Deadly States (Seaforth Files by Nicholas P Clark Book 2) (11 page)

warranted some scrutiny, in the estimation of most people. No doubt
some
of those faces in the crowd had already
decided that Jack had
something to do with the explosion,
even though they
knew nothing
about him or the circumstances and progress of the investigation.

Jack moved his head this way and that in as natural a fashion as
he could muster; he didn’t want the people looking in at him to think
that he was being in some way
evasive as that would
only serve to
heighten their curiosity even further, yet at the same time he did need
to do all that he could to keep a low
profile. The policeman watched
Jack in the rear-view
mirror as he shifted uncomfortably in his seat.
The officer smiled.

“Don’t worry, boss, we will soon be clear
of the crowds,” said the
officer, in a thick
Africana accent. “This is a violent city at the best of
times,
but something like this is a
bit special.
You
can’t
blame them
for having a look, eh?”

Jack nodded his head at the
officer’s words and he returned with
a smile of his own—
easy for you to say, mate
, Jack thought, coldly. He
was not the one who was being stared at. Once they were clear of the
main hub of activity the officer responded to Jack’s unspoken concerns
by accelerating.

There were many parts of the city that Jack avoided; most because
they were deemed unsafe by the South
African authorities, and some
because they were too close to the kind of people who might just notice that there was something not
quite right with Jack and his entire
company set-up. The intense briefing that he received back in London
before he set
off
on the mission was not very helpful. Over the years
Jack had learned that when his handlers used the term ‘intense briefing’, what they really meant was short briefing. Whoever was providing him with the information normally spoke at great speed as if to
give the impression that what he was being told was only the abridged
version
of detailed files that they had access to—that was invariably
bullshit—what he was
being told was all the information that they
had on a particular mission. It was all a part
of the great game that
they
played but with time he longed for a handler who told him the
truth from the start. That was never going to happen, and if the day
came when he was pulled out of the field and sat behind a desk, he

would probably use the same tricks on the agents that he briefed. The
bitter experiences he had as poacher would be quickly forgotten when
he turned gamekeeper.

The South
African
government
knew
there was
something
not
quite right with Jack and his company set-up, and they approved of
him and what he did, for the most part, because what he, and others
like him did helped to put many
of the men and women in power into
their gated communities with their luxury villas and chauffer driven
cars. Those people were happy to accommodate Jack and his kind as
long as they
didn’t bring any mess to their back yards. Once that happened he would be cut loose into the care of the legal system, and that
was a world where few unconnected foreigners seldom returned from.

It was the less informed people in the lower levels
of the power
ladder who Jack feared
most. People such as the
police. They were
trained to spot when someone was trying to cover something up and
if the police ever looked into Jack and his company they would
encounter many anomalies, and even in a police force as corrupt as that
found in South Africa there was always the danger that he might run
into that
one cop who was beyond corruption. Those in power had a
lot
of control but with the modern media always
on the lookout for
some big player in the political arena to bring down, a good cop could
always find protection in the arms
of a
media spotlight—such
cops
could
not
simply
disappear; at
least
not
without
many
awkward
questions being asked. For that reason Jack always went out of his way
to avoid the police, and the press. He had a run-in with one young reporter who wanted to run a piece on new investment in South Africa
but Jack refused to give an interview. The young man was very persistent. Eventually he turned to his friends in the government for help.
It
turned
out
that
the reporter
was
really
an
undercover
agent
working
for the Revenue Department. Soon after reaching
out to his
contacts, the young agent ended his investigation. Jack often wondered
what was
meant
by the simple phone message that had been left for
him at his
office—
the process has been terminated
. Was the agent told
to back off
or was there a more sinister meaning behind those words?
He never
did find out. There was a small part of him that worried that
one day
a vengeful agent, now
older and in a
more senior
position,
would come knocking on Jack’s door. That’s what he would have done,

In the summer
of the previous year Jack found himself in the police station a few
miles from the
little bit
of trouble for
one
of his
the
twenty-year -old
son
of
British investor in Jack’s fictitious company. Thompson, along with ten
other
major investors from the city
of London had no idea that the
company
didn’t really
exist; all they knew was that their investment
was
guaranteed by the British government and that
each year they
were
paid a very
healthy
dividend. In return the government got to
cover the firm in a veil of authenticity and allow Jack to do what was
asked
of him without interference.

Thompson sent his son to South
Africa to gain some real life business
experience. The boy had played the role of spoilt rich brat
once
too often back in the UK and his father had enough
of his antics. In
South Africa he would learn what it was like to cope in the real world
without his father’s money and influence waiting to bail him out when
he slipped up. That was never truly going to be the case for young Mr
Thompson as his father made certain there were enough people looking out for his only heir just in case he did revert back to his old ways.
Jack was
one such guardian; the ultimate guardian as it
happened,
and the
man who Thompson senior would have access to should it
all go terribly wrong for his son. Terribly wrong arrived three months
after the boy landed in the country. On a night
out with some friends
Richard met a sixteen-year-old black girl. One thing led to another and
before he could say,
call my solicitor
, Richard was in a cell charged with
aggravated rape.

Had the girl
been a
child
of
one
of the lost
masses from
one
of
the townships, Richard would have been sent on his way with a stern
rebuke, if that,
but that
particular sixteen year
old just happened to
be the granddaughter
of
General
Utta
Embeke, the second in command in the South
African army, and a former
ANC hit
man. The
General wanted blood and it took the full force of the South
African
government just to stop him from
entering the
police station where
Thompson was
being held, and throttling him with his
bare hands.
Even with all of his contacts Jack was unable to get the boy freed and
in the end a Special Forces rescue mission was sanctioned. The boy
office building trying to sort
out a
employees. Richard Thompson was
Michael
Thompson,
a
legitimate
was intercepted on his way to federal prison; two guards were killed
in the rescue mission. He
quietly turned up in London a few weeks
later
but the South
African government
did not ask any
questions.
The General was not
quite so understanding. Jack was called in to
meet with investigating officers six times and although they could not
find any link between Jack and the rescue mission, there was always a
suspicion. One detective in particular kept turning up at the office to
ask more
questions. Those meetings were acts
of intimidation rather
than a genuine attempt at finding out something new, and in the end
Jack was forced to call on some of his government contacts to get
the
detective to back off.

His contact with the Police may have been minimal but they were
significant
enough for Jack to know where his nearest two police stations were in relation to his
office, and as they continued to drive at
relatively
high speed through the city, Jack knew that
both
of those
stations had now been passed, and by a long way. Before he started to
kick on
the windows in the back of
the Land Rover in an
effort to
escape, Jack tried to come up with a logical explanation as to why the
police
officer had not taken him to one of the closest stations. Perhaps
this
case was so serious that the policeman had been
Jack
to
police
headquarters?
would
be
working
on
the
Perhaps
the
specialist

There were
many good reasons why they
had driven past the local
stations; what
was more difficult to reason away was why the officer
had driven so far
that they
were leaving the
city
completely. Jack
rarely ventured into
the townships
on the
edge
of the
city, and as
they
drove
past
one
of
those
huge
centres
of
human
misery
he
wondered which one of the innocuously named conurbations it was—
that would at least give him
some idea
of which direction they were
travelling in.

Jack struggled to remain calm as they silently headed off into the
surrounding countryside.
After half an hour Jack’s composure began
to disintegrate as his eyes danced wildly in search of an escape. The
driver
noticed Jack’s
discomfort and he relished in it. A dirty
smirk
spread across the policeman’s face.