Kidnap the Emperor! by Jay Garnet

Author:Jay Garnet
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780008155285
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2015-10-19T16:15:17.610000+00:00

Saturday, 3 April

Before take-off from Nairobi, the twenty-six-year-old pilot, Bob Hudson, briefed Rourke about the geography of the Rift Valley. He turned out to be effusive, even over-effusive, about his subject. He had a kinked nose (the result of a rugger injury), and a habit of pulling his top lip back from his teeth when embarrassed. His hearty public-school accent grated constantly on Rourke.

‘Look at the map, here,’ Hudson said. ‘Here’s the Rift just outside Nairobi. The walls go up northwards on either side here and here. They spread out as they go past Lake Rudolf, which is where we’re heading, and then together again, up through Ethiopia. But the centre’s always marked by lakes and volcanoes. Funny place. You know why?’

Rourke gave him no encouragement. Undeterred, Hudson put his hands together in a position as if for prayer, except tilted over, and as he talked they fell apart to dramatize his words. ‘The whole of East Africa and Arabia is being torn apart, sort of unzipped, along the line of the Rift. As the sides pulled apart, the middle bit fell. All sorts of things seep up from below – lava and soda mainly – so the landscapes are often all twisted and the lakes are white and salty-looking with soda deposits round the edge. You’ll see. Sometime, millions of years hence, this place will be on another continent and over there, westwards, the other side of those hills, there’ll be a new strip of ocean. Fabulous thought, isn’t it?’

‘Uh huh,’ said Rourke, unmoved. ‘How do I recognize…?’

‘Well, first you’ll see the edge of the Rift…’ said Hudson, and went on to brief Rourke in rather more detail with the aid of the map. It took half an hour. They were ready to leave shortly after nine o’clock.

The JetRanger was standing on a concrete square thirty yards away from the shed. They climbed in, with Rourke in the second pilot’s seat, and fixed seat belts and headsets.

Hudson said: ‘Here, take the map. You’ll see the way.’ He made his take-off checks and pushed the starter button to ignite the turbine.

The helicopter thumped into life, hauled itself slowly aloft towards the haze that precedes the Kenyan rains, and bent away north and west, swinging over Uhuru Park and out above the dual carriageway of Uhuru Avenue. Rourke gave the broad streets and well-spaced buildings not a second glance, straining forward instead to familiarize himself with the geography of the place, which he would have to recall well enough to bring Collins and Halloran on their flight from Addis Ababa.

As the machine picked up its cruising speed of 130 m.p.h., the town fell away behind them. Buildings and roads gave way to patchwork patterns of banana and vegetable plantations, which were in their turn replaced by forest. Suddenly, after fifteen minutes, the ground rose slightly and then dropped away over 2000 feet to savannah and grasslands.

‘The Rift!’ said Hudson. Then, as he swung north to follow the line of the hills, he pointed out to the left.

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