Dictator

by Tom Cain

  34

  Wendell Klerk’s gamekeeper Donald McGuinness was a wiry Scotsman who combined an impeccably polite manner with a sharp, sceptical look in his eye that suggested he was a very easy man to get along with, but a very hard one to impress.

  ‘If ye’ll just follow me, please,’ he said in a soft Highland burr, leading Carver, Klerk and Zalika down a set of stairs that led to a subterranean hallway off which there were two doors. One of them led to the wine-cellar of which Klerk was so proud. McGuinness ignored it. He went directly to the second door, to one side of which was a keypad. McGuinness punched in a number.

  Klerk looked at Carver. ‘I think you’re going to like this,’ he said.

  Carver heard the sound of a lock being released. The door swung open. It was solid steel and hefty enough to resist anything short of an artillery shell. McGuinness stood aside to let them through, and Carver followed Klerk and Zalika into a room about forty feet long and fifteen wide. Three of the walls were wood-panelled and decorated with photographs, prints and oil paintings that depicted shooting scenes, dogs and artful arrangements of dead game. The fourth was taken up with a gigantic cabinet. Its lower portion consisted of a series of twin-door wooden cupboards, rising some three feet from the floor. Above them, the rest of the cabinet was set back behind a narrow shelf, covered in green baize. This upper section rose to the ceiling and was fitted with toughened, shatterproof glass. Behind it, a long line of guns marched the full length of the room.

  The majority of them were shotguns, presented in matched pairs. Beyond them came a much smaller selection of rifles for use in target-shooting or stalking deer. There must have been at least a hundred weapons, enough firepower to equip a company of soldiers, and their quality was as striking as the quantity.

  Klerk was smiling more broadly than at any time in the entire weekend, clearly delighted by Carver’s evident appreciation of his collection. ‘Pretty impressive, hey?’ he said. ‘And look here …’ Klerk opened two of the low cupboard doors to reveal a metal cabinet that looked like a small safe. Above its door, a digital readout showed the figure 68.5. ‘That, my friend, is a climate-controlled ammunition store. The temperature is constant. The air is dessicated to prevent any moisture corrupting the cartridges and their contents. When you fire my ammunition, Sam, you get the best bang my bucks can buy!’

  Carver got the feeling that this was not the first time Klerk had used the line, but he was impressed nonetheless.

  ‘So,’ Klerk continued, ‘let us choose our weapons. I’ll have my usual gun, please, Donald.’

  McGuinness unlocked one of the panes of glass and slid it open. He took out a supremely beautiful double-barrelled twelve-bore shotgun engraved with an image of a pair of pheasants taking to the air. Around the birds, the gun’s action was decorated with an intricate swirling pattern of stylized leaves and flowers. In the midst of them a scroll bore the words ‘J. Purdey & Sons’. The Mayfair-based gunsmiths, founded in 1814, were to shotguns what Rolls-Royce were to cars: the ultimate example of traditional British craftsmanship and luxury. Their products were priced accordingly: a gun like Klerk’s, Carver reckoned, must have cost seventy thousand pounds at the absolute minimum. It was as much a work of art as a firearm.

  Klerk turned to Carver. ‘What will you have, Sam?’

  ‘I’ll wait my turn,’ he said. He looked at Zalika. ‘Ladies first.’

  Carver was acting the gentleman, but his intention was far less chivalrous. He wanted to see what kind of weapon Zalika chose. It would be the first clue as to the kind of opponent she was likely to be.

  If Zalika was aware of the game Carver was playing, she gave no sign of it. She strolled along the full length of the cabinet, looking at the guns as casually as a woman eyeing up fruit on a market stall. Carver expected her to stop by the lighter, small-bored ladies’ guns, whose barrels were typically twenty-eight inches long. She ignored them. Instead, she pointed at a twelve-bore Perazzi MX2000S with thirty-inch barrels. ‘That one, please, Donald,’ she said.

  Carver wondered for a moment whether she was putting on an act. The Perazzi was a serious competition gun, used by Olympic-level shots. It was entirely bare of fancy decoration. This was a gun that had no need to look pretty. Its only purpose was to shoot straight. It was his kind of weapon.

