by Tom Cain
The men who’d come to take him were all down. But not all of them would stay that way.
73
Carver dashed for the door on the far wall, wrenched it open and charged through. It led into a bare concrete passage that stretched for a good twenty yards in either direction, lit by occasional naked bulbs. Carver turned right and started sprinting, waiting for the sound of pursuit, his back prickling in dread anticipation of the first shot.
Up ahead, he saw a doorway. He glanced back. The passage behind him was empty: no sign of the man in the army shirt.
Carver kept running flat-out for the door. It was wooden, flimsy-looking, roughly painted in flaking blue gloss. He tried the handle, but it was locked.
He looked back again. Still no one in the passage.
Carver stepped back, kicked the door open and walked through into a store very like the one he had just left: more boxes, more shelves, but this time they all seemed to be laden with jars of herbs and strange-looking liquids. By the look of them, and the huge antique black cabinet divided into hundreds of small drawers, it was some kind of traditional chemist’s or apothecary’s. The counter in front of it was fancier than the one in the grocer’s shop, fronted with glass and filled with brightly coloured boxes covered in Chinese script. The woman behind it was talking to two diminutive middle-aged customers who were competing to get their point across to her. Carver realized with a shock that these were the same women who had been in the grocer’s store. They turned at the sound of the opening door, recognized him too, and raised the pitch and volume still higher as they pointed and shouted at him.
‘Afternoon, ladies,’ he said as he walked by as casually as he could, half-wondering if the old biddies might be crazy or angry enough to attack him as he went.
Once outside, he turned left and began walking back towards his car. Then he stopped. Now he knew why the gang leader had not followed him. He was heading for Carver’s car, presuming that it would be his first port of call.
Carver took out his phone as he watched the man in the old army shirt walk up to the Honda, looking around as he went. Confident that Carver was not yet in the area, he leaned back against the car and took a packet of cigarettes from the chest pocket of his green shirt. Either he was a well-known local hardman or he simply carried an air of violence with him wherever he went, because the crowds seemed to part round him, leaving plenty of open space around the car – a good thing as far as Carver was concerned.
As the man tapped the bottom of the packet to punch out a cigarette, Carver tapped a key on his phone. He had always expected that he might need to do this at some point during the day, but it had only been planned as a means of destroying evidence, rather than taking out the enemy. Still, you couldn’t complain about two birds with one stone.
The speed dial called up the number of the phone Carver had bought the previous day. The phone that was held down with zip-ties on to the piece of wood he had brought from Geneva. Two AA batteries were also tied to that piece of wood, as was the rocket sparking device. The two screws, their bolts and washers were also fixed to the wood, between the phone and the batteries.
Two crocodile-clipped wires ran from one screw to the batteries and from the batteries to the sparker. A third wire was clipped from the other screw to the sparker. Two much shorter lengths of plastic-coated electric wiring ran from the screws into the hole Carver had made in the side of the phone casing. Their bare ends were just a couple of millimetres apart inside the hole.
When he called the phone, the vibrator did its job and started vibrating. In so doing it touched the two bare wires together and completed the circuit that led to the batteries and the sparker. The sparker ignited the rocket engine, which in turn set off the acetone and then the petrol, and then the whole car went up in an explosive burst of flame, taking the man in the army shirt with it.
As screams and shouts echoed down the street and hordes of people poured out from shops, bars and restaurants to catch a glimpse of the drama, Carver walked ignored and unnoticed into a bar, and went to the men’s room. Having made sure he was alone, he chose one of the toilet cubicles and locked the door. He took off his wig and glasses. He transferred the wallet with all the Bowen Erikson papers and cards from his jacket to his trouser pocket. Then he removed the jacket and his vicar’s bib. He stopped, listened to make sure the men’s room was still empty apart from him, then came out of the cubicle and stuffed all the vicar gear into a tall wire-mesh wastepaper bin that stood beside the toilet’s washbasins, covering it all up with paper towels from the dispenser on the wall.
