This part of the narrative is set in London, where the couple share her flat in South Kensington, and southern England, where Hope works as an ecologist on an intriguing hedgerow mapping project in Dorset.

He then breaks into hysterics in an Italian restaurant back in London and matters are made worse when Hope discovers he is having an affair with the wife of a Polish university colleague.

They are both genuinely fond of each other during their time together, with Usman making plans to buy one of the run-down houses on the beach where they go to relax and swim, until he meets an untimely end on one of his missions.

Hope herself gets caught up in the civil war when she and Ian Vail are captured by Dr Amilcar and his atomique boum volleyball team, who commandeer their Land Rover to return more quickly to the UNAMO stronghold in the Musave River Territories following a failed offensive against the Federal Army.

Accompanying this are the author's detailed descriptions of chaos theory, the social and professional wrangling between the different project members working at the Grosso Avore Research Centre (Ian and Roberta Vail, the thoroughly dislikeable Anton Hauser and the Mallabars themselves), along with the human-like behaviour of the chimpanzees as one group sets out to destroy the other.

The aggressors' motive is to ensure the return of the alpha female, Rita Lu, to her original group which has become dysfunctional during her absence, and these chimpanzee wars only come to an end as a result of human intervention.