude change. He started forward at a run, but within a dozen paces he took control of himself. The look of extreme pleasure on his lovely face was swiftly masked. He was expressionless as he walked calmly to the side of the jeep in which Ramsey sat and held out his hand.

"Good day, Padre,' he said softly. 'How does it go with you?" Ramsey felt an almost irresistible compulsion to embrace him. He sat very still while he overcame it, then he took Nicholas's hand and returned his formal greeting.

Nicholas rode in the front of the jeep beside his father. Adra sat in the back. They skirted the guerrilla camp on the way from the airstrip to the beach compound, and Nicholas could not contain his curiosity. He asked the first question hesitantly, in a subdued voice.

"Why are all these men here? Are they sons of the revolution like we are, Padre?" When Ramsey replied without any sign of irritability, the next question was bolder. When the reply to that was also friendly, he relaxed further and took a lively interest in everything around them.

The men at the roadside saluted Ramsey as the jeep passed. From the comer of his eye he saw Nicholas stiffen in the front seat and return the salute with all the aplomb of a veteran. Ramsey had to turn his face away to hide his smile. The men had noticed it also and grinned after the departing vehicle.

When they arrived at the compound, Ramsey's orderly had a batch of satellite messages for his attention. However, there was little of importance amongst them, and Ramsey dealt with them swiftly. He went to the hut alongside his own that he had allocated for Nicholas and Adra. He heard 33e the boy's excited chatter as he stepped up on to the stoep, but it was cut off abruptly as he appeared in the doorway. Again Nicholas was strange and withdrawn, watching his father warily.

"Did you bring your bathing-suit?' Ramsey asked him.

"Yes, Padre." 'Good. Put it on. We will swim together." The water inside the reef was calm and warm.

"Look, Padre. I can swim the crawl now - no more baby paddle,' Nicholas boasted.

With Ramsey swimming beside him, he made it out to the reef with only a half-dozen pauses to tread water while he regained his breath. They sat side by side on a coral head, and while they discussed seriously how the reef was formed by millions of tiny living creatures Ramsey studied the boy carefully. He was well favoured, tall and strong for his age. His vocabulary had expanded again since they had last been together. At times it was almost like talking to a grown man.

They ate dinner together on the veranda. Ramsey discovered how much he had missed Adra's cooking. Every minute Nicholas seemed more relaxed. His appetite was good. He asked for more of the baked mullet. Ramsey allowed him half a glass of well-watered wine. Nicholas sipped it like a connoisseur, swelling with pride at being treated as an adult.

When Adra came to fetch him to bed, he slipped off his chair without argument but pulled away from her hand and came around the table to his father.

"I am very happy to be here, Padre,' he said formally, and held out his hand.

As Ramsey shook his hand he experienced an actual physical constriction of his chest.

Within a week Nicholas had become a favourite at Tercio camp. Some of the ANC instructors and recruits had their families with them. One of the wives was a trained primary-school teacher from the University of the Western Cape in South Africa. She had set up a school for the children in the camp. Ramsey sent Nicholas to take part in the classes. The schoolroom was a thatched building with open sides and rows of benches made of roughly planed native timber.

Almost immediately it was clear that Nicholas was as bright and advanced as children three and four years older than he was. English was the language of instruction, and he made swift progress in it. He had a clear sweet voice and led the singing. He taught them 'Land of the Landless' and the other revolutionary songs which the teacher translated into English. He had brought his soccer ball with him, and this gave him tremendous social prestige amongst his peers. A work detail from the camp under orders from Colonel-General Machado levelled a soccer pitch for the school, laid out the markings in lime and set up goal-posts. Such was Nicholas's prowess on the field that they nicknamed him Pele, and the daily matches became a popular feature of camp life.

As the general's son, Nicholas had special standing and privilege. He had the run of the camp, including the induction classes for new recruits. The instructors allowed him to handle the weapons.

Ramsey watched with carefully concealed pride as his son stood up before a class of adult recruits and demonstrated the stripping and reassembling of an AK assaultrifle. Then he took his place on the range and fired a magazine of live ammunition. Twelve of the twenty rounds struck the man-sized target at which he was aiming.

Without Ramsey's knowledge, Jose, the Cuban driver, taught Nicholas to drive the jeep. The first Ramsey knew of his son's latest accomplishment was when Nicholas, sitting on a cushion, proudly drove him down to the airstrip to meet the incoming Ilyushin transport flight.

The men along the road cheered them as they passed with cries of 'Viva Pele!" The camp tailor made Nicholas his own set of camouflage combat fatigues and a soft Cuban-style cap. He wore the cap cocked at an angle over one eye, just as his father did, and imitated Ramsey's mannerisms, lifting his cap to rake his fingers through his hair or hooking his thumbs in his belt as he stood at rest. He became Ramsey's unofficial driver, and wherever they went huge grins of delight followed the jeep.

On some afternoons Ramsey and Nicholas took one of the boats powered by a fifty-horsepower outboard motor and raced out through the pass in the coral reef into the blue Atlantic waters. They anchored the boat over one of the deep reefs and fished with hand-lines. The coral teemed with fish of every possible shape and size and colour. Ramsey taught Nicholas how to chop the carcass of a large fish, preserved from their previous expedition, into a fine mince. They mixed this with beach sand to make it sink swiftly and ground-baited the reef below the anchored boat.

Soon they could make out the shadowy shapes of large fish darting and swirling in the blue depths sixty feet below their hull. The scent of the ground bait had goaded them into a feeding frenzy. As they dropped their baited hooks amongst them the thick line was jerked through their fingers and Nicholas squealed with glee.

The reef fish glittered and glowed with peacock blue and iridescent green; with clear daffodil yellow and startling scarlet. They were spotted with jade and sapphire, striped like zebra and splashed with flaming ruby and opal. They were shaped like bullets and butterflies, and winged like exotic birds. They were armed with daggers and barbed spines and rows-of porcelain-white fangs. They squeaked and grunted like pigs as they were hauled flapping and squirming over the gunwale of the ass~ult-boat. Some were so large that Ramsey had to give Nicholas a hand to drag them from the water. He hated anybody, even his father, to help him. He hated even more to stop fishing at the close of the day.

"One more, Padre - just one more,' he cried eagerly, and in the end Ramsey had to take the line out of his hands.

One evening they stayed later than usual. Darkness was falling as they hauled the anchor and started the outboard. The trade wind had turned chilly, and the wind of their passage blew over them as they bounced over the tops of the swells on their way back to the river mouth.

Goose-flesh pimpled Nicholas's arms as he hugged himself. He shivered with cold and exhaustion and the reaction from so much excitement.

Steering the boat with one hand, Ramsey put his other arm around Nicholas's shoulders. For a moment the child froze with shock at his unfamiliar touch, and then his body relaxed and he crept closer to his father and cuddled against his chest.

As he steered through the darkness with the small shivering body pressed to his, Ramsey was assailed once again by the memory of the abuna of Addis Ababa's sons propped against the front wall of their father's home with empty eye-sockets and each with his tiny dark penis protruding like a finger from between his dead lips. Ramsey was not touched by either guilt or regret. It had been necessary, just as once it had been necessary to half-drown the child that now cuddled against his chest. Duty was often hard and cruel, but he had never flinched from its call. Still, he had never felt before the way he did now.

They beached the boat, and handed it over to Jose, the Cuban driver, to care for. Then they made their way by lantern-light through the palm grove towards the stockade of the compound.

Nicholas stumbled against him in the darkness, and Ramsey took his hand to steady him. The child made no effort to pull his hand away.

They walked on without speaking until they reached the gate of the compound, and then Nicholas whispered softly: 'I wish I could stay here at Tercio with you always." Ramsey pretended he had not heard him, but he found it difficult to draw his next breath.

The signals clerk woke him ten minutes after midnight. It needed only a light tap on the door of the hut for Ramsey to come fully awake with the Tokarev pistol in his hand.

"What is it?" 'A Red Rose relay from Moscow,' the clerk answered him. They had strict instructions to call him at any time of day or night for a Red Rose communication.

"I will come immediately." The message was in code, and Ramsey fetched his copy of the code-pad from the steel safe. They used a 'one-time' pad, a separate code randomly generated by computer for each sheet. He and Red Rose had the only existing copies of the pad, and used a single sheet for each message.

He matched her sheet and began to decode the message.

"Project is code-named Skylight,' the message read. 'First subterranean test of thirty-megaton fission device scheduled October twenty-sixth. Test site located 27*35'S 24'25'E. Full specifications of device on hand." Ramsey sent his driver to the main ANC camp upriver, and Raleigh Tabaka was in his office within forty minutes.

"We must leave for London immediately,' Ramsey told him as Raleigh read the message. 'This is too important to co-ordinate from here. We will orchestrate through the London embassy and the ANC office in the UK." Ramsey smiled with quiet satisfaction. 'We will have the Boers on the mat in front of the Security Council before the week is out. Once again, they have played right into our hands." He woke Nicholas to say goodbye to him.

"When will you come back, Padre?' the child asked bravely, hiding any sign of distress.

"I don't know, Nicky.' Ramsey used the diminutive of his name for the first time, and it sat awkwardly on his tongue.

"You will come back, won't you, Padre?" 'Yes, I will come back. I promise you that." 'And you will let me and Adra stay here at Tercio? You won't send us away?" 'Yes, Nicky. You and Adra will stay here." "Thank you. I am glad,'said Nicholas. 'Goodbye, Padre."

They shook hands solemnly, and then Ramsey turned away quickly and ran down the steps to the waiting jeep.

Preventing the Skylight test was of secondary importance. It was almost three years since they had first learnt of the South African plans to build a nuclear bomb, and Ramsey knew that by now they had a viable weapon.

However, a nuclear weapon had very little practical application in the type of bush war that was typically African.

What was of primary importance was to isolate South Africa even further from its last remaining support in the Western world. Already a political pariah, this was an opportunity that he had waited for, to brand her a nuclear rogue into the bargain.

They met in the ambassador's safe room in the cellar of the Soviet embassy.

The embassy was set in that intimate diplomatic enclave behind Kensington Palace.

Both General Borodin and Aleksei Yudenich had flown in from Moscow. Their presence gave weight to the deliberations. It underlined both the foreign ministry's and the KGB's renewed interest in the African section, and gave Colonel-General Machado tremendous personal prestige.

The Africans were represented by Raleigh Tabaka and the secretary-general of the ANC. Oliver Tambo, the president of the ANC, was on an unofficial visit to East Germany and could not return to London in time for the meeting.

There was a great deal of urgency, for the South Africans were due to test Skylight within the coming week. Red Rose had reinforced her initial despatch with quite extensive information concerning the enriching of the uranium, the specifications of the actual bomb, its projected delivery in the new G5 artillery round, the position and depth of the test-hole and the ignition system that would be used to detonate the bomb.

"What we have to decide today,' Yudenich opened the discussion, 'is how best to use this information."

"I think, comrade,' the secretary-general of the ANC cut in eagerly, "that you should allow us to call a press conference here in London." Ramsey's lips curled into a small cynical smile. Of course they wanted it.

What a blaze of publicity the ANC would bring down upon itself.

"Comrade Secretary-General,'Yudenich smiled broadly,, 'I think the announcement would carry a little more weight if it were to be made by the president of the USSR, rather than the president of ANC.' His tone was heavy with sarcasm. Yudenich didn't like blacks.

In private, before this meeting, he had remarked to Ramsey that it was a pity that they had been obliged to invite the 'monkeys' rather than deciding the issue between civilized human beings. 'It is difficult to bring one's mind down to their level,' he had chuckled. 'But, then, you have had much experience with them, Comrade. Should I have brought a packet of nuts for them, do you think?" Ramsey sat aloof from the discussion for nearly twenty minutes. The voices of both Yudenich and the secretarygeneral were becoming louder and more strained. It was Borodin who at last suggested mildly: 'Should we perhaps ask Comrade General Machado's views? His source provided the information perhaps he has ideas how best to take advantage of it." They all looked down the table at him, and Ramsey had his reply prepared.

"Comrades, all that you have said has good sense and reason. However, if either the ANC or the president of the USSR breaks the news it will be a one-day sensation. I believe that to extract the most benefit we should draw out the process. We should release a few scraps of information at a time, and allow interest to build up over a protracted period-" They looked thoughtful, and Ramsey went on.

"I also believe that if we break it ourselves, either through Moscow or through the ANC, it will be looked upon as biased or at least highly prejudiced information. I think we should give the news to the most powerful voice in America to spread for us.

The voice that governs the United States - and, through it, the Western world." Yudenich looked confused. 'Gerald Ford? The President of the United States?" 'No, Comrade Minister. The news media. The true government of America. In their single-minded obsession with the freedom of speech, the Americans have created a dictatorship more powerful than anything we can devise. Let us give this to the American television networks. We make no announcements, we hold no press conferences. We simply give one of them a mere whiff of the scent, show them the tracks of the hare, and let them hunt it down and tear the animal to pieces themselves. You know well how it works; like a pack of hounds their excitement and their blood lust will be more thoroughly aroused if they believe that the prey is theirs alone. They call it "investigative journalism" and give prizes to the ones who do most damage to their government, their allies and to the capitalist system that supports them." Yudenich stared at him a little longer before he began to chuckle. 'I hear that in Africa they call you the Fox, Comrade General." "The Golden Fox,'Borodin corrected him, and Yudenich burst into full-throated laughter.

"I see you merit your name, Comrade General. Let the Americans and the British do our work for us once again."

The total success of the Skylight operation reaffirmed Red Rose's-worth a hundredfold, but brought with it its own problems.

The more valuable Red Rose became, the more skilfully and carefully she must be controlled. Every possible precaution had to be taken to protect and guard her in the field, and to give her incentive to continue. She must be rewarded immediately for Skylight and given access to Nicholas as soon as reasonably possible. However, this again was complicated by Ramsey's own changing attitude towards his son.

He was determined that these sickly bourgeois sentiments which recently had intruded on his sense of purpose must never be allowed to interfere with his duty. He knew that, if necessary, given the right circumstances, he must be ready to sacrifice Nicholas, just as he was completely resigned to laying down his own life if duty dictated it.

Until that day, however, Nicholas must never be placed in any position of danger. Especially there must never be the least possibility of Red Rose or any other person laying hands on the boy and removing him from Ramsey's custody.

