In your room, your new room across the passage. She flashed at him.
So that's the way you want it? You didn't really think I'd want to pick up Ephrem's leftovers, did you? Daniel tried to keep his tone reasonable.
Off you go, there's a good little harlot. She picked up her handbag and shoes and marched to the door. There she turned back to him, swaying with a drunkard's dignity. It's all true, what they say, she told him with vindictive relish. They are big. Bigger and better than you'll ever be! She slammed the door behind her.
Daniel was on his second cup of breakfast tea when Bonny came out on to the verandah and, without greeting him, took her place at the breakfast table opposite him.
She wore her usual working uniform of faded blue jeans and denim top, but her eyes were puffy and her expression disgruntled with hangover.
The guest house chef was an anachronism from the colonial era and he served a traditional English breakfast. Neither of them spoke while Bonny demolished her plateful of eggs and bacon. Then she looked up at him.
So what happens now? You make a film, he said. Just the way it's written in your contract. You still want me around? As a cameraman, yes. But from now on it's a business relationship. That suits me just fine, she agreed. It was getting to be a bit of a strain; I'm not good at faking it. Daniel stood up abruptly, and went to fetch his gear from the bedroom. He was still too angry-to risk getting into an argument with her.
Before he was ready, Captain Kajo arrived with three soldiers in the back of his Landrover. They helped carry out the heavy video equipment and load it into the back of the truck. Daniel let Bonny sit up in the cab beside Captain Kajo, while he rode in the back with the heavily armed Hita soldiers.
the town of Kahali was very much as he remembered it from his last visit.
The streets were wide and dusty where the potholes had eaten, cancerlike, through the tarmac. The buildings looked like those from the movie set of an old-fashioned Western.
The main difference that Daniel noticed was the mood of the people.
The Uhali women still wore their colourful ankle-length robes and turbans, the Moslem influence apparent in their demeanour, but the expressions on their faces were guarded and neutral. There were few smiles and no laughter in the open-air market where the women squatted in lines with their wares spread out on sheets of cloth in front of them. There were army patrols in the market-place and on the street corners.
The populace averted their eyes as the Landrover passed.
There were very few tourists, and these were dusty, unshaven and rumpled, probably members of an overland safari making their way down the length of the African continent in a huge communal truck. They were haggling for tomatoes and eggs in the market. Daniel grinned.
They were paying for a glimpse of purgatory. The overland safari meant amoebic dysentery and punctures, five thousand miles of potholes and army roadblocks, probably the only package holiday on the globe with no repeat customers. Once was enough to last a lifetime.
The gunboat was waiting for them at the wharf. Seamen in navy blue uniforms and bare feet carried the video equipment up the gangplank and the captain shook hands with Daniel as he came aboard. Peace be with you, he greeted him in Swahili. I have orders to take you where you want to go. They left the harbour and turned northwards, parallel to theLakeshore. Daniel stood out on the foredeck and his good spirits returned swiftly. The water was a dark and lovely blue, sparkling in the sunlight. There was a single cloud on the northern horizon, as white as a seagull and not much larger. It was the spray column- where the lake spilled over its rocky rim into a deep gorge and became the infant Nile.
The ultimate source of the White Nile had been debated for two thousand years and had still not been entirely agreed upon.
Was it those falls where the Victoria Nile out of Lake Victoria joined the Albert Nile in Lake Albert and spilled over at the beginning of the incredible journey down to Cairo and the Mediterranean Sea? Or was it higher still, as Herodotus had written long before the birth of Christ?
Did it spring from a bottomless lake lying between the two mountains Crophi and Mophi and fed by their eternal snows? With the lake-spray in his face, Daniel turned to look westward, trying to make out the loom of the romantic mountain peaks in the distance, but today, as on most days, it was a diffuse blue cloud mass, blending with the blue of the African sky.
Many of the earlier explorers had passed close by the Mountains of the Moon without ever dreaming of their existence.
Even Henry Morton Stanley, that ruthless, driven, Americanised Welsh bastard, had lived for months in their shadow before the perpetual clouds had opened and astonished him with a vista of snowy peaks and shining glaciers. It gave Daniel a mystic feeling to sail upon these waters that were the lifeblood pumped from the heart mountains of this savage continent.
He turned and glanced up at the open bridge of the gunboat.
Bonny Mahon was filming. She had the Sony camera balanced on her shoulder and pointed towards the shore. He grimaced with reluctant approval. Whatever their personal problems, she was a true professional. At the end she'd probably get a good shot of the devil on her way through hell, and the thought made him grin and took the edge off his antagonism towards her.
He went back to the chartroom below the bridge and spread the survey maps and architect's drawings that BOSS had provided for him on the table.
The site that had been chosen for the hotel and casino was seven miles up the coast from the port of Kahati. Daniel saw that it was a natural bay with an island garding the entrance.
The Ubomo River, pouring down the escarpment of the Rift Valley from the great forests and snowy mountain ranges, debauched into the bay.
On the map it looked an ideal site for the holiday complex that Tug Harrison hoped would make Ubomo one of the more desirable holiday destinations for tourists from southern Europe.
To Daniel there seemed to be only one drawback. There was already a large fishing village sited on the bay. He wondered what Tug Harrison and Ning Cheng Gong planned to do about that. European sunbathers would not want to share the beach with native fishermen and their nets, while the odour of sundried fish on the racks would not encourage the appetite or add much to the romantic attractions of Fish Eagle Bay Lodge, as the project had already been named.
The captain hailed Daniel from above. He left the chart-table and went out to the open deck, just as the gunboat rounded the headland and Fish Eagle Bay opened ahead of them.
