The Cull

by Tony Park

‘Don’t kill any more of my men than you have to,’ said an accented voice from the computer.

  Sonja looked down. There was a lag and the video appeared just after the words were spoken. She gasped. The other computer was angled to show the slender naked body of a black woman, tied down, her legs apart. On the woman’s face was a wet towel. There was an agonising, animalistic scream as a bucket of water was poured slowly, mercilessly, onto the towel. The bound woman thrashed like there were thousands of volts of electricity being passed through her.

  The bucket and the hands holding it disappeared from the frame for a moment and then the towel was pulled from the woman’s face.

  Tears streamed down Tema’s face as she coughed and spluttered.

  The bastard was waterboarding her. Sonja had heard the stories and they had been confirmed, early on during the time she’d spent in Afghanistan, when she had sat in on the interrogation of an al-Qaeda man. She had seen the hardened mujahideen reduced to a screaming, crying mess in what seemed like no time at all.

  Sonja hardened her heart, shutting down her emotions. She said nothing.

  Peves changed the direction of the screen until he was looking at her. ‘Hey, I’m impressed. She lasted fifteen minutes, more than any man I’ve ever had to do that to.’

  Sonja glared at him.

  ‘It’s over,’ he said. ‘I know everything now.’

  ‘So let her go,’ Sonja said at last.

  ‘No, I think I’ll kill her, slowly.’

  Tema whimpered off screen.

  ‘She knew the risks when she took on the job, took on the likes of you,’ Sonja said.

  Peves drew back from the screen. ‘My goodness, I heard you were hard, but I didn’t think you were such a callous bitch, Sonja.’

  ‘Shut up, Peves. What do you want from us?’

  ‘Who says I want anything?’

  He stood up and walked out of the cabin on to the boat’s deck, holding the laptop. There was water all around him, from what she could see; no land.

  ‘You contacted me, you wanted me to see this. Tema is alive. What do you want?’

  ‘Do you want to save Tema?’

  ‘What do you think?’

  ‘You were right; I do want something. Your boss.’

  ‘Paterson? I thought you said you already had him.’

  ‘I do. No, I want Julianne Clyde-Smith.’

  Sonja shook her head. ‘Are you crazy? After Kim Kardashian she’s probably the world’s most recognisable woman. What are you going to do, waterboard her, as well, on Skype?’

  ‘No, I just want to blackmail her.’

  ‘Well, I’m sure she’ll agree to that.’

  Peves laughed, deep and loud. ‘What just happened to Tema is Julianne’s fault. This is the price she pays for taking the law into her own hands. I want you to call Julianne, tell her that your operation, your whole team, is compromised, and that I want her to come to my lodge, today, in her own aircraft, and meet me.’

  ‘She’s the richest woman in Africa. There’ll be a kidnap and ransom team, the bloody British SAS for all I know, here in no time. You don’t have a choice.’

  ‘Watch this,’ he said.

  Sonja could hear Peves tapping on his keyboard. A minute later a link appeared in the message box on Skype. Sonja clicked on it.

  In the video only Tema’s tear-streaked face appeared. ‘Julianne Clyde-Smith,’ she sniffed, ‘my employer, has set up an illegal hit squad to carry out assassination missions against poachers and their leaders.’

  In the background Sonja heard something indistinct but forceful, as though Peves was threatening her.

  It looked like Tema was reading from a script. Sonja saw her give a little nod to some whispered command.

  ‘Julianne Clyde-Smith ordered the assassination of James “King Jim” Ndlovu and Antonio Cuna at the Sabie River Lodge golf course in South Africa. They tried to kill Nikola Pesev, a respected businessman in Tanzania, because Julianne Clyde-Smith wanted his lakeside beach resort property.’

  The video ended.

  ‘Anyone who sees this will know Tema was coerced.’