He considered once again arranging the next access at the hacienda in Spain. This would mean moving from Tercio; that involved a degree of risk, a very small degree, but a certain risk none the less. It was just possible that Red Rose - say, with the assistance of South African agents might succeed in spiriting the child to the British embassy in Madrid. He knew that Red Rose possessed a British passport and dual nationality. Spain was no longer secure enough to satisfy Ramsey.

Of course, he could arrange the meeting in either Havana or Moscow. This entailed considerable logistical problems in getting Red Rose to those locations. It would also reveal to her beyond any doubt who were her ultimate masters. He wanted to avoid that if at all possible.

The most secure location outside Cuba or Russia was Tercio base on the Chicamba river. It was remote and heavily guarded. There was no foreign embassy within a thousand miles. Nicholas was already installed there. Red Rose could be brought in with very little inconvenience. Once she was at Tercio she would be more completely under his control than in any other place on this earth.

Tercio it would have to be.

Isabella came fully awake with a guilty start. For a moment she did not know where she was or what had woken her. Then she remembered, and realized that it was the change in the sound of the Ilyushin's engines and the canting of the deck beneath her that had woken her. Despite her best intentions, she had fallen asleep in the uncomfortable jump-seat.

She glanced quickly at her wristwatch. Two hours fifty minutes since take-off from Lusaka.

She lifted herself slightly in her seat and checked the instrument-panel over the pilot's shoulder. They were still on the same heading, but they were beginning their descent. The altimeter began to unwind steadily.

She looked ahead through the windscreen of the cockpit. It was late afternoon and hazy, but suddenly the low sun flashed on a large body of water ahead.

Lake? she thought, and searched her memory for one that large. The African lakes all lay along the Great Rift Valley, thousands of miles in the opposite direction. Then suddenly it occurred to her.

"The Atlantic! We have reached the west coast.' She reassembled the map of Africa in her mind. 'Angola or Zaire, or the Enclave." The Candid banked on to an approach heading. The undercarriage whined and vibrated as it was lowered. Ahead she saw white coral beaches, and the shape of the reefs beneath the blue Atlantic waters.

There was a river mouth, with a low surf breaking on the bar and a deeper serpentine channel crawling into the lagoon. The river was broad and brown, but not large enough to be one of the major African drainages, not the Congo nor the Luanda river. She tried to memorize every detail. A few miles above the lagoon the river formed a distinctive ox-bow, a double S. Dead ahead was a long red clay landing-strip, and she made out the thatched roofs of a large settlement in the bend of the river beyond it.

The Candid touched down and taxied to the far end of the strip. As the pilot shut down the engines, a convoy of 34e trucks trundled out to surround it. She saw many armed men in camouflage and combat fatigues.

"Wait,' the pilot told her. 'Men come fetch.

Two officers entered the flight-deck. One was a major. They were both swarthy and wore moustaches. They were dressed in camouflage with no insignia apart from their badges or rank.

South Americans, she thought. Or Mexicans. And this was confirmed when the major addressed her in Spanish.

"Welcome, sehora. You will please come with us." 'My suitcase.' She indicated her luggage with all the hauteur she could muster, and the major snapped an order at his junior. The lieutenant carried her baggage down the ramp and loaded it into a waiting truck.

They drove her in silence for twenty minutes, passing the barbed-wire stockade beyond which stood the thatched buildings she had first seen from the air. There were armed guards at the gate. They followed a single track, and she caught glimpses of the river through the trees. The track became progressively softer and sandier, and she guessed that they were headed towards the river mouth and the sea.

They reached another smaller stockade. The gate was guarded, but they were allowed to pass straight through. The huts were thatched, but seemed smaller and neater than the others she had seen. There were nine of them along the edge of the beach.

As she stepped down from the truck she looked around her. It was a pretty spot, and reminded her of one of the brochures for a Club Mdditerrande holiday - sea, sand, palms and thatched huts.

The major escorted her politely into the largest hut, and as soon as Isabella saw the two uniformed females who were waiting to meet her she felt her flesh crawl. She remembered the degrading deep body-search that had been inflicted on her on the previous occasion.

Her fears were without substance. The two young women were almost apologetic as they searched her suitcase and handbag. They patted her down, but did not force her to undress for a body-search.

There was minor consternation when they discovered her camera. It was a small 'Swinger' type Kodak. They discussed it with obvious alarm, and Isabella resigned herself to losing it.

"It is of no value,' she told them in Spanish. 'You may take it if you wish." In the end, one of the women took the camera and the two spare rolls of film and disappeared with them through the door at the back of the room.

Ramsey was watching through the peep-hole in the wall as the two women signallers conducted the search. He had ordered them to behave with circumspection and not to give unnecessary offence, so he nodded with approval when one of them came through and handed him the camera and film.

He examined them quickly but thoroughly. He exposed a single frame to ensure that the trigger mechanism functioned and that the film wound on properly. Then he nodded and handed the camera back to the woman.

Isabella was surprised and obviously pleased when it was returned to her.

Through the peep-hole, Ramsey studied her expression with interest. She had grown her hair longer, and her features had matured and become stronger.

She was even more poised and self-possessed than she had been when last he had seen her in Spain. She carried authority and success well, and he reminded himself of her considerable achievements and the high place that she had carved for herself in a few short years.

She had obviously kept herself in top physical condition. She was slim and fit-looking. Her legs and arms under the short cotton blouse and Bermuda shorts were tanned and shapely. Her muscle tone was as taut as that of a professional athlete. He considered her objectively and he thought that she was probably one of the three or four physically most attractive women of the hundreds he had known. He was highly pleased with her. She was in large measure responsible for his own career success.

The two women finished the search and repacked and closed Isabella's suitcase. One of them picked it up and asked Isabella to follow her. She took her to the end of the compound to a gate in the screen fence made of dried palm-fronds. Isabella found herself in a small enclosure that contained only two huts.

The woman led her to the nearest of these and ushered her into a single large living-room, with a mosquito-netted bed in a side-alcove. She deposited the suitcase on the bed and left Isabella alone.

Isabella explored quickly. There was a shower-room and earth toilet at the rear. All very bucolic but more than adequate for her needs. It reminded her of one of Sean's hunting camps in the Chizora concession.

She began unpacking her suitcase. There were hangingspace and shelves behind a curtain, but before she could finish the chore a sound carried to her through the open window overlooking the beach.

It was a sound that pierced her soul, the high joyous shout of a child that she would have recognized wherever or whenever she heard it.

She rushed to the window.

Nicholas was on the beach. He wore only bathing-trunks, and at first glance she saw that he had grown inches since their last meeting in Spain.

He had a puppy with him, a black and white spotted mongrel with a thin muzzle and a long whippy tail. Nicholas was holding a stick out of reach as he raced along the water's edge, and the puppy gambolled and leapt beside him trying to reach the stick. Nicholas was shrieking with laughter, and the puppy yapped hysterically.

Nicholas hurled the stick out into the sea and shouted, 'Fetch!' And the puppy plunged in gamely and swam out to the floating stick. It picked it up in its jaws and turned back.

"Good boy! Come on!' Nicholas encouraged him, and as the puppy came ashore it shook a gale of waterdrops over him. Nicholas howled with protest, and seized one end of the stick. Boy and dog began a laughing growling tug-ofwar.

Isabella found her vision misting over, and she had to blink rapidly to clear her eyes. She left the hut and went down softly to the high-water mark. Nicholas was so absorbed with his pet that she was able to sit still and observe him for almost ten minutes before he noticed her.

Immediately his manner altered. He pushed the puppy away. 'Down!' he commanded sternly, and it obeyed. 'Sid' he said. 'Stay!" He left it at the water's edge and came to Isabella.

"Good day, Mamma.' He held out his hand solemnly. 'How goes it with you today?" 'Did you know I was coming?" 'Yes. I am to be good and kind to you,' he replied frankly. 'But I will not be allowed to go to school while you are here." 'Do you like school, Nicholas?" 'Yes, Mamma, very much. I can read now. And we are learning in English,' he replied in that language.

"Your English is very good, Nicky. Luckily I have brought you some English books.' She tried to make up for denied pleasure. 'I think you will like them." 'Thank you." She felt rejected, an interloper in his compact little world.

"What is your puppy's name?" 'July Twenty-Six." 'That is an odd name for a puppy. Why do you call him that?" He looked astonished at her ignorance. 'July Twentysix. It is the date of the beginning of the revolution. Everybody knows that." 'Of course. How foolish of me." He took pity on her. 'I call him just plain Twenty-Six.' He whistled the puppy, and it came bounding up the beach. 'Sid' he ordered. 'Shake hands." The puppy offered her its paw.

"Twenty-Six is very clever. You have trained him well." 'Yes,' he agreed calmly. 'He is the cleverest dog in the world." 'My baby,' she lamented silently, 'what are they doing to you? What tricks are they playing on your susceptible young mind that you call your puppy after some violent political event?' She did not know what revolution Nicholas was referring to, but the anguish must have twisted her features, for he asked: 'Are you all right, Mamma?" 'Oh, yes." 'I will take you to meet Adra,'he invited. As they walked back through the palms she casually tried to take his hand, but he firmly and politely disengaged her fingers.

"I still have the soccer ball you gave me,' he mollified her. She knew she would have to win his confidence and liking all over again, and the knowledge made her eyes sting once more.

"I must take it very easily,' she cautioned herself. 'I mustn't press him too hard." She was totally unprepared for the shock of first seeing Nicholas in his combat fatigues. With the cap cocked over one eye and his thumbs hooked in his belt, he swaggered like a legionnaire and strutted for her approval.

She covered up her distress and made suitable noises of admiration.

She had brought with her a selection of books that she hoped might appeal to a boy of Nicholas's age. By a fortunate chance one of these was the African classic lock of the Bushveld, a story of a man and his dog.

The illustrations intrigued Nicholas immediately, and he professed to see in Jock a resemblance to his own Twenty-six. They discussed this at great length, and then Nicholas wanted to read the text. It was a simple story, but beautifully written. He read aloud. Despite herself she was impressed by his ability, although once or twice he appealed to her for help with a difficult word or the name of an African animal with which he was unfamiliar.

By the time that Adra came to fetch him to bed, they had made up most of the lost time and ground, and were once again on the slippery footing of tentative friendship.

"Don't push too hard,' she had to keep warning herself.

As he said goodnight and shook her hand formally, he suddenly blurted out: 'It is a good story. I like Jock the dog, and I am glad you have come to see me again. I don't really mind not going to school.' His outburst had clearly embarrassed him, and he hurried from the room.

Isabella waited until she saw the light go out in his bedroom, then she went to find Adra. She wanted to speak to her alone, and try to make some estimate of just what part she had played in Nicholas's abduction and where her sympathies now lay. She also wanted news of Ramsey, and to find out from Adra when she would see him again.

Adra was in the kitchen, washing the dinner-dishes, but as Isabella entered her expression went dead and she withdrew behind an iron-cold reserve. She replied to Isabella in monosyllables and would not meet her eyes. Very shortly Isabella gave up the effort and went back to her own hut.

Despite the fatigue of travel she slept fitfully and woke in the dawn light, eager for her first full day with her son.

They spent the entire day with Twenty-six on the beach. In the bag of gifts that Isabella had brought with her was a tennis ball. This kept boy and dog amused for hours on end.

Then they swam out to the reef. Nicholas showed her how to hook the sea-cats out of their holes in the coral. He was delighted by her horror of the writhing slimy legs of the miniature octopuses and the huge luminous eyes which gave them their name.

"Adra will cook them for dinner,' he promised.

"You love Adra, don't you?' she asked.

"Of course,' he replied. 'Adra is my mother.' He caught himself as he realized his gaffe. 'I mean you are my mamma, but Adra is my real mother." The hurt made her want to weep.

On the second morning Nicholas came to her hut and woke her while it was still dark. 'We are going fishing,' he exulted. 'Jose is going to take us out in the boat.' , jose was one of the camp guards she had noticed on her arrival. He was a dark-skinned young man with crooked teeth and pock-marked face. He was obviously one of Nicholas's favourites. The two of them chatted easily while they readied the boat and the fishing-lines.

"Why do you call him Pele?' she asked Jose in Spanish, and Nicholas answered for him.

"Because I am the champion soccer-player in the school - not so, JOSe?" Nicholas showed her how to bait her line, and was patronizingly indulgent of her inability to remove the hook from the mouth of a leaping, quivering fish.

That evening they read another chapter ofyock together. When Nicholas was in bed, Isabella tried once again to engage Adra in friendly conversation.

She received the same taciturn and hostile response. However, when she gave up and left the kitchen, Adra followed her out into the darkness and gripped her arm. With her lips almost touching Isabella's ear she hissed: 'I cannot talk to you. They are watching us every minute." Before Isabella could recover, Adra had disappeared back into the kitchen.

In the morning Nicholas had another surprise for her. He took her down to the beach where Jok waited for them. At a word from Nicholas he handed over his weapon and stood by grinning with crooked teeth while the boy stripped the AKM. Nicholas's fingers were nimble and fast. He called out the name of each separate part of the weapon as he detached it.

"How long?' he demanded of jose as he finished.

"Twenty-five seconds, Pele.' The guard laughed with admiration. 'Very good.

We will make you a para, yet." 'Twenty-five seconds, Mamma,' he repeated to Isabella proudly, and although she was appalled by the demonstration she tried to make her congratulations sound sincere.

"Now, Jose, you must time me again when I reassemble,' Nicholas ordered.

"And you must take my photograph, Mamma." The camera was a great attraction, and she obeyed. Then Nicholas posed with the rifle and demanded another photograph. Watching him through the lens, she was reminded strongly of the photographs she had seen of the child warriors trained by the Vietcong. They were children dwarfed by the weapons they carried, little boys and girls with faces like cherubs and big innocent eyes. She had read also of the atrocities committed by these aberrant little monsters. Was Nicholas being turned into one of these? The thought made her physically sick.

"Can I shoot, Jose?' Nicholas wheedled him, and they argued playfully until at last Josd allowed himself to be won over.

He threw an empty bottle out into the lagoon, and Nicholas stood at the edge of the water and fired with the selector of the rifle on single shot.

The sound of gunfire brought half a dozen paratroopers and the women signallers from the compound. They stood at the high-water mark and cheered him on. On the fifth shot the bottle exploded and there were shouts of 'Viva, Pelep and 'Courage, Pele!' from the onlookers.

