Desmond Bagley - Windfall

Stafford lifted his eyebrows. 'What rumours?'

'About the unexpected inflow of cash,' said Hunt. He looked at Brice. 'Is it true?'

'Quite true,' said Brice. 'An unexpected windfall. Could be as much as six or seven million.'

'Kenya shillings?' queried Hunt.

Brice laughed. 'Pounds sterling,' he said, and Hunt gave a long whistle.

Stafford kept a poker face and wondered what had happened to the rest of the cash. There was a shortfall of about twenty-seven million.

Brice said, 'Keep it under your hat, Alan, until I make the official announcement. I'm seeing the Trustees and a lawyer in the next few days.'

They had a few more moments of conversation and then Stafford and Hunt returned to their own table. Stafford was abstracted, mulling over what Brice had said, but presently he got talking to Judy. 'If you're coming to the College you must go ballooning with us,' she said.

He stared at her. 'Ballooning! You must be kidding.'

'No, I'm not. Alan has a hot air balloon. He says he finds it useful in his work.' She laughed. 'I think that is just an excuse, though; it's for the sport mostly. It's great fun. A good way of spotting animals.'

'Can you steer it?'

'Not very well. You go where the wind listeth, like a thistledown. Alan talks learnedly about wind shear and other technicalities, and says he can go pretty much where he wants. But I don't think he has all that much control.'

'What happens if you blow over the lake?'

'You don't go up if the wind is in that direction; but if it changes you swim until the chase boat catches up, and you hope there aren't any crocodiles about.'

Stafford said, 'I call that living dangerously.'

'It's not really dangerous; we haven't had as much as a sprained wrist yet. Alan caught the ballooning bug from another Alan – Alan Root. Have you heard of him?'

'The wildlife man? Yes; I've seen him on television back home.'

'He lives near here,' said Judy. 'He does a lot of filming from his balloon. And he went over Kilimanjaro. Ballooning is becoming popular here. Down at Keekorok in the Masai Mara they take tourists up and call it a balloon safari.'

It was pleasant sitting there chatting. Stafford learned a bit more about the Foundation, but not much, and was sorry when the Hunts departed at about eleven, their parting words urging him to come back soon. When they had gone he, Hardin and Nair pooled their knowledge and found it wouldn't fill an egg-cup.

Stafford said, 'Ben, I'm sending you back to England to do something we should have done before. In any case you're too conspicuous here; Nairobi is a small town and you could come face to face with Gunnarsson all too easily.'

'Yeah,' he said. 'I suppose I am your hole card. What do I do in England?'

'You study the life and times of Jan-Willem Hendrykxx. I could bear to know how he made his boodle and why he left it to the Ol Njorowa Foundation. Find the Kenya connection, Ben. And nose around Jersey while Farrar is away. The old man must have talked to someone in the seven years he was there.'

'When do I leave?'

'Tomorrow.' Stafford turned to Nair. 'And I'd like to know more about the Foundation. Can you dig out anything on it?'

He nodded. 'That should be easy.'

'Then we leave for Nairobi immediately after breakfast tomorrow.'

They got back to Nairobi just after eleven next morning and, as Nair parked the car outside the Norfolk, Stafford saw Curtis in the Delamere Bar sinking a beer. He said to Hardin, 'Tell the Sergeant 'I'll see him in my room now.'

'Okay,' said Hardin.

'I'll find Chip,' said Nair.

Stafford nodded and got out of the car. He went into the bar to buy cigarettes and then went up to his room where Curtis and Hardin awaited him. He looked at Curtis and said, 'Where's Gunnarsson?'

'At the Hilton,' said Curtis. 'Chip is covering him.'

'Chip is covering him,' Stafford repeated. 'All right, Sergeant; exactly who are Chip and Nair?'

He wore an injured look. 'I told you.'

'Don't come the old soldier with me,' said Stafford. 'I've had better men than you booked for dumb insolence. You've told me nothing. Now, out with it. I want to know if I can trust them. I want to know if they'll sell me should Gunnarsson offer a higher price. How much are we paying them, anyway?'

'Nothing,' Curtis said. 'It's a favour.'

Stafford looked at him in silence for a while, then said. 'That does it. Now you've got to tell me.'

'I'm a mite interested, too,' said Hardin.

Curtis sighed. 'All right; but I don't want anyone getting into trouble. No names, no pack drill; see? I told the Colonel I'd been in Kenya before, but that wasn't the only time. I spent a leave here in 1975. The Colonel knows how it's done.'

'You talked to a Chief Petty Officer and came over as a supernumerary in one of Her Majesty's ships. A free ride.'

He nodded. 'She was one of the ships on the Beira patrol.'

'What's that?' asked Hardin.

'A blockade of Beira to try to stop oil getting into Rhodesia,' said Stafford. 'And bloody ineffectual it was. Carry on Sergeant.'

Curtis said, 'I went ashore at Mombasa, had a look around there, then came up here on the train. I'd been here three or four days when I went to have a look at that big building – the tall round one.'

'The Kenyatta Conference Centre,' said Hardin.

'That's it," said Curtis. 'It wasn't finished then. There was a lot of builder's junk around; it was a mess. I'd left it a bit late in the day and before I knew it the twilight had come, and that doesn't last long here. Anyway I heard a scuffle and when I turned a corner I saw four black Africans attacking an old Indian and a girl. They'd beat up the old man and he was lying on the ground, and now they were taking care of the girl. It was going to be a gang rape, I reckon. It didn't happen.' He held up his fists. 'I'm pretty good with these.'

Stafford knew that; Curtis had been runner-up in the Marine Boxing Championships in his time. And a tough Marine Colour-Sergeant would be more than a match for four unskilled yobbos. 'Go on.'

'The girl was fifteen years old, and the man was her grandfather. The girl was unhurt if scared, but the old man had been badly beaten-up. Anyway the upshot of it was that I took them home. They made quite a fuss of me then – gave me a meal. It was good curry,' he said reminiscently.

'We'll leave your gourmet experiences until later,' Stafford said. 'What next?'

'The Indians were in a bad way then. Kenyatta had declared that holders of British passports must turn them in for Kenyan passports.'

'It was the Kenya for the Kenyans bit,' remarked Hardin. 'I was here then. The word for it was "localization".'

'The Indians didn't want to give up their British passports but they knew that if they didn't the government would deport them,' Curtis said. 'India wouldn't have them and the only place they could go to was the UK. They didn't mind that but they weren't allowed to take any currency with them, and their baggage was searched for valuables before leaving.'

'Yeah,' said Hardin. 'They were between the rock and a hard place.' He shrugged. 'But I don't know that you could blame Kenyatta. He didn't want a big foreign enclave in the country. It applied to the British, too, you know. Become Kenyans or leave.'

Curtis said, 'They asked me to help them. I'd told them how I had come to Kenya and they wanted me to take something back to England.'

'What was it?' Stafford asked.

He sketched a small package in the air. 'A small box sewn up in leather.'

'What was in it?'

'I don't know. I didn't open it.'

'What do you think was in it?'

Curtis hesitated, then said, 'I reckon diamonds.'

Stafford said, 'Sergeant, you were a damned fool. If you'd have been caught you'd have been jailed and lost your service pension. So you took it to England.'