As he walked back out through the bar, attracting no more attention than he had on the way in, Carver considered trying to find Mabeki, but dismissed the thought at once. By now he would have disappeared into the apartment blocks on the Aberdeen shore, or, much more likely, the boats crammed in its harbour. Wherever Mabeki was, there, too, Zalika would be. Carver could not believe he would kill the girl, not before he’d extracted his full helping of pleasure at her expense. And he wouldn’t do that in Hong Kong, either; not when there was work to be done and power to be grabbed in Malemba.
Mabeki had known, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that the Gushungo hit was going down that day. He’d known, too, that Carver and Zalika would be doing the job. All that being the case, it followed that he’d known about the coup in Malemba. Carver was prepared to bet every cent in his offshore bank accounts that the coup had not succeeded – or not in the way he had been told about, anyway.
Someone had tipped Mabeki off about the entire plan, someone who had been willing to sell out Carver and Zalika. But who? Had Klerk been lying all along about his love for his niece? If Mabeki had offered him a better deal than Patrick Tshonga had done, would Klerk have put money before family? Carver didn’t want to believe that, but he had long since learned the hard way that men who truly love money always value it more highly than any mere human affection. And what of Tshonga himself? Had he just been playing Klerk, leading him on with the promise of easy money, when all along he’d cut a deal with Mabeki? It would be an abdication of all Tshonga’s principles to ally himself with Gushungo’s right-hand man. But for anyone who really wanted power in Malemba that might be the smart, cynical move to make.
Whatever had happened, the answer to the puzzle lay in the same place to which Moses Mabeki was certainly travelling, and where he would hide Zalika Stratten until he had done with her: Malemba. Carver had no choice. He had to go there, even if it meant going alone and unprotected against overwhelming odds. He thought of calling Klerk and Tshonga, but decided against it. If one of them really had double-crossed him, letting them know he was on his way was the last thing he should do.
When he got back out on the street, Carver walked down to the harbour promenade. Taxis were dropping off tourists. He hailed one of them.
‘Take me to the airport,’ he said.
74
The timing had been split second, and even then it had been a close-run thing. But with the help of two of Fisherman Zheng’s men, both armed and ready to use their weapons, Moses Mabeki had managed to get Zalika Stratten into the delivery van parked just outside the Gushungos’ house before Carver came out of the building. From that point on it had been a simple case of misdirection. He’d made a show of slamming the boot shut loud enough for Carver to hear, and standing right by it so that the Englishman would come to the obvious conclusion that the girl was in there. Then he’d taken the scenic route, leading Carver down Route Twisk, while the van went on the fastest possible highways from Hon Ka Mansions to Aberdeen.
It had gone straight to the waterfront where Zheng’s men opened up the rear cargo, removed Zalika Stratten and led her down a flight of quayside steps to a small motorboat that was bobbing on the water below. She’d lost her ridiculous sunglasses as well as her phone. Her hair had come unpinned and now hung round her shoulders. She looked much more like her true self, but dressed more cheaply than usual.
The boat had spe
d away, jinking between the other craft crammed into the narrow stretch of water between Aberdeen and Ap Lei Chau island on the other side of the harbour. It had pulled up alongside the streamlined, dart-like hull of a Sunseeker Predator 52 performance motoryacht moored off the Aberdeen Marina Club. Once again, there were armed men all around Zalika as she was led aboard.
The motorboat had then sped away again, only to return fifteen minutes later with Moses Mabeki.
The Sunseeker weighed anchor, eased its way through the harbour and then, when it reached the open sea, the skipper opened up the throttle and it raced away westwards, hitting thirty knots as it ate up the twenty-five-mile journey to the former Portuguese colony of Macau.
