Part 2
Now
25
The second time Wendell Klerk summoned Carver, he phrased it as an invitation: a weekend at Campden Hall, his estate in Suffolk, seventy miles north of London. ‘I’m having a few people over. I think you’d enjoy it,’ he said. ‘If there’s a better chef or a finer wine-cellar in any private home in England, I’ve yet to see them. And I’ve got a shooting set-up that’s second to none.’
Whatever the reason Klerk was so keen to see him, Carver didn’t think it had much to do with good company or fine wine. But the Mozambique assignment had given him a lot of respect for the man. In a business filled with double-crossing bastards, Klerk had told it straight, kept his word and paid in full when the job was done. That was a decade ago now, but there was no harm in at least listening to what he had to say.
‘Sounds good,’ Carver said.
‘Excellent. You still based in Geneva? I’ll send a plane to pick you up.’
The plane duly arrived one Friday afternoon in May, and a uniformed chauffeur driving a Bentley Arnage limousine collected Carver from the airport and drove him to Campden Hall. A butler opened a front door that nestled beneath the portico of classical Ionic columns that dominated the building’s Palladian facade. When Carver stepped into the marble-floored grand hall, from which a double staircase rose through the heart of the house, one of the most striking women he had ever seen in his life was waiting there to greet him.
She walked towards him with a click-clack of teetering patent black heels and a smile that proclaimed there was nothing, absolutely nothing in the whole wide world that could possibly delight her more than saying hello to Samuel Carver. Her glossy auburn hair floated around her shoulders like a slow-motion close-up in a shampoo commercial. Below the breasts that pressed against the soft cream silk of her blouse a broad black belt – patent, to match her shoes – emphasized the slenderness of her waist, while an apparently demure knee-length black pinstriped skirt was somehow cut to suggest every inch of the long, slender thighs sheathed in sheer black stockings that swayed beneath it.
‘Hello, I’m Alice, Mr Klerk’s personal assistant,’ she said.
Her voice was soft, pliant, almost submissive; but for a fleeting moment Carver caught a much sharper glint in her hazel eyes and the hint of an ironic twist to the corners of her mouth. Alice, he decided, knew precisely the effect she had on men and liked to play with it a little.
She paused, as if daring him to make some cheap crack about the nature of the assistance she offered, then went on: ‘Mr Klerk is so sorry he can’t be here to meet you himself. He’s tied up on a call. But if you follow me, I’ll do my best to make you feel at home.’
Alice turned and led the way across the hall, proving as she went that her rear view was almost as good as her front. She showed him into a richly decorated drawing room that, in a nod to long-gone imperial traditions, combined very English proportions and furniture with rugs, paintings and objects suggestive of wilder, distant lands.
‘Can I get you a drink, Mr Carver?’ Alice asked.
‘Scotch, please, Blue Label if you’ve got it.’
‘Of course. Ice? Soda water?’
‘No thanks, neat will do fine.’
She pressed a button on one of the side-tables and a second later the butler reappeared and was given Carver’s order.
‘Terence will bring your drink in a moment,’ Alice said as he departed. ‘I’ll go and see what Mr Klerk is getting up to. I’m sure he won’t want to keep you waiting.’
She left with what Carver felt certain was a deliberate twitch of her pinstriped backside just before the door closed behind her. Less than a minute later, Terence entered with a silver tray on which stood two whisky snifters, a full lead crystal decanter and a small glass jug of water with two more glasses. He placed the tray on a table and poured out a glass of whisky and another of water. Then he stepped to one side, saying nothing, giving no indication whatever of how he expected Carver to proceed.
Carver could tell that Terence, like so many servants, was a crashing snob. This was his way of testing Carver’s right to be served.
‘Thank you, Terence,’ said Carver, with charming condescension.
There weren’t many times he thanked his adoptive parents for sending him off to the overpriced, emotionally stunting, frequently abusive confines of an old-fashioned private boarding school, but this was one of them. He had at least been taught how to conduct himself properly, and, when his education failed to provide the correct solution to a social problem, to have the self-confidence to fake one.
Ignoring the snifter, Carver took a sip of water to clear his palate. Only then did he lift the glass of whisky, gently swirl the honey-coloured liquid and take a long, appreciative sniff of its smoky, floral aromas. Finally he lifted the glass and took a sip. ‘Perfect,’ he said, once he had savoured its complex flavours. ‘That will be all, thank you.’
Terence gave a fractional nod, acknowledging that Carver would now be treated as a gentleman rather than a mere hired hand, and disappeared once again.
Taking his whisky, Carver strolled across to the ornate marble fireplace that was the centrepiece of the room. It was flanked on either side by two mighty elephant’s tusks that stood almost to Carver’s full height.
Above the fireplace hung an oil painting at least five feet tall and wide enough to cover the entire chimney breast. It was a head-on portrait of a single bull elephant striding across the savannah. The artist had somehow perfectly captured not just its appearance, but its spirit. Carver could almost feel the earth tremble at the elephant’s approach, as though it might at any moment break free from the imprisonment of the picture and step right out into the room.