  Peves came back on the screen. He nodded. ‘Yes, any law enforcement people will know that, and some sensible media commentators, but before any voices of reason come to Julianne’s defence, or question Tema’s words, it will be too late. The families of the dead will force investigations to be carried out. I’m going to make this video public unless Julianne meets with me and agrees to my terms.’

  ‘What are they?’

  Peves shrugged. ‘There is some stuff I want to negotiate with Julianne, but that is none of your business. I want your unit disbanded and for Julianne to call off this fatwa she has with the Scorpions. If I ever hear of you, personally, going after any of my people I will take out a worldwide contract against you, and your former lover, Hudson Brand, and Tema, if I spare her.’

  ‘And if Julianne refuses?’

  ‘You’ve got an hour to get me an answer, Sonja. When you look outside you may or may not see that there are now twelve men surrounding you, from all sides. I know you’re good, very good, and you’ve probably already killed one of my men, but by my man’s calculation you don’t have many rounds left in the Makarov that Tema says you’re carrying and you have just one spare magazine that Paterson issued you with when he gave you and Tema your weapons.’

  Sonja exhaled. She didn’t blame Tema for revealing the information she had, and she was genuinely impressed by the young woman’s ability to withstand as much of the horrific torture as she had. ‘What guarantee do I have that you won’t kill Tema anyway?’

  ‘None, and if you do manage to shoot your way out of my house now I’ll know soon enough, and I’ll kill Tema. I’ve got enough resources to disappear, but I don’t want to. I want to stay in business and I want an agreement from Julianne Clyde-Smith to lay off my people and my organisation.’

  Sonja thought for a moment. Peves had said nothing about Mario. As much as she detested him, she wondered where he was right now. It would be best not to mention him. ‘So what of Paterson?’

  ‘Oh, he’s probably going to die. That’s part of my price, and a reasonable one considering how many of my good men he has been responsible for eliminating.’

  Sonja felt a chill run through her body. ‘All right, I’ll call Julianne.’

  ‘Wait.’

  ‘What now?’ Sonja asked.

  ‘Tell Ms Clyde-Smith I have a gift for her, one she will thank me for.’

  Chapter 27

  Julianne Clyde-Smith boarded her private aircraft at the airstrip at Kuria Hills and strapped herself into her seat. The pilot, Doug Pearse, revved the engine to scare off some wildebeest who were grazing on the edge of the runway. They galloped away and the pilot opened the throttle.

  She felt the anxiety rising in her chest as the aircraft climbed and set a course for Kipili on the edge of Lake Tanganyika. Normally she would have had her face pressed against the window to take in the sights of the open plains, the picturesque hills and the Mara River, but now she could only concentrate on her hands, clasped tightly in her lap.

  This situation was all her fault. There was no escaping it.

  James was a hostage under threat of execution and Tema, that lovely, brave, pretty young girl, with a little baby at home in South Africa, was in the clutches of Nikola Pesev. Like Sonja, she wondered where Mario was.

  How had it come to this?

  It was easy, she knew, to talk tough about crimes, poaching included, but few politicians ever looked past the next news cycle or election to actually do anything about them. Because poaching transgressed international borders it made it that much harder to combat. Memorandums of understanding were laboured over, and even when eventually signed they counted for little. The South African National Defence Force, national parks range
rs and police knew exactly where the poachers were in Mozambique, and in many cases who they and their superiors were by name, but they lacked the power to cross the border and hunt them down. Likewise, the rangers in Zimbabwe knew there were Zambians poised across the Zambezi River all too eager to cross and take out the country’s elephants. None of them could do anything about it, but Julianne had thought she could.

  And she had, damn it.

  She raised a knuckle to her mouth. She thought about James. He was handsome, committed to the point of being ruthless, and he had been the right man for her to employ to command this operation that she had concocted. Sure, he had encouraged her, and he had come into her life at exactly the right time, but this had all been her idea.

