by Wilbur Smith
‘You made a deal with Courtney. I know it.’
De La Rey’s face betrayed no sign of reaction.
‘Did you hand me over to him and his family?’ von Meerbach asked. ‘Was that the little sweetener that made him say yes?’
‘I have no comment to make about wild, unfounded accusations made by an uninvited intruder into my office,’ De La Rey replied. ‘Look at yourself, man. Have you no pride, no dignity?’
‘You don’t know what it’s like to be a fugitive.’ Von Meerbach could not keep a plaintive note of self-pity out of his voice.
‘On the contrary, I know exactly what it’s like. But I have not handed you over to anyone. No one has asked me to help them find you. I haven’t told anyone that you are in South Africa, what name you are using or where you live. I have done nothing, absolutely nothing, to threaten your security.’
Von Meerbach felt the merest scintilla of relief, but he wanted confirmation.
‘So no one is coming for me?’
‘How would I know? But I can tell you this – there are fifteen million people in this country and they are scattered across more than one million square kilometres. That is a very big haystack and you are one small needle. There is no reason to believe that anyone will ever find you.’
Von Meerbach was about to speak, but De Lay Rey raised his hand.
‘Enough. Leave this office. I have work to do. And I do not wish to speak to you again.’
Saffron ran the final twenty-five yards to the far end of her training circuit. Okay . . . ten more burpees, she told herself. Hit them hard. No slacking.
She stood up straight, then dropped into a squatting position with her hands on the ground in front of her. She thrust her legs out behind her, brought them back in again to the squatting position and jumped into the air. One burpee down, nine to go.
She was breathing hard. This was her third rotation. She turned right, sprinted another fifty yards and turned right again. Ahead of her was a crude tunnel, formed by a ditch covered by a series of concrete slabs. She dived into the ditch, ignoring the scraping of her elbows and knees against the hard, stony earth, cursing beneath her breath when she banged her head on the concrete.
Saffron emerged from the ditch and sprinted another twenty-five yards, jogged twenty-five, then sprinted another twenty-five to the scramble net hung from an eight-foot-high wooden frame. Up the net she went, rolled over the top, dropped to the ground then sprinted again to the shooting range.
Her Beretta 418 pistol, the weapon that had seen her through the war, was sitting on a stool, fully loaded, with Wajid waiting, ready to reload it once Saffron had emptied its eight-round magazine. The gun was not the most powerful available, but it was small, light and could easily be tucked into the canvas shoulder-bag Saffron carried in wartime, a civilian handbag or even a pocket. It was known as the Italian ‘pocket pistol’. It had fixed iron sights: a rear notch and front blade.
Joshua had specified that she and Gerhard would only take part in the mission as advisors and observers. Still, she had no intention of taking any chances. She was determined to be fighting fit by the time the call came to say that the ship carrying the Israelis was on its way to Cape Town.
If she had to use her gun, she anticipated it would be defensive and at close quarters. The range had been set up as a rough copy of the killing house that had been created for SOE trainees near their base at Arisaig on the west coast of Scotland. A week earlier, Saffron had bought a dozen tailor’s dummies: stuffed, fabric-covered male torsos on wooden stands. Red circles were painted on the centre of their chests, above their imaginary hearts. Six of the dummies were mounted on wooden poles that were rammed into the ground, deep enough to remain upright despite a bullet’s impact, in a line across the range, at distances of between ten and twenty yards from her firing position and numbered, from left to right.
The drill was always the same. Saffron picked up the gun, still out of breath, pulse racing, muscles protesting. She stood with her back to the range. The moment she got into position, Wajid shouted, ‘Turn!’
She spun round and immediately Wajid shouted four numbers in quick succession, giving her no time to rest. This time his sequence went, ‘Four! One! Six! Three!’
Saffron shot the way she had been taught at Arisaig. She didn’t take aim in the conventional manner. SOE training doctrine considered that too slow and ineffective in close-quarters combat. She simply looked at the target, let her hand follow her eye and shot on instinct. She fired two rounds in quick succession: the double-tap technique that was another SOE innovation. She looked at the next target and did exactly the same thing.
