Dictator

by Tom Cain

  Finally, Carver called Klerk.

  ‘Justus Iluko was captured by Gushungo’s men today,’ Carver said. ‘I heard it happen. His wife is dead. His kids are in jail. I need to know which one. Can your people find that out for me?’

  ‘Sure,’ said Klerk. ‘But are you going to try and break them out? Don’t waste your time, man. You’re good, but one man against Gushungo’s entire security forces? Forget it.’

  ‘Thanks, but I worked that out for myself. Next question: your mining operations, do they employ chemists?’

  ‘Of course. The best. We depend on them for a lot of our refining processes.’

  ‘Excellent. Tell them I need someone to carry out’ – Carver looked at the words on the laptop screen and took a deep breath – ‘a synthesis that relies on the formation of a benzylhydrazide intermediate, subjected to methyl glyoxylate hemimethyl acetal and a Lewis acid, in order to construct a highly reactive azomethine imine which subsequently undergoes an intramolecular 1,3-dipolar cycloaddition reaction, leading to an advanced tetracyclic intermediate. They should end up with a substance that has the molecular formula C10H17N7O4.’

  ‘Sam, what the fuck are you on about?’

  ‘Something that will sort out that issue you’ve got in Hong Kong.’

  ‘Really?’ said Klerk. His whole attitude had changed in a single word. Suddenly he sounded a lot more interested.

  ‘Yes, really. I’ve reconsidered my position. Let’s just say I now have a strong personal interest in making sure the job is done as thoroughly as possible.’

  ‘That’s great news. Zalika will be delighted.’

  ‘Good for her, but that’s not the reason I’m doing this. I’ll email you that synthesis along with the appropriate diagrams. Tell your people that if they want a full account they can find it in the Journal of the American Chemical Society, 1984, edition 106, page 5,594. They’re also going to need flour, water and a basic guide to unleavened baking. And you’d better tell them to wear protective clothing when they work on this.’

  ‘Might exposure prove dangerous to their health?’ Klerk asked. ‘Very.’

  ‘That’s good to know.’

  ‘Now, I agree that the way to do this is by faking a diamond heist. The robbers come in, get rid of the inhabitants of the house, then take the stones at their leisure. The obvious time to do it is when the entire household is down on its knees taking communion – the one time in the week when their guard is down. The way this plays out, it will look like two separate groups of people taking advantage of a given situation. Gushungo leaves the country, that’s when his opponents mount a coup to seize power. The cat’s away, the mice play. That makes perfect sense. Meanwhile, he and the wife are carting millions of bucks’ worth of diamonds around Hong Kong: frankly it’s a miracle someone hasn’t lifted them long before now. Is it a handy coincidence, both things happening at the same time? Yes. Can anyone prove there’s a connection? No. I’ll make sure they can’t. And that would be a lot easier if your niece wasn’t tagging along for the ride. So give me one good reason, aside from her making life miserable for Uncle Wendell if she doesn’t get her way, that she has to be there.’

  ‘Two reasons. First, because this is her job. She researched it. She planned it. She has a right to help execute it. And second, because you can’t get the diamonds without her.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘The safe,’ Klerk replied. ‘It opens via a scanner which is set to recognize Faith Gushungo’s finger and palm prints. They have to align the right way, too. And that requires a woman’s hand. Yours would be too big.’

  ‘And you know this about the scanner because …?’

  ‘Because one of the maids, young woman by the name of Tina Wong, is actually a former detective sergeant in the Organized Crime and Triad Bureau of the Hong Kong Police. She’s working for us, been undercover in the house for the past three months. She can get you a set of Faith Gushungo’s prints. She can make sure the front door is unlocked. The one thing she can’t do is get the diamonds for you. She has to be on her knees, saying her prayers, same as everyone else. In any case, the Chinese, very petite. Her hand is too small.’

  ‘But Zalika’s got Goldilocks hands, I get it. I’ll need to get her trained up first. You say you have plans of the house?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You have outbuildings up at that place of yours in Suffolk?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Right then. Get the target house mocked up inside a barn or something. Doesn’t have to be anything fancy: chalk marks on the floor, some stairs and a first floor made out of planks and scaffolding. Just so long as the dimensions are right. Try and get a copy of the safe, or as near as dammit, too. We’re not going to go in blasting on this. No guns, no smoke, no bombs. It’s all about timing, and that has to be perfect. If Zalika shows me she can do it, she can come. Otherwise I’ll take my chances with your undercover cop. All right?’

  ‘Ja,’ said Klerk. ‘But now let me give you my condition for doing the job. I’ve got great things planned for that young lady, so you just listen to me. You brought her back safely once. You damn well bring her back again.’

  ‘I’ll do my best.’

  ‘No, Carver, just do it.’

  43

  Within half an hour of Klerk and Carver ending their conversation, Moses Mabeki received another call from within the grounds of Campden Hall.

  ‘That’s good news,’ he said. ‘I had considered remaining in Malemba while the Gushungos went abroad, so that I would be well placed to respond in the event of any …’ Mabeki chuckled to himself as he searched for the right words. ‘Any unforeseen emergencies. But on reflection, I think the best course of action would be to accompany the President and First Lady to Hong Kong, so that I can offer any assistance that might be required there. Yes, that is certainly the better option.’

