by Tom Cain
The car left the central business district and headed into Sandhurst, a top-of-the-market residential area where palatial mansions stood in grounds covering acres, on blocks that measured a quarter of a mile on every side. It was followed all the way by a dusty white minivan that remained at least a hundred yards behind it at all times. The two vehicles passed houses barricaded behind high walls and heavy gates, and watched over by CCTV cameras. Every property seemed to bear a metal plate by the entrance, stating that it was guarded by XPT Security. The company liked to boast that it had reduced the local crime-rate to zero, thanks to its combination of regular armed patrols and constant video surveillance. Its cars were a round-the-clock presence on the streets and its customers were assured that the company’s response time, coordinated from a control room that operated for twenty-four hours of every day in the year, would never exceed six minutes, under any circumstances.
The white van pulled up in the moonshadow cast by a large jacaranda tree growing by the side of the road. Up ahead, the limo had stopped in front of a gate that would not have looked out of place outside a maximum-security prison. It rose at least twelve feet into the air and was made of thick stainless-steel plates, topped with four rows of barbed wire, angled outwards to prevent anyone climbing over the top. The gate opened by sliding across the entrance from left to right, from the point of view of the road. To the left-hand side of the gate, a guardhouse was built into the property’s thick concrete-covered wall. South Africans drive on the left, so anyone driving into the property would therefore pass directly by the guardhouse and the gate would only need to be half-opened to let them in.
This was Wendell Klerk’s principal South African townhouse. Its protective features befitted a man of his wealth, prominence and exposure to possible threat.
There were always two men in the guardhouse, working eight-hour shifts round the clock. One acted as the sentry and gatekeeper, watching the world go by through a thick plate-glass window; the other monitored the network of cameras, motion detectors and other alarms that covered the entire house and grounds. The feeds from all the properties’ cameras were also available to staff back at the corporate control room. And just in case anyone should somehow get into the grounds, a kennel to the rear of the guardhouse contained three German Shepherds, bred for speed, strength and aggression. They could be released at any moment without the guards having to leave their post.
The men and women in the back of the limo knew all this, just as they knew about the maximum six minutes that would elapse between the first alarm sounding and the arrival of the XPT personnel, guns out and sirens blaring. They would be long gone by then.
One of the passenger doors opened and the woman who’d kept her party clothes on almost fell out on to the pavement. She was a fine-looking girl, and her micro-skirted, backless, halter-necked excuse for a dress revealed every inch of her toned, glossy-skinned figure. She paused for a moment on the pavement to gather her wits, then teetered towards the guardhouse, brushing away the tumbling waves of golden-brown hair extensions from her face then holding a hand to her mouth to stifle her giggles.
The two men in the guardhouse were entering the sixth hour of a shift in which precisely nothing had happened. The boss and his woman had stayed home. No one had come to visit them. Almost no one had even driven by. They were bored out of their minds, and their body-clocks were telling them they really ought to be asleep. When the guard on sentry duty saw the girl, he sighed, grinned cheerfully and waved his mate over to feast his eyes, too.
The girl tapped a finger on the window, smiled alluringly and started speaking. She appeared to be trying to ask some kind of question. Maybe she and her friends were lost: it was impossible to hear her through the thick glass.
The guard held a hand up to his ear and shook his head.
She shrugged her shoulders helplessly, but very prettily.
The guard had a bright idea. He gestured to her to come round to the side of the guardhouse where there was a window that opened, allowing staff to speak to anyone waiting by the gate.
The girl smiled and nodded then walked round to the window.
The guard slid it up and leaned out of the opening to get the fullest possible view of every inch of the woman in front of him. He was not disappointed. Putting on his most charming, debonair smile, he said, ‘How can I help you, Miss?’
His pal was standing just behind him, peering over his shoulder to get a good look, too.
The girl gave a coy, embarrassed smile. ‘We’re lost.’ She giggled.