  With gun-barrels as with skis, beginners go short for easier control, while experts go long for greater performance. Zalika frowned at the gun McGuinness was holding out to her. ‘Pity it’s only got thirty-inch barrels,’ she said.

  ‘Not to worry, Miss,’ McGuinness replied, placing the gun carefully on the green baize shelf. ‘I should have some thirty-twos available as well. I’ll get them fitted right away.’

  ‘Thank you, Donald,’ said Zalika with a gracious smile. ‘Would you mind putting full and three-quarter chokes in them, please?’

  ‘Certainly, Miss.’

  Carver’s face remained impassive, but his mind was racing. The choke was a fitting placed into the end of the gun-barrel that restricted the blast of pellets from the cartridge, compressing them into a much tighter spread. This gave the gun much more hitting power, particularly at a distance. But it also placed a huge premium on the shooter’s accuracy because there was far less margin for error than a wider spread of pellets allowed. Zalika Stratten was either a seriously good shot, Carver decided, or she was playing her own personal game of bluff, raising the stakes without the hand to back it up. One way or the other, she was certainly ready to compete with him before a single shot had been fired.

  So far he’d thought of her challenge to him as little more than a game, just another flirtation on the way to an inevitable conclusion. But it struck him now that he really wanted to beat her very much indeed. It wasn’t just because she’d made that a condition of having her. It was the fact that she’d been playing him, one way or the other, ever since he’d stepped inside the house, and now he’d had enough. Carver was not a man who sought either conflict or competition. But if anyone insisted on taking him on, then they were going to pay for it. It was time he taught Miss Zalika Stratten a lesson she wouldn’t forget.

  ‘And you, sir?’ McGuinness said, interrupting Carver’s train of thought.

  ‘I’ll take a Perazzi too,’ Carver said.

  ‘Longer barrels?’ McGuinness asked.

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘How about choke?’

  Zalika had gone to one extreme by being so specific, Carver decided to go to the other. ‘I’ll just take it as it comes, thanks,’ he said.

  He was pleased to see Zalika’s brow crinkle into a frown. She would, he hoped, be wondering why he could afford to be casual about his gun. Was he really that good, that confident of victory?

  ‘Interesting choice you made,’ Carver said.

  ‘I’ve always liked the trigger-pull on the Perazzi,’ she said. ‘It’s got a nice, even weight. Very crisp, don’t you think?’

  Klerk was watching the two of them with detached amusement. ‘Come,’ he said, ‘let’s get out of here. We’ve chosen our weapons. Time we went and used them.’

  35

  A Range Rover was waiting for them outside the front door. McGuinness loaded the guns and cartridge bags into the back then drove them down one of the private roads that criss-crossed the estate until they came to a massive earthwork, at least thirty feet high, extending in either direction as far as the eye could see. The road led to a tunnel through the earthwork.

  When they emerged into the open again, Carver could see that the ground fell away into a gigantic bowl that must have been at least fifty feet deep. The land within was laid out like a golf course, with patches of open grass separated by copses of trees, hedgerows, man-made hills and valleys and even a stream that fed into a small lake. But instead of golf tees, fairways, bunkers and greens, each individual section of land was equipped with a selection of different stands for guns to fire from; traps to launch clay pigeons; a selection of what looked like watchtowers, or mobile telephone
masts; and a rifle range.

  ‘Impressive,’ said Carver.

  ‘Thank you,’ said Klerk. ‘I’ve taken elements from the finest shoots in the British Isles and reproduced them right here. Different landscapes, different types of game, we’ve got them all.’

  McGuinness drove them down to the bottom of the bowl and parked the car. He handed each of the three competitors their gun, a cartridge bag and a set of ear-protectors. Then he stood before them and, abandoning his usual deference, spoke to them as the man who, as keeper, would be taking responsibility for the shoot.

  ‘You will each be shooting ten clays per stand, at five separate stands,’ he said. ‘So you each have fifty-five rounds: fifty for the competition and five spares in case any shots have to be retaken. Guns will be carried broken and unloaded. Ear-protectors must be worn while shooting is taking place. I will keep score and act as referee. Does anyone have any questions? No? Well, in that case, if you would please follow me, we will go to the first trap.’

