Текст книги "The Seventh Scroll"
Автор книги: Wilbur Smith
Жанр:
Исторические приключения
сообщить о нарушении
Текущая страница: 6 (всего у книги 42 страниц)
appointment?"
"That is about it, yes. Sorry."
He pondered a moment, "All right. Who knew you were leaving Cairo? Who
knew you were staying at your mother's cottage?"
"One of the clerks from administration brought my slides out to the
airport."
"Did you tell him what flight you were leaving on?"
"No, definitely not."
"Did you tell anybody at all?"
"No. That is.-'she hesitated.
"Yes?"
"I told the minister himself during our interview, when I asked for
leave of absence. Not him surely not?" her expression. reflected her
horror at the thought.
Nicholas shrugged, "Some funny things happen. Of course, the minister
knew all about the work that you and Duraid were doing on the seventh
scroll?"
"Not all the details, but – yes – in general terms he knew what we were
up to.
"All right. Next question, tea or coffee?" He poured coffee into her
cup, and then went on, "You said that nso Duraid had a list of possible
sponsors for an expedition.
Might give us some ideas as to a short-list of suspects?"
"The Getty Museum," she said, and he' smiled.
"Cross one from the list. They don't go around tossing grenades in the
streets of Cairo. Who else was there on the list?, "Gotthold Ernst von
Schiller."
"Hamburg. Heavy industry. Metal and alloy refineries.
Base mineral production."Nicholas nodded. "Who was the third name on the
list?"
"Peter Walsh," she said. "The Texan."
"That's the one," he nodded. "Lives in Fort Worth.
Fast-food'franchising. Mail order retail." There were very few
collectors with the substance to compete with the major institutions
when it came to making significant of antiquities or to financing
archaeological acquisitions exploration. Nicholas knew them all, for it
was a mutually antagonistic circle of no more than a couple of dozen
men.
He had competed with each of them at one time or ano& on the auction
floors of Sotheby's and Christie's, not to mention other less salubrious
venues where "fresh' antiquities were sold. The adjective "fresh' was
used in the context of "fresh out of the ground'.
"Those are two beady-eyed bandits. They would probably eat their own
children if they felt peckish. What would they do if they thought you
stood in their way to the tomb of Mamose? Do you know if either of them
contacted Duraid after the book was published, the way I did?"
"I don't know. They may have."
"I cannot imagine that either of those beauties would have missed such
an easy trick. We must believe that they both know that Duraid had
something going on. We will put their names on our list of suspects."
Then he inspected her plate. "Enough? Another spoonful of egg? No? Very
well, let's go down to the museum and see what Mrs. Street has found for
us to work on."
When they walked into his study, she was impressed by the amount of
organization that he had accomplished in such a short time. He must have
been busy at it all last night, turning the room into a military-type
headquarters.
In the centre of the room stood a large easel and blackboard which were
pinned a set of overlapping satellite photographs. She went across to
study them, and then glanced at the other material pinned on the board.
Along with a large-scale map covering the same area of southwestern
Ethiopia as the satellite photographs there were lists of names and
addresses, lists of equipment and stores which he had obviously used on
previous African expeditions, sheets of calculations of distance and
what looked like a preliminary financial budget. At the top of the board
was a schedule headed "Ethiopia – General Information'. There were five
closely typed sheets, so she did not read through the entire schedule,
but she was impressed by his thoroughness in preparation.
Royan determined to study all this material at the earliest opportunity,
but now she crossed to one of the two chairs he had set up at a table
facing the board. He stood at the board and picked up a silver-topped
swagger stick from the table, brandishing it like a schoolmaster's
pointer.
"Class will come to order." He rapped on the board.
"The first thing you have to do is convince me that we will be able to
pick up the spoor of Taita again after it has had several thousand years
to cool. Let us first consider the geographical features of the Abbay
gorge."
Nicholas described the course of the river on the satellite photograph
with his pointer. "Along this section the river has cut its way through
the flood basalt plateaux.
In places the cliff of the sub-gorge are sheer, as high as four or five
hundred feet on each side. Where there are intrusive strata of harder
igneous schists the river has not been able to erode them. They form a
series of gigantic steps in the course of the river. I think you are
correct in your assumption that Taita's "steps" are actually waterp
falls."