‘Magnificent, isn’t it?’
Wendell Klerk’s low rumble of a voice had, if anything, become even deeper in the years since Carver had first heard it.
He turned to look at his host. Klerk had acquired a few more lines on his face and the curly hair had gone from coal black to steely grey, but the man’s pugnacious air of vitality and determination was undimmed.
‘Good to see you again, Sam,’ Klerk said, taking Carver’s hand in a crushing grip. ‘Glad you could make it. I want you to know that I have not forgotten what you did for me and my family. I can never repay you. Never.’
Carver gave a wry smile, thinking of the massive fee that had been deposited in his Geneva account. ‘You made a pretty good stab at it, Mr Klerk.’
The tycoon laughed. ‘Ja, that’s true! But hey, call me Wendell. You are my guest, in my home. I don’t want to stand on ceremony.’
Klerk went across to the table where the drinks had been left. He ignored the water, poured himself a deep measure of whisky, downed it in one and refilled his glass before rejoining Carver by the fireplace.
‘David Shepherd did that for me – finest wildlife artist in the world,’ Klerk said, looking up at the painting. ‘What’s really remarkable, he was working entirely from photographs. The old bull was dead. I had shot him – quite legally I should add. Those are his tusks: one hundred and eleven, and one hundred and thirteen pounds respectively. We were in northeast Namibia, the Caprivi Strip. I tell you, man, when I came back to Cape Town with those beauties, no one could bloody believe it. Mind you, they cost me the love of a fine young woman.’
‘How so?’
‘Her name was Renée. Beautiful girl, but she hated the idea of me shooting such a magnificent creature. I tried to explain that it is vital to cull the herds for conservation purposes. If elephant populations are allowed to expand too much, they will destroy their habitat through overeating. Then there is nothing left for them, or other animals, or even the human population, and that is when things turn nasty. It is far better for everyone to manage the elephants through controlled hunting. It even provides legal ivory so that there is less opportunity for poachers to make money.’
‘What did Renée say to that?’
‘She said she didn’t care. Killing animals was wrong and she couldn’t love a man who could slaughter a defenceless elephant. I said to her, try wandering up to an angry bull elephant and see how defenceless it is. How would you like one of those tusks jammed right through your guts?’
‘I bet she didn’t like that.’
‘No, she certainly did not! But my argument still stands. Sometimes the herd must be culled. Sometimes the rogue male must be destroyed. Do you understand what I’m saying, Sam?’
‘Sure.’
‘Good,’ said Klerk. ‘Because there is someone I want you to cull.’
26
Carver closed his eyes for a second and sighed. ‘You know I don’t do that kind of thing any more,’ he said. ‘I quit a long time ago.’
Klerk nodded. ‘That’s what I heard, yes.’
‘So why are you asking?’
‘Because this is a special case,’ said Klerk. He placed his whisky glass on the mantelpiece. When he spoke again, his hands were in front of him, palms up in something close to supplication. ‘Listen, I truly believe that what I am about to ask you to do will make the world a better place. You could be saving tens, even hundreds of thousands of lives. Millions of people will be freer, healthier and more prosperous.’
Carver took another sip of his drink. ‘And how, precisely, will I do that?’
Klerk looked him straight in the eyes. ‘By killing that mad, tyrannical old bastard President Henderson Gushungo of Malemba.’
‘Why bother? The man’s in his eighties. He’ll die soon anyway.’
‘That’s what people said when he was in his seventies,’ Klerk replied. ‘But in the past ten years, while people have waited for him to go, the whole country has fallen apart. We’re talking an annual inflation rate of eleven million per cent. It is literally cheaper to wipe your arse with Malemban dollars than buy toilet paper. You know, they just printed a one-hundred-trillion-dollar note, and it’s worth less than the scrap of paper it’s printed on.’
‘Is that why you want him dead, to lower the rate of inflation? You sure the reason isn’t more personal than that?’
‘You know, Carver, that’s what I like about you: there’s no bullshit. Ja, I admit it, I’d like to see Gushungo dead for what he did to my family. He ordered the attack on the Stratten Reserve. The deaths there were down to him and he must pay for them in his own blood. That debt is long overdue. But I mean what I say about the shit he’s heaped on Malemba, too.’
Klerk’s right hand was clenched now, just the index finger sticking out, jabbing at the air between them as he spoke.
‘My homeland used to be the breadbasket of Africa, but vast areas of rich, fertile farmland are now just dust and weeds. The only thing stopping mass starvation is food aid from the West. The average life expectancy is just over forty-five years. More than one person in ten has HIV. There’s been an epidemic of cholera. And on top of all that, the people have to put up with oppression, rigged elections, forced eviction from their homes and resettlement in squalid camps miles from bloody anywhere. I tell you, man, it’s a disaster.’
