Golden Fox

"Bad luck, Pater. So sorry, signora,' they chorused, and were puzzled that the couple looked smug and self-satisfied and fell on their breakfast with as much gusto as if there were a world-record leopard in the skinning-shed.

"We can continue our meeting after breakfast,' Garry suggested over coffee.

"And I'll renew the baits this morning.' Sean came in. 'Matatu says the leopard was never alarmed or spooked. We can try again tonight. This time I'll hunt with you, signora. It takes the touch of the master." Instead of accepting the suggestions immediately, Elsa glanced across at Shasa and then lowered her eyes demurely to her coffee-cup.

"Well, actually,' Shasa began, 'to tell the truth, we rather thought, that is, Elsa and 1, rather Signora Pignatelli and 1...' As Shasa floundered for words, all three of his brood stared at him in astonishment. Was this the master of savoir-faire? Was this Mr. Cool himself speaking?

"Your father has promised to show me the Victoria Falls,' Elsa came to his rescue, and Shasa looked relieved and rallied gamely.

"We'll take the Beechcraft,' he agreed briskly. 'Signora Pignatelli has never seen the falls. This seems like a good opportunity."

The other members of the family recovered from their confusion as rapidly as Shasa had. 'That's a lovely idea,' Isabella enthused. 'It's the most awe-inspiring spectacle, signora. You'll adore it." 'It's only an hour's flight,' Garry nodded. 'You could have lunch at the Vic Falls Hotel and be back here for tea." 'And you can still be ready to go into the leopard-hide at four this afternoon,' Sean agreed, and waited expectantly for agreement from his client.

Once again, Elsa glanced at Shasa, and he drew a deep breath. 'Actually, we may stay over at the Vic Falls Hotel for a day or two." Slowly various degrees of comprehension dawned on the three young faces.

"Quite right. You'll need time,' Isabella recovered first. 'You'll want to walk in the rainforest, perhaps take a raft trip down the gorge below the falls." 'Bella is right; you'll need three or four days. So many interesting things to do and see." 'That, Garry old boy, is the understatement of the week,' Sean drawled, and both Garry and Isabella glared at him furiously.

In the cool clean air, not yet sullied by the smoke of the bush fires of the late winter season, the spray cloud of the Victoria Falls was visible at sixty miles distance. It rose two thousand feet into the sky, a silver mountain as brilliant as an alp of snow.

Shasa shed altitude as they approached. Ahead of them the great Zambezi glinted in the sun, broad and tranquil, studded by its islands on which the forests of graceful ivory nut palms stood giraffe-necked.

Then the main gorge opened beneath them and they peered down in wonder as they watched the great river, well over a mile wide, tumble over the sheer edge of the chasm, and fall three hundred and fifty feet in a welter of foaming waters and blown spray. Along the brink of the chasm, black castles of rock split the flow of the river. Over it all towered the immense spray-cloud which was shot through with rainbows of astonishing colour.

Below the falls the entire flood of the river, a staggering thirty-eight thousand cubic feet a second, was trapped between vertical cliffs of rock and charged, raging at this restraint, into the narrow throat of the gorge.

Shasa banked the aircraft into a tight right-hand turn, pointing one wing into the abyss, so that Elsa could gaze down with her view unobstructed.

With each circuit he allowed the Beechcraft to drop lower until they were in danger of being engulfed by the splendid chaos of rock and water. The silver leaping spray blew over the canopy, blinding them for an instant before they burst once more into the sunlight and the rainbows garlanded the sky around them.

Shasa landed at the small private airfield of Sprayview on the outskirts of the village, and taxied to the hard stand. He switched off the engines, and turned to Elsa. The wonder of it was still in her eyes, and her expression was solemn with an almost religious awe.

"Now you have worshipped in the cathedral of Africa,' Shasa told her softly. 'The one place that truly embodies all of the grandeur and mystery and savagery of this continent."

They were fortunate enough to find the Livingstone Suite at the hotel vacant.

The building was in the style and dimensions of a bygone era. The walls were thick and the rooms immense, but cool and comfortable.

The suite was decorated with prints of the drawings that the old explorer Thomas Baines had made of the falls only a few years after David Livingstone first discovered them. From the windows of their sitting-room they looked across the gorge and the railway bridge that spanned it. The steelwork of the arched bridge seemed delicate as lace, and the entire structure was light and graceful as the wing of an eagle in flight.

They left the suite and wandered down the pathway to the brink of the gorge and walked hand in hand through the rainforest, where the spray fell in an eternal soaking rain and the vegetation was green and luxuriant. The rock trembled beneath their feet, and the air was filled with the thunder of the falling waters. The spray soaked their clothing and their hair, and ran down their faces, and they laughed together with the joy of it.

They followed the rim of the gorge downstream, out of the spray-cloud. The bright sunshine dried their hair and clothing almost as swiftly as the spray had drenched them. They found a rocky perch on the very edge and sat side-by side, dangling their legs over the terrifying chasm while the mad waters churned into green whirlpools far below.

"Look!' Shasa cried, and pointed upwards as a small bird of prey stooped out of the sun and fell on whistling knife-blade wings into the flock of black swifts that swirled along the cliff face below them.

"A Taita falcon,' Shasa exulted. 'One of the rarest birds in Africa." The falcon struck one of the -swifts in flight, killing it instantly in a burst of feathers. Then, binding to its prey, it fell into the void and disappeared from their view in the gloom far below.

That evening they dined on steaks of crocodile-tail that tasted like lobster, but when they went up to the suite they were suddenly both shy and nervous. Shasa drank a Cognac in the sitting-room. When finally he went through into the bedroom, Elsa was already propped up on the pillows. Her hair was down on the shoulders of her lace nightdress, and it was thick and black and glossy.

Shasa was overcome by a sense of panic. He was no longer young and there had been one or two occasions recently with other women which had shaken his confidence.

She smiled and lifted her arms to him in invitation. He need not have worried. She managed him as no other we ever had. In the morning, when they awoke in each other's arms, the sun was streaming in through the high windows.

She sighed and smiled with a slow and languorous contentment and said: "My man.' And kissed him.

Their illicit honeymoon drew out from one day to the next. They did things together, silly little things for which for many years Shasa had had neither the time nor the inclination.

They slept late each morning and then spent the rest of it loafing in their swimming-costurnes beside the pool. They read for hours in companionable silence, stretched out in the sunlight. At intervals, they anointed each other with sun-tan oil, making it a fine excuse to touch and examine each other in leisurely detail.

Elsa was lean and smooth and tanned. The condition and tone of her muscle and skin were the rewards for endless hours of aerobics and callisthenics and beauty care. She was obviously proud of her body. Shasa came to share that pride as he compared her to the other semi-naked bodies sunning themselves under the msasa trees on the green lawns.

Only up very close were the stigmata that life and childbirth had left upon her visible. Shasa found even those small blemishes appealing. They emphasized her maturity and bespoke her experience and understanding of life. She was a woman, ripe and complete.

This was made even more apparent when they talked. They talked for hours at a time. These were lazy contented conversations during which they explored each other's mind in the same way they had explored each other's body in the double bed upstairs in the Livingstone Suite.

She told him about herself with an engaging candour. She described Bruno's slow cruel death as the crab of cancer ate him alive, and her own agony as she watched helplessly. She spoke of the loneliness that followed, seven long years of it. She did not have to tell him that she hoped that was now behind her. She merely reached out and touched his hand and it was understood.

She told him of her children: a son, also named Bruno, and three daughters.

Two of the girls were married, the youngest was at university in Milano, and Bruno junior was an MBA from Harvard, now working for Pignatelli Industries in Rome.

"He does not have his father's fire,' she told Shasa frankly. 'I do not think he will ever fill those shoes; they are many sizes too large for him." She made Shasa think of his own sons. They spoke of the heartaches and disappointments that their children had brought them and of the rare joys that some had bestowed upon them.

They explored together their love of horses and hunting, of music and art and fine things lovingly crafted, of books and music and theatre. Finally they spoke of power and money, and openly admitted their addictions to all these things.

They held nothing back, and at one point Elsa regarded him solemnly. 'It is too early to be absolutely certain, but I think that you and I will be good together." 'I believe that also,' he replied as gravely, and it was as though they had made a vow and a commitment.

They danced in the balmy African nights. They laid their cheeks together still hot and brown from the sun, and swayed to the beat of the steel band.

After midnight, they at last climbed the broad stairway, hand in hand, to their suite and the wide soft bed.

"Good Lordv Shasa said with genuine amazement. 'It's Thursday. We have been here four days. The kids will be wondering what on earth has happened to us.' They were at brunch on the open terrace.

"I think they will guess.' Elsa looked up from the mango she was peeling for him and smiled. 'And I don't think that "kids" is the correct description for that rumbustious Utter of yours." 'Van Wyk will be arriving at Chizora tomorrow,' Shasa pointed out.

"I know,' she sighed. 'I hate the thought of ending this, but we must be there to meet him."

Sir Clarence Van Wyk was one of those extraordinary creatures that African evolution sometimes throws up.

He was a pure-bred Afrikaner. His father had been chief justice of South Africa when it was part of the British Empire, and he had received his hereditary title when it was still permissible for a South African to accept that honour.

Sir Clarence was a product of Eton and Sandhurst. He had been an officer in a famous Guards regiment, and was heir to the considerable family estates in the Cape of Good Hope. He was also the minister in Ian Smith's government specifically charged with funding the debilitating guerrilla warfare in which Rhodesia was engaged, and in evading the comprehensive mandatory sanctions that the British Labour Government, the United States and the United Nations had placed upon these perpetrators of unilateral independence.

Garry and Shasa had arranged this meeting during their stop-over in Salisbury on the way to Chizora. Sir Clarence was an avid big-game hunter, and they had promised him a bit of sport in the intervals between their deliberations.

Sir Clarence arrived at Chizora in a Rhodesian air-force helicopter. He had with him two of his aides and a pair of bodyguards, all of whom threatened to put a strain on the safari camp. The staff and facilities were geared to entertaining a much smaller number of guests. However, Sean had been given plenty of notice, and additional equipment, staff and stores had been sent down from Salisbury by truck.

The conference-table under the msasa tree was extended and additional chairs set out for Sir Clarence and his team. Isabella joined them as her father's personal assistant. From the beginning Sir Clarence made no attempt to conceal his interest in her.

At six foot five inches, Sir Clarence towered above even Shasa or Sean. He was a most impressive figure of a an whose plummy upper-class English accent and classical features belied his Afrikaner origins. He had a brilliant financial and political brain and a reputation as a lady's man.

Under the msasa tree, they negotiated the marketing and transportation of a nation's wealth and produce, and the commissions and handling fees due to each of them.

Rhodesia was a primary producer, which simplified these deliberations considerably. Her small-scale mines that worked narrow quartz reefs nevertheless turned out a considerable gold production. This did not concern them here, for gold was anonymous'. There was no 'Made in Rhodesia' stamp upon it, and its high value-to-bulk ratio made it readily transportable and disposable.

It was different with the other primary products of the country: tobacco and rare metals, chiefly chrome. These had to be transported in bulk, their country of origin had to be concealed and then they must be disseminated to the markets of the world.

From Rhodesia, the railways ran southwards to the harbours of Durban and Cape Town in the Republic of South Africa. That was the natural route for these treasures to go. For years now, ever since the Smith Government's declaration of independence, Garry Courtney and Courtney Enterprises had played a leading rele in helping Rhodesia evade the sanctions campaign against it.

Now there was to be an ambitious new strategy. After carefully studying the Pignatelli group of industries, Garry and Sir Clarence were offering Elsa Pignatelli the lucrative opportunity of taking part in these anti-sanctions activities.

Pignatelli Industries owned the second-largest tobacco 0e company in Europe, after the British American Tobacco Company. In addition, they had a controlling interest in Winnipeg Mining in Canada, and operated a stainless-steel mill and vanadium refinery in southern Italy near Taranto.

All this dovetailed neatly with Rhodesia's need to find a market for her products, but there was hard bargaining ahead.

Although it was conducted in a superficially civilized and friendly atmosphere, these were all shrewd and merciless financial predators locked in a contest of minds and wills. Isabella watched them with awe. Her brother used his bluff, almost bumbling manner, his myopic ingenuous gaze and hearty laugh to conceal the steely calculating mind.

Elsa Pignatelli, poised and beautiful, shamelessly exploited her looks and her charms and used the feminine rapier against their masculine cutlasses.

She matched and met them with ease.

Sir Clarence was suave and his manners courtly. He held the line like the Guardsman he was and made them pay dearly for every inch he was forced to yield. Then he counter-attacked with consummate timing.

Shasa sat aloof at his end of the table, leaving most of the bargaining to Garry. However, when he spoke, his comments were pithy and apposite, and very often served to break a log-jam in the negotiations and to propose the equitable compromise.

The sums of money they were discussing were of numbing magnitude. While Isabella recorded the minutes of this conference, she amused herself by calculating two and a half percent of three billion dollars. That would be the Courtney Enterprises share of the loot in the coming twelve months alone, all of it earned without any additional capital investment on their part. When she had the total worked out, she looked at her brother with renewed respect.

At noon the conference adjourned for an elaborate lunch. In the air-force Alouette helicopter Sir Clarence had brought with him a selected baron of the finest Rhodesian beef. Sean and his chef had passed the morning in barbe-

cueing it to golden-brown perfection over a fire of mopanc coals. They cleared their palates with a glass of Dom Perignon while they watched Sean carve pink slices from the joint and the juices spurted and sizzled from around the blade.

During the luncheon, Sir Clarence demonstrated as great a skill and finesse as he had at the conference-table in his attempts to cut Isabella out of the herd and put his brand upon her.

Isabella was flattered by his attentions and more than a little tempted. He was a superior man, a dominant herd bull. Power is a wonderful aphrodisiac for any woman. In addition, he had thick wavy dark hair with just a touch of grey at the temples. She liked his eyes. He was so tall, and he amused her with his urbane wit.

She found herself smiling at his sallies, and once she glanced down at his feet. They must be size fourteen in those gleaming hand-made chukka boots, and she smiled again thoughtfully. Perhaps that was a fallacy, but never theless the possibility was intriguing.

She could almost hear Nanny's rebuke ring in her cars. 'All the Courtneys got hot blood. You must be careful, missy, and remember you are a lady." She knew he was married, but it seemed a long time since she had taken comfort from a man's body, and he was so big and powerful. Perhaps, if Sir Clarence continued to demonstrate the requisite amount of class and s - then perhaps, just perhaps he stood a chance.

After lunch they returned to the conference-table. It seemed to Isabella that their minds had been stimulated rather than dulled by the Dom Perignon.

At four o'clock Garry glanced at his watch. 'If we aren't to miss the evening flight, then I suggest we adjourn until tomorrow morning." They drove down to the pools in both trucks to shoot the evening flight of ring-necked doves coming in to drink.

Sir Clarence had contrived, without making it too obvious, to seat himself beside Isabella in the leading truck. However, at the last moment just as they were about to pull away, she jumped down and ran back to sit beside Garry in the second truck. She didn't want to make it too easy for Sir C. She sensed that he enjoyed the chase as much as the kill. Garry was in an ebullient mood. As he drove he slipped one arm around her shoulders and squeezed her.

"God, I love it,' he exulted. 'I love Harold Wilson and James Callaghan and all those, sanctimonious little bleeding hearts in the General Assembly of the United Nations. I love being a sanctions-buster. It's exciting and romantic. It makes me feel like Al Capone or Captain Blood. Yo ho ho, and a bottle of rum. It gives me a fine feeling of patriotism and the opportunity to make a telling political statement, while at the same time I can pocket seventy-five million pounds in lovely hard cash that the taxman will never see. It's beautiful. I love all sanctioneers and prohibitionists." 'You are incorrigible.' She laughed at him. 'Isn't there any limit to your appetite for riches?" At that he sobered and removed his arm from her shoulders. 'You think I'm avaricious?' he asked. 'It's not so, Bella. The truth is that I am a player in the great game. I don't play for the monetary prize, I play for the thrill of winning. I was a loser for too much of my life. Now I must be a winner." "Is that all there is to it?' She was also serious now. 'You are playing with the wealth and well-being of millions of little people to gratify your ego." 'When I win, then those little people win. The sanctioneers; seek to inflict starvation and misery upon millions of ordinary people in order to enforce their particular political vision. That, in my view, is a crime against humanity. When I frustrate their efforts, I strike a powerful blow for the little people." 'Oh, Garry, you aren't a white knight. Don't pretend to be one - please!" 'Oh, yes, I am,' he contradicted her. 'I am one of the white knights of the capitalist system. Don't you see that?

The only way out of our dilemma in southern Africa is through the education and upliftment of the people, particularly the blacks, and by the creation of wealth. We must steer for a society based not on class or caste or race or creed, but on merit. A society in which every person can pull his full weight and be rewarded in proportion to that effort - that is the capitalistic way." 'Garry, I have never heard you speak like that before, like a liberal." 'Not a liberal, a capitalist. Apartheid is a primitive feudal system. As a capitalist, I abhor it as much or more than any of the sanctioneers.

Capitalism destroyed the ancient feudalism of medieval Europe. Capitalism cannot co-exist with a system that reserves power and privilege to a hereditary minority, a system which suppresses the free-market principles of labour and goods. Capitalism will destroy apartheid if it is allowed to do so. The sanctioneers would deny and inhibit that process. By their well-intentioned but misguided actions they bolster apartheid and they play into the hands of its perpetrators." She stared at him. 'I've never thought about it that way before." 'Poverty leads to repression. It is easy to oppress the poor. It is almost impossible to oppress an educated and prosperous people for ever." 'So you will point the way to freedom through the economic rather than the political kingdom." 'Precisely,' Garry nodded and then he boomed out that big laugh. 'And I'll set a fine capitalistic example by making myself seventy-five million pounds a year in the process." He braked the truck and turned off the track, following the leading Toyota with Sean at the wheel down to the pools in the mopane forest.

These were shallow depressions, known in Africa as pans, filled with a muddy grey water. They were warmed by the sun and heavily laced with the pungent urine of the elephant herds that regularly bathed and drank in them. Despite the temperature and flavour of the water the flocks of doves preferred them to the clear running water of the river only two miles distant.

The birds came in the hour before sunset in flocks that filled the air like blue-grey smoke. In their tens of thousands they winged in along established flight-lanes.

Sean set up his guns on these lanes, five or six hundred metres from the water. He did not wish to prevent the birds from drinking by placing the guns over the pans.

Instead he forced them to run the gauntlet to reach the water. As a matter of honour, each gun was expected to observe strictly the daily bag-limit of fifty birds, and to attempt only the difficult challenging shots at high, swiftly flying doves.

The guns were placed in pairs. Not merely for company, but also to check each other and see fair play, and to provide an appreciative audience for those finely taken doubles or that beautifully led shot at a blue streak passing a hundred feet overhead at seventy miles an hour.

Quite naturally, Elsa paired with Shasa, and their cries of 'Bello! Molto hello!' and 'Jolly good shot! Well donev rang through the mopane as they encouraged each other.

Garry and Sean made a pair on the west side of the pans. Deliberately they placed themselves behind a tall stand of timber so that the doves were forced high and hurtled into their view over the tree-tops without warning, presenting a shot so fleeting as to call for lightning reflexes and instinctive calculation of lead.

Once Sean missed his bird, shooting two or three feet behind it. Garry swivelled with the long Purdy mounting to his shoulder and brought the escaping dove tumbling down on a trail of loose feathers. Then he looked across at his older brother with his spectacles glinting gleefully and boomed with laughter. Sean tossed back his hair and tried to ignore him, but his face darkened with fury.

Isabella was left with Sir Clarence at the south end of a grassy glen out of sight of the rest of the party. She was shooting the gold-engraved 2o-gauge Holland & Holland that her father had given her. However, she had not fired it for almost a year, and her lack of practice showed up in her shooting.

