Dictator sc-4

by Tom Cain

  He made one last effort to try to preserve his own view of reality.

  ‘Mabeki abducted you when we were in Hong Kong. He held a gun to your head. I saw him do it.’

  ‘And I let him,’ she said. ‘Then, when we’d got outside, I ran to the van he had waiting, and they drove me away. I’d wanted to stay at the house, so that we could kill you together, Moses and me. But he said that was too risky. He wanted to be sure I was all right. And he’d already worked out a plan for dealing with you. All the time I was in that van I just prayed that he would get away from you safely, so that he could join me. And I prayed that you were dead, Sam. I prayed for that with all my heart.’

  ‘And everything between us, that was…’

  ‘Just a way of getting you to Hong Kong, so that you would kill the Gushungos, and then we would kill you.’

  ‘So it was you all along, selling us out, telling Mabeki everything.’

  ‘Oh yes.’ She smiled. ‘And it was him all along, telling me about the Gushungos. There were no old ladies at that church in Hong Kong. I didn’t have to spend hours checking out their house. Anything I ever wanted to know, Moses just told me. We never met. But we talked on the phone, sent emails. He’s even my Facebook friend. Fake name and picture, of course.’ She laughed at the deceitful absurdity. ‘It’s been going for years. Did Wendell ever tell you how he got his bright idea to get rid of the Gushungos?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then I will. I went up to him one day and said, “I want revenge” in my best blank, moody, kidnap-victim voice. That got him thinking, just like Moses said it would. After that, all I had to do was drop the occasional hint and… well, here we are.’

  Carver had a limited appetite for self-pity. The pain he felt was rapidly mutating into a cold, detached anger. ‘Well I hope you’re pleased with yourself. This country’s lost the chance to be free. And your uncle’s dead. Shot in the back. Did you know that?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘And it doesn’t bother you? Wendell Klerk rescued you, gave you a home… the guy loved you like a daughter, and this is how you repay him?’

  ‘Loved me? Is that what you think? He loved money. All I was to him was a way of keeping his precious business alive when he was gone. He only paid you to come after me in Mozambique because it was cheaper than paying the ransom.’

  ‘That’s not true. I know it’s not. And how can you say you want to be with Moses Mabeki? The man’s a psychopath. He killed your family. He tried to rape you. I saw him in that room, by your bed, half-undressed…’

  Zalika’s laugh was derisive, contemptuous of his stupidity. ‘It wasn’t rape. It was the most glorious moment of my life. I’d been in love with Moses since I was a little girl. I was willing to do anything, endure anything if it meant being with him. Finally, all my dreams were about to come true. Plain little Zalika, Mummy’s problem child, the girl who wasn’t pretty enough, or sweet enough, who couldn’t get a boyfriend, who had to spend her whole life being compared to her wonderful, handsome, charming older brother… Finally I was going to get my man. And that’s when Uncle Wendell’s hired hooligan has to come charging through the door… And look what you did to him! Moses was so beautiful. He was like a God. But you took all that away from me. You bastard! I hate you! Every night we were together, I only got through it by telling myself I was doing it for him.’

  She was unravelling, thought Carver. All the secret resentments she’d stored up for years were pouring out, toxic delusions that had driven everything she’d ever done.

  ‘For Christ’s sake, Zalika, listen to yourself,’ he said. ‘You’ve fallen in love with your captor. It’s normal, the Stockholm Syndrome – happens to hostages, kidnap victims, even people who’ve been tortured. But we can get you help.’

  ‘Help? I don’t want help!’ she screamed. ‘There’s nothing wrong with me!’

  ‘He killed your family,’ Carver said, emphasizing each word.

  ‘Yes, he did. He killed my bitch of a mother and the brother I hated.’

  ‘He killed your father, too. Did you hate him?’

  For the first time he saw a sign of weakness in the wall of loathing and self-pity she’d built round her soul. ‘My father… my father was a thief,’ Zalika said. ‘He owned land stolen from the people. He got rich by keeping Malembans poor.’

