by Rob Aspinall
“Really?” the doctor asked. “She’s in urgent need. Can’t you look the other way this once?”
Sven shrugged in sympathy. “New policy, I’m afraid.”
“Ah, right,” the doctor said, looking left, right, behind. Fast as lightning, he slammed Sven’s head into the counter. Sven bounced off and disappeared over the other side. The doctor vaulted up and over the counter.
“Poor guy,” I said, shivering despite the obvious warmth of the hospital. “You could have gone for a sleeper hold or something.”
“You want these drugs or not?” Philippe asked, snatching the prescription papers off the counter.
“How do you even know what meds I need?” I asked.
“I read your file when I was assigned to your case.”
“You mean, when you were assigned to kill me?”
“Something like that,” he said.
Philippe rifled through the shelves while I sat guard, my throat drier than a sandpit and my body aching all over. He moved from one shelf to another, comparing each box to the names on the list and dropping them in the kind of green plastic basket you got at supermarkets. I didn’t remember much about the bus ride to Sweden. Only waking up to the worst Circle of Concern ever. All those cool, sophisticated, beautiful Euro people and me, a British train-wreck abroad. I woke up briefly on the aisle floor, a girl fanning me with a straw fedora, my head on a rolled-up tie-dye tee donated by a walking male tattoo. Now we were here. And Philippe was helping me. Why? He was a JPAC assassin. They didn’t exactly do warm and fuzzy.
Philippe was part way through completing my drugs order when a female pharmacist strode through the automatic doors. She was middle-aged and shapely. Blue eyes, brown hair and a face that said don’t fuck with me. She stopped in her tracks. I glanced over the counter. Philippe was temporarily out of sight.
“Are you being served?” the pharmacist asked.
“Yes, thanks.”
She walked past me to a side door that led through to the other side of the counter. If she went through that door, she’d see Sven out cold on the floor. She swiped a pass against a reader. The door clicked open.
“Wait,” I said, raising my voice. “You can’t go back there.”
The pharmacist held the door halfway open. “Why not?”
“Because,” I said, searching for a good reason in the midst of the mind fog. “Because there are cockroaches. Giant, huge cockroaches swarming all over the floor. Sven went to report it.”
The pharmacist backed away from the door. I thought the idea of loads of creepy-crawlies would frighten her off. I know it would me. But she seemed curious.
“What? Here? How strange,” she said, walking around the front of the counter. Before she could peer over, I wheeled forward and kicked her in her left calf.
She spun around and gripped her leg. “Ow. What the—”
“Sorry,” I said, offering no explanation.
I looked past the pharmacist to where Philippe was silently placing the last of the immunosuppressants into the basket and stepping towards the side door. The pharmacist shook her head at me. She couldn’t very well shout at a sick cardiology patient, could she? Not in a private, big-bucks hospital. She turned her attention back to the counter. I kicked her again. This time in the ankle, just above the back of her white plimsoll.
“Agh! What are you doing?” she said, turning to me again.
Philippe ghosted out from between the shelves and over to the door. I kicked the pharmacist in the shin.
“Sorry, I can’t help it,” I said as she hopped back out of range.
I wheeled forward and walloped her one more time as Philippe eased open the side door.
“Stop it, you maniac!” the pharmacist shouted, hopping away.
I spun the wheels on the chair and kicked her again, making her block with her hands.
“It’s a condition,” I said, chasing her out through the automatic doors. “Kickashinitus.”
Philippe appeared and plonked the basket in my lap. The pharmacist saw us over her shoulder as he wheeled me out of the pharmacy.
“Security! Security!” she shouted, hobbling along the corridor. As she hung a right, we hung a left and bolted along the ground-floor corridors, Philippe snatching a blanket off an empty gurney and dumping it on top of the basket. We broke out into the main entrance to the hospital – a wide-open circular space with high ceilings and a large reception desk. We scooted past a vending machine containing rows of bottled mineral water.
“I need water to swallow the pills,” I said, feeling hot and cold and dizzy again, just like on the bus.
