Agents of the State

by Mike Nicol

  Joey Curtains leant forward, flicked at the keyboard, swiping through some more photographs. Fish and Cynthia Kolingba exiting the restaurant. Fish and Cynthia Kolingba shaking hands.

  ‘They are not lovers,’ said Kaiser Vula. He stabbed his finger at the screen, at the image of Fish Pescado. ‘You find out who this man is. Tomorrow. Tomorrow I want name, address, cellphone number. I want to know what he does, who he is. Okay, you hear me, Agent Curtains? Tomorrow, alright.’

  On the screen was an image of Cynthia Kolingba driving off in her Fortuner. The last image that of Fish talking to the car guard.

  ‘You didn’t get his car?’

  ‘No, Major. Major said to watch her,’ said Joey Curtains. ‘She was driving away, Major. Like you said, I didn’t want to lose her.’

  Major Kaiser Vula rolled his eyes. ‘We have a tracker on her car, no one’s going to lose her. Another few minutes he would’ve driven away. One photograph of his number plate and we know everything.’ This time he tapped his own head. ‘Simple. Don’t you think, Agent? Don’t you use your mind? Tomorrow, okay, you tell me what he eats for breakfast.’

  Kaiser Vula looked at Joey Curtains. ‘You know what is happening with the colonel?’

  Joey Curtains nodded. ‘In a coma still, Major.’

  ‘I know. That is not my question. My question, Agent, my question is: Tell me your plan. Tell me how you will fix this situation? Four days we’re waiting. Four days is a long time. In four days what have you done? You bring me the same news all the time. We are waiting. We are waiting. We are waiting. What are we waiting for, Agent?’

  ‘Maybe he will die, Major.’

  ‘Of course. Of course he will die. You will die. I will die. He will die. But he must die now. You understand what is now? Today. Today is now.’

  ‘It’s not easy, Major. It’s difficult.’

  ‘Difficult?’ He frowned at Joey Curtains. ‘Difficult. You tell me what is difficult? The colonel is in one place. He can’t leave that place. You know where that place is. So where is this difficult?’

  ‘There is security,’ said Joey Curtains.

  ‘No, man, no, no, no,’ said Kaiser Vula. ‘That is nonsense. We are security. You must fix this, Curtains. Fix this properly. Soon. Now. The latest tomorrow. Tomorrow. Finish ’n klaar. Like it should’ve been.’ Kaiser Vula waving Joey Curtains back to the Aviary.

  ‘Talk to Prosper. Prosper can make a plan.’

  Prosper Mtethu, the driver, the old man, the Umkhonto we Sizwe veteran.

  ‘Listen to Prosper, Agent Curtains, listen to what he says. You can learn something.’ Waving his hand again, dismissing the agent, telling him to close the door.

  12

  Joey Curtains closed the door with a soft click, his face a mask: hooded eyes, thin mouth, head bowed. Walked slowly down the corridor past closed doors to the stairs thinking, what a prick. What a shitwit. The colonel wasn’t coming back. A couple of days they’d switch off the life support. Stupid to get all poeperig. Joey Curtains mouthing the word, smiling at the sound. The sound of the major shitting himself. Had to be a big shit storm coming down the tubes onto the major’s head. Arsehole. These army types marching into the Agency like Hitlers. Fuck him.

  And Prosper Mtethu again. The man who’d said, as they burnt rubber after the shooting of Colonel Kolingba, who’d said, ‘No, my friend, that is not the way. That was a mistake. We have left a man.’

  True enough.

  But.

  But not as if he’d been left for the hyenas. Not as if he was dead on some cassava battlefield in central Africa. No, man, right outside the cathedral. Home ground. Sacred ground. Anyhow the cleaners would pick him up. Make it all nice.

  Joey Curtains took the stairs down to the Aviary. Mostly empty, all the birdies flown this late hour of the afternoon. Sat at his desk on his typist’s chair, scrolled through his tablet to the photograph of Fish Pescado.

  Tomorrow. Tomorrow he’d sort him.

  Fish Pescado was the easy part. Kolingba was another story.

  Joey Curtains phoned Prosper Mtethu.

  Got a terse, ‘Ja, Prosper here.’ No background noise. ‘What you want?’

  ‘Hey, my bru, we got to do a job,’ said Joey Curtains.

  Silence. Then: ‘What job?’

  ‘The colonel.’