  ‘Mabeki told you that, did he?’

  ‘He explained it to me, yes, but-’

  ‘And that was a good enough reason for your father to die?’

  ‘There was no choice. That’s how it had to be. I didn’t like it, but Moses explained it and I believed him. I loved him. I still love him. And he loves me. He wants me by his side when he fulfils his destiny. He was born to rule Malemba. I was born to be his woman.’

  ‘You deluded little bitch. You had everything and you threw it away. You betrayed the people who loved you, and for what? If you think Moses Mabeki loves you, you’re as mad as he is. He just wants to fuck you. Fuck your family, fuck your class, fuck your race… it’s not exactly subtle, is it? And once he’s done it, he’ll kill you, just like he killed the best of your people. Count on it.’

  ‘You’re wrong! You’re wrong! He’s coming for me now. Then I’m giving you to him. I’m going to watch him take you apart, piece by piece. And then we’ll be together, the two of us, and-’

  The sentence ended there. Zalika had seen something beyond Carver. She smiled, her whole face transformed by an expression of pure delight… and then the joy was replaced by shocked surprise as a burst of semi-automatic gunfire hammered out, puncturing her body with a three-shot ellipsis of wounds that flowered diagonally across her chest, exited explosively out of her back and flung her to the floor of the little ravine.

  ‘She was deluded,’ said Moses Mabeki, walking past Carver and stopping when he reached Zalika Stratten’s body. ‘A useful idiot who had outlived her usefulness. It would have been amusing to have had her, of course – had her again, I should say. But there are some things more satisfying than mere sex. I had total control of her. I determined whether she lived or died. Far better.’

  It was then that Carver truly hated Moses Mabeki: hated him for the way he had perverted, exploited and then discarded a girl whose only real sin was to have loved him – or rather, loved a dream of what he might once have been. Carver hated himself, too, for not finishing this when he first had the chance. So much suffering could have been avoided, for the want of one more bullet.

  ‘She was right too, though,’ Mabeki said. ‘I will take my time killing you. Get to your feet.’

  Carver began to move. And then he frowned. There was something else moving out there, coming towards them down the same path Zalika had trodden. But this shadow was much larger.

  Carver raised a finger and pointed past Mabeki. ‘Behind you,’ he said.

  Mabeki raised his eyebrows and sighed. ‘Please, don’t insult my intelligence.’

  And then there was a roar so loud that it seemed to reverberate inside Carver’s body, liquefying his guts and filling him with a primal caveman terror that overrode all his years of training and combat.

  Mabeki’s eyes widened. He spun round. And the old lion Lobengula summoned up the remnants of his strength, leapt from fifteen feet away and hit Mabeki with the full force of his massive body.

  99

  Moses Mabeki screamed as the lion clamped his foreclaws on either side of his stomach, holding him tight in a terrible dance of death. Then his mouth opened, and even where he lay Carver was engulfed in the hot, fetid stench of rotten meat that hung on that carnivore breath.

  Frantically, Carver rolled to one side, then scrambled away as the lion drove Mabeki to the ground, the gun falling from his hand as his outflung wrist snapped against the rock that had been Carver’s shelter.

  The massive, savagely regal head lowered over Mabeki whose screams rose to an even higher pitch. The great curved fangs tore into his shoulder and the base of his neck, ripping and gnawing at his fle
sh while the fur round the old lion’s mouth became matted with hot, fresh blood.

  From the far side of the rock came the sound of men shouting. Mabeki must have gone on ahead, wanting his own, personal moment of triumph. Now the rest of his people were catching up. More shots were fired. Carver heard the ricochets of bullets against the rock walls of the defile.

  The lion paused for a moment, raised his head and looked with perfect feline night-vision towards the source of the disturbance. Again he roared, and now the men’s earlier bravado was replaced by cries of panic and the sound of running feet as they raced one another to escape the presence of the man-eater.

  The lion returned to his long-awaited feast. Mabeki’s screams were now just barely audible whimpers. Carver looked on, mesmerized. This was the same beast that he had encountered less than ten minutes earlier. He could see the fresh bullet wounds in its flank and haunches.

