Amie in Africa Box Set 1

by Lucinda E Clarke

  Amie and Simon huddled together beside the open Isuzu, horrified beyond words, riveted by the movie-like scene. There was no sign of Karen, where had she gone? Then Simon nudged Amie and pointed to the underside of the cab where a white foot was visible pointing out into the road.

  “Karen?” Amie gasped. “She’s under there? Oh my God, this can’t be happening.”

  “In a moment someone’s going to remember they were coming to investigate the shots and start to harass us,” Simon reminded her.

  “We’ll say we saw a lion or something. I’ll say I was scared and shot at it. I think they’ll believe me.” She wrapped her arms tightly around her chest to stop herself from falling apart.

  “How long till the border opens?” Simon asked.

  Amie peered at her watch. “Not long, maybe half an hour? It’s half six now and it’s getting light.” She pointed to the faint glow from over the hills on their left.

  Simon pulled her away from the carnage, wincing at the pain in his arm.

  “We’ll say the animal attacked me, and that’s why I let off the shots. I’m sure they’ll buy that.” Amie hoped they had a plausible story, she pointed to his arm. “You’ve got the wound to prove it.”

  “And what do we say about Karen pinned under the truck?”

  Amie frowned. “The driver will be blamed for killing her. I feel bad about that but he was going too fast and she was right in the middle of the road, I suppose.”

  “You’re forgetting she has a bullet in her.”

  Amie hadn’t forgotten. Amie would never forget. “We’ll just have to take our chances. By the time they get that truck up on its wheels we’ll be long gone – won’t we?”

  They closed the Isuzu’s tailgate and climbed into the front, Amie in the driving seat. They used the half hour before the border post opened to decide the best course of action. Should they stay quiet and hope no one would question them? Drive back the way they’d come and find another border crossing, or push to the front here and hope to get through before anyone else.

  Until now, no one had paid any attention to them. There was prime beef for the taking, a real bonus, and a couple had carried the lorry driver away, presumably for medical attention. One by one the men were drifting back to their trucks, probably eager to reach their destinations while the meat was still fresh enough to eat.

  Two of the drivers wandered over and asked several questions, but both Amie and Simon pretended not to understand. They didn’t speak English and Amie chattered away in gibberish, waving her arms in the air, sobbing and wailing. The men looked disgusted and hurried away.

  “It’s amazing how men hate it when women cry.” Amie grinned. “Works every time.”

  Simon glanced at her. “I’ll remember that. Do we take both cars through?”

  “No. If we leave the Nissan here, when they find Karen, they’ll assume she was driving it,” Amie said.

  “Yes of course. Get your stuff from the Nissan and we’ll carry on in this one. Karen’s stuff is in there too, so they’ll figure it was her vehicle.”

  “Good point,” Amie agreed. “How’s that bandage holding up, or do I need to change it?”

  “It’ll do Miss Felicity. Just as well you’re a Civil servant, you’d never make a nurse.”

  She was tempted to retaliate but held her tongue.

  His words reminded Amie there was a lot Simon didn’t know about her, and there were plenty of doubts in her mind about him too. She still didn’t know why Karen had called him a traitor.

  After loading Amie’s gear into the Isuzu, they climbed aboard again and peered along the dawn-lit road waiting for the border gate to open.

  “What am I thinking of! I’ve lost my mind!” Simon scrambled out of the passenger seat and into the back.

  Amie twisted round to see what he was doing. She started the engine as she saw activity around the huts further ahead, she wanted to try and get through before the truck drivers.

  “Hurry up,” she called back, “Come on, I want to get going.”

  “Patience, two more minutes.”

  Amie fumed. Simon clambered back into the passenger seat again and Amie put the 4WD into first gear and pulled forward. “Keep your fingers crossed,” she murmured, as they drove up to the gate.

  It was more chaos. There were only three border guards on duty and they had arrived to find a truck blocking the road on the Mozambique side, a crowd of lorry drivers fighting and squabbling over recently slaughtered cows, more cattle milling around the road, a couple of fights had broken out, and everyone was yelling and screaming.

  One look at the white tourists and the South African registration plates on the Isuzu and they were waved through without even being stopped as they left Mozambique. On the South African side, the guards only glanced briefly at their British passports before turning to the vehicle behind them.

  Amie heaved a huge sigh of relief as the border post disappeared from sight in her rear-view mirror. She drove on for several more kilometres and then pulled over to the side of the road and turned the engine off.

  “What’s the matter?” Simon touched her shoulder.

  “Just give me a minute to get myself together, please. It’s been a horrendous few days. I can’t stop shaking. Give me a moment or two … please, Simon.”

  Simon put his good arm around her. “Look Felicity, we’ve got to talk.”

  “It’s Amie.”

  “What?”

  “Amie. My name’s Amie and I’m sick to death of being called Felicity, I hate the name.”

  “Oh,” Simon withdrew his arm. “Then there’s a lot more we have to talk about than I thought.” He took a map book out of the side pocket and flipped through the pages. “I vote we stop off for a couple of nights and have a heart to heart, get our stories straight and catch up on the truth.”

