Not for the first time he wondered about this place he’d come to know so well. Hints of its recent past were everywhere. The half-used boxes of ammunition under the counter, the shredded railway sleepers in the buttressed shed outside, old copies of the South African Sunday Times yellowing in the coal scuttle, cupboards stocked with enough lamb stew and tuna to last a year. And now a dead man outside the front door.
He breathed, closed his eyes a moment. Then he walked to the bookshelf, pulled out an old hardback volume of Macbeth, stuffed it into his jacket pocket, killed the lamp and walked out the door for the last time.
Clay set off down the footpath at a run, the wind at his back, the rain gusting in sheets that flayed across the open blufflands, the gorse shivering with each whip of the lash. The car couldn’t be far. He was going to find it and put as much time and distance between himself and this place as he could.
As he ran, the telephone conversation of earlier that day replayed itself in his mind, the words finding cadence with his footfall.
Crowbar had answered first ring.
‘It’s me, broer.’
‘I told you to keep quiet,’ Crowbar – Koevoet in Afrikaans – had said. He’d sounded drunk.
Clay switched to the language of his childhood. ‘I haven’t heard from you.’
‘Where are you?’
‘Town.’
‘Kak, Straker. I fokken told you–’
Clay cut him off. ‘Have you heard from Rania?’
Silence, and then: ‘No. No, I haven’t. But there have been–’
‘What, Koevoet? Have been what?’
‘Articles in the paper. Written by Lise Moulinbecq. That’s her alias, isn’t it?’
He’d told her to keep quiet, stay hidden. Irony flooded through him, that particularly brutal nausea. ‘What articles?’
‘Something about Cyprus. Some sort of scam involving stolen antiquities.’
‘Get me out, Koevoet.’
‘Look, Straker.’ Crowbar coughed, deep and bronchial. ‘I have connections in the police. They don’t know who plugged Medved and his two thugs, but they know it happened in your hotel room. They want you for questioning.’
Killing Rex Medved had been the first right thing Clay had done in a long time, the first unselfish thing. But even as he’d pulled the trigger, something inside him had been pulling the other way, that promise he had made to himself a decade ago, after he’d fled the war, the insanity of a country tearing itself apart: no more killing. And then, deep in the wilds of Yemen, just five months ago, his day of reckoning had come. He’d met Rania. And that night when he’d killed Medved, it had been for something that mattered. It had been for her, for all those people in Yemen that Medved had screwed over, the dead kids, all the poisoned villagers whose minutes and hours and years had been chewed up and shit out into the open sewer of exploitation.
‘Be patient, broer,’ said Crowbar. ‘It’s going cold.’
‘Cold? A hundred thousand pounds cold?’
Crowbar laughed. ‘Not anymore, broer. Medved’s sister raised the reward to a million, just last week. And that’s just for information. She’s offering twice that for the hit, ja.’
Two million pounds. Enough to change a life: pay debts, buy freedom, solve problems. It changed everything, for him and for Rania, raised risk to the sixth power.
‘Congratulations, Straker. You’re finally worth something,’ slurred Crowbar. ‘If it wasn’t for this new job in Angola, might even take it on myself.’
After all these years, Crowbar was going back to Africa, this time to fight someone else’s war. As he’d said on the drive down to Cornwall, he didn’t know how to do anything else, and wouldn’t want to if he did. He’d even tried to recruit Clay into ‘The Company’ as he’d called it.
Clay heard Crowbar light a smoke and exhale.
‘This Medved woman is not the kind of person you want to get mixed up with, mind.’ The clink of glass, pouring. ‘Maybe you can just wait her out.’
‘You’re not listening, Koevoet.’
‘She’ll be dead in six months, by all accounts. Some degenerative liver disease. One failed transplant after another. She’s now convinced that the only thing that can save her is this lost icon thing she’s searching for.’
‘Icon?’ he said.
‘The Patmos Illumination, some twelfth-century Eastern Orthodox trinket. They say it was carved out of wood from the cross.’
‘Which cross?’
‘The cross, for fok’s sake, Straker. They say Christ’s blood soaked in, that you can still see the hole where they drove in the spike for his hand.’
