and perched on a rock above the pool while he stripped off his shirt and
knelt, at the verge to splash himself with the cold mountain water. The
river was muddy yellow and swollen from the rainstorms.
"I don't think Boris believes your story about the striped dik-dik," she
warned him. "Tessay tells me that he is suspicious of what we are up
to." She watched with interest as he sluiced his chest and upper arms.
'"ere the sun had not touched it, his skin was very white and
unblemished.
His chest hair was thick and dark. She decided that his body was good to
look at.
"He is the type that would go through our luggage if he gets a chance,'
Nicholas agreed. "You didn't bring anything with you that has any clues
for him? No papers or notes?"
"Only the satellite photograph, and my notebooks are all in my own
shorthand. He won't be able to make anything of them."
"Be very careful of what you discuss with Tessay."
"She is a dear. There is nothing underhand about her." Heatedly Royan
came to the defence of her new friend.
"She may be all right, but she's married to my chum Boris. Her first
allegiance lies there. No matter what your feelings towards her, don't
trust either of them." He dried himself on his shirt, slipped it on and
then buttoned it over his chest. "Let's go and get something to eat."
Back at the parked truck Boris was pulling the cork from a bottle of
South African white wine. He poured a tumbler full for Nicholas. Chilled
in the river, it was crisp and fruity. Tessay offered them cold roast
chicken and injera bread, the flat, thin sheets of stone-ground
unleavened bread of the country. The trials and labours of the morning's
travels faded into insignificance as Royan lay beside Nicholas in the
grass and they watched a bearded vulture sailing high against the blue.
It saw them and drifted overhead curiously, twisting its head to look
down at them. Its eyes were masked in black like those of a highwayman,
and the distinctive wedge-shaped tail feathers flirted with the wind the
way the fingers of a concert pianist would stroke the ivories of the
keyboard.
When it was time to go on, Nicholas gave her his hand to lift her to her
feet. It was one of their rare moments of physical contact, and she held
on to his fingers for just a second or two longer than was strictly
necessary.
There was no improvement in the surface of the trac as they drew nearer
to the rim of the gorge, and the hours passed in this bone-jarring,
teeth-rattling progress. The track snaked over a rise and then
dog-legged down the far slope. Halfway down Boris swore in Russian as
they came round the hairpin bend of a high earthen bank to find a huge
diesel truck slewed across the track, almost blocking it.
Even though they had been following the tracks of this convoy of
vehicles since the previous day, this was the first of them that they
had encountered, and it took Boris by surprise. He hit his brakes so
suddenly that his passengers were almost catapulted from their seats,
but on the steep incline in the mud the brakes did not bring them to a
complete halt. Boris was forced to change down into his lowest gear and
steer for the narrow gap between the bank and the truck.
From the back seat Royan looked out of the window I beside her, up the
high side of the diesel truck. There was a company name and logo
emblazoned in scarlet on the green background.
A strong feeling of du vu overcame her as she stared at the image. She
had seen this sign recently, but her memory cheated her: she could not
recall the time or the place. She only knew that it was of vital
importance that she should remember.
The side of the Toyota scraped against the metal of the truck, and then
they were past it. Boris leaned out of his window and shook his fist at
the driver of the larger vehicle.
He was a local man, probably recruited in Addis by the owner of the
truck. Grinning at Boris's antics, he leaned out of his own cab to
return the clenched fist salute, adding a nice little touch by jerking a
raised forefinger upwards.
"Dungeater!" Boris roared with outrage at being bested in the exchange,
but he did not stop. "No use even talking to them. What do they know?
Black chimps!'
For the rest of the wearisome journey Royan remained silent and
withdrawn, shaken and troubled by the conviction that she had seen the
trademark of the winged red horse before, with, set above it in a
pennant, the name of the company: "PEGASUS EXPLORATION'.
As they approached the end of the day's journey at last they passed a
signpost beside the track. The supporting legs of the sign were solidly
set in concrete, and the artwork was of such high quality that it could
only have been that of a professional signwriter.
Across the top of the board an arrow indicated a newly bulldozed road
that headed off to the right, and the directions read:
PEGASUS EXPLORATION
BASE CAMP - ONE KILOMETRE
PRIVATE ROAD
NO ENTRY TO UNAUTHORIZED TRAFFIC
The scarlet horse reared in the centre of the board with its wings
spread wide, on the point of flight.
Now she gasped aloud as the elusive memory came upon her with stunning
clarity. She remembered where she had last seen the flying red horse. In
an instant she was transported back into the icy waters of an English
salmon river, flung from the rolling body of the Land Rover, the huge
MAN truck roaring over the bridge above her, and, for a subliminal pulse
of time, the prancing red horse upon its side.
she almost shouted aloud, but controlled herself. The terror of the
moment returned to her with full force, and she found herself breathing
hard and her heart racing as though she had run a long way.
"It cannot be a coincidence," she assured herself silently, "and I am
not mistaken. It is the same company.
Pegasus Exploration."
She was withdrawn and distracted for the last few miles of the journey,
until the track they were following ended abruptly on the brink of the
sheer cliffs of the escarpment, Here Boris pulled on to the grassy verge
and stopped the engine.
"This is as far as we ride. We camp here tonight. My big truck is not
far behind. They will make camp as so on as they arrive. Tomorrow we
will go down into the gorge on foot."
As they dismounted, Royan tugged at Nicholas's arm, "I must speak to
you," she whispered urgently, and she followed him as he led her along
the bank of the river.
He found a place for them to sit side by side, with their legs dangling
over the drop. Beside them the swollen yellow river seemed to sense what
lay ahead of it. The cold mountain waters speeded up, swirled amongst
the rocks, and gathered themselves for that dizzying leap out into empty
space. The cliff below them was a sheer wall of rock almost a thousand
feet deep. It was so high that in the evening light the abyss far below
was a dark, mysterious place, its bottom hidden from them by shadow and
spray from the falls. As Royan looked down into it her sense of balance
swirled with vertigo. She cringed back from the edge and found herself
instinctively leaning against Nicholas's shoulder to steady herself.