by Andy Maslen
The patrons were all black, but seemed untroubled at the arrival of this pale-skinned pair. Britta attracted more attention than Gabriel, and a couple of wolf-whistles carried above the sound of the band playing fast township jazz in a corner. But the atmosphere was friendly and after exchanging a few smiles with the men and women between them and the bar, they found a couple of stools, ordered two lagers and some fried chicken and plantain chips.
Above the bar, a flat-screen TV was tuned to a sports channel with the sound turned down. Sipping their beer while they waited for their meals, Gabriel and Britta stared up at the TV, half-heartedly watching the floodlit soccer match. At half time, the channel switched to a newsreader pulling a professionally stern face above her navy suit jacket and white blouse.
The marquee running along the foot of the screen announced, “Zimbabwe mourns reformist minister, Philip Agambe.”
Gabriel clutched Britta’s bicep and nodded. Then he signalled the barman.
“Please turn up the sound,” he said.
They came in part-way through the news report.
“. . . was discovered in the burnt-out shell of his Government car,” the newsreader said. “We go now, live, to the scene, where Mr Agambe’s wife, Marsha, is talking to Prudence Kwenda.”
The picture changed. In the foreground, an attractive black woman, slim and immaculately dressed in a black linen dress, her cheeks streaked with tears, was being interviewed by a female reporter from the Mozambican channel.
“My husband was murdered by somebody hired by, or under the direct orders of, Barbara Sutherland, the British Prime Minister,” she said. “He was about to expose Mrs Sutherland at the Fourth Southern African Development Conference.”
“Expose her for what?” the reporter asked, before aiming the bulbous foam-covered mic back at Agambe’s widow.
“For her involvement in illegal land and property deals in my country in the 1990s funded by further illegal transactions involving blood diamonds smuggled out of the Democratic Republic of Congo.” She turned to face the camera, so that she appeared to Gabriel to be addressing him directly from the other side of the glass screen. “Listen to me, whoever you are. You killed a decent man. An honest man. A loving father and husband. But you did not kill his dream of ridding Zimbabwe of the corrupting influence of the British State. I will continue his work. I will speak at the conference in his place”.
After this threat, the segment ended and within a few more seconds the TV station had returned to the soccer match.
Britta turned away from the TV to look at Gabriel.
He felt her gaze but couldn’t meet it. Something was going badly wrong. Barbara Sutherland was the decent one, the honest one. She was a loving mother and wife, and above all a good politician. She wasn’t corrupt. Couldn’t be.
18
A Phone Call
VAIL, COLORADO
NINE thousand, four hundred and seventy miles away, pale-grey woodsmoke was curling from the chimney of a timber ski lodge in Vail, Colorado. Inside, Robert Hamilton sat, sipping champagne, in a white leather and walnut Charles Eames lounge chair, his feet propped up on the matching ottoman. The chair was the genuine article, as he liked to point out to visitors – a prototype, in fact. Signed on its underside by Charles and Ray Eames themselves and insured for two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. His patrician good looks – luxuriant blond hair swept back from a clear, high forehead, sharp, blue eyes, strong nose, cruel mouth – were set off by the expensive clothes he wore, from the duck-egg-blue cashmere sweater to the hand-stitched, suede Gucci moccasins.
The open-plan living area was vast, at least thirty feet long by twenty across. Tawny cow hides and sheepskin rugs carpeted the floor. A wall of floor-to-ceiling glass gave an uninterrupted view across the snow-covered hillside, punctuated by trembling birch trees. The rest of the furnishings were a mixture of antiques and modern classics. Black leather and chrome Barcelona chairs lined one wall, facing a squashy bottle-green Chesterfield sofa, its leather cracked with age. Classical music was playing from speakers recessed into the pine ceiling. And in one corner, standing on the floor, a tall Lalique glass vase held two dozen bird of paradise flowers, which Hamilton’s wife had flown in from a nursery in Arizona every week the family was in residence. Their orange crests and blue-green bracts were one of the few spots of bright colour in the otherwise sombrely decorated room.
Hamilton was CEO of Gordian Security, Inc. His company had no need to publicise its activities, or even its existence. In fact, Hamilton and his colleagues preferred to keep their collective heads well below the parapet and had taken extensive precautions to ensure their organisation was invisible to search engines. Had they bothered with an advertising agency, or a public website, they would have bragged of their expertise in “international crisis management”, “global security solutions” and “traditional and non-traditional defence resourcing”. To those who might wish to do business with Gordian, the meaning of these anodyne phrases would be clear: mercenaries drawn from ex-military, Special Forces and law enforcement personnel; undercover agents, similarly recruited from the ranks of the CIA, Secret Service and the FBI; and weapons. Lots of weapons. Lots of sophisticated, expensive weapons. In crates. Unused. For sale to anybody with deep enough pockets.
Hamilton’s phone rang and he transferred the cut glass flute of champagne to his left hand to answer it. He checked to see who might be calling. It was a business contact. A rather important business contact. He looked up at the fair-haired youth lounging against the marble mantelpiece.