‘Ahh…’ said the guard, nodding, his suspicions confirmed. ‘So where is your destination?’
‘Coronation Road,’ she said. ‘I have the address in my bag. Wait a moment.’
She was carrying a small gold sequinned clutch-bag. She opened it, rummaged inside and pulled out a Walther TPH pistol, a ‘pocket-gun’ barely five inches long that fires just six. 22 calibre rounds.
The party girl used four of them to put a pair of head-shots into the guard closest to her, then shifted her aim and put two more in the one behind. From the first shot to the last took less than three seconds.
The only entrance to the guardhouse was at the back, on the far side of the gate. So the woman kicked off her shoes, pushed the first guard’s dead body out of the opening and clambered through the window.
The. 22 is a very neat bullet. Being such a small calibre, and especially when fired from a gun as modest as the TPH, it lacks the power to pass right through a human skull and instead ricochets around the brain. This causes appalling damage to the victim while avoiding the mess of bone, brain and blood-spatter caused by a through-and-through round. There was thus no obvious carnage for the woman to step through on her way to the guardhouse control panel. Not that she would have been put off if there had been. She had seen a great deal worse in her time.
She turned off all the alarm systems and opened the gate. The other five passengers got out of the limo, taking care to shut the doors silently behind them, and slipped through the gate, which closed behind them. The limo gently eased into motion and drove away. Then the road was silent again. As silent as the grave.
58
Carver had read a magazine story once about Ike and Tina Turner. Back in the late sixties, they bought a big mansion in LA and did it up in the kind of style Ike felt was appropriate for a legendary soulman and his red-hot wife. A guy from their record company came over one day. Ike told him the decorations had cost seventy thousand dollars, serious money back then. The guy replied, ‘You mean you can actually spend seventy grand in Woolworths?’
The Gushungos’ Hong Kong residence reminded Carver of that story. He was led down a hall floored with polished black marble tiles. They were edged in white and laid in diagonal lines, so that the white edges joined together to form a diamond-shaped pattern that criss-crossed the floor. Some kind of optical illusion made it look as though the white lines were raised from the black tiles, so that he constantly felt like he was just about to trip over them. Two glossy ceramic tigers, as tall as Carver’s waist, sat on either side of the door, each baring its teeth and waving a claw in his direction. The walls were decorated with a paper that featured a swirling metallic silver pattern on a black velveteen background. Maybe it was the other way round. Maybe the black velveteen was the pattern. It was hard to tell, and Carver didn’t bother to look closely enough to find out. He didn’t want to risk getting a headache. He just looked dead ahead and thought about Jesus.
On the right-hand side of the hall, a staircase led upstairs to the bedrooms and bathrooms, and down to the servants’ quarters. The main living room, however, was at the back of the building, looking out across a valley towards a jagged line of steep, thickly wooded hills. The land between Kowloon and Tai Po was mostly set aside as parkland, a rural oasis in the heart of the city-state, and the Gushungos’ villa took full advantage of the stunning views.
The inside of the living room was spectacular too, in its own absurd
ly gaudy way. The floor tiles were the same as the hall, but the paper switched to a burnished gold colour. Carver looked to his right and saw a life-size double portrait of Henderson and Faith Gushungo, posing in their wedding clothes in front of an impossibly lush landscape of African savannah, teeming with wild animals of every kind – the kind, for example, that no longer existed in the arid wastelands of Malemba. The artist had taken about thirty years off the President’s age and turned his skin the purple-black colour of an aubergine. He was standing with his shoulders squared, staring manfully into the distance, while his beautiful, submissive bride gazed up at him with adoring cow eyes.
Beneath the painting was a sofa strewn with richly patterned silk cushions. Its vivid purple-leather upholstery almost matched the mauve curtains draped on either side of the floor-to-ceiling windows on the far side of the room. The rest of the armchairs in the room were bright scarlet, and the light fittings were all gold-plated, as was the frame of the glass-topped coffee table, littered with copies of Vogue and Architectural Digest, that stood in front of the sofa. The other paintings scattered around the walls made the one of the Gushungos look like a masterpiece of aristocratic portraiture by Gainsborough.
