by Andy Maslen
“Yes. Georgie died two weeks ago.”
“At The Paxus Institute in Lucerne.”
“What of it?”
“Oh, nothing. I mean, flying off to Switzerland to be sent to the Great Beyond by some ex-Nazi with a syringe full of morphine and a bloody great bottle of sleeping pills, well, if that’s how you choose to end it all, good luck to you, I say.” The tall stranger looked down into Don’s grey eyes, and smiled. “It’s just that the law is quite clear. You must make the journey under your own steam. Mrs Paris, now, she was confined to a wheelchair, wasn’t she?” Webster glared at him but said nothing. “I wonder if you can tell me where your wife was two weekends ago, Mr Webster. Actually, don’t. I know exactly where she was. As, I suspect, do you. Or did you two build in some plausible deniability?” The man’s voice took on a sing-song sound. “Oh, no, officer. I thought she’d gone to visit her sister on the Isle of Wight. I had no idea she’d taken a British citizen to Switzerland to be euthanised.”
“What do you want?” Don said in a low voice, his eyes hooded.
“I want your chap on manoeuvres in Mozambique disavowed. Taken off the internal phone directory, the coffee rota and the secret Santa list. I don’t want you to have any contact with him. Not so much as a text. Make me happy, and I think I can persuade my good friend the Attorney General to ignore Mrs Webster’s transgression. Otherwise, who knows? The Crown Prosecution Service might find they are briefed to take an interest in Mrs Webster’s actions. Horrible to be recovering from a stroke in prison, I’d imagine. It might even bring on another one.”
The man watched as Don’s face contorted, a snarl masquerading as a frown of concentration. Five seconds passed in complete silence.
“You can’t . . .”
“Oh, but that’s where you’re wrong. I can. And I will, if you force me to. Now. What’s it to be?”
“Fine,” Don said quietly. “I’ll make the arrangements.”
“Jolly good. Well, I’ll bid you farewell.”
He held out his hand. Don took it reflexively, then almost immediately winced with pain. The man’s long fingers were wrapped around the back of Don’s hand and the fingernails, as sharp as knives, were digging into the thin skin there. Don pulled, but the grip was as tight as a vice.
“Naturally, this conversation never happened,” the man said. He allowed Don to withdraw his hand, which was engraved with four bloody crescents.
23
Let’s Play Some Rock and Roll
JONATHAN Makalele had once been a teacher. That is, until a team of South African RENAMO mercenaries had torched his school. They had also shot and killed his wife, who acted as secretary, matron and janitor all rolled into one. The white-skinned arsonists, in their khaki shorts, were laughing as they doused the building in petrol. Elvis Presley was singing in the background, his voice blaring across the clearing from their four-wheel drive.
But that was all in the past. A long time ago. After a period of mourning, he had chosen a new name for himself. And a new career. He was General Rambo, and he had personally killed twenty men. He didn’t believe any of that team of mercenaries were among them, but there was always hope.
Now, the General had issued his orders. Kill the British agents infiltrating his territory.
*
The Rock and Roll Boys were sitting around in a loose group near their Toyotas. The rising sun threw spears of yellow for tens of miles across the almost flat plain behind them. One glinted evilly off the muzzle of the machine gun mounted behind the cab on a Hilux pickup.
They had eaten well the previous night. Bushmeat – monkey, deer and a porcupine – pit-barbecued and wrapped in palm leaves to keep the meat moist. Today was going to be a good day. A day for fighting. A day for heroes.
Their camp was alive to the sounds of fighting men preparing for action. Weapons being stripped, bolt actions being tested. Dirty jokes and the laughter that followed. Calls to the younger ones to fetch more beers or another joint. And, beneath it all, electric guitars, drums, saxophones and the voice of Elvis Presley.
Into their midst strode their local commander, Nuria Chissano. As always, she was immaculately turned out. Her olive-green fatigues were pressed with sharp creases, her black boots were shining. Initially, there had been grumblings from some of the men. After all, everybody knew a woman’s place was in the kitchen. Or on her back. But after she’d dumped a couple of the bigger men on their arses and given them each an extra facial scar or two with the point of her knife, the grumblings had quietened.
