Curtis put a burner op to a small cylinder of propane and began to open cans. In a very short while he had prepared a meal, and they began to eat just as the sun was setting over the Mau Escarpment. Over coffee Nair said, 'It's time for bed.'

'So early?' queried Hardin. 'It's just after six.'

'Please yourself,' said Nair. -But the wind changes at night fall and brings the lake flies. You'll be glad to be under coyer.'

Stafford found what he meant five minutes later when he began to swat at himself viciously. By the time he had got into the sleeping bag and under the safety of the mosquito netting he felt the skin of his arms and ankles coming out in bumps which itched ferociously. Also he found that he had admitted several undesirable residents to share his bed and it was some time before he was sure he had killed the last of them.

Curtis was silent as usual, but from Hardin's direction came a continual muffled cursing. 'Goddammit, Nair!' he yelled. 'You sure these things aren't mosquitoes?'

'Just flies,' said Nair soothingly. 'They won't hurt you; they don't transmit disease.'

'Maybe not; but they're eating me alive. I'll be a picked-over skeleton tomorrow.'

'They're an aviation hazard,' said Nair in a conversational voice. 'Especially over Lake Victoria. They block air niters and Pilot tubes. There have been a few crashes because of them, but they've never been known to eat anybody.'

Stafford lit a cigarette and stared at the sky through the diaphanous and almost invisible netting. There were no clouds and the sky was full of the diamond brilliance of stars, growing brighter as the light ebbed in the west. 'Nair?'

'Yes, Max?'

'Did Chip say anything before he went to Nairobi?'

'About what?'

'You bloody well know about what,' said Stafford without heat.

There was a brief silence. 'I'm not a high ranking officer,' said Nair, almost apologetically. 'I don't get to know everything.'

'They can't stop you thinking. You're no fool, Nair; what do you think will happen?'

Again there was silence from Nair. Presently he said, 'This is a big thing, Max. There'll be a lot of talk among the people at the top; they'll argue about the best thing to do. You know how it is in intelligence work.'

Stafford knew. There were a number of options open to the Kenyans which he ticked off in his mind. They could go for a propaganda victory – smash into Ol Njorowa with full publicity, including TV cameras on hand and hard words in the United Nations. Or they could snap up Brice and Hendriks unobtrusively and close down their illicit operation without fanfare. The South Africans would know about it, of course, but there would not be a damned thing they could do. That would give the Kenyans a diplomatic ace up the sleeve, a quid pro quo for any concession they might want to wring out of the South Africans – do this for us or we blow the gaff publicly on your illegalities. Stafford doubted if the South Africans would respond to that kind of blackmail.

There was a third option – to do nothing. To put a fine meshed net around Ol Njorowa, to keep Brice, Hendriks and the animal migration team under surveillance and, possibly, feed them false information. That would be the more subtle approach he himself would favour, but he did not give the average politician many marks for subtlety. The average politician's time-horizon was limited and most would go for the short term solution. Had not Harold Wilson said that a week in politics was a long time?

And so there would be a lot of talk in Nairobi that night as factions in the government pushed their points of view. He hoped that Chip and Mr Anonymous had the sense to restrict their new found knowledge of Ol Njorowa to a select few.

He stirred. 'Nair – the men who kidnapped the tour group – do you think they were Tanzanians?' – 'In the circumstances I doubt it.'

Stafford leaned up on one elbow. 'Kenyans?'

'Perhaps.'

'But how would Brice recruit them?'

'Some men will do much for money.'

'Even kill, as they were going to kill Corliss?'

'Even that.' Nair paused. 'They could, of course, have been South African blacks.'

Stafford had not thought of that. 'Could a South African black pass himself off as a Kenyan? Could he get away with it?'

Nair said dryly, 'Just as easily as a Russian called Konon Molody could pass himself as a Canadian called Gordon Lonsdale. All it needs is training.'

Stafford mulled it over in his mind. 'But I can't understand why blacks would work for the white South Africans in the first place. Why should they defend white supremacy?"

'The South African army is full of blacks,' said Nair. 'Didn't you know? A lot are in the army for the pay. Some have other reasons – learning to use modern weaponry, for instance. But in the end it all comes down to the simple fact that if a man has a set of views it's always possible to find another man with the opposite set of views.'

'I suppose so,' said Stafford, but he was not convinced.

'The white man finds it difficult to understand how the mind of the black man works,' said Nair. There was a smile in his voice as he added, 'Not to mention the mind of the Indian. Even the white South Africans, who ought to know better, make mistakes about that."

'Such as?'

'To begin with, the countries of Africa are artificial creations of the white man. The black does not really understand the nation state; his loyalties are to the tribe.'

'Yes,' said Stafford thoughtfully. 'Chip was saying something about that.'

'All right,' said Nair. 'Take Zimbabwe, which used to be Southern Rhodesia, an artificial entity. They had an election to see who'd come out on top, Nkomo, Mugabe or Bishop Muzorewa who ran the caretaker government. No one gave much chance to Muzorewa. The odds-on favourite was Nkomo and Mugabe was expected to come a bad second. Even the South Africans, who ought to have known better, laid their bets that way.'

'Why ought they to have known better?'

'They've been in Africa long enough. You see, there are two main tribes in Zimbabwe, the Ndebele and the Mashona. Nkomo is an Ndebele and Mugabe a Mashona. The Mashona outnumber the Ndebele four to one and Mugabe won the election by four to one. Simple, really.'

'They voted along tribal lines?'

'Largely.' Nair paused, then said, 'If the South Africans could set up a well-financed secret base here they could stir up a lot of trouble among the tribes."

Stafford extinguished his cigarette carefully and lay back to think. Because of its position in Africa Kenya was a hodgepodge of ethnic and religious differences, all of which could be exploited by a determined and cynical enemy. Nair was probably right.

He was still thinking of this when he fell asleep.

He awoke in the grey light of dawn and looked uncomprehendingly at something which moved. He lay on his side and watched the buck daintily picking its way across his line of vision. It was incredibly small, about the size of a small dog, say, a fox terrier," and its legs were about as thick as a ball point pen and terminated in miniature hooves. Its rump was rounded and its horns were two small daggers. He had never seen anything so exquisite.

A twig snapped and the buck scampered away into the safety of the trees. Stafford rolled over and saw Nair approaching from the lake. 'That was a dik-dik,' said Nair.

'Have the flies gone?'

'No flies now.'

'Good.' Stafford threw back the netting and emerged from the sleeping bag. He put on his trousers, then his shoes, and took a towel. 'Is it safe to wash in the lake?'

'Safe enough; just keep your eyes open for snakes. Not that you're likely to see any.'' As Stafford turned away Nair called, 'There are some fish eagles nesting in the trees over there.'

As Stafford walked to the water's edge he shook his head in amusement. Nair's cover as a courier for tourist groups seemed to have stuck. A herd of Thomson's gazelle drifted out of his way, not hurrying but keeping a safe distance from him. At the shore he sluiced down and was towelling himself dry when Hardin joined him. 'Peaceful place,' Hardin remarked.