Desmond Bagley - Windfall

'This is it,' said Hunt. 'Prepare for landing. Show Max how, Judy.'

She said, 'When Alan says "Now" crouch down in the basket and hang on to these rope handles – like this.' She demonstrated.

They passed over the steam jets and the balloon danced a little. There were flows of jagged lava which Stafford thought would do the balloon envelope a bit of no good should the balloon land among them. They went over those at a height of about fifty feet towards the open grassland beyond. Hunt said 'Now!' and Judy and Stafford crouched, but not before he had seen an eland looking at him with astonishment.

The basket made contact with the ground and he twisted his head to see Hunt yanking on a line. Above him the whole top of the envelope seemed to tear apart and he could see blue sky. Then the basket tipped on to its side and he was thrown on to his back alongside Judy. Everything was still and they had stopped moving.

'End of ride,' she said, and crawled out.

Stafford rolled out and stood up. Behind were the lava flows and steam clouds; ahead was the balloon envelope, looking very much as it had when he had first seen it, inert and dead upon the ground. In the distance the Land-Rover was driving towards them over the grass. Hunt was standing by the basket. He grinned and said, 'What does it feel like to be a hero of the sky?'

Stafford said slowly, 'I think that was the best damned experience I've had in my life.'

'You've not finished yet,' Hunt said. 'There's more to come. But first help me get the gas cylinders out."

They took out the cylinders and rolled them aside. The Land-Rover drove up and Lucas and the other Kenyans got out. Lucas came over carrying a hamper. 'Breakfast!' said Judy with satisfaction. She opened the hamper and took out plastic boxes. 'Cold chicken; boiled eggs, fruit. I hope I put the salt in – I can't remember.'

'You're forgetting the most important thing,' said Hunt, and stooped to pick up a large flask. 'It's an old ballooning tradition that anyone making a first flight ends up drinking champagne.' He opened the flask and took out a bottle. 'Nicely chilled,' he commented, and smiled. 'That's why we like to take up first-time passengers; that way we get to drink champagne, too.'

They sat on the empty cylinders eating breakfast and drinking champagne while Lucas and his friend packed up the balloon. It folded into a cube with dimensions of under four feet a side. After breakfast they climbed over the lava flows and had a look at the place where the steam was issuing. There was a strong smell of sulphur and the ground was hot underfoot.

Hunt pointed. 'Ol Karia is about two kilometres that way. They're drilling for steam there; gone down over five and a half thousand feet.'

Stafford looked at the steam issuing all around him. 'I don't see the point. Why drill that far down? There's plenty here.'

'Not this flabby stuff; you need high pressure steam to drive a turbine.'

Stafford shook his head. 'I don't think I'd like to live in a volcanic area. I prefer my terra to be firma.' 'Oh, it's fairly stable around here,' said Hunt. 'There was a quake in the Valley about four years ago but it didn't hurt much apart from taking out a piece of the road coming down the escarpment from Nairobi.'

Stafford turned and looked across at Longonot. The crater showed quite clearly. 'Is that an active volcano?'

'Not so as you'd notice. A few fumaroles, that's all. I'd call it quiescent. I've climbed into the crater. There are caves, some quite large, where gases have blown out. There are active volcanoes further south of here in Tanzania, notably Ol Doinyo Lengai.'

They turned to walk back to the Land-Rover and Stafford saw a taxi drawn up next to it and, much to his surprise, Hardin and Nair standing by. Hunt said in surprise, 'Now what are they doing here?'

Nair stepped forward and held the Hunts in conversation leaving Hardin to talk privately with Stafford. 'Things began happening yesterday,' Hardin said. 'We didn't know how to contact you but Nair had the bright idea of following the balloon. You gave us quite a chase.'

He related the facts about Gunnarsson, and Stafford looked at the taxi with its array of antennas. 'You were a damn fool to try a trick like that on an old pro like Gunnarsson. Now he's alerted.'

'It was Nair – not me,' protested Hardin.

'Look, we must have a conference; you, me, Nair, Curtis and Chip, if he's around.' Stafford took the camera from his pocket and extracted the film cassette. 'We'll hold the conference as soon as you get this developed and prints made.'

'How can we let you know?'

'I can see the fence from my bedroom,' said Stafford. 'There's a place on the other side of the fence about a hundred yards long where the grass has been burned over. Curtis will know where it is; he's been scouting the perimeter of Ol Njorowa. In the middle of the burned area there's an acacia. When you're ready have someone take a fairly big sheet of newspaper and stick it on one of the thorns as though it's been blown there. That will be the signal. Where are you staying ?'

'I couldn't stay at the Lake Naivasha hotel,' said Hardin. "Gunnarsson is there. I booked into a place called Safariland.' He told Stafford where it was.

'Then that's where we'll talk.'

'What about?' said Hardin.

'About using you to spook Gunnarsson and drive him towards the wolves.' Stafford smiled. 'The wolves being at present located at Ol Njorowa.'

Stafford spent the rest of the morning wandering over the grounds of Ol Njorowa, at first with Hunt and then with Dirk Hendriks. He was shown the propagation sheds, the soil testing laboratory, the fertilizer testing laboratory, the this laboratory and the that laboratory, and the scientific terms were pumped remorselessly into one ear only to escape from the other. However, he managed to keep his end up by showing a halfway intelligent interest while keeping his eyes open.

He came to a few conclusions, the first of which was that Hunt was probably not in Brice's pocket. All the time he was in Hunt's company he noted that they were under discreet surveillance by three men, two blacks and a white, who apparently had nothing better to do than potter about in the middle distance. When Hunt excused himself to go about his business they vanished, too, and Hendriks took over the guided tour. The conclusion was that Hunt was not trusted to steer Stafford away from dangerous areas but that Hendriks was.

A second conclusion was that he was being conned and, had it not been for the bugged picture frame in his bedroom, he might have fallen for it. It was being demonstrated to him with some assiduity that Ol Njorowa was an open book in which he might read from any scientific page. The trouble was that science was a foreign language to him and he could have done with a translator.

At last Dirk looked at his watch. 'Well, that's about it, Max. It's nearly lunchtime. I think you've seen about everything.' He laughed. 'Not that I'm qualified to show you. I don't know all that much about the place myself. Brice was going to give you the tour himself but something came up.'

'Yes,' said Stafford. 'He must be a busy man.' He looked around. 'How big is this place?'

'About six hundred hectares.' Hendriks paused to figure it out. 'A little over two square miles.'

Stafford smiled. 'I couldn't have worked it out so quickly.'

'We have the metric system in South Africa now. It makes you bilingual in mathematics.'

As they strolled in the direction of the Admin Block which was about a quarter of a mile away Stafford thought glumly that one could hide a hell of a lot in two square miles. But could one? Assuming that Ol Njorowa was a going concern as a genuine agricultural college then most of the staff would be genuine agricultural specialists. They would be wandering all over the place and could quite easily stumble across something illicit and wonder what it was. No, thought Stafford; hiding something at Ol Njorowa would not be as easy as all that.