Dictator

50



London is arguably the most racially diverse city in the world. Heathrow handles more international passengers than any other airport, anywhere. It follows that there is nowhere on earth with as rich and concentrated a tapestry of ethnicities as the airport’s overcrowded passenger terminals: they are their very own rainbow nation. It would take a very unusual human being indeed to warrant a second glance. So neither Samuel Carver nor Zalika Stratten paid any attention whatsoever to the tall, shaven-headed African standing by a suitcase a few steps away with a telephone pressed to his face as they checked in their baggage for the Thursday-morning Cathay Pacific flight to Hong Kong.

Carver’s mind was torn between the beautiful woman standing in line next to him and the job he was preparing to undertake. He had never visited Hong Kong before and spent much of the flight engrossed in maps and guidebooks: partly a professional familiarizing himself with the surroundings of his next mission, partly a tourist intrigued by one of the world’s most fascinating cities, a tiny oasis of something approaching capitalist democracy within the great totalitarian monolith of communist China.

Although it was surrounded by a mass of small outlying islands, the heart of Hong Kong consisted of three sections. The first was Hong Kong Island, the site of the first British occupation in 1841 and still the political and financial heart of the city. Across Victoria Harbour, on the Chinese mainland, stood Kowloon, one of the most crowded places on the planet, where up to a hundred thousand people squeezed into every square mile. North of Kowloon, past a band of hills now preserved as a string of country parks and lakes, came the New Territories, land acquired by the British from the Chinese in 1898. Here, in the outlying district of Tai Po, was where the Gushungos had their bolthole. Carver took a good long look at the maps, memorizing every route in and out of Tai Po, by road, rail, air and sea.

The flight arrived at breakfast time on Friday morning. They checked in to a hotel on the Kowloon side of the water – the location chosen for ease of access to Tai Po. Once unpacked, showered and changed, they headed out into the city’s incomparable atmosphere of energy, enterprise and tightly packed humanity, all jostling, arguing, bantering and sweating in the sweltering heat and humidity. Everywhere Carver looked, familiarity and strangeness collided with each other in a mesmerizing cultural confusion. Most of the signs were in Chinese characters that were totally incomprehensible to him. Yet among them English words would suddenly pop out: ‘Tom Lee Music’, ‘Stockwell Securities’, ‘Classic Beauty’, and even, on a shopfront that could have been pulled straight from an English high street, ‘Body Shop’. More than a decade after the end of British rule, Pitt Street, Knutsford Terrace and Jordan Path still jostled for space with Tak Shing Street and Yan Cheung Road, traffic drove on the left, and the buses were double-deckers.

On one corner, there’d been some kind of incident in a grocery store. A handful of police were on the scene. They were all Chinese, but they wore olive-green short-sleeved tropical uniforms, with fatigue trousers tucked into gleaming black boots that could have come straight from a British Army quartermaster’s stores, right down to their berets and cap badges. Carver passed one policeman speaking into his radio. A blizzard of Mandarin dialect was followed by ‘Yes, sir. Over.’

Zalika insisted on stopping for a bite to eat at a white-tiled, neon-lit restaurant where the menu was in Chinese and they ordered by pointing at pictures of dishes and the numbers next to them. But the label on Carver’s beer read ‘Carlsberg’.

By then he’d already found a tailor to make the alterations to his suit trousers. Two hours later he had a car. He needed something that looked dowdy and unexceptional, but was still quick enough to get him out of trouble if any should arise. After twenty minutes online, a cab through the Cross Harbour Tunnel from Kowloon on to Hong Kong Island took him to the showroom of Vin’s Motors in Tin Hau Temple Road, North Point, not far from the Happy Valley racecourse.

When Carver walked in, neatly dressed with a beautiful young woman on his arm, the salesman’s eyes gleamed. Here, surely, was a man with the need and the means to impress. A fat commission would soon be on the way. His enthusiasm waned, to be replaced by disappointment, bafflement and then unfettered curiosity, as Carver spent a mere twenty-two thousand Hong Kong dollars – roughly seventeen hundred pounds – on one of the oldest, cheapest cars on the premises: a faded maroon-coloured 1998 Honda Civic EF9. It was a model beloved by petrolheads for the astounding horsepower the engineers at Honda had squeezed from its modest 1.6-litre engine – the most power per cc of any engine ever, some maintained.