He came to the table and picked out a photograph from amongst the
bundles of papers that covered it. "I took this in the gorge during the
Armed Forces Expedition in 1976. It will give you an idea of what some
of those falls are like."
He passed her a black and white riverscape of towering cliffs on either
hand and a cascade of water that seemed to fall from the heavens to
dwarf the tiny figures of half-naked men and boats in the foreground.
"I had no idea it was. like thad' She stared at it in awe.
"Doesn't do justice to the splendid desolation down he told her. "From a
photographer's there in the gorge, gra point of view there. is no place
to stand from which you can get it all into perspective. But at least
you can see how that waterfall would halt a party of Egyptians coming
upriver on foot, or at least with pack horses. There is usually some
sort of path alongside the cataracts made by elephant and other wild
game over the ages. However, there is simply no way to bypass waterfalls
such as this one, and to get around those cliffs."
She nodded, and he went on, "Even coming downstream we had to lower the
boats and all our equipment down each set of waterfalls on ropes. It
wasn't easy."
"Let us agree that it was a waterfall that stopped them going further -
the second waterfall from the westerly approaches," she conceded.
Nicholas picked up the swagger stick and on the satellite photograph
traced the course of the river up from the dark wedge shape of the
Roseires dam in central Sudan.
"The escarpment, rises on the Ethiopian side of the border, that is
where the gorge proper begins. No roads or towns in there, and only two
bridges far upstream. Nothing for five hundred miles except racing Nile
waters and savage black basalt rock." He paused to let that sink in.
"It is one of the last true wildernesses on earth, with an evil
reputation as the haunt of wild animals and even wilder men. I have
marked the main falls that show in the gut of the gorge here on the
satellite photo." With the pointer he picked them out, each circled
neatly in red marker pen.
"Here is waterfall number two, about a hundred and twenty miles upstream
from the Sudanese border. However, there are a number of factors we have
to consider, not least the fact that the river may have altered its
course during the last four thousand years since our friend, "Taita,
visited it."
"Surely it could not have escaped from such a deep canyon, four thousand
feet," she protested. "Even the Nile must be held captive by that?"
"Yes, but it would certainly have altered the existing bed. In the flood
season the volume and force of the river exceeds my ability to describe
it to you. The river rises twenty metres up the side walls and bores
through at speeds 3; of ten knots or more."
"You navigated that?" she asked doubtfully.
"Not in the flood season. Nothing could survive that.
They both stared at the photograph in silence for a minute, imagining
the terrors of that mighty stretch of water in its fury.
Then she reminded him, "The second waterfall?
"Here it is, where one of the tributary rivers enters the main flow of
the Abbay. The tributary is the Dandera river and it rises at twelve
thousand feet altitude, below the peak of Sancai Mountain in the Choke
range, here about a hundred miles north of the gorge."
"Do you remember the spot where it joins the Abbay from when you were
there?"
"It was over twenty years ago, and even then we had been almost a month
down there in the gorge, so it all seemed to merge into a single
nightmare. The memory bluffed with the monotonous surroundings of the
cliffs and the dense Jungle of the walls, and our senses were dulled by
the heat and the insects and the roar of water and the repetitive,
unremitting toil at the oars i But, strangely, I do remember the
confluence of the Dandera and the Abbay for two reasons."
"Yes?" She sat forward eagerly, but he shook his head.
"We lost a man there. The only casualty on the second expedition. Rope
parted and he fell a hundred feet. Landed on his back across a spur of
rock."
i am sorry. But what was the other reason you remember the spot."
"There is a Coptic Christian monastery there, built into the rock face
about four hundred feet above the surface of the river."
"Down the re in the depths of the gorge?" She sounded incredulous. "Why
would they build a monastery there?"
"Ethiopia is one of the oldest Christian countries on earth. It has over
nine thousand churches and monasteries, a great many of them in
similarly remote and almost inaccessible places in the mountains. This
one at the Dandera river is the reputed burial site of St. Frumentius,
the saint who introduced Christianity to Ethiopia from the Byzantine
Empire in Constantinople in the early third century. Legend has it that
he was shipwrecked on the Red Sea shore and taken to Aksum, where he
converted the Emperor Ezana."
"Did you visit the monastery?"
