Someone had tipped Mabeki off about the entire plan, someone who had been willing to sell out Carver and Zalika. But who? Had Klerk been lying all along about his love for his niece? If Mabeki had offered him a better deal than Patrick Tshonga had done, would Klerk have put money before family? Carver didn’t want to believe that, but he had long since learned the hard way that men who truly love money always value it more highly than any mere human affection. And what of Tshonga himself? Had he just been playing Klerk, leading him on with the promise of easy money, when all along he’d cut a deal with Mabeki? It would be an abdication of all Tshonga’s principles to ally himself with Gushungo’s right-hand man. But for anyone who really wanted power in Malemba that might be the smart, cynical move to make.
Whatever had happened, the answer to the puzzle lay in the same place to which Moses Mabeki was certainly travelling, and where he would hide Zalika Stratten until he had done with her: Malemba. Carver had no choice. He had to go there, even if it meant going alone and unprotected against overwhelming odds. He thought of calling Klerk and Tshonga, but decided against it. If one of them really had double-crossed him, letting them know he was on his way was the last thing he should do.
When he got back out on the street, Carver walked down to the harbour promenade. Taxis were dropping off tourists. He hailed one of them.
‘Take me to the airport,’ he said.
74
The timing had been split second, and even then it had been a close-run thing. But with the help of two of Fisherman Zheng’s men, both armed and ready to use their weapons, Moses Mabeki had managed to get Zalika Stratten into the delivery van parked just outside the Gushungos’ house before Carver came out of the building. From that point on it had been a simple case of misdirection. He’d made a show of slamming the boot shut loud enough for Carver to hear, and standing right by it so that the Englishman would come to the obvious conclusion that the girl was in there. Then he’d taken the scenic route, leading Carver down Route Twisk, while the van went on the fastest possible highways from Hon Ka Mansions to Aberdeen.
It had gone straight to the waterfront where Zheng’s men opened up the rear cargo, removed Zalika Stratten and led her down a flight of quayside steps to a small motorboat that was bobbing on the water below. She’d lost her ridiculous sunglasses as well as her phone. Her hair had come unpinned and now hung round her shoulders. She looked much more like her true self, but dressed more cheaply than usual.
The boat had sped away, jinking between the other craft crammed into the narrow stretch of water between Aberdeen and Ap Lei Chau island on the other side of the harbour. It had pulled up alongside the streamlined, dart-like hull of a Sunseeker Predator 52 performance motoryacht moored off the Aberdeen Marina Club. Once again, there were armed men all around Zalika as she was led aboard.
The motorboat had then sped away again, only to return fifteen minutes later with Moses Mabeki.
The Sunseeker weighed anchor, eased its way through the harbour and then, when it reached the open sea, the skipper opened up the throttle and it raced away westwards, hitting thirty knots as it ate up the twenty-five-mile journey to the former Portuguese colony of Macau.
The boat was one of Fishermen Zheng’s favourite toys, and this voyage gave him particular pleasure. He had brought a diamond dealer along to inspect the stones Mabeki had agreed to sell him. The dealer assured him, in a Hoklo dialect incomprehensible even to the vast majority of Chinese, that they were worth almost twenty million US dollars. On Friday night, Zheng and Mabeki had shaken hands at six million, subject to delivery and acceptance. Now the money was paid directly into Mabeki’s personal account in the Cayman Islands. Everyone was happy.
Mabeki made his excuses and went to the cabin where the next stage of the extraction plan he had agreed with Zheng was due to take place. A doctor – Hoklo, like all Zheng’s associates, and thus guaranteed to keep his silence – injected Zalika with a heavy dose of nitrazepam, which knocked her out cold.
They were met at the Macau shore by an ambulance driven by two more of Zheng’s men, dressed as uniformed paramedics. The ambulance took Mabeki and his unconscious companion to Macau International Airport, which is specifically geared to the private aviation needs of the high-rollers who gamble their money at Macau’s twenty-eight casinos. There, a Gulfstream 550 ultra-long-range jet, equipped with medical facilities and with a doctor and nurse on its crew, was waiting to fly Mabeki and the comatose Zalika to a medical facility near Paris. No one enquired why she needed to travel so far for treatment. The airport’s officials had long since become accustomed to the foibles of the rich.
An hour into the flight, the pilot was re-routed on to a new southwesterly course, towards Sindele airport, Malemba.
They were barely two thousand miles from their destination when Zalika Stratten began very groggily to wake up. She cast bleary eyes around the cabin and asked where on earth she was.
75
Gatekeeper Wu had been told very clearly where his duties lay. At half-past ten on Sunday morning, when the delivery van had first pulled up by the barricade at the entrance to Hon Ka Mansions, the two men inside had assured him that they knew precisely where he, his wife and three small children lived. They’d made it plain that not only his life but those of his family were at stake. If he wished to live, he would turn his eyes from anyone who came in or out of the development over the next ninety minutes. If he was approached by any policemen, he should play dumb and claim not to remember anything about any of the cars or people who’d gone past his post. It was made very clear that the boss for whom the men worked had contacts within the police who would tell him in an instant if Wu had told them anything of interest. On the other hand, his discretion would be much appreciated and his family would be greatly rewarded.
Wu had got the message.
The first police car had arrived shortly after midday. The officers inside told Wu they were responding to a report of gunfire. Wu assured them, truthfully, that he had heard none. One of the cops had shrugged and told him he didn’t expect there was any reason to be concerned. The woman who had reported it said she and her husband had waited for more than half an hour before calling the police because they were arguing about what the sound had been.
It took the two cops almost ten minutes to determine that the noise had come from the Gushungo entrance and another five to decide they should force their way into the house. Twenty seconds later, they discovered the two bodies of the maids in the hallway, followed by the Gushungos and their four bodyguards in the living room.
The cops reported back to their station. The chief inspector, who was the senior duty officer, took the instant decision that he did not wish to be in any way responsible for the investigation of a head of state’s violent death on Hong Kong soil. He got straight on to the Hong Kong Police Force’s headquarters, where a chief superintendent went straight to the top, disturbing the Commissioner of Police, who was standing over a tricky putt on the fourth hole of the Ocean Nine course at the Clearwater Bay Golf and Country Club.
By happy chance, the commissioner’s playing partner was the Secretary for Security, a member of the Executive Council that assisted the Chief Executive of Hong Kong in governing the territory. The two men immediately decided that every available police resource would be devoted to investigating the deaths at Hon Ka Mansions. They also agreed that it would be most unwise to alarm the public, or jeopardize the international reputation of Hong Kong, by making any statement whatsoever until the perpetrators responsible had been identified and, if possible, apprehended.