"Take my picture again, Mamma,' Nicholas pleaded, and posed with his admirers on either side of him and the rifle held at high port across his chest.

Adra gave them a picnic lunch of fruit and cold smoked fish to eat on the beach. As they sat together Nicholas remarked suddenly through a mouthful of food: Jose has fought in many battles. He has killed five men with his rifle. One day I will be a true son of the revolution - just as he is." That night she lay under her mosquito-net and tried to fight off the dark waves of despair and helplessness that flooded over her.

"They, are turning my baby into a monster. How can I stop them? How can I get him away from them?"

She did not even know who they were, and her sense of helplessness was overwhelnung.

"Oh, where is Ramsey? If only he would come to me. With his help, I know I can be strong. With him beside me, we can see this dreadful thing through." She tried to approach Adra again, but the woman was cold and intractable.

Nicholas was becoming restless. Although he was still polite and friendly, she could tell that he was becoming bored with her company alone. He spoke of school and soccer matches and his friends and what they would do when he was allowed to return to them. She tried desperately to distract him, but there was a limit to the games she could devise, to the fascination of the books and stories she provided for him.

A kind of wild desperation came over her. She dreamt of escaping with him to the safe and sane world of Weltevreden. She imagined him dressed in the uniform of a firstclass public school, rather than in military camouflage.

She fantasized making some bargain with the mysterious powers that controlled their destinies so completely.

"I would do anything - if only they would give my baby back to me.' Yet, even as she thought it, she knew it was in vain.

Then in the dark and hopeless watches of the night her imagination became morbid. She thought of ending it, ending the torment for both herself and her son.

"It would be the only way to save him, the only way out for both of us." She could use josd's rifle. She would ask Nicholas to show it to her, and once she had it in her hands... She shuddered at the thought and could take it no further.

Colonel-General Ramsey Machado recognized the change in her. He had been anticipating it.

For ten days he had been observing her closely. There were cameras and microphones in the huts which Isabella had not discovered. While she and the child had been together on the beach or in the boat they had been filmed with a high-powered telescopic lens. For hours at a time Ramsey studied her through binoculars from carefully prepared vantage-points above the beach.

He had watched her first wild elation change slowly to simple single-minded enjoyment of her son, and then slowly sour into despair and corroding discontent as she came to appreciate fully the invidious circumstances in which she was trapped.

He guessed that she had probably reached the stage when she could try something desperate that would destroy all the beneficial results that had been achieved by the visit so far.

He gave Adra new orders.

As she served dinner that evening, Adra abruptly sent Nicholas on an errand that got him out of the hut for a few minutes. Then, as she spooned thick fish soup into Isabella's bowl, she leant so close to her that a loose strand of her hair brushed Isabella's cheek.

"Do not speak or look at me,' she whispered. 'I have a message from the marques.' Isabella dropped her spoon with a clatter. 'Careful. Give no sign. He says that he will try to come to you, but it is difficult and dangerous. He says that he loves you. He says to be brave." All thought of suicide was driven from her mind. Ramsey was close. Ramsey loved her. She knew deep down in her heart that it would be all right as long as she had the fortitude to brave it through, and Ramsey's help.

The knowledge kept her going through the next two days. There was a new sparkle and zest in her that she was able to share with Nicholas. The restlessness and creeping ennui which had begun to affect their relationship evaporated. They were happy again together.

In the nights she lay awake in her hut, no longer devoured by doubt and brooding fears, but waiting for Ramsey.

"He will come. I know he will." Then one of the women who had met her and searched her luggage on arrival came to her, but with a message.

35e 'There is an aircraft departing at nine o'clock tomorrow. You will leave with it." 'The child!' she demanded. 'Nicholas - Pele?" The woman shook her head. 'The child remains. Your visit is terminated.

They will fetch you at eight o'clock tomorrow morning. You must be ready.

Those are my orders." She wanted to take some memento of her son with her. After she had showered and changed for dinner she took a pair of nail-scissors from her toilet-bag and hid them in the pocket of her Bermudas. When Nicholas was seated at the dinner-table she came up behind him and before he could pull away she snipped a thick dark curl from the back of his head.

"Hey,'he protested half-heartedly. 'Why do you do that?" 'I want something to remember you by when I am gone." He thought about that for a while and then asked shyly: 'Can I have some of your hair as well - to remember you?" Without a word she handed him the scissors. He stood in front of her and streamed one of her tresses between his fingers.

"Not too much,' she warned him. He laughed and cut a lock and curled it round his finger.

"Your hair is soft - and pretty,' he whispered. 'Do you really have to go, Mamma?" 'I am afraid so, Nicky." 'Will you come and visit me again?" "Yes, I will. I promise you that." 'I will keep this piece of your hair in my lock book.' He fetched the book and pressed the curl between the pages. 'Every time I read the book I will think of you." The moon was almost full. The silver radiance sifted in through the open sides of her hut and cast stark shadows that moved softly across the floor to mark the passage of the hours.

"He must come,' she told herself, lying rigid with fearful hope on the hard mattress. 'Please let him come." Suddenly she sat bolt upright. She had heard nothing, seen nothing, but she knew with utter certainty that he was close. She had to force herself not to call his name aloud. She waited with every sense alert, and then suddenly without sound he was there.

He appeared like a wraith in the silver moonlight, and she gagged the cry that rose in her throat. She threw back the mosquito-net and with three quick steps had crossed the hut and was in his arms. Their kiss seemed to last a moment and all of infinity; and then, still without a word, he drew her down the front steps of the hut and into the sanctuary of the palm grove.

"We do not have long,' he warned her softly, and she choked back a sob and clung to him.

"What is happening to us, darling?' she pleaded. 'I don't understand any of it. Why are you doing this to us?" 'For the same reason that you are forced to obey. For Nicholas, and for you." 'I don't understand. I cannot go on, Ramsey. I have reached the end of my strength." 'Not much longer, my darling. I promise you that. Soon it will be over, and we will be together." 'You said that last time, darling. I have done all I can... 'I know, Bella. What you have done has saved us. Both of us, Nicholas and me. Without you we would have long since been destroyed. You have bought time and life for us." 'They have made me do terrible, terrible things, Ramsey. They have made me betray my family and my country." 'They are pleased with you, Bella. This visit is proof of that. They have given you two weeks with Nicholas. If only you can last a little longer give them just a little more of what they want." 'They will never let me go, Ramsey. I know that. They will hold me for ever, and bleed the last drop." 'Bella, darling.' He stroked her body through the thin silk of her nightgown. 'I have a plan. If you can keep them happy just a little longer, next time they will be more lenient. They will trust you a little more. They will start to become careless - and then, I promise, I will bring Nicky to you." 'Who are they?' she whispered, but he was beginning to make love to her and the question faltered.

"Quiet, my love. Don't ask. It is best you don't know." 'At first I thought it was the Russians, but the Americans acted on my Skylight message. The Americans used my information on the Angola raid. Is it the American CIA, Ramsey?" 'You may be right, my love, but for Nicky's sake don't provoke them." 'Oh God, Ramsey. I am so unhappy. I didn't believe that any civilized people could treat others in this way." 'Not much longer,' he whispered. 'Be strong. Give them what they want for just a little longer, and then Nicky and I will be with you." 'Make love to me, Ramsey. It's the only thing in the world that can keep me from going mad."

Nicholas drove her to the airstrip the following morning. He was tremendously proud of his driving skill, and she was effusive in her praise.

Josd and the regular driver were in the back of the jeep, and she overheard a remark that one made to the other that at the time made little sense but stuck in her memory like a burr.

"Pele is the true cub of the fox, El Zorro." At the ramp of the Ilyushin they said goodbye to each other.

"You promised to come to see me again, Mamma,' Nicholas reminded her.

"Of course, Nicky. What present should I bring you?" 'My soccer ball is worn and leaking. We have to pump it many times during the match." 'I will bring you another." 'Thank you, Mamma.' He offered her his hand, but she could not restrain herself. She dropped to her knees and hugged him to her breast.

For a shocked moment he stood very still in her arms, and then he tore himself violently from her embrace. His face was scarlet with humiliation.

He glared at her, then whirled and ran for the jeep.

She peered down from the small side-window in the flight-deck of the Ilyushin, but Nicholas was gone. She saw the fine pall of dust still hanging over the road to the beach. He left a great emptiness in her soul.

She disembarked from the Ilyushin in Libya where it landed to refuel, and caught a Swissair flight to Zurich. She airmailed postcards to everybody in the family including Nanny, and used her credit cards to establish her presence in Switzerland. She even called on Shasa's bankers in Lausanne to withdraw ten thousand francs and thus allay any suspicions that her father might have about her holiday.

The photographs she had taken of Nicholas were beautiful. She had captured his typical expressions and moods and characteristic poses. Even those of him in his camouflage fatigues handling that dreadful assault-rifle gave her more pleasure than distress.

She was keeping a journal for Nicholas. It was a thick bound book with pockets inside the covers, and it contained every memento of Nicholas that she had accumulated over the years.

There was a copy of his official Spanish birth certificate and adoption papers. She had hired a London firm who specialized in this type of work to trace the Machado family back three centuries. A copy of the family tree and the Machado heraldic arms were in the front pockets of the journal.

There was also the baby bootee that she had retrieved from under his cot in the flat in Milaga. She had pasted in the copies of the reports from his nursery school and the paediatric: clinic, together with every photograph they had ever sent her. She wrote her own comments and a description of her feelings of love and hope and despair on alternate pages.

When she returned to Weltevreden she added the lock of his hair and the photographs she had taken of him to her hoard, and included a description of their interlude together. She even recorded their conversations and every amusing or poignant comment he had made.

When she felt deeply depressed and unhappy she locked herself in her suite, retrieved the journal from her personal safe and gloated over every item in it.

It gave her the strength to go on.

The Beechcraft banked into a steep descending turn and the release of gravity made Isabella feel light in the rear seat.

"There,' Garry shouted from the pilot's left front seat. 'See them? At the foot of the hill. Three of them." Isabella stared down at the forest-top and the broken ground along the rim of the escarpment. The rock was fractured into battlements and turrets, wild cliffs and tumbled towers like the ruins of some fabulous fairy castle.

The forest filled the valleys and the ravines between the rocky castles with splendid chaos; great tree-trunks towered up a hundred feet or more with widespread branches clothed in autumn livery, gilded with all the amalgams of gold and copper and bronze. Other great trees were already bare of leaf; the bloated baobabs with reptilian bark squatted grotesquely as creatures from the age of the dinosaurs. At the very wing-tip of the Beechcraft a giant African ebony flashed by, its leaves still dark shining green and its top branches studded with ripe yellow fruit.

A flock of green pigeons hurled themselves in wild alarm into the air, and darted by so close that she could see their bright yellow beaks and the beady shine of their eyes. Then abruptly the forest ended and a glade of pale winter grass stretched below them. The Beechcraft roared straight at the tall cliff of rock on the far side.

"There! Can you see them, Bella?' Garry called again.

"Yes! Yes! Aren't they magnificent?' she shouted back.

At the far end of the clearing, three bull elephants ran in single file.

Their ears were spread wide as the lateen sail on an Arab dhow. Their backs were humped so that she could see the curved and crested ridge of the spine beneath the grey hide and the gleam of long curved ivory carried high.

As they flashed twenty feet over him, the lead bull turned to confront them. He reached up with a long serpentine trunk as though to pluck them from the sky. Then Garry pulled back on the control column. Gravity sucked at Isabella's bowels, and the aircraft hurtled up to skim the raw blue granite and then bore up high into the cloudless African sky.

"That big one would go all of seventy pounds.' Garry was judging the weight of the bull's tusks as he twisted in the seat, looking back over his shoulder, flying by instinct alone, even in this critical angle of climb.

"Are they in our area, Pater?' he asked, as he rotated the nose down and eased back on throttle and pitch to resume level flight.

"On the edge of it.' Shasa was relaxed in the right-hand seat beside him.

He had taught Garry to fly and knew his capabilities. 'That's the National Park over there - you can see the cut-line through the forest that marks the boundary." 'Those old jumbo are heading straight for it." Isabella leant on the back of her father's seat, and he turned and grinned at her.

"You bet your sweet life, they are,' he agreed.

"You mean they know which is hunting concession and which is the sanctuary?" 'Like you know the way to your own bathroom. At the very first hint of trouble they head for home and mother." 'Can you see the camp?' Garry asked.362 'Just south of that kopie.' Shasa pointed ahead through the windscreen.

"There, now you can see the smoke. The landing-strip runs parallel to that patch of dark Jesse bush." Garry eased the power again, sinking back towards the wilderness, winging low over the rough bush strip to check that it was clear.

A small herd of zebra that had been grazing on the grass strip scattered at their approach and plunged away at full gallop. Each of them towed a feather of pale dust behind it.

Damned donkeys,' Garry muttered. 'Hit one of those and he'll take your wing off." Below her Isabella saw an open truck parked near the crude windsock. She looked for her elder brother at the wheel, but it was one of his black drivers. She felt a tingle of disappointment. She hadn't seen Sean in over two years, and she missed him.

Garry turned the twin-engined Beechcraft on to final approach and lined up with the strip. He lowered the undercarriage, and three green lights lit up on the dashboard. His hands were powerful and sure on the controls as he completed his landing checks and brought her in at a steep angle to avoid the tree-tops that crowded the strip.

"He is a marvelous pilot,'Isabella admired his technique. 'Almost as good as Pater." Garry had flown them up from Johannesburg in the company jet. They had stayed over in Salisbury at the Monomatapa Hotel. Shasa and Garry had had a meeting with Ian Smith, the Rhodesian prime minister. Then they had flown this last leg in the smaller Beechcraft. The jet needed a thousand metres of metalled runway to make a safe landing, whereas the twin-engined Beechcraft could sneak into the short grass strip at Chizora with a skilful pilot at the controls.

It was a full-flap landing, and Garry set her down firmly, no float or bounce. The machine jolted and pitched to the rough surface. He thrust on maximum safe braking as the wall of trees at the far end of the strip rushed towards them. Then he wheeled her with another burst of engine and taxied in a blown dust-devil to where the truck waited for them.

