Deadly States (Seaforth Files by Nicholas P Clark Book 2)

by Clark, Nicholas P

  Jack spotted what looked like a metal tube—it was badly scorched which made proper identification from a distancea little difficult. The object was suspiciously like something that the Islamic fundamentalists had used in the past as detonators when carrying out those kinds of attacks. Sometimes the tubes were spent artillery shells, and sometimes they were custom made for a particular attack. Jack took a pen from his jacket pocket and he bent down to take a closer look at the object. He carefully probed the metal object with his pen, but after a careful examination he concluded that it could have been anything. Jack stood up just as someone entered through the entrance at the front of the car park. At first the person didn’t see Jack standing at the side of the car park where he found the metal cylinder. Jack was just about to call over to the stranger to get him to have a look at the metal

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  people as possible—wasting time on beyond help at the expense of two

  object, but before he had a chance to call out, the man looked over at Jack, paused for a moment, and then he broke into a sudden sprint as he fled out into the street from where he came. Jack gave chase quickly but by the time he got out onto the street, the man had gone.

  Several paramedics were milling around at the front of the building and Jack hurried over to a paramedic who was closest to the entrance when the man ran off.

  “Did you see a man leave the car park?” Jack asked. The paramedic paused and then said, excitedly, “Yeah, he almost knocked me down on the way out. He ran off down the street. I lost sight of him in the crowd. Why? Do you think that he has something to do with the bomb,” the man asked, hopefully.

  “Possibly,” Jack replied. like that.”

  The paramedic grinned.

  “My friend, this entire country is packed with men and woman who are running away from something. There is every possibility that guy had simply gone inside to see what he could see and when he saw you he thought that you might be police, or something. I really wouldn’t read too much into it.”

  Jack touched the man on the shoulder as he started to walk away.

  “You are probably right, but I think that I will let the police know what happened, just to be safe,” Jack added.

  Jack had no intentions of calling in with the police to tell them about the man. The less the police knew about the man, the better. Jack walked to the other side of the street. His training back in Scotland in the 1970s kicked in—he was told all those years ago to step back and look at a scene from a distance. He was told not to focus on the main hub of activity as that was often little more than a distraction. It made sense—if a bomb went off you were unlikely to find the bomber standing yards from the explosion admiring his handiwork. What was more likely was to find the bomber a short distance away so that they could admire what they had done, yet at the same time stay far enough away to avoid being caught.

  On the other side of the street Jack began to take in the scene.

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  “It is certainly a bit odd that he took off

  People had initially run away from the building, like a wave heading out to sea, but as the dust settled, and against the demands of the police, the people were now rushing back towards the building to have a look at what was going on. There were shootings everyday in the city, and even the odd small yet deadly car bomb, but a blast on this scale was something that didn’t come along everyday and the people wanted to be part of the story.

  There was an almost morbid inevitability about what was about to happen next

  the crowd was

  but Jack feared that he could do nothing about it. If

  not prepared to listen to the instructions issued to them by the police then there was little point of Jack stepping up and making a fool of himself. As the crowd began to surge forwards a second explosion ripped through the underground. The blast hit Jack but he was able to keep his feet, which was more than the majority of the encroaching crowd could manage. Those at the front of the crowd bore the brunt of the explosion as bits of masonry tore through them. The rows behind were slightly shielded by the sacrifice made by the leading edge of people, but the power of the blast at such a close distance meant that the experience was far from pleasant.

  The wave of humanity was on the move once again as people clambered to their feet and they began to rush away from the building. Jack instinctively looked up—the first blast was the more powerful of the two and it had really rattled the entire building, but the second blast did not have to be very powerful to bring the building down. Jack looked for any signs of movement on the upper floors of the tower. There were none.

  Jack’s attention returned to the scene of terror and confusion. People were pushing each other out of the way as they tried to make their escape. Some of the policemen and paramedics were also trying to clear out of the area, while those a little more dedicated, or foolhardy, cautiously made their way back towards the smouldering building. Jack scanned the area. If this was the work of one of the Islamist groups then there was no guarantee that more devices would not explode; or perhaps they would follow the explosions up with a gun attack—another favourite tactic that they often used. Jack’s knowledge of these groups indicated that he should be looking for motorcycles, especially those carrying passengers. Therewere none, which was unusual in that

  37 part of the city—the young rich of the city were often to be seen nipping around on bikes so powerful that they would have been better suited to a racetrack.