She clean missed the first three birds in succession and then pricked one.

She said: 'Damn! Double damn!' She hated to wound them.

Sir Clarence took an accomplished double, then set his shotgun against the trunk of a mopane tree and crossed to where she stood.

"I say, do you mind if I give you a few tips?' he asked.

When she smiled at him over her shoulder he came up behind her. 'You are allowing your right hand to overpower the gun.' He folded her in his arms and took her hands in his huge fists. 'Remember, your left hand must always dominate. The right hand is there only to pull the trigger." He mounted the gun to her shoulder for her and squeezed her left hand on to the forestock for emphasis.

"Head up,' he said. 'Both eyes open. Watch the bird, not the gun." He smelt masculine. The perfume of his aftershave lotion did not entirely conceal the odour of fresh male sweat. His arms around her felt very agreeable.

"Oh,' she said. 'You mean like this?' And she pushed backwards gently with her hard round buttocks as she aimed over the barrels.

"Precisely.' There was a catch in his voice. 'You have got it exactly right." 'Goodness gracious me!' She used one of Nana's cherished expressions to herself 'He is size fourteen all over.' She had to work hard to prevent herself giggling like a schoolgirl.

Sir Clarence was warming rapidly to his self-appointed task as tutor, and Isabella told herself firmly: 'That's enough already. We don't want to spoil him.' And gently freed herself from his embrace.

"Let me try it,' she said, and shot the next dove so cleanly that it did not even flutter a wing.

"You are a natural,' he murmured, and she turned her head away to conceal her smile at the double entendre.

"I understand from your brother that you are also a first-class horsewoman,' he pursued relentlessly, not waiting for her reply. 'I have recently purchased a magnificent Arab stallion. I doubt there is another like him in Africa. I'd love to show him to you." 'Oh?' she asked with feigned lack of interest, concentrating on loading the shotgun. 'Where is he?" 'On my ranch at Rusape. We could have the Alouette drop us off there on the way back to Salisbury tomorrow afternoon." 'I might enjoy that,' she agreed. 'I'd like to meet your wife. I've heard that she is a delightful lady." He fielded it without a blink. 'Alas, my wife is in Europe at the moment.

She'll be away for another month at the least. You'd have to put up with me alone.' He gave the last sentence another subtle emphasis, and this time she could not prevent herself smiling.

"I'll have to think about that, Sir Clarence,' she said. 'I imagine that you are rather a large handful to put up with.' And this time his grave expression cracked and he smiled back at her.

"Nothing that you couldn't handle, my dear." She wondered what the reward from her mysterious masters would be if she could present them with not only the anti-sanctions strategy but also the complete Rhodesian order of battle. 'All in the line of duty,' she assured herself.

"Full bag!' Shasa called across to Elsa. He broke open his shotgun and placed it across the crook of his arm. He called to the two black children: Takamisa! Pick them UPV They scampered away to pick up the last two doves. Shasa and Elsa sauntered back to where the trucks were parked beyond the pan. The sun was almost on the treetops, and the thin stratum of cloud above it was gilded to brightest gold - the colour of a wedding ring, Shasa decided for no apparent reason.

"All right,' Elsa said suddenly, as though she had reached a difficult decision.

"Forgive me' - he was puzzled -'what is all right?" 'I trust you," she said. 'There will be conditions attached, but I will give you the blueprint for the plant and the formula for Cyndex 25." He drew a slow breath. 'I will try to be worthy of your trust." That evening, as they sat at the camp-fire withdrawn from the rest of the party, she set down the conditions.

"You will, give me your personal guarantee that Cyndex will never be used except on the express authority of the prime minister or his successors in office." Shasa glanced across the flames to make certain that they were not overheard. 'I swear that to you. I will obtain the prime minister's written agreement." 'Now, as to the rules of engagement, Cyndex will never be used on any section of the South African people,' Elsa went on carefully. 'It will never be used in internal political or civil conflict. It will never be used to quell an uprising of the populace or in a future civil war." 'I agree." 'It may be used only to repel a military invasion by troops of a foreign power. Then only when the use of conventional arms fails." 'I agree." 'There is one other condition - a little more personal." 'Name it." 'You will come to Lausanne personally to arrange the details." 'That will be my particular pleasure." It was the last morning of safari. The guests had packed and were ready to leave Chizora. Their luggage was stacked outside each tent, ready for the camp staff to collect.

The business was done, and the contracts signed. Elsa Pignatelli had agreed to assist with the marketing of Rhodesian tobacco and chrome - for a princely fee - while Garry Courtney had undertaken to provide shipping and false documentation for these materials from South African ports. His rewards for these services would include extension of the Chizora hunting concessions as well as his monetary commissions.

The entire party was due to be ferried back to Salisbury in the Rhodesian air-force helicopter. The helicopter had already been in radio contact with the camp when it was airborne and only a hundred nautical miles out. They had expected it to land in the glade in front of the camp thirty minutes ago. It was overdue, and they were worried.

In small groups they stood around the camp-fire in the boma sipping a final Pimm's No. i. Instinctively they kept glancing to the sky and listening for the sound of the Alouette's rotors.

Sean and Bella were together. 'When are you coming to Cape Town?' she asked her eldest brother.

"I'll try to get down at the end of the season, if you promise to line up some crumpet for me." 'Whenever did you need help?' she asked, and Sean grinned and kissed her.

"I'm not as bad as Pater,' he protested. 'Look at the old dog. He's off to Europe with the widow, I hear." They both looked across at Elsa and Shasa.

"It's puke-making at their age,' Sean teased, and Isabella came loyally to her father's defence.

"Daddy is one of the most attractive-" 'Cool it, Bella.' He squeezed her arm. 'Worry about Sir C. You'll be lucky to escape with your virtue. They don't call him Cantering Clarence for nothing." As if in response to his name, Sir Clarence drifted across to Isabella and quietly spirited her aside.

"We'll drop the others off at Salisbury,' he murmured, leaning over her solicitously. 'Then the helicopter can take the two of us on to my ranch.

We don't have to make a fuss about our little excursion, do we?" 'Of course not,',Isabella agreed sweetly. 'We don't want my papa - or Lady Van Wyk - spoiling our innocent interlude of horse appreciation." "Exactly,' he agreed. 'Some things are best...' He broke off as the radio in Sean's tent crackled urgently and then burst into life.

Sean bounded from the boma and disappeared into his tent. More than any of them, he had been worried by the overdue helicopter. They heard him acknowledging his call-sign from the approaching helicopter.

"Tugboat, this is Big Foot. Go ahead." 'Big Foot. We have a change of plan. Please inform the minister that this flight is being diverted to hot-pursuit operations. We will pick you up with your recce team in sixteen minutes. I have ten Scouts on board.

Alternative arrangements will be made for ministerial transport as soon as possible. Over." 'Roger, Tugboat. We will be ready for pick-up. Standing by.9 'War is such a damned nuisance,' Sir Clarence sighed. They had overheard every word of the radio exchange. 'We will have to sit around here until they can send another chopper to fetch us." 'What has happened?' Isabella demanded.

"Terrorist action,' Sir Clarence explained. 'Probably an attack on a white farm somewhere. Our helicopter is being diverted. The pursuit takes precedence over all other traffic. Can't let these murderous swine get away with it -have to keep the morale of the farmers up." He didn't mention how desperately short of military helicopters the Rhodesian air force was, but shrugged instead.

"It does look as though the Fates are conspiring against us." 'Perhaps we'll just have to postpone our little arrangements-' She broke off as Sean came out of the tent shrugging on his light pursuit-harness, with its canvas pockets for ammunition and grenades and water-bottles. His FN rifle was slung over one shoulder, and he was bellowing.

"Matatu, come on, you skinny little bugger. We've got real work to do now.

Hot pursuit." 42e The diminutive Ndorobo tracker appeared like a grinning black jack-in-the-box.

"Hai, Bwana,' he piped in Swahili. 'We will roast some ZANLA testicles on the camp-fire tonight." 'You bloodthirsty little devil. You love it, don't you,' Sean grinned with his own fierce joy, and then turned to the others clustered in the centre of the boma.

"Sorry, folks. Have to leave you to make your own way back to Salisbury.

Matatu and I have a date.' He singled out Garry in the group. 'Why don't you ferry them up to Salisbury in the Beechcraft? With all that luggage it will take you a couple of trips, but it's better than sitting around waiting for the chopper to be free." He broke off and cocked his head to listen. 'Here she comes now." He moved quickly amongst them, shaking hands in brief farewell.

"Will we see you again next season, signora? Next time, I promise you a big leopard..." 'Sorry to bump you off the flight, Sir Clarence." "Cheerio, Dad. Keep out of mischief. This with a wink and a glance at Elsa Pignatelli.

"Bye, little sister.' He kissed Isabella, and she clung to him for a moment.

"Be careful, Sean. Please don't let anything happen to YOU. I He hugged her and laughed at the absurdity of that idea. 'You are in more danger of receiving incoming fire from Sir C,' he chuckled.

He looked up at the sky, and the helicopter was a black insect shape above the trees.

He crossed to shake his younger brother's hand. 'D it, Garry. Who wants your job - when I can be doing this?" While they waited for the helicopter to settle Sean stood in the gateway of the boma with Matatu.

Isabella felt her throat close up and tears prickle her eyes. They made such an incongruous pair, the tall heroic figure of her brother with flowing locks and tanned muscular limbs and the wizened black gnome at his side. As she watched, Sean dropped one hand on the little man's shoulder in an affectionate embrace, an affirmation of the trust bred between them in a hundred desperate adventures and the mark of the special bond between these two warrior hunters.

Then they were racing forward into the blown dust-cloud of the hovering helicopter, ducking low under the spi i g blur of the rotors, and scrambling into the open hatchway.

Immediately the machine rose and went boring away into the south-east, keeping low over the tree-tops, not wasting a moment in the climb for altitude.

The ten Scouts were seated along the benches in the cabin of the helicopter, each of them heavily pregnant with their body harnesses and packs, draped with belts of ammunition and grenades and water-bottles, their bare arms and legs blackened. Only their teeth sparkled in faces that were either smeared with camouflage cream or were naturally dark. At least half the Ballantyne Scouts were loyal Mat2bele.

It was well known that blacks and whites fighting together as comrades tended to bring out the best qualities in each other as warriors. The Ballantyne Scouts were the crack unit of Rhodesia's fighting forces, although the Selous Scouts and the Special Air Services and the Rhodesian Regiment would split your crust if they heard you say it.

As Sean clambered into the cabin, he recognized every man of them, and greeted them by name. They returned the greeting with a laconic economy of words that belied their awe and respect. Sean and Matatu were already a living legend in the Scouts. The two of them had trained most of these tough young veterans in the subtle skills of bushcraft.

Roland Ballantyne, the founder and commanding colonel of the Scouts, had tried every ruse to inveigle Sean in as his second-in-command - so far without success. In the meantime he called upon Sean and Matatu whenever there was a heavy contact in the offing.

Sean dropped on to the seat beside him now. He snapped on his seat-belt.

While he began rubbing camouflage cream into his face he shouted above the clatter of the rotors: 'Greetings, Skipper. What's the rumble?'.

"Bunch of terrs hit a tobacco farm outside Karoi yesterday evening. They ambushed the farmer at the homestead gate. Shot him down as his wife came out on the veranda to welcome him. She held them off alone all night in the farmhouse - even under rocket-fire. Gutsy bird. Some time after midnight they pulled out and gapped it." 'How many?" 'Twenty plus." 'Which way?" 'North into the valley." 'Contact?" 'Not yet," Roland shook his head. Even under the cama cream he was lantern-jawed and impressive. He was probably five years older than Scan.

Like Sean he had built a hell of a reputation in the few short years since the bush war began.

"Local unit is following up but making heavy weather, losing ground every hour. The gooks are running hard." 'They'll bombshell and try to lose themselves amongst the local black population in the Tribal Trust area,' Sean predicted as he bound a grubby scrap of camouflage-net over his shining shoulder-length locks. 'Get us to the follow-up unit, Skipper." 'We'll be in radio contact any minute-' Roland broke off as the flight engineer beckoned him to the radio handset. 'Come on.' He unbuckled his safety-belt and led the way down the vibrating, bucking aisle between the benches. Sean followed him. He stood beside Roland, bracing himself against the bulkhead and craning his head to listen to the tinny disembodied voice in the microphone. 'Bush buck. This is Striker One,' Roland spoke into the mouthpiece. 'Do you have contact?" "Striker One. This is Bushbuck. Negative. I say again negative on contact." 'Are you on the spoor, Bushbuck?" 'Affirmative, but chase has bombshelled.' That meant that the terrorist gang had split up to hinder the pursuit.

"Roger, Bushbuck. As soon as you hear our engines give us yellow smoke." "Confirm yellow smoke, Striker One." Forty-five minutes later, the helicopter pilot picked out the smokc-signal, a canary-yellow feather drifting over the dark green roof of the forest.

The helicopter dropped towards it, and hovered above the grass-tops in an open glade between the trees standing in the tree-iine. They saw the police unit who had pushed the pursuit thus far. It was obvious at a glance that these were not e1ite bush fighters, but garrison troops from Karoi. They were townies and reserves doing their monthly call-up duties and not enjoying the chase one little bit.

Sean and Matatu exited together, jumping the six feet to earth and landing like a pair of cats, in balance with hot guns. They spread out swiftly and took cover while the helicopter soared and hovered two hundred feet above them.

It took them fifteen seconds to make certain that the police had the drop area secure, then Sean ran across to the leader of the pursuit unit.

"OK, Sergeant,' he snapped crisply. 'Hit your bottle. Drink, man, drink." The sergeant was red-faced, burnt by the sun, and overweight. Even in the valley heat, he had stopped sweating. It had dried on his shirt in irregular white rings of salt. He didn't know enough to keep himself from dehydrating. Another hour and he would be a casualty.

"Water is finished.' The sergeant's voice was hoarse. Sean tossed him a precious water-bottle, and while the man drank asked; 'What's the line of spoor?"

The sergeant pointed to the earth ahead of him, but already Matatu had picked up the sign left by the fleeing gang. He scampered along it, cocking his head to study the fine details which were invisible to any but the truly talented eye. He followed it for a mere fifty paces and then doubled back to where Sean waited.

"Five of them,' he chirped. 'One wounded in the left leg... 'The farmer's widow must have given them a good run." '... but the spoor is cold. We must play the spring hare." Sean nodded. The 'spring hare' was a technique that he and Matatu had worked out between them. It could only be effective with a tracker of Matatu's calibre. They had to be able to guess where the chase was heading.

They had to have a good idea of the line and rate of march before they could leap-frog - or spring-hare - down the line.

Here there was no doubt. The band of terrorists must keep northwards towards the Zambezi and the Tribal Trust lands where they could expect to find food and shelter and some rudimentary medical treatment for their wounded. There were many sympathizers amongst the black Shona and Batonka tribesmen who lived along the valley rim. Those who would not co-operate willingly would be forced to do so at the muzzle of an AK assault-rifle.

All right, so they would keep on northwards. However, the wilderness ahead was vast. There was hard going and broken terrain, rocky valleys and jumbled granite kopjes. If the fleeing band turned only a few degrees off the obvious line of march, they could disappear without trace.

Sean ran out into the open glade and signalled the circling Alouette, holding his arms in a crucifix. The helicopter responded instantly.

"OK, Sergeant.' Sean called. 'Keep after them. We'll go ahead and try to cut the spoor. Maintain radio contact -and remember to drink." 'Right on, sir!' the sergeant grinned. The brief meeting had given him and his men fresh heart. They all knew who Sean was. He and Matatu were legend.

"Give them hell, sirp he yelled up at Sean, and Sean waved from the open hatch of the Alouette as they soared away.

Sean swallowed half a dozen codeine tablets for his ribs, which. were beginning to ache, and washed them down with a swig from his spare water-bottle. He and Matatu crouched together in the opening of the hatchway, peering down at the canopy of the forest five hundred feet below.

Only at moments like these, when the hunt was running hot and hard, could Matatu subdue his terror of flying.

Now he leant so far out of the hatch that Sean had an arm around his waist to hold him from the drop. Matatu was positively shivering in his grip, the way a good gun-dog shivers with the scent of the bird in his nostrils.

Suddenly he pointed, and Sean yelled to the flight engineer: 'Turn ten degrees left." Over the intercom the engineer relayed the change of course to the pilot in the high cockpit.

Sean could see no possible reason for Matatu's turn to the west. Below them the forest was amorphous and featureless. The rocky kopies that broke the leafy monotony were miles apart, random and indistinguishable one from the other.

Two minutes later Matatu pointed again, and Sean interpreted for him: "Turn back five degrees right." The Alouette banked obediently. Matatu was performing his special magic. He was actually tracking the fugitives from five hundred feet above the canopy of trees, not by sight or sign, but by a weird intuitive sense that Sean would not have credited if he had not seen it happen on a hundred other chases over the years.

Matatu quivered in Sean's grip and turned his face up at his master. He was grinning wickedly, his lips trembling with excitement. The blast of the slipstream had filled his eyes with tears, and they streamed down his cheeks.

"Down!' he yelped, and pointed again.

"Downp Sean yelled at the flight engineer. As the helicopter dropped, Sean looked across at Roland Ballantyne.

"Hot guns!' he warned, and Roland signalled his men. They straightened up on the hard benches and leant forward like hunting dogs on the leash. As one man they raised their weapons, muzzles high, and with a metallic clatter that carried above the roar of the turbo engines they locked and loaded.

The helicopter checked and hovered six feet above the baked dry earth. Sean and Matatu jumped together, and cleared the drop zone.

As soon as they were clear they went down into cover, facing outward.

Sean's FN was at his shoulder as he scanned the bush around him. The Scouts came boiling out of the hatchway, and scattered to adopt a defensive perimeter. The helicopter climbed away empty.

The second they were in position Roland Ballantyne signalled across to Sean with clenched fist 'Gov Well separated, Sean and Matatu went forward. The Scouts spread out and covered them, eyes glinting and restless trigger-fingers cocked. Matatu had brought them down in a bottle-neck where a series of steep rocky ridges formed a funnel. The apex of the V was cut through by a dry riverbed. Storm water over the millennium had sculpted a natural staircase that climbed the ridge, and the elephant herds that used this natural pass had worn the contours and levelled the gradients.

Would the fleeing band have traded time for stealth? Would they have chosen the elephant highway, rather than toil up the jagged rocky ridge at another, less obvious point?

Matatu flicked his fingers underhand, signalling Sean to cast the eastern approach to the pass. Sean was as good a tracker as any white man alive. To save precious time Matatu would trust him with such a simple cast as this.

Sean moved across the sun, placing it between him and the ground he was searching. It was the old tracker's trick to highlight the spoor. He concentrated all his attention on the earth, trusting the hovering Scouts to cover his back. They were all good men; he had trained them himself.

He felt the little electric thrill of it as he picked it up. It was close in against the cliff-face. One of the round water-worn river-boulders had been displaced. It was sitting a quarter of an inch askew in the natural dish of earth that had held it. He touched it with a fingertip just to check. He would not call Matatu and risk his scorn until he was certain.

"Little bugger will mock me for a week if I make a bum call." The boulder was the size of his head and it moved slightly under his finger. Yes, it had been recently dislodged. Sean whistled, and Matatu appeared at his side like the genie of the lamp. Sean did not have to point it out. Matatu saw it instantly and nodded his approbation.

The file of fugitives was anti-tracking skilfully. They had moved up the water-course in Indian file, keeping in close'under the precipitous rocky side. They had used the river-boulders as stepping-stones to hide their tracks, but this one had been slightly dislodged by the weight of the men passing over it.

