by Tom Cain
When they’d finished their deadly work, they pulled the Hilux back out of the river, restarted the engine and made their way back to the acacia grove. There, the raiding team split in two, four of the men taking the Strattens’ Land Rover as they headed towards the estate house. They paused once along the way to meet another pick-up filled with more armed veterans, then, reinforced, they sped towards their destination.
Zalika Stratten had tried to protest when her father ordered her into the family’s underground shelter, hidden beneath a workshop some distance from the main house. Contact had been lost with Andy and his men. Word had come in from an outlying village of a truck of armed men on the move. In a country inured to armed insurgency, people were used to preparing for the worst. Like many white women in southern Africa, Zalika had taken every self-defence and weapons training course she could get. It was a given among her race and class that they, too, were an endangered species.
‘I know how to handle a gun,’ she insisted, ‘let me fight!’
Her father was having none of it. ‘For once in your life, Zalika, do as you are told!’ he shouted, grabbing her by the arm and half-dragging her towards her only hope of safety.
‘Come on, darling, you know this is for the best,’ said Jacqui. ‘Daddy doesn’t want to have to worry about us.’
The shelter was well supplied with food, water, basic survival gear and even a couple of rifles. The women clambered through a hatch and down a ladder into the underground chamber, then looked up at Stratten, who was on his haunches above them.
‘You know the drill,’ he said. ‘Stay here. Do not make any noise. Do not use any of the torches or lanterns. If all goes well, I will come for you. If it does not, then wait until nightfall, and try to get out under cover of dark.’
‘Oh Dick!’ cried Jacqui, her composure finally starting to crack.
‘It’s all right, my dear,’ said Stratten, trying to keep his own fear from his voice. ‘Don’t you worry now. Everything’s going to be just fine.’ He paused for a second, forcing his emotions back under control, then said, ‘I love you both so very, very much,’ before he closed the hatch.
‘Daddy!’ shouted Zalika in the darkness. But her father was already gone.
Down in the shelter, the women were aware of the trucks’ arrival. They heard the firing of the guns, the screams of the fearful and the wounded, and the frenetic shouts of the fighting men. Then, as swiftly as a passing storm, the gunfire abated and the screaming gave way to a few agonized moans, swiftly silenced by single shots. Finally came a crash as the workshop door was barged open, followed by four quick, confident footsteps heading straight for the hatch.
For a fraction of a second hope flickered in the women’s hearts as they stood in the darkness, each gripping a rifle. Whoever was up there was not blundering around. They knew exactly what they were doing. That could only mean Dick Stratten, or one of the very few family retainers who were trusted enough to know about the shelter.
Then the hatch was flung open and a disembodied voice – a refined, educated voice – commanded them, ‘Put down your guns. They are of no help to you now. My men have hand-grenades. If you do not leave the shelter within the next ten seconds, unarmed, holding on to the ladder with both hands, they will blow you to pieces. Ten… nine…’
‘You two-faced little shit,’ hissed Jacqui Stratten. Then she gripped the ladder and called ‘We’re coming up!’ as she stepped up into the beam of light coming through the open hatch.
Zalika Stratten followed her mother. Before she’d reached the top of the ladder, strong hands reached down to grab her, pull her upwards and dump her on the workshop floor. She landed by a man’s feet, clad in expensive, barely worn safari boots.
She heard the man’s voice bark, ‘Take the mother away.’
Zalika raised her face and looked Moses Mabeki in the eye as he said, ‘Your brother is dead. Your father is dead. Your mother will soon be dead. You, however, are coming with me.’
9
Two weeks later, a man named Wendell Klerk phoned Carver and summoned him to a meeting at a hotel on the northern shore of Lake Geneva. Klerk did not say what he wanted to discuss. He did not need to. He merely barked, ‘Be there in thirty minutes,’ and hung up without waiting for an answer.
