Hyena Dawn

by Christopher Sherlock

  ‘God, Bunty, we’re really in a fix.’

  ‘Haven’t seen Colonel Strong yet, have you?’

  ‘No, just his handiwork in the distance. Looks like he’s blown the whole bang-shoot to smithereens. How long do you think it’ll be before reinforcements arrive?’

  ‘I don’t want to be around to find out.’

  ‘Exactly my feelings.’

  Bunty gestured for Ted to follow him and they made their way up the side of the slope. At a pine tree he had marked when they had first made their way up the bank a week before, Bunty started down towards the road.

  They moved more cautiously now, making sure there was no one below them. In the distance there was another explosion. By the time they reached the roadside it was getting dark and visibility was not good. All the same, they hoped they wouldn’t be stuck too long in such an exposed position.

  Siva Singh rushed up to what was left of the bank. He had driven his car here himself, and at incredible speed, wearing only a pair of shorts and a T-shirt - for once his obsession with being dressed for the occasion had been abandoned.

  He noticed in panic the bank notes lying all over the street in the pouring rain. Sprinting up the front stairs, he stared aghast at the doors of the vault which were hanging on their hinges. Slowly he moved forwards, praying that only money had been taken, but his worst fears were confirmed when he saw that the floor was scattered with empty safe-deposit boxes. He made his way to the nearest telephone.

  ‘General Vorotnikov. Singh here . . . Yes, I know you have bigger problems . . . The fuel tanks . . . All destroyed? No, I don’t believe it. The airport under attack? It must be the Rhodesians . . . Worse, they have hit the bank. Yes, all the documents have been taken. They obviously knew exactly what they were looking for. Yes, the agreements are gone. Your guards should have been here, but instead they were at the fuel supply depot. General, General . . .’

  The line went dead. Singh stumbled through the wreckage around him and went back into the vault. Plaster fell from the ceiling, cascading off the top of his head. Perhaps he had been wrong; maybe some of the boxes had been left untouched. Carefully he searched through the rubble, but every box he found had had its lock shot away.

  He made his way back through the fallen masonry to the front entrance. Outside in the rain he saw vast black clouds billowing up from the fuel supply depot. Just an hour before, he had been relaxing at home, feeling supremely confident about the future. Now everything had changed. He could hear the frantic reports coming through on the military radio in the jeep nearby. He could hear the shouts and screams of men being injured by gunfire - and suddenly it dawned on him that these reports were not coming from the fuel depot, but from the airport.

  Siva Singh raced back to his Mercedes and drove home as quickly as he could. If there was an invading force, then they would only know him as a private citizen, not as a supporter of ZANLA and the armies of the USSR. And nothing on earth was going to persuade him to come outside again today.

  *

  Fernandes sat in the bar of the Hotel Beira, drinking neat brandy with a shaking hand. He had just been in the shop next door that he had rented out to Mr Brand. It hadn’t been hard to guess what had been stored in it, and he’d also seen signs that men had been living there.

  Every time there was another explosion in the distance Fernandes trembled and spilled some more of his drink, but at least he had for reassurance the comforting chill of the Berretta pistol stuffed into the belt of his trousers. There was only one choice left for him, and that was to get out of Beira as fast as he could.

  He got up and reached for his car keys behind the desk of the hotel foyer. Once he had them safely in his hands he walked toward the front entrance of the hotel. He froze as he saw who was coming towards him.

  Ivan had been ordered to arrest the owner of the hotel by General Vorotnikov. The order had been barked over the telephone at him and he was told in no uncertain terms that he must torture the Portuguese till he squealed like a sucking pig. Ivan despised torturing as an activity so the order was odious to him even though he disliked Fernandes, but he allowed none of this to show in his reply to Vorotnikov.

  The Hotel Beira looked completely deserted. He parked the car and entered through the double front doors - immediately bumping into Fernandes, who was on his way out and did not look pleased to see him.

  ‘Going out for a stroll, Fernandes?’

