were once again on the slippery footing of tentative friendship.
'Don't push too hard,' she had to keep warning herself.
As he said goodnight and shook her hand formally, he suddenly blurted out: 'It is a good story. I like Jock the dog, and I am glad you have come to see me again. I don't really mind not going to school.' His outburst had clearly embarrassed him, and he hurried from the room.
Isabella waited until she saw the light go out in his bedroom, then she went to find Adra. She wanted to speak to her alone, and try to make some estimate of just what part she had played in Nicholas's abduction and where her sympathies now lay. She also wanted news of Ramsey, and to find out from Adra when she would see him again.
Adra was in the kitchen, washing the dinner-dishes, but as Isabella entered her expression went dead and she withdrew behind an iron-cold reserve. She replied to Isabella in monosyllables and would not meet her eyes. Very shortly Isabella gave up the effort and went back to her own hut.
Despite the fatigue of travel she slept fitfully and woke in the dawn light, eager for her first full day with her son.
They spent the entire day with Twenty-six on the beach. In the bag of gifts that Isabella had brought with her was a tennis ball. This kept boy and dog amused for hours on end.
Then they swam out to the reef. Nicholas showed her how to hook the sea-cats out of their holes in the coral. He was delighted by her horror of the writhing slimy legs of the miniature octopuses and the huge luminous eyes which gave them their name.
'Adra will cook them for dinner,' he promised.
'You love Adra, don't you?' she asked.
'Of course,' he replied. 'Adra is my mother.' He caught himself as he realized his gaffe. 'I mean you are my mamma, but Adra is my real mother.' The hurt made her want to weep.
On the second morning Nicholas came to her hut and woke her while it was still dark. 'We are going fishing,' he exulted. 'Jose is going to take us out in the boat.' , jose was one of the camp guards she had noticed on her arrival. He was a dark-skinned young man with crooked teeth and pock-marked face. He was obviously one of Nicholas's favourites. The two of them chatted easily while they readied the boat and the fishing- lines.
'Why do you call him Pele?' she asked Jose in Spanish, and Nicholas answered for him.
'Because I am the champion soccer-player in the school - not so, JOSe?' Nicholas showed her how to bait her line, and was patronizingly indulgent of her inability to remove the hook from the mouth of a leaping, quivering fish.
That evening they read another chapter ofyock together. When Nicholas was in bed, Isabella tried once again to engage Adra in friendly conversation.
She received the same taciturn and hostile response. However, when she gave up and left the kitchen, Adra followed her out into the darkness and gripped her arm. With her lips almost touching Isabella's ear she hissed: 'I cannot talk to you. They are watching us every minute.' Before Isabella could recover, Adra had disappeared back into the kitchen.
In the morning Nicholas had another surprise for her. He took her down to the beach where Jok waited for them. At a word from Nicholas he handed over his weapon and stood by grinning with crooked teeth while the boy stripped the AKM. Nicholas's fingers were nimble and fast. He called out the name of each separate part of the weapon as he detached it.
'How long?' he demanded of jose as he finished.
'Twenty-five seconds, Pele.' The guard laughed with admiration. 'Very good.
We will make you a para, yet.' 'Twenty-five seconds, Mamma,' he repeated to Isabella proudly, and although she was appalled by the demonstration she tried to make her congratulations sound sincere.
'Now, Jose, you must time me again when I reassemble,' Nicholas ordered.
'And you must take my photograph, Mamma.' The camera was a great attraction, and she obeyed. Then Nicholas posed with the rifle and demanded another photograph. Watching him through the lens, she was reminded strongly of the photographs she had seen of the child warriors trained by the Vietcong. They were children dwarfed by the weapons they carried, little boys and girls with faces like cherubs and big innocent eyes. She had read also of the atrocities committed by these aberrant little monsters. Was Nicholas being turned into one of these? The thought made her physically sick.
'Can I shoot, Jose?' Nicholas wheedled him, and they argued playfully until at last Josd allowed himself to be won over.