Her groupings weren’t perfect. Barely half her rounds hit the red circle. But they all hit the dummies somewhere, and if things got messy, a man with two bullets in him would pose a drastically reduced threat. Not that Saffron was satisfied.
‘Useless!’ she gasped as she turned to run back up the circuit to do the next set of burpees, while Wajid watched her and shook his head in bafflement at his mistress’s bizarre behaviour.
When she completed her fifth and final rotation, Saffron sprinted to the finishing line and collapsed on the ground, her chest heaving until she recovered enough to get back on her feet, wipe the sweat from her face and accept the water-bottle Wajid handed to her. He would rather have prepared a jug of fresh orange juice or lemonade, properly iced and served in frosted glasses. But the memsahib had insisted: plain water, served in her old military canteen.
Gerhard, watching to one side, walked over and said, ‘Well done. That was very impressive.’
Saffron shook her head. ‘Not really. I should be able to do ten circuits. And my shooting was rubbish.’
‘It can’t have been too bad. Those dummies have been shot to bits. You’d better put the next six up. Anyway, I couldn’t do a single circuit. Five sounds pretty good to me.’
‘I don’t expect you to do any.’
Saffron managed an exhausted smile. She saw it was difficult for Gerhard, seeing her do this when his health, though good enough for everyday life, was not up to the strain of high-intensity training. His doctors would never allow it.
‘You’re alive,’ she said, taking his hand. ‘That’s a miracle in itself. I don’t care about anything else.’
He kissed Saffron, whispered, ‘I love you,’ in her ear, then said, ‘I’ve been thinking, maybe I should do some shooting, in case.’
‘Now that’s the most sensible thing I’ve heard you say in ages,’ she replied. ‘Wajid, please reload the gun for Bwana Meerbach.’
‘Yes, memsahib.’ He did as he’d been bidden, handed the loaded gun to Gerhard and asked, ‘Will Bwana be shooting like the memsahib?’
Gerhard considered for a moment and said, ‘Yes, why not?’
He took up his position with his back to the ragged targets.
‘Turn!’ Wajid shouted. ‘Two! . . . Three! . . . Six! . . . One!’
Gerhard fired a faster series of double-taps than Saffron had managed. Seven of his shots were inside the red circles. The eighth missed by a whisker.
Saffron could hardly believe what she had witnessed.
‘Good Lord . . . I had no idea. You’re . . . You’re actually better than me.’
‘Yes, but you were out of breath, so your hand was bound to shake. It’s not a fair comparison.’
‘But even so . . . for a man who doesn’t want anything to do with guns, you’re a hell of a shot.’
Gerhard put his hands on Saffron’s shoulders and looked into her eyes.
‘My darling, I was one of the highest-scoring fighter aces of the war. I was not standing at a range. I had to shoot from an aircraft travelling at five hundred kilometres an hour, sometimes more, while turning, climbing, rolling or diving. And my targets were doing the same thing. Yes, I had three heavy machine guns to play with, not one pistol or rifle, but even so . . .’
Saffron said nothing.
Gerhard
frowned. ‘What is it?’
‘Not only was that the first time I have seen you fire a gun, it’s also the first time I’ve heard you talking about your war service with anything close to pride.’ She gave a smile which turned into a blown kiss and added, ‘Not to mention a little arrogance.’
‘Is that a problem for you?’
Saffron shook her head. ‘Not at all . . . In fact, I like it. Does me good to be reminded that I’m not the only warrior in the family.’
Gerhard laughed softly. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘it does me good, too.’
They drove back to the lodge. Saffron had a long shower to wash away the sweat, the dirt and the lingering smell of cordite. She changed and came downstairs to find Gerhard waiting for her. He was holding a telex.
‘One of your father’s boys drove this over from the Estate House.’ He read it out: ‘“I’m expecting to arrive Cape Town within the next three days. Looking forward to our safari! Send your ETA and I’ll pick you up at the airport: J”.’
‘We’d better sort out tickets first thing tomorrow morning.’
‘I’ll do it,’ Gerhard said. ‘I’ll fly to Nairobi as soon as the sun is up and be at the travel agents when they open.’ He smiled. ‘You can do another training session.’