  ‘Do you shoot much?’ Klerk asked Carver as they walked away. ‘For sport, I mean, rather than business.’

  ‘Every now and then. Been a while since I shot any clays.’

  Carver wasn’t paying too much attention to Klerk. He was watching Zalika, who was walking ahead of them. She’d put her hair back into a ponytail and changed into jeans and a Beretta ladies’ shooting vest. The vest, in theory a purely functional garment, was cut to follow every curve of her upper body and to stop just high enough to reveal the contours beneath her jeans. As she walked, the sway of her body seemed designed to tantalize, giving Carver just a hint of the pleasures in store if he was man enough to match her challenge.

  Zalika half-turned to look at him over her shoulder, a teasing smile on her face, and for a second Carver felt another surge of anger at her blatant tactics and irritation at himself for falling for them so easily. She’d meant to distract him, and it had worked. It was time to concentrate on the matter in hand: winning the shooting match.

  They were walking through heather now. A short way ahead of them, Carver saw three circular butts, or shooting hides, constructed of dry-stone walls, topped with turf. Ahead of the butts the heather-covered ground rose gradually, simulating the slope of a grouse moor.

  ‘Thought we’d start with grouse,’ said Klerk. ‘We’ll be shooting one at a time from the centre butt. Sam, why don’t you shoot first, hey?’

  It was an obvious tactic to put Carver at a disadvantage. The other two had shot there a hundred times and knew all the quirks of the land and the positions of the traps from which the clays would be fired like miniature black Frisbees, precisely 108mm across. As the newcomer, Carver would have benefited hugely from watching the others go first. Instead, he would have to shoot sight unseen, trust his reactions and hope for the best.

  Carver transferred ten cartridges from his cartridge bag to a pocket of his shooting vest then walked into the butt. He closed his eyes and breathed deeply for a few seconds, trying to clear his mind of everything but the thought processes required to hit a small, fast-moving target. Then he loaded two cartridges into the twin barrels of his gun and raised it to his shoulders.

  McGuinness was standing behind him, slightly to one side, holding a control box.

  ‘Would you like to see a pair, sir?’ he said.

  He was offering to release two of the clays before the shooting began so that Carver could see where they came from and at what distance and angle they flew. The obvious response was, ‘Yes please.’ But some perverse refusal to be seen to need outside help prevented Carver from doing the sensible thing. Instead he replied, ‘No thanks, I’m fine.’

  He concentrated his vision on the air just above the artificial moor, directly in front of him, and said, ‘Pull!’

  McGuinness pushed a button on his control box and Carver heard the sound of a spring being released as the trap slung the first clay pigeon into the air. Then came the fluttering whirr of the clay as it cut through the air. It came low and fast from a point about forty yards away, just as a real grouse would do, flying towards him but slanting right-to-left across his line of fire.

  Carver fired.

  The clay pigeon kept flying, entirely untouched, until gravity pulled it to earth.

  He’d missed.

  Appalled by his stupidity and incompetence, he barely heard the release of the second clay, was late getting back into position, and missed that one as well.

  Carver could not remember the last time he’d felt so humiliated, so exposed. Behind him, the other three stood in stunned, embarrassed silence for several seconds until Klerk called out, ‘Jesus Christ, Carver, you ever fired a gun before in your life?’ It was meant as banter, pulling his leg. But there was nothing funny about Carver’s shooting. It wasn’t just that he had missed. He had done so like a rank amateur.

  He ejected the first two cartridges from his gun, resumed his stance and called ‘Pull!’ once again. This time he hit both clays. They broke into a few large fragments – a sure sign that he’d not struck them dead-centre – but they were hits nonetheless. So were the next three pairs. Carver walked away from the butt with a score of eight out of ten. He only cared about the two dropped shots.

  Klerk went next. He shot with the metronomic style of a man who has spent a lot of time and money on lessons from an excellent teacher. Technically, he was faultless, but he wasn’t a natural marksman. Even so, he too scored eight, and seemed perfectly happy to have done so.

