Dictator (4 page)

Moses spoke to the two other black Africans, then addressed Andy. ‘So, we are agreed: eight men, armed with AK-47s, but only seven of them fired. The eighth man stood here, watching the whole scene.’

‘The leader,’ said Andy, ‘giving orders.’

‘I would think so, yes.’

‘OK, so let’s see where they went. I know we promised the old man there’d be no heavy stuff, but if I find the bastard who ordered this, he’s a dead man.’

‘Yes, and then what will happen?’ Moses asked. ‘Nothing good for you, that is for sure. So you must calm that hot Stratten blood. We will follow these men. We will find them, observe them, call in their position and wait for the police. Then, maybe, you can have your revenge. But for now we just follow the spoor.’

The poachers had made an attempt to cover their tracks and set false trails, but the failure of their deceits merely added to the confidence of the men following them. It was not long before they found the spot where the Hilux had been left. The tyre-tracks clearly showed how the poachers had turned off the road and left their vehicle screened by mopane scrub. They had not turned back on to the road, though, when they left the scene. Instead, they’d kept going away from it, deeper into the scrubland.

‘They headed for the river,’ said Andy. ‘They must be nuts.’

‘Perhaps they thought they could cross it,’ Moses suggested.

‘There are fords, but not here. They can’t be that stupid, can they?’

Moses shrugged. ‘Not stupid, perhaps, but desperate. We should be careful. Maybe we should stop here. There are eight of them, remember.’

‘Stop? No way. I will have these fuckers, mark my words.’

Moses said nothing. But his knuckles whitened around his gun and his eyes darted nervously around as they made their way through the mopane bushes that rose as high as ten feet to either side of the path forced through the undergrowth by the heavily laden pick-up.

No one was talking now. The air was still and close, heavy with the resinous, turpentine smell of mopane seeds, and the men’s shirts were gummed to their backs with sweat. The visibility was poor in every direction, every sightline blocked by trunks, branches and foliage. The men bowed their heads low, looking ahead of them at ground level, below the foliage, hoping to catch sight of a poacher’s feet or his shadow.

Even Andy Stratten’s demeanour lost its bullish confidence. His father had fought in the vicious civil war that led to the transformation of the white-ruled former colony of British Mashonaland into an independent Malemba governed by its own people, but his son had been spared that pitiless conflict. For all his talk of revenge he had never gone after human prey, nor been a target himself. Fear was gripping him by the throat and twisting his bowel and guts.

Then, with barely a warning, they were through the scrub and standing by the banks of the river. There, sure enough, was the Hilux, its front wheels and bonnet half underwater, its cab tilting down towards the river, only its rear wheels still finding some purchase on the damp red soil of the bank.

‘Fuck!’ Andy Stratten exclaimed. ‘I hope those dumb munts can swim.’

His relief had made him forget himself: he’d used the white Malemban slang for a black man. No sooner had he said it than he realized his offence.

He was starting to stammer an apology to Moses when the sound of his voice was drowned by two sharp bursts of gunfire. The two estate workers had no time to cry out, still less raise or fire their weapons as the bullets from the AK-47s dropped them where they stood.

The poachers emerged from the mopane scrub, just a few paces away, screaming and gesturing at Andy and Moses to drop their weapons. Then their leader stepped on to the open ground on the riverbank. His eyes hidden behind a pair of fake designer shades, he walked up to Andy Stratten and jabbed a finger hard at his chest.

‘Now who’s the dumb munt?’ he said.

Then he stepped back and got out of the line of fire as the order rang out and the guns started chattering again.

8

They called themselves war veterans, men who had served in the endless string of conflicts, at home and abroad, that plagued Malemba along with so many other African countries. They were psychologically scarred by their experiences, filled with rage and convinced of their entitlement to land and money in compensation for their services to the state.

When they’d finished their deadly work, they pulled the Hilux back out of the river, restarted the engine and made their way back to the acacia grove. There, the raiding team split in two, four of the men taking the Strattens’ Land Rover as they headed towards the estate house. They paused once along the way to meet another pick-up filled with more armed veterans, then, reinforced, they sped towards their destination.