  ‘I have urgent business to attend to.’ He attempted to bustle past Ivan, but found his way blocked.

  ‘Don’t push me,’ he bristled.

  ‘You’re under arrest. Direct orders from General Vorotnikov.’

  Ivan moved towards him, instinctively reaching for his pistol as Fernandes retreated, desperately searching for an angle of escape. He pointed his Berretta at Ivan. The Russian had cornered him.

  ‘Come on, Fernandes. Put that pea-shooter away. It’s time we had a little talk.’

  Fernandes looked nervously at the big Russian. To him it was a simple enough equation: kill or be killed. He would be tortured and he knew he couldn’t face that.

  ‘You wouldn’t do it, Fernandes.’

  Fernandes closed his eyes and squeezed the trigger.

  When he opened them again, Ivan was lying on the floor screaming, blood pouring from a wound in his side.

  ‘You fucking bastard! You’re going to die for this!’

  Fernandes shot Ivan a second time in the chest, and the Russian slumped to the ground like a sack of potatoes. But, as Fernandes ran out into the street, Ivan pulled himself up, sighted his pistol and fired two shots before finally collapsing. The bullets hit Fernandes in the centre of the spine and flung him across the tarmac.

  The two bodies, both covered in blood, lay quite still in the pouring rain.

  Vorotnikov felt his world collapsing around him. The stabbing pains in his chest, which had started earlier in the afternoon, were becoming more pronounced every minute. Was this a heart attack? He tried to stagger towards a chair, but knew he couldn’t reach it. The pain, the pain! He fell across the floor. He felt his body start to convulse and he screamed out in agony.

  The world went very black. He was being drawn towards a place he did not want to go. The face of the American journalist came into his mind, the long blonde hair, the beautiful husky voice, but every time he tried to fix on her image it began to fade. He knew now that he would never catch her.

  Relaxing with a whisky in one of the sumptuous leather-covered seats of his private jet, Bernard Aschaar was beginning to feel rather more philosophical about the whole business. Perhaps, indeed, it had all been a giant mistake from the beginning. Anyway, he would negotiate with Mugabe when he came to power; at least the groundwork had been effectively laid.

  He smiled as he looked through the report he had taken from his briefcase. It made pleasant reading. It was an analysis of his plan to gain control of the world’s gold mining production. He would step up the pressure on Sonja Seyton-Waugh - he was sure he could break her - then she would sell up, and her mines would give him the edge he needed to acquire world control.

  The interior of the cabin was dark and soothing, the only light coming from a spotlight on the ceiling. Bernard’s whisky was nearly finished. As he rose to pour himself another Dufftown Glenlivet from the elegant crystal decanter, a sudden, interesting thought crossed his mind. He sat down, and raised the captain on the intercom.

  ‘I want you to make direct contact with Vorotnikov’s villa.’

  Bernard waited patiently. Eventually the intercom crackled into life. ‘I have Vorotnikov’s servant on the line, Mr Aschaar, he’s not very cooperative.’

  ‘Just make the connection.’ Immediately the sound of static dominated all else.

  ‘General Vorotnikov?’ There was a lengthy pause and Ber­nard’s pulse began to race furiously.

  ‘I am afraid the General is unavailable at the moment.’

  Bernard recognised the routine stalling tactics. H
e said, ‘The General and I had agreed to speak to each other at this precise time. Please connect me, this is irritating.’

  ‘My apologies, sir, but you will not be able to speak to General Vorotnikov.’

  ‘Why the hell not!’

  ‘He died of a heart attack late this afternoon. You will have

  to . . .’

  Bernard switched off the transmission, then walked over to pour himself another Scotch. His hands were rock steady and his face sported the biggest smile it had worn for a considerable time.

  Almost at the rendezvous point, they saw a Russian patrol coming in the opposite direction. Rayne screamed at Sam to hang on as he accelerated off the road and pulled the bike down.

  Trembling, they lay in the foliage as vehicle after vehicle rumbled by. If they were spotted, they wouldn’t have stood a chance.