‘I’ll do two,’ Saffron said. ‘And another two the day after tomorrow.’
‘On the day after that we take the plane to Cape Town. And then we get my brother.’
Kungu Kabaya strolled into the Mighty Lion Taxi Company garage in Nairobi, looked at its ranks of Ford Consul saloons, and summoned the company’s owner, Javinder Singh.
‘Which is the best?’ he asked, nodding at the assembled vehicles.
Singh paid a substantial chunk of his income to Kabaya, to ensure his protection from other gang leaders, who in turn extorted other taxi firms.
‘That one, sahib,’ he said, pointing to a car whose bodywork was somewhat less dented and paint a fraction fresher than the rest. ‘She is a real beauty. One of my drivers will be happy to take you wherever you wish to go.’
But Kabaya was not interested in a taxi ride.
‘Give me the keys,’ he said.
Singh rushed back to his office to grab the keys from their hook.
‘Give them to him,’ Kabaya said, indicating Wilson Gitiri, who climbed into the car and started the engine.
Before he got in, Kabaya looked at his watch. It was five past eleven in the morning. He told Singh, ‘At midday you will call the police and report this car as stolen. Not before. Not after. At midday. Do you understand?’
Singh nodded nervously. ‘Oh yes, sahib. I understand very well. I will call the police at twelve o’clock, on the dot.’
‘That’s good,’ Kabaya said. Then he added, ‘You know what will happen if you do not.’
He slipped into the taxi.
As Gitiri drove away he asked his boss, ‘Do you want me to get any of the others?’
‘No,’ Kabaya said. ‘They would only get in the way. I can handle this myself.’
‘What do you mean, our retail turnover is down by thirty per cent?’ Chief Ndiri raged, while his bookkeeper quailed at his boss’s fury. ‘People have to eat. How can they not buy food? Tell me that, eh? How . . . can . . . they . . . not . . . buy food?’
‘Because they have no money, sir,’ the bookkeeper said, blinking nervously behind his thick spectacles. ‘The terrorists raid the farms on which they work. They force workers in businesses to come out on strike. We have had six stoppages in the past months in our own enterprises – our wholesale food shop in Nyeri, the vegetable canning plant in Nakuru, the—’
‘But I told the cannery workers to go back to work! I am their chief. How dare they disobey me?’
‘They love you, sir, and respect you . . . but they fear the Mau Mau more. And that is not all. Thousands of our people have been placed in the British internment camps. That means they are not working, so their families have no money and—’
‘Enough! I will arrange a meeting with Governor Baring. We will talk man to man and I will tell him that more must be done to end this nonsense. These Mau Mau are no better than rats that eat a farmer’s crop, and they must be exterminated like rats, too.’
‘That is very wise, sir. Surely the governor will listen to a man of your eminence, for he trusts you above all our people.’
The bookkeeper’s flattery served its purpose. Chief Ndiri called their meeting to an end without any further reprimands. He went back to his desk and collapsed into his chair.
Ndiri, meanwhile, thanked his lucky stars for the sizeable fortune that he had salted away in Switzerland, where neither the Mau Mau, nor the British, nor anyone else but him could touch it. He looked at the gold Audemars Piguet watch that he had bought for himself on his last visit to his bankers. It was time for lunch, which he would take at home, as was his daily custom. His temper somewhat restored by the thought of the excellent meal that would soon be laid before him, he left his Nairobi office building and settled into the back of his splendid Hudson Commodore Super Six saloon.
This car epitomised everything for which Chief Ndiri had strived. He had imported it from the United States and he loved everything about it. The nose of the bonnet rose from the gleaming chrome of the front bumper and radiator, tall and pointed like the prow of a great ocean liner. The wheel arches on either side were splendidly wide and muscular. The body of the car, painted a rich chocolate brown, was magnificently American in its length, breadth and strident assertion of power and might. The whitewall tyres were the proof of Ndiri’s wealth, for in a country of red earth roads, they could only be kept clean by means of constant labour by his garage hands.
Ndiri sank into the cream leather expanse of the rear passenger seat with a contented sigh.
