Ross smiled. "The average man consumes four to six liters a day, which is eight to thirteen pounds of weight. On a two-week expedition to a desert region, we'd have to provide two hundred pounds of water for each man. But we have a NASA water-recycling unit which purifies all excretions, including urine. It weighs six ounces. That's how we do it."
Seeing his expression, she said, "It's not bad at all. Our purified water is cleaner than what you get from the tap.,'
"I'll take your word for it." Elliot picked up a pair of strange-looking sunglasses. They were very dark and thick, and there was a peculiar lens mounted over the forehead bridge.
"Holographic night goggles," Ross said. "Employing thin-film diffraction optics." She then pointed out a vibration-free camera lens with optical systems that compensated for movement, strobe infrared lights, and miniature survey lasers no larger than a pencil eraser. There was also a series of small tripods with rapid-geared motors mounted on the top, and brackets to hold something, but she did not explain these devices beyond saying they were "defensive units."
Elliot drifted toward the far table, where he found six submachine guns set out under the lights. He picked one up; it was heavy, and gleaming with grease. Clips of ammunition lay stacked nearby. Elliot did not notice the lettering on the stock; the machine guns were Russian AK-47s manufactured under license in Czechoslovakia.
He glanced at Ross.
"Just precautions," Ross said. "We carry them on every expedition. It doesn't mean anything."
Elliot shook his head. "Tell me about your GPU from Houston," he said.
"I'm not worried about it," she said.
"I am," Elliot said.
As Ross explained it, the GPU was just a technical report. The Zaire government had closed its eastern borders during the previous twenty-four hours; no tourist or commercial traffic could enter the country from Rwanda or Uganda; everyone now had to enter the country from the west, through Kinshasa.
No official reason was given for closing the eastern border, although sources in Washington speculated that Idi Amin's troops, fleeing across the Zaire border from the Tanzanian invasion of Uganda, might be causing "local difficulties." In central Africa, local difficulties usually meant cannibalism and other atrocities.
"Do you believe that?" Elliot asked. "Cannibalism and atrocities?"
"No," Ross said. "It's all a lie. It's the Dutch and the Germans and the Japanese - probably your friend Morikawa. The Euro-Japanese electronics consortium knows that ERTS is close to discovering important diamond reserves in Vi?runga. They want to slow us down as much as they can. They've got the fix in somewhere, probably in Kinshasa, and closed the eastern borders. It's nothing more than that."
"If there's no danger, why the machine guns?"
"Just precautions," she said again. "We'll never use machine guns on this trip, believe me. Now why don't you get some sleep? We'll be landing in Tangier soon."
"Tangier?"
"Captain Munro is there."
6. Munro
THE NAME OF "CAPTAIN" CHARLES MUNRO WAS not to be found on the list of the expedition leaders employed by any of the usual field parties. There were several reasons for this, foremost among them his distinctly unsavory reputation.
Munro had been raised in the wild Northern Frontier Province of Kenya, the illegitimate son of a Scottish farmer and his handsome Indian housekeeper. Munro's father had the bad luck to be killed by Mau Mau guerillas in 1956. * Soon afterward, Munro's mother died of tuberculosis, and Munro made his way to Nairobi where in the late 1950s he worked as a white hunter, leading parties of tourists into the bush. It was during this time that Munro awarded himself the title of "Captain," although he had never served in the military.
Apparently, Captain Munro found humoring tourists uncongenial; by 1960, he was reported running guns from Uganda into the newly independent Congo. After Moise Tshombe went into exile in 1963, Munro's activities became politically embarrassing, and ultimately forced him to disappear from East Africa in late 1963.
He appeared again in 1964, as one of General Mobutu's white mercenaries in the Congo, under the leadership of Colonel "Mad Mike" Hoare. Hoare assessed Munro as a "hard, lethal customer who knew the jungle and was highly effective, when we could get him away from the ladies."
*Although more than nineteen thousand people were killed in the Mau Mau uprisings. only thirty-seven whites were killed during seven years of terrorism. Each dead white was properly regarded more as a victim of circumstance than of emerging black politics.
Following the capture of Stanleyville in Operation Dragon Rouge, Munro's name was associated with the mercenary atrocities at a village called Avakabi. Munro again disappeared for several years.
In 1968, he re-emerged in Tangier, where he lived splendidly and was something of a local character. The source of Munro'.s obviously substantial income was unclear, but he was said to have supplied Communist Sudanese rebels with East German light arms in 1971, to have assisted the royalist Ethiopians in their rebellion in 1974 - 1975, and to have assisted the French paratroopers who dropped into Zaire's Shaba province in 1978.
His mixed activities made Munro a special case in Africa in the 1970s; although he was persona non grata in a half-dozen African states, he traveled freely throughout the continent, using various passports. It was a transparent ruse: every border official recognized him on sight, but these officials were equally afraid to let him enter the country or to deny him entry.
Foreign mining and exploration companies, sensitive to local feeling, were reluctant to hire Munro as an expedition leader for their parties. It was also true that Munro was by far the most expensive of the bush guides. Nevertheless, he had a reputation for getting tough, difficult jobs done. Under an assumed name, he had taken two German tin-mining parties into the Cameroons in 1974; and he had led one previous ERTS expedition into Angola during the height of the armed conflict in 1977. He quit another ERTS field group headed for Zambia the following year after Houston refused to meet his price: Houston had canceled the expedition.