  The moment the patrol had passed Rayne dragged the bike back into the road. Sam leapt on the back and Rayne accelerated off, pushing the machine as fast as it would go.

  Everything was a blur. The bike was running rough. A knocking sound from the engine indicated that there was some­thing seriously wrong. Ahead, through the trees, he could see the flat stretch of ground that was the old airport. Languid palms ran along the sides of the grass runway and an air of foreboding hung over the place.

  The engine seized moments later, pitching them both forward onto the road.

  Rayne was winded by the force of the impact and for a few minutes he couldn’t move. He was terrified that they had been followed - that a truckload of Soviet soldiers would come around the corner at any minute and open fire on them.

  At last he staggered over to where Sam lay silent on the ground.

  She opened her eyes as he bent down and managed a smile. ‘Next time I go for a bike ride, I’ll make sure it’s with someone who knows what they’re doing.’

  He helped her to her feet and they walked towards the runway. If John Fry kept his promises, the plane circling above would land as soon as he released the flare to indicate that they were all in place.

  ‘This is the six o’clock news. Reports have just been received that a large Soviet invasion force, based in Beira, has been attacked and destroyed. Both the United States and Great Britain have voiced their dissatisfaction with the Soviet Union’s tactics at this delicate stage of the Rhodesian Independence negotiations . . .’

  John Fry listened to the BBC World Service report with satisfaction. He imagined the consternation it would cause in Moscow. Now he would wait eagerly for his agent in Beira to report back on the extent of the damage and the effectiveness of Gallagher’s attack.

  He was in black tie, ready to attend a ball at the American Embassy in Pretoria. In his hand was a glass of neat whisky and in the elegant glass ashtray on his desk lay a smoking Hauptmann cigar.

  John Fry never regretted the loss of life that was the inevitable by-product of his profession. During his twenty-five-year career in espionage he had learnt to distance himself from people and events - a necessary form of self-preservation, for otherwise he would have found orders like the one he was about to give, almost intolerable. But to John Fry agents were simply pieces of vital equipment, to be used tactically at the right time. They did not have families, or souls.

  Sometimes he remembered the time when he had fallen in love with a woman agent. She had been expertly briefed and was quite convinced that the information she was carrying was of vital importance to the Soviet Union. Only he and a few other top officials knew that she had been fed a story to tell her Soviet captors once she had been arrested. He had almost cracked, almost broken the rules and gone over to get her. Betty.

  That was when it had all started, the complex web that he had spun over so many years. He had never slept with any women except prostitutes since that time. He hadn’t married. He was more successful than ever at his job, but somehow something was missing.

  The monitor above his desk crackled into life and he heard the unemotional tones of the radio operator who sat in the basement four floors below him. This innocuous building, at the heart of Pretoria, was to all outside appearances the head office of a large American import and export company. Only a few top people in the South African National Intelligence Service knew that it was the headquarters of the CIA’s Southern Africa section. In the basement was a labyrinth of electronic listening equipment that monitored broadcasts from agents operating throughout the African continent.

  Intelligence that Fry had gathered here over the past year had pointed to the existence of a frightening Soviet strategy: the Russians were infiltrating the government of every single African country. Though Fry kept much of this information to himself, his directive from the US government was clear: to thwart Soviet expansionism in every conceivable way without letting the situ­ation develop into another Vietnam.

  It was a tough assignment, especially now that Rhodesia was on the verge of getting a new government. Gallagher’s attack on Beira, for example, would have to appear to have been the work of the Rhodesians, and this he would engineer over the next few days. The Soviet government must never know that the true instigator was John Fry of the CIA.

  The voice of his agent in Beira came through on the speaker, and Fry pushed the red button on the intercom to open the conversation.

  ‘This is Lynx. Please give me your account of the weather.’

  ‘Affirmative, this is Cub. The business is good and the weather excellent. Gallagher is performing up to expectation. Everything is as it should be, apart from one major difficulty.’

  John Fry tensed. What the hell was wrong? He had not calculated on Captain Gallagher making any mistakes.