  “The truth? Yeah, that would be good.” Amie couldn’t stop trembling, she badly needed some down time, a large brandy would help, but some R & R would do more. She lowered her head, breathing deeply; it would take all her strength to drive any further.

  “There’s a game lodge a few miles further along if we turn off here.” Simon indicated the road with his finger on the map. “Let’s see if we can book in and take it from there.”

  Amie nodded and restarted the engine. The thought of a nearby rest point gave her the energy to continue.

  They were in luck. There was one vacancy, and once they’d checked in, they almost fell through the door of the rustic hut and collapsed on the bed. It hadn’t even occurred to either of them to ask for two rooms, there was too much to sort out. But first a shower and a nap, then they could talk.

  A few hours later, while Amie sorted through her belongings Simon went over to the main building and ordered a meal to be brought to the room. When it arrived, they sat and ate in silence.

  Amie sighed and wiped her mouth with the serviette and looking at Simon, she said. “Right, talk.”

  “Let me start at the beginning and to hell with security clearance levels, you need to hear the whole story. I don’t blame you if you don’t trust me, but I want to put that right.”

  Simon pushed the dinner trays aside and leant back in his chair.

  “London told me they’d heard rumours of illegal weapons dealing, possibly involving members of our own service. Well, maybe ‘told’ me is too strong a word to use, rather they hinted at it, all that stupid ‘need to know’ stuff. Anyway, I was to keep my eyes and ears open while they passed it along the line, and I was their chosen go-between who would facilitate the deal. They promised me a back-up team that would arrive shortly and shadow what went on. The idea was to catch both the sellers and the buyers in the act, and having identified them, report back. Those involved from the Service end would be taken care of, and then others would follow the supply lines to identify the source of both the manufacturers and the users. Clear up to this point?”

  Amie nodded. “And then I arrived?”

  “Yeah, w
ith no label so to speak, so I had no idea if you were sent to help me or to report on me. If there was a leak, I wasn’t sure if you were coming to meet up with the dealers, or spy on the embassy staff. You could have been the bad guy. So I kept you close and when word came that I was to go and pretend to work for a rogue section of the government, I needed to take you with me, to see how you fitted into the picture.”

  “Fair enough I can understand that. Some romantic weekend in the bush that turned out to be.” Amie smiled sadly. She’d hoped that Simon’s feelings for her had mirrored her own. Even now, he made her heart beat that much faster and she ached to hold him and snuggle up against him. But it was all probably part of the job as far as he was concerned. Also, could she believe what he was telling her now? She waited for him to continue.

  “I was given coordinates for the meeting and I wrongly, as it happened, assumed it would be a small game lodge somewhere in Kruger National Park. I was an idiot. I should have checked more carefully. I was too stupid to notice it meant crossing over the border into Mozambique. It was a nightmare journey if you remember, and when we finally found it, I was horrified.

  “When we first drove into the camp the men there believed I was from the British Embassy, but working against the government. They thought I was their man on the inside. So, they were expecting me to attend the demonstration, pretend it was all legal on behalf of Whitehall and rubber stamp the proposed sale. Of course, they weren’t happy I’d brought you along.” Simon looked a little ashamed as he lowered his voice. “I, uh, told them you were my little bit on the side and quite harmless.”

  “Charming!”

  “I didn’t know how to explain why I’d brought you. I still didn’t know whose side you were on and I could hardly pretend you were part of the conspiracy now, could I?”

  “I suppose not,” Amie had to admit. “Go on.”

  “So, you were left in camp with Kirk guarding you while we all traipsed down to meet and greet the sellers, who I think were Chinese, but they may have been Korean for all I know. After the firework show with bullets flying in all directions, and all the handshaking was over and the envelopes and papers had changed hands, the helicopters took off again and we returned to the camp site. Then, all hell broke loose. You had disappeared, the old Land Rover had gone and Kirk was dead. Obviously, while you were still there, because you’d covered his body ...”

  “Goodness, yes,” Amie interrupted him, “I didn’t think. That gave it away, how stupid of me. At the time it felt like the right thing to do, treat his body with a bit of decency. But if I’d left him … What happened to you then?”

  “I was not the flavour of the month. They suspected me, thought you and I were working together. They got pretty rough, but I hoped I could talk my way out of it. Until …”

  “Until what?”

  “Until they discovered that the paperwork in the case under the bed had been disturbed. Then the shit really hit the fan. From then on, I was public enemy number one, trussed like a chicken and not invited to leave.”

  “You must have been a prisoner for a while. All the time it took me to get back to Durban, and then the other three arrived and we all returned.”

  “I don’t remember too much, to tell the truth. The man I knew as Peter and you now call Ken was in charge at the demonstration. He flew in on one of the choppers and was also the one who handled the paperwork and greeted the sellers. I think he was definitely buying, not selling.”

  Amie frowned. “So, let me see if I have this right. The crowd selling the arms were either Chinese or Korean right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Peter/Ken or whatever his name was, was buying the armaments?”

  “Yes.”

  “So where, as a representative of Her Majesty’s Government did you fit in?”

  “I’m not quite sure.”

