A shrill sound went off as they drove out of Orlu. The driver stopped with a jerk, in the middle of the road, and they jumped out of the car and into the thick green bush. Some women who had been walking along the road ran too, looking up as they did, twisting their necks. It was the first time Richard had taken cover with Kainene; she lay flat and rigid on the ground next to him. Their shoulders touched. The driver was a little way behind them. The silence was absolute. A loud rustling nearby made Richard tense until a redheaded lizard crawled out. They waited and waited and finally got up when they heard the revving of a car engine and rising voices from nearby, "My money is gone! My money is gone!" There was a market only yards away. Somebody had stolen from one of the traders while she was taking cover. Richard could see her and some other women underneath open stalls, shouting and gesticulating. It was difficult to believe how silent it all had been a moment ago, and how Biafran markets now thrived so easily in the bush since the Nigerians bombed the open-air Awgu market.

"False alarm is worse than the real one," the driver said.

Kainene dusted herself down carefully, but the ground was wet and the mud had stuck to her clothes; her blue dress looked designed with chocolate-colored smudges. They climbed into the car and continued the journey. Richard sensed that Kainene was angry.

"Look at the tree," he told her, pointing. It had been cleanly split in two, from the branches down to the stem. One half still stood, slightly tilted, while the other lay on the ground.

"It seems recent," Kainene said.

"My uncle flew a plane in the war. He bombed Germany. It's strange to think of him doing something like this."

"You don't talk about him."

"He died. He was shot down." Richard paused. "I'm going to write about our new forest markets."

The driver had stopped at a checkpoint. A lorry loaded with sofas and shelves and tables was parked by the side, and a man stood beside it talking to a young female civil defender wearing khaki jeans and canvas shoes. She left him and came up and peered at Richard and Kainene. She asked the driver to open the boot, looked inside the glove compartment, and then extended her hand for Kainene's handbag.

"If I had a bomb, I would not hide it in my bag," Kainene muttered.

"What did you say, madam?" the young woman asked.

Kainene said nothing. The woman looked through the bag carefully. She brought out a small radio. "What is this? Is this a transmitter?"

"It is not a transmitter. It is a ra-di-o," Kainene said, with a mocking slowness. The young woman examined their special duties passes, smiled, and adjusted her beret. "Sorry, madam. But you know we have many saboteurs who use strange gadgets to transmit to Nigeria. Vigilance is our watchword!"

"Why have you stopped that man with the lorry?" Kainene asked.

"We are turning back people evacuating furniture."

"Why?"

"Evacuations like this cause panic in the civil population." She sounded as if she were reciting something rehearsed. "There is no cause for alarm."

"But what if his town is about to fall? Do you know where he has come from?"

She stiffened. "Good day, madam."

As soon as the driver started the car, Kainene said, "It's such an awful joke, isn't it?"

"What?" Richard asked, although he knew what she meant.

"This fear we are whipping up in our people. Bombs in women's bras! Bombs in tins of baby milk! Saboteurs everywhere! Watch your children because they could be working for Nigeria!"

"It's normal for wartime." He sometimes wished she would not be so arch about things. "It's important for people to be aware that there are saboteurs in our midst."

"The only saboteurs we have are the ones Ojukwu invented so he can lock up his opponents and the men whose wives he wants. Did I ever tell you about the Onitsha man who bought up all of the cement we had in the factory shortly after the refugees starting coming back? Ojukwu is having an affair with the man's wife and has just had the man arrested for nothing."

She was tapping her foot on the car floor. She always sounded like Madu when she spoke about His Excellency. Her disdain did not convince Richard; it began when Madu complained that His Excellency had bypassed him and made his junior a commanding officer. If His Excellency had not bypassed Madu, perhaps she would be less critical.

"Do you know how many officers he's locked up? He is so suspicious of his officers that he's using civilians to buy arms. Madu said they just bought some miserable bolt-action rifles in Europe. Really, when Biafra is established, we will have to remove Ojukwu."

"And replace him with who, Madu?"

Kainene laughed, and it pleased and surprised him that she had enjoyed his sarcasm. His foreboding returned, a rumbling rush in his stomach, as they approached Port Harcourt.

"Stop so that we can buy akara and fried fish," Kainene said to the driver, and even the driver's stepping on the brake made Richard nervous.

When they got home, Ikejide said Colonel Madu had called four times.

"I hope nothing is wrong," Kainene said, opening the oil-smeared newspaper package of fried fish and bean cakes. Richard took a still-hot akara and blew on it and told himself that Port Harcourt was safe. Nothing was wrong. The phone rang and he grabbed it and felt his heart begin to jog when he heard Madu's voice.

"How are you? Any problems?" Madu asked.

"No. Why?"

"There's a rumor that Britain supplied five warships to Nigeria, so youths have been burning British shops and houses all over Port Harcourt today. I wanted to be sure you hadn't been bothered. I can send one or two of my boys down."

First, Richard was irritated at the thought that he still was a foreigner who could be attacked, and then he felt grateful for Madu's concern.

"We're fine," he said. "We've just come back from seeing the house in Orlu."

"Oh, good. Let me know if anything develops." Madu paused and spoke to somebody in muffled tones before he came back on the line. "You should write about what the French ambassador said yesterday."

"Yes, of course."

"I was told that Biafrans fought like heroes, but now I know that heroes fight like Biafrans" Madu intoned proudly, as if the compliment was one given him personally and he wanted to make sure Richard knew it.

"Yes, of course," Richard said again. " Port Harcourt is safe, isn't it?"

There was a pause on Madu's end. "Some saboteurs have been arrested and all of them are non-Igbo minorities. I don't know why these people insist on aiding the enemy. But we will overcome. Is Kainene there?"

Richard handed Kainene the phone. The sacrilege of it, that some people could betray Biafra. He remembered the Ijaw and Efik men he had spoken to at a bank in Owerri, who said the Igbo would dominate them when Biafra was established. Richard had told them that a country born from the ashes of injustice would limit its practice of injustice. When they looked at him doubtfully, he mentioned the army general who was Efik, the director who was Ijaw, the minority soldiers who were fighting so brilliantly for the cause. Still, they looked unconvinced.

Richard stayed at home the following days. He wrote about the forest markets and stood often on the veranda, looking down the stretch of road, half expecting a mob of youths to rush toward the house with flaming torches. Kainene had seen one of the burned houses on her way to work. A mild effort, she had called it; they had only blackened the walls. Richard wanted to see it too, to write about it and perhaps link it to the burning of effigies of Wilson and Kosygin he had seen recently at the government field, but he waited for a week to make sure it was safe to be a British man on the road before he left very early in the morning for a tour of the city.