  Silence. Then: ‘You got a job,’ said Prosper Mtethu. ‘I don’t fix your problems.’

  ‘Nay, my bru,’ said Joey Curtains, ‘that’s not what the major said. The major said you was the man, you was the man to fix this.’

  Silence. Silence so long Joey Curtains thought Prosper Mtethu had disconnected. Was about to reconnect, he heard the man clear his throat, hawk, spit.

  ‘He was a brother that died.’

  ‘Who?’ Joey Curtains playing dumb.

  ‘On Sunday. That man we left on the steps was a brother.’

  ‘You mean family?’

  ‘We are all family.’

  ‘Blood family?’

  That silence.

  ‘Tonight,’ said Joey Curtains. ‘We gotta do it tonight. Or there’s kak from the major.’

  ‘It was a problem.’

  ‘What? What’s this problem.’

  ‘That he was shot.’

  ‘Hey, man, what’s this? There was more of them. It could of been me they shot, just as easily. Couple of turns the other way it was me would’ve gone down. It’s luck, my bru. Easy as that, luck of the draw.’

  ‘You are senior. You got experience. That man was a boy in this job.’

  Joey Curtains counted slowly in his head, one crocodile, two crocodile, three crocodile to ten crocodile. At ten said, ‘My brother, we have orders. We must make a plan.’

  Again the hawk and spit. ‘You know the One&Only?’

  ‘Waterfront, of course.’

  ‘There’s a bar in the foyer. Six o’clock.’

  Joey Curtains left listening to dead air. Joey Curtains with a couple of hours to kill.

  13

  Berlin, the Hackescher Markt Hotel. Vicki Kahn, topless, stripped down to jeans, stood looking at her breasts in the bathroom mirror. Relaxed her shoulders. Her breasts felt different to yesterday. Same size, same shape. But her bra had seemed too tight. Like between today and yesterday there’d been a seismic change. Not just period sensitivity. A change way up the sore barometer. You touched them they screamed. Sensitivity like heat. Out of the bra wasn’t much relief either. Covered her breasts lightly with her hands. Fine delicate hands with long fingers that hid them. She applied pressure. And there was the tenderness. Excruciating. She grimaced, dropped her hands onto the basin. Leant forward until her head touched the mirror. Why now? Why on this trip? With so much happening off-script.

  Which was as far as she was going with those thoughts. Two days, three max, she would be through it. Back home the problem could be sorted. Enough.

  Her thoughts shifted, turned to a scotch and soda. Wasn’t every day you were on an expense account in a hotel with a minibar. She pulled a T-shirt over her head, gently over her chest. Washed her face, ran fingers through the black bob of her hair. Shook her head at herself. Wished it was that time of the month. Like a really radical time of the month. Like a time of the month never experienced before. But odds on she knew what it was. And it didn’t fill Vicki Kahn with joy.

  She went over to the minibar, upended a glass, took out the miniature Bells. Twisted the cap off, caught a whiff of whisky and gagged. Couldn’t even pour it into the glass. Went for a straight soda water.

  Then sat on the sofa looking round the room. A room at the top of the Hackescher Markt Hotel. Henry Davidson’s recommendation. Not so much a recommendation as a directive.

  ‘You’ll like it there, Vicki. In the centre of things. Very historic. Very chic these days.’ His wet-lipped grin. ‘It’s your sort of place. A wonderland.’

  Whatever he’d meant by that. However he saw her.

  Here she was in a big room, very nice, Swedish furnitur
e, straight neat lines, blond wood. White linen on the bed, the duvet folded in the German way. A sexy standing lamp. Snake-eye reading lamps over the double bed. A little desk with a black anglepoise light. Very stylish.

  Vicki glanced at the skylight, the sky that dark blue before it went black. Could see the Alexanderplatz tower reaching up. Iconic. That new word everybody used. Historic. Not a city she knew although she’d heard stories of her aunt being here in the Honecker days: days of grim streets, dull streetlights, shot-up buildings, Checkpoint Charlie, people machine-gunned trying to jump the Wall, trying to swim the Spree. Spy days. John le Carré was about as close as she’d got to that Berlin.

  Now here she was due to meet an old spy – a lecherous old spy if you went by Henry Davidson’s brief – from those days. From the Struggle days when her aunt had lived on East German stipends before she got the posting to Paris.

  What was she doing here, really?