Philippe slid to a sudden stop, jerking the wheelchair back and nearly tipping me out. I looked up at him. He wasn’t happy. He shook his head, but dug a hand in one of the pockets of his stolen trousers. He came out with a couple of euro coins and strode over to the vending machine, leaving me sitting un-pretty in the middle of reception. Philippe slotted the coins in the machine and hit a couple of buttons. The robotic arm of the vending machine reached up to pull down the bottle of water.
It seemed to take an age. Meanwhile, here came the cavalry. A pair of security guards carrying batons. They were heading for Philippe, who was bending over retrieving the bottle from the machine.
As the security guards ran across reception, I used the last of the strength in my arms to wheel myself directly into their path. They had no time to body swerve and bundled straight into me, sending me sprawling onto the floor and them crashing over the chair, one piled on top of the other. It was more for their own protection than Philippe’s.
Speaking of the devil, he ran back over and put the guards’ lights out with a couple of swift kicks while they were down. He dragged my dead weight up off the floor and plonked me in the chair, quickly gathering up the spilled boxes of drugs and dumping them back in my lap. He wheeled me out of the front door, the receptionist frantically dialling for more security.
Philippe ditched the white coat, stethoscope and glasses in a bin outside and pushed me across a carpark. The rain had stopped, but the water stood fresh on the tarmac, spraying up off the wheels, Philippe’s feet splish-sploshing through shallow puddles. I glanced over my shoulder. More security emerged out of the door. Four men this time, with the local PD no doubt hot-footing it our way. We cut between cars as if looking for a certain one. A Merc? An Audi? Something sleek and fast and comfortable? No, a beige Volvo estate from a previous century. Philippe parked me up alongside it and put both hands flat against the passenger side window. He pushed it a third of the way down, then reached an arm inside and, with two fingers, popped up the lock on the door. We were in. Me in the passenger seat with a basket of drugs; Philippe hot-wiring the granddad mobile. He was about to spark the wires together when I spotted security jogging past.
“Wait,” I said. “Get down.”
The pair of us stooped low in our seats as the guards weaved their way through the cars, looking side to side. Over the dash, I saw them move on across the carpark.
“Okay, go.”
Philippe sparked the wires and the car shook itself into life. He rammed the long, thin gearstick into reverse and backed us out of the space at speed. We shot out of the carpark, wriggling in the wet, with only the driver’s side windscreen wiper whining away as the worn rubber dragged itself up and down the glass. I twisted open the bottle of water and waded through the mishmash of meds.
It had been close. Any longer without the drugs and I might not have made it. With the pills working their way into my bloodstream, I pulled the blanket over me and reclined my seat. No energy left other than to sleep.
3
The House On The Hill
Me, Clarence and Inge took our original positions back in the van and set off behind Gold Teeth and his men in their jeeps. A couple of hundred metres further on, a road marked private branched off and curved to the left up the hill, steeper than a night in the Ritz. The rainforest jungle chattered with life either side of the narro
w road. Beautiful, but deadly. I saw a large, colourful snake slither into the grass as the van rumbled by, the road getting tougher and rockier the higher we climbed. The van struggled to keep up with the trail of dust kicked out by the army jeeps, but we made it up, thanks to some determined gear changing by Clarence. The jungle got thicker before it got thinner, trees with giant leaves leaning lazily over the road, but after a minute or two, the land flattened out and we passed through a five-metre-high wire fence, opened and closed by another of the general’s red berets. We parked in a driveway in front of the house, behind an empty military truck with a canopy stretched over the back, and a gleaming platinum Hummer with huge alloy-spoked rims and a number plate that said: KILLR1. Nice to see the general had taste.
We followed the soldiers around the side of the house into a large courtyard, and I realised that this was more than just a house. It was a compound, with four different buildings arranged into a square, each built from wood and sporting a walkway that skirted the courtyard.