‘Koevoet…’
‘They say it has the power to heal. You know, make the blind see, all that kak, ja.’
‘Koevoet.’
‘They say that it vanished, years ago. Wonder if it could help me.’
‘God damn it, Koevoet.’
‘Never been the same since I took that FAPLA bullet.’
‘I don’t have six months, Koevoet. I’m leaving. With your help or without it.’
‘Okay, seun. Go back to the cottage. Now. Stay put a while longer.’
‘I’ve got to get off this island, Koevoet. The weather’s killing me.’
Crowbar laughed, the rasp of his cigarette lungs. ‘Look, Straker, it’ll take a while to organise, a week maybe.’
‘A week? No way, broer.’
‘For fok’s sake, Straker,’ growled Crowbar through the line. ‘For once in your life can you just do what you’re told?’
He had trusted this man with his life so many times. Never had he known anyone cooler under pressure. Clay could see him there now, R4 gripped in one burly hand, massive golden-haired forearms bare in the Ovamboland sun, those blue eyes shining their battle light through the dust and the smoke, striding along the line as if he were on manoeuvres, the rest of them all scared shitless, staring up at him from the bottom of their holes, the metal ripping through the air all around like arcing electricity, him urging them up – return fire lads, steady now – like some old-time Regimental Sergeant Major. If you hadn’t seen it you would never have believed it, understood what courage that took, to expose yourself to that horrible mutilating reality, to see other men fall with shattered limbs and holed, jellied skulls, to will yourself into that cathedral of horrors. And Koevoet had done it repeatedly, routinely, until the men in the platoon came to look upon him as invulnerable, a talisman of sorts, immortal even, as others more careful were killed and maimed all around him.
‘Look, oom, I’m serious.’ Clay let the Afrikaans word of respect sink in. Uncle. ‘If they’re after me, they’re after Rania, too. I need to ontrek.’
‘Okay, Straker. Two days. Just get back to the safe house. Sit tight, ja. I’ll set it up.’
‘Air?’
‘No way, broer. You wouldn’t get past check-in. The airports are still being watched.’
‘How then?’
‘I’ll come down to get you. Tell you then.’
‘I’ll set another place for dinner. We can discuss Shakespeare.’
Koevoet grunted. ‘How you liking the place?’
In truth, the solitude of the little cottage had done Clay good. He missed Rania more intensely than he had ever thought possible, none of his defences, the thousand mile deserts, the numb Atlantics of disavowal, the sheer fucking hate, able to resist her. And after a while he’d stopped trying to fight it, started to live with it, this thing lodged inside him like some exquisitely jagged trajectile. Thus armed, each day without her became a second chance. He started drinking less, suffering at first, pushing through. He took long walks along the coast, avoiding towns and villages, covering twenty or thirty miles a day over chevron bluffs and shingle beaches, watching the gulls whirling in the breeze, the sun strobing through shot-holed cumulus onto a sheet-metal sea, getting strong again, daring to think about the future. Evenings he pushed makeshift weights, did sit-ups, chin-ups, push-ups till his muscles screamed
. He practised in the shed with the silenced Glock. He read, hours by the fire, the rain washing the hours and nights away.
But that was finished. And as he ran through the night, he recalled his final words to Crowbar. ‘Two days,’ he’d said. ‘If you don’t show, I’m gone.’
Two days. A lifetime.
He’d done as Crowbar had asked. He’d gone back to the cottage, only to be met by these assassins. And now he was running for his life, half-blind through the gorse. It was raining hard, thick drops that crashed through the hedgerows and streamed from his eyes. Up ahead, a beam of light flashed across the cloud and was gone. The road was close.
He came to a gap in the hedgerow, pushed through and stepped onto a narrow lane, the tarmac sunk deep into the ground, a grassedged rut in the landscape. He stopped and peered through the rain, looking west, but there was only the dark, water-slicked road. He turned east and started walking. He’d covered fifty metres when he saw the outline of a car tucked into a pullout on the laneside. It was facing away from him, a large saloon, wide tyres. A BMW. Clay exhaled, relief surging through him. He took the keys from his pocket and started towards the car. Plans started forming in his head, destinations, routes. He’d head south to the coast. Find a boat. Try for the continent by sea.