Carver was intrigued. Klerk was as familiar a figure in the gossip columns, invariably attached to the latest in a long line of beauty-queen blondes, as he was in the business pages. Born into a working-class white family, one of two children of a railway worker and his socially ambitious teacher wife, Klerk had fought on the losing side in the civil war and left the country soon after British Mashonaland’s rebirth as Malemba. He’d settled in Johannesburg, South Africa, from where he’d built an international business empire whose interests included gambling, hotels, construction and mining – ‘from casinos to coalmines’ as one reporter had put it. Klerk was known as a tough operator. Over the years both journalists and hostile politicians had accused him of corruption, bribery and even ties to organized crime. But none of the charges had stuck. If anything, they had just made the public warm to Klerk as a tough but likeable renegade.
In recent weeks, however, Klerk had been in the news for very different reasons. Carver assumed that was the reason for the call. Out of curiosity, if nothing else, he wanted to know what Klerk had in mind.
Twenty-seven minutes later, Carver walked into the reception of a modern low-slung building faced in brick and terracotta rendering that made it look more Moroccan than Swiss. He was led by one of the staff across the ground-floor reception area, out past a swimming-pool ringed with unoccupied sun-loungers and down into a tunnel which passed under the main road that ran along the lakeshore. At the far end of the tunnel a jetty stretched out across the water. A long, thin wooden motorboat that resembled a Venetian water-taxi was moored at the far end.
The boat belonged to the hotel, whose insignia was embroidered on the pennant that fluttered from its stern. But the man standing at the open wheel in front of the covered passenger cabin was not one of the standard white-jacketed hotel boatmen. He wore the global uniform of the upmarket heavy: black suit, tie, shades and shoes; white shirt; earpiece; a gun invisibly but unquestionably secreted somewhere about his person.
Carver was patted down, then ushered into the cabin where Wendell Klerk was waiting. Klerk’s short, stocky, powerful body, with its snub-nosed peasant’s face and tightly curled black hair, looked as incongruous as a cannonball deposited on the elegant quilted seating. The two men shook hands, then sat in silence as the boat was cast off from the shore and motored out on to the lake.
Klerk looked out through a porthole. Evidently happy that they had travelled far enough to be out of earshot of any shore-based surveillance, he turned his black-brown eyes on Carver and asked, ‘You know who I am, ja?’
‘Of course.’
‘So you are aware of my interest in a certain kidnapping case.’
‘Sure, I watch the news. You’re the Stratten girl’s uncle – her mother’s brother.’
‘In that case you can work out why I wanted to see you.’ Klerk’s voice was a deep, guttural rumble.
Carver nodded. ‘Your sister was killed and your niece was kidnapped. With the father and the brother both dead, that left only you to get her back. I assume you hired one of the top security firms to handle the negotiations to recover her. Clearly they’ve not succeeded, so now you’re thinking it’s time for Plan B. Money’s not an issue for a man of your resources and you must have some very powerful, well-connected friends. Some of them could have been involved with the organization I used to work for. Maybe you were in it yourself. Either way, I’m assuming my name came up. Right?’
Klerk nodded. ‘Close enough. So let me tell you the situation. The kidnappers are moving every few days, but my people have been tracking them wherever they go. It isn’t hard to do. Nothing stays secret in Africa for long, not if you’re willing to pay. I have not told the authorities because I do n
ot trust them either to keep the information secret, or act on it appropriately. Instead, I want you to get my niece Zalika Stratten out of there. She must be recovered unharmed. Her safety is the only reason I have not sent my people in after her long before now. They are good, but – how can I put it? – they lack subtlety. That is why I have come to you.’
‘Maybe so,’ said Carver, ‘but however subtle I might be, the guys who have your niece aren’t likely to let her go without a fight. Even if she doesn’t get hurt, they will. And I don’t want to end up rotting in an African jail.’
‘I understand. But you can rest assured that if any of the kidnappers are made to pay the price for their actions, I will not care, and nor will the police. I will make sure of that.’
Klerk rubbed his fingers together to indicate that a willingness to pay would, once again, be the key. Then he looked at Carver, appraisingly.
‘How tall are you?’ he asked.
‘Five eleven.’
‘Weight?’
