by Tom Cain
Saxitoxin, which has the chemical formula C10H17N7O4 and is named after the clam Saxidomus giganteus in which it was first discovered, is a neurotoxin or nerve poison produced by a small number of species of dinoflagellate phyto-plankton. These microscopic life-forms are ingested by other, bigger species such as shellfish and puffer fish, most commonly when the waters which the fish inhabit are affected by ‘algal bloom’. This occurs when the population of algae, including the types of plankton that contain saxitoxin, multiplies rapidly, covering the water with a thick layer of red or brown scum. The fish eat the plankton, humans eat the fish, and then the humans are struck down by a condition known as paralytic shellfish poisoning, or PSP.
Saxitoxin is heat resistant, so cooking cannot nullify its effect. Once it has been consumed, symptoms appear within minutes and include any or all of the following: a feeling of nausea, followed by diarrhoea and/or vomiting and/or abdominal pain; tingling and/or burning sensations in limbs and extremities, including hands, feet, lips, gums and even the tongue; shortness of breath and choking; confused and/or slurred speech; and loss of limb coordination. Someone who has saxitoxin poisoning could easily be mistaken for a drunk. The crucial difference is that a hard night’s boozing will only give you a hangover. PSP, however, can very easily be fatal. In fact, saxitoxin is so dangerous that a single dose of 0.2 milligrams is enough to kill an average human. That makes it approximately a thousand times more toxic than sarin nerve-gas.
Naturally, the CIA became very, very interested in saxitoxin. Back in the fifties, its undercover operatives were supposedly given suicide capsules containing it, but in 1970 the agency was ordered to destroy its entire stock by, ironically enough, that most toxic of all presidents, Richard Milhous Nixon.
Saxitoxin, however, did not go away. Nature kept on producing it, and precisely because of its effects on the nervous system medical researchers discovered it could be an extremely effective laboratory tool. In time, scientists discovered how to synthesize it, using the methods described by Carver to Klerk. It had proved relatively simple for Klerk’s people to replicate the process so painstakingly mapped out in the Journal of the American Chemical Society and then mix extremely high doses of saxitoxin, many times greater than that needed to kill, into the flour and water used to make communion wafers. The baking process did nothing to make the wafers any less poisonous. The intensity of the poison, however, ensured that its effects would be felt far more quickly than those of a naturally inflicted dose of PSP.
The timing was a delicate issue, though. It was absolutely vital that Carver reach the end of the line of communicants, dosing them all, before anyone realized that anything had happened. Ideally, he wanted a few extra seconds in which to attack Mabeki before he too was alerted. Finally, it was essential to coordinate the timing of everything he did downstairs with that of Zalika’s theft of the diamonds upstairs.
Zalika was in the master bedroom. She had located the safe, hidden behind another portrait of the Gushungos. Now she was reaching into her canvas shoulder-bag and retrieving the envelope Tina Wong had given her. She opened it and pulled out a clear, sealable plastic sandwich-bag. Inside the bag was a thin latex glove, of the kind worn by surgeons. Zalika removed it and placed it on her right hand. Then she turned back to the safe.
Faith Gushungo accepted her wafer with uncharacteristic meekness. Then Carver moved on to the bodyguards kneeling on the floor behind. From the corner of his eye, he saw Moses Mabeki slip from the room. He thought he heard Mabeki’s footsteps first in the hallway and then slipping up the stairs.
Zalika was up there, unarmed and unaware that she was in danger of detection.
But there was no way Carver could warn her that Mabeki was loose inside the house without blowing his own cover.
And if that were not enough, he had a more immediate problem to consider, the one that had struck him just before the service. And with every step he took, it was getting closer.
63
To avoid poisoning himself, Carver had placed two saxitoxin-free wafers into the pyx, as well as a dozen poisoned ones. That allowed one for the actual service and another in case anyone asked him to prove, in advance, that the wafers were edible. The two wafers were each marked with a very slight notch, to distinguish them from the rest. He had only needed one of them, leaving the second spare. But now there were two Chinese housemaids, one of them a woman who had gone undercover in this madhouse to help him, expecting communion.