Matatu darted forward. A hundred or so paces further on he found the spot where the wounded terrorist's foot had slipped off one of the stepping-stones and touched the soft white sand. The foot had left a brush-mark. Only the highly trained eye would have noticed the faint shade of colour difference between the surface grains and the freshly exposed grains of sand from below.

Matatu knelt over it and studied the faint scuff-mark, then he blew gently on the surrounding sand to gauge its friability. He rocked back on his heels while he pondered the factors that had effected the colour difference in the grains - the moisture content of the sand, the angle of the sun, the strength of the breeze and, most important, the time elapsed since the sand had been disturbed.

"Two hours,' he said with utter finality, and Sean accepted it without question.

"Two hours behind them,' Sean reported to Roland Ballantyne.

"How does he do it?' Roland shook his head in wonder. 'He brought us straight here, and now he gives us the exact time. He's gained us eight hours in fifteen minutes. How does he do it, Sean?" 'Beats me,' Sean admitted. 'He's just a chocolate-coated miracle." 'Can he spring-hare us again?' Roland demanded. He spoke no Swahili; Sean had to translate.

"Spring-hare, Matatu?" 'Ndio, Bwana,' Matatu nodded happily, and preened under the patent admiration of the colonel.

"Leave four men to follow up on the ground,' Sean advised. 'Tell them to follow the water-course and there's a good chance they will pick up the spoor at the top." Roland gave the orders, and the four Scouts moved away up the funnel in good order. Sean called down the helicopter, and they scrambled aboard.

They flew on into the north. However, they had not been airborne for more than ten minutes before Matatu wriggled in Sean's grip and yelped: "Turn!

Turn backv Under Sean's direction the helicopter made a wide circle, and Matatu was leaning halfway out of the hatch. His head swung quickly from side to side as he peered downwards, and for the first time he seemed uncertain.

"Down,' he cried suddenly, and pointed to a long streak of darker-green vegetation that filled a shallow kidneyshaped depression in the terrain ahead of them.

The Alouette descended gently, warily. Matatu pointed out a landing-zone at the far side of the depression.

The scrub below them was dense and thorny, and the ground was studded with ant-heaps. These were bare towers of concrete, hard red clay each as high as a man's shoulder, like headstones in a cemetery; they would make the landing difficult and dangerous.

Little bugger is taking us into the worst-possible LZ, Sean thought bitterly. Why does he have to choose this particular spot?

The helicopter checked in mid-air, and Sean turned his head and yelled at Roland: 'Hot guns, man!' And then followed Matatu. They landed side by side and scurried forward, dropping into cover behind one of the antheaps.

He did not turn his head to watch the other Scouts come out of the hatch.

He was watching the tangled thorn scrub out ahead, sweeping his flanks with a darting penetrating scrutiny, holding the FN levelled and his thumb on the safety. Although it was a million-to-one chance that there was a terrorist within five miles of the LZ, still the landing drill was second nature to all of them.

"No gooks here,' Sean assured himself. And then incredibly, stunningly they were under fire.

From the thorn scrub on their left flank AK fire raked them. The sharp distinctive rattle of the fusillades swept over them. Dust and chips of red clay flew from the side of the ant-heap only inches in front of his face.

Sean reacted instantly. He rolled and re-aligned, and as he brought the FN to bear he glimpsed from the corner of his eye a grisly little cameo of death.

One of the Scouts, the last man out of the hatch, was hit. As his feet touched the ground, a burst of AK fire caught him across the belly. It doubled him over and drove him backwards three sharp paces. The bullets exiting from his back pulled his body out of shape. They sucked half his guts out of him, and blew them in a misty pink streak through the stark sunlit air. Then he was down and gone into the scrub.

As Sean returned fire the realization flashed in upon him: Matatu has dropped us into direct contact. He punctuated his thoughts with short measured bursts of the FN. The little bugger has been too bloody good this time. He has dropped us right on their heads.

At the same time he was assessing the contact. Obviously the gang had been taken as unaware as they were. They 43e had not been able to prepare any kind of defence, nor had the time to set up an ambush. Probably they had heard the roar of the approaching helicopter and then only seconds later the Scouts had begun dropping amongst them.

Surprise, Sean thought, and shot at the muzzle-flashes of an AK that were fluttering the leaves of a thorn bush only thirty paces ahead.

From experience he had learnt that the Shona guerrillas facing him were first-class soldiers, doughty and brave and dedicated. They had two weaknesses, however. First, their fire-control was poor; they believed that sheer weight of fire made up for inaccuracy. Their other weakness was the inability to react swiftly to surprise. Sean knew that for another minute or so the terrorists in the scrub in front of him would be disorganized and flustered.

Hit them now, he thought, and snatched a phosphorus grenade from his webbing. As he pulled the pin from the grenade he opened his mouth to yell at Roland Ballantyne: 'Come on, Roland. Sweep line! Charge the sods before they settle down." Roland beat him to it. The same thoughts must have raced through his mind.

"Take them, boys! Sweep line -on the charge!" Sean leapt to his feet and in the same movement hurled the grenade in a high arcing trajectory. It fell thirty yards ahead of him, and the thorn scrub erupted in a blinding white cloud of phosphorus smoke. Flaming fragments, burning with a dazzling white radiance, showered over the area.

Sean raced forward, conscious of the small dark shape that ran at his heels. Matatu was his shadow. Other grenades were exploding across the front, and the thorn scrub was thrashed by the blasts and lashed by the sheets of automatic fire that the Scouts threw down as they charged.

The gang broke before them. One of them ducked out of the bush ten paces ahead of Sean, a teenager in tattered blue jeans and a soft camouflage-cap.

Burning globules of phosphorus had adhered to his upper body. They sizzled and flared, leaving smoking black spots on his arms and torso. The smoke smelt like barbecueing meat.

Sean shot hijrn, but the burst was low. It broke his left hip, and the boy dropped. The AK rifle flew from his grip, and he rolled on to his back and held his hands in front of his face.

"No, Mambo!' he screamed in English. 'Don't kill me! I am a Christian - for the love of God, spare me!" 'Matatu,' Sean snapped without checking or looking round. 'Kufa!" He jumped over the maimed guerrilla. The magazine of his FN was half-empty.

He could not afford to waste a single rounds and Matatu had his skinning-knife. He spent hours each day honing the blade. If he had been a section leader, Sean might have saved him for interrogation; but Matatu could cut this one's throat. Cannon-fodder like him was of no use to them, and medical attention was expensive.

The Scouts swept the bush, and it was over in less than two minutes. It was no contest. It was like pitting Pekinese puppies against a pack of wild dogs. The Scouts charged through and then whirled and came back.

"Secure the area,' Roland Ballantyne ordered. He was standing less than twenty yards from Sean. He held the muzzle of his rifle pointed at the sky, and the heated metal distorted the air around it in a watery mirage. 'Well done, Sean. That little black devil of yours is a charm." He glanced across at Matatu.

Matatu was straightening up from the corpse of the hip-shot terrorist. He had slit his throat with a single stroke, across the side of the throat and up under the ear to catch the carotid artery.

He was wiping the blade of his skinning-knife on his thigh as he scurried back to his rightful place at Sean's side, but he grinned an acknowledgement at Roland Ballantyne. Both of them were distracted, still heady with the euphoria of violence and blood.

The corpse of one of the other guerrillas lay in the scrub between them.

The flesh and clothing still smouldered with burnt-out phosphorus, and the man's clothing was splattered with bright blood from his gunshot wounds. Roland Ballantyne walked past him with barely a glance. It was impossible that the terrorist could have survived such terrible injuries.

The terrorist rolled over abruptly. He had been concealing a Tokarev pistol under his shattered chest. With his last flutter of life he lifted the Tokarev and he was close enough to touch Roland with the muzzle.

"Roland!' Sean screamed a warning, and although Roland reacted instantly it was too late. The shot would take him in the spine from a range of three feet.

Sean did not have time to raise the FN to his shoulder. He fired from the hip, pointing and aiming instinctively. The bullet caught the terrorist in the face. His head burst like an over-ripe water-melon hit with a Pick-handle, and he flopped over on his back. The Tokarev slipped unfired from his nerveless fingers.

Roland Ballantyne straightened up slowly, and for a long moment he stared down at the corpse. The man's legs were kicking and trembling convulsively.

Roland contemplated his own mortality and saw the agony of his own death reflected in the man's bulging eyeballs.

He tore his gaze away and looked across at Sean.

"I owe you one,' he said curtly. 'You can collect any time.' And he turned away to shout orders at his Scouts to gather the kill. There were green plastic body-bags in the hovering Alouette.

Le Morne Brabant was a jagged mountain of black volcanic lava that seemed to tower over them threateningly, even though they were almost four miles out on the oceanic stream.

These sapphire currents that eddied around the toe of the island of Mauritius created an enrichment of marine life that big-game anglers around the world recognized as a 'hot spot'. There were other famous grounds such as those off the ribbons of the Great Barrier Reef, at Cabo San Lucas on the Californian peninsula or in the lee of the island of Nova Scotia. At all these points the concentrations of vast shoals of bait-fish attracted the ocean predators -the giant marlin and the tuna species. The sports anglers of the world came to pit their skill and their strength against these sleek monsters.

Shasa Courtney always insisted on chartering the same boat and the same island crew. Each boat sets up its own individual vibration in the water, a combination of engine and propeller and hull configuration which is as unique to that boat as a fingerprint is to the man. That vibration either attracts or repels fish.

Le Bonkeur was a lucky boat. She pulled fish, and her skipper had eyes like a gannet. He could spot the flash of a single sea-bird diving on a school of bait-fish on the horizon, or at a mile's distance pick out the sickle-shaped dorsal fin of a cruising marlin and estimate the fish's weight to within ten kilos.

Today, however, they were desperate for a bait. They had been out for almost two hours without putting a bait on the outriggers.

Everywhere they looked there were shoals of bait-fish. The Indian Ocean seemed to swarm with their multitudes. They darkened the surface of the water like patches of cloud shadow, and dense flocks of sea-birds circled over them, screaming and diving in avaricious hysteria. Every few minutes a volley of leaping bonito would burst through the surface and arc in glittering silver parabolas through the brilliant tropical sunshine.

They were being panicked and driven up by the great pelagic fish that circled in the depths below the shoals. It was one of those crazy days that occur all too seldom in a fisherman's life when there are simply too many fish. The ravenous predators were harrying the shoals so viciously that they were unable to feed. All their energy was diverted to avoiding the voracious charging monsters that tore through the shoals. They ignored the small finger-length feather lures with which the crew of Le Bonheur were trying to tempt them.

Standing on the flying bridge fifteen feet above the deck, Shasa could see deep into the limpid blue waters. He could clearly make out the hordes of bonito, like fat cigars as long as his forearm, dodging and ducking through Le Bonheur's wake. They almost touched the feather jigs as they darted past them.

"We need one - just one bait,' Shasa groaned. 'On a day like this it's an iron-clad guarantee of a marlin." Elsa Pignatelli leant over the bridge rail beside him. She wore only a tiny flaming scarlet bikini and she was tanned and smooth as a loaf of honey bread crisp from the oven.

"Lookv she cried, and Shasa whirled just in time to see a marlin come out of the water alongside Le Bonheur. It was driven high into the air by the speed and power of its own charge as it split a shoal of bonito. Its eyes were the size of tennis balls, and its spike was the length and thickness of a baseball bat. The water streamed from its flanks in silver cascades, and it wagged its great head in the air. In the excitation of the feeding frenzy, it had changed colour, like a chameleon, and burnt with bands of electric blue and lilac that turned the tropical blue of the sky pale in contrast.

"A granderp Shasa shouted the colloquial name for a fish that would push the scale beyond the mystic thousand pound mark.

The marlin fell back and hit the water flat on its side with a report like a shot of cannon.

"A bait!' cried Shasa, clutching his brow like a Shakespearian tragedian.

"My kingdom for a bait." The other half-dozen boats of the Black River fleet that they could see scattered to the horizon were suffering the same agonies. They could hear the frustrated lamentations of their skippers on the ship's radio. Nobody had bait, while out there the marlin were waiting to commit suicide.

"What can I do?' Elsa demanded. 'Do you want me to propound a little of my witchcraft and weave a spell for you?

"I don't know if that would be strictly ethical,' Shasa grinned back at her. 'But I'm willing to try anything. Weave away, my lovely witch!" She opened her purse and found her lipstick. 'Tom Thumb, Thomas i Becket, Rumpelstiltskin!' she mitoned solemnly, and drew a scarlet hieroglyph on his naked chest which had a distinctly phallic outline. 'I diddle you! I fiddle you! I doddle you! I doodle youp 'Oh yes. I love it,' Shasa laughed out loud. 'I could get seriously hooked on your type of magic." "You have to believe in it.' she warned him, 'or else it just won't work." 'I believe,' said Shasa fervently. 'Oh, how I believe in doodling youp Down on the deck below them one of the crew squealed suddenly, and they heard the tinny whirr of the ratchet on one of the small bait-rods.

Shasa's laughter was cut off abruptly. For an instant he stared at her with awe. 'Damn me! You really are a witch,' he muttered, and he dived for the ladder and slid down to the deck.

The deck-hand brought the skipjack bonito over the side and cradled him lovingly in his arms. The fish quivered and struggled, but he cushioned its fat round body against his chest. It was a pretty metallic blue and silver, with a pointed snout and sharp-bladed tail-fins. Its lower body was laced with lateral lines of black. Shasa saw with relief that it was lightly hooked in the hinge of the jaw. There was no damage to its gills.

He slipped the small hook from its jaw and ordered the deckie: 'Turn himv The deckie inverted the bonito, and immediately its struggles ceased.

Holding it upside down was a trick that disorientated and quietened it.

Shasa had his bait instruments laid out like those of a surgeon. He selected the long crochet-hook and worked it carefully into the front of the bonito's eye-socket. The blunt steel tip pushed the eyeball aside and did not damage it in the least.

He steered the needle into the natural canal through the bone of the fish's skull. The tip emerged from the same spot in the opposite eye-socket. The fish showed no sign of distress and lay quietly in the deckie's arms Shasa hooked a loop Of 120-lb Dacron line over the steel crochet-hook and gently drew the line back through the wound. He dropped the crochet-hook and snatched up the huge 12/0 marlin-hook. With a series of quick deft turns he had attached the hook firmly between the bonito's eyes. The fish was stiff alive and virtually unharmed. Its eyesight was unimpaired.

Shasa stood back and nodded to the deckie. He knelt on the gunwale and lowered the bonito over the side, solicitous as a nursemaid. As soon as it was released, the fish darted away, drawing the heavy steel trace and the attached Dacron line behind it. It disappedred almost instantly into the blue depths.

Shasa stood beside the fighting-chair. The stubby rod was set in the gimbal. The Fin-Nor Tycoon reel was made of gold-anodized marine-grade aluminium alloy. Still it weighed over five kilos and held over a kilornetre of the braided Dacron line. The line hissed softly as it streamed off the reel. Shasa adjusted the tension on it with a light touch of his fingertips.

He had marked the line with wraps of silk thread at intervals of fifty yards. He let out a measured hundred yards before he tightened the drag lever of the reel.

The deckie was already lowering the halyard of one of the twenty-foot outriggers that protruded like whippy steel antennae from each side of the hull. The purpose of the outriggcr was to hold the lines separated and to allow the slack bight of line to drop back when the marlin struck.

"No,' Shasa stopped him. 'I will hold it myself." This was a more precise method of determining the depth of the bait and amount of drop-back. However, it required patience and experience and fortitude to hand-

hold the line rather than merely to loll in the chair and leave it in the clip of the outrigger.

Carefully Shasa stripped a hundred feet of line off the big Fin Nor and coiled it on the deck. Then he perched on the stem of Le Bonheur and called to the skipper: 'Allez!" The skipper engaged the gear lever, and the propeller began to turn lazily.

The diesel engine was ticking over at idling revs and Le Bonheur began to inch forward against the scend of the swells.

Slowly she built up to a leisurely walking speed. The tension on the line in Shasa's hand increased. He could feel the weight of the bonito on the other end. The fish began to follow the boat like a dog on a leash. Shasa judged the depth of the bait by the angle at which the 11the entered the water. He could tell the condition and liveliness of the bonito by the faint vibration of its tail and the intermittent tugs and jerks it gave as it attempted to turn or dive.

Within minutes Shasa's arm was numb and cramping, but he ignored the discomfort and called up to Elsa on the bridge: 'How about a little more of your "fiddle me diddle me" magic?" 'It only works once.' She shook her head. 'From here on you are on your own." At slow speed Le Bonheur rolled sluggishly over the swells, and at Shasa's order began a wide and gentle turn up into the north.

Halfway through the turn, the line went slack in Shasa's hand and he stood up quickly from his seat on the gunwale.

"What is it?' Elsa called down eagerly.

"Probably nothing,' he grunted, but all his concentration was on the feel of the line.

It came taut again, but now the bonito's movements were altered. He could feel its frantic struggles transmitted through his fingertips. It ducked and dived and tried to turn, but the gentle progress of Le Bonheur drew it forward remorselessly.

"Attention!' Shasa alerted the crew.

"What's happening?' Elsa asked again.

"Something is frightening the bonito,' he answered. 'It's seen something down there." He could imagine the terror of the small fish as the gigantic shadow circled it stealthily in the blue underworld of the ocean. The marlin would be wary. The bonito was behaving unnaturally. It should have darted away instantly. The marlin stalked it gingerly, but soon its appetite would exceed its caution. Shasa waited a minute and another minute, crouched over the transom, rigid with excitement.

Suddenly the line was plucked from his fingers, but for an instant he felt the mighty weight and majesty of the marlin as it struck the bonito with the broad blunt edge of its spike.

"Strikep Shasa howled, holding both arms above his head. 'Stop engines!" Obediently the skipper slipped the gear lever into neutral, and Le Bonheur wallowed, dead in the water. Shasa picked up the line again and held it with the lightest pressure of his fingertips. It was slack; no sign of life. The. bonito had been killed instantly by that massive blow.

Vividly he imagined what was happening in those mysterious blue depths. The marlin had killed and now it circled again. It might lose interest, or become alarmed by the unnatural movement of the carcass. It was essential that no movement or drift on the line scared it off.

The seconds dripped like treacle, slow and sticky.

"He is making another circle,' Shasa tried to encourage himself. Still nothing happened.

"Il est parti,' the skipper announced lugubriously. '11 a refusd." 'I'll kick your pessimistic butt if you wish it on me,' Shasa told him furiously. 'He hasn't bloody well partied. He's coming around for another circle." The line twitched in his fingers, and Shasa let out a shout of relief.

"Le voilk! There he is!" Elsa clapped her hands. 'Eat, fish. Smell that lovely sweet flesh. Eat it," she implored.

The line jiggled and tugged softly, and Shasa let a few inches slide through his fingers. He could imagine the marlin picking up the carcass in its horny beak and turning it head-first to swallow it down.

"Don't let him feel the hook,' Shasa whispered a prayer. The loop of line should allow the point of the hook to lie flat against the bonito's head as it slid down the marlin's gaping maw. If, however, the loop had twisted or hung up - Shasa did not want to think about that.

There was another long pause, and then the line came taut again and began to move off with sedate but purposeful momentum.

"He's swallowed it,' Shasa exulted, and let the line flow through his fingers; coil after coil unwound from the deck and slipped away over the transom.

Shasa leapt to the swivel chair and swung himself into the seat. He clipped the harness to the rings on top of the glittering Fin-Nor reel. The harness formed a hammocklike sling around his lower back and buttocks and was attached directly to the reel.

Only the ignorant, or the deliberately misinformed, believed that the angler was buckled into the chair like a fighter pilot and that this gave him some sort of unsporting advantage. The only thing that kept him in the chair was his own strength and balance. If he made a mistake, the fish, weighing over a thousand pounds, as fast and powerful as a marine diesel engine, could pluck him and the rod effortlessly over the side and give him a very swift trip down to the five-hundred-fathom mark.

