You can be certain that HE has already registered a formal complaint
with the President's office,' Geoffrey told them as he drove them to the
airport the next day. 'He is most upset at the whole business, I can
tell you. Deportation orders and all that rot.
Never heard the likes.'
'Don't fuss yourself, old boy,' Nicholas told him. 'As it is, neither of
us intends coming back here again. No harm done.'
'It's the principle of the thing. Prominent British subject being
treated like a common criminal. No respect shown.' He sighed. 'Sometimes
I wish I had been born a hundred years ago. We wouldn't have to put up
with this sort of nonsense. just send a gunboat.'
'Quite so, Geoffrey, but please don't let it upset you.' Geoffrey
hovered around them like a cat with kittens while they checked in at the
Kenya Airways counter. They had only their hand luggage, two small cheap
nylon holdalls that they had bought that morning at a street market.
Nicholas had rolled his dik'dik skin into a ball and wrapped it in an
embroidered shamma that he had purchased in the same market.
Geoffrey waited with them until their flight was called and waved to
them after they passed through the barrier, aiming this affectionate
display more at Royan than Nicholas.
They had been allocated seats behind the wing, and Royan was beside the
window. The Kenya Airways plane started its engines and began to taxi
slowly past the airport buildings. Nicholas was arguing with a
stewardess who wanted him to stow his precious dik-dik skin in its
purple nylon bag in the overhead locker, while Royan peered out of the
porthole beside her for her last glimpse of Addis during takeoffs
Suddenly Royan stiffened in her seat, and while still gazing out of the
window reached across and seized Nicholas's arm.
'Look!' she hissed with such venom in her tone that he leaned across her
to see what had excited her.
'Pegasus!' she exclaimed, and pointed to the Falco executive jet that
had just taxied in and parked at the far end of the airport buildings.
The small, sleek aircraft was painted grpen and on its tall tail fill
the scarlet horse reared on its hind legs in that stylized pose. While
they watched through the window, the door in the fuselage of the green I
Falcon was lowered, and a small reception committee waiting on the
tarmac pressed forward expectantly to greet the passengers as they
appeared in the doorway of the jet.
The first of these was a small man, neatly dressed in a cream tropical
suit and a white panama straw hat. Despite his size he exuded an air of
confidence and command, that special aura of power. His face was pale,
as though he had come from a northern winter, and it looked incongruous
'in this setting. His jaw was firm and stubborn, his nose I prominent
and his gaze beneath dark beetling eyebrows penetrating.
Nicholas'recognized him immediately. He had seen him often enough on the
auction floors at Sotheby's and Christie's. This man was not the type of
person whom anyone would forget in a hurry.
'Von Schiller!' he exclaimed, as the German surveyed with an imperial
gaze the men who waited on the tarmac below him.
'He looks like a bantam rooster,' Royan murmured, 'or Thai') a standing
