Book Read Free

Payback - A Cape Town thriller

Page 17

by Mike Nicol


  ‘Isn’t this cosy for a reunion?’

  Mace shrugged. ‘Very nice.’

  She picked up the wine list. ‘Who’s the client?’

  ‘A banker.’

  She gave him a raised eyebrow. ‘You fly all the way over here to babysit a banker going on holiday.’

  ‘Part of the service.’

  ‘Who gives a shit what happens to a banker?’

  ‘She does. Her husband and kiddies too.’

  Isabella shook her head. ‘The world’s paranoid. You want merlot? Or pinot noir?’

  ‘Merlot.’

  She ordered pinot noir, giving him the wide smile that had worked him up in their arms-dealing jungle days.

  Mace rolled with it.

  ‘Do you remember,’ she said, ‘the first words I ever said to you?’ - a glint in her eyes.

  ‘I hope you want to have sex.’

  She smiled. ‘Quite a memory!’

  ‘Hardly the sort of opener you’re likely to forget.’

  Isabella nodded. ‘That was a hopeless situation. How you walked right into it, not a care in the world. I’m watching you switch off the Jeep, start down the path towards me, wondering when’s he going to realise what’s going down?’

  Mace shrugged. ‘You could’ve given me a clue.’

  ‘What? Like I hope you want to have sex isn’t a clue?’

  ‘I thought you’d been in the bush too long.’

  ‘Oh right. I was desperate for it.’

  ‘I even said it. Made a joke about you being bush-happy. Then you got all tight-lipped, said something about being serious and I wasn’t to run …’

  ‘Or do anything I was going to regret.’

  ‘Words to that effect.’

  Mace thinking back to this stunning woman: hair short, ragged and self-cut against the dripping heat. A face out of some Italian renaissance painting: hooded brown eyes, smooth skin, roman nose, small lovely mouth, delicate cheek bones. This woman standing in the doorway of the hut. Unsmiling.

  ‘Then you got the general idea.’

  ‘I did.’

  The waiter brought the wine, showing the label to Isabella.

  She smiled up at him. ‘Let’s have it.’

  The waiter cut the seal, twisted an old-fashioned corkscrew into the cork and pulled it with a grimace. Splashed an eighth into Isabella’s glass. She swirled it, tasted, nodded at the man to pour.

  When he was done she raised her glass to Mace, toasted, ‘To getting out alive.’

  They clinked glasses and drank, Mace taking a little more than a sip.

  ‘You approve?’

  ‘It’s not merlot,’ he said.

  ‘And you’ve become a wine connoisseur?’

  ‘Hardly.’

  ‘It doesn’t get any better than this.’

  Mace shrugged. ‘I’ll take your word for it.’ Took another decent mouthful. ‘Where was that?’ he said. ‘Where were we? Uganda?’

  ‘Zaire, Mace. Outskirts of Kinshasa. On the edge of a rainforest. The way I remember it there was a hut on a track through fields of banana palms. A bit further off, a small village near the tree edge but not so far away you couldn’t hear voices now and then. Not sure when we’d made the arrangement or even how but I’d got the hardware for you: a stack of Czech assault rifles.’

  ‘The first time I’d sourced from you.’

  ‘The way it began I didn’t think we had a future. Walking straight into kiddie-bandits like that.’

  ‘Before I left the hotel, the dive we were staying at, I told Pylon, it’s a simple pick-up, only one of us needed to go. Told him to stay in case you called. He said, how’s that supposed to happen when the phone’s down? So I joked maybe there’d be a messenger with a letter in a forked stick.’

  ‘Pity about that. That he didn’t come with you.’

  ‘No harm done.’

  ‘Very nearly though. Remember the little boy, the frisker, patting you down, trying to undo your belt buckle and hold that Aksu at the same time?’

  Mace laughed. ‘I thought about making a grab for it. But his finger was on the trigger. He touched that fifteen rounds were going to go off, or the whole clip, thirty. No telling who would’ve died.’

  ‘You for one.’

  ‘Probably.’

  ‘The thing about it I thought was how spooky they were. Like aliens. With no ideas about living and dying. Just there doing this thing. Shooting guns they could hardly lift. Killing, being killed. The leader was so cool. Giving me instructions with serious intent.’