  And then, just a couple of feet beyond its twitching, hairy-tufted tail, Carver noticed his gun, lying discarded on the ground. He had to reach it without catching the lion’s attention. With infinite care, keeping his movements as slow and imperceptible as possible, Carver wriggled his way across the ground.

  Lobengula had switched his attention to Mabeki’s right arm. Placing his front paws on Mabeki’s chest, to keep it still and give himself some leverage, he dug his teeth in just above the man’s elbow and shook his head to wrench the limp, unmoving arm out of the elbow joint, growling contentedly to himself as it did so.

  Carver kept moving. He was almost there. Slowly, slowly, he reached out his hand and felt his fingertips touch the stock of the gun.

  The lion’s tail gave another impatient twitch, the brushy end swishing by just inches from his outstretched fingertips. Carver tightened his grip and gently pulled the gun towards him.

  Lobengula was relishing the taste and feel of fresh, blood-warmed meat. His wounds were forgotten. There was nothing on his mind but the feast he had in store.

  And then, out of the corner of his eye he noticed something moving by the tip of his tail. He raised his head from his meal and looked round.

  Carver didn’t wait to be attacked himself. He just switched his M4 to automatic fire and emptied an entire magazine into the lion’s body and head. There was a part of him that felt sad, almost ashamed at the slaughter of such a magnificent beast. But there was another, far greater part of him that had no intention whatever of being the second course. There was a horrible moment when it seemed that even this might not be enough, when the lion’s fighting spirit was so great that he attempted to charge through the torrent of bullets. But just as he seemed to be gathering himself for one last leap a round must have hit his heart, for his legs crumpled beneath him and he fell, stone dead, to the ground.

  But even if the lion was dead, Moses Mabeki was not. His neck and shoulder had been opened up like a corpse on the dissecting table and his arm had been severed from his body, yet somehow the lion had missed his heart and his airpipe and he was still breathing. Just.

  ‘Help me,’ he whispered. ‘For the love of God, please help me.’

  So now, all of a sudden, you discover religion, Carver thought.

  He discarded the empty magazine from his M4 and rammed in a fresh one. Mabeki was lying at his feet, his car-crash face and his twisted mouth and the white bones and torn muscles of his ripped and blood-soaked body clearly visible.

  ‘Sure,’ said Carver, ‘I’ll help you.’

  Then he pressed the trigger, and once again he did not let go until the magazine was empty.

  When the killing was done, an emptiness came over him. He looked at all the bodies and wondered what the hell the point of any of it had been. Zalika’s lovely face was still untouched, and as she lay there in the pale-blue moonlight it was almost possible that she was waiting for him to come and wake her with a kiss. But hers was a sleep that would never end. Carver put a third magazine into his M4, more out of habit than anything else, and walked away down the gully.

  He’d gone about a hundred metres when he heard the groan up ahead. Carver’s walk became a jog, then a run, then a flat-out sprint.

  Justus was alive. Zalika hadn’t killed him. And Carver was going to get him across the border if it was the last thing he ever did.

  Six Months Later…

  100

  Samuel Carver finished a mouthful of butter-soft fillet steak – nice and bloody in the middle, just as he liked it – and took a sip of 2001 Jardin Sophia, a superb red wine from a vineyard in Stellenbosch, South Africa. He looked around the restaurant at the waiters bustling between close-packed tables. It was hard to believe they were all in Sindele, the capital of a new, democratic Malemba.

  ‘Considering this country was starving six months ago, this isn’t a bad bit of steak,’ Carver said.

  Brianna Latrelle laughed politely. She was sticking to mineral water. She had to. She was seven months pregnant.

  ‘It was never really a starving country,’ she replied. ‘It was a prosperous, fertile country starved by a mad dictator.’

  ‘Whatever happened to him, I wonder?’

  This time her laugh was a lot more spontaneous. Brianna had quite a dirty cackle when she really laughed, Carver thought. It was one of the many things he was discovering he liked about her.