  44

  Carver was not a religious man, though there had been times when he was grateful for the words of comfort offered by military chaplains in the hours before battle, or at the gravesides of recently dead friends. But that afternoon he took a short drive out of town, along Route 1, parallel to the north shore of Lake Geneva. At the Nyon exit he turned left, away from the lake, up towards the village of Gingins. A little oasis of Englishness in the heart of Switzerland, it possessed both a cricket club and a beautiful old church where the Anglican parish of La Côte held a service at four o’clock every Sunday afternoon.

  Carver took communion there for the first time in more than a decade. The words of the service, ingrained in him by years of compulsory religious attendance at school, came back to him with all the familiarity of an old friend encountered by chance after many years of absence. The ritual played out with comforting predictability, and the prayers retained a strange, potent poetry for all the many attempts of the Church’s modernizers to strip them of their mystery and magic.

  The moments of silence and contemplation enabled him to think about what he was planning to do. Was he committing a murder, he wondered, or casting out a devil? As always, however, Carver did not waste too much energy on metaphysical speculation. His focus had to remain on the here and now, and that meant concentrating on the words printed in the Order of Service he was holding in his hand:

  Grant us therefore, gracious Lord,

  so to eat the flesh of your dear Son Jesus Christ

  and to drink his blood,

  that our sinful bodies may be made clean by his body

  and our souls washed through his most precious blood,

  and that we may evermore dwell in him and he in us.

  Amen.

  When the prayer was over and the vicar’s preparations complete, Carver left his pew and joined the line of worshippers waiting for communion. Finally, he approached the altar and knelt to receive the bread and wine. He watched every movement the vicar made, noted the precise sequence of events and the words that accompanied each of them. And when the service was over, just to make
sure he’d got it right, he drove straight back to Geneva, went out to evensong at Holy Trinity Church, which the locals called l’église anglaise, and took communion all over again.

  45

  For the rest of the day after Justus Iluko had been taken away, his house remained undisturbed. It was as if the violence and suffering that had occurred in its vicinity had created some kind of force field that held the mass of dispossessed who clustered around it at bay. It was not until the final light of the dying sun had been extinguished and the purple-black African night, heavy with the spicy scent of warm earth, had descended that the first scavengers started edging towards the walls of whitewashed concrete blocks.

  This was no more than the law of nature in action. When an animal died in the bush, its carcass provided carrion for hyenas, vultures and all manner of insects until nothing remained but its bare bones. Even they provided marrow for truly enterprising scavengers. And so it was with the house. It too was a corpse from which the spirit of life had been extinguished. Its inhabitants had no more use for the beds on which they had slept, the tables at which they had worked and eaten, or the countless little possessions that spoke of a man and woman working together to raise the children they loved. This was neither a moral issue nor a sentimental one. Better that these belongings should be recycled for the benefit of those still alive and present than rot away to no purpose.

  The larder was emptied of all its contents. The floorboards, joists, doors, window frames and shutters were taken for firewood and building materials. The corrugated iron panels were stripped from the roof. By dawn, only the walls remained. And with the rising sun came men with hammers, chisels and pickaxes to hack and chip away at the blocks themselves.

  By noon, the house that Justus Iluko had built with such sweat and devotion, and occupied with such pride, had vanished as if it had never been. The land on which it stood was covered with brand-new huts and improvised tents, filled with the never-ending stream of people being transported to this once bountiful farm, now a dusty, barren hell.

  46

  As a religious man, Justus would not have described his new conditions in Buweku jail as hellish. They were more like a form of purgatory, a waiting room filled with other lost souls awaiting their day of judgement.

  The cell to which he’d been taken was intended for all the remand prisoners who were awaiting trial. One of its sides faced a corridor and consisted of iron bars and crosspieces, so that the inmates were at all times visible to any passing guard. The other three sides comprised concrete walls into which concrete bunks had been fitted in three rows, rising several feet towards the roof. Justus had to reach up to grab the top bunk: it must have been seven feet off the ground. The only sanitation was a hole in the floor, ringed with cracked tiles, stained with the faeces of inmates from years and generations gone by. There was a solitary standpipe from which an intermittent dribble of water flowed, regardless of whether the tap was turned on or off. A single bare bulb, hanging from the ceiling in a wire-mesh cage, provided light to the cell, in theory at least. But it, too, worked only sporadically, and at times over which the men beneath it had no control whatsoever.

  There were thirty-four men crammed into this hot, airless, fetid space. One of them was Justus’s son Canaan. They hugged each other with a mixture of relief at being reunited, profound sorrow at the loss of Nyasha and the fierce desperation of men who know their days are numbered.

  ‘Are you all right?’ Justus asked, stepping back to look his boy in the eyes.

  Canaan nodded. ‘Yes, Father.’

  Justus looked around at the eyes watching them, scanning them for signs of threat.

  ‘Have you been treated well?’ he asked.