‘I get it,’ said Carver. ‘The man’s an evil tyrant. But that’s what they said about Iraq. And killing Saddam didn’t do much good, did it? You take out the bastard at the top, you don’t get a sudden outbreak of peace and love. You just get some other bastard taking his place. Or even worse, a whole bunch of other bastards all fighting for the top spot while innocent civilians get caught in the crossfire. And if you do it illegally it just makes matters even worse. Why would Malemba be any different?’
‘Because there is an alternative: a genuine democrat waiting for the chance to govern the country properly and peacefully. I presume you’ve heard of Patrick Tshonga, head of the Popular Freedom Movement?’
‘Is he that guy who keeps winning elections without ever getting power, the one whose son was killed in a light aircraft? The authorities said the crash was an accident, as I recall.’ Carver gave a short, humourless laugh. ‘Oh yeah, I know all about that kind of accident.’
Klerk took out his mobile phone and pressed a speed-dial number. ‘Could you bring in our other guest please, my dear? And the laptop, too, if you don’t mind.’
The two men waited in silence for a minute or so. Then the door opened and Alice walked in, holding the slender aluminium body of a MacBook Air under one arm like a futuristic evening-bag. She was accompanied by a tall, powerfully built black man whose shaved head was dusted with a stubble of greying hair. His huge shoulders seemed to strain at the fabric of his suit and his neck bulged over the collar of his shirt. He looked like a retired NFL player, the kind of guy who’d played in the trenches, slugging it out on the line of scrimmage. If he’d been allowed to claim his country by solitary combat, the President wouldn’t have stood a chance.
‘Good evening, Mr Carver,’ he said. ‘My name is Patrick Tshonga. I have the privilege of leading the struggle for democracy in Malemba. I presume Mr Klerk has already made the request that was the reason for inviting you here tonight?’
‘Yes, he has,’ said Carver as the ever reliable Terence slipped into the room bearing more glasses and fresh supplies of whisky. ‘And I was about to tell him how I used to think I was making the world a better place by taking out the bad guys. Then I realized that it made no difference. The world carried on just like it had before. And I had more deaths on my conscience.’
Klerk gave a snort of disgust. ‘Don’t get wishy-washy on me now, man. You weren’t this squeamish when you rescued my niece. You plugged plenty of the bastards then, and a bloody good thing too.’
Tshonga accepted the whisky that Terence offered him, gave a nod that indicated both thanks and dismissal, then said, ‘No, Wendell, Mr Carver has a point. It is one thing for us to wish an evil man dead, it is quite another to be the one who actually has to kill him. But think of all the people who have died because of this man. Do they not deserve retribution? Think of the people who will die because of him. Do they not deserve to be saved? On their behalf, Mr Carver, I implore you, rid the world of this monster.’
‘Suppose I did. Suppose you and your party took power. What then? Any way you dress it up, you’re planning the murder of a head of state. Doesn’t sound like a good precedent to be setting if you plan on taking his job. Someone might decide to get rid of you the same way. And you claim to be a democrat. What kind of democrat becomes president by assassination?’
‘The kind who has discovered that it’s not enough to win elections,’ said Tshonga. ‘I have tried to do this in the proper fashion. I have fought elections honestly, even though Gushungo sends his thugs to disrupt my rallies and attack my supporters; even though his men threaten and intimidate voters; even though the final counts are corrupt; even though it cost me my son. I have done that and won a majority, against all the odds. But then he refuses to accept the result. He denies the truth. He spits in the face of the electorate. And no one has the power to stop him. Believe me, Mr Carver, if there were a way to remove the President by legal means, I would find it and pursue it. But there is not. I have therefore been forced to conclude that the only way to save the lives of our people, who are dying every day of disease and starvation, is to kill the man who is causing all this suffering. And if you think that is wrong, I would ask you: why is it worse to kill one evil man, so that innocent people can be saved, than to let him live and condemn those people to death? Why are their lives worth so much less than his?’
‘That’s a very powerful argument, Mr Tshonga,’ said Carver. ‘But I don’t hear you making it in public. I don’t see the rest of the world’s politicians nodding their heads and agreeing. None of you people can afford to be seen to support the assassination of a national leader. So you’re asking me to do something you don’t even have the guts to talk about outside this room.’
‘You are right, Mr Carver, I cannot get up in public and say that the President should die. But that does not make any difference to my argument. It is still better to cause one evil leader to die than to let an entire nation perish.’
Carver nodded, taking the point. ‘Maybe, but what about you, Klerk? Don’t even try to tell me you’re doing this for the good of humankind. What’s in it for you?’
‘Tantalum,’ Klerk replied, with typical bluntness. ‘You know what that is?’
‘Sounds like some kind of designer drug,’ said Carver.
Klerk laughed. ‘Well, there are certainly people who are addicted to it. But they are industrialists, not junkies. Tantalum is a very hard, very dense metal. It is a superb conductor of electricity and heat, and incredibly resistant to acid. Mixed with steel, it makes alloys of unusual strength and flexibility. You could say it is a wonder-metal.’
‘That’s the science lesson,’ said Carver. ‘How about the economics?’
