to the complexity of supersonic flight. In addition, the Migs had done almost twenty years of service in eastern Europe before being sold to Zambia. Zambia's copper-based economy had been sent reeling by the fall in the price of the metal, and by two decades of gross mismanagement.
Costs had been pruned in the maintenance of the fighter squadron, and they were familiarly known as 'The Flying Bombs'.
Beyond the fighters was parked an enormous unmarked aircraft with four turbo-fan engines and a tail-fin taller than a two-storey house. Although Isabella did not recognize it as such, it was an Ilyushin 11-7e with the NATO reporting name 'Candid'. It was the standard Russian military heavy freight-carrying transport.
Paul, her escort, spoke to the guards at the gate and showed them a document from his brief-case. The guard commander studied the paper and then went into his kiosk. He spoke on the telephone to a superior and then handed Paul back his papers, opened the gates and saluted as they drove through.
Two pilots in flying-overalls were supervising the refuelling of the huge Candid. Paul parked the Volkswagen alongside the main hangar and walked across to the aircraft. He spoke to one of the pilots and then beckoned to Isabella to follow. They watched her struggling with her suitcase, but none of them offered to help her.
'You will go with the aircraft,' Paul told her.
'What about my luggage?' she asked, and the chief pilot shrugged and answered in a heavy accent: 'Leave here. Me fix. Come.' Isabella looked round, but Paul was already halfway back to the Volkswagen.
She followed the pilot up the loading-ramp of the Candid.
The hold was filled with cargo. It was packed on wooden pallets under heavy nylon netting. There were literally hundreds of wooden cases of various sizes. Most of them were stencilled in black paint with letters and numerals in Cyrillic script. The pilot led her down the side- aisle of the cavernous compartment and up the ladder to the flightdeck.
'Sit.' He pointed at one of the folding jump-seats in the rear bulkhead of the flight-deck.
There were no formalities when the Candid took off an hour later.
From her seat in the rear of the compartment Isabella had a clear view of the instrument- panel over the pilot's shoulder. The Candid levelled out into a cruise altitude of thirty thousand feet and settled on a course Of 3oo degrees magnetic.
Surreptitiously, she checked the time on her wristwatch. She wanted to know how long they would fly on this northwesterly heading. She conjured up a map of the continent in her mind. Although she had no idea of the aircraft's ground speed, the needle on the air-speed indicator quivered at around knots.
After an hour's flight she guessed that they had crossed from Zambia into Angola, and she shivered slightly. Angola was not her number-one choice for a holiday. She had recently been nominated to the African Affairs Committee of the Senate, and she had attended all the special briefings on the subject of Angola. She had also read the confidential reports assembled by military intelligence on that country.
She looked down at the mosaic of savannah and mountains and jungle that passed slowly beneath the Candid and tried to recall every detail that she had read about this troubled land.
Angola had long been the pearl of the Portuguese empire. After South Africa itself, Angola was the richest and most beautiful of all African countries.
This thousand-mile stretch of the West African Atlantic seaboard was rich with marine resources. Vast shoals of pelagic fish swarmed within easy reach of secure natural harbours. Offshore drilling by American companies had recently proved huge reserves of oil and natural gas. Inland lay rich and fertile plains and valleys, marvelous forests of hardwoods, pleasant well-watered highlands from which flowed numerous great rivers. In Africa water was a natural resource almost as precious as oil. Apart from her oil, Angola produced gold and diamonds and iron ore. Her climate was temperate and benign.
Despite all these blessings, Angola had for a decade been racked by a savage and bitter civil war. Her indigenous African peoples had been struggling to throw off the fivehundred-year colonial rule from Lisbon.
The liberation struggle had not been united. Many armies under all the usual flamboyant warlike names had fought not only the Portuguese but each other as well. There was the MPLA, the People's Movement for the Liberation of Angola; the FNLA, the National Front for the Liberation of Angola; UNITA, the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola; and a rash of other private armies and guerrilla movements.
The Portuguese had held on grimly to their colony. Tens of thousands of young Portuguese conscripts had come out to Africa, many of them to bleed and die by bullet and mine and tropical disease far from their native land.
