met her and searched her luggage on arrival came to her, but with a message.
35e 'There is an aircraft departing at nine o'clock tomorrow. You will leave with it.' 'The child!' she demanded. 'Nicholas - Pele?' The woman shook her head. 'The child remains. Your visit is terminated.
They will fetch you at eight o'clock tomorrow morning. You must be ready.
Those are my orders.' She wanted to take some memento of her son with her. After she had showered and changed for dinner she took a pair of nail-scissors from her toilet-bag and hid them in the pocket of her Bermudas. When Nicholas was seated at the dinner-table she came up behind him and before he could pull away she snipped a thick dark curl from the back of his head.
'Hey,'he protested half-heartedly. 'Why do you do that?' 'I want something to remember you by when I am gone.' He thought about that for a while and then asked shyly: 'Can I have some of your hair as well - to remember you?' Without a word she handed him the scissors. He stood in front of her and streamed one of her tresses between his fingers.
'Not too much,' she warned him. He laughed and cut a lock and curled it round his finger.
'Your hair is soft - and pretty,' he whispered. 'Do you really have to go, Mamma?' 'I am afraid so, Nicky.' 'Will you come and visit me again?' 'Yes, I will. I promise you that.' 'I will keep this piece of your hair in my lock book.' He fetched the book and pressed the curl between the pages. 'Every time I read the book I will think of you.' The moon was almost full. The silver radiance sifted in through the open sides of her hut and cast stark shadows that moved softly across the floor to mark the passage of the hours.
'He must come,' she told herself, lying rigid with fearful hope on the hard mattress. 'Please let him come.' Suddenly she sat bolt upright. She had heard nothing, seen nothing, but she knew with utter certainty that he was close. She had to force herself not to call his name aloud. She waited with every sense alert, and then suddenly without sound he was there.
He appeared like a wraith in the silver moonlight, and she gagged the cry that rose in her throat. She threw back the mosquito-net and with three quick steps had crossed the hut and was in his arms. Their kiss seemed to last a moment and all of infinity; and then, still without a word, he drew her down the front steps of the hut and into the sanctuary of the palm grove.
'We do not have long,' he warned her softly, and she choked back a sob and clung to him.
'What is happening to us, darling?' she pleaded. 'I don't understand any of it. Why are you doing this to us?' 'For the same reason that you are forced to obey. For Nicholas, and for you.' 'I don't understand. I cannot go on, Ramsey. I have reached the end of my strength.' 'Not much longer, my darling. I promise you that. Soon it will be over, and we will be together.' 'You said that last time, darling. I have done all I can... 'I know, Bella. What you have done has saved us. Both of us, Nicholas and me. Without you we would have long since been destroyed. You have bought time and life for us.' 'They have made me do terrible, terrible things, Ramsey. They have made me betray my family and my country.' 'They are pleased with you, Bella. This visit is proof of that. They have given you two weeks with Nicholas. If only you can last a little longer give them just a little more of what they want.' 'They will never let me go, Ramsey. I know that. They will hold me for ever, and bleed the last drop.' 'Bella, darling.' He stroked her body through the thin silk of her nightgown. 'I have a plan. If you can keep them happy just a little longer, next time they will be more lenient. They will trust you a little more. They will start to become careless - and then, I promise, I will bring Nicky to you.' 'Who are they?' she whispered, but he was beginning to make love to her and the question faltered.
'Quiet, my love. Don't ask. It is best you don't know.' 'At first I thought it was the Russians, but the Americans acted on my Skylight message. The Americans used my information on the Angola raid. Is it the American CIA, Ramsey?' 'You may be right, my love, but for Nicky's sake don't provoke them.' 'Oh God, Ramsey. I am so unhappy. I didn't believe that any civilized people could treat others in this way.' 'Not much longer,' he whispered. 'Be strong. Give them what they want for just a little longer, and then Nicky and I will be with you.' 'Make love to me, Ramsey. It's the only thing in the world that can keep me from going mad.'
Nicholas drove her to the airstrip the following morning. He was tremendously proud of his driving skill, and she was effusive in her praise.
Josd and the regular driver were in the back of the jeep, and she overheard a remark that one made to the other that at the time made little sense but stuck in her memory like a burr.