Klerk smiled. ‘Ah, yes, the money. Well, tantalum is particularly useful for the manufacture of components for the electronics industry. There are currently two main producers: Australia and the Congo. But the tantalum mined in the Congo is stained with blood, just like their diamonds. No one would use it if they could get tantalum more easily and acceptably somewhere else.’
‘And you think there’s tantalum in Malemba?’
‘I know there is,’ said Klerk. ‘There used to be a tantalum mine at a place called Kamativi. It closed about fifteen years ago. But I believe there’s still more tantalum down there – a helluva lot more.’
‘So you organize the death of the President and get the tantalum in return? Well, it makes a change from liberating countries for oil …’
‘Is that really such a bad thing, Mr Carver?’ asked Tshonga. ‘You know, a man in my position receives a great deal of sympathy for his plight. Many important people tell me how they weep for my country. But then they do nothing for us. So I appreciate Mr Klerk’s honesty. He makes no secret of what he wants. If he reopens the mine, yes, he will make a great deal of money. But he will also employ many thousands of workers and bring hundreds of millions of dollars into the country to help my government restore our country to health. That sounds to me like a fair deal. I believe the people will think it is a fair deal, too.’
‘This is good business all round,’ said Klerk. ‘So here’s my proposition, Sam. I have set up a holding company to handle the tantalum project. I will give you five per cent of its shares if you agree to do the job. Of course, these shares are worthless … now. But if you succeed then the mine will be reopened and soon your stake will be enough to set you up in luxury for the rest of your life. And if that isn’t enough incentive, I’ve got one last card up my sleeve.’
Klerk looked away from Carver towards the far corner of the room. Alice had opened a large walnut cabinet to reveal a flatscreen TV, to which the MacBook was now connected. She was standing just in front of the cabinet, holding a remote control.
‘Come with me, Sam,’ said Klerk, walking across towards her. ‘It’s time we became reacquainted with a long-lost friend.’
27
A Quick Time file appeared on the TV screen and Alice pressed ‘play’. It was video footage, handheld, taken from the crowd at a political rally in Malemba. President Gushungo was giving a speech, ranting at the evils of white politicians in Britain and America. The camera, however, did not linger on him long. Instead the image zoomed and focused on a figure standing just behind the President, to his right-hand side: a tall, bespectacled man in an expensively tailored black suit, cut to fit his scrawny, emaciated frame.
He appeared to be paying little attention to the speech; all his concentration was on its audience. His head kept turning from side to side in a series of jerky, staccato movements as he looked out across the sweaty, jostling mass of people, observing their reactions, scanning them like a malevolent spider seeking out its prey.
The man’s posture was twisted by his right shoulder, which was hunched and curved in towards the side of his face. But the feature that caught Carver’s eye and which he then gazed at with a mixture of repulsion and compulsive fascination was the lower half of his face. What was left of it.
His jaw was twisted, misshapen and bereft of muscle control, so that his mouth kept flopping open. His cheeks had caved in like those of an old toothless codger, except that this was much worse, because the man’s skin was ridged and pitted with great welts of scar-tissue. His lips twisted up to one side in a vicious parody of a smile, revealing an expanse of vivid pink gum, a single, sharply pointed white canine tooth and a gaping black hole where his molars should have been.
Carver heard a high-pitched gasp and turned to see Alice stripped of her cool self-possession as she fought to control her emotions.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said, blinking back tears. ‘It doesn’t seem to matter how many times I see this, I still can’t seem to take it.’
Carver looked at Klerk. ‘What the hell happened to that guy?’
‘You did,’ said Klerk. ‘That’s Moses Mabeki, the man who kidnapped Zalika Stratten. It was your bullets that made him the fine figure of a man he is today.’
‘Mabeki?’ Carver’s mind went back to the room above the shebeen and the man he’d left lying in a spreading pool of his own blood. ‘Last time I saw him he was dead.’
‘Plenty of people in Malemba believe he still is. They don’t believe he’s human. They think an evil spirit took up residence in Mabeki’s dead body, brought it back to life and then used it to spread death and suffering wherever he went.’
‘It is not an unreasonable opinion,’ said Patrick Tshonga. ‘One would not wish to believe that an ordinary man could be as cruel and as bloodthirsty as Moses Mabeki.’
‘You’ve obviously not met the same people I have,’ said Carver.
‘Oh no, Mr Carver, trust me, I know all about the evil that men do,’ said Tshonga. ‘I would just prefer it if we could blame evil spirits rather than human nature for their actions.’
‘So what exactly has Mabeki been up to?’
‘You name it,’ said Klerk. ‘Moses Mabeki is the man who does the President’s dirty work. If the President is an African Hitler, Mabeki is his Heinrich Himmler. He runs the secret police and approves their use of torture, coercion and brutality. He plans the war veterans’ attacks on the few white farmers who have not yet fled their lands, just as he planned the attack on my sister and her family. He organizes the forced expulsions of hundreds of thousands of people from their homes and villages. Then he makes certain that there is not enough food for them on the lands where they are forced to settle. They say he likes to see people starve, you know. He cannot eat solid food himself – everything has to be pulped like baby food, or sucked through a straw – and he resents anyone who can.’