At the far end of the room stood a bar with a white marble top. Beneath it, the side of the bar had been divided into three panels. The outer edge of each panel was black. The inner heart of it was bright pillar-box red. The two colours were divided by a rectangle of white beading. The style was Nazi Nouveau.
‘Do you have a cross?’ Mabeki asked him.
‘Of course.’
Carver reached into his briefcase and took out his crucifix. He regretted now buying one with Jesus hanging on the cross. It made him feel like he was being watched.
‘Put it on here,’ said Mabeki, patting the bar counter. ‘Your colleague, Gibson, uses this as the altar.’
‘Does he really?’ said Carver. Either Gibson was too saintly to notice his physical surroundings, or he was taking the piss.
There was an ashtray sitting on the bar just a few inches from the cross, filled with lipstick-ringed cigarette butts.
‘Could you move that, please?’ Carver asked.
Mabeki gave him a bleak, spidery stare, then clapped his hands and shouted a few words in a language Carver could not understand. One of the bodyguards came in, was treated to a sharp burst of spittle-flecked orders, grabbed the ashtray and disappeared into another room. A few seconds later he was back again, this time with a colleague, to move the coffee table out of the way. More commands were issued. The two men hurried away and reappeared once more carrying two ornate gilt dining chairs, which were placed about six feet from the bar, facing the cross.
‘The President and the First Lady will take communion sitting on these chairs. The President’s health makes it difficult for him to kneel. Other members of the household will kneel in a row behind them.’
‘Will you be joining us, Mr…? I’m sorry, I didn’t catch your name.’
‘Mabeki. And no, I will not be taking part in this ridiculous charade.’ He came right up to Carver, standing over him. Then he twisted his body so that his face was thrust towards Carver’s, almost daring Carver to look away from the mangled wreckage of his scarred skin, twisted lips and glistening gums. ‘Do I look like I should believe in a just and merciful God?’
It suddenly struck Carver just how all-consuming Mabeki’s hunger for power must be, that he would choose to remain the way he was, with the effect that he caused, rather than have the surgery that could have repaired the worst, at least, of the damage. Mabeki actually wanted to look that deformed, that repellent. To him it was a source of strength.
‘Well,’ Carver replied, hoping that his face conveyed a suitable look of understanding and concern, ‘it is not for us to judge God’s purpose in afflicting us as he sometimes does. But you may be sure that he has one, and that it is filled with love and compassion for you.’
He ended with his face wreathed in a smug, patronizing smile and watched as Mabeki struggled to control the rage that constantly festered within him.
‘Believe that if you like, Reverend. I do not. And if God exists, let him prove me wrong.’
‘God does not have to prove anything, Mr Mabeki.’
Mabeki gave a dismissive grunt then took a pace back, breaking the tension between them. He took one last look at Carver – a man assessing the threat posed by another.
‘Will you be taking communion as well?’ Mabeki asked.
‘Of course. The meal is shared between the celebrant and the congregation.’
‘You will consume the same bread and wine as everyone else?’
Carver had been wondering when these questions would be asked. Mabeki was the kind of man who never, ever stopped seeing potential threats in everything and everyone around him. Would he now want Carver to taste everything to prove it was safe?
‘Naturally,’ Carver replied. ‘There is one chalice of wine, shared by all. The wafers, too, are the same for everyone.’
‘Who is the first to eat and drink?’
‘I am. The celebrant is always the first to receive the sacrament.’
Mabeki thought for a moment.
