The Dark Chronicles

by Jeremy Duns

  ‘Certainly – just call my office. I was here for the Queen’s trip in ’56, so I’m quite used to the pomp and ceremony. Wilson’s rather small potatoes, isn’t he? Reminds me of a bank clerk in those silly raincoats he wears.’

  ‘He’ll have to ditch them in this heat,’ said Manning.

  We all laughed politely.

  ‘Is Lagos as safe as everyone says it is?’ I asked Sandy. ‘It seems very quiet.’

  ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘we haven’t had any action here since one of the rebels’ planes attacked the Motor Boat Club two years ago. Didn’t do much harm, though everyone got frightfully excited, of course.’

  ‘“Rebels”? You don’t think secession was justified, then?’

  ‘Not really. Ojukwu’s a thug, and Gowon’s doing his best to control a very difficult situation.’

  ‘What about the accusations of genocide? I’ve heard there were seven thousand Biafran deaths a day due to starvation over the summer.’

  He grimaced. ‘A lot of do-gooders with no idea of how this part of the world works are swallowing the genocide line whole. Propaganda, of course – people throw around these enormous figures, but nobody really has the slightest idea. I think the Federals have actually dealt with the situation very well, considering the paltry support they’ve received from our government – and I’ll be telling the PM that when I meet him at State House on Thursday. At the moment, we seem to be simply watching from the sidelines, as usual. Nigeria will carry on with or without us.’

  ‘Wawa,’ said Manning, nodding his chin.

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘West Africa wins again. Another drink, old boy?’

  ‘It’s all right,’ I said, ‘I’ll get it.’

  I pushed my chair back and headed for the bar.

  *

  A steward in a gleaming white uniform and scarlet cummerbund stood behind a makeshift table crammed with bottles and paper cups. With all the poise of a Sotheby’s auctioneer, he surveyed the small crowd gathered round him, eventually nodding to a man in khaki shorts and deck shoes.

  ‘Star,’ said the man, in the manner of someone who had been wandering through the desert for forty days and nights.

  The steward leaned down, scooped a bottle of beer from an icebox, opened it deftly and handed it to the man.

  And that was when I saw her.

  She was sitting by herself on a stack of breeze blocks just beyond the bar, in a black bathing suit, a cigarette dangling from one hand. Her face was turned away in contemplation of the water, but the line of her jaw was unmistakable. I made my way through the crowd, stepped over the steward’s icebox and tapped her on the shoulder.

  ‘Anna.’

  She turned and peered at me in puzzlement. And for a fraction of a moment, it was her – but her twenty years ago. And then the illusion faded, and I was apologizing for my error. What a fool I was! What a bloody fool to mistake the first dark-haired stranger for her. I was losing grip, and fast.

  ‘You do not wear pyjamas,’ said the girl. Her accent was French, as was her tone. I looked at her again. She had one of those androgynous cat-like faces that were so much in fashion, the effect highlighted by her lack of make-up and slicked-back hair. She was more conventionally beautiful than Anna had ever been, but there was something rather hard about her. She looked like she should be marching through Parisian boulevards holding a placard.

  ‘No,’ I said in answer to her comment. ‘But neither do you.’

  ‘I was swimming.’

  I glanced down at the water – it looked filthy.

  ‘It is not so bad once you have entered,’ she said, white teeth flashing in the dark face.

  I offered her my hand. ‘Robert Kane.’

  She shook it perfunctorily. ‘Isabelle Dumont. Tell me, who did you think I was just now?’

  ‘Someone I knew a long time ago,’ I said.

  She smiled softly. ‘I see. So what do you do, Mister Kane? I haven’t seen you here before.’

  ‘I’ve only just arrived. I’m a reporter, for The Times.’

  ‘That is a coincidence. I write for Agence France-Presse. Are you here for your prime minister’s visit?’

  I nodded, already bored of the pretext.

  She grinned again, and lifted her chin. ‘Look on the good side of it: you meet such very interesting people.’

  I followed her gaze back to the table I’d left. Manning was stuffing his face full of peanuts, his wife was laughing like a hyena and Sandy was trying to fish a dead fly from his drink with a spoon.

