‘Naturally,’ Carver replied. ‘There is one chalice of wine, shared by all. The wafers, too, are the same for everyone.’
‘Who is the first to eat and drink?’
‘I am. The celebrant is always the first to receive the sacrament.’
Mabeki thought for a moment.
‘Is there a problem?’ Carver asked, feigning bemusement at this line of questioning. ‘I’m sure I conduct the service in very much the same style as the Reverend Gibson. The text is taken from the Book of Common Worship. The procedure is absolutely standard. Well, I say that, but of course there will be some difference between those who prefer the traditional form of words and the more modern version. Personally, I confess I hanker after the poetry of-’
‘I get the point,’ hissed Mabeki. ‘Now, make your preparations. The President and the First Lady will be with you in five minutes.’
He stalked out of the room, leaving Carver with the two bodyguards watching over him as he busied himself with his briefcase filled with holiness and death.
59
In Sandton, Wendell Klerk had woken early, keen to see the text flash on his screen that would tell him Carver had succeeded in his mission. He lay in bed with the lights off and curtains drawn, so as not to disturb the sleeping figure of Brianna Latrelle beside him, clutching his phone and snatching glances at its screen as anxiously as a nervous adulterer waiting for a message from his lover.
Because he was awake, he heard the sound of the. 22 being fired. An average civilian could easily have mistaken those rounds fired in very quick succession for the popping of a backfiring engine. Wendell Klerk, however, was not an average civilian. He had fought in a vicious civil war and the instincts he acquired then had never entirely deserted him, even in his sleep.
He sat up in bed and listened for a moment. His gate had been designed and engineered to be as noiseless as possible, so as not to disturb anyone in the house. Yet he thought he could hear the soft sound of its rubber wheels rolling over the tarmac of his drive and the barely audible purr of an engine. Then nothing.
Klerk did not hesitate. He pressed the emergency button by his bed. He had always allowed for the possibility that his guardhouse might be overrun. The emergency button was linked by its own dedicated line direct to the control room at XPT Security’s headquarters, and it required immediate armed response. From the moment he touched it, the clock was running. Six minutes, maximum, was all he now needed to survive.
He leaned across his kingsize bed and shook Brianna’s shoulder. She moaned softly and shrugged his hand away. He shook her again.
‘Go ’way,’ she mumbled.
Klerk gripped more tightly and gave her a single, much rougher shake. ‘Get up,’ he hissed. ‘Do it! Now!’
She raised her body on one elbow and peered at him blearily through the darkness. ‘What’s happening?’ There was an edge of alarm to her voice.
‘I don’t know,’ Klerk replied, ‘but I want you to go to the panic room. Don’t argue. Just go. Now!’
Brianna didn’t make a fuss. She knew her man well enough to realize that he wouldn’t give that kind of order without a very good reason. But as she stopped to grab the satin dressing gown she kept draped over the end of the bed, she asked, ‘What about you?’
Klerk was out of bed now, too. He slept in a pair of pyjama trousers, worn for precisely this sort of occasion. He liked to tell dinner guests that he never wanted to be stark bollock naked when he came face to face with an intruder: ‘I wouldn’t want to frighten the bastard too much.’ Now he walked over to Brianna, gave her a quick, fierce hug, kissed her cheek and said, ‘Don’t worry about me, worry about the other guy. Now get out of here!’
She raised a hand to touch his face, then sped across the room to her walk-in wardrobe. At the back, hidden behind her ballgowns, was a small touchscreen. She placed her hand against it and a hitherto-invisible door in the back wall of the wardrobe swung open, like the entrance to Narnia. It did not lead to a magic kingdom but a small chamber, roughly ten feet square, that was essentially an air-conditioned, bullet- and bombproof bank vault designed to safeguard humans rather then cash. When she swung the door closed behind her she was as safe as a gold bar at Fort Knox.
Wendell Klerk had never intended to use the panic room himself. The reason he gave in public – true as far as it went – was that he didn’t want to be hidden away like a coward while someone was violating his property. It offended his manly pride. His private reason was never revealed to anyone, Brianna and Zalika included. He’d once been in the room just to see what it was like. He’d closed the door and suddenly found himself so overwhelmed by claustrophobia that it made his heart race, his body break out in a muck sweat and his chest heave as he desperately tried to breathe. The panic room felt to him like a tomb, and it scared him far more than any human ever could. Under no circumstances would he ever go in there again.
Once he knew Brianna was safe, Klerk switched his attention to the defence of his property. The panic room was not the only secret hidden in the walk-in wardrobe. On the single wall reserved for his clothes stood a large chest of drawers, in which he kept underwear, T-shirts, sweatshirts and sweaters. From the bottom drawer, hidden beneath two piles of neatly folded wool and cashmere jumpers, he removed a brutally simple, almost crude-looking black shotgun. Then he got out a circular drum magazine containing thirty-two twelve-gauge cartridges and attached it beneath the gun. What he now had was a fully loaded AA-12 automatic shotgun, capable of firing at a rate of three hundred rounds a minute.
Klerk had once met the man who’d developed it, a silver-haired engineer from Piney Flats, Tennessee, by the name of Jerry Baber. Baber hadn’t minced his words when he described the AA-12. He’d simply said, ‘It’s probably the most powerful weapon in the world. There’s no way that anyone within two hundred yards could face this weapon and survive it. There’s so much lead in the air that it destroys everything in its path.’ Klerk had immediately bought one for every property, yacht and jet he owned in the world.
Now, holding it in his hands, he felt like a human tank. As he eased open the door that led from the master bedroom suite to the first-floor landing, he heard a crash of glass from downstairs. A greedy, wolfish grin spread across his face. ‘Bring it on,’ he whispered to himself. He almost felt sorry for anyone in his path.
Wendell Klerk went back to war. He used his familiarity with the house to choose his killing ground and occupy the best firing position. He waited until his enemy, four of them, had come within range and then he hit them with overwhelming firepower.
He just didn’t account for the possibility that there were five intruders in his home that morning.
60
Carver kissed the red silk stole and draped it round his neck. He took out the cruet filled with wine, the chalice and finally the pyx, the weapon with which he would carry out the killing.
As he took out his service book, Carver began to feel nervous for the first time; but these were the nerves any performer – actor, athlete or assassin – needs if they are to do their best work. They sharpened Carver’s senses and honed his concentration. He had no doubt now about the rights or wrongs of what he was about to do. Once the decision to take the job had been made, the argument was over so far as he was concerned. He had made up his mind and he would stick with it.
From outside the room, Carver could hear the sound of footsteps and respectfully lowered voices coming down the stairs. His stomach tightened. The action was about to begin. The door of the living room opened and the bodyguards snapped to attention as Moses Mabeki came in, then stood to one side to let his master and mistress through.