In the centre, there was an extravagant fountain – four gold mermaids with outlandishly big boobs spouting water into a giant, babbling pool. A gold statue of an African man in uniform – I guessed the general – rose out from between the mermaids with arms crossed in an X, a gun in each hand.
Leaning back against the edge of the fountain was a soldier stripped to his waist. He was blindfolded, his hands tied behind his back. He was bleeding from the nose and quivering with fear. A shot rang out that made the three of us jump and Inge squeal. Surely, we were acting.
I looked across the courtyard and saw a man who looked a lot like the statue, if not as tall, broad, chiselled or imposing as the sculptor had made out. He stood on one of the walkways, platinum-plated gun in hand, aiming at the poor man by the fountain. It was a horrible sight, but, I must admit, I was getting used to the blood-and-guts violence of the dreams. It was like playing Grand Theft Auto. At first, it was shocking, assaulting passers-by on the street. But after a few goes, you were clubbing a granny to death with a baseball bat and thinking nothing of it.
“Keep still, won’t you?” the general said in English, much clearer than Gold Teeth. “I can’t shoot you if you’re squirming around.”
The man in the blindfold held himself still, as if wanting death to come sooner. The general took aim again. Germany’s answer to Meryl Streep turned and buried her head in my chest and jumped again at the next gunshot. Someone give that woman an Oscar.
This time, the general hit the blindfolded man dead centre in his chest, the bullet punching its way out of his back and lodging in one of the mermaid tails. The force of the shot knocked him backwards into the base of the fountain, his body turning in the water until he floated face-down and lifeless. Gold Teeth beckoned us forward to meet the general by the fountain.
“General, sir, here are the aid workers you sent for,” he said, his tone softening.
General Mobutu ignored him and examined the damage to his statue. “I hate it when that happens,” he said. “Wait, watch this …”
The pool of water at the base of the fountain had already turned red. Now, the same water spurted out of the mermaids’ trout-pout lips. It looked like they were spewing up blood.
General Mobutu laughed and handed his weapon to one of his soldiers. “Impressive, yes?”
His eyes were wide and fierce, like he was on the sherbet. In fact, I think all his men were sniffing the white stuff by the looks of it.
He spat on the floating body. “Another traitor. I give them everything, do I not? Food, vodka, money, women. I train them, house them, clothe them. Maybe too much. I find him asleep at his post, a bottle in his hand.”
Falling asleep on the job hardly made him a traitor. Of course, no one was about to point that out to Mobutu.
“Sleeping on duty is stealing time,” he said. “My time.”
General Mobutu stomped past us and up a flight of three steps onto a walkway to the main house. Gold Teeth signalled for us to follow.
“And that’s just my soldiers,” Mobutu said as we entered the house at the front of the compound through a sliding glass door. “The villagers are worse. They would steal my eyes in the night if I did not sleep with them closed.”
The inside of the house was air conditioned, thank frig, ice-cool awesomeness wafting against my skin, the glare of the sun lost behind the tinted glass. The general led us through a large and opulent hallway with varnished wooden flooring and giant overhead fans that thrummed quietly like muffled helicopter rotors.
We ended up in his office – a spacious area with a big flat-screen on one wall, playing live football from England, and a portrait painting of his bad self in full military garb on the other. Between them sat a giant oak desk and padded leather chair, which he slung himself into. He put both feet up on the desk, boots caked in dirt.
“Okay,” he said. “Give me the vaccine.”
I put the medical box down and opened it up, snapped on a pair of gloves and readied a syringe.
Inge stepped forward with the sterilised cotton swab. “The top of your left arm, please, General.”
Mobutu unbuttoned his shirt and pulled his left arm out of the sleeve. He ran his tongue inside his mouth as Inge wiped the vein area with the swab. I walked around the desk with the needle, ready to give him the injection.
“Not you,” Mobutu said to me. “The woman will do it.”
He eyed me and Clarence suspiciously as Inge stuck him with the needle, then looked up at Inge with a twinkle in his eye.
“How would you like to stay here awhile? My guest.”