  ‘Who’d have guessed it would turn out this way?’ said Brianna. ‘Tshonga coming out of hiding, demanding an election, with a fair count this time…’

  ‘The guy’s got a helluva nerve, hasn’t he?’ said Carver. ‘You’ve got to admire him, really, the way he can talk about peace and democracy and keep a straight face.’

  ‘Well, he truly believes in them.’

  ‘Up to a point.’

  ‘Yeah, OK, so maybe he slipped up once or twice. But be fair, round here that’s nothing.’

  ‘And it helped that there was such a handy scapegoat, who just happened to have been the only survivor of the Gushungo assassination, found conveniently dead on a hill by the South African border, his body having been used for dinner by a lion.’

  ‘Couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy,’ Brianna said.

  Carver raised his glass. ‘I’ll certainly drink to that.’

  They ate in companionable silence for a while, then Carver said, ‘So here we are, two directors of the Kamativi Mining Corporation. How did you think the first annual shareholders meeting went, Madam Chairperson?’

  ‘I think it went well, Mr Carver,’ she replied.

  ‘Bizarre how it’s all worked out, isn’t it? I take the mickey out of Tshonga, but he kept his word about the deal.’

  ‘Why shouldn’t he? You fulfilled your side of it.’ She smiled at Carver’s quizzical expression. ‘Yes, I know what your side of it was. Wendell told me when we were flying down to Jo’burg, that last time. We shared a lot more than he or I ever let on. You know I had a bad feeling about what went down, that weekend at Campden Hall. I told you then. But the mine was always a good deal for Malemba. So why shouldn’t Tshonga keep to it?’

  ‘I should have listened to you that time.’

  ‘Damn straight you should have… and when we met at the house in Sandton. It’s weird, looking back. I always sensed something had gone wrong with Zalika, even if I didn’t know what. I used to tell myself I was being unfair, that I was just jealous of how much Wendell cared for her. I should have trusted myself more.’

  ‘And I should have trusted her less.’

  Carver didn’t want to think about Zalika Stratten any more than he had to. Time to change the subject.

  ‘So, the baby… did you tell Klerk about it?’

  ‘Yeah, just a few days before he died.’

  ‘He must have been ecstatic. He didn’t think he could have kids.’

  ‘I guess he hadn’t found the right girl,’ Brianna said with a melancholic mix of sadness and contentment in her voice.

  ‘Well he found the right girl in you all right. I just hope he knew it.’

  ‘He knew it
,’ she said.

  Her eyes began to fill with tears.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Carver said, reaching out to hold her wrist. ‘I didn’t mean to upset you.’

  ‘No, it’s all right, you didn’t.’ She took a deep breath, dabbed her eyes with her napkin and forced a bright smile. ‘So, anyway, tell me about Justus and… what were those kids called again?’

  ‘Canaan and Farayi. They’re fine. Better than fine, actually. They got their farm back. Justus is rebuilding the house. He’s got a new tractor.’

  ‘Really?’ Brianna said. ‘That sounds expensive.’

  ‘The man got shot doing me a favour. It wasn’t a lot to do in return…’

  ‘You know, Wendell was right about you,’ she said. ‘He always liked you, even when you turned him down. He used to say’ – she lowered her voice into a feminine approximation of Klerk’s bass rumble – ‘ “That Carver, he keeps his word. He does what he says he’s going to do. And he can shoot the balls off a horsefly at a hundred metres.” ’

  Once again their laughter lit up the table.

  ‘I’d better write that down,’ Carver said. ‘It’ll come in handy for my tombstone.’

  Brianna smiled fondly. ‘You’re a good man, Sam Carver,’ she said. Then a look of concern crossed her face as she saw him frown and twist his lips in an unexpected grimace. ‘What’s the matter?’

  ‘Just that the last woman who said that to me tried to kill me three days later.’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ she said. ‘I have no intention of killing you.’

  ‘Excellent,’ said Carver, reaching for the bottle of Jardin Sophia. ‘Then I’ll drink to that, too.’