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into her jeans, knowing exactly the effect she was having on him. ‘We’re right behind you, commander,’ she said with mock deference. Freeing her long blonde hair from the combs holding it up, she let it cascade, shaking her head forward. Behind his aggressive attitude towards her, she well knew that the overweight man nursed serious hots for her. ‘Dream on, loser,’ she said to herself, blew him a sarcastic kiss and left to face the freezing London night.
    She found a cab mercifully quickly, and took it to Euston where, ever mindful of security—and without the need of Sam Thrower’s reminders—she lost herself in the Underground to complete her journey to Pimlico and the small, stuccoed terraced house she shared with Oliver, her Airedale terrier. Some of her fellow activists were strongly opposed to the keeping of pets, to pet shops, breeders and the whole pet industry; Lydia, however, loved the bad-tempered dog more than anyone she knew with just two legs right then.
    Meetings of the Warriors in dingy, studenty flats always called for an immediate bath on her return home, and long baths called for a cavernous glass of chilled chardonnay. Having first walked and fed Oliver, she was soon soaking in the six-foot Duker, trying to relax—something she found difficult. Work as a media buyer was stressful: all shouting, bargaining and bluffing on the phone. But it suited her high energy nature, soaking up some of her hyper-activity, as well as paying well. Outside its consuming maelstrom she really lived for her many causes: The Anti-Slavery League, Tourism Concern, Greenpeace and Shelter. Her involvement, however, in direct action with the Warriors was not something she ever talked about. To anyone. Although all her friends well knew her passion for animal rights.
    It was a life that left little room for long-standing relationships, but then that was not something she presently wanted in her busy world. In any case, her looks did not naturally invite flirtatious attention. She was always just a few pounds overweight and shortish, at five feet four inches. As a teenager, unlike her two best friends, her picture had never made it as one of Country Life’s weekly debby ‘girls in pearls’: something considered a great county accolade at the time. With her strong facial resemblance to her father—blue eyes, ski-jump button nose and dimpled chin—she was what even her own mother called striking, rather than classically pretty. Except, that was, for the thick mane of natural, honey-blonde hair which, along with those blue eyes and wide sensuous mouth, she had learned as a small girl to use to imitate real beauty whenever it suited her. She knew how to conjure up its fickle mask at will, like an actress playing a part. She enjoyed the power of surprise it gave her. It worked well in her career too, where the trick was to be popular, but tough. There was a freedom in plainness—freedom from all the bimbo stereotyping and macho hassle. Freedom to be accepted as one of the boys. And yet, with just a few facial tricks and gestures, she could make any man she wanted look twice.
    Drying herself later in a towelling robe, she poured another glass of wine and thought again about the unpleasant meeting of the unit earlier. She had no qualms about fire-bombing one of her father’s plants. It was something that had somehow always seemed inevitable, the irony lost on no one. But it certainly called for renewed contact with him. Not to warn him, of course. Just to touch base, and push him to talk about what he was doing, and why. Besides, she was long overdue a visit to the old rogue. She would call him tomorrow.
    *
    Chancey was relieved to find his way back to the small plane, still safely where he had parked it. They had just completed a seven-hour trek from beyond the Chenga village to reach the clearing by the early afternoon. It had rained incessantly most of the time, and now it had finally stopped the humidity was almost