Christ, had he given one of the guards the dummy wafer?
Carver told himself to calm down. There were still seven wafers left in the box. One of them, with any luck, was safe. Six to one: hardly needle-in-haystack time. So just look.
He riffled around the inside of the pyx with his right index finger. Tina Wong was looking at him with a quizzical expression.
‘Close your eyes, my child,’ Carver said.
She obeyed.
A cough came from one of the chairs behind him, the wheezing cough of an elderly man. It tailed away in a dry retching sound.
At last, Carver found the wafer he was looking for and halved it.
The Chinese girls were kneeling in front of him, Tina Wong perfectly composed, the other leaning to the side, eyes wide open, trying to see round him and find out what was happening up at the front.
Now Faith Gushungo had started coughing.
‘The body of Christ,’ said Carver, firmly, and shoved half a wafer into the hands of Tina Wong.
‘Amen,’ she said, and put it in her mouth.
Carver stepped a pace to one side, blocking the view of the second maid.
‘The body of Christ,’ he said.
The bodyguards were starting to suffer now. One was bent over, clutching at his guts.
‘This bad!’ the maid said, casting horrified glances at the sickening men before throwing the half-wafer to the floor. ‘You give us bad bread!’
‘You’re fine,’ Carver hissed. ‘Now get out of here.’
The girl didn’t move, just knelt there.
‘Scram!’ Carver said.
Tina Wong jumped to her feet and started dragging the servant away, screaming at her in Chinese.
Carver spared them no more time. He could hear movement behind him. He spun round on one foot, uncurled his fist and punched the heel of his hand into the face of one of the guards, who had got to his feet and was clumsily trying to reach inside his suit for the handgun holstered to his ribcage.
The blow snapped the bodyguard’s head sideways, straining his neck ligaments and sending his brain bouncing round his skull like a pinball against the bumpers. The guard reeled backwards, collided with Faith Gushungo’s chair and landed in a heap on top of his mistress, who was physically incapable of resisting his momentum. The two of them collapsed on to the floor where Henderson Gushungo was already lying like a landed fish, gasping for air, incapable of any movement bar the occasional spasm of his body or limbs.
Moses Mabeki stood quite still a couple of feet inside the door to the master bedroom, watching Zalika Stratten. She had not noticed he was there. All her attention was on the bag. She had been unable to resist opening it and pulling out an uncut diamond the size of a quail’s egg. It sat in her palm, the light glinting off its countless rough, irregular surfaces, just waiting for the diamond cutter’s skill to bring it to full, sparkling life. Mabeki was happy to let her enjoy the sensation of holding such a magnificent gemstone. It was a pleasure to watch her and almost to enjoy the self-denial of delaying for those last few seconds before he took possession of her again.
Finally, he could wait no longer. He coughed quietly, as if politely clearing his throat.
Zalika spun round, her eyes widening as she saw Mabeki and the gun in his hand.
‘I think you’d better give me the diamonds,’ he said, quite calmly, watching the emotions play across her features as she took in the reality of his presence, and his actual flesh-and-blood appearance.
He crooked his right index finger and wordlessly gestured for her to come to him.
Even after ten years, the obedience drilled into her in Mozambique had not entirely gone away. The fiery pride and independence that had animated Zalika during the time she had spent with Carver vanished as swiftly as a desert mirage. She went to him without the slightest act of defiance.
‘Put the diamonds in your bag and then give it to me,’ Mabeki said.
She did as he asked. Mabeki slung the bag over his left shoulder and then, without warning, smashed the grip of his pistol, clasped in his right hand, into her temple.
Zalika was taken completely by surprise. She made a noise halfway between a gasp and a whimper and tottered unsteadily on her feet.
Mabeki grabbed her round the neck with his left arm. He pressed the gun to her head with his right.
‘Come with me,’ he hissed into her ear. ‘Time we dealt with your boyfriend.’
64
Downstairs in the living room, the fourth of the guards was the only one still standing, although he was already losing his coordination. Carver slammed his left elbow into the guard’s Adam’s apple, let him follow the others to the ground, then crouched over him. He placed one hand over the man’s throat, gently squeezing the already damaged airway, while his other hand felt for the handle of the man’s gun and pulled it out of its black leather shoulder holster. He shoved the gun in his waistband and felt around on the other side of the chest. The ribs were moving as the guard made his last feeble attempts to breathe. His feet flopped about as he tried to kick himself free. Carver ignored all that. His only interest was the two clips of ammunition in the holster’s second pocket. He took them out and placed them in his jacket pocket, then got to his feet.
Henderson Gushungo was silent and motionless now. In his last moments, he had coughed blood on to the marble tile in front of him. He had also evacuated his bowels and the stench of it was now hanging heavily in the air. The great dictator, dying in his own blood and shit. His wife, half her body trapped beneath her bodyguard’s, made a weak mewling sound and with one last desperate effort reached out to grab her husband’s lifeless hand.
From outside the room, Carver heard the sound of footsteps running down the stairs and into the hall. There was a high-pitched scream; the sound of two shots being fired; more screams, wounded ones this time; then two more shots.
There had been three women left alive in the house. Some, if not all of them, were now dead. But which ones?
Carver started to move past the twitching, gasping bodies of the dying guards towards the door of the living room, his gun out in front of him, ready to fire at any moment.
Then Carver felt something grab at his ankle. He stumbled to the ground, wincing as he cracked his kneecaps on the hard marble surface. He turned his head and saw that one of the bodyguards had somehow summoned the strength to reach out and wrap a hand round his leg. Carver kicked out with his other leg, hitting the guard’s nose and feeling the crack as it broke beneath his heel. There was a gurgling sound as air left the guard’s lungs, a final breath. But he did not let go. The dead fingers still had Carver in their grip.
Up ahead, Carver saw a shadow against the wall by the door as Mabeki’s head bobbed into the doorway, then disappeared from view. Carver fired two quick shots towards the doorway then writhed desperately to change his position as Mabeki’s gun-hand appeared.
Mabeki shot four rounds in quick succession. One went straight through the giant window on the far side of the room. Two ploughed into the marble floor, one so close to Carver that he could feel the stabs of tiny, needle-sharp splinters of stone against the side of his face. The fourth hit the glossy bald head of the man whose hand was clasped round Carver’s ankle, entering just above his nose and blowing away the back of his skull.
The fingers jerked open with a convulsive twitch.
Carver jumped to his feet, ran to the wall next to the door and pressed his back to it. Then, with his newly acquired gun held vertically next to his head, he slid sideways along the wall towards the door.
That was when he heard the single word ‘Carver!’
Zalika had survived!
Carver could make out the sound of feet scrabbling for purchase on the marble floor. Now he too had to move fast. He abandoned his cautious progress and dashed to the door, throwing himself forward into the hall then rolling to one side as Mabeki fired into the space where he had just been.