The camp staff swarmed around the Beechcraft the moment that Garry cut the motors. Shasa opened the hatch and jumped down off the wing to shake their hands and greet each one of them in strict order of seniority. Most of the safari staff had been with the company from the beginning, and so Shasa knew each of them by name.

The pleasure of the camp staff was even greater when Isabella jumped down off the wing, and those marvelous white African smiles stretched to the limit. Although her visits to Chizora were intermittent, she was a firm favourite amongst them. They called her Kwezi, the Morning Star.

"I have fresh tomatoes and lettuce for you, Kwezi,' Lot, the head gardener assured her. The garden at Chizora camp was fertilized with buffalo and elephant dung and yielded fruit and vegetables that would have won prizes at any agricultural show. They all knew Kwezi's weakness for salads.

"I put your tent at the end,- Kwezi,' Isaac, the camp butler, told her. "So you can listeh to the birds in the morning. Chef has got your special rooibos tea for you.' The herbal tea from the Cape mountains was another of Isabella's weaknesses.

Garry ran the Beechcraft into its jackal-wire hangar to prevent the lions and hyenas gnawing on the tyres during the night. The staff loaded their baggage on the back of the open truck. Then with Garry at the Toyota's wheel they bumped along the rough track through the combretum forest.

It had been a good rainy season, and game was plentiful. The sandy track was dimpled with their spoor. When they came out into the wide glade in front of the camp, there were herds of zebra and sleek red-brown impala standing out unafraid on the silvery winter-grass pasture. It was one of Sean's strict rules that no shot was ever fired within two miles of the camp. This was no inhibiting restriction, for the Chizora concession spread over ten thousand square kilometres.

The camp overlooked the glade and the muddy waterhole at its centre. Later in the season, when the water dried up, the game would migrate. Then Sean would be obliged to pack up this entire camp and follow them down the escarpment to his other camp-site on the shore of Lake Kariba.

The row of green tents was set back discreetly within the forest, each with its own shower and earthen toilet standing behind it. The dining-tent was surrounded by a thatch-walled boma which was open to the sky. The canvas camp-chairs were set around the camp-fire, great logs of leadwood and mopane which were kept burning day and night. The camp servants all wore crisply starched uniforms, and Isaac, as camp butler, sported a crimson sash over one shoulder.

The portable generator provided lighting and power for the bank of refrigerators and deep-freezers in the mudwalled pantry. From his thatched kitchen the chef conjured up a sequence of gourmet dishes. There were all the refinements of what was known as a 'Hemingway camp'. Chief amongst these were the tubs of ice on the bar table and the regiments of liquor-bottles drawn up in ranks. There were five different brands of premium whisky and three of single malt. A grand cru Chablis Vaudesir reposed in a silver ice-bucket. There were also the ingredients for Pimm's No. i and Bloody Mary, to cater for those with more mundane tastes. All the glasses were Stuart crystal. The type of clients who could afford the safari fees expected and made damn sure they got these basic necessities of life.

The uniformed attendants had filled the tanks of the individual showers with piping-hot water. While the guests washed off the dust and grime of their travels, they unpacked and laid out their safari clothes in each tent.

Bathed and refreshed, the family gathered at the campfire, and Shasa glanced at his wristwatch.

"Bit early for a peg?" 'Nonsense,' said Garry. 'We are on holiday." He called the barman to take their orders.

Isabella sipped her cold white wine. For the first time in almost two years she felt safe and at peace, and incongruously she thought of Michael. He was the only thing missing. She watched the procession of beautiful wild animals coming down to drink at the waterhole and listened to her father and Garry with only half her attention.

They were discussing Sean's client. He was a German industrialist named Otto Heider.

"He's twenty years older than Sean, but they are soulmates. Both of them are thrusters. God, they take some chances together,' Shasa told them. "The more hairy and dangerous the action, the more old Otto loves it. He won't hunt with anybody except Sean." 'I had Special Services run a full report on him,' Garry nodded. Special Services was a closed section of Courtney Enterprises whose director reported directly to Garry. It was his private intelligence system. It dealt with everything from company security to industrial espionage. 'Otto Heider is a player all right. The list of his assets runs to four typed pages, but he is a wild player. I don't think we should get financially involved with him. He takes too' many chances. According to my calculations, he is undercapitalized by at least three billion Deutschmarks." 'I agree," Shasa inclined his head. 'He's an interesting character, but not for us. Do you know he brings his own blood-bank on safari, just in case he gets stamped on by an elephant or hooked by a buffalo?" 'No, I didn't know that.' Garry sat forward in his campchair.

"Fresh sweet blood,' Shasa smiled. 'On the hoof, so to speak.

Self-administering transfusions." 'What does that mean?' Even Isabella was interested.

"He brings two qualified nurses with him. Both blonde, both beautiful and under twenty-five years old, both blood-type AB Positive. If he needs blood, he can tap it 3ee straight off one of them and at the same time have expert nursing care." Garry let out an admiring snort of laughter. 'And, even if he does not need blood, they are still extremely useful items to have on a safari. The transfusions simply flow in the opposite direction." 'You are disgusting, Garry,' Isabella smiled.

"Not me! Old Otto is the disgusting one. I think I am changing my opinion of him. We might still do business together. Such forethought is most commendable." 'Forget it. Otto is flying out first thing in the morning with his two nurses. The client we are really interested in arrives tomorrow afternoon.

Sean will drop Otto in Salisbury and bring the other one back-' Shasa broke off and shaded his eyes, staring out across the wide glade in front of the camp.

"I hear Sean's truck. Yes, there he comes." The tiny shape of the hunting vehicle darted out of the forest edge a mile away across the open grassland.

"Master Sean is in a real hurry." The sound of the truck engine mounted to a roar. A tall column of dust rose into the still evening sky. The animals at the waterhole panicked and galloped for the trees.

As the distance closed rapidly, they could make out the occupants of the open Toyota. The cab and the body work had been removed and the windscreen laid flat over the engine bonnet. On a high rear seat were four figures.

Sean's two black trackers in khaki fatigues and two white women. These, Isabella presumed, were the German nurses, for they fitted the description, young and blonde and pretty.

In the front passenger-seat was a middle-aged dressed in custom-tailored safari clothing. He wore goldrimmed spectacles and a leopard-skin band around his Stetson. He exuded the air of jaunty confidence that marked him as Otto Heider, the client they had been discussing.

Sean was at the wheel of the speeding Toyota, and Isabella could not restrain herself. She jumped up from the camp-chair and ran to the gate of the boma.

Scan wore a bush shirt with two heavy-calibre brass cartridges in the loops on his breast. His shirt-sleeves had been cut away at the shoulders, so that his arms were bare. The muscles were tanned and glowing with abundant health as though they had been oiled. His shoulder-length hair was cut in a Prince Valiant bob. The Comanche-stylc leather thong around his forehead could not restrain the shimmering jet-black locks that danced and fluttered like a flag around his head as he drove the truck at high speed up to the entrance of the boma.

He hit the brakes so hard that the heavy vehicle spun into a broadside and came to a halt in a billowing cloud of its own dust. Sean leapt out and strode towards them. His khaki shorts were cut away high on the thighs, and his sockless feet were thrust into kudu-skin velskoen.

"Sean!' Isabella let out a happy cry, but he brushed past her with an expression of dark fury on his face. She stared after him in bewilderment.

Sean ignored his father as he had his sister and stopped in front of his younger brother.

"Just what the hell do you think you are playing at?' he asked in a voice that rang with cold fury, and Garry's happy grin faded.

"And I'm glad to see you also.' Garry's tone was mild, but his eyes sparkled with annoyance behind his spectacles.

Sean reached down and seized the front of Garry's shirt. With one clean jerk, he lifted his brother out of the canvas chair. It was a feat of brutal strength, for Garry was a big, solidly built man.

"Let me tell you a little secret,' Sean said. 'I spend four days getting into position for a shot at the only decent bull I've seen all season. At the critical moment you come barging in like von Richthofen and rev the hell out of us!" 'Look, Sean, I didn't... Garry tried to placate him, but Sean wasn't even listemng.

"You goddam pen-pushing office wallah. You soft-arsed tourist playing tough guy. Who the hell are you trying to impress?" 'Scan.' Garry held up both hands, palms open. 'Come on, be reasonable. How was I to know?" 'Reasonable? When you shoot up my concession and chase the hell out of my jumbo. Reasonable? When you screw up my best client and the last shot we will get at a big bull this safarif 'I said I'm sorry." 'If you're sorry now, just think how sorry you're going to be five minutes from now,' said Sean. With his left hand still gripping Garry's shirt, he shoved him backwards. Instinctively Garry resisted. Instantly Sean reversed the pressure, and it took Garry by surprise.

Sean did not cock his right hand. He threw the punch only five inches, but the full power of his broad muscled shoulders was behind it and Garry was moving into it. Garry's teeth clicked together in his jaw. As he staggered backwards his spectacles spun from his head. The campchair caught him at the back of his knees; he went over backwards, falling heavily and awkwardly.

"Damn it, that felt good,' said Sean, clenching and unclenching his right hand as he moved around the overturned chair to reach him again.

"Sean!' Isabella recovered from her shock. 'Stop it, Sean! Leave him alonev She ran forward to interpose herself between her brothers, but Shasa caught her arm to restrain her. Although she struggled to be free, he held her easily.

Garry struggled into a sitting position. His expression was dazed. A little trail of blood crept out of one nostril, and he tried to sniff it back.

Then he lifted his hand and smeared it across his upper lip. He held the bloodied hand close to his myopic eyes and inspected it with disbeliel "Come on, Big Shot.' Sean was standing over him. 'Get on your feet. I've been saving up for this." 'Leave him alone, Sean. Please!' Isabella hated the violence and the blood and this terrifying anger between two people she loved so dearly. 'Stop it!

Stop itv 'Quiet, Bella!' Her father shook her sharply. 'Keep out of this."

Still sitting in the dust, Garry shook himself like a great St. Bernard dog.

"Come on, Mr. bloody Chairman of the Board,' Sean taunted him. 'Get on your feet, Mr. Businessman of the Sodding Year. Let's see your style, Mr. Fortune Magazine 500.

"Leave them, Bella.' Shasa still held her. 'This had to come. It's been brewing for twenty years. Let them work it out.' Suddenly Isabella understood. Sean's choice of jibes was an expression of the envy and resentment that he had accumulated over a lifetime.

Sean was the firstborn, the golden princeling, the pick of the litter. All those honours and titles should have been his. He should have been the prime recipient of his father's favour and approbation, and yet he had lost it all. It had been stolen away from him by the runt.

"Piss-bed,' said Sean. 'Four-eyes.'Those were childhood insults. Isabella had a vivid memory of the lordly superiority of the elder brother. She remembered how in the Cape winters of their childhood, when the snow lay thick on the Hottentots Holland mountains, Sean would turn Garry out of bed in the dawn and send him to sit on the toilet to warm the seat for him. She remembered a hundred other episodes of humiliation and casual bullying by which Sean had reinforced his domination over the weakling.

Garry came to his feet. He had applied twenty years of unremitting labour to building up the sickly body that he had been born with. Now his chest was a barrel of muscle, and the coarse body-hair curled out of the V of his shirt front. His limbs were almost grotesquely over-developed. However, he stood almost four inches shorter than his elder brother as they confronted each other.

"That,' he said quietly, 'is the last time. It will never happen again. Do you understand?" 'No.' Sean shook his head, his anger contained behind the mocking smile. 'I don't understand, Piss-bed. You are going to have to explain it to me." The German client and his two nubile nurses had climbed down from the Toyota and followed Sean into the boma. Now they were watching with delighted anticipation.

Garry blinked like an owl without his glasses, but his teeth clenched so hard that humps of muscles, like walnuts, bulged on the hinges of his jaw below his ears. Sean leant forward, balanced on the balls of his feet and slapped his cheek lightly, still smiling mockingly, and Garry went for him.

He was fast for such a heavy man, the way a bull buffalo is fast, the way an old mugger crocodile is fast, but Sean was fast as a leopard. He ducked under Garry's rush, and threw a left-hander into his belly just below the sternum of his ribs. It was like throwing a brick at a battle-tank. Garry did not even grunt. He merely hunched his shoulders and came in again.

Sean weaved and danced ahead of him, the insolent grin still on his lips.

He was letting Garry come to him, and counter-punching with the rushes. His blows thudded on rubbery muscles as though he were beating a truck tyre with a baseball bat.

The German nurses were squealing with happy horror. The camp servants came running from the kitchen lines. Their heads bobbed up in a row along the low boma wall, wide-eyed with fascination.

"Stop them, Daddy,' Isabella pleaded, but Shasa was assessing his sons with a calculating eye. So far, this was the way he would have expected it to go.

Sean was all flash and style, tossing back his glossy locks after each exchange, taking a moment to glance at his audience, especially the blonde nurses.

Garry, on the other hand, was plugging away solidly, making Sean dance and weave to keep out of range of those massive arms. He was obviously willing to take all the body shots that Sean could throw at him. However, it was surprisingly difficult for Sean to land on Garry's head. He had a trick of hunching those muscled shoulders at the final instant and deflecting Sean's fists.

He was also very quick with his arms, and some of Sean's best punches to the head were caught on Garry's heavy biceps or on his hairy forearms.

At first, Garry's rushes seemed to be without purpose. Then Shasa realized that he was remorselessly driving Sean back into the corner wall of the boma, attempting to pin and grapple him there. Each time, Sean managed to break clear and Garry would begin all over again. He was as patient as a sheep-dog, working him into the position he wanted, grimly accepting the punishment Sean was inflicting. Blood from his nostril was running into his mouth and dripping from his chin into the front of his khaki bush shirt.

By this time Sean's mocking grin was becoming a little strained, and the flow of taunts had long since dried up. His movements were no longer so crisp. On the other hand, Garry moved with the same ponderous rhythm and momentum, pushing Sean back, back, always backwards. Sean's punches were losing their snap, and he threw them less prolifically.

Then Garry blocked him as he tried to pirouette away to the right, at last anticipating his move precisely. Sean back-pedalled quickly to regain poise, and felt the thatch of the wall touch his back. He ducked to go under Garry's outstretched arm, and Garry let his first punch fly.