As Shasa settled behind the rod and engaged the brake, the line came up short against the spool and the rod-tip bowed over, as though it was kow-towing to the fish's brute strength.

Shasa thrust his feet against the foot board and took the strain with his legs.

"AJlez!' he yelled at Martin the skipper. 'Go!" The diesel bellowed as Martin opened the throttle wide and a dense cloud of oily black diesel smoke belched from 44e the exhausts. Le Bonheur leapt forward and crashed her shoulder into the swell.

No man had the strength to drive the point of the huge Mustad hook into the iron-hard mouth of the marlin. Shasa was using the power and speed of the boat to set the hook, to bury the barb deep in the horny beak. The spool of the reel hummed against its own massive brake-pads, and the line streamed away in a white blur.

"Arr8tez-vous!' Shasa judged that the hook was in. 'Stop!' he cried, and Martin closed the throttle.

They stopped and hung in the water. The rod was arched over as though the line were attached to the bottom of the ocean, but the reel was still ' held by the brake.

Then the fish shook his head, and the power of it crashed the butt of the rod back and forth in its gimbal as though it were a twig in a high wind.

"Here he goesp Shasa howled. The fish had been taken aback by the unexpected drag of the line, but even Le Bonheur had been unable to move his massive body against the drag of the water.

Now at last he realized that something was seriously wrong, and he made his first mad run. Once again the line poured off the reel in a molten blur, and Shasa was lifted high off the seat like a jockey pushing for the post.

So great was the friction in the massive Fin-Nor reel that it began to smoke. The grease on the bearings melted and boiled. It bubbled and spurted from the casing in steaming jets.

Leaning back with the full weight of his body, Shasa kept both hands well clear of the humming reel. The Dacron line was as dangerous as the blade of a butcher's bandsaw. It would take off a finger effortlessly or slash skin and flesh and muscle to the bone.

The fish ran as though there was no restraint upon him. The line on the spool melted away, three hundred yards were gone, then four, and in seconds half a kilometer of line had gone over the side.

"He's a goddam. Chinaman and he's going home to daddy,' Shasa yelled. "He's never going to stop!"

Abruptly the ocean parted in a maelstrom of white water, and the fish came out. Such was his girth and mass that he gave the illusion of moving in slow motion. He rose into the air, and the water poured from his body as though from the hull of a surfacing submarine. He came all the way out and, though he was five hundred yards from Le Bonheur, he seemed to blot out half the sky.

"Qu'il est grand!' shrieked Martin. Je n'ai jamais vu un autre comme qap And Shasa knew it was true - he had never seen a fish to match this one, not by half. He seemed to light the heavens with a reflected blue radiance, a flash of distant lightning.

Then, like a steeplechaser taking a fence, the fish reached the zenith of its leap and curved back to the surface of the ocean. It opened in a shockwave to his bulk, and then he was gone, leaving them all shaken by the memory of his majesty.

The line was blurring from the reel. Though Shasa had the brake dangerously heavy, pushing the drag up near the 12o-pound breaking-strain, it still streamed away as though there were no check upon it.

"Tournez-vous! Turn!' There was an edge of panic in Shasa's voice, as he yelled at the skipper; 'Turn and chase him!" With full rudder and opposite engine-thrust Martin spun the boat on its heel and they roared away in pursuit of the fish. Le Bonheur was rushing into wind and current, and the swells battered her. She dug her nose into them and burst them open in white spray. Then as she leapt over the crests she was almost airborne, and came pounding down into the troughs on her belly.

In the chair Shasa was thrown around mercilessly. He hung on to the arms of the chair, and rode the swells with his legs, his backside not touching the seat. The rod was bent like a longbow at full stretch. Even though Le Bonheur was running at full throttle, he was still losing line. The marlin was outrunning them by ten knots. The line on the reel wasted away, and Shasa watched helplessly as the spool seemed to shrink.

"Shasap Elsa shrieked from the bridge. 'He has turned!' She was so excited that she spoke in Italian. Shasa had by now enough practice with the language to understand her warning.

"Stop! Arr8tezp he howled at the skipper.

For no apparent reason the marlin had suddenly turned completely about and was charging back towards the boat.

This was not yet apparent from the direction that the line was running into the water. The marlin had thrown a half-mile loop in the line, which was potentially catastrophic. The side-drag of the loop in the water could snap the heavy line like cotton when the marlin came up tight on it. Elsa had spotted the turn in the very nick of time.

Shasa had to pick up that loop before the marlin passed under the boat. He pumped with his legs in a powerful mechanical rhythm, coming up to gain a foot of line, sinking down to give himself slack to take it on to the reel with two quick turns of the handle. Up and down he bobbed, grunting for air with each cycle, legs and arms working together, and the wet line coming on to the spool under such tension that a fine haze of droplets sprayed from the braid. The line was cutting sideways through the water, slicing a tiny feather from the surface. The loop was shrinking. The fish passed under the boat. The line began to straighten.

Shasa pumped with a frantic rhythm, getting those last few turns of line on to the reel.

"Turn now!' he gasped. Sweat was pouring down his naked chest. It mingled with the lipstick design that Elsa had drawn and ran down to stain the waistband of his shorts. 'Turn quickly! Quickly!" The fish was tearing away in the opposite direction, and the skipper got Le Bonheur around just as the line came up tight again. The full weight of the fish came down on the rod-tip, and it whipped over like a willow tree struck by a gale of wind. Shasa was levered up out of the chair to the full stretch of his legs, and the strain on the line was ounces short of snapping it.

He thumbed off the brake, releasing the tension, and the line crackled off the spool at fifty miles an hour. With despair he watched as those precious feet of line which he had won back with so much effort blurred effortlessly over the side.

"Chase him!' he blurted, and Le Bonheur pounded after the fish.

It was exquisite teamwork now. No single man could subdue a fish like this alone and unaided. The handling of the boat was critical, each turn and run and back-up had to be quick and precise.

Precious seconds before it was apparent to the men on the deck below, Elsa called out to warn of each new wild evolution of the great fish. For an hour those irresistible rushes never ceased. Every second of that time the thin strand of Dacron was under immense pressure, and Shasa stood in the chair and used his weight against it, pumping the rod and churning the reel. He took turn after agonizing turn on to the spool and then watched it dissipate again as the fish made another charge.

One of the deck-hands spilled sea-water from a bucket over his shoulders to cool him. The salt burnt the abrasions around his waist where the nylon straps of the harness had rubbed through his skin. The blood seeped from the injuries and stained his shorts watery pink. Every time the fish ran, the harness cut in a little deeper.

The second hour was bad. The fish showed no sign of weakening. Shasa was streaming with sweat, his hair was sodden as if he stood under a shower.

The galls of the harness around his middle were bleeding freely. The working of the boat hammered his thighs against the arms of the chair, and he was bruising extensively. Elsa came down from the bridge and tried to pack a cushion between the harness and his torn flesh. She gave him a handful of salt tablets and made him drink two cans of Coke, holding them to his mouth while he gulped them down.

"Tell me something,' he grinned crookedly at her with agony in his single eye. 'What the hell am I doing this for?" 'Because you are a crazy macho man. And there are some things a man must do.' She towelled the sweat off his face and kissed him with a fierce protective pride.

Some time during the third hour Shasa got his second wind. Twenty years ago it would have come sooner and lasted longer. The second wind was an extraordinary sensation. The pain of the galling harness receded, the cramps in his arms and legs smoothed away, he felt light-headed and invincible. His legs stopped juddering under him, and he planted his feet more firmly on the foot board.

"All right, fish,' he said softly. 'You have had your innings. Now it's my turn.' He leant back with all his weight against the rod, and felt the fish give.

It was only a tiny check on the rod. A shudder of movement, but down there in the blue depths the great fish had stumbled slightly.

"Yes, fish,' Shasa whispered, as his spirits soared, 'it's hurting you, too, now, isn't it?' He pumped with legs that were once more strong beneath him and laid four tight white coils of line on the reel - and he knew that they would stay there this time. The fish was coming at last.

By the end of the fourth hour the fish had no more wild dashing runs to make. He was fighting deep and dogged, making slow, almost sedate circles three hundred feet below the drifting boat. He was working on his side, offering as much resistance as possible to the pressure of rod and line. He was almost four feet deep across the shoulder and he weighed nearly three-quarters of a ton. The great half-moon of his tail swept back and forth to a stately beat, and his enormous eyes glowed like opals in the semidark. Waves of Mac and azure flame rippled across his body like the aurora of the Arctic skies. Around he went, and around again in steady sweeping circles.

Shasa Courtney was crouched in the fighting-chair, bowed over the rod like a hunchback. All the euphoria of the second wind had evaporated. He bent and straightened his legs with the deliberate agony of an arthritic, and every muscle and nerve screamed a protest at the movement.

Fish and man had established a dreadful pattern in this final phase of the struggle. The fish went out on the far lap of its circle, and the man hung on grimly, his sinews strained to the same pitch as the Dacron line. Then the fish swung through the circle and came back in under the boat; for a few moments the tension on the line abated and the arc in the rod straightened.

Shasa took two quick turns of line and then hung on again as the fish swung on to the outward leg. With each circle he recovered a few feet of line, but he paid the full price for it in sweat and pain. Shasa knew he was coming to the end of his endurance. He thought about the risk of doing permanent damage to his body. He could feel his heart pulsing like a swollen fragile sac in his chest, and his spine was shot through with fire.

Soon something must snap or burst inside him, but he pulled with all his remaining strength and felt the fish give again.

"Please,' he whispered to it. 'You are killing us both. just give up now, please." He gathered himself and pulled again - and the fish broke. It rolled like a waterlogged tree-trunk and succumbed to the pressure of the rod. It came up, sluggish and heavy, and thrust its head through the surface so close to the stem of the boat that it seemed to Shasa that he could reach out and touch one of its great glowing eyes with the tip of the rod.

It stood on its tail and pointed its nose spike to the sky and shook its head the way a spaniel coming ashore shakes the water from its cars. The heavy steel trace whipped and whistled around its head, and the rod was battered and slammed from side to side. The butt clattered and banged in the gimbal, and the line flashed and looped and traced sweeping designs in the air.

Still the fish stood in the water and opened wide its mighty triangular beak and kept shaking its head, and Shasa was helpless in the face of such power. He could not control it. The rod was jerked back and forth in his grip, and he watched the steel trace flog like the lash of a bullwhip.

With a sense of despair he saw the long shank of the hook twist and flick in the hinge of the open jaw. The gyrations of the fish were working it loose from the bone.

"Stop it!' he gasped at the fish, and tried to haul it over on its side. He felt the hook come loose and slip and skid across the bone, before it caught again. The fish gaped at him, and he saw the hook still holding lightly on the very lip of the iron black beak. One more shake of the head and the hook would be catapulted away on the swinging steel trace.

Shasa rose up in the chair and gathered the last of his strength. He hauled the marlin backwards, and it toppled and crashed back into the sea in a smother of foam.

"The trace,' he croaked at the deckie. 'Get the trace.' A direct pull on the steel wire trace would bring the fish under control.

During all four hours of the struggle, no person other than the angler had been permitted to touch the rod or the line to assist in the capture. Those were the rules of the sporting ethic laid down by the International Game Fishing Association.

Now with the fish played out and lying beaten on the surface the crew were permitted to handle the thirty-foot steel trace, which was attached to the end of the line, and to hold the fish with it while the flying gaff was driven into its flesh.

"Tracep Shasa pleaded, as the deckie with heavy leather gloves reached out over the stern and tried to get a hand to the top swivel of the trace. It was just beyond his fingertips.

The marlin wallowed on the surface, rolling and pitching like a dead log in the swells.

"One more time.' Shasa rose up and braced ilimself behind the rod. He pulled with a steady even pressure. The hook was holding only by its needle point, the barb was not buried - the slightest twist or jerk could free it.

The second deck-hand stood ready with the flying gaff, a massive stainless-steel hook on the end of a detachable pole. Once that hook was plunged into the marlin's shoulder, the struggle would be over.

The top swivel of the trace was six inches from the fingertips of the gloved hand, and the marlin fanned its tail, a last exhausted effort. The tip of the rod gave a little nod, almost as though approving the gallant spirit of the fish - and the hook came free.

The rod snapped straight and the hook flicked through the air and clattered against Le Bonheur's gunwale. Shasa fell back with a crash into the chair.

Only forty feet away the marlin lay on the surface with its back and the tall dorsal fin exposed. It was free but too spent to swim away; its tail made only convulsive spasmodic movements.

They all stared at it, until Martin the skipper recovered his wits. He slipped Le Bonheur into reverse and backed her up on the wallowing monster.

"On I'aura! We will have himv he yelled at the gaff man, as the marlin bumped against the stem. The deck-hand sprang to the transom and raised the gleaming hook high to drive the point into the fish's unprotected hump.

Shasa tumbled from the chair, his legs buckling weakly under him. Only just in time, he managed to seize the deckie's shoulder and arrest the blow before it was struck.

"No,' he croaked. 'No.' He wrested the gaff from the man's hand and flung it on the deck. The crew stared at him in astonishment and chagrin. They had worked almost as hard as Shasa had done for this fish.

It did not matter. He would explain to them later that it was unethical to free-gaff a fish. The moment the marlin threw the hook, the contest was over. The fish had won. To kill him now would be a deadly offence to all the ethics of sportsmanship.

Shasa's legs could no longer support his weight. He collapsed across the transom. The fish stiff lay on the surface beneath the stern. He reached down and touched the colossal dorsal fin. The edge was sharp as a broadsword.

"Well done, fiih,' Shasa whispered, and his eyes stung with the salt of his own sweat and with other things. 'It was a hell of a fight. Good for you, fish." He stroked the fin as though it were the body of a lovely woman. His touch seemed to galvanize the marlin. The strokes of his tail became stronger and more regular. His gill plates opened and closed like a bellows as he breathed and he moved away slowly.

They followed him for almost half a mile as he swam upon the surface with his fin standing in the blue like a tail tower. Shasa and Elsa stood hand-in-hand at the rail in silence and watched the strength and vigour return to the great fish.

Faster beat his tail, and he steadied in the water and pressed against the swells with all his former majesty. Gradually the tall fin sank below the surface, and they saw the long dark shape of his body recede into the depths. There was one last flash of light like the reflection from a mirror deep in the blue water and then the fish was gone.

On the long run back to port, Shasa and Elsa sat very close together. They watched the lovely emerald gem of the island grow before them, and once or twice they smiled at each other in quiet and perfect accord.

When Le Banheur ran into the Black River harbour and came into the dock, the other boats of the fleet were already tied up alongside. On the scaffold in front of the clubhouse hung the carcasses of two dead marlin.

Neither of them was half the size of the fish that Shasa had lost. A small admiring crowd was gathered around them. The successful anglers were posing with their rods. Their names and the marlin's weights were chalked on the glory-board. The Indian photographer from Port Louis was crouched over his tripod recording their moment of triumph.

"Don't you wish that your fish was hanging there?' Elsa asked softly, as they paused to watch the scene.

"How beautiful a marlin is when he is alive,' Shasa murmured. 'And how ugly he is when he is dead.' He shook his head. 'My fish deserves better than that." 'And so do you,' she said, and led him to the bar in the clubhouse. He moved stiffly, like a very old man, but his bruises gave him a strange masochistic pride.

Elsa ordered him a Green Island rum and lime.

"That should give you strength to get you home, old man,' she teased him lovingly.

Home was Maison des Aliz&s, the House of the Trade Winds. It was a rambling old plantation-house, built a hundred years ago by one of the French sugar barons. Shasa's architects had renovated it and restored it in authentic detail.

It sat like a glistening wedding-cake in twenty acres of its own gardens.

The old French baron had begun a collection of tropical plants, and Shasa had added to these over the years. The pride of the collection was the Royal Victoria waterlilies whose leaves floated on the gleaming fish-ponds.

The leaves were four feet across and curled at the edges like enormous platters, and the blooms were the size of a man's head.

Maison des Alizes was situated below the massif of Le Morne Brabant, only twenty minutes' drive from the clubhouse at Black River harbour. This was the main reason that Shasa had purchased it. He referred to it as his fishing shack.

As they drove up under the spreading canopy of the ficus trees, Shasa remarked: 'Well, it looks as though the rest of the party has arrived safely." Half a dozen cars were parked along the curve of the driveway, in front of the main portals of the house. Elsa's pilot had ferried the two engineers from Zurich in her personal jet. They were the technical directors of Pignatelli Chemicals who had developed the process and designed the plant for manufacturing Cyndex 25. Shasa had met Werner Stolz, the German director, during the delicate preliminary discussions in Europe. These had gone smoothly, under Elsa's skilful direction.

45e The technical directors and engineers of Capricorn Chemical Industries had come in from Johannesburg to attend this conference. Capricorn Chemical Industries was a fully owned subsidiary of Courtney Industrial Holdings.

Under Garry's chairmanship, Capricorn was the largest manufacturer of agricultural fertilizers and pesticides on the African continent.

The company had its main plant near the town of Germiston in the industrial triangle of the Transvaal. The existing plant already incorporated a high-security section which manufactured highly toxic pesticides. There was adequate space available to double this facility. The Cyndex plant could be set up without any fuss or undue public speculation.

The technical representatives of Pignatelli and Capricorn had come together here to discuss the blueprints and the specifications for the new plant.

For obvious reasons, it would have been unwise to conduct this meeting on the site in South Africa. In fact Elsa had insisted that none of her staff should ever visit the plant or have any connection with the enterprise that could be traced back to Pignatelli.

Mauritius had offered a perfect venue for this meeting. Shasa had owned Maison des Alizds for over ten years. He and his family and their guests were frequent visitors. Their presence here was unremarkable, and Shasa was on excellent terms with the Mauritian government and most of the influential figures on the island. The Mauritians treated the family as honoured and privileged guests.

Before his illness Bruno Pignatelli had also been a keen big-game angler who visited Mauritius regularly. So Elsa was also well known and respected on the island. Nobody was going to pry into her affairs or make awkward enquiries about her reasons for being at Maison des Alizds with a team of her engineers and consultants.

Shasa and Elsa were still keeping up appearances and exercising elaborate decorum, even to the extent of occupying separate, but interconnecting, suites on the top floor of Maison des Alizes. The family thought this little charade was hilarious. They were all waiting for the two of them in the gazebo on the lawn above the fish-pools when they came down for evening cocktails.

Elsa had bathed Shasa and anointed his bruises and scrapes, so he looked very dapper and refreshed, and limped only slightly as they strolled down the front steps together. He was dressed in a cream tropical silk suit with a crisp new eye-patch, and she wore a full-length gauzy chiffon with a frangipani spray in her hair.

"Look at the little devils. Do you really believe that they are just jolly good pals?' Garry demanded with a twinkle in his eye, and Isabella and Holly had to cling to each other for support. Even Centaine covered her smile with the Japanese fan and turned away to speak to one of the engineers.

Isabella had every reason to be at Maison des Alizes even though the Senate was in session. She was on the board of directors of Capricorn Chemicals.

Since the trip to Chizora Concession when she had first learnt of the Cyndex project, Isabella had shown a sudden interest in CCI. She had succeeded in having herself appointed to the Senate standing committee on agriculture, and after that it had required only a few subtle hints for Garry to offer her a seat on the CCI board. She had rapidly become an active and valuable addition to the management team of Capricorn and had never missed a meeting of the board. She had taken a particular interest in the Cyndex project, and Garry had naturally included her in this gathering.

Garry had also seized the opportunity of bringing Holly and the children along for an unscheduled holiday. Although he would be heavily occupied with the technical discussions, he hoped to be able to spend some time each day with his family. Holly had been complaining recently that they saw so little of him, and the children were growing up so quickly that he was missing a big slice of their childhood. These days Centaine Courtney-Malcomess never missed a chance to be with her great-grandchildren, and she had insisted on boarding the Lear when it took off from Lanseria private airport outside Johannesburg.

