Flyaway / Windfall

by Desmond Bagley

  Hardin looked at Nair blankly. ‘Thanks,’ he said. As they moved away he said, ‘That was pretty foolish of Max.’

  ‘He wasn’t to know Gunnarsson would come looking for him.’ Nair stopped with an intent look on his face as he listened to his inner voice. He said, ‘Gunnarsson is getting out of his taxi in Muindi Mbingu Street.’ He paused. ‘He’s going into the United Touring Company office. The UTC is a car hire firm among other things.’

  There was no discussion. ‘I’ll pack a bag,’ said Hardin. ‘Ready in fifteen minutes.’ As he walked out of the lobby he saw Nair already reaching for a telephone.

  Again Stafford suffered the ritual of inspection before the gates of Ol Njorowa College opened for him. He drove to the Administration Block, parked the Nissan, and went inside where he gave his name to the black Kenyan behind the counter in the hall. He looked around and saw what he had not noticed on his first visit. Chip was right; security was tighter than one would expect in such an innocent organization.

  No one could penetrate anywhere into the building without passing the wicket gate, and he was willing to bet that every time it opened it would send out a signal; at least it would if he had been responsible for security. He looked around with a keen professional eye and detected a soft gleam of glass high in a corner of the hall where two walls and a ceiling met, and guessed it was the wide-angle lens of a TV camera. It was unnoticeable and only to be detected by someone actively looking for it. He wondered where they kept the monitor screen.

  The man behind the counter put down the telephone. ‘Mr Hendriks will be with you in a moment. Please take a seat.’

  Stafford sat on a comfortable settee, picked up a magazine from the low table in front of him, and flipped through the pages. It was a scientific journal devoted to tropical crop production and of no particular interest. Presently Hendriks appeared and came through the wicket, his arm outstretched. ‘Max! Good to see you.’

  Stafford doubted that statement but he got up and they shook hands. ‘Nice of Brice to have me here,’ he said. ‘I could just as easily have stayed at the hotel. It’s not far down the road.’

  ‘Charles wouldn’t hear of it,’ said Hendriks. ‘As soon as he knew we were friends. Why didn’t you mention it when you were here last?’

  ‘I didn’t have all that much time with Brice, and I was with another party—the Hunts, Alan and Judy. Do you know them?’

  ‘No; but I haven’t been here all that long. I’ve just got back from England.’

  ‘And how are Alix and young Max?’ asked Stafford politely.

  ‘Motherhood agrees with her,’ said Hendriks, and took Stafford’s arm. ‘Come and see Charles.’ He led Stafford through the wicket gate and along a corridor where he opened a door. ‘Max is here,’ he said.

  Brice greeted Stafford genially. ‘So you’ve come to be an intrepid birdman with Alan Hunt. Rather you than me; I don’t trust that contraption—it looks much too flimsy.’ He waved Stafford to a chair.

  As he sat down Hendriks said, ‘Bad news about cousin Henry. You’ve heard, of course?’

  Stafford was ready for that one and had already formulated his reply. ‘More than heard,’ he said. ‘I was there. Not with the kidnapped party but with a group who charged off somewhat blunderingly to the rescue. I didn’t know that Henry Hendrix was involved, though, and when we got back to Keekorok I got a shock when I heard the name. In fact, at first I thought it might have been you.’

  Brice said, ‘Odd that your adventure wasn’t reported in the press.’

  Stafford shrugged. ‘Bloody bad journalism. Have there been any developments?’

  ‘Nothing,’ said Dirk. ‘I’ve been to the police and the American Embassy but no one seems to know anything or, if they do, they aren’t saying.’

  ‘It hasn’t done diplomatic relations between Kenya and Tanzania any good,’ remarked Brice. ‘Not that they were so sparkling in the first place.’ He changed the subject. ‘I suspect you’ll want to clean up. We have some bedrooms upstairs for VIPs—the Trustees visit us from time to time and sometimes the odd government official. You can have one of those while you’re here.’

  ‘It’s very good of you.’

  ‘No problem at all. You know, we’re a rather ingrown community here—something like a monastery but for the few women among us like Judy Hunt. It will do us good to see a new face and have fresh conversation and ideas. Dirk will show you to your room and then…er…hunt up Hunt, if you’ll pardon the phrase.’