He was within touching distance of the car when a light flared inside the passenger compartment. Clay froze. Then the sound of a window motor, the flick of a red cigarette end. One man, alone in the driver’s seat, waiting.
4
The Chasm between Now and Then
Clay stood next to the car, the ruts in the road streaming black water, the driving rain heavy in his eyes. Three miles behind him was the cottage on the cliff, which Crowbar had used as a safe house for the last five years of his tenure as chief European operative for the old DCC – South African Military Intelligence’s secret Directorate of Covert Collection. And a metre away, miles from the nearest village or farm, sat this black 500 series BMW with its lone occupant.
Clay pulled the G21 from his waistband, held it close, checked the magazine. The ember of the driver’s cigarette end glowed red inside the car then died. Clay approached at a walk, the Glock pointed to the ground. He didn’t rush. The rain was coming harder now. He could hear the drumming of the raindrops on the car’s roof, see the back of the driver’s head, the green light of the dashboard clock. He tapped on the driver’s side window with his stump.
The driver jumped, whipping his head towards the sound. Through the rain-washed glass, Clay could see the man’s face, the eyes bulging white with surprise, the two-day stubble on his chin, mouth open in a curse. Clay signalled that he should lower the window. The man composed himself, moved his right hand to the control panel and lowered the glass about an inch. A bloom of cigarette smoke wafted out and dissolved in the rain.
Clay leaned towards the gap in the window. ‘Lost, mate?’
The man shrugged, tried an ugly smile and leaned forward. There was a black handgun on the seat next to him.
In that instant, the outline of the Heckler and Koch handgun clearly imprinted on Clay’s retina, the rain running cold down the back of his neck, the Glock’s trigger safety coming off, a .45 slug sitting dry in its chamber, the firing pin millimetres away, Clay wished that the man was lost, that he’d simply pulled to the side of the road in his expensive car, wipers going, interior lights on, a roadmap spread over his knees, fingers tracing the web of narrow, hedgerowed ruts, that he was late getting home perhaps, was visiting a friend, a mistress even, anything but this. But there was no map. The interior of the car was dark. He wasn’t lost.
They looked at each other, a blink. It took only a fraction of a second. The man knew Clay had seen the weapon. His eyes widened. Clay could see his body tensing, preparing itself for a grab at the gun. Clay pushed the muzzle of the G21 into the gap between the window glass and the frame. The man froze.
‘Move and you die,’ Clay said. And then in Afrikaans: ‘Verstaan jy?’ Do you understand?
The man nodded once. Of course he understood.
‘I don’t want to kill you,’ Clay said, again in Afrikaans. ‘Don’t give me a reason.’ Please, don’t give me a reason.
Another nod.
‘Get out of the car.’
The man sat, unmoving.
‘Do it.’
The man nodded again.
Clay was about to step back when the man jerked forward in his seat, pushing his head down towards the door. As he did, the window motor engaged and the glass started coming up. A fraction of a second later the car’s engine gunned. Clay just had time to pull the Glock free and jump back as the car lurched forward. Clay fired. The bullet blew out the side window. The car swerved right, stabilised for a moment then surged away, the engine screaming. It had travelled about fifty metres along the lane when suddenly it jagged hard left and ploughed up into the hedgerow.
Clay ran to the car and peered inside. The driver was unconscious, slumped over the steering wheel. Clay scanned the laneway right and left. No one, no lights anywhere. He opened the door and dragged the man free. Then he got into the driver’s seat, restarted the engine and backed the car down the lane and into the pullout. The rain had stopped now and faint moonlight shone on the wet tarmac and danced in the rivulets flowing down the gutters. Clay got out and ran back to where the man was lying, grabbed him under one shoulder and levered him up so that he could slide his stump under the other arm. As quickly as he could, he dragged the man back to the car and laid him in the grass of the verge. From here, the car would screen him from anyone who happened to drive past.
