Dictator Read online

  Contents

  Cover

  Title

  Copyright

  Also by Tom Cain

  Part 1: Ten Years Ago

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Part 2: Now

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65

  Chapter 66

  Chapter 67

  Chapter 68

  Chapter 69

  Chapter 70

  Chapter 71

  Chapter 72

  Chapter 73

  Chapter 74

  Chapter 75

  Chapter 76

  Chapter 77

  Chapter 78

  Chapter 79

  Chapter 80

  Chapter 81

  Chapter 82

  Chapter 83

  Chapter 84

  Chapter 85

  Chapter 86

  Chapter 87

  Chapter 88

  Chapter 89

  Chapter 90

  Chapter 91

  Chapter 92

  Chapter 93

  Chapter 94

  Chapter 95

  Chapter 96

  Chapter 97

  Chapter 98

  Chapter 99

  Six Months Later …

  Chapter 100

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  This eBook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

  Version 1.0

  Epub ISBN 9781446421277

  www.randomhouse.co.uk

  TRANSWORLD PUBLISHERS

  61–63 Uxbridge Road, London W5 5SA

  A Random House Group Company

  www.rbooks.co.uk

  First published in Great Britain

  in 2010 by Bantam Press

  an imprint of Transworld Publishers

  Copyright © Tom Cain 2010

  Tom Cain has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.

  This book is a work of fiction and, except in the case of historical fact, any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  ISBNs 9780593062340 (cased)

  9780593062357 (tpb)

  This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  Addresses for Random House Group Ltd companies outside the UK can be found at: www.randomhouse.co.uk

  The Random House Group Ltd Reg. No. 954009

  2 4 6 8 10 9 7 5 3 1 4

  Also by Tom Cain

  The Accident Man

  The Survivor

  Assassin

  Part 1

  Ten Years Ago

  1

  Carver sat astride the girl’s broad hips and ran his cool green eyes over her naked torso. Her belly was by no means fat, but it had a proper female curve to it. Her breasts were full and weighty. Her features were anything but delicate: the nose a little too big, the jaw perhaps too heavy. But her mouth was a vivid slash of blood-red lips that parted to reveal strong white teeth, and her eyes were bright with spirit and life.

  He leaned forward, reached out his right arm and very gently, experimentally, allowing barely any contact between her skin and his, brushed his hand across her left nipple. She shivered and gave a little gasp as it hardened against his palm. She threw her arms back on the pillow, the wrists crossed above her head as if tied by invisible cords to his bedframe. Her fists had clenched at Carver’s first touch. He smiled and gave her other breast exactly the same treatment.

  Then, he placed a hand on each breast, a little more firmly now. Taking all the strain in his back and stomach, so that his hands did not press down too hard, he lowered his head and let his lips and tongue play where his hands had just been. He felt her hips move beneath him and tightened the grip of his thighs, restricting her movements and increasing her frustration. She moaned as he took one of her nipples between his teeth and toyed with it, biting her with delicate precision, just enough to hurt a very little.

  Now Carver ran his hands down both sides of her ribcage till they settled in the dip of her waist. His mouth delivered weightless kisses to the undersides of her breasts and the downy, peachy skin that surrounded her belly button. He explored that with his tongue for a second, tickling her, and then shifted position so that his arms moved off her body on to the mattress, taking his weight as his legs slipped between hers and slowly but inexorably forced her thighs apart. She put up a token, playful resistance. She was strong, but he was stronger. They both knew this was a contest he was always going to win.

  His mouth brushed against the thin strip of pubic hair, just a few wisps to toy with as she tilted her pelvis to bring herself closer to him. There was another moan now, a little louder this time, in anticipation of the feel of his tongue inside her. She moved her own hands down to his head, almost cradling it as she ran her fingers through his hair, trying to guide him to her, but Carver wasn’t in any hurry. Instead of carrying on down, he teased her a little, kissing the insides of her thighs, right at the very top, so that he was breathing in the smell of her, feeling her heat.

  His own hips were moving now and he could feel his hardness between his body and the sheets. He was frustrating himself as much as her, but that was just part of the fun, seeing who could hold out the longest. Her fingernails were digging into his scalp, scratching the skin, urging him on. The moment was getting closer. He placed his lips against her, tasted her
for the first time, and then …

  And then a thought suddenly dropped, unbidden and unwanted, into his brain: he had absolutely no idea at all what the woman beneath him was called.

