attention wandering to other images of wild canyons and ancient stelae.
Only when Nicholas nudged her did she look around at him a little
haughtily. He had set up a tiny travelling chessboard on the arm of the
seat between them, and now he lifted an eyebrow at her and inclined his
head in invitation.
When they landed at Jomo Kenyatta airport in Kenya they were still
locked in combat. They were level at two games each, but she was a
bishop and two pawns up in the final deciding game. She felt quite
pleased with herself.
At the Norfolk Hotel in Nairobi he had booked a pair of garden
bungalows, one for each of them. Within ten minutes of her flopping down
on the bed, he called her from next door on the house phone.
'We are going to dinner with the British High Commissioner tonight. He
is an old chum. Dress informal. Can you be ready at eight?'
One did not have to rough it too onerously when travelling around the
world in this man's company, she thought.
It was a relatively short haul from Nairobi up to Addis Ababa, and the
landscape below them unfolded in fascinating sequences that kept her
glued to the cabin window of the Air Kenya flight. The hoary summit of
Mount Kenya was for once free of cloud, and the snow-clad double peaks
glistened in the high sunlight.
The bleak brown deserts of the Northern Frontier District were relieved
only by the green hills that surrounded the oasis of Marsabit and, far
out on the port side, the dashing waters of Lake Turkana, formerly Lake
Rudolf.
The desert finally gave way to the highlands of the great central
plateau of the ancient land of Ethiopia.
'In Africa only the Egyptians go back further than this civilization,'
Nicholas remarked as they watched it together. 'They were a cultured
race when we peoples of northern climes were still dressing in untanned
skins and living in caves. They were Christians when Europeans were
still pagans, worshipping the old gods, Pan and Diana.'
'They were a civilized people when Taita passed this way nearly four
thousand years ago,' she agreed. 'In his Scrolls he writes of them as
almost his cultural equals which was rare for him. He disparaged all the
other nations of the old world as his inferiors in every way.'
From the air Addis was like so many other African cities, a mixture of
the old and the new, of traditional and exotic architectural styles,
thatched roofs alongside galvanized iron and baked tiles. The rounded
walls of the old tukuls built with mud and wattle contrasted with the
rectangular shapes and geometrical planes of the brick built
multi-storeyed buildings, the blocks of flats and the villas of the
affluent, the government buildings and the grandiose, flag-bedecked
headquarters of the Organization of African Unity.
The distinguishing features of the surrounding countryside were the
plantations of tall eucalyptus trees, the ubiquitous blue gums that
provided firewood. It was the only fuel available to so many in this
poor and war-torn land, which over the centuries had been ravaged by
marauding armies and, more recently, by alien political doctrines.
After Nairobi the high-altitude air was cool and sweet when Royan and