“Christopher, would you give me a moment please?” he said, his cultured drawl redolent of several generations of Manhattan privilege.
“Of course, Dad. Game of snooker later?”
He nodded. “Why not?”
With the room to himself, he answered the phone.
“David, this is an unexpected pleasure,” he said.
“Hello, Robert. How are you?” A man’s voice. As upper-class as Hamilton’s, but formed at a public school in England, as opposed to Connecticut.
“Busy. Though we’re at the lodge in Vail just now. Zoë’s on the slopes as we speak. I’m here for a little skiing, a little business. You know how it is.”
“Yes, I do. Which is why I’m calling. Have you seen the news from Harare?”
“Naturally. One monitors the news from all the countries where one has interests.”
“We can’t have Marsha Agambe presenting that dossier to the SADC. It would be ruinous. For all of us.”
“Yes,” he drawled. “Certainly an awkward spot you’ve got yourself into.”
“We’ve got ourselves into? Listen, Robert. We have our papers too, you know. A little insurance policy. If the shit hits the fan, you might need to sell that delightful little ski lodge to pay for your lawyers.”
“What do you propose,” Hamilton paused, “we do about the widow Agambe?”
“Do you really need me to spell it out for you?”
“In the circumstances, I think I would rather you did just that.”
“Very well. Send a team in and deal with her.”
“I think that can be arranged. One thing, though?”
“What?”
“Your operative. Oughtn’t you to ensure his silence?” Hamilton looked down and picked a piece of lint from the crease of his trousers. “Wouldn’t do to leave him at liberty. One hears terrible stories of black ops guys getting all moralistic from time to time. Buying a whistle and then puffing out their pink little cheeks for all they’re worth.”
“That’s very true. Though without evidence, he couldn’t do anything that would hurt our operation, even if he wanted to. I had planned to deal with him back here, but it might be better for him to meet with some sort of accident in Africa. Easier to shift the blame then. Can you have your people take care of him?”
“Of course. We have plenty of ways of finding out where he’s been and where he’s travelling to. Send me his picture, th
en consider it done. As will be Mrs Agambe.”
19
Company
THE following morning, with Britta at the wheel of the Land Rover, they drove out of Muanza. They were following the satnav to the GPS reference supplied by Don Webster. As they powered northwest, the sky ahead boiled with tremendous rainclouds, huge charcoal and purple thunderheads that looked like mountains floating above the horizon. The acacia trees gave way to palms as the terrain on each side of the red-earth road changed from dry scrubland to denser forest. A wind had sprung up, nothing savage, but enough to move the Land Rover about on the road from time to time, causing Britta to swear in Swedish and grip the wheel more tightly.
“Jävla Helveta! The steering’s shot on this. Maybe the suspension bushes are worn too. It’s like driving a thirty-year-old Volvo.”
“It’s just the road surface. Don wouldn’t have lined up a duff vehicle.”
“Fine. I guess the wind is coming over stronger now.”
Britta was right. The palms to each side of the road were thrashing from side to side as gusts of wind flew towards them ahead of the oncoming rain. The sky had massed into a solid wall of towering storm clouds, lit on their upper surfaces by the bright African sun, but coal-black on their underside. The space between the clouds and the road ahead was streaked with grey, as if an artist had run her thumb from the graphite cloud edges to the ground.
The first spots of rain pattered against the almost vertical windscreen a few minutes later. Britta switched on the wipers and almost at once snorted with laughter.
“Those are the worst windscreen wipers I have ever seen. They’re shit!”
The thin blades of rubber were no match for the rain, which had intensified to a steady beat on the glass. All they did was combine the water with the patina of red road dust to create a uniform film of plum-coloured mud across the glass.
“Pull over,” Gabriel said. “I’ll adjust them. Push them in a bit.”
The temperature had dropped. Gabriel shivered as the rain thrashed down on his shoulders and ran down the inside of his shirt. He gripped the driver’s side windscreen wiper and carefully bent the thin metal structure inwards to apply greater pressure against the glass.
“Try it now!” he shouted to Britta, and wagged his index finger from side to side for good measure.
She got the message. The newly modified wiper swept the red paste from the glass, helped by the raindrops hitting the screen like bullets. Gabriel was shivering now. His shirt and trousers were soaked with freezing rain as he jogged round the front of the Land Rover to bend the other windscreen wiper into its new improved configuration.
A blinding flash of blue-white lightning erupted from the storm clouds over his head. The air crackled as ozone molecules were cooked out of the air. The lightning made landfall in a stand of palms about two hundred yards to the east of their position. Almost immediately, the accompanying thunder battered their eardrums with a roaring explosion.
Gabriel had his fingers on the door handle when a distant movement back on the road made him stop and look up. Wiping his eyes, he squinted through the rain. In the distance, far enough behind the storm to be still throwing up a cloud of red dust, was a vehicle. Something was off about its silhouette. That far back it should have been tiny. It wasn’t. It was wider than a normal car, but taller too. Not a truck either.
Gabriel climbed back in.