Upstairs, Moses Mabeki was walking slowly but as inexorably as the angel of death down the corridor towards the master bedroom. As he moved, he reached into his jacket and pulled out a gun.
In the bedroom, Zalika Stratten was reaching into the safe and grabbing a green velveteen bag. It was heavier than she’d expected and there was a scrabbling sound of cold, hard surfaces rubbing against each other as she picked it up.
Carver was doing his best to be cold-bloodedly professional. His mantra had always been: don’t worry about things you cannot control. It was Zalika’s responsibility to look after herself. It was his to carry out the assassination. So think about that and come to the obvious conclusion: find the damn wafer, split it in two, and give them half each.
But the bloody thing had disappeared. It had become jumbled up with the others while he was serving the bodyguards.
Christ, had he given one of the guards the dummy wafer?
Carver told himself to calm down. There were still seven wafers left in the box. One of them, with any luck, was safe. Six to one: hardly needle-in-haystack time. So just look.
He riffled around the inside of the pyx with his right index finger. Tina Wong was looking at him with a quizzical expression.
‘Close your eyes, my child,’ Carver said.
She obeyed.
A cough came from one of the chairs behind him, the wheezing cough of an elderly man. It tailed away in a dry retching sound.
At last, Carver found the wafer he was looking for and halved it.
The Chinese girls were kneeling in front of him, Tina Wong perfectly composed, the other leaning to the side, eyes wide open, trying to see round him and find out what was happening up at the front.
Now Faith Gushungo had started coughing.
‘The body of Christ,’ said Carver, firmly, and shoved half a wafer into the hands of Tina Wong.
‘Amen,’ she said, and put it in her mouth.
Carver stepped a pace to one side, blocking the view of the second maid.
‘The body of Christ,’ he said.
The bodyguards were starting to suffer now. One was bent over, clutching at his guts.
‘This bad!’ the maid said, casting horrified glances at the sickening men before throwing the half-wafer to the floor. ‘You give us bad bread!’
‘You’re fine,’ Carver hissed. ‘Now get out of here.’
The girl didn’t move, just knelt there.
‘Scram!’ Carver said.
Tina Wong jumped to her feet and started dragging the servant away, screaming at her in Chinese.
Carver spared them no more time. He could hear movement behind him. He spun round on one foot, uncurled his fist and punched the heel of his hand into the face of one of the guards, who had got to his feet and was clumsily trying to reach inside his suit for the handgun holstered to his ribcage.
The blow snapped the bodyguard’s head sideways, straining his neck ligaments and sending his brain bouncing round his skull like a pinball against the bumpers. The guard reeled backwards, collided with Faith Gushungo’s chair and landed in a heap on top of his mistress, who was physically incapable of resisting his momentum. The two of them collapsed on to the floor where Henderson Gushungo was already lying like a landed fish, gasping for air, incapable of any movement bar the occasional spasm of his body or limbs.
Moses Mabeki stood quite still a couple of feet inside the door to the master bedroom, watching Zalika Stratten. She had not noticed he was there. All her attention was on the bag. She had been
unable to resist opening it and pulling out an uncut diamond the size of a quail’s egg. It sat in her palm, the light glinting off its countless rough, irregular surfaces, just waiting for the diamond cutter’s skill to bring it to full, sparkling life. Mabeki was happy to let her enjoy the sensation of holding such a magnificent gemstone. It was a pleasure to watch her and almost to enjoy the self-denial of delaying for those last few seconds before he took possession of her again.
Finally, he could wait no longer. He coughed quietly, as if politely clearing his throat.
Zalika spun round, her eyes widening as she saw Mabeki and the gun in his hand.
‘I think you’d better give me the diamonds,’ he said, quite calmly, watching the emotions play across her features as she took in the reality of his presence, and his actual flesh-and-blood appearance.
He crooked his right index finger and wordlessly gestured for her to come to him.
Even after ten years, the obedience drilled into her in Mozambique had not entirely gone away. The fiery pride and independence that had animated Zalika during the time she had spent with Carver vanished as swiftly as a desert mirage. She went to him without the slightest act of defiance.
‘Put the diamonds in your bag and then give it to me,’ Mabeki said.
