'Yes. It's very nice.' Stafford put on his shirt. 'Where's Curtis? His sleeping bag was empty.'

Hardin waved his arm. 'Gone to the top of the ridge there; he wanted to have a look-see at the mainland.'

Stafford smiled. 'Military habits die hard.'

Hardin was staring out into the lake. 'Now, look at that, will you?'

Stafford followed his gaze and saw nothing but ripples. 'What is it?'

'Wait!' Hardin pointed. 'It was about there. Look! It's come up again. A goddamn hippo.'

Stafford saw the head break surface and heard a distant snorting and snuffling, then the hippopotamus submerged again. He said, 'Well, we are in Africa, you know. What would you expect to find in an African lake? Polar bears?'

'Crocodiles, that's what.' Hardin looked around very carefully at the lake shore. 'And I hope Nair was right about lions and leopards not liking to swim too far. We don't have a gun between the lot of us.'

There was an outcrop of rock close by and Stafford thought he would get a better view of the hippo from the top so he walked over to it. As he climbed he found the rock oddly slippery and he had difficulty in keeping his footing despite the fact that his shoes were rubber-soled. At the top he lost his balance entirely – his feet shot from under him and he fell to the ground below, a matter of some ten feet.

He was winded and gasped desperately for breath, and his senses swam. He did not entirely lose consciousness but was hardly aware of Hardin running up to him and turning him on to his back. 'You okay, Max?' said Hardin anxiously.

It was a couple of minutes before Stafford could reply. 'Christ, but that was bad.'

'Anything broken?'

Stafford handled himself gingerly, testing for broken bones. At last he said, 'I think I'm in one piece.'

'It could have been your neck the way you went down,' said Hardin. 'What the hell happened?'

Stafford got to his feet. 'There's something about that rock. It's damned slippery; almost as if it's been greased.'

Hardin took a pace to the outcrop and inspected it visually, then passed his hand over the surface. 'Just plain old rock as far as I can see.'

'Damn it!' said Stafford. 'It was just like walking on loose ball bearings.' He joined Hardin but could detect nothing odd about the nature of the stone surface.

Hardin said, 'If you're okay I'll finish cleaning up." He returned to the waterside and Stafford waited, watching what he supposed was one of the fish eagles Nair had mentioned as it circled lazily above, and wondering about the curious nature of the rock on Crescent Island.

Hardin finished and they walked back, Stafford limping a little because he had pulled a muscle in his leg. Nair had coffee waiting and gave Stafford a cup as he sat on his sleeping bag. Hardin said, 'Max thinks you have odd rocks here. He took a nasty tumble back there.'

Nair looked up. 'Odd? How?'

'Damned slippery. I could have broken something.' Stafford massaged his thigh.

'Take a look at the soles of your shoes,' Nair advised.

Stafford took off a shoe and turned it over. 'Well, I'll be damned!' The rubber sole was completely hidden by a packed mass of brown seeds.

'You'll be all right walking about in the normal way,' said Nair. 'Just pick your surfaces and don't walk on naked rock or you'll slip.'

All the same Stafford took his pocket knife and de-seeded his shoes after breakfast. The seeds were small and tetrahedron in shape with a small spike at each vertex so that whichever way they fell one spike would be uppermost, rather like miniature versions of the medieval caltrops which were scattered to discourage cavalry charges. Nature got there first, he reflected, and said aloud, 'Now I know why Gunnarsson was hobbling so badly when he got back to Keekorok.' He inspected the sole of the shoe. The remaining small spikes had broken off under his body weight and left a smooth, polished surface as slick as a ballroom floor. He cleaned the seeds out and then looked at the sole of his shoe. It was full of pinholes.

After they had breakfast and done the camp chores such as flattening and burying the empty cans there was nothing much to do. 'Did Chip say when he'd be coming back?' asked Stafford.

Nair shrugged. 'I doubt if he'd know.'

'So we twiddle our thumbs,' said Stafford disgustedly.

Curtis returned to his position on top of the ridge, taking with him Stafford's binoculars, and Hardin elected to keep him company. Nair and Stafford took a walk; there being nothing else to do. 'We'll be at the north end of the island,' Nair told Hardin before they left.

They strolled along, taking their time because they were not going anywhere in particular. As they went Stafford told Nair of his assessment of the Kenyan options and Nair agreed with him somewhat gloomily. 'The trouble with us,' he said. 'Is that we're civilized enough to have intelligence and security departments, but not civilized enough to know how to use them properly. We haven't had the experience of you British. I don't think we're cynical enough.'

It was an odd way of defining civilization, but Stafford thought he could very well be right.

Once Nair stopped and pointed to the ground, ahead of them but to one side.'Look!'

Stafford saw nothing, but then an ear twitched and he saw a beady eye. 'A rabbit!' he said in astonishment. 'I didn't know you had those in Africa.'

'Not many,' said Nair. 'Too many predators. That's a Bunyoro rabbit.' He moved and the rabbit took fright and bounded away, changing direction with every hop. Nair slanted his eyes at Stafford. 'Too many predators in all of Africa.'

And most of them human, agreed Stafford, but to himself.

It was nearly eleven in the morning when Hardin caught up with them. 'Alan Hunt just landed from a boat,' he reported. 'The Sergeant has gone down to meet him.'

'He might have brought news,' said Stafford. 'Let's go see.'

Hunt, however, had no news. He had been to the service station in Naivasha to replenish the butane bottles for the balloon and to have a pipe welded on the burner and had then decided to see if Stafford knew what was happening. 'We're marking bloody time, that's all,' said Stafford. 'Waiting for the top brass to make up its collective mind – if any.'

'You were right,' said Hunt.

'What about?'

'The TV camera in the entrance hall of the Admin Block. I checked on it.'

Stafford grunted. 'I hope you didn't poke your eye right into it.'

'And your friend, Gunnarsson, stayed over last night. He and Brice seemed quite pally.'

Stafford thought of the directed conversation he had with Gunnarsson in the bedroom. He said, 'Brice is probably measuring him up; assessing the opposition, no doubt.'

Hardin laughed. 'Measuring him up is right. For a coffin, probably.'

Stafford disagreed. 'I doubt it. It's a bad operation that leaves too many corpses around. I don't think Brice is as stupid as that."

'He wasn't too worried about leaving a corpse on the Tanzanian border,' objected Hardin.

'That was different. There's still no direct connection between Brice and that episode. He's still pretty well covered. I think…"

What Stafford thought was lost because a piercing whistle came from the ridge and he looked up to see Curtis waving in a beckoning motion. 'Something's up," he said, and began to run.

He was out of breath when he cast himself down next to Curtis and thought that this was a job for a younger man. Nair and Hunt were with him, but Hardin was still trailing behind. Curtis pointed to a boat half way across the narrow strait between the island and the mainland, and passed the binoculars to Stafford. 'If the Colonel would care to take a look? It's coming from the Lake Naivasha Hotel.'

Stafford put the glasses to his eyes and focused. In the stern was a young black Kenyan, his hand on the tiller of the outboard motor. And Gunnarsson sat amidships, staring at the island and apparently right into Stafford's eyes.