Then suddenly had come the left-wing coup ditat by, the military junta in Mother Portugal, and shortly thereafter the declaration that Portugal was to give Angola its independence and hold popular elections to select a new government and write a constitution.
Now, in the months leading up to the proposed elections, the country was in even greater turmoil than it had been during the civil war, as the various factions jockeyed for power, and the great powers and other African governments played their favourites, while the guerrilla leaders themselves indulged in an orgy of intrigue and torture and intimidation of a population already cowed by years of war. Reading between the lines of the intelligence reports, Isabella sensed that nobody really knew what was happening in Luanda, the capital, let alone in the remote jungles and mountains.
Admiral Rosa Coutinho, the Red Admiral, appointed as the governor-general by the armed-forces movement after the coup d'itat, seemed to favour Agostinho Neto and his 'purified' MPLA. The purification process consisted of torturing all other factions of the party to death. This was done by gradually tightening a wooden frame around their heads until the skull collapsed.
The American CIA, out of touch as always, appeared to be supporting the FNLA which was the weakest, most tribally based and corrupt of the three, slipping them niggardly amounts of financial aid which the United States Senate would not have approved, had it been aware of them. The Chinese were also betting on the FNLA, as were the North Koreans.
The motorcade of black Chaikas crossed the moat bridge and entered the fortress of the Kremlin through the gate below the Borovitskaya Tower.
The two Cuban generals rode in the leading limousine. Senen Casas Requerien was chief of staff of the Cuban army, and with him was his army logistics chief. Colonelgeneral Ramsey Machado was in the second vehicle with President Fidel Castro, acting as host and interpreter for the visiting head of state.
Ramsey's promotion had been announced within weeks of his return from Ethiopia where he had masterminded the abdication of the Emperor Haile Selassie, the abolition of the monarchy and the formal declaration by the Ethiopian Derg of a Marxist socialist state.
He was now the second-youngest general in the entire Russian military service, and by far the youngest in the KGB. His immediate senior in the secret service was fifty-three years of age. His predecessor Joe Cicero had only been elevated to general officer rank just before his retirement. The promotion was all the more extraordinary in that Ramsey was not a Russian national by birth. His naturalization papers had only been serviced eight years ago.
Ethiopia had been a triumph for him. He had steered the first stage of the revolution through without any visible Russian presence in the country and, more importantly, with the expenditure of a paltry few million roubles.
Following immediately had been his clandestine but equally successful visit to Luanda in Angola where Ramsey had met the Red Admiral, Rosa Coutinho.
Coutinho was a member of the Portuguese Communist Party. He had been appointed governor-general of Angola by the left-wing military-forces committee which now governed Portugal. He had been charged with organizing the popular elections to select an African government to bring the former Portuguese colony of Angola to independence. However, during his meeting with Ramsey he had proven to be a political soulmate.
'We must ensure that under no circumstances popular elections take place,' he had told Ramsey. 'If we allow that to happen, then Jonas Savimbi will be the first president of Angola, if only because his Ovimbundu tribe is the largest in the country.' 'We cannot allow it,' Ramsey agreed. He did not have to elaborate. Jonas Savimbi was the boldest and most successful of all the Angolan guerrilla leaders.'His UNITA army had fought the Portuguese with skill and dogged determination for a decade. He was intelligent, educated and strong-willed.
Although he had never declared his political allegiances, he was certainly not a Marxist, probably not even a socialist, and they could not take a chance on him coming to power.
'The only possible solution,' Ramsey went on, 'is for you to declare that, owing to the state of chaos in the country, it will be impractical to hold elections. You should then declare that the solution is to recognize the MPLA as the only party capable of assuming the reins of government, and to persuade Lisbon to transfer power to Agostinho Neto and the MPLA as soon as possible.' Neto was the Soviet choice. He was devious, weak, cruel and malleable. He could be controlled, whereas Savimbi could not.
'I agree,' Coutinho nodded. 'But can I count on full support from Russia and Cuba?' 'If I am able to promise