Clay dropped his pack, pulled out his torch and ran it over the man’s body. He was thin, wiry, with a closely shaved head. Clay pulled away the man’s jacket and tore away his shirt, exposing the wounds. There was a lot of blood. It looked as if the bullet had passed through the meat of the shoulder and then grazed the side of the neck, not deep enough to hit an artery. The oke had been lucky.
Using the supplies from his pack, Clay bandaged the wounds as best he could. It took valuable moments, but by the time he was done he was pretty sure he’d stopped the bleeding. If the man received proper medical attention in the next couple of hours, he’d be okay. Clay checked the man’s pockets but found nothing. He stood by the car, the rain pelting his skull again, running rivulets over his face, and looked down at the man’s motionless body, and he felt it come: the empty horror, the physical pain, the shaking, the buzz. His hand was trembling, his heart rate spiking, irregular. He felt the cold rain snaking down his spine, and the dark chasm between now and then, the infinity that separated one moment from the next, one living and one not.
He threw his pack onto the passenger seat, jumped behind the wheel, reached across the centre console, grabbed the H&K from the passenger-side footwell and stashed it in the glove box. It wouldn’t be long before Medved’s people were notified of the failure. For these were Medved’s people, here for the reward. Of that he had no doubt. And soon they would be coming after him.
In Angola he had always been among the hunters, tracking SWAPO through the bush, chasing them across the miles, assaulting them from the air, deep inside the border. Now, he was the prey.
Clay grabbed the steering wheel, closed his eyes, concentrated on his breathing and tried to calm himself. He adjusted the seat, the mirrors, got comfortable. It was a beautiful automobile.
He was about to start towards the A38 when he saw a blinking green light under his feet. He reached down into the footwell and retrieved a mobile phone. It was open, paused in mid dial, active. Clay scrolled through the recent call numbers, but saw nothing familiar. He was about to close the phone when his thumb stopped, hung twitching on its tendons. A string of digits burned in the display, a string whose pattern he recognised. He checked the number again, read it aloud. The London 0207 prefix, the uncanny string of primes. It was the number he’d dialled from the phone box earlier that day. Crowbar’s flat in Kilburn.
5
/> Their Glorious Youth
The BMW was fast and smooth, the roads empty.
Crowbar’s words came to him in a flash: might even take it on myself.
Jesus Christ Almighty. Crowbar had betrayed him. He’d tried to use his own guys to collect Regina Medved’s three-million-pound reward. The tip-off and the hit. Clay could not bring himself to believe it, would literally have wagered his life against it. In so many ways, he already had. But there they were, lying dead and injured in the gorse, Boers like Koevoet, bloody Natal farm boys, lately of the DCC or 32 Battalion or some such outfit, guns for hire, mercenaries, using their years of experience to fight other people’s wars now that their country no longer wanted them.
Clay turned on the stereo, an expensive Blaukpunt. A CD loaded. He eased back the seat and settled in, the night air buffeting cold through the empty side window. A tinkling synthesised intro filled the car, building, mournful, that long single chord lasting and lasting in the background, and it made sense, really, that the men he had just killed would have been listening to this on the way here, anticipating perhaps the payoff and all it would bring. All of them of the same era, fighting that same race war. Now they were fighting each other. And then that haunting guitar and those four notes that always seemed to be asking him: where are you now? All of it always reminding him of Eben and that cheap tape deck and the Wish You Were Here cassette he played over and over in their tent at the Kunene River encampment, and the way Koevoet always came round and told Eben to turn it off, threatened to shoot the thing, run it over with a Buffel, give them all extra guard duty, and the way Eben always laughed and turned it right back up as soon as the old man had gone, and those long nights on standby, sitting by the fire, screaming the lyrics they were living out into the night with all the strength of their glorious youth: caught in the crossfire, blown on the steel breeze. Then, like now, none of it real, somehow. As he gazed through the trembling tunnel of light, the confused shadows of his memory twinned then trebled, the embers from the fire spinning skyward then blurring, come on you target, dissolving in the rain until they were gone and he was no longer sure that they had ever existed. He drove on through the night, sang it out at the top of his lungs until his already bruised throat ached. How I wish you were here.
Evolution of Fear Page 3
