On the flight up-river to Kabara, Isobel Cunningham went through the notes she'd taken on that town. It was also on the Niger, and the assignment had been almost identical to the Gao one. In fact, she'd gone through the same routine in Ségou, Ké-Macina, Mopti, Gôundam and Bourem, above Gao, and Ansongo, Tillabéri and Niamey below. She was stretching her luck, if you asked her. Sooner or later she was going to run into someone who knew her from a past performance. Well, let the future take care of the future. She looked over at Cliff Jackson who was piloting the jet and said, "What're the latest developments? Obviously, I haven't seen a paper or heard a broadcast for over a week." Cliff shrugged his huge shoulders. "Not much. More trouble with the Portuguese down in the south." Jake rumbled, "There's going to be a bloodbath there before it's over." Isobel said thoughtfully, "There's been some hope that fundamental changes might take place in Lisbon." Jake grunted his skepticism. "In that case the bloodbath would take place there instead of in Africa." He added, "Which is all right with me." "What else?" Isobel said. "Continued complications in the Congo." "That's hardly news." "But things are going like clockwork in the west. Kenya, Uganda, Tanganyika." Cliff took his right hand away from the controls long enough to make a circle with its thumb and index finger. "Like clockwork. Fifty new fellows from the University of Chicago came in last week to help with the rural education development and twenty or so men from Johns Hopkins in Baltimore have wrangled a special grant for a new medical school." "All ... Negroes?" "What else?" Jake said suddenly, "Tell her about the Cubans." Isobel frowned. "Cubans?" "Over in the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan area. They were supposedly helping introduce modern sugar refining methods--" "Why supposedly?" "Why not?" "All right, go on," Isobel said. Cliff Jackson said slowly, "Somebody shot them up. Killed several, wounded most of the others." The girl's eyes went round. "Who ... and why?" The pilot shifted his heavy shoulders again. Jake said, "Nobody seems to know, but the weapons were modern. Plenty modern." He twisted in his bucket seat, uncomfortably. "Listen, have you heard anything about some character named El Hassan?" Isobel turned to face him. "Why, yes. The people there in Gao mentioned him. Who is he?" "That's what I'd like to know," Jake said. "What did they say?"