Dictator Page 11

  They did not bother to knock. Front doors were kicked or if necessary blown open. Warning shots were fired into the ceiling to cower the inhabitants, the muzzle flashes blazing in the gloomy interiors, where the only light came from the occasional gas or meths-fuelled lantern. Soldiers went in shouting at the tops of their voices and swinging their gun-butts with indiscriminate abandon. If they were lucky, the people crammed into the houses had time to grab a few belongings and even some food or water before they were herded at bayonet point on to the trucks, but many clambered into the bare open-topped cargo bays with nothing more than the clothes on their backs.

  Mary Utseya was relatively fortunate. She managed to sling a canvas bag across her shoulder and stuff it with a bottle of milk, a couple of biscuits and a clean nappy-cloth for baby Peter. All she kept for herself was a small framed picture of her dead husband Henry. It had been taken on his last leave home before he died. He was dressed in his army uniform, smiling proudly at the camera as he showed off the corporal’s stripes he had just been awarded.

  It was only when one of the soldiers grabbed her upper arm and shoved her up on to the truck that Mary noticed that his uniform carried exactly the same regimental insignia as Henry’s. These men were his old comrades, his brothers in arms.

  ‘Did you know Henry Utseya?’ she babbled, hoping she might somehow get better treatment if the soldier knew her man had belonged to his unit. ‘Please! He was in your regiment. He was killed in—’

  Mary was silenced by a slap to the side of her head. The blow sent her spinning across the floor of the cargo bay. She dropped Peter, who started crying, bawling with the banshee volume that even the tiniest baby can generate. Her face still stinging, her mind dazed and her vision blurred by the soldier’s slap, she scrabbled half-blindly around the truck, desperately trying to get to her baby before the soldier silenced him for good. She bumped into an old man, who lashed out at her with his boot. A woman started screaming. More people kept being shoved over the tailboard into the cargo bay, terrifying Mary, who felt sure her child would be trampled.

  At last her outstretched hands felt Peter’s cotton blanket, tightly curled hair and soft, warm skin, and she clutched him desperately to her breast. Then the truck’s ignition key was turned, its engine coughed into life, and they rumbled off into the night.

  A black Rolls-Royce Phantom was parked by the turning into Severn Road. It had been stretched to more than twenty-two feet in length and fitted with armour plating by Mutec, a specialist carriagemaker in Oberstenfeld, Germany. From behind tinted, bulletproof windows, its passengers watched as the trucks went by.

  ‘Let that be a lesson to them,’ said Faith Gushungo. ‘Have you allocated the properties yet?’

  She was sitting in one of four passenger seats, arranged in two facing pairs behind the divider that separated them from the driver, guaranteeing total privacy.

  Moses Mabeki gave a jerky twitch of his brutally distorted head. ‘Of course,’ he said, the last word dissolving into a drooling slur.

  ‘And the new owners are aware that the trucks will come for them, too, if they ever question their loyalty to our cause?’

  Mabeki’s laugh was a hacking cough. ‘Oh yes, they know, and they believe it, don’t worry about that.’

  ‘And the diamonds: you have a buyer lined up?’

  ‘Yes. They’re offering ten million. I will make them pay twelve.’

  ‘Twelve million dollars,’ purred Faith Gushungo with something close to ecstasy. ‘All for us.’

  ‘It will almost double our holdings,’ said Mabeki.

  ‘You’re sure Henderson doesn’t know that we control the accounts?’

  ‘He does not know that we control the country. Why would he know about the accounts?’

  Faith laughed. She reached out to stroke Mabeki’s face, feeling the hard, shiny knots of scar-tissue under her fingertips. His terrible ugliness appalled her. The drops of spittle that fell from his lips on to the palm of her hand disgusted her. Yet they thrilled her, too, and she felt herself melting with desire for him.

  ‘You are my beast,’ she whispered.

  She ran her hands over the whipcord muscles beneath his suit and lowered her head over his body. Moses Mabeki’s face had lost all its beauty and his shoulder was a twisted wreck. But he was still a man, for all that.