  ‘About us getting naked!’ Mace, mimicking her accent: ‘They want us to screw. I have to tell you I have my period. Menstrual blood’s bad juice to them. They get their willies blooded they’re in line for serious malevolence from the spirits. They’d rather see this happen to you. Jesus! You sounded like anthropology 101. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.’

  ‘You did as you were told.’

  ‘Anything for a screw.’

  ‘I’m sure.’

  ‘I had an alternative? I didn’t think so.’

  ‘Nice striptease. I enjoyed it. Until you’re standing there buck naked and the main kid says you look like a snail and he’s bigger than you. I could’ve burst out laughing at that.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘Thing is, he was. Whipping out that great schlong. Something you have to admit, looked like a stunted leg on a kid that short.’

  ‘Awesome,’ said Mace, and Isabella spluttered.

  The main kid had stood there with his hands on his hips, his crotch thrust out. Letting them get a good look at him. Then he’d zipped again, and got Isabella to lose the bra. She dropped it at her feet. The main kid whisking it up with the barrel of his rifle, pressed it to his nose, his eyes fastened on her tits. He touched the buckle of her webbing belt with his gun. Isabella unclipped the belt, the main kid studying her every move. Her eyes were on him, too. Her play slow, deliberate: the releasing of a button, opening the zip, letting the shorts fall down her legs, stepping out of them. She’d got the main kid hooked, the others standing around open-mouthed.

  The main kid snagged the elastic of her underpants with the barrel of his gun. Dragged them down.

  Isabella took the pants off, turned them inside out, held them for the main kid to see there was blood in the crotch. That made them step back.

  Mace took a mouthful of wine. ‘When you took your knickers off, showed him the crotch, I couldn’t tell what he was going to do. He just kept staring at them, absorbed. The others went back a pace, he didn’t move. The last thing I expected was you’d throw them in his face.’

  ‘Didn’t you?’

  ‘Hell no. He was hypnotised. Me too.’

  ‘Broke the spell though. Got him going. Got them all going. Screaming. Running off faster than if they’d seen the evil spirits. Still can’t believe it was that easy.’

  ‘Me neither,’ said Mace. ‘I kept expecting them to open fire from the forest. Even when we drove out I expected it.’

  ‘We were lucky.’ Isabella looked at him. ‘What I wonder though is would you’ve done it?’

  Mace shrugged. ‘Only to stay alive.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Pleasure. D’you remember what you said, back in Kinshasa when I dropped you at the Consulate?’

  Isabella shook her head. ‘Tell me.’

  ‘Don’t think you can take up the offer anytime you want.’

  ‘You did though.’

  Mace nodded, grinned.

  For lunch they made their way through the pinot noir and most of a second bottle. Not a mention of the proposition. How it’d always been with Isabella. When she had something on her mind, it was the last thing she was going to talk about. Like flying out of N’Djamena on the morning of 16 February 1986 with Isabella talking about a short break in the Seychelles maybe to celebrate the deal and not talking about the French jets flying into N’Djamena to put down the rebel offensive. Rebels Mace had just the previous day tool
ed up with smart weaponry. Only in the hotel that night watching a clip on television it came to Mace that Isabella had known. And not said a thing. Not in the air. Not at any time. Simply smiled when he said she could’ve told him. Her current proposition equally as mysterious. Until, when the bill was paid, when they were getting their coats she said, ‘I want you to see my new apartment.’

  Mace inclined his head in acceptance.

  In the cab she held his hand. Simply took it in hers without looking at him, put it in her lap, stared out the window.

  Mace wondered about this, wondered too about her husband, Paulo, a little creep that didn’t gel with her profile. ‘You still married?’

  ‘Sure.’ Said without looking at him. ‘Like you and the gorgeous Oumou.’

  He let the barb go. When it’d come to the choice, Oumou or Isabella, there’d never been a choice.

  The taxi stopped in a busy street, Upper West Side somewhere. Outside spoke of celebrity; inside spoke of money, not lavish money, comfortable money: plenty of artworks hanging wherever there was space, stacks of CDs, a row of artbooks. A number on African art. Some novels on a side table next to the telephone, half covered by a map. The name of a city caught his eye: Luanda. Strange map for her to have open, he thought, but then also not strange, if she was still in that line of business.

  ‘You like it?’ she asked.

