"You ought to live the clean life. I turned in early."
Gus inspected Nick's face. "That eye shows black even under the paint. You look almost as bad as I do."
"Sour grapes. You'll feel better after some breakfast I'll need a bit of help. Escort Booty out to her car when it comes, then get her back into the hotel on some excuse. How about having them put up a box lunch and then take her back inside to get it Don't tell her what it is — shell make some excuse not to get it or she probably has one ordered already."
Most of the girls were late for breakfast. Nick haunted the lobby, watched the street, and saw a cream-colored Singer Vogue park in one of the angled spaces at exactly eight o'clock. A young man in a white jacket entered the hotel and the PA system paged Miss DeLong. Through a window Nick watched Booty and Gus meet the delivery man near the desk and go out to the Singer. They talked. The lad in the white jacket left Booty and Gus went back into the hotel. Nick slipped out the door near the arcade.
He walked swiftly behind the parked cars and pretended to drop something at the rear of a Rover parked beside the Singer. He went down out of sight When he came up, the beeper-emitter was fastened under the Singer's rear frame.
From the corner he watched Booty and Gus come out of the hotel carrying a small box and Booty's large handbag. They paused under the portico. Nick watched until Booty got into the Singer and started the engine, then he hurried back to the BMW. When he eased up to the turn the Singer was halfway down the block. Gus spotted him and waved, a small motion with an upward flick of his hand. "Good luck," it seemed to semaphore.
Booty drove north. The day was gorgeous, the bright sun baking a landscape that looked like Southern California in a dry spell — not the desert areas, but the near-mountain country, with thick vegetation and strange rock formations. Nick followed, staying far back, confirming contact by the ba-beep of the radio receiver braced against the back of the seat at his side.
The more he saw of the country the more he liked it — climate, landscape, and people. The blacks looked calm and often prosperous, driving all sorts of cars and trucks. He reminded himself that he was seeing a developed, commercial section of the country and ought to withhold opinion.
He saw an elephant grazing near an irrigation pump, and by the astonished looks of the bystanders he concluded they were as surprised as he was. The animal probably had been driven into civilization by the drought.
The hallmark of England was everywhere and it fitted very well, as if a sun-splashed countryside and hardy tropical vegetation was just as good a background as the mild-damp cloudy landscape of the British Isles. The baobab trees caught his attention. They cast weird arms toward space, looking like the banyan or fig trees of Florida. He passed one that must have measured thirty feet across, and came to an intersection. The signs included Ayrshire, Eldorado, Picaninyamba, Sinoia. Nick stopped, picked up his radio and rotated it The strongest signal came from dead ahead. He went straight and tested the ba-heep again. Right out in front and loud and clear.
He rounded a turn, saw Booty's Singer stopped at a roadside gate; he stamped the BMW's brakes and hid it handily in a turnout evidently used by trucks. He jumped out of the car and peered past the neatly clipped bushes that screened a cluster of rubbish cans. There was no traffic on the road. The Singer's horn bleated four times. After a considerable wait a black man, wearing khaki shorts, shirt, and a peaked cap, trotted up the side road and unlocked the gate. The Singer drove in and the man fastened the gate, got in the car, and drove it down the grade and out of sight Nick waited a moment, then drove the BMW to the gate.
It was an interesting barrier: unobtrusive and insurmountable, though it looked flimsy. A bar of three-inch steel swung on a pivot post with a counterbalance. It was painted with red and white stripes and you might mistake it for wood. Its free end was locked with a sturdy chain and fist-size English padlock.
Nick knew he could pick it or break it, but there was the question of strategy. From the center of the pole a long oblong sign hung down lettered in neat block-yellow — SPARTACUS FARM, PIETER VAN PREZ, PRIVATE ROAD.
There was no fence on either side of the gate, but the ditch from the highroad formed a moat impassable even for a jeep. Nick decided it had been cleverly dug that way with a backhoe.
He returned to the BMW, drove it farther into the bushes, and locked it Carrying the little radio he cut through the bundu on a course parallel to the side road. He crossed several dry creeks that reminded him of New Mexico in the dry season. Much of the vegetation seemed to have desert characteristics, able to hold its own moisture through drought periods. He heard a strange growling sound from a clump of brush and circled it, wondering if Wilhelmina could stop a rhino or whatever you ran into around here.
Keeping the road in sight, he saw the roof of a small house and approached it until he could inspect the terrain. The house was of cement or stucco, with a large kraal or cattle enclosure and neat fields stretching up a valley to the west and on out of sight. The road ran past the house and on into the bush, to the north. He took out his little brass telescope and studied details. Two small horses grazed under a shade roof like a Mexican ramada; a small, windowless building looked like a garage. Two large hounds sat looking in his direction, their jowls gravely thoughtful as they came through his lens like sad giants.
Nick crawled back and continued to parallel the road until he was a mile past the house. The bundu was getting thicker and the going rough. He reached the road and followed it, opening and closing two cattle gates. His receiver showed the Singer to be ahead of him. He trotted on, watchful but covering ground.
The parched road was gravel-surfaced and looked as if it drained well, not that it mattered in this weather. He saw dozens of cattle under trees, some very far away, A small snake scuttled off the gravel as he trotted by, and once he saw a lizard-like creature on a log that would take any ugliness prize — in its six-inch length it had varied colors, scales, horns, glaring eyes, and vicious-looking teeth. He stopped and mopped his head and it regarded him gravely without moving.
Nick looked at his watch — 1:06. He had been on foot two hours; estimated distance covered: seven miles. Using a handkerchief, he made a pirate's cap for protection from the searing sun. He reached a pump installation where a diesel purred smoothly and pipes vanished into the bundu. There was a spigot at the pump house and he drank after smelling and examining the water. It had to come from deep underground and was probably all right; he needed it badly. He mounted a rise in the road and looked ahead cautiously, like a cavalry picket He took out his telescope and extended it.
The powerful little lens showed him a large California-style ranch house amid a cluster of trees and well-trimmed vegetation. There were several outbuildings and kraals. The Singer was in the big looping drive, along with a Land Rover, a sporty-looking MG, and a classic car he did not recognize, a long-hooded roadster that must be thirty years old and looked three.
On a spacious screened patio at one side of the house he saw several people seated in colorful chairs. He focused carefully — Booty, an old man with weathered skin who gave the impression of being the host and leader, even at this distance, three other white men in shorts, two blacks...