  The realization hit him like a bucket of ice-cold water, killing the moment stone dead. Had he really come to this? A drunken pick-up in a crowded club; going through the motions of a cynical, anonymous fuck: was this his idea of a great night out? He’d always thought he was better than that.

  He shrivelled with disgust and self-loathing and pushed himself away from her.

  She must have thought this was just another one of his teases because for a couple of seconds she didn’t react. Then she raised herself on her elbows.

  ‘What’s the matter, baby?’ she said.

  Her accent was Italian. It didn’t help him remember her name any better.

  She giggled enticingly. ‘Come back here. What you do feels so good, so hot. Don’t be mean, boy. Don’t stop now.’

  Carver ignored her. He sat on the edge of the mattress and rubbed a hand across his eyes. Now that the buzz of sexual excitement had gone, he was just another sleepless man at half-past four in the morning, on the cusp between intoxication and the inevitable hangover.

  He got to his feet, taking a moment to get his balance before padding through to the kitchen.

  ‘Hey! Where you going, leave me here?’ she shouted after him, then muttered something in Italian. It didn’t sound like much of a compliment.

  He stopped in the corridor and turned back towards the bedroom door. ‘You want some coffee?’

  She gave him the finger.

  Carver shrugged and continued on his way. As he poured water into the coffee-machine he could hear her stomping and cursing in the distance, letting him know how she felt as she searched for her discarded clothing and got dressed.

  He looked out at the rooftops of the Old Town as they turned from black to battleship grey in the first watery light of the false dawn. It struck him that he was ravenously hungry. He hadn’t eaten anything last night, and he wasn’t about to eat now. There was nothing in the fridge apart from an old half-empty bottle of Sancerre and an ancient lump of Gruyère now roughly the consistency of heavy-duty plastic and thickly encrusted with green and white mould.

  The coffee-machine was making gurgling noises that suggested the water had boiled. Carver slid a cup under the spout. The cup still had the dried brown remnants of yesterday morning’s multiple espressos in it. What the hell, boiling water would kill any germs, no need to bother washing it now.

  By the time he’d poured his coffee and left the kitchen, she was making her way to the door.

  ‘What your problem?’ she sneered when she noticed him watching her. ‘Can’t do it? No woody? Puh!’

  He downed his espresso and opened the door for her. ‘Here, allow me.’

  ‘Oh thank you, Mr English Gentleman.’ The sarcasm was laid on with a spade.

  ‘Just before you go,’ Carver said, putting an arm across the open door. ‘What’s my name?’

  She gave him a withering look. ‘I don’ know. Don’ care. Never wanna see you again.’

  ‘So we’re even.’

  He let his arm fall and she walked past, not even sparing him a backward glance. He closed the door behind her and wandered back to the coffee-maker, wondering when it was that he’d let it all slide. Not just the girl, everything.

  Stupid question. He knew exactly when it had happened. He could date it to the second. Another woman walking through the same door, the finality as it closed behind her, ripping out his heart.

  Even now, months later, there were moments when Carver thought he saw Alix Petrova again. All it took was a flash of gold hair in the sunlight that caught his eye, but was not hers; a waft of her scent on the air, but sprayed on another woman’s body; a voice that sounded like hers but came from another’s mouth.

  No matter how often it happened, he was helpless to stop the surge of hope, or the crushing pain when those hopes were dashed.

  Carver pulled on some clothes and went out in search of a bakery that would sell him a couple of slices of pizza or a croque-monsieur. Both maybe. He’d need the energy because as soon as he’d eaten and showered he planned on driving up into the mountains. He was going to run through woods and across meadows, run till he’d burned the alcohol from his body and the poison from his soul. And tomorrow he’d do it again.

  It was time he got his edge back, time he regained focus. But all the physical fitness in the world would only get him so far.

  What Samuel Carver really needed was a job, an assignment that would allow him to exercise his very particular, deadly skills. And several thousand miles away, in the landlocked African state of Malemba, that need was about to be met.

  2

  On the Stratten Reserve in southern Malemba, hard by the South African border, a black rhino cow was standing placidly in a grove of acacia trees, close to the pool on the banks of a slow-flowing river where she liked to drink. The game wardens who had followed her progress like doting godparents since her birth fifteen years ago called her Sinikwe, just as they named all the key animals – the rhinos, elephants and big cats – on the reserve.