  Everything about what Jack was looking at made perfect sense. There was nothing out of place. The emergency workers were doing what they were supposed to be doing, at least the ones who were hanging around were doing what they were supposed to be doing, and the frightened crowd was doing what it was supposed to be doing. Everything was as it should be, given the extreme circumstances. Jack’s eyes moved up and down the street, and up and down, and up and down again. Nothing. He was about to cross back to the building when he noticed something out of the corner of his eye. At first it barely registered. It was almost imperceptible, but his eye caught it and his mind gave it a context just in time, as a large crowd of people ran towards one of the side streets about fifty yards from where Jack was standing. A slow moving bottleneck had developed, but it was moving. That’s when Jack spotted him. The man was dressed in jeans and a leather jacket. His choice of wardrobe was odd enough given the stifling temperature that was oppressing the city, but the fact that he was not moving was the more interesting thing about the man. Jack observed the man for a few moments just to be certain that he wasn’t waiting for a friend or colleague. The man didn’t move—he remained fixated by what was going on in the car park. He was either an extreme rubbernecker or he had something to do with the blast.

  Jack stepped out onto the street. The calm expression that had been on his face was replaced by a deliberate look of concern as he joined the tail end of people as they rushed away from the scene of the explosions. Jack avoided looking at the man as much as possible—if Jack could spot him then there was every possibility that the man could also spot Jack. The distance between them closed rapidly—twenty yards; fifteen yards; ten yards. Jack looked the man right in the face when there were only a couple of yards separating them. Jack’s brain locked in on the man’s features. He was familiar to Jack, but he couldn’t instantly place him. Just as Jack was about to confront the man a policeman stepped in between them. The policeman confronted Jack.

  “You are going to have to keep moving sir. It is not safe here,” said the policeman. Jack smiled briefly at the policeman and he nodded his head to indicate that he understood. Jack walked around the policeman to where the man had been standing; the man was gone. Jack quickly pushed his way through the crowd as it snaked its way down the side street. So caught up was he with recognising the man’s face, he had not paid any attention to the colour of his hair; something that would have been very handy at that moment as all he could see, for the most part, was the back of people’s heads. The leather jack
et was all that Jack had to work with. He frantically looked for that leather jacket amongst the crowd but there wasn’t a single man, woman or child with such a jacket to be seen. After a few minutes of frantic searching Jack gave up—in front of him, neatly folded and placed with care on top of a bin, was the jacket. He could have followed the crowd but something told him that the man would not be found.

  Jack cursed himself for not acting more quickly as he made his way back towards the office. He cursed himself again as he couldn’t place the man’s face. He was so familiar; but from where? Initially Jack thought that he had seen the man with Robert at one of the previous business meetings—perhaps a minder of some kind? That wasn’t it. The context was all wrong. The man and South Africa was all wrong. He knew the man and from the look on the stranger’s face when their eyes locked out on the street, it seemed clear to Jack that the man knew him too.

  When he got back to the office building the police had done a much more rigorous job of securing the scene. Jack explained who he was but that cut no ice with the two officers who were standing guard at the main entrance. As Jack argued his case another officer approached them.

  “Sir, I have been given instructions to take you in to provide a statement. I believe you knew some of the victims?” said the policeman.

  “They were business associates,” Jack replied. “Very good sir. If you would like to come with me. It shouldn’t take too long.”

  Jack followed the policeman to a waiting Landrover.

  Warrior’s Way

  Jack never got involved with South African politics beyond the terms of his mission. He had his own views on the inequalities of the society, but those thoughts remained firmly locked up inside his head. He had been to many countries in a professional capacity over many years, and some of the regimes he had duelled with were much more ruthless than that of South Africa—though a greater number were a lot fairer than the system that was supposed to have come to an end in South Africa. A strong opinion one way or the other was sure to alienate someone, and he had carefully nurtured the image of an apolitical everyman, ever to put that cover in danger. His apparent disinterest gave him great access and it also helped him to fly under the radar of the authorities. However, even in the new South Africa there was a latent prejudice that touched everyone, including Jack, and it was that prejudice that allowed him to climb into the back of the Police Land Rover without asking any questions—the policeman escorting Jack was white, but had the officer been black, Jack may have been a little more cautious. The former ruling minority still had a loud voice in the new state and they did everything in their power to discredit any black South African who was in a position of authority. That character assassination usually took the form of allegation of corruption. There were many stories of black police officers abusing their power. One of those

  stories told of how some of the corrupt officers would kidnap foreign nationals and threaten them with violence, or death, if a “security fee” was not forthcoming. Jack suspected that such stories were more fiction than fact, but they were always there in the back of his mind, no matter how unrealistic he believed them to be.