Reaching the centre of the camp and standing with her back to the still-smoking remains of the previous night’s fire, she stopped. Legs apart, hands on her hips, chrome plated revolver snug in its polished leather holster, she surveyed her men. To her, they were all men, even the young ones like Little Richard. Only twelve, and short like his namesake, he’d shot five men since being inducted into The Rock and Roll Boys. Now he had the eyes of a stone killer and they were turned on her now, watching and waiting for her orders. She flashed him a brief smile and he smiled back, chin up, thin chest out, Kalashnikov cradled in his lap like a baby.
“Listen up!” she shouted, then immediately dropped her voice to a low tone that had this crew of killers leaning forward, eager not to miss anything. “General Rambo and I spoke this morning. He has given me his orders. Two British security agents are heading our way. Orders from their government are to spy on us and destroy our operation. So guess what?”
“We going to play some Rock and Roll, Mama Chissano?” called Little Richard.
There was laughter at this, whistling, stamping and clapping of hands.
She looked down at her little killer and smiled once more. The corners of her brown-gold eyes crinkled.
“Tune up, Little Richard. You going to be a rock star today!” Then she thrust her chin out and addressed the group as a whole. “Get your shit together. We got a long drive ahead of us. We move out in fifteen minutes.”
With a toss of her braided hair that set the glass beads clinking against each other, Chissano marched off, leaving her band to load their weapons and collect their gear. Sitting on an outcrop of smooth rock with an unimpeded view across the tree-studded plain to the forest beyond, she consulted her phone again. Chissano cut and pasted the GPS coordinates for the incoming spies into a geolocation app and waited for the map to zoom in.
Shading her eyes with a flattened palm, she stared across the plain to the south. A dust devil whirled by: red, powdery earth whipped into a five-foot column that danced magically in front of her for a few seconds before dissipating as quickly as it had arrived.
From behind her, Chissano heard the sound of the Land Cruisers and the Hilux starting up. She wound one of her braids around the others and tied it tight, enjoying the feel of the plait as it ran through her callused fingers. First they’d find them. And then they’d kill them. They’d film it for the General. It would make a good training aid. Like he said, “Nobody fucks with the Rock and Roll Boys.”
24
Killshot
GABRIEL and Britta grabbed the SA80s and walked away from the lake. A breeze had sprung up, blowing off the water towards them. It was good news, meaning their own scent would be carried away from the game. About three hundred yards into the forest they found what they were looking for: a sturdy baobab tree with a trunk wider than the Land Rover. Its foliage was the same mixture of greens and browns as their camouflage fatigues.
Gabriel boosted Britta onto the lowest branch and then swung himself up. Together they climbed higher, aiming for a broad, cradling V between two branches as thick as a man’s waist. The bark was rough and scraped at Gabriel’s palms as he clambered up beside Britta.
“Perfect sniping spot,” he said.
“Ja! Now we just need a target. A nice, fat little gazelle for instance.”
“Any DLT would be good.”
She turned, grinning at him as the evening sun slanted across her head from behind, bringin
g out the coppery colour of her hair as it blew around her face.
“DLT?”
“You know,” he said, returning the smile. “Deer-Like Thing.”
“Ha! Going to add that to my little book of Wolfe-isms when I get the chance. Now shut up and spot for me.”
Beside him, Britta wriggled tighter against the tree bough, flattening her body until she had moulded herself to its contours. She brought her right knee up against a thick bulge of wood and used it to brace herself. He watched as she laid her cheek against the stock of the rifle and sighted through the scope. With her left hand, she flicked the fire-select switch to single-shot then returned it to the hand-guard.
Gabriel put the binoculars to his eyes, adjusted the focus until he could see each bird on the lake with pin-sharp clarity, then began, slowly, to sweep from right to left. Nothing bigger than a pelican appeared in the field of view of the binoculars so he tracked further back across the water to the far bank.