  ‘Right,’ said Dirk. ‘I’ll take you up. You have the room next to mine.’

  ‘And you’ll join us for dinner,’ said Brice.

  As they went upstairs Stafford said to Hendriks, ‘You’re the real VIP here, of course. What do you think of the place?’

  ‘I haven’t seen much of it yet. I’ve been too busy trying to get some action on my cousin. But what I’ve seen has impressed me. Here’s your room.’

  The ‘monks’ in Brice’s monastery lived well, thought Stafford as he surveyed the bedroom which would not have disgraced a three-star hotel. Dirk indicated a door. ‘That’s the bathroom. If you’ll give me your car keys I’ll have someone bring up your bags.’

  ‘It’s not locked.’

  ‘Right. The staff room is at the far end of the corridor. I’ll meet you there in fifteen minutes with Hunt. We’ll have a drink together.’

  ‘I know where the staff room is.’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ said Dirk. ‘I’d forgotten you’ve been here before.’

  He departed and Stafford did not doubt that the Nissan would be thoroughly searched, as would his suitcase. He did not mind; there was nothing unusual to be found. He inspected the room with an experienced eye, looking not for comfort but for bugs, the electronic kind. He had no doubt that the room would be bugged; Brice would be interested in the private conversations of the Trustees and government officials.

  The table lamp was clean as was the reading lamp over the bed. There were no strange objects attached beneath the coffee table, the dressing table or the bed. He looked at the telephone doubtfully. It would probably be tapped but that did not matter; any conversation he used it for would definitely be innocuous. However, it might have been gimmicked in another way. He unscrewed the mouthpiece and shook out the carbon button to inspect it. It looked all right so he put it back and replaced the mouthpiece. It had taken him fifteen seconds.

  As he put down the telephone there was a knock at the door and the Kenyan who had been at the counter in the hall downstairs came in bearing Stafford’s suitcase. He put it next to the dressing table, and said, ‘Mr Hunt is in the staff room, sah.’

  ‘Thank you. Tell him I’ll be along in a few minutes.’ Stafford took his toilet kit and went into the bathroom. When he came out he looked at the picture on the wall which appeared conventional enough. It was a reproduction of a painting of an elephant by David Shepherd, typical of those to be found in the curio shops in Nairobi. He examined it more closely paying attention, not to the picture itself, but to the frame which was of unpainted white wood and which seemed unusually thick. Near the bottom of the frame he found a small knot hole and he smiled.

  From his jacket pocket he took a pen torch and examined the hole more carefully. By angling the light and moving it rhythmically he caught a repeated metallic wink from the bottom of the hole—the diaphragm of a miniature button microphone. As he put away the torch he felt relieved. If he had not found a bug he would have been worried because so far all his suspicions about Hendriks and Brice had been built on a tenuous chain of suppositions. But this was the clincher; no innocent organization would bug its own rooms.

  Hidden in the thickness of the picture frame would be a small transmitter and the batteries to power it, and probably somewhere in Ol Njorowa would be a receiver coupled to a sound-actuated tape recorder. It would be simple to put the bug out of order by the simple expedient of inserting a needle into the hole and ruining the microphone but that would not do because it would be a
dead giveaway. Better to leave it alone and say nothing of consequence in the room or, indeed, anywhere in Ol Njorowa.

  Before leaving the room he took a small pair of field glasses from his suitcase and went to the window. In the distance he could see a section of the chain-link fence which indicated the perimeter of the college. He swept it, the glasses to his eyes, and estimated it to be ten feet high. At the top were three strands of barbed wire. Somewhere on the other side Curtis was making an examination of the fence from the outside, and his briefing had been to make a complete reconnaissance of the perimeter. Stafford put the field glasses away and walked to the staff room with a light heart.

  In Brice’s office Dirk Hendriks put down the telephone. He had found it difficult to contact Mandeville in London; the lawyer had been engaged in court and Hendriks had requested a return call with some urgency. Now he had just finished talking to Mandeville and the news he got had knocked the wind out of him.

  Brice said, ‘What’s the matter? What did Mandeville say?’

  ‘The New York agency was Gunnarsson Associates,’ said Dirk hollowly.

