It was mid-morning before we really got going. We had quite a selection of vehicles to choose from, our inheritance from the Fifteenth Battalion. In spite of possible fuel problems Sadiq insisted on taking the remaining Saracen, but we ditched some of the trucks. We left the Russian pipe truck but took Dufour's vehicle with us, at the Frenchman's insistence. Brad Bishop said that he had so little cooking to do that the chuck wagon might as well be ditched too, but he didn't mean it.

Kemp, who had been a passenger on the rig because of his shoulder wound, had joined Wingstead and me in the Land Rover. Atheridge drove with Dufour. Their common ordeal at the hands of Maksa's men had forged a bond between them, just as one now existed between Harry Zimmerman and the Russian, Vashily Kirilenko; with his partner's death the nicknames had disappeared.

Wingstead said, 'Ben Hammond can move the convoy out. Let's drive on. We have to talk about McGrath.'

'I think he's psychopathic,' Wingstead went on. 'He's been with you more than with anyone else lately, Neil. What do you think?'

Kemp intervened, 'He's an unscrupulous bastard, and it was me who hired him. If you think I've made a mistake for God's sake say so.'

'Don't take this personally,' Wingstead said. 'If you want my candid opinion, he's the best bloody truck man you've ever hired. He's a damned marvel with that tractor.'

'Amen to that,' I said.

Kemp was still on the defensive. 'Well, I knew that. I couldn't afford to turn him down, Geoff. I knew we'd need the top men for this job. But his papers weren't in order. I advertised for heavy haulage drivers and he applied. He could do the job and had the necessary certificates, but I found discrepancies. I think he's travelling on a false. passport.'

Kemp had come a long way on his own.

I told them what I knew, both fact and speculation. At the end there was silence before either spoke.

Then Kemp said, 'He killed Sisley? But why should he?'

'He has only one answer to every problem – violence. I think he's a hard line gunman on the run from Ireland. He's dangerous. To look at he's a big amiable Mick straight from the bog. He works at that image.'

Wingstead asked, 'Do you think he could have killed Burke too?'

'Not the way Jones told it.'

'And you're not sure about Ron Jones' death.'

'No, that's only a gut feeling. But four men saw McGrath gun Sisley down. Burke ran off and is very likely dead by now. Jones is dead. Lang is gravely wounded, though thank God I know that one isn't at McGrath's door. That leaves Bob Pitman and if I were he I'd be walking carefully right now. Whatever we know or suspect about McGrath I suggest we keep it buttoned up, or we could find ourselves in deep trouble.'

We turned our attention to the future.

There's a biggish town, Batanda, not far across the Manzu border,' Wingstead said. 'I haven't found anyone who's been there, but the country itself is known to be relatively stable. There must be a road from Batanda to the ferry on Lake Pirie, because a lot of trade goes on between the two countries at that point. If we can take the ferry to Manzu and drive to Batanda we should be safe.'

'What's Fort Pirie like?' Kemp asked.

'Another Makara, not much there at all. And there may have been military activity there, so God knows what we'll find.'

Kemp asked, 'What are Sadiq's plans?'

'He'll stay with us as far as Fort Pirie, and help us cross the ferry if the road to Lasulu isn't clear. He won't cross himself, of course. He'll keep his men inside his own border. But I think he'll welcome our departure.'

'Not half as much as I will,' Kemp said fervently. v The bush country was left behind and the rainforest began to close in, green and oppressive. The exuberant plant life had eroded the road surface, roots bursting through the tarmac. The trees that bordered the road were very tall, their boughs arched so that it was like driving through a tunnel. There was more bird life but the game, which had been sparse before, was now nonexistent.

In the days before Maro Ofanwe improved matters this road had been not much more than a track, only one car wide for miles at a stretch. Traffic was one way on Mondays., Wednesdays and Fridays, and the other way on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays. Sundays you stayed home or took your chances and prayed to God. A lot of other roads in Nyala were still like that.

Occasionally there was a hard won clearing, usually with a scattering of grass huts clustered about a warehouse. These were the collection points for the cotton, coffee and cacao beans from the plantations hewed out of the forest. There were people in all these villages but little in the way of food or goods, and hardly anyone spoke English. We asked for news but it was scanty and the people ill-informed.

One or two villages were larger and we were able to drain storage tanks and pumps of available petrol. It was a good sign that there was some, as it meant that there'd been little traffic that way. Somehow enough food was found to keep us going, though it was pretty unpalatable. Behind and around us, our escort of Nyalans swelled and diminished as people joined in for a few miles, dropped out and were replaced by others. The train was growing, though; Sadiq told us there were several hundred people now, coming as remorselessly as a horde of locusts, and with consequences for the countryside nearly as disastrous. There was nothing we could do about it.

Two days passed without incident. On the rig, Lang's condition worsened and one of the soldiers died of his wounds. Sister Ursula nursed with devotion, coming among us to do spot checks on our continuing health and bully us into keeping clean, inside as well as out. If she could she'd have dispensed compulsory laxatives all round.

Margretta Marriot did the rounds too, changing bandages and keeping a watch for infection. There was little for her to do on the rig now except basic nursing, and sometimes she rode with one or other of us. A dour woman at best, I thought, and now she had retreated into a pit of misery that only work could alleviate. Sister Ursula, for all her hectoring, was more of a tonic.

On the morning of the third day Sadiq's scouts returned with news that they'd reached the Katali river and seen Lake Pirie shining in the sun. From where we were camped it was only a couple of hours' drive in a car, and spirits lifted; whatever was going to happen there, we'd reached another of our goals with the convoy still intact.

I'd travelled for most of the previous day in the cab of the water tanker with Sam Wilson (we each gave one another a turn in the comparative comfort of the Land Rover) and now I was with Thorpe in the travelling workshop when a messenger came asking me to join Captain Sadiq.

'I am going ahead, Mister Mannix,' he told me. 'I wish to see for myself what the situation is. There is a village ahead with petrol pumps. Would you and Mister Kemp drive there with us to look at it, please?'

I said, 'Harry Zimmerman told me there was a fuel depot hereabouts, one of his own company's places. We'll take him with us.'

Zimmerman, Kemp and I pushed on behind the soldiers, glad of the release. Soon enough we saw a welcome bottle-green expanse spreading out between the trees, and the road ran down through them to emerge on the shore of a large body of water, a sight quite astonishing after the endless days of bush and forest, and incredibly refreshing to the eye. It stretched away, placid in the blazing sun.

For a while we just sat and stared at it. Then we drove along the lakeside road for another mile or two.

Eventually we arrived at what might have passed for civilization. The place consisted of a roadside filling station with a big, faded Lat-Am fascia board; it was obviously a gas and oil distribution centre. Behind it was an extensive compound fenced in by cyclone netting, which contained stacks of drums. I supposed the gas and oil would be hauled along the road by tankers, transferred to ground tanks here and then rebottled in the drums for distribution to planters and farmers.