Indeed, so large had been the family contingent and the weight of their luggage that the other Capricorn directors had been obliged to catch the next commercial flight.

Maison des Alizds was bursting at the seams, every bed was occupied and they had set up two extra cots in the nursery for the babies. Centaine had borrowed extra trained staff from La Pirogue, the five-star beach resort just down the coast at Flic and Flac to deal with the invasion. Then she had sent the Lear back to Johannesburg to bring in supplies of such essentials as Imperial caviare and vintage Krug and fresh fruit and baby-foods that were unobtainable on the island.

The Krug was flowing freely now as Shasa and Elsa joined the party under the frivolous fretwork roof of the gazebo. There was an exuberant orgy of kisses and handshakes and back-slapping and happy cries of greeting.

Elsa had been presented to Centaine only briefly the previous evening when the old lady arrived at Maison des Alizes. Even though Centaine had been tired by the long jet flight, they had warmed to each other immediately.

Centaine had squinted at her in that particular way she had when she was concentrating deeply. Then her eyes had straightened and she had smiled and held out her hand.

"Shasa has told me many good things about you, but I suspect that's not half of it,' she said in Italian, and Elsa had smiled with pleasure at the compliment and at Centaine's command of her language.

"I did not know you spoke Italian, Signora Courtneymalcomess." 'There is still much we have to learn about each other,' Centaine nodded.

"I look forward to that,' Elsa replied. They had recognized kindred spirits and now, under the gazebo, Elsa moved naturally to Centaine's side and kissed her cheek.

Well, Centaine thought complacently as she took Elsa's arm, Shasa took long enough to find this one, but she was well worth waiting for.

Garry's children were chasing eich other around the gazebo, and their shrieks and howls detracted a little from the sophisticated ambience of the gathering.

"I must admit,' Shasa remarked as he regarded his grandchildren balefully, 'that I'm becoming more like Henry the Eighth every day - I prefer small children in the abstract." 'As I recall, at that age you were every bit as bad,' Centaine rallied immediately to the defence of her brood of great-grandchildren, but at that moment a particularly piercing squeal made Shasa wince.

"For that one alone you would have boiled me in oil. Mater, you are in danger of becoming a doting greatgranny." 'They'll soon have enough of it,' Centaine smiled down on them fondly.

"Not before I do, I assure you,' he muttered, and went off to where Bella was chatting to the Pignatelli engineers.

Isabella had set out to be charming to the German director, and by this time he was throwing off sparks. For Isabella there was a bizarre sense of unreality about the scene. She felt like an actress in a Franco Zeffirelli movie. The gleaming ivory house, the weird shapes of the trees and tropical plants, the gigantic fronds of the Royal Victoria waterlilies floating on the ponds and the shoals of multicoloured ornamental carp sailing beneath them, all contributed to a fantastic dreamlike setting. The laughter and the disjointed enigmatic conversations in different languages and the cries of the children were all so inconsequential when set against the true reason for this gathering.

There was Nana holding court like a dowager empress, and Holly and Elsa Pignatelli wearing precious chiffons and silks that cost a working man's wages for a year. While somewhere far away her little Nicholas dressed in combat camouflage and played with the ghastly weapons of war, with soldiers and terrorists for companions.

Here she flirted with this balding middle-aged man who looked like a grocer or a barman, but who was in reality the purveyor of death in one of its least attractive guises. 4eo Here she smiled at her big teddy bear of a brother and linked arms with her beloved father while she conspired to betray them both, and her country to boot. Here was the shell, the beautiful, groomed, intelligent, successful young woman, fully in control of her destiny and the world around her. While within was the terrified confused creature, suffering and bereaved, the pawn of powerful shadowy forces in a game that she did not understand.

"One day at a time,' she warned herself. 'One step at a time.' And the next step was the Cyndex project.

Perhaps this would be the ultimate endeavour that Ramsey had promised her.

Once she had given them the Cyndex project, perhaps they would be able to escape from the web - she, Ramsey and Nicholas. Perhaps then the nightmare would end.

The conference began the following morning in the dining room of Maison des Alizes. They sat beneath the revolving punkah fans at the long walnut table which extended to seat thirty persons and they talked about death. They discussed the mechanics and the chemical structure of death. They argued the packaging and the quality control and the cost-efficiency of death, as though talking about manufacturing potato crisps or face cream.

Isabella steeled herself to show no reaction mthe things she heard discussed at the long table. She had learnt never to underestimate the powers of observation of her brother Garry. Behind the horn-rimmed spectacles and bluff genial facade he missed very little. She knew that he would pick up any sign of horror or revulsion that she showed. That would probably be the end of her involvement in the project.

The Pignatelli technicians had prepared a dossier. The copies were contained in untitled but handsome pigskin folders which were placed on the dining-room table in front of each of them. The dossier was exhaustive and covered every aspect of the problem of manufacturing, storing and deploying the nerve gas.

Werner Stolz, the technical director, took them through the dossier a paragraph at a time. As horror unfolded on horror, read out in Werner's clipped sibilant German accent, Isabella found that she had to exercise all her self-control to keep her expression neutral and businesslike.

"Cyndex is a volatile gas consisting of an organophosphorus compound of the Alkylphosphonic Fluoridic Acid Group. Gases of this composition are known as G agents and include Sarin and Soman.

"However, Cyndex has desirable features that differ distinctly from these older types of nerve gas...' As he enumerated these features Isabella was appalled by his choice of the adjective 'desirable', but she nodded thoughtfully and kept her eyes on the dossier.

"Cyndex has a unique and highly aggressive combination of properties.

These are high toxicity, rapid action, percutaneous effectiveness as well as absorption through the lungs and mucous membrane of the human body.

Other advantages are high cost-effective ratios. By reason of its dual chemical structure, it is safe to manufacture, store and handle. Once the two agents which make up* Cyndex are mixed, the gas becomes highly unstable and has an extremely short effective lifespan. Thus it is more readily controlled in the field. After the elimination of the threatened population, the treated terrain can be more swiftly taken under friendly control." He beamed down the table at them benignly. 'I would like now to discuss each of these properties in greater detail. Let us take the question of toxicity. Cyndex in either vapour or aerosol form absorbed through the lungs has an LDI dosage' - he smiled apologetically - 'which means that it will kill fifty percent of the threatened population of moderately active adult men in two minutes, and a hundred percent of the population in ten minutes. This is not significantly more rapid than Sarin, but it is in its percutaneous effect that Cyndex comes into its own. It is absorbed much more rapidly through the skin, the eyes, the nose, the throat and the digestive system than Sarin. One microlitre of Cyndex - and I remind you that is a millionth part of a litre - applied to naked skin will incapacitate a man in two minutes and kill in fifteen minutes. This is approximately four times more potent than Sarin. Although atrophine injected intravenously within thirty seconds may inhibit the process and reduce some of the symptoms, it will not arrest spontaneous collapse of the respiratory system and subsequent death by suffocation. I will come later to the specific symptoms of exposure to the agent, but let us now discuss the cost of manufacture. Please turn to page twelve of the dossier." They obeyed like schoolchildren, and Werner Stolz went on: "You will see from the bottom line of our estimate that at this point in time the plant will cost in the region of twenty million US dollars and the direct cost of manufacture will amount to twenty dollars per kilo." Isabella wondered, even in the stress of listening to these horrific details, why the use of newspeak cliches such as 'bottom line' and 'this point in time' annoyed her so. I wish he would speak plain English, she thought, as if that would somehow make the facts more palatable. Werner was still speaking.

"Translated into comparative terms that means that the entire plant would cost the same as a single Harrier jet fighter from British Aerospace and the cost of manufacture of a stock of Cyndex sufficient to ensure the defence of the country for twelve months would be equivalent to the purchase of fifty Sidewinder air-to-air missiles..." 'That's an offer we just can't refuse,' Garry chuckled, and Isabella felt a stab of hatred for him that shocked her with its intensity.

How can he joke about something like this? She dared not look up at him. He might have read her thoughts. Werner nodded and smiled agreement with Garry.

"Of course, Cyndex needs no special vehicle for dissemination. Ordinary crop-sprayer aircraft such as those in day-to-day use in agricultural situations can be readily adapted for the purpose. The gas may also be delivered by artillery projectile. The new G5 long-range howitzer being developed at present by Armscor would be ideal." At noon they broke for a swim in the pool and a buffet lunch on the terrace. The discussion dwelt largely on Elsa and Shasa's recent visit to the Salzburg Festival where Herbert von Karajan had directed the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra. They went back into the dining-room to listen to a description of the symptoms of Cyndex poisoning.

"Although it has never been tested on human subjects, we have determined that the symptoms of a moderate exposure to Cyndex aerosol will not differ greatly from other G agent nerve gases,' Werner told them. 'These would commence with a sensation of tightness in the chest and difficulty in breathing, followed by copious running of the nose and a burning, stinging pain in the eyes and a dimming of vision." Isabella felt her own eyes begin to sting in sympathy, and she dabbed at them surreptitiously.

"As these symptoms become progressively more intense, there will be heavy salivation and frothing at the mouth, sweating and trembling, nausea and belching, sensations of heartburn and stomach cramps which will lead swiftly to projectile vomiting and explosive diarrhoea. These will be followed by involuntary urination and bleeding from the mucous membrane of the eyes, nose, mouth and genitalia. Trembling, twitching and giddiness and muscle cramps will lead to paralysis and convulsions.

"However, the immediate cause of death will be total collapse of the respiratory system. Cyndex owes its superior toxicity to the ease with which it penetrates the bloodbrain barrier in the central nervous system." They were silent and subdued for a full minute after Werner finished, and then Garry asked softly: 'If Cyndex has never been used on human subjects, how do you anticipate these symptoms?" 'Initially by extrapolation with the effects of other G

agent nerve gases, Sarin in particulan', Wemer Stolz paused, for the first time showing some sign of embarrassment. 'Thereafter the gas was tested on primate subjects.' He cleared his throat. 'Chimpanzees were used in laboratory tests." With an effort Isabella prevented herself making some gesture of disgust and outrage. However, her horror became almost uncontrollable as the director went on remorselessly: 'We found, however, that chimpanzees are extremely expensive laboratory animals. You are fortunate in that you have access to an almost unlimited supply of cheap and entirely satisfactory laboratory animals in the shape of Papio ursinus, the chacma baboon, which is indigenous to South Africa and still occurs there in large numbers." 'We aren't going to test on live animals?' Isabella's voice was shrill even in her own ears, and immediately she regretted the outburst and tried to recover her poise. "I mean, is it really necessary?" They were all staring at her now, and she flushed with anger at her own lack of self-control. It was Garry who broke the silence.

He spoke lightly, but there was a steely glint behind the lenses of his spectacles. 'The baboon is not my favourite animal. I have seen them kill the newborn lambs at Camdeboo to eat the milk curds in their-stomachs. Nana will tell you about their depredations on her roses and vegetable garden.

I am sure we all share your distaste and your reluctance to see unnecessary suffering inflicted on any living thing.' He paused. "However, in this instance we are considering the defence of the country, the safety of our nation - and the expenditure of many millions of Courtney money." He looked across at Shasa, who nodded agreement.

"The short answer is, I am afraid, yes. We must test. Better that some animals should die than our own people. It is not a pretty thought, but it is essential. I'm sorry, Bella. If it offends you, then you don't have to have anything further to do with the project. You can resign your seat on the Capricorn board and we'll say no more about it. We will all understand and respect your feelings." 'No.' She shook her head. 'I understand the necessity. I'm sorry I raised the subject.' She realized how close she had come to letting Nicholas and Ramsey down. Their safety and freedom were worth any price she might be forced to pay. She forced herself to smile and speak lightly: 'You don't get rid of me that easily. I'll keep my seat, thank you very much." Garry studied her face for a second longer, then he nodded. 'Good. I'm glad we have settled that.' And he turned his full attention back to Werner Stolz.

Isabella composed her expression into one of polite attention and clasped her hands in her lap. 'This is one project that Red Rose will have no qualms about reporting,' she promised hcrself.

Isabella sent the Red Rose despatch three days after she arrived back in Cape Town.

Over the years a routine had developed between her and the forces that controlled her. When she had information she sent a Red Rose telegram to the address in London and usually within twenty-four hours she received instructions for a dead drop. These always took the same form. She was given the time and location at which to park her Porsche. The location was always a public car park. Sometimes the Parade at the old fort, or a drive-in cinema, or one of the large supermarkets in the suburbs.

She wrote out her message on sheets of the one-time pad and left them in an envelope under the driver's seat with the door unlocked. When she returned to the Porsche half an hour or so later the envelope was missing. When they had a message or instructions for her the same method was employed, except only that when she returned to the 4ee Porsche there was an envelope containing typed instructions under the driver's seat.

At the end of the conference at Maison des Alizes Garry had personally collected all the leather-covered dossiers and seen to the shredding of the contents. He was very concerned that no detail of the Cyndex project fall into unauthorized hands. Isabella had made a few careful notes during the discussions, but he had relieved her of these also.

"Don't you trust me, Teddy Bear?' She had made a joke of it, and though he chuckled he had been adamant.

"I don't even trust myself.' And he had held out his hand for her notepad.

"You want to remember any details, you come and ask me, Bella, but you don't write down anything - I mean anything." She knew better than to make an issue of it.

Even though she had no notes to refer to, the Red Rose report that she sent was shaky only in the area of the chemical composition of Cyndex 25. She knew that it was an organophosphate of the G group of nerve gases but could not recall the exact atomic structure of the constituent parts or the sequence of manufacture. However, she gave them the proposed location of the plant and the tentative timetable for construction. The forecast was that the plant would be in production within seven months.

At this stage the only ingredient that needed to be imported was a phosphate precursor - again she was uncertain of the exact chemical structure of this agent. However, she was able to report that the reason that this catalyst could not be manufactured in South Africa - at least, for the time being - was that the correct grade of stainless steel for the redoubt in which it was mixed was not obtainable locally. However, the state-owned steel works of ISCOR would work on the production of this grade of steel and it was anticipated that they would be able to supply within eighteen months. After that time Cyndex would be a hundred percent locally manufactured. In the meantime the precursor would be supplied through a Pignatelli front company in Taipei who were already holding stocks sufficient for the first year of operation of the Capricorn plant.

Apart from the problem with the supply of chemicalgrade stainless steel, the other difficulty that the conference had foreseen was the availability of skilled technicians to operate the plant. Pignatelli Chemicals had declined to provide any personnel. It was anticipated that these would be recruited in Britain or in Israel. The conference had placed emphasis on the security clearance of any foreign technicians who were thus engaged.

The rest of Isabella's report covered the transportation, storage and dissemination of the gas in battlefield situations. Both Puma helicopters and Impala jet fighters of the South African air force could be adapted to serve as delivery vehicles. In addition, work would begin immediately on the design and testing of a shell for the G5 howitzer which would be designated '155 mm CW (Chemical Warfare) ERFB Cargo'. This shell would deliver eleven kilos of Cyndex to a maximum range of thirty-five kilometres. The rotation of the shell in flight would centrifugally open valves in the cargo-head and mix the two constituent ingredients of the gas prior to impact in the target area.

She was fully aware of the value of this information and so she was emboldened to add a final line to the twenty-six pages of her report.

"Red Rose requests access as soon as possible." She waited anxiously for a reaction to her request after she had delivered it. There was none.

As time passed with no reply she understood that she was being punished for her impertinence, and at first she was defiant. Then as the weeks became months she started to become truly worried. At the end of the second month she sent an abject apology to the London accommodation address.

"Red Rose regrets importunate request for access. No insubordination was contemplated. Awaiting further orders." It was another month before those orders came. She was instructed to use any means necessary to ensure that she was a member of the team from Capricorn Chemicals that would travel to London and Israel to interview and recruit personnel for the operation of the Cyndex plant.

Isabella had difficulty imagining how she could justify any claim to be a member of the recruiting team. What possible reason could she give Garry that-would not immediately arouse his suspicions as to her motives? She agonized over this for weeks before the next board meeting of CCI, and then at the meeting itself it all fell into place with an ease that amazed her.

The subject of recruitment came up at the meeting, even though it was not on the agenda, and Isabella saw her opportunity and gave her views on the subject in an impromptu but articulate and well-reasoned address.

When she finished, she saw that she had impressed Garry, and he remarked in not entirely jocular fashion: 'Perhaps we should send you to do the job, Dr. Courtney." She shrugged, not to appear over-eager. 'Why not? I could fit in a little shopping - I need a few new frocks." 'Typical woman,' Garry sighed, but six weeks later she found herself back in the Cadogan Square flat. The personnel manager of CCI was ensconced in the Berkeley Hotel, only a short walk from Cadogan Square. The two of them conducted the preliminary interviews in the dining-room of the flat.

The night she arrived in London, there was an anonymous phone caller. She did not recognize the voice. The message was simple.

"Red Rose. Tomorrow you will interview Benjamin Afrika. Make certain that he is selected." She couldn't place the name, so she looked up the application in her file.

To her surprise she found that Benjamin Afrika had been born in Cape Town.

This, however, seemed to be his strongest claim to the job on offer.

Despite the fact that his academic qualifications were good, he was really too young - only twenty-four years of age. He had four A-levels and a BSc in chemical engineering from Leeds University with two years' experience as a scientific assistant with Imperial Chemical Industries at one of their factories near Liverpool.

At the salary they were offering she could have found a hundred applicants with similar or better qualifications in South Africa.

She could not squeeze him into any of the vacant senior posts. There were, however, two more junior positions to fill.

Benjamin Afrika was the third interviewee on the morning's list. He walked into the Cadogan Square dining-room at eleven o'clock in the morning, and Isabella felt herself go icy cold with panic.

Benjamin Afrika was a coloured man, but this was not what caused her consternation. Benjamin Afrika was her half-brother, the man whom she knew as Ben Gama, bastard son of her mother and the notorious terrorist and black revolutionary Moses Gama.

So great was the shock of seeing him that she was unable to utter a word.

A host of turbulent thoughts tumbled in confusion through her mind as she stared at Benjamin. She thought how his name, and the name of Tara Courtney, their mother, was never mentioned at Weltevreden - even after all these years the scandal and tragedy ~surrounding them cast a darlk shadow over the family. How would it be possible for her to secure employment for Benjamin in one of the Courtney companies? Nana would have a hernia, and Pater would throw a blue fit. Then there was Garry... Fortunately for Isabella, the CCI personnel manager was also evincing symptoms of acute distress, but the source of his concern was much more straightforward than Isabella's. It was merely the colour of Benjamin's skin. In the long pregnant pause that followed Benjamin's entry, Isabella was able to take control of hirself again and bring some order to her jumbled emotions. Benjamin had shown no sign of recognition, and she took her lead from him.

Abruptly the CCI manager leapt to his feet. To compensate for his initial reaction he now became over-effusive and ducked round the desk to seize Benjamin's hand.

"I'm David Meekin, head of personnel at CCI. I'm delighted to meet you, young man,'he babbled enthusiastically, and pulled out a chair for Benjamin. 'We have been studying your credentials and your CV. Very impressive -I mean truly impressive." He seated Benjamin and offered him a cigarette. 'This is Dr. Courtney who is a director of CCI,' Meekin introduced them.

Benjamin half-rose from his seat and made a small bow. 'How do you do, ma'am." Isabella did not trust herself to speak. She nodded and then gave all her attention to Benjamin's letter of application while Meekin began the interview.