"Hell, no!" he laughed. "We were too busy just surviving, too eager to
escape from the hell of the gorge to have any time for sightseeing. We
descended the falls and kept on down river. All I remember of the
monastery are the excavations in the cliff face high above the pool of
the river, and the distant figures of the troglodytic monks in their
white robes lining the parapet of the caves to watch impassively as we
passed. Some of us waved up to them) and felt quite rebuffed when they
made no response."
"How would we ever reach that spot again, without a full-scale river
expedition?" she wondered aloud, staring disconsolately at the board.
"Discouraged already?" He grinned at her. "Wait until you meet some of
the mosquitoes that live down there.
They pick you up and fly with you to their lairs before they eat you."
"Be serious," she entreated him. "How would we ever get down there?"
"The monks are fed by the villagers who live up on the highlands above
the gorge. Apparently, there is a goat track down the wall. They told us
that it takes three days to get down that track into the gut of the
gorge from the rim."
"Could you find your way down?"
"No, but I have a few ideas on the subject. We will come to that later.
Firstly, we must decide what we expect to find down there after four
thousand years." He looked at her expectantly. "Your turn now. Convince
me." He handed her the silver-headed pointer, dropped into the chair
beside her and folded his arms.
"First you have to go back to the book." She exchanged the pointer for
the copy of River God. "You remember the character of Tanus from the
story?"
"Of course. He was the commander of the Egyptian armies under Queen
Lostris, with the title of Great Lion of Egypt. He led the exodus from
Egypt, when they were driven out by the Hyksos."
"He was also the Queen's secret lover and, if we are to believe Taita,
the father of Prince Memnon, her eldest son," she agreed.
Tanus was killed during a punitive expedition against an Ethiopian chief
named Arkoun in the high mountains, and his body was mummified and
brought back to the Queen by Taita,'Nicholas expanded the story.
Precisely." She nodded. This leads me on to the other clue that Duraid
and I winkled out."
"From the seventh scroll?" He unfolded his arms and sat forward in his
seat.
"No, not from the scrolls, but from the inscriptions in the tomb of
Queen Lostris." She reached into her bag and brought out another
photograph. This is an enlargement of a section of the murals from the
burial chamber, that part of the wall that later fell away and was lost
when the alabaster jars were revealed. Duraid and I believe that the
fact that Taita placed this inscription in the place of honour, over the
hiding-place of the scrolls, was significant." She passed the photograph
to him, and he picked up a magnifying glass from the table to study it.
While he puzzled over the hieroglyphics Royan went on, "You will recall
from the book how Taita loved riddles and word games, how he boasts so
often that he is the greatest of all boa players?"
Nicholas looked up from the magnifying glass, "I remember that. I go
along with the theory that bao was the forerunner of the game of chess.
I have a dozen or so boards in the museum collection, some from Egypt
and others from further south in Africa."
"Yes, I would also subscribe to that theory. Both games have many of the
same objects and rules, but bao is a more rudimentary form of the game.
It is played with coloured stones of different rank, instead of chess
men. Well, I believe that Taita was not able to resist the temptation to
display his riddling skills and his cleverness to posterity. I believe
that he was so conceited that he deliberately left clues to the location
of the Pharaoh's tomb, both in the scrolls and amongst the murals that
he tells us he painted with his own hands in the tomb of his beloved
Queen."
"You think that this is one of those clues?" Nicholas tapped the
photograph with the glass.
"Read it," she instructed him. "It's in classical hieroglyphics – not
too difficult compared to his cryptic codes."
"'The father of the prince who is not the father, the giver of the blue
that killed him,"' he translated haltingly, "'guards eternally hand in
hand with Hapi the stone testament of the pathway to the father of the
prince who is not the father, the giver of blood and ashes."'
Nicholas shook his head, "No, it doesn't make sense," he protested, you
must have made an error in the translation."
"Don't despair. You are making your first acquaintance with Taita, the
champion bao, player and consummate riddler. Duraid and I puzzled over
it for weeks," she reassured him. "To work it out, let's go back to the
book.
Tanus was not the father of Prince Memnon in name, but, as the Queen's
lover, was his biological father. On his deathbed, he gave Memnon the
blue sword that had inflicted his own mortal wound during the battle
with the native Ethiopian chief There is a full description of the
battle in the book."
"Yes, when I first read that section, I remember thinking that the blue
sword was probably one of the very earliest iron weapons, and in an age
of bronze would have been a marvel of the armourer's art. A gift fit for
a prince," Nicholas mused, and went on, "So "the father of the prince
who is not the father" is Tanus?" He sighed with resignation.