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Why is it one can never stand one’s countrymen whenever one meets them abroad?’

  ‘One has no idea,’ she said, curling her lip a little.

  ‘Still,’ I said, ignoring the crack. ‘I’ve met you. You’re interesting. Have you been out here long?’

  ‘I grew up here,’ she said. ‘My father was the French ambassador.’

  ‘Have you seen much of the rest of the country?’

  There was a noise from further down the jetty, and we both looked up. A woman in a cocktail dress was squealing as a man lifted her over his head and threatened to throw her in the water. People at other tables stopped their conversations to stare at the scene, but nobody did much, and a few seconds later there was a splash as her spine hit the water.

  The woman swam to the shore and helped herself out, ignoring the man’s insincere apologies. The steward ran over to offer her a towel, and she took it, wrapped it around herself and marched through the crowd into the clubhouse.

  A few moments later, the man walked past us, a wide, innocent smile on his face.

  ‘Kraut,’ he said in an American accent. ‘Can’t take jokes.’

  We watched him trudge up to the clubhouse, and then Isabelle took a puff of her cigarette and said in a very still voice: ‘I was at the front in January. I must now get back. But it takes very long to obtain authorization to fly there.’

  She was looking out at the sea instead of me, at the lights of the trawlers. Her brown skin, the sheen of her bathing suit, the lapping of the water behind her, the alcohol still warm in my throat… for a moment, I forgot about Slavin and Anna and Sasha and Pritchard, and felt like a human being. Then a ship hooted in the distance and I woke up. That life was an illusion, and I couldn’t afford to slip back into it.

  ‘I’m afraid I can’t help you,’ I said. ‘I’ve only just got here.’

  She turned, and shot me a withering look. ‘I was not requesting your help,’ she said. ‘I make my own arrangements.’

  I looked at my watch. It was a quarter to midnight.

  ‘It was nice meeting you,’ I said, and her looks softened for a fraction of a moment.

  *

  Back at the table, I took Manning to one side and told him I needed to borrow his car.

  ‘Whatever for?’ he said. ‘Not that Slavin business again?’

  ‘Well, he’s not here, is he?’

  ‘But how am I supposed to—’

  ‘Sandy can give you a lift home,’ I said, lifting the keys from his jacket pocket.

  *

  I stood on the eighteenth brown and looked around. Nothing.

  Nigerian golf courses didn’t have greens, Manning had explained to me. It was too hard to maintain grass in such a climate, so instead they had ‘browns’: they were made of a mix of sand and oil, which the caddies would sweep for you before your putt.

  He was already ten minutes late. Had I just blown him? I had counted on his being senior enough to read his own messages without being challenged, but now I was having doubts. What if he was under such close supervision that his correspondence was read as a matter of course? I had no choice but to wait and find out.

  Behind me were the banks of villas and embassies. I could see Slavin’s street, but there didn’t seem to be any sign of life in it. And then something moved in my peripheral vision, and I turned to catch it. It was just a shape in the darkness, but it hadn’t been there before.

&nb
sp; ‘Who’s that?’ I called out.

  The shape stopped, and now I saw it was a man. He ran up the incline onto the far edge of the brown. He was tall with stooped shoulders and, I could just make out, a widow’s peak.

  Slavin.

  *

  I exhaled deeply. I had left London this morning with the aim of reaching this man before anyone else, and I’d succeeded.

  ‘You are not Mister Manning,’ he said, and I fancied he backed away a step.

  I held up my hands. ‘I work with Mister Manning at the High Commission,’ I said in Russian. ‘He told me to arrange a meeting with you.’

  ‘Why? I thought it was clear that the interview was tomorrow.’

  ‘It is,’ I assured him. ‘And I’m sorry we broke our promise not to contact you before then. But we had to. Some questions have come up in London.’

  He took a couple of steps closer, and the moonlight struck his face. Anxiety was etched across it.

  ‘Questions?’ he asked. ‘What questions?’

