could get around to searching Isabella's luggage.
This time the camera was passed without comment, though they lingered longingly over her cosmetics. Isabella invited them to try a little of her lipstick, and they accepted with alacrity, and admired the results in the mirror of Isabella's compact. The atmosphere was more that of a gathering of old friends than of a security screening.
By the time they came to examine the box of gifts for Nicholas their hearts were obviously no longer in the task. One of them picked out the deflated soccer ball. 'Ah, Pele will like this,' she cried, and then Isabella's nerves prickled with tension as she handled the pump.
'For the ball,' she explained.
'Sf. I know, to pump air.' The woman gave it a few desultory strokes and then dropped the pump back into the box.
'I am sorry to have inconvenienced you, sefiora. We only do our duty.' 'Of course. I understand,' Isabella agreed.
'You will stay with us two weeks. That is good. Pele has been very excited that you are coming. He is a good boy. Everybody likes him very much.
Everybody is very proud of him.' She helped Isabella to carry her cases across to the same hut that they had given her on her last visit.
Nicholas was sitting on her bed, already in his swimming- trunks.
'Come, Mamma, we will go for a swim now. I will race you out to the reef.' He swam like an otter, and she was hard-pressed to keep up with him.
That evening when just the two of them were alone in her hut, she gave him his gifts from the box. Although the soccer ball was the greatest hit, he also enjoyed her choice of books and clothes. She had brought a selection of colourful surfer's baggies and T-shirts which delighted him. There was also a Sony cassette-playcr and a box of music cassettes. His favourites were Creedence Clearwater Revival and the Beatles.
'Can you rock 'n' roll?' she asked. 'I'll show you.' And she put a Johnny Halliday tape on the player.
They gyrated around the hut in their bathing-suits, shrieking with laughter, until Adra called them for dinner. Adra was as taciturn and withdrawn as ever, and Isabella ignored her and concentrated all her attention on Nicholas. She had stored up a selection of elephant, jokes for him.
'How do you know that the elephant has been in the refrigerator? You see his footprints in the butter.' He loved that one. In return he told her a joke that he had heard from Jose the paratrooper. It left her gasping for air.
'Do you know what that means?' she asked in nervous trepidation.
. 'Of course,' he told her. 'One of the big girls at school showed me.' And Isabella thought it prudent not to pursue the subject.
After they had seen him to bed, Adra walked with her to the hut and Isabella whispered: 'Where is Ramsey, the Marquds? Is he here?' Adra looked around carefully before replying. 'No. He will come soon. I think tomorrow or the next day. He says he will come to you. He says to tell you he loves you.' Alone in her hut, Isabella found that she was trembling at the prospect of meeting Ramsey again, now that she knew him for what he was. She doubted whether she would be able to act naturally towards him. The thought of making love to him terrified her. Surely he would sense the change in her feelings towards him. He might take Nicholas away, or have her imprisoned.
'Please, God, let Sean reach me before Ramsey does. Keep him away until Sean comes.' She lay awake that night, cold with dread that Ramsey would suddenly appear out of the darkness and she must take him into her bed.
As before, she and Nicholas spent the next two days swimming and fishing and playing with Twenty-Six on the beach. The puppy had grown into a lanky, long-tailed, cross-eyed dog with floppy ears that Nicholas adored. It shared his bed with him; Isabella did not have the authority to forbid it, even though Nicholas's long legs were speckled with flea-bites.
On the Monday night, while she watched Nicholas prepare for bed, she reached up casually and took down the bicycle pump from the shelf above his bed on which the new soccer ball held pride of place. She twisted the handle and heard the faint internal click as the transponder switched on.
She replaced the pump on the shelf just as Nicholas came back from -the bathroom smelling of the peppermint toothpaste she had brought from Cape Town for him.
As she leant over the bed to tuck in the mosquito-net he reached up unexpectedly and threw both arms around her neck. 'I love you, Mamma,' he whispered shyly, and she kissed him.
His mouth was soft and moist and warm and tasted of toothpaste, and she thought her heart would burst with love of him. Quickly embarrassed by his own display, Nicholas rolled over, pulled the sheet up to his chin, closed his eyes tightly and made ostentatious snoring sounds.
'Sleep well, Nicky. I love you, too - with all my heart,' she whispered.