She did as he asked. Mabeki slung the bag over his left shoulder and then, without warning, smashed the grip of his pistol, clasped in his right hand, into her temple.
Zalika was taken completely by surprise. She made a noise halfway between a gasp and a whimper and tottered unsteadily on her feet.
Mabeki grabbed her round the neck with his left arm. He pressed the gun to her head with his right.
‘Come with me,’ he hissed into her ear. ‘Time we dealt with your boyfriend.’
64
Downstairs in the living room, the fourth of the guards was the only one still standing, although he was already losing his coordination. Carver slammed his left elbow into the guard’s Adam’s apple, let him follow the others to the ground, then crouched over him. He placed one hand over the man’s throat, gently squeezing the already damaged airway, while his other hand felt for the handle of the man’s gun and pulled it out of its black leather shoulder holster. He shoved the gun in his waistband and felt around on the other side of the chest. The ribs were moving as the guard made his last feeble attempts to breathe. His feet flopped about as he tried to kick himself free. Carver ignored all that. His only interest was the two clips of ammunition in the holster’s second pocket. He took them out and placed them in his jacket pocket, then got to his feet.
Henderson Gushungo was silent and motionless now. In his last moments, he had coughed blood on to the marble tile in front of him. He had also evacuated his bowels and the stench of it was now hanging heavily in the air. The great dictator, dying in his own blood and shit. His wife, half her body trapped beneath her bodyguard’s, made a weak mewling sound and with one last desperate effort reached out to grab her husband’s lifeless hand.
From outside the room, Carver heard the sound of footsteps running down the stairs and into the hall. There was a high-pitched scream; the sound of two shots being fired; more screams, wounded ones this time; then two more shots.
There had been three women left alive in the house. Some, if not all of them, were now dead. But which ones?
Carver started to move past the twitching, gasping bodies of the dying guards towards the door of the living room, his gun out in front of him, ready to fire at any moment.
Then Carver felt something grab at his ankle. He stumbled to the ground, wincing as he cracked his kneecaps on the hard marble surface. He turned his head and saw that one of the bodyguards had somehow summoned the strength to reach out and wrap a hand round his leg. Carver kicked out with his other leg, hitting the guard’s nose and feeling the crack as it broke beneath his heel. There was a gurgling sound as air left the guard’s lungs, a final breath. But he did not let go. The dead fingers still had Carver in their grip.
Up ahead, Carver saw a shadow against the wall by the door as Mabeki’s head bobbed into the doorway, then disappeared from view. Carver fired two quick shots towards the doorway then writhed desperately to change his position as Mabeki’s gun-hand appeared.
Mabeki shot four rounds in quick succession. One went straight through the giant window on the far side of the room. Two ploughed into the marble floor, one so close to Carver that he could feel the stabs of tiny, needle-sharp splinters of stone against the side of his face. The fourth hit the glossy bald head of the man whose hand was clasped round Carver’s ankle, entering just above his nose and blowing away the back of his skull.
The fingers jerked open with a convulsive twitch.
Carver jumped to his feet, ran to the wall next to the door and pressed his back to it. Then, with his newly acquired gun held vertically next to his head, he slid sideways along the wall towards the door.
That was when he heard the single word ‘Carver!’
Zalika had survived!
Carver could make out the sound of feet scrabbling for purchase on the marble floor. Now he too had to move fast. He abandoned his cautious progress and dashed to the door, throwing himself forward into the hall then rolling to one side as Mabeki fired into the space where he had just been.
Carver came to rest by the body of Tina Wong. She was lying next to the other servant, so close that the blood from their wounds was mingling into a single pool on the floor. Wong’s eyes were open, looking straight into his in mute accusation: ‘I’m dead because of you.’
He looked up and brought his gun to bear. Mabeki was silhouetted against the light from the open front door. Carver’s gun was pointing right at him. Or rather, it was pointing right at Zalika Stratten, who was standing there, directly in front of Mabeki, his arm round her throat.
Her eyes looked dull. There was blood trickling from a cut on her left temple. A decade after Moses Mabeki had first kidnapped her, he had her at his mercy once again. And this time Carver had no clear shot, no answer as Mabeki rasped, ‘You try to shoot, she dies. You come after me, she dies.’