  ‘What?’ Brice sat open-mouthed. ‘You mean the man you talked with in Nairobi was the man who found Henry Hendrix in the States?’

  ‘It would seem so.’ Hendriks stood up. ‘There can’t be many Gunnarssons around and the Gunnarsson in Nairobi is an American.’

  ‘And he was in the tour group with your cousin. They were travelling together, obviously. Now, why should a private detective still stick around after he’s delivered the goods? And to the extent of coming to Kenya at that. And why should Henry Hendrix let him?’

  ‘Perhaps he thought he needed a bodyguard after inheriting all that money.’

  ‘Unlikely.’ Brice drummed his finger on the desk.

  ‘Oh, I don’t know,’ Hendriks objected. ‘He’d been shot in Los Angeles and there was the business of the car in Cornwall. He might have become suspicious.’

  ‘I suppose so,’ Brice said tiredly. ‘Another suggestion is that Gunnarsson and Stafford are tied together.’ He thought for a moment. ‘Whichever way it is Gunnarsson needs watching. We must find out who he sees, and particularly if he gets in touch with Stafford.’

  ‘Do I go back to Nairobi?’ asked Dirk.

  ‘No, you stay here and keep an eye on Stafford. I’ll send Patterson.’ Brice stood up. ‘I’ll go to the radar office and send him now. You say Gunnarsson is staying at the New Stanley?’

  Dirk nodded. Brice was almost out of the room when Dirk said suddenly, ‘Wait a minute. I’ve just remembered something.’ Brice turned back and raised an eyebrow, and Dirk said, ‘When I was talking to Gunnarsson in the Thorn Tree I had the odd impression I’d seen him before but I couldn’t place him. I can now.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Remember when I came to Kenya for the first time with Henry and Farrar? We stayed at the Lake Naivasha Hotel. You joined us there and we had dinner together.’

  ‘Well?’

  ‘Gunnarsson was dining at a corner table alone.’

  TWENTY-THREE

  Dirk Hendriks walked into the staff room and found Stafford in conversation with Alan Hunt who was saying, ‘I’m going up tomorrow anyway. Jim Odhiambo wants some photographs of his experimental plots. The balloon is useful for that kind of thing.’

  Stafford beckoned to Dirk and said, ‘Alan, I don’t think you’ve met Dirk Hendriks, the grandson of the benefactor of the Ol Njorowa Foundation. Alan Hunt.’

  The two men shook hands and Hunt said, ‘Your grandfather’s largesse has come just at the right time for me. I want a fraction of that seven million quid for a gas chromatograph.’

  Dirk laughed. ‘I wouldn’t know what that is.’

  ‘Seven million!’ said Stafford in simulated surprise. ‘It’s more than that, surely.’

  ‘Per annum,’ said Dirk easily. ‘That’s Charles Brice’s estimate of the annual return when the capital is invested. I think he’s too optimistic. It’s before tax, of course, but he’s having talks with the government with a view to getting it tax free. The Foundation is a non-profit organization, after all.’

  All very specious. ‘I must have misunderstood Brice,’ Stafford said.

  Hunt whistled. ‘I certainly misunderstood him, and so did the pressmen. How much did your grandfather leave us?’

  ‘At the time of his death it would have been about thirty-four million, but probate and proving the will has taken some time during which the original sum has been earning more cash. Say about thirty-seven million.’

  Hunt gave a sharp crack of laughter. ‘Now I know I’ll get my gas chromatograph. Let’s drink to it.’

  He ordered a round of drinks and then Stafford said curiously, ‘You said you are taking photographs for Dr Odhiambo. I don’t see the point. I mean he can see the crops on the ground, can’t he?’

  ‘Ah,’ said Hunt. ‘But this is quicker. We use infra-red film to shoot his experimental plots. Plants that are ailing or sick show up very well on infra-red if you know what to look for. It saves Jim many a weary mile of walking.’

  ‘The wonders of science,’ said Hendriks.

  ‘They use the same system in satellites,’ said Hunt. ‘But they can cover greater areas than I can.’

  Stafford sampled his beer. ‘Talking about satellites, who owns the satellite your animal movement people use? They couldn’t have put it up themselves.’