That satisfied Carver’s requirement for speed, but the downside was that Honda’s stylists had tried to signal the car’s capabilities by fitting it with red Recaro sports seats, a titanium knob on the gear-stick and fancy aluminium pedals. Carver politely requested that all these should be replaced by much drabber parts and bought a second, even shabbier Civic to provide them. He also asked for the bodywork to be scuffed and dented. The engine, meanwhile, had to be tuned to the highest possible spec, irrespective of the cost or number of components that needed replacing. He handed the salesman an incentive payment of twenty thousand Hong Kong dollars, cash, to make sure that the job was done within twenty-four hours. Then he answered all the questions he could see the man was dying to ask by winking and saying that a friend of his had just bought a new Porsche 911. He intended to turn up in his tatty old car, offer to race him, put a lot of money on the outcome, then watch his face as the Honda won. This, it was agreed, was a brilliant joke, and Carver was made to promise that he would come back on Monday and tell all the lads in the service department about the victory they had won for him.

‘You’re an excellent liar,’ said Zalika as they left the showroom.

‘That makes two of us,’ said Carver. ‘No wonder Klerk thought we were suited.’





51



Moses Mabeki was obliged to go back in time before he dialled the number. He had to remember the young man he’d been a dozen years ago and hear in his head the voice with which he’d spoken to his fellow students at the London School of Economics; the confident, even cocky sound of a handsome, well-connected kid whose biggest social problem was sparing enough time from his studies to accommodate all the girls who wanted to get to know him. It had been a mask, an act, just like the dutiful, grateful facade he presented to Dick Stratten, or the big-brother friendship he had with Stratten’s son Andy. But that voice had served him well, and he needed to tap into it one more time.

‘Johnny Zen, my man,’ he drawled when he got through. ‘Wassup?’

‘Moses? Moses Mabeki?’ asked his former LSE contemporary Zheng Junjie before breaking into laughter. ‘Holy crap, it must be, what, ten years?’

‘More,’ agreed Mabeki. ‘Lot of water flowed under my bridge. Yours too, I bet.’

‘Well, you know how it is, man. You get a proper job. You get married, have kids. Suddenly you’re an old fart. But I’m not complaining. I develop commercial property, and business has been good. How about you?’

‘Well, I have no wife, no children. But no, I am not complaining.’

‘No wife, eh? Ha! Typical Moses, too many women to choose from, I bet! So, what can I do for you, bro?’

Zheng, too, was putting on a face, a variation of the one he presented to all non-Chinese. To his parents’ generation they were all barbarians, uncivilized peoples, and Africans like Moses Mabeki were barely human. Zheng did not share these prejudices remotely to the same extent – his generation, after all, coveted German cars, Italian designer clothes and Manhattan condominiums – but the innate sense of superiority remained, as did the absolute separation between the true self he reserved for his family and immediate community, and the face he presented to men like Moses Mabeki. They had been friends. There were aspects of Mabeki that Zheng respected, even envied. But they could never be equals.

In that respect, both men regarded each other in a very similar light. They were both intelligent enough to know it, too. Yet neither would ever let it get in the way of doing business to their mutual advantage.

‘You remember, years ago, how we made each other a promise, an exchange deal?’ Mabeki asked.

‘Uh-huh,’ grunted Zheng, noncommittally.

‘We talked about our families, that I was the descendant of a king of the Ndebele and that your family were very powerful Tanka people in Hong Kong. I said that if you were ever in southern Africa and you needed something – something you could not get by conventional means – I would use my connections to help you.’

‘Ye-e-e-s.’

‘And if I came to Hong Kong, then you would do the same for me. You remember?’

‘Of course. And I meant it.’

‘Well, I am in Hong Kong and I need that favour.’

‘I see. And what exactly is it that you need?’

‘I need you to buy something from me. I need you to provide fast, private transportation. And I need you to help me remove a personal difficulty – no, an irritant. In exchange for this favour, I will make you richer by approximately five million dollars.’

‘Excuse me for one moment. I have another call on the line. Just let me get rid of them.’

There was, of course, no other call. Zheng Junjie just needed time to think. If Mabeki was serious, and he suspected very strongly that he was, then this could be a chance to make his family a great deal of money and earn himself great face. On the other hand, it was clear that whatever Mabeki wanted could not be provided without the direct personal agreement of his uncle, known to all who knew him as Fisherman Zheng. He was a small, skinny, bald old man who ran a floating fish restaurant in Aberdeen harbour, on the south side of Hong Kong Island. He was also one of the richest, most powerful gangsters not just in Hong Kong, but all of southeast China. If the deal proved beneficial, Fisherman would be greatly pleased with his nephew. If it did not … well, that was not a possibility Zheng much cared to contemplate.