  ‘The eagle has died.’

  John Fry went white. He had given Rayne no instructions to kill General Vorotnikov. Perhaps he had heard incorrectly.

  ‘Cub. Is the eagle the king of the birds?’

  ‘Affirmative.’

  He could be recalled to Washington for this, it was a major catastrophe. Vorotnikov had been a man they could out-guess; his replacement might be a different animal altogether.

  John had chosen Rayne carefully on Martin Long’s advice; he’d been certain that he would be reliable. Why had he killed Vorotnikov? Whatever the answer to that question, one thing was certain: Gallagher knew far more about what was going on than was good for him - and that John Fry could not tolerate.

  Though the outside world might still be persuaded to believe that it was the Rhodesians who had attacked Beira, Fry knew that the Soviet government would never buy that story now. The death of Vorotnikov would be a big issue. There could well be reprisals. There would definitely be investigations.

  ‘Lynx. It is past my bedtime.’

  The transmissions were always kept short so that there was no possibility of their being traced. Already this one had gone on beyond the recognised time limit.

  ‘End report Cub.’ The silence that followed was one of the nastiest John Fry had experienced.

  He made another radio transmission.

  ‘This is Lynx.’ The distortion from the other end was horren­dous. ‘Affirmative, this is Swallow.’

  ‘Cancel collection.’

  ‘Are you fucking crazy?’

  Fry exploded. The pilot had broken the code sequence. ‘Abort collection, Swallow.’

  There was a grim silence. Then, ‘It’s your party, Lynx.’

  ‘You will abort collection?’

  ‘Affirmative.’

  Fry switched off the receiver and smiled. If the Soviets caught Rayne they might just make him talk - but perhaps he didn’t need to worry. It was far more likely that they’d just shoot him on sight.

  He walked over to the drinks cabinet in the corner of his office, took some ice out of the concealed fridge and dropped the cubes into his glass. He poured himself another generous whisky.

  He wondered how Rayne would react when the plane did not land. He knew they wouldn’t last long in Mozambique. Of course, he’d made quite sure they w
ouldn’t by ordering his agent in Beira to make certain that the Russian military knew where the collection point was. With a bit of luck they’d just gun the lot of them down without taking any prisoners. After that Soviet high command could guess all they liked, they’d never find out the truth.

  Now he would have to concentrate on Mugabe. The man was an intellectual and a Marxist. He might present problems, and then again he might not.

  Restlessly pacing up and down the room, John Fry happened to glance down at a young couple in the street below, laughing, with their arms round each other. The thought crossed his mind that it might be nice to have someone to go home to, someone that he could talk to. But of course, everything he handled was classified, and the way he operated there was no one he could talk to.

  He sipped meditatively at his drink. What had persuaded Rayne to disobey orders? The question bothered him, he had not expected this. It crossed his mind that Rayne might be involved with the magnate Aschaar. Fry was aware of Aschaar’s activities, knowledge which he kept to himself. Aschaar might be useful to him in the future. But if Gallagher and Aschaar somehow knew about his activities, what then?

  He walked over to the filing cabinet and pulled out the file on Vorotnikov. Years of intelligence work, carefully analysed to build up an accurate picture of the man; now it was all wasted, they would have to start again on his successor. Fry must contact his agent in Maputo in the morning and begin to find out who that successor might be. He sat down at the desk again and pushed another set of buttons on the intercom.

  ‘Control, get me London Section Six. Use code X12GTT, category Urgent. I want immediate clearance.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  It would take about ten minutes for the contact to be made. As he fed Vorotnikov’s file into the shredder next to his desk, he wondered again how Rayne and his men would feel when the plane did not land. Naturally they wouldn’t expect anyone to know where the pick-up point was, so that would come as a surprise too. The more he thought about it, the more he was sure that the Soviets wouldn’t take prisoners. They’d be bitter, and bitter men never thought straight. It would be over a day before a senior Soviet officer took the reins, and by then it would be too late.