  She’d been interviewed in South Africa’s Sunday Times and had said she believed that the private sector, safari lodge operators, needed to be more unified, to spend more on the war against rhino poaching. The property owners were well-heeled, successful people, and as such they were strong personalities. It was not easy to get such people to work together, and she had noted on occasion a direct correlation between a person’s wealth and the shortness of their arms when it came to reaching into their collective pockets to find more money for anti-poaching teams and equipment.

  It was easy for her. While she was no Bill Gates, she could spend the rest of her life, literally, and not run out of money. She had no husband, no children, no siblings. In fact, she had no one.

  And then James had come into her life.

  She pictured him, but more importantly remembered the feel of him, his smell, his touch. He had the clichéd square-jawed face of a military man, but there was much more to him, a depth of knowledge cultivated through life and education. He had masters degrees in business, criminology, and science, and had earned his stripes many times over in the wars on extremism and terrorism.

  She remembered their first meeting. He had been at a conference on rhino conservation; she had been the keynote speaker, and he had been giving a lecture about lessons from Iraq and Afghanistan and how they could be applied in the African context, in the war to protect the continent’s wildlife.

  She’d wanted to attend his lecture, but after her address she knew that any session she attended would draw attention away from the guest speaker. The media would want to sit and watch her, film her, question her afterwards, rather than pay attention to the person presenting. She didn’t need any more of that attention.

  Julianne had asked, through the organisers, if she might have a look at James’s notes or presentation prior to his delivery. She had a plane to catch back to England the next day and couldn’t afford to stick around, nor trust herself to get one of her people to follow up once she was enmeshed in the day-to-day business of running her many companies.

  On the first night of the conference she attended a cocktail party. It was as much to ensure media coverage for the organisers as from any desire to mix and mingle. Indeed, she hated doing the latter. She was, socially, a private person, and exposed herself to the bare minimum of functions that her profile demanded.

  At the event, which was held in the ballroom of the Table Bay Hotel in Cape Town, she’d found herself chaperoned by the organiser of the conference and engaged in a nonsensical conversation with a government minister who mouthed platitudes from briefing notes and showed no passion for the fight to protect her country’s wildlife resources at all.

  ‘Excuse me, you wanted to see me?’ a voice had interrupted.

  Julianne and her minders had been equally taken aback.

  She’d handed her empty champagne glass to a hovering waiter. ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘I’m James Paterson. You wanted to see me.’

  ‘No, Mr Paterson, I didn’t want to see you.’

  ‘Yes, you did, but you had to leave early.’

  ‘It was your paper I wanted.’

  The government minister, used to being feted, not ignored, begged off. Julianne was pleased this handsome, if slightly arrogant stranger had rescued her.

  They had talked, too long for the organisers’ liking, and she had been fascinated by Paterson’s knowledge, his resolve, and his proposal.

  ‘What you need,’ he had been bold enough to tell her, ‘is a top-class reconnaissance unit, a team of ex–special forces people, or properly trained local operators, who can cross borders legally and gather the intelligence the national police forces and militaries can’t. Most importantly, you need someone who can analyse this intelligence and develop courses of action to take the war to the poachers and to cut the heads off their organisations.’

  ‘A hit squad?’ she had asked him.

  ‘Most assuredly not. That’s too easy, but it’s also fraught with danger, for you most of all. No, you need a strategy.’

  He had stopped a waiter and taken two glasses from the tray.

  ‘No, thank, you,’ she had said. ‘I limit myself to one drink at these things.’

  ‘Fine.’ He had beckoned the waiter back again. ‘Sorry, take these please.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘It’s better if we have a drink together, away from this rabble. My place or yours?’

  She had thrown her head back and laughed. His direct approach was refreshing, to be sure, but she had no intention of going back to a stranger’s room.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘You don’t live in the public eye like I do. Right now there are paparazzi –’ she had looked around and it took her less than thirty seconds to find three of them conspiring, pretending not to be monitoring her every move, ‘– who will already be asking each other who you are. Call my office, tomorrow, after you’ve delivered the presentation you’re going to email me tonight.’ She had given him her email address and he had nodded, committing it to memory. ‘I’ll tell reception to accept your call. Do you have the money to fly to England?’