‘Is there a problem?’ Carver asked, feigning bemusement at this line of questioning. ‘I’m sure I conduct the service in very much the same style as the Reverend Gibson. The text is taken from the Book of Common Worship. The procedure is absolutely standard. Well, I say that, but of course there will be some difference between those who prefer the traditional form of words and the more modern version. Personally, I confess I hanker after the poetry of-’
‘I get the point,’ hissed Mabeki. ‘Now, make your preparations. The President and the First Lady will be with you in five minutes.’
He stalked out of the room, leaving Carver with the two bodyguards watching over him as he busied himself with his briefcase filled with holiness and death.
59
In Sandton, Wendell Klerk had woken early, keen to see the text flash on his screen that would tell him Carver had succeeded in his mission. He lay in bed with the lights off and curtains drawn, so as not to disturb the sleeping figure of Brianna Latrelle beside him, clutching his phone and snatching glances at its screen as anxiously as a nervous adulterer waiting for a message from his lover.
Because he was awake, he heard the sound of the. 22 being fired. An average civilian could easily have mistaken those rounds fired in very quick succession for the popping of a backfiring engine. Wendell Klerk, however, was not an average civilian. He had fought in a vicious civil war and the instincts he acquired then had never entirely deserted him, even in his sleep.
He sat up in bed and listened for a moment. His gate had been designed and engineered to be as noiseless as possible, so as not to disturb anyone in the house. Yet he thought he could hear the soft sound of its rubber wheels rolling over the tarmac of his drive and the barely audible purr of an engine. Then nothing.
Klerk did not hesitate. He pressed the emergency button by his bed. He had always allowed for the possibility that his guardhouse might be overrun. The emergency button was linked by its own dedicated line direct to the control room at XPT Security’s headquarters, and it required immediate armed response. From the moment he touched it, the clock was running. Six minutes, maximum, was all he now needed to survive.
He leaned across his kingsize bed and shook Brianna’s shoulder. She moaned softly and shrugged his hand away. He shook her again.
‘Go ’way,’ she mumbled.
Klerk gripped more tightly and gave her a single, much rougher shake. ‘Get up,’ he hissed. ‘Do it! Now!’
She raised her body on one elbow and peered at him blearily through the darkness. ‘What’s happening?’ There was an edge of alarm to her voice.
‘I don’t know,’ Klerk replied, ‘but I want you to go to the panic room. Don’t argue. Just go. Now!’
Brianna didn’t make a fuss. She knew her man well enough to realize that he would
n’t give that kind of order without a very good reason. But as she stopped to grab the satin dressing gown she kept draped over the end of the bed, she asked, ‘What about you?’
Klerk was out of bed now, too. He slept in a pair of pyjama trousers, worn for precisely this sort of occasion. He liked to tell dinner guests that he never wanted to be stark bollock naked when he came face to face with an intruder: ‘I wouldn’t want to frighten the bastard too much.’ Now he walked over to Brianna, gave her a quick, fierce hug, kissed her cheek and said, ‘Don’t worry about me, worry about the other guy. Now get out of here!’
She raised a hand to touch his face, then sped across the room to her walk-in wardrobe. At the back, hidden behind her ballgowns, was a small touchscreen. She placed her hand against it and a hitherto-invisible door in the back wall of the wardrobe swung open, like the entrance to Narnia. It did not lead to a magic kingdom but a small chamber, roughly ten feet square, that was essentially an air-conditioned, bullet- and bombproof bank vault designed to safeguard humans rather then cash. When she swung the door closed behind her she was as safe as a gold bar at Fort Knox.
Wendell Klerk had never intended to use the panic room himself. The reason he gave in public – true as far as it went – was that he didn’t want to be hidden away like a coward while someone was violating his property. It offended his manly pride. His private reason was never revealed to anyone, Brianna and Zalika included. He’d once been in the room just to see what it was like. He’d closed the door and suddenly found himself so overwhelmed by claustrophobia that it made his heart race, his body break out in a muck sweat and his chest heave as he desperately tried to breathe. The panic room felt to him like a tomb, and it scared him far more than any human ever could. Under no circumstances would he ever go in there again.