‘Drive on,’ he commanded his chauffeur as he lit one of the cigars, made specially for him from the finest Rhodesian tobacco. A bodyguard occupied the other front seat. His name was Mathu and he was a former soldier, tough and well-trained, twice decorated for acts of valour during the war. He was armed with a Colt revolver. Whatever wickedness the Mau Mau might have in mind, Mathu could deal with it.
Ndiri puffed away, looking out at the world passing by as the Hudson sped up the Limuru road, on the western outskirts of the city. A splendid lunch was waiting for him at home. His fields were fertile. His cattle were fat. The Mau Mau be damned, his life was as good as it could be.
There was little traffic on the road. But just then a car came speeding by. It was smaller than the Hudson, but it churned up a thick cloud of dust as its driver overtook around the outside of a blind bend, heedless of the risk of oncoming traffic.
‘Bloody fool!’ Ndiri snapped.
‘It’s a taxi,’ Mathu replied, leaning his head to talk over his shoulder. ‘They drive like madmen.’
There was no other car in Nairobi like Chief Ndiri’s Hudson, but Kabaya wanted to make sure that the chief was aboard.
‘Well?’ Gitiri asked as the taxi raced away up the road.
‘He was there, sitting in the back like a big fat pig, puffing on his cigar.’
Gitiri laughed. ‘Now you will slaughter the pig!’
Kabaya made no reply. He was concentrating on the road ahead.
‘There,’ he said. ‘Do you see it?’
About two hundred yards away was a turning to the left, at a point where the Limuru road curved uphill to the right.
‘I see it,’ Gitiri said. ‘I know what to do.’
He waited a few seconds, then drifted across to the right-hand side of the road before turning the steering wheel hard to the left. At the same time, he jammed on the brakes.
The Ford Consul swerved and skidded until it came to a halt, side-on across the road at the point where it forked, blocking both the main road and the turning.
Kabaya reached inside his pocket and took out a Luger 9mm revolver of the type used by the Wehrmacht. It had been retrieved from the body of a dead Ger
man soldier by a farmer who was, like many emigrants to Kenya, a former soldier. Now Kabaya had taken it from him.
Earlier that morning, before setting off for the taxi garage, he had stripped the gun, cleaned and oiled its parts, reassembled it and loaded it. He pulled back the cocking mechanism to put a round into the chamber.
‘Let’s go,’ he said.
‘Why are we slowing?’ Chief Ndiri asked.
‘That madman in the taxi, sir,’ Mathu said. ‘Do you see . . .?’
Ndiri peered through the windscreen. The taxi driver had obviously lost control of his vehicle. Now he and his passenger were standing in the middle of the road, looking down at the front tyre. The passenger was pointing at his watch, then jabbing it in the driver’s face. Ndiri could not see the tyre. He did not need to. The tyre had burst. The passenger wasn’t happy about the delay.
Nor, for that matter, was Ndiri. He took a mental note of the name, Mighty Lion, written on the side of the cab.
The taxi passenger had noticed the Hudson’s arrival. He turned away from the taxi, leaving the driver crouched by the damaged wheel, and walked towards the Hudson, arms raised to either side and shrugging as if to say, ‘I’m sorry, but it’s not my fault.’
‘I’ll deal with this, sir,’ Mathu said, getting out of the car.
Ndiri relaxed as the chauffeur turned off the engine. This was a nuisance, but no more than that. Mathu would have everything sorted soon enough. He took a puff on his cigar as Mathu walked towards the taxi.
The passenger kept walking towards Mathu. He lowered his hands. He reached inside his jacket. He pulled out a gun and before Mathu could react, the passenger fired.
Mathu fell to the ground. He did not move.
Ndiri choked on his tobacco smoke. His protector was dead.
‘Get out of here!’ he screamed at his chauffeur. ‘Move! Move!’
Kungu Kabaya did not glance at the man he had shot. As the Hudson’s engine coughed and spluttered back to life, he kept walking at a steady pace until he was no more than ten feet from the car, then he paused long enough to put two rounds into the nearest tyre. He saw the driver let go of the wheel and stare at him with eyes so wide the whites were visible. Kabaya ignored him.