He got back on the line to Mabeki.

‘I think you should come and have dinner with my family. You will propose what you have in mind. I will translate for you and help you make your case. I cannot promise that the deal will be acceptable. What I am doing to honour my promise is to make the introduction. The rest is up to you. Do we have a deal?’

‘Yes.’

‘Then meet me tonight at the fish market in Aberdeen. My family have a business there. It is marked by a large sign for Zhen Fang Seafood. I will be there at ten o’clock. Come alone.’

‘See you then. And Johnny, there is something you should know. I have changed since you last saw me, changed a lot.’

Zheng laughed. ‘Oh, we’ve all changed, Moses.’

‘No,’ said Mabeki, ‘I can assure you, you have not changed like me.’





52



That evening, Zalika insisted on taking one of the Star Ferries trips round the harbour. Carver didn’t mind going along for the ride. The Hong Kong shoreline was one of the world’s most spectacular urban landscapes and the open deck of a ferry was as good a place as any to talk business undisturbed. An hour into the trip, though, and it was still all sightseeing and inconsequential, flirtatious chit-chat.

‘I don’t want to ruin the mood here,’ he said, ‘but we need to talk about Sunday.’

Zalika looked at her watch. ‘Hang on,’ she said, ‘you’re just about to discover why I dragged you on to this tourist-trap. Literally any second now. You’ve got to see this … Yes!’

A low, synthesized rumbling set to a pacy electro beat started pulsing across the water. Atop the towers on the Hong Kong side of the harbour, searchlights swept back and forth across the sky, as if searching for raiding bombers. Then the buildings themselves burst into life in a sort of electric firework display. One skyscraper was bathed in glowing blue. Sharp lines of pure white light zig-zagged up another soaring glass tower. A third building was transformed into a neon rainbow in a display that was simultaneously vulgar, absurd and completely irresistible.

‘See!’ Zalika exclaimed, grabbing Carver’s arm and nestling against his shoulder. ‘Isn’t it amazing?’

‘Yes, it is,’ he agreed, suddenly feeling very old in the face of her unabashed enthusiasm. ‘But the reason I’m on this boat is to have somewhere to talk business where we wouldn’t be overheard. And I wouldn’t mind getting on with it.’

She looked up at him with knowingly coy eyes. ‘Humour me.’

Carver sighed and gave in to the pleasure of feeling her body against his and breathing in the scent of her hair while the lights danced across the water and the music whooshed, tinged and burbled to its climax.

When it was done, he said, ‘OK, now we talk business.’

‘Oh all right,’ she replied, like a schoolgirl conceding that she had to do her homework.

Carver half-turned his body, so that they were face to face. He glanced over Zalika’s shoulder to check that no one was close enough to overhear them, then leaned towards her as if lost in their own private lovers’ world and said, ‘So, run me through the whole deal between the Gushungos and their vicar again.’

‘The Gushungos’ nearest church is St George’s in Tai Po,’ she said. ‘The vicar there is a Scotsman called Simon Dollond. He’s in his mid-forties, much loved by his congregation, the British and the Chinese. And he wasn’t exactly thrilled to discover that Henderson and Faith had just moved into his parish.’

As she filled in the details of the deal Dollond had struck with the Gushungos, Zalika spoke with the same efficient grasp of her subject as she had when briefing Carver about Malemba, back at Klerk’s country house. As always, Carver was struck by her ability to switch moods – almost her whole personality, in fact – at a moment’s notice. He decided to test it one more time. When she had finished, he pulled her even closer and gave her a long, passionate kiss. She switched to accommodate that, too, without any obvious difficulty.

‘Mmmm,’ Zalika whispered when he finally pulled his mouth from hers. ‘That was nice. What made you so romantic suddenly?’

‘I was just maintaining our cover,’ he said, deadpan.

‘Oh, I see,’ she said. Then she frowned. ‘Are you sure you maintained it quite enough, though? A few people might not have noticed.’

‘You’re right. Better make absolutely sure. Just to be on the safe side.’

When he came back up for air a second time, Carver asked, ‘How did you find out all that stuff about the church?’