“That’s very kind of you, General, but we have a lot of work to do,” Inge said. “A lot more of your people to treat.”
With the needle fresh out of his arm, he pulled his shirt back over his shoulder before I could clean off the point of injection.
“My people? They are not my people,” Mobutu said. “They plot against me. After all I have done for them. Securing the mining contracts. My so-called people hide diamonds in their socks and their teeth. I am a kind man, a just leader, but they force me to raise my hand …”
Mobutu was ranting again, only interrupted when his team, Chelsea, scored on TV. “Yes! Two nil. Fuck you, United.”
“Okay, take them away,” he ordered Gold Teeth. “I watch the match.” We packed up and headed out of the door. “But let them immunise the whores and the men first,” Mobutu shouted after us.
“Yes, General,” said Gold Teeth.
He led us around the courtyard, boots and shoes clomping along the wooden walkway, the cries and cackles of jungle animals coming from the high trees towering above the back of the compound. We stopped in one of the houses to the rear of the courtyard – a large, murky room with old beds sporting dirty bare mattresses. One woman to a bed. Ready to serve. Some younger than me. A red beret was finishing off as we entered, doing up his fly and picking up his rifle. I felt sick. I felt angry. In the eyes of the women, the girls, I didn’t see fear or sorrow. I saw acceptance. Come on, Philippe, do something. Stab one of the soldiers in the eye with the next syringe. Pull a gun from a holster and start blasting.
No such luck. After injecting the women and soldiers trooping in and out of the house in pairs, it was left to Inge to say something.
“These women need proper medical attention,” she said.
“There’s a hospital in the next town,” I said. “We could—”
Gold Teeth loomed over me. He took a hunting knife from his belt and held it up in front of my face so I could see just how sharp the blade was.
“Don’t get any ideas, boy,” he said. “You may be immune to the scratchy-scratch. Don’t mean you’re immune from me.”
“It’s okay, boss,” Clarence said to the big man, pulling me away by the arm. “We’re leaving.”
“Yeah, you’d better,” said Gold Teeth, his lip curling like a snarling dog.
Amazing how fast people could turn. We were quickly on our way down the hill
, fresh out of medical supplies, the soldiers following for a while, making sure we left the village. We drove for a few miles before pulling into a layby. Inge drew the blue curtain open and pushed through a hidden door in the panel behind the front seats. We piled into the back with her.
Okay, this was more like the JPAC I knew and hated.
To one side was a bolted-down swing chair and desk, with twin computer monitors, a keyboard and a couple of shiny black trackballs. On the other side, a large object beneath a thick camouflage net hiding whatever was underneath. In between sat a couple of large metal cases padlocked shut. Clarence and I used them as impromptu stools as Inge jumped in the chair and fired up the monitors. We reviewed the footage from three cameras, chest-high, moving around Mobutu’s place. Hidden cameras? One was definitely somewhere on me.
Inge paused the videos. “Set your watches. We go in at zero one hundred.”
4
Steak And Eggs
I woke up from a deep, deep sleep. The car droned along a half-empty motorway in the early-morning light. Philippe sat bolt upright like a machine, two hands rigid on the big old Volvo steering wheel. I mean, how the hell was he alive? He died, then had his heart pulled out. Now he was here, driving us somewhere in some old rust bucket with dirty brown velour seats and a custard dash. I fumbled for the seat lever and jerked myself upright. I shifted up in my seat and stretched.
Philippe glanced over. “How do you feel?”
“Okay … I think.”
The immunosuppressants seemed to have done the trick. My fever had gone. Ditto the churning in the pit of my stomach. Shame I couldn’t say the same for the bruises up and down my body. I flipped my visor down and rubbed my neck in the vanity mirror. The burn from the tape Philippe had wound around the plastic bag was now a purple band, tender to the touch. The car rattled and bumped and squeaked and let in a draught through the passenger window. My attention turned to the super-shabby interior. It was like something Mr Herd, my physics teacher, would have driven.
