I’d thought of a better idea. I had disposed of the rifle, dismantling it and leaving it in the wardrobe of my hotel room. Then I had taken a taxi to the Agence France-Presse offices, which were housed in a concrete office block opposite one of the Arab embassies in Ikoyi. I told the driver to wait and rang the bell. A tanned Frenchman in shirtsleeves answered the door, and I told him I was looking for Isabelle Dumont.

‘I am sorry,’ he said. ‘She has already left.’

‘Where from? What time was her departure?’

He smiled tolerantly - Isabelle and her lovers - and looked at his watch.

‘Three o’clock,’ he said. ‘From the main airport.’

I shook his hand and ran back over to the taxi.

Through one of the windows, I could see that the Nigeria Airways DC-4 that had been on the tarmac when I’d arrived on Sunday was still there - or perhaps it was another DC-4. But just one soldier stood beside it now, and as I watched he threw his cigarette stub to the ground and began to climb the steps of the ladder.

‘That’s my plane,’ I told the customs official. ‘If it leaves, prepare to receive a very stern note from Government Office headquarters.’

He was a small man with an oversize cap and a neat row of pens in his shirt pocket. ‘I am sorry, sir,’ he said. ‘But I need to see your authorization before I can let you through.’

‘And I’ve already told you that I don’t bloody have it! It’s on the plane with my colleague, Isabelle Dumont. There was a mix-up at the office, and she left without me. Call the control tower, stop the plane, and ask her if she works with Robert Kane - or you can say goodbye to any chance of promotion!’

Something in that lot - perhaps the idea he’d be stuck talking to the likes of me forever - penetrated, and he hurried off to a back office. I lit another cigarette - forget my silly game, my body needed the nicotine - and watched the plane.

It was starting to move. Damn it, he had to hurry. I wondered if I should go in there and make the call myself. The plane was taxiing towards the runway, and with it my chances of getting to Udi. I had no other plan. I’d have to sit it out and wait for Pritchard to arrange something, but the chances were that they would allow only him to go, and that would be it . . .

The plane stopped. The official beckoned me.

XIV

XIV