‘Sounds like I should have finished him off when I had the chance.’
‘Ach, don’t beat yourself up about it, man. You were there to rescue my niece. You used the force necessary to achieve your objective. No blame attaches to you.’
‘Big of you,’ said Carver.
‘On the other hand, if you were to remove Mabeki at the same time as the President, you would be doing me a great personal favour.’
‘And you would be liberating the people of my country from his wickedness,’ Tshonga interjected. ‘More importantly, you would remove one of the great obstacles to peace and democracy in Malemba. There would be little purpose in getting rid of the current President if his most able understudy were still able to continue his regime. If Mabeki succeeds to the presidency, the tyranny under which we have suffered for the past twenty-five years will seem like a golden age compared to what he would inflict, and the opportunity to establish a truly democratic government and a free society will vanish.’
‘And you won’t get your tantalum mine, will you, Klerk?’ said Carver.
A broad smile crossed Klerk’s face. ‘And your shares will be worth nothing, Sam. It seems our interests coincide, financially and personally. I want my revenge for what this man did to my family, and if you are half the man I take you for, you will want the satisfaction of completing the job you started all those years ago.’
‘Satisfaction doesn’t come into it,’ said Carver. ‘There are only two things that interest me. Can I do the job? And, can I live with myself after I’ve done it?’
He felt a gentle pressure on his arm, the touch of Alice’s hand.
‘Please, Mr Carver, take the job,’ she said. Her voice was urgent, anguished. ‘So many people have died. So many more are suffering. Surely it’s a good thing to try, at least, to help them.’
‘All right, suppose I did. People only hire me when they want total deniability. Whatever happens to Gushungo or Mabeki, you can’t afford to have it traced back to you. If I do the job – if – rest assured you’ll get that deniability. But I’ll need full logistical backup, some way of getting close to the President and a cover that will stand up to thorough examination. And that’s before we even talk about when, where and how the whole thing goes down.’
‘Of course,’ said Klerk, ‘that goes without saying. In fact, I have had one of my associates working on this project for some time now, finding out everything there is to know about the President’s movements, his security arrangements and the layouts of every one of his residences and offices on three different continents. We have people on the inside, supplying us with information. A dossier has been prepared that contains everything you could possibly want to know. If there is any further information that has somehow been omitted, we will get it for you. If there is anything you need to do your work, anything at all, we will provide it. My sole condition, and this is as much for your good as anyone else’s, is that my associate should work with you during the planning process and accompany you on the mission itself.’
‘On a job like this I prefer to work alone. Simplifies things.’
‘I understand,’ said Klerk. ‘Nevertheless, I insist.’
‘So who is this associate, then?’
Klerk gave a wry half-smile. ‘My niece, Zalika Stratten.’
‘Are you out of your mind?’ Carver snapped. ‘You’re asking me to put my balls on the line, not to mention the future of an entire bloody country, and all the billions you plan to make from that tantalum mine, and I’m supposed to do this at the same time as nursemaiding some screwed-up schoolgirl who’s got bugger-all training, experience or competence for this kind of work?’
Klerk’s smile broadened. ‘She’s not a schoolgirl any more, Sam. She’s a grown woman of twenty-seven. She’s highly intelligent, extremely fit, a qualified pilot and a first-class shot. I guarantee that her bushcraft skills are at least as good as yours, probably better. And no one on earth knows more about the President, or Mabeki, than she does.’
‘That’s just the problem, though, isn’t it? Mabeki knows her too. He’d recognize her the moment he clapped eyes on her.’
‘Really?’ said Alice. ‘You didn’t.’
28
Zalika slipped off the auburn wig and removed the tight stocking cap beneath it, revealing a head of pale brown hair, highlighted with streaks of blonde. She shook her head and scrunched her hair with her fingers, then grinned at him. ‘Still don’t see it?’
She tilted her face forward and lifted her index finger to her eyes, removing the hazel-coloured contact lenses that had covered them. When she raised her head again, her eyes were a deep jewelled blue.
‘How about now?’
Now Zalika’s whole face slipped into focus. She’d had some work done on her nose, Carver reckoned – it was much less prominent than before – but that aside, the teenage girl he’d met a decade ago was clearly visible in the woman who stood before him. And yet she’d changed utterly.
‘Yes,’ said Carver. ‘Now I see it.’
‘Superb!’ laughed Klerk, clapping his hands with delight. ‘Zalika, my dear, that was a magnificent performance. I apologize, Sam. It was hardly fair to play such a cheap trick on the man who saved Zalika’s life. But the best way to convince you that she could fool someone else was if you had already been fooled yourself.’
Zalika gave a little pout of mock contrition, then she took a couple of steps towards him until she was close enough to reach out and take his hands in hers.
‘Will you forgive me?’ she said, looking him in the eye.