  31

  The dinner was as magnificent as Klerk had promised. The truffle soufflés were almost as light as the air around them. The main course was a leg of tender pink roast spring lamb, served with fondant potatoes and a fricassee of baby vegetables picked barely an hour earlier. For dessert they ate fresh strawberries and cream, dusted with ground black pepper to bring out the sweetness of the fruit. All the ingredients came from Campden Hall’s own home farm. Even the truffle had been found in one of the patches of woodland that dotted the estate. Only the wines had been imported, and for Carver, the journey from Geneva was entirely justified by the chance to sample the 1998 Cheval Blanc, a red wine from the Bordeaux commune of St Emilion, which accompanied the lamb. He wasn’t a man who sat around thinking of pretentious adjectives to describe what he was drinking. It was simpler just to say that the wine tasted even better than Zalika Stratten looked.

  No one talked about Malemba, or Gushungo, let alone the reason why Carver was a guest at the meal. It was as if there were an unspoken agreement to keep the conversation light and trivial.

  After the meal, the diners began to drift upstairs to bed. Carver’s room was on the same corridor as Zalika’s. They went up together.

  ‘Well, this is me,’ she said, stopping outside her door.

  They stood opposite each other, so close that it would take only the slightest inclination of their heads to join in the kiss that would open the door and take them both inside. The tension between them mounted. Then Zalika leaned across and gave Carver an innocent peck on the cheek. He did not move as she turned the handle, half-opened her door and then paused at the entrance to her room. She looked him in the eyes. And then she was gone.

  Before long, only Tshonga and Klerk were left downstairs. They discussed their impressions of the afternoon’s discussion over brandy and cigars. Then the Malemban called it a day, leaving only Klerk behind.

  In the small hours of Saturday morning, when all but one of the inhabitants of Campden Hall were lost in sleep, a mobile phone was used to contact a number in Malemba.

  ‘Carver arrived here today,’ the caller said. ‘We offered him the Gushungo assignment. He hasn’t accepted yet.’

  The voice on the other end of the line was hard to make out. The reply had to be forced through a lazy mouth filled with spittle and incapable of precise speech: ‘Did you make sure he was tempted as I suggested?’

  ‘Oh yes. He knows you are still alive. We told him this is his chance to finish the job he started ten years ago.’

  ‘Did he like that idea?’

  ‘Hard to say. He wouldn’t commit himself.’

  Moses Mabeki gave a long, rattling sigh, like a hiss from an irritable venomous snake.

  ‘I want them all dead: Gushungo, his bitch wife and Carver. All of them.’

  ‘Relax. He’ll take the job. It’s just a matter of time.’

  ‘Good. Everything we planned depends on that.’

  ‘I’m well aware of that,’ said the caller.

  Then the phone snapped shut, the call ended, and within three minutes every bed in Campden Hall was occupied once again.

  32

  Wendell Klerk didn’t like to be hurried on a Saturday morning and saw no need to hurry his guests. The staff were on hand from the crack of dawn to provide anything anyone might want, but the first set event of the day was a midday brunch.

  ‘So, Sam, are you ready to shoot some clay pigeons?’ Klerk said, emphasizing his words with jabs of a sausage-laden fork.

  Zalika smiled at Carver. ‘My uncle is very proud of his shooting ground. He had to bulldoze half of Suffolk to make it.’

 
‘At least half!’ said Klerk. ‘Patrick, will you be joining us?’

  Tshonga smiled and shook his head. ‘No, Wendell, I have never had any skill with a gun. While my brothers were fighting for freedom in the bush—’

  ‘Ja, fighting me!’ Klerk interrupted.

  ‘I was studying law. All these years later, I am still happy just to read while others play with guns.’

  ‘Fair enough,’ said Klerk. ‘Brianna is not a great fan of shooting either, are you?’

  ‘Well, it’s not as boring as golf,’ Brianna sighed.

  Carver laughed. So the plaything had a sense of humour hidden away inside that doll-like figure. There was more to her than met the eye. She had that, at least, in common with Zalika.