‘Simple. Whenever I was in Hong Kong, I went to St George’s. They have coffee and biscuits after the service every week, which is really just an excuse for all the old dears who go every week to hang around and have a good gossip. Once they’d got used to me being there, they chatted away perfectly happily, and of course they all knew about “dear, sweet Simon” and the wicked Gushungos and couldn’t wait to tell me all about it.’

‘Old women,’ said Carver, ‘they’re the best spies in the world.’

‘Not for you they aren’t. This is strictly ladies-only.’

‘Well then, thank you for betraying the sisterhood. So now I have a question. Can you go on the phone and sound like a black Malemban woman?’

‘Depends who’s listening. If I was talking to another Malemban, they’d know straight away. But if it’s just a Brit or a Chinese, sure. I spent my entire childhood surrounded by Malemban nannies, cooks and housemaids. I know just how they sound.’

‘Good, I hoped you’d say that.’

‘Why?’

‘Because you’re going to give the nice Reverend Dollond a call on Sunday morning. And you’re going to be a Malemban.’

‘Oh, with him it’ll be easy. Now, I’ve got something for you. Well, someone actually.’

Zalika tapped out a text. Seconds later, a Chinese woman in an anonymous outfit of T-shirt and jeans got up off a bench on the far side of the deck and, apparently paying no attention to either Carver or Zalika, made her way towards the railing, just next to them.

‘I have what you need,’ said Tina Wong, looking directly out across the harbour.

Carver and Zalika turned to face the same way – just three people in a line, looking out at the spectacular view.

Passing it in front of her, so that it could not be seen by anyone onboard, Wong handed Zalika an A4-sized padded envelope. Then, still not making eye contact, she said, ‘So, are you going to kill these pigs?’

Carver did not reply.

Wong did not seem disappointed by his silence. For the first time she turned her head in his direction, fixed him with a penetrating stare, turned back again and nodded to herself. ‘Yes, you can do this. Good.’

Now it was Carver’s turn to speak: ‘Are you working on Sunday?’

Wong nodded her head.

‘Then just before the family and their bodyguards take communion, make sure the front door is unlocked. Can you do that?’

‘Of course.’

‘Good. And thank you for this.’ Carver jerked his head towards Zalika’s simple canvas shoulder-bag, which now contained the envelope. ‘It’s very important.’

‘No problem. OK, enough sightseeing. It is beneath my dignity to look like a tourist.’

Wong left as casually as she’d arrived.

As she walked away, Carver asked Zalika, ‘Are you sure you want to go through with this? You understand I’m not questioning your ability to do the job. It’s just that this could get messy. You’ve had enough violence and death in your life. Are you sure you want more?’

There was no hesitation in her answer, not a flicker of doubt in her voice. ‘Yes, I want more all right. I want to see what you’ve done. I want to spit on their dead bodies. Every single one of them.’

‘All right. But you play it absolutely by the book.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘And I’m getting you a phone with a tracking system, so if we get separated for any reason, I’ll know where you are.’

‘Whatever you say.’

‘And if anything happens to me, you don’t wait around to see if I’m all right, understand? Go straight to Hong Kong International. There’s a fifteen-oh-five flight direct to London. Just get on it and go.’

‘Absolutely.’ She wrapped her arms round his waist and examined him thoughtfully. ‘Thanks for having faith in me. My uncle was right. You’re a good man, Samuel Carver.’





53



The Aberdeen fish market was deserted, the last traces of the previous day’s catch all washed and swept away, yet the smell of fish still filled the air, as though it seeped from the polished concrete floor, the painted steel columns and girders and the corrugated iron roof. Zheng Junjie, the man once known as Johnny Zen, was standing beneath the bare neon lights of his family’s stall, nervously sucking on a cigarette. He looked as though he’d grown a little soft around the middle since Moses Mabeki had last seen him. Maybe he’d been eating too much of his wife’s home cooking or, more likely, having too many dinners out with his mistress. A sweet young concubine had always been considered an essential accessory for any Hong Kong businessman on the way to the top.

