The Flamingo Room
The winds of change in Africa had yet to blow when the young and reckless Christopher Ryan fire-bombs the compound of an illegal game rancher in the remote lowveld of Rhodesia. To avoid being imprisoned he is sent by his father to live with friends in the Australian outback. When a visiting artist arrives at the station with her geologist boyfriend, Chris falls madly in love with the girl and woos her with all the flamboyant passion of a Spanish bullfighter. Chris and Julia are married and return to Rhodesia at the death of his father to run the family game sanctuary.
But the bush war had begun, and they leave the sanctuary to live on a less remote game reserve where Chris is employed as a ranger. The house is attacked one night by guerrillas while Chris is visiting a neighbor and Julia is killed. The circumstances surrounding the attack are suspicious, and when Chris investigates, he finds himself in the middle of an international archaeological controversy involving a clay jar containing ancient papyri he had discovered in the bush during one of his army call-ups.
Driven by grief, anger and guilt, Chris vows to avenge her death and joins the Selous Scouts, operating alone behind enemy lines in the wilderness of Mozambique, gathering intelligence while also searching for the gang responsible. Unsuccessful and disillusioned, he leaves the army and joins a sanctions-busting group, flying in North Africa, where the trail of Julia's killers is leading him.
He is aided reluctantly in his quest by a beautiful hieroglyphics expert in Cairo, who has herself been attacked in suspicious circumstances. Her situation deteriorates when she is
abducted and sold into prostitution by her radical father. She is near to death from the infected butchery of female genital mutilation when Chris rescues her at gunpoint and flies her to safety in Kenya.
She recovers and the search for the killers continues back where it began, in the wilds of the remote Rhodesian lowveld. But those behind the murder are still at large, secure in the halls of privilege and authority in England. Not all will escape, but Chris's burden of guilt remains, and Zarena's own shame and distrust of men make the gap between them seem insurmountable.
But Africa has a card of its own to play. About to part in Kenya,
Chris and Zarena share one more experience that changes their lives; the witnessing of a spectacular display by creatures that suffer a much harsher and more tenuous existence than their own. The dance of the flamingos.
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