He threw an empty bottle out into the lagoon, and Nicholas stood at the edge of the water and fired with the selector of the rifle on single shot.
The sound of gunfire brought half a dozen paratroopers and the women signallers from the compound. They stood at the high-water mark and cheered him on. On the fifth shot the bottle exploded and there were shouts of 'Viva, Pelep and 'Courage, Pele!' from the onlookers.
'Take my picture again, Mamma,' Nicholas pleaded, and posed with his admirers on either side of him and the rifle held at high port across his chest.
Adra gave them a picnic lunch of fruit and cold smoked fish to eat on the beach. As they sat together Nicholas remarked suddenly through a mouthful of food: Jose has fought in many battles. He has killed five men with his rifle. One day I will be a true son of the revolution - just as he is.' That night she lay under her mosquito-net and tried to fight off the dark waves of despair and helplessness that flooded over her.
'They, are turning my baby into a monster. How can I stop them? How can I get him away from them?'
She did not even know who they were, and her sense of helplessness was overwhelnung.
'Oh, where is Ramsey? If only he would come to me. With his help, I know I can be strong. With him beside me, we can see this dreadful thing through.' She tried to approach Adra again, but the woman was cold and intractable.
Nicholas was becoming restless. Although he was still polite and friendly, she could tell that he was becoming bored with her company alone. He spoke of school and soccer matches and his friends and what they would do when he was allowed to return to them. She tried desperately to distract him, but there was a limit to the games she could devise, to the fascination of the books and stories she provided for him.
A kind of wild desperation came over her. She dreamt of escaping with him to the safe and sane world of Weltevreden. She imagined him dressed in the uniform of a firstclass public school, rather than in military camouflage.
She fantasized making some bargain with the mysterious powers that controlled their destinies so completely.
'I would do anything - if only they would give my baby back to me.' Yet, even as she thought it, she knew it was in vain.
Then in the dark and hopeless watches of the night her imagination became morbid. She thought of ending it, ending the torment for both herself and her son.
'It would be the only way to save him, the only way out for both of us.' She could use josd's rifle. She would ask Nicholas to show it to her, and once she had it in her hands... She shuddered at the thought and could take it no further.
Colonel-General Ramsey Machado recognized the change in her. He had been anticipating it.
For ten days he had been observing her closely. There were cameras and microphones in the huts which Isabella had not discovered. While she and the child had been together on the beach or in the boat they had been filmed with a high-powered telescopic lens. For hours at a time Ramsey studied her through binoculars from carefully prepared vantage-points above the beach.
He had watched her first wild elation change slowly to simple single-minded enjoyment of her son, and then slowly sour into despair and corroding discontent as she came to appreciate fully the invidious circumstances in which she was trapped.
He guessed that she had probably reached the stage when she could try something desperate that would destroy all the beneficial results that had been achieved by the visit so far.
He gave Adra new orders.
As she served dinner that evening, Adra abruptly sent Nicholas on an errand that got him out of the hut for a few minutes. Then, as she spooned thick fish soup into Isabella's bowl, she leant so close to her that a loose strand of her hair brushed Isabella's cheek.
'Do not speak or look at me,' she whispered. 'I have a message from the marques.' Isabella dropped her spoon with a clatter. 'Careful. Give no sign. He says that he will try to come to you, but it is difficult and dangerous. He says that he loves you. He says to be brave.' All thought of suicide was driven from her mind. Ramsey was close. Ramsey loved her. She knew deep down in her heart that it would be all right as long as she had the fortitude to brave it through, and Ramsey's help.
The knowledge kept her going through the next two days. There was a new sparkle and zest in her that she was able to share with Nicholas. The restlessness and creeping ennui which had begun to affect their relationship evaporated. They were happy again together.
In the nights she lay awake in her hut, no longer devoured by doubt and brooding fears, but waiting for Ramsey.
'He will come. I know he will.' Then one of the women who had