  Too many rugs everywhere, Mace reckoned. Too many African artefacts, spears, masks, pots, carved figures. Small tables covered with brass ornaments, souvenirs. Candles all over, like she’d turn the room into a grotto at night. A clutter that spoke of Isabella. Nothing here of her husband.

  ‘Nostalgic,’ he said.

  ‘Open this,’ she said, handing him a bottle of Maipo Valley cabernet, ‘I’ve got to take a pee.’

  Mace sat down on a three-seater settee while he uncorked the wine. He poured, tasted.

  ‘You approve?’

  ‘It’s good,’ he said. ‘Come on, what do I know?’

  ‘Not as heavy as a Meerlust.’

  Mace shrugged. ‘Wine is wine.’

  They touched glasses. She sat along from him at the other end of the couch, swung her legs up, stretched until her feet pushed at his thigh. She moved her foot against him: she could be scratching an itch on the sole of her foot, she could be caressing. She’d had a thing about her toes, loved to have them massaged, he remembered. Remembered sitting out a fire-fight with her in a ruined church. The odd round thudding into the walls. Frelimo, Renamo off in the bush shooting the shit out of one another: he and Isabella on the edge of it waiting to make a break. A time he massaged her toes, and more. For two days until the shooting stopped. A craziness they’d both mainlined.

  Mace took some more wine, relaxed into the cushions, ignored the pushing of her toes. The cab tasted of sun, began to lay lazily at the back of his head. They didn’t say anything, made no eye contact through this, kept sipping wine, lost in the silence: one of Isabella’s strategies of getting to the point.

  ‘How’s your daughter doing?’ she said.

  Mace laughed. ‘What d’you mean?’

  ‘She’s how old now? Ten?’

  ‘Nine going ten.’ Mace wondered if he should tell her more. Decided not to.

  ‘The family man.’

  ‘Uh huh.’ He sat up at the sarcasm in her voice.

  ‘Relax. I got over us a long time ago.’ She laughed, her ice-cold laugh that didn’t show in her eyes. Their eyes met. ‘Now I like the thought of Mace the former arms-dealer. Husband. Father. Muscle to the rich and famous. Jesus Christ!’

  ‘Protection consultant.’

  ‘What?’ She kicked at his thigh. ‘A goon, Macey-boy. A bloody jumped-up goon, that’s what you are.’

  Mace shrugged. ‘You need some protection?’

  ‘A trader,’ she said, ‘is what I need. Someone who knows.’ She made a gesture for more wine and Mace passed the bottle. Before she filled her glass, she said, ‘Real life, Mace. Not the pretend stuff.’ She poured, held out the bottle to him.

  He took the rest, thinking the thing about a bottle of wine was it only held four glasses.

  ‘I need to buy a shipment.’

  When Mace didn’t respond she said, ‘In your part of the world.’

  ‘Luanda’s not my part of the world.’

  She pointed her glass at him. ‘Always the observant one.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘I’ve got this buyer, I’ve got the money in your currency. All I need’s the hardware.’

  ‘Which is?’

  ‘Full bag. Handguns, rifles, RPGs, grenades, mines, radios, boots, cam suits, medic kits.’

  ‘Sounds like stock for USAID.’

  ‘Very funny. So yes? So no?’ She nudged her foot against his thigh. ‘I need a tough guy. So yes? So no?’

  Mace considered, useful to get the bank off his back, grimaced a maybe yes, maybe no. She swung her legs off the couch. ‘There’s someone you’ll need to meet.’

  ‘Now?’

  ‘Now’s a good time.’

  The lift stopped at the seventh floor. Across a marble foyer were glass doors: Global Enterprises. This arching over an ellipse of the world, all the continents side by side. Isabella punched a code into the security lock, pushed the door open. She led him through reception to where he could hear a man talking, saying, ‘You do the arithmetic, you’d want to know how many virgins there are in heaven? Those virgins having to get from here to there first. Then you’d want to know why’re they virgins? Must be some sorry looking women nobody wanted to screw them in the first place.’

  They entered the room. Francisco peering into a telescope, talking on his cellphone. He said to Isabella, ‘You’re late. I was about to call.’

  Isabella ignored him, said, ‘Meet my one-time lover Mace Bishop.’

  Francisco said into his phone, ‘I’ll call you’ - disconnected. Said to Mace, ‘You been to Ground Zero?’ Took him by the arm. ‘Come here. Get a look at Ground Zero.’