The boat was one of Fishermen Zheng’s favourite toys, and this voyage gave him particular pleasure. He had brought a diamond dealer along to inspect the stones Mabeki had agreed to sell him. The dealer assured him, in a Hoklo dialect incomprehensible even to the vast majority of Chinese, that they were worth almost twenty million US dollars. On Friday night, Zheng and Mabeki had shaken hands at six million, subject to delivery and acceptance. Now the money was paid directly into Mabeki’s personal account in the Cayman Islands. Everyone was happy.
Mabeki made his excuses and went to the cabin where the next stage of the extraction plan he had agreed with Zheng was due to take place. A doctor – Hoklo, like all Zheng’s associates, and thus guaranteed to keep his silence – injected Zalika with a heavy dose of nitrazepam, which knocked her out cold.
They were met at the Macau shore by an ambulance driven by two more of Zheng’s men, dressed as uniformed paramedics. The ambulance took Mabeki and his unconscious companion to Macau International Airport, which is specifically geared to the private aviation needs of the high-rollers who gamble their money at Macau’s twenty-eight casinos. There, a Gulfstream 550 ultra-long-range jet, equipped with medical facilities and with a doctor and nurse on its crew, was waiting to fly Mabeki and the comatose Zalika to a medical facility near Paris. No one enquired why she needed to travel so far for treatment. The airport’s officials had long since become accustomed to the foibles of the rich.
An hour into the flight, the pilot was re-routed on to a new southwesterly course, towards Sindele airport, Malemba.
They were barely two thousand miles from their destination when Zalika Stratten began very groggily to wake up. She cast bleary eyes around the cabin and asked where on earth she was.
75
Gatekeeper Wu had been told very clearly where his duties lay. At half-past ten on Sunday morning, when the delivery van had first pulled up by the barricade at the entrance to Hon Ka Mansions, the two men inside had assured him that they knew precisely where he, his wife and three small children lived. They’d made it plain that not only his life but those of his family were at stake. If he wished to live, he would turn his eyes from anyone who came in or out of the development over the next ninety minutes. If he was approached by any policemen, he should play dumb and claim not to remember anything about any of the cars or people who’d gone past his post. It was made very clear that the boss for whom the men worked had contacts within the police who would tell him in an instant if Wu had told them anything of interest. On the other hand, his discretion would be much appreciated and his family would be greatly rewarded.
Wu had got the message.
The first police car had arrived shortly after midday. The officers inside told Wu they were responding to a report of gunfire. Wu assured them, truthfully, that he had heard none. One of the cops had shrugged and told him he didn’t expect there was any reason to be concerned. The woman who had reported it said she and her husband had waited for more than half an hour before calling the police because they were arguing about what the sound had been.
It took the two cops almost ten minutes to determine that the noise had come from the Gushungo entrance and another five to decide they should force their way into the house. Twenty seconds later, they discovered the two bodies of the maids in the hallway, followed by the Gushungos and their four bodyguards in the living room.
The cops reported back to their station. The chief inspector, who was the senior duty officer, took the instant decision that he did not wish to be in any way responsible for the investigation of a head of state’s violent death on Hong Kong soil. He got straight on to the Hong Kong Police Force’s headquarters, where a chief superintendent went straight to the top, disturbing the Commissioner of Police, who was standing over a tricky putt on the fourth hole of the Ocean Nine course at the Clearwater Bay Golf and Country Club.
By happy chance, the commissioner’s playing partner was the Secretary for Security, a member of the Executive Council that assisted the Chief Executive of Hong Kong in governing the territory. The two men immediately decided that every available police resource would be devoted to investigating the deaths at Hon Ka Mansions. They also agreed that it would be most unwise to alarm the public, or jeopardize the international reputation of Hong Kong, by making any statement whatsoever until the perpetrators responsible had been identified and, if possible, apprehended.
Around two in the afternoon, the first detectives came to interview Gatekeeper Wu. Like Zheng’s men, they told him not to tell anyone about what he had seen if he knew what was good for him.
