"Robin turned slightly with barely controlled rage, not deliberately elbowing Melingu in the ribs, but making no effort to stop himself. The computer technician. toppled backwards, further and further away. And then blackness, darkness, nothing." Zambia in the summer of 1999: Robin Carver is a volunteer medical student at the Chisale District Hospital. Within days of his arrival, he meets Yotham Banda, laboratory technician and local witchdoctor. But is the beguiling stranger all he pretends to be? On a hill-walking excursion, Robin's nightmares are realised when Melingu Mwamba falls to his death. Convinced he is Melingu's murderer, Robin becomes embroiled in a chain of events involving kidnapping, espionage and the W.E.B. - an illegal militant organisation opposed to land-redistribution in Zimbabwe. But, in his desperate need to escape, has Robin overlooked one crucial factor? .that everywhere he looks he sees the witchdoctor of Chisale.