Brazzaville Beach by William Boyd Read Free Book Online Page A

information, where there were no secrets. In these games, be said, there was always an optimum strategy. That was what he was looking for: optimum strategies. Chess is a game of perfect information, so is tick-tack-toe. Games of perfect information can be infinitely complex or comparatively straightforward. The only condition was that there had to be no secrets. Poker isn’t a game of perfect information. Poker is a two-person, zero-sum game without perfect information. “Just like marriage,” Hope said. He still disagreed .
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    I was ready, early the next morning, when Ian Vail came by to pick me up. There was a dirt road that took you a mile or so into the heart of the northern area. It saved a lot of time: a fifth to a quarter of my day was spent in commuting to and fro.
    As we drove off Vail told me that he had sent two of his field assistants ahead at first light with walkie-talkies to look for the chimps. With a bit of luck, he said, we might be able to cover most if not all of the northern chimp population in a day. I was very much aware of the aftereffects of my encounter with Mallabar the night before. I asked Vail if he had spoken of our trip to anyone. He looked at me, a little surprised.
    â€œNo,” he said. “Why?”
    â€œMallabar thinks it wasn’t a baby chimp. That body. He says it was a baboon.”
    â€œAnd you don’t agree.”
    â€œIt’s not a question of agreeing. I’m right, he’s wrong.”
    Vail made a face. “Look, Hope, maybe you shouldn’t tell me any more, you know? Eugene has been extraordinarily…I just don’t want to have to take sides.”
    I smiled to myself: very Ian Vail. “Oh, don’t worry,” I said. “I’ll keep your name out of it. Just a professional disagreement.”
    â€œHe must have his reasons. I mean, if you’re right.”
    â€œI am and he has. Though I’ve no idea what they are.”
    I sensed Vail’s deepening worry: what was he getting into here? To what extent, by aiding me in this way, might he be going counter to his benefactor’s wishes?
    â€œIt’s awkward for me, that’s all,” he said feebly. “With Roberta and all that.”
    Roberta Vail. Ian’s American wife and Mallabar’s amanuensis and uncredited coauthor. Roberta worshiped Mallabar—the term was not too strong—and everyone knew it, even though her adoration was couched in terms of proper professional awe. Perhaps, I thought now, it was Roberta’s fervent devotion to Eugene that had made Ian Vail try to kiss me that day…. I realized, also, that Roberta had better not learn of this trip—not because she distrusted her husband (she didn’t), but because of its implicit disloyalty to the God Eugene. However, that was one confidence I knew our Ian wouldn’t divulge.
    We parked the Land-Rover and set off up the path into the low hills that climbed toward the grasslands of the plateau. We were now right in the middle of the Grosso Arvore National Park, an area of approximately one hundred square miles. Our particularterritory, where the northern group of chimpanzees were situated, was smaller, a strip of forest and scrub approximately ten miles long and two miles wide. It supported a fluctuating population of between thirty and forty chimpanzees—now reduced somewhat by the migration of my southerners.
    About half of the northern chimps had been spotted by one of Vail’s assistants, so we were informed over our walkie-talkies. We made good progress. It took us only about half an hour to reach them. I noticed how the going here in the north was far easier; there was little of the thick forest or dense undergrowth that I encountered in the south.
    We were lucky to find so many of the chimpanzees together at one site. The reason was that three large dalbergia trees grew here and the flowers were in bud. I counted fourteen chimpanzees sitting