To any Chinese, a threat from a government official is at least as terrifying, if not more so, than one from a gangster. No gangster, after all, has killed even a tiny fraction of the Chinese citizens sacrificed by their own state over the past sixty-odd years. That night, Wu ordered his wife to gather together the family’s pitiful quantity of possessions. On Monday morning they were getting on a train and heading back to their old fishing village, two hundred miles away on the coast of Guangdong province. The family Wu had had enough of Hong Kong.
76
Carver’s flight got into Johannesburg at quarter-past seven on Monday morning. As soon as he’d made it through immigration and customs he sat down in an airport café with a double espresso and his iPhone. Then he logged on to the BBC news pages and looked for headlines about Malemba.
It didn’t take long for his worst fears to be confirmed. The whole Gushungo operation had been blown and Tshonga’s supposedly peaceful takeover had collapsed in a swift series of massacres. Meanwhile, there were rumours of a simultaneous attack on President Gushungo and his wife at their home in Hong Kong. The Hong Kong authorities were remaining tight-lipped, but neither the President nor his wife had been seen in more than twenty-four hours and although a local vicar reported that he had been told that they were suffering from a stomach-bug, some Hong Kong bloggers were suggesting that they were dead and that local authorities were engaged in a massive cover-up. Carver liked the sound of that. The more the truth was glossed over, the less chance there was that anything would ever be traced to him.
Malemba itself was now under the control of a self-proclaimed Committee of National Security, a group of senior military officers who had decreed a state of emergency pending the reestablishment of civilian government. The committee members, like the Hong Kong authorities, refused to comment on stories that Henderson Gushungo was dead. They preferred to focus on Patrick Tshonga, who was described as a traitor, an anarchist and a threat to peace. He was being hunted without mercy, one general stated, and would soon be cornered like a rat. In the meantime, a press conference was being scheduled for the following morning, Tuesday, at which time the people would get a chance to hear the committee’s plans for the country.
The timing seemed about right, Carver thought. If Mabeki had flown direct to Sindele, he would have arrived at roughly the same time as Carver got to Johannesburg. He’d need a day to get his feet under the table, prepare the various bribes, threats and blackmails with which he’d bend everyone to his will, and then appoint whichever stooges would nominally run the country. He’d also have to decide what to do with Zalika. Assuming she was still alive.
In any case, Carver now had his deadline. His best, maybe only cha
nce of killing Mabeki and rescuing Zalika was to do it before Mabeki had the chance to assemble and announce his new regime. Once that African Machiavelli had the full resources of the Malemban police state at his beck and call, he would be almost impossible to touch. It had to be now.
First, though, he had to confront Klerk. He leaned back in his chair, wanting to think through the best approach, one that would give him the flexibility to respond equally effectively, whether Klerk had betrayed the plan or not. Then something caught his eye, a copy of the Johannesburg Star discarded along with the empty coffee cups on a nearby table. The front-page headline screamed ‘Slaughter in Sandton’. Next to it was a sub-head: ‘Death toll rises to seven in billionaire mansion shoot-out’.
A nauseous sense of dread and apprehension clawed at Carver’s guts. He reached across to pick up the paper. Two minutes later, he was on the phone to Sonny Parkes, Wendell Klerk’s head of security.
‘It’s Carver,’ he said. ‘We need to meet. Now.’
77
Half an hour later, Carver was standing in the street outside Klerk’s mansion while Sonny Parkes talked their way past the police guard manning the barricades and crime-scene tape round the entrance to the house. One look at Parkes told Carver why Klerk had trusted him so much. Sonny Parkes had a prop-forward’s body, a boxer’s nose, a balding skinhead’s haircut and a redneck’s complexion. Plenty of men who look like that are no better than drunken thugs, and that’s on a good day. Others, though – the ones blessed with intelligence, courage and a sound temperament – are the warriors you want fighting beside you in the trenches. It’s a common enough cliché, but Carver had been there for real, and he knew just by looking at him that Parkes had too.