He asked the usual questions about the work that Benjamin had done at ICI, and his reasons for wanting this job, but clearly Meekin's heart was not in the task. He wanted to get it over with. Meanwhile, Isabella was working out her own plans. If she had not recognized Ben's name, Afrika, then it was highly unlikely that anyone else athome would do so, either. Apart from Michael, no other member of the family, as far as she knew, had ever met Ben. There was no reason why they ever should. He would be a junior employee in one of a hundred factories in a town over a thousand miles from Weltevreden. Michael, of course, could be relied on to support her and Ben completely.

David Meekin had no more questions to ask, and he glanced at Isabella enquiringly.

"I see you were born in Cape Town, Mr. Afrika,' she spoke for the first time. 'Do you still have South African citizenship? You haven't taken naturalized British citizenship?" 'No, Dr. Courtney,' Ben shook his head. 'I am still a South African. I have a passport issued by South Africa House here in London." I 'Good. Can you tell us something about your family? Do they still live in Cape Town?" 'Both my father and my mother were schoolteachers.

They were killed in a motor accident in Cape Town in 19e9." 'I'm sorry.' She glanced down at her file. It was possible that Tara, their mother, had tried to conceal the facts of Ben's birth by contriving a false birth certificate. She could check that easily enough. She looked up again.

"I hope you will forgive my next question, Mr. Afrika. It may sound impertinent. However, Capricorn Chemicals is a defence contractor to Armscor, and all its employees are vetted by the South African security police. It would be best if you tell us now if you are, or have ever been, a member of any political organization." Ben smiled softly. He really was a good-looking young man. By some fortunate chance he seemed to have inherited the best features from both sides of his racial ancestry.

"You want to know if I am a member of the ANC?' he asked, and Isabella's mouth tightened with annoyance.

"Or any other radical political organization,' she said curtly.

"I am not a political creature, Dr. Courtney. I am a scientist and an engineer. I am a member of the Society of Engineers, but of no other body." So he was not interested in politics?

She remembered the bitter political argument they had become embroiled in at their last meeting - when was that? Almost eight years ago, she realized with surprise. Of course, the Red Rose instructions that she had received gave the lie to his protestations. None the less, she had to cover herself 'Again you must pardon the personal nature of my questions, but your frank replies now may save us all a great deal of embarrassment later. You must be aware of the racial situation in South Africa. As a coloured person you will not be allowed to vote, and furthermore you will be subject to a body of legislation and a policy known as apartheid, which, to say the least, restricts many of the freedoms which you will have taken as your natural right here in England."

"Yes, I know all about apartheid,' Ben agreed.

"Then, why would you want to give up what you have here and return to a country where you will be treated as a second-class citizen, and where your prospects of advancement will be limited by your skin tone?" 'I am an African, Dr. Courtney. I want to go home. I think I can be of service to my country and my people. I believe I can make a good life for myself in the land of my birth." They stared at each other for long seconds, and then Isabella said softly, 'I can find no fault with those sentiments, Mr. Afrika. Thank you for coming to talk to us. We have your address and telephone number. We will contact you one way or the other, just as soon as we are able to do so." When Ben had left neither she nor Meekin spoke for a while. Isabella stood up and moved to the window. Looking down into the square she saw Ben leave the front door of the building. As he buttoned his overcoat he glanced up and saw her in the second-floor window. He lifted one hand in farewell and then set off towards Pont Street and turned the corner.

"Well,' said David Meekin beside her, 'we can cross that one off the list." 'For what reason?' Isabella asked, and Meekin was flustered. He had expected her to agree immediately.

"His qualifications. His experience..." 'The colour of his skin?" Isabella suggested.

"That, too,' Meekin nodded. 'He would be in a position at Capricorn where he might have to give orders to white employees. He might actually have white females under him. It would cause ill-feelings." 'There are at least a dozen black and coloured managers in other Courtney companies,' Isabella pointed out.

"Yes, I know,' Meekin acceded hurriedly, 'but they have coloureds and blacks under them, not whites." 'My father and my brother are both very eager to advance blacks and coloureds; to managerial positions. My brother in particular feels that bringing all sections of our community to prosperity and responsibility is the only recipe for long-term peace and harmony in our country." 'I would agree with that one hundred percent." 'I found Mr. Afrika a most personable young man. I agree that he is a little young and lacking in experience for either of the senior posts, however-" Meekin changed tack, like the corporate survivor he was. 'I'd like to suggest that we short-list Afrika for the post of technical assistant to the director." 'I agree with your suggestion wholeheartedly.' Isabella smiled her sweetest, most winning smile. Her estimate had been correct. David Meekin's most firmly held principles were subject to negotiation.

They finished the interview with the - last candidate at four o'clock that afternoon and, as soon as Meekin had left Cadogan Square to return to the Berkeley Hotel, Isabella telephoned her mother.

"The Lord Kitchener Hotel, good afternoon.' She recognized her mother's voice.

"Hallo, Tara. It's Isabella.' And then for emphasis, 'Isabella Courtney, your daughter." 'Bella, my baby. It's been ever so long. Let's see now -eight years at least. I thought you'd forgotten your old mamma.' She always made Isabella feel guilty, and she made a lame excuse.

"I'm sorry, Tara. The pace of life - I don't seem to have time for anything..." 'Yes, Mickey tells me that you have been ever so successful and clever. He says that you are Dr. Courtney now, and a Senator,' Tara gushed on. 'Mind you, Bella, how you can bring yourself to have anything to do with that bunch of racist bigots that call themselves the National Party? In any civilized society, John Vorster would have been sent to the gallows years ago." 'Tara, is Ben there?" Isabella cut her off.

"I thought it was too good to be true that my own daughter wanted to talk to me.' Tara's tone was mart I yred and long-suffering. 'I'll call Ben." 'Hello, Bella.' He came on the phone almost immediately.

"We must talk ' 'she told him.

"Where?' he asked, and she thought swiftly.

"Hatchards." 'The bookshop in Piccadilly? OK. When?" 'Tomorrow, ten in the morning." Ben was in the African Fiction section, thumbing through a Nadine Gordimer novel. She stood beside him and picked a book at random from the shelves.

"Ben, I don't know what this is about." 'I'm applying for a job, Bella. It's as simple as that.' He smiled easily.

"I don't want to know, either,' she went on quickly. 'Just tell me - do you really have valid papers in the name of Afrika?" 'Tara registered my birth in the name of a coloured couple, friends of hers. She was never married to my father - and of course their relationship was illegal. She could have been imprisoned for being in love with Moses Gama and giving birth to me.' His tone was easy; there was even a light smile on his lips. She looked for some sign of bitterness or anger, but found none. "Officially my name is Benjamin Afrika. I have a birth certificate and South African passport in that name." 'I have to warn you, Ben. There is terrible bitterness and hatred in the Courtney side of the family. Your father was convicted of murdering Nana's second husband, I mean Centaine Courtney-Malcomess's husband." 'Yes, I know." 'You and I will never be able to acknowledge each other in South Africa." 'I understand." 'If Nana, if my grandmother or my father ever found out about you - well, I just don't know what the consequences would be."

"They won't find out about it from me." 'If it was up to me, I would not...'She broke off, and lowered her voice. 'Ben, be careful. We have never had a chance to become close; a chasm divides us. Nevertheless, you are my brother. I don't want anything to happen to you. ~ 'Thank you, Bella.' He was still smiling softly, and she knew that she could never penetrate the curtain.

She went on quietly, 'I will warn Michael that you are coming home. Please believe me that I will help you in any way that I can. If you need me, let Michael know. It would be best if we do not contact each other once you arrive in the country." Impulsively she dropped the book she was holding and embraced him.

"Oh, Ben, Ben! What a terrible world we live in. We are brother and sister, and yet... It's cruel and inhuman - I hate it." 'Perhaps we can help to change the world.' He returned her embrace quickly and then they drew apart.

"There are many things that I can never tell you, Ben. Forces beyond our control. If we try to oppose them, we will be crushed. They are too powerful for us." 'Still, some of us must try." 'Oh God, Ben. You terrify me when you speak like that." 'Goodbye, Bella,' he said sadly. "I think we might have been good for each other - if only things had been ordained differently.' He placed the Gordimer novel back on the shelf and without looking back walked out into Piccadilly.

Over the years it had become traditional that whenever Isabella was in Johannesburg she stayed with Garry and Holly.

Before she gave up her career to become a full-time wife and mother, Holly had been one of the leading architects in the country. Her designs had won international awards.

47e When they came to build their own home, Garry, who was never one to stint, had given her an open budget and egged her on to design her final masterpiece. She had managed to combine opulence and space with such good taste and invention that their home was Isabella's favourite retreat. She preferred it even to Weltevreden.

As always the family breakfasted on the man-made island in the centre of the miniature lake. On a morning such as this, when the highveld sunshine decked the world in splendour, the roof of the pagoda had been rolled back by its electrically powered machinery and was open to the sky. The flocks of pink flamingo on the lakeshore were free-ranging birds, persuaded to interrupt their continental migrations by this jewel-like stretch of open water.

The older children were in school uniform ready to leave for their daily penance. Isabella was feeding the latest addition to Garry's family, her year-old god-daughter - an exercise which they both enjoyed immensely. It aroused all Isabella's frustrated materrial instincts.

Garry, in his shirt-sleeves and broad, brightly coloured braces at the head of the breakfast-table, had just lit his first cigar of the day.

"Who was the one that accused me of being squeamish?' Isabella demanded of him as she shovelled a teaspoonful of egg into her god-daughter's mouth and then scraped up the overspill as it trickled down her chin.

"It's not a case of squeamishness at all,' Garry protested too loudly.

"I've got five meetings this morning, and Holly's charity ball this evening. Give me a break, Bella." 'You could have cancelled any one of those meetings,' Isabella pointed out.

"Or all of them." 'Look, Mavourneen, there'll be so many politicians and generals crowding the place that there is nothing I could add to the proceedings." 'Don't come over all Irish with me, begorrah. You are funking it, Teddy Bear, and we both know it." Garry let out one of his evasive guffaws, and turned to Holly. 'What time do we have to be there this evening, lover?' But Holly was on Isabella's side.

"Why are you making Bella go through with this awful business?' she demanded.

"I am doing no such thing,' Garry was unconvincingly indignant. 'It's her decision entirely.' He glanced at his wristwatch, and then growled with theatrical menace at his children.

"You monsters are going to be late for school. Get out of itv They showed not the least sign of terror as they lined up to kiss him goodbye, and then clattered off over the bridge like a squadron of cavalry.

"Me, too.' Bella wiped her god-daughter's face and stood up, but Garry stopped her.

"Look, Bella, I apologize. I know I hinted that you couldn't take it. You are as tough as any man I know. You don't have to prove it." 'So you admit you are chickening out, then)' she asked.

"All right,' he capitulated. 'Hell, I don't want to watch it. You don't have to, either." 'I am a director of Capricorn,' she said, and gathered up her handbag and briefcase. 'I'll see you at eight." As she climbed into the Porsche she felt a twinge of guilt. The true reason for her determination to witness the Cyndex tests was not one of duty, not even to demonstrate her toughness. The last Red Rose communique she had received had promised her access to Nicky as soon as she reported that the tests had been successfully carried out.

The drive down to Germiston took her a little over an hour on the new highway. Holly had designed the Capricorn Chemicals plant, and her taste and touch were distinctive. It did not look like a factory. There were lawns and trees, and a cunning exploitation of the terrain so that the least pleasing features of the industrial buildings were disguised or concealed. Those buildings that she had been able to clothe in glass and natural stone were given prominence. The various units were scattered over many hundreds of acres.

The prancing goat figure of the Capricorn logo surmounted the main entrance-gateway. Isabella pressed her electronic key-card into the lock and the gates trundled open. The uniformed guards saluted her as she drove through.

All the visitors' slots in the car park behind the main administration block were filled. Most of the visiting vehicles were black limousines sporting ministerial numberplates or military pennants on the bonnet.

She rode up in the lift, and as she stepped into the director's suite she surveyed the room swiftly. It was a small, almost intimate gathering. Not more than twenty persons were present, and she was the only woman. The politicals and the civil servants were in regulation dark suits, and the military were in uniform. There were all branches of the service represented, including the security police, and they were all of staff or general rank.

She knew more than half those present, including the cabinet minister and the two deputy ministers. A refreshment-table had been laid out, including alcohol, but nobody was drinking anything stronger than coffee. The conversations were exclusively in Afrikaans, and she was struck once again by the major difference between the two white races. The English section was preoccupied with luxury and material possessions, with finance and commerce. The Afrikaner lived in the halls of political and military power.

Here were gathered some of the most powerful men in the land. Though paupers compared to the Courtneys, their political influence dominated the entire society. ~ Compared to them the Courtneys were of little account.

Within the citadel of power the military men, rather like their Russian equivalents, formed a caste of their own before whose strength even the state president bowed his head.

Within seconds she had singled out the most influential men in the room and made her way towards them, exchanging greetings and hand-shakes and smiles with the others as she passed. In this patriarchal society she had carved an unusual niche for herself. They accepted her as almost an equal.

"I'm a sort of honorary male,' she smiled to herself, and shook hands with the minister of defence, then turned to his deputy with a controlled and friendly smile.

"Good morning, General De La Rey,' she greeted him in fluent colloquial Afrikaans. Lothar De La Rey had been the first grand passion of her life.

They had lived together for six months, before he had dropped her and gone off to marry a good Afrikaner girl of the Dutch Reformed faith. If he had not, he would not now be a deputy minister, and a man who it was whispered had no ceiling on his political future.

"Good morning, Dr. Courtney.' He was as polite, but he could not keep his eyes on her face. They slid over her body in swift appreciation.

Go ahead, lover boy, she thought, knowing that she had never looked better in her life. Eat your heart out - then go home to your fat little farm-girl.

Despite her fingering resentment she had to admit to herself that he also was looking good. So many Afrikaners put on weight once their Rugby-playing days were over. Lothar was as lean and hard and clean-cut as he had been ten years before. He was probably just about ripe for a little fling, she thought, and he would certainly have some interesting pillow-talk.

I'd love to have my revenge on you, she thought. She had once contemplated suicide for him. It would give her pleasure to place him on the list of Red Rose's informers. Then quite suddenly she thought of Ramsey, her Ramsey, and her physical interest in Lothar subsided.

Only in the line of duty, she decided - and at that moment the Capricorn general manager caught her eye.

She made a short welcoming address to the company and apologized for the absence of the chairman. Then she 48o invited them through into the projection room for the presentation.

The video film that Capricorn had prepared was of high professional quality. It included computer-generated simulations and artist's impressions of the deployment and dissemination of Cyndex under combat and battlefield conditions. As the video ran, Isabella glanced round the semi-darkened room. She could see that all the military men were passionately excited by this new weapon. They watched the screen with a deadly concentration and when the tape came to an end they broke into animated discussion amongst themselves.

When Paul Searle, the Israeli technical director whom Isabella had recruited in Tel Aviv, stood up and called for commet, they bombarded him with searching questions. Isabella noticed that up to this time there had been no sign of Ben. His brown face had been discreetly kept in a back room somewhere. Inevitably one of the generals asked the question that Isabella had been dreading. He put it bluntly.

"Has this gas ever been used on a human population? If so, can you give us details?" 'Perhaps the general can provide us with a few surplus Cuban POWs from Angola?' the director asked, and they laughed delightedly at the graveyard humour.

"Seriously, General, the answer to your question is no. However, it has been tested extensively overseas under laboratory conditions with excellent results. In fact we have arranged for you to witness our own first test today." The pesticide and poisons division of Capricorn Chemicals was situated half a mile from the administrative block. The party drove down in a convoy with the minister's black Cadillac in the lead. Isabella sat beside him in the back seat and pointed out features of the Capricorn plant.

"This section here is the uranium enrichment plant. You see how we have made it appear to be merely an extension of the main bulk phosphate refinery..." The minister of defence had the reputation of possessing a fiery temper.

However, she had always got on well with him, and respected him for his dedication and political acumen. They chatted in friendly fashion during the short drive until they drew up at the front gate of the pesticide and agricultural poisons plant. This was a separate compound within the main complex.

It was surrounded by a twelve-foot diamond-mesh fence. There were prominent warning notices placed at intervals along the fence. These featured red skull-and-crossbones designs with warnings in three languages: 'Danger!

Gevaar! Ingozil' The guards at the main gate had Rottweiler guard-dogs on leads. The plant was screened by a grove of trees. The building was long and low, the walls were of natural stone and all the external windows were smoked one-way glass. There was a further security check at the entrance, and even the minister was asked to pass through the electronic scanner.

The Israeli director led them down a series of carpeted corridors, each separated by steel fire- and gas-proof doors, until finally they entered the new Cyndex extension. The building was still so new that it smelt of raw concrete. They assembled in a small entrance-lobby. The gas-doors closed behind them, and the director addressed them.

"Strict safety procedures are in force in this section of the building. You will notice the air-conditioning.' He gestured at the panels in the walls.

"The quality of air in the building is strictly monitored at all times. In the highly unlikely event of a leak developing, the air can be pumped out and changed within ten seconds.' For a few minutes more he elaborated on the building's safety features. 'However, for your further safety, before entering the main plant you will be required to don protective suits." There were separate changing-rooms for the sexes. In the women's room a coloured female attendant assisted Isabella to strip to her underwear, and then she hung her suit in one of the lockers for her. She helped Isabella into the one-piece white protective overall that had been laid out for her.

There were white plastic boots and gloves, and she showed Isabella how to place the helmet over her head and switch on the compressed-air supply. There was a clear plastic visor, and the air-cylinder was contained in a neat back-pack that formed part of the helmet attachment.

There were built-in headphones that permitted normal conversation.

Isabella returned to the lobby and rejoined the rest of the party.

"If we are all ready, my lady and gentlemen?'The director turned to the door in the far wall. It slid open, and they trooped through. There were four technicians to welcome them. Isabella noticed that, while the visitors wore white suits, the four technicians were in chrome yellow and the director's suit was tomato red for easy identification.

One of the yellow-suited technicians ushered them down yet another short corridor. As they went, he fell in beside Isabella.

"Good morning, Dr. Courtney,' he said softly, and with a small shock she recognized his voice and she looked into his yisor.

"Hello, Mr. Afrika,' she murmured. 'How are you enjoying your job with Capricorn?' It was the first time she had seen him since London.

"It is very interesting, thank you.' That was all that passed between them before they entered the test-room, but Lothar De La Rey had been watching her. As they seated themselves in the row of padded leather armchairs Lothar took the seat beside Isabella and asked: 'Wie is die kaffir? Who is the nigger?" 'His name is Afrika. He has a degree in chemical engineering." 'How do you know him?' Lothar insisted.

"I was on the selection committee who recruited him." 'He has security clearance, of course?" 'Of course. He was cleared by your own department,' she added artlessly. He nodded, and they turned their attention back to the director.

"These are the test-cubicles.' At the end of the room were four windows that looked in upon separate chambers; each was the size of a telephone booth - or a toilet cabinet was a better description, Isabella decided.

"The windows are of double armoured glass,' the director pointed out. "And you will notice the monitors above each.' He pointed to the electronic panels on which vital life functions were displayed in green LED printout.

Behind the windows, strapped to bare white plastic chairs were four small humanoid figures. For a moment Isabella thought they were children - and then the director explained.

"The test subjects are baboons of the genus Papio ursinus. They may seem unfamiliar to you, because they have been shaved to resemble human subjects more closely. You will notice that Number One is almost completely unprotected." The naked shaven body strapped to the chair in the first cubicle was pathetically vulnerable-looking. The infant's disposable nappy which was its only garment added to the poignancy.

"Number Two is wearing clothing that resembles normal military uniform." This baboon was dressed in a miniature suit of combat fatigues, but the arms and head were unprotected.

"Number Three is fully covered except for eyes, mouth and nose.' The animal wore gloves and a soft plastic hood which left only its face bare.