  Amie looked thoughtful. “In one of two ways I think. Either you were seen as an Englishman who was buying on the side for the British government, thus concealing the fact that Peter-slash-Ken was planning a revolution in Africa, or, simply to give him credibility. If the plan fell through, or when the shit hit the fan, you would be the fall guy, blamed for everything.”

  “What revolution?”

  “I’ll fill you in on that later,” Amie replied.

  Simon continued. “I got the impression we were talking very large quantities of arms and money.”

  “Didn’t you know that from what they were saying? And let’s just call him Ken. That was his name when I first met him,” Amie said.

  “OK. But no. Again, Ken was very sharp. One of his goons was fluent in either Chinese or Korean – I’ve always admired their ability to pick up other languages so easily. There are so many different languages even within one country …”

  “Yes, yes, go on,” Amie interrupted him, she was impatient to hear the whole story.

  “Well, as I was saying, the deal went down without me understanding a word of it. Ken spoke to his crew in Zulu and they did the translating. At no time did I have an inkling Ken was really a member of the service back home. I only met him for the first time out there in the bush. I never saw him at the Consulate in Durban.”

  “Makes sense,” Amie added, “because by that time I was there and I would have recognized him.” Then she remembered something else.

  “Wait. Ken told me he was going to the Consulate to get me a new passport after mine was lost, and to sort out about getting Vivienne’s body repatriated, so he must have gone there. That would have been maybe late last year?”

  “Who’s Vivienne?”

  “Vivienne or Veronica Keppell, the girl who was killed in the holdup in the shopping mall. She also worked for the service.”

  “I heard about the shootout, everyone did, but I had no idea that any British nationals were involved. Only South African citizens, and nothing about replacement passports or flying bodies home. Didn’t you come into the Consulate with him?”

  “Nope. I just took his word for it. He sent me shopping for winter clothes, said it wasn’t necessary as he had spare photographs of me and ... I suppose it didn’t make sense, but I never questioned it at the time. He was my boss and had arranged everything. And we flew out in a military sort of plane and not from the airport in Durban.”

  “Which you thought was organized by the British?”

  “Yes, I did.”

  “Hardly likely, not on foreign soil. That proves that Ken had more pull over here than he did in the UK.”

  “I just went along with whatever he told me to do.” Amie felt both miserable and stupid. Had Ken been in the mall? Had he been involved in Vivienne’s death? She would probably never know. “And all the time he was here to buy weapons pretending it was for the British. He wanted arms to set up his African revolution to kick every white man off the continent. He boasted about it to me before … before …” Amie squeezed her eyes shut and Simon took her hand.

  “And, include every other race along with that. Indians, Coloureds, anyone who wasn’t pure Bantu or Swahili, or one of the other three thousand or so African groups. It was a wild dream. No one has ever been able to unite all the different tribes, and it just wasn’t going to happen,” added Amie, shaking her head.

  “He believed in it.” Simon sat forward and ran his fingers through his hair. “I won’t go into the details of my exciting imprisonment, only to say that Ken left me with his band of merry men, who were determined to make sure I wouldn’t escape. We moved to another camp several miles away and then days later, they took me back with them to the one where he flung me into a tent with Bob. He filled me in and told me that you and Karen had also been captured. By this time, I didn’t know what to think, or who to believe. Nothing made sense.”

  “Then there was the shootout,” Amie continued. “And you saved my life. You killed Ken.”

  “Well, he wasn’t exactly going to wave us goodbye, was he?” Simon grinned.

  “There’s one other person we’ve not
mentioned.”

  “Karen?”

  “Yeah, where does she fit into all this? I know she was another MI6 employee, she trained me somewhere in Scotland, I think.”

  “Felicity, the spy.” Simon laughed gently.

  “It’s not Felicity! My name is Amie, Amie, please remember that.”

  “OK, OK, Amie it is.”

  “I had no doubts about her at all, except for something odd that she said.”

  “And that was?”

  “When she and Bob went to kill the rest of Ken’s men, she came back alone and told us they’d got him. I asked her why she’d not tried to bring his body back.”

  “I remember that.” Simon got up and began pacing the room.

  “At the time I felt there was something wrong, but it wasn’t until much later that it dawned on me. She lied.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “She said there was a crowd of leopards around and it wasn’t safe. But, Simon, leopards are solitary creatures, they hunt alone. You never, ever, see them in groups. She must have killed Bob. Now I blame myself she nearly killed you!”

  Simon sat next to her on the bed, and put his good arm round her. “You can’t blame yourself. We’d only just escaped the lions.”

  “That’s no excuse,” and Amie buried her head in her hands and Simon folded both arms around her rocking her gently.

  “Well, she didn’t succeed, did she? And you had the courage to shoot her. You saved my life Fel … Amie!”

  Despite herself Amie grinned. “And don’t you forget that, it’s Amie, and I saved your life and you saved mine, so we’re quits.”

  Then she remembered something else. “You were trying to tell me something just before that. What was it?”

  “Documents I found in the other truck. I didn’t get a chance to study them while we were driving, but when we stopped at the border, I took them out to have a look. The moment I sat back in the chair, Karen noticed the folder on my lap and that’s when she attacked me.”