  Why the meeting with Detlef Schroeder?

  What chance now of bringing in Linda Nchaba? No chance.

  She sighed, reached across for her cellphone, put a call through to Henry Davidson. Might have rung once before he answered.

  ‘You like the hotel?’

  ‘It’s lovely.’

  ‘I told you. You have a nice room?’

  She laughed. ‘I do.’

  ‘With a view?’

  ‘Sort of.’

  ‘You can see the tower?’

  ‘The top part.’

  ‘Good.’

  Where’d Henry be this time of the evening? In his office still? At the Cape Town Club? She guessed the club. That weird hushed place of leather armchairs. You sat there, you couldn’t hear the city, as if you weren’t part of it any longer. She could see him, wig, blazer, gin and tonic, cigar. A scattering of whites among the new elites. Rich black men settling into the club.

  ‘A good flight?’

  People always asked that. Vicki could never understand why.

  ‘Yes. A bit bumpy.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Henry Davidson, ‘it can be in winter.’

  She waited, her expenses paying for silence while Henry used up airtime. Doing what? Taking a puff? Taking a swig? Oiling his voice? She waited.

  ‘Look, Vicki, I made a few calls. Got some help from the embassy. From a young man there, very efficient young man I have to say. He got onto Schiphol, seems Linda Nchaba had a panic attack. Something like that. She is fine. They let her rest. Booked her onto another flight. All is well, no cause for alarm.’

  Vicki looked at her watch: quarter to eight. All that in three hours. Said, ‘I’m pleased to hear that.’ Wondering if she was being told a story.

  ‘You should contact her, first thing tomorrow. Set up that rendezvous. Keep on her. Let her know we are serious, that we can help her. You are okay? Not jittery?’

  ‘I’m fine.’

  ‘Good. Good. Ah, one other thing,’ said Henry Davidson. ‘The flash drive. Keep it with you all the time. Just to be on the safe side.’

  ‘The safe side? Only you know where I am.’

  Henry Davidson chuckled. ‘An expression, Vicki. Only an expression. Nothing sinister. Now, watch out for Detlef’s hands tomorrow. They’ll be all over you otherwise.’ Again the chuckle. ‘An unreconstructed lech. Give him my best. And enjoy Saturday, drink a glühwein for me. At one of those markets, in the snow. Good girl.’

  And he disconnected.

  Patronising bastard, thought Vicki. Threw her cellphone onto the bed. What was all that about anyhow? What sort of line was he spinning?

  Like Linda Nchaba had a panic attack?

  Really?

  14

  Vicki Kahn connected her notebook to the hotel’s wi-fi, Skyped Fish Pescado, needing some reality.

  And there he was, pixelated, but no mistaking that wild blond surfer hair. Like he’d just come in from a surf. Which he probably had.

  Lover. Beach bum. Hardarse. And what’d he call it on his business cards these days? Investigative Consultant.

  ‘Vics,’ he said, his image coming clear. His image taking a pull from a bottle of Butcher Block pale ale: ‘Where’re you?’

  She shook her head. Said, ‘No, Fish, how can you? Use a glass with a beer like that.’

  ‘Tastes the same,’ he said, wiping the back of his hand over his mouth. ‘Cheers.’

  She’d been the one weaned him from the milk stout onto ales. ‘Artisan beers, craft beers, that’s where it’s at, Fish, when’re you going to grow up?’ Immediately, it turned out. She bought him a four-pack of Butcher Blocks, hooked the surfer dude with the first slug. ‘Cool,’ he’d said, ‘where’s this been all my life?’ No place for stout in the fridge after that. Figuring she was on a roll, Vicki managed to get him grooving on red wine at meal times. Shiraz mostly. No pinotage. Definitely no pinotage. Cab sav merlot blends at a push. Thing was, she turned her back, she knew Fish hit the ale. Mother’s milk he called it. Though the thought of Fish’s mother Estelle expressing milk wasn’t a thought Vicki wanted to hold for long, or at all.

  ‘Cheers,’ he said again. ‘Let’s see what you’re drinking.’

  She raised hers.

  ‘What’s that? Looks like water?’

  ‘J&B light,’ she lied. No good telling Fish she wasn’t drinking, he’d want to know why not.

  ‘So?’

  ‘So what?’

  ‘So show me. Your room. Out the window. Tell me about Berlin.’