The knowing, teasing look had returned to her smile, but much more openly now that she did not have to play at being Alice the sexy secretary. Carver suddenly felt a very strong urge to wipe that smile off her face, whether by kissing her or slapping her he didn’t much care.
She gave his hands a little squeeze, as if she knew just what he was thinking, and leaned forward to kiss him, very delicately, on the cheek.
‘Yes,’ she said, ‘of course you will.’
She’d asked one question, but she’d answered another one altogether.
‘Good,’ said Carver. ‘I’m glad we’re agreed on that.’
A silence fell on the room, eventually broken by a harsh, guttural cough. Zalika spun round, saw Klerk with his fist to his mouth and frowning as if in deep discomfort. She burst out laughing. ‘God, Wendell, I’ve never seen you looking embarrassed before!’
‘Not at all,’ growled Klerk, clearing his throat. ‘I just wondered if you could stop flirting for five seconds and demonstrate to Mr Carver here that you really do know as much about President Gushungo as I just said you did.’
‘Of course,’ said Zalika. ‘I’d be delighted.’
She picked up the remote control and turned back to the TV, clicking her way through a series of menus until she came to a PowerPoint file titled HG-HK.ppt. She clicked it open and a picture of Henderson Gushungo appeared on the screen.
‘Just in case we’d forgotten who we were dealing with,’ Zalika said.
Now she was all business.
‘Before we go any further,’ she continued, ‘I just want to explain how we – well, I actually – arrived at the location that was chosen for this operation. The obvious place to attack Gushungo, of course, is Malemba itself. But it is also the least suitable. The President has the nation’s entire armed forces to call on as personal protection. His secret police are everywhere. He still has a lot of allies, men who know that their only hope of staying in power is to keep the old man alive as long as possible. We also have reliable information suggesting that Gushungo has at least four doubles. Their basic role in life is to take a bullet that’s meant for him, so it would be depressingly easy to take out the wrong man and kill some innocent lookalike instead of the real thing. And if that were not bad enough, the total collapse of the country’s infrastructure would make it a hard place to leave in a hurry. Of course we could organize a fast extraction if we had to. But the state Malemba is in makes everything much more complicated and much less reliable than you’d want it to be. So if Malemba’s no good, when does Gushungo go abroad?’
She clicked the remote control and a new picture appeared of the President standing in front of a giant Bedouin tent, shaking hands with a man wearing vivid purple silk robes, a matching pillbox hat and impenetrable black shades.
‘There are still some states willing to welcome Gushungo. This is him meeting Gaddafi in Libya last year. He also had the brass nerve to attend an EU summit on relations with Africa in Lisbon. Officially, the European nations are opposed to his regime. All his bank accounts within the EU and even Switzerland have been frozen. But it’s very difficult for them to prevent a head of state entering a European nation, particularly if he’s been invited to attend a multinational meeting, or an event held by an international organization like the United Nations. So here he is in Rome, for example.’
Now the picture on the screen showed Gushungo, surrounded by a scrum of bodyguards and photographers, standing in front of the Colosseum.
‘He went to a UN conference there and talked about the need to preserve global food supplies and meet the threat of climate change,’ said Zalika. ‘This from a man who has reduced his country to a desert! When I think of how our farms used to be when I was a girl: the land looked after so beautifully; wonderful crops every year; plenty of work for everyone … and now it’s all gone. It makes me so angry.’
‘You are not alone, my dear,’ said Tshonga. ‘We all feel the same way.’
‘Thank you, sir,’ she said. ‘Anyway, there are opportunities when the President makes these visits. But the host countries give him the same protection they provide for any head of state. These days all the western nations have excellent special forces, the Middle Eastern and Asian ones, too. I’m sure you could find a way past them if you had to, Sam. But again, it adds to the risk. Which left me with one final option.’
Another picture appeared on the screen. It was blurry, taken at long distance with an extreme telephoto lens. It showed a close-up of Gushungo wearing a dressing gown, leaning on a balcony.
Click.
Now the picture expanded and revealed that the balcony was on the top floor of a slender four-storey building perched on a hillside, with similar constructions on either side.
‘This is dear old Henderson, beloved Father of our Nation, sunning himself at his new holiday home,’ said Zalika. ‘It’s in Hong Kong. And that’s where we’re going to get him.’
29
Before Carver could respond to what Zalika Stratten had said there was a tentative, barely audible knock on the door.
‘Come!’ barked Klerk.
The door opened to reveal a woman in a short strapless red cocktail dress. She was very blonde, very tanned and very thin. As she walked across to Klerk, she smiled in a way that was simultaneously dazzling yet also somewhat tentative, as if she were not quite sure of how she would be received. She stepped up to Klerk and lightly placed her right hand on his chest then kept moving round him as if marking out an invisible boundary to ward off any competitors. She left her hand where it was as she stepped behind him so that her fingers ended up draped over his right shoulder, revealing long, perfectly manicured nails painted in the same scarlet shade as her dress. The diamond and ruby ring on the fourth finger was a mugger’s wet dream.