Mabeki had taken a cab down from Tai Po. He’d told the driver to drop him a few minutes’ walk away from the Aberdeen Harbour fish market, at the foot of one of the high-rise apartment blocks that crowded into the narrow space between the hills of Hong Kong Island and the sea. They housed most of the local Tanka and Hoklo tribes, people who had for centuries inhabited floating villages of junks and narrow-boats, working and living almost entirely on the water. Now their descendants were pasty-faced property developers whose pastel-coloured Ralph Lauren polo shirts stretched across their bosomy chests and flabby guts. But then, Mabeki reflected, how different was he? His people had been cattle-herders and warriors, going where they wanted across the southern African savannah. Now most were happy with a cold beer and a Manchester United shirt. The white man’s cruellest trick was not to conquer or even enslave, but simply to soften, weaken and corrupt every culture or people he encountered, until they lost the will to be themselves any more.

Mabeki made his way unobserved to within thirty feet of Zheng. He watched him take his cigarette out of his mouth, throw it down and grind it under his heel. Zheng looked around, checked his watch, then looked again. He did not look like a powerful man about to take charge of a tough negotiation. He looked like a frightened man wondering how he was going to explain to his superiors that he’d just let them down.

Mabeki let him sweat for a moment longer, then stepped out of the shadows and made his way between the large blue and yellow plastic containers from which the following morning’s fish would be sold. He deliberately let his right foot knock one of them as he walked by. The noise made Zheng spin round and catch sight of his old university friend.

Over the years, Mabeki had become a connoisseur of people’s reactions to his appearance, and Zheng’s was a classic example. In the space of a couple of seconds his face registered alarm at the unexpected noise, relief that it came from Mabeki, shock and revulsion at the first sight of his face, and finally, after an all-too-evident internal struggle, a bland mask of impassive self-control.

‘Hello, Johnny,’ Mabeki said.

‘Moses.’

They shook hands. Mabeki took a perverse pleasure from watching Zheng’s attempts to find a safe, polite place to look. He had seen it so many times, the way people could not help themselves staring at the scars, craters and distorted flesh of his face, no matter how much the sight disgusted them. He knew, too, the questions they all wanted to ask and the mental contortions they went through trying to find the right words with which to frame them.

Zheng did better than most. ‘I see what you mean,’ he said. ‘You have changed. May I ask what happened?’

‘I was shot. A nine-millimetre parabellum round fired at extreme close range passed right through my mouth from one side to the other. I was left for dead by the man who shot me. His mistake.’

‘Did you ever find him?’

‘He is about to find me.’

Zheng nodded thoughtfully. ‘I see. He is the problem you referred to?’

Mabeki gave a fractional nod of assent.

‘Then you’d better follow me,’ Zheng said.

They made their way out of the market and down to the water’s edge. A flight of stone steps with a polished metal handrail led down from the quayside. A square-bowed boat whose sturdy wooden hull was buffered with old tyres bumped up and down against the bottom steps in the swell of the water. The deck, sheltered by a canvas roof stretched across a metal frame, was scattered with plastic buckets and boxes. An old woman in loose grey pyjamas with a large mushroom-shaped straw hat on her head was standing barefoot among them. When she saw Zheng she rattled off a high-pitched, hectoring volley of incomprehensible Chinese, pointing at Mabeki as she spoke. Zheng bowed respectfully and replied in a far more conciliatory style. The old woman spat disgustedly on to the deck, glared at Mabeki, then made her way to the stern of the boat.

A second later, the boat was reversing away from the steps. The old woman turned it round, miraculously avoiding all the other boats clustered by the quay, then set off across the bay. The fishing boats were crammed so tightly that Mabeki could barely see the water, yet the woman steered between them with an ease that came from a lifetime’s practice, squeezing between hulls that seemed barely a hand’s breadth apart and heading straight towards apparent dead ends that miraculously opened up at her approach.

They passed under a road bridge across the harbour and saw, not far away, the dazzling strings of fairy-lights and gaudily painted hull of the Jumbo Kingdom floating restaurant, where four thousand customers could dine at a single sitting, rise in tiers into the night air, a huge temple of gastronomy and greed.

‘Impressive, isn’t it?’ said Zheng. ‘I’m afraid our destination is much more modest.’

That, Mabeki soon realized, was an understatement. The old woman brought their little boat to a halt by the rectangular, barge-like hull of a far smaller, dingier restaurant, moored on the far side of Aberdeen Harbour, connected to the shore by a red-painted walkway. A rusty metal ladder hung down from the side of the hull. The old woman nestled the blunt bow of her boat against the foot of the ladder and gave a dismissive gesture in its direction.

‘This is where we get off,’ said Zheng.

‘One moment,’ said Mabeki.

