reply to that was also friendly, he relaxed further and took a lively interest in everything around them.
The men at the roadside saluted Ramsey as the jeep passed. From the comer of his eye he saw Nicholas stiffen in the front seat and return the salute with all the aplomb of a veteran. Ramsey had to turn his face away to hide his smile. The men had noticed it also and grinned after the departing vehicle.
When they arrived at the compound, Ramsey's orderly had a batch of satellite messages for his attention. However, there was little of importance amongst them, and Ramsey dealt with them swiftly. He went to the hut alongside his own that he had allocated for Nicholas and Adra. He heard 33e the boy's excited chatter as he stepped up on to the stoep, but it was cut off abruptly as he appeared in the doorway. Again Nicholas was strange and withdrawn, watching his father warily.
'Did you bring your bathing-suit?' Ramsey asked him.
'Yes, Padre.' 'Good. Put it on. We will swim together.' The water inside the reef was calm and warm.
'Look, Padre. I can swim the crawl now - no more baby paddle,' Nicholas boasted.
With Ramsey swimming beside him, he made it out to the reef with only a half-dozen pauses to tread water while he regained his breath. They sat side by side on a coral head, and while they discussed seriously how the reef was formed by millions of tiny living creatures Ramsey studied the boy carefully. He was well favoured, tall and strong for his age. His vocabulary had expanded again since they had last been together. At times it was almost like talking to a grown man.
They ate dinner together on the veranda. Ramsey discovered how much he had missed Adra's cooking. Every minute Nicholas seemed more relaxed. His appetite was good. He asked for more of the baked mullet. Ramsey allowed him half a glass of well-watered wine. Nicholas sipped it like a connoisseur, swelling with pride at being treated as an adult.
When Adra came to fetch him to bed, he slipped off his chair without argument but pulled away from her hand and came around the table to his father.
'I am very happy to be here, Padre,' he said formally, and held out his hand.
As Ramsey shook his hand he experienced an actual physical constriction of his chest.
Within a week Nicholas had become a favourite at Tercio camp. Some of the ANC instructors and recruits had their families with them. One of the wives was a trained primary-school teacher from the University of the Western Cape in South Africa. She had set up a school for the children in the camp. Ramsey sent Nicholas to take part in the classes. The schoolroom was a thatched building with open sides and rows of benches made of roughly planed native timber.
Almost immediately it was clear that Nicholas was as bright and advanced as children three and four years older than he was. English was the language of instruction, and he made swift progress in it. He had a clear sweet voice and led the singing. He taught them 'Land of the Landless' and the other revolutionary songs which the teacher translated into English. He had brought his soccer ball with him, and this gave him tremendous social prestige amongst his peers. A work detail from the camp under orders from Colonel-General Machado levelled a soccer pitch for the school, laid out the markings in lime and set up goal-posts. Such was Nicholas's prowess on the field that they nicknamed him Pele, and the daily matches became a popular feature of camp life.
As the general's son, Nicholas had special standing and privilege. He had the run of the camp, including the induction classes for new recruits. The instructors allowed him to handle the weapons.
Ramsey watched with carefully concealed pride as his son stood up before a class of adult recruits and demonstrated the stripping and reassembling of an AK assaultrifle. Then he took his place on the range and fired a magazine of live ammunition. Twelve of the twenty rounds struck the man-sized target at which he was aiming.
Without Ramsey's knowledge, Jose, the Cuban driver, taught Nicholas to drive the jeep. The first Ramsey knew of his son's latest accomplishment was when Nicholas, sitting on a cushion, proudly drove him down to the airstrip to meet the incoming Ilyushin transport flight.
The men along the road cheered them as they passed with cries of 'Viva Pele!' The camp tailor made Nicholas his own set of camouflage combat fatigues and a soft Cuban-style cap. He wore the cap cocked at an angle over one eye, just as his father did, and imitated Ramsey's mannerisms, lifting his cap to rake his fingers through his hair or hooking his thumbs in his belt as he stood at rest. He became Ramsey's unofficial driver, and wherever they went huge grins of delight followed the jeep.