'Pele is the true cub of the fox, El Zorro.' At the ramp of the Ilyushin they said goodbye to each other.
'You promised to come to see me again, Mamma,' Nicholas reminded her.
'Of course, Nicky. What present should I bring you?' 'My soccer ball is worn and leaking. We have to pump it many times during the match.' 'I will bring you another.' 'Thank you, Mamma.' He offered her his hand, but she could not restrain herself. She dropped to her knees and hugged him to her breast.
For a shocked moment he stood very still in her arms, and then he tore himself violently from her embrace. His face was scarlet with humiliation.
He glared at her, then whirled and ran for the jeep.
She peered down from the small side-window in the flight-deck of the Ilyushin, but Nicholas was gone. She saw the fine pall of dust still hanging over the road to the beach. He left a great emptiness in her soul.
She disembarked from the Ilyushin in Libya where it landed to refuel, and caught a Swissair flight to Zurich. She airmailed postcards to everybody in the family including Nanny, and used her credit cards to establish her presence in Switzerland. She even called on Shasa's bankers in Lausanne to withdraw ten thousand francs and thus allay any suspicions that her father might have about her holiday.
The photographs she had taken of Nicholas were beautiful. She had captured his typical expressions and moods and characteristic poses. Even those of him in his camouflage fatigues handling that dreadful assault-rifle gave her more pleasure than distress.
She was keeping a journal for Nicholas. It was a thick bound book with pockets inside the covers, and it contained every memento of Nicholas that she had accumulated over the years.
There was a copy of his official Spanish birth certificate and adoption papers. She had hired a London firm who specialized in this type of work to trace the Machado family back three centuries. A copy of the family tree and the Machado heraldic arms were in the front pockets of the journal.
There was also the baby bootee that she had retrieved from under his cot in the flat in Milaga. She had pasted in the copies of the reports from his nursery school and the paediatric: clinic, together with every photograph they had ever sent her. She wrote her own comments and a description of her feelings of love and hope and despair on alternate pages.
When she returned to Weltevreden she added the lock of his hair and the photographs she had taken of him to her hoard, and included a description of their interlude together. She even recorded their conversations and every amusing or poignant comment he had made.
When she felt deeply depressed and unhappy she locked herself in her suite, retrieved the journal from her personal safe and gloated over every item in it.
It gave her the strength to go on.
The Beechcraft banked into a steep descending turn and the release of gravity made Isabella feel light in the rear seat.
'There,' Garry shouted from the pilot's left front seat. 'See them? At the foot of the hill. Three of them.' Isabella stared down at the forest-top and the broken ground along the rim of the escarpment. The rock was fractured into battlements and turrets, wild cliffs and tumbled towers like the ruins of some fabulous fairy castle.
The forest filled the valleys and the ravines between the rocky castles with splendid chaos; great tree-trunks towered up a hundred feet or more with widespread branches clothed in autumn livery, gilded with all the amalgams of gold and copper and bronze. Other great trees were already bare of leaf; the bloated baobabs with reptilian bark squatted grotesquely as creatures from the age of the dinosaurs. At the very wing-tip of the Beechcraft a giant African ebony flashed by, its leaves still dark shining green and its top branches studded with ripe yellow fruit.
A flock of green pigeons hurled themselves in wild alarm into the air, and darted by so close that she could see their bright yellow beaks and the beady shine of their eyes. Then abruptly the forest ended and a glade of pale winter grass stretched below them. The Beechcraft roared straight at the tall cliff of rock on the far side.
'There! Can you see them, Bella?' Garry called again.
'Yes! Yes! Aren't they magnificent?' she shouted back.
At the far end of the clearing, three bull elephants ran in single file.
Their ears were spread wide as the lateen sail on an Arab dhow. Their backs were humped so that she could see the curved and crested ridge of the spine beneath the grey hide and the gleam of long curved ivory carried high.
As they flashed twenty feet over him, the lead bull turned to confront them. He reached up with a long serpentine trunk as though to pluck them from the sky. Then Garry pulled back on the control column. Gravity sucked at Isabella's bowels, and the aircraft hurtled up to skim the raw blue granite and