Zalika Stratten had tried to protest when her father ordered her into the family’s underground shelter, hidden beneath a workshop some distance from the main house. Contact had been lost with Andy and his men. Word had come in from an outlying village of a truck of armed men on the move. In a country inured to armed insurgency, people were used to preparing for the worst. Like many white women in southern Africa, Zalika had taken every self-defence and weapons training course she could get. It was a given among her race and class that they, too, were an endangered species.

‘I know how to handle a gun,’ she insisted, ‘let me fight!’

Her father was having none of it. ‘For once in your life, Zalika, do as you are told!’ he shouted, grabbing her by the arm and half-dragging her towards her only hope of safety.

‘Come on, darling, you know this is for the best,’ said Jacqui. ‘Daddy doesn’t want to have to worry about us.’

The shelter was well supplied with food, water, basic survival gear and even a couple of rifles. The women clambered through a hatch and down a ladder into the underground chamber, then looked up at Stratten, who was on his haunches above them.

‘You know the drill,’ he said. ‘Stay here. Do not make any noise. Do not use any of the torches or lanterns. If all goes well, I will come for you. If it does not, then wait until nightfall, and try to get out under cover of dark.’

‘Oh Dick!’ cried Jacqui, her composure finally starting to crack.

‘It’s all right, my dear,’ said Stratten, trying to keep his own fear from his voice. ‘Don’t you worry now. Everything’s going to be just fine.’ He paused for a second, forcing his emotions back under control, then said, ‘I love you both so very, very much,’ before he closed the hatch.

‘Daddy!’ shouted Zalika in the darkness. But her father was already gone.

Down in the shelter, the women were aware of the trucks’ arrival. They heard the firing of the guns, the screams of the fearful and the wounded, and the frenetic shouts of the fighting men. Then, as swiftly as a passing storm, the gunfire abated and the screaming gave way to a few agonized moans, swiftly silenced by single shots. Finally came a crash as the workshop door was barged open, followed by four quick, confident footsteps heading straight for the hatch.

For a fraction of a second hope flickered in the women’s hearts as they stood in the darkness, each gripping a rifle. Whoever was up there was not blundering around. They knew exactly what they were doing. That could only mean Dick Stratten, or one of the very few family retainers who were trusted enough to know about the shelter.

Then the hatch was flung open and a disembodied voice – a refined, educated voice – commanded them, ‘Put down your guns. They are of no help to you now. My men have hand-grenades. If you do not leave the shelter within the next ten seconds, unarmed, holding on to the ladder with both hands, they will blow you to pieces. Ten … nine …’

‘You two-faced little shit,’ hissed Jacqui Stratten. Then she gripped the ladder and called ‘We’re coming up!’ as she stepped up into the beam of light coming through the open hatch.

Zalika Stratten followed her mother. Before she’d reached the top of the ladder, strong hands reached down to grab her, pull her upwards and dump her on the workshop floor. She landed by a man’s feet, clad in expensive, barely worn safari boots.

She heard the man’s voice bark, ‘Take the mother away.’

Zalika raised her face and looked Moses Mabeki in the eye as he said, ‘Your brother is dead. Your father is dead. Your mother will soon be dead. You, however, are coming with me.’

9

Two weeks later, a man named Wendell Klerk phoned Carver and summoned him to a meeting at a hotel on the northern shore of Lake Geneva. Klerk did not say what he wanted to discuss. He did not need to. He merely barked, ‘Be there in thirty minutes,’ and hung up without waiting for an answer.

Carver was intrigued. Klerk was as familiar a figure in the gossip columns, invariably attached to the latest in a long line of beauty-queen blondes, as he was in the business pages. Born into a working-class white family, one of two children of a railway worker and his socially ambitious teacher wife, Klerk had fought on the losing side in the civil war and left the country soon after British Mashonaland’s rebirth as Malemba. He’d settled in Johannesburg, South Africa, from where he’d built an international business empire whose interests included gambling, hotels, construction and mining – ‘from casinos to coalmines’ as one reporter had put it. Klerk was known as a tough operator. Over the years both journalists and hostile politicians had accused him of corruption, bribery and even ties to organized crime. But none of the charges had stuck. If anything, they had just made the public warm to Klerk as a tough but likeable renegade.

In recent weeks, however, Klerk had been in the news for very different reasons. Carver assumed that was the reason for the call. Out of curiosity, if nothing else, he wanted to know what Klerk had in mind.