Zalika herself was silent now. But Carver could clearly see her mouth the words ‘Help me … help me!’
Carver lay on the cold marble tiles, beneath the vulgar wallpaper. The blood from the two women’s bodies was slowly spreading towards him. He cursed himself: why had he let himself be persuaded to bring an amateur, however capable, on a mission as important as this? Eaten up by frustration and helplessness, paralysed with fear for the woman he was supposed to have protected, Carver barely moved a muscle as Mabeki hustled Zalika out of the door. Only when he heard the sound of two car doors slamming shut and an engine coming to life did he get to his feet, hurdle the pathetic corpses in their blood-soaked grey dresses and start running frantically down the hall.
65
As he ran out of the house, Carver pressed ‘send’ on his phone’s text-message screen and sent the ‘OK’ signal to the number he’d been given. It felt like a lie. Yes, the Gushungos were dead. But that was where the good news ended. Everything else was going more pear-shaped by the second.
Outside, the Rolls-Royce was cruising out of the forecourt with none of the frantic speed Carver would have expected from a kidnapper making a getaway. It paused for a second as a small white delivery van covered in Chinese characters pottered past the entrance to the property and drove away down the road. The Rolls moved forward again, still going gently. Even at this sedate pace, however, it would only be a matter of a second or two before Mabeki turned left and followed the little van back down the hill towards the main entrance.
Carver could clearly see Mabeki in the driver’s seat, but there was no sign of Zalika. Either he’d shoved her down out of sight or … No, that wasn’t it. Carver hadn’t heard the sound of two doors closing. The first sound he’d heard had been the lid slamming shut. The bastard had shoved her in the boot. That was why Mabeki was going so gingerly. Any sudden movements and she’d be rattl
ing around in there like a cat in a tumble-dryer. He didn’t want to damage the goods.
Mabeki’s caution gave Carver a fractional window of opportunity. He stood on the top step, just outside the front door, braced his legs and held the bodyguard’s pistol out in front of him in a two-handed grip. It was a Chinese model, with a communist star stamped on the grip: a QSZ-92 with fifteen nine-millimetre rounds in the magazine. The Rolls was side-on to him now – as clear a shot as he would ever have, and as safe as it would ever be. This was his one chance to end it fast.
He aimed. His finger curled round the trigger, gently squeezing it …
Carver put the gun down. Firing a nine-millimetre round at an armoured vehicle was an entirely futile activity. The bodywork was impenetrable. Even the windows would repel a bullet without so much as a scratch. He would achieve nothing except make a lot of noise and attract unwanted attention.
Mabeki knew it, too. He turned his head, leaning forward in his seat and peering out through the passenger window. Then he wrenched his mouth into the closest thing he could manage to a broad grin, gave a brief mocking wave of his hand, and hit the accelerator. The Rolls’s massive 6.7-litre engine did not exactly roar into life. A Rolls-Royce never does anything so crude. But though the noise was not spectacular, the effect certainly was. The massive car leapt forward. An instant later, it had disappeared from sight.
Carver’s instinct was to race to the Honda and give chase right away, but again he resisted the temptation. Instead, he went back into the house, past the two bodies in the hall, and returned to the living room. There, amid the lingering stench of cordite and shit, he gathered up the communion kit and put it back in the leather briefcase. No sense in leaving fingerprint-rich evidence if he didn’t have to.
On the other hand, it did make sense to leave the gun behind where it could mislead police investigators. Carver wiped down the handle and trigger then, holding it by the barrel, his hand covered by a handkerchief, replaced it in the hand of the dead bodyguard. In total, he spent thirty seconds in the room before leaving again. Keeping the handkerchief over his hand, he closed the front door then walked briskly to his car. He got in and placed his briefcase with its flap open in the footwell of the passenger seat. Then he switched applications on his phone and, for the first time all day, gave a silent, heartfelt, entirely genuine prayer of thanks: Zalika’s phone was on, and it was heading steadily up the road away from the estate. For the time being there was no need to panic. He could follow Mabeki at a distance.