On some afternoons Ramsey and Nicholas took one of the boats powered by a fifty-horsepower outboard motor and raced out through the pass in the coral reef into the blue Atlantic waters. They anchored the boat over one of the deep reefs and fished with hand-lines. The coral teemed with fish of every possible shape and size and colour. Ramsey taught Nicholas how to chop the carcass of a large fish, preserved from their previous expedition, into a fine mince. They mixed this with beach sand to make it sink swiftly and ground-baited the reef below the anchored boat.
Soon they could make out the shadowy shapes of large fish darting and swirling in the blue depths sixty feet below their hull. The scent of the ground bait had goaded them into a feeding frenzy. As they dropped their baited hooks amongst them the thick line was jerked through their fingers and Nicholas squealed with glee.
The reef fish glittered and glowed with peacock blue and iridescent green; with clear daffodil yellow and startling scarlet. They were spotted with jade and sapphire, striped like zebra and splashed with flaming ruby and opal. They were shaped like bullets and butterflies, and winged like exotic birds. They were armed with daggers and barbed spines and rows-of porcelain-white fangs. They squeaked and grunted like pigs as they were hauled flapping and squirming over the gunwale of the ass~ult-boat. Some were so large that Ramsey had to give Nicholas a hand to drag them from the water. He hated anybody, even his father, to help him. He hated even more to stop fishing at the close of the day.
'One more, Padre - just one more,' he cried eagerly, and in the end Ramsey had to take the line out of his hands.
One evening they stayed later than usual. Darkness was falling as they hauled the anchor and started the outboard. The trade wind had turned chilly, and the wind of their passage blew over them as they bounced over the tops of the swells on their way back to the river mouth.
Goose-flesh pimpled Nicholas's arms as he hugged himself. He shivered with cold and exhaustion and the reaction from so much excitement.
Steering the boat with one hand, Ramsey put his other arm around Nicholas's shoulders. For a moment the child froze with shock at his unfamiliar touch, and then his body relaxed and he crept closer to his father and cuddled against his chest.
As he steered through the darkness with the small shivering body pressed to his, Ramsey was assailed once again by the memory of the abuna of Addis Ababa's sons propped against the front wall of their father's home with empty eye-sockets and each with his tiny dark penis protruding like a finger from between his dead lips. Ramsey was not touched by either guilt or regret. It had been necessary, just as once it had been necessary to half-drown the child that now cuddled against his chest. Duty was often hard and cruel, but he had never flinched from its call. Still, he had never felt before the way he did now.
They beached the boat, and handed it over to Jose, the Cuban driver, to care for. Then they made their way by lantern-light through the palm grove towards the stockade of the compound.
Nicholas stumbled against him in the darkness, and Ramsey took his hand to steady him. The child made no effort to pull his hand away.
They walked on without speaking until they reached the gate of the compound, and then Nicholas whispered softly: 'I wish I could stay here at Tercio with you always.' Ramsey pretended he had not heard him, but he found it difficult to draw his next breath.
The signals clerk woke him ten minutes after midnight. It needed only a light tap on the door of the hut for Ramsey to come fully awake with the Tokarev pistol in his hand.
'What is it?' 'A Red Rose relay from Moscow,' the clerk answered him. They had strict instructions to call him at any time of day or night for a Red Rose communication.
'I will come immediately.' The message was in code, and Ramsey fetched his copy of the code-pad from the steel safe. They used a 'one-time' pad, a separate code randomly generated by computer for each sheet. He and Red Rose had the only existing copies of the pad, and used a single sheet for each message.
He matched her sheet and began to decode the message.
'Project is code-named Skylight,' the message read. 'First subterranean test of thirty-megaton fission device scheduled October twenty- sixth. Test site located 27*35'S 24'25'E. Full specifications of device on hand.' Ramsey sent his driver to the main ANC camp upriver, and Raleigh Tabaka was in his office within forty minutes.
'We must leave for London immediately,' Ramsey told him as Raleigh read the message. 'This is too important to co-ordinate from here. We will orchestrate through the London embassy and the ANC office in the UK.' Ramsey smiled with quiet satisfaction. 'We will have the Boers on the mat in front of the Security Council before the week is out. Once again, they have played right into our hands.' He woke Nicholas to say goodbye to