Turning his back on Zheng, who was already stepping gingerly on to the ladder, he took a few paces towards the old woman and, speaking quietly but with infinite menace, told her in Ndebele that she was a dung-eating whore of a baboon with shrivelled-up breasts and a closed-up cunt as dry as an old gourd. He revelled in the fear that spread across the crone’s incomprehending face as he loomed over her and let the poison of his malice fill her soul. In a louder, much friendlier voice, he switched to English and said, ‘Thank you for bringing us here, grandmother.’ Then he walked up to the bow and sprang with surprising athleticism, even grace, on to the ladder. A few seconds later, he was standing on the restaurant’s deck.

‘Let’s go,’ said Zheng.

He led Mabeki along a narrow walkway running down the side of the hull to the front entrance to the restaurant. There were no strings of fairy-lights here, just a scruffy, dimly lit interior where no more than a dozen tables were filled. The desultory hum of scattered conversations almost faded away as Mabeki walked by.

A white-jacketed waiter gave a respectful nod to Zheng as he walked to the back of the dining area, past the bar and through a door into a kitchen heavy with the smell of stir-fried food. Here, too, the atmosphere was half-dead. A handful of cooks were standing by one of the ranges, talking and smoking with the lassitude of men who did not expect to be taking many more orders that night. Zhen ignored them and led Mabeki to a metal door.

‘Watch your head,’ he said as he opened it and moved into a small store-cabin.

The walls were lined with metal shelves on which huge drums of cooking oil and soy sauce were crammed alongside cans, bags and glass jars of produce, packets of dried noodles and sacks of rice. A porthole, cut into the hull near the ceiling, had been opened to provide ventilation but the air was still thick with the cigarette smoke that rose from the four men sitting around a small wooden table, topped with a plastic cloth, in the middle of the cabin. All were as old as the woman who had piloted the boat. Dressed in a motley selection of sweaty, dirt-stained vests and tatty shirts, they looked like old dockside navvies, or lowly ship’s crewmen. In front of them, the table was covered in ivory mah-jongg tiles marked with Chinese characters, piles of notes in an assortment of currencies, bottles of spirits and cheap plastic tumblers, all illuminated by the single bare bulb that hung above the table.

Zheng approached the oldest man at the table and spoke quietly in his ear. The man looked up at Mabeki, who caught not a trace of discomfort, let alone fear, in his eyes. So this was Fisherman Zheng. Well, he was a tough, cold-blooded old bastard, that was for sure. But Mabeki wasn’t worried. He’d spent the past decade working for the biggest cold-blooded old bastard of them all. He’d f*cked Henderson Gushungo’s wife and got away with it. He’d changed their relationship day by day, inch by inch, until he was the real master and Gushungo his puppet. He was entirely confident that he could deal with this old Chinese gangster, too.

Fisherman turned his attention back to his nephew. They spoke for a few seconds, and then Zheng spoke in English to Mabeki: ‘My uncle will hear your proposal. He wishes you to know, however, that nothing happens in Hong Kong without him knowing about it, or that he cannot discover within a matter of an hour or two. There is, therefore, no point in you trying to mislead or cheat him. It is very important, for your sake, that you understand this.’

Zheng lowered his voice. ‘Seriously, Moses, you don’t want to cross my uncle.’

Mabeki gave his own approximation of a smile. ‘I understand, Johnny. So please assure your uncle first that I would never attempt to double-cross him, any more than he would think of double-crossing me. Also, inform him that I have spent the past ten years as the most trusted personal adviser of the President of Malemba, His Excellency the Honourable Henderson Gushungo, with the result that there is no threat he could possibly make that I have not both heard before and made myself. Further, tell him that no matter how many people he has had killed during his long and illustrious career, I have killed more in my relatively short one. And fourthly, please ask him, with all due respect for his age, dignity and position, to stop pretending that he cannot speak English, since I can see very clearly from his eyes that he has understood every word I have just said.’

Mabeki watched the anger flare in Fisherman Zheng’s eyes, knew that he’d caught the old man red-handed, and added, ‘As I thought. So, let me explain the deal I have in mind, which is in essence very simple. At around noon on Sunday, roughly thirty-six hours from now, I will sell you a consignment of uncut Malemban diamonds worth at least fifteen million US dollars for a mere eight million. In exchange for this discount, which is much greater than I would normally give to any middle-man, you will kindly do me two additional services. One of them is nothing, a mere delivery run. The second is more complicated.’