"For the moment I accept your interpretation."
"Thank you for your trust and confidence in me," she said sarcastically.
"But to proceed with Taita's riddle Pharaoh Mamose was Memnon's father
in name only, but not his blood father. Again the father who was not the
father. Mamose passed down to the prince the double crown of Egypt, the
red and white crowns of Upper and Lower Kingdoms – the blood and the
ashes.
"I am able to swallow that more easily. What about the rest of the
inscription?"Nicholas was clearly intrigued.
"The expression "hand in hand" is ambiguous in ancient Egyptian. It
could just as well mean very close to, or within sight of, something."
"Go on. At last you have me sitting up and taking notice,'Nicholas
encouraged her.
"Hapi is the hermaphroditic god or goddess of the Nile, depending on the
gender he or she adopts at any particular moment. Throughout the scrolls
Taita uses Hapi as an alternative name for the river."
"So if we put the seventh scroll and the "inscription from the Queen's
tomb together, what then is your full interpretation?" he insisted.
"Simply this: Tanus is buried within sight of, or very close to, the
river at the second waterfall. There is a stone monument or inscription
on, or in, his tomb that points the way to the tomb of Pharaoh."
He exhaled through his teeth. "I am exhausted from all this jumping to
conclusions. What other clues have you ferreted out for me?"
"That's it," she said, and he looked at her with disbelief.
"That's it? Nothing else?" he demanded, and she shook her head.
"Just suppose that you are correct so far. Let us suppose that the river
is recognizably the same in shape and configuration as it was nearly
four thousand years ago. Let us further suppose that Taita was indeed
pointing us towards the second waterfall at the Dandera river. just what
do we look for when we get there? If there is a rock inscription, will
it still be intact or will it be eroded away by weather and the action
of the river?"
"Howard Carter had an equally slender lead to the tomb of Tutankhamen,'
she pointed out mildly. "A single piece of papyrus, of dubious
authenticity."
"Howard Carter had only the area of the Valley of the Kings to search.
It still took him ten years," he replied. "You have given me Ethiopia, a
country twice the size of France.
How long will that take us, do you think?"
She stood up abruptly, "Excuse me, I think I should go and visit my
mother in hospital. It's fairly obvious that I am wasting my time here."
"It is not yet visiting hours," he told her.
"She has a private room." Royan made for the door.
"I will drive you to the hospital," he offered.
"Don't bother. I will call a taxi," she replied in a tone that crackled
with ice.
"A taxi will take an hour to get here," he warned, and she relented just
enough to let him lead her to the Range Rover. They drove in silence for
fifteen minutes, before he spoke.
"I am not very good at apologies. Not much practice, I am afraid, but I
am sorry. I was abrupt. I didn't mean to be.
Carried away by the excitement of the moment She did not reply, and
after a minute added,'You will have to talk to me, unless we are to
correspond only by note. It will be a bit awkward down in the Abbay
gorge."
"I had the distinct impression that you were no longer interested in
going down there." She stared ahead through the windscreen.
am a brute," he agreedi and she glanced sideways at him. It was her
undoing. His grin was irresistible, and she laughed.
"I Suppose I will just have to come to terms with that fact. You are a
brute."
"Still partners?" he asked.
"At the moment you are the only brute I have.
suppose that I am stuck with you."
He dropped her off at the main hospital entrance. "I will pick you up
here at three 'clock," he told her and drove on into the centre of York.
From his university days Nicholas had kept a small flat in one of the
narrow alleys behind York Minster. The entire building was registered in
the name of a Cayman Island company, and the unlisted telephone there
did not route through an internal switchboard. No ownership could be
traced to him personally. Before he had met Rosalind the flat had played
an important part in his social life. But nowadays Nicholas only used it
for confidential and clandestine business. Both the Libyan and the Iraqi
expeditions had been planned and organized from here.
He hadn't used the flat for months, and it was cold and musty-smelling
and uninviting. He put a match to the gas fire in the grate and filled
the kettle. With a mug of steaming tea in front of him he placed a call
to a bank in Jersey, followed immediately by another to a bank in the
Cayman Islands.
"A wise rat has more than one exit from its burrow."
This was a family maxim, passed down through the generations. He was
going to need funds for the expedition, and the lawyers had most of
those locked up already.