She gave Klerk a proprietorial peck on the left cheek and said, ‘When do you think you’ll be ready for dinner, sweetie? Jean-Pierre is totally stressing out. He’s making us individual cheese and black truffle soufflés and he says they have to be served straight from the oven.’
‘Ten minutes,’ said Klerk. ‘Let this be a warning to you, Sam: when I have made you very, very rich, you too will have to deal with temperamental chefs and beautiful, highly strung women.’
Klerk turned back to the blonde. ‘My dear, this is Mr Samuel Carver, who is about to do me a very great personal favour by sorting out a problem with our African operations. Sam, meet Brianna Latrelle, my fiancée, who hopes that I’ll do her an even bigger favour by setting the date for our wedding before I die of old age.’
‘Pleased to meet you, Brianna,’ said Carver, shaking her hand.
Up close, he could see that there were fine lines beneath the make-up on Brianna’s pretty face. No wonder she wanted to seal the deal with Klerk. She had to be in her late thirties at least. She needed to land her man soon, before someone younger and fresher stole him away.
‘Hello, Sam,’ Brianna replied, with another all-American cheerleader smile.
She looked at Zalika, as if noticing her for the first time. ‘Zalika, honey,’ she said, kissing her on either cheek. ‘You make the cutest little secretary. But aren’t you changing for dinner?’
‘I’m so sorry, Bree,’ said Zalika. ‘I’ve been working so hard I just haven’t had time. And anyway, your dress is so stunning, I’m sure I couldn’t compete.’
The compliment was sweetly made. But Carver detected something much more hostile beneath the surface: each word was like a dagger covered in candyfloss. These two women were anything but friends.
‘Right then, that’s enough chit-chat,’ said Klerk. ‘Brianna, my dear, go and tell Jean-Pierre he can start cooking his precious soufflés.’
‘Of course, my love,’ Brianna said, giving Klerk another little kiss before she left.
Klerk turned his attention to Zalika. ‘Gushungo,’ he said. ‘Hong Kong. Please continue.’
‘Last year, the President paid more than five million dollars for this bolt-hole in Hong Kong,’ said Zalika, snapping straight back into business mode. She’d been totally convincing in the role of Alice the sexy secretary. Now she was equally at ease as a serious, intelligent professional, delivering a well-prepared briefing with all the key facts at her fingertips. Carver had to admit that he’d underestimated her.
‘The location is no accident,’ she continued. ‘For the past fifty years, the Chinese have been working hard to extend their influence over post-colonial Africa, presenting themselves as fellow strugglers against Western imperialism. The deal is always the same. The African nations sell the Chinese the natural resources they can produce and in return the Chinese help install basic infrastructure: roads, railways, power supplies, ports, pretty much anything a modern nation needs, really.
‘Every year, thousands of African students go to Chinese universities. Of course, the irony is that the average Chinese is even more racist towards Africans than a white would be. They call the students “black devils”. Oddly enough, Gushungo doesn’t seem to mind. He’s spent years and years ranting about the evils of white people, but he’s never said a word against the Chinese. Why? Because they let him put his money in their banks and buy property on their territory. And they do something he likes even more than that: they buy his diamonds.’
Another series of images flashed up on the screen: hordes of men and women, carrying spades and pickaxes and caked in dust and grime, clustered in a series of giant open trenches.
‘This is the Chidange diamond field in eastern Malemba,’ said Zalika. ‘It’s an area of forest that’s potentially the single richest source of diamonds in the world. The stones are just lying in the dirt, right up to ground level. So it could be worth billions of dollars a year to the Malemban economy, but it’s never been properly mined or exploited. Until a few years ago, De Beers, the huge South African company that dominates the global diamond market, had the mining rights. They were planning a proper full-scale operation there. But in 2006 the rights were passed to an English company, and then, just a few months later, seized by the government.
‘Naturally, no government run by Henderson Gushungo could ever do something as complex as set up a diamond mine. So the diamonds just lay there, waiting for someone to take them away. Which is what happened. Thousands of people came to Chidange, hoping to make their fortunes. Well, Henderson couldn’t have that. He didn’t want anyone taking his rocks. So he sent in the troops. They went in without warning, firing from helicopter gunships, shooting to kill. No one knows exactly how many people died; dozens certainly, maybe even hundreds. The forests were littered with bodies for miles around. When the killing was over, the whole area was sealed off and all the survivors were forced to fill in all the holes they had dug. They weren’t given any food or water. If they died, they were just thrown into the holes. Anyone who was still alive after all that was then forcibly removed from the area and driven away for resettlement. Then, when no one else was left, Gushungo allowed a new group of diggers into the area – people he trusted, members of his political party. The operations started up again, and all the stones went straight to Henderson Gushungo and his closest associates.’
‘Including Moses Mabeki,’ Tshonga interjected.
‘So they’re blood diamonds,’ said Carver.