  ‘Irina Grigorieva,’ I said. ‘We need to know more about her.’

  He took another few steps, and now we were standing face to face, within touching distance.

  ‘Irina?’ he said, confused. ‘But she has nothing to—’

  He stopped, and I wondered if he had changed his mind about whatever it was he’d been about to tell me. But then I saw the dark red patch on his throat and my mind caught up with the sound, half-drowned in the wind.

  Shot.

  VII

  Slavin fell into my arms. I dropped him and ran in the direction of the noise. As I clambered down the bank, I saw a figure on the fairway: a white man, running. I followed him.

  Was he heading for Slavin’s house? Had he been one of his guards? He looked to be heading for the road, certainly. On the drive here, I hadn’t seen anybody on the streets – curfew descended at midnight, and expats were unlikely to wander around anyway. They had gins to drink, boats to sail, women to throw in the sea.

  He still had the pistol in his right hand, and he turned to fire at me. It missed, and I wondered if it had been deliberate – he’d had no trouble with Slavin.

  He was heading through a band of bushes to cut across to another hole, which sloped down to the gardens on Slavin’s street. When he reached the crest of the hill, he stopped, staggering a little, standing back and bellowing at me. I couldn’t understand it – the echo was too confusing. But it was a jeer. He raised his hand to fire again, and I dropped to the ground. He disappeared over the brow of the hill.

  And now it started raining. It began gently, bringing the smell of the earth to the fore and refreshing my face, but within seconds it was a sheet. It attacked like hot needles, and the noise of it on the nearby roofs was deafening.

  The rain wasn’t good for the shooter, either, as he was stuck in weeds in the rough, bogging him down. I was on the fairway and started gaining ground. I saw that another mound was coming up, and from its position I guessed what lay behind it.

  As he reached the brow, I shouted out at him, and he turned back for an instant. With a surge, I carried myself over and onto his back, tumbling us both into the bunker. He grunted and waved his arms around as though he were drowning, and I realized that I’d have to be quick; he was a younger, stronger man, trained, with a gun. I wanted him alive, but it might not be possible. I swung wildly at his head, trying to get at his eyes or nose. I felt the cracking of bone and heard him scream, so I immediately brought the other hand round in an axe-chop to follow through, but he rolled to avoid it and then he was climbing on me. A fist slammed into the small of my back, sending a wave of agony up my spine, and I tried to get the momentum to push back into him, hoisting my elbows towards his face, but I merely scraped his chin and he was grabbing me around the neck and pulling me towards him. His breathing was fast and I could smell him, could smell his sweat and his desire to kill me. As I started to lose control of my throat muscles, I freed one hand and grabbed at his groin. His grip loosened for a moment and I managed to turn enough to bring my other hand into play, gouging at one of his eyes. My fingers came away wet, but I lost my footing and fell face first into the mud. It took me a while to get back up, but I couldn’t see anything and the nerves in my spine were stabbing at me. Where the hell was he? Everything was black, and the rain was hammering down. Suddenly I saw a glint of light. The moon? No, it was moving! I rolled away from it and heard a slashing sound behind me as I did. I leapt at the shape in the dark, lashing out with my feet and catching him hard in the stomach. He fell against the side of the bunker and I pinned him, locking my arms around his neck and squeezing. It was a thick neck: the neck of a KGB thug. Rage surged through me. Sasha had broken his promise.

  ‘Who are you?’ I screamed into his face in Russian, but he was incapable of answering, so I loosened my hold and concentrated on his left arm instead.

  ‘Who? Tell me!’

  He didn’t answer, and after I’d asked him a few more times, I broke the arm in one movement. But there was no scream from the Russian, and I wondered what was wrong. His face suddenly looked pale; I realized what he was doing and frantically tried to prise open his jaw to get to the pill.

  Too late.

  I searched him. There were no identifying papers, of course, but there were some Nigerian shillings and a box of matches. The matchbox had something scribbled on it in pencil. I held it up to the moonlight. It was one very familiar Cyrillic word: “АЭРОФΛОТ”.