  Mace put an eye to the telescope. There was not much to see of Ground Zero. Nothing moving down there at all. While he was looking Francisco explained about things that weren’t noticed until they were missed. Mace pretended he was with him on this theory.

  When they were seated round his desk, Francisco said, ‘You hear about the suicide bomber this morning? Took out some Jews on a bus. You think these guys really reckon they’re gonna get laid by seventy-eight virgins?’

  ‘Sure,’ said Isabella.

  ‘I wanna know what Mace thinks,’ Francisco said.

  Mace told him probably.

  ‘You think that’s the motivation?’

  ‘Probably.’

  He glanced at Mace to see if he was taking the piss, then cut to the business at hand, said, ‘Mace, you think you can pull this one off for us?’

  ‘Probably,’ said Mace. Francisco chuckled, leant on the table to let Mace know the jokes were over.

  ‘What we’ve got here, Mace,’ he said, ‘is a delicate situation featuring a bunch of guns Isabella’s wanting to acquire. Where from’s where you come in. Given the logistics we’re tying up the nearest market, a dive by name of Luranda.’

  ‘Luanda,’ said Isabella.

  Francisco raised his eyebrows. ‘Mace comes from Africa. He knows where it’s positioned.’ He focused on Mace again. ‘What we’re needing is the merchandise, someone to go there, oversee the transaction. Make things easier for you this is a no-money deal. Guys in Luranda print dollars to wipe their asses. So we told them no paper. Stones only. There’s a fellow lives there, John Webster, knows about stones. Diamond John’s what the Russians call him. Major merchant figure. Used to work for Debretts.’

  ‘De Beers,’ said Isabella.

  ‘Whatever,’ said Francisco. ‘The payment comes in, before you release, Diamond John checks we’re not being shoved a parcel of piss crystals.’

  He sat back in his chair. There was a picture behind him, idyllic Italian scene, couple wa
lking down a path about to step into his hair.

  ‘You reckon this is a peach?’

  ‘Probably,’ Mace said.

  Outside on the sidewalk Isabella said, ‘You’ve got maybe a month, six weeks. Get back to me soonest.’

  They took separate taxis. In the cab, Mace thought the thing about Isabella was their history, the lunacy of it: the jive. There’d always been that with her, a spark. On his phone he saw he had two SMSs.

  The first from Christa. ‘Msng u.’ Made him smile, the thought of her asleep now. Probably in their bed, despite Oumou’s rules. The second from Oumou. ‘How you doing?’

  He tapped a message back: ‘Good. Off now to call on four million bucks. All love.’

  To Christa: ‘Hi dollface. Got you on my mind. Love Papa and Cupcake.’

  Mace sat back looking at the bright streets, the dense traffic, thinking Isabella still tweaked a vibe in him, wondered how Pylon would enjoy some déjà vu.

  10

  Pylon didn’t enjoy the prospect Mace laid out not forty-eight hours later.

  ‘No,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘No, we’re not into that. We’re finished with those days. You told me that’s what you promised Oumou. No more trading.’

  ‘I did.’

  ‘So what’s this?’

  ‘I need the bucks.’

  ‘Oh save me Jesus. You want another loan?’

  ‘No. No. I appreciate that. What you did. Like I said, that saved us. Thing is I need serious bucks. Or we’ll lose the house. It’s this or Cayman.’

  The way they saw Cayman was keep the money hidden until Complete Security was flourishing. Sell the business, wash the stash gradually into their lifestyles so no one would know the difference. Certainly not the taxman. Be quietly rich and contented. That was the game plan.

  ‘No.’ Pylon shot out of the chair other side of Mace’s desk and headed for the door. Spun round before he got there. ‘No to both things. No to Cayman, no to gun deals. This’s Isabella we’re talking about here. Not only guns but Isabella. Miss CIA. Fun once. A good contact once. But as I seem to recall we shut that door. For the sake of family life.’ He came up to Mace’s desk, placed both hands on the surface, leant forward. ‘We can be bad guys, I acknowledge. Except next to them we’re angels. Where we’re going to hesitate, they’re going to kill.’ He stopped to let the point sink in. ‘Also, Oumou finds out you are going to be in such deep crap, losing the house will seem like fun.’

 

‹ Prev