He gave the passwords and account numbers to each of the bank managers,
and instructed them to make certain transfers. It always amazed him how
easily matters could be rranged, as long as you had money.
He checked his watch. It was still early morning in Florida, but Alison
picked up the phone on the second ring. She was the blonde feminine
dynamo who ran Global Safaris, a company that arranged hunting and
fishing expeditions to remote areas around the world.
"Hello, Nick. We haven't heard from you in over a year. We thought you
didn't love us any more."
"I have been out of it for a while," he admitted. How do you tell people
that your wife and two little girls had died?
"Ethiopia?" She did not sound at all disconcerted by the request. "When
did you want to go?"
"How about next week?"
"You have to be joking. We only work with one hunter there, Nassous
Roussos, and he is booked two years in advance."
"Is there nobody else?" he insisted. "I have to be in and out again
before the big rains."
"What trophies are you after? she hedged. "Mountain nyala? Menelik's
bushbuck?"
"I am planning a collecting trip for the museum, down the Abbay river."
It was as much as he was prepared to tell her.
She hedged a little longer and then told him reluctantly, This is
without our recommendation, do you understand. There is only one hunter
who may take You on at such short notice, but I don't even know if he
has a camp on the Blue Nile. He is a Russian, and we have had mixed
reports about him. Some people say he is ex-KGB an was one of Mengistu's
bunch of thugs."
Mengistu was the "Black Stalin' who had deposed an then murdered the
old Emperor Haile Selassie, and in sixteen years of despotic Marxist
rule had driven Ethiopia to its knees. When his sponsor, the Soviet
Empire, had collapsed, Mengistu had been overthrown and fled the
country.
"I am desperate enough to go to bed with the devil," he told her. "I
promise I won't come back to you with any complaints."
"Okay, then, no comebacks-' and she gave him a name and a telephone
number in Addis Ababa.
"I love you, Alison darling Nicholas told her.
"I wish," she said, and hung up on him.
He didn't expect that it would be easy to telephone Addis, and he wasn't
disappointed in his expectations. But at last he got through. A woman
with a sweet lisping of Ethiopian accent answered and switched to fluent
English when he asked for Boris Brusilov.
"He is out on safari at present," she told him. "I am Woizero Tessay,
his wife." In Ethiopia a wife did not take on her husband's name.
Nicholas remembered enough of the language to know that the name meant
Lady Sun, a pretty name.
"But if it is in connection with safari business I can help you," said
Lady Sun.
Nicholas picked Royan up outside the hospital entrance.
"How is your mother?"
"Her leg is doing well, but she's still distraught about is Magic -
about her dog."
You will have to get her a puppy. One of my keepers breeds first-class
springers. I can arrange it." He paused and then asked delicately, "Will
you be able to leave your mother? I mean, if we are going out to
Africa?"
"I spoke to her about that. There is a woman from her church group who
will stay with her until she is well enough to fend for herself again."
Royan turned fully around in her seat to examine his face. "You have
been up to something since I last saw you," she accused him. "I can see
it in your face."
He made the Arabic sign against the evil eye, "Allah save me from
witches!'
"Come on!" He could make her laugh so readily, she was not sure if that
was a good thing or not. "Tell me what you have up your sleeve."
"Wait until we get back to the museum." He would not be moved, and she
had to bridle her impatience.
As soon as they entered the building he led her through the Egyptian
room to the hall of African mammals, and then stopped her in front of a
diorama of mounted antelope. These were some of the smaller and
mediumsized varieties – impala, Thompson's and Grant's gazelle, gerenuk
and the like.
"Madoqua harperii." He pointed to a tiny creature in one corner of the
display. "Harper's dik-dik, also known as the striped dik-dik."
It was a nondescript little animal, not much bigger than a large hare.
The brown pelt was striped in chocolate over the shoulders and back, and
the nose was elongated into a prehensile proboscis.
"A bit tatty," she gave her opinion carefully, unwilling to bend, yet
knowing he was inordinately Proud of this Specimen. "Is there something
special about it?, "Special?" he asked with wonder in his voice. The
Woman asks if it is special." He rolled his eyes heavenward and she had
to laugh again at his histrionics. "It is the only known specimen in
existence.
creatures on earth. So rare that It is One of the rarest now. So rare it
is probably extinct by that many zoologists believe that apocryphal,
that it never really existed. They think it is that my sainted
great-grandfather, after whom it is named, actually invented it. One
learned reference hinted that he may have taken the skin of the striped
mongoose and stretched it over the form of a common dik-dik. Can you
imagine a more heinous accusation?)