All the spectators gasped, and one of the nurses squeaked shrilly. Garry's punch was a thunderbolt, with two hundred pounds of muscle and bone and determination driving it. It hissed through the air and, although Sean caught it on his guard, it drove on through. It crashed against the curved dome of his skull, high above the hairline, with a force that made his long shining hair swirl and flicker as though a gust of wind had caught it.

For an instant Sean's eyes rolled fully backwards in their sockets, giving him a blind white stare. His knees buckled and sagged under him. Then he partially recovered, but his face was frosted with pain and his mouth was twisted with panic, as he tried to avoid the next bear-like rush.

Garry charged in, eagerly seizing the moment for which he had worked so doggedly. His arms were spread as though to welcome an old friend or a lover. Suddenly he kicked and spurted like a long-distance runner hearing the bell for the final lap. He had fooled them all, including Sean. They had thought that those ponderous rushes were all the speed he had, but suddenly there was more, much more.

A buffalo bull charges in for the kill in the same fashion, crabbing across the front of his victim, lulling him, making him doubt that he is really the focus of all that mountainous aggression. Then at the last moment he turns in with bewildering speed to hook and gore and trample.

Half-stunned, Sean could not avoid him. Garry's arms snapped around him in a murderous hug, and the momentum of his charge carried them both onwards into the dining-tent. The bar table went over in a shower of ancient spirits, noble wines and precious crystal. They trampled the glittering splinters underfoot, and a heady cloud of fumes enveloped them for a moment before they barged onwards.

The long dining-table, spread with Madeira lace, crashed over. The Rosenthal dinner service burst into ten thousand expensive splinters. As they went out through the back of the tent, they ripped out the guy ropes and the canvas sagged in weary folds. The servants scattered with cries of alarm and excitement and encouragement.

In a ferocious waltz, they whirled each other in erratic circles. Garry's grip was unshakeable. He had doublelocked his own wrists behind his brother's back. His arms convulsed, rippling with muscle as they tightened like a python crushing its prey.

One of Sean's arms was trapped in that deadly circle. With the free fist, he beat wildly at Garry's head, but he lacked purchase and the blows had no sting. Although one caught Garry in the mouth and split his lip, it left his big white teeth intact. He merely ducked his head and slitted his eyes and squeezed and squeezed.

With an approving roar from the black audience and feminine squeals from Sean's admirers, they lunged into the far side of the thatched boma wall and it burst open.

The two of them, still locked together, came storming back on to the central stage. One of the nurses was not quick enough to avoid them. She was knocked over in a tangle of long tanned legs, flaring skirts and lacy underwear that might have stopped any lesser show. Nobody even glanced at her.

Garry was trying to swing Sean off his feet, lifting him high with each turn. Although Sean's face was swelling and darkening with blood from the constriction of his chest and breathing, he managed like a cat to come down on his feet after each wild swing until Garry steered him into the middle of the camp-fire. Sean's legs were bare, and the flames licked at them, frizzling the hair off his calves, scorching the thin kudu-skin velskoen.

Sean let out a howl of anguish and bounded high in his brother's arms. He managed to jump clear of the fire, but Garry's grip was inexorable.

Grunting with the effort, he forced Sean slowly backwards, bending him like a longbow. Sean's scorched legs buckled, and he sank lower and lower. His knees touched the ground, and Garry bent over him and grunted again as he tightened the circle of his arms another inch.

The air was forced from Sean's lungs in a long hollow groan, and his face suffused with dark blood. Garry grunted again, and his grip tightened another notch, remorseless as a mechanical steel press. Sean's eyes began to bulge from their sockets, and his jaw fell open. His tongue lolled out between his teeth.

"Garry! You are killing him!' Isabella screamed, her concern moving from one brother to the other. Her father held her, and Garry showed no sign of having heard her. He grunted yet again and squeezed.

This time they heard Sean's ribs crack like green twigs. He cried out and went slack as a half-empty bag of wheat in Garry's arms. Garry dropped him and stood back, breathing heavily. His own face was flushed and swollen with the effort.

Sean tried to sit up, but the pain of the cracked ribs lanced him and he moaned again and clutched his chest. Garry smoothed back his hair with both hands, but the unruly crest at the crown of his scalp sprang up again immediately.

"Right,'said Garry calmly. 'From now on you will behave yourself. Do you hear me?" Sean managed to push himself up on to his knees with one hand, clutching his chest with the other.

"Do you hear me?'Garry asked again, standing over him.

"Screw you,' Sean whispered, and the effort hurt his chest.

Garry leant over and prodded his injured chest with a thick hard thumb.

"Do you hear me?" 'OK, OK,' Sean yelped. 'I hear you." 'Good,' Garry nodded, and turned to the hovering nurses. 'Frdulein,' he said in passable German, 'I think we have need of your professional services." They rushed forward clucking. One on each side of him, they raised Sean to his feet and led him away to his tent.

Shasa released Isabella's arm.

"Well,' he murmured. 'That seems to have sorted that out at last.' And then he glanced at the shambles of the dining-tent.

"I do hope that wasn't the last bottle of Chivas."

Garry sat on the camp-bed, stripped to the waist while Isabella anointed his bruises with arnica salve from the first-aid box. The hectic blotches left by Sean's fists covered his arms and upper body like the dappling of a giraffe's hide. His nose was swollen, and his lip was lumped and crusted with fresh scab.

"I think it's an improvement,' Isabella told him. 'Before your face was only half-nose, now it is all nose." Garry chuckled and pinched the end of it gingerly. 'We have taken care of Master Sean. Now it seems as though you are next on the list to be taught a little respect." She kissed the top of his head where the tuft stood up from his crown.

"Teddy Bear,' she said. 'You know, Garry, Holly is a lucky girl; you are one hell of a man.'He blushed, he actually blushed, and her love for him was confirmed and strengthened. He was no longer comical, even with the bloated nose and thick upper lip.

Sean groaned again theatrically, and Otto Heider threw back his head and laughed.

"Herep He poured another three fingers of whisky into the tumbler that stood on the bedside table. 'This is for the pain, like chloroform." Sean leant across to take the glass and tossed back the whisky. 'I've been jumped on by buffalo and kicked by jumbo, but this one! Hey, Trudi, take it easy." Trudi paused with the surgical tape in her hand, and kissed him full on the lips.

"Be quiet,' she said. 'I am fixing you.' She had a sexy German lisp and soft red lips.

"You are a great little fixer,' he admitted. She tinkled with laughter and resumed work on his injured chest, passing the tape under his armpit to Erica who sat behind Sean on his king-size bed.

"No more bumsen for you.' Erica smiled severely. 'Not for many long times." And passed the tape under his other armpit, back to Trudi.

Otto Heider laughed again. 'Are you going to retire injured and leave me to take care of these two little vixen all on my own?'Otto was amazingly generous to his friends, and Sean was an old friend. Otto shared with his friends. The four of them - Otto, Trudi, Erica and Sean - had 37e done more than merely hunt together. It had been a fun safari. Except for the elephant that Garry had messed up, they had all enjoyed themselves immensely.

"You no good any more. But your brother - he strong like a bull.' Trudi slanted her eyes wickedly. 'He fight good. You think he bumsen good?" Sean stared at her thoughtfully for a moment, and then he began to grin.

"My brother is a prude, a prig. He was almost certainly a virgin when he married that po-faced wench of his. I doubt he would know what to do with a good piece of bumsen if you waved it under his nose." 'We show him what to do with it,' Trudi promised. 'Me and Erica, we show him good." 'What do you think, Otto?' Sean looked across at his client. 'Can I borrow the ladies tonight? It shouldn't take long? I'll have them back at your tent by midnight." Otto shook his head with admiration. 'My friend, you are one funny man. You always make such good jokes. Hey, girls, you like it? What you think? It's a funny joke, hey?" Sean was laughing with them, holding his injured ribs to cushion them.

However, there was a vindictive gleam in his eyes.

Sean understood better than any of them what had happened that day. It had been much more than another brotherly brawl that he had provoked. It had been the ultimate territorial contest of two young bulls in the final battle for dominance and rank. He had lost, and the defeat rankled deeply.

He knew that he could never seriously challenge again. Garry had beaten him in every sphere, from the boardroom to the physical arena. Garry was at last unassailable. All Sean could do now was adulterate his power. He wanted to lay in a little insurance against the stormy days that he was sure lay ahead.

Garry was having a dream. It was extraordinarily vivid and real. He was being pursued across an open meadow by a horde of dancing wood-nymphs, and his legs were lead beneath him. Each pace was an effort as though he waded through a swamp of hot treacle.

He could see Holly and the children standing at the far side of the meadow.

She was holding the baby in her arms, and the other children crowded about her legs, clinging to her skirts. Holly was calling something to him, although he could not hear the words. Tears poured from those lovely bi-coloured eyes of hers.

He tried to reach her, but then he felt the soft warm hands of the nymphs on his body holding him back. He tried to shrug off the hands, but the effort was unconvincing. In despair, he saw Holly and the children turn away from him. She gathered the little ones closer around her, and they faded away into the woods beyond the meadow.

He tried to call to them to wait, but his own thoughts and feelings were confused. The hands on him were exciting. Suddenly his own arousal was overpowering. He no longer wanted to escape. He didn't want the dream to end, for even in his sleep he realized that it was a dream.

He let himself flow with the fantasy, and there were smooth warm bodies pressing close around him. The smell* of excited young womanhood was sweet and irresistible in his nostrils. He heard their laughter muffled by his own flesh and the startling sensation of their hot lubricious mouths upon him.

Holly and the children were gone; he had forgotten them, their images wereerased by his lust. He felt himself surrendering to it completely.

Then suddenly he was wide awake and he realized that it was not a dream.

His bed was filled with squirming bodies. They swarmed over him. He did not know how many hands were stroking and pressing and tugging and caressing him. Silky hair washed over his face like seawater. Hot wet little tongues licked and probed at him. Long smooth limbs wrapped and enveloped him.

For a moment longer he lay quiescent, and then he let out a cry and sprang upright. The moonlight poured into his tent. The naked feminine bodies glowed like opals as they clung to him.

His elder brother was sitting on the end of his bed. Sean's chest was wrapped in white tape, but there was a boyish grin on his face. 'You have won first prize, Garry old fruit. To the victor the spoils. Enjoy, lad, enjoy!" 'You bastard!' Garry reached for him.

But Sean was gone with an alacrity that discounted the injuries to his chest. The two girls scrambled out of his rumpled bed in a confusion of limbs and bouncing bosoms and bobbing white buttocks.

Garry grabbed them, one under each arm and lifted them as easily as he would a pair of kittens. He carried them out of his tent. They squealed and kicked in the air ineffectually.

He saw his father in the doorway of his tent belting his dressing-gown.

"I say, old chap, what's going on?" 'My darling brother put a bunch of vermin in my bed. just getting rid of them,' Garry told him politely.

"Pity,' said Shasa. 'Awful waste.' But Garry marched on. Shasa sauntered along behind him, hands in the pockets of his dressing-gown, grinning with amusement.

Isabella was in a short lace nightie, wide-eyed with sleep as she stumbled out of her tent. 'Garry, what on earth have you got theref 'I should have thought that was fairly obvious." 'Two, Garry? Isn't that a bit greedy?" 'Ask Sean; it was his idea." 'What are you going to do with them? May I come along?" 'Delighted. You and Pater can report to Holly for me." Garry led the small procession out of the camp, across the glade and down to the edge of the waterhole. It was a cold night; the frost crunched under their feet. The approach to the waterhole had been trampled into a greasy black porridge by the hoofs of the game that drank from it.

"Please, we make little joke,' Trudi trilled from under Garry's arm, wriggling weakly.

"It is joke,' Erica agreed tearfully. 'Please to let go.' She had slipped around and hung head-down in Garry's grip. Her bare bottom flashed in the light of the moon, and she bicycled her legs in the air.

"Me, too,' Garry told them. 'I make little joke. I think my joke better than your little joke." His first throw was not his best, a mere twenty feet. But, then, Erica was the plumper and heavier of the two and she classed as a ranging shot. His second throw was much better, all of thirty feet, and Trudi shrieked in flight. The sound was cut off abruptly as she plunged below the icy water.

Both girls came up spluttering and wailing miserably under a coat of glistening black mud.

"Now, that,' said Garry, 'is what I call a real joke."

Sean was late for breakfast. He paused in the entrance to the dining-tent, and his eyes narrowed as he glanced around.

The servants had made good most of the damage. The broken furniture had been repaired during the night by the camp handyman. Isaac had put together a scratch dinner service to replace the breakages. Trudi and Erica had washed off most of the mud, but their hair was still drying in coloured plastic curlers. However, none of this held Sean's attention.

He looked to his place at the end of the long table. It was his camp, and that seat was his by tradition and custom. Everybody knew that. His name was printed on the canvas back of the chair.

Garry sat in his top chair. The swelling of his nose had subsided considerably. He had repaired the side-frame of his damaged spectacles. His hair was still wet from the shower. He looked big and cocky and self-satisfied, and he was sitting in Sean's chair.

He looked up at Sean from his hunter's breakfast of impala liver and onions and scrambled eggs. 'Morning, Sean,' he said cheerfully. 'Get me a cup of coffee while you're up." There was a sudden silence at the table. Every one of them watched Sean for his reaction. Slowly Sean's scowl faded and he smiled.

"How many sugars?' he asked as he went to the sideboard and took the coffee-pot out of Isaac's hands.

"Two will do.' Garry resumed eating, and an audible ripple of relief ran down the table. Everybody started talking again at the same time.

Sean brought his younger brother the coffee-mug, and Garry nodded. "Thanks, Sean. Sit down.' He indicated the empty chair beside him. 'We have got a few things to discuss." Isabella wanted desperately to listen to that conversation, but the two German girls were giggling and chattering, flirting with Shasa and Otto indiscriminately. She knew that Garry was setting out the programme of meetings that would be taking place in this camp over the next few days.

The names of the visitors and every detail about them would be important to her, and to Nicky.

"What about this Italian woman? You've had her as a client before. What's she like?' she heard Garry ask, and Sean shrugged.

"Elsa Pignatelli? Swiss Italian. She shoots well, when you can get her to shoot. Never takes a chance, but when she pulls that trigger something falls down. I've never seen her miss." Garry thought about that for a moment, then nodded. 'Anything else?" 'She's bloody-minded. Wants things done her way, and you can't slip anything over on her - eyes in the back of her head. I tried to pad the bill a little. She picked it up right away." Garry nodded. 'Doesn't surprise me. She's one of the richest women in Europe. Pharmaceuticals and chemicals.