  I shunted it to one side of my brain, to deal with later, picked up the rake and started shovelling the mud over his body, as the rain kept coming down around us. Then I trudged back up to the eighteenth to look for Slavin and do the same thing.

  VIII

  In the front seat of Manning’s car, away from the rain hammering into my back and drowning out my thoughts, I considered the implications of what had just happened. They were, all told, pretty bleak. The death of a KGB officer on the eve of his defection would trigger the order for an immediate investigation from London. I could have handled that if it had been run by Manning, but Pritchard would be in the city in a matter of days, possibly even hours, and he would be much harder to fob off. Especially as I had disobeyed orders to come out here, had then insisted on meeting Slavin ahead of the scheduled time – and had been the only witness to his murder.

  There was nothing I could do about any of that now. If I went underground – moved hotels, cut all contact with Manning – I might as well paint a cross on my back. Pritchard would have a pack of hounds sent over on Concorde. No, my only option was to carry on the pretence I was searching for the traitor, even if that meant Pritchard breathing down my neck and giving me even less room for manoeuvre. It was precisely the situation I’d wanted to avoid – and precisely what I’d warned Sasha would happen if he got Moscow to send a hitman into Lagos.

  Now I had to find Anna. The Service knew she had recruited Radnya, so would almost certainly investigate her next. I knew she was somewhere in this city – probably even somewhere in this neighbourhood. Perhaps that house, there, with the jacaranda trees swaying in the wind. Perhaps she was in that villa, wrapped up in pleasant dreams, while I sat here with my shirt dripping and my fingers caked in blood as the minutes wound down until Pritchard’s plane landed.

  I took the torch from the glove compartment and ran it over the assassin’s effects. I wasn’t expecting to find anything that would identify him: he’d been a professional. But there were clues. There were always clues.

  The most obvious one was the word scrawled on the matchbox: ‘AEROFLOT’. My first thought was that it was a reminder to book his ticket back to Moscow: after all, even hitmen need to organize their travel arrangements. But why would he write that down? It wasn’t as if he would forget the name of the national airline.

  Next thought: perhaps he had a contact at Aeroflot’s office here. That made more sense – it was a common KGB cover. But again, why make a note of it? Bad form and, again, it wouldn’t be
too hard to remember.

  I was missing something. I hadn’t been in the field in over five years, and it was taking me time to get back into the old ways of thinking. Too much time.

  I picked up the Russian’s gun. It was a Tokarev TT. I had always thought it a brutish-looking weapon: unpainted and almost devoid of markings, it looked more like a cast of a pistol than the real thing. This one had been worn smooth with years of use, so that only one of the Cs in ‘CCCP’ arranged around the grip was still legible.

  I emptied the chamber, because it had no manual safety and I didn’t want to blow my knees off, and asked myself why a KGB assassin would be carrying this gun. The TT hadn’t been produced in years – most KGB now used the Makarov. The army had continued to use it for a while, but I’d read a report just a few months ago saying that they had also abandoned it. Perhaps he had been in the army many years ago, and had kept the gun? I tried to remember his face, before its features had been contorted by pain. Late twenties – no older than that. So too young to have been issued with a TT even if he had been in the army. Perhaps someone he knew had been in the army and had given it to him. Or he had it for other reasons – like I had my Luger.

  I wasn’t getting anywhere. My thoughts turned to Slavin – were there any clues there? He had started to say something about Anna before the shots had interrupted him. ‘But she has nothing to…’ What? Nothing to do with this? Nothing to gain? Nothing to lose?

  The shots. There was a clue. The first had gone through Slavin’s windpipe; the second had nearly taken off my ear. But why had he wasted valuable seconds shooting at me? Simply because I was a witness to murder – or because I was his second target?

  A chill went through me. Had Sasha ordered me ‘dispatched’, too?

  I would have to make a move soon. I lit a cigarette with one of the dead man’s matches. As I made to put the box in my pocket, I noticed that his scribbled ‘eh’ looked more like a stylized ‘ehf’. That didn’t help me much: so I knew he hadn’t been an especially literate assassin. But then I saw that two other letters also looked wrong.