  The police officer opened a door to the back of the vehicle and he smiled warmly at Jack as he waited for him to climb inside. In the context of the bomb in his building, it wasn’t so farfetched to believe that the police would want to speak to him at some point, and so he climbed into the vehicle without pause for thought. The door closed firmly and as it did Jack noticed that there were no handles on the doors in the back of the Land Rover. A thick iron mesh separated Jack from the officer sitting behind the wheel in the front, completing the appearance of the Land Rover being nothing more than a small prison on wheels. As uneasy feeling came over Jack for a moment but it quickly dissipated once he reassured himself that such a set up was not uncommon for a police vehicle. A little warning from the officer about what to expect once he was inside the Land Rover would have been nice, but given the circumstances, it was understandable that the oversight was made. Besides, the police in any country were trained to make the experience of tangling with the law, in any capacity, an uncomfortable one. The more a suspect or potential witness could be knocked off guard, the better was the chance for the truth to be revealed during the interview stage.

  They drove away from the crime scene at a sober pace, passing more emergency vehicles which were heading in the opposite direction as they continued towards the police station, as well as an increasingly swelling crowd of onlookers who were once again calling up enough bravery to move in towards the source of the explosions for a better look. There was nothing about the policeman’s actions that gave Jack any reason to doubt his sincerity—the cop was the very epitome of calm and collected.

  Jack liked crowds, for the most part, as they anonymity and cover, but this crowd was a number of them were looking right at him as he sat in the back of the Land Rover, and in his line of business it was never a good idea to draw too much attention to one’s self. A man in suit in the back of a cop car

  41 provided him with little different—a

  warranted some scrutiny, in the estimation of most people. No doubt some of those faces in the crowd had already decided that Jack had something to do with the explosion, even though they knew nothing about him or the circumstances and progress of the investigation.

  Jack moved his head this way and that in as natural a fashion as he could muster; he didn’t want the people looking in at him to think that he was being in some way evasive as that would only serve to heighten their curiosity even further, yet at the same time he did need to do all that he could to keep a low profile. The policeman watched Jack in the rear-view mirror as he shifted uncomfortably in his seat. The officer smiled.

  “Don’t worry, boss, we will soon be clear of the crowds,” said the officer, in a thick Africana accent. “This is a violent city at the best of times, but something like this is a bit special. You can’t blame them for having a look, eh?”

  Jack nodded his head at the officer’s words and he returned with a smile of his own—easy for you to say, mate, Jack thought, coldly. He was not the one who was being stared at. Once they were clear of the main hub of activity the officer responded to Jack’s unspoken concerns by accelerating.

  There were many parts of the city that Jack avoided; most because they were deemed unsafe by the South African authorities, and some because they were too close to the kind of people who might just notice that there was something not quite right with Jack and his entire company set-up. The intense briefing that he received back in London before he set off on the mission was not very helpful. Over the years Jack had learned that when his handlers used the term ‘intense briefing’, what they really meant was short briefing. Whoever was providing him with the information normally spoke at great speed as if to give the impression that what he was being told was only the abridged version of detailed files that they had access to—that was invariably bullshit—what he was being told was all the information that they had on a particular mission. It was all a part of the great game that they played but with time he longed for a handler who told him the truth from the start. That was never going to happen, and if the day came when he was pulled out of the field and sat behind a desk, he

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  would probably use the same tricks on the agents that he briefed. The bitter experiences he had as poacher would be quickly forgotten when he turned gamekeeper.

  The South African government knew there was something not quite right with Jack and his company set-up, and they approved of him and what he did, for the most part, because what he, and others like him did helped to put many of the men and women in power into their gated communities with their luxury villas and chauffer driven cars. Those people were happy to accommodate Jack and his kind as long as they didn’t bring any mess to their back yards. Once that happened he would be cut loose into the care of the legal system, and that was a world where few unconnected foreigners seldom returned from.<
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  It was the less informed people in the lower levels of the power ladder who Jack feared most. People such as the police. They were trained to spot when someone was trying to cover something up and if the police ever looked into Jack and his company they would encounter many anomalies, and even in a police force as corrupt as that found in South Africa there was always the danger that he might run into that one cop who was beyond corruption. Those in power had a lot of control but with the modern media always on the lookout for some big player in the political arena to bring down, a good cop could always find protection in the arms of a media spotlight—such cops could not simply disappear; at least not without many awkward questions being asked. For that reason Jack always went out of his way to avoid the police, and the press. He had a run-in with one young reporter who wanted to run a piece on new investment in South Africa but Jack refused to give an interview. The young man was very persistent. Eventually he turned to his friends in the government for help. It turned out that the reporter was really an undercover agent working for the Revenue Department. Soon after reaching out to his contacts, the young agent ended his investigation. Jack often wondered what was meant by the simple phone message that had been left for him at his office—the process has been terminated. Was the agent told to back off or was there a more sinister meaning behind those words? He never did find out. There was a small part of him that worried that one day a vengeful agent, now older and in a more senior position, would come knocking on Jack’s door. That’s what he would have done,