Heavy engineering, jet engines, armaments. She has run the show since her husband died seven years ago. She has a tough reputation." "Last season we took a full-out charge from a wounded jumbo in thick Jesse bush. She stood her ground and put him down with a frontal brain shot at twenty paces. Then she turned on me and chewed me up. Accused me of firing at her elephant. She's tough all right." 'Anything else? Any weaknesses? Liquor?' Garry asked.

Sean shook his head. 'One glass of champagne every evening. Fresh bottle of Dom Perignon each time. She drinks one glass and sends the rest away. Fifty dollars a bottle." 'Anything else?' Garry stared at him through his thick spectacles, and Sean grinned.

"Come on, Garry. She's an old aunty - must be all of fifty. P 'Actually she is forty-two,' Garry contradicted him.

Sean sighed. 'OK, you want to know if we played hide-the-sausage together.

Look, I made the offer. Hell, it's expected of me. That's part of the service. She laughed. She said she didn't want to be arrested for child abuse.' He shook his head. Sean didn't like admitting to sexual failures.

"Pity! We have to do business with her,' Garry pointed out. 'I need any leverage I can lay my hands on." 'I'll bring her in at five this afternoon,' Sean promised. 'Then she's all yours, and the best of British luck to you.$ They all drove out to the airstrip to give Otto and his nurses a send-oft.

The mood was gay.

Not only had the German girls forgiven Garry for their midnight dunking, but he also seemed to have won their esteem and piqued their interest by his forthright refusal of their offer. They made a huge fuss of him, kissing and hugging him and ruffling his hair until he blushed again.

"Next time, we make good jokes again,' they promised him. They waved furiously through the side-windows as the Beechcraft roared down the airstrip and flashed into the air. Half a mile out and two hundred feet high, Sean threw the aircraft into a maximum-rate turn and came diving back on them, flashing barely twenty feet over their heads. The girls in the back seat were still waving.

"Cowboy!'gruffed Garry, as he climbed behind the wheel of the Toyota. "Are you coming, Bella?" 'I'll drive back with Pater,'she called. She knew it would be easier for her to pump her father than her brother. She ran to the second truck and jumped up into the seat beside Shasa.

They were halfway back to the camp before she got her chance.

"So who is Elsa Pignatelh?' she asked sweetly. 'And why haven't I heard of her before?" Shasa looked startled. 'How did you find out about her?" "Don't you trust me, Pater? I am your personal assistant, aren't IF Cunningly she saddled him with guilt, and immediately he began trying to exonerate himself. 'Forgive me, Bella. It's not that I don't trust you.

It's all rather hush-hush." 'She is the main reason for us all being here, isn't that so?" But Shasa was still being evasive.

"Elsa Pignatelli is an avid huntress, a veritable Diana. She has hunted with Sean for the last three seasons. Her passion is hunting the cats lion and leopard. You know that Sean has a reputation for bringing-in big cats." 'We haven't come to watch her kill cats,' Isabella pressed him, and Shasa shook his head and relented.

"Amongst the Pignatelli assets are a number of chemical factories pharmaceuticals, agricultural fertilizers and pesticides, plastics and paints. They hold certain patents that we are interested in." 'So why didn't Garry fly to Geneva or Rome, or wherever she lives?" 'Lausanne actually."

"So why didn't he go to her, or why didn't she send one of her people to meet him in Johannesburg, instead of this Tarzan setting in the jungle?

What precisely is all the mystery?" Shasa slowed the truck and gave all his attention to negotiating the rocky ford of the river. He did not reply until they climbed the steep opposite bank in four-wheel drive.

"Forgive me for not letting you in on it. I was going to tell you. Our interests are not confined entirely to agricultural pesticides. There would be a lot of unfriendly people out there in the big wide world who would be very interested in any discussions between Pignatelli Industries and the chairman of Armscor." 'Ah, you are wearing your Armscor hat, so it must be armaments or weapons." Speculatively Shasa glanced across at her. She had a brightly coloured scarf bound around her hair like a turban, and the wind had rouged her cheeks. She was very lovely, and Shasa felt a prickle of guilt that he should have mistrusted her. She was part of him; he should trust her as he did his own self.

"You and I have discussed the weapons of last resort,' he murmured.

"Not nuclear weapons?' Isabella said. 'You have the bomb already. All that fuss over Operation Skylight.) 'No, not nuclear weapons,' he sighed. 'Something just as nasty, I'm afraid.

You know that I share your distaste for weapons of mass indiscriminate destruction. However, such weapons are not intended ever to be used. Their effectiveness lies in their mere existence." 'If they exist, then sooner or later some madman is going to use them,' she said flatly, and again Shasa shook his head.

"We've been over this before, my darling. But the bare fact remains that I have been entrusted with the job of providing our nation with all possible means of protecting itself. I have not been given the option of deciding which weapons are morally acceptable." 'Do we really need some other nastiness?'she insisted.

"There is a groundswell of hatred running against our little country. It is being cunningly orchestrated by a small vicious group of our enemies. They are brainwashing an entire generation of young people around the world to regard us as monsters who must be destroyed at all costs. Very soon these young people will be in positions of authority and command. They are the decision-makers of tomorrow. One day we could see an American naval task force blockading our coast. We could face a military invasion of, say, Indian troops backed by Australia and Canada and all the members of the Commonwealth." 'Oh, Papa, that is far-fetched. Isn't it?" 'Still remote,' Shasa agreed. 'But you met influential members of the British Labour Government while we were in London. You spoke to members of the American Democratic Party - Teddy Kennedy for one. Do you remember what he told you?" 'Yes, I remember,' said Isabella, and the memory subdued her.

"We must make absolutely certain that no nation - not even one of the superpowers - can ever with impunity consider armed intervention in our internal affairs." 'We already have the bomb,' she pointed out.

"Nuclear weapons are expensive, difficult to deliver and impossible to limit or control in their effects. There are other effective deterrents." 'Elsa Pignatelli is going to provide an alternative? Why should she help us?" 'Signora Pignatelli is a sympathizer. She is a member of the Italian South Africa Society. She knows and understands Africa. She is a huntress and she has other ties with this continent. Her father was on General de Bono's staff when he invaded Abyssinia in 1935. Her husband fought in the Western Desert under Rommel and was captured at Benghazi. He spent three years as a POW in South Africa and developed an affection for the country that lasted his lifetime. He transmitted those feelings to her. She visits Africa regularly, either to hunt or to do business. She understands the problems we face and rejects, as we do, the simplistic solutions which the rest of the world would try to force upon us. This meeting was arranged at her suggestion." Isabella wanted to ask questions, but she knew it was wiser to let him come to it in his own time.

She sat silently staring at the rutted track, barely noticing the herd of impala antelope that crossed ahead of the vehicle in a series of lithe bounds. They were lovely but insubstantial as blown smoke through the forest.

"Only four people know about this meeting, Bella. Signora Pignatelli has not trusted her own staff. Apart from Garry and I, only the prime minister is aware of the subject of our meeting." Isabella suppressed that sickening sense of treachery that lay at the pit of her stomach. She wanted to warn him not to tell, then she thought of Nicky and she sat quietly.

"Five years ago, NATO had contracted with two chemical companies in Western Europe to develop a nerve gas that could be used under battlefield conditions. Last autumn the contracts were cancelled, mostly due to pressure from the socialist governments of Scandinavia and Holland. However, much work had already been done on the development of these weapons, and one company had produced and tested a gas that met all the original criteria." 'That company was Pignatelli Chemicals?" Isabella asked. When Shasa nodded, she went on: 'What were the criteria that NATO laid down?" 'The weapon has to be safe to store and transport. Pignatelli developed two separate substances, each on its own absolutely inert and harmless. They can be transported in bulk tankers by road or by rail without any risk whatsoever. But when they combine they form a heavier-than-air gas which is approximately eleven times more toxic than the cyanide gas used in American execution-chambers." 39e Shasa pulled off the track and parked the truck on the verge beneath the outspread branches of a flowering kigelia tree, that lovely sausage tree with its gigantic pods the size and shape of polonies.

He lifted Sean's double-barrelled Gibbs rifle off the rack behind the driver's seat and loaded it with two fat brass cartridges from the bandolier.

"Let's go down to the hippo pool,' he suggested, and Isabella followed him down the footpath to the deep green pool of the river. The rifle was insurance, for the hippo has killed more human beings in Africa than all the snakes and lions and buffalo combined.

Yet they did not look dangerous as they wallowed under the bank, only their backs exposed like great black riverboulders. Then the bull opened his jaws in a pink and cavernous gape and showed the curved ivory tusks that could scythe the papyrus reeds or guillotine a full-grown oxen into separate pieces. He turned his piggy eyes upon them and regarded them with a bloodshot malevolence.

They sat side by side on a dead log, and Shasa propped the rifle close at hand. After a moment, the bull hippo closed his jaws and sank back below the surface so that only his eyes and the tip of his small round ears were exposed. Shasa stared back at him as balefully.

"Eleven times more toxic than cyanide gas,' he repeated. 'It is terrifying stuff." 'Then, why, Pater? It is heinous. Why do it?" He shrugged. 'To protect ourselves from hatred.' He picked up a pebble from between his feet and lobbed it at the hippo. The pebble splashed twenty feet short, but the bull submerged completely. Shasa went on speaking.

"The gas is code-named Cyndex and it has other desirable properties apart from its ability to deal swift and silent death." 'How heartening,' Isabella murmured. 'What are they?" 'It is odourless. There is no warning; death comes unannounced. However, it can be given a signature, any signature one chooses - the smell of ripe apples, or jasmine, or even Chanel Number Five if you so wish." 'That's macabre, Pater. Not your usual style." He did not respond to the rebuke. 'It is also highly unstable. Decay time is a mere three hours after mixing. Thereafter, it is absolutely harmless.

This is extremely advantageous. You can gas an opposing army, and then move your own troops in to occupy the area three hours later." "Charming,' Isabella whispered. 'I have no doubt that the political possibilities have not entirely escaped the prime minister. Say, if a million blacks went on the rampage." Shasa sighed. 'It doesn't bear thinking of' 'But you have thought of it, haven't you, Pater?' He was silent, acquiescing. 'You say that NATO cancelled the contracts. Only Pignatelli Chemicals are manufacturing this Cyndex 25F 'No. They manufactured and tested the gas. It was the twenty-fifth prototype, hence the numerical designation. But when the NATO contract was cancelled they discontinued production and allowed the original stocks to degenerate." Isabella glanced sideways at him. 'Degenerate?" 'As I said before, it is a highly unstable product. It has a very short storage-life - six months. New stocks have to be constantly manufactured to replace those that deteriorate." 'Lucrative for Capricorn Chemicals," Isabella pointed out, but Shasa ignored the remark.

"Signora Pignatelli will be able to supply us with blueprints for the plant; it is a complicated manufacturing procedure with very delicate manufacturing tolerances." 'When will you begin to manufacture?" Isabella asked, and Shasa chuckled.

"Hold your horses, young lady. It isn't even certain that Signora Pignatelli can be persuaded to sell us the blueprints and the formula. That is what we are going to chat about now.' He glanced at his wristwatch. 'Almost lunchtime and we are still half an hour from camp."

Sean called up on the camp radio on the'unmanned airfield' frequency when he was still forty minutes out. So they were waiting on the airstrip when the Beechcraft slanted in towards the field that evening.

Shading his eyes against the low-lying sun, Shasa made out the head of Sean's passenger through the windscreen as she sat in the right-hand seat.

He felt an electric tickle down the back of his neck that was more than simple curiosity. It was extraordinary that he and Elsa Pignatelli had never met, for they came from the same world - that exclusive world of wealth and rank and privilege that knew no national boundaries. They had literally dozens of mutual friends and acquaintances, and he was aware that on several occasions over the years they had been within a few minutes or kilometres of meeting each other. Shasa had been on friendly terms with her husband.

The two men had skied in the same party one afternoon at Klosters and had run the notorious Wang together, that terrible ice wall that hangs above the village. At the time, Bruno Pignatelli had apologized for his wife's absence but explained that she had flown to Rome that weekend to visit her elderly mother. She and Shasa must have passed each other at Zurich airport, travelling in different directions.

On another occasion, during Shasa's tenure at the embassy in London, they were invited separately to a dinner at the Swiss embassy. He learnt afterwards that they would have been table companions, but Elsa Pignatelli had been obliged to cancel for family reasons only days before the engagement.

Since then, Shasa had heard Elsa Pignatelli's name mentioned and discussed in detail at many a society dinner or weekend house-party, often spitefully and vindictively but often again with admiration and open envy. He had seen her photograph in the glossy women's fashion magazines to which Centaine and Isabella subscribed religiously. Courtney Industries had dealt with Pignatelli interests for twenty years to the benefit and satisfaction of both parties. So in the weeks since this meeting had been arranged Shasa had studied all the considerable information about her contained in the file that Special Service's had provided.

Sean taxied the Beechcraft to the hard stand of compacted red clay and switched off the engines, and Elsa Pignatelli stepped out on to the wing, then jumped down to earth. She moved with the supple grace of a young gyrrmast, and yet she was tall and long-limbed. Shasa knew she had modelled for Yves St.-Laurent before she married Bruno Pignatelli.

Although he felt that he knew her, Shasa was unprepared for his own reaction to her physical presence. The electric tickle spread from his neck to the back of his arms, and he felt the hair there come erect as she looked around. Her dark gaze swept over Garry and Isabella and the servants and fastened directly on him.

Her hair was very dark, with an almost bluish gloss in the late-afternoon sunlight. It was drawn back severely and secured behind her head in a neat tight coil. This emphasized her fine bone structure, the high, slightly domed forehead and vaulted cheekbones. And yet her features were full and feminine. Her lips looked soft, and her mouth was wide.

"Shasa Courtney,' she said his name as she came towards him with a free hip-swinging model's gait. She smiled, and he saw that her jaw-line was clean. He knew that next year in July she would celebrate her forty-third year. However, her skin was flawless and lovingly cared for under light natural-toned make-up.

"Signora Pignatelli.' He took her hand. It was cool and firm with long narrow bones. Her grip was swift, but strong, the kind of hands that could hold a rackct-handle or the reins of a thoroughbred.

