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He leaned down and spoke to them and they both started to wave vigorously. I waved back, feeling unaccountably cheered and then we moved into the mouth of the Mortes and they disappeared from view.

FOURTEEN

Up the River of Death

At two o'clock that afternoon the steam barge dropped me at Landro, pausing at the jetty only for as long as it took me to step over the rail. I waved as it moved away and got no reply which didn't particularly surprise me. During the entire trip, Silvio had not spoken to me once and the Indian deckhands had kept away from me. Whatever he was up to was no business of mine, but it was certainly illegal, I was sure of that.

A couple of locals were down on the beach beneath the jetty beside their canoes mending nets. They looked casually up as I walked by, then carried on with their task.

There was something missing - something which didn't fit. I paused on the riverbank, frowning over it, then realised what it was. The mission launch was no longer tied up at the jetty. So they'd finally decided to get out? In a way, that surprised me.

An even bigger surprise waited when I crossed the airstrip. The Hayley stood in the open ready for off as I would have expected, but when I reached the hangar, I saw to my amazement that the Bristol stood inside. Now how could that be?

There was no one about. Even the military radio section had been cleared. In fact, there was something of an air of desolation to the place. I helped myself to a whisky from the bottle on the table then climbed up to the observer's cockpit of the Bristol and found the 10-gauge still in its special compartment and a couple of boxes of steel buckshot.

I loaded up as I crossed the airstrip. All very dramatic, I suppose, but the chips were down now with a vengeance and I was going to have the truth out of him for the whole world to see, nothing was more certain.

I tried the house first, approaching cautiously from the rear and entering by the back door. I needn't have bothered. There was no one there. There was another mystery here also. My old room had been cleared of any sign that Joanna Martin had ever inhabited it, but Mannie had very obviously not moved back in for neither of the two beds was made up.

It was a different story in Hannah's old room. It stank like a urinal and from the look of things had very probably been used for that purpose. The bed had been recently slept in, sheets and blankets scattered to the floor and someone had vomited by the window.

I got out of there fast, my stomach heaving, and moved towards Landro, the shotgun in the crook of my left arm. Again, there was this quality of deja vu to everything. As if I had taken this same walk many times before, which in a way, I had. The same hopeless faces on the veranda of the houses, the same dirty, verminous little children playing underneath.

Time was a circle, no beginning, no end and I would take this walk for all eternity. A disquieting thought to say the least and then, when I was ten or fifteen yards away from the hotel, I heard the crash of glass breaking, a woman screamed and a chair came through one of the windows.

A moment later, the door was flying open and Mannie backed out slowly. Beyond him, Hannah stood inside the bar clutching a broken bottle by the neck.

*

It was Hannah who saw me first - saw a ghost walk before him. A look of stupefaction appeared on his face, his grip slackened, the bottle fell to the floor.

He was certainly a sight, no resemblance at all to the man I had met that first day beside the Vega. This was a human wreck. Bloodshot eyes, face swollen by drink, the linen suit indescribably filthy and soaked in liquor.

Mannie glanced over his shoulder. His eyes widened. 'God in Heaven, we have miracles now? You're supposed to be dead in some swamp on the Seco. We had a message on the radio from Manaus last night. What happened?'

'My luck turned, that's what happened.' I went up the steps to join him. 'How