‘Ja, I do, as it happens. He’s got a court date this afternoon, his kids too. The lawyer’s managed to combine all their cases into one. She wants to establish them all as victims of the same conspiracy. So now they’ve got a bail hearing. Not that they’ll be offered any, of course.’
‘How far is the court from the jail?’
‘Dunno, man. But we can easily get a streetmap of Buweku and find out.’
‘And they’ll be taken there by car or truck?’
‘I guess.’
‘Then that’s when we’ll grab them. How soon can you get us to Buweku?’
Parkes almost gagged on the smoke as he burst out laughing. ‘I’ll say one thing for you, Carver,’ he gasped. ‘You don’t fucking hang about, do you?’
80
‘Hello, Mary, how have you been?’
Zalika Stratten smiled wearily as she greeted the woman she had last seen a decade ago. That day, the day her old world was destroyed, she had been a plain, gawky girl of seventeen and Mary Ncube a junior housemaid. Now Mary was the housekeeper, a plump, imperious woman who ruled her domestic kingdom with a warm heart for those who stuck to her rules and a tongue like a rhino-hide whip for those who did not. She had spent her whole working life catering first to her country’s richest family and then to its president, his family and his guests. Over the years, she had developed an air of haughty self-assurance that made her seem almost grander than the people she served. But when she caught sight of Zalika Stratten, all that was overwhelmed by a wave of emotion.
‘Miss Zalika!’ Mary cried, frantically trying to wipe away the tears that were flooding down her round cheeks. ‘It is so wonderful to see you again. Let me look at you.’ She stepped back and examined Zalika through watery eyes. ‘Oh, you are so pretty now. But so thin, and with such dark circles under your eyes. And what is this?’ Mary pointed at the scratches and bruises on Zalika’s upper arm, left by the nylon straps that had bound her tight to the stretcher on which she’d been carried on to the plane in Macau. ‘Have these jackals been mistreating you?’
Zalika looked wearily at the armed men, cradling their AK-47s, who were arrayed in a semi-circle behind her in the hall of the old Stratten house. ‘I’m sorry about my new boyfriends,’ she said. ‘I can’t seem to get rid of them.’
She tried to smile. It was supposed to be a joke. But her brain was numbed by exhaustion, stress and the after-effects of the drugs still working their way through her system.
‘Pah!’ Mary jeered, dismissing the men with a single, withering sweep of her eyes. ‘Forget them. You come with me. I have made a bed for you in your old room. I am afraid it does not look the same any more. Our First Lady, Mrs Gushungo, insisted that she had to redecorate. But if you close your eyes, you can imagine that it is just the same, with all your tennis prizes and riding rosettes on the wall, and your pictures of pop stars who look like little white girls, even though-’
‘That’s enough!’
The slurring hiss of Moses Mabeki’s voice did not so much cut across Mary Ncube’s words as slide through them. But the effect was the same. Mary fell silent and the air in the room seemed to chill as Mabeki walked past his men and up to Zalika.
‘I must go back to Sindele,’ he told her. ‘I have a government to appoint. A series of incompetent, gutless buffoons will beg me for the chance to become President. They will all be wasting their time. I have made my choice, and once he has been announced, I will tell him what to say at his first press conference tomorrow. As for you, my dear, I have my best men guarding you. They are all armed and will use their weapons without hesitation.’
He bent down till his face was alongside hers, his gnarled and pockmarked skin brushing against her soft, smooth complexion. Then he whispered wetly into her ear, ‘Rest assured that I will be back, Zalika… my darling. I have spent the last ten years waiting for this moment, thinking of what I would do to you, planning every detail. I’ve got a very special night in store for you. And I want you to be ready.’
81
‘Shall I tell you one good thing about my job? No one ever gives any crap to the one guy in the company who wears a gun to work!’
Sonny Parkes roared with laughter at his own wit, the four men he’d picked for the mission chuckled dutifully, and Carver managed a grin. It was plainly a line that got used on a regular basis, but he wasn’t about to complain. Not when he was sitting in the cabin of the propeller-driven De Havilland Twin Otter that was currently flying him at a stately one hundred and ninety miles an hour over the southern African bush towards the Malemban city of Buweku.
‘What did you tell them?’ Carver asked.
‘The truth, or as close as I could get to it. I said I was urgently pursuing a lead on Mr Klerk’s murder. I also said that this was a matter that had to be handled independently. In our organization, Carver, the word “independent” has a very special meaning. And do you know who’s responsible for that meaning?’
‘No idea.’
‘You are. When you went into Mozambique ten years ago and got Miss Stratten the first time-’
‘I never thought there’d be a second one.’
‘I’ll bet. Anyway, Mr Klerk was very impressed. He realized that with Africa being the way it is – you know, total fucking chaos nine-tenths of the time – there was no point even trying to rely on governments and official authorities to, you know, protect you or uphold the law. A man had to be able to act independently.’
‘Which is what you and your blokes do.’
‘Correct.’
‘Let’s get on with the independent plan for today then. Were you able to get what I needed?’
Parkes grinned. ‘You mean apart from the shower and the change of clothes? Man, you needed those. Smelled like a rotting warthog when you got off that flight!’
‘Apart from that…’
‘Yeah, I got most of it, and I got us a cover, too. Klerk’s still got – sorry, had – businesses in Malemba. They’re all run by locals these days, because that’s the only way you can keep the government from seizing all your assets. But they’re actually controlled by us through a bunch of shell companies and offshore trusts. Point is, no one in Malemba’s going to connect them with Wendell Klerk, which is good for us right now. Same with this plane. As far as anyone in Buweku is concerned, we work for an independent security contractor and we’ve come to pitch our services to a potential client in Malemba. When we get to the airport, I’ll show the customs people the flight cases containing all the fancy audiovisual equipment we’re going to use for our presentation. They’ll shake their heads and go tut-tut. Then they’ll explain that it is against government policy to allow the importation of such products because it makes it harder for local Malemban industry to compete. Of course, there is no Malemban industry any more, but I will nod all the same and say that I quite understand, and would one thousand US dollars cover the import duty? We will then be waved through. And so will the weapons – including, you may be pleased to hear, a couple of AA-12s – that are hidden in the cases beneath the projector, the lights and the PA system.’
‘You’ve got some non-lethal stuff, too?’
‘Yeah, yeah… I can’t believe you’re so pussy. What’s wrong with just blowing the bastards away?’
‘Nothing, when they’re the right bastards. But I don’t want to kill innocent people. I leave that kind of thing to people like Mabeki.’
‘That’s a very noble principle. I just hope it doesn’t kill you.’
‘Hasn’t yet. How about transport?’
‘A minibus to meet us at the airport; one three-ton truck; some anonymous Japanese four-by-fours to get us in and out of the target area; and three drivers who know their way through every rat-run in Buweku. Yeah, we’ve got transport all right.’
‘Outstanding,’ said Carver. ‘Right, let’s go over that plan.’