‘About one seventy-five in pounds, a little under eighty kilos.’
‘Light heavyweight,’ said Klerk. ‘That’ll do. You keep yourself in shape?’
Carver gave a silent prayer of thanks for the hundred-plus miles of hard cross-country running he’d put in over the past fortnight. ‘Yes.’
‘Fully recovered?’
So Klerk knew about the torture Carver had endured in the chalet outside Gstaad and the havoc that had wreaked on his mind.
‘I’m fit for action, yes,’ said Carver.
Klerk looked at him again like a jeweller examining a stone under his glass, searching for hidden flaws. ‘Yes, I believe you are,’ he finally replied. ‘Right, I’m sure we can work out a financial package, you and I. My people will get you all the details we have about the kidnappers’ current location. That just leaves two things you must know. The first is that Zalika Stratten is all the family I have left. I have never been able to have children, Mr Carver. I always hoped there would be someone to carry on my work when I am gone, keep my business alive. Zalika is my only hope and I will stop at nothing, absolutely nothing, to get her back. Whatever you want, you will have. Understood?’
‘Absolutely. What’s the second thing?’
‘The terms on which we do business,’ said Klerk. ‘I am a tough, mean bastard, Mr Carver. My sister got all the looks and social graces in our family and I got nothing but the will to win. But I am also a man of my word. You do right by me and you have nothing to fear. On the other hand, if you even try to screw with me I will not forget it and I will get even, however long it takes. So, now that you know what kind of a man you are dealing with, are you still interested?’
‘Yes,’ said Carver.
‘Good. When can you leave?’
‘When’s the next flight?’
10
The eastern border of Malemba resembles a crudely drawn semicircle, ringed by its neighbour Mozambique much as a spanner grips a nut. About fifty miles inside Mozambique, astride the river Zambezi, lies the town of Tete.
Carver arrived there at nine in the morning after a twenty-hour journey from Geneva, changing planes twice en route. He was expecting to be hit by a physical blast of heat and humidity as he stepped from the plane: Tete is only sixteen degrees south of the equator, well within the Tropic of Capricorn. He knew too that Mozambique was one of the poorest nations on earth, devastated by more than a decade of armed struggle against its former Portuguese masters, and a fifteen-year civil war that had killed almost a million people. Yet the air was pleasantly warm and dry, and the small terminal building, which rose from the runway tarmac in a series of whitewashed blocks topped by sharply angled roofs, was surprisingly clean and well maintained.
He’d cleared passport control and customs and walked out into the arrivals area when a short, wiry, moustachioed white man wearing a faded safari shirt over a pair of khaki shorts came up to him, pulled a cigarette from his mouth and asked ‘You Carver?’ in an abrasive colonial accent.
Carver said nothing.
‘Flattie Morrison,’ said the man, chucking the glowing butt on to the floor and grinding it under the heel of an ancient walking boot before sticking out his right hand. ‘Howzit? We’ve been expecting you.’
‘Samuel Carver.’
Morrison turned and led the way through a crowd of people, exchanging greetings in what Carver presumed was the local dialect; shooing away anyone who looked as if they were about to try to sell something; cursing and occasionally swatting the children who constantly darted around them.
‘The munts here are all right, but they are the worst fucking thieves in the whole of Africa,’ Morrison said, shoving a diminutive boy out of the way. ‘They will jack the clothes off your back and you will not even notice until you feel the wind on your arse. What the hell, hey? They have no economy, so if they want some kite, what else can they do?’
‘Kite?’
‘Money… greenbacks!’ Morrison rolled his tongue round the word with enormous relish then grinned, his upper lip spreading in a flat line across his face, exposing a line of gleaming white teeth below his grey-flecked ginger moustache. He tapped his right cheek. ‘See this smile, hey?’ he said, then clipped another child with the back of his hand without slowing his stride or pausing for breath. ‘That is why they call me Flattie. In Malemba, a flattie is a crocodile. And he gives you a great big smile just like this… right before he kills you. Hahaha!’