“We’ve got company.”
Britta looked at him quickly but didn’t waste time asking questions. Instead, she grabbed a pair of binoculars from a cubby in the space between their seats and clambered into the back.
“Humvee,” she said.
“That’s what I thought.”
“Who drives black Humvees?” Britta asked. “Not the local warlords. They’d have a Toyota pickup or a Land Cruiser.”
“Not the Army. They have Landies like this one.”
They exchanged a glance. It was a look borne of long experience, both separately and during their time running joint operations together in the late 1990s. A look that said, “Trouble”.
“Private contractors,” they said in unison.
Britta slammed the gear lever into first and took off, spraying rooster tails of red mud from all four wheels as the Land Rover squirmed and wriggled, before finding grip and lurching forward.
Even with Gabriel’s modifications to the windscreen wipers, the rain was making the screen an almost solid curtain of water.
Britta slewed to a stop. She unbuckled herself and twisted in her seat to face Gabriel, who’d done the same.
“Strategic assessment?”
“We’ve been set up.”
20
A Fashion for Killing
FLORENCE
THE celebrities in the front row of the haute couture show in Florence were absorbed in the bizarre geometric outfits being paraded in front of them. As each model stalked the length of the catwalk on stilt-like legs, the magazine editors, fashion designers, pop stars and A-list actors applauded, took photos on their phones and shared their opinions of the outfits with their social media followers. Alone amongst them, ignoring the beaded dresses, slashed silk and feathered waistcoats, a strikingly attractive woman paid close attention to the screen of her phone.
Her cheekbones were higher than those of the beautiful models hired by the designer for his triumphant collection. Her wide-set eyes were almond-shaped and a mid-brown colour with greenish tints echoed by the emeralds in her ears. Her forehead was broad, high and unlined, though from good genes rather than injections of botulinum toxin. It was framed by long, dark hair, as straight and fine as brushstrokes from a Japanese calligrapher. The tip of her nose was tilted up, giving her the air of a woman constantly scenting the breeze, like a cat. But it was her lips that dominated her face, full and of such a deep red as to look almost bruised. She was slim, but not skinny, possessing an athletic build her floor-length gold silk dress only partially concealed. The cutaway sleeves showed off streamlined deltoids, biceps and triceps that spoke of many hours in the gym lifting free weights.
The screen bore a short message:
Sasha. Please call me.
She stood, smiling at her neighbours, a famous soccer player and his jewellery designer wife, and made her way to the lobby of the hotel. There, she called the number displayed beside the text.
“Thank you for calling, Sasha.”
“No need to thank me, Robert. What can I do for you?” she said, waving away a waiter who was approaching bearing a tray of champagne glasses and a hopeful smile.
“I have a somewhat urgent job that I need you for.”
“I’m taking some time off. As I think you know. That last project took rather more of my time than I really wanted it to.”
“I know, I know. And I’m sorry. I had hoped the additional compensation would restore Gordian to your good graces.”
She smiled. Then beckoned to the waiter she’d just dismissed, mouthing, “changed my mind”. Taking a sip from the flute of five-hundred-euros-a-bottle vintage Krug, she returned her mouth to the phone.
“As indeed it did, darling. So tell me, who is causing you so much trouble that you feel the need to interrupt my holiday?”
“Her name is Marsha Agambe. She’s . . .”
“The widow of Philip Agambe, until recently Minister of Finance in Zimbabwe.”
“You knew?”
“Oh, Robert, your naiveté is touching. In my profession it pays to stay abreast of developments in the corridors of power, wherever they run to and from.”
“Touché, Sasha. Well then, Marsha Agambe is the target. Your usual fee, I assume? I have your bank details from last time.”
“Yes, my usual fee.” She looked down and smoothed the gold silk over her thigh. “Doubled.”
“Doubled?”
“For interrupting my holiday.”
There was a pause, during which Sasha Beck drained her glass and signalled to the waiter, who had been hovering nearby,
for another.
“Of course. Three million dollars. What else do you need from me?”
“Well, a deadline might be nice.”
“I’ll leave the precise timings up to you, but she must be dead before the Southern African Development Conference. It’s in three days’ time.”
“And she will be. Thank you, Robert, for your continuing faith in me.”
“You always repay it. In fact, I wonder whether I might ask you for a small favour?”
“A favour? Robert, you know I am a businesswoman first and foremost. Favours aren’t part of my regular inventory. But tell me anyway.”
“Mrs Agambe may have been contacted by British mercenaries. I think they might be the ones who killed her husband. If you come across them, perhaps you would be good enough to let me know.”
21
The Second Ambush
ABANDONING the Land Rover, which now represented a target rather than protection, Gabriel and Britta ran to the trees and crawled under a low tangle of vines and broad-leaved plants. Before leaving the car, Gabriel had collected one of the weapons packs from the loadspace. Now he flipped open the catches. Britta snorted then wrinkled her nose in disgust.
“What’s this? You want to take on a Humvee with a couple of SIGs? You can’t just shoot the tyres out. That’s military armour coming for us.”