He regretted that the contact had been so fleeting, but her eyes were compensation. They were starred with rays of brown and gold that radiated from the central pupil. They were bright intelligent eyes, and the lashes were long and black and curled.

"It is my regret that we have not met sooner,' Shasa said in awkward Italian, and she smiled and answered in faultless English, tinged with only an intriguing hint of an accent.

"Oh, but we have.' Her teeth were startlingly white, but one incisor was just crooked enough to suggest that they were her own and not some orthodontist's artifice.

"Where?' Shasa was surprised.

"Windsor Park. The Guards'Polo Club.' She was amused by his confusion. "You were playing number two for the Duke of Edinburgh's invitation team." 'My goodness, that was ten years ago." 'Eleven,' she said. 'We were never introduced, but we met for approximately three seconds at the buffet after the match. You offered me a smoked-salmon sandwich." 'You have a marvelous memory,' he admitted defeat. 'Did you accept the sandwich?" 'How ungallant of you not to remember,' she teased, then turned to the others. 'You must be Garrick Courtney?' And Shasa hastened to introduce first Garry and then Isabella.

The servants were loading Signora Pignatelli's luggage into one of the trucks. It was heavy leather luggage with brass-bound corners, and there was plenty of it. Only people who flew in their own jets and were not subjected to the caprice of the commercial airlines' check-in could afford that type and quantity of luggage. There were four long gun-cases amongst it.

"You'll ride with me, signora,' Sean tossed back his hair and called to her as he stepped up into the high driver's seat of his hunting vehicle. She ignored the suggestion and fell in naturally beside Shasa as he crossed to the second truck.

Isabella started to follow them, but Garry caught her hand and steered her towards the seat in Scan's truck which Elsa had refused.

"Come on, Bella. Wise up!' Garry murmured. 'Three's a crowd." Isabella started. It hadn't occurred to her - not Pater and the widow! Then she leant briefly against Garry's arm.

"I didn't realize that you included match-making amongst your many talents."

At sundowner time, Isaac brought Elsa Pignatelli a seething tulip-shaped glass of Dom Pdrignon from a freshly opened bottle, without being ordered to do so. He knew all the foibles of each of their regular clients.

While they sat in the half-circle round the camp-fire, keeping above the drift of blue smoke, Sean called his two trackers to the evening conference. This ritual was mainly for the benefit of the client, for everything of importance had been discussed previously and well out of earshot. However, the average client, and especially the first-timers, were impressed by the flow of Swahili between Sean and his trackers. In addition, being included in the ritual gave them a sense of being part of the hunt, and not merely excess baggage.

The trackers, both of whom had been with Sean since he had been an apprentice in Kenya at the time of the Mau Mau rebellion, were natural actors and hammed it up splendidly. They squatted respectfully on either side of Sean's camp-chair and called him Bwana Mkubwa, or Big Chief They mimed the animals they were discussing and drew their spoor in the dust between their feet, and rolled their eyes and shook their heads, then hawked and spat in the fire for emphasis.

They were an oddly assorted pair. One was a tall taciturn Samburu with shaven head and classical Nilotic features, Maria Theresa silver dollars set in the enlarged lobes of his ears. The other was a gnome with a puckish face and bright beady eyes.

Matatu was one of the few surviving members of the forest Ndorobo tribe, a people famous for their magical bushcraft, adepts of forest lore who had unfortunately been unable to withstand the impact of progress which had destroyed their forests and contaminated them with all civilization's ailments and diseases, from tuberculosis to alcoholism and venereal disease.

Sean had named him Matatu, or Number Three, because his tribal name was not pronounceable and because he was the third tracker whom Sean had hired. The other two had not lasted longer than a week each. Matatu had been with Sean more than half Sean's lifetime.

Matatu said, 'Ngwi,' and rolled his eyes as he drew the perfect imprint of a leopard's spoor in the dust. Sean questioned him in sonorous Swahili, to which Matatu replied in his piping lyrical voice and at the end spat explosively in the fire. Sean turned to Elsa Pignatelli to translate.

"'A week ago I hanged five leopard baits, two on the river and the others along the rim overlooking the National Park."' Elsa nodded; she knew the area well from her previous trips.

"'We had one strike a few days ago. An old tabby that came out of the park.

She only fed once, and then left it, and we tracked her back into the park.

Since then it has been quiet."' Sean turned back and asked Matatu another question. The little Ndorobo answered at length, obviously enjoying the attention.

"Matatu checked the baits today, while I was fetching you from Salisbury.

You are in luck, signora. We have had another strike on one of the river baits. Matatu says it's a g. ood tom. He ate well last night. The impala bait has been hanging for a week, and even with the cool weather it has ripened nicely. if he feeds again tonight, then we'll sit up for him tomorrow evening." 'Si,' Elsa nodded. 'That's good." 'So tomorrow morning we can check the bait and shoot a few more impala, just in case we need them. Then after lunch we'll have an hour's lie-down and then we'll go into the hide around three o'clock tomorrow afternoon." "You check the bait. You shoot the impala,' Elsa told him. 'Tomorrow morning I have a meeting to attend.' She smiled at Shasa in the chair beside her. 'We have much to discuss."

The discussion took up most of the morning. Garry had made the arrangements with deceptive simplicity. He had sent Isabella off in the Toyota with Sean to check the leopard baits, and had then ordered Isaac and his staff to set up three chairs and a folding table under a msasa tree at the edge of the glade, but well away from the camp itself.

Under the msasa tree, the three of them, Garry, Shasa and Elsa Pignatelli, were as secure from eavesdropping as at any spot on the planet. It was bizarre, Shasa thought, to be discussing such a terrifying subject in such tranquil and beautiful surroundings.

On the other hand, the negotiations did not follow the course that either Shasa or Garry had hoped for. Although Elsa Pignatelli had with her a handsome pigskin attache case, it remained locked and unopened while they delicately circled around the central issue.

Almost immediately it became obvious that Elsa had not yet made up her mind to proceed with the Cyndex enterprise. On the contrary, she was obviously having serious doubts and misgivings, and would need a great deal of persuasion.

"It is a hideous thing to let loose in the world,' she said at one point.

"My relief when NATO rescinded the original contract and ordered us to allow the existing stocks to degrade and to dismantle the plant was immense. I cannot imagine what possessed me even to consider equipping another plant, especially one over which I would have no direct control." All that morning, Shasa and Garry worked to allay her fears. They tried to devise between them some arrangements that would satisfy her demands on control and the ultimate rules of engagement under which Cyndex could ever be used.

"If you were to begin manufacturing, any NATO expert who ever inspected the plant and analysed a sample of the gas would know immediately where the technology was obtained,' she pointed out. 'If that happened and it was traced back to Pignatelli..." She did not finish the sentence, but merely spread those long graceful hands in an expressive Italian gesture. Gradually, as the discussion continued, Elsa moved round in her chair to face Shasa. She began to direct all her remarks and questions to him alone.

It was subtly, almost subconsciously, that she excluded Garry from the exchanges. Beneath his bluff exterior Garry was an intuitive and sensitive negotiator. Before even they realized it, he had detected the currents that ran between these two. He recognized that, belonging to the same generation and the same caste, they shared values and understood a special code that he could not comprehend.

He sensed that Elsa Pignatelli wanted to be reassured not by him, but by the man to whom she was inexorably being drawn. Tactfully he withdrew into silence and watched them fall in love with each other without realizing what was happening to them.

The hum of the engine of the returning Toyota startled them. Shasa glanced at his watch with disbelief.

"Good gracious, it's lunchtime already, and we have settled nothing."

"We have two weeks in which to talk,' Elsa pointed out, and rose to her feet. 'We can pick up again from here tomorrow morning." As the three of them came back into the boma, Sean was already at the bar table mixing Pimm's No. i in a crystal jug. He prided himself on his personal recipe.

"Good news, signora,' he called. 'Can I wheedle you into a festive Pimm's?" She smiled a refusal. 'I'll have my usual Badoit water with a slice of lemon. Now, tell me the good news." 'The leopard fed again last night. judging by the sign, he came in early, half an hour before sunset. So he's starting to get careless and bold, and he's huge. He's got paws on him like snow-shoes." 'Thank you, Sean. You always find good cats for me, but never so soon. This is the first day of safari." 'Take a nap after lunch, just to settle your nerves, and we'll go into the hide around three this afternoon." Isaac offered Elsa her mineral water on a silver tray, and then distributed the tall glasses of Pimm's to the musical accompaniment of tinkling ice, and Sean gave them a toast.

"To a big old tom leopard death at the base of the tree.' The professional hunter's horror was the cat down from the tree and waiting wounded in the tall grass.

They all drank the toast, and immediately afterwards Shasa and Elsa fell into a quiet but intent conversation that excluded the younger Courtneys.

Garry seized on the opportunity to take his elder brother's arm and gently lead him out of earshot.

"How are you feeling, Sean?' he asked.

"Fine. Never better.' Sean was puzzled by this uncustomary brotherly concern.

"You don't look fine to me.' Garry shook his head. 'In fact it is fairly obvious that you are sickening for a go of malaria, and those ribs-" "What sort of crap is this?' Sean was getting annoyed. 'There's nothing wrong with my ribs that a couple of codeine won't fix."

39e iyou won't be able to hunt with Signora Pignatelli this evening." "The hell I won't. I've set up this cat, and he's a beaut--2 'You will stay in your tent this evening with a bottle Of chloroquine tablets beside your bed and, if anybody asks, you have a temperature of a hundred and four in the shade." 'Listen, Big Shot, you've screwed up my elephant already. You're not going to do the same with my leopard." "Pater will hunt with the client,' Garry said firmly. 'You are staying in camp." 'Pater?' Sean stared at him for a moment before he started to grin. 'The randy old dog! Pater has the hots for the widow, has he?" "Why do you always make it sound so vulgar?' Garry asked mildly. 'We are trying to do business with Signora Pignatelli, and Pater needs to develop the relationship to a point of mutual trust. That's all there is to it." 'And when those two geriatric nymphos mess up the leopard, old S)ean will be the one who has to go in to clean up.) 'You told me that Signora Pignatelli never misses, and Pater is as good a hunter as you any day. Besides which, you aren't frightened of a wounded leopard, not the fearless Sean Courtney - surely not?" Sean scowled at the jibe, and then bit back his response. 'I'll go set it up for them,' he agreed, and then smiled. 'To answer your question - no, Garry, I'm not frightened of a wounded leopard, or of anything else. Bear that in mind, old son."

Shasa lay stretched out on his camp-bed with a book. The safari camp was one of the few places in his existence where he had the opportunity to read for pleasure rather than for business or political necessity. He was reading Alan Moorehead's Blue Nile for the fourth time and savouring every word of it, when Garry popped his head into the tent.

"We have a little problem, Pater. Scan's having a go of malaria." Shasa sat up and dropped the book with alarm. 'How bad?' He knew that Sean never took malarial suppressants such as Paludrine or Maloprim. Sean preferred to build up his immunity to the disease and only treated symptoms. Shasa, knew also that there had recently appeared along the Zambezi a new strain of 'P Falciparum' that was resistant to the usual drugs, and which had a dangerous tendency to mutate into the cerebral and pernicious form. 'I should go to him." 'Don't worry. It's responding to chloroquine already, and he's asleep. So you shouldn't disturb him." Shasa looked relieved, and Garry went on smoothly: 'But somebody will have to hunt with Signora Pignatefli this evening, and you have more experience than I do."

The hide was in the lower branches of a wild ebony tree, only ten feet above ground-level. Sean had raised it, not to protect the hunter, for a leopard could climb and be in the tree. with him before he drew breath, but rather to provide a wider field of view across the narrow stream to the bait-tree.

Sean had chosen the bait-tree with infinite care, and Shasa nodded approval as he surveyed it. Most important, it was above the prevailing easterly evening breeze, so the hunter's scent would be wafted away. Also it was surrounded by dense shoulder-high riverine bush that would give the leopard confidence in his approach.

The main trunk leant out over the riverbed at a slight angle to give the cat an easy climb to the horizontal branch twenty feet above the ground from which the carcass of the impala antelope was suspended by a short length of chain. The foliage of the ebony tree was dense and green.

That would also give the leopard confidence to climb. However, the horizontal branch was open, with a window of blue sky beyond it which would silhouette the leopard as he stretched out and reached down to pull the stinking bait up to him.

The hide was exactly sixty-five yards from the bait-tree. Sean had measured it with a builder's tape, while earlier that afternoon Elsa Pignatelli had sighted and fired her rifle at the marked range behind the main camp. Shasa had set up the target at precisely sixty-five yards, and she had put three shots into the bull's-eye, forming a perfect clover-leaf pattern with the three bullet-holes slightly overlapping each other.

The hide was built of mopane poles and thatch, and was a comfortable little tree-house. Inside were two camp-chairs facing the firing-apertures in the thatch wall. Matatu and the Samburu tracker laid out blankets and sleeping-bap, tucker-box with snacks and a Thermos filled with hot coffee.

Their vigil could last until the dawn, so they were provided with a powerful flashlight that drew power from a twelve-volt car battery; a hand-held two-way radio to communicate with the trackers; and even a china chamberpot with a tasteful floral pattern to allow them to last out the night without discomfort.

When Matatu had set up the furnishing of the hide to his satisfaction, he scrambled down the ladder and he and Shasa had a last brief conference beside the Toyota.

"I think that he will come before dark,' Matatu said in Swahili. 'He is a cheeky devil and he gorges like a pig. I think he will be hungry tonight, and he will not be able to withstand his greed." 'If he does not come, we will wait through until the dawn. Do not return here until I call for you on the radio. Go in peace now, Matatu." 'Stay in peace, Bwana. Let us pray that the memsahib kills cleanly. I do not want this spotted devil to feast on my liver."

3"

The trackers waited until the hunters had climbed into the hide and settled down, before they drove the Toyota away. They would park on the crest of the valley two miles distant, and wait for the sound of gunfire or the call on the two-way radio.

Shasa and Elsa sat side-by-side in the two camp-chairs. Their elbows were almost, but not quite touching. The sleeping-bags were spread over the chair-backs, ready to draw over their shoulders when the temperature began to drop. There were rugs over their laps. Both of them wore leather jackets, some protection not only against the cold, but also against sharp curling claws in an emergency.