"I am truly appalled by such injustice,'she laughed.
"Darned right, You should be. Because we are going to Africa to hunt for
another specimen of Madoqua harpent, to vindicate the honour of the
family., "I don't understand."
"Come with me and all will be explained."He led her back to his study,
and from the jumble on the tabletop Picked out a notebook bound in red
Morocco leather. The cover was faded and stained with water marks and
tropical sun light, while the corners and the spine were frayed and
battered.
"Old Sir Jonathan's game book,) he explained, and opened it. Pressed
between the pages were faded wild flowers and leaves that must have been
there for almost a century. The text was illuminated by line drawings in
faded Yellow ink of men and animals and wild landscapes.
Nicholas read the date at the top of one page.
2nd of February 1902.
A In camp on the Abbay river.
11 day following the spoor of two large bull ele Phants– Unable to come
up with the . Heat ve, intense– MY Men Played out Abandoned the chase
small antelope grazing on the river-bank which I and returned to camp.
On the return march lied a brought down with one shot from the little
Rigby "and– On close examination it proved to be a member of the genus
Madoqa. However, it was of a species that I had never seen before,
larger than the common dik-dik and Possessing a striped body. I believe
that this specimen may be new to science.
He looked up from the diary. "Old great-grandpa Jonathan has given us
the perfect excuse for going down into the Abbay gorge." He closed the
book, and went on, "As you pointed out, to cater for our own expedition
would require months of planning and organization, not to mention the
expense. It would mean having to obtain approval and permission from the
Ethiopian government. In Africa that can take months, if not Years."
"I don't imagine that the Ethiopian government would be too cooperative
if they suspected our real intentions," she agreed.
"On the other hand, there are a number of legitimate hunting safari
companies operating throughout the country. They have all the necessary
permits, governmental contacts, vehicles, camping equipment and logistic
back, up necessary to travel and stay in even the remotest areas.
The authorities are quite accustomed to foreign hunters arriving and
leaving with these companies, whereas a couple of ferengi nosing around
on their own would have the local military and everybody else down on
them like a herd of angry buffalo., ( So we are going to travel as a
pair of dik-dik hunters?"
"I have already made the booking with a safari operator in Addis Ababa,
the capital. MY Plan is to look upon the whole of our project in three
distinct and separate stages.
The first stage will be this reconnaissance. If we find the lead we are
hoping for, then we will go back again with our own men and equipment.
That will be stage two. Stage three, of course, will be getting the
booty out of Ethiopia, and that I assure you from past experience will
not be the easiest part of the operation."
"How will you do that-' she began, but he held up his hands.
"Don't ask, because at this stage I don't have even the vaguest idea how
we will do it. One stage at a time."
"When do we leave?"
"Before I tell you when, let me ask you one more question. Your
interpretation of the Taita riddle – did you explain that in the notes
that were stolen from you at the oasis?"
"Yes, everything was either in those notes or on the microfilm. I am
sorry."
So the uglies will have it all neatly laid out for them, just the way
you laid it out for me."
"I am afraid they will, yes."
"Then to reply to your question as to when, the answer is tout de suite,
and the tooter the sweeter! We must get into the Abbay gorge before the
competition beats us to it.
They have had your conclusions and suppositions for almost a month. For
all we know they are on their way already!
"When?" she repeated eagerly.
"I have booked two seats on the British Airways flight to Nairobi this
Saturday – that is, in two days' time. We will connect there with an Air
Kenya flight to Addis that will get us in on Monday at around midday. We
will drive down to London this evening and stay over at my digs there.
Are your yellow fever and hepatitis shots up to date?"
"Yes, but I have no equipment and hardly any clothing with me., I left
Cairo in rather a hurry."
We will. see to that in London. Trouble with Ethiopia is it's cold
enough to emasculate a brass monkey in the highlands, and like a sauna
bath down in the gorge."
He crossed to the board and began to check off the items on his list.
"We will both start malarial prophylactics immediately. We are going
into an area of chloroquineresistant . falciparum mosquitoes, so I will
put you on Mefloquine "He worked swiftly through the list.
"Of course all your travel documents are in order, or you wouldn't be