They walked out to Morrison’s car, a battered old Nissan Sunny, its once red paint faded to a washed-out pink, streaked with rust and punctuated with dents and holes.
‘Sorry if the wheels are a bit rough for your taste,’ said Morrison, getting in the driver’s side then leaning across to shove open the passenger door. ‘No point having a fancy new car here, boet. The munts strip it like fucking vultures on a corpse, and if it breaks down out there in the bush, there’s no bugger qualified to fix it. But this old heap? A baboon could learn to service it.’
After a couple of failed attempts, the engine coughed into life like an elderly man waking from an afternoon nap, and they headed out of the airport towards the city.
‘So,’ said Morrison once they were on the open road, ‘you are here to get the girl, hey?’
Carver nodded. ‘That’s the plan.’
‘By whatever means necessary.’
‘Something like that. So, you got the gear I asked for?’
Morrison grinned. ‘Mr Heckler and Mr Koch are in the building, and so are all their friends, stripped, checked, reassembled and in perfect working order.’
‘I’ll be the judge of that.’
‘Quite right. Never trust another bugger to check your weapon. So, they told me you were a Royal Marine, hey?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Regular bootie or SBS?’
‘That’s not something I talk about.’
Morrison gave a slightly narrower, slyer smile. ‘Ja, you were SBS, I can tell. Did you see action, may I ask? Contacts with the enemy?’
‘Yeah, I’ve had contacts.’
‘Good. Because let me tell you, I don’t want to fuck about with any more plum-in-mouth so-called experts in fancy suits who don’t know how to fight. “Conflict resolution” they call it, “a negotiated settlement”. Bullshit, man! They’re just sitting on their fat backsides in the bar of the Zambezi Hotel making bloody telephone calls to Mabeki, the treacherous, ungrateful black bastard, while that poor little chibba Zalika Stratten is all alone, scared out of her fucking mind, wondering why no one’s come to get her.’
‘She hasn’t been moved in the past twenty-four hours?’
‘Nah, still in Chitongo. It’s a village up by the Cahora Bassa dam, just another back-country shithole. Now me, I’d go and get her myself. Fuck, I’ve killed enough of them in my time. Wasted more than a hundred gooks, way more. Rebels, their women, children… hell, you see something moving in the elephant grass, you don’t stop to ask questions, you just empty your magazine
before the other fucker bends you over and gives you one right up the nought. But sometimes, hey, sometimes you should not have fired…’
Morrison’s voice trailed away. For a moment Carver could have sworn he was welling up. But then Morrison coughed, wiped a hand across his flushed, scarlet face, whispered, ‘Christ,’ to himself and went on, ‘So, anyway, I offered to do it, but the boss said, “No, Flattie. We must have a man who is more clinical than you. In, out, no mess, that is the plan.”’
Carver wondered what kind of kid Morrison had been before someone stuck some pips on his shoulder, put a gun in his hand and sent him off into the bush to destroy anything he found, himself included. The man was barely keeping it together. But Carver wasn’t about to judge. The ghosts of his own dead haunted him too, visiting him in nightmares that left him sweat-soaked, wide-eyed and fighting to hold back the screams. Anyone who’d truly been to war was scarred by the experience. If they told you any different they were lying.
‘How come you work for Klerk?’ he asked. ‘You don’t seem the corporate type.’
Morrison broke into a chuckle that ended in a wheezing cough. ‘You mean, why does a man like him put up with a crazy old bastard like me, hey? Well, I will tell you. I used to be his company commander. Klerk was just a corporal back then. After the war, well, let’s just say that our lives took very different courses. But we were comrades. We fought side by side. You don’t forget a thing like that.’
They drove down a broad avenue, the tarmac hardly visible beneath a thick coat of dust whose red-ochre colour seemed tinted by all the bloodshed it had absorbed. Tall palms poked up between the trees on either side.
‘We could not put you up at the Zambezi because we don’t want those other useless buggers knowing what’s really going on,’ said Morrison, pulling up in front of a dilapidated attempt at an American-style motel. ‘This place will have to do. Don’t worry, though, you won’t be stopping here long.’