As she walked back to her own hut, thunder growled and lightning flickered across the night sky. As she looked up, a heavy drop of warm rain struck her on the centre of her forehead.
It was very quiet in the cockpit of the Lear. They were at forty thousand feet, almost service ceiling, as high as they could get for maximum endurance and speed.
'Enemy coast ahead,' Shasa said softly, and Garry chuckled.
'Come on, Pater. People only say things Re that in World War Two movies.' They were high above the cloud mass in a world of enchanted silver moonlight. The cloud below them shone with the peculiar brilliance of an alpine snowfield.
'One hundred nautical miles to run to the mouth of the Congo river.' Shasa checked their position on the screen of the satellite nav system. 'We should be almost exactly overhead Lancer's station.' 'Better give them a call,' Garry suggested, and Shasa switched radio frequencies.
'Hello, Donald Duck. This is the Magic Dragon. Do you read?' 'Hello, Dragon. This is the Duck. Reading you ten and ten,' the reply was immediate, and Shasa smiled with relief as he recognized his eldest son's voice. 'Sean must have had his thumb on the button,' he murmured and keyed his microphone. 'Stand by, Duck. We are heading for Disneyland.' 'Have a nice trip. Duck is standing by.' Shasa swivelled in the co-pilot's seat and looked back into the Lear's passenger-cabin. The two technicians from Courtney Communications were crouched over their equipment. It had taken them ten days to install all the special electronics. Much of it was state-of-the-art equipment which was still under test with Armscor and had not yet been issued to the air force. It was not built into the Lear's body, but strapped and screwed to the cabin floor. Their intent faces were painted a witch's green by the glow from the display panel, and the enormous headphones distorted the shape of their heads.
Shasa switched to the intercom. 'How you doing, Len?' he head engineer glanced up at him. 'No radar lash. We are receiving normal radio traffic from Luanda, Kinshasa and Brazzaville. No signal from the target.' 'Carry on.' Shasa turned. He knew that the new frequency-search equipment was skipping through the bands. It should pick up any military traffic from Luanda or Saurimo military bases. The antenna mounted under the Lear's belly would warn them if they were detected by 5xe hostile radar. Len, the radio engineer, had been chosen for his command of Spanish. He would be able to monitor any Cuban radio traffic.
'OK, Garry.' Shasa touched his arm. 'We are overhead the Congo mouth. Your new heading is.' 'New heading 175.'Garr-y stood the Lear on one wing-tip as they turned east of south to run parallel with the coastline.
By some freak of wind and weather, a deep hole opened in the cloud mass beneath them. The moon was directly overhead and only two days from its full. Its light beamed down into the chasm, and forty thousand feet below they saw the platinum gleam of water and the dark shape of the African coast.
'Ambriz river-mouth in four minutes,' Shasa warned.
'We have initiated search for target signal,' Len confirmed in his headphones.
'Overhead Ambriz,' Shasa intoned.
'No target signal received.' 'Catacanha river-mouth in six minutes,' Shasa said.
He hadn't really expected the Ambriz to yield results. It was the outer limit of their search-cone. He looked ahead and grimaced. Directly in their track a gigantic mountain of menacing black cloud rose hammer-headed into the stratosphere. He estimated its height at sixty or seventy thousand feet, 'way above the Lear's ceiling.
'How do you like that Charlie Bravo?' he asked, and Garry shook his head and looked down at the screen of the weather radar set. The enormous tropical thunderstorm showed up as a lurid and ferocious crimson cancer on the screen.
'Ninety-six miles ahead, and it's a real Lulu. Looks like it's sitting right over one of our target river-mouths, the Chicamba.' 'If it is, it will wipe out any signal from Bella's transponder.' Shasa was looking worried.
. 'We wouldn't be able to fly through that anyway,' Garry growled.
'Overhead the Catacanha, Len. Are you picking up anything from our target?' 'Negative, Mr. Courtney.' And then his voice changed. 'Hold on! Oh shit!
Somebody is hitting us with radar lash.' 'Garry' - Shasa reached across to shake his shoulder -'they've picked us up on radar.' 'Switch to the international frequency,' Garry said, 'and listen.' They sat frozen in their seats listening to the static of that great turbulent storm ahead.
Suddenly the
