Klerk shook his head in disbelief and disgust. ‘You telling me that you’ve lost your nerve, Carver?’
‘No, just my interest in other people’s dirty laundry.’
‘Please, Sam, it’s not like that,’ Zalika pleaded. ‘This is a matter of principle, of saving lives. It’s totally justifiable.’
‘You think so? From where I’m standing it looks like one man who wants power, another man who wants money and a woman who wants revenge for a ten-year-old crime, and, oh, while we’re at it, can I have all my land back? All those dying, suffering people you keep going on about aren’t the reason for killing Gushungo. They’re the excuse.’
‘So what about everything I told you yesterday?’ Klerk asked. ‘You going to throw all that back in my face?’
‘What, that killing Gushungo and Mabeki will do more for Zalika than any shrink ever could? Like it’s some kind of therapy? Trust me, it isn’t.’
‘I see. Well, if that’s what you think, Carver, there’s no purpose in extending your stay here any further. Terence will arrange a taxi to take you to the airport. I’m sure there will be a flight that’s going somewhere near Geneva.’
‘Thanks. That’s all I need. I appreciate the hospitality, Mr Klerk. It was good seeing you again. You too, Zalika. Mr Tshonga, I wish you the best of luck with your next election.’
Tshonga gave a gentle, knowing smile. ‘Thank you, Mr Carver. But somehow I do not think it will come to that. I believe I have not seen the last of you.’
‘I wouldn’t count on it.’
‘Think about it, Sam,’ Zalika urged. Then her voice turned much harder as she added, more like an ultimatum than a request, ‘Think very carefully about what you’re throwing away.’
Carver had thought about that. He’d very nearly discarded all his rational, carefully marshalled arguments for turning down the job, just for the chance to be next to Zalika Stratten. It had taken a serious effort of will to turn his back on everything she had to offer. He had no answer for her now; no explanation that would justify his rejection of her.
Klerk, meanwhile, having got nowhere playing hardball, tried the softly-softly approach. ‘There are still a few days before the Gushungos fly to Hong Kong. If you change your mind, the offer’s still open.’
Carver nodded in acknowledgement. ‘I’ll find my own way out,’ he said.
41
Carver didn’t leave Campden Hall quite as quickly as he’d anticipated. Just before he got to the front door, he heard a low, urgent voice behind him: ‘Mr Carver! Please! Wait!’
He turned to see Brianna Latrelle striding towards him, her head darting from side to side as she made sure there was no one else around to see her.
‘Did you agree?’ she whispered again, even more quietly, when she’d caught up with Carver. She reached out a slender brown arm and grabbed his wrist in a surprisingly strong grip. ‘Whatever they asked you to do, did you agree?’
‘I’m leaving,’ said Carver. ‘I have a plane to catch.’
‘So you said no?’ She relaxed her hand a fraction and her shoulders dropped as the tension in them abated. ‘I hope so… for your sake.’ Her hand tightened again. ‘I don’t know exactly what it is you guys have been talking about. But just the way everyone’s been acting, it gives me a real bad feeling. Before you arrived, Wendell and Tshonga were shut away for hours, no one else allowed near the room. Then Zalika, dressing up like that, faking you out… I can’t tell you why it bothers me. I mean, Wendell has meetings all the time. Why should this be any different? I guess it’s just my female intuition. Silly, huh?’
Carver removed her hand from his arm as gently as he could. Brianna Latrelle meant well, but she wasn’t in any position to know what had really been going on.
‘I’ve got to go,’ he said, not unkindly.
By the time he’d walked through the doors, he’d already put Brianna Latrelle out of his mind and switched his attention to his travel plans.
The last flight out of Luton to Geneva was already about to leave by the time Carver’s taxi pulled away. He went online, checked the schedules and found a British Airways flight out of Heathrow leaving in two hours’ time. There were seats left in business class. Carver bought one and checked in online.
Heathrow Terminal Five was a hundred and eleven miles from Klerk’s front door. He took four fifty-pound notes from his wallet.
‘Yours if you get me there in eighty minutes or less,’ he told the driver, who was called Asif.
The money made no difference. There were roadworks on the M11 with a forty-mile-an-hour limit and speedcams. Then they hit traffic on the M25. Asif clocked a hundred and twenty trying to make up for lost time, but arrived fractionally too late for Carver to make the plane. He gave him the two hundred anyway, and got another ticket at the airport: a Swissair flight to Zurich.
By the time he got there, the only way of getting to Geneva was the train. It left at four minutes past eleven and arrived a little before half-past two in the morning. Carver caught a cab from the station to the Old Town, went up to his apartment and was asleep before his head hit the pillow.
He had turned off his mobile as he got on the Zurich flight and had not bothered to turn it back on. He had a feeling Zalika might call him to try to persuade him to change his mind about the Gushungo job, or just give him hell for saying no. His refusal of Klerk’s offer must have felt to her like a personal rejection. She’d offered herself and he’d walked away. She wasn’t likely to be too happy about that. And if he told her the truth, that his decision was nothing personal, it was only likely to make matters worse.
It wasn’t till he woke up around nine that he finally opened up his connection to the outside world again and heard Justus’s message.
And his first reaction was that he’d made a mistake. It wasn’t Zalika playing tricks. It was Wendell Klerk.
42
They came back for Justus Iluko in the morning. He wasn’t surprised. Even the ignorant apes who ran the local branch of the National Intelligence Organization, the secret police who enforced Gushungo’s never-ending campaign of fear and oppression, would have worked out that if they had a man’s children, they would not be safe until they had him too. Justus let them come. He took it for granted that he was a dead man. And he reasoned that the nearest jail was at Buweku, some thirty miles away. Canaan and Farayi were almost certainly being held there. If he were taken to Buweku too, that would be his best chance of getting close to them, however fleetingly, before they all vanished for good.
All he wanted was to speak to Carver first. Justus knew that there was nothing his friend could do now. But perhaps, if he could only tell Carver what had happened, that might, in the end, give him some hope of revenge.
‘I know you’re a ruthless bastard, Klerk, but I never thought you’d stoop that low.’
‘What the fuck, Carver – what’s this “stoop that low”? What are you talking about, man?’
Carver stopped pacing round his living room and spoke with steely clarity. ‘I’m talking about the message I got from Justus Iluko.’
‘Justus who?’