Twenty-seven minutes later, Carver walked into the reception of a modern low-slung building faced in brick and terracotta rendering that made it look more Moroccan than Swiss. He was led by one of the staff across the ground-floor reception area, out past a swimming-pool ringed with unoccupied sun-loungers and down into a tunnel which passed under the main road that ran along the lakeshore. At the far end of the tunnel a jetty stretched out across the water. A long, thin wooden motorboat that resembled a Venetian water-taxi was moored at the far end.

The boat belonged to the hotel, whose insignia was embroidered on the pennant that fluttered from its stern. But the man standing at the open wheel in front of the covered passenger cabin was not one of the standard white-jacketed hotel boatmen. He wore the global uniform of the upmarket heavy: black suit, tie, shades and shoes; white shirt; earpiece; a gun invisibly but unquestionably secreted somewhere about his person.

Carver was patted down, then ushered into the cabin where Wendell Klerk was waiting. Klerk’s short, stocky, powerful body, with its snub-nosed peasant’s face and tightly curled black hair, looked as incongruous as a cannonball deposited on the elegant quilted seating. The two men shook hands, then sat in silence as the boat was cast off from the shore and motored out on to the lake.

Klerk looked out through a porthole. Evidently happy that they had travelled far enough to be out of earshot of any shore-based surveillance, he turned his black-brown eyes on Carver and asked, ‘You know who I am, ja?’

‘Of course.’

‘So you are aware of my interest in a certain kidnapping case.’

‘Sure, I watch the news. You’re the Stratten girl’s uncle – her mother’s brother.’

‘In that case you can work out why I wanted to see you.’ Klerk’s voice was a deep, guttural rumble.

Carver nodded. ‘Your sister was killed and your niece was kidnapped. With the father and the brother both dead, that left only you to get her back. I assume you hired one of the top security firms to handle the negotiations to recover her. Clearly they’ve not succeeded, so now you’re thinking it’s time for Plan B. Money’s not an issue for a man of your resources and you must have some very powerful, well-connected friends. Some of them could have been involved with the organization I used to work for. Maybe you were in it yourself. Either way, I’m assuming my name came up. Right?’

Klerk nodded. ‘Close enough. So let me tell you the situation. The kidnappers are moving every few days, but my people have been tracking them wherever they go. It isn’t hard to do. Nothing stays secret in Africa for long, not if you’re willing to pay. I have not told the authorities because I do not trust them either to keep the information secret, or act on it appropriately. Instead, I want you to get my niece Zalika Stratten out of there. She must be recovered unharmed. Her safety is the only reason I have not sent my people in after her long before now. They are good, but – how can I put it? – they lack subtlety. That is why I have come to you.’

‘Maybe so,’ said Carver, ‘but however subtle I might be, the guys who have your niece aren’t likely to let her go without a fight. Even if she doesn’t get hurt, they will. And I don’t want to end up rotting in an African jail.’

‘I understand. But you can rest assured that if any of the kidnappers are made to pay the price for their actions, I will not care, and nor will the police. I will make sure of that.’

Klerk rubbed his fingers together to indicate that a willingness to pay would, once again, be the key. Then he looked at Carver, appraisingly.

‘How tall are you?’ he asked.

‘Five eleven.’

‘Weight?’

‘About one seventy-five in pounds, a little under eighty kilos.’

‘Light heavyweight,’ said Klerk. ‘That’ll do. You keep yourself in shape?’

Carver gave a silent prayer of thanks for the hundred-plus miles of hard cross-country running he’d put in over the past fortnight. ‘Yes.’

‘Fully recovered?’

So Klerk knew about the torture Carver had endured in the chalet outside Gstaad and the havoc that had wreaked on his mind.

‘I’m fit for action, yes,’ said Carver.

Klerk looked at him again like a jeweller examining a stone under his glass, searching for hidden flaws. ‘Yes, I believe you are,’ he finally replied. ‘Right, I’m sure we can work out a financial package, you and I. My people will get you all the details we have about the kidnappers’ current location. That just leaves two things you must know. The first is that Zalika Stratten is all the family I have left. I have never been able to have children, Mr Carver. I always hoped there would be someone to carry on my work when I am gone, keep my business alive. Zalika is my only hope and I will stop at nothing, absolutely nothing, to get her back. Whatever you want, you will have. Understood?’