‘Exactly,’ said Zalika. ‘And one of the reasons Gushungo has bought a place in Hong Kong is that he thinks he can sell his diamonds there. He’s trying to put a deal together with the Chinese government. They have an almost unlimited need for industrial-quality diamonds. But the best stones, millions of dollars’ worth of uncut diamonds, he wants to sell separately. Well, I say “he” wants to sell them, but that’s not quite right. Because the real brains behind this scheme is not Henderson Gushungo at all, but his wife.’
The contrast between the images of the desperate, filthy prospectors at Chidange and the woman who now appeared on the screen could not have been more acute. She appeared first as a young bride, resplendent in a flowing, lacy white wedding dress, smiling and waving at the camera with Gushungo standing in formal morning dress beside her. Then came another image, evidently taken a few years later. The wedding dress had been swapped for a black outfit, and her face had hardened: her mouth was set in an expression of tight-lipped disdain, her eyes invisible behind dark glasses whose frames were studded with crystals.
‘This is Faith Gushungo, Henderson’s second wife,’ said Zalika. ‘And there’s no point getting rid of him if you don’t get her as well.’
Carver didn’t like the way the conversation was heading. ‘Just how many people am I supposed to be hitting? First we had Gushungo, then Mabeki, now the wife. Who’s next? Any kids you want me to get rid of? Pets, maybe?’
Klerk looked to the heavens and sighed. He pulled out a BlackBerry and pressed a speed-dial letter. ‘Terence, it’s Mr Klerk. Tell Jean-Pierre to take his soufflés out of the oven. We could be a little late for dinner. Tell Jean-Pierre, if he’s got a problem, take it up with Miss Latrelle. She can deal with it.’
Klerk put the phone away. ‘Carry on, Zalika. You were about to tell Sam about Faith Gushungo. Fascinating woman. Let us hope she’ll soon be burning in hell, hey?’
‘She doesn’t believe she will,’ said Zalika. ‘She’s Faith by name and faith by nature: a devout Christian, just like Henderson. They spend six days a week doing nothing but evil, then they say their prayers on Sunday, take communion and think that everything’s forgiven. They make their bodyguards do it, too. The whole household comes to a standstill. It’s so hypocritical it makes me sick. This is a woman who’s ordered the construction of a new presidential palace, which will cost at least twenty million dollars. She goes on shopping trips to London, Paris and Milan, blowing hundreds of thousands more at a time when the country is desperately short of foreign currency to buy food or oil for its people. And she’s got the nerve to claim that she’s religious.’
‘So Mrs Gushungo’s Africa’s answer to Imelda Marcos,’ said Carver. ‘It isn’t pretty, but it’s hardly a capital offence.’
‘Imelda Marcos … and Lady Macbeth,’ Zalika countered.
‘Perhaps I can explain,’ said Patrick Tshonga. ‘You understand, Mr Carver, that Henderson Gushungo is a very elderly man. His ability to retain command of the country is remarkable, but still he is mortal and his faculties are diminished. Faith, however, is still a young woman, in the prime of life. She is filled with energy. She is also filled with hatred, spite and malice. These days, when the veterans seize property or attack people who are deemed to be opponents of the government, as like as not they are doing it on Mrs Gushungo’s orders, not the President’s. She has built vast estates from all the farms she has appropriated. And in every case, it is not just the white owners who have been forced to flee. All the people who worked for them are evicted also, their possessions are seized and their homes are given to Mrs Gushungo’s supporters. And you will note that I say “Mrs Gushungo’s supporters”. These people owe their loyalty to her, not her husband. She has built up an entire power-base of her own. She knows that her man will soon be gone, either because he dies or is finally removed from office. And when that day comes, she does not intend to go with him. No, Faith Gushungo will stay and fight for power for herself.’
‘So where do Hong Kong and the diamonds fit into all this?’ asked Carver.
‘Simple,’ said Zalika. ‘They’re Faith’s Plan B. If it all goes wrong and she gets kicked out along with her husband, then she’s got somewhere to go and a very large amount of money, she hopes, to keep her in comfort and idleness when she gets there.’
‘And what does it all have to do with us?’
Zalika smiled. ‘Well, the Gushungos have a hard time getting any bank to take their business. So when they’re in Hong Kong they keep their diamonds at home. Now, what if someone tried to steal those diamonds?’
‘The robbery might go wrong, people might get hurt and no one would suspect a political motive,’ said Carver. ‘It’s an excellent idea …’
‘Thank you,’ said Zalika, giving an ironic little bow.
‘… but I might have one that’s even better.’
‘Really? What might that be?’
She looked him straight in the eye, challenging him.
‘I don’t know yet. I’ll tell you when I get it.’
‘So, Sam,’ said Klerk, cutting through the growing tension, ‘you will accept my offer?’
‘I don’t know that, either,’ said Carver. ‘I’ll give you my answer tomorrow afternoon, right here, seventeen hundred hours. You happy with that?’
‘It sounds like I don’t have a choice. Ja, I can live with tomorrow afternoon. Before the meeting we will go shooting. Then we will talk. Meanwhile, let’s eat.’ He glared at Carver and Zalika. ‘You two can sort out your differences over Jean-Pierre’s damned truffle soufflés.’