  Now it was Zalika’s turn. She didn’t just hit the first pair of clays, she dusted them, striking them so perfectly that they disintegrated in mid-air, vanishing in what looked like little puffs of smoke.

  When she broke open the gun, she caught the cartridges one-handed as they sprang from the barrels before placing them in a little bin that stood inside the butt. The catch was a nice touch, Carver thought, a clever, deceptively casual way of letting him know how at ease she was around guns. He noticed something else as Zalika reloaded: she rotated her cartridges in the barrels so that the writing on the brass base of each shell was the right way up. It was a telling little ritual, designed to prepare her for action, like a tennis player bouncing a ball, or a golfer practising his swing.

  It worked. Zalika vaporized the next four pairs as efficiently as she had the first. She walked away with a perfect ten. If it wasn’t obvious before, Carver knew for sure now that he had a fight on his hands – one he could easily lose. If he were going to stand any chance at all he had to shed the look of a loser and regain some sense of authority.

  As they walked away to the next stand, he asked McGuinness, ‘Just out of curiosity, what chokes have I got?’

  ‘Quarter and cylinder,’ the gamekeeper replied.

  ‘Interesting,’ said Carver.

  He hoped he sounded relaxed, even a little blasé. But inside he was cursing himself. A quarter-choke was the least restriction available; ‘cylinder’ meant an entirely clear barrel. That gave him a much wider spread of shot. At short range that was an advantage; it might have been the only reason he’d been able to hit any clay at all in that disaster of a first round. But the further the shot went, the more holes opened up in the air between the scattered pellets and the tougher it became to get a kill. If they had to shoot at clays flying high, or any distance away, Carver was going to be in trouble.

  36

  ‘So, we’ve shot grouse, now it’s time for partridge,’ said Klerk as they reached the second stand. It was much simpler than the grouse butt, just a basic square of wooden fencing, hip-high, with a bin for used cartridges attached to the shooter’s side. All the effort had been devoted to creating a classic, mature hedgerow of bushes and trees directly in front of the stand that looked as though it had been a part of the landscape for centuries. Carver marvelled at the effort and cost that must have gone into locating, transporting and replanting the mix of dogwood, spindleberry and hawthorn hedging, as well as the oak and chestnut trees that stood among them.


  From behind the hedgerow, Carver heard the noise of a motor starting up followed by a quieter, whirring sound. Somewhere back there at least one mechanized platform was rising into the air, taking with it a trap. So the clays, like the birds they were imitating, would emerge from behind the hedge at a variety of heights.

  ‘Simultaneous pairs,’ said McGuinness, indicating that both clays would be released at the same time. ‘Mr Klerk to go first.’

  Now the strike order had rotated in Carver’s favour. This time he would be the last to shoot.

  Klerk took his place behind the fencing and called ‘Pull!’ for the first pair.

  The clays emerged from behind the hedgerow, passing over one of the oak trees and rising higher into the air as they flew towards Klerk, angled left-to-right this time. They flew at different heights and on marginally differing courses, adding to the challenge of shooting them both in quick succession.

  Klerk tracked the clays as they sped through the sky, swinging his gun round clockwise from twelve o’clock almost to three before he fired. Again his technique was well-schooled and effective. He scored nine out of ten.

  Zalika demonstrated once again that she was more gifted than her uncle. She dismissed the first four pairs with her usual accuracy, firing earlier, so that the clays were hit when they had barely passed two o’clock. When the final pair appeared, she destroyed the ninth clay with calm efficiency. But as any serious shot knows, the last bird is often the hardest. It may be a matter of mental fatigue, for even the sternest concentration can slip. Or perhaps complacency is the greater danger, a fractional relaxation brought on by the certainty that the tenth will go down just like the last nine have done. In any event, many a competitor has been undone right at the end of a hitherto perfect sequence. And that was what happened to Zalika Stratten. She looked incredulously at the final clay as it kept flying long after the last echoes of her shot had faded away, then snapped her hand irritably round her cartridges as they sprang from the barrels of her gun.