Mabeki took out his phone and brought a photograph up on the screen. It had been taken at Heathrow airport and showed a Caucasian male, full length, as he waited with his baggage by the Cathay Pacific desk. Mabeki flicked a finger across the screen and a series of further shots spun by, showing the man from varying angles and distances.

‘The man in these pictures is called Samuel Carver. I want him dead. You will ensure that he dies at a time and place that I will specify. The killing will be carried out in such a way that no suspicion attaches to me. Do this and I will give you the bargain of a lifetime. So, do we have a deal?’

Fisherman Zheng sat silently as Mabeki ran through his proposal. Then he cleared his throat like a man gargling gravel and phlegm and spoke to his nephew in perfect English: ‘Tell this African that the favours he asks can be granted with one wave of my hand. But tell him also that even the meanest beggar in Hong Kong knows about his precious diamonds and that no dealer would value them at more than a third of the figure he mentions. If I am to make a fair profit, I therefore cannot offer him more than two million dollars. That is my offer, and it is final.’

Moses Mabeki cast his eye over the three other mah-jongg players. ‘One of you give me your chair,’ he said. ‘I can see that this will take some time.’

Fisherman Zheng barked an order. All three men left the room. Mabeki sat himself down, as did Zheng Junjie. Fisherman poured them all drinks from one of his liquor bottles. And so the negotiations began.





54



On Saturday morning, Carver set about acquiring the final pieces of equipment he would need for the Gushungo assassination. First, he went to a hobby shop that sold amateur rocket-making kits and bought a couple of cheap engines in the form of cardboard tubes like small fireworks, filled with fast-burning explosive powder. At a hardware store, he acquired some acetone paint thinners. At a phone store, he picked up two handsets: one to be used as Zalika’s tracking device, the other for his own purposes. Then he went back to collect the suit trousers and the refitted Honda Civic, which he left in the darkest, least conspicuous corner he could find in one of Kowloon’s underground car parks. Before he left the car, he opened the boot and spent a few minutes working with the rocket accessories, the acetone and the various bits of kit he’d brought from his Geneva toolbox. By the time he’d finished, Carver had both a getaway car and the means to destroy it, along with any evidence it might contain.

Satisfied with his morning’s work, he called Zalika and met her for lunch. Afterwards, they took a cab up into the New Territories and found a spot where they could look down on to the Hon Ka Mansions and see the gaudy pink-painted home that was the Gushungos’ Asian bolthole. It was one thing working on a mockup, but there was no substitute for getting a first-hand look.

‘Fine,’ he said, once he’d committed the view of the house and its surroundings to memory. ‘I’m ready. There’s nothing to do now but wait.’

Zalika smiled. ‘Not quite nothing.’

‘No, maybe not.’

It was not easy for Moses Mabeki to smoke a cigarette. He had to hold it permanently to his mouth, his lips being too misshapen to grip it tightly by themselves. The drool in his mouth was apt to make the filter soggy. As he stood outside the Gushungo residence, slurping and sucking, blinking his eyes against the smoke, he made a grotesque, even bleakly comic sight. Mabeki could not have cared less. The sole purpose of his newly acquired habit was that it gave him an excuse to leave the house, within which Faith Gushungo had banned all smoking, and get outside. Once there he could walk to some quiet, unobserved corner, get rid of the cigarette and make phone calls in peace, without risk of being overheard.

He speed-dialled Zheng Junjie, and they spoke for less than thirty seconds, just enough time for Mabeki to give the precise time and location for the attack on Carver. ‘I expect him to have made an effort to change his appearance,’ he added. ‘If so, I will of course update you. You will spot him easily enough. Have no fear of that.’

Mabeki’s second call was made to General Augustus Zawanda, commander-in-chief of the Malemban National Army. Together they ran through a series of operations planned for the following morning. The conversation was notable for the unspoken assumption that even the most senior member of the nation’s armed forces was junior to the President’s unelected, unofficial right-hand man.

‘Carry out your orders precisely as specified, and I will ensure that you receive a twenty-five per cent share of all the monies I will liberate from the President and the First Lady’s private offshore accounts – accounts to which only I have the codes. Fail, or try to double-cross me, and I will ensure that your wife, your children, your mother, your brothers, your sisters and all your family die, very slowly. And all the soldiers in Malemba will not be able to save them.’





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