  ‘I do.’

  ‘Then do so. My personal assistant, Audrey Uren, will tell you when I’m free. If you make it to me in London, I’ll hear what you have to say about this special unit you want to put together.’

  Paterson had sized her up, his eyes all over her, and she had felt at once offended and slightly aroused by his naked appraisal of her. His look had nothing to do with business, and he was doing nothing to disguise that fact. He was an ex-army officer, though clearly not always a gentleman. He had the raw sex appeal of many of the South African male safari guides she had met, and employed, touched up with the veneer of manners and bearing that came from the British Army. His alpha maleness was palpable.

  ‘Very well,’ James had said. He had come to her, and into her life.

  ‘Commencing descent, Ms Clyde-Smith,’ Doug, the pilot, said over the intercom.

  Julianne shook herself out of her reverie. Doug was a good-looking man, but she had no interest in him sexually. She’d had a strict self-imposed policy throughout her business life that she would never sleep with a co-worker or, for the majority of her adult life, a subordinate.

  She had broken that rule with James, but she didn’t regret it.

  The work he had been doing for her in Africa, initially gathering intelligence and building a database of poaching kingpins and, increasingly, a dossier on the Scorpions, had brought them much closer.

  She was interested in this work, far more than she was in the day-to-day running of her business empire, which tended to look after itself in the hands of a stable of competent men and women in general management roles. Julianne took a perverse pleasure in immersing herself in the revelations of organised crime’s involvement in wildlife poaching in Africa.

  As poaching became more businesslike it became an easier target for someone who was an expert at bringing down rival companies, taking them over, dismembering them, and profiting from their demise.

  ‘Ma’am, I’d like to stay with you, that i
s, by your side, from the time we land,’ Doug said from the cockpit.

  ‘Thank you, Doug, but the instructions from Sonja were that I must move alone. I’ll be met at the airstrip by her, and some of Peves’s people.’

  ‘Roger that. I still don’t like it.’

  ‘I’ll be fine,’ she said, trying to sound brave. In truth, she was terrified, but she knew she would do anything to save James and Tema.

  They had been working late, each having a single malt scotch, at Khaya Ngala in South Africa the first time they’d had sex.

  The media loved to speculate about Julianne’s love life. She was a single, successful woman approaching middle age who had never been married. Every time she was seen in public with a good-looking male or female – especially female – friend or subordinate, like James, the photographers fired off like the opening barrage of the Battle of the Somme.

  The fact was, she chose her partners carefully and rarely, and spent time with them discreetly. It had been that way with James, but he had been different from the others.

  He had been quick to accept her ways, her kinks, and to indulge her and complement her. With some of the others she’d been left feeling that they had gone through the motions because of her wealth. That never boded well, but with James she had the feeling that whatever he allowed her to subject him to, or whatever he did to her, it was not about the money, nor the power.

  Julianne bit her lower lip. She felt the rising tide of anxiety again, and pictured what might happen to him or what had already been done. Before the day-mare could overwhelm her she used a trick her psychotherapist had taught her. She visualised a ‘Stop’ traffic sign, big, red and hexagonal with bold white lettering. She mentally held up a hand and mouthed the word. It helped, a little.

  James had worked with the Special Forces, including Britain’s famed Special Air Service, and he had told her he had gone through brutal ‘resistance to interrogation’ training as part of his own career development as an intelligence officer. He had learned how to resist torture. He was as tough as he was good-looking.

  The aircraft lurched as it hit an updraft rising from the hot African soil. On either side of her she saw dried gold and brown, a few huts, the slash of a red dirt airstrip like a fresh cut, and Lake Tanganyika glittering in the near distance.