  ‘Shoo, Fish, I just got here.’ But she unplugged the notebook, gave him a tour of the room, the bathroom, a close-up of the snake-eye lamps, a view of the buildings over the street, the tower and ball in the distance.

  ‘Bloody hell,’ said Fish. ‘Amazing what my tax buys government workers.’

  ‘You don’t pay tax, Fish,’ said Vicki.

  ‘If I did.’

  She looked at him grinning at her in his kitchen, late sunlight filling the room. For a moment thought: Wouldn’t that be better? Sitting there with him in the summer warmth. Eating seafood. Drinking a crisp sauvignon blanc. Better. In one way. But what about this? She wanted to like this. This idea of herself. The agent at Schiphol receiving information. The Berlin tourist. Would like it better if she weren’t sore.

  Said, ‘Fish, can you do something?’

  ‘Depends.’ Fish sitting back, his hands linked behind his head. ‘Official or unofficial? Money or spec?’ His head tilted, quizzical.

  She said nothing. Shrugged, leant forward, her face filling the screen. Winked.

  Fish smiled. ‘Okay. So what’s this something?’

  This something. Three thoughts in Vicki’s head: Why get Fish into this? Why not wait till she was back, do her own legwork? Why not get boss Davidson to assign the help? Because she didn’t trust the help. Maybe didn’t even trust bewigged Davidson. Because she wanted to know more about Linda Nchaba. The file had been too skimpy. Or there was another file she wasn’t shown. Henry’s secrecy rules.

  ‘Unofficial, no money,’ she typed, watched Fish’s smile turn into a grin.

  ‘Hey, hey, what’s this? Berlin rules?’ Fish saying it aloud. ‘You’ve only been there a couple of hours, you’re already George Smiley.’

  Fish went blurry. Skype told her it was a slow connection, drop the video feed. She clicked away the message. Said, ‘See what happens when you make jokes. Now keep still, you’re moving around too much.’

  He did. His image cleared, his fingers on the keyboard, typing: ‘Unofficial, no money. Spooky.’

  ‘I said don’t joke, Fish.’ Read his message: ‘No money, really?’

  ‘I can’t,’ Vicki said. ‘Not straight away. Maybe later.’

  ‘Ah, something you don’t want anyone to know about,’ said Fish. ‘Nice place you work for.’

  She let that go.

  ‘Please.’ Vicki watching surfer-dude Fish mulling it over, staring straight out the screen at her. Watching him take another slug of the pale ale.

  ‘Alright. I got a job this a
fternoon. How urgent’s yours?’

  ‘Very.’ Decided to allow him some slack, show interest in his new job. ‘What sort of job?’

  ‘A scary one.’

  She smiled, thinking he was taking the piss.

  ‘No, strues. You know that Congolese got nailed outside the cathedral? Him. Well, not him. Mrs Congolese actually.’

  Vicki typed: ‘Colonel Kolingba?’

  ‘Ja, him.’

  ‘Central African Republic. Not the Congo.’

  ‘Doesn’t matter. Darkest Africa.’ Fish got up, disappeared off screen. Still talking though, telling her the pasta was ready, telling her about meeting Cynthia Kolingba after surfing in blown-out waves, telling her the Kolingba story. He came back on screen with a bowl of linguini, mixing in tomatoes and basil pesto, strips of Parma ham and black olives. Sprinkled Parmesan over it. Forked up a mouthful. ‘My supper, I’m starving.’

  ‘Looks good,’ Vicki said, feeling her stomach lurch. She sipped water. Waiting for Fish to deliver the pay-off line. Dreading it. She got it between his mouthfuls.

  A typed response: ‘Wants me to find the shooter.’

  Remembered what Henry Davidson had said, ‘Not our playing field.’ The way he’d brushed her query aside. ‘Not our playing field.’ Not even wanting to get into it. Despite all the corridor rumours, all the coffee gossip, Davidson wasn’t interested. Davidson who was interested in everything. Who collected information constantly. This time he didn’t want to know. Why? Because it was an inside job? Like wonderful, here was her man on the trail of a secret-service hitter. One of her colleagues, in a manner of speaking. Vicki closed her eyes, shook her head.

  ‘She came to you?’

  Fish frowning. Looking hurt. ‘Don’t sound so surprised. I have a rep about town.’

  ‘All the private dicks in the city, she comes to you? You, rather than the big boys?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘You don’t think that’s strange?’