"Number Four is equipped with a fully protective suit, similar to those which have been issued to you. These will be worn by friendly forces when handling or disseminating Cyndex 25.' He paused. 'I may add that subjects One, Two and Three have been sedated. There will be physical symptoms apparent upon application of the test agent, but these are reflexive reactions of the central nervous system and should not be construed as indicating the degree of suffering that the animal is undergoing." Isabella felt her stomach muscles tightening, and despite the filtered air she was breathing her chest felt tight and constricted.

"Cyndex is colourless and odourless. However, for safety reasons we have added the scent of almonds to our gas. There will be no aerosol mist or any other indication of its application, except via the monitoring equipment.

The readout will show parts of Cyndex in one hundred thousand parts of air.' He paused and cleared his throat. 'Now, gentlemen - and my lady - if you are ready, we will proceed with the demonstration." The minister nodded his helmeted head, and the director gave a terse order into the microphone on his desk. Isabella imagined Ben or one of the other technicians adjusting the controls in the back room.

For a few seconds nothing happened. The breathing and the heartbeats of the four baboons continued sedately tracing regular luminous green patterns on the screens.

Then the panel registering the concentration of Cyndex in the inflowing air flickered and moved up from zero to - five parts of nerve gas in one hundred thousand parts of air.

Within seconds the displays began to alter - all except that above the fully suited baboon. The heartbeats accelerated swiftly, the breathing became rapid and deep. The changes were most violent on the display panel above the naked ape.

Isabella stared at it in horror. She saw its eyelids fficker, and tears began to run down the shaven face. It mouthed the air, its tongue lolling and rolling between its lips. Strings of silver saliva drooled down on to its chest.

"Fifteen seconds,' intoned the director. 'Subject Number One is now incapacitated. Number Four is unaffected, Two and Three are registering medium to acute symptoms." The naked baboon began to writhe and struggle against the retaining straps.

Isabella tasted the bitter bile rising in the back of her throat and swallowed it down.

Suddenly the baboon opened its mouth wide and shrieked. The thin agonized cry carried to them even through the double-glazed windows. It ripped along Isabella's nerve-endings. She clenched her fists and felt cold sickly sweat break out beneath the clinging white suit. Beside her she felt Lothar De La Rey stir, and all around her the other men made small instinctive gestures of revulsion and discomfort. They were soldiers and policemen hardened to atrocity and suffering, yet they shuffled their feet, clenched gloved hands or made ducking, twisting movements of their heads.

All three of the exposed animals were twitching and kicking, rolling their heads, arching their spines in spasmodic convulsions. The mucou4 linings of their tongues and of their open screaming mouths turned a bright boiled scarlet, their fluttering streaming eyeballs glazed over with a network of bloodshot veins. They began to vomit. The nappy that the first baboon wore was soiled by a spreading stain of urine and faeces.

Isabella fought down the waves of nausea that rose to engulf her. She wanted to scream, to run, to hide from the horror of it.

"One minute five seconds. Number One all vital life-signs terminated." The pathetic childlike corpse hung against the straps. Its shaven nakedness was aberrant and obscene.

"Two minutes fifteen seconds. Number Two terminated." 'Three minutes eight seconds. Number Three terminated." 'You will notice that Number Four is totally unaffected. The suit has afforded complete protection." Isabella rose to her feet. 'Excuse me,' she blurted. She had been determined to outlast any of the men in the room. Her vow was forgotten now. She fled down the corridor and burst into the women's changing-room.

She ripped the helmet from her head and dropped on her knees and clutched the cold porcelain of the toilet-bowl with both hands. She choked and sobbed, and her horror and pity and guilt shot up her throat in a thick bitter acid stream and spewed into the bowl.

After what she had just experienced Isabella could not bring herself to return to the blissful domestic environment of Garry and Holly's home.

She left the Capricorn plant without seeing the minister or Lothar or any of the other officials. She drove without attention to her surroundings.

She drove fast, too fast, pushing the Porsche up near its top speed. She was trying to expurgate her shame in the elemental and purifying sensation of speed. The attempt was not successful. After an hour she turned back towards Johannesburg and slowed the Porsche to a more moderate pace.

The fuel-tank was almost empty, and she pulled into the next service station that she reached. While the attendant refuelled her tank she realized that she had lost track of her whereabouts. This was not her home town. She knew only that she was somewhere in the network of roads and the maze of residential suburbs that surround the huge industrial and mining complex of the city of Johannesburg.

She asked the attendant which was the quickest route from here back to Sandton. As soon as he explained where she was, she realized that fate or her own subconscious had guided her. She was only two or three miles from Michael's home. A few years previously, Michael had bought himself a smallholding of fifty acres on which stood a dilapidated farmhouse. It was close enough to the offices of the Golden City Mail for him to commute to work. Michael had set about renovating the house on a do-it-yourself basis.

He planted a hundred or so fruit trees, much to the delight of the birds and locusts and aphids, and he kept a flock of chickens that wandered into the kitchen and defecated on the sink and down the refrigerator door.

"Well, it's their home, too,' Michael had explained to her when she remonstrated. 'A turd or two never hurt anybody.' Although Michael's original intention had been to convert the birds into an endless series of poulet reti and coq all vin, he had so far not been able to bring himself to chop off a single head. Some of the birds had already died of old age.

"Michael!'Isabella felt her spirits lighten and she checked her wristwatch.

It was after six. He should be home by now. 'Michael is exactly the person I need right now." As she drove along the winding track through the scraggly blue-gum plantation that marked the boundary of Michael's estate, she saw his Volkswagen Kombi parked in front of the house. Michael's old Valiant had finally passed away. She smiled as she remembered Michael's description of how an electrical short-circuit had selfignited in rush-hour traffic and the ancient vehicle had given itself a Viking's funeral and created a five-mile traffic-jam as its own cortege of mourners. She noted that the Kombi, acquired secondhand, seemed not to be in much better shape.

One half of the tin roof of Michael's home was painted in fresh sparkling apple green, the other half was in genuine red rust. He had lost heart in the middle of the renovations.

Michael had also cleared a landing-strip down one boundary of his property and had registered it as a private airfield with the directorate of civil aviation. He kept his old Cessna Centurion aircraft in a hangar at the far end of his fruit orchard. The building was constructed with secondhand corrugated-iron sheets that Michael had purchased cheaply from a scrapyard.

The resulting edifice was very much in keeping with Michael's usual style.

She found him in the hangar working in the interior of the blue and white aircraft. She tugged at the leg of his overalls, and he crawled out backwards and registered surprise and pleasure. They hadn't seen each other for almost a year.

After he had kissed her, he fetched a bottle of wine from the rusty old refrigerator in the corner and filled two tumblers. Only then did Isabella notice that he seemed nervdus and distracted. He kept glancing at his watch and going to the door of the hangar. She was hurt and disappointed.

"You are expecting somebody,' she said. 'I'm sorry, Mickey. I should have phoned you beforehand. I hope I haven't put you out." 'No, of course not. Not at all,' he assured her, but stood up with alacrity and obvious relief. 'But... well, to tell the truth...' his voice trailed off, and once again he glanced over her head towards the door.

One of his lovers, she thought bitterly. He's worried that I will meet his ' latest fancy boy. She resented him not being available when she needed him so badly, and cut short their farewells.

She watched him in the rearview mirror as she drove back through the trees.

He looked lonely and vulnerable, and her anger at him evaporated.

Poor dear Mickey, she thought. You are as lost and unhappy as I am.

She checked the Porsche at the gate to the property, and then pulled out and turned eastward on to the main tarmac highway heading back towards Sandton. There was another vehicle approaching. It was a nondescript grey van. As it drew level, she casually glanced sideways at the driver and immediately straightened up in the seat. The driver was her brother Ben. He had not noticed her and was in conversation with the black man who sat in the passengerseat beside him. The passenger was much darker-skinned than Ben, a full-blooded Zulu or Xhosa, with striking features and a smouldering expression. It was not the kind of face that one would readily forget.

She slowed the Porsche and watched the departing vehicle in her rearview mirror. Suddenly the rear brake-lights of the van glowed red, and then the turning-indicator began to flick on and off. The van turned into the track leading to Michael's house and disappeared amongst the blue gums.

"Mystery solved,' Isabella muttered, and accelerated the Porsche. "Although I don't understand why Michael didn't want me to see Ben. He knows that I arranged the job at Capricorn for him.' She considered it for a moment longer. 'It must be the man with Ben. That's a face to remember. I wonder who he is?"

It was almost eight and the sun had already set when she pulled into the garage under Garry's house in Sandton.

"Damn it,' Garry greeted her as she entered the livingroom. 'Where the hell have you been? Do you know what the time is?' Both Garry and Holly were in evening dress. It was not often she saw Garry angry.

"Oh my God! The ball! I'm sorry." Then Garry saw her face, and immediately his anger smoothed away. 'Poor Bella. You look as though you have had a lousy day. We'll wait while you change." 'No, no,' she protested. 'Go ahead. I'll follow you." For Isabella the evening was a disaster. The partner who Holly had arranged for her was a university professor and a total bore. Because she was a senator he wanted to discuss politics all evening.

"Don't you think I get enough of that?' she asked tartly, and he sulked at the rebuke. She left early. The rest of the night was troubled and nightmare-ridden. She dreamt of the shaven ape dressed in military battledress and strapped into the white chair.

Somewhere in her dreams the tortured creature changed identity and became her own little Nicky in his suit of camouflage. She woke in a cold trembling welter of sweat and horror.

She could not risk sleep again, nor the fantasies that sleep might bring.

She sat in a chair and read until dawn defined the outline of the windows.

She ran a bath, but before she could step into it there was a knock at the door of her suite. When she opened it, Garry stood on the threshold in a silk dressing-gown. His hair was in disarray and his eyes were bleary and swollen with sleep.

"I have just had a call from Pater at Weltevreden,' he told her.

"At this hour? Is everything all right? Is it Nana?" 'No. He told me to tell you that both of them are well." 'Then, what did he want?" 'He wants you and me to fly down to Weltevreden immediately."

"Both of us?" 'Yes. You and me. Immediately." 'What on earth for?" "He wouldn't say. just that it's a matter of life and death." She stared at Garry. 'What can it be?" 'How soon can you be ready to leave - half an hour?" 'Yes, of course." 'I'll ring Lanseria Airport and tell them to have the Lear ready and the pilots standing by.' He checked his watch. "We can be in Cape Town before ten o'clock." When they landed at Cape Town's D. F. Malan Airport, Klonkie the chauffeur was waiting for them. He drove them directly to Weltevreden.

Shasa and Centaine were waiting for them in the gun-room. By family tradition the gun-room was where the most dire and unpleasant subjects were addressed and thrashed out, both figuratively and literally. For it was here, across the big leather armchair, that Shasa had administered corporal punishment to his three sons. A summons to the gun-room was never taken lightly, and Isabella felt a prickle of apprehension as she and Garry entered.

Nana and Shasa stood shoulder-to-shoulder behind the old desk, and their expressions were so bleak that Isabella stopped dead in her tracks and Garry bumped into her from behind. She hardly felt it.

"What is it?' she asked fearfully, and then she realized that Nanny was also in the room, standing in front of the stone fireplace. The old coloured woman had been weeping. Her face was swollen with grief, and her eyes were bloodshot. She clutched a sodden handkerchief in one hand.

"Oh, Miss. Bella,' she sobbed. 'I'm so sorry, child. I had to do it - for your sake..." 'What on earth are you talking about, Nanny?" Isabella started towards her, to comfort her - and then she stopped again.

A dreadful sense of disaster overwhelmed her as she realized what lay on the desk in front of Nana and Shasa.

"What have you done, Nanny?' she whispered, chilled and stricken with despair. 'You've destroyed us." On the desk was her leather bound journal. Nanny had been into her safe.

"You have destroyed me and my baby. Oh, Nanny, how could you do this to us?" The journal was open at the page which contained the lock of Nicky's hair.

On the desk-top beside it lay his knitted baby bootee and the copy of his birth certificate.

"Oh, you stupid prying old woman.' Isabella's anger boiled over. 'You'll never know what harm you have done. You've killed my Nicky. I'll never forgive you for this, never." Nanny wailed with despair, then covered her mouth with her wet handkerchief and fled from the room.

"She did it because she loves you, Bella,' Shasa told her sternly. 'She did what you should have done eight years ago.5 'It was none of her business. It's nothing to do with any of you. You don't understand. If you meddle with this, you will put Nicky and Ramsey in terrible danger." She ran to the desk and snatched up the journal and clutched it to her chest. 'This is mine. You have no right to interfere." 'What is happening here?' Garry stepped up beside Isabella. 'Come on, Bella. If you are in trouble, then it concerns all of us. We are a family.

We stand together." 'Yes, Bella, Garry is right. We stand together." 'If only you had come to us right away-'Centaine broke off, and sat down behind the desk. 'Recriminations will not help us now. We have to work this thing out - all of us together. Sit down, Bella. We can guess most of it.

You must tell us the rest of it. Tell us about Nicky and Ramsey, all of it."

Isabella swayed on her feet, confused and torn by the torment of her emotions. Garry wrapped a thick muscular arm around her shoulders to steady her.

"It's OK, Bella. We are all here behind you now. Who is Nicky? Who is Ramsey?" 'Nicky is my son. Ramsey is his father,' she said softly, and buried her face against the great comforting barrel of his chest.

They let her cry for a while, and then Centaine lifted the telephone. "I'll call Doc Saunders. He can give her a shot to calm her." Isabella spun towards her. 'No, Nana. I don't need anything. I'll be all right. just give me a minute." Centaine set the telephone back on its cradle, and Garry led Isabella to the buttoned-leather sofa and sat beside her. Shasa came to sit on her other side, and they held her between them.

"All right,' Centaine said at last. 'That's enough. You can weep later. Now we've got work to do." Isabella straightened up, and Shasa handed her the handkerchief from his breast pocket.

"Tell us how it happened,' Centaine ordered.

Isabella took a deep breath. 'I met Ramsey at the Rolling Stones concert in Hyde Park when Daddy and I were living in London,' she whispered. Her voice strengthened as she went on. She spoke for almost half an hour. She told them why she and Ramsey had been unable to marry and how they had gone to Spain for Nicky's birth.

"I was going to bring him here to Weltevreden. Ramsey and I planned to be married here just as soon as he was free. ' She told them how Ramsey and Nicky had been abducted. She told them of the water torture of the infant she had been forced to witness and the nightmare of her existence since then.

"What did they want from you, these mysterious people? What price did you have to pay for Ramsey and Nicky's safety? What did you have to give them in exchange for the chance to visit Nicky? Shasa demanded harshly.

Centaine thumped her cane on the wooden floor.-'That is not important at the moment. We'll deal with that later." 'No,' Isabella shook her head. "I don't mind answering. They wanted nothing from me. I think that they were forcing Ramsey to perform some service for them. They rewarded him by allowing me to visit the two of them, Ramsey and Nicholas." 'You are lying, Bella,' Shasa accused her harshly. 'Ramsey Machado is using you. You are being forced to work for him and his masters." 'No.' She was appalled that he had seen through her lies so easily. 'Ramsey is as helpless as I am. We are being threatened and blackmailed-" 'Stop it, Bella,' Shasa cut her short. 'You are the one being forced to pay the price. Nicholas is the hostage. Ramsey is the evil puppet-master who pulls the strings." She cried out with anguish: 'No! You are wrong! Ramsey is-" 'I'll tell you who Ramsey de Santiago y Machado is. Yes, you provided us with his family-tree and his full names and date of birth," Shasa pointed out, and Isabella clutched the journal protectively. 'You know that I have friends in Israel. One of them is the director of Mossad. I telephoned him.

He ran Ramsey's name through their computer. They fink into the CIA computer. Our own security forces also have an open file on Ramsey de Santiago y Machado. In the three days since Nanny brought your journal to us, I have been able to discover quite a few interesting facts about your Ramsey.' He jumped up from the sofa and crossed to his desk. He pulled open one of the drawers and returned with a thick file which he slammed down on the coffee-table in front of her. Press cuttings and photographs and documents and reams of computer sheets spilled out from between the bulging covers.

"This came in last night in the Israeli diplomatic bag from Tel Aviv. I didn't call you until I had studied it. It makes interesting reading." Shasa picked out a photograph from the pile. 'Fidel Castro's victorious entry into Havana in January 1959.

Those are Che Guevara and Ramsey together in the second jeep.' He flipped over another glossy black-and-white print. 'The Congo, 19e5. Patrice Lumumba Brigade. Ramsey is the second white from the left. The corpses are executed Simba rebels.' He picked out another. 'Ramsey with his cousin Fidel Castro after the Bay of Pigs.

Apparently, Ramsey was instrumental in gathering the advance intelligence of the landing.' He scuffled through the pack of photographs. 'This one is fairly recent. Colonel-General Ramsey de Santiago y Machado, head of the African section of the fourth directorate of the KGB, receiving the award of the Order of Lenin from General Secretary Brezhnev. Very handsome in his uniform, isn't he, Bella? Look at all those medals." She cringed away from the photograph as though her father held a black mamba.

Garry leant across and took the photograph out of Shasa's hand. 'Is this Ramsey?' he demanded of her, holding it before her face. She dropped her eyes but would not answer.

"Come on, Bella. You must tell us. Is this your Ramsey)' Still she refused to reply. Shasa had to shock her into acceptance. 'It is all an elaborate deception. He probably singled you out as his victim. He almost certainly arranged the abduction and the water torture of your son.

He has been toying with you ever since then. Did you know that his nickname is El Zorro Dorado? It seems that Castro himself selected the name, the Golden Fox." Isabella's head jerked up. She remembered the remark made by Jose, the paratrooper, that had puzzled her at the time. "Pcle is the cub of the fox, El Zorro.' Somehow that was the last tiny detail that forced her to face the truth.

"El Zorro - yes.' Her expression hardened. The first gleam of burning hatred showed in her eyes. She looked instinctively towards her grandmother.

"What are we going to do, Nana?' she asked.

"Well, the first thing we are going to do is rescue Nicholas,' she said briskly.

"You don't know what you are saying, Nana,' Garry objected. His expression was stunned.

"I always know what I'm saying,' Centaine Courtneymalcomess told him firmly. 'I'm putting you in charge, Garry. This takes precedence over everything else. You can have whatever you need. I don't mind what it costs. just get me that child. That's all that counts. Do I make myself clear, young man?" Garry's bemused expression cleared slowly. He began to grin.

"Yes, Nana, you make yourself abundantly clear."

Garry converted the gun-room at Weltevreden into his operations-room.

He could have chosen any of a dozen better-equipped facilities in one of the Courtney conference-centres or boardrooms. Somehow none of these had the secure family atmosphere of this room, which had for so long been the centre of their lives. None of the others queried his choice.

"This is restricted to the family. We bring in nobody from outside until it is absolutely necessary,' he warned them.

He set up two large boards on easels, one each side of the desk. On one he hung a large-scale map of Africa, south of the Sahara. The second board he left blank for the time being, except for a photograph which he pinned at the top.

It was one that Isabella had taken of Nicholas on the beach. He was in bathing-trunks, his hair tousled by seasalt and wind as he was laughing into the camera.

"That's to remind me what this is all about,' Garry told them. 'I want to imprint that face on my mind. As Nana has said - from now on that is all that counts. That face. That child."

49e He scowled at it. 'All right, young Nicky, where are you?' , He turned to Isabella, who was seated at the desk, and placed the heavy volume of 7ane's All the Worws Aircraft in front of her.

"OK, Bella. Let's presume that it was a Russian military freighter that flew you from Lusaka to this base where you met Nicky. Let's find what type it was.' He opened the book in front of her and began turning the pages.

"That's it,' she said, and stabbed at one of the illustrations.

"Are you certain?' he demanded, and leant over her shoulder.