There! A lone antelope. He had no idea what species. It was the colour of cinnamon on its upper surfaces and a pale cream below. Its ears seemed absurdly large for its head, and they revolved incessantly, like miniature radar dishes. He was about to nudge Britta when something in the far distance caught his eye: a tall, narrow column of smoke – little more than a hair’s width across. The optics that rendered the DLT in such detail compressed the depth of field so that the smoke appeared to be issuing from its head. In reality he had no idea how far away the plume of smoke was. The plain was so flat and the visibility so clear it could have been hundreds of miles.
“I can see dinner,” he whispered, aware, even as he said it, that there was no need for silence. But seeing the beast so close through the binoculars made him feel it was necessary, as if it was just beyond his grasp and might bolt if he startled it. “Something else, too. Smoke.”
“What kind of smoke,” she whispered back.
“Not sure. Could be a camp fire.”
“More of those mercenary types, do you think?”
“I doubt it. They’d be too smart to signal they were coming after us. It’d be cold field rations like you were complaining about.”
“So should we move on? Find better cover?”
“No. I don’t think we need to. It could be a tree smouldering after a lightning strike. It could be nomads cooking. I’m not sure who’d be out here, but if they’re happy to have a fire then I think we can be too.”
“OK. So where’s dinner?”
“Beyond the lake, your ten o’clock. Maybe fifty yards behind the far bank. There’s a group of three acacia trees. It’s in front of them and to the left.”
Britta manoeuvred the rifle’s barrel in the direction he’d indicated, searching for her target.
“Found him.”
“Him? You can tell at this distance?”
She grunted. “Him, her, who cares? It’s dinner. Now, quiet. This isn’t quite the rifle I’d pick for a shot like this. I need to concentrate.”
Gabriel watched as she zeroed in on the antelope. Watched as her back rose and fell with her breathing, slowing and smoothing out as she brought herself into the calm, clear zone every sharpshooter cultivates when they need to make a kill.
Her index finger tightened on the trigger, squeezing gently but firmly until it began to move.
The report, when it came, was deafening. Flame flashed as the 5.56 mm round exploded out of the muzzle.
Gabriel watched the round drill a hole through the animal’s flank and burst its heart, before leaving on the far side in a pink spray. The antelope toppled sideways, blood gushing from entry and exit wounds. He patted Britta on the shoulder.
“Nice shooting.”
“Thank you. Shall we collect our dinner?”
The buck turned out to be too awkward to carry back to their camp so they butchered it where it lay, taking a hind leg back with them and leaving the rest for whatever scavengers or predators got to it first.
With the meat roasting over a fire, Britta took a swig of water they’d collected from the lake and purified with a couple of iodine tablets. She winced.
“I’m still not happy with that shit that happened back there,” she said. “We’re basically in the middle of nowhere and a bunch of ex-US marines or whatever show up in a Humvee, tracking us, clearly, and try to take us out. Whose orders were they really following? That’s what I want to know.”
“I’ve told you what I think.”
“Yes. And I told you what I thought of what you think. Isn’t it more likely to be a local warlord? Or even some powerful friends of Philip Agambe?”
“Maybe. But I left nothing they could use to identify me. And how many African warlords go in for ex-Marine-types to do their dirty work?”
“I don’t know. I really don’t. I can’t think straight right now.”
Gabriel pointed at the blackened joint of meat on their improvised spit over the flames.
“Then don’t. Let’s eat instead.”
25
A Childhood Story
THE antelope meat was charred on the outside and pink in the middle. It tasted like venison – dark and gamy – though the texture was tough and fibrous. They ate slices carved off with Gabriel’s tactical knife, pausing to wipe the grease from their chins and smiling as their bellies filled with the hot meat.
The sun kissed goodbye to the horizon and slipped away. Mozambique not being on the Equator, the sunset was not a sudden switching off of the light, but the rose-pink streaks that flared across the sky were still gone within five minutes, plunging Gabriel and Britta into a dark so total it seemed as though Earth itself had vanished, leaving them floating in space on a small patch of dusty ground.