  Again his son nodded. This time he said nothing, just gave a nervous lick of his top lip. The boy’s former princely demeanour had entirely disappeared and Justus felt certain he was hiding something, but knew that there was no point in pursuing the matter. If someone had attacked or abused him, it would only invite further trouble to mention it.

  ‘Do you know what they have done with Farayi?’ Justus asked. ‘Is she all right? Have you seen her, or spoken to her?’

  Canaan shook his head slowly. ‘She is here somewhere, in a women’s cell. But that is all I know.’

  Justus nodded, trying to remain calm. He was Farayi’s father. He should be protecting her, keeping her safe. Instead he was locked behind bars, unable to do anything to help his little girl. He sighed, then did his best to smile and put a cheerful tone in his voice as he asked, ‘So, what have they been feeding you? Is the menu good at this establishment?’

  Canaan shrugged, again saying nothing.

  ‘The jailers,’ Justus persisted, ‘they must give you meals of some kind. I am sure the food is terrible, but—’

  ‘There is no food, father.’

  ‘No food? Don’t be ridiculous! They must give you something.’

  ‘The boy is right. There is no food.’

  A man moved out of the shadows beneath one of the concrete bunks, wincing as he got to his feet. His body was emaciated, his hair matted and grey.

  ‘I see you are not familiar with the ways of our prison system,’ he said. Not waiting for Justus to respond, he continued, ‘The rules are very simple. All food must be brought to the jail by the friends or families of the men inside. In order to get it from the front door of the prison to these cells, a bribe must be paid to the guards. Sometimes this is money, sometimes it is food. They need to eat too, after all.’

  ‘But we have no family,’ said Justus. ‘There is no one left to bring us food.’

  ‘In that case,’ said the man, ‘prepare to starve.’

  47

  Early on the Monday morning, Carver flew back to England. Before he left Geneva, he stood by his kitchen island and reached into the wine rack that had been installed along one side. In the second row from the top, three spaces along, there was a hidden switch. He pressed it, then waited while the centre of the island’s granite worksurface rose, revealing a metal frame containing a large plastic toolbox divided into six trays of varying depths.

  Carver ignored the bottom tray, which contained his personal firearms: with a number of flights between now and the Gushungo job there was simply no point in bringing them along. In any event, he did not plan to do any shooting. Instead, he opened one of the shallower trays and removed an apparently random selection of items: a piece of wood, about six inches square, with a number of holes drilled through it; a set of AA batteries; and an assortment of nuts, bolts, washers and wires attached to crocodile clips.

  From the kitchen he went to his bedroom wardrobe, took down a suitcase from the top shelf and picked out a couple of accessories he thought would come in handy: a pair of tortoiseshell spectacles with plain glass lenses and a short grey wig. When he was in the Special Boat Service, Carver had known another officer, not much older than him, who went prematurely grey in his early thirties. The officer’s face, as if to compensate, remained unusually youthful and unlined. These contradictory signals made it very difficult for anyone who did not know him to judge his age. Carver was aiming for a similar effect.

  All he needed now was an assortment of passports, driving licences, credit cards and SIM cards. He was ready to go.

  He came in through Gatwick this time, rented a car at the airport and drove five miles to the West Sussex town of Crawley. On an industrial estate not far from the town’s station he found a specialist suppliers called Vanpoulles and explained his particular requirements to a sales assistant, who was happy to go through Carver’s list and recommend which of the various items he should purchase. Neither a chasuble nor a patten would be necessary, he was told.

  Carver also mentioned that he was looking for a very particular kind of case to carry everything in, preferably second-hand and well worn-in. The salesman conferred with a colleague and mentioned an old customer who had just retired and might be able to supply just what Carver was looking for. He was down i
n Kent, not far from Tunbridge Wells.

  The journey there and back took the best part of three hours, but was well worth the diversion. While he was there, Carver took advantage of Tunbridge Wells’s reputation for being populated by elderly conservative gentlefolk. He went to a charity shop and found a lightweight dark-grey suit, tailor-made but just beginning to get a hint of that gloss around the elbows, knees and backside that comes from regular use. The trousers were cut for a man who ate more and exercised less than Carver, but a half-decent Hong Kong tailor would sort that out easily enough.

  By late afternoon, Carver was battling the rush-hour traffic on the M25, heading up to Campden Hall. The tedious crawl round the eastern perimeter of London was enough to try the patience of a far more saintly man than him, but despite it Carver still felt that his day had been very well spent.

  48

  Faith Gushungo stormed into the kitchen of her Hong Kong property and screamed at the two servants cowering on the far side of the table in the middle of the room, stabbing a bejewelled finger at her underlings. ‘My bedroom is a pigsty! I ordered you to have it spotlessly tidy when the President and I arrived, but the beds are not made! There is dirt everywhere! The bathroom is like an open sewer!’

  She leaned forward, placing both hands flat on the table. In her red-soled Louboutin heels she stood over six feet tall, a giantess compared to the smaller figures of the Chinese women in their pale-grey uniforms and white aprons.

  ‘But … but … I cleaned it, Missy,’ the younger of the servants blurted out between sobs of fear and humiliation.