  She looked up as she heard a squeal from Fairchild, her calf, who was discovering to his cost that while acacia leaves were tender and delicious, they grew on branches protected by vicious thorns. The youngster had suffered no serious damage, however, and his hunger soon overcame his pain. He returned to the acacia, but a little more cautiously this time, a lesson learned. Two other calves were feeding nearby, Sinikwe’s two-year-old daughter Lisa-Marie, and her cousin, Kanja, whose mother Petal had wandered to the pool to slake her thirst.

  A dirt road ran by the grove, near enough to enable tourists to sit in their open-sided trucks and photograph the rhino and other species that clustered there. The animals had become accustomed to humans and no longer fled at the first sound of an engine, unless they were actually on the road when a truck appeared. In that case the safari-goers got to enjoy the sight of a fully grown rhino’s massive backside heading away from them at thirty miles an hour in a rolling, waddling, fat-man gait – a sight as comic as that of a rhino charging towards them would be terrifying.

  But the eight men crammed into the battered old Toyota Hilux pick-up – two in the cab, six packed tight in the back – were not tourists. Dressed in a motley jumble of jeans, army fatigues, football tops and sleeveless T-shirts, and aged from eighteen to forty, their only common denominator was the AK-47 assault rifle each of them carried.

  Sinikwe looked up again as the truck drove by the grove. Her ears gave an edgy twitch. But the truck kept moving and its noise faded away, so she returned to browsing for food.

  The truck came to a halt downwind from the grove, so she did not smell the men as they dismounted and walked back towards her. The feeble eyesight with which rhinos are cursed meant that she did not see them either as they crept up to the acacia grove and raised their weapons to fire.

  A rhino has no natural predators. The biggest danger they face is each other: roughly one-third to a half of all rhinos die from injuries sustained as a result of fighting other rhinos. Thick hide and a sharp horn will deter any other natural threat. But they are powerless against a brutal volley of automatic weapons fire like the one that ripped through the acacia grove that day, tearing skin and flesh, cracking bones and shredding leaves and branches.

  Sinikwe was the first target. She died with a high-pitched scream of terror that could be heard over the brutal chatter of the guns before she and they fell silent, leaving her punctured body, garlanded with the crimson rosettes of its wounds, lying on the blood-spattered earth.

  All but one of the other rhinos fled, suffering no more than minor injuries. But Fairchild, frozen by terror, overwhelmed by the sound and smell of the guns and baffled by his mother’s sudden stillness, remained by the bush where he had been feeding. Then he slowly crept towards Sinikwe’s body, mewling and squeaking in a
plaintive attempt to rouse his parent.

  A single sharp order was barked by one of the men. Two of the others slammed fresh magazines into their AK-47s. There was another, much briefer burst of firing. Then Fairchild, too, lay dead.

  The men got to work with machetes. One group hacked the full-grown horns off Sinikwe and the much shorter, immature growths off Fairchild. The others, some wielding axes, attacked the rhinos’ feet until their work was cut short by another order.

  The men stepped away from the mutilated corpses, keeping Sinikwe’s longer front horn, their most valuable trophy, but leaving the rest for the carrion feeders who would soon be drawn to the slaughter. They made their way back to the Hilux. And silence fell again upon the grove.

  3

  Zalika Stratten kept hoping that her father would rescue her. Later, she knew, he would ruffle her hair with his strong brown fingers, their skin as rough as bark, and tell her, ‘Don’t you worry too much about what Mummy says. She means well. She just worries about you, that’s all.’ But Zalika didn’t want ‘later’. She wanted him to stand up now and say, ‘Stop it, Jacqui. That’s enough.’

  Dick Stratten ruled his own vast personal kingdom – not just the reserve, but farms and ranches all over the country, filled with people who depended on him for their work, their homes, even the food in their bellies. Why couldn’t he rule his own wife? Why did he have to sit there, chewing on his lamb chop and very deliberately looking out at the view from the terrace while he ignored the argument going on right next to him at the table?

  And why wouldn’t her mother leave her alone?

  ‘Honestly, darling,’ Jacqui Stratten was saying, ‘it really wouldn’t hurt, just once in a while, to put on a pretty dress. If you just took off those ghastly trainers and put on some heels, or paid a tiny little bit of attention to your make-up, it would make such a difference. You have such lovely blue eyes, they’re much your best feature, but no one will notice unless you make some effort to show them off. As for your hair, René keeps asking me when I’m going to bring you along to the salon. He’s longing to give you some proper highlights. He says it would absolutely transform you.’