The fire glowed, its meagre light dwarfed by the immensity of the star field over their heads. Gabriel lay back, resting his head on his arm. He stretched out his other arm and Britta joined him. He looked up into the darkness of the African sky, each star like a bullet hole shot through a black velvet curtain, revealing a brighter world beyond.
“We’re going to find him, tomorrow,” Gabriel said. “I can feel it. Something to take back to Melody and Nathalie.”
“How will you feel then? Knowing you’ve done your duty to Smudge?”
“Better. I hope. It’s just . . .”
“What?”
“I’m not sure my PTSD was caused by what happened to Smudge.”
He felt Britta’s hand pat its way up his chest until it came to rest on his cheek.
“What do you mean?” she asked. “I thought that’s exactly what it was all about.”
He inhaled deeply, catching the smell of the roasted meat from the leg-bone they’d tossed away from their basic camp.
“I had a brother. His . . .”
“No you didn’t! You always told me you were an only child.”
“His name was Michael,” Gabriel said, as if Britta’s interruption hadn’t happened. “When I was nine and Michael was five, Mum took us to a park down by the harbour in Hong Kong to play. I had a rugby ball with me and one of my passes went over Michael’s head and into the water. I sent him to get it and he just jumped in, hit his head and drowned. I killed Michael, Britta. I killed my little brother.”
“Oh, my God, that’s terrible,” she said, wrapping her arm around his chest and squeezing. “But, I mean, how come you found this out? Did you have hypnotherapy or something?”
“No. Well, yes. I’m having therapy now. It happened on my last mission. In Brazil, you remember? The fake religious guru? I started hearing a voice in my head. Not Smudge. God bless him, I’d actually started to get used to him. This was a much younger, lighter voice. And it said, ‘Gable’. That was how Michael said my name. It became a family nickname for me. So when I got back to London I called Zhao Xi and . . .”
“Sorry. Zhao Xi?”
“He more or less brought me up afterwards. I was in a lot of trouble at school anyway and the fighting and indiscipline just got worse after Michael. He was
a friend of my parents, a local Hong Konger. He became my tutor, and I guess my guardian.”
“Was he the one who taught you all that Eastern shit? The meditation and the hypnosis?”
“He was. And it wasn’t. Shit, I mean. Yinshen fangshi’s got me out of lots of trouble since.”
“Sorry. But now you have to explain again. Yin-what?”
Gabriel smiled in the darkness. Her Swedish frankness, and her unwillingness or inability to notice when she was irritating him, were pulling him out of the melancholy mood into which he’d been sinking.
“Yin . . .” he said.
“Yin . . .” she repeated. “Ja! Got that.”
“Shen.”
“Shen.”
“You’re a pain, Falskog, do you know that?”
“Yes, but don’t stop my Chinese lesson now, Master Wolfe. It’s my first one ever.”
She nudged him in the ribs.
“Fang.”
“Fang.”
“Shi.”
“Shi. Got it! Yin-shen fang-shi. Which means what, exactly?”
“Which means, ‘the way of stealth’.”
“Aha! Like the time you pulled that pistol right out of that dude’s hand in Kabul? And he was all, like, ‘What the fuck just happened?’”
“Yes. That.”
“Okej! Pretty cool guy, huh?”
“Yes, very. So, when I called Zhao Xi, it was the middle of the night in Hong Kong, but he picked up on the second or third ring. Like he always knew I’d call one day. He told me the whole story. How I went into some sort of trance or fugue state for a fortnight and when I came out of it, I couldn’t remember a single thing about Michael or any of what had happened. After that, my parents just cleared the house of anything to do with Michael and they let him fade away. In the house, anyway. I’m sure they kept grieving for him, but they never spoke about him from that day on.”
Gabriel stared upwards, trying to identify the unfamiliar southern constellations, but it was hard because the individual pinpricks of light kept doubling and blurring. He felt a cold tickling from the corner of his eye down onto his neck.