Elsa had her long rifle-barrel thrust through the firingaperture, ready to raise the butt to her shoulder with the minimum of movement. It was a 7-millimetre Remington magnum loaded with a 175-grain Nosler bullet that would cover the sixty-five yards to the bait-tree at three thousand feet per second. Shasa had the big eight-bore shotgun as a back-up weapon.

Designed for shooting wild geese at long range, it was a devastating weapon for close work.

As the beat of the Toyota engine faded, the silence of the bushveld descended on the river valley. It was a silence that whispered with tiny intimate sounds: the gentle sigh of the breeze in the leaves above their heads, the stir of a bird in the undergrowth along the river, the far-off booming shout of a bull baboon that echoed faintly along the rocky cliffs at the head of the valley and the tiny ticking sounds of the termite legions gnawing away at the dry mopane poles on which they sat.

Both of them had brought books to while away the hours until dusk, but neither of them opened them. They sat very close to each other, and they were vitally aware of each other's proximity. Shasa felt as comfortable and companionable in her presence as though they were old and trusted friends.

He smiled at the fancy. He turned his head surreptitiously to glance at Elsa, and she had anticipated and was smiling at him already.

She turned the hand that lay on the arm of the chair between them palm uppermost. He took the hand in his own, and was surprised by the smooth warm feel of her skin and by the sharp emotion her touch evoked. He hadn't felt like that for many a long year. They sat side by side holding hands like a pair of teenagers on their first date, and waited for the leopard to come.

Although all his senses were tuned to the subtle sounds and signs of the wilderness, Shasa's mind was free to wander through the junk-room of memory. He thought about many things in those quiet hours as the sun turned across the blue dome of sky and sank towards the jagged line of hills. He thought about the other women he had known. There had been many of those.

He had no way of knowing how many, the passage of time had rendered most of them faceless and nameless. just a very few would remain with him for ever.

The first had been a sly-faced little harlot. When Centaine had caught them at it, she had scrubbed him in a scalding tub of Lysol and carbolic soap that had taken the skin off his most tender parts. He smiled at that far-off memory.

The other that stood out in his memory was Tara, mother of all his children. They had been antagonists from the very beginning. He had always thought of her as the beloved enemy. Then love had wrested the upper hand, and for a time they had been happy together. Finally they had become enemies again, true enemies. Their enmity had been inflamed rather than mitigated by that brief illusory period of happiness.

After Tara there had been fifty or a hundred others - it did not really matter how many. Not one of them had been able to give him what he sought, nor had they been able to alleviate the loneliness.

Recently, in middle age, he had even fallen into the age-old trap of seeking immortality in those young feminine bodies that were themselves in the flower of their youth. Though the flesh was sweet and firm, he had found no contact of the mind, and could no longer match their energy. Sadly he had left them to their booming mindless music and their frenetic search for they knew not what. He had walked on alone.

He thought of loneliness then, as he did so often these days. Over the years, he had learnt that it was the most corrosive and destructive of all man's ills. Most of his life he had been alone. Although there had been a half-brother, he had never known him as a sibling and Centaine had raised Shasa as an only child.

In all the multitude of humankind that had filled his life, the servants and business associates, the acquaintances and sycophants, even his own children, there had been only one person with whom he had been able to share all the triumphs and disasters of his life, one who had been constant in her encouragement and understanding and love.

However, Centaine was seventy-six years old and ageing fast. He was sick to his soul of the loneliness and afraid of the greater loneliness which he knew lay ahead.

At that moment, the woman who sat beside him tightened her grip on his hand as though she empathized' with his despair. When he turned his head and looked into her honey-golden eyes, she was no longer smiling. Her expression was serious, and she held his gaze without shift or embarrassment. The sense of aloneness faded, and he felt calm and at peace as he seldom had in all his fifty-odd years.

Outside their little tree-house, the light mellowed and flared into the soft glow of the African twilight. It was a time of magical stillness, in which the world held its breath and all the forest colours were richer and deeper. The sun sagged like a dying gladiator, and bowed its bloody head below the forest-top. The light went with it, the outlines of the forest trunks and branches faded and softened and receded.

A francolin called in the gloom. Shasa leant forward in his seat and looked through the firing-aperture in the thatch wall. He saw the dark partridge-like bird perched on a dead branch on the far side of the river.

Its bare cheeks were bright scarlet, and it cocked its head and looked down from its perch and made that creaking sound like a rusty hinge which was the special warning: 'Beware! I see a killer cat." Elsa heard the call and, because she also knew the African wild and understood the meaning of it, she squeezed Shasa's hand briefly and then released it. Slowly she reached forward for the pistol grip of the rifle, and achingly slowly lifted the rifle to her shoulder. The tension in the hide was a palpable charge that held them both in its thrall. The leopard was out there, silent and secretive as a dappled golden shadow.

They were both adepts in the art of the hunter, and neither of them moved except to blink their eyelids and keep their vision clear in the failing light. They drew and released each breath with infinite care, and heard the pulse of their racing hearts beat in their eardrums.

The light was going faster, while the unseen leopard circled the bait-tree.

Shasa could imagine him in his mind's eye, each deliberate stealthy pace, the paw raised and held aloft and then laid down again softly, the yellow eyes endlessly turning and darting, the round black-tipped ears flicking to catch the faintest sound of danger.

The outline of the bait-tree receded, the carcass of the impala hanging on its chain was a dark amorphous blob. The open window of sky above the bare branch dulled and bruised to the shade of tarnished lead, and still the leopard prowled and circled in the dark thicket.

Shooting light was almost gone, night came on apace, and then suddenly the leopard was in the tree. There was no sound or warning. The abruptness of it was a little miracle that stopped both their hearts and then sent them racing away at a mad pace.

The leopard stood on the branch. However, he was only a darker shape in the darkness, and even as Elsa laid her cheek to the polished walnut wood of the butt-stock the darkness was complete and the shape of the leopard was swallowed up by the night.

Shasa felt rather than saw Elsa lower the rifle. He stared through the aperture, but there was nothing to see, and he turned his head and laid his lips against Elsa's ear.

"We must wait until morning,' he breathed, and she touched his cheek in agreement.

Out in the darkness they heard the clink of the chain links. Shasa imagined the leopard lying belly down on the branch, reaching down with one front paw to hook the carcass and draw it up, holding it with both front feet, sniffing the putrefying flesh hungrily, thrusting its head into the belly cavity to reach the lungs and liver and heart.

In the silence they heard the tearing sound of fangs in flesh, the grating and splintering of rib bone, the ripping of wet hide, as the leopard began to feed.

The night was long, and Shasa could not sleep. As the hunter, his was the responsibility of monitoring each of the leopard's movements. After the first few hours, Elsa's head sagged against his shoulder. Moving stealthily, he slipped his arm around her, pulled the down-filled sleeping-bag up snugly over her shoulders, and held her close while she slept.

She slept quietly, like a tired child. Her breathing was light and warm against his cheek. Even though his arm went dead and numb, he did not wish to disturb her. He sat happy and virtuous in his discomfort.

The leopard fed at intervals during the night, the chain tinkling and bones grating and cracking. Then there were long periods of silence when Shasa feared it had left, before the sounds began again.

Of course, he could easily have turned the powerful spotlight on the tree and lit the leopard for her. It would have probably sat bemused, blinking those huge yellow eyes into the blinding beam. The idea never even occurred to him, and he would have been bitterly disappointed if Elsa had even contemplated such unfair tactics.

Deep down Shasa disliked the technique of baiting for the great cats. He had personally never killed one of them on a bait. Although in Rhodesia it was perfectly legal, Shasa's own sporting ethic could never come to terms with luring them into a prepared position to offer a carefully staged broadside shot to a hidden marksman shooting from a dead rest.

Every lion and leopard he had ever taken, he had tracked down on foot, often in the thickest cover, and the animal had been alert and aware of his presence. In consequence he had experienced a hundred failures and not more than a dozen kills in all those years as a hunter. However, each success had been a peak of the hunting experience, a memory to last his lifetime.

He did not despise Elsa or any of the other clients who took their cats over bait. They were not Africans, as he was, and their time in the bushveld was limited to a few short days. They were paying huge sums of money for the privilege, and much of that money was channelled back into the protection and conservation of the species they hunted. Therefore they were entitled to the best-possibic chance of success. He did not resent them, but it was not his way.

Sitting beside her in the dark hide, he realized suddenly that his own hunting of the cats was over for ever. Like so many old hunters, he had had his surfeit of blood. He loved the hunting game as much, probably more than he ever had, but it was enough. He had killed his last elephant and lion and leopard. The thought made him glad and at the same time sad, a kind of sweet warm melancholy that mingled well with the new emotion he had conceived for the lovely lady who slept on his shoulder. He thought how he would in future take his pleasure in the hunt through her, the way he was doing now. He dreamt happily of travelling with her to the hunting-fields of the world: Russia for the sheep of Marco Polo, Canada for the polar bear, Brazil for the spotted jaguar, and to Tanzania for the great Cape buffalo with a spread of horn over fifty inches wide. These vicarious pleasures sustained him through the long night.

Then a pair of Heughlin's robins chorused a duet from the undergrowth along the river, a melodious entreaty that sounded like "Don't do it! Don't do it!' repeated over an dover, at first softly and then rising to an excited crescendo.

At this certain harbinger of the dawn, Shasa glanced upwards and made out the uppermost branches of the ebony tree against the lightening sky. It would be shooting light in fifteen minutes. The dawn comes on swiftly in Africa.

He touched Elsa's cheek to wake her, and immediately she snuggled against him. He realized that she must have been feigning sleep for some time. She had come awake so secretively that he had not realized it. Since then she had been lying against him there savouring their intimate contact, just as he had been doing.

"Is the leopard still there?' she asked, a breath of a whisper very close to his ear.

"Don't know,' he answered as softly. It was almost two hours since he had last heard it feeding. Perhaps it had left already. 'Be ready,' he warned her.

She straightened mi her chair and leant forward to where the rifle was propped in the forked rest. Although they were no longer touching, he felt very close to her and his arm tingled with the flow of returning blood which her head on his shoulder had impeded.

The light strengthened. Vaguely he could make out the open window through the foliage of the ebony tree. He blinked his eyes and stared into it. The outline of the branch formed out of the gloom. The branch appeared bare, and he felt the swoop of disappointment for her. The leopard was gone.

He turned his head slowly to tell her so, but he never took his eyes off the branch. He checked the words on his lips and stared harder, feeling the tiny ants of excitement crawl along his nerve ends. The outline of the branch was harder, but it was strangely thickened and misshapen.

Now he could just make out the blob of the dangling impala carcass. Most of it had been devoured. It was a ravaged bundle of bared bones and torn skin, but there was Pe something else hanging from the branch, a long snakelike ribbon. He could not decide what it was, until it curled and swung lazily, and then he realized.

"The tail, the leopard's tail.' Like the hidden creature in the puzzle picture, the whole jumped into focus.

The leopard was still draped on the branch, lying flat, its neck outstretched. Its chin was propped against the rough bark. It was sluggish with the weight of meat in its belly, too lazy to move from its perch. Only its long tail swung below.

He felt Elsa stiffen beside him as she also made out the shape of the leopard. He reached across gently to restrain her. The light was still too poor; they must wait it out. As he touched her arm, he felt the tension in her through his fingertips. She seemed to vibrate like the strings of a violin lightly touched with the bow.

The light bloomed. The shape of the leopard hardened. Its hide turned to buttery gold, studded with black rosettes. Its tail swung gently like a metronome set to its slowest beat. It lifted its head slightly and pricked its ears. The light caught its eyes, a flare of yellow, like a distant flash of sheet lightning. It looked towards them and blinked sleepily in regal indolence, so beautiful that Shasa felt his chest squeezed for breath.

It was time to make the kill. He touched Elsa, a light imperative tap on her upper arm. She settled down behind the telescopic sight of the rifle.

Shasa braced himself for the shot and stared at the leopard, willing the bullet into its heart, hoping to see it topple and tumble lifeless from the high branch.

The seconds drew out, each of them a separate age. The shot did not come.

The leopard rose to its full height, standing easily erect on the narrow branch. It stretched, arching its back deeply, digging its extended claws into the bark.

"Now!' Shasa commanded her silently. 'Shoot it now!" The leopard yawned. Its pink tongue curled out between the gaping fangs. Its thin black lips drew back into a fierce rictus.

"Now!' With telepathic effort Shasa tried to force her to make the shot. He dared not reinforce the command with a word or touch for fear that he disturb her concentration in the very act of firing.

The leopard straightened and flicked its tail over its back. Then, without further warning, it launched itself into flight and dropped from the branch twenty feet to the soft mulched floor of the forest. It was a leap so controlled and graceful that there was no sound as it landed. The undergrowth swallowed it instantly.

They sat for almost a minute in total silence. At last Elsa set the safety-catch with a click and lowered the unfired rifle and turned her head towards him. In the dawn fight, the tears shone like seed pearls on the long curled lashes of her lower lids. 'He was so beautiful,' she whispered.

"I could not kill him, not today, not on this day." He understood instantly. This day was their day, their very first day together as lovers. She had declined to desecrate it.

"I dedicate the leopard to you,' she said.

"You do me too much honour,' he replied, and kissed her. Their embrace was strangely innocent, almost childlike, devoid as yet of sexual passion. It was a thing of the spirit rather than of the body. There would be time for that later, all the time in the world, but not today, not on this blessed day.

Sean had made a miraculous recovery from his malaria and was waiting eagerly at the boma gate to welcome the returning hunters. The reputation of a safari company was built upon the quality of trophies it produced for its clients, especially for its important clients.

As the Toyota pulled up he glanced hopefully into the back and his mouth tightened with disappointment. He spoke first to Matatu, and the little Ndorobo tracker shook his head gloomily. 'The devil came late and left early." 'I'm sorry, signora.' Sean turned to her, and handed her down from the truck.

"That is hunting,' she murmured, and he had never seen her so philosophical before. Usually she was as angry and as impatient with failure as he was.

"Your shower is ready, hot as you like it. Breakfast will be waiting as soon as you have cleaned up." The rest of the party were full of condolences when Shasa and Elsa appeared in the dining-tent, both of them showered and dressed in freshly laundered and crisply ironed khaki. Shasa was shaved and redolent of aftershave lotion.