“He’s been calling every night for a week from Entebbe in the hope that we would pick him up. But as you know we haven’t been using the radio much, and so we haven’t happened to hear him.”
“All right,” said Bob, his patience thoroughly exhausted. “I heard that. Now will you talk turkey?” And reaching out a big arm, he pulled Frank against his chest and began to knuckle his head with his free hand in the familiar fashion known as administering the “Dutch rub.”
“Ouch. Leggo, you big bully,” gasped Frank. “Will you talk straight?”
“Uh-huh.”
Bob released him. “Now speak up,” he said belligerently, “or who knows what’ll happen to you?”
“He wants us to go with him to the Mountains of the Moon?”
“Are you trying to—”
Frank backed off, laughing, hands held up defensively in front of him.
“No, I’m not trying to kid anybody,” he said. “Well, what’s this ‘Mountains of the Moon’ stuff, then?”
“Not the Moon in the sky, Bob,” said Frank. “But a mountainous district in the Belgian Conga constituting the very heart of Africa.”