  Hunt laughed. ‘Not likely. It’s an American job. The migration study boys asked to put their scientific package into it. It’s not very big and it takes very little power so the Yanks didn’t mind. But the satellite does a lot more than monitor the movement of wildebeest.’ He pointed to the ceiling. ‘It sits up there, 22,000 miles high, and watches the clouds over most of Africa and the Indian Ocean; a long term study of the monsoons.’

  ‘A geo-stationary orbit,’ said Stafford.

  ‘That’s right. It’s on the Equator. Here we’re about one degree south. It’s fairly steady, too; there’s a bit of liberation but not enough to worry about.’

  ‘You’ve lost me,’ said Hendriks. ‘I understand about one word in three.’ He shook his head and said wryly, ‘My grandfather wanted me to work here part of the year but I don’t see what I can do. I haven’t had the right training. I was in liberal arts at university.’

  ‘No doubt Brice will have you working with him on the administrative side,’ observed Hunt, and drank some beer.

  No doubt he would, thought Stafford, and said aloud, ‘Which university, Dirk?’

  ‘Potch. That’s Potchefstroom in the Transvaal.’

  Stafford filed that information away in his mind; it would be a useful benchmark if Hendriks had to be investigated in depth at a later date.

  Hunt said, ‘Max, if you’re coming with us tomorrow it’ll be early—before breakfast. The air is more stable in the early morning. I’ll give you a ring at six-thirty.’ Stafford nodded and Hunt looked at Dirk. ‘Would you like to come? There’s room for one more.’

  Hendriks shook his head. ‘Brice wants to see me early tomorrow morning. Some other time, perhaps.’

  Stafford was relieved; he had his own reasons for wanting to overfly Ol Njorowa and he did not want Hendriks watching him when it happened. He did not think the Hunts were mixed up in any undercover activity at the College. They were Kenya born and it was unlikely they would have been suborned by South African intelligence. He thought they were part of the innocent protective camou—flage behind which Brice hid, like most of the scientific staff. He had his own ideas about where the worm in this rosy apple lay.

  Hunt announced he had work to do, finished his beer and went off. Stafford and Hendriks continued to chat, a curious conversation in which both probed but neither wanted to give anything away. A duel with words ending at honours even.

  As Gunnarsson drove to Naivasha he began to put the pieces together and the conclusion he arrived at was frightening. He was a tough-minded man and did not scare easily but now he was w
orried because the package he had put together in New York was coming apart; the string unravelling, the cover torn and, worse, the contents missing.

  Corliss was missing, damn him!

  He had been so careful in New York. After Hendrix had been delivered by Hardin no one had seen him because Gunnarsson had personally smuggled him out of the building and to a hideaway in Connecticut. The only person to have laid eyes on Hendrix, apart from Hardin, had been his secretary in the outer office and she did not know who he was because the name had not been mentioned. And he had successfully got rid of Hardin; the damn fool needled so easily and had blown his top, which made his dismissal a perfectly natural reaction.

  Gunnarsson tapped his fingers on the wheel of the car. Still, it was strange that when he wanted to find Hardin again he had vanished. Probably he had crawled into some hole to lick his wounds. Gunnarsson shrugged and dismissed Hardin from his mind. The guy was a has-been and of no consequence in the immediate problem he faced.

  But Hardin’s report had been interesting and valuable. Here was Henry Hendrix, a hippy drop-out with no folks, and no one in the world would give a damn whether he lived or died because no one knew the guy existed. No one except that freaky commune in Los Angeles and, at first, he had discounted Biggie and his crowd.

  And so, with Hendrix held isolated, he had the material for the perfect scam, and the hit was going to be big—no less than six million bucks. Hendrix had gone along with everything, talking freely under the impression that his interrogation was for the benefit of a British lawyer and quite unaware of the quietly revolving spools of the tape recorder memorizing every word.

  And then there was Corliss. Corliss had been easy because he was weak and bent under pressure. He had been uncovered in a routine check by Gunnarsson Associates and when Gunnarsson had faced him and shown him the options he had folded fast. No one in the organization wondered when he quit his job without being prosecuted because everyone knew computer frauds were hushed up. No bank liked to broadcast that it had been ripped off by a computer artist because it was bad for business. And so Corliss had also been isolated but Gunnarsson made sure that Corliss and Hendrix never met.