'11yushin 117e. NATO reporting name Candid,' he read aloud. 'Yane's lists its estimated cruise speed as to 8oo kilometres an hour." He jotted it down on his navigation-pad. 'OK, you say the course was 3oo degrees magnetic and the flying time was two hours fifty-six minutes. We know it was on the Atlantic coast - let's mark that up on the chart." He went to the map and set to work with the dividers and protractor.

"Garry' - Isabella was worried -'just because Nicky was there last year does not mean that he will still be there, does it?" 'Of course not,' he agreed without looking round from the chart. 'However, from what you tell us, Nicky seemed to be settled at that camp. He was in school and had been there long enough to make friends and build a reputation as a soccer-player - Pele?' He turned and beamed at her through his spectacles like a friendly goldfish. 'We know from both Israeli and South African intelligence reports that your friend El Zorro is still operating in Angola. He was spotted in Luanda by a CIA agent as recently as fourteen days ago. And we have to start planning somewhere. Until we find out for sure that Nicky is not there, we'll presume he is." He stepped back from the map. 'There we go,' he muttered. 'It looks like somewhere north of Luanda and south of the Zaire border. There are five, no, six rivermouths in that general area within a hundred miles of each other. Cross-winds could have made a ten-degree deviation in the Candid's course either way." He came back to the desk and picked up the large sheet of art paper on which Isabella had sketched from memory a map of the airstrip and river-mouth. He studied it dubiously, and then shook his head. 'It could be any one of the six rivers shown on the map.' He peered closely at the map.

"They are the Tabi, the Ambriz, the Catacanha, the Chicamba, the Mabubas and the Quicabo - do any of those names ring a bell, Bella?" She shook her head. 'Nicky called the base Tercio." 'That is probably a code-name,' said Garry, and pinned her sketch-map beside Nicky's photograph on the second board. 'Any comments so far?'He looked across at Centaine and Shasa. 'What about it, Pater?" 'It's a thousand kilometres from the Namibian border, which is our nearest friendly territory. We can forget about any overland attempt to reach Nicky." "Helicopters?' Centaine asked. Both men shook their heads simultaneously.

"Out of range, without refuelling,' Garry said, and Shasa agreed.

"We'd be flying over a battle zone. According to our latest intelligence the Cubans have a solid radar chain covering the Namibian border and at least a squadron of Mig-23 fighters based just north of the border at Lubango." 'What about using the Lear?'Centaine insisted, and both men laughed.

"We can't outrun a Mig, Nana,'said Garry. 'And they've got more guns than we have." 'Yes, but you can circle around them, fly 'way out over the Atlantic and come back in behind them. I know fighters can't fly very far, and the Lear can go to Mauritius." They stopped laughing and looked at each other. 'You think she got rich by being stupid?" Garry asked, and then addressed her directly.

"Supposing we could get there in the Lear, then what? We can't land or take off - the Lear needs a thousand-metre runway. From what Bella tells us, it's a short strip and a guerrilla training base with South American or, more likely, Cuban paratroopers guarding it. They aren't going to hand Nicky over to us, not without an argument." 'Yes. I expect we'll have to fight,' Centaine nodded. 'So now it's time to send for Sean." "Sean?' Shasa blinked. 'Of course!" 'Nana, I love you,' said Isabella, and picked up the telephone.

"International, I want to put an urgent call through to Ballantyne Barracks at Bulawayo in Rhodesia." The call took almost two hours to come through, by which time Garry had telephoned the airport and spoken to his pilots. The Lear was already on its way to Bulawayo when Sean finally came on the line.

Garry said, 'Let me talk to him,' and took the telephone out of Isabella's hand. They argued for less than a minute, and then Garry snarled: 'Don't give me that crap, Sean. The Lear will be at Bulawayo airport within the next hour to pick you up. I want your hairy arse on board, but pronto. I'll phone General Walls or Ian Smith if necessary. We need you here. The family needs you." He hung up and looked at Centaine. 'Sorry, Nana." 'I have heard the expression before,' she murmured. 'And sometimes a little strong language works wonders."

Major Sean Courtney of the Ballantyne Scouts stood before the makeshift situation-board in the Weltevreden. gunroom and studied the photograph of his nephew. His promotion to major and second-in-command of the Scouts was only three months old. Roland Ballantyne had finally manoeuvred him into a full-time billet with the regiment.

"You can see he's Bella's boy. Takes after her. Ugly little 4"

brat.' Sean grinned at her. 'No wonder she's been keeping him up her sleeve." She stuck out her tongue at him. He was good for her; he gave her hope again. He was so hard and competent and tough-looking, he brimmed with such sublime confidence in his own strength and immortality that she had to believe in it, too.

"When will they let you see Nicky again?' he asked, and she thought for a second. She could not tell him about the promise to give her access as soon as the Cyndex tests were completed. That would mean admitting to all of them that she was a traitress.

"I think it will be soon. I haven't seen Nicky for almost a year. It must be soon. Days rather than weeks from now." 'You won't go,' Garry cut in. 'We aren't going to give you into their clutches again." 'Oh, shut up, Garry,' Sean snapped. 'Of course she has to go. How the hell will we know where they are holding Nicky, if she doesn't?" 'I thought. Garry began, his face flushing with anger.

"OK, matey. Let's make a bargain here. I run the actual operation - you are responsible for all the logistics and back-up. How about it?" "Good!' Centaine cut in. 'That's the way we'll do it. Go on, Sean. Tell us how you'll carry out the rescue." 'OK. In broad outline, this is it. We will work out the details later.

First of all we have to accept that it's a fully offensive operation. We are sure as hell going to run into heavy opposition. They are going to try to kill us - we've got to kill them first. We are not going to mess around.

If we want Nicky, we have to fight for him. However, if things go wrong, we might have to face a political and legal storm both here and abroad. We might be deemed guilty of anything from terrorism to murder. Are we prepared to accept that?" He looked around the circle of attentive faces. They all nodded without hesitation.

"Good. That's settled. Now for practicalities. We assume Nicky is being held in northern Angola at this coastal base. Bella goes in as she did last time. Once she is in position with Nicky she calls us in." "How?' Garry demanded.

"That's your problem. You have Courtney Communications at your beck and call. Get them to come up with some kind of miniature radio or even a transponder. As soon as she is in position, Bella will activate it and give us a fix." 'OK,' Garry agreed. 'We have those electronic positionmarkers that we use for flagging aerial geological surveys. We should be able to adapt one of those. How will Bella smuggle it in?" "Again, that's your problem,' Sean told him brusquely. 'Let's get on with it. So Bella is in the target area. She gives us a fix. We go in-" "How?' Garry asked again.

"There is only one way - from the sea.' Sean swept his hand across the map of the southern Atlantic and down to the nose of the African continent.

"We've got the trawling and canning factory at Walvis Bay. One of those new long-range trawlers of yours, Garry, the ones you send down to Veerna Seamount. They'll do nearly thirty knots, and have a range of four thousand miles." 'Dairm it, yesp Garry beamed. 'Lancer has just finished a major refit in Cape Town docks. She is at sea at this very moment, on her way back to Walvis Bay. I'll tell them to hold her there, fully refuelled and ready for sea. Van Der Berg, the skipper, is a first-class seaman." 'Tell them to unload the nets and all the other heavy items we won't need," Sean added.

"Right. I'll also arrange extra war and all-risks cover on the insurance policy. I know the way you bang up equipment.' Garry was becoming indignant. 'Hell, you went through four Landcruisers last year." 'That's enough squabbling.' Centaine brought them firmly back on track. "Tell us, Sean. Are you going to sail Lancer into this river?" 'No, Nana. We'll use landing-craft to run into the beach, inflatables with outboard motors. Do you know anybody at Simonstown naval base?" 'I know the minister of defence,' Bella cut in. 'And Admiral Keyter." 'Beauty!" Sean nodded. 'If you get the boats, see if you can also get permission for a dozen or so boat-handlers to volunteer for a little extra-curricular fun and games. Those naval commandos are hot babies, and they will fall over themselves for a chance at a good barney. Play up the fact that it's an ANC training base that we are going to hose down and that we'll be doing them a good turn." 'I also know the minister. I will go with Bella to see him,' Centaine agreed. 'I guarantee you all the special equipment you need. just give me a list, Sean." 'I'll have it ready by tomorrow morning." 'What about weapons - and men?" 'Scouts,' Sean told them. 'They don't come any better. I trained them myself. I'll need about twenty men. I know exactly who I want. I'll talk to Roland Ballantyneright away. Things are pretty quiet up there in Rhodesia at the moment, the rainy season. He'll let me have them. I might have to break one of his legs, but he'll let me have them. They'll need a couple of days of boat training, but they'll be ready to go by the end of next week." He looked across at Isabella. 'It all depends on you now, Bella. You are our hunting dog. Lead us to them, lass."

Eleven days after she sent the Red Rose coded confirmation that Capricorn Chenacals had successfully tested Cyndex 25, Isabella received permission and instructions for a visit to Nicholas. She was instructed to take the South African Airways flight to London that refuelled in Kinshasa on the Congo river and to disembark at this stop-over instead of continuing on to London.

She would be met at Kinshasa airport.

"It's looking good.' Sean was jubilant as he placed his finger on the map.

"Here's Kinshasa. It's within three or four hundred kilometres of the expected target area. They are going to pick you up on the doorstep, not the roundabout route via, Nairobi and Lusaka that they sent you on last time.' He looked across at Isabella. 'So they want you to take next Friday's flight? If it works out, that means you will probably be in position on Saturday, or Sunday at the very latest. We will sail from Walvis Bay in Lancer just as soon as I can get up there. The boys have finished their training, and all the equipment is on board Lancer. They have been sitting around doing nothing for almost a week - they'll be glad to be on their way." He studied the map and then punched his calculator. 'We can be in position one hundred nautical miles off the mouth of the Congo river by Monday the twelfth. How does that suit you, Garry?" Garry stood up and went to the map. 'I'll be waiting with the Lear at Windhoek Airport - here. I will make my first fly-over on the night of Monday the twelfth. I'll have to head out to sea at least five hundred miles before I can turn back. That's the estimated range of the Cuban radar net in southern Angola. Five hundred miles is well beyond the operational range of the Mig squadron at Lubango.' He touched the Cuban base on the map. 'All right, then I'll hit the coast at the mouth of the Congo here and fly south down the coast until I pick up the signal of Bella's transponder." 'Hold on, Garry,' Shasa intervened. "How's that working out?" 'The boys at Courtney Communications have done a damn fine job in the short time they had available.' He opened his brief-case. 'This is itp 'A bicycle pump?' Shasa asked.

"Apparently Nicky is a soccer star. He asked Bella to bring him a new ball, and he complained that they had to keep pumping his old ball. The pump is a natural accessory to go with the ball. It should arouse no suspicion. This one is in perfect working order.' He demonstrated a few strokes of the pump, and the air hissed out in a satisfactory manner.

"The transponder is fitted into the handle of the pump. It has a thirty-day battery life. It is activated simply by twisting the handle like this.' He showed them. 'There is one drawback. We have had to make the transponder small enough to fit into the handle, and in the process we have been forced to reduce the power of the signal. It has a range of less than twelve kilometres, even with the very sensitive antenna that we have fitted into the Lear. I'll have to fly in that close before I pick up the signal." 'What about Cuban fighters in the north?' Shasa asked anxiously.

"According to South African intelligence, the nearest squadron is based at Saurimo. I will make one quick run down the coast. As soon as I pick up Bella's signal, I'll head back out to sea. I've worked it out on paper; even if Cuban radar picks me up as I enter Angolan airspace and they immediately scramble a flight of Migs from Saurimo, I should be able to turn out and run for it before they can catch me." 'What about SAMs?' Shasa persisted.

"Intelligence reports the Cuban SAM regiments are all in the south." "And if Intelligence is wrong?" 'Come on, Pater! Sean's running a hell of a lot more risk than I am." 'This kind of thing is Sean's job, and he has not got a wife and a flock of kids." 'Do we want to get Nicky out - or what?' Garry turned his back on his father, ending the exchange. 'All right, where was I? Yes, I pick up Bella's signal. I turn out to sea and make radio contact with Lancer as she lies off the Congo mouth. I give them the fix on the base, and then I just come on home."

"I rather think,' Shasa drawled nonchalantly, 'that I'll go along with you for the ride, Garry!" 'Come on, Pater, you're Battle of Britain vintage. Act your age." 'I taught you to fly, my boy, and I can still fly circles around you any day of the week." Garry glanced across at Nana for support. Her expression was stony. He threw his hands in the air and began to grin.

"Welcome aboard, Skipper,' he acquiesced.

"Goodbye, Nana.' Isabella hugged the old lady with a sudden despairing strength. 'Pray for us." 'You just bring my great-grandson here to me, missy. He and I, have got a lot of catching up to do." Isabella turned to her father. 'I love you, Daddy." 'Not as much as I love you." 'I have been so stupid. I should have trusted you. I should have come to you right in the beginning.' She gulped. 'I've done terrible things, Daddy.

Things I haven't told you about yet. I wonder if you'll ever be able to forgive lne.$ 'You are my girl.' His voice was husky. 'My very special, my only girl.

Come back safely - and bring your baby with YOU- ) She kissed him and held him hard. Then she whirled and almost ran through the international departures gate of Jan Smuts Airport.

Centaine and Shasa stood staring after her long after she had disappeared.

Overhead the airport loudspeaker system was already calling her flight.

"This is the final call for all passengers travelling on the South African Airways SA 1e to Kinshasa and London." Centaine turned away and took Shasa's arm. She limped heavily on her stick.

Her leg always seemed to get worse when she was worried or under unusual strain.

The chauffeur had the car parked at the main entrance, although one of the traffic constables was trying to move him on. Shasa settled Centaine in the back seat and then went round to the other door and climbed in beside her.

"There is something we haven't talked about yet.' Centaine took his hand.

"Yes,' Shasa agreed. 'I know what you are going to ask. What have they extorted from Bella? What price have they made her pay?" 'She's been working for them for years, ever since the birth of the child.

That is obvious now." 'I don't want to think about it,' Shasa sighed. "But I know we'll have to face it, sooner or later. This bastard who has tied her up is a general in the KGB - so we know who Bella's masters are." 'Shasa.' Centaine hesitated, and then her voice firmed. 'You recall the Skylight scandal?" 'I'll never forget it." 'There was a leak - a traitor,' Centaine pressed on doggedly.

"Bella knew nothing about Skylight. I was very careful to keep her out of it,' Shasa said hotly.

"Do you remember the Israeli nuclear scientist who came down to Dragon's Fountain? What was his name - Aaron somebody? Bella had a little fling with him. You told me that her name was in the security register at Pelindaba.

She spent the night with him." 'Mother, you aren't suggesting... F Shasa broke off. 'My God, do you realize what information she has had access to over the years? As a senator, and as my assistant, most of the sensitive Armscor projects have passed over her deskv 'The Cyndex project at Capricorn,' Centaine nodded. 'She was at the tests only a few weeks back. Why is she being allowed to see Nicholas now? Has she given them some special piece of information, do you think?" They were silent for a long time, and then Shasa asked softly: 'Where does loyalty to the family and to one of our 5oe children end - and loyalty and patriotic duty to our country begin?" 'I think that you and- I will have to face that question very soon,' she sighed. 'But let's see this other business through first."

Lancer was tied up at the hospital jetty alongside the Courtney canning factory in Walvis Bay. She was a 250400t stern trawler but she had the sleek lines of a modern cruise liner. She had been built to work in any fishery in any ocean, to get there fast, stay at sea for months at a time and then to get back to port just as fast.

Sean stood on the jetty and looked her over. He did not like her bright yellow paintwork; it was much too visible. On the other hand, her stem chute would make for easy launching and recovery of the landing-boats.

Anyway, it was much too late to do anything about the paintwork now, he decided.

Half the Scouts were lining the rail of the trawler, and as soon as they recognized him they launched into a chorus of 'Why Was He Born So Beautifulf.

Sean gave them the finger. 'No goddam respect,' he lamented, and ran up the gangway. They were delighted to see him and crowded around him to shake his hand. Much of their enthusiasm was a symptom of boredom; for these highly trained fighting men a week of inactivity had been almost insupportable.

They were all dressed like trawlermen in worn and faded jeans, tattered woollen jerseys and an assortment of caps and balaclava helmets.

Sergeant-Major Esau Gondele was a full-blooded Matabele, an old comrade in a dozen desperate contacts and battles. He saluted Sean and then grinned as Sean punched his arm.

"You're out of uniform, Esau. Take it easy, brother." Twelve of the twenty Scouts that Sean had chosen were Matabele, the others were young white Rhodesians - nearly all of them the sons of ranchers and game wardens and miners who had been brought up in the bush.

In the Scouts there was no awareness of colour. As Esau Gondele once remarked to Sean: 'The best cure for racism is have somebody shoot at you.

Man, it does not matter then what colour the arse is that comes to save yours -black or white, you're ready to give it a big fat kiss." Sean had worried about the naval commandos from Simonstown who were handling the inflatables. They were all tough young Afrikaners. They might have trouble fitting into this multi-racial team.

"How are you getting on with the rock spiders?' Sean asked Esau Gondele, using the pejorative slang for an Afrikaner.

"Some of them are my best friends already, but still I wouldn't want one of them to marry my sister,' he chuckled. 'No, seriously, Sean, they're all right. They know their job. I told them they don't have to call me Baasie, and they saw the joke." 'OK, Sergeant-Major. We are leaving port at nightfall. It's unlikely that there'll be anybody here taking an interest in us. But we'll take no chances. You and I are going to check equipment before we sail, and then we'll brief the boys as soon as we cast off." The crew accommodation was cramped and spartan. The Scouts and the six commandos crowded into the mess, perched on the table and the bunks. Within minutes the air was fogged with cigarette smoke and Lancer pitched and rolled heavily to the thrust of the cold green Benguela current.

All the Scouts that Sean had chosen were proven sailors who had done boat patrols on the choppy waters of Lake Kariba. Mal de mer was the reason that he had not sent for Matatu. The little Ndorobo would have been puking his heart out by now. It felt strange going into an operation without Matatu at his side, like going on a journey without a St. Christopher. Matatu was his good-luck charm. He put that thought out of his mind, and looked round the crowded Mess.

"Can you all see?' Sean had tacked the maps up on the bulkhead. There was a chorus of assent.

"We are heading up here.' He prodded the map. 'And the mission is to pick up two prisoners, a woman and a child." There were groans and raspberries of mock disappointment, and Sean grinned.

"It's OK, don't panic. There'll be plenty of gooks. It's hot guns all the way, gentlemen, and open season." The groans turned to ironic cheers, and Sean waited for them to settle down.

"This is a sketch-map of the target area. As you can see, it's pretty rough, but it gives you some idea of what to expect. I expect to find the prisoners being held in this compound here, near the beach. Probably in this hut. I will lead the rescue party. We will go in with three of the boats." He noticed Esau Gondele squatting on one of the bunks with a South African naval commando squashed up on each side of him. The three of them were sharing a cigarette, passing the butt from hand to hand as they listened to his briefing. 'What price apartheid now?' Sean smiled to himself, and went on.

"If there is going to be any serious trouble, it's going to come down this road alongside the. river from the terrorist camp near the airstrip, here and here. Sergeant-Major Gondele will lead the support unit up the river in the other three boats and set up a road-block to prevent any gooks coming through. You will have to hold there for thirty minutes after you hear the first shot fired. That will give us time to spring the prisoners. Then you pull out and get back down-river and hotfoot out to sea to RZ with Lancer.

It's simple, and it must be quick. We aren't going to hang around a second longer than necessary, but if you can sort out a few of the uglies while you are about it nobody is going to complain. OK, now we'll go over it again in detail and tomorrow we'll practise launching the boats and recovering them again in rough water. We'll do that every day, plus weapons drill and equipment checks - you aren't going to have much time to write home before we hit the beach on the night of Tuesday the thirteenth. Keep that date open. Write it down.'.