  ‘Very good,’ said Klerk, sounding rather less amused. ‘So now we three who will be shooting must agree on the stakes. What do you say, Sam, how about the two losers each give the winner ten thousand US?’

  ‘If you like,’ said Carver, unenthusiastically.

  ‘Not enough for you? What if we make it fifty grand each?’

  ‘Honestly, Wendell, can’t you see Sam’s not interested in money?’ Zalika said.

  ‘He was the last time I paid him.’

  ‘Well of course, that was business,’ Zalika insisted. ‘But if we want to get him interested today, it has to be something more personal. Now, I seem to remember that yesterday he called me, and I quote, a “screwed-up schoolgirl who’s got bugger-all training, experience or competence for this kind of work”. Sorry, Sam, but that’s not the sort of thing a girl forgets in a hurry. So my wager is this. I bet you can’t beat little schoolgirl me in a straightforward head-to-head shooting match. And I’m not going to put any money on it because I know that if you, the great Samuel Carver, action hero extraordinaire, can’t shoot better than a helpless, weak and feeble female, you’ll lose something – well, a couple of things, actually – that say more about you than cash ever can.’

  ‘Ahahaha!’ Klerk burst out laughing. ‘You’re really putting your balls on the line here, my man! Don’t be fooled by this kid. She’s a Stratten. She was blasting away all over the family estates when she was still in nappies.’

  ‘You’re on,’ said Carver.

  Zalika smiled. ‘Excellent.’

  One by one the others drifted away until Carver and Zalika were alone in the room. She sat herself down next to him and pulled her chair right over to his. Then she leaned forward so close it seemed to Carver that her sea-blue eyes were not just looking at him but through him, and very softly said, ‘If you want to take me, you’ll have to beat me first. And believe me, Carver, I won’t make it easy.’

  33

  The open trucks came rumbling down the dirt track that snaked between the rolling hills of south-central Malemba, throwing up a choking cloud of parched red earth over the tightly packed huddles of fearful, half-starved men, women and children crammed into their cargo bays. A horn blared from the leading vehicle and a uniformed soldier with sergeant’s stripes on his arm and his eyes hidden behind fluorescent yellow-framed sunglasses got out of the driver’s cabin. He slammed the door behind him and lifted his AK-47 assault rifle one-handed into the air. He fired off a volley of shots then shouted, ‘Move! Move! Clear the way!’

  Ahead of him the track was blocked by more people: a horde that stretched away to either side, covering the rolling ground as far as the eye could see. There were more than thirty thousand of them, covering a barren wasteland that had once been occupied by flourishing crops and cattle made sleek and contented by lush green grass. Camps like this had sprung up all over the country, filled by families ejected from rural villages, estates seized from their white owners and urban neighbourhoods, just like Severn Road, that had dared to vote against Henderson Gushungo. Officially, the forced eviction and transportation of hundreds of thousands of people was known as resettlement. In reality, it was more like a form of ethnic cleansing, except that Gushungo terrorized members of his own tribe as willingly as he did those from other social and ethnic groups. Once moved, the people were simply dumped, without food, water or shelter, and left to fend for themselves. That they were doing so on land that belonged to other Malembans did not concern Henderson Gushungo in any way at all.

  A two-storey house, constructed of breezeblocks with a corrugated iron roof, stood like an island in this ocean of humanity, some fifty metres from where the trucks had stopped. All around it, wisps of smoke rose from smouldering cooking-fires and women sat before huts and tents cobbled together from whatever scraps of rag, wood and corrugated iron they or their men could find. Here and there small children with legs like fragile twigs and bellies as swollen as honeydew melons tried to play. But they had no energy to run or jump; no toys for imaginary tea-parties or battles; no light in their round, enquiring eyes.

  There was a slow, tired, hungry ripple of movement in front of the line of trucks and a few metres of track were cleared. The trucks rumbled forward again until they were swallowed up in the ocean of humanity and had to stop once more, some thirty metres now from the house. The man with the gun, who had been walking beside the leading truck, kicking people out of his way, fired another burst into the sky, and again a path through the throng, shorter and narrower this time, briefly appeared. When even this progress had reached its limit, the man accepted the inevitable. He turned round to face the line of trucks and shouted, ‘Enough, we stop here! Get them out!’

  A dozen or so more soldiers spilled from the trucks’ cabins. They went round to the backs of the cargo bays and opened them up, screaming ‘Get out!’ to the people inside, prodding them with the barrels of their AK-47s and lashing out with the butts at anyone who dared protest, or even ask where they were or what was going on.

  Mary had learned her lesson the previous night. She said nothing. She just held Peter tight, hoping that he would keep quiet. It made no difference. One of the soldiers smashed her in the face with his gun, just for the hell of it. He laughed and pointed Mary out to his mates as she fell to the ground, one hand still clinging to her baby, the other clasped to her face, blood seeping out between the fingers.

  ‘Stop that!’

  The shout came from the building. A boy in his late teens and a girl of about the same age – brother and sister by the look of them – were standing in the open front door. They seemed a little healthier and better-fed than the rest of the people around them and they carried themselves with the confidence of young people who have been raised in the belief that anything is possible and have yet to discover the limitations and dangers of that particular delusion.

  It was the boy who had shouted. Now he was walking through the people towards the truck, moving with the purposeful stride of a warrior prince. He ignored the soldiers and went straight to Mary Utseya, crouching on his haunches beside her and wrapping a consoling arm round her shoulders.

  The boy looked up at the soldier who had hit Mary. ‘Shame on you,’ he said with dismissive contempt. ‘A real man has no need to hit a defenceless woman.’

  The soldier took a step forward and the boy sprang to his feet to meet him. They stood opposite each other, glaring, barely a pace apart.

  ‘This woman needs help, her child too,’ the boy said. He turned his head towards his sister and called out, ‘Farayi, come and give me a hand.’

  The girl ran towards him, picking her way through the crowds with the sure-footed grace of a young gazelle. She took hold of Mary’s elbow, gently guiding her as the boy lifted her to her feet.

  ‘We’re taking her to the house,’ the boy said.

  He turned to lead the two women in that direction. They’d only taken three shuffling steps towards their destination when the sergeant’s voice rang out again: ‘Where you going, boy? You stay right here.’

  The boy hissed at his sister, ‘Keep going. Ignore him.’

  She hesitated for a second. ‘Canaan, do what he says.’

  The sergeant ignored them both. He had his own way of resolving tric
ky situations. He slammed a fresh magazine into his AK-47, took careful aim and fired a three-shot burst. Mary Utseya seemed to dance in the two kids’ arms, then her body slumped to the ground as the boy and girl jumped aside, away from any more shots.

  Peter was left lying on the ground between them. He started to cry. The sergeant walked up to the small bundle wriggling on the bare red earth. He aimed his gun at it then lowered the barrel. No need to waste a bullet. He raised his right foot high in the air, bringing his knee up almost to his chest, then slammed it down, crushing the baby’s skull with one blow of his boot heel.

  ‘Now you got no reason to go to the house,’ the sergeant said, rubbing his boot in the dirt to scrape the fragments of skull and brain matter off its sole.

  He pointed his index finger at four of his men. ‘You, you, you, you.’ He jerked a thumb at Canaan and Farayi. ‘Seize them. They are rebels. They are trying to sabotage our mission. They must come with us.’

  ‘No!’ The simple word was dragged out into a long, wailing cry of despair as a third person came out of the house, a middle-aged woman, her once-elegant features ravaged by exhaustion and stress. ‘You will not take my children!’ she shouted, hurrying towards the trucks.

  ‘Stay away!’ the sergeant shouted, but she kept going.

  ‘Do what he says!’ Canaan cried, struggling to free himself from the soldiers who had him in their grip.

  His words were drowned by the chatter of the gun.

  As Nyasha Iluko – wife of Justus Iluko, mother of Canaan and Farayi – lay on the ground, twitching in her final death-throes, the sergeant walked up to Canaan and jabbed him in the chest with the burning-hot barrel of his gun. ‘You see